"Could that be done?"

"Even if you had little talent, less intelligence, and no experience. Properly taught, the trade part of every art is easy. Teachers make it hard partly because they're dull, chiefly because there'd be small money for them if they taught quickly, and only the essentials. No, journeyman acting's no harder to learn than bricklaying or carpentering. And in America—everywhere in the world but a few theaters in Paris and Vienna—there is nothing seen but journeyman acting. The art is in its infancy as an art. It even has not yet been emancipated from the swaddling clothes of declamation. Yes, you can do well by the autumn. And if you develop what I think you have in you, you can leap with one bound into fame. In America or England, mind you—because there the acting is all poor to 'pretty good'."

"You are sure it could be done? No—I don't mean that. I mean, is there really a chance—any chance—for me to make my own living? A real living?"

"I guarantee," said Brent.

She changed from seriousness to a mocking kind of gayety—that is, to a seriousness so profound that she would not show it. And she said:

"You see I simply must banish my old women—and that hunchback and his piano. They get on my nerves."

He smiled humorously at her. But behind the smile his gaze—grave, sympathetic—pierced into her soul, seeking the meaning he knew she would never put into words.

At the sound of voices in the hall she said:

"We'll talk of this again."

At lunch that day she, for the first time in many a week, listened without irritation while Freddie poured forth his unending praise of "my wife." As Brent knew them intimately, Freddie felt free to expatiate upon all the details of domestic economy that chanced to be his theme, with the exquisite lunch as a text. He told Brent how Susan had made a study of that branch of the art of living; how she had explored the unrivaled Parisian markets and groceries and shops that dealt in specialties; how she had developed their breakfasts, dinners, and lunches to works of art. It is impossible for anyone, however stupid, to stop long in Paris without beginning to idealize the material side of life—for the French, who build solidly, first idealize food, clothing, and shelter, before going on to take up the higher side of life—as a sane man builds his foundation before his first story, and so on, putting the observation tower on last of all, instead of making an ass of himself trying to hang his tower to the stars. Our idealization goes forward haltingly and hypocritically because we try to build from the stars down, instead of from the ground up. The place to seek the ideal is in the homely, the commonplace, and the necessary. An ideal that does not spring deep-rooted from the soil of practical life may be a topic for a sermon or a novel or for idle conversation among silly and pretentious people. But what use has it in a world that must live, and must be taught to live?

Freddie was unaware that he was describing a further development of Susan—a course she was taking in the university of experience—she who had passed through its common school, its high school, its college. To him her clever housekeeping offered simply another instance of her cleverness in general. His discourse was in bad taste. But its bad taste was tolerable because he was interesting—food, like sex, being one of those universal subjects that command and hold the attention of all mankind. He rose to no mean height of eloquence in describing their dinner of the evening before—the game soup that brought to him visions of a hunting excursion he had once made into the wilds of Canada; the way the barbue was cooked and served; the incredible duck—and the salad! Clelie interrupted to describe that salad as like a breath of summer air from fields and limpid brooks. He declared that the cheese—which Susan had found in a shop in the Marche St. Honore—was more wonderful than the most wonderful petit Suisse. "And the coffee!" he exclaimed. "But you'll see in a few minutes. We have coffee here."

"Quelle histoire!" exclaimed Brent, when Freddie had concluded. And he looked at Susan with the ironic, quizzical gleam in his eyes.

She colored. "I am learning to live," said she. "That's what we're on earth for—isn't it?"

"To learn to live—and then, to live," replied he.

She laughed. "Ah, that comes a little later."

"Not much later," rejoined he, "or there's no time left for it."

It was Freddie who, after lunch, urged Susan and Clelie to "show Brent what you can do at acting."

"Yes—by all means," said Brent with enthusiasm.

And they gave—in one end of the salon which was well suited for it—the scene between mother and daughter over the stolen diary, in "L'Autre Danger." Brent said little when they finished, so little that Palmer was visibly annoyed. But Susan, who was acquainted with his modes of expression, felt a deep glow of satisfaction. She had no delusions about her attempts; she understood perfectly that they were simply crude attempts. She knew she had done well—for her—and she knew he appreciated her improvement.

"That would have gone fine—with costumes and scenery—eh?" demanded Freddie of Brent.

"Yes," said Brent absently. "Yes—that is—Yes."

Freddie was dissatisfied with this lack of enthusiasm. He went on insistently:

"I think she ought to go on the stage—she and Madame Clelie, too."

"Yes," said Brent, between inquiry and reflection.

"What do you think?"

"I don't think she ought," replied Brent. "I think she must." He turned to Susan. "Would you like it?"

Susan hesitated. Freddie said—rather lamely, "Of course she would. For my part, I wish she would."

"Then I will," said Susan quietly.

Palmer looked astounded. He had not dreamed she would assent. He knew her tones—knew that the particular tone meant finality. "You're joking," cried he, with an uneasy laugh. "Why, you wouldn't stand the work for a week. It's hard work—isn't it, Brent?"

"About the hardest," said Brent. "And she's got practically everything still to learn."

"Shall we try, Clelie?" said Susan.

Young Madame Deliere was pale with eagerness. "Ah—but that would be worth while!" cried she.

"Then it's settled," said Susan. To Brent: "We'll make the arrangements at once—today."

Freddie was looking at her with a dazed expression. His glance presently drifted from her face to the fire, to rest there thoughtfully as he smoked his cigar. He took no part in the conversation that followed. Presently he left the room without excusing himself. When Clelie seated herself at the piano to wander vaguely from one piece of music to another, Brent joined Susan at the fire and said in English:

"Palmer is furious."

"I saw," said she.

"I am afraid. For—I know him."

She looked calmly at him. "But I am not."

"Then you do not know him."

The strangest smile flitted across her face.

After a pause Brent said: "Are you married to him?"

Again the calm steady look. Then: "That is none of your business."

"I thought you were not," said Brent, as if she had answered his question with a clear negative. He added, "You know I'd not have asked if it had been 'none of my business.'"

"What do you mean?"

"If you had been his wife, I could not have gone on. I've all the reverence for a home of the man who has never had one. I'd not take part in a home-breaking. But—since you are free——"

"I shall never be anything else but free. It's because I wish to make sure of my freedom that I'm going into this."

Palmer appeared in the doorway.

That night the four and Gourdain dined together, went to the theater and afterward to supper at the Cafe de Paris. Gourdain and young Madame Deliere formed an interesting, unusually attractive exhibit of the parasitism that is as inevitable to the rich as fleas to a dog. Gourdain was a superior man, Clelie a superior woman. There was nothing of the sycophant, or even of the courtier, about either. Yet they already had in their faces that subtle indication of the dependent that is found in all professional people who habitually work for and associate with the rich only. They had no sense of dependence; they were not dependents, for they gave more than value received. Yet so corrupting is the atmosphere about rich people that Gourdain, who had other rich clients, no less than Clelie who got her whole living from Palmer, was at a glance in the flea class and not in the dog class. Brent looked for signs of the same thing in Susan's face. The signs should have been there; but they were not. "Not yet," thought he. "And never will be now."

Palmer's abstraction and constraint were in sharp contrast to the gayety of the others. Susan drank almost nothing. Her spirits were soaring so high that she did not dare stimulate them with champagne. The Cafe de Paris is one of the places where the respectable go to watch les autres and to catch a real gayety by contagion of a gayety that is mechanical and altogether as unreal as play-acting. There is something fantastic about the official temples of Venus; the pleasure-makers are so serious under their masks and the pleasure-getters so quaintly dazzled and deluded. That is, Venus's temples are like those of so many other religions in reverence among men—disbelief and solemn humbuggery at the altar; belief that would rather die than be undeceived, in the pews. Palmer scarcely took his eyes from Susan's face. It amused and pleased her to see how uneasy this made Brent—and how her own laughter and jests aggravated his uneasiness to the point where he was almost showing it. She glanced round that brilliant room filled with men and women, each of them carrying underneath the placidity of stiff evening shirt or the scantiness of audacious evening gown the most fascinating emotions and secrets—love and hate and jealousy, cold and monstrous habits and desires, ruin impending or stealthily advancing, fortune giddying to a gorgeous climax, disease and shame and fear—yet only signs of love and laughter and lightness of heart visible. And she wondered whether at any other table there was gathered so curious an assemblage of pasts and presents and futures as at the one over which Freddie Palmer was presiding somberly. . . . Then her thoughts took another turn. She fell to noting how each man was accompanied by a woman—a gorgeously dressed woman, a woman revealing, proclaiming, in every line, in every movement, that she was thus elaborately and beautifully toiletted to please man, to appeal to his senses, to gain his gracious approval. It was the world in miniature; it was an illustration of the position of woman—of her own position. Favorite; pet. Not the equal of man, but an appetizer, a dessert. She glanced at herself in the glass, mocked her own radiant beauty of face and form and dress. Not really a full human being; merely a decoration. No more; and no worse off than most of the women everywhere, the favorites licensed or unlicensed of law and religion. But just as badly off, and just as insecure. Free! No rest, no full breath until freedom had been won! At any cost, by straight way or devious—free!

"Let's go home," said she abruptly. "I've had enough of this."

She was in a dressing gown, all ready for bed and reading, when Palmer came into her sitting-room. She was smoking, her gaze upon her book. Her thick dark hair was braided close to her small head. There was delicate lace on her nightgown, showing above the wadded satin collar of the dressing gown. He dropped heavily into a chair.

"If anyone had told me a year ago that a skirt could make a damn fool of me," said he bitterly, "I'd have laughed in his face. Yet—here I am! How nicely I did drop into your trap today—about the acting!"

"Trap?"

"Oh, I admit I built and baited and set it, myself—ass that I was! But it was your trap—yours and Brent's, all the same. . . . A skirt—and not a clean one, at that."

She lowered the book to her lap, took the cigarette from between her lips, looked at him. "Why not be reasonable, Freddie?" said she calmly. Language had long since lost its power to impress her. "Why irritate yourself and annoy me simply because I won't let you tyrannize over me? You know you can't treat me as if I were your property. I'm not your wife, and I don't have to be your mistress."

"Getting ready to break with me eh?"

"If I wished to go, I'd tell you—and go."

"You'd give me the shake, would you?—without the slightest regard for all I've done for you!"

She refused to argue that again. "I hope I've outgrown doing weak gentle things through cowardice and pretending it's through goodness of heart."

"You've gotten hard—like stone."

"Like you—somewhat." And after a moment she added, "Anything that's strong is hard—isn't it? Can a man or a woman get anywhere without being able to be what you call 'hard' and what I call 'strong'?"

"Where do you want to get?" demanded he.

She disregarded his question, to finish saying what was in her mind—what she was saying rather to give herself a clear look at her own thoughts and purposes than to enlighten him about them. "I'm not a sheltered woman," pursued she. "I've got no one to save me from the consequences of doing nice, sweet, womanly things."

"You've got me," said he angrily.

"But why lean if I'm strong enough to stand alone? Why weaken myself just to gratify your mania for owning and bossing? But let me finish what I was saying. I never got any quarter because I was a woman. No woman does, as a matter of fact; and in the end, the more she uses her sex to help her shirk, the worse her punishment is. But in my case——

"I was brought up to play the weak female, to use my sex as my shield. And that was taken from me and—I needn't tell you how I was taught to give and take like a man—no, not like a man—for no man ever has to endure what a woman goes through if she is thrown on the world. Still, I'm not whining. Now that it's all over I'm the better for what I've been through. I've learned to use all a man's weapons and in addition I've got a woman's."

"As long as your looks last," sneered he.

"That will be longer than yours," said she pleasantly, "if you keep on with the automobiles and the champagne. And when my looks are gone, my woman's weapons. . .

"Why, I'll still have the man's weapons left—shan't I?—knowledge, and the ability to use it."

His expression of impotent fury mingled with compelled admiration and respect made his face about as unpleasant to look at as she had ever seen it. But she liked to look. His confession of her strength made her feel stronger. The sense of strength was a new sensation with her—new and delicious. Nor could the feeling that she was being somewhat cruel restrain her from enjoying it.

"I have never asked quarter," she went on. "I never shall. If fate gets me down, as it has many a time, why I'll he able to take my medicine without weeping or whining. I've never asked pity. I've never asked charity. That's why I'm here, Freddie—in this apartment, instead of in a filthy tenement attic—and in these clothes instead of in rags—and with you respecting me, instead of kicking me toward the gutter. Isn't that so?"

He was silent.

"Isn't it so?" she insisted.

"Yes," he admitted. And his handsome eyes looked the love so near to hate that fills a strong man for a strong woman when they clash and he cannot conquer. "No wonder I'm a fool about you," he muttered.

"I don't purpose that any man or woman shall use me," she went on, "in exchange for merely a few flatteries. I insist that if they use me, they must let me use them. I shan't be mean about it, but I shan't be altogether a fool, either. And what is a woman but a fool when she lets men use her for nothing but being called sweet and loving and womanly? Unless that's the best she can do, poor thing!"

"You needn't sneer at respectable women."

"I don't," replied she. "I've no sneers for anybody. I've discovered a great truth, Freddie the deep-down equality of all human beings—all of them birds in the same wind and battling with it each as best he can. As for myself—with money, with a career that interests me, with position that'll give me any acquaintances and friends that are congenial, I don't care what is said of me."

As her plan unfolded itself fully to his understanding, which needed only a hint to enable it to grasp all, he forgot his rage for a moment in his interest and admiration. Said he:

"You've used me. Now you're going to use Brent—eh? Well—what will you give him in exchange?"

"He wants someone to act certain parts in certain plays."

"Is that all he wants?"

"He hasn't asked anything else."

"And if he did?"

"Don't be absurd. You know Brent."

"He's not in love with you," assented Palmer. "He doesn't want you that way. There's some woman somewhere, I've heard—and he doesn't care about anybody but her."

He was speaking in a careless, casual way, watching her out of the corner of his eye. And she, taken off guard, betrayed in her features the secret that was a secret even from herself. He sprang up with a bound, sprang at her, caught her up out of her chair, the fingers of one hand clasping her throat.

"I thought so!" he hissed. "You love him—damn you! You love him! You'd better look out, both of you!"

There came a knock at the door between her bedroom and that of Madame Clelie. Palmer released her, stood panting, with furious eyes on the door from which the sound had come. Susan called, "It's all right, Clelie, for the present." Then she said to Palmer, "I told Clelie to knock if she ever heard voices in this room—or any sound she didn't understand." She reseated herself, began to massage her throat where his fingers had clutched it. "It's fortunate my skin doesn't mar easily," she went on. "What were you saying?"

"I know the truth now. You love Brent. That's the milk in the cocoanut."

She reflected on this, apparently with perfect tranquillity, apparently with no memory of his furious threat against her and against Brent. She said:

"Perhaps I was simply piqued because there's another woman."

"You are jealous."

"I guess I was—a little."

"You admit that you love him, you——"

He checked himself on the first hissing breath of the foul epithet. She said tranquilly:

"Jealousy doesn't mean love. We're jealous in all sorts of ways—and of all sorts of things."

"Well—he cares nothing about you."

"Nothing."

"And never will. He'd despise a woman who had been——"

"Don't hesitate. Say it. I'm used to hearing it, Freddie—and to being it. And not 'had been' but 'is.' I still am, you know."

"You're not!" he cried. "And never were—and never could be—for some unknown reason, God knows why."

She shrugged her shoulders, lit another cigarette. He went on:

"You can't get it out of your head that because he's interested in you he's more or less stuck on you. That's the way with women. The truth is, he wants you merely to act in his plays."

"And I want that, too."

"You think I'm going to stand quietly by and let this thing go on—do you?"

She showed not the faintest sign of nervousness at this repetition, more carefully veiled, of his threat against her—and against Brent. She chose the only hopeful course; she went at him boldly and directly. Said she with amused carelessness:

"Why not? He doesn't want me. Even if I love him, I'm not giving him anything you want."

"How do you know what I want?" cried he, confused by this unexpected way of meeting his attack. "You think I'm simply a brute—with no fine instincts or feelings——"

She interrupted him with a laugh. "Don't be absurd, Freddie," said she. "You know perfectly well you and I don't call out the finer feelings in each other. If either of us wanted that sort of thing, we'd have to look elsewhere."

"You mean Brent—eh?"

She laughed with convincing derision. "What nonsense!" She put her arms round his neck, and her lips close to his. The violet-gray eyes were half closed, the perfume of the smooth amber-white skin, of the thick, wavy, dark hair, was in his nostrils. And in a languorous murmur she soothed his subjection to a deep sleep with, "As long as you give me what I want from you, and I give you what you want from me why should we wrangle?"

And with a smile he acquiesced. She felt that she had ended the frightful danger—to Brent rather than to herself—that suddenly threatened from those wicked eyes of Palmer's. But it might easily come again. She did not dare relax her efforts, for in the succeeding days she saw that he was like one annoyed by a constant pricking from a pin hidden in the clothing and searched for in vain. He was no longer jealous of Brent. But while he didn't know what was troubling him, he did know that he was uncomfortable.



CHAPTER XXIII

IN but one important respect was Brent's original plan modified. Instead of getting her stage experience in France, Susan joined a London company making one of those dreary, weary, cheap and trashy tours of the smaller cities of the provinces with half a dozen plays by Jones, Pinero, and Shaw.

Clelie stayed in London, toiling at the language, determined to be ready to take the small part of French maid in Brent's play in the fall. Brent and Palmer accompanied Susan; and every day for several hours Brent and the stage manager—his real name was Thomas Boil and his professional name was Herbert Streathern—coached the patient but most unhappy Susan line by line, word by word, gesture by gesture, in the little parts she was playing. Palmer traveled with them, making a pretense of interest that ill concealed his boredom and irritation. This for three weeks; then he began to make trips to London to amuse himself with the sports, amateur and professional, with whom he easily made friends—some of them men in a position to be useful to him socially later on. He had not spoken of those social ambitions of his since Susan refused to go that way with him—but she knew he had them in mind as strongly as ever. He was the sort of man who must have an objective, and what other objective could there be for him who cared for and believed in the conventional ambitions and triumphs only—the successes that made the respectable world gape and grovel and envy?

"You'll not stick at this long," he said to Susan.

"I'm frightfully depressed," she admitted. "It's tiresome—and hard—and so hideously uncomfortable! And I've lost all sense of art or profession. Acting seems to be nothing but a trade, and a poor, cheap one at that."

He was not surprised, but was much encouraged by this candid account of her state of mind. Said he:

"It's my private opinion that only your obstinacy keeps you from giving it up straight off. Surely you must see it's nonsense. Drop it and come along—and be comfortable and happy. Why be obstinate? There's nothing in it."

"Perhaps it is obstinacy," said she. "I like to think it's something else."

"Drop it. You want to. You know you do."

"I want to, but I can't," replied she.

He recognized the tone, the expression of the eyes, the sudden showing of strength through the soft, young contour. And he desisted.

Never again could there be comfort, much less happiness, until she had tried out her reawakened ambition. She had given up all that had been occupying her since she left America with Freddie; she had abandoned herself to a life of toil. Certainly nothing could have been more tedious, more tormenting to sensitive nerves, than the schooling through which Brent was putting her. Its childishness revolted her and angered her. Experience had long since lowered very considerably the point at which her naturally sweet disposition ceased to be sweet—a process through which every good-tempered person must pass unless he or she is to be crushed and cast aside as a failure. There were days, many of them, when it took all her good sense, all her fundamental faith in Brent, to restrain her from an outbreak. Streathern regarded Brent as a crank, and had to call into service all his humility as a poor Englishman toward a rich man to keep from showing his contempt. And Brent seemed to be—indeed was—testing her forbearance to the uttermost. He offered not the slightest explanation of his method. He simply ordered her blindly to pursue the course he marked out. She was sorely tempted to ask, to demand, explanations. But there stood out a quality in Brent that made her resolve ooze away, as soon as she faced him. Of one thing she was confident. Any lingering suspicions Freddie might have had of Brent's interest in her as a woman, or even of her being interested in him as a man, must have been killed beyond resurrection. Freddie showed that he would have hated Brent, would have burst out against him, for the unhuman, inhuman way he was treating her, had it not been that Brent was so admirably serving his design to have her finally and forever disgusted and done with the stage.

Finally there came a performance in which the audience—the gallery part of it—"booed" her—not the play, not the other players, but her and no other. Brent came along, apparently by accident, as she made her exit. He halted before her and scanned her countenance with those all-seeing eyes of his. Said he:

"You heard them?"

"Of course," replied she.

"That was for you," said he and he said it with an absence of sympathy that made it brutal.

"For only me," said she—frivolously.

"You seem not to mind."

"Certainly I mind. I'm not made of wood or stone."

"Don't you think you'd better give it up?"

She looked at him with a steely light from the violet eyes, a light that had never been there before.

"Give up?" said she. "Not even if you give me up. This thing has got to be put through."

He simply nodded. "All right," he said. "It will be."

"That booing—it almost struck me dead. When it didn't, I for the first time felt sure I was going to win."

He nodded again, gave her one of his quick expressive, fleeting glances that somehow made her forget and forgive everything and feel fresh and eager to start in again. He said:

"When the booing began and you didn't break down and run off the stage, I knew that what I hoped and believed about you was true."

Streathern joined them. His large, soft eyes were full of sympathetic tears. He was so moved that he braved Brent. He said to Susan:

"It wasn't your fault, Miss Lenox. You were doing exactly as Mr. Brent ordered, when the booing broke out."

"Exactly," said Brent.

Streathern regarded him with a certain nervousness and veiled pity. Streathern had been brought into contact with many great men. He had found them, each and every one, with this same streak of wild folly, this habit of doing things that were to him obviously useless and ridiculous. It was a profound mystery to him why such men succeeded while he himself who never did such things remained in obscurity. The only explanation was the abysmal stupidity, ignorance, and folly of the masses of mankind. What a harbor of refuge that reflection has ever been for mediocrity's shattered and sinking vanity! Yet the one indisputable fact about the great geniuses of long ago is that in their own country and age "the common people heard them gladly." Streathern could not now close his mouth upon one last appeal on behalf of the clever and lovely and so amiable victim of Brent's mania.

"I say, Mr. Brent," pleaded he, "don't you think—Really now, if you'll permit a chap not without experience to say so—Don't you think that by drilling her so much and so—so beastly minutely—you're making her wooden—machine-like?"

"I hope so," said Brent, in a tone that sent Streathern scurrying away to a place where he could express himself unseen and unheard.

In her fifth week she began to improve. She felt at home on the stage; she felt at home in her part, whatever it happened to be. She was giving what could really be called a performance. Streathern, when he was sure Brent could not hear, congratulated her. "It's wonderfully plucky of you, my dear," said he, "quite amazingly plucky—to get yourself together and go straight ahead, in spite of what your American friend has been doing to you."

"In spite of it." cried Susan. "Why, don't you see that it's because of what he's been doing? I felt it, all the time. I see it now."

"Oh, really—do you think so?" said Streathern.

His tone made it a polite and extremely discreet way of telling her he thought she had become as mad as Brent. She did not try to explain to him why she was improving. In that week she advanced by long strides, and Brent was radiant.

"Now we'll teach you scales," said he. "We'll teach you the mechanics of expressing every variety of emotion. Then we'll be ready to study a strong part."

She had known in the broad from the outset what Brent was trying to accomplish—that he was giving her the trade side of the art, was giving it to her quickly and systematically. But she did not appreciate how profoundly right he was until she was "learning scales." Then she understood why most so called "professional" performances are amateurish, haphazard, without any precision. She was learning to posture, and to utter every emotion so accurately that any spectator would recognize it at once.

"And in time your voice and your body," said Brent, "will become as much your servants as are Paderewski's ten fingers. He doesn't rely upon any such rot as inspiration. Nor does any master of any art. A mind can be inspired but not a body. It must be taught. You must first have a perfect instrument. Then, if you are a genius, your genius, having a perfect instrument to work with, will produce perfect results. To ignore or to neglect the mechanics of an art is to hamper or to kill inspiration. Geniuses—a few—and they not the greatest—have been too lazy to train their instruments. But anyone who is merely talented dares not take the risk. And you—we'd better assume—are merely talented."

Streathern, who had a deserved reputation as a coach, was disgusted with Brent's degradation of an art. As openly as he dared, he warned Susan against the danger of becoming a mere machine—a puppet, responding stiffly to the pulling of strings. But Susan had got over her momentary irritation against Brent, her doubt of his judgment in her particular case. She ignored Streathern's advice that she should be natural, that she should let her own temperament dictate variations on his cut and dried formulae for expression. She continued to do as she was bid.

"If you are not a natural born actress," said Brent, "at least you will be a good one—so good that most critics will call you great. And if you are a natural born genius at acting, you will soon put color in the cheeks of these dolls I'm giving you—and ease into their bodies—and nerves and muscles and blood in place of the strings."

In the seventh week he abruptly took her out of the company and up to London to have each day an hour of singing, an hour of dancing, and an hour of fencing. "You'll ruin her health," protested Freddie. "You're making her work like a ditch digger."

Brent replied, "If she hasn't the health, she's got to abandon the career. If she has health, this training will give it steadiness and solidity. If there's a weakness anywhere, it'll show itself and can be remedied."

And he piled the work on her, dictated her hours of sleep, her hours for rest and for walking, her diet—and little he gave her to eat. When he had her thoroughly broken to his regimen, he announced that business compelled his going immediately to America. "I shall be back in a month," said he.

"I think I'll run over with you," said Palmer. "Do you mind, Susan?"

"Clelie and I shall get on very well," she replied. She would be glad to have both out of the way that she might give her whole mind to the only thing that now interested her. For the first time she was experiencing the highest joy that comes to mortals, the only joy that endures and grows and defies all the calamities of circumstances—the joy of work congenial and developing.

"Yes—come along," said Brent to Palmer. "Here you'll be tempting her to break the rules." He added, "Not that you would succeed. She understands what it all means, now—and nothing could stop her. That's why I feel free to leave her."

"Yes, I understand," said Susan. She was gazing away into space; at sight of her expression Freddie turned hastily away.

On a Saturday morning Susan and Clelie, after waiting on the platform at Euston Station until the long, crowded train for Liverpool and the Lusitania disappeared, went back to the lodgings in Half Moon Street with a sudden sense of the vastness of London, of its loneliness and dreariness, of its awkward inhospitality to the stranger under its pall of foggy smoke. Susan was thinking of Brent's last words:

She had said, "I'll try to deserve all the pains you've taken, Mr. Brent."

"Yes, I have done a lot for you," he had replied. "I've put you beyond the reach of any of the calamities of life—beyond the need of any of its consolations. Don't forget that if the steamer goes down with all on board."

And then she had looked at him—and as Freddie's back was half turned, she hoped he had not seen—in fact, she was sure he had not, or she would not have dared. And Brent—had returned her look with his usual quizzical smile; but she had learned how to see through that mask. Then—she had submitted to Freddie's energetic embrace—had given her hand to Brent—"Good-by," she had said; and "Good luck," he.

Beyond the reach of any of the calamities? Beyond the need of any of the consolations? Yes—it was almost literally true. She felt the big interest—the career—growing up within her, and expanding, and already overstepping all other interests and emotions.

Brent had left her and Clelie more to do than could be done; thus they had no time to bother either about the absent or about themselves. Looking back in after years on the days that Freddie was away, Susan could recall that from time to time she would find her mind wandering, as if groping in the darkness of its own cellars or closets for a lost thought, a missing link in some chain of thought. This even awakened her several times in the night—made her leap from sleep into acute and painful consciousness as if she had recalled and instantly forgotten some startling and terrible thing.

And when Freddie unexpectedly came—having taken passage on the Lusitania for the return voyage, after only six nights and five days in New York—she was astonished by her delight at seeing him, and by the kind of delight it was. For it rather seemed a sort of relief, as from a heavy burden of anxiety.

"Why didn't you wait and come with Brent?" asked she.

"Couldn't stand it," replied he. "I've grown clear away from New York—at least from the only New York I know. I don't like the boys any more. They bore me. They—offend me. And I know if I stayed on a few days they'd begin to suspect. No, it isn't Europe. It's—you. You're responsible for the change in me."

He was speaking entirely of the internal change, which indeed was great. For while he was still fond of all kinds of sporting, it was not in his former crude way; he had even become something of a connoisseur of pictures and was cultivating a respect for the purity of the English language that made him wince at Susan's and Brent's slang. But when he spoke thus frankly and feelingly of the change in him, Susan looked at him—and, not having seen him in two weeks and three days, she really saw him for the first time in many a month. She could not think of the internal change he spoke of for noting the external change. He had grown at least fifty pounds heavier than he had been when they came abroad. In one way this was an improvement; it gave him a dignity, an air of consequence in place of the boyish good looks of the days before the automobile and before the effects of high living began to show. But it made of him a different man in Susan's eyes—a man who now seemed almost a stranger to her.

"Yes, you have changed," replied she absently. And she went and examined herself in a mirror.

"You, too," said Freddie. "You don't look older—as I do. But—there's a—a—I can't describe it."

Susan could not see it. "I'm just the same," she insisted.

Palmer laughed. "You can't judge about yourself. But all this excitement—and studying—and thinking—and God knows what—— You're not at all the woman I came abroad with."

The subject seemed to be making both uncomfortable; they dropped it.

Women are bred to attach enormous importance to their physical selves—so much so that many women have no other sense of self-respect, and regard themselves as possessing the entirety of virtue if they have chastity or can pretend to have it. The life Susan had led upsets all this and forces a woman either utterly to despise herself, even as she is despised of men, or to discard the sex measure of feminine self-respect as ridiculously inadequate, and to seek some other measure. Susan had sought this other measure, and had found it. She was, therefore, not a little surprised to find—after Freddie had been back three or four days—that he was arousing in her the same sensations which a strange man intimately about would have aroused in her in the long past girlhood of innocence. It was not physical repulsion; it was not a sense of immorality. It was a kind of shyness, a feeling of violated modesty. She felt herself blushing if he came into the room when she was dressing. As soon as she awakened in the morning she sprang from bed beside him and hastened into her dressing-room and closed the door, resisting an impulse to lock it. Apparently the feeling of physical modesty which she had thought dead, killed to the last root, was not dead, was once more stirring toward life.

"What are you blushing about?" asked he, when she, passing through the bedroom, came suddenly upon him, very scantily dressed.

She laughed confusedly and beat a hurried retreat. She began to revolve the idea of separate bedrooms; she resolved that when they moved again she would arrange it on some pretext—and she was looking about for a new place on the plea that their quarters in Half Moon Street were too cramped. All this close upon his return, for it was before the end of the first week that she, taking a shower bath one morning, saw the door of the bathroom opening to admit him, and cried out sharply:

"Close that door!"

"It's I," Freddie called, to make himself heard above the noise of the water. "Shut off that water and listen."

She shut off the water, but instead of listening, she said, nervous but determined:

"Please close the door. I'll be out directly."

"Listen, I tell you," he cried, and she now noticed that his voice was curiously, arrestingly, shrill.

"Brent—has been hurt—badly hurt." She was dripping wet. She thrust her arms into her bathrobe, flung wide the partly open door. He was standing there, a newspaper in his trembling hand. "This is a dispatch from New York—dated yesterday," he began. "Listen," and he read:

"During an attempt to rob the house of Mr. Robert Brent, the distinguished playwright, early this morning, Mr. Brent was set upon and stabbed in a dozen places, his butler, James Fourget, was wounded, perhaps mortally, and his secretary, Mr. J. C. Garvey, was knocked insensible. The thieves made their escape. The police have several clues. Mr. Brent is hovering between life and death, with the chances against him."

Susan, leaning with all her weight against the door jamb, saw Palmer's white face going away from her, heard his agitated voice less and less distinctly—fell to the floor with a crash and knew no more.

When she came to, she was lying in the bed; about it or near it were Palmer, her maid, his valet, Clelie, several strangers. Her glance turned to Freddie's face and she looked into his eyes amid a profound silence. She saw in those eyes only intense anxiety and intense affection. He said:

"What is it, dear? You are all right. Only a fainting spell."

"Was that true?" she asked.

"Yes, but he'll pull through. The surgeons save everybody nowadays. I've cabled his secretary, Garvey, and to my lawyers. We'll have an answer soon. I've sent out for all the papers."

"She must not be agitated," interposed a medical looking man with stupid brown eyes and a thin brown beard sparsely veiling his gaunt and pasty face.

"Nonsense!" said Palmer, curtly. "My wife is not an invalid. Our closest friend has been almost killed. To keep the news from her would be to make her sick."

Susan closed her eyes. "Thank you," she murmured. "Send them all away—except Clelie. . . . Leave me alone with Clelie."

Pushing the others before him, Freddie moved toward the door into the hall. At the threshold he paused to say:

"Shall I bring the papers when they come?"

She hesitated. "No," she answered without opening her eyes. "Send them in. I want to read them, myself."

She lay quiet, Clelie stroking her brow. From time to time a shudder passed over her. When, in answer to a knock, Clelie took in the bundle of newspapers, she sat up in bed and read the meager dispatches. The long accounts were made long by the addition of facts about Brent's life. The short accounts added nothing to what she already knew. When she had read all, she sank back among the pillows and closed her eyes. A long, long silence in the room. Then a soft knock at the door. Clelie left the bedside to answer it, returned to say:

"Mr. Freddie wishes to come in with a telegram."

Susan started up wildly. Her eyes were wide and staring—a look of horror. "No—no!" she cried. Then she compressed her lips, passed her hand slowly over her brow. "Yes—tell him to come in."

Her gaze was upon the door until it opened, leaped to his face, to his eyes, the instant he appeared. He was smiling—hopefully, but not gayly.

"Garvey says"—and he read from a slip of paper in his hand—" 'None of the wounds necessarily mortal. Doctors refuse to commit themselves, but I believe he has a good chance.'"

He extended the cablegram that she might read for herself, and said, "He'll win, my dear. He has luck, and lucky people always win in big things."

Her gaze did not leave his face. One would have said that she had not heard, that she was still seeking what she had admitted him to learn. He sat down where Clelie had been, and said:

"There's only one thing for us to do, and that is to go over at once."

She closed her eyes. A baffled, puzzled expression was upon her deathly pale face.

"We can sail on the Mauretania Saturday," continued he. "I've telephoned and there are good rooms."

She turned her face away.

"Don't you feel equal to going?"

"As you say, we must."

"The trip can't do you any harm." His forced composure abruptly vanished and he cried out hysterically: "Good God! It's incredible." Then he got himself in hand again, and went on: "No wonder it bowled you out. I had my anxiety about you to break the shock. But you—— How do you feel now?"

"I'm going to dress."

"I'll send you in some brandy." He bent and kissed her. A shudder convulsed her—a shudder visible even through the covers. But he seemed not to note it, and went on: "I didn't realize how fond I was of Brent until I saw that thing in the paper. I almost fainted, myself. I gave Clelie a horrible scare."

"I thought you were having an attack," said Clelie. "My husband looked exactly as you did when he died that way."

Susan's strange eyes were gazing intently at him—the searching, baffled, persistently seeking look. She closed them as he turned from the bed. When she and Clelie were alone and she was dressing, she said:

"Freddie gave you a scare?"

"I was at breakfast," replied Clelie, "was pouring my coffee. He came into the room in his bathrobe—took up the papers from the table opened to the foreign news as he always does. I happened to be looking at him"—Clelie flushed—"he is very handsome in that robe—and all at once he dropped the paper—grew white—staggered and fell into a chair. Exactly like my husband."

Susan, seated at her dressing-table, was staring absently out of the window. She shook her head impatiently, drew a long breath, went on with her toilet.



CHAPTER XXIV

A FEW minutes before the dinner hour she came into the drawing room. Palmer and Madame Deliere were already there, near the fire which the unseasonable but by no means unusual coolness of the London summer evening made extremely comfortable—and, for Americans, necessary. Palmer stood with his back to the blaze, moodily smoking a cigarette. That evening his now almost huge form looked more degenerated than usual by the fat of high living and much automobiling. His fleshy face, handsome still and of a refined type, bore the traces of anxious sorrow. Clelie, sitting at the corner of the fireplace and absently turning the leaves of an illustrated French magazine, had in her own way an air as funereal as Freddie's. As Susan entered, they glanced at her.

Palmer uttered and half suppressed an ejaculation of amazement. Susan was dressed as for opera or ball—one of her best evening dresses, the greatest care in arranging her hair and the details of her toilette. Never had she been more beautiful. Her mode of life since she came abroad with Palmer, the thoughts that had been filling her brain and giving direction to her life since she accepted Brent as her guide and Brent's plans as her career, had combined to give her air of distinction the touch of the extraordinary—the touch that characterizes the comparatively few human beings who live the life above and apart from that of the common run—the life illuminated by imagination. At a glance one sees that they are not of the eaters, drinkers, sleepers, and seekers after the shallow easy pleasures money provides ready-made. They shine by their own light; the rest of mankind shines either by light reflected from them or not at all.

Looking at her that evening as she came into the comfortable, old-fashioned English room, with its somewhat heavy but undeniably dignified furniture and draperies, the least observant could not have said that she was in gala attire because she was in gala mood. Beneath the calm of her surface expression lay something widely different. Her face, slim and therefore almost beyond the reach of the attacks of time and worry, was of the type to which a haggard expression is becoming. Her eyes, large and dreamy, seemed to be seeing visions of unutterable sadness, and the scarlet streak of her mouth seemed to emphasize their pathos. She looked young, very young; yet there was also upon her features the stamp of experience, the experience of suffering. She did not notice the two by the fire, but went to the piano at the far end of the room and stood gazing out into the lovely twilight of the garden.

Freddie, who saw only the costume, said in an undertone to Clelie, "What sort of freak is this?"

Said Madame Deliere: "An uncle of mine lost his wife. They were young and he loved her to distraction. Between her death and the funeral he scandalized everybody by talking incessantly of the most trivial details—the cards, the mourning, the flowers, his own clothes. But the night of the funeral he killed himself."

Palmer winced as if Clelie had struck him. Then an expression of terror, of fear, came into his eyes. "You don't think she'd do that?" he muttered hoarsely.

"Certainly not," replied the young Frenchwoman. "I was simply trying to explain her. She dressed because she was unconscious of what she was doing. Real sorrow doesn't think about appearances." Then with quick tact she added: "Why should she kill herself? Monsieur Brent is getting well. Also, while she's a devoted friend of his, she doesn't love him, but you."

"I'm all upset," said Palmer, in confused apology.

He gazed fixedly at Susan—a straight, slim figure with the carriage and the poise of head that indicate self-confidence and pride. As he gazed Madame Clelie watched him with fascinated eyes. It was both thrilling and terrifying to see such love as he was revealing—a love more dangerous than hate. Palmer noted that he was observed, abruptly turned to face the fire.

A servant opened the doors into the dining-room, Madame Deliere rose. "Come, Susan," said she.

Susan looked at her with unseeing eyes.

"Dinner is served."

"I do not care for dinner," said Susan, seating herself at the piano.

"Oh, but you——"

"Let her alone," said Freddie, curtly. "You and I will go in."

Susan, alone, dropped listless hands into her lap. How long she sat there motionless and with mind a blank she did not know. She was aroused by a sound in the hall—in the direction of the outer door of their apartment. She started up, instantly all alive and alert, and glided swiftly in the direction of the sound. A servant met her at the threshold. He had a cablegram on a tray.

"For Mr. Palmer," said he.

But she, not hearing, took the envelope and tore it open. At a sweep her eyes took in the unevenly typewritten words:



Brent died at half past two this afternoon. GARVEY.

She gazed wonderingly at the servant, reread the cablegram. The servant said: "Shall I take it to Mr. Palmer, ma'am?"

"No. That is all, thanks," replied she.

And she walked slowly across the room to the fire. She shivered, adjusted one of the shoulder straps of her low-cut pale green dress. She read the cablegram a third time, laid it gently, thoughtfully, upon the mantel. "Brent died at half past two this afternoon." Died. Yes, there was no mistaking the meaning of those words. She knew that the message was true. But she did not feel it. She was seeing Brent as he had been when they said good-by. And it would take something more than a mere message to make her feel that the Brent so vividly alive, so redolent of life, of activity, of energy, of plans and projects, the Brent of health and strength, had ceased to be. "Brent died at half past two this afternoon." Except in the great crises we all act with a certain theatricalism, do the thing books and plays and the example of others have taught us to do. But in the great crises we do as we feel. Susan knew that Brent was dead. If he had meant less to her, she would have shrieked or fainted or burst into wild sobs. But not when he was her whole future. She knew he was dead, but she did not believe it. So she stood staring at the flames, and wondering why, when she knew such a frightful thing, she should remain calm. When she had heard that he was injured, she had felt, now she did not feel at all. Her body, her brain, went serenely on in their routine. The part of her that was her very self—had it died, and not Brent?

She turned her back to the fire, gazed toward the opposite wall. In a mirror there she saw the reflection of Palmer, at table in the adjoining room. A servant was holding a dish at his left and he was helping himself. She observed his every motion, observed his fattened body, his round and large face, the forming roll of fat at the back of his neck. All at once she grew cold—cold as she had not been since the night she and Etta Brashear walked the streets of Cincinnati. The ache of this cold, like the cold of death, was an agony. She shook from head to foot. She turned toward the mantel again, looked at the cablegram. But she did not take it in her hands. She could see—in the air, before her eyes—in clear, sharp lettering—"Brent died at half past two this afternoon. Garvey."

The sensation of cold faded into a sensation of approaching numbness. She went into the hall—to her own rooms. In the dressing-room her maid, Clemence, was putting away the afternoon things she had taken off. She stood at the dressing table, unclasping the string of pearls. She said to Clemence tranquilly:

"Please pack in the small trunk with the broad stripes three of my plainest street dresses—some underclothes—the things for a journey—only necessaries. Some very warm things, please, Clemence, I've suffered from cold, and I can't bear the idea of it. And please telephone to the—to the Cecil for a room and bath. When you have finished I shall pay you what I owe and a month's wages extra. I cannot afford to keep you any longer."

"But, madame"—Clemence fluttered in agitation—"Madame promised to take me to America."

"Telephone for the rooms for Miss Susan Lenox," said Susan. She was rapidly taking off her dress. "If I took you to America I should have to let you go as soon as we landed."

"But, madame—" Clemence advanced to assist her.

"Please pack the trunk," said Susan. "I am leaving here at once."

"I prefer to go to America, even if madame——"

"Very well. I'll take you. But you understand?"

"Perfectly, madame——"

A sound of hurrying footsteps and Palmer was at the threshold. His eyes were wild, his face distorted. His hair, usually carefully arranged over the rapidly growing bald spot above his brow, was disarranged in a manner that would have been ludicrous but for the terrible expression of his face. "Go!" he said harshly to the maid; and he stood fretting the knob until she hastened out and gave him the chance to close the door. Susan, calm and apparently unconscious of his presence, went on with her rapid change of costume. He lit a cigarette with fingers trembling, dropped heavily into a chair near the door. She, seated on the floor, was putting on boots.

When she had finished one and was beginning on the other he said stolidly:

"You think I did it"—not a question but an assertion.

"I know it," replied she. She was so seated that he was seeing her in profile.

"Yes—I did," he went on. He settled himself more deeply in the chair, crossed his leg. "And I am glad that I did."

She kept on at lacing the boot. There was nothing in her expression to indicate emotion, or even that she heard.

"I did it," continued he, "because I had the right. He invited it. He knew me—knew what to expect. I suppose he decided that you were worth taking the risk. It's strange what fools men—all men—we men—are about women. . . . Yes, he knew it. He didn't blame me."

She stopped lacing the boot, turned so that she could look at him.

"Do you remember his talking about me one day?" he went on, meeting her gaze naturally. "He said I was a survival of the Middle Ages—had a medieval Italian mind—said I would do anything to gain my end—and would have a clear conscience about it. Do you remember?"

"Yes."

"But you don't see why I had the right to kill him?"

A shiver passed over her. She turned away again, began again to lace the boot—but now her fingers were uncertain.

"I'll explain," pursued he. "You and I were getting along fine. He had had his chance with you and had lost it. Well, he comes over here—looks us up—puts himself between you and me—proceeds to take you away from me. Not in a square manly way but under the pretense of giving you a career. He made you restless—dissatisfied. He got you away from me. Isn't that so?"

She was sitting motionless now.

Palmer went on in the same harsh, jerky way:

"Now, nobody in the world—not even you—knew me better than Brent did. He knew what to expect—if I caught on to what was doing. And I guess he knew I would be pretty sure to catch on."

"He never said a word to me that you couldn't have heard," said Susan.

"Of course not," retorted Palmer. "That isn't the question. It don't matter whether he wanted you for himself or for his plays. The point is that he took you away from me—he, my friend—and did it by stealth. You can't deny that."

"He offered me a chance for a career—that was all," said she. "He never asked for my love—or showed any interest in it. I gave him that."

He laughed—his old-time, gentle, sweet, wicked laugh. He said:

"Well—it'd have been better for him if you hadn't. All it did for him was to cost him his life."

Up she sprang. "Don't say that!" she cried passionately—so passionately that her whole body shook. "Do you suppose I don't know it? I know that I killed him. But I don't feel that he's dead. If I did, I'd not be able to live. But I can't! I can't! For me he is as much alive as ever."

"Try to think that—if it pleases you," sneered Palmer. "The fact remains that it was you who killed him."

Again she shivered. "Yes," she said, "I killed him."

"And that's why I hate you," Palmer went on, calm and deliberate—except his eyes; they were terrible. "A few minutes ago—when I was exulting that he would probably die—just then I found that opened cable on the mantel. Do you know what it did to me? It made me hate you. When I read it——" Freddie puffed at his cigarette in silence. She dropped weakly to the chair at the dressing table.

"Curse it!" he burst out. "I loved him. Yes, I was crazy about him—and am still. I'm glad I killed him. I'd do it again. I had to do it. He owed me his life. But that doesn't make me forgive you."

A long silence. Her fingers wandered among the articles spread upon the dressing table. He said:

"You're getting ready to leave?"

"I'm going to a hotel at once."

"Well, you needn't. I'm leaving. You're done with me. But I'm done with you." He rose, bent upon her his wicked glance, sneering and cruel. "You never want to see me again. No more do I ever want to see you again. I wish to God I never had seen you. You cost me the only friend I ever had that I cared about. And what's a woman beside a friend—a man friend? You've made a fool of me, as a woman always does of a man—always, by God! If she loves him, she destroys him. If she doesn't love him, he destroys himself."

Susan covered her face with her bare arms and sank down at the dressing table. "For pity's sake," she cried brokenly, "spare me—spare me!"

He seized her roughly by the shoulder. "Just flesh!" he said. "Beautiful flesh—but just female. And look what a fool you've made of me—and the best man in the world dead—over yonder! Spare you? Oh, you'll pull through all right. You'll pull through everything and anything—and come out stronger and better looking and better off. Spare you! Hell! I'd have killed you instead of him if I'd known I was going to hate you after I'd done the other thing. I'd do it yet—you dirty skirt!"

He jerked her unresisting form to its feet, gazed at her like an insane fiend. With a sob he seized her in his arms, crushed her against his breast, sunk his fingers deep into her hair, kissed it, grinding his teeth as he kissed. "I hate you, damn you—and I love you!" He flung her back into the chair—out of his life. "You'll never see me again!" And he fled from the room—from the house.



CHAPTER XXV

THE big ship issued from the Mersey into ugly waters—into the weather that at all seasons haunts and curses the coasts of Northern Europe. From Saturday until Wednesday Susan and Madame Deliere had true Atlantic seas and skies; and the ship leaped and shivered and crashed along like a brave cavalryman in the rear of a rout—fighting and flying, flying and fighting. Four days of hours whose every waking second lagged to record itself in a distinct pang of physical wretchedness; four days in which all emotions not physical were suspended, in which even the will to live, most tenacious of primal instincts in a sane human being, yielded somewhat to the general lassitude and disgust. Yet for Susan Lenox four most fortunate days; for in them she underwent a mental change that enabled her to emerge delivered of the strain that threatened at every moment to cause a snap.

On the fifth day her mind, crutched by her resuming body, took up again its normal routine. She began to dress herself, to eat, to exercise—the mechanical things first, as always—then to think. The grief that had numbed her seemed to have been left behind in England where it had suddenly struck her down—England far away and vague across those immense and infuriated waters, like the gulf of death between two incarnations. No doubt that grief was awaiting her at the other shores; no doubt there she would feel that Brent was gone. But she would be better able to bear the discovery. The body can be accustomed to the deadliest poisons, so that they become harmless—even useful—even a necessary aid to life. In the same way the mind can grow accustomed to the cruelest calamities, tolerate them, use them to attain a strength and power the hot-housed soul never gets.

When a human being is abruptly plunged into an unnatural unconsciousness by mental or physical catastrophes, the greatest care is taken that the awakening to normal life again be slow, gradual, without shock. Otherwise the return would mean death or insanity or lifelong affliction with radical weakness. It may be that this sea voyage with its four days of agitations that lowered Susan's physical life to a harmony of wretchedness with her mental plight, and the succeeding days of gradual calming and restoration, acted upon her to save her from disaster. There will be those readers of her story who, judging her, perhaps, by themselves—as revealed in their judgments, rather than in their professions—will think it was quite unnecessary to awaken her gradually; they will declare her a hard-hearted person, caring deeply about no one but herself, or one of those curiosities of human nature that are interested only in things, not at all in persons, even in themselves. There may also be those who will see in her a soft and gentle heart for which her intelligence finally taught her to construct a shield—more or less effective—against buffetings which would have destroyed or, worse still, maimed her. These will feel that the sea voyage, the sea change, suspending the normal human life, the life on land, tided her over a crisis that otherwise must have been disastrous.

However this may be—and who dares claim the definite knowledge of the mazes of human character and motive to be positive about the matter?—however it may be, on Thursday afternoon they steamed along a tranquil and glistening sea into the splendor and majesty of New York Harbor. And Susan was again her calm, sweet self, as the violet-gray eyes gazing pensively from the small, strongly-featured face plainly showed. Herself again, with the wound—deepest if not cruelest of her many wounds—covered and with its poison under control. She was ready again to begin to live—ready to fulfill our only certain mission on this earth, for we are not here to succumb and to die, but to adapt ourselves and live. And those who laud the succumbers and the diers—yea, even the blessed martyrs of sundry and divers fleeting issues usually delusions—may be paying ill-deserved tribute to vanity, obstinacy, lack of useful common sense, passion for futile and untimely agitation—or sheer cowardice. Truth—and what is truth but right living?—truth needs no martyrs; and the world needs not martyrs, not corpses rotting in unmarked or monumented graves, but intelligent men and women, healthy in body and mind, capable of leading the human race as fast as it is able to go in the direction of the best truth to which it is able at that time to aspire.

As the ship cleared Quarantine Susan stood on the main deck well forward, with Madame Clelie beside her. And up within her, defying all rebuke, surged the hope that cannot die in strong souls living in healthy bodies.

She had a momentary sense of shame, born of the feeling that it is basest, most heartless selfishness to live, to respond to the caress of keen air upon healthy skin, of glorious light upon healthy eyes, when there are others shut out and shut away from these joys forever. Then she said to herself, "But no one need apologize for being alive and for hoping. I must try to justify him for all he did for me."

A few miles of beautiful water highway between circling shores of green, and afar off through the mist Madame Clelie's fascinated eyes beheld a city of enchantment. It appeared and disappeared, reappeared only to disappear again, as its veil of azure mist was blown into thick or thin folds by the light breeze. One moment the Frenchwoman would think there was nothing ahead but more and ever more of the bay glittering in the summer sunlight. The next moment she would see again that city—or was it a mirage of a city?—towers, mighty walls, domes rising mass above mass, summit above summit, into the very heavens from the water's edge where there was a fringe of green. Surely the vision must be real; yet how could tiny man out of earth and upon earth rear in such enchantment of line and color those enormous masses, those peak-like piercings of the sky?

"Is that—it?" she asked in an awed undertone.

Susan nodded. She, too, was gazing spellbound. Her beloved City of the Sun.

"But it is beautiful—beautiful beyond belief. And I have always heard that New York was ugly."

"It is beautiful—and ugly—both beyond belief!" replied Susan.

"No wonder you love it!"

"Yes—I love it. I have loved it from the first moment I saw it. I've never stopped loving it—not even——" She did not finish her sentence but gazed dreamily at the city appearing and disappearing in its veils of thin, luminous mist. Her thoughts traveled again the journey of her life in New York. When she spoke again, it was to say:

"Yes—when I first saw it—that spring evening—I called it my City of the Stars, then, for I didn't know that it belonged to the sun— Yes, that spring evening I was happier than I ever had been—or ever shall be again."

"But you will be happy again dear," said Clelie, tenderly pressing her arm.

A faint sad smile—sad but still a smile—made Susan's beautiful face lovely. "Yes, I shall be happy—not in those ways—but happy, for I shall be busy. . . . No, I don't take the tragic view of life—not at all. And as I've known misery, I don't try to hold to it."

"Leave that," said Clelie, "to those who have known only the comfortable make-believe miseries that rustle in crepe and shed tears—whenever there's anyone by to see."

"Like the beggars who begin to whine and exhibit their aggravated sores as soon as a possible giver comes into view," said Susan. "I've learned to accept what comes, and to try to make the best of it, whatever it is. . . . I say I've learned. But have I? Does one ever change? I guess I was born that sort of philosopher."

She recalled how she put the Warhams out of her life as soon as she discovered what they really meant to her and she to them—how she had put Jeb Ferguson out of her life—how she had conquered the grief and desolation of the loss of Burlingham—how she had survived Etta's going away without her—the inner meaning of her episodes with Rod—with Freddie Palmer——

And now this last supreme test—with her soul rising up and gathering itself together and lifting its head in strength——

"Yes, I was born to make the best of things," she repeated.

"Then you were born lucky," sighed Clelie, who was of those who must lean if they would not fall and lie where they fell.

Susan gave a curious little laugh—with no mirth, with a great deal of mockery. "Do you know, I never thought so before, but I believe you're right," said she. Again she laughed in that queer way. "If you knew my life you'd think I was joking. But I'm not. The fact that I've survived and am what I am proves I was born lucky." Her tone changed, her expression became unreadable. "If it's lucky to be born able to live. And if that isn't luck, what is?"

She thought how Brent said she was born lucky because she had the talent that enables one to rise above the sordidness of that capitalism he so often denounced—the sordidness of the lot of its slaves, the sordidness of the lot of its masters. Brent! If it were he leaning beside her—if he and she were coming up the bay toward the City of the Sun!

A billow of heartsick desolation surged over her. Alone—always alone. And still alone. And always to be alone.

Garvey came aboard when the gangway was run out. He was in black wherever black could be displayed. But the grief shadowing his large, simple countenance had the stamp of the genuine. And it was genuine, of the most approved enervating kind. He had done nothing but grieve since his master's death—had left unattended all the matters the man he loved and grieved for would have wished put in order. Is it out of charity for the weakness of human nature and that we may think as well as possible of it—is that why we admire and praise most enthusiastically the kind of love and the kind of friendship and the kind of grief that manifest themselves in obstreperous feeling and wordiness, with no strength left for any attempt to do? As Garvey greeted them the tears filled Clelie's eyes and she turned away. But Susan gazed at him steadily; in her eyes there were no tears, but a look that made Garvey choke back sobs and bend his head to hide his expression. What he saw—or felt—behind her calmness filled him with awe, with a kind of terror. But he did not recognize what he saw as grief; it did not resemble any grief he had felt or had heard about.

"He made a will just before he died," he said to Susan. "He left everything to you."

Then she had not been mistaken. He had loved her, even as she loved him. She turned and walked quickly from them. She hastened into her cabin, closed the door and flung herself across the bed. And for the first time she gave way. In that storm her soul was like a little land bird in the clutch of a sea hurricane. She did not understand herself. She still had no sense that he was dead; yet had his dead body been lying there in her arms she could not have been more shaken by paroxysms of grief, without tears or sobs—grief that vents itself in shrieks and peals of horrible laughter-like screams—she smothered them in the pillows in which she buried her face. Clelie came, opened the door, glanced in, closed it. An hour passed—an hour and a half. Then Susan appeared on deck—amber-white pallor, calm, beautiful, the fashionable woman in traveling dress.

"I never before saw you with your lips not rouged!" exclaimed Clelie.

"You will never see them rouged again," said Susan.

"But it makes you look older."

"Not so old as I am," replied she.

And she busied herself about the details of the landing and the customs, waving aside Garvey and his eager urgings that she sit quietly and leave everything to him. In the carriage, on the way to the hotel, she roused herself from her apparently tranquil reverie and broke the strained silence by saying:

"How much shall I have?"

The question was merely the protruding end of a train of thought years long and pursued all that time with scarcely an interruption. It seemed abrupt; to Garvey it sounded brutal. Off his guard, he showed in flooding color and staring eye how profoundly it shocked him. Susan saw, but she did not explain; she was not keeping accounts in emotion with the world. She waited patiently. After a long pause he said in a tone that contained as much of rebuke as so mild a dependent dared express:

"He left about thirty thousand a year, Miss Lenox."

The exultant light that leaped to Susan's eye horrified him. It even disturbed Clelie, though she better understood Susan's nature and was not nearly so reverent as Garvey of the hypocrisies of conventionality. But Susan had long since lost the last trace of awe of the opinion of others. She was not seeking to convey an impression of grief. Grief was too real to her. She would as soon have burst out with voluble confession of the secret of her love for Brent. She saw what Garvey was thinking; but she was not concerned. She continued to be herself—natural and simple. And there was no reason why she should conceal as a thing to be ashamed of the fact that Brent had accomplished the purpose he intended, had filled her with honest exultation—not with delight merely, not with triumph, but with that stronger and deeper joy which the unhoped for pardon brings to the condemned man.

She must live on. The thought of suicide, of any form of giving up—the thought that instantly possesses the weak and the diseased—could not find lodgment in that young, healthy body and mind of hers. She must live on; and suddenly she discovered that she could live free! Not after years of doubtful struggles, of reverses, of success so hardly won that she was left exhausted. But now—at once—free! The heavy shackles had been stricken off at a blow. She was free—forever free! Free, forever free, from the wolves of poverty and shame, of want and rags and filth, the wolves that had been pursuing her with swift, hideous padded stride, the wolves that more than once had dragged her down and torn and trampled her, and lapped her blood. Free to enter of her own right the world worth living in, the world from which all but a few are shut out, the world which only a few of those privileged to enter know how to enjoy. Free to live the life worth while the life of leisure to work, instead of slaving to make leisure and luxury and comfort for others. Free to achieve something beside food, clothing, and shelter. Free to live as she pleased, instead of for the pleasure of a master or masters. Free—free—free! The ecstasy of it surged up in her, for the moment possessing her and submerging even thought of how she had been freed.

She who had never acquired the habit of hypocrisy frankly exulted in countenance exultant beyond laughter. She could conceal her feelings, could refrain from expressing. But if she expressed at all, it must be her true self—what she honestly felt. Garvey hung his head in shame. He would not have believed Susan could be so unfeeling. He would not let his eyes see the painful sight. He would try to forget, would deny to himself that he had seen. For to his shallow, conventional nature Susan's expression could only mean delight in wealth, in the opportunity that now offered to idle and to luxuriate in the dead man's money, to realize the crude dreamings of those lesser minds whose initial impulses toward growth have been stifled by the routine our social system imposes upon all but the few with the strength to persist individual.

Free! She tried to summon the haunting vision of the old women with the tin cups of whisky reeling and staggering in time to the hunchback's playing. She could remember every detail, but these memories would not assemble even into a vivid picture and the picture would have been far enough from the horror of actuality in the vision she formerly could not banish. As a menace, as a prophecy, the old women and the hunchback and the strumming piano had gone forever. Free—secure, independent—free!

After a long silence Garvey ventured stammeringly:

"He said to me—he asked me to request—he didn't make it a condition—just a wish—a hope, Miss Lenox—that if you could, and felt it strongly enough——"

"Wished what?" said Susan, with a sharp impatience that showed how her nerves were unstrung.

"That you'd go on—go on with the plays—with the acting."

The violet eyes expressed wonder. "Go on?" she inquired, "Go on?" Then in a tone that made Clelie sob and Garvey's eyes fill she said:

"What else is there to live for, now?"

"I'm—I'm glad for his sake," stammered Garvey.

He was disconcerted by her smile. She made no other answer—aloud. For his sake! For her own sake, rather. What other life had she but the life he had given her? "And he knew I would," she said to herself. "He said that merely to let me know he left me entirely free. How like him, to do that!"

At the hotel she shut herself in; she saw no one, not even Clelie, for nearly a week. Then—she went to work—and worked like a reincarnation of Brent.

She inquired for Sperry, found that he and Rod had separated as they no longer needed each other; she went into a sort of partnership with Sperry for the production of Brent's plays—he, an excellent coach as well as stage director, helping her to finish her formal education for the stage. She played with success half a dozen of the already produced Brent plays. At the beginning of her second season she appeared in what has become her most famous part—Roxy in Brent's last play, "The Scandal." With the opening night her career of triumph began. Even the critics—therefore, not unnaturally, suspicious of an actress who was so beautiful, so beautifully dressed, so well supported, and so well outfitted with actor-proof plays even the critics conceded her ability. She was worthy of the great character Brent had created—the wayward, many-sided, ever gay Roxy Grandon.

When, at the first night of "The Scandal," the audience lingered, cheering Brent's picture thrown upon a drop, cheering Susan, calling her out again and again, refusing to leave the theater until it was announced that she could answer no more calls, as she had gone home—when she was thus finally and firmly established in her own right—she said to Sperry:

"Will you see to it that every sketch of me that appears tomorrow says that I am the natural daughter of Lorella Lenox?"

Sperry's Punch-like face reddened.

"I've been ashamed of that fact," she went on. "It has made me ashamed to be alive in the bottom of my heart."

"Absurd," said Sperry.

"Exactly," replied Susan. "Absurd. Even stronger than my shame about it has been my shame that I could be so small as to feel ashamed of it. Now—tonight" she was still in her dressing-room. As she paused they heard the faint faraway thunders of the applause of the lingering audience—"Listen!" she cried. "I am ashamed no longer. Sperry, Ich bin ein Ich!"

"I should say," laughed he. "All you have to say is 'Susan Lenox' and you answer all questions."

"At last I'm proud of it," she went on. "I've justified myself. I've justified my mother. I am proud of her, and she would be proud of me. So see that it's done, Sperry."

"Sure," said he. "You're right."

He took her hand and kissed it. She laughed, patted him on the shoulder, kissed him on both cheeks in friendly, sisterly fashion.

He had just gone when a card was brought to her—"Dr. Robert Stevens"—with "Sutherland, Indiana," penciled underneath. Instantly she remembered, and had him brought to her—the man who had rescued her from death at her birth. He proved to be a quiet, elderly gentleman, subdued and aged beyond his fifty-five years by the monotonous life of the drowsy old town. He approached with a manner of embarrassed respect and deference, stammering old-fashioned compliments. But Susan was the simple, unaffected girl again, so natural that he soon felt as much at ease as with one of his patients in Sutherland.

She took him away in her car to her apartment for supper with her and Clelie, who was in the company, and Sperry. She kept him hour after hour, questioning him about everyone and everything in the old town, drawing him out, insisting upon more and more details. The morning papers were brought and they read the accounts of play and author and players. For once there was not a dissent; all the critics agreed that it was a great performance of a great play. And Susan made Sperry read aloud the finest and the longest of the accounts of Brent himself—his life, his death, his work, his lasting fame now peculiarly assured because in Susan Lenox there had been found a competent interpreter of his genius.

After the reading there fell silence. Susan, her pallid face and her luminous, inquiring violet eyes inscrutable, sat gazing into vacancy. At last Doctor Stevens moved uneasily and rose to go. Susan roused herself, accompanied him to the adjoining room. Said the old doctor.

"I've told you about everybody. But you've told me nothing about the most interesting Sutherlander of all—yourself."

Susan looked at him. And he saw the wound hidden from all the world—the wound she hid from herself as much of the time as she could. He, the doctor, the professional confessor, had seen such wounds often; in all the world there is hardly a heart without one. He said:

"Since sorrow is the common lot, I wonder that men can be so selfish or so unthinking as not to help each other in every way to its consolations. Poor creatures that we are—wandering in the dark, fighting desperately, not knowing friend from foe!"

"But I am glad that you saved me," said she.

"You have the consolations—success—fame—honor."

"There is no consolation," replied she in her grave sweet way. "I had the best. I—lost him. I shall spend my life in flying from myself."

After a pause she went on: "I shall never speak to anyone as I have spoken to you. You will understand all. I had the best—the man who could have given me all a woman seeks from a man—love, companionship, sympathy, the shelter of strong arms. I had that. I have lost it. So——"

A long pause. Then she added:

"Usually life is almost tasteless to me. Again—for an hour or two it is a little less so—until I remember what I have lost. Then—the taste is very bitter—very bitter."

And she turned away.

She is a famous actress, reputed great. Some day she will be indeed great—when she has the stage experience and the years. Except for Clelie, she is alone. Not that there have been no friendships in her life. There have even been passions. With men and women of her vigor and vitality, passion is inevitable. But those she admits find that she has little to give, and they go away, she making no effort to detain them; or she finds that she has nothing to give, and sends them away as gently as may be. She has the reputation of caring for nothing but her art—and for the great establishment for orphans up the Hudson, into which about all her earnings go. The establishment is named for Brent and is dedicated to her mother. Is she happy? I do not know. I do not think she knows. Probably she is—as long as she can avoid pausing to think whether she is or not. What better happiness can intelligent mortal have, or hope for? Certainly she is triumphant, is lifted high above the storms that tortured her girlhood and early youth, the sordid woes that make life an unrelieved tragedy of calamity threatened and calamity realized for the masses of mankind. The last time I saw her——

It was a few evenings ago, and she was crossing the sidewalk before her house toward the big limousine that was to take her to the theater. She is still young; she looked even younger than she is. Her dress had the same exquisite quality that made her the talk of Paris in the days of her sojourn there. But it is not her dress that most interests me, nor the luxury and perfection of all her surroundings. It is not even her beauty—that is, the whole of her beauty.

Everything and every being that is individual in appearance has some one quality, trait, characteristic, which stands out above all the rest to make a climax of interest and charm. With the rose it is its perfume; with the bird, perhaps the scarlet or snowy feathers upon its breast. Among human beings who have the rare divine dower of clear individuality the crown and cap of distinction differs. In her—for me, at least—the consummate fascination is not in her eyes, though I am moved by the soft glory of their light, nor in the lovely oval contour of her sweet, healthily pallid face. No, it is in her mouth—sensitive, strong yet gentle, suggestive of all the passion and suffering and striving that have built up her life. Her mouth—the curve of it—I think it is, that sends from time to time the mysterious thrill through her audiences. And I imagine those who know her best look always first at those strangely pale lips, curved in a way that suggests bitterness melting into sympathy, sadness changing into mirth—a way that seems to say: "I have suffered—but, see! I have stood fast!"

Can a life teach any deeper lesson, give any higher inspiration?

As I was saying, the last time I saw her she was about to enter her automobile. I halted and watched the graceful movements with which she took her seat and gathered the robes about her. And then I noted her profile, by the light of the big lamps guarding her door. You know that profile? You have seen its same expression in every profile of successful man or woman who ever lived. Yes, she may be happy—doubtless is more happy than unhappy. But—I do not envy her—or any other of the sons and daughters of men who is blessed—and cursed—with imagination.

And Freddie—and Rod—and Etta—and the people of Sutherland—and all the rest who passed through her life and out? What does it matter? Some went up, some down—not without reason, but, alas! not for reason of desert. For the judgments of fate are, for the most part, not unlike blows from a lunatic striking out in the dark; if they land where they should, it is rarely and by sheer chance. Ruth's parents are dead; she is married to Sam Wright. He lost his father's money in wheat speculation in Chicago—in one of the most successful of the plutocracy's constantly recurring raids upon the hoardings of the middle class. They live in a little house in one of the back streets of Sutherland and he is head clerk in Arthur Sinclair's store—a position he owes to the fact that Sinclair is his rich brother-in-law. Ruth has children and she is happier in them than she realizes or than her discontented face and voice suggest. Etta is fat and contented, the mother of many, and fond of her fat, fussy August, the rich brewer. John Redmond—a congressman, a possession of the Beef Trust, I believe—but not so highly prized a possession as was his abler father.

Freddie? I saw him a year ago at the races at Auteuil. He is huge and loose and coarse, is in the way soon to die of Bright's disease, I suspect. There was a woman with him—very pretty, very chic. I saw no other woman similarly placed whose eyes held so assiduously, and without ever a wandering flutter, to the face of the man who was paying. But Freddie never noticed her. He chewed savagely at his cigar, looking about the while for things to grumble at or to curse. Rod? He is still writing indifferent plays with varying success. He long since wearied of Constance Francklyn, but she clings to him and, as she is a steady moneymaker, he tolerates her.

Brent? He is statelily ensconced up at Woodlawn. Susan has never been to his grave—there. His grave in her heart—she avoids that too, when she can. But there are times—there always will be times——

If you doubt it, look at her profile.

Yes, she has learned to live. But—she has paid the price.

THE END