Mrs. Severence gave her difficult daughter an appealing glance, as if she feared the girl would cap the climax of rebellion by flatly refusing; but Margaret said sweetly:

"Yes, Grandma."

The two left the room, the old lady leaning heavily on her granddaughter and wielding her ebony staff as if getting her arm limbered to use it. In the hall, she said fiercely, "To your room," and waved her staff toward the stairway.

Margaret hesitated, shrugged her shoulders. She preceding, and Madam Bowker ascending statelily afterward, they went up and were presently alone in Margaret's pretty rose and gold boudoir, with the outer door closed.

"Now!" exclaimed Madam Bowker.

"Not so loud, please," suggested the tranquil Margaret, "unless you wish Selina to hear." She pointed to the door ajar. "She's sewing in there."

"Send the woman away," commanded the old lady.

But Margaret merely closed the door. "Well, Grandmother?"

"Sit at this desk," ordered the old lady, pointing with the ebony staff, "and write a note to that man Craig, breaking the engagement. Say you have thought it over and have decided it is quite impossible. And to-morrow morning you go to New York with me."

Margaret seated herself on the lounge instead. "I'll do neither," said she.

The old lady waved the end of her staff in a gesture of lofty disdain. "As you please. But, if you do not, your allowance is withdrawn."

"Certainly," said Margaret. "I assumed that."

Madam Bowker gazed at her with eyes like tongues of flame. "And how do you expect to live?" she inquired.

"That is OUR affair," replied the girl. "You say you are done with me. Well, so am I done with you."

It was, as Margaret had said, because she was not afraid of her grandmother that that formidable old lady respected her; and as she was one of those who can give affection only where they give respect, she loved Margaret—loved her with jealous and carping tenacity. The girl's words of finality made her erect and unyielding soul shiver in a sudden dreary blast of loneliness, that most tragic of all the storms that sweep the ways of life. It was in the tone of the anger of love with the beloved that she cried, "How DARE you engage yourself to such a person!"

"You served notice on me that I must marry," replied the girl, her own tone much modified. "He was the chance that offered."

"The chance!" Madam Bowker smiled with caustic scorn, "He's not a chance."

"You ordered me to marry. I am marrying. And you are violating your promise. But I expected it."

"My promise? What do you mean?"

"You told me if I'd marry you'd continue my allowance after marriage. You even hinted you'd increase it."

"But this is no marriage. I should consider a connection between such a man and a Severence as a mere vulgar intrigue. You might as well run away with a coachman. I have known few coachmen so ill- bred—so repellent—as this Craig."

Margaret laughed cheerfully. "He isn't what you'd call polished, is he?"

Her grandmother studied her keenly. "Margaret," she finally said, "this is some scheme of yours. You are using this engagement to help you to something else."

"I refused Grant Arkwright just before you came."

"You—refused—Arkwright?"

"My original plan was to trap Grant by making him jealous of Craig. But I abandoned it."

"And why?"

"A remnant of decency."

"I doubt it," said the old lady.

"So should I in the circumstances. We're a pretty queer lot, aren't we? You, for instance—on the verge of the grave, and breaking your promise to me as if a promise were nothing."

Mrs. Bowker's ebon staff twitched convulsively and her terrible eyes were like the vent-holes of internal fires; but she managed her rage with a skill that was high tribute to her will-power. "You are right in selecting this clown—this tag-rag," said she. "You and he, I see, are peculiarly suited to each other....My only regret is that in my blind affection I have wasted all these years and all those thousands of dollars on you." Madam Bowker affected publicly a fine scorn of money and all that thereto appertained; but privately she was a true aristocrat in her reverence and consideration for that which is the bone and blood of aristocracy.

"Nothing so stupid and silly as regret," said Margaret, with placid philosophy of manner. "I, too, could think of things I regret. But I'm putting my whole mind on the future."

"Future!" Madam Bowker laughed. "Why, my child, you have no future. Within two years you'll either be disgracefully divorced, or the wife of a little lawyer in a little Western town."

"But I'll have my husband and my children. What more can a woman ask?"

The old lady scrutinized her granddaughter's tranquil, delicate face in utter amazement. She could find nothing on which to base a hope that the girl was either jesting or posing. "Margaret," she cried, "are you CRAZY?"

"Do you think a desire for a home, and a husband who adores one, and children whom one adores is evidence of insanity?"

"Yes, you are mad—quite mad!"

"I suppose you think that fretting about all my seasons without an offer worth accepting has driven me out of my senses. Sometimes I think so, too." And Margaret lapsed into abstracted, dreamy silence.

"Do you pretend that you—you—care for—this person?" inquired the old lady.

"I can't discuss him with you, Grandmother," replied the girl. "You know you have washed your hands of me."

"I shall never give up," cried the old lady vehemently, "until I rescue you. I'll not permit this disgrace. I'll have him driven out of Washington."

"Yes, you might try that," said Margaret. "I don't want him to stay here. I am sick—sick to death—of all this. I loathe everything I ever liked. It almost seems to me I'd prefer living in a cabin in the back-woods. I've just wakened to what it really means—no love, no friendship, only pretense and show, rivalry in silly extravagance, aimless running to and fro among people that care nothing for one, and that one cares nothing for. If you could see it as I see it you'd understand."

But Madam Bowker had thought all her life in terms of fashion and society. She was not in the least impressed. "Balderdash!" said she with a jab at the floor with the ebony staff. "Don't pose before me. You know very well you're marrying this man because you believe he will amount to a great deal."

Margaret beamed upon her grandmother triumphantly, as if she had stepped into a trap that had been set for her. "And your only reason for being angry," cried she, "is that you don't believe he will."

"I know he won't. He can't. Stillwater has kept him solely because that unspeakable wife of his hopes to foist their dull, ugly eldest girl on him."

"You think a man as shrewd as Stillwater would marry his daughter to a nobody?"

"It's useless for you to argue, Margaret," snapped the old lady. "The man's impossible—for a Severence. I shall stop the engagement."

"You can't," rejoined Margaret calmly. "My mind is made up. And along with several other qualities, Grandmother, dear, I've inherited your will."

"Will without wit—is there anything worse? But I know you are not serious. It is merely a mood—the result of a profound discouragement. My dear child, let me assure you it is no unusual thing for a girl of your position, yet without money, to have no offers at all. You should not believe the silly lies your girlfriends tell about having bushels of offers. No girl has bushels of offers unless she makes herself common and familiar with all kinds of men—and takes their loose talk seriously. Most men wouldn't dare offer themselves to you. The impudence of this Craig! You should have ordered him out of your presence."

Margaret, remembering how Craig had seized her, smiled.

"I admit I have been inconsiderate in urging you so vigorously," continued her grandmother. "I thought I had observed a tendency to fritter. I wished you to stop trifling with Grant Arkwright—or, rather, to stop his trifling with you. Come, now, my dear, let me put an end to this engagement. And you will marry Grant, and your future will be bright and assured."

Margaret shook her head. "I have promised," said she, and her expression would have thrilled Lucia.

Madam Bowker was singularly patient with this evidence of sentimentalism. "That's fine and noble of you. But you didn't realize what a grave step you were taking, and you—"

"Yes, but I did. If ever anything was deliberate on a woman's part, that engagement was." A bright spot burned in each of the girl's cheeks. "He didn't really propose. I pretended to misunderstand him."

Her grandmother stared.

"You needn't look at me like that," exclaimed Margaret. "You know very well that Grandfather Bowker never would have married you if you hadn't fairly compelled him. I heard him tease you about it once when I was a little girl."

It was Madam Bowker's turn to redden. She deigned to smile. "Men are so foolish," observed she, "that women often have to guide them. There would be few marriages of the right sort if the men were not managed."

Margaret nodded assent. "I realize that now," said she. Earnestly: "Grandmother, try to make the best of this engagement of mine. When a woman, a woman as experienced and sensible as I am, makes up her mind a certain man is the man for her, is it wise to interfere?"

Madam Bowker, struck by the searching wisdom of this remark, was silenced for the moment. In the interval of thought she reflected that she would do well to take counsel of herself alone in proceeding to break this engagement. "You are on the verge of making a terrible misstep, child," said she with a gentleness she had rarely shown even to her favorite grandchild. "I shall think it over, and you will think it over. At least, promise me you will not see Craig for a few days."

Margaret hesitated. Her grandmother, partly by this unusual gentleness, partly by inducing the calmer reflection of the second thought, had shaken her purpose more than she would have believed possible. "If I've made a mistake," said she, "isn't seeing him the best way to realize it?"

"Yes," instantly and emphatically admitted the acute old lady. "See him, by all means. See as much of him as possible. And in a few days you will be laughing at yourself—and very much ashamed."

"I wonder," said Margaret aloud, but chiefly to herself.

And Madam Bowker, seeing the doubt in her face, only a faint reflection of the doubt that must be within, went away content.



CHAPTER XII

PUTTING DOWN A MUTINY

Margaret made it an all but inflexible rule not to go out, but to rest and repair one evening in each week; that was the evening, under the rule, but she would have broken the rule had any opportunity offered. Of course, for the first time since the season began, no one sent or telephoned to ask her to fill in at the last moment. She half-expected Craig, though she knew he was to be busy; he neither came nor called up. She dined moodily with the family, sat surlily in a corner of the veranda until ten o'clock, hid herself in bed. She feared she would have a sleepless night. But she had eaten no dinner; and, as indigestion is about the only thing that will keep a healthy human being awake, she slept dreamlessly, soundly, not waking until Selina slowly and softly opened the inner blinds of her bedroom at eight the next morning.

There are people who are wholly indifferent about their surroundings, and lead the life dictated by civilized custom only because they are slaves of custom, Margaret was not one of these. She not only adopted all the comforts and luxuries that were current, she also spent much tune in thinking out new luxuries, new refinements upon those she already had. She was through, and through the luxurious idler; she made of idling a career—pursued it with intelligent purpose where others simply drifted, yawning when pastimes were not provided for them. She was as industrious and ingenious at her career as a Craig at furthering himself and his ideas in a public career.

Like the others of her class she left the care of her mind to chance. As she had a naturally good mind and a bird-like instinct for flitting everywhere, picking out the food from the chaff, she made an excellent showing even in the company of serious people. But that was accident. Her person was her real care. To her luxurious, sensuous nature every kind of pleasurable physical sensation made keen appeal, and she strove in every way to make it keener. She took the greatest care of her health, because health meant beauty and every nerve and organ in condition to enjoy to its uttermost capacity.

Because of this care it was often full three hours and half between the entrance of Selina and her own exit, dressed and ready for the day. And those three hours and a half were the happiest of her day usually, because they were full of those physical sensations in which she most delighted. Her first move, after Selina had awakened her, was to spend half an hour in "getting the yawns out." She had learned this interesting, pleasant and amusing trick from a baby in a house where she had once spent a week. She would extend herself at full length in the bed, and then slowly stretch each separate muscle of arm and leg, of foot and hand, of neck and shoulders and waist. This stretching process was accompanied by a series of prolonged, profound, luxurious yawns.

The yawning exercise completed, she rose and took before a long mirror a series of other exercises, some to strengthen her waist, others to keep her back straight and supple, others to make firm the contour of her face and throat. A half-hour of this, then came her bath. This was no hurried plunge, drying and away, but a long and elaborate function at which Selina assisted. There had to be water of three temperatures; a dozen different kinds of brushes, soaps, towels and other apparatus participated. When it was finished Margaret's skin glowed and shone, was soft and smooth and exhaled a delicious odor of lilacs. During the exercises Selina had been getting ready the clothes for the day—everything fresh throughout, and everything delicately redolent of the same essence of lilacs with which Selina had rubbed her from hair to tips of fingers and feet. The clothes were put on slowly, for Margaret delighted in the feeling of soft silks and laces being drawn over her skin. She let Selina do every possible bit of work, and gave herself up wholly to the joy of being cared for.

"There isn't any real reason why I shouldn't be doing this for you, instead of your doing it for me—is there, Selina?" mused she aloud.

"Goodness gracious, Miss Rita!" exclaimed Selina, horrified. "I wouldn't have it done for anything. I was brought up to be retiring about dressing. It was my mother's dying boast that no man, nor no woman, had ever seen her, a grown woman, except fully dressed."

"Really?" said Margaret absently. She stood up, surveyed herself in the triple mirror—back, front, sides. "So many women never look at themselves in the back," observed she, "or know how their skirts hang about the feet. I believe in dressing for all points of view."

"You certainly are just perfect," said the adoring Selina, not the least part of her admiring satisfaction due to the fact that the toilette was largely the creation of her own hands. "And you smell like a real lady—not noisy, like some that comes here. I hate to touch their wraps or to lay 'em down in the house. But you—It's one of them smells that you ain't sure whether you smelt it or dreamed it."

"Pretty good, Selina!" said Margaret. She could not but be pleased with such a compliment, one that could have been suggested only by the truth. "The hair went up well this morning, didn't it?"

"Lovely—especially in the back. It looks as if it had been marcelled, without that common, barbery stiffness-like."

"Yes, the back is good. And I like this blouse. I must wear it oftener."

"You can't afford to favor it too much, Miss Rita. You know you've got over thirty, all of them beauties."

"Some day, when I get time, we must look through my clothes. I want to give you a lot of them. ... What DOES become of the time? Here it is, nearly eleven. See if breakfast has come up. I'll finish dressing afterward if it has."

It had. It was upon a small table in the rose and gold boudoir. And the sun, shining softly in at the creeper-shaded window, rejoiced in the surpassing brightness and cleanness of the dishes of silver and thinnest porcelain and cut glass. Margaret thought eating in bed a "filthy, foreign fad," and never indulged in it. She seated herself lazily, drank her coffee, and ate her roll and her egg slowly, deliberately, reading her letters and glancing at the paper. A charming picture she made—the soft, white Valenciennes of her matinee falling away from her throat and setting off the clean, smooth healthiness of her skin, the blackness of her vital hair; from the white lace of her petticoat's plaited flounces peered one of her slim feet, a satin slipper upon the end of it. At the top of the heap of letters lay one she would have recognized, she thought, had she never seen the handwriting before.

"Sure to be upsetting," reflected she; and she laid it aside, glancing now and then at the bold, nervous, irregular hand and speculating about the contents and about the writer.

She had gone to bed greatly disturbed in mind as to whether she was doing well to marry the obstreperous Westerner. "He fascinates me in a wild, weird sort of a way when I'm with him," she had said to herself before going to sleep, "and the idea of him is fascinating in certain moods. And it is a temptation to take hold of him and master and train him—like broncho-busting. But is it interesting enough for—for marriage? Wouldn't I get horribly tired? Wouldn't Grant and humdrum be better? less wearying? "And when she awakened she found her problem all but solved." I'll send him packing and take Grant," she found herself saying, "unless some excellent reason for doing otherwise appears. Grandmother was right. Engaging myself to him was a mood." Once more she was all for luxury and ease and calmness, for the pleasant, soothing, cut- and-dried thing. "A cold bath or a rough rub-down now and then, once in a long while, is all very well. It makes one appreciate comfort and luxury more. But that sort of thing every day—many times each day—" Margaret felt her nerves rebelling as at the stroking of velvet the wrong way.

She read all her other letters, finished her toilette, had on her hat, and was having Selina put on her boots when she opened Craig's letter and read:

"I must have been out of my mind this afternoon. You are wildly fascinating, but you are not for me. If I led you to believe that I wished to marry you, pray forget it. We should make each other unhappy and, worse still, uncomfortable.

"Do I make myself clear? We are not engaged. I hope you will marry Arkwright; a fine fellow, in every way suited to you, and, I happen to know, madly in love with you. Please try to forgive me. If you have any feeling for me stronger than friendship you will surely get over it.

"Anyhow, we couldn't marry. That is settled.

"Let me have an answer to this. I shall be upset until I hear." No beginning. No end. Just a bald, brutal casting-off. A hint—more than a hint—of a fear that she would try to hold him in spite of himself. She smiled—small, even teeth clenched and eyelids contracted cruelly—as she read a second time, with this unflattering suggestion obtruding. The humiliation of being jilted! And by such a man!—the private shame—the public disgrace—She sprang up, crunching her foot hard down upon one of Selina's hands. "What is it?" said she angrily, at her maid's cry of pain.

"Nothing, Miss," replied Selina, quickly hiding the wounded hand. "You moved so quick I hadn't time to draw away. That was all."

"Then finish that boot!"

Selina had to expose the hand, Margaret looked down at it indifferently, though her heel had torn the skin away from the edge of the palm and had cut into the flesh.

"Hurry!" she ordered fiercely, as Selina fumbled and bungled.

She twitched and frowned with impatience while Selina finished buttoning the boot, then descended and called Williams. "Get me Mr. Craig on the telephone," she said.

"He's been calling you up several times to-day, ma'am,—"

"Ah!" exclaimed Margaret, eyes flashing with sudden delight.

"But we wouldn't disturb you."

"That was right," said Margaret. She was beaming now, was all sunny good humor. Even her black hair seemed to glisten in her simile. So! He had been calling up! Poor fool, not to realize that she would draw the correct inference from this anxiety.

"Shall I call him?" "No. I'll wait. Probably he'll call again soon. I'll be in the library."

She had not been roaming restlessly about there many minutes before Williams appeared "He's come, himself, ma'am," said he. "I told him I didn't know whether you'd be able to see him or not."

"Thank you, Williams," said Margaret sweetly. "Order the carriage to come round at once. Leave Mr. Craig in the drawing-room. I'll speak to him on the way out."

She dashed upstairs. "Selina! Selina!" she called. And when Selina came: "Let me see that hand. I hurt you because I got news that went through me like a knife. You understand, don't you?"

"It was nothing, Miss Rita," protested Selina. "I'd forgot it myself already."

But Margaret insisted on assuring herself with her own eyes, got blood on her white gloves, had to change them. As she descended she was putting on the fresh pair—a new pair. How vastly more than even the normal is a man's disadvantage in a "serious" interview with a woman if she is putting on new gloves! She is perfectly free to seem occupied or not, as suits her convenience; and she can, by wrestling with the gloves, interrupt him without speech, distract his attention, fiddle his thoughts, give him a sense of imbecile futility, and all the time offer him no cause for resentment against her. He himself seems in the wrong; she is merely putting On her gloves.

She was wrong in her guess that Arkwright had been at him. He had simply succumbed to his own fears and forebodings, gathered in force as soon as he was not protected from them by the spell of her presence. The mystery of the feminine is bred into men from earliest infancy, is intensified when passion comes and excites the imagination into fantastic activity about women. No man, not the most experienced, not the most depraved, is ever able wholly to divest himself of this awe, except, occasionally, in the case of some particular woman. Awe makes one ill at ease; the woman who, by whatever means, is able to cure a man of his awe of her, to make him feel free to be himself, is often able to hold him, even though he despises her or is indifferent to her; on the other hand, the woman who remains an object of awe to a man is certain to lose him. He may be proud to have her as his wife, as the mother of his children, but he will seek some other woman to give her the place of intimacy in his life.

At the outset on an acquaintance between a man and a woman his awe for her as the embodiment of the mystery feminine is of great advantage to her; it often gets him for her as a husband. In this particular case of Margaret Severence and Joshua Craig, while his awe of her was an advantage, it was also a disadvantage. It attracted him; it perilously repelled him. He liked to release his robust imagination upon those charms of hers—those delicate, refined beauties that filled him with longings, delicious in their intensity, longings as primeval in kind as well as in force as those that set delirious the savage hordes from the German forests when they first poured down over the Alps and beheld the jewels and marbles and round, smooth, soft women of Italy's ancient civilization. But at the same time he had the unmistakable, the terrifying feeling of dare-devil sacrilege. What were his coarse hands doing, dabbling in silks and cobweb laces and embroideries? Silk fascinated him; but, while he did not like calico so well, he felt at home with it. Yes, he had seized her, had crushed her madly in the embrace of his plowman arms. But that seemed now a freak of courage, a drunken man's deed, wholly beyond the nerve of sobriety.

Then, on top of all this awe was his reverence for her as an aristocrat, a representative of people who had for generations been far removed above the coarse realities of the only life he knew. And it was this adoration of caste that determined him. He might overcome his awe of her person and dress, of her tangible trappings; but how could he ever hope to bridge the gulf between himself and her intangible superiorities? He was ashamed of himself, enraged against himself for this feeling of worm gazing up at star. It made a mockery of all his arrogant, noisy protestations of equality and democracy.

"The fault is not in my ideas," thought he; "THEY'RE all right. The fault's in me—damned snob that I am!"

Clearly, if he was to be what he wished, if he was to become what he had thought he was, he must get away from this sinister influence, from this temptation that had made him, at first onset, not merely stumble, but fall flat and begin to grovel. "She is a superior woman—that is no snob notion of mine," reflected he. "But from the way I falter and get weak in the knees, she ought to be superhuman—which she isn't, by any means. No, there's only one thing to do—keep away from her. Besides, I'd feel miserable with her about as my wife." My wife! The very words threw him into a cold sweat.

So the note was written, was feverishly dispatched.

No sooner was it sent than it was repented. "What's the matter with me?" demanded he of himself, as his courage came swaggering back, once the danger had been banished. "Why, the best is not too good for me. She is the best, and mighty proud she ought to be of a man who, by sheer force of character, has lifted himself to where I am and who, is going to be what I shall be. Mighty proud! There are only two realities—money and brains. I've certainly got more brains than she or any of her set; as for money, she hasn't got that. The superiority is all on my side. I'm the one that ought to feel condescending."

What had he said in his note? Recalling it as well as he could— for it was one, the last, of more than a dozen notes he had written in two hours of that evening—recalling phrases he was pretty sure he had put into the one he had finally sent, in despair of a better, it seemed to him he had given her a wholly false impression—an impression of her superiority and of his fear and awe. That would never do. He must set her right, must show her he was breaking the engagement only because she was not up to his standard. Besides, he wished to see her again to make sure he had been victimized into an engagement by a purely physical, swiftly-evanescent imagining. Yes, he must see her, must have a look at her, must have a talk with her.

"It's the only decent, courageous thing to do in the circumstances. Sending that note looked like cowardice—would be cowardice if I didn't follow it up with a visit. And whatever else I am, surely I'm not a coward!"

Margaret had indulged in no masculine ingenuities of logic. Woman- like, she had gone straight to the practical point: Craig had written instead of coming—he was, therefore, afraid of her. Having written he had not fled, but had come—he was, therefore, attracted by her still. Obviously the game lay in her own hands, for what more could woman ask than that a man be both afraid and attracted? A little management and she not only would save herself from the threatened humiliation of being jilted—jilted by an uncouth nobody of a Josh Craig!—but also would have him in durance, to punish his presumption at her own good pleasure as to time and manner. If Joshua Craig, hardy plodder in the arduous pathway from plowboy to President, could have seen what was in the mind so delicately and so aristocratically entempled in that graceful, slender, ultra-feminine body of Margaret Severence's, as she descended the stairs, putting fresh gloves upon her beautiful, idle hands, he would have borrowed wings of the wind and would have fled as from a gorgon.

But as she entered the room nothing could have seemed less formidable except to the heart. Her spring dress—she was wearing it for the first time—was of a pale green, suggesting the draperies of islands of enchantment. Its lines coincided with the lines of her figure. Her hat, trimmed to match, formed a magic halo for her hair; and it, in turn, was the entrancing frame in which her small, quiet, pallid face was set—that delicate, sensitive face, from which shone, now softly and now brilliantly, those hazel eyes a painter could have borrowed for a wood nymph. In the doorway, before greeting him, she paused.

"Williams," she called, and Craig was thrilled by her "high-bred" accent, that seemed to him to make of the English language a medium different from the one he used and heard out home.

"Yes, ma'am," came the answer in the subtly-deferential tone of the aristocracy of menialdom, conjuring for Craig, with the aid of the woman herself and that aristocratic old room, a complete picture of the life of upper-class splendor.

"Did you order the carriage, as I asked?"

"Yes, ma'am; it's at the door."

"Thank you." And Margaret turned upon an overwhelmed and dazzled Craig. He did not dream that she had calculated it all with a view to impressing him—and, if he had, the effect would hardly have been lessened. Whether planned or not, were not toilette and accent, and butler and carriage, all realities? Nor did he suspect shrewd calculations upon snobbishness when she said: "I was in such haste to dress that I hurt my poor maid's hand as she was lacing my boot"—she thrust out one slender, elegantly-clad foot— "no, buttoning it, I mean." Oh, these ladies, these ladies of the new world—and the old—that are so used to maids and carriages and being waited upon that they no more think of display in connection with them than one would think of boasting two legs or two eyes!

The advantage from being in the act of putting on gloves began at the very outset. It helped to save her from deciding a mode of salutation. She did not salute him at all. It made the meeting a continuation, without break, of their previous meeting.

"How do you like my new dress?" she asked, as she drew the long part of her glove up her round, white arm.

"Beautiful," he stammered.

From the hazel eyes shot a shy-bold glance straight into his; it was as if those slim, taper fingers of hers had twanged the strings of the lyre of his nerves. "You despise all this sort of trumpery, don't you?"

"Sometimes a man says things he don't mean," he found tongue to utter.

"I understand," said she sympathetically, and he knew she meant his note. But he was too overwhelmed by his surroundings, by her envelope of aristocracy, too fascinated by her physical charm, too flattered by being on such terms with such a personage, to venture to set her right. Also, she gave him little chance; for in almost the same breath she went on: "I've been in such moods!—since yesterday afternoon—like the devils in Milton, isn't it?—that are swept from lands of ice to lands of fire?—or is it in Dante? I never can remember. We must go straight off, for I'm late. You can come, too—it's only a little meeting about some charity or other. All rich people, of course—except poor me. I'm sure I don't know why they asked me. I can give little besides advice. How handsome you are to-day, Joshua!"

It was the first time she had called him by his first name. She repeated it—"Joshua—Joshua"—as when one hits upon some particularly sweet and penetrating chord at the piano, and strikes it again, and yet again.

They were in the carriage, being whirled toward the great palace of Mrs. Whitson, the latest and grandest of plutocratic monuments that have arisen upon the ruins of the old, old-fashioned American Washington. And she talked incessantly—a limpid, sparkling, joyous strain. And either her hand sought his or his hers; at any rate, he found himself holding her hand. They were almost there before he contrived to say, very falteringly: "You got my note?"

She laughed gayly. "Oh, yes—and your own answer to it, Joshua—my love"—the "my love" in a much lower, softer tone, with suggestion of sudden tears trembling to fall.

"But I meant it," he said, though in tones little like any he was used to hearing from his own lips. But he would not dare look himself in the face again if he did not make at least a wriggle before surrendering.

"We mean many things in as many moods," said she. "I knew it was only a mood. I knew you'd come. I've such a sense of implicit reliance on you. You are to me like the burr that shields the nut from all harm. How secure and cozy and happy the nut must feel in its burr. As I've walked through the woods in the autumn I've often thought of that, and how, if I ever married—"

A wild impulse to seize her and crush her, as one crushes the ripe berry for its perfume and taste, flared in his eyes. She drew away to check it. "Not now," she murmured, and her quick breath and flush were not art, but nature. "Not just now—Joshua."

"You make me—insane," he muttered between his teeth. "God!—I DO love you!"

They were arrived; were descending. And she led him, abject and in chains, into the presence of Mrs. Whitson and the most fashionable of the fashionable set. "So you've brought him along?" cried Mrs. Whitson. "Well, I congratulate you, Mr. Craig. It's very evident you have a shrewd eye for the prizes of life, and a strong, long reach to grasp them."

Craig, red and awkward, laughed hysterically, flung out a few meaningless phrases. Margaret murmured: "Perhaps you'd rather go?" She wished him to go, now that she had exhibited him.

"Yes—for Heaven's sake!" he exclaimed. He was clutching for his braggart pretense of ease in "high society" like a drowning man scooping armsful of elusive water.

She steered her captive in her quiet, easeful manner toward the door, sent him forth with a farewell glance and an affectionate interrogative, "This afternoon, at half-past four?" that could not be disobeyed.

The mutiny was quelled. The mutineer was in irons. She had told him she felt quite sure about him; and it was true, in a sense rather different from what the words had conveyed to him. But it was of the kind of security that takes care to keep the eye wakeful and the powder dry. She felt she did not have him yet where she could trust him out of her sight and could herself decide whether the engagement was to be kept or broken.

"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Whitson, "he positively feeds out of your hand! And such a wild man he seemed!"

Margaret, in the highest of high spirits, laughed with pleasure.

"A good many," pursued Mrs. Whitson, "think you are throwing yourself away for love. But as I size men up—and my husband says I'm a wonder at it—I think he'll be biggest figure of all at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue or the other. Perhaps, first one end, then at the other."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," cried Margaret, with the keen enthusiasm with which, in time of doubt, we welcome an ally to our own private judgment. "But," she hastened to add, with veiled eye and slightly tremulous lip, "I'm ready to take whatever comes."

"That's right! That's right!" exclaimed Mrs. Whitson, a tender and dreamy sentimentalist except in her own affairs. "Love is best!"

"Love is best," echoed Margaret.



CHAPTER XIII

A MEMORABLE MEETING

In that administration the man "next" the President was his Secretary of the Treasury, John Branch, cold and smooth and able, secreting, in his pale-gray soul, an icy passion for power more relentless than heat ever bred. To speak of him as unscrupulous would be like attributing moral quality to a reptile. For him principle did not exist, except as an eccentricity of some strangely-constructed men which might be used to keep them down. Life presented itself to him as a series of mathematical problems, as an examination in mathematics. To pass it meant a diploma as a success; to fail to pass meant the abysmal disgrace of obscurity. Cheating was permissible, but not to get caught at it. Otherwise Branch was the most amiable of men; and why should he not have been, his digestion being good, his income sufficient, his domestic relations admirable, and his reputation for ability growing apace? No one respected him, no one liked him; but every one admired him as an intellect moving quite unhampered of the restraints of conscience. In person he was rather handsome, the weasel type of his face being well concealed by fat and by judicious arrangements of mustache and side-whiskers. By profession he was a lawyer, and had been most successful as adviser to wholesale thieves on depredations bent or in search of immunity for depredations done. It was incomprehensible to him why he was unpopular with the masses. It irritated him that they could not appreciate his purely abstract point of view on life; it irritated him because his unpopularity with them meant that there were limits, and very narrow ones, to his ambition.

It was to John Branch that Madam Bowker applied when she decided that Joshua Craig must be driven from Washington. She sent for him, and he came promptly. He liked to talk to her because she was one of the few who thoroughly appreciated and sympathized with his ideas of success in life. Also, he respected her as a personage in Washington, and had it in mind to marry his daughter, as soon as she should be old enough, to one of her grandnephews.

"Branch," said the old lady, with an emphatic wave of the ebony staff, "I want that Craig man sent away from Washington."

"Josh, the joke?" said Branch with a slow, sneering smile that had an acidity in it interesting in one so even as he.

"That's the man. I want you to rid us of him. He has been paying attention to Margaret, and she is encouraging him."

"Impossible!" declared Branch. "Margaret is a sensible girl and Josh has nothing—never will have anything."

"A mere politician!" declared Madam Bowker. "Like hundreds of others that wink in with each administration and wink out with it. He will not succeed even at his own miserable political game—and, if he did, he would still be poor as poverty."

"I don't think you need worry about him and Margaret. I repeat, she is sensible—an admirable girl—admirably brought up. She has distinction. She has the right instincts."

Madam Bowker punctuated each of these compliments with a nod of her haughty head. "But," said she, "Craig has convinced her that he will amount to something."

"Ridiculous!" scoffed Branch, with an airy wave of the hand. But there was in his tone a concealment that set the shrewd old lady furtively to watching him.

"What do they think of him among the public men?" inquired she.

"He's laughed at there as everywhere."

Her vigilance was rewarded; as Branch said that, malignance hissed, ever so softly, in his suave voice, and the snake peered furtively from his calm, cold eyes. Old Madam Bowker had not lived at Washington's great green tables for the gamblers of ambition all those years without learning the significance of eyes and tone. For one politician to speak thus venomously of another was sure sign that that other was of consequence; for John Branch, a very Machiavelli at self-concealment and usually too egotistic to be jealous, thus to speak, and that, without being able to conceal his venom—"Can it be possible," thought the old lady, "that this Craig is about to be a somebody?" Aloud she said: "He is a preposterous creature. The vilest manners I've seen in three generations of Washington life. And what vanity, what assumptions! The first time I met him he lectured me as if I were a schoolgirl —lectured me about the idle, worthless life he said I lead. I decided not to recognize him next time I saw him. Up he came, and without noticing that I did not speak he poured out such insults that I was answering him before I realized it."

"He certainly is a most exasperating person."

"So Western! The very worst the West ever sent us. I don't understand how he happened to get about among decent people. Oh, I remember, it was Grant Arkwright who did it. Grant picked him up on one of his shooting trips."

"He is insufferable," said Branch.

"You must see that the President gets rid of him. I want it done at once. I assure you, John, my alarm is not imaginary. Margaret is very young, has a streak of sentimentality in her. Besides, you know how weak the strongest women are before a determined assault. If the other sex wasn't brought up to have a purely imaginary fear of them I don't know what would become of the world."

Branch smiled appreciatively but absently. "The same is true of men," said he. "The few who amount to anything—at least in active life—base their calculations on the timidity and folly of their fellows rather than upon their own abilities. About Craig—I'd like to oblige you, but—well, you see, there is—there are certain political exigencies—"

"Nonsense!" interrupted the old lady. "I know the relative importance of officials. A mere understrapper like Craig is of no importance."

"The fact is," said Branch with great reluctance, "the President has taken a fancy to Craig."

Branch said it as if he hardly expected to be believed—and he wasn't. "To be perfectly frank," he went on, "you know the President, how easily alarmed he is. He's afraid Craig may, by some crazy turn of this crazy game of politics, develop into a Presidential possibility. Of course, it's quite absurd, but—"

"The more reason for getting rid of him."

"The contrary. The President probably reasons that, if Craig has any element of danger in him the nearer he keeps him to himself the better. Craig, back in the West, would be free to grow. Here the President can keep him down if necessary. And I think our friend Stillwater will succeed in entangling him disastrously in some case sooner or later." There Branch laughed pleasantly, as at the finding of the correct solution to a puzzling problem in analytics or calculus.

"What a cowardly, shadow-fighting, shadow-dodging set you men are!" commented Madam Bowker. Though she did not show it, as a man certainly would, her brain was busy with a wholly different phase of the matter they were discussing.

"Isn't Stillwater going to retire?" she asked presently.

Branch startled. "Where did you hear that?" he demanded.

The old lady smiled. "There are no secrets in Washington," said she. "Who will be his successor?"

Branch's cold face showed annoyance. "You mustn't speak of it," replied he, "but the President is actually thinking of appointing Craig—in case the vacancy should occur. Of course, I am trying to make him see the folly of such a proceeding, but—You are right. Men are cowards. That insufferable upstart is actually bullying the President into a state of terror. Already he has compelled him to prosecute some of our best friends out in the Western country, and if the Courts weren't with us—" Branch checked himself abruptly. It was not the first time he had caught himself yielding to Washington's insidious custom of rank gossip about everything and everybody; but it was about his worst offense in that direction. "I'm getting to be as leaky as Josh Craig is—as he SEEMS to be," he muttered, so low, however, that not even her sharp ears caught it.

"So it is to be Attorney-General Craig," said the old lady, apparently abstracted but in reality catlike in watchfulness, and noting with secret pleasure Branch's anger at this explicit statement of the triumph of his hated rival.

"Isn't it frightful?" said Branch. "What is the country coming to?"

But she had lost interest in the conversation. She rid herself of Branch as speedily as the circumstances permitted. She wished to be alone, to revolve the situation slowly from the new viewpoint which Branch, half-unconsciously and wholly reluctantly, had opened up. She had lived a long time, had occupied a front bench overlooking one of the world's chief arenas of action. And, as she had an acute if narrow mind, she had learned to judge intelligently and to note those little signs that are, to the intelligent, the essentials, full of significance. She had concealed her amazement from Branch, but amazed she was, less at his news of Craig as a personage full of potentiality than at her own failure, through the inexcusable, manlike stupidity of personal pique, to discern the real man behind his mannerisms. "No wonder he has pushed so far, so fast," reflected she; for she appreciated that in a man of action manners should always be a cloak behind which his real campaign forms. It must be a fitting cloak, it should be a becoming one; But always a cloak. "He fools everybody, apparently," thought she. "The results of his secret work alarm them; then, along he comes, with his braggart, offensive manners, his childish posings, his peacock vanity, and they are lulled into false security. They think what he did was an accident that will not happen again. Why, he fooled even ME!"

That is always, with every human being, the supreme test, necessarily. Usually it means nothing. In this case of Cornelia Bowker it meant a great deal; for Cornelia Bowker was not easily fooled. The few who appear in the arena of ambition with no game to play, with only sentiment and principle to further, the few who could easily have fooled her cynical, worldly wisdom could safely be disregarded. She felt it was the part of good sense to look the young man over again, to make sure that the new light upon him was not false light. "He may be a mere accident in spite of his remarkable successes," thought she. "The same number sometimes comes a dozen times in succession at roulette." She sent her handy man, secretary, social manager and organizer, mattre d'hotel, companion, scout, gossip, purveyor of comfort, J. Worthington Whitesides, to seek out Craig and to bring him before her forthwith.

As Mr. Whitesides was a tremendous swell, in dress, in manner and in accent, Craig was much impressed when he came into his office in the Department of Justice. Whitesides' manner, the result of Madam Bowker's personal teaching, was one of his chief assets in maintaining and extending her social power. It gave the greatest solemnity and dignity to a summons from her, filled the recipient with pleasure and with awe, prepared him or her to be duly impressed and in a frame of mind suitable to Madam Bowker's purposes.

"I come from Madam Bowker," he explained to Craig, humbly conscious of his own disarray and toiler's unkemptness. "She would be greatly obliged if you will give her a few minutes of your time. She begs you to excuse the informality. She has sent me in her carriage, and it will be a great satisfaction to her if you will accompany me."

Craig's first impulse of snobbish satisfaction was immediately followed by misgivings. Perhaps this was not the formal acceptance of the situation by the terrible old woman as he had, on the spur, fancied. Perhaps she had sent for him to read him the riot act. Then he remembered that he was himself in doubt as to whether he wished to marry the young woman. All his doubts came flooding back, and his terrors—for, in some of its aspects, the idea of being married to this delicate flower of conventionality and gentle breeding was literally a terror to him. If he went he would be still further committing himself; all Washington would soon know of the journey in the carriage of Madam Bowker, the most imposing car of state that appeared in the streets of the Capital, a vast, lofty affair, drawn by magnificent horses, the coachman and footman in costly, quiet livery, high ensconced.

"No, thanks," said Josh, in his most bustlingly-bounderish manner. "Tell the old lady I'm up to my neck in work."

Mr. Whitesides was taken aback, but he was far too polished a gentleman to show it. "Perhaps later?" he suggested.

"I've promised Margaret to go out there later. If I get through here in time I'll look in on Mrs. Bowker on the way. But tell her not to wait at home for me."

Mr. Whitesides bowed, and was glad when the outer air was blowing off him the odor of this vulgar incident. "For," said he to himself, "there are some manners so bad that they have a distinct bad smell. He is 'the limit!' The little Severence must be infernally hard-pressed to think of taking him on. Poor child! She's devilish interesting. A really handsome bit, and smart, too —excellent ideas about dress. Yet somehow she's been marooned, overlooked, while far worse have been married well. Strange, that sort of thing. Somewhat my own case. I ought to have been able to get some girl with a bunch, yet I somehow always just failed to connect—until I got beyond the marrying age. Devilish lucky for me, too. I'm no end better off." And Mr. Whitesides, sitting correctly upon Madam Bowlder's gray silk cushions, reflected complacently upon his ample salary, his carefully built-up and most lucrative commissions, his prospects for a "smashing-good legacy when her majesty deigns to pass away."

At four Madam Bowker, angry yet compelled to a certain respect, heard with satisfaction that Craig had come. "Leave me, Whitesides," said she. "I wish to be quite alone with him throughout."

Thus Craig, entering the great, dim drawing-room, with its panel paintings and its lofty, beautifully-frescoed ceiling, found himself alone with her. She was throned upon a large, antique gold chair, ebony scepter in one hand, the other hand white and young- looking and in fine relief against the black silk of her skirt; she bent upon him a keen, gracious look. Her hazel eyes were bright as a bird's; they had the advantage over a bird's that they saw—saw everything in addition to seeming to see.

Looking at him she saw a figure whose surfaces were, indeed, not extraordinarily impressive. Craig's frame was good; that was apparent despite his clothes. He had powerful shoulders, not narrow, yet neither were they of the broad kind that suggest power to the inexpert and weakness and a tendency to lung trouble to the expert. His body was a trifle long for his arms and legs, which were thick and strong, like a lion's or a tiger's. He had a fine head, haughtily set; his eyes emphasized the impression of arrogance and force. He had the leader's beaklike nose, a handsome form of it, like Alexander's, not like Attila's. The mouth was the orator's—wide, full and flexible of lips, fluent. It was distinctly not an aristocratic mouth. It suggested common speech and common tastes—ruddy tastes—tastes for quantity rather than for quality. His skin, his flesh were also plainly not aristocratic; they lacked that fineness of grain, that finish of surface which are got only by eating the costly, rare, best and best-prepared food. His hair, a partially disordered mop over- hanging his brow at the middle, gave him fierceness of aspect. The old lady had more than a suspicion that the ferocity of that lock of hair and somewhat exaggerated forward thrust of the jaw were pose—in part, at least, an effort to look the valiant and relentless master of men—perhaps concealing a certain amount of irresolution. Certainly those eyes met hers boldly rather than fearlessly.

She extended her hand. He took it, and with an effort gave it the politician's squeeze—the squeeze that makes Hiram Hanks and Bill Butts grin delightedly and say to each other: "B'gosh, he ain't lost his axe-handle grip yet, by a durn sight, has he?—dog-gone him!"

Madam Bowker did not wince, though she felt like it. Instead she smiled—a faint, derisive smile that made Craig color uncomfortably.

"You young man," said she in her cool, high-bred tones, "you wish to marry my granddaughter."

Craig was never more afraid nor so impressed in his life. But there was no upflaming of physical passion here to betray him into yielding before her as he had before her granddaughter. "I do not," replied he arrogantly. "Your granddaughter wants to marry me."

Madam Bowker winced in spite of herself. A very sturdy-appearing specimen of manhood was this before her; she could understand how her granddaughter might be physically attracted. But that rude accent, that common mouth, those uncouth clothes, hand-me-downs or near it, that cheap look about the collar, about the wrists, about the ankles—

"We are absolutely unsuited to each other—in every way," continued Craig. "I tell her so. But she won't listen to me. The only reason I've come here is to ask you to take a hand at trying to bring her to her senses."

The old lady, recovered from her first shock, gazed at him admiringly. He had completely turned her flank, and by a movement as swift as it was unexpected. If she opposed the engagement he could hail her as an ally, could compel her to contribute to her own granddaughter's public humiliation. On the other hand, if she accepted the engagement he would have her and Margaret and all the proud Severence family in the position of humbly seeking alliance with him. Admirable! No wonder Branch was jealous and the President alarmed. "Your game," said she pleasantly, "is extremely unkempt, but effective. I congratulate you. I owe you an apology for having misjudged you."

He gave her a shrewd look. "I know little Latin and less Greek," said he, "but, 'timeo Danaos dona ferentes.' And I've got no game. I'm telling you the straight truth, and I want you to help save me from Margaret and from myself. I love the girl. I honestly don't want to make her wretched. I need a sock-darner, a wash-counter, a pram-pusher, for a wife, as Grant would say, not a dainty piece of lace embroidery. It would soon be covered with spots and full of holes from the rough wear I'd give it."

Madam Bowker laughed heartily. "You are—delicious," said she. "You state the exact situation. Only I don't think Rita is quite so fragile as you fancy. Like all persons of common origin, Mr. Craig, you exaggerate human differences. They are not differences of kind, but of degree."

Craig quivered and reddened at "common origin," as Madam Bowker expected and hoped. She had not felt that she was taking a risk in thus hardily ignoring her own origin; Lard had become to her, as to all Washington, an unreality like a shadowy reminiscence of a possible former sojourn on earth. "I see," pursued she, "that I hurt your vanity by my frankness—"

"Not at all! Not at all!" blustered Joshua, still angrier—as Madam Bowker had calculated.

"Don't misunderstand me," pursued she tranquilly. "I was simply stating a fact without aspersion. It is the more to your credit that you have been able to raise yourself up among us—and so very young! You are not more than forty, are you?"

"Thirty-four," said Craig surlily. He began to feel like a cur that is getting a beating from a hand beyond the reach of its fangs. "I've had a hard life—"

"So I should judge," thrust the old lady with gentle sympathy. It is not necessary to jab violently with a red-hot iron in order to make a deep burn.

"But I am the better for it," continued Craig, eyes flashing and orator lips in action. "And you and your kind—your granddaughter Margaret—would be the better for having faced—for having to face—the realities of life instead of being pampered in luxury and uselessness."

"Then why be resentful?" inquired she. "Why not merely pity us? Why this heat and seeming jealousy?"

"Because I love your granddaughter," replied Craig, the adroit at debate. "It pains, it angers me to see a girl who might have been a useful wife, a good mother, trained and set to such base uses."

The old lady admired his skillful parry. "Let us not discuss that," said she. "We look at life from different points of view. No human being can see beyond his own point of view. Only God sees life as a whole, sees how its seeming inconsistencies and injustices blend into a harmony. Your mistake—pardon an old woman's criticism of experience upon inexperience—your mistake is that you arrogate to yourself divine wisdom and set up a personal opinion as eternal truth."

"That is very well said, admirably said," cried Craig. Madam Bowker would have been better pleased with the compliment had the tone been less gracious and less condescending.

"To return to the main subject," continued she. "Your hesitation about my granddaughter does credit to your manliness and to your sense. I have known marriages between people of different station and rank to turn out well—again—"

"That's the second or third time you've made that insinuation," burst out Craig. "I must protest against it, in the name of my father and mother, in the name of my country, Mrs. Bowker. It is too ridiculous! Who are you that you talk about rank and station? What is Margaret but the daughter of a plain human being of a father, a little richer than mine and so a little nearer opportunities for education? The claims to superiority of some of the titled people on the other side are silly enough when one examines them—the records of knavery and thievery and illegitimacy and insanity. But similar claims over here are laughable at a glance. The reason I hesitate to marry your daughter is not to her credit, or to her parents' credit—or to yours."

Madam Bowker was beside herself with rage at these candid insults, flung at her with all Craig's young energy and in his most effective manner; for his crudeness disappeared when he spoke thus, as the blackness and roughness of the coal vanish in the furnace heat, transforming it into beauty and grace of flames.

"Do I make myself clear?" demanded Craig, his eyes flashing superbly upon her.

"You certainly do," snapped the old lady, her dignity tottering and a very vulgar kind of human wrath showing uglily in her blazing eyes and twitching nose and mouth and fingers.

"Then let us have no more of this caste nonsense," said the young man. "Forbid your granddaughter to marry or to see me. Send or take her away. She will thank you a year from now. My thanks will begin from the moment of release."

"Yes, you have made yourself extremely clear," said Madam Bowker in a suffocating voice. To be thus defied, insulted, outraged, in her own magnificent salon, in her own magnificent presence! "You may be sure you will have no further opportunity to exploit your upstart insolence in my family. Any chance you may have had for the alliance you have so cunningly sought is at an end." And she waved her ebony scepter in dismissal, ringing the bell at the same time.

Craig drew himself up, bowed coldly and haughtily, made his exit in excellent style; no prince of the blood, bred to throne rooms, no teacher of etiquette in a fashionable boarding-school could have done better.



CHAPTER XIV

MAGGIE AND JOSH

Wrath is a baseless flame in the intelligent aged; also, Margaret's grandmother was something more than a mere expert in social craft, would have been woman of the world had not circumstances compressed her to its petty department of fashionable society. Before Craig had cleared the front door she was respecting him, even as she raged against him. Insolent, impudent, coarsely insulting—yes, all these. But very much a man, a masculine force; with weaknesses, it was true, and his full measure of the low-sprung's obsequious snobbishness; but, for all that, strong, persistent, concentrated, one who knew the master- art of making his weaknesses serve as pitfalls into which his enemies were lured, to fall victim to his strength.

"Yes, he will arrive," reflected Madam Bowker. "Branch will yet have to serve him. Poor Branch! What a misery for a man to be born with a master's mind but with the lack of will and courage that keeps a man a servant. Yes, Craig will arrive! ... What a pity he has no money."

But, on second thought, that seemed less a disadvantage. If she should let him marry Margaret they would be dependent upon her; she could control them—him—through holding the purse strings. And when that remote time came at which it would please God to call her from her earthly labors to their eternal reward, she could transfer the control to Margaret. "Men of his origin are always weak on the social side," she reflected. "And it wouldn't be in nature for a person as grasping of power as he is not to be eager about money also."

With the advent of plutocratic fashion respect for official position had dwindled at Washington. In Rome in the days when the imperators became mere creatures of the army, the seat of fashion and of power was transferred to the old and rich families aloof from the government and buying peace and privilege from it. So Washington's fashionable society has come to realize, even more clearly than does the rest of the country, that, despite spasmodic struggles and apparent spurts of reaction, power has passed to the plutocracy, and that officialdom is, as a rule, servant verging toward slave. Still, form is a delusion of tenacious hold upon the human mind. The old lady's discoveries of Craig's political prospects did not warm her toward him as would news that he was in the way of being vastly rich; but she retained enough of the fading respect for high-titled office to feel that he was not the quite impossibility she had fancied, but was fit to be an aspirant for an aristocratic alliance.

"If Margaret doesn't fall in love with him after she marries him," reflected she, "all may be well. Of course, if she does she'll probably ruin him and herself, too. But I think she'll have enough sense of her position, of how to maintain it for herself, and for him and her children, not to be a fool."

Meanwhile Craig was also cooling down. He had meant every word he said—while he was saying it. Only one self-convinced could have been so effective. But, sobering off from his rhetorical debauch in the quiet streets of that majestic quarter, he began to feel that he had gone farther, much farther, than he intended.

"I don't see how, in self-respect, I could have said less," thought he. "And surely the old woman isn't so lost to decency that she can't appreciate and admire self-respect."

Still he might have spoken less harshly; might have been a little considerate of the fact that he was not making a stump speech, but was in the drawing-room of a high-born, high-bred lady. "And gad, she IS a patrician!"

His eyes were surveying the splendid mansions round about—the beautiful window-gardens—the curtains at the windows, which he had learned were real lace, whatever that might be, and most expensive. Very fine, that way of living! Very comfortable, to have servants at beck and call, and most satisfactory to the craving for power—trifles, it is true, but still the substantial and tangible evidence of power. "And it impresses the people, too. We're all snobs at bottom. We're not yet developed enough to appreciate such a lofty abstraction as democracy."

True, Margaret was not rich; but the old grandmother was. Doubtless, if he managed her right, she would see to it that he and Margaret had some such luxury as these grandly-housed people— "but not too much, for that would interfere with my political program." He did not protest this positively; the program seemed, for the moment, rather vague and not very attractive. The main point seemed to be money and the right sort of position among the right sort of people. He shook himself, scowled, muttered: "I am a damn fool! What do I amount to except as I rise in politics and stay risen? I must be mighty careful or I'll lose my point of view and become a wretched hanger-on at the skirts of these fakers. For they are fakers—frauds of the first water! Take their accidental money away from them and they'd sink to be day laborers, most of them—and not of much account there."

He was sorely perplexed; he did not know what to do—what he ought to do—even what he wanted to do. One thing seemed clear—that he had gone further than was necessary in antagonizing the old woman. Whether he wanted to marry the girl or not, he certainly did not wish, at this stage of the game, to make it impossible. The wise plan was to leave the situation open in every direction, so that he could freely advance or freely retreat as unfolding events might dictate. So he turned in the direction of the Severence house, walked at his usual tearing pace, arrived there somewhat wilted of collar and exceedingly dusty of shoe and trouser-leg.

Greater physical contrast could hardly have been than that between him and Margaret, descending to him in the cool garden where he was mopping himself and dusting his shoes, all with the same handkerchief. She was in a graceful walking costume of pale blue, scrupulously neat, perfect to the smallest detail. As she advanced she observed him with eyes that nothing escaped; and being in one of her exquisite moods, when the senses are equally quick to welcome the agreeable or to shrink from the disagreeable, she had a sense of physical repugnance. He saw her the instant she came out of the house. Her dress, its harmony with her delicateness of feature and coloring, the gliding motion of her form combined to throw him instantly into a state of intoxication. He rushed toward her; she halted, shivered, shrank. "Don't—look at me like that!" she exclaimed half under her breath.

"And why not? Aren't you mine?" And he seized her, enwrapped her in his arms, pressed his lips firmly upon her hair, her cheek— upon her lips. There he lingered; her eyes closed, her form, he felt, was yielding within his embrace as though she were about to faint.

"Don't—please," she murmured, when he let her catch her breath. "I—I—can't bear it."

"Do you love me?" he cried passionately.

"Let me go!" She struggled futilely in his plowman arms.

"Say you love me!"

"If you don't let me go I shall hate you!"

"I see I shall have to kiss you until you do love me."

"Yes—yes—whatever you wish me to say," she cried, suddenly freeing herself by dodging most undignifiedly out of his arms.

She stood a little way from him, panting, as was he. She frowned fiercely, then her eyes softened, became tender—just why she could not have explained. "What a dirty boy it is!" she said softly. "Go into the house and ask Williams to take you where you can make yourself presentable."

"Not I," said he, dropping into a seat. "Come, sit here beside me."

She laughed; obeyed. She even made several light passes at his wet mop of hair. She wondered why it was that she liked to touch him, where a few minutes before she had shrunk from it.

"I've just been down telling that old grandmother of yours what I thought of her," said he.

She startled. "How did you happen to go there?" she exclaimed. She forgot herself so completely that she added imperiously: "I wanted you to keep away from her until I was ready for you to go."

"She sent for me," apologized he. "I went. We came together with a bang. She told me I wanted to marry you; I told her YOU wanted to marry ME. She told me I was low; I told her she was a fraud. She said I was insolent; I said good-afternoon. If I hadn't marched out rather quickly I guess she'd have had me thrown out."

Margaret was sitting stone-still, her hands limp in her lap.

"So you see it's all up," continued he, with a curious air of bravado, patently insincere. "And it's just as well. You oughtn't to marry me. It's a crime for me to have permitted things to go this far."

"Perhaps you are right," replied she slowly and thoughtfully. "Perhaps you are right."

He made one of his exclamatory gestures, a swift jerk around of the head toward her. He had all he could do to restrain himself from protesting, without regard to his pretenses to himself and to her. "Do you mean that, Maggie?" he asked with more appeal in his voice than he was conscious of.

"Never call me that again!" she cried. "It's detestable—so common!"

He drew back as if she had struck him. "I beg your pardon," he said with gentle dignity. "I shall not do it again. Maggie was my mother's name—what she was always called at home."

She turned her eyes toward him with a kind of horror in them. "Oh, forgive me!" she begged, her clasped hands upon his arm. "I didn't mean it at all—not at all. It is I that am detestable and common. I spoke that way because I was irritated about something else." She laid one hand caressingly against his cheek. "You must always call me Maggie—when—when "—very softly—"you love me very, very much. I like you to have a name for me that nobody else has."

He seized her hands. "You DO care for me, don't you?" he cried.

She hesitated. "I don't quite know," said she. Then, less seriously: "Not at all, I'm sure, when you talk of breaking the engagement. I WISH you hadn't seen grandmother!"

"I wish so, too," confessed he. "I made an ass of myself."

She glanced at him quickly. "Why do you say that?"

"I don't know," he stammered confusedly. How could he tell her?

"A moment ago you seemed well pleased with what you'd done."

"Well, I guess I went too far. I wasn't very polite."

"You never are."

"I'm going to try to do better....No, I don't think it would be wise for me to go and apologize to her."

She was looking at him strangely. "Why are you so anxious to conciliate her?"

He saw what a break he had made, became all at once red and inarticulate.

"What is she to you?" persisted the girl.

"Nothing at all," he blustered. "I don't care—THAT"—he snapped his fingers—"for her opinion. I don't care if everybody in the world is against our marrying. I want just you—only you."

"Obviously," said she with a dry laugh that was highly disconcerting to him. "I certainly have no fortune—or hope of one, so far as I know."

This so astounded, so disconcerted him that he forgot to conceal it. "Why, I thought—your grandmother—that is—" He was remembering, was stammering, was unable to finish.

"Go on," she urged, obviously enjoying his hot confusion.

He became suddenly angry. "Look here, Margaret," he cried, "you don't suspect me of—"

She put her fingers on his lips and laughed quietly at him. "You'd better run along now. I'm going to hurry away to grandmother, to try to repair the damage you did." She rose and called, "Lucia! Lucia!" The round, rosy, rather slovenly Miss Severence appeared in the little balcony—the only part of the house in view from where they sat.

"Telephone the stables for the small victoria," called Margaret.

"Mother's out in it," replied Lucia.

"Then the small brougham."

"I want that. Why don't you take the electric?"

"All right."

Lucia disappeared. Margaret turned upon the deeply-impressed Craig. "What's the matter?" asked she, though she knew.

"I can't get used to this carriage business," said he. "I don't like it. Where the private carriage begins just there democracy ends. It is the parting of the ways. People who are driving have to look down; people who aren't have to look up."

"Nonsense!" said Margaret, though it seemed to her to be the truth.

"Nonsense, of course," retorted Craig. "But nonsense rules the world." He caught her roughly by the arm. "I warn you now, when we—"

"Run along, Josh," cried she, extricating herself and laughing, and with a wave of the hand she vanished into the shrubbery. As soon as she was beyond the danger of having to continue that curious conversation she walked less rapidly. "I wonder what he really thinks," she said to herself. "I wonder what I really think. I suspect we'd both be amazed at ourselves and at each other if we knew."

Arrived at her grandmother's she had one more and huger cause for wonder. There were a dozen people in the big salon, the old lady presiding at the tea-table in high good humor. "Ah—here you are, Margaret," cried she. "Why didn't you bring your young man?"

"He's too busy for frivolity," replied Margaret.

"I saw him this afternoon," continued Madam Bowker, talking aside to her alone when the ripples from the new stone in the pond had died away. "He's what they call a pretty rough customer. But he has his good points."

"You liked him better?" said the astonished Margaret.

"I disliked him less," corrected the old lady. "He's not a man any one"—this with emphasis and a sharp glance at her granddaughter— "likes. He neither likes nor is liked. He's too much of an ambition for such petty things. People of purpose divide their fellows into two classes, the useful and the useless. They seek allies among the useful, they avoid the useless."

Margaret laughed.

"Why do you laugh, child? Because you don't believe it?"

Margaret sighed. "No, because I don't want to believe it."



CHAPTER XV

THE EMBASSY GARDEN PARTY

Craig dined at the Secretary of State's that night, and reveled in the marked consideration every one showed him. He knew it was not because of his political successes, present and impending; in the esteem of that fashionable company his success with Margaret overtopped them. And while he was there, drinking more than was good for him and sharing in the general self-complacence, he thought so himself. But waking up about three in the morning, with an aching head and in the depths of the blues, the whole business took on again its grimmest complexion. "I'll talk it over again with Grant," he decided, and was at the Arkwright house a few minutes after eight.

It so happened that Grant himself was wakeful that morning and had got up about half-past seven. When Craig came he was letting his valet dress him. He sent for Craig to come up to his dressing- room. "You can talk to me while Walter shaves me," said Grant from the armchair before his dressing table. He was spread out luxuriously and Josh watched the process of shaving as if he had never seen it before. Indeed, he never had seen a shave in such pomp and circumstance of silver and gold, of ivory and cut glass, of essence and powder.

"That's a very ladylike performance for two men to be engaged in," said he.

"It's damn comfortable," answered Grant lazily.

"Where did you get that thing you've got on?"

"This gown? Oh, Paris. I get all my things of that sort there. Latterly I get my clothes there, too." "I like that thing," said Craig, giving it a patronizing jerk of his head. "It looks cool and clean. Linen and silk, isn't it? Only I'd choose a more serviceable color than white. And I'd not have a pink silk lining and collar in any circumstances."

He wandered about the room.

"Goshalimity!" he exclaimed, peering into a drawer. "You must have a million neckties. And"—he was at the partly open door of a huge closet—"here's a whole roomful of shirts—and another of clothes." He wheeled abruptly upon the smiling, highly-flattered tenant of the arm-chair. "Grant, how many suits have you got?"

"Blest if I know. How many, Walter?"

"I really cannot say, sir. I know 'em all, but I never counted 'em. About seventy or eighty, I should say, not counting extra trousers."

Craig looked astounded. "And how many shirts, Walter?"

"Oh, several hundred of them, sir. Mr. Grant's most particular about his linen."

"And here are boots and shoes and pumps and gaiters and Lord knows what and what not—enough to stock a shoe-store. And umbrellas and canes—Good God, man! How do you carry all that stuff round on your mind?"

Grant laughed like a tickled infant. All this was as gratifying to his vanity as applause to Craig's. "Walter looks after it," said he.

Craig lapsed into silence, stared moodily out of the window. The idea of his thinking of marrying a girl of Grant's class! What a ridiculous, loutish figure he would cut in her eyes! Why, not only did he not have the articles necessary to a gentleman's wardrobe, he did not even know the names of them, nor their uses! It was all very well to pretend that these matters were petty. In a sense they were. But that sort of trifles played a most important part in life as it was led by Margaret Severence. She'd not think them trifles. She was probably assuming that, while he was not quite up to the fashionable standard, still he had a gentleman's equipment of knowledge and of toilet articles. "She'd think me no better than a savage—and, damn it! I'm not much above the savage state, as far as this side of life is concerned."

Grant interrupted his mournful musings with: "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll have my bath."

And, Walter following, he went in at a door to the right, through which Craig had a glimpse of marble walls and floor, of various articles of more than Roman luxury. The moments dragged away until half an hour had passed.

"What the devil!" Josh called out. "What are you doing all this time?"

"Massage," responded Grant. "You can come in."

Craig entered the marble chamber, seated himself on a corner of the warmed marble couch on which Grant lay luxuriating in Walter's powerful massage. "Do you go through this thing often?" demanded he.

"Every morning—except when I'm roughing it. You ought to take massage, Josh. It's great for the skin."

Craig saw that it was. His own skin, aside from his hands and face, was fairly smooth and white; but it was like sandpaper, he thought, beside this firm, rosy covering of the elegant Arkwright's elegant body. "Get through here and send Walter away," he said harshly. "I want to talk to you. If you don't I'll burst out before him. I can't hold in any longer."

"Very well. That'll do, Walter," acquiesced Grant. "And please go and bring us some breakfast. I'll finish dressing afterward."

As soon as the door closed on the valet, Craig said, "Grant, I've got myself into a frightful mess. I want you to help me out of it."

Grant's eyes shifted. He put on his white silk pajamas, thrust his feet into slippers, tossed the silk-lined linen robe about his broad, too square shoulders, and led the way into the other room. Then he said: "Do you mean Margaret Severence?"

"That's it!" exclaimed Craig, pacing the floor. "I've gone and got myself engaged—"

"One minute," interrupted Arkwright in a voice so strange that Joshua paused and stared at him. "I can't talk to you about that."

"Why not?"

"For many reasons. The chief one—Fact is, Josh, I've acted like a howling skunk about you with her. I ran you down to her; tried to get her myself."

Craig waved his hand impatiently. "You didn't succeed, did you? And you're ashamed of it, aren't you? Well, if I wasted time going round apologizing for all the things I'd done that I'm ashamed of I'd have no time left to do decently. So that's out of the way. Now, help me."

"What a generous fellow you are!"

"Generous? Stuff! I need you. We're going to stay friends. You can do what you damn please—I'll like you just the same. I may swat you if you get in my way; but as soon as you were out of it—and that'd be mighty soon and sudden, Grant, old boy—why, I'd be friends again. Come, tell me how I'm to get clear of this engagement."

"I can't talk about it to you."

"Why not?"

"Because I love her."

Craig gasped: "Do you mean that?"

"I love her—as much as I'm capable of loving anybody. Didn't I tell you so?"

"I believe you did say something of the kind," admitted Craig. "But I was so full of my own affairs that I didn't pay much attention to it. Why don't you jump in and marry her?"

"She happens to prefer you."

"Yes, she does," said Craig with a complacence that roiled Arkwright. "I don't know what the poor girl sees in me, but she's just crazy about me."

"Don't be an ass, Josh!" cried Grant in a jealous fury.

Craig laughed pleasantly. "I'm stating simple facts." Then, with abrupt change to earnestness, "Do you suppose, if I were to break the engagement, she'd take it seriously to heart?"

"I fancy she could live through it if you could. She probably cares no more than you do."

"There's the worst of it. I want her, Grant. When I'm with her I can't tolerate the idea of giving her up. But how in the mischief can I marry HER? I'm too strong a dose for a frail, delicate little thing like her."

"She's as tall as you are. I've seen her play athletes to a standstill at tennis."

"But she's so refined, so—"

"Oh, fudge!" muttered Arkwright. Then louder: "Didn't I tell you not to talk to me about this business?"

"But I've got to do it," protested Craig. "You're the only one I can talk to—without being a cad."

Arkwright looked disgusted. "You love the girl," he said bitterly, "and she wants you. Marry her."

"But I haven't got the money."

Craig was out with the truth at last. "What would we live on? My salary is only seventy-five hundred dollars. If I get the Attorney-Generalship it'll be only eight thousand, and I've not got twenty thousand dollars besides. As long as I'm in politics I can't do anything at the law. All the clients that pay well are clients I'd not dare have anything to do with—I may have to prosecute them. Grant, I used to think Government salaries were too big, and I used to rave against office-holders fattening on the people. I was crazy. How's a man to marry a LADY and live like a GENTLEMAN on seven or eight thousand a year? It can't be done."

"And you used to rave against living like a gentleman," thrust Grant maliciously.

Craig reddened. "There it is!" he fairly shouted. "I'm going to the devil. I'm sacrificing all my principles. That's what this mixing with swell people and trying to marry a fashionable lady is doing for me!"

"You're broadening out, you mean. You're losing your taste for tommy-rot."

"Not at all," said Craig surlily and stubbornly. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to see the girl to-day and put the whole case before her. And I want you to back me up."

"I'll do nothing of the sort," cried Grant. "How can you ask such a thing of ME?"

"Yes, you must go with me to-day."

"I've got an engagement—garden-party at the British Embassy."

"Going there, are you? ... Um! ... Well, we'll see."

The breakfast came and Craig ate like a ditch-digger—his own breakfast and most of Grant's. Grant barely touched the food, lit a cigarette, sat regarding the full-mouthed Westerner gloomily. "What DID Margaret see in this man?" thought Grant. "True, she doesn't know him as well as I do; but she knows him well enough. Talk about women being refined! Why, they've got ostrich stomachs."

"Do you know, Grant," said Craig thickly, so stuffed was his mouth, "I think your refined women like men of my sort. I know I can't bear anything but refined women. Now, you—you've got an ostrich stomach. I've seen you quite pleased with women I'd not lay my finger on. Yet most people'd say you were more sensitive than I. Instead, you're much coarser—except about piffling, piddling, paltry non-essentials. You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if Margaret had penetrated the fact that your coarseness is in-bred while mine is near surface. Women have a surprising way of getting at the bottom of things. I'm a good deal like a woman in that respect myself."

Grant thrust a cigar upon him, got him out of the room and on the way out of the house as quickly as possible. "Insufferable egotist!" he mumbled, by way of a parting kick. "Why do I like him? Damned if I believe I do!"

He did not dress until late that afternoon, but lay in his rooms, very low and miserable. When he issued forth it was to the garden- party—and immediately he ran into Margaret and Craig, apparently lying in wait for him. "Here he is!" exclaimed Josh, slapping him enthusiastically on the back. "Grant, Margaret wants to talk with you. I must run along." And before either could speak he had darted away, plowing his way rudely through the crowd.

Margaret and Grant watched his progress—she smiling, he surly and sneering. "Yet you like him," said Margaret.

"In a way, yes," conceded Arkwright. "He has a certain sort of magnetism." He pulled himself up short. "This morning," said he, "I apologized to him for my treachery; and here I am at it again."

"I don't mind," said Margaret. "It's quite harmless."

"That's it!" exclaimed Grant in gloomy triumph. "You can't care for me because you think me harmless."

"Well, aren't you?"

"Yes," he admitted, "I couldn't give anybody—at least, not a blase Washington society girl—anything approaching a sensation. I understand the mystery at last."

"Do you?" said Margaret, with a queer expression in her eyes. "I wish I did."

Grant reflected upon this, could make nothing of it. "I don't believe you're really in love with him," he finally said.

"Was that what you told him you wished to talk to me about?"

"I didn't tell him I wanted to talk with you," protested Grant. "He asked me to try to persuade you not to marry him."

"Well—persuade!"

"To explain how coarse he is."

"How coarse is he?"

"To dilate on the folly of your marrying a poor man with no money prospects."

"I'm content with his prospects—and with mine through him."

"Seven or eight thousand a year? Your dresses cost much more than that."

"No matter."

"You must be in love with him!"

"Women take strange fancies."

"What's the matter, Rita? What have you in the back of your mind?"

She looked straight at him. "Nothing about YOU. Not the faintest, little shadow of a regret." And her hazel eyes smiled mirth of the kind that is cruelest from woman to man.

"How exasperating you are!"

"Perhaps I've caught the habit from my man."

"Rita, you don't even like me any more."

"No—candidly—I don't."

"I deserve it."

"You do. I can never trust you again."

He shrugged his shoulders; but he could not pretend that he was indifferent. "It seems to me, if Josh forgave me you might."

"I do—forgive."

"But not even friendship?"

"Not EVEN friendship."

"You are hard."

"I am hard."

"Rita! For God's sake, don't marry that man! You don't love him— you know you don't. At times you feel you can hardly endure him. You'll be miserable—in every way. And I—At least I can give you material happiness."

She smiled—a cold, enigmatic smile that made her face seem her grandmother's own peering through a radiant mask of youth. She glanced away, around—"Ah! there are mamma and Augusta Burke." And she left him to join them.

He wandered out of the garden, through the thronged corridors, into the street, knocking against people, seeing no one, not heeding the frequent salutations. He went to the Wyandotte, to Craig's tawdry, dingy sitting-room, its disorder now apparently beyond possibility of righting. Craig, his coat and waistcoat off, his detachable cuffs on the floor, was burrowing into masses of huge law-books.

"Clear out," said he curtly; "I'm busy."

Grant plumped himself into a chair. "Josh," cried he desperately, "you must marry that girl. She's just the one for you. I love her, and her happiness is dear to me."

Craig gave him an amused look. "However did she persuade you to come here and say that?" he inquired.

"She didn't persuade me. She didn't mention it. All she said was that she had wiped me off the slate even as a friend."

Craig laughed uproariously. "THAT was how she did it—eh? She's a deep one."

"Josh," said Arkwright, "you need a wife, and she's it."

"Right you are," exclaimed Craig heartily. "I'm one of those surplus-steam persons—have to make an ass of myself constantly, indulging in the futility of blowing off steam. Oughtn't to do it publicly—creates false impression. Got to have a wife—no one else but a wife always available and bound to be discreet. Out with you. I'm too busy to talk—even about myself."

"You will marry her?"

"Like to see anybody try to stop me!"

He pulled Arkwright from the chair, thrust him into the hall, slammed the door. And Arkwright, in a more hopeful frame of mind, went home. "I'll do my best to get back her respect—and my own," said he. "I've been a dog, and she's giving me the whipping I deserve."



CHAPTER XVI

A FIGHT AND A FINISH

In his shrewd guess at Margaret's reason for dealing so summarily with Arkwright, Craig was mistaken, as the acutest of us usually are in attributing motives. He had slowly awakened to the fact that she was not a mere surface, but had also the third dimension —depth, which distinguishes persons from people. Whenever he tried to get at what she meant by studying what she did, he fell into the common error of judging her by himself, and of making no allowance for the sweeter and brighter side of human nature, which was so strong in her that, in happier circumstances, the other side would have been mere rudiment.

Her real reason for breaking with Grant was a desire to be wholly honorable with Craig. She resolved to burn her bridges toward Arkwright, to put him entirely out of her mind—as she had not done theretofore; for whenever she had grown weary of Craig's harping on her being the aggressor in the engagement and not himself, or whenever she had become irritated against him through his rasping mannerisms she had straightway begun to revolve Arkwright as a possible alternative. Craig's personality had such a strong effect on her, caused so many moods and reactions, that she was absolutely unable to tell what she really thought of him. Also, when she was so harassed by doubt as to whether the engagement would end in marriage or in a humiliation of jilting, when her whole mind was busy with the problem of angling him within the swoop of the matrimonial net, how was she to find leisure to examine her heart? Whether she wanted him or simply wanted a husband she could not have said.

She felt that his eccentric way of treating the engagement would justify her in keeping Arkwright in reserve. But she was finding that there were limits to her ability to endure her own self- contempt, and she sacrificed Grant to her outraged self-respect. Possibly she might have been less conscientious had she not come to look on Grant as an exceedingly pale and shadowy personality, a mere vague expression of well-bred amiability, male because trousered, identifiable chiefly by the dollar mark.

Her reward seemed immediate. There came a day when Craig was all devotion, was talking incessantly of their future, was never once doubtful or even low-spirited. It was simply a question of when they would marry—whether as soon as Stillwater fixed his date for retiring, or after Craig was installed. She had to listen patiently to hours on hours of discussion as to which would be the better time. She had to seem interested, though from the viewpoint of her private purposes nothing could have been less important. She had no intention of permitting him to waste his life and hers in the poverty and uncertainty of public office, struggling for the applause of mobs one despised as individuals and would not permit to cross one's threshold. But she had to let him talk on and on, and yet on. In due season, when she was ready to speak and he to hear, she would disclose to him the future she had mapped out for him, not before. He discoursed; she listened. At intervals he made love in his violent, terrifying way; she endured, now half-liking it, now half-hating it and him, but always enduring, passive, as became a modest, inexperienced maiden, and with never a suggestion of her real thoughts upon her surface.

It was the morning after one of these outbursts of his, one of unusual intensity, one that had so worn upon her nerves that, all but revolted by the sense of sick satiety, she had come perilously near to indulging herself in the too costly luxury of telling him precisely what she thought of him and his conduct. She was in bed, with the blinds just up, and the fair, early-summer world visioning itself to her sick heart like Paradise to the excluded Peri at its barred gate. "And if he had given me half a chance I'd have loved him," she was thinking. "I do believe in him, and admire his strength and his way of never accepting defeat. But how can I—how CAN I—when he makes me the victim of these ruffian moods of his? I almost think the Frenchman was right who said that every man ought to have two wives. ...Not that at times he doesn't attract me that way. But because one likes champagne one does not wish it by the cask. A glass now and then, or a bottle—perhaps—" Aloud: "What is it, Selina?"

"A note for you, ma'am, from HIM. It's marked important and immediate. You told me not to disturb you with those marked important, nor with those marked immediate. But you didn't say what to do about those marked both."

"The same," said Margaret, stretching herself out at full length, and snuggling her head into the softness of her perfumed hair. "But now that you've brought it thus far, let me have it."

Selina laid it on the silk and swansdown quilt and departed. Margaret forgot that it was there in thinking about a new dress she was planning, an adaptation of a French model. As she turned herself it fell to the floor. She reached down, picked it up, opened it, read:

"It's no use. Fate's against us. I find the President is making my marriage the excuse for not appointing me. How lucky we did not announce the engagement. This is a final good-by. I shall keep out of your way. It's useless for you to protest. I am doing what is best for us both. Thank me, and forget me."

She leaped from the bed with one bound, and, bare of foot and in her nightgown only, rushed to the telephone. She called up the Arkwrights, asked for Grant. "Wake him," she said. "If he is still in bed tell him Miss Severence wishes to speak to him at once."

Within a moment Grant's agitated voice was coming over the wire: "Is that you, Rita? What is the matter?"

"Come out here as soon as you can. How long will it be?"

"An hour. I really must shave."

"In an hour, then. Good-by."

Before the end of the hour she was pacing her favorite walk in the garden, impatiently watching the point where he would appear. At sight of her face he almost broke into a run. "What is it, Margaret?" he cried.

"What have you been saying to Josh Craig?" she demanded.

"Nothing, I swear. I've been keeping out of his way. He came to see me this morning—called me a dozen times on the telephone, too. But I refused him."

She reflected. "I want you to go and bring him here," she said presently. "No matter what he says, bring him."

"When?"

"Right away."

"If I have to use force." And Grant hastened away.

Hardly had he gone when Williams appeared, carrying a huge basket of orchids. "They just came, ma'am. I thought you'd like to see them."