Madeleine laughed aloud.

"But, my dear, this is only a passing phase. Of course your system is depressed but that will wear off, and what you need now, even more than brandy twice a day, is a mental tonic. By the way, don't you think you might leave it off now?"

"No, I do not. If my system is depressed I'd go to pieces altogether without it."

"I'll give you a regular tonic—"

"I'll not take it. You are not disposed to use force, I imagine."

"No, I cannot do that. But you'll accept these invitations—some of them?" He indicated a pile of square envelopes on the table. He had opened them but she had not given them a passing glance.

"Society would have the effect of arresting my 'cure.' I hate it. If you force me to go out I'll drink too much and disgrace you."

"But what shall I tell them?" he asked in despair. "I see some of them every day and they'll quiz my head off. They can't suspect the truth, of course, but—but—" he paused and his ruddy face turned a deep brick red. He had never mentioned Masters' name to her since he announced his impending departure, but he was desperate. "They'll think you're pining, that's what! That you won't go out because you take no interest in any one but Langdon Masters."

She was standing by the window with her back to him, looking down into the street. She turned and met his eyes squarely.

"That would be quite true," she said.

"You do not mean that!"

"I have never forgotten him for a moment and I never shall as long as I live." She averted her eyes from his pallid face but went on remorselessly. "If you had been merciful you would have let me die when I was so ill. But you showed me another way, and now you would take even that from me."

"Do—do you mean to say that you tried to drink yourself to death?"

"Yes, I mean that. And if you really cared for me you would let me do it now."

"That I'll never do," he cried violently. "I'll cure you and you'll get over this damned nonsense in time."

"I never shall get over it. Don't delude yourself for an instant."

He stared at her with a sickening sense of impotence—and despair. He thought she had never looked more beautiful. She wore a graceful wrapper of pale blue camel's hair and her long hair in two pendent braids. She was very white and she looked as cold and remote as the moon.

"Madeleine! Madeleine! You have changed so completely! I cannot believe that you'll never be the same Madeleine again. Why—you—you look as if you were not there at all!"

"Only my shell is here. The real me is with him."

"Curse the man! Curse him! Curse him! I wish I'd blown out his brains!" He threw his arms about wildly and she wondered if he would strike her. But he threw himself into a chair and burst into heavy sobbing. Madeleine ran out of the room.



XXXI

"I tell you it's true. You needn't pooh-pooh at me, Antoinette McLane. I have it on the best authority."

"Old Ben Travers, I suppose!"

"No, it's not Ben Travers, although he'll find it out soon enough. Her chambermaid knows my cook. She is devoted to Madeleine, evidently, and cried after she had told it, but—well, I suppose it was too good for any mere female to keep."

"Servants' gossip," replied Mrs. McLane witheringly. "I should think it would be beneath your self-respect to listen to it. Fancy gossiping with one's cook."

"I didn't," replied Mrs. Abbott with dignity. "She told my maid, and if we didn't listen to our maids' gossip how much would we really know about what goes on in this town?"

Mrs. McLane, Mrs. Ballinger, Guadalupe Hathaway and Sally Abbott were sitting in Mrs. Abbott's large and hideous front parlor after luncheon, and she had tormented them throughout the meal with a promise of "something that would make their hair stand on end."

She had succeeded beyond her happy expectations. Mrs. McLane's eyes were flashing. Mrs. Ballinger looked like a proud silver poplar that had been seared by lightning. Sally burst into tears, and Miss Hathaway's large cold Spanish blue eyes saw visions of Nina Randolph, a brilliant creature of the early sixties, whom she had tried to save from the same fate.

"Be sure the bell boys will find it out," continued Mrs. Abbott unctuously. "And when it gets to the Union Club—well, no use for us to try to hush it up."

"As you are trying to do now!"

"You needn't spit fire at me. I feel as badly as you do about it. If I've told just you four it's only to talk over what can be done."

"I don't believe there's a word of truth in the story. Probably that wretched servant is down on her for some reason. Madeleine Talbot! Why, she's the proudest creature that ever lived."

"She might have the bluest blood of the South in her veins," conceded Mrs. Ballinger handsomely. "I pride myself on my imagination but I simply cannot see her in such a condition."

"If it's true, it's Masters, of course," said Miss Hathaway. "The only reason I didn't fall in love with him was because it was no use. But he's the sort of man—there are not many of them!—who would make a woman love him to desperation if he loved her himself. And she'd never forget him."

"I don't believe it," said Mrs. Ballinger coldly. "I never believed that Madeleine was in love with Langdon Masters. A good woman loves only her husband."

"Oh, mamma!" wailed Sally. "Madeleine is young, and the doctor's a dear but he wasn't the sort of a man for her at all. He just attracted her when she was a girl because he was so different from the men she knew. But Langdon is exactly suited to her. I guessed it before any of you did. It worried me dreadfully, but I sympathized—I always admired Langdon—if he'd looked at me before I fell in love with Hal I believe I'd have married him—but I wish, oh, how I wish, Madeleine could get a divorce."

"Sally Ballinger!" Her mother's voice quavered. "This terrible California! If you had been brought up in Virginia—"

"But I wasn't. And I mean what I say. And—and—it's true about Madeleine. I went there the other day and she saw me—and—oh, I never meant to tell it—it's too terrible!"

"So," said Mrs. McLane. "So," She added thoughtfully after a moment. "It's a curious coincidence. Langdon Masters is drinking himself to death in New York. Jack Belmont returned the other day—he told Mr. McLane."

She had been interrupted several times, Madeleine for the moment forgotten.

"Why didn't Alexander Groome know? He's his cousin and bad enough himself, heaven knows."

"Oh, poor Langdon! Poor Langdon! I knew he could love a woman like that—"

"He has remarkable powers of concentration!"

"I'll wager Mr. Abbott heard it himself at the Club, the wretch! He'll hear from me!"

"Oh, it's too awful," wailed Sally again. "What an end to a romance. It was quite perfect before—in a way. And now instead of pitying poor Madeleine and wishing we were her—she—which is it?—we'll all be despising her!"

"It's loathsome," said Mrs. Ballinger. "I wish I had not heard it. I prefer to believe that such things do not exist."

"Good heavens, mamma, I've heard that gentlemen in the good old South were as drunk as lords, oftener than not."

"As lords, yes. Langdon Masters is in no position to emulate his ancestors. And Madeleine! No one ever heard of a lady in the South taking to drink from disappointed love or anything else. When life was too hard for them they went into a beautiful decline and died in the odor of sanctity."

"They get terribly skinny and yellow in the last stages—"

"Sally!"

"Well, I don't care anything about Langdon Masters," announced Mrs. Abbott. "He's left here anyway, and like as not we'll never see him again. This is what I want to know: Can anything be done about Madeleine Talbot? Of course Howard poured whiskey down her throat until it got the best of her. But he should know how to cure her. That is if he knows the worst."

"You may be sure he knows the worst," said Mrs. McLane. "How could he help it?"

"That maid said she bought it on the sly all the time. Don't you suppose he'd put a stop to that if he knew it?"

"Well, he will find it out. And I'll not be the one to tell him. One ordeal of that sort is enough for a lifetime."

"Why not give her a talking to? She has always seemed to defer more to you than to any one else." Mrs. Abbott made the admission grudgingly.

"I am willing to try, if she will see me. But—if she knows what has happened to Masters—and ten to one she does—he may have written to her—I don't believe it will do any good. Alas! Why does youth take life so tragically? When she is as old as I am she will know that no man is worth the loss of a night's sleep."

"Yes, but Madeleine isn't old!" cried Sally. "She's young—young— and she can't live without him. I don't know whether she's weaker or stronger than Sibyl, but at any rate Sibyl is happy—"

"How do you know?"

"Can't you see it in her face at the theatre? Oh, I don't care! I'll tell it! Madeleine asked me to lunch to meet her one day last winter and I went. We had a splendid time. After lunch we sat on the rug before the fire and popped corn. Oh, you needn't all glare at me as if I'd committed a crime. It's hard to be hard when you're young, and Sibyl was my other intimate friend. But that's not the question at present. I've had an idea. Perhaps I could persuade Madeleine to stay with me. Now that I know, perhaps she won't mind so much. I only got in by accident. There's a new man at the desk and he let me go up—"

"Well, what is your idea?" asked Mrs. McLane impatiently. "What could you do with her if she did visit you—which she probably will not."

"I might be able to cure her. She wouldn't see anything to drink. Hal has sworn off. There's not a drop in sight, and not only on his account but because the last butler got drunk and fell in the lake. We'll not have any company while she's there. And I'd lock her in at night and never leave her alone in the daytime."

"That is not a bad idea at all," said Mrs. McLane emphatically. "But don't waste your time trying to persuade her. Go to Howard. Tell him the truth. He will give her a dose of valerian and take her over in a hack at night."

"I don't like the idea of Sally coming into contact with such a dreadful side of life—"

"But if I can save her, mamma?"

"Maria is Alexander Groome's wife and she has no influence over him."

"Oh, Maria! If he were my husband I'd lead him such a dance that he'd behave himself in self-defence. Maria is too much like you—"

"Sally Ballinger!"

"I only meant that you are an angel, mamma dear. And of course you are so enchanting and beautiful papa has always toed the mark. But Maria is good without being any too fascinating—"

"Sally is right," interrupted Mrs. McLane. "I am not sure that her plan will succeed. But no one has thought of a better. If Madeleine has a deeper necessity for stupefying her brain than shattered nerves, I doubt if any one could save her. But at least Sally can try. We'd be brutes if we left her to drown without throwing her a plank."

"Just what I said," remarked Mrs. Abbott complacently. "Was I not justified in telling you? And when you get her over there, Sally, and her mind is quite clear, warn her that while she may do what she chooses in private, if she elects to die that way, just let her once be seen in public in a state unbecoming a lady, and that is the end of her as far as we are concerned."

"Yes," said Mrs. McLane with a sigh. "We should have no choice. Poor Madeleine!"



XXXII

Madeleine awoke from a heavy drugged sleep and reached out her hand automatically for the drawer of her commode. It fumbled in the air for a moment and then she raised herself on her elbow. She glanced about the room. It was not her own.

She sprang out of bed. A key turned and Sally Abbott entered.

"What does this mean?" cried Madeleine. "What are you doing here, Sally? Why did Howard move me into another room?"

"He didn't. You are over at my house. He thought the country would be good for you for a while and I was simply dying to have you—"

"Where are my clothes? I am going back to the city at once."

"Now, Madeleine, dear." Sally put her arm round the tall form which was as rigid as steel in her embrace. But she was a valiant little person and strong with health and much life in the open. "You are going to stay with me until—until—you are better."

"I'll not. I must get back. At once! You don't understand—"

"Yes, I do. And I've something for you." She took a flask from the capacious pocket of her black silk apron and poured brandy into a glass.

Madeleine drank it, then sank heavily into a chair.

"That is more than he has been giving me," she said suspiciously. "How often did he tell you to give me that?"

"Four times a day."

"He's found out! He's found out!"

"That chambermaid blabbed, and of course he heard it. I—I—saw him just after. He felt so terribly, Madeleine dear! Your heart would have ached for him. And when I asked him to let you come over here he seemed to brighten up, and said it was the best thing to do."

Madeleine burst into tears, the first she had shed in many months. "Poor Howard! Poor Howard! But it will do no good."

"Oh, yes, it will. Now, let me help you dress. Or would you rather stay in bed today?"

"I'll dress. And I'm not going to stay, Sally. I give you fair warning."

"Oh, but you are. I've locked up your outdoor things—and my own! I'll only let you have them when we go out together."

"So you have turned yourself into my jailer?"

"Yes, I have. And don't try to look like an outraged empress until your stays are covered up. Put on your dress and we'll have a game of battledore and shuttlecock in the hall. It's raining. Then we'll have some music this afternoon. My alto used to go beautifully with your soprano, and I'll get out our duets. I haven't forgotten one of the accompaniments—What are you doing?"

Madeleine was undressing rapidly. "I haven't had my bath. I seldom forget that, even—where is the bath room? I forget."

"Across the hall. And leave your clothes here. Although you'd break your bones if you tried to jump out of the window. When you've finished I'll have a cup of strong coffee ready for you. Run along."



XXXIII

Lake Merritt, a small sheet of water near the little town of Oakland, was surrounded by handsome houses whose lawns sloped down to its rim. Most them were closed in summer, but a few of the owners, like the Harold Abbotts, lived there the year round. At all times, however, the lawns and gardens were carefully tended, for this was one of Fashion's chosen spots, and there must be no criticism from outsiders in Oakland. The statues on the lawns were rubbed down after the heavy rains and dusted as carefully in summer. There were grape-vine arbors and wild rose hedges, and the wide verandas were embowered. In summer there were many rowboats on the lake, and they lingered more often in the deep shade of the weeping willows fringing the banks. The only blot on the aristocratic landscape was a low brown restaurant kept by a Frenchman, known as "Old Blazes." It was a resort for gay parties that were quite respectable and for others that were not. Behind the public rooms was a row of cubicles patronized by men when on a quiet spree (women, too, it was whispered). There were no cabinet particuliers. Old Blazes had his own ideas of propriety; and no mind to be ousted from Lake Merritt.

Madeleine had found Sally Abbott's society far more endurable, when she paid her round of visits after Masters' departure, than that of the older women with their watchful or anxious eyes, and she had no suspicion that Sally had guessed her secret long since. If love had been her only affliction she would have been grateful for her society and amusing chatter, for they had much in common. But in the circumstances it was unthinkable. Not only was she terrified once more by the prospect of being "cured," but her shattered nerves demanded far more stimulation and tranquilizing than these small daily doses of brandy afforded.

Her will was in no way affected. She controlled even her nerves in Sally's presence, escaped from it twice a day under pretext of taking a nap, and went upstairs immediately after dinner. She had a large room at the back of the house where she could pace up and down unheard.

She pretended to be amiable and resigned, played battledoor and shuttlecock in the hall, or on the lawn when the weather permitted, sang in the evenings with Sally and Harold, and affected not to notice that she was locked in at night. She refused to drive, as she would have found sitting for any length of time unendurable, but she was glad to take long walks even in the rain—and was piloted away from the town and the railroad.

Sally wrote jubilant letters to Dr. Talbot, who thought it best to stay away. The servants were told that Mrs. Talbot was recovering from an illness and suspected nothing.

It lasted two weeks. Sally had inexorably diminished the doses after the seventh day. Madeleine's mind, tormented by her nerves, never ceased for a moment revolving plans for escape.

As they returned from a walk one afternoon they met callers at the door and it was impossible to deny them admittance. Madeleine excused herself and went up to her room wearing her coat and hat instead of handing them to Sally as usual. She put them in her wardrobe and locked the door and hid the key. At dinner it was apparent, however, that Sally had not noticed the omission of this detail in her daily espionage, for the visitors had told her much interesting gossip and she was interested in imparting it. Moreover, her mind was almost at rest regarding her captive.

Madeleine, some time since, had found that the key of another door unlocked her own, and secreted it. She had no money, but she had worn a heavy gold bracelet when her husband and Sally dressed her and they had pinned her collar with a pearl brooch. Sally followed her to her room after she had had time to undress and gave her the nightly draught, but did not linger; she had no mind that her husband should feel neglected and resent this interruption of an extended honeymoon.

Madeleine waited until the house was quiet. Then she went down the heavily carpeted stairs and let herself out by one of the long French windows. She had made her plans and walked swiftly to the restaurant. She knew "Old Blazes," for she had dined at his famous hostelry more than once with her husband or friends.

There was a party in the private restaurant. She walked directly to one of the cubicles and rang for a waiter and told him to send M'sieu to her at once.

"Old Blazes" came immediately, and if she expected him to look astonished she was agreeably disappointed. Nothing astonished him.

She held out her bracelet and brooch. "I want you to lend me some money on these," she said. "My husband will redeem them."

"Very well, madame." (He was far too discreet to recognize her.) "I will bring you the money at once."

"And I wish to buy a quart of Bourbon, which I shall take with me. You may also bring me a glass."

"Very well, madame."

He left the room and returned in a moment with a bottle of Bourbon, from which he had drawn the cork, a glass, and a bottle of Napa Soda. He also handed her two gold pieces. He had been a generous friend to many patrons and had reaped his reward.

"I should advise you to leave by the back entrance," he said. "Shall I have a hack there—in—"

"Send for it at once and I will take it when I am ready. Tell the man to drive on to the boat and to the Occidental Hotel."

"Yes, Madame. Good-night, Madame."

He closed the door. Madeleine left the restaurant three quarters of an hour later.



XXXIV

Colonel Belmont, Alexander Groome, Amos Lawton, Ogden Bascom and several other worthy citizens, were returning from a pleasant supper at Blazes'. They sat for a time in the saloon of the ferry boat El Capitan with the birds of gorgeous plumage they had royally entertained and then went outside to take the air; the ladies preferring to nap.

"Hello! What's that?" exclaimed Groome. "Something's up. Let's investigate."

At the end of the rear deck was a group of men and one or two women. They were crowding one another and those on the edge stood on tiptoe. Belmont was very tall and he could see over their heads without difficulty.

"It's a woman," he announced to his friends. "Drunk—or in a dead faint—"

A man laughed coarsely. "Drunk as they make 'em. No faint about that —Hi!—Quit yer shovin'—"

Belmont scattered the crowd as if they had been children and picked up the woman in his arms.

"My God!" he cried to his staring companions, and as he faced them he looked about to faint himself. "Do you see who it is? Where can we hide her?"

"Whe-e-ew!" whistled Groome, and for the moment was thankful for his Maria. "What the—"

"I've got my hack on the deck below," said one of the gaping crowd. "She came in it. Better take her right down, sir. I never seen her before but I seen she was a lady and tried to prevent her—"

"Lead the way.... I'll take her home," he said to the others. "And let's keep this dark if we can."

When the hack reached the Occidental Hotel he gave the driver a twenty-dollar gold piece and the man readily promised to "keep his mouth shut." He told the night clerk that Mrs. Talbot had sprained her ankle and fainted, and demanded a pass key if the doctor were out. A bell boy opened the parlor door of the Talbot suite and Colonel Belmont took off Madeleine's hat, placed her on the bed, and then went in search of the doctor.

When Madeleine opened her eyes her husband was sitting beside her. He poured some aromatic spirits of ammonia into a glass of water and she drank it indifferently.

"How did I get here?" she asked.

He told her in the bitterest words he had ever used.

"You are utterly disgraced. Some of those men may hold their tongues but others will not. By this time it is probably all over the Union Club. You are an outcast from this time forth."

"That means nothing to me. And I warned you."

"It is nothing to you that you have disgraced me also, I suppose?"

"No. You made an outcast of Langdon Masters. You wrecked his life and will be the cause of his early death. Meanwhile he is in the gutter. I am glad that I am publicly beside him.... Still, I would have spared you if I could. You are a good man according to your lights. If you had heeded my warning and made no foolish attempts to cure me, no one would have been the wiser."

"Several of the women knew it. And if you had taken advantage of the opportunity given you by Sally I think they would have guarded your secret. You have publicly disgraced them as well as yourself and your husband."

"Well, what shall you do? Throw me into the street? I wish that you would."

"No, I shall try to cure you again."

"And have a wife that your friends will cut dead? You'd be far better off if I were dead."

"Perhaps. But I shall do my duty. And if I can cure you I'll sell my practice and go elsewhere. To South America, perhaps."

"Scandal travels. You would never get away from it. Better stay here with your friends, who will not visit my sins on your head. They will never desert you. And you cannot cure me. Did you ever know any one to be cured against his will?"

"I shall lock you in these rooms and you can't drink what you haven't got."

"I've circumvented you before and I shall again."

"Then," he cried violently, "I'll put you in the Home for Inebriates!"

She laughed mockingly. "You'll never do anything of the sort. And I shouldn't care if you did. I should escape."

"Have you no pride left?"

"It is as dead as everything else but this miserable shell. As dead as all that was great in Langdon Masters. Won't you let me die in my own way?"

"I will not."

She sighed and moved her head restlessly on the pillow. "You mean to do what is right, I suppose. But you are cruel, cruel. You condemn me to live in torment."

"I shall give you more for a while than I did before. I was too abrupt. I wouldn't face the whole truth, I suppose."

"I'll kill myself."

"I have no fear of that. You are as superstitious as all religious women—although much good your religion seems to do you. And you have the same twisted logic as all women, clever as you are. You would drink yourself to death if I would let you, but you'd never commit the overt act. If you are relying on your jewels to bribe the servants with, you will not find them. They are in the safe at the Club. And I shall discontinue your allowance."

"Very well. Please go. I should like to take my bath."

He was obliged to attend an important consultation an hour later, but he did not lock the doors as he had threatened. He wanted as little scandal in the hotel as possible, and he believed her to be helpless without money. The barkeeper was an old friend of his, and when he instructed him to honor no orders from his suite he knew, that the man's promise could be relied on. The chambermaid was dismissed.

As soon as she was alone Madeleine wrote to her father and asked him for a thousand dollars. It was the first time she had asked him for money since her marriage; and he sent it to her with a long kindly letter, warning her against extravagance. She had given no reason for her request, but he inferred that she had been running up bills and was afraid to tell her husband. Was she ill, that she wrote so seldom? He understood that she had quite recovered. But she must remember that he and her mother were old people.

Several days after her return she had sold four new gowns, recently arrived from New York and unworn, to Sibyl Forbes.



XXXV

Ralph Holt ran down the steps of a famous night restaurant in north Montgomery Street on the edge of Chinatown. It was a disreputable place but it had a certain air of brilliancy, although below the sidewalk, and was favored by men that worked late on newspapers, not only for its excellent cuisine but because there was likely to be some garish bit of drama to refresh the jaded mind.

The large room was handsomely furnished with mahogany and lit by three large crystal chandeliers and many side brackets. It was about two thirds full. A band was playing and on a platform a woman in a Spanish costume of sorts was dancing the can-can, to the noisy appreciation of the male guests. Along one side of the room was a bar with a large painting above it of bathing nymphs. The waiters were Chinese.

Holt found an unoccupied table and ordered an oyster stew, then glanced about him for possible centres of interest. There were many women present, gaudily attired, but they were not the elite of the half-world. Neither did the gentlemen who made life gay and care-free for the haughty ladies of the lower ten thousand patronize anything so blatant. They were far too high-toned themselves. Their standards were elevated, all things considered.

But the women of commerce, of whatever status, had no interest for young Holt save as possible heroines of living drama. He had a lively news sense, and although an editor, and of a highly respectable sheet at that, he could become as keen on the track of a "story" as if he were still a reporter.

But although the night birds were eating little and drinking a great deal, at this hour of two in the morning, the only excitement was the marvellous high kicking of the black-eyed scantily clad young woman on the stage and the ribald applause of her admirers.

His eye was arrested by the slender back of a woman who sat at a table alone drinking champagne. She was so simply dressed that she was far more noticeable than if she had crowned herself with jewels. His lunch arrived at the moment, and it was not until he had satisfied his usual morning appetite that he remembered the woman and glanced her way again. Two men were sitting at her table, apparently endeavoring to engage her in conversation. They belonged to the type loosely known as men about town, of no definite position, but with money to spend and a turn for adventure.

It was equally apparent that they received no response to their amiable overtures, for they shrugged their shoulders in a moment, laughed, and went elsewhere. More than one woman sat alone and these were amenable enough. They came for no other purpose.

Holt paid his account and strolled over to the table. When he took one of the chairs he was shocked but not particularly surprised to see that the woman was Mrs. Talbot. The town had rung with her story all winter, and he had heard several months since that she had obtained money in some way and left her husband. The report was that Dr. Talbot had traced her to lodgings on the Plaza, but she had not only refused to return to him but to tell him where she had obtained her funds. She had informed him that she had sufficient money to keep her "long enough," but the doctor had his misgivings and directed his lawyers to pay the rent of the room and make an arrangement with a neighboring restaurant to send in her meals. Then he had gone off on a sea voyage. Holt had seen him driving his double team the day before, evidently on a round of visits. The sea, apparently, had done him little good. Nothing but age, no doubt, would shatter that superb constitution, but he had lost his ruddy color and his face was drawn and lined.

Madeleine had not raised her eyes. She looked like an effigy of well-bred contempt, and Holt did not wonder that she suffered briefly from the attentions of predatory males in search of amusement. Moreover, she was very thin, and the sirens of that day were voluptuous. They fed on cream and sweets until the proper curves of bust and hips were achieved, and those that appeared in the wrong place were held flat with a broad "wooden whalebone."

Holt was surprised to find her so little changed. It was evident she was one of those drinkers whom liquor made pallid not red; her skin was still smooth and her face had not lost its fine oval. But it was only a matter of time!

"Mrs. Talbot."

She raised her eyes with a faint start and with an expression of haughty disdain. But as she recognized him the expression faded and she regarded him sadly.

"You see," she said.

"It's a crime, you know."

"Have you any news of him?"

"Nothing new. It takes time to kill a man like that."

"I hope he is more fortunate than I am! It hasn't the effect that it did. It keeps my nerves sodden, but my brain is horribly clear. I no longer forget! And death is a long time coming. I am tired always, but I don't break."

"You shouldn't come to such places as this. If a man was drunk enough you couldn't discourage him."

"Oh, I have been spoken to in places like this and on the street by men in every stage of intoxication and by men who were quite sober. But I am able to take care of myself. This sort of man—the only sort I meet now—likes gay clothes and gay women."

"All the same it's not safe. Do you only go out at night?"

"Yes—I—I sleep in the daytime."

"Look here—I have a plan—I won't tell you what it is now—but meanwhile I wish you would promise me that you will not go out alone— to hells of this sort—again. I can make an arrangement for a while at the office to get off earlier, and I'll take you wherever you want to go. Is it a bargain?"

"Very well," she said indifferently. Then she smiled for the first time, and her face looked sweet and almost girlish once more. "You are very kind. Why do you take so much interest? I am only one more derelict. You must have seen many."

"Well, I'm just built that way. I took a shine to you the day in that old ark we ambled about in, and then I'm as fond of Masters as ever. D'you see? Now, let's get out of this. I'm going to see you home."

"Home!"

"Well, I'm glad the word gives you a shock, anyway. It's where you ought to be."

They left the restaurant and although, when they reached the sidewalk, she took his arm, he noticed that she did not stagger.

They walked up the hill past the north side of the Plaza. The gambling houses of the fifties and early sixties had moved elsewhere, and although there were low-browed shops on the east side with flaring gas jets before them even at this hour, the other three sides, devoted to offices and rooming-houses, were respectable. There were a few drunken sailors on the grass, who had wandered too far from Barbary Coast, but they were asleep.

"I never am molested here," she said. "I don't think I have ever met any one. Sometimes I have stood in the shadow up there and looked down Dupont Street. What a sight! Respectable Montgomery Street is never so crowded at four in the afternoon. And the women! Sometimes I have envied them, for life has never meant anything to them but just that. I never saw one of those painted harlots who looked as if she had even the remnants of a mind."

"Well, for heaven's sake keep your distance from Dupont Street. If some drunken brute caught you lurking in the shadows it might appeal to his sense of humor to toss you on his shoulder and run the length of the street with you—possibly fling you through one of the windows of those awful cottages into some harlot's lap, if she happened to be soliciting at the moment. Then she'd scratch your eyes out.... You know a lot about taking care of yourself," he fumed.

"Oh, I never go there any more," she said indifferently. "I'm tired of it."

"I can understand you leaving your husband and wishing to live alone —natural enough!—but what I cannot understand is that you, the quintessence of delicate breeding, should walk the streets at night and sit in dives. I wonder you can stand being in the room with such women, to say nothing of the men."

"It has been my hope to forget all I represented before, and danger means nothing to me. Moreover, there are other reasons. I must have exercise and air. I do not care to risk meeting any of my old friends. I must get away from myself—from solitude—during some part of the twenty-four hours. And—well—the die was cast. I was publicly disgraced. It doesn't matter what I do now, and when I sit in that sort of place I can imagine that he is in similar ones on the other side of the continent. I told you that I intended to be no better than he—and of course as I am a woman I am worse."

"I suppose you would not be half so charming if you were not so completely feminine. But just how many of these night hells have you been to?"

"I can't tell. I've been to far worse dives than that. I've even been in saloons over on Barbary Coast. But although I've been hurt accidentally several times in scuffles, and a bullet nearly hit me once, I seem to bear a charmed life. I suppose those do that want to die. And although they treat me with no respect they seem to regard me as a harmless lunatic, and—and—I take very little when I am out. I have just enough pride left not to care to be taken to the calaboose by a policeman."

"Good God! How can you even talk of such things? Some day you will regret all this horribly."

"I'll never regret anything except that I was born."

"Well, here we are. I'll not take you up to your rooms. Don't give them a chance at that sort of scandal whatever you do. It's lucky for you that alcohol doesn't send you along a still livelier road to perdition. It does most women."

"I see him every moment. Even if I did not, I do not think—well, of course if things were different I should not be an outcast of any sort. And don't imagine that my refinement suffers in these new contacts. The underworld interests me; I had never even tried to imagine it before. I am permitted to remain aloof and a spectator. At times it is all as unreal as I seem to myself, sitting there. But I never feel so close to vice as to complete honesty. I have often had glimpses of blacker sins in Society."

"Well, I'm glad it's no worse. To tell you the truth, I've avoided looking you up, for I didn't know—well, I didn't want to see you again if you were too different. Good-night. I'll meet you at this door tonight at twelve sharp."



XXXVI

There were doctors' offices on the first floor and Madeleine climbed wearily the two flights to her room. Her muscles felt as tired as her spirit, but she had an odd fancy that her skeleton was of fine flexible steel and not only indestructible but tenacious and dominant. It defied the worst she could do to organs and soul.

She unlocked her door and lit the gas jet. It was a decent room, large, with the bed in an alcove, and little uglier than those grim double parlors of her past that she had graced so often. But her own rooms at the hotel had been beautiful and luxurious. They had sheltered and pampered her body for five years, and her father's house was a stately mansion, refurnished, with the exception of old colonial pieces, after the grand tour in Europe. This room, although clean and sufficiently equipped, was sordid and commonplace, and the bed was as hard as the horsehair furniture. Her body as well as her aesthetic sense had rebelled more than once.

But she would never return; although she guessed that the complete dissociation from her old life and its tragic reminders had more than a little to do with the loathing for drink that had gradually possessed her. She had not admitted it to Holt, but it required a supreme effort of will to take a glass of hot whiskey and water at night, the taste disguised as much as possible by lime juice, and another in the daytime. She had no desire to reform! And she longed passionately to drown not only her heart but her pride. Now that her system was refusing its demoralizing drug she felt that horror of her descent only possible to a woman who has inherited and practised all the refinements of civilization. She longed to return to those first months of degraded oblivion, and could not!

The champagne or brandy she was forced to order in the dives she haunted, in order to secure a table, merely gave her tone for the moment.

Her nerves were less affected than her spirits. She had hours of such black depression that only the faint glimmering star of religion kept her from suicide. She had longer seasons for thought on Masters and his ruin—and of the hours they had spent together. One night she went out to Dolores and sat in the dark little church until dawn. She had nothing of the saint in her and felt no impulse to emulate Concha Arguello, who had become the first nun in California; moreover, Razanov had died an honorable death through no fault of his or his Concha's. She and Langdon Masters were lost souls and must expiate their sins in the eyes of the world that heaped on their heads its pitiless scorn.

Madeleine threw off her hat and dropped into the armchair, oblivious of its bumps. She began to cry quietly with none of her former hysteria. Holt was nearer to Masters than any one she knew, and she was grateful that he had not seen her in her hours of supreme degradation. If he ever saw Masters again he would tell him of her downfall, of course—and the reason for it; but at least he could paint no horrible concrete picture. For the first time she felt thankful that she had not sunk lower; been compelled, indeed, against her will, to retrace her steps. She even regretted the hideous episode of the ferry boat, although she had welcomed the exposure at the time. Her pride was lifting its battered head, and although she felt no remorse, and was without hope, and her unclouded consciousness foreshadowed long years of spiritual torment and longing with not a diversion to lighten the gloom, she possessed herself more nearly that night than since Holt had given her what she had believed to be her death blow.

If she could only die. But death was no friend of hers.



XXXVII

That afternoon Holt called on Dr. Talbot in his office. Half an hour later, looking flushed and angry, he strolled frowning down Bush street, then turned abruptly and walked in the direction of South Park. He did not know Mrs. McLane but he believed she would see him.

He called at midnight—and on many succeeding nights—for Madeleine and took her to several of the dives that seemed to afford her amusement. He noticed that she drank little, and had a glimmering of the truth. Newspaper men have several extra senses. It was also apparent that the life she had led had not made her callous. As he insisted upon "treating" her she would have none of champagne but ordered ponies of brandy.

Now that she had a cavalier she was stared at more than formerly, and there was some audible ribald comment which Holt did his best to ignore; but as time wore on those bent on hilarity or stupor ceased to notice two people uninterestingly sober.

Holt talked of Masters constantly, relating every incident of his sojourn in San Francisco he could recall, and of his past that had come to his knowledge; expatiating bitterly upon his wasted gifts and blasted life. The more Madeleine winced the further he drove in the knife.

One night they were sitting on a balcony in Chinatown. In the restaurant behind them a banquet was being given by a party of Chinese merchants, and Holt had thought the scene might amuse her. The round table was covered with dishes no larger than those played with in childhood and the portions were as minute. The sleek merchants wore gorgeously embroidered costumes, and behind them were women of their own race, dressed plainly in the national garb, their stiff oiled hair stuck with long pins lobed with glass. They were evidently an orchestra, for they sang, or rather chanted, in high monotonous voices, as mournful as their gray expressionless faces. In two recesses, extended on teakwood couches, were Chinamen presumably of the same class as the diners, but wearing their daily blue silk unadorned and leisurely smoking the opium pipe. The room was heavily gilded and decorated and on the third floor as befitted its rank. Chinamen of humbler status dined on the floor below, and the ground restaurant accommodated the coolies.

On the little balcony, their chairs wedged between large vases of growing plants, Madeleine could watch the function without attracting attention; or lean over the railing and look down upon the narrow street hung with gay paper lanterns above the open doors of shops that flaunted the wares of the Orient under strange gilt signs. There were many little balconies high above the street and they were as brilliantly lit as for a festival. From several came the sound of raucous instrumental music or that same thin chant as of lost souls wandering in outer darkness. The street was thronged with Chinamen of the lower caste in dark blue cotton smocks, pendent pigtails, and round coolie hats.

It was eight o'clock, but it was Holt's "night off" and as he had told her that morning he could get a pass for the dinner, and that it was time she "changed her bill," she had risen early and met him at her door.

It was apparent that she took a lively interest in this bit of Shanghai but a step out of the Occident, for her face had lost its heavy brooding and she asked him many questions. It was an hour before Masters' name was mentioned, and then she said abruptly:

"You tell me much of his life out here and before he came, but you hardly ever say anything about the present."

"That sort of life is much of a muchness."

"How do you hear?"

"One of the Bulletin men—Tom Lacey—went East just after Masters did. He is on the Times. Several of us correspond with him."

"Has—has he ever been—literally, I mean—in the gutter?"

"Probably. He was in a hospital for a time and when he came out several of his friends tried to buck him up. But it was no use. He did work on one of the newspapers—the Tribune, I believe—about half sober until he had paid his hospital bill with something to spare. Then he went to work in the same old steady painstaking way to drink himself to death."

"Wh—why did he go to the hospital? Was he very ill?"

"Busted the crust of a policeman and got his own busted at the same time."

"How is it you spared me this before?"

He pretended not to see her tears, or her working hands.

"Didn't want to give you too heavy doses at once, but you are so much stronger that I chanced it. He's been in more than one spectacular affair. One night, in front of the City Prison, he tossed the driver off a van as if the man had been a dead leaf, and before the guard had time to jump to his seat he was on the box and had lashed the horses. He drove like mad all over New York for hours, the prisoners inside yelling and cursing at the top of their lungs. They thought it was a new and devilishly ingenious mode of punishment. When the horses dropped he left the van where it stood and went home. There was a frightful row over the affair. Masters was arrested, of course, but bailed out. He has friends still and some of them are influential. The trial was postponed a few times and then dropped. His rows are too numerous to mention. When he was here and sober he betrayed anger only in his eyes, which looked like steel blades run through fire, and with the most caustic tongue ever put in a man's head. But when he's in certain stages of insobriety his fighting instincts appear to take their own sweet way. At other times, Lacey writes, he is as interesting as ever and men sit round eagerly and listen to him talk. At others he simply disappears. Did I tell you he had come into a little money—just recently?"

"No, you did not. Why doesn't he start a newspaper?"

"He's probably forgotten he ever wanted one—no, I don't fancy he ever forgets anything. Only death will destroy that brain no matter how he may obfuscate it. And I guess there are times when he can't, poor devil. But he couldn't start a newspaper on what he's got. It's just enough to buy him all he wants without the necessity for work."

"How did he get it?"

"His elder brother—only remaining member of the immediate family— died and left him the old plantation in Virgina—what there is left of it; and a small income from two or three old houses in Richmond. Masters told me once that when the war left them high and dry he agreed to waive his share in the estate provided his brother would take care of his mother and the old place. The estate comes to him now, but in trust. At his death, without legal heir, it goes to a cousin."

"Oh, take me home, please. I can't stand those wailing women any longer."



XXXVIII

A month later there was a tap on Madeleine's door. She rose earlier these days and opened it at once, assuming that it was a message from Holt. But Mr. McLane stood there.

"How are you, Madeleine? May I come in?" He shook her half-extended hand as if he were paying her an afternoon call at the Occidental Hotel, and sat down on the horsehair sofa with a genial smile; placing his high silk hat and gold-headed cane beside him.

"Glad to see you looking so well. I've wanted to call for a long time, but as you dropped us all like so many hot potatoes, I hesitated, and was delighted today when Howard gave me an excuse."

"Howard?"

"Yes, he wants you to go back to him."

"That I'll never do."

"Don't be hasty. He is willing to forget everything—he asked me to make you understand that he would never mention the subject. He will also put your share of your father's estate unreservedly in your hands as soon as the usual legal delays are over. You knew that your father was dead, did you not? And your mother also?"

"Oh yes, I knew. It didn't seem to make any difference. I knew I never should see them again anyhow."

"Howard was appointed trustee of your inheritance, but as I said, he does not mean to take advantage of the fact. I am informed, by the way, that your brother never told your parents that you had left Howard. He knew nothing beyond the fact, of course."

"Well, I am glad of that."

She had no intention of shedding any tears before Mr. McLane. Let him think her callous if he must.

"About Howard?"

"I'll never go back to him. I never want to see him again."

"Not if he would take you to Europe to live? There is an opening for an American doctor in Paris."

"I never want to see him again. I know he is a good man but I hate him. And if I did go back it would be worse. You may tell him that."

"Is your decision irrevocable?"

"Yes, it is."

"Then I must tell you that if there is no prospect of your return he will divorce you."

"Divorced—I divorced?" Her eyes expanded with horrified astonishment. But only for a moment. She threw back her head and laughed. "That was funny, wasn't it? Well, let him do as he thinks best. And he may be happy once more if I am out of his life altogether. He won't have much trouble getting a divorce!"

"He will obtain it on the ground of desertion."

"Oh! Well, he was always a very good man. Poor Howard! I hope he'll marry again and be happy."

"Better think it over. I—by the way—I'm not sure the women wouldn't come round in time; particularly if you lived abroad for a few years."

She curled her lip. "And I should have my precious position in Society again! How much do you suppose that means to me? Have the fatted calf killed and coals of fire poured on my humbled head! Do you think I have no pride?"

"You appear to have regained it. I wish you could regain the rest and be the radiant creature you were when you came to us. God! What a lovely stunning creature you were! It hurts me like the devil, I can tell you. And it's hurt the women too. They were fond of you. Do you know that Sally is dead?"

"Yes. She had everything to live for and she died. Life seems to amuse herself with us."

"She's a damned old hag." He rose and took up his hat and cane. "Well, I'll wait a week, and then if you don't relent the proceedings will begin. I shan't get the divorce. Not my line. But he asked me to talk to you and I was glad to come. Good-by."

She smiled as she shook hands with him. As he opened the door he turned to her again.

"That young Holt is a good fellow and has a head on his shoulders. Better be guided by him if he offers you any advice."



XXXIX

Almost insensibly and without comment Madeleine fell into the habit of sleeping at night and going abroad with Holt in the daytime. Nor did he take her to any more dives. They went across the Bay, either to Oakland or Sausalito, and took long walks, dining at some inn where they were sure to meet no one they knew. She had asked him to buy her books, as she did not care to venture either into the bookstores or the Mercantile Library. She now had a part of her new income to spend as she chose, and moved into more comfortable rooms, although far from the fashionable quarter. She was restless and often very nervous but Holt knew that she drank no longer. There had been another revolution of the wheel: she would have a large income, freedom impended, the future was hers to dispose of at will. Her health was excellent; she had regained her old proud bearing.

"What are you going to do with it?" he asked her abruptly one evening. They were sitting in the arbor of a restaurant on the water front at Sausalito and had just finished dinner. The steep promontory rose behind them a wild forest of oak and pine, madrona and chaparral. Across the sparkling dark green water San Francisco looked a pale blue in the twilight and there was a banner of soft pink above her. Lights were appearing on the military islands, the ferry boats, and yachts. "You will be free in about a month now. Have you made any plans? You will not stay here, of course."

"Stay here! I shall leave the day the decree is granted, and I'll never see California again as long as I live."

"But where shall you go?"

"Oh—it would be interesting to live in Europe."

"Whether you have admitted it to yourself or not you have not the remotest idea of going to Europe."

"Oh?"

"You are going to Langdon Masters. Nothing in the world could keep you away from him—or should."

"I wish women smoked. You look so placid. And I am glad you smoke cigarettes."

"Why not try one?"

"Oh, no!" She looked scandalized. "I never did that—before. The other was for a purpose, not because I liked it."

"I am used to your line of ratiocination. But you haven't answered my question."

"Did you ask one?"

"In the form of an assertion, yes."

"You know—the Church forbids marriage after divorce."

"Look here, Madeleine!" Holt brought his fist down on the table with such violence that she half started to her feet. "Do you mean to tell me you are going to let any more damn foolishness wreck your life a second time?"

"You must not speak of the Church in that way."

"Let that pass. I am not going to argue with you. You've argued it all out with yourself unless I'm much mistaken. Are you going to let Masters kill himself when you can save him? Are you going to condemn yourself to a miserably solitary, wandering, aimless life, in which you are no good to yourself, your Church, or any one on earth—and with a crime on your soul?"

I—I—haven't admitted to myself what I shall do. It has seemed to me that when I am free I shall simply go—"

"And straight to Masters. As well for a needle to try to run away from a magnet."

"Oh, I wonder! I wonder!" But she did not look distressed. Her face was transfigured as if she saw a vision. But it fell in a moment, that inner glowing lamp extinguished.

"He may no longer want me. He may have forgotten me. Or if he remembers it must only be to remind himself that I have ruined his life. He may hate me."

"That is likely! If he hated you he'd have pulled up long ago. He knows he still has it in him to make a name for himself, whether he owns a newspaper or not. If he's gone on making a fool of himself it's because his longing for you is insupportable; he can forget you in no other way."

"Can men really love like that?" The inner lamp glowed again.

"A few. Not many, perhaps. Langdon's one of them. Case of a rare whole being chopped in two by fate and both halves bleeding to death without the other. There are a few immortal love affairs in the world's history, and that's just what makes 'em immortal."

She did not answer, but sat staring at the rosy peaceful light above the fiery city that had burnt out so many lives. Then her face changed suddenly. It was set and determined, almost hard. He thought she looked like a beautiful Medusa.

"Yes," she said. "I am going to him. I suppose I have known it all along. At all events I know it now."

"And what is your plan?"

"I have had no time to make one yet."

"Will you listen to mine?"

"Do not I always listen to you with the greatest respect?" She was the charming woman again. "Mr. McLane told me that I was to follow your advice—I have an idea you have engineered this whole affair!— But if he hadn't—well, I have every reason to be humbly grateful to you. If this terrible tangle ever unravels I shall owe it to you."

"Then listen to me now. What I said—that his actions prove that he cares for you as much as ever—is true. But—you might come upon him in a condition where he would not recognize you, or was morose from too much drink or too little; and for the moment he would hate you, either because you reminded him too forcibly of what he had been and was, or because it degraded him further to be seen by you in such a state. He could make himself excessively disagreeable sober. Drunk, panic stricken, reckless, I should think he might achieve a masterpiece in that line that would make you feel like ten cents.... This is my plan. I'll go on at once and prepare him. Get him down to his home in Virginia on one pretence or another, sober him up by degrees, and then tell him all you have been through for his sake, and that as soon as you are free you will come to him. He'll be a little more like himself by that time and can stand having you look at him.... It'll be no easy task at first; and I'll have to taper him off to prevent any blow to his heart. There may be relapses, and the whole thing to do over; but I shall use the talisman of your name as soon as he is in a condition to understand, and shall succeed in the end. Once let the idea take hold of him that he can have you at last and it is only a question of time."

She made no reply for a moment. She sat with her eyes on his as he spoke. At first they had opened widely, melted and flashed. But they narrowed slowly. As he finished she turned her profile toward him and he had never seen a cameo look harder.

"That would be an easy way out," she said. "But it does not appeal to me. Nothing easy appeals to me these days. I'll fight my own battles and overcome my own obstacles. Besides, he's mine. He shall owe nothing to any one but to me. I'll find him and cure him myself."

"But you'll have a hard time finding him. He disappears for weeks at a time. Even Tom Lacey might not be able to help you."

"I'll find him."

"You may have to haunt the most abominable places."

"You seem to forget that I have haunted a good many abominable places. And if they are good enough for him they are good enough for me."

"New York has the worst set of roughs in the world. Our hoodlums are lambs beside them."

"I have no fear of anything but not finding him in time."

"But that is not the worst. You should not see him in that state. You might find him literally in the gutter. He might be a sight you never could forget. No matter what you made of him you never could obliterate such a hideous memory. And he might say things to you that your outraged pride would never forgive."

"I can forget anything I choose. Nor could anything he said, nor anything he may have become, horrify me. Don't you think I have pictured all that? I think of him every moment and I am not a coward. I have imagined things that may be worse than the reality."

"Hardly. But there is another danger. You might kidnap him and get him sobered up, only to lose him again. He might be so overcome with shame that he would cut loose and hide where you would never find him. Remember, his pride was as great as yours."

"I'd track him to the ends of the earth. He's mine and I'll have him."

Holt stared at her for a moment in perplexity, then laughed. "You are a liberal education, Madeleine. Just as I think I really know you at last you break out in a new place. Masters will have an interesting life. You must be a sort of continued-in-our-next story for any one who has the right to love and live with you. But for any one else who has loved you it must be death and damnation."

She stole a glance at him, wondering if he loved her. If he did he had never made a sign, and at the moment he seemed to be appraising her with his sharp cool blue eyes.

"I was thinking of the doctor," he said calmly. "Although, of course, there must have been a good many in a more or less idiotic state over the reigning toast."

"The reigning toast!... Well, I'll never be that again. But it won't matter if—when—You are to promise me you will not write to him!"

"Oh, yes, I promise." Holt had been rapidly formulating his own plans. "But you'll let me give you a letter to Lacey? It's a wild goose chase but a little advice might help."

"I should have asked you for a line to Mr. Lacey. I don't wish to waste time if I can help it."

He rose. "Well, there's a pile of blank paper and a soft pencil waiting for me. I've an editorial to write on the low-lived politics of San Francisco, and another on the increasing number of murders in our fair city. Look at the fog sailing in through the Golden Gate, pushing itself along like the prow of a ship. You'll never see anything as beautiful as California again. But I suppose that worries you a lot."

She smiled, a little mysterious smile, but she did not reply, and they walked down to the ferry slip in silence.



XL

Madeline went directly from the train to Printing House Square and had a long talk with "Tom" Lacey. He had been advised of her coming and her quest and had already made a search for Masters, but without result. This he had no intention of imparting, however, but told her a carefully prepared story.

Masters had been writing regularly for some time and it was generally believed among his friends that he had pulled up in a measure, but where he was hiding himself no one knew. Cheques and suggestions were sent to the Post Office, but he had no box, nor did he call for his mail in person.

He appeared no more at the restaurants in Nassau or Fulton Streets, or in Park Row, and it would be idle to look for him up town. It was apparent that he wished to avoid his friends, and to do this effectually he had probably hidden himself in one of the rabbit warrens of Nassau Street, where the King of England or the Czar of all the Russias might hide for a lifetime and never be found. But Masters could be "located," no doubt of that. "It only needs patience and alertness," said Lacey, looking straight into Madeleine's vigilant eyes. "I have a friend on the police force down there who will spot him before long and send for me hot-foot."

It was Lacey's intention to sublet a small office in one of the swarming buildings, put a cot in it and a cooking stove, and transfer Masters to it as soon as he was found. He knew what some of Masters' haunts were and had no intention that this delicate proud woman should see him in any of them.

When she told him that she should never leave Masters again after his whereabouts had been discovered, he warned her not to take rooms in a hotel. There would be unpleasant espionage, possibly newspaper scandal. There was nothing for it but Bleecker Street. It was outwardly quiet, the rooms were large and comfortable in many of those once-fashionable houses, and it was the one street in New York where no questions were asked and no curiosity felt. It was no place for her, of course—but under the circumstances—if she persisted in her idea of keeping Masters with her until his complete recovery—

"My neighbors will not worry me," she said, smiling for the first time. "It seems to be just the place. I already feel bewildered in this great rushing noisy city. I have lived in a small city for so long that I had almost forgotten there were great ones; and I should not know what to do without your advice. I am very grateful."

"Glad to do anything I can. When Holt wrote me you were coming and there was a chance to pull Masters out of the—put him on his legs again, I went right up in the air. You may count on me. Always glad to do anything I can for a lady, too. I used to see you at the theatre and driving, Mrs. Talbot, and wished I were one of the bloods. Seems like a fairy tale to be able to help you now."

He had red hair and slate-colored eyes, a snub nose and many freckles, but she thought him quite beautiful; he was her only friend in this terrifying city, and there was no doubt she could count on him.

"How shall I go about finding a lodging in Bleecker Street?" she asked. "I stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel when I visited New York with my mother, and as I know nothing of the other hotels, I left my luggage at the depot until I should have seen you. I didn't dare go where I might run into any one. Californians are beginning to visit New York. Moreover, my brother and his family live here and I particularly wish to avoid them."

"A theatrical troupe is just leaving town—so there should be several empty rooms. A good many of them hang out there when in New York. There is one thing in your favor. Your—pardon me—beauty won't be so conspicuous in Bleecker Street as it would be in hotels. It isn't only actresses that lodge there, but—well—those ladies so richly dowered by nature they command the longest pocketbooks, and the owners thereof sometimes have a pew in Trinity Church and a seat on the Stock Exchange. The great world averts its eyes from Bleecker Street, and you will be as safe in there as the most respectable sinner. Nor will you be annoyed by rowdyism in the street, although you may hear echoes of high old times going on in some of the houses patronized by artists and students—it's a sort of Latin Quarter, too. Little of everything, in fact. Now, come along. We'll take a hack, get your luggage, and fix you up."

"And you'll vow—"

"To send for you the moment Masters is located? Just rely on Tom Lacey."



XLI

Madeline took two floors of a large brown stone house in Bleecker Street, and the accommodating landlady found a colored wench to keep her rooms in order and cook her meals. A room at the back and facing the south was fitted up for Masters. It was a masculine-looking room with its solid mahogany furniture, and as his books were stored in the cellar of the Times Building she had shelves built to the ceiling on the west wall. Lacey obtained an order for the books without difficulty, and Madeleine disposed of several of her long evenings filling the shelves. When she had finished, one side of the large room at least looked exactly like his parlor in the Occidental Hotel. She also hung the windows with green curtains and draped the mantelpiece with the same material. Green had been his favorite color.

She had rebelled at giving up her original purpose of making a personal search for Masters, but one look at New York had convinced her that if Lacey would not help her she must employ a detective. Nevertheless, she went every mid-day to one or other of the restaurants below Chambers Street; and, although nothing had ever terrified her so much, she ventured into Nassau Street at least once a day and struggled through it, peering into every face.

Nassau Street was only ten blocks long and very narrow, but it would seem as if, during the hours of business, a cyclone gathered all the men in New York and hurled them in compact masses down its length until they were met by another cyclone that drove them back again. They filled the street as well as the narrow sidewalks, they poured out of the doorways as if impelled from behind, and Madeleine wondered they did not jump from the windows. No one sauntered, all rushed along with tense faces; there were many collisions and no one paused to apologize, nor did any one seem to expect it. There were hundreds, possibly thousands, of offices in those buildings high for their day, and every profession, every business, every known or unique occupation, was represented. There were banks and newspaper buildings, hotels, restaurants, auction rooms, the Treasury and the old Dutch Church that had been turned into the General Post Office. There were shops containing everything likely to appeal to men, although one wondered when they found time for anything so frivolous as shopping; second-hand book stores, and street hawkers without number.

In addition to the thousands of men who seemed to be hurrying to and from some business of vital import, there were the hundred thousand or more who surged through that narrow thoroughfare every day for their mail. The old church looked like a besieged fortress and Madeleine marvelled that it did not collapse. She was thankful that she was never obliged to enter it. Holt and her lawyer had been instructed to send their letters to Lacey's care, and Lacey when obliged to communicate with her, either called or sent his note by a messenger.

Madeleine was so hustled, stepped on, whirled about, that she finally made friends with an old man who kept one of the secondhand shops, and, comparatively safe, used the doorway as her watch tower.

One day she thought she saw Masters and darted out into the street. There she fought her way in the wake of a tall stooping man with black hair as mercilessly as if she were some frantic woman who had risked her all on the Stock Exchange. He entered the door of one of the tall buildings, and when she reached it she heard the sound of footsteps rapidly mounting.

She followed as rapidly. The footsteps ceased. When she arrived at the fourth floor she knocked on every door in turn. It was evidently a building that housed men of the dingiest social status. Every man who answered her peremptory summons looked like a derelict. These were mere semblances of offices, with unmade beds, sometimes on the floor. In some were dreary looking women, partners, no doubt, of these forlorn men, whose like she sometimes saw down in the street. But her breathless search was fruitless. She knew that one of the men who grudgingly opened his door—looking as if he expected the police— was the man she had followed, and she was grateful that it was not Masters.

She went slowly down the rickety staircase feeling as if she should sink at every step. It had been her first ray of hope in two weeks and she felt faint and sick under the reaction.

She found a coupe in Broadway and was driven to her lodgings. The maid was waiting for her in the doorway, evidently perturbed.

"There's a strange gentleman upstairs in the parlor, ma'am," she said. "Not Mr. Lacey. I didn't want to let him in but he would. He said—"

She thrust the girl aside and ran up the steps. But when she burst into the parlor the man waiting for her was Ralph Holt.

She dropped into a chair and began to cry hysterically. He had dealt with her in that state before, and Amanda had lived in Bleecker Street for many years. She was growing bored with the excessive respectability of her place, and was delighted to find that her mistress was human. Cold water, sal volatile, and hartshorn soon restored Madeleine's composure. She handed her hat to the woman and was alone with Holt.

"I thought—perhaps you understand—"

"I understand, all right. I hope you are not angry with me for following you."

"I am only too glad to see you. I never knew a city could be so big and heartless. I have felt like a leaf tossed about in a perpetual cold wind. When did you arrive?"

"The day after you did."

"What? And you—you—have been looking for him?"

"That is what I came for—partly. Yes, Lacey and I have combed the town."

Madeleine sprang to her feet. "You've found him! I know it! Why don't you say so?"

"Well, we know where he is. But it's no place for you."

"Take me at once. I don't care what it is."

"But I do. So does Lacey. His plan was to shanghai him and sober him up. But—well—it is your right to say whether he shall do that or not. You wanted to find him yourself. But Five Points is no place for you, and I want your permission to carry out Lacey's program."

"What is Five Points?"

"The worst sink in New York. Just imagine the Barbary Coast of San Francisco multiplied by two thousand. There is said to be nothing worse in London or Paris."

"If you and Mr. Lacey do not take me there I shall go alone."

"Be reasonable."

"My reason works quite as clearly as if my heart were chloroformed. Langdon will know, when I track him to a place like that, what he means to me."

"He probably will be in no condition to recognize you."

"I'll make him recognize me. Or if I cannot you may use your force then, but he shall know later that I went there for him. Have you seen him?"

Holt moved uneasily and looked away. "Yes, I have seen him."

"You need not be so distressed. I shall not care what he looks like. I shall see him inside. Did you speak to him?"

"He either did not recognize me or pretended not to."

"Well, we go now."

"Won't you think it over?"

"I prefer your escort to that of a policeman. I shall not be so foolish as to go alone."

"Then we'll come for you at about eleven tonight. It would be useless to go look for him now. People who lead that sort of life sleep in the day time. I have not the faintest idea where he lives."

"Very well, I shall have to wait, I suppose."

Holt rose. "Lacey and I will come for you, and we'll bring with us two of the biggest detectives we can find. It's no joke taking a woman—a woman like you—Good God!—into a sewer like that. Even Lacey and I got into trouble twice, but we could take care of ourselves. Better dine with me at Delmonico's and forget things for a while."

"I could not eat, nor sit still. Nor do I wish to run the risk of meeting my brother; or any one else I know. Come for me promptly at eleven or you will not find me here."



XLII

Langdon Masters awoke from a sleep that had lasted all day and glowered out upon the room he occupied in Baxter Street. It was as wretched as all tenements in the Five Points, but it had the distinguishing mark of neatness. Drunk as he might be, the drab who lived with him knew that he would detect dirt and disorder, and that her slender hold on his tolerance would be forfeited at once. There were too many of her sort in the Five Points eager for the position of mistress to this man who treated them as a sultan might treat the meanest of his concubines, rarely throwing them a word, and alternately indulgent and brutal. They regarded him with awe, even forgetting to drink when, in certain stages of his cups, he entertained by the hour in one or other of the groggeries a circle of the most abandoned characters in New York—thieves, cracksmen, murderers actual or potential, "shoulder-hitters," sailors who came ashore to drink the fieriest rum they could find, prostitutes, dead-beats, degenerates, derelicts—with a flow of talk that was like the flashing of jewels in the gutter. He related the most stupendous adventures that had ever befallen a mortal. If any one of his audience had heard of Munchausen he would have dismissed him as a poor imitation of this man who would seem to have dropped down into their filthy and lawless quarter from a sphere where things happened unknown to men on this planet. They dimly recognized that he was a fallen gentleman, for at long intervals good churchmen from the foreign territory of Broadway or Fifth Avenue came to remonstrate and plead. They never came a second time and they usually spent the following week in bed.

But Masters was democratic enough in manner; it was evident that he regarded himself as no better than the worst, and nothing appeared to be further from his mind than reform of them or himself. He had now been with them for six months and came and went as he pleased. In the beginning his indestructible air of superiority had subtly irritated them in spite of his immediate acceptance of their standards, and there had been two attempts to trounce him. But he was apparently made of steel rope, he knew every trick of their none too subtle "game," and he had knocked out his assailants and won the final respect of Five Points.

And if he was finical about his room he took care to be no neater in his dress than his associates. Although he had his hair cut and his face shaved he wore old and rough clothes and a gray flannel shirt.

Masters, after his drab had given him a cup of strong coffee and a rasher, followed by a glass of rum, lost the horrid sensations incident upon the waking moment and looked forward to the night with a sardonic but not discontented grin. He knew that he had reached the lowest depths, and if his tough frame refused to succumb to the vilest liquor he could pour into it, he would probably be killed in some general shooting fray, or by one of the women he infatuated and cast aside when another took his drunken but ever ironic fancy. Only a week since the cyprian at present engaged in washing his dishes had been nearly demolished by the damsel she had superseded. She still wore a livid mark on her cheek and a plaster on her head whence a handful of hair had been removed by the roots. He had stood aloof during the fracas in the dirty garish dance house under the sidewalk, laughing consumedly; and had awakened the next night to find the victor mending her tattered finery. She made him an excellent cup of coffee, and he had told her curtly that she could stay.

If, in his comparatively sober moments, the memory of Madeleine intruded, he cast it out with a curse. Not because he blamed her for his downfall; he blamed no one but himself; but because any recollection of the past, all it had been and promised, was unendurable. Whether he had been strong or weak in electing to go straight to perdition when Life had scourged him, he neither knew nor cared. He began to drink on the steamer, determined to forget for the present, at least; but the mental condition induced was far more agreeable than those moments of sobriety when he felt as if he were in hell with fire in his vitals and cold terror of the future in his brain. In New York, driven by his pride, he had made one or two attempts to recover himself, but the writing of unsigned editorials on subjects that interested him not at all was like wandering in a thirsty desert without an oasis in sight—after the champagne of his life in San Francisco with a future as glittering as its skies at night and the daily companionship of a woman whom he had believed the fates must give him wholly in time.

He finally renounced self-respect as a game not worth the candle. Moreover, the clarity of mind necessary to sustained work embraced ever the image of Madeleine; what he had lost and what he had never possessed. And, again, he tormented himself with imaginings of her own suffering and despair; alternated with visions of Madeleine enthroned, secure, impeccable, admired, envied—and with other men in love with her! Some depth of insight convinced him that she loved him immortally, but he knew her need for mental companionship, and the thought that she might find it, however briefly and barrenly, with another man, sent him plunging once more.

His friends and admirers on the newspaper staffs had been loyal, but not only was he irritated by their manifest attempts to reclaim him, but he grew to hate them as so many accusing reminders of the great gifts he was striving to blast out by the roots; and, finding it difficult to avoid them, he had, as soon as he was put in possession of his small income, deliberately transferred himself to the Five Points, where they would hardly be likely to trace him, certainly not to seek his society.

And, on the whole, this experience in a degraded and perilous quarter, famous the world over as a degree or two worse than any pest-hole of its kind, was the most enjoyable of his prolonged debauch. It was only a few yards from Broadway, but he had never set foot in that magnificent thoroughfare of brown stone and white marble, aristocratic business partner of Fifth Avenue, since he entered a precinct so different from New York, as his former world knew it, that he might have been on a convict island in the South Seas.

The past never obtruded itself here. He was surrounded by danger and degradation, ugliness unmitigated, and a complete indifference to anything in the world but vice, crime, liquor and the primitive appetites. Even the children in the swarming squalid streets looked like little old men and women; they fought in the gutters for scraps of refuse, or stood staring sullenly before them, the cry in their emaciated bodies dulled with the poisons of malnutrition; or making quick passes at the pocket of a thief. The girls had never been young, never worn anything but rags or mean finery, the boys were in training for a career of crime, the sodden women seemed to have no natural affection for the young they bore as lust prompted. Men beat their wives or strumpets with no interference from the police. The Sixth Ward was the worst on Manhattan, and the police had enough to do without wasting their time in this congested mass of the city's putrid dregs; who would be conferring a favor on the great and splendid and envied City of New York if they exterminated one another in a grand final orgy of blood and hate.

The irony in Masters' mind might sleep when that proud and contemptuous organ was sodden, but it was deathless. When he thought at all it was to congratulate himself with a laugh that he had found the proper setting for the final exit of a man whom Life had equipped to conquer, and Fate, in her most ironic mood, had challenged to battle; with the sting of death in victory if he won. He had beaten her at her own game. He had always aimed at consummation, the masterpiece; and here, in his final degradation, he had accomplished it.

This morning he laughed aloud, and the woman—or girl?—her body was young but her scarred face was almost aged—wondered if he were going mad at last. There was little time lost in the Five Points upon discussion of personal peculiarities, but all took for granted that this man was half mad and would be wholly so before long.

"Is anything the matter?" she asked timidly, her eye on the door but not daring to bolt.

"Oh, no, nothing! Nothing in all this broad and perfect world. Life is a sweet-scented garden where all the good are happy and all the bad receive their just and immediate deserts. You are the complete epitome of life, yourself, and I gaze upon you with a satisfaction as complete. I wouldn't change you for the most silken and secluded beauty in Bleecker Street, and you may stay here for ever. The more hideous you become the more pleased I shall be. And you needn't be afraid I have gone mad. I am damnably sane. And still more damnably sober. Go out and buy me a bottle of Lethe, and be quick about it. This is nearly finished."

"Do you mean rum?" She was reassured, somewhat, but he had a fashion of making what passed for her brain feel as if it had been churned.

"Yes, I mean rum, damn you. Clear out."

He opened an old wallet and threw a handful of bills on the floor. "Go round into Broadway and buy yourself a gown of white satin and a wreath of lilies for your hair. You would be a picture to make the angels weep, while I myself wept from pure joy. Get out."



XLIII

Madeleine had forced herself to eat a light dinner, and a few minutes before eleven she drank a cup of strong coffee; but when she entered upon the sights and sounds and stenches of Worth Street she nearly fainted.

The night was hot. The narrow crooked streets of the Five Points were lit with gas that shone dimly through the grimy panes of the lamp posts or through the open doors of groggeries and fetid shops. The gutter was a sewer. Probably not one of those dehumanized creatures ever bathed. Some of the children were naked and all looked as if they had been dipped in the gutters and tossed out to dry. The streets swarmed with them; and with men and women between the ages of sixteen and forty. One rarely lived longer than that in the Five Points. Some were shrieking and fighting, others were horribly quiet. Men and women lay drunk in the streets or hunched against the dripping walls, their mouths with black teeth or no teeth hanging loosely, their faces purple or pallid. Screams came from one of the tenements, but neither of the two detectives escorting the party turned his head.

Madeleine had imagined nothing like this. Her only acquaintance with vice had been in the dens and dives of San Francisco, and she had pictured something of the same sort intensified. But there was hardly a point of resemblance. San Francisco has always had a genius for making vice picturesque. The outcasts of the rest of the world do their worst and let it go at that. Moreover, in San Francisco she had never seen poverty. There was work for all, there were no beggars, no hungry tattered children, no congested districts. Vice might be an agreeable resource but it was forced on no one; and always the atmosphere of its indulgence was gay. She had witnessed scenes of riotous drunkenness, but there was something debonair about even those bent upon extermination, either of an antagonist or the chandeliers and glass-ware, and she had never seen men sodden save on the water front. Even then they were often grinning.

But this looked like plain Hell to Madeleine, or worse. The Hell of the Bible and Dante had a lively accompaniment of writhing flames and was presumably clean. This might be an underground race condemned to a sordid filthy and living death for unimaginable crimes of a previous existence. Even the children looked as if they had come back to Earth with the sins of threescore and ten stamped upon their weary wicked faces. Madeleine's strong soul faltered, and she grasped Holt's arm.

"Well, you see for yourself," he said unsympathetically. "Better go back and let me bring him to you. One of our men can easily knock him out—"

"I'm here and I shall go on. I'll stay all night if necessary."

Lacey looked at her with open adoration; he had fallen truculently in love with her. If Masters no longer loved her he felt quite equal to killing him, although with no dreams for himself. He hoped that if Masters were too far gone for redemption she would recognize the fact at once, forget him, and find happiness somewhere. He was glad on the whole that she had come to Five Points.

"What's the program?" asked one of the detectives, kicking a sprawling form out of the way. "Do you know where he hangs out?"

"No," said Lacey. "He seems to go where fancy leads. We'll have to go from one groggery to another, and then try the dance houses, unless they pass the word in time. The police are supposed to have closed them, you know."

"Yes, they have!" The man's hearty Irish laugh startled these wretched creatures, unused to laughter, and they forsook their apathy or belligerence for a moment to stare. "They simply moved to the back, or to the cellar. They know we believe in lettin' 'em go to the devil their own way. Might as well turn in here."

They entered one of the groggeries. It was a large room. The ceiling was low. The walls were foul with the accumulations of many years, it was long since the tables had been washed. The bar, dripping and slimy, looked as if about to fall to pieces, and the drinks were served in cracked mugs. The bar-tender was evidently an ex-prize- fighter, but the loose skin, empty of muscle, hung from his bare arms in folds. The air was dense with vile tobacco smoke, adding to the choice assortment of stenches imported from without and conferred by Time within. Men and women, boys and girls, sat at the tables drinking, or lay on the floor. There they would remain until their drunken stupor wore off, when they would stagger home to begin a new day. A cracked fiddle was playing. The younger people and some of the older were singing in various keys. Many were drinking solemnly as if drinking were a ritual. Others were grinning with evident enjoyment and a few were hilarious.

The party attracted little general attention. Investigating travellers, escorted by detectives, had visited the Five Points more than once, curious to see in what way it justified its reputation for supremacy over the East End of London and the Montmartre of Paris; and although pockets usually were picked, no violence was offered if the detectives maintained a bland air of detachment. They did not even resent the cologne-drenched handkerchiefs the visitors invariably held to their noses. As evil odors meant nothing to them, they probably mistook the gesture for modesty.

Madeleine preferred her smelling salts, and at Holt's suggestion had wrapped her handkerchief about the gold and crystal bottle. But she forgot the horrible atmosphere as she peered into the face of every man who might be Masters. She wore a plain black dress and a small black hat, but her beauty was difficult to obscure. Her cheeks were white and her brown eyes had lost their sparkle long since, but men not too drunk to notice a lovely woman or her manifest close scrutiny, not only leered up into her face but would have jerked her down beside them had it not been for their jealous partners and the presence of the detectives. There was a rumor abroad that the new City Administration intended to seek approval if not fame by cleaning out the Five Points, tearing down the wretched tenements and groggeries, and scattering its denizens; and none was too reckless not to be on his guard against a calamity which would deprive him not only of all he knew of pleasure but of an almost impregnable refuge after crime.

The women, bloated, emaciated with disease, few with any pretension to looks or finery, made insulting remarks as Madeleine examined their partners, or stared at her in a sort of terrible wonder. She had no eyes for them. When she reached the end of the room, looking down into the faces of the men she was forced to step over, she turned and methodically continued her pilgrimage up another lane between the tables.

"Good God!" exclaimed Holt to Lacey. "There he is! I hoped we should have to visit at least twenty of these hells, and that she'd faint or give up."

"How on earth can you distinguish any one in this infernal smoke?"

"Got the eyes of a cat. There he is—in that corner by the door. God! What a female thing he's got with him."

"Hope it'll cure her—and that we can get out of this pretty soon. Strange things are happening within me."

There was an uproar on the other side of the room. One man had made up his mind to follow this fair visitor, and his woman was beating him in the face, shrieking her curses.

A party of drunken sailors staggered in, singing uproariously, and almost fell over the bar.

But not a sound had penetrated Madeleine's unheeding ears. She had seen Masters.

His drab had not taken his invitation to bedeck herself too literally, nor had she ventured into Broadway. But after returning with the rum she had gone as far as Fell Street and bought herself all the tawdry finery her funds would command. She wore it with tipsy pride: a pink frock of slazy silk with as full a flowing skirt as any on Fifth Avenue during the hour of promenade, a green silk mantle, and a hat as flat as a plate trimmed with faded roses, soiled streamers hanging down over her impudent chignon. She was attracting far more attention than the simply dressed lady from the upper world. The eyes of the women in her vicinity were redder with envy than with liquor and they cursed her shrilly. One of the younger women, carried away by a sudden dictation of femininity, made a dart for the fringed mantle with obvious intent to appropriate it by force. She received a blow in the face from the dauntless owner that sent her sprawling, while the others mingled jeers with their curses.

Masters was leaning on the table, supporting his head with his hands and laughing. He had passed the stage where he wanted to talk, but it would be morning before his brain would be completely befuddled.

Madeleine's body became so stiff that her heels left the floor and she stood on her toes. Holt and Lacey grasped her arms, but she did not sway; she stood staring at the man she had come for. There was little semblance of the polished, groomed, haughty man who had won her. His face was not swollen but it was a dark uniform red and the lines cut it to the bone. The slight frown he had always worn had deepened to an ugly scowl. His eyes were injected and dull, his hair was turning gray. His mouth that he had held in such firm curves was loose and his teeth stained. She remembered how his teeth had flashed when he smiled, the extraordinary brilliancy of his gray eyes.... The groggery vanished ... they were sitting before the fire in the Occidental Hotel....

The daze and the vision lasted only a moment. She disengaged herself from her escorts and walked rapidly toward the table.



XLIV

Masters did not recognize her at once. Her face lay buried deep in his mind, covered with the debris of innumerable carouses, forgotten women, and every defiance he had been able to fling in the face of the civilization he had been made to adorn. As she stood quite still looking at him he had a confused idea that she was a Madonna, and his mind wandered to churches he had attended on another planet, where pretty fashionable women had commanded his escort. Then he began to laugh again. The idea of a Madonna in a groggery of the Five Points was more amusing than the fracas just over.

"Langdon!" she said imperiously. "Don't you know me?"

Then he recognized her, but he believed she was a ghost. He had had delirium tremens twice, and this no doubt was a new form. He gave a shaking cry and shrank back, his hands raised with the palms outward.

"Curse you!" he screamed. "It's not there. I don't see you!"

He extended one of his trembling hands, still with his horrified eyes on the apparition, filled his mug from a bottle and drank the liquor off with a gulp. Then he flung the mug to the floor and staggered to his feet, his eyes roving to the men behind her. "What does this mean?" he stammered. "Are you here or aren't you—dead or alive?"

"We're here all right," said Holt, in his matter-of-fact voice. "And this really is she. She has come for you."

"Come for me—for me!" His roar of laughter was drunken but its note was even more ironic than when his mirth had been excited by the mean drama of the women. He fell back in his chair for he was unable to stand. "Well, go back where you came from. There's nothing here for you. Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse.... Here—what's your name?" he said brutally to his companion. "Go and get me another mug."

But the young woman, who had been gaping at the scene, suddenly recovered herself. She ran round the table and flung her arms about his neck. "He's my man!" she shrieked. "You can't have him." And she sputtered obscenities.

Madeleine reached over, tore her from Masters, dragged her across the table, whirled her about, and flung her to the floor. The neighborhood shrieked its delight. The rest of the room took no notice of them. The drunken sailors were still singing and many took up the refrain.

"No," said Madeleine. "He's mine and I'll have him."

"Now I know you are not Madeleine," cried Masters furiously, and trying to rise again. "She never was your sort, you damned whore, to fight over a man in a groggery. She was a lady—"

"She was also a woman," said Madeleine coolly. "And never more so than now. You are coming with me."