If she had not been so exquisite, so skilled in the nuances of life, so swift and elusive in conversation, so well fitted for the finest forms of enjoyment, her renunciation of liberty would not have proved so exasperating to Kate. A youthful enthusiasm for religion might have made her step understandable. But enthusiasm and she seemed far apart. Intelligent as she unquestionably was, she nevertheless seemed to have given herself over supinely to a current of emotions which was sweeping her along. She looked both pious and piteous, for all of her sophisticated manner and her accomplishments and graces, and Kate felt like throwing a rope to her. But Mrs. Leger was not in a mood to seize the rope. She had her curiously gentle mind quite made up. Though she was still young,—not quite eighteen years older than her son,—she appeared to have no further concern for life. To the last, she was indulging in her delicate vanities—wore her pearls, walked in charming foot-gear, trailed after her the fascinating gowns of the initiate, and viewed with delight the portfolios of etchings which Dr. von Shierbrand chanced to be purchasing.

She was glad, she said, to be at the Caravansary, quite on a different side of the city from her friends. She made no attempt to renew old acquaintances or to say farewell to her former associates. Her extravagant home on the Lake Shore Drive was passed over to a self-congratulatory purchaser; the furnishings were sold at auction; and her other properties were disposed of in such a manner as to make the transfer of her wealth convenient for the recipients.

She asked Kate to go to the station with her.

"I've given you my one last friendship," she said. "I shall speak with no one on the steamer. My journey must be spent in preparation for my great change. But it seems human and warm to have you see me off."

"It seems inhuman to me, Mrs. Leger," Kate cried explosively. "Something terrible has happened to you, I suppose, and you're hiding away from it. You think you're going to drug yourself with prayer. But can you? It doesn't seem at all probable to me. Dear Mrs. Leger, be brave and stay out in the world with the other living people."

"You are talking of something which you do not understand," said Mrs. Leger gently. "There is a secret manna for the soul of which the chosen may eat."

"Oh!" cried Kate, almost angrily. "Are these your own words? I cannot understand a prepossession like this on your part. It doesn't seem to set well on you. Isn't there some hideous mistake? Aren't you under the influence of some emotional episode? Might it not be that you were ill without realizing it? Perhaps you are suffering from some hidden melancholy, and it is impelling you to do something out of keeping with the time and with your own disposition."

"I can see how it might appear that way to you, Miss Barrington. But I am not ill, except in my soul, which I expect to be healed in the place to which I am going. Try to understand that among the many kinds of human beings in this world there are the mystics. They have a right to their being and to their belief. Their joys and sorrows are different from those of others, but they are just as existent. Please do not worry about me."

"But you understand so well how to handle the material things in the world," protested Kate. "You seem so appreciative and so competent. If you have learned so much, what is the sense of shutting it all up in a cell?"

"Did you never read of Purun Bhagat," asked Mrs. Leger smilingly, "who was rich with the riches of a king; who was wise with the learning of Calcutta and of Oxford; who could have held as high an office as any that the Government of England could have given him in India, and who took his beggar's bowl and sat upon a cavern's rim and contemplated the secret soul of things? You know your Kipling. I have not such riches or such wisdom, but I have the longing upon me to go into silence."

The lips from which these words fell were both tender and ardent; the little gesticulating hands were clad in modish, mouse-colored suede; orris root mixed with some faint, haunting odor, barely caressed the air with perfume. Kate looked at her companion in despair.

"I must be an outer barbarian!" she cried. "I can imagine religious ecstasy, but you are not ecstatic. I can imagine turning to a convent as a place of hiding from shame or despair. But you are not going into it that way. As for wishing to worship, I understand that perfectly. Prayer is a sort of instinct with me, and all the reasoning in the world couldn't make me cast myself out of communion with the unknown something roundabout me that seems to answer me. But what you are doing seems, as I said, so obsolete."

"I am looking forward to it," said Mrs. Leger, "as eagerly as a girl looks forward to her marriage. It is a beautiful romance to me. It is the completely beautiful thing that is going to make up to me for all the ugliness I have encountered in life."

For the first time a look of passion disturbed the serenity of the high-bred, conventional face.

Kate threw out her hands with a repudiating gesture.

"Well," she said, "in the midst of my freedom I shall think of you often and wonder if you have found something that I have missed. You are leaving the world, and books, and friends, and your son for some pale white idea. It seems to me you are going to the embrace of a wraith."

Mrs. Leger smiled slowly, and it was as if a lamp showed for a moment in a darkened house and then mysteriously vanished.

"Believe me," she reiterated, "you do not understand."

Kate helped her on the train, and left her surrounded by her fashionable bags, her flowers, fruit, and literature. She took these things as a matter of course. She had looked at her smart little boots as she adjusted them on a hassock and had smiled at Kate almost teasingly.

"In a month," she said, "I shall be walking with bared feet, or, if the weather demands, in sandals. I shall wear a rope about my waist over my brown robe. My hair will be cut, my head coiffed. When you are thinking of me, think of me as I really shall be."

"So many things are going to happen that you will not see!" cried Kate. "Why, maybe in a little while we shall all be going up in flying-machines! You wouldn't like to miss that, would you? Or your son will be growing into a fine man and you'll not see him—nor the woman he marries—nor his children." She stopped, breathing hard.

"It is like the sound of the surf on a distant shore," smiled Mrs. Leger. "Good-bye, Miss Barrington. Don't grieve about me. I shall be happier than you can know or dream."

The conductor swung Kate off the train after it was in motion.

* * * * *

So, among other things, she had that to think of. She could explain it all merely upon the hypothesis that the sound of the awakening trumpets—the trumpets which were arousing woman from her long torpor—had not reached the place where this wistful woman dwelt, with her tender remorses, her delicate aversions, her hunger for the indefinite consolations of religion.

Moreover, she was beginning to understand that not all women were maternal. She had, indeed, come across many incidents in her work which emphasized this. Good mothers were quite as rare as good fathers; and it was her growing belief that more than half of the parents in the world were undeserving of the children born to them. Also, she realized that a child might be born of the body and not of the spirit, and a mother might minister well to a child's corporeal part without once ministering to its soul. It was possible that there never had been any bond save a physical one between Mrs. Leger and her son. Perhaps they looked at each other with strange, uncomprehending eyes. That, she could imagine, would be a tantalization from which a sensitive woman might well wish to escape. It was within the realm of possibility that he was happier with his grandmother than with his mother. There might be temperamental as well as physical "throwbacks."

Kate remembered a scene she once had witnessed at a railway station. Two meagre, hard-faced, work-worn women were superintending the removal of a pine-covered coffin from one train to another, and as the grim box was wheeled the length of a long platform, a little boy, wild-eyed, gold-haired, and set apart from all the throng by a tragic misery, ran after the truck calling in anguish:—

"Grandmother! Grandmother! Don't leave me! I'm so lonesome, grandmother! I'm so afraid!"

"Stop your noise," commanded the woman who must have been his mother. "Don't you know she can't hear you?"

"Oh, maybe she can! Maybe she can," sobbed the boy. "Oh, grandmother, don't you hear me calling? There's nobody left for me now."

The woman caught him sharply by the arm.

"I'm left, Jimmy. What makes you say such a thing as that? Stay with mother, that's a good boy."

They were lifting the box into the baggage-car. The boy saw it. He straightened himself in the manner of one who tries to endure a mortal wound.

"She's gone," he said. He looked at his mother once, as if measuring her value to him. Then he turned away. There was no comfort for him there.

Often, since, Kate had wondered concerning the child. She had imagined his grim home, his barren days; the plain food; the compulsory task; the kind, yet heavy-handed, coarse-voiced mother. She was convinced that the grandmother had been different. In the corner where she had sat, there must have been warmth and welcome for the child. Perhaps there were mellow old tales, sweet old songs, soft strokings of the head, smuggled sweets—all the beautiful grandmotherly delights.



XIII

Since Kate had begun to write, a hundred—a thousand—half-forgotten experiences had come back to her. As they returned to her memory, they acquired significance. They related themselves with other incidents or with opinions. They illustrated life, and however negligible in themselves, they attained a value because of their relation to the whole.

It was seldom that she felt lonely now. Her newly acquired power of self-expression seemed to extend and supplement her personality. August von Shierbrand had said that he wished to marry her because she completed him. It had occurred to her at the time—though she suppressed her inclination to say so—that she was born for other purposes than completing him, or indeed anybody. She wished to think of herself as an individual, not as an addendum. But, after all, she had sympathized with the man. She was beginning to understand that that "solitude of the soul," which one of her acquaintances, a sculptor, had put into passionate marble, was caused from that sense of incompletion. It was not alone that others failed one—it was self-failure, secret shame, all the inevitable reticences, which contributed most to that.

She fell into the way of examining the men and women about her and of asking:—

"Is he satisfied? Is she companioned? Has this one realized himself? Is that one really living?"

She remembered one person—one only—who had given her the impression of abounding physical, mental, and spiritual life. True, she had seen him but a moment—one swift, absurd, curiously haunting moment. That was Karl Wander, Honora's cousin, and the cousin of Mary Morrison. They were the children of three sisters, and from what Kate knew of their descendants' natures, she felt these sisters must have been palpitating creatures.

Yes, Karl Wander had seemed complete—a happy man, seething with plans, a wise man who took life as it came; a man of local qualities yet of cosmopolitan spirit—one who would not have fretted at his environment or counted it of much consequence, whatever it might have been.

If she could have known him—

But Honora seldom spoke of him. Only sometimes she read a brief note from him, and added:—

"He wishes to be remembered to you, Kate."

She did not hint: "He saw you only a second." Honora was not one of those persons who take pleasure in pricking bubbles. She perceived the beauty of iridescence. If her odd friend and her inexplicable cousin had any satisfaction in remembering a passing encounter, they could have their pleasure of it.

Kate, for her part, would not have confessed that she thought of him. But, curiously, she sometimes dreamed of him.

At last Ray McCrea was coming home. His frequent letters, full of good comment, announced the fact.

"I've been winning my spurs, commercially speaking," he wrote. "The old department heads, whom my father taught me to respect, seem pleased with what I have done. I believe that when I come back they will have ceased to look on me as a cadet. And if they think I'm fit for responsibilities, perhaps you will think so, too, Kate. At any rate, I know you'll let me say that I am horribly homesick. This being in a foreign land is all very well, but give me the good old American ways, crude though they may be. I want a straightforward confab with some one of my own sort; I want the feeling that I can move around without treading on somebody's toes. I want, above all, to have a comfortable entertaining evening with a nice American girl—a girl that takes herself and me for granted, and isn't shying off all the time as if I were a sort of bandit. What a relief to think that you'll not be accompanied by a chaperon! I shall get back my self-respect once I'm home again with you nice, self-confident young American women."

"It will be good to see him, I believe," mused Kate. "After all, he always looked after me. I can't seem to remember just how much pleasure I had in his society. At any rate, we'll have plenty of things to talk about. He'll tell me about Europe, and I'll tell him about my work. That ought to carry us along quite a while."

She set about making preparations for him. She induced Honora to let her have an extra room, and she made her fine front chamber into a sitting-room, with a knocker on the door, and some cheerful brasses and old prints within. She came across oddities of this sort in her Russian and Italian neighborhoods, but until now she had not taken very much interest in what she was inclined to term "sublimated junk."

Mary Morrison took an almost vicious amusement in Kate's sudden efforts at aesthetic domestication, and Marna Fitzgerald—who was delighted—considered it as a frank confession of sentiment. Kate let them think what they pleased. She presented to their inspection—even Mary was invited up for the occasion—a cheerful room with a cream paper, a tawny-colored rug, some comfortable wicker chairs, an interesting plaster cast or two, and the previously mentioned "loot." Mary, in a fit of friendliness, contributed a Japanese wall-basket dripping with vines; Honora proffered a lamp with a soft shade; and Marna took pride in bestowing some delicately embroidered cushions, white, and beautiful with the beauty of Belfast linen.

It did not appear to occur to Kate, however, that personal adornment would be desirable, and it took the united efforts of Marna and Mary to persuade her that a new frock or two might be needed. Kate had a way of avoiding shabbiness, but of late her interest in decoration had been anything but keen. However, she ventured now on a rather beguiling dress for evening—a Japanese crepe which a returned missionary sold her for something more than a song. Dr. von Shierbrand said it was the color of rust, but Marna affirmed that it had the hue of copper—copper that was not too bright. It was embroidered gloriously with chrysanthemums, and she had great pleasure in it. Mary Morrison drew from her rainbow collection a scarf which accentuated the charm of the frock, and when Kate had contrived a monk's cape of brown, she was ready for possible entertainments—panoplied for sentiment. She would make no further concessions. Her practical street clothes and her home-made frocks of white linen, with which she made herself dainty for dinner at Mrs. Dennison's, had to serve her.

"I'm so poor," she said to Marna, "that I feel like apologizing for my inefficiency. I'm getting something now for my talks at the clubs, and I'm paid for my writing, too. Now that it's begun to be published, I ought to be opulent presently."

"You're no poorer than we," Marna said. "But of course there are two of us to be poor together; and that makes it more interesting."

"Love doesn't seem to be flying out of your window," smiled Kate.

"We've bars on the windows," laughed Marna. "Some former occupant of the flat put them on to keep the babies from dashing their brains out on the pavement below, and we haven't taken them off." She blushed. "No," responded Kate with a moue; "what was the use?"

* * * * *

Unfortunately McCrea, the much-expected, had not made it quite plain when he was to land in New York. To be sure, Kate might have consulted the steamer arrivals, but she forgot to do that. So it happened that when a wire came from Ray saying that he would be in Chicago on a certain Saturday night in mid-May, Kate found herself under compulsion to march in a suffrage procession.

David Fulham thought the circumstance uproariously funny, and he told them about it at the Caravansary. They made rather an annoying jest of it, but Kate held to her promise.

"It's an historic event to my mind," she said with all the dignity she could summon. "I wouldn't excuse myself if I could. And I can't. I've promised to march at the head of a division. We hope there'll be twenty thousand of us."

Perhaps there were. Nobody knew. But all the city did know that down the broad boulevard, in the mild, damp air of the May night, regiment upon regiment of women marched to bear witness to their conviction and their hope. Bands played, choruses sang, transparencies proclaimed watchwords, and every woman in the seemingly endless procession swung a yellow lantern. The onlookers crowded the sidewalks and hung from the towering office buildings, to watch that string of glowing amber beads reaching away to north and to south. College girls, working-girls, home-women, fine ladies, efficient business women, vague, non-producing, half-awakened women,—all sorts, all conditions, black, white, Latin, Slav, Germanic, English, American, American, American,—they came marching on. They were proud and they were diffident; they were sad and they were merry; they were faltering and they were enthusiastic. Some were there freely, splendidly, exultantly; more were there because some force greater than themselves impelled them. Through bewilderment and hesitancy and doubt, they saw the lights of the future shining, and they fixed their eyes upon the amber lanterns as upon the visible symbols of their faith; they marched and marched. They were the members of a new revolution, and, as always, only a portion of the revolutionists knew completely what they desired.

At the Caravansary there had been sharp disapproval of the whole thing. The men had brought forth arguments to show Kate her folly. Mrs. Dennison, Mrs. Goodrich, and Mrs. Applegate had spoken gentle words of warning; Honora had vaguely suggested that the matter was immaterial; Mary Morrison had smiled as one who avoided ugliness; and Kate had laughingly defied them.

"I march!" she had declared. "And I'm not ashamed of my company."

It was, indeed, a company of which she was proud. It included the names of the most distinguished, the most useful, the most talented, the most exclusive, and the most triumphantly inclusive women in the city.

"Poor McCrea," put in Fulham. "Aren't you making him ridiculous? He'll come dashing up here the moment he gets off the train. As a matter of fact, he'll be half expecting you to meet him. You're making a mistake, Miss Barrington, if you'll let a well-meaning fellow-being say so. You're leaving the substance for the shadow."

"I've misled you about Ray, I'm afraid," Kate said with unexpected patience. "He hasn't really any right to expect me to be waiting, and I don't believe he will. Come to think of it, I don't know that I want to be found waiting."

"Oh, well, of course—" said Fulham with a shrug, leaving his sentence unfinished.

"Anyway," said Kate flushing, "I march!"

* * * * *

They told her afterward how McCrea had come toof-toofing up to the door in a taxi, and how he had taken the steps two at a time.

"He wrung my hand," said Honora, "and got through the preliminary amenities with a dispatch I never have seen excelled. Then he demanded you. 'Is she upstairs?' he asked. 'May I go right up? She wrote me she had a parlor of her own.' 'She has a parlor,' I said, 'but she isn't in it.' He balanced on the end of a toe. 'Where is she?' I thought he was going to fly. 'She's out with the suffragists,' I said. I didn't try to excuse you. I thought you deserved something pretty bad. But I did tell him you'd promised to go and that you hadn't known he was coming that day. 'She's in that mess?' he cried. 'I saw the Amazon march as I came along. You don't mean Kate's tramping the streets with those women!' 'Yes, she is,' I said, 'and she's proud to do it. But she was sorry not to be here to welcome you.' 'Sorry!' he said; 'why, Mrs. Fulham, I've been dreaming of this meeting for months.' Honestly, Kate, I was ashamed for you. I asked him in. I told him you'd be home before long. But he would not come in. 'Tell her I—I came,' he said. Then he went."

It was late at night, and Kate was both worn and exhilarated with her marching. Honora's words let her down considerably. She sat with tears in her eyes staring at her friend.

"But couldn't he see," she pleaded, "that I had to keep my word? Didn't he understand how important it was? I can see him to-morrow just as well."

"Then you'll have to send for him," said Honora decisively. "He'll not come without urging."

She went up to bed with a stern aspect, and left Kate sitting staring before her by the light of one of Mary's foolish candles.

"They seem to think I'm a very unnatural woman," said Kate to herself. "But can't they see how much more important it was that the demonstration should be a success than that two lovers should meet at a certain hour?"

The word "lovers" had slipped inadvertently into her mind; and no sooner had she really recognized it, looked at it, so to speak, fairly in the face, than she rejected it with scorn.

"We're just friends," she protested. "One has many friends."

But her little drawing-room, all gay and fresh, accused her of deceiving herself; and a glimpse of the embroidered frock reminded her that she was contemptibly shirking the truth. One did not make such preparations for a mere "friend." She sat down and wrote a note, put stamps on it to insure its immediate delivery, and ran out to the corner to mail it. Then she fell asleep arguing with herself that she had been right, and that he ought to understand what it meant to give one's word, and that it could make no difference that they were to meet a few hours later instead of at the impetuous moment of his arrival.

* * * * *

She spent the next day at the Juvenile Court, and came home with the conviction that there ought to be no more children until all those now wandering the hard ways of the world were cared for. She was in no mood for sweethearting, yet she looked with some covert anxiety at the mail-box. There was an envelope addressed to her, but the superscription was not in Ray's handwriting. The Colorado stamp gave her a hint of whom it might have come from, and ridiculously she felt her heart quickening. Yet why should Karl Wander write to her? She made herself walk slowly up the stairs, and insisted that her hat and gloves and jacket should be put scrupulously in their places before she opened her letter. It proved not to be a letter, after all, but only a number of photographs, taken evidently by the sender, who gave no word of himself. He let the snow-capped solitary peaks utter his meanings for him. The pictures were beautiful and, in some indescribable way, sad—cold and isolate. Kate ran her fingers into the envelope again and again, but she could discover no note there. Neither was there any name, save her own on the cover.

"At least," said Kate testily, "I might have been told whom to thank."

But she knew whom to thank—and she knew with equal positiveness that she would send no thanks. For the gift had been a challenge. It seemed to say: "I dare you to open communication with me. I dare you to break the conscious silence between us!"

Kate did not lift the glove that had been thrown down. She hid the photographs in her clock and told no one about them.

At the close of the third day a note came from Ray. Her line, he said, had followed him to Lake Forest and he had only then found time to answer it. He was seeing old friends and was very much occupied with business and with pleasure, but he hoped to see her before long. Kate laughed aloud at the rebuff. It was, she thought, a sort of Silvertree method of putting her in her place. But she was sorry, too,—sorry for his hurt; sorry, indefinitely and indescribably, for something missed. If it had been Karl Wander whom she had treated like that he would have waited on her doorstep till she came, and if he had felt himself entitled to a quarrel, he would have "had it out" before men and the high gods.

At least, so she imagined he would have done; but upon consideration there were few persons in the world about whom she knew less than about Karl Wander. It seemed as if Honora were actually perverse in the way she avoided his name.



XIV

The spring was coming. Signs of it showed at the park edges, where the high willow hedges began to give forth shoots of yellowish-green; at times the lake was opalescent and the sky had moments of tenderness and warmth. Even through the pavement one seemed to scent the earth; and the flower shops set up their out-of-door booths and solicited the passer-by with blossoms.

When Kate could spare the money, she bought flowers for Marna—for it was flower-time with Marna, and she had seen the Angel of the Annunciation. All that was Celtic in her was coming uppermost. She dreamed and brooded and heard voices. Kate liked to sit in the little West-Side flat and be comforted of the happiness there. She was feeling very absurd herself, and she was ashamed of her excursion into the realms of feminine folly. That was the way she put her defection from "common sense," and her little flare of sentiment for Ray, and all her breathless, ridiculous preparation for him. She had never worn the chrysanthemum dress, and she so loathed the sight of it that she boxed it and put it in the bottom of her trunk.

No word came from Ray. "Sometime" had not materialized and he had failed to call. His name was much in the papers as "best man" or cotillion leader or host at club dinners. He moved in a world of which Kate saw nothing—a rather competitive world, where money counted and where there was a brisk exchange of social amenities. Kate's festivities consisted of settlement dinners and tea here and there, at odd, interesting places with fellow "welfare workers"; and now and then she went with Honora to some University affair. A great many ladies sent her cards to their "afternoons"—ladies whom she met at the home of the President of the University, or with whom she came in contact at Hull House or some of the other settlements. But such diversions she was obliged to deny herself. They would have taken time from her too-busy hours; and she had not the strength to do her work according to her conscience, and then to drag herself halfway across town, merely for the amiability of making her bow and eating an ice in a charming house. Not but that she enjoyed the atmosphere of luxury—the elusive sense of opulence given her by the flowers, the distant music, the smiling, luxurious, complimentary women, the contrast between the glow within and the chill of twilight without—twilight sparkling with the lights of the waiting motors, and the glittering procession on the Drive. But, after all, while others rode, she walked, and sometimes she was very weary. To be sure, she was too gallant, too much at ease in her entertaining world, too expectant of the future, to fret even for a moment about the fact that she was walking while others rode. She hardly gave it a thought. But her disadvantages made her unable to cope with other women socially. She was, as she often said, fond of playing a game; but the social game pushed the point of achievement a trifle too far.

Moreover, there was the mere bother of "dressing the part." Her handsome heavy shoes, her strong, fashionable street gloves, her well-cared-for street frock, and becoming, practical hat she could obtain and maintain in freshness. She was "well-groomed" and made a sort of point of looking competent, as if she felt mistress of herself and her circumstances; she could even make herself dainty for a little dinner, but the silks and furs, the prodigality of yard-long gloves, the fetching boots and whimsical jewels of the ladies who made a fine art of feminine entertainments, were quite beyond her. So, sensibly, she counted it all out.

That Ray was at home in such surroundings, and that, had she been willing to give him the welcome he expected, she might have had a welcome at these as yet unopened doors through which he passed with conscious suavity, sometimes occurred to her. She was but human—and but woman—and she could not be completely oblivious to such things. But they did not, after all, wear a very alluring aspect.

When she dreamed of being happy, as she often did, it was not amid such scenes. Sometimes, when she was half-sleeping, and vague visions of joy haunted the farther chambers of her brain, she saw herself walking among mountains. The setting sun glittered on distant, splendid snows; the torrent rushed by her, filling the world with its clamor; beneath lay the valley, and through the gathering gloom she could see the light of homes. Then, as sleep drew nearer and the actual world slipped farther away, she seemed to be treading the path—homeward—with some companion. Which of those lights spelled home for her she did not know, and whenever she tried to see the face of her companion, the shadows grew deeper,—as deep as oblivion,—and she slept.

She was lonely. She felt she had missed much in missing Ray. She knew her friends disapproved of her; and she was profoundly ashamed that they should have seen her in that light, expectant hour in which she awaited this lover who appeared to be no lover, after all. But she deserved her humiliation. She had conducted herself like the expectant bride, and she had no right to any such attitude because her feelings were not those of a bride.

The thing that she did desperately care about just now was the fitting-up of a home for mothers and babes in the Wisconsin woods. It was to be a place where the young Polish mothers of a part of her district could go and forget the belching horror of the steel mills, and the sultry nights in the crowded, vermin-haunted homes. She hoped for much from it—much more than the physical recuperation, though that was not to be belittled. There was some hitch, at the last, about the endowment. A benevolent spinster had promised to remember the prospective home in her will and neglected to do so and now there were several thousands to be collected from some unknown source. Kate was absorbed with that when she was not engaged with her regular work. Moreover, she made a point of being absorbed. She could not endure the thought that she might be going about with a love-lorn, he-cometh-not expression.

* * * * *

Life has a way of ambling withal for a certain time, and then of breaking into a headlong gallop—bolting free—plunging to catastrophe or liberty. Kate went her busy ways for a fortnight, somewhat chastened in spirit, secretly a little ashamed, and altogether very determined to make such a useful person of herself that she could forget her apparent lack of attractions (for she told herself mercilessly that if she had been very much desired by Ray he would not have been able to leave her upon so slight a provocation). Then, one day,—it was the last day of May and the world had rejuvenated itself,—she came across him.

A more unlikely place hardly could have been chosen for their meeting than an "isle of safety" in mid-street, with motors hissing and toof-toofing round about, policemen gesticulating, and the crowd ceaselessly surging. The two were marooned with twenty others, and met face to face, squarely, like foes who set themselves to combat. At first he tried not to see her, and she, noting his impulse, thought it would be the part of propriety not to see him. Then that struck her as so futile, so childish, so altogether a libel on the good-fellowship which they had enjoyed in the old days, that she held out her hand.

He swept his hat from his head and grasped the extended hand in a violent yet tremulous clutch.

"We seem to be going in opposite directions," she said. There was just a hint of a rising inflection in the accent.

He laughed with nervous delight.

"We are going the same way," he declared. "That's a well-established fact."

An irritable policeman broke in on them with:—

"Do you people want to get across the street or not?"

"Personally," said McCrea, smiling at him, "I'm not particular."

The policeman was Irish and he liked lovers. He thought he was looking at a pair of them.

"Well, it's not the place I'd be choosing for conversation, sir," he said.

"Right you are," agreed Ray. "I suppose you'd prefer a lane in Ballamacree?"

"Yes, sir. Good luck to you, sir."

"Same to you," called back Ray.

He and Kate swung into the procession on the boulevard. Kate was smiling happily.

"You haven't changed a bit!" she cried. "You keep right on enjoying yourself, don't you?"

"Not a bit of it," retorted Ray indignantly. "I've been miserable! You know I have. The only satisfaction I got at all was in hoping I was making you miserable, too. Was I?"

"I wouldn't own to it if you had," said Kate. "Shall we forgive each other?"

"Do you want it to be as easy as that—after all we've been through? Wouldn't it be more satisfactory to quarrel?"

"You can if you want, of course," Kate laughed. "But hadn't it better be with some other person? Really, I wanted to see you dreadfully—or, at least, I wanted to see you pleasantly. I had made preparations. You didn't let me know when to expect you, and I had an engagement when you did come. Weren't you foolish to get in a rage?"

"But I was so frightfully disappointed. I expected so much and I had expected it so long."

"Ray!" Her voice was almost stern, and he turned to look at her half with amusement, half with apprehension. "Expect nothing. Enjoy yourself to-day."

"But how can I enjoy myself to-day unless I am made to understand that there is something I may expect from you? Circumstances have kept us playing fast and loose long enough. Can't we come to an understanding, Kate?"

Kate stopped to look in a florist's window and fixed her eyes upon a vast bouquet of pale pink roses.

"Do say something," he said after a time. "Shall I speak from the heart?"

"Oh, yes, please." He drew his breath in sharply between his teeth.

"Well, then, I'm not ready to give up my free life, Ray. I can't seem to see my way to relinquishing any part of my liberty. I think you know why. I've told you everything in my letters. I feel too experimental to settle down."

"You don't love me!"

"Did I ever say I did?"

"You gave me to understand that you might."

"You wanted me to try."

"But you haven't succeeded? Then, for heaven's sake, let me go and make out some other programme for myself. I've come back to you because I couldn't be satisfied away from you. I've seen women, if it comes to that,—cities of women. But there's no one like you, Kate, to my mind; no one who so makes me enjoy the hour, or so plan for the future. Ever since that day when you stood up by the C Bench and fought for the right of women to sit on it,—that silly old C Bench,—I've liked your warring spirit. And I come back, by Jove, to find you marching with the militant women! Well, I didn't know whether to laugh or swear! Anyway, you do beat the world."

"A pretty sweetheart I'd make," cried Kate, disgusted with herself. "I'm only good to provide you with amusement, it seems."

"You provide me with the breath of life! Heavens, what a spring you have when you walk! And you 're as straight as a grenadier. I'm so sick of seeing slouching, die-away women! It's only you American women who know how to carry yourselves. Oh, Kate, if you can't answer me, don't, but let me see you once in a while. I'm a weak character, and I've got to enjoy your society a little longer."

"You can enjoy as much of it as you please, only you mustn't be holding me up to some tremendous responsibility, and blaming me by and by for things I can't help."

"I give you my word I'll not. Oh, Kate, is this a busy day with you? Can't you come out into the country somewhere? We could take the electric and in an hour we'd be out where we could see orchards in bloom."

"I could go," mused Kate. "I've a half-holiday coming to me, and really, if I were to take it to-day, no one would care."

"The ayes have it! Let us go to the station-I'll buy plenty of tickets and we can get off at any place where the climate seems mild and the natives kind."

* * * * *

It proved to be a day of encounters.

They had traveled well beyond the city, past the straggling suburbs and the comfortable, friendly old villages, some of which antedated the city of which they were now the fringe, and had reached the wider sweeps of the prairie, with the fine country homes of those who sought privacy. At length they came to a junction of the road.

"All out here for—"

They could not catch the name.

"Isn't that where we're going?" laughed Kate.

"Of course it is," Ray responded.

They hastened out and looked about them for the train they had supposed would be in waiting. It was not yet in, however, but was showing its dark nose a mile or two down the track.

"I must see about our tickets," said Ray. "Perhaps we'll have to buy others."

Kate had been standing with her back to the ticket station window, but now she turned, and through the ticker-seller's window envisaged the pale, bitterly sullen face of Lena Vroom. It looked sunken and curiously alien, as if its possessor felt herself unfriended of all the world.

"Lena!" cried Kate, too startled to use tact or to wait for Lena to give the first sign of recognition.

Lena nodded coolly.

"Oh, is this where you are?" cried Kate. "We've looked everywhere for you."

"If I'd wanted to be found, I could have been, you know." The tone was muffled and pitifully insolent.

"You are living out here?"

"I live a few miles from here."

"And you like the work? Is it—is it well with you, Lena?"

"It will never be well with me, and you know it. I broke down, that's all. I can't stand anything now that takes thought. This just suits me—a little mechanical work like this. I'm not fit to talk, Kate. You'll have to excuse me. It upsets me. I'm ordered to keep very quiet. If I get upset, I'll not be fit even for this."

"I'll go," said Kate contritely. "And I'll tell no one." She battled to keep the tears from her eyes. "Only tell me, need you work at all? I thought you had enough to get along on, Lena. You often told me so—forgive me, but we've been close friends, you know, even if we aren't now."

"My money's gone," said Lena in a dead voice. "I used up my principal. It wasn't much. I'm in debt, too, and I've got to get that paid off. But I've a comfortable place to live, Kate, with a good motherly German woman. I tell you for your peace of mind, because I know you—you always think you have to be affectionate and to care about what people are doing. But you'll serve me best by leaving me alone. Understand?"

"Oh, Lena, yes! I'll not come near you, but I can't help thinking about you. And I beg and pray you to write me if you need me at any time."

"I can't talk about anything any more. It tires me. There's your train."

Ray bought his tickets to nowhere in particular. The little train came on like a shuttle through the blue loom of the air; they got on, and were shot forward through bright green fields, past expectant groves and flowering orchards, cheered by the elate singing of innumerable birds.

Ray had recognized Lena, but Kate refused to discuss her.

"Life has hurt her," she said, "and she's in hiding like a wounded animal. I couldn't talk about her. I—I love her. It's like that with me. Once I've loved a person, I can't get it out of my system."

She was staring from the window, trying to get back her happiness. Ray snatched her hand and held it in a crushing grip.

"For God's sake, Kate, try to love me, then!" he whispered.

It was spring all about them,—"the pretty ring-time,"—and she had just seen what it was to be a defeated and unloved woman. She felt a thrill go through her, and she turned an indiscreetly bright face upon her companion.

"Don't expect too much," she whispered back, "but I will try."

They went on, almost with the feeling that they were in Arcadia, and drew up at a platform in the midst of woods, through which they could see a crooked trail winding.

"Here's our place!" cried Ray. "Don't you recognize it? Not that you've ever seen it before."

They dashed, laughing, from the train, and found themselves a minute later in a bird-haunted solitude, among flowers, at the beginning of the woodland walk. There seemed to be no need to comment upon the beauty of things. It was quite enough that the bland, caressing air beat upon their cheeks in playful gusts, that the robins gave no heed to them, and that "the little gray leaves were kind" to them.

Never was there a more capricious trail than the one they set themselves to follow. It skirted the edge of a little morass where the young flags were coming up; it followed the windings of a brook where the wild forget-me-not threw up its little azure buds; it crossed the stream a dozen times by means of shaking bridges, or fallen trees; it had magnificent gateways between twin oaks—gateways to yet pleasanter reaches of leaving woodland.

"Whatever can it lead to?" wondered Kate.

"To some new kind of Paradise, perhaps," answered Ray. "And see, some one has been before us! Hush—"

He drew her back into the bushes at the side, beneath a low-hanging willow. A man and a woman were coming toward them. The woman was walking first, treading proudly, her head thrown back, her body in splendid motion, like that of an advancing Victory. The man, taller than she, was resting one hand upon her shoulder. He, too, looked like one who had mastered the elements and who felt the pangs of translation into some more ethereal and liberating world. As they came on, proud as Adam and Eve in the first days of their existence, Kate had a blinding recognition of them. They were David Fulham and Mary Morrison.

She looked once, saw their faces shining with pagan joy, and, turning her gaze from them, sank on the earth behind the screen of bushes. Ray perceived her desire to remain unseen, and stepped behind the wide-girthed oak. The two passed them, still treading that proud step. When they were gone, Kate arose and led the way on along the path. She wished to turn back, but she dared not, fearing to meet the others on the station platform. Ray had recognized Fulham, but he did not know his companion, and Kate would not tell him.

"What a fool!" he said. "I thought he loved his wife. She's a fine woman."

"He loves his wife," affirmed Kate stalwartly. "But there's a hedonistic fervor in him. He's—"

"He's a fool!" reaffirmed Ray. "Shall we talk of something else?"

"By all means," agreed Kate.

They tried, but the glory of the day was slain. They had seen the serpent in their Eden—and where there is one reptile there may always be another.

When they thought it discreet, they went back to the junction. Lena Vroom was still there. She was nibbling at some dry-looking sandwiches. Her glance forbade them to say anything personal to her, and Kate, with a clutch at the heart, passed her by as if she had been any ticket-seller.

She wondered if any one, seeing that gray-faced, heavy-eyed woman, would dream of her so dearly won Ph.D. or of the Phi Beta Kappa key which she had won but not claimed! She had not even dared to converse, lest Lena's fragile self-possession should break. She evidently was in the clutches of nervous fatigue and was fighting it with her last remnant of courage. Even the veriest layman could guess as much.

Kate hastened home, and as she opened the door she heard the voice of Honora mingled with the happy cries of the twins. They were down in the drawing-room, and Honora had bought some colored balloons for them, and was running to and fro with them in her hand, while Patience and Patricia shrieked with delight.

"What a lovely day it's been, hasn't it?" Honora queried, pausing in her play. "I've so longed to be in the country, but matters had reached such a critical point at the laboratory that I couldn't get away. Do you know, Kate, the great experiment that David and I are making is much further along than he surmises! I'm going to have a glorious surprise for him one of these days. Business took him over to the Academy of Science to-day and I was so glad of it. It gave me the laboratory quite to myself. But really, I've got to get out into the country. I'm going to ask David if he won't take me next Sunday."

Kate felt herself growing giddy. She dared not venture to reply. She kissed the babies and sped up to her room. But Honora's happy laughter followed her even there. Then suddenly there was a scurrying. Kate guessed that David was coming. The babies were being carried up to the nursery lest they should annoy him.

Kate beat the wall with her fists.

"Fool! Fool!" she cried. "Why didn't she let him see her laughing and dancing like that? Why didn't she? She'll come down all prim and staid for him and he'll never dream what she really is like. Oh, how can she be so blind? I don't know how to stand it! And I don't know what to do! Why isn't there some one to tell me what I ought to do?"

Mary Morrison was late to dinner. She said she had run across an old Californian friend and they had been having tea together and seeing the shops. She had no appetite for dinner, which seemed to carry out her story. Her eyes were as brilliant as stars, and a magnetic atmosphere seemed to emanate from her. The men all talked to her. They seemed disturbed—not themselves. There was something in her glowing lips, in her swimming glance, in the slow beauty of her motions, that called to them like the pipes o' Pan. She was as pagan and as beautiful as the spring, and she brought to them thoughts of elemental joys. It was as if, sailing a gray sea, they had come upon a palm-shaded isle, and glimpsed Calypso lying on the sun-dappled grass.



XV

That night Kate said she would warn Honora; but in the morning she found herself doubtful of the wisdom of such a course. Or perhaps she really lacked the courage for it. At any rate, she put it off. She contemplated talking to Mary Morrison, and of appealing to her honor, or her compassion, and of advising her to go away. But Mary was much from home nowadays, and Kate, who had discouraged an intimacy, did not know how to cultivate it at this late hour. Several days went by with Kate in a tumult of indecision. Sometimes she decided that the romance between Mary and David was a mere spring madness, which would wear itself out and do little damage. At other moments she felt it was laid upon her to speak and avert a catastrophe.

Then, in the midst of her indecision, she was commanded to go to Washington to attend a national convention of social workers. She was to represent the Children's Protective Agency, and to give an account of the method of its support and of its system of operation. She was surprised and gratified at this invitation, for she had had no idea that her club and settlement-house addresses had attracted attention to that extent. She made so little effort when she spoke that she could not feel much respect for her achievement. It was as if she were talking to a friend, and the size of her audience in no way affected her neighborly accent.

She did not see that it was precisely this thing which was winning favor for her. Her lack of self-consciousness, her way of telling people precisely what they wished to know about the subject in hand, her sense of values, which enabled her to see that a human fact is the most interesting thing in the world, were what counted for her. If she had been "better trained," and more skilled in the dreary and often meaningless science of statistics, or had become addicted to the benevolent jargon talked by many welfare workers, her array of facts would have fallen on more or less indifferent ears. But she offered not vital statistics, but vital documents. She talked in personalities—in personalities so full of meaning that, concrete as they were, they took on general significance—they had the effect of symbols. She furnished watchwords for her listeners, and she did it unconsciously. She would have been indignant if she had been told how large a part her education in Silvertree played in her present aptitude. She had grown up in a town which feasted on dramatic gossip, and which thrived upon the specific personal episode. To the vast and terrific city, and to her portion of the huge task of mitigating the woe of its unfit, Kate brought the quality which, undeveloped, would have made of her no more than an entertaining village gossip.

What stories there were to tell! What stories of bravery in defeat, of faith in the midst of disaster, of family devotion in spite of squalor and subterfuges and all imaginable shiftlessness and shiftiness.

Kate had got hold of the idea of the universality of life—the universality of joy and pain and hope. She was finding it easy now to forgive "the little brothers" for all possible perversity, all defects, all ingratitude. Wayward children they might be,—children uninstructed in the cult of goodness, happiness, serenity,—but outside the pale of human consideration they could not be. The greater their fault the greater their need. Kate was learning, in spite of her native impatience and impulsiveness, to be very patient. She was becoming the defender of those who stumbled, the explainer of those who themselves lacked explanations or who were too defiant to give them.

So she was going to Washington. She was to talk on a proposed school for the instruction of mothers. She often had heard her father say that a good mother was an exception. She had not believed him—had taken it for granted that this idea of his was a part of his habitual pessimism. But since she had come up to the city and become an officer of the Children's Protective Association, she had changed her mind, and a number of times she had been on the point of writing to her father to tell him that she was beginning to understand his point of view.

This idea of a school for mothers had been her own, originally, and a development of the little summer home for Polish mothers which she had helped to establish. She had proposed it, half in earnest, merely, at Hull House on a certain occasion when there were a number of influential persons present. It had appealed to them, however, as a practical means of remedying certain difficulties daily encountered.

Just how large a part Jane Addams had played in the enlightenment of Kate's mind and the dissolution of her inherent exclusiveness, Kate could not say. Sometimes she gave the whole credit to her. For here was a woman with a genius for inclusiveness. She was the sister of all men. If a youth sinned, she asked herself if she could have played any part in the prevention of that sin had she had more awareness, more solicitude. It was she who had, more than others,—though there was a great army of men and women of good will to sustain her,—promulgated this idea of responsibility. A city, she maintained, was a great home. She demanded, then, to know if the house was made attractive, instructive, protective. Was it so conducted that the wayward sons and daughters, as well as the obedient ones, could find safety and happiness within it? Were the privileges only for the rich, the effective, and the out-reaching? Or were they for those who lacked the courage to put out their hands for joy and knowledge? Were they for those who had not yet learned the tongue of the family into which they had newly entered? Were they for those who fought the rules and shirked the cares and dug for themselves a pit of sorrow? She believed they were for all. She could not countenance disinheritance. Yes, always, in high places and low, among friends and enemies, this sad, kind, patient, quiet woman, Jane Addams, of Hull House, had preached the indissolubility of the civic family. Kate had listened and learned. Nay, more, she had added her own interpretations. She was young, strong, brave, untaught by rebuff, and she had the happy and beautiful insolence of those who have not known defeat. She said things Jane Addams would have hesitated to say. She lacked the fine courtesy of the elder woman; but she made, for that very reason, a more dramatic propaganda.

* * * * *

Kate had known what it was to tramp the streets in rain and wind; she had known what it was to face infection and drunken rage; she had looked on sights both piteous and obscene; but she had now begun—and much, much sooner than was usual with workers in her field—to reap some of the rewards of toil.

Soon or late things in this life resolve themselves into a question of personality. History and art, success and splendor, plenitude and power, righteousness and immortal martyrdom, are all, in the last resolve, personality and nothing more. Kate was having her swift rewards because of that same indescribable, incontestable thing. The friendship of remarkable women and men—women, particularly—was coming to her. Fine things were being expected of her. She had a vitality which indicated genius—that is, if genius is intensity, as some hold. At any rate, she was vividly alert, naturally eloquent, physically capable of impressing her personality upon others.

She thought little of this, however. She merely enjoyed the rewards as they came, and she was unfeignedly surprised when, on her way to Washington, whither she traveled with many others, her society was sought by those whom she had long regarded with something akin to awe. She did not guess how her enthusiasm and fresh originality stimulated persons of lower vitality and more timid imagination.

At Washington she had a signal triumph. The day of her speech found the hall in which the convention was held crowded with a company including many distinguished persons—among them, the President of the United States. Kate had expected to suffer rather badly from stage fright, but a sense of her opportunity gave her courage. She talked, in her direct "Silvertree method," as Marna called it, of the ignorance of mothers, the waste of children, the vast economic blunder which for one reason and another even the most progressive of States had been so slow to perceive. She said that if the commercial and agricultural interests of the country were fostered and protected, why should not the most valuable product of all interests, human creatures, be given at least an equal amount of consideration. In her own way, which by a happy instinct never included what was hackneyed, she drew a picture of the potentialities of the child considered merely from an economic point of view, and in impulsive words she made plain the need for a bureau, which she suggested should be virtually a part of the governmental structure, in which should be vested authority for the care of children,—the Bureau of Children, she denominated it,—a scientific extension of motherhood!

It seemed a part of the whole stirring experience that she should be asked with several others to lunch at the White House with the President and his wife. The President, it appeared, was profoundly interested. A quiet man, with a judicial mind, he perceived the essential truth of Kate's propaganda. He had, indeed, thought of something similar himself, though he had not formulated it. He went so far as to express a desire that this useful institution might attain realization while he was yet in the presidential chair.

"I would like to ask you unofficially, Miss Barrington," he said at parting, "if you are one to whom responsibility is agreeable?"

"Oh," cried Kate, taken aback, "how do I know? I am so young, Mr. President, and so inexperienced!"

"We must all be that at some time or other," smiled the President. "But it is in youth that the ideas come; and enthusiasm has a value which is often as great as experience."

"Ideas are accidents, Mr. President," answered Kate. "It doesn't follow that one can carry out a plan because she has seen a vision."

"No," admitted the President, shaking hands with her. "But you don't look to me like a woman who would let a vision go to waste. You will follow it up with all the power that is in you."

* * * * *

It happened that Kate's propaganda appealed to the popular imagination. The papers took it up; they made much of the President's interest in it; they wrote articles concerning the country girl who had come up to town, and who, with a simple faith and courage, had worked among the unfortunate and the delinquent, and whose native eloquence had made her a favorite with critical audiences. They printed her picture and idealized her in the interests of news.

A lonely, gruff old man in Silvertree read of it, and when the drawn curtains had shut him away from the scrutiny of his neighbors, he walked the floor, back and forth, following the worn track in the dingy carpet, thinking.

They talked of it at the Caravansary, and were proud; and many men and women who had met her by chance, or had watched her with interest, openly rejoiced.

"They're coming on, the Addams breed of citizens," said they. "Here's a new one with the trick—whatever it is—of making us think and care and listen. She's getting at the roots of our disease, and it's partly because she's a woman. She sees that it has to be right with the children if it's to be right with the family. Long live the Addams breed!"

Friends wired their congratulations, and their comments were none the less acceptable because they were premature. Many wrote her; Ray McCrea, alone, of her intimate associates, was silent. Kate guessed why, but she lacked time to worry. She only knew that her great scheme was afoot—that it went. But she would have been less than mortal if she had not felt a thrill of commingled apprehension and satisfaction at the fact that Kate Barrington, late of Silvertree and its gossiping, hectoring, wistful circles, was in the foreground. She had had an Idea which could be utilized in the high service of the world, and the most utilitarian and idealistic public in the world had seized upon it.

So, naturally enough, the affairs of Honora Fulham became somewhat blurred to Kate's perception. Besides, she was unable to decide what to do. She had heard that one should never interfere between husband and wife. Moreover, she was very young, and she believed in her friends. Others might do wrong, but not one's chosen. People of her own sort had temptations, doubtless, but they overcame them. That was their business—that was their obligation. She might proclaim herself a democrat, but she was a moral aristocrat, at any rate. She depended upon those in her class to do right.

She was a trifle chilled when she returned to find how little time Honora had to give to her unfolding of the great new scheme. Honora had her own excitement. Her wonderful experiment was drawing to a culmination. Honora could talk of nothing else. If Kate wanted to promulgate a scheme for the caring for the Born, very well. Honora had a tremendous business with the Unborn. So she talked Kate down.



XVI

Then came the day of Honora's victory!

It had been long expected, yet when it came it had the effect of a miracle. It was, however, a miracle which she realized. She was burningly aware that her great moment had come.

She left the lights flaring in the laboratory, and, merely stopping to put the catch on the door, ran down the steps, fastening her linen coat over her working dress as she went. David would be at home. He would be resting, perhaps,—she hoped so. For days he had been feverish and strange, and she had wondered if he were tormented by that sense of world-stress which was forever driving him. Was there no achievement that would satisfy him, she wondered. Yes, yes, he must be satisfied now! Moreover, he should have all the credit. To have found the origin of life, though only in a voiceless creature,—a reptile,—was not that an unheard-of victory? She would claim no credit; for without him and his daring to inspire her she would not have dreamed of such an experiment.

Of course, she might have telephoned to him, but it never so much as occurred to her to do that. She wanted to cry the words into his ear:—

"We have it! The secret is ours! There is a hidden door into the house of life—and we've opened it!"

Oh, what treasured, ancient ideas fell with the development of this new fact! She did not want to think of that, because of those who, in the rearrangement of understanding, must suffer. But as for her, she would be bold to face it, as the mate and helper of a great scientist should be. She would set her face toward the sun and be unafraid of any glory. Her thoughts spun in her head, her pulses throbbed. She did not know that she was thinking it, but really she was feeling that in a moment more she would be in David's arms. Only some such gesture would serve to mark the climax of this great moment. Though they so seldom caressed, though they had indulged so little in emotion, surely now, after their long and heavy task, they could have the sweet human comforts. They could be lovers because they were happy.

Perhaps, after all, she would only cry out to him:—"It will be yours, David—the Norden prize!" That would tell the whole thing.

People looked after her as she sped down the street. At first they thought she was in distress, but a glance at her shining face, its nobility accentuated by her elation, made that idea untenable. She was obviously the bearer of good tidings.

Dr. von Shierbrand, passing on the other side of the street, called out:—

"Carrying the good news from Ghent to Aix?"

An old German woman, with a laden basket on her arm nodded cheerfully.

"It's a baby," she said aloud to whoever might care to corroborate.

But Honora carried happiness greater than any dreamed,—a secret of the ages,—and the prize was her man's fame.

She reached her own door, and with sure, swift hands, fitted the key in the lock. The house wore a welcoming aspect. The drawing-room was filled with blossoming plants, and the diaphanous curtains which Blue-eyed Mary had hung at the windows blew softly in the breeze. The piano, with its suggestive litter of music, stood open, and across the bench trailed one of Mary's flowered chiffon scarfs.

"David!" called Honora. "David!"

Two blithe baby voices answered her from the rear porch. The little ones were there with Mrs. Hays, and they excitedly welcomed this variation in their day's programme.

"In a minute, babies," called Honora. "Mamma will come in a minute."

Yes, she and David would go together to the babies, and they would "tell them," the way people "told the bees."

"David!" she kept calling. "David!"

She looked in the doors of the rooms she passed, and presently reached her own. As she entered, a large envelope addressed in David's writing, conspicuously placed before the face of her desk-clock, caught her eye. She imagined that it contained some bills or memoranda, and did not stop for it, but ran on.

"Oh, he's gone to town," she cried with exasperation, "and I haven't an idea where to reach him!"

Closing her ears to the calls of the little girls, she returned to her own room and shut herself in. She was completely exasperated with the need for patience. Never had she so wanted David, and he was not there—he was not there to hear that the moment of triumph had come for both of them and that they were justified before their world.

Petulantly she snatched the envelope from the desk and opened it. It was neither bills nor memoranda which fell out, but a letter. Surprised, she unfolded it.

Her eyes swept it, not gathering its meaning. It might have been written in some foreign language, so incomprehensible did it seem. But something deep down in her being trembled as if at approaching dissolution and sent up its wild messages of alarm. Vaguely, afar off, like the shouts of a distant enemy on the hills, the import besieged her spirit.

"I must read it again," she said simply.

She went over it slowly, like one deciphering an ancient hieroglyph.

"My DEAR HONORA:—" (it ran.)

"I am off and away with Mary Morrison. Will this come to you as a complete surprise? I hardly think so. You have been my good comrade and assistant; but Mary Morrison is my woman. I once thought you were, but there was a mistake somewhere. Either I misjudged, or you changed. I hope you'll come across happiness, too, sometime. I never knew the meaning of the word till I met Mary. You and I haven't been able to make each other out. You thought I was bound up heart and soul in the laboratory. I may as well tell you that only a fractional part of my nature was concerned with it. Mary is an unlearned person compared with you, but she knew that, and it is the great fact for both of us.

"It is too bad about the babies. We ought never to have had them. See that they have a good education and count on me to help you. You'll find an account at the bank in your name. There'll be more there for you when that is gone.

"DAVID."

The old German woman was returning, her basket emptied of its load, when Honora came down the steps and crossed the Plaisance.

"My God," said the old woman in her own tongue, "the child did not live!"

Honora walked as somnambulists walk, seeing nothing. But she found her way to the door of the laboratory. The white glare of the chemical lights was over everything—over all the significant, familiar litter of the place. The workmanlike room was alive and palpitating with the personality which had gone out from it—the flaming personality of David Fulham.

The woman who had sold her birthright of charm and seduction for his sake sat down to eat her mess of pottage. Not that she thought even as far as that. Thought appeared to be suspended. As a typhoon has its calm center, so the mad tumult of her spirit held a false peace. She rested there in it, torpid as to emotion, in a curious coma.

Yet she retained her powers of observation. She took her seat before the tanks in which she had demonstrated the correctness of David's amazing scientific assumption. Yet now the creatures that he had burgeoned by his skill, usurping, as it might seem to a timid mind, the very function of the Creator, looked absurd and futile—hateful even. For these things, bearing, as it was possible, after all, no relation to actual life, had she spent her days in desperate service. Then, suddenly, it swept over her, like a blasting wave of ignited gas, that she never had had the pure scientific flame! She had not worked for Truth, but that David might reap great rewards. With her as with the cave woman, the man's favor was the thing! If the cave woman won his approval with base service, she, the aspiring creature of modern times, was no less the slave of her own subservient instincts! And she had failed as the cave woman failed—as all women seemed eventually to fail. The ever-repeated tragedy of woman had merely been enacted once more, with herself for the sorry heroine.

Yet none of these thoughts was distinct. They passed from her mind like the spume puffed from the wave's crest. She knew nothing of time. Around her blazed and sputtered the terrible white lights. The day waned; the darkness fell; and when night had long passed its dark meridian and the anticipatory cocks began to scent the dawn and to make their discovery known, there came a sharp knocking at the door.

It shattered Honora's horrible reverie as if it had been an explosion. The chambers of her ears quaked with the reverberations. She sprang to her feet with a scream which rang through the silent building.

"Let me in! Let me in!" called a voice. "It's only Kate. Let me in, Honora, or I'll call some one to break down the door."

* * * * *

Kate had mercy on that distorted face which confronted her. It was not the part of loyalty or friendship to look at it. She turned out the spluttering, glaring lights, and quiet and shadow stole over the room.

"Well, Honora, I found the note and I know the whole of your trouble. Remember," she said quietly, "it's your great hour. You have a chance to show what you're made of now."

"What I'm made of!" said Honora brokenly. "I'm like all the women. I'm dying of jealousy, Kate,—dying of it."

"Jealousy—you?" cried Kate. "Why, Honora—"

"You thought I couldn't feel it, I suppose,—thought I was above it? I'm not above anything—not anything—" Her voice straggled off into a curious, shameless sob with a sound in it like the bleating of a lamb.

"Stop that!" said Kate, sharply. "Pull yourself together, woman. Don't be a fool."

"Go away," sobbed Honora. "Don't stay here to watch me. My heart is broken, that's all. Can't you let me alone?"

"No, I can't—I won't. Stand up and fight, woman. You can be magnificent, if you want to. It can't be that you'd grovel, Honora."

"You know very little of what you're talking about," cried Honora, whipped into wholesome anger at last. "I've been a fool from the beginning. The whole thing's my fault."

"I don't see how."

Kate was getting her to talk; was pulling her up out of the pit of shame and anguish into which she had fallen. She sat down in a deal chair which stood by the window, and Honora, without realizing it, dropped into a chair, too. The neutral morning sky was beginning to flush and the rosiness reached across the lead-gray lake, illuminated the windows of the sleeping houses, and tinted even the haggard monochrome of the laboratory with a promise of day.

"Why, it's my fault because I wouldn't take what was coming to me. I wouldn't even be what I was born to be!"

"I know," said Kate, "that you underwent some sort of a transformation. What was it?"

She hardly expected an answer, but Honora developed a perfervid lucidity.

"Oh, Kate, you've said yourself that I was a very different girl when you knew me first. I was a student then, and an ambitious one, too; but there wasn't a girl in this city more ready for a woman's role than I. I longed to be loved—I lived in the idea of it. No matter how hard I tried to devote myself to the notion of a career, I really was dreaming of the happiness that was going to come to me when—when Life had done its duty by me."

She spoke the words with a dramatic clearness. The terrific excitement she had undergone, and which she now held in hand, sharpened her faculties. The powers of memory and of expression were intensified. She fairly burned upon Kate there in the beautiful, disguising light of the morning. Her weary face was flushed; her eyes were luminous. Her terrific sorrow put on the mask of joy.

"You see, I loved David almost from the first—I mean from the beginning of my University work. The first time I saw him crossing the campus he held my attention. There was no one else in the least like him, so vivid, so exotic, so almost fierce. When I found out who he was, I confess that I directed my studies so that I should work with him. Not that I really expected to know him personally, but I wanted to be near him and have him enlarge life for me. I felt that it would take on new meanings if I could only hear his interpretations of it."

Kate shivered with sympathy at the woman's passion, and something like envy stirred in her. Here was a world of delight and torment of which she knew nothing, and beside it her own existence, restless and eager though it had been, seemed a meager affair.

"Well, the idea burned in me for months and years. But I hid it. No one guessed anything about it. Certainly David knew nothing of it. Then, when I was beginning on my graduate work, I was with him daily. But he never seemed to see me—he saw only my work, and he seldom praised that. He expected it to be well done. As for me, I was satisfied. The mere fact that we were comrades, forced to think of the same matters several hours of each day, contented me. I couldn't imagine what life would be away from him; and I was afraid to think of him in relation to myself."

"Afraid?"

"Afraid—I mean just that. I knew others thought him a genius in relation to his work. But I knew he was a genius in regard to life. I felt sure that, if he turned that intensity of his upon life instead of upon science, he would be a destructive force—a high explosive. This idea of mine was confirmed in time. It happened one evening when a number of us were over in the Scammon Garden listening to the out-of-door players. I grew tired of sitting and slipped from my seat to wander about a little in the darkness. I had reached the very outer edge of seats and was standing there enjoying the garden, when I overheard two persons talking together. A man said: 'Fulham will go far if he doesn't meet a woman.' 'Nonsense,' the woman said; 'he's an anchorite.' 'An inflammatory one,' the man returned. 'Mind, I don't say he knows it. Probably he thinks he's cast for the scientific role to the end of his days, but I know the fellow better than he does himself. I tell you, if a woman of power gets hold of him, he'll be as drunk as Abelard with the madness of it. Over in Europe they allow for that sort of thing. They let a man make an art of loving. Here they insist that it shall be incidental. But Fulham won't care about conventionalities if the idea ever grips him. He's born for love, and it's a lucky thing for the University that he hasn't found it out.' 'We ought to plan a sane and reasonable marriage for him,' said the woman. 'Wouldn't that be a good compromise?' 'It would be his salvation,' the man said."

Honora poured the words out with such rapidity that Kate hardly could follow her.

"How you remember it all!" broke in Kate.

"If I remember anything, wouldn't it be that? As I say, it confirmed me in what I already had guessed. I felt fierce to protect him. My jealousy was awake in me. I watched him more closely than ever. His daring in the laboratory grew daily. He talked openly about matters that other men were hardly daring to dream of, and his brain seemed to expand every day like some strange plant under calcium rays. I thought what a frightful loss to science it would be if the wilder qualities of his nature got the upper hand, and I wondered how I could endure it if—"

She drew herself up with a horror of realization. The thing that so long ago she had thought she could not endure was at last upon her! Her teeth began to chatter again, and her hands, which had been clasped, to twist themselves with the writhing motion of the mentally distraught.

"Go on!" commanded Kate. "What happened next?"

"I let him love me!"

"I thought you said he hadn't noticed you."

"He hadn't; and I didn't talk with him more than usual or coquette with him. But I let down the barriers in my mind. I never had been ashamed of loving him, but now I willed my love to stream out toward him like—like banners of light. If I had called him aloud, he couldn't have answered more quickly. He turned toward me, and I saw all his being set my way. Oh, it was like a transfiguration! Then, as soon as ever I saw that, I began holding him steady. I let him feel that we were to keep on working side by side, quietly using and increasing our knowledge. I made him scourge his love back; I made him keep his mind uppermost; I saved him from himself."

"Oh, Honora! And then you were married?"

"And then we were married. You remember how sudden it was, and how wonderful; but not wonderful in the way it might have been. I kept guard over myself. I wouldn't wear becoming dresses; I wouldn't even let him dream what I really was like—wouldn't let him see me with my hair down because I knew it was beautiful. I combed it plainly and dressed like a nurse or a nun, and every day I went to the laboratory with him and kept him at his work. He had got hold of this dazzling idea of the extraneous development of life, and he set himself to prove it. I worked early and late to help him. I let him go out and meet people and reap honors, and I stayed and did the drudgery. But don't imagine I was a martyr. I liked it. I belonged to him. It was my honor and delight to work for him. I wanted him to have all of the credit. The more important the result, the more satisfaction I should have in proclaiming him the victor. I was really at the old business of woman, subordinating myself to a man I loved. But I was doing it in a new way, do you see? I was setting aside the privilege of my womanhood for him, refraining from making any merely feminine appeal. You remember hearing Dr. von Shierbrand say there was but one way woman should serve man—the way in which Marguerite served Faust? It made me laugh. I knew a harder road than that to walk—a road of more complete abnegation."

"But the babies came."

"Yes, the babies came. I was afraid even to let him be as happy in them as he wanted to be. I held him away. I wouldn't let him dwell on the thought of me as the mother of those darlings. I dared not even be as happy myself as I wished, but I had secret joys that I told him nothing about, because I was saving him for himself and his work. But at what a cost, Kate!"

"Honora, it was sacrilegious!"

Honora leaped to her feet again.

"Yes, yes," she cried, "it was. And now all has happened according to prophecy, and he's gone with this woman! He thinks she's his mate, but, I—I was his mate. And I defrauded him. So now he's taken her because she was kind, because she loved him, because—she was beautiful!"

"She looks like you."

"Don't I know it? It's my beauty that he's gone away with—the beauty I wouldn't let him see. Of course, he doesn't realize it. He only knows life cheated him, and now he's trying to make up to himself for what he's lost."

"Oh, can you excuse him like that?"

The daylight was hardening, and it threw Honora's drawn face into repellent relief.

"I don't excuse him at all!" she said. "I condemn him! I condemn him! With all his intellect, to be such a fool! And to be so cruel—so hideously cruel!"

But she checked herself sharply. She looked around her with eyes that seemed to take in things visible and invisible—all that had been enacted in that curious room, all the paraphernalia, all the significance of those uncompleted, important experiments. Then suddenly her face paled and yet burned with light.

"But I know a great revenge," she said. "I know a revenge that will break his heart!"

"Don't say things like that," begged Kate. "I don't recognize you when you're like that."

"When you hear what the revenge is, you will," said Honora proudly.

"We're going now," Kate told her with maternal decision. "Here's your coat."

"Home?" She began trembling again and the haunted look crept back into her eyes.

Kate paid no heed. She marched Honora swiftly along the awakened streets and into the bereaved house, past the desecrated chamber where David's bed stood beside his wife's, up to Kate's quiet chamber. Honora stretched herself out with an almost moribund gesture. Then the weight of her sorrow covered her like a blanket. She slept the strange deep sleep of those who dare not face the waking truth.



XVII

Kate, who was facing it, telegraphed to Karl Wander. It was all she could think of to do.

"Can you come?" she asked. "David Fulham has gone away with Mary Morrison. Honora needs you. You are the cousin of both women. Thought I had better turn to you." She was brutally frank, but it never occurred to her to mince matters there. However, where the public was concerned, her policy was one of secrecy. She called, for example, on the President of the University, who already knew the whole story.

"Can't we keep it from being blazoned abroad?" she appealed to him. "Mrs. Fulham will suffer more if he has to undergo public shame than she possibly could suffer from her own desertion. She's tragically angry, but that wouldn't keep her from wanting to protect him. We must try to prevent public exposure. It will save her the worst of torments." She brooded sadly over the idea, her aspect broken and pathetic.

The President looked at her kindly.

"Did she say so?"

"Oh, she didn't need to say so!" cried Kate. "Any one would know that."

"You mean, any good woman would know that. Of course, I can give it out that Fulham has been called abroad suddenly, but it places me in a bad position. I don't feel very much like lying for him, and I shan't be thought any too well of if I'm found out. I should like to place myself on record as befriending Mrs. Fulham, not her husband."

"But don't you see that you are befriending her when you shield him?"

"Woman's logic," said the President. "It has too many turnings for my feeble masculine intellect. But I've great confidence in you, Miss Barrington. You seem to be rather a specialist in domestic relations. If you say Mrs. Fulham will be happier for having me bathe neck-deep in lies, I suppose I shall have to oblige you. Shall it be the lie circumstantial? Do you wish to specify the laboratory to which he has gone?"