With a violent wrench, Lightbody twisted himself free, while one hand flung appealingly back, begged for time to master the emotion which burst forth in the cry:

"Gone—forever!"

"By Jove!" said De Gollyer, suddenly enlightened, and through his mind flashed the thought—"There's been an accident—something fatal. Tough—devilish tough."

He cast a furtive glance toward the bedrooms and then an alarmed one toward his friend, standing in the embrasure of the windows, pressing his forehead against the panes.

Suddenly Lightbody turned and, going abruptly to the desk, leaned heavily on one arm, raising the letter in two vain efforts. A spasm of pain crossed his lips, which alone could not be controlled. He turned his head hastily, half offering, half dropping the letter, and wheeling, went to an armchair, where he collapsed, repeating inarticulately:

"Forever!"

"Who? What? Who's gone?" exclaimed De Gollyer, bewildered by the appearance of a letter. "Good heavens, dear boy, what has happened? Who's gone?"

Then Lightbody, by an immense effort, answered:

"Irene—my wife!"

And with a rapid motion he covered his eyes, digging his fingers into his flesh.

De Gollyer, pouncing upon the letter, read:

My dear Jackie: When you read this, I shall have left you forever—

Then he halted with an exclamation, and hastily turned the page for the signature.

"Read!" said Lightbody in a stifled voice.

"I say, this is serious, devilishly serious," said De Gollyer, now thoroughly amazed. Immediately he began to read, unconsciously emphasizing the emphatic words—a little trick of his enunciation.

When Lightbody had heard from the voice of another the message that stood written before his eyes, all at once all impulses in his brain converged into one. He sprang up, speaking now in quick, distinct syllables, sweeping the room with the fury of his arms.

"I'll find them; by God, I'll find them. I'll hunt them down. I'll follow them. I'll track them—anywhere—to the ends of the earth—and when I find them—"

De Gollyer, sensitively distressed at such a scene, vainly tried to stop him.

"I'll find them, if I die for it! I'll shoot them down. I'll shoot them down like dogs! I will, by all that's holy, I will! I'll butcher them! I'll shoot them down, there at my feet, rolling at my feet!"

All at once he felt a weight on his arm, and heard De Gollyer saying, vainly:

"Dear boy, be calm, be calm."

"Calm!" he cried, with a scream, his anger suddenly focusing on his friend, "Calm! I won't be calm! What! I come back—slaving all day, slaving for her—come back to take her out to dinner where she wants to go—to the play she wants to see, and I find—nothing—this letter—this bomb—this thunderbolt! Everything gone—my home broken up—my name dishonored—my whole life ruined! And you say be calm—be calm—be calm!"

Then, fearing the hysteria gaining possession of him, he dropped back violently into an armchair and covered his face.

During this outburst, De Gollyer had deliberately removed his gloves, folded them and placed them in his breast pocket. His reputation for social omniscience had been attained by the simple expedient of never being convinced. As soon as the true situation had been unfolded, a slight, skeptical smile hovered about his thin, flouting lips, and, looking at his old friend, he was not unpleasantly aware of something comic in the attitudes of grief. He made one or two false starts, buttoning his trim cutaway, and then said in a purposely higher key:

"My dear old chap, we must consider—we really must consider what is to be done."

"There is only one thing to be done," cried Lightbody in a voice of thunder.

"Permit me!"

"Kill them!"

"One moment!"

De Gollyer, master of himself, never abandoning his critical enjoyment, softened his voice to that controlled note that is the more effective for being opposed to frenzy.

"Sit down—come now, sit down!"

Lightbody resisted.

"Sit down, there—come—you have called me in. Do you want my advice? Do you? Well, just quiet down. Will you listen?"

"I am quiet," said Lightbody, suddenly submissive. The frenzy of his rage passed, but to make his resolution doubly impressive, he extended his arm and said slowly:

"But remember, my mind is made up. I shall not budge. I shall shoot them down like dogs! You see I say quietly—like dogs!"

"My dear old pal," said De Gollyer with a well-bred shrug of his shoulders, "you'll do nothing of the sort. We are men of the world, my boy, men of the world. Shooting is archaic—for the rural districts. We've progressed way beyond that—men of the world don't shoot any more."

"I said it quietly," said Lightbody, who perceived, not without surprise, that he was no longer at the same temperature. However, he concluded with normal conviction: "I shall kill them both, that's all. I say it quietly."

This gave De Gollyer a certain hortatory moment of which he availed himself, seeking to reduce further the dramatic tension.

"My dear old pal, as a matter of fact, all I say is, consider first and shoot after. In the first place, suppose you kill one or both and you are not yourself killed—for you know, dear boy, the deuce is that sometimes does happen. What then? Justice is so languid nowadays. Certainly you would have to inhabit for six, eight—perhaps ten months—a drafty, moist jail, without exercise, most indigestible food abominably cooked, limited society. You are brought to trial. A jury—an emotional jury—may give you a couple of years. That's another risk. You see you drink cocktails, you smoke cigarettes. You will be made to appear a person totally unfit to live with."

Lightbody with a movement of irritation, shifted the clutch of his fingers.

"As a matter of fact, suppose you are acquitted, what then? You emerge, middle-aged, dyspeptic, possibly rheumatic—no nerves left. Your photograph figures in every paper along with inventors of shoes and corsets. You can't be asked to dinner or to house parties, can you? As a matter of fact, you'll disappear somewhere or linger and get shot by the brother, who in turn, as soon as he is acquitted, must be shot by your brother, et cetera, et cetera! Voila! What will you have gained?"

He ceased, well pleased—he had convinced himself.

Lightbody, who had had time to be ashamed of the emotion that he, as a man, had shown to another of his sex, rose and said with dignity:

"I shall have avenged my honor."

De Gollyer, understanding at once that the battle had been won, took up in an easy running attack his battery of words.

"By publishing your dishonor to Europe, Africa, Asia? That's logic, isn't it? No, no, my dear old Jack—you won't do it. You won't be an ass. Steady head, old boy! Let's look at it in a reasonable way—as men of the world. You can't bring her back, can you? She's gone."

At this reminder, overcome by the vibrating sense of loss, Lightbody turned abruptly, no longer master of himself, and going hastily toward the windows, cried violently:

"Gone!"

Over the satisfied lips of De Gollyer the same ironical smile returned.

"I say, as a matter of fact I didn't suspect, you—you cared so much."

"I adored her!"

With a quick movement, Lightbody turned. His eyes flashed. He no longer cared what he revealed. He began to speak incoherently, stifling a sob at every moment.

"I adored her. It was wonderful. Nothing like it. I adored her from the moment I met her. It was that—adoration—one woman in the world—one woman—I adored her!"

The imp of irony continued to play about De Gollyer's eyes and slightly twitching lips.

"Quite so—quite so," he said. "Of course you know, dear boy, you weren't always so—so lonely—the old days—you surprise me."

The memory of his romance all at once washed away the bitterness in Lightbody. He returned, sat down, oppressed, crushed.

"You know, Jim," he said solemnly, "she never did this, never in the world, not of her own free will, never in her right mind. She's been hypnotized, some one has gotten her under his power—some scoundrel. No—I'll not harm her, I'll not hurt a hair of her head—but when I meet him—"

"By the way, whom do you suspect?" said De Gollyer, who had long withheld the question.

"Whom? Whom do I suspect?" exclaimed Lightbody, astounded. "I don't know."

"Impossible!"

"How do I know? I never doubted her a minute."

"Yes, yes—still?"

"Whom do I suspect? I don't know." He stopped and considered. "It might be—three men."

"Three men!" exclaimed De Gollyer, who smiled as only a bachelor could smile at such a moment.

"I don't know which—how should I know? But when I do know—when I meet him! I'll spare her—but—but when we meet—we two—when my hands are on his throat—"

He was on his feet again, the rage of dishonor ready to flame forth. De Gollyer, putting his arm about him, recalled him with abrupt, military sternness.

"Steady, steady again, dear old boy. Buck up now—get hold of yourself."

"Jim, it's awful!"

"It's tough—very tough!"

"Out of a clear sky—everything gone!"

"Come, now, walk up and down a bit—do you good."

Lightbody obeyed, locking his arms behind his back, his eyes on the floor.

"Everything smashed to bits!"

"You adored her?" questioned De Gollyer in an indefinable tone.

"I adored her!" replied Lightbody explosively.

"Really now?"

"I adored her. There's nothing left now—nothing—nothing."

"Steady."

Lightbody, at the window, made another effort, controlled himself and said, as a man might renounce an inheritance:

"You're right, Jim—but it's hard."

"Good spirit—fine, fine, very fine!" commented De Gollyer in critical enthusiasm, "nothing public, eh? No scandal—not our class. Men of the world. No shooting! People don't shoot any more. It's reform, you know, for the preservation of bachelors."

The effort, the renunciation of his just vengeance, had exhausted Lightbody, who turned and came back, putting out his hands to steady himself.

"It isn't that, it's, it's—" Suddenly his fingers encountered on the table a pair of gloves—his wife's gloves, forgotten there. He raised them, holding them in his open palm, glanced at De Gollyer and, letting them fall, suddenly unable to continue, turned aside his head.

"Take time—a good breath," said De Gollyer, in military fashion, "fill your lungs. Splendid! That's it."

Lightbody, sitting down at the desk, wearily drew the gloves to him, gazing fixedly at the crushed perfumed fingers.

"Why, Jim," he said finally, "I adore her so—if she can be happier—happier with another—if that will make her happier than I can make her—well, I'll step aside, I'll make no trouble—just for her, just for what she's done for me."

The last words were hardly heard. This time, despite himself, De Gollyer was tremendously affected.

"Superb! By George, that's grit!"

Lightbody raised his head with the fatigue of the struggle and the pride of the victory written on it.

"Her happiness first," he said simply.

The accent with which it was spoken almost convinced De Gollyer.

"By Jove, you adore her!"

"I adore her," said Lightbody, lifting himself to his feet. This time it came not as an explosion, but as a breath, some deep echo from the soul. He stood steadily gazing at his friend. "You're right, Jim. You're right. It's not our class. I'll face it down. There'll be no scandal. No one shall know."

Their hands met with an instinctive motion. Then, touched by the fervor of his friend's admiration, Lightbody moved wearily away, saying dully, all in a breath:

"Like a thunderclap, Jim."

"I know, dear old boy," said De Gollyer, feeling sharply vulnerable in the eyes and throat.

"It's terrible—it's awful. All in a second! Everything turned upside down, everything smashed!"

"You must go away," said De Gollyer anxiously.

"My whole life wrecked," continued Lightbody, without hearing him, "nothing left—not the slightest, meanest thing left!"

"Dear boy, you must go away."

"Only last night she was sitting here, and I there, reading a book." He stopped and put forth his hand. "This book!"

"Jack, you must go away for a while."

"What?"

"Go away!"

"Oh, yes, yes. I suppose so. I don't care."

Leaning against the desk, he gazed down at the rug, mentally and physically inert.

De Gollyer, returning to his nature, said presently: "I say, dear old fellow, it's awfully delicate, but I should like to be frank, from the shoulder—out and out, do you mind?"

"What? No."

Seeing that Lightbody had only half listened, De Gollyer spoke with some hesitation:

"Of course it's devilish impudent. I'll offend you dreadfully. But, I say, now as a matter of fact, were you really so—so seraphically happy?"

"What's that?"

"As a matter of fact," said De Gollyer changing his note instantly, "you were happy, terrifically happy, always happy, weren't you?"

Lightbody was indignant.

"Oh, how can you, at such a moment?"

The new emotion gave him back his physical elasticity. He began to pace up and down, declaiming at his friend, "I was happy, ideally happy. I never had a thought, not one, for anything else. I gave her everything. I did everything she wanted. There never was a word between us. It was ideal"

De Gollyer, somewhat shamefaced, avoiding his angry glance, said hastily:

"So, so, I was quite wrong. I beg your pardon."

"Ideally happy," continued Lightbody, more insistently. "We had the same thoughts, the same tastes, we read the same books. She had a mind, a wonderful mind. It was an ideal union."

"The devil, I may be all wrong," thought De Gollyer to himself. He crossed his arms, nodded his head, and this time it was with the profoundest conviction that he repeated:

"You adored her."

"I adored her," said Lightbody, with a ring to his voice. "Not a word against her, not a word. It was not her fault. I know it's not her fault."

"You must go away," said De Gollyer, touching him on the shoulder.

"Oh, I must! I couldn't stand it here in this room," said Lightbody bitterly. His fingers wandered lightly over the familiar objects on the desk, shrinking from each fiery contact. He sat down. "You're right, I must get away."

"You're dreadfully hard hit, aren't you?"

"Oh, Jim!"

Lightbody's hand closed over the book and he opened it mechanically in the effort to master the memory. "This book—we were reading it last night together."

"Jack, look here," said De Gollyer, suddenly unselfish before such a great grief, "you've got to be bucked up, boy, pulled together. I'll tell you what I'll do. You're going to get right off. You're going to be looked after. I'll knock off myself. I'll take you."

Lightbody gave him his hand with a dumb, grateful look that brought a quick lump to the throat of De Gollyer, who, in terror, purposely increasing the lightness of his manner, sprang up with exaggerated gaiety.

"By Jove, fact is, I'm a bit dusty myself. Do me good. We'll run off just as we did in the old days—good days, those. We knocked about a bit, didn't we? Good days, eh, Jack?"

Lightbody, continuing to gaze at the book, said:

"Last night—only last night! Is it possible?"

"Come, now, let's polish off Paris, or Vienna?"

"No, no." Lightbody seemed to shrink at the thought. "Not that, nothing gay. I couldn't bear to see others gay—happy."

"Quite right. California?"

"No, no, I want to get away, out of the country—far away."

Suddenly an inspiration came to De Gollyer—a memory of earlier days.

"By George, Morocco! Superb! The trip we planned out—Morocco—the very thing!"

Lightbody, at the desk still feebly fingering the leaves that he indistinctly saw, muttered:

"Something far away—away from people."

"By George, that's immense," continued De Gollyer exploding with delight, and, on a higher octave, he repeated: "Immense! Morocco and a smashing dash into Africa for big game. The old trip just as we planned it seven years ago. IMMENSE!"

"I don't care—anywhere."

De Gollyer went nimbly to the bookcase and bore back an atlas.

"My boy—the best thing in the world. Set you right up—terrific air, smashing scenery, ripping sport, caravans and all that sort of thing. Fine idea, very fine. Never could forgive you breaking up that trip, you know. There." Rapidly he skimmed through the atlas, mumbling, "M-M-M—Morocco."

Lightbody, irritated at the idea of facing a decision, moved uneasily, saying, "Anywhere, anywhere."

"Back into harness again—the old camping days—immense."

"I must get away."

"There you are," said De Gollyer at length. With a deft movement he slipped the atlas in front of his friend, saying, "Morocco, devilish smart air, smashing colors, blues and reds."

"Yes, yes."

"You remember how we planned it," continued De Gollyer, artfully blundering; "boat to Tangier, from Tangier bang across to Fez."

At this Lightbody, watching the tracing finger, said with some irritation, "No, no, down the coast first."

"I beg your pardon," said De Gollyer; "to Fez, my dear fellow."

"My dear boy, I know! Down the coast to Rabat."

"Ah, now, you're sure? I think—"

"And I know," said Lightbody, raising his voice and assuming possession of the atlas, which he struck energetically with the back of his hand. "I ought to know my own plan."

"Yes, yes," said De Gollyer, to egg him on. "Still you're thoroughly convinced about that, are you?"

"Of course, I am! My dear Jim—come, isn't this my pet idea—the one trip I've dreamed over, the one thing in the world I've longed to do, all my life?" His eyes took energy, while his forefinger began viciously to stab the atlas. "We go to Rabat. We go to Magazam, and we cut—so—long sweep, into the interior, take a turn, so, and back to Fez, so!"

This speech, delivered with enthusiasm, made De Gollyer reflect. He looked at the somewhat revived Lightbody with thoughtful curiosity.

"Well, well—you may be right. You always are impressive, you know."

"Right? Of course I'm right," continued Lightbody, unaware of his friend's critical contemplation. "Haven't I worked out every foot of it?"

"A bit of a flyer in the game country, then? Topple over a rhino or so. Stunning, smart sport, the rhino!"

"By George, think of it—a chance at one of the brutes!"

When De Gollyer had seen the eagerness in his friend's eyes, the imps returned, ironically tumbling back. He slapped him on the shoulder as Mephistopheles might gleefully claim his own, crying, "Immense!"

"You know, Jim," said Lightbody, straightening up, nervously alert, speaking in quick, eager accents, "it's what I've dreamed of—a chance at one of the big beggars. By George, I have, all my life!"

"We'll polish it off in ripping style, regiments of porters, red and white tents, camels, caravans and all that sort of thing."

"By George, just think of it."

"In style, my boy—we'll own the whole continent, buy it up!"

"The devil!"

"What's the matter?"

Lightbody's mood had suddenly dropped. He half pushed back his chair and frowned. "It's going to be frightfully extravagant."

"What of it?"

"My dear fellow, you don't know what my expenses are—this apartment, an automobile—Oh, as for you, it's all very well for you! You have ten thousand a year and no one to care for but yourself."

Suddenly he felt almost a hatred for his friend, and then a rebellion at the renunciation he would have to make.

"No—it can't be done. We'll have to give it up. Impossible, utterly impossible, I can't afford it."

De Gollyer, still a little uncertain of his ground, for several moments waited, carefully considering the dubious expression on his friend's face. Then he questioned abruptly:

"What is your income—now?"

"What do you mean by now?"

"Fifteen thousand a year?"

"It has always been that," replied Lightbody in bad humor.

De Gollyer, approaching at last the great question, assumed an air of concentrated firmness, tempered with well-mannered delicacy.

"My dear boy, I beg your pardon. As a matter of fact it has always been fifteen thousand—quite right, quite so; but—now, my dear boy, you are too much of a man of the world to be offended, aren't you?"

"No," said Lightbody, staring in front of him. "No, I'm not offended."

"Of course it's delicate, ticklishly delicate ground, but then we must look things in the face. Now if you'd rather I—"

"No, go on."

"Of course, dear boy, you've had a smashing knock and all that sort of thing, but—" suddenly reaching out he took up the letter, and, letting it hang from his fingers, thoughtfully considered it—"I say it might be looked at in this way. Yesterday it was fifteen thousand a year to dress up a dashing wife, modern New York style, the social pace, clothes that must be smarter than Thingabob's wife, competitive dinners that you stir up with your fork and your servants eat, and all that sort of thing, you know. To-day it's fifteen thousand a year and a bachelor again."

Releasing the letter, he disdainfully allowed it to settle down on the desk, and finished:

"Come now, as a matter of fact there is a little something consoling, isn't there?"

From the moment he had perceived De Gollyer's idea. Lightbody had become very quiet, gazing steadily ahead, seeing neither the door nor the retaining walls.

"I never thought of that," he said, almost in a whisper.

"Quite so, quite so. Of course one doesn't think of such things, right at first. And you've had a knock-down—a regular smasher, old chap." He stopped, cleared his voice and said sympathetically: "You adored her?"

"I suppose I could give up the apartment and sell the auto," said Lightbody slowly, speaking to himself.

De Gollyer smiled—a bachelor smile.

"Riches, my boy," he said, tapping him on the shoulder with the same quick, awakening Mephistophelean touch.

The contact raised Lightbody from revery. He drew back, shocked at the ways through which his thoughts had wandered.

"No, no, Jim," he said. "No, you mustn't, nothing like that—not at such a time."

"You're right," said De Gollyer, instantly masked in gravity. "You're quite right. Still, we are looking things in the face—planning for the future. Of course it's a delicate question, terrifically delicate. I'm almost afraid to put it to you. Come, now, how shall I express it—delicately? It's this way. Fifteen thousand a year divided by one is fifteen thousand, isn't it; but fifteen thousand a year divided by two, may mean—" He straightened up, heels clicking, throwing out his elbows slightly and lifting his chin from the high, white stockade on which it reposed. "Come, now, we're men of the world, aren't we? Now, as a matter of fact how much of that fifteen thousand a year came back to you?"

"My dear Jim," said Lightbody, feeling that generosity should be his part, "a woman, a modern woman, a New York woman, you just said it—takes—takes—"

"Twelve thousand—thirteen thousand?"

"Oh, come! Nonsense," said Lightbody, growing quite angry. "Besides, I don't—"

"Yes, yes, I know," said De Gollyer, interrupting him, now with fresh confidence. "All the same your whiskies have gone off, dear boy—they've gone off, and your cigars are bad, very bad. Little things, but they show."

A pencil lay before him. Lightbody, without knowing what he did, took it up and mechanically on an unwritten sheet jotted down $15,000, drawing the dollar sign with a careful, almost caressing stroke. The sheet was the back of his wife's letter, but he did not notice it.

De Gollyer, looking over his shoulder, exclaimed:

"Quite right. Fifteen thousand, divided by one."

"It will make a difference," said Lightbody slowly. Over his face passed an expression such as comes but once in a lifetime; a look defying analysis; a look that sweeps back over the past and challenges the future and always retains the secret of its judgment.

De Gollyer, drawing back slowly, allowed him a moment before saying:

"And no alimony!"

"What?"

"Free and no alimony, my boy!"

"No alimony?" said Lightbody, surprised at this new reasoning.

"A woman who runs away gets no alimony," said De Gollyer loudly. "Not here, not in the effete East!"

"I hadn't thought of that, either," said Lightbody, who, despite himself, could not repress a smile.

De Gollyer, irritated perhaps that he should have been duped into sympathy, ran on with a little vindictiveness.

"Of course that means nothing to you, dear boy. You were happy, ideally happy! You adored her, didn't you?"

He paused and then, receiving no reply, continued:

"But you see, if you hadn't been so devilish lucky, so seraphically happy all these years, you might find a certain humor in the situation, mightn't you? Still, look it in the face, what have you lost, what have you left? There is something in that. Fifteen thousand a year, liberty and no alimony."

The moment had come which could no longer be evaded. Lightbody rose, turned, met the lurking malice in De Gollyer's eyes with the blank indecision screen of his own, and, turning on his heel, went to a little closet in the wall, and bore back a decanter and glasses.

"This is not what we serve on the table," he said irrelevantly. "It's whisky."

De Gollyer poured out his drink and looked at Lightbody en connoisseur.

"You've gone off—old—six years. You were the smartest of the old crowd, too. You certainly have gone off."

Lightbody listened, with his eyes in his glass.

"Jack, you're middle-aged—you've gone off—badly. It's hit you hard."

There was a moment's silence and then Lightbody spoke quietly:

"Jim!"

"What is it, old boy?"

"Do you want to know the truth?"

"Come—out with it!"

Lightbody struggled a moment, all the hesitation showing in his lips. Then he said, slowly shaking his head, never lifting his eyes, speaking as though to another:

"Jim, I've had a hell of a time!"

"Impossible!"

"Yes."

He lifted his glass until he felt its touch against his lips and gradually set it down. "Why, Jim, in six years I've loved her so that I've never done anything I wanted to do, gone anywhere I wanted to go, drank anything I've wanted to drink, saw anything I wanted to see, wore anything I wanted to wear, smoked anything I wanted to smoke, read anything I wanted to read, or dined any one I wanted to dine! Jim, it certainly has been a domestic time!"

"Good God! I can't believe it!" ejaculated De Gollyer, too astounded to indulge his sense of humor.

All at once a little fury seemed to seize Lightbody. His voice rose and his gestures became indignant.

"Married! I've been married to a policeman. Why, Jim, do you know what I've spent on myself, really spent? Not two thousand, not one thousand, not five hundred dollars a year. I've been poorer than my own clerk. I'd hate to tell you what I paid for cigars and whisky. Everything went to her, everything! And Jim—" he turned suddenly with a significant glance—"such a temper!"

"A temper? No, impossible, not that!"

"Not violent—oh, no—but firm—smiling, you know, but irresistible."

He drew a long breath charged with bitter memories and said between his teeth, rebelling: "I always agreed."

"Can it be? Is it possible?" commented De Gollyer, carefully mastering his expression.

Lightbody, on the new subject of his wrongs, now began to explode with wrath.

"And there's one thing more—one thing that hurts! You know what she eloped in? She eloped in a hat, a big red hat, three white feathers—one hundred and seventy-five dollars. I gave up a winter suit to get it."

He strode over to the grotesquely large hat-box on the slender table, and struck it with his fist.

"Came this morning. Jim, she waited for that hat! Now, that isn't right! That isn't delicate!"

"No, by Jove, it certainly isn't delicate!"

"Domesticity! Ha!" At the moment, with only the long vision of petty tyranny before him, he could have caught her up in his hands and strangled her. "Domesticity! I've had all I want of domesticity!"

Suddenly the eternal fear awakening in him, he turned and commanded authoritatively:

"Never tell!"

"Never!"

De Gollyer, at forty-two, showed a responsive face, invincibly, gravely sympathetic, patiently awaiting his climax, knowing that nothing is so cumulatively dangerous as confession.

Lightbody took up his glass and again approached it to his lips, frowning at the thought of what he had revealed. All at once a fresh impulse caught him, he put down his glass untasted, blurting out:

"Do you want to know one thing more? Do you want to know the truth, the real truth?"

"Gracious heavens, there is something more?"

"I never married her—never in God's world!"

He ceased and suddenly, not to be denied, the past ranged itself before him in its stark verity.

"She married me!"

"Is it possible?"

"She did!"

What had been an impulse suddenly became a certainty.

"As I look back now, I can see it all—quite clear. Do you know how it happened? I called three times—not one time more—three times! I liked her—nothing more. She was an attractive-looking girl—a certain fascination—she always has that—that's the worst of it—but gentle, very gentle."

"Extraordinary!"

"On the third time I called—the third time, mind you," proceeded Lightbody, attacking the table, "as I stood up to say good-by, all at once—the lights went out."

"The lights?"

"When they went on again—I was engaged."

"Great heavens!"

"The old fainting trick."

"Is it possible?"

"I see it all now. A man sees things as they are at such a moment."

He gave a short, disagreeable laugh. "Jim, she had those lights all fixed!"

"Frightful!"

Lightbody, who had stripped his soul in confession, no longer was conscious of shame. He struck the table, punctuating his wrath, and cried:

"And that's the truth! The solemn literal truth! That's my story!"

To confess, it had been necessary to be swept away in a burst of anger. The necessity having ceased, he crossed his arms, quite calm, laughing a low, scornful laugh.

"My dear boy," said De Gollyer, to relieve the tension, "as a matter of fact, that's the way you're all caught."

"I believe it," said Lightbody curtly. He had now an instinctive desire to insult the whole female sex.

"I know—a bachelor knows. The things I have seen and the things I have heard. My dear fellow, as a matter of fact, marriage is all very well for bankers and brokers, unconvicted millionaires, week domestic animals in search of a capable housekeeper, you know, and all that sort of thing, but for men of the world—like ourselves, it's a mistake. Don't do it again, my boy—don't do it."

Lightbody laughed a barking laugh that quite satisfied De Gollyer.

"Husbands—modern social husbands—are excrescences—they don't count. They're mere financial tabulators—nothing more than social sounding-boards."

"Right!" said Lightbody savagely.

"Ah, you like that, do you?" said De Gollyer, pleased. "I do say a good thing occasionally. Social sounding-boards! Why, Jack, in one-half of the marriages in this country—no, by George, in two-thirds—if the inconsequential, tabulating husband should come home to find a letter like this—he'd be dancing a can-can!"

Lightbody felt a flood of soul-easing laughter well up within him. He bit his lip and answered:

"No!"

"Yes."

"Pshaw!"

"A can-can!"

Lightbody, fearing to betray himself, did not dare to look at the triumphant bachelor. He covered his eyes with his hands and sought to fight down the joyful hysteria that began to shake his whole body. All at once he caught sight of De Gollyer's impish eyes, and, unable longer to contain himself, burst out laughing. The more he laughed at De Gollyer, who laughed back at him, the more uncontrollable he became. Tears came to his eyes and trickled down his cheeks, washing away all illusions and self-deception, leaving only the joy of deliverance, acknowledged at last.

All at once holding his sides, he found a little breath and cried combustibly:

"A can-can!"

Suddenly, with one impulse, they locked arms and pirouetted about the room, flinging out destructive legs, hugging each other with bear-like hugs as they had done in college days of triumph. Exhausted at last, they reeled apart, and fell breathless into opposite chairs. There was a short moment of weak, physical silence, and then Lightbody, shaking his head, said solemnly:

"Jim—Jim, that's the first real genuine laugh I've had in six vast years!"

"My boy, it won't be the last."

"You bet it won't!" Lightbody sprang up, as out of the ashen cloak of age the young Faust springs forth. "To-morrow—do you hear, to-morrow we're off for Morocco!"

"By way of Paris?" questioned De Gollyer, who likewise gained a dozen years of youthfulness.

"Certainly by way of Paris."

"With a dash of Vienna?"

"Run it off the map!"

"Good old Jack! You're coming back, my boy, you're coming strong!"

"Am I? Just watch!" Dancing over to the desk, he seized a dozen heavy books:

"'Evolution and Psychology,' 'Burning Questions!' 'Woman's Position in Tasmania!' Aha!"

One by one, he flung them viciously over his head, reckoning not the crash with which they fell. Then with the same pas de ballet he descended on the hat-box and sent it from his boot crashing over the piano. Before De Gollyer could exclaim, he was at the closet, working havoc with the boxes of cigars.

"Here, I say," said De Gollyer laughing, "look out, those are cigars!"

"No, they're not," said Lightbody, pausing for a moment. Then, seizing two boxes, he whirled about the room holding them at arms' length, scattering them like the sparks of a pin-wheel, until with a final motion he flung the emptied boxes against the ceiling, and, coming to an abrupt stop, shot out a mandatory forefinger, and cried:

"Jim, you dine with me!"

"The fact is—"

"No buts, no excuses! Break all engagements! To-night we celebrate!"

"Immense!"

"Round up the boys—all the boys—the old crowd. I'm middle-aged, am I?"

"By George," said De Gollyer, in free admiration, "you're getting into form, my boy, excellent form. Fine, fine, very fine!"

"In half an hour at the Club."

"Done."

"Jim?"

"Jack!"

They precipitated themselves into each other's arms. Lightbody, as delirious as a young girl at the thought of her first ball, cried:

"Paris, Vienna, Morocco—two years around the world!"

"On my honor!"

Rapidly Lightbody, impatient for the celebration, put De Gollyer into his coat and armed him with his cane.

"In half an hour, Jim. Get Budd, get Reggie Longworth, and, I say, get that little reprobate of a Smithy, will you?"

"Yes, by George."

At the door, De Gollyer, who, when he couldn't leave on an epigram, liked to recall the best thing he had said, turned:

"Never again, eh, old boy?"

"Never," cried Lightbody, with the voice of a cannon.

"No social sounding-board for us, eh?"

"Never again!"

"You do like that, don't you? I say a good thing now and then, don't I?"

Lightbody, all eagerness, drove him down the hall, crying:

"Round 'em up—round them all up! I'll show them if I've come back!"

When he had returned, waltzing on his toes to the middle of the room, he stopped and flung out his arms in a free gesture, inhaling a delicious breath. Then, whistling busily, he went to a drawer in the book-shelves and came lightly back, his arms crowded with time-tables, schedules of steamers, maps of various countries. All at once, remembering, he seized the telephone and, receiving no response, rang impatiently.

"Central—hello—hello! Central, why don't you answer? Central, give me—give me—hold up, wait a second!" He had forgotten the number of his own club. In communication at last, he heard the well-modulated accents of Rudolph—Rudolph who recognized his voice after six years. It gave him a little thrill, this reminder of the life he was entering once more. He ordered one of the dinners he used to order, and hung up the receiver, with a smile and a little tightening about his heart at the entry he, the prodigal, would make that night at the Club.

Then, seizing a map of Morocco in one hand and a schedule of sailings in the other, he sat down to plan, chanting over and over, "Paris, Vienna, Morocco, India, Paris, Vienna—"

At this moment, unnoticed by him, the doors moved noiselessly and Mrs. Lightbody entered; a woman full of appealing movements in her lithe body, and of quick, decisive perceptions in the straight, gray glance of her eyes. She held with one hand a cloak fastened loosely about her throat. On her head was the hat with the three white feathers.

A minute passed while she stood, rapidly seizing every indication that might later assist her. Then she moved slightly and said in a voice of quiet sadness:

"Jackie."

"Great God!"

Lightbody, overturning chair and table, sprang up—recoiling as one recoils before an avenging specter. In his convulsive fingers were the time-tables, clinging like damp lily pads.

"Jackie, I couldn't do it. I couldn't abandon you. I've come back." Gently, seeming to move rather than to walk, advancing with none of the uncertainty that was in her voice, she cried, with a little break: "Forgive me!"

"No, no, never!"

He retreated behind a chair, fury in his voice, weak at the thought of the floating, entangling scarf, and the perfume he knew so well. Then, recovering himself, he cried brutally:

"Never! You have given me my freedom. I'll keep it! Thanks!"

With a gradual motion, she loosened her filmy cloak and let it slip from the suddenly revealed shoulders and slender body.

"No, no, I forbid you!" he cried. Anger—animal, instinctive anger—began to possess him. He became brutal as he felt himself growing weak.

"Either you go out or I do!"

"You will listen."

"What? To lies?"

"When you have heard me, you will understand, Jack."

"There is nothing to be said. I have not the slightest intention of taking back—"

"Jack!"

Her voice rang out with sudden impressiveness: "I swear to you I have not met him, I swear to you I came back of my own free will, because I could not meet him, because I found that it was you—you only—whom I wanted!"

"That is a lie!"

She recoiled before the wound in his glance. She put her long white hand over her heart, throwing all of herself into the glance that sought to conquer him.

"I swear it," she said simply.

"Another lie!"

"Jack!"

It was a physical rage that held him now, a rage divided against itself—that longed to strike down, to crush, to stifle the thing it coveted. He had almost a fear of himself. He cried:

"If you don't go, I'll—I'll—"

Suddenly he found something more brutal than a blow, something that must drive her away, while yet he had the strength of his passion. He crossed his arms, looking at her with a cold look.

"I'll tell you why you came back. You went to him for just one reason. You thought he had more money than I had. You came back when you found he hadn't."

He saw her body quiver and it did him good.

"That ends it," she said, hardly able to speak. She dropped her head hastily, but not before he had seen the tears.

"Absolutely."

In a moment she would be gone. He felt all at once uneasy, ashamed—she seemed so fragile.

"My cloak—give me my cloak," she said, and her voice showed that she accepted his verdict.

He brought the cloak to where she stood wearily, and put it on her shoulders, stepping back instantly.

"Good-by."

It was said more to the room than to him.

"Good-by," he said dully.

She took a step and then raised her eyes to his.

"That was more than you had a right to say, even to me," she said without reproach in her voice.

He avoided her look.

"You will be sorry. I know you," she said with pity for him. She went toward the door.

"I am sorry," he said impulsively. "I shouldn't have said it."

"Thank you," she said, stopping and returning a little toward him.

He drew back as though already he felt her arms about him.

"Don't," she said, smiling a tired smile. "I'm not going to try that."

Her instinct had given her possession of the scene. He felt it and was irritated.

"Only let us part quietly—with dignity," she said, "for we have been happy together for six years." Then she said rapidly:

"I want you to know that I shall do nothing to dishonor your name. I am not going to him. That is ended."

An immense curiosity came to him to learn the reason of this strange avowal. But he realized it would never do for him to ask it.

"Good-by, Jackie," she said, having waited a moment. "I shall not see you again."

He watched her leaving with the same moving grace with which she had come. All at once he found a way of evasion.

"Why don't you go to him?" he said harshly.

She stopped but did not turn.

"No," she said, shaking her head. And again she dared to continue toward the door.

"I shall not stand in your way," he said curtly, fearing only that she would leave. "I will give you a divorce. I don't deny a woman's liberty."

She turned, saying:

"Do you allow a woman liberty to know her own mind?"

"What do you mean?"

She came back until he almost could have touched her, standing looking into his eyes with a wistful, searching glance, clasping and unclasping her tense fingers.

"Jack," she said, "you never really cared."

"So it is all my fault!" he cried, snapping his arms together, sure now that she would stay.

"Yes, it is."

"What!" he cried in a rage—already it was a different rage—"didn't I give you anything you wanted, everything I had, all my time, all—"

"All but yourself," she said quietly; "you were always cold."

"I!"

"You were! You were!" she said sharply, annoyed at the contradiction. But quickly remembering herself, she continued with only a regretful sadness in her voice:

"Always cold, always matter-of-fact. Bob of the head in the morning, jerk of the head at night. When I was happy over a new dress or a new hat you never noticed it—until the bill came in. You were always matter-of-fact, absolutely confident I was yours, body and soul."

"By George, that's too much!" he cried furiously. "That's a fine one. I'm to blame—of course I'm to blame!"

She drew a step away from him, and said:

"Listen! No, listen quietly, for when I've told you I shall go."

Despite himself, his anger vanished at her quiet command.

"If I listen," he thought, "it's all over."

He still believed he was resisting, only he wanted to hear as he had never wanted anything else—to learn why she was not going to the other man.

"Yes, what has happened is only natural," she said, drawing her eyebrows a little together and seeming to reason more with herself. "It had to happen before I could really be sure of my love for you. You men know and choose from the knowledge of many women. A woman, such as I, coming to you as a girl, must often and often ask herself if she would still make the same choice. Then another man comes into her life and she makes of him a test to know once and for all the answer to her question. Jack, that was it. That was the instinct that drove me to try if I could leave you—the instinct I did not understand then, but that I do now, when it's too late."

"Yes, she is clever," he thought to himself, listening to her, desiring her the more as he admired what he did not credit. He felt that he wanted to be convinced and with a last angry resistance, said:

"Very clever, indeed!"

She looked at him with her clear, gray look, a smile in her eyes, sadness on her lips.

"You know it is true."

He did not reply. Finally he said bruskly:

"And when did—did the change come to you?"

"In the carriage, when every turn of the wheel, every passing street, was rushing me away from you. I thought of you—alone—lost—and suddenly I knew. I beat with my fists on the window and called to the coachman like a madman. I don't know what I said. I came back."

She stopped, pressing back the tears that had started on her eyelids at the memory. She controlled herself, gave a quick little nod, without offering her hand, went toward the door.

"What! I've got to call her back!" He said it to himself, adding furiously: "Never!"

He let her go to the door itself, vowing he would not make the advance.

When the door was half open, something in him cried: "Wait!"

She closed the door softly, but she did not immediately turn round. The palms of her hands were wet with the cold, frightened sweat of that awful moment. When she returned, she came to him with a wondering, timid, girlish look in her eyes.

"Oh, Jack, if you only could!" she said, and then only did she put out her hands and let her fingers press over his heart.

The next moment she was swept up in his arms, shrinking and very still.

All at once he put her from him and said roughly:

"What was his name?"

"No, no!"

"Give me his name," he said miserably. "I must know it."

"No—neither now nor at any other time," she said firmly, and her look as it met his had again all the old domination. "That is my condition."

"Ah, how weak I have been," he said to himself, with a last bitter, instinctive revolt. "How weak I am."

She saw and understood.

"We must be generous," she said, changing her voice quickly to gentleness. "He has been pained enough already. He alone will suffer. And if you knew his name it would only make you unhappy."

He still rebelled, but suddenly to him came a thought which at first he was ashamed to express.

"He doesn't know?"

She lied.

"No."

"He's still waiting—there?"

"Yes."

"Ah, he's waiting," he said to himself.

A gleam of vanity, of triumph over the discarded, humiliated one, leaped up fiercely within him and ended all the lingering, bitter memories.

"Then you care?" she said, resting her head on his shoulder that he might not see she had read such a thought.

"Care?" he cried. He had surrendered. Now it was necessary to be convinced. "Why, when I received your letter I—I was wild. I wanted to do murder."

"Jackie!"

"I was like a madman—everything was gone—nothing was left."

"Oh, Jack, how I have made you suffer!"

"Suffer? Yes, I have suffered!" Overcome by the returning pain of the memory, he dropped into a chair, trying to control his voice. "Yes, I have suffered!"

"Forgive me!" she said, slipping on her knees beside him, and burying her head in his lap.

"I was out of my head—I don't know what I did, what I said. It was as though a bomb had exploded. My life was wrecked, shattered—nothing left."

He felt the grief again, even more acutely. He suffered for what he had suffered.

"Jack, I never really could have abandoned you," she cried bitterly. She raised her eyes toward him and suddenly took notice of the time-tables that lay clutched in his hands. "Oh, you were going away!"

He nodded, incapable of speech.

"You were running away?"

"I was running away—to forget—to bury myself!"

"Oh, Jack!"

"There was nothing here. It was all a blank! I was running away—to bury myself!"

At the memory of that miserable hopeless moment, in which he had resolved on flight, the tears, no longer to be denied, came dripping down his cheeks.



THE LIE



I

For some time they had ceased to speak, too oppressed with the needless anguish of this their last night. At their feet the tiny shining windows of Etretat were dropping back into the night, as though sinking under the rise of that black, mysterious flood that came luminously from the obscure regions of the faint sky. Overhead, the swollen August stars had faded before the pale flush that, toward the lighthouse on the cliff, heralded the red rise of the moon.

He held himself a little apart, the better to seize every filmy detail of the strange woman who had come inexplicably into his life, watching the long, languorous arms stretched out into an impulsive clasp, the dramatic harmony of the body, the brooding head, the soft, half-revealed line of the neck. The troubling alchemy of the night, that before his eyes slowly mingled the earth with the sea and the sea with the sky, seemed less mysterious than this woman whose body was as immobile as the stillness in her soul.

All at once he felt in her, whom he had known as he had known no other, something unknown, the coming of another woman, belonging to another life, the life of the opera and the multitude, which would again flatter and intoxicate her. The summer had passed without a doubt, and now, all at once, something new came to him, indefinable, colored with the vague terror of the night, the fear of other men who would come thronging about her, in the other life, where he could not follow.

Around the forked promontory to the east, the lights of the little packet-boat for England appeared, like the red cinder in a pipe, slipping toward the horizon. It was the signal for a lover's embrace, conceived long ago in fancy and kept in tenderness.

"Madeleine," he said, touching her arm. "There it is—our little boat."

"Ah! le p'tit bateau—with its funny red and green eyes."

She turned and raised her lips to his; and the kiss, which she did not give but permitted, seemed only fraught with an ineffable sadness, the end of all things, the tearing asunder and the numbness of separation. She returned to her pose, her eyes fixed on the little packet, saying:

"It's late."

"Yes."

"It goes fast."

"Very."

They spoke mechanically, and then not at all. The dread of the morning was too poignant to approach the things that must be said. Suddenly, with the savage directness of the male to plunge into the pain which must be undergone, he began:

"It was like poison—that kiss."

She turned, forgetting her own anguish in the pain in his voice, murmuring, "Ben, my poor Ben."

"So you will go—to-morrow," he said bitterly, "back to the great public that will possess you, and I shall remain—here, alone."

"It must be so."

He felt suddenly an impulse he had not felt before, an instinct to make her suffer a little. He said brutally:

"But you want to go!"

She did not answer, but, in the obscurity, he knew her large eyes were searching his face. He felt ashamed of what he had said, and yet because she made no protestation, he persisted:

"You have left off your jewels, those jewels you can't do without."

"Not to-night."

"You who are never happy without them—why not to-night?"

As, carried away by the jealousy of what lay beyond, he was about to continue, she laid her fingers on his lips, with a little brusk, nervous movement of her shoulders.

"Don't—you don't understand."

But he understood and he resented the fact that she should have put aside the long undulating rope of pearls, the rings of rubies and emeralds that seemed as natural to her dark beauty as the roses to the spring. He had tried to understand her woman's nature, to believe that no memory yet lingered about them, to accept without question what had never belonged longed to their life together, and remembering what he had fought down he thought bitterly:

"She has changed me more than I have changed her. It is always so."

She moved a little, her pose, with instinctive dramatic sense, changing with her changing mood.

"Do not think I don't understand you," she said quietly.

"What do you understand?"

"It hurts you because I wish to return."

"That is not so, Madeleine," he said abruptly. "You know what big things I want you to do."

"I know—only you would like me to say the contrary—to protest that I would give it all up—be content to be with you alone."

"No, not that," he said grudgingly, "and yet, this last night—here—I should like to hear you say the contrary."

She laughed a low laugh and caught his hand a little tighter.

"That displeases you?"

"No, no, of course not!" Presently she added with an effort:

"There is so much that we must say to each other and we have not the courage."

"True, all summer we have never talked of what must come after."

"I want you to understand why I go back to it all, why I wish every year to be separated from you—yes, exactly, from you," she added, as his fingers contracted with an involuntary movement. "Ben, what has come to me I never expected would come. I love, but neither that word nor any other word can express how absolutely I have become yours. When I told you my life, you did not wonder how difficult it was for me to believe that such a thing could be possible. But you convinced me, and what has come to me has come as a miracle. I adore you. All my life has been lived just for this great love; ah yes, that's what I believe, what I feel." She leaned swiftly to him and allowed him to catch her to him in his strong arms. Then slowly disengaging herself, she continued, "You are a little hurt because I do not cry out what you would not accept, because I do not say that I would give up everything if you asked it."

"It is only to hear it," he said impulsively.

"But I have often wished it myself," she said slowly. "There's not a day that I have not wished it—to give up everything and stay by you. Do you know why? From the longing that's in me now, the first unselfish longing I have ever had—to sacrifice myself for you in some way, somehow. It is more than a hunger, it is a need of the soul—of my love itself. It comes over me sometimes as tears come to my eyes when you are away, and I say to myself, 'I love him,' and yet, Ben, I shall not, I shall never give up my career, not now, not for years to come."

"No," he said mechanically.

"We are two great idealists, for that is what you have made me, Ben. Before I was always laughing, and I believed in nothing. I despised even what my sacrifice had won. Now, when I am with you, I remain in a revery, and I am happy—happy with the happiness of things I cannot understand. To-night, by your side, it seems to me I have never felt the night before or known the mystery of the silent, faint hours. You have made me feel the loneliness of the human soul, and that impulse it must have before these things that are beyond us, that surround us, dominate us, to cling almost in terror to another soul. You have so completely made me over that it is as though you had created me yourself. I am thirty-five. I have known everything else but what you have awakened in me, and because I have this knowledge and this hunger I can see clearer what we must do. You and I are a little romanesque, but remember that even a great love may tire and grow stale, and that is what I won't have, what must not be." Her voice had risen with the intensity of her mood. She said more solemnly: "You are afraid of other men, of other moods of mine—you have no reason. This love which comes to some as the awakening of life is to me the end of all things. If anything should wound it or belittle it, I should not survive it."

She continued to speak, in a low unvarying voice. He felt his mind clear and his doubts dissipate, and impatiently he waited for her to end, to show her that his weakness of the moment was gone and that he was still the man of big vision who had awakened her.

"There are people who can put in order their love as they put in order their house. We are not of that kind, Ben. I am a woman who has lived on sensations. You, too, are a dreamer and a poet at the bottom. If I should give up the opera and become to you simply a housewife, if there was no longer any difficulty in our having each other, you would still love me—yes, because you are loyal—but the romanticism, the mystery, the longing we both need would vanish. Oh, I know. Well, you and I, we are the same. We can only live on a great passion, and to have fierce, unutterable joys we must suffer also—the suffering of separation. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I do."

"That is why I shall never give up my career. That is why I can bear the sadness of leaving you. I want you to be proud of me, Ben. I want you to think of me as some one whom thousands desire and only you can have. I want our love to be so intense that every day spent apart is heavy with the longing for each other; every day together precious because it will be a day nearer the awful coming of another separation. Believe me, I am right. I have thought much about it. You have your diplomatic career and your ambitions. You are proud. I have never asked you to give that up to follow me. I would not insult you. In January you will have a leave of absence, and we will be together for a few wonderful weeks, and in May I shall return here. Nothing will be changed." She extended her arm to where a faint red point still showed on the unseen water. "And each night we will wait, as we have waited, side by side, the coming of our little boat,—notre p'tit bateau"

"You are right," he said, placing his lips to her forehead. "I was jealous. I am sorry. It is over."

"But I, too, am jealous," she said, smiling.

"You?"

"Of course—no one can love without being jealous. Oh, I shall be afraid of every woman who comes near you. It will be an agony," she said, and the fire in her eyes brought him more healing happiness than all her words.

"You are right," he repeated.

He left her with a little pressure of the hand, and walked to the edge of the veranda. A nervous, sighing breeze had come with the full coming of the moon, and underneath him he heard the troubled rustle of leaves in the obscurity, the sifting and drifting of tired, loose things, the stir of the night which awakened a restless mood in his soul. He had listened to her as she had proclaimed her love, and yet this love, without illusions, sharply recalled to him other passions. He remembered his first love, a boy-and-girl affair, and sharply contrasting it with a sudden ache to this absence of impulse and illusions, of phrases, vows, without logic, thrown out in the sweet madness of the moment. Why had she not cried out something impulsive, promised things that could not be. Then he realized, standing there in the harvest moonlight, in the breaking up of summer, that he was no longer a youth, that certain things could not be lived over, and that, as she had said, he too felt that this was the great love, the last that he would share; that if it ended, his youth ended and with his youth all that in him clung to life.

He turned and saw her, chin in the flat of her palm, steadily following his mood. He had taken but a dozen steps, and yet he had placed a thousand miles between them. He had almost a feeling of treachery, and to dispel these new unquiet thoughts he repeated to himself again:

"She is right."

But he did not immediately return. The memory of other loves, faint as they had been in comparison with this all-absorbing impulse, had yet given him a certain objective point of view. He saw himself clearly, and he understood what of pain the future had in store for him.

"How I shall suffer!" he said to himself.

"You are going so far away from me," she said suddenly, warned by some woman's instinct.

He was startled at the conjunction of her words and his moods. He returned hastily, and sat down beside her. She took his head in her hands and looked anxiously into his eyes.

"What is it?" she said. "You are afraid?"

"A little," he said reluctantly.

"Of what—of the months that will come?"

"Of the past."

"What do you mean?" she said, withdrawing a little as though disturbed by the thought.

"When I am with you I know there is not a corner of your heart that I do not possess," he began evasively.

"Well?"

"Only it's the past—the habits of the past," he murmured. "I know you so well, Madeleine, you have need of strength, you don't go on alone. That is the genius of women like you—to reach out and attach to themselves men who will strengthen them, compel them on."

"Ah, I understand," she said slowly.

"Yes, that is what I'm afraid of," he said rapidly.

"You are thinking of the artist, not the woman."

"Ah, there is no difference—not to a man who loves," he said impulsively. "I know how great your love is for me, and I believe in it. I know nothing will come to efface it. Only you will be lonely, you'll have your trials and annoyances, days of depression, of doubt, when you will need some one to restore your faith in yourself, your courage in your work, and then, I don't say you will love any one else, but you will need some one near you who loves you, always at your service—"

"If you could only understand me," she said, interrupting him. "Men, other men, are like actors to me. When I am on the stage, when I am playing Manon, do you think I see who is playing Des Grieux? Not at all. He is there, he gives me my replique, he excites my nerves, I say a thousand things under my breath, when I am in his arms I adore him, but when the curtain goes down, I go off the stage and don't even say good night to him."

"But he, he doesn't know that."

"Of course not; tenors never do. Well, that is just the way I have lived, that is just what men have meant to me. They give the replique to my moods, to my needs, and when I have no longer need of them, I go off tranquilly. That is all there is to it. I take from them what I want. Of course they will be around me, but they will be nothing to me. They will be like managers, press-agents, actors. Don't you understand that?"

"Yes, yes, I understand," he said without sincerity. Then he blurted out, "I wish you had not said it, all the same."

"Why?"

"I cannot see it as you see it, and besides, you put a doubt in my mind that I never wish to feel."

"What doubt?"

"Do I really have you, or only a mood of yours?"

"Ben!"

"I know. I know. No, I am not going to think such things. That would be unworthy of what we have felt." He paused a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was under control. "Madeleine, remember well what I say to you now. I shall probably never again speak to you with such absolute truth, or even acknowledge it to myself. I accept the necessity of separation. I know all the sufferings it will bring, all the doubts, the unreasoning jealousies. I am big enough in experience to understand what you have just suggested to me, but as a man who loves you, Madeleine, I will never understand it. I know that a dozen men may come into your life, interest you intensely, even absorb you for a while, and that they would still mean nothing to you the moment I come. Well, I am different. A man is different. While you are away, I shall not see a woman without resentment; I shall not think of any one but you, and if I did, I would cease to love you."

"But why?"

"Because I cannot share anything of what belongs to you. That is my nature. There is no use in pretending the contrary. Yours is different, and I understand why it is so. I have listened to many confidences, understood many lives that others would not understand. I have always maintained that it is the natural thing for a human being to love many times—even that there might he in the same heart a great, overpowering love and a little one. I still believe it—with my mind. I know it is so. These are the things we like to analyze in human nature together. I know it is true, but it is not true for me. No, I would never understand it in you. I know myself too well, I am jealous of everything of the past—oh, insanely jealous. I know that no sooner are you gone than I will be tortured by the most ridiculous doubts. I will see you in the moonlight all across that endless sea with other men near you. I will dream of other men with millions, ready to give you everything your eyes adore. I will imagine men of big minds that will fascinate you. I will even say to myself that now that you have known what a great love can mean you will all the more be likely to need it, to seek something to counterfeit it—"

"Ben, my poor Ben—frightful," she murmured.

"That is how it is. Shall I tell you something else?"

"What?"

"I wish devoutly you had never told me a word of—of the past."

"But how can you say such things? We have been honest with each other. You yourself—"

"I know, I know, I have no right myself, and yet there it is. It is something fearful, this madness of possession that comes to me. No, I have no fear that I will not always be first in your heart, only I understand the needs, the habits, of your nature. I understand myself now as I have not before, and that's why I say to you solemnly, Madeleine, if ever for a moment another man should come into your life—never, never, let me know."

"But—"

"No, don't say anything that I may remember to torture me. Lie to me."

"I have never lied."

"Madeleine, it is better to be merciful than to tell the truth, and, after all, what does such a confession mean? It only means that you free your conscience and that the wound—the ache—remains with the other. Whatever happens, never tell me. Do you understand?"

This time she made no answer. She even ceased to look at him, her head dropped back, her arms motionless, one finger only revolving slowly on the undulating arm of her chair.

"I shall try by all the strength that is in me never to ask that question," he rushed on. "I know I shall make a hundred vows not to do so, and I know that the first time I look into your face I shall blurt it out. Ah, if—if—if it must be so, never let me know, for there are thoughts I cannot bear now that I've known you." He flung himself at her side and took her roughly in his arms. "Madeleine, I know what I am saying. I may tell you the contrary later. I may say it lightly, pretending it is of no importance. I may beg the truth of you with tears in my eyes—I may swear to you that nothing but honesty counts between us, that I can understand, forgive, forget everything. Well, whatever I say or do, never, never let me know—if you value my happiness, my peace of mind, my life even!"

She laid her hand on his lips and then on his forehead to calm him, drawing his head to her shoulder.

"Listen, Ben," she said, gently. "I, the Madeleine Conti who loves you, am another being. I adore you so that I shall hate all other men, as you will hate all other women. There will never be the slightest deceit or infidelity between us. Ask any questions of me at any time. I know there can be from now on but one answer. Have no fear. Do not tire yourself in a senseless fever. There is so little time left. I love you."

Never had he heard her voice so deep with sincerity and tenderness, and yet, as he surrendered to the touch of her soft hands, yielding up all his doubts, he was conscious of a new alarm creeping into his heart; and, dissatisfied with what he himself had a moment before implored, in the breath with which he whispered, "I believe you," he said to himself:

"Does she say that because she believes it or has she begun to lie?"



II

For seven years they lived the same existence, separated sometimes for three months, occasionally for six, and once because of a trip taken to South America for nearly a year.

The first time that he joined her, after five months of longing, he remained a week without crying out the words that were heavy on his heart. One day she said to him:

"What is there—back of your eyes, hidden away, that you are stifling?"

"You know," he blurted out.

"What?"

"Ah, I have tried not to say it, to live it down. I can't—it's beyond me. I shall have no peace until it is said."

"Then say it."

He took her face in his two hands and looked into her eyes.

"Since I have been away," he said brutally, "there has been no one else in your heart? You have been true to me, to our love?"

"I have been true," she answered with a little smile.

He held his eyes on hers a long while, hesitating whether to be silent or to continue, and then, all at once, convinced, burst into tears and begged her pardon.

"Oh, I shouldn't have asked it—forgive me."

"Do whatever is easiest for you, my love," she answered. "There is nothing to forgive. I understand all. I love you for it."

Only she never asked him any questions, and that alarmed him.

The second time report had coupled her name with a Gabriel Lombardi, a great baritone with whom she was appearing. When he arrived, as soon as they were alone, he swung her about in his arms and cried in a strangled voice:

"Swear to me that you have been faithful."

"I swear."

"Gabriel Lombardi"?

"I can't abide him".

"Ah, if I had never told you to lie to me—fool that I was."

Then she said calmly, with that deep conviction which always moved him: "Ben, when you asked me that, I told you I would never lie. I have told you the truth. No man has ever had the pressure of my fingers, and no man ever will."

So intense had been his emotion that he had almost a paroxysm. When he opened his eyes he found her face wet with tears.

"Ah, Madeleine," he said, "I am brutal with you. I cannot help it."

"I would not have you love me differently," she said gently, and through her tears he seemed to see a faint, elusive smile, that was gone quickly if it was ever there at all.

Another time, he said to himself: "No, I will say nothing. She will come to me herself, put her arms around me, and tell me with a smile that no other thought has been in her heart all this while. That's it. If I wait she will make the move, she will make the move each time—and that will be much better."

He waited three days, but she made no allusion. He waited another, and then he said lightly:

"You see, I am reforming."

"How so?"

"Why, I don't ask foolish questions any more."

"That's so."

"Still—"

"Well?" she said, looking up.

"Still, you might have guessed what I wanted," he answered, a little hurt.

She rose quickly and came lightly to him, putting her hand on his shoulder.

"Is that what you wish?" she said.

"Yes."

She repeated slowly her protestations and when she had ended, said, "Take me in your arms—hurt me."

"Now she will understand," he thought; "the next time she will not wait."

But each time, though he martyrized his soul in patience, he was forced to bring up the question that would not let him rest.

He could not understand why she did not save him this useless agony. Sometimes when he wanted to find an excuse he said to himself it was because she felt humiliated that he should still doubt. At other times, he stumbled on explanations that terrified him. Then he remembered with bitterness the promise that he had exacted from her, a promise that, instead of bringing him peace, had left only an endless torment, and forgetting all his protestations he would cry to himself, in a cold perspiration:

"Ah, if she is really lying, how can I ever be sure?"



III

In the eighth year, Madeleine Conti retired from the stage and announced her marriage. After five years of complete happiness she was taken suddenly ill, as the result of exposure to a drenching storm. One afternoon, as he waited by her bedside, talking in broken tones of all that they had been to each other, he said to her in a voice that he tried nervously to school to quietness:

"Madeleine, you know that our life together has been without the slightest shadow from the first. You know we have proved to each other how immense our love has been. In all these years I have grown in maturity and understanding. I regret only one thing, and I have regretted it bitterly, every day—that I once asked you, if—if ever for a moment another man came into your life to hide it from me, to tell me a lie. It was a great mistake. I have never ceased to regret it. Our love has been so above all worldly things that there ought not to be the slightest concealment between us. I release you from that promise. Tell me now the truth. It will mean nothing to me. During the eight years when we were separated there were—there must have been times, times of loneliness, of weakness, when other men came into your life. Weren't there?"

She turned and looked at him steadily, her large eyes seeming larger and more brilliant from the heightened fever of her cheeks. Then she made a little negative sign of her head, still looking at him.

"No, never."

"You don't understand, Madeleine," he said, dissatisfied, "or you are still thinking of what I said to you there in Etretat. That was thirteen years ago. Then I had just begun to love you, I feared for the future, for everything. Now I have tested you, and I have never had a doubt. I know the difference between the flesh and the spirit. I know your two selves; I know how impossible it would have been otherwise. Now you can tell me."

"There is nothing—to tell," she said slowly.

"I expected that you would have other men who loved you about you," he said, feverishly. "I knew it would be so. I swear to you I expected it. I know why you continue to deny it. It's for my sake, isn't it? I love you for it. But, believe me, in such a moment there ought nothing to stand between us. Madeleine, Madeleine, I beg you, tell me the truth."

She continued to gaze at him fixedly, without turning away her great eyes, as forgetting himself, he rushed on:

"Yes, let me know the truth—that will be nothing now. Besides, I have guessed it. Only I must know one way or the other. All these years I have lived in doubt. You see what it means to me. You must understand what is due me after all our life together. Madeleine, did you lie to me?"

"No."

"Listen," he said, desperately. "You never asked me the same question—why, I never understood—but if you had questioned me I could not have answered truthfully what you did. There, you see, there is no longer the slightest reason why you should not speak the truth."

She half closed her eyes—wearily.

"I have told—the truth."

"Ah, I can't believe it," he cried, carried away. "Oh, cursed day when I told you what I did. It's that which tortures me. You adore me—you don't wish to hurt me, to leave a wound behind, but I swear to you if you told me the truth I should feel a great weight taken from my heart, a weight that has been here all these years. I should know that every corner of your soul had been shown to me, nothing withheld. I should know absolutely, Madeleine, believe me, when I tell you this, when I tell you I must know. Every day of my life I have paid the penalty, I have suffered the doubts of the damned, I have never known an hour's peace! I beg you, I implore you, only let me know the truth; the truth—I must know the truth!"

He stopped suddenly, trembling all over, and held out his hands to her, his face lashed with suffering.

"I have not lied," she said slowly, after a long study. She raised her eyes, feebly made the sign of the cross, and whispered, "I swear it."

Then he no longer held in his tears. He dropped his head, and his body shook with sobs, while from time to time he repeated, "Thank God, thank God."



IV

The next day Madeleine Conti had a sudden turn for the worse, which surprised the attendants. Doctor Kimball, the American, doctor, and Pere Francois, who had administered the last rites, were walking together in the little formal garden, where the sun flung short, brilliant shadows of scattered foliage about them.

"She was an extraordinary artist and her life was more extraordinary," said Dr. Kimball. "I heard her debut at the Opera Comique. For ten years her name was the gossip of all Europe. Then all at once she meets a man whom no one knows, falls in love, and is transformed. These women are really extraordinary examples of hysteria. Each time I know one it makes me understand the scientific phenomenon of Mary Magdalene. It is really a case of nerve reaction. The moral fever that is the fiercest burns itself out the quickest and seems to leave no trace behind. In this case love came also as a religious conversion. I should say the phenomena were identical."

"She was happy," said the cure, turning to go.

"Yes, it was a great romance."

"A rare one. She adored him. Love is a tide that cleanses all."

"Yet she was of the stage up to the last. You know she would not have her husband in the room at the end."

"She had a great heart," said the cure quietly. "She wished to spare him that suffering."

"She had an extraordinary will," said the doctor, glancing at him quickly. He added, tentatively: "She asked two questions that were curious enough."

"Indeed," said the cure, lingering a moment with his hand on the gate.

"She wanted to know whether persons in a delirium talked of the past and if after death the face returned to its calm."

"What did you say to her about the effects of delirium?" said the cure with his blank face.

"That it was a point difficult to decide," said the doctor slowly. "Undoubtedly, in a delirium, everything is mixed, the real and the imagined, the memory and the fantasy, actual experience and the inner dream-life of the mind which is so difficult to classify. It was after that, that she made her husband promise to see her only when she was conscious and to remain away at the last."

"It is easily understood," said the cure quietly, without change of expression on his face that held the secrets of a thousand confessionals. "As you say, for ten years she had lived a different life. She was afraid that in her delirium some reference to that time might wound unnecessarily the man who had made over her life. She had a great courage. Peace be with her soul."

"Still,"—Doctor Kimball hesitated, as though considering the phrasing of a delicate question; but Father Francois, making a little amical sign of adieu, passed out of the garden, and for a moment his blank face was illumined by one of those rare smiles, such as one sees on the faces of holy men; smiles that seem in perfect faith to look upon the mysteries of the world to come.



EVEN THREES



I

Ever since the historic day when a visiting clergyman accomplished the feat of pulling a ball from the tenth tee at an angle of two hundred and twenty-five degrees into the river that is the rightful receptacle for the eighth tee, the Stockbridge golf-course has had seventeen out of the eighteen holes that are punctuated with possible water hazards. The charming course itself lies in the flat of the sunken meadows which the Housatonic, in the few thousand years which are necessary for the proper preparation of a golf-course, has obligingly eaten out of the high, accompanying bluffs. The river, which goes wriggling on its way as though convulsed with merriment, is garnished with luxurious elms and willows, which occasionally deflect to the difficult putting-greens the random slices of certain notorious amateurs.

From the spectacular bluffs of the educated village of Stockbridge nothing can be imagined more charming than the panorama that the course presents on a busy day. Across the soft, green stretches, diminutive caddies may be seen scampering with long buckling-nets, while from the river-banks numerous recklessly exposed legs wave in the air as the more socially presentable portions hang frantically over the swirling current. Occasionally an enthusiastic golfer, driving from the eighth or ninth tees, may be seen to start immediately in headlong pursuit of a diverted ball, the swing of the club and the intuitive leap of the legs forward forming so continuous a movement that the main purpose of the game often becomes obscured to the mere spectator. Nearer, in the numerous languid swales that nature has generously provided to protect the interests of the manufacturers, or in the rippling patches of unmown grass, that in the later hours will be populated by enthusiastic caddies, desperate groups linger in botanizing attitudes.

Every morning lawyers who are neglecting their clients, doctors who have forgotten their patients, business men who have sacrificed their affairs, even ministers of the gospel who have forsaken their churches, gather in the noisy dressing-room and listen with servile attention while some unscrubbed boy who goes around under eighty imparts a little of his miraculous knowledge.

Two hours later, for every ten that have gone out so blithely, two return crushed and despondent, denouncing and renouncing the game, once and for all, absolutely and finally, until the afternoon, when they return like thieves in the night and venture out in a desperate hope; two more come stamping back in even more offensive enthusiasm; and the remainder straggle home moody and disillusioned, reviving their sunken spirits by impossible tales of past accomplishments.

There is something about these twilight gatherings that suggests the degeneracy of a rugged race; nor is the contamination of merely local significance. There are those who lie consciously, with a certain frank, commendable, whole-hearted plunge into iniquity. Such men return to their worldly callings with intellectual vigor unimpaired and a natural reaction toward the decalogue. Others of more casuistical temperament, unable all at once to throw over the traditions of a New England conscience to the exigencies of the game, do not burst at once into falsehood, but by a confusing process weaken their memories and corrupt their imaginations. They never lie of the events of the day. Rather they return to some jumbled happening of the week before and delude themselves with only a lingering qualm, until from habit they can create what is really a form of paranoia, the delusion of greatness, or the exaggerated ego. Such men, inoculated with self-deception, return to the outer world, to deceive others, lower the standards of business morality, contaminate politics, and threaten the vigor of the republic. R.N. Booverman, the Treasurer, and Theobald Pickings, the unenvied Secretary of an unenvied hoard, arrived at the first tee at precisely ten o'clock on a certain favorable morning in early August to begin the thirty-six holes which six times a week, six months of the year, they played together as sympathetic and well-matched adversaries. Their intimacy had arisen primarily from the fact that Pickings was the only man willing to listen to Booverman's restless dissertations on the malignant fates which seemed to pursue him even to the neglect of their international duties, while Booverman, in fair exchange, suffered Pickings to enlarge ad libitum on his theory of the rolling versus the flat putting-greens.

Pickings was one of those correctly fashioned and punctilious golfers whose stance was modeled on classic lines, whose drive, though it averaged only twenty-five yards over the hundred, was always a well-oiled and graceful exhibition of the Royal St. Andrew's swing, the left sole thrown up, the eyeballs bulging with the last muscular tension, the club carried back until the whole body was contorted into the first position of the traditional hoop-snake preparing to descend a hill. He used the interlocking grip, carried a bag with a spoon driver, an aluminium cleek, three abnormal putters, and wore one chamois glove with air-holes on the back. He never accomplished the course in less than eighty five and never exceeded ninety four, but, having aimed to set a correct example rather than to strive vulgarly for professional records, was always in a state of offensive optimism due to a complete sartorial satisfaction.

Booverman, on the contrary, had been hailed in his first years as a coming champion. With three holes eliminated, he could turn in a card distinguished for its fours and threes; but unfortunately these sad lapses inevitably occurred. As Booverman himself admitted, his appearance on the golf-links was the signal for the capricious imps of chance who stir up politicians to indiscreet truths and keep the Balkan pot of discord bubbling, to forsake immediately these prime duties, and enjoy a little relaxation at his expense.

Now, for the first three years Booverman responded in a manner to delight imp and devil. When standing thirty-four for the first six holes, he sliced into the jungle, and, after twenty minutes of frantic beating of the bush, was forced to acknowledge a lost ball and no score, he promptly sat down, tore large clutches of grass from the sod, and expressed himself to the admiring delight of the caddies, who favorably compared his flow of impulsive expletives to the choice moments of their own home life. At other times he would take an offending club firmly in his big hands and break it into four pieces, which he would drive into the ground, hurling the head itself, with a last diabolical gesture, into the Housatonic River, which, as may be repeated, wriggles its way through the course as though convulsed with merriment.

There were certain trees into which he inevitably drove, certain waggish bends of the river where, no matter how he might face, he was sure to arrive. There was a space of exactly ten inches under the clubhouse where his balls alone could disappear. He never ran down a long put, but always hung on the rim of the cup. It was his adversary who executed phenomenal shots, approaches of eighty yards that dribbled home, sliced drives that hit a fence and bounded back on the course. Nothing of this agreeable sort had ever happened or could ever happen to him. Finally the conviction of a certain predestined damnation settled upon him. He no longer struggled; his once rollicking spirits settled into a moody despair. Nothing encouraged him or could trick him into a display of hope. If he achieved a four and two twos on the first holes, he would say vindictively:

"What's the use? I'll lose my ball on the fifth."

And when this happened, he no longer swore, but said gloomily with even a sense of satisfaction: "You can't get me excited. Didn't I know it would happen?"

Once in a while he had broken out, "If ever my luck changes, if it comes all at once—"

But he never ended the sentence, ashamed, as it were, to have indulged in such a childish fancy. Yet, as Providence moves in a mysterious way its wonders to perform, it was just this invincible pessimism that alone could have permitted Booverman to accomplish the incredible experience that befell him.



II

Topics of engrossing mental interests are bad form on the golf-links, since they leave a disturbing memory in the mind to divert it from that absolute intellectual concentration which the game demands. Therefore Pickings and Booverman, as they started toward the crowded first tee, remarked de rigueur:

"Good weather."

"A bit of a breeze."

"Not strong enough to affect the drives."

"The greens have baked out."

"Fast as I've seen them."

"Well, it won't help me."

"How do you know?" said Pickings, politely, for the hundredth time. "Perhaps this is the day you'll get your score."

Booverman ignored this set remark, laying his ball on the rack, where two predecessors were waiting, and settled beside Pickings at the foot of the elm which later, he knew, would rob him of a four on the home green.

Wessels and Pollock, literary representatives, were preparing to drive. They were converts of the summer, each sacrificing their season's output in a frantic effort to surpass the other. Pickings, the purist, did not approve of them in the least. They brought to the royal and ancient game a spirit of Bohemian irreverence and banter that offended his serious enthusiasm.

When Wessels made a convulsive stab at his ball and luckily achieved good distance, Pollock remarked behind his hand, "A good shot, damn it!"

Wessels stationed himself in a hopefully deprecatory attitude and watched Pollock build a monument of sand, balance his ball, and whistling nervously through his teeth, lunge successfully down. Whereupon, in defiance of etiquette, he swore with equal fervor, and they started off.

Pickings glanced at Booverman in a superior and critical way, but at this moment a thin, dyspeptic man with undisciplined whiskers broke in serenely without waiting for the answers to the questions he propounded:

"Ideal weather, eh? Came over from Norfolk this morning; ran over at fifty miles an hour. Some going, eh? They tell me you've quite a course here; record around seventy-one, isn't it? Good deal of water to keep out of? You gentlemen some of the cracks? Course pretty fast with all this dry weather? What do you think of the one-piece driver? My friend, Judge Weatherup. My name's Yancy—Cyrus P."

A ponderous person who looked as though he had been pumped up for the journey gravely saluted, while his feverish companion rolled on:

"Your course's rather short, isn't it? Imagine it's rather easy for a straight driver. What's your record? Seventy-one amateur? Rather high, isn't it? Do you get many cracks around here? Caddies seem scarce. Did either of you gentlemen ever reflect how surprising it is that better scores aren't made at this game? Now, take seventy-one; that's only one under fours, and I venture to say at least six of your holes are possible twos, and all the rest, sometime or other, have been made in three. Yet you never hear of phenomenal scores, do you, like a run of luck at roulette or poker? You get my idea?"

"I believe it is your turn, sir," said Pickings, both crushing and parliamentary. "There are several waiting."

Judge Weatherup drove a perfect ball into the long grass, where successful searches averaged ten minutes, while his voluble companion, with an immense expenditure of force, foozled into the swale to the left, which was both damp and retentive.

"Shall we play through?" said Pickings, with formal preciseness. He teed his ball, took exactly eight full practice swings, and drove one hundred and fifty yards as usual directly in the middle of the course.

"Well, it's straight; that's all can be said for it," he said, as he would say at the next seventeen tees.

Booverman rarely employed that slogan. That straight and narrow path was not in his religious practice. He drove a long ball, and he drove a great many that did not return in his bag. He glanced resentfully to the right, where Judge Weatherup was straddling the fence, and to the left, where Yancy was annoying the bullfrogs.

"Darn them!" he said to himself. "Of course now I'll follow suit."

But whether or not the malignant force of suggestion was neutralized by the attraction in opposite directions, his drive went straight and far, a beautiful two hundred and forty yards.

"Tine shot, Mr. Booverman," said Frank, the professional, nodding his head, "free and easy, plenty of follow-through."

"You're on your drive to-day," said Pickings, cheerfully.

"Sure! When I get a good drive off the first tee," said Booverman discouraged, "I mess up all the rest. You'll see."

"Oh, come now," said Pickings, as a matter of form. He played his shot, which came methodically to the edge of the green.

Booverman took his mashy for the short running-up stroke to the pin, which seemed so near.

"I suppose I've tried this shot a thousand times," he said savagely. "Any one else would get a three once in five times—any one but Jonah's favorite brother."

He swung carelessly, and watched with a tolerant interest the white ball roll on to the green straight for the flag. All at once Wessels and Pollock, who were ahead, sprang into the air and began agitating their hats.

"By George! it's in!" said Pickings. "You've run it down. First hole in two! Well, what do you think of that?"

Booverman, unconvinced, approached the hole with suspicion, gingerly removing the pin. At the bottom, sure enough, lay his ball for a phenomenal two.

"That's the first bit of luck that has ever happened to me," he said furiously; "absolutely the first time in my whole career."

"I say, old man," said Pickings, in remonstrance, "you're not angry about it, are you?"

"Well, I don't know whether I am or not," said Booverman, obstinately. In fact, he felt rather defrauded. The integrity of his record was attacked. "See here, I play thirty-six holes a day, two hundred and sixteen a week, a thousand a month, six thousand a year; ten years, sixty thousand holes; and this is the first time a bit of luck has ever happened to me—once in sixty thousand times."

Pickings drew out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

"It may come all at once," he said faintly.

This mild hope only infuriated Booverman. He had already teed his ball for the second hole, which was poised on a rolling hill one hundred and thirty-five yards away. It is considered rather easy as golf-holes go. The only dangers are a matted wilderness of long grass in front of the tee, the certainty of landing out of bounds on the slightest slice, or of rolling down hill into a soggy substance on a pull. Also there is a tree to be hit and a sand-pit to be sampled.

"Now watch my little friend the apple-tree," said Booverman. "I'm going to play for it, because, if I slice, I lose my ball, and that knocks my whole game higher than a kite." He added between his teeth: "All I ask is to get around to the eighth hole before I lose my ball. I know I'll lose it there."

Due to the fact that his two on the first brought him not the slightest thrill of nervous joy, he made a perfect shot, the ball carrying the green straight and true.

"This is your day all right," said Pickings, stepping to the tee.

"Oh, there's never been anything the matter with my irons," said Booverman, darkly. "Just wait till we strike the fourth and fifth holes."

When they climbed the hill, Booverman's ball lay within three feet of the cup, which he easily putted out.

"Two down," said Pickings, inaudibly. "By George! what a glorious start!"

"Once in sixty thousand times," said Booverman to himself. The third hole lay two hundred and five yards below, backed by the road and trapped by ditches, where at that moment Pollock, true to his traditions as a war correspondent, was laboring in the trenches, to the unrestrained delight of Wessels, who had passed beyond.

"Theobald," said Booverman, selecting his cleek and speaking with inspired conviction, "I will tell you exactly what is going to happen. I will smite this little homeopathic pill, and it will land just where I want it. I will probably put out for another two. Three holes in twos would probably excite any other human being on the face of this globe. It doesn't excite me. I know too well what will follow on the fourth or fifth. Watch."

"Straight to the pin," said Pickings in a loud whisper. "You've got a dead line on every shot to-day. Marvelous! When you get one of your streaks, there's certainly no use in my playing."

"Streak's the word," said Booverman, with a short, barking laugh. "Thank heaven, though, Pickings, I know it! Five years ago I'd have been shaking like a leaf. Now it only disgusts me. I've been fooled too often; I don't bite again."

In this same profoundly melancholic mood he approached his ball, which lay on the green, hole high, and put down a difficult put, a good three yards for his third two.

Pickings, despite all his classic conservatism, was so overcome with excitement that he twice putted over the hole for a shameful five.

Booverman's face as he walked to the fourth tee was as joyless as a London fog. He placed his ball carelessly, selected his driver, and turned on the fidgety Pickings with the gloomy solemnity of a father about to indulge in corporal punishment.

"Once in sixty thousand times, Picky. Do you realize what a start like this—three twos—would mean to a professional like Frank or even an amateur that hadn't offended every busy little fate and fury in the whole hoodooing business? Why, the blooming record would be knocked into the middle of next week."

"You'll do it," said Pickings in a loud whisper. "Play carefully."

Booverman glanced down the four-hundred-yard straightaway and murmured to himself:

"I wonder, little ball, whither will you fly? I wonder, little ball, have I bid you good-by? Will it be 'mid the prairies in the regions to the west? Will it be in the marshes where the pollywogs nest? Oh, tell me, little ball, is it ta-ta or good-by?"



He pronounced the last word with a settled conviction, and drove another long, straight drive. Pickings, thrilled at the possibility of another miracle, sliced badly.

"This is one of the most truly delightful holes of a picturesque course," said Booverman, taking out an approaching cleek for his second shot. "Nothing is more artistic than the tiny little patch of putting-green under the shaggy branches of the willows. The receptive graveyard to the right gives a certain pathos to it, a splendid, quiet note in contrast to the feeling of the swift, hungry river to the left, which will now receive and carry from my outstretched hand this little white floater that will float away from me. No matter; I say again the fourth green is a thing of ravishing beauty."

This second shot, low and long, rolled up in the same unvarying line.

"On the green," said Pickings.

"Short," said Booverman, who found, to his satisfaction, that he was right by a yard.

"Take your time," said Pickings, biting his nails.

"Rats! I'll play it for a five," said Booverman.

His approach ran up on the line, caught the rim of the cup, hesitated, and passed on a couple of feet.

"A four, anyway," said Pickings, with relief.

"I should have had a three," said Booverman, doggedly. "Any one else would have had a three, straight on the cup. You'd have had a three, Picky; you know you would."

Pickings did not answer. He was slowly going to pieces, forgetting the invincible stoicism that is the pride of the true golfer.

"I say, take your time, old chap," he said, his voice no longer under control. "Go slow! go slow!"

"Picky, for the first four years I played this course," said Booverman, angrily, "I never got better than a six on this simple three-hundred-and-fifty-yard hole. I lost my ball five times out of seven. There is something irresistibly alluring to me in the mosquito patches to my right. I think it is the fond hope that when I lose this nice new ball I may step inadvertently on one of its hundred brothers, which I may then bring home and give decent burial."

Pickings, who felt a mad and ungolfish desire to entreat him to caution, walked away to fight down his emotion.

"Well?" he said, after the click of the club had sounded.

"Well," said Booverman, without joy, "that ball is lying about two hundred and forty yards straight up the course, and by this time it has come quietly to a little cozy home in a nice, deep hoof track, just as I found it yesterday afternoon. Then I will have the exquisite pleasure of taking my niblick, and whanging it out for the loss of a stroke. That'll infuriate me, and I'll slice or pull. The best thing to do, I suppose, would be to play for a conservative six."

When, after four butchered shots, Pickings had advanced to where Booverman had driven, the ball lay in clear position just beyond the bumps and rills that ordinarily welcome a long shot. Booverman played a perfect mashy, which dropped clear on the green, and ran down a moderate put for a three.

They then crossed the road and arrived by a planked walk at a dirt mound in the midst of a swamp. Before them the cozy marsh lay stagnant ahead and then sloped to the right in the figure of a boomerang, making for those who fancied a slice a delightful little carry of one hundred and fifty yards. To the left was a procession of trees, while beyond, on the course, for those who drove a long ball, a giant willow had fallen the year before in order to add a new perplexity and foster the enthusiasm for luxury that was beginning among the caddies.