"How lovely," Mrs. Greyson said eagerly. "I never saw this altar before. Where did you get it, and why is it hidden up here?"

"I picked it up in Rome, years ago," Herman returned, a trifle shamefacedly. "It came from somewhere in Greece. Isn't it beautiful?"

"Yes; but why is it hidden here?" she repeated.

"The truth is that when I was young and romantic, I bought that altar— it is a Hymeneal altar, they say—and said I would pour a libation upon it at my marriage; a sentimental and heathenish notion enough."

He paused a moment, a certain hesitancy showing itself more and more definitely in his manner. He glanced at his companion, then looked away into the ghost world below. Her heart was beating quickly. She cast down her eyes, her hand, the whiter by contrast with the discolored marble, resting upon the altar.

"When I left Rome," he resumed, "I could not quite make up my mind to leave it behind; so I had it boxed up and sent home. It has been boxed up ever since until—until recently."

However determined Helen might be to avoid dangerous topics, she was yet a woman, and she had in her heart a strong yearning towards the sculptor which could hardly be repressed. Before she had considered to what the question might lead, she asked:

"And recently?"

"Recently," re-echoed he, regaining his composure, "I took it out and meant it to stand down in the corner there to remind me."

He pointed as he spoke, down into the studio below, still dim, since the screens covered the large windows. Her glance followed his motion in an abstracted, impersonal way.

"To remind you?" she in turn echoed.

"To remind me," he took up the words again, "that I am like other men, and that life is at best an aspiration; at worst a despair."

She understood the intimation of his words, but it seemed not to touch her. She did not flush or start, but regarded abstractedly the jocund Cupids. Then she raised her eyes to his face.

"But you removed it here."

"Yes," he said. "Our friend Fenton once said that there is in this world only one good, into which all others resolve themselves—the amelioration of life. The reminder, with all its suggestiveness, was too poignant; I ameliorated my life by putting it up here out of sight."

She did not question him further, but, gathering up her dress, turned and went down the next flight of stairs, which brought her to a landing eight or ten feet from the floor of the studio. There she turned again and looked back at him descending. She almost seemed to herself not to speak, yet by some inward volition her lips formed the words:

"Hope is only a bubble, yet it rims with rainbows whatever we see mirrored in it."

"Yes?" he returned, inquiringly.

"I was only thinking," replied she, continuing her descent, "that it is worth some pains to keep the bubble unbroken as long as possible."

"But facts are such achromatic glasses."

To this she made no answer, and together they moved towards a modeling stand upon which stood something covered with wet cloths. These the sculptor carefully removed.

A perfectly nude male figure was disclosed, exquisitely modeled, and of superb proportions. It lay upon a hillock, about which fragments of broken weapons and the torn ground indicated a recent battle. The head and limbs of the figure drooped down the sides of the mound, falling with the limpness of death. About the noble, lifeless head were bent and broken stalks of poppies, ridden down by the horses, yet not wholly destroyed.

Herman and Mrs. Greyson stood in silence looking at the figure, the pathos of the work so penetrating Helen that the tears gathered in her eyes.

"What do you call it?" she asked, struggling to regain composure.

Her companion pulled away the cloth, which still lay against the pedestal, and she saw the words:

"I strew these opiate flowers Round thy restless pillow."

Again she was silent. Perplexity, regret, and, more keenly than all, a delicious exultation, overcame her. She stole a half-glance up into the face of the tall form beside her.

"But he is dead," she murmured at length.

"It seems so," he assented.

She turned and faced him, a sudden paleness making her very lips white.

"I have no right to let you show me this," she cried, in a voice thrilling with emotion. "My husband is alive. I never pretended to love him, but I am his wife. You must have seen him with Arthur Fenton—Dr. Ashton."

"Dr. Ashton!" he echoed, in bewilderment. "Your husband? Dr. Ashton, Teuton's friend?"

"Yes," replied she, her eyes falling, and her breast beginning to heave. "I had promised not to tell; but it was not right. I should have told you, but I could not bear—Oh," she cried, breaking off her sentence abruptly, "if you despise me it is only my due!"

"Despise you! As if it were possible! But don't you know? Haven't you been told?"

"Know? Been told?" demanded Helen, in alarm. "What is it?"

"Haven't you seen the morning paper, even?"

"No. What was in it? Has any thing happened to Dr. Ashton?"

"Yes," Herman said slowly, wondering in a baffled way if 'it was possible to soften the blow. "He is dead."

"Dead!"

Her cry rang out sharply in the dim studio, over that clay figure of a lifeless warrior.

A cry of horror, of pain, and, too, of remorse. There was in it nothing of love, only that nameless fear that death brings, and still more that groundless self-reproach which sensitive natures must feel when confronted by the irremediable—as if some blame must be taken for the acts of fate. Imaginative natures never quite shake off the responsibility of the inevitable, and Helen began instinctively to question herself. The scene of the previous night came before her. Ought she to have yielded to the love which had called her, late aftermath of a blighted wedded life? At least when her husband spoke of his suffering she might more strongly—A sudden thought pierced her like a knife.

"How did he die?" she questioned breathlessly.

"Of heart disease."

So then the world would not know the truth, if what she feared were truth.

"I will go home," she said. "Please tell Ninitta."

When she reached her rooms she found a letter, addressed in Dr. Ashton's hand, which the penny-post had left for her after she had gone out in the morning. It contained only an impression in wax which resembled a large seal. With hot eyes she bent over it, making nothing of its reversed letters. Then, with a sudden thought, she held it before the glass, seeing in the mirror the words, which read backwards, like the life of him whose last act had been their forming:

"DEATH FOILS THE GODS."



XXXI.

HE SPEAKS THE MERE CONTRARY. Love's Labor's Lost; i.—1.

"Edith," Arthur Fenton said, looking up from his paper at breakfast that morning, "Dr. Ashton is dead."

"Dead!" she exclaimed.

Her husband's indifferent tone shocked her. She was not without an unphrased feeling that death was so sacred or at least so solemn a subject that it should be treated with reverence. Any jesting upon it made her cringe, and the light mention of it seemed to her almost immoral.

"So the paper says," replied he; and he read aloud the paragraph containing the announcement of Dr, Ashton's sudden death from heart disease. "It is too bad," he commented. "He was a mighty smart fellow and square as a brick. I wonder what made him do it now."

"Made him do what?" she asked. "How strangely you talk. Made him die?"

"Yes; that's what I meant. I knew he had a trouble which would probably make him do it sooner or later, but I'd no idea it would come so soon."

"Arthur, what do you mean," Edith repeated, the tears coming into her eyes. "I don't like to hear you speak of death so—so—flippantly."

"Flippantly, my dear?" returned he. "I'm sure I don't know why you should use that word. If a man takes his life, why shouldn't I speak of it,—to you, that is; of course I should not in public."

"Takes his life!" she cried. "Do you mean—"

"Of course I know nothing about it," her husband replied as coolly as ever, and watching sharply the effect of his words; "but I presume Will took poison, poor old fellow."

She sank back in her chair, white and trembling.

"It is what might have been expected," she said. "It almost seems as if Providence measured to him the portion of poor Frontier."

"Providence is noted for close observance of the lex talionis" sneered Arthur, "but Dr. Ashton didn't believe in the existence of that functionary, so it really ought to have passed him by. It would certainly have been more dignified."

"But, oh!" she cried out, apparently not hearing or not heeding his last words, "into what sort of a world have you brought me, Arthur? Are all your friends so desperate that they think only of taking their own lives? Have they no faith, no hope, no beyond? I feel as if it were all a dreadful nightmare! It cannot be you alone, for Mrs. Greyson and Dr. Ashton—Oh, Arthur, where has religion, where has morality gone? Oh, I cannot understand it! I cannot bear it!"

She laid her bowed head on her arms upon the pretty breakfast table, and sobbed as if her heart would break. Her husband looked at her with intense irritation, and an inward curse that he had ever married her. He sipped his coffee; he noted with admiration the rich, glowing hues of the dull blue bowl of nasturtiums which adorned the table.

"There, Edith," he said at length, "it is rather idle to cry over the sins of your neighbors. According to your creed each of us has enough of his own derelictions to answer for, without going abroad for things to repent. As for religion, I suppose girls who do Kensington work will use it for decorative purposes for some time to come, but thinking people long ago outgrew such folly. In regard to my friends, it is all a question of standards, as I've said no end of times. From my point of view they are very sensible people, and you a little bigot. Grant Herman believes some pious nonsense, though he has too good taste to obtrude it, and I dare say Bently and Rangely have their superstitions. There are probably ten thousand people in this good city of Boston—and for aught I know a hundred thousand—who believe, or, if you like, disbelieve, as I do."

"It cannot be true," was Edith's reply. "But if it is so, it is too sad to think of."

"Why, I suspect," Arthur continued lightly, "that the Pagans regard me as too orthodox lately, though you'd hardly agree with them."

She made no reply, and Arthur continued his breakfast in silence. The sun shone in at the windows, the soft coal fire sputtered in the grate, and to all appearance the room was full of cheerfulness. Edith leaned her head upon her hand and reflected sadly. She resolved that her husband should be weaned from the Pagans, if that were within her power. She seemed to herself to relinquish joy in life, and to devote herself wholly to duty.

The entrance of a servant with the morning letters interrupted further conversation, until Arthur tossed his wife a letter which Dr. Ashton had mailed at the same time he posted the missive which Helen received later in the day.

"There, you see," Fenton remarked. "Of course I show it to you in confidence."

The room swam before Edith as she read, but she forced herself to be outwardly calm, as she ran her eye over this note:

DEAR ARTHUR:—

I've a strong presentiment—and although I disbelieve in presentiments, mine generally come true—that in about half an hour my obituary will be in order. Certain easily foreseen contingencies have determined me to give it up. I shall never have a better chance to make my exit dramatically, and you've often assured me that that is the chief thing to consider in this connection. I've contemplated such a possibility long enough to have my affairs in order, and doubtless your wife will have a mass or two said for the repose of my soul. If you ever have a chance to do Helen a good turn, you may regard it as a personal favor to my ghost to do it. I've left you my Diaz as a sort of propitiatory sop.

Yours, of course, as ever, W. A.

"Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" Edith sobbed, breaking down again. "It is awful! It is just as he always talked. It is as light as if he were going out to drive."

"Naturally," was the response. "If you fancy Will would cry baby at death, you knew him far from as well as I did. How strange it is to think of his being in the past tense, poor fellow. It was clever of him to leave me his Diaz; I always coveted it."

In the face of this, what was there for Edith to say. She was simply numbed to silence, and horror at her husband for the time deadened all sense of the shock of Dr. Ashton's death. It was not until later in the day that she was able to think of Helen.

"But, Arthur," she said then, "Mrs. Greyson?"

"Well; what of Mrs. Greyson?"

"I am going to see her."

"After your last night's indignation?"

"I may have been wrong," Mrs. Fenton said bravely, "I may have been hard. I realize every day how little I am able to judge for other people. Perhaps I am narrow, as you say. At least now her husband is dead I can show her my sympathy; and since I know more of him, it does not seem so strange that she left him."

"They left each other," he responded to these contradictory words. "But what can you say? The consolations of religion will hardly be available, and Helen never pretended to love Ashton?"

His tone wounded her, but she answered without a change of countenance:

"The death of the man who has been her husband can never be indifferent to any true woman. I shall not force her to listen to any religion she does not wish to hear."



XXXII.

A SYMPATHY OF WOE. Titus Andronicus; iii.—I.

"I am afraid you will think me intrusive," was Edith's hesitating greeting to Helen, "but I could not help coming. I thought you might feel lonely."

Helen looked at her for a moment with wistful eyes and trembling lips: then she crossed swiftly to where her friend stood and kissed her. And never could these two be so wholly separated or estranged again as to efface the memory of all the meaning that this caress conveyed. The word which Edith had used had been most happily chosen. Her woman's instinct divined the loneliness which overwhelmed the widow, and this proof of her sympathy was the passport to Mrs. Greyson's heart. Loneliness was the feeling of which Helen was most of all conscious. The death of even an indifferent acquaintance often may seem to desolate the earth from its simple irremediableness, and much more does the removal of one near to us make the world appear half a void.

Helen had been sitting alone before Edith came, reviewing her past and drearily speculating of her future. She went over the days of her wedded life; her innocent, introspective childhood, in which she had dreamed and read, dwelling in a world apart; alone but for the ideal creations of her books or her own quick fancy. She had married knowing as little of life or of love, as when, a lonely child, she had spelled out the tale of Prince Camaralzaman, and wondered what the divine passion really was, or if indeed it had existence, outside of fairy lore.

The torch of death throws its glare backward, and its funeral light showed many a past long since forgotten, but now revealed with new and distorting vividness. Helen remembered the baby which had lived but long enough to open its eyes with a smile that seemed of recognition, and then faded back into the unknown whence it had come. A throb of tenderness for the dead father moved the mother's heart as she thought of her baby, so little time hers, and so long asleep under the marguerites of a grave over the sea. She had suffered much from the selfishness, the dominant self-will, the distorted views of life of Dr. Ashton; and these things she even now could not forget; but, too, she thought of him as the father of her child, her baby ever dear and living in memory.

She reflected, too, of the men she had known, and especially of Arthur Fenton. Her nature had need of some one upon whom to expend its treasures, and she realized that had she not felt in the artist a certain insincerity, he might have awakened her love. He had been appreciative, sympathetic, brilliant; and, too, he had called largely upon her patience and forbearance, than which there is no surer way to win a generous woman's affection. Yet always some note rang false to her fine ear, and to the weakness of his nature she had never been wholly blind, although not until his marriage had given him a certain distance had she realized how deep and unsparing her knowledge of him really was.

Of Grant Herman she would not think. Thoughts of him arose again and again in her mind, but she resolutely put them down. Some secret stir of mingled pain and joy told her too well that the sculptor had awakened the first love of her life. But at least with her husband, however unloved, lying yet unburied, she would not dwell upon the passion of another.

She took Edith's hand, and the two women sat down side by side, shedding tears together, rather from a sense of the general woe and bitterness of life than for poignant grief for the present calamity. It was not much they said at first. Neither was of the talkative order of women, finding comfort in the mere utterance of words. They grew together, sustained by giving and receiving tenderness, and each tacitly asking and according forgiveness for unfriendly feelings in the past. It is probable, too, that Edith, heavy with the disappointments of her married life, found relief in being able to weep unrestrainedly, even though the true source of her tears was not the obvious one.

"I never loved him," Helen said of her husband. "After we separated we became friends, rather because of a common past when we were both strangers here, than from any fitness for each other. But he was once my husband."

Her friend pressed her hand in silence.

"We had a child," Helen spoke again; "a little daughter. She only lived one day. If she had not gone it might have been different. At least we should have kept on together. My poor little baby!"

Edith's eyes were full of tears, as she answered softly:

"I hope you will let me say that I believe she is waiting for you some where."

"She must be," the mother responded quickly. "Whatever one doubts, one must surely believe that. I could not lose her! She is mine, wherever in the universe she may be."

"Yes," was all Edith ventured in reply. "I am sure of it."

They gave no heed to the fading day, but sat with clasped hands until twilight had gathered, and it occurred at last to Mrs. Fenton that her husband and dinner must be awaiting her. Helen had been telling of her plans.

"I shall go abroad," she said, "I want to study in Rome; I want to meet great men; to be influenced by great works. I have been thinking of it for a long time, and now it seems as if some ties that held me here are broken, for we often obey claims which we yet deny. And besides," she added, in a lower tone, "it is a flight from temptation. I am in danger here."

"In danger?" Edith asked wonderingly.

"Only from myself," was the reply, "but that peril is sufficiently imminent to make me afraid."

Edith questioned no further, and to the true import of these words she had no clue. She looked at her friend a moment inquiringly and musingly, but as Helen did not continue, she rose to go.

"I must get home now," she said, in a tone so tender that it seemed to beg pardon for this abandonment. "Arthur is waiting for me and his dinner; and if he doesn't get the latter at least, I won't answer for the consequences. Mr. Calvin was with him when I came away."

"Mr. Peter Calvin!" exclaimed the other, in some surprise.

"Yes; he has bought one of Arthur's pictures, and he wants Arthur to propose him at the St. Filipe Club, I believe."

She spoke in perfect ignorance of the tumult her words excited in her hearer's mind. Long after Edith was gone Helen sat looking out into the darkening sky and thinking of Arthur Fenton. She had heard him talk too often about Mr. Peter Calvin not to know what was implied by this new friendship. Mr. Peter Calvin had been for years the head and front of Boston Philistinism in art. He had been the patron of subservient artists; the chairman of committees for the purchase of public statues; an elegant writer upon such live and timely topics as Plaster Casting among the Egyptians, Notes upon Abyssinian Statues, while his monograph upon the question, What Was the Original Cost of the Venus de Milo? had by his flatterers been pronounced the masterpiece of all known art essays for power and critical research. His was a prominent name upon the covers of dilettante art journals; it was he who effectually crushed young and too daringly independent artists; who repressed impertinent originality; who headed the hosts of conventionality against individuality or genius which held itself above the established canons of antiquated tradition. He was the High Priest of Boston conservatism; the presiding genius of Philistia; and until the St. Filipe Club entered a protest against him by refusing to admit him to membership, his power had scarcely received a blow.

Tom Bently always insisted, with much profanity, that Mr. Peter Calvin was a joke.

"He writes with tremendous pomposity," Tom would say, "and he is in no end of societies for molly-coddling art. He goes on, too, about the plaster casts at that hospital for decrepit gods, the Art Museum, as if his whole soul was in the plaster barrels of the Greeks. But bless your soul! It's only his little joke. He doesn't really mean any thing by it. He's only a stupendous joke himself."

The Pagans, so far as they were to be regarded as an entity, represented the protest of the artistic soul against shams. They stood for sincerity above everything; for utter honesty in art, in life, in manners and morals alike. To them Philistinism was the substitution of convention for conviction. For the spirit of imitation, of blind subservience to authority, the Pagans had no tolerance. While they held themselves always open to conviction, they refused assent to any thing which was offered them ex cathedra; they devoted themselves to art with a passion of enthusiasm which was in itself the highest expression of their principles. That they seemed often iconoclastic was in reality less the result of their hatred of authority than the prevalence of unreasoning, and therefore by their standards necessarily insincere, adherence to established formulae. Dogmas they hated, not because they were popularly received, but because although they had been vital realities to their originators, they had become in time mere lifeless forms, held in reverence by blind devotees long after the soul had gone out of them.

In art especially the Pagans demanded the most absolute surrender of self to truth; and it should be added that they defined truth exactly as Helen did, "that which one sincerely believes." They had no condemnation too severe or sweeping for the artist who worshipped the golden gods of Philistia by following popular conventions at the expense of his honest art ideals. It is not impossible that they carried this feeling to extremes sometimes, suspecting every thing which was stamped with popular approval, but in the main at least their standard was of the highest and their lives conformed well to it. Measured by the creeds they rejected, they might often enough be found wanting; tried by their own, there had never been an apostate among them until the defection of Fenton.

No one had been more bitter and outspoken in his condemnation of Mr. Calvin and of what he represented than Arthur Fenton. Many a time he had entertained Helen with stories of the presumption and the ignorance of this man whom now he was receiving into his friendship, or, more properly, in whose train of sycophants he had taken his place.

Helen could not forgive him. Leaving dinner untasted, she sat with burning cheeks in the darkness, mourning over the apostacy of the man who had been her warmest friend.



XXXIII.

A MINT OF PHRASES IN HIS BRAIN. Love's Labor's Lost; i.—1.

Dr. Ashton had been in his grave several weeks. Life had gone on much as usual in Boston, with the bickerings of small souls the gaping imitations of the mob, the carping of the self-appointed critics, and the earnest endeavor of the honest and inspired workers, who leaven the lump of modern civilization.

Among the Pagans the nomination of Mr. Calvin to the St. Filipe Club by Arthur Fenton had been received with a bitterness born of a feeling of outraged confidence. They were to-night to meet in Tom Bently's studio, and Fenton, who had no intention of being present, was yet keenly conscious of what the talk there concerning him would be. He was glum and moody at dinner, and Edith, who knew that this was Pagan night, watched him wistfully. She hoped to win him away from friends and acquaintances who seemed to her dangerous. Perfectly honest and ready to lay down her life for her husband, she was yet urging him into paths which he felt it to be degradation to walk, since they led him away from sincerity. She had no means of knowing how his sudden championship of Mr. Calvin was regarded. Her own relations to art had been those of pretty amateurishness. She had been bred to believe in conventionality, and the flavor of Bohemianism alarmed and repelled her.

To-night she had put on her most becoming dress, she had ordered the dinner with especial reference to her husband's tastes, and she exerted herself to be as entertaining and attractive as lay in her power. She even allowed herself the innocent ruse of delaying dinner a little, that it might be later before Arthur could be ready to go out; and when the answer to her timid hope that he was to be at home that evening, was in the affirmative, her foolish, tender heart fluttered with delighted hope that she was influencing him to shake off his irregular associations.

He was rather gloomy and silent all the evening, brooding of the Pagans, from whose meetings he had never before been absent, and of Helen, and what she would think. Edith tried all her arts and wiles to make him forget the pleasure he was losing, and she partly succeeded, since her attentions and endearments chimed in with the train of thought by which he was endeavoring to prove to his own satisfaction that he was the most virtuous of men, and that his swearing allegiance to Philistinism, was a noble example of a transgressor willing to confess and abjure his faults. He accepted his wife's attentions as eminently fitting under the circumstances, and could he have forgotten the Pagans and Helen, he might almost have been comfortable. More than once in the old days he had found it hard to face Mrs. Greyson's clear eyes, which saw so readily through shams, and now while he was able to work himself into a defensive attitude towards all others of his old friends, he felt a horrible humiliation in the consciousness that Helen was sure to know of his course and to understand all its weakness.

It occurred to him, too, that Helen had avoided him of late. Since the death of Dr. Ashton, he had scarcely seen her, although she was often with his wife. He knew from Edith that she was soon to go abroad, and he wondered if the wish to escape him had any share in bringing her to this decision.

He tormented himself with speculations and memories until he could endure it no longer. He must have comfort; his wounded self-sufficiency craved the balm of approval, and although he was contemptuously conscious of his own weakness, he turned to Edith to seek admiration and praise.

"So you are glad that I am not going to the Pagans to-night," he said to her, as they sat before the fire, for the evening was damp and chilly.

"Very glad," she answered, leaving her chair to come and sit upon a low hassock by his knee. "It was so good of you."

She made a beautiful picture as she sat there, her long dress of cardinal and stone gray silk gathered in waves about her, the Elizabethan ruffle setting off her shapely head and slender neck, while the soft, yellow old lace showed how clear was the tone of her skin. Her pure, sweet face, with its appealing dark eyes, was turned upward to her husband's, in an expression at once wistful and full of love. Edith had always a highbred air, and to-night her attitude and expression added the one charm of warmth and softness needed to make her most lovely and moving.

"You doubtless have some excellent reason," remarked Arthur smiling down on her.

"I am afraid of them; they are in arms against every thing that is acknowledged to be good."

"And yet they are the most honest men I ever knew," he returned, half musing, and with a little pleased sense of his magnanimity in saying this at a moment when they were probably abusing him.

"I don't know, Arthur. Perhaps they may be honest, but I am sure it is not good for you to be with them. They are so sure that their false views of life are true."

The little sting in the implication that he was not able to resist the influence which had surrounded him was forgotten in the satisfactory view which his wife took of the real value of the judgments of the Pagans. He knew how little she understood them. With every premise upon which her conclusions were founded he disagreed, yet he said to himself that Edith was right; that the Pagans were quite too infallible about every thing. They would have him grope along poor and unknown, he argued with himself, simply for the sake of standing in the position of chronic rebuke to established authorities; with only now and then a chance to get a hearing upon what they assumed to be the true theory of art. What they believed—ah! there after all was the weakness of the whole. What ground had they for their belief? Did he himself really believe any thing, or had he a right to assert in any matter a positive conviction? And even if they or he asserted never so strongly, what sort of a test of truth was that? After all the Philistines, the Calvins, were as likely to be right as were a set of discontented if not disappointed artists; men whose natures would never allow them to be satisfied with any existing state of things, since it would inevitably differ from their dreamy ideals. And it was certainly true that the weight of authority and of numbers was with the Philistines.

"Perhaps you are right, Edith," he said aloud. "I hope so at least, for they are probably indignant enough with me."

"With you? Why?"

"Oh, they choose to think I went over to Philistia when I proposed Mr. Calvin for the St. Filipe. I'm sure I don't see why I haven't a right to propose whom I please."

"But Mr. Calvin, Arthur," responded Edith, who regarded that gentleman as one of the art gods of Boston. "I should think any body would be proud to propose him. Why, he is one of the most distinguished men in the city."

Her husband did not answer for a moment. He looked into the fire and watched his inner consciousness adapt itself to this view of the case, which than himself no one had condemned more bitterly. Yet it was the theory upon which it was necessary to rest did he expect to arrive at any comfort in the course of supporting Mr. Calvin, which he had already pursued so far that retreat was impossible. Yes, he assured himself, he could even accept this. And why not? Did not common opinion confirm it; and however much common opinion might be sneered at, it was surely the voice of the common sense of the world.

He looked down at his wife, who looked back smiling proudly. He realized how pure, how tender, how true she was. He knew, too, that she was daily and hourly weaving about him bands which held him captive to beliefs which though true to her were the veriest falsehoods to him; and that only his love of ease, his fatal complaisance, prevented his rending these cords as did Samson the new ropes of the Philistines. He realized that he was sacrificing his manhood, that he was bartering his convictions for flattery and ease by allying himself to Calvin and his following. He recalled Helen's remark that what is called being honest with one's self is often the subtlest form of hypocrisy, and he did not spare himself a single pang of self-humiliation and contempt; and then, when he was full to the throat with self-loathing, he let his sensuous, self-loving nature devise excuse and soothe his wounded vanity.

He looked into the fire with a smile of mingled bitterness and complacency, half ashamed, half amused at the view which introspection gave him.

But whenever into his musings came the thought of Helen it rankled like a poisoned barb. For he secretly believed that Helen loved him, and although if a man humiliates himself in the eyes of the woman he loves it is as bitter as death; yet to prove unworthy in the sight of her who hopelessly loves him, contains a more subtly envenomed shaft, which wounds that most sensitive spot in a sensuous man's nature—his vanity.



XXXIV.

HEART-BURNING HEAT OF DUTY. Love's Labor's Lost; i.—I.

That evening Helen too sat at home, alone and full of resistless thoughts.

She had put the finishing touches to the Flight of the Months, completing the work with scarcely less success than at first, and in three days she was to sail for Europe. She had not allowed Dr. Ashton's death to interrupt her work, the necessity of avoiding unpleasant gossip which would be provoked by the disclosure of her relations with the dead man, being sufficient reason why she should not change her outward life. She quietly and rapidly completed the preparations for departure, and already the feeling of severance from familiar scenes cast its sadness over her.

Leaving the studio to-day, she had gone down to speak with Herman, whom she wished to take the responsibility of the firing of the bas-relief. When she had finished this errand she turned to a figure in terra-cotta whose freshness showed that it had but recently come from the kiln.

"What is this?" she asked. "I have never seen it."

"It is a Pasht," the sculptor returned. "I modeled it as a wedding present for Arthur Fenton, but luckily I did not get it done in time."

"Why 'luckily?'"

"Because I should be sorry to have given him any thing so closely connected with the Pagans, as things have turned out."

Helen did not need to ask explanations of these words, although she did not know how complete the breach between Fenton and his former friends had become.

"I am glad I am going away," she exclaimed with a sigh.

"Going away?" he echoed, dropping his modeling tools.

"Yes, I sail Saturday."

She spoke with perfect composure, yet her glance was averted. She was painfully conscious of having concealed the fact from him until this moment.

He came towards her, his eyes fixed upon her face.

"What does this mean?" he demanded, almost fiercely. "Why do you go?"

"I mean to study in Rome," she replied faintly. "I always told you that I hoped to go some day."

"But why do you go now? Why have you concealed it from me? Are you afraid of my—of my love? If any one must go it should be I; I have no right to drive you away."

"You are not driving me away; I—it is better that I should go."

"But why go now? Now you are free, and I have a right to claim you."

"No," Helen said in a voice suddenly firm, but which yet showed her inward agitation, "no; there is Ninitta. I have suffered too much myself to be willing to try to come to happiness over any woman's heart. It is better that I should go."

"Ninitta!" Herman burst out. "She has no claim; she will not even care; she—"

"No," interrupted Helen, laying her hand upon his arm. "You cannot say that; you know it is not true. You can see as well as I that Ninitta is pining her life out over your neglect. We are not free to break her heart when you yourself taught her to love."

"I have never been unkind to her," he said, a little defiantly; "except perhaps when she acted like a mad woman and broke your figures."

"In love," returned Helen, smiling faintly, and glad to take refuge in generalities, "sins of commission, as compared with the deadly sin of omission, are mere venial offenses. It is not what you have done, but what you have left undone."

"But what can I do? I cannot force myself to love her?"

"You have made her love you."

"But I outgrew her centuries ago."

"The price of growth is always to outgrow," replied Helen.

She was struggling hard to keep the conversation away from dangerous levels. She felt that she must seem heartless, but none the less she went on bravely.

"And after all what is outgrowing? It is a question of moods, of—"

But her courage failed her. Her voice trembled, she turned away from him and walked down the studio, stopping here and there as if to examine a cast or a figure, invisible through the tears which welled up in her eyes. The sculptor followed close behind her, until she put her hand upon the great Oran rug which hung before the door.

"Then you leave me," he broke out bitterly. "You make Ninitta a pretext for escaping me. You might have told me that you did not care for me. I would not have molested you."

She turned to him suddenly, and he was startled by the whiteness of her face, for she was pale to the very lips.

"Do you think it is easy for me to go," she cried passionately, "to give you up when I love you! You should help me, not make it harder. Isn't it better to part now while we have nothing to regret than to live with a wrong between us?"

"But what wrong will be between us? Surely that boyish mistake need not blight both our lives."

"Can we help it?" she asked sadly.

"We will help it! Are we merely puppets then, to be bandied about helplessly? I told her I loved her; it is no longer true, and why is the pledge that followed binding?"

"It is not simply that you gave her your word," Helen returned, struggling bravely with herself; "it is that you made her love you, and that obligation you can never shake off. Oh, it is because you are too noble to take a woman's love and then trample upon it, that I love you—that you fill my heart."

She poured out the words, her eyes blazing, her splendid form dilated, her arms involuntarily extended towards him. He took her into his embrace; not hastily, not wildly; but with a slow, irresistible movement that had in it something of solemnity. He showered kisses upon her hair, her forehead, her lips; he pressed her to his bosom as if he would absorb her into himself.

"My darling, my darling," he said, in a hoarse, fiery whisper, "I cannot give you up! Think how lonely I am; how I love you!"

She put up her face and kissed him with a long, clinging kiss; then she freed herself from his arms. They stood face to face, her eyes appealing, until his glance fell before hers.

"Yes," he said in a voice so low that she bent forward to listen, "yes; you must be right."

"I am right," she responded sadly, "I have fought against it too much not to be sure of that."

"It is an odd way of proving my love for you to give you up," continued Herman, with a new accent of bitterness in his voice. "Oh, the folly of that boyish passion!"

He strode away from her, as she leaned panting against a modeling stand. The darkness was gathering so rapidly that when he turned back his face came out of the gloom like a surprise.

"My reward," he said, "must be that you love me; but that very reward makes it harder to deserve it. I am sure that we would be wiser and happier if we had no scruples to hamper us."

"But we have," was her response; "to take your own words, we are not mere puppets."

Again he walked away from her, and for a few moments there was no sound but that of his heavy footsteps, which seemed to make the silence more solemn and penetrating.

"I will do whatever you ask," he burst out suddenly. "I will even marry her if you wish."

"I ask nothing. It is not I but your convictions you should follow. I am not even able to advise. Your own instincts are better and nobler than any thing I can say to you." She stopped and choked back a sob. "Oh, Grant, it is so hard!" she cried.

She had never used that name before, and it so thrilled him with joy and pain that he made an impulsive movement as if once more to take her in his arms; but she lifted her hand with a gesture of negation.

"I have been tempted as well as you," she continued, "I have said to myself a thousand times that love justified all, and that these theories were too fine spun. I could not keep the thought of you down even when I first knew I was a widow, and I said over and over to myself that now no one stood between us. I knew it was no use, but I lay awake in the night and tried to prove to myself that Ninitta had no claim,—but, oh! you are too much to me for me to be willing that you should do what we both know is wrong and cruel. I can endure anything better than that you should not always be my ideal; and I should hate myself if I tempted you to wrong."

"What I am," he said brokenly, moved most of all by the tears upon her cheeks, "is nothing. You have beaten this temptation, not I; I would have done any thing if you had encouraged me. I am a very ordinary mortal, Helen, when one really knows my littleness."

She smiled through her tears at him.

"You shall not abuse yourself;" she replied. "I will not have it."

There was not much further said between them. They remained together until the dusk filled the studio, and it looked again like a ghost-world as on the morning they two had come into it to see the dead form modeled in red clay. Perhaps it was upon this remembrance that at length Mrs. Greyson said:

"Will you give me, before I go to Europe, that figure you showed me?"

"I will give you any thing you ask," he answered; "I wish I might add myself. Is it right," he added, with sudden fire, "for me to tie myself to that model girl? Am I worth nothing better than that?"

"You are worth the best woman on earth; but—oh I cannot argue it, but I feel it; I am sure that it cannot be right to deny the claim which you yourself gave her, Grant. I know by myself what it would be to lose you."

"But she is not the woman you are. Her feelings are those of an ignorant peasant; she—"

Helen laid her fingers lightly upon his lips.

"No," she said, "don't go on. We have said it all once. You are trying to out-argue your own convictions. I must go now. It is almost dark already."

She took a step or two towards the door and again laid her hand upon the rug portiere. Then as by a common impulse they turned towards each other, and once more she was locked in his embrace.

And to-night, sitting alone in the dark, with dilated eyes, Helen felt still the ecstasy of that moment, but murmured to herself:

"It must not be again; I will not see him alone."



XXXV.

PARTED OUR FELLOWSHIP. Othello; ii.—I.

Tom Bently's studio that night was a sight well worth seeing.

Tom had two rooms in Studio Building, opening into each other by folding doors, which were never known to be shut. The walls were hung with old French tapestry, its rich, soft colors harmonizing exquisitely with some dull-red velvet draperies from Venice. Bits of armor, some of them very splendid, were disposed here and there, while a wealth of bric-a-brac enriched every nook and corner. In the doorway hung an old altar-lamp of silver, with a cup of ruby glass, and from various points depended other lamps of Moresque and antique shapes. A pair of tall brass flambeau-stands, spoil of a Belgian cathedral sacked a couple of centuries ago, upheld the heaviest candles Tom had been able to find, which smoked and flared most picturesquely.

Bently had traveled widely, every where picking up graceful and artistic trifles—stuffs from Algiers; rugs from Persia and Turkey; weapons from Tripoli and India and Tunis; musical instruments from Egypt and Spain; antiques from Greece and Germany and Italy; and pottery from every where. His studio was the envy of all his brother artists, although he himself growled about it profanely, declaring that he had so much rubbish about him that he could not work, yet nevertheless declining to part with a single object.

"I ought to clear the place out," he would say. "My pictures are getting to look like advertisements of an old clo' shop, and if a man doesn't change all his properties every year, the sapient critics say he has become mannered. But I can't let them go; or rather they won't let me go; they hang on like barnacles to an old hulk."

The Pagans were six that night, Fenton's place being unfilled. The delinquency of the absent artist was a good deal commented upon, yet always as if an effort were made to keep the subject out of the conversation. It came up again and again, and that not unnaturally, since it was necessarily in every man's thoughts.

"He's a mellifluous coward, now isn't he?" Bently remarked, with his usual picturesque disregard of the conventional use of words. "The average American couldn't have been more sneaking."

"He was always afraid of the rough grain of life," Rangely responded. "I always told him he was a born coward. He could never serve any cause that wouldn't give him a uniform of broadcloth. But he was born for something better than tagging after Calvin and his tribe, heaven knows."

"Bah!" went on Bently, "the bad taste of it! I could get over every thing else, but the bad taste of proving a sneak, and giving up every thing worth while."

Somebody threw in a quotation from Browning's Lost Leader, and then Grant Herman, trying to turn the conversation, took up Bently's remark.

"You're right, Tom," he said, "in your view of taste. Taste is sublimated morality. It is the appreciation of the proportion and fitness of all things in the universe, and of course it is above simple morality, for that is founded upon a partial view. Taste is the universal, where a system of morals is the local."

"Can't you say that of art?" asked Rangely. "I should think art is the universal, where religion is the provincial. A religion expresses the needs and the aspirations of a race or a country, while art embodies the aspirations and attributes of humanity."

"Good!" Bently responded. "That is better than I should have said it, but it's my belief, all the same. There are so few people who have imagination enough even to understand what one means by saying that art is the only thing in the world worth living for. Why, art is the supreme expression of humanity; the apotheosis of all the best there is in the race."

"I don't see that," objected another. "Isn't religion the expression of the longings of the soul, or whatever there is in us we call soul? I can't say it well, but it seems to me you talk of religions, not religion."

"People seldom take the trouble to make that distinction. He who attacks any of the religions is generally set down as striking at religion itself."

"Religion," returned Bently, "is the expression of fear, and nothing else, if you sift it to the bottom. Knowledge kills so-called religion as surely as it does those lower forms of belief which it is nowadays the fashion to dub superstition. It is precisely the same feeling that builds churches and that rhymes the country hag's charms. Fairies and saints are double and twisted cousins, after all."

"But religion," persisted the German, "is more than the expression of fear; it is the embodiment of the aspirations of mankind; of the instinct and desire for worship."

"For worshipping something," amended Tom. "That is the same thing differently phrased."

"No, it isn't, either. To yearn for the higher is not to show that we fear it, but that we long to grow like it. It is a confession of incompleteness, of weakness, I grant you; but a thousand times no to your calling it fear."

"I confess to having been hasty, and modify my words so far as to say; an expression of fear or weakness."

"Is there then any shame in acknowledging weakness?" demanded the German, pushing him as hard as he was able. "It certainly is honest."

"Is there any shame to formulating fear?" retorted the other, deftly evading him.

"Then see how religion always appeals to art to help out its ultimate expression," observed Rangely.

"And how it has failed," added Bently, "when it has not had art to help it. Puritanism tried to get on without art, and where is Puritanism? You couldn't find a trace of it, if it hadn't come down on its marrow-bones and begged art to build its churches, compose its music, and regulate its rituals."

"It is no more fair to say that," objected another Pagan, doggedly, "than to say that art has gone to religion for help. Their accounts are pretty evenly balanced."

"Nonsense!" Rangely returned. "Art has never gained by being religious, but by being art; but religion owes its hold largely to the help art has given it."

"And it has paid its debts by blackguarding art from every pulpit it has builded for it."

"As Fenton used to say," Ainsworth remarked, "art has been used as the sugar-coating to the bitter pill of religion."

"Oh, Fenton again," Bently exclaimed impatiently. "What did you bring him up for? Who the devil would have thought Fenton would have turned out so?"

"I can tell you a piece of news," said Rangely. "The Election Committee blackballed Calvin this afternoon."

"Good!" cried they all; and some body added: "But Fenton said he'd resign if Calvin wasn't elected."

"Resign," echoed Rangely, "I guess he'll have to. He's been sent to Coventry by half the Club now for that Graves affair."

"The Graves affair?" some one queried. "What's that? What else has he been doing? If a man starts to go to the devil, it does seem as if he never could get ahead fast enough."

"Miss Graves was going to buy one of Flackerman's pictures, and heaven knows he needs the money; and Fenton, who has always pretended to be Flack's friend, talked her into taking one of his instead; or rather he got Calvin to go to her and do it. It was a stunning Flackerman, too; and we were all rejoicing over his luck."

"I would not be too ready to believe that story," Grant Herman said. "I don't think Fenton's gone utterly to the bad all at once. He's living expensively, they say, and possibly he let Calvin go to Miss Graves; but I don't believe Arthur ever originated that sneaking scheme, and I shouldn't be surprised if he never knew the rights of the case."

"He's done what so many artists have been bullied into doing before," Ainsworth observed. "If he has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, that is precisely what the patrons of art in this country demand that every man shall do who comes here. I could tell you of a dozen good fellows who've been spoiled in that way. I am far enough outside to look on in an unbiased way; but they treat us architects in the same fashion. Lots of the most rubbishy and conventional men we have, started out to be fair and work from conviction; and they simply had the choice between subservience and starvation, and cases of the choice of death from starvation haven't been over plenty."

"Oh, a man is known by the tailor he keeps," threw in Rangely; "especially if he doesn't pay him."

"It's all a game of cut-throat," Bently remarked philosophically; "art and business alike."

"I should hate to have my throat cut," observed the German Pagan in a matter of fact tone; "it must let a dreadful draught into the system."

"Oh, if you were beheaded," cried Rangely, "you'd turn into a capital beer fountain, so your friends would find some consolation, even in your loss."

A diversion was caused here by the production of a splendid Japanese punch-bowl, supported upon a teakwood stand. In it the host proceeded to brew a potent and steaming mixture, whose fragrance must have delighted the jocund gods of jollity and laughter. Tom was notorious for being chronically in pecuniary difficulties, but he was always adding to his collection of bibelots, and he never was known to lack the means of concocting a glorious punch.

"Ye gods!" exclaimed Ainsworth, "how good that smells. It almost overcomes the general mustiness of Tom's den here, which usually has all the odors of the Ghetto from which his things are dragged."

"Casper is intoxicated already with the mere fumes," retorted Bently good humoredly. "He's bound to fill a drunkard's grave sooner or later."

"No; I never shall," chuckled the other. "I'm altogether too good natured to crowd the drunkard out."

This sally was received with applause, and the glasses being filled, the usual toasts to the goddess Pasht and to art were drank.

"And to our seven," went on Herman, holding up his glass, and going on with the formula they had, half unconsciously, fallen into the habit of using, although they made no pretense of having a ritual.

But he set his glass down untasted, suddenly remembering that their ranks were broken, and the others followed his example.

"The difference between religion and art," broke out Rangely, hurriedly, to cover the awkward silence which followed, "is that religion is a matter of tradition, of convention; it rests upon authority, while art springs from inner conviction."

"Sophistry," retorted the German, picking up the gauntlet; "there have been a good many things said here to-night which sound well but won't stand fire. It is precisely for following conventions in art that we blame Fenton."

"And that proves my point."

"No, it doesn't; there's as much art that depends upon tradition as there is religion."

"No," replied Rangely. "In so far as art gets its inspiration from fossil tradition it is lifeless and indeed ceases to be art. Religion presupposes something exterior; while art is the outgrowth of the individual's own mind, the best expression of his inner strength."

"Religion," Herman threw in, "demands the existence of the unknown; art only the existence of the inexpressible."

"Yet art devotes itself to expression."

"Yes, but more to suggesting. It phrases the possible so as to suggest that which is above and beyond expression, yet toward which it helps the emotions and the imagination. I think a man's soul a matter of very little moment as compared to his imagination, and it is because art ministers to the latter that I place it above religion."

The talk was diverted here by some laughing remark which led on to a train of gay badinage. The German tried to bring the conversation back to serious levels, but in vain.

"Oh, what fustian we've given ourselves up to to-night," laughed Rangely.

"It amuses me to hear you fellows discuss religion," Tom Bently observed. "You wander round the subject as aimlessly as the young women in the first half hour of a Harvard symphony concert."

"Never you mind, Bently," rejoined Ainsworth. "You are sure of coming out all right; the gods are bound to protect humbug, for on it depends their own existence."

They drifted in little groups to different parts of the studio, admiring this or that bit of grace or beauty. Then the German, who was a professional musician, tuned an old mandolin with which a Venetian lover some star-lit night centuries ago, may have serenaded his loved one from his gondola; and to its trembling accompaniment sang a quaint chansonette, his Teutonic accent making havoc among its liquid Italian syllables. Then Rangely possessed himself of a strange African instrument, a crooked gourd, hollowed and strung with twisted tree fibers, and joined to the notes of the mandolin, its weird, cicada-like harshness. The duet moved Bently to clear a miscellaneous collection of articles from the lid of a spinnet of the time of Louis XIV., upon which be-powdered and be-patched dames, long forgotten, had strummed pretty little tinkling tunes, while all about them other marionette-like ladies and gallants played at little tinkling loves, as pretty and as empty.

The three instruments, so strangely matched, went off together in a variety of music, imparting to every thing an uncanny, ghostly flavor, as if these airs came in wild echoes from the shores of some dead past.

"Oh, stop that," Herman cried, at last. "It's too melancholy. Your instruments are all dead; and it's no use trying to get live music out of them."

For reply the German led off in a drearisome minor folk-tune, Rangely and Bently improvising their parts with some skill, albeit not always with perfect harmony.

"Ye Gods!" cried Ainsworth, seizing the mandolin out of the player's grasp. "Is this a Hottentot funeral? Here, Fred, give me that diabolical gourd; it is haunted by the soul of a Caffre medicine man."

"I say, fellows," spoke Rangely, as the din subsided, "I move we make this a funeral, by breaking up the Pagans. Of course there is nothing to hinder our meeting round at each other's places whenever we want to; but we've either got to turn Fenton out or break up. I, for one, am coward enough to prefer to break up."

"So say I," said Herman. "When once a circle like this is broken, there is an end of it. It can't be patched together."

They looked at each other in silence a moment. To disband seemed like an acknowledgment of defeat. Many another band of ardent souls has known the feeling, with its dreary ache, although it oftener happens that a circle of this kind disappears by the gradual dropping away of its numbers one by one rather than that its members are brought face to face with the necessity of owning that its existence had resulted in failure. Whatever their faults and extravagances, whatever their errors and intolerance, they were sincere, self sacrificing and ardent beyond the men who made up the world about them; a group of eager lovers of truth and art who had been drawn together by mutual aims and enthusiasms. Their fierceness had been in defense of honesty and sincerity, their disinterestedness was attested by the fact that any one of them might have made his peace with Philistia and been rewarded for his complaisance had he so chosen. Doubtless they had their faults and foibles, yet their comradeship, in its essential purport had been true and noble.

They in no wise abandoned their aims in agreeing with the proposition to disband, but about their fellowship had been a certain un-phrased tenderness, at which, if put in word, any one of them might have scoffed, yet which nevertheless they all felt strongly in their secret hearts, and all were conscious that after this defection of Fenton, the circle could never be perfect again. They did not discuss the matter now, but in the interval of silence each acknowledged to himself that to disband was best; and briefly each gave his assent; all soberly, some almost gruffly.

And so it came about that the goddess Pasht lost her last band of followers, and the Pagans assembled no more forever.



XXXVI.

AS FALSE AS STAIRS OF SAND. Merchant of Venice; v.—2.

"Very likely you cannot see it," Arthur Fenton said, striking in the background of a portrait with vicious roughness. "Women and brutes differ from men in lacking reason; if you were logical you'd see."

"See that you are right in selling your convictions for patronage," Helen returned gravely, ignoring the insult. "Then I am glad I am not logical."

"If you choose to put it that way," he retorted doggedly, "I must still say yes."

It was Friday morning, and Helen was to sail the next day. She had come to Fenton's studio to bid him good-by, knowing that they should have that to say which could not be freely spoken before Edith, and yet not choosing to have him come to her own house without his wife.

"Poverty," he went on aggressively, "is nature's protest against civilization, and still more against art. I am bound to fight nature on her own ground, am I not?"

"If I were a little more orthodox," she replied, "I might quote Scripture upon life's being some thing more than meat. Oh, Arthur, what is the use of all this fencing? All that is asked of you is to be honest; and to be honest the life of an artist in America to-day must be a protest against dominant Philistinism; nobody has ever acknowledged that oftener or more emphatically than you have."

"But the artists," returned he, not meeting her eyes, "are too self-centered. Look at the Pagans; what efforts have they ever made to win society? Society is ready enough to take them in."

"Arthur! Is it you who say that? To quote yourself against yourself, 'every work of art is an effort to conquer Philistinism.' Patronage seems already to have sucked the life out of you."

"You may say what you like," Fenton remarked defensively; "you cannot make me angry."

"That may be your misfortune," rejoined she sadly, "but I fear it is your fault."

"The sin of a thing," he said, putting down his brushes impatiently, "oftener consists in regarding it as a sin than in the thing itself."

He went to the round window, for his studio was high up in the building, and removed the Japanese umbrella which served as its screen. He threw himself upon a pile of cushions, regarding darkly the tops of the trees in the Old Granary burying-ground opposite.

"Que voulez-vous?" he demanded coolly, after a moment's silence. "You are unreasonable; you always are. I must live. I don't know why you have a right to object to that. I have married a wife who is well connected, and I always meant to make her connections help me, Philistines or not. Even the godly Israelites made a virtue of spoiling the Egyptians."

"But that was in departing from their country."

"We won't argue," the artist declared sulkily. "Argument is only disputing about definitions, and we should never agree. I don't expect you to think I'm right. As a matter of fact I have my doubts myself. You might at least allow me the satisfaction of humbugging myself if I am able."

She regarded him sadly. The chance remarks about Edith's relatives seemed to throw a new and sinister light upon the reasons of his marriage. She wondered if she had not been mistaken in following her impulse to come here, and whether words could effect any thing.

"But Edith?" she said at length, and as if half to herself; "does not her honesty rebuke you? Don't you feel unworthy of her?"

"Well, and if her severe virtue does repel me?" he asked, a hard look coming into his face, "am I to blame for that also?"

"You are speaking of your wife!"

"C'est vrai" with a shrug, "but the one lie I never tell to or of any woman is that my passion for her will be eternal, and I am long ago tired of Edith. Her innocence bores me. She urges me, too, to do precisely the things you condemn. And after all what is my crime? Simply that I am following the intelligence of the majority instead of being governed by the growls of the discontented minority, any one of whom would be glad of the chance to follow my example."

"It is not with whom you side," Helen answered. "It is the simple question of having the courage of your convictions. The dry rot of hypocrisy is ruining you. I can see Peter Calvin's smirk in every brush mark of your canvas there!"

For reply he threw a brush at the picture upon the easel. Then he sat upright in his cushions and faced her.

"Well," he ejaculated, half-angrily, half bitterly, "you are right. You cannot scorn me half as much as I scorn myself, and have ever since I asked Edith Caldwell to marry me. I meant then to make my peace with the Philistines!"

He sprang to his feet impetuously and shook himself as if to shake off some disgusting touch.

"I like a comfortable home at the West End," he continued impetuously, "far better than I do dreary bachelor lodgings, now here, now there. I prefer faring sumptuously every day, to dining in an attic. Whatever else may be said of that terrible Calvin—my God! Helen, how I would like to choke him!—he certainly has plenty of money, and he patronizes me beautifully."

He walked up to the easel and regarded the half-finished portrait contemptuously.

"Honesty," he began again with cool irony, "is doubtless a charming thing for digestive purposes, but it is a luxury too expensive for me. The gods in this country bid for shams, and shams I purpose giving them. I am not sure I shall not go into chromos eventually. I don't enjoy this especially, but after all that is a mere matter of standards, and I have resolved to change mine, so that I shall end by enjoying or even honoring my eminently respectable self. As for art, she is a jade that can't give her lovers even a fire to sit by while they woo her. I'm sorry for her, but I don't see clearly how I can help her by sitting down to starve in her company; so I've made friends with the mammon of unrighteousness—you see my orthodox education was not wholly lost upon me! Voila tout! Honesty, I say, is for the most part cant, and at any rate only a relative term. I prefer substantial good. If you despise me, tant pis pour—one of us; whichever you choose."

He spoke defiantly, but faltered a little at the last words. She rose as he finished.

"Good-by," she said. "You have taught me forever to distrust my own judgments, for I had mistaken you for a man! I am sorry that I have ever known you. You lower my respect for all the race."

"But I acknowledge my faults."

"Acknowledge!" she retorted in disdain. "What of that? Acknowledgment is not reparation, though many try to make it so."

She walked towards the door, but he reached it first and laid his hand upon the latch.

"You are going away," he said. "Who knows when we shall ever meet again. At least remember that I condemn myself as sharply as you can."

"That is the degradation of it," was her retort, her eyes blazing at him. "If you could plead ignorance, I could pity you."

"Edith is a saint," he went on, not heeding, "but her good is my evil. I do not plead it as an excuse; I have and I want no excuse: but it is true that temptation could come to me in no shape so insidious as through her sincerity."

"Then you will be honest!" pleaded Helen.

"I do not say that. I think I shall go on as I am; but I have changed my idea of my epitaph. It shall be only the word 'Pardon.'"

"Your old one was better," she retorted stingingly, "and better than either would be a blank! Let me pass!"



XXXVII.

FAREWELL AT ONCE, FOR ONCE, FOR ALL AND EVER. Richard II.; ii.—2.

The outward bound steamer was almost ready to sail, and all the bustle attendant upon departure of an ocean craft eddied about three people who stood in a half-sheltered nook upon the wharf. They were saying little. Both Grant Herman and Ninitta kept their eyes fixed upon Helen, while her glance was cast to the ground, save when she raised her head in speaking.

The Italian from time to time took Helen's hand in hers and kissed it fondly.

"I pray the Madonna for you every night," she whispered in her native tongue, "that she will give you a safe voyage."

The sculptor watched all that went on about them, waiting with some inward impatience for the moment when the duty of escorting Mrs. Greyson on board would give him an opportunity of being a moment alone with her.

"We shall miss you much," he said, feeling that any thing would be better than the silence which hedged them in amid the noisy bustle of the throng. "We shall not soon fill your place, shall we, Ninitta?"

He did not listen to the eager answer; his eyes were fixed upon Helen's face, and for her alone he had ears.

"Yes," he said again with nervous platitude, when once more they had lapsed into the silence he found it so hard to bear; "neither my wife nor myself has any friend to take your place."

Some faint accent in the tone in which he referred to his three hours' bride made the widow look up suddenly. To the question in her eyes his glance gave no answer, and for the moment a feeling of despair overcame her. Had she given him up only to the end that his life should be miserable; had she forced him into a marriage whose bonds would gall and chafe him with more deadly and festering wounds as time went on?

But all these questionings Helen had answered with stern bravery during the sad wakeful nights and lonely days just past. She had first convinced herself that it was right that Herman should redeem his old-time pledge to Ninitta, and after that she forced herself to the bitterer task of realizing that when time had obliterated somewhat the clearness of her own image in the sculptor's heart, something of his old affection for the Italian might be rekindled in his generous, warm nature, always tenderly chivalrous towards woman, and sure to prove doubly so to one dependent upon him. It was hard, but Helen unflinchingly analyzed the nature of her lover, and while she could not believe that he would ever feel for his wife the grand passion which she had herself inspired in his breast, she saw for him a tranquil future in which his wife's devotion would be met with enduring, even with increasing affection, which if not love, would be so like it that Ninitta, at least, would never distinguish; and in which her husband would find comfort and warmth, if not fire and aspiration.

She had a harder struggle when the thought came to her, "Have I not led him into the one thing he most dreads and despises, an act of insincerity? Can a loveless marriage be honest?" But she answered her doubting heart; "No; he has told Ninitta that he does not love her as of old, and he is not deceiving her. It is my own selfishness that puts this thought into my mind." It may be that Helen was wrong, for the influence of her Puritan training had left a strong impress upon her moral sense in a regard for the sanctity of a pledge, especially to its spirit rather than its letter, so deep as to be almost morbid; yet at least she was self sacrificing and never more truly consistent than in the seeming inconsistency of urging this marriage.

"Come," was Herman's word, almost a command, when the crowd upon the steamer's deck began definitely to separate into those who were to go and those who remained. "You must go aboard. Ninitta, stand just where you are until I come back. I will be gone only an instant."

Helen turned and kissed Ninitta, a sharp pang stabbing her very soul, as the thought came to her: "He will love her; she is his wife, and he will learn to love her!" Then she put her arm upon Herman's in silence.

She had been alternately desiring and fearing this moment, until her excitement was almost beyond control. The sculptor led her on board the steamer, and together they descended to the saloon. Every body was on deck except the servants, and without difficulty a nook was found where the two were alone.

"Well," he said, breaking the silence with a voice full of emotion, "it is done, and we are parted as far as the earth is wide."

"No," she answered, clasping his hands in hers. "With a broken faith between us we should have been separated; now we are truly together, no matter how many oceans part us. It is hard; it is hard; but I know it must be right."

He bent forward to kiss her.

"No," she said, drawing back. "Your kisses belong to your wife, now. I have no right even to your thought. But I cannot help telling you, now we are parting, how much it is to me to love you. It is hard to leave you, Grant, to give you up; but now I understand that it is better to love, even if we are not together, even though we may not belong to each other. And I cannot but find comfort in thinking that you will not forget me."

"But if hereafter," he began eagerly, but before the words were uttered he realized what they implied, and a hot flush of shame tinged his cheek. "No," he said, "I cannot think of the future."

She put up her hand with a gesture of appeal. The bell of the steamer sounded out sharply upon the air.

"No," she said. "We must say good-by with no reservations, no hopes, even with no prayers. It is simply and absolutely good-by. And oh!" she added, her voice breaking a little, "I do so hope for your happiness, though I must not share it."

He wrung her hand and left her. Once he halted, as if to return, but her gesture gave him so absolute a farewell that he went on. His wife awaited him where he had left her. She slipped her arm through his.

"I am so glad you have come back," she said in her soft Italian, lifting to his a face full of trust and love; "I was so lonely and afraid without you."

He was touched with a tender pity as he looked into her eyes. When he withdrew his glance the steamer was moving, and he saw Helen leaning over the rail. She waved her hand, and as the ship glided away, down the harbor, these two, so separated, yet so united, clung together by their glances until distance shut them from each other's sight.

FINIS.