"There's a chance for you still, my friend," she laughed. "You have won my fond regard—and, incidentally, the cost of a new frock."

"I?"

"Yes. We laid a bet as to whether you would come, Hermia and I. We've been watching the island through the telescope, and saw you embark—so to me—the victor, falls the honor of conducting you home in triumph."

"I'm to go in chains, it seems," he laughed, getting in beside her. "I've rarely seen you looking so handsome."

"You're improving. It's joy, mon ami, at seeing once again a full grown man. I have been bored—oh, so bored! Will you be nice to me?"

The motor skimmed smoothly over the perfect roads, mounting the hills through the village and spinning along a turnpike flanked by summer residences. "Wake Robin" stood at some distance from the village on the highest point of the hills and made a very imposing vista from the driveway—an English house with long wings at either side, flanked by terraces, lawns and gardens, guarded from the intrusive eyes of the highway by a high privet hedge. The tennis courts seemed to be the center of interest and in a corner of the terrace which faced the bay were some people taking tea and watching a match of singles between Reggie Armistead and their hostess. The chauffeur took the suit case to the butler and Olga Tcherny led the way to the tea table where Phyllis Van Vorst was pouring tea. Beside her sat a tall handsome woman with a hard mouth, dressed in white linen and a picture hat, who ogled him tentatively through a lorgnon during the moment of introduction before permitting her face to relax into a smile of welcome.

"So glad," she purred at last, extending a long slim hand in Markham's direction. "Phyllis, do give Mr. Markham some tea."

"How d'ye do, Mr. Markham," chortled Miss Van Vorst. "I'm afraid you'll have to put up with the Philistines for a while. Hermia's beating Reggie Armistead at tennis, and it's as much as one's life is worth to interrupt."

"That's no joke," said Archie Westcott, who was watching the game. "Some tennis, that. They're one set all and Hermia just broke through Reggie's service. That makes it five four."

Markham, teacup in hand, followed the Countess to the balustrade and watched. One would never have supposed from the way she played that this girl had been up since dawn and suffered an accident which had temporarily incapacitated her. Youth was triumphant. Vigor, suppleness and grace marked every movement, the smashing overhand service, the cat-like spring to the net, the quick recovery, the long free swing of the volley from the back-court, all of which showed form of a high order. It was a man's tennis that the girl was playing and Reggie Armistead needed all his cleverness to hold her at even terms. It was an ancient grudge, Markham learned, and an even thing in the betting, but Armistead pulled through by good passing and made the sets deuce.

"Gad! It makes me hot to look at 'em!" said Crosby Downs, fingering at his collar band, his face brick-color from the day in the open. "Make 'em stop, somebody."

He dropped into a wicker chair and fanned vigorously with his hat.

"Lord! Golf is bad enough. Oh, what's the use," he sighed heavily.

"Been golfing, Crosby?" smiled the Countess.

"Oh, call it that if you like," he growled. "Rotten game, that. Doctor's orders. A hundred and ten to-day. Couldn't hit the earth even and there were acres of it."

"Living up to your reputation, Crosby," sneered Carol Gouverneur. "Sans putt et sans approach?"

"You've struck it, young man. Sans anything, but that Weary Willie feelin' and a devourin' thirst. But I lost four pounds," he added more cheerfully—his fingers demonstrating in his waistband. "Oh, I'll put it on again to-night at dinner. Silly ass business—this runnin' around in the sun."

"Quite so," Olga agreed, "but everything we do is silly and asinine."

There was an outburst of applause form the others at a particularly brilliant shot below.

"By George!" cried Westcott, "she's got him. It's Hermia's vantage and forty-love. O Reggie! A love game, by Jiminy! Hermia, you've won me a cool hundred."

The game was over and the players shook hands before the net, Hermia laughing gaily, Armistead's eyes full of honest adoration. They were handsome children, those two.

Hermia climbed the steps slowly amid the congratulations of the guests and smiled as Markham came forward to meet her. She was rosy as a cherub, her bright hair tumbled beneath her crimson hair-band.

"Very good of you to come, Mr. Markham," she said breathlessly. "I had my eye in, and couldn't stop. I simply had to beat Reggie, you know," And then as her responsibilities recurred to her, "you've met everybody? Mrs. Renshaw, Miss Coddington—Mr. Markham—the Hermit of Thimble Island."

With a laugh she led him away from the others and threw herself in a lounge chair and motioned him to a seat nearby.

"You see," she said gaily, "her I am—quite safe—and ready to mock at all seriousness-the grasshopper entertaining the ant. Do you think you can stand so much gayety, Mr. Markham?"

"Even an ant must have its moments of frivolity."

"You frivolous!" she smiled.

"I've always wanted to be. It's one of my secret longings. I was born old. Show me how to be young and I'll give you anything I possess."

"That's tempting. I think I'll begin at once."

He laughed. "At what?"

She scrutinized him from top to toe.

"Oh, at your goggles."

He fingered his glasses.

"These?"

She nodded.

He took them off and looked at them amusedly.

"That's the first step. You're ten years younger already," she said.

"Oh, am I?"

"Yes. I'm sure of it—when you don't frown."

"And next?"

"You must flirt, Mr. Markham—and make pretty speeches—"

"Pretty speeches!"

"Oh, yes—you must treat every woman as though you adored her secretly, and when ladies visit your studio you mustn't bang the door in their faces."

"Did I do that?"

"Er—figuratively, yes. You were very impolite." She lay back and laughed at him. "There—I feel better. Now we shall be good friends."

He fingered his goggles a moment, and then his eyes met hers in frank agreement.

"I'm glad of that," he said, with a slow smile. "I like you a great deal."

She straightened, her eyes sparkling merrily.

"You see? You're improving already. I have great hopes for you, Mr. Markham." She threw a glance at the others and rose. "Here endeth the first lesson. It is time to dress. We will resume after dinner. That is," she added, "if Olga will spare you for a few moments."

"Olga—Madame Tcherny won't mind in the least," he laughed. "If you can make me anybody but myself, she will thank you from the bottom of her heart. Madame Tcherny is already at the point of giving me up as a hopeless case."

"In what respect?"

"Oh, in all respects. I'm a great disappointment to her—" He stopped suddenly. "I mean socially—professionally. You see I'm not the stuff that successful portrait painters are made of—"

"Except perhaps that you really can paint?" she asked over her shoulder.

He shrugged and followed.

CHAPTER VIII

OLGA TCHERNY

As the guests gathered in the drawing-room and on the terrace before dinner it was apparent to Markham that, unless he obeyed the injunctions of his small preceptor, he would be quite forgotten amid this gay company. On Thimble Island, as in New York, he had not found them necessary to his own existence, and it was quite clear that her at "Wake-Robin" they returned his indifference. After the first nod and appraising glance in his direction, Crosby Downs and Carol Gouverneur had completely ignored him. Archie Westcott had unbent to the point of offering him a cigarette, and Trevvy Morehouse, who had joined them over the cocktails, and injected polite bromidics into the conversation which Reggie Armistead, who knew nothing of Markham's art and cared less, only saved by some wholesome enthusiasm, in which all joined, over the "sand" and all-around good fellowship of their hostess.

But it required little assurance to make one's self at home here where informality seemed to be the rule, and before Hermia and the Countess came down Markham found himself on easy terms with the group he had joined. Mrs. Renshaw's appraisal and patronizing air dismayed him less than the china blue eyes of Phyllis Van Vorst which she had raised with a pretty effectiveness to his; Hilda Ashhurst hadn't even taken the trouble to notice him. When Carol Gouverneur was in her neighborhood there were no other men in the world.

But Hermia took pains to make her guests aware of the status of Mr. Markham in her house by seating him on her right at dinner and paying him an assiduous attention which detracted something from Reggie Armistead's interest, as well as Olga's, in that repast.

With a carelessness which put him off his guard Hermia drew him into the general conversation, aroused his sense of humor, until with a story of an experience in France, which he told with a dry wit that well suited him, he found himself the center of interest at the head of the table.

Out on the terrace over the coffee and tobacco, the compound slowly resolved itself into its elements, social and sentimental. Markham, scarcely aware of the precise moment when she had appropriated him, found himself in the garden below the terrace with Olga Tcherny. The heavy odor of the roses was about them, unstirred by the land breeze which faintly sighed in the treetops. A warm moon hung over Thimble Island, its soft lights catching in the ornaments Markham's companion wore, caressing her white shoulders and dusky hair, and softening the shadows in her eyes which peered like those of a seer down the path of light where the moonbeams played upon the water.

He had always thought her handsome, but to-night she was a fragment of the night itself, with all its tenderness and its melancholy mystery. He watched her slender figure as she reached forward, plucked a rose and raised its petals to her lips—a full flown rose, wasting its last hours of loveliness. She fastened it in her corsage and led the way to a stone bench beneath an arbor at the end of the wall where she sat and motioned to the place beside her.

The accord which existed between these two was unusual because of the total difference in their points of view on life and the habits of thought which made each the negative pole of the other. However unusual Markham may have appeared to a person of Olga Tcherny's training, he was not an unusual young man in the ordinary sense. He had always taken life seriously, from the hour when as a clerk in a broker's office he had started to work at night at the League in New York, with the intention of becoming a painter. He was no more serious than thousands of other young men who plan their lives early and live them up to specifications; but Olga Tcherny, who had flitted a zig-zag butterfly course among the exotics, now found in the meadows she had scorned a shrub quite to her liking. Markham was the most refreshingly original person she had ever met. He always said exactly what he thought and refused to speak at all unless he had something to say. Those hours in the studio when he had painted her portrait had been hours to remember, sound, sane hours in which they had discussed many things not comprehended in her philosophy, when he had led her by easy stages up the steep path he had climbed until she had gained, from the pinnacle of his successes, a vista of what had lain beneath. Unconsciously he had drawn upon her mentality until, surprised at its own existence, it had awakened to life and responded to his. To make her mental subjection the more complete, he had in his simplicity peered like a child through all her disguises and painted her soul as he saw it—as it was. The flattery was the more effectual because of its subtlety and because she knew, as he did, that in it there was no guile, no self-interest or sentimentality. And in return she could have paid him no higher compliment than when coolly, almost coldly, she told him of her life and what she had made of it.

She was very winning to-night—very gentle and womanly—more English than French or Russian, more American than either. Neither of them spoke for a long while. Such words as they could speak would have taken something from the perfection of their background. But Markham thought of her as he had frequently done, thankful again for the benefits of her regard, the genuineness of which she had brought home to him in many material ways.

To Olga alone there was a peril in the silence, a peril for the sanity he had taught her, for the pact which she had made with herself. She had eaten the bread and salt of his friendship and had given him hers. He believed in her and she could not deceive him. She knew his nature well. She had not been a student of men all her life for nothing. It would have been so easy to lie to him, to befuddle and bewitch him, to bring him to her feet by unfair means. But she had scorned to use them. For her, John Markham had been taboo. But there was peril in the silence. She sat looking into the wake of the moon in the water, very quiet, tense and almost breathless.

"You're glad you came?" she asked at last in the tones of matter and fact.

"Yes, I am. You've been too kind and patient with me, Olga."

He laid his hand over hers with a genuine impulse. It did not move beneath his touch or return his pressure.

"Yes," she said coolly, "I think I have."

"Have I offended you?"

"No. Not at all—only disappointed me a little. I had such nice plans for you."

He laughed.

"Olga, you're the most wonderful woman in the world. I don't deserve your friendship. But I did want to loaf—I worked pretty hard last winter."

"Oh, you needn't evade me. I can't make you like my friends. But I hoped you wouldn't disappoint them. Mrs. Berkley Hammond, the Gormeley twins, and now Hermia—"

"Miss Challoner!" in surprise. "Her portrait! I thought she disapproved of my method."

She smiled. "Oh, you don't know Hermia as I do. One is never more certain in one's judgment of her than when one thinks one is wrong." She gave a short laugh. "At any rate, she said she was going to speak to you about it."

"That's curious," he muttered.

"Will you do it?" she asked.

He looked away toward the terrace.

"I hadn't planned to do any portraits until Fall."

"Doesn't she interest you?" she continued quickly.

"She's paintable—it would be profitable, of course—"

"You're evading again."

"Yes, she interests me," he said frankly. "She's clever, amiable, hospitable—and quite irresponsible. But then she would want to be 'pretty.' I'm afraid I should only make her childish."

"Oh, she's prepared for the worst. You had better paint her. It will do you a lot of good. Besides, you paint better when you're a little contemptuous."

"I'm not sure that I could take that attitude toward Miss Challoner," he said slowly. "She's too good for the crowd she runs with, that's sure, and—"

"Thanks," laughed Olga. "You always had a neat turn for flattery."

But he didn't laugh.

"I mean it," he went on warmly. "She's too good for them—and so are you. Mrs. Renshaw, a woman notorious even in New York, who at the age of thirty has already changed husbands three times, drained them and thrown them aside as one would a rotten orange; Hilda Ashhurst who plays cards for a living and knows how to win; Crosby Downs, a merciless voluptuary who makes a god of his belly; Archie Westcott, the man Friday of every Western millionaire with social ambitions who comes to New York—a man who lives by his social connections, his wits and his looks; Carol Gouverneur, his history needn't be repeated—"

"Nor mine—" finished Olga quietly, "you needn't go on." The calmness of her tone only brought its bitterness into higher relief. Markham stopped, turned and caught both her hands in his.

"No, not yours, Olga. God knows I didn't mean that. You're not their kind, soulless, cynical, selfish and narrow social parasite who poison what they fee don and live in the idleness that better men and women have bought for them. Call them your crowd if you like. I know better. You've only taken people as you've found them—taken life as it was planned for you—moved along the line of least resistance because you'd never been taught that there was any other way to go. In Europe you never had a chance to learn—"

"That's it," she broke in passionately, "I never had a chance—not a chance."

Her fingers clutched his and then quickly released them.

"Oh, what's the use?" she went on in a stifled tone. "Why couldn't you have let me live on, steeped in my folly? It's too late for me to change. I can't. I'm pledged. If I gamble, keep late hours, and do all the things that this set does it's because if I didn't I should die of thinking. What does it matter to any one but me?"

She stopped and rose with a sudden gesture of anger.

"Don't preach, John. I'm not in the humor for it—not to-night—do you hear?"

He looked up at her in surprise. One of her hands was clenched on the balustrade and her dark eyes regarded him scornfully.

"I've made you angry? I'm sorry," he said.

The tense lines of her figure suddenly relaxed as she leaned against the pergola and then laughed up at the sky.

"Would you preach to the stars, John Markham? They're a merry congregation. They're laughing at you—as I am. A sermon by moonlight with only the stars and a scoffer to listen!"

Her mockery astonished and bewildered him. His indictment of those with whom she affiliated was no new thing in their conversations, and he knew that what he had said was true.

"I'm sorry I spoke," he muttered.

She laughed at him again and threw out her arms toward the moonlit sea.

"What a night for the moralities—for the ashes of repentance! I ask a man into the rose-garden to make love to me and he preaches to me instead—preaches to me! of the world, the flesh and the devil, par exemple! Was ever a pretty woman in a more humiliating position!"

She approached him again and leaned over him, the strands of her hair brushing his temples, her voice whispering mockingly just at his ear.

"Oh, la la! You make such a pretty lover, John. If I could only paint you in your sackcloth and ashes, I should die in content. What is it like, mon ami, to feel like moralizing in a rose-garden by moonlight? What do they tell you—the roses? Of the dull earth from which they come? Don't they whisper of the kisses of the night winds, of the drinking of the dew—of the mad joy of living—the sweetness of dying? Or don't they say anything to you at all—except that they are merely roses, John?"

She brushed the blossom in her fingers lightly across his lips and sprang away from him. But it was too late. She had gone too far and she realized it in a moment; for thought she eluded him once, he caught her in his arms and kissed her roughly on the lips.

"You'd mock at me, would you?" he cried.

She struggled in his arms and then lay inert. She deserved this revenge she knew, but not the carelessness of these kisses of retribution, each of them merciless with the burden of her awakening.

"Let me go, John," she said faintly. "You must not—"

"Not yet. I'm no man of stone. Can you scoff now?"

"No, no. Let me go. I've paid you well and you—O God! you've paid me, too. Let me go."

"Not until you kiss me."

"No—not that."

"Why?" he whispered.

"No—never that! Oh, the damage you have done!"

"I'll repair it—"

"No. You can't bring the dead to life——our friendship——it was so clean——Let me go, do you hear?"

But he only laughed at her.

"You'll kiss me—"

"Never!"

"You shall—"

"Never!"

He raised her face to his. She quivered under his touch, but her lips were insensate, and upon his hand a drop of moisture fell—a tear limpid, pure from the hidden springs of the spirit. He kissed its piteous course upon her cheek.

"Olga!" he whispered softly. "What have I done?"

"Killed something in me—I think—something gentle and noble that was trying so hard to live—"

"Forgive me," he stammered. "I didn't know you cared so much."

She started in his arms, then slowly released herself, and drew away while with an anxious gaze he followed her.

"Our friendship—I cared for that more than anything else in the world," she said simply.

"It shall be stronger," he began.

"No—friendship does not thrive on kisses."

"Love—" he began. But her quick gesture silenced him.

"Love, boy! What can you know of love!"

"Nothing. Teach me!"

She looked up into his face, her hands upon his shoulders holding him at arm's length, flushed with her empty victory—ice-cold with self contempt at the means she had used to accomplish it. Another man—a man of her own world—would have played the game as she had played it, mistrusting the tokens she had shown and taking her coquetry at its worldly value; would have kissed and perhaps forgotten the next morning. But as she looked in Markham's eyes she saw with dismay that he still read her heart correctly and that the pact of truthfulness which neither of them had broken was considered a pact between them still. Her gaze fell before his and she turned away, sure now that for the sake of her pride she must deceive him.

"No, I can teach you nothing, it seems, except, perhaps, that you should not make the arms of your lady black and blue. Love is a zephyr, mon ami, not a tornado."

He stared at her, bewildered by the sudden transformation.

"I—I kissed you," he said stupidly. "You wanted me to."

"Did I?" she taunted him. "Who knows? If I did"—examining her wrist—"I have now every reason to regret it."

He stood peering down at her from his great height, his thoughts tumbling into words.

"Don't lie to me, Olga. You were not content with friendship. No woman ever is. You wanted me to do—what I have done."

"Perhaps," she admitted calmly, "but not the way you did it. Kissing should be done upon the soft pedal mon ami, adagio, con amore. Your technique is rusty. Is it a wonder that I am disappointed?"

She was mocking him again, but this time he was not deceived.

"Perhaps I will improve with practice," he muttered.

He would have seized her again but she eluded him, laughing.

"Thank you, no—" she cried.

He went toward her again, but she sprang behind the bench, Markham following, both intent upon their game. He had seized her again when suddenly over their very heads there was a sound of feminine laughter among the vines from which there immediately emerged a white satin slipper, a slender white ankle, followed quickly by another—draperies, and at last Hermia Challoner, who, swinging for a moment by her hands, dropped breathlessly upon the bench between them. Markham, whose nose had been narrowly missed by the flying slippers, drew back in astonishment.

"Hello!" panted Hermia, laughing. "Reggie was chasing me, so I slipped over the balustrade onto the pergola—" She stopped and looked with quick intuition from one to the other. "Sorry I blunder'd in here, though, Olga—awfully sorry. Did I kick you in the nose, Mr. Markham?"

CHAPTER IX

OUT OF HIS DEPTH

Markham stammered something, but Olga was laughing softly. "Hermia, darling, you always do go into things feet first, but it's perilous in French heels. Mr. Markham and I were just trying to decide whether this stone bench wouldn't be just the place to do your portrait. If you'll observe—"

The situation was so palpable. Hermia looked from one to the other amusedly. Markham was following Olga's artistic dissertation with the eye of dubiety, but their hostess was merciless.

"Olga, dear," she inquired sweetly, "did you know your back hair was down?"

"Oh, is it? How provoking! Georgette is positively worthless!"

Even Olga's resourcefulness was not proof against Hermia's persistent audacity, especially as she was aware of a smudge of face-powder on John Markham's coat lapel which could not have been attributed by any chance to the deficiencies of her unlucky maid.

"Poor Georgette!" said Hermia softly, watching Olga's fingers quickly twist the erring strand into place.

At this moment there was a sound of footsteps on the walk and Reggie Armistead, who, like an ubiquitous terrier, had at last found the scent, came down the arbor on the run with Trevvy Morehouse after him, a poor second, and emerged upon the scene.

"You're mine—" cried Reggie triumphantly. "I win!" He moved forward and would have caught Hermia around the waist, but she dodged him.

"Reggie," she cried, "how dare you!"

"Oh, don't mind us," laughed Olga.

"I don't—" he said stoutly. "But I got here first, Olga, didn't I?"

"You surely did—"

"I'm glad to have witnesses. Hermia's dreadfully slippery, you know."

Olga, who had dropped into a corner of the stone bench, looked up languidly.

"Would you mind telling us what it all means?" she asked.

Hermia laughed. "May I, Trevvy?"

The excellent Trevelyan smiled politely and shrugged his shoulders.

"By all means—since I have no further interest in the matter."

"It's too amusing. They were to give me ten minutes' start from the house—the two of them. Oh, what a lark!" she laughed. "I made for the Maze, while they watched me from the drawing-room windows; but instead of going in, I skirted the edge and crept through the bushes on the other side. By the time they had reached the privet hedge, I had gone through the house from the kitchen to the terrace again, where I sat for ten minutes entirely alone laughing and watching those geese chasing each other around in the moonlight. I've never had such fun since I was born."

"Geese! Oh, I say, Hermia!"

"Then Reggie came out sniffing the breeze and I had to run for cover, so I slipped over the balustrade to the pergola, down which I crept on my hands and knees and dropped through—and here I am," she concluded.

"But what is it all about?" asked Olga again.

"It means that Hermia is mine—for a month," said Reggie, glowing. "She promised—you couldn't go back on that, Hermia. Could she, Olga?" he appealed.

"I'm sure I don't know. Do you mean engaged to you?" she asked curiously.

"Yes—for a month," said Reggie. "The idea was to try and see if she really could like either of us well enough to—"

"I didn't really promise anything," Hermia broke in, severely. "I merely agreed—"

"She did, Olga," he insisted. "I knew she'd be trying to wriggle."

Olga was laughing silently.

"You're admirably suited to each other, you two. You're actually quarreling already."

"We always do—"

"Then marry at once, my dears."

Hermia glanced at Markham, who was leaning over the back of the bench watching the scene with alien eyes. She turned toward Armistead frankly with an extended hand, which he promptly seized.

"You are a nice boy, Reggie. I'll try it. But you'll have to promise—"

"Oh, I'll promise anything," cried Reggie rapturously.

The excellent Trevelyan watched them a moment in silence, and then lighting his cigarette slowly wandered away.

Hermia and Armistead followed hand in hand, but not before Hermia had turned her head over her shoulder and whispered mischievously to Olga:

"You can sit as many risks as you run, Olga, darling."

In the moments which had passed during this interesting revelation Olga Tcherny had been thinking—desperately. The taste of life had never been so sweet in her mouth—nor so bitter. With the departure of the trio Markham had not moved, but his eyes followed the two figures through the rose garden. The moon was suddenly snuffed out and the sea grew lead-color—like a passion that has gone stale. Markham's silhouette loomed monstrous against the sky, and the silence was abruptly broken by the rough laughter of Crosby Downs from somewhere in the distance. Olga shivered and rose.

"Come," she said, "let's follow."

Markham straightened slowly and stood before her, one hand on her arm.

"Olga," he said quietly.

She paused, but she didn't look up at him, and gently she took his fingers from her arm.

"It's a pity—" he stopped again. "What you said was true. You—and I—one of us has killed the old relation between us."

"Yes," she murmured.

"Can we forget—to-night—"

"No, no," she said. "Never. I know."

"Will you forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive."

He shook his head.

"Nothing to forgive if you were only amusing yourself—much to forgive if you really care"

His ingenuousness was alarming.

"Par exemple!" She bantered him. "You mean that I—that I love you?"

"Yes, I mean just that."

She took quick refuge in laughter.

"You are the most surprising creature! Much as I esteem, I cannot flatter you so much as that." And she drew away from him, still laughing softly.

"I have done you a wrong," he went on steadily.

His simplicity was heroic. She did not dare question him.

"You have a New England conscience, mon ami," she said, gently ironical. "Your code is meshed in the cobwebs of antiquity. One kisses in the moonlight—or one doesn't kiss. What is the difference? It is a pastime—not a tragedy. Je M'amusais. I fished for minnows and caught a Tartar—voilˆ tout. I love you—I do love you—but only when you paint, monsieur l'artiste—then you are magnificent—a companion to the gods! When you kiss— Oh, la la! You are—er—paleozoic!"

It was Olga's master stroke. She could parry no longer and must thrust if she would survive. The tenderness that this gaucherie aroused in her made her the more merciless in her mockery! And she was aware of a throb of exaltation as she made the sacrifice which prevented the declaration that was hanging on his lips. In making a fool of him again she was saving him from making a fool of himself. Markham did not reply and only stood there gnawing at his lips. He was no squire of dames he knew, and what she said of him touched him on the raw of his self-esteem. Paleozoic he might be, but it stung him that she should tell him so.

She delivered his coup de grace unerringly.

"Take my advice and let love-making alone, or if you must make love, do it as other gods do—my messenger. Otherwise your Elysian dignity is in jeopardy. You are not the kind of man that women love, mon cher. Come, it is time that we joined the others."

She led him down the avenue of roses, every line of her graceful figure rebuking his insufficiency, and he followed dumbly, aware of it.

Upon the terrace occupied by couples intent upon private matters, she promptly deserted him, leaving him without a word to his own devices. He stood for a moment of uncertainty, and then fumbling in his pocket for his pipe, which was not there, went into the smoking-room in search of a cigarette.

"Two spades," declared Archie Westcott at the auction table, and then when Markham went out, "Odd fish—that."

"Three hearts," said Mrs. Renshaw. "Why Hermia asks such people I can't imagine. You're never certain whom you're asked to meet nowadays. Prig, isn't he?"

"Oh, rather! Has ideals, and all that sort of thing, hasn't he, Hilda?"

"If his ideals are as rotten as his manners I can't say much for 'em."

"Olga likes him—"

"Oh, Olga—" sniffed Hilda. "Anything for a new sensation. Remember that queer little French marquis who trailed around after her at Monte Carlo?"

"Oh, play ball," growled Gouverneur. "Who cares—so long as he keeps out of here."

Unaware of these unflattering comments, Markham strolled out of doors and into a lonely armchair on the terrace, and smoked in solitary dignity. Indeed solitude seemed to be the only thing left to him. He was not a man who made friends rapidly, and the three or four people whom he might have cared to cultivate had other fish to fry to-night—and were not frying them on the terrace. Olga, it seemed, had no intention of returning and Hermia Challoner was doubtless already in that happy phase of experimentation so warmly advocated by Reggie Armistead.

He envied those two young people their carelessness, their grace, their ruddy delights which by contrast added conviction to Olga's indictment of him. He tried with some difficulty to analyze the precise nature of his sentiments toward Olga Tcherny, and found at the end of a quarter of an hour, to his surprise, that the only feeling of which he was conscious was one of dull resentment at her for having made a fool of him.

Whatever Markham the painter had accomplished in the delineation of character of the fashionable women he had painted, the truth was that Markham both feared and misunderstood them. Their changing moods, their unaccountable likes and dislikes, their petty ambitions and vanities he accepted as part of the heritage of a race of beings apart form his own, and he hid his timidity under a brusque manner which gave him credit for a keener penetration than he actually possessed. And, strangely enough, Fate, with sardonic humor, had given him a knack, which so few painters possess, of catching on canvas the elusive charm of his feminine sitters, of investing with grace those characteristics he professed so much to despise. He had told Hermia Challoner that he did not paint "pretty" portraits, but as Olga knew, it was upon his delineation of beauty, his manipulation of dainty draperies, the sheen of silk and satin, that his reputation so securely rested. It was perhaps merely a contemptuous cleverness which had given him the name among his craft of being a "master brushman."

Into Olga Tcherny's portrait he had put something more of his sitter than usual. He had painted the soul of the girl in the body of the woman of thirty, and if he rendered his subject in a manner more stilted than usual, he repaid her in the real interest with which her portrait was invested. He liked Olga. He had accepted her warily at first until he had proved to his own satisfaction the disinterestedness of her regard and then he had given her his friendship without reserve, his first real friendship with a woman of the world, conscious of the charm of their relation from which all sentiment had been banished.

He had awakened rudely to-night. He was now aware that sentiment on Olga's part had never been banished nor could ever be banished with a woman of her type. He had made the mistake of judging her by the records of their friendship, unmindful of her history as to which he had been forewarned.

To-night the secret was out. The feminine in her had been triumphant. He was a different kind of fish from any she had caught and for reasons of her own she wanted him. She had been playing him skillfully for months, giving him all the line in her reel that he might be hooked the more easily. And to what end? Their friendship had fallen into shreds. What was to follow?

Of one thing he was certain. He was learning something, also progressing. In the twelve hours that had passed he had kissed two women—something of a record for a man of his prejudices. He rose and threw the unsatisfactory cigarette into the bushes. It was high time he was making his way back to Thimble Island and solitude.

There was a rustle of silk behind him, and he turned.

"Oh, do stay, Mr. Markham. I was just coming out to talk to you."

He greeted Hermia with delight, quickly responding to the charm of her juvenility.

"I was wondering if I would see you again," he said genuinely.

"You see," she laughed, "I don't always pop in feet first." She sat and examined him curiously, and then, after a pause.

"What a fraud you are, Mr. Markham!"

"I?"

"A deep-dyed hypocrite—I can't see how you can dare look me in the face—"

"But I can—and I find it very pleasant."

"Oh—shame! To take advantage of my childish credulity—my trusting innocence. You make me believe you to be a fossilized pedant—a philosopher prematurely aged—willing to barter your hope of salvation for a draught of the Fountain of Youth—and I find you making love to my chaperon and most distinguished woman guest! And I was actually offering to teach you! Aren't you a little ashamed of yourself?"

"No, I think not," he said slowly. "You know Madame Tcherny is a very old friend of mine."

"So she is of mine. She's a perfectly adorable chaperon—but then there are limits even to the indiscretions of a chaperon."

"Do you think it quite fair to Olga—" he began.

She leaned back in her chair and smiled at him mischievously.

"Oh, Olga is quite capable of taking care of herself. It isn't Olga I'm thinking about at all. It's you, my poor friend. Did you know that Olga has the reputation of being quite the most dangerous woman in Europe?"

"All women are dangerous. Fortunately I'm not the kind of man such women find interesting."

"I'm not sure that I know just what kind of a man you are, Mr. Markham. In your studio I inclined to the opinion that you had most of the characteristics of an amiable gorilla; on Thimble Island you seemed like Diogenes—without the tub; to-night you're Lothario, Bluebeard, and Lancelot all in one."

"I'm afraid you flatter me. First impressions are usually correct, I think. I'm an amiable gorilla. Perhaps by the time you visit my studio again, I may have reached the next link in the chain to the human." He laughed and then quickly turned the conversation to a topic less personal. "You will visit my studio next winter, won't you?"

"Of course. You're to do my portrait, you know? But I was hoping that you might stay on and paint it here at 'Wake-Robin'!"

He looked off toward Thimble Island a moment before replying.

"I'm sorry I can't. I have some engagements in New York and my passage is booked for Europe early in the month. I leave Thimble Island almost at once."

"Oh, that's unkind of you. Don't you find it sufficiently attractive here?"

"Yes, I do. Unfortunately, I can't consult my own wishes in the matter."

She had been examining him narrowly.

"You don't want to stay, Mr. Markham," she announced, decisively.

He looked her in the eyes, but made no reply.

"We're not your sort, I know. But I thought that with Olga here—"

"It has been very pleasant. I am glad to have had the privilege—"

"Don't, Mr. Markham. The truth is," she went on, "that you came here because you thought you ought to be polite. You go because you think you have been quite polite enough. Isn't that true?"

"Figuratively, yes," he replied frankly. "I'm not gregarious by instinct. I can't help it. I suppose I'm just unsociable, that's all."

"Oh, well, I'm sorry," she said, rising. "If you won't stay—shall I see you again?"

"I think not. I'm leaving early."

"Oh," with a stamp of her foot. "I have no patience with you!"

"You see," he shrugged, "I don't wear well."

They reached the hall and she gave him her fingers.

"I wish you all the happiness in the world," he said quietly. She glanced at him quickly.

"I'm always happy. You mean—"

"Your engagement to Mr. Armistead."

Her lips curved demurely.

"Oh, of course—Reggie and I will get along—we'll manage somehow—but a month is a long while—"

"But life is a longer while—"

"Yes—it is—too long—"

There was a note in her voice he had not heard before. He glanced at her inquisitively, but she went up the steps, one hand extended over the baluster to his, laughing mischievously. "Good night, Mr. Markham. Thanks for the breakfast—and the philosophy. But please remember that people who love in glass houses—shouldn't cast aspersions."

CHAPTER X

THE FUGITIVE

Like the skillful general who covers his retreat by an unexpected show of strength, Olga Tcherny had retired in good order, with colors flying. She had struck hard, spent some ammunition and endangered her line of communications, but she had reached the cover of the tall timbers, where for the moment it was safe to go into camp, repair damages and take account of injuries.

At the beginning of their acquaintance her interest in Markham had not been unlike that of the motherly hen in the doings of the newly hatched duckling with which she differed as to the practical utility of duckponds. She had been intensely interested in his work and in his career which during the winter in Paris had been definitely shaped as a painter of successful portraits. She had liked the man from the first, liked him well enough to be as genuine as he was, and found delight in a companionship which led her down pleasant lanes of thought—which terminated, as they had begun, in quiet satisfaction. He neither lied to her nor flattered her; his speech had the simple directness of a child's, and while she frequently reproved him for his rusticity, in secret she adored it. She had been used all her life to the polish of Europe, satiated with its compliments, glutted with its hypocrisy, courted by men with manner and no manners, whom she had met with their own weapons. She had never known a real friendship in man—or woman—had not even sought friendship, because life had taught her that, for her, such things did not exist. In Markham she had found the myth without searching, and once found she had grappled it to her soul with hoops of steel. His friendship it was that she had loved—not Markham. He was her own discovery, her very own, and she followed her first sober impulse, calmly, giving him the best of her, scorning the arts which she had been accustomed to employ on other men with so much success.

A born coquette is much like the hunter who hunts for the love of hunting and has no appetite for game upon his own table. Olga Tcherny had hunted in all the covers of sportive Europe with an appetite which always ended with the chase. Markham had not been marked as game. He was simply a delicious accident and she had accepted him as such, grateful for the new appetite which was as healthy as it was unusual.

But it was very natural that his indifference should pique her vanity. Markham did not care for women. That was all the more a reason why he should learn to care for her. The love of being loved was habit, ingrained, and she could not dismiss it with a word. But she gave him her friendship, and having given it would not recant from her secret vow to be honest with it and with him.

There had been moments of uncertainty, moments of ennui, but never of danger—until to-night, when she had fallen from grace and yielded to an impulse, once ignoble, but now ignoble no longer, to bring Markham at all hazards to her feet. It was no longer their friendship that she loved, but Markham. She loved fervently as coquettes will at last, placing in one ship the cargo that had fared forth in so many vessels. It was the coquette in her that had mocked and tantalized him, the coquette even whom he had kissed—but it was the woman who had struck and now suffered the pains of her imprudence.

Olga dismissed the unfortunate Georgette when she came to brush her hair and threw herself on the bed, both hands supporting her chin, staring at vacancy. He had guessed the truth-the agony of it! She had wept—real tears, the tears of subjection. She had begun—a coquette, trusting to her skill in dissimulation, but her heart had betrayed her. She had wept and Markham had seen her tears. Even a less sophisticated man than he would have known that women of her type only weep when they are stirred to the lees. Had she deceived him in the end? The doubt still assailed her. She had cut him deeply, hurt his amour propre and left him scowling in Arcadian resentment. Would the lesson last? Or must she seek further means to convince him of her indifference? Why had she provoked him? A whim—the dormant devil in her—to whom her better self must now pay in the loss of his friendship.

The old relation between them was dead. She had nailed it in its coffin. He did not love her, but she knew, that had she wished, she could have made him think he was, coaxed lies from his lips which both of them would have lived to regret.

The future? Had she one? Happiness? It must come soon. She had reached the beginning of wrinkles and cheekbones and her wrists were squarer than they used to be. Thirty!—a year older than Markham! Roses grown in hothouses are quick to fade. Would she fade, too, quickly?

She went to the dressing-table and examined her face in a hand-mirror with assiduous care. Yes, crow's feet—three of them at each eye, and two tiny wrinkles leading into her dimples. She was positively haggard to-night. It did not do for the woman of thirty to cry. Her hair—another gray one—she plucked it out viciously. She would not grow old. Age was a disease which could be prevented by the use of proper precautions. She must stop playing cards so late, get up earlier, take long walks in the air, play tennis as Hermia did—

She put the mirror down and lay back in her chair, her gaze fixed upon the wall beside her which bore a photograph of her young hostess astride her favorite hunter. Hermia's youth and her own knowledge of the world—what would she not give for that indomitable combination! She was glad in a way that Markham had decided to postpone the painting of Hermia's portrait. She wasn't quite certain about Hermia. It was never wise to be certain about any girl—especially if that girl was seven years younger than you were and quite as pretty. And what on earth did Hermia mean by scrubbing John Markham's floor? In her present mood it seemed a symbol—was it prophetic? Markham was candid in his likes and dislikes and he made no bones now of the pleasure in Hermia's society. Hermia was a surprising person. Her love of mischief was increasing with her years, her capacity for making it only limited by the end of opportunity.

She was not surprised when she came downstairs rather late the next morning to learn that Markham had returned to the island. This meant that he was still angry—which was healthful. She needed a little time for reconstruction, too, and Markham's anger was a more pleasant thought for contemplation than his repentance, apology or sentiment, all of which he would have offered as sops to her pride, and none of which could have been genuine. His departure without seeing her meant that he had believed her spoken word rather than that which had been written in silence, the testimony of her drooping figure and her unlucky tears.

A walk refreshed her. By the time she returned to "Wake-Robin" all doubts had been cleared from her mind. She would wait. He would come to her. Time would mend his wounds.

On the way to the house she passed the hangar where her hostess, Reggie Armistead and Salignac were tinkering with the machines. She stopped and watched them for a moment, when Hermia joined her and they walked toward the house together.

"I'm awfully sorry, Olga—" Hermia paused.

"About what?"

"Last night. How could I have known that the pergola was occupied!"

"Oh, it didn't matter in the least," she said coolly. "Markham was making love to me, that's all. Pity—isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," said Hermia slowly, "a great pity—you're no respecter of persons, Olga."

Olga shrugged effectively.

"How should I have known?"

"You have had time enough to study him, I should say. Why couldn't you let him be? When there are so many other men—"

"Hear the child! One might think that I had brought him to my knees, malice propense. I didn't. Mon Dieu, one can't always prevent the unexpected."

Hermia laughed dryly. "One doesn't plan the unexpected quite so carefully as you do, Olga, dear."

It was beneath Olga's dignity to reply.

"At any rate," continued Hermia, "you've driven him away from 'Wake-Robin'."

"Oh, he'll come back," said Olga lightly. "Do you think so?"

"Of course."

"We shall see," said the girl.

At the end of three days the Countess Olga realized that for the first time in her life she had made a mistake in judgment; for Mr. Markham did not return to "Wake-Robin." And when she went to the island in the launch to make her peace with him she found the cabin deserted.

It was not until some days later that she received a letter from him dated in New York, and sent on the eve of his sailing for Europe.

My Dear Olga:

It is to laugh! But you can be sure that I was angry for a day or two. What is the use? I have forgotten my misadventure and will consider it a warning against rose gardens. I'll not venture into a rose garden by moonlight again unless quite alone. It's dangerous—even with a sworn friend. It wasn't altogether your fault or mine, and you served me quite properly in cutting my self-esteem to ribbons. But it hurt, Olga. You know the least of us mortals thinks he's a heart-breaker, if he tries to be. You've put me back upon my shelf among the cobwebs and there I shall remain. I'm hopeless material to work with socially and deserve no better fate than to be laid away and forgotten. People must take me as I am or not at all. I don't mind rubbing elbows with the great unwashed. They're human somehow. But your world of dissatisfied women and unsatisfied men! It gets on my nerves, and so I've cut it and run.

I'm painting an antiquated countess in Havre, and then I'm off for the open country with a thumb box, a toothbrush and a smile, and with this equipment I have all that the world can offer. I shall live upon the fat of the land at forty sous a day—ripaille—under the trees—a sound red wine to wash the dust from one's throat—and an appetite and a thirst such as Westport will never know.

Au revoir, ch�re Olga. I could wish you with me, but I shall be many honest kilometers from a limousine, which is not your idea of a state of being.

With affectionate regards, Faithfully, J.M.

In the same mail was a note to Hermia:

My Dear Miss Challoner:

Your kindness deserves a better return than my abrupt and rather churlish departure from "Wake Robin," and, if it isn't already too late to restore myself to your graces, I hope you will accept my regrets and apologies, and the sketch from Thimble Island, which goes to you by express. I hope you will like it. I do. That's why I've giving it to you. But it's hardly complete without the wrecked monoplane and the small person who came with it. Perhaps some day you'll "drop in" on me again somewhere and I can finish it. Meanwhile please think seriously about the portrait. I don't believe I'm just the man to do it. I can't seem to see you somehow. My business is to portray the social anachronism. That is easy—a matter of clothes. But how shall a mere mortal define in terms of paint the dwellers of the air? You have me guessing, dear lady. Imagine Ariel in the conventional broadcloth of commerce. It's preposterous. I can't lend myself to any such deception.

The rest of the letter was more formal and finished with a message of congratulation to Mr. Armistead and a word of thanks for her own hospitality. And he hoped to remain very cordially "John Markham."

Hermia smiled as she finished it and then read it over again. The letter with its mixture of the formal and whimsical both pleased and reassured her. It represented more the Markham of Thimble Island, a person whose identity had lost something of its definiteness since her talks with Olga in the days that had followed his departure from "Wake-Robin." She had been aware of a sense of doubt and disappointment in him and she had not been quite so sure that she liked him now. Of course, if he chose to make a fool of himself over Olga it was none of her affair, and she had been obliged to admit that her discovery had taken from him some of the charm of originality. She did not know what had passed between her guests before her abrupt descent through the pergola, but she was quite certain she had fallen into the middle of a psychological moment. Whose moment was it, Olga's or his? She couldn't help wondering. Olga had intimated that Markham was in love with her. Hermia now doubted. Indeed a suspicion was growing in her mind that it was Olga who was in love with Markham. Hermia smiled and put the letter away in her desk. It didn't matter to her, of course, only interested her a great deal, but she couldn't help wondering why, if Markham was so deeply under the spell of Olga's worldliness, he had not come back to her when she had wanted him.

A northeaster had set in along the coast, and the guests of "Wake Robin" were driven indoors. Olga, when she wasn't playing auction, wandered from window to window, looking out at the dreary skies, venting her ennui on anyone within earshot. Archie Westcott, who was losing more money than he could afford to lose, now lacked the buoyant spirits which carried him so blithely along the crest of the social wave and scowled gloomily at his cards which persisted in favoring his opponents. Crosby Downs, whose waistband had again reached its fullest tension, sought the tall grasses of the smoking-room and refused to be dislodged. Without the shadows of her hat and veil Mrs. Renshaw showed her age to a day, and that didn't improve her temper. Beatrice Coddington had an attack of the megrims and remained in her room.

Hermia played bottle pool and pinochle with Reggie Armistead until they began discussing the exact terms of Hermia's promise when there began a quarrel which lasted the entire afternoon and ended in Reggie's going out into the pouring rain and swearing that he would never come back. But he did come back just in time for dinner, through which he sat pretending that he was interested in Phyllis Van Vorst and casting gloomy looks in the direction of the oblivious Hermia. At the end of three days there were no more than two people in the house on terms of civility, and most of Hermia's guests had departed.

Olga Tcherny, after an afternoon alone in her room, came downstairs at the last extremity of fatigue.

"I can't stand it another hour, Hermia. I'm off in the morning."

"Off? Where?" asked Hermia.

"Oh, I don't know. Anywhere. New York first and then—"

"Normandy?" queried Hermia impertinently.

Olga only smiled.

CHAPTER XI

THE GATES OF CHANCE

Markham had finished the portrait of his antiquated countess in Havre and abandoning the luxuries of the Hotel Frascati had taken to the road with his knapsack and painting kit for a two months' jaunt along unfrequented Norman byways. This had been his custom since his first year in Paris, when his means were small and the wanderlust drove him forth from the streets of Paris. He had walked from the Savoie to Brittany, from Belgium to Provence and the vagabond instinct in him had grown no less with advancing years. He liked the long days in the open. The slowly moving panorama of hill and dell, which was lost upon the touring motorists who continually passed him, filling the air with their evil smells and clouds of dust. He liked the odor of the loam in the early morning, the clean air washed by the dew and redolent of burning wood, the drowsy hour of noon with its meal of cheese and bread eaten at the shady brink of some musical stream and the day-dream or doze that followed it; the long mellow afternoons under the blue arch of sky where the pink clouds moved as lazily as he, in vagabond procession, across the zenith. His aimlessness and theirs made them brothers of the air, and he followed them under the trackless sky, aware that his destination for the night lay somewhere ahead of him, leaving the rest to chance and the patron saint of Nomads. He liked the rugged faces he saw on the road, the Norman welcome of his host and the deep sleep of utter weariness and content which defied the tooth of time and discomfort.

After a few days in Rouen, where he always lingered longer than he intended to, he had crossed the river at Sotteville an had followed main roads which led him to the south and east through the heart of the historic Eure.

He had given Trouville a wide berth; for he knew some people there, friends of Olga Tcherny's, people of fashion who would have looked askance at his dusty clothes and general air of disrepute. He was not in the humor for Olga's kind of friends or indeed for Olga, if as the last note from her had indicated she, too, had arrived on this side of the water. He was sufficient unto himself and gloried in his selfishness. Song he would have and did often have at night with his chance companions of the road, and wine or the sound Norman cider which was better—but no women—no women for him!

It was on the road beyond Evreux that he thus congratulated himself for the twentieth time. His path passed near the brink of a river fringed with trees and to the right the hills mounted abruptly to a rocky eminence, crowned with an ancient castle which stolidly sat as it had done for a thousand years and guarded the peaceful valley beneath. It had looked down upon the pageantry of an earlier day when knights in armor had ridden forth of its portals for the honor of their ladies, had listened to the hoof-beats of more than one army, and had heard in the distance the clash of Ivry. To-day a railroad wound around the base of its pedestal, reminding it of the new order of things and of its own antiquity.

As Markham approached the railroad crossing, from the opposite direction, in a cloud of dust, came an automobile. But as it neared the track a woman waving a red flag and blowing a horn came running from a small house by the roadside and pulled the gates across the road. The automobile, which had only one occupant, came to a sudden stop and an argument followed. Markham was too far away to hear what was said, but the gestures of the disputants could be easily understood. There was no train in sight and plenty of time to cross, said the motorist. The peasant waved her flag and pointed down the track. More words, more gesticulations, but the gate-keeper was obdurate. The motorist looked up the track and at the gate and road, and then followed explosives, smoke and dust from the impatient machine, which slowly moved backward a short distance up the road again. Markham, slowly approaching, watched the comedy with interest. An impatient Parisian, jealous of the passing minutes, and an obstinate peasant—to whom passing minutes had no significance—could any two humans be more definitely antagonistic?

What was the person in the car about? More explosions and the blue of burning oil as the car came forward, its cutout open, turning to the left off the road over a ditch and into a field. The gate-keeper ran forward shaking her flag and screaming as she guessed the motorist's intention. But it was too late. The car was hidden for a moment from Markham's view in the declivity upon the other side of the railroad embankment, the exhaust roaring furiously, and leaped into sight, the front wheels high in the air as it took the near rail and then fell heavily with a complaining groan across the track and moved no more, its rear axle snapped in two.

Of all the fool performances! Markham ran forward crying in French to the chauffeur to jump, for around the profile of the hill the locomotive of the oncoming train was emerging. The motorist looked at Markham and then at the advancing train in bewilderment; then jumped clear of the track beside Markham as the freight train, its brakes creaking, its steam shrieking, crashed into the unfortunate machine, turning it over and then crumpling it into a shapeless mass, through which it tore, its impetus carrying it well down the road and scattering the torn fragments of nickel and steel on both sides of the tracks.

It was not until the train had been brought to a stop that Markham had had time to notice that the motorist was a woman—not until she turned a rather wan face in his direction that he saw that the victim of this misfortune was Hermia Challoner.

"You, child!" he gasped. "What in the name of all that's impossible—"

"John Markham!"

"Good Lord, but you had a close call for it! Couldn't you have waited a moment—"

"It was a new machine," she stammered. "I was trying for a record to Trouville from Paris."

"It was a d—n fool thing to do," he blurted forth angrily. "You might have been killed."

She looked at him, her lips compressed, but made no reply.

The gate-woman, who for a few moments had stood as though petrified with fright, now resumed her screams and gesticulations as the crew of the train descended. In a few moments they surrounded Hermia, all shouting at once, and waving their arms under Hermia's nose. She attempted replies, but the noise was deafening and no one listened to her. Peasants working in the fields nearby who had heard the crash came running and added their numbers and temperaments to the Babel. The gate-keeper thrust herself violently into the midst of the group pointing at the wreck of the machine and at Hermia, her remarks as unintelligible to the train crew as they were to Markham.

Hermia stood her ground, but when one of the train crew seized her by the arm and thrust his grimy face close to her own she grew pale and drew back. Markham stepped between and gave the fellow a shove which sent him sprawling. There was a pause and for a moment matters looked difficult. But Markham mounted the embankment, drew Hermia up beside him, put his back against a car, held up his hand and in French demanded silence. His voice rang true and they listened. He had seen the accident from the road and would bear witness. It was not the fault of the gate-keeper or of the lady who drove the car. It was simply an accident tin which lives had fortunately been spared. The axle of the machine had broken upon the track. If there was any claim for damages he would testify that the engineer was not to blame.

A man in a peasant's smock from a neighboring field, who, it appeared, held some local office of authority, now took a hand in the investigation and, after a number of questions of Hermia and the gate-keeper, sent the train upon its way.

Amid the turmoil of the gate-keeper's voice who was recounting the affair to the latest arrivals Hermia watched the train as it passed between the fragments of what a few minutes before had been a new French machine. Some of the peasants had already gathered around the wreck and one of them restored her leather bag, which had been tossed some distance into the ditch. To all appearances this was the only salvage and she took it gratefully. A walk down the track convinced Markham that what was left of the car was only fit for the scrap-heap. And as the crowd still surrounded Hermia he put his arm in hers and led her away. She followed him silently up the road by which she had come until they had left the gaping crowd behind them. Then he made her sit on a bank by the roadside and unslinging his knapsack dropped beside her. "Well?" he asked.

She looked down the road toward the scene of her misfortune, the smile, half plaintive, half whimsical, that had been hovering on her lips suddenly breaking.

"If you scold me I shall cry."

"I'm not going to scold," he said kindly. "That wouldn't help matters."

"It was such a beautiful piece of mechanism—so human—so intelligent—" a tear trembled on her lashes and fell—"and I've only had it two days."

She was the child with a broken toy. It was the child he wanted to comfort.

"I'm sorry," he said genuinely. "I wish I could put it together for you again."

"It's gone—irretrievably. There's nothing to be done, of course." And then, "Oh! it seems so cruel! The thing cried out like a wounded animal. You heard it, didn't you? And it was all my fault. That's what hurts me so."

"One gets over being hurt, but one doesn't get over being dead. You only missed being killed by the part of a second."

She dashed the tears form her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Oh, I know. And I'm awfully grateful. I really am. I don't know why I didn't jump sooner. I saw the train, too. I simply couldn't move. I seemed to be glued there—until you shouted. It was lucky you were there."

She buried her face in her hands a moment and when she straightened was quite calm again.

"It's all over now, Mr. Markham, and I'm awfully obliged," she said with a laugh. "You seem fated to be the recording angel of my maddest ventures."

"It was madness," he insisted.

"I know it," she sighed. "And yet I'm quite sure I would do it again."

"I don't doubt that in the least," he replied gravely, concealing a smile as one would have done from a mischievous child.

There was a silence.

"The world is very small, isn't it, Mr. Markham?" she asked. "What on earth are you doing here?

"I? Oh, vagabonding. It's a habit I have, I'm doing Normandy."

She examined him from top to toe and then said amusedly:

"Did you know that for the past week Olga has been searching Havre high and low for you?"

"No. I didn't know it. Where is she now?"

"At Trouville. And I was to have dined with her tonight."

"I'm afraid you'll hardly get there," he said, looking at his watch. "This line doesn't connect."

"Doesn't it? Oh, some line will, I suppose." And then irrelevantly, "Do you know, Mr. Markham, I've often wondered what it would be like to be a vagabond? I think I really am one deep down in my heart."

"Vagabonds are born—not made, Miss Challoner. They belong to the immortal Fellowship of the Open Air, an association which dates from Esau—an exclusive company, I can tell you, which black-balled brother Jacob, and made Fran�ois Villon its laureate. It is the only club in the world where the possession of money is looked on with suspicion. Imagine a vagabond in a six thousand-dollar motor car!"

She opened her eyes wide and threw out her hands with a hopeless gesture.

"But I'm not responsible for the money. I didn't make it. I don't see why I haven't just as much right to be a vagabond as you have."

He examined her amusedly.

"You would have the right perhaps if it wasn't for your unfortunate millions. It's too bad. I'm really very sorry for you."

His irony passed beyond her.

"I am a vagabond," she insisted. "I haven't a single conventional instinct. I've never had. I hate convention. It fetters and stifles me. My money! If you only knew how I loathe the responsibilities, the endless formalities, the people who prey upon me and those who would like to, the toadying of the older people, the hypocrisy of the younger ones. It isn't me that they care for. I have no friends. No one as rich as I am can have friends. I distrust everyone. Sometimes I've thought of going away from it all—disappearing and never coming back again. I'm so tired of having everything I want. I want to want something I can't get. I am weary of everything that life can offer me. I have to choose unhealthy excitements to keep my soul alive. Speed—danger—they're the only things that seem to make life worth while."

He shook his head as she paused for breath.

"Oh, I know you think I'm mad. I seem so by contrast to your content. You seem so happy, Mr. Markham."

"I am," he said. "All vagabonds are happy."

She looked at him enviously as though she might by chance discover his secret of life, but he lit his pipe and puffed at it silently.

"What is your secret of happiness, Mr. Markham?" she asked wistfully. "Tell me, won't you?"

"'An open hand, an easy shoe and a hope to make the day go through,'" he quoted with a quick laugh.

"What else?"

"Thirst—and a good inn to quench it at."

"Yes—"

"A conscience," he finished, "with little on it—a purse with little in it. You see the Ancient Order of Vagabonds never used purses—unless they were other people's."

He stopped with a laugh and glanced down the road toward the scene of Hermia's accident. "All of which is interesting," he said with a practical air, "but doesn't exactly solve the problem of how we're to get you to Trouville in time for dinner with the Countess Tcherny." He took a road map from his pocket and spread it out on his knapsack between them, while Hermia peered over his shoulder and followed his long forefinger.

"Evreux, Conches, Breteuil—we must be about here—yes—and there's your crooked railroad. It goes around to Evreux, where there's a through line to the coast. You might hire a horse and wagon—but even then you would hardly get to Evreux before sunset. Miss Challoner, I'm afraid you'll not reach Trouville to-night—"

"Oh, I don't care," she said. "It's a matter of indifference to me whether I reach Trouville at all—"

"But your friends will worry."

"Oh, no—I could wire them, I suppose—"

"Oh yes. And there's a good inn at Evreux. But we had better be going at once."

He folded his map, put it in his pocket and rose, slinging his knapsack across his shoulder and offering her a hand to rise. But she didn't move or look at him. She had plucked a blade of grass and was nibbling at it, her gaze on the distant landscape to the southward.

"Wait a moment, please. I—I've something more to say to you."

He looked at her keenly, then leaned against the bole of a tree, listening.

"I—I don't know just what you'll think of me, but if I—I didn't feel pretty sure that you'd understand what I mean I don't think I'd have the courage to speak to you. You once told me you liked me a great deal, Mr. Markham, and I—I know you meant it because you're not a man to say things you don't mean."

"That's true," he confirmed to her. "I'm not."

"And I think that's one of the reasons I believe in you," she went on, smiling, "and why I thought your friendship might be worth while. You're the only person I've ever met in my world or out of it whose opinions were not tainted with self-interest. Can you wonder that I value them?"

"I'm glad of that," he said genuinely. "I'd like to help you if I can."

"Would you?" she asked, "would you really?" She rose and faced him. "Then teach me the secret of your happiness, John Markham," she cried. "Show me how to live my life so that I can get as much out of it as you get out of yours. There is—there must be some way to learn. I've always wanted to be happy, but I've never known how to be. When I grew up, people told me how much better off I was than other people, how happy I would be—that anything I wanted was mine for the asking, measuring my future happiness—as the world will—in terms of dollars and cents. I'm only twenty-three, John Markham, but I've bought from life already all it has to offer. Isn't there something else? Isn't there something that one can't buy?"

"Yes," he said. "Freedom."

"That's it," she cried. "Freedom—I'm a slave. I've always been-a slave to my lawyers and trustees, a tool in the hands of the people who fatten on me, the servants who rob me, the guests who flatter and use me, the people of society to invite me to their houses and take my character when my back is turned. I'm a slave, John Markham, a moral coward, afraid of my enemies—afraid of my friends, afraid to hate, afraid to love—distrusting everyone—even myself."

He did not speak, but as she turned toward him she saw that his eyes were alight with comprehension. She thrust out her hands impulsively and caught his in her own.

"Take me with you, John Markham. I want to learn what makes you happy—I want to learn your secret of living."

"Impossible!" he stammered.

She dropped his hands and turned away.

"You refuse then?"

"I—I didn't say so. But I can't believe—"

"You must. I've paid you the high compliment of thinking you'd understand."

He tangled his brows in perplexity. "Yes—I'm flattered—but have you thought? I'm afoot—eating and drinking where and what I can get, sleeping where I may. It wouldn't be easy—for a girl."

"I'm not made of tender stuff—" she broke off and turned toward him with an impulsive gesture.

"If you don't want me," she cried, "tell me so. I'll believe you and go."

"No," he muttered. "I won't tell you that. But have you thought of the consequences? Of what people will think?"

"Let them think what they choose," she said.

She met the inquisition of his eyes frankly and the thought which for a moment had troubled him went flying to the winds in the treetops. For all her experience with the world she was a child—with a trust in him or an innocence which was appalling.

"The roads of France are free," he laughed gaily. "How should I stop you."

She looked up at him in delight. "You mean it? I may go? Oh, John Markham, you're a jewel of a man."

"Perhaps you won't think so when we're vagabonds together; for vagabonds you must be—taking what comes without complaint—sour wine—a crust—"

"Here's my hand on it—a vagabond—with vagabond's luck—vagabond's fare."

He studied her a moment again, soberly testing her with this gaze, but she did not flinch.

"This," he said at last, "is the maddest thing—you've ever done."

CHAPTER XII

THE FAIRY GODMOTHER

He threw the knapsack over his shoulder and picked up Hermia's leather bag which had been saved from the wreck of the machine, but she quickly took it from him.

"No," she said sternly, "I'll do my own carrying. I'll take my half, whatever it is." She led the way out into the road, then paused.

"Which way, brother?"

He pointed with his stick. "Southward," he said, but paused, looking down the hill toward the gate-keeper's cottage around which a small crowd still hovered. "But there's something to do before we go."

"The machine? There's nothing to do with that. I'll leave it—"

"Not only the machine—we'll leave something else here."

Her puzzled glance questioned.

"Our identities—we'll leave them here, too, if you please," he replied. "The person by the name of Hermia Challoner from this point simply ceases to exist—"

"She does. She ceased to exist ten minutes ago," she laughed joyfully. "And John Markham?"

"Is Philidor, portrait artist, by appointment to the proletariat of France, at two francs the head."

"Delicious! And I—?"

"You? You'll have to be my—er—sister."

"Oh, never! I simply won't be your sister. That's entirely too respectable. A pretty vagabond you'll have me! You'll be giving e a green umbrella and a copy of Baedeker next. I'll be something devilish and French or I'll be Hermia. Yvonne—that's my name—Yvonne Deschamps, compagnon de voyage of the Philidor aforesaid."

"No," he protested.

"Why not?"

He shook his head. "I don't like the idea," he said thoughtfully.

"But I insist."

He looked down at her for a moment, measuring her with his eye, and then smiled and shrugged a shoulder with an air of accepting the inevitable. And then as the thought came to him.

"Your car—could the wreck be identified?"

"Its number. We must find that and destroy it."

They went down the hill together and, eyed by the curious peasants, sauntered down the track where Markham, after some searching among the bushes, found the number of the machine still clinging to the ruins of the radiator. This he unstrapped and slipped into his knapsack, presently joining Hermia, who was making her peace with the gate-keeper.

"Two tires, one wheel—the speedometer," she was saying in French. "I will leave them for you to sell, Madame, if you can. And Monsieur—he may have whatever else is left. That is understood between you, and these gentlemen will bear witness. As for me—never will I ride in an automobile again. If it pleases you, say nothing more of this than may be necessary. Adieu, Madame et Monsieur."

There were offers of conveyance to Evreux (for a consideration), which Markham refused, an the two companions took to the road and soon passed out of sight, leaving the group of peasants staring after them, still mystified as to the whole occurrence and wondering with Norman stolidity whether Hermia was mad or just a fool.

As Hermia followed Markham over the ridge and down the long slope that led to Vagabondia a deep-drawn breath of delight escaped her.

The gray road descended slowly into a valley, already filled with the long shadows of the afternoon-a valley of ripening crops laid out in lozenges of green and purple and gold, like a harlequin suit, girdled at the waist by the blue ribbon of the river, a cap of green and purple where a clump of young oaks perched jauntily on the bald contour of the distant hilltop; above, a sky of blue flecked with saffron and silver like a turquoise matrix—against which the tall poplars marched in stately procession, their feathery tops nodding solemnly at the sun.

It was curious. From a car the landscape had never looked like this. Indeed, when she was motoring, Hermia never saw anything much but the stretch of road in front of her, its "thank ye marms," its ditches and its speed signs.

She glanced up at Markham, who strode silently beside her, his pipe hanging bowl-downward from his teeth, his lips smiling under the shadowy mustache, his eyes blinking merrily at the sky. She guessed now at the reason for the serenity in his face, as to which she had been so curious. It was the reflection of the wide blue vault above him, the quiet river and the dignity of the distances.

Hermia paused and drank the air in gulps.

"Vagabondia! You've opened its gates to me, John Markham."

He looked around at her in amusement.

"There are no gates in Vagabondia, Miss Challoner."

"Miss Challoner!" she reproved him.

"Hermia, then. Do you realize, you very mischievous young person, that this is precisely the fourth time that you and I have met?"

"I shall call you John, just the same," she announced.

"By all means, or Philidor—anything else would be rather silly—under the circumstances. You aren't regretting this madness? There's still time to reconsider."

"No," promptly. "I've burned my bridges. En avant, Monsieur."

The next rise of land brought into view the houses of a small town huddled among the trees along the river bank. They were still on the main line of communication between Paris and the Coast, and here perhaps they would find a telephone or telegraph office. Hermia made a wry face.

"I didn't know there were any telephones in Vagabondia."

"There aren't. We haven't reached there yet." He glanced at her modish French suit and hat and down at the English leather traveling case she was carrying.

"If you think you look like a vagabond in that get up you're much mistaken," he laughed.

"I don't. I know I don't," looking ruefully at her clothes. "But I will before long. You'll see."

The village upon closer inspection achieved a dignity which the distance denied it. There was a row of small shops, a brasserie and an inn, all slumbering under the shadows of a grove of trees. The road became a street. Upon their left a gate into an open-air cabaret under the trees next to a wine shop stood invitingly open, and the pilgrims entered. There were wooden tables and benches upon which sat some workmen in their white smocks drinking beer and discussing politics.

The proprietor of the place, a motherly person, took Markham's order and went indoors, presently emerging with a try which bore a pitcher of cider, a wonderful cheese and a tower of bread, all of which she deposited before them. She only glanced at Markham, for she was used to the visits of traveling craftsmen along the highway—but she studied Hermia's modish frock with a critical eye. After the first polite greetings she lingered nearby, her curiosity getting the better of her discretion.

"Monsieur and Madame are stopping at the Inn?" she asked at last.

Markham smiled. It was the curiosity of interest rather than intrusiveness.

Monsieur and Madame had not decided yet. Was the inn a good one?

Very good. Monsieur Duchanel, a cousin of hers, took great pride in receiving guests who knew good fare.

All the while she was appraising with a Norman eye the value of the feather in Hermia's hat.

"We thought of going on to Boisset," Markham went on. "Perhaps it is too far to reach by nightfall."

"Oh, mon Dieu, yes—if one is walking—ten kilometers at the least. Did Monsieur and Madame desire a carriage?"

"No, perhaps after all we will stay here."

This wouldn't do at all. To be taken for persons who were accustomed to the excellences of French cuisine was not Hermia's idea of being a vagabond. She had been studying the face of their hostess and came to a sudden resolution. Here was the person who could, if she would, complete her emancipation. Turning to Markham she said smoothly in French:

"Will you go on to the Inn and see if you can find accommodations? In the meanwhile I will stay here and talk with Madame."

Taking the hint Markham finished his glass and leaving his knapsack on the bench went out into the high road in the direction indicated. He walked slowly, his head bent deep in thought, realizing for the first time the exact nature of the extraordinary compact which he had made with the little nonconformist who had chosen him for a traveling companion. The more he thought of the situation the more apparent became the gravity of his responsibility. Why had he yielded to her reckless whim? Only this morning he had been thanking his lucky stars that he was well rid of women of the world for a month at least. And now—Shades of Pluto! He had one hanging around his nick more securely than any millstone. And this one—Hermia Challoner, an enthusiast without a mission—a feminine abnormity, half child, half oracle, wholly irresponsible and yet, by the same token, wholly and delightfully human!

But in spite of the charm of her amiability and enthusiasm he felt it his duty to think of her at this moment as the daughter of Peter Challoner, the arrogant, hard-fisted harvester of millions—to think of her as he had thought of her when she had left his studio in New York with Olga Tcherny, as the spoiled and rather impertinent example of the evils of careless bringing up, but try as he might he only succeeded in visualizing the tired and rather unhappy little girl who wanted to learn "how to live." Whether that confession were genuine or not it made an appealing picture—one which he could not immediately forget. Markham had lived in the thick of life for a good many years as a man must who wins his way in Paris, but his view of women was elemental, like that of the child who chooses for itself at an early age between the only alternatives it knows, "good" and "bad." To Markham women were good or they were bad and there weren't any women to speak of between these two classifications. He had seen Hermia first as the protŽgŽe and boon companion of the Countess Tcherny, had afterward met her as the intimate of such men as Crosby Downs and Carol Gouverneur, and of such women as Mrs. Renshaw, and yet it had never occurred to him to think of Hermia as anything but the spoiled child of Peter Challoner's too eloquent millions, the rebellious victim of environment which meant the end of idealism, the beginning of oblivion.