"One step forward whenever there is a foothold," she said to herself, "and trust to God for the next."

That night, as fortune would have it, Grandmother and Aunt Matilda elected to sit up late, solving a puzzle in The Household Guardian for which a Mission rocker was offered as a prize. It was long past ten o'clock when they gave it up.

"I dunno," yawned Aunt Matilda, "as I'm partial to rockers."

"Leastways," continued Grandmother, rising to put her spectacles on the mantel, "to the kind they give missionaries. I've seen the things they send missionaries more'n once, in my time."

[Sidenote: More than One Way]

By eleven, the household slept, except Rosemary. As silently as a ghost, she made her way to the attic, brought down the clean white muslin, and, with irons scarcely hot enough, pressed it into some semblance of freshness. She hung it in her closet, under the brown alpaca of two seasons past, and went to sleep, peacefully.

Bright and early the next morning the Idea presented itself. Why not put on the white gown with one of the brown ones over it and take off the brown one when she got there? Mrs. Marsh would understand.

Rosemary laughed happily as she climbed out of bed. Surely there was more than one way of cheating Fate! That afternoon, while the others took their accustomed "forty winks," she brought down the faded pink ribbon that had been her mother's. That night she discovered that neither of the brown ginghams would go over the white muslin, as they had shrunk when they were washed, but that the alpaca would. There was not even a bit of white showing beneath the skirt, as she had discovered by tilting her mirror perilously forward.

She was up early Saturday morning, and baked and swept and dusted to such good purpose that, by three o'clock, there was nothing more that anyone could think of for her to do until it was time to get supper. She had put the white gown on under the alpaca when she dressed in the morning, as it was the only opportunity of which she was at all sure.

[Sidenote: Hung in the Balance]

Grandmother and Aunt Matilda were nodding in their chairs. The kitchen clock struck the half hour. Finally, Rosemary spoke.

"Is there anything either of you would like me to get at the store?"

"No," said Grandmother.

"No," echoed Aunt Matilda. Then she added: "Why? Were you thinkin' of goin' out?"

"I thought I would," said Rosemary, with a yawn, "if there was nothing more for me to do. It's such a nice day, and I'd like a breath of fresh air."

For a moment, Fate hung in the balance, then Grandmother said, generously: "Go on, Rosemary, and get all the fresh air you want. You've worked better'n common to-day."

"I should think you'd be tired enough to stay home and rest," Aunt Matilda commented, fretfully, but the door had closed on the last word, and Rosemary was gone.

"But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day; So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray Up your warm throat to your warm lips—"

[Sidenote: Rosemary Meets Edith]

The beautiful words sang themselves through her memory as she sped on. She had forgotten about the guest for the moment, remembering with joy that almost hurt, the one word "Mother," and the greater, probable joy that overshadowed it. Of course he would be there! Why not, when he knew she was coming to tea—and when they had a guest, too? The girl's heart beat tumultuously as she neared the house, for through it, in great tides, surged fear, and ecstasy—and love.

Madame herself opened the door. "Come in, dear!"

"Oh, Mrs. Marsh! Please, just a minute!"

"Mrs. Marsh again? I thought we were mother and daughter. Edith!" she called. Then, in the next moment, Rosemary found herself in the living-room, offering a rough, red hand to an exquisite creature who seemed a blurred mass of pale green and burnished gold, redolent of violets, and who murmured, in a beautifully modulated contralto: "How do you do, Miss Starr! I am very glad to meet you."

The consciousness of the white gown underneath filled Rosemary's eyes with tears of mortification, which Madame hastened to explain. "It's raw and cold still," she said, "in spite of the calendar. These keen Spring winds make one's eyes water. Here, my dear, have a cup of tea."

[Sidenote: An Uncomfortable Afternoon]

Rosemary took the cup with hands that trembled, and, while she sipped the amber fragrance of it, struggled hard for self-possession. Madame ignored her for the moment and chatted pleasantly with Edith. Then Alden came in and shook hands kindly with Rosemary, though he had been secretly annoyed when he learned she was coming. Afterward, he had a bad quarter of an hour with himself while he endeavoured to find out why. At last he had shifted the blame to Edith, deciding that she would think Rosemary awkward and countrified, and that it would not be pleasant for him to stand by and see it.

However, the most carping critic could have found no fault with Edith's manner. If she felt any superiority, she did not show it. She accorded to Rosemary the same perfect courtesy she showed Madame, and, apparently, failed to notice that the girl had not spoken since the moment of introduction.

She confined the conversation wholly to things Rosemary must have been familiar with—the country, the cool winds that sometimes came when one thought it was almost Summer, the perfect blend of Madame's tea, the quaint Chinese pot, and the bad manners of the canary, who seemed to take a fiendish delight in scattering the seed that was given him to eat.

[Sidenote: Looking into the Crystal Ball]

Rosemary merely sat in the corner, tried to smile, and said, as required, "Yes," or "No." Alden, pitying her from the depths of his heart and yet secretly ashamed, tried unsuccessfully, now and then, to draw her into the conversation.

Edith drained her cup, affected disappointment at finding no stray leaves by which she might divine the future, then went to Rosemary, and took the empty cup which she sat holding with pathetic awkwardness.

"You have none, either, Miss Starr," she said, sweetly. "Suppose we try the crystal ball? I've been wanting to do it ever since I came, but was afraid to venture, alone."

Rosemary, her senses whirling, followed her over to the table, where the ball lay on its bit of black velvet.

"How do you do it?" asked Edith, of Madame.

"Just get into a good light, shade your eyes, and look in."

"That's easy," Edith said. She bent over the table, shaded her eyes with her white, beautifully-kept hands, and peered into the crystalline depths. "There's nothing here," she continued, somewhat fretfully, to Alden, "except you. By some trick of reflection, I could see you as plainly as though it were a mirror. You try, Miss Starr."

Madame's heart contracted suddenly as she remembered the day she had looked into the crystal ball, and had seen not only Alden, but a woman with flaming red hair, clasped closely in his arms. "It's all nonsense," she tried to say, but her stiff lips would not move.

[Sidenote: A Black Cloud]

Rosemary left the table and went back to her corner. "What did you see?" queried Edith. "Did you have any better luck than I did?"

"No," Rosemary answered, with a degree more of self-possession than she had shown previously. "There was nothing there but a black cloud."

The task of keeping up the conversation fell to Edith and Alden, for Madame had unconsciously withdrawn into herself as some small animals shut themselves into their shells. All were relieved, though insensibly, when Rosemary said she must go.

Alden went into the hall with her, to help her with her coat and hat, and, as opportunity offered, to kiss her twice, shyly, on her cheek. He wanted to go part way home with her, but Rosemary refused.

"You'd better not," she said, "but thank you just as much."

"Won't you even let me go to the corner with you?"

"No," said Rosemary, with trembling lips, "please don't."

So she went on alone, while Alden returned to the living-room. Edith was saying to Madame: "Poor little brown mouse! How one longs to take a girl like that and give her all the pretty things she needs!"

[Sidenote: Edith's Desire for Rosemary]

Madame took the crystal ball, wrapped it in its bit of velvet, and put it on the highest shelf of the bookcase, rolling it back behind the books, out of sight.

"Why do you do that, Mother?" asked Alden, curiously. "Because," returned Madame, grimly, "it's all nonsense. I won't have it around any more."

Alden laughed, but Edith went on, thoughtfully: "I'd like to do her hair for her, and see that all her under-things were right, and then put her into a crepe gown of dull blue—a sort of Chinese blue, with a great deal of deep-toned lace for trimming, and give her a topaz pendant set in dull silver, and a big picture hat of ecru net, with a good deal of the lace on it, and one long plume, a little lighter than the gown."

"I would, too," said Alden, smiling at Edith. He did not in the least know what she was talking about, but he knew that she felt kindly toward Rosemary, and was grateful for it.

Rosemary, at home, went about her duties mechanically. There was a far-away look in her eyes which did not escape the notice of Grandmother and Aunt Matilda, but they forebore to comment upon it as long as she performed her tasks acceptably. At supper she ate very little, and that little was as dust and ashes in her mouth.

[Sidenote: Heartburns]

Before her, continually, was a heart-breaking contrast. She, awkward, ugly, ill at ease in brown alpaca made according to the fashion of ten or fifteen years ago, and Mrs. Lee, beautiful, exquisite, dainty to her finger-tips, richly dowered with every conceivable thing that she herself lacked.

"Mother," said Rosemary, to herself. "Oh, Mother!" She did not mean Mrs. Marsh, but the pretty, girlish mother who had died in giving birth to her. She would have been like Mrs. Lee, or prettier, and she would have understood.

Her heart smarted and burned and ached, but she got through the evening somehow, and, at the appointed time, stumbled up to her own room.

Why should she care because another woman was prettier than she, knew more, and had more? Were there not many such in the world, and had she not Alden? Accidentally, Rosemary came upon the cause of her pain.

Of course she had Alden, for always—unless—then, once more, reassurance came. "She's married," said Rosemary, smiling back at the white, frightened face she saw in the mirror. "She's married!"

[Sidenote: The Comforting Thought]

The thought carried with it so much comfort that presently Rosemary slept peacefully, exhausted, as she was, by the stress of the afternoon. "She's married," was her last conscious thought, and a smile lingered upon her lips as she slept. She had not enough worldly wisdom to know that, other things being equal, a married woman may be a dangerous rival, having the unholy charm of the unattainable, and the sanction of another man's choice.



XI

The Hour of the Turning Night

[Sidenote: Awake in the Night]

The darkness was vibrant, keen, alive. It throbbed with consciousness, with mysterious fibres of communication. There was no sense of a presence in the room, nor even the possibility of a presence. It was vague, abstract, yet curiously definite.

Edith woke from a troubled dream with a start. For a moment she lay quietly and listened, not afraid, but interested, as though upon the threshold of some new experience. The scurrying feet of mice made a ghostly patter in the attic, above her room, and a vagrant wind, in passing, tapped at her window with the fairy-like fingers of the vine that clung to the wall.

Otherwise all was still, and yet the darkness trembled with expectancy. Something hitherto unknown seemed to have entered her consciousness, some thought, emotion, instinct, or what? Wide awake, staring into space, she lay there, wondering, waiting, not in the least frightened, but assured of shelter and of peace.

[Sidenote: Another Personality]

Gradually she had lost consciousness of her body. She had relaxed completely and her mind soared, free. She moved one foot, cautiously, to see whether her body was still there, and smiled when she was reassured by the cool smoothness of the linen sheet, and the other warm little foot she touched in moving.

Somewhere, in this same darkness, was another personality. Of so much she eventually became sure. It was not in the room, perhaps not even in the house, but for someone else, somewhere, was this same sense—of communication? No, but rather the possibility of it.

Someone else had also lost consciousness of the body. Another mind, released for the moment from its earthly prison, sought communion with hers. Was this death, and had she wakened in another world? She moved her foot again, pressed her hand to the warm softness of her breast, felt her breath come and go, and even the steady beating of her heart. Not death, then, only a pause, in which for once the body, clamorous and imperious with its thousand needs, had given way to the soul.

The curious sense of another personality persisted. Was this other person dead, and striving mutely for expression? No, surely not, for this other mind was on the same plane as hers, subject to the same conditions. Not disembodied entirely, but only relaxed, as she was, this other personality had wakened and found itself gloriously free.

[Sidenote: A New Self]

A perception of fineness followed. Not everyone was capable of this, and the conviction brought a pleasant sense of superiority. Above the sordid world, in some higher realm of space and thought, they two had met, and saluted one another.

For the first time Edith thought of her body as something separate from herself, and in the light of a necessary—or unnecessary—evil. This new self neither hungered nor thirsted nor grew weary; it knew neither cold nor heat nor illness; pain, like a fourth dimension, was out of its comprehension, it required neither clothes nor means of transportation, it simply went, as the wind might, by its own power, when and where it chose.

Whose mind was it? Was it someone she knew, or someone she was yet to meet? And in what bodily semblance did it dwell, when it was housed in its prison? Was it a woman, or a man? Not a woman—Edith instantly dismissed the idea, for this sense of another personality carried with it not the feeling of duality or likeness, but of difference, of divine completion.

Some man she knew, or whom she was to know, freed for the moment from his earthly environment, roamed celestial ways with her. She was certain that it was not lasting, that, at the best, it could be of very brief duration, and this fact of impermanence was the very essence of its charm, like life itself.

[Sidenote: Who Was the Man?]

The clock down-stairs began to strike—one, two, three—four. It was the hour of the night when life is at its lowest, the point on the flaming arc of human existence where it touches the shadow of the unknown, softening into death or brightening into life according to the swing of the pendulum. Then, if ever, the mind and body would be apart, Edith thought, for when the physical forces sink, the spirit must rise to keep the balance true.

Who was the man? Her husband? No, for they were too far apart to meet like this. She idly went over the list of her men acquaintances—old schoolmates, friends of her husband's, husbands of her friends, as one might call the roll of an assembly, expecting someone to rise and answer "Here."

Yet it was all in vain, though she felt herself on the right track and approaching a definite solution. The darkness clung about her like a living thing. It throbbed as the air may when a wireless instrument answers another, leagues away; it was as eloquent of communication as a network of telephone and telegraph wires, submerged in midnight, yet laden with portent of life and death.

She sat up in bed, straining every nerve to the point where all senses unite in one. "Who are you?" Her lips did not move, but the thought seemed to have the sound of thunder in its imperious demand. Tangled fibres of communication noiselessly wove themselves through the darkness, and again all her soul merged itself into one question—"Who? For God's sake, who?"

[Sidenote: The Answer]

Then, after a tense instant of waiting, the answer flashed upon her, vivid as lightning: "Alden Marsh!"

And swiftly, as though in response to a call, a definite, conscious thought from the other personality presented itself: "Yes? What would you have of me?"

Edith lay back among her pillows, as the clock struck the half hour. The body, as though resentful of denial, urged itself swiftly upon her now. Her heart beat tumultuously, her hands shook, she thrilled from head to foot with actual physical pain. The darkness no longer seemed alive, but negative and dead, holding somewhere in its merciful depths the promise of rest.

Utterly exhausted, she closed her eyes and slept, to be roused by a tap at her door.

"Yes," she answered, drowsily, "come in!"

Madame came in, pulled up the shades and flooded the room with sunshine. "I'm sorry if I've disturbed you, dear, but I was afraid you were ill. I've been here twice before."

[Sidenote: Aroused from Sleep]

Edith sat up and rubbed her eyes. "What time is it?"

"Half-past nine."

"Oh, I'm so sorry! You mustn't spoil me this way, for I do want to get up to breakfast. Why didn't you call me?"

Madame sat down on the side of the bed and patted Edith's outstretched hand with affectionate reassurance. "You're to do just as you please," she said, "but I was beginning to worry a bit, for you've been the soul of punctuality."

"Did—" Edith closed her lips firmly upon the instinctive question, "Did he miss me?" She dismissed it as the mere vapouring of a vacant brain.

"Did what?" asked Madame, helpfully.

"Did you miss me?"

"Of course. Alden did too. The last thing he said before he went to school was that he hoped you were not ill."

"That was nice of him." Edith put a small pink foot out of bed on the other side and gazed at it pensively. Madame laughed.

"I don't believe you've grown up," she said. "You remind me of a small child, who has just discovered her toes. Do you want your breakfast up here?"

"No, I'll come down. Give me half an hour and I'll appear before you, clothed and in my right mind, with as humble an apology for my sins as I'm able to compose in the meantime."

[Sidenote: Call of the Wander-Lust]

She was as good as her word, appearing promptly at the time she had set, and dressed for the street. After doing justice to a hearty breakfast, she said that she was going out for a walk and probably would not be back to luncheon.

"My dear!" exclaimed Madame. "You mustn't do that. I'll have luncheon kept for you."

"No, please don't, for I really shan't want any. Didn't you observe my breakfast? Even a piano-mover couldn't think of eating again before seven, so let me go a-gypsying till sunset."

Madame nodded troubled acquiescence, and, with a laugh, Edith kissed her good-bye. "I'm subject to the Wander-lust," she said, "and when the call comes, I have to go. It's in my blood to-day, so farewell for the present."

Madame watched her as she went down the street, the golden quill on her green hat bidding jaunty defiance to the wind. As she had said, she felt the call at times, and had to yield to its imperative summons, but to-day it was her soul that craved the solace of the open spaces and the wind-swept fields.

As she dressed, she had tried to dismiss last night's experience as a mere fantasy of sleep, or, if not an actual dream, some vision hailing from the borderland of consciousness, at the point where the senses merge. Yet, even as she argued with herself, she felt the utter futility of it, and knew her denials were vain in the face of truth.

[Sidenote: Roaming through the Village]

She dreaded the necessity of meeting Alden again, then made a wry face at her own foolishness. "Ridiculous," she said to herself, "preposterous, absurd!" No matter what her own nightmares might be, he slept soundly—of course he did. How could healthy youth with a clear conscience do otherwise?

For an hour or more, she kept to the streets of the village, with the sublime unconsciousness of the city-bred, too absorbed in her own thoughts to know that she was stared at and freely commented upon by those to whom a stranger was a source of excitement. Her tailored gown, of dark green broadcloth, the severe linen shirtwaist, and her simple hat, were subjects of conversation that night in more than one humble home, fading into insignificance only before her radiant hair. The general opinion was that it must be a wig, or the untoward results of some experiment with hair-dye, probably the latter, for, as the postmaster's wife said, "nobody would buy a wig of that colour."

The school bell rang for dismissal, and filled her with sudden panic. After walking through the village all the morning to escape luncheon with Alden, it would be disagreeable to meet him face to face almost at the schoolhouse door. Turning in the opposite direction, she walked swiftly until she came to a hill, upon which an irregular path straggled half-heartedly upward.

[Sidenote: The Finding of the Red Book]

So Edith climbed the Hill of the Muses, pausing several times to rest. When she reached the top, she was agreeably surprised to find a comfortable seat waiting her, even though it was only a log rolled back against two trees. She sank back into the hollow, leaned against the supporting oak, and wiped her flushed face.

Others had been there before her, evidently, for the turf was worn around the log, and there were even hints of footprints here and there. "Some rural trysting place, probably," she thought, then a gleam of scarlet caught her attention. A small red book had fallen into the crevice between the log and the other tree. "The House of Life," she murmured, under her breath. "Now, who in this little village would—unless——"

The book bore neither name nor initials, but almost every page was marked. As it happened, most of them were favourite passages of her own. "How idyllic!" she mused; "a pair of young lovers reading Rossetti on a hill-top in Spring! Could anything be more pastoral? I'll take it back to the house and tell about it at dinner."

[Sidenote: Mutually Surprised]

She welcomed it as a sure relief from a possible awkward moment. "I knew I was right," she said to herself, as she turned the pages. "To-day was set aside, long ago, for me to go a-gypsying."

The clear air of the heights and the sunlit valley beneath her gave her a sense of proportion and of value which she realised she had sadly needed. Free from the annoyances of her daily life, she could look back upon it with due perspective, and see that her unhappiness had been largely caused by herself.

"I can't be miserable," she thought, "unless I'm willing to be."

She sat there for a long time, heedless of the passing hours. She was roused from her reverie by a muffled footstep and an involuntary exclamation of astonishment.

"Why, how do you do, Miss Starr?" said Edith, kindly, offering a well-gloved hand. "Are you out gypsying too?"

"Yes," Rosemary stammered. Her eyes were fixed upon the small red book that Mrs. Lee held in her other hand.

"See what I found," Edith went on, heedlessly. "Rossetti's House of Life, up here. Boy Blue must have brought it up to read to Bo-Peep in the intervals of shepherding. There may not be any such word as 'shepherding,' but there ought to be, I love to make words, don't you?"

[Sidenote: Shrines Laid Bare]

"Yes," said Rosemary, helplessly. She had thought Alden had the book, but had forgotten to make sure, and now the most precious hours of her life had been invaded and her shrines laid bare. Was it not enough for this woman to live in the same house with Alden? Need she take possession of the Hill of the Muses and the little book which had first awakened her, then brought them together? Resentful anger burned in her cheeks, all the more pitiful because of Mrs. Lee's utter unconsciousness, and the impossibility of reparation, even had she known.

"Sit down," Edith suggested. "You must be tired. It's a long climb."

"Did—did you come up here to—to meet anyone?" The suspicion broke hotly from Rosemary's pale lips.

Edith might have replied that she came up to avoid meeting anyone, but she only said, with cool astonishment: "Why, no. Why should I?"

There was no answer to that. Indeed, thought Rosemary, floundering helplessly in a sea of pain, there was no reason. Was she not in the same house with him, day in and day out?

"She's married," Rosemary said to herself with stern insistence, trying to find comfort in the thought, but comfort strangely failed now. Another suspicion assailed her and was instantly put into headlong speech. "Is your husband dead, or are you divorced?"

[Sidenote: Too Late]

Mrs. Lee turned quickly. She surveyed the girl calmly for an instant, entirely unable to translate her evident confusion; then she rose.

"Neither," she returned, icily, "and if there are no other personal questions you desire to ask me, I'll go back."

Rosemary kept back the tears until Mrs. Lee was out of sight. "She's married," she sobbed, "and he isn't dead, and they're not divorced, so why—oh, why?" The pain unreasonably persisted, taking to itself a fresh hold. She had offended Mrs. Lee and she would tell Alden, and Alden would be displeased and would never forgive her.

If she were to run after her, and apologise, assuring her that she had not meant the slightest offence, perhaps—. She stumbled to her feet, but, even as she did so, she knew that it was too late. She longed with all the passion of her desolate soul for Alden's arms around her, for only the touch of his hand or the sound of his voice, saying: "Rosemary! Rosemary dear!" But it was too late for that also—everything came too late!

* * * * *

By the time she reached the foot of the hill Edith had understood and pardoned Rosemary. "Poor child," she thought. "Think of her loving him, and actually being jealous of me! And, man-like, of course, he's never noticed it. For her sake, I hope he won't."

[Sidenote: Like a Nymph]

She waited to gather a spray or two of wild crab-apple blossoms, then went home. She did not see Alden, but stopped to exchange a few words with Madame, then went on up-stairs. The long walk had wearied her, but it had also made her more lovely. After an hour of rest and a cool shower, she was ready to dress for dinner.

She chose a dinner-gown of white embroidered chiffon that she had not yet worn. It was cut away a little at the throat and the sleeves came to the elbow. She was not in the mood for jewels, but she clasped a string of pearls around her perfect throat, and put the crab-apple blossoms in her hair. The experiment was rather daring, but wholly successful, as she took care to have green leaves between her hair and the blossoms.

When she went down, Madame and Alden were waiting for her, Alden in evening clothes as usual and Madame in her lavender gown.

"You look like a nymph of Botticelli's," commented Alden, with a smile. There was no trace of confusion, or even of consciousness in his manner, and, once again, Edith reproached herself for her foolishness.

[Sidenote: "Don't Leave Me Alone"]

Dinner was cheerful, though not lively. Once or twice, Edith caught Alden looking at her with a strange expression on his face. Madame chattered on happily, of the vineyard and the garden and the small household affairs that occupied her attention.

Afterward, Alden read the paper and the other two played cribbage. It was only a little after nine when Madame, concealing a yawn, announced that she was tired and would go to bed, if she might be excused.

Edith rose with alacrity. "I'll come, too," she said. "It's astonishing how sleepy it makes one to be outdoors."

"Don't," Madame protested. "We mustn't leave him entirely alone. You can sleep late to-morrow morning if you choose."

"Please don't leave me alone, Mrs. Lee," pleaded Alden, rather wickedly.

"All right," Edith answered, accepting the inevitable as gracefully as she might. "Shall I play solitaire while you read the paper?"

"If you like," he replied.

Madame took her candle and bade them good-night. As she went up-stairs, Edith said, with a pout: "I wish I were going to bed too."

"You can't sleep all the time," he reminded her. The paper had slipped to the floor. "Mother tells me that you slept this morning until half-past nine."

[Sidenote: The Souvenir of Rural Lovers]

"Yes—but—." She bit her lips and the colour rose to her temples. She hastily shuffled the cards and began to play solitaire so rapidly that he wondered whether she knew what cards she was playing.

"But," he said, "you didn't sleep well last night. Was that what you were going to say?"

Edith dropped her cards, and looked him straight in the face. "I slept perfectly," she lied. "Didn't you?"

"I slept just as well as you did," he answered. She thought she detected a shade of double meaning in his tone.

"I had a long walk to-day," she went on, "and it made me sleepy. Look," she continued, going to the mantel where she had left the book. "See what I found on top of a hill, in a crevice between an oak and a log that lay against it. Do you think some pair of rural lovers left it there?"

"Possibly," he replied. If the sight of the book he had loaned Rosemary awoke any emotion, or even a memory, he did not show it. "Sit down," he suggested, imperturbably, "and let me see if I can't find a sonnet that fits you. Yes, surely—here it is. Listen."

She rested her head upon her hand and turned her face away from him. In his smooth, well-modulated voice, he read:

[Sidenote: Alden Reads a Sonnet]

HER GIFTS

High grace, the dower of queens; and therewithal Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity; A glance like water brimming with the sky Or hyacinth-light where forest shadows fall; Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthral The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms imply All music and all silence held thereby; Deep golden locks, her sovereign coronal; A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary; Hands which forever at Love's bidding be, And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign:— These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er. Breathe low her name, my soul, for that means more.

Her heart beat wildly and her colour came and went, but, with difficulty, she controlled herself until he reached the end. When she rose, he rose also, dropping the book.

"Mrs. Lee—Edith!"

"Yes," she said, with a supreme effort at self-command, "it is a pretty name, isn't it?" She was very pale, but she offered him her hand. "I really must go now," she continued, "for I am tired. Thank you—and good-night."

Alden did not answer—in words. He took the hand she offered him, held it firmly in his own, stooped, and kissed the hollow of her elbow, just below the sleeve.



XII

Asking—Not Answer

[Sidenote: No Guarantee]

"She's married, and he isn't dead, and they're not divorced. She's married and he isn't dead, and they're not divorced." Rosemary kept saying it to herself mechanically, but no comfort came. Through the long night, wakeful and wretched, she brooded over the painful difference between the woman to whom Alden had plighted his troth and the beautiful stranger whom he saw every day.

"She's married," Rosemary whispered, to the coarse unbleached muslin of her pillow. "And when we're married—" ah, it would all be different then. But would it? In a flash she perceived that marriage itself guarantees nothing in the way of love.

Hurt to her heart's core, Rosemary sat up in bed and pondered, while the tears streamed over her cheeks. She had not seen Alden since Mrs. Lee came, except the day she had gone there to tea, wearing her white muslin under her brown alpaca. There was no way to see him, unless she went there again—the very thought of that made her shudder—or signalled from her hill-top with the scarlet ribbon.

[Sidenote: Hugging her Grief]

And, to her, the Hill of the Muses was like some holy place that had been profaned. The dainty feet of the stranger had set themselves upon her path in more ways than one. What must life be out in the world, when the world was full of women like Mrs. Lee, perhaps even more beautiful? Was everyone, married or not, continually stabbed by some heart-breaking difference between herself and another?

Having the gift of detachment immeasurably beyond woman, man may separate himself from his grief, contemplate it calmly in its various phases, and, with a mighty effort, throw it aside. Woman, on the contrary, hugs hers close to her aching breast and remorselessly turns the knife in her wound. It is she who keeps anniversaries, walks in cemeteries, wears mourning, and preserves trifles that sorrowfully have outlasted the love that gave them.

If she could only see him once! And yet, what was there to say or what was there to do, beyond sobbing out her desolate heart in the shelter of his arms? Could she tell him that she was miserable because she had come face to face with a woman more beautiful than she; that she doubted his loyalty, his devotion? From some far off ancestor, her woman's dower of pride and silence suddenly asserted itself in Rosemary. When he wanted her, he would find her. If he missed her signal, fluttering from the birch tree in the Spring wind, he could write and say so. Meanwhile she would not seek him, though her heart should break from loneliness and despair.

[Sidenote: Worn and Weary]

Craving the dear touch of him, the sound of his voice, or even the sight of his tall well-knit figure moving along swiftly in the dusk, she compelled herself to accept the situation, bitterness and all. Across her open window struck the single long deepening shadow that precedes daybreak, then grey lights dawned on the far horizon, paling the stars to points of pearl upon dim purple mists. Worn and weary, Rosemary slept until she was called to begin the day's dreary round of toil, as mechanical as the ticking of a clock.

Cold water removed the traces of tears from her cheeks, but her eyes were red and swollen. The cheap mirror exaggerated her plainness, while memory pitilessly emphasised the beauty of the other woman. As she dressed, the thought came to her that, no matter what happened, she could still go on loving him, that she might always give, whether or not she received anything at all in return.

"Service," she said to herself, remembering her dream, "and sacrifice. Giving, not receiving; asking, not answer." If this indeed was love, she had it in fullest measure, so why should she ask for more?

[Sidenote: Waiting for Breakfast]

"Rosemary!"

"Yes," she called back, trying hard to make her voice even, "I'm coming!"

"It beats all," Grandmother said, fretfully, when she rushed breathlessly into the dining-room. "For the life of me I can't understand how you can sleep so much."

Rosemary smiled grimly, but said nothing.

"Here I've been settin', waitin' for my breakfast, since before six, and it's almost seven now."

"Never mind," the girl returned, kindly; "I'll get it ready just as quickly as I can."

"I was just sayin'," Grandmother continued when Aunt Matilda came into the room, "that it beats all how Rosemary can sleep. I've been up since half-past five and she's just beginnin' to get breakfast, and here you come, trailin' along in with your hair not combed, at ten minutes to breakfast time. I should think you'd be ashamed."

"My hair is combed," Matilda retorted, quickly on the defensive.

"I don't know when it was," Grandmother fretted. "I ain't seen it combed since I can remember."

"Then it's because you ain't looked. Any time you want to see me combin' my hair you can come in. I do it every morning."

[Sidenote: Fluffy Hair]

Grandmother laughed, sarcastically. "'Pears like you thought you was one of them mermaids I was readin' about in the paper once. They're half fish and half woman and they set on rocks, combin' their hair and singin' and the ships go to pieces on the rocks 'cause the sailors are so anxious to see 'em they forget where they're goin'."

"There ain't no rocks outside my door as I know of," Matilda returned, "and only one rocker inside."

"No, nor your hair ain't like theirs neither. The paper said their hair was golden."

"Must be nice and stiff," Matilda commented. "I'd hate to have my hair all wire."

Grandmother lifted her spectacles from the wart and peered through them critically. "I dunno," she said, "as it'd look any different, except for the colour. The way you're settin' now, against the light, I can see bristles stickin' out all over it, same as if 'twas wire."

"Fluffy hair is all the style now," said Matilda, complacently.

"Fluffy!" Grandmother grunted. "If that's what you call it, I reckon it'll soon go out. It might have been out for fifteen or twenty years and you not know it. I don't believe any self-respectin' woman would let her hair go like that. Why 'n the name of common sense can't you take a hair brush and wet it in cold water and slick it up, so's folks can see that it's combed? Mine's always slick, and nobody can't say that it isn't."

[Sidenote: Grandmother's Disappointment]

"Yes," Matilda agreed with a scornful glance, "it is slick, what there is of it."

Grandmother's head burned pink through her scanty white locks and her eyes flashed dangerously. Somewhat frightened, Matilda hastened to change the subject.

"She wears her hair like mine."

"She?" repeated Grandmother, pricking up her ears, "Who's she?"

"You know—the company up to Marshs'."

"Who was tellin' you? The milkman, or his wife?"

"None of 'em," answered Matilda, mysteriously. Then, lowering her voice to a whisper, she added: "I seen her myself!"

"When?" Grandmother demanded. "You been up there, payin' back your own call?"

"She went by here yesterday," said Matilda, hurriedly.

"What was I doin'?" the old lady inquired, resentfully.

"One time you was asleep and one time you was readin'."

"What? Do you mean to tell me she went by here twice and you ain't never told me till now?"

"When you've been readin'," Matilda rejoined, with secret delight, "you've always told me and Rosemary too that you wan't to be disturbed unless the house took afire. Ain't she, Rosemary?"

[Sidenote: If Anything's Important]

"What?" asked the girl, placing a saucer of stewed prunes at each place and drawing up the three chairs.

"Ain't she always said she didn't want to be disturbed when she was readin'?" She indicated Grandmother by an inclination of her frowsy head.

"I don't believe any of us like to be interrupted when we're reading," Rosemary replied, tactfully. She disliked to "take sides," and always avoided it whenever possible.

"There," exclaimed Matilda, triumphantly.

"And the other time?" pursued Grandmother. Her eyes glittered and her cheeks burned with dull, smouldering fires.

"You was asleep."

"I could have been woke up, couldn't I?"

"You could have been," Matilda replied, after a moment's thought, "but when you've been woke up I ain't never liked to be the one what did it."

"If it's anything important," Grandmother observed, as she began to eat, "I'm willin' to be interrupted when I'm readin', or to be woke up when I'm asleep, and if that woman ever goes by the house again, I want to be told of it, and I want you both to understand it, right here and now."

[Sidenote: Have You Seen Her?]

"What woman?" queried Rosemary. She had been busy in the kitchen and had not grasped the subject of the conversation, though the rumbling of it had reached her from afar.

"Marshs' company," said both voices at once.

"Oh!" Rosemary steadied herself for a moment against the back of her chair and then sat down.

"Have you seen her?" asked Grandmother.

"Yes." Rosemary's answer was scarcely more than a whisper. In her wretchedness, she told the truth, being unable to think sufficiently to lie.

"When?" asked Aunt Matilda.

"Where?" demanded Grandmother.

"Yesterday, when I was out for a walk." It was not necessary to go back of yesterday.

"Where was she?" insisted Grandmother.

"Up on the hill. I didn't know she was there when I went up. She was at the top, resting."

"Did she speak to you?" asked Aunt Matilda.

"Yes." Rosemary's voice was very low and had in it all the weariness of the world.

"What did she say?" inquired Grandmother, with the air of the attorney for the defence. The spectacles were resting upon the wart now, and she peered over them disconcertingly.

[Sidenote: What Does She Look Like?]

"I asked you what she said," Grandmother repeated distinctly, after a pause.

"She said: 'How do you do, Miss Starr?'"

"How'd she know who you were?"

"There, there, Mother," put in Aunt Matilda. "I reckon everybody in these parts knows the Starr family."

"Of course," returned the old lady, somewhat mollified. "What else did she say?"

"Nothing much," stammered Rosemary. "That is, I can't remember. She said it was a nice day, or something of that sort, and then she went back home. She didn't stay but a minute." So much was true, even though that minute had agonised Rosemary beyond words.

"What does she look like?" Grandmother continued, with deep interest.

"Not—like anybody we know. Aunt Matilda can tell you better than I can. She saw her too."

Accepting modestly this tribute to her powers of observation, Aunt Matilda took the conversation out of Rosemary's hands, greatly to her relief. The remainder of breakfast was a spirited dialogue. Grandmother's doubt on any one point was quickly silenced by the sarcastic comment from Matilda: "Well, bein' as you've seen her and I haven't, of course you know."

[Sidenote: Under the Ban]

Meanwhile Rosemary ate, not knowing what she ate, choking down her food with glass after glass of water which by no means assuaged the inner fires. While she was washing the breakfast dishes the other two were discussing Mrs. Lee's hair. Grandmother insisted that it was a wig, as play-actresses always wore them and Mrs. Lee was undoubtedly a play-actress.

"How do you know?" Matilda inquired, with sarcastic inflection.

"If she ain't," Grandmother parried, "what's she gallivantin' around the country for without her husband?"

"Maybe he's dead."

"If he's dead, why ain't she wearin' mourning, as any decent woman would? She's either a play-actress, or else she's a divorced woman, or maybe both." Either condition, in Grandmother's mind, was the seal of social damnation.

"If we was on callin' terms with the Marshs," said Matilda, meditatively, "Mis' Marsh might be bringin' her here."

"Not twice," returned Grandmother, with determination. "This is my house, and I've got something to say about who comes in it. I wouldn't even have Mis' Marsh now, after she's been hobnobbin' with the likes of her."

After reverting for a moment to the copper-coloured hair, which might or might not be a wig, the conversation drifted back to mermaids and the seafaring folk who went astray on the rocks. Aunt Matilda insisted that there were no such things as mermaids, and Grandmother triumphantly dug up the article in question from a copy of The Household Guardian more than three months old.

[Sidenote: Working Faithfully]

"It's a lie, just the same," Matilda protested, though weakly, as one in the last ditch.

"Matilda Starr!" The clarion note of Grandmother's voice would have made the dead stir. "Ain't I showed it to you, in the paper?" To question print was as impious as to doubt Holy Writ.

Rosemary was greatly relieved when Mrs. Lee gave way to mermaids in the eternal flow of talk. She wondered, sometimes, that their voices did not fail them, though occasionally a sulky silence or a nap produced a brief interval of peace. She worked faithfully until her household tasks were accomplished, discovering that, no matter how one's heart aches, one can do the necessary things and do them well.

Early in the afternoon, she found herself free. Instinct and remorseless pain led her unerringly to the one place, where the great joy had come to her. She searched her suffering dumbly, and without mercy. If she knew the reason why!

"She's married, and her husband isn't dead, and they're not divorced." Parrot-like, Rosemary repeated the words to herself, emphasising each fact with a tap of her foot on the ground in front of her. Then a new fear presented itself, clutching coldly at her heart. Perhaps they were going to be divorced and then——

[Sidenote: Something Snapped]

Something seemed to snap, like the breaking of a strained tension. Rosemary had come to the point where she could endure no more, and mercifully the pain was eased. Later on, no doubt, she could suffer again, but for the moment she felt only a dull weariness. In the background the ache slumbered, like an ember that is covered with ashes, but now she was at rest.

She looked about her curiously, as though she were a stranger. Yet, at the very spot where she stood, Mrs. Lee had stood yesterday, her brown eyes cold with controlled anger when she made her sarcastic farewell. When she first saw her, she had been sitting on the log, where Alden usually sat. Down in the hollow tree was the wooden box that held the red ribbon. Shyly, the nine silver birches, with bowed heads, had turned down the hillside and stopped. Across, on the other side of the hill, where God hung His flaming tapestries of sunset from the high walls of Heaven, Rosemary had stood that day, weeping, and Love had come to comfort her.

[Sidenote: Another Standard]

None of it mattered now—nothing mattered any more. She had reached the end, whatever the end might be. Seemingly it was a great pause of soul and body, the consciousness of arrival at the ultimate goal.

When she saw Alden, she would ask to be released. She could tell him, with some semblance of truth, that she could not leave Grandmother and Aunt Matilda, because they needed her, and after they had done so much for her, she could not bring herself to seem ungrateful, even for him. The books were full of such things—the eternal sacrifice of youth to age, which age unblushingly accepts, perhaps in remembrance of some sacrifice of its own.

He had told her, long ago, that she was the only woman he knew. Now he had another standard to judge her by and, at the best, she must fall far short of it. Some day Alden would marry—he must marry, and have a home of his own when his mother was no longer there to make it for him, and she—she was not good enough for him, any more than Cinderella was good enough for the Prince.

The fact that the Prince had considered Cinderella fully his equal happily escaped Rosemary now. Clearly before her lay the one thing to be done: to tell him it was all a mistake, and ask for freedom before he forced it upon her. He had been very kind the other day, when she had gone there to tea but, naturally, he had seen the difference—must have seen it.

[Sidenote: Rosemary's Few Days of Joy]

Of course it would not be Mrs. Lee—Rosemary could laugh at that now. Her jealousy of an individual had been merely the recognition of a type, and her emotion the unfailing tribute inferiority accords superiority. Married, and her husband not dead, nor divorced—manifestly it could not be Mrs. Lee.

She longed to set him free, to bid him mate with a woman worthy of him. Some glorious woman, Rosemary thought, with abundant beauty and radiant hair, with a low, deep voice that vibrated through the room like some stringed instrument and lingered, in melodious echoes, like music that has ceased. She saw her few days of joy as the one perfect thing she had ever had, the one gift she had prayed for and received. This much could never be taken away from her. She had had it and been blessed by it, and now the time had come to surrender it. What was she, that she might hope to keep it?

"Lo, what am I to Love, the Lord of all One little shell upon the murmuring sand, One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand—"

The moment of shelter became divinely dear. Already, in her remembrance, she had placed a shrine to which she might go, in silence, when things became too hard. She would have written to Alden, if she had had a sheet of paper, and an envelope, and a stamp, but she had not, and dared not face the torrent of questions she would arouse by asking for it.

[Sidenote: No One Came]

Her face transfigured by a passion of renunciation, Rosemary reached into the hollow tree for the wooden box, and, for the last time unwound the scarlet ribbon. She tied it to the lowest bough of the birch when the school bell rang, and went back to wait. Without emotion, she framed the few words she would say. "Just tell him it's all a mistake, that they need me and I mustn't leave them, and so good-bye. And if he tries to kiss me for good-bye—oh, he mustn't, for I couldn't bear that!"

So Rosemary sat and waited—until almost dark, but no one came. Alden had, indeed, hurried home to have afternoon tea with his mother and Edith. He had almost forgotten the oriflamme that sometimes signalled to him from the top of the hill, and seldom even glanced that way.

In the gathering dusk, Rosemary took it down, unemotionally. It seemed only part of the great denial. She put it back into the box, and hid it in the tree.

"Service," she said to herself, as she went home, "and sacrifice. Giving, not receiving; asking, not answer. And this is love!"



XIII

The Stain of the Rose

[Sidenote: Put Aside]

Alden had put Rosemary aside as though in a mental pigeon-hole. If vague thoughts of her came now and then to trouble him, he showed no sign of it. As weeks and months had sometimes passed without a meeting, why should it be different now? Moreover, he was busy, as she must know, with the vineyard and school, and a guest.

He had ordered several books on the subject of vine-culture, and was reading a great deal, though a close observer might have noted long intervals in which he took no heed of the book, but stared dreamily into space. He saw Edith at the table, and in the evenings, and occasionally at afternoon tea—a pleasant custom which she and Madame never failed to observe,—but she seemed to make it a point not to trespass upon his daylight hours.

The apple blossoms had gone, blown in fragrant drifts afar upon field and meadow. The vineyard lay lazily upon its southern slope, basking in the sun. Sometimes a wandering wind brought a fresh scent of lusty leaves or a divine hint of bloom.

[Sidenote: Alden's Feast]

The old-fashioned square piano, long silent, was open now, and had been put in order. In the evenings, after dinner, Edith would play, dreamily, in the dusk or by the light of one candle. The unshaded light, shining full upon her face, brought out the delicacy of her profile and allured stray gleams from the burnished masses of her hair. In the soft shadows that fell around her, she sat like St. Cecilia, unconscious of self, and of the man who sat far back in a corner of the room, never taking his eyes from her face.

Wistfulness was in every line of her face and figure, from the small white-shod foot that rested upon the pedal to the glorious hair that shimmered and shone but still held its tangled lights safely in its silken strands. The long line from shoulder to wrist, the smooth, satiny texture of the rounded arm, bare below the elbow, the delicate hands, so beautifully cared-for, all seemed eloquent with yearning.

Alden, from his safe point of observation, feasted his soul to the full. The ivory whiteness of her neck shaded imperceptibly into the creamy lace of her gown. Underneath her firm, well rounded chin, on the left side, was a place that was almost a dimple, but not quite. There was a real dimple in her chin and another at each corner of her mouth, where the full scarlet lips drooped a little from sadness. Star-like, her brown eyes searched the far shadows and sometimes the flicker of the candle brought a dancing glint of gold into their depths. And as always, like a halo, stray gleams hovered about her head, bent slightly forward now and full into the light, throwing into faint relief the short straight nose, and the full, short upper lip.

[Sidenote: Edith at the Piano]

Smiling, and wholly unconscious, it was as though she pleaded with the instrument to give her back some half-forgotten melody. Presently the strings answered, shyly at first, then in full soft chords that sang and crooned through the dusk. Alden, in his remote corner, drew a long breath of rapture. The ineffable sweetness of her pervaded his house, not alone with the scent of violets, but with the finer, more subtle fragrance of her personality.

She wore no jewels, except her wedding ring—not even the big, blazing diamond with which her husband had sealed their betrothal. She had a string of pearls and a quaint, oriental necklace set with jade, and sometimes she wore one or two turquoises, or a great, pale sapphire set in silver, but that was all. Out of the world of glitter and sparkle, she had chosen these few things that suited her, and was content.

[Sidenote: Madame in the Moonlight]

From another corner came the sound of slow, deep breathing. Outside the circle of candlelight, Madame had fallen asleep in her chair. The full June moon had shadowed the net curtain upon the polished floor and laid upon it, in silhouette, an arabesque of oak leaves. It touched Madame's silvered hair to almost unearthly beauty as she leaned back with her eyes closed, and brought a memory of violets and sun from the gold-tasselled amethyst that hung on her breast. The small slender hands lay quietly, one on either arm of her chair. A white crepe shawl, heavy with Chinese embroidery, lay over her shoulders,—a gift from Edith. A Summer wind, like a playful child, stole into the room, lifted the deep silk fringe of the shawl, made merry with it for a moment, then tinkled the prisms on the chandelier and ran away again.

The fairy-like sound of it, as though it were a far, sweet bell, chimed in with Edith's dreamy chords and brought her to herself with a start. She turned quickly, saw that Madame was asleep, and stopped playing.

"Go on," said Alden, in a low tone. "Please do."

"I mustn't," she whispered, with her finger on her lips. "Your mother is asleep and I don't want to disturb her."

"Evidently you haven't," he laughed.

"Hush!" Edith's full, deep contralto took on an affected sternness. "You mustn't talk."

[Sidenote: Edith's Room]

"But I've got to," he returned. "Shall we go outdoors?"

"Yes, if you like."

"Don't you want a wrap of some sort?"

"Yes. Wait a moment, and I'll get it."

"No—tell me where it is, and I'll go."

"It's only a white chiffon scarf," she said. "I think you'll find it hanging from the back of that low rocker, near the dressing-table."

He went up-stairs, silently and swiftly, and paused, for a moment, at Edith's door. It seemed strange to have her permission to turn the knob and go in. He hesitated upon the threshold, then entered the sweet darkness which, to him, would have meant Edith, had it been blown to him across the wastes of Sahara.

How still it was! Only the cheery piping of a cricket broke the exquisite peace of the room; only a patch of moonlight, upon the polished floor, illumined the scented dusk. He struck a match, and lighted one of the candles upon the dressing-table.

The place was eloquent of her, as though she had just gone out. The carved ivory toilet articles—he could have guessed that she would not have silver ones,—the crystal puff box, with a gold top ornamented only by a monogram; no, it was not a monogram either, but interlaced initials trailing diagonally across it; the mirror, a carelessly crumpled handkerchief, and a gold thimble—he picked up each article with a delightful sense of intimacy.

[Sidenote: A Man's Face]

Face down upon the dressing-table was a photograph, framed in dull green leather. That, too, he took up without stopping to question the propriety of it. A man's face smiled back at him, a young, happy face, full of comradeship and the joy of life for its own sake.

This, then, was her husband! Alden's heart grew hot with resentment at the man who had made Edith miserable. He had put those sad lines under her eyes, that showed so plainly sometimes when she was tired, made her sweet mouth droop at the corners, and filled her whole personality with the wistfulness that struck at his heart, like the wistfulness of a little child.

This man, with the jovial countenance, and doubtless genial ways, had the right to stand at her dressing-table, if he chose, and speculate upon the various uses of all the daintiness that was spread before him. He had the right and cared nothing for it, while the man who did care, stood there shamefaced, all at once feeling himself an intruder in a sacred place.

He put the photograph back, face down, as it had been, took the scarf, put out the light, and went back down-stairs. He stopped for a moment in the hall to wonder what this was that assailed him so strangely, this passionate bitterness against the other man, this longing to shelter Edith from whatever might make her unhappy.

[Sidenote: On the Veranda]

The living-room was dark. In her moonlit corner, Madame still slept. From where he stood, he could see the dainty little lavender-clad figure enwrapped in its white shawl. There was no sign of Edith in the room, so he went out upon the veranda, guessing that he should find her there.

She had taken out two chairs—a favourite rocker of her own, and the straight-backed, deep chair in which Alden usually sat when he was reading. The chairs faced each other, with a little distance between them. Edith sat in hers, rocking, with her hands crossed behind her head, and her little white feet stretched out in front of her.

Without speaking, Alden went back for a footstool. Then he turned Edith, chair and all, toward the moonlight, slipped the footstool under her feet, laid the fluttering length of chiffon over her shoulders, and brought his own chair farther forward.

"Why," she laughed, as he sat down, "do you presume to change my arrangements?"

"Because I want to see your face."

[Sidenote: Effect of Moonlight]

"Didn't it occur to you that I might want to see yours?"

"Not especially."

"My son," she said, in her most matronly manner, "kindly remember that a woman past her first youth always prefers to sit with her back toward the light."

"I'm older than you are," he reminded her, "so don't be patronising."

"In years only," she returned. "In worldly wisdom and experience and all the things that count, I'm almost as old as your mother is. Sometimes," she added, bitterly, "I feel as though I were a thousand."

A shadow crossed his face, but, as his figure loomed darkly against the moon, Edith did not see it. The caressing glamour of the light revealed the sad sweetness of her mouth, but presently her lips curved upward in a forced smile.

"Why is it?" she asked, "that moonlight makes one think?"

"I didn't know it did," he replied. "I thought it was supposed to have quite the opposite effect."

"It doesn't with me. In the sun, I'm sane, and have control of myself, but nights like this drive me almost mad sometimes."

"Why?" he asked gently, leaning toward her.

"Oh, I don't know," she sighed. "There's so much I might have that I haven't." Then she added, suddenly: "What did you think of my husband's picture?"

[Sidenote: Edith's Husband]

The end of the chiffon scarf rose to meet a passing breeze, then fell back against the softness of her arm. A great grey-winged night moth fluttered past them. From the high bough of a distant maple came the frightened twitter of little birds, wakeful in the night, and the soft, murmurous voice of the brooding mother, soothing them.

"How did you know?" asked Alden, slowly.

"Oh, I just knew. You were looking at my dressing-table first, and you picked up the picture without thinking. Then, as soon as you knew who it was, you put it down, found the scarf, and came out."

"Do you love him?"

"No. That is, I don't think I do. But—oh," she added, with a sharp indrawing of her breath, "how I did love him!"

"And he—" Alden went on. "Does he love you?"

"I suppose so, in his way. As much as he is capable of caring for anything except himself, he cares for me."

She rose and walked restlessly along the veranda, the man following her with his eyes, until she reached the latticed end, where a climbing crimson rose, in full bloom, breathed the fragrance of some far Persian garden. Reaching up, she picked one, on a long, slender stem.

[Sidenote: The Crimson Rose]

Alden appeared beside her, with his knife in his hand. "Shall I take off the thorns for you?"

"No, I'm used to thorns. Besides, the wise ones are those who accept things as they are." She thrust the stem into her belt, found a pin from somewhere, and pinned the flower itself upon the creamy lace of her gown.

"It's just over your heart," he said. "Is your heart a rose too?"

"As far as thorns go, yes."

She leaned back against one of the white columns of the porch. She was facing the moonlight, but the lattice and the rose shaded her with fragrant dusk.

"Father and Mother planted this rose," Alden said, "the day they were married."

"How lovely," she answered, without emotion. "But to think that the rose has outlived one and probably will outlive the other!"

"Mother says she hopes it will. She wants to leave it here for me and my problematical children. The tribal sense runs rampant in Mother."

"When are you and Miss Starr going to be married?" asked Edith, idly.

Alden started. "How did you know?" he demanded, roughly, possessing himself of her hands. "Who told you—Mother, or—Miss Starr?"

[Sidenote: Mutual Understanding]

"Neither," replied Edith, coldly, releasing herself. "I—just knew. I beg your pardon," she added, hastily. "Of course it's none of my affair."

"But it is," he said, under his breath. Then, coming closer, he took her hands again. "Look here, Edith, there's something between you and me—do you know it?"

"How do you mean?" She tried to speak lightly, but her face was pale.

"You know very well what I mean. How do you know what I think, what I do, what I am? And the nights—no, don't try to get away from me—from that first night when I woke at four and knew you were crying, to that other night when you knew it was I who was awake with you, and all the nights since when the tide of time has turned between three and four! I've known your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams, as you've known mine!

"And the next day," he went on, "when you avoid me even with your eyes; when you try to hide with laughter and light words your consciousness of the fact that the night before you and I have met somewhere, in some mysterious way, and known each other as though we were face to face! Can you be miserable, and I not know it? Can I be tormented by a thousand doubts, and you not know it? Could you be ill, or troubled, or even perplexed, and I not know, though the whole world lay between us? Answer me!"

[Sidenote: Oblivious of Time and Space]

Edith's face was very white and her lips almost refused to move. "Oh, Boy," she whispered, brokenly. "What does it mean?"

"This," he answered, imperiously. "It means this—and now!"

He took her into his arms, crushing her to him so tightly that she almost cried out with the delicious pain of it. In the rose-scented shadow, his mouth found hers.

Time and space were no more. At the portal of the lips, soul met soul. The shaded veranda, and even the house itself faded away. Only this new-born ecstasy lived, like a flaming star suddenly come to earth.

Madame stirred in her sleep. Then she called, drowsily: "Alden! Edith!" No one answered, because no one heard. She got up, smothering a yawn behind her hand, wondered that there were no lights, waited a moment, heard nothing, and came to the window.

The moon flooded the earth with enchantment—a silvery ocean of light breaking upon earth-bound shores. A path of it lay along the veranda—opal and tourmaline and pearl, sharply turned aside by the shadow of the rose.

Madame drew her breath quickly. There they stood, partly in the dusk and partly in the light, close in each other's arms, with the misty silver lying lovingly upon Edith's hair.

[Sidenote: Pledges of Love]

She sank back into a chair, remembering, with vague terror, the vision she had seen in the crystal ball. So, then, it was true, as she might have known. Sorely troubled, and with her heart aching for them both, she crept up-stairs.

* * * * *

"Boy," whispered Edith, shrinking from him. "Oh, Boy! The whole world lies between you and me!"

His only answer was to hold her closer still, to turn her mouth again to his. "Not to-night," he breathed, with his lips on hers. "God has given us to-night!"

White and shaken, but with her eyes shining like stars, at last she broke away from him. She turned toward the house, but he caught her and held her back.

"Say it," he pleaded. "Say you love me!"

"I do," she whispered. "Oh, have pity, and let me go!"

"And I," he answered, with his face illumined, "love you with all my heart and soul and strength and will—with every fibre of my being, for now and for ever. I am yours absolutely, while earth holds me, and even beyond that."

[Sidenote: What Matters]

Edith looked up quickly, half afraid. His eyes were glowing with strange, sweet fires.

"Say it!" he commanded. "Tell me you are mine!"

"I am," she breathed. "God knows I am, but no—I had forgotten for the moment!"

She broke into wild sobbing, and he put his arm around her with infinite tenderness. "Hush," he said, as one might speak to a child. "What has been does not matter—nothing matters now but this. In all the ways of Heaven, you are mine—mine for always, by divine right!"

"Yes," she said, simply, and lifted her tear-stained face to his.

He kissed her again, not with passion, but with that same indescribable tenderness. Neither said a word. They went into the house together, he found her candle, lighted it, and gave it to her.

She took it from him, smiling, though her hands trembled. Back in the shadow he watched her as she ascended, with a look of exaltation upon her face. Crimson petals were falling all around her, and he saw the stain of the rose upon her white gown, where he had crushed it against her heart.

Neither slept, until the tide of the night began to turn. Swiftly, to her, through the throbbing, living darkness, came a question and a call.

[Sidenote: Peace]

"Mine?"

Back surged the unmistakable answer: "Thine." Then, to both, came dreamless peace.



XIV

The Light before a Shrine

[Sidenote: Madame Reproaches Herself]

Edith did not appear at breakfast. Alden seemed preoccupied, ate but little, and Madame, pale after a sleepless night, ate nothing at all. Furtively she watched her son, longing to share his thoughts and warn him against the trouble that inevitably lay ahead.

Woman-like, she blamed the woman, even including herself. She knew that what she had seen last night was not the evidence of a mere flirtation or passing fancy, and reproached herself bitterly because she had asked Edith to stay.

And yet, what mother could hope to shield her son against temptation in its most intoxicating form? For his thirty years he had lived in the valley, practically without feminine society. Only his mother, and, of late, Rosemary. Then, star-like upon his desert, Edith had arisen, young, beautiful, unhappy, with all the arts and graces a highly specialised civilisation bestows upon its women.

[Sidenote: Looking Back]

Madame's heart softened a little toward Edith. Perhaps she was not wholly to blame. She remembered the night Edith had endeavoured to escape a tete-a-tete with Alden and she herself had practically forced her to stay. Regardless of the warning given by the crystal ball, in which Madame now had more faith than ever, she had not only given opportunity, but had even forced it upon them.

Looking back, she could not remember, upon Edith's part, a word or even a look that had been out of place. She could recall no instance in which she had shown the slightest desire for Alden's society. Where another woman might have put herself in his way, times without number, Edith had kept to her own room, or had gone out alone.

On the contrary, Madame herself had urged drives and walks. Frequently she had asked Alden to do certain things and had reminded him of the courtesy due from host to guest. Once, when she had requested him to take Edith out for a drive, he had replied, somewhat sharply, that he had already invited her and she had refused to go.

Murmuring an excuse, Alden left the table and went out. Madame was rather glad to be left alone, for she wanted time to think, not as one thinks in darkness, when one painful subject, thrown out of perspective, assumes exaggerated proportions of importance, but in clear, sane sunlight, surrounded by the reassuring evidences of every-day living.

[Sidenote: Madame's View of the Case]

Obviously she could not speak to either. She could not say to Alden: "I saw you last night with Edith in your arms and that sort of thing will not do." Nor could she say to Edith: "My dear, you must remember that you are a married woman." She must not only wait for confidences, but must keep from them both, for ever, the fact that she had accidentally stumbled upon their divine moment.

After long thought, and eager to be just, she held Edith practically blameless, yet, none the less, earnestly wished that she would go home. She smiled whimsically, wishing that there were a social formula in which, without offence, one might request an invited guest to depart. She wondered that one's home must be continually open, when other places are permitted to close. The graceful social lie, "Not at home," had never appealed to Madame. Why might not one say, truthfully: "I am sorry you want to see me, for I haven't the slightest desire in the world to see you. Please go away." Or, to an invited guest: "When I asked you to come I wanted to see you, but I have seen quite enough of you for the present, and would be glad to have you go home."

[Sidenote: A Wearisome Day]

Her reflections were cut short by the appearance of Edith herself, wan and weary, very pale, but none the less transfigured by secret joy. Her eyes, alight with mysterious fires, held in their starry depths a world of love and pain. In some occult way she suggested to Madame a light burning before a shrine.

Edith did not care for breakfast but forced herself to eat a little. She responded to Madame's polite inquiries in monosyllables, and her voice was faint and far away. Yes, she was well. No, she had not slept until almost morning. No, nothing was making her unhappy—that was, nothing new. After all, perhaps she did have a headache. Yes, she believed she would lie down. It was very kind of Madame but she did not believe she wanted any luncheon and certainly would not trouble anyone to bring it up.

Yet at noon, when Madame herself appeared with a tempting tray, Edith gratefully accepted a cup of coffee. She was not lying down, but was sitting in her low rocker, with her hands clasped behind her head and the photograph of her husband on the dressing-table before her.

"Yes," she said, in answer to Madame's inquiring glance, "that's my husband. It was taken just about the time we were married."

[Sidenote: On the Stroke of Seven]

Madame took the picture, studied it for a moment, then returned it to its place. She made no comment, having been asked for none.

"Won't you lie down, dear?"

"Yes, I believe I will."

"Truly?"

"Yes—I promise."

With a sad little smile she kissed Madame, closed the door, and turned the key in the lock. The old lady sighed as she went down with the tray, reflecting how impossible it is really to aid another, unless the barrier of silence be removed.

At four, she had her tea alone. No sound came from up-stairs, and Alden neither returned to luncheon nor sent word. When he came in, a little past six, he was tired and muddy, his face was strained and white, and, vouchsafing only the briefest answers to his mother's solicitude, went straight to his room.

Exactly upon the stroke of seven, both appeared, Alden in evening clothes as usual, and Edith in her black gown, above which her face was deathly white by contrast, in spite of the spangles. She wore no ornaments, not even the string of pearls about her bare throat.

"You look as though you were in mourning, my dear," said Madame. "Let me get you a red rose."

[Sidenote: Things to Be Said]

She started toward the veranda, but, with a little cry, Edith caught her and held her back. "No," she said, in a strange tone, "roses are—not for me!"

The dinner-gong chimed in with the answer, and the three went out together. Neither Alden nor Edith made more than a pretence of eating. Edith held her head high and avoided even his eyes, though more than once Madame saw the intensity of his appeal.

Afterward he took his paper, Madame her fancy work, and Edith, attempting to play solitaire, hopelessly fumbled her cards. Madame made a valiant effort to carry on a conversation alone, but at length the monologue wearied her, and she slipped quietly out of the room.

Edith turned, with a start, and hurriedly rose to follow her. Alden intercepted her. "No," he said, quietly. "There are things to be said between you and me."

"I thought," Edith murmured, as she sank into the chair he offered her, "that everything was said last night."

"Everything? Perhaps, but not for the last time."

She leaned forward, into the light, put her elbows upon the table, and rested her head upon her clasped hands, as though to shade her eyes. "Well?" she said, wearily.

"Look at me!"

[Sidenote: Vows and the Law]

Her hands trembled, but she did not move. He leaned across the table, unclasped her hands gently, and forced her to look at him. Her eyes were swimming with unshed tears.

"Darling! My darling! Have I made you unhappy?"

"No," she faltered. "How could you?"

He came to her, sat down on the arm of her chair, slipped his arm around her, and held her close against his shoulder. "Listen," he said. "You belong to me, don't you?"

"Absolutely."

"Could you—could you—make yourself free?"

"Yes, as you mean it, I could."

"Then—when?"

"Never!" The word rang clear, tensely vibrant with denial.

"Edith! What do you mean?"

Releasing herself she stood and faced him. "This," she said. "At the altar I pledged myself in these words: 'Until death do us part,' and 'Forsaking all others, keep thee only unto me so long as we both shall live.' Isn't that plain?"

"The law," he began.

"Law!" repeated Edith. "Why don't you say perjury, and be done with it?"

"Dearest, you don't understand. You——"

"I know what I said," she reminded him, grimly. "I said 'For better or worse,' not 'for better' only."

[Sidenote: What of Miss Starr?]

"You promised to love and to honour also, didn't you?"

Edith bowed her head. "I did," she answered, in a low tone, "and I have, and, God helping me, I shall do so again."

"Have I no rights?" he asked, with a sigh.

He could scarcely hear the murmured answer: "None."

"Nor you?"

She shook her head sadly, avoiding his eyes, then suddenly turned and faced him. "What of your own honour?" she demanded. "What of Miss Starr?"

"I have thought of that," he replied, miserably. "I have thought of nothing else all day."

Edith leaned back against the table. "What," she asked, curiously, "were you planning to do?"

The dull colour rose to his temples. "Go to her," he said, with his face averted, "tell her the truth like a man, and ask for freedom."

She laughed—the sort of laugh one hears from a woman tossing in delirium. Madame heard it, up-stairs, and shuddered.

"Like a man!" Edith repeated, scornfully.

"Say it," he said, roughly. "Like a cad, if that's what you mean."

She laughed again, but with a different cadence. "Ask yourself first," she continued, "and then be honest with me. How would you feel?"

[Sidenote: Suppose There Is Another Woman]

He shrugged his shoulders uneasily. "I admit it, but I'm willing to pay the price. I'll feel like a cad all the rest of my life, if I must, in order to have you."

"If a man has no self-respect," she retorted, "what can he expect from his——"

"Wife," breathed Alden, in a rapturous whisper. "Oh, Edith, say you will!"

She turned away, for she could not force herself to meet his eyes. Her little white hands clasped the edge of the table tightly.

"Have you thought of this?" he continued. "Suppose, for him, there is another woman——"

"There isn't," she denied. "I know that."

"Perhaps not in the sense you mean, but if he were free——?"

Edith drew a long breath. "I never thought of that."

Steadily the man pursued his advantage. "There must be some reason for his treating you as he does—for making you miserable. If, for any cause whatever, he wanted his freedom, would it make—any difference to you?"

She tapped her foot restlessly upon the floor. The atmosphere was surcharged with expectancy, then grew tense with waiting. Alden's eyes never swerved from her face.

[Sidenote: What Right?]

"Have you any right, through principles of your own, which I thoroughly understand and respect, to keep a man bound who desires to be free?"

She swayed back and forth unsteadily. Alden assisted her to her chair and stood before her as she sat with her elbows upon her knees, her face hidden in her hands. With the precise observation one accords to trifles in moments of unendurable stress, he noted that two of the hooks which fastened her gown at the back of her neck had become unfastened and that the white flesh showed through the opening.

"If," said Alden, mercilessly, "he longs for his freedom, and the law permits him to take it, have you the right to force your principles upon him—and thus keep him miserable when he might otherwise be happy?"

The clock in the hall struck ten. The sound died into silence and the remorseless tick-tick went on. Outside a belated cricket fiddled bravely as he fared upon his way. The late moon flooded the room with light.

"Have you?" demanded Alden. He endeavoured to speak calmly, but his voice shook. "Answer me!"

Edith leaned back in her chair, white and troubled. "I don't know," she murmured, with lips that scarcely moved. "Before God, I don't know!"

[Sidenote: Advantages of a Letter]

The man went on pitilessly. "Don't you think you might find out? Before you condemn yourself and me to everlasting separation, don't you think you might at least ask him?"

"Yes," said Edith, slowly. "I might ask him. I'll go——"

"No, you needn't go. Can't you write?"

"Yes," she returned. "I can write."

All the emotion had gone from her voice. She said the words as meaninglessly as a parrot might.

"A letter has distinct advantages," remarked Alden, trying to speak lightly. "You can say all you want to say before the other person has a chance to put in a word."

"Yes," she agreed, in the same meaningless tone. "That is true."

"When," queried Alden, after a pause, "will you write?"

"To-morrow."

He nodded his satisfaction. "Tell him," he suggested, "that you love another man, and——"

"No," she interrupted, "I won't tell him that. I'll say that I've tried my best to be a good wife, that I've tried as best I knew to make him happy. I'll say I've—" she choked on the word—"I'll say I've failed. I'll tell him I can do no more, that I do not believe I can ever do any better than I have done, and ask him to tell me frankly whether or not he prefers to be free. That's all."

[Sidenote: How Different?]

"That isn't enough. You have rights——"

"We're not speaking of my rights," she said, coldly. "We're speaking of his."

A silence fell between them, tense and awkward. The open gate between them had turned gently upon its hinges, then closed, with a suggestion of finality. The clock struck the half hour. Outside, the cricket still chirped cheerily, regardless of the great issues of life and love.

"Come outside," Alden pleaded, taking her hand in his.

"No," she said, but she did not withdraw her hand.

"Come, dear—come!"

He led her out upon the veranda where the moon made far-reaching shadows with the lattice and the climbing rose, then returned for chairs, the same two in which they had sat the night before. She was the first to break the pause.

"How different it all is!" she sighed. "Last night we sat here in the moonlight, just where we are now. In twenty-four hours, everything has changed."

"The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul."

he quoted softly.

[Sidenote: When They Knew]

"When did you—know?" she asked.

"The night I read Rossetti to you and kissed your arm, do you remember? It rushed upon me like an overwhelming flood. When did you know?"

"I think I've always known—not the fact, exactly, but the possibility of it. The first night I came, I knew that you and I could care a great deal for each other—not that we ever would, but merely that we might, under different circumstances. In a way, it was as though a set of familiar conditions might be seen in a different aspect, or in a different light."

"From the first," he said, "you've meant a great deal to me, in every way. I was discontented, moody, restless, and unhappy when you came. That was mainly responsible for——"

He hesitated, glanced at her, accepted her nod of understanding, and went on.

"I've hated the vineyard and the rest of my work. God only knows how I've hated it! It's seemed sometimes that I'd die if I didn't get away from it. Mother and I had it out one day, and finally I decided to stay, merely to please her. Because I had nothing more to do than to make her happy, I determined to make the best of things. You've made me feel that, in a way, it's myself that's at stake. I want to take it and make it widely known among vineyards, as it has been—for my own sake, and for yours."

[Sidenote: A Corner Turned]

Edith leaned toward him, full into the light. Her face, still pale, was rapt—almost holy. To him, as to Madame earlier in the day, she somehow suggested the light before a shrine. "Thank you," she said. The low, full contralto tones were vibrant with emotion.

There was a pause. As though a light had been suddenly thrown upon one groping in darkness, Alden saw many things. His longing for Edith, while no less intense, became subtly different. He seemed to have turned a corner and found everything changed.

"Dear," he went on, "there's something wonderful about this. I've—" he stopped and cleared his throat. "I mean it's so exquisitely pure, so transcendently above passion. Last night, when I had you in my arms, it wasn't man and woman—it was soul and soul. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I know. Passion isn't love—any more than hunger is, but an earth-bound world seldom sees above the fog of sense."

"I could love you always," he returned, "and never so much as touch your hand or kiss you again."

She nodded, smiling full comprehension. Then she asked, briefly: "Why write?"

"Merely because we belong to one another in a divine sense, and marriage is the earthly sanction of it—or ought to be. If you and I were both free, and I thought marriage would in any way change this, I—I wouldn't ask you to marry me."

[Sidenote: The Shadow Rose]

Rising from her chair, she bent over, kissed him on the forehead, went to the lattice, picked another rose, and came back. "See," she said, standing in the light; "life and beauty and joy—all in a rose."

"And love," he added.

"And love." She held it at arm's length. Sharply defined, the shadow fell upon the white floor of the veranda, perfect in line.

"And there," she continued, "is the same thing in another form. It is still a rose—anyone can see that. Only the colour and fragrance are gone, but one can remember both. To-morrow I'll write, and find out which we're to have—the rose, or the shadow of the rose."

"It's chance," he said, "like the tossing of a coin."

"Most things are," she reminded him. "Did you ever stop to think what destinies attend the opening or closing of a door?"

He made no answer. "Good-night," she said, with a smile.

"Good-night, my beloved." His face was illumined with "the light that never was on sea or land," but he did not even attempt to touch her hand.



XV

The Inlaid Box

[Sidenote: Beauty]

"'Beauty,'" read Grandmother Starr, with due emphasis upon every word, "'is the birthright of every woman,'" She looked up from the pages of The Household Guardian as she made this impressive announcement. Rosemary was busy in the kitchen, and Miss Matilda sat at the other window mending a three-cornered tear in last year's brown alpaca.

"'The first necessity of beauty is an erect carriage,'" she continued.

"That lets us out," commented Matilda, "not havin' any carriage at all."

"Frank used to say," said Grandmother, irrelevantly, "that he always had his own carriage until his Pa and me got tired of pushin' it."

"What kind of a carriage is an erect carriage?" queried Matilda, biting off her thread.

"I ain't never heard tell of 'em," replied Grandmother, cautiously, "but I should think, from the sound of it, that it was some kind that was to be driv' standin' up."

[Sidenote: The Power of Ages]

"Then I've seen 'em."

"Where?" Grandmother lowered her spectacles to the point where they rested upon the wart and peered disconcertingly at Matilda. The upper part of the steel frames crossed her eyeballs horizontally, giving her an uncanny appearance.

"At the circus, when Pa took us. After the whole show was over they had what they called a chariot race, and women driv' around the tent in little two-wheeled carts, standin' up."

"Matilda Starr! 'Tain't no such thing!"

Matilda shrugged her shoulders with an air of finality. "All right," she returned, with cold sarcasm, "as long as you see it and I didn't."

"'Beauty has been the power of the ages,'" Grandmother continued, taking refuge once more in The Household Guardian. "'Cleopatra and Helen of Troy changed the map of the world by their imperial loveliness.'"

"I didn't know imps was lovely," Matilda remarked, frowning at the result of her labours. "I reckon I'll have to set a piece in at the corner, where it's puckerin'."

"Ain't I always told you that the only way to mend a three-cornered tear was to set a piece in? Some folks never get old enough to learn anything. Even Frank's wife would have known better'n that."

[Sidenote: Cleopatra]

"Never mind Frank's wife," returned Matilda, somewhat hurriedly. "Let her rest in her grave and go on readin' about the lovely imps."

"It doesn't say imps is lovely. It says 'imperial loveliness.'"

"Well, ain't that the same thing?"

"No, it ain't. Imperial means empire."

"Then why ain't it spelled so? Imperial begins with an i and so does imp, and, accordin' to what I learned when I went to school, empire begins with an e."

There seemed to be no adequate reply to this, so Grandmother went on: "If Cleopatra's nose had been an inch longer, where would Egypt have been now?"

"Where 'tis, I reckon," Matilda returned, seeing that an answer was expected.

"No, it wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"I don't know why not, but if it wouldn't have made no difference, the man that wrote the piece wouldn't have asked about it."

"Well, then, let him answer it himself, as long as he knows."

"'Wars have been fought over beautiful women,'" Grandmother resumed, "'and will continue to be till the end of time.'"

"What about Egypt?" interrupted Matilda.

"I ain't come to that yet. Let me alone, can't you? 'Every mother should begin with her child almost from the moment of birth. Projecting ears can be corrected by the wearing of a simple cap, and a little daily attention to the nose in the way of gentle pinching with the fingers, will insure the proper shape. This of course, must be done while the cartilage is easily pushed into the proper position.'"

[Sidenote: The Paper's Circulation]

"While the what?" Matilda demanded.

"Cart-i-lage. It means before the child has outgrown its buggy. 'Teeth and complexion are to be considered later, but must be looked after carefully. Every woman should bear in mind the fact that a good complexion comes from the inside.'"