"You promised us each a dance," retorted Tappan sulkily, "but you never made good. I'll take mine now if you don't mind——"

"I'm down first!" insisted the Pink 'un.

They squabbled over her furiously; Bunbury Gray got her; she swung away into a waltz on his arm, glancing backward at Duane, who watched her until she disappeared in the whirl of dancers. Then he strolled to the edge of the lantern-lit glade, stood for a moment looking absently at the shadowy woods beyond, and presently sauntered into the luminous dusk, which became darker and more opaque as he left the glare of the glade behind.

Here and there fantastic figures loomed, moving slowly, two and two, under the fairy foliage; on the Gray Water canoes strung with gaudy paper lanterns drifted; clouds of red fire rolled rosy and vaporous along the water's edge; and in the infernal glow, hazy shapes passed and repassed, finding places among scores of rustic tables, where servants in old-time livery and powdered wigs hurried to and fro with ices and salads, and set the white-covered tables with silverware and crystal.

A dainty masked figure in demon red flitted across his path in the uncanny radiance. He hailed her, and she turned, hesitated, then, as though convinced of his identity, laughed, and hastened on with a nod of invitation.

"Where are you going, pretty mask?" he inquired, wending his pace and trying to recognise the costume in the uncertain cross light.

But she merely laughed and continued to retreat before him, keeping the distance between them, hastening her steps whenever he struck a faster gait, pausing and looking back at him with a mocking smile when his steps slackened; a gracefully malicious, tormenting, laughing creature of lace and silk, whose retreat was a challenge, whose every movement and gesture seemed instinct with the witchery of provocation.

On the edge of the ring of tables she paused, picked up a goblet, held it out to a passing servant, who immediately filled the glass.

Then, before Duane could catch her, she drained the goblet to his health and fled into the shadows, he hard on her heels, pressing her closer, closer, until the pace became too hot for her, and she turned to face him, panting and covering her masked face with her fan.

"Now, my fair unknown, we shall pay a few penalties," he said with satisfaction; but she defended herself so adroitly that he could not reach her mask.

"Be fair to me," she gasped at last; "why are you so rough with me when—when you need not be? I knew you at once, Jack."

And she dropped her arms, standing resistless, breathing fast, her masked face frankly upturned to be kissed.

"Now, who the devil," thought Duane, "have I got in my arms? And for whom does she take me?"

He gazed searchingly into the slitted eye-holes; the eyes appeared to be blue, as well as he could make out. He looked at the fresh laughing mouth, a young, sensitive mouth, which even in laughter seemed not entirely gay.

"Don't you really mind if I kiss you?" He spoke in a whisper to disguise his voice.

"Isn't it a little late to ask me that?" she said; and under her mask the colour stained her skin. "I think what we do now scarcely matters."

She was so confident, so plainly awaiting his caress, that for a moment he was quite ready to console her. And did not, could not, with the fragrant and yielding intimacy of Geraldine still warm in his quickened heart.

She stood quite motionless, her little hands warm in his, her masked face upturned. And, as he merely stared at her:

"What is the matter, Jack?" she breathed. "Why do you look at me so steadily?"

He ought to have let her go then; he hesitated, wondering which Jack she supposed him to be; and before he realised it her arms were on his shoulders, her mouth nearer to his.

"Jack, you frighten me! What is it?"

"N-nothing," he continued to stammer.

"Yes, there is. Does your—your wife suspect—anything——"

"No, she doesn't," said Duane grimly, trying to free himself without seeming to. "I've got an appointment——"

But the girl said piteously: "It isn't—Geraldine, is it?"

"What!"

"You—you admitted that she attracted you—for a little while.... Oh, I did forgive you, Jack; truly I did with all my miserable heart! I was so fearfully unhappy—I would have done anything." ... Her face flushed scarlet. "And I—did.... But you do love me, don't you?" And the next moment her lips were on his with a sob.

Duane reached back and quietly unclasped her fingers. Then very gently he forced her to a seat on a great fallen log. Still looking up at him, droopingly pathetic in contrast to her gay debut with him, she naively slipped up the mask over her forehead and passed her hand across her pretty blue eyes. Sylvia Quest!

The sinister significance of her attitude flashed over him, all doubt vanished, all the comedy of their encounter was gone in an instant. Over him swept a startled sequence of emotions—bitter contempt for Dysart, scorn of the wretchedly equivocal situation and of the society that bred it, a miserable desire to spare her, vexation at himself for what he had unwittingly stumbled upon. The last thought persisted, dominated; succeeded by a disgusted determination that she must be spared the shame and terror of what she had inadvertently revealed; that she must never know she had not been speaking to Dysart himself.

"If I tell you that all is well—and if I tell you no more than that," he whispered, "will you trust me?"

"Have I not done so, Jack?"

The tragedy in her lifted eyes turned him cold with fury.

"Then wait here until I return," he said. "Promise."

"I promise," she sighed, "but I don't understand. I'm a—a little frightened, dear. But I—believe you."

He swung on his heel and made toward the lights once more, and a moment later the man he sought passed within a few feet of him, and Duane knew him by his costume, which was a blue replica of his own gray silks.

"Dysart!" he said sharply.

The masked figure swung gracefully around and stood still, searching the shadowy woodland inquiringly.

"I want a word with you. Here—not in the light, if you please. You recognise my voice, don't you?"

"Is that you, Mallett?" asked Dysart coldly, as the former appeared in the light for an instant and turned back again with a curt gesture.

"Yes. I want you to step over here among the trees, where nobody can interrupt us."

Dysart followed more slowly; came to a careless halt:

"Well, what the devil do you want?" he demanded insolently.

"I'll tell you. I've had an encounter with a mask who mistook me for you.... And she has said—several things—under that impression. She still believes that I am you. I asked her to wait for me over there by those oaks. Do you see where I mean?" He pointed and Dysart nodded coolly. "Well, then, I want you to go back there—find her, and act as though it had been you who heard what she said, not I."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly that. The girl ought never to know that what she said was heard and—and understood, Dysart, by any man in the world except the blackguard I'm telling this to. Now, do you understand?"

He stepped nearer:

"The girl is Sylvia Quest. Now, do you understand, damn you!"

A stray glimmer from the distant lanterns fell across Dysart's masked visage. The skin around the mouth was loose and ashy, the dry lips worked.

"That was a dirty trick of yours," he stammered; "a scoundrelly thing to do."

"Do you suppose that I dreamed for an instant that she was convicting herself and you?" said Duane in bitter contempt. "Go and manufacture some explanation of my conduct as though it were your own. Let her have that much peace of mind, anyway."

"You young sneak!" retorted Dysart. "I suppose you think that what you have heard will warrant your hanging around my wife. Try it and see."

"Good God, Dysart!" he said, "I never thought you were anything more vicious than what is called a 'dancing man.' What are you, anyhow?"

"You'll learn if you tamper with my affairs," said Dysart. He whipped off his mask and turned a corpse-like visage on the younger man. Every feature of his face had altered: his good looks were gone, the youth in his eyes had disappeared, only a little evil lustre played over them; and out of the drawn pallor Duane saw an old man peering, an old man's lips twitching back from uneven and yellowed teeth.

"Mallett," he said, "you listen to me. Keep your investigating muzzle out of my affairs; forget what you've ferreted out; steer clear of me and mine. I want no scandal, but if you raise a breath of it you'll have enough concerning yourself to occupy you. Do you understand?"

"No," said Duane mechanically, staring at the man before him.

"Well, then, to be more precise, if you lift one finger to injure me you'll cut a figure in court.... And you can marry her later."

"Who?"

"My wife. I don't think Miss Seagrave will stand for what I'll drag you through if you don't keep clear of me!"

Duane gazed at him curiously:

"So that is what you are, Dysart," he said aloud to himself.

Dysart's temples reddened.

"Yes, and then some!... I understand that you have given yourself the privilege of discussing my financial affairs in public. Have you?"

Duane said in a dull voice: "The Algonquin Trust was mentioned, I believe. I did say that you are a director."

"You said I was hard hit and that the Clearing House meant to weed out a certain element that I represented in New York."

"I did not happen to say that," said Duane wearily, "but another man did."

"Oh. You didn't say it?"

"No. I don't lie, Dysart."

"Then add to that negative virtue by keeping your mouth shut," said Dysart between his teeth, "or you'll have other sorts of suits on your hands. I warn you now to keep clear of me and mine."

"Just what is yours?" inquired Duane patiently.

"You'll find out if you touch it."

"Oh. Is—is Miss Quest included by any hazard? Because if the right chance falls my way, I shall certainly interfere."

"If you do, I shall begin suit for alienation within twenty-four hours."

"Oh, no, you won't. You're horribly afraid, Dysart. This grimacing of yours is fear. All you want is to be let alone, to burrow through the society that breeds your sort. Like a maggot in a chestnut you feed on what breeds you. I don't care. Feed! What bred you is as rotten as you are. I'm done with it—done with all this," turning his head toward the flare of light. "Go on and burrow. What nourishes you can look out for itself.... Only"—he wheeled around and looked into the darkness where, unseen, Sylvia Quest awaited him—"only, in this set, the young have less chance than the waifs of the East Side."

He walked slowly up to Dysart and struck him across the face with open palm.

"Break with that girl or I'll break your head," he said.

Dysart was down on the leaves, struggling up to his knees, then to his feet, the thin blood running across his chin. The next instant he sprang at Duane, who caught him by both arms and forced him savagely into quivering inertia.

"Don't," he said. "You're only a thing that dances. Don't move, I tell you.... Wipe that blood off and go and set the silly girl's heart at rest.... And keep away from her afterward. Do you hear?"

He set his teeth and shook him so wickedly that Dysart's head rolled and his wig fell off.

"I know something of your sloppy record," he continued, still shaking him; "I know about your lap-dog fawning around Miss Seagrave. It is generally understood that you're as sexless as any other of your kind. I thought so, too. Now I know you. Keep clear of me and mine, Dysart.... And that will be about all."

He left him planted against a tree and walked toward the lights once more, breathing heavily and in an ugly mood.

On the edge of the glade, just outside the lantern glow, he stood sombre, distrait, inspecting the torn lace on his sleeve, while all around him people were unmasking amid cries of surprise and shouts of laughter, and the orchestra was sounding a march, and multicoloured Bengal fires rolled in clouds from the water's edge, turning the woods to a magic forest and the people to tinted wraiths.

Behind him he heard Rosalie's voice, caressing, tormenting by turns; and, glancing around for her victim, beheld Grandcourt at heel in calflike adoration.

Kathleen's laughter swung him the other way.

"Oh, Duane," she cried, the pink of excitement in her cheeks, "isn't it all too heavenly! It looks like Paradise afire with all those rosy clouds rolling under foot. Have you ever seen anything quite as charming?"

"It's rotten," said Duane brusquely, tearing the tattered lace free and tossing it aside.

"Wh-what!" she exclaimed.

"I say it's all rotten," he repeated, looking up at her. "All this—the whole thing—the stupidity of it—the society that's driven to these kind of capers, dreading the only thing it ever dreads—ennui! Look at us all! For God's sake, survey us damn fools, herded here in our pinchbeck mummery—forcing the sanctuary of these decent green woods, polluting them with smoke and noise and dirty little intrigues! I'm sick of it!"

"Duane!"

"Oh, yes; I'm one of 'em—dragging my idleness and viciousness and my stupidity and my money at my heels. I tell you, Kathleen, this is no good. There's a stench of money everywhere; there's a staler aroma in the air, too—the dubious perfume of decadence, of moral atrophy, of stupid recklessness, of the ennui that breeds intrigue! I'm deadly tired of it—of the sort of people I was born among; of their women folk, whose sole intellectual relaxation is in pirouetting along the danger mark without overstepping, and in concealing it when they do; of the overgroomed men who can do nothing except what can be done with money, who think nothing, know nothing, sweat nothing but money and what it can buy—like horses and yachts and prima donnas——"

She uttered a shocked exclamation, but he went on:

"Yes, prima donnas. Which of our friends was it who bought that pretty one that sang in 'La Esmeralda'?"

"Duane!" she exclaimed in consternation; but he took her protesting hands in his and held her powerless.

"You happen to be a darling," he said; "but you were not born to this environment. Geraldine was—and she is a darling. God bless her. Outside of my sister, Naida, and you two—with the exception of the newly fledged and as yet mercifully unregurgitated with vicious wisdom—who are all these people? Ciphers, save for their balances at their banks; nameless, save for the noisy reiteration of their hard-fisted forebears' names; without any ambition, except financial and social; without any objective, save the escape from ennui—without any taste, culture, inspiration, except that of physical gratification! Oh, Lord, I'm one of them, but I resign to-night."

"Duane, you're quite mad," she said, wrenching her hands free and gazing at him rather fearfully.

"I think he's dead sensible," said a calm voice at her elbow; and Scott Seagrave appeared, twirling his mask and blinking at them through his spectacles.

Duane laughed: "Of course I am, you old reptile-hunting, butterfly-chasing antediluvian! But, come on; Byzantium is gorging its diamond-swathed girth yonder with salad and champagne; and I'm hungry, even if Kathleen isn't——"

"I am!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Scott, can't you find Naida and Geraldine? Duane and I will keep a table until you return——"

"I'll find them," said Duane; and he walked off among the noisy, laughing groups, his progress greeted uproariously from table to table. He found Naida and Bunbury Gray, and they at once departed for the rendezvous indicated.

"Geraldine was here a little while ago," said Gray, "but she walked to the lake with Jack Dysart. My, but she's hitting it up," he added admiringly.

"Hitting it up?" repeated Duane.

"For a girl who never does, I mean. I imagine that she's a novice with champagne. Champagne and Geraldine make a very fetching combination, I can tell you."

"She took no more than I," observed Naida with a shrug; "one solitary glass. If a girl happens to be high strung and ventures to laugh a little, some wretched man is sure to misunderstand! Bunny, you're a gadabout!"

She made her way out from the maze of tables, Bunny following, somewhat abashed; and Duane walked toward the shore, where dozens of lantern-hung canoes bobbed, and the pasteboard cylinders of Bengal fire had burned to smouldering sparks.

In the dim light he came on the people he was looking for, seated on the rocks. Dysart, at her feet, was speaking in an undertone; Geraldine, partly turned away from him, hands clasped around her knees, was staring steadily across the water.

Neither rose as he came up; Dysart merely became mute; Geraldine looked around with a start; her lips parted in a soundless, mechanical greeting, then the flush in her cheeks brightened; and as she rose, Dysart got onto his feet and stood silently facing the new arrival.

"I said after the third dance, you know," she observed with an assumed lightness that did not deceive him. And, as he made no answer, he saw the faint flicker of fright in her eyes and the lower lip quiver.

He said pleasantly, controlling his voice: "Isn't this after the third dance? You are to be my partner for supper, I think."

"A long time after; and I've already sat at Belshazzar's feast, thank you. I couldn't very well starve waiting for you, could I?" And she forced a smile.

"Nevertheless, I must claim your promise," he said.

There was a silence; she stood for a moment gazing at nothing, with the same bright, fixed smile, then turned and glanced at Dysart. The glance was his dismissal and he knew it.

"If I must give you up," he said cheerfully, at his ease, "please pronounce sentence."

"I am afraid you really must, Mr. Dysart."

There was another interval of constraint; then Dysart spoke. His self-possession was admirable, his words perfectly chosen, his exit in faultless taste.

They looked after him until he was lost to view in the throngs beyond, then the girl slowly reseated herself, eyes again fixed on the water, hands clasped tightly upon her knee, and Duane found a place at her elbow. So they began a duet of silence.

The little wavelets came dancing shoreward out of the darkness, breaking with a thin, splashing sound against the shale at their feet. Somewhere in the night a restless heron croaked and croaked among the willows.

"Well, little girl?" he asked at last.

"Well?" she inquired, with a calmness that did not mislead him.

"I couldn't come to you after the third dance," he said.

"Why?"

He evaded the question: "When I came back to the glade the dancing was already over; so I got Kathleen and Naida to save a table."

"Where had you been all the while?"

"If you really wish to know," he said pleasantly, "I was talking to Jack Dysart on some rather important matters. I did not realise how the time went."

She sat mute, head lowered, staring out across the dark water. Presently he laid one hand over hers, and she straightened up with a tiny shock, turned and looked him full in the eyes.

"I'll tell you why you failed me—failed to keep the first appointment I ever asked of you. It was because you were so preoccupied with a mask in flame colour."

He thought a moment:

"Did you believe you saw me with somebody in a vermilion costume?"

"Yes; I did see you. It was too late for me to retire without attracting your attention. I was not a willing eavesdropper."

"Who was the girl you thought you saw me with?"

"Sylvia Quest. She unmasked. There is no mistake."

So he was obliged to lie, after all.

"It must have been Dysart you saw. His costume is very like mine, you know——"

"Does Jack Dysart stand for minutes holding Sylvia's hands—and is she accustomed to place her hands on his shoulders, as though expecting to be kissed? And does he kiss her?"

So he had to lie again: "No, of course not," he said, smiling. "So it could not have been Dysart."

"There are only two costumes like yours and Mr. Dysart's. Do you wish me to believe that Sylvia is common and depraved enough to put her arms around the neck of a man who is married?"

There was no other way: "No," he said, "Sylvia isn't that sort, of course."

"It was either Mr. Dysart or you."

He said nothing.

"Then it was you!" in hot contempt.

Still he said nothing.

"Was it?" with a break in her voice.

"Men can't admit things of that kind," he managed to say.

The angry colour surged up to her cheeks, the angry tears started, but her quivering lips were not under command and she could only stare at him through the blur of grief, while her white hands clinched and relaxed, and her fast-beating heart seemed to be driving the very breath from her body.

"Geraldine, dear——"

"It wasn't fair!" she broke out fiercely; "there is no honour in you—no loyalty! Oh, Duane! Duane! How could you—at the very moment we were nearer together than we had ever been! It isn't jealousy that is crying out in me; it is nothing common or ignoble in me that resents what you have done! It is the treachery of it! How could you, Duane?"

The utter hopelessness of clearing himself left him silent. How much was to be asked of him as sacrifice to code? How far was he expected to go to shield Sylvia Quest—this unhappy, demoralised girl, whose reputation was already at the mercy of two men?

"Geraldine," he said, "it was nothing but a carnival flirtation—a chance encounter that meant nothing—the idlest kind of——"

"Is it idle to do what you did—and what she did? Oh, if I had only not seen it—if I only didn't know! I never dreamed of such a thing in you. Bunny Gray and I were taking a short cut to the Gray Water to sit out the rest of his dance—and he saw it, too—and he was furious—he must have been—because he's devoted to Sylvia." She made a hopeless gesture and dropped her hand to her side: "What a miserable night it has been for me! It's all spoiled—it's ended.... And I—my courage went.... I've done what I never thought to do again—what I was fighting down to make myself safe enough for you to marry—you to marry!" She laughed, but the mirth rang shockingly false.

"You mean that you had one glass of champagne," he said.

"Yes, and another with Jack Dysart. I'll have some more presently. Does it concern you?"

"I think so, Geraldine."

"You are wrong. Neither does what you've been doing concern me—the kind of man you've been—the various phases of degradation you have accomplished——"

"What particular species of degradation?" he asked wearily, knowing that Dysart was now bent on his destruction. "Never mind; don't answer, Geraldine," he added, "because there's no use in trying to set myself right; there's no way of doing it. All I can say is that I care absolutely nothing for Sylvia Quest, nor she for me; that I love you; that if I have ever been unworthy of you—as God knows I have—it is a bitterer memory to me than it could ever be to you."

"Shall we go back?" she said evenly.

"Yes, if you wish."

They walked back together in silence; a jolly company claimed them for their table; Geraldine laughingly accepted a glass of champagne, turning her back squarely on Duane.

Naida and Kathleen came across.

"We waited for you as long as we could," said his pretty sister, smothering a yawn. "I'm horribly sleepy. Duane, it's three o'clock. Would you mind taking me across to the house?"

He cast a swift, anxious glance at Geraldine; her vivid colour, the splendour of her eyes, her feverish laughter were ominous. With her were Gray and Sylvia, rather noisy in their gaiety, and the boisterous Pink 'uns, and Jack Dysart, lingering near, the make-up on his face in ghastly contrast to his ashen pallor and his fixed and unvaried grin.

"I'm waiting, Duane," said Naida plaintively.

So he turned away with her through the woods, where one by one the brilliant lantern flames were dying out, and where already in the east a silvery lustre heralded the coming dawn.

* * * * *

When he returned, Geraldine was gone. At the house somebody said she had come in with Kathleen, not feeling well.

"The trouble with that girl," said a man whom he did not know, "is that she's had too much champagne."

"You lie," said Duane quietly. "Is that perfectly plain to you?"

For a full minute the young man stood rigid, crimson, glaring at Duane. Then, having the elements of decency in him, he said:

"I don't know who you are, but you are perfectly right. I did lie. And I'll see that nobody else does."



CHAPTER XII

THE LOVE OF THE GODS

Two days later the majority of the people had left Roya-Neh, and the remainder were preparing to make their adieux to the young chatelaine by proxy; for Geraldine had kept her room since the night of the masked fete, and nobody except Kathleen and Dr. Bailey had seen her.

"Fashionable fidgets," said Dr. Bailey, in answer to amiable inquiries; "the girl has been living on her nerves, like the rest of you, only she can't stand as much as you can."

To Duane he said, in reply to persistent questions:

"As a plain and unromantic proposition, young man, it may be her liver. God alone knows with what young women stuff their bodies in those bucolic solitudes."

To Kathleen he said, after questioning her and listening in silence to her guarded replies:

"I don't know what is the matter, Mrs. Severn. The girl is extremely nervous. She acts, to me, as though she had something on her mind, but she insists that she hasn't. If I were to be here, I might come to some conclusion within the next day or two."

Which frightened Kathleen, and she asked whether anything serious might be anticipated.

"Not at all," he said.

So, as he was taking the next train, there was nothing to do. He left a prescription and whizzed away to the railroad station with the last motor-load of guests.

There remained only Duane, Rosalie Dysart, Grandcourt, and Sylvia Quest, a rather subdued and silent group on the terrace, unresponsive to Scott's unfeigned gaiety to find himself comparatively alone and free to follow his own woodland predilections once more.

"A cordial host you are," observed Rosalie; "you're guests are scarcely out of sight before you break into inhuman chuckles."

"Speed the parting," observed Scott, in excellent spirits; "that's the truest hospitality."

"I suppose your unrestrained laughter will be our parting portion in a day or two," she said, amused.

"No; I don't mind a few people. Do you want to come and look for scarabs?"

"Scarabs? Do you imagine you're in Egypt, my poor friend?"

Scott sniffed: "Didn't you know we had a few living species around here? Regular scarabs. Kathleen and I found three the other day—one a regular beauty with two rhinoceros horns on the thorax and iridescent green and copper tinted wing-covers. Do you want to help me hunt for some more? You'll have to put on overshoes, for they're in the cow-yards."

Rosalie, intensely bored, thanked him and declined. Later she opened a shrimp-pink sunshade and, followed by Grandcourt, began to saunter about the lawn in plain sight, as people do preliminary to effacing themselves without exciting comment.

But there was nobody to comment on what they did; Duane was reading a sporting-sheet, souvenir of the departed Bunbury; Sylvia sat pallid and preoccupied, cheek resting against her hand, looking out over the valley. Her brother, her only living relative, was supposed to have come up that morning to take her to the next house party on the string which linked the days of every summer for her. But Stuyvesant had not arrived; and the chances were that he would turn up within a day or two, if not too drunk to remember her.

So Sylvia, who was accustomed to waiting for her brother, sat very colourless and quiet by the terrace parapet, pale blue eyes resting on the remoter hills—not always, for at intervals she ventured a furtive look at Duane, and there was something of stealth and of fright in the stolen glance.

As for Scott, he sat on the parapet, legs swinging, fussing with a pair of binoculars and informing the two people behind him—who were not listening—that he could distinguish a black-billed cuckoo from a thrasher at six hundred yards.

Which edified neither Sylvia nor Duane, but the boy continued to impart information with unimpaired cheerfulness until Kathleen came out from the house.

"How's Sis?" he inquired.

"I think she has a headache," replied Kathleen, looking at Duane.

"Could I see her?" he asked.

Kathleen said gently that Geraldine did not feel like seeing anybody at that time. A moment later, in obedience to Scott's persistent clamouring for scarabs, she went across the lawn with the young master of Roya-Neh, resigned to the inevitable in the shape of two-horned scarabs or black-billed cuckoos.

It had always been so with her; it would always be so. Long ago the Seagrave twins had demanded all she had to give; now, if Geraldine asked less, Scott exacted double. And she gave—how happily, only her Maker and her conscience knew.

Duane was still reading—or he had all the appearance of reading—when Sylvia lifted her head from her hand and turned around with an effort that cost her what colour had remained under the transparent skin of her oval face.

"Duane," she said, "it occurred to me just now that you might have really mistaken what I said and did the other night." She hesitated, nerving herself to encounter his eyes, lifted and levelled across the top of his paper at her.

He waited; she retained enough self-command to continue with an effort at lightness:

"Of course it was all carnival fun—my pretending to mistake you for Mr. Dysart. You understood it, didn't you?"

"Why, of course," he said, smiling.

She went on: "I—don't exactly remember what I said—I was trying to mystify you. But it occurred to me that perhaps it was rather imprudent to pretend to be on—on such impossible terms with Mr. Dysart——"

There was something too painful in her effort for him to endure. He said laughingly, not looking at her:

"Oh, I wasn't ass enough to be deceived, Sylvia. Don't worry, little girl." And he resumed the study of his paper.

Minutes passed—terrible minutes for one of them, who strove to find relief in his careless reassurance, tried desperately to believe him, to deceive that intuition which seldom fails her sex.

He, with the print blurred and meaningless before him, sat miserable, dumb with the sympathy he could not show, hot with the anger he dared not express. He thought of Dysart as he had revealed himself, now gone back to town to face that little crop of financial rumours concerning the Algonquin that persisted so wickedly and would not be quieted. For the first time in his life, probably, Dysart was compelled to endure the discomforts of a New York summer—more discomforts this summer than mere dust and heat and noise. For men who had always been on respectful financial terms with Dysart and his string of banks and his Algonquin enterprise were holding aloof from him; men who had figured for years in the same columns of print where his name was so often seen as director and trustee and secretary—fellow-members who served for the honour of serving on boards of all sorts, charity boards, hospital, museum, civic societies—these men, too, seemed to be politely, pleasantly, even smilingly edging away from him in some indefinable manner.

Which seemed to force him toward certain comparatively newcomers among the wealthy financiers of the metropolis—brilliant, masterful, restless men from the West, whose friendship in the beginning he had sought, deeming himself farsighted.

Now that his vision had become normally adjusted he cared less for this intimacy which it was too late to break—at least this was not the time to break it with money becoming unbelievably scarcer every day and a great railroad man talking angrily, and another great railroad man preaching caution at a time when the caution of the man in the Street might mean something so serious to Dysart that he didn't care to think about it.

Dysart had gone back to New York in company with several pessimistic gentlemen—who were very open about backing their fancy; and their fancy fell on that old, ramshackle jade, Hard Times, by Speculation out of Folly. According to them there was no hope of her being scratched or left at the post.

"She'll run like a scared hearse-horse," said young Grandcourt gloomily. There was reason for his gloom. Unknown to his father he had invested heavily in Dysart's schemes. It was his father's contempt that he feared more than ruin.

So Dysart had gone to town, leaving behind him the utter indifference of a wife, the deep contempt of a man; and a white-faced girl alone with her memories—whatever they might be—and her thoughts, which were painful if one might judge by her silent, rigid abstraction, and the lower lip which, at moments, escaped, quivering, from the close-set teeth.

When Duane rose, folding his paper with a carelessly pleasant word or two, she looked up in a kind of naive terror—like a child startled at prospect of being left alone. It was curious how those adrift seemed always to glide his way. It had always been so; even stray cats followed him in the streets; unhappy dogs trotted persistently at his heels; many a journey had he made to the Bide-a-wee for some lost creature's sake; many a softly purring cat had he caressed on his way through life—many a woman.

As he strolled toward the eastern end of the terrace, Sylvia looked after him; and, suddenly, unable to endure isolation, she rose and followed as instinctively as her lesser sisters-errant.

It was the trotting of little footsteps behind him on the gravel that arrested him. A glance at her face was enough; vexed, shocked, yet every sympathy instantly aroused, he resigned himself to whatever might be required of him; and within him a bitter mirth stirred—acrid, unpleasant; but his smile indicated only charmed surprise.

"I didn't suppose you'd care for a stroll with me," he said; "it is exceedingly nice of you to give me the chance."

"I didn't want to be left alone," she said.

"It is rather quiet here since our gay birds have migrated," he said in a matter-of-fact way. "Which direction shall we take?"

"I—don't care."

"The woods?"

"No," with a shudder so involuntary that he noticed it.

"Well, then, we'll go cross country——"

She looked at her thin, low shoes and then at him.

"Certainly," he said, "that won't do, will it?"

She shook her head.

They were passing the Lodge now where his studio was and where he had intended to pack up his canvases that afternoon.

"I'll brew you a cup of tea if you like," he said; "that is, if it's not too unconventional to frighten you."

She smiled and nodded. Behind the smile her heavy thoughts throbbed on: How much did this man know? How much did he suspect? And if he suspected, how good he was in every word to her—how kind and gentle and high-minded! And the anguish in her smile caused him to turn hastily to the door and summon old Miller to bring the tea paraphernalia.

There was nothing to look at in the studio; all the canvases lay roped in piles ready for the crates; but Sylvia's gaze remained on them as though even the rough backs of the stretchers fascinated her.

"My father was an artist. After he married he did not paint. My mother was very wealthy, you know.... It seems a pity."

"What? Wealth?" he asked, smiling.

"N-no. I mean it seems a little tragic to me that father never continued to paint."

Miller's granddaughter came in with the tea. She was a very little girl with yellow hair and big violet eyes. After she had deposited everything, she went over to Duane and held up her mouth to be kissed. He laughed and saluted her. It was a reward for service which she had suggested when he first came to Roya-Neh; and she trotted away in great content.

Sylvia's indifferent gaze followed her; then she sipped the tea Duane offered.

"Do you remember your father?" he asked pleasantly.

"Why, yes. I was fourteen when he died. I remember mother, too. I was seven."

Duane said, not looking at her: "It's about the toughest thing that can happen to a girl. It's tough enough on a boy."

"It was very hard," she said simply.

"Haven't you any relatives except your brother Stuyvesant—" he began, and checked himself, remembering that a youthful aunt of hers had eloped under scandalous circumstances, and at least one uncle was too notorious even for the stomachs of the society that whelped him.

She let it pass in silence, as though she had not heard. Later she declined more tea and sat deep in her chair, fingers linked under her chin, lids lowered.

After a while, as she did not move or speak, he ventured to busy himself with collecting his brushes, odds and ends of studio equipment. He scraped several palettes, scrubbed up some palette-knives, screwed the tops on a dozen tubes of colour, and fussed and messed about until there seemed to be nothing further to do. So he came back and seated himself, and, looking up, saw the big tears stealing from under her closed lids.

He endured it as long as he could. Nothing was said. He leaned nearer and laid his hand over hers; and at the contact she slipped from the chair, slid to her knees, and laid her head on the couch beside him, both hands covering her face, which had turned dead white.

Minute after minute passed with no sound, no movement except as he passed his hand over her forehead and hair. He knew what to do when those who were adrift floated into Port Mallett. And sometimes he did more than was strictly required, but never less. Toward sundown she began to feel blindly for her handkerchief. He happened to possess a fresh one and put it into her groping hand.

When she was ready to rise she did so, keeping her back toward him and standing for a while busy with her swollen eyes and disordered hair.

"Before we go we must have tea together again," he said with perfectly matter-of-fact cordiality.

"Y-yes." The voice was very, very small.

"And in town, too, Sylvia. I had no idea what a companionable girl you are—how much we have in common. You know silence is the great test of mutual confidence and understanding. You'll let me see you in town, won't you?"

"Yes."

"That will be jolly. I suppose now that you and I ought to be thinking about dressing for dinner."

She assented, moved away a step or two, halted, and, still with her back turned, held out her hand behind her. He took it, bent and kissed it.

"See you at dinner," he said cheerfully.

And she went out very quietly, his handkerchief pressed against her eyes.

He came back into the studio, swung nervously toward the couch, turned and began to pace the floor.

"Oh, Lord," he said; "the rottenness of it all—the utter rottenness."

* * * * *

Dinner that night was not a very gay function; after coffee had been served, the small group seemed to disintegrate as though by some prearrangement, Rosalie and Grandcourt finding a place for themselves in the extreme western shadow of the terrace parapet, Kathleen returning to the living-room, where she had left her embroidery.

Scott, talking to Sylvia and Duane, continued to cast restless glances toward the living-room until he could find the proper moment to get away. And in a few minutes Duane saw him seated, one leg crossed over the other, a huge volume on "Scientific Conservation of Natural Resources" open on his knees, seated as close to Kathleen as he could conveniently edge, perfectly contented, apparently, to be in her vicinity.

From moment to moment, as her pretty hands performed miracles in tinted silks, she lifted her eyes and silently inspected the boy who sat absorbed in his book. Perhaps old memories of a child seated in the schoolroom made tender the curve of her lips as she turned again to her embroidery; perhaps a sentiment more recent made grave the beautiful lowered eyes.

Sylvia, seated at the piano, idly improvising, had unconsciously drifted into the "Menuet d'Exaudet," and Duane's heart began to quicken as he stood listening and looking out through the open windows at the stars.

How long he stood there he did not know; but when, at length, missing the sound of the piano, he looked around, Sylvia was already on the stairs, looking back at him as she moved upward.

"Good-night," she called softly; "I am very tired," and paused as he came forward and mounted to the step below where she waited.

"Good-night, Miss Quest," he said, with that nice informality that women always found so engaging. "If you have nothing better on hand in the morning, let's go for a climb. I've discovered a wild-boar's nest under the Golden Dome, and if you'd like to get a glimpse of the little, furry, striped piglings, I think we can manage it."

She thanked him with her eyes, held out her thin, graceful hand of a schoolgirl, then turned slowly and continued her ascent.

As he descended, Kathleen, looking up from her embroidery, made him a sign, and he stood still.

"Where are you going?" asked Scott, as she rose and passed him.

"I'm coming back in a moment."

Scott restlessly resumed his book, raising his head from time to time as though listening for her return, fidgeting about, now examining the embroidery she had left on the lamp-lit table, now listlessly running over the pages that had claimed his close attention while she had been near him.

Across the hall, in the library, Duane stood absently twisting an unlighted cigar, and Kathleen, her hand on his shoulder, eyes lifted in sweet distress, was searching for words that seemed to evade her.

He cut the knot without any emotion:

"I know what you are trying to say, Kathleen. It is true that there has been a wretched misunderstanding, but if I know Geraldine at all I know that a mere misunderstanding will not do any permanent harm. It is something else that—worries me."

"Oh, Duane, I know! I know! She cannot marry you—in honour—until that—that terrible danger is eliminated. She will not, either. But—don't give her up! Be with her—with us in this crisis—during it! See us through it, Duane; she is well worth what she costs us both—and costs herself."

"She must marry me now," he said. "I want to fight this thing with all there is in me and in her, and in my love for her and hers for me. I can't fight it in this blind, aloof way—this thing that is my rival—that stands with its claw embedded in her body warning me back! The horror of it is in the blind, intangible, abstract force that is against me. I can't fight it aloof from her; I can't take her away from it unless I have her in my arms to guard, to inspire, to comfort, to watch. Can't you see, Kathleen, that I must have her every second of the time?"

"She will not let you run the risk," murmured Kathleen. "Duane, she had a dreadful night—she broke down so utterly that it scared me. She is horribly frightened; her nervous demoralisation is complete. For the first time, I think, she is really terrified. She says it is hopeless, that her will and nerve are undermined, her courage contaminated.... Hour after hour I sat with her; she made me tell her about her grandfather—about what I knew of the—the taint in her family."

"Those things are merely predispositions," he said. "Self-command makes them harmless."

"I told her that. She says that they are living sparks that will smoulder while life endures."

"Suppose they are," he said; "they can never flame unless nursed.... Kathleen, I want to see her——"

"She will not."

"Has she spoken at all of me?"

"Yes."

"Bitterly?"

"Y-yes. I don't know what you did. She is very morbid just now, anyway; very desperate. But I know that, unconsciously, she counts on an adjustment of any minor personal difficulty with you.... She loves you dearly, Duane."

He passed an unsteady hand across his eyes.

"She must marry me. I can't stand aloof from this battle any longer."

"Duane, she will not. I—she said some things—she is morbid, I tell you—and curiously innocent—in her thoughts—concerning herself and you. She says she can never marry."

"Exactly what did she say to you?"

Kathleen hesitated; the intimacy of the subject left her undecided; then very seriously her pure, clear gaze met his:

"She will not marry, for your own sake, and for the sake of any—children. She has evidently thought it all out.... I must tell you how it is. There is no use in asking her; she will never consent, Duane, as long as she is afraid of herself. And how to quiet that fear by exterminating the reason for it I don't know—" Her voice broke pitifully. "Only stand by us, Duane. Don't go away just now. You were packing to go; but please don't leave me just yet. Could you arrange to remain for a while?"

"Yes, I'll arrange it.... I'm a little troubled about my father—" He checked himself. "I could run down to town for a day or two and return——"

"Is Colonel Mallett ill?" she asked.

"N-no.... These are rather strenuous times—or threaten to be. Of course the Half-Moon is as solid as a rock. But even the very, very great are beginning to fuss.... And my father is not young, Kathleen. So I thought I'd like to run down and take him out to dinner once or twice—to a roof-garden or something, you know. It's rather pathetic that men of his age, grown gray in service, should feel obliged to remain in the stifling city this summer."

"Of course you must go," she said; "you couldn't even hesitate. Is your mother worried?"

"I don't suppose she has the slightest notion that there is anything to worry over. And there isn't, I think. She and Naida will be in the Berkshires; I'll go up and stay with them later—when Geraldine is all right again," he added cheerfully.

Scott, fidgeting like a neglected pup, came wandering into the hall, book in hand.

"For the love of Mike," he said impatiently, "what have you two got to talk about all night?"

"My son," observed Duane, "there are a few subjects for conversation which do not include the centipede and the polka-dotted dickey-bird. These subjects Kathleen and I furtively indulge in when we can arrange to elude you."

Scott covered a yawn and glanced at Kathleen.

"Is Geraldine all right?" he asked with all the healthy indifference of a young man who had never been ill, and was, therefore, incapable of understanding illness in others.

"Certainly, she's all right," said Duane. And to Kathleen: "I believe I'll venture to knock at her door——"

"Oh, no, Duane. She isn't ready to see anybody——"

"Well, I'll try——"

"Please, don't!"

But he had her at a disadvantage, and he only laughed and mounted the stairs, saying:

"I'll just exchange a word with her or with her maid, anyway."

When he turned into the corridor Geraldine's maid, seated in the window-seat sewing, rose and came forward to take his message. In a few moments she returned, saying:

"Miss Seagrave asks to be excused, as she is ready to retire."

"Ask Miss Seagrave if I can say good-night to her through the door."

The maid disappeared and returned in a moment.

"Miss Seagrave wishes you good-night, sir."

So he thanked the maid pleasantly and walked to his own room, now once more prepared for him after the departure of those who had temporarily required it.

Starlight made the leaded windows brilliant; he opened them wide and leaned out on the sill, arms folded. The pale astral light illuminated a fairy world of meadow and garden and spectral trees, and two figures moving like ghosts down by the fountain among the roses—Rosalie and Grandcourt pacing the gravel paths shoulder to shoulder under the stars.

Below him, on the terrace, he saw Kathleen and Scott—the latter carrying a butterfly net—examining the borders of white pinks with a lantern. In and out of the yellow rays swam multitudes of night moths, glittering like flakes of tinsel as the lantern light flashed on their wings; and Scott was evidently doing satisfactory execution, for every moment or two Kathleen uncorked the cyanide jar and he dumped into it from the folds of the net a fluttering victim.

"That last one is a Pandorus Sphinx!" he said in great excitement to Kathleen, who had lifted the big glass jar into the lantern light and was trying to get a glimpse of the exquisite moth, whose wings of olive green, rose, and bronze velvet were already beating a hazy death tattoo in the lethal fumes.

"A Pandorus! Scott, you've wanted one so much!" she exclaimed, enchanted.

"You bet I have. Pholus pandorus is pretty rare around here. And I say, Kathleen, that wasn't a bad net-stroke, was it? You see I had only a second, and I took a desperate chance."

She praised his skill warmly; then, as he stood admiring his prize in the jar which she held up, she suddenly caught him by the arm and pointed:

"Oh, quick! There is a hawk-moth over the pinks which resembles nothing we have seen yet!"

Scott very cautiously laid his net level, stole forward, shining the lantern light full on the darting, hazy-winged creature, which was now poised, hovering over a white blossom and probing the honeyed depths with a long, slim proboscis.

"I thought it might be only a Lineata, but it isn't," he said excitedly. "Did you ever see such a timid moth? The slightest step scares the creature."

"Can't you try a quick net-stroke sideways?"

Her voice was as anxious and unsteady as his own.

"I'm afraid I'll miss. Lord but it's a lightning flier! Where is it now?"

"Behind you. Do be careful! Turn very slowly."

He pivoted; the slim moth darted past, circled, and hung before a blossom, wings vibrating so fast that the creature was merely a gray blur in the lantern light. The next instant Gray's net swung; a furious fluttering came from the green silk folds; Kathleen whipped off the cover of the jar, and Duane deftly imprisoned the moth.

"Upon my word," he said shakily, "I believe I've got a Tersa Sphinx!—a sub-tropical fellow whose presence here is mere accident!"

"Oh, if you have!" she breathed softly. She didn't know what a Tersa Sphinx might be, but if its capture gave him pleasure, that was all she cared for in the world.

"It is a Tersa!" he almost shouted. "By George! it's a wonder."

Radiant, she bent eagerly above the jar where the strange, slender, gray-and-brown hawk-moth lay dying. Its recoiling proboscis and its slim, fawn-coloured legs quivered. The eyes glowed like tiny jewels.

"If we could only keep these little things alive," she sighed; then, fearful of taking the least iota from his pleasure, added: "but of course we can't, and for scientific purposes it's all right to let the lovely little creatures sink into their death-sleep."

A slight haze had appeared over the lake; a sudden cool streak grew in the air, which very quickly cleared the flower-beds of moths; and the pretty sub-tropical sphinx was the last specimen of the evening.

In the library Scott pulled out a card-table and Kathleen brought forceps, strips of oiled paper, pins, setting-blocks, needles, and oblong glass weights; and together, seated opposite each other, they removed the delicate-winged contents of the collecting jar.

Kathleen's dainty fingers were very swift and deft with the forceps. Scott watched her. She picked up the green-and-rose Pandorus, laid it on its back on a setting-block, affixed and pinned the oiled-paper strips, drew out the four wings with the setting-needle until they were symmetrical and the inner margin of the anterior pair was at right angles with the body.

Then she arranged the legs, uncoiled and set the proboscis, and weighted the wings with heavy glass strips.

They worked rapidly, happily there together, exchanging views and opinions; and after a while the brilliant spoils of the evening were all stretched and ready to dry, ultimately to be placed in plaster-of-Paris mounts and hermetically sealed under glass covers.

Kathleen went away to cleanse her hands of any taint of cyanide; Scott, returning from his own ablutions, met her in the hall, and so miraculously youthful, so fresh and sweet and dainty did she appear that, in some inexplicable manner, his awkward, self-conscious fear of touching her suddenly vanished, and the next instant she was in his arms and he had kissed her.

"Scott!" she faltered, pushing him from her, too limp and dazed to use the strength she possessed.

Surprised at what he had done, amazed that he was not afraid of her, he held her tightly, thrilled dumb at the exquisite trembling contact.

"Oh, what are you doing," she stammered, in dire consternation; "what have you done? We—you cannot—you must let me go, Scott——"

"You're only a girl, after all—you darling!" he said, inspecting her in an ecstacy of curiosity. "I wonder why I've been afraid of you for so long?—just because I love you!"

"You don't—you can't care for me that way——"

"I care for you in every kind of a way that anybody can care about anybody." She turned her shoulder, desperately striving to release herself, but she had not realised how tall and strong he was. "How small you are," he repeated wonderingly; "just a soft, slender girl, Kathleen. I can't see how I ever came to let you make me study when I didn't want to."

"Scott, dear," she pleaded breathlessly, "you must let me go. This—this is utterly impossible——"

"What is?"

"That you and I can—could care—this way——"

"Don't you?"

"I—no!"

"Is that the truth, Kathleen?"

She looked up; the divine distress in her violet eyes sobered him, awed him for a moment.

"Kathleen," he said, "there are only a few years' difference between our ages. I feel older than you; you look younger than I—and you are all in the world I care for—or ever have cared for. Last spring—that night——"

"Hush, Scott," she begged, blushing scarlet.

"I know you remember. That is when I began to love you. You must have known it."

She said nothing; the strain of her resisting arms against his breast had relaxed imperceptibly.

"What can a fellow say?" he went on a little wildly, checked at moments by the dryness of his throat and the rapid heartbeats that almost took his breath away when he looked at her. "I love you so dearly, Kathleen; there's no use in trying to live without loving you, for I couldn't do it!... I'm not really young; it makes me furious to think you consider me in that light. I'm a man, strong enough and old enough to love you—and make you love me! I will make you!" His arms tightened.

She uttered a little cry, which was half a sob; his boyish roughness sent a glow rushing through her. She fought against the peril of it, the bewildering happiness that welled up—fought against her heart that was betraying her senses, against the deep, sweet passion that awoke as his face touched hers.

"Will you love me?" he said fiercely.

"No!"

"Will you?"

"Yes.... Let me go!" she gasped.

"Will you love me in the way I mean? Can you?"

"Yes. I do. I—have, long since.... Let me go!"

"Then—kiss me."

She looked up at him a moment, slowly put both arms around his neck: "Now," she breathed faintly, "release me."

And at the same instant he saw Geraldine descending the stairs.

Kathleen saw her, too; saw her turn abruptly, re-mount and disappear. There was a moment's painful silence, then, without a word, she picked up her lace skirts, ran up the stairway, and continued swiftly on to Geraldine's room.

"May I come in?" She spoke and opened the door of the bedroom at the same time, and Geraldine turned on her, exasperated, hands clenched, dark eyes harbouring lightning:

"Have I gone quite mad, Kathleen, or have you?" she demanded.

"I think I have," whispered Kathleen, turning white and halting. "Geraldine, you will have to listen. Scott has told me that he loves me——"

"Is this the first time?"

"No.... It is the first time I have listened. I can't think clearly; I scarcely know yet what I've said and done. What must you think?... But won't you be a little gentle with me—a little forbearing—in memory of what I have been to you—to him—so long?"

"What do you wish me to think?" asked the girl in a hard voice. "My brother is of age; he will do what he pleases, I suppose. I—I don't know what to think; this has astounded me. I never dreamed such a thing possible——"

"Nor I—until this spring. I know it is all wrong; this is making me more fearfully unhappy every minute I live. There is nothing but peril in it; the discrepancy in our ages makes it hazardous—his youth, his overwhelming fortune, my position and means—the world will surely, surely misinterpret, misunderstand—I think even you, his sister, may be led to credit—what, in your own heart, you must know to be utterly and cruelly untrue."

"I don't know what to say or think," repeated Geraldine in a dull voice. "I can't realise it; I thought that our affection for you was so—so utterly different."

She stared curiously at Kathleen, trying to reconcile what she had always known of her with what she now had to reckon with—strove to find some alteration in the familiar features, something that she had never before noticed, some new, unsuspected splendour of beauty and charm, some undetected and subtle allure. She saw only a wholesome, young, and lovely woman, fresh-skinned, slender, sweet, and graceful—the same companion she had always known and, as she remembered, unchanged in any way since the years of childhood, when Kathleen was twenty and she and her brother were ten.

"I suppose," she said, "that if Scott is in love with you, there is only one thing to do."

"There are several," said Kathleen in a low voice.

"Will you not marry him?"

"I don't know; I think not."

"Are you not in love with him?"

"Does that matter?" asked Kathleen steadily. "Scott's happiness is what is important."

"But his happiness, apparently, depends on you."

Kathleen flushed and looked at her curiously.

"Dear, if I knew that was so, I would give myself to him. Neither you nor he have ever asked anything of me in vain. Even if I did not love him—as I do—and he needed me, I would give myself to him. You and he have been all there was in life for me. But I am afraid that I may not always be all that life holds for him. He is young; he has had no chance yet; he has had little experience with women. I think he ought to have his chance."

She might have said the same thing of herself. A bride at her husband's death-bed, widowed before she had ever been a wife, what experience had she? All her life so far had been devoted to the girl who stood there confronting her, and to the brother. What did she know of men?—of whether she might be capable of loving some man more suitable? She had not given herself the chance. She never would, now.

There was no selfishness in Kathleen Severn. But there was much in the Seagrave twins. The very method of their bringing up inculcated it; they had never had any chance to be otherwise. The "cultiwation of the indiwidool" had driven it into them, taught them the deification of self, forced them to consider their own importance above anything else in the world.

And it was of that importance that Geraldine was now thinking as she sat on the edge of her bed, darkly considering these new problems that chance was laying before her one by one.

If Scott was going to be unhappy without Kathleen, it followed, as a matter of course, that he must have Kathleen. The chances Kathleen might take, what she might have to endure of the world's malice and gossip and criticism, never entered Geraldine's mind at all.

"If he is in love with you," she repeated, "it settles it, I think. What else is there to do but marry him?"

Kathleen shook her head. "I shall do what is best for him—whatever that may be."

"You won't make him unhappy, I suppose?" inquired Geraldine, astonished.

"Dear, a woman may be truer to the man she loves—and kinder—by refusing him. Is not that what you have done—for Duane's sake?"

Geraldine sprang to her feet, face white, mouth distorted with anger:

"I made a god of Duane!" she broke out breathlessly. "Everything that was in me—everything that was decent and unselfish and pure-minded dominated me when I found I loved him. So I would not listen to my own desire for him, I would not let him risk a terrible unhappiness until I could go to him as clean and well and straight and unafraid as he could wish!" She laughed bitterly, and laid her hands on her breast. "Look at me, Kathleen! I am quite as decent as this god of mine. Why should I worry over the chances he takes when I have chances enough to take in marrying him? I was stupid to be so conscientious—I behaved like a hysterical schoolgirl—or a silly communicant—making him my confessor! A girl is a perfect fool to make a god out of a man. I made one out of Duane; and he acted like one. It nearly ended me, but, after all, he is no worse than I. Whoever it was who said that decency is only depravity afraid, is right. I am depraved; I am afraid. I'm afraid that I cannot control myself, for one thing; and I'm afraid of being unhappy for life if I don't marry Duane. And I'm going to, and let him take his chances!"

Kathleen, very pale, said: "That is selfishness—if you do it."

"Are not men selfish? He will not tell me as much of his life as I have told him of mine. I have told him everything. How do I know what risk I run? Yes—I do know; I take the risk of marrying a man notorious for his facility with women. And he lets me take that risk. Why should I not let him risk something?"

The girl seemed strangely excited; her quick breathing and bright, unsteady eyes betrayed the nervous tension of the last few days. She said feverishly:

"There is a lot of nonsense talked about self-sacrifice and love; about the beauties of abnegation and martyrdom, but, Kathleen, if I shall ever need him at all, I need him now. I'm afraid to be alone any longer; I'm frightened at the chances against me. Do you know what these days of horror have been to me, locked in here—all alone—in the depths of degradation for what—what I did that night—in distress and shame unutterable——"

"My darling——"

"Wait! I had more to endure—I had to endure the results of my education in the study of man! I had to realise that I loved one of them who has done enough to annihilate in me anything except love. I had to learn that he couldn't kill that—that I want him in spite of it, that I need him, that my heart is sick with dread; that he can have me when he will—Oh, Kathleen, I have learned to care less for him than when I denied him for his own sake—more for him than I did before he held me in his arms! And that is not a high type of love—I know it—but oh, if I could only have his arms around me—if I could rest there for a while—and not feel so frightened, so utterly alone!—I might win out; I might kill what is menacing me, with God's help—and his!"

She lay shivering on Kathleen's breast now, dry-eyed, twisting her ringless fingers in dumb anguish.

"Darling, darling," murmured Kathleen, "you cannot do this thing. You cannot let him assume a burden that is yours alone."

"Why not? What is one's lover for?"

"Not to use; not to hazard; not to be made responsible for a sick mind and a will already demoralised. Is it fair to ask him—to let him begin life with such a burden—such a handicap? Is it not braver, fairer, to fight it out alone, eradicate what threatens you—oh, my own darling! my little Geraldine!—is it not fairer to the man you love? Is he not worth striving for, suffering for? Have you no courage to endure if he is to be the reward? Is a little selfish weakness, a miserable self-indulgence to stand between you and life-long happiness?"

Geraldine looked up; her face was very white:

"Have you ever been tempted?"

"Have I not been to-night?"

"I mean by—something ignoble?"

"No."

"Do you know how it hurts?"

"To—to deny yourself?"

"Yes.... It is so—difficult—it makes me wretchedly weak.... I only thought he might help me.... You are right, Kathleen.... I must be terribly demoralised to have wished it. I—I will not marry him, now. I don't think I ever will.... You are right. I have got to be fair to him, no matter what he has been to me.... He has been fearfully unfair. After all, he is only a man.... I couldn't really love a god."



CHAPTER XIII

AMBITIONS AND LETTERS

Rosalie had departed; Grandcourt followed suit next day; Sylvia's brother, Stuyvesant, had at last found a sober moment at his disposal and had appeared at Roya-Neh and taken his sister away. Duane was all ready to go to New York to find out whether his father was worrying over anything, as the tone of his letters indicated.

The day he left, Kathleen and Geraldine started on a round of August house parties, ranging from Lenox to Long Island, including tiresome week ends and duty visits to some very unpretentious but highly intellectual relatives of Mrs. Severn. So Scott remained in solitary possession of Roya-Neh, with its forests, gardens, pastures, lakes and streams, and a staggering payroll and all the multiplicity of problems that such responsibility entails. Which pleased him immensely, except for the departure of Kathleen.

To play the intellectual country squire had been all he desired on earth except Kathleen. From the beginning White's "Selborne" had remained his model for all books, Kathleen for all women. He was satisfied with these two components of perfect happiness, and with himself, as he was, for the third ingredient in a contented and symmetrical existence.

He had accepted his answer from her with more philosophy than she quite expected or was prepared for, saying that if she made a particular point of it he would go about next winter and give himself a chance to meet as many desirable young girls as she thought best; that it was merely wasting time, but if it made her any happier, he'd wait and endeavour to return to their relations of unsentimental comradeship until she was satisfied he knew his mind.

Kathleen was, at first, a little dismayed at his complacency. It was only certainty of himself. At twenty-two there is time for anything, and the vista of life ahead is endless. And there was one thing more which Kathleen did not know. Under the covering of this Seagrave complacency and self-centred sufficiency, all alone by itself was developing the sprouting germ of consideration for others.

How it started he himself did not know—nor was he even aware that it had started. But long, solitary rambles and the quiet contemplation of other things besides himself had awakened first curiosity, then a dawning suspicion of the rights of others.

In the silence of forests it is difficult to preserve complacency; under the stars modesty is born.

It began to occur to him, by degrees, that his own personal importance among his kind might be due, in part, to his fortune. And from the first invasion of that shocking idea matters progressed rather rapidly with the last of the Seagraves.

He said uneasily to Duane, once: "Are you going in seriously for painting?"

"I am in," observed Duane drily.

"Professionally?"

"Sure thing. God hates an amateur."

"What are you after?" persisted Scott. "Fame?"

"Yes; I need it in my business."

"Are you contemplating a velvet coat and bow tie, and a bunch of the elect at your heels?—ratty men, and pop-eyed young women whose coiffure needs weeding?"

Duane laughed. "Are they any more deadly than our own sort? Why endure either? Because you are developing into a country squire, you don't have to marry Maud Muller." And he quoted Bret Harte:

"For there be women fair as she, Whose verbs and nouns do more agree."

"You don't have to wallow in a profession, you know."

"But why the mischief do you want to paint professionally?" inquired Scott, with unsatisfied curiosity. "It isn't avarice, is it?"

"I expect to hold out for what my pictures are worth, if that's what you mean by avarice. What I'm trying to do," added Duane, striking his palm with his fist as emphasis, "is not to die the son of a wealthy man. If I can't be anything more, I'm not worth a damn. But I'm going to be. I can do it, Scott; I'm lazy, I'm undecided, I've a weak streak. And yet, do you know, with all my blemishes, all my misgivings, all my discouragements, panics, despondent moments, I am, way down inside, serenely and unaccountably certain that I can paint like the devil, and that I am going to do it. That sounds cheeky, doesn't it?"

"It sounds all right to me," said Scott. And he walked away thoughtfully, fists dug deep in his pockets.

And one still, sunny afternoon, standing alone on the dry granite crags of the Golden Dome, he looked up and saw, a quarter of a million miles above him, the moon's ghost swimming in azure splendour. Then he looked down and saw the map of the earth below him, where his forests spread out like moss, and his lakes mirrored the clouds, and a river belonging to him traced its course across the valley in a single silver thread. And a slight blush stung his face at the thought that, without any merit or endeavour of his own, his money had bought it all—his money, that had always acted as his deputy, fought for him, conquered for him, spoken for him, vouched for him—perhaps pleaded for him!—he shivered, and suddenly he realised that this golden voice was, in fact, all there was to him.

What had he to identify him on earth among mankind? Only his money. Wherein did he differ from other men? He had more money. What had he to offer as excuse for living at all? Money. What had he done? Lived on it, by it. Why, then, it was the money that was entitled to distinction, and he figured only as its parasite! Then he was nothing—even a little less. In the world there was man and there was money. It seemed that he was a little lower in the scale than either; a parasite—scarcely a thing of distinction to offer Kathleen Severn.

Very seriously he looked up at the moon.

It was the day following his somewhat disordered and impassioned declaration. He expected to receive his answer that evening; and he descended the mountain in a curiously uncertain and perplexed state of mind which at times bordered on a modesty painfully akin to humbleness.

Meanwhile, Duane was preparing to depart on the morrow. And that evening he also was to have his definite answer to the letter which Kathleen had taken to Geraldine Seagrave that morning.

"Dear," he had written, "I once told you that my weakness needed the aid of all that is best in you; that yours required the best of courage and devotion that lies in me. It is surely so. Together we conquer the world—which is ourselves.

"For the little things that seem to threaten our separation do not really alarm me. Even if I actually committed the inconsequential and casual thing that so abruptly and so deeply offended you, there remains enough soundness in me at the core to warrant your charity and repay, in a measure, your forgiveness and a renewal of your interest in my behalf.

"Search your heart, Geraldine; question your intelligence; both will tell you that I am enough of a man to dare love you. And it takes something of a man to dare do it.

"There is a thing that I might say which would convince you, even against the testimony of your own eyes, that never in deed or in thought have I been really disloyal to you since you gave me your heart.... Yet I must not say it.... Can you summon sufficient faith in me to accept that statement—against the evidence of those two divine witnesses which condemn me—your eyes? Circumstantial evidence is no good in this case, dear. I can say no more than that.

"Dearest, what can compare to the disaster of losing each other?

"I ask you to let me have the right to stand by you in your present distress and despondency. What am I for if not for such moments?

"That night you were closer to the danger mark than you have ever been. I know that my conduct—at least your interpretation of it—threw you, for the moment off your guarded balance; but that your attitude toward such a crisis—your solution of such a situation—should be a leap forward toward self-destruction—a reckless surrender to anger and blind impulse, only makes me the more certain that we need each other now if ever.

"The silent, lonely, forlorn battle that has been going on behind the door of your room and the doors of your heart during these last few days, is more than I can well endure. Open both doors to me; leagued we can win through!

"Give me the right to be with you by night as well as by daylight, and we two shall stand together and see 'the day break and the shadows flee away.'"

That same evening his reply came:

"My darling, Kathleen will give you this. I don't care what my eyes saw if you tell me it isn't true. I have loved you, anyway, all the while—even with my throat full of tears and my mouth bitter with anger, and my heart torn into several thousand tatters—oh, it is not very difficult to love you, Duane; the only trouble is to love you in the right way; which is hard, dear, because I want you so much; and it's so new to me to be unselfish. I began to learn by loving you.

"Which means, that I will not let you take the risk you ask for. Give me time; I've fought it off since that miserable night. Heaven alone knows why I surrendered—turning to my deadly enemy for countenance and comfort to support my childish and contemptible anger against you.

"Duane, there is an evil streak in me, and we both must reckon with it. Long, long before I knew I loved you, things you said and did often wounded me; and within me a perfectly unreasoning desire to hurt you—to make you suffer—always flamed up and raged.

"I think that was partly what made me do what you know I did that night. It would hurt you; that was my ignoble instinct. God knows whether it was also a hideous sort of excuse for my weakness—for I was blazing hot after the last dance—and the gaiety and uproar and laughter all overexcited me—and then what I had seen you do, and your not coming to me, and that ominous uneasy impulse stirring!

"That is the truth as I analyse it. The dreadful thing is that I could have been capable of dealing our chance of happiness such a cowardly blow.

"Well, it is over. The thing has fled for a while. I fought it down, stamped on it with utter horror and loathing. It—the encounter—tired me. I am weary yet—from honourable wounds. But I won out. If it comes back again—Oh, Duane! and it surely will—I shall face it undaunted once more; and every hydra-head that stirs I shall kill until the thing lies dead between us for all time.

"Then, dear, will you take the girl who has done this thing?

"GERALDINE SEAGRAVE."

This was his answer on the eve of his departure.

And on the morning of it Geraldine came down to say good-bye; a fresh, sweet, and bewildering Geraldine, somewhat slimmer than when he had last seen her, a little finer in feature, more delicate of body; and there was about her even a hint of the spirituel as a fascinating trace of what she had been through, locked in alone behind the doors of her room and heart.

She bade him good-morning somewhat shyly, offering her slim hand and looking at him with the slight uncertainty and bent brows of a person coming suddenly into a strong light.

He said under his breath: "You poor darling, how thin you are."

"Athletics," she said; "Jacob wrestled with an angel, but you know what I've been facing in the squared circle. Don't speak of it any more, will you? ... How sunburned you are! What have you been about since I've kept to my room?"

"I've painted Miller's kids in the open; I suppose the terrific influence of Sorolla has me in bondage for the moment." He laughed easily: "But don't worry; it will leave nothing except clean inspiration behind it. I'll think out my own way—grope it out through Pantheon and living maze. All I've really got to say in paint can be said only in my own way. I know that, even when realising that I've been sunstruck by Sorolla."

She listened demurely, watching him, her lips sensitive with understanding; and she laughed when he laughed away his fealty to the superb Spaniard, knowing himself and the untried strength within him.

"But when are you coming back to us, Duane?"

"I don't know. Father's letters perplex me. I'll write you every day, of course."

A quick colour tinted her skin:

"And I will write you every day. I will begin to-day. Kathleen and I expect to be here in September. But you will come back before that and keep Scott company; won't you?"

"I want to get into harness again," he said slowly. "I want to settle down to work."

"Can't you work here?"

"Not very well."

"Why?"

"To tell the truth," he admitted, smiling, "I require something more like a working studio than Miller's garret."

"That's what I thought," she said shyly, "and Scott and I have the plans for a studio all ready; and the men are to begin Monday, and Miller is to take the new gate cottage. Oh, the plans are really very wonderful!" she added hastily, as Duane looked grateful but dubious. "Rollins and Calvert drew them. I wrote to Billy Calvert and sent him the original plans for Hurryon Lodge. Duane, I thought it would please you——"

"It does, you dear, generous girl! I'm a trifle overwhelmed, that's all my silence meant. You ought not to do this for me——"

"Why? Aren't we to be as near each other as we can be until—I am ready—for something—closer?"

"Yes.... Certainly.... I'll arrange to work out certain things up here. As for models, if there is nothing suitable at Westgate village, you won't mind my importing some, will you?"

"No," she said, becoming very serious and gravely interested, as befitted the fiancee of a painter of consequence. "You will do what is necessary, of course; because I—few girls—are accustomed in the beginning to the details of such a profession as yours; and I'm very ignorant, Duane, and I must learn how to second you—intelligently"—she blushed—"that is, if I'm to amount to anything as an artist's wife."

"You dear!" he whispered.

"No; I tell you I am totally ignorant. A studio is an awesome place to me. I merely know enough to keep out of it when you are using models. That is safest, isn't it?"

He said, intensely amused: "It might be safer not to give pink teas while I am working from the nude."

"Duane! Do you think me a perfect ninny? Anyway, you're not always painting Venus and Ariadne and horrid Ledas, are you?"

"Not always!" he managed to assure her; and her pretty, confused laughter mingled with his unembarrassed mirth as the motor-car swung up to carry him and his traps to the station.

They said good-bye; her dark eyes became very tragic; her lips threatened to escape control.

Kathleen turned away, manoeuvring Scott out of earshot, who knowing nothing of any situation between Duane and his sister, protested mildly, but forgot when Kathleen led him to an orange-underwing moth asleep on the stone coping of the terrace.

And when the unfortunate Catocala had been safely bottled and they stood examining it in the library, Scott's rapidly diminishing conceit found utterance:

"I say, Kathleen, it's all very well for me to collect these fascinating things, but any ass can do that. One can't make a particular name for one's self by doing what a lot of cleverer men have already done, and what a lot of idle idiots are imitating."

She raised her violet eyes, astonished:

"Do you want to make a name for yourself?"

"Yes," he said, reddening.

"Why not? I'm a nobody. I'm worse; I'm an amateur! You ought to hear what Duane has to say about amateurs!"

"But, Scott, you don't have to be anything in particular except what you are——"

"What am I?" he demanded.

"Why—yourself."

"And what's that?" He grew redder. "I'll tell you, Kathleen. I'm merely a painfully wealthy young man. Don't laugh; this is becoming deadly serious to me. By my own exertions I've never done one bally thing either useful or spectacular. I'm not distinguished by anything except an unfair share of wealth. I'm not eminent, let alone pre-eminent, even in that sordid class; there are richer men, plenty of them—some even who have made their own fortunes and have not been hatched out in a suffocating plethora of affluence like the larva of the Carnifex tumble-bug——"

"Scott!"

"And I!" he ended savagely. "Why, I'm not even pre-eminent as far as my position in the social puddle is concerned; there are sets that wouldn't endure me; there's at least one club into which I couldn't possibly wriggle; there are drawing-rooms where I wouldn't be tolerated, because I've nothing on earth to recommend me or to distinguish me from Algernon FitzNoodle and Montmorency de Sansgallette except an inflated income! What have I to offer anybody worth while for entertaining me? What have I to offer you, Kathleen, in exchange for yourself?"

He was becoming boyishly dramatic with sweeping gestures which amazed her; but she was conscious that it was all sincere and very real to him.

"Scott, dear," she began sweetly, uncertain how to take it all; "kindness, loyalty, and decent breeding are all that a woman cares for in a man——"

"You are entitled to more; you are entitled to a man of distinction, of attainment, of achievement——"

"Few women ask for that, Scott; few care for it; fewer still understand it——"

"You would. I've got a cheek to ask you to marry me—me!—before I wear any tag to identify me except the dollar mark——"

"Oh, hush, Scott! You are talking utter nonsense; don't you know it?"

He made a large and rather grandiose gesture:

"Around me lies opportunity, Kathleen—every stone; every brook——"

The mischievous laughter of his listener checked him. She said: "I'm sorry; only it made me think of

'Sermons in stones, Books in the running brooks,'

and the indignant gentleman who said: 'What damn nonsense! It's "sermons in books, stones in the running brooks!"' Do go on, Scott, dear, I don't mean to be frivolous; it is fine of you to wish for fame——"

"It isn't fame alone, although I wouldn't mind it if I deserved it. It's that I want to do just one thing that amounts to something. I wish you'd give me an idea, Kathleen, something useful in—say in entomology."

Together they walked back to the terrace. Duane had gone; Geraldine sat sideways on the parapet, her brown eyes fixed on the road along which her lover had departed.

"Geraldine," said Kathleen, who very seldom relapsed into the vernacular, "this brother of yours desires to perform some startling stunt in entomology and be awarded Carnegie medals."

"That's about it," said Scott, undaunted. "Some wise guy put it all over the Boll-weevil, and saved a few billions for the cotton growers; another gentleman full of scientific thinks studied out the San Jose scale; others have got in good licks at mosquitoes and house-flies. I'd like to tackle something of that sort."

"Rose-beetles," said his sister briefly. In her voice was a suspicion of tears, and she kept her head turned from them.

"Nobody could ever get rid of Rose-beetles," said Kathleen. "But it would be exciting, wouldn't it, Scott? Think of saving our roses and peonies and irises every year!"

"I am thinking of it," said Scott gravely.

A few moments later he disappeared around the corner of the house, returning presently, pockets bulging with bottles and boxes, a field-microscope in one hand, and several volumes on Coleoptera in the other.

"They're gone," he said without further explanation.

"Who are gone?" inquired Kathleen.

"The Rose-beetles. They deposit their eggs in the soil. The larvae ought to be out by now. I'm going to begin this very minute, Kathleen." And he descended the terrace steps, entered the garden, and, seating himself under a rose-tree, spread out his paraphernalia and began a delicate and cautious burrowing process in the sun-dried soil.

"Fame is hidden under humble things," observed Geraldine with a resolute effort at lightness. "That excellent brother of mine may yet discover it in the garden dirt."

"Dirt breeds roses," said Kathleen. "Oh, look, dear, how earnest he is about it. What a boy he is, after all! So serious and intent, and so touchingly confident!"

Geraldine nodded listlessly, considering her brother's evolutions with his trowel and weeder where he lay flat on his stomach, absorbed in his investigations.

"Why does he get so grubby?" she said. "All his coat-pockets are permanently out of shape. The other day I was looking through them, at his request, to find one of my own handkerchiefs which he had taken, and oh, horrors! a caterpillar, forgotten, had spun a big cocoon in one of them!"

She shuddered, but in Kathleen's laughter there was a tremor of tenderness born of that shy pride which arises from possession. For it was now too late, if it had not always been too late, for any criticism of this boy of hers. Perfect he had always been, wondrous to her, as a child, for the glimpses of the man developing in him; perfect, wonderful, adorable now for the glimpses of the child which she caught so constantly through the man's character now forming day by day under her loyal eyes. Everything masculine in him she loved or pardoned proudly—even his egotism, his slapdash self-confidence, his bullying of her, his domination, his exacting demands. But this new humility—this sudden humble doubt that he might not be worthy of her, filled her heart with delicious laughter and a delight almost childish.

So she watched him from the parapet, chin cupped in both palms, bright hair blowing, one shoulder almost hidden under the drooping scarlet nasturtiums pendant from the carved stone urn above; a fair, sweet, youthful creature, young as her guiltless heart, sweet as her conscience, fair as the current of her stainless life.

And beside her, seated sideways, brown eyes brooding, sat a young girl, delicately lovely, already harassed, already perplexed, already bruised and wearied by her first skirmishes with life; not yet fully understanding what threatened, what lay before—alas! what lay behind her—even to the fifth generation.

They were to motor to Lenox after luncheon. Before that—and leaving Scott absorbed in his grubbing, and Kathleen absorbed in watching him—Geraldine wandered back into the library and took down a book—a book which had both beguiled and horrified the solitude of her self-imprisonment. It was called "Simpson on Heredity."

There were some very hideous illustrated pages in that book; she turned to them with a fearful fascination which had never left her since she first read them. They dealt with the transmission of certain tendencies through successive generations.

That the volume was an old one and amusingly out of date she did not realise, as her brown eyes widened over terrifying paragraphs and the soft tendrils of her glossy hair almost bristled.

She had asked Kathleen about it, and Kathleen had asked Dr. Bailey, who became very irritated and told Geraldine that anybody except a physician who ever read medical works was a fool. Desperation gave her courage to ask him one more question; his well-meant reply silenced her. But she had the book under her pillow. It is better to answer such questions when the young ask them.

And over it all she pondered and pored, and used a dictionary and shuddered, frightening herself into a morbid condition until, desperately scared, she even thought of going to Duane about it; but could not find the hardihood to do it or the vocabulary necessary.

Now Duane was gone; and the book lay there between her knees, all its technical vagueness menacing her with unknown terrors; and she felt that she could endure it alone no longer.

She wrote him:

"You have not been gone an hour, and already I need you. I wish to ask you about something that is troubling me; I've asked Kathleen and she doesn't know; and Dr. Bailey was horrid to me, and I tried to find out from Scott whether he knew, but he wasn't much interested. So, Duane, who else is there for me to ask except you? And I don't exactly know whether I may speak about such matters to you, but I'm rather frightened, and densely ignorant.

"It is this, dear; in a medical book which I read, it says that hereditary taints are transmissible; that sometimes they may skip the second generation but only to appear surely in the third. But it also says that the taint is very likely to appear in every generation.

"Duane, is this true? It has worried me sick since I read it. Because, my darling, if it is so, is it not another reason for our not marrying?

"Do you understand? I can and will eradicate what is threatening me, but if I marry you—you do understand, don't you? Isn't it all right for me to ask you whether, if we should have children, this thing would menace them? Oh, Duane—Duane! Have I any right to marry? Children come—God knows how, for nobody ever told me exactly, and I'm a fool about such things—but I summoned up courage to ask Dr. Bailey if there was any way to tell before I married whether I would have any, and he said I would if I had any notion of my duty and any pretence to self-respect. And I don't know what he means and I'm bewildered and miserable and afraid to marry you even when I myself become perfectly well. And that is what worries me, Duane, and I have nobody in the world to ask about it except you. Could you please tell me how I might learn what I ought to know concerning these things without betraying my own vital interest in them to whomever I ask? You see, Kathleen is as innocent as I.

"Please tell me all you can, Duane, for I am most unhappy."

* * * * *

"The house is very still and full of sunlight and cut flowers. Scott is meditating great deeds, lying flat in the dirt. Kathleen sits watching him from the parapet. And I am here in the library, with that ghastly book at my elbow, pouring out all my doubts and fears to the only man in the world—whom God bless and protect wherever he may be—Oh, Duane, Duane, how I love you!"

She hurriedly directed and sealed the letter and placed it in the box for outgoing mail; then, unquiet and apprehensive regarding what she had ventured to write, she began a restless tour of the house, upstairs and down, wandering aimlessly through sunny corridors, opening doors for a brief survey of chambers in which only the shadow-patterns of leaves moved on sunlit walls; still rooms tenanted only by the carefully dusted furniture which seemed to stand there watching attentively for another guest.

Duane had left his pipe in his bedroom. She was silly over it, even to the point of retiring into her room, shredding some cigarettes, filling the rather rank bowl, and trying her best to smoke it. But such devotion was beyond her physical powers; she rinsed her mouth, furious at being defeated in her pious intentions, and, making an attractive parcel of the pipe, seized the occasion to write him another letter.

"There is in my heart," she wrote, "no room for anything except you; no desire except for you; no hope, no interest that is not yours. You praise my beauty; you endow me with what you might wish I really possessed; and oh, I really am so humble at your feet, if you only knew it! So dazed by your goodness to me, so grateful, so happy that you have chosen me (I just jumped up to look at myself in the mirror; I am pretty, Duane, I've a stunning colour just now and there is a certain charm about me—even I can see it in what you call the upcurled corners of my mouth, and in my figure and hands)—and I am so happy that it is true—that you find me beautiful, that you care for my beauty.... It is so with a man, I believe; and a girl wishes to have him love her beauty, too.

"But, Duane, I don't think the average girl cares very much about that in a man. Of course you are exceedingly nice to look at, and I notice it sometimes, but not nearly as often as you notice what you think is externally attractive about me.

"In my heart, I don't believe it really matters much to a girl what a man looks like; anyway, it matters very little after she once knows him.

"Of course women do notice handsome men—or what we consider handsome—which is, I believe, not at all what men care for; because men usually seem to have a desire to kick the man whom women find good-looking. I know several men who feel that way about Jack Dysart. I think you do, for one.

"Poor Jack Dysart! To-day's papers are saying such horridly unpleasant things about the rich men with whom he was rather closely associated in business affairs several years ago. I read, but I do not entirely comprehend.

"The New York papers seem unusually gloomy this summer; nothing but predictions of hard times coming, and how many corporations the attorney-general is going to proceed against, and wicked people who loot metropolitan railways, and why the district-attorney doesn't do his duty—which you say he does—oh, dear; I expect that Scott and Kathleen and I will have to take in boarders this winter; but if nobody has any money, nobody can pay board, so everybody will be ruined and I don't very much care, for I could teach school, only who is to pay my salary if there's no money to pay it with? Oh, dear! what nonsense I am writing—only to keep on writing, because it seems to bring you a little nearer—my own—my Duane—my comrade—the same, same little boy who ran away from his nurse and came into our garden to fight my brother and—fall in love with his sister! Oh, Fate! Oh, Destiny! Oh, Duane Mallett!