"And since then?"

"Only twice."

"But twice is more than enough."

"It shows that the trouble is still there, that one can't count on his promises," Thayer assented gravely.

"He does promise?"

"Yes, like a child. That is the pitiful part of it, pitiful and yet exasperating. He admits his own weakness, and is sorry and ashamed, as soon as he comes to himself. For a time, he is a model of caution and sobriety. Then he blunders into the way of temptation and makes a mess of it all." Unconsciously Thayer's voice betrayed his dislike of a weakness of which he had no comprehension. An instant later, he seemed to realize his own self-betrayal and he pulled himself up sharply. "I wish you knew Lorimer better, Miss Gannion. Then you would understand why I am telling you all this. He is so loyal, so generous to his friends, so full of talent. At Goettingen, they called him the most brilliant American who had ever studied there, and he was by all odds the most popular fellow of his time. His very popularity increased the danger." As if he had been pleading his own cause, Thayer's voice was full of earnest eagerness. Even in the midst of her anxiety and pain, Miss Gannion felt the power of its flexible modulation; and her half-formulated condemnation of Lorimer stayed itself.

Thayer broke the silence which followed, and his accent was resonant again.

"There's no especial use in thrashing over the past. The present is none too good; but my question is simply in relation to the future."

"And the question is?" Miss Gannion asked.

"Whether we ought to tell Miss Dane," he answered briefly.

"It will kill her." The feminine in Margaret Gannion was uppermost once more.

"Such wounds are more likely to mangle than to kill." Thayer spoke grimly.

"Poor Beatrix!"

"She does love him, then? I didn't see how she could help it."

Margaret Gannion's hands shut on a fold of her skirt.

"She loves him better than she loves her life; but she loves right better than either."

"And what is right?"

"I am not sure," she confessed weakly. "I can't seem to analyze it at all. What do you think?"

"That she ought to be told."

"What good will it do?"

"At least, it will put her on her guard."

"Against what? From your own showing, it is like fighting an unseen enemy. One never knows when or where it will come. She will only be put under a terrible nervous strain, faced by a fear that will haunt her, day and night. Besides, she might break the engagement. Have you thought of that?"

"It was of that I was thinking. She ought to have the facts, and be allowed to face the alternatives before it is too late. Miss Gannion," he turned upon her sharply; "can't you realize the pain it is to me to be saying this? I love Lorimer, love him as one man rarely loves another. Perhaps I love him all the more for his lack of strength. But that is no reason I should let him make havoc of a girl's whole life, perhaps of other lives to come. Miss Dane loves him; moreover, she is very proud. She is bound to suffer keenly on both scores."

"Then you think—"

"That the trouble is likely to increase."

"And, if she breaks her engagement to him?"

"That it will increase all the faster. She has a strong hold on him."

"And you would run the risk of loosing this hold, when you know the danger to your friend?"

"Yes, when I see the danger to Miss Dane."

Miss Gannion's hands unclasped, and she looked up at him with the pitiful, drooping lips of a frightened child. Like Thayer, she too loved Lorimer.

"It is terrible, Mr. Thayer. I can see no way out of the trouble; it stands on either side of the path. But do you think she could hold him, if she were to try?"

"It is an open question. Lorimer is weak; but I am not sure how strong she is, nor how patient. If she could steady him and forgive him ninety-nine times, it is possible that, on the hundredth, she would have nothing to forgive. But that is asking too much of a woman, that she should sacrifice her pride and her hope to her loyalty and her love."

"I think Beatrix would do it."

"Perhaps. At least, though, she ought to have the right to choose for herself."

Once more Miss Gannion mastered herself.

"I am not sure. You make the alternatives certain ruin and possible salvation. I should cling to the chance."

"And take the responsibility of silence?"

"It is a responsibility; but I should assume it for the present. What we should say to her could never be unsaid. It might do good; it might do terrible harm. It is possible that the truth may come to her in some other way. I should certainly prefer that it might."

He bent over the fire for a moment. Then he straightened up and threw back his shoulders, like a man relieved of the burden of a heavy load.

"Then that is your final advice?" he asked slowly.

She made answer just as slowly,—

"Mr. Thayer, I am growing older than I used to be, and things don't look quite so plain to me as they did once. Motives mix themselves more, and I am not so ready to put my finger on my neighbor's nerve. If I were in your place, I—rather think I should say my prayers, and then wait."



CHAPTER SEVEN

"I believe I should hate to have Mr. Thayer fall in love with me," Sally observed thoughtfully.

"I wouldn't worry about it yet," Bobby said unkindly. "He yawned twice, last night, while he was talking to you."

Sally's answer was prompt.

"Yes, we were discussing you."

"Why didn't you call me over to give you some points? It is the only subject upon which I can speak with authority. But just think what a lover Thayer would make, troubadouring around under windows!"

Sally counted swiftly.

"There are nineteen families in our hotel, Bobby, and thirteen of them have marriageable daughters. Imagine the creaking of casements, when Mr. Thayer warbled, 'Open the window to me, Love!' Troubadours will do for the country; in town, one can heed only the impersonal strains of the hurdy-gurdy. But really—"

"Yes?" Bobby's accent was encouraging.

"If Mr. Thayer should fall in love and get engaged, what could the girl call him? His name doesn't lend itself easily to endearments."

"His mother ought to have thought of that, when she named him."

"It is a case of visiting the father's sins upon the child of the sixth generation. He is only Volume Seven in the series of Cotton Mathers."

Bobby plunged his fists into his pockets.

"That is a respectable custom; but a mighty stupid one. A fellow oughtn't to be labelled like one of a class. Might as well catalogue children, and done with it, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and so on through the list of Thayers. Then, when he came to years of discretion, he could pick for himself. Do you suppose I would have been Bobby, if I had been consulted?"

"What then?" Beatrix asked, pausing in her talk with Lorimer.

"Demosthenes Alphonso, of course. That's something worth while."

"Demosthenes Alphonso Dane. D. A. D." Sally commented irrepressibly. Then she swept across the room and, parting the curtains, peeped out between them. "Beatrix, the Philistines be upon you! Here comes Mrs. Lloyd Avalons. Oh, why was I the first to come? As a rule, I believe in the rotation of callers as implicitly as I do in the rotation of crops. Bobby, you came next. How long do you mean to stay?"

"Till the almonds are gone, or till Beatrix turns me out," he replied imperturbably.

"All right. Give me five minutes' warning. You can twirl your thumbs, when it is time for me to start; but I am bound to see some of the fun."

"Now, children, you must be good," Beatrix implored them hurriedly. "Bobby, do try to talk about something she can understand."

"If you want to condemn me to the conversational limits of a mummy, say so in plain Saxon," he retorted. "How can I talk about something that doesn't exist?"

"Bobby!" Sally's tone was full of warning, as Beatrix rose to meet her guest.

Mrs. Lloyd Avalons had gained one distinct point in her social training. She had learned to cross a room as if she were doing her hostess a favor by appearing. Even Beatrix was impressed by the swift, dainty sweep with which she came forward, and she cast a hasty thought to the quality of her tea. Bobby, meanwhile, was taking mental stock of Mrs. Lloyd Avalons's tailor and deciding that he could give points to his own fellow. For a person who professed to ignore all such detail, Bobby Dane was singularly critical of feminine dress, as Beatrix had learned to her cost.

Seated by the tea-table, balancing a Sevres cup in her hand, Mrs. Lloyd Avalons appeared to be casting about in her mind for a subject of conversation. Bobby came to her relief.

"When you appeared, Mrs. Avalons, we were just speaking of mummies. Have you seen the latest importation at the Metropolitan?"

"Mr. Dane!" she remonstrated hastily. "Do you suppose I—"

"Certainly," Bobby assured her gravely. "I often spend an hour looking at them, and I always feel the better for the time passed in their society. They remind me of the futility of earthly things, and inspire me to higher aims."

Mrs. Lloyd Avalons smiled faintly.

"You literary people have strange thoughts," she observed, addressing the room at large. "I have often thought I should like to write, if I only had the time."

"Why don't you?" Bobby inquired blandly. "The result would be sure to be interesting."

But Beatrix interposed.

"Are you as busy as ever, Mrs. Avalons?"

"Busier. It is such a bore to be in this perpetual rush; but I can't seem to help it. Lent didn't bring me any rest, this year; and, now that Easter is over, it seems to me that we are more gay than ever."

"That is the penalty of having an early Easter," Sally suggested. "We had to stop for Lent in the middle of the season, and now we are finishing up the sins of which we have already repented."

"Oh—yes," Mrs. Lloyd Avalons responded blankly.

"Can you get all your arrears of penitence done up in six weeks, Sally?" Bobby asked, as he passed her the almonds.

"Yes, if I've not seen too much of you," she returned. "Mrs. Avalons, when are you going to give us another recital?"

Mrs. Lloyd Avalons rose to the cast.

"Wasn't that a success? Mr. Thayer quite covered himself with glory."

"His mantle fell over some of the rest of us, and we gained lustre from his glory." Sally's tone was slightly malicious.

"He is certainly a great artist, and I am proud to have discovered him."

"But I thought Mrs. Stanley discovered him. He sang for her first."

Mrs. Lloyd Avalons straightened in her chair. She had no intention of allowing to Mrs. Stanley the prestige which belonged to herself. Mrs. Stanley was several rounds farther up the social ladder than she was, herself; but Mrs. Stanley lacked initiative and was rapidly losing her start. In the seasons to come, she would find herself playing the part of understudy to Mrs. Lloyd Avalons.

"Oh, Mrs. Stanley heard he was to sing for me, and she cabled across to him to take an earlier steamer and sing for her first. It was a little tricky. What is it you call it in the business world, Mr. Dane?"

"A corner in Cotton," Bobby replied gravely.

Mrs. Lloyd Avalons thought she could see that the point of this joke was directed against Mrs. Stanley, and she laughed rather more heartily than good breeding required. In her mirth, she even bent forward in her chair, writhing slightly to and fro, while her silken linings hissed like angry snakes. Suddenly she realized that she had prolonged her mirth beyond the limits of the others, and she straightened her face abruptly.

"But I am so glad the subject has come up, Miss Dane," she went on. "I was meaning to ask you whether you thought I could get Mr. Thayer to sing for our Fresh Air Fund."

"Really, I have no idea of Mr. Thayer's engagements," Beatrix said drily.

"But I thought you knew him so well."

Beatrix's face expressed her surprise.

"I know him as I know any number of people, Mrs. Avalons. That doesn't mean that Mr. Thayer consults me in regard to his plans."

"Oh, no," Mrs. Lloyd Avalons responded vivaciously. "But couldn't you just say a good word for us?"

"I am afraid it wouldn't count for much."

Mrs. Lloyd Avalons raised her brows and made a delicate, pushing gesture with her outspread palms.

"You are too modest, Miss Dane. We all know your powers of persuasion, and we are counting on you."

"Who are we?" Sally inquired, in flat curiosity.

"Mrs. Van Bleeker and Mrs. Knickerbocker and I. We are the committee, this year, and we are trying to have an uncommonly good concert."

"It must be very hard for you to work on a music committee with Mrs. Van Bleeker," Bobby suggested. "She doesn't know a fugue from a bass viol, and she never hesitates to say so."

"Therein she differs from most unmusical people," Sally responded, in a swift aside. "Even truthful people will fib valiantly, where music is concerned, and go into raptures, when they have hard work to suppress their yawns. It was a sorry day for music, when it became the fashion."

"How droll you are, Miss Van Osdel!" Mrs. Lloyd Avalons was nothing, if not direct, in her personal comments. Then she answered Bobby. "Even if Mrs. Van Bleeker isn't really musical, it is a delight to work with her, she is so very charming and so business-like. Strange as it may seem, I actually take pleasure in our committee meetings, Mr. Dane."

"I haven't the slightest doubt of it," Bobby responded, with unctuous emphasis.

"When is the concert to be, Mrs. Avalons?" Beatrix asked hastily, with a frown at her cousin who stared blandly back at her.

"The first week in May, if we can possibly be ready for it. There was so much, just before Lent, that we postponed it until after Easter. Now we are no better off, for every day is full, so we are delaying it again. We want to make it a large affair, don't you know, something that will attract the swell set and the musical people, too."

If Bobby Dane hated one word in the language, that word was swell. Accordingly, he glared haughtily across the table at Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, noting, as he did so, the scornful cadence of her voice over the final phrase.

"The two sets rarely mingle, Mrs. Avalons. Which is under your especial care?"

Lorimer interposed hurriedly, for he felt the hostility in Bobby's tone, and he was ignorant of the thickness of Mrs. Lloyd Avalons's skin.

"Both, I should say from the make-up of your recital, Mrs. Avalons. Society and art both spelled themselves with capital letters, that night."

"I am sure it is very kind of you to say so," she answered, while her pleasure brought the first sincere note into her voice. "I tried to have something really good. But about this concert; we are to have a soprano from the Metropolitan Opera House, and possibly a violinist, and we want Mr. Thayer so much. Do you suppose we could get him?"

"It might depend a little upon the state of your finances," Bobby suggested.

"Oh; but it is for charity, you know."

"Yes, charity is supposed to be like molasses, sweet and cheap. It isn't very nourishing to a professional man, though."

"But Mr. Thayer is not poor."

"That doesn't signify that he can give all his time for nothing," Bobby answered rather warmly, considering that the question was utterly impersonal. "If he sang every day, all winter, for some charity or other, he couldn't begin to get round in ten years. There ought to be a new mission started, a Society for the Protection of Over-begged Artists."

"But I am only asking him for one charity."

"That's all anybody is supposed to do. The time hasn't come yet when you syndicate the job, though I suppose it is only a matter of time."

Mrs. Lloyd Avalons looked at him distrustfully for a moment; then she laughed with a dainty vagueness.

"You are so amusing, Mr. Dane! One never really knows whether you're in earnest or not. How many tickets did you say you would take?"

"One and a half," Sally advised, while Bobby stared at Mrs. Lloyd Avalons in speechless disgust. "He will go, and take me with him; but newspaper men are always admitted at half-rates."

"And you really think Mr. Thayer will sing for us?" Mrs. Lloyd Avalons went on, turning back to Beatrix. "It will be an advantage to him, in a way, to have sung under the auspices of our committee."

This time, even Beatrix felt herself antagonized. Thayer belonged to her own class, and her class was scarcely of the type to need the official social sanction of Mrs. Lloyd Avalons.

"I have no idea at all in regard to the matter," she answered a little coldly. "Mr. Thayer appears to me to be able to hold his own, without the backing of any committee. It simply depends upon his personal generosity."

"But it is such a worthy object. And don't you think we could get that little Arlt to fill in with?"

"From, by, in, or with charity, and to or for a charity?" Bobby asked savagely.

"Oh, of course, we couldn't pay him." There was a falling inflection of the last word.

"Then I should advise him to decline charity altogether," Bobby retorted.

"It would be an advantage to him to play on such a programme," Mrs. Lloyd Avalons asserted, as she set down her cup.

"It would also be an advantage to him to get a little money, now and then."

Mrs. Lloyd Avalons raised her brows. They were daintily-marked brows, and the expression suited her pretty, empty little face.

"I think it is something for a man of no reputation at all to have a chance to be heard in such a connection," she replied a little tartly.

"Ye-es." Bobby rose with provoking deliberation. "And it is also possible, Mrs. Avalons, that when we are thankful even to be charted in Woodlawn, Mr. Arlt's name may be a good deal better known than it is now. Sally, we are due at the Stuyvesants', and I think we must tear ourselves away."

Out in the hall, he addressed himself to Sally.

"For social pulleys, give me three: music, cheek, and charity, but the greatest of these is ch—"

"Charity," amended Sally promptly.

Bobby gloomily pulled himself into his overcoat.

"Sally, I abhor that woman," he said.



CHAPTER EIGHT

"If you once begin, there'll be no end to it," Bobby warned Thayer, when he announced his intention of singing for the Fresh Air Fund.

"I never yet found anything I couldn't end, when I tried," Thayer returned coolly.

Bobby eyed him askance.

"Ever tackled Mrs. Lloyd Avalons's idiocy?" he queried.

"She is not the only one."

"No; worse luck! But what makes you do it?"

"I approve the charity, and I happened to have a free night. Moreover, it will give Arlt a chance to accompany."

"But she won't pay him."

"No, but I generally manage to pay my own accompanist."

"Do you think he will gain from such a thing?"

Crossing his knees comfortably, Thayer lighted the pipe he had been filling, and took a tentative puff or two.

"I don't know," he said dubiously. "He ought to, but I can't seem to discover the way to get on in this precious country of ours. Arlt is a musician to the tips of his fingers; I have yet to hear a pianist in the city to compare with him. And still, nobody manifests the least interest in him."

Bobby contemplated the tip of his own cigar, bending his brows and frowning as much from his optical angle as from his mental one.

"He lacks the two P's," he said slowly; "pull and personality."

Impatiently Thayer uncrossed his knees and crossed them in the reverse position.

"Do you mean that nothing else counts here?" he demanded.

"Precious little. A fellow has got to have good lungs for blowing his own horn, else he is drowned in the general chorus. That's the worst of music as a profession; personality is everything. You must be perfect or peculiar. The latter alternative is the greater help. If Arlt would grow a head of hair, or wear a dinner napkin instead of a necktie, it would improve his chances wonderfully."

"But, if the right people would take him up?" Thayer suggested.

"They won't; or, if they do, they'll drop him as a monkey drops a hot chestnut. Arlt plays like an artist; but he blushes, and he forgets to keep his cuffs in sight. He is as unworldly as he is conventional. Society doesn't care to fuss with him."

Thayer looked grave.

"I am having my own share of good times, Dane. It seems as if I ought to be able—"

Bobby interrupted him.

"You can't. No man can hoist his brother into success. It is bound to be every man for himself. You can work over Arlt till the crack of doom, and that's all the good it will do him. People will say 'How noble of Mr. Thayer!' and they will burn moral tapers about your feet; and meanwhile they'll leave Arlt sitting on the floor alone in the dark."

"Nevertheless, I think I shall keep on with the experiment," Thayer said stubbornly.

"Good luck go with you! But it won't. You can't make the next man's reputation; he must do it for himself. All art is bound to be a bit selfish; but music is the worst of the lot. I don't mean composing, of course, but the interpreting end of it. It's such beastly personal work; all the nooks and corners of your individuality show up across the footlights. They are commented upon, and they have to pass muster. Artistically, you and Arlt are as alike as two peas; personally, you are positive, he is negative.'"

There was a pause. Then Thayer said quietly,—"I think I shall sing the Damrosch Danny Deever. It has a stunning accompaniment."

The committee of the Fresh Air Fund concert showed themselves a potent trio, and their concert became recognized as the official finale of the musical season. Their meetings had been fraught with interest, for time, place and programme all came under detailed discussion. It must be at a time neither too soon after Easter to collide with it, nor too late to have a place in the season's gayety. The place must be lofty enough to lure the world of fashion; yet not so lofty as to deter the simpler folk to whom the white and gold of the Waldorf ballroom was a mere name, as remote from their lives as the Petit Trianon. The programme must be classic enough to satisfy the critic; yet tuneful enough not to bore the amateur, and accordingly it roamed from Brahms to Molloy, and included that first Slavonic Dance of Dvorak which sets the pulses of Pagan and Philistine alike to tingling with a barbarous joy in the mere consciousness of living. Thayer alone had refused to accept dictation at the hands of the committee.

"If I consent to sing, I must choose my own songs," he had said quietly to Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, when she had suggested a modern French love song in place of the Haendel aria he had selected.

"Oh, but it is so late in the season, and everybody is tired," she had urged gayly. "If we give them too heavy things on a warm night, they may go to sleep."

"Then I shall proceed to wake them up," he replied. "And, for the second number, the Danny Deever, I think."

"Mr. Thayer! That grewsome thing! Why don't you sing My Desire, if you are so anxious for an American song?"

"I think Danny will be better. Then we will consider it settled." And it was not until she was out on the stairs that Mrs. Lloyd Avalons realized she had been defeated and then dismissed by the man whose patroness she was assuming to be.

"No matter," she reflected; "we've got to pay Signora Cantabella, and we can insist upon her singing something a little more digestible. Mr. Thayer is cranky; but we get him and that little Arlt for nothing, so I suppose we mustn't be too critical."

For once, Mrs. Lloyd Avalons showed her good sense. In all truth, beggars should not be choosers, whether the alms be of bread crusts or of high art.

Lorimer dined with Beatrix, that night. Contrary to the custom of the Danes, they did not linger over the meal; and, as soon as they left the table, Beatrix and Lorimer strolled away to the conservatory at the back of the house. The yellow sunset light was still gilding the place, and through the wide-open windows the night breeze crept in, softly stirring the heavy palm leaves and scattering the scent of a few late violets over all the air.

Refusing the seat which Lorimer silently pointed out to her, Beatrix paced restlessly up and down the broad middle walk.

"I think I am nervous, to-night," she said, with an odd little laugh. "I have been feeling, all day long, as if things were going to happen."

"Things generally do happen," Lorimer said lightly, as he sauntered along by her side.

"Yes; but something unusual, something uncanny."

Lorimer threw back his head and laughed.

"I thought you derided presentiments, Beatrix."

She bit her lip.

"I do," she said, after a pause. "I know it is foolish, and I am ashamed of myself; but I dread this recital, to-night, and I dread that hateful Lloyd Avalons supper after it. Let's not go, Sidney."

"Oh, but we must. Why not?"

"They are such impossible people."

"I know; but everyone will understand that it is on Thayer's account that we go, Beatrix. And he made such a point of it."

She drew a long breath.

"If we must—But I dread it. Do keep Mr. Avalons away from me, then."

As he looked down at the brown head which scarcely rose above his lips, Lorimer's smile ceased to be whimsical and became inexpressibly tender and winning.

"Count on me, dear girl. He is a brute; but I won't let him go near you."

Impulsively she turned and faced him.

"Sidney," she said, with a breathless catch in her voice; "Sidney—" Then, while she hesitated, she raised her hands and rested them on his broad shoulders. "Sidney dearest, do you know what it is to love as I love you? It would kill me to have anything come in between us."

Startled by her overwrought nerves, he put his arm around her and drew her head against his shoulder.

"I know only one thing, Beatrix," he said gravely; "nothing now can come between us but death."

Diamond aigrettes and critical ears both were at the concert, that night, mingled with a fair sprinkling of those to whom the charity appealed far more than did the mere musical and worldly phases of the affair. The little folded programmes were in a way typical of the whole situation: one page containing the modest announcement of the Fresh Air Fund concert, the next one the simple statement of the numbers of the programme, while the third, in full-faced type bore the majestic list of patronesses. Between his German and Italian fellow artists and his polysyllabic Dutch sponsors, Thayer's name stood out in all the aggressiveness of Puritan simplicity.

As a whole, the concert was as frothy as was the audience. The songs glittered like the diamonds, and the orchestra played the Valkyries' Ride with a cheerful abandonment of mirth.

"Thayer is the only dignified member of the company," Bobby growled into Sally's ears, as the last note of his aria died away. "The rest of them are doing tricks like a set of vaudeville artists. I expected that violinist to play cadenzas with his violin held in the air above his head. You don't catch Thayer dropping into such trick work."

"He doesn't need to; he can 'scorn such a foe' to his heart's content, for he is getting the applause of the evening. Does he sing again?"

"The very last number. It is an unusual place, to wind up a programme after the orchestra is through; but I think he is equal to it."

Beatrix felt every nerve in her body tingling and throbbing, when Thayer came out on the stage for the second time. As a whole, the concert had not been inspiring to her; it had been too obviously popular. Yet, at least, it had tended to relax her strained nerves. Gade concertos are a species of mental gruel, easy to assimilate and none too stimulating; but all the innate barbarism of humanity, all of her nervous force responded to the clashing rhythm of the Slavonic Dance, and the swift color came into her face and focussed itself in a tiny circle in either cheek, as she listened. For the moment, she was as fiercely defiant of fate as a Valkyrie flying forth to battle.

The mood was still upon her, as Thayer came striding out across the stage. Arlt was beside him, for Thayer had refused an orchestral accompaniment and had left Danny Deever in the hands of a pianist. His choice had been a wise one for Arlt. The two of them had spent hours over the song, and the young German surpassed himself in the swift changes of motif until, as he left Danny's soul freeing itself from the swinging body and took up the cheery theme of the quickstep once more, even Thayer was relegated momentarily to the background, as a mere librettist to the passionate fury of the accompaniment.

Again and again the applause broke out; again and again Thayer insisted upon leading Arlt before the audience to make his bow; but still the audience refused to be satisfied. Even the most graceful of bows is not enough, when one is thoroughly aroused.

"Play something, Arlt," Thayer ordered him at last.

Arlt shook his head.

"It is for you they are calling."

"Nonsense. This is your success; not mine."

Arlt demurred; but in the end he yielded and played one or two numbers of Schumann's Papillon, played them like a true artist. As he listened, Thayer held his breath. At last, Arlt's chance had come, and he was making the most of it. The furore of a moment before had been for Arlt more than for himself. Sad experience had taught him the futility of Danny, unless it were adequately accompanied, and the audience were discerning enough to give honor to whom honor was due. Standing in the wings, Thayer exulted in each note which fell from the boy's fingers, round and mellow and weighted with passionate meaning. Arlt was betraying his hopes and fears more than he realized, just then, and Thayer grew impatient for his closing phrase, that he might hear the storm of applause which was bound to follow. He had not counted upon the veering wind of popular interest which scattered the storm, leaving only the gentle patter of a summer shower. The critics applauded; but society applied its lorgnette to its eye and discovered that, in his excitement, Arlt had neglected to make sure that his tie was mathematically straight. The patter died away into silence. Then the wind veered again and the storm broke out afresh, mingled with cries of Thayer's name.

Arlt's lips worked nervously, as he joined Thayer in the wings.

"It was you they wanted, after all," he said, with a pitiful attempt at a smile.

"Then they are damned fools," Thayer replied savagely; but his hand was gentle, as he rested it on Arlt's shoulder.

The boy braced himself at the touch.

"We must go back," he said.

Thayer hesitated, while his thoughts worked swiftly. There would be a certain cruelty, to his mind, in forcing Arlt to appear again before the audience which had just cut him so mercilessly. On the other hand, it would be the part of childish pique for him to refuse to show himself. Nevertheless, he needed Arlt's support. He disliked to play his own accompaniments, and he felt that, in doing so, he risked possible disaster. The hesitation lasted only for a moment. Then his jaw stiffened.

"It's all right, Arlt," he said briefly. "I am going to accompany myself, this time."

As he crossed the stage, he glanced hastily from Bobby to Bobby's cousin. Bobby was glowering at the audience and grumbling into Sally's ear. Four rows in front of them, Beatrix sat silent at Lorimer's side. The color had left her face again, and her eyes drooped heavily. It was as if, in watching Arlt's overthrow, her old prescience of impending disaster had come back upon her in fourfold measure, heightened by the intensity of her exhilaration of a few moments before. When a quiet woman is stirred from her usual poise, the pendulum of her nerves swings in a long arc. The Dvorak dance had not deepened Sally's color; the Damrosch song had not caused her to draw her white ostrich boa more closely about her throat.

Thayer struck a vigorous major chord or two; then, with a sudden memory of the dry glitter in Arlt's eyes, he modulated thoughtfully. His own eyes rested again upon Beatrix during the few notes of the introduction, and his mind went swiftly back to the day when he had sung the same little song in her parlor. Half absently, his eyes were still upon her face, as he came again to the closing words,—

"I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn To kiss the cross, sweetheart, to kiss the cross."

Unconsciously, uncontrollably, his eyes held hers, and he could see the two great drops gather there, as she listened, her lips parted with her deep, swift breathing. Then their eyes dropped apart, and the color rushed into her cheeks while, with a sudden, impulsive gesture, she slipped her hand into Lorimer's arm and pressed it until she felt the returning, reassuring pressure.

Lorimer looked down at her with a smile.

"Spooky again, dear girl?" he asked, under cover of the applause which had broken out madly once more. "He is singing superbly, to-night; but this last was wonderful. Something has rubbed him the wrong way; I know that set of his jaw, and it always means that he will be inspired to do his best. Queer thing; isn't it? If I were angry or hurt, I should go to pieces completely; but it brings Thayer to his feet, every time."

"What do you think was the reason?" Beatrix asked, with as great a show of interest as she could command. The first lesson Mrs. Dane had taught her child in preparation for her coming-out tea had been the simple and obvious one that men were rarely minded to sympathize with feminine moods; but that under all conditions a woman who seeks to please, must adapt herself to the mental vagaries of her masculine companion. Even Lorimer, tender and loving as he invariably showed himself, was no exception to the rule.

"It was Arlt's snubbing," Lorimer returned, as he rose. "It was a beastly thing to do. Arlt played superbly, and they might have treated him with common courtesy. But there is no accounting for tastes. Thayer is the hero of the evening, and people are too busy applauding him, to have any time for lesser lights."

"Do you think Mr. Arlt will ever succeed?" she asked anxiously for, through Thayer's efforts to bring them together, she had become genuinely interested in the boy.

"God knows," Lorimer answered, with a sudden gravity that became him well.

Later, that evening, Thayer joined Lorimer and Beatrix in a corner of the Lloyd Avalons's music-room. Beatrix greeted him half shyly.

"It was a new experience," she said, with an effort to speak lightly. "I thought I had learned to know your voice long ago; but I have decided that I never really knew it, until to-night."

He stood looking down at her with a grave smile.

"My voice isn't always reliable, Miss Dane. Once in a while, it seems to run away with me. To-night, it took the bits in its teeth."

She felt compelled to raise her eyes to meet his.

"I hope it won't do it too often. It is wonderful; but—" Then she pulled herself together with a little laugh. "It must be rather amusing to you, Mr. Thayer, to watch your effect on your audience, and to know that you can make them shiver or cry whenever you choose."

He refused to be won into the laugh for which she hoped.

"It isn't whenever I choose," he responded, with unexpected literalness. "Sometimes I feel as if I were the victim of a sort of possession. I believe I have a demon that inhabits my vocal cords upon occasion. If he does get hold of me, I am merely a machine in his hands. When I become my own manager again, I am never quite sure what I may have been doing."

"Something very good, to-night. But where is Mr. Arlt?"

Thayer's face darkened.

"Mrs. Lloyd Avalons neglected to invite him," he replied quietly.

Lorimer's lip curled.

"If that isn't beyond the dreams of snobbishness, Thayer! Why did you come to her old party, then?"

"Because I thought it would be too petty to stay away."

"I would be petty, then. But, as far as that goes, Arlt's ancestors were gentlemen, when hers were shovelling gravel for a dollar a day. American democracy runs in strange grooves. Thayer, I am going to leave Beatrix in your care for a few minutes. I promised Ned Carpenter I would see him in the smoking-room, to make a date for his yachting cruise."

Thayer looked after him with a certain anxiety which clouded his gray eyes and found a reflection in the face of his companion. The cloud remained, although their talk went on as if nothing were amiss. In fact, nothing was amiss; it was only that their nerves, jarred by Arlt's failure, were looking for disaster upon every hand. For the time being, each bead seemed tipped with its cross. Both felt it; both were loath to acknowledge the feeling by so much as a look.

Suddenly Thayer roused himself.

"Lorimer has been detained, Miss Dane, and we both are growing hungry. May I take you to the dining-room?"

Side by side, they crossed the floor, now almost deserted, and reached the door of the dining-room whence came a confused noise of buzzing tongues and clattering dishes. Then, above all else, Lorimer's voice met their ears, a merry, laughing voice, but strangely thick as regarded its consonants.

"An' so, 's I was shayin', we wen' to Mory's, one ni', an' there was thish man—"

Some unaccountable impulse made him raise his eyes just then. They fell full upon Beatrix standing in the doorway, with Thayer at her side.



CHAPTER NINE

Beatrix's library was full of women, when Lorimer put in a tardy appearance, the day after the Fresh Air Fund concert. A dozen little tables littered with cards were pushed together in one corner, and the tinkling of china and the hum of conversation betrayed the fact that whist had given place to a more congenial method of passing the time. Modern womanhood plays whist almost without ceasing; but it should be noted that she frowns over the whist and reserves her smiles for her more garrulous interludes.

Lorimer, as he stepped across the threshold, felt a sudden longing to retreat. He had forgotten both the whist and the interlude, that afternoon, and he felt no inclination to exchange verbal inanities with a group of women of whom several had been at the Lloyd Avalons supper, the night before. All of them, he was convinced, had heard of the incident, and were covertly eying Beatrix to see whether she looked as if she had slept well. His theory was justified by the fact that, for the first time that season, not a substitute had been present.

Beatrix rose from the tea table, as he crossed the room towards her. Her manner was a shade more alert than usual; but her eyes, half-circled in heavy shadows, drooped before his eyes, as she gave him her hand. He felt her fingers shake a little, and he could see the color die out of her cheeks. Otherwise, there was nothing to mark their meeting as in any way differing from any other meeting in the past. He greeted the other women, accepted his cup of tea and took up his share of the burden of conversation with apparent nonchalance.

The nonchalance was only apparent, however. Lorimer had sought Beatrix, that day, much in the mood in which the naughty boy turns his back to receive his allotted caning. The bad half-hour was bound to come; it was best to have it over as soon as possible. Lorimer had gone to bed, the night before, in a state of maudlin cheeriness. He had wakened, that morning, feeling a heavy weight in his head and a heavier one on his conscience. He had an unnecessarily clear recollection of Beatrix's face as it had looked to him, the one sharply-outlined fact across a misty distance peopled with vague shadows. The eyes had been hurt and angry; but the lips showed only loving disappointment. All the morning long, he had pondered upon the matter; but by noon he had made his decision. The meeting was inevitable, so what was the use of trying to put it off?

"Well, Sidney?" Beatrix said steadily, as soon as the last guest had made her nervous, chattering exit.

With some degree of care, he had prepared his defensive argument; but it had lost all its force and fervor by reason of the half-hour spent in the roomful of women. Now he made a hasty effort to reconstruct it, and failed.

"I am sorry," he said, with simple humility.

Unconsciously, each had taken the best method to disarm the other. Before scornful, angry denunciation, he could have burst out into voluble explanation and defence which, in its turn, would have antagonized Beatrix beyond any possibility of relenting. For the unpardonable sin, forgiveness must be a free gift. Confronted by excuses, Beatrix would have been unyielding. In the face of his humility, she hesitated to speak the final condemnation, and instinct taught her that feminine reproaches were worse than futile in the face of a real crisis.



"How did you happen to do it, Sidney?" she asked quietly, as she seated herself again beside the deserted tea table and began absently setting the disordered cups into straight rows.

He raised his eyes from the carpet.

"Because I was a brute," he said briefly.

Methodically she sorted out the spoons in two little piles. Then, pushing them together into a disorderly heap, she started to her feet and faced him.

"Can't you make any sort of an excuse for yourself, Sidney?" she demanded, and there was a desperate ring to her words.

He shook his head.

"I can't see any," he replied, after an interval. Suddenly he laughed harshly. "Unless you count total depravity," he added.

She ignored the laugh.

"I suppose you know, then, what this means," she said slowly, so slowly that it seemed as if each word caught in her throat.

His face whitened and he started to speak; but his voice failed him. He bowed in silence.

"I am sorry," she went on, while the cords in her clasped hands stood out like bits of rattan; "perhaps I am more sorry than you are; but there seems to be nothing else that I can do. Last night was the tragedy of my life; to-day is the hardest, the longest day I have ever spent. But—"

Bending forward, he took up one of the spoons from the table and looked at it intently for a moment. Under his mustache his lips worked nervously, and Beatrix saw the moisture gather in great drops upon his forehead. Fortunately she could not see his eyes, for their long lashes veiled them. It was better so; she could hold herself more steady. There was a certain mercilessness in the way she waited for him to break the silence.

"Is it final?" he asked at length. "I wish you would give me another chance, Beatrix."

"I have given you too many, as it is," she replied sadly.

He looked up at her, too much startled now to care whether or not she saw the tell-tale tears.

"How do you mean?"

"That last night only confirmed what I have been suspecting and dreading." This time, there came the scornful note he had so feared.

He dropped his eyes again, and accepted the condemnation in silence. If she knew the whole truth, there was no need of arguing with her over the details. The spoon snapped in two in his hands. He rose and tossed the fragments into the fire.

"Where are you going?" Beatrix asked.

"Straight to the devil." His accent was hard, but perfectly quiet, the accent of a desperate man, not of a reckless boy.

Up to the last moment, she had expected that he would seek to justify himself, would ask her to explain her decision and to modify it. This grim, silent acceptance of his fate terrified her. It seemed to throw upon her shoulders all the responsibility of an action which in itself was right, yet possibly burdened with consequences dangerous to another. For herself, for the killing of her own great love, Beatrix never wavered. It was her own affair and concerned herself alone. But she knew that Lorimer loved her, and all at once she realized that her sudden rejection of his love was bound to bring forth bitter fruit. During the time it took him to cross the floor, she was swiftly weighing her duty to herself against her duty to her neighbor. She was bound to send him away; but was she equally bound to send him away like a beaten dog, without a word of explanation or of pity?

"Sidney?"

He had reached the door; but, at her call, he hesitated and looked back.

"You understand why I am doing this?"

"Yes," he said bitterly; "I understand only too well."

"And you think I am justified?"

He faced about squarely.

"Good God, Beatrix, when you have stabbed a man to death, don't grind the knife round and round, and ask him if he feels it! Let him make as plucky an exit as he can."

His words broke the strain she had put upon herself.

"I didn't mean—I didn't suppose—" she faltered. Then she dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands.

Lorimer turned to the door again, halted irresolutely, then went back to her side.

"I can't go away and leave you like this, dear girl," he said, as he bent over her. "It isn't going to be easy for either of us; it is bound to leave a terrible scar on our lives. But, if it is the only thing you can do: at least, can't we say a decent good-by to each other?"

She took down her hands, drew a long breath and looked up at him; but she was unable to meet the look in his eyes, the loving, hungry look which she had learned to know so well.

"We have loved each other, dear girl. I have been better and stronger for your love. I only wish it might have lasted, for in time it might have made me quite steady. But I am glad I have had so much. Whatever the future has for me, at least I have had something in the past."

The hardness had left his tone, and the passionate, bitter ring. There was nothing now but the note of utter sadness. Beatrix trembled for herself, for the fate of her resolve, as she heard it.

"But I couldn't hold you, Sidney."

"No, dear; perhaps not. But you held me more than you knew. You only saw the times I slipped; you never had any idea of the times I nearly went under, and pulled myself up again for your sake. If it hadn't been for you and Thayer, for Thayer before I ever saw you, dear, I should have gone under long ago. Now Thayer will have it all to do."

There was no reproach in his voice. He seemed to be merely stating the fact, not entirely for her ears, but as if he were trying to accustom himself to the thought of all which it implied. Suddenly his shoulders straightened; his tone grew resonant; his words came more rapidly.

"It is in my blood, Beatrix. My mother was weak, and I am weaker still. I know the danger; I see it and I tell myself that I must fight shy of it. For a while I do fight shy of it, till I get off my guard and think I am quite safe. The next thing I know, it has cropped out again, and I haven't the nerve to face it and knock it over. It knocks me over, instead, and each knock is just a little harder than the one before it has been. I realize it, and I try to down it; but that's all the good it does. I am weak, Beatrix, weak and selfish. I honestly think it is harder for me to keep steady than it would be for Thayer, or even for Bobby. The taint is in me. I don't mean that it is any excuse for my making a brute of myself; but, if there is any pity in God, he must give a little bit of it to us fellows, born weak, realizing our weakness and truly meaning to fight it, and yet giving in to it again and again."

"There is pity in God, Sidney," she said drearily; "but pity can't do any good in a case like this. You need help, not pity."

"The help of man?" he asked bitterly. "Who will give it? They are too busy saving themselves."

"There is only one man who can help you."

"Thayer?"

"No; yourself. Sidney, I hate to discuss this thing, for it has come between us and spoiled life for us both; but you have no right to depend on Mr. Thayer as you do. You aren't a child, and you can fight your own way out of this."

"What's the use now?"

"Use! Everything. Your whole manhood."

"But in the end? What does it all amount to?"

"Surely, you aren't child enough to need a bribe?" she asked in sharp scorn.

Her scorn stung him to rapid speech.

"Beatrix, ever since I turned into manhood, I have known this danger of mine, and I have tried to fight it for the sake of the woman I might love, some day. Laugh, if you will. Perhaps it is funny; but it has a certain pitiful side to it, this trying to keep one's self clean for the sake of the woman one has never yet seen. Then, last fall, I did see her. Since then, the fight has been easier; perhaps I've not lost so many battles. It all seemed more worth while. And now—"

"And now?" Her voice was almost inaudible.

"Now I have had it all and lost it, lost it through my own fault, and there doesn't seem to be anything left worth fighting for."

There was a long silence. At length, Beatrix rose.

"Sidney," she said, as she slowly held out both hands to him; "shall we fight side by side for a little longer?"



CHAPTER TEN

"I've manufactured a new definition of happiness," Sally said to Bobby Dane, six months later.

"What now?"

"Think with the mob."

"Who has rubbed you the wrong way, this time?" Bobby queried unsympathetically.

"Everybody. I am so tired of hearing people praise Beatrix for marrying Sidney Lorimer."

Bobby halted and shook hands with her, to the manifest wonder of the post-ecclesiastical Fifth Avenue throng.

"That's where even your head is level, Sally," he said, as he resumed his stroll. "Do you want to know what I think of her?"

"If you agree with me; not otherwise. I hate arguments, and, besides, it is bad form to condemn one's dearest friend. But keeping still so long has nearly driven me to—"

"Tetanus," Bobby suggested. "Well, my impression of Beatrix is that she is a bally idiot. I don't know just what bally means; but our English brethren apply it in critical cases, and so it is sure to be right. Yes, I think Beatrix is very bally indeed."

"Then you don't approve, either?"

"Me? I? I have hated Lorimer from the start."

"I haven't," Sally said, after a thoughtful interval. "I liked him at first."

"You never saw him at the club," Bobby returned briefly.

"What did he do there?"

"I don't know. He just wasn't right."

Sally paced along meditatively at his side.

"Bobby, you are a critical being," she observed at length.

"Mayhap. But the event justifies me. I never have liked Lorimer, and I never shall."

"What are you going to do about it?"

Bobby opened his hands and turned them palm downwards.

"There's nothing to be done. I hate to see Beatrix throw herself away; but I can't help it."

"I wonder what her idea is," Sally said thoughtfully. "She has always been so down upon any fastness that I supposed she would cut his acquaintance entirely, after that Lloyd Avalons supper."

"He acted an awful cad, that night." Bobby's tone was disdainful. "I helped get him home and, before he was fairly out of the dining-room, he was bragging about his family, and his money, and the Lord knows what."

"Yes, I heard him. Beatrix heard some of it, too, before Mr. Thayer took her away. I was at her house, the next afternoon, when Mr. Lorimer called, and I was sure she would break her engagement there and then. Put not your faith in the principles of a woman in love."

"Confound her principles! That's what is the matter with her," Bobby growled. "I had always supposed that Beatrix was a reasonable girl; but no girl in her senses would tackle the job of marrying Sidney Lorimer to reform him."

"When I do it, I'll reverse things and reform the man to marry him," Sally returned shrewdly.

Bobby raised his brows.

"The first time you've ever warned me that I was on probation, Sally!"

"I said a man, not a boy," she replied unkindly. "But, after all, Mr. Lorimer has been perfectly steady, all summer long."

"Mm—yes, after a fashion. Of course, he would do his best, for I will do him the justice to admit that he loves Beatrix with all the manhood there is in him. To be sure, that's not saying much."

"You aren't quite fair to him, Bobby. He must have some manhood in him, to have steadied down as much as he has done, this summer."

Bobby shrugged his shoulders.

"He is playing for high stakes, Sally, and he can afford to be careful. Any slip now would prove to be the losing of the whole game. Wait a year and see."

"Then you think—"

"That his reform is skin deep, and that, like all other serpents, he sloughs his skin once a year."

"Bobby!"

"Sarah Maria!"

"Don't make fun of me because I was named for a spinster aunt. I can't help my name."

"No; it's past help. I'd change it, if I were you. Just think how it would sound at the altar, while the alteration was going on! 'I, Sarah Maria, take thee—'"

Sally interposed hurriedly.

"But, to go back to Beatrix, if you feel in this way about Mr. Lorimer, why don't you do something about it?"

"Do what, for example?"

"Speak to her father, or something."

Bobby's answer had an accent of utter gravity which somehow belied the frivolous form of his words.

"Sally, I'll give you a new proverb, one I have found useful at times. Put not thy finger into thy neighbor's pie, lest it get stuck there permanently."

For the next few blocks, the silence between them was unbroken. Sally nodded to an occasional acquaintance, and Bobby, without lifting his eyes from the ground, seconded her salute with the mechanical raising of his hat which good breeding demands. Few conventions are more exasperatingly impersonal than the bow and smile of the average social being.

"But I love Beatrix," Sally said inconsequently, after an interval.

"I, too."

For the moment, both voices had lost their customary tone of light banter. Bobby broke the next pause.

"Couldn't you say something, Sally?"

"I wish I could; but it is no use. Beatrix hasn't the least respect for my opinion. She thinks I am only a child, and, moreover, once upon a time, I urged her to marry Mr. Lorimer. Of course, that was before any of this came out about him; but I hate to go into details with her, and, if I don't she will think it's nothing but a whim."

"What do you care what she thinks?"

Sally shifted her eyes from the apartment houses on Eighth Avenue to Bobby's face.

"Bobby, I am afraid of Beatrix," she confessed. "She is built on a larger frame than I am, and we both of us are quite aware of the fact."

"It may be a part of her capacious frame to risk her life in marrying Sidney Lorimer," Bobby grumbled; "but, for my part, I prefer smaller women."

Sally faced him suddenly.

"Bobby! You don't mean you think he will kill her sometime when he is drunk?"

"No such luck! In the intervals, he will adore her and treat her like a princess; but he won't spare her the anxiety and the shame of knowing he is liable to take too much at any reception to which they may send an acceptance. You haven't seen men as I have, Sally; you don't know how far they can make babbling fools of themselves, without being absolutely drunk. To a girl like Beatrix, the shame of it when it does occur, and the fear of the shame, when it doesn't, would be worse than sudden death. That gets over and done with; the other hangs on and grows worse and worse to an endless end."

"And you think there's no cure?"

Once more Bobby shrugged his shoulders.

"I wouldn't take any chances."

"You think Beatrix can't hold him?"

"She can for a time; but there's no knowing how long the time will last. Any medicine loses its effect, if it is repeated often enough."

"What about Mr. Thayer?"

"He has more power over Lorimer than anyone else; but he has his own professional life before him, and it won't be long before New York has a small share of his time. He isn't going to give up a grand success for the sake of playing keeper to Sidney Lorimer."

"I think he is fully capable of the sacrifice."

"Capable, yes. But it would be a sin to allow it; it would be spoiling a saint to patch up a sinner. Thayer's future is too broad to be limited by a futile creature like Lorimer. If he turns Quixotic, I'll poison him. At least, that will ensure his dying in the full tide of professional success."

"Ye-es," Sally answered thoughtfully; "but, do you know, Mr. Thayer is so perfectly organized that I have an idea he could swallow a certain amount of poison and come out of it unharmed, if his will were really bent upon accomplishing some definite end."

There was another interval. It was Sally's turn to break it.

"Bobby, does it occur to you that we are just exactly where we started? We both hate Mr. Lorimer; we hate the idea of his marrying Beatrix, and neither one of us dares interfere. Let's go and talk to Miss Gannion."

"What's the use?"

"To clear out our mental ganglia. At least, by the time we have been over it with her, we shall know what we think, and there's a certain satisfaction in that."

"I know just what I think about it now."

"What do you think?"

"Damn," Bobby replied concisely.

They found Miss Gannion alone before the fire. She threw down her book and welcomed them cordially.

"I had an indolent fit, to-day," she said, as she drew some chairs up before the hearth. "Once in a while, I prefer to dismiss my clerical adviser and settle my problems to suit myself. To be sure, I am quite likely to settle them wrongly; but that renews my confidence in churchly methods, so some good is gained, after all."

Bobby deliberately placed himself in the chair which long experience of Miss Gannion's house had taught him best fitted the angles of his anatomy.

"We came to have you settle a problem for us," he said; "so we are glad your hand is in."

"And the problem," Sally added; "is Beatrix."

"What about Beatrix?" Miss Gannion asked.

"She is going to marry Sidney Lorimer, and she mustn't. Please tell us how we are going to prevent it."

Miss Gannion sat still for a moment, with her clear eyes fixed on the glowing embers.

"Are you sure that it would be best to prevent it?" she asked then.

Bobby started to his feet, faced about, and stood looking down at the little figure of his hostess.

"Miss Gannion, Beatrix and I have been chums ever since we could go alone. In fact, we learned to go alone by hanging on to each other's hands. I love her as a fellow without any sisters is bound to love a girl cousin; and I'll be blest if I can keep quiet and see her throw herself away."

"Have you spoken to her about it?"

"I don't dare," Bobby returned bluntly. "I know I should end by losing my temper and saying things about Lorimer. I wouldn't hurt Beatrix for the world, and I believe she honestly thinks she is doing the Lord's own work in not throwing Lorimer over."

"Perhaps she may be," Miss Gannion said gently.

"Miss Gannion! Well, if she is, I shall have to revise my notions of the Lord," Bobby responded hotly.

Miss Gannion's smile never wavered. She knew Bobby Dane too well to resent his occasional outbursts.

"Bobby, my dear boy," she said, with the maternal accent she assumed at times; "this isn't too easy a problem for any of us; but the hardest part of its solution is coming on Beatrix. It's not an easy place to put a woman with a conscience. The old-fashioned idea was to marry a man to reform him; the new-fashioned practice is to wash your hands of him altogether, as soon as he makes a single slip. The middle course is the most difficult one to take and the most thankless. Any good woman is sure to have a strong hold on the man who loves her; and, in times of real danger, she is afraid to let go that hold."

Bobby shook his head.

"That's Beatrix all over, Miss Gannion. But it will take a mighty strong grip to haul Lorimer across to firm ground."

"I realize that."

"But the question is, does Beatrix realize it, too," Sally said abruptly.

"Better than we can. I think she has measured both the danger and her own strength."

Bobby took a turn or two up and down the room. Then he came back to the hearthrug.

"She can't do it," he said conclusively. "The odds are all against her. Lorimer can't pull her down, of course; but he can tug and tug till he has used up all her strength and she has to let him go. And then what? Miss Gannion, do you honestly think it worth the while?"

"No; I do not," she said reluctantly.

"Then why the deuce do you argue for it?" he asked, with a recurrence of his former temper. "I beg your pardon, Miss Gannion; but this maddens me, and I came here to have you help me find a way out. Instead, you are in favor of Beatrix's signing her own death warrant."

"No," she said slowly. "Down in my heart of hearts, I think it is all a mistake, a terrible mistake; and I have tried in vain to find a way to prevent it. Then, each time I think it over, I am afraid to prevent it, because it seems to me that Beatrix's mistake is just a little bit nobler than the safe course which we ourselves would take."

"Have you heard Mr. Thayer say what he thinks about it?" Sally asked.

"Not lately."

Sally's eyes were under less subjection than her tongue, and Miss Gannion answered the question they so plainly asked.

"Long ago, before the night of the concert, even, Mr. Thayer spoke of the matter to me. Since then he has never mentioned it."

"I wish you would ask him what he thinks now," Sally said bluntly. "He knows Mr. Lorimer better than any of us do, and he should be able to judge what we ought to do about it."

"The honest fact is," Bobby broke in thoughtfully; "we can't one of us do a solitary thing about it, but get together and grumble. Beatrix hasn't a clinging, confiding nature; she makes up her own mind and she doesn't change it easily. If she has decided to marry Lorimer, we can kneel in a ring at her feet and shed tears by the pint, and all the good it will do us will be the chance of making her die of pneumonia caused by the surrounding dampness. But it's a beastly shame! I'd rather she married Arlt and done with it. If you've got to form a character, it's better to start in while the character is young."

Miss Gannion caught at the opportunity for a digression.

"Mr. Arlt is coming to lunch," she observed.

"To-day? I didn't know he was back in town."

"He came last night."

"Was Mr. Thayer with him?"

"No; Mr. Thayer sings in Boston, last night and to-night. He sent me a note, saying I might expect him to dinner on Tuesday."

"I wonder what success Mr. Arlt has had."

"Mr. Thayer sent me some criticisms. They were very enthusiastic, as far as they went; but that was only a few lines."

"And the rest of the criticism probably concerned itself with Thayer, and was discreetly cut away," Bobby said, as he dropped back into his chair. "Miss Gannion, Arlt is on the steps, and you have not invited us to stay to lunch, so we must take a reluctant departure. Before I go, though, I'd like to ask one favor. When Thayer comes, Tuesday night, are you willing to talk the whole matter over with him and see what he thinks about it now? There would be a certain consolation to me in knowing that he disapproved the affair, and he may possibly suggest some way of breaking it off."

"Possibly," Miss Gannion assented; "unless it is already too late."

The words were still ringing in the air, when Arlt came into the room. They were still ringing in Bobby's ears, ten minutes later, when he and Sally took their leave.

"My mental ganglia are cleared," Bobby said disconsolately, as they went down the steps. "I now see that there is precisely one thing for us to do, and only one."

"What is that?"

"To grin and bear it."



CHAPTER ELEVEN

Beatrix's principles extended even to the point of observing her day at home. Society was bidden, the next afternoon, to a tea at Mrs. Stanley's, and Beatrix was absolutely certain that none of her friends would cross the intervening forty blocks in order to look in upon her, going or coming. In her secret heart, she longed to follow society; instead, she was sitting in solitude, when Thayer was announced.

She rose to greet him with a cordial friendliness, for the past six months had made a great change in their outward relations. They had liked each other from the day of Mrs. Stanley's recital, and the liking had increased with each subsequent meeting. During the next few weeks, they had met often. Lorimer insisted upon going to every recital at which Thayer was to sing, and under his guidance Beatrix had gained a fair idea of what went on behind the scenes. Thayer, meanwhile, had swiftly assumed his own place in society, and discerning hostesses generally found it well to put him near to Beatrix at dinner. Owing to his many evening engagements, Thayer usually ate but sparingly, so it was all the more necessary that he should be placed within range of someone with whom he cared to talk. He rarely lent himself to the usual run of social badinage; but retired into his shell whenever it became the dominant note of the conversation. A man of his bulk and prominence and potential boredom was an object of hospitable consideration. He could always talk to Beatrix, for she never chattered. Therefore he was generally to be found somewhere within the conversational radius of Beatrix Dane.

The tea table of Beatrix, moreover, had become one of the focal points of his New York life. He liked the cheery, informal atmosphere of the house whose old-fashioned austerity was tempered with a dash of modern frivolity; he liked the people he met there, people too assured of their own social position to be touchy upon slight points of social precedence. Most of all, he liked Beatrix Dane, herself. In the gay, chattering multitude among whom she moved, her own steadfast quietness stood out in bold relief, and it answered to certain traits of his own Puritanism. It was not that she was dull, or overfreighted with conscience. She frisked with the others of her kind; but her friskiness was intermittent and never frivolous. To Beatrix Dane, pleasure was an interlude, never the sole end and aim of life. And, on her own side, Beatrix felt a thorough admiration for the clean-minded, clean-bodied singer, a thorough reliance upon his judgment and upon his loyalty to anyone to whom he vouchsafed his friendship.

This had been the relation between them, on the evening of the concert for the Fresh Air Fund, a relation whose cordial matter-of-factness was in no way disturbed by the potent spell of Thayer's voice. Beatrix had spent much of her life in the open air; she was too healthy to be given to self-analysis. She admitted to herself the wonderful power of Thayer's voice, the passionate appeal of certain of his songs; but she made a curiously sharp distinction between the man and the voice. The one might be a strong guiding force in the current of her life; the other was a rising tide that swept her from her moorings and left her drifting to and fro over stormy seas. On the night of the Fresh Air Fund concert, for the first time in her experience, these two personalities had become inextricably intermingled. As she had said, she had never before realized the possibilities of either Thayer or his voice.

Everything had conspired to produce the impression. All day long, she had been haunted by a nervous, nameless dread. The vague hints and signs of the past months had suddenly gathered to a nucleus of anxiety and alarm, and, in spite of her rigid self-control, she had been terrified into giving the one outcry, partly to satisfy her feminine need for sympathy, partly with the hope of putting Lorimer upon his guard. The sympathy had come, prompt and loving; the warning had been utterly ignored.

Music ought to be taken with fasting and prayer. Quiet nerves and a full stomach are deaf to its deepest meaning. To most of the audience, Honor and Arms stood as a superb piece of vocal gymnastics; to Beatrix, Thayer was like a live wire, pulsing with a virile scorn of any but uneven contests, defiant only of those mightier than himself. To her mind, he was ready to court heavy odds, bound to conquer them, one and all; and her own pulses beat faster in time to the half-barbarous outburst which ends the great aria. The Gade concerto, instead of soothing her, had only exasperated her. She longed to get behind the violinist and the orchestra and even the composer himself, and goad them into some tenseness of emotion. But the Slavonic Dance had set her heart bounding once more, until her very finger tips tingled with the blood racing through them, and the clashing cymbals had seemed scarcely louder than the ringing of her own ears. The rest had been only the natural sequel; Danny and Arlt's failure had led inevitably up to the finale when Thayer's eyes, burning with that new, strange light, had held her own eyes captive while he had sounded the tragic note which dominates all human love.

And the finale had not been final, after all. She had had a vague presentiment that the cross might be at the end; she had been totally unprepared to find it pressed to her lips, that selfsame night.

With a swift excuse, Thayer had hurried her back into the music-room; but he had not been able to prevent that one instant when Beatrix had found herself face to face with a Lorimer she had never known till then. Though her eyes had betrayed her horror of the scene, she had kept her voice steady as she asked Thayer to call her carriage and to say her farewells to her hostess.

Thayer went with her to her own door. Neither of them spoke until they stood on the steps; then Thayer cleared his throat, but even then his voice was husky.

"It may not be as bad as you think, Miss Dane," he said slowly.

As if with a physical effort, she raised her eyes to his.

"Perhaps not," she assented; "but I can think of nothing worse."

It took Thayer two weeks to gather together his courage to see her again. He too had been shaken by the events of the evening. His Slav blood, kindled by the Dvorak dance, fired by his anger for Arlt, had blazed up into a fury of scorn and hatred against the man who would so allow his own weakness to stab another's strength. Lorimer, in Bobby Dane's cab and under the lash of Bobby's energetic tongue, was out of Thayer's way; but, as Thayer stood looking down at the face, whiter than the fluffy white fur of her cloak, he had felt a momentary longing to take Beatrix into his arms and, holding her there, to protect her from Lorimer and from the danger that was threatening her whole happiness. The moment passed and with it the longing; but, unknown to himself, it had done its work. It had broken out the beginning of a new channel; it had prepared the way for a new trend of thought.

Bobby Dane told him what had actually passed between himself and Lorimer on the way home, what had probably occurred, the next day, between Lorimer and Beatrix. Thayer waited before calling until he hoped the memory of what had passed was so remote that neither he nor Beatrix would think of it again. Nevertheless, though Beatrix was surrounded by callers and upon her guard, the eyes of both drooped before the sudden consciousness of having faced a crisis side by side.

According to their annual custom, the Danes went to their cottage at Monomoy, the first of July, and Lorimer took up his quarters at the hotel, less than a mile away. Two weeks later, Thayer and Arlt joined him there. Lorimer had been urgent for Thayer's coming, and Thayer, upon thinking the matter over, could see no valid reason for refusal. Miss Gannion was on the way to Alaska, that summer, and, next to her, the Danes were the closest friends he had made during his first season in New York. It was only natural that he should arrange his plans in order to be near them. Moreover, the idle life on the island sounded attractive, and he was fully aware of the fact that his constant companionship would be a strong hold upon Lorimer. All in all, he decided to go.

He took Arlt with him, on the plea of requiring an accompanist for the new songs he was studying. The boy needed the change. The stress of New York life was wearing upon him; the consciousness of comparative failure had disheartened him. He needed the tonic of sea air and of idleness and of contact with inartistic, care-free humanity. Furthermore, Thayer felt that he himself might need the tonic of the simple-hearted affection of the young German. The world about him was too complex. There were days when the most conventional of incidents seemed weighted with a hidden meaning, burdened with a consciousness of their own future import.

The summer days passed swiftly and with a certain monotony. During the mornings while Thayer was practising, Lorimer and Beatrix idled away the hours together. Later in the day, Thayer always appeared at Monomoy, sometimes with Lorimer, sometimes alone. Occasionally Beatrix forsook them both, and went off for long walks with Arlt or floated lazily about the harbor with him, leaving her mother to entertain the young men with garrulous recollections of her own childhood.

One subject was forever sealed between Beatrix and Thayer, to one evening's events they neither of them ever alluded. Now and then, at some careless turn of the conversation, one or the other of them would stealthily raise his eyes to find the other furtively watching him; and their eyes would drop apart again swiftly. It was obvious to Thayer that Beatrix was carrying a heavy care, that summer. If Lorimer were tardy in appearing, she was absent and restless; if he came upon her suddenly, she started; if he talked or laughed more than usual, she invented an excuse to take him away from the group, apart from the general conversation. Occasionally, it was evident to Thayer that she was trying to take him, himself, off his guard, seeking to make him betray himself, in case he was sharing in her watchfulness. Upon such occasions, Thayer's mental armor became as impenetrable as a corselet of steel. If he were keeping guard over Lorimer, amusing him and circumventing him in a thousand different ways, it was not only for Lorimer's sake, but for that of Beatrix as well, and it was imperative that Beatrix should never know. The day had passed forever when he could look into Miss Gannion's clear eyes and declare with perfect truthfulness that Beatrix was nothing in the world to him. He admitted this to himself; he also admitted that there are an infinite number of gradations between the opposite poles, nothing and something. There was no especial need of deciding which one of them marked his present status.

This Monday afternoon was the first time he had seen Beatrix since early September. He had left the others at Monomoy and, in company with Arlt, had gone back to the city to put himself in training for some autumn festivals at which he had been engaged to sing. By the time Beatrix was back in town once more, he had started upon what was destined to be a triumphal progress through New England. To some men, the mere professional success would have been enough in itself; but Thayer was of too large calibre to find a steady diet of applause and adjectives, both in the superlative degree of comparison, either a satisfactory or a stimulating meal. Often and often, as he bowed across the footlights preparatory to shouldering and lugging off his ponderous wreath of laurels, he would have given all the evening's triumph for the sake of one quiet hour upon the Monomoy beach.

The evening before had been the climax of his empty successes. It had been Boston's first oratorio of the season, and the wreath had been an unusually ponderous one. It had met him promptly at the end of his first number, and it had impressed him as a curious bit of irony, following as it did upon the closing phrases of Spe modo Vivitur. Were his crowns to be only the thornless, characterless ones that went with his profession? He bowed low, nevertheless, before the storm of applause, set up his trophy against the steadiest of the music racks of the second violins, and lost himself so completely in wondering how Lorimer was holding out without him that he went through his part in the quartette, three numbers later, in perfect unconsciousness of the hostile glances which the soprano had been casting at him during the Est tibi Laurea. Her flowers had been carnations, and only two dozen of them, at that.

The next afternoon, Thayer found himself in the familiar room, with Beatrix's hand in his own.

"Only ten weeks, measured by time," he answered her greeting; "but it seems half a decade since we were killing time on the beach at Monomoy."

"Killing crabs, you would better say," she returned, with a smile. "I think you and Sidney must have exterminated the race for all time."

"Can you destroy the future for a race that habitually goes backwards?" he questioned, with a boyish gayety which she had never seen in him before. "How is Lorimer?"

No one else but Thayer would have noted the slight hesitation that punctuated her reply.

"He is—well."

Thayer's momentary gayety left him, and he glanced at her sharply.

"And you?" he asked.

"I am always in rude health, just now the better for having you invade my loneliness. Do you still take only one lump?" Her tone was perfectly noncommittal.

"Only one. How does it happen that I have the good luck to find you alone?"

"Everybody is at Mrs. Stanley's. She has captured a new lion, and has bidden the world to come and inspect her prey."

Thayer laughed.

"What is he, this time?"

"Not he at all; it is a full-fledged Japanese princess whose husband does lectures on some sort of theosophy before all the universities. Your lustre is totally eclipsed by this new comet." There was a short silence; then Beatrix added inconsequently, "We all of us have been so delighted at your success, Mr. Thayer."

He did not take the trouble to discount the fact; but merely asked,—

"How did you know about it?"

"We have followed you in the papers. Bobby had some, and I think Sidney must have bought tons of them. He even talked of subscribing to a clipping bureau. He has read them aloud to us, every night; and we all have tried to act as if it were nothing so very unusual to have one of our friends winning laurels by the wholesale."

"They were very concrete laurels, too, Miss Dane," he returned indifferently, though his face had lighted at her eager accent. "Some of the wreaths must have been four feet across, and I invariably tripped over the ribbons, when I carried them off the stage. I did wish they would furnish a dray; garlands are horribly in the way in a carriage."

"And then what became of them?"

Thayer shrugged his shoulders.

"Ask the chambermaids along the route. I don't mean to be unappreciative; but not even the most trusting of publics could expect me to bear my trophies away in my arms, next morning. I came to wish I could ship them back to the florist, to be presented to some other baritone, the next night."

"But you enjoyed the trip?"

"After a fashion. I enjoyed the summer more, though."

"There is a certain satisfaction in dropping off the social harness now and then, and we were comparatively primitive at Monomoy," she assented. "The whole summer would have been worth while, just for the sake of seeing Mr. Arlt enjoy it. Has he come back yet?"

"Yes, two days ago. The trip has meant a good deal to him, and already he is engaged for two festivals in the spring. I am hoping that a taste of success will give him more self-reliance. He needs it, if ever he is to impose himself upon the dear public. Even the critics are prone to take a man at his own valuation, and one of the best American musicians is working in a corner, to-day, because he finds it a good deal more interesting to work towards future successes than to exploit his past ones in the eyes of the world."

Beatrix smiled, half in assent, half in amusement at his sudden energy.

"Mr. Arlt will succeed in time; he is only a boy yet. But, with genius and energy and his real love for his art, there can be no doubt of his future."

"That is as fate may decree," Thayer answered.

"Or Providence," she corrected him.

He shook his head.

"Miss Dane, the more I know of life, I am learning to write fate in capitals, and to spell Providence with a little p. Things are pretty well cut out for us."

She glanced at him with sudden intentness.

"Then I hope the scissors are sharp, and that Moira carries a steady hand. We have to put up with our own indecisions; those of other people are maddening."

"Doesn't that depend upon what the decision finally proves to be?" he asked.

Her eyes had gone back to the fire, and her face was very grave.

"No; I would rather know where I am going. Anything is better than drifting; it is a comfort to look steadily forward to the best or to the worst." Suddenly she roused herself. "Mr. Thayer, do you realize that it is two months since I have heard you sing?"

He roused himself quite as suddenly. In the slight pause which had broken her speech, he had been making a swift, but futile effort to chart the future. He knew that Lorimer was drifting carelessly, thoughtlessly; he also knew that Beatrix was allowing herself to drift idly in his wake. And how about himself? And would they all make the same port in the end? If not, where would the diverging currents be waiting for them?

His brain was working intently; but his voice was quite conventional, as he rose.

"I hoped you would ask me. After a month or two of singing to strangers, I begin to feel the need of something a little more personal. Will you have the new songs, or the old?"

"The old, of course," she answered unhesitatingly.

He improvised for a moment; then he began to sing,—

"The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, Are as a string of pearls to me. I count them over one by—"

Abruptly he stopped singing and struck a dozen resonant major chords.

"What a disgustingly sentimental thing that is!" he said sharply. "After our summer at Monomoy in the sea air, we need an atmosphere of ozone, not of laughing gas."

And he played the prelude of Die Beiden Grenadieren.



CHAPTER TWELVE

Arlt dropped in at Thayer's rooms, the next afternoon, and sat looking on while his friend put himself into his evening clothes, preparatory to dining with Miss Gannion.

"I walked up here with Mr. Dane," he observed, after a thoughtful interval. "What an American he is!"

"American?"

"Yes. No other country but yours can produce such people. France tries it, and fails. A Frenchman takes his frivolity in earnest. Mr. Dane is like that little Scherzo by Faulkes, the one that frisks on and on, and all of a sudden comes to an end with a loud Ha ha over its own absurdity. Mr. Dane delights in his own talk, just as you delight in your singing."

"He is not self-conscious," Thayer objected quickly.

"Neither are you. Each of you has a gift, and you each delight in using it. That is not saying that you either of you regard it as the only gift in the world. Instead, having it, you make the most of it, to let it grow and to put it in the way of giving pleasure to other people."

Thayer smiled, in spite of himself.

"To paraphrase you, Arlt, what a German you are! Nobody else would attempt to philosophize concerning Bobby Dane."

"Why not? He is worth it, for he has other gifts than his wit."

"Did he say anything about Lorimer?" Thayer asked abruptly.

"He spoke of him once or twice."

"Anything especial?"

"N-o."

There had been a slight hesitation. The next instant, Arlt felt Thayer's keen eyes upon him.

"Is anything wrong with Lorimer?"

"What should there be?"

"Nothing should be. I asked if anything is."

"Mr. Dane would hardly discuss his friends with me." Arlt's tone was noncommittal.

"Now, see here, Arlt, don't get obstinate. We both know Lorimer's failing. Have you heard anything new about him?"

Arlt stared hard at the carpet.

"Mr. Lorimer was very good to the mother and Katarina," he said, in his slow, deliberate English.

"That may be. Mr. Lorimer has been good to a great many people, and we aren't going to forget it. That doesn't keep us from knowing his weakness."

"No," Arlt said simply; "but it might keep us from discussing it."

Thayer's lips shut closely for an instant. He felt a rebuke which Arlt would never have dared to intend.

"It might; but it does not. We both know it, and there is no harm in our talking it over. Lorimer is weak and foolish; he isn't nearly so bad as many men we know. The taint is in his blood, and he is too easy-going to fight it out."

"But he did fight, last summer," Arlt urged.

Thayer's thoughts flew backwards to one night, in Lorimer's room at the hotel. It seemed to him he could still see Lorimer's flushed face, still hear against the background of noises that marred the stillness of the August moonlight outside the window, the high-pitched, insistent voice of the man who sat on the edge of the bed, arguing about the necessity of unlacing his shoes before taking them off. The next morning, Beatrix had received a note from Thayer, apologizing for carrying Lorimer off for a day's fishing. Cotton Mather himself might well have envied the grim fervor of the sermon preached by his namesake, that sunshiny summer day. The old-time hell gave place to a more modern theory of retribution; but the terrors were painted with a black-tipped brush, and Lorimer had shuddered, as he listened. For the once, Thayer had made no effort to avoid rousing his antagonism. Lorimer had been more angry than ever before in his life; then the inevitable reaction had come, and it had been a penitent, hopeful sinner who had walked up the pier at Thayer's side, late in the afternoon. But Arlt, who had been playing Chopin at Monomoy, all the previous evening, was quite at a loss to understand how a single day's fishing could so completely exhaust a strong man like Thayer.

Arlt changed his phrase to the direct question.

"Don't you think he fought with the best that was in him?"

And Thayer assented with perfect truthfulness,—

"I do."

"Then we ought to ask for nothing more."

"If he stood alone. Unfortunately he doesn't."

Arlt raised his brows.

"But the risk is hers."

Thayer untied his necktie with a long, deliberate pull, and made a second attempt to arrange it to his liking. At length he turned from the mirror and faced Arlt.

"Would you be willing to allow Katarina to take such a risk?"

"No," Arlt answered honestly, after an interval.

Neither man spoke for some time. Arlt was unwilling to continue the subject, and Thayer knew from experience the uselessness of trying to force him to talk when he was minded to keep silence. It was Arlt, however, who finally broke the silence, and his subject was one utterly remote from Lorimer.

"I have heard from the mother, to-day," he said suddenly.

"Good news, I hope." Thayer's tone was as hearty as if he had felt no passing annoyance at the boy's stubborn reticence.

"The best that can be for them. An old cousin has died, and they are his heirs."

"Good! Is it much?"

"Enough so they can live in comfort, whatever happens to me."

"And enough so that you can live in comfort, without anxiety for them," Thayer supplemented kindly.

"Without anxiety; I can do without the comfort," Arlt replied. "I have worried sometimes."

Crossing the room, Thayer laid his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"And you have borne the worry very pluckily, too, Arlt. It has been hard for you, this first year in America, with the double care for them and for yourself. I hope things are going to be easier now."

"It will be a help in my work," he assented. Then he added, with a sudden effort which showed how dear the subject was to his heart, "I think I shall now have a few more lessons in counterpoint."

"More?" Thayer said interrogatively.

"Yes; I had already studied for two years."

"And you want to compose?"

"When I know enough. Not till then."

"It takes something besides the knowing, to make a composer, Arlt," Thayer said warningly.

"I know. But I think I have something to say, when I am ready," the boy answered, with simple directness.

"But, if you wanted to study counterpoint, why didn't you say so? You knew I would lend you the money."

"Yes, you would give me everything; but I could never accept this."

"Why not?"

Arlt looked up, and even Thayer, well as he knew him, was surprised at the sudden concentration of character in the boy's face.

"One will be helped in the small things, never in accomplishing the real purpose of his life. Each one of us must work that out for himself. Then, if he succeeds or fails, at least the result is of his own making."

Dismissing four or five importunate cab drivers with a brief shake of his head, Thayer went striding away up the Avenue towards Miss Gannion's house. As he went, he was half-consciously applying Arlt's words to the question of his own future. It was true enough that he must work out his own real purpose for himself; and, in one sense the unsuccessful boy was happier by far than the successful man. Arlt's purpose was single. Thayer's was two-fold, and as yet he could not determine which of them would prove to be the dominant impulse of his life.

"Really, it does seem very good to drop back into the old ways," Miss Gannion said contentedly, two hours later.

The loitering, lingering dinner was over; the servants had been instructed to admit no other guests, and Miss Gannion was snuggled back in her deep chair, gazing up at Thayer who stood on the rug with his hands idly locked behind his back. In this room which showed so plainly its feminine occupancy, he seemed uncommonly virile, and Miss Gannion, watching him, felt a momentary exultation in his virility. Most of the men whom she knew, put on a feminine languor as an adjunct to their evening clothes. Thayer looked down upon her with manifest approval. After months of separation, it was good to find himself in the presence of this woman to whom he was allowed to speak freely his real opinion. Miss Gannion by no means always agreed with him; but she usually understood his point of view and was willing to admit its weight. Moreover, she was able to discuss without losing her temper, and she belonged to that species of good listener who understands that an occasional word of comprehension is worth more than hours of mere silent attention.

"It is refreshing to get back to a place where my personality counts for something," Thayer assured her. "The past two months have left me feeling as if I had not a friend in the world, nothing but audiences."

"What an ingrate you are! Most of us would be willing to have that kind of impersonality."

"Would you?"

"No," she said candidly. "I'm not large enough for that."

"It wouldn't have occurred to me that it was any indication of largeness."

"To be able to resign your own individuality, for the sake of the pleasure you can give other people? That seems to me rather large."

"It depends. I think I would rather concentrate my efforts, person on person, instead of spreading myself out like a vast impersonal plaster."

She laughed a little, though her eyes were very grave.

"You might apply your theory here and now. Go and sing to me, not a new song, but one of the old favorites."

Obediently he crossed the room to the piano where he sat for an hour, now singing, now stopping to comment on a song or to relate some of his experiences of the past two months. Later that night, when Miss Gannion was thinking over the talk of the evening, it suddenly occurred to her that he had made no reference at all to the summer. At length he rose to return to the fire.

"No," she objected. "There is one song still lacking. You've not sung The Rosary yet."

His stride across the room never hesitated, although duller ears than his own could not have mistaken the wish in her voice.

"I have worn out The Rosary," he said briefly. "I shall have to let it rest for a while."

"I am sorry. I loved it."

He laughed mirthlessly.

"It is the weakest kind of sentimentality, Miss Gannion. The song itself amounts to very little; it is merely a question of the key."

"I am sorry," she repeated, still a little sadly. "I have cared a good deal for the song."

Thayer made no answer, and she sat looking up at him with a steady wishfulness which made him uneasy. Her next words, though chosen by chance, increased his uneasiness.

"Have you seen Miss Dane, since you came back?"

"I was there, yesterday."

"How did she seem to you?"

His steady eyes met hers without wavering.

"I don't quite understand what you mean by the question."

Miss Gannion varied the form of her words.

"Did you think she looked well?"

"Very."

"And yet, I don't think Beatrix is happy," Miss Gannion said, half to herself.

"Why not?"

"How can she be? Beatrix is not dense. She thinks things, and she must know the uncertainty of the future."

"But I thought it was quite certain." There was a level monotony in Thayer's accent.

"You think Mr. Lorimer has really reformed and is out of danger?" Miss Gannion asked quickly.

"I wish he had," Thayer answered half involuntarily.

"Then there is still trouble?"

But already Thayer was once more upon his guard.

"I have heard of nothing since I came home."

"Have you seen Mr. Lorimer?"

"No."

There was a curt brevity in his manner which was new to Miss Gannion. In spite of herself, it set her to wondering whether prosperity had been good for her friend, whether the consciousness of his own importance were making him indifferent to the interests of others. Perhaps, after all, it was true that he was becoming impersonal. He might be growing larger; he was certainly growing more remote from her life. Miss Gannion cared for Thayer. Now, while she watched him, her eyes were lighted with an almost fierce affection, even though her disappointment made her voice take on a hard, metallic ring, as she asked,—

"Are you turning your back upon the problem of your old friend, Mr. Thayer?"

"No," he answered; "but I thought we had solved it, in this very room."

She raised her brows interrogatively.

"'To say our prayers, and wait,'" he quoted.

Her momentary distrust of him weakened, and her face lighted, as she heard him quoting her own words, spoken so long ago.

"Yes; but I—we all—think it is time—think it may be a mistake."

He lifted his eyes from the fire, looked at her steadily for a minute, and then stared into the fire again. She grew restless with the stillness.

"And we thought perhaps you could say something."

"To—?" he asked, without raising his eyes.

"To Mr. Lorimer."

"What could I say?"

"Something to break it off."

In spite of himself, he laughed outright.

"Would you advise threats or bribery, Miss Gannion? I really can't imagine any argument that would lead Lorimer to give up Miss Dane of his own accord."

"Couldn't you put it to him strongly that he has no moral right to hold her to her promise?"

"I could; but he would probably put it to me just as strongly that I have no moral right to interfere in his concerns."