"I tell you what 'tis, Mary Elliston Byrd," said Miss Mason. "It's 'bout time you saw a doctor. My mother was a physician-homeopath, one of the first that ever graduated. Take my advice, and have a woman."

"I'd much rather," said Mary.

"I should say!" agreed the other. "I never was one to be against the men, but oh, my—" she threw up her bony little hands—"if there's one thing I never could abide it's a man doctor for woman's work. I s'pose I got started that way by what my mother told me of the medical students in her day. Anyway, it hardly seems Christian to me for a woman to go to a man doctor."

Mary laughed. "I wish my dear old Dad could have heard you. I remember he once refused to meet a woman doctor in consultation. She had to leave Lindum—no one would employ her. I was a child at the time, but even then it seemed all wrong to me."

"My dear, you thank the Lord you live under the Stars and Stripes," rejoined Miss Mason, who conceived of England as a place beyond the reach of liberty for either women or men.

"I shall live under the Tricolor if Stefan has his way," smiled Mary.

"Child," said her visitor, putting on her hat, "don't say it. Your husband's an elegant man—I admire him—but don't you ever let me hear he doesn't love his country."

"I'm certainly learning to love it myself," Mary discreetly evaded.

"You're too fine a woman not to," retorted the other. "Now I tell you. I've been treated for my chest at the Women's and Children's Hospital. There's one little doctor there's cute's she can be. I'm goin' to get you her address. You've got to treat yourself right. Good-bye," nodded the little woman; and was gone in her usual brisk fashion.

It was the day of Mr. Farraday's expected call, and Miss Mason had hardly departed when the bell rang. Mary hastily put away her sewing and pressed the electric button which opened the downstairs door to visitors. She wished Stefan were back again to help her entertain the editor, and greeted him with apologies for her husband's absence. She was anxious that this man, whom she instinctively liked and trusted, should see her husband at his best. Seating Farraday in the Morris chair, she got him some tea, while he looked about with interest.

The two big pictures, "Tempest," and "Pursuit," now hung stretched but unframed, on either side of the room. Farraday's gaze kept returning to them.

"Those are his Beaux Arts pictures; extraordinary, aren't they?" said Mary, following his eyes.

"They certainly are. Remarkably powerful. I understand there is another, though, that he has only just finished?"

"Yes, it's on the easel, covered, you see," she answered. "Stefan must have the honor of showing you that himself."

"I wish you would tell me, Mrs. Byrd," said Farraday, changing the subject, "how you happened to write those verses? Had you been brought up with children, younger brothers and sisters, for instance?"

Mary shook her head. "No, I'm the younger of two. But I've always loved children more than anything in the world." She blushed, and Farraday, watching her, realized for the first time what a certain heightened radiance in her face betokened. He smiled very sweetly at her. She in her turn saw that he knew, and was glad. His manner seemed to enfold her in a mantle of comfort and understanding.

As they finished their tea, Stefan arrived. He entered gaily, greeted Farraday, and fell upon the tea, consuming two cups and several slices of bread and butter with the rapid concentration he gave to all his acts.

That finished, he leaped up and made for the easel.

"Now, Farraday," he cried, "you are going to see one of the finest modern paintings in the world. Why should I be modest about it? I'm not. It's a masterpiece—Mary's and mine!"

Mary wished he had not included her. Though determined to overcome the feeling, she still shrank from having the picture shown in her presence. Farraday placed himself in position, and Stefan threw back the cloth, watching the other's face with eagerness. The effect surpassed his expectation. The editor flushed, then gradually became quite pale. After a minute he turned rather abruptly from the canvas and faced Stefan.

"You are right, Mr. Byrd," he said, in an obviously controlled voice, "it is a masterpiece. It will make your name and probably your fortune. It is one of the most magnificent modern paintings I have ever seen."

Mary beamed.

"Your praise honors me," said Stefan, genuinely delighted.

"I'm sorry I have to run away now," Farraday continued almost hurriedly. "You know what a busy man I am." He shook hands with Stefan. "A thousand congratulations," he said. "Good-bye, Mrs. Byrd; I enjoyed my cup of tea with you immensely." The hand he offered her was cold; he hardly looked up. "You will let me have some more stories, won't you? I shall count on them. Good-bye again—my warmest congratulations to you both," and he took his departure with a suddenness only saved from precipitation by the deliberate poise of his whole personality.

"I'm sorry he had to go so soon," said Mary, a little blankly.

"What got into the man?" Stefan wondered, thrusting his hands into his pockets. "He was leisurely enough till he had seen the picture. I tell you what!" he exclaimed. "Did you notice his expression when he looked at it? I believe the chap is in love with you!" He turned his most impish and mischievous face to her.

Mary blushed with annoyance. "How perfectly ridiculous, Stefan! Please don't say such things."

"But he is!" He danced about the room, hugely entertained by his idea. "Don't you see, that is why he is so eager about your verses, and why he was so bouleverse by the Danae! Poor chap, I feel quite sorry for him. You must be nice to him."

Mary was thoroughly annoyed. "Please don't talk like that," she reiterated. "You don't know how it hurts when you are so flippant. If you suggest such a reason for his acceptance of my work, of course I can't send in any more." Tears of vexation were in her eyes.

"Darling, don't be absurd," he responded, teasingly. "Why shouldn't he be in love with you? I expect everybody to be so. As for your verses, of course he wouldn't take them if they weren't good; I didn't mean that."

"Then why did you say it?" she asked, unplacated.

"Dearest!" and he kissed her. "Don't be dignified; be Aphrodite again, not Pallas. I never mean anything I say, except when I say I love you!"

"Love isn't the only thing, Stefan," she replied.

"Isn't it? What else is there? I don't know," and he jumped on the table and sat smiling there with his head on one side, like a naughty little boy facing his schoolmaster.

She wanted to answer "comprehension," but was silent, feeling the uselessness of further words. How expect understanding of a common human hurt from this being, who alternately appeared in the guise of a god and a gamin? She remembered the old tale of the maiden wedded to the beautiful and strange elf-king. Was the legend symbolic of that mysterious thread—call it genius or what you will—that runs its erratic course through humanity's woof, marring yet illuminating the staid design, never straightened with its fellow-threads, never tied, and never to be followed to its source? With the feeling of having for an instant held in her hand the key to the riddle of his nature, Mary went to Stefan and ran her fingers gently through his hair.

"Child," she said, smiling at him rather sadly; and "Beautiful," he responded, with a prompt kiss.



X

The next morning brought Constance Elliot, primed with a complete scheme for the future of the Danae. She found Mary busy with her sewing and Stefan rather restlessly cleaning his pallette and brushes. The great picture was propped against the wall, a smaller empty canvas being screwed on the easel. Stefan greeted her enthusiastically.

"Come in!" he cried, forestalling Mary. "You find us betwixt and between. She's finished," indicating the Danae, "and I'm thinking of doing an interior, with Mary seated. I don't know," he went on thoughtfully; "it's quite out of my usual line, but we're too domestic here just now for anything else." His tone was slightly grumbling. From the rocking chair Constance smiled importantly on them both. She had the happy faculty of never appearing to hear what should not have been expressed.

"Children," she said, "your immediate future is arranged. I have a plan for the proper presentation of the masterpiece to a waiting world, and I haven't been responsible for two suffrage matinees and a mile of the Parade for nothing. I understand publicity. Now listen."

She outlined her scheme to them. The reporters were to be sent for and informed that the great new American painter, sensation of this year's Salon, had kindly consented to a private exhibition of his masterpiece at her house for the benefit of the Cause. Tickets, one dollar each, to be limited to two hundred.

"Then a bit about your both being Suffragists, and about Mary's writing, you know," she threw in. "Note the value of the limited sale—at once it becomes a privilege to be there." Tickets, she went on to explain, would be sent to the art critics of the newspapers, and Mr. Farraday would arrange to get Constantine himself and one or two of the big private connoisseurs. She personally knew the curator of the Metropolitan, and would get him. The press notices would be followed by special letters and articles by some of these men. Then Constantine would announce a two weeks' exhibition at his gallery, the public would flock, and the picture would be bought by one of the big millionaires, or a gallery. "I've arranged it all," she concluded triumphantly, looking from one to the other with her dark alert glance.

Stefan was grinning delightedly, his attention for the moment completely captured. Mary's sewing had dropped to her lap; she was round-eyed.

"But the sale itself, Mrs. Elliot, you can hardly have arranged that?" she laughed.

Constance waved her hand. "That arranges itself. It is enough to set the machinery in motion."

"Do you mean to say," went on Mary, half incredulous, "that you can simply send for the reporters and get them to write what you want?"

"Within reason, certainly," answered the other. "Why not?"

"In England," Mary laughed, "if a woman were to do that, unless she were a duchess, a Pankhurst, or a great actress, they wouldn't even come."

Constance dismissed this with a shrug. "Ah, well, my dear, luckly we're not in England! I'm going to begin to-day. I only came over to get your permission. Let me see—this is the sixteenth—too near Christmas. I'll have the tickets printed and the press announcement prepared, and we'll let them go in the dead week after Christmas, when the papers are thankful for copy. We'll exhibit the first Saturday in the New Year. For a week we'll have follow-up articles, and then Constantine will take it. You blessed people," and she rose to go, "don't have any anxiety. Suffragists always put things through, and I shall concentrate on this for the next three weeks. I consider the picture sold."

Mary tried to express her gratitude, but the other waved it aside. "I just love you both," she cried in her impulsive way, "and want to see you where you ought to be—at the top!" She shook hands with Stefan effusively. "Mind you get on with your next picture!" she cried in parting; "every one will be clamoring for your work!"

"Oh, Stefan, isn't it awfully good of her?" exclaimed Mary, linking her arm through his. He was staring at his empty canvas. "Yes, splendid," he responded carelessly, "but of course she'll have the kudos, and her organization will benefit, too."

"Stefan!" Mary dropped his arm, dumfounded. It was not possible he should be so ungenerous. She would have remonstrated, but saw he was oblivious of her.

"Yes," he went on absently, looking from the room to the canvas, "it's fine for every one all round—just as it should be. Now, Mary, if you will sit over there by the fire and take your sewing, I think I'll try and block in that Dutch interior effect I noticed some time back. The light is all wrong, but I can get the thing composed."

He was lost in his new idea. Mary told herself she had in part misjudged him. His comment on their friend's assistance was not dictated by lack of appreciation so much as by indifference. No sooner was the picture's future settled than he had ceased to be interested in it. The practical results of its sale would have little real meaning for him, she knew. She began to see that all he asked of humanity was that it should leave him untrammeled to do his work, while yielding him full measure of the beauty and acclamation that were his food. "Well," she thought, "I'm the wife of a genius. It's a great privilege, but it is strange, for I always supposed if I married it would simply be some good, kind man. He would have been very dull," she smiled to herself, mentally contrasting the imagined with the real.

A few days before Christmas Mary noticed that one of the six skyscraper studies was gone from the studio. She spoke of it, fearing the possibility of a theft, but Stefan murmured rather vaguely that it was all right—he was having it framed. Also, on three consecutive mornings she awakened to find him busily painting at a small easel close under the window, which he would hastily cover on hearing her move. As he evidently did not wish her to see it, she wisely restrained her curiosity. She was herself busy with various little secrets—there was some knitting to be done whenever his back was turned, and she had made several shopping expeditions. On Christmas Eve Stefan was gone the whole afternoon, and returned radiant, full of absurd jokes and quivers of suppressed glee. He was evidently highly pleased with himself, but cherished with touching faith, she thought, the illusion that his manner betrayed nothing.

That night, when she was supposed to be asleep, she felt him creep carefully out of bed, heard him fumbling for his dressing gown, and saw a shaft of light as the studio door was cautiously opened. A moment later a rustling sounded through the transom, followed by the shrill whisper of Madame Corriani. Listening, she fell asleep.

She was wakened by Stefan's arms round her.

"A happy Christmas, darling! So wonderful—the first Christmas I ever remember celebrating."

There was a ruddy glow of firelight in the room, but to her opening eyes it seemed unusually dark, and in a moment she saw that the great piece of Chinese silk they used for their couch cover was stretched across the room on cords, shutting off the window end. She jumped up hastily.

"Oh, Stefan, how thrilling!" she exclaimed, girlishly excited. As for him, he was standing before her dressed, and obviously tingling with impatience. She slipped into a dressing gown of white silk, and caught her hair loosely up. Simultaneously Stefan emerged from the kitchenette with two steaming cups of coffee, which he placed on a table before the fire.

"Clever boy!" she exclaimed delighted, for he had never made the coffee before. In a moment he produced rolls and butter.

"Dejeuner first," he proclaimed gleefully, "and then the surprise!" They ate their meal as excitedly as two children. In the midst of it Mary rose and, fetching from the bureau two little ribbon-tied parcels, placed them in his hands.

"For me? More excitements!" he warbled. "But I shan't open them till the curtain comes down. There, we've finished." He jumped up. "Beautiful, allow me to present to you the Byrds' Christmas tree." With a dramatic gesture he unhooked a cord. The curtain fell. There in the full morning light stood a tree, different from any Mary had ever seen. There were no candles on it, but from top to bottom it was all one glittering white. There were no garish tinsel ornaments, but from every branch hung a white bird, wings outstretched, and under each bird lay, on the branch below, something white. At the foot of the tree stood a little painting framed in pale silver. It was of a nude baby boy, sitting wonderingly upon a hilltop at early dawn. His eyes were lifted to the sky, his hands groped. Mary, with an exclamation of delight, stepped nearer. Then she saw what the white things were under the spreading wings of the birds. Each was the appurtenance of a baby. One was a tiny cap, one a cloak, others were dresses, little jackets, vests. There were some tiny white socks, and, at the very top of the tree, a rattle of white coral and silver.

"Oh, Stefan, my dearest—'the little white bird'!" she cried.

"Do you like it, darling?" he asked delightedly, his arms about her. "Mrs. Elliot told me about Barrie's white bird—I hadn't known the story. But I wanted to show you I was glad about ours," he held her close, "and directly she spoke of the bird, I thought of this. She went with me to get those little things—" he waved at the tree—"some of them are from her. But the picture was quite my own idea. It's right, isn't it? What you would feel, I mean? I tried to get inside your heart."

She nodded, her eyes shining with tears. She could find no words to tell him how deeply she was touched. Her half-formed doubts were swept away —he was her own dear man, kind and comprehending. She took the little painting and sat with it on her knee, poring over it, Stefan standing by delighted at his success. Then he remembered his own parcels. The larger he opened first, and instantly donned one of the two knitted ties it held, proclaiming its golden brown vastly becoming. The smaller parcel contained a tiny jeweler's box, and in it Stefan found an old and heavy seal ring of pure design, set with a transparent greenish stone, which bore the intaglio of a winged head. He was enchanted.

"Mary, you wonder," he cried. "You must have created this—you couldn't just have found it. It symbolizes what you have given me—sums up all that you are!" and he kissed her rapturously.

"Oh, Stefan," she answered, "it is all perfect, for your gift symbolizes what you have brought to me!"

"Yes, darling, but not all I am to you, I hope," he replied, rubbing his cheek against hers.

"Foolish one," she smiled back at him.

They spent a completely happy day, rejoicing in the successful attempt of each to penetrate the other's mind. They had never, even on their honeymoon, felt more at one. Later, Mary asked him about the missing sketch.

"Yes, I sold it for the bird's trappings," he answered gleefully; "wasn't it clever of me? But don't ask me for the horrid details, and don't tell me a word about my wonderful ring. I prefer to consider that you fetched it from Olympus."

And Mary, whose practical conscience had given her sharp twinges over her extravagance, was glad to let it rest at that.

During the morning a great sheaf of roses came for Mary with the card of James Farraday, and on its heels a bush of white heather inscribed to them both from McEwan. The postman contributed several cards, and a tiny string of pink coral from Miss Mason. "How kind every one is!" Mary cried happily.

In the afternoon the Corrianis were summoned. Mary had small presents for them and a glass of wine, which Stefan poured to the accompaniment of a song in his best Italian. This melted the somewhat sulky Corriani to smiles, and his wife to tears. The day closed with dinner at their beloved French hotel, and a bottle of Burgundy shared with Stefan's favorite waiters.



XI

During Christmas week Stefan worked hard at his interior, but about the fifth day began to show signs of restlessness. The following morning, after only half an hour's painting, he threw down his brush.

"It's no use, Mary," he announced, "I don't think I shall ever be able to do this kind of work; it simply doesn't inspire me."

She looked up from her sewing. "Why, I thought it promised charmingly."

"That's just it." He ruffled his hair irritably. "It does. Can you imagine my doing anything 'charming'? No, the only hope for this interior is for me to get depth into it, and depth won't come—it's facile." And he stared disgustedly at the canvas.

"I think I know what you mean," Mary answered absently. She was thinking that his work had power and height, but that depth she had never seen in it.

Stefan shook himself. "Oh, come along, Mary, let's get out of this. We've been mewed up in this domestic atmosphere for days. I shall explode soon. Let's go somewhere."

"Very well," she agreed, folding up her work.

"You feel all right, don't you?" he checked himself to ask.

"Rather, don't I look it?"

"You certainly do," he replied, but without his usual praise of her. "I have it, let's take a look at Miss Felicity Berber! I shall probably get some new ideas from her. Happy thought! Come on, Mary, hat, coat, let's hurry." He was all impatience to be gone.

They started to walk up the Avenue, stopping at the hotel to find in the telephone book the number of the Berber establishment. It was entered, "Berber, Felicity, Creator of Raiment."

"How affected!" laughed Mary.

"Yes," said Stefan, "amusing people usually are."

Though he appeared moody the crisp, sunny air of the Avenue gradually brightened him, and Mary, who was beginning to feel her confined mornings, breathed it in joyfully.

The house was in the thirties, a large building of white marble. A lift carried them to the top floor, and left them facing a black door with "Felicity Berber" painted on it in vermilion letters. Opening this, they found themselves in a huge windowless room roofed with opaque glass. The floor was inlaid in a mosaic of uneven tiles which appeared to be of different shades of black. The walls, from roof to floor, were hung with shimmering green silk of the shade of a parrot's wing. There were no show-cases or other evidences of commercialism, but about the room were set couches of black japanned wood, upon which rested flat mattresses covered in the same green as the walls. On these silk cushions in black and vermilion were piled. The only other furniture consisted of low tables in black lacquer, one beside every couch. On each of these rested a lacquered bowl of Chinese red, obviously for the receipt of cigarette ashes. A similar but larger bowl on a table near the door was filled with green orchids. One large green silk rug—innocent of pattern—invited the entering visitor deeper into the room; otherwise the floor was bare. There were no pictures, no decorations, merely this green and black background, relieved by occasional splashes of vermilion, and leading up to a great lacquered screen of the same hue which obscured a door at the further end of the room.

From the corner nearest the entrance a young woman advanced to meet them. She was clad in flowing lines of opalescent green, and her black hair was banded low across the forehead with a narrow line of emerald.

"You wish to see raiment?" was her greeting.

Mary felt rather at a loss amidst these ultra-aestheticisms, but Stefan promptly asked to see Miss Berber.

"Madame rarely sees new clients in the morning." The green damsel was pessimistic. Mary felt secretly amused at the ostentatious phraseology.

"Tell her we are friends of Mrs. Theodore Elliot's," replied Stefan, with his most brilliant and ingratiating smile.

The damsel brightened somewhat. "If I may have your name I will see what can be done," she offered, extending a small vermilion tray. Stefan produced a card and the damsel floated with it toward the distant exit. Her footsteps were silent on the dead tiling, and there was no sound from the door beyond the screen.

"Isn't this a lark? Let's sit down," Stefan exclaimed, leading the way to a couch.

"It's rather absurd, don't you think?" smiled Mary.

"No doubt, but amusing enough for mere mortals," he shrugged, a scarcely perceptible snub in his tone. Mary was silent. They waited for several minutes. At last instinct rather than hearing made them turn to see a figure advancing down the room.

Both instantly recognized the celebrated Miss Berber. A small, slim woman, obviously light-boned and supple, she seemed to move forward like a ripple. Her naturally pale face, with its curved scarlet lips and slanting eyes, was set on a long neck, and round her small head a heavy swathe of black hair was held by huge scarlet pins. Her dress, cut in a narrow V at the neck, was all of semi-transparent reds, the brilliant happy reds of the Chinese. In fact, but for her head, she would have been only half visible as she advanced against the background of the screen. Mary's impression of her was blurred, but Stefan, whose artist's eye observed everything, noticed that her narrow feet were encased in heelless satin shoes which followed the natural shape of the feet like gloves.

"Mr. and Mrs. Byrd! How do you do?" she murmured, and her voice was light-breathed, a mere memory of sound. It suggested that she customarily mislaid it, and recaptured only an echo.

"Pull that other couch a little nearer, please," she waved to Stefan, appropriating the one from which they had just risen. Upon this she stretched her full length, propping the cushions comfortably under her shoulders.

"Do you smoke?" she breathed, and stretching an arm produced from a hidden drawer in the table at her elbow cigarettes in a box of black lacquer, and matches in one of red. Mary declined, but Stefan immediately lighted a cigarette for himself and held a match for Miss Berber. Mary and he settled themselves on the couch which he drew up, and which slipped readily over the tiles.

"Now we can talk," exhaled their hostess on a spiral of smoke. "I never see strangers in the morning, not even friends of dear Connie's, but there was something in the name—" She seemed to be fingering a small knob protruding from the lacquer of her couch. It must have been a bell, for in a moment the green maiden appeared.

"Chloris, has that picture come for the sylvan fitting room?" she murmured. "Yes? Bring it, please." Her gesture seemed to waft the damsel over the floor. During this interlude the Byrds were silent, Stefan hugely entertained, Mary beginning to feel a slight antagonism toward this super-casual dressmaker.

A moment and the attendant nymph reappeared, bearing a large canvas framed in glistening green wood.

"Against the table—toward Mr. Byrd." Miss Berber supplemented the murmur with an indicative gesture. "You know that?" dropped from her lips as the nymph glided away.

It was Stefan's pastoral of the dancing faun. He nodded gaily, but Mary felt herself blushing. Her husband's work destined for a fitting room!

"I thought so," Miss Berber enunciated through a breath of smoke. "I picked it up the other day. Quite lovely. My sylvan fitting room required just that note. I use it for country raiment only. Atmosphere, Mr. Byrd. I want my clients to feel young when they are preparing for the country. I am glad to see you here."

Stefan reciprocated. So far, Miss Berber had ignored Mary.

"I might consult you about my next color scheme—original artists are so rare. I change this room every year." Her eyelids drooped.

At this point Mary ventured to draw attention to herself.

"Why is it, Miss Berber," she asked in her clear English voice, "that you have only couches here?"

Felicity's lids trembled; she half looked up. "How seldom one hears a beautiful voice," she uttered. "Chairs, Mrs. Byrd, destroy women's beauty. Why sit, when one can recline? My clients may not wear corsets; reclining encourages them to feel at ease without."

Mary found Miss Berber's affectations absurd, but this explanation heightened her respect for her intelligence. "Method in her madness," she quoted to herself.

"Miss Berber, I want you to create a gown for my wife. I am sure when you look at her you will be interested in the idea." Stefan expected every one to pay tribute to Mary's beauty.

Again Miss Berber's fingers strayed. The nymph appeared. "How long have I, Chloris? ... Half an hour? Then send me Daphne. You notice the silence, Mr. Byrd? It rests my clients, brings health to their nerves. Without it, I could not do my work."

Mary smiled as she mentally contrasted these surroundings with Farraday's office, where she had last heard that expression. Was quiet so rare a privilege in America, she wondered?

A moment, and a second damsel emerged, brown-haired, clad in a paler green, and carrying paper and pencil. Not until this ministrant had seated herself at the foot of Miss Berber's couch did that lady refer to Stefan's request. Then, propping herself on her elbow, she at last looked full at Mary. What she saw evidently pleased her, for she allowed herself a slight smile. "Ah," she breathed, "an evening, or a house gown?"

"Evening," interposed Stefan. Then to Mary, "You look your best decolletee, you know."

"Englishwomen always do," murmured Miss Berber.

"Will you kindly take off your hat and coat, and stand up, Mrs. Byrd?" Mary complied, feeling uncomfortably like a cloak model.

"Classic, pure classic. How seldom one sees it!" Miss Berber's voice became quite audible. "Gold, of course, classic lines, gold sandals. A fillet, but no ornaments. You wish to wear this raiment during the ensuing months, Mrs. Byrd?" Mary nodded. "Then write Demeter type," the designer interpolated to her satellite, who was taking notes. "Otherwise it would of course be Artemis—or Aphrodite even?" turning for agreement to Stefan. "Would you say Aphrodite?"

"I always do," beamed he, delighted.

At this point the first nymph, Chloris, again appeared, and at a motion of Miss Berber's hand rapidly and silently measured Mary, the paler hued nymph assisting her as scribe.

"Mr. Byrd," pronounced the autocrat of the establishment, when at the conclusion of these rites the attendants had faded from the room. "I never design for less than two hundred dollars. Such a garment as I have in mind for your wife, queenly and abundant—" her hands waved in illustration—"would cost three hundred. But—" her look checked Mary in an exclamation of refusal—"we belong to the same world, the world of art, not of finance. Yes?" She smiled. "Your painting, Mr. Byrd, is worth three times what I gave for it, and Mrs. Byrd will wear my raiment as few clients can. It will give me pleasure"—her lids drooped to illustrate finality—"to make this garment for the value of the material, which will be—" her lips smiled amusement at the bagatelle—"between seventy and eighty-five dollars—no more." She ceased.

Mary felt uncomfortable. Why should she accept such a favor at the hands of this poseuse? Stefan, however, saved her the necessity of decision. He leapt to his feet, all smiles.

"Miss Berber," he cried, "you honor us, and Mary will glorify your design. It is probable," he beamed, "that we cannot afford a dress at all, but I disregard that utterly." He shrugged, and snapped a finger. "You have given me an inspiration. As soon as the dress arrives, I shall paint Mary as Demeter. Mille remerciements!" Bending, he kissed Miss Berber's hand in the continental manner. Mary, watching, felt a tiny prick of jealousy. "He never kissed my hand," she thought, and instantly scorned herself for the idea.

The designer smiled languidly up at Stefan. "I am happy," she murmured. "No fittings, Mrs. Byrd. We rarely fit, except the model gowns. You will have the garment in a week. Au revoir." Her eyes closed. They turned to find a high-busted woman entering the room, accompanied by two young girls. As they departed a breath-like echo floated after them, "Oh, really, Mrs. Van Sittart—still those corsets? I can do nothing for you, you know." Tones of shrill excuse penetrated to the lift door. At the curb below stood a dyspeptically stuffed limousine, guarded by two men in puce liveries.

The Byrds swung southward in silence, but suddenly Stefan heaved a great breath. "Nom d'un nom d'un nom d'un vieux bonhomme!" he exploded, voicing in that cumulative expletive his extreme satisfaction with the morning.



XII

Constance Elliot had not boasted her stage-management in vain. On the first Saturday in January all proceeded according to schedule. The Danae, beautifully framed, stood at the farther end of Constance's double drawing-room, from which all other mural impedimenta, together with most of the furniture, had been removed. Expertly lighted, the picture glowed in the otherwise obscure room like a thing of flame.

Two hundred ticket holders came, saw, and were conquered. Farraday, in his most correct cutaway, personally conducted a tour of three eminent critics to the Village. Sir Micah, the English curator of the Metropolitan, reflectively tapping an eye-glass upon an uplifted finger tip, pronounced the painting a turning-point in American art. Four reporters—whose presence in his immediate vicinity Constance had insured—transferred this utterance to their note books. Artists gazed, and well-dressed women did not forbear to gush. Tea, punch, and yellow suffrage cakes were consumed in the dining room. There was much noise and excessive heat. In short, the occasion was a success.

Toward the end, when few people remained except the genial Sir Micah, whom Constance was judiciously holding with tea, smiles, and a good cigar, the all-important Constantine arrived. Prompted, Sir Micah was induced to repeat his verdict. But the picture spoke for itself, and the famous dealer was visibly impressed. Constance was able to eat her dinner at last with a comfortable sense of accomplishment. She was only sorry that the Byrds had not been there to appreciate her strategy. Stefan, indeed, did appear for half an hour, but Mary's courage had failed her entirely. She had succumbed to an attack of stage fright and shut herself up at home.

As for Stefan, he had developed one of his most contrary moods. Refusing conventional attire, he clad himself in the baggy trousers and flowing tie of his student days, under the illusion that he was thus defying the prejudices of Philistia. He was unaware that the Philistines, as represented by the gentlemen of the press, considered his costume quintessentially correct for an artist just returned from Paris, and would have been grieved had he appeared otherwise. Unconsciously playing to the gallery, Stefan on arrival squared himself against a doorway and eyed the crowds with a frown of disapprobation. He had not forgotten his early snubs from the dealers, and saw in every innocent male visitor one of the fraternity.

Constance, in her bid for publicity, had sold most of her tickets to the socially prominent, so that Stefan was soon surrounded by voluble ladies unduly furred, corseted, and jeweled. He found these unbeautiful, and his misanthropy, which had been quiescent of late, rose rampant.

Presently he was introduced to a stout matron, whose costume centered in an enormous costal cascade of gray pearls.

"Mr. Byrd," she gushed, "I dote on art. I've made a study of it, and I can say that your picture is a triumph."

"Madam," he fairly scowled, "it is as easy for the rich to enter the kingdom of Art as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle." Leaving her pink with offense, he turned his back and, shaking off other would-be admirers, sought his hostess.

"My God, I can't stand any more of this—I'm off," he confided to her. Constance was beginning to know her man. She gave him a quick scrutiny. "Yes, I think you'd better be," she agreed, "before you spoil any of my good work. An absent lion is better than a snarling one. Run home to Mary." She dismissed him laughingly, and Stefan catapulted himself out of the house, thereby missing the attractive Miss Berber by a few minutes. Dashing home across the Square, he flung himself on the divan with every appearance of exhaustion. "Sing to me, Mary," he implored.

"Why, Stefan," she asked, startled, "wasn't it a success? What's the matter?"

"Success!" he scoffed. "Oh, yes. They all gushed and gurgled and squeaked and squalled. Horrible! Sing, dearest; I must hear something beautiful."

Failing to extract more from him, she complied.

The next day brought a full account of his success from Constance, and glowing tributes from the papers. The head-lines ranged from "Suffragettes Unearth New Genius" to "Distinguished Exhibit at Home of Theodore M. Elliot." The verdict was unanimous. A new star had risen in the artistic firmament. One look at the headings, and Stefan dropped the papers in disgust, but Mary pored over them all, and found him quite willing to listen while she read eulogistic extracts aloud.

Thus started, the fuse of publicity burnt brightly. Constance's carefully planned follow-up articles appeared, and reporters besieged the Byrds' studio. Unfortunately for Mary, these gentry soon discovered that she was the Danae's original, which fact created a mild succes de scandale. Personal paragraphs appeared about her and her writing, and, greatly embarrassed, she disconnected the door-bell for over a week. But the picture was all the more talked about. In a week Constantine had it on exhibition; in three, he had sold it for five thousand dollars to a tobacco millionaire.

"Mary," groaned Stefan when he heard the news, "we have given in to Mammon. We are capitalists."

"Oh, dear, think of our beautiful picture going to some odious nouveau riche!" Mary sighed. But she was immeasurably relieved that Stefan's name was made, and that they were permanently lifted from the ranks of the needy.

That very day, as if to illustrate their change of status, Mrs. Corriani puffed up the stairs with the news that the flat immediately below them had been abandoned over night. The tenants, a dark couple of questionable habits and nationality, had omitted the formality of paying their rent— the flat was on the market. The outcome was that Stefan and Mary, keeping their studio as a workshop, overflowed into the flat beneath, and found themselves in possession of a bed and bathroom, a kitchen and maid's room, and a sitting room. These they determined to furnish gradually, and Mary looked forward to blissful mornings at antique stores and auctions. She had been brought up amidst the Chippendale, old oak, and brasses of a cathedral close, and new furniture was anathema to her. A telephone and a colored maid-servant were installed. Their picnicking days were over.



XIII

True to her word, Constance arranged a reception in the Byrds' honor, at which they were to meet Felicity Berber. The promise of this encounter reconciled Stefan to the affair, and he was moreover enthusiastically looking forward to Mary's appearance in her new gown. This had arrived, and lay swathed in tissue paper in its box. In view of their change of fortune they had, in paying the account of seventy-five dollars, concocted a little note to Miss Berber, hoping she would now reconsider her offer, and render them a bill for her design. This note, written and signed by Mary in her upright English hand, brought forth a characteristic reply. On black paper and in vermilion ink arrived two lines of what Mary at first took to be Egyptian hieroglyphics. Studied from different angles, these yielded at last a single sentence: "A gift is a gift, and repays itself." This was followed by a signature traveling perpendicularly down the page in Chinese fashion. It was outlined in an oblong of red ink, but was itself written in green, the capitals being supplied with tap-roots extending to the base of each name. Mary tossed the letter over to Stefan with a smile. He looked at it judicially.

"There's draughtsmanship in that," he said; "she might have made an etcher. It's drawing, but it's certainly not handwriting."

On the evening of the party Stefan insisted on helping Mary to dress. Together they opened the great green box and spread its contents on the bed. The Creator of Raiment had not done things by halves. In addition to the gown, she had supplied a wreath of pale white and gold metals, representing two ears of wheat arranged to meet in a point over the brow, and a pair of gilded shoes made on the sandal plan, with silver-white buckles. Pinned to the gown was a printed green slip, reading "No corsets, petticoats or jewelry may be worn with this garb."

The dress was of heavy gold tissue, magnificently draped in generous classic folds. It left the arms bare, the drapery being fastened on either shoulder with great brooches of white metal, reproduced, as Stefan at once recognized, from Greek models. Along all the edges of the drapery ran a border of ears of wheat, embroidered in deep gold and pale silver. Mary, who had hitherto only peeped at the gown, felt quite excited when she saw it flung across the bed.

"Oh, Stefan, I do think it will be becoming," she cried, her cheeks bright pink. She had never dreamed of owning such a dress.

He was enchanted. "It's a work of art. Very few women could wear it, but on you—! Well, it's worthy of you, Beautiful."

During the dressing he made her quite nervous by his exact attention to every detail. The arrangement of her hair and the precise position of the wreath had to be tried and tried again, but the result justified him.

"Olympian Deity," he cried, "I must kneel to you!" And so he did, gaily adoring, with a kiss for the hem of her robe. They started in the highest spirits, Stefan correct this time in an immaculate evening suit which Mary had persuaded him to order. As they prepared to enter the drawing room he whispered, "You'll be a sensation. I'm dying to see their faces."

"Don't make me nervous," she whispered back.

By nature entirely without self-consciousness, she had become very sensitive since the Danae publicity. But her nervousness only heightened her color, and as with her beautiful walk she advanced into the room there was an audible gasp from every side. Constance pounced upon her.

"You perfectly superb creature! You ought to have clouds rolling under your feet. There, I can't express myself. Come and receive homage. Mr. Byrd, you're the luckiest man on earth—I hope you deserve it all—but then of course no man could. Mary, here are two friends of yours—Mr. Byrd, come and be presented to Felicity."

Farraday and McEwan had advanced toward them and immediately formed the nucleus of a group which gathered about Mary. Stefan followed his hostess across the room to a green sofa, on which, cigarette in hand, reclined Miss Berber, surrounded by a knot of interested admirers.

"Yes, Connie," that lady murmured, with the ghost of a smile, "I've met Mr. Byrd. He brought his wife to the Studio." She extended a languid hand to Stefan, who bowed over it.

"Ah! I might have known you had a hand in that effect," Constance exclaimed, looking across the room toward Mary.

"Of course you might," the other sighed, following her friend's eyes. "It's perfect, I think; don't you agree, Mr. Byrd?" and she actually rose from the sofa to obtain a better view.

"Absolutely," answered Stefan, riveted in his turn upon her.

Miss Berber was clad in black tulle, so transparent as barely to obscure her form. Sleeves she had none. A trifle of gauze traveled over one shoulder, leaving the other bare save for a supporting strap of tiny scarlet beads. Her triple skirt was serrated like the petals of a black carnation, and outlined with the same minute beads. Her bodice could scarcely be said to exist, so deep was its V. From her ears long ornaments of jet depended, and a comb in scarlet bead-work ran wholly across one side of her head. A flower of the same hue and workmanship trembled from the point of her corsage. She wore no rings, but her nails were reddened, and her sleek black hair and scarlet lips completed the chromatic harmony. The whole effect was seductive, but so crisp as to escape vulgarity.

"I must paint you, Miss Berber," was Stefan's comment.

"All the artists say that." She waved a faint expostulation.

Her hands, he thought, had the whiteness and consistency of a camelia.

"All the artists are not I, however," he answered with a smiling shrug.

"Greek meets Greek," thought Constance, amused, turning away to other guests.

"I admit that." Miss Berber lit another cigarette. "I have seen your Danae. The people who have painted me have been fools. Obvious—treating me like an advertisement for cold cream."

She breathed a sigh, and sank again to the sofa. Her lids drooped as if in weariness of such banalities. Stefan sat beside her, the manner of both eliminating the surrounding group.

"One must have subtlety, must one not?" she murmured.

How subtle she was, he thought; how mysterious, in spite of her obvious posing! He could not even tell whether she was interested in him.

"I shall paint you, Miss Berber," he said, watching her, "as a Nixie. Water creatures, you know, without souls."

"No soul?" she reflected, lingering on a puff of smoke. "How chic!"

Stefan was delighted. Hopefully, he broke into French. She replied with fluent ease, but with a strange, though charming, accent. The exotic French fitted her whole personality, he felt, as English could not do. He was pricked by curiosity as to her origin, and did not hesitate to ask it, but she gave her shadow of a smile, and waved her cigarette vaguely. "Quien sabe?" she shrugged.

"Do you know Spanish?" he asked in French, seeking a clue.

"Only what one picks up in California." He was no nearer a solution.

"Were you out there long?"

She looked at him vaguely. "I should like some coffee, please."

Defeated, he was obliged to fetch a cup. When he returned, it was to find her talking monosyllabic English to a group of men.

Farraday and McEwan had temporarily resigned Mary to a stream of newcomers, and stood watching the scene from the inner drawing room.

"James," said McEwan, "get on to the makeup of the crowd round our lady, and compare it with the specimens rubbering the little Berber."

Farraday smiled in his grave, slow way.

"You're right, Mac, the substance and the shadow."

Many of the women seated about the room were covertly staring at Felicity, but so far none had joined her group. This consisted, besides Stefan, of two callow and obviously enthralled youths, a heavy semi-bald man with paunched eyes and a gluttonous mouth, and a tall languid person wearing tufts of hair on unexpected parts of his face, and showing the hands of a musician.

Round Mary stood half a dozen women, their host, the kindly and practical Mr. Elliot, a white-haired man of distinguished bearing, and a gigantic young viking with tawny hair and beard and powerful hands.

"That's Gunther, an A1 sculptor," said McEwan, indicating the viking, who was looking at Mary as his ancestors might have looked at a vision of Freia.

"They're well matched, eh, James?"

"As well as she could be," the other answered gravely. McEwan looked at his friend. "Mon," he said, relapsing to his native speech, "come and hae a drop o' the guid Scotch."

Constance had determined that Felicity should dance, in spite of her well-known laziness. At this point she crossed the room to attack her, expecting a difficult task, but, to her surprise, Felicity hardly demurred. After a moment of sphinx-like communing, she dropped her cigarette and rose.

"Mr. Byrd is going to paint me as something without a soul—I think I will dance," she cryptically vouchsafed.

"Shall I play?" offered Constance, delighted.

Miss Berber turned to the languid musician.

"Have you your ocarina, Marchmont?" she breathed.

"I always carry it, Felicity," he replied, with a reproachful look, drawing from his pocket what appeared to be a somewhat contorted meerschaum pipe.

"Then no piano to-night, Connie. A little banal, the piano, perhaps." Her hands waved vaguely.

A space was cleared; chairs were arranged.

Miss Berber vanished behind a portiere. The languid Marchmont draped himself in a corner, and put the fat little meerschaum to his lips. A clear, jocund sound, a mere thread of music, as from the pipe of some hidden faun, penetrated the room. The notes trembled, paused, and fell to the minor. Felicity, feet bare, toes touched with scarlet, wafted into the room. Her dancing was incredibly light; she looked like some exotic poppy swaying to an imperceptible breeze. The dance was languorously sad, palely gay, a thing half asleep, veiled. It seemed always about to break into fierce life, yet did not. The scent of mandragora hung over it—it was as if the dancer, drugged, were dreaming of the sunlight.

When, waving a negligent hand to the applause, Felicity passed Stefan at the end of her dance, he caught a murmured phrase from her.

"Not soulless, perhaps, but sleeping." Whether she meant this as an explanation of her dance or of herself he was not sure.

Mary watched the dance with admiration, and wished to compare her impressions of it with her husband's. She tried to catch his eye across the room at the end, but he had drifted away toward the dining room. Momentarily disappointed, she turned to find Farraday at her elbow, and gladly let him lead her, also, in search of refreshments. There was a general movement in that direction, and the drawing room was almost empty as McEwan, purpose in his eye, strode across it to Constance. He spoke to her in an undertone.

"Sing? Does she? I had no idea! She never tells one such things," his hostess replied. "Do you think she would? But she has no music. You could play for her? How splendid, Mr. McEwan. How perfectly lovely of you. I'll arrange it." She hurried out, leaving McEwan smiling at nothing in visible contentment. In a few minutes she returned with Mary.

"Of course I will if you wish it," the latter was saying, "but I've no music, and only know foolish little ballads."

"Mr. McEwan says he can vamp them all, and it will be too delightful to have something from each of my women stars," Constance urged. "Now I'll leave you two to arrange it, and in a few minutes I'll get every one back from the dining room," she nodded, slipping away again.

"Cruel man, you've given me away," Mary smiled.

"I always brag about my friends," grinned McEwan. They went over to the piano.

"What price the Bard! Do you know this?" His fingers ran into the old air for "Sigh No More, Ladies." She nodded.

"Yes, I like that."

"And for a second," he spun round on his stool, "what do you say to a duet?" His candid blue eyes twinkled at her.

"A duet!" she exclaimed in genuine surprise. "Do you sing, Mr. McEwan?"

"Once in a while," and, soft pedal down, he played a few bars of Marzials' "My True Love Hath My Heart," humming the words in an easy barytone.

"Oh, what fun!" exclaimed Mary. "I love that." They tried it over, below their breaths.

The room was filling again. People began to settle down expectantly; McEwan struck his opening chords.

Just as Mary's first note sounded, Stefan and Felicity entered the room. He started in surprise; then Mary saw him smile delightedly, and they both settled themselves well in front.

"'Men were deceivers ever,'" sang Mary, with simple ease, and "'Hey nonny, nonny.'" The notes fell gaily; her lips and eyes smiled.

There was generous applause at the end of the little song. Then McEwan struck the first chords of the duet.

"'My true love hath my heart,'" Mary sang clearly, head up, eyes shining. "'My true love hath my heart,'" replied McEwan, in his cheery barytone.

"'—And I have his,'" Mary's bell tones announced.

"'—And I have his,'" trolled McEwan.

"'There never was a better bargain driven,'" the notes came, confident and glad, from the golden figure with its clear-eyed, glowing face. They ended in a burst of almost defiant optimism.

Applause was hearty and prolonged. McEwan slipped from his stool and sought a cigarette in the adjoining room. There was a general congratulatory movement toward Mary, in which both Stefan and Felicity joined. Then people again began to break into groups. Felicity found her sofa, Mary a chair. McEwan discovered Farraday under the arch between the two drawing-rooms, and stood beside him to watch the crowd. Stefan had moved with Felicity toward her sofa, and, as she disposed herself, she seemed to be talking to him in French. McEwan and Farraday continued their survey. Mary was surrounded by people, but her eyes strayed across the room. Felicity appeared almost animated, but Stefan seemed inattentive; he fidgeted, and looked vague.

A moment more, and quite abruptly he crossed the room, and planted himself down beside Mary.

"Ah," sighed McEwan, apparently a propos of nothing, and with a trace of Scotch, "James, I'll now hae another whusky."



PART III

THE NESTLING

I

Stefan's initial and astonishing success was not to be repeated that winter. The great Constantine, anxious to benefit by the flood tide of his client's popularity, had indeed called at the studio in search of more material, but after a careful survey, had decided against exhibiting "Tempest" and "Pursuit." Before these pictures he had stood wrapped in speculation for some time, pursing his lips and fingering the over-heavy seals of his fob. Mary had watched him eagerly, deeply curious as to the effect of the paintings. But Stefan had been careless to the point of rudeness; he had long since lost interest in his old work. When at last the swarthy little dealer, who was a Greek Jew, and had the keen, perceptions of both races, had shaken his head, Mary was not surprised, was indeed almost glad.

"Mr. Byrd," Constantine had pronounced, in his heavy, imperfect English, "I think we would make a bad mistake to exhibit these paintings now. Technically they are clever, oh, very clever indeed, but they would be unpopular; and this once," he smiled shrewdly, "the public would be right about it. Your Danae was a big conception as well as fine painting; it had inspiration—feeling—" his thick but supple hands circled in emphasis—"we don't want to go back simply to cleverness. When you paint me something as big again as that one I exhibit it; otherwise," with a shrug, "I think we spoil our market."

After this visit Stefan, quite unperturbed, had turned the two fantasies to the wall.

"I dare say Constantine is right about them," he said; "they are rather crazy things, and anyhow, I'm sick of them."

Mary was quite relieved to have them hidden. The merman in particular had got upon her nerves of late.

As the winter advanced, the Byrds' circle of acquaintances grew, and many visitors dropped into the studio for tea. These showed much interest in Stefan's new picture, a large study of Mary in the guise of Demeter, for which she was posing seated, robed in her Berber gown. Miss Mason in particular was delighted with the painting, which she dubbed a "companion piece" to the Danae. The story of Constantine's decision against the two salon canvases got about and, amusingly enough, heightened the Byrds' popularity. The Anglo-Saxon public is both to take its art neat, preferring it coated with a little sentiment. It now became accepted that Stefan's genius was due to his wife, whose love had lighted the torch of inspiration.

"Ah, Mr. Byrd," Miss Mason had summed up the popular view, in one of her rare romantic moments, "the love of a good woman—!" Stefan had looked completely vague at this remark, and Mary had burst out laughing.

"Why, Sparrow," for so, to Miss Mason's delight, she had named her, "don't be Tennysonian, as Stefan would say. It was Stefan's power to feel love, and not mine to call it out, that painted the Danae," and she looked at him with proud tenderness.

But the Sparrow was unconvinced. "You can't tell me. If 'twas all in him, why didn't some other girl over in Paris call it out long ago?"

"Lots tried," grinned Stefan, with his cheeky-boy expression.

"Ain't he terrible," Miss Mason sighed, smiling. She adored Mary's husband, but consistently disapproved of him.

Try as she would, Mary failed to shake her friends' estimate of her share in the family success. It became the fashion to regard her as a muse, and she, who had felt oppressed by Stefan's lover-like deification, now found her friends, too, conspiring to place her on a pedestal. Essentially simple and modest, she suffered real discomfort from the cult of adoration that surrounded her. Coming from a British community which she felt had underestimated her, she now found herself made too much of. A smaller woman would have grown vain amid so much admiration; Mary only became inwardly more humble, while outwardly carrying her honors with laughing deprecation.

For some time after the night of Constance's reception, Stefan had shown every evidence of contentment, but as the winter dragged into a cold and slushy March he began to have recurrent moods of his restless irritability. By this time Mary was moving heavily; she could no longer keep brisk pace with him in his tramps up the Avenue, but walked more slowly and for shorter distances. She no longer sprang swiftly from her chair or ran to fetch him a needed tool; her every movement was matronly. But she was so well, so entirely normal, as practically to be unconscious of a change to which her husband was increasingly alive.

Another source of Stefan's dissatisfaction lay in the progress of his Demeter. This picture showed the Goddess enthroned under the shade of a tree, beyond which spread harvest fields in brilliant sunlight. At her feet a naked boy, brown from the sun, played with a pile of red and golden fruits. In the distance maids and youths were dancing. The Goddess sat back drowsily, her eyelids drooping, her hands and arms relaxed over her chair. She had called all this richness into being, and now in the heat of the day she rested, brooding over the fecund earth. So far, the composition was masterly, but the tones lacked the necessary depth; they were vivid where they should have been warm, and he felt the deficiency without yet having been able to remedy it.

"Oh, damn!" said Stefan one morning, throwing down his brush. "This picture is architectural, absolutely. What possessed me to try such a conception? I can only do movement. I can't be static. Earth! I don't understand it—everything good I've done has been made of air and fire, or water." He turned an irritable face to Mary.

"Why did you encourage me in this?"

She looked up in frank astonishment, about to reply, but he forestalled her.

"Oh, yes, I know I was pleased with the idea—it isn't your fault, of course, and yet—Oh, what's the use!" He slapped down his pallette and made for the door. "I'm off to get some air," he called.

Mary felt hurt and uneasy. The nameless doubts of the autumn again assailed her. What would be the end, she wondered, of her great adventure? The distant prospect vaguely troubled her, but she turned easily from it to the immediate future, which held a blaze of joy sufficient to obliterate all else.

The thought of her baby was to Mary like the opening of the gates of paradise to Christian the Pilgrim. Her heart shook with joy of it. She passed through her days now only half conscious of the world about her. She had, together with her joy, an extraordinary sense of physical well- being, of the actual value of the body. For the first time she became actively interested in her beauty. Even on her honeymoon she had never dressed to please her husband with the care she now gave to the donning of her loose pink and white negligees and the little boudoir caps she had bought to wear with them. That Stefan paid her fewer compliments, that he often failed to notice small additions to her wardrobe, affected her not at all. "Afterwards he will be pleased; afterwards he will love me more than ever," she thought, but, even so, knew that it was not for him she was now fair, but for that other. She did not love Stefan less, but her love was to be made flesh, and it was that incarnation she now adored. If she had been given to self-analysis she might have asked what it boded that she had never—save for that one moment's adoration of his genius the day he completed the Danae—felt for Stefan the abandonment of love she felt for his coming child. She might have wondered, but she did not, for she felt too intensely in these days to have much need of thought. She loved her husband—he was a great man—they were to have a child. The sense of those three facts made up her cosmos.

Farraday had asked her in vain on more than one occasion for another manuscript. The last time she shook her head, with one of her rare attempts at explanation, made less rarely to him than to her other friends.

"No, Mr. Farraday, I can't think about imaginary children just now. There's a spell over me—all the world waits, and I'm holding my breath. Do you see?"

He took her hand between both his.

"Yes, my dear child, I do," he answered, his mouth twisting into its sad and gentle smile. He had come bringing a sheaf of spring flowers, narcissus, and golden daffodils, which she was holding in her lap. He thought as he said good-bye that she looked much more like Persephone than the Demeter of Stefan's picture.

In spite of her deep-seated emotion, Mary was gay and practical enough in these late winter days, with her small household tasks, her occasional shopping, and her sewing. This last had begun vaguely to irritate Stefan, so incessant was it.

"Mary, do put down that sewing," he would exclaim; or "Don't sing the song of the shirt any more to-day;" and she would laughingly fold her work, only to take it up instinctively again a few minutes later.

One evening he came upon her bending over a table in their sitting room, tracing a fine design on cambric with a pencil. Something in her pose and figure opened a forgotten door of memory; he watched her puzzled for a moment, then with a sudden exclamation ran upstairs, and returned with a pad of paper and a box of water-color paints. He was visibly excited. "Here, Mary," he said, thrusting a brush into her hand and clearing a place on the table. "Do something for me. Make a drawing on this pad, anything you like, whatever first comes into your head." His tone was eagerly importunate. She looked up in surprise, "Why, you funny boy! What shall I draw?"

"That's just it—I don't know. Please draw whatever you want to—it doesn't matter how badly—just draw something."

Mystified, but acquiescent, Mary considered for a moment, looking from paper to brush, while Stefan watched eagerly.

"Can't I use a pencil?" she asked.

"No, a brush, please, I'll explain afterwards."

"Very well." She attacked the brown paint, then the red, then mixed some green. In a few minutes the paper showed a wobbly little house with a red roof and a smudged foreground of green grass with the suggestion of a shade-giving tree.

"There," she laughed, handing him the pad, "I'm afraid I shall never be an artist," and she looked up.

His face had dropped. He was staring at the drawing with an expression of almost comic disappointment.

"Why, Stefan," she laughed, rather uncomfortably, "you didn't think I could draw, did you?"

"No, no, it isn't that, Mary. It's just—the house. I thought you might —perhaps draw birds—or flowers."

"Birds?—or flowers?" She was at a loss.

"It doesn't matter; just an idea."

He crumpled up the little house, and closed the paintbox. "I'm going out for awhile; good-bye, dearest"; and, with a kiss, he left the room.

Mary sat still, too surprised for remonstrance, and in a moment heard the bang of the flat door.

"Birds, or flowers?" Suddenly she remembered something Stefan had told her, on the night of their engagement, about his mother. So that was it. Tears came to her eyes. Rather lonely, she went to bed.

Meanwhile Stefan, his head bare in the cold wind, was speeding up the Avenue on the top of an omnibus.

"Houses are cages," he said to himself. For some reason, he felt hideously depressed.

* * * * *

"I called on Miss Berber last evening," Stefan announced casually at breakfast the next morning.

"Did you?" replied Mary, surprised, putting down her cup. "Well, did you have a nice time?"

"It was mildly amusing," he said, opening the newspaper. The subject dropped.



II

Mary, who had lived all her life in a small town within sight of the open fields, was beginning to feel the confinement of city life. Even during her year in London she had joined other girls in weekend bicycling excursions out of town, or tubed to Golder's Green or Shepherd's Bush in search of country walks. Now that the late snows of March had cleared away, she began eagerly to watch for swelling buds in the Square, and was dismayed when Stefan told her that the spring, in this part of America, was barely perceptible before May.

"That's the first objection I've found to your country, Stefan," she said.

He was scowling moodily out of the window. "The first? I see nothing but objections."

"Oh, come!" she smiled at him; "it hasn't been so bad, has it?"

"Better than I had expected," he conceded. "But it will soon be April, and I remember the leaves in the Luxembourg for so many Aprils back."

She came and put her arm through his. "Do you want to go, dear?"

"Oh, hang it all, Mary, you don't suppose I want to leave you?" he answered brusquely, releasing his arm. "I want my own place, that's all."

She had, in her quieter way, become just as homesick for England, though sharing none of his dislike of her adopted land.

"Well, shall we both go?" she suggested.

He laughed shortly. "Don't be absurd, dearest—what would your doctor say to such a notion? No, we've got to stick it out," and he ruffled his hair impatiently.

With a suppressed sigh Mary changed the subject. "By the by, I want you to meet Dr. Hillyard; I have asked her to tea this afternoon."

"Do you honestly mean it when you say she is not an elderly ironsides with spectacles?"

"I honestly assure you she is young and pretty. Moreover, I forbid you to talk like an anti-suffragist," she laughed.

"Very well, then, I will be at home," with an answering grin.

And so he was, and on his best behavior, when the little doctor arrived an hour later. She had been found by the omniscient Miss Mason, and after several visits Mary had more than endorsed the Sparrow's enthusiastic praise.

When the slight, well-tailored little figure entered the room Stefan found it hard to believe that this fresh-faced girl was the physician, already a specialist in her line, to whom Mary's fate had been entrusted. For the first time he wondered if he should not have shared with Mary some responsibility for her arrangements. But as, with an unwonted sense of duty, he questioned the little doctor, his doubts vanished. Without a trace of the much hated professional manner she gave him glimpses of wide experience, and at one point mentioned an operation she had just performed—which he knew by hearsay as one of grave difficulty—with the same enthusiastic pleasure another young woman might have shown in the description of a successful bargain-hunt. She was to Stefan a new type, and he was delighted with her. Mary, watching him, thought with affectionate irony that had the little surgeon been reported plain of face he would have denied himself in advance both the duty and the pleasure of meeting her.

Over their tea, Dr. Hillyard made a suggestion.

"Where are you planning to spend the summer?" she asked.

Stefan looked surprised. "We thought we ought to be here, near you," he answered.

"Oh, no," the doctor shook her head; "young couples are always martyrizing themselves for these events. By May it will be warm, and Mrs. Byrd isn't acclimatized to our American summers. Find a nice place not too far from the city—say on Long Island—and I can run out whenever necessary. You both like the country, I imagine?"

Stefan was overjoyed. He jumped up.

"Dr. Hillyard, you've saved us. We thought we had to be prisoners, and I've been eating my heart out for France. The country will be a compromise."

"Yes," said the doctor, smiling a little, "Mrs. Byrd has been longing for England for a month or more."

"I never said so!" and "She never told me!" exclaimed Mary and Stefan simultaneously.

"No, you didn't," the little doctor nodded wisely at her patient, "but I know."

Stefan immediately began to plan an expedition in search of the ideal spot, as unspoiled if possible as Shadeham, but much nearer town. All through dinner he discussed it, his spirits hugely improved, and immediately after rang up Constance Elliot for advice.

"Hold the line," the lady's voice replied, "while I consult." In a minute or two she returned.

"Mr. Farraday is dining with us, and I've asked him. He lives at Crab's Bay, you know."

"No, I don't," objected Stefan.

"Well, he does," her voice laughed back. "He was born there. He says if you like he will come over and talk to you about it, and I, like a self- sacrificing hostess, am willing to let him."

"Splendid idea," said Stefan, "ask him to come right over. Mary," he called, hanging up the receiver, "Constance is sending Farraday across to advise us."

"Oh, dear," said she; "sometimes I feel almost overwhelmed by all the favors we receive from our friends."

"Fiddlesticks! They are paid by the pleasure of our society. You don't seem to realize that we are unusually interesting and attractive people," laughed he with a flourish.

"Vain boy!"

"So I am, and vain of being vain. I believe in being as conceited as possible, conceited enough to make one's conceit good."

She smiled indulgently, knowing that, as he was talking nonsense, he felt happy.

Farraday appeared in a few minutes, and they settled in a group round the fire with coffee and cigarettes. Stefan offered Mary one. She shook her head.

"I'm not smoking now, you know."

"Did Dr. Hillyard say so?" he asked quickly.

"No, but—"

"Then don't be poky, dearest." He lit the cigarette and held it out to her, but she waved it back.

"Don't tease, dear," she murmured, noticing that Farraday was watching them. Stefan with a shrug retained the cigarette in his left hand, and smoked it ostentatiously for some minutes, alternately with his own. Mary, hoping he was not going to be naughty, embarked on the Long Island topic.

"We want to be within an hour of the city," she explained, "but in pretty country. We want to keep house, but not to pay too much. We should like to be near the sea. Does that sound wildly impossible?"

Farraday fingered his cigarette reflectively.

"I rather think," he said at last, "that my neighborhood most nearly meets the requirements. I have several hundred acres at Crab's Bay, which belonged to my father, running from the shore halfway to the railroad station. The village itself is growing suburban, but the properties beyond mine are all large, and keep the country open. We are only an hour from the city—hardly more, by automobile."

"Are there many tin cans?" enquired Stefan, flippantly. "In Michigan I remember them as the chief suburban decoration."

"Yes?" said Farraday, in his invariably courteous tone, "I've never been there. It is a long way from New York."

"Touche," cried Stefan, grinning. "But you would think pessimism justified if you'd ever had my experience of rural life."

"Was your father really American?" enquired his guest with apparent irrelevance.

"Yes, and a minister."

"Oh, a minister. I see," the other replied, quietly.

"Explains it, does it?" beamed Stefan, who was nothing if not quick. They all laughed, and the little duel was ended. Mary took up the broken discussion.

"Is there the slightest chance of our finding anything reasonably cheap in such a neighborhood?" she asked.

"I was just coming to that," said Farraday. "You would not care to be in the village, and any houses that might be for rent there would be expensive, I'm afraid. But it so happens there is a cottage on the edge of my property where my father's old farmer used to live. After his death I put a little furniture in the place, and have occasionally used it. But it is entirely unnecessary to me, and you are welcome to it for the summer if it would suit you. The rent would be nominal. I don't regard it commercially, it's too near my own place."

Mary flushed. "It's most awfully good of you," she said, "but I don't know if we ought to accept. I'm afraid you may be making it convenient out of kindness."

"Mary, how British!" Stefan interrupted. He had taken lately so to labeling her small conventionalities. "Why accuse Mr. Farraday of altruistic insincerity? I think his description sounds delightful. Let's go tomorrow and see the cottage."

"If you will wait till Sunday," Farraday smiled, "I shall be delighted to drive you out. It might be easier for Mrs. Byrd."

Mary again demurred on the score of giving unnecessary trouble, but Stefan overrode her, and Farraday was obviously pleased with the plan. It was arranged that he should call for them in his car the following Sunday, and that they should lunch with him and his mother. When he had left Stefan performed a little pas seul around the room.

"Tra-la-la!" he sang; "birds, Mary, trees, water. No more chimney pots, no more walking up and down that tunnel of an avenue. See what it is to have admiring friends."

Mary flushed again. "Why will you spoil everything by putting it like that?"

He stopped and patted her cheek teasingly.

"It's me they admire, Mary, the great artist, creator of the famous Danae," and he skipped again, impishly.

Mary was obliged to laugh. "You exasperating creature!" she said, and went to bed, while he ran up to the studio to pull out the folding easel and sketching-box of his old Brittany days.



III

When on the following Sunday morning Farraday drove up to the house, Mary was delighted to find Constance Elliot in the tonneau.

"Theodore has begun golfing again, now that the snow has gone," she greeted her, "so that I am a grass widow on holidays as well as all the week."

"Why don't you learn to play, too?" Mary asked, as they settled themselves, Stefan sitting in front with Farraday, who was driving.

"Oh, for your English feet, my dear!" sighed Constance. "They are bigger than mine—I dare say so, as I wear fours—but you can walk on them. I was brought up to be vain of my extremities, and have worn two-inch heels too long to be good for more than a mile. The links would kill me. Besides," she sighed again prettily, "dear Theodore is so much happier without me."

"How can you, Constance!" objected Mary.

"Yes, my dear," went on the other, her beautiful little hands, which she seldom gloved, playing with the inevitable string of jade, "the result of modern specialization. Theodore is a darling, and in theory a Suffragist, but he has practised the matrimonial division of labor so long that he does not know what to do with the woman out of the home."

"This is Queensborough Bridge," she pointed out in a few minutes, as they sped up a huge iron-braced incline. "It looks like eight pepper-castors on a grid, surmounted by bayonets, but it is very convenient."

Mary laughed. Constance's flow of small talk always put her in good spirits. She looked about her with interest as the car emerged from the bridge into a strange waste land of automobile factories, new stone-faced business buildings, and tumbledown wooden cottages. The houses, in their disarray, lay as if cast like seeds from some titanic hand, to fall, wither or sprout as they listed, regardless of plan. The bridge seemed to divide a settled civilization from pioneer country, and as they left the factories behind and emerged into fields dotted with advertisements and wooden shacks Mary was reminded of stories she had read of the far West, or of Australia. Stefan leant back from the front seat, and waved at the view.

"Behold the tin can," he cried, "emblem of American civilization!" She saw that he was right; the fields on either side were dotted with tins, bottles, and other husks of dinners past and gone. Gradually, however, this stage was left behind: they began to pass through villages of pleasant wooden houses painted white or cream, with green shutters, or groups of red-tiled stucco dwellings surrounded by gardens in the English manner. Soon these, too, were left, and real country appeared, prettily wooded, in which low-roofed homesteads clung timidly to the roadside as if in search of company.

"What dear little houses!" Mary exclaimed.

"Yes," said Constance, "that is the Long Island farmhouse type, as good architecturally as anything America has produced, but abandoned in favor of Oriental bungalows, Italian palaces and French chateaux."

"I should adore a little house like one of those."

"Wait till you see Mr. Farraday's cottage; it's a lamb, and his home like it, only bigger. What can one call an augmented lamb? I can only think of sheep, which doesn't sound well."

"I'm afraid we should say it was 'twee' in England," Mary smiled, "which sounds worse."

"Yes, I'd rather my house were a sheep than a 'twee,' because I do at least know that a sheep is useful, and I'm sure a 'twee' can't be."

"It's not a noun, Constance, but an adjective, meaning sweet," translated Mary, laughing. She loved Constance's nonsense because it was never more than that. Stefan's absurdities were always personal and, often, not without a hidden sting.

"Well," Constance went on, "you must be particularly 'twee' then, to James' mother, who is a Quaker from Philadelphia, and an American gentlewoman of the old school. His father was a New Englander, and took his pleasures sadly, as I tell James he does; but his mother is as warm as a dear little toast, and as pleasant—well—as the dinner bell."

"What culinary similes, Constance!"

"My dear, from sheep to mutton is only a step, and I'm so hungry I can think only in terms of a menu. And that," she prattled on, "reminds me of Mr. McEwan, whose face is the shape of a mutton chop. He is sure to be there, for he spends half his time with James. Do you like him?"

"Yes, I do," said Mary; "increasingly."

"He's one of the best of souls. Have you heard his story?"

"No, has he one?"

"Indeed, yes," replied Constance. "The poor creature, who, by the way, adores you, is a victim of Quixotism. When he first came to New York he married a young girl who lived in his boarding-house and was in trouble by another man. Mac found her trying to commit suicide, and, as the other man had disappeared, married her to keep her from it. She was pretty, I believe, and I think he was fond of her because of her terrible helplessness. The first baby died, luckily, but when his own was born a year or two later the poor girl was desperately ill, and lost most of what little mind she possessed. She developed two manias—the common spendthrift one, and the conviction that he was trying to divorce her. That was ten years ago. He has to keep her at sanitariums with a companion to check her extravagance, and he pays her weekly visits to reassure her as to the divorce. She costs him nearly all he makes, in doctors' bills and so forth—he never spends a penny on himself, except for a cheap trip to Scotland once a year. Yet, with it all, he is one of the most cheerful souls alive."

"Poor fellow!" said Mary. "What about the child?"

"He's alive, but she takes very little notice of him. He spends most of his time with Mrs. Farraday, who is a saint. James, poor man, adores children, and is glad to have him."

"Why hasn't Mr. Farraday married, I wonder?" Mary murmured under the covering purr of the car.

"Oh, what a waste," groaned Constance. "An ideal husband thrown away! Nobody knows, my dear. I think he was hit very hard years ago, and never got over it. He won't say, but I tell him if I weren't ten years older, and Theodore in evidence, I should marry him myself out of hand."

"I like him tremendously, but I don't think I should ever have felt attracted in that way," said Mary, who was much too natural a woman not to be interested in matrimonial speculations.

"That's because you are two of a kind, simple and serious," nodded Constance. "I could have adored him."

They had been speeding along a country lane between tall oaks, and, breasting a hill, suddenly came upon the sea, half landlocked by curving bays and little promontories. Beyond these, on the horizon, the coast of Connecticut was softly visible. Mary breathed in great draughts of salt- tanged air.

"Oh, how good!" she exclaimed.

"Here we are," cried Constance, as the machine swung past white posts into a wooded drive, which curved and curved again, losing and finding glimpses of the sea. No buds were out, but each twig bulged with nobbins of new life; and the ground, brown still, had the swept and garnished look which the March winds leave behind for the tempting of Spring. Persephone had not risen, but the earth listened for her step, and the air held the high purified quality that presages her coming.

"Lovely, lovely," breathed Mary, her eyes and cheeks glowing.

The car stopped under a porte cochere, before a long brown house of heavy clapboards, with shingled roof and green blinds. Farraday jumped down and helped Mary out, and the front door opened to reveal the shining grin of McEwan, poised above the gray head of a little lady who advanced with outstretched hand to greet them.

"My mother—Mrs. Byrd," Farraday introduced.

"I am very pleased to meet thee. My son has told me so much about thee and thy husband. Thee must make thyself at home here," beamed the little lady, with one of the most engaging smiles Mary had ever beheld.

Stefan was introduced in his turn, and made his best continental bow. He liked old ladies, who almost invariably adored him. McEwan greeted him with a "Hello," and shook hands warmly with the two women. They all moved into the hall, Mary under the wing of Mrs. Farraday, who presently took her upstairs to a bedroom.

"Thee must rest here before dinner," said she, smoothing with a tiny hand the crocheted bedspread. "Ring this bell if there is anything thee wants. Shall I send Mr. Byrd up to thee?"

"Indeed, I'm not a bit tired," said Mary, who had never felt better.

"All the same I would rest a little if I were thee," Mrs. Farraday nodded wisely. Mary was fascinated by her grammar, never having met a Quaker before. The little lady, who barely reached her guest's shoulder, had such an air of mingled sweetness and dignity as to make Mary feel she must instinctively yield to her slightest wish. Obediently she lay down, and Mrs. Farraday covered her feet.

Mary noticed her fine white skin, soft as a baby's, the thousand tiny lines round her gentle eyes, her simple dress of brown silk with a cameo at the neck, her little, blue-veined hands. No wonder the son of such a woman impressed one with his extraordinary kindliness.

The little lady slipped away, and Mary, feeling unexpected pleasure in the quiet room and the soft bed, closed her eyes gratefully.

At luncheon, or rather dinner, for it was obvious that Mrs. Farraday kept to the old custom of Sunday meals, a silent, shock-headed boy of about ten appeared, whom McEwan with touching pride introduced as his son. He was dressed in a kilt and small deerskin sporran, with the regulation heavy stockings, tweed jacket and Eton collar.

"For Sundays only—we have to be Yankees on school days, eh, Jamie?" explained his father. The boy grinned in speechless assent, instantly looking a duplicate of McEwan.

Mary's heart warmed to him at once, he was so shy and clumsy; but Stefan, who detested the mere suspicion of loutishness, favored him with an absent-minded stare. Mary, who sat on Farraday's right, had the boy next her, with his father beyond, Stefan being between Mrs. Farraday and Constance. The meal was served by a gray-haired negro, of manners so perfect as to suggest the ideal southern servant, already familiar to Mary in American fiction. As if in answer to a cue, Mrs. Farraday explained across the table that Moses and his wife had come from Philadelphia with her on her marriage, and had been born in the South before the war. Mary's literary sense of fitness was completely satisfied by this remark, which was received by Moses with a smile of gentle pride.

"James," said Constance, "I never get tired of your mother's house; it is so wonderful to have not one thing out of key."

Farraday smiled. "Bless you, she wouldn't change a footstool. It is all just as when she married, and much of it, at that, belonged to her mother."

This explained what, with Mary's keen eye for interiors, had puzzled her when they first arrived. She had expected to see more of the perfect taste and knowledge displayed in Farraday's office, instead of which the house, though dignified and hospitable, lacked all traces of the connoisseur. She noticed in particular the complete absence of any color sense. All the woodwork was varnished brown, the hangings were of dull brown velvet or dark tapestry, the carpets toneless. Her bedroom had been hung with white dimity, edged with crochet-work, but the furniture was of somber cherry, and the chintz of the couch-cover brown with yellow flowers. The library, into which she looked from where she sat, was furnished with high glass-doored bookcases, turned walnut tables, and stuffed chairs and couches with carved walnut rims. Down each window the shade was lowered half way, and the light was further obscured by lace curtains and heavy draperies of plain velvet. The pictures were mostly family portraits, with a few landscapes of doubtful merit. There were no flowers anywhere, except one small vase of daffodils upon the dinner table. According to all modern canons the house should have been hideous; but it was not. It held garnered with loving faith the memories of another day, as a bowl of potpourri still holds the sun of long dead summers. It fitted absolutely the quiet kindliness, the faded face and soft brown dress of its mistress. It was keyed to her, as Constance had understood, to the last detail.

"Yes," said Farraday, smiling down the table at his mother, "she could hardly bring herself to let me build my picture gallery on the end of the house—nothing but Christian charity enabled her to yield."

The old lady smiled back at her tall son almost like a sweetheart. "He humors me," she said; "he knows I'm a foolish old woman who love, my nest as it was first prepared for me."

"Oh, I can so well understand that," said Mary.

"Do you mean to say, Mrs. Farraday," interposed Stefan, "that you have lived in this one house, without changing it, all your married life?"

She turned to him in simple surprise. "Why, of course; my husband chose it for me."

"Marvelous!" said Stefan, who felt that one week of those brown hangings would drive him to suicide.

"Nix on the home-sweet-home business for yours, eh, Byrd?" threw in McEwan with his glint of a twinkle.

"Boy," interposed their little hostess, "why will thee always use such shocking slang? How can I teach Jamie English with his father's example before him?" She shook a tiny finger at the offender.

"Ma'am, if I didn't sling the lingo, begging your pardon, in my office, they would think I was a highbrow, and then—good night Mac!"

"Don't believe him, Mother," said Farraday. "It isn't policy, but affection. He loves the magazine crowd, and likes to do as it does. Besides," he smiled, "he's a linguistic specialist."

"You think slang is an indication of local patriotism?" asked Mary.

"Certainly," said Farraday. "If we love a place we adopt its customs."

"That's quite true," Stefan agreed. "In Paris I used the worst argot of the quarter, but I've always spoken straightforward English because the only slang I knew in my own tongue reminded me of a place I loathed."

"Stefan used to be dreadfully unpatriotic, Mrs. Farraday," explained Mary, "but he is outgrowing it."

"Am I?" Stefan asked rather pointedly.

"Art," said McEwan grandly, "is international; Byrd belongs to the world." He raised his glass of lemonade, and ostentatiously drank Stefan's health. The others laughed at him, and the conversation veered. Mary absorbed herself in trying to draw out the bashful Jamie, and Stefan listened while his hostess talked on her favorite theme, that of her son, James Farraday.

They had coffee in the picture gallery, a beautiful room which Farraday had extended beyond the drawing-room, and furnished with perfect examples of the best Colonial period. It was hung almost entirely with the work of Americans, in particular landscapes by Inness, Homer Martin, and George Munn, while over the fireplace was a fine mother and child by Mary Cassatt. For the first time since their arrival Stefan showed real interest, and leaving the others, wandered round the room critically absorbing each painting.

"Well, Farraday," he said at the end of his tour, "I must say you have the best of judgment. I should have been mighty glad to paint one or two of those myself." His tone indicated that more could not be said.

Meanwhile, Mary could hardly wait for the real object of their expedition, the little house. When at last the car was announced, Mrs. Farraday's bonnet and cloak brought by a maid, and everybody, Jamie included, fitted into the machine, Mary felt her heart beating with excitement. Were they going to have a real little house for their baby? Was it to be born out here by the sea, instead of in the dusty, overcrowded city? She strained her eyes down the road. "It's only half a mile," called Farraday from the wheel, "and a mile and a half from the station." They swung down a hill, up again, round a bend, and there was a grassy plateau overlooking the water, backed by a tree-clad slope. Nestling under the trees, but facing the bay, was just such a little house as Mary had admired along the road, low and snug, shingled on walls and roof, painted white, with green shutters and a little columned porch at the front door. A small barn stood near; a little hedge divided house from lane; evidences of a flower garden showed under the windows. "Oh, what a duck!" Mary exclaimed. "Oh, Stefan!" She could almost have wept.

Farraday helped her down.

"Mrs. Byrd," said he with his most kindly smile, "here is the key. Would you like to unlock the door yourself?"

She blushed with pleasure. "Oh, yes!" she cried, and turned instinctively to look for Stefan. He was standing at the plateau's edge, scrutinizing the view. She called, but he did not hear. Then she took the key and, hurrying up the little walk, entered the house alone.

A moment later Stefan, hailed stentoriously by McEwan, followed her.

She was standing in a long sitting-room, low-ceilinged and white-walled, with window-seats, geraniums on the sills, brass andirons on the hearth, an eight-day clock, a small old fashioned piano, an oak desk, a chintz- covered grandmother's chair, a gate-legged table, and a braided rag hearth-rug. Her hands were clasped, her eyes shining.

"Oh, Stefan!" she exclaimed as she heard his step. "Isn't it a darling? Wouldn't it be simply ideal for us?"

"It seems just right, and the view is splendid. There's a good deal that's paintable here."

"Is there? I'm so glad. That makes it perfect. Look at the furniture, Stefan, every bit right."

"And the moldings," he added. "All handcut, do you see? The whole place is actually old. What a lark!" He appeared almost as pleased as she.

"Here come the others. Let's go upstairs, dearest," she whispered.

There were four bedrooms, and a bathroom. The main room had a four-post bed, and opening out of it was a smaller room, almost empty. In this Mary stood for some minutes, measuring with her eye the height of the window from the floor, mentally placing certain small furnishings. "It would be ideal, simply ideal," she repeated to herself. Stefan was looking out of the window, again absorbed in the view. She would have liked so well to share with him her tenderness over the little room, but he was all unmindful of its meaning to her, and, as always, his heedlessness made expression hard for her. She was still communing with the future when he turned from the window.

"Come along, Mary, let's go downstairs again."

They found the others waiting in the sitting-room, and Farraday detached Stefan to show him a couple of old prints, while Mrs. Farraday led Constance and Mary to an exploration of the kitchen. Chancing to look back from the hall, Mary saw that McEwan had seated himself in the grandmother's chair, and was holding the heavy shy Jamie at his knee, one arm thrown round him. The boy's eyes were fixed in dumb devotion on his father's face.

"The two poor lonely things," she thought.

The little kitchen was spotless, tiled shoulder-high, and painted blue above. Against one wall a row of copper saucepans grinned their fat content, echoed by the pale shine of an opposing row of aluminum. Snowy larder shelves showed through one little door; through another, laundry tubs were visible. There was a modern coal stove, with a boiler. The quarters were small, but perfect to the last detail. Mrs. Farraday's little face fairly beamed with pride as they looked about them.

"He did it all, bought every pot and pan, arranged each detail. There were no modern conveniences until old Cotter died—he would not let James put them in. My boy loves this cottage; he sometimes spends several days here all alone, when he is very tired. He doesn't even like me to send Moses down, but of course I won't hear of that." She shook her head with smiling finality. There were some things, her manner suggested, that little boys could not be allowed.

"But, Mrs. Farraday," Mary exclaimed, "how can we possibly take the house from him if he uses it?"

"My dear," the little lady's hand lighted on Mary's arm, "when thee knows my James better, thee will know that his happiness lies in helping his friends find theirs. He would be deeply disappointed if thee did not take it," and her hand squeezed Mary's reassuringly.

"We are too wonderfully lucky—I don't know how to express my gratitude," Mary answered.

"I think the good Lord sends us what we deserve, my dear, whether of good or ill," the little lady replied, smiling wisely.

Constance sighed contentedly. "Oh, Mrs. Farraday, you are so good for us all. I'm a modern backslider, and hardly ever go to church, but you always make me feel as if I had just been."

"Backslider, Constance? 'Thy own works praise thee, and thy children rise up and call thee blessed—thy husband also,'" quoted their hostess.

"Well, I don't know if my boys and Theodore call me blessed, but I hope the Suffragists will one day. Goodness knows I work hard enough for them."

"I've believed in suffrage all my life, like all Friends," Mrs. Farraday answered, "but where thee has worked I have only prayed for it."

"If prayers are heard, I am sure yours should count more than my work, dear lady," said Constance, affectionately pressing the other's hand.

The little Quaker's eyes were bright as she looked at her friend.

"Ah, my dear, thee is too generous to an old woman."

Mary loved this little dialogue, "What dears all my new friends are," she thought; "how truly good." All the world seemed full of love to her in these days; her heart blossomed out to these kind people; she folded them in the arms of her spirit. All about, in nature and in human kind, she felt the spring burgeoning, and within herself she felt it most of all. But of this Mary could express nothing, save through her face—she had never looked more beautiful.

Coming into the dining room she found Farraday watching her. He seemed tired. She put out her hand.

"May we really have it? You are sure?"

"You like it?" he smiled, holding the hand.

She flushed with the effort to express herself. "I adore it. I can't thank you."

"Please don't," he answered. "You don't know what pleasure this gives me. Come as soon as you can; everything is ready for you."

"And about the rent?" she asked, hating to speak of money, but knowing Stefan would forget.

"Dear Mrs. Byrd, I had so much rather lend it, but I know you wouldn't like that. Pay me what you paid for your first home in New York."

"Oh, but that would be absurd," she demurred.

"Make that concession to my pride in our friendship," he smiled back.

She saw that she could not refuse without ungraciousness. Stefan had disappeared, but now came quickly in from the kitchen door.

"Farraday," he called, "I've been looking at the barn; you don't use it, I see. If we come, should you mind my having a north light cut in it? With that it would make an ideal workshop."

"I should be delighted," the other answered; "it's a good idea and will make the place more valuable. I had the barn cleaned out thinking some one might like it for a garage."