"Does the other girl still feel the way she did?"

"She's killing herself. She's breaking her heart. Nobody knows it but him and her—and even he doesn't take it in. But she is."

"I suppose she thinks I'm something awful."

"Does it matter to you what she thinks?"

"I don't want her to hate me."

"Oh, I shouldn't say she did that. She feels that, considering everything, you might have acted with more decision."

"But he won't let me."

"And he never will, if you wait for that."

"Then what do you think I ought to do?"

"That's where I find you weak, Letty, since you ask me the question. No one can tell you what to do—and he least of all. It's a situation in which one of you must withdraw—either you or the other girl. But, don't you see? he can't say so to either."

"And if one of us must withdraw you think it should be me."

"I have to leave that to you. You're the one who butted in. I know it wasn't your fault—that the fault was his entirely; but we recognize the fact that he's—how shall I put it?—not quite responsible. We women have to take the burden of the thing on ourselves, if it's ever to be put right."

In her corner of the car Letty thought this over. The impression on her mind was the deeper since, for several months past, she had watched the prince growing more and more unhappy. He was less nervous than he used to be, less excitable; and for that he had told her the credit was due to herself. "You soothe me," he had once said to her, in words she would always treasure; and yet as his irritability decreased his unhappiness seemed to grow. She could only infer that he was mourning over the girl to whom he was engaged, and on whom he had inflicted a great wrong. For the last few weeks Letty's mind had occupied itself with her almost more than with the prince himself.

"Do you think I shall ever see her?" she asked, suddenly now.

Barbara reflected. "I think you could if you wanted to."

"Should you arrange it?"

"I could."

"You're sure she'd be willing to see me?"

"Yes; I know she would."

"When could you do it?"

"Whenever you like."

"Soon?"

"Yes; sooner perhaps than—" Barbara spoke absently, as if a new idea was taking possession of her mind—"sooner perhaps than you think."

"And you say she's breaking her heart?"

"A little more, and it will be broken."

By the time Letty had been set down at the door in East Sixty-seventh Street the afternoon had grown chilly. In the back drawing-room Steptoe was on his knees lighting the fire. Letty came and stood behind him. Without preliminary of any kind she said, quietly:

"Steptoe, it's got to end."

Expecting a protest she was surprised that he should merely blow on the shivering flame, saying, in the interval between two long breaths: "I agrees with madam."

"And it's me that must end it."

He blew gently again. "I guess that'd be so too."

She thought of the little mermaid leaping into the sea, and trembling away into foam. "If he wants to marry the girl he's in love with he'll never do it the way we're living now."

He rose from his knees, dusting one hand against the other. "Madam's quite right. 'E won't—not never."

She threw out her arms, and moaned. "And, O Steptoe! I'm so tired of it."

"Madam's tired of——?"

"Of living here, and doing nothing, and just watching and waiting, and nothing never happening——"

"Does madam remember that, the dye when she first come I said there was two reasons why I wanted to myke 'er into a lydy?"

Letty nodded.

"The one I told 'er was that I wanted to 'elp someone who was like what I used to be myself."

"I remember."

"And the other, what I didn't tell madam, I'll tell 'er now. It was—it was I was 'opin' that a woman'd come into my poor boy's life as'd comfort 'im like——"

"And she didn't come."

"'E ain't seen that she's come. I said it'd be a tough job to bring 'im to fallin' in love with 'er like; but it's been tougher than what I thought it'd be."

"So that I must—must do something."

"Looks as if madam'd 'ave to."

"I suppose you know that there's an easy way for me to do it?"

"Nothink ain't so very easy; but if madam 'as a big enough reason——"

She felt the necessity of being plain. "I suppose that if he hadn't picked me up in the Park that day I'd have gone to the bad anyhow."

"If madam's thinkin' about goin' to the bad——"

She threw up her head defiantly. "Well, I am. What of it?"

"I was just thinkin' as I might 'elp 'er a bit about that."

She was puzzled. "I don't think you know what I said. I said I was——"

"Goin' to the bad, madam. That's what I understood. But madam won't find it so easy, not 'avin 'ad no experience like, as you might sye."

"I didn't know you needed experience—for that."

"All good people thinks that wye, madam; but when you tackle it deliberate like, there's quite a trick to it."

"And do you know the trick?" was all she could think of saying.

"I may not know the very hidentical trick madam'd be in want of—'er bein' a lydy, as you might sye—but I could put 'er in the wye of findin' out."

"You don't think I could find out for myself?"

"You see, it's like this. I used to know a young man what everythink went ag'in' 'im. And one dye 'e started out for to be a forgerer like—so as 'e'd be put in jyle—and be took care of—board and lodgin' free—and all that. Well, out 'e starts, and not knowin' the little ins and outs, as you might sye, everythink went agin 'im, just as it done before. And, would madam believe it? that young man 'e hended by studying for the ministry. Madam wouldn't want to myke a mistyke like that, now would she?"

Letty turned this over in her mind. A career parallel to that of this young man would effect none of the results she was aiming at.

"Then what would you suggest?" she asked, at last.

"I could give madam the address of a lydy—an awful wicked lydy, she is—what'd put madam up to all the ropes. If madam was to go out into the cold world, like, this lydy'd give 'er a home. Besides the address I'd give madam a sign like—so as the lydy'd know it was somethink special."

"A sign? I don't know what you mean."

"It'd be this, madam." He drew from his pocket a small silver thimble. "This'd be a password to the lydy. The minute she'd see it she'd know that the time 'ad come."

"What time?"

"That's somethink madam'd find out. I couldn't explyne it before'and."

"It sounds very queer."

"It'd be very queer. Goin' to the bad is always queer. Madam wouldn't look for it to be like 'avin' a gentleman lead 'er in to dinner."

"What's she like—the lady?"

"That's somethink madam'd 'ave to wyte and see. She wouldn't seem so wicked, not at first sight, as you might sye. But time'd tell. If madam'd be pytient—well, I wouldn't like to sye." He eyed the fire. "I think that fire'll burn now, madam; and if it don't, madam'll only 'ave to ring."

He was at the door when Letty, feeling the end of all things to be at hand, ran after him, laying her fingers on his sleeve.

"Oh, Steptoe; you've been so good to me!"

He relaxed from his dignity sufficiently to let his hand rest on hers, which he patted gently. "I've been madam's servant—and my boy's."

"I shall never think of you as a servant—never."

The frosty color rose into his cheeks. "Then madam'll do me a great wrong."

"To me you're so much higher than a servant——"

"Madam'll find that there ain't nothink 'igher than a servant. There's a lot about service in the pypers nowadyes, crackin' it up, like; but nobody don't seem to remember that servants knows more about that than what other people do, and servants don't remember it theirselves. So long as I can serve madam, just as I've served my boy——"

"Oh, but, Steptoe, I shall have gone to the bad."

"That'd be all the syme to me, madam. At my time o' life I don't see no difference between them as 'as gone to the bad and them as 'as gone to the good, as you might sye. I only sees—people."

Left alone Letty went back to the fire, and stood gazing down at it, her foot on the fender. So it was the end. Even Steptoe said so. In a sense she was relieved.

She was relieved at the prospect of being freed from her daily torture. The little mermaid walking on blades in the palace of the prince, and forever dumb, had known bliss, but bliss so akin to anguish that her heart was consumed by it. The very fact that the prince himself suffered from the indefinable misery which her presence seemed to bring made escape the more enticing.

She was so buried in this reflection as to have heard no sound in the house, when Steptoe announced in his stately voice: "Miss Barbara Walbrook." Having parted from this lady half an hour earlier Letty turned in some surprise.

"I've come back again," was the explanation, sent down the long room. "Don't let William bring in tea," the imperious voice commanded Steptoe. "We wish to be alone." There was the same abruptness as she halted within two or three feet of where Letty stood, supporting herself with a hand on the edge of the mantelpiece. "I've come back to tell you something. I made up my mind to it all at once—after I left you a few minutes ago. Now that I've done it I feel easier."

Letty didn't know which was uppermost in her mind, curiosity or fear. "What—what is it?" she asked, trembling.

"I've given up the fight. I'm out of it."

Letty crept forward. "You've—you've done what?"

"I told you in the Park that one or the other of us would have to withdraw——"

"One or the other of—of us?"

"Exactly and I've done it."

With horror in her face and eyes Letty crept nearer still. "But—but I don't understand."

"Oh, yes, you do. How can you help understanding. You must have seen all along that——"

"Not that—that you were—the other girl. Oh, not that!"

"Yes, that; of course; why not?"

"Because—because I—I couldn't bear it."

"You can bear it if I can, can't you—if I've had to bear it all these weeks and months."

"Yes, but that's—" she covered her face with her hands—"that's what makes it so terrible."

"Of course it makes it terrible; but it isn't as terrible now as it was—to you anyhow."

"But why do you withdraw when—when you love him—and he loves you——?"

"I do it because I want to throw all the cards on the table. It's what my common sense has been telling me to do all along, only I've never worked round to it till we had our talk this afternoon. Now I see——"

"What do you see, Miss Walbrook?"

"I see that we've got to give him a clean sheet, or he'll never know where he is. He can't decide between us because he's in an impossible position. We'll have to set him absolutely free, so that he may begin again. I'll do it on my side. You can do—what you like."

She went as abruptly as she came, leaving Letty clearer than ever as to her new course.

By midnight she was ready. In the back spare room she waited only to be sure that all in the house were asleep.

She had heard Allerton come in about half past nine, and the whispering of voices told that Steptoe was making his explanations, that she was out of sorts, had dined in her room, and begged not to be disturbed. At about half past ten she heard the prince go upstairs to his own room, though she fancied that outside her door he had paused for a second to listen. That was the culminating minute of her self-repression. Once it was over, and he had gone on his way, she knew the rest would be easier.

By midnight she had only to wait quietly. In the old gray rag and the battered black hat she surveyed herself without emotion. Since making her last attempt to escape her relation to all these things had changed. They had become less significant, less important. The emblems of the higher life which in the previous autumn she had buried with ritual and regret she now packed away in the closet, with hardly a second thought. The old gray rag which had then seemed the livery of a degraded life was now no more than the resumption of her reality.

"I'll go as I came," she had been saying to herself, all the evening. "I know he'd like me to take the things he's given me; but I'd rather be just what I was."

If there was any ritual in what she had done since Miss Walbrook had left her it was in the putting away of small things by which she didn't want to be haunted.

"I couldn't do it with this on," she said of the plain gold band on her finger, to which, as a symbol of marriage, she had never attached significance in any case.

She took it off, therefore, and laid it on the dressing table.

"I couldn't do it with this in my pocket," she said of the purse containing a few dollars, with which Steptoe had kept her supplied.

This too she laid on the dressing table, becoming as penniless as when Judson Flack had put her out of doors. Somehow, to be penniless seemed to her an element in her new task, and an excuse for it.

Since Allerton had never made her a present there was nothing of this kind to discard. It had been part of his non-committal, impersonal attitude toward her that he had never given her a concrete sign that she meant anything to him whatever. He had thanked her on occasions for the comforting quality he found in her presence. He had, in so many words, recognized the fact that when he got into a tantrum of nerves she could bring him out of it as no one else had ever done. He had also imparted to her the discovery that in reading to her, and trying to show her the point of view of a life superior to her own, he had for the first time in his life done something for someone else; but he had never gone beyond all this or allowed her to think that his heart was not given to "the girl he was engaged to." In that at least he had been loyal to the mysterious princess, as the little mermaid could not but see.

She was not consciously denuded, as she would have felt herself six months earlier. As to that she was not thinking anything at all. Her motive, in setting free the prince from the "drag" on him which she now recognized herself to be, filled all her mental horizons. So dominated was she by this overwhelming impulse as to have no thought even for self-pity.

When a clock somewhere struck one she took it as the summons. From the dressing-table she picked up the scrawl in Steptoe's hand, giving the name of Miss Henrietta Towell, at an address at Red Point, L. I. She knew Red Point, on the tip of Long Island, as a distant, partially developed suburb of Brooklyn. In the previous year she had gone with a half dozen other girl "supes" from the Excelsior Studio to "blow in" a quarter looking at the ocean steamers passing in and out. She had no intention of intruding on Miss Towell, but she couldn't hurt Steptoe's feelings by leaving the address behind her.

For the same reason she took the silver thimble which stood on the scrap of paper. On its rim she read the inscription, "H.T. from H.S." but she made no attempt to unravel the romance behind it. She merely slipped the scrawl and the thimble into the pocket of her jacket, and stood up.

She took no farewells. To do so would have unnerved her. On the landing outside her door she listened for a possible sound of the prince's breathing, but the house was still. In the lower hall she resisted the impulse to slip into the library and kiss the place where she had kissed his feet on the memorable morning when her hand had been on his brow. "That won't help me any," were the prosaic words with which she put the suggestion away from her. If the little mermaid was to leap over the ship's side and dissolve into foam the best thing she could do was to leap.

The door no longer held secrets. She had locked it and unlocked it a thousand times. Feeling for the chain in the darkness she slipped it out of its socket; she drew back the bolt; she turned the key. Her fingers found the two little brass knobs, pressing this one that way, and that one this way. The door rolled softly as she turned the handle.

Over the threshold she passed into a world of silence, darkness, electricity, and stars. She closed the door noiselessly. She went down the steps.



Chapter XXI

Having the choice between going southward either by Fifth Avenue or by Madison Avenue, Letty took the former for the reason that there were no electric cars crashing through it, so that she would be less observed. It seemed to her important to get as far from East Sixty-seventh Street as possible before letting a human glance take note of her personality, even as a drifting silhouette.

In this she was fortunate. For the hour between one and two in the early morning this part of Fifth Avenue was unusually empty. There was not a pedestrian, and only a rare motor car. When one of the latter flashed by she shrank into the shadow of a great house, lest some eye of miraculous discernment should light on her. It seemed to her that all New York must be ready to read her secret, and be on the watch to turn her back.

She didn't know why she was going southward rather than northward, except that southward lay the Brooklyn Bridge, and beyond the Brooklyn Bridge lay Beehive Valley, and within Beehive Valley the Excelsior Studio, and in the Excelsior Studio the faint possibility of a job. She was already thinking in the terms that went with the old gray rag and the battered hat, and had come back to them as to her mother-tongue. In forsaking paradise for the limbo of outcast souls she was at least supported by the fact that in the limbo of outcast souls she was at home.

She was not frightened. Now that she was out of the prince's palace she had suddenly become sensationless. She was like a soul which having reached the other side of death is conscious only of release from pain. She was no longer walking on blades; she was no longer attempting the impossible. Between her and the life which Barbara Walbrook understood the few steps she had taken had already marked the gulf. The gulf had always been there, yawning, unbridgeable, only that she, Letty Gravely, had tried to shut her eyes to it. She had tried to shut her eyes to it in the hope that the man she loved might come to do the same. She knew now how utterly foolish any such hope had been.

She would have perceived this earlier had he not from time to time revived the hope when it was about to flicker out. More than once he had confessed to depending on her sympathy. More than once he had told her that she drew out something he had hardly dared think he possessed, but which made him more of a man. Once he harked back to the dust flower, saying that as its humble and heavenly bloom brightened the spots bereft of beauty so she cheered the lonely and comfortless places in his heart. He had said these things not as one who is in love, but as one who is grateful, only that between gratitude and love she had purposely kept from drawing the distinction.

She did not reproach him. On the contrary, she blessed him even for being grateful. That meed he gave her at least, and that he should give her anything at all was happiness. Leaving his palace she did so with nothing but grateful thoughts on her own side. He had smiled on her always; he had been considerate, kindly, and very nearly tender. For what he called the wrong he had done her, which she held to be no wrong at all, he would have made amends so magnificent that the mere acceptance would have overwhelmed her. Since he couldn't give her the one thing she craved her best course was like the little mermaid to tremble into foam, and become a spirit of the wind.

It was what she was doing. She was going without leaving a trace. A girl more important than she couldn't have done it so easily. A Barbara Walbrook had she attempted a freak so mad, would be discovered within twenty-four hours. It was one of the advantages of extreme obscurity that you came and went without notice. No matter how conspicuously a Letty Gravely passed it would not be remembered that she had gone by.

With regard to this, however, she made one reserve. She couldn't disappear forever, not any more than Judith of Bethulia when she went to the tent of Holofernes. The history of Judith was not in Letty's mind, because she had never heard of it; there was only the impulse to the same sort of sacrifice. Since Israel could be delivered only in one way, that way Judith had been ready to take. To Letty her prince was her Israel. One day she would have to inform him that the Holofernes of his captivity was slain—that at last he was free.

There were lines along which Letty was not imaginative, and one of those lines ran parallel to Judith's experience. When it came to love at first sight, she could invent as many situations as there were millionaires in the subway. In interpreting a part she had views of her own beyond any held by Luciline Lynch. As to matters of dress her fancy was boundless.

Her limitations were in the practical. Among practical things "going to the bad" was now her chief preoccupation. She had always understood that when you made up your mind to do it you had only to present yourself. The way was broad; the gate wide open. There were wicked people on every side eager to pull you through. You had only to go out into the street, after dark especially—and there you were!

Having walked some three or four blocks she made out the figure of a man coming up the hill toward her. Her heart stopped beating; her knees quaked. This was doom. She would meet it, of course, since her doom would be the prince's salvation; but she couldn't help trembling as she watched it coming on.

By the light of an arc-lamp she saw that he was in evening dress. The wicked millionaires who, in motion-pictures, were the peril of young girls, were always so attired. Iphigenia could not have trodden to the altar with a more consuming mental anguish than Letty as she dragged herself toward this approaching fate; but she did so drag herself without mercy. For a minute as he drew near she was on the point of begging him to spare her; but she saved herself in time from this frustration of her task.

The man, a young stock-broker in a bad financial plight, scarcely noticed that a female figure was passing him. Had the morrow's market been less a matter of life and death to him he might have thrown her a glance; but as it was she did not come within the range of his consciousness. To her amazement, and even to her consternation, Letty saw him go onward up the hill, his eyes straight before him, and his profile sharply cut in the electric light.

She explained the situation by the fact that he hadn't seen her at all. That a man could actually see a girl, in such unusual conditions, and still go by inoffensively, was as contrary to all she had heard of life as it would have been to the principles of a Turkish woman to suppose that one of this sex could behold her face and not fall fiercely in love with her. As, however, two men were now coming up the hill together Letty was obliged to re-organize her forces to meet the new advance.

She couldn't reason this time that they hadn't seen her, because their heads turned in her direction, and the intonation of the words she couldn't articulately hear was that of faint surprise. Further than that there was no incident. They were young men too, also in evening dress, and of the very type of which all her warnings had bidden her beware. The immunity from insult was almost a matter for chagrin.

As she approached Fifty-ninth Street encounters were nearly as numerous as they would have been in daylight; but Letty went on her way as if, instead of the old gray rag, she wore the magic cloak of invisibility. So it was during the whole of the long half mile between Fifty-ninth Street and Forty-second Street. In spite of the fact that she was the only unescorted woman she saw, no invitation "to go to the bad" was proffered her. "There's quite a trick to it," Steptoe had said, in the afternoon; and she began to think that there was.

At Forty-second Street, for no reason that she could explain, she turned into the lower and quieter spur of Madison Avenue, climbing and descending Murray Hill. Here she was almost alone. Motor-car traffic had practically ceased; foot-passengers there were none; on each side of the street the houses were somber and somnolent. The electric lamps flared as elsewhere, but with little to light up.

Her sense of being lost became awesome. It began to urge itself in on her that she was going nowhere, and had nowhere to go. She was back in the days when she had walked away from Judson Flack's, without the same heart in the adventure. She recalled now that on that day she had felt young, daring, equal to anything that fate might send; now she felt curiously old and experienced. All her illusions had been dished up to her at once and been blown away as by a hurricane. The little mermaid who had loved the prince and failed to win his love in return could have nothing more to look forward to.

She was drifting, drifting, when suddenly from the shadow of a flight of broad steps a man stalked out and confronted her. He confronted her with such evident intention that she stopped. Not till she stopped could she see that he was a policeman in his summer uniform.

"Where you goin', sister?"

"I ain't goin' nowheres."

She fell back on the old form of speech as on another tongue.

"Where you come from then?"

Feeling now that she had gone to the bad, or was at the beginning of that process, she made a reply that would seem probable. "I come from a fella I've been—I've been livin' with."

"Gee!" The tone was of deepest pity. "Darned sorry to hear you're in that box, a nice girl like you."

"I ain't such a nice girl as you might think."

"Gee! Anyone can see you're a nice girl, just from the way you walk."

Letty was astounded. Was the way you walked part of Steptoe's "trick to it?" In the hope of getting information she said, still in the secondary tongue: "What's the matter with the way I walk?"

"There's nothin' the matter with it. That's the trouble. Anyone can see that you're not a girl that's used to bein' on the street at this hour of the night. Ain't you goin' anywheres?"

Fear of the police-station suddenly made her faint. If she wasn't going anywheres he might arrest her. She bethought her of Steptoe's scrawled address. "Yes, I'm goin' there."

As he stepped under the arc-light to read it she saw that he was a fatherly man, on the distant outskirts of youth, who might well have a family of growing boys and girls.

"That's a long ways from here," he said, handing the scrap of paper back to her. "Why don't you take the subway? At this time of night there's a train every quarter of an hour."

"I ain't got no bones. I'm footin' it."

"Footin' it all the way to Red Point? You? Gee!"

Once more Letty felt that about her there was something which put her out of the key of her adventure.

"Well, what's there against me footin' it?"

"There's nothin' against you footin' it—on'y you don't seem that sort. Haven't you got as much as two bits? It wouldn't come to that if you took the subway over here at——"

"Well, I haven't got two bits; nor one bit; nor nothin' at all; so I guess I'll be lightin' out."

She had nodded and passed, when a stride of his long legs brought him up to her again. "Well, see here, sister! If you haven't got two bits, take this. I can't have you trampin' all the way over to Red Point—not you!"

Before knowing what had happened Letty found her hand closing over a silver half-dollar, while her benefactor, as if ashamed of his act, was off again on his beat. She ran after him. Her excitement was such that she forgot the secondary language.

"Oh, I couldn't accept this from you. Please! Don't make me take it. I'm—" She felt it the moment for making the confession, and possibly getting hints—"I'm—I'm goin' to the bad, anyhow."

"Oh, so that's the talk! I thought you said you'd gone to the bad already. Oh, no, sister; you don't put that over on me, not a nice looker like you!"

She was almost sobbing. "Well, I'm going—if—if I can find the way. I wish you'd tell me if there's a trick to it."

"There's one trick I'll tell you, and that's the way to Red Point."

"I know that already."

"Then, if you know that already, you've got my four bits, which is more than enough to take you there decent." He lifted his hand, with a warning forefinger. "Remember now, little sister, as long as you spend that half dollar it'll bind you to keep good."

He tramped off into the darkness, leaving Letty perplexed at the ways of wickedness, as she began once more to drift southward.

But she drifted southward with a new sense of misgiving. Danger was mysteriously coy, and she didn't know how to court it. True, there was still time enough, but the debut was not encouraging. When she had gone forth from Judson Flack's she had felt sure that adventure lay in wait for her, and Rashleigh Allerton had responded almost instantaneously. Now she had no such confidence. On the contrary; all her premonitions worked the other way. Perhaps it was the old gray rag. Perhaps it was her lack of feminine appeal. Men had never flocked about her as they flocked about some girls, like bees about flowers. If she was a flower, she was a dust flower, a humble thing, at home in the humblest places, and never regarded as other than a weed.

She wandered into Fourth Avenue, reaching Astor Place. From Astor Place she descended the city by the long artery of Lafayette Street, in which teams rumbled heavily, and all-night workers shouted raucously to each other in foreign languages. One of a band of Italians digging in the roadway, with colored lanterns about them, called out something at her, the nature of which she could only infer from the laughter of his compatriots. Here too she began to notice other women like herself, shabby, furtive, unescorted, with terrible eyes, aimlessly drifting from nowhere to nowhere. There were not many of them; only one at long intervals; but they frightened her more than the men.

They frightened her because she saw what she must look like herself, a thing too degraded for any man to want. She was not that yet, perhaps; but it was what she might become. They were not wholly new to her, these women; and they all had begun at some such point as that from which she was starting out. Very well! She was ready to go this road, if only by this road her prince could be freed from her. Since she couldn't give up everything for him in one way, she would do it in another. The way itself was more or less a matter of indifference—not entirely, perhaps, but more or less. If she could set him free in any way she would be content.

The rumble and stir of Lafayette Street alarmed her because it was so foreign. The upper part of the town had been empty and eerie. This quarter was eerie, alien, and occupied. It was difficult for her to tell what so many people were doing abroad because their aims seemed different from those of daylight. What she couldn't understand struck her as nefarious; and what struck her as nefarious filled her with the kind of terror that comes in dreams.

By these Italians, Slavs, and Semites she was more closely scrutinized than she had been elsewhere. She was scrutinized, too, with a hint of hostility in the scrutiny. In their jabber of tongues they said things about her as she passed. Wild-eyed women, working by the flare of torches with their men, resented her presence in the street. They insulted her in terms she couldn't understand, while the men laughed in frightful, significant jocosity. The unescorted women alone looked at her with a hint of friendliness. One of them, painted, haggard, desperate, awful, stopped as if to speak to her; but Letty sped away like a snowbird from a shrike.

At a corner where the cross-street was empty she turned out of this haunted highway, presently finding herself lost in a congeries of old-time streets of which she had never heard. Her only knowledge of New York was of streets crossing each other at right angles, numbered, prosaic, leaving no more play to the fancy than a sum in arithmetic. Here the ways were narrow, the buildings tall, the night effects fantastic. In the lamp light she could read signs bearing names as unpronounceable as the gibbering monkey-speech in Lafayette Street. Warehouses, offices, big wholesale premises, lairs of highly specialized businesses which only the few knew anything about, offered no place for human beings to sleep, and little invitation to the prowler. Now and then a marauding cat darted from shadow to shadow, but otherwise she was as nearly alone as she could imagine herself being in the heart of a great city.

Still she went on and on. In the effort to escape this overpowering solitude she turned one corner and then another, now coming out beneath the elevated trains, now on the outskirts of docks where she was afraid of sailors. She was afraid of being alone, and afraid of the thoroughfares where there were people. On the whole she was more afraid of the thoroughfares where there were people, though her fear soon entered the unreasoning phase, in which it is fear and nothing else. Still headed vaguely southward she zigzagged from street to street, helpless, terrified, longing for day.

She was in a narrow street of which the high weird gables on either side recalled her impressions on opening a copy of Faust, illustrated by Gustave Dore, which she found on the library table in East Sixty-seventh Street. On her right the elevated and the docks were not far away, on the left she could catch, through an occasional side street the distant gleam of Broadway. Being afraid of both she kept to the deep canyon of unreality and solitude, though she was afraid of that. At least she was alone; and yet to be alone chilled her marrow and curdled her blood.

Suddenly she heard the clank of footsteps. She stopped to listen, making them out as being on the other side of the street, and advancing. Before she had dared to move on again a man emerged from the half light and came abreast of her. As he stopped to look across at her, Letty hurried on.

The man also went on, but on glancing over her shoulder to make sure that she was safe she saw him pause, cross to her side of the street, and begin to follow her. That he followed her was plain from his whole plan of action. The ring of his footsteps told her that he was walking faster than she, though in no precise hurry to overtake her. Rather, he seemed to be keeping her in sight, and watching for some opportunity.

It was exactly what men did when they robbed and murdered unprotected women. She had read of scores of such cases, and had often imagined herself as being stalked by this kind of ghoul. Now the thing which she had greatly feared having come upon her she was nearly hysterical. If she ran he would run after her. If she only walked on he would overtake her. Before she could reach the docks on one side or Broadway on the other, where she might find possible defenders, he could easily have strangled her and rifled her fifty cents.

It was still unreasoning fear, but fear in which there was another kind of prompting, which made her wheel suddenly and walk back towards him. She noticed that as she did so, he stopped, wavered, but came on again.

Before the obscurity allowed of her seeing what type of man he was she cried out, with a half sob:

"Oh, mister, I'm so afraid! I wish you'd help me."

"Sure!" The tone had the cheery fraternal ring of commonplace sincerity. "That's what I turned round for. I says, that girl's lost, I says. There's places down here that's dangerous, and she don't know where she is."

Hysterical fear became hysterical relief. "And you're not going to murder me?"

"Gee! Me? What'd I murder you for? I'm a plumber."

His tone making it seem impossible for a plumber to murder anyone she panted now from a sense of reassurance and security. She could see too that he was a decent looking young fellow in overalls, off on an early job.

"Where you goin' anyhow?" he asked, in kindly interest. "The minute I see you on the other side of the street, I says Gosh, I says! That girl's got to be watched, I says. She don't know that these streets down by the docks is dangerous."

She explained that she was on her way to Red Point, Long Island, and that having only fifty cents she was sparing of her money.

"Gee! I wouldn't be so economical if it was me. That ain't the only fifty cents in the world. Look-a-here! I've got a dollar. You must take that——"

"Oh, I couldn't."

"Shucks! What's a dollar? You can pay me back some time. I'll give you my address. It's all right. I'm married. Three kids. And say, if you send me back the dollar, which you needn't do, you know—but if you must—sign a man's name to the letter, because my wife—well, she's all right, but if——"

Letty escaped the necessity of accepting the dollar by assuring him that if he would tell her the way to the nearest subway station she would use a portion of her fifty cents.

"I'll go with you," he declared, with breezy fraternity. "No distance. They're expecting me on a job up there in Waddle Street, but they'll wait. Pipe burst—floodin' a loft where they've stored a lot of jute—but why worry?"

As they threaded the broken series of streets toward the subway he aired the matrimonial question.

"Some think as two can live on the same wages as one. All bunk, I'll say. My wife used to be in the hair line. Some little earner too. Had an electric machine that'd make hair grow like hay on a marsh. Two dollars a visit she got. When we was married she had nine hunderd saved. I had over five hunderd myself. We took a weddin' tour; Atlantic City. Gettin' married's a cinch; but stayin' married—she's all right, my wife is, only she's kind o' nervous like if I look sideways at any other woman—which I hardly ever do intentional—only my wife's got it into her head that...."

At the entrance to the subway Letty shook hands with him and thanked him.

"Say," he responded, "I wish I could do something more for you; but I got to hike it back to Waddle Street. Look-a-here! You stick to the subway and the stations, and don't you be in a hurry to get to your address in Red Point till after daylight. They can't be killin' nobody over there, that you'd need to be in such a rush, and in the stations you'd be safe."

To a degree that was disconcerting Letty found this so. Having descended the stairs, purchased a ticket, and cast it into the receptacle appointed for that purpose, she saw herself examined by the colored man guarding the entry to the platform. He sat with his chair tilted back, his feet resting on the chain which protected part of the entrance, picking a set of brilliant teeth. Letty, trembling, nervous, and only partly comforted by the cavalier who was now on his way to Waddle Street, shrank from the colored man's gaze and was going down the platform where she could be away from it. Her progress was arrested by the sight of two men, also waiting for the train, who on perceiving her started in her direction.

The colored man lifted his feet lazily from the chain, brought his chair down to four legs, put his toothpick in his waistcoat pocket, and dragged himself up.

"Say, lady," he drawled, on approaching her, "I think them two fellas is tough. You stay here by me. I'll not let no one get fresh with you."

Languidly he went back to his former position and occupation, but when after long waiting, the train drew in he unhooked his feet again from the chain, rose lazily, and accompanied Letty across the otherwise empty platform.

"Say, brother," he said to the conductor, "don't let any fresh guy get busy with this lady. She's alone, and timid like."

"Sure thing," the conductor replied, closing the doors as Letty stepped within. "Sit in this corner, lady, next to me. The first mutt that wags his jaw at you'll get it on the bean."

Letty dropped as she was bidden into the corner, dazed by the brilliant lighting, and the greasy unoccupied seats. She was alone in the car, and the kindly conductor having closed his door she felt a certain sense of privacy. The train clattered off into the darkness.

Where was she going? Why was she there? How was she ever to accomplish the purpose with which two hours earlier she had stolen away from East Sixty-seventh Street? Was it only two hours earlier? It seemed like two years. It seemed like a space of time not to be reckoned....

She was tired as she had never been tired in her life. Her head sank back into the support made by the corner.

"There's quite a trick to it," she found herself repeating, though in what connection she scarcely knew. "An awful wicked lydy, she is, what'd put madam up to all the ropes." These words too drifted through her mind, foolishly, drowsily, without obvious connection. She began to wish that she was home again in the little back spare room—or anywhere—so long as she could lie down—and shut her eyes—and go to sleep....



Chapter XXII

It was Steptoe who discovered that the little back spare room was empty, though William had informed him that he thought it strange that madam didn't appear for breakfast. Steptoe knew then that what he had expected had come to pass, and if earlier than he had looked for it, perhaps it was just as well. Having tapped at madam's door and received no answer he ventured within. Everything there confirming his belief, he went to inform Mr. Rash.

As Mr. Rash was shaving in the bathroom Steptoe plodded round the bedroom, picking up scattered articles of clothing, putting outside the door the shoes which had been taken off on the previous night, digging another pair of shoes from the shoe-cupboard, and otherwise busying himself as usual. Even when Mr. Rash had re-entered the bedroom the valet made no immediate reference to what had happened in the house. He approached the subject indirectly by saying, as he laid out an old velvet house-jacket on the bed:

"I suppose if Mr. Rash ain't goin' out for 'is breakfast 'e'll put this on for 'ome."

Mr. Rash, who was buttoning his collar before the mirror said over his shoulder: "But I am going out for my breakfast. Why shouldn't I? I always do."

Steptoe carried the house-jacket back to the closet.

"I thought as Mr. Rash only did that so as madam could 'ave the dinin' room to 'erself, private like."

As a way of expressing the fact that Allerton had never eaten a meal with Letty the choice of words was neat.

"Well? What then?"

"Oh, nothink, sir. I was only thinkin' that, as madam was no longer 'ere——"

Allerton wheeled round, his fingers clawing at the collar-stud, his face growing bloodless. "No longer here? What the deuce do you mean?"

"Oh, didn't Mr. Rash know? Madam seems to 'ave left us. I supposed that after I'd gone upstairs last night Mr. Rash and 'er must 'ave 'ad some sort of hunderstandin'—and she went."

"Went?" Allerton's tone was almost a scream. Leaping on the old man he took him by the shoulders, snaking him. "Damn you! Get it out! What are you trying to tell me?"

Steptoe quaked and cowered. "Why, nothink, sir. Only when William said as madam didn't come down to 'er breakfast I went to 'er door and tapped—and there wasn't no one in the room. Mr. Rash 'ad better go and see for 'imself."

The young man not only released the older one, but pushed him aside with a force which sent him staggering backwards. Over the stairs he scrambled, he plunged. Though he had never entered the back spare room since allotting it to Letty as her own he threw the door open now as if the place was on fire.

But by the time Steptoe had followed and reached the threshold Allerton had calmed suddenly. He stood in front of the open closet vaguely examining its contents. He picked up the little gold band, chucked it a few inches into the air, caught it, and put it down. He looked into the little leather purse, poured out its notes and pennies into his hand, replaced them, and put that also down again. He opened the old red volume lying on the table by the bed, finding The Little Mermaid marked by two stiff dried sprays of dust flower, which more than ever merited its name. When he turned round to where Steptoe, white and scared by this time, was standing in the open doorway, his, Allerton's, face was drawn, in mingled convulsion and bewilderment. With two strides he was across the room.

"Tell me what you know about this, you confounded old schemer, before I kick you out."

Shivering and shaking, Steptoe nevertheless held himself with dignity. "I'll tell you what I know, Mr. Rash, though it ain't very much. I know that madam 'as 'ad it in 'er mind for some time past that unless she took steps Mr. Rash'd never be free to marry the young lydy what 'e was in love with."

"What did she mean by taking steps?"

"I don't know exactly, but I think it was the kind o' steps as'd give Mr. Rash 'is release quicker nor any other."

Allerton's arm was raised as if to strike a blow. "And you let her?"

The old face was set steadily. "I didn't do nothin' but what Mr. Rash 'imself told me to do."

"Told you to do?"

"Yes, Mr. Rash; six months ago; the mornin' after you'd brought madam into the 'ouse. I was to get you out of the marriage, you said; but I think madam 'as done it all of 'er own haccord."

"But why? Why should she?"

Steptoe smiled, dimly. "Oh, don't Mr. Rash see? Madam 'ad give 'erself to 'im 'eart and spirit and soul. If she couldn't go to the good for 'im, she'd go to the bad. So long as she served 'im, it didn't matter to madam what she done. And if I was Mr. Rash——"

Allerton's spring was like that of a tiger. Before Steptoe felt that he had been seized he was on his back on the floor, with Allerton kneeling on his chest.

"You old reptile! I'm going to kill you."

"You may kill me, Mr. Rash, but it won't make no difference to madam 'avin' loved you——"

Two strong hands at his throat choked back more words, till the sound of his strangling startled Allerton into a measure of self-control. He scrambled to his feet again.

"Get up."

Steptoe dragged himself up, and after dusting himself with his fingers stood once more passive and respectful, as if nothing violent had occurred.

"If I was Mr. Rash," he went on, imperturbably, "I'd let well enough alone."

It was Allerton who was breathless. "Wha—what do you mean by well enough alone?"

"Well the wye I see it, it's this wye. Mr. Rash is married to one young lydy and wants to marry another." He broke off to ask, significantly: "I suppose that'd be so, Mr. Rash?"

"Well, what then?"

"Why, then, 'e can't marry the other young lydy till the young lydy what 'e's married to sets 'im free. Now that young lydy what 'e's married to 'as started out to set 'im free, and if I was Mr. Rash I'd let 'er."

"You'd let her throw herself away for me?"

"I'd let 'er do anythink what'd show I knowed my own mind, Mr. Rash. If it wouldn't be steppin' out of my place to sye so, I wish Mr. Rash could tell which of these two young lydies 'e wanted, and which 'e'd be willin' for to——"

"How can I tell that when—when both have a claim on me?"

"Yes, but only one 'as a clyme on Mr. Rash now. Madam 'as given up 'er clyme, so as to myke things easier for 'im. There's only one clyme now for Mr. Rash to think about, and that mykes everythink simple."

An embarrassed cough drew Steptoe's attention to the fact that someone was standing in the hall outside. It was William with a note on a silver tray. Beside the note stood a small square package, tied with a white ribbon, which looked as if it contained a piece of wedding cake. His whisper of explanation was the word, "Wildgoose," but a cocking of his eye gave Steptoe to understand that William was quite aware of wading in the current of his employer's love-affairs. Moreover, the fact that Steptoe and his master should be making so free with the little back spare room was in William's judgment evidence of drama.

"What's this?"

Glancing at the hand-writing on the envelope, and taking in the fact that a small square package, looking like a bit of wedding cake stood beside it, Allerton jumped back. Steptoe might have been presenting him with a snake.

"I don't know, Mr. Rash. William 'as just brought it up. Someone seems to 'ave left it at the door."

As Steptoe continued to stand with his offering held out Allerton had no choice but to take up the letter and break the seal. He read it with little grunts intended to signify ironic laughter, but which betrayed no more than bitterness of soul.

"DEAR RASH:

I have come to see that we shall never get out of the impasse in which we seem to have been caught unless someone takes a stand. I have therefore decided to take one. Of the three of us it is apparently easiest for me, so that I am definitely breaking our engagement and sending you back your ring. Any claim I may have had on you I give up of my own accord, so that as far as I am concerned you are free. This will simplify your situation, and enable you to act according to the dictates of your heart. Believe me, dear Rash, affectionately yours

BARBARA WALBROOK."

Though it was not his practice to take his valet into the secret of his correspondence the circumstances were exceptional. Allerton handed the letter to Steptoe without a word. As the old man was feeling for his glasses and adjusting them to his nose Mr. Rash turned absently away, picking up the volume of Hans Andersen, from which the sprays of dust flower tumbled out. On putting them back his eyes fell upon the words, which someone had marked with a pencil:

"Day by day she grew dearer to the prince; but he loved her as one loves a child. The thought of making her his queen never crossed his mind."

A spasm passed over his face. He turned the page impatiently. Here he caught the words which had been underlined:

"I am with him every day. I will watch over him—love him—and sacrifice my life for him."

Shutting the book with a bang, and throwing it on the table, he wheeled round to where Steptoe, having folded the letter, was taking off his spectacles.

"Well, what do you say to that?"

"What I'd sye to that, Mr. Rash, is that it's as good as a legal document. If any young lydy what wrote that letter was to bring a haction for breach, this 'ere pyper'd nyle 'er."

"So where am I now?"

"Free as a lark, Mr. Rash. One young lydy 'as turned you down, and the other 'as gone to the bad for you; so if you was to begin agyne with a third you'd 'ave a clean sheet."

He groaned aloud. "Ah, go to ——"

But without stating the place to which Steptoe was to go he marched out of the room, and back to his dressing upstairs.

* * * * *

More dispassionate was the early morning scene in the little basement eating house in which the stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture was serving breakfast to two gentlemen who had plainly met by appointment. Beside the one was an oblong packet, of which some of the contents, half displayed, had the opulent engraved decorations of stock certificates.

The other gentleman, resembling an operatic brigand a little the worse for wear, was saying with conviction: "Oil! Don't talk to me! No, sir! There's enough oil in Milligan Center alone to run every car in Europe and America at this present time; while if you include North Milligan, where it's beginnin' to shoot like the Old Faithful geyser——"

"Awful obliged to you, Judson," the other took up, humbly. "I thought that bunch o' nuts 'd never——"

"So did I, Gorry. I've sweated blood over this job all winter. Queer the way men are made. Now you'd hardly believe the work I've had to show that lot of boneheads that because a guy's a detective in one line, he ain't a detective in every line. Homicide, I said, was Gorry Larrabin's specialty, and where there's no homicide he's no more a detective than a busted rubber tire."

"You've said it," Gorry corroborated, earnestly. "One of the cussed things about detectin' is that fellas gets afraid of you. Think because you're keepin' up your end you must be down on every little thing, and that you ain't a sport."

"Must be hard," Judson said, sympathetically.

"I'll tell you it's hard. Lots of fun I'd like to be let in on—but you're kept outside."

The drawbacks of the detective profession not being what Judson chiefly had on his mind he allowed the subject to drop. An interval of silence for the consumption of a plateful of golden toasties permitted Gorry to begin again reminiscently.

"By the way, Judson, do you remember that about six months ago you was chewin' over that girl of yours, and what had become of her?"

To himself Judson said: "That's the talk; now we're comin' to business." Aloud he made it: "Why, yes. Seems to me I do. She's been gone so long I'd almost forgot her."

"Well, what d'ye know? Last night—lemme see, was it last night?—no, night before last—I kind o' got wind of her."

"Heaven's sake!"

"Guy I know was comin' through East Sixty-seventh Street, and there was my lady, dressed to beat the band, leadin' one of them little toy dogs, and talkin' to a swell toff that lives in one of them houses. Got the number here in my pocket-book."

While he was searching his pocket-book Judson asked, breathlessly: "Couldn't be no mistake?"

"It's nix on mistakes. That guy don't make 'em. Surest thing on the force. He said, 'Good afternoon, Miss Gravely'; and she said, 'Good afternoon' back to him—just like that. The guy walked on and turned a corner; but when he peeped back, there was the couple goin' into the house just like husband and wife. What d'ye know?"

"What do I know? I know I'll spill his claret for him before the week is out."

"Ah, here it is! Knew I had that address on me somewheres." He handed the scrap of paper across the table. "That's his name and number. Seems to me you may have a good thing there, Judson, if you know how to work it."

* * * * *

In another early morning scene the ermine was cleaning her nest; and you know how fastidious she is supposed to be as to personal spotlessness. The ermine in question did not belie her reputation, as you would have seen by a glance at the three or four rooms which made up what she called her "flat."

Nothing was ever whiter than the wood-work of the "flat" and its furnishings. Nothing was ever whiter than the little lady's dress. The hair was white, and even the complexion, the one like silver, the other like the camelia. Having breakfasted from white dishes placed on a white napkin, she was busy with a carpet-sweeper sweeping up possible crumbs. In an interval of the carpet-sweeper's buzz she heard the telephone.

"Hello!" The male voice was commanding.

"Yes?" The response was sweetly precise.

"Is this Red Point 3284-W?"

"It is."

"Can I speak to Miss Henrietta Towell?"

"This is Miss Henrietta Towell."

"This is the Brooklyn Bridge Emergency Hospital. Do you know a girl named Letitia Rashleigh?"

There was a second's hesitation. "I was once a lady's maid to a lady whose maiden name was Rashleigh. I think there may be a connection somewhere."

"She was found unconscious on a car in the subway last night and brought in here."

"And has she mentioned me?"

"She hasn't mentioned anyone since she came to; but we find your address on a paper in her pocket."

"That seems singular, but I expect there's a purpose behind it. Is that everything she had?"

"No; she had forty-five cents and a thimble."

"A thimble! Just an ordinary thimble."

"Yes, an ordinary thimble, except that it has initials on the edge. 'H.T. from H.S.' Does that mean anything to you?"

"Yes; that means something to me. May I ask how to reach the hospital?"

This being explained Miss Towell promised to appear without delay, begging that in the meantime everything be done for Miss Rashleigh's comfort.

She was not perturbed. She was not surprised. She did not wonder who Letitia Rashleigh could be, or why her address should be found in the girl's pocket. She was as quiet and serene as if such incidents belonged to every day's work.

Dressed for the street she was all in black. A mantua covered with bugles and braid dropped from her shoulders, while a bonnet which rose to a pointed arch above her brow, and allowed the silver knob of her hair to escape behind, gave her a late nineteenth century dignity. Before leaving the house she took two volumes from her shelves—read first in one, then in the other—sat pensive for a while, with head bent and eyes shaded—after which she replaced her books, turned the key in her door, and set forth for Brooklyn Bridge.



Chapter XXIII

"Why you should hold me responsible," Barbara was saying, "I can't begin to imagine. Surely I've done everything I could to simplify matters, to straighten them out, and to give you a chance to rectify your folly. I've effaced myself; I've broken my heart; I've promised Aunt Marion to go in for a job for which I'm not fitted and don't care a rap; and yet you come here, accusing me——"

"But, Barbe, I'm not accusing you! If I'm accusing anyone it's myself. Only I can't speak without your taking me up——"

"There you go! Oh, Rash, dear, if you'd only been able to control yourself nothing of this would have happened—not from the first."

She was pacing up and down the little reception room, and rubbing her hands together, while the twisting of the fish-tail of her hydrangea-colored robe, like an eel in agony, emphasized her agitation. Rashleigh was seated, his elbows on his knees, his head bowed between his hands, of which the fingers clutched and tore at the masses of his hair. Only when he spoke did he lift his woe-begone black eyes.

"Well, I didn't control myself," he admitted, impatiently; "that's settled. Why go back to it? The question is——"

"Yes; why go back to it? That's you all over, Rash. You can do what no one else in his senses would ever think of doing; and when you've upset the whole apple cart it must never be referred to again. I'm to accept, and keep silence. Well, I've kept silence. I've gone all winter like a muzzled dog. I've wheedled that girl, and kow-towed to her, and made her think I was fond of her—which I am in a way—you may not believe it, but I am—and what's the result? She gets sick of the whole business; runs away; and you come here and throw the whole blame on me."

He tried to speak with special calmness. "Barbe, listen to me. What I said was this——"

She came to a full stop in front of him, her arms outspread. "Oh, Rash, dear, I know perfectly well what you said. You don't have to go all over it again. I'm not deaf. If you would only not be so excitable——"

He jumped to his feet. "I'm excitable, I know, Barbe. I confess it. Everybody knows it. What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm not excited now."

She laughed, a little mocking laugh, and started once more to pace up and down. "Oh, very well! You're not excited now. Then that's understood. You never are excited. You're as calm as a mountain." She paused again, though at a distance. "Now? What is it you're going to do? That's what you've come to ask me, isn't it? Are you going to run after her? Are you going to let her go? Are you going to divorce her, if she gives you the opportunity? If you divorce her are you going to——?"

"But, Barbe, I can't decide all these questions now. What I want to do is to find her."

"Well, I haven't got her here? Why don't you go after her? Why don't you apply to the police? Why don't you——?"

"Yes, but that's just what I want to discuss with you. I don't like applying to the police. If I do it'll get into the papers, and the whole thing become so odious and vulgar——"

"And it's such an exquisite idyll now!"

He threw back his head. "She's an exquisite idyll—in her way."

"There! That's what I wanted to hear you say! I've thought you were in love with her——"

He remembered the penciled lines in Hans Andersen. "If I have been, it's as you may be in love with an innocent little child——"

She laughed again, wildly, almost hysterically. "Oh, Rash, don't try to get that sort of thing off on me. I know how men love innocent little children. You can see the way they do it any night you choose to hang round the stage-door of a theatre where the exquisite idylls are playing in musical comedy."

"Don't Barbe! Not when you're talking about her! I know she's an ignorant little thing; but to me she's like a wild-flower——"

"Wild-flowers can be cultivated, Rash."

"Yes, but the wild-flower she's most like is the one you see in the late summer all along the dusty highways——"

She put up both palms in a gesture of protestation. "Oh, Rash, please don't be poetical. It gets on my nerves. I can't stand it. I like you in every mood but your sentimental one." She came to a halt beside the mantelpiece, on which she rested an elbow, turning to look at him. "Now tell me, Rash! Suppose I wasn't in the world at all. Or suppose you'd never heard of me. And suppose you found yourself married to this girl, just as you are—nominally—legally—but not really. Would you—would you make it—really?"

They exchanged a long silent look. His eyes had not left hers when he said: "I—I might."

"Good! Now suppose she wasn't in the world at all, or that you'd never heard of her. And suppose that you and I were—were on just the same terms that we are to-day. Would you—would you want to marry me? Answer me truly."

"Why, yes; of course."

"Now suppose that she and I were standing together, and you were led in to choose between us. And suppose you were absolutely free and untrammelled in your choice, with no question as to her feelings or mine to trouble you. Which would you take? Answer me just as truly and sincerely as you can."

He took time to think, wheeling away from her, and walking up and down the little room with his hands behind his back. It occurred to neither that Barbara having broken the "engagement," and returned the ring, the choice before him was purely hypothetical. Their relations were no more affected by the note she had written him that morning than by the ceremony through which he and Letty had walked in the previous year.

To Barbara the suspense was almost unbearable. In a minute or two, and with a word or two, she would know how life for the future was to be cast. She would have before her the possibility of some day becoming a happy wife—or a great career like her aunt's.

Pausing in his walk he confronted her just as he stood, his hands still clasped behind his back. Her own attitude, with elbow resting on the mantelpiece, was that of a woman equal to anything.

He spoke slowly. "Just as truly and sincerely as I can answer you—I don't know."

She stirred slightly, but otherwise gave no sign of her impatience. "And is there anything that would help you to find out?"

He shook his head. "Nothing that I can think of, unless——"

"Yes? Unless—what?"

"Unless it's something that would unlock what's locked in my subconsciousness."

"And what would that be?"

"I haven't the faintest idea."

She moved from the mantelpiece with a gesture of despair. "Rash, you're absolutely and hopelessly impossible."

"I know that," he admitted, humbly.

With both fists clenched she stood in front of him. "I could kill you."

He hung his head. "Not half so easily as I could kill myself."

* * * * *

Letty's judgment on Miss Henrietta Towell was different from yours and mine. She found her just what she had expected to see from the warnings long ago issued by Mrs. Judson Flack in putting her daughter on her guard. In going about the city she, Letty, was always to be suspicious of elderly ladies, respectably dressed, enticingly mannered, and with what seemed like maternal intentions. The more any one of these traits was developed, the more suspicious Letty was to be. With these instructions carefully at heart she would have been suspicious of Henrietta Towell in any case; but with Steptoe's description to fall back upon she couldn't but feel sure.

By the time Miss Towell had arrived at the hospital Letitia Rashleigh had sufficiently recovered to be dressed and seated in the armchair placed beside the bed in the small white ward. On one low bedpost the jacket had been hung, and on the other the battered black hat.

"There's nothing the matter with her," the nurse explained to Miss Towell, before entering the ward. "She had fainted in the subway, but I think it was only from fatigue, and perhaps from lack of food. She's quite well nourished, only she didn't seem to have eaten any supper, and was evidently tired from a long and frightening walk. She gives us no explanation of herself, and is disinclined to talk, and if it hadn't been that she had your address in her pocket——"

"I think I know how she got that. From her name I judge that she's a relative of the family in which I used to be employed; but as they were all very wealthy people——"

"Even very wealthy people often have poor relations."

"Yes, of course; but I was with this family for so many years that if there'd been any such connection I think I must have heard of it. However, it makes no difference to me, and I shall be glad to be of use to her, especially as she has in her possession an article—a thimble it is—which once belonged to me."

At the bedside the nurse made the introduction. "This is the lady whose address you had in your pocket. She very kindly said she'd come and see what she could do for you."

Having placed a chair for Miss Towell the nurse withdrew to attend to other patients in the ward, of whom there were three or four.

Letty regarded the newcomer with eyes that seemed lustreless in spite of their tiny gold flames. Having a shrewd idea of what she would mean to her visitor she felt it unnecessary to express gratitude. In a certain sense she hated her at sight. She hated her bugles and braid and the shape of her bonnet, as the criminal about to be put to death might hate the executioner's mask and gaberdine. The more Miss Towell was sweet-spoken and respectable, the more Letty shrank from these tokens of hypocrisy in one who was wicked to the core. "She wouldn't seem so wicked, not at first," Steptoe had predicted, "but time'd tell." Well, Letty didn't need time to tell, since she could see for herself already. She could see from the first words addressed to her.

"You needn't tell me anything about yourself, dear, that you don't want me to know. If you're without a place to go to, I shall be glad if you'll come home with me."

It was the invitation Letty had expected, and to which she meant to respond. Knowing, however, what was behind it she replied more ungraciously than she would otherwise have done. "Oh, I don't mind talking about myself. I'm a picture-actress, only I've been out of a job. I haven't worked for over six months. I've been—I've been visiting."

Miss Towell lowered her eyes, and spoke with modesty. "I suppose you were visiting people who knew—who knew the person who—who gave you my address and the thimble?"

This question being more direct than she cared for Letty was careful to answer no more than, "Yes."

Miss Towell continued to sit with eyes downcast, and as if musing. Two or three minutes went by before she said, softly: "How is he?"

Letty replied that he was very well, and in the same place where he had been so long. Another interval of musing was followed by the simple statement: "We differed about religion."

This remark had no modifying effect on Letty's estimate of Miss Towell's character, since religion was little more to her than a word. Neither was she interested in dead romance between Steptoe and Miss Towell, all romance being summed up in her prince. That flame burned with a pure and single purpose to wed him to the princess with whom he was in love, while the little mermaid became first foam, and then a spirit of the air. It took little from the poetry of this dissolution that it could be achieved only by trundling over Brooklyn Bridge, and through a nexus of dreary streets. In Letty's outlook on her mission the end glorified the means, however shady or degraded.

It was precisely this spirit—mistaken, if you choose to call it so—which animated Judith of Bethulia, Monna Vanna, and Boule de Suif. Letty didn't class herself with these heroines; she only felt as they did, that there was something to be done. On that something a man's happiness depended; on it another woman's happiness depended too; on it her own happiness depended, since if it wasn't done she would feel herself a clog to be cursed. To be cursed by the prince would mean anguish far more terrible than any punishment society could mete out to her.

"If you feel equal to it we might go now, dear," Miss Towell suggested, on waking from her dreams of what might have been. "I wish I could take you in a taxi; but I daresay you won't mind the tram."

Letty rose briskly. "No, I shan't mind it at all." She looked Miss Towell significantly in the eyes, hoping that her words would carry all the meaning she was putting into them. "I shan't mind—anything you want me to do, no matter what."

Miss Towell smiled, sweetly. "Thank you, dear. That'll be very nice. I shan't ask you to do much, because it's your problem, you know, and you must work it out. I'll stand by; but standing by is about all we can do for each other, when problems have to be faced. Don't you think it is?"

As this language meant nothing to Letty, she thanked the nurse, smiled at the other patients, and, trudging at Miss Towell's side with her quaintly sturdy grace, went forth to her great sacrifice.

* * * * *

Allerton had drawn from his conversation with Barbara this one practical suggestion. As he had months before consulted his lawyer, Mr. Nailes, as to ways of losing Letty after she had been found, he might consult him as to ways of finding her now that she had been lost. Mr. Nailes would not go to the police. He would apply to some discreet house of detectives who would do the work discreetly.

"Then, I presume, you've changed your mind about this marriage," was Mr. Nailes' not unnatural inference, "and mean to go on with it."

"N-not exactly." Allerton was still unable to define his intentions. "I only don't want her to disappear—like this."

Mr. Nailes pondered. He was a tall, raw-boned man, of raw-boned countenance, to whom the law represented no system of divine justice, but a means by which Eugene Nailes could make money, as his father had made it before him. Having inherited his father's practice he had inherited Rashleigh Allerton, the two fathers having had a long-standing business connection. Mr. Nailes had no high opinion of Rashleigh Allerton—in which he was not peculiar—but a client with so much money was entitled to his way. At the same time he couldn't have been human without urging a point of common sense.

"If you don't want to—to continue your—your relation with this—this lady, doesn't it strike you that now might be a happy opportunity——?"

Allerton did what he did rarely; he struck the table with his fist. "I want to find her."

The words were spoken with so much force that to Mr. Nailes they were conclusive. It was far from his intention to compel anyone to common sense, and least of all a man whose folly might bring increased fees to the firm of Nailes, Nailes, and Nailes.

It was agreed that steps should be taken at once, and that Mr. Nailes would report in the evening. Gravely was the name Allerton was sure she would use, and the only one that needed to be mentioned. It needed only to be mentioned too that Mr. Nailes was acting for a client who preferred to remain anonymous.

It was further agreed that Mr. Nailes should report at Allerton's office at ten that evening, in person if there was anything to discuss, by telephone if there was nothing. This was convenient for Mr. Nailes, who lived in the neighborhood of Washington Square, while it protected Rash from household curiosity. At ten that night he was, therefore, in the unusual position of pacing the rooms he had hardly ever seen except by daylight.

Not Letty's disappearance was uppermost in his mind, for the moment, but his own inhibitions.

"My God, what's the matter with me?" he was muttering to himself. "Am I going insane? Have I been insane all along? Why can't I say which of these two women I want, when I can have either?"

He placed over against each other the special set of spells which each threw upon his heart.

Barbara was of his own world; she knew the people he knew; she had the same interests, and the same way of showing them. Moreover, she had in a measure grown into his life. Their friendship was not only intimate it was one of long standing. Though she worried, hectored, and exasperated him, she had fits of generous repentance, in which she mothered him adorably. This double-harness of comradeship had worked for so many years that he couldn't imagine wearing it with another.

And yet Letty pulled so piteously at his heart that he fairly melted in tenderness toward her. Everything he knew as appeal was summed up in her soft voice, her gentle manner, her humility, her unquestioning faith in himself. No one had ever had faith in him before. To Barbe he was a booby when he was not a baby. To Letty he was a hero, strong, wise, commanding. It wasn't merely his vanity that she touched; it was his manliness. Barbe suppressed his manliness, because she herself was so imperious. Letty depended on it, and therefore drew it out. Because she believed him a man, he could be a man; whereas with Barbe, as with everyone else, he was a creature to be liked, humored, laughed at, and good-naturedly despised. He was sick of being liked, humored, and laughed at; he rebelled with every atom in him that was masculine at being good-naturedly despised. To find anyone who thought him big and vigorous was to his starved spirit, as the psalmist says, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. In having her weakness to hold up he could for the first time in his life feel himself of use.

If there was no Barbe in the world he could have taken Letty as the mate his soul was longing for. Yet how could he deal such a blow at Barbe's loyalty? She had protected him during all his life, from boyhood upwards. Between him and derision she had stood like a young lioness. How could he deny her now?—no matter what frail, gentle hands were clinging around his heart?

"How can I? How can I? How can I?"

He was torturing himself with this question when the telephone rang, and he knew that Letty had not been found.

"No; nothing," were the words of Mr. Nailes. "No one of the name has been reported at any of the hospitals, or police stations, or any other public institution. They've applied at all the motion-picture studios round New York; but still with no result. This, of course, is only the preliminary search, as much as they've been able to accomplish in one afternoon and evening. You mustn't be disappointed. To-morrow is likely to be more successful."

Rash was, therefore, thrown back on another phase of his situation. Letty was lost. She was not only lost, but she had run away from him. She had not only run away from him, but she had done it so that he might be rid of her. She had not only done it so that he might be rid of her, but....

His spirit balked. His imagination could work no further. Horror staggered him. A mother who knows that her child is in the hands of kidnappers who will have no mercy might feel something like the despair and helplessness which sent him chafing and champing up and down the suite of rooms, cursing himself uselessly.

Suddenly he paused. He was in front of the cabinet which had come via Bordentown from Queen Caroline Murat. Behind its closed door there was still the bottle on the label of which a kilted Highlander was dancing. He must have a refuge from his thoughts, or else he would go mad. He was already as near madness as a man could come and still be reckoned sane.

He opened the door of the cabinet. The bottle and the glass stood exactly where he had placed them on that morning when he had tried to begin going to the devil, and had failed. Now there was no longer that same mysterious restraint. He was not thinking of the devil; he was thinking only of himself. He must still the working of his mind. Anything would do that would drug his faculties, and so....

It was after midnight when he dragged himself out of a stupor which had not been sleep. Being stupor, however, it was that much to the good. He had stopped thinking. He couldn't think. His head didn't ache; it was merely sore. He might have been dashing it against the wall, as figuratively he had done. His body was sore too—stiff from long sitting in the same posture, and bruised as if from beating. All that was nothing, however, since misery only stunned him. To be stunned was what he had been working for.

Out in the air the wind of the May night was comforting. It soothed his nerves without waking the dormant brain. Instead of looking for a taxi he began walking up the Avenue. Walking too was a relief. It allowed him to remain as stupefied as at first, and yet stirred the circulation in his limbs. He meant to walk till he grew tired, after which he would jump on an electric bus.

But he did not grow tired. He passed the great milestones, Fourteenth Street, Twenty-third Street, Forty-second Street, Fifty-ninth Street, and not till crossing the last did he begin to feel fagged. He was then so near home that the impulse of doggedness kept him on foot. He was a strong walker, and physically in good condition, without being wholly robust. Had it not been for the kilted Highlander he would hardly have felt fatigue; but as it was, the corner of East Sixty-seventh Street found him as spent as he cared to be.

Advancing toward his door he saw a man coming in the other direction. There was nothing in that, and he would scarcely have noticed him, only for the fact that at this hour of the night pedestrians in the quarter were rare. In addition to that the man, having reached the foot of Allerton's own steps, stood there waiting, as if with intention.

Through the obscurity Rash could see only that the man was well built, flashily dressed, and that he wore a sweeping mustache. In his manner of standing and waiting there was something significant and menacing. Arrived at the foot of the steps Allerton could do no less than pause to ask if the stranger was looking for anyone.

"Is your name Allerton?"

"Yes; it is."

"Then I want my girl."

It was some seconds before Rash could get his dulled mind into play. Moreover, the encounter was of a kind which made him feel sick and disgusted.

"Whom do you mean?" he managed to ask, at last.

"You know very well who I mean. I mean Letty Gravely. I'm her father; and by God, if you don't give her up—with big damages——"

"I can't give her up, because she's not here."

"Not here? She was damn well here the day before yesterday."

"Yes; she was here the day before yesterday; but she disappeared last night."

"Ah, cut that kind o' talk. I'm wise, I am. You can't put that bunk over on me. She's in there, and I'm goin' to get her."

"I wish she was in there; but she's not."

"How do I know she's not?"

"I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it."

"Like hell I'll take your word for it. I'm goin' to see for myself."

"I don't see how you're going to do that."

"I'm goin' in with you."

"That wouldn't do you any good. Besides, I can't let you."

The man became more bullying. "See here, son. This game is my game. Did j'ever see a thing like this?"

Watching the movement of his hand Rash saw the handle of a revolver displayed in a side pocket.

"Yes, I've seen a thing like that; but even if it was loaded—which I don't believe it is—you've too much sense to use it. You might shoot me, of course; but you wouldn't find the girl in the house, because she isn't there."

"Well, I'm goin' to see. You march. Up you go, and open that door, and I'll follow you."

"Oh, no, you won't." Allerton looked round for the policeman who occasionally passed that way; but though a lighted car crashed down Madison Avenue there was no one in sight. He might have called in the hope of waking the men upstairs, but that seemed cowardly. Though in a physical encounter with a ruffian like this he could hardly help getting the worst of it—especially in his state of half intoxication—it was the encounter itself that he loathed, even more than the defeat. "Oh, no, you won't," he repeated, taking one step upward, and turning to defend his premises. "I don't mean that you shall come into this house, or ever see the girl again, if I can prevent it."

"Oh, you don't, don't you?"

"No, I don't."

"Then take that."

The words were so quickly spoken, and the blow in his face so unexpected, that Rash staggered backwards. Being on a step he had little or no footing, and having been drinking his balance was the more quickly lost.

"And that!"

A second blow in the face sent him down like a stone, without a struggle or a cry.

He fell limply on his back, his feet slipping to the sidewalk, his body sagging on the steps like a bit of string, accidentally dropped there. The hat, which fell off, remained on the step beside the head it had been covering.

The man leaped backward, as if surprised at his own deed. He looked this way and that, to see if he had been observed. A lighted car crashed up Madison Avenue, but otherwise the street remained empty. Creeping nearer the steps he bent over his victim, whose left hand lay helpless and outstretched. Timidly, gingerly, he put his fingers to the pulse, starting back from it with a shock. He spoke but two words, but he spoke them half aloud.

"Dead! God!"

Then he walked swiftly away into Madison Avenue, where he soon found a car going southward.



Chapter XXIV

Barbara was late for breakfast. Miss Walbrook, the aunt, was scanning the morning paper, her refined, austere Americanism being as noticeable in the dining-room as elsewhere in the house. Everything was slender and strong; everything was American, unless it was the Persian rug. On the paneled walls there were but three portraits, a Boston ancestress, in lace cap and satins, painted by Copley; a Philadelphia ancestor in the Continental uniform, painted by Gilbert Stuart; and her New York grandmother, painted by Thomas Sully, looking over her shoulder with the wild backward glance that artist gives to the girl Victoria in the Metropolitan Museum. In a flat cabinet along a wall was the largest collection of old American glass to be found in the country.

Barbara rushed in, with apologies for being late. "I didn't sleep a wink. It doesn't seem to me as if I should ever sleep again. Where's my cup?"

"Wildgoose will bring it. As the coffee had grown cold he took that and the cup to keep warm. What's the matter?"

Wildgoose stepped in with the missing essentials. A full-fed, round-faced, rubicund man of fifty-odd he looked a perennial twenty-five. Barbara began to minister to herself.

"Oh, everything's the matter. I told you yesterday that that girl had run away. Well, I begin to wish she'd run back again."

Miss Walbrook, the elder, had this in common with Miss Henrietta Towell, that she believed it best for everyone to work out his own salvation. Barbara had her personal life to live, and while her aunt would help her to live it, she wouldn't guide her choice. She continued, therefore, to scan the paper till her niece should say something more.

She said it, not because she wanted to give information, but because she was temperamentally outspoken. "I begin to wish there were no men in the world. If women are men in a higher stage of development, why didn't men die out, so that we could be rid of them? Isn't that what we generally get from the survival of the fittest?"

Miss Walbrook's thin, clear smile suggested the edge of a keenly tempered blade. "I've never said that women were men in a higher stage of development. I've said that in their parallel states of development women had advanced a stage beyond men. You may say of every generation born that women begin where men leave off. I suppose that that's what's meant by the myth of Eve springing from Adam's side. It was to be noticed even then, in the prehistoric, in the age that formed the great legends. Adam was asleep, when Eve as a vital force leaped away from him. If it wasn't for Eve's vitality the human race would still be in the Stone Age."

Barbara harked back to what for her was the practical. "Some of us are in the Stone Age as it is. I'm sure Rash Allerton is as nearly an elemental as one can be, and still belong to clubs and drive in motorcars."

Miss Walbrook risked her principles of non-interference so far as to say: "It's part of our feminine lack of development that we're always inclined to look back on the elemental with pity, and even with regret. The woman was never born who didn't have in her something of Lot's wife."

"Thank you, Aunt Marion. In a way that lets me out. If I'm no weaker than the rest of my sex——"

"Than many of the rest of your sex."

"Very well, then; than many of the rest of my sex; if I'm no weaker than that I don't have to lose my self-respect."

"You don't have to lose your self-respect; you only risk—your reason."

Barbara stared at her. "That's the very thing I'm afraid of. I'd give anything for peace of mind. How did you know?"

"Oh, it doesn't call for much astuteness. I don't suppose there's a married woman in the world in full command of her wits. You've noticed how foolish most of them are. That's why. It isn't that they were born foolish. They've simply been addled by enforced adaptation to mates of lower intelligence. Oh, I'm not scolding. I'm merely stating a natural, observed, psychological fact. The woman who marries says good-bye to the orderly working of her faculties. For that she may get compensations, with which I don't intend to find fault. But compensations or no, to a clear-thinking woman like——"

"Like yourself, Aunt Marion."

"Very well; like myself, if you will; but to a clear-thinking woman it's as obvious as daylight that her married sisters are partially demented. They may not know it; the partially demented never do. And it's no good telling them, because they don't believe you. I'm only saying it to you to warn you in advance. If you part with your reason, it's something to know that you do it of your own free will."

Once more Barbara confined herself to the case in hand. "Still, I don't believe every man is as trying as Rash Allerton."

"Not in his particular way, perhaps. But if it's not in one way then it's in another."

"Even he wouldn't be so bad if he could control himself. At the minute when he's tearing down the house he wants you to tell him that he's calm."

"If he didn't want you to tell him that it would be something equally preposterous. There's little to choose between men."

Barbara grew thoughtful. "Still, if people didn't marry the human race would die out."

"And would there be any harm in that? It's not a danger, of course; but if it was, would anyone in his senses want to stop it? Looking round on the human race to-day one can hardly help saying that the sooner it dies out the better. Since we can't kill it off, it's well to remember——"

"To remember what, Aunt Marion?"

Miss Walbrook reflected as to how to express herself cautiously. "To remember that—in marrying—and having children—children who will have to face the highly probable miseries of the next generation—Well, I'm glad there'll be no one to reproach me with his being in the world, either as his mother or his ancestress."