"But it does help if there is any one to whom we can tell our troubles."

"I cannot tell mine."

"Cannot you tell me?"

"No, I believe I wish you knew, but I could not tell you. No, I do not even wish you to know."

"Have you seen Kate?"

She covered her face with her hands again: "No, no, no," she cried, "not Kate!" Then she looked up at him with eyes suddenly kindling: "Have you heard what Kate's life has been since her marriage?"

"We have all heard, I suppose."

"She has never spoken a word against him—not even to me from whom she never had a secret. How could I go to her about Rowan? Even if she had confided in me, I could not tell her this."

"If you are going away, change of scene will help you to forget it."

"No, it will help me to remember."

"There is prayer, Isabel."

"I know there is prayer. But prayer does not do any good. It has nothing to do with this."

"Enter as soon as possible into the pleasures of the people you are to visit."

"I cannot! I do not wish for pleasure,"

"Isabel," he said at last, "forgive him."

"I cannot forgive him."

"Have you tried?"

"No, I cannot try. If I forgave him, it would only be a change in me: it would not change him: it would not undo what he has done."

"Do you know the necessity of self-sacrifice?"

"But how can I sacrifice what is best in me without lowering myself? Is it a virtue in a woman to throw away what she holds to be as highest?"

"Remember," he said, returning to the point, "that, if you forgive him, you become changed yourself. You no longer see what he has done as you see it now. That is the beauty of forgiveness: it enables us better to understand those whom we have forgiven. Perhaps it will enable you to put yourself in his place."

She put her hands to her eyes with a shudder: "You do not know what you are saying," she cried, and rose.

"Then trust it all to time," he said finally, "that is best! Time alone solves so much. Wait! Do not act! Think and feel as little as possible. Give time its merciful chance. I'll come to see you."

They had moved toward the door. She drew off her glove which she was putting on and laid her hand once more in his.

"Time can change nothing. I have decided."

As she was going down the steps to the carriage, she turned and came back.

"Do not come to see me! I shall come to you to say good-by. It is better for you not to come to the house just now. I might not be able to see you."

Isabel had the carriage driven to the Osborns'.

The house was situated in a pleasant street of delightful residences. It had been newly built on an old foundation as a bridal present to Kate from her father. She had furnished it with a young wife's pride and delight and she had lined it throughout with thoughts of incommunicable tenderness about the life history just beginning. Now, people driving past (and there were few in town who did not know) looked at it as already a prison and a doom.

Kate was sitting in the hall with some work in her lap. Seeing Isabel she sprang up and met her at the door, greeting her as though she herself were the happiest of wives.

"Do you know how long it has been since you were here?" she exclaimed chidingly. "I had not realized how soon young married people can be forgotten and pushed aside."

"Forget you, dearest! I have never thought of you so much as since I was here last."

"Ah," thought Kate to herself, "she has heard. She has begun to feel sorry for me and has begun to stay away as people avoid the unhappy."

But the two friends, each smiling into the other's eyes, their arms around each other, passed into the parlors.

"Now that you are here at last, I shall keep you," said Kate, rising from the seat they had taken. "I will send the carriage home. George cannot be here to lunch and we shall have it all to ourselves as we used to when we were girls together."

"No," exclaimed Isabel, drawing her down into the seat again, "I cannot stay. I had only a few moments and drove by just to speak to you, just to tell you how much I love you."

Kate's face changed and she dropped her eyes. "Is so little of me so much nowadays?" she asked, feeling as though the friendship of a lifetime were indeed beginning to fail her along with other things.

"No, no, no," cried Isabel. "I wish we could never be separated."

She rose quickly and went over to the piano and began to turn over the music. "It seems so long since I heard any music. What has become of it? Has it all gone out of life? I feel as though there were none any more."

Kate came over and looked at one piece of music after another irresolutely.

"I have not touched the piano for weeks."

She sat down and her fingers wandered forcedly through a few chords. Isabel stepped quickly to her side and laid restraining hands softly upon hers: "No; not to-day."

Kate rose with averted face: "No; not any music to-day!"

The friends returned to their seat, on which Kate left her work. She took it up and for a few moments Isabel watched her in silence.

"When did you see Rowan?"

"You know he lives in the country," replied Isabel, with an air of defensive gayety.

"And does he never come to town?"

"How should I know?"

Kate took this seriously and her head sank lower over her work: "Ah," she thought to herself, "she will not confide in me any longer. She keeps her secrets from me—me who shared them all my life."

"What is it you are making?"

Isabel stretched out her hand, but Kate with a cry threw her breast downward upon her work. With laughter they struggled over it; Kate released it and Isabel rising held it up before her. Then she allowed it to drop to the floor.

"Isabel!" exclaimed Kate, her face grown cold and hard. She stooped with dignity and picked up the garment.

"Oh, forgive me," implored Isabel, throwing her arms around her neck. "I did not know what I was doing!" and she buried her face on the young wife's shoulder. "I was thinking of myself: I cannot tell you why!"

Kate released herself gently. Her face remained grave. She had felt the first wound of motherhood: it could not be healed at once. The friends could not look at each other. Isabel began to draw on her gloves and Kate did not seek to keep her longer.

"I must go. Dear friend, have you forgiven me? I cannot tell you what was in my heart. Some day you will understand. Try to forgive till you do understand."

Kate's mouth trembled: "Isabel, why are you so changed toward me?"

"Ah, I have not changed toward you! I shall never change toward you!"

"Are you too happy to care for me any longer?"

"Ah, Kate, I am not too happy for anything. Some day you will understand."

She leaned far out and waved her hand as she drove away, and then she threw herself back into the carriage. "Dear injured friend! Brave loyal woman'" she cried, "the men we loved have ruined both our lives; and we who never had a secret from each other meet and part as hypocrites to shield them. Drive home," she said to the driver. "If any one motions to stop, pay no attention. Drive fast."

Mrs. Osborn watched the carriage out of sight and then walked slowly back to her work. She folded the soft white fabric over the cushions and then laid her cheek against it and gave it its first christening—the christening of tears.



IX

The court-house clock in the centre of the town clanged the hour of ten—hammered it out lavishly and cheerily as a lusty blacksmith strikes with prodigal arm his customary anvil. Another clock in a dignified church tower also struck ten, but with far greater solemnity, as though reminding the town clock that time is not to be measured out to man as a mere matter of business, but intoned savingly and warningly as the chief commodity of salvation. Then another clock: in a more attenuated cobwebbed steeple also struck ten, reaffirming the gloomy view of its resounding brother and insisting that the town clock had treated the subject with sinful levity.

Nevertheless the town clock seemed to have the best of the argument on this particular day; for the sun was shining, cool, breezes were blowing, and the streets were thronged with people intent on making bargains. Possibly the most appalling idea in most men's notions of eternity is the dread that there will be no more bargaining there.

A bird's-eye view of the little town as it lay outspread on its high fertile plateau, surrounded by green woods and waving fields, would have revealed near one edge of it a large verdurous spot which looked like an overrun oasis. This oasis was enclosed by a high fence on the inside of which ran a hedge of lilacs, privet, and osage orange. Somewhere in it was an old one-story manor house of rambling ells and verandas. Elsewhere was a little summer-house, rose-covered; still elsewhere an arbor vine-hung; at various other places secluded nooks with seats, where the bushes could hide you and not hear you—a virtue quite above anything human. Marguerite lived in this labyrinth.

As the dissenting clocks finished striking, had you been standing outside the fence near a little side gate used by grocers' and bakers' carts, you might have seen Marguerite herself. There came a soft push against the gate from within; and as it swung part of the way open, you might have observed that the push was delivered by the toe of a little foot. A second push sent it still farther. Then there was a pause and then it flew open and stayed open. At first there appeared what looked like an inverted snowy flagstaff but turned out to be a long, closed white parasol; then Marguerite herself appeared, bending her head low under the privet leaves and holding her skirts close in, so that they might not be touched by the whitewash on each edge. Once outside, she straightened herself up with the lithe grace of a young willow, released her skirts, and balancing herself on the point of her parasol, closed the gate with her toe: she was too dainty to touch it.

The sun shone hot and Marguerite quickly raised her parasol. It made you think of some silken white myriad-fluted mushroom of the dark May woods; and Marguerite did not so much seem to have come out of the house as out of the garden—to have slept there on its green moss with the new moon on her eyelids—indeed to have been born there, in some wise compounded of violets and hyacinths; and as the finishing touch to have had squeezed into her nature a few drops of wildwood spritishness.

She started toward the town with a movement somewhat like that of a tall thin lily stalk swayed by zephyrs—with a lilt, a cadence, an ever changing rhythm of joy: plain walking on the solid earth was not for her. At friendly houses along the way she peeped into open windows, calling to friends; she stooped over baby carriages on the sidewalk, noting but not measuring their mysteries; she bowed to the right and to the left at passing carriages; and people leaned far out to bow and smile at her. Her passage through the town was somewhat like that of a butterfly crossing a field.

"Will he be there?" she asked. "I did not tell him I was coming, but he heard me say I should be there at half-past ten o'clock. It is his duty to notice my least remark."

When she reached her destination, the old town library, she mounted the lowest step and glanced rather guiltily up and down the street. Three ladies were going up and two men were going down: no one was coming toward Marguerite.

"Now, why is he not here? He shall be punished for this."

She paced slowly backward and forward yet a little while. Then she started resolutely in the direction of a street where most of the law offices were situated. Turning a corner, she came full upon Judge, Morris.

"Ah, good morning, good morning," he cried, putting his gold-headed cane under his arm and holding out both hands. "Where did you sleep last night? On rose leaves?"

"I was in grandmother's bed when I left off," said Marguerite, looking up at the rim of her hat.

"And where were you when you began again?"

"Still in grandmother's bed. I think I must have been there all the time. I know all about your old Blackstone and all that kind of thing," she continued, glancing at a yellow book under his arm and speaking with a threat as though he had adjudged her ignorant.

"Ah, then you will make a good lawyer's wife."

"I supposed I'd make a good wife of any kind. Are you coming to my ball?"

"Well, you know I am too old to make engagements far ahead. But I expect to be there. If I am not, my ghost shall attend."

"How shall I recognize it? Does it dance? I don't want to mistake it for Barbee."

"Barbee shall not come if I can keep him at home."

"And why, please?"

"I am afraid he is falling in love with you."

"But why shouldn't he?"

"I don't wish my nephew to be flirted."

"But how do you know I'd flirt him?"

"Ah, I knew your mother when she was young and your grandmother when she was young: you're all alike."

"We, are so glad we are," said Marguerite, as she danced away from him under her parasol.

Farther down the street she met Professor Hardage.

"I know all about your old Odyssey—your old Horace and all those things," she said threateningly. "I am not as ignorant as you think."

"I wish Horace had known you."

"Would it have been nice?"

"He might have written an ode Ad Margaritam instead of Ad Lalagem."

"Then I might have been able to read it," she said. "In school I couldn't read the other one. But you mustn't think that I did not read a great deal of Latin. The professor used to say that I read my Latin b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l-l-y, but that I didn't get much English out of it. I told him I got as much English out of it as the Romans did, and that they certainly ought to have known what it was meant for."

"That must have taught him a lesson!"

"Oh, he said I'd do: I was called the girl who read Latin perfectly, regardless of English. And, then, I won a prize for an essay on the three most important things that the United States has contributed to the civilizations of the Old World. I said they were tobacco, wild turkeys and idle curiosity. Of course every one knew about tobacco and turkeys; but wasn't it clever of me to think of idle curiosity? Now, wasn't it? I made a long list of things and then I selected these from my list."

"I'd like to know what the other things were!"

"Oh, I've forgotten now! But they were very important at the time. Are you coming to my ball?"

"I hope to come."

"And is Miss Anna coming?"

"Miss Anna is coming. She is coming as a man; and she is going to bring a lady."

"How is she going to dress as a man?" said Marguerite, as she danced away from him under her parasol.

She strolled slowly on until she reached the street of justice and the jail; turning into this, she passed up the side opposite the law offices. Her parasol rested far back on one shoulder; to any lateral observer there could have been no mistake regarding the face in front of it. She passed through a group of firemen sitting in their shirtsleeves in front of the engine-house, disappeared around the corner, and went to a confectioner's. Presently she reentered the street, and this time walked along the side where the law offices were grouped. She disappeared around the corner and entered a dry-goods store. A few moments later she reentered the street for the third and last time. Just as she passed a certain law office, she dropped her packages. No one came out to pick them up. Marguerite did this herself—very slowly. Still no one appeared. She gave three sharp little raps on the woodwork of the door.

From the rear office a red head was thrust suddenly out like a surprised woodpecker's. Barbee hurried to the entrance and looked up the street. He saw a good many people. He looked down the street and noticed a parasol moving away.

"I supposed you were in the courthouse," she said, glancing at him with surprise. "Haven't you any cases?"

"One," he answered, "a case of life and death."

"You need not walk against me, Barbee; I am not a vine to need propping. And you need not walk with me. I am quite used to walking alone: my nurse taught me years ago."

"But now you have to learn not to walk alone, Marguerite."

"It will be very difficult."

"It will be easy when the right man steps forward: am I the right man?"

"I am going to the library. Good morning."

"So am I going to the library."

"Aren't all your authorities in your office?"

"All except one."

They turned into the quiet shady street: they were not the first to do this.

When they reached the steps, Marguerite sank down.

"Why do I get so tired when I walk with you, Barbee? You exhaust me very rapidly."

He sat down not very near her, but soon edged a little closer.

Marguerite leaned over and looked intently at his big, thin ear.

"What a lovely red your ear is, seen against a clear sky. It would make a beautiful lamp-shade."

"You may have both of them—and all the fixtures—solid brass—an antique some day."

He edged a little closer.

Marguerite coughed and pointed across the street: "Aren't those trees beautiful?"

"Oh, don't talk to me about trees! What do I care about wood! You're the tree that I want to dig up, and take home, and plant, and live under, and be buried by."

"That's a great deal—all in one sentence."

"Are you never going to love me a little, Marguerite?"

"How can I tell?"

"Don't torture me."

"What am I doing?"

"You are not doing anything, that's the trouble. The other night I was sure you loved me."

"I didn't say so."

"But you looked it."

"Then I looked all wrong: I shall change my looks."

"Will you name the day?"

"What day?"

"The day."

"I'll name them all: Monday, Tuesday—"

"Ah, Lord—"

"Barbee, I'm going to sing you a love song—an old, old, old love song. Did you ever hear one?"

"I have been hearing mine for some time."

"This goes back to grandmother's time. But it's the man's song: you ought to be singing it to me."

"I shall continue to sing my own."

Marguerite began to sing close to Barbee's ear:

"I'll give to you a paper of pins, If that's the way that love begins, If you will marry me, me, me, If you will marry me."

"Pins!" said Barbee; "why, that old-time minstrel must have been singing when pins were just invented. You can have—"

Marguerite quieted him with a finger on his elbow:

"I'll give to you a dress of red, Bound all around with golden thread, If you will marry me, me, me, If you will marry me."

"How about a dress not simply bound with golden thread but made of it, made of nothing else! and then hung all over with golden ornaments and the heaviest golden utensils?"

Marguerite sang on:

"I'll give to you a coach and six, Every horse as black as pitch, If you will marry me, me, me, If you will marry me."

"I'll make it two coaches and twelve white ponies."

Marguerite sang on, this time very tenderly:

"I'll give to you the key of my heart, That we may love and never part, If you will marry me, me, me, If you will marry me."

"No man can give anything better," said Barbee, moving closer (as close as possible) and looking questioningly full into Marguerite's eyes.

Marguerite glanced up and down the street. The moment was opportune, the disposition of the universe seemed kind. The big parasol slipped a little lower.

"Marguerite. . . Please, Marguerite. . . Marguerite."

The parasol was suddenly pulled down low and remained very still a moment: then a quiver ran round the fringe. It was still again, and there was another quiver. It swayed to and fro and round and round, and then stood very, very still indeed, and there was a violent quiver.

Then Marguerite ran into the library as out of a sudden shower; and Barbee with long slow strides returned to his office.

"Anna," said Professor Hardage, laying his book across his knee as they sat that afternoon in the shady side porch, "I saw Marguerite this morning and she sent her compliments. They were very pretty compliments. I sometimes wonder where Marguerite came from—out of what lands she has wandered."

"Well, now that you have stopped reading," said Miss Anna, laying down her work and smoothing her brow (she never spoke to him until he did stop—perfect woman), "that Is what I have been waiting to talk to you about: do you wish to go with Harriet to Marguerite's ball?"

"I most certainly do not wish to go with Harriet to Marguerite's ball," he said, laughing, "I am going with you."

"Well, you most certainly are not going with me: I am going with Harriet."

"Anna!"

"If I do not, who will? Now what I want you to do is to pay Harriet some attention after I arrive with her. I shall take her into supper, because if you took her in, she would never get any. But suppose that after supper you strolled carelessly up to us—you know how men do—and asked her to take a turn with you."

"What kind of a turn in Heaven's name?"

"Well, suppose you took her out into the yard—to one of those little rustic seats of Marguerite's—and sat there with her for half an hour—in the darkest place you could possibly find. And I want you to try to hold her hand."

"Why, Anna, what on earth—"

"Now don't you suppose Harriet would let you do it," she said indignantly. "But what I want her to have is the pleasure of refusing: it would be such a triumph. It would make her happy for days: it might lengthen her life a little."

"What effect do you suppose it would have on mine?"

His face softened as he mused on the kind of woman his sister was.

"Now don't you try to do anything else," she added severely. "I don't like your expression."

He laughed outright: "What do you suppose I'd do?"

"I don't suppose you'd do anything; but don't you do it!"

Miss Anna's invitation to Harriet had been written some days before.

She had sent down to the book-store for ten cents' worth of tinted note paper and to the drugstore for some of Harriet's favorite sachet powder. Then she put a few sheets of the paper in a dinner plate and sprinkled the powder over them and set the plate where the powder could perfume the paper but not the house. Miss Anna was averse to all odor-bearing things natural or artificial. The perfect triumph of her nose was to perceive absolutely nothing. The only trial to her in cooking was the fact that so often she could not make things taste good without making them smell good.

In the course of time, bending over a sheet of this note paper, with an expression of high nasal disapproval. Miss Anna had written the following note:

"A. Hardage, Esq., presents the compliments of the season to Miss Crane and begs the pleasure of her company to the ball. The aforesaid Hardage, on account of long intimacy with the specified Crane, hopes that she (Crane) will not object to riding alone at night in a one-horse rockaway with no side curtains. Crane to be hugged on the way if Hardage so desires—and Hardage certainly will desire. Hardage and Crane to dance at the ball together while their strength lasts."

Having posted this letter, Miss Anna went off to her orphan and foundling asylum where she was virgin mother to the motherless, drawing the mantle of her spotless life around little waifs straying into the world from hidden paths of shame.



X

It was past one o'clock on the night of the ball.

When dew and twilight had fallen on the green labyrinths of Marguerite's yard, the faintest, slenderest moon might have been seen bending over toward the spot out of drapery of violet cloud. It descended through the secluded windows of Marguerite's room and attended her while she dressed, weaving about her and leaving with her the fragrance of its divine youth passing away. Then it withdrew, having appointed a million stars for torches.

Matching the stars were globe-like lamps, all of one color, all of one shape, which Marguerite had had swung amid the interlaced greenery of trees and vines: as lanterns around the gray bark huts of slow-winged owls; as sun-tanned grapes under the arches of the vine-covered summer-house; as love's lighthouses above the reefs of tumbling rose-bushes: all to illumine the paths which led to nooks and seats. For the night would be very warm; and then Marguerite—but was she the only one?

The three Marguerites,—grandmother, mother, and daughter,—standing side by side and dressed each like each as nearly as was fitting, had awaited their guests. Three high-born fragile natures, solitary each on the stem of its generation; not made for blasts and rudeness. They had received their guests with the graciousness of sincere souls and not without antique distinction; for in their veins flowed blood which had helped to make manners gentle in France centuries ago.

The eldest Marguerite introduced some of her aged friends, who had ventured forth to witness the launching of the frail life-boat, to the youngest; the youngest Marguerite introduced some of hers to the eldest; the Marguerite linked between made some of hers known to her mother and to her child.

Mrs. Conyers arrived early, leaning on the arm of her grandson, Victor Fielding. To-night she was ennobled with jewels—the old family jewels of her last husband's family, not of her own.

When the three Marguerites beheld her, a shadow fell on their faces. The change was like the assumption of a mask behind which they could efface themselves as ladies and receive as hostesses. While she lingered, they forebore even to exchange glances lest feelings injurious to a guest should be thus revealed: so pure in them was the strain of courtesy that went with proffered hospitality. (They were not of the kind who invite you to their houses and having you thus in their power try to pierce you with little insults which they would never dare offer openly in the street: verbal Borgias at their own tables and firesides.) The moment she left them, the three faces became effulgent again.

A little later, strolling across the rooms toward them alone, came Judge Morris, a sprig of wet heliotrope in his button-hole, plucked from one of Marguerite's plants. The paraffin starch on his shirt front and collar and cuffs gave to them the appearance and consistency of celluloid—it being the intention of his old laundress to make him indeed the stiffest and most highly polished gentleman of his high world. His noble face as always a sermon on kindness, sincerity, and peace; yet having this contradiction, that the happier it seemed, the sadder it was to look at: as though all his virtues only framed his great wrong; so that the more clearly you beheld the bright frame, the more deeply you felt the dark picture.

As soon as they discovered him, the Marguerites with a common impulse linked their arms endearingly. Six little white feet came regimentally forward; each of six little white hands made individual forward movements to be the first to lie within his palm; six velvet eyes softened and glistened.

Miss Anna came with Harriet; Professor Hardage came alone; Barbee—burgeoning Alcibiades of the ballroom—came with Self-Confidence. He strolled indifferently toward the eldest Marguerite, from whom he passed superiorly to the central one; by that time the third had vanished.

Isabel came with the Osborns: George soon to be taken secretly home by Rowan; Kate (who had forced herself to accompany him despite her bereavement), lacerated but giving no sign even to Isabel, who relieved the situation by attaching herself momentarily to her hostesses.

"Mamma," protested Marguerite, with indignant eyes, "do you wish Isabel to stand here and eclipse your daughter? Station her on the far side of grandmother, and let the men pass this way first!"

The Merediths were late. As they advanced to pay their respects, Isabel maintained her composure. An observer, who had been told to watch, might have noticed that when Rowan held out his hand, she did not place hers in it; and that while she did not turn her face away from his face, her eyes never met his eyes. She stood a little apart from the receiving group at the moment and spoke to him quickly and awkwardly:

"As soon as you can, will you come and walk with me through the parlors? Please do not pay me any more attention. When the evening is nearly over, will you find me and take me to some place where we may not be interrupted? I will explain."

Without waiting for his assent, she left him, and returned with a laugh to the side of Marguerite, who was shaking a finger threateningly at her.

It was now past one o'clock: guests were already leaving.

When Rowan went for Isabel, she was sitting with Professor Hardage. They were not talking; and her eyes had a look of strained expectancy. As soon as she saw him, she rose and held out her hand to Professor Hardage; then without speaking and still without looking at him, she placed the tips of her fingers on the elbow of his sleeve. As they walked away, she renewed her request in a low voice: "Take me where we shall be undisturbed."

They left the rooms. It was an interval between the dances: the verandas were crowded. They passed out into the yard. Along the cool paths, college boys and college girls strolled by in couples, not caring who listened to their words and with that laughter of youth, the whole meaning of which is never realized save by those who hear it after they have lost it. Older couples sat here and there in quiet nooks—with talk not meant to be heard and with occasional laughter so different.

They moved on, seeking greater privacy. Marguerite's lamps were burnt out—brief flames as measured by human passion. But overhead burnt the million torches of the stars. How brief all human passion measured by that long, long light!

He stopped at last:

"Here?"

She placed herself as far as possible from him.

The seat was at the terminus of a path in the wildest part of Marguerite's garden. Overhead against the trunk of a tree a solitary lantern was flickering fitfully. It soon went out. The dazzling lights of the ballroom, glimmering through boughs and vines, shot a few rays into their faces. Music, languorous, torturing the heart, swelled and died on the air, mingled with the murmurings of eager voices. Close around them in the darkness was the heavy fragrance of perishing blossoms—earth dials of yesterday; close around them the clean sweetness of fresh ones—breath of the coming morn. It was an hour when the heart, surrounded by what can live no more and by what never before has lived, grows faint and sick with yearnings for its own past and forlorn with the inevitableness of change—the cruelty of all change.

For a while silence lasted. He waited for her to speak; she tried repeatedly to do so. At length with apparent fear that he might misunderstand, she interposed an agitated command:

"Do not say anything."

A few minutes later she began to speak to him, still struggling for her self-control.

"I do not forget that to-night I have been acting a part, and that I have asked you to act a part with me. I have walked with you and I have talked with you, and I am with you now to create an impression that is false; to pretend before those who see us that nothing is changed. I do not forget that I have been doing this thing which is unworthy of me. But it is the first time—try not to believe it to be my character. I am compelled to tell you that it is one of the humiliations you have forced upon me."

"I have understood this," he said hastily, breaking the silence she had imposed upon him.

"Then let it pass," she cried nervously. "It is enough that I have been obliged to observe my own hypocrisies, and that I have asked you to countenance and to conceal them."

He offered no response. And in a little while she went on:

"I ought to tell you one thing more. Last week I made all my arrangements to go away at once, for the summer, for a long time. I did not expect to see you again. Two or three times I started to the station. I have stayed until now because it seemed best after all to speak to you once more. This is my reason for being here to-night; and it is the only apology I can offer to myself or to you for what I am doing."

There was a sad and bitter vehemence in her words; she quivered with passion.

"Isabel," he said more urgently, "there is nothing I am not prepared to tell you."

When she spoke again, it was with difficulty and everything seemed to hang upon her question:

"Does any one else know?"

His reply was immediate:

"No one else knows."

"Have you every reason to believe this?"

"I have every reason to believe this."

"You kept your secret well," she said with mournful irony. "You reserved it for the one person whom it could most injure: my privilege is too great!"

"It is true," he said.

She turned and looked at him. She felt the depth of conviction with which he spoke, yet it hurt her. She liked his dignity and his self-control, and would not have had them less; yet she gathered fresh bitterness from the fact that he did not lose them. But to her each moment disclosed its new and uncontrollable emotions; as words came, her mind quickly filled again with the things she could not say. She now went on:

"I am forced to ask these questions, although I have no right to ask them and certainly I have no wish. I have wanted to know whether I could carry out the plan that has seemed to me best for each of us. If others shared your secret, I could not do this. I am going away—I am going in the morning. I shall remain away a long time. Since we have been seen together here to-night as usual, no one suspects now that for us everything has become nothing. While I am away, no one can have the means of finding this out. Before I return, there will be changes—there may be many changes. If we meet with indifference then, it will be thought that we have become indifferent, one of us, or both of us: I suppose it will be thought to be you. There will be comment, comment that will be hard to stand; but this will be the quietest way to end everything—as far as anything can ever be ended."

"Whatever you wish! I leave it all to you."

She did not pause to heed his words:

"This will spare me the linking of my name with yours any further just now; it will spare me all that I should suffer if the matter which estranges us should be discovered and be discussed. It will save me hereafter, perhaps, from being pointed out as a woman who so trusted and was so deceived. It may shield my life altogether from some notoriety: I could be grateful for that!"

She was thinking of her family name, and of the many proud eyes that were turned upon her in the present and out of the past. There was a sting for her in the remembrance and the sting passed into her concluding words:

"I do not forget that when I ask you to do all this, I, who am not given to practising deception, am asking you to go on practising yours. I am urging you to shirk the consequences of your wrong-doing—to enjoy in the world an untarnished name after you have tarnished your life. Do not think I forget that! Still I beg you to do as I say. This is another of the humiliations you have led me to: that although I am separated from you by all that once united us, I must remain partner with you in the concealment of a thing that would ruin you if it were known."

She turned to him as though she experienced full relief through her hard and cruel words:

"Do I understand, then, that this is to be buried away by you—and by me—from the knowledge of the world?"

"No one else has any right to know it. I have told you that."

"Then that is all!"

She gave a quick dismissal to the subject, so putting an end to the interview.

She started to rise from her seat; but impulses, new at the instant, checked her: all the past checked her, all that she was herself and all that he had been to her.

Perhaps what at each moment had angered her most was the fact that she was speaking, not he. She knew him to be of the blood of silent men and to have inherited their silence. This very trait of his had rendered association with him so endearing. Love had been so divinely apart from speech, either his or her own: most intimate for having been most mute. But she knew also that he was capable of speech, full and strong and quick enough upon occasion; and her heart had cried out that in a lifetime this was the one hour when he should not have given way to her or allowed her to say a word—when he should have borne her down with uncontrollable pleading.

It was her own work that confronted her and she did not recognize it. She had exhausted resources to convince him of her determination to cast him off at once; to render it plain that further parley would to her be further insult. She had made him feel this on the night of his confession; in the note of direct repulse she sent him by the hand of a servant in her own house the following afternoon; by returning to him everything that he had ever given her; by her refusal to acknowledge his presence this evening beyond laying upon him a command; and by every word that she had just spoken. And in all this she had thought only of what she suffered, not of what he must be suffering.

Perhaps some late instantaneous recognition of this flashed upon her as she started to leave him—as she looked at him sitting there, his face turned toward her in stoical acceptance of his fate. There was something in the controlled strength of it that touched her newly. She may have realized that if he had not been silent, if he had argued, defended himself, pleaded, she would have risen and walked back to the house without a word. It turned her nature toward him a little, that he placed too high a value upon her dismissal of him not to believe it irrevocable.

Yet it hurt her: she was but one woman in the world; could the thought of this have made it easier for him to let her go away now without a protest?

The air of the summer night grew unbearable for sweetness about her. The faint music of the ballroom had no pity for her. There young eyes found joy in answering eyes, passed on and found joy in others and in others. Palm met palm and then palms as soft and then palms yet softer. Some minutes before, the laughter of Marguerite in the shrubbery quite close by had startled Isabel. She had distinguished a voice. Now Marguerite's laughter reached her again—and there was a different voice with hers. Change! change! one put away, the place so perfectly filled by another.

A white moth of the night wandered into Rowan's face searching its features; then it flitted over to her and searched hers, its wings fanning and clinging to her lips; and then it passed on, pursuing amid mistakes and inconstancies its life-quest lasting through a few darknesses.

Fear suddenly reached down into her heart and drew up one question; and she asked that question in a voice low and cold and guarded:

"Sometime, when you ask another woman to marry you, will you think it your duty to tell her?"

"I will never ask any other woman."

"I did not inquire for your intention; I asked what you would believe to be your duty."

"It will never become my duty. But if it should, I would never marry without being true to the woman; and to be true is to tell the truth."

"You mean that you would tell her?"

"I mean that I would tell her."

After a little silence she stirred in her seat and spoke, all her anger gone:

"I am going to ask you, if you ever do, not to tell her as you have told me—after it is too late. If you cannot find some way of letting her know the truth before she loves you, then do not tell her afterward, when you have won her life away from her. If there is deception at all, then it is not worse to go on deceiving her than it was to begin to deceive her. Tell her, if you must, while she is indifferent and will not care, not after she has given herself to you and will then have to give you up. But what can you, a man, know what it means to a woman to tell her this! How can you know, how can you ever, ever know!"

She covered her face with her hands and her voice broke with tears.

"Isabel—"

"You have no right to call me by my name, and I have no right to hear it, as though nothing were changed between us."

"I have not changed."

"How could you tell me! Why did you ever tell me!" she cried abruptly, grief breaking her down.

"There was a time when I did not expect to tell you. I expected to do as other men do."

"Ah, you would have deceived me!" she exclaimed, turning upon him with fresh suffering. "You would have taken advantage of my ignorance and have married me and never have let me know! And you would have called that deception love and you would have called yourself a true man!"

"But I did not do this! It was yourself who helped me to see that the beginning of morality is to stop lying and deception."

"But if you had this on your conscience already, what right had you ever to come near me?"

"I had come to love you!"

"Did your love of me give you the right to win mine?"

"It gave me the temptation."

"And what did you expect when you determined to tell me this? What did you suppose such a confession would mean to me? Did you imagine that while it was still fresh on your lips, I would smile in your face and tell you it made no difference? Was I to hear you speak of one whose youth and innocence you took away through her frailties, and then step joyously into her place? Was this the unfeeling, the degraded soul you thought to be mine? Would I have been worthy even of the poor love you could give me, if I had done that?"

"I expected you to marry me! I expected you to forgive. I have this at least to remember: I lost you honestly when I could have won you falsely."

"Ah, you have no right to seek any happiness in what is all sadness to me! And all the sadness, the ruin of everything, comes from your wrong-doing."

"Remember that my wrong-doing did not begin with me. I bear my share: it is enough: I will bear no more."

A long silence followed. She spoke at last, checking her tears:

"And so this is the end of my dream! This is what life has brought me to! And what have I done to deserve it? To leave home, to shun friends, to dread scandal, to be misjudged, to bear the burden of your secret and share with you its shame, to see my years stretch out before me with no love in them, no ambitions, no ties—this is what life has brought me, and what have I done to deserve it?"

As her tears ceased, her eyes seemed to be looking into a future that lacked the relief of tears. As though she were already passed far on into it and were looking back to this moment, she went on, speaking very slowly and sadly:

"We shall not see each other again in a long time, and whenever we do, we shall be nothing to each other and we shall never speak of this. There is one thing I wish to tell you. Some day you may have false thoughts of me. You may think that I had no deep feeling, no constancy, no mercy, no forgiveness; that it was easy to give you up, because I never loved you. I shall have enough to bear and I cannot bear that. So I want to tell you that you will never know what my love for you was. A woman cannot speak till she has the right; and before you gave me the right, you took it away. For some little happiness it may bring me hereafter let me tell you that you were everything to me, everything! If I had taught myself to make allowances for you, if I had seen things to forgive in you, what you told me would have been only one thing more and I might have forgiven. But all that I saw in you I loved. Rowan, and I believed that I saw everything. Remember this, if false thoughts of me ever come to you! I expect to live a long time: the memory of my love of you will be the sorrow that will keep me alive."

After a few moments of silent struggle she moved nearer.

"Do not touch me," she said; "remember that what love makes dear, it makes sacred."

She put out a hand in the darkness and, closing her eyes over welling tears, passed it for long remembrance over his features: letting the palm lie close against his forehead with her fingers in his hair; afterward pressing it softly over his eyes and passing it around his neck. Then she took her hand away as though fearful of an impulse. Then she put her hand out again and laid her fingers across his lips. Then she took her hand away, and leaning over, laid her lips on his lips:

"Good-by!" she murmured against his face, "good-by! good-by! good-by!"

Mrs. Conyers had seen Rowan and Isabel together in the parlors early in the evening. She had seen them, late in the evening, quit the house. She had counted the minutes till they returned and she had marked their agitation as they parted. The closest association lasting from childhood until now had convinced her of the straightforwardness of Isabel's character; and the events of the night were naturally accepted by her as evidences of the renewal of relationship with Rowan, if not as yet of complete reconciliation.

She herself had encountered during the evening unexpected slights and repulses. Her hostesses had been cool, but she expected them to be cool: they did not like her nor she them. But Judge Morris had avoided her; the Hardages had avoided her; each member of the Meredith family had avoided her; Isabel had avoided her; even Harriet, when once she crossed the rooms to her, had with an incomprehensible flare of temper turned her back and sought refuge with Miss Anna. She was very angry.

But overbalancing the indignities of the evening was now this supreme joy of Isabel's return to what she believed to be Isabel's destiny. She sent her grandson home that she might have the drive with the girl alone. When Isabel, upon entering the carriage, her head and eyes closely muffled in her shawl, had withdrawn as far as possible into one corner and remained silent on the way, she refrained from intrusion, believing that she understood the emotions dominating her behavior.

The carriage drew up at the door. She got out quickly and passed to her room—with a motive of her own.

Isabel lingered. She ascended the steps without conscious will. At the top she missed her shawl: it had become entangled in the fringe of a window strap, had slipped from her bare shoulders as she set her foot on the pavement, and now lay in the track of the carriage wheels. As she picked it up, an owl flew viciously close to her face. What memories, what memories came back to her! With a shiver she went over to a frame-like opening in the foliage on one side of the veranda and stood looking toward the horizon where the moon had sunk on that other night—that first night of her sorrow. How long it was since then!

At any other time she would have dreaded the parting which must take place with her grandmother: now what a little matter it seemed!

As she tapped and opened the door, she put her hand quickly before her eyes, blinded by the flood of light which streamed out into the dark hall. Every gas-jet was turned on—around the walls, in the chandelier; and under the chandelier stood her grandmother, waiting, her eyes fixed expectantly on the door, her countenance softened with returning affection, the fire of triumph in her eyes.

She had unclasped from around her neck the diamond necklace of old family jewels, and held it in the pool of her rosy palms, as though it were a mass of clear separate raindrops rainbow-kindled. It was looped about the tips of her two upright thumbs; part of it had slipped through the palms and flashed like a pendent arc of light below.

The necklace was an heirloom; it had started to grow in England of old; it had grown through the generations of the family in the New World.

It had begun as a ring—given with the plighting of troth; it had become ear-rings; it had become a pendant; it had become a tiara; it had become part of a necklace; it had become a necklace—completed circlet of many hopes.

As Isabel entered Mrs. Conyers started forward, smiling, to clasp it around her neck as the expression of her love and pleasure; then she caught sight of Isabel's face, and with parted lips she stood still.

Isabel, white, listless, had sunk into the nearest chair, and now said, quietly and wearily, noticing nothing:

"Grandmother, do not get up to see me off in the morning. My trunk is packed; the others are already at the station. All my arrangements are made. I'll say good-by to you now," and she stood up.

Mrs. Conyers stood looking at her. Gradually a change passed over her face; her eyes grew dull, the eyelids narrowed upon the balls; the round jaws relaxed; and instead of the smile, hatred came mysteriously out and spread itself rapidly over her features: true horrible revelation. Her fingers tightened and loosened about the necklace until it was forced out through them, until it glided, crawled, as though it were alive and were being strangled and were writhing. She spoke with entire quietness:

"After all that I have seen to-night, are you not going to marry Rowan?"

Isabel stirred listlessly as with remembrance of a duty:

"I had forgotten, grandmother, that I owe you an explanation. I found, after all, that I should have to see Rowan again: there was a matter about which I was compelled to speak with him. That is all I meant by being with him to-night: everything now is ended between us."

"And you are going away without giving me the reason of all this?"

Isabel gathered her gloves and shawl together and said with simple distaste:

"Yes."

As she did so, Mrs. Conyers, suddenly beside herself with aimless rage, raised one arm and hurled the necklace against the opposite wall of the room. It leaped a tangled braid through the air and as it struck burst asunder, and the stones scattered and rattled along the floor and rolled far out on the carpet.

She turned and putting up a little white arm, which shook as though palsied, began to extinguish the lights. Isabel watched her a moment remorsefully:

"Good night, grandmother, and good-by. I am sorry to go away and leave you angry."

As she entered her room, gray light was already creeping in through the windows, left open to the summer night. She went mournfully to her trunk. The tray had been lifted out and placed upon a chair near by. The little tops to the divisions of the tray were all thrown back, and she could see that the last thing had been packed into its place. Her hand satchel was open on her bureau, and she could see the edge of a handkerchief and the little brown wicker neck of a cologne bottle. Beside the hand satchel were her purse, baggage checks, and travelling ticket: everything was in readiness. She looked at it all a long time:

"How can I go away? How can I, how can I?"

She went over to her bed. The sheet had been turned down, the pillow dented for her face. Beside the pillow was a tiny reading-stand and on this was a candle and a book—with thought of her old habit of reading after she had come home from pleasures like those of to-night—when they were pleasures. Beside the book her maid had set a little cut-glass vase of blossoms which had opened since she put them there—were just opening now.

"How can I read? How can I sleep?"

She crossed to a large window opening on the lawn in the rear of the house—and looked for the last time out at the gray old pines and dim blue, ever wintry firs. Beyond were house-tops and tree-tops of the town; and beyond these lay the country—stretching away to his home. Soon the morning light would be crimsoning the horizon before his window.

"How can I stay?" she said. "How can I bear to stay?"

She recalled her last words to him as they parted:

"Remember that you are forgotten!"

She recalled his reply:

"Forget that you are remembered!"

She sank down on the floor and crossed her arms on the window sill and buried her face on her arms. The white dawn approached, touched her, and passed, and she did not heed.



PART SECOND

I

The home of the Merediths lay in a region of fertile lands adapted alike to tillage and to pasturage. The immediate neighborhood was old, as civilization reckons age in the United States, and was well conserved, It held in high esteem its traditions of itself, approved its own customs, was proud of its prides: a characteristic community of country gentlemen at the side of each of whom a characteristic lady lived and had her peculiar being.

The ownership of the soil had long since passed into the hands of capable families—with this exception, that here and there between the borders of large estates little farms were to be found representing all that remained from slow processes of partition and absorption. These scant freeholds had thus their pathos, marking as they did the losing fight of successive holders against more fortunate, more powerful neighbors. Nothing in its way records more surely the clash and struggle and ranking of men than the boundaries of land. There you see extinction and survival, the perpetual going under of the weak, the perpetual overriding of the strong.

Two such fragmentary farms lay on opposite sides of the Meredith estate. One was the property of Ambrose Webb, a married but childless man who, thus exempt from necessity of raking the earth for swarming progeny, had sown nearly all his land in grass and rented it as pasturage: no crops of children, no crops of grain.

The other farm was of less importance. Had you ridden from the front door of the Merediths northward for nearly a mile, you would have reached the summit of a slope sweeping a wide horizon. Standing on this summit any one of these bright summer days, you could have seen at the foot of the slope, less than a quarter of a mile away on the steep opposite side, a rectangle of land covering some fifty acres. It lay crumpled into a rough depression in the landscape. A rivulet of clear water by virtue of indomitable crook and turn made its way across this valley; a woodland stood in one corner, nearly all its timber felled; there were a few patches of grain so small that they made you think of the variegated peasant strips of agricultural France; and a few lots smaller still around a stable. The buildings huddled confusedly into this valley seemed to have backed toward each other like a flock of sheep, encompassed by peril and making a last stand in futile defence of their right to exist at all.

What held the preeminence of castle in the collection of structures was a small brick house with one upper bedroom. The front entrance had no porch; and beneath the door, as stepping-stones of entrance, lay two circular slabs of wood resembling sausage blocks, one half superposed. Over the door was a trellis of gourd vines now profusely, blooming and bee-visited. Grouped around this castle in still lower feudal and vital dependence was a log cabin of one room and of many more gourd vines, an ice-house, a house for fowls, a stable, a rick for hay, and a sagging shed for farm implements.

If the appearance of the place suggested the struggles of a family on the verge of extinction, this idea was further borne out by what looked like its determination to stand a long final siege at least in the matter of rations, for it swarmed with life. In the quiet crystalline air from dawn till after sunset the sounds arising from it were the clamor of a sincere, outspoken multitude of what man calls the dumb creatures. Evidently some mind, full of energy and forethought, had made its appearance late in the history of these failing generations and had begun a fight to reverse failure and turn back the tide of aggression. As the first step in self-recovery this rugged island of poverty must be made self-sustaining. Therefore it had been made to teem with animal and vegetable plenty.

On one side of the house lay an orderly garden of vegetables and berry-bearing shrubs; the yard itself was in reality an orchard of fruit trees, some warmed by the very walls; under the shed there were beegums alive with the nectar builders; along the garden walks were frames for freighted grape-vines. The work of regeneration had been pushed beyond the limits of utilitarianism over into a certain crude domain of aesthetics. On one front window-sill what had been the annual Christmas box of raisins had been turned into a little hot-bed of flowering plants; and under the panes of glass a dense forest of them, sun-drawn, looked like a harvest field swept by a storm. On the opposite window ledge an empty drum of figs was now topped with hardy jump-up-johnnies. It bore some resemblance to an enormous yellow muffin stuffed with blueberries. In the garden big-headed peonies here and there fell over upon the young onions. The entire demesne lay white and green with tidiness under yellow sun and azure sky; for fences and outhouses, even the trunks of trees several feet up from the ground, glistened with whitewash. So that everywhere was seen the impress and guidance of a spirit evoking abundance, order, even beauty, out of what could so easily have been squalor and despondent wretchedness.

This was the home of Pansy Vaughan; and Pansy was the explanation of everything beautiful and fruitful, the peaceful Joan of Arc of that valley, seeing rapt visions of the glory of her people.

In the plain upper room of the plain brick house, on her hard white bed with her hard white thoughts, lay Pansy—sleepless throughout the night of Marguerite's ball. The youngest of the children slept beside her; two others lay in a trundle-bed across the room; and the three were getting out of sleep all that there is in it for tired, healthy children. In the room below, her father and the eldest boy were resting; and through the rafters of the flooring she could hear them both: her father a large, fluent, well-seasoned, self-comforting bassoon; and her brother a sappy, inexperienced bassoon trying to imitate it. Wakefulness was a novel state for Pansy herself, who was always tired when bedtime came and as full of wild vitality as one of her young guineas in the summer wheat; so that she sank into slumber as a rock sinks into the sea, descending till it reaches the unstirred bottom.

What kept her awake to-night was mortification that she had not been invited to the ball. She knew perfectly well that she was not entitled to an invitation, since the three Marguerites had never heard of her. She had never been to a fashionable party even in the country. But her engagement to Dent Meredith already linked her to him socially and she felt the tugging of those links: what were soon to become her rights had begun to be her rights already. Another little thing troubled her: she had no flower to send him for his button-hole, to accompany her note wishing him a pleasant evening. She could not bear to give him anything common; and Pansy believed that no one was needed to tell her what a common thing is.

For a third reason slumber refused to descend and weigh down her eyelids: on the morrow she was to call upon Dent's mother, and the thought of this call preoccupied her with terror. She was one of the bravest of souls; but the terror which shook her was the terror that shakes them all—terror lest they be not loved.

All her life she had looked with awe upward out of her valley toward that great house. Its lawns with stately clumps of evergreens, its many servants, its distant lights often seen twinkling in the windows at night, the tales that reached her of wonderful music and faery dancing; the flashing family carriages which had so often whirled past her on the turnpike with scornful footman and driver—all these recollections revisited her to-night. In the morning she was to cross the boundary of this inaccessible world as one who was to hold a high position in it.

How pictures came crowding back! One of the earliest recollections of childhood was hearing the scream of the Meredith peacocks as they drew their gorgeous plumage across the silent summer lawns; at home they had nothing better than fussing guineas. She had never come nearer to one of those proud birds than handling a set of tail feathers which Mrs. Meredith had presented to her mother for a family fly brush. Pansy had good reason to remember because she had often been required to stand beside the table and, one little bare foot set alternately on the other little bare foot, wield the brush over the dishes till arms and eyelids ached.

Another of those dim recollections was pressing her face against the window-panes when the first snow began to fall on the scraggy cedars in the yard; and as she began to sing softly to herself one of the ancient ditties of the children of the poor, "Old Woman, picking Geese," she would dream of the magical flowers which they told her bloomed all winter in a glass house at the Merediths' while there was ice on the pines outside. Big red roses and icicles separated only by a thin glass—she could hardly believe it; and she would cast her eye toward their own garden where a few black withered stalks marked the early death-beds of the pinks and jonquils.

But even in those young years Pansy had little time to look out of windows and to dream of anything. She must help, she must work; for she was the oldest of five children, and the others followed so closely that they pushed her out of her garments. A hardy, self-helpful child life, bravened by necessities, never undermined by luxuries. For very dolls Pansy used small dried gourds, taking the big round end of the gourd for the head of the doll and all the rest of the gourd for all the rest of the body.

One morning when she was fourteen, the other children were clinging with tears to her in a poor, darkened room—she to be little mother to them henceforth: they never clung in vain.

That same autumn when woods were turning red and wild grapes turning black and corn turning yellow, a cherished rockaway drawn by a venerated horse, that tried to stop for conversation on the highroad whenever he passed a neighbor's vehicle, rattled out on the turnpike with five children in it and headed for town: Pansy driving, taking herself and the rest to the public school. For years thereafter, through dark and bright days, she conveyed that nest of hungry fledglings back and forth over bitter and weary miles, getting their ravenous minds fed at one end of the route, and their ravenous bodies fed at the other. If the harness broke, Pansy got out with a string. If the horse dropped a shoe, or dropped himself, Pansy picked up what she could. In town she drove to the blacksmith shop and to all other shops whither business called her. Her friends were the blacksmith and the tollgate keeper, her teachers—all who knew her and they were few: she had no time for friendships. At home the only frequent visitor was Ambrose Webb, and Pansy did not care for Ambrose. The first time she remembered seeing him at dinner, she—a very little girl—had watched his throat with gloomy fascination. Afterward her mother told her he had an Adam's apple; and Pansy, working obscurely at some problem of theology, had secretly taken down the Bible and read the story of Adam and the fearful fruit. Ambrose became associated in her mind with the Fall of Man; she disliked the proximity.

No time for friendships. Besides the labors at school, there was the nightly care of her father on her return, the mending of his clothes; there was the lonely burning of her candle far into the night as she toiled over lessons. When she had learned all that could be taught her at the school, she left the younger children there and victoriously transferred herself for a finishing course to a seminary of the town, where she was now proceeding to graduate.

This was Pansy, child of plain, poor, farmer folk, immemorially dwelling close to the soil; unlettered, unambitious, long-lived, abounding in children, without physical beauty, but marking the track of their generations by a path lustrous with right-doing. For more than a hundred years on this spot the land had lessened around them; but the soil had worked upward into their veins, as into the stalks of plants, the trunks of trees; and that clean, thrilling sap of the earth, that vitality of the exhaustless mother which never goes for nothing, had produced one heavenly flower at last—shooting forth with irrepressible energy a soul unspoiled and morally sublime. When the top decays, as it always does in the lapse of time, whence shall come regeneration if not from below? It is the plain people who are the eternal breeding grounds of high destinies.

In the long economy of nature, this, perhaps, was the meaning and the mission of this lofty child who now lay sleepless, shaken to the core with thoughts of the splendid world over into which she was to journey to-morrow.

At ten o'clock next morning she set out.

It had been a question with her whether she should go straight across the fields and climb the fences, or walk around by the turnpike and open the gates. Her preference was for fields and fences, because that was the short and direct way, and Pansy was used to the short and direct way of getting to the end of her desires. But, as has been said, she had already fallen into the habit of considering what was due her and becoming to her as a young Mrs. Meredith; and it struck her that this lady would not climb field fences, at least by preference and with facility. Therefore she chose the highroad, gates, dust, and dignity.

It could scarcely be said that she was becomingly raimented. Pansy made her own dresses, and the dresses declared the handiwork of their maker. The one she wore this morning was chiefly characterized by a pair of sleeves designed by herself; from the elbow to the wrist there hung green pouches that looked like long pea-pods not well filled. Her only ornament was a large oval pin at her throat which had somewhat the relation to a cameo as that borne by Wedgwood china. It represented a white horse drinking at a white roadside well; beside the shoulder of the horse stood a white angel, many times taller, with an arm thrown caressingly around the horse's neck; while a stunted forest tree extended a solitary branch over the horse's tail.

She had been oppressed with dread that she should not arrive in time. No time had been set, no one knew that she was coming, and the forenoons were long. Nevertheless impatience consumed her to encounter Mrs. Meredith; and once on the way, inasmuch as Pansy usually walked as though she had been told to go for the doctor, but not to run, she was not long in arriving.

When she reached the top of the drive in front of the Meredith homestead, her face, naturally colorless, was a consistent red; and her heart, of whose existence she had never in her life been reminded, was beating audibly. Although she said to herself that it was bad manners, she shook out her handkerchief, which she had herself starched and ironed with much care; and gathering her skirts aside, first to the right and then to the left, dusted her shoes, lifting each a little into the air, and she pulled some grass from around the buttons. With the other half of her handkerchief she wiped her brow; but a fresh bead of perspiration instantly appeared; a few drops even stood on her dilated nostrils—raindrops on the eaves. Even had the day been cool she must have been warm, for she wore more layers of clothing than usual, having deposited some fresh strata in honor of her wealthy mother-in-law.

As Pansy stepped from behind the pines, with one long, quivering breath of final self-adjustment, she suddenly stood still, arrested by the vision of so glorious a hue and shape that, for the moment, everything else was forgotten. On the pavement just before her, as though to intercept her should she attempt to cross the Meredith threshold, stood a peacock, expanding to the utmost its great fan of pride and love. It confronted her with its high-born composure and insolent grace, all its jewelled feathers flashing in the sun; then with a little backward movement of its royal head and convulsion of its breast, it threw out its cry,—the cry she had heard in the distance through dreaming years,—warning all who heard that she was there, the intruder. Then lowering its tail and drawing its plumage in fastidiously against the body, it crossed her path in an evasive circle and disappeared behind the pines.

"Oh, Dent, why did you ever ask me to marry you!" thought Pansy, in a moment of soul failure.

Mrs. Meredith was sitting on the veranda and was partly concealed by a running rose. She was not expecting visitors; she had much to think of this morning, and she rose wonderingly and reluctantly as Pansy came forward: she did not know who it was, and she did not advance.

Pansy ascended the steps and paused, looking with wistful eyes at the great lady who was to be her mother, but who did not even greet her.

"Good morning, Mrs. Meredith," she said, in a shrill treble, holding herself somewhat in the attitude of a wooden soldier, "I suppose I shall have to introduce myself: it is Pansy."

The surprise faded from Mrs. Meredith's face, the reserve melted. With outstretched hands she advanced smiling.

"How do you do. Pansy," she said with motherly gentleness; "it is very kind of you to come and see me, and I am very glad to know you. Shall we go in where it is cooler?"

They entered the long hall. Near the door stood a marble bust: each wall was lined with portraits. She passed between Dent's ancestors into the large darkened parlors.

"Sit here, won't you?" said Mrs. Meredith, and she even pushed gently forward the most luxurious chair within her reach. To Pansy it seemed large enough to hold all the children. At home she was used to chairs that were not only small, but hard. Wherever the bottom of a chair seemed to be in that household, there it was—if it was anywhere. Actuated now by this lifelong faith in literal furniture, she sat down with the utmost determination where she was bid; but the bottom offered no resistance to her descending weight and she sank. She threw out her hands and her hat tilted over her eyes. It seemed to her that she was enclosed up to her neck in what might have been a large morocco bath-tub—which came to an end at her knees. She pushed back her hat, crimson.

"That was a surprise," she said, frankly admitting the fault, "but there'll never be another such."

"I am afraid you found it warm walking, Pansy," said Mrs. Meredith, opening her fan and handing it to her.

"Oh, no, Mrs. Meredith, I never fan!" said Pansy, declining breathlessly. "I have too much use for my hands. I'd rather suffer and do something else. Besides, you know I am used to walking in the sun. I am very fond of botany, and I am out of doors for hours at a time when I can find the chance."

Mrs. Meredith was delighted at the opportunity to make easy vague comment on a harmless subject.

"What a beautiful study it must be," she said with authority.

"Must be!" exclaimed Pansy; "why, Mrs. Meredith, don't you know? Don't you understand botany?"

Pansy had an idea that in Dent's home botany was as familiarly apprehended as peas and turnips in hers.

"I am afraid not," replied Mrs. Meredith, a little coolly. Her mission had been to adorn and people the earth, not to study it. And among persons of her acquaintance it was the prime duty of each not to lay bare the others' ignorance, but to make a little knowledge appear as great as possible. It was discomfiting to have Pansy charge upon what after all was only a vacant spot in her mind. She added, as defensively intimating that the subject had another dangerous side:

"When I was a girl, young ladies at school did not learn much botany; but they paid a great deal of attention to their manners."

"Why did not they learn it after they had left school and after they had learned manners?" inquired Pansy, with ruthless enthusiasm. "It is such a mistake to stop learning everything simply because you have stopped school. Don't you think so?"

"When a girl marries, my dear, she soon has other studies to take up. She has a house and husband. The girls of my day, I am afraid, gave up their botanies for their duties: it may be different now."

"No matter how many children I may have," said Pansy, positively, "I shall never—give—up—botany! Besides, you know, Mrs. Meredith, that we study botany only during the summer months, and I do hope—" she broke off suddenly.

Mrs. Meredith smoothed her dress nervously and sought to find her chair comfortable.

"Your mother named you Pansy," she remarked, taking a gloomy view of the present moment and of the whole future of this acquaintanceship.

That this should be the name of a woman was to her a mistake, a crime. Her sense of fitness demanded that names should be given to infants with reference to their adult characters and eventual positions in life. She liked her own name "Caroline"; and she liked "Margaret" and all such womanly, motherly, dignified, stately appellatives. As for "Pansy," it had been the name of one of her husband's shorthorns, a premium animal at the county fairs; the silver cup was on the sideboard in the dining room now.

"Yes, Mrs. Meredith," replied Pansy, "that was the name my mother gave me. I think she must have had a great love of flowers. She named me for the best she had. I hope I shall never forget that," and Pansy looked at Mrs. Meredith with a face of such gravity and pride that silence lasted in the parlors for a while.

Buried in Pansy's heart was one secret, one sorrow: that her mother had been poor. Her father wore his yoke ungalled; he loved rough work, drew his religion from privations, accepted hardship as the chastening that insures reward. But that her mother's hands should have been folded and have returned to universal clay without ever having fondled the finer things of life—this to Pansy was remembrance to start tears on the brightest day.

"I think she named you beautifully," said Mrs. Meredith, breaking that silence, "and I am glad you told me, Pansy." She lingered with quick approval on the name.

But she turned the conversation at once to less personal channels. The beauty of the country at this season seemed to offer her an inoffensive escape. She felt that she could handle it at least with tolerable discretion. She realized that she was not deep on the subject, but she did feel fluent.

"I suppose you take the same pride that we all do in such a beautiful country."

Sunlight instantly shone out on Pansy's face. Dent was a geologist; and since she conceived herself to be on trial before Mrs. Meredith this morning, it was of the first importance that she demonstrate her sympathy and intelligent appreciation of his field of work.

"Indeed I do feel the greatest pride in it, Mrs. Meredith," she replied. "I study it a great deal. But of course you know perfectly the whole formation of this region."

Mrs. Meredith coughed with frank discouragement.

"I do not know it," she admitted dryly. "I suppose I ought to know it, but I do not. I believe school-teachers understand these things. I am afraid I am a very ignorant woman. No one of my acquaintances is very learned. We are not used to scholarship."

"I know all the strata," said Pansy. "I tell the children stories of how the Mastodon once virtually lived in our stable, and that millions of years ago there were Pterodactyls under their bed."

"I think it a misfortune for a young woman to have much to say to children about Pterodactyls under their bed—is that the name? Such things never seem to have troubled Solomon, and I believe he was reputed wise." She did not care for the old-fashioned reference herself, but she thought it would affect Pansy.

"The children in the public schools know things that Solomon never heard of," said Pansy, contemptuously.

"I do not doubt it in the least, my dear. I believe it was not his knowledge that made him rather celebrated, but his wisdom. But I am not up in Solomon!" she admitted hastily, retreating from the subject in new dismay.

The time had arrived for Pansy to depart; but she reclined in her morocco alcove with somewhat the stiffness of a tilted bottle and somewhat the contour. She felt extreme dissatisfaction with her visit and reluctance to terminate it.

Her idea of the difference between people in society and other people was that it hinged ornamentally upon inexhaustible and scanty knowledge. If Mrs. Meredith was a social leader, and she herself had no social standing at all, it was mainly because that lady was publicly recognized as a learned woman, and the world had not yet found out that she herself was anything but ignorant. Being ignorant was to her mind the quintessence of being common; and as she had undertaken this morning to prove to Dent's mother that she was not common, she had only to prove that she was learned. For days she had prepared for this interview with that conception of its meaning. She had converted her mind into a kind of rapid-firing gun; she had condensed her knowledge into conversational cartridges. No sooner had she taken up a mental position before Mrs. Meredith than the parlors resounded with light, rapid detonations of information. That lady had but to release the poorest, most lifeless, little clay pigeon of a remark and Pansy shattered it in mid air and refixed suspicious eyes on the trap.

But the pigeons soon began to fly less frequently. And finally they gave out. And now she must take nearly all her cartridges home! Mrs. Meredith would think her ignorant, therefore she would think her common. If Pansy had only known what divine dulness, what ambrosial stupidity, often reclines on those Olympian heights called society!

As last she rose. Neither had mentioned Dent's name, though each had been thinking of him all the time. Not a word had been spoken to indicate the recognition of a relationship which one of them so desired and the other so dreaded. Pansy might merely have hurried over to ask Mrs. Meredith for the loan of an ice-cream freezer or for a setting of eggs. On the mother's part this silence was kindly meant: she did not think it right to take for granted what might never come to pass. Uppermost in her mind was the cruelty of accepting Pansy as her daughter-in-law this morning with the possibility of rejecting her afterward.

As Pansy walked reluctantly out into the hall, she stopped with a deep wish in her candid eyes.

"Oh, Mrs. Meredith, I should so much like to see the portrait of Dent's father: he has often spoken to me about It."

Mrs. Meredith led her away in silence to where the portrait hung, and the two stood looking at it side by side. She resisted a slight impulse to put her arm around the child. When they returned to the front of the house, Pansy turned:

"Do you think you will ever love me?"

The carriage was at the door. "You must not walk," said Mrs. Meredith, "the sun is too hot now."

As Pansy stepped into the carriage, she cast a suspicious glance at the cushions: Meredith upholstery was not to be trusted, and she seated herself warily.

Mrs. Meredith put her hand through the window: "You must come to see me soon again, Pansy. I am a poor visitor, but I shall try to call on you in a few days."

She went back to her seat on the veranda.

It has been said that her insight into goodness was her strength; she usually had a way of knowing at once, as regards the character of people, what she was ever to know at all. Her impressions of Pansy unrolled themselves disconnectedly:

"She makes mistakes, but she does not know how to do wrong. Guile is not in her. She is so innocent that she does not realize sometimes the peril of her own words. She is proud—a great deal prouder than Dent. To her, life means work and duty; more than that, it means love. She is ambitious, and ambition, in her case, would be indispensable. She did not claim Dent: I appreciate that. She is a perfectly brave girl, and it is cowardice that makes so many women hypocrites. She will improve—she improved while she was here. But oh, everything else! No figure, no beauty, no grace, no tact, no voice, no hands, no anything that is so much needed! Dent says there are cold bodies which he calls planets without atmosphere: he has found one to revolve about him. If she only had some clouds! A mist here and there, so that everything would not be so plain, so exposed, so terribly open! But neither has he any clouds, any mists, any atmosphere. And if she only would not so try to expose other people! If she had not so trampled upon me in my ignorance; and with such a sense of triumph! I was never so educated in my life by a visitor. The amount of information she imparted in half an hour—how many months it would have served the purpose of a well-bred woman! And her pride in her family—were there ever such little brothers and sisters outside a royal family! And her devotion to her father, and remembrance of her mother. I shall go to see her, and be received, I suppose, somewhere between the griddle and the churn."

As Pansy was driven home, feeling under herself for the first time the elasticity of a perfect carriage, she experimented with her posture. "This carriage is not to be sat in in the usual way," she said. And indeed it was not. In the family rockaway there was constant need of muscular adjustment to different shocks at successive moments; here muscular surrender was required: a comfortable collapse—and there you were!

Trouble awaited her at home. Owing to preoccupation with her visit she had, before setting out, neglected much of her morning work. She had especially forgotten the hungry multitude of her dependants. The children, taking advantage of her absence, had fed only themselves. As a consequence, the trustful lives around the house had suffered a great wrong, and they were attempting to describe it to each other. The instant Pansy descended from the carriage the ducks, massed around the doorsteps, discovered her, and with frantic outcry and outstretched necks ran to find out what it all meant. The signal was taken up by other species and genera. In the stable lot the calves responded as the French horn end of the orchestra; and the youngest of her little brothers, who had climbed into a fruit tree as a lookout for her return, in scrambling hurriedly down, dropped to the earth with the boneless thud of an opossum.

Pansy walked straight up to her room, heeding nothing, leaving a wailing wake. She locked herself in. It was an hour before dinner and she needed all those moments for herself.

She sat on the edge of her bed and new light brought new wretchedness. It was not, after all, quantity of information that made the chief difference between herself and Dent's mother. The other things, all the other things—would she ever, ever acquire them! Finally the picture rose before her of how the footman had looked as he had held the carriage door open for her, and the ducks had sprawled over his feet; and she threw herself on the bed, hat and all, and burst out crying with rage and grief and mortification.

"She will think I am common," she moaned, "and I am not common! Why did I say such things? It is not my way of talking. Why did I criticise the way the portrait was hung? And she will think this is what I really am, and it is not what I am! She will think I do not even know how to sit in a chair, and she will tell Dent, and Dent will believe her, and what will become of me?"

"Pansy," said Dent next afternoon, as they were in the woods together, "you have won my mother's heart."

"Oh, Dent," she exclaimed, tears starting, "I was afraid she would not like me. How could she like me, knowing me no better?"

"She doesn't yet know that she likes you," he replied, with his honest thinking and his honest speech, "but I can see that she trusts you and respects you; and with my mother everything else follows in time."

"I was embarrassed. I did myself such injustice."

"It is something you never did any one else."

He had been at work in his quarry on the vestiges of creation; the quarry lay at an outcrop of that northern hill overlooking the valley in which she lived. Near by was a woodland, and she had come out for some work of her own in which he guided her. They lay on the grass now side by side.

"I am working on the plan of our house, Pansy. I expect to begin to build in the autumn. I have chosen this spot for the site. How do you like it?"

"I like it very well. For one reason, I can always see the old place from it."

"My father left his estate to be equally divided between Rowan and me. Of course he could not divide the house; that goes to Rowan: it is a good custom for this country as it was a good custom for our forefathers in England. But I get an equivalent and am to build for myself on this part of the land: my portion is over here. You see we have always been divided only by a few fences and they do not divide at all."

"The same plants grow on each side, Dent."

"There is one thing I have to tell you. If you are coming into our family, you ought to know it beforehand. There is a shadow over our house. It grows deeper every year and we do not know what it means. That is, my mother and I do not know. It is some secret in Rowan's life. He has never offered to tell us, and of course we have never asked him, and in fact mother and I have never even spoken to each other on the subject."

It was the first time she had even seen sadness in his eyes; and she impulsively clasped his hand. He returned the pressure and then their palms separated. No franker sign of their love had ever passed between them.

He went on very gravely: "Rowan was the most open nature I ever saw when he was a boy. I remember this now. I did not think of it then. I believe he was the happiest. You know we are all pantheists of some kind nowadays. I could never see much difference between a living thing that stands rooted in the earth like a tree and a living thing whose destiny it is to move the foot perpetually over the earth, as man. The union is as close in one case as in the other. Do you remember the blind man of the New Testament who saw men as trees walking? Rowan seemed to me, as I recall him now, to have risen out of the earth through my father and mother—a growth of wild nature, with the seasons in his face, with the blood of the planet rising into his veins as intimately as it pours into a spring oak or into an autumn grape-vine. I often heard Professor Hardage call him the earth-born. He never called any one else that. He was wild with happiness until he went to college. He came back all changed; and life has been uphill with him ever since. Lately things have grown worse. The other day I was working on the plan of our house; he came in and looked over my shoulder: 'Don't build, Dent,' he said, 'bring your wife here,' and he walked quickly out of the room. I knew what that meant: he has been unfortunate in his love affair and is ready to throw up the whole idea of marrying. This is our trouble, Pansy. It may explain anything that may have been lacking in my mother's treatment of you; she is not herself at all." He spoke with great tenderness and he looked disturbed.