"Live here, you mean?"

"Yes, or somewhere like it."

Mrs. Farron looked down, and smoothed the delicate dark fur of her muff. She hardly knew how to begin at the very beginning like this. She did not want to hurt any one's feelings. How could she tell this childlike, optimistic creature that to put Mathilde to living in surroundings like these would be like exposing a naked baby on a mountaintop? It wasn't love of luxury, at least not if luxury meant physical self-indulgence. She could imagine suffering privations very happily in a Venetian palace or on a tropical island. It was an esthetic, not a moral, problem; it was a question of that profound and essential thing in the life of any woman who was a woman—her charm. She wished to tell Mrs. Wayne that her son wouldn't really like it, that he would hate to see Mathilde going out in overshoes; that the background that she, Adelaide, had so expertly provided for her child was part of the very attraction that made him want to take her out of it. There was no use in saying that most poor mortals were forced to get on without this magic atmosphere. They had never been goddesses; they did not know what they were going without. But her child, who had been, as it were, born a fairy, would miss tragically the delicate beauty of her every-day life, would fade under the ugly monotony of poverty.

But how could she say this to Mrs. Wayne, in her flat-heeled shoes and simple, boyish shirt and that twelfth-century saint's profile, of which so much might have been made by a clever woman?

At last she began, still smoothing her muff:

"Mrs. Wayne, I have brought up my daughter very simply. I don't at all approve of the extravagances of these modern girls, with their own motors and their own bills. Still, she has had a certain background. We must admit that marriage with your son on his income alone would mean a decrease in her material comforts."

Mrs. Wayne laughed.

"More than you know, probably."

This was candid, and Adelaide pressed on.

"Well is it wise or kind to make such a demand on a young creature when we know marriage is difficult at the best?" she asked.

Mrs. Wayne hesitated.

"You see, I have never seen your daughter, and I don't know what her feeling for Pete may be."

"I'll answer both questions. She has a pleasant, romantic sentiment for Mr. Wayne—you know how one feels to one's first lover. She is a sweet, kind, unformed little girl, not heroic. But think of your own spirited son. Do you want this persistent, cruel responsibility for him?"

The question was an oratorical one, and Adelaide was astonished to find that Mrs. Wayne was answering it.

"Oh, yes," she said; "I want responsibility for Pete. It's exactly what he needs."

Adelaide stared at her in horror; she seemed the most unnatural mother in the world. She herself would fight to protect her daughter from the passive wear and tear of poverty; but she would have died to keep a son, if she had had one, from being driven into the active warfare of the support of a family.

In the pause that followed there was a ring at the bell, an argument with the servant, something that sounded like a scuffle, and then a young man strolled into the room. He was tall and beautifully dressed,—at least that was the first impression,—though, as a matter of fact, the clothes were of the cheapest ready-made variety. But nothing could look cheap or ill made on those splendid muscles. He wore a silk shirt, a flower in his buttonhole, a gray tie in which was a pearl as big as a pea, long patent-leather shoes with elaborate buff-colored tops; he carried a thin stick and a pair of new gloves in one hand, but the most conspicuous object in his dress was a brand-new, gray felt hat, with a rather wide brim, which he wore at an angle greater than Mr. Lanley attempted even at his jauntiest. His face was long and rather dark, and his eyes were a bright gray blue, under dark brows. He was scowling.

He strode into the middle of the room, and stood there, with his feet wide apart and his elbows slightly swaying. His hat was still on.

"Your servant said you couldn't see me," he said, with his back teeth set together, a method of enunciation that seemed to be habitual.

"Didn't want to would be truer, Marty," answered Mrs. Wayne, with a utmost good temper. "Still, as long as you're here, what do you want?"

Marty Burke didn't answer at once. He stood looking at Mrs. Wayne under his lowering brows; he had stopped swinging his elbows, and was now very slightly twitching his cane, as an evilly disposed cat will twitch the end of its tail.

Mrs. Farron watched him almost breathlessly. She was a little frightened, but the sensation was pleasurable. He was, she knew, the finest specimen of the human animal that she had ever seen.

"What do I want?" he said at length in a deep, rich voice, shot here and there with strange nasal tones, and here and there with the remains of a brogue. "Well, I want that you should stop persecuting those poor kids."

"I persecuting them? Don't be absurd, Marty," answered Mrs. Wayne.

"Persecuting them; what else?" retorted Marty, fiercely. "What else is it? They wanting to get married, and you determined to send the boy up the river."

"I don't think we'll go over that again. I have a lady here on business."

"Oh, please don't mind me," said Mrs. Farron, settling back, and wriggling her hands contentedly into her muff. She rather expected the frivolous courage of her tone to draw the ire of Burke's glance upon her, but it did not.

"Cruel is what I call it," he went on. "She wants it, and he wants it, and her family wants it, and only you and the judge that you put up to opposing—"

"Her family do not want it. Her brother—"

"Her brother agrees with me. I was talking to him yesterday."

"Oh, that's why he has a black eye, is it?" said Mrs. Wayne.

"Black eyes or blue," said Marty, with a horizontal gesture of his hands, "her brother wants to see her married."

"Well, I don't," replied Mrs. Wayne, "at least not to this boy. I will never give my consent to putting a child of her age in the power of a degenerate little drunkard like that."

Mrs. Farron listened with all her ears. She did not think herself a prude, and only a moment before she had been accusing Mrs. Wayne of ignorance of the world; but never in all her life had she heard such words as were now freely exchanged between Burke and his hostess on the subject of the degree of consent that the girl in question had given to the advances of Burke's protege. She would have been as embarrassed as a girl if either of the disputants had been in the least aware of her presence. Once, she thought, Mrs. Wayne, for the sake of good manners, was on the point of turning to her and explaining the whole situation; but fortunately the exigencies of the dispute swept her on too fast. Adelaide was shocked, physically rather than morally, by the nakedness of their talk; but she did not want them to stop. She was fascinated by the spectacle of Marty Burke in action. She recognized at once that he was a dangerous man, not dangerous to female virtue, like all the other men to whom she had heard the term applied, but actually dangerous to life and property. She was not in the least afraid of him, but she knew he was a real danger. She enjoyed the knowledge. In most ways she was a woman timid in the face of physical danger, but she had never imagined being afraid of another human being. That much, perhaps, her sheltered training had done for her. "If she goes on irritating him like this he may murder us both," she thought. What she really meant was that he might murder Mrs. Wayne, but that, when he came to her and began to twist her neck, she would just say, "My dear man, don't be silly!" and he would stop.

In the meantime Burke was not so angry as he was affecting to be. Like most leaders of men, he had a strong dramatic instinct, and he had just led Mrs. Wayne to the climax of her just violence when his manner suddenly completely changed, and he said with the utmost good temper:

"And what do you think of my get-up, Mrs. Wayne? It's a new suit I have on, and a boutonniere." The change was so sudden that no one answered, and he went on, "It's clothes almost fit for a wedding that I'm wearing."

Mrs. Wayne understood him in a flash. She sprang to her feet.

"Marty Burke," she cried, "you don't mean to say you've got those two children married!"

"Not fifteen minutes ago, and I standing up with the groom." He smiled a smile of the wildest, most piercing sweetness—a smile so free and intense that it seemed impossible to connect it with anything but the consciousness of a pure heart. Mrs. Farron had never seen such a smile. "I thought I'd just drop around and give you the news," he said, and now for the first time took off his hat, displaying his crisp, black hair and round, pugnacious head. "Good morning, ladies." He bowed, and for an instant his glance rested on Mrs. Farron with an admiration too frank to be exactly offensive. He put his hat on his head, turned away, and made his exit, whistling.

He left behind him one person at least who had thoroughly enjoyed his triumph. To do her justice, however, Mrs. Farron was ashamed of her sympathy, and she said gently to Mrs. Wayne:

"You think this marriage a very bad thing."

Mrs. Wayne pushed all her hair away from her temples.

"Oh, yes," she said, "it's a bad thing for the girl; but the worst is having Marty Burke put anything over. The district is absolutely under his thumb. I do wish, Mrs. Farron, you would get your husband to put the fear of God into him."

"My husband?"

"Yes; he works for your husband. He has charge of the loading and unloading of the trucks. He's proud of his job, and it gives him power over the laborers. He wouldn't want to lose his place. If your husband would send for him and say—" Mrs. Wayne hastily outlined the things Mr. Farron might say.

"He works for Vincent," Adelaide repeated. It seemed to her an absolutely stupendous coincidence, and her imagination pictured the clash between them—the effort of Vincent to put the fear of God into this man. Would he be able to? Which one would win? Never before had she doubted the superior power of her husband; now she did. "I think it would be hard to put the fear of God into that young man," she said aloud.

"I do wish Mr. Farron would try."

"Try," thought Adelaide, "and fail?" Could she stand that? Was her whole relation to Vincent about to be put to the test? What weapons had he against Marty Burke? And if he had none, how stripped he would appear in her eyes!

"Won't you ask him, Mrs. Farron?"

Adelaide recoiled. She did not want to be the one to throw her glove among the lions.

"I don't think I understand well enough what it is you want. Why don't you ask him yourself?" She hesitated, knowing that no opportunity for this would offer unless she herself arranged it. "Why don't you come and dine with us to-night, and," she added more slowly, "bring your son?"

She had made the bait very attractive, and Mrs. Wayne did not refuse.



CHAPTER VI

As she drove home, Adelaide's whole being was stirred by the prospect of that conflict between Burke and her husband, and it was not until she saw Mathilde, pale with an hour of waiting, that she recalled the real object of her recent visit. Not, of course, that Adelaide was more interested in Marty Burke than in her daughter's future, but a titanic struggle fired her imagination more than a pitiful little romance. She felt a pang of self-reproach when she saw that Mr. Lanley had come to share the child's vigil, that he seemed to be suffering under an anxiety almost as keen as Mathilde's.

They did not have to question her; she threw out her hands, casting her muff from her as she did so.

"Oh," she said, "I'm a weak, soft-hearted creature! I've asked them both to dine tonight."

Mathilde flung herself into her mother's arms.

"O Mama, how marvelous you are!" she exclaimed.

Over her daughter's shoulder Adelaide noted her father's expression, a stiffening of the mouth and a brightening of the eyes.

"Your grandfather disapproves of me, Mathilde," she said.

"He couldn't be so unkind," returned the girl.

"After all," said Mr. Lanley, trying to induce a slight scowl, "if we are not going to consent to an engagement—"

"But you are," said Mathilde.

"We are not," said her mother; "but there is no reason why we should not meet and talk it over like sensible creatures—talk it over here"—Adelaide looked lovingly around her own subdued room—"instead of five stories up. For really—" She stopped, running her eyebrows together at the recollection.

"But the flat is rather—rather comfortable when you get there," said Mr. Lanley, suddenly becoming embarrassed over his choice of an adjective.

Adelaide looked at him sharply.

"Dear Papa," she asked, "since when have you become an admirer of painted shelves and dirty rugs? And I don't doubt," she added very gently, "that for the same money they could have found something quite tolerable in the country."

"Perhaps they don't want to live in the country," said Mr. Lanley, rather sharply: "I'm sure there is nothing that you'd hate more, Adelaide."

She opened her dark eyes.

"But I don't have to choose between squalor here or—"

"Squalor!" said Mr. Lanley. "Don't be ridiculous!"

Mathilde broke in gently at this point:

"I think you must have liked Mrs. Wayne, Mama, to ask her to dine."

Adelaide saw an opportunity to exercise one of her important talents.

"Yes," she said. "She has a certain naive friendliness. Of course I don't advocate, after fifty, dressing like an Eton boy; I always think an elderly face above a turned-down collar—"

"Mama," broke in Mathilde, quietly, "would you mind not talking of Mrs. Wayne like that? You know, she's Pete's mother."

Adelaide was really surprised.

"Why, my love," she answered, "I haven't said half the things I might say. I rather thought I was sparing your feelings. After all, when you see her, you will admit that she does dress like an Eton boy."

"She didn't when I saw her," said Mr. Lanley.

Adelaide turned to her father.

"Papa, I leave it to you. Did I say anything that should have wounded anybody's susceptibilities?"

Mr. Lanley hesitated.

"It was the tone Mathilde did not like, I think."

Adelaide raised her shoulders and looked beautifully hurt.

"My tone?" she wailed.

"It hurt me," said Mathilde, laying her little hand on her heart.

Mr. Lanley smiled at her, and then, springing up, kissed her tenderly on the forehead. He said it was time for him to be going on.

"You'll come to dinner to-night, Papa?"

Rather hastily, Mr. Lanley said no, he couldn't; he had an engagement. But his daughter did not let him get to the door.

"What are you going to do to-night, Papa?" she asked, firmly.

"There is a governor's meeting—"

"Two in a week, Papa?"

Suddenly Mr. Lanley dropped all pretense of not coming, and said he would be there at eight.

During the rest of the day Mathilde's heart never wholly regained its normal beat. Not only was she to see Pete again, and see him under the gaze of her united family, but she was to see this mother of his, whom he loved and admired so much. She pictured her as white-haired, benignant, brooding, the essential mother, with all her own mother's grace and charm left out, yet with these qualities not ill replaced by others which Mathilde sometimes dimly apprehended were lacking in her own beautiful parent. She looked at herself in the glass. "My son's wife," was the phrase in her mind.

On her way up-stairs to dress for dinner she tried to confide her anxieties to her mother.

"Mama," she said, "if you had a son, how would you feel toward the girl he wanted to marry?"

"Oh, I should think her a cat, of course," Adelaide answered; and added an instant later, "and I should probably be able to make him think so, too."

Mathilde sighed and went on up-stairs. Here she decided on an act of some insubordination. She would wear her best dress that evening, the dress which her mother considered too old for her. She did not want Pete's mother to think he had chosen a perfect baby.

Mr. Lanley, too, was a trifle nervous during the afternoon. He tried to say to himself that it was because the future of his darling little Mathilde was about to be settled. He shook his head, indicating that to settle the future of the young was a risky business; and then in a burst of self-knowledge he suddenly admitted that what was really making him nervous was the incident of the pier. If Mrs. Wayne referred to it, and of course there was no possible reason why she should not refer to it, Adelaide would never let him hear the last of it. It would be natural for Adelaide to think it queer that he hadn't told her about it. And the reason he hadn't told was perfectly clear: it was on that infernal pier that he had formed such an adverse opinion of Mrs. Wayne. But of course he did not wish to prejudice Adelaide; he wanted to leave her free to form her own opinions, and he was glad, excessively glad, that she had formed so favorable a one as to ask the woman to dinner. There was no question about his being glad; he surprised his servant by whistling as he put on his white waistcoat, and fastened the buckle rather more snugly than usual. Self-knowledge for the moment was not on hand.

He arrived at exactly the hour at which he always arrived, five minutes after eight, a moment not too early to embarrass the hostess and not too late to endanger the dinner.

No one was in the drawing-room but Mathilde and Farron. Adelaide, for one who had been almost perfectly brought up, did sometimes commit the fault of allowing her guests to wait for her.

"'Lo, my dear," said Mr. Lanley, kissing Mathilde. "What's that you have on? Never saw it before. Not so becoming as the dress you were wearing the last time I was here."

Mathilde felt that it would be almost easier to die immediately, and was revived only when she heard Farron saying:

"Oh, don't you like this? I was just thinking I had never seen Mathilde looking so well, in her rather more mature and subtle vein."

It was just as she wished to appear, but she glanced at her stepfather, disturbed by her constant suspicion that he read her heart more clearly than any one else, more clearly than she liked.

"How shockingly late they are!" said Adelaide, suddenly appearing in the utmost splendor. She moved about, kissing her father and arranging the chairs. "Do you know, Vin, why it is that Pringle likes to make the room look as if it were arranged for a funeral? Why do you suppose they don't come?"

"Any one who arrives after Adelaide is apt to be in wrong," observed her husband.

"Well, I think it's awfully incompetent always to be waiting for other people," she returned, just laying her hand an instant on his shoulder to indicate that he alone was privileged to make fun of her.

"That perhaps is what the Waynes think," he answered.

Mathilde's heart sank a little at this. She knew her mother did not like to be kept waiting for dinner.

"When I was a young man—" began Mr. Lanley.

"It was the custom," interrupted Adelaide in exactly the same tone, "for a hostess to be in her drawing-room at least five minutes before the hour set for the arrival of the guests."

"Adelaide," her father pleaded, "I don't talk like that; at least not often."

"You would, though, if you didn't have me to correct you," she retorted. "There's the bell at last; but it always takes people like that forever to get their wraps off."

"It's only ten minutes past eight," said Farron, and Mathilde blessed him with a look.

Mrs. Wayne came quickly into the room, so fast that her dress floated behind her; she was in black and very grand. No one would have supposed that she had murmured to Pete just before the drawing-room door was opened, "I hope they haven't run in any old relations on us."

"I'm afraid I'm late," she began.

"She always is," Pete murmured to Mathilde as he took her hand and quite openly squeezed it, and then, before Adelaide had time for the rather casual introduction she had planned, he himself put the hand he was holding into his mother's. "This is my girl, Mother," he said. They smiled at each other. Mathilde tried to say something. Mrs. Wayne stooped and kissed her. Mr. Lanley was obviously affected. Adelaide wasn't going to have any scene like that.

"Late?" she said, as if not an instant had passed since Mrs. Wayne's entrance. "Oh, no, you're not late; exactly on time, I think. I'm only just down myself. Isn't that true, Vincent?"

Vincent was studying Mrs. Wayne, and withdrew his eyes slowly. But Adelaide's object was accomplished: no public betrothal had taken place.

Pringle announced dinner. Mr. Lanley, rather to his own surprise, found that he was insisting on giving Mrs. Wayne his arm; he was not so angry at her as he had supposed. He did not think her offensive or unfeminine or half baked or socialistic or any of the things he had been saying to himself at lengthening intervals for the last twenty-four hours.

Pete saw an opportunity, and tucked Mathilde's hand within his own arm, nipping it closely to his heart.

The very instant they were at table Adelaide looked down the alley between the candles, for the low, golden dish of hot-house fruit did not obstruct her view of Vincent, and said:

"Why have you never told me about Marty Burke?"

"Who's he?" asked Mr. Lanley, quickly, for he had been trying to start a little conversational hare of his own, just to keep the conversation away from the water-front.

"He's a splendid young super-tough in my employ," said Vincent. "What do you know about him, Adelaide?"

The guarded surprise in his tone stimulated her.

"Oh, I know all about him—as much, that is, as one ever can of a stupendous natural phenomenon."

"Where did you hear of him?"

"Hear of him? I've seen him. I saw him this morning at Mrs. Wayne's. He just dropped in while I was there and, metaphorically speaking, dragged us about by the hair of our heads."

"Some women, I believe, confess to enjoying that sensation," Vincent observed.

"Yes, it's exciting," answered his wife.

"It's an easy excitement to attain."

"Oh, one wants it done in good style."

Something so stimulating that it was almost hostile flashed through the interchange.

Mathilde murmured to Pete:

"Who are they talking about?"

"A mixture of Alcibiades and Bill Sykes," said Adelaide, catching the low tone, as she always did.

"He's the district leader and a very bad influence," said Mrs. Wayne.

"He's a champion middle-weight boxer," said Pete.

"He's the head of my stevedores," said Farron.

"O Mr. Farron," Mrs. Wayne exclaimed, "I do wish you would use your influence over him."

"My influence? It consists of paying him eighty-five dollars a month and giving him a box of cigars at Christmas."

"Don't you think you could tone him down?" pleaded Mrs. Wayne. "He does so much harm."

"But I don't want him toned down. His value to me is his being just as he is. He's a myth, a hero, a power on the water-front, and I employ him."

"You employ him, but do you control him?" asked Adelaide, languidly, and yet with a certain emphasis.

Her husband glanced at her.

"What is it you want, Adelaide?" he said.

She gave a little laugh.

"Oh, I want nothing. It's Mrs. Wayne who wants you to do something—rather difficult, too, I should imagine."

He turned gravely to their guest.

"What is it you want, Mrs. Wayne?"

Mrs. Wayne considered an instant, and as she was about to find words for her request her son spoke:

"She'll tell you after dinner."

"Pete, I wasn't going to tell the story," his mother put in protestingly. "You really do me injustice at times."

Adelaide, remembering the conversation of the morning, wondered whether he did. She felt grateful to him for wishing to spare Mathilde the hearing of such a story, and she turned to him with a caressing graciousness in which she was extremely at her ease. Mathilde, recognizing that her mother was pleased, though not being very clear why, could not resist joining in their conversation; and Mrs. Wayne was thus given an opportunity of murmuring the unfortunate Anita's story into Vincent's ear.

Adelaide, holding Pete with a flattering gaze, seeming to drink in every word he was saying, heard Mrs. Wayne finish and heard Vincent say:

"And you think you can get it annulled if only Burke doesn't interfere?"

"Yes, if he doesn't get hold of the boy and tell him that his dignity as a man is involved."

Adelaide withdrew her gaze from Pete and fixed it on Vincent. Was he going to accept that challenge? She wanted him to, and yet she thought he would be defeated, and she did not want him to be defeated. She waited almost breathless.

"Well, I'll see what I can do," he said. This was an acceptance. This from Vincent meant that the matter, as far as he was concerned, was settled.

"You two plotters!" exclaimed Adelaide. "For my part, I'm on Marty Burke's side. I hate to see wild creatures in cages."

"Dangerous to side with wild beasts," observed Vincent.

"Why?"

"They get the worst of it in the long run."

Adelaide dropped her eyes. It was exactly the right answer. For a moment she felt his complete supremacy. Then another thought shot through her mind: it was exactly the right answer if he could make it good.

In the meantime Mr. Lanley began to grow dissatisfied with the prolonged role of spectator. He preferred danger to oblivion; and turning to Mrs. Wayne, he said, with his politest smile:

"How are the bridges?"

"Oh, dear," she answered, "I must have been terribly tactless—to make you so angry."

Mr. Lanley drew himself up.

"I was not angry," he said.

She looked at him with a sort of gentle wonder.

"You gave me the impression of being."

The very temperateness of the reply made him see that he had been inaccurate.

"Of course I was angry," he said. "What I mean is that I don't understand why I was."

Meantime, on the opposite side of the table, Mathilde and Pete were equally immersed, murmuring sentences of the profoundest meaning behind faces which they felt were mask-like.

Farron looked down the table at his wife. Why, he wondered, did she want to tease him to-night, of all nights in his life?

When they came out of the dining-room Pete said to Mathilde with the utmost clearness:

"And what was that magazine you spoke of?"

She had spoken of no magazine, but she caught the idea, the clever, rather wicked idea. He made her work her mind almost too fast sometimes, but she enjoyed it.

"Wasn't it this?" she asked, with a beating heart.

They sat down on the sofa and bent their heads over it with student-like absorption.

"I haven't any idea what it is," she whispered.

"Oh, well, I suppose there's something or other in it."

"I think your mother is perfectly wonderful—wonderful."

"I love you so."

The older people took a little longer to settle down. Mr. Lanley stood on the hearth-rug, with a cigar in his mouth and his head thrown very far back. Adelaide sank into a chair, looking, as she often did, as if she had just been brilliantly well posed for a photograph. Farron was silent. Mrs. Wayne sat, as she had a bad habit of doing, on one foot. The two groups were sufficiently separated for distinct conversations.

"Is this a conference?" asked Farron.

Mrs. Wayne made it so by her reply.

"The whole question is, Are they really in love? At least, that's my view."

"In love!" Adelaide twisted her shoulders. "What can they know of it for another ten years? You must have some character, some knowledge to fall in love. And these babes—"

"No," said Mr. Lanley, stoutly; "you're all wrong, Adelaide. It's first love that matters—Romeo and Juliet, you know. Afterward we all get hardened and world-worn and cynical and material." He stopped short in his eloquence at the thought that Mrs. Wayne was quite obviously not hardened or world-worn or cynical or material. "By Jove!" he thought to himself, "that's it. The woman's spirit is as fresh as a girl's." He had by this time utterly forgotten what he had meant to say.

Adelaide turned to her husband.

"Do you think they are in love, Vin?"

Vincent looked at her for a second, and then he nodded two or three times.

Though no one at once recognized the fact, the engagement was settled at that moment.

It seemed obvious that Mr. Lanley should take the Waynes home in his car. Mrs. Wayne, who had prepared for walking with overshoes and with pins for her trailing skirt, did not seem too enthusiastic at the suggestion. She stood a moment on the step and looked at the sky, where Orion, like a banner, was hung across the easterly opening of the side street.

"It's a lovely night," she said.

It was Pete who drew her into the car. Her reluctance deprived Mr. Lanley of the delight of bestowing a benefit, but gave him a faint sense of capture.

In the drawing-room Mathilde was looking from one to the other of her natural guardians, like a well-trained puppy who wants to be fed. She wanted Pete praised. Instead, Adelaide said:

"Really, papa is growing too secretive! Do you know, Vin, he and Mrs. Wayne quarreled like mad last evening, and he never told me a word about it!"

"How do you know?"

"Oh, I heard them trying to smooth it out at dinner."

"O Mama," wailed Mathilde, between admiration and complaint, "you hear everything!"

"Certainly, I do," Adelaide returned lightly. "Yes, and I heard you, too, and understood everything that you meant."

Vincent couldn't help smiling at his stepdaughter's horrified look.

"What a brute you are, Adelaide!" he said.

"Oh, my dear, you're much worse," she retorted. "You don't have to overhear. You just read the human heart by some black magic of your own. That's really more cruel than my gross methods."

"Well, Mathilde," said Farron, "as a reader of the human heart, I want to tell you that I approve of the young man. He has a fine, delicate touch on life, which, I am inclined to think, goes only with a good deal of strength."

Mathilde blinked her eyes. Gratitude and delight had brought tears to them.

"He thinks you're wonderful, Mr. Farron," she answered a little huskily.

"Better and better," answered Vincent, and he held out his hand for a letter that Pringle was bringing to him on a tray.

"What's that?" asked Adelaide. One of the first things she had impressed on Joe Severance was that he must never inquire about her mail; but she always asked Farron about his.

He seemed to be thinking and didn't answer her.

Mathilde, now simply insatiable, pressed nearer to him and asked:

"And what do you think of Mrs. Wayne?"

He raised his eyes from the envelope, and answered with a certain absence of tone:

"I thought she was an elderly wood-nymph."

Adelaide glanced over his shoulder, and, seeing that the letter had a printed address in the corner, lost interest.

"You may shut the house, Pringle," she said.



CHAPTER VII

Pringle, the last servant up, was soon heard discreetly drawing bolts and turning out electric lights. Mathilde went straight up-stairs without even an attempt at drawing her mother into an evening gossip. She was aware of being tired after two nights rendered almost sleepless by her awareness of joy. She went to her room and shut the door. Her bed was piled high with extra covers, soft, light blankets and a down coverlet covered with pink silk. She took a certain hygienic pride in the extent to which she always opened her bedroom windows even when, as at present, the night was bitterly cold. In the morning she ran, huddling on her dressing-gown, into a heated bathroom, and when she emerged from this, the maid had always lighted her fire, and laid her breakfast-tray close to the blaze. To-night, when she went to open her window, she noticed that the houses opposite had lost courage and showed only cracks. She stood a second looking up at the stars, twinkling with tiny blue rays through the clear air. By turning her head to the west she could look down on the park, with its surface of bare, blurred tree-branches pierced by rows of lights. The familiar sight suddenly seemed to her almost intolerably beautiful. "Oh, I love him so much!" she said to herself, and her lips actually whispered the words, "so much! so much!"

She threw the window high as a reproof of those shivers across the way, and, jumping into bed, hastily sandwiched her small body between the warm bedclothes. She was almost instantly asleep.

Overhead the faint, but heavy, footfall of Pringle ceased. The house was silent; the city had become so. An occasional Madison Avenue car could be heard ringing along the cold rails, or rhythmically bounding down hill on a flat wheel. Once some distance away came the long, continuous complaint of the siren of a fire-engine and the bells and gongs of its comrades; and then a young man went past, whistling with the purest accuracy of time and tune the air to which he had just been dancing.

At half-past five the kitchen-maid, a young Swede who feared not God, neither regarded man, but lived in absolute subjection to the cook, to whom, unknown to any one else, she every morning carried up breakfast, was stealing down with a candle in her hand. Her senses were alert, for a friend of hers had been strangled by burglars in similar circumstances, and she had never overcome her own terror of the cold, dark house in these early hours of a winter morning.

She went down not the back stairs, for Mr. Pringle objected that she woke him as she passed, whereas the carpet on the front stairs was so thick that there wasn't the least chance of waking the family. As she passed Mrs. Farron's room she was surprised to see a fine crack of light coming from under it. She paused, wondering if she was going to be caught, and if she had better run back and take to the back stairs despite Pringle's well-earned rest; and as she hesitated she heard a sob, then another—wild, hysterical sobs. The girl looked startled and then went on, shaking her head. What people like that had to cry about beat her. But she was glad, because she knew such a splendid bit of news would soften the heart of the cook when she took up her breakfast.

By five o'clock it seemed to Adelaide that a whole eternity had passed and that another was ahead of her, that this night would never end.

When they went up-stairs, while she was brushing her hair—her hair rewarded brushing, for it was fine and long and took a polish like bronze—she had wandered into Vincent's room to discuss with him the question of her father's secretiveness about Mrs. Wayne. It was not, she explained, standing in front of his fire, that she suspected anything, but that it was so unfriendly: it deprived one of so much legitimate amusement if one's own family practised that kind of reserve. Her just anger kept her from observing Farron very closely. As she talked she laid her brush on the mantelpiece, and as she did so she knocked down the letter that had come for him just before they went up-stairs. She stooped, and picked it up without attention, and stood holding it; she gesticulated a little with it as she repeated, for her own amusement rather than for Vincent's, phrases she had caught at dinner.

The horror to Farron of seeing her standing there chattering, with that death-dealing letter in her hand, suddenly and illogically broke down his resolution of silence. It was cruel, and though he might have denied himself her help, he could not endure cruelty.

"Adelaide," he said in a tone that drove every other sensation away—"Adelaide, that letter. No, don't read it." He took it from her and laid it on his dressing-table. "My dear love, it has very bad news in it."

"There has been something, then?"

"Yes. I have been worried about my health for some time. This letter tells me the worst is true. Well, my dear, we did not enter matrimony with the idea that either of us was immortal."

But that was his last effort to be superior to the crisis, to pretend that the bitterness of death was any less to him than to any other human creature, to conceal that he needed help, all the help that he could get.

And Adelaide gave him help. Artificial as she often was in daily contact, in a moment like this she was splendidly, almost primitively real. She did not conceal her own passionate despair, her conviction that her life couldn't go on without his; she did not curb her desire to know every detail on which his opinion and his doctor's had been founded; she clung to him and wept, refusing to let him discuss business arrangements, in which for some reason he seemed to find a certain respite; and yet with it all, she gave him strength, the sense that he had an indissoluble and loyal companion in the losing fight that lay before him.

Once she was aware of thinking: "Oh, why did he tell me to-night? Things are so terrible by night," but it was only a second before she put such a thought away from her. What had these nights been to him? The night when she had found his light burning so late, and other nights when he had probably denied himself the consolation of reading for fear of rousing her suspicions. She did not attempt to pity or advise him, she did not treat him as a mixture of child and idiot, as affection so often treats illness. She simply gave him her love.

Toward morning he fell asleep in her arms, and then she stole back to her own room. There everything was unchanged, the light still burning, her satin slippers stepping on each other just as she had left them. She looked at herself in the glass; she did not look so very different. A headache had often ravaged her appearance more.

She had always thought herself a coward, she feared death with a terrible repugnance; but now she found, to her surprise, that she would have light-heartedly changed places with her husband. She had much more courage to die than to watch him die—to watch Vincent die, to see him day by day grow weak and pitiful. That was what was intolerable. If he would only die now, to-night, or if she could! It was at this moment that the kitchen maid had heard her sobbing.

Because there was nothing else to do, she got into bed, and lay there staring at the electric light, which she had forgotten to put out. Toward seven she got up and gave orders that Mr. Farron was not to be disturbed, that the house was to be kept quiet. Strange, she thought, that he could sleep like an exhausted child, while she, awake, was a mass of pain. Her heart ached, her eyes burned, her very body felt sore. She arranged for his sleep, but she wanted him to wake up; she begrudged every moment of his absence. Alas! she thought, how long would she continue to do so?

Yet with her suffering came a wonderful ease, an ability to deal with the details of life. When at eight o'clock her maid came in and, pulling the curtains, exclaimed with Gallic candor, "Oh, comme madame a mauvaise mine ce matin!" she smiled at her with unusual gentleness. Later, when Mathilde came down at her accustomed hour, and lying across the foot of her mother's bed, began to read her scraps of the morning paper, Adelaide felt a rush of tenderness for the child, who was so unaware of the hideous bargain life really was. Surprising as it was, she found she could talk more easily than usual and with a more undivided attention, though everything they said was trivial enough.

Then suddenly her heart stood still, for the door opened, and Vincent, in his dressing-gown, came in. He had evidently had his bath, for his hair was wet and shiny. Thank God! he showed no signs of defeat!

"Oh," cried Mathilde, jumping up, "I thought Mr. Farron had gone down-town ages ago."

"He overslept," said Adelaide.

"I had an excellent night," he answered, and she knew he looked at her to discover that she had not.

"I'll go," said Mathilde; but with unusual sharpness they both turned to her and said simultaneously, "No, no; stay." They knew no better than she did why they were so eager to keep her.

"Are you going down-town, Vin?" Adelaide asked, and her voice shook a little on the question; she was so eager that he should not institute any change in his routine so soon.

"Of course," he answered.

They looked at each other, yet their look said nothing in particular. Presently he said:

"I wonder if I might have breakfast in here. I'll go and shave if you'll order it; and don't let Mathilde go. I have something to say to her."

When he was gone, Mathilde went and stood at the window, looking out, and tying knots in the window-shade's cord. It was a trick Adelaide had always objected to, and she was quite surprised to hear herself saying now, just as usual:

"Mathilde, don't tie knots in that cord."

Mathilde threw it from her as one whose mind was engaged on higher things.

"You know," she observed, "I believe I'm only just beginning to appreciate Mr. Farron. He's so wise. I see what you meant about his being strong, and he's so clever. He knows just what you're thinking all the time. Isn't it nice that he likes Pete? Did he say anything more about him after you went up-stairs? I mean, he really does like him, doesn't he? He doesn't say that just to please me?"

Presently Vincent came back fully dressed and sat down to his breakfast. Oddly enough, there was a spirit of real gaiety in the air.

"What was it you were going to say to me?" Mathilde asked greedily. Farron looked at her blankly. Adelaide knew that he had quite forgotten the phrase, but he concealed the fact by not allowing the least illumination of his expression as he remembered.

"Oh, yes," he said. "I wish to correct myself. I told you that Mrs. Wayne was an elderly wood-nymph; but I was wrong. Of course the truth is that she's a very young witch."

Mathilde laughed, but not whole-heartedly. She had already identified herself so much with the Waynes that she could not take them quite in this tone of impersonality.

Farron threw down his napkin, stood up, pulled down his waistcoat.

"I must be off," he said. He went and kissed his wife. Both had to nerve themselves for that.

She held his arm in both her hands, feeling it solid, real, and as hard as iron.

"You'll be up-town early?"

"I've a busy day."

"By four?"

"I'll telephone." She loved him for refusing to yield to her just at this moment of all moments. Some men, she thought, would have hidden their own self-pity under the excuse of the necessity of being kind to her.

She was to lunch out with a few critical contemporaries. She was horrified when she looked at herself by morning light. Her skin had an ivory hue, and there were many fine wrinkles about her eyes. She began to repair these damages with the utmost frankness, talking meantime to Mathilde and the maid. She swept her whole face with a white lotion, rouged lightly, but to her very eyelids, touched a red pencil to her lips, all with discretion. The result was satisfactory. The improvement in her appearance made her feel braver. She couldn't have faced these people—she did not know whether to think of them as intimate enemies or hostile friends—if she had been looking anything but her best.

But they were just what she needed; they would be hard and amusing and keep her at some tension. She thought rather crossly that she could not sit through a meal at home and listen to Mathilde rambling on about love and Mr. Farron.

She was inexcusably late, and they had sat down to luncheon—three men and two women—by the time she arrived. They had all been, or had wanted to go, to an auction sale of objets d'art that had taken place the night before. They were discussing it, praising their own purchases, and decrying the value of everybody else's when Adelaide came in.

"Oh, Adelaide," said her hostess, "we were just wondering what you paid originally for your tapestry."

"The one in the hall?"

"No, the one with the Turk in it."

"I haven't an idea,—" Adelaide was distinctly languid,—"I got it from my grandfather."

"Wouldn't you know she'd say that?" exclaimed one of the women. "Not that I deny it's true; only, you know, Adelaide, whenever you do want to throw a veil over one of your pieces, you always call on the prestige of your ancestors."

Adelaide raised her eyebrows.

"Really," she answered, "there isn't anything so very conspicuous about having had a grandfather."

"No," her hostess echoed, "even I, so well and favorably known for my vulgarity—even I had a grandfather."

"But he wasn't a connoisseur in tapestries, Minnie darling."

"No, but he was in pigs, the dear vulgarian."

"True vulgarity," said one of the men, "vulgarity in the best sense, I mean, should betray no consciousness of its own existence. Only thus can it be really great."

"Oh, Minnie's vulgarity is just artificial, assumed because she found it worked so well."

"Surely you accord her some natural talent along those lines."

"I suspect her secret mind is refined."

"Oh, that's not fair. Vulgar is as vulgar does."

Adelaide stood up, pushing back her chair. She found them utterly intolerable. Besides, as they talked she had suddenly seen clearly that she must herself speak to Vincent's doctor without an instant's delay. "I have to telephone, Minnie," she said, and swept out of the room. She never returned.

"Not one of the perfect lady's golden days, I should say," said one of the men, raising his eyebrows. "I wonder what's gone wrong?"

"Can Vincent have been straying from the straight and narrow?"

"Something wrong. I could tell by her looks."

"Ah, my dear, I'm afraid her looks is what's wrong."

Adelaide meantime was in her motor on her way to the doctor's office. He had given up his sacred lunch-hour in response to her imperious demand and to his own intense pity for her sorrow.

He did not know her, but he had had her pointed out to him, and though he recognized the unreason of such an attitude, he was aware that her great beauty dramatized her suffering, so that his pity for her was uncommonly alive.

He was a young man, with a finely cut face and a blond complexion. His pity was visible, quivering a little under his mask of impassivity. Adelaide's first thought on seeing him was, "Good Heavens! another man to be emotionally calmed before I can get at the truth!" She had to be tactful, to let him see that she was not going to make a scene. She knew that he felt it himself, but she was not grateful to him. What business had he to feel it? His feeling was an added burden, and she felt that she had enough to carry.

He did not make the mistake, however, of expressing his sympathy verbally. His answers were as cold and clear as she could wish. She questioned him on the chances of an operation. He could not reduce his judgment to a mathematical one; he was inclined to advocate an operation on psychological grounds, he said.

"It keeps up the patient's courage to know something is being done." He added, "That will be your work, Mrs. Farron, to keep his courage up."

Most women like to know they had their part to play, but Adelaide shook her head quickly.

"I would so much rather go through it myself!" she cried.

"Naturally, naturally," he agreed, without getting the full passion of her cry.

She stood up.

"Oh," she said, "if it could only be kill or cure!"

He glanced at her.

"We have hardly reached that point yet," he answered.

She went away dissatisfied. He had answered every question, he had even encouraged her to hope a little more than her interpretation of what Vincent said had allowed her; but as she drove away she knew he had failed her. For she had gone to him in order to have Vincent presented to her as a hero, as a man who had looked upon the face of death without a quiver. Instead, he had been presented to her as a patient, just one of the long procession that passed through that office. The doctor had said nothing to contradict the heroic picture, but he had said nothing to contribute to it. And surely, if Farron had stood out in his calmness and courage above all other men, the doctor would have mentioned it, couldn't have helped doing so; he certainly would not have spent so much time in telling her how she was to guard and encourage him. To the doctor he was only a patient, a pitiful human being, a victim of mortality. Was that what he was going to become in her eyes, too?

At four she drove down-town to his office. He came out with another man; they stood a moment on the steps talking and smiling. Then he drew his friend to the car window and introduced him to Adelaide. The man took off his hat.

"I was just telling your husband, Mrs. Farron, that I've been looking at offices in this building. By the spring he and I will be neighbors."

Adelaide just shut her eyes, and did not open them again until Vincent had got in beside her and she felt his arm about her shoulder.

"My poor darling!" he said. "What you need is to go home and get some sleep." It was said in his old, cherishing tone, and she, leaning back, with her head against the point of his shoulder, felt that, black as it was, life for the first time since the night before had assumed its normal aspect again.



CHAPTER VIII

The morning after their drive up-town Vincent told his wife that all his arrangements were made to go to the hospital that night, and to be operated upon the next day. She reproached him for having made his decision without consulting her, but she loved him for his proud independence.

Somehow this second day under the shadow of death was less terrible than the first. Vincent stayed up-town, and was very natural and very busy. He saw a few people,—men who owed him money, his lawyer, his partner,—but most of the time he and Adelaide sat together in his study, as they had sat on many other holidays. He insisted on going alone to the hospital, although she was to be in the building during the operation.

Mathilde had been told, and inexperienced in disaster, she had felt convinced that the outcome couldn't be fatal, yet despite her conviction that people did not really die, she was aware of a shyness and awkwardness in the tragic situation.

Mr. Lanley had been told, and his attitude was just the opposite. To him it seemed absolutely certain that Farron would die,—every one did,—but he had for some time been aware of a growing hardness on his part toward the death of other people, as if he were thus preparing himself for his own.

"Poor Vincent!" he said to himself. "Hard luck at his age, when an old man like me is left." But this was not quite honest. In his heart he felt there was nothing unnatural in Vincent's being taken or in his being left.

As usual in a crisis, Adelaide's behavior was perfect. She contrived to make her husband feel every instant the depth, the strength, the passion of her love for him without allowing it to add to the weight he was already carrying. Alone together, he and she had flashes of real gaiety, sometimes not very far from tears.

To Mathilde the brisk naturalness of her mother's manner was a source of comfort. All the day the girl suffered from a sense of strangeness and isolation, and a fear of doing or saying something unsuitable—something either too special or too every-day. She longed to evince sympathy for Mr. Farron, but was afraid that, if she did, it would be like intimating that he was as good as dead. She was caught between the negative danger of seeming indifferent and the positive one of being tactless.

As soon as Vincent had left the house, Adelaide's thought turned to her daughter. He had gone about six o'clock. He and she had been sitting by his study fire when Pringle announced that the motor was waiting. Vincent got up quietly, and so did she. They stood with their arms about each other, as if they meant never to forget the sense of that contact; and then without any protest they went down-stairs together.

In the hall he had shaken hands with Mr. Lanley and had kissed Mathilde, who, do what she would, couldn't help choking a little. All this time Adelaide stood on the stairs, very erect, with one hand on the stair-rail and one on the wall, not only her eyes, but her whole face, radiating an uplifted peace. So angelic and majestic did she seem that Mathilde, looking up at her, would hardly have been surprised if she had floated out into space from her vantage-ground on the staircase.

Then Farron lit a last cigar, gave a quick, steady glance at his wife, and went out. The front door ended the incident as sharply as a shot would have done.

It was then that Mathilde expected to see her mother break down. Under all her sympathy there was a faint human curiosity as to how people contrived to live through such crises. If Pete were on the brink of death, she thought that she would go mad: but, then, she and Pete were not a middle-aged married couple; they were young, and new to love.

They all went into the drawing-room, Adelaide the calmest of the three.

"I wonder," she said, "if you two would mind dining a little earlier than usual. I might sleep if I could get to bed early, and I must be at the hospital before eight."

Mr. Lanley agreed a little more quickly than it was his habit to speak.

"O Mama, I think you're so marvelous!" said Mathilde, and touched at her own words, she burst into tears. Her mother put her arm about her, and Mr. Lanley patted her shoulder—his sovereign care.

"There, there, my dear," he murmured, "you must not cry. You know Vincent has a very good chance, a very good chance."

The assumption that he hadn't was just the one Mathilde did not want to appear to make. Her mother saw this and said gently:

"She's overstrained, that's all."

The girl wiped her eyes.

"I'm ashamed, when you are so calm and wonderful."

"I'm not wonderful," said her mother. "I have no wish to cry. I'm beyond it. Other people's trouble often makes us behave more emotionally than our own. If it were your Pete, I should be in tears." She smiled, and looked across the girl's head at Mr. Lanley. "She would like to see him, Papa. Telephone Pete Wayne, will you, and ask him to come and see her this evening? You'll be here, won't you?"

Mr. Lanley nodded without cordiality; he did not approve of encouraging the affair unnecessarily.

"How kind you are, Mama!" exclaimed Mathilde, almost inaudibly. It was just what she wanted, just what she had been wanting all day, to see her own man, to assure herself, since death was seen to be hot on the trail of all mortals, that he and she were not wasting their brief time in separation.

"We might take a turn in the motor," said Mr. Lanley, thinking that Mrs. Wayne might enjoy that.

"It would do you both good."

"And leave you alone, Mama?"

"It's what I really want, dear."

The plan did not fulfil itself quite as Mr. Lanley had imagined. Mrs. Wayne was out at some sort of meeting. They waited a moment for Pete. Mathilde fixed her eyes on the lighted doorway, and said to herself that in a few seconds the thing of all others that she desired would happen—he would come through it. And almost at once he did, looking particularly young and alive; so that, as he jumped in beside her on the back seat, both her hands went out and caught his arm and clung to him. Her realization of mortality had been so acute that she felt as if he had been restored to her from the dead. She told him the horrors of the day. Particularly, she wanted to share with him her gratitude for her mother's almost magic kindness.

"I wanted you so much, Pete," she whispered; "but I thought it would be heartless even to suggest my having wishes at such a time. And then for her to think of it herself—"

"It means they are not really going to oppose our marriage."

They talked about their marriage and the twenty or thirty years of joy which they might reasonably hope to snatch from life.

"Think of it," he said—"twenty or thirty years, longer than either of us have lived."

"If I could have five years, even one year, with you, I think I could bear to die; but not now, Pete."

In the meantime Mr. Lanley, alone on the front seat, for he had left his chauffeur at home, was driving north along the Hudson and saying to himself:

"Sixty-four. Well, I may be able to knock out ten or twelve pretty satisfactory years. On the other hand, might die to-morrow; hope I don't, though. As long as I can drive a car and everything goes well with Adelaide and this child, I'd be content to live my full time—and a little bit more. Not many men are healthier than I am. Poor Vincent! A good deal more to live for than I have, most people would say; but I don't know that he enjoys it any more than I do." Turning his head a little, he shouted over his shoulder to Pete, "Sorry your mother couldn't come."

Mathilde made a hasty effort to withdraw her hands; but Wayne, more practical, understanding better the limits put upon a driver, held them tightly as he answered in a civil tone: "Yes, she would have enjoyed this."

"She must come some other time," shouted Mr. Lanley, and reflected that it was not always necessary to bring the young people with you.

"You know, he could not possibly have turned enough to see," Pete whispered reprovingly to Mathilde.

"I suppose not; and yet it seemed so queer to be talking to my grandfather with—"

"You must try and adapt yourself to your environment," he returned, and put his arm about her.

The cold of the last few days had given place to a thaw. The melting ice in the river was streaked in strange curves, and the bare trees along the straight heights of the Palisades were blurred by a faint bluish mist, out of which white lights and yellow ones peered like eyes.

"Doesn't it seem cruel to be so happy when Mama and poor Mr. Farron—" Mathilde began.

"It's the only lesson to learn," he answered—"to be happy while we are young and together."

About ten o'clock Mr. Lanley left her at home, and she tiptoed up-stairs and hardly dared to draw breath as she undressed for fear she might wake her unhappy mother on the floor below her.

She had resolved to wake early, to breakfast with her mother, to ask to be allowed to accompany her to the hospital; but it was nine o'clock when she was awakened by her maid's coming in with her breakfast and the announcement not only that Mrs. Farron had been gone for more than an hour, but that there had already been good news from the hospital.

"Il parait que monsieur est tres fort," she said, with that absolute neutrality of accent that sounds in Anglo-Saxon ears almost like a complaint.

Adelaide had been in no need of companionship. She was perfectly able to go through her day. It seemed as if her soul, with a soul's capacity for suffering, had suddenly withdrawn from her body, had retreated into some unknown fortress, and left in its place a hard, trivial, practical intelligence which tossed off plan after plan for the future detail of life. As she drove from her house to the hospital she arranged how she would apportion the household in case of a prolonged illness, where she would put the nurses. Nor was she less clear as to what should be done in case of Vincent's death. The whole thing unrolled before her like a panorama.

At the hospital, after a little delay, she was guided to Vincent's own room, recently deserted. A nurse came to tell her that all was going well; Mr. Farron had had a good night, and was taking the anesthetic nicely. Adelaide found the young woman's manner offensively encouraging, and received the news with an insolent reserve.

"That girl is too wildly, spiritually bright," she said to herself. But no manner would have pleased her.

Left alone, she sat down in a rocking-chair near the window. Vincent's bag stood in the corner, his brushes were on the dressing-table, his tie hung on the electric light. Immortal trifles, she thought, that might be in existence for years.

She began poignantly to regret that she had not insisted on seeing him again that morning. She had thought only of what was easiest for him. She ought to have thought of herself, of what would make it possible for her to go on living without him. If she could have seen him again, he might have given her some precept, some master word, by which she could have guided her life. She would have welcomed something imprisoning and safe. It was cruel of him, she thought, to toss her out like this, rudderless and alone. She wondered what he would have given her as a commandment, and remembered suddenly the apocryphal last words which Vincent was fond of attributing to George Washington, "Never trust a nigger with a gun." She found herself smiling over them. Vincent was more likely to have quoted the apparition's advice to Macbeth: "Be bloody, bold, and resolute." That would have been his motto for himself, but not for her. What was the principle by which he infallibly guided her?

How could he have left her so spiritually unprovided for? She felt imposed upon, deserted. The busily planning little mind that had suddenly taken possession of her could not help her in the larger aspects of her existence. It would be much simpler, she thought, to die than to attempt life again without Vincent.

She went to the window and looked out at the roofs of neighboring houses, a disordered conglomeration of water-tanks and skylights and chimney-pots. Then nearer, almost under her feet, she looked into a courtyard of the hospital and saw a pale, emaciated man in a wheel-chair. She drew back as if it were something indecent. Would Vincent ever become like that? she thought. If so, she would rather he died now under the anesthetic.

A little while later the nurse came in, and said almost sternly that Dr. Crew had sent her to tell Mrs. Farron that the conditions seemed extremely favorable, and that all immediate danger was over.

"You mean," said Adelaide, fiercely, "that Mr. Farron will live?"

"I certainly inferred that to be the doctor's meaning," answered the nurse. "But here is the assistant, Dr. Withers."

Dr. Withers, bringing with him an intolerable smell of disinfectants and chloroform, hurried in, with his hair mussed from the haste with which he had removed his operating-garments. He had small, bright, brown eyes, with little lines about them that seemed to suggest humor, but actually indicated that he buoyed up his life not by exaltation of himself, but by half-laughing depreciation of every one else.

"I thought you'd be glad to know, Mrs. Farron," he said, "that any danger that may have existed is now over. Your husband—"

"That may have existed," cried Adelaide. "Do you mean to say there hasn't been any real danger?"

The young doctor's eyes twinkled.

"An operation even in the best hands is always a danger," he replied.

"But you mean there was no other?" Adelaide asked, aware of a growing coldness about her hands and feet.

Withers looked as just as Aristides.

"It was probably wise to operate," he said. "Your husband ought to be up and about in three weeks."

Everything grew black and rotatory before Adelaide's eyes, and she sank slowly forward into the young doctor's arms.

As he laid her on the bed, he glanced whimsically at the nurse and shook his head.

But she made no response, an omission which may not have meant loyalty to Dr. Crew so much as unwillingness to support Dr. Withers.

Adelaide returned to consciousness only in time to be hurried away to make room for Vincent. His long, limp figure was carried past her in the corridor. She was told that in a few hours she might see him. But she wasn't, as a matter of fact, very eager to see him. The knowledge that he was to live, the lifting of the weight of dread, was enough. The maternal strain did not mingle with her love for him; she saw no possible reward, no increased sense of possession, in his illness. On the contrary, she wanted him to stride back in one day from death to his old powerful, dominating self.

She grew to hate the hospital routine, the fixed hours, the regulated food. "These rules, these hovering women," she exclaimed, "these trays—they make me think of the nursery." But what she really hated was Vincent's submission to it all. In her heart she would have been glad to see him breaking the rules, defying the doctors, and bullying his nurses.

Before long a strong, silent antagonism grew up between her and the bright-eyed, cheerful nurse, Miss Gregory. It irritated Adelaide to gain access to her husband through other people's consent; it irritated her to see the girl's understanding of the case, and her competent arrangements for her patient's comfort. If Vincent had showed any disposition to revolt, Adelaide would have pleaded with him to submit; but as it was, she watched his docility with a scornful eye.

"That girl rules you with a rod of iron," she said one day. But even then Vincent did not rouse himself.

"She knows her business," he said admiringly.

To any other invalid Adelaide could have been a soothing visitor, could have adapted the quick turns of her mind to the relaxed attention of the sick; but, honestly enough, there seemed to her an impertinence, almost an insult, in treating Vincent in such a way. The result was that her visits were exhausting, and she knew it. And yet, she said to herself, he was ill, not insane; how could she conceal from him the happenings of every day? Vincent would be the last person to be grateful to her for that.

She saw him one day grow pale; his eyes began to close. She had made up her mind to leave him when Miss Gregory came in, and with a quicker eye and a more active habit of mind, said at once:

"I think Mr. Farron has had enough excitement for one day."

Adelaide smiled up at the girl almost insolently.

"Is a visit from a wife an excitement?" she asked. Miss Gregory was perfectly grave.

"The greatest," she said.

Adelaide yielded to her own irritation.

"Well," she said, "I shan't stay much longer."

"It would be better if you went now, I think, Mrs. Farron."

Adelaide looked at Vincent. It was silly of him, she thought, to pretend he didn't hear. She bent over him.

"Your nurse is driving me away from you, dearest," she murmured.

He opened his eyes and took her hand.

"Come back to-morrow early—as early as you can," he said.

She never remembered his siding against her before, and she swept out into the hallway, saying to herself that it was childish to be annoyed at the whims of an invalid.

Miss Gregory had followed her.

"Mrs. Farron," she said, "do you mind my suggesting that for the present it would be better not to talk to Mr. Farron about anything that might worry him, even trifles?"

Adelaide laughed.

"You know very little of Mr. Farron," she said, "if you think he worries over trifles."

"Any one worries over trifles when he is in a nervous state."

Adelaide passed by without answering, passed by as if she had not heard. The suggestion of Vincent nervously worrying over trifles was one of the most repellent pictures that had ever been presented to her imagination.



CHAPTER IX

The firm for which Wayne worked was young and small—Benson & Honaton. They made a specialty of circularization in connection with the bond issues in which they were interested, and Wayne had charge of their "literature," as they described it. He often felt, after he had finished a report, that his work deserved the title. A certain number of people in Wall Street disapproved of the firm's methods. Sometimes Pete thought this was because, for a young firm, they had succeeded too quickly to please the more deliberate; but sometimes in darker moments he thought there might be some justice in the idea.

During the weeks that Farron was in the hospital Pete, despite his constant availability to Mathilde, had been at work on his report on a coal property in Pennsylvania. He was extremely pleased with the thoroughness with which he had done the job. His report was not favorable. The day after it was finished, a little after three, he received word that the firm wanted to see him. He was always annoyed with himself that these messages caused his heart to beat a trifle faster. He couldn't help associating them with former hours with his head-master or in the dean's office. Only he had respected his head-master and even the dean, whereas he was not at all sure he respected Mr. Benson and he was quite sure he did not respect Mr. Honaton.

He rose slowly from his desk, exchanging with the office boy who brought the message a long, severe look, under which something very comic lurked, though neither knew what.

"And don't miss J.B.'s socks," said the boy.

Mr. Honaton—J.B.—was considered in his office a very beautiful dresser, as indeed in some ways he was. He was a tall young man, built like a greyhound, with a small, pointed head, a long waist, and a very long throat, from which, however, the strongest, loudest voice could issue when he so desired. This was his priceless asset. He was the board member, and generally admitted to be an excellent broker. It always seemed to Pete that he was a broker exactly as a beaver is a dam-builder, because nature had adapted him to that task. But outside of this one instinctive capacity he had no sense whatsoever. He rarely appeared in the office. He was met at the Broad Street entrance of the exchange at one minute to ten by a boy with the morning's orders, and sometimes he came in for a few minutes after the closing; but usually by three-fifteen he had disappeared from financial circles, and was understood to be relaxing in the higher social spheres to which he belonged. So when Pete, entering Mr. Benson's private office, saw Honaton leaning against the window-frame, with his hat-brim held against his thigh exactly like a fashion-plate, he knew that something of importance must be pending.

Benson, the senior member, was a very different person. He looked like a fat, white, pugnacious cat. His hair, which had turned white early, had a tendency to grow in a bang; his arms were short—so short that when he put his hands on the arms of his swing-chair he hardly bent his elbows. He had them there now as Pete entered, and was swinging through short arcs in rather a nervous rhythm. He was of Irish parentage, and was understood to have political influence.

"Wayne," said Benson, "how would you like to go to China?"

And Honaton repeated portentously, "China," as if Benson might have made a mistake in the name of the country if he had not been at his elbow to correct him.

Wayne laughed.

"Well," he said, "I have nothing against China."

Benson outlined the situation quickly. The firm had acquired property in China not entirely through their own choice, and they wanted a thorough, clear report on it; they knew of no one—no one, Benson emphasized—who could do that as impartially and as well as Wayne. They would pay him a good sum and his expenses. It would take him a year, perhaps a year and a half. They named the figure. It was one that made marriage possible. They talked of the situation and the property and the demand for copper until Honaton began to look at his watch, a flat platinum watch, perfectly plain, you might have thought, until you caught a glimpse of a narrow line of brilliants along its almost imperceptible rim. His usual working day was over in half an hour.

"And when I come back, Mr. Benson?" said Wayne.

"Your place will be open for you here."

There was a pause.

"Well, what do you say?" said Honaton.

"I feel very grateful for the offer," said Pete, "but of course I can't give you an answer now."

"Why not, why not?" returned Honaton, who felt that he had given up half an hour for nothing if the thing couldn't be settled on the spot; and even Benson, Wayne noticed, began to glower.

"You could probably give us as good an answer to-day as to-morrow," he said.

Nothing roused Pete's spirit like feeling a tremor in his own soul, and so he now answered with great firmness:

"I cannot give you an answer to-day or to-morrow."

"It's all off, then, all off," said Honaton, moving to the door.

"When do the Chinese boats sail, Mr. Honaton?" said Pete, with the innocence of manner that an employee should use when putting his superior in a hole.

"I don't see what difference that makes to you, Wayne, if you're not taking them," said Honaton, as if he were triumphantly concealing the fact that he didn't know.

"Don't feel you have to wait, Jack, if you're in a hurry," said his partner, and when the other had slid out of the office Benson turned to Wayne and went on: "You wouldn't have to go until a week from Saturday. You would have to get off then, and we should have to know in time to find some one else in case you don't care for it."

Pete asked for three days, and presently left the office.

He had a friend, one of his mother's reformed drunkards, who as janitor lived on the top floor of a tall building. He and his wife offered Wayne the hospitality of their balcony, and now and then, in moments like this, he availed himself of it. Not, indeed, that there had ever been a moment quite like this; for he knew that he was facing the most important decision he had ever been forced to make.

In the elevator he met the janitor's cat Susan going home after an afternoon visit to the restaurant on the sixteenth floor. The elevator boy loved to tell how she never made a mistake in the floor.

"Do you think she'd get off at the fifteenth or the seventeenth? Not she. Sometimes she puts her nose out and smells at the other floors, but she won't get off until I stop at the right one. Sometimes she has to ride up and down three or four times before any one wants the sixteenth. Eh, Susan?" he added in caressing tones; but Susan was watching the floors flash past and paid no attention until, arrived at the top, she and Pete stepped off together.

It was a cool, clear day, for the wind was from the north, but on the southern balcony the sun was warm. Pete sat down in the kitchen-chair set for him, tilted back, and looked out over the Statue of Liberty, which stood like a stunted baby, to the blue Narrows. He saw one thing clearly, and that was that he would not go if Mathilde would not go with him.

He envied people who could make up their minds by thinking. At least sometimes he envied them and sometimes he thought they lied. He could only think about a subject and wait for the unknown gods to bring him a decision. And this is what he now did, with his eyes fixed on the towers and tanks and tenements, on the pale winter sky, and, when he got up and leaned his elbows on the parapet, on the crowds that looked like a flood of purple insects in the streets.

He thought of Mathilde's youth and his own untried capacities for success, of poverty and children, of the probable opposition of Mathilde's family and of a strange, sinister, disintegrating power he felt or suspected in Mrs. Farron. He felt that it was a terrible risk to ask a young girl to take and that it was almost an insult to be afraid to ask her to take it. That was what his mother had always said about these cherished, protected creatures: they were not prepared to meet any strain in life. He knew he would not have hesitated to ask a girl differently brought up. Ought he to ask Mathilde or ought he not even to hesitate about asking her? In his own future he had confidence. He had an unusual power of getting his facts together so that they meant something. In a small way his work was recognized. A report of his had some weight. He felt certain that if on his return he wanted another position he could get it unless he made a terrible fiasco in China. Should he consult any one? He knew beforehand what they would all think about it. Mr. Lanley would think that it was sheer impertinence to want to marry his granddaughter on less than fifteen thousand dollars a year; Mrs. Farron would think that there were lots of equally agreeable young men in the world who would not take a girl to China; and his mother, whom he could not help considering the wisest of the three, would think that Mathilde lacked discipline and strength of will for such an adventure. And on this he found he made up his mind. "After all," he said to himself as he put the chair back against the wall, "everything else would be failure, and this may be success."

It was the afternoon that Farron was brought back from the hospital, and he and Mathilde were sure of having the drawing-room to themselves. He told her the situation slowly and with a great deal of detail, chronologically, introducing the Chinese trip at the very end. But she did not at once understand.

"O Pete, you would not go away from me!" she said. "I could not face that."

"Couldn't you? Remember that everything you say is going to be used against you."

"Would you be willing to go, Pete?"

"Only if you will go with me."

"Oh!" she clasped her hands to her breast, shrinking back to look at him. So that was what he had meant, this stranger whom she had known for such a short time. As she looked she half expected that he would smile, and say it was all a joke; but his eyes were steadily and seriously fixed on hers. It was very queer, she thought. Their meeting, their first kiss, their engagement, had all seemed so inevitable, so natural, there had not been a hint of doubt or decision about it; but now all of a sudden she found herself faced by a situation in which it was impossible to say yes or no.

"It would be wonderful, of course," she said, after a minute, but her tone showed she was not considering it as a possibility.

Wayne's heart sank; he saw that he had thought it possible that he would not allow her to go, but that he had never seriously faced the chance of her refusing.

"Mathilde," he said, "it's far and sudden, and we shall be poor, and I can't promise that I shall succeed more than other fellows; and yet against all that—"

She looked at him.

"You don't think I care for those things? I don't care if you succeed or fail, or live all your life in Siam."

"What is it, then?"

"Pete, it's my mother. She would never consent."

Wayne was aware of this, but, then, as he pointed out to Mathilde with great care, Mrs. Farron could not bear for her daughter the pain of separation.

"Separation!" cried the girl, "But you just said you would not go if I did not."

"If you put your mother before me, mayn't I put my profession before you?"

"My dear, don't speak in that tone."

"Why, Mathilde," he said, and he sprang up and stood looking down at her from a little distance, "this is the real test. We have thought we loved each other—"

"Thought!" she interrupted.

"But to get engaged with no immediate prospect of marriage, with all our families and friends grouped about, that doesn't mean such a lot, does it?"

"It does to me," she answered almost proudly.

"Now, one of us has to sacrifice something. I want to go on this expedition. I want to succeed. That may be egotism or legitimate ambition. I don't know, but I want to go. I think I mean to go. Ought I to give it up because you are afraid of your mother?"

"It's love, not fear, Pete."

"You love me, too, you say."

"I feel an obligation to her."

"And, good Heavens! do you feel none to me?"

"No, no. I love you too much to feel an obligation to you."

"But you love your mother and feel an obligation to her. Why, Mathilde, that feeling of obligation is love—love in its most serious form. That's what you don't feel for me. That's why you won't go."

"I haven't said I wouldn't go."

"You never even thought of going."

"I have, I do. But how can I help hesitating? You must know I want to go."

"I see very little sign of it," he murmured. The interview had not gone as he intended. He had not meant, he never imagined, that he would attempt to urge and coerce her; but her very detachment seemed to set a fire burning within him.

"I think," he said with an effort to sound friendly, "that I had better go and let you think this over by yourself."

He was actually moving to the door when she sprang up and put her arms about him.

"Weren't you even going to kiss me, Pete?"

He stooped, and touched her cheek with his lips.

"Do you call that a kiss?"

"O Mathilde, do you think any kiss will change the facts?" he answered, and was gone.

As soon as he had left her the desire for tears left her, too. She felt calm and more herself, more an isolated, independent human being than ever before in her life. She thought of all the things she ought to have said to Pete. The reason why she felt no obligation to him was that she was one with him. She was prepared to sacrifice him exactly as she was, or ought to be, willing to sacrifice herself; whereas her mother—it seemed as if her mother's power surrounded her in every direction, as solid as the ancients believed the dome of heaven.

Pringle appeared in the doorway in his eternal hunt for the tea-things.

"May I take the tray, miss?" he said.

She nodded, hardly glancing at the untouched tea-table. Pringle, as he bent over it, observed that it was nice to have Mr. Farron back. Mathilde remembered that she, too, had once been interested in her stepfather's return.

"Where's my mother, Pringle?"

"Mrs. Farron's in her room, I think, miss, and Mr. Lanley's with her."

Lanley had stopped as usual to ask after his son-in-law. He found his daughter writing letters in her room. He thought her looking cross, but in deference to her recent anxieties he called it, even in his own mind, overstrained.

"Vincent is doing very well, I believe," she answered in response to his question. "He ought to be. He is in charge of two lovely young creatures hardly Mathilde's age who have already taken complete control of the household."

"You've seen him, of course."

"For a few minutes; they allow me a few minutes. They communicate by secret signals when they think I have stayed long enough."

Mr. Lanley never knew how to treat this mood of his daughter's, which seemed to him as unreasonable as if it were emotional, and yet as cold as if it were logic itself. He changed the subject and said boldly:

"Mrs. Baxter is coming to-morrow."

Adelaide's eyes faintly flashed.

"Oh, wouldn't you know it!" she murmured. "Just at the most inconvenient time—inconvenient for me, I mean. Really, lovers are the only people you can depend on. I wish I had a lover."

"Adelaide," said her father with some sternness, "even in fun you should not say such a thing. If Mathilde heard you—"

"Mathilde is the person who made me see it. Her boy is here all the time, trying to think of something to please her. And who have I? Vincent has his nurses; and you have your old upholstered lady. I can't help wishing I had a lover. They are the only people who, as the Wayne boy would say, 'stick around.' But don't worry, Papa, I have a loyal nature." She was interrupted by a knock at the door, and a nurse—the same who had been too encouraging to please her at the hospital—put in her head and said brightly:

"You may see Mr. Farron now, Mrs. Farron."

Adelaide turned to her father and made a little bow.

"See how I am favored," she said, and left him.

Nothing of this mood was apparent when she entered her husband's room, though she noticed that the arrangement of the furniture had been changed, and, what she disliked even more, that they had brushed his hair in a new way. This, with his pallor and thinness, made him look strange to her. She bent over, and laid her cheek to his almost motionless lips.

"Well, dear," she said, "have you seen the church-warden part they have given your hair?"

He shook his head impatiently, and she saw, she had made the mistake of trying to give the tone to an interview in which she was not the leading character.

"Who has the room above mine, Adelaide?" he asked.

"My maid."

"Ask her not to practice the fox-trot, will you?"

"O Vincent, she is never there."

"My mistake," he answered, and shut his eyes.

She repented at once.

"Of course I'll tell her. I'm sorry that you were disturbed." But she was thinking only of his tone. He was not an irritable man, and he had never used such a tone to her before. All pleasure in the interview was over. She was actually glad when one of the nurses came in and began to move about the room in a manner that suggested dismissal.

"Of course I'm not angry," she said to herself. "He's so weak one must humor him like a child."

She derived some satisfaction, however, from the idea of sending for her maid Lucie and making her uncomfortable; but on her way she met Mathilde in the hall.

"May I speak to you, Mama?" she said.

Mrs. Farron laughed.

"May you speak to me?" she said. "Why, yes; you may have the unusual privilege. What is it?"

Mathilde followed her mother into the bedroom and shut the door.

"Pete has just been here. He has been offered a position in China."

"In China?" said Mrs. Farron. This was the first piece of luck that had come to her in a long time, but she did not betray the least pleasure. "I hope it is a good one."

"Yes, he thinks it good. He sails in two weeks."

"In two weeks?" And this time she could not prevent her eye lighting a little. She thought how nicely that small complication had settled itself, and how clever she had been to have the mother to dinner and behave as if she were friendly. She did not notice that her daughter was trembling; she couldn't, of course, be expected to know that the girl's hands were like ice, and that she had waited several seconds to steady her voice sufficiently to pronounce the fatal sentence:

"He wants me to go with him, Mama."

She watched her mother in an agony for the effect of these words. Mrs. Farron had suddenly detected a new burn in the hearth-rug. She bent over it.

"This wood does snap so!" she murmured.

The rug was a beautiful old Persian carpet of roses and urns.

"Did you understand what I said, Mama?"

"Yes, dear; that Mr. Wayne was going to China in two weeks and wanted you to go, too. Was it just a politesse, or does he actually imagine that you could?"

"He thinks I can."

Mrs. Farron laughed good-temperedly.

"Did you go and see about having your pink silk shortened?" she said.

Mathilde stared at her mother, and in the momentary silence Lucie came in and asked what madame wanted for the evening, and Adelaide in her fluent French began explaining that what she really desired most was that Lucie should not make so much noise in her room that monsieur could not sleep. In the midst of it she stopped and turned to her daughter.

"Won't you be late for dinner, darling?" she said.

Mathilde thought it very possible, and went away to get dressed. She went into her own room and shut the door sharply behind her.

All the time she was dressing she tried to rehearse her case—that it was her life, her love, her chance; but all the time she had a sickening sense that a lifted eye-brow of her mother's would make it sound childish and absurd even in her own ears. She had counted on a long evening, but when she went down-stairs she found three or four friends of her mother's were to dine and go to the theater. The dinner was amusing, the talk, though avowedly hampered by the presence of Mathilde, was witty and unexpected enough; but Mathilde was not amused by it, for she particularly dreaded her mother in such a mood of ruthless gaiety. At the theater they were extremely critical, and though they missed almost the whole first act, appeared, in the entr'acte, to feel no hesitation in condemning it. They spoke of French and Italian actors by name, laughed heartily over the playwright's conception of social usages, and made Mathilde feel as if her own unacknowledged enjoyment of the play was the guiltiest of secrets.

As they drove home, she was again alone with her mother, and she said at once the sentence she had determined on:

"I don't think you understood, Mama, how seriously I meant what I said this afternoon."

Mrs. Farron was bending her long-waisted figure forward to get a good look at a picture which, small, lonely, and brightly lighted, hung in a picture-dealer's window. It was a picture of an empty room. Hot summer sunlight filtered through the lowered Venetian blinds, and fell in bands on the golden wood of the floor. Outside the air was burned and dusty, but inside the room all was clear, cool, and pure.