"I couldn't marry a man I didn't love." She looked at him with sweet friendly eyes. "I couldn't even marry you, much as I like you."

Norman laughed—a dismal attempt at ease and raillery.

"When he told me about your marrying," she went on, "I knew how I felt about you. For I was not a bit jealous. Why haven't you ever said anything about it?"

He disregarded this. He leaned forward and with curious deliberateness took her hand. She let it lie gently in his. He put his arm round her and drew her close to him. She did not resist. He kissed her upturned face, kissed her upon the lips. She remained passive, looking at him with calm eyes.

"Kiss me," he said.

She kissed him—without hesitation and without warmth.

"Why do you look at me so?" he demanded.

"I can't understand."

"Understand what?"

"Why you should wish to kiss me when you love another woman. What would she say if she knew?"

"I'm sure I don't know. And I rather think I don't care. You are the only person on earth that interests me."

"Then why are you marrying?"

"Let's not talk about that. Let's talk about ourselves." He clasped her passionately, kissed her at first with self-restraint, then in a kind of frenzy. "How can you be so cruel!" he cried. "Are you utterly cold?"

"I do not love you," she said.

"Why not?"

"There's no reason. I—just don't. I've sometimes thought perhaps it was because you don't love me."

"Good God, Dorothy! What do you want me to say or do?"

"Nothing," replied she calmly. "You asked me why I didn't love you, and I was trying to explain. I don't want anything more than I'm getting. I am content—aren't you?"

"Content!" He laughed sardonically. "As well ask Tantalus if he is content, with the water always before his eyes and always out of reach. I want you—all you have to give. I couldn't be content with less."

"You ought not to talk to me this way," she reproved gently, "when you are engaged."

He flung her hand into her lap. "You are making a fool of me. And I don't wonder. I've invited it. Surely, never since man was created has there been such another ass as I." He drew her to her feet, seized her roughly by the shoulders. "When are you coming to your senses?" he demanded.

"What do you mean?" she inquired, in her childlike puzzled way.

He shook her, kissed her violently, held her at arm's length. "Do you think it wise to trifle with me?" he asked. "Don't your good sense tell you there's a limit even to such folly as mine?"

"What is the matter?" she asked pathetically. "What do you want? I can't give you what I haven't got to give."

"No," he cried. "But I want what you have got to give."

She shook her head slowly. "Really, I haven't, Mr. Norman."

He eyed her with cynical amused suspicion. "Why did you call me Mr. Norman just then? Usually you don't call me at all. It's been weeks since you have called me Mister. Was your doing it just then one of those subtle, adroit, timely tricks of yours?"

She was the picture of puzzled innocence. "I don't understand," she said.

"Well—perhaps you don't," said he doubtfully. "At any rate, don't call me Mr. Norman. Call me Fred."

"I can't. It isn't natural. You seem Mister to me. I always think of you as Mr. Norman."

"That's it. And it must stop!"

She smiled with innocent gayety. "Very well—Fred. . . . Fred. . . . Now that I've said it, I don't find it strange." She looked at him with an expression between appeal and mockery. "If you'd only let me get acquainted with you. But you don't. You make me feel that I've got to be careful with you—that I must be on my guard. I don't know against what—for you are certainly the very best friend that I've ever had—the only real friend."

He frowned and bit his lip—and felt uncomfortable, though he protested to himself that he was simply irritated at her slyness. Yes, it must be slyness.

"So," she went on, "there's no reason for being on guard. Still, I feel that way." She looked at him with sweet gravity. "Perhaps I shouldn't if you didn't talk about love to me and kiss me in a way I feel you've no right to."

Again he laid his hands upon her shoulders. This time he gazed angrily into her eyes. "Are you a fool? Or are you making a fool of me?" he said. "I can't decide which."

"I certainly am very foolish," was her apologetic answer. "I don't know a lot of things, like you and father. I'm only a girl."

And he had the maddening sense of being baffled again—of having got nowhere, of having demonstrated afresh to himself and to her his own weakness where she was concerned. What unbelievable weakness! Had there ever been such another case? Yes, there must have been. How little he had known of the possibilities of the relations of men and women—he who had prided himself on knowing all!

She said, "You are going to marry?"

"I suppose so," replied he sourly.

"Are you worried about the expense? Is it costing you too much, this helping father? Are you sorry you went into it?"

He was silent.

"You are sorry?" she exclaimed. "You feel that you are wasting your money?"

His generosity forbade him to keep up the pretense that might aid him in his project. "No," he said hastily. "No, indeed. This expense—it's nothing." He flushed, hung his head in shame before his own weakness, as he added, in complete surrender, "I'm very glad to be helping your father."

"I knew you would be!" she cried triumphantly. "I knew it!" And she flung her arms round his neck and kissed him.

"That's better!" he said with a foolishly delighted laugh. "I believe we are beginning to get acquainted."

"Yes, indeed. I feel quite different already."

"I hoped so. You are coming to your senses?"

"Perhaps. Only—" She laid a beautiful white pleading hand upon his shoulder and gazed earnestly into his eyes—"please don't frighten me with that talk—and those other kisses."

He looked at her uncertainly. "Come round in your own way," he said at last. "I don't want to hurry you. I suppose every bird has its own way of dropping from a perch."

"You don't like my way?" she inquired.

It was said archly but also in the way that always made him vaguely uneasy, made him feel like one facing a mystery which should be explored cautiously. "It is graceful," he admitted, with a smile since he could not venture to frown. "Graceful—but slow."

She laughed—and he could not but feel that the greater laughter in her too innocent eyes was directed at him. She talked of other things—and he let her—charmed, yet cursing his folly, his slavery, the while.



X

Many a time he had pitied a woman for letting him get away from her, when she obviously wished to hold him and failed solely because she did not understand her business. Like every other man, he no sooner began to be attracted by a woman than he began to invest her with a mystery and awe which she either could dissipate by forcing him to see the truth of her commonplaceness or could increase into a power that would enslave him by keeping him agitated and interested and ever satisfied yet ever baffled. But no woman had shown this supreme skill in the art of love—until Dorothy Hallowell. She exasperated him. She fascinated him. She kept him so restless that his professional work was all but neglected. Was it her skill? Was it her folly? Was she simply leading him on and on, guided blindly by woman's instinct to get as much as she could and to give as little as she dared? Or was she protected by a real indifference to him—the strongest, indeed the only invulnerable armor a woman can wear? Was she protecting herself? Or was it merely that he, weakened by his infatuation, was doing the protecting for her?

Beside these distracting questions, the once all-important matter of professional and worldly ambition seemed not worth troubling about. They even so vexed him that he had become profoundly indifferent as to Josephine. He saw her rarely. When they were alone he either talked neutral subjects or sat almost mute, hardly conscious of her presence. He received her efforts at the customary caressings with such stolidity that she soon ceased to annoy him. They reduced their outward show of affection to a kiss when they met, another when they separated. He was tired—always tired—worn out—half sick—harassed by business concerns. He did not trouble himself about whether his listless excuses would be accepted or not. He did not care what she thought—or might think—or might do.

Josephine was typical of the women of the comfortable class. For them the fundamentally vital matters of life—the profoundly harassing questions of food, clothing, and shelter—are arranged and settled. What is there left to occupy their minds? Little but the idle emotions they manufacture and spread foglike over their true natures to hide the barrenness, the monotony. They fool with phrases about art or love or religion or charity—for none of those things can be vivid realities to those who are swathed and stupefied in a luxury they have not to take the least thought to provide for themselves. Like all those women, Josephine fancied herself complex—fancied she was a person of variety and of depth because she repeated with a slight change of wording the things she read in clever books or heard from clever men. There seemed to Norman to be small enough originality, personality, to the ordinary man of the comfortable class; but there was some, because his necessity of struggling with and against his fellow men in the several arenas of active life compelled him to be at least a little of a person. In the women there seemed nothing at all—not even in Josephine. When he listened to her, when he thought of her, now—he was calmly critical. He judged her as a human specimen—judged much as would have old Newton Hallowell to whom the whole world was mere laboratory.

She bored him now—and he made no effort beyond bare politeness to conceal the fact from her. The situation was saved from becoming intolerable by that universal saver of intolerable situations, vanity. She had the ordinary human vanity. In addition, she had the peculiar vanity of woman, the creation of man's flatteries lavished upon the sex he alternately serves and spurns. In further addition, she had the vanity of her class—the comfortable class that feels superior to the mass of mankind in fortune, in intellect, in taste, in everything desirable. Heaped upon all these vanities was her vanity of high social rank—and atop the whole her vanity of great wealth. None but the sweetest and simplest of human beings can stand up and remain human under such a weight as this. If we are at all fair in our judgments of our fellow men, we marvel that the triumphant class—especially the women, whose point of view is never corrected by the experiences of practical life—are not more arrogant, more absurdly forgetful of the oneness and the feebleness of humanity.

Josephine was by nature one of the sweet and simple souls. And her love for Norman, after the habit of genuine love, had destroyed all the instinct of coquetry. The woman—or, the man—has to be indeed interesting, indeed an individuality, to remain interesting when sincerely in love, and so elevated above the petty but potent sex trickeries. Josephine, deeply in love, was showing herself to Norman in her undisguised natural sweet simplicity—and monotony. But, while men admire and reverence a sweet and simple feminine soul—and love her in plays and between the covers of a book and when she is talking highfaluting abstractions of morality—and wax wroth with any other man who ignores or neglects her—they do not in their own persons become infatuated with her. Passion is too much given to moods for that; it has a morbid craving for variety, for the mysterious and the baffling.

The only thing that saves the race from ruin through passion is the rarity of those by nature or by art expert in using it. Norman felt that he was paying the penalty for his persistent search for this rarity; one of the basest tricks of destiny upon man is to give him what he wants—wealth, or fame, or power, or the woman who enslaves. Norman felt that destiny had suddenly revealed its resolve to destroy him by giving him not one of the things he wanted, but all.

The marriage was not quite two weeks away. About the time that the ordinary plausible excuses for Norman's neglect, his abstraction, his seeming indifference were exhausted, Josephine's vanity came forward to explain everything to her, all to her own glory. As the elysian hour approached—so vanity assured her—the man who loved her as her complex soul and many physical and social advantages deserved was overcome with that shy terror of which she had read in the poets and the novelists. A large income, fashionable attire and surroundings, a carriage and a maid—these things gave a woman a subtle and superior intellect and soul. How? Why? No one knew. But everyone admitted, indeed saw, the truth. Further, these beings—these great ladies—according to all the accredited poets, novelists, and other final authorities upon life—always inspired the most awed and worshipful and diffident feelings in their lovers. Therefore, she—the great lady—was getting but her due. She would have liked something else—something common and human—much better. But, having always led her life as the conventions dictated, never as the common human heart yearned, she had no keen sense of dissatisfaction to rouse her to revolt and to question. Also, she was breathlessly busy with trousseau and the other arrangements for the grand wedding.

One afternoon she telephoned Norman asking him to come on his way home that evening. "I particularly wish to see you," she said. He thought her voice sounded rather queer, but he did not take sufficient interest to speculate about it. When he was with her in the small drawing room on the second floor, he noted that her eyes were regarding him strangely. He thought he understood why when she said:

"Aren't you going to kiss me, Fred?"

He put on his good-natured, slightly mocking smile. "I thought you were too busy for that sort of thing nowadays." And he bent and kissed her waiting lips. Then he lit a cigarette and seated himself on the sofa beside her—the sofa at right angles to the open fire. "Well?" he said.

She gazed into the fire for full a minute before she said in a voice of constraint, "What became of that—that girl—the Miss Hallowell——"

She broke off abruptly. There was a pause choked with those dizzy pulsations that fill moments of silence and strain. Then with a sob she flung herself against his breast and buried her face in his shoulder. "Don't answer!" she cried. "I'm ashamed of myself. I'm ashamed—ashamed!"

He put his arm about her shoulders. "But why shouldn't I answer?" said he in the kindly gentle tone we can all assume when a matter that agitates some one else is wholly indifferent to us.

"Because—it was a—a trap," she answered hysterically. "Fred—there was a man here this afternoon—a man named Tetlow. He got in only because he said he came from you."

Norman laughed quietly. "Poor Tetlow!" he said. "He used to be your head clerk—didn't he?"

"And one of my few friends."

"He's not your friend, Fred!" she cried, sitting upright and speaking with energy that quivered in her voice and flashed in her fine brown eyes. "He's your enemy—a snake in the grass—a malicious, poisonous——"

Norman's quiet, even laugh interrupted. "Oh, no," said he. "Tetlow's a good fellow. Anything he said would be what he honestly believed—anything he said about me."

"He pleaded that he was doing it for your good," she went on with scorn. "They always do—like the people that write father wicked anonymous letters. He—this man Tetlow—he said he wanted me for the sake of my love for you to save you from yourself."

Norman glanced at her with amused eyes. "Well, why don't you? But then you are doing it. You're marrying me, aren't you?"

Again she put her head upon his shoulder. "Indeed I am!" she cried. "And I'd be a poor sort if I let a sneak shake my confidence in you."

He patted her shoulder, and there was laughter in his voice as he said, "But I never professed to be trustworthy."

"Oh, I know you used to—" She laughed and kissed his cheek. "Never mind. I've heard. But while you were engaged to me—about to marry me—why, you simply couldn't!"

"Couldn't what?" inquired he.

"Do you want me to tell you what he said?"

"I think I know. But do as you like."

"Maybe I'd better tell you. I seem to want to get rid of it."

"Then do."

"It was about that girl." She sat upright and looked at him for encouragement. He nodded. She went on: "He said that if I asked you, you would not dare deny you were—were—giving her money."

"Her and her father."

She shrank, startled. Then her lips smiled bravely, and she said, "He didn't say anything about her father."

"No. That was my own correction of his story."

She looked at him with wonder and doubt. "You aren't—doing it, Fred!" she exclaimed.

He nodded. "Yes, indeed." He looked at her placidly. "Why not?"

"You are supporting her?"

"If you wish to put it that way," said he carelessly. "My money pays the bills—all the bills."

"Fred!"

"Yes? What is it? Why are you so agitated?" He studied her face, then rose, took a final pull at the cigarette, tossed it in the fire. "I must be going," he said, in a cool, even voice.

She started up in a panic. "Fred! What do you mean? Are you angry with me?"

His calm regard met hers. "I do not like—this sort of thing," he said.

"But surely you'll explain. Surely I'm entitled to an explanation."

"Why should I explain? You have evidently found an explanation that satisfies you." He drew himself up in a quiet gesture of haughtiness. "Besides, it has never been my habit to allow myself to be questioned or to explain myself."

Her eyes widened with terror. "Fred!" she gasped. "What do you mean?"

"Precisely what I say," said he, in the same cool, inevitable way. "A man came to you with a story about me. You listened. A sufficient answer to the story was that I am marrying you. That answer apparently does not content you. Very well. I shall make no other."

She gazed at him uncertainly. She felt him going—and going finally. She seized him with desperate fingers, cried: "I am content. Oh, Fred—don't frighten me this way!"

He smiled satirically. "Are you afraid of the scandal—because everything for the wedding has gone so far?"

"How can you think that!" cried she—perhaps too vigorously, a woman would have thought.

"What else is there for me to think? You certainly haven't shown any consideration for me."

"But you told me yourself that you were false to me."

"Really? When?"

She forgot her fear in a gush of rage rising from sudden realization of what she was doing—of how leniently and weakly and without pride she was dealing with this man. "Didn't you admit——"

"Pardon me," said he, and his manner might well have calmed the wildest tempest of anger. "I did not admit. I never admit. I leave that to people of the sort who explain and excuse and apologize. I simply told you I was paying the expenses of a family named Hallowell."

"But why should you do it, Fred?"

His smile was gently satirical. "I thought Tetlow told you why."

"I don't believe him!"

"Then why this excitement?"

One could understand how the opposition witnesses dreaded facing him. "I don't know just why," she stammered. "It seemed to me you were admitting—I mean, you were confirming what that man accused you of."

"And of what did he accuse me? I might say, of what do you accuse me?" When she remained silent he went on: "I am trying to be reasonable, Josephine. I am trying to keep my temper."

The look in her eyes—the fear, the timidity—was a startling revelation of character—of the cowardice with which love undermines the strongest nature. "I know I've been foolish and incoherent, Fred," she pleaded. "But—I love you! And you remember how I always was afraid of that girl."

"Just what do you wish to know?"

"Nothing, dear—nothing. I am not sillily jealous. I ought to be admiring you for your generosity—your charity."

"It's neither the one nor the other," said he with exasperating deliberateness.

She quivered. "Then what is it?" she cried. "You are driving me crazy with your evasions." Pleadingly, "You must admit they are evasions."

He buttoned his coat in tranquil preparation to depart. She instantly took alarm. "I don't mean that. It's my fault, not asking you straight out. Fred, tell me—won't you? But if you are too cross with me, then—don't tell me." She laughed nervously, hiding her submission beneath a seeming of mocking exaggeration of humility. "I'll be good. I'll behave."

A man who admired her as a figure, a man who liked her, a man who had no feeling for her beyond the general human feeling of wishing well pretty nearly everybody—in brief, any man but one who had loved her and had gotten over it would have deeply pitied and sympathized with her. Fred Norman said, his look and his tone coolly calm:

"I am backing Mr. Hallowell in a company for which he is doing chemical research work. We are hatching eggs, out of the shell, so to speak. Also we are aging and rejuvenating arthropods and the like. So far we have declared no dividends. But we have hopes."

She gave a hysterical sob of relief. "Then it's only business—not the girl at all!"

"Oh, yes, it's the girl, too," replied he. "She's an officer of the company. In fact, it was to make a place for her that I went into the enterprise originally." With an engaging air of frankness he inquired, "Anything more?"

She was gazing soberly, almost somberly, into the fire. "You'll not be offended if I ask you one question?"

"Certainly not."

"Is there anything between you and—her?"

"You mean, am I having an affair with her?"

She hung her head, but managed to make a slight nod of assent.

He laughed. "No." He laughed again. "No—not thus far, my dear." He laughed a third time, with still stronger and stranger mockery. "She congratulated me on my engagement with a sincerity that would have piqued a man who was interested in her."

"Will you forgive me?" Josephine said. "What I've just been feeling and saying and putting you through—it's beneath both of us. I suppose a woman—no woman—can help being nasty where another woman is concerned."

With his satirical good-humored smile, "I don't in the least blame you."

"And you'll not think less of me for giving way to a thing so vulgar?"

He kissed her with a carelessness that made her wince But she felt that she deserved it—and was grateful. He said: "Why don't you go over and see for yourself? No doubt Tetlow gave you the address—and no doubt you have remembered it."

She colored and hastily turned her head. "Don't punish me," she pleaded.

"Punish you? What nonsense! . . . Do you want me to take you over? The laboratory would interest you—and Miss Hallowell is lovelier than ever. She has an easier life now. Office work wears on women terribly."

Josephine looked at him with a beautiful smile of love and trust. "You wish to be sure I'm cured. Well, can't you see that I am?"

"I don't see why you should be. I've said nothing one way or the other."

She laughed gayly. "You can't tempt me. I'm really cured. I think the only reason I had the attack was because Mr. Tetlow so evidently believed he was speaking the truth."

"No doubt he did think he was. I'm sure, in the same circumstances, I'd think of anyone else just what he thinks of me."

"Then why do you do it, Fred?" urged she with ill-concealed eagerness. "It isn't fair to the girl, is it?"

"No one but you and Tetlow knows I'm doing it."

"You're mistaken there, dear. Tetlow says a great many people down town are talking about it—that they say you go almost every day to Jersey City to see her. He accuses you of having ruined her reputation. He says she is quite innocent. He blames the whole thing upon you."

Norman, standing with arms folded upon his broad chest, was gazing thoughtfully into the fire.

"You don't mind my telling you these things?" she said anxiously. "Of course, I know they are lies——"

"So everyone is talking about it," interrupted he, so absorbed that he had not heard her.

"You don't realize how conspicuous you are."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, it can't be helped."

"You can't afford to be mixed up in a scandal," she ventured, "or to injure a poor little creature—I'm afraid you'll have to—to stop it."

"Stop it." His eyes gleamed with mirth and something else. "It isn't my habit to heed gossip."

"But think of her, Fred!"

He smiled ironically. "What a generous, thoughtful dear you are!" said he.

She blushed. "I'll admit I don't like it. I'm not jealous—but I wish you weren't doing it."

"So do I!" he exclaimed, with sudden energy that astonished and disquieted her. "So do I! But since it can't be helped I shall go on."

Never had she respected him so profoundly. For the first time she had measured strength with him and had been beaten and routed. She fancied herself enormously proud; for she labored under the common delusion which mistakes for pride the silly vanity of class, or birth, or wealth, or position. She had imagined she would never lower that cherished pride of hers to any man. And she had lowered it into the dust. No wonder women had loved him, she said to herself; couldn't he do with them, even the haughtiest of them, precisely as he pleased? He had not tried to calm, much less to end her jealousy; on the contrary, he had let it flame as high as it would, had urged it higher. And she did not dare ask him, even as a loving concession to her weakness, to give up an affair upon which everybody was putting the natural worst possible construction! On the contrary, she had given him leave to go on—because she feared—yes, knew—that if she tried to interfere he would take it as evidence that they could not get on together. What a man!

* * * * *

But there was more to come that day. As he was finishing dressing for dinner his sister Ursula knocked. "May I come, Frederick?" she said.

"Sure," he cried. "I'm fixing my tie."

Ursula, in a gown that displayed the last possible—many of the homelier women said impossible—inch of her beautiful shoulders, came strolling sinuously in and seated herself on the arm of the divan. She watched him, in his evening shirt, as he with much struggling did his tie. "How young you do look, Fred!" said she. "Especially in just that much clothes. Not a day over thirty."

"I'm not exactly a nonogenarian," retorted he.

"But usually your face—in spite of its smoothness and no wrinkles—has a kind of an old young—or do I mean young old?—look. You've led such a serious life."

"Um. That's the devil of it."

"You're looking particularly young to-night."

"Same to you, Urse."

"No, I'm not bad for thirty-four. People half believe me when I say I'm twenty-nine." She glanced complacently down at her softly glistening shoulders. "I've still got my skin."

"And a mighty good one it is. Best I ever saw—except one."

She reflected a moment, then smiled. "I know it isn't Josephine's. Hers is good but not notable. Eyes and teeth are her strongholds. I suppose it's—the other lady's."

"Exactly."

"I mean the one in Jersey City."

He went on brushing his hair with not a glance at the bomb she had exploded under his very nose.

"You're a cool one," she said admiringly.

"Cool?"

"I thought you'd jump. I'm sure you never dreamed I knew."

He slid into his white waistcoat and began to button it.

"Though you might know I'd find out," she went on, "when everyone's talking."

"Everyone's always talking," said he indifferently.

"And they rattle on to beat the band when they get a chance at a man like you. Do you know what they're saying?"

"Certainly. Loosen these straps in the back of my waistcoat—the upper ones, won't you?"



As she fussed with the buckles she said: "But you don't know that they say you're going to pieces—neglecting your cases—keeping away from your office—wasting about half of your day with your lady love. They say that you have gone stark mad—that you are rushing to ruin."

"A little looser. That's better. Thanks."

"And everyone's wondering when Josephine will hear and go on the rampage. She's so proud and so stuck on herself that they're betting she'll give you the bounce."

"Well—" getting into his coat—"you'd delight in that. For you don't like her."

"Oh—so—so," replied Ursula. "She's all right, as women go. You know we women don't ever think any too well of each other. We're 'on.' Now, I'm frank to admit I'm not worth the powder to blow me up. I can't do anything worth doing. I don't know anything worth knowing—except how to dress and make a fool of an occasional man. I'm not a good house-keeper, nor a good wife—and I'd as lief go to jail for two years as have a baby. But I admit I'm n. g. Most women are as poor excuses as I am, yet they think they're grand!"

Norman, standing before his sister and smiling mysteriously, said: "My dear Urse, let me give you a great truth in a sentence. The value of anything is not its value to itself or in itself, but its value to some one else. A woman—even as incompetent a person as you——"

"Or Josephine."

"—or Josephine—may seem to some man to be pricelessly valuable. And if she happens to seem so to him, why, she is so."

"Meaning—Jersey City?"

His eyes glittered curiously. "Meaning Jersey City," he said.

A long silence. Then Ursula: "But suppose Josephine hears?"

He stood beside the doorway, waiting for her to pass out. His face expressed nothing. "Let's go down. I'm hungry. We were talking about it this afternoon."

"You and Jo!"

"Josephine and I."

"And it's all right?"

"Why not?"

"You fooled her?"

"I don't stoop to that sort of thing."

"No, indeed," she laughed. "You rise to heights of deception that would make anyone else giddy. Oh, I'd give anything to have heard."

"There's nothing to deceive about," said he.

She shook her head. "You can't put it over me, Fred. You've never before made a fool of yourself about a woman. I'd like to see her. I suppose I'd be amazed. I've observed that the women who do the most extraordinary things with men are the most ordinary sort of women."

"Not to the men," said he bitterly. "Not while they're doing it."

"Does she seem extraordinary to you still?"

He thrust his hands deep in his pockets. "What you heard is true. I'm letting everything slide—work—career—everything. I think of nothing else. Ursula, I'm mad about her—mad!"

She threw back her head, looked at him admiringly. Never had she so utterly worshiped this wonderful, powerful brother of hers. He was in love—really—madly in love—at last. So he was perfect! "How long do you think it will hold, Fred?" she said, all sympathy.

"God knows!"

"Yet—caring for her you can go on and marry another woman!"

He looked at his sister cynically. "You wouldn't have me marry her, would you?"

"Of course not," protested she hastily. Her passion for romance did not carry her to that idiocy. "You couldn't. She's a sort of working girl—isn't she?—anyhow, that class. No, you couldn't marry her. But how can you marry another woman?"

"How could I give up Josephine?—and give her up probably to Bob Culver?"

Ursula nodded understandingly. "But—what are you going to do?"

"How should I know? Perhaps break it off when I marry—if you can call it breaking off, when there's nothing to break but—me."

"You don't mean—" she cried, stopping when her tone had carried her meaning.

He laughed. "Yes—that's the kind of damn fool I've been."

"You must have let her see how crazy you were about her."

"Was anyone ever able to hide that sort of insanity?"

Ursula gazed wonderingly at him, drew a long breath. "You!" she exclaimed. "Of all men—you!"

"Let's go down."

"She must be a deep one—dangerous," said Ursula, furious against the woman who was daring to resist her matchless brother. "Fred, I'm wild to see her. Maybe I'd see something that'd help cure you."

"You keep out of it," he replied, curtly but not with ill humor.

"It can't last long."

"It'd do for me, if it did."

"The marriage will settle everything," said Ursula with confidence.

"It's got to," said he grimly.



XI

The next day or the next but one Dorothy telephoned him. He often called her up on one pretext or another, or frankly for no reason at all beyond the overwhelming desire to hear her voice. But she had never before "disturbed" him. He had again and again assured her that he would not regard himself as "disturbed," no matter what he might be doing. She would not have it so. As he was always watching for some faint sign that she was really interested in him, this call gave him a thrill of hope—a specimen of the minor absurdities of those days of extravagant folly.

"Are you coming over to-day?" she asked.

"Right away, if you wish."

"Oh, no. Any time will do."

"I'll come at once. I'm not busy."

"No. Late this afternoon. Father asked me to call up and make sure. He wants to see you."

"Oh—not you?"

"I'm a business person," retorted she. "I know better than to annoy you, as I've often said."

He knew it was foolish, tiresome; yet he could not resist the impulse to say, "Now that I've heard your voice I can't stay away. I'll come over to lunch."

Her answering voice was irritated. "Please don't. I'm cleaning house. You'd be in the way."

He shrank and quivered like a boy who has been publicly rebuked. "I'll come when you say," he replied.

"Not a minute before four o'clock."

"That's a long time—now you've made me crazy to see you."

"Don't talk nonsense. I must go back to work."

"What are you doing?" he asked, to detain her.

"Dusting and polishing. Molly did the sweeping and is cleaning windows now."

"What have you got on?"

"How silly you are!"

"No one knows that better than I. But I want to have a picture of you to look at."

"I've got on an old white skirt and an old shirt waist, both dirty, and a pair of tennis shoes that were white once but are gray now, where they aren't black. And I've got a pink chiffon rag tied round my hair."

"Pink is wonderful when you wear it."

"I look a fright. And my face is streaked—and my arms."

"Oh, you've got your sleeves rolled up. That's an important detail."

"You're making fun of me."

"No, I'm thinking of your arms. They are—ravishing."

"That's quite enough. Good-by."

And she rang off. He was used to her treating compliment and flattery from him in that fashion. He could not—or was it would not?—understand why. He had learned that she was not at all the indifferent and unaware person in the matter of her physical charms he had at first fancied her. On the contrary, she had more than her share of physical vanity—not more than was her right, in view of her charms, but more than she could carry off well. With many a secret smile he had observed that she thought herself perfect physically. This did not repel him; it never does repel a man—when and so long as he is under the enchantment of the charms the woman more or less exaggerates. But, while he had often seen women with inordinate physical vanity, so often that he had come to regarding it as an essential part of feminine character, never before had he seen one so content with her own good opinion of herself that she was indifferent to appreciation from others.

He did not go back to the office after lunch. Several important matters were coming up; if he got within reach they might conspire to make it impossible for him to be with her on time. If his partners, his clients knew! He the important man of affairs kneeling at the feet of a nobody!—and why? Chiefly because he was unable to convince her that he amounted to anything. His folly nauseated him. He sat in a corner in the dining room of the Lawyers' Club and drank one whisky and soda after another and brooded over his follies and his unhappiness, muttering monotonously from time to time: "No wonder she makes a fool of me. I invite it, I beg for it, damned idiot that I am!" By three o'clock he had drunk enough liquor to have dispatched the average man for several days. It had produced no effect upon him beyond possibly a slight aggravation of his moodiness.

It took only twenty minutes to get from New York to her house. He set out at a few minutes after three; arrived at twenty minutes to four. As experience of her ways had taught him that she was much less friendly when he disobeyed her requests, he did not dare go to the house, but, after looking at it from a corner two blocks away, made a detour that would use up some of the time he had to waste. And as he wandered he indulged in his usual alternations between self-derision and passion. He appeared at the house at five minutes to four. Patrick, who with Molly his wife looked after the domestic affairs, was at the front gate gazing down the street in the direction from which he always came. At sight of him Pat came running. Norman quickened his pace, and every part of his nervous system was in turmoil.

"Mr. Hallowell—he's—dead," gasped Pat.

"Dead?" echoed Norman.

"Three quarters of an hour ago, sir. He came from the lobatry, walked in the sitting room where Miss Dorothy was oiling the furniture and I was oiling the floor. And he sets down—and he looks at her—as cool and calm as could be—and he says, 'Dorothy, my child, I'm dying.' And she stands up straight and looks at him curious like—just curious like. And he says, 'Dorothy, good-by.' And he shivers, and I jumps up just in time to catch him from rolling to the floor. He was dead then—so the doctor says."

"Dead!" repeated Norman, looking round vaguely.

He went on to the house, Pat walking beside him and chattering on and on—a stream of words Norman did not hear. As he entered the open front door Dorothy came down the stairs. He had thought he knew how white her skin was. But he did not know until then. And from that ghostly pallor looked the eyes of grief beyond tears. He advanced toward her. But she seemed to be wrapped in an atmosphere of aloofness. He felt himself a stranger and an alien. After a brief silence she said: "I don't realize it. I've been upstairs where Pat carried him—but I don't realize it. It simply can't be."

"Do you know what he wished to say to me?" he asked.

"No. I guess he felt this coming. Probably it came quicker than he expected. Now I can see that he hasn't been well for several days. But he would never let anything about illness be said. He thought talking of those things made them worse."

"You have relatives—somebody you wish me to telegraph?"

She shook her head. "No one. Our relatives out West are second cousins or further away. They care nothing about us. No, I'm all alone."

The tears sprang to his eyes. But there were no tears in her eyes, no forlornness in her voice. She was simply stating a fact. He said: "I'll look after everything. Don't give it a moment's thought."

"No, I'll arrange," replied she. "It'll give me something to do—something to do for him. You see, it's my last chance." And she turned to ascend the stairs. "Something to do," she repeated dully. "I wish I hadn't cleaned house this morning. That would be something more to do."

This jarred on him—then brought the tears to his eyes again. How childish she was!—and how desolate! "But you'll let me stay?" he pleaded. "You'll need me. At any rate, I want to feel that you do."

"I'd rather you didn't stay," she said, in the same calm, remote way. "I'd rather be alone with him, this last time. I'll go up and sit there until they take him away. And then—in a few days I'll see what to do—I'll send for you."

"I can't leave you at such a time," he cried. "You haven't realized yet. When you do you will need some one."

"You don't understand," she interrupted. "He and I understood each other in some ways. I know he'd not want—anyone round."

At her slight hesitation before "anyone" he winced.

"I must be alone with him," she went on. "Thank you, but I want to go now."

"Not just yet," he begged. Then, seeing the shadow of annoyance on her beautiful white face, he rose and said: "I'm going. I only want to help you." He extended his hand impulsively, drew it back before she had the chance to refuse it. For he felt that she would refuse it. He said, "You know you can rely on me."

"But I don't need anybody," replied she. "Good-by."

"If I can do anything——"

"Pat will telephone." She was already halfway upstairs.

He found Pat in the front yard, and arranged with him to get news and to send messages by way of the drug store at the corner, so that she would know nothing about it. He went to a florist's in New York and sent masses of flowers. And then—there was nothing more to do. He stopped in at the club and drank and gambled until far into the morning. He fretted gloomily about all the next day, riding alone in the Park, driving with his sister, drinking and gambling at the club again and smiling cynically to himself at the covert glances his acquaintances exchanged. He was growing used to those glances. He cared not the flip of a penny for them.

On the third day came the funeral, and he went. He did not let his cabman turn in behind the one carriage that followed the hearse. At the graveyard he stood afar off, watching her in her simple new black, noting her calm. She seemed thinner, but he thought it might be simply her black dress. He could see no change in her face. As she was leaving the grave, she looked in his direction but he was uncertain whether she had seen him. Pat and Molly were in the big, gloomy looking carriage with her.

He ventured to go to the front gate an hour later. Pat came out. "It's no use to go in, Mr. Norman," he said. "She'll not see you. She's shut up in her own room."

"Hasn't she cried yet, Pat?"

"Not yet. We're waiting for it, sir. We're afraid her mind will give way. At least, Molly is. I don't think so. She's a queer young lady—as queer as she looks—though at first you'd never think it. She's always looking different. I never seen so many persons in one."

"Can't Molly make her cry?—by talking about him?"

"She's tried, sir. It wasn't no use. Why, Miss Dorothy talks about him just as if he was still here." Pat wiped the sweat from his forehead. "I've been in many a house of mourning, but never through such a strain as this. Somehow I feel as if I'd never before been round where there was anyone that'd lost somebody they really cared about. Weeping and moaning don't amount to much beside what she's doing."

Norman stayed round for an hour or more, then rushed away distracted. He drank like a madman—drank himself into a daze, and so got a few hours of a kind of sleep. He was looking haggard and wild now, and everyone avoided him, though in fact there was not the least danger of an outburst of temper. His sister—Josephine—the office—several clients telephoned for him. To all he sent the same refusal—that he was too ill to see anyone. Not until the third day after the funeral did Dorothy telephone for him.

He took an ice-cold bath, got himself together as well as he could, and reached the house in Jersey City about half past three in the afternoon. She came gliding into the room like a ghost, trailing a black negligee that made the whiteness of her skin startling. Her eyelids were heavy and dark, but unreddened. She gazed at him with calm, clear melancholy, and his heart throbbed and ached for her. She seated herself, clasped her hands loosely in her lap, and said:

"I've sent for you so that I could settle things up."

"Your father's affairs? Can't I do it better?"

"He had arranged everything. There are only the papers—his notes—and he wrote out the addresses of the men they were to be sent to. No, I mean settle things up with you."

"You mustn't bother about that," said he. "Besides, there's nothing to settle."

"I shan't pretend I'm going to try to pay you back," she went on, as if he had not spoken. "I never could do it. But you will get part at least by selling this furniture and the things at the laboratory."

"Dorothy—please," he implored. "Don't you understand you're to stay on here, just the same? What sort of man do you think I am? I did this for you, and you know it."

"But I did it for my father," replied she, "and he's gone." She was resting her melancholy gaze upon him. "I couldn't take anything from you. You didn't think I was that kind?"

He was silent.

"I cared nothing about the scandal—what people said—so long as I was doing it for him. . . . I'd have done anything for him. Sometimes I thought you were going to compel me to do things I'd have hated to do. I hope I wronged you, but I feared you meant that." She sat thinking several minutes, sighed wearily. "It's all over now. It doesn't matter. I needn't bother about it any more."

"Dorothy, let's not talk of these things now," said Norman. "There's no hurry. I want you to wait until you are calm and have thought everything over. Then I'm sure you'll see that you ought to stay on."

"How could I?" she asked wonderingly.

"Why not? Am I demanding anything of you? You know I'm not—and that I never shall."

"But there's no reason on earth why you should support me. I can work. Why shouldn't I? And if I didn't, if I stayed on here, what sort of woman would I be?"

He was unable to find an answer. He was trying not to see a look in her face—or was it in her soul, revealed through her eyes?—a look that made him think for the first time of a resemblance between her and her father.

"You see yourself I've got to go. Any money I could earn wouldn't more than pay for a room and board somewhere."

"You can let me advance you money while you—" He hesitated, had an idea which he welcomed eagerly—"while you study for the stage. Yes, that's the sensible thing. You can learn to act. Then you will be able to make a decent living."

She slowly shook her head. "I've no talent for it—and no liking. No, Mr. Norman, I must go back to work—and right away."

"But at least wait until you've looked into the stage business," he urged. "You may find that you like it and that you have talent for it."

"I can't take any more from you," she said.

"You think I am not to be trusted. I'm not going to say now how I feel toward you. But I can honestly say one thing. Now that you are all alone and unprotected, you needn't have the least fear of me."

She smiled faintly. "I see you don't believe me. Well, it doesn't matter. I've seen Mr. Tetlow and he has given me a place at twelve a week in his office."

Norman sank back in his chair. "He is in for himself now?"

"No. He's head clerk for Pitchley & Culver."

"Culver!" exclaimed Norman. "I don't want you to go into Culver's office. He's a scoundrel."

Again Dorothy smiled faintly. Norman colored. "I know he stands well—as well as I do. But I can't trust you with him. That sounds ridiculous but—it's true."

"I think I can trust myself," she said quietly. Her grave regard fixed his. "Don't you?" she asked.

His eyes lowered. "Yes," he replied. "But—why shouldn't you come back with us? I'll see that you get a much better position than Culver's giving you."

Over her face crept one of those mysterious transformations that made her so bafflingly fascinating to him. Behind that worldly-wise, satirical mask was she mocking at him? All she said was: "I couldn't work there. I've settled it with Mr. Tetlow. I go to work to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" he cried, starting up.

"And I've found a place to live. Pat and Molly; will take care of things for you here."

"Dorothy! You don't mean this? You're not going to break off?"

"I shan't see you again—except as we may meet by accident."

"Do you realize what you're saying means to me?" he cried. "Don't you know how I love you?" He advanced toward her. She stood and waited passively, looking at him. "Dorothy—my love—do you want to kill me?"

"When are you to be married?" she asked quietly.

"You are playing with me!" he cried. "You are tormenting me. What have I ever done that you should treat me this way?" He caught her unresisting hands and kissed them. "Dear—my dear—don't you care for me at all?"

"No," she said placidly. "I've always told you so."

He seized her in his arms, kissed her with a frenzy that was savage, ferocious. "You will drive me mad. You have driven me mad!" he muttered. And he added, unconscious that he was speaking his thoughts, so distracted was he: "You must love me—you must! No woman has ever resisted me. You cannot."

She drew herself away from him, stood before him like snow, like ice. "One thing I have never told you. I'll tell you now," she said deliberately. "I despise you."

He fell back a step and the chill of her coldness seemed to be freezing the blood in his veins.

"I've always despised you," she went on, and he shivered before that contemptuous word—it seemed only the more contemptuous for her calmness. "Sometimes I've despised you thoroughly—again only a little—but always that feeling."

For a moment he thought she had at last stung his pride into the semblance of haughtiness. He was able to look at her with mocking eyes and to say, "I congratulate you on your cleverness in concealing your feelings."

"It wasn't my cleverness," she said wearily. "It was your blindness. I never deceived you."

"No, you never have," he replied sincerely. "Perhaps I deserve to be despised. Again, perhaps if you knew the world—the one I live in—better, you'd think less harshly of me."

"I don't think harshly of you. How could I—after all you did for my father?"

"Dorothy, if you'll stay here and study for the stage—or anything you choose—I promise you I'll never speak of my feeling for you—or show it in any way—unless you yourself give me leave."

She smiled with childlike pathos. "You ought not to tempt me. Do you want me to keep on despising you? Can't you ever be fair with me?"

The sad, frank gentleness of the appeal swung his unhinged mind to the other extreme—from the savagery of passion to a frenzy of remorse. "Fair to you? No," he cried, "because I love you. Oh, I'm ashamed—bitterly ashamed. I'm capable of any baseness to get you. You're right. You can't trust me. In going you're saving me from myself." He hesitated, stared wildly, appalled at the words that were fighting for utterance—the words about marriage—about marrying her! He said hoarsely: "I am mad—mad! I don't know what I'm saying. Good-by—For God's sake, don't think the worst of me, Dorothy. Good-by. I will be a man again—I will!"

And he wrung her hand and, talking incoherently, he rushed from the room and from the house.



XII

He went straight home and sought his sister. She had that moment come in from tea after a matinee. She talked about the play—how badly it was acted—and about the women she had seen at tea—how badly dressed they were. "It's hard to say which is the more dreadful—the ugly, misshapen human race without clothes or in the clothes it insists on wearing. And the talk at that tea! Does no one ever say a pleasant thing about anyone? Doesn't anyone ever do a pleasant thing that can be spoken about? I read this morning Tolstoy's advice about resolving to think all day only nice thoughts and sticking to it. That sounded good to me, and I decided to try it." Ursula laughed and squirmed about in her tight-fitting dress that made an enchanting display of her figure. "What is one to do? I can't be a fraud, for one. And if I had stuck to my resolution I'd have spent the day in lying. What's the matter, Fred?" Now that her attention was attracted she observed more closely. "What have you been doing? You look—frightful!"

"I've broken with her," replied he.

"With Jo?" she cried. "Why, Fred, you can't—you can't—with the wedding only five days away!"

"Not with Jo."

Ursula breathed noisy relief. She said cheerfully: "Oh—with the other. Well, I'm glad it's over."

"Over?" said he sardonically. "Over? It's only begun."

"But you'll stick it out, Fred. You've made a fool of yourself long enough. What was the girl playing for? Marriage?"

He nodded. "I guess so." He laughed curtly. "And she almost won."

Ursula smiled with fine mockery. "Almost, but not quite. I know you men. Women do that sort of fool thing. But men—never—at least not the ambitious, snobbish New York men."

"She almost won," he repeated. "At least, I almost did it. If I had stayed a minute longer I'd have done it."

"You like to think you would," mocked Ursula. "But if you had tried to say the words your lungs would have collapsed, your vocal chords snapped and your tongue shriveled."

"I am not so damn sure I shan't do it yet," he burst out fiercely.

"But I am," said Ursula, calm, brisk, practical. "What's she going to do?"

"Going to work."

Ursula laughed joyously. "What a joke! A woman go to work when she needn't!"

"She is going to work."

"To work another man."

"She meant it."

"How easily women fool men!—even the wise men like you."

"She meant it."

"She still hopes to marry you—or she has heard of your marriage——"

Norman lifted his head. Into his face came the cynical, suspicious expression.

"And has fastened on some other man. Or perhaps she's found some good provider who's willing to marry her."

Norman sprang up, his eyes blazing, his mouth working cruelly. "By God!" he cried. "If I thought that!"

His sister was alarmed. Such a man—in such a delirium—might commit any absurdity. He flung himself down in despair. "Urse, why can't I get rid of this thing? It's ruining me. It's killing me!"

"Your good sense tells you if you had her you'd be over it—" She snapped her fingers—"like that."

"Yes—yes—I know it! But—" He groaned—"she has broken with me."

Ursula went to him and kissed him and took his head in her arms. "What a boy-boy it is!" she said tenderly. "Oh, it must be dreadful to have always had whatever one wanted and then to find something one can't have. We women are used to it—and the usual sort of man. But not your sort, Freddy—and I'm so sorry for you."

"I want her, Urse—I want her," he groaned, and he was almost sobbing. "My God, I can't get on without her."

"Now, Freddy dear, listen to me. You know she's 'way, 'way beneath you—that she isn't at all what you've got in the habit of picturing her—that it's all delusion and nonsense——"

"I want her," he repeated. "I want her."

"You'd be ashamed if you had her as a wife—wouldn't you?"

He was silent.

"She isn't a lady."

"I don't know," replied he.

"She hasn't any sense. A low sort of cunning, yes. But not brains—not enough to hold you."

"I don't know," replied he. "She's got enough for a woman. And—I want her."

"She isn't to be compared with Josephine."

"But I don't want Josephine. I want her."

"But which do you want to marry?—to bring forward as your wife?—to spend your life with?"

"I know. I'm a mad fool. But, Urse, I can't help it." He stood up suddenly. "I've used every weapon I've got. Even pride—and it skulked away. My sense of humor—and it weakened. My will—and it snapped."

"Is she so wonderful?"

"She is so—elusive. I can't understand her—I can't touch her. I can't find her. She keeps me going like a man chasing an echo."

"Like a man chasing an echo," repeated Ursula reflectively. "I understand. It is maddening. She must be clever—in her way."

"Or very simple. God knows which; I don't—and sometimes I think she doesn't, either." He made a gesture of dismissal. "Well, it's finished. I must pull myself together—or try to."

"You will," said his sister confidently. "A fortnight from now you'll be laughing at yourself."

"I am now. I have been all along. But—it does no good."

She had to go and dress. But she could not leave until she had tried to make him comfortable. He was drinking brandy and soda and staring at his feet which were stretched straight out toward the fire. "Where's your sense of humor?" she demanded. "Throw yourself on your sense of humor. It's a friend that sticks when all others fail."

"It's my only hope," he said with a grim smile. "I can see myself. No wonder she despises me."

"Despises you?" scoffed Ursula. "A woman despise you! She's crazy about you, I'll bet anything you like. Before you're through with this you'll find out I'm right. And then—you'll have no use for her."

"She despises me."

"Well—what of it? Really, Fred, it irritates me to see you absolutely unlike yourself. Why, you're as broken-spirited as a henpecked old husband."

"Just that," he admitted, rising and looking drearily about. "I don't know what the devil to do next. Everything seems to have stopped."

"Going to see Josephine this evening?"

"I suppose so," was his indifferent reply.

"You'll have to dress after dinner. There's no time now."

"Dress?" he inquired vaguely. "Why dress? Why do anything?"

She thought he would not go to Josephine but would hide in his club and drink. But she was mistaken. Toward nine o'clock he, in evening dress, with the expression of a horse in a treadmill, rang the bell of Josephine's house and passed in at the big bronze doors. The butler must have particularly admired the way he tossed aside his coat and hat. As soon as he was in the presence of his fiancee he saw that she was again in the throes of some violent agitation.

She began at once: "I've just had the most frightful scene with father," she said. "He's been hearing a lot of stuff about you down town and it set him wild."

"Do you mind if I smoke a cigar?" said he, looking at her unseeingly with haggard, cold eyes. "And may I have some whisky?"

She rang. "I hope the servants didn't hear him," she said. Then, as a step sounded outside she put on an air of gayety, as if she were still laughing at some jest he had made. In the doorway appeared her father one of those big men who win half the battle in advance on personal appearance of unconquerable might. Burroughs was noted for his generosity and for his violent temper. As a rule men of the largeness necessary to handling large affairs are free from petty vindictiveness. They are too busy for hatred. They do not forgive; they are most careful not to forget; they simply stand ready at any moment to do whatever it is to their interest to do, regardless of friendships or animosities. Burroughs was an exception in that he got his highest pleasure out of pursuing his enemies. He enjoyed this so keenly that several times—so it was said—he had sacrificed real money to satisfy a revenge. But these rumors may have wronged him. It is hardly probable that a man who would let a weakness carry him to that pitch of folly could have escaped destruction. For of all the follies revenge is the most dangerous—as well as the most fatuous.

Burroughs had a big face. Had he looked less powerful the bigness of his features, the spread of cheek and jowl, would have been grotesque. As it was, the face was impressive, especially when one recalled how many, many millions he owned and how many more he controlled. The control was better than the ownership. The millions he owned made him a coward—he was afraid he might lose them. The millions he controlled, and of course used for his own enrichment, made him brave, for if they were lost in the daring ventures in which he freely staked them, why, the loss was not his, and he could shift the blame. Usually Norman treated him with great respect, for his business gave the firm nearly half its total income, and it was his daughter and his wealth, prestige and power, that Norman was marrying. But this evening he looked at the great man with a superciliousness that was peculiarly disrespectful from so young a man to one well advanced toward old age. Norman had been feeling relaxed, languid, exhausted. The signs of battle in that powerful face nerved him, keyed him up at once. He waited with a joyful impatience while the servant was bringing cigars and whisky. The enormous quantities of liquor he had drunk in the last few days had not been without effect. Alcohol, the general stimulant, inevitably brings out in strong relief a man's dominant qualities. The dominant quality of Norman was love of combat.

"Josephine tells me you are in a blue fury," said Norman pleasantly when the door was closed and the three were alone. "No—not a blue fury. A black fury."

At the covert insolence of his tone Josephine became violently agitated. "Father," she said, with the imperiousness of an only and indulged child, "I have asked you not to interfere between Fred and me. I thought I had your promise."

"I said I'd think about it," replied her father. He had a heavy voice that now and then awoke some string of the lower octaves of the piano in the corner to a dismal groan. "I've decided to speak out."

"That's right, sir," said Norman. "Is your quarrel with me?"

Josephine attempted an easy laugh. "It's that silly story we were talking about the other day, Fred."

"I supposed so," said he. "You are not smoking, Mr. Burroughs—" He laughed amiably—"at least not a cigar."

"The doctor only allows me one, and I've had it," replied Burroughs, his eyes sparkling viciously at this flick of the whip. "What is the truth about that business, Norman?"

Norman's amused glance encountered the savage glare mockingly. "Why do you ask?" he inquired.

"Because my daughter's happiness is at stake. Because I cannot but resent a low scandal about a man who wishes to marry my daughter."

"Very proper, sir," said Norman graciously.

"My daughter," continued Burroughs with accelerating anger, "tells me you have denied the story."



Norman interrupted with an astonished look at Josephine. She colored, gazed at him imploringly. His face terrified her. When body and mind are in health and at rest the fullness of the face hides the character to a great extent. But when a human being is sick or very tired the concealing roundness goes and in the clearly marked features the true character is revealed. In Norman's face, haggard by his wearing emotions, his character stood forth—the traits of strength, of tenacity, of inevitable purpose. And Josephine saw and dreaded.

"But," Burroughs went on, "I have it on the best authority that it is true."

Norman, looking into the fascinating face of danger, was thrilled. "Then you wish to break off the engagement?" he said in the gentlest, smoothest tone.

Burroughs brought his fist down on the table—and Norman recognized the gesture of the bluffer. "I wish you to break off with that woman!" he cried. "I insist upon it—upon positive assurances from you."

"Fred!" pleaded Josephine. "Don't listen to him. Remember, I have said nothing."

He had long been looking for a justifying grievance against her. It now seemed to him that he had found it. "Why should you?" he said genially but with subtle irony, "since you are getting your father to speak for you."

There was just enough truth in this to entangle her and throw her into disorder. She had been afraid of the consequences of her father's interfering with a man so spirited as Norman, but at the same time she had longed to have some one put a check upon him. Norman's suave remark made her feel that he could see into her inmost soul—could see the anger, the jealousy, the doubt, the hatred-tinged love, the love-saturated hate seething and warring there.

Burroughs was saying: "If we had not committed ourselves so deeply, I should deal very differently with this matter."

"Why should that deter you?" said Norman—and Josephine gave a piteous gasp. "If this goes much farther, I assure you I shall not be deterred."

Burroughs, firmly planted in a big leather chair, looked at the young man in puzzled amazement. "I see you think you have us in your power," he said at last. "But you are mistaken."

"On the contrary," rejoined the young man, "I see you believe you have me in your power. And in a sense you are not mistaken."

"Father, he is right," cried Josephine agitatedly. "I shouldn't love and respect him as I do if he would submit to this hectoring."

"Hectoring!" exclaimed Burroughs. "Josephine, leave the room. I cannot discuss this matter properly before you."

"I hope you will not leave, Josephine," said Norman. "There is nothing to be said that you cannot and ought not to hear."

"I'm not an infant, father," said Josephine. "Besides, it is as Fred says. He has done nothing—improper."

"Then why does he not say so?" demanded Burroughs, seeing a chance to recede from his former too advanced position. "That's all I ask."

"But I told you all about it, father," said Josephine angrily. "They've been distorting the truth, and the truth is to his credit."

Norman avoided the glance she sent to him; it was only a glance and away, for more formidably than ever his power was enthroned in his haggard face. He stood with his back to the fire and it was plain that the muscles of his strong figure were braced to give and to receive a shock. "Mr. Burroughs," he said, "your daughter is mistaken. Perhaps it is my fault—in having helped her to mislead herself. The plain truth is, I have become infatuated with a young woman. She cares nothing about me—has repulsed me. I have been and am making a fool of myself about her. I've been hoping to cure myself. I still hope. But I am not cured."

There was absolute silence in the room. Norman stole a glance at Josephine. She was sitting erect, a greenish pallor over her ghastly face.

He said: "If she will take me, now that she knows the truth, I shall be grateful—and I shall make what effort I can to do my best."

He looked at her and she at him. And for an instant her eyes softened. There was the appeal of weak human heart to weak human heart in his gaze. Her lip quivered. A brief struggle between vanity and love—and vanity, the stronger, the strongest force in her life, dominating it since earliest babyhood and only seeming to give way to love when love came—it was vanity that won. She stiffened herself and her mouth curled with proud scorn. She laughed—a sneer of jealous rage. "Father," she said, "the lady in the case is a common typewriter in his office."

But to men—especially to practical men—differences of rank and position among women are not fundamentally impressive. Man is in the habit of taking what he wants in the way of womankind wherever he finds it, and he understands that habit in other men. He was furious with Norman, but he did not sympathize with his daughter's extreme attitude. He said to Norman sharply:

"You say you have broken with the woman?"

"She has broken with me," replied Norman.

"At any rate, everything is broken off."

"Apparently."

"Then there is no reason why the marriage should not go on." He turned to his daughter. "If you understood men, you would attach no importance to this matter. As you yourself said, the woman isn't a lady—isn't in our class. That sort of thing amounts to nothing. Norman has acted well. He has shown the highest kind of honesty—has been truthful where most men would have shifted and lied. Anyhow, things have gone too far." Not without the soundest reasons had Burroughs accepted Norman as his son-in-law; and he had no fancy for giving him up, when men of his pre-eminent fitness were so rare.

There was another profound silence. Josephine looked at Norman. Had he returned her gaze, the event might have been different; for within her there was now going on a struggle between two nearly evenly matched vanities—the vanity of her own outraged pride and the vanity of what the world would say and think, if the engagement were broken off at that time and in those circumstances. But he did not look at her. He kept his eyes fixed upon the opposite wall, and there was no sign of emotion of any kind in his stony features. Josephine rose, suppressed a sob, looked arrogant scorn from eyes shining with tears—tears of self-pity. "Send him away, father," she said. "He has tried to degrade me! I am done with him." And she rushed from the room, her father half starting from his chair to detain her.

He turned angrily on Norman. "A hell of a mess you've made!" he cried.

"A hell of a mess," replied the young man.

"Of course she'll come round. But you've got to do your part."

"It's settled," said Norman. And he threw his cigar into the fireplace. "Good night."

"Hold on!" cried Burroughs. "Before you go, you must see Josie alone and talk with her."

"It would be useless," said Norman. "You know her."

Burroughs laid his hand friendlily but heavily upon the young man's shoulder. "This outburst of nonsense might cost you two young people your happiness for life. This is no time for jealousy and false pride. Wait a moment."

"Very well," said Norman. "But it is useless." He understood Josephine now—he who had become a connoisseur of love. He knew that her vanity-founded love had vanished.

Burroughs disappeared in the direction his daughter had taken. Norman waited several minutes—long enough slowly to smoke a cigarette. Then he went into the hall and put on his coat with deliberation. No one appeared, not even a servant. He went out into the street.

In the morning papers he found the announcement of the withdrawal of the invitations—and from half a column to several columns of comment, much of it extremely unflattering to him.



XIII

When a "high life" engagement such as that of Norman and Miss Burroughs, collapses on the eve of the wedding, the gossip and the scandal, however great, are but a small part of the mess. Doubtless many a marriage—and not in high life alone, either—has been put through, although the one party or the other or both have discovered that disaster was inevitable—solely because of the appalling muddle the sensible course would precipitate. In the case of the Norman-Burroughs fiasco, there were—to note only a few big items—such difficulties as several car loads of presents from all parts of the earth to be returned, a house furnished throughout and equipped to the last scullery maid and stable boy to be disposed of, the entire Burroughs domestic economy which had been reconstructed to be put back upon its former basis.

It is not surprising that, as Ursula Fitzhugh was credibly informed, Josephine almost decided to send for Bob Culver and marry him on the day before the day appointed for her marriage to Fred. The reason given for her not doing this sounded plausible. Culver, despairing of making the match on which his ambition—and therefore his heart was set—and seeing a chance to get suddenly rich, had embarked for a career as a blackmailer of corporations. That is, he nosed about for a big corporation stealthily doing or arranging to do some unlawful but highly profitable acts; he bought a few shares of its stock, using a fake client as a blind; he then proceeded to threaten it with exposure, expensive hindrances and the like, unless it bought him off at a huge profit to himself. This business was regarded as most disreputable and—thanks to the power of the big corporations over the courts—had resulted in the sending of several of its practisers to jail or on hasty journeys to foreign climes. But Culver, almost if not quite as good a lawyer as Norman, was too clever to be caught in that way. However, while he was getting very rich rapidly, he was as yet far from rich enough to overcome the detestation of old Burroughs, and to be eligible for the daughter.

So, Josephine sailed away to Europe, with the consolation that her father was so chagrined by the fizzle that he had withdrawn his veto upon the purchase of a foreign title—that veto having been the only reason she had looked at home for a husband. Strange indeed are the ways of love—never stranger than when it comes into contact with the vanities of wealth and social position and the other things that cause a human being to feel that he or she is lifted clear of and high above the human condition. Josephine had her consolation. For Norman the only consolation was escape from a marriage which had become so irksome in anticipation that he did not dare think what it would be in the reality. Over against this consolation was set a long list of disasters. He found himself immediately shunned by all his friends. Their professed reason was that he had acted shabbily in the breaking of the engagement; for, while it was assumed that Josephine must have done the actual breaking, it was also assumed that he must have given her provocation and to spare. This virtuous indignation was in large part mere pretext, as virtuous indignation in frail mortals toward frail mortals is apt to be. The real reason for shying off from Norman was his atmosphere of impending downfall. And certainly that atmosphere had eaten away and dissipated all his former charm. He looked dull and boresome—and he was.

But the chief disaster was material. As has been said, old Burroughs, in his own person and in the enterprises he controlled, gave Norman's firm about half its income. The day Josephine sailed, Lockyer, senior partner of the firm, got an intimation that unless Norman left, Burroughs would take his law business elsewhere, and would "advise" others of their clients to follow his example. Lockyer no sooner heard than he began to bestir himself. He called into consultation the learned Benchley and the astute Sanders and the soft and sly Lockyer junior. There could be no question that Norman must be got rid of. The only point was, who should inform the lion that he had been deposed?

After several hours of anxious discussion, Lockyer, his inward perturbations hid beneath that mask of smug and statesmanlike respectability, entered the lion's den—a sick lion, sick unto death probably, but not a dead lion. "When you're ready to go uptown, Frederick," said he in his gentlest, most patriarchal manner, "let me know. I want to have a little talk with you."

Norman, heavy eyed and listless, looked at the handsome old fraud. As he looked something of the piercing quality and something of the humorous came back into his eyes. "Sit down and say it now," said he.

"I'd prefer to talk where we can be quiet."

Norman rang his bell and when an office boy appeared, said "No one is to disturb me until I ring again." Then as the boy withdrew he said to Lockyer: "Now, sir, what is it?"

Lockyer strolled to the window, looked out as if searching for something he failed to find, came back to the chair on the opposite side of the desk from Norman, seated himself. "I don't know how to begin," said he. "It is hard to say painful things to anyone I have such an affection for as I have for you."

Norman pushed a sheet of letter paper across the desk toward his partner. "Perhaps that will help you," observed he carelessly.

Lockyer put on his nose glasses with the gesture of grace and intellect that was famous. He read—a brief demand for a release from the partnership and a request for an immediate settlement. Lockyer blinked off his glasses with the gesture that was as famous and as admiringly imitated by lesser legal lights as was his gesture of be-spectacling himself. "This is most astounding, my boy," said he. "It is most—most——"

"Gratifying?" suggested Norman with a sardonic grin.

"Not in the least, Frederick. The very reverse—the exact reverse."

Norman gave a shrug that said "Why do you persist in those frauds—and with me?" But he did not speak.

"I know," pursued Lockyer, "that you would not have taken this step without conclusive reasons. And I shall not venture the impertinence of prying or of urging."

"Thanks," said Norman drily. "Now, as to the terms of settlement."

Lockyer, from observation and from gossip, had a pretty shrewd notion of the state of his young partner's mind, and drew the not unwarranted conclusion that he would be indifferent about terms—would be "easy." With the suavity of Mr. Great-and-Good-Heart he said: "My dear boy, there can't be any question of money with us. We'll do the generously fair thing—for, we're not hucksterers but gentlemen."

"That sounds terrifying," observed the young man, with a faint ironic smile. "I feel my shirt going and the cold winds whistling about my bare body. To save time, let me state the terms. You want to be rid of me. I want to go. It's a whim with me. It's a necessity for you."

Lockyer shifted uneasily at these evidences of unimpaired mentality and undaunted spirit.

"Here are my terms," proceeded Norman. "You are to pay me forty thousand a year for five years—unless I open an office or join another firm. In that case, payments are to cease from the date of my re-entering practice."

Lockyer leaned back and laughed benignantly. "My dear Norman," he said with a gently remonstrant shake of the head, "those terms are impossible. Forty thousand a year! Why that is within ten thousand of the present share of any of us but you. It is the income of nearly three quarters of a million at six per cent—of a million at four per cent!"

"Very well," said Norman, settling back in his chair. "Then I stand pat."

"Now, my dear Norman, permit me to propose terms that are fair to all——"

"When I said I stood pat I meant that I would stay on." His eyes laughed at Lockyer. "I guess we can live without Burroughs and his dependents. Maybe they will find they can't live without us." He slowly leaned forward until, with his forearms against the edge of his desk, he was concentrating a memorable gaze upon Lockyer. "Mr. Lockyer," said he, "I have been exercising my privilege as a free man to make a damn fool of myself. I shall continue to exercise it so long as I feel disposed that way. But let me tell you something. I can afford to do it. If a man's asset is money, or character or position or relatives and friends or popular favor or any other perishable article, he must take care how he trifles with it. He may find himself irretrievably ruined. But my asset happens to be none of those things. It is one that can be lost or damaged only by insanity or death. Do you follow me?"

The old man looked at him with the sincere and most flattering tribute of compelled admiration. "What a mind you've got, Frederick—and what courage!"

"You accept my terms?"

"If the others agree—and I think they will."

"They will," said Norman.

The old man was regarding him with eyes that had genuine anxiety in them. "Why do you do it, Fred?" he said.

"Because I wish to be free," replied Norman. He would never have told the full truth to that incredulous old cynic of a time-server—the truth that he was resigning at the dictation of a pride which forbade him to involve others in the ruin he, in his madness, was bent upon.

"I don't mean, why do you resign," said Lockyer. "I mean the other—the—woman."

Norman laughed harshly.

"I've seen too much of the world not to understand," continued Lockyer. "The measureless power of woman over man—especially—pardon me, my dear Norman—especially a bad woman!"

"The measureless power of a man's imagination over himself," rejoined Norman. "Did you ever see or hear of a man without imagination being upset by a woman? It's in here, Mr. Lockyer"—he rapped his forehead—"altogether in here."

"You realize that. Yet you go on—and for such a—pardon me, my boy, for saying it—for such a trifling object."

"What does 'trifling' mean, sir?" replied the young man. "What is trifling and what is important? It depends upon the point of view. What I want—that is vital. What I do not want—that is paltry. It's my nature to go for what I happen to want—to go for it with all there is in me. I will take nothing else—nothing else."

There was in his eyes the glitter called insanity—the glitter that reflects the state of mind of any strong man when possessed of one of those fixed ideas that are the idiosyncrasy of the strong. It would have been impossible for Lockyer to be possessed in that way; he had not the courage nor the concentration nor the independence of soul; like most men, even able men, he dealt only in the conventional. Not in his wildest youth could he have wrecked or injured himself for a woman; women, for him, occupied their conventional place in the scheme of things, and had no allure beyond the conventionally proper and the conventionally improper—for, be it remembered, vice has its beaten track no less than virtue and most of the vicious are as tame and unimaginative as the plodders in the high roads of propriety. Still, Lockyer had associated with strong men, men of boundless desires; thus, he could in a measure sympathize with his young associate. What a pity that these splendid powers should be perverted from the ordinary desires of strong men!

Norman rose, to end the interview. "My address is my house. They will forward—if I go away."

Lockyer gave him a hearty handclasp, made a few phrases about good wishes and the like, left him alone. The general opinion was that Norman was done for. But Lockyer could not see it. He had seen too many men fall only to rise out of lowest depths to greater heights than they had fallen from. And Norman was only thirty-seven. Perhaps this would prove to be merely a dip in a securely brilliant career and not a fall at all. In that case—with such a brain, such a genius for the lawlessness of the law, what a laughing on the other side of the mouth there might yet be among young Norman's enemies—and friends!

He spent most of the next few days—the lunch time, the late afternoon, finally the early morning hours—lurking about the Equitable Building, in which were the offices of Pytchley and Culver. As that building had entrances on four streets, the best he could do was to walk round and round, with an occasional excursion through the corridors and past the elevators. He had written her, asking to see her; he had got no answer. He ceased to wait at the elevators after he had twice narrowly escaped being seen by Tetlow. He was indifferent to Tetlow, except as meeting him might make it harder to see Dorothy. He drank hard. But drink never affected him except to make him more grimly tenacious in whatever he had deliberately and soberly resolved. Drink did not explain—neither wholly nor in any part—this conduct of his. It, and the more erratic vagaries to follow, will seem incredible conduct for a man of Norman's character and position to feeble folk with their feeble desires, their dread of criticism and ridicule, their exaggerated and adoring notions of the master men. In fact, it was the natural outcome of the man's nature—arrogant, contemptuous of his fellowmen and of their opinions, and, like all the master men, capable of such concentration upon a desire that he would adopt any means, high or low, dignified or the reverse, if only it promised to further his end. Fred Norman, at these vulgar vigils, took the measure of his own self-abasement to a hair's breadth. But he kept on, with the fever of his infatuation burning like a delirium, burning higher and deeper with each baffled day.

At noon, one day, as he swung into Broadway from Cedar street, he ran straight into Tetlow. It was raining and his umbrella caught in Tetlow's. It was a ludicrous situation, but there was no answering smile in his former friend's eyes. Tetlow glowered.

"I've heard you were hanging about," he said. "How low you have sunk!"

Norman laughed in his face. "Poor Tetlow," he said. "I never expected to see you develop into a crusader. And what a Don Quixote you look. Cheer up, old man. Don't take it so hard."

"I warn you to keep away from her," said Tetlow in subdued, tense tones, his fat face quivering with emotion. "Hasn't she shown you plainly that she'll have nothing to do with you?"

"I want only five minutes' talk with her, Tetlow," said Norman, dropping into an almost pleading tone. "And I guarantee I'll say nothing you wouldn't approve, if you heard. You are advising her badly. You are doing her an injury."

"I am protecting her from a scoundrel," retorted Tetlow.

"She'll not thank you for it, when she finds out the truth."

"You can write to her. What a shallow liar you are!"

"I cannot write what I must say," said Norman. It had never been difficult for him, however provoked, to keep his temper—outwardly. Tetlow's insults were to him no more than the barkings of a watch dog, and one not at all dangerous, but only amusing. "I must see her. If you are her friend, and not merely a jealous, disappointed lover, you'll advise her to see me."

"You shall not see her, if I can help it," cried his former friend. "And if you persist in annoying her——"

"Don't make futile threats, Tetlow," Norman interrupted. "You've done me all the mischief you can do. I see you hate me for the injuries you've done me. That's the way it always is. But I don't hate you. It was at my suggestion that the Lockyer firm is trying to get you back as a partner." Then, as Tetlow colored—"Oh, I see you're accepting their offer."

"If I had thought——"

"Nonsense. You're not a fool. How does it matter whose the hand, if only it's a helping hand? And you may be sure they'd never have made you the offer if they didn't need you badly. All the credit I claim is having the intelligence to enlighten their stupidity with the right suggestion."

In spite of himself Tetlow was falling under the spell of Norman's personality, of the old and deep admiration the lesser man had for the greater.

"Norman," he said, "how can you be such a combination of bigness and petty deviltry? You are a monster of self-indulgence. It's a God's mercy there aren't more men with your selfishness and your desires."

Norman laughed sardonically. "The difference between me and most men," said he, "isn't in selfishness or in desires, but in courage. Courage, Billy—there's what most of you lack. And even in courage I'm not alone. My sort fill most of the high places."

Tetlow looked dismal confession of a fear that Norman was right.

"Yes," pursued Norman, "in this country there are enough wolves to attend to pretty nearly all the sheep—though it's amazing how much mutton there is." With an abrupt shift from raillery, "You'll help me with her, Billy?"

"Why don't you let her alone, Fred?" pleaded Tetlow. "It isn't worthy of you—a big man like you. Let her alone, Fred!—the poor child, trying to earn her own living in an honest way."

"Let her alone? Tetlow, I shall never let her alone—as long as she and I are both alive."

The fat man, with his premature wrinkles and his solemn air of law books that look venerable though fresh from the press, took on an added pastiness. "Fred—for God's sake, can't you love her in a noble way—a way worthy of you?"

Norman gave him a penetrating glance. "Is love—such love as mine—and yours—" There Tetlow flushed guiltily—"is it ever noble?—whatever that means. No, it's human—human. But I'm not trying to harm her. I give you my word. . . . Will you help me—and her?"

Tetlow hesitated. His heavy cheeks quivered. "I don't trust you," he cried violently—the violence of a man fighting against an enemy within. "Don't ever speak to me again." And he rushed away through the rain, knocking umbrellas this way and that.

About noon two days later, as Norman was making one of his excursions past the Equitable elevators, he saw Bob Culver at the news stand. It so happened that as he recognized Culver, Culver cast in the direction of the elevators the sort of look that betrays a man waiting for a woman. Unseen by Culver, Norman stopped short. Into his face blazed the fury of suspicion, jealousy, and hate—one of the cyclones of passion that swept him from time to time and revealed to his own appalled self the full intensity of his feeling, the full power of the demon that possessed him. Culver was of those glossy, black men who are beloved of women. He was much handsomer than Norman, who, indeed, was not handsome at all, but was regarded as handsome because he had the air of great distinction. Many times these two young men had been pitted against each other in legal battles. Every time Norman had won. Twice they had contended for the favor of the same lady. Each had scored once. But as Culver's victory was merely for a very light and empty-headed lady of the stage while he had won Josephine Burroughs away from Culver, the balance was certainly not against him.

As Norman slipped back and into the cross corridor to avoid meeting Culver, Dorothy Hallowell hurried from a just descended elevator and, with a quick, frightened glance toward Culver, in profile, almost ran toward Norman. It was evident that she had only one thought—to escape being seen by her new employer. When she realized that some one was standing before her and moved to one side to pass, she looked up. "Oh!" she gasped, starting back. And then she stood there white and shaking.

"Is that beast Culver hounding you?" demanded Norman.

She recovered herself quickly. With flashing eyes, she cried: "How dare you! How dare you!"

Norman, possessed by his rage against Culver, paid no attention. "If he don't let you alone," he said, "I'll thrash him into a hospital for six months. You must leave his office at once. You'll not go back there."

"You must be crazy," replied she, calm again. "I've no complaint to make of the way I'm being treated. I never was so well off in my life. And Mr. Culver is very kind and polite."

"You know what that means," said Norman harshly.

"Everyone isn't like you," retorted she.

He was examining her from head to foot, as if to make sure that it was she with no charm missing. He noted that she was much less poorly dressed than when she worked for his firm. In those days she often looked dowdy, showed plainly the girl who has to make a hasty toilet in a small bedroom, with tiny wash-stand and looking-glass, in the early, coldest hours of a cold morning. Now she looked well taken care of physically, not so well, not anything like so well as the women uptown—the ladies with nothing to do but make toilettes; still, unusually well looked after for a working girl. At first glance after those famished and ravening days of longing for her and seeking her, she before him in rather dim reality of the obvious office-girl, seemed disappointing. It could not be that this insignificance was the cause of all his fever and turmoil. He began to hope that he was recovering, that the cloud of insane desire was clearing from his sky. But a second glance killed that hope. For, once more he saw her mystery, her beauties that revealed their perfection and splendor only to the observant.

While he looked she was regaining her balance, as the fading color in her white skin and the subsidence of the excitement in her eyes evidenced. "Let me pass, please," she said coldly—for, she was against the wall with him standing before her in such a way that she could not go until he moved aside.

"We'll lunch together," he said. "I want to talk with you. Did that well-meaning ass—Tetlow—tell you?"

"There is nothing you can say that I wish to hear," was her quiet reply.

"Your eyes—the edges of the lids are red. You have been crying?"

She lifted her glance to his and he had the sense of a veil drawing aside to reveal a desolation. "For my father," she said.

His face flushed. He looked steadily at her. "Now that he is gone, you have no one to protect you. I am——"

"I need no one," said she with a faintly contemptuous smile.

"You do need some one—and I am going to undertake it."

Her face lighted up. He thought it was because of what he had said. But she immediately undeceived him. She said in a tone of delighted relief, "Here comes Mr. Tetlow. You must excuse me."

"Dorothy—listen!" he cried. "We are going to be married at once."

The words exploded dizzily in his ears. He assumed they would have a far more powerful effect upon her. But her expression did not change. "No," she said hastily. "I must go with Mr. Tetlow." Tetlow was now at hand, his heavy face almost formidable in its dark ferocity. She said to him: "I was waiting for you. Come on"

Norman turned eagerly to his former friend. He said: "Tetlow, I have just asked Miss Hallowell to be my wife."

Tetlow stared. Then pain and despair seemed to flood and ravage his whole body.

"I told you the other day," Norman went on, "that I was ready to do the fair thing. I have just been saying to Miss Hallowell that she must have some one to protect her. You agree with me, don't you?"

Tetlow, fumbling vaguely with his watch chain, gazed straight ahead. "Yes," he said with an effort. "Yes, you are right, Norman. An office is no place for an attractive girl as young as she is."

"Has Culver been annoying her?" inquired Norman.

Tetlow started. "Ah—she's told you—has she? I rather hoped she hadn't noticed or understood."

Both men now looked at the girl. She had shrunk into herself until she was almost as dim and unimpressive, as cipher-like as when Norman first beheld her. Also she seemed at least five years less than her twenty. "Dorothy," said Norman, "you will let me take care of you—won't you?"

"No," she said—and the word carried all the quiet force she was somehow able to put into her short, direct answers.

Tetlow's pasty sallowness took on a dark red tinge. He looked at her in surprise. "You don't understand, Miss Dorothy," he said. "He wants to marry you."

"I understand perfectly," replied she, with the far-away look in her blue eyes. "But I'll not marry him. I despise him. He frightens me. He sickens me."

Norman clinched his hands and the muscles of his jaw in the effort to control himself. "Dorothy," he said, "I've not acted as I should. Tetlow will tell you that there is good excuse for me. I know you don't understand about those things—about the ways of the world——"

"I understand perfectly," she interrupted. "It's you that don't understand. I never saw anyone so conceited. Haven't I told you I don't love you, and don't want anything to do with you?"

Tetlow, lover though he was—or perhaps because he was lover, of the hopeless kind that loves generously—could not refrain from protest. The girl was flinging away a dazzling future. It wasn't fair to her to let her do it when if she appreciated she would be overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. "I believe you ought to listen to Norman, Miss Dorothy," he said pleadingly. "At any rate, think it over—don't answer right away. He is making you an honorable proposal—one that's advantageous in every way——"

Dorothy regarded him with innocent eyes, wide and wondering. "I didn't think you could talk like that, Mr. Tetlow!" she exclaimed. "You heard what I said to him—about the way I felt. How could I be his wife? He tried everything else—and, now, though he's ashamed of it, he's trying to get me by marriage. Oh, I understand. I wish I didn't. I'd not feel so low." She looked at Norman. "Can't you realize ever that I don't want any of the grand things you're so crazy about—that I want something very different—something you could never give me—or get for me?"

"Isn't there anything I can do, Dorothy, to make you forget and forgive?" he cried, like a boy, an infatuated boy. "For God's sake, Tetlow, help me! Tell her I'm not so rotten as she thinks. I'll be anything you like, my darling—anything—if only you'll take me. For I must have you. You're the only thing in the world I care for—and, without you, I've no interest in life—none—none!"

He was so impassioned that passersby began to observe them curiously. Tetlow became uneasy. But Norman and Dorothy were unconscious of what was going on around them. The energy of his passion compelled her, though the passion itself was unwelcome. "I'm sorry," she said gently. "Though you would have hurt me, if you could, I don't want to hurt you. . . . I'm sorry. I can't love you. . . . I'm sorry. Come on, Mr. Tetlow."

Norman stood aside. She and Tetlow went on out of the building. He remained in the same place, oblivious of the crowd streaming by, each man or woman with a glance at his vacant stare.



XIV

Than Fred Norman no man ever had better reason to feel securely entrenched upon the heights of success. It was no silly vaunt of optimism for him to tell Lockyer that only loss of life or loss of mind could dislodge him. And a few days after Dorothy had extinguished the last spark of hope he got ready to pull himself together and show the world that it was indulging too soon in its hypocritical headshakings over his ruin.

"I am going to open an office of my own at once," he said to his sister.

She did not wish to discourage him, but she could not altogether keep her thoughts from her face. She had, in a general way, a clear idea of the complete system of tollgates, duly equipped with strong barriers, which the mighty few have established across practically all the highroads to material success. Also, she felt in her brother's manner and tone a certain profound discouragement, a lack of the unconquerable spirit which had carried him so far so speedily. It is not a baseless notion that the man who has never been beaten is often destroyed by his first reverse. Ursula feared the spell of success had been broken for him.

"You mean," she suggested, with apparent carelessness, "that you will give up your forty thousand a year?"

He made a disdainful gesture. "I can make more than that," said he. "It's a second rate lawyer who can't in this day."