But criticisms from this source Emmet accepted as a matter of course, much as a Republican candidate for the Presidency would count on a solid Democratic South. A more serious menace to his future lay in the attitude of some of his own supporters, who supposed that the mayor's office could now be their lounging-place and headquarters. Bat Quayle, the leader of a strong constituency of the submerged tenth, had already departed breathing vengeance, when he discovered that there was nothing in the new regime for the Boys. They had given their votes to Emmet in the confident expectation of special privilege and protection; but he had made no promises, and had none to keep. No previous Democratic mayor of Warwick had ever been able to dispense with the Boys, and it remained for Emmet to offset their loss by winning new supporters during his administration. Bat Quayle, he knew, would be picked up by his opponents and used against him two years hence; but two years seemed a long time, and the mayor shook out the lines and started off with a burst of speed, as if he would tumble black care into the snow behind him.

The street was like a vista of fairyland. A new fall of snow had covered all unsightly stains of traffic, and now lay heaped on every inch of horizontal space, on branch and roof and post, on window-ledge and fence. The sky was clearing, and the last belated flakes were floating slowly downward, detached from the burdened roofs by light puffs of wind. To one glancing upward, the feathery visitors seemed to drop from the widening spaces of pale blue sky. The ringing sound of snow shovels and the crisp crunching of pedestrians' feet indicated a falling mercury. The air was filled with the jocund jingling of sleighbells, now coming, now near at hand, now lessening into the distance, a pleasing confusion of silvery sounds, not inharmonious in their varying pitch and intensity.

Emmet, crouching low among his blankets, drew his cap down over his eyes and let out another link of speed. At last he was free to take up the problem that occupied his leisure moments. His wife had gone South with her father on the very day when he had expected her to lift the veil from their marriage, and an acknowledgement of the justice of her anger caused him to keep the secret still, awaiting her decision. He could count the times they had met during the last two years on the fingers of his hands. This relationship, which had promised so much at its inception, was the great mystery of his life, and every succeeding month it became more unreal, more inexplicable. Now he went back in his mind to the time when the bishop's daughter began to take his car rather than another, and conveyed to him in some subtle way the impression of her preference. By little and little he had played the dangerous game that made such an appeal to his vanity.

The poets were true in their psychology when they pictured the distress of mortal men beloved of goddesses: Tithonus and Aurora, Venus and Adonis, Diana and Endymion. How could aught but tragedy result from such loves as these? How could a mortal have dared to lift his eyes to such a height unbidden? The gulf between Miss Wycliffe, beautiful, rich, aristocratic, and Tom Emmet, the professional baseball player and street-car conductor, was to his mind as impassable. It was she who had first suggested the possibility of a bridge between them. His conception of her mental states was as dim as our dreams of the inhabitants of Mars. Of her ennui in that life which seemed to him all lightness and pleasure, of the romance with which she invested his commonplace days, of the possibilities she read in his personality, he had no conception; but to the lingering of her fingers in his own, to the glance of her eyes, the primitive man within him made response.

Love of adventure lured him on. The subtle courtship progressed apace, and if any of Miss Wycliffe's friends noted her growing friendship with the conductor, it was merely to praise her sweet and unassuming humanity. At the end of that period of increasing intimacy, marked by little incidents which no lover in the retrospect can ever arrange in their proper sequence, the night of his marriage loomed in his memory, every detail ineradicable. Their coincident absence from Warwick was naturally unnoted; and who, in all the range of human probabilities, would be present to see them meet at a certain day and hour on a certain street corner in New York?

Life is a careless maker of plots. The villain did not appear to shadow them to the obscure old church, to lurk in the darkening pews and see them married, to watch their exit in the twilight as man and wife, to observe from a safe distance their long talk on the corner of the street, and, most inexplicable of all, to see her call a passing cab and drive away in evident haste, perhaps in sudden alarm.

Emmet would never have brooked such desertion from a woman of his own class, but the ascendancy which she had established over him from the first was not materially shaken by the fact that she was now his wife. He did not even know where she passed the night, while he walked the streets, a deceived and baffled bridegroom, until in desperation he took the midnight train and arrived home at dawn, too weary to care for aught but sleep.

When they met again in Warwick, she resumed her mysterious power of direction as before, and his status as her husband gave him no advantage that he dared to press. He accepted the secret interviews she granted, and learned at last the part he had to play. On that promissory note which she had given him at the altar she paid the instalment of a few elusive kisses, and he discovered to his dismay that he must do some great thing to make himself worthy of her, before the note should be paid in full. It was she who had seen the possibilities of his connection with a union and of his interest in politics, and had suggested the career he was to follow. His election as mayor was to be crowned by her acknowledgement of him before the world. This was the plan in which he had acquiesced, as one who had only to obey and to wait humbly for his reward.

But a sense of power developed with the struggle. It was true that she had directed his feet into the right path; but once there, he began to feel that he would have found it unaided. She was secret with him, giving and withholding as she chose. He saw her with other men, and his strong nature rebelled. Should she be free, while he was bound? At a certain meeting he presented this point of view, but she said truly enough that the men she met were nothing to her, and that to do as he wished would only excite surprise and suspicion. She would fain play the part of Egeria and lay down the law to him in stolen interviews beyond the city. But Emmet had never heard of that delightful arrangement, and the role of a Numa in the making began to be intolerable to him. When they met again, he no longer upbraided her, for he had met Lena Harpster at a lodge dance in the interval, and in the culmination of a reckless mood, he had taken his revenge. Only a consciousness of his own duplicity saved Felicity from his insistence and restored her power.

Emmet meant that the affair with Lena should go no further, but the memory of the kiss she had given him drew him back at last and he sought her out, as the first man might have sought again the first woman in the Garden of Eden, after an ingenuous shame had driven them asunder. And hereupon began a titanic struggle in his soul. He knew that he loved his wife and meant to be true to her, but Lena's kisses more deeply stirred his blood. She was wonderfully pliant to his will, as pliant in reality as he seemed to be to the will of his wife. For longer or shorter periods he neglected her, only to come back again to find her more helpless in his grasp, himself more than ever fascinated by his power over her. It was a milestone in their nameless relationship when he feigned jealousy of her other admirers, when she admitted his right to question. Then came the night when she had fainted beside him in the half-finished building, and he knew that the jealousy was real. After that wild moment of parting at the gate, he resolved to see her no more. The prize he had sought so long was almost within his grasp,—the mayoralty and a wife who would make that office but a stepping-stone to something higher,—and he would not forfeit his reward. He meant also, as he had meant all along, to be essentially true to his moral obligations.

The pathos of Lena's position he but dimly discerned, and his cruelty was unconscious. The election almost swept her from his mind, and the note in which she disclosed her refuge in his wife's house stirred only a momentary anxiety. He would deny whatever she might say, and he felt that she would quietly acquiesce in her fate when she knew the truth. But he had forgotten the ring, and the ring was his undoing.

At the very moment when he turned his sleigh into Birdseye Avenue he pressed his hand to his side and felt Felicity's letter crinkle beneath his touch. He had carried it continuously with him, and knew its brief contents by heart. She had hoped the letter might have been one of pure congratulation; she had intended to keep her promise and to come to him as his wife before the world, but now he must wait until she had time to think over her course of action by herself. An explanation would be useless; but she had recovered her ring, and she knew the value he put upon her gifts, both this one and the greater gift of which it was a symbol. And that was all.

The fact remained that she had not utterly cast him off. He would be punished, but not forever, and he divined that his probation would end with her return. He had a firm conviction that her sense of obligation was like his own, that repentance and good conduct would restore him to her, and he longed for an opportunity to tell her how it had happened, how much less guilty he was than she might suppose. If he had been weak with Lena, he knew that he had also been strong. He had withheld his hand from taking all, when she would have offered no resistance to his will. Surely, that counted for much, and his temptation had been great. Cheered by this thought, little realising that the very simplicity of his position would make it difficult for his wife to understand, that the vulgarity of his temptation was to her its worst feature, he glanced down the long avenue with a sudden sentiment at the thought of passing her home.

This street, because of its width, the absence of car-tracks, and its comparative freedom from heavy traffic, was often the scene of races in the winter, and now he saw a group of sleighs ready for the start. As the bunch drew away, his own horse came abreast of the others, and without prearrangement he found himself racing side by side with Anthony Cobbens.

"Well met, Mr. Mayor!" the lawyer cried cheerily. "I 'll race you down to College Street."

Emmet glanced at his opponent, and shouted his acceptance of the challenge, his sporting-blood surging suddenly to his very finger-tips. As he gave his mare the whip and held her in from breaking, he looked once more at the figure whizzing along by his side against the western light. Something in the pink, pinched face, the red, eager eyes, appealed to his sense of humour, and he laughed aloud. Emmet had more than one reason for wishing to beat this man. He had worsted his candidate in the election, and now he would show him a clean pair of heels in the race. His heart beat with exultation as they two drew away from the others. For a moment the thought of Felicity flashed through his mind as they passed her house and the nose of his pacer was shoved an inch ahead of her opponent.

"Good girl," he murmured, squaring his jaw; "good girl. Steady there, steady."

The feathery snow flew up in whirls from the flying heels. Pedestrians on the sidewalk paused and cheered as they flashed by under the bending branches of the elms, under the electric lights that were just then beginning their sputtering struggle for supremacy against the sunset. Emmet had learned to handle horses during an apprenticeship at the race-track in his boyhood, and now the judgment with which he had selected his pacer was amply vindicated. Her steaming flanks swung powerful and free; her long stride just missed the dashboard of the sleigh. As he lightly touched her swaying back with the whip for a final burst of speed, he loved the beast as only a horseman can, and murmured terms of endearment that were equally applicable to a sweetheart.

The head of Cobbens's horse was just in a line with Emmet's shoulder as they passed the goal. The mayor turned while the other began to drop behind and shouted a derisive farewell, with a parting flourish of the whip. The victory was as sweet to his heart as the taste of honey to the lips. The race had changed his mood completely, filling him with a joyous truculence. He would gladly have embraced the opportunity of a rough knock-down and drag-out fight with a picked champion from the enemy's camp.

As he passed along the eastern border of the campus and glanced up at St. George's Hall, it no longer appeared the impregnable fortress of privilege he had once thought it. Yet, in reality, the towers of the college had never looked more formidable. Rising magnificently at the crest of a bleak expanse of snow, the embrasured battlements, silhouetted against the sunset sky, might well have suggested to a beholder grim thoughts of mediaeval strongholds and robber barons. The red orb of the sun, hovering just above the rim of the western hills, flashed successively through the windows of the long, low hall, like a running trail of fire. Emmet was directly opposite the towers when he saw the muzzle of the telescope rise slowly above the topmost line of coping, as if it were a living thing stretching itself to take a look at the surrounding country. Evidently Professor Leigh was preparing the instrument for an observation. Emmet pictured the platform heaped with snow, imagined the cold air rushing into the small shed through the open roof, and wondered that his friend's enthusiasm could brave such discomforts to win a knowledge so remote from the interests of life.

He turned his eyes once more to the road and winked away the glare of the sun. The floating spots, changing from crimson to green and from green to purple, so obscured his vision that he failed to see the figure of a woman plodding slowly on in the centre of the track. The wind was directly ahead, and the hood of a golf cape so closely enveloped the woman's head that she for her part was deaf to the sound of coming sleighbells. Emmet had been driving slowly to give his mare a breathing-space. Now, as she veered suddenly of her own accord, he drew in the reins with a jerk, and brought the sleigh to a standstill so near to Lena Harpster that he could have touched her with his hand.

Her first alarm was followed immediately by such a chaos of deeper emotions that the cry died away on her lips. She stood looking at him with shining eyes from behind the fringe of her tall, peaked hood, then, in a voice as low as the wind, she spoke his name. At the same moment she laid her hand on the edge of the seat, either obeying the impulse that would draw her to him, or because she must otherwise have fallen.

Since their last meeting, their night together in the shelter of the half-finished building, he had resolutely put her from his thoughts. He had supposed the victory won, and never more so than on this very day, when self-interest and moral obligations had marshalled such invincible arguments before his mind. If he had seen her from a distance, if she had been on the sidewalk instead of in his very path, would he have had time to wrestle with his temptation and to overthrow it? Would he have whipped up his horse and passed her by without a look of recognition? But the hypothesis is contrary to the fact, and suggests a fruitless speculation. It would seem that his evil genius had planned deliberately to put his resolution to the supreme test, first by filling him with arrogant self-confidence, then by firing his blood with a triumph over his enemy, and finally by placing within the reach of his hand the very woman whom most of all, in his heart of hearts, he longed to see.

As she stood there before him, all her soul concentrated in her eyes, her lips apart in breathless waiting on his will, it seemed that trouble had never put a marring finger upon her beauty; and suddenly he knew the overmastering hunger of his nature. This was the woman that loved him without question, the woman he wished to take into his arms and carry off. The place and time were propitious. Already the sun had set—there was no one in sight—and just beyond the ridge the open country beckoned.

"Lena," he said, his voice vibrant with reckless abandonment to his desire, "jump in here, quick!"

There was no previous greeting, no inquiry or explanation, no dalliance with emotion. His first words were a command, her inevitable response was to obey. Now, as always, she threw the whole responsibility upon him. And Emmet felt equal to the burden. He was like a god, knowing good and evil. He meant to do good in the main, but just now it was his pleasure to deviate a little. To-morrow he would come back into the straight road and hold it to the end. This resolve gave him a peculiar exhilaration, a special license for the definite indulgence.

The next moment she was nestling close to his side, borne swiftly along as in a dream to the music of the bells. Putting his left arm behind her shoulders, he drew the robe up across her face to ward off the whistling wind. For some time she was content to lie thus in silence, lost in a sense of his strong embrace and in a consciousness of the romance that had come to her so unexpectedly out of loneliness and despair. This was her own lover, come back to her again, but he had never come thus before; and she remembered with a thrill that he was now the mayor of Warwick, taking his pleasure in his own sleigh. She wondered whether he had admired her golf cape; she had no need to wonder what he thought of its wearer. As if to reassure her on this very point, he spoke aloud.

"Lena, I had clean forgot you were so pretty."

"What did you say, Tom?" she asked, thrusting her head above the robe to hear again the praise she feigned to miss.

"I had forgotten," he repeated, "that you were so confoundedly pretty."

"I should think you would have forgotten it," she retorted. "You gave yourself time enough to forget almost anything."

This unexpected show of spirit invested her with new piquancy, and he laughed aloud. At that moment the sleigh emerged upon the brow of the hill and caught the full force of the wind. A violent gust filled her hood and threw it back upon her shoulders, disclosing, as by the touch of a magician's wand, the mass of soft curls blowing wildly about her little head, her flushed cheeks and shining eyes. She saw the wide, desolate sweep of the valley, dotted here and there with twinkling lights, the belt of crimson against the distant hills; and then she saw his eyes bending near her own, as if they would drink in the beauty of every line of her face and every curl. His head blotted out the western sky, and their lips met.

The sleigh began to drop below the hill, faster and faster, and her pulses kept time to the jingling of the bells. Without premeditation she had struck a new note in their relationship. The resentment which she had scarcely acknowledged to herself had grown during the weeks of unmerited neglect, and its expression had given her an advantage, had filled him with strange pleasure. He would find it harder to stay away from her so long again. From now on she was armed with a new knowledge of her lover.

Emmet too was seeing new light. He did like opposition in a woman, but not that of a superior mind and a higher station. He would have enjoyed the tingle of Lena's little hand smiting his cheek, that helpless little hand which he could so easily control. Out of this special indulgence which he allowed himself sprang an unexpected menace for the future.

"Where are you taking me, Tom?" she asked presently.

"To Hillside," he answered, "for supper. I can have you home by eight o'clock. There's no hurry about your getting back?"

"Oh, no," she assured him. "The housekeeper thinks I have gone to my sister's."

"Then you are still at the bishop's?"

"Yes—and with very little to do. I get rather lonely sometimes."

"And Miss Wycliffe didn't take you with her as her maid? I should have thought she would."

He longed to ask her about the scene attending the discovery of the ring, and to find out just what his wife had said. Of course she had not told the truth, but a new suspicion of Lena's astuteness made him cautious. He was impressed by the fact that Felicity had left Lena behind. Had she loved him wholly, would she not have made every effort to keep her rival from his path? Was this her way of showing that she refused to regard a servant in such a light? Or was it thus that she put him upon his honour? At the thought he winced with a consciousness of guilt. A third explanation occurred to his mind. Perhaps she left Lena behind, like a bait in a trap, with the old housekeeper as spy. This was a mean thought, he knew, suggested by his own duplicity, but he resolved to act upon the supposition and to avoid all danger.

"She spoke of taking me," Lena said, "but changed her mind, and left me to help take care of the house."

She too had questions to ask, but instinctively she shrunk from disturbing the deep content of the present moment. The road they travelled was not the one Leigh had taken that October afternoon when he made his bicycle trip to Hillside, but a parallel way about half a mile to the south. As they neared the other side of the valley, Emmet took a cross-cut back to the northern road and passed her house, without knowing that the place at which she glanced in passing was her home. She had no desire to tell him, for it seemed mean and homely in her eyes. She saw her father's silhouette on the curtain, his corncob pipe in his mouth, and while she would have liked to exhibit her lover to her family, she was ashamed of their rustic ways and feared the impression they might make upon the mayor of Warwick.

The village of Hillside was typical of the country. In summer time a stream dropping down from the hills turned the wheels of a large paper mill. There was a general store, a post-office, a white, wooden Congregational church with four Corinthian pillars, and an inn dating from Colonial days, as its swinging sign-board, adorned with the blurred image of a Revolutionary soldier, bore witness. This inn, "The Old Continental," had recovered from its moribund condition with the advent of the automobile, and was often the scene of gay supper parties from Warwick. It had received a new coat of yellow paint and a new roof, but the Society for the Preservation of Colonial Landmarks had decreed that the figure of the soldier on the sign-board should remain untouched by the brush. Thus the uniform that had once shone so spick and span in streaks of buff and blue would better recall the ragged regimentals of the well-known poem.

The distance from Warwick was ten miles, but it still lacked something of six o'clock when Emmet drove into the stable, blanketed his mare, and lifted his companion from the sleigh. He led her through a side door and into a small room that had formerly been the kitchen. Here, in a huge brick fireplace, blazing logs threw out a dancing light that glinted on the polished mahogany table and quaint chairs, and disclosed the dark red walls and brown beams, as well as several highly coloured English coaching scenes.

Lena seated herself close to the blaze, and glanced up at the sooty arch above her head with small appreciation of the historic memories of the place, of the archaeological interest inherent in the swinging crane and twisted andirons. It did not occur to her, as it would have occurred to many visitors, to open the doors of the baking-ovens at the side and to peer within. If she thought at all of these things, it was merely to realise their inconvenience, and to be reminded of the similar room in her own home.

And yet, though she did not know it, she was eligible to membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. Her ancestors had taken their muskets from just such chimney places to go forth and fight the British. Only, they had never kept their family records, their descendants had never climbed high in the world; and now one of them was sitting in her own appropriate environment, suggesting in her sweet face, her curling hair and slender figure, in the very cape thrown over the back of the chair, the familiar picture of Priscilla.

It was Emmet, an American of only one generation, who reminded her of the legend that Washington had stopped there overnight on his way to take command of the army in Cambridge; but she was too deeply absorbed in thinking how handsome he was and how much he seemed the mayor to listen with attention to his remarks. She took his intellectual interests for granted, and accepted as a matter of course his larger knowledge of a history that was his merely by adoption. Love was her mental theme and the sum of all her interests, not academic speculations concerning the effect upon America of the great Irish immigration of the last century, of which indeed she had never even heard.

She had not observed his quick, keen glance at the stalls of the stable, nor noted his relief when he found them empty. They two had the house entirely to themselves, but the larger dining-room, seen through the open door, suggested guests, for the tables were set and the lights turned low.

"Yes, sir," the waiter answered in reply to his question, "there's a party due here at six-thirty from Warwick. Mr. Cobbens is bringing 'em out."

"Then hurry up," Emmet commanded. "Bring us something hot, and be quick about it."

The man did not know him; there was consolation in that. But Emmet realised the necessity of getting away before the party should arrive. There seemed a fatality in the coincidence that he and Cobbens should cross each other's path twice in the same day, when often they did not meet for a fortnight.

As Lena Harpster drank her coffee and noted her lover's increasing uneasiness, she gave no sign of her resentment, part of which was due to the unwillingness of a sensuous nature to leave a warm corner by the fire on a winter night. Her awakened sense of power made her for the first time rebellious of being hustled out of sight and kept in the dark. The struggle between her and Emmet was on in earnest, and her heart beat fast with a resolve to delay him there until they should be seen together.

It was quarter after six when the jingle of bells was heard before the door, and Cobbens's voice calling loudly for the stable-man. Even then there was time to escape. Emmet had only to pay his bill and slip quickly out the side door as his enemy entered at the front. Lena too saw the chance and started from her chair, her eyes fixed upon his with instinctive questioning and submission, all her high resolves forgotten in the actual crisis. Their respective attitudes at that moment were singularly characteristic. She was now poised for instant flight, with something of the air of a creature of the wild whose safety lies in speed of wing or foot; he, who had thought to steal away unobserved, now threw the thought contemptuously aside. A dull glow of anger spread slowly over his handsome features, and his jaw grew rigid.

"Sit down, Lena," he said peremptorily. "Sit down."

She sank into her chair again, grasping the arms with her thin, white fingers.

"What's the matter with your supper?" he asked with a short laugh. "Have you lost your appetite?"

She took up her spoon once more, but her hand trembled, and she was forced to steady it against the table.

Cobbens entered the door, throwing back his great-coat and tugging at his gloves, to meet Emmet's slow turn of the head and forbidding stare. It was the look of one who feels himself intruded upon and waits in no very amiable mood for an apology. The rest of the party followed, six in all, and Emmet recognised Mrs. Parr, Felicity's neighbour and friend, among them. The worst had come to pass. Of Cobbens's malice there could be no doubt, but in all probability he had not observed Lena in the bishop's house during her short stay there before her mistress's departure. Mrs. Parr, however, was in and out daily; and what more choice bit of gossip could she write to her friend than an account of this unexpected meeting? If there was any momentary doubt in his mind, it was dispelled by her action. One sharp look told her all she wished to know; then she turned her back upon her friend's servant and the mayor of Warwick with ostentatious indifference, holding out her hands to the blaze and chatting of the inclemency of the weather. The others followed her example, closing in about the fire, as if utterly unconscious of the two of whose presence they were in reality so acutely aware. Cobbens alone chose a different course.

"Ah, Emmet," he said, with easy familiarity, and in a tone that displayed a distinct relish for the situation, "I did n't mean to interrupt your tete-a-tete, but the fact is, I had engaged the place for dinner—wired out this afternoon, just before you beat me so handsomely on the avenue. That's a fine pacer of yours. If you want to part with her at any time, I hope you 'll give me a chance to make you an offer."

"I believe the waiter told me you were coming at six-thirty," Emmet answered coolly, glancing at his watch. "Miss Harpster and I were counting on another ten minutes to finish our supper."

If the speaker's first stare had failed of its effect, his words now interpreted it and gave it significance. The lawyer's jauntiness dropped off, as if a modicum of respect for this man had found its way into his calculating soul. Here was no poor devil of a conductor, but the mayor of Warwick, a very different person; and though he was surprised in an adventure of gallantry, he intended to carry it off with a high hand, as nobody's business but his own. Cobbens reflected that the mayor's companion might well be a respectable girl, perhaps his fiancee. Now he was quick to see his trespass and to mend his manner.

"Why, of course," he assented graciously. "Don't let us hurry you. The fact is, we all came in here before we noticed the room was occupied, to leave our wraps. Quaint old place, isn't it? I fancy Washington could have touched the ceiling with his hand. There's a fire in the larger room, I believe."

The party took the hint and filed out in silence, leaving Emmet and Lena in possession of the field. But to the mayor the victory appeared only half won, for Lena had risen to her feet at their first entrance, as if to remain standing in the presence of her superiors, thereby discounting his own assurance. Now she flushed beneath his look of speechless indignation and reproach. If she had only supported him! If she had only realised what a beauty she was in contrast with the other women! As superior as he knew himself to be to that little Cobbens, or to the bland and elephantine husband of Mrs. Parr.

No words now passed between them, but in the other room the chatter continued, though in a more subdued key. Emmet knew well that they were only waiting for him to depart to break forth into excited comments; and presently he heard the phrase, "What assurance!" followed by a lull, as if some one had made a cautioning gesture. Then the somewhat dilapidated piano began to tinkle, as it could tinkle only under the mincing fingers of Mrs. Parr. Had her random notes been given a name, they might have been called Mrs. Parr's Tale of a Wayside Inn.

Emmet realised that the fat was in the fire. If he were only free, he reflected bitterly, how little he would now care what they thought or said! He would take Lena as his wife and make a lady of her, and force her down their throats by the power of the money he meant to win. Position was something, but money everything. Let him once get their husbands and sons in his debt, and every door would open wide. With Felicity as his wife, his acceptance was assured; but in his present mood he scorned to make his entry in such a manner. Now, if he spelled aright the handwriting on the wall, he might remain forever on the outside of the citadel he had thought to storm. He rose to his feet and paid his bill with a rueful conviction that he had fought not wisely, though so well.

The very action, the very throwing down of the money, somehow restored his earlier exhilaration, the assurance of a man who can pay the bill. It seemed symbolic of future accounts of whatever kind, all of which he meant to square. The web he had woven for himself was now so complete, his discomfiture so inevitable, that his spirits rose to meet the odds he had arrayed against himself.

Lena, divining his change of moods, but little realising their depths and heights, was tenderly grateful. He had stood up for her before them all, and her wildest hope was fulfilled. As they drove from the inn yard, she seized his left hand, which he was about to thrust into his glove, and pressed it tremulously to her lips. In this way she thanked him for what she thought he had done for her, for what in reality he could never do; and at the touch of her soft lips his accusing conscience spoke to him in no uncertain voice.

During the homeward drive she was unexpectedly easy upon him. An innate womanly tact warned her not to speak of the incident as committing him to her before the world. For the second time that evening she showed the wisdom of a daughter of Eve in dealing with one of the sons of men; but her gaiety, a new sparkle in her eyes, a new vibration in her laugh, told him unmistakably the secret joyousness of her heart. He had a glimpse also of what she might be under happier circumstances; he saw how the bud which was even now so sweet could unfold in love's sunlight; he imagined the possibility of their life together; but none the less he determined that now at last he must break away from her forever.

The immutable fact remained that he was married to Felicity. Though he had ceased to attend his own church from the days of his boyhood, the Catholic doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage remained as one of his traditions, and this too in spite of the fact that he had been married by a Protestant priest. He had not committed the one sin which his wife's church recognised as the only cause for divorce. There was no escape from his obligation, provided his wife would forgive him and take him back. Her wrong to him had borne the bitter fruit of his wrong to this defenceless girl. Let her come back—she could not come too soon—and face him with his faithlessness. He would tell her what she had done, and bid her to forgive him or not, as she chose.

The wind was now at their backs, and having slackened its velocity until it approximated their pace, it seemed to have died down altogether, leaving them to glide along in a dead calm. Emmet looked up at the stars, which had never seemed to shine with such peculiar brilliancy, and thought of Leigh. There was the one man in whom he could confide. None of his old acquaintances could be trusted with such a vital secret. The astronomer bore no part in the struggles and jealousies about him. His very occupation at that moment invested him in Emmet's eyes with something of the impartiality and spiritual aloofness of the seer. It did not occur to him to seek the help of the confessional, to make his peace with the church from whose instruction, even as a boy, he had fled to the public schools, in spite of his mother's disapproval and the angry protests of his parish priest. That very night he would go to Leigh, if not for advice, at least for sympathy and understanding.

Immersed in such thoughts, he said little, but from time to time he drew Lena to him and kissed her, not with his former intensity, but with a softening sense of impending farewell. They had come within sight of the towers of St. George's Hall, looming against the pale horizon, when she threw him into sudden panic.

"Tom, dear," she said, "did you know that Miss Wycliffe took away the ring you gave me?"

"Took it away?" he echoed.

"Yes; she said it belonged to her, and that she had lost it in the car. Of course, I had to give it up." After vacillating in delicate hesitation she went on. "I did n't mind losing the ring so very much, since it was really hers, but I was a little hurt that you did n't buy me a ring."

He winced perceptibly, and she hastened to make her peace.

"What a queer old thing it was! I liked it at first because you gave it to me, though it seemed to have an unlucky look, somehow. I 'd much rather have had just a little ring, with a solitary diamond in it."

"Did you tell her where you got it?" he demanded abruptly.

"She asked who gave me the ring, and I told her. But I did n't tell her we were engaged, or anything like that."

"What did you tell her, then?" he persisted.

"Just that you gave me the ring, Tom. Then she told me you must have found it in the car."

"I suppose she blamed me for not returning the thing to the office," he suggested.

His effort to appear indifferent did not escape her awakened perception. She suffered again the pang of losing him that had brought her to her knees on that dreadful night, and fluttered toward him in terror.

"Oh, no, Tom," she cried. "She did n't say anything about that, but she seemed angry with me, though she was so quiet. I thought, Tom,—how foolish you will think me,—that she loved you and meant to take you away from me!"

He laughed harshly. "She love me!"

The bitter incredulity of his accent was too pronounced to be feigned, as indeed it was not, and she lifted her head, reassured. "I might have known it," she said, dashing away her tears with a tremulous little laugh, "but I loved you so. And she warned me against you. She said you meant nothing good by me. I suppose she thought you would want to marry a lady, now that you are mayor; but at the time I felt somehow that she wanted you for herself!"

A subtler and more highly developed man would have foreseen all this suffering from the first; he would have sown the wind with some knowledge of the whirlwind to come. But Emmet was a child in matters feminine, and he stood aghast at the thought of the probable effect upon Lena of the inevitable discovery of the truth. If the very fancy caused her such grief, what would she do when she found out that her imagination had been prophetic? A frantic desire to postpone the blow that must fall upon her so soon gave him the skill of a Faustus. He scoffed at the absurdity of her fear, and a bitter conviction of his wife's selfishness gave his arguments the ring of truth. Only, when he drew a picture of the difference between his social position and that of women of Miss Wycliffe's class, she stopped him with the assertion that not one of them, with all their money, was worthy to be his wife. She added humbly that she knew how little worthy she was herself.

As if the approaching end of their journey drove her on to lay her soul bare before him, she told him every detail of that interview with her mistress in her room, down to the moment when she had groped blindly for the window and looked out through her tears to see him pass.

He had planned to leave her some distance from the bishop's house, but now caution was useless. The street, however, was deserted thereabouts, though the night was still young, and no one saw their farewell. As he drove away and glanced back to see her figure still motionless against the snow, he experienced some of the punishment that comes to him who plays at ducks and drakes with a woman's heart.



CHAPTER XII

THE CONFESSION

An hour later, Emmet approached the college through the maple walk with very different feelings from those he had entertained when he watched the sunset behind the towers. Then he had felt the glory of individualism, his own vivid power as opposed to the lethargy of institutions. But his recent experience had started the pendulum back, and now it swung to the other extreme. His self-confidence had been followed by an exhibition of weakness. He who could defy and control men was helpless before the eyes of a woman; he who had burned with indignation at the corrupt politics of his enemies, who had sacrificed his interests to principle by showing Bat Quayle the door, had gone forth and sacrificed his principles to his pleasure at the very first opportunity.

Though by nature objective rather than introspective, his experiences since his first meeting with Felicity were teaching him by hard blows the rudiments of his own psychology. Had he been unmoral, he would have remained unscrupulous and unreflecting, but the claims of right would not down. He saw the better way and approved it, but followed the worse, and his knowledge of this inconsistency was gall and bitterness to his soul. He was as genuinely repentant as it is possible for a healthy man to be while the taste of life is still sweet; yet without doubt a large measure of his repentance was the fear of discovery. In the recesses of his mind lurked a hope that Leigh would be able to show him some way out of the labyrinth, would somehow help him to escape the consequences of his misdeeds.

Born a Catholic, his instinctive attitude toward the established order of things was that of a dissenter. Yet here were religion and learning coming back, and not in vain, to claim their penny of tribute. He had defied the authority of the Church, and had nevertheless accepted her doctrine of the sanctity of marriage; he had scorned the College, and now he turned by preference to one of her representatives, influenced, in spite of prejudice and disillusioning experience, by respect for her ideals. There she loomed, seeming monolithic in her solidity, a part of the rock on which she was built, her windows sending out shafts of light into the surrounding darkness, an allegory in stone.

As he passed the windows, he saw within characteristic glimpses of college life. Half a dozen students were gathered about a fireplace with their pipes, clothed in every variety of garment from the sweater or bath-robe to the evening dress of one who had dropped in for a chat on his way to a dance. In another room a game of cards was in progress; in still a third a thoughtful plodder sat close to his shaded lamp, his head resting upon his hand, an open book before him. Somewhere above he heard a piano played with brilliancy and dash, and the rollicking chorus of the college song:—

Then we 'll drink to old St. George, (By George!) Then we 'll drink to our valiant knight, With his trusty spear, And never a fear, And the dragon pinned down tight, tight, tight, And the dragon pinned down tight!

Emmet listened to the refrain with a curious mixture of envy and contempt. Many a time these fellows had taken his car and discussed football news with him, but at no time, in his hearing, had their conversation indicated intellectual interests or risen even to the level of the socialistic problems that were dear to his heart. He had yet to learn more of college life than is disclosed by the sporting clique to a street-car conductor; but with characteristic self-assurance he thought he had penetrated to the very heart of the machine. The quiet and unobtrusive student, the leaven of the loaf, the future poet or statesman, had never attracted his attention or that of men of his kind. They saw only what was on the surface. It was the froth of college life that gave him a not unwelcome excuse to form caustic generalisations upon a privileged class.

He hurried along, relieved to meet no one on the walk, for there were few who would not have recognised him, and his mood was all for concealment. Observing from without that the light in Leigh's windows was dim, he concluded that he was still upon the tower and went on up the stairs, striking match after match to guide his steps. As he paused to extinguish the embers, he encountered the blank darkness of the walls, relieved by ghostly slits of windows holding here and there a star; and the hollow drumming of the wind was like the sea. It was a release to emerge at last from this series of aerial prisons and to stand beneath the wide sweep of the sky. In answer to his knock Leigh opened the door and confronted him, clothed like a Siberian Cossack.

"Still at it, professor?" Emmet inquired. "I should think you would be frozen out."

"Come in, Mr. Emmet," Leigh answered. "This is a welcome interruption. I 've been working at a problem now for a month, and was just beginning to get a little lonely."

His eyes shone bright in the dim light and his face was somewhat thinner than Emmet had remembered it, but his manner was buoyant and alert. The visitor took a chair and glanced about him with interest, noting the changes that had been made since he last saw the place. He observed an improvised windbreak of canvas, and a charcoal brasier in the corner.

"And how do you manage to work that sliding roof in snowy weather?" he asked.

"A broom, a shovel, some salt to melt the ice, and a little oil for the wheels"—

"Well, I saw your telescope rising up above the towers about half-past four, and was so surprised to think that you were still taking observations that I came up to see how the place looked."

"I 'm making observations for the parallax of Arcturus," Leigh explained. "The atmosphere is clearer in winter, you know."

"How long might it take, now," Emmet asked jocosely, "to get at the facts?"

"Who knows? Others have been working at the same problem for twelve years."

Emmet emitted a low whistle. "What does it all amount to?" he demanded. "Suppose you do find the what's its name—parallax? It sounds like the name of some kind of weapon. Why don't you go in for some other line of business, before it's too late? There's the law, now—a short cut to politics. You could get somewhere in the world, if you did n't shut yourself up on this tower and spend your time in looking through that telescope."

The reproach was in reality a compliment, and Emmet would have been disappointed had his suggestion been received with favour.

"Since we 're comparing politics with astronomy," Leigh answered, "let me ask who was the governor of this State fifty years ago? Perhaps he spent a lifetime struggling for the place, and after his two years of office he was down and out for good, with the privilege of hanging his portrait among a hundred others on the walls of the State Library. But take any name connected with a scientific discovery, and it lasts as long as the world endures. Take even a lesser name—never mind your Galileos and Herschels. There's Asaph Hall, who discovered the moons of Mars, and already, before his death, he is enjoying his immortality."

"But I thought you told me the instrument was no good," Emmet persisted.

"Not as bad as that. It is n't what I should like, but a man must do something, even if it's only to keep in practice. It might stand him in stead some day in a larger place."

Emmet was too much absorbed in himself to catch the hint of restlessness these words conveyed. Leigh's profession, like the ministry, made him, in the mayor's eyes, a being apart from the life with which he was familiar. It naturally did not occur to him that the astronomer had been driven back to his duty by the scourge of suffering, much less that his own wife had wielded the whip. He saw only an inexplicable devotion to an ideal pursuit.

"Well," Leigh continued, with a sudden change of manner, "and how is the mayoralty getting on?"

Emmet's face darkened. "I had it out with Bat Quayle this morning and turned him down hard. He 'll get back at me sooner or later. But that is n't what I came up to see you about. The fact is, I 'm in trouble."

Leigh glanced tentatively at the sheets of paper on his table, covered with unfinished calculations, and hesitated; but his visitor's manner implied an urgent need.

"If I can be of any help to you"—he suggested.

"I'm not so sure of that," Emmet answered gloomily, "as that I want to tell some one what an awful fool I 've made of myself."

"There are others," Leigh replied, with a bitter grin. "I know a triple-expansion ass not a hundred miles from here; so fire away."

Emmet went over to the brasier and warmed his hands, as if embarrassed for words with which to begin. Leigh fumbled in the pocket of his greatcoat and produced his pipe, then drawing up his chair opposite, he sat down to listen. No premonition came to him at that moment that the story his visitor had to tell in any way concerned himself, or would deepen the even melancholy of his present days. He settled himself comfortably, with a sense of justifiable relaxation from toil. The troubles of another might arouse his intellectual sympathy, but they could add no burden to his heart. He even experienced a pleasurable curiosity. Emmet was to some degree a mysterious character to him, though he no longer thought of him in connection with Felicity. Her departure from Warwick had put an end to that suspicion, and made it something of which he was ashamed. He divined indeed that the trouble concerned a woman, but not the woman who had gone away with such evident indifference to any man in Warwick.

"Well, Emmet," he said at last, "here I am, all ears. Perhaps it will help you to a beginning if I suggest that there's a woman somewhere at the bottom of the trouble."

The other placed his chair snugly in the corner, buried his hands deep in his pockets, and looked at the brasier with a fixed stare. "It's not one woman," he began, with a sensible effort, "it's two. I don't know any better way to give you an idea of the tangle I've gotten myself into than by going back to the beginning of the story. About five years ago, I hadn't any more idea of going into politics than you have now. I was playing baseball in the summer and running a car in winter, and saving my money. My parents were both dead, and I was thinking that it was pretty near time for me to get married. I was never one to throw away my money with the boys,—it came too hard,—I didn't even smoke or drink, and"—

"That's a bad beginning," Leigh interrupted, shaking his head with mock seriousness. "No small vices—women."

Emmet took the comment with good humour. "No, I was n't an easy mark for women, either. I tell you my main idea was to get ahead, to save some money. I could n't stand poverty; I had seen too much of it. When I was a boy, I carried the washing for my mother after school hours. In summer I played baseball and hung around the race-track. If I had n't been so heavy, I 'd have become a jockey and made my fortune quicker; but anyhow I had ten thousand dollars salted away by the time I was twenty-five. I 'm thirty now."

Leigh was secretly somewhat amused by this prologue, which seemed to spring partly from the egotism of a self-made man, partly from an instinctive unwillingness to embark upon the confession to which he was committed. However, he was far from being bored. "I'm about thirty myself," he remarked, "and I'm worth about thirty cents. But that's a digression."

"Well, as I was saying," Emmet resumed, "I wasn't an easy mark for women. I had too much at stake to get tangled up that way, but I was thinking that it was pretty near time for me to find a wife. There's a lady in this town—you 'll hardly believe it—I did n't myself, at first—that took a fancy to me. She was rich and fashionable, and all that, the sort of woman I would n't have thought of in any such way; but gradually I began to notice that she took my car nearly every day. Even when she told me straight out that she preferred to ride with me, I did n't suspect anything, for she always had a pleasant word for all the boys. But after a while I woke up to the fact that she knew just when I would be at the City Hall, and managed her shopping so as to ride home with me. After that I began to take particular notice. When I took her fare, I was embarrassed by the look in her eyes. She had fine eyes, and a way of sizing me up that seemed to mean something. Sometimes our hands would touch for a moment, and then it was n't by accident; and by Christmas time I knew as well as if she had told me that if she was n't in love with me, she thought she was."

"You were a lucky dog," Leigh said, filling an impressive pause with the first chance comment that came to him. Afterward he wondered at the obstinate torpidity of his mind, for not even the reference to her deliberate look and fine eyes gave him the clew. All this talk of early hardship and of street-cars had put the narrator for the time on another level from that he now occupied in the world, and made his past seem his present. The very confession, and the manner of it, belittled the confessor, and Leigh took his characterisation of his admirer as rich and fashionable with a grain of salt, making some allowance for the point of view, some for natural vanity and a desire to impress him.

"I did n't think I was so lucky," the mayor answered simply. "Of course I was pretty well set up, but I never thought it would amount to anything, and it was a dangerous game to play. I was n't sure how far I could go, or how far she wanted me to go, and besides, I had mighty little chance to see her alone. There was always somebody near, and I thought if I overstepped the mark she might be offended, or her father might get on to it and have me fired for impertinence."

His listener suddenly abandoned his semi-recumbent position for one of alert attention and ceased smoking, not yet fully aware of the reason for his dawning excitement, except that the last words had called up a vision of Bishop Wycliffe to his mind. He was in a state of suspended perception, trembling upon the brink of a discovery he was loath to make, waiting with painful tension for more light.

"So I did n't even meet her halfway," Emmet was saying. "She kept asking me questions about my life, until little by little she knew all about me. But the thing that interested her most was the fact that I belonged to a union, and that I had read a good deal of political economy. Well, at Christmas time I got a box of books without any clew as to the sender, but of course I knew who sent them. They were Plato and Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and John Stuart Mill, and books of that kind. After that she began to talk to me, right before her friends or her father, of my studies. I read at the books, at first to please her and to have something to say about them, and then because I became interested. Her friends regarded me as one of her charities and began to patronise me, but all the time I knew she felt differently, though no one suspected it but ourselves.

"Just before I left the car to play ball in the spring, she said she hoped it would be the last time, for I was fit for something better. Several times she happened to be in Warwick that summer when we played there, and I saw her in the grand stand; and once, when I knocked a home run, I saw her wave her handkerchief to let me know she saw me do it. When I came back in the fall, we began with a new understanding. I had thought a good deal of her during the summer, and I knew she had of me. There was more between us than before, and it was only a question of time and opportunity before we should come together. We happened to take the same car one evening when I was off duty. All the way up we talked like two old friends, and when she reached her street, I helped her off and then walked over with her to her house on Birdseye Avenue."

A sharp crackling sound startled him into silence. Leigh had unconsciously been clenching the amber stem of his pipe with increasing intensity, and now it was ground to powder between his teeth. The meerschaum bowl fell to the floor, scattering a trail of sparks as it rolled away.

"Hello!" Emmet cried. "You 've broken your pipe."

Leigh was groping for the bowl and stamping out the sparks.

"The cold weather," he muttered, "makes the amber brittle. There must have been a flaw somewhere."

Long before Emmet had mentioned Birdseye Avenue, he had known the worst; but only then, when he remembered the two lovers whom he and Cardington had overtaken after the evening at Littleford's, did his emotion culminate in this unexpected expression. She had gone from his side, after he had made love to her and had taken the lilies of the valley he still cherished, to walk with her real lover, to congratulate him upon the triumph she had made her dupe describe. Now every incident connected with her fell into its proper place and appeared with its true meaning. He understood how he had been used from the first; the lurking figure by the fire in the woods was no longer a mystery; the scene on this very spot, when she had bent down to hand Emmet the candle, was explained. The whole story, in which he played the part of a meddler and a fool, was unrolled before him. Emmet—Emmet—Emmet—that had been her theme, and apparently her chief interest in life. Still, with a pitiful hope, he must needs have the final proof before believing. There was yet some remote possibility of a mistake, some question at least as to the extent of her infatuation for this man. He had spoken of two women. Perhaps Miss Wycliffe's abrupt departure was connected with a discovery of his unfaithfulness to her, and meant that she would cast him off forever. A wild hope that this might be so displaced his first despair. If that were all,—a mere ideal fancy which really did her credit,—perhaps she would return disillusioned, convinced of her mistake, and eager to bury its very memory forever.

He regained his seat, pale as a ghost, but with a wonderful effort he managed to smile.

Emmet reflected a moment. He had gone too far to retreat.

"Perhaps if her name were still Miss Wycliffe," he announced, "instead of Mrs. Emmet, it might be better for all concerned."

Only the semi-darkness of the place prevented him from seeing the effect of this disclosure. During the silence that ensued, the canvas of the windbreak flapped audibly, like the sail of a yacht responding to a rising breeze.

"You did n't expect that?" he demanded, gratified by the sensation he had created.

"No," Leigh heard himself reply, in a voice that sounded far away. "That makes it all the more—interesting. Then you were married secretly?"

"Not for two years or more; but we met from time to time. I can't help wondering now why nobody suspected the truth. Of course the boys chaffed me a good deal, and asked to be invited to the wedding, but they were miles short of guessing the real state of affairs. Sometimes I noticed her friends putting their heads together and knew they were discussing me, for they stopped whispering when I came up for their fares. But even so I heard casual remarks. Some said it was sweet of her—the way women talk, you know—and democratic, and others said it was no use trying to do anything for that kind of people."

"Mrs. Parr, for example?"

"Yes," Emmet burst out, his eyes flashing redly, "but I 'll show that singed cat yet what kind of people I am! I 'll show her and her whole damned set!" His anger almost choked him, and his face grew crimson. "She's part of the story, too," he went on, "but she does n't come in yet. However, if there were two people in Warwick that suspected anything serious, it was that woman and Professor Cardington."

"Not the bishop?" Leigh asked.

"I don't think so, though he did freeze me in that way of his that you can't put your finger on. He's as proud as Lucifer, and would as soon have thought of his daughter falling in love with some little Dago on the street as with me. But all the same, he did n't approve of her interest in me, and he managed to make it evident."

Leigh had a vision of the blow that awaited the bishop's pride. He even wondered whether the disclosure would kill him, but he made no comment. In his own heart a sense of anger deadened for the time being his sense of loss. Since his discovery of the fact that she was a married woman, her treatment of him appeared so much more heartless that he felt he could never forgive her.

"We were married in New York," Emmet explained. "It was in September. The bishop was off on a visitation; Mrs. Parr was in Europe. We met"—

"Never mind," Leigh interrupted, shrinking. "Tell me where the other woman comes in."

"That's just what I 'm coming to now. When we got back to Warwick,—we didn't come together, you understand,—I found out for the first time what I was in for. That was when my troubles began."

"You don't speak as if you loved her," the other said harshly. Was it for this she had thrown herself away? Fortunately Emmet was too much absorbed in himself to note the suppressed scorn and fury of his voice.

"I did n't get much chance for love, or much love from her, either," he said bitterly. "She kept me just where I was before. What did I get? A stolen interview and a kiss now and then, but plenty of advice and books and plans. She put me up to running for mayor; I 'm bound to say that. But she was n't to acknowledge me as her husband until I was elected. That was the plan, and I was fool enough to agree to it. You would n't believe it, but I did n't see her sometimes for weeks together. Last winter she even sailed off to Europe as cool as a cucumber, and left me alone to work out my salvation, as she called it. I worked it out, too. I worked the union for all it was worth. I got to be president and formed a secret league with the other unions, and we captured the Democratic nomination before the opposition knew what we were up to. All that took time and work, and gave me something to think about besides my married life. But when I saw Felicity after that, it was mostly to report progress and to get advice. God! It was more like going to my teacher than to my wife, and the thing became intolerable. She grew more mysterious to me all the time. She did n't seem like a natural woman, and I could n't understand her at all. Then I met the other woman at a lodge dance. I took her home and kissed her at the gate, partly because she was a pretty girl, and partly because I thought she expected it. I thought that would be the end of it, but it was n't. You know how those things grow into something you did n't expect. You can understand how I got in deeper and deeper, intending to break away all the time. If you 're the man I take you to be, you can't help understanding. You can't help seeing both sides of the question, and how I gradually got mixed with this girl without meaning any harm, until I discovered that we loved each other, and that my wife had kept me waiting till she had killed the love I once had for her, and the gratitude, too.

"The situation came to a head all at once. Just before the election, this girl goes to work for Felicity, and while there she wears a ring I let her have, which my wife had given me as a sort of kismet, or talisman, as she called it. Felicity sees it on her hand, follows her to her room, and gets it back, after having found out all she wanted to know, but without telling anything herself. Then, instead of coming to me after the election, she sent me a note to let me know that she had found me out, and off she went to Bermuda with her father."

"I see," said Leigh coldly, "but I don't see yet where I come in."

"I want your advice, as a friend," Emmet returned. He was still unsuspicious of anything amiss in his auditor, and went on to tell of the adventure that followed his good resolutions: of his race on the avenue; of his unexpected meeting with Lena and his sudden fall; of the encounter at the inn. Something of the eloquence which Leigh had heard from him on the platform glowed in the apologetic passages of his narrative. If the astronomer had never known and loved Felicity himself, he could not have failed to be impressed by the man's evident struggle; he would have appreciated his repentance; he would have blamed his wife for her conduct, and would have realised that her need of sympathy was less than Lena's in proportion as her love was less, in proportion as her resources and her pride were greater. As it was, he would have been more than human had he taken such a comprehensive view of the tragedy, and his judgment went bitterly against the man who had dared to esteem lightly the gift which he felt he would have given his all to possess.

"Now," Emmet said, in conclusion, "you 're a friend of mine and a friend of my wife's, and I thought—perhaps"—

"You want me to be a go-between?" Leigh demanded. "You want me to help you win her back?"

"That's what I was thinking of," the mayor replied. "Tell her I mean to do the right thing, that I meant to all along. Somehow I think she 'll understand better if you tell her. You stand halfway between us, and can see both points of view. Now that I 'm mayor and established in life, the bishop need n't feel that he 'd be disgraced by the marriage. I can hold my own with the old gentleman now. She 's my wife, and I want her to acknowledge it. The account is pretty even as things stand, I take it."

Leigh smiled scornfully at Emmet's claim of social equality with the bishop, based upon his position as mayor. Not that office, but only the fact that he was Felicity's husband, would give him an entrance into the bishop's house, and the claim seemed to him boastful and vulgar. He rose abruptly to his feet, every muscle tense.

"No, I can't see both points of view," he said hoarsely. "I can see only her point of view, what she is, what she meant to do for you, what she gave you"—

"What she gave me!" Emmet echoed, springing to his feet in turn. "Hold on, professor. Be fair to a man. She gave me nothing that a wife should give, I tell you, nothing! She left me at the very door of the church and went off alone"—

"What!" Leigh cried. His revulsion of feeling was so great that he tottered and leaned against the wall for support. Only one thought possessed him, that she was not in reality this man's wife, after all. In the face of her desertion, the mere words of the marriage ceremony were as nothing.

"Why, man," he said, taking Emmet suddenly by the shoulder, as if he would shake a comprehension of his words into him, "you're not married, before God you're not married. What priestcraft notion has gotten hold of you? I tell you it's all a mistake. You've both made a mistake—and you've both found it out. Do you suppose, if she really loved you, she would have gone away like that, without giving you a chance to explain? If you really loved her, would you have kissed the first pretty girl that came in your way? I help you to win her back! Get her back yourself, if you can. I hope you can't do it. I don't wish you the luck you don't deserve. Don't come to me with your troubles!"

Emmet wrenched himself violently away and stood aghast.

"You love her yourself," he said, in a voice of wonder.

"And if I do," Leigh retorted defiantly, "what is that to you?"

"Nothing," Emmet answered, "nothing." And turning like one stupefied, he walked slowly away without another word.



CHAPTER XIII

FURNITURE AND FAMILY

It was not without a painful self-consciousness that Leigh and Emmet met again after their strange interview on the tower. In a city of between fifty and one hundred thousand people, with comparatively few large arteries of trade, a chance encounter sooner or later was inevitable. It occurred one afternoon in a large crowd of Christmas shoppers. Either would have been glad of a forewarning and a chance to look casually in another direction, but neither was prepared, when they came face to face, to give the cut direct. Their greeting was scarcely more than a nod, and showed their mutual constraint. Leigh read in Emmet's bold eyes a warning such as an injured husband might convey to the man that had wronged him, and a defiant reassertion of himself after his humiliating confession. He suspected also, what indeed was the truth, that the discovery of his own feeling for the bishop's daughter had opened Emmet's eyes anew to her value, and had cleared them of the mists of passion for the unfortunate Lena Harpster. From now on the mayor would do his best to win his wife back. He had the bearing of one who had recovered his poise and meant to yield no inch of ground.

Leigh, absorbed in the impression he had received, was unconscious of the one he had given, of his somewhat repellent expression when he saw the mayor's square figure bearing down upon him. Yet his emotion was less personal and intense than the other's in proportion as he was less primitive by nature and training. He distinguished between Emmet the mayor and Emmet the lover; for he was familiar with the phenomenon of official probity combined with a lack of that quality in some personal relationship. Had Emmet's quandary been presented to him abstractly, he would have been quite tolerant in his judgement, with the understanding of a man of the world; but, in spite of resentment and chagrin, he still continued to love Felicity Wycliffe, and this fact made him scornful of the man who had trampled her gift under foot. But would Felicity continue to give?

Leigh believed that she had awakened from her delusion; but what direction would her pride now take? Would she continue in the course she had chosen in sheer perversity, in sheer fidelity to herself? There was also the attraction of extreme opposites to be reckoned with, the fascination which a man of simple psychology, of strength and wholesome good looks, might possess for a woman of great subtlety and cultivation. Yet what could he do to prevent it? With what grace could he attempt to open her eyes to her husband's ulterior motives in seeking a reconciliation, now that she knew of his own love for her? Could he advise her to get a divorce on some technical ground, that she might marry the man who had opened her eyes to the truth? And how could he assume that to her he was an element in the situation?

After his first emotion in learning that she had never lived with her husband, and his consequent conviction that she regarded the marriage as a mistake, the ceremony itself loomed up as a grim fact, one not to be brushed aside by ingenious arguments. Behind it, as a prop to its stability, was the strict tradition of Christianity, an inheritance of peculiar influence with both the participants in the strange mistake. There was no cause for divorce which either of their respective churches recognised as valid; at least, so he believed, for he did not doubt that Emmet had told him the whole truth in regard to Lena Harpster, and he felt sure that he would now avoid the very appearance of evil. He recognised also that he was the recipient of a confession he must regard as sacred. Felicity must not know he shared her secret. His part must be merely that of a spectator of a drama.

These were his thoughts as he wandered from place to place, trying to convince himself that he had reached a point of renunciation; but as often as her face rose up before him he wavered in his resolution, and went back to the conviction that she really did not love the man who was only technically her husband. Might not her treatment of himself be capable of a more favourable interpretation than his first anger and chagrin had put upon it? He felt that it would depend upon her, when she returned, whether he could maintain a feigned indifference.

He purchased a pipe for Cardington, and ultimately found himself in a large department store turning over the volumes on the book counter in search of a gift for his father. Presently he heard a voice at his elbow.

"Are you engaged in Christmas shopping too, Mr. Leigh?"

He turned and saw Mrs. Parr looking at him tentatively, her hands full of bundles. A remembrance of his rudeness to her at Littleford's caused him to welcome this opportunity to make amends. She was Felicity's nearest friend, and perhaps she would mention her name. Moreover, the fact that Emmet suspected her of having divined his secret, and her meeting with him and Lena at the inn, gave her a new interest in his eyes.

"Yes, Mrs. Parr," he returned. "I'm doing as well as a mere man can be expected to do, which is n't very well. Perhaps you can come to my assistance."

She placed her bundles on the counter with alacrity, and her thin, gloved hand hovered over the rows of volumes.

"You must give me some hint as to the destination of the gift," she declared, turning upon him with a sparrow-like motion of the head and a significant smile.

"No," he said, laughing at her intimation, "it isn't what you suspect. I want a book for an old-fashioned gentleman, past middle life. There seems to be nothing here but the latest novels."

"As to that," she responded, "the bishop reads everything, from the Talmud to a Nick Carter detective story."

"Neither of the classics you mention will fit the present case, however."

"I know!" she cried. "'The Bible in Spain.' You need n't look dubious; it is n't a Sunday-school book, as you might think from the title. You may be sure that Felicity Wycliffe would n't like insipid literature, and this is one of her favourite books."

Leigh's dubious look had not been due to ignorance of the book, but to a doubt as to whether his father possessed it. On reflection, he thought the choice a safe one, and his reply left his adviser undisturbed in her conviction that she was admitting him into the select circle of Borrovians.

"The recommendation goes," he said. "Not," he corrected himself, "that I would not have purchased it upon yours alone, Mrs. Parr."

"Oh, I'm not vain of my knowledge of books," she assured him. "Miss Wycliffe is my literary conscience. I do miss her so much! When she 's away, I 'm only half a person, I declare; and when she 's here, I 'm just nobody at all, because I lose myself in her."

"You make the friendships of men pale into insignificance," he remarked jestingly, yet not without a new respect, inspired by this glimpse of her capacity for loyalty to one who overshadowed her.

"If you only knew her!" she said. "But you don't."

He could not help wondering which of them knew the more about one great incident in her life, but he merely echoed her words with a rueful conviction of his own: "No, I don't."

She regarded him with sympathetic understanding. Of course he was infatuated with Felicity, like many others, and undoubtedly his chances were as remote as theirs.

"Now tell me," she said, "what you are going to get for the rest of your family."

"That's what I want you to tell me," he answered.

"Follow me, then," she said brightly, "and I 'll see that you don't get imposed upon."

He took the book and her bundles, and they left the counter on the best of terms. Though he was hopelessly in love with another, a knowledge of Mrs. Parr's partiality for him lent a certain charm to his manner. Without attaching any weight to the fancy Miss Wycliffe had told him of, he was sufficiently human to enjoy being liked and to make some response. At his first meeting with Mrs. Parr she had seemed merely insignificant; at Littleford's he had found her irritating; now, to his astonishment, he discovered in her worship of Felicity her attractive side. When they finally left the shop with their accumulated purchases, she insisted that he follow her into the sleigh and go to her home for a cup of tea.

"People are so inconsiderate during the Christmas season," she chattered. "Now I never have my things sent home at this time of year, when the delivery men are so overworked; and I don't even bother the boys to carry them out to the sleigh for me, unless I positively have to. John and I do our shopping together, don't we, John?"

The coachman touched his hat with his whip in acknowledgement of the copartnership in humanitarianism, and deftly steered his horses into the open street. "I belong to a league of women," she went on, "who have agreed not to go shopping in the late afternoons, and not to have the things they can carry sent by the delivery waggons. I don't know how many printed slips I have sent out requesting shoppers to use the same consideration. We looked up nearly every name in the directory. This is the third year we 've done it."

"That's why I did n't receive a copy of your communication," he remarked. "My name 's not in the directory yet."

"You would n't believe what fun Felicity always makes of us," she said. "She pretends that we are trying to excuse people from doing what they are paid to do."

He was able to see how the virtue of the league could appeal to Felicity's sense of humour, even though she might accept its suggestion.

"There 's that man!" she cried, suddenly stiffening. "It seems to me I can never go down-town without meeting the horrid creature somewhere, strutting along as if he owned the town, just because a lot of ruffians have made him mayor. But I believe Felicity has won you over to her strange point of view."

"Emmet is n't at all a bad mayor," he returned. "I happen to know that he has refused to have anything to do with Bat Quayle, the political boss of the worst element of his party. What do you say to that?"

"That you have been misinformed," she answered implacably, "or that he has gone back on his word, and now refuses to pay his political debts."

"In either case you don't leave him a leg to stand on. Still, I can only reiterate my conviction in regard to his political honesty, and wait for developments."

"I notice you don't make any claims for his private character," she retorted, giving him a severe glance. "But men have their own code of morals, and always stand by each other. Now I happen to know that he is running around with one of Felicity's servants. Out at the Old Continental, the other evening, we found them in possession of a room we had engaged for dinner. He practically ordered us out of the place until he and Miss Harpster, as he called her, chose to take their departure. Did you ever hear of such a thing in your life?"

"Never," he answered. "Emmet would be quite a catch for her, would n't he?"

She threw up her hands with a gesture of infinite scorn. "He never in this world intends to marry her. I 'm sure of that."

He wondered whether she guessed how truly she had spoken, but her face was sphinx-like in its hard acerbity. She seemed to shrink and grow pinched with the intensity of her emotion, and her next words, spoken almost as a soliloquy, showed the trend of her thoughts.

"I had n't quite made up my mind to write to Felicity yet, but now I will, this very night. She ought not to let such a girl stay in the house. But I 'm afraid my writing will only make her determined—she 's so perverse."

The words only completed his mystification. It now occurred to him that this might be merely the excessive virtue of a New Englander, that Mrs. Parr merely wished to save her friend from the mortification of a scandal belowstairs in her house. Her prejudice against Emmet was sufficient to explain her belief in his bad intentions regarding Lena Harpster.

"On second thoughts I sha'n't do it," she declared, with a curious gleam in her eyes; then she closed her lips firmly, as if to dismiss the subject.

Leigh could only guess why she had changed her mind, and had suddenly decided to let matters take their course. Assuming that she knew nothing of Emmet's true relationship with Felicity and thought merely that her friend was infatuated with him, it was possible that she might even welcome a moral breakdown on Emmet's part, provided it would open Felicity's eyes to his true quality. He was tempted to believe that Mrs. Parr would willingly let Lena be sacrificed to accomplish this result. The various possibilities that lay concealed behind his companion's enigmatical features were bewildering, and the subject was too delicate for further probing. As the fine vista of Birdseye Avenue opened up before them, he turned the subject by remarking that Christmas never seemed so truly Christmas as in New England. The dictum was a happy one.

"Yes," she assented with fervour, "and is n't Warwick beautiful? I never go away, even to Europe, without realising when I come back that Warwick is the most beautiful place in the world. Thank God, I was born and brought up in New England!"

"And thank God, I was n't!" he retorted.

"What do you mean by that?" she demanded, turning upon him with shocked asperity.

"I merely mean that my view would have been limited for life to the vista that may be obtained from the steps of the First Church—not that it is n't a fine one, in its way."

The genial banter of his tone softened her resentment to curiosity.

"Where in Heaven's name were you brought up?" she asked.

"Let me see. An account of my peregrinations would read like a list of most of the States of the Union. One gets an idea of the country by such a nomadic existence, and does n't make the mistake of supposing that the tail wags the dog, instead of the dog wagging the tail."

"I suppose you mean to imply that New England is the tail," she said with trembling intensity, "when every one knows it's the head and brains of the country. I've never been west of Niagara Falls, and I 'm proud of it."

"You have reason to be," he replied with gravity. "I was only testing your loyalty. Where is our Mecca of patriotism and literature, if it is n't New England? My remark about the New England Christmas was suggested by a memory of 'Snow-Bound,' which was one of the classics of my youth, when I used to look out discontentedly upon our inferior Western brand of snow."

"I can't make you out," she said.

When they entered the house, she laid aside her wraps and gave him a cup of tea, supplemented by the thinnest of thin wafers, after which she conducted him from room to room on a tour of inspection.

"Are you interested in Colonial furniture?" she questioned.

"I 'm anxious to learn enough about it to get interested," he assured her. "I see you have a great deal of it here."

"A great many people have," she answered. "It's easy enough to pick up imitations in the second-hand shops, or to ransack country houses; but these pieces are all genuine and have been in the family for generations. There are three Chippendales that belonged to my grandfather on my mother's side, Colonel Styles, and this is a Sheraton. That mahogany table with the low-hanging leaves is a genuine Pembroke. Do you see that newel-post? It's the only thing in the house we did n't inherit. We got it from the old Putney mansion when they were tearing it down to make room for the library. When I heard they were destroying the house, I sent Mr. Parr there to see what he could pick up, and he found this beautiful thing thrown in the corner, as if it had no value at all. Think of it!"

Leigh owned that it was a prize of no small value.

"You may say so," she went on, warming to the subject, "and it cost us twenty-five dollars. When they found out we wanted it, they put up the price. Mrs. Bradford has never gotten over it that we stole a march on her, for she meant to get it herself. Do you know Mrs. Bradford?"

"Miss Wycliffe made me acquainted with her at Littleford's. I remember hearing that she was prominent in the First Church and very much interested in historical relics."

"Her husband is one of the Bradfords," with an emphasis on the definite article, "descended from Governor Bradford, and she is president of the Society for the Preservation of Colonial Landmarks, and also of the Daughters."

"The Daughters of the King?" he inquired maliciously.

"The Daughters of the American Revolution," she corrected.

"I did n't know," he explained; "I used to hear of the other 'daughters' from an aunt of mine; but her chief hobby was bishops."

"The Episcopalians are in a small minority here," she informed him. "Most of the old families go to the First Church. I was brought up there, but Miss Wycliffe has made me a kind of half Episcopalian, so that I go to St. George's sometimes with her. But speaking of the Bradfords, you have no idea how many obscure people claim to be descended from Governor Bradford. Now, I am a genuine Bradford on my father's side."

"The old governor must have been the Adam of these parts," he commented.

She picked up a volume from a near-by table. "This is the real Bradford genealogy," she announced.

They continued their progress through the house, viewing hautboys, and clocks, and tables, and tapestries, and chairs. Leigh had extracted all the amusement for himself that the subject and the a narrator could offer, and he began to grow inattentive. The long roll of names and of styles of furniture, hitherto unfamiliar, confused him, and the constant reiteration of the local point of view seemed an almost incredible provincialism. When they returned at last to the drawing-room, Mr. Parr, just returned from his office, rose to greet him.

"And how do you like Warwick?" he demanded. "You show your good taste," he approved, when Leigh had complimented the beauty of the city, "and Warwick is a very cultivated place as well. Have n't you found it so? There are a great many rich people here, but you see no display of wealth, as in New York."

"I hate New York," his wife put in. "It's so frightfully commercial."

Mr. Parr, having delivered himself of the articles of his belief, resumed his role as the silent partner of the house. He was a large, slow man, whose history seemed to be the history of the dinners he had eaten. In his eyes smouldered a dull glow, as of resentment at the limits of the human stomach and the volubility of wives. He woke up as his visitor prepared to depart, to inform him that the thermometer had registered twenty degrees of frost that morning, and to express the conviction that Warwick would spoil him for residence hereafter in any other city. Leigh assured him that there was no doubt of it, and went out into the winter twilight, homesick for the full, crude life of the Middle West, for the picturesque civilisation of California, for the smoke and splendour and roar of New York.

As he passed the bishop's darkened house, he felt that it was out of the question for him to spend the Christmas recess in the deserted college on the hill. He resolved to run away from himself, to seek distraction from the riddle of his existence by a visit to the metropolis, to change his sky in the hope of changing his mind. The increasing cold, and the dun canopy of cloud that had overspread the sky for days, convinced him of the futility of attempting to continue his observations at present. Tomorrow he would join in the general hegira from the Hall.

He walked back to the college, and seeing a light in Cardington's room, he knocked at the door. His friend was seated in the chair he never seemed to leave.

"Ah," he said, observing his visitor's bundles, "you come in like a Santa Claus coadjutor, a youthful Santa Claus, not yet dignified by that hirsute appendage to the chin without which no Santa Claus is complete."

Leigh admitted that he was a feeble imitation, and produced the briar-wood pipe from his pocket. Cardington was greatly pleased.

"Thank you," he said; "thank you. I shall break the amber stem, sooner or later, but I shall have it replaced by one of vulcanised rubber, and shall continue to cherish the gift though mutatus ab illo. If you don't mind, I 'll initiate it now, without waiting for Christmas day." He suited the action to the words and leaned back in his chair, puffing. "A new pipe is like—a new pair of shoes—necessary—inevitable—but it must be broken in. I see promise already of sweetness—great sweetness—in this briar."

"Mrs. Parr picked me up and took me home for a cup of tea," Leigh said. "And there I met Mr. Parr."

"Well, and how did you enjoy our excellent friends, the Parrs?" Cardington queried, leaning back in his chair with an expectant twinkle in his eyes.

"I felt that I was visiting a storage warehouse filled with old furniture, in the midst of which stood Parr like a wax figure escaped from the Eden Musee."

"I can well understand that," Cardington commented, with a chuckle. "And you learned something, doubtless, about the old newel-post that was taken from the Putney mansion, which I hope you admired adequately, about the old clock, the tables, and the chairs. You heard the respectable names also of the respectable Parrs' ancestors, and Mr. Parr asked you how you liked Warwick, after which he told you how he liked it himself."

"Your astral body must have accompanied me," Leigh suggested.

"I could report the conversation verbatim," Cardington declared. "She told you, among other things, that she was a genuine Bradford on her father's side, and uttered bulls of excommunication against pretenders to the honour. It would n't do, you know, to admit that the Bradford progeny is as numerous as the stars for multitude, and as the sands upon the seashore. It is advisable to restrict the genuine Bradfords to those of wealth and position. Now, this genealogical mania is a kind of midsummer madness that lasts in Warwick the year through, a lineal descendant, so to speak, of the witchcraft delusion; but it offers a certain kind of mental pemmican to impoverished minds. Those much vaunted ancestors were very worthy people, but, bless you! there was n't a social swell in the whole lot."

"Out West one never hears of such things," said Leigh.

"Out West," Cardington returned, "they are still grappling with the realities of life. Ancestor worship has not yet set in as a canker in the fruit; that will come with the dead ripeness. Here you see the New Englander as he is to-day, not as he was in a glorified past; not landing at Plymouth Rock, not hanging witches, or beating Quakers, or persecuting Episcopalians, not throwing tea into Boston Harbour, or writing philosophy at Concord, but spending his days in watching the gradual accretion of his already substantial fortune.

"A New Englander is the only jewel that appears to better advantage out of its proper setting than in it. To illustrate. In the West, the New Englander is thawed without being melted to such an extent as to lose his backbone; he becomes genial without undue compromise; he carries the torch of civilisation without a flourish. It was the chosen spirits of New England, men and women, that went West in their great waggons with the pots and pans hanging from the axle, and salted that crude country with their quality.

"But the conversation has become very oracular," he continued. "What are you going to do during the recess?"

"I 'm going home, and shall stop over in New York for a visit on my way back. But where are you going?"

"Well, I may take a little run down to Bermuda and see the bishop and Miss Felicity. Just think of leaving all this ice and snow, and about the second day out beginning to shed your superfluous outer garments, until you arrive at your destination in white duck trousers and a Panama hat! Think of the odour of lilies, not to mention the onions! And there I shall find Miss Felicity, looking like the goddess Flora, wandering in those beautiful lily-fields that command a wide sweep of the purple sea. It's enough to stir one to poetry, is n't it?"

"I wish I might go with you," Leigh remarked.

A film seemed to come over Cardington's blue eyes, just the suggestion of a veil of secrecy.

"Yes—yes—if you hadn't made other plans, you know. But you must go down there some winter, you must indeed. It's really a most charming place."

"Well," Leigh said, rising and taking up his bundles, "give the bishop and Miss Wycliffe my regards."

"I will," Cardington promised. "Perhaps they will return with me. I 'll take your excellent pipe along to smoke on the Gulf Stream and among the lilies. Good-bye!"



CHAPTER XIV

THE PRESIDENT TAKES A HAND

One evening late in January, Leigh entered Cardington's room with his post-prandial pipe still burning.

"What do you say," he demanded, "to going down to the opera house to hear the President of the United States speak? Here I 've been shut up all day, and forgot what was going on till I picked up the paper just now. I'm ripe for some excitement, the mood which in my undergraduate days would have tempted me to go out and paint the town." He threw himself into a chair, looked about with a sense of being at home, and passed his fingers wearily through the disordered masses of his hair.

The other looked at him attentively. "You make a great mistake," he remarked, "in allowing yourself to get out of condition. With a reasonable regard to the laws of health, you could keep yourself looking like the discus-thrower, thinly disguised in modern habiliments." He spoke like an impersonal judge, who appreciates the excellence of a type and wishes to see it maintained.

Leigh laughed with some bitterness. "You remember what the German professor said to his American student when he wished to take a rest. 'Who ever heard of a real mathematician with any health?'"