"Yes," growled Bromberg, "and there's that redheaded wench of Vanya's!—some Grand Duke's slut, they say, before she quit him for the university to start something else——"

Kastner cut in in his steely voice: "If you do not throw out these women, Puma, we fix them and your hall and you—all at one time, my friend. Also! Iss it then for February the first, our understanding? Or iss it, a little later, the end of all your troubles, Angelo?"

Puma got up, nodded his acceptance of their ultimatum, and opened the door for them.

When they trooped out, under the brick arch, they noticed his splendid limousine waiting, and as they shuffled sullenly away westward, Bromberg, looking back, saw Puma come out and jump lightly into the car.

"Swine!" he snarled, facing the bitter wind once more and shuffling along beside his silent brethren.

Puma went east, then north to the Hotel Rajah, where, in a private room, he was to complete a financial transaction with Alonzo B. Pawling.

Skidder, too, came in at the same time, squinting rapidly at his partner; and together they moved toward the elevator.

The elevator waited a moment more to accommodate a willowy, red-haired girl in furs, whose jade eyes barely rested on Puma's magnificent black ones as he stepped aside to make way for her with an extravagant bow.

"Some skirt," murmured Skidder in his ear, as the car shot upward.

Marya left the car at the mezzanine floor: Puma's eyes were like coals for a moment.

"You know that dame?" inquired Skidder, his eyes fairly snapping.

"No." He did not add that he had seen her at the Combat Club and knew her to belong to another man. But his black eyes were almost blazing as he stepped from the elevator, for in Marya's insolent glance he had caught a vague glimmer of fire—merely a green spark, very faint—if, indeed, it had been there at all....

Pawling himself opened the door for them.

"Is it all right? Do we get the parcel?" were his first words.

"It's a knock-out!" cried Skidder, slapping him on the back. "We got the land, we got the plans, we got the iron, we got the contracts!—Oh, boy!—our dough is in—go look at it and smell it for yourself! So get into the jack, old scout, and ante up, because we break ground Wednesday and there'll be bills before then, you betcha!"

When the cocktails were brought, Puma swallowed his in a hurry, saying he'd be back in a moment, and bidding Skidder enlighten Mr. Pawling during the interim.

He summoned the elevator, got out at the mezzanine, and walked lightly into the deserted and cloister-like perspective, his shiny hat in his hand.

And saw Marya standing by the marble ramp, looking down at the bustle below.

He stopped not far away. He had made no sound on the velvet carpet. But presently she turned her head and the green eyes met his black ones.

Neither winced. The sheer bulk of the beast and the florid magnificence of its colour seemed to fascinate her.

She had seen him before, and scarcely noted him. She remembered. But the world was duller, then, and the outlook grey. And then, too, her still, green eyes had not yet wandered beyond far horizons, nor had her heart been cut adrift to follow her fancy when the tides stirred it from its mooring—carrying it away, away through deeps or shallows as the currents swerved.



CHAPTER XX

The pale parody on that sacred date which once had symbolised the birth of Christ had come and gone; the ghastly year was nearing its own death—the bloodiest year, for all its final triumph, that the world had ever witnessed—l'annee horrible!

Nor was the end yet, of all this death and dying: for the Crimson Tide, washing through Russia, eastward, seethed and eddied among the wrecks of empires, lapping Poland's bones, splashing over the charred threshold of the huns, creeping into the Balkans, crawling toward Greece and Italy, menacing Scandinavia, and arousing the stern watchers along the French frontier—the ultimate eastward barrier of human liberty.

And unless, despite the fools who demur, that barrier be based upon the Rhine, that barrier will fall one day.

Even in England, where the captive navies of the anti-Christ now sulked at anchor under England's consecrated guns, some talked glibly of rule by Soviet. All Ireland bristled now, baring its teeth at government; vast armies, disbanding, were becoming dully restless; and armed men, disarming, began to wonder what now might be their destiny and what the destiny of the world they fought for.

And everywhere, among all peoples, swarmed the stealthy agents of the Red Apocalypse, whispering discontent, hinting treasons, stirring the unhappy to sullen anger, inciting the simple-minded to insanity, the ignorant to revolution. For four years it had been a battle between Light and Night; and now there threatened to be joined in battle the uttermost forces of Evolution and Chaos—the spiritual Armageddon at last, where Life and Light and Order must fight a final fight with Degeneracy, Darkness and Death.

And always, everywhere, that hell-born Crimson Tide seemed to be rising. All newspapers were full of it, sounding the universal alarm. And Civilisation merely stared at the scarlet flood—gawked stupidly and unstirring—while the far clamour of massacre throughout Russia grew suddenly to a crashing discord in Berlin, shaking the whole world with brazen dissonance.

Like the first ominous puff before the tempest, the deadly breath of the Black Death—called "influenza," but known of old among the verminous myriads of the East—swept over the earth from East to West. Millions died; millions were yet to perish of it; yet the dazed world, still half blind with blood and smoke, sat helpless and unstirring, barring no gates to this pestilence that stalked the stricken earth at noon-day.

New York, partly paralysed by sacrifice and the blood-sucking antics of half-crazed congressmen, gorged by six years feeding after decades of starvation, welcomed the incoming soldiers in a bewildered sort of way, making either an idiot's din of dissonance or gaping in stupid silence as the huge troop-ships swept up the bay.

The battle fleet arrived—the home squadron and the "6th battle squadron"—and lay towering along the Hudson, while officers and jackies swarmed the streets—streets now thronged by wounded, too—pallid cripples in olive drab, limping along slowly beneath lowering skies, with their citations and crosses and ribbons and wound chevrons in glinting gold under the relighted lustres of the metropolis.

So the false mockery of Christmas came to the city—a forced festival, unutterably sad, for all that the end of the war was subject of thanks in every church and synagogue. And so the mystic feast ended, scarcely heeded amid the slow, half-crippled groping for financial readjustment in the teeth of a snarling and vindictive Congress, mean in its envy, meaner in revenge—a domestic brand of sectional Bolsheviki as dirty and degenerate as any anarchist in all Russia.

The President had sailed away—(Slava! Slava! Nechevo!)—and the newspapers were preparing to tell their disillusioned public all about it, if permitted.

And so dawned the New Year over the spreading crimson flood, flecking the mounting tide with brighter scarlet as it crept ever westward, ever wider, across a wounded world.

* * * * *

Palla had not seen Jim for a very long time now. Christmas passed, bringing neither gift nor message, although she had sent him a little remembrance—The Divine Pantheon, by an unfrocked Anglican clergyman, one Loxon Fettars, recently under detention pending investigation concerning an alleged multiplicity of wives.

The New Year brought no greeting from him, either; nobody she knew had seen him, and her pride had revolted at writing him after she had telephoned and left a message at his club—her usual concession after a stormy parting.

And there was another matter that was causing her a constantly increasing unrest—she had not seen Marya for many a day.

Quiet grief for what now appeared to be a friendship ended—at other times a tingle of bitterness that he had let it end so relentlessly—and sometimes, at night, the secret dread—eternally buried yet perennially resurrected—the still, hidden, ever-living fear of Marya; these the girl knew, now, as part of life.

And went on, steadily, with her life's business, as though moving toward a dark horizon where clouds towered gradually higher, reflecting the glimmer of unseen lightning.

Somehow, lately, a vague sensation of impending trouble had invaded her; and she never entirely shook it off, even in her lighter moods, when there was gay company around her; or in the warm flush of optimistic propaganda work; or in the increasingly exciting sessions of the Combat Club, now interrupted nightly by fierce outbreaks from emissaries of the Red Flag Club, who were there to make mischief.

Also, there had been an innovation established among her company of moderate socialists; a corps of missionary speakers, who volunteered on certain nights to speak from the classic soap-box on street corners, urging the propaganda of their panacea, the Law of Love and Service.

Twice already, despite her natural timidity and dread of public speaking, Palla had faced idle, half-curious, half sneering crowds just east or west of Broadway; had struggled through with what she had come to say; had gently replied to heckling, blushed under insult, stood trembling by her guns to the end.

Ilse was more convincing, more popular with her gay insouciance and infectious laughter, and her unexpected and enchanting flashes of militancy, which always interested the crowd.

And always, after these soap-box efforts, both Palla and Ilse were insulted over the telephone by unknown men. Their mail, also, invariably contained abusive or threatening letters, and sometimes vile ones; and Estridge purchased pistols for them both and exacted pledges that they carry them at night.

On the evening selected for Palla's third essay in street oratory, she slipped her pistol into her muff and set out alone, not waiting for Ilse, who, with John Estridge, was to have met her after dinner at her house, and, as usual, accompany her to the place selected.

But they knew where she was to speak, and she did not doubt they would turn up sooner or later at the rendezvous.

All that day the dull, foreboding feeling had been assailing her at intervals, and she had been unable to free herself entirely from the vague depression.

The day had been grey; when she left the house a drizzle had begun to wet the flagstones, and every lamp-post was now hooded with ghostly iridescence.

She walked because she had need of exercise, not even deigning to unfurl her umbrella against the mist which spun silvery ovals over every electric globe along Fifth Avenue, and now shrouded every building above the fourth story in a cottony ocean of fog.

When finally she turned westward, the dark obscurity of the cross-street seemed to stretch away into infinite night and she hurried a little, scarcely realising why.

There did not seem to be a soul in sight—she noticed that—yet suddenly, halfway down the street, she discovered a man walking at her elbow, his rubber-shod feet making no sound on the wet walk.

Palla had never before been annoyed by such attentions in New York, yet she supposed it must be the reason for the man's insolence.

She hastened her steps; he moved as swiftly.

"Look here," he said, "I know who you are, and where you're going. And we've stood just about enough from you and your friends."

In the quick revulsion from annoyance and disgust to a very lively flash of fright, Palla involuntarily slackened her pace and widened the distance between her and this unknown.

"You better right-about-face and go home!" he said quietly. "You talk too damn much with your face. And we're going to stop you. See?"

At that her flash of fear turned to anger:

"Try it," she said hotly; and hurried on, her hand clutching the pistol in her wet muff, her eyes fixed on the unknown man.

"I've a mind to dust you good and plenty right here," he said. "Quit your running, now, and beat it back again—" His vise-like grip was on her left arm, almost jerking her off her feet; and the next moment she struck him with her loaded pistol full in the face.

As he veered away, she saw the seam open from his cheek bone to his chin—saw the white face suddenly painted with wet scarlet.

The sight of the blood made her sick, but she kept her pistol levelled, backing away westward all the while.

There was an iron railing near; he went over and leaned against it as though stupefied.

And all the while she continued to retreat until, behind her, his dim shape merged into the foggy dark.

Then Palla turned and ran. And she was still breathing fast and unevenly when she came to that perfect blossom of vulgarity and apotheosis of all American sham—Broadway—where in the raw glare from a million lights the senseless crowds swept north and south.

And here, where Jew-manager and gentile ruled the histrionic destiny of the United States—here where art, letters, service, industry, business had each developed its own species of human prostitute—two muddy-brained torrents of humanity poured in opposite directions, crowding, shoving, shuffling along in the endless, hopeless Hunt for Happiness.

She had made, in the beginning of her street-corner career, arrangements with a neighbouring boot-black to furnish one soap-box on demand at a quarter of a dollar rent for every evening.

She extracted the quarter from her purse and paid the boy; carried the soap-box herself to the curb; and, with that invariable access of fright which attacked her at such moments, mounted it to face the first few people who halted out of curiosity to see what else she meant to do.

Columns of passing umbrellas hid her so that not many people noticed her; but gradually that perennial audience of shabby opportunists which always gathers anywhere from nowhere, ringed her soap-box. And Palla began to speak in the drizzling rain.

For some time there were no interruptions, no jeers, no doubtful pleasantries. But when it became more plain to the increasing crowd that this smartly though simply gowned young woman had come to Broadway in the rain for the purpose of protesting against all forms of violence, including the right of the working people to strike, ugly remarks became audible, and now and then a menacing word was flung at her, or some clenched hand insulted her and amid a restless murmur growing rougher all the time.

Once, to prove her point out of the mouth of the proletariat itself, she quoted from Rosa Luxemburg; and a well-dressed man shouldered his way toward her and in a low voice gave her the lie.

The painful colour dyed her face, but she went on calmly, explaining the different degrees and extremes of socialism, revealing how the abused term had been used as camouflage by the party committed to the utter annihilation of everything worth living for.

And again, to prove her point, she quoted:

"Socialism does not mean the convening of Parliaments and the enactment of laws; it means the overthrow of the ruling classes with all the brutality at the disposal of the proletariat."

The same well-dressed man interrupted again:

"Say, who pays you to come here and hand out that Wall Street stuff?"

"Nobody pays me," she replied patiently.

"All right, then, if that's true why don't you tell us something about the interests and the profiteers and all them dirty games the capitalists is rigging up? Tell us about the guy who wants us to pay eight cents to ride on his damned cars! Tell us about the geezers who soak us for food and coal and clothes and rent!

"You stand there chirping to us about Love and Service and how we oughta give. Give! Jesus!—we ain't got anything left to give. They ain't anything to give our wives or our children,—no, nor there ain't enough left to feed our own faces or pay for a patch on our pants! Give? Hell! The interests took it. And you stand there twittering about Love and Service! We oughta serve 'em a brick on the neck and love 'em with a black-jack!"

"How far would that get you?" asked Palla gently.

"As far as their pants-pockets anyway!"

"And when you empty those, who is to employ and pay you?"

"Don't worry," he sneered, "we'll do the employing after that."

"And will your employees do to you some day what you did to your employers with a black-jack?"

The crowd laughed, but her heckler shook his fist at her and yelled:

"Ain't I telling you that we'll be sitting in these damn gold-plated houses and payin' wages to these here fat millionaires for blackin' our shoes?"

"You mean that when Bolshevism rules there are to be rich and poor just the same as at present?"

Again the crowd laughed.

"All right!" bawled the man, waving both arms above his head, "—yes, I do mean it! It will be our turn then. Why not? What do we want to split fifty-fifty with them soft, fat millionaires for? Nix on that stuff! It will be hog-killing time, and you can bet your thousand-dollar wrist watch, Miss, that there'll be some killin' in little old New York!"

He had backed out of the circle and disappeared in the crowd before Palla could attempt further reasoning with him. So she merely shook her head in gentle disapproval and dissent:

"What is the use," she said, "of exchanging one form of tyranny for another? Why destroy the autocracy of the capitalist and erect on its ruins the autocracy of the worker?

"How can class distinctions be eradicated by fanning class-hatred? In a battle against all dictators, why proclaim dictatorship—even of the proletariat?

"All oppression is hateful, whether exercised by God or man—whether the oppressor be that murderous, stupid, treacherous, tyrannical bully in the Old Testament, miscalled God, or whether the oppressor be the proletariat which screamed for the blood of Jesus Christ and got it!

"Free heart, free mind, free soul!—anything less means servitude, not service—hatred, not love!"

A man in the outskirts of the crowd shouted: "Say, you're some rag-chewer, little girl! Go to it!"

She laughed, then glanced at her wrist watch.

There were a few more words she might say before the time she allowed herself had expired, and she found courage to go on, striving to explain to the shifting knot of people that the battle which now threatened civilisation was the terrible and final fight between Order and Disorder and that, under inexorable laws which could never change, order meant life and survival; disorder chaos and death for all living things.

A few cheered her as she bade them good-night, picked up her soap-box and carried it back to her boot-black friend, who inhabited a shack built against the family-entrance side of a saloon.

She was surprised that Ilse and John Estridge had not appeared—could scarcely understand it, as she made her way toward a taxicab.

For, in view of the startling occurrence earlier in the evening, and the non-appearance of Ilse and Estridge, Palla had decided to return in a taxi.

The incident—the boldness of the unknown man and vicious brutality of his attitude, and also a sickening recollection of her own action and his bloody face—had really shocked her, even more than she was aware of at the time.

She felt tired and strained, and a trifle faint now, where she lay back, swaying there on her seat, her pistol clutched inside her muff, as the ramshackle vehicle lurched its noisy way eastward. And always that dull sense of something sinister impending—that indefinable apprehension—remained with her. And she gazed darkly out on the dark streets, possessed by a melancholy which she did not attempt to analyse.

Yet, partly it came from the ruptured comradeship which always haunted her mind, partly because of Ilse and the uncertainty of what might happen to her—may have happened already for all Palla knew—and partly because—although she did not realise it—in the profound deeps of her girl's being she was vaguely conscious of something latent which seemed to have lain hidden there for a long, long time—something inert, inexorable, indestructible, which, if it ever stirred from its intense stillness, must be reckoned with in years to come.

She made no effort to comprehend what this thing might be—if, indeed, it really existed—no pains to analyse it or to meditate over the vague indications of its presence.

She seemed merely to be aware of something indefinable concealed in the uttermost depths of her.

It was Doubt, unborn.

* * * * *

The taxi drew up before her house. Rain was falling heavily, as she ran up the steps—a cold rain through which a few wet snowflakes slanted.

Her maid heard the rattle of her night-key and came to relieve her of her wet things, and to say that Miss Westgard had telephoned and had left a number to be called as soon as Miss Dumont returned.

The slip of paper bore John Estridge's telephone number and Palla seated herself at her desk and called it.

Almost immediately she heard Ilse's voice on the wire.

"What is the matter, dear?" inquired Palla with the slightest shiver of that premonition which had haunted her all day.

But Ilse's voice was cheerful: "We were so sorry not to go with you this evening, darling, but Jack is feeling so queer that he's turned in and I've sent for a physician."

"Shall I come around?" asked Palla.

"Oh, no," replied Ilse calmly, "but I've an idea Jack may need a nurse—perhaps two."

"What is it?" faltered Palla.

"I don't know. But he is running a high temperature and he says that it feels as though something were wrong with his appendix.

"You see Jack is almost a physician himself, so if it really is acute appendicitis we must know as soon as possible."

"Is there anything I could do?" pleaded Palla. "Darling, I do so want to be of use if——"

"I'll let you know, dear. There isn't anything so far."

"Are you going to stay there to-night?"

"Of course," replied Ilse calmly. "Tell me, Palla, how did the soap-box arguments go?"

"Not very well. I was heckled. I'm such a wretched public speaker, Ilse;—I can never remember what rejoinders to make until it's too late."

She did not mention her encounter with the unknown man; Ilse had enough to occupy her.

They chatted a few moments longer, then Ilse promised to call her if necessary, and said good-night.

A little after midnight Palla's telephone rang beside her bed and she started upright with a pang of fear and groped for the instrument.

"Jack is seriously ill," came the level voice of Ilse. "We have taken him to the Memorial Hospital in one of their ambulances."

"W—what is it?" asked Palla.

"They say it is pneumonia."

"Oh, Ilse!——"

"I'm not afraid. Jack is in magnificent physical condition. He is too splendid not to win the fight.... And I shall be with him.... I shall not let him lose."

"Tell me what I can do, darling!"

"Nothing—except love us both."

"I do—I do indeed——"

"Both, Palla!"

"Y—yes."

"Do you understand?"

"Oh, I—I think I do. And I do love you—love you both—devotedly——"

"You must, now.... I am going home to get some things. Then I shall go to the hospital. You can call me there until he is convalescent."

"Will they let you stay there?"

"I have volunteered for general work. They are terribly short-handed and they are glad to have me."

"I'll come to-morrow," said Palla.

"No. Wait.... Good-night, my darling."



CHAPTER XXI

As a mischievous caricaturist, in the beginning, draws a fairly good portrait of his victim and then gradually habituates his public to a series of progressively exaggerated extravagances, so progressed the programme of the Bolsheviki in America, revealing little by little their final conception of liberty and equality in the bloody and distorted monster which they had now evolved, and which they publicly owned as their ideal emblem.

In the Red Flag Club, Sondheim shouted that a Red Republic was impossible because it admitted on an equality the rich and well-to-do.

Karl Kastner, more cynical, coolly preached the autocracy of the worker; told his listeners frankly that there would always be masters and servants in the world, and asked them which they preferred to be.

With the new year came sporadic symptoms of unrest;—strikes, unwarranted confiscations by Government, increasingly bad service in public utilities controlled by Government, loose talk in a contemptible Congress, looser gabble among those who witlessly lent themselves to German or Bolshevik propaganda—or both—by repeating stories of alleged differences between America and England, America and France, America and Italy.

The hen-brained—a small minority—misbehaved as usual whenever the opportunity came to do the wrong thing; the meanest and most contemptible partisanship since the shameful era of the carpet bagger prevailed in a section of the Republic where the traditions of great men and great deeds had led the nation to expect nobler things.

For the same old hydra seemed to be still alive on earth, lifting, by turns, its separate heads of envy, intolerance, bigotry and greed. Ignorance, robed with authority, legally robbed those comfortably off.

The bleat of the pacifist was heard in the land. Those who had once chanted in sanctimonious chorus, "He kept us out of war," now sang sentimental hymns invoking mercy and forgiveness for the crucifiers of children and the rapers of women, who licked their lips furtively and leered at the imbecile choir. Representatives of a great electorate vaunted their patriotism and proudly repeated: "We forced him into war!" Whereas they themselves had been kicked headlong into it by a press and public at the end of its martyred patience.

There appeared to be, so far, no business revival. Prosperity was penalised, taxed to the verge of blackmail, constantly suspected and admonished; and the Congressional Bolsheviki were gradually breaking the neck of legitimate enterprise everywhere throughout the Republic.

And everywhere over the world the crimson tide crept almost imperceptibly a little higher every day.

* * * * *

Toward the middle of January the fever which had burnt John Estridge for a week fell a degree or two.

Palla, who had called twice a day at the Memorial Hospital, was seated that morning in a little room near the disinfecting plant, talking to Ilse, who had just laid aside her mask.

"You look rather ill yourself," said Ilse in her cheery, even voice. "Is anything worrying you, darling?"

"Yes.... You are."

"I!" exclaimed the girl, really astonished. "Why?"

"Sometimes," murmured Palla, "my anxiety makes me almost sick."

"Anxiety about me!——"

"You know why," whispered Palla.

A bright flush stained Ilse's face: she said calmly:

"But our creed is broad enough to include all things beautiful and good."

Palla shrank as though she had been struck, and sat staring out of the narrow window.

Ilse lifted a basket of soiled linen and carried it away. When, presently, she returned to take away another basket, she inquired whether Palla had made up her quarrel with Jim Shotwell, and Palla shook her head.

"Do you really suppose Marya has made mischief between you?" asked Ilse curiously.

"Oh, I don't know, Ilse," said the girl listlessly. "I don't know what it is that seems to be so wrong with the world—with everybody—with me——"

She rose nervously, bade Ilse adieu, and went out without turning her head—perhaps because her brown eyes had suddenly blurred with tears.

* * * * *

Half way to Red Cross headquarters she passed the Hotel Rajah. And why she did it she had no very clear idea, but she turned abruptly and entered the gorgeous lobby, went to the desk, and sent up her name to Marya Lanois.

It appeared, presently, that Miss Lanois was at home and would receive her in her apartment.

The accolade was perfunctory: Palla's first glance informed her that Marya had grown a trifle more svelte since they had met—more brilliant in her distinctive coloration. There was a tawny beauty about the girl that almost blazed from her hair and delicately sanguine skin and lips.

They seated themselves, and Marya lighted the cigarette which Palla had refused; and they fell into the animated, gossiping conversation characteristic of such reunions.

"Vanya?" repeated Marya, smiling, "no, I have not seen him. That is quite finished, you see. But I hope he is well. Do you happen to know?"

"He seems—changed. But he is working hard, which is always best for the unhappy. And he and his somewhat vociferous friend, Mr. Wilding, are very busy preparing for their Philadelphia concert."

"Wilding," repeated Marya, as though swallowing something distasteful. "He was the last straw! But tell me, Palla, what are you doing these jolly days of the new year?"

"Nothing.... Red Cross, canteen, club—and recently I go twice a day to the Memorial Hospital."

"Why?"

"John Estridge is ill there."

"What is the matter with him?"

"Pneumonia."

"Oh. I am so sorry for Ilse!——" Her eyes rested intently on Palla's for a moment; then she smiled subtly, as though sharing with Palla some occult understanding.

Palla's face whitened a little: "I want to ask you a question, Marya.... You know our belief—concerning life in general.... Tell me—since your separation from Vanya, do you still believe in that creed?"

"Do I still believe in my own personal liberty to do as I choose? Of course."

"From the moral side?"

"Moral!" mocked Marya, "—What are morals? Artificial conventions accidentally established! Haphazard folkways of ancient peoples whose very origin has been forgotten! What is moral in India is immoral in England: what is right in China is wrong in America. It's purely a matter of local folkways—racial customs—as to whether one is or is not immoral.

"Ethics apply to the Greek Ethos; morals to the Latin Mores—moeurs in French, sitte in German, custom in English;—and all mean practically the same thing—metaphysical hair-splitters to the contrary—which is simply this: all beliefs are local, and local customs or morals are the result. Therefore, they don't worry me."

Palla sat with her troubled eyes on the careless, garrulous, half-smiling Russian girl, and trying to follow with an immature mind the half-baked philosophy offered for her consumption.

She said hesitatingly, almost shyly: "I've wondered a little, Marya, how it ever happened that such an institution as marriage became practically universal——"

"Marriage isn't an institution," exclaimed Marya smilingly. "The family, which existed long before marriage, is the institution, because it has a definite structure which marriage hasn't.

"Marriage always has been merely a locally varying mode of sex association. No laws can control it. Local rules merely try to regulate the various manners of entering into a marital state, the obligations and personal rights of the sexes involved. What really controls two people who have entered into such a relation is local opinion——"

She snapped her fingers and tossed aside her cigarette: "You and I happen to be, locally, in the minority with our opinions, that's all."

Palla rose and walked slowly to the door. "Have you seen Jim recently?" she managed to say carelessly.

Marya waited for her to turn before replying: "Haven't you seen him?" she asked with the leisurely malice of certainty.

"No, not for a long while," replied Palla, facing with a painful flush this miserable crisis to which her candour had finally committed her. "We had a little difference.... Have you seen him lately?"

Marya's sympathy flickered swift as a dagger:

"What a shame for him to behave so childishly!" she cried. "I shall scold him soundly. He's like an infant—that boy—the way he sulks if you deny him anything—" She checked herself, laughed in a confused way which confessed and defied.

Palla's fixed smile was still stamped on her rigid lips as she made her adieux. Then she went out with death in her heart.

* * * * *

At the Red Cross his mother exchanged a few words with her at intervals, as usual, during the seance.

The conversation drifted toward the subject of religious orders in Russia, and Mrs. Shotwell asked her how it was that she came to begin a novitiate in a country where Catholic orders had, she understood, been forbidden permission to establish themselves in the realm of the Greek church.

Palla explained in her sweet, colourless voice that the Czar had permitted certain religious orders to establish themselves—very few, however,—the number of nuns of all orders not exceeding five hundred. Also she explained that they were forbidden to make converts from the orthodox religion, which was why the Empress had sternly refused the pleading of the little Grand Duchess.

"I do not think," added Palla, "that the Bolsheviki have left any Catholic nuns in Russia, unless perhaps they have spared the Sisters of Mercy. But I hear that non-cloistered orders like the Dominicans, and cloistered orders such as the Carmelites and Ursulines have been driven away.... I don't know whether this is true."

Mrs. Shotwell, her eyes on her flying needle, said casually: "Have you never felt the desire to reconsider—to return to your novitiate?"

The girl, bending low over her work, drew a deep, still breath.

"Yes," she said, "it has occurred to me."

"Does it still appeal to you at times?"

The girl lifted her honest eyes: "In life there are moments when any refuge appeals."

"Refuge from what?" asked Helen quietly.

Palla did not evade the question: "From the unkindness of life," she said. "But I have concluded that such a motive for cloistered life is a cowardly one."

"Was that your motive when you took the white veil?"

"No, not then.... It seemed to be an overwhelming need for service and adoration.... It's strange how faiths change though need remains."

"You still feel that need?"

"Of course," said the girl simply.

"I see. Your clubs and other service give you what you require to satisfy you and make you happy and contented."

As Palla made no reply, Helen glanced at her askance; and caught a fleeting glimpse of tragedy in this girl's still face—the face of a cloistered nun burnt white—purged utterly of all save the mystic passion of the spirit.

The face altered immediately, and colour came into it; and her slender hands were steady as she turned her bandage and cut off the thread.

What thoughts concerning this girl were in her mind, Helen could neither entirely comprehend nor analyse. At moments a hot hatred for the girl passed over her like flame—anger because of what she was doing to her only son.

For Jim had changed; and it was love for this woman that had changed him—which had made of him the silent, listless man whose grey face haunted his mother's dreams.

That he, dissipating all her hopes of him, had fallen in love with Palla Dumont was enough unhappiness, it seemed; but that this girl should have found it possible to refuse him—that seemed to Helen a monstrous thing.

And even were Jim able to forget the girl and free himself from this exasperating unhappiness which almost maddened his mother, still she must always afterward remember with bitterness the girl who had rejected her only son.

Not since Palla had telephoned on that unfortunate night had she or Helen ever mentioned Jim. The mother, expecting his obsession to wear itself out, had been only too glad to approve the rupture.

But recently, at moments, her courage had weakened when, evening after evening, she had watched her son where he sat so silent, listless, his eyes dull and remote and the book forgotten on his knees.

A steady resentment for all this change in her son possessed Helen, varied by flashes of impulse to seize Palla and shake her into comprehension of her responsibility—of her astounding stupidity, perhaps.

Not that she wanted her for a daughter-in-law. She wanted Elorn. But now she was beginning to understand that it never would be Elorn Sharrow. And—save when the change in Jim worried her too deeply—she remained obstinately determined that he should not bring this girl into the Shotwell family.

And the amazing paradox was revealed in the fact that Palla fascinated her; that she believed her to be as fine as she was perverse; as honest as she was beautiful; as spiritually chaste as she knew her to be mentally and bodily untainted by anything ignoble.

This, and because Palla was the woman to whom her son's unhappiness was wholly due, combined to exercise an uncanny fascination on Helen, so that she experienced a constant and haunting desire to be near the girl, where she could see her and hear her voice.

At moments, even, she experienced a vague desire to intervene—do something to mitigate Jim's misery—yet realising all the while she did not desire Palla to relent.

* * * * *

As for Palla, she was becoming too deeply worried over the darkening aspects of life to care what Helen thought, even if she had divined the occult trend of her mind toward herself.

One thing after another seemed to crowd more threateningly upon her;—Jim's absence, Marya's attitude, and the certainty, now, that she saw Jim;—and then the grave illness of John Estridge and her apprehensions regarding Ilse; and the increasing difficulties of club problems; and the brutality and hatred which were becoming daily more noticeable in the opposition which she and Ilse were encountering.

* * * * *

After a tiresome day, Palla left a new Hostess House which she had aided to establish, and took a Fifth Avenue bus, too weary to walk home.

The day had been clear and sunny, and she wondered dully why it had left with her the impression of grey skies.

Dusk came before she arrived at her house. She went into her unlighted living room, and threw herself on the lounge, lying with eyes closed and the back of one gloved hand across her temples.

* * * * *

When a servant came to turn up the lamp, Palla had bitten her lip till the blood flecked her white glove. She sat up, declined to have tea, and, after the maid had departed, she remained seated, her teeth busy with her under lip again, her eyes fixed on space.

After a long while her eyes swerved to note the clock and what its gilt hands indicated.

And she seemed to arrive at a conclusion, for she went to her bedroom, drew a bath, and rang for her maid.

"I want my rose evening gown," she said. "It needs a stitch or two where I tore it dancing."

At six, not being dressed yet, she put on a belted chamber robe and trotted into the living room, as confidently as though she had no doubts concerning what she was about to do.

It seemed to take a long while for the operator to make the connection, and Palla's hand trembled a little where it held the receiver tightly against her ear. When, presently, a servant answered:

"Please say to him that a client wishes to speak to him regarding an investment."

Finally she heard his voice saying: "This is Mr. James Shotwell Junior; who is it wishes to speak to me?"

"A client," she faltered, "—who desires to—to participate with you in some plan for the purpose of—of improving our mutual relationship."

"Palla." She could scarcely hear his voice.

"I—I'm so unhappy, Jim. Could you come to-night?"

He made no answer.

"I suppose you haven't heard that Jack Estridge is very ill?" she added.

"No. What is the trouble?"

"Pneumonia. He's a little better to-night."

She heard him utter: "That's terrible. That's a bad business." Then to her: "Where is he?"

She told him. He said he'd call at the hospital. But he said nothing about seeing her.

"I wondered," came her wistful voice, "whether, perhaps, you would dine here alone with me this evening."

"Why do you ask me?"

"Because—I—our last quarrel was so bitter—and I feel the hurt of it yet. It hurts even physically, Jim."

"I did not mean to do such a thing to you."

"No, I know you didn't. But that numb sort of pain is always there. I can't seem to get rid of it, no matter what I do."

"Are you very busy still?"

"Yes.... I saw—Marya—to-day."

"Is that unusual?" he asked indifferently.

"Yes. I haven't seen her since—since she and Vanya separated."

"Oh! Have they separated?" he asked with such unfeigned surprise that the girl's heart leaped wildly.

"Didn't you know it? Didn't Marya tell you?" she asked shivering with happiness.

"I haven't seen her since I saw you," he replied.

Palla's right hand flew to her breast and rested there while she strove to control her voice. Then:

"Please, Jim, let us forgive and break bread again together. I—" she drew a deep, unsteady breath—"I can't tell you how our separation has made me feel. I don't quite know what it's done to me, either. Perhaps I can understand if I see you—if I could only see you again——"

There ensued a silence so protracted that a shaft of fear struck through her. Then his voice, pleasantly collected:

"I'll be around in a few minutes."

* * * * *

She was scared speechless when the bell rang—when she heard his unhurried step on the stair.

Before he was announced by the maid, however, she had understood one problem in the scheme of things—realised it as she rose from the lounge and held out her slender hand.

He took it and kept it. The maid retired.

"Well, Palla," he said.

"Well," she said, rather breathlessly, "—I know now."

His voice and face seemed amiable and lifeless; his eyes, too, remained dull and incurious; but he said: "I don't think I understand. What is it you know?"

"Shall I tell you?"

"If you wish."

His pleasant, listless manner chilled her; she hesitated, then turned away, withdrawing her hand.

When she had seated herself on the sofa he dropped down beside her in his old place. She lighted a cigarette for him.

"Tell me about poor old Jack," he said in a low voice.

Their dinner was a pleasant but subdued affair. Afterward she played for him—interrupted once by a telephone call from Ilse, who said that John's temperature had risen a degree and the only thing to do was to watch him every second. But she refused Palla's offer to join her at the hospital, saying that she and the night nurse were sufficient; and the girl went slowly back to the piano.

But, somehow, even that seemed too far away from her lover—or the man who once had been her avowed lover. And after idling-with the keys for a few minutes she came back to the lounge where he was seated.

He looked up from his revery: "This is most comfortable, Palla," he said with a slight smile.

"Do you like it?"

"Of course."

"You need not go away at all—if it pleases you." Her voice was so indistinct that for a moment he did not comprehend what she had said. Then he turned and looked at her. Both were pale enough now.

"That is what—what I was going to tell you," she said. "Is it too late?"

"Too late!"

"To say that I am—in love with you."

He flushed heavily and looked at her in a dazed way.

"What do you mean?" he said.

"I mean—if you want me—I am—am not afraid any more——"

They had both risen instinctively, as though to face something vital. She said:

"Don't ask me to submit to any degrading ceremony.... I love you enough."

He said slowly: "Do you realise what you say? You are crazy! You and your socialist friends pretend to be fighting anarchy. You preach against Bolshevism! You warn the world that the Crimson Tide is rising. And every word you utter swells it! You are the anarchists yourselves! You are the Bolsheviki of the world! You come bringing disorder where there is order; you substitute unproven theory for proven practice!

"Like the hun, you come to impose your will on a world already content with its own God and its own belief! And that is autocracy; and autocracy is what you say you oppose!

"I tell you and your friends that it was not wolves that were pupped in the sand of the shaggy Prussian forests when the first Hohenzollern was dropped. It was swine! Swine were farrowed;—not even sanglier, but decadent domestic swine;—when Wilhelm and his degenerate litter came out to root up Europe! And they were the first real Bolsheviki!"

He turned and began to stride to and fro; his pale, sunken face deeply shadowed, his hands clenching and unclenching.

"What in God's name," he said fiercely, "are women like you doing to us! What do you suppose happens to such a man as I when the girl he loves tells him she cares only to be his mistress! What hope is there left in him?—what sense, what understanding, what faith?

"You don't have to tell me that the Crimson Tide is rising. I saw it in the Argonne. I wish to God I were back there and the hun was still resisting. I wish I had never lived to come back here and see what demoralisation is threatening my own country from that cursed germ of wilful degeneracy born in the Prussian twilight, fed in Russian desolation, infecting the whole world——"

His voice died in his throat; he walked swiftly past her, turned at the threshold:

"I've known three of you," he said, "—you and Ilse and Marya. I've seen a lot of your associates and acquaintances who profess your views. And I've seen enough."

He hesitated; then when he could control his voice again:

"It's bad enough when a woman refuses marriage to a man she does not love. That man is going to be unhappy. But have you any idea what happens to him when the girl he loves, and who says she cares for him, refuses marriage?

"It was terrible even when you cared for me only a little. But—but now—do you know what I think of your creed? I hate it as you hated the beasts who slew your friend! Damn your creed! To hell with it!"

She covered her face with both hands: there was a noise like thunder in her brain.

She heard the door close sharply in the hall below.

This was the end.



CHAPTER XXII

She felt a trifle weak. In her ears there lingered a dull, confused sensation, like the echo of things still falling. Something had gone very wrong with the scheme of nature. Even beneath her feet, now, the floor seemed unsteady, unreliable.

A half-darkness dimmed her eyes; she laid one slim hand on the sofa-back and seated herself, fighting instinctively for consciousness.

She sat there for a long while. The swimming faintness passed away. An intense stillness seemed to invade her, and the room, and the street outside. And for vast distances beyond. Half hours and hours rang clearly through the silence from the mantel-clock. So still was the place that a sheaf of petals falling from a fading rose on the piano seemed to fill the room with ghostly rustling.

* * * * *

This, then, was the finish. Love had ended. Youth itself was ending, too, here in the dead silence of this lamplit room.

There remained nothing more. Except that ever darkening horizon where, at the earth's ends, those grave shapes of cloud closed out the vista of remote skies.

There seemed to be no shelter anywhere in the vast nakedness of the scheme of things—no shadow under which to crouch—no refuge.

Dim visions of cloistered forms, moving in a blessed twilight, grew and assumed familiar shape amid the dumb desolation reigning in her brain. The spectral temptation passed, repassed; processional, recessional glided by, timed by her heart's low rhythm.

But, little by little, she came to understand that there was no refuge even there; no mystic glow in the dark corridors of her own heart; no source of light save from the candles glimmering on the high altar; no aureole above the crucifix.

Always, everywhere, there seemed to be no shelter, no roof above the scheme of things.

* * * * *

She heard the telephone. As she slowly rose from the sofa she noted the hour as it sounded;—four o'clock in the morning.

A man's voice was speaking—an unhurried, precise, low-pitched, monotonous voice:

"This—is—the—Memorial Hospital. Doctor—Willis—speaking. Mr.—John— Estridge—died—at—ten minutes—to—four. Miss Westgard—wishes—to— go—to—your—residence—and—remain—over—night—if—convenient.... Thank you. Miss—Westgard—will—go—to—you—immediately. Good-night."

* * * * *

Palla rose from her chair in the unfurnished drawing-room, went out into the hall, admitted Ilse, then locked and chained the two front doors.

When she turned around, trembling and speechless, they kissed. But it was only Palla's mouth that trembled; and when they mounted the stairs it was Ilse's arm that supported Palla.

Except that her eyes were heavy and seemed smeared with deep violet under the lower lids, Ilse did not appear very much changed.

She took off her furs, hat, and gloves and sat down beside Palla. Her voice was quite clear and steady; there appeared to be no sign of shock or of grief, save for a passing tremor of her tired eyes now and then.

She said: "We talked a little together, Jack and I, after I telephoned to you.

"That was the last. His hand began to burn in mine steadily, like something on fire. And when, presently, I found he was not asleep, I motioned to the night nurse.

"The change seemed to come suddenly; she went to find one of the internes; I sat with my hand on his pulse.... There were three physicians there.... Jack was not conscious after midnight."

Palla's lips and throat were dry and aching and her voice almost inaudible:

"Darling," she whispered, "—darling—if I could give him back to you and take his place!——"

Ilse smiled, but her heavy eyelids quivered:

"The scheme of things is so miserably patched together.... Except for the indestructible divinity within each one of us, it all would be so hopeless.... I had never been able to imagine Jack and Death together—" She looked up at the clock. "He was alive only an hour ago.... Isn't it strange—"

"Oh, Ilse, Ilse! I wish this God who deals out such wickedness and misery had struck me down instead!"

Neither seemed to notice the agnostic paradox in this bitter cry wrung from a young girl's grief.

Ilse closed her eyes as though to rest them, and sat so, her steady hand on Palla's. And, so resting, said in her unfaltering voice:

"Jack, of course, lives.... But it seems a long time to wait to see him."

"Jack lives," whispered Palla.

"Of course.... Only—it seems so long a time to wait.... I wanted to show him—how kind love has been to us—how still more wonderful love could have been to us ... for I could have borne him many children.... And now I shall bear but one."

After a silence, Palla lifted her eyes. In them the shadow of terror still lingered; there was not an atom of colour in her face.

* * * * *

Ilse slept that night, though Palla scarcely closed her eyes. Dreadful details of the coming day rose up to haunt her—all the ghastly routine necessary before the dead lie finally undisturbed by the stir and movement of many footsteps—the coming and going of the living.

* * * * *

Because what they called pneumonia was the Black Death of the ancient East, they had warned Ilse to remain aloof from that inert thing that had been her lover. So she did not look upon his face again.

There were relatives of sorts at the chapel. None spoke to her. The sunshine on the flower-covered casket was almost spring like.

And in the cemetery, too, there was no snow; and, under the dead grass, everywhere new herbage tinted the earth with delicate green.

Ilse returned from the cemetery with Palla. Her black veil and garments made of her gold hair and blond skin a vivid beauty that grief had not subdued.

That deathless courage which was part of her seemed to sustain the clear glow of her body's vigour as it upheld her dauntless spirit.

"Did you see Jim in the chapel?" she asked quietly.

Palla nodded. She had seen Marya, also. After a little while Ilse said gravely:

"I think it no treachery to creed when one submits to the equally vital belief of another. I think our creed includes submission, because that also is part of love."

Palla lifted her face in flushed surprise:

"Is there any compromising with truth?" she asked.

"I think love is the greatest truth. What difference does it make how we love?"

"Does not our example count? You had the courage of your belief. Do you counsel me to subscribe to what I do not believe by acquiescing in it?"

Ilse closed her sea-blue eyes as though fatigued. She said dreamily:

"I think that to believe in love and mating and the bearing of children is the only important belief in the world. But under what local laws you go about doing these things seems to be of minor importance,—a matter, I should say, of personal inclination."

Ilse wished to go home. That is, to her own apartment, where now were enshrined all her memories of this dead man who had given to her womanhood that ultimate crown which in her eyes seemed perfect.

She said serenely to Palla: "Mine is not the loneliness that craves company with the living. I have a long time to wait; that is all. And after a while I shall not wait alone.

"So you must not grieve for me, darling. You see I know that Jack lives. It's just the long, long wait that calls for courage. But I think it is a little easier to wait alone until—until there are two to wait—for him——"

"Will you call me when you want me, Ilse?"

"Always, darling. Don't grieve. Few women know happiness. I have known it. I know it now. It shall not even die with me."

She smiled faintly and turned to enter her doorway; and Palla continued on alone toward that dwelling which she called home.

The mourning which she had worn for her aunt, and which she had worn for John Estridge that morning, she now put off, although vaguely inclined for it. But she shrank from the explanations in which it was certain she must become involved when on duty at the Red Cross and the canteen that afternoon.

Undressed, she sent her maid for a cup of tea, feeling too tired for luncheon. Afterward she lay down on her bed, meaning merely to close her eyes for a moment.

It was after four in the afternoon when she sat up with a start—too late for the Red Cross; but she could do something at the canteen.

She went about dressing as though bruised. It seemed to take an interminable time. Her maid called a taxi; but the short winter daylight had nearly gone when she arrived at the canteen.

She remained there on kitchen duty until seven, then untied her white tablier, washed, pinned on her hat, and went out into the light-shot darkness of the streets and turned her steps once more toward home.

There is, among the weirder newspapers of the metropolis, a sheet affectionately known as "pink-and-punk," the circulation of which seems to depend upon its distribution of fake "extras."

As Palla turned into her street, shabby men with hoarse voices were calling an extra and selling the newspaper in question.

She bought one, glanced at the headlines, then, folding it, unlocked her door.

Dinner was announced almost immediately, but she could not touch it.

She sank down on the sofa, still wearing her furs and hat. After a little while she opened her newspaper.

It seemed that a Bolsheviki plot had been discovered to murder the premiers and rulers of the allied nations, and to begin simultaneously in every capital and principal city of Europe and America a reign of murder and destruction.

In fact, according to the account printed in startling type, the Terrorists had already begun their destructive programme in Philadelphia. Half a dozen buildings—private dwellings and one small hotel—had been more or less damaged by bombs. A New York man named Wilding, fairly well known as an impresario, had been killed outright; and a Russian pianist, Vanya Tchernov, who had just arrived in Philadelphia to complete arrangements for a concert to be given by him under Mr. Wilding's management, had been fatally injured by the collapse of the hotel office which, at that moment, he was leaving in company with Mr. Wilding.

A numbness settled over Palla's brain. She did not seem to be able to comprehend that this affair concerned Vanya—that this newspaper was telling her that Vanya had been fatally hurt somewhere in Philadelphia.

Hours later, while she was lying on the lounge with her face buried in the cushions, and still wearing her hat and furs, somebody came into the room. And when she turned over she saw it was Ilse.

Palla sat up stupidly, the marks of tears still glistening under her eyes. Ilse picked up the newspaper from the couch, laid it aside, and seated herself.

"So you know about Vanya?" she said calmly.

Palla nodded.

"You don't know all. Marya called me on the telephone a few minutes ago to tell me."

"Vanya is dead," whispered Palla.

"Yes. They found an unmailed letter directed to Marya in his pockets. That's why they notified her."

After an interval: "So Vanya is dead," repeated Palla under her breath.

Ilse sat plaiting the black edges of her handkerchief.

"It's such a—a senseless interruption—death——" she murmured. "It seems so wanton, so meaningless in the scheme of things ... to make two people wait so long—so long!—to resume where they had been interrupted——"

Palla asked coldly whether Marya had seemed greatly shocked.

"I don't know, Palla. She called me up and told me. I asked her if there was anything I could do; and she answered rather strangely that what remained for her to do she would do alone. I don't know what she meant."

* * * * *

Whether Marya herself knew exactly what she meant seemed not to be entirely clear to her. For, when Mr. Puma, dressed in a travelling suit and carrying a satchel, arrived at her apartment in the Hotel Rajah, and entered the reception room with his soundless, springy step, she came out of her bedroom partly dressed, and still hooking her waist.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded contemptuously, looking him over from, head to foot. "Did you really suppose I meant to go to Mexico with you?"

His heavy features crimsoned: "What pleasantry is this, my Marya?——" he began; but the green blaze in her slanting eyes silenced him.

"The difference," she said, "between us is this. You run from those who threaten you. I kill them."

"Of—of what nonsense are you speaking!" he stammered. "All is arranged that we shall go at eleven——"

"No," she said wearily, "one sometimes plays with stray animals for a few moments—and that is all. And that is all I ever saw in you, Angelo—a stray beast to amuse and entertain me between two yawns and a cup of tea." She shrugged, still twisted lithely in her struggle to hook her waist. "You may go," she added, not even looking at him, "or, if you are not too cowardly, you may come with me to the Red Flag Club."

"In God's name what do you mean——"

"Mean? I mean to take my pistol to the Red Flag Club and kill some Bolsheviki. That is what I mean, my Angelo—my ruddy Eurasian pig!"

She slipped in the last hook, turned and enveloped him again with an insolent, slanting glance: "Allons! Do you come to the Red Flag?"

"Marya——"

"Yes or no! Allez!"

"My God, are—are you then demented?" he faltered.

"My God, I'm not," she mimicked him, "but I can't answer for what I might do to you if you hang around this apartment any longer."

She came slowly toward him, her hands bracketed on her hips, her strange eyes narrowing.

"Listen to me," she said. "I have loved many times. But never you! One doesn't love your kind. One experiments, possibly, if idle.

"A man died to-day whom I loved; but was too stupid to love enough. Perhaps he knows now how stupid I am.... Unless they blew his soul to pieces, also. Allez! Good-night. I tell you I have business to attend to, and you stand there rolling your woman's eyes at me!——"

"Damn you!" he said between his teeth. "What is the matter with you——"

He had caught her arm; she wrenched it free, tearing the sleeve to her naked shoulder.

Then she went to her desk and took a pistol from an upper drawer.

"If you don't go," she said, "I shall have to shoot you and leave you here kicking on the carpet."

"In God's name, Marya!" he cried hoarsely, "who is it you shall kill at the hall?"

"I shall kill Sondheim and Bromberg and Kastner, I hope. What of it?"

"But—if I go to-night—the others will say I did it! I can't run away if you do such thing! I can not go into Mexico but they shall arrest me before I am at the border——"

"Eurasian pig, I shall admit the killing!" she said with a green gleam in her eyes that perhaps was laughter.

"Yes, my Marya," he explained in agony, the sweat pouring from his temples, "but if they think me your accomplice they shall arrest me. Me—I can not wait—I shall be ruined if I am arrest! You do not comprehend. I have not said it to you how it is that I am compel to travel with some money which—which is not—my own."

Marya looked at him for a long while. Suddenly she flung the pistol into a corner, threw back her head while peal on peal of laughter rang out in the room.

"A thief," she said, fairly holding her slender sides between gemmed fingers: "—Just a Levantine thief, after all! Not a thing to shoot. Not a man. No! But a giant cockroach from the tropics. Ugh! Too large to place one's foot upon!——"

She came leisurely forward, halted, inspected him with laughing insolence:

"And the others—Kastner, Sondheim—and the other vermin? You were quite right. Why should I kill them—merely because to-day a real man died? What if they are the same species of vermin that slew Vanya Tchernov? They are not men to pay for it. My pistol could not make a dead man out of a live louse! No, you are quite correct. You know your own kind. It would be no compliment to Vanya if I should give these vermin the death that real men die!"

Puma stood close to the door, furtively passing a thick tongue over his dry, blanched lips.

"Then you will not interfere?" he asked softly.

She shrugged her shoulders: one was bare with the torn sleeve dangling. "No," she said wearily. "Run home, painted pig. After all, the world is mostly swine.... I, too, it seems——" She half raised her arms, but the gesture failed, and she stood thinking again and staring at the curtained window. She did not hear him leave.



CHAPTER XXIII

In the strange, springlike weather which prevailed during the last days of January, Vanya was buried under skies as fleecy blue as April's, and Marya Lanois went back to the studio apartment where she and Vanya had lived together. And here, alone, in the first month of the new year, she picked up again the ravelled threads of life, undecided whether to untangle them or to cut them short and move on once more to further misadventure; or to Vanya; or somewhere—or perhaps nowhere. So, pending some decision, she left her pistol loaded.

Afternoon sunshine poured into the studio between antique silken curtains, now drawn wide to the outer day for the first time since these two young people had established for themselves a habitation.

And what, heretofore, even the lighted mosque-lamps had scarcely half revealed, now lay exposed to outer air and daylight, gilded by the sun—cabinets and chests of ancient lacquer; deep-toned carpets in which slumbered jewelled fires of Asia; carved gods from the East, crusted with soft gold; and tapestries of silk shot with amethyst and saffron, centred by dragons and guarded by the burning pearl.

Over all these, and the great mosque lantern drooping from above, the false-spring sunshine fell; and through every open window flowed soft, deceptive winds, fluttering the leaves of music on the piano, stirring the clustered sheafs of growing jonquils and narcissus, so that they swayed in their Chinese bowls.

Marya, in black, arranged her tiger-ruddy hair before an ancient grotesquerie set with a reflecting glass in which, on some days, one could see the form of the Lord Buddha, though none could ever tell from whence the image came.

Where Vanya had left his music opened on the piano rack, the sacred pages now stirred slightly as the soft wind blew; and scented bells of Frisia swayed and bowed around a bowl where gold-fish glowed.

Marya, at the piano, reading at sight from his inked manuscript, came presently to the end of what was scored there—merely the first sketch for a little spring song.

Some day she would finish it as part of a new debt—new obligations she had now assumed in the slowly increasing light of new beliefs.

As she laid Vanya's last manuscript aside, under it she discovered one of her own—a cynical, ribald, pencilled parody which she remembered she had scribbled there in an access of malicious perversity.

As though curious to sound the obscurer depths of what she had been when this jeering cynicism expressed her mood, she began to read from her score and words, playing and intoning:

"CROQUE-MITAINE.

"Parfait qu'on attend La Maree Rouge, La chose est positive. On n'sait pas quand el' bouge, Mais on sait qu'el' arrive. La Maree Rouge arrivera Et tout le monde en crevera!

"Croque'morts, sacristains et abbes, Dans leurs sacre's boutiques Se cachent aupres des machabe's En repetant des cantiques. Pape, cardinal, et sacre soeur Miaulent avec tout leurs cliques, Lorsque les Bolsheviks reprenn 'nt en choeur; Mort aux saligaudes chic!

"La Maree Rouge montera Et la bourgeoisie en crevera!"

The vicious irony of the atrocious parody—words and music—died out in the sunny silence: for a few moments the girl sat staring at the scored page; then she leaned forward, and, taking the manuscript in both hands, tore it into pieces.

She was still occupied in destroying the unclean thing when a servant appeared, and in subdued voice announced Palla and Ilse.

They came in as Marya swept the tattered scraps of paper into an incense-bowl, dropped a lighted match upon them, and set the ancient bronze vessel on the sill of the open window.

"Some of my vileness I am burning," she said, coming forward and kissing Ilse on both cheeks.

Then, looking Palla steadily in the eyes, she bent forward and touched her lips with her own.

"Nechevo," she said; "the thing that dwelt within me for a time has continued on its way to hell, I hope."

She took the pale girl by both hands: "Do you understand?"

And Palla kissed her.

When they were seated: "What religious order would be likely to accept me?" she asked serenely. And answered her own question: "None would tolerate me—no order with its rigid systems of inquiry and its merciless investigations.... And yet—I wonder.... Perhaps, as a lay-sister in some missionary order—where few care to serve—where life resembles death as one twin the other.... I don't know: I wonder, Palla."

Palla asked her in a low voice if she had seen the afternoon paper. Marya did not reply at once; but presently over her face a hot rose-glow spread and deepened. Then, after a silence:

"The paper mentioned me as Vanya's wife. Is that what you mean? Yes; I told them that.... It made no difference, for they would have discovered it anyway. And I scarcely know why I made Vanya lie about it to you all;—why I wished people to think otherwise.... Because I have been married to Vanya since the beginning.... And I can not explain why I have not told you."

She touched a rosebud in the vase that stood beside her, broke the stem absently, and sat examining it in silence. And, after a few moments:

"As a child I was too imaginative.... We do not change—we women. Married, unmarried, too wise, or too innocent, we remain what we were when our mothers bore us.... Whatever we do, we never change within: we remain, in our souls, what we first were. And unaltered we die.... In morgue or prison or Potter's Field, where lies a dead female thing in a tattered skirt, there, hidden somewhere under rag and skin and bone, lies a dead girl-child."

She laid the unopened rosebud on Palla's knees; her preoccupied gaze wandered around that silent, sunlit place.

"I could have taken my pistol," she said softly, "and I could have killed a few among those whose doctrines at last slew Vanya.... Or I could have killed myself."

She turned and her remote gaze came back to fix itself on Palla.

"But, somehow, I think that Vanya would grieve.... And he has grieved enough. Do you think so, Palla?"

"Yes."

Ilse said thoughtfully: "There is always enough death on earth. And to live honestly, and love undauntedly, and serve humanity with a clean heart is the most certain way to help the slaying of that thing which murdered Vanya."

Palla gazed at Marya, profoundly preoccupied by the astounding revelation that she had been Vanya's legal wife; and in her brown eyes the stunned wonder of it still remained, nor could she seem to think of anything except of that amazing fact.

When they stood up to take leave of Marya, the rosebud dropped from Palla's lap, and Marya picked it up and offered it again.

"It should open," she said, her strange smile glimmering. "Cold water and a little salt, my Palla—that is all rosebuds need—that is all we women need—a little water to cool and freshen us; a little salt for all the doubtful worldly knowledge we imbibe."

She took Palla's hands and bent her lips to them, then lifted her tawny head:

"What do words matter? Slava, slava, under the moon! Words are but symbols of needs—your need and Ilse's and mine—and Jack's and Vanya's—and the master-word differs as differ our several needs. And if I say Christ and Buddha and I are one, let me so believe, if that be my need. Or if, from some high minarette, I lift my voice proclaiming the unity of God!—or if I confess the Trinity!—or if, for me, the god-fire smoulders only within my own accepted soul—what does it matter? Slava, slava—the word and the need spell Love—whatever the deed, Palla—my Palla!—whatever the deed, and despite it."

* * * * *

As they came, together, to Palla's house and entered the empty drawing-room, Ilse said:

"In mysticism there seems to be no reasoning—nothing definite save only an occult and overwhelming restlessness.... Marya may take the veil ... or nurse lepers ... or she may become a famous courtesan.... I do not mean it cruelly. But, in the mystic, the spiritual, the intellectual and the physical seem to be interchangeable, and become gradually indistinguishable."

"That is a frightful analysis," murmured Palla. A little shiver passed over her and she laid the rosebud against her lips.

Ilse said: "Marya is right: love is the world's overwhelming need. The way to love is to serve; and if we serve we must renounce something."

They locked arms and began to pace the empty room.

"What should I renounce?" asked Palla faintly.

Ilse smiled that wise, wholesome smile of hers:

"Suppose you renounce your own omniscience, darling," she suggested.

"I do not think myself omniscient," retorted the girl, colouring.

"No? Well, darling, from where then do you derive your authority to cancel the credentials of the Most High?"

"What!"

"On what authority except your own omniscience do you so confidently preach the non-existence of omnipotence?"

Palla turned her flushed face in sensitive astonishment under the gentle mockery.

Ilse said: "Love has many names; and so has God. And all are good. If, to you, God means that little flame within you, then that is good. And so, to others, according to their needs.... And it is the same with love.... So, if for the man you love, love can be written only as a phrase—if the word love be only one element in a trinity of which the other two are Law and Wedlock—does it really matter, darling?"

"You mean I—I am to renounce my—creed?"

Ilse shook her head: "Who cares? The years develop and change everything—even creeds. Do you think your lover would care whether, at twenty-odd, you worship the flaming godhead itself, or whether you guard in spirit that lost spark from it which has become entangled with your soul?—whether you really do believe the man-made law that licenses your mating; or whether you reject it as a silly superstition? To a business man, convention is merely a safe procedure which, ignored, causes disaster—he knows that whenever he ignores it—as when he drives a car bearing no license; and the police stop him."

"I never expected to hear this from you, Ilse."

"Why?"

"You are unmarried."

"No, Palla."

The girl stared at her: "Did you marry Jack?" she gasped.

"Yes. In the hospital."

"Oh, Ilse!——"

"He asked me."

"But—" her mouth quivered and she bent her head and placed her hand on Ilse's arm for guidance, because the starting tears were blinding her now. And at last she found her voice: "I meant I am so thankful—darling—it's been a—a nightmare——"

"It would have been one to me if I had refused him. Except that Jack wished it, I did not care.... But I have lately learned—some things."

"You—you consented because he wished it?"

"Of course. Is not that our law?"

"Do you so construe the Law of Love and Service? Does it permit us to seek protection under false pretences; to say yes when we mean no; to kneel before a God we do not believe in; to accept immunity under a law we do not believe in?"

"If all this concerned only one's self, then, no! Or, if the man believed as we do, no! But even then—" she shook her head slowly, "unless all agree, it is unfair."

"Unfair?"

"Yes, it is unfair if you have a baby. Isn't it, darling? Isn't it unfair and tyrannical?"

"You mean that a child should not arbitrarily be placed by its parents at what it might later consider a disadvantage?"

"Of course I mean just that. Do you know, Palla, what Jack once said of us? He said—rather brutally, I thought—that you and I were immaturely un-moral and pitiably unbaked; and that the best thing for both of us was to marry and have a few children before we tried to do any more independent thinking."

Palla's reply was: "He was such a dear!" But what she said did not seem absurd to either of them.

Ilse added: "You know yourself, darling, what a relief it was to you to learn that I had married Jack. I think you even said something like, 'Thank God,' when you were choking back the tears."

Palla flushed brightly: "I meant—" but her voice ended in a sob. Then, all of a sudden, she broke down—went all to pieces there in the dim and empty little drawing-room—down on her knees, clinging to Ilse's skirts....

She wished to go to her room alone; and so Ilse, watching her climb the stairs as though they led to some dread calvary, opened the front door and went her lonely way, drawing the mourning veil around her face and throat.



CHAPTER XXIV

Leila Vance, lunching with Elorn Sharrow at the Ritz, spoke of Estridge:

"There seem to be so many of these well-born men who marry women we never heard of."

"Perhaps we ought to have heard of them," suggested Elorn, smilingly. "The trouble may lie with us."

"It does, dear. But it's something we can't help, unless we change radically. Because we don't stand the chance we once did. We never have been as attractive to men as the other sort. But once men thought they couldn't marry the other sort. Now they think they can. And they do if they have to."

"What other sort?" asked Elorn, not entirely understanding.

"The sort of girl who ignores the customs which make us what we are. We don't stand a chance with professional women any more. We don't compare in interest to girls who are arbiters of their own destinies.

"Take the stage as an illustration. Once the popularity of women who made it their profession was due partly to glamour, partly because that art drew to it and concentrated the very best-looking among us. But it's something else now that attracts men; it's the attraction of women who are doing something—clever, experienced, interesting, girls who know how to take care of themselves and who are not afraid to give to men a frank and gay companionship outside those conventional limits which circumscribe us."

Elorn nodded.

"It's quite true," said Leila. "The independent professional girl to-day, whatever art or business engages her, is the paramount attraction to men.

"A few do sneak back to us after a jolly caper in the open—a few timid ones, or snobs of sorts—thrifty, perhaps, or otherwise material, or cautious. But that's about all we get as husbands in these devilish days of general feminine bouleversement. And it's a sad and instructive fact, Elorn. But there seems to be nothing to do about it."

Elorn said musingly: "The main thing seems to be that men admire a girl's effort to get somewhere—when she happens to be good-looking."

"It's a cynical fact, dear; they certainly do. And now that they realise they have to marry these girls if they want them—why, they do."

Elorn dissected her ice. "You know Stanley Wardner," she remarked.

"Mortimer Wardner's son?"

Elorn nodded. "He became a queer kind of sculptor. I think it is called a Concentrationist. Well, he's concentrated for life, now."

"Whom did he marry?" asked Leila, laughing.

"A girl named Questa Terrett. You never heard of her, did you?"

"No. And I can imagine the moans and groans of the Mortimer Wardners."

"I have heard so. She lives—they live now, together, in Abdingdon Square, where she possesses a studio and nearly a dozen West Highland terriers."

"What else does she do?" inquired Leila, still laughing.

"She writes cleverly when she needs an income; otherwise, she produces obscure poems with malice aforethought, and laughs in her sleeve, they say, when the precious-minded rave."

Leila reverted to Estridge:

"I had no idea he was married," she said. "Palla Dumont introduced his widow to me the other day—a most superb and beautiful creature. But, oh dear I—can you fancy her having once served as a girl-soldier in the Russian Battalion of Death!"

The slightest shadow crossed Elorn's face.

"By the way," added Leila, following quite innocently her trend of thought, "Helen Shotwell tells me that her son is going back to the army if he can secure a commission."

"Yes, I believe so," said Elorn serenely.

Leila went on: "I fancy there'll be a lot of them. A taste of service seems to spoil most young men for a piping career of peace."

"He cares nothing for his business."

"What is it?"

"Real estate. He is with my father, you know."

"Of course. I remember—" She suddenly seemed to recollect something else, also—not, perhaps, quite certain of it, but instinctively playing safe. So she refrained from saying anything about this young man's recent devotion to her friend, Palla Dumont, although that was the subject which she had intended to introduce.

And, smiling to herself, she thought it a close call, because she had meant to ask Elorn whether she knew why the Shotwell boy had so entirely deserted her little friend Palla.

The Shotwell boy himself happened to be involved at that very moment, in matters concerning a friend of Mrs. Vance's little friend Palla—in fact, he had been trying, for the last half hour, to find this friend of Palla's on the telephone. The friend in question was Alonzo D. Pawling. And he was being vigorously paged at the Hotel Rajah.

As for Jim, he remained seated in the private office of Angelo Puma, whither he had been summoned in professional capacity by one Skidder, the same being Elmer, and partner of the Puma aforesaid.

The door was locked; the room in disorder. Safe, letter-files, cupboards, desks had been torn open and their contents littered the place.

Skidder, in an agony of perspiring fright, kept running about the room like a distracted squirrel. Jim watched him, darkly preoccupied with other things, including the whereabouts of Mr. Pawling.

"You say," he said to Skidder, "that Mr. Pawling will confirm what you have told me?"

"John D. Pawling knows damn well I own this plant!"

Jim shook his head: "I'm sorry, but that isn't sufficient. I can only repeat to you that there is no point in calling me in at present. You have no legal right to offer this property for sale. It belongs, apparently, to the creditors of your firm. What you require first of all is a lawyer——"

"I don't want a lawyer and I don't want publicity before I get something out of this dirty mess that scoundrel left behind!" cried Skidder, snapping his eyes like mad and swinging his arms. "I got to get something, haven't I? Isn't this property mine? Can't I sell it?"

"Apparently not, under the terms of your agreement with Puma," replied Jim, wearily. "However, I'm willing to hear what Mr. Pawling has to say."

"You mean to tell me, Puma fixed it so I'm stuck with all his debts? You mean to say my own personal property is subject to seizure to satisfy——"

"I certainly do mean just that, Mr. Skidder. But I'm not a lawyer——"

"I tell you I want to get something for myself before I let loose any lawyers on the premises! I'll make it all right with you——"

"It's out of the question. We wouldn't touch the property——"

"I'll take a quarter of its value in spot cash! I'll give you ten thousand to put it through to-day!"

"Why can't you understand that what you suggest would amount to collusion?"

"What I propose is to get a slice of what's mine!" yelled Skidder, fairly dancing with fury. "D'yeh think I'm going to let that crooked wop, Puma, do this to me just like that! D'yeh think he's going to get away with all my money and all Pawling's money and leave me planted on my neck while about a million other guys come and sell me out and fill their pants pockets with what's mine?"

Jim said: "If Mr. Pawling is the very rich man you say he is, he's not going to let the defalcation of this fellow, Puma, destroy such a paying property."

"Damn it, I don't want him to buy it in for himself and freeze me out! I can't stop him, either; Puma's got all my money except what's in this parcel. And you betcha life I hang onto this, creditors or no creditors, and Pawling to the contrary! He knows damn well it belongs to me. Try him again at the Rajah——"

"They're paging him. I left the number. But I tell you the proper thing for you to do is to go to a lawyer, and then to the police," repeated Jim. "There's nothing else to do. This fellow, Puma, may have run for the Mexican border, or he may still be in the United States. Without a passport he couldn't very easily get on any trans-Atlantic boat or any South American boat either. The proper procedure is to notify the police——"

"Nix on the police!" shouted Skidder. "That'll start the land-slide, and the whole shooting-match will go. I want this property. If the papers show it's subject to the firm's liabilities, then that dirty skunk altered the thing. It's forgery.

"I never was fool enough to lump this parcel in with our assets. Not me. It's forgery; that's what it is, and this parcel belongs to me, privately——"

"See an attorney," repeated Jim patiently. "You can't keep a thing like this out of the papers, Mr. Skidder. Why, here's a man, Angelo Puma, who pounces on every convertible asset of his firm, stuffs a valise full of real money, and beats it for parts unknown.

"That's a matter for the police. You can't hope to hide it for more than a day or two longer. Your firm is bankrupt through the rascality of a partner. He's gone with all the money he could scrape together. He converted everything into cash; he lied, swindled, stole, and skipped. And what he didn't take must remain to satisfy the firm's creditors. You can't conceal conditions, slyly pocket what Puma has left and then call in an attorney. That's criminal. You have your contracts to fulfil; you have a studio full of people whose salaries are nearly due; you have running expenses; you have notes to meet; you have obligations to face when a dozen or so contractors for your new theatre come to you on Saturday——"

"You mean that's all up to me?" shrieked Skidder, squinting horribly at a framed photograph of Puma. And suddenly he ran at it and hurled it to the floor and began to kick it about with strange, provincial maledictions:

"Dern yeh, yeh poor blimgasted thing! I'll skin yeh, yeh dumb-faced, ring-boned, two-edged son-of-a-skunk!——"

The telephone's clamour silenced him. Jim answered:

"Who? Oh, long-distance. All right." And he waited. Then, again: "Who wants him?... Yes, he's here in the office, now.... Yes, he'll come to the 'phone."

And to Skidder: "Shadow Hill wants to speak to you."

"I won't go. By God, if this thing is out!—Who the hell is it wants to speak to me? Wait! Maybe it's Alonzo D. Pawling!——"

"Shall I inquire?" And he asked for further information over the wire. Then, presently, and turning again to Skidder:

"You'd better come to the wire. It seems to be the Chief of Police who wants you."

Skidder's unhealthy skin became ghastly. He came over and took the instrument:

"What d'ye want, Chief? Sure it's me, Elmer.... Hey? Who? Alonzo D. Pawling? My God, is he dead? Took pizen! W-what for! He's a rich man, ain't he?... Speculated?... You say he took the bank's funds? Trust funds? What!" he screeched—"put 'em into my company! He's a liar! ... I don't care what letters he left!... Well, all right then. Sure, I'll get a lawyer——"

"Tell him to hold that wire!" cut in Jim; and took the receiver from Skidder's shaking fingers.

"Is the Shadow Hill Trust Company insolvent?" he asked. "You say that the bank closed its doors this morning? Have you any idea of its condition? Looted? Is it entirely cleaned out? Is there no chance for depositors? I wish to inquire about the trust funds, bonds and other investments belonging to a friend of mine, Miss Dumont.... Yes, I'll wait."

He turned a troubled and sombre gaze toward Skidder, who sat there pasty-faced, with sagging jaw, staring back at him. And presently:

"Yes.... Yes, this is Mr. Shotwell, a friend of Miss Dumont.... Yes.... Yes.... Yes.... I see.... Yes, I shall try to communicate with her immediately.... Yes, I suppose the news will be published in the evening papers.... Certainly.... Yes, I have no doubt that she will go at once to Shadow Hill.... Thank you.... Yes, it does seem rather hopeless.... I'll try to find her and break it to her.... Thank you. Good-bye."

He hung up the receiver, took his hat and coat, his eyes fixed absently on Skidder.

"You'd better beat it to your attorney," he remarked, and went out.

* * * * *

He could not find Palla. She was not at the Red Cross, not at the canteen, not at the new Hostess House.

He telephoned Ilse for information, but she was not at home.

Twice he called at Palla's house, leaving a message the last time that she should telephone him at the club on her arrival.

He went to the club and waited there, trying to read. At a quarter to six o'clock no message from her had come.

Again he telephoned Ilse; she had not returned. He even telephoned to Marya, loath to disturb her; but she, also, was not at home.

The chances that he could break the news to Palla before she read it in the evening paper were becoming negligible. He had done his best to forestall them. But at six the evening papers arrived at the club. And in every one of them was an account of the defalcation and suicide of the Honorable Alonzo D. Pawling, president of the Shadow Hill Trust Company. But nothing yet concerning the defalcation and disappearance of Angelo Puma.

Jim had no inclination to eat, but he tried to at seven-thirty, still waiting and hoping for a message from Palla.

He tried her house again about half past eight. This time the maid answered that Miss Dumont had telephoned from down town that she would dine out and go afterward to the Combat Club. And that if Mr. Shotwell desired to see her he should call at her house after ten o'clock.

So Jim hastened to the cloak-room, got his hat and coat, found the starter, secured a taxi, bought an evening paper and stuffed it into his pocket, and started out to find Palla at the Combat Club. For it seemed evident to him that she had not yet read the evening paper; and he hoped he might yet encounter her in time to prepare her for news which, according to the newspapers, appeared even blacker than he had supposed it might be.



CHAPTER XXV

As he left the taxi in front of the dirty brick archway and flight of steps leading to the hall, where he expected to find Palla, he noticed a small crowd of wrangling foreigners gathered there—men and women—and a policeman posted near, calm and indifferent, juggling his club at the end of its leather thong.

Jim paused to inquire if there had been any trouble there that evening.

"Well," said the policeman, "there's two talking-clubs that chew the rag in that joint. It's the Reds' night, but wan o' the ladies of the other club showed up—Miss Dumont—and the Reds yonder was all for chasing her out. So we run in a couple of 'em—that feller Sondheim and another called Bromberg. They're wanted, anyhow, in Philadelphia."

"Is there a meeting inside?"

"Sure. The young lady went in to settle it peaceful like; and she's inside now jawin' at them Reds to beat a pink tea."

"Do you apprehend any violence?" asked Jim uneasily.

The policeman juggled his club and eyed him. "I—guess—not," he drawled. And, to the jabbering, wrangling crowd on pavement and steps: "—Hey, you! Go in or stay out, one or the other, now! Step lively; you're blockin' the sidewalk."

A number of people mounted the steps and went in with Jim. As the doors to the hall opened, a flare of smoky light struck him, and he pushed his way into the hall, where a restless, murmuring audience, some seated, others standing, was watching a number of men and women on the rostrum.

There seemed to be more wrangling going on there—knots of people disputing and apparently quite oblivious of the audience.

And almost immediately he caught sight of Palla on the platform. But even before he could take a step forward in the crowded aisle, he saw her force her way out of an excited group of people and come to the edge of the platform, lifting a slim hand for silence.

"Put her out!" shouted some man's voice. A dozen other voices bawled out incoherencies; Palla waited; and after a moment or two there were no further interruptions.

"Please let me say what I have to say," she said in that shy and gentle way she had when facing hostile listeners.

"Speak louder!" yelled a young man. "Come on, silk-stockings!—spit it out and go home to mother!"

"I wish I could," she said.

Her rejoinder was so odd and unexpected that stillness settled over the place.

"But all I can do," she added, in an even, colourless voice, "is to go home. And I shall do that after I have said what I have to say."

At that moment there was a commotion in the rear of the hall. A dozen policemen filed into the place, pushing their way right and left and ranging themselves along the wall. Their officer came into the aisle:

"If there's any disorder in this place to-night, I'll run in the whole bunch o' ye!" he said calmly.

"All right. Hit out, little girl!" cried the young man who had interrupted before. "We gotta lot of business to fix up after you've gone to bed, so get busy!"

"I, also, have some business to fix up," she said in the same sweet, emotionless voice, "—business of setting myself right by admitting that I have been wrong.

"Because, on this spot where I am standing, I have spoken against the old order of things. I have said that there is no law excepting only the law of Love and Service. I have said that there is no God other than the deathless germ of deity within each one of us. I have said that the conventions and beliefs and usages and customs of civilisation were old, outworn, and tyrannical; and that there was no need to regard them or to obey the arbitrary laws based on them.

"In other words, I have preached disorder while attempting to combat it: I have preached revolution while counselling peace; I have preached bigotry where I have demanded toleration.

"For there is no worse bigot than the free-thinker who demands that the world subscribe to his creed; no tyrant like the under-dog when he becomes the upper one; no autocracy to compare with mob rule!

"You can not obtain freedom for all by imposing that creed upon anybody by the violence of revolutionary ukase!

"You can not wreck any edifice until all who enjoy ownership in it agree to its demolition. You can not build for all unless each voluntarily comes forward to aid with stone and mortar.

"Anarchy leaves the majority roofless. What is the use of saying, 'Let them perish'? What is the use of trying to rebuild the world that way? You can't do it, even if you set fire to the world and start your endless war of human murder.

"If you were the majority you would not need to do it. But you are the minority, and there are too many against you.

"Only by infinite pains and patience can you alter the social structure to better it. Cautious and wary replacement is the only method, not exploding a mine beneath the keystone.

"The world has won out from barbarism so far. It must continue to emerge by degrees. And if beliefs and laws and customs be obsolete, only by general agreement may they be modified without danger to all. Not the violent revolt of one or a dozen or a thousand can alter what has, so far, nourished and sustained civilisation.

"That is the Prussian belief. Bolshevism was sired by Karl Marx and was hatched out in the shaggy gloom of the Prussian wilderness.

"It does not belong anywhere else; it does not belong on the plains of Russia or in her forests or on her mountains. It is a Prussian thing—a misbegotten monster born of a vile and decadent race,—a horrible parasite, like that one which carries typhus, infects as it spreads from the degraded race that hatched it, crawling from country to country and leaving behind it dead minds, dead hearts, dead souls, and rotting flesh.

"For order and disorder can not both reign paramount on this planet! The one shall slay the other. And Bolshevism is disorder—a violent and tyrannical and autocratic attempt to utterly destroy the vast majority for the benefit of the microscopic minority.

"You can not do it, you Terrorists! Prussia tried terrorism on the world. Where is she to-day? You can not teach by frightfulness. You can not scare beliefs out of anybody.

"Method, order, education—there is no other chance for any propagandist to-day.

"I have stood here night after night proclaiming that my personal conception of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of law and morals was the only intelligent one, and that I should ignore and disregard any other opinion.

"What I preached was Bolshevism! And I was such a fool I didn't know it. But that's what I preached. For it is an incitement to disorder to proclaim one's self above obedience to what has been established as a law to govern all.

"It is an insidious counsel to violence, revolution, Bolshevism and utter anarchy to say to people that they should disregard any law formed by all for the common weal.

"If the marriage law seems unnecessary, unjust, then only by common consent can it be altered; and until it is altered, any who disregard it strike at civilisation!

"If the laws governing capital and labour seem cruel, stupid, tyrannical, only by general consent can they be altered safely.

"You of the Bolsheviki can not come among us dripping with human blood, showing us your fangs, and expect from us anything except a fusillade.

"And your propaganda, also, is not human. It is Prussian. Do you suppose, you foreign-born, that you can come here among this free people and begin your operations by cursing our laws and institutions and telling us we are not free?

"Because we tolerate you, do you suppose we don't know that in most of the larger cities there are now organised Soviets, similar to those in Russia, that anarchists are now conducting schools, and that the radical propaganda which has taken on new life since the signing of the armistice is gaining headway in those parts of the country where there are large foreign-born populations?