"Are you asking me to let a beast like that go unpunished?" demanded Neville violently.

"Oh, use your brains, Louis. He frightened her and she slashed him well for it. And, womanlike—after there was no more danger and no more necessity for pluck—she got scared and ran; and the farther she ran the more scared she became. Look here, Louis; look at me—squarely." He laid both ponderous hands on Neville's shoulders:

"Sam has told me all about you and Miss West—and I can guess how your family takes it. Can't you see why she had the pluck to remain silent about this thing? It was because she saw in it the brutal contempt of the world toward a woman who stood in that world alone, unsupported, unprotected. And she would not have you and your family know how lightly the world held the woman whom you love and wish to marry—not for her own sake alone—but for the sake of your family's pride—and yours."

His hands dropped from Neville's shoulders; he stood considering him for a moment in silence.

"I've told you because, if you are the man I think you are, you ought to know the facts. Forcing her to the humiliation of telling you will not help matters; filling this pup full of lead means an agony of endless publicity and shame for her, for your family, and for you.... He'll never dare remain in the same county with her after this. He's probably skedaddled by this time anyway." ... Dr. Ogilvy looked narrowly at Neville. "Are you pretty sane, now?"

"Yes."

"You realise that gun-play is no good in this matter?"

"Y-yes."

"And you really are going to consider Miss West before your own natural but very primitive desire to do murder?"

Neville nodded.

"Knowing," added the doctor, "that the unspeakable cur who affronted her has probably taken to his heels?"

Neville, pale and silent, raised his eyes:

"Do you suspect anybody?"

"I don't know," said the doctor carelessly;—"I'll just step over to the telephone and make an inquiry of Penrhyn Cardemon—"

He walked to the end of the big hall, unhooked the receiver, asked for Cardemon's house, got it.

Neville heard him say:

"This is Dr. Ogilvy. Is that you, Gelett? Isn't your master at home?"

* * * * *

"What? Had to catch a train?"

* * * * *

"Oh! A sudden matter of business."

* * * * *

"I see. He's had a cable calling him to London. How long will he be away, Gelett?"

* * * * *

"Oh, I see. You don't know. Very well. I only called up because I understood he required medical attention."

* * * * *

"Yes—I understood he'd been hurt about the head and face, but I didn't know he had received such a—battering."

* * * * *

"You say that his horse threw him in the big beech-woods? Was he really very much cut up?"

* * * * *

"Pretty roughly handled, eh! All right. When you communicate with him tell him that Dr. Ogilvy and Mr. Neville, Jr., were greatly interested to know how badly he was injured. Do you understand? Well, don't forget. And you may tell him, Gelett, that as long as the scars remain, he'd better remain, too. Get it straight, Gelett; tell him it's my medical advice to remain away as long as he can—and a little longer. This climate is no good for him. Good-bye."

He turned from the telephone and sauntered toward Neville, who regarded him with a fixed stare.

"You see," he remarked with a shrug; and drew from his pocket a slightly twisted scarf pin—a big horse-shoe set with sapphires and diamonds—the kind of pin some kinds of men use in their riding-stocks.

"I've often seen him wearing it," he said carelessly. "Curious how it could have become twisted and entangled in Miss West's lace waist."

He held out the pin, turning it over reflectively as the facets of the gems caught and flashed back the light from the hall brackets.

"I'll drop it into the poor-box I think," he mused. "Cardemon will remain away so long that this pin will be entirely out of fashion when he returns."

After a few moments Neville drew a long, deep breath, and his clenched hands relaxed.

"Sure," commented the burly doctor. "That's right—feeling better—rush of common sense to the head. Well, I've got to go."

"Will you be here in the morning?"

"I think not. She'll be all right. If she isn't, send over for me."

"You don't think that the shock—the exhaustion—"

"Naw," said the big doctor with good-natured contempt; "she's going to be all right in the morning.... She's a lovely creature, isn't she? Sam said so. Sam has an eye for beauty. But, by jinks! I was scarcely prepared for such physical perfection—h'm!—or such fine and nice discrimination—or for such pluck.... God knows what people's families want these days. If the world mated properly our best families would be extinct in another generation.... You're one of 'em; you'd better get diligent before the world wakes up with a rush of common sense to its doddering old head." He gave him both hands, warmly, cordially: "Good-bye, Louis."

Neville said: "I want you to know that I'd marry her to-morrow if she'd have me, Billy."

The doctor lifted his eyebrows.

"Won't she?"

"No."

"Then probably you're not up to sample. A girl like that is no fool. She'll require a lot in a man. However, you're young; and you may make good yet."

"You don't understand, Billy—"

"Yes, I do. She wears a dinky miniature of you against her naked heart. Yes, I guess I understand.... And I guess she's that kind of a girl all unselfishness and innocence, and generous perversity and—quixotic love.... It's too bad, Louis. I guess you're up against it for fair."

He surveyed the younger man, shook his head:

"They can't stand for her, can they?"

"No."

"And she won't stand for snaking you out of the fold. That's it, I fancy?"

"Yes."

"Too bad—too bad. She's a fine woman—a very fine little woman. That's the kind a man ought to marry and bother the Almighty with gratitude all the rest of his life. Well—well! Your family is your own after all; and I live in Dartford, thank God!—not on lower Fifth Avenue or Tenth Street."

He started away, halted, came back:

"Couldn't you run away with her?" he asked anxiously.

"She won't," replied Neville, unsmiling.

"I mean, violently. But she's too heavy to carry, I fancy—and I'll bet she's got the vigour of little old Diana herself. No—you couldn't do the Sabine act with her—only a club and the cave-man's gentle persuasion would help either of you.... Well—well, if they see her at breakfast it may help some. You know a woman makes or breaks herself at breakfast. That's why the majority of woman take it abed. I'm serious, Louis; no man can stand 'em—the majority."

Once more he started away, hesitated, came back.

"Who's this Countess that Sam is so crazy about?"

"A sweet little woman, well-bred, and very genuine and sincere."

"Never heard of her in Dartford," muttered the doctor.

Neville laughed grimly:

"Billy, Tenth Street and lower Fifth Avenue and Greenwich Village and Chelsea and Stuyvesant Square—and Syringa Avenue, Dartford, are all about alike. Bird Centre is just as stupid as Manhattan; and there never was and never will be a republic and a democracy in any country on the face of this snob-cursed globe."

The doctor, very red, stared at him.

"By jinks!" he said, "I guess I'm one after all. Now, who in hell would suspect that!—after all the advice I've given you!"

"It was another fellow's family, that's all," said Neville wearily. "Theories work or they don't; only few care to try them on themselves or their own families—particularly when they devoutly believe in them."

"Gad! That's a stinger! You've got me going all right," said the doctor, wincing, "and you're perfectly correct. Here I've been practically counselling you to marry where your inclination led you, and let the rest go to blazes; and when it's a question of Sam doing something similar, I retire hastily across the river and establish a residence in Missouri. What a rotten, custom-ridden bunch of snippy-snappy-snobbery we are after all!... All the same—who is the Countess?"

Neville didn't know much about her.

"Sam's such an ass," said his brother, "and it isn't all snobbery on my part."

"The safest thing to do," said Neville bitterly, "is to let a man in love alone."

"Right. Foolish—damned foolish—but right! There is no greater ass than a wise one. Those who don't know anything at all are the better asses—and the happier."

And he went away down the stairs, muttering and gesticulating.

Mrs. Neville came to the door as he opened it to go out. They talked in low voices for a few moments, then the doctor went out and Mrs. Neville called to Stephanie.

The girl came from the lighted drawing-room, and, together, the two women ascended the stairs.

Stephanie smiled and nodded to Neville, then continued on along the hall; but his mother stopped to speak to him.

"Go and sit with your father a little while," she said. "And don't be impatient with him, dear. He is an old man—a product of a different age and a simpler civilisation—perhaps a narrower one. Be patient and gentle with him. He really is fond of you and proud of you."

"Very well, mother.... Is anybody going to sit up with Valerie?"

"Stephanie insists on sleeping on the couch at the foot of her bed. I offered to sit up but she wouldn't let me.... You'll see that I'm called if anything happens, won't you?"

"Yes. Good-night, mother."

He kissed her, stood a moment looking at the closed door behind which lay Valerie—tried to realise that she did lie there under the same roof-tree that sheltered father, mother, and sister—then, with a strange thrill in his heart, he went downstairs.

Cameron passed him, on his upward way to slumberland.

"How's Miss West?" he asked cheerfully.

"Asleep, I think. Billy Ogilvy expects her to be all right in the morning."

"Good work! Glad of it. Tell your governor; he's been inquiring."

"Has he?" said Neville, with another thrill, and went into the living room where his father sat alone before the whitening ashes of the fire.

"Well, father!" he said, smiling.

The older man turned his head, then turned it away as his son drew up a chair and laid a stick across the andirons.

"It's turned a little chilly," he said.

"I have known of many a frost in May," said his father.

There was a silence; then his father slowly turned and gazed at him.

"How is—Miss West?" he asked stiffly.

"Billy Ogilvy says she will be all right to-morrow, father."

"Was she injured by her unfortunate experience?"

"A little briar-torn, I'm afraid. Those big beech woods are rather a puzzle to anybody who is not familiar with the country. No wonder she became frightened when it grew dark."

"It was—very distressing," nodded his father.

They remained silent again until Mr. Neville rose, took off his spectacles, laid aside The Evening Post, and held out his hand.

"Good-night, my son."

"Good-night, father."

"Yes—yes—good-night—good-night—to many, many things, my son; old-fashioned things of no value any more—of no use to me, or you, or anybody any more."

He retained his son's hand in his, peering at him, dim-eyed, without his spectacles:

"The old order passes—the old ideas, the old beliefs—and the old people who cherished them—who know no others, needed no others.... Good-night, my son."

But he made no movement to leave, and still held to his son's hand:

"I've tried to live as blamelessly as my father lived, Louis—and as God has given me to see my way through life.... But—the times change so—change so. The times are perplexing; life grows noisier, and stranger and more complex and more violent every day around us—and the old require repose, Louis. Try to understand that."

"Yes, father."

The other looked at him, wearily:

"Your mother seems to think that your happiness in life depends on—what we say to you—this evening. Stephanie seems to believe it, too.... Lily says very little.... And so do I, Louis—very little ... only enough to—to wish you—happiness. And so—good-night."



CHAPTER XV

It was barely daylight when Valerie awoke. She lay perfectly still, listening, remembering, her eyes wandering over the dim, unfamiliar room. Through thin silk curtains a little of the early light penetrated; she heard the ceaseless chorus of the birds, cocks crowing near and far away, the whimpering flight of pigeons around the eaves above her windows, and their low, incessant cooing.

Suddenly, through the foot-bars of her bed she caught sight of Stephanie lying sound asleep on the couch, and she sat up—swiftly, noiselessly, staring at her out of wide eyes from which the last trace of dreams had fled.

For a long while she remained upright among her pillows, looking at Stephanie, remembering, considering; then, with decision, she slipped silently out of bed, and went about her dressing without a sound.

In the connecting bath-room and dressing-room beyond she found her clothing gathered in a heap, evidently to be taken away and freshened early in the morning. She dared not brush it for fear of awakening Stephanie; her toilet was swift and simple; she clothed herself rapidly and stepped out into the hall, her rubber-soled walking shoes making no noise.

Below, the side-lights of the door made unbolting and unchaining easy; it would be hours yet before even the servants were stirring, but she moved with infinite caution, stepping out onto the veranda and closing the door behind her without making the slightest noise.

Dew splashed her shoes as she hastened across the lawn. She knew the Estwich road even if there had been no finger-posts to point out her way.

The sun had not yet risen; woods were foggy; the cattle in the fields stood to their shadowy flanks in the thin mist; and everywhere, like the cheery rush of a stream, sounded the torrent of bird-music from bramble patch and alder-swale, from hedge and orchard and young woodland.

It was not until she had arrived in sight of Estwich Corners that she met the first farmer afield; and, as she turned into the drive, the edge of the sun sent a blinding search-light over a dew-soaked world, and her long-shadow sprang into view, streaming away behind her across the lawn.

To her surprise the front door was open and a harnessed buck-board stood at the gate; and suddenly she recollected with a hot blush that the household must have been amazed and probably alarmed by her non-appearance the night before.

Helene's farmer and her maid came out as she entered the front walk, and, seeing her, stood round-eyed and gaping.

"I got lost and remained over night at Mrs. Collis's," she said, smiling. "Now, I'd like a bath if you please and some fresh clothing for travelling, because I am obliged to go to the city, and I wish to catch the earliest train."

When at last it was plain to them that she was alive and well, Helene's maid, still trembling, hastened to draw a bath for her and pack the small steamer trunk; and the farmer sat down on the porch and waited, still more or less shaken by the anxiety which had sent him pottering about the neighbouring woods and fields with a lantern the night before, and had aroused him to renewed endeavour before sunrise.

Bathed and freshly clothed, Valerie hastened into the pretty library, seated herself at the desk, pushed up her veil, and wrote rapidly:

"MY DEAR MRS. COLLIS: My gratitude to you, to Mrs. Neville, and to Miss Swift is none the less real because I am acknowledging it by letter. Besides, I am very certain that you would prefer it so.

"You and your family have been kindness itself to me in my awkward and painful dilemma; you have sheltered me and provided medical attendance; and I am deeply in your debt.

"Had matters been different I need scarcely say that it would have been a pleasure for me to personally acknowledge to you and your family my grateful appreciation.

"But I am very sure that I could show my gratitude in no more welcome manner than by doing what I have done this morning and by expressing that obligation to you in writing.

"Before I close may I ask you to believe that I had no intention of seeking shelter at your house? Until I heard Mr. Neville's voice I had no idea where I was. I merely made my way toward the first lighted windows that I saw, never dreaming that I had come to Ashuelyn.

"I am sorry that my stupid misadventure has caused you and your family so much trouble and annoyance. I feel it very keenly—more keenly because of your kindness in making the best of what must have been to you and your family a most disagreeable episode.

"May I venture to express to you my thanks to Miss Swift who so generously remained in my room last night? I am deeply sensible of her sweetness to an unwelcome stranger—and of Mrs. Neville's gentle manner toward one who, I am afraid, has caused her much anxiety.

"To the very amiable physician who did so much to calm a foolish and inexcusable nervousness, I am genuinely grateful. If I knew his name and address I would write and properly acknowledge my debt.

"There is one thing more before I close: I am sorry that I wrote you so ungraciously after receiving your last letter. It would have been perfectly easy to have thanked you courteously, whatever private opinion I may have entertained concerning a matter about which there may be more than my own opinion.

"And now, please believe that I will never again voluntarily cause you and your family the slightest uneasiness or inconvenience; and believe me, too, if you care to. Very gratefully yours,

"VALERIE WEST."

She directed and sealed the letter, then drew toward her another sheet of paper:

"DEAREST: I could die of shame for having blundered into your family circle. I dare not even consider what they must think of me now. You will know how innocently and unsuspiciously it was done—how utterly impossible it would have been for me to have voluntarily committed such an act even in the last extremity. But what they will think of my appearance at your door last night, I don't know and I dare not surmise. I have done all I could; I have rid them of me, and I have written to your sister to thank her and your family for their very real kindness to the last woman in the world whom they would have willingly chosen to receive and entertain.

"Dear, I didn't know I had nerves; but this experience seems to have developed them. I am perfectly well, but the country here has become distasteful to me, and I am going to town in a few minutes. I want to get away—I want to go back to my work—earn my living again—live in blessed self-respect where, as a worker, I have the right to live.

"Dearest, I am sorry about not meeting you at the station and going back to town with you. But I simply cannot endure staying here after last night. I suppose it is weak and silly of me, but I feel now as though your family would never be perfectly tranquil again until I am out of their immediate vicinity. I cannot convey to you or to them how sorry and how distressed I am that this thing has occurred.

"But I can, perhaps, make you understand that I love you, dearly—love you enough to give myself to you—love you enough to give you up forever.

"And it is to consider what is best, what to do, that I am going away quietly somewhere by myself to think it all out once more—and to come to a final decision before the first of June.

"I want to search my heart, and let God search it for any secret selfishness and unworthiness that might sway me in my choice—any overmastering love for you that might blind me. When I know myself, you shall know me. Until then I shall not write you; but sometime before the first of June—or on that day, you shall know and I shall know how I have decided wherein I may best serve you—whether by giving or withholding—whether by accepting or refusing forever all that I care for in the world—you, Louis, and the love you have given me.

"VALERIE WEST."

She sealed and directed this, laid it beside the other, and summoned the maid:

"Have these sent at once to Ashuelyn," she said; "let Jimmy go on his bicycle. Are my things ready? Is the buck-board still there? Then I will leave a note for the Countess."

And she scribbled hastily:

"HELENE DEAR: I've got to go to town in a hurry on matters of importance, and so I am taking a very unceremonious leave of you and of your delightful house.

"They'll tell you I got lost in the woods last night, and I did. It was too stupid of me; but no harm came of it—only a little embarrassment in accepting a night's shelter at Ashuelyn among people who were everything that was hospitable, but who must have been anything but delighted to entertain me.

"In a few weeks I shall write you again. I have not exactly decided what to do this summer. I may go abroad for a vacation as I have saved enough to do so in an economical manner; and I should love to see the French cathedrals. Perhaps, if I so decide, you might be persuaded to go with me.

"However, it is too early to plan yet. A matter of utmost importance is going to keep me busy and secluded for a week or so. After that I shall come to some definite decision; and then you shall hear from me.

"In the meanwhile—I have enjoyed Estwich and you immensely. It was kind and dear of you to ask me. I shall never forget my visit.

"Good-bye, Helene dear.

"VALERIE WEST."

This note she left on Helene's dresser, then ran downstairs and sprang into the buck-board.

They had plenty of time to catch the train; and on the train she had plenty of leisure for reflection. But she could not seem to think; a confused sensation of excitement invaded her mind and she sat in her velvet armed chair alternately shivering with the memory of Cardemon's villainy, and quivering under the recollection of her night at Ashuelyn.

Rita was not at home when she came into their little apartment. The parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and shrieking from his perch; the goldfish goggled his eyes and swam 'round and 'round. She stood still in the centre of her room looking vacantly about her. An immense, overwhelming sense of loneliness came over her; she turned as the rush of tears blinded her and flung herself full length among the pillows of her bed.

* * * * *

Her first two or three days in town were busy ones; she had her accounts to balance, her inventories to take, her mending to do, her modest summer wardrobe to acquire, letters to write and to answer, engagements to make, to fulfill, to postpone; friends to call on and to receive, duties in regard to the New Idea Home to attend to.



Also, the morning after her arrival came a special delivery letter from Neville:

"It was a mistake to go, dear, because, although you could not have known it, matters have changed most happily for us. You were a welcome guest in my sister's house; you would have been asked to remain after your visit at Estwich was over. My family's sentiments are changing—have changed. It requires only you yourself to convince them. I wish you had remained, although your going so quietly commanded the respect of everybody. They all are very silent about it and about you, yet I can see that they have been affected most favourably by their brief glimpse of you.

"As for your wishing to remain undisturbed for a few days, I can see no reason for it now, dear, but of course I shall respect your wishes.

"Only send me a line to say that the month of June will mean our marriage. Say it, dear, because there is now no reason to refuse."

To which she answered:

"Dearest among all men, no family's sentiments change over night. Your people were nice to me and I have thanked them. But, dear, I am not likely to delude myself in regard to their real sentiments concerning me. Too deeply ingrained, too basic, too essentially part of themselves and of their lives are the creeds, codes, and beliefs which, in spite of themselves, must continue to govern their real attitude toward such a girl as I am.

"It is dear of you to wish for us what cannot be; it is kind of them to accept your wish with resignation.

"But I have told you many times, my darling, that I would not accept a status as your wife at any cost to you or to them—and I can read between the lines, even if I did not know, what it would cost them and you. And so, very gently, and with a heart full of gratitude and love for you, I must decline this public honour.

"But, God willing, I shall not decline a lifetime devoted to you when you are not with them. That is all I can hope for; and it is so much more than I ever dreamed of having, that, to have you at all—even for a part of the time—even for a part of my life, is enough. And I say it humbly, reverently, without ignoble envy or discontent for what might have been had you and I been born to the same life amid the same surroundings.

"Don't write to me again, dear, until I have determined what is best for us. Before the first day of summer, or on that day, you will know. And so will I.

"My life is such a little thing compared to yours—of such slight value and worth that sometimes I think I am considering matters too deeply—that if I simply fling it in the scales the balance will scarcely be altered—the splendid, even tenor of your career will scarcely swerve a shade.

"Yet my life is already something to you; and besides it is all I have to give you; and if I am to give it—if it is adding an iota to your happiness for me to give it—then I must truly treat it with respect, and deeply consider the gift, and the giving, and if it shall be better for you to possess it, or better that you never shall.

"And whatever I do with myself, my darling, be certain that it is of you I am thinking and not of the girl, who loves you.

"V."

By degrees she cleared up her accounts and set her small house in order.

Rita seemed to divine that something radical was in progress of evolution, but Valerie offered no confidence, and the girl, already deeply worried over John Burleson's condition, had not spirit enough to meddle.

"Sam Ogilvy's brother is a wonder on tubercular cases," she said to Valerie, "and I'm doing my best to get John to go and see him at Dartford."

"Won't he?"

"He says he will, but you know how horridly untruthful men are. And now John is slopping about with his wet clay again as usual—an order for a tomb in Greenwood—poor boy, he had better think how best to keep away from tombs."

"Why, Rita!" said Valerie, shocked.

"I can't help it; I'm really frightened, dear. And you know well enough I'm no flighty alarmist. Besides, somehow, I feel certain that Sam's brother would tell John to go to Arizona"—she pointed piteously to her trunk: "It's packed; it has been packed for weeks. I'm all ready to go with him. Why can't a man mould clay and chip marble and cast bronze as well in Arizona as in this vile pest-hole?"

Valerie sat with folded hands looking at her.

"How do you think you could stand that desolation?"

"Arizona?"

"Yes."

"There is another desolation I dread more."

"Do you really love him so?"

Rita slowly turned from the window and looked at her.

"Yes," she said.



"Does he know it, Rita?"

"No, dear."

"Do you think—if he did—"

"No.... How could it be—after what has happened to me?"

"You would tell him?"

"Of course. I sometimes wonder whether he has not already heard—something—from that beast—"

"Does John know him?"

"He has done two fountains for his place at El Nauar. He had several other things in view—" she shrugged—"but The Mohave sailed suddenly with its owner for a voyage around the world—so John was told;—and—Valerie, it's the first clear breath of relief I've drawn since Penrhyn Cardemon entered John's studio."

"I didn't know he had ever been there."

"Yes; twice."

"Did you see him there?"

"Yes. I nearly dropped. At first he did not recognise me—I was very young—when—"

"Did he speak to you?"

"Yes. I managed to answer. John was not looking at me, fortunately.... After that he wrote to me—and I burned the letter.... It was horrible; he said that Jose Querida was his guest at El Nauar, and he asked me to get you because you knew Querida, and be his guest for a week end.... I cried that night; you heard me."

"Was that it!" asked Valerie, very pale.

"Yes; I was too wretched to tell you,"

Valerie sat silent, her teeth fixed in her lower lip. Then:

"Jose could not have known what kind of a man the—other—is."

"I hope not."

"Oh, he couldn't have known! Rita, he wouldn't have let him ask us—"

"Men seldom deceive one another."

"You don't think Jose Querida knew?"

"I—don't—think.... Valerie, men are very—very unlike women.... Forgive me if I seem to be embittered.... Even you have had your experience with men—the men that all the world seems to like—kind, jolly, generous, jovial, amusing men—and clever men; men of attainment, of distinction. And they—the majority of them—are, after all, just men, Valerie, just men in a world made for men, a world into which we come like timid intruders; uncertain through generations of uncertainty—innocently stupid through ages of stupid innocence, ready to please though not knowing exactly how; ready to be pleased, God knows, with pleasures as innocent as the simple minds that dream of them.

"Valerie, I do not believe any evil first came into this world of men through any woman."

Valerie looked down at her folded hands—small, smooth, white hands, pure of skin and innocent as a child's.

"I don't know," she said, troubled, "how much more unhappiness arises through men than through women, if any more ... I like men. Some are unruly—like children; some have the sense and the morals of marauding dogs.

"But, at worst, the unruly and the marauders seem so hopelessly beneath one, intellectually, that a girl's resentment is really more of contempt than of anger—and perhaps more of pity than of either."

Rita said: "I cannot feel as charitably.... You still have that right."

"Rita! Rita!" she said softly, "we both have loved men, you with the ignorance and courage of a child—I with less ignorance and with my courage as yet untested. Where is the difference between us—if we love sincerely?"

Rita leaned forward and looked at her searchingly:

"Do you mean to do—what you said you would?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he wants me."

Rita sprang to her feet and began pacing the floor.

"I will not have it so!" she said excitedly, "I will not have it so! If he is a man—a real man—he will not have it so, either. If he will, he does not love you; mark what I say, Valerie—he does not love you enough. No man can love a woman enough to accept that from her; it would be a paradox, I tell you!"

"He loves me enough," said Valerie, very pale. "He could not love me as I care for him; it is not in a man to do it, nor in any human being to love as I love him. You don't understand, Rita. I must be a part of him—not very much, because already there is so much to him—and I am so—so unimportant."

"You are more important than he is," said Rita fiercely—"with all your fineness and loyalty and divine sympathy and splendid humility—with your purity and your loveliness; and in spite of his very lofty intellect and his rather amazing genius, and his inherited social respectability—you are the more important to the happiness and welfare of this world—even to the humblest corner in it!"

"Rita! Rita! What wild, partisan nonsense you are talking!"



"Oh, Valerie, Valerie, if you only knew! If you only knew!"

* * * * *

Querida called next day. Rita was at home but flatly refused to see him.

"Tell Mr. Querida," she said to the janitor, "that neither I nor Miss West are at home to him, and that if he is as nimble at riddles as he is at mischief he can guess this one before his friend Mr. Cardemon returns from a voyage around the world."

Which reply slightly disturbed Querida.

All during dinner—and he was dining alone—he considered it; and his thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie.

Somehow, some way or other he must come to an understanding with Valerie West. Somehow, some way, she must be brought to listen to him. Because, while he lived, married or single, poor or wealthy, he would never rest, never be satisfied, never wring from life the last drop that life must pay him, until this woman's love was his.

He loved her as such a man loves; he had no idea of letting that love for her interfere with other ambitions.

Long ago, when very poor and very talented and very confident that the world, which pretended to ignore him, really knew in its furtive heart that it owed him fame and fortune and social position, he had determined to begin the final campaign with a perfectly suitable marriage.

That was all years ago; and he had never swerved in his determination—not even when Valerie West surprised his life in all the freshness of her young beauty.

And, as he sat there leisurely over his claret, he reflected, easily, that the time had come for the marriage, and that the woman he had picked out was perfectly suitable, and that the suitable evening to inform her was the present evening.

Mrs. Hind-Willet was prepossessing enough to interest him, clever enough to stop gaps in a dinner table conversation, wealthy enough to permit him a liberty of rejecting commissions, which he had never before dared to exercise, and fashionable enough to carry for him what could not be carried through his own presentable good looks and manners and fame.

This last winter he had become a frequenter of her house on Sixty-third Street; and so carelessly assiduous, and so delightfully casual had become his attentions to that beautifully groomed widow, that his footing with her was already an intimacy, and his portrait of her, which he had given her, had been the sensation of the loan exhibition at the great Interborough Charity Bazaar.

He was neither apprehensive nor excited as he calmly finished his claret. He was to drop in there after dinner to discuss with her several candidates as architects for the New Idea Home.

So when he was entirely ready he took his hat and stick and departed in a taxicab, pleasantly suffused with a gentle glow of anticipation. He had waited many years for such an evening as this was to be. He was a patient and unmoral man. He could wait longer for Valerie,—and for the first secret blow at the happiness and threatened artistic success of Louis Neville.

So he rolled away in his taxi very comfortably, savouring his cigarette, indolently assured of his reception in a house which it would suit him perfectly to inhabit when he cared to.

Only one thing worried him a little—the short note he had received from his friend Penrhyn Cardemon, saying rather brusquely that he'd made up his mind not to have his portrait painted for five thousand dollars, and that he was going off on The Mohave to be gone a year at least.

Which pained Querida, because Cardemon had not only side-stepped what was almost a commission, but he had, also, apparently forgotten his invitation to spend the summer on The Mohave—with the understanding that Valerie West was also to be invited.

However, everything comes in its season; and this did not appear to be the season for ripe commissions and yachting enterprises; but it certainly seemed to be the season for a judicious matrimonial enterprise.

And when Mrs. Hind-Willet received him in a rose-tinted reception corner, audaciously intimate and secluded, he truly felt that he was really missing something of the pleasures of the chase, and that it was a little too easy to be acutely enjoyable.

However, when at last he had gently retained her hand and had whispered, "Alma," and had let his big, dark, velvet eyes rest with respectful passion upon her smaller and clearer and blacker ones, something somewhere in the machinery seemed to go wrong—annoyingly wrong.

Because Mrs. Hind-Willet began to laugh—and evidently was trying not to—trying to remain very serious; but her little black eyes were glistening with tears of suppressed mirth, and when, amazed and offended, he would have withdrawn his hand, she retained it almost convulsively:

"Jose! I beg your pardon!—I truly do. It is perfectly horrid and unspeakable of me to behave this way; but listen, child! I am forty; I am perfectly contented not to marry again; and I don't love you. So, my poor Jose, what on earth am I to do if I don't laugh a little. I can't weep over it you know."

The scarlet flush faded from his olive skin. "Alma," he began mournfully, but she only shook her head, vigorously.

"Nonsense," she said. "You like me for a sufficient variety of reasons. And to tell you the truth I suspect that I am quite as madly in love with you as you actually are with me. No, no, Jose. There are too many—discrepancies—of various kinds. I have too little to gain!—to be horribly frank—and you—alas!—are a very cautious, very clever, and admirably sophisticated young man.... There, there! I am not really accusing you—or blaming you—very much.... I'd have tried the same thing in your place—yes, indeed I would.... But, Jose dear, if you'll take the mature advice of fair, plump, and forty, you'll let the lesser ambition go.

"A clever wealthy woman nearer your age, and on the edge of things—with you for a husband, ought to carry you and herself far enough to suit you. And there'd be more amusement in it, believe me.... And now—you may kiss my hand—very good-humoredly and respectfully, and we'll talk about those architects. Shall we?"

* * * * *

For twenty-four hours Querida remained a profoundly astonished man. Examine, in retrospective, as he would, the details of the delicately adjusted machinery which for so many years had slowly but surely turned the interlocking cog-wheels of destiny for him, he could not find where the trouble had been—could discover no friction caused by neglect of lubricants; no over-oiling, either; no flaw.

Wherein lay the trouble? Based on what error was his theory that the average man could marry anybody he chose? Just where had he miscalculated?

He admitted that times changed very fast; that the world was spinning at a rate that required nimble wits to keep account of its revolutions. But his own wits were nimble, almost feminine in the rapid delicacy of their intuition—almost feminine, but not quite. And he felt, vaguely, that there lay his mistake in engaging a woman with a woman's own weapons; and that the only chance a man has is to perplex her with his own.

The world was spinning rapidly; times changed very fast, but not as fast as women were changing in the Western World. For the self-sufficient woman—the self-confident, self-sustaining individual, not only content but actually preferring autonomy of mind and body, was a fact in which Jose Querida had never really ever believed. No sentimentalist does or really can. And all creators of things artistic are, basically, sentimentalists.

Querida's almond-shaped, velvet eyes had done their share for him in his time; they were merely part of a complex machinery which, included many exquisitely adjusted parts which could produce at will such phenomena as temporary but genuine sympathy and emotion: a voice controlled and modulated to the finest nuances; a grace of body and mind that resembled inherent delicacy; a nervous receptiveness and intelligence almost supersensitive in its recognition of complicated ethical problems. It was a machinery which could make of him any manner of man which the opportunism of the particular moment required. Yet, with all this, in every nerve and bone and fibre he adored material and intellectual beauty, and physical suffering in others actually distressed him.

Now, reviewing matters, deeply interested to find the microscopic obstruction which had so abruptly stopped the machinery of destiny for him, he was modest enough and sufficiently liberal-minded to admit to himself that Alma Hind-Willet was the exception that proved this rule. There were women so constructed that they had become essentially unresponsive. Alma was one. But, he concluded that if he lived a thousand years he was not likely to encounter another.

And the following afternoon he called upon Mrs. Hind-Willet's understudy, the blue-eyed little Countess d'Enver.

Helene d'Enver was superintending the definite closing of her beautiful duplex apartments—the most beautiful in the great chateau-like, limestone building. And Jose Querida knew perfectly well what the rents were.

"Such a funny time to come to see me," she had said laughingly over the telephone; "I'm in a dreadful state with skirts pinned up and a motor-bonnet over my hair, but I will not permit my maids to touch the porcelains; and if you really wish to see me, come ahead."

He really wished to. Besides he adored her Ming porcelains and her Celedon, and the idea of any maid touching them almost gave him heart-failure. He himself possessed one piece of Ming and a broken fragment of Celedon. Women had been married for less.

She was very charming in her pinned-up skirts and her dainty head-gear, and she welcomed him and intrusted him with specimens which sent pleasant shivers down his flexible spine.

And, together, they put away many scores of specimens which were actually priceless, inasmuch as any rumour of a public sale would have excited amateurs to the verge of lunacy, and almost any psychopathic might have established a new record for madness at an auction of this matchless collection.

They breathed easier when the thrilling task was ended; but emotion still enchained them as they seated themselves at a tea-table—an emotion so deep on Helene's part that she suffered Querida to retain the tips of her fingers for an appreciable moment when transferring sugar to his cup. And she listened, with a smile almost tremulous, to the fascinating music of his voice, charmingly attuned and modulated to a pitch which, somehow, seemed to harmonise with the very word, Celedon.

"I am so surprised," she said softly—but his dark eyes noted that she was still busy with her tea paraphernalia—"I scarcely know what to think, Mr. Querida—"

"Think that I love you—" breathed Querida, his dark and beautiful head very near to her blond one.

"I—am—thinking of it.... But—"

"Helene," he whispered musically;—and suddenly stiffened in his chair as the maid came clattering in over the rugless and polished parquet to announce Mr. Ogilvy, followed san facon by that young man, swinging a straw hat and a malacca stick.

"Sam!" said the pretty Countess, changing countenance.

"Hello, Helene! How-do, Querida! I heard you were temporarily in town, dear lady—" He kissed a hand that was as faltering and guilty as the irresolute eyes she lifted to his.

Ten minutes later Querida took his leave. He dismissed the expensive taxi which had been devouring time outside, and walked thoughtfully away down the fashionable street.

Because the machinery had chanced to clog twice did not disturb his theory; but the trouble with him was local; he was intensely and personally annoyed, nervous, irritated unspeakably. Because, except for Valerie, these two, Alma Hind-Willet and Helene d'Enver, were the only two socially and financially suitable women in whom he took the slightest physical interest.

There is, in all women, one moment—sometimes repeated—in which a sudden yielding to caprice sometimes overturns the logical plans laid out and inexorably followed for half a lifetime. And there was much of the feminine about Querida.

And it chanced to happen on this day—when no doubt all unsuspected and unperceived some lurking jettatura had given him the evil eye—that he passed by hazard through the block where Valerie lived, and saw her mounting the steps.

"Why, Jose!" she exclaimed, a trifle confused in her smiling cordiality as he sprang up the steps behind her—for Rita's bitterness, if it had not aroused in her suspicions, had troubled her in spite of her declaration of unbelief.

He asked for a cup of tea, and she invited him. Rita was in the room when they entered; and she stood up coolly, coolly returned Querida's steady glance and salutation with a glance as calm, as detached, and as intelligent as a surgeon's.

Neither he nor she referred to his recent call; he was perfectly self-possessed, entirely amiable with that serene and level good-humour which sometimes masks a defiance almost contemptuous.

But Rita's engagements required her to leave very shortly after his advent; and before she went out she deliberately waited to catch Valerie's eye; and Valerie coloured deeply under her silent message.

Then Rita went away with a scarcely perceptible nod to Querida; and when, by the clock, she had been gone twenty minutes, Querida, without reason, without preparation, and perfectly aware of his moment's insanity, yielded to a second's flash of caprice—the second that comes once in the lives of all women—and now, in the ordered symmetry of his life, had come to him.

"Valerie," he said, "I love you. Will you marry me?"

She had been leaning sideways on the back of her chair, one hand supporting her cheek, gazing almost listlessly out of the open window.

She did not stir, nor did her face alter, but, very quietly she turned her head and looked at him.

He spoke, breathlessly, eloquently, persuasively, and well; the perfect machinery was imitating for him a single-minded, ardent, honourable young man, intelligent enough to know his own mind, manly enough to speak it. The facsimile was flawless.

He had finished and was waiting, long fingers gripping the arms of his chair; and her face had altered only to soften divinely, and her eyes were very sweet and untroubled.

"I am glad you have spoken this way to me, Jose. Something has been said about you—in connection with Mr. Cardemon—which disturbed me and made me very sad and miserable, although I would not permit myself to believe it.... And now I know it was a mistake—because you have asked me to be your wife."

She sat looking at him, the sadness in her eyes emphasised by the troubled smile curving her lips:

"I couldn't marry you, Jose, because I am not in love with you. If I were I would do it.... But I do not care for you that way."

For an instant some inner flare of madness blinded his brain and vision. There was, in his face, something so terrible that Valerie unconsciously rose to her feet, bewildered, almost stunned.

"I want you," he said slowly.

"Jose! What in the world—"

His dry lips moved, but no articulate sound came from them. Suddenly he sprang to his feet, and out of his twisted, distorted mouth poured a torrent of passion, of reproach, of half-crazed pleading—incoherency tumbling over incoherency, deafening her, beating in upon her, till she swayed where she stood, holding her arms up as though to shield herself.

The next instant she was straining, twisting in his arms, striving to cry out, to wrench herself free to keep her feet amid the crash of the overturned table and a falling chair.

"Jose! Are you insane?" she panted, tearing herself free and springing toward the door. Suddenly she halted, uttered a cry as he jumped back to block her way. The low window-ledge caught him under both knees; he clutched at nothing, reeled backward and outward and fell into space.

For a second she covered her white face with both hands, then turned, dragged herself to the open window, forced herself to look out.

He lay on his back on the grass in the rear yard, and the janitor was already bending over him. And when she reached the yard Querida had opened both eyes.

Later the ambulance came, and with its surgeon came a policeman. Querida, lying with his head on her lap, opened his eyes again:

"I was—seated—on the window-ledge," he said with difficulty—"and overbalanced myself.... Caught the table—but it fell over.... That's all."

The eyes in his ghastly face closed wearily, then fluttered:

"Awfully sorry, Valerie—make such a mess—in your house."

"Oh-h—Jose," she sobbed.

After that they took him away to the Presbyterian Hospital; and nobody seemed to find very much the matter with him except that he'd been badly shocked.

But the next day all sensation ceased in his body from the neck downward.

And they told Valerie why.

For ten days he lay there, perfectly conscious, patient, good-humored, and his almond-shaped and hollow eyes rested on Valerie and Rita with a fatalistic serenity subtly tinged with irony.

John Burleson came to see him, and cried. After he left, Querida said to Valerie:

"John and I are destined to remain near neighbours; his grief is well meant, but a trifle premature."

"You are not going to die, Jose!" she said gently.

But he only smiled.

Ogilvy came, Annan came, the Countess Helene, and even Mrs. Hind-Willet. He inspected them all with his shadowy and mysterious smile, answered them gently deep in his sunken eyes a sombre amusement seemed to dwell. But there was in it no bitterness.

Then Neville came. Valerie and Rita were absent that day but their roses filled the private ward-room with a hint of the coming summer.

Querida lay looking at Neville, the half smile resting on his pallid face like a slight shadow that faintly waxed and waned with every breath he drew.

"Well," he said quietly, "you are the man I wished to see."

"Querida," he said, deeply affected, "this thing isn't going to be permanent—"

"No; not permanent. It won't last, Neville. Nothing does last.... unless you can tell me whether my pictures are going to endure. Are they? I know that you will be as honest with me as I was—dishonest with you. I will believe what you say. Is my work destined to be permanent?"

"Don't you know it is?"

"I thought so.... But you know. Because, Neville, you are the man who is coming into what was mine, and what will be your own;—and you are coming into more than that, Neville, more than I ever could have attained. Now answer me; will my work live?"

"Always," said Neville simply.

Querida smiled:

"The rest doesn't matter then.... Even Valerie doesn't matter.... But you may hand me one of her roses.... No, a bud, if you don't mind—unopened."

When it was time for Neville to go Querida's smile had faded and the pink rose-bud lay wilted in his fingers.

"It is just as well, Neville," he said. "I couldn't have endured your advent. Somebody has to be first; I was—as long as I lived.... It is curious how acquiescent a man's mind becomes—when he's like this. I never believed it possible that a man really could die without regret, without some shadow of a desire to live. Yet it is that way, Neville.... But a man must lie dying before he can understand it."

* * * * *

A highly tinted uncle from Oporto arrived in New York just in time to see Querida alive. He brought with him a parrot.

"Send it to Mrs. Hind-Willet," whispered Querida with stiffening lips; "uno lavanta la caca y otro la nata."

A few minutes later he died, and his highly coloured uncle from Oporto sent the bird to Mrs. Hind-Willet and made the thriftiest arrangement possible to transport what was mortal of a great artist to Oporto—where a certain kind of parrot comes from.



CHAPTER XVI

On the morning of the first day of June Neville came into his studio and found there a letter from Valerie:

"DEAREST: I am not keeping my word to you; I am asking you for more time; and I know you will grant it.

"Jose Querida's death has had a curious effect on me. I was inclined to care very sincerely for him; I comprehended him better than many people, I think. Yet there was much in him that I never understood. And I doubt that he ever entirely understood himself.

"I believe that he was really a great painter, Louis—and have sometimes thought that his character was mediaeval at the foundations—with five centuries of civilisation thinly deposited over the bed-rock.... In him there seemed to be something primitive; something untamable, and utterly irreconcilable with, the fundamental characteristics of modern man.

"He was my friend.... Friendship, they say, is a record of misunderstandings; and it was so with us But may I tell you something? Jose Querida loved me—in his own fashion.

"What kind of a love it was—of what value—I can not tell you. I do not think it was very high in the scale. Only he felt it for me, and for no other woman, I believe.

"It never was a love that I could entirely understand or respect; yet,—it is odd but true—I cared something for it—perhaps because, in spite of its unfamiliar and sometimes repellent disguises—it was love after all.

"And now, as at heart and in mind you and I are one; and as I keep nothing of real importance from you—perhaps can not; I must tell you that Jose Querida came that day to ask me to marry him.

"I tried to make him understand that I could not think of such a thing; and he lost his head and became violent. That is how the table fell:—I had started toward the door when he sprang back to block me, and the low window-sill caught him under the knees, and he fell outward into the yard.

"I know of course that no blame could rest on me, but it was a terrible and dreadful thing that happened there in one brief second; and somehow it seems to have moved in me depths that have never before been stirred.

"The newspapers, as you know, published it merely as an accident—which it really was. But they might have made it, by innuendo, a horror for me. However, they put it so simply and so unsuspiciously that Jose Querida might have been any nice man calling on any nice woman.

"Louis, I have never been so lonely in my life as I have been since Jose Querida died; alas! not because he has gone out of my life forever, but because, somehow, the manner of his death has made me realise how difficult it is for a woman alone to contend with men in a man's own world.

"Do what she may to maintain her freedom, her integrity, there is always,—sometimes impalpable, sometimes not—a steady, remorseless pressure on her, forcing her unwillingly to take frightened cognisance of men;—take into account their inexorable desire for domination; the subtle cohesion existent among them which, at moments, becomes like a wall of adamant barring, limiting, inclosing and forcing women toward the deep-worn grooves which women have trodden through the sad centuries;—and which they tread still—and will tread perhaps for years to come before the real enfranchisement of mankind begins.

"I do not mean to write bitterly, dear; but, somehow, all this seems to bear significantly, ominously, upon my situation in the world.

"When I first knew you I felt so young, so confident, so free, so scornful of custom, so wholesomely emancipated from silly and unjust conventions, that perhaps I overestimated my own vigour and ability to go my way, unvexed, unfettered in this man's world, and let the world make its own journey in peace. But it will not.

"Twice, now, within a month,—and not through any conscious fault of mine—this man's world has shown its teeth at me; I have been menaced by its innate scorn of woman, and have, by chance, escaped a publicity which would have damned me so utterly that I would not have cared to live.

"And dear, for the first time I really begin to understand now what the shelter of a family means; what it is to have law on my side,—and a man who understands his man's world well enough to fight it with its own weapons;—well enough to protect a woman from things she never dreamed might menace her.

"When that policeman came into my room,—dear, you will think me a perfect coward—but suddenly I seemed to realise what law meant, and that it had power to protect me or destroy me.... And I was frightened,—and the table lay there with the fragments of broken china—and there was that dreadful window—and I—I who knew how he died!—Louis! Louis! guiltless as I was,—blameless in thought and deed—I died a thousand deaths there while the big policeman and the reporters were questioning me.

"If it had not been for what Jose was generous enough to say, I could never have thought out a lie to tell them; I should have told them how it had really happened.... And what the papers would have printed about him and about me, God only knows.

"Never, never had I needed you as I needed you at that moment.... Well; I lied to them, somehow; I said to them what Jose had said—that he was seated on the window-ledge, lost his balance, clutched at the table, overturned it, and fell. And they believed me.... It is the first lie since I was a little child, that I have ever knowingly told.... And I know now that I could never contrive to tell another.

"Dear, let me try to think out what is best for us.... And forgive me, Louis, if I can not help a thought or two of self creeping in. I am so terribly alone. Somehow I am beginning to believe that it may sometimes be a weakness to totally ignore one's self.... Not that I consider myself of importance compared to you, my darling; not that I would fail to set aside any thought of self where your welfare is concerned. You know that, don't you?

"But I have been wondering how it would be with you if I passed quietly and absolutely out of your life. That is what I am trying to determine. Because it must be either that or the tie unrecognised by civilisation. And which would be better for you? I do not know yet. I ask more time. Don't write me. Your silence will accord it.

"You are always in my thoughts.

"VALERIE."

Ogilvy came into the studio that afternoon, loquacious, in excellent humour, and lighting a pipe, detailed what news he had while Neville tried to hide his own deep perplexity and anxiety under a cordial welcome.

"You know," said Ogilvy, "that all the time you've given me and all your kindness and encouragement has made a corker of that picture of mine."

"You did it yourself," said Neville. "It's good work, Sam."

"Sure it's good work—being mostly yours. And what do you think, Kelly; it's sold!"

"Good for you!"

"Certainly it's good for me. I need the mazuma. A courteous multi purchased it for his Long Branch cottage—said cottage costing a million. What?"

"Oh, you're doing very well," laughed Neville.

"I've got to.... I've—h'm!—undertaken to assume obligations toward civilisation—h'm!—and certain duties to my—h'm—country—"

"What on earth are you driving at?" asked Neville, eying him.

"Huh! Driving single just at present; practising for tandem—h'm!—and a spike—h'm—some day—I hope—of course—"

"Sam!"

"Hey?"

"Are you trying to say something?"

"Oh, Lord, no! Why, Kelly, did you suspect that I was really attempting to convey anything to you which I was really too damned embarrassed to tell you in the patois of my native city?"

"It sounded that way," observed Neville, smiling.

"Did it?" Ogilvy considered, head on one side. "Did it sound anything like a—h'm!—a man who was trying to—h'm!—to tell you that he was going to—h'm!—to try to get somebody to try to let him try to tell her that he wanted to—marry her?"

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Neville, bewildered, "what do you mean?"

Ogilvy pirouetted, picked up a mahl-stick, and began a lively fencing bout with an imaginary adversary.

"I'm going to get married," he said amiably.

"What!"

"Sure."

"To whom?"

"To Helene d'Enver. Only she doesn't know it yet."

"What an infernal idiot you are, Sam!"

"Ya-as, so they say. Some say I'm an ass, others a bally idiot, others merely refer to me as imbecile. And so it goes, Kelly,—so it goes."

He flourished his mahl-stick, neatly punctured the air, and cried "Hah!" very fiercely.

Then he said:

"I've concluded to let Helene know about it this afternoon."

"About what?—you monkey?"

"About our marriage. Won't it surprise her though! Oh, no! But I think I'll let her into the secret before some suspicious gink gets wind of it and tells her himself."

Neville looked at the boy, perplexed, undecided, until he caught his eye. And over Sam's countenance stole a vivid and beauteous blush.

"Sam! I—upon my word I believe you mean it!"

"Sure I do!"

Neville grasped his hand:

"My dear fellow!" he said cordially, "I was slow, not unsympathetic. I'm frightfully glad—I'm perfectly delighted. She's a charming and sincere woman. Go in and win and God bless you both!"

Ogilvy wrung his hand, then, to relieve his feelings, ran all over the floor like a spider and was pretending to spin a huge web in a corner when Harry Annan and Rita Tevis came in and discovered him.

"Hah!" he exclaimed, "flies! Two nice, silly, appetising flies. Pretend to fall into my web, Rita, and begin to buzz like mad!"

Rita's dainty nose went up into the air, but Annan succumbed to the alluring suggestion, and presently he was buzzing frantically in a corner while Sam spun an imaginary web all over him.

Rita and Neville looked on for a while.

"Sam never will grow up," she said disdainfully.

"He's fortunate," observed Neville.

"You don't think so."

"I wish I knew what I did think, Rita. How is John?"

"I came to tell you. He has gone to Dartford."

"To see Dr. Ogilvy? Good! I'm glad, Rita. Billy Ogilvy usually makes people do what he tells them to do."



The girl stood silent, eyes lowered. After a while she looked up at him; and in her unfaltering but sorrowful gaze he read the tragedy which he had long since suspected.

Neither spoke for a moment; he held out both hands; she laid hers in them, and her gaze became remote.

After a while she said in a low voice:

"Let me be with you now and then while he's away; will you, Kelly?"

"Yes. Would you like to pose for me? I haven't anything pressing on hand. You might begin now if it suits you."

"May I?" she asked gratefully.

"Of course, child.... Let me think—" He looked again into her dark blue eyes, absently, then suddenly his attention became riveted upon something which he seemed to be reading in her face.

Long before Sam and Harry had ended their puppy-like scuffling and had retired to woo their respective deputy-muses, Rita was seated on the model-stand, and Neville had already begun that strange and sombre picture afterward so famous, and about which one of the finest of our modern poets wrote:

"Her gold hair, fallen about her face Made light within that shadowy place, But on her garments lay the dust Of many a vanished race.

"Her deep eyes, gazing straight ahead, Saw years and days and hours long dead, While strange gems glittered at her feet, Yellow, and green, and red.

"And ever from the shadows came Voices to pierce her heart like flame, The great bats fanned her with their wings, The voices called her name.

"But yet her look turned not aside From the black deep where dreams abide, Where worlds and pageantries lay dead Beneath that viewless tide.

"Her elbow on her knee was set, Her strong hand propt her chin, and yet No man might name that look she wore, Nor any man forget."

All day long in the pleasant June weather they worked together over the picture; and if he really knew what he was about, it is uncertain, for his thoughts were of Valerie; and he painted as in a dream, and with a shadowy splendour that seemed even to him unreal.

They scarcely spoke; now and then Rita came silently on sandalled feet to stand behind him and look at what he had done.

The first time she thought to herself, "Querida!" But the second time she remained mute; and when the daylight was waning to a golden gloom in the room she came a third time and stood with one hand on his arm, her eyes fixed upon the dawning mystery on the canvas—spellbound under the sombre magnificence already vaguely shadowed forth from infinite depth of shade.

Gladys came and rubbed and purred around his legs; the most recent progeny toddled after her, ratty tails erect; sportive, casual little optimists frisking unsteadily on wavering legs among the fading sunbeams on the floor.

The sunbeams died out on wall and ceiling; high through the glass roof above, a shoal of rosy clouds paled to saffron, then to a cinder gray. And the first night-hawk, like a huge, erratic swallow, sailed into view, soaring, tumbling aloft, while its short raucous cry sounded incessantly above the roofs and chimneys.

Neville was still seated before his canvas, palette flat across his left arm, the sheaf of wet brushes held loosely.

"I suppose you are dining with Valerie," he said.

"No."

He turned and looked at her, inquiringly.

"Valerie has gone away."

"Where?"

"I don't know, Kelly.... I was not to know."

"I see." He picked up a handful of waste and slowly began to clean the brushes, one by one. Then he drove them deep into a bowl of black soap.

"Shall we dine together here, Rita?"

"If you care to have me."

"Yes, I do."

He laid aside his palette, rang up the kitchen, gave his order, and slowly returned to where Rita was seated.

Dinner was rather a silent affair. They touched briefly and formally on Querida and his ripening talent prematurely annihilated; they spoke of men they knew who were to come after him—a long, long way after him.

"I don't know who is to take his place," mused Neville over his claret.

"You."

"Not his place, Rita. He thought so; but that place must remain his."

"Perhaps. But you are carving out your own niche in a higher tier. You are already beginning to do it; and yesterday his niche was the higher.... Yet, after all—after all—"



He nodded. "Yes," he said, "what does it matter to him, now? A man carves out his resting place as you say, but he carves it out in vain. Those who come after him will either place him in his proper sepulchre ... or utterly neglect him.... And neglect or transfer will cause him neither happiness nor pain.... Both are ended for Querida;—let men exalt him above all, or bury him and his work out of sight—what does he care about it now? He has had all that life held for him, and what another life may promise him no man can know. All reward for labour is here, Rita; and the reward lasts only while the pleasure in labour lasts. Creative work—even if well done—loses its savour when it is finished. Happiness in it ends with the final touch. It is like a dead thing to him who created it; men's praise or blame makes little impression; and the aftertaste of both is either bitter or flat and lasts but a moment."

"Are you a little morbid, Kelly?"

"Am I?"

"It seems to me so."

"And you, Rita?"

She shook her pretty head in silence.

After a while Gladys jumped up into her lap, and she lay back in her arm-chair smoothing the creature's fur, and gazing absently into space.

"Kelly," she said, "how many, many years ago it seems when you came up to Delaware County to see us."

"It seems very long ago to me, too."

She lifted her blue eyes:

"May I speak plainly? I have known you a long while. There is only one man I like better. But there is no woman in the world whom I love as I love Valerie West.... May I speak plainly?"

"Yes."

"Then—be fair to her, Kelly. Will you?"

"I will try."

"Try very hard. For after all it is a man's world, and she doesn't understand it. Try to be fair to her, Kelly. For—whether or not the laws that govern the world are man-made and unjust—they are, nevertheless, the only laws. Few men can successfully fight them; no woman can—yet.... I am not angering you, am I?"

"No. Go on."

"I have so little to say—I who feel so deeply—deeply.... And the laws are always there, Kelly, always there—fair or unfair, just or unjust—they are always there to govern the world that framed them. And a woman disobeys them at her peril."

She moved slightly in her chair and sat supporting her head on one pretty ringless hand.

"Yet," she said, "although a woman disobeys any law at her peril—laws which a man may often ignore with impunity—there is one law to which no woman should dare subscribe. And it is sometimes known as 'The Common Law of Marriage.'"

She sat silent for a while, her gaze never leaving his shadowy face.

"That is the only law—if it is truly a law—that a woman must ignore. All others it is best for her to observe. And if the laws of marriage are merely man-made or divine, I do not know. There is a din in the world to-day which drowns the voices preaching old beliefs.... And a girl is deafened by the clamour.... And I don't know.

"But, it seems to me, that back of the laws men have made—if there be nothing divine in their inspiration—there is another foundation solid enough to carry them. Because it seems to me that the world's laws—even when unjust—are built on natural laws. And how can a girl say that these natural laws are unjust because they have fashioned her to bear children and feed them from her own body?

"And another thing, Kelly; if a man breaks a man-made law—founded, we believe, on a divine commandment—he suffers only in a spiritual and moral sense.... And with us it may be more than that. For women, at least, hell is on earth."

He stirred in his chair, and his sombre gaze rested on the floor at her feet.

"What are we to do?" he said dully.

Rita shook her head:

"I don't know. I am not instructing you, Kelly, only recalling to your mind what you already know; what all men know, and find so convenient to forget. Love is not excuse enough; the peril is unequally divided. The chances are uneven; the odds are unfair. If a man really loves a woman, how can he hazard her in a game of chance that is not square? How can he let her offer more than he has at stake—even if she is willing? How can he permit her to risk more than he is even able to risk? How can he accept a magnanimity which leaves him her hopeless debtor? But men have done it, men will continue to do it; God alone knows how they reconcile it with their manhood or find it in their hearts to deal so unfairly by us. But they do.... And still we stake all; and proudly overlook the chances against us; and face the contemptible odds with a smile, dauntless and—damned!"

He leaned forward in the dusk; she could see his bloodless features now only as a pale blot in the twilight.

"All this I knew, Rita. But it is just as well, perhaps, that you remind me."

"I thought it might be as well. The world has grown very clever; but after all there is no steadier anchor for a soul than a platitude."

Ogilvy and Annan came mincing in about nine o'clock, disposed for flippancy and gossip; but neither Neville nor Rita encouraged them; so after a while they took their unimpaired cheerfulness and horse-play elsewhere, leaving the two occupants of the studio to their own silent devices.

It was nearly midnight when he walked back with Rita to her rooms.

And now day followed day in a sequence of limpid dawns and cloudless sunsets. Summer began with a clear, hot week in June, followed by three days' steady downpour which freshened and cooled the city and unfolded, in square and park, everything green into magnificent maturity.

Every day Neville and Rita worked together in the studio; and every evening they walked together in the park or sat in the cool, dusky studio, companionably conversational or permitting silence to act as their interpreter.

Then John Burleson came back from Dartford after remaining there ten days under Dr. Ogilvy's observation; and Rita arrived at the studio next day almost smiling.

"We're' going to Arizona," she said. "What do you think of that, Kelly?"

"You poor child!" exclaimed Neville, taking her hands into his and holding them closely.

"Why, Kelly," she said gently, "I knew he had to go. This has not taken me unawares."

"I hoped there might be some doubt," he said.

"There was none in my mind. I foresaw it. Listen to me: twice in a woman's life a woman becomes a prophetess. That fatal clairvoyance is permitted to a woman twice in her life—and the second time it is neither for herself that she foresees the future, nor for him whom she loves...."

"I wish—I wish—" he hesitated; and she flushed brightly.

"I know what you wish, Kelly dear. I don't think it will ever happen. But it is so much for me to be permitted to remain near him—so much!—Ah, you don't know, Kelly! You don't know!"

"Would you marry him?"

Her honest blue eyes met his:

"If he asked me; and if he still wished it—after he knew."

"Could you ever be less to him—and perhaps more, Rita?"

"Do you mean—"

He nodded deliberately.

She hung her head.

"Yes," she said, "if I could be no more I would be what I could."

"And you tell me that, after all that you have said?"

"I did not pretend to speak for men, Kelly. I told you that women had, and women still would overlook the chances menacing them and face the odds dauntlessly.... Because, whatever a man is—if a woman loves him enough—he is worth to her what she gives."

"Rita! Rita! Is it you who content yourself with such sorry philosophy?"

"Yes, it is I. You asked me and I answer you. Whatever I said—I know only one thing now. And you know what that is."

"And where am I to look for sympathy and support in my own decision? What can I think now about all that you have said to me?"

"You will never forget it, Kelly—whatever becomes of the girl who said it. Because it's the truth, no matter whose lips uttered it."

He released her hands and she went away to dress herself for the pose. When she returned and seated herself he picked up his palette and brushes and began in silence.

* * * * *

That evening he went to see John Buries on and found him smoking tranquilly in the midst of disorder. Packing cases, trunks, bundles, boxes were scattered and piled up in every direction, and the master of the establishment, apparently in excellent health, reclined on a lounge in the centre of chaos, the long clay stem of a church-warden pipe between his lips, puffing rings at the ceiling.

"Hello, Kelly!" he exclaimed, sitting up; "I've got to move out of this place. Rita told you all about it, didn't she? Isn't it rotten hard luck?"

"Not a bit of it. What did Billy Ogilvy say?"

"Oh, I've got it all right. Not seriously yet. What's Arizona like, anyway?"

"Half hell, half paradise, they say."

"Then me for the celestial section. Ogilvy gave me the name of a place"—he fumbled about—"Rita has it, I believe.... Isn't she a corker to go? My conscience, Kelly, what a Godsend it will be to have a Massachusetts girl out there to talk to!"

"Isn't she going as your model?"

"My Lord, man! Don't you talk to a model? Is a nice girl who poses for a fellow anything extra-human or superhuman or—or unhuman or inhuman—so that intelligent conversation becomes impossible?"

"No," began Neville, laughing, but Burleson interrupted excitedly:

"A girl can be anything she chooses if she's all right, can't she? And Rita comes from Massachusetts, doesn't she?"

"Certainly."

"Not only from Massachusetts, but from Hitherford!" added Burleson triumphantly. "I came from Hitherford. My grandfather knew hers. Why, man alive, Rita Tevis is entitled to do anything she chooses to do."

"That's one way of looking at it, anyway," admitted Neville gravely.

"I look at it that way. You can't; you're not from Massachusetts; but you have a sort of a New England name, too. It's Yankee, isn't it?"

"Southern."

"Oh," said Burleson, honestly depressed; "I am sorry. There were Nevilles in Hitherford Lower Falls two hundred years ago. I've always liked to think of you as originating, somehow or other, in Massachusetts Bay."

"No, John: unlike McGinty, I am unfamiliar with the cod-thronged ocean deeps.... When are you going?"

"Day after to-morrow. Rita says you don't need her any longer on that picture—"

"Lord, man! If I did I wouldn't hold you up. But don't worry, John; she wouldn't let me.... She's a fine specimen of girl," he added casually.



"Do you suppose that is news to me?"

"Oh, no; I'm sure you find her amusing—"

"What!"

"Amusing," repeated Neville innocently. "Don't you?"

"That is scarcely the word I would have chosen, Kelly. I have a very warm admiration and a very sincere respect for Rita Tevis—"

"John! You sound like a Puritan making love!"

Burleson was intensely annoyed:

"You'd better understand, Kelly, that Rita Tevis is as well born as I am, and that there would be nothing at all incongruous in any declaration that any decent man might make her!"

"Why, I know that."

"I'm glad you do. And I'm gratified that what you said has given me the opportunity to make myself very plain on the subject of Rita Tevis. It may amaze you to know that her great grandsire carried a flintlock with the Hitherford Minute Men, and fell most respectably at Boston Neck."

"Certainly, John. I knew she was all right. But I wasn't sure you knew it—"

"Confound it! Of course I did. I've always known it. Do you think I'd care for her so much if she wasn't all right?"

Neville smiled at him gravely, then held out his hand:

"Give my love to her, John. I'll see you both again before you go."

For nearly two weeks he had not heard a word from Valerie West. Rita and John Burleson had departed, cheerful, sure of early convalescence and a complete and radical cure.

Neville went with them to the train, but his mind was full of his own troubles and he could scarcely keep his attention on the ponderous conversation of Burleson, who was admonishing him and Ogilvy impartially concerning the true interpretation of creative art.

He turned aside to Rita when opportunity offered and said in a low voice:

"Before you go, tell me where Valerie is."

"I can't, Kelly."

"Did you promise her not to?"

"Yes."

He said, slowly: "I haven't had one word from her in nearly two weeks. Is she well?"

"Yes. She came into town this morning to say good-bye to me."

"I didn't know she was out of town," he said, troubled.

"She has been, and is now. That's all I can tell you, Kelly dear."

"She is coming back, isn't she?"

"I hope so."

"Don't you know?"

She looked into his anxious and miserable face and gently shook her head:

"I don't know, Kelly."

"Didn't she say—intimate anything—"

"No.... I don't think she knows—yet."

He said, very quietly: "If she ever comes to any conclusion that it is better for us both never to meet again—I might be as dead as Querida for any work I should ever again set hand to.

"If she will not marry me, but will let things remain as they are, at least I can go on caring for her and working out this miserable problem of life. But if she goes out of my life, life will go out of me. I know that now."

Rita looked at him pitifully:

"Valerie's mind is her own, Kelly. It is the most honest mind I have ever known; and nothing on earth—no pain that her decision might inflict upon her—would swerve it a hair's breath from what she concludes is the right thing to do."

"I know it," he said, swallowing a sudden throb of fear.

"Then what can I say to you?"

"Nothing. I must wait."

"Kelly, if you loved her enough you would not even wait."

"What!"

"Because her return to you will mean only one thing. Are you going to accept it of her?"

"What can I do? I can't live without her!"

"Her problem is nobler, Kelly. She is asking herself not whether she can live life through without you—but whether you can live life well, and to the full, without her?"

Neville flushed painfully.

"Yes," he said, "that is Valerie. I'm not worth the anxiety, the sorrow that I have brought her. I'm not worth marrying; and I'm not worth a heavier sacrifice.... I'm trying to think less of myself, Rita, and more of her.... Perhaps, if I knew she were happy, I could stand—losing her.... If she could be—without me—" He checked himself, for the struggle was unnerving him; then he set his face firmly and looked straight at Rita.

"Do you believe she could forget me and be contented and tranquil—if I gave her the chance?"

"Are you talking of self-sacrifice for her sake?"

He drew a deep, uneven breath:

"I—suppose it's—that."

"You mean that you're willing to eliminate yourself and give her an opportunity to see a little of the world—a little of its order and tranquillity and quieter happiness?—a chance to meet interesting women and attractive men of her own age—as she is certain to do through her intimacy with the Countess d'Enver?"

"Yes," he said, "that is what must be done.... I've been blind—and rottenly selfish. I did not mean to be.... I've tried to force her—I have done nothing else since I fell in love with her, but force her toward people whom she has a perfect right not to care for—even if they happen to be my own people. She has felt nothing but a steady and stupid pressure from me;—heard from me nothing except importunities—the merciless, obstinate urging of my own views—which, God forgive me, I thought were the only views because they were respectable!"

He stood, head lowered, nervously clenching and unclenching his hands.

"It was not for her own sake—that's the worst of it! It was for my sake—because I've had respectability inculcated until I can't conceive of my doing anything not respectable.... Once, something else got away with me—and I gave it rein for a moment—until checked.... I'm really no different from other men."

"I think you are beginning to be, Kelly."

"Am I? I don't know. But the worst of it was my selfishness—my fixed idea that her marrying me was the only salvation for her.... I never thought of giving her a chance of seeing other people—other men—better men—of seeing a tranquil, well-ordered world—of being in it and of it. I behaved as though my world—the fragment inhabited by my friends and family—was the only alternative to this one. I've been a fool, Rita; and a cruel one."

"No, only an average man, Kelly.... If I give you Valerie's address, would you write and give her her freedom—for her own sake?—the freedom to try life in that well-ordered world we speak of?... Because she is very young. Life is all before her. Who can foretell what friends she may be destined to make; what opportunities she may have. I care a great deal for you, Kelly; but I love Valerie.... And, there are other men in the world after all;—but there is only one Valerie.... And—how truly do you love her?"

"Enough," he said under his breath.

"Enough to—leave her alone?"

"Yes."

"Then write and tell her so. Here is the address."

She slipped a small bit of folded paper into Neville's land.

"We must join the others, now," she said calmly.

Annan had come up, and he and Ogilvy were noisily baiting Burleson amid shouts of laughter and a protesting roar from John.

"Stop it, you wretches," said Rita amiably, entering the little group. "John, are you never going to earn not to pay any attention to this pair of infants?"

"Are you going to kiss me good-bye, Rita, when the train departs?" inquired Sam, anxiously.

"Certainly; I kissed Gladys good-bye—"

"Before all this waiting room full of people?" persisted Sam. "Are you?"

"Why I'll do it now if you like, Sammy dear."

"They'll take you for my sister," said Sam, disgusted.

"Or your nurse; John, what is that man bellowing through the megaphone?"

"Our train," said Burleson, picking up the satchels. He dropped them again to shake the hands that were offered:

"Good-bye, John, dear old fellow! You'll get all over this thing in a jiffy out there You'll be back in no time at all! Don't worry, and get well!"

He smiled confidently and shook all their hands Rita's pretty face was pale; she let Ogilvy kiss her cheek, shook hands with Annan, and then, turning to Neville, put both hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the mouth.

"Give her her chance, Kelly," she whispered ... "And it shall be rendered unto you seven-fold."

"No, Rita; it never will be now."

"Who knows?"

"Rita! Rita!" he said under his breath, "when I am ending, she must begin.... You are right: this world needs her. Try as I might, I never could be worth what she is worth without effort. It is my life which does not matter, not hers. I will do what ought to be done. Don't be afraid. I will do it. And thank God that it is not too late."

That night, seated at his desk in the studio, he looked at the calendar. It was the thirteenth day since he had heard from her; the last day but two of the fifteen days she had asked for. The day after to-morrow she would have come, or would have written him that she was renouncing him forever for his own sake. Which might it have been? He would never know now.

He wrote her:

"Dearest of women, Rita has been loyal to you. It was only when I explained to her for what purpose I wished your address that she wisely gave it to me.

"Dearest, from the beginning of our acquaintance and afterward when it ripened into friendship and finally became love, upon you has rested the burden of decision; and I have permitted it.

"Even now, as I am writing here in the studio, the burden lies heavily upon your girl's shoulders and is weighting your girl's heart. And it must not be so any longer.

"I have never, perhaps, really meant to be selfish; a man in love really doesn't know what he means. But now I know what I have done; and what must be undone.

"You were perfectly right. It was for you to say whether you would marry me or not. It was for you to decide whether it was possible or impossible for you to appear as my wife in a world in which you had had no experience. It was for you to generously decide whether a rupture between that world and myself—between my family and myself—would render me—and yourself—eternally unhappy.

"You were free to decide; you used your own intellect, and you so decided. And I had no right to question you—I have no right now. I shall never question you again.

"Then, because you loved me, and because it was the kind of love that ignored self, you offered me a supreme sacrifice. And I did not refuse; I merely continued to fight for what I thought ought to be—distressing, confusing, paining you with the stupid, obstinate reiterations of my importunities. And you stood fast by your colours.

"Dear, I was wrong. And so were you. Those were not the only alternatives. I allowed them to appear so because of selfishness.... Alas, Valerie, in spite of all I have protested and professed of love and passion for you, to-day, for the first time, have I really loved you enough to consider you, alone. And with God's help I will do so always.

"You have offered me two alternatives: to give yourself and your life to me without marriage; or to quietly slip out of my life forever.

"And it never occurred to you—and I say, with shame, that it never occurred to me—that I might quietly efface myself and my demands from your life: leave you free and at peace to rest and develop in that new and quieter world which your beauty and goodness has opened to you.

"Desirable people have met you more than half-way, and they like you. Your little friend, Helene d'Enver is a genuine and charming woman. Your friendship for her will mean all that you have so far missed in life all that a girl is entitled to.

"Through her you will widen the circle of your acquaintances and form newer and better friendships You will meet men and women of your own age and your own tastes which is what ought to happen.

"And it is right and just and fair that you enter into the beginning of your future with a mind unvexed and a heart untroubled by conflicts which can never solve for you and me any future life together.

"I do not believe you will ever forget me, or wish to, wholly. Time heals—otherwise the world had gone mad some centuries ago.