Brinsley Tyson had known Baltimore before the days of modern cities. He had known it before it had cut its hotels after the palace pattern, and when Rennert's in more primitive quarters had been the Mecca for epicureans. He had known its theaters when the footlight favorites were Lotta and Jo Emmet, and when the incomparable Booth and Jefferson had held audiences spellbound at Ford's and at Albaugh's. He had known Charles Street before it was extended, and he had known its Sunday parade. He had known the Bay Line Boats, the harbor and the noisy streets that led to the wharves. He had known Lexington Market on Saturday afternoons; the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the heyday of its importance, and more than all he had known the beauties and belles of old Baltimore, and it added piquancy to many of his anecdotes when he spoke of his single estate as a tragedy resulting from his devotion to too many charmers, with no possibility of making a choice.

It was of these things that he spoke while Geoffrey, lying in the grass with his arm across his eyes, listened and enjoyed.

"And you never married, sir?"

"I've told you there were too many of them. If I could have had any one of those girls on this island with 'tother dear charmers away, there wouldn't have been any trouble. But a choice with them all about me was—impossible." His old eyes twinkled.

"Suppose you had made a choice, and she hadn't cared for you?" said the voice of the man on the grass.

"Any woman will care if you go at it the right way."

"What is the right way?"

"There's only one way to win a woman. If she says she won't marry you, carry her off by force to a clergyman, and when you get her there make her say 'Yes.'"

Geoffrey sat up. "You don't mean that literally?"

Brinsley nodded. "Indeed I do. Take the attitude with them of Man the Conqueror. They all like it. Man the Suppliant never gets what he wants."

"But in these days primitive methods aren't possible."

Brinsley skipped a chicken bone expertly across the surface of the water. "Primitive methods are always possible. The trouble is that man has lost his nerve. The cult of chivalry has spoiled him. It has taught him to kneel at his lady's feet, where pre-historically he kept his foot on her neck!"

Geoffrey laughed. "You'd be mobbed in a suffrage meeting."

"Suffrage, my dear fellow, is the green carnation in the garden of femininity. Every woman blooms for her lover. It is the lack of lovers that produces the artificial—hence votes for women. What does the woman being carried off under the arm of conquering man care for yellow banners or speeches from the tops of busses? She is too busy trying to please him."

"It would be a great experiment. I'd like to try it."

Brinsley, uncorking a hot and cold bottle, boldly surmised, "It is the little school-teacher?"

Geoffrey, again flat on the grass, murmured, "Yes."

"And it is neck and neck between you and that young cousin of mine?"

"I am afraid he is a neck ahead."

"It all depends upon which runs away with her first."

Again Geoffrey murmured, "I'd like to try it."

"Why not?" said Brinsley and beamed over his coffee cup like a benevolent spider at an unsuspecting fly. He had no idea that his fooling might be taken seriously. It was not given to his cynicism to comprehend the mood of the seemingly composed young person who lay on the grass with his hat over his eyes—torn by contending emotions, maddened by despair and the dread of darkness, awakened to new impulses in which youth and hot blood fought against an almost reverent tenderness for the object of his adoration. Since the night of the Crossroads ball Geoffrey had permitted himself to hope. She had turned to him then. For the first time he had felt that the barriers were down between them.

"Now Richard," Brinsley was saying, as he smoked luxuriously after the feast, "ought to marry Eve. She'll get her Aunt Maude's money, and be the making of him."

* * * * *

Richard, who at that very moment was riding through the country on his old white horse, had no thought of Eve.

The rhythm of old Ben's even trot formed an accompaniment to the song that his heart was singing—

"I think she was the most beautiful lady, That ever was in the West Country——"

As he passed along the road, he was aware of the world's awakening. His ears caught the faint flat bleating of lambs, the call of the cocks, the high note of the hens, the squeal of little pigs, and above all, the clamor of blackbirds and of marauding crows.

The trees, too, were beginning to show the pale tints of spring, and an amethyst haze enveloped the hills. The river was silver in the shadow and gold in the sun; the little streams that ran down to it seemed to sing as they went.

Coming at last to an old white farmhouse, Richard dismounted and went in. The old man bent with rheumatism welcomed him, and the old wife said, "He is always better when he knows that you are coming, doctor."

The old man nodded. "Your gran'dad used to come. I was a little boy an' croupy, and he seemed big as a house when he came in at the door. He was taller than you, and thin."

"Now, father," the old woman protested, "the young doctor ain't fat."

"He's fatter'n his gran'dad. But I ain't saying that I don't like it. I like meat on a man's bones."

Richard laughed. "Just so that I don't go the way of Cousin Brin. You know Brinsley Tyson, don't you?"

"He's the fat twin. Yes, I know him and David. David comes and reads to me, but Brinsley went to Baltimore, and now he don't seem to remember that we were boys together, and went to the Crossroads school."

After that they spoke of the little new teacher, and Richard revelled in the praise they gave her. She was worshipped, they said, by the people roundabout. There had never been another like her.

"I think she was the most beautiful lady, That ever was in the West Country——"

was Richard's enlargement of their theme. In the weeks just past he had seen much of her, and it had seemed to him that life began and ended with his thought of her.

When he rose to go the old woman went to the door with him. "I guess we owe you a lot by this time," she remarked; "you've made so many calls. It cheers him up to have you, but you'd better stop now that he don't need you. It's so far, and we ain't good pay like some of them."

Richard squared his shoulders—a characteristic gesture. "Don't bother about the bill. I have a sort of sentiment about my grandfather's old patients. It is a pleasure to know them and serve them."

"If you didn't mind taking your pay in chickens," she stated as he mounted his horse, "we could let you have some broilers."

"You will need all you can raise." Then as his eyes swept the green hill which sloped down to the river, he perceived an orderly line of waddling fowls making their way toward the house.

"I'd like a white duck," he said, "if you could let me take her now."

He chose a meek and gentle creature who submitted to the separation from the rest of her kind without rebellion. Tucked under Richard's arm, she surveyed the world with some alarm, but presently, as he rode on with her, she seemed to acquiesce in her abduction and faced the adventure with serene eyes, murmuring now and then some note of demure interrogation as she nestled quite confidently against the big man who rode so easily his great white horse.

And thus they came to Bower's, to find Anne on the south bank, like a very modern siren, drying her hair, with Diogenes nipping the new young grass near her.

She saw them coming. Richard wore a short rough coat and an old alpine hat of green. His leggings were splashed with mud, and the white horse was splashed, but there was about the pair of them an air of gallant achievement.

She rose to greet them. She was blushing a little and with her dark hair blowing she was "the most beautiful," like the lady in the song.

"I thought no one would be coming," was her apology, "and out here I get the wind and sun."

"All the old fishermen will be wrecked on the rocks if they get a glimpse of you," he told her gravely; "you mustn't turn their poor old heads."

And now the white duck murmured.

"The lovely dear, where did you get her?" Anne asked.

"In the hills, to cheer up Diogenes."

He set the white duck down. She shook her feathers and again spoke interrogatively. And now Diogenes lifted his head and answered. For a few moments he rent the air with his song of triumph. Then he turned and led the way to the river. There was a quiet pool in the bend of the bank. The old drake breasted its shining waters, and presently the white duck followed. With a sort of restrained coquetry she turned her head from side to side. All her questions were answered, all her murmurs stilled.

Richard and Anne smiled at each other. "What made you think of it?" she asked.

"I thought you'd like it."

"I do." She began to twist up her hair.

"Please don't. I like to see it down."

"But people will be coming in."

"Why should we be here when they come? I'll put Ben in the stable—and we'll go for a walk. Do you know there are violets in the wood?"

From under the red-striped awning of Brinsley's boat Geoffrey Fox saw Anne's hair blowing like a sable banner in the breeze. He saw Richard's square figure peaked up to the alpine hat. He saw them enter the wood.

He shut his eyes from the glare of the sun and lay quietly on the cushions of the little launch. But though his eyes were shut, he could still see those two figures walking together in the dreamy dimness of the spring forest.

"What were the ethics of the primitive man?" he asked Brinsley suddenly. "Did he run away with a woman who belonged to somebody else?"

"Why not?" Brinsley's reel was whirring. "And now if you don't mind, Fox, you might be ready with the net. If this fish is as big as he pulls, he will weigh a ton."

Geoffrey, coming in, found Peggy disconsolate on the pier.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"I can't find Anne. She said that after her hair dried she'd go for a walk to Beulah's playhouse, and we were to have tea. Beulah was to bring it."

"She has gone for a walk with some one else."

"Who?"

"Dr. Brooks. Let's go and look for her, Peggy, and when we find her we will tell her what we think of her for running away."

The green stillness of the grove was very grateful after the glare of the river. Geoffrey walked quickly, with the child's hand in his. He had a feeling that if he did not walk quickly he would be too late.

He was not too late; he saw that at a glance. Richard had dallied in his wooing. It had been so wonderful to be with her. Once when he had knelt beside her to pick violets, the wind had blown across his face a soft sweet strand of her hair. It was then that she had braided it, sitting on a fallen log under a blossoming dogwood.

"It is so long," she had said with a touch of pride, "that it is a great trouble to care for it. Cynthia Warfield had hair like mine."

"I don't believe that any one ever had hair like yours. It seems to me as if every strand must have been made specially in some celestial shop, and then the pattern destroyed."

How lovely she was when she blushed like that! How little and lovely and wise and good. He liked little women. His mother was small, and he was glad that both she and Anne had delicate hands and feet. He was aware that this preference was old-fashioned, but it was, none the less, the way he felt about it.

And now there broke upon the silence of the wood the sound of murmuring voices. Peggy and Geoffrey Fox had invaded their Paradise!

"We thought," Peggy complained, "that we had lost you. Anne, you promised about the tea."

"Oh, Peggy, I forgot."

"Beulah's gone with the basket and Eric, and we can't be late because there are hot biscuits."

Hurrying toward the biscuits and their hotness, Anne ran ahead with Peggy.

"How about the eyes?" Richard asked as he and Geoffrey followed.

"I've been on the water, and it is bad for them. But I'm not going to worry. I am getting out of life more than I hoped—more than I dared hope."

His voice had a high note of excitement. Richard glanced at him. For a moment he wondered if Fox had been drinking.

But Geoffrey was intoxicated with the wine of his dreams. With a quick gesture in which he seemed to throw from him all the fears which had oppressed him, he told his triumphant lie.

"I am going to marry Anne Warfield; she has promised to be eyes for me, and light—the sun and the moon."

Richard's face grew gray. He spoke with difficulty. "She has promised?"

Then again Geoffrey lied, meaning indeed before the night had passed to make his words come true. "She is going to marry me—and I am the happiest man alive!"

The light went out of Richard's world. How blind he had been. He had taken her smiles and blushes to himself when she had glowed with a happiness which had nothing to do with him.

He steadied himself to speak. "You are a lucky fellow, Fox; you must let me congratulate you."

"The world doesn't know," Geoffrey said, "not yet. But I had to tell it to some one, and a doctor is a sort of secular father confessor."

Richard's laugh was without mirth. "If you mean that it's not to be told, you may rely on my discretion."

"Of course. I told you she was to play Beatrice to my Dante, but she shall be more than that."

It was a rather silent party which had tea on the porch of the Playhouse. But Beulah and Eric were not aware of any lack in their guests. Eric had been to Baltimore the day before, and Beulah wore her new ring. She accepted Richard's congratulations shyly.

"I like my little new house," she said; "have you been over it?"

He said that he had not, and she took him. Eric went with them, and as they stood in the door of an upper room, he put his arm quite frankly about Beulah's shoulders as she explained their plans to Richard. "This is to be in pink and the other one in white, and all the furniture is to be pink and white."

She was as pink and white and pretty as the rooms she was planning, and to see her standing there within the circle of her lover's arm was heart-warming.

"You must get some roses from my mother, Beulah, for your little garden," the young doctor told her; "all pink and white like the rest of it."

He let them go down ahead of him, and so it happened that he stood for a moment alone in a little upper porch at the back of the house which overlooked the wood. The shadows were gathering in its dim aisles, shutting out the daylight, shutting out the dreams which he had lost that day in the fragrant depths.

When later he came with the rest of them to Bower's, the river was stained with the sunset. Diogenes and the white duck breasted serenely the crimson surface. Certain old fishermen trailed belatedly up the bank. Others sat spick and span and ready for supper on the porch.

Brinsley Tyson over the top of his newspaper hailed Richard.

"There's a telephone call for you. They've been trying to get you for an hour."

He went in at once, and coming out told Anne good-night. "Thank you for a happy afternoon," he said.

But she missed something in his voice, something that had been there when they had walked in the wood.

She watched him as he went away, square-shouldered and strong on his big white horse. She had a troubled sense that things had in some fateful and tragic way gone wrong with her afternoon, but it was not yet given to her to know that young Richard on his big white horse was riding out of her life.

It was after supper that Geoffrey asked her to go out on the river with him.

"Not to-night. I'm tired."

"Just a little minute, Mistress Anne. To see the moon come up over the island. Please." So she consented.

Helping her into the boat, Geoffrey's hands were shaking. The boat swept out from the pier in a wide curve, and he drew a long breath. He had her now—it would be a great adventure—like a book—better than any book.

Primitive man in prehistoric days carried his woman off captive under his arm. Geoffrey, pursuing modern methods, had borrowed Brinsley's boat. A rug was folded innocently on the cushions; in a snug little cupboard under the stern seat were certain supplies—a great adventure, surely!

And now the boat was under the bridge; the signal lights showed red and green. Then as they slipped around the first island there was only the silver of the moonshine spread out over the waters.

Geoffrey stopped the motor. "We'll drift and talk."

"You talk," she told him, "and I'll listen, and we mustn't be too late."

"What is too late?"

"I told you I would stay just a little minute."

"There is no real reason why we shouldn't stay as long as we wish. You are surely not so prim that you are doing it for propriety."

"You know I am not prim."

"Yes you are. You are prim and Puritan and sometimes you are a prig. But I like you that way, Mistress Anne. Only to-night I shall do as I please."

"Don't be silly."

"Is it silly to love you—why?"

He argued it with her brilliantly—so that it was only when the red and green lights of a second bridge showed ahead of them that she said, sharply, "We are miles away from Bower's; we must go back."

"It won't take us long," he said, easily, and presently they were purring up-stream.

Then all at once the motor stopped. Geoffrey, inspecting it with a flashlight, said, succinctly, "Engine's on the blink."

"You mean that we can't go on?"

"Oh, I'll tinker it up. Only you'll have to let me get into that box under the stern seat for the tools. You can hold the light while I work."

As he worked they drifted. They passed the second bridge. Anne, steering, grew cold and shivered. But she did not complain. She was glad, however, when Geoffrey said, "You'd better curl down among the cushions, and let me wrap you in this rug."

"Can you manage without me?"

"Yes. I've patched it up partially. And you'll freeze in this bitter air."

The wind had changed and there was now no moon. She was glad of the warmth of the rug and the comfort of the cushioned space. She shut her eyes, after a time, and, worn out by the emotions of the day, she dropped into fitful slumber.

Then Geoffrey, his hair blown back by the wind, stood at the wheel and steered his boat not up-stream toward the bridge at Bower's, but straight down toward the wider waters, where the river stretches out into the Bay.



CHAPTER XII

In Which Eve Usurps an Ancient Masculine Privilege.

AUNT MAUDE CHESLEY belonged to the various patriotic societies which are dependent on Revolutionary fighting blood, on Dutch forbears, or on the ancestral holding of Colonial office. The last stood highest in her esteem. It was the hardest to get into, hence there was about it the sanctity of exclusiveness. Any man might spill his blood for his country, and among those early Hollanders were many whose blood was red instead of blue, but it was only a choice few who in the early days of the country's history had been appointed by the Crown or elected by the people to positions of influence and of authority.

When Aunt Maude went to the meeting of her favorite organization, she wore always black velvet which showed the rounds of her shoulders, point lace in a deep bertha, the family diamonds, and all of her badges. The badges had bars and jewels, and the effect was imposing.

Evelyn laughed at her. "Nobody cares for ancestors any more. Not since people began to hunt them up. You can find anything if you look for it, Aunt Maude. And most of the crests are bought or borrowed so that if one really belongs to you, you don't like to speak of it, any more than to tell that you are a lady or take a daily bath."

"Our ancestors," said Aunt Maude solemnly, "are our heritage from the past—but you have reverence for nothing."

"They were a jolly old lot," Eve agreed, "and I am proud of them. But some of their descendants are a scream. If men had their minds on being ancestors instead of bragging of them there'd be some hope for the future of old families."

Aunt Maude, having been swathed by her maid in a silk scarf, so that her head was stiff with it, batted her eyes. "If you would go with me," she said, "and hear some of the speeches, you might look at it differently. Now there was a Van Tromp——"

"And in New England there were Codcapers, and in Virginia there were Pantops. I take off my hat to them, but not to their descendants, indiscriminately."

And now Aunt Maude, more than ever mummified in a gold and black brocade wrap trimmed with black fur, steered her uncertain way toward the motor at the door.

"People in my time——" floated over her shoulder and then as the door closed behind her, her eloquence was lost.

Eve, alone, faced a radiant prospect. Richard was coming. He had telephoned. She had not told Aunt Maude. She wanted him to herself.

When at last he arrived she positively crowed over him. "Oh, Dicky, this is darling of you."

A shadow fell across her face, however, when he told her why he had come.

"Austin wanted me with him in an operation. He telegraphed me and I took the first train. I have been here for two days without a minute's time in which to call you up."

"I thought that perhaps you had come to see me."

"Seeing you is a pleasant part of it, Eve."

He was really glad to see her; to be drawn away by it all from the somberness of his thoughts. The night before he had left the train on the Jersey side and had ferried over so that he might view once more the sky-line of the great city. There had been a stiff breeze blowing and it had seemed to him that he drew the first full breath since the moment when he had walked with Geoffrey in the wood. What had followed had been like a dream; the knowledge that the great surgeon wanted him, his mother's quick service in helping him pack his bag, the walk to Bower's in the fragrant dark to catch the ten o'clock train; the moment on the porch at Bower's when he had learned from a word dropped by Beulah that Anne was on the river with Geoffrey.

And now it all seemed so far away—the river with the moon's broad path, Bower's low house and its yellow-lighted panes, the silence, the darkness.

Since morning he had done a thousand things. He had been to the hospital and had yielded once more to the spell of its splendid machinery; he had talked with Austin and the talk had been like wine to a thirsty soul. In such an atmosphere a man would have little time to—think. He craved the action, the excitement, the uplift.

He came back to Eve's prattle. "I told Winifred Ames we would come to her little supper after the play. I was to have gone with her and Pip and Jimmie Ford. Tony is away. But when you 'phoned, I called the first part of it off. I wanted to have a little time just with you, Richard."

He smiled at her. "Who is Jimmie Ford?"

"A lovely youth who is in love with me—or with my money—he was at your birthday party, Dicky Boy; don't you remember?"

"The Blue Butterfly? Yes. Is he another victim, Eve?"

She shrugged. "Who knows? If he is in love with me, he'll get hurt; if he is in love with Aunt Maude's money, he won't get it. Oh, how can a woman know?" The lightness left her voice. "Sometimes I think that I'll go off somewhere and see if somebody won't love me for what I am, and not for what he thinks Aunt Maude is going to leave me."

"And you with a string of scalps at your belt, and Pip ready at any moment to die for you."

She nodded. "Pip is pure gold. Nobody can question his motives. And anyhow he has more money than I can ever hope to have. But I am not in love with him, Dicky."

"You are not in love with anybody. You are a cold-blooded little thing, Eve. A man would need much fire to melt your ice."

"Would he?"

"You know he would."

He swept away from her petulances to the thing which was for the moment uppermost in his mind. "I have had an offer, Eve, from Austin. He wants an assistant, a younger man who can work into his practice. It is a wonderful working opportunity."

"It would be wicked to throw it away," she told him, breathlessly, "wicked, Richard."

"It looks that way. But there's mother to think of, and Crossroads has come to mean a lot to me, Eve."

"Oh, but New York, Dicky! Think of the good times we'd have, and of your getting into Austin's line of work and his patients. You would be rolling in your own limousine before you'd know it."

Rolling in his own limousine! And missing the rhythm of big Ben's measured trot——!

"I think—she was the—most beautiful——"

As they motored to Winifred's, Eve spoke of his quiet mood. "Why don't you talk, Dicky?"

"It has been a busy day—I'll wake up presently and realize that I am here."

It was before he went down-stairs at the Dutton-Ames that he had a moment alone with Jimmie Ford.

Jimmie was not in the best of moods. Winifred had asked him a week ago to join a choice quartette which included Pip and Eve. Of course Meade made a troublesome fourth, but Jimmie's conceit saved him from realizing the real fact of the importance of the plain and heavy Pip to that group. And now, things had been shifted, so that Eve had stayed to talk to a country doctor, and he had been left to the callow company of an indefinite debutante whom Winifred had invited to fill the vacancy.

"When did you come down, Brooks?" he asked coldly.

"This morning."

"Nice old place of yours in Harford."

"Yes."

"Owned it long?"

"Several generations."

"Oh, ancestral halls, and all that——?"

"Yes."

"I saw Cynthia Warfield's picture on the wall—used to know the family down in Carroll—our old estates joined—Anne Warfield and I were brought up together."

They had reached the head of the stairway. Richard stopped and stood looking down. "Anne Warfield?"

"Yes. Surprised to find her teaching. I fancy they've been pretty hard up—grandfather drank, and all that, you know."

"I didn't know." It was now Richard's turn to speak coldly.

"Oh, yes, ran through with all their money. Years ago. Anne's a little queen. Engaged to her once myself, you know. Boy and girl affair, broken off——"

Below them in the hall, Richard could see the women with whom he was to sup. Shining, shimmering figures in silk and satin and tulle. For these, softness and ease of living. And that other one! Oh, the cheap little gown, the braided hair! Before he had known her she had been Jimmie's and now she was Geoffrey's. And he had fatuously thought himself the first.

He threw himself uproariously into the fun which followed. After all, it was good to be with them again, good to hear the familiar talk of people and of things, good to eat and drink and be merry in the fashion of the town, good to have this taste of the old tumultuous life.

He and Eve went home together. Philip's honest face clouded as he saw them off. "Don't run away with her, Brooks," he said, as he leaned in to have a last look at her. "Good-night, little lady."

"Good-night."

It was when they were motoring through the park that Eve said, "I am troubled about Pip."

"Why?"

"Oh, I sometimes have a feeling that he has a string tied to me—and that he is pulling me—his way. And I don't want to go. But I shall, if something doesn't save me from him, Richard."

"You can save yourself."

"That's all you know about it. Women take what they can get in this world, not what they want. Every morning Pip sends me flowers, sweetheart roses to-day, and lilies yesterday, and before that gardenias and orchids, and when I open the boxes every flower seems to be shouting, 'Come and marry me, come and marry me.'"

"No woman need marry a man she doesn't care for, Eve."

"Lots of them do."

"You won't. You are too sensible."

"Am I?"

"Of course."

She sighed a little. "I am not half as sensible as you think."

When they reached home, they found Aunt Maude before them. She had been unswathed from her veil and her cloak, released from her black velvet, and was comfortable before her sitting-room fire in a padded wisteria robe and a boudoir cap with satin bow. Underneath the cap there were no flat gray curls. These were whisked mysteriously away each night by Hannah, the maid, to be returned in the morning, fresh from their pins with no hurt to Aunt Maude's old head.

She greeted Richard cordially. "I sent Hannah down when I heard you. Eve didn't let me know you were here; she never lets me know. And now tell me about your poor mother."

"Why poor, dear lady? You know she loves Crossroads."

"How anybody can—— I'd die of loneliness. Now to-night—so many people of my own kind——"

"Everybody in black velvet or brocade, everybody with badges, everybody with blue blood," Eve interrupted flippantly; "nobody with ideas, nobody with enthusiasms, nobody with an ounce of originality—ugh!"

"My dear——!"

"Dicky, Aunt Maude's idea of Heaven is a place where everybody wears coronets instead of halos, and where the angel chorus is a Dutch version of 'God save the King.'"

"My idea of Heaven," Aunt Maude retorted, "is a place where young girls have ladylike manners."

Richard roared. It had been long since he had tasted this atmosphere of salt and spice. Aunt Maude and her sprightly niece were as good as a play.

"How long shall you be in town, Richard?"

"Three or four days. It depends on the condition of our patient. It may be necessary to operate again, and Austin wants me to be here."

"Aunt Maude, Dicky may come back to New York to live."

"He should never have left. What does your mother think of it?"

"I haven't told her of Austin's offer. I shall write to-night."

"If she has a grain of sense, she'll make you take it."

Eve was restless. "Come on down, Dicky. It is time that Aunt Maude was in bed."

"I never go until you do, Eve, and in my day young men went home before morning."

"Dearest, Dicky shall leave in ten minutes. I'll send him."

But when they were once more in the great drawing-room, she forgot the time limit. "Don't let your mother settle things for you, Dicky. Think of yourself and your future. Of your—manhood, Dicky—please."

She was very lovely as she stood before him, with her hands on his shoulders. "I want you to be the biggest of them—all," she said, and her laugh was tremulous.

"I know. Eve, I want to stay."

"Oh, Dicky—really?"

"Really, Eve."

Their hands came together in a warm clasp.

She let him go after that. There had been nothing more than brotherly warmth in his manner, but it was enough that in the days to come she was to have him near her.

Richard, writing to his mother, told her something of his state of mind. "I'll admit that it tempts me. It is a big thing, a very big thing, to work with a man like that. Yet knowing how you feel about it, I dare not decide. We shall have to face one thing, however. The Crossroads practice will never be a money-making practice. I know how little money means to you, but the lack of it will mean that I shall be tied to rather small things as the years go on. I should like to be one of the Big Men, mother. You see I am being very frank. I'll admit that I dreamed with you—of bringing all my talents to the uplift of a small community, of reviving at Crossroads the dignity of other days. But—perhaps we have dreamed too much—the world doesn't wait for the dreamers—the only way is to join the procession."

In the day which intervened between his letter and his mother's answer, he had breakfast with Eve in the room with the flame-colored fishes and the parrot and the green-eyed cat. He motored with Eve out to Westchester, and they had lunch at an inn on the side of a hill which overlooked the Hudson; later they went to a matinee, to tea in a special little corner of a down-town hotel for the sake of old days, then back again to dress for dinner at Eve's, with Aunt Maude at the head of the table, and Tony and Winifred and Pip completing the party. Then another play, another supper, another ride home with Eve, and in the morning in quiet contrast to all this, his mother's letter.

"Dear Boy," she said, "I am glad you spoke to me frankly of what you feel. I want no secrets between us, no reservations, no sacrifices which in the end may mean a barrier between us.

"Our sojourn at Crossroads has been an experiment. And it has failed. I had hoped that as the days went on, you might find happiness. Indeed, I had been deceiving myself with the thought that you were happy. But now I know that you are not, and I know, too, what it must mean to you to feel that from among all the others you have been chosen to help a great man like Dr. Austin, who was the friend of my father, and my friend through everything.

"But Richard, I can't go back. I literally crawled to Crossroads, after my years in New York, as a wounded animal seeks its lair. And I have a morbid shrinking from it all, unworthy of me, perhaps, but none the less impossible to overcome. I feel that the very stones of the streets would speak of the tragedy and dishonor of the past: houses would stare at me, the crowds would shun me.

"And now I have this to propose. That I stay here at Crossroads, keeping the old house open for you. David is near me, and any one of Cousin Mary Tyson's daughters would be glad to come to me. And you shall run down at week-ends, and tell me all about it, and I shall live in your letters and in the things which you have to tell. We can be one in spirit, even though there are miles between us. This is the only solution which seems possible to me at this moment. I cannot hold you back from what may be your destiny. I can only pray here in my old home for the happiness and success that must come to you—my boy—my little—boy——"

The letter broke off there. Richard, high up in the room of the big hotel, found himself pacing the floor. Back of the carefully penned lines of his mother's letter he could see her slender tense figure, the whiteness of her face, the shadow in her eyes. How often he had seen it when a boy, how often he had sworn that when he was the master of the house he would make her happy.

The telephone rang. It was Eve. "I was afraid you might have left for the hospital."

"I am leaving in a few minutes."

"Can you go for a ride with me?"

"In the afternoon. There's to be another operation—it may be very late before I am through."

"Not too late for dinner out of town somewhere and a ride under the May moon." Her voice rang high and happy.

For the rest of the morning he had no time to think of his own affairs. The operation was extremely rare and interesting, and Austin's skill was superb. Richard felt as if he were taking part in a play, in which the actors were the white clad and competent doctors and nurses, and the stage was the surgical room.

Eve coming for him, found him tired and taciturn. She respected his mood, and said little, and they rode out and out from the town and up and up into the Westchester hills, dotted with dogwood, pink and white like huge nosegays. As the night came on there was the fragrance of the gardens, the lights of the little towns; then once more the shadows as they swept again into the country.

"We will go as far as we dare," Eve said. "I know an adorable place to dine."

She tried more than once to bring him to speak of Austin, but he put her off. "I am dead tired, dear girl; you talk until we have something to eat."

"Oh," Eve surveyed him scornfully, "oh, men and their appetites!"

But she had a thousand things to tell him, and her light chatter carried him away from somber thoughts, so that when they reached at last the quaint hostelry toward which their trip had tended, he was ready to meet Eve's mood half-way, and enter with some zest upon their gay adventure. She chose a little table on a side porch, where they were screened from observation, and which overlooked the river, and there took off her hat and powdered her nose, and gave her attention to the selection of the dinner.

"A clear soup, Dicky Boy, and Maryland chicken, hot asparagus, a Russian dressing for our lettuce, and at the end red raspberries with little cakes. They are sponge cakes, Dicky, filled with cream, and they are food for the gods."

He was hungry and tired and he wanted to eat. He was glad when the food came on.

When he finished he leaned back and talked shop. "If you don't like it," he told Eve, "I'll stop. Some women hate it."

"I love it," Eve said. "Dicky, when I dream of your future you are always at the top of things, with smaller men running after you and taking your orders."

He smiled. "Don't dream. It doesn't pay. I've stopped."

She glanced at him. His face was stern.

"What's up, Dicky Boy?"

He laughed without mirth. "Oh, I'm beginning to think we are puppets pulled by strings; that things happen as Fate wills and not as we want them."

"Men haven't any right to talk that way. It's their world. If you were a woman you might complain. Look at me! Everything that I have comes from Aunt Maude. She could leave me without a cent if she chose, and she knows it. She owns me, and unless I marry she'll own me until I die."

"You'll marry, Eve. Old Pip will see to that."

"Pip," passionately. "Dicky, why do you always fling Pip in my face?"

"Eve——!"

"You do. Everybody does. And I don't want him."

"Then don't have him. There are others. And you needn't lose your temper over a little thing like that."

"It isn't a little thing."

"Oh, well——" The conversation lapsed into silence until Eve said, "I was horrid—and I think we had better be getting back, Dicky."

Again in the big limousine, with the stolid chauffeur separated from them by the glass screen, she said, softly, "Oh, Dicky, it seems too good to be true that we shall have other nights like this—other rides. When will you come up for good?"

"I am not coming, Eve."

She turned to him, her face frozen into whiteness.

"Not coming? Why not?"

"While mother lives I must make her happy."

"Oh, don't be goody-goody."

He blazed. "I'm not."

"You are. Aren't you ever going to live your own life?"

"I am living it. But I can't break mother's heart."

"You might as well break hers as—mine."

He stared down at her. Mingled forever after with his thoughts of that moment was a blurred vision of her whiteness and stillness. Her slim hands were crossed tensely on her knees.

He laid one of his own awkwardly over them. "Dear girl," he said, "you don't in the least mean it."

"I do. Dicky, why shouldn't I say it? Why shouldn't I? Hasn't a woman the right? Hasn't she?"

She was shaking with silent sobs, the tears running down her cheeks. He had not seen her cry like this since little girlhood, when her mother had died, and he, a clumsy lad, had tried to comfort her.

He was faced by a situation so stupendous that for a moment he sat there stunned. Proud little Eve for love of him had made the supreme sacrifice of her pride. Could any man in his maddest moment have imagined a thing like this——!

He bent down to her, and took her hands in his.

"Hush, Eve, hush. I can't bear to see you cry. I'm not the fellow to make you happy, dear."

Her head dropped against his shoulder. The perfumed gold of her hair was against his cheeks. "No one else can make me happy, Dicky."

Then he felt the world whirl about him, and it seemed to him as he answered that his voice came from a long distance.

"If you'll marry me, Eve, I'll stay."

It was the knightly thing to do, and the necessary thing. Yet as they swept on through the night, his mother's face, all the joy struck from it, seemed to stare at him out of the darkness.



CHAPTER XIII

In Which Geoffrey Plays Cave Man.

MINE OWN UNCLE:

I don't know whether to begin at the beginning or at the end of what I have to tell you. And even now as I think back over the events of the last twenty-four hours I feel that I must have dreamed them, and that I will wake and find that nothing has really happened.

But something has happened, and "of a strangeness" which makes it seem to belong to some of those queer old dime "thrillers" which you never wanted me to read.

Last night Geoffrey Fox asked me to go out with him on the river. I don't often go at night, yet as there was a moon, it seemed as if I might.

We went in Brinsley Tyson's motor boat. It is big and roomy and is equipped with everything to make one comfortable for extended trips. I wondered a little that Geoffrey should take it, for he has a little boat of his own, but he said that Mr. Tyson had offered it, and they had been out in it all day.

Well, it was lovely on the water; I was feeling tired and as blue as blue—some day I may tell you about that, Uncle Rod, and I was glad of the quiet and beauty of it all; and of late Geoffrey and I have been such good friends.

Can't you ever really know people, Uncle Rod, or am I so dull and stupid that I misunderstand? Men are such a puzzle—all except you, you darling dear—and if you were young and not my uncle, even you might be as much of a puzzle as the rest.

Well, I would never have believed it of Geoffrey Fox, and even now I can't really feel that he was responsible. But it isn't what I think but what you will think that is important—for I have, somehow, ceased to believe in myself.

It was when we reached the second bridge that I told Geoffrey that we must turn back. We had, even then, gone farther than I had intended. But as we started up-stream, I felt that we would get to Bower's before Peter went back on the bridge, which is always the signal for the house to close, although it is never really closed; but the lights are turned down and the family go to bed, and I have always known that I ought not to stay out after that.

Well, just as we left the second bridge, something happened to the motor.

Uncle Rod, that was last night, and I didn't get back to Bower's until a few hours ago, and here is the whole truth before I write any more——

Geoffrey Fox tried to run away with me!

It would seem like a huge joke if it were not so serious. I don't know how he got such an idea in his head. Perhaps he thought that life was like one of his books—that all he had to do was to plan a plot, and then make it work out in his own way. He said, in that first awful moment, when I knew what he had done, "I thought I could play Cave Man and get away with it." You see, he hadn't taken into consideration that I wasn't a Cave Woman!

When the engine first went wrong I wasn't in the least worried. He fixed it, and we went on. Then it stopped and we drifted: the moon went down and it was cold, and finally Geoffrey made me curl up among the cushions. I felt that it must be very late, but Geoffrey showed me his watch, and it was only a little after ten. I knew Peter wouldn't be going to the bridge until eleven, and I hoped by that time we would be home.

But we weren't. We were far, far down the river. At last I gave up hope of arriving before the house closed, but I knew that I could explain to Mrs. Bower.

After that I napped and nodded, for I was very tired, and all the time Geoffrey tinkered with the broken motor. Each time that I waked I asked questions but he always quieted me—and at last—as the dawn began to light the world, a pale gray spectral sort of light, Uncle Rod, I saw that the shore on one side of us was not far away, but on the other it was a mere dark line in the distance—double the width that the river is at Bower's. Geoffrey was standing up and steering toward a little pier that stuck its nose into shallow water. Back of the pier was what seemed to be an old warehouse, and in a clump of trees back of that there was a thin church spire.

I said, "Where are we?" and he said, "I am not sure, but I am going in to see if I can get the motor mended."

I couldn't think of anything but how worried the Bowers would be. "You must find a telephone," I told him, "and call Beulah, and let her know what has happened."

He ran up to the landing and fastened the boat, and then he helped me out. "We will sit here and have a bit of breakfast first," he said; "there's some coffee left in Brinsley's hot and cold bottle, and some supplies under the stern seat."

It was really quite cheerful sitting there, eating sardines and crackers and olives and orange marmalade. A fresh breeze was blowing, and the river was wrinkled all over its silver surface, and we could see nothing but water ahead of us, straight to the horizon, where there was just the faint streak of a steamer's smoke.

"We must be almost in the Bay," I said. "Couldn't you have steered up-stream instead of down?"

He sat very still for a moment looking at me, and then he said quickly and sharply, "I didn't want to go up-stream. I wanted to go down. And I came in here because I saw a church spire, and where there is a church there is always a preacher. Will you marry me, Mistress Anne?"

At first I thought that he had lost his mind. Uncle Rod, I don't think that I shall ever see a sardine or a cracker without a vision of Geoffrey with his breakfast in his hand and his face as white as chalk above it.

"That's a very silly joke," I said. "Why should I marry you?"

He looked at me, and—I didn't need any answer, for it came to me then that I had been out all night on the river with him, and that he was thinking of a way to quiet people's tongues!

I tried to speak, but my voice shook, and finally I managed to stammer that when we got back I was sure it would be all right.

"It won't be all right," he said; "the world will have things to say about you, and I'd rather die than have them say it. And I could make you happy, Anne."

Then I told him that I did not love him, that he was my dear friend, my brother—and suddenly his face grew red, and he came over and caught hold of my hands. "I am not your brother," he said. "I want you whether you want me or not. I could make you love me—I've got to have you in my life. I am not going on alone to meet darkness—and despair."

Oh, Uncle Rod, then I knew and I looked straight at him and asked: "Geoffrey Fox, did you break the motor?"

"It isn't broken," he said; "there has never been a thing the matter with it."

I think for the first time that I was a little afraid. Not of him, but of what he had done.

"Oh, how could you," I said, "how could you?"

And it was then that he said, "I thought that I could play Cave Man and get away with it."

After that he told me how much he cared. He said that I had helped him and inspired him. That I had shown him a side of himself that no one else had ever shown. That I had made him believe in himself—and in—God. That if he didn't have me in his life his future would be—dead. He begged and begged me to let him take me into the little town and find some one to marry us. He said that if we went back I would be lost to him—that—that Brooks would get me—that was the way he put it, Uncle Rod. He said that he was going blind; that I hadn't any heart; that he would love me as no one else could; that he would write his books for me; that he would spend his whole life making it up to me.

I don't know how I held out against him. But I did. Something in me seemed to say that I must hold out. Some sense of dignity and of self-respect, and at last I conquered.

"I will not marry you," I said; "don't speak of it again. I am going back to Bower's. I am not a heroine of a melodrama, and there's no use to act as if I had done an unpardonable thing. I haven't, and the Bowers won't think it, and nobody else will know. But you have hurt me more than I can tell by what you have done to-night. When you first came to Bower's there were things about you that I didn't like, but—as I came to know you, I thought I had found another man in you. The night at the Crossroads ball you seemed like a big kind brother—and I told you what I had suffered, and now you have made me suffer."

And then—oh, I don't quite know how to tell you. He dropped on his knees at my feet and hid his face in my dress and cried—hard dry sobs—with his hands clutching.

I just couldn't stand it, Uncle Rod, and presently I was saying, "Oh, you poor boy, you poor boy——" and I think I smoothed his hair, and he whispered, "Can't you?" and I said, "Oh, Geoffrey, I can't."

At last he got control of himself. He sat at a little distance from me and told me what he was going to do.

"I think I was mad," he said. "I can't even ask your forgiveness, for I don't deserve it. I am going up to town to telephone to Beulah, and when I come back I will take you up the river where you can get the train. I shall break the engine and leave it here, so that when Brinsley gets it back there will be nothing to spoil our story."

He was gone half an hour. When he came he brought me a hat. He had bought it at the one little store where he had telephoned, and he had bought one for himself. I think we both laughed a little when we put them on, although it wasn't a laughing matter, but we did look funny.

He unfastened the boat, and we turned up the river and in about an hour we came into quite a thriving port with the Sunday quiet over everything, and Geoffrey did things to the engine that put it out of commission, and then he left it with a man on the pier, and we took the train.

It seems that all night at Bower's they were looking for us. They even took other boats, and followed. And they called. I know that if Geoffrey heard them call he didn't answer.

Every one seemed to accept our explanation. Perhaps they thought it queer. But I can't help that.

Geoffrey is going away to-morrow. When we were alone in the hall for a moment he told me that he was going. "If you can ever forgive me," he said, "will you write and tell me? What I have done may seem unforgivable. But when a man dreams a great deal he sometimes thinks that he can make his dreams come true."

Uncle Rod, I think the worst thing in the whole wide world is to be disappointed in people. As soon as school closes I am coming back to you. Perhaps you can make me see the sunsets. And what do you say about life now? Is it what we make it? Did I have anything to do with this mad adventure? Yet the memory of it will always—smirch.

And if life isn't what we make it, where is our hope and where are our sunsets? Tell me that, you old dear.

ANNE.

P.S. When I opened my door just now, I found that Geoffrey had left on the threshold his little Napoleon, and a letter. I am sending the letter to you. I cried over it, and I am afraid it is blurred—but I haven't time to make a copy before the mail goes.

* * * * *

What Geoffrey said:

* * * * *

MY LITTLE CHILD:

I am calling you that because there is something so young and untouched about you. If I were an artist I should paint you as young Psyche—and there should be a hint of angels' wings in the air and it should be spring—with a silver dawn. But if I could paint should I ever be able to put on canvas the light in your eyes when you have talked to me by the fire, my kind little friend whom I have lost?

I cannot even now understand the mood that possessed me. Yet I will be frank. I saw you go into the wood with Richard Brooks. I felt that if he should say to you what I was sure he wanted to say that there would be no chance for me—so I hurried after you. The thing which was going to happen must not happen; and I arrived in time. After that I told Brooks as we walked back that I was going to marry you, and I took you out in my boat intending to make my words come true.

These last few days have been strange days. Perhaps when I have described them you may find it in your heart to feel sorry for me. The book is finished. That of itself has left me with a sense of loss, as if I had put away from me something that had been a part of me. Then—I am going blind. Do you know what that means, the desperate meaning? To lose the light out of your life—never to see the river as I saw it this morning? Never to see the moonlight or the starlight—never to see your face?

The specialist has given me a few months—and then darkness.

Was it selfishness to want to tie you to a blind man? If you knew that you were losing the light wouldn't you want to steal a star to illumine the night?—and you were my—Star.

I am going now to my little sister, Mimi. She leaves the convent in a few days. There are just the two of us. I have been a wayward chap, loving my own way; it will be a sorry thing for her to find, I fancy, that henceforth I shall be in leading strings.

It is because of this thing that is coming that I am begging you still to be my friend—to send me now and then a little letter; that I may feel in the night that you are holding out your hand to me. There can be no greater punishment than your complete silence, no greater purgatory than the thought that I have forfeited your respect. Looking into the future I can see no way to regain it, but if the day ever comes when a Blind Beggar can serve you, you will show that you have forgiven him by asking that service of him.

I am leaving my little Napoleon for you. You once called him a little great man. Perhaps those of us who have some elements of greatness find our balance in something that is small and mean and mad.

Will you tell Brooks that you are not bound to me in any way? It is best that you should do it. I shall hope for a line from you. If it does not come—if I have indeed lost my little friend through my own fault—then indeed the shadows will shut me in.

GEOFFREY.

* * * * *

Uncle Rodman writes:

* * * * *

MY BELOVED NIECE:

Once upon a time you and I read together "The Arabian Nights," and when we had finished the first book you laid your little hand on my knee and looked up at me. "Is it true, Uncle Rod?" you asked. "Oh, Uncle Rod, is it true?" And I said, "What it tells about the Roc's egg and the Old Man of the Sea and the Serpent is not true, but what it says about the actions and motives of people is true, because people have acted in that way and have thought like that through all the ages, and the tales have lived because of it, and have been written in all languages." I was sure, when I said it, that you did not quite understand; but you were to grow to it, which was all that was required.

Blessed child, what your Geoffrey Fox has done, though I hate him for it and blame him, is what other hotheads have done. The protective is not the primitive masculine instinct. Men have thought of themselves first and of women afterward since the beginning of time. Only with Christianity was chivalry born in them. And since many of our youths have elected to be pagan, what can you expect?

So your Geoffrey Fox being pagan, primitive—primordial, whatever it is now the fashion to call it, reverted to type, and you were the victim.

I have read his letter and might find it in my heart to forgive him were it not that he has made you suffer; but that I cannot forgive; although, indeed, his coming blindness is something that pleads for him, and his fear of it—and his fear of losing you.

I am glad that you are coming home to me. Margaret and her family are going away, and we can have their big house to ourselves during the summer. We shall like that, I am sure, and we shall have many talks, and try to straighten out this matter of dreams—and of sunsets, which is really very important, and not in the least to be ignored.

But let me leave this with you to ponder on. You remember how you have told me that when you were a tiny child you walked once between me and my good old friend, General Ross, and you heard it said by one of us that life was what we made it. Before that you had always cried when it rained; now you were anxious that the rain might come so that you could see if you could really keep from crying. And when the rain arrived you were so immensely entertained that you didn't shed a tear, and you went to bed that night feeling like a conqueror, and never again cried out against the elements.

It would have been dreadful if all your life you had gone on crying about rain, wouldn't it? And isn't this adventure your rainy day? You rose above it, dearest child. I am proud of the way you handled your mad lover.

Life is what we make it. Never doubt that. "He knows the water best who has waded through it," and I have lived long and have learned my lesson. When I knew that I could paint no more real pictures I knew that I must have dream pictures to hang on the walls of memory. Shall I make you a little catalogue of them, dear heart—thus:

No. 1.—Your precious mother sewing by the west window in our shadowed sitting-room, her head haloed by the sunset.

No. 2.—Anne in a blue pinafore, with the wind blowing her hair back on a gray March morning.

No. 3.—Anne in a white frock amid a blur of candle-light on Christmas——

Oh, my list would be long! People have said that I have lacked pride because I have chosen to take my troubles philosophically. There have been times when my soul has wept. I have cried often on my rainy days. But—there have always been the sunsets—and after that—the stars.

I fear that I have been but little help to you. But you know my love—blessed one. And the eagerness with which I await your coming. Ever your own

UNCLE.



CHAPTER XIV

In Which There is Much Said of Marriage and of Giving in Marriage.

EVE'S green-eyed cat sat on a chair and watched the flame-colored fishes. It was her morning amusement. When her mistress came down she would have her cream and her nap. In the meantime, the flashing, golden things in the clear water aroused an ancient instinct. She reached out a quick paw and patted the water, flinging showers of sparkling drops on her sleek fur.

Aunt Maude, eating waffles and reading her morning paper, approved her. "I hope you'll catch them," she said, "especially the turtles and the tadpoles—the idea of having such things where you eat."

The green-eyed cat licked her wet paw, then she jumped down from the chair and trotted to the door to meet Eve, who picked her up and hugged her. "Pats," she demanded, "what have you been doing? Your little pads are wet."

"She's been fishing," said Aunt Maude, "in your aquarium. She has more sense than I thought."

Eve, pouring cream into a crystal dish, laughed. "Pats is as wise as the ages—you can see it in her eyes. She doesn't say anything, she just looks. Women ought to follow her example. It's the mysterious, the silent, that draws men. Now Polly prattles and prattles, and nobody listens, and we all get a little tired of her; don't we, Polly?"

She set the cream carefully by the green cushion, and Pats, classically posed on her haunches, lapped it luxuriously. The Polly-parrot coaxed and wheedled and was rewarded with her morning biscuit. The flame-colored fishes rose to the snowy particles which Eve strewed on the surface of the water, and then with all of her family fed, Eve turned to the table, sat down, and pulled away Aunt Maude's paper.

"My dear," the old lady protested.

"I want to talk to you," Eve announced. "Aunt Maude, I'm going to marry Dicky."

Aunt Maude pushed back her plate of waffles. The red began to rise in her cheeks. "Oh, of all the fools——"

"'He who calleth his brother a fool——'" Eve murmured pensively. "Aunt Maude, I'm in love with him."

"You're in love with yourself," tartly, "and with having your own way. The husband for you is Philip Meade. But he wants you, and so—you don't want him."

"Dicky wants me, too," Eve said, a little wistfully; "you mustn't forget that, Aunt Maude."

"I'm not forgetting it." Then sharply, "Shall you go to live at Crossroads?"

"No. Austin has made him an offer. He's coming back to town."

"What do you expect to live on?"

Silence. Then, uncertainly, "I thought perhaps until he gets on his feet you'd make us an allowance."

The old lady exploded in a short laugh. She gathered up her paper and her spectacles case and her bag of fancy work. Then she rose. "Not if you marry Richard Brooks. You may as well know that now as later, Eve. All your life you have shaken the plum tree and have gathered the fruit. You may come to your senses when you find there isn't any tree to shake."

The deep red in the cheeks of the old woman was matched by the red that stained Eve's fairness. "Keep your money," she said, passionately; "I can get along without it. You've always made me feel like a pauper, Aunt Maude."

The old woman's hand went up. There was about her a dignity not to be ignored. "I think you are saying more than you mean, Eve. I have tried to be generous."

They were much alike as they faced each other, the same clear cold eyes, the same set of the head, the only difference Eve's youth and slenderness and radiant beauty. Perhaps in some far distant past Aunt Maude had been like Eve. Perhaps in some far distant future Eve's soft lines would stiffen into a second edition of Aunt Maude.

"I have tried to be generous," Aunt Maude repeated.

"You have been. I shouldn't have said that. But, Aunt Maude, it hasn't been easy to eat the bread of dependence."

"You are feeling that now," said the old lady shrewdly, "because you are ready for the great adventure of being poor with your young Richard. Well, try it. You'll wish more than once that you were back with your old—plum tree."

Flash of eye met flash of eye. "I shall never ask for another penny," Eve declared.

"I shall buy your trousseau, of course, and set you up in housekeeping, but when a woman is married her husband must take care of her." And Aunt Maude sailed away with her bag and her spectacles and her morning paper, and Eve was left alone in the black and white breakfast room, where Pats slept on her green cushion, the Polly-parrot swung in her ring, and the flame-colored fishes hung motionless in the clear water.

Eve ate no breakfast. She sat with her chin in her hand and tried to think it out. Aunt Maude had not proved tractable, and Richard's income would be small. Never having known poverty, she was not appalled by the prospect of it. Her imagination cast a glamour over the future. She saw herself making a home for Richard. She saw herself inviting Pip and Winifred Ames and Tony to small suppers and perfectly served little dinners. She did not see herself washing dishes or cooking the meals. Knowing nothing of the day's work, how could she conceive its sordidness?

She roused herself presently to go and write notes to her friends. Triumphant notes which told of her happiness.

Her note to Pip brought him that night. He came in white-faced. As she went toward him, he rose to meet her and caught her hands in a hard grip, looking down at her. "You're mine, Eve. Do you think I am going to let any one else have you?"

"Don't be silly, Pip."

"Is it silly to say that there will never be for me any other woman? I shall love you until I die. If that is foolishness, I never want to be wise."

He was kissing her hands now.

"Don't, Pip, don't."

She wrenched herself away from him, and stood as it were at bay. "You'll get over it."

"Shall I? How little you know me, Eve. I haven't even given you up. If I were a story-book sort of hero I'd bestow my blessing on you and Brooks and go and drive an ambulance in France, and break my heart at long distance. But I shan't. I shall stay right here on the job, and see that Brooks doesn't get you."

"Pip, I didn't think you were so—small."

The telephone rang. Eve answered it. "It was Winifred to wish me happiness," she said, as she came in from the hall.

She was blushing faintly. He gave her a keen glance. "What else did she say?"

"Nothing."

"You're fibbing. Tell me the truth, Eve."

She yielded to his masterfulness.

"Well, she said—'I wanted it to be Pip.'"

"Good old Win, I'll send her a bunch of roses." He wandered restlessly about the room, then came back to her. "Why, Eve, I planned the house—our house. It was to have the sea in front of it and a forest behind it, and your room was to have a wide window and a balcony, and under the balcony there was to be a rose garden."

"How sure you were of me, Pip."

"I have never been sure. But what I want, I—get. Remember that, dear girl. When I shut my eyes I can see you at the head of my table, in a high gold chair—like a throne."

She stared at him in amazement. "Pip, it doesn't sound a bit like you."

"No. What a man thinks is apt to be—different. On the surface I'm a rather practical sort of fellow. But when I plan my future with you I am playing king to your queen, and I'm not half bad at it."

And now it was she who was restless. "If I married you, what would I get out of it but—money?"

"Thank you."

"You know I don't mean it that way. But I like to think that I can help Richard—in his career."

"You're not made of that kind of stuff. You want your own good time. Women who help men to achieve must be content to lose their looks and their figures and to do without pretty clothes, and you wouldn't be content. You want to live your own life, and be admired and petted and envied, Eve."

She faced him, blazing. "You and Aunt Maude and Win are all alike. You think I can't be happy unless I live in the lap of luxury. Well, I can tell you this, I'd rather have a crust of bread with Richard than live in a palace with you, Pip."

He stood up. "You don't mean it. But you needn't have put it quite that way, and some day you'll be sorry, and you'll tell me that you're sorry. Tell me now, Eve."

He put his hands on her shoulders, holding her with a masterful grip. Her eyes met his and fell. "Oh, I hate your—sureness."

"Some day you are going to love it. Look at me, Eve."

She forced herself to do so. But she was not at ease. Then almost wistfully she yielded. "I—am sorry, Pip."

His hands dropped from her shoulders. "Good little girl."

He kissed both of her hands before he went away. "I am glad we are friends"—that was his way of putting it—"and you mustn't forget that some day we are going to be more than that," and when he had gone she found herself still shaken by the sureness of his attitude.

Pip on his way down-town stopped in to order Winifred's roses, and the next day he went to her apartment and unburdened his heart.

"If it was in the day of duels I'd call him out. Just at this moment I am in the mood for pistols or poison, I'm not sure which."

"Why not try—patience?"

He glanced at her quickly. "You think she'll tire?"

"I think—it can never happen. For Richard's sake I—hope not."

"Why for his sake?"

Winifred smiled. "I'd like to see him marry little Anne."

"The school-teacher?"

"Yes. Oh, I am broken-hearted to think he's spoiling Nancy's dreams for him. There was something so idyllic in them. And now he'll marry Eve."

"You say that as if it were a tragedy."

"It is, for him and for her. Eve was never made to be poor."

"Don't tell her that. She took my head off. Said she'd rather have a crust of bread with Richard——"

"Oh, oh!"

"Than a palace with me."

"Poor Pip. It wasn't nice of her."

"I shall make her eat her words."

Winifred shook her head. "Don't be hard on her, Pip. We women are so helpless in our loves. Richard might make her happy if he cared enough, but he doesn't. Perhaps Eve will be broadened and deepened by it all. I don't know. No one knows."

"I know this. That you and Tony seem to get a lot out of things, Win."

"Of marriage? We do. Yet we've had all of the little antagonisms and differences. But underneath it we know—that we're made for each other. And that helps. It has helped us to push the wrong things out of our lives and to hold on to the right ones."

Philip's young face was set. "I wanted to have my chance with Eve. We are young and pretty light-weight on the surface, but life together might make us a bit more like you and Tony. And now Richard is spoiling things."

Back at Crossroads, Nancy was trying to convince her son that he was not spoiling things for her. "I have always been such a dreamer, dear boy. It was silly for me to think that I could stand between you and your big future. I have written to Sulie Tyson, and she'll stay with me, and you can run down for week-ends—and I'll always have David."

"Mother, let me go to Eve and tell her——"

"Tell her what?"

"That I shall stay—with you."

She was white with the whiteness which had never left her since he had told her that he was going to marry Eve.

"Hickory-Dickory, if I kept you here in the end you would hate me."

"Mother!"

"Not consciously. But I should be a barrier—and you'd find yourself wishing for—freedom. If I let you go—you'll come back now and then—and be—glad."

He gathered her up in his arms and declared fiercely that he would not leave her, but she stayed firm. And so the thing was settled, and as soon as he could settle his affairs at Crossroads he was to go to Austin.

Anne, writing to Uncle Rod about it, said:

"St. Michael is to marry the Lily-of-the-Field. You see, after all, he likes that kind of thing, though I had fancied that he did not. She is not as fine and simple as he is, and somehow I can't help feeling sorry.

"But that isn't the worst of it, Uncle Bobs. He is going back to New York. And now what becomes of his sunsets? I don't believe he ever had any. And oh, his poor little mother. She is fooling him and making him think that it is just as it should be and that she was foolish to expect anything else. But to me it is unspeakable that he should leave her. But he'll have Eve Chesley. Think of changing Nancy Brooks for Eve!"

It was at Beulah's wedding that Anne and Richard saw each other for the last time before his departure.

Beulah was married in the big front room at Bower's. She was married at six o'clock because it was easy for the farmer folk to come at that time, and because the evening could be given up afterward to the reception and a big supper and Beulah and Eric could take the ten o'clock train for New York.

She had no bridesmaids except Peggy, who was quite puffed up with the importance of her office. Anne had instructed her, and at the last moment held a rehearsal on the side porch.

"Now, play I am the bride, Peggy."

"You look like a bride," Peggy said. "Aren't you ever going to be a bride, Miss Anne?"

"I am not sure, Peggy. Perhaps no one will ever ask me."

"I'd ask you if I were a man," Peggy reassured her. "Now, go on and show me, Anne."

"You must take Beulah's bouquet when she hands it to you, and after she is married you must give it back to her, and——"

"And then I must kiss her."

"You must let Eric kiss her first."

"Why?"

"Because he will be her husband."

"But I've been her sister for ever and ever."

"Oh, but a husband, Peggy. Husbands are very important."

"Why are they?"

"Well, they give you a new name and a new house, and you have new clothes to marry them in, and you go away with them on a honeymoon."

"What's a honeymoon?"

"The honey is for the sweetness, and the moon is for the madness, Peggy, dear."

"Do people always go away on trains for their honeymoons?"

"Not always. I shouldn't like a train. I should like to get into a boat with silver sails, and sail straight down a singing river into the heart of the sunset."

"Well, of course, you couldn't," said the plump and practical Peggy, "but it sounds nice to say it. Does our river sing, Miss Anne?"

"Yes."

"What does it say?"

Anne stretched out her arms with a little yearning gesture. "It says—'Come and see the world, see the world, see the world!'"

"It never says that to me."

"Perhaps you haven't ears to hear, Peggy."

It was a very charming wedding. Richard was there and Nancy, and David and Brinsley. The country folk came from far and wide, and there was a brave showing of Old Gentlemen from Bower's who brought generous gifts for Peter's pretty daughter.

Richard, standing back of his mother during the ceremony, could see over her head to where Anne waited not far from Peggy to prompt her in her bridesmaid's duties. She was in white. Her dark hair was swept up in the fashion which she had borrowed from Eve. She seemed very small and slight against the background of Bower's buxom kinsfolk.

As he caught her eye he smiled at her, but she did not smile back. She felt that she could not. How could he smile with that little mother drooping before his very eyes? How could he?

She found herself later, when the refreshments were served, brooding over Nancy. The little lady tasted nothing, but was not permitted to refuse the cup of tea which Anne brought to her.

"I had it made especially for you," she said; "you looked so tired."

"I am tired. You see we are having rather strenuous days."

"I know."

"It isn't easy to let—him—go."

"It isn't easy for anybody to let him go."

The eyes of the two women went to where Richard in the midst of a protesting group was trying to explain his reasons for deserting Crossroads.

He couldn't explain. They had a feeling that he was turning his back on them. "It's hard lines to have a good doctor and then lose him," was the general sentiment. He was made to feel that it would have been better not to have come than to end by deserting.

He was aware that he had forfeited something precious, and he voiced his thought when he joined his mother and Anne.

"I'll never have a practice quite like this. Neighborhood ties are something they know little about in cities."

His mother smiled up at him bravely. "There'll be other things."

"Perhaps;" he patted her hand. Then he fired a question at Anne. "Do you think I ought to go?"

"How can I tell?" Her eyes met his candidly. "I felt when you came that I couldn't understand how a man could bury himself here. And now I am wondering how you can leave. It seems as if you belong."

"I know what you mean."

She went on: "And I can't quite think of this dear lady alone."

Nancy stopped her. "Don't speak of that, my dear. I don't want you to speak of it. It is right that Richard should go."

Anne was telling herself passionately that it was not right, when Beulah sent for her, and presently the little bride came down in her going-away gown, to be joined by Eric in the stiff clothes which seemed to rob him of the picturesqueness which belonged to him in less formal moments.

But Richard had no eyes for the bride and groom; he saw only Anne at the head of the stairway where he had first talked to her. How long ago it seemed, and how sweet she had been, and how shy.

The train was on the bridge, and a laughing crowd hurried out into the night to meet it. Peggy in the lead threw roses with a prodigal hand. "Kiss me, Beulah," she begged at the last.

Beulah bent down to her, then was lifted in Eric's strong arms to the platform. Then the train drew out and she was gone!

Alone on the stairway, Anne and Richard had a moment before the crowd swept back upon them.

"Dr. Brooks, take your mother with you."

"She won't go."

"Then stay with her."

He caught at the edge of her flowing sleeve, and held it as if he would anchor her to him. "Do you want me to stay?"

Her eyes came up to him. She saw in them something which lifted her above and beyond her doubts of him. She had an ineffable sense of having found something which she could never lose.

Then as he drew back he was stammering, "Forgive me. I have been wanting to wish you happiness. Geoffrey told me——"

And now Peggy bore down upon them and all the heedless happy crowd, and Richard said, "Good-night," and was gone.

Yet when she was left alone, Anne felt desperately that she should have shouted after him, "I am not going to marry Geoffrey Fox. I am not going to be married at all."



CHAPTER XV

In Which Anne Asks and Jimmie Answers.

"'A MONEYLESS man,'" said Uncle Rod, "'goes quickly through the market.'"

He had a basket on his arm. Anne, who was at her easel, looked up. "What did you buy?"

He laughed. His laugh had in it a quality of youth which seemed to contradict the signs of age which were upon him. Yet even these signs were modified by the carefulness of his attire and the distinction of his carriage. Great-uncle Rodman had been a dandy in his day, and even now his Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, his long divided beard and flowing tie gave him an air half foreign, wholly his own.

In his basket was a melon, crusty rolls, peaches and a bottle of cream.

"Such extravagance!" Anne said, as he showed her the bottle.

"It was the price of two chops. And not a lamb the less for it. Two chops would have been an extravagance, and now we shall feast innocently and economically."

"Where shall we eat?" Anne asked.

"Under the oak?"

She shook her head. "Too sunny."

"In the garden?"

"Not till to-night—people can see us from the road."

"You choose then." It was a game that they had played ever since she had come to him. It gave to each meal the atmosphere of an adventure.

"I choose," she clapped her hands, "I choose—by the fish-pond, Uncle Rod."

The fish-pond was at the end of the garden walk. Just beyond it a wooden gate connected a high brick wall and opened upon an acre or two of pasture where certain cows browsed luxuriously. The brick wall and the cows and the quiet of the corner made the fish-pond seem miles away from the town street which was faced by the front of Cousin Margaret's house.

The fish-pond was a favorite choice in the game played by Anne and Uncle Rod. But they did not always choose it because that would have made it commonplace and would have robbed it of its charm.

Anne, rising to arrange the tray, was stopped by Uncle Rodman. "Sit still, my dear; I'll get things ready."

To see him at his housekeeping was a pleasant sight. He liked it, and gave to it his whole mind. The peeling of the peaches with a silver knife, the selection of a bowl of old English ware to put them in, and making of the coffee in a copper machine, the fresh linen, the roses as a last perfect touch.

Anne carried the tray, for his weak arm could not be depended upon; and by the fish-pond they ate their simple meal.

The old fishes had crumbs and came to the top of the water to get them, and a cow looking over the gate was rewarded by the remaining half of the crusty roll. She walked away presently to give place to a slender youth who had crossed the fields and now stood with his hat off looking in.

"If it isn't Anne," he said, "and Uncle Rod."

Uncle Rod stood up. He did not smile and he did not ask the slender youth to enter. But Anne was more hospitable.

"Come in, Jimmie," she said. "I can't offer you any lunch because we have eaten it all up. But there's some coffee."

Jimmie entered with alacrity. He had come back from New York in a mood of great discontent, to meet the pleasant news that Anne Warfield was in town. He had flown at once to find her. If he had expected the Fatted Calf, he found none. Uncle Rodman left them at once. He had a certain amount of philosophy, but it had never taught him patience with Jimmie Ford.

Jimmie drank a cup of coffee, and talked of his summer.

"Saw your Dr. Richard in New York, out at Austin's."

"Yes."

"He's going to marry Eve."

"Is he?"

"Yes. I don't understand what she sees in him—he isn't good style."

"He doesn't have to be."

"Why not?"

"Men like Richard Brooks mean more to the world than just—clothes, Jimmie."

"I don't see it."

"You wouldn't."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Well, you look so nice in your clothes—and you need them to look nice in."

He stared at her. He felt dimly that she was making fun of him.

"From the way you put it," he said, with irritation, "from the way you put it any one might think that it was just my clothes——"

"That make you attractive? Oh, no, Jimmie. You have nice eyes and—and a way with you."

She was sewing on a scrap of fancy work, and her own eyes were on it. She was as demure as possible, but she seemed unusually and disconcertingly self-possessed.

And now Jimmie became plaintive. Plaintiveness had always been his strong suit with Anne. He was eager for sympathy. His affair with Eve had hurt his vanity.

"I have never seen a girl like her. She doesn't care what the world thinks. She doesn't care what any one thinks. She goes right along taking everything that comes her way—and giving nothing."

"Did you want her to give you—anything, Jimmie?"

"Me? Not me. She's a beauty and all that. But I wouldn't marry her if she were as rich as Rockefeller—and she isn't. Her money is her Aunt Maude's."

"Oh, Jimmie—sour grapes."

"Sour nothing. She isn't my kind. She said one day that if she wanted a man she'd ask him to marry her. That it was a woman's right to choose. I can't stand that sort of thing."

"But if she should ask you, Jimmie?"

Again he stared at her. "I jolly well shouldn't give her a chance. Not after the way she treated me."

"What way?"

"Oh, making me think I was the whole thing—and then—throwing me down."

"Oh, so you don't like being thrown down?"

"No. I don't like that kind of a woman. You know the kind of woman I like, Anne."

The caressing note in his voice came to her like an echo of other days. But now it had no power to move her.

"I am not sure that I do know the kind of woman you like—tell me."

"Oh, I like a woman that is a woman, and makes a man feel that he's the whole thing."

"But mustn't he be the whole thing to make her feel that he is?"

He flung himself out of his chair and stood before her. "Anne," he demanded, "can't you do anything but ask questions? You aren't a bit like you used to be."

She laid down her work and now he could see her eyes. Such steady eyes! "No, I'm not like myself. You see, Jimmie, I have been away for a year, and one learns such a lot in a year."

He felt a sudden sense of loss. There had always been the old Anne to come back to. The Anne who had believed and had sympathized. Again his voice took on a plaintive note. "Be good to me, girl," he said. Then very low, "Anne, I was half afraid to come to-day."

"Afraid—why?"

"Oh, I suppose you think I acted like a—cad."

"What do you think?"

"Oh, stop asking questions. It was the only thing to do. You were poor and I was poor, and there wasn't anything ahead of me—or of you—surely you can't blame me."

"How can I blame you for what was, after all, my great good fortune?"

"Your what?"

She said it again, quietly, "My great good fortune, Jimmie. I couldn't see it then. Indeed, I was very unhappy and sentimental and cynical over it. But now I know what life can hold for me—and what it would not have held if I had married you."

"Anne, who has been making love to you?"

"Jimmie!"

"Oh, no woman ever talks like that until she has found somebody else. And I thought you were constant."

"Constant to what?"

"To the thought—to—to the thought of what we might be to each other some day."

"And in the meantime you were asking Eve to marry you. Was it her money that you wanted?"

"Her money! Do you think I am a fortune-hunter?"

"I am asking you, Jimmie?"

"For Heaven's sake, stop asking questions. You know how a pretty woman goes to my head. And she's the kind that flits away to make you follow. I can't fancy your doing that sort of a thing, Anne."

"No," quietly, "women like myself, Jimmie, go on expecting that things will come to them—and when they don't come, we keep on—expecting. But somehow we never seem to be able to reach out our hands to take—what we might have."

He began to feel better. This was the wistful Anne of the old days.

"There has never been any one like you, Anne. It seems good to be here. Women like Eve madden a man, but your kind are so—comfortable."

Always the old Jimmie! Wanting his ease! After he had left her she sat looking out over the gate beyond the fields to the gold of the west.

When at last she went up to the house Uncle Rod had had his nap and was in his big chair on the front porch.

"Jimmie and I are friends again," she told him.

He looked at her inquiringly. "Real friends?"

"Surface friends. He is coming again to tell me his troubles and get my sympathy. Uncle Rod, what makes me so clear-eyed all of a sudden?"

He smoothed his beard. "My dear, 'the eyes of the hare are one thing, the eyes of the owl another.' You are looking at life from a different point of view. I knew that if you ever met a real man you'd know the difference between him and Jimmie Ford."

She came over, and standing behind him, put her hands on his shoulders. "I've found him, Uncle Rod."

"St. Michael?"

"Yes."

"Poor little girl."

"I am not poor, Uncle Rod. I am rich. It is enough to have known him."

The sunset was showing above the wooden gate. The cows had gone home. The old fish swam lazily in the shadowed water.

Anne drew her low chair to the old man's side. "Uncle Rod, isn't it queer, the difference between the things we ask for and the things we get? To have a dream come true doesn't mean always that you must get what you want, does it? For sometimes you get something that is more wonderful than any dream. And now if you'll listen, and not look at me, I'll tell you all about it, you darling dear."

* * * * *

It was in late August that Anne received the first proof sheets of Geoffrey's book. "I want you to read it before any one else. It will be dedicated to you and it is better than I dared believe—I could never have written it without your help, your inspiration."

It was a great book. Anne, remembering the moment the plot had been conceived on that quiet night by Peggy's bedside when she had seen the pussy cat and had heard the tinkling bell, laid it down with a feeling almost of awe.

She wrote Geoffrey about it. It was her first real letter to him. She had written one little note of forgiveness and of friendliness, but she had felt that for a time at least she should do no more than that, and Uncle Rod had commended her resolution.

"Hot fires had best burn out," he said.

"If you never do anything else," Anne wrote to Geoffrey, "you can be content. There isn't a line of pot-boiling in it. It is as if you had dipped your pen in magic ink. Rereading it to Uncle Rodman has brought back the nights when we talked it over, and I can't help feeling a little peacock-y to know that I had a part in it.

"And now I am going to tell you what Uncle Rod's comment was when I finished the very last word. He sat as still as a solemn old statue, and then he said, 'Geoffrey Fox is a great man. No one could have written like that who was sordid of mind or small of soul.'

"If you knew my Uncle Rodman you would understand all that his opinion stands for. He is never flattering, but he has had much time to think—he is like one of the old prophets—so that, indeed, I sometimes feel that he ought to sing his sentences like David, instead of saying wise things in an ordinary way. And his proverbs! he has such a collection, he is making a book of them, and he digs into old volumes in all sorts of languages—oh, some day you must know him!

"I am going back to Crossroads. It seems that my work lies there. And I have great news for you. I am to live with Mrs. Brooks. She has her cousin, Sulie Tyson, with her, but she wants me. And it will be so much better than Bower's.

"All through Mrs. Nancy's letters I can read her loneliness. She tries to keep it out. But she can't. She is proud of her son's success—but she feels the separation intensely. He has his work, she only her thoughts of him—and that's the tragedy.

"In the meantime, here we are at Cousin Margaret's doing funny little stunts in the way of cooking and catering. We can't afford the kind of housekeeping which requires servants, so it is a case of plain living and high thinking. Uncle Rod hates to eat anything that has been killed, and makes all sorts of excuses not to. He won't call himself a vegetarian, for he thinks that people who label themselves are apt to be cranks. So he does our bit of marketing and comes home triumphant with his basket innocent of birds or beasts, and we live on ambrosia and nectar or the modern equivalent. We are quite classic with our feasts by the old fish-pond at the end of the garden.

"Cousin Margaret's garden is flaming in the August days with phlox, and is fragrant with day lilies. There's a grass walk and a sun-dial, and best of all, as I have said, the fish-pond.

"And while I am on the subject of gardens, Uncle Rod rises up in wrath when people insist upon giving the botanical names to all of our lovely blooms. He says that the pedants are taking all of the poetry out of language, and it does seem so, doesn't it? Why should we call larkspur Delphinium? or a forget-me-not Myostis Palustria, and would a primrose by the river's brim ever be to you or to me primula vulgaris? Uncle Rod says that a rose by any other name would not smell as sweet; and it is fortunate that the worst the botanists may do cannot spoil the generic—rosa.

"And now with my talk of Uncle Rod and of Me, I am stringing this letter far beyond all limits, and yet I have not told you half the news.

"I had a little note from Beulah, and she and Eric are at home in the Playhouse. She loves your silver candlesticks. So many of her presents were practical and she prefers the 'pretties.'

"You have heard, of course, that Dr. Brooks is to marry Eve Chesley. The wedding will not take place for some time. I wonder if they will live with Aunt Maude. I can't quite imagine Dr. Richard's wings clipped to such a cage."

She signed herself, "Always your friend, Anne Warfield."

Far up in the Northern woods Geoffrey read her letter. He could use his eyes a little, but most of the time he lay with them shut and Mimi read to him, or wrote for him at his dictation. He had grown to be very dependent on Mimi; there were even times when he had waked in the night, groping and calling out, and she had gathered him in her arms and had held him against her breast until he stopped shaking and shivering and saying that he could not see.

He spoke her name now, and she came to him. He put Anne's letter in her hand. "Read it!" and when she had read, he said, "You see she says that I am great—and she used to say it. Am I, Mimi?"

"Oh, Geoffrey, yes."

"I want you to make it true, Mimi. Shall I begin my new book to-morrow?"

It was what she had wanted, what she had begged that he would do, but he had refused to listen. And now he was listening to another voice!

She brought her note-book, and sat beside him. Being ignorant of shorthand she had invented a little system of her own, and she was glad when she could make him laugh over her funny pot-hooks and her straggling sketches.

Thus in the darkness Geoffrey struggled and strove. "Speaking of candlesticks," he wrote to Anne, "it was as if a thousand candles lighted my world when I read your letter!"



CHAPTER XVI

In Which Pan Pipes to the Stars.

THAT Richard in New York should miss his mother was inevitable. But he was not homesick. He was too busy for that. Austin's vogue was tremendous.

"Every successful man ought to be two men," he told Richard, as they talked together one Sunday night at Austin's place in Westchester, "'another and himself,' as Browning puts it. Then there would be one to labor and the other to enjoy. I want to retire, and I can't. There's a selfish instinct in all of us to grip and hold. That is why I am pinning my faith to you. You can slip in as I slip out. I have visions of riding to hounds and sailing the seas some day, to say nothing of putting up a good game of golf. But perhaps that's a dream. A man can't get away from his work, not when he loves it."

"That's why you're such a success, sir," Richard told him, honestly; "you go to every operation as if it were a banquet."

Austin laughed. "I'm not such a ghoul. But there's always the wonder of it with me. I sometimes wish I had been a churchgoing man, Brooks. There isn't much more for me to learn about bodies, but there's much about souls. I have a feeling that some day in some physical experiment I shall find tangible evidence of the spiritual. That's why I say my prayers to Something every night, and I rather think It's God."

"I know it's God," said Richard, simply, "on such a night as this."

They were silent in the face of the evening's beauty. The great trees on the old estate were black against a silver sky. White statues shone like pale ghosts among them. Back of Richard and his host, in a semicircle of dark cedars, a marble Pan piped to the stars.

"And in the cities babies are sleeping on fire escapes," Austin meditated. "If I had had a son I should have sent him to the slums to find his work. But the Fates have given me only Marie-Louise."

And now his laugh was forced. "Brooks, the Gods have checkmated me. Marie-Louise is the son of her father. I had planned that she should be the daughter of her mother. I sowed some rather wild oats in my youth, and waked in middle age to the knowledge that my materialism had led me astray. So I married an idealist. I wanted my children to have a spiritual background of character such as I have not possessed. And the result of that marriage is—Marie-Louise! If she has a soul it is yet to be discovered."

"She is young. Give her time."

"I have been giving her time for eighteen years. I have wanted to see her mother in her, to see some gleam of that exquisite fineness. There are things we men, the most material of us, want in our women, and I want it in Marie-Louise. But she gives back what I have given her—nothing more. And I don't know what to do with her."

"Her mother?" Richard hinted.

"Julie is worn out with trying to meet a nature so unlike her own. Our love for each other has made us understand. But neither of us understands Marie-Louise. I sent her away to school, but she wouldn't stay. She likes her home and she hates rules. She loves animals, and if she were a boy she would practice medicine. Being a woman and having no outlet for her energies, she is freakish. You saw the way she was dressed at dinner."