Agatha Caithness, sleeves rolled up, tall and slim and strangely pale in her white flannels, came from the squash-court with Quarrier to watch the finish; and Mortimer observed her sidewise, blinking, irresolute, for he had never understood her and was always a trifle afraid of her. A pair of icicles, she and Quarrier, with whom he had never been on betting terms; so he made no suggestions in that direction, and presently became absorbed in the splashing battle below. Indeed, such a dashing of foam and showering of spray was taking place that the fronds of the big palms hung dripping amid drenched blossoms overweighted and prone on the wet marble edges of the pool.

Suddenly, through the confused blur of foam and spray, the big, glistening ball shot aloft and remained.

"Blue! Blue!" exclaimed Grace Ferrall, clapping her hands; and a little whirlwind of cries and hand clapping echoed from the gallery as the breathless swimmers came climbing out of the pool, with scarcely wind enough left for a word or strength for a gesture toward the laughing crowd above.

Mortimer, disgusted, turned away, already casting about him for somebody to play cards with—it being his temperament and his temper to throw good money after bad. But Quarrier and Miss Caithness had already returned to the squash-courts, the majority of the swimmers to their several dressing-rooms, and Grace Ferrall's party, equipped for motoring, to the lawn, where they lost little time in disappearing into the golden haze which a sudden shift of wind had spun out of the cloudless afternoon's sunshine.

However, he got Marion, and also, as usual, the two men who had made a practice of taking away his money—Major Belwether and Lord Alderdene. He hadn't particularly wanted them; he wanted somebody he could play with, like Siward, for example, or even the two ten-dollar Pages; not that their combined twenty would do him much good, but it would at least permit him the pleasures of the card-table without personal loss.

But the Pages had retired to dress, and Voucher was for motoring, and he had no use for his wife, and he was afraid of Plank's game, and Siward, seated on the edge of the pool and sharing a pint of ginger-ale with Sylvia Landis, shook his head at the suggestion and resumed his division of the ginger-ale.

Plank and Leila Mortimer came down to congratulate them. Sylvia, always instinctively and particularly nice to people of Plank's sort whom she occasionally encountered, was so faultlessly amiable, that Plank, who had never before permitted himself the privilege of monopolising her, found himself doing it so easily that it kept him in a state of persistent mental intoxication.

That slow, sweet, upward training inflection to a statement which instantly became a confided question was an unconscious trick which had been responsible, in Sylvia's brief life, for more mistakes than anything else. Like others before him, Beverly Plank made the mistake that the sweetness of voice and the friendliness of eyes were particularly personal to him, in tribute to qualities he had foolishly enough hitherto not suspected in himself. Now he suspected them, and whatever of real qualities desirable had been latent in him also appeared at once, confirming his modest suspicions. Certainly he was a wit! Was not this perfectly charming girl's responsive and delicious laughter proof enough? Certainly he was epigrammatic! Certainly he could be easy, polished, amusing, sympathetic, and vastly interesting all the while. Could he not divine it in her undivided attention, the quick, amused flicker of recognition animating her beautiful face when he had turned a particularly successful phrase or taken a verbal hurdle without a cropper? And above all, her kindness to him impressed him; her natural and friendly pleasure in being agreeable. Here he was already on an informal footing with one of the persons of whom he had been most shy and uncertain. If people were going to be as considerate of him as she had proved, why—why—

His dull, Dutch-blue eyes returned to her, fascinated. The conquest of what he desired and meant to have became merged in a vague plan which included such a marriage as he had dreamed of.

Somebody had once told him that a man who could afford to dress for dinner could go anywhere; meaning that, being a man, nature had fitted his feet with the paraphernalia for climbing as high as he cared to climb.

There was just enough truth in the statement to determine him to use his climbing irons; and he had done so, carrying his fortune with him, which had proved neither an impediment nor an aid so far. But now he had concluded that neither his god-sent climbing irons, his amiability, his obstinacy, his mild, tireless persistency, nor his money counted. It had come to a crisis where personal worth and sterling character must carry him through sheer merit to the inner temple—that inner temple of raw gold whose altars are served by a sexless skeleton in cap and bells!

Siward, inclined to be amused by the duration of the trance into which Plank had fallen, watched the progress of that bulky young man's infatuation as he sat there on the pool's marble edge, exchanging trivial views on trivial subjects with Mrs. Leroy Mortimer.

But her conversation, even when inconsequential, was never wearisome except when she made it so for her husband's benefit. Features, person, personality, and temperament were warmly exotic; her dark eyes with their slight Japanese slant, the clear olive skin with its rose bloom, the temptation of mouth and slender neck, were always provocative of the audacity in men which she could so well meet with amusement or surprise, or at times with a fascinating audacity of her own wholly charming because of its setting.

Once, in their history, during her early married life, Siward had been very sentimental about her; but neither he nor she had approached the danger line closer than to make daring eyes at one another across the frontiers of good taste. And their youthful enchantment had faded so naturally, so pleasantly, that always there had remained to them both an agreeable after-taste—a sort of gay understanding which almost invariably led to mutual banter when they encountered. But now something appeared to be lacking in their rather listless badinage—something of the usual flavour which once had salted even a laughing silence with significance. Siward, too, had ceased to be amused at the spectacle of Plank's calf-like infatuation; and Leila Mortimer's bored smile had lasted so long that her olive-pink cheeks were stiff, and she relaxed her fixed features with a little shrug that was also something of a shiver. Then, looking prudently around, she encountered Siward's eyes; and during a moment's hesitation they considered one another with an increasing curiosity that slowly became tentative intelligence. And her eyes said very plainly and wickedly to Siward's: "Oho, my friend! So it bores you to see Mr. Plank monopolising an engaged girl who belongs to Howard Quarrier!"

And his eyes, wincing, denying, pretending ignorance too late, suddenly narrowed in vexed retaliation: "Speak for yourself, my lady! You're no more pleased than I am!"

The next moment they both regretted the pale flash of telepathy. There had been something wounded in his eyes; and she had not meant that. No; a new charity for the hapless had softened her wonderfully within a fortnight's time, and a self-pity, not entirely ignoble, had subdued the brilliancy of her dark eyes, and made her tongue more gentle in dealing with all failings. Besides, she was not yet perfectly certain what ailed her, never having really cared for any one man before. No, she was not at all certain. ... But in the meanwhile she was very sorry for herself, and for all those who drained the bitter cup that might yet pass from her shrinking lips. Who knows! "Stephen," she said under her breath, "I didn't mean to hurt you. ... Don't scowl. Listen. I have already entirely forgotten the nature of my offense. Pax, if you please."

He refused to understand; and she understood that, too; and she gazed critically upon Sylvia Landis as a very young mother might inspect a rival infant with whom her matchless offspring was coquetting.

Then, without appearing to, she took Plank away from temptation; so skilfully that nobody except Siward understood that the young man had been incontinently removed. He, Plank, never doubting that he was a perfectly free agent, decided that the time had arrived for triumphant retirement. It had; but Leila Mortimer, not he, had rendered the decision, and so cleverly that it appeared even to Plank himself that he had dragged her off with him rather masterfully. Clearly he was becoming a devil of a fellow!

Sylvia turned to Siward, glanced up at him, hesitated, and began to laugh consciously:

"What do you think of my latest sentimental acquisition?"

"He'd be an ornament to a stock farm," replied Siward, out of humour.

"How brutal you can be!" she mused, smiling.

"Nonsense! He's a plain bounder, isn't he?"

"I don't know. ... Is he? He struck me a trifle appealingly—even pathetically; they usually do, that sort. ... As though the trouble they took could ever be worth the time they lose! ... There are dozens of men I know who are far less presentable than this highly coloured and robust young human being; and yet they are part of the accomplished scheme of things—like degenerate horses, you know—always pathetic to me; but they're still horses, for all that. Quid rides? Species of the same genus can cross, of course, but I had rather be a donkey than a mule. ... And if I were a donkey I'd sing and cavort with my own kind, and let horses flourish their own heels inside the accomplished scheme of things. ... Now I have been brutal. But—I'm easily coloured by my environment."

She sat, smiling maliciously down at the water, smoothing out the soaked skirt of her swimming suit, and swinging her legs reflectively.

"Are you reconciled?" she asked presently.

"To what?"

"To leaving Shotover. To-day is our last day, you know. To-morrow we all go; and next day these familiar walls will ring with other voices, my poor friend:

"'Yon rising moon that looks for us again—How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter, rising, look for us Through this same mansion—and for one in vain!'"

"That is I—the one, you know. You may be here again; but I—I shall not be I if I ever come to Shotover again."

Her stockinged heels beat the devil's tattoo against the marble sides of the pool. She reached up above her head, drawing down a flowering branch of Japanese orange, and caressed her delicate nose with the white blossoms, dreamily, then, mischievously: "I'm accustoming myself to this most significant perfume," she said, looking at him askance. And she deliberately hummed the wedding march, watching the colour rise in his sullen face.

"If you had the courage of a sparrow you'd make life worth something for us both," he said.

"I know it; I haven't; but I seem to possess the remainder of his lordship's traits—inconsequence, self-centred selfishness, the instinct for Fifth Avenue nest-building—all the feathered vices, all the unlovely personality and futility and uselessness of my prototype. ... Only, as you observe, I lack the quality of courage."

"I don't know how much courage it requires to do what you're going to do," he said sulkily.

"Don't you? Sometimes, when you wear a scowl like that, I think that it may require no more courage than I am capable of. ... And sometimes—I don't know."

She crossed her knees, one slender ankle imprisoned in her hand, leaning forward thoughtfully above the water.

"Our last day," she mused; "for we shall never be just you and I again—never again, my friend, after we leave this rocky coast of Eden. ... I shall have hints of you in the sea-wind and the sound of the sea; in the perfume of autumn woods, in the whisper of stirring leaves when the white birches put on their gold crowns next year." She smiled, turning to him, a little gravely: "When the Lesser Children return with April, I shall not forget you, Mr. Siward, nor forget your mercy of a day on them; nor your comradeship, nor your sweetness to me. ... Nor your charity for me, nor all that you overlook so far in me,—under the glamour of a spell that seems to hold you still, and that still holds me. ... I can answer for my constancy so far, until one more spring and summer have come and gone—until one more autumn comes, and while it lasts—as long as any semblance of the setting remains which had once framed you; I can answer for my constancy as long as that. ... Afterwards, the snow!—symbol of our separation. I am to be married a year from November first."

He looked up at her in dark surprise, for he had heard that their wedding date had been set for the coming winter.

"A year's engagement?" he repeated, unconvinced.

"It was my wish. I think that is sufficient for everybody concerned." Then, averting her face, which had suddenly lost a little of its colour: "A year is little enough," she said impatiently. "I—what has happened to us requires an interval—a decent interval for its burial. ... Death is respectable in any form. What dies between you and me can have no resurrection under the snow. ... So I bring to the burial my tribute—a year of life, a year of constancy, my friend; symbol of an eternity I could have given you had I been worth it." She looked up, flushed, the forced smile stamped on lips still trembling. "Sentiment in such a woman as I! 'A spectacle for Gods and men,' you are saying—are you not? And perhaps sentiment with me is only an ancient instinct, a latent ancestral quality for which I, ages later, have no use." She was laughing easily. "No use for sentiment, as our bodies have no use for that fashionable little cul-de-sac, you know, though wise men say it once served its purpose, too. ... Stephen Siward, what do you think of me now?"

"I am learning," he replied simply.

"What, if you please?"

"Learning a little about what I am losing."

"You mean—me?"

"Yes."

She bent forward impulsively, balancing her body on the pool's rim with both arms, dropping her knee until her ankles swung interlocked above the water. "Listen," she said in a low, distinct voice: "What you lose is no other man's gain! If I warm and expand in your presence—if I say clever things sometimes—if I am intelligent, sympathetic, and amusing—it is because of you. You inspire it in me. Normally I am the sort of girl you first met at the station. I tell you that I don't know myself now—that I have not known myself since I knew you. Qualities of understanding, ability to appreciate, to express myself without employing the commonplaces, subtleties of intercourse—all, maybe, were latent in me, but sterile, until you came into my life. ... And when you go, then, lacking impulse and incentive, the new facility, the new sensitive alertness, the unconscious self-confidence, all will smoulder and die out in me. ... I know it; I realise that it was due to you—part of me that I should never have known, of which I should have remained totally ignorant, had it not blossomed suddenly, stimulated by you alone."

Slowly the clouded seriousness of her blue eyes cleared, and the smile began to glimmer again. "That is your revenge; you recommit me to my commonplace self; you restore me to my tinsel career, practically a dolt. Shame on you, Stephen Siward, to treat a poor girl so! ... But it's just as well. Blunted perceptions, according to our needs, you know; and so life is tempered for us all, else we might not endure it long. ... A pleasantly morbid suggestion for a day like this, is it not? ... Shall we take a farewell plunge, and dress? You know we say good-bye to-morrow."

"Where do you go from here?"

"To Lenox; the Claymores have asked us for a week; after that, Hot Springs for another two weeks or so; after that, to Oyster Bay. ... Mr. Quarrier opens his house on Sedge Point," she added demurely, "but I don't think he expects to invite you to 'The Sedges.'"

"How long do you stay there?" asked Siward irritably.

"Until we go to town in December."

"What will you find to do all that time in Oyster Bay?" he asked more irritably.

"What a premature question! The yacht is there. Besides, there's the usual neighbourhood hunting, with the usual packs and inevitable set; the usual steeple-chasing; the usual exchange of social amenities; the usual driving and riding; the usual, my poor friend, the usual, in all its uncompromising certainty. ... And what are you to do?"

"When?"

"After you leave here?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know where you are going?"

"I'm going to town."

"And then?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, but haven't you been asked somewhere? You have, of course."

"Yes, and I have declined."

"Matters of business," she inferred. "Too bad!"

"Oh, no."

"Then," she concluded, laughing, "you don't care to tell me where you are going."

"No," he said thoughtfully, "I don't care to tell you."

She laughed again carelessly, and, placing one hand on the tiled pavement, sprang lightly to her feet.

"A last plunge?" she asked, as he rose at her side.

"Yes, one last plunge together. Deep! Are you ready?"

She raised her white arms above her head, finger-tips joined, poised an instant on the brink, swaying forward; then, at his brief word, they flashed downward together, cutting the crystalline sea-water, shooting like great fish over the glass-tiled bed, shoulder to shoulder under the water; and opening their eyes, they turned toward one another with a swift outstretch of hands, an uncontrollable touch of lips, the very shadow of contact; then cleaving upward, rising to the surface to lie breathlessly floating, arms extended, and the sun filtering down through the ground-glass roof above.

"We are perfectly crazy," she breathed. "I'm quite mad; I see that. On land it's bad enough for us to misbehave; but submarine sentiment! We'll be growing scales and tails presently. ... Did you ever hear of a Southern bird—a sort of hawk, I think—that almost never alights; that lives and eats and sleeps its whole life away on the wing? and even its courtship, and its honeymoon? Grace Ferrall pointed one out to me last winter, near Palm Beach—a slender bird, part black, part snowy white, with long, pointed, delicate wings like an enormous swallow; and all day, all night, it floats and soars and drifts in the upper air, never resting, never alighting except during its brief nesting season. ... Think of the exquisite bliss of drifting one's life through in mid-air—to sleep, balanced on light wings, upborne by invisible currents flowing under the stars—to sail dreamily through the long sunshine, to float under the moon! ... And at last, I suppose, when its time has come, down it whirls out of the sky, stone dead! ... There is something thrilling in such a death—something magnificent. ... And in the exquisitely spiritual honeymoon, vague as the shadow of a rainbow, is the very essence and aroma of that impalpable Paradise we women prophesy in dreams! ... More sentiment! Heigho! My brother is the weeping crocodile, and the five winds are my wits. ... Shall we dress? Even with a maid and the electric air-blast it will take time to dry my hair and dress it."

When he came out of his dressing-room she was apparently still in the hands of the maid. So he sauntered through the house as far as the library, and drawing a cheque-book from one pocket, fished out a memorandum-book from another, and began to cast up totals with a view to learning something about the various debts contracted at Shotover.

He seemed to owe everybody. Fortune had smitten him hip and thigh; and, a trifle concerned, he began covering a pad with figures until he knew where he stood. Then he drew a considerable cheque to Major Belwether's order, another to Alderdene. Others followed to other people for various amounts; and he was very busily at work when, aware of another presence near, he turned around in his chair. Sylvia Landis was writing at a desk in the corner, and she looked up, nodding the little greeting that she always reserved for him even after five minutes' separation.

"I'm writing cheques," she said. "I suppose you're writing to your mother."

"Why do you think so?" he asked curiously.

"You write to her every day, don't you?"

"Yes," he said, "but how do you know?"

She looked at him with unblushing deliberation. "You wrote every day. ... If it was to a woman, I wanted to know. ... And I told Grace Ferrall that it worried me. And then Grace told me. Is there any other confession of my own pettiness that I can make to you."

"Did you really care to whom I was writing?" he asked slowly.

"Care? I—it worried me. Was it not a pitifully common impulse? 'Sisters under our skin,' you know—I and the maid who dresses me. She would have snooped; I didn't; that's the only generic difference. I wanted to know just the same. ... But—that was before—"

"Before what?"

"Before I—please don't ask me to say it. ... I did, once, when you asked me."

"Before you cared for me. Is that what you mean?"

"Yes. You are so cruelly literal when you wish to punish me. ... You are interrupting me, too. I owe that wretched Kemp Ferrall a lot of money, and I'm trying to find out how much seven and nine are, to close accounts with Marion Page."

Siward turned and continued his writing. And when the little sheaf of cheques was ready he counted them, laid them aside, and, drawing a flat packet of fresh bank-notes from his portfolio, counted out the tips expected of him below stairs. These arranged for, he straightened up and glanced over his shoulder at Sylvia, but she was apparently absorbed in counting something on the ends of her fingers, so he turned smilingly to his desk and wrote a long letter to his mother—the same tender, affectionately boyish letter he had always written her, full of confidences, full of humour, gaily anticipating his own return to her on the heels of the letter.

In his first letter to her from Shotover he had spoken casually of a Miss Landis. It seemed the name was familiar enough to his mother, who asked about her; and he had replied in another letter or two, a trifle emphatic in his praise of her, because from his mother's letters it was quite evident that she knew a good deal concerning the very unconventional affairs of Sylvia's family.

Of his swift and somewhat equivocal courtship he had had nothing to say in his letters; in fact recently he had nothing to say about Sylvia at all, reserving that vital confidence for the clear sympathy and understanding which he looked forward to when he should see her, and which, through dark days and bitter aftermaths, through struggle and defeat by his master-vice, had never failed him yet, never faltered for an instant.

So he brought his letter to a close with a tender and uneasy inquiry concerning her health, which, she had intimated, was not exactly satisfactory, and for that reason she had opened the house in town in order to be near Dr. Grisby, their family doctor.

Sealing and directing the letter, he looked up to see Sylvia standing at his elbow. She dropped a light hand on his shoulder for a second, barely touching him—a fugitive caress, delicate as the smile hovering on her lips, as the shy tenderness in her eyes.

"More letters to your sweetheart?" she asked, abandoning her hand to him.

"One more—the last before I see her. ... I wish you could see her, Sylvia."

"I wish so, too," she answered simply, seating herself on the arm of his chair as though it were a side-saddle.

They sat there very silent for a few moments, curiously oblivious to the chance curiosity of any one who might enter or pass.

"Would she—care for me—do you think?" asked the girl in a low voice.

"I think so,—for your real self."

"I know. She could only feel contempt for me—as I am."

"She is old-fashioned," he said reverently.

"That means all that is best in a woman. ... The old fashion of truth and faith; the old fashion of honour, and faith in honour; the old, old fashion of—love. ... All that is best, Stephen; all that is worth the love of a man. ... Some day somebody will revive those fashions."

"Will you?"

"Dear, they would not become me," she said, the tenderness in her eyes deepening a little; and she touched his head lightly in humourous caress.

"What shall we do with the waning daylight?" she asked. "It is my last day with you. I told Howard it was my last day with you, and I did not care to be disturbed."

"You probably didn't say it that way," he commented, amused.

"I did."

"How much of that sort of thing is he prepared to stand?" asked Siward curiously.

"How much? I don't know. I don't believe he cares. It is my uncle, Major Belwether, who is making things unpleasant for me. I had to tell Howard, you know."

"What!" exclaimed Siward incredulously.

"Certainly. Do you think my conduct has passed without protest?"

"You told Quarrier!" he repeated.

"Did you imagine I could do otherwise?" she asked coolly. "I have that much decency left. Certainly I told him. Do you suppose that, after what we did—what I admitted to you—that I could meet him as usual? Do you think I am afraid of him?"

"I thought you were afraid of losing him," muttered Siward.

"I was, dreadfully. And the morning after you and I had been imprudent enough to sit up until nearly daylight—and do what we did—I made him take a long walk with me, and I told him plainly that I cared for you, that I was too selfish and cowardly to marry you, and that if he couldn't endure the news he was at liberty to terminate the engagement without notice."

"What did he say?" stammered Siward.

"A number of practical things."

"You mean to say he stands it!"

"It appears so. What else is there for him to do, unless he breaks the engagement?"

"And he—hasn't?"

"No. I was informed that he held me strictly and precisely to my promise; that he would never release me voluntarily, though I was, of course, at liberty to do what I chose. ... My poor friend, he cares no more for love than do I. I happen to be the one woman in New York whom he considers absolutely suitable for him; by race, by breeding, by virtue of appearance and presence, eminently fitted to complete the material portion of his fortune and estate."

Her voice had hardened as she spoke; now it rang a little at the end, and she laughed unpleasantly.

"It appears that I was a little truer to myself than you gave me credit for—a little truer to you—a little less treacherous, less shameless, than you must have thought me. But I have gone to my limit of decency; ... and, were I ten times more in love with you than I am, I could not put away the position and power offered me. But I will not lie for it, nor betray for it. ... Do you remember, once you asked me for what reasons I dropped men from my list? And I told you, because of any falsehood or treachery, any betrayal of trust—and for no other reason. You remember? And did you suppose that elemental standard of decency did not include women—even such a woman as I?"

She dropped one arm on the back of his chair and rested her chin on it, staring at space across his shoulders.

"That's how it had to be, you see, when I found that I cared for you. There was nothing to do but to tell him. I was quite certain that it was all off; but I found that I didn't know the man. I knew he was sensitive, but I didn't know he was sensitive to personal ridicule only, and to nothing else in all the world that I can discover. I—I suppose, from my frankness to him, he has concluded that no ridicule could ever touch him through me. I mean, he trusts me enough to marry me. ... He will be safe enough, as far as my personal conduct is concerned," she added naively. "It seems that I am capable of love; but I am incapable of its degradation."

Siward, leaning heavily forward over his desk, rested his head in both hands; and she stooped from her perch on the arm of the chair, pressing her hot cheeks against his hands—a moment only; then slipping to her feet, she curled up in a great arm-chair by the fire, head tipped back, blue gaze concentrated on him.

"The thing for you to do," she said, "is to ambush me some night, and throw me into a hansom, and drive us both to the parson's. I'd hate you for it as much as I'd love you, but I'd make you an interesting wife."

"I may do that yet," he said, lifting his head from his hands.

"You've a year to do it in," she observed. ... "By the way, you're to take me in to dinner, as you did the first night. Do you remember? I asked Grace Ferrall then. I asked her again to-day. Heigho! It was years ago, wasn't it, that I drove up to the station and saw a very attractive and perplexed young man looking anxiously about for somebody to take him to Shotover. Ahem! the notorious Mr. Siward! Dear, ... I didn't mean to hurt you! You know it, silly! Mayn't I have my little joke about your badness—your redoubtable badness of reputation? There! You had just better smile. ... How dare you frighten me by making me think I had hurt you! ... Besides, you are probably unrepentant."

She watched him closely for a moment or two, then, "Are you unrepentant?"

"About what?"

"About your general wickedness? About—" she hesitated—"about that girl, for example."

"What girl?" he asked coldly.

"That reminds me that you have told me absolutely nothing about her."

"There is nothing to tell," he said, in a tone so utterly new to her in its finality that she sat up as though listening to an unknown voice.

Tone and words so completely excluded her from the new intimacy into which she had imperceptibly drifted that both suddenly developed a significance from sheer contrast. Who was this girl, then, of whom he had absolutely nothing to say? What was she to him? What could she be to him—an actress, a woman of common antecedents?

She had sometimes idly speculated in an indefinitely innocent way as to just what a well-born man could find to interest him in such women; what he could have to talk about to persons of that sort, where community of tastes and traditions must be so absolutely lacking.

Gossip, scandal of that nature, hints, silences, innuendoes, the wise shrugs of young girls oversophisticated, the cool, hard smiles of matrons, all had left her indifferent or bored, partly from distaste, partly from sheer incredulity; a refusal to understand, an innate delicacy that not only refrains from comprehension, but also denies itself even the curiosity to inquire or the temptation of vaguest surmise on a subject that could not exist for her.

But now, something of the uncomfortable uneasiness had come over her which she had been conscious of when made aware of Marion Page's worldly wisdom, and which had imperceptibly chilled her when Grace Ferrall spoke of Siward's escapade, coupling this woman and him in the same scandal.

She took it for granted that there must be, for men, an attraction toward women who figured publicly behind the foot-lights, though it appeared very silly to her. In fact it all was silly and undignified—part and parcel, no doubt, of that undergraduate foolishness which seemed to cling to some men who had otherwise attained discretion.

But it appeared to her that Siward had taken the matter with a seriousness entirely out of proportion in his curt closure of the subject, and she felt a little irritated, a little humiliated, a little hurt, and took refuge in a silence that he did not offer to break.

Early twilight had fallen in the room; the firelight grew redder.

"Sylvia," he said abruptly, reverting to the old, light tone hinting of the laughter in his eyes which she could no longer see, "Suppose, as you suggested, I did ambush you—say after the opera—seize you under the very nose of your escort and make madly for a hansom?"

"I know of no other way," she said demurely.

"Would you resist, physically?"

"I would, if nobody were looking."

"Desperately?

"How do I know? Besides, it couldn't last long," she said, thinking of his slimly powerful build as she had noticed it in his swimming costume. Smiling, amused, she wondered how long she could resist him with her own wholesome supple activity strengthened to the perfection of health in saddle and afoot.

"I should advise you to chloroform me," she said defiantly. "You don't realise my accomplishments with the punching-bag."

"So you mean to resist?"

"Yes, I do. If I were going to surrender at once, I might as well go off to church with you now."

"Wenniston church!" he said promptly. "I'll order the Mercedes."

She laughed, lazily settling herself more snugly by the fire. "Suppose it were our fire?" she smiled. "There would be a dog lying across that rug, and a comfortable Angora tabby dozing by the fender, and—you, cross-legged, at my feet, with that fascinating head of yours tipped back against my knees."

The laughter in her voice died out, and he had risen, saying unsteadily: "Don't! I—I can't stand that sort of thing, you know."

She had made a mistake, too; she also had suddenly become aware of her own limits in the same direction.

"Forgive me, dear! I meant no mockery."

"I know. ... After a while a man finds laughter difficult."

"I was not laughing at—anything. I was only pretending to be happy."

"Your happiness is before you," he said sullenly.

"My future, you mean. You know I am exchanging one for the other. ... And some day you will awake to the infamy of it; you will comprehend the depravity of the monstrous trade I made. ... And then—and then—"

She passed one slim hand over her face—"then you will shake yourself free from this dream of me; then, awake, my punishment at your hands will begin. ... Dear, no man in his right senses can continue to love a girl such as I am. All that is true and ardent and generous in you has invested my physical attractiveness and my small intellect with a magic that cannot last, because it is magic; and you are the magician, enmeshed for the moment in the mists of your own enchantment. When this fades, when you unclose your eyes in clear daylight, dear, I dread to think what I shall appear to you—what a dreadful, shrunken, bloodless shell, hung with lace and scented, silken cerements—a jewelled mummy-case—a thing that never was! ... Do you understand my punishment a little, now?"

"If it were true," he said in a dull voice, "you will have forgotten, too."

"I pray I may," she said under her breath.

And, after a long silence: "Do you think, before the year is out, that you might be granted enough courage?" he asked.

"No. I shall not even pray for it. I want what is offered me! I desire it so blindly that already it has become part of me. I tell you the poison is in every vein; there is nothing else but poison in me. I am what I tell you, to the core. It is past my own strength of will to stop me, now. If I am stopped, another must do it. My weakness for you, being a treachery if not confessed, I was obliged to confess, horribly frightened as I was. He might have stopped me; he did not. ... And now, what is there on earth to halt me? Love cannot. Common decency and courage cannot. Fear of your unhappiness and mine cannot. No, even the certitude of your contempt, some day, is powerless to halt me now. I could not love; I am utterly incapable of loving you enough to balance the sacrifice. And that is final."

Grace Ferrall came into the room and found a duel of silence in progress under the dull fire-glow tinting the ceiling.

"Another quarrel," she commented, turning on the current of the drop-light above the desk from which Siward had risen at her entrance. "You quarrel enough to marry. Why don't you?"

"I wish we could," said Sylvia simply.

Grace laughed. "What a little fool you are!" she said tenderly, seating herself in Siward's chair and dropping one hand over his where it rested on the arm. "Stephen, can't you make her—a big, strong fellow like you? Oh, well; on your heads be it! My conscience is now clear for the first time, and I'll never meddle again." She gave Siward's hand a perfunctory pat and released him with a discreetly stifled yawn. "I'm disgracefully sleepy; the wind blew like fury along the coast. Sylvia, have you had a good time at Shotover—the time of your life?"

Sylvia raised her eyes and encountered Siward's.

"I certainly have," she said faintly.

"C'est bien, cherie. Can you be as civil, Stephen—conscientiously? Oh, that is very nice of you! But there's one thing: why on earth didn't you make eyes at Marion? Life might be one long, blissful carnival of horse and dog for you both. Oh, dear! there, I'm meddling again! Pinch me, Sylvia, if I ever begin to meddle again! How did you come out at Bridge, Stephen? What—bad as that? Gracious! this is disgraceful—this gambling the way people do! I'm shocked and I'm going up to dress. Are you coming, Sylvia?"

The dinner was very gay. The ceremony of christening the Shotover Cup, which Quarrier had won, proceeded with presentation speech and a speech of acceptance faultlessly commonplace, during which Quarrier wore his smile—which was the only humorous thing he contributed.

The cup was full. Siward eyed it, perplexed, deadly afraid, yet seeing no avenue of escape from what must appear a public exhibition of contempt for Quarrier if he refused to taste its contents. That meant a bad night for him; yet he shrank more from the certain misinterpretation of a refusal to drink from the huge loving-cup with its heavy wreath of scented orchids, now already on its way toward him, than he feared the waking struggle so sure to follow.

Marion received the cup, lifted it in both hands, and said distinctly, "Good Hunting!" as she drank to Quarrier. Her brother Gordon took it, and drank entirely too much. Then Sylvia lifted it, her white hands half buried among the orchids: "To you!" she murmured for Siward's ear alone; then drank gaily, mischievously, "To the best shot at Shotover!" And Siward took the cup: "I salute victory," he said, smiling, "always, and everywhere! To him who takes the fighting chance and wins out! To the best man! Health!" And he drank as a gentleman drinks, with a gay bow to Quarrier, and with death in his heart.

Later, the irony of it struck him so grimly that he laughed; and Sylvia, beside him, looked up, dismayed to see the gray change in his face.

"What is it?" she faltered, catching his eye; "why do you—why are you so white?"

But he only smiled, as though he had misunderstood, saying:

"The survival of the fittest; that is the only test, after all. The man who makes good doesn't whine for justice. There's enough of it in the world to go round, and he who misses it gets all that's due him just the same."

Later, at cards, the aromatic odour from Alderdene's decanter roused him to fierce desire, but he fought it down until only the deadened, tearing ache remained to shake and loosen every nerve. And when Ferrall, finishing his usual batch of business letters, arrived to cut in if needed, Siward dropped his cards with a shudder, and rose so utterly unnerved that Captain Voucher, noticing his drawn face, asked him if he were not ill.

He was leaving on an earlier train than the others, having decided to pass through Boston and Deptford, at which latter place he meant to leave Sagamore for the winter in care of the manager of his mother's farm. So he took a quiet leave of those to whom the civility might not prove an interruption—a word to Alderdene and Voucher as he passed out, a quick clasp for Ferrall and for Grace, a carefully and cordially formal parting from the Page boys, which pleased them ineffably.

Eileen and Rena, who had never had half a chance at him, took it now, delighted to discipline their faithful Pages; and he submitted in his own engagingly agreeable way, and so skilfully that both Eileen and Rena felt sorry that they had not earlier understood how civilly anxious he had been to devote himself to them alone. And they looked at the Pages, exasperated.

In the big hall he passed Marion, and stopped to take his leave.

No, he would do no hunting this season either at Carysford or with the two trial packs at Eastwood. Possibly at Warrenton later, but probably not; business threatened to detain him in town more or less. ... Of course he'd come to see her when she returned to town. ... And it had been a jolly party, and it was a shame to sound "lights out" so soon! Good-bye. ... Good night. And that was all.

And that was all, unless he disturbed Sylvia, seated at cards with Quarrier and Major Belwether and Leila Mortimer—and very intent on the dummy, very still, and a trifle pallid with the pallor of concentration.

So—that was all, then.

Ascending the stairs, a servant handed him a letter bearing the crest of the Lenox Club. He pocketed it unopened and continued his way.

In the darkness of his own room he sat down, the devil's own clutch on his shrinking nerves, a deathly desire tearing at his very vitals, and every vein a tiny trail of fire run riot. He had been too long without it, too long to endure the craving aroused by that gay draught from Quarrier's loving-cup.

The awakened fury of his desire appalled him, and for a while that occupied him, enabling him to endure. But fear and dismay soon passed in the purely physical distress; he walked the floor, haggard, the sweat starting on his face; he lay with clenched hands, stiffened out across the bed, deafened by the riotous clamour of his pulses, conscious that he was holding out, unconscious how long he could hold out.

Crisis after crisis swept him; sometimes he found his feet and moved blindly about the room.

Strange periods of calm intervened; sensation seemed deadened; and he stood as a man who listens, scarcely daring to breathe lest the enemy awake and seize him.

He turned on the light, later, to look for his pipe, and he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. It was a sick man who stared back at him out of hollow eyes, and the physical revulsion shocked him into something resembling self-command.

"Damn you!" he said fiercely, setting his teeth and staring back at his reflected face, "I'll kill you yet before I've finished with you!"

Then he filled his pipe, and opening his bedroom window, sat down, resting his arm on the sill. A splendid moon silvered the sea; through the intense stillness he heard the surf, magnificently dissonant among the reefs, and he listened, fascinated, loathing the tides as he feared and loathed the inexorable tides that surged and ebbed with his accursed desire.

Once he said to himself, weakly—for he was deadly tired—"What am I making the fight for, anyway?" And "Who are you making the fight for?" echoed his heavy pulses.

He had asked that question and received that answer before. After all, it had been for his mother's sake alone. And now—and now?—his heart beat out another answer; and before his eyes two other eyes seemed to open, fearlessly, sweetly, divinely tender. But they were no longer his mother's grave, gray eyes.

After the second pipe he remembered his letter. It gave him something to do, so he opened it and tried to read it, but for a long while, in his confused physical and mental condition, he could make no sense of it.

Little by little he began to comprehend its purport that his resignation was regretfully requested by the governors of the Lenox Club for reasons unassigned.

The shock of the thing came to him after a while, like a distant, dull report long after the flash of the explosion. Well, the affair, bad enough at first, was turning worse, that was all. How much of that sort of discredit could a man stand and keep his balance? ... And what would his mother say?

Confused from his own physical suffering, the blow had fallen with a deadened force on nerves already numbed; but his half-stupefied acquiescence had suddenly become a painful recoil when he remembered where the brunt of the disgrace would fall—where the centre of suffering must always be, and the keenest grief concentrated. Roused, appalled, almost totally unnerved, he stood staring at the letter, beginning to realise what it would mean to his mother. A passion of remorse and resentment swept him. She must be spared that! There must be some way—some punishment for his offence that could not strike her through him! It was wicked, it was contemptible, insane, to strike her! What were the governors of the Lenox about—a lot of snivelling hypocrites, pandering to the horrified snobbery at the Patroons! Who were they, anyway, to discipline him! Scarce one in fifty among the members of the two clubs was qualified to sit in judgment on a Siward!

But that tempest of passion and mortification passed, too, leaving him standing there, dumb, desperate, staring at the letter crushed in his shaking hand.

He must see somebody, some member of the Lenox, and do something—something! Ferrall! Was that Ferrall's step on the landing?

He sprang to the door and opened it. Quarrier, passing the corridor, turned an expressionless visage toward him, and passed on with a nod almost imperceptible.

"Quarrier!" he called, swept by a sudden impulse.

Quarrier halted and turned.

"Could you give me a moment—here in my room? I won't detain you."

The faint trace of surprise faded from Quarrier's face; he quietly retraced his steps, and, entering Siward's room, stood silently confronting its pallid tenant.

"Will you sit down a moment?"

Quarrier seated himself in the arm-chair by the window, and Siward found a chair opposite.

"Quarrier," said the younger man, turning a tensely miserable face on his visitor, "I want to ask you something. I'll not mince matters. You know that the Patroons have dropped me, and you know what for."

"Yes, I know."

"When I was called before the Board of Governors to explain the matter, if I could, you were sitting on that Board."

"Yes."

"I denied the charge, but refused to explain. ... You remember?"

Quarrier nodded coldly.

"And I was dropped by the club!"

A slight inclination of Quarrier's symmetrical head corroborated him.

"Now," said Siward, slowly and very distinctly, "I shall tell you unofficially what I refused to tell the other governors officially." And, as he began speaking, Quarrier's face flushed, then the features became immobile, set, and inert, and his eyes grew duller and duller, as though, under a smooth surface the soul inside of him was shrinking back into some dark corner, silent, watchful, suspicious, and perhaps defiant.

"Mr. Quarrier," said Siward quietly, "I did not take that girl to the Patroons Club—and you know it."

Quarrier was all surface now; he had drawn away internally so far that even his eyes seemed to recede until they scarcely glimmered through the slits in his colourless mask. And Siward went on:

"I knew perfectly well what sort of women I was to meet at that fool supper Billy Fleetwood gave; and you must have, too, for the girl you took in was no stranger to you. ... Her name is Lydia Vyse, I believe."

The slightest possible glimmer in the elder man's eyes was all the answer he granted.

"What happened," said Siward calmly, "was this: She bet me she could so disguise herself that I could safely take her into any club in New York. I bet her she couldn't. I never dreamed of trying. Besides, she was your—dinner partner," he added with a shrug.

His concentrated gaze seemed at length to pierce the expressionless surface of the other man, who moved slightly in his chair and moistened his thin lips under the glossy beard.

"Quarrier," said Siward earnestly, "What happened in the club lobby I don't exactly know, because I was not in a condition to know. I admit it; that was the trouble with me. When I left Fleetwood's rooms I left with a half dozen men. I remember crossing Fifth Avenue with them; and the next thing I remember distinctly was loud talking in the club lobby, and a number of men there, and a slim young fellow in Inverness and top hat in the centre of a crowd, whose face was the face of that girl, Lydia Vyse. And that is absolutely all. But I couldn't do more than deny that I took her there unless I told what I knew; and of course that was not possible, even in self-defence. But it was for you to admit that I was right. And you did not. You dared not! You let another man blunder into your private affairs and fall a victim to circumstantial evidence which you could have refuted; and it was up to you to say something! And you did not! ... And now—what are you going to do? The Lenox Club has taken this thing up. A man can't stand too much of that sort of thing. What am I to do? I can't defend myself by betraying my accidental knowledge of your petty, private affairs. So I leave it to you. I ask you what are you going to do?"

"Do you mean"—Quarrier's voice was not his own, and he brought it harshly under command—"do you mean that you think it necessary for me to say I knew her? What object would be attained by that? I did not take her to the Patroons'."

"Nor did I. Ask her how she got there. Learn the truth from her, man!"

"What proof is there that I ever met her before I took her into supper at Fleetwood's?"

"Proof! Are you mad? All I ask of you is to say to the governors what I cannot say without using your name."

"You wish me," asked Quarrier icily, "to deny that you made that wager? I can do that."

"You can't do it! I did make that bet."

"Oh! Then, what is it you wish me to say?"

"Tell them the truth. Tell them you know I did not take her to the club. You need not tell them why you know it. You need not tell them how much you know about her, whose brougham she drove home in. I can't defend myself at your expense—intrench myself behind your dirty little romance. What could I say? I denied taking her to the club. Then Major Belwether confronted me with my wager. Then I shut up. And so did you, Quarrier—so did you, seated there among the governors, between Leroy Mortimer and Belwether. It was up to you, and you did not stir!"

"Stir!" echoed the other man, exasperated. "Of course I did not stir. What did I know about it? Do you think I care to give a man like Mortimer a hold on me by admitting I knew anything?—or Belwether—do you think I care to have that man know anything about my private and personal business? Did you expect me to say that I was in a position to prove anything one way or another? And," he added with increasing harshness, "how do you know what I might or might not prove? If she went to the Patroons Club, I did not go with her; I did not see her; I don't know whether or not you took her."

"I have already told you that I did not take her," said Siward, turning whiter.

"You told that to the governors, too. Tell them again, if you like. I decline to discuss this matter with you. I decline to countenance your unwarranted intrusion into what you pretend to believe are my private affairs. I decline to confer with Belwether or Mortimer. It's enough that you are inclined to meddle—" His cold anger was stirring. He rose to his full, muscular height, slow, menacing, his long, pale fingers twisting his silky beard. "It's enough that you meddle!" he repeated. "As for the matter in question, a dozen men, including myself, heard you make a wager; and later I myself was a witness that the terms of that wager had been carried out to the letter. I know absolutely nothing except that, Mr. Siward; nor, it appears, do you, for you were drunk at the time, and you have admitted it to me."

"I have asked you," said Siward, rising, and very grave, "I have asked you to do the right thing. Are you going to do it?"

"Is that a threat?" inquired Quarrier, showing the edges of his well-kept teeth. "Is this intimidation, Mr. Siward? Do I understand that you are proposing to bespatter others with scandal unless I am frightened into going to the governors with the flimsy excuse you attempt to offer me? In other words, Mr. Siward, are you bent on making me pay for what you believe you know of my private life? Is it really intimidation?"

And still Siward stared into his half-veiled, sneering eyes, speechless.

"There is only one name used for this kind of thing," added Quarrier, taking a quick involuntary step backward to the door as the blaze of fury broke out in Siward's eyes.

"Good God! Quarrier," whispered Siward with dry lips, "what a cur you are! What a cur!"

And long after Quarrier had passed the door and disappeared in the corridor, Siward stood there, frozen motionless under the icy waves of rage that swept him.

He had never before had an enemy worth the name; he knew he had one now. He had never before hated; he now understood something of that, too. The purely physical craving to take this man and crush him into eternal quiescence had given place to a more terrible mental desire to punish. His brain surged and surged under the first flood of a mortal hatred. That the hatred was sterile made it the more intense, and, blinded by it, he stood there or paced the room minute after minute, hearing nothing but the wild clamour in his brain, seeing nothing but the smooth, expressionless face of the man whom he could not reach.

Toward midnight, seated in his chair by the window, a deathly lassitude weighing his heart, he heard the steps of people on the stairway, the click of the ascending elevator, gay voices calling good night, a ripple of laughter, the silken swish of skirts in the corridor, doors opening and closing; then silence creeping throughout the house on the receding heels of departure—a stillness that settled like a mist through hall and corridor, accented for a few moments by distant sounds, then absolute, echoless silence. And for a long while he sat there listening.

The cool wind from the ocean blew his curtains far into the room, where they bellied out, fluttering, floating, subsiding, only to rise again in the freshening breeze. He sat watching their silken convolutions, stupidly, for a while, then rose and closed his window, and raised the window on the south for purposes of air.

As he turned to adjust his transom, something white thrust under the door caught his eye, and he walked over and drew it across the sill. It was a sealed note. He opened it, reading it as he walked back to the drop-light burning beside his bed:

"Did you not mean to say good-bye? Because it is to be good-bye for a long, long time—for all our lives—as long as we live—as long as the world lasts, and longer. ... Good-bye—unless you care to say it to me."

He stood studying the note for a while; presently, lighting a match, he set fire to it and carried it blazing to the grate and flung it in, watching the blackened ashes curl up, glow, whiten, and fall in flakes to the hearth. Then he went out into the corridor, and traversed the hall to the passage which led to the bay-window. There was nobody there. The stars looked in on him, twinkling with a frosty light; beneath, the shadowy fronds of palms traced a pale pattern on the glass roof of the swimming pool. He waited a moment, turned, retraced his steps to his own door and stood listening. Then, moving swiftly, he walked the length of the corridor, and, halting at her door, knocked once.

After a moment the door swung open. He stepped forward into the room, closing the door behind him, and confronted the tall girl standing there silhouetted against the lamp behind her.

"You are insane to do this!" she whispered. "I let you in for fear you'd knock again!"

"I went to the bay-window," he said.

"You went too late. I was there an hour ago. I waited. Do you know what time it is?"

"Come to the bay-window," he said, "if you fear me here."

"Do you know it is nearly three o'clock?" she repeated. "And you leave at six.

"Shall we say good-bye here?" he asked coolly.

"Certainly. I dare not go out. And you—do you know the chances we are running? You must be perfectly mad to come to my room. Do you think anybody could have seen—heard you—"

"No. Good night." He offered his hand; she laid both of hers in it. He could scarcely distinguish her features where she stood dark against the brilliant light behind her.

"Good-bye," he whispered, kissing her hands where they lay in his.

"Good-bye." Her fingers closed convulsively, retaining his hands. "I hope—I think that—you—" Her head was drooping; she could not control her voice.

"Good-bye, Sylvia," he said again.

It was quite useless, she could not speak; and when he took her in his arms she clung to him, quivering; and he kissed the wet lashes, and the hot, trembling lips, and the smooth little hands crushed to his breast.

"We have a year yet," she gasped. "Dear, take me by force before it ends. I—I simply cannot endure this. I told you to take me—to tear me from myself. Will you do it? I will love you—truly, truly! Oh, my darling, my darling! Don't—don't give me up! Can't you do something for us? Can't you—"

"Will you come with me now?"

"How can—"

"Will you?"

A sudden sound broke out in the night—the distant pealing of the lodge-gate bell. Startled, she shrank back; somebody in the adjoining room had sprung to the floor and was opening the window.

"What is it?" she motioned with whitening lips. "Quick! oh, quick, before you are seen! Grace may come! I—I beg of you to go!"

As he stepped into the corridor he heard, below, a sound at the great door, and the stirring of the night watchman on post. At his own door he turned, listening to the movement and whispering. Ferrall, in dressing-gown and slippers, stepped into the corridor; below, the chains were rattling as the wicket swung open. There was a brief parley at the door, sounds of retreating steps on the gravel outside, sounds of approaching steps on the stairway.

"What's that? A telegram?" said Ferrall sharply. "Here, give it to me. ... Wait! It isn't for me. It's for Mr Siward!"

Siward, standing at his open door, swayed slightly. A thrill of pure fear struck him through and through. He laid one hand on the door to steady himself, and stepped forward as Ferrall came up.

"Oh! You're awake, Stephen. Here's a telegram." He extended his hand. Siward took the yellow envelope, fumbled it, tore it open.

"Good God!" whispered Ferrall; "is it bad?"

And Siward's glazed eyes stared and stared at the scrawled and inky message:

"YOUR MOTHER IS VERY ILL. COME AT ONCE."

The signature was the name of their family physician, Grisby.



CHAPTER VIII CONFIDENCES

By January the complex social mechanism of the metropolis was whirling smoothly again; the last ultra-fashionable December lingerer had returned from the country; those of the same caste outward bound for a Southern or exotic winter had departed; and the glittering machine, every part assembled, refurbished, repolished, and connected, having been given preliminary speed-tests at the horse show, and a tuning up at the opera, was now running under full velocity; and its steady, subdued whir quickened the clattering pulse of the city, keying it to a sublimely syncopated ragtime.

The commercial reaction from the chaos of the holidays had become a carnival of recovery; shop windows grew brighter and gayer than ever, bursting into gaudy winter florescence; the main arteries of the town roared prosperity; cross streets were packed; Fifth Avenue, almost impassible in the morning, choked up after three o'clock; and all the afternoon through, and late into the night, mounted police of the traffic squad, adrift in the tide of carriages, stemmed the flashing currents pouring north and south from the white marble arch to the gilded bronze battle-horse and its rider on guard at the portals of the richest quarter of the wealthiest city in the world.

So far, that winter, snow had fallen only twice, lasting but a day or two each time; street and avenue remained bone dry where the white-uniformed cleaning squads worked amid clouds of dust; and all day long the flinty asphalt echoed the rattling slap of horses' feet; all day long the big, shining motor-cars sped up town and down town, droning their distant warnings. It was an open winter in New York, and, financially, a prosperous one; and that meant a brilliant social season. Like a set piece of fireworks, with its interdependent parts taking fire in turn, function after function, spectacle after spectacle, glittered, fizzed, and was extinguished, only to give place to newer and more splendid spectacles; separate circles, sets, and groups belonging to the social solar system whizzed, revolved, rotated, with edifying effects on everybody concerned, unconcerned, and not at all concerned; and at intervals, when for a moment or two something hung fire, the twinkle of similar spectacles sputtering away in distant cities beyond the horizon was faintly reflected in the social sky above the incandescent metropolis. For the whole nation was footing it, heel and toe, to the echoes of strains borne on the winds from the social capital of the republic; and the social arbiter at Bird Centre was more of a facsimile of his New York confrere than that confrere could ever dream of even in the most realistic of nightmares.

Three phenomena particularly characterised that metropolitan winter: the reckless rage for private gambling through the mediums of bridge and roulette; the incorporation of a company known as The Inter-County Electric Company, capitalised at a figure calculated to disturb nobody, and, so far, without any avowed specific policy other than that which served to decorate a portion of its charter which otherwise might have remained ornately and comparatively blank; the third phenomenon was the retirement from active affairs of Stanley S. Quarrier, the father of Howard Quarrier, and the election of the son to the presidency of the great Algonquin Loan and Trust Company, with its network system of dependent, subsidiary, and allied corporations.

The day that the newspapers gave this interesting information to the Western world, Leroy Mortimer, on being bluntly notified that he had overdrawn his account with the Algonquin Loan and Trust, began telephoning in every direction until he located Beverly Plank at the Saddle Club—an organisation of wealthy men, and sufficiently exclusive not to compromise Plank's possible chances for something better; in fact, the Saddle Club, into which Leroy Mortimer had already managed to pilot him, was one riser and tread upward on the stair he was climbing, though it was more of a lobby for other clubs than a club in itself. To be seen there was, perhaps, rather to a man's advantage, if he did not loaf there in the evenings or use it too frequently. As Plank carefully avoided doing either, Mortimer was fortunate in finding him there; and he crawled out of his hansom, saying that the desk clerk would pay, and entered the reading-room, where Plank sat writing a letter.

Beverly Plank had grown stouter since he had returned to town from Black Fells; but the increase of weight was evenly distributed over his six feet odd, which made him only a trifle more ponderous and not abdominally fat. But Mortimer had become enormous; rolls of flesh crowded his mottled ear-lobes outward and bulged above his collar; cushions of it padded the backs of his hands and fingers; shaving left his heavy, distended face congested and unpleasantly shiny. But he was as minutely groomed as ever, and he wore that satiated air of prosperity which had always been one of his most important assets.

The social campaign inaugurated by Leila Mortimer in behalf of Beverly Plank had, so far, received no serious reverses. His box at the horse show, of course, produced merely negative results; his box at the opera might mean something some day. His name was up at the Lenox and the Patroons; he had endowed a ward in the new pavilion of St. Berold's Hospital; he had presented a fine Gainsborough—The Countess of Wythe—to the Metropolitan Museum; and it was rumoured that he had consulted several bishops concerning a new chapel for that huge bastion of the citadel of Faith looming above the metropolitan wilderness in the north.

So far, so good. If, as yet, he had not been permitted to go where he wanted to go, he at least had been instructed where not to go and what not to do; and he was as docile as he was dogged, understanding how much longer it takes to shuffle in by way of the mews and the back door than to sit on the front steps and wait politely for somebody to unchain the front door.

Meanwhile he was doggedly docile; his huge house, facing the wintry park midway between the squat palaces of the wealthy pioneers and the outer hundreds, remained magnificently empty save for certain afternoon conferences of very solemn men, fellow directors and associates in business and financial matters—save for the periodical presence of the Mortimers: a mansion immense and shadowy, haunted by relays of yawning, livened servants, half stupefied under the vast silence of the twilit splendour. He was patient, not only because he was told to be, but also because he had nothing better to do. Society stared at him as blankly as the Mountain confronted Mahomet. But the stubborn patience of the man was itself a strain on the Mountain; he was aware of that, and he waited for it to come to him. As yet, however, he could detect no symptoms of mobility in the Mountain.

"Things are moving all the same," said Mortimer, as he entered the reading room of the Saddle Club. "Quarrier and Belwether have listened a damned sight more respectfully to me since they read that column about you and the bishops and that chapel business."

Plank turned his heavy head with a disturbed glance around the room; for he always dreaded Mortimer's indiscretions of speech—was afraid of his cynical frankness in the presence of others; even shrank from the brutal bonhomie of the man when alone with him.

"Can't you be careful?" he said; "there was a man here a moment ago." He picked up his unfinished letter, folded and pocketed it, touched an electric bell, and when a servant came, "Take Mr. Mortimer's order," he said, supporting his massive head on his huge hands and resting his elbow on the writing-desk.

"I've got to cut out this morning bracer," said Mortimer, eyeing the servant with indecision; but he gave his order nevertheless, and later accepted a cigar; and when the servant had returned and again retired, he half emptied his tall glass, refilled it with mineral water, and, settling back in the padded arm-chair, said: "If I manage this thing as it ought to be managed, you'll go through by April. What do you think of that?"

Plank's phlegmatic features flushed. "I'm more obliged to you than I can say," he began, but Mortimer silenced him with a gesture: "Don't interrupt. I'm going to put you through The Patroons Club by April. That's thirty yards through the centre; d'ye see, you dunderheaded Dutchman? It's solid gain, and it's our ball. The Lenox will take longer; they're a 'holier-than-thou' bunch of nincompoops, and it always horrifies them to have any man elected, no matter who he is. They'd rather die of dry rot than elect anybody; it shocks them to think that any man could have the presumption to be presented. They require the spectacle of fasting and prayer—a view of a candidate seated in sackcloth and ashes in outer darkness. You've got to wait for the Lenox, Plank."

"I am waiting," said Plank, squaring his massive jaws.

"You've got to," growled Mortimer, emptying his glass aggressively.

Plank looked out of the window, his shrewd blue eyes closing in retrospection.

"Another thing," continued Mortimer thickly; "the Kemp Ferralls are disposed to be decent. I don't mean in asking you to meet some intellectual second-raters, but in doing it handsomely. I don't know whether it's time yet," he added, with a sidelong glance at Plank's stolid face; "I don't want to push the mourners too hard ... Well, I'll see about it ... And if it's the thing to do, and the time to do it"—he turned on Plank with his boisterous and misleading laugh and clapped him on the shoulder—"it will be done, as sure as snobs are snobs; and that's the surest thing you ever bet on. Here's to them!" and he emptied his glass and fell back into his chair, wheezing and sucking at his unlighted cigar.

"I want to say," began Plank, speaking the more slowly because he was deeply in earnest, "that all this you are doing for me is very handsome of you, Mortimer. I'd like to say—to convey to you something of how I feel about the way you and Mrs. Mortimer—"

"Oh, Leila has done it all."

"Mrs. Mortimer is very kind, and you have been so, too. I—I wish there was something—some way to—to—"

"To what?" asked Mortimer so bluntly that Plank flushed up and stammered:

"To be—to do a—to show my gratitude."

"How? You're scarcely in a position to do anything for us," said Mortimer, brutally staring him out of countenance.

"I know it," said Plank, the painful flush deepening.

Mortimer, fussing and growling over his cigar, was nevertheless stealthily intent on the game which had so long absorbed him. His wits, clogged, dulled by excesses, were now aroused to a sort of gross activity through the menace of necessity. At last Plank had given him an opening. He recognised his chance.

"There's one thing," he said deliberately, "that I won't stand for, and that's any vulgar misconception on your part of my friendship for you. Do you follow me?"

"I don't misunderstand it," protested Plank, angry and astonished; "I don't—"

"—As though," continued Mortimer menacingly, "I were one of those needy social tipsters, one of those shabby, pandering touts who—"

"For Heaven's sake, Mortimer, don't talk like that! I had no intention—"

"—One of those contemptible, parasitic leeches," persisted Mortimer, getting redder and hoarser, "who live on men like you. Confound you, Plank, what the devil do you mean by it?"

"Mortimer, are you crazy, to talk to me like that?"

"No, I'm not, but you must be! I've a mind to drop the whole cursed business! I've every inclination to drop it! If you haven't horse-sense enough—if you haven't innate delicacy sufficient to keep you from making such a break—"

"I didn't! It wasn't a break, Mortimer. I wouldn't have hurt you—"

"You did hurt me! How can I feel the same again? I never imagined you thought I was that sort of a social mercenary. Why, so little did I dream that you looked on our friendship in that light that I was—on my word of honour!—I was just now on the point of asking you for three or four thousand, to carry me to the month's end and square my bridge balance."

"Mortimer, you must take it! You are a fool to think I meant anything by saying I wanted to show my gratitude. Look here; be decent and fair with me. I wouldn't offer you an affront—would I?—even if I were a cad. I wouldn't do it now, just when you're getting things into shape for me. I'm not a fool, anyway. This is in deadly earnest, I tell you, Mortimer, and I'm getting angry about it. You've got to show your confidence in me; you've got to take what you want from me, as you would from any friend. I resent your failure to do it now, as though you drew a line between me and your intimates. If you're really my friend, show it!"

There was a pause. A curious and unaccustomed sensation had silenced Mortimer, something almost akin to shame. It astonished him a little. He did not quite understand why, in the very moment of success over this stolid, shrewd young man and his thrifty Dutch instincts, he should feel uncomfortable. Were not his services worth something? Had he not earned at least the right to borrow from this rich man who could afford to pay for what was done for him? Why should he feel ashamed? He had not been treacherous; he really liked the fellow. Why shouldn't he take his money?

"See here, old man," said Plank, extending a huge highly coloured hand, "is all square between us now?"

"I think so," muttered Mortimer.

But Plank would not relinquish his hand.

"Then tell me how to draw that cheque! Great Heaven, Mortimer, what is friendship, anyhow, if it doesn't include little matters like this—little misunderstandings like this? I'm the man to be sensitive, not you. You have been very good to me, Mortimer. I could almost wish you in a position where the only thing I possess might square something of my debt to you."

A few minutes later, while he was filling in the cheque, a dusty youth in riding clothes and spurs came in and found a seat by one of the windows, into which he dropped, and then looked about him for a servant.

"Hello, Fleetwood!" said Mortimer, glancing over his shoulder to see whose spurs were ringing on the polished floor.

Fleetwood saluted amiably with his riding-crop; including Plank, whom he did not know, in a more formal salute.

"Will you join us?" asked Mortimer, taking the cheque which Plank offered and carelessly pocketing it without even a nod of thanks. "You know Beverly Plank, of course? What! I thought everybody knew Beverly Plank."

Mr. Fleetwood and Mr. Plank shook hands and resumed their seats.

"Ripping weather!" observed Fleetwood, replacing his hat and rebuttoning the glove which he had removed to shake hands with Plank. "Lot of jolly people out this morning. I say, Mortimer, do you want that roan hunter of mine you looked over? I mean King Dermid, because Marion Page wants him, if you don't. She was out this morning, and she spoke of it again."

Mortimer, lifting a replenished glass, shook his head, and drank thirstily in silence.

"Saw you at Westbury, I think," said Fleetwood politely to Plank, as the two lifted their glasses to one another.

"I hunted there for a day or two," replied Plank, modestly. "If it's that big Irish thoroughbred you were riding that you want to sell I'd like a look in, if Miss Page doesn't fancy him."

Fleetwood laughed, and glanced amusedly at Plank over his glass. "It isn't that horse, Mr. Plank. That's Drumceit, Stephen Siward's famous horse." He interrupted himself to exchange greetings with several men who came into the room rather noisily, their spurs resounding across the oaken floor. One of them, Tom O'Hara, joined them, slamming his crop on the desk beside Plank and spreading himself over an arm-chair, from the seat of which he forcibly removed Mortimer's feet without excuse.

"Drink? Of course I want a drink!" he replied irritably to Fleetwood—"one, three, ten, several! Billy, whose weasel-bellied pinto was that you were kicking your heels into in the park? Some of the squadron men asked me—the major. Oh, beg pardon! Didn't know you were trying to stick Mortimer with him. He might do for the troop ambulance, inside! ... What? Oh, yes; met Mr. Blank—I mean Mr. Plank—at Shotover, I think. How d'ye do? Had the pleasure of potting your tame pheasants. Rotten sport, you know. What do you do it for, Mr. Blank?"

"What did you come for, if it's rotten sport?" asked Plank so simply that it took O'Hara a moment to realise he had been snubbed.

"I didn't mean to be offensive," he drawled.

"I suppose you can't help it," said Plank very gently; "some people can't, you know." And there was another silence, broken by Mortimer, whose entire hulk was tingling with a mixture of surprise and amusement over his protege's developing ability to take care of himself. "Did you say that Stephen Siward is in Westbury, Billy?"

"No; he's in town," replied Fleetwood. "I took his horses up to hunt with. He isn't hunting, you know."

"I didn't know. Nobody ever sees him anywhere," said Mortimer. "I guess his mother's death cut him up."

Fleetwood lifted his empty glass and gently shook the ice in it. "That, and—the other business—is enough to cut any man up, isn't it?"

"You mean the action of the Lenox Club?" asked Plank seriously.

"Yes. He's resigned from this club, too, I hear. Somebody told me that he has made a clean sweep of all his clubs. That's foolish. A man may be an ass to join too many clubs but he's always a fool to resign from any of 'em. You ask the weatherwise what resigning from a club forecasts. It's the first ominous sign in a young man's career."

"What's the second sign?" asked O'Hara, with a yawn.

"Squadron talk; and you're full of it," retorted Fleetwood—"'I said to the major,' and 'The captain told the chief trumpeter'—all that sort of thing—and those Porto Rico spurs of yours, and the ewe-necked glyptosaurus you block the bridle-path with every morning. You're an awful nuisance, Tom, if anybody should ask me."

Under cover of a rapid-fire exchange of pleasantries between Fleetwood and O'Hara, Plank turned to Mortimer, hesitating:

"I rather liked Siward when I met him at Shotover," he ventured. "I'm very sorry he's down and out."

"He drinks," shrugged Mortimer, diluting his mineral water with Irish whisky. "He can't let it alone; he's like all the Siwards. I could have told you that the first time I ever saw him. We all told him to cut it out, because he was sure to do some damfool thing if he didn't. He's done it, and his clubs have cut him out. It's his own funeral. ... Well, here's to you!"

"Cut who out?" asked Fleetwood, ignoring O'Hara's parting shot concerning the decadence of the Fleetwood stables and their owner.

"Stephen Siward. I always said that he was sure, sooner or later, to land in the family ditch. He has a right to, of course; the gutter is public property."

"It's a damned sad thing," said Fleetwood slowly.

After a pause Plank said: "I think so, too. ... I don't know him very well."

"You may know him better now," said O'Hara insolently.

Plank reddened, and, after a moment: "I should be glad to, if he cares to know me."

"Mortimer doesn't care for him, but he's an awfully good fellow, all the same," said Fleetwood, turning to Plank; "he's been an ass, but who hasn't? I like him tremendously, and I feel very bad over the mess he made of it after that crazy dinner I gave in my rooms. What? You hadn't heard of it? Why man, it's the talk of the clubs."

"I suppose that is why I haven't heard," said Plank simply; "my club-life is still in the future."

"Oh!" said Fleetwood with an involuntary stare, surprised, a trifle uncomfortable, yet somehow liking Plank, and not understanding why.

"I'm not in anything, you see; I'm only up for the Patroons and the Lenox," added Plank gravely.

"I see. Certainly. Er—hope you'll make 'em; hope to see you there soon. Er—I see by the papers you've been jollying the clergy, Mr. Plank. Awfully handsome of you, all that chapel business. I say: I've a cousin—er—young architect; Beaux Arts, and all that—just over. I'd awfully like to have him given a chance at that competition; invited to try, you see. I don't suppose it could be managed, now—"

"Would you like to have me ask the bishops?" inquired Plank, naively shrewd. And the conversation became very cordial between the two, which Mortimer observed, keeping one ironical eye on Plank, while he continued a desultory discussion with O'Hara concerning a very private dinner which somebody told somebody that somebody had given to Quarrier and the Inter-County Electric people; which, if true, plainly indicated who was financing the Inter-County scheme, and why Amalgamated stock had tumbled again yesterday, and what might be looked for from the Algonquin Trust Company's president.

"Amalgamated Electric doesn't seem to like it a little bit," said O'Hara. "Ferrall, Belwether, and Siward are in it up to their necks; and if Quarrier is really the god in the machine, and if he really is doing stunts with Amalgamated Electric, and is also mixing feet with the Inter-County crowd, why, he is virtually paralleling his own road; and why, in the name of common sense, is he doing that? He'll kill it; that's what he'll do."

"He can afford to kill it," observed Mortimer, punching the electric button and making a significant gesture toward his empty glass as the servant entered; "a man like Quarrier can afford to kill anything."

"Yes; but why kill Amalgamated Electric? Why not merge? Why, it's a crazy thing to do, it's a devil of a thing to do, to parallel your own line!" insisted O'Hara. "That is dirty work. People don't do such things these days. Nobody tears up dollar bills for the pleasure of tearing."

"Nobody knows what Quarrier will do," muttered Mortimer, who had tried hard enough to find out when the first ominous rumours arose concerning Amalgamated, and the first fractional declines left the street speechless and stupefied.

O'Hara sat frowning, and fingering his glass. "As a matter of fact," he said, "a little cold logic shows us that Quarrier isn't in it at all. No sane man would ruin his own enterprise, when there is no need to. His people are openly supporting Amalgamated and hammering Inter-County; and, besides, there's Ferrall in it, and Mrs. Ferrall is Quarrier's cousin; and there's Belwether in it, and Quarrier is engaged to marry Sylvia Landis, who is Belwether's niece. It's a scrap with Harrington's crowd, and the wheels inside of wheels are like Chinese boxes. Who knows what it means? Only it's plain that Amalgamated is safe, if Quarrier wants it to be. And unless he does he's crazy."

Mortimer puffed stolidly at his cigar until the smoke got into his eyes and inflamed them. He sat for a while, wiping his puffy eyelids with his handkerchief; then, squinting sideways at Plank, and seeing him still occupied with Fleetwood, turned bluntly on O'Hara:

"See here: what do you mean by being nasty to Plank?" he growled. "I'm backing him. Do you understand?"

"It is curious," mused O'Hara coolly, "how much of a cad a fairly decent man can be when he's out of temper!"

"You mean Plank, or me?" demanded Mortimer, darkening angrily.

"No; I mean myself. I'm not that way usually. I took him for a bounder, and he's caught me with the goods on. I've been thinking that the men who bother with such questions are usually open to suspicion themselves. Watch me do the civil, now. I'm ashamed of myself."

"Wait a moment. Will you be civil enough to do something for him at the Patroons? That will mean something."

"Is he up? Yes, I will;" and, turning in his chair, he said to Plank: "Awfully sorry I acted like a bounder just now, after having accepted your hospitality at the Fells. I did mean to be offensive, and I'm sorry for that, too. Hope you'll overlook it, and be friendly."

Plank's face took on the dark-red hue of embarrassment; he looked questioningly at Mortimer, whose visage remained non-committal, then directly at O'Hara.

"I should be very glad to be friends with you," he said with an ingenuous dignity that surprised Mortimer. It was only the native simplicity of the man, veneered and polished by constant contact with Mrs. Mortimer, and now showing to advantage in the grain. And it gratified Mortimer, because he saw that it was going to make many matters much easier for himself and his protege.

The tall glasses were filled and drained again before they departed to the cold plunge and dressing-rooms above, whence presently they emerged in street garb to drive down town and lunch together at the Lenox Club, Plank as Fleetwood's guest.

Mortimer, very heavy and inert after luncheon, wedged himself into a great stuffed arm-chair by the window, where he alternately nodded over his coffee and wheezed in his breathing, and leered out at Fifth Avenue from half-closed, puffy eyes. And there he was due to sit, sodden and replete, until the fashionable equipages began to flash past. He'd probably see his wife driving with Mrs. Ferrall or with Miss Caithness, or perhaps with some doddering caryatid of the social structure; and he'd sit there, leering with gummy eyes out of the club windows, while servants in silent processional replenished his glass from time to time, until in the early night the trim little shopgirls flocked out into the highways in gossiping, fluttering coveys, trotting away across the illuminated asphalt, north and south to their thousand dingy destinations. And after they had gone he would probably arouse himself to read the evening paper, or perhaps gossip with Major Belwether and other white-haired familiars, or perhaps doze until it was time to summon a cab and go home to dress.

That afternoon, however, having O'Hara and Fleetwood to give him countenance, he managed to arouse himself long enough to make Plank known personally to several of the governors of the club and to a dozen members, then left him to his fate. Whence, presently, Fleetwood and O'Hara extracted him—fate at that moment being personified by a garrulous old gentleman, one Peter Caithness, who divided with Major Belwether the distinction of being the club bore—and together they piloted him to the billiard room, where he beat them handily for a dollar a point at everything they suggested.

"You play almost as pretty a game as Stephen Siward used to play," said O'Hara cordially. "You've something of his cue movement—something of his infernal facility and touch. Hasn't he, Fleetwood?"

"I wish Siward were back here," said Fleetwood thoughtfully, returning his cue to his own rack. "I wonder what he does with himself—where he keeps himself all the while? What the devil is there for a man to do, if he doesn't do anything? He's not going out anywhere since his mother's death; he has no clubs to go to, I understand. What does he do—go to his office and come back, and sit in that shabby old brick house all day and blink at the bum portraits of his bum and distinguished ancestors? Do you know what he does with himself?" to O'Hara.

"I don't even know where he lives," observed O'Hara, resuming his coat. "He's given up his rooms, I understand."

"What? Don't know the old Siward house?"

"Oh! does he live there now? Of course; I forgot about his mother. He had apartments last year, you remember. He gave dinners—corkers they were. I went to one—like that last one you gave."

"I wish I'd never given it," said Fleetwood gloomily. "If I hadn't, he'd be a member here still. ... What do you suppose induced him to take that little gin-drinking cat to the Patroons? Why, man, it wasn't even an undergraduate's trick! it was the act of a lunatic."

For a while they talked of Siward, and of his unfortunate story and the pity of it; and when the two men ceased,

"Do you know," said Plank mildly, "I don't believe he ever did it."

O'Hara looked up surprised, then shrugged. "Unfortunately he doesn't deny it, you see."

"I heard," said Fleetwood, lighting a cigarette, "that he did deny it; that he said, no matter what his condition was, he couldn't have done it. If he had been sober, the governors would have been bound to take his word of honour. But he couldn't give that, you see. And after they pointed out to him that he had been in no condition to know exactly what he did do, he shut up. ... And they dropped him; and he's falling yet."

"I don't believe that sort of a man ever would do that sort of thing," repeated Plank obstinately, his Delft-blue eyes partly closing, so that all the Dutch shrewdness and stubbornness in his face disturbed its highly coloured placidity. And he walked away toward the wash-room to cleanse his ponderous pink hands of chalk-dust.

"That's what's the matter with Plank," observed O'Hara to Fleetwood as Plank disappeared. "It isn't that he's a bounder; but he doesn't know things; he doesn't know enough, for instance, to wait until he's a member of a club before he criticises the judgment of its governors. Yet you can't help tolerating the fellow. I think I'll write a letter for him, or put down my name. What do you think?"

"It would be all right," said Fleetwood. "He'll need all the support he can get, with Leroy Mortimer as his sponsor. ... Wasn't Mortimer rather nasty about Siward though, in his role of the alcoholic prophet? Whew!"

"Siward never had any use for Mortimer," observed O'Hara.

"I'll bet you never heard him say so," returned Fleetwood. "You know Stephen Siward's way; he never said anything unpleasant about any man. I wish I didn't either, but I do. So do you. So do most men. ... Lord! I wish Siward were back here. He was a good deal of a man, after all, Tom."

They were unconsciously using the past tense in discussing Siward, as though he were dead, either physically or socially.

"In one way he was always a singularly decent man," mused O'Hara, walking toward the great marble vestibule and buttoning his overcoat.

"How exactly do you mean?"

"Oh, about women."

"I believe it, too. If he did take that Vyse girl into the Patroons, it was his limit with her—and, I believe his limit with any woman. He was absurdly decent that way; he was indeed. And now look at the reputation he has! Isn't it funny? isn't it, now?"

"What sort of an effect do you suppose all this business is going to have on Siward?"

"It's had one effect already," replied Fleetwood, as Plank came up, ready for the street. "Ferrall says he looks sick, and Belwether says he's going to the devil; but that's the sort of thing the major is likely to say. By the way, wasn't there something between that pretty Landis girl and Siward? Somebody—some damned gossiping somebody—talked about it somewhere, recently."

"I don't believe that, either," said Plank, in his heavy, measured, passionless voice, as they descended the steps of the white portico and looked around for a cab.

"As for me, I've got to hustle," observed O'Hara, glancing at his watch. "I'm due to shine at a function about five. Are you coming up-town either of you fellows? I'll give you a lift as far as Seventy-second Street, Plank."

"Tell you what we'll do," said Fleetwood, impulsively, turning to Plank: "We'll drive down town, you and I, and we'll look up poor old Siward! Shall we? He's probably all alone in that God-forsaken red brick family tomb! Shall we? How about it, Plank?"

O'Hara turned impatiently on his heel with a gesture of adieu, climbed into his electric hansom, and went buzzing away up the avenue.

"I'd like to, but I don't think I know Mr. Siward well enough to do that," said Plank diffidently. He hesitated, colouring up. "He might misunderstand my going with you—as a liberty—which perhaps I might not have ventured on had he been less—less unfortunate."

Again Fleetwood warmed toward the ruddy, ponderous young man beside him. "See here," he said, "you are going as a friend of mine—if you care to look at it that way."

"Thank you," said Plank; "I should be very glad to go in that way."

The Siward house was old only in the comparative Manhattan meaning of the word; for in New York nothing is really very old, except the faces of the young men.

Decades ago it had been considered a big house, and it was still so spoken of—a solid, dingy, red brick structure, cubical in proportions, surmounted by heavy chimneys, the depth of its sunken windows hinting of the thickness of wall and foundation. Window-curtains of obsolete pattern, all alike, and all drawn, masked the blank panes. Three massive wistaria-vines, the gnarled stems as thick as tree-trunks, crawled upward to the roof, dividing the facade equally, and furnishing some relief to its flatness, otherwise unbroken except by the deep reveals of window and door. Two huge and unsymmetrical catalpa trees stood sentinels before it, dividing curb from asphalt; and from the centres of the shrivelled, brown grass-plots flanking the stoop under the basement windows two aged Rose-of-Sharon trees bristled naked to the height of the white marble capitals of the flaking pillars supporting the stained portico.

An old New York house, in the New York sense. Old in another sense, too, where in a rapid land Time outstrips itself, painting, with the antiquity of centuries, the stone and mortar which were new scarce ten years since.

"Nice old family mausoleum," commented Fleetwood, descending from the hansom, followed by Plank. The latter instinctively mounted the stoop on tiptoe, treading gingerly as one who ventures into precincts unknown but long respected; and as Fleetwood pulled the old-fashioned bell, Plank stole a glance over the facade, where wisps of straw trailed from sparrows' nests, undisturbed, wedged between plinth and pillar; where, behind the lace pane-screens, shadowy edges of heavy curtains framed the obscurity; where the paint had blistered and peeled from the iron railings, and the marble pillars of the portico glimmered, scarred by frosts of winters long forgotten.

"Cheerful monument," repeated Fleetwood with a sarcastic nod. Then the door was opened by a very old man wearing the black "swallow-tail" clothes and choker of an old-time butler, spotless, quite immaculate, but cut after a fashion no young man remembers.

"Good evening," said Fleetwood, entering, followed on tiptoe by Plank.

"Good evening, sir." ... A pause; and in the unsteady voice of age: "Mr. Fleetwood, sir. ... Mr.—." A bow, and the dim eyes peering up at Plank, who stood fumbling for his card-case.

Fleetwood dropped both cards on the salver unsteadily extended. The butler ushered them into a dim room on the right.

"How is Mr. Siward?" asked Fleetwood, pausing on the threshold and dropping his voice.

The old man hesitated, looking down, then still looking away from Fleetwood: "Bravely, sir, bravely, Mr. Fleetwood."

"The Siwards were always that," said the young man gently.

"Yes, sir. ... Thank you. Mr. Stephen—Mr. Siward," he corrected, quaintly, "is indisposed, sir. It was a—a great shock to us all, sir!" He bowed and turned away, holding his salver stiffly; and they heard him muttering under his breath, "Bravely, sir, bravely. A—a great shock, sir! ... Thank you."

Fleetwood turned to Plank, who stood silent, staring through the fading light at the faded household gods of the house of Siward. The dim light touched the prisms of a crystal chandelier dulled by age, and edged the carved foliations of the marble mantel, above which loomed a tarnished mirror reflecting darkness. Fleetwood rose, drew a window-shade higher, and nodded toward several pictures; and Plank moved slowly from one to another, peering up at the dead Siwards in their crackled varnish.

"This is the real thing," observed Fleetwood cynically, "all this Fourth Avenue antique business; dingy, cumbersome, depressing. Good God! I see myself standing it. ... Look at that old grinny-bags in a pig-tail over there! To the cellar for his, if this were my house. ... We've got some, too, in several rooms, and I never go into 'em. They're like a scene in a bum play, or like one of those Washington Square rat-holes, where artists eat Welsh-rabbits with dirty fingers. Ugh!"

"I like it," said Plank, under his breath.

Fleetwood stared, then shrugged, and returned to the window to watch a brand-new French motor-car drawn up before a modern mansion across the avenue.

The butler returned presently, saying that Mr. Siward was at home and would receive them in the library above, as he was not yet able to pass up and down stairs.

"I didn't know he was as ill as that," muttered Fleetwood, as he and Plank followed the old man up the creaking stairway. But Gumble, the butler, said nothing in reply.

Siward was sitting in an arm-chair by the window, one leg extended, his left foot, stiffly cased in bandages, resting on a footstool.