"And—cease to be yourself?"

"Yes. But I shall always remember. Not many have had the wonderful glimpse I have had—not many."

"I—I will not let you go back! You belong in the light; in love and the giving of love. You have given me a glimpse of myself—as I should be. I have stayed in this magic place without a past and a future—for your sake! I see it now. I love——"

"Oh! please, please stop. We are both mad, and when to-morrow comes and the day after, and the day after that, we will both be sorry, and, oh! I want all my life to—to—be glad because of this night."

"You shall—remember it—all your life as—your happiest night, if I can make it so!"

His face was bent close to hers. For the first time Travers was overpowered by the charm of woman, and all the pent passion and love of his life broke bonds like a wild, primeval thing that education and conventions had never touched.

"I—I want you! I want you without knowing any more than if you and I had been born anew in this wonderful life. Look at me! You believe I can offer you—the one perfect gift a man should offer a woman?"

She looked long and tenderly in his eyes. She was—going to leave him; she could afford the truth. She was brave now.

"Yes," she whispered.

"And I know you to be—what I want. Isn't that enough? Can we not trust each—for the rest?"

"Yes, if the white hills could shut us forever from the other things."

"Other things?"

"Yes, the things of to-morrow. Duty, the demands that lie—over the Alps."

"I—renounce them all!"

"But they will not renounce us!"

Travers felt her slipping from him. A man whose youth has been denied, as his had, is a puppet in Fate's hands when youth makes its claims.

"I—mean to have you! Do you hear me? I mean to have you."

And just then Margaret Moffatt drew near. Calmly, smilingly, she came like one playing her part in a perfectly arranged drama.

"You are here? Ready for home? Wasn't it sublime and exactly as it should be? We are so nice and friendly with our real selves."

There was no surprise; no suggestion of disapproval. The world in which they were all playing could have only direct and simple processes. But, having lived in a past world where her perceptions had been made keen and vital, Margaret Moffatt understood what she saw. She had noticed every letting down and abandonment of Travers since he had joined them. She was too wise not to know the effect of such a woman as Priscilla upon such a man; such a denied and almost puritanical man as Travers. She knew his story from her father. An artistic triumph was hers that night. The splendid elements of primitive justice had been set in motion, and almost gleefully she wondered what they would do with Richard Travers and Priscilla Glynn.

For herself? Well, she had put herself to the test and had come out clear-visioned and glad to a point of dangerous excitement. Only two or three mighty things mattered, if one were to gain in the marvellous game. She meant to hold to them and let the rest go!

But Travers had not passed through Ledyard's school and come out untouched. After leaving Priscilla, silent and white, he had gone to his room and flung himself down upon a low couch by the window. Then his old self took him in hand while he stubbornly resisted every attack that reason, as trained by Ledyard, made upon him.

"Think of—your mother! What has she not done and suffered that you might stand before the world—a free man? And your profession; your future! They are all your mother holds to for her peace and joy. And I? Well, I do not claim anything for myself; but you know the game as well as I. If you toss to the winds all that has been gained for you, professionally and socially, you are done for! Your renunciation and restraint, what have they amounted to, unless you accept them as stepping-stones and go—on?"

And then Travers clenched his hands and had his say.

In that moment his own mother rose clear and radiant beside him and made her appeal. She pleaded for justice, but she showed mercy. He must not forget or forego anything that had been gained for him; but he was her child, the child of her love—unasking, unfettered love—and the passion that was throbbing in him was pure and instinctive; he must not deny it or the rest would be shucks! Non-essentials must not hamper him. Alone, unsought, a strange and compelling force had made him captive. All that others, and himself, had achieved for him must make holy this simple but all-powerful desire.

Then she faded, that poor, little, half-forgotten mother! But she left, like the fragrance of rare flowers that had been taken from the dim, moon-lighted room, a memory of happiness and sweetness and content.



CHAPTER XXI

By all the deductions of experience the three people in the little inn should have, in the light of the morning after, been reduced to common sense; but the day laughed common sense to scorn and fanned the fires of the previous evening to bright flame.

"I must write a letter," announced Margaret after breakfast, "a letter so momentous that it will take me—an hour and a half! But my plans and yours are all laid. Now, Priscilla, none of your cap and apron look. You'll do exactly what I tell you to do; and you, too, Doctor Travers."

"I haven't the slightest intention of disobeying. And as for my cap and apron, I've burned them!" Priscilla tossed her head.

Travers looked at her, and her loveliness seemed enhanced in her trim white linen gown with its broad collar of Irish lace. How magnificent her throat was! What a perfect woman she was! And what hair!

"There is a train that leaves here at nine-thirty, a mad little ramshackle train that goes to The Ghost and back in an hour and a half. We've all yearned to climb The Ghost, or as much of it as we dared. Now you two, with Mousey and a servant, are to go on the nine-thirty. I'll finish my destruction of the social system and catch the eleven o'clock train. We'll have picnic lunch. They say there's a dreadful cavern at the base of The Ghost that is corking for picnics, and then we'll explore until we have to return. Any objections?"

There were none.

"Very well! It's nine now! Priscilla, wear the roughest, heaviest things you've got. You always have your hours of remorse too late. The Ghost will chill your blood."

When the little party reached the small station at the mountain foot the servants started at once to the cavern to build a fire and prepare for the luncheon.

"Let us walk a bit up the trail," suggested Travers. "I always feel like the Englishman who said the views halfway up a mountain are more enjoyable than those on top. At least, you have life enough left to enjoy them. This particular trail is a mighty wicked one. There ought to be guides, for safety. I know the way perfectly; my mother and I once stayed here some years ago. She meant to come here this summer early, but has decided to wait until Doctor Ledyard joins us. I feel as if I were taking the cream off the thing. Will you trust me—Priscilla?"

There was challenge and command in the use of her name.

"Absolutely."

"Come, then! I want you to go first. The rise is easy for a half-mile or so. I can better watch out for you and catch you—if you make a misstep. The stones are loose and mischievous; the path is ridiculously near the edge of things. If one should—now do not get nervous, but if you should go over, just clutch the bushes, the sturdy little clumps, and nothing can really happen."

"I never get nervous in high places. Being used to dead levels, I have the courage of the ignorant. Doesn't the air make one——"

"Heady?"

"Yes. I suppose that is it. Heady and—light-hearted."

Travers had his eyes fixed on the form ahead in its dark blue mountain skirt and corduroy waist.

"I wish you would take off your hat," he said.

Priscilla obeyed.

"Thank you! Will you let me—love you?"

He noticed a tremor run the length of her body.

"Is—that in my giving?" Priscilla meant to play just a little longer, only a little, and then she must make him see that because this sudden and great thing had come to them both, they must prove themselves worthy of it by unselfish recognition of deep truths.

"No. But I would like to have you say—yes! I meant all I said last evening; you said nothing. I mean to have you, because I love you; because I know you love me, and because nothing else matters. It's only fair to warn you. You do love me?"

"Is it love—when everything else is swept aside?"

"Yes."

"All but the longing—for the best?"

"Yes. That is love."

"Then, I love you."

"On ahead there is a tiny bluff, do not speak again until we reach it. A strange and wonderful thing came to me there once—years ago. I want to tell you about it, my beloved!"

Travers watched her as he spoke. Again that tremor ran through Priscilla.

It was nearly noon when they stopped, at Travers's word. They had come, silently, up the trail, only their footsteps and their quicker breathing breaking the awesome stillness. Their separate thoughts were bringing them dangerously nearer together, trampling caution, warning, and purpose beneath their young yearning for the vital meaning of life. When they faced each other at last it was as if they had indeed been transfigured.

"Mine!" whispered Travers, stretching out his hands. "You are mine! Do not struggle."

Priscilla put her hands in his, but did not speak.

"And now let us sit here. I want you to understand. You will try to understand?"

"Yes."

All her life Priscilla was to look back on that moment as the first perfect one of her life. She felt no shame in taking it. It belonged to her, and she meant to prove herself to him.

"I feel as if there were a new heaven and a new earth, Priscilla, and that you and I had just been created—the first man, the first woman. Dear heart, rest your head, so, against my knee." He was sitting above her. "Your hair holds all the glory of the sunlight, and how white and warm your throat is!" His fingers touched it reverently. "Let us cling to this one hour that has given us to each other. Are you happy?"

"It means—something more than that—this moment——" Priscilla spoke as if held by a dream.

"You are—content?"

"Yes. That is it. I am—content. I shall never ask for anything more, anything better. I have everything—the world and—and God, has to give."

"My darling! Now let me tell you. Years ago I came here after a hard struggle for health. I had never had childhood or boyhood, in the real sense; but I was well at last! I saw that I was going to have a man's life, with all that that means, and for months the emotions and cravings, that generally go to the years of making a child and boy, had been crowding and pushing me to a sense of having been defrauded, and I meant to have my turn at last: my joy and pleasure. It seemed just and right to me that I should taste and revel in all that I had been deprived of. I had even been deprived of the longing, had not even had the glory of conquest. I had been such a meaningless creature, I thought I could afford even to be selfish. I shrank from being different—I had been forced to in the past—but I meant to make up for lost time and take my place among my fellows.

"One morning, just such a morning as this, I found myself alone—here! Then I had it out with myself. More distinctly than anything had ever come to me before I realized that life meant one thing, and one thing only: the biggest fight or the meanest defeat! I knew that every passion that burned and flayed me was a warhorse that, if controlled, would carry me safely through the battle; if succumbed to, would trample me under its relentless feet. This I knew with my brain, while tradition, inclination, and longing called me—fool! Well, I was given strength to follow my head; but every year has been a struggle. I found that to be different meant contempt often, misunderstanding always. Sometimes it has not seemed worth while; the victories were so lonely and useless; but I thanked God last night, when I saw your face as you danced, that I could offer you a love that need not make the pitiful plea for mercy from your love. Through temptation and the long fight it has always seemed to me that no man should ask for pure love without the equivalent to offer in return.

"Can you understand when I say that this battle of mine has brought me closer to men and women, with no bitterness in my heart; has left me free, not to despise them, but to help them?"

"Yes, oh, yes; all my life I could understand those who—fight. I, too, have fought and fought."

Travers's hand was pressing upward the head against his knee so that he could look in the uplifted eyes.

"My love! as free man and woman, let us give ourselves to each other!"

Then he bent and kissed the smiling mouth.

"Speak to me, my—wife."

"Yes! But let me think, dear heart. I must speak; the half has only been told." She moved a bit away from him. Travers let her go with no fear.

"Now, strange little thing, since you cannot speak in my arms, have your will!" he whispered.

"There is a to-morrow." The even voice had no strain of pain or sorrow in it. "And we must not forget that. We have played and played until we have made ourselves believe—such wonderful things; but to-morrow—we will wake up and be what we have been made! I have heard, oh! so many people, tell of your future, your honours. I have seen Doctor Ledyard's eyes upon you; I know you have a mother who adores you. I do not know your world; I could not touch your place but to mar it, and, because I love you so—oh! so absolutely, and because I would want, and must have, glory in my own love—we must stop playing! We have not"—and now the eyes dimmed—"we have not played for keeps!"

"You poor, little girl! How you use the old, foolish arguments, thinking yourself—wise. Do you imagine I could let you dim the sacred thing that has come to us—by such idle prating? There are only you and I and—the future. You darling child, come here!"

In reaching toward her, Travers's foot pressed too heavily against the stone upon which she sat; it moved, slipped, and Priscilla escaped his clutch. Not realizing her danger, she smiled up at him radiantly. She meant what she had said, but youth could not relinquish its rights without a struggle, and his eyes were so heavenly kind.

"My God! Clutch the bushes, Priscilla!"

"What—is the matter?" But with the question came the knowledge. She was going down, down, and every effort he made to save her sent her farther along the awful slope! She held to a nearby bush but uprooted it by the force with which she gripped it. Faster, faster, with that terrified face above her!

"My precious one! Try again! Do not be afraid!"

"No."

And then they both heard the hoarse whistle of the little shuttle train nearing The Ghost, with Margaret Moffatt on board!

Travers realized the new danger. Very steep was the grade of the mountain, and it ended on—the tracks!

He shut his eyes; he could do no more. Every move he made imperilled the woman he would give his life to save. The only comfort he knew was that he, too, was losing, losing. They would be together at the last.

Priscilla understood also. She looked up and saw him close his eyes; then fear fled, as it does when the last hope takes it. It would soon be over for them, and—nothing in all the world could separate them. There was nothing but him and her! He had seen that; but now she saw it, too. Him and her! him and her!

"I—love you so!" she whispered. "I am not afraid. I'm sorry. I would have given myself to you! I would indeed!"

She wanted him to know. He opened his eyes and smiled a twisted, hideous smile.

"I—meant—to have you." The words came to her faintly. A nearer shriek of the whistle, and a deafening clang of the bell! Some one at the throttle of the engine had an inspiration and sent the crazy thing shooting ahead.

Then it was past, and upon the tracks over which the car had but just gone lay Priscilla Glenn quite unconscious!

Travers came to himself at once, and took her head on his knee where but a short time ago it had lain so happily.

"You, Priscilla!" It was Margaret Moffatt who spoke. The train had stopped; the few passengers had come back to see what had happened.

"Yes; my God! Yes! Miss Moffatt, will you see if she is dead? I dare not trust—myself."

* * * * *

It was late that night, in Priscilla's room at the inn, that she and Margaret had their talk.

Priscilla lay upon her bed weak and bruised, but otherwise safe. Margaret sat beside her, her hand in Priscilla's.

"Doctor Travers has pulled himself together at last," she said. "I never saw a strong man so shattered. And you, dear, you are sure you have told me the truth—you are not suffering?"

"No, only a little dazed. That's natural after looking death in the face for hours and hours while everything slipped away from you—things you had always thought meant something."

"Yes, poor girl!"

"And they—meant nothing. They never do."

"No. You found that at death's door; I found it at life's. I want to tell you something, dear, that will make you forget yourself—and think of me. You are sure you cannot sleep?"

"I do not want to sleep."

"Priscilla, I have given myself to love! You can understand. Travers has just told me—about him and you!"

A faint colour touched the face on the pillow.

"It was the telling that brought him around. He's superb, and you're a daffy little goose, Cilla. Imagine a man like Travers letting a girl like you slip through his fingers."

"He did!" weakly interrupted Priscilla.

"But he followed you right down, and into—hell!"

"Into life and joy, you mean, Margaret—life!"

"Well, at any rate, he was with you. It is magnificent to see a man, or a woman, big enough, brave enough, and sensible enough to sweep the senseless rubbish of life aside, and get each other! Oh! it's life as God meant it. Priscilla, the letter I wrote to-day was to—my man. He's as splendid as yours. I told you once how I—I loved children. I had taken that love for granted until something happened. A friend of mine married—one of the girls my people thought was the kind for me to know. She didn't understand life any more than I did; she just took one of the men who wore the same label she did. Her child came—a year after; a horrible little creature—diseased; dreadful—can you understand?"

"Yes"—Priscilla had turned toward the girl by her side—"yes, I know what you mean. I have been a nurse."

"That was the first time things we should have known—were known by my friend and me!" Margaret's voice was low and hard.

"She—she cursed him, her husband—and left him! It was terrible! I was frightened, more frightened than I had ever been. Everything seemed tottering around me. I thought—I must die; I dared trust nothing. Just then—some one told me—he loved me; and I—I had loved him. But I was more afraid of him than of any one in God's world. I thought I was going mad, and then—I went to Doctor Ledyard and told him all about it. I just threw my whole burden of doubt and ignorance upon him—he is such a good man! Sometimes I weep when I think of him. He was father, friend, and physician, all in one. He understood. He told me to go away; he got you for me. He told me to play like a little girl, with only the real and beautiful things of life; to forget the worries, and he would make sure!

"Priscilla, he has made sure! My love is safe. I can give myself to my love and let it have its way with me, and in the beautiful future, our future, his and mine, little children cannot—curse us by their suffering and deformity.

"This must be the heritage a woman should be able to give her children, or she has no right to her own love. God has been so good to me—he has not asked for sacrifice; but"—here she spoke fiercely—"I was ready to sacrifice my love—for I had seen my friend's baby!

"I had never known God before as I know him now. He came to me with love and faith and my glorious life. Before, my God was a prayer-book God; a dead thing that only rustled when we touched him; and now, oh! Cilla, he is alive and breathing in good men and women, in little children, in all the beautiful, real things. They did not bury my God, or yours, long ago; they only set him free for us to find and love and follow."

They clung to each other in a passion of reverence and happiness, and then kissed each other good night.



CHAPTER XXII

"My girl," said Travers a week later, "how shall it be? May I tell every one how madly happy I am? May I take you to that little shrine a mile up the mountain yonder and make you—mine—and then show them all why I am so happy? Or——"

"Yes. Or——" Priscilla lay quite contentedly in his arms, her eyes on the shining outlines of The Ghost.

"And that means, my sweet?"

"That we should keep this blessed secret just a little longer—to ourselves. I feel as if I could not bear to have it explained, defended, or justified, and all that must follow, my very dear man, when the play is over and we return to—to school. I shall be glad and ready to do all this a little later on; proud to have you do it for me, and—we'll face the music. It is going to be music, dear, I am sure of that. But some very stern questions will be asked by that sweet mother of yours, and she shall have her answer. Then Doctor Ledyard, with all the prayer gone from his eyes, will call me up for judgment and demand to know what right a nurse, even a white nurse, had to lay hands upon a young physician who was on the road to glory! It will be hard to answer him; but never mind!"

"And then, dear lady of mystery, what then?"

"Why, then I'm going to beckon to you and we'll dance——"

"Dance, my darling?"

"Yes, dance away and away to a holy place I know, and then I'm going to tell you the whole story of Priscilla——"

But at that moment Margaret Moffatt came upon the scene. The miracle of love had transfigured the girl. She looked, as Travers had said to Priscilla, like the All Woman: large, fine, and noble, with unashamed surrender in her splendid eyes.

"And that is what she is!" Priscilla had replied, "the All Woman. I could die for her, live for her, do anything for her. For me, she is the first, the one woman, in all the world."

"Young devotee, could you, would you, give your—love up for her?" Travers had asked, and then Priscilla spoke words that Travers remembered long afterward.

"I could not give my love up for—that is—I, myself; just as the dance is—just as my soul is—but I could; yes, I know I could give up—my happiness for her, if by so doing I could spare her one shadow. Her glorious nature could reach where mine never could."

"Yours reaches to me, little girl."

"But hers—oh! my dear man, hers reaches to—the world. If you knew her as I know her!"

But Margaret was whimsical and witchy as she came upon the two in the small arbour by the lake.

"Folks," she said, "let us keep our nice little surprises to ourselves for a while, like miserly creatures. My dear old daddy-boy is fretting and fussing about me, 'dreading the issue,' as he told Doctor Ledyard, and behold—I'm going to do exactly what my daddykins desires! And you, Doctor Richard Travers, you are wanted by your lady mother. Here's a telegram. The girl in the office always tells what is in a telegram, to spare shock. And Cilla, my shining-headed chum, you and I are going to scamper about a bit before we go home. I'd be a miserable defaulter, indeed, if I did not give you your share of this experience. Oh! I know you've snatched bits that in no wise were included in the program, but we're all grafters. I want to play fair. Will you flit over the continent with me and Mousey, dear little—pal?"

And three days later they began their trip, while Travers returned to Helen. It was a charming trip the girls made, but their hearts were elsewhere.

In October they were in New York again, and the inevitable happened. Margaret was returned to her world, and, for the moment, was absorbed. Priscilla lost sight of her, though she heard constantly from her by telephone or delicately worded notes.

A sad occurrence kept Richard Travers abroad. Helen contracted fever and for weeks lay between life and death. Doctor Ledyard waited until the danger was past, and then left the two together in Paris, while Helen recovered, with Travers to watch and care for her.

The letters that came to Priscilla were all that kept her eyes shining and her heart singing.

"I shall go on as usual," she wrote to Richard. "When you come, then we'll make the wonderful announcement. I see now that we have no right to our secret alone; but with the ocean between us, it is best."

During those months Priscilla learned to know Helen Travers through Travers's letters. Woman-like, she read between the lines and caught a glimpse of Helen's nobility and simple sweetness. Her loved ones were so sacred to her that no personal demands could ever cause her to raise objections. Once she was sure that they she worshipped wanted anything for their true happiness, her energies were bent to that end.

"And she will love you, my girl; will learn to depend upon you as I do. As for Doctor Ledyard, when he is cornered, he is the best soul that ever drew breath, and mother can bully him into anything."

It was in February that Priscilla was called up by Doctor Hapgood, a man of high repute.

"Are you on duty?"

"No, sir."

"Any immediate engagement?"

"None until March."

"I would like to have you take a case of mine that requires tact as well as efficiency. Can you take it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Report then at 60 West Eighty-first Street this afternoon, at four."

Priscilla found herself promptly at four o'clock in the waiting-room of a palatial bachelor apartment, and there Doctor Hapgood joined her.

"Before we go upstairs," he said, drawing his chair close to Priscilla's and lowering his voice, "I wish to say to you what, doubtless, there is no real need of saying. I simply emphasize the necessity. The young man who requires your services is Clyde Huntter. This means nothing to you, but it does to many others. He is supposed to be in—Bermuda. You understand?"

"Yes, Doctor Hapgood."

"The case is a particularly tragic one, such an one as you may encounter later on in your career. It demands all your sympathy, encouragement, and patience. Mr. Huntter is as fine a man, as upright a one, as I know, his ideals and—and present life are above reproach. He is paying a bitter debt for youthful and ignorant folly. I believed this impossible, but so it is. I am thankful to say, however, that he has every reason to hope that the future, after this, is secure. I have chosen you to care for him, because I know your ability; have heard of your powers of reticence and cheerfulness. I depend upon you absolutely."

"Thank you, Doctor Hapgood."

Priscilla's face had gone deadly white, but never having heard Huntter's name before, she was impersonal in her feeling.

"I will do my best."

The days following were days of strain and torture to Priscilla. Her patient was a man who appealed to her strongly, pathetically. There were hours when his gloom and depression would almost drag her along to the depths into which he sank; then again he would beg her to pardon him for his brutal thoughtlessness.

"Sit there, Miss Glynn," he said one day. "The sunshine is rather niggardly, but when it rests on your hair—it lasts longer."

"Oh, my poor hair!"

"Poor? It looks like a gold mine." Then: "I wish you would read to me. No; nothing recent or superficial. Something from the old, cast-iron writers who knew how to use thumb screws and rack. There's something wholesome in them; something you buck up against. They make you writhe and groan, but they leave you with the thought that—you've lived through something."

Again, another day, after a bad night:

"I think you'd better go into the next room, Miss Glynn, and take a nap. I'd feel less brutally selfish if I could see your eyes calmer. Besides, being shut away here from all I'm dying to have makes an idiot of me. If you stay any longer, looking at me with those queer eyes of yours, I may break down and tell you all about it, just for the dangerous joy of easing my own soul by dumping a load on yours. Good God! Miss Glynn, such women as you should not be nurses; it isn't fair. I'd give—let me see—well, I'd give six months of my life—since Hapgood says I stand a fair chance for ninety years—to talk to you, man to woman, and get your point of view—about something. There are moments, after a bad night, when I think you women haven't had all they say you should have had. We men have been too blindly sure we could play your game as well as our own. Run now! If you stay another minute I'll regret it, and so will you."

"Shall I shake your pillow before I go, Mr. Huntter?"

"Yes. Thank you. You manage to shake more whim-whams out of the creases than you know."

He stayed her by a wistful, longing, and half-boyish smile.

"Say," he said, "you see you didn't run quick enough, and now I'm going to ask you something. You must have seen a good deal of women as well as men in your calling."

"Yes, I have."

"Seen them with their masks off?"

"Yes."

"What does love count for in the big hours of life? Does it stand everything, anything?"

Priscilla felt her throat contract. She longed to say something that would reach Huntter without arousing his suspicions.

"No; love—at least, woman's love, doesn't stand everything—always."

"What doesn't it stand? The essence, I mean."

"It doesn't stand unfair play! Women understand fair play and for it would die. They may not say much, but—they never forgive being—tricked."

"Oh! of course. How graphic you are, Miss Glynn. You sound as if we were discussing a game of—of tennis or bridge. Gentlemen do not trick ladies." He frowned a bit.

"Don't they, Mr. Huntter?"

"Certainly not! What I meant was this: You seem, for a trained woman, very human and—and—well, what shall I say?—observing and rather a—thoroughbred. If you loved, now, loved really, is there anything you would not forgive a man? That is, if his love for you was the biggest thing in his life?"

Priscilla stood quite still and looked at the pale, handsome face on the pillow.

"My love—yes; my love could and would forgive anything, if it related only to—to—the man I loved and—me!"

The frown deepened on Huntter's face; he turned uneasily.

"After all," he muttered, "a man and woman see things so differently. There is no use!"

"I wonder—if things would not seem plainer if they saw them—together?"

But Priscilla saw she had gone too far. The whimsical mood in Huntter had passed. He was himself again, and she was his nurse—his nurse who knew too much! More fretfully than he had ever spoken to her, he said:

"I wish to be alone, Miss Glynn."

Priscilla passed out, leaving the door between the rooms ajar, and lay down upon the couch.

To Doctor Hapgood she was a machine merely; an easy-running one, a dependable one, but none the less a machine. To Huntter, shut away from society, gregarious, friendly, and kindly, she had meant much more. Her recent experience abroad, with all the exquisite touches of human interest and uplift, had left her peculiarly sensitive to her present environment.

She liked the man in the room next her. There was much that was noble and fine about him, but he was a type that had never entered her life before, and often, by his kindliest word and gesture, drew her attention to a yawning space between them. She was at her ease, perfectly so, when near him, but she knew it was because of the distance that separated them. Still, she was confronted by a certain grim fact, and that ugly knowledge held him and her together. By some strange process of reason she wanted him to live up to the best in him. There were two markedly different sides of his nature; she trembled before one; before the other she gave homage as she did to Travers, to John Boswell, and Master Farwell.

The day before, Huntter had had a long talk with Doctor Hapgood while she was off duty. That conversation had doubtlessly caused the bad night; she wondered about it now. It had evidently upset Huntter a good deal.

Then Priscilla, losing consciousness gradually, thought of Travers, of Margaret Moffatt, who believed her to be out of the city. She smiled happily as she relived her blessed memories of good men and women. They justified and sanctified life, love, and happiness, and they made it possible for her, poor, struggling, little white nurse as she was, with all her professional knowledge, to trust and sympathize, and faithfully serve.

She must have slept deeply, for it took her a full moment to realize that some one in the next room was talking and—saying things!

"No, she's asleep, Huntter. She looks worn out. We must get a night nurse. Well, I have only this to say: God knows I pity you, but my duty compels me to say that—you should not marry! The chances are about even; but—you shouldn't take the risk."

A groan brought Priscilla to her feet, alert and quivering. Like a sudden and blinding shock she understood, what seemed to her, a whole life history. She stumbled to the door and faced Dr. Hapgood, hat in hand, keen-eyed, but detached.

"You slept—heavily?"

"Yes, Doctor Hapgood."

"I am going to send a night nurse to relieve you. When did you say your next engagement began?"

"March fifth."

"Well, you will need a week to recuperate. Make your plans accordingly. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

Did he suspect? Did he warn her? But his next words were kindness alone.

"There should have been two nurses all along. One forgets your youth in your efficiency. Good morning."

When Priscilla stood beside Huntter again his wan face, close-shut eyes, and grim mouth almost frightened her.

"I want to sleep," he said briefly. "Draw down the shades."

The night nurse became a staple joke between her and Huntter.

"Lord!" he exclaimed one day as Priscilla entered; "you're like the morning: clear, fresh, and hopeful. Do you know, that to escape the nightmare that haunts my chamber after you go, I have to play sleep even if I'm dying with thirst or blue devils? She's religious! Think of a nurse with religion that she feels compelled to share with a sick man! I'm going to get up to-day, Miss Glynn. I've bullied Hapgood into giving permission, and I've done him one better. I'm going to have a visitor! I'm back from Bermuda, you know. After you've fixed me up—isn't it a glorious day?—open the windows, and—I've ordered a lot of flowers. Put them in those brass bowls. My visitor is a lady. She likes yellow roses. By the way, Miss Glynn, Doctor Hapgood tells me that you've been in—Bermuda, too? Thorough old disciplinarian he! You must have been lonely. And you leave me next week? I want to thank you. I shall thank you ceremoniously every time you enter after this. You've been—a good nurse and a—good friend. I couldn't say more, now could I?"

"No, Mr. Huntter. And you've been—a very brave man! I know you will always be that, and make light of it. I rather like the half-joking way you do your kindest things. Here are the flowers! Oh, what beauties!"

Priscilla turned from helping Huntter and began arranging the glorious mass of roses in the brass bowls.

"What time is it, Miss Glynn?"

"Eleven o'clock."

"And my friend is due at eleven-thirty. She will be here on the minute. I feel like a boy, Miss Glynn. One gets the doldrums being alone and convalescing. How the grim devils catch and hold you while they try to distort life! I must have been a sad trial to you, but I'm myself again. Tell me, honest true, Miss Glynn, just how have I come out in your estimation? A man is no hero to his valet. What is he to his trained nurse?"

"You have been very patient and considerate." Priscilla's back was turned to Huntter; her face was quivering.

"Negative virtues! Had I been a brute you would have gone. I might have had the night nurse for twenty-four hours. I dared not run the risk of letting you go."

"I've come out pretty well in your estimation? That's a feather in my nice, white cap," she said.

"I wonder why I care what you think of me?"

"I do not know, Mr. Huntter, except that we all care for the good opinion of those who wish us well."

"You wish me well?"

"With all my heart."

"I'd like"—Huntter turned his face toward the window and the glorious winter day—"I'd like to be worthy of every well-wisher. I feel quite the good boy this morning. I've been—well, I've been rather up against it, I fear, and a trial to you, for all that you say to the contrary; but I am going to make amends to you—and the world! Now, when my friend comes, you won't mind if I ask you to leave us alone for a few moments? I can call you when I need you."

"Yes, Mr. Huntter."

"The lady is—you may have guessed—my fiancee. I have important things to say to her, and——"

Priscilla's heart beat madly. She felt she was near a deeper tragedy than any that had ever entered her life. And just then, as the clock struck the half hour, came a tap on the door:

"Come!" cried Huntter, in a tone of joy; "Come!" And in burst Margaret Moffatt!

She did not notice the rigid figure by the bowl of flowers; her radiant face was fixed upon Huntter, and she ran toward him with outstretched arms.

"My beloved!" she whispered. "Oh! my dear, my dear! How ill you have been! They did not tell me. I shall never forgive them. When did you get back from Bermuda?"

Priscilla slipped from the room and closed the door noiselessly behind her, but not before she had seen Margaret Moffatt sink into Huntter's arms; not before she heard the sigh of perfect content that escaped her.

Alone in the anteroom, the hideous truth flayed Priscilla into suffering and clear vision.

"What shall I do?" she moaned, clasping her hands and swaying back and forth. All the burden and responsibility of the world seemed cast upon her. Then reason asserted itself.

"He will tell her! He is telling her now! Killing her love—killing her! Oh, my God!"

Then she shrank from the thought that she would, in a few moments, have to face her friend! How could she, when she remembered that holy night of confession in the little Swiss village? Again she moaned, "Oh! my God!" But she was spared that scene. Moments, though they seemed ages, passed, and then Huntter called:

"Miss Glynn!"

She hardly recognized his voice. It was—triumphant, thrilling. It rang boldly, commandingly. When she entered, Huntter was alone. Gone was the guest; gone the mass of golden roses. Huntter turned a face glowing and confident to her.

"Just because you are you, Miss Glynn, and because I'm the happiest man in New York, I want you to congratulate me. That was Miss Moffatt. She and I are to marry—in the spring."

"Did you—mention my name to her?"

Priscilla's haggard face at last attracted the man.

"No. I was inhumanly selfish. You must forgive me. I meant to tell her of your faithful care; I meant to have you meet her. I forgot."

"Never mention—me to her! She is my—one friend in all the world; my one woman friend."

They faced each other blankly, fiercely. Then:

"Good Lord, Miss Glynn!" and Huntter—laughed!



CHAPTER XXIII

The week of recuperation Doctor Hapgood recommended was one of prolonged torture to Priscilla Glenn. Thinking of it afterward, she realized that it was the Gethsemane of her life—the hour when, forsaken by all, she fought her bitter fight.

The drift of the ages confronted her. Her own insignificance, her humbleness, accentuated and betrayed her. Who would listen? How dared she speak! Who would heed her?

One, and one only. Margaret Moffatt!

From her Priscilla shrank and hid until she could gain courage to go and—by saving her, kill her! Yes, it meant that. The killing of the beautiful All Woman, as Travers had called her. After the telling there would be only the shadow of the splendid creature that God had meant to be so happy, if only the wrong of the world had not come between!

There were moments when, worn by struggle and wakeful nights, Priscilla felt incapable of sane thought.

Why should she interfere, she asked herself. Professional silence was her only course. And—there was the chance—the chance! Against it stood, pleading, Margaret's radiant love and Huntter's strength and devotion.

Who could blame her if she—forgot? But oh! how they would curse her if she spoke! They might not believe; they might ruin her!

Then faith laid its commanding touch upon her spirit. It had been given her to know a woman who, for high principles and all the sacred future, was prepared to sacrifice her love if needs must be!

They two, Margaret of the high-soul, and she, Priscilla Glenn of the understanding devotion, seemed to stand apart and alone, each, in her way, called upon to testify and act.

"It must be done!" moaned Priscilla; "she must know and—decide! But how? how?"

John Boswell and Master Farwell were gone to the In-Place. The sanctuary overlooking the river was closed. There was no one, no place, to which Priscilla could go for comfort and advice, and her secret and her duty left her no peace or rest.

She had taken a tiny suite in a family hotel. The rooms had the comfort needed for her physical wants, but she tossed on the bed nights and slept brokenly. She ate poorly and grew very thin, very pale. She walked, days, until her body cried out for mercy. She cancelled her engagement, for she was unfitted for service, and intuitively she knew that, for her, a great change was near.

When she was weak from weariness and lonely to the verge of exhaustion, she thought of Kenmore—not Travers—with positive yearning. The woman of her, madly defending, or about to defend, woman, excluded even her own love and her own man. It was sex against sex; the world's injustice against all that woman held sacred! If Margaret were to be sacrificed, so was she, for she blindly felt that Travers would not uphold her! How could he when tradition held him captive? How could he when his oath bound him like a slave? Doctor Hapgood had done his part, had spoken his word—to man! But that was not enough. Man had flaunted it, was willing to take—the chance without giving the woman intelligent choice. Oh! it was cruel, it was unjust, and it must be defied. She and Margaret must stand side by side, or life never again would taste sweet and pure!

Priscilla had not heard from Travers in ten days, and this added to her sense of desolation. Then, one evening, coming in from a long tramp in the park, snow covered and bedraggled, she faced him in her own little parlour!

"My blessed child!" cried he, rushing toward her. "What have you been doing to yourself?"

She was in his arms; his hands were taking off her snow-wet coat and hat. He was whispering to her his love and gladness while he placed her in a chair and lighted the tiny gas log in the grate.

"It's a wicked shame!" he said laughingly; "but it will have to do. Now then, confess!"

"Oh! I have longed so for you! I have been—mad!"

Priscilla tried to smile, but collapsed miserably.

"I don't believe you have eaten a morsel since——" Travers glared at her ferociously.

"Since I—I was in Switzerland." The sob aroused Travers to the girl's condition.

"You poor little tyke!" he said. "Now lean back and do as you're told. I'm going to ring for food. Just plain, homely food. I'm as hungry as a bear myself. I came to you from the vessel. I sent mother home in a cab. I had to see you. We'll eat—play; and then, my precious one, we'll talk business."

"How I have wanted you! needed you!" Again the pitiful wail.

"Now behave, child! When the waiter comes we must be as staid as Darby and Joan. You poor little girl! Heavens! how big your eyes are, and how frightened! Come in! Yes. This is the order; serve it here."

The waiter took the order wrapped in a good-sized bill, and departed on willing feet.

"Your hair is about all that's familiar; longing for me couldn't take the shine from that!" Travers kissed it.

"I see my next case," he laughed. "To get you in shape will be quite an achievement. We both need—play. We thrive on that."

"Yes, my dear, my dear; but I have forgotten how!"

"Nonsense! Here's the food. Put the table near the grate"—this to the man—"things smoking hot; that's good. The wine, please. Thanks! Miss Glynn, to your health!"

How Travers managed it no one could tell, but his own unfettered joy drove doubt and care from the little room. Priscilla, warmed and comforted, laughed and responded, and the meal was a merry one. But it was over at last, and the grim spectre stalked once more. Travers noticed the haunted look in the eyes following his every movement, and took warning. Something was seriously wrong, that was evident; but he had boundless faith in his love and power to drive the cloud away. After the room was cleared of dishes and the grateful waiter, Travers attacked the shadow at once.

He drew a stool to Priscilla's chair and flung his long body beside her.

"Now," he said, with wonderful tenderness, "let me begin my life work at once, my darling. You are troubled; I am here to bear it all—for you!"

"Oh! Will you bear—half, dear heart?"

"Yes, and that is better. We need not waste words, my tired little girl. Out with the worst and then—you and I are going to—my mother!"

"Your—mother?"

"My mother! God bless her! You know she came near slipping away. She will need and love you more than ever."

"Oh! how good it sounds! Mother! Oh, my love, my love! I've had so little and I've wanted so much! Your mother!"

"She'll be yours, too, Priscilla. But hurry, child! Just the bare structure; my love will fill in the rest."

"Do not look up at me, dear man! So, let me rest my face on your head. Can you hear me—if I whisper?"

"Yes."

"It's about Margaret—Margaret Moffatt."

"The All Woman, the happiest creature, next to what you're going to be, in all God's world?"

"No!"

"No? Priscilla, what do you mean?"

"Do not move. Please do not look up. She is—engaged to—to Clyde Huntter!"

"Well?"

"I did not know; she never mentioned his name. While we played, names did not matter—his, mine, no one's." An hysterical gasp caused Travers to start.

"No, please keep your face turned. I must tell you in my way. I have just taken care of—Mr. Huntter. He is not—fit to marry any woman—he cannot marry—Margaret! Doctor Hapgood told him, but—he—means to marry! She came to see him; she did not see me; she does not know; but she must know!" fiercely; "she must know! That is the one thing above all else that would matter to her; she told me so! She does not live for the—the now; she was made for—for bigger things!"

"My God!" Travers was on his feet, and he dragged Priscilla with him. He held her close by her wrists and searched her white, agonized face. Truth and stern purpose were blazoned on it. She had never looked so beautiful, so noble, or so—menacing.

"You heard Doctor Hapgood say that?"

"I did."

"In your presence?"

"No." Then she described the little scene graphically.

"But Ledyard——" Then he paused. Ledyard's confidence must be sacred to him.

"And Huntter—Huntter knows that you know; does he know that you are Margaret's friend?"

"Yes."

"And—he trusts you?"

"He thinks I do not count, but I do—with Margaret."

"Priscilla, this is no work for you, poor child!"

"It is—hers—and mine, and God's!" determinedly.

"Darling, you are overwrought. You must trust me. You know what I think of such things; you can safely leave this to me. Ledyard is Huntter's physician. Why he called Hapgood in, I do not know. I will go to Ledyard. Can you not see—that they would not believe—you?"

"Margaret will!"

"But her father! You do not understand, my precious. You dear, little, unworldly soul! Margaret Moffatt's marriage means a ninth wonder. Any meddling with that would have to be sifted to the dregs. And when they reached you, my own girl, they would grind you to atoms!"

"Not—Margaret!"

Priscilla drew herself away from the straining hands. She was quite calm now and terribly earnest.

"When all's told, it is Margaret and I—and God!"

"No. There are others, and other things. All the world's forces are against you."

"No, they are not! They are turning with me. I feel them; I feel them. I am not afraid." Then she took command, while Travers stood amazed. She put her hands on his shoulders and held him so before the bar of her crude, woman-judgment.

"Answer me, my beloved! You believe—what I have told you?"

"I do."

"You know Doctor Hapgood will do no more?"

"He—cannot."

"If you go to Doctor Ledyard—and he knows and believes—what will he do?"

"He has been Huntter's physician for years. If he has been mistaken, he will go to Huntter."

"Go to—Huntter! And what then? Suppose Mr. Huntter—still takes the chance?"

"Ledyard will—he will forbid it!"

"And what good will that do?" A pitiful bitterness crept into Priscilla's voice; her lips quivered.

"It is all Huntter! Huntter! All men! men! and there stands my dear—alone! No one goes to her to let—her choose; no one but me! Don't you see what I mean? Oh! my love, my love! My good, good man, can you leave her there in ignorance, all of you? Through the ages she has not had her say—about the chance, and that is why——"

Priscilla paused, choked by rising passion.

"Little girl, listen! What do you mean?" Travers was genuinely alarmed and anxious.

"I mean"—the white, set face looked like an avenger's, not a passionately loving woman's—"I mean—that because women have never had an opportunity to know and to choose, you and I, and all people like us, stand helpless with our own great heaven-sent love at peril!"

"At peril! Oh, my dear girl!"

"Yes, at peril. We do not know what to do, where to turn. You see the great injustice clearly as I do; but you—all men have tried to right it by themselves, in their way, while all women, through all the ages, have stood aside and tried to think they were doing God's will when they accepted—your best; your half best! Now, oh! now something—I think it is God calling loud to them—is waking them up. They know—you cannot do this thing alone; it is their duty, too—they must help you, for, oh!"—Priscilla leaned toward him with tear-blinded eyes and pleading hands—"For the sake of the—the little children of the world. Oh! men are fathers, good fathers, but they have forgotten the part mothers must take! We women cannot leave it all to you. It is wicked, wicked for women to try! There is something mightier than our love—we are learning that!"

Travers took her in his arms. She was weeping miserably. His heart yearned over her, for he feared she was feeling, as women sometimes did, the awful weight of injustice men had unconsciously, often in deepest love, laid upon them.

"Priscilla, you trust me; trust my love?"

"Yes."

"You believe me when I say that I see this—as you do—but that we only differ as to methods?"

"I—I hope I see that and believe it."

"Then"—and here Travers did his poor, blind part to lay another straw upon the drift of burden—"leave this—to me. I know better than you do the end of any such mad course as you, in your affection and sense of wrong, might take. Little girl, let me try to show you. Suppose you went to Margaret Moffatt. You know her proud, sensitive nature; her loyalty and absolute frankness. After the shock and torture she would go to her father with the truth—for she would believe you—and announce her unwillingness—I am sure, even though her heart broke, she would do this—to marry Huntter. Then the matter would lie among men; men with the traditional viewpoint; men with much, much at stake. If Huntter has, as you say, taken the chance, in his love for Margaret—and he does love her, poor devil!—he will defend himself and his position."

"How?" Priscilla was regaining her calm; she raised her head and faced Travers from the circle of his arms.

"He will—send Moffatt to—to—Hapgood."

"And he—what will he do?"

"What does the priest do when the secrets of the confessional are attacked?"

"Yes, yes—but then?"

"Then—oh! my precious girl! Can you not see? You will come into focus. You, my love, my wife, but, nevertheless, a woman! a trained nurse! Hapgood would flay you alive, not because he has anything against you, but professional honour and discipline would be at stake. Between such a man as Hapgood and—Priscilla Glynn—oh! can you not see my dear, dear girl?"

"Yes, I begin to see. And—I see I dare not trust even you!" The hard note in Priscilla's voice hurt Travers cruelly. "And—you, you and Doctor Ledyard—how would you stand?" she asked faintly.

Travers held her at arm's length, and his face turned ashen gray.

"Besides being men, we, too, are physicians!" he said. "Brutal as this sounds, it is truth!"

The light burned dangerously in Priscilla's eyes.

"When you are physicians—you are not men!" she panted, and suddenly, by a sharp stab of memory, Ledyard's words, back in the boyhood days at Kenmore, stung Travers. They were like an echo in his brain.

"You—you of all women, cannot say that and mean it, my darling!" he cried, and tried to draw her to him. She resisted.

"Our love, the one sacred thing of our very own," he pleaded, "is in peril." He saw it now. "Can you not see? Even if it is woman against woman, what right have you, Priscilla, to cloud and hurt our love?"

"It is not—woman against woman—any more." The words came sweetly, almost joyously; something like renunciation tinged them. "It is woman for woman until men will take us by the hands, trustingly, faithfully, and work with us for what belongs equally to us both!"

The radiance of the uplifted eyes frightened Travers. So might she look, he thought, had she passed through death and come out victorious.

"Now, just for a time," the tense, thrilling voice went on, "she and I—women—must stand alone, and do our best as we see it. It is no good leaving it to—to any man. I see that! And our love, yours and mine! Oh! dear man of my heart, that can never die or be hurt. It is yours, mine! God gave it. God will not take it away. God will not take Margaret's either. She will understand, and, even alone, far, far from her love, she will be true, as I will be. That is what it means to us!" Then she paused and smiled at Travers as across a widening chasm.

"I—am going now!"

"Going? My beloved—going—where?"

"To Margaret."

"You—dare not! You shall not! You are—mad!"

"No. I am—going, because, as things are, I cannot—trust you, even you! That is our penalty for the world's wrong. Long, long ago some one—oh! it was back in the days when I did not know what life meant—some one told me—never to let any one kill my ideal! No one ever has! It goes on before, leading and beckoning. I must follow. I do not know where he is, he who told me, but I know, as sure as I know that I shall always love you, that he is following his ideal, and living true and sure. Good night."

Unable to think or act, Travers saw Priscilla take up her still damp coat and hat. Like a man in a nightmare he saw her turn a deadly white face upon him, and then the door closed and he was alone in her little room!

He looked about, dazed and emotionless. He felt her in every touch of the lonely place; her books, her little pictures, herself! Some women are like that: they leave themselves in the presence of them they love—forever!

"Kill her ideal!" The words rang in the empty corners of his heart and mind. "Somewhere he is following his ideal, and living true and sure!"

Unconsciously, as men do in an hour of stress, Travers turned to action. Presently he found himself setting the tiny room in order as one does after a dear one has departed, or a spirit taken its flight. And while he moved about his reason was slowly readjusting itself, and he felt poignantly his impotency, his inability to use even his love for dominance. Being a just and honest man, he could not deny what Priscilla had said; truth rang in every sentence, chimed in with the minor notes of his life. No thought of following or staying her entered his mind; she had set about her business, woman's business, and, to the man's excited fancy, he seemed to see her pressing forward to the doing of that to which her soul called her. Then it was her beautiful shining hair he remembered, and his passion cried out for its own.

"This comes," he fiercely cried, setting his teeth hard, "of our leaving them behind—our women! Through the ages their place has been beside us as we fought every foe of the race. We set them aside in our folly, and now"—he bowed his head upon his folded arms—"and now they are waking up and demanding only what is theirs!"

A specimen of the new man was Travers, but inheritance, and Ledyard's teaching, had left their seal upon him. Bowed in Priscilla's little room he tried to see his way, but for a time he reasoned with Ledyard's words ringing in his ears. Had he not gone over this with his friend and partner many a time?

"Yes, I know the cursed evil, know its power and danger! Yes, it threatens—the race, but it has its roots in the ages; it must be tackled cautiously. If we take the stand you suggest"—for Travers had put forth his violent, new opposition—"what will happen? The quacks and money-making sharks will get the upper hand. Do you think men would come to us if exposure faced them? It's the devil, my boy; but of the two evils this, God knows, is the least. We must do what we can; work for a scientific and moral redemption, but never play the game like fools."—"But the women," Travers had put in feverishly, "the women!"—"Spare me, boy! The women have clutched the heart of me—always. The women and the—the babies. I've used them to flay many men into remorse and better living. I am thinking of them, as God hears me, when I take the course I do!"

And so Travers suffered and groaned in the small, deserted room.

Above and beyond Ledyard's reasoning stood two desolate figures. They seemed to represent all women: his Priscilla and Margaret Moffatt! One, the crude child of nature with her gleam undimmed, leading her forth unhampered, though love and suffering blocked her way; the other, the daughter of ages of refinement and culture, who had heard the call of the future in her big woman-heart and could leave all else for the sake of the crown she might never wear, but which, with God's help, she would never defile.

On, on, they two went before Travers's aching eyes. The way before them was shining, or was it the light of Priscilla's hair? They were leaving him, all men, in the dark! It was to seek the light, or——And then Travers got up and left the room with bowed head, like one turning his back upon the dead.

He went to Ledyard at once, and found that cheerful gentleman awaiting him.

"At last!" he cried. "Helen telephoned at seven. She thought you were on your way here. Did you get lost?"

"Yes."

"What's the matter, Dick? You look as if you had seen a ghost."

"I have. An army of them."

"Are you—ill?"

"No."

"Sit down, boy. Here, take a swallow of wine. You're used up. Now then!"

"Doctor Ledyard, you were wrong—about Huntter! You remember what you told me, before Margaret Moffatt announced her engagement?"

"Yes." Ledyard poured himself a glass of wine and walked to his chair across the room.

"You were wrong; he is not what you think."

"What do you mean? I haven't seen Huntter for—for a year or more. I took care, sacred care, though, to—to trace him from the time he first came to me, more than ten years ago. No straighter, more honourable man breathes than he. He was one of the victims of ignorance and crooked reasoning, but, thank God! he was spared the worst."

"He was—not."

"Dick, in God's name, what do you mean?"

"Hapgood was called in. Huntter has not been in Bermuda; he has been right here in New York, under Hapgood's care."

"And Hapgood—told you?"

A purplish flush dyed Ledyard's face.

"No."

"Who, then? No sidetracking, Dick. Who?"

"The—the nurse."

"She-devil! Fell in love with her patient? I've struck that kind——"

"Stop!"

Both men were on their feet and glaring at each other.

"You are speaking of my future—wife!"

Ledyard loosened his collar and—laughed!

"You're mad!" he said faintly, "or a damned fool!"

"I'm neither. I am engaged to marry Priscilla Glynn; have been since the summer. I meant to tell you and mother to-night. I went to her from the vessel. Priscilla Glynn took care of Huntter without knowing of his connection in the Moffatt affair. Above all else in the world"—Travers's voice shook—"she adores Margaret Moffatt, knows her intimately, and wishes, blindly, to serve her as she understands her. There are such women, you know, and they are becoming more numerous. She has gone to—tell Margaret Moffatt."

"Gone?" Ledyard reeled back a step. "And you permitted that?"

"I had no choice. You do not know—my—my—well, Miss Glynn."

"Not know her? The young fiend! Not know her? I remember her well. I might have known that no good could come from her. But—we can crush her, the young idiot! I do not envy you your fiancee, Dick."

The telephone rang sharply and Ledyard took up the receiver with trembling hand.

"It's your mother," he said; "you had better speak for yourself."

"So you are there, Dick?"

"Yes, mother."

"There was a message just now. Such a peculiar one. I thought you had better have it at once. It was only this: 'She knows' and a 'good-bye.'"

"Thanks, mother. I understand."

Ledyard watched the unflinching face and noted the even voice. He was so near he had caught Helen's words.

"And that is all, mother?"

"All, dear."

"I'll be home soon. Good night."

Then he looked up at Ledyard, and the older man's face softened.

"You'll find this sort of thing is a devil of a jigsaw. It cuts in all directions," he said, laying his hand on Travers's shoulder.

"Yes, doesn't it? But, Doctor Ledyard, I want to tell you something. She's right—that girl of mine, and Margaret Moffatt, too—and you know it as well as I do! If I can, I'm going to have my love and my woman; but even if I go empty hearted to my grave I shall know—they are right! Besides being women, and our loves, they are human beings, and they are beginning to find it out. The way may lead through hell, but it ends in——"

"What?" Ledyard breathed; his eyes fixed on the stern young face.

"In understanding. It leads to the responsibility all women must take. Good night, old friend."



CHAPTER XXIV

Priscilla had gone straight from Margaret Moffatt's to her own little apartment. She had no sense of suffering; no sensation at all. She must pack and get away! And like a dead thing she set to work, although it was midnight and she had been so weary before; and then she smiled quiveringly:

"Before!"

She stood and stretched out her arms to the empty space where Travers had been.

"Oh! my dear, dear man!" she moaned. "My beloved!"

She had set the spark to the powder; by to-morrow the devastation would be complete. That, she knew full well. And he—the man she loved above all else in life—in order to escape must seek safety with those others! All those others—men! men! men! Only she and Margaret, suffering and alone, would stand in the ruins. But from those ruins! Her eyes shone as with a vision of what must be.

"I wish I could tell you—all about it!" the weak, human need called to the absent love. The whispered words brought comfort; even his memory was a stronghold. It always would be, even when she was far away in her In-Place, never to see him again.

How thankful she was that he did not know, really. He could not follow; she would not be able to hurt him—after to-morrow. Her changed name had saved her!

"Priscilla Glynn," she faltered, "hide her, hide her forever, hide poor Priscilla Glenn."

Then her thoughts flew back to the recent past. She had found Margaret alone in her own library.

"Now how did you know I wanted you more than any one else in the world?" Margaret had said. "When did you get back? You baddest of the bad! Why did you hide from me? Where were you?"

"In—Bermuda." How ghastly it sounded, but it caught Margaret's quick thought.

"Sit down, you little ghost of bygone days of bliss. You'll have to play again. Work is killing you. In Bermuda? What doing?"

"Wearing—my cap and apron, dear, dear——"

"Your cap and apron? I thought you burned them! I shall tell Travers, you deceitful, money-getting little fraud! Well, who has taken it out of you so? You are as white as ivory. Do you know the Traverses came in on the St. Cloud to-day?"

"Yes. Doctor Travers came to see me."

"Ha! ha! He doesn't seem to have cheered you much. I wager he's told you what he thinks of you, tossing to the winds all the beautiful health and spirits of the summer! When are you to be married? I must tell him to bully you as—as my dear love is bullying me! Has Doctor Ledyard growled at you? I can twist him easily! He is a darling, and just wears that face and voice for fun in order to scare little redheaded nurses. Cilla, dear heart, I'm going to be married in June! Dear, old-fashioned June, with roses and good luck and—oh! the heaven seems opening and the glory is pouring down! There, girlie! cuddle here! I'm going to tell you everything; even to the mentioning of names! I've always hated to label my joy before. But, first, take some chocolate; it's hot and piping. Now! Who did you nurse in Bermuda? I'm going to tell him, or her, what I think of him!"

"I—nursed—Mr. Clyde Huntter. We were in New York all the time. That is why—I had to keep—still——"

"Mr. Clyde Huntter?" Margaret set the cup she held, down sharply. The quick brain was alert and in action.

"Mr. Clyde Huntter?" And then Margaret Moffatt came close to Priscilla, and looked down deep into the unfaltering eyes raised to hers.

"Mr. Clyde Huntter—is the man I am to marry!" she said in a voice from which the girlish banter had gone forever. It was the voice of a woman in arms to defend all she worshipped.

"Yes, I know. I was in his room the day you called. I thought I should die. I hoped he would tell you. I was ready to stand beside you; but he did not tell!"

"Tell—what? As God hears you, Priscilla, as you love me, and—and as I trust you, tell me what?"

And then Priscilla had told her. At first Margaret stood, taking the deadly blow like a Spartan woman, her grave eyes fixed upon Priscilla. Slowly the cruel truth, and all it implied, found its way through the armour of her nobility and faith. She began to droop; then, like one whose strength has departed, she dropped beside Priscilla's chair and clung to her. It had not taken long to tell, but it had lain low every beautiful thing but—courage!

"Back there," Margaret had said at last, "back there where we played, I told you I was ready for sacrifice. I thought my God was not going to exact that, but since he has, I am ready. Priscilla, I still have God! I wonder"—and, oh! how the weak, pain-filled voice had wrung Priscilla's heart—"I wonder if you can understand when I tell you that I love my love better now—than ever? Shall always love him, my poor boy! Can you not see that he did not mean—to be evil? It was the curse handed down to him, and when he found out—his love, our love, had taken possession of him, and he could not let me—go! I feel as if—as if I were his mother! He cannot have the thing he would die for, but I shall love him to the end of life. I shall try to make it up to him—in some way; help him to be willing and brave, to do the right; teach him that my way is the only—honourable way. I am sure both he and I will be—glad not—not to let others, oh! such sad, little others, pay the debt for us. Our day is—is short at best, but the—the eternity! And you, dear, faithful Cilla! You, with your blessed love, how will it be when I have done what I must do? I must go to—to father and tell the truth, and then——"

"I know," Priscilla had said. "Doctor Travers told me what would follow. I shall not be here for him to suffer for; I am going——"

"Where, my precious friend?"

"To—the Place Beyond the Winds! You do not understand. You cannot; no one can follow me; but I cannot bear the hurting blasts any more. I want the In-Place."

Then it was over, and now she was back in her lonely rooms. She packed her few, dear possessions, and toward morning lay down upon her bed. At daylight she departed, after settling her affairs with the night clerk and leaving no directions that any one could follow.

"It is business," she had cautioned, and the sleepy fellow nodded his head.

The rest did not matter. She would travel to the port from which the boats sailed to Kenmore. Any boat would do; any time. Some morning, perhaps, at four o'clock, if the passage had not been too rough, she would find herself on the shabby little wharf with the pink morning light about her, and the red-rock road stretching on before.

Then Priscilla, like a miser, gripped her purse. Never before had money held any power over her, but the hundreds she had saved were precious to her now. Her father's doors were still, undoubtedly, closed to her. She could not be a burden to the two men living in Master Farwell's small home. There was, to be sure, Mary McAdam! By and by, perhaps, when the hurt was less and she could trust herself more, she would go to the White Fish Lodge and beg for employment; but until then——

The morning Priscilla departed, Ledyard, unequal to any further strain, was called upon to bear several. By his plate, at the breakfast table, lay a scrawled envelope that he recognized at once as a report from Tough Pine.

"What's up now?" muttered he. "This thing isn't due for—three weeks yet."

Then he read, laboriously, the crooked lines:

I give up job. Dirty work. Money—bad money. I take no more—or I be damned! He better man—than you was; you bad and evil, for fun—he grow big and white. No work for bad man—friend now to good mens.

Pine.

"The devil!" muttered Ledyard; but oddly enough the letter raised, rather than lowered, his mental temperature. Those ill-looking epistles of Pine's had nauseated him lately. He had begun to experience the sensation of over-indulgence. Some one had told him, a time back, of Boswell's leaving the city, and he had been glad of the suspicion that arose in him when he heard it.

Later in the day the forces Priscilla had set in motion touched and drew him into the maelstrom.

"Ledyard"—this over the telephone—"my daughter has just informed me that she is about to break her engagement. May I see you at—three?"

"Yes. Here, or at your office?"

"I will come to you."

They had it out, man to man, and with all the time-honoured and hoary arguments.

"My girl's a fool!" Moffatt panted, red-faced and eloquent. "Not to mention what this really means to all of us, there is the girl's own happiness at stake. What are we to tell the world? You cannot go about and—explain! Good Lord! Ledyard, Huntter stands so high in public esteem that to start such a story as this about him would be to ruin my own reputation."

"No. The thing's got to die," Ledyard mused. "Die at its birth."

"Die in my girl's heart! Good God! Ledyard, you ought to see her after the one night! It wrings my heart. It isn't as if the slander had killed her love for him. It hasn't; it has strengthened it. 'I must bear this for him and for me,' she said, looking at me with her mother's eyes. She never looked like her mother before. It's broken me up. What's the world coming to, when women get the bit in their teeth?"

"There are times when all women look alike," Ledyard spoke half to himself; "I've noticed that." The rest of Moffatt's sentence he ignored.

"Why, in the name of all that is good," Moffatt blazed away, "did you send that redheaded girl into our lives? I might have known from the hour she set her will against mine that she was no good omen. Things I haven't crushed, Ledyard, have always ended by giving me a blow, sooner or later. Think of her coming into my home last night and daring——" The words ended in a gulp. "Let me send Margaret to you," pleaded the father at his wits' end. "Huntter is away. Will not be back until to-morrow. Perhaps you can move her. You brought her into the world; you ought to try and keep her here."

At four Margaret entered Ledyard's office. She was very white, very self-possessed, but gently smiling.

"Dear old friend," she said, drawing near him and taking the role of comforter at once. "Do not think I blame you. I know you did your best with your blessed, nigh-to glasses on, but we younger folks have long vision, you know. Do you remember how you once told me to swallow your pills without biting them? I obeyed you for a long, long time; but I've bitten this one! It's bitter, but it is for the best. The medicine is in the pills; we might as well know."

"See here, Margaret, I'm not going to use your father's weapons. I only ask you—to wait! Do not break your engagement; let me see Huntter. Do not speak to him of this. I can explain, and—" he paused—"if the worse comes to the worst, the wedding can be postponed; then things can happen gradually."

"No," Margaret shook her head. "This is his affair and mine, and our love lies between us. I want—oh! I want to make him feel as I do, if I can; but above all else he must know that whatever I do is done in love. You see, I cannot hate him now; by and by it would be different if we were not just to each other."

"My poor girl! Do you women think you are going to be happier, the world better, because of—things like this? Men have thought it out!"

"Alone, yes. And women have let you bear the burden—alone. Happiness is—not all. And who can tell what the world will be when we all do the work God sent us to do? I know this: we cannot push our responsibilities off on any one else without stumbling across them sooner or later, for the overburdened ones cannot carry too much, or forever!"

Ledyard expected Travers for dinner, but, as the time drew near, he felt that his young partner would not come. At six a note was handed to him:

Kindest of Friends:

To-morrow, or soon, I will come to you; not to-night. I have to be alone. I am all in confusion. I can see only step by step, and must follow as I may. Two or three things stand out clear. We haven't, we men, played the game fair, though God knows we meant to. They—she and such women as my girl—are right! Blindly, fumblingly right. They are seeking to square themselves, and we have no business to curse them for their efforts.

Lastly, I love Priscilla Glynn, and mean to have her, even at the expense of my profession! You have set my feet on a broad path and promised an honourable position. I have always felt that to try and follow in your steps was the noblest ambition I had. I know now that I could not accomplish this. You have truth and conviction to guide and uphold you. I have doubt. I must work among my fellows with no hint of distrust as to my own position. Forgive me! Go, if you will, to my mother—to Helen. She will need you—after she knows. You will, perhaps, understand when I tell you that, for a time at least, I must be by myself, and I am going to the little town where my own mother and I, long ago, lived our strange life together. She seems to be there, waiting for me.

Ledyard ate no dinner that night; he seemed broken and ill; he pushed dish after dish aside, and finally left the table and the house.

Everything had failed him. All his life's work and hopes rustled past him like dead things as he walked the empty streets.

"Truth and conviction," he muttered. "Who has them? The young ass! What is truth? How can one be convinced? It's all bluff and a doing of one's best!"

And then he reached Helen Travers's house and found her waiting for him.

"I have a—a note from Dick," she said. Ledyard saw that she had been crying.

"Poor boy! He has gone to—his mother; his real mother. We"—she caught her breath—"we have, somehow, failed him. He is in trouble."

"I wonder—why?" Ledyard murmured. Never had his voice held that tone before. It startled even the sad woman.

"We have tried to do right—have loved him so," she faltered.

"Perhaps we have been too sure of ourselves, our traditions. Each generation has its own ideals. We're only stepping-stones, but we like to believe we're the—end-all!"

"That may be."

Then they sat with bowed heads in silence, until Ledyard spoke again.

"I'm going to retire, Helen. Without him, work would be—impossible. His empty place would be a silent condemnation, a constant reminder, of—mistakes."

"If he leaves me, I shall close this house. I could not live—without him here. I never envied his mother before. I have pitied, condoned her, but to-night I envy her from my soul!"

"Helen"—and here Ledyard got up and walked the length of the room restlessly; he was about to put his last hope to the test—"Helen, this world is—too new for us; for you and me. We belong back where the light is not so strong and things go slower! We get—blinded and breathless and confused. I have nothing left, nor have you. Will you come with me to that crack in the Alps, as Dick used to call it, and let me—love you?"

"Oh! John Ledyard! What a man you are!"

"Exactly! What a man I am! A poor, rough fool, always loving what was best; never daring to risk anything for it. I'm tired to death——"

She was beside him, kneeling, with her snow-touched head upon his knee.

"So am I. Tired, tired! I could not do without you. I have leaned on you far too long; we all have. Now, dear, lean on me for the rest of the way."

He bent his grizzled head upon hers and his eyes had the look of prayer that Priscilla once discovered.

"Dick—has not told me his real trouble," Helen faintly said. "I know it is somehow connected with a—nurse."

"The redheaded one," Ledyard put in; "a regular little marplot!" Then he gave that gruff laugh of his that Helen knew to be a signal of surrender.

"It's odd," he went on, "how one can admire and respect when often he disapproves. I disapprove of this—redheaded girl, but, if it will comfort you any, my child, I will tell you this: Dick's future, in her hands, would be founded on—on everlasting rock!"

"Perhaps—she won't have him!"

"Helen"—and Ledyard caught her to him—"you never would have said that if you had been Dick's mother!"

"Perhaps—not!"

"No. You and I have only played second fiddles, first and last; but second fiddles come in handy!"

The room grew dim and shadowy, and the two in the western window clung together.

"Have you heard—John, that Margaret Moffatt has broken her engagement to Clyde Huntter?"

"Yes. Where did you hear it?"

"She came—to see me; wanted to know how I was. She was very beautiful and dear. She talked a good deal about that—that——"

"Redheaded nurse?" asked Ledyard.

"Yes. I couldn't quite see any connecting link then, but you know Dick did go to that Swiss village last summer. I fear the party wasn't properly chaperoned, for 'twas there he met—the nurse!"

"It—was!" grunted Ledyard.

"There is something sadly wrong with this broken engagement of Margaret's, but I imagine no one will ever know. Girls are so—so different from what they used to be."

"Yes," but a tone of doubt was in Ledyard's voice. Presently he said: "Since Dick has left, or may leave, the profession, I suppose he'll take to writing. He's always told me that when he could afford to, he'd like to cut the traces and wollop the race with his pen. Many doctors would like to do that. A gag and a chain and ball are not what they're cracked up to be. The pen is mightier than the pill, sometimes, but it often eliminates the butter from the bread."

Helen caught at the only part of this speech that she understood.

"There's the little income I'm living on," she said; "it's Dick's father's. I wish—you'd let me give it to him—now. I am old-fashioned enough to want to live on my husband's money."

"Exactly!" Ledyard drew her closer; "quite the proper feeling. It can be easily arranged."

And while they sat in the gathering gloom, Travers was wending his way up a village street, and wondering that he found things so little changed.

While his heart grew heavier, his steps hastened, and he felt like a small boy again—a boy afraid of the dark, afraid of the mystery of night—alone! The boy of the past had always known a heavy heart, too, and that added reality to the touch.

There stood the old cottage with a sign "To Let" swinging from the porch. Had no one lived there since they, he and the pretty creature he called mother, had gone away?

There had been workmen in the house, evidently. They had carelessly left the outer door open and a box of tools in the living-room. Travers went in and sat down upon the chest, closed his eyes, and gave himself up to his sad mood. Clearly he seemed to hear the low, sweet voice:

"Little son, is that you?" Yes, it was surely he! "Come home to—to mother? Tired, dear?" Indeed he was tired—tired to the verge of exhaustion. "Suppose—suppose we have a story? Come, little son! It shall be a story of a fine, golden-haired princess who loves and loves, but—is very, very wise. And you are to be the prince who is wise, too. If you are not both very wise there will be trouble; and of course princesses and princes do not have trouble." The old, foolish memory ran on with its deeper truth breaking in upon the heart and soul of the man in the haunted room.

Then Travers spoke aloud:

"Mother, I will make no mistake if I can help it, and as God hears me, I will not cheat love. As far as lies in me, I will play fair for her sake—and yours!"

When he uncovered his eyes he almost expected to see a creaky little rocker and a sleepy boy resting on the breast of a woman so beautiful that it was no wonder many had loved her.

"Poor, little, long-ago mother!"

Then he thought of Helen and her strong purpose in life, her devotion and sacrifice.

"I must go to her!" he cried resolutely. "I owe her—much, much!"



CHAPTER XXV

The pines and the hemlocks stood out sharply against a pink, throbbing sky in which the stars still shone faintly but brilliantly. It was five o'clock of a dim morning, and no one was astir in the In-Place as the little steamer indolently turned from the Big Bay into the Channel and headed for the wharf.

Not a breath of air seemed stirring, and the stillness was unbroken except by the panting of the engines.

Priscilla Glenn stood near the gangway of the boat. Now that she had left all her beautiful love and life, she was eager to hide, like a hurt and bruised thing, in the old, familiar home. Leaning her poor, tired head against the post near her, she thought of the desolate wreck behind, and the tears came to the deep, true eyes.

"I could have done—nothing else!" she murmured, as if to comfort the sad thing she was. "It had to be! Margaret knew that; she understood. By now she is as bereft as I; poor, dear love! Oh! it seems, just sometimes it seems, like an army of men on one side and all of us women on the other. Between us lies the great battlefield, and they, the men, are trying to fight alone—fight our battle as well as theirs. And—they cannot! they cannot!"

Just then the boat touched the wharf, and a sleepy man, a stranger to Priscilla, materialized and looked at her queerly.

"For the Lodge?" he grunted.

"Yes—I suppose so. Yes, the Lodge."

"Up yonder." Then he turned to the freight. Once she was on the Green, Priscilla paused and looked about.

"For which?" Then she smiled a ghost of her bright, sunny smile.

"My father's doors are shut to me," she sighed; "I cannot go to the Lodge, yet! I must go—to——" Something touched her hand, and she looked down. It was Farwell's dog, the old one, the one who used to play with Priscilla when she was a little girl.

"You dear!" she cried, dropping beside him; "You've come to show me the way. Beg, Tony, beg like a good fellow. I have a bit of cake for you!"

Clumsily, heavily, the old collie tried to respond, but of late he had been excused from acting; and he was old, old.

"Then take it, Tony, take it without pay. That comes of being a doggie. You ought to be grateful that you are a dog, and—need not pay!"

It was clear to her now that Farwell's home must be her first shelter, and taking up her suit-case she passed over the Green and took the path leading to the master's house.

Some one had been before her. Some one who had swept the hearth, lighted a fire, and set the breakfast table. Pine had taken Toky's place and was vying with that deposed oriental in whole-souled service.

Priscilla pushed the ever-unlatched door open and went inside. The bare living-room had been transformed. John Boswell had transferred the comfort, without the needless luxury, from the town home to the In-Place—books, pictures, rugs, the winged chair and an equally easy one across the hearth. And, yes, there was her own small rocker close by, as if, in their detachment, they still remembered her and missed her and were—ready for her coming! Priscilla noiselessly took off her wraps and sat down, glad to rest again in the welcoming chair.

She swayed back and forth, her closely folded arms across her fast-beating heart. She kept her face turned toward the door through which she knew the men would enter. She struggled for control, for a manner which would disarm their shock at seeing her; but never in her life had she felt more defeated, more helplessly at bay.

The early morning light, streaming through the broad eastern window, struck full across her where she sat in the low rocker; and so Boswell and Farwell came upon her. They stopped short on the threshold and each, in his way, sought to account for the apparition. The brave smile upon Priscilla's face broke and fled miserably.

"I—I've been doshed!" she cried in a last effort at bravado, and then, covering her face with her hands, she wept hysterically, repeating again and again, "I've come home, come home—to—no home!"

They were beside her at once. Boswell's hand rested on the bowed head; Farwell's on the back of her chair.

"Dear, bright Butterfly!" whispered Boswell comfortingly; "it has come to grief in the Garden."

"Oh! I wanted to learn, and oh! Master Farwell, I said I was willing to suffer, and I have, I have!"

Then she looked up and her unflinching courage returned.

"I was tired!" she moaned; "tired and hungry."

"After breakfast you will explain—only as much as you choose, child." This from Farwell. "Make the toast for us, Priscilla. I remember how you used to brown it without blackening it. Boswell always gets dreaming on the second side of the slice."

After the strange meal Priscilla told very little, but both men read volumes in her pale, thin face and understanding eyes.

"Damn them!" thought Farwell; "they have taken it out of her. I knew they would; but they have not conquered her!"

Boswell thoughtfully considered her when her eyes were turned from him.

"She learned," he thought; "suffered and learned; but when she gets her breath she will go back. The In-Place cannot hold her."

Then they told her of the Kenmore folk.

"Your father has had a stroke, Priscilla," Farwell said in reply to her question; "it has made him blind. Long Jean cares for him. He will have no other near him."

"And—he never wants me?" Priscilla whispered.

"No; but he needs you!" Boswell muttered. "You must let your velvety wings brush his dark life; the touch will comfort him."

"And old Jerry?"

Farwell leaned forward to poke the fire.

"Old Jerry," said he, "has gone mildly—mad. All day he sits dressed in his best, ready to start for Jerry-Jo's. He fancies that scapegoat of his has a mansion and fortune, and is expecting his arrival. He amuses himself by packing and unpacking a mangy old carpet-bag. Mary McAdam looks after him and the village youngsters play with him. It's rather a happy ending, after all."

Many a time after that Priscilla packed and unpacked the old carpet-bag, while Jerry rambled on of his great and splendid lad to the "Miss from the States."

"It's weak I am to-day, ma'am," he would say, "but to-morrow, to-morrow! 'Tis the Secret Portage I'll make for; the Fox is a bit too tricky for my boat—a fine boat, ma'am. I'm thinking the Big Bay may be a trifle rough, but the boat's a staunch one. Jerry-Jo's expecting me; but he'll understand."

"I am sure he will be glad to see you, sir." Priscilla learned to play the sad game. The children taught her and loved her, and all the quiet village kept her secret. Mary McAdam claimed her, but Priscilla clung to the two men who meant the only comfort she could know. They never questioned her; never intruded upon her sad, and often pitiful, reserve; but they yearned over her and cheered her as best they could.

Priscilla's visits to her father's house were often dramatic. At first the sound of her voice disturbed and excited the blind man pathetically.

"Eh? eh?" he stormed, holding to Long Jean's hand; "who comes in my door?"

"Oh! a lass—from the States," Jean replied with a reassuring pat on the bony shoulder.

"From the States?" suspiciously.

"Aye. She's taken training in one of them big hospitables, and is a friend to the crooked gentleman who bides with Master Farwell. The lass comes to give me lessons in my trade." Jean had a touch of humour.

"I'll have no fandangoing with me!" asserted Glenn, settling back in his chair. "Old ways are good enough for me, Jean, and remember that, if you value your place. I want no woman about me who has notions different from what God Almighty meant her to have. Larning is woman's curse. Give 'em larning, I've always held, and you've headed 'em for perdition."

But Priscilla won him gradually, after he had become accustomed to her disturbing voice. He would not have her touch him physically. She seemed to rouse in him a strange unrest when she came near him, but eventually he accepted her as a diversion and utilized her for his own hidden need.

One day, with a hint of spring in the air, he reached out a lean hand toward the window near which Jean had placed him, and said:

"Woman, are you here?"

"Jean's gone—erranding." The old mother-word attracted Glenn's attention.

"Eh?" he questioned.

"To the village. I'm waiting until she comes back. Can I do anything for you, sir?"

"No. Is—is it a sunny day?"

"Glorious. The ice is melting now—in the shady places."

"I thought I felt the warmth. 'Tis cold and drear sitting forever in darkness."

"I am sure it must be—terrible."

But Glenn resented pity.

"God's will is never terrible!" he flung back. Then:

"Are you one—who got larning?"

"I—learned to read, sir."

"And much—good it's done you—the larning! I warrant ye'd be better off without it. Women are. Good women are content with God's way. My wife was. Always willing, was she, to follow. God was enough for her—God and me!"

"I wonder!"

"Eh? What was that?"

"Nothing, sir. May I read to you?"

"Is the Book there?"

"Right here on the stand. What shall I read?"

"There's one verse as haunts me at times; find it in Acts—the seventeenth, I think—and along about the twenty-third verse. I used to conjure what it might mean more than was good for me. It haunts me now, though I ain't doubting but what the meaning will come to me, some day. Them as sits in darkness often gets spiritual leadings."

And Priscilla read:

"'For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you?'"

A silence fell between the old, blind father and the stranger-girl looking yearningly into his face.

"I've conned it this way and that," Glenn said, with his oratorical manner claiming him. "It might be that some worship an Unknown God and the true God might pass by and set things straight. There be altars and altars, and sometimes even my God seems——"

"An Unknown God?" Priscilla asked tenderly. "That must be such a lonely feeling."

"No!" almost shrieked Nathaniel, as if the suggestion insulted him; "no! The true God declared himself to me long since. But what do you make of it, young Miss?"

Priscilla turned her eyes to the open, free outer world, where the sunshine was and the stirring of spring.

"Sometimes," she whispered, "I love to think of God coming down from all the shrines and altars of the world, and walking with his children—in the Garden! They need him so. I do not like altars or shrines; the Garden is the holiest place for God to be!"

"Thou blasphemer!" Glenn struggled to an upright position and his sightless eyes were fixed upon his child. "Wouldst thou desecrate the holy of holies, the altars of the living God?"

"If he is a living God he will not stay upon an altar; he will come and walk with his children!"

The tone of the absorbed voice reached where heretofore it had never touched.

"I'll have none of thee!" commanded Nathaniel, his face dangerously purple. "Your words are of the—the devil! Leave me! leave me!" And for the second time Priscilla was ordered from her father's house.

It did not matter. It was all so useless, and the future was so blank. Still, to go back to Master Farwell's just then was impossible, and Priscilla turned toward the wood road leading to the Far Hill Place. She had no plan, no purpose. She was drifting, drifting, and could not see her way. The bright sun touched her comfortingly. In the shadow it was chilly; but the red rock was warm and luring. And so she came to the open space and the almost forgotten shrine where once she had raised her Strange God.

She sat down upon a fallen tree and looked over the little, many-islanded bay to the Secret Portage. Through that she seemed to pass yearningly, and her eyes grew large and strained. Then she stretched out her arms, her young, empty arms.

"My Garden!" she called; "my Garden, my dear, dear love and Margaret's God! Margaret's and mine!"

And so she sat for a while longer. Then, because the chill air crept closer and closer, she arose and faced the old, bleached skull. The winters had killed the sheltering vines that once hid it from all eyes but hers. It stood bare and hideous, as if demanding that she again worship it. A frenzy overpowered Priscilla. That whitened, dead thing brought back memories that hurt and stung by their very sweetness. She rushed to the spot and seized the forked stick upon which the skull rested.

"This for all—Unknown Gods!" she cried in breathless passion, and dashed the skull to the ground. "And this! and this!" She trampled it. "They shall not keep you upon shrines! They shall not keep you hidden from all in the Garden!" With that she took a handful of the shattered god and flung it far and wide, with her blazing eyes fixed on the Secret Portage.

Standing so, she looked like a priestess of old defying all falseness and traditional wrong.

Among the trees Richard Travers gazed upon the scene with a kind of horror gripping him.

He was not a superstitious man, but he was a worn and weary one, and he had come to the Far Hill Place, two days before, because, after much searching, he had failed to find Priscilla Glynn, and his love was hurt and desperate. He had wanted to hide and suffer where no eyes could penetrate. But he had discovered that for a man to return to his boyhood was but to undergo the torture of those who are haunted by lost spirits. It had been damnable—that dreary, dismantled house back on the hill! The nights had maddened him and left him unable to cope intelligently with the days. Nothing comforting had been there. The pale boy he once had been taunted him with memories of lowered ideals, unfilled promise and purpose. He had travelled a long distance from the Far Hill Place, and he was going back to fight it out—somehow, somewhere. He would stop at Master Farwell's and then take the night steamer for the old battle-ground. And just at that moment, in the open space, he saw the strange sight that stopped his breath and heart for an instant.

Of course his wornout senses were being tricked. He had known of such cases, and was now thoroughly alarmed. Like a man in delirium, he walked into the open and confronted the fascinated gaze of the girl for whom he had been searching for weeks.

"How came—you here?" he asked in a voice from which normal emotions were eliminated.

"And—you?" she echoed.

They came a step nearer, their hands outstretched in a poor, blind groping for solution and reality.

"Why—I am—I meant to tell you—some day. I am Priscilla Glenn—not Glynn—Priscilla Glenn of—Lonely Farm."

"My God!" Travers came a step nearer, his face set and grim. "Of course! I see it now—the dance! Don't you remember? The dance at the Swiss village?"

"And the—the tune that made me cry. Who—are——How did you know that tune? How did you know—the In-Place?"

Their hands touched and clung now, desperately. Together they must find their way out.

"I am—I was—the boy of the Far Hill Place. I played for you—once—to dance—right here!"

Something seemed snapping in Priscilla's brain.

"Yes," she whispered, breathing hard and quick. "I remember now: you taught me music, and—and you taught me—love, but you told me not to let them kill my ideal; and, oh! I haven't! I haven't!"

She shut her eyes and reeled forward. She did not faint, but for a moment her senses refused to accept impressions.

Travers knelt and caught her to him as she fell. Her dear head was upon his knee once more, and he pressed his lips to the wonderful hair from which the little hat had fallen. Then her eyes opened, but her lips trembled.

"You—came all the way from the Place Beyond the Winds, little girl, to show me my ideal again; to strike your blow—for women." Travers was whispering.

"Your ideal? But no, dear love. Your ideal is back there—in the Garden."

"And yours? I—I do not understand, Priscilla. I am still dazed. What Garden?"

"The big world, my dear man; your world."

"My blessed child! Do not look like that. Do you think I'm going back without you? I've been looking for—Priscilla Glynn—fool that I was! And you were—great heavens! You were the little nurse in St. Albans!"