She said something to Grace Ferrall about the mist promising good point-shooting in the morning, took the order book from a servant, jotted down her request to be called an hour before sunrise, filled in the gun-room records with her score—the species and number bagged, and the number of shells used—and accepting the tea offered, drew out a tiny cigarette-case of sweet-bay wood heavily crusted with rose-gold.

"With whom were you shooting?" asked Grace, as Marion dropped one well-shaped leg over the other and wreathed her delicately tanned features in smoke.

"Stephen Siward and Blinky. They're at it yet, but I had some letters to write." She glanced leisurely at Sylvia and touched the ash-tray with the whitening end of her cigarette. "That dog you let Mr. Siward have is a good one. I'm taking him to Jersey next week for the cock-shooting."

Sylvia returned her calm gaze blankly.

An unreasonable and disagreeable shock had passed through her.

"My North Carolina pointers are useless for close work," observed Marion indifferently; and she leaned back, watching the blue smoke curling upward from her cigarette.

Sylvia, distrait, but with downcast eyes on fire under the fringed lids, was thinking of the cheque Siward had given her for Sagamore. The transaction, for her, had been a business one on the surface only. She had never meant to use the cheque. She had laid it away among a few letters, relics, pleasant souvenirs of the summer. To her the affair had been softened by a delicate hint of intimacy,—the delight he was to take in something that had once been hers had given her a faint taste of the pleasure of according pleasure to a man. And this is what he had done!

The drizzle had turned to fog, through which rain was now pelting the cliffs; people were returning from the open; a motor-car came whizzing into the drive, and out of it tumbled Rena and Eileen and the faithful Pages, the girls irritable and ready for tea, and the boys like a pair of eager, wagging, setter puppies, pleased with everything and everybody, utterly oblivious to the sombre repose brooding above the tea-table.

Their sister calmly refused them the use of her cigarettes. Eileen presented her pretty shoulder, Rena nearly yawned at them, but, nothing dampened, they recounted a number of incidents with reciprocal enthusiasm to Sylvia, who was too inattentive to smile, and to Grace Ferrall, who smiled the more sweetly through sheer inattention.

Then Alderdene came in, blinking a greeting through his foggy goggles, sloppy, baggy, heavy shoes wheezing, lingered in the vicinity long enough to swallow his "peg" and acquire a disdainful opinion of his shooting from Marion, and then took himself off, leaving the room noisy with his laugh, which resembled the rattle of a startled kingfisher.

In ones and twos the guests reported as the dusk-curtained fog closed in on Shotover. Quarrier came, dry as a chip under his rain-coat, but his silky beard was wet with rain, and moisture powdered his long, soft eyelashes and white skin; and his flexible, pointed fingers, as he drew off his gloves, seemed startling in their whiteness through the gathering gloom.

"I suppose our evening walk is out of the question," he said, standing by Sylvia, who had nodded a greeting and then turned her head rather hastily to see who had entered the room. It was Siward, only a vague shape in the gloom, but perfectly recognisable to her. At the same moment Marion Page rose leisurely and strolled toward the billiard-room.

"Our walk?" repeated Sylvia absently—"it's raining, you know." Yet only a day or two ago she had walked to church with Siward through the rain, the irritated Major feeling obliged to go with them. Her eyes followed Siward's figure, suddenly dark against the door of the lighted billiard-room, then brilliantly illuminated, as he entered, nodded acceptance to Mortimer's invitation, and picked up the cue just laid aside by Agatha Caithness, who had turned to speak to Marion. Then Mortimer's bulk loomed nearer; voices became gay and animated in the billiard-room. Siward's handsome face was bent toward Agatha Caithness in gay challenge; Mortimer's heavy laugh broke out; there came the rattle of pool-balls, and the dull sound of cue-butts striking the floor; then, crack! and the game began, with Marion Page and Siward fighting Mortimer and Miss Caithness for something or other.

Quarrier had been speaking for some time before Sylvia became aware of it—something about a brisk walk in the morning somewhere; and she nodded impatiently, watching Marion's supple waist-line as she bent far over the illuminated table for a complicated shot at the enemy.

His fiancee's inattention was not agreeable to Quarrier. A dozen things had happened since his arrival which had not been agreeable to him: her failure to meet him at the Fells Crossing, and the reason for her failure; and her informal acquaintance with Siward, whose presence at Shotover he had not looked for, and her sudden intimacy with the man he had never particularly liked, and whom within six months he had come to detest and to avoid.

These things—the outrageous liberty Siward had permitted himself in caricaturing him, the mortifying caprice of Sylvia for Siward on the day of the Shotover cup-drive—had left indelible impressions in a cold and rather heavy mind, slow to waste effort in the indulgence of any vital emotion.

In a few years indifference to Siward had changed to passive disapproval; that, again, to an emotionless dislike; and when the scandal at the Patroons Club occurred, for the first time in his life he understood what it was to fear the man he disliked. For if Siward had committed the insane imprudence which had cost him his title to membership, he had also done something, knowingly or otherwise, which awoke in Quarrier a cold, slow fear; and that fear was dormant, but present, now, and it, for the time being, dictated his attitude and bearing toward the man who might or might not be capable of using viciously a knowledge which Quarrier believed that he must possess.

For that reason, when it was not possible to avoid Siward, his bearing toward him was carefully civil; for that reason he dampened Major Belwether's eagerness to tell everybody all he knew about the shamelessly imprudent girl who had figured with Siward in the scandal, but whose identity the press had not discovered.

Silence was always desirable to Quarrier; silence concerning all matters was a trait inborn and congenially cultivated to a habit by him in every affair of life—in business, in leisure, in the methodical pursuits of such pleasures as a limited intellect permitted him, in personal and family matters, in public questions and financial problems.

He listened always, but never invited confidences; he had no opinion to express when invited. And he became very, very rich.

And over it all spread a thin membrane of vanity, nervous, not intellectual, sensitiveness; for all sense of humour was absent in this man, whose smile, when not a physical effort, was automatically and methodically responsive to certain fixed cues. He smiled when he said "Good morning," when declining or accepting invitations, when taking his leave, when meeting anybody of any financial importance, and when everybody except himself had begun to laugh in a theatre or a drawing-room. This limit to any personal manifestation he considered a generous one. And perhaps it was.

A sudden rain-squall, noisy against the casements, had darkened the room; then the electric lights broke out with a mild candle-like lustre, and Quarrier, standing beside Sylvia's chair, discovered it to be empty.

It was not until he had dressed for dinner that he saw her again, seated on the stairs with Marion Page—a new appearance of intimacy for both women, who heretofore had found nothing except a passing civility in common.

Marion was discussing dog-breeding with that cool, crude, direct insouciance so unpleasant to some men. Sylvia was attentive, curious, and instinctively shrinking by turns, secretly dismayed at the overplainness of terms employed in kennel lore by the girl at her side.

The conversation veered toward the Sagamore pup. Marion explained that Siward was too busy to do any Southern shooting, which was why he was glad to have her polish Sagamore on Jersey woodcock.

"I thought it was not good for a dog to be used by anybody except his master," said Sylvia carelessly.

"Only second-raters suffer. Besides, I have shot enough, now, with Mr. Siward to use his dog as he does."

"He is an agreeable shooting companion, smiled Sylvia.

"He is perfect," answered Marion coolly. "The only test for a thoroughbred is the field. He rings true."

They exchanged carefully impersonal views on Siward's good qualities for a moment or two; then Marion said bluntly: "Do you know anything in particular about that Patroons Club affair?"

"No," said Sylvia, "nothing in particular."

"Neither do I; and I don't care to; I mean, that I don't care what he did; and I wish that gossiping old Major would stop trying to hint it to me."

"My uncle!"

"Oh! I forgot. Beg your pardon, you know, but—"

"I'm not offended," observed Sylvia, with a shrug of her pretty, bare shoulders.

Marion laughed. "Such a gadabout! Besides, I'm no prude, but he and Leroy Mortimer have no business to talk to unmarried women the way they do. No matter how worldly wise we are, men have no right to suppose we are."

"Pooh!" shrugged Sylvia. "I have no patience to study out double-entendre, so it never shocks me. Besides—"

She was going to add that she was not at all versed in doubtful worldly wisdom, but decided not to, as it might seem to imply disapproval of Marion's learning. So she went on: "Besides, what have innuendoes to do with Mr. Siward?"

"I don't know whether I care to understand them. The Major hinted that the woman—the one who figured in it—is—rather exclusively Mr. Siward's 'property.'"

"Exclusively?" repeated Sylvia curiously. "She's a public actress, isn't she?"

"If you call the manoeuvres of a newly fledged chorus girl acting, yes, she is. But I don't believe Mr. Siward figures in that unfashionable role. Why, there are too many women of his own sort ready for mischief." Marion turned to Sylvia, her eyes hard with a cynicism quite lost on the other. "That sort of thing might suit Leroy Mortimer, but it doesn't fit Mr. Siward," she concluded, rising as their hostess appeared from above and the butler from below.

And all through dinner an indefinitely unpleasant remembrance of the conversation lingered with Sylvia, and she sat silent for minutes at a time, returning to actualities with a long, curious side-glance across at Siward, and an uncomprehending smile of assent for whatever Quarrier or Major Belwether had been saying to her.

Cards she managed to avoid after dinner, and stood by Quarrier's chair for half an hour, absently watching the relentless method and steady adherence to rule which characterised his Bridge-playing, the eager, unslaked brutality of Mortimer, the set, selfish face of his pretty wife, the chilled intensity of Miss Caithness.

And Grace Ferrall's phrase recurred to her, "Nobody ever has enough money!"—not even these people, whose only worry was to find investment for the surplus they were unable to spend. Something of the meanness of it all penetrated her. Were these the real visages of these people, whose faces otherwise seemed so smooth and human? Was Leila Mortimer aware of the shrillness of her voice? Did Agatha Caithness realise how pinched her mouth and nose had grown? Did even Leroy Mortimer dream how swollen the pouches under his eyes were; how red and puffy his hands, shuffling a new pack; how pendulous and dreadful his red under-lip when absorbedly making up his cards?

Instinctively she moved a step forward for a glimpse of Quarrier's face. The face appeared to be a study in blankness. His natural visage was emotionless and inexpressive enough, but this face, from which every vestige of colour had fled, fascinated her with its dead whiteness; and the hair brushed high, the long, black lashes, the silky beard, struck her as absolutely ghastly, as though they had been glued to a face of wax.

She turned on her heel, restless, depressed, inclined for companionship. The Page boys had tempted Rena and Eileen to the billiard-room; Voucher, Alderdene, and Major Belwether were huddled over a table, immersed in Preference; Katharyn Tassel and Grace Ferrall sat together looking over the announcements of Sylvia's engagement in a batch of New York papers just arrived; Ferrall was writing at a desk, and Siward and Marion were occupied in the former's sketch for an ideal shooting vehicle, to be built on the buckboard principle, with a clever arrangement for dogs, guns, ammunition, and provisions. Siward's profile, as it bent in the lamplight over the paper, was very engaging. The boyish note predominated as he talked while he drew, his eyes now smiling, now seriously intent on the sketch which was developing so swiftly under his facile pencil.

Marion's clean-cut blond head was close to his, her supple body twisted in her seat, one bare arm hanging over the back of the chair. Something in her attitude seemed to exclude intrusion; her voice, too, was hushed in comment, though his was pitched in his naturally agreeable key.

Sylvia had taken a hesitating step toward them, but halted, turning irresolutely; and suddenly over her crept a sensation of isolation—something of that feeling which had roused her at midnight from her bed and driven her to Grace Ferrall for a refuge from she knew not what.

The rustle of her silken dinner gown was scarcely perceptible as she turned. Siward, moving his head slightly, glanced up, then brought his sketch to a brilliant finish.

"Don't you think something of this sort is practicable?" he asked pleasantly, including Mrs. Ferrall and Katharyn Tassel in a general appeal which brought them into the circle of two. Grace Ferrall leaned forward, looking over Marion's shoulder, and Siward rose and stepped back, with a quick glance into the hall—in time to catch a glimmer of pale blue and lace on the stairs.

"I suppose my cigarettes are in my room as usual," he said aloud to himself, wheeling so that he could not have time to see Marion's offer of her little gold-encrusted case, or notice her quickly raised eyes, bright with suspicion and vexation. For she, too, had observed Sylvia's distant entrance, had been perfectly aware of Siward's cognizance of Sylvia's retreat; and when Siward went on sketching she had been content. Now she could not tell whether he had deliberately and skillfully taken his conge to follow Sylvia, or whether, in his quest for his cigarettes, chance might meddle, as usual. Even if he returned, she could not know with certainty how much of a part hazard had played on the landing above, where she already heard the distant sounds of Sylvia's voice mingling with Siward's, then a light footfall or two, and silence.

He had greeted her in his usual careless, happy fashion, just as she had reached her chamber door; and she turned at the sound of his voice, confused, unsmiling, a little pale.

"Is it headache, or are you too in quest of cigarettes?" he asked, as he stopped in passing her where she stood, one slender hand on the knob of her door.

"I don't smoke, you know," she said, looking up at him with a cool little laugh. "It isn't headache either. I was—boring myself, Mr. Siward."

"Is there any virtue in me as a remedy?"

"Oh, I have no doubt you have lots of virtues. ... Perhaps you might do as a temporary remedy—first aid to the injured." She laughed again, uncertainly. "But you are on a quest for cigarettes."

"And you?"

"A rendezvous—with the Sand-Man. ... Good night."

"Good night ... if you must say it."

"It's polite to say something ... isn't it?"

"It would be polite to say, 'With pleasure, Mr. Siward!'"

"But you haven't invited me to do anything—not even to accept a cigarette. Besides, you didn't expect to meet me up here?"

The trailing accent made it near enough a question for him to say, "Yes, I did."

"How could you?"

"I saw you leave the room."

"You were sketching for Marion Page. Do you wish me to believe that you noticed me—"

"—And followed you? Yes, I did follow you." She looked at him, then past him toward a corner of the wide hall where a maid in cap and apron sat pretending to be sewing. "Careful!" she motioned with smiling lips, "servants gossip. ... Good night, again."

"Won't you—"

"Oh, dear! you mustn't speak so loud," she motioned, with her fresh, sweet lips curving on the edge of that adorable smile once more.

"Couldn't we have a moment—"

"No—"

"One minute—"

"Hush! I must open my door"—lingering. "I might come out again, if you have anything particularly important to communicate to me."

"I have. There's a big bay-window at the end of the other corridor. Will you come?"

But she opened her door, with a light laugh, saying "good night" again, and closed it noiselessly behind her.

He walked on, turning into his corridor, but kept straight ahead, passing his own door, on to the window at the end of the hall, then north along a wide passageway which terminated in a bay-window overlooking the roof of the indoor swimming tank.

Rain rattled heavily, against the panes and on the lighted roof of opalescent glass below, through which he could make out the shadowy fronds of palms.

It appeared that he had cigarettes enough, for he lighted one presently, and, leaving his chair, curled up in the cushioned and pillowed window-seat, gathering his knees together under his arm.

The cigarette he had lighted went out. He had bitten into it and twisted it so roughly that it presently crumbled; and he threw the rags of it into a metal bowl, locking his jaws in silence. For the night threatened to be a bad one for him. A heavy fragrance from his neighbour's wine-glass at dinner had stirred up what had for a time lain dormant; and, by accident, something—some sweetmeat he had tasted—was saturated in brandy.

Now, his restlessness at the prospect of a blank night had quickened to uneasiness, with a hint of fever tinting his skin, but, as yet, the dull ache in his body was scarcely more than a premonition.

He had his own devices for tiding him over such periods—reading, tobacco, and the long, blind, dogged tramps he took in town. But here, to-night, in the rain, one stood every chance of walking off the cliffs; and he was sick of reading himself sightless over the sort of books sent wholesale to Shotover; and he was already too ill at ease, physically, to make smoking endurable.

Were it not for a half-defiant, half-sullen dread of the coming night, he might have put it from his mind in spite of the slowly increasing nervous tension and the steady dull consciousness of desire. He drew another Sirdar from his case and sat staring at the rain-smeared night, twisting the frail fragrant cigarette to bits between his fingers.

After a while he began to walk monotonously to and fro the length of the corridor, like a man timing his steps to the heavy ache of body or mind. Once he went as far as his own door, entered, and stepping to the wash-basin, let the icy water run over hands and wrists. This sometimes helped to stimulate and soothe him; it did now, for a while—long enough to change the current of his thoughts to the girl he had hoped might have the imprudence to return for a tryst, innocent enough in itself, yet unconventional and unreasonable enough to prove attractive to them both.

Probably she wouldn't come; she had kept her fluffy skirts clear of him since Cup Day—which simply corroborated his vague estimate of her. Had she done the contrary, his estimate would have been the same; for, unconsciously but naturally, he had prejudged her. A girl who could capture Quarrier at full noontide, and in the face of all Manhattan, was a girl equipped for anything she dared—though she was probably too clever to dare too much; a girl to be interested in, to amuse and be amused by; a girl to be reckoned with. His restlessness and his fever subdued by the icy water, he stood drying his hands, thinking, coolly, how close he had come to being seriously in love with this young girl, whose attitude was always a curious temptation, whose smile was a charming provocation, whose youth and beauty were to him a perpetual challenge. He admitted to himself, calmly, that he had never seen a woman he cared as much for; that for the brief moment of his declaration he had known an utterly new emotion, which inevitably must have become the love he had so quietly declared it to be. He had never before felt as he felt then, cared as he cared then. Anything had been possible for him at that time—any degree of love, any devotion, any generous renunciation. Clear-sighted, master of himself, he saw love before him, and knew it when he saw it; recognised it, was ready for it, offered it, emboldened by her soft hands so eloquent in his.

And in his arms he held it for an instant, he thought, spite of the sudden inertia, spite of the according of cold lips and hands still colder, relaxed, inert; held it until he doubted. That was all; he had been wise to doubt such sudden miracles as that. She, consummate and charming, had soon set him right. And, after all, she liked him; and she had been sure enough of herself to permit the impulse of a moment to carry her with him—a little way, a very little way—merely to the formal symbol of a passion the germ of which she recognised in him.

Then she had become intelligent again, with a little laughter, a little malice, a becoming tint of hesitation and confusion; all the sense, all the arts, all the friendly sweetness of a woman thorough in training, schooled in self-possession, clear enough to be audacious and perverse without danger to herself, to the man, or to the main chance.

Standing there alone in his lighted room, he wondered whether, had her trained and inbred policy been less precise, less worldly, she might have responded to such a man as he. Perfectly conscious that he had been capable of loving her; aware, too, that his experience had left him on that borderland only through his cool refusal to cross it and face a hopeless battle already lost, he leisurely and mentally took the measure of his own state of mind, and found all well, all intact; found himself still master of his affections, and probably clear-minded enough to remain so under the circumstances.

To such a man as he, impulse to love, capacity to love, did not mean instant capsizing with a flop into sentimental tempests, where swamped, ardent and callow youth raises a hysterically selfish clamour for reciprocity or death. His nature partly, partly his character, accounted for this balance; and, in part, a rather wide experience with women of various degrees counted more.

So, by instinct and experience, normally temperate, only what was abnormal and inherited might work a mischief in this man. His listlessness, his easy acquiescence, were but consequent upon the self-knowledge of self-control. But mastery of the master-vice required something different; he was sick of a sickness; and because, in this sickness, will, mind, and body are tainted too, reason and logic lack clarity; and, to the signals of danger his reply had always been either overconfident or weak—and it had been always the same reply: "Not yet. There is time." And now, this last week, it had come upon him that the time was now; the skirmish was already on; and it had alarmed him suddenly to find that the skirmish was already a battle, and a rough one.

As he stood there he heard voices on the stairs. People had already begun to retire, because late cards and point-shooting at dawn do not agree. And a point-shooting picnic in snugly elaborate blinds was popular with women—or was supposed to be.

He could distinguish by their voices, by their laughter and step, the people who were mounting the stairway and lingering for gossip or passing through the various corridors to court the sleep denied him; he heard Mortimer's heavy tread and the soft shuffling step of Major Belwether as they left the elevator; and the patter of his hostess's satin slippers, and her gay "good night" on the stairs.

Little by little the tumult died away. Quarrier's measured step came, passed; Marion Page's cool, crisp voice and walk, and the giggle and amble of the twins, and Rena and Eileen,—the last laggards, with Ferrall's brisk, decisive tones and stride to close the procession.

He turned and looked grimly at his bed, then, shutting off the lights, he opened his door and went out into the deserted corridor, where the elevator shaft was dark and only the dim night-lights burned at angles in the passageways.

He had his rain-coat and cap with him, not being certain of what he might be driven to; but for the present he found the bay-window overlooking the swimming tank sufficient to begin the vigil.

Secure from intrusion, as there were no bedrooms on that corridor, he tossed coat and cap into the window-seat, walked to and fro for a while listening to the rain, then sat down, his well-shaped head between his hands. And in silence he faced the Enemy.

How long he had sat there he did not know. When he raised his face, all gray and drawn with the tension of conflict, his eyes were not very clear, nor did the figure standing there in the dim light from the hall mean anything for a moment.

"Mr. Siward?" in an uncertain voice, almost a whisper.

He stood up mechanically, and she saw his face.

"Are you ill? What is it?"

"Ill? No." He passed his hand over his eyes. "I fancy I was close to the edge of sleep." Some colour came back into his face; he stood smiling now, the significance of her presence dawning on him.

"Did you really come?" he asked. "This isn't a very lovely but impalpable astral vision, is it?"

"It's horridly imprudent, isn't it?" she murmured, still considering the rather drawn and pallid face of the man before her. "I came out of pure curiosity, Mr. Siward."

She glanced about her. He moved a big bunch of hothouse roses so she could pass, and she settled down lightly on the edge of the window-seat. When he had piled some big downy cushions behind her back, she made a quick gesture of invitation.

"I have only a moment," she said, as he seated himself beside her. "Part of my curiosity is satisfied in finding you here; I didn't suppose you so faithful."

"I can be fairly faithful. What else are you curious about?"

"You said you had something important—"

"—To tell you? So I did. That was bribery, perjury, false pretences, robbery under arms, anything you will! I only wanted you to come."

"That is a shameful confession!" she said; but her smile was gay enough, and she noiselessly shook out her fluffy skirts and settled herself a trifle more deeply among the pillows.

"Of course," she observed absently, "you are dreadfully mortified at yourself."

"Naturally," he admitted.

The patter of the rain attracted her attention; she peered out through the blurred casements into the blackness. Then, picking up his cap and indicating his raincoat, "Why?" she asked.

"Oh—in case you hadn't come—"

"A walk? By yourself? A night like this on the cliffs! You are not perfectly mad, are you?"

"Not perfectly."

Her face grew serious and beautiful.

"What is the matter, Mr. Siward?"

"Things."

"Do you care to be more explicit?"

"Well," he said, with a humourous glance at her, "I haven't seen you for ages. That's not wholesome for me, you know."

"But you see me now; and it does not seem to benefit you."

"I feel much better," he insisted, laughing; and her blue eyes grew very lovely as the smile broke from them in uncertain response.

"So you had nothing really important to tell me, Mr. Siward?"

"Only that I wanted you."

"Oh! ... I said important."

But he did not argue the question; and she leaned forward, broke a rose from its stem, then sank back a little way among the cushions, looking at him, idly inhaling the hothouse perfume.

"Why have you so ostentatiously avoided me, Mr. Siward?" she asked languidly.

"Well, upon my word!" he said, with a touch of irritation.

"Oh, you are so dreadfully literal!" she shrugged, brushing her straight, sensitive nose with the pink blossom; "I only said it to give you a chance. ... If you are going to be stupid, good night!" But she made no movement to go. ... "Yes, then; I have avoided you. And it doesn't become you to ask why."

"Because I kissed you?"

"You hint at the true reason so chivalrously, so delicately," she said, "that I scarcely recognise it." The cool mockery of her voice and the warm, quick colour tinting neck and face were incongruous. He thought with slow surprise that she was not yet letter-perfect in her role of the material triumphant over the spiritual. A trifle ashamed, too, he sat silent, watching the silken petals fall one by one as she slowly detached them with delicate, restless lips.

"I am sorry I came," she said reflectively. "You don't know why I came, do you? Sheer loneliness, Mr. Siward; there is something of the child in me still, you see. I am not yet sufficiently resourceful to take it out in a quietly tearful obligato; I never learned how to produce tears. ... So I came to you." She had stripped the petals from the rose, and now, tossing the crushed branch from her, she leaned forward and broke from its stem a heavy, perfumed bud, half unfolded.

"It seems my fate to pass my life in bidding you good night," she said, straightening up and turning to him with the careless laughter touching mouth and eyes again. Then, resting her weight on one hand, her smooth, white shoulder rounded beside her cheek, she looked at him out of humourous eyes:

"What is it that women find so attractive in you? The man's experienced insouciance? The boy's unconscious cynicism? The mystery of your self-sufficiency? The faulty humanity in you? The youth in you already showing traces of wear that hint of future scars? What will you be at thirty-five? At forty? ... Ah," she added softly, "what are you now? For I don't know, and you cannot tell me if you would. ... Out of these little windows called eyes we look at one another, and study surfaces, and try to peep into neighbours' windows. But all is dark behind the windows—always dark, in there where they tell us souls hide."

She laid the shell-pink bud against her cheek that matched it, smiling with wise sweetness to herself.

"What counts with you?" he asked after a moment.

"Counts? How?"

"In your affections. What prepossesses you?"

She laughed audaciously: "Your traits—some of them—all of them that you reveal. You must be aware of that much already, considering everything—"

"Then, what is it I lack? Where do I fail?"

"But you don't lack—you don't fail! I ask nothing more of you, Mr. Siward."

"A man from whom a woman desires nothing is already convicted of insufficiency. ... You would recognise this very quickly if I made love to you."

"Is that the only way I am to discover your insufficiency, Mr. Siward?"

"Or my sufficiency. ... Have you enough curiosity to try?"

"Oh! I thought you were to try." Then, quickly: "But I think you have already experimented; and I did not notice your shortcomings. So there is no use in pursuing that line of investigation any farther—is there?"

And always with her the mischief lay in the trailing upward inflection; in the confused sweetness of her eyes, and their lovely uncertainty.

One slim white hand held the rose against her cheek; the other lay idly on her knee, fresh and delicate as a fallen petal; and he laid both hands over it and lifted it between them.

"Mr. Siward, I am afraid this is becoming a habit with you." The gay mockery was not quite genuine; the curve of lips too sensitive for a voice so lightly cynical.

He smiled, bending there, considering her hand between his; and after a moment her muscles relaxed, and bare round arm and hand lay abandoned to him.

"Quite flawless—perfect," he said aloud to himself.

"Do you—read hands?"

"Vaguely." He touched the smooth palm: "Long life, clear mind, and"—he laughed—"heart supreme over reason! There is written a white lie—but a pretty one."

"It is no lie."

He laughed again, unconvinced.

"It is the truth," she said, seriously insisting and bending sideways above her own hand where it lay in his. "It is a miserable confession to admit it, but I'm afraid intelligence would fight a losing battle with heart if the conflict ever came. You see, I know, having nobody to study except myself all these years. ... There is the proof of it—that selfish, smooth contour, where there should be generosity. Then, look at the tendency of imagination toward mischief!" She laid her right forefinger on the palm of the left hand which he held, and traced the developments arising in the Mount of Hermes. "Is it not a horrid hand, Mr. Siward? I don't know how much you know about palms, but—" She suddenly flushed, and attempted to close her hand, doubling the thumb over. There was a little half-hearted struggle, freeing one of his arms, which fell, settling about her slender waist; a silence, a breathless moment, and he had kissed her. Her lips were warm, this time.

She recovered herself, avoiding his eyes, and moved backward, shielding her face with pretty upflung elbows out-turned. "I told you it was becoming a habit with you!" The loud beating of her pulses marred her voice. "Must I establish a dead-line every time I commit the folly of being alone with you?"

"I'll draw that line," he said, taking her in his arms.

"I—I beg you will draw it quickly, Mr. Siward."

"I do; it passes through your heart and mine!"

"Is—do you mean a declaration—again? You are compromising yourself, you know. I warn you that you are committing yourself."

"So are you. Look at me!"

In his arms, her own arms pressed against his breast, resisting, she raised her splendid youthful eyes; and through and through her shot pulse on pulse, until every nerve seemed aquiver.

"While I'm still sane," he said with a dry catch in his throat, "before I tell you that I love you, look at me."

"I will, if you wish," she said with a trembling smile, "but it is useless—"

"That is what I shall find out in time. ... You must meet my eyes. That is well; that is frank and sweet—"

"And useless—truly it is. ... Please don't tell me—anything."

"You will not listen?"

"There is no chance for you—if you mean love. I—I tell you in time, you see. ... I am utterly frivolous—quite selfish and mercenary."

"I take my chance!"

"No, I give you none! Why do you interfere! A—a girl's policy costs her something if it be worth anything; whatever it costs it is worth it to me. ... And I do not love you. In so short a time how could I?"

Then in his arms she fell a-trembling. Something blinded her eyes, and she turned her head sharply, only to encounter his lips on hers in a deep, clinging embrace that left her dazed, still resisting with the fragments of breath and voice.

"Not again—I beg—you. Let me go now. It is not best. Oh! truly, truly it is all wrong with us now." She bent her head, blinded with tears, swaying, stunned; then, with a breathless sound, turned in his arms to meet his lips, her hands contracting in his; and, confronting, they paused, suspending the crisis, young faces close, and hearts afire.

"Sylvia, I love you."

For an instant their lips clung; she had rendered him his kiss. Then, tremblingly, "It is useless ... even though I loved you."

"Say it!"

"I do."

"Say it!"

"I—I cannot! ... And it is no use—no use! I do not know myself—this way. My eyes—are wet. It is not like me; there is nothing of me in this girl you hold so closely, so confidently. ... I do care for you—how can I help it? How could any woman help it? Is not that enough?"

"Until you are a bride, yes."

"A bride? Stephen!—I cannot—"

"You cannot help it, Sylvia."

"I must! I have my way to go."

"My way lies that way."

"No! no! I cannot do it; it is not best for me—not best for you. ... I do care for you; you have taught me how to say it. But—you know what I have done—and mean to do, and must carry through. Then, how can you love a girl like that?"

"Dear, I know the woman I love."

"Silly, she is what her life has made her—material, passionately selfish, unable to renounce the root of all evil. ... Even if this—this happiness were ours always—I mean, if this madness could last our wedded life—I am not good enough, not noble enough, to forget what I might have had, and put away. ... Is it not dreadful to admit it? Do you not know that self-contempt is part of the price? ... I have no money. I know what you have. ... I asked. And it is enough for a man who remains unmarried. ... For I cannot 'make things do'; I cannot 'contrive'; I will not cling to the fringe of things, or play that heartbreaking role of the shabby expatriated on the Continent. ... No person in this world ever had enough. I tell you I could find use for every flake of metal ever mined! ... You see you do not know me. From my pretty face and figure you misjudge me. I am intelligent—not intellectual, though I might have been, might even be yet. I am cultivated, not learned; though I care for learning—or might, if I had time. ... My role in life is to mount to a security too high for any question as to my dominance. ... Can you take me there?"

"There are other heights, Sylvia."

"Higher?"

"Yes, dear."

"The spiritual; I know. I could not breathe there, if I cared to climb. ... And I have told you what I am—all silk and lace and smooth-skinned selfishness." She looked at him wistfully. "If you can change me, take me." And she rose, facing him.

"I do not give you up," he said, with a savage note hardening his voice; and it thrilled her to hear it, and every drop of blood in her body leaped as she yielded to his arms again, heavy-lidded, trembling, confused, under the piercing sweetness of contact.

The perfume of her mouth, her hair, the consenting fingers locked in his, palm against palm, the lips, acquiescent, then afire at last, responsive to his own; and her eyes opening from the dream under the white lids—these were what he had of her till every vein in him pulsed flame. Then her voice, broken, breathless:

"Good night. Love me while you can—and forgive me! ... Good night. ... Where are we? All—all this must have stunned me, blinded me. ... Is this my door, or yours? Hush! I am half dead with fear—to be here under the light again. ... If you take me again, my knees will give way. ... And I must find my door. Oh, the ghastly imprudence of it! ... Good night ... good night. I—I love you!"



CHAPTER VI MODUS VIVENDI

After the first few days of his arrival at Shotover time had threatened to hang heavily on Mortimer's mottled hands. After the second day afield he recognised that his shooting career was practically over; he had become too bulky during the last year to endure the physical exertion; his habits, too, had at length made traitors of his eyes; a half hour's snipe-shooting in the sun, and the veins in his neck swelled ominously. Panting, eyes inflamed, fat arms wobbly, he had scored miss after miss, and laboured onward, sullenly persistent to the end. But it was the end. That cup day finished him; he recognised that he was done for. And, following the Law of Pleasure, which finishes us before we are finished with it, he did not experience any particular sense of deprivation in the prospect. Only the wholesome dread caging. But Mortimer, not yet done with self-indulgence in more convenient forms, cast about him within his new limits for occupation between those hours consecrated to the rites of the table and the card-room.

He drove four, but found that it numbed his arms, and that the sea air made him sleepy. Motor-cars agreed with him only when driving with a pretty woman. Forced through ennui to fish off the rocks, he soon tired of the sea-perch and rock-cod and the malodours of periwinkle and clam.

Then he frankly took to Major Belwether's sunny side of the gun-room, with illustrated papers and apples and decanter. But Major Belwether, always as careful of his digestion as of his financial secrets, blandly dodged the pressing invitations to rum and confidence, until Mortimer sulkily took up his headquarters in the reading-room, on the chance of his wife's moving elsewhere. Which she did, unobtrusively carrying Captain Voucher with her in a sudden zeal for billiard practice on rainy mornings now too frequent along the coast.

Mortimer possessed that mysterious talent, so common among the financially insolvent, for living lavishly on an invisible income. But, plan as he would, he had never been able to increase that income through confidential gossip with men like Quarrier or Belwether, or even Ferrall. What information his pretty wife might have extracted he did not know; her income had never visibly increased above the vanishing point, although, like himself, she denied herself nothing. One short, lively interview with her had been enough to drive all partnership ideas out of his head. If he wanted to learn anything financially advantageous to himself he must do it without her aid; and as he was perpetually in hopes of the friendly hint that never came, he still moused about when opportunity offered; and this also helped to kill time.

Besides, he was always studying women. Years before, Grace Ferrall had snapped her slim fingers in his face; and here, at Shotover, the field was limited. Mrs. Vendenning had left; Agatha Caithness was still a pale and reticent puzzle; Rena, Katharyn, and Eileen tormented him; Marion Page, coolly au fait, yawned in his face. There remained Sylvia, who, knowing nothing about his species, met him half-way with the sweet and sensitive deference due a somewhat battered and infirm gentleman of forty-eight—until a sleek aside from Major Belwether spoiled everything, as usual, for her, leaving her painfully conscious and perplexed between doubt and disgust.

Meanwhile, the wealthy master of Black Fells, Beverly Plank, had found encouragement enough at Shotover to venture on tentative informality. There was no doubt that ultimately he must be counted on in New York; but nobody except him was impatiently cordial for the event; and so, at the little house party, he slipped and slid from every attempt at closer quarters, until, rolling smoothly enough, he landed without much discomfort somewhere between Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Mortimer. And it was not a question as to "which would be good to him," observed Major Belwether, with his misleading and benevolent mirth; "it was, which would be goodest quickest!"

And Mrs. Mortimer, abandoning Captain Voucher by the same token, displayed certain warning notices perfectly comprehensive to her husband. And at first he was inclined to recognise defeat.

But the general insuccess which had so faithfully attended him recently had aroused the long-dormant desire for a general review of the situation with his wife—perhaps even the furtive hope of some conjugal arrangement tending toward an exchange of views concerning possible alliance.

The evening previous, to his intense disgust, host, hostess, and guests had retired early, in view of the point-shooting at dawn. For not only was there to be no point-shooting for him, but he had risen from the card-table heavily hit; and besides, for the first time his apples and port had disagreed with him.

As he had not risen until mid-day he was not sleepy. Books were an aversion equalled only by distaste for his own company. Irritated, bored, he had perforce sulkily entered the elevator and passed to his room, where there was nothing on earth for him to do except to thumb over last week's sporting periodicals and smoke himself stupid.

But it required more than that to ensnare the goddess of slumber. He walked about the room, haunted of slow thoughts; he stood at the rain-smeared pane, fat fingers resting on the glass. The richly flavoured cigar grew distasteful; and if he could not smoke, what, in pity's name, was he to do?

Involuntarily his distended eyes wandered to his wife's locked and bolted door; then he thought of Beverly Plank, and his own failure to fasten himself upon that anxiously over-cordial individual with his houses and his villas and his yachts and his investments!

He stepped to the switch and extinguished the lights in his room. Under the door, along the sill, a glimmer came from his wife's bed-chamber. He listened; the maid was still there; so he sat down in the darkness to wait; and by-and-by he heard the outer bedroom door close, and the subdued rustle of the departing maid.

Then, turning on his lights, he moved ponderously and jauntily to his wife's door and knocked discreetly.

Leila Mortimer came to the door and opened it; her hair was coiled for the night, her pretty figure outlined under a cascade of clinging lace.

"What is the matter?" she asked quietly.

"Are you point-shooting to-morrow?"

"I wanted to chat with you."

"I'm sorry. I'm driving to Wenniston, after breakfast, with Beverly Plank, and I need sleep."

"I want to talk to you," he repeated doggedly.

She regarded him for a moment in silence, then, with an assenting gesture, turned away into her room; and he followed, heavily apprehensive but resolved.

She had seated herself among a pile of cushions, one knee crossed over the other, her slim white foot half concealed by the silken toe of her slipper. And as he pulled a chair forward for himself, her pretty black eyes, which slanted a little, took his measure and divined trouble.

"Leila," he said, "why can't we have—"

"A cigarette?" she interrupted, indicating her dainty case on the table.

He took one, savagely aware of defiance somewhere. She lighted her own from a candle and settled back, studying the sequence of blue smoke-rings jetting upward to the ceiling.

"About this man Plank," he began, louder than he had intended through sheer self-mistrust; and his wife made a quick, disdainful sign of caution, which subdued his voice instantly. "Why can't we take him up—together, Leila?" he ended lamely, furious at his own uneasiness in a matter which might concern him vitally.

"I see no necessity of your taking him up," observed his wife serenely. "I can do what may be useful to him in town."

"So can I. There are clubs where he ought to be seen—"

"I can manage such matters much better."

"You can't manage everything," he insisted sullenly. "There are chances of various sorts—"

"Investments?" asked Mrs. Mortimer, with bright malice.

"See here, Leila, you have your own way too much. I say little; I make damned few observations; but I could, if I cared to. ... It becomes you to be civil at least. I want to talk over this Plank matter with you; I want you to listen, too."

A shade of faint disgust passed over her face. "I am listening," she said.

"Well, then, I can see several ways in which the man can be of use to me. ... I discovered him before you did, anyway. And what I want to do is to have a frank, honourable—"

"A—what?"

"—An honourable understanding with you, I said," he repeated, reddening.

"Oh!" She snapped her cigarette into the grate. "Oh! I see. And what then?"

"What then?"

"Yes; what then?"

"Why, you and I can arrange to stand behind him this winter in town, can't we?"

"And then?"

"Then—damn it!—the beggar can show his gratitude, can't he?"

"How?" she asked listlessly.

"By making good. How else?" he retorted savagely. "He can't welch because there's little to climb for beyond us; and even if he climbs, he can't ignore us. I can do as many things for him in my way as you can in yours. What is the use of being a pig, Leila? Anything he does for me isn't going to cancel his obligations to you."

"I know him better than you do," she observed, bending her head and pleating the lace on her knee. "There is Dutch blood in him."

"Not good Hollander, but common Dutch," sneered Mortimer. "And you mean he'll squeeze a dollar till the eagle screams-don't you?"

She sat silent, pleating her lace with steady fingers.

"Well, that's all right, too," laughed Mortimer easily; "let the Audubon Society worry over the eagle. It's a perfectly plain business proposition; we can do for him in a couple of winters what he can't do for himself in ten. Figure it out for yourself, Leila," he said, waving a mottled fat hand at her.

"I—have," she said under her breath.

"Then, is it settled?

"Settled—how?"

"That we form ourselves into a benevolent society of two in behalf of Plank?"

"I—I don't want to, Roy," she said slowly.

"Why not?"

She did not say why not, seated there nervously pleating the fragile stuff clinging to her knee.

"Why not?" he repeated menacingly. Her unexpectedly quiescent attitude had emboldened him to a bullying tone—something he had not lately ventured on.

She raised her eyes to his: "I—rather like him," she said quietly.

"Then, by God! he'll pay for that!" he burst out, mask off, every inflamed feature shockingly congested.

"Roy! You dare not—"

"I tell you I—"

"You dare not!"

The palpitating silence lengthened; slowly the blood left the swollen veins. Heavy pendulous lip hanging, he stared at her from distended eyes, realising that he had forgotten himself. She was right. He dared not. And she held the whip-hand as usual.

For every suspicion he could entertain, she had evidence of a certainty to match it; for every chance that he might have to prove anything, she had twenty proven facts. And he knew it. Why they had, during all these years, made any outward pretence of conjugal unity they alone knew. The modus vivendi suited them better than divorce: that was apparent, or had been until recently. Recently Leila Mortimer had changed—become subdued and softened to a degree that had perplexed her husband. Her attitude toward him lacked a little of the bitterness and contempt she usually reserved for him in private; she had become more prudent, almost cautious at times.

"I'll tell you one thing," he said with a sudden snarl: "You'd better be careful there is no gossip about you and Plank."

She reddened under the insult.

"Now we'll see," he continued venomously, "how far you can go alone."

"Do you suppose," she asked calmly, "that I am afraid of a divorce court?"

The question so frankly astonished him that he sat agape, unable to reply. For years he had very naturally supposed her to be afraid of it—afraid of not being qualified to obtain it. Indeed, he had taken that for granted as the very corner-stone of their mutual toleration. Had he been an ass to do so? A vague alarm took possession of him; for, with that understanding, he had not been at all careful of his own behaviour, neither had he been at any particular pains to conceal his doings from her. His alarm increased. What had he against her, after all, except ancient suspicions, now so confused and indefinite that memory itself outlawed the case, if it ever really existed. What had she against him? Facts—unless she was more stupid than any of her sex he had ever encountered. And now, this defiance, this increasing prudence, this subtle change in her, began to make him anxious for the permanency of the small income she had allowed him during all these years—doled out to him, as he believed, though her dormant fear of him.

"What are you talking about?" he said harshly.

"I believe I mentioned divorce."

"Well, cut it out! D'ye see? Cut it, I say. You'd stand as much chance before a referee as a snowball in hell."

"There's no telling," she said coolly, "until one tries."

He glared at her, then burst into a laugh. "Rot!" he said thickly. "Talk sense, Leila! And keep this hard-headed Dutchman for yourself, if you feel that way about it. I don't want to butt in. I only thought—for old times' sake—perhaps you'd—"

"Good night," she managed to say, her disgust almost strangling her.

And he went, furtively, heavy-footed, perplexed, inwardly cursing his blunder in stirring up a sleeping lioness whom he had so long mistaken for a dozing cat.

For hours he sat in his room, or paced the four walls, doubtful, chagrined, furious by turns. Once he drew out a memorandum-book and stood under a lighted sconce, studying the figures. His losses at Shotover staggered him, but he had looked to his wife heretofore in such emergencies.

Certainly the time had come for him to do something. But what?—if his wife was going to strike such attitudes in the very face of decency? Certainly a husband in these days was without honour in his own household.

His uneasiness had produced a raging thirst. He punched an electric button with his fleshy thumb, and prowled around, waiting. Nobody came; he punched again, and looked at his watch. It astonished him to find the hour was three o'clock in the morning. That discovery, however, only appeared to increase his thirst. He opened the hall door, prepared to descend into the depths of the house and raid a sideboard; and as he thrust his heavy head out into the lighted corridor his eyes fell upon two figures standing at the open door of a bedroom. One was Siward; that was plain. Who was the girl he had kissed? One of the maids? Somebody's wife? Who?

Every dull pulse began to hammer in Mortimer's head. In his excitement he stepped half-way into the corridor, then skipped nimbly back, closing his door without a sound.

"Sylvia Landis, by all that's holy!" he breathed to himself, and sat down rather suddenly on the edge of the bed.

After a while he rose and crept to the door, opened it, glued his eyes to the crack, in time to catch a glimpse of Siward entering his own corridor alone.

And that night, Mortimer, lying awake in bed, busy with schemes, became conscious of a definite idea. It took shape and matured so suddenly that it actually shocked his moral sense. Then it scared him.

"But—but that is blackmail!" he whispered aloud. "A man can't do that sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? ... And there are men I know—women, too—scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that information somehow; and make it pay, too. The scoundrels!"

He squirmed down among the bedclothes with a sudden shiver; but the night had turned warm.

"Scoundrels!" he said, with milder emphasis. "Blackmailers! Contemptible pups!"

He fell asleep an hour later, muttering something incoherent about scoundrels and blackmail.

And meanwhile, in the darkened house, from all round came the noise of knocking on doors, sounds of people stirring—a low voice here and there, lights breaking out from transoms, the thud of rubber-shod heels, the rattle of cartridges from the echoing gun-room. For the guests at Shotover were awaking, lest the wet sky, whitening behind the east, ring with the whimpering wedges of wild-fowl rushing seaward over empty blinds.

The unusual stillness of the house in the late morning sunshine was pleasant to Miss Landis. She had risen very late, unconscious of the stir and movement before dawn; and it was only when a maid told her, as she came from her bath, that she remembered the projected point-shooting, and concluded, with an odd, happy sense of relief, that she was almost alone in the house.

A little later, glancing from her bedroom window for a fulfilment of the promise of the sun which a glimpse of blue sky heralded, she saw Leila Mortimer settling herself in the forward seat of a Mercedes, and Beverly Plank climbing in beside her; and she watched Plank steer the big machine across the wet lawn, while the machinist swung himself into the tonneau; and away they rolled, faster, faster, rushing out into the misty hinterland, where the long streak of distant forest already began to brighten, edged with the first rays of watery sunshine.

So she had the big house to herself—every bit of it and with it freedom from obligation, from comment, from demand or exaction; freedom from restraint; liberty to roam about, to read, to dream, to idle, to remember! Ah, that was what she needed—a quiet interval in this hurrying youth of hers to catch her breath once more, and stand still, and look back a day or two and remember.

So, to breakfast all alone was delicious; to stroll, unhurried, to the sideboard and leisurely choose among the fresh cool fruits; to loiter over cream-jug and cereal; to saunter out into the freshness of the world and breathe it, and feel the sun warming cheek and throat, and the little breezes from a sunlit sea stirring the bright strands of her hair.

In the increasing brilliancy of the sunshine she stretched out her hands, warming them daintily as she might twist them before the fire on the hearth. And here, at the fragrant hearth of the world, she stood, sweet and fresh as the morning itself, untroubled gaze intensely blue with the tint of the purple sea, sensitive lips scarcely parting in the dreaming smile that made her eyes more wonderful.

As the warmth grew on land and water, penetrating her body, a faintly delicious glow responded in her heart,—nothing at first wistful in the serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in the unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers uncurled, tightened, and fell limp as her arms fell and her superb young figure straightened, confronting the sea.

Out over the rain-wet, odorous grass she picked her way, skirts swung high above the delicate contour of ankle and limb, following a little descending path she knew full of rocky angles, swept by pendant sprays of blackberry, and then down under the jutting rock, south through thickets of wild cherry along the crags, until, before her the way opened downward again where a tiny crescent beach glimmered white hot in the sun.

From his bedroom window Mortimer peeped forth, following her progress with a leer.

As she descended, noticing the rifts of bronzing seaweed piled along the tide mark, her foot dislodged a tiny triangle of rock, which rolled clattering and ringing below; and as she sprang lightly to the sand, a man, lying full length and motionless as the heaped seaweed, raised himself on one arm, turning his sun-dazzled eyes on her.

The dull shock of surprise halted her as Siward rose to his feet, still dazed, the sand running from his brown shooting-clothes over his tightly strapped puttees.

"Have you the faintest idea that I supposed you were here?" she asked briefly. Then, frank in her disappointment, she looked up at the cliffs overhead, where her line of retreat lay.

"Why did you not go with the others?" she added, unsmiling.

"I—don't know. I will, if you wish." He had coloured slowly, the frank disappointment in her face penetrating his surprise; and now he turned around, instinctively, also looking for the path of retreat.

"Wait," she said, aware of her own crude attitude and confused by it; "wait a moment, Mr. Siward. I don't mean to drive you away."

"It's self-exile," he said quietly; "quite voluntary, I assure you."

"Mr. Siward!"

And, as he looked up coolly, "Have you nothing more friendly to say to me? Is your friendship for me so limited that my first caprice oversteps the bounds? Must I always be in dread of wounding you when I give you the privilege of knowing me better than anybody ever knew me—of seeing me as I am, with all my faults, my failings, my impulses, my real self? ... I don't know why the pleasure of being alone to-day should have meant exclusion for you, too. It was the unwelcome shock of seeing anybody—a selfish enjoyment of myself—that surprised me into rudeness. That is all. ... Can you not understand?"

"I think so. I meant no criticism—"

"Wait, Mr. Siward!" as he moved slowly toward the path. "You force me to say other things, which you have no right to hear. ... After last night"—the vivid tint grew in her face—"after such a night, is it not—natural—for a girl to creep off somewhere by herself and try to think a little?"

He had turned full on her; the answering colour crept to his forehead.

"Is that why?" he asked slowly.

"Is it not a reason?"

"It was my reason—for being here."

She bit her bright lip. This trend to the conversation was ominous, and she had meant to do her drifting alone in still sun-dreams, fearing no witness, no testimony, no judgment save her own self in court with herself.

"I—I suppose you cannot go—now," she reflected innocently.

"Indeed I can, and must."

"And leave me here to dig in the sand with my heels? Merci!"

"Do you mean—"

"I certainly do, Mr. Siward. I don't want to dream, now; I don't care to reflect. I did, but here you come blundering into my private world and upset my calculations and change my intentions! It's a shame, especially as you've been lying here doing what I wished to do for goodness knows how long!"

"I'm going," he said, looking at her curiously.

"Then you are very selfish, Mr. Siward."

"We will call it that," he said with an odd laugh.

"Very well." She seated herself on the sand and calmly shook out her skirts.

"About what time would you like to be called?" he asked smilingly.

"Thank you, I shall do no sun-dreaming."

"Please. It is good for you."

"No, it isn't good at all. And I am grateful to you for waking me," she retorted with a sudden gay malice that subdued him. And she, delicate nose in the air, laughingly watching him, went on with her punishment: "You see what you've done, don't you?—saved me from an entire morning wasted in sentimental reverie over what might have been. Now you can appreciate it, can't you?—your wisdom in appearing in the flesh to save a silly girl the effort of evoking you in the spirit! Ah, Mr. Siward, I am vastly obliged to you! Pray sit here beside me in the flesh, for fear that in your absence I might commit the folly that tempted me here."

His low running laughter accompanying her voice had stimulated her to a gay audacity, which for the instant extinguished in her the little fear of him she had been barely conscious of.

"Do you know," he said, "that you also aroused me from my sun-dreams?"

"Did I? And can't you resume them?"

"You save me the necessity."

"Oh, that is a second-hand compliment," she said disdainfully—"a weak plagiarism on what I conveyed very wittily. You were probably really asleep, and dreaming of bird-murder."

He waited for her to finish, then, amused eyes searching, he roamed about until high on a little drifted sand dune he found a place for himself; and while she watched him indignantly, he curled up in the sunshine, and, dropping his head on the hot sand, calmly closed his eyes.

"Upon—my word!" she breathed aloud.

He unclosed his eyes. "Now you may dream; you can't avoid it," he observed lazily, and closed his eyes; and neither taunts nor jeers nor questions, nor fragments of shells flung with intent to hit, stirred him from his immobility.

She tired of the attempt presently, and sat silent, elbows on her thighs, hands propping her chin. Thoughts, vague as the fitful breeze, arose, lingered, and, like the breeze, faded, dissolved into calm, through which, cadenced by the far beat of the ebb tide, her heart echoed, beating the steady intervals of time.

She had not meant to dream, but as she sat there, the fine-spun golden threads flying from the whirling loom of dreams floated about her, settling over her, entangling her in unseen meshes, so that she stirred, groping amid the netted brightness, drawn onward along dim paths and through corridors of thought where, always beyond, vague splendours seemed to beckon.

Now lost, now restless, conscious of the perils of the shining path she followed, the rhythm of an ocean soothing her to false security, she dreamed on awake, unconscious of the tinted sea and sky which stained her eyes to hues ineffable. A long while afterward a small cloud floated across the sun; and, in the sudden shadow on the world, doubt sounded its tiny voice, and her ears listened, and the enchantment faded and died away.

Turning, she looked across the sand at the man lying there; her eyes considered him—how long she did not know, she did not heed—until, stirring, he looked up; and she paled a trifle and closed her eyes, stunned by the sudden clamour of pulse and heart.

When he rose and walked over, she looked up gravely, pouring the last handful of white sand through her stretched fingers.

"Did you dream?" he asked lightly.

"Yes."

"Did you dream true?"

"Nothing of my dream can happen," she said. "You know that, ... don't you?"

"I know that we love ... and that we dare not ignore it."

She suffered his arm about her, his eyes looking deeply into hers—a close, sweet caress, a union of lips, and her dimmed eyes' response.

"Stephen," she faltered, "how can you make it so hard for me? How can you force me to this shame!"

"Shame?" he repeated vaguely.

"Yes—this treachery to myself—when I cannot hope to be more to you—when I dare not love you too much!"

"You must dare, Sylvia!"

"No, no, no! I know myself, I tell you. I cannot give up what is offered—for you!—dearly, dearly as I do love you!" She turned and caught his hands in hers, flushed, trembling, unstrung. "I cannot—I simply cannot! How can you love me and listen to such wickedness? How can you still care for such a girl as I am—worse than mercenary, because I have a heart—or had, until you took it! Keep it; it is the only part of me not all ignoble."

"I will keep it—in trust," he said, "until you give yourself with it."

But she only shook her head wearily, withdrawing her hands from his, and for a time they sat silent, eyes apart.

Then—"There is another reason," she said wistfully.

He looked up at her, hesitated, and—"My habits?" he asked simply.

"Yes."

"I have them in check."

"Are you—certain?"

"I think I may be—now."

"Yet," she said timidly, "you lost one fight—since you knew me."

The dull red mantling his face wrung her heart. She turned impulsively and laid both hands on his shoulders. "That chance I would take, with all its uncertainty, all the dread inheritance you have come into. I love you enough for that; and if it turned out that—that you could not stem the tide, even with me to face it with you; and if the pity of it, the grief of it, killed me, I would take that chance—if you loved me through it all. ... But there is something else. Hush; let me have my say while I find the words—something else you do not understand. ... Turn your face a little; please don't look at me. This is what you do not know—that, in three generations, every woman of my race has—gone wrong. ... Every one! and I am beginning—with such a marriage! ... deliberately, selfishly, shamelessly, perfectly conscious of the frivolous, erratic blood in me, aware of the race record behind me.

"Once, when I knew nothing—before I—I met you—I believed such a marriage would not only permit me mental tranquillity, but safely anchor me in the harbour of convention, leaving me free to become what I am fashioned to become—autocrat and arbiter in my own world. And now! and now! I don't know—truly I don't know what I may become. Your love forces my hand. I am displaying all the shallowness, falseness, pettiness, all the mean, and cruel and callous character which must be truly my real self. ... Only I shall not marry you! You are not to run the risk of what I might prove to be when I remember in bitterness all I have renounced. If I married you I should remember, unreconciled, what you cost me. Better for you and for me that I marry him, and let him bear with me when I remember that he cost me you!"

She bent over, almost double, closing her eyes with small clenched hands; and he saw the ring shimmering in the sunshine, and her hair, heavily, densely gold, and the white nape of her neck, and the tiny close-set ears, and the curved softness of cheek and chin; every smooth, childlike contour and mould—rounded arms, slim, flowing lines of body and limb—all valued at many millions by her as her own appraiser.

Suddenly, deep within him, something seemed to fail, die out—perhaps a tiny newly lighted flame of unaccustomed purity, the dawning flicker of aspiration to better things. Whatever it was, material, spiritual, was gone now, and where it had glimmered for a night, the old accustomed twilit doubt crept in—the same dull acquiescence—the same uncertainty of self, the familiar lack of will, of incentive, the congenial tendency to drift; and with it came weariness—perhaps reaction from the recent skirmishes with that master-vice.

"I suppose," he said in a dull voice, "you are right."

"No, I am wrong—wrong!" she said, lifting her lovely face and heavy eyes. "But I have chosen my path. ... And you will forget."

"I hope so," he said simply.

"If you hope so, you will."

He nodded, unconvinced, watching a flock of sand-pipers whirling into the cove like a gray snow-squall and fearlessly settling on the beach.

After a while, with a long breath: "Then it is settled," she concluded.

If she expected corroboration from him she received none; and perhaps she was not awaiting it. She sat very still, her eyes lost in thought.

And Mortimer, peeping down at them over the thicket above, yawned impatiently and glanced about him for the most convenient avenue of self-effacement when the time arrived.



CHAPTER VII PERSUASION

The days of the house-party at Shotover were numbered. A fresh relay of guests was to replace them on Monday, and so they were making the most of the waning week on lawn and marsh, in covert and blind, or motoring madly over the State, or riding in parties to Vermillion Light. Tennis and lawn bowls came into fashion; even water polo and squash alternated on days too raw for more rugged sport.

And during all these days Beverly Plank appeared with unflagging persistence and assiduity, until his familiar, big, round head and patient, delft-blue, Dutch eyes became a matter of course at Shotover, indoors and out.

It was not that he was either accepted, tolerated, or endured; he was simply there, and nobody took the trouble to question his all-pervading presence until everybody had become too much habituated to him to think about it at all.

The accomplished establishment of Beverly Plank was probably due as much to his own obstinate and good-tempered persistence as to Mrs. Mortimer. He was a Harvard graduate—there are all kinds of them—enormously wealthy, and though he had no particular personal tastes to gratify, he was willing and able to gratify the tastes of others. He did whatever anybody else did, and did it well enough to be amusing; and as lack of intellectual development never barred anybody from any section of the fashionable world, it seemed fair to infer that he would land where he wanted to, sooner or later.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Mortimer led him about with the confidence that was her perquisite; and the chances were that in due time he would have house-parties of his own at Black Fells—not the kind he had wisely denied himself the pleasure of giving, with such neighbours as the Ferralls to observe, but the sort he desired. However, there were many things to be accomplished for him and by him before he could expect to use his great yacht and his estates and his shooting boxes and the vast granite mansion recently completed and facing Central Park just north of the new palaces built on the edges of the outer desert where Fifth Avenue fringes the hundreds.

Meanwhile, he had become in a measure domesticated at Shotover, and Shotover people gradually came to ride, drive, and motor over the Fells, which was a good beginning, though not necessarily a promise for anything definite in the future.

Mortimer, riding a huge chestnut—he could still wedge himself into a saddle—had now made it a regular practice to affect the jocular early-bird squire, and drag Plank out of bed. And Plank, in no position to be anything but flattered by such sans gene, laboriously and gratefully splashed through his bath, wallowed amid the breakfast plates, and mounted a hunter for long and apparently aimless gallops with Mortimer.

His acquaintance among people who knew Mortimer being limited, he had no means of determining the latter's social value except through hearsay and a toadying newspaper or two. Therefore he was not yet aware of Mortimer's perennial need of money; and when Mortimer laughingly alluded to his poverty, Plank accepted the proposition in a purely comparative sense, and laughed, too, his thrifty Dutch soul untroubled by misgivings.

Meanwhile, Mortimer had come, among other things, on information; how much, and precisely of what nature, he was almost too much ashamed to admit definitely, even to himself. Still, the idea that had led him into this sudden intimacy with Plank, vague or not, persisted; and he was always hovering on the edge of hinting at something which might elicit a responsive hint from the flattered master of Black Fells.

There was much about Plank that was unaffected, genuine, even simple, in one sense; he cared for people for their own sakes; and only stubborn adherence to a dogged ambition had enabled him to dispense with the society of many people he might easily have cultivated and liked—people nearer his own sort; and that, perhaps, was the reason he so readily liked Mortimer, whose coarse fibre soon wore through the polish when rubbed against by a closer, finer fibre. And Plank liked him aside from gratitude; and they got on famously on the basis of such mutual recognition. Then, one day, very suddenly, Mortimer stumbled on something valuable—a thread, a mere clew, so astonishing that for an instant it absolutely upset all his unadmitted theories and calculations.

It was nothing—a vague word or two—a forced laugh—and the scared silence of this man Plank, who had blundered on the verge of a confidence to a man he liked.

A moment of amazement, of half-incredulous suspicion, of certainty; and Mortimer pounced playfully upon him like a tiger—a big, fat, friendly, jocose tiger:

"Plank, is that what you're up to!"

"Up to! Why, I never thought of such a—"

"Haw! haw!" roared Mortimer. "If you could only see your face!"

And Beverly Plank, red as a beet, comfortably suffused with reassurance under the reaction from his scare, attempted to refute the other's conclusions: "It doesn't mean anything, Mortimer. She's just the handsomest girl I ever saw. I know she's engaged. I only admired her a lot."

"You're not the only man," said Mortimer blandly, still striving to reconcile his preconceived theories with the awkward half-confession of this great, red-fisted, hulking horseman riding at his stirrup.

"I wouldn't have her dream," stammered Plank, "that I had ever thought of such a—"

"Why not? It would only flatter her."

"Flatter a woman who is engaged to marry another man!" gasped Plank.

"Certainly. Do you think any woman ever had enough admiration in this world?" asked Mortimer coolly. "And as for Sylvia Landis, she'd be tickled to death if anybody hinted that you had ever admired her."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Plank, alarmed; "You wouldn't make a joke of it! you wouldn't be careless about such a thing! And there's Quarrier! I'm not on joking terms with him; I'm on most formal terms."

"Quarrier!" sneered the other, flicking at his stirrup with his crop. "He's on formal terms with everybody, including himself. He never laughed on purpose in his life; once a month only, to keep his mouth in; that's his limit. Do you suppose any woman would stand for him if a better man looked sideways at her?" And, reversing his riding crop, he deliberately poked Mr. Plank in the ribs.

"A—a better man!" muttered Plank, scarce crediting his ears.

"Certainly. A man who can make good, is good; but a man who can make better is it with the ladies—God bless 'em!" he added, displaying a heavy set of teeth.

Beverly Plank knew perfectly well that, in the comparison so delicately suggested by Mortimer, his material equipment could be scarcely compared to the immense fortune controlled by Howard Quarrier; and as he thought it, his reflections were put into words by Mortimer, airily enough:

"Nobody stands a chance in a show-down with Quarrier. But—"

Plank gaped until the tension became unbearable.

"But—what?" he blurted out.

"Plank," said Mortimer solemnly, and his voice vibrated with feeling, "Let me do a little thinking before I ask you a—a vital question."

But Plank had become agitated again, and he said something so bluntly that Mortimer wheeled on him, glowering:

"Look here, Plank: you don't suppose I'm capable of repeating a confidence, do you?—if you choose to make me understand it's a confidence."

"It isn't a confidence; it isn't anything; I mean it is confidential, of course. All there's in it is what I said—or rather what you took me up on so fast," ended Plank, abashed.

"About your being in love with Syl—"

"Confound it!" roared Plank, crimson to his hair; and he set his heavy spurs to his mount and plunged forward in a storm of dust. Mortimer followed, silent, profoundly immersed in his own thoughts and deductions; and as he pounded along, turning over in his mind all the varied information he had so unexpectedly obtained in these last few days, a dull excitement stirred him, and he urged his huge horse forward in a thrill of rising exhilaration such as seizes on men who hunt, no matter what they hunt—the savage, swimming sense of intoxication which marks the man who chases the quarry not for its own value, but because it is his nature to chase and ride down and enjoy spoils.

And all that afternoon, having taken to his room on pretence of neuralgia, he lay sprawled on his bed, thinking, thinking. Not that he meant harm to anybody, he told himself very frequently. He had, of course, information which certain degraded men might use in a contemptible way, but he, Mortimer, did not resemble such men in any particular. All he desired was to do Plank a good turn. There was nothing disreputable in doing a wealthy man a favour. ... And God knew a wealthy man's gratitude was necessary to him at that very moment—gratitude substantially acknowledged. ... He liked Plank—wished him well; that was all right, too; but a man is an ass who doesn't wish himself well also. ... Two birds with one stone. ... Three! for he hated Quarrier. Four! ... for he had no love for his wife. ... Besides, it would teach Leila a wholesome lesson—teach her that he still counted; serve her right for her disgusting selfishness about Plank.

No, there was to be nothing disreputable in his proceedings; that he would be very careful about. ... Probably Major Belwether might express his gratitude substantially if he, Mortimer, went to him frankly and volunteered not to mention to Quarrier the scene he had witnessed between Sylvia Landis and Stephen Siward at three o'clock in the morning in the corridor; and if, in playful corroboration, he displayed the cap and rain-coat and the big fan, all crushed, which objects of interest he had discovered later in the bay-window. ... Yes, probably Major Belwether would be very grateful, because he wanted Quarrier in the family; he needed Quarrier in his business. ... But, faugh! that was close enough to blackmail to rub off! ... No! ... No! He wouldn't go to Belwether and promise any such thing! ... On the contrary, he felt it his duty to inform Quarrier! Quarrier had a right to know what sort of a girl he was threatened with for life! ... A man ought not to let another man go blindly into such a marriage. ... Men owed each other something, even if they were not particularly close friends. ... And he had always had a respect for Quarrier, even a sort of liking for him—yes, a distinct liking! ... And, anyhow, women were devils! and it behooved men to get together and stand for one another!

Quarrier would give her her walking papers damned quick! ... And, in her humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn't snap up Plank in such a fix? ... And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier? ... But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his money. ... And Plank would be very, very grateful—very useful, a very good friend to have. ... And Leila would learn at last that he, Mortimer, had cut his wisdom teeth, by God!

As for Siward, he amounted to nothing; probably was one of that contemptible sort of men who butted in and kissed a pretty girl when he had the chance. He, Mortimer, had only disgust for such amateurs of the social by-ways; for he himself kept to the highways, like any self-respecting professional, even when a tour of the highways sometimes carried him below stairs. There was no romantic shilly-shallying fol-de-rol about him. Women learned what to expect from him in short order. En garde, Madame!—ou Mademoiselle—tant pis!

He laughed to himself and rolled over, digging his head into the pillows and stretching his fat hands to ease their congestion. And most of all he amused himself with figuring out the exact degree of his wife's astonishment and chagrin when, without consulting her, he achieved the triumph of Quarrier's elimination and the theatrical entry of Beverly Plank upon the stage. He laughed when he thought of Major Belwether, too, confounded under the loss of such a nephew-in-law, humiliated, crushed, all his misleading jocularity, all his sleek pink-and-white suavity, all his humbugging bonhomie knocked out of him, leaving only a rumpled, startled old gentleman, who bore an amusing resemblance to a very much mussed-up buck-rabbit.

"Haw! haw!" roared Mortimer, rolling about in his bed and kicking the slippers from his fat feet. Then, remembering that he was supposed to be suffering silently in his room, he hunched up to a sitting posture and regarded his environment with a subdued grin.

Everything seems easy when it seems funny. After all, the matter was simple—absurdly simple. A word to Quarrier, and crack! the match was off! Girl mad as a hornet, but staggered, has no explanation to offer; man frozen stiff with rage, mute as an iceberg. Then, zip! Enter Beverly Plank—the girl's rescuer at a pinch—her preserver, the saviour of her "face," the big, highly coloured, leaden-eyed deus ex machina. Would she take fifty cents on the dollar? Would she? to buy herself a new "face"? And put it all over Quarrier? And live happy ever after? Would she? Oh, not at all!

And Mortimer rolled over in another paroxysm; which wasn't good for him, and frightened him enough to lie still awhile and think how best he might cut down on his wine and spirits.

The main thing, after all, was to promise Plank his opportunity, but not tell him how he was to obtain it; for Mortimer had an uneasy idea that there was something of the Puritan deep planted under the stolid young man's hide, and that he might make some absurd and irrelevant objection to the perfectly proper methods employed by his newly self-constituted guide and mentor. No; that was no concern of Plank's. All he had to do was to be ready. As for Quarrier, anybody could forecast his action when once convinced of Sylvia's behaviour.

He lay there pondering several methods of imparting the sad but necessary information to Quarrier. One thing was certain: there was not now time enough before the house-party dissolved to mould Plank into acquiescent obedience. That must be finished in town—unless Plank invited him to stay at the Fells after his time was up at Shotover. By Heaven! That was the idea! And there'd be a chance for him at cards! ... Only, of course, Plank would ask Leila too. ... But what did he care! He was no longer afraid of her; he'd soon be independent of her and her pittance. Let her go to the courts for her divorce! Let her—

He sat up rather suddenly, perplexed with a new idea which, curiously enough, had not appealed to him before. The astonishing hint so coolly dropped by his wife concerning her fearlessness of divorce proceedings had only awakened him to the consciousness of his own vulnerability and carelessness of conduct.

Now it occurred to him, for the first time, that if it were not a mere bluff on Leila's part, this sudden coquetting with the question of divorce might indicate an ulterior object. Was Leila considering his elimination in view of this ulterior object? Was there an ulterior gentleman somewhere prepared to replace him? If so, where? And who?

His wife's possible indiscretions had never interested him; he simply didn't care—had no curiosity, as long as appearances were maintained. And she had preserved appearances with a skill which required all the indifferent and easy charity of their set to pretend completely deceived everybody. Yes, he gave her credit for that; she had been clever. Nobody outside of the social register knew the true state of affairs in the house of Leroy Mortimer—which, after all, was all anybody cared about.

And so, immersed in the details of his dirty little drama, he pondered over the possibility of an ulterior gentleman as he moved heavily to and fro, dressing himself—his neuralgia being much better—and presently descended the stairs to find everybody absent, engaged, as a servant explained, in a game of water basket-ball in the swimming pool. So he strolled off toward the north wing of the house, which had been built for the squash-courts and swimming pool.

There was a good deal of an uproar in the big gymnasium as Mortimer walked in, threading his way through the palms and orange-trees; much splashing in the pool, cries and stifled laughter, and the quick rattle of applause from the gallery of the squash-courts.

The Page boys and Rena and Eileen on one side were playing the last match game against Sylvia, Marion Page, Siward, and Ferrall on the other; the big, slippery, glistening ball was flying about through storms of spray. Marion caught it, but her brother Gordon got it away; then Ferrall secured it and dived toward the red goal; but Rena Bonnesdel caught him under water; the ball bobbed up, and Sylvia flung both arms around it with a little warning shout and hurled it back at Siward, who shot forward like an arrow, his opponents gathering about him in full cry, amid laughter and excited applause from the gallery, where Grace Ferrall and Captain Voucher were wildly offering odds on the blue, and Alderdene and Major Belwether were thriftily booking them.

Mortimer climbed the slippery, marble stairway as fast as his lack of breath permitted, anxious for his share of the harvest if the odds were right. He ignored his wife's smilingly ironical offer, seeing no sense in bothering about money already inside the family; but he managed to make several apparently desirable wagers with Katharyn Tassel and one with Beverly Plank, who was also obstinately backing the blues, the losing side. Sylvia played forward for the blues.