Mrs. Vandervelde liked the way she wore her hair, in thick red plaits wound around the head and pinned flat. It had a medieval effect, which suited her coloring. Her black dress was soft and lusterless. She wore no jewelry, not even a ring. There were shadows under her grave, gray-green eyes. Altogether, she looked individual, astonishingly young, and pathetically alone. Mrs. Vandervelde's interest was aroused. Skilfully she tried to draw the girl out, and was relieved to discover that she wasn't talkative; nor was she awkward. She sat with her hands on the arms of her chair, restfully; and while you spoke, you could see that she weighed what you were saying, and you.

"I am going to like this girl, I think," Marcia Vandervelde told herself. And she looked at Nancy with the affectionate eyes of the creative artist who sees his material to his hand.

"Jason," she said to her husband, some time later, "what would you think if I should tell you I wished to take Anne Champneys abroad with me?"

"I'd say it was the finest idea ever—if you meant it."

"I do mean it. My dear man, with proper handling one might make something that approaches a classic out of that girl. There's something elemental in her: she's like a birch tree in spring, and like the earth it grows in, too, if you see what I mean. I want to try my hand on her. I hate to see her spoiled."

"It's mighty decent of you, Marcia!" said he, gratefully.

"Oh, you know how bored I get at times, Jason. I need something real to engage my energies. I fancy Anne Champneys will supply the needed stimulus. I shall love to watch her reactions: she's not a fool, and I shall be amused. If she managed to do so well with nobody but poor old Mr. Champneys and that dreary MacGregor woman, think what she'll be when I get through with her!"

Vandervelde said respectfully: "You're a brick, Marcia! If she patterns herself on you—"

"If she patterns herself on anybody but herself, I'll wash my hands of her! It's because I think she won't that I'm willing to help her," said his wife, crisply.

Some six weeks later the Champneys house had been closed indefinitely, the premises put in charge of the efficient Hoichi, and Mrs. MacGregor bonused and another excellent position secured for her, and Mrs. Peter Champneys was making her home with her guardian and his wife.

She might have moved into another world, so different was everything,—as different, say, as was the acrid countenance of Mrs. MacGregor from the fresh-skinned, clear-eyed, clever, handsome face of Marcia Vandervelde. Everything interested Nancy. Her senses were acutely alert. Just to watch Mrs. Vandervelde, so calm, so poised and efficient, gave her a sense of physical well-being. She had never really liked, or deeply admired, or trusted any other woman, and the real depths of her feeling for this one surprised her. Mrs. Vandervelde possessed the supreme gift of putting others at their ease; she had tact, and was at the same time sincere and kind. Nancy found herself at home in this fine house in which life moved largely and colorfully.

A maid had been secured for her, whom Mrs. Vandervelde pronounced a treasure. Then came skilful and polite persons who did things to her skin and hair, with astounding results. After that came the selection of her wardrobe, under Mrs. Vandervelde's critical supervision. Although the frocks were black, with only a white evening gown or two for relief, Nancy felt as if she were clothed in a rosy and delightful dream. She had never even imagined such things as these black frocks were. When she saw herself in them she was silent, though the super-saleswomen exclaimed, and Mrs. Vandervelde smiled a gratified smile.

"I am going to keep her strictly in the background for the time being, Jason," she explained to her husband. "As she's already married, she can afford to wait a year—or even two. I mean her to be perfect. I mean her to be absolutely sure. She's going to be a sensation. Jason, have you ever seen anything to equal her team-work? When I tell her what I want her to do, she looks at me for a moment—and then does it. One thing I must say for old Mr. Champneys and that MacGregor woman: they certainly knew how to lay a firm foundation!"

Nancy was perfectly willing to remain in the background. She was interested in people only as an on-looker. She responded instantly to Mrs. Vandervelde's suggestions and instructions, and carried them out with an intelligent thoroughness that at times made her mentor gasp. It gave her a definite object to work for, and kept her from thinking too much about Glenn Mitchell. And she didn't want to think about Glenn Mitchell. It hurt. She watched with a quiet wonder—quite as if it had been a stranger to whom all this was happening—the change being wrought in herself; the immense difference intelligent care, perfectly selected clothes, and the background of a beautiful house can make not only in one's appearance but in one's thoughts. Sometimes she would stare at the perfectly appointed dinner-table, with its softly shaded lights; she would look, reflectively, from Marcia Vandervelde's smartly coiffured head to her husband's fine, aristocratic face; the reflective glance would trail around the beautiful room, rest appreciatively upon the impressive butler, come back to the food set before her, and a fugitive smile would touch her lips and linger in her eyes. There were times when she felt that she herself was the only real thing among shadows; as if all these pleasant things must vanish, and only her lonesome self remain. She watched with a certain wistfulness the few people she knew. Marcia, now—so admired, so sure, with so many interests, so many friends, and with Jason Vandervelde's quiet love always hers—did she ever have that haunting sense of the impermanence of all possessions; of having, in the end, nothing but herself?

"What are you thinking, when you look at me like that?" Marcia asked her one evening, smilingly. She was as curious about Nancy as Nancy was about her.

"I was just—wondering."

"About what?"

"I was wondering if you were ever lonely?" said Nancy, truthfully. "I mean, as if all this,"—they were in the drawing-room then, and she made a gesture that included everything in it,—"just things, you know, all the things you have—and—and the people you know—weren't real. They go. And nothing stays but just you. You, all by yourself." She leaned forward, her eyes big and earnest.

Marcia Vandervelde stared at her. After a moment she said, tentatively: "There are always things; things one has, things one does. There are always other people."

"Yes, or there wouldn't be you, either. But what I mean is, they go. And you stay, don't you?" She paused, a pucker between her brows, "All by yourself," she finished, in a low voice.

"Does that make you afraid?" asked Mrs. Vandervelde.

"Oh, no! Why should it? It just makes me—wonder."

Mrs. Vandervelde said quietly: "I understand." Nancy felt grateful to her.

A few days later Mrs. Vandervelde said to her casually: "An old friend of ours dines with us to-night, Anne,—Mr. Berkeley Hayden, one of the most charming men in the world. I think you will like him."

Mrs. Vandervelde always said that Berkeley Hayden was the most critical man of her acquaintance, and that his taste was infallible. He had an unerring sense of proportion, and that miracle of judgment which is good taste. He was one of those fortunate people who, as the saying goes, are born with a gold spoon in the mouth. Unlike most inheritors of great wealth, he not only spent freely but added even more freely to the ancestral holdings. He was moneyed enough to do as he pleased without being considered eccentric; he could even afford to be esthetic, and to prefer Epicurus to St. Paul. He had a highly important collection of modern paintings, and an even more valuable one of Tanagra figurines, old Greek coins, and medieval church plate. He had, too, the reputation of being the most gun-shy and bullet-proof of social lions. At thirty he was a handsome, well-groomed, rather bored personage, with sleekly-brushed blond hair and a short mustache. He looked important, and one suspected that he must have been at some pains to keep his waist line so inconspicuous. For the rest, he was as really cultivated and pleasing a pagan as one may find, and so wittily ironical he might have been mistaken for a Frenchman.

Mrs. Vandervelde had planned that he should be the only guest. She knew this would please him, as well as suit her own purpose, which was that he should see young Mrs. Peter Champneys. She was curious to learn what impression Anne would create, and if Berkeley Hayden's judgment would coincide with her own. She had informed him that Jason's ward was stopping with them; would, in fact, go abroad with her shortly. Mr. Hayden was not interested. He thought a ward rather a bore for the Vanderveldes.

He was standing with his back to the mantel, facing the door, when Nancy entered the room. In the filmy black Mrs. Vandervelde had selected for her, tall and slim, she paused for the fraction of a second and lifted her cool, shining, inscrutable green eyes to his lazy blue ones. Mrs. Vandervelde had prevailed upon her to retain her own fashion of wearing her hair in plaits wound around her head, and the new maid had managed to soften the severity of the style and so heightened its effectiveness. A small string of black pearls was around her throat, and pendants of the same beautiful jewels hung from her ears. Berkeley Hayden started, and his eyes widened. Mrs. Vandervelde, who had been watching him intently, sighed imperceptibly.

"I wasn't mistaken, then," she thought, and smiled to herself.

She could have hugged Anne Champneys for her beautifully unconscious manner. Of course the girl didn't understand she was being signally honored and favored by Hayden's openly interested notice, but Marcia reflected amusedly that it wouldn't have made much difference if Anne had known. He didn't interest her, except casually and impersonally. She thought him a very good-looking man, in his way, but rather old: say all of thirty:—and Glenn Mitchell had been handsome, and romantic, and twenty. Young Mrs. Champneys, then, didn't respond to Mr. Berkeley Hayden's notice gratefully, pleasedly, flutteringly, as other young women—and many older ones—did. This one paid a more flattering attention to Mr. Jason Vandervelde than to him. But he had seen other women play that game; he wondered for a moment if this one were designing. But he was himself too clever not to understand that this was real indifference. Then he wondered if she might be—horrible thought!—stupid. He was forced to dismiss that suspicion, too. She wasn't stupid. The truth didn't occur to him—that he himself was spoiled. It provoked him, too, that he couldn't make her talk.

Mrs. Vandervelde smiled to herself again. Berkeley was deliberately trying to make himself agreeable, something he did not often have to trouble himself to do. He was at his best only when he was really interested or amused, and he was at his best to-night. He aroused her admiration, drew the fire of her own wit and raillery, stung even quiet Jason into unwonted animation. Anne Champneys looked from one to the other, concealing the fact that at times their conversation was over her head. She didn't always understand them. The sense of their unreality in relation to herself came upon her. She turned to watch this strange man who was saying things that puzzled her, and he met her eyes, as Glenn Mitchell had once met them. She wasn't looking at him as she had looked at Glenn, but Berkeley Hayden's sophisticated, well-trained, wary heart gave an unprecedented, unmannerly jump when those green eyes sought to fathom him.

Marcia spoke of their proposed stay abroad. She had gone to school in Florence, and she retained a passionate affection for the old city, and showed her delight at the prospect of revisiting it.

"This will be your first visit to Italy, Mrs. Champneys?" asked Hayden.

"Yes."

"I envy you. But you mustn't allow yourself to be weaned away from your own country. You must come back to New York." He smiled into her eyes—Berkeley Hayden's famous smile.

"Yes, I suppose I must," said Nancy, without enthusiasm.

He felt puzzled. Was she unthinkably simple and natural, or was she immeasurably deep? Was her apparent utter unconsciousness of the effect she produced a superfine art? He couldn't decide.

He usually knew exactly why any certain woman pleased him. He had usually demanded beauty; he had worshiped beauty all his life. But beauty must go hand in hand with intellectual qualities; he hated a fool. To-night he found himself puzzled. He couldn't tell exactly why Anne Champneys pleased him. Studying her critically, he decided that she was not beautiful. He could not even call her pretty. Perhaps it was her unusualness. But wherein was she so unusual? He had met women with red hair and white skin and gray-green eyes before—women far, far more seductive than Jason's ward. Yet not one of them all had so potently gripped his imagination.

Mrs. Vandervelde was a brilliant pianist, and after dinner Hayden begged her to play. Under cover of the music, he watched Mrs. Champneys. She was sitting almost opposite him, and he could observe her changing countenance. Nancy was beginning to love and understand good music. Men create music; women receive and carry it as they receive and carry life. It is quite as much a part of themselves.

Nancy's eyes shadowed. She leaned back in her chair, and the man watched the curve of her white cheek and throat, and the thick braids of her red hair. She had forgotten his presence. He was saying to himself, with something of wonder, "No, she's not beautiful: but, my God! how real she is!" when, subtly drawn by the intensity of his gaze, she turned, looked at him with her clouded eyes, and smiled vaguely. Still smiling, she turned her head again and gave herself up to listening, unconscious that destiny had clapped her upon the shoulder.

The man sat quite still. It had come to him with, the suddenness of a lightning stroke, and his first feeling was one of stunned amazement, and an almost incredulous resentment. He had gone to and fro in the earth and walked up and down in it, comfortably immune, an amused and ironic looker-on. And now, at thirty, without rhyme or reason he had fallen in love with a red-haired young woman of whom he knew absolutely nothing, beyond the bare fact that she was Jason Vandervelde's ward. A woman who didn't conform to any standard he had ever set for himself, whose mind was a closed book to him, of whose very existence he had been ignorant until to-night. Old Dame Destiny must have sniggered when she thrust Mrs. Peter Champneys, nee Nancy Simms, into the exquisitely ordered life of Mr. Berkeley Hayden!

He presently discovered from Jason all that the trustee of the Champneys estate knew of Mrs. Peter, which really wasn't very much, as the lawyer and his wife had never seen Nancy until the morning of her marriage. And he didn't have much to say about her as she was then. Hayden gathered that it was a marriage of convenience, for family reasons—to keep the money in the family. He asked a few questions about Peter, whom Vandervelde thought a likely young fellow enough, but whom Hayden fancied must be a poor sort—probably a freak with a pseudo-artistic temperament. There couldn't have been very much love lost between a husband and wife who had consented to so singular a separation. Hayden had a very poor opinion of Mr. Peter Champneys! But he was fiercely glad it hadn't been a love-match, glad that that other man's claim upon Anne was at the best nominal, that theirs was a marriage in name only.

He saw her several times before her departure, and came no nearer to understanding her. The night before they sailed, he gave a dinner in his apartment, an old aunt of his, more enchanting at sixty than at sixteen, being the only other guest. That apartment with its brocaded walls and its marvelous furniture was a revelation to Nancy. It was like an opened door to her.

She looked at her host with a new interest. He appeared to greater advantage seen, as it were, against his proper and natural background. And that background had the glamour of things strange, exciting, and alluring, smacking somewhat of, say, an Arabian Night's entertainment. Over the dining-room mantel hung a curious and colorful landscape, in which two brown girls, naked to the waist and from thence to the knees wrapped in straight, bright-colored stuff, raised their angular arms to pluck queer fruit from exotic trees.

He knew all that, she thought; he had seen that strange landscape and those brown women, and tasted the fruit they reached to pluck. Just as he knew those tiny terra-cotta figurines over there, and that pottery which must have been made out of ruby-dust. Just as he knew everything. All this had been in his world, always. A world full of things beautiful and strange. He had had everything that she had missed. It seemed to her that he incarnated in his proper and handsome person all the difference and the change that had come into her life.

And quite suddenly she saw Nancy Simms dusting the Baxter parlor, pausing to stand admiringly before a picture on a white-and-gold easel, that cherished picture of a house with mother-of-pearl puddles in front of it. A derisive and impish amusement flickered like summer lightning across her face, and with an inscrutable smile she mocked the mother-of-pearl puddles and her old admiration of them. She lifted her eyes to the painting over Berkeley Hayden's mantel, and the smile deepened.

"Perhaps it is her smile," thought he, watching her. "Yes, I am sure it must be her smile. I am rather glad Marcia is taking her abroad. I do not wish to make a fool of myself, and there'd be that danger if she remained." Yet the idea of her absence gave him an unaccustomed pang.

He filled her quarters aboard ship with exquisite flowers. She was not yet used to graceful attentions, they had been for other women, not for her. She had no idea at all that she was of the slightest importance, if only because of the Champneys money; her comparative freedom was still too recent for her to have changed her estimate of herself. She thought it touchingly kind and thoughtful of this handsome, important man to have remembered just her, particularly when there wasn't anybody else to do so, and she looked at him with a pleased and appreciative friendliness for which he felt absurdly grateful. While Marcia was busied with the other friends who had come to see her off, he stood beside Mrs. Champneys, who seemed to know no one but himself, and this established a measure of intimacy between them.

"It occurs to me," said he, tentatively, "that it has been some time since I saw Florence. All of two or three years."

They stood together by the railing, and she leaned forward the better to watch a leggy little girl with a brickdust-red pigtail in a group on the pier.

"Yes?" said she, absently. The leggy girl had just thrust out her tongue at an expostulating nurse. She seemed to be a highly unpleasant child; one of those children of whom aunts speak as "poor Mary" or whatever their name may be. Anne Champneys, watching her, put her hand up and touched her own hair, that gleamed under her close-fitting black hat. Her eyes darkened; she smiled, secretly, mysteriously, rememberingly.

In that instant Berkeley Hayden made his decision. There was no longer any doubt in his mind. When she turned away from the railing, he said pleasantly:

"You and Marcia have put me in the humor to see Florence again. If I come strolling in upon you some fine day, I hope you'll be glad to see me, Mrs. Champneys?"

"Oh, yes!" said she, politely. And then Marcia and Vandervelde came up, and a few minutes later the two men went ashore. Hayden's face was the last thing Nancy saw as the steamer moved slowly outward. There were hails, laughter, waving of hand-kerchiefs. He alone looked at her. And so he remained in her memory, standing a little apart from all others.



CHAPTER XV

"I, TOO, IN ARCADIA"

If Riverton was his mother's house and England his grandmother's, France was peculiarly his own. Peter Champneys felt that he had come home, and even the fact that he couldn't speak understandable French didn't spoil the illusion. Nobody laughed at his barbarous jargon; people were patient, polite, helpful. He thought the French the pleasantest people in the world, and this opinion he never changed. Later, when he learned to know them better, he concluded that they were very deliberately and very gallantly gay in order to conceal from themselves and from the world how mortally sad they were at heart. They eschewed those virtues which made one disagreeable, and they indulged only in such vices as really amused them, and in consequence they made being alive a fine art.

The Hemingways knew Paris as they knew London, and they smoothed his path. In their drawing-room Peter met that dazzling inner circle of Parisian society which includes talent and genius as well as rank, beauty, and wealth. Then, Mrs. Hemingway having first seen to it that he met those whom she wished him to meet, Peter was permitted to meet those whom he himself wished to meet. He was introduced to two deceptively mild-mannered young Englishmen, first cousins named Checkleigh, students in one of the great ateliers, who were by way of being painters; and to a shock-headed young man from California, a sculptor, named Stocks. The Englishmen were closely related to a large-toothed, very important Lady Somethingorother, high up in the diplomatic sphere, and the Californian possessed a truly formidable aunt. Hence the three young men appeared in fashionable circles at decent intervals. Later, Peter learned to know their redoubtable relatives as "Rabbits" and "The Grampus," and he once saw a terrifyingly truthful portrait of "Rabbits" sketched on a skittish model's bare back, and a movingly realistic little figure of "The Grampus" modeled by her dutiful nephew in a moment of diabolical inspiration. It was explained to him that God, for some inscrutable purpose of his own, generally pleases himself by bestowing only the most limited human intelligence upon the wealthy relatives of poor but gifted artists; but that if properly approached, and at not too frequent intervals, they may be induced to loosen their tight purse-strings. Wherefore one must somehow manage to keep on good terms with them. Witness, Stocks said, his forgiving—nay, kindly—attitude toward The Grampus; see how he went to her house and drank her loathly tea and ate her beastly little cakes, even though she regarded a promising sculptor as a sort of unpromising stone-cutter who couldn't hold down a steady job, and had vehemently urged him to go in for building and contracting in Sacramento, California. "And yet that woman has got about all the money there is in our family!" finished Stocks, bitterly.

"Rabbits takes you aside and talks to you heart to heart," said the younger Checkleigh, gloomily. The elder Checkleigh's face took on a look of martyrdom.

"We have Immortal Souls," said he, in a tone of anguish and affliction. "I ask you, as man to man: Is it our fault?"

It was these three Indians, then, who took Peter Champneys under their wing, helped him find the pleasantest rooms in the Quartier, helped him furnish them at about a third of what he would have paid if left to his own devices, and also helped him to shed his skin of a timid provincial by plunging him to the scalp in that bubbling cauldron in which seethes the creative brain of France. Serious and sad young men who were going to be poets; intense fellows who were going to rehabilitate the Drama, or write the Greatest Novel; illustrators, journalists, critics, painters, types in velvet coats, flowing ties, flowing locks, and astonishing hats, sculptors, makers of exquisite bits of craftsmanship, models, masters, singers of sorts, actors and actresses, sewing-girls, frightful old concierges; students from the four corners of the earth driven hither by the four winds of heaven, came and went in the devil-may-care wake of Stocks and the Checkleighs and disported themselves before the reflective and appreciative eyes of Peter Champneys. These gay Bohemians laughed at him for what Stocks called his spinterishness, but ended by loving him as only youth can love a comrade.

In six months he knew the Quartier to the core. He met men who were utter blackguards, whose selfish, cold-blooded brutality filled him with loathing; he met women with the soul of the cat. But the Quartier as a whole was sound-hearted; Peter himself was too sound-hearted not to know. He met Youth at work, his own kind of work. They were all going to do something great presently,—and presently many of them did. The very air he breathed stimulated him. Here were comrades, to whom, as to himself, art was the one supremely important thing in the universe. They, too, were climbers toward the purple heights.

Shy young men who work like mules are as thick as hops in any art center; but shy young men who are immensely talented, who have a genius for steady labor, and who at the same time have not only the inclination but the opportunity to be generous, are not numerous anywhere.

Peter Champneys never talked about himself, made no parade, was so simple in his tastes that he spent very little upon himself, and while he could say "No" to impudence, he had ever a quick, warm "Yes" for need. That he should be able to become an artist had been the top of his dream; that by a very little self-denial he could help others to remain artists, left him large-eyed at his own good fortune. He experienced the glowing happiness that only the generous can know.

On Sundays he went to see Emma Campbell, for whom he had found a little house on the summit of Montmartre, on the very top of the Butte. It had a hillside garden, with a dove-cote in it, and a little kiosk in which Emma liked to sit, with the cat Satan on her lap, and projeck at the strange world in which she found herself. She shared the house with a scene-painter and his wife, and as the scene-painter was an Englishman, Emma could talk to somebody and be understood. Emma's idea of happiness was leisure to sew squares of patchwork together for quilts. She had brought her cut-out quilt scraps with her, and she sat in the kiosk and sewed little pieces of colored calico together, while the big cat scampered about the garden, or lay and blinked at her, and all Paris lay spread out far below, the spires of Notre Dame showing as through a mist.

On Sundays she cooked for Peter,—old homely Riverton dishes,—and waited on him while he ate. Because she couldn't read, she looked forward to Peter's reading what she reverently called "de Book." Peter had been reading the Bible to old darkies all his life, and he accepted it as a matter of course that he should take the long climb, and give up a part of his Sundays, to save Emma Campbell from being disappointed now. Afterward, Emma spoke of his mother, and of old, familiar things they both remembered. Then he went back to the Quartier feeling as refreshed and rested as if he'd had a swim in the river "over home."

At regular intervals he appeared at Mrs. Hemingway's, and kept up his acquaintance with her friends. When she told him to accept an invitation, he resignedly obeyed, looking, the elder of the Checkleigh boys told him, as if he were doing it for God's sake. He was beginning to speak French less villainously, and this made things easier for him. He could carry on a simple conversation, by going slowly; and he almost understood about half of what strangers said to him. He interested one or two fine ladies greatly, and they were extremely gracious to him. Artists—that is, young and unknown artists in the Quartier—are more or less pleasant to read about in the pages of Muerger and others, but they are too often beggarly and quite impossible persons in real life. But this young American who lived in the Quartier was at the same time on a footing of intimacy in the exclusive home of those so charming Hemingways, who were, one knew, of the grand monde. Was it true that the American painter was very wealthy? Yes? Ah, ciel! That droll young man was then amusing himself by living in the Quartier? But what an original! His family approved? He was an orphan? With no relations save that old uncle whose heir he was? Ah, mon Dieu! That touched one's heart! One must try to be very pleasant to that so lonely young man! And that so lonely young man was extended mead and balm in the shape of invitations to very smart affairs. To some of which he found, at the last minute, he couldn't go, for the simple and cogent reason that Checkleigh or Stocks had appropriated his dress suit.

"It's infernally unlucky, Rabbits having an affair on to-night. But you know how it is, Champ—she'd never forgive me if I didn't show up. Big-wigs from home, and all that, and she feels it's her duty to make me show 'em I haven't become an Apache. And my togs are out at interest—one has to pay one's rent sometimes, you understand," explained Checkleigh, who was dressing before Peter's mirror. "You don't have to care: you aren't compelled to keep in her good graces!"

"Oh, all right. I don't mind. I only accepted to please Mrs. Hemingway."

"Mrs. Hemingway is my very good friend. At the first opportunity I shall explain to her. She can readily understand that

"One may go without relatives, cousins, and aunts— But civilized man cannot go without pants.

I wish you hadn't such deucedly long legs, Champ. Regular hop-poles!" grumbled Checkleigh, ungratefully.

"They are poor things, but mine own," said Peter, mildly. "You will find a five-franc piece in the waistcoat pocket, Checkleigh, if you happen to want it. I keep it there for cab fare."

"If I happen to want it!" shrieked Checkleigh. "Oh, bloated plutocrat, purse-proud millionaire, I always happen to want it!" He waved an eloquent hand to the circumambient air. "He has five-franc pieces in his waistcoat pocket—and no Rabbits in his family!" cried Checkleigh. "Now, have you a presentable pair of gloves, Croesus?—Oh, damn your legs, Champneys! Look at these beastly breeches of yours, will you? I've had to turn 'em up until you'd fancy I was wearing cuffs on the ankles, and still they're too long!"

"You should have cut 'em off a bit—then you wouldn't look as though you were poulticing your shins. And they'd fit me, too," commented Stocks, who had sauntered in.

Checkleigh looked at Peter's watch—his own was "out at interest" along with his dress suit—and shook his head dolefully.

"If you'd just suggested it sooner, I could have done it—now it's too late." he lamented. "Your progeny will probably resemble herons, Champneys, and serve 'em right!—Are those new gloves? I am a credit to Rabbits!" And he rushed off.

"What a friend we have in Champ-neys, All his gloves and pa-ants to wear!"

Stocks sang in a voice like the scraping of a mattock over flint; one saw that he had been piously raised. Then he hooked his arm in Peter's and the two went forth to join the joyous hordes surging up the Boul' Miche, and to dine in their favorite restaurant, where the waiters were one's good friends, and Madame the proprietress addressed her Bohemians as "mes enfants." Having dined, one joined one's brother workers who waged the battle of Art with jaws and gestures. Bawling out the slang of the studios, they grimaced, sneered, shrugged, praised, demolished. Nothing was sacred to these young savages but the joy of the present. They had no past, and the future hadn't arrived. They lived in the moment, worked, laughed, loved, and, when they could, dined. When one had a handful of silver, how gay the world was! How one wished to pat it on the back and invite it to come and be merry with one!

In the full stream of this turbulent tide, behold Peter Champneys; with a lock of his black hair falling across his forehead; his head cocked sidewise; and his big nose and clear golden eyes giving him the aspect of a benevolent hawk, like, say, Horus, Hawk of the Sun. Those golden eyes of his saw tolerantly as well as clearly. This quiet American worked like a fiend, yet had time to look on and laugh with you while you played. He was gravely gay at his best, but he didn't neglect the good things of his youth. And he had a genius for playing impromptu Providence when you were down on your luck and about all in. Maybe you hadn't dined for a couple of days, or maybe you were pretty nearly frozen in your room, as you had no fire; and you were wondering whether, after all, you weren't a fool to starve and freeze for art's sake, and whether, all things considered, life was worth living; and there'd be a gentle tap at your door, and Peter Champneys would stick his thin dark face in, smilingly. He'd tell you he'd been lonely all day, and would you, if you hadn't done so already, kindly come and dine with him? He spoke French with a South Carolina accent, in those days, but an archangel's voice could not then have sounded more dulcet in your ears than his. Presently, over your cigarettes, you found yourself telling him just how things were with you. Maybe you slept on a lounge in his studio that night, because it was warmer there. And next morning you could face life and work feeling that God's in his heaven, all's right with the world. That's what Peter Champneys meant to many a hard-pressed youngster.

With his immense capacity for work, at the end of a year Peter Champneys had made great strides. But he was troubled. Like Millet, he couldn't take the ordered direction. He felt that he was merely marking time, that he wasn't on the right track. His robust and original talent demanded heartier food than was offered it. Reluctantly enough, Peter withdrew from the official studio to which he was attached, and went on his own. It was a momentous step.

One Sunday afternoon he said to Emma Campbell, seriously:

"You've never laid eyes on a goddess, Emma, have you? Or a nymph? Well, neither have I. And I can't paint what I don't know." He walked up and down the little graveled garden path. And he burst out: "That is not life. It is not truth. I don't want gods. I only see men! I don't want goddesses. I want women!"

Emma Campbell said in a scandalized voice:

"Dat ain't no kind o' way to talk! Leastwise," she compromised, "not on Sundays."

Peter burst out laughing. Emma wore her usual Sunday cashmere, with a snowy apron and head-handkerchief. Satan lay upon the small table beside her, in the attitude of a sphinx, his black, velvety paws stretched in front of him, his inscrutable eyes watching the restless young man. Peter paused, and his eyes narrowed. Then he snapped his fingers, as he had done when he was a little boy back in Riverton and something had pleased him.

"I've got it!" he shouted. "Emma, you're It!"

No one ever had a more patient model. She couldn't exackly understan' why Mist' Peter should want to paint a ole nigger like her, but if Peter Champneys had wanted to bury her alive in the ground, with only her head sticking out, Emma would have known it had to be all right, somehow. So she sat for weary hours, while Peter made rough sketches, and tried out many theories, before he settled down to work in dead earnest.

And presently Emma saw herself as it were alive on a square of canvas, so alive that she was more than a bit afraid. She said it looked like her own ha'nt, and Emma wasn't partial to ha'nts. There she sat in her plain black dress and her plain white apron and head-handkerchief, and her gold hoop ear-rings. On the table beside her were the vegetables she was to prepare. She had forgotten work for the time being. Emma projecked, one hand resting idly on the table, the other on the great black cat in her lap. She looked at you, with the wistfully animal look of a negro woman, who is loving, patient, kind, long-suffering, imbued with a terrible patience, and of a sound, sly, earthy humor; and who at the same time is childishly credulous, full of dark passions, and with the fires of savagery banked in her heart. There she sat, that sphinx that is Africa, who has seen the white races come, and who will probably see them go; you could almost sense the half-slumbrous brain of her throbbing under her head-handkerchief. She wasn't a mere colored woman; she was a symbol and a challenge. And her eyes that had seen so much and wept so much were as inscrutable as fate, as sphinx-like as the cat's who watched you from her knee. The whole picture breathed an amazingly bold and original power, and was so arrestingly vital that it gripped and held one. Down in one corner, painted with exquisite care and delicacy, was a Red Admiral.

The Quartier came, squinted through the fingers, and praised and dispraised, after its wont. The Symbolists sneered and told Peter to his teeth he was a Philistine; they said you can't boot-lick Nature: you've got to bully her, demand her soul, make her give you her Sign! Quieter men came and studied Emma Campbell and her cat, and clapped Peter on the back; the more exuberant Latins kissed him, noisy, hearty, hairy kisses on both cheeks. Undoubtedly, it would be accepted, they said!

It was, and hung conspicuously. There were always small groups before it, for it created something like the uproar that Manet's "Olympia" had raised in its time. Peter learned from one critic that his technique was magnificent, his picture a masterpiece of psychology and of portraiture, and that if he kept on he'd soon be one of the Immortals. He learned from another that while he undoubtedly had technique, his posing was commonplace, his subject banal, his imagination hopelessly bourgeois; that he was a painter of the ugly and the ordinary, without inspiration or imagination; that the one pretty and delicate note in the whole canvas was the butterfly in the lower left-hand corner, and that that was obviously reminiscent of Whistler, who on a time had used a butterfly signature! But on the whole the criticisms were highly favorable; it was admitted that a young painter of promise had arisen.

Peter Champneys went about his business, indifferent to praise or blame. He knew he was a way-faring man whose business it was to follow his own road, a road he had to hack out for himself; and somewhere on the horizon were the purple heights.

The unbounded delight, the disinterested pride of the Hemingways, couldn't have been greater had he been their son. Mrs. Hemingway gave a brilliant entertainment in his honor, and he was feted and made much of. Young ladies who danced divinely found his stork-like hopping pleasing, and his stammering French delightful. This charming Monsieur Champneys, you see, was not only invested with the glamour of art; he was the heir of an American millionaire! Ah, the dear young man!

The picture was sold to a Spanish nobleman, who said it reminded him of Velasquez's "AEsop"; he was so delighted with the painter's power that he commissioned Peter to portray his own long, pale, melancholy visage. Whereupon the two Checkleighs and Stocks called loudly for a proper celebration, and Peter honored their clamorous demand. It was a memorable affair, graced by the Quartier's darlingest models, who had long since voted M'sieu Champnees a bon garcon. A Spanish student, in a velvet coat and with long black hair, insisted upon charcoaling mustachios and imperial upon his host's countenance, in honor of his countryman who had distinguished himself as a patron of art. Later, a laughing girl whose blue-black hair was banded Madonna-wise around a head considerably otherwise, washed it off with a table napkin dipped in wine. She sat on his knee to perform the operation, scanned his clean face with satisfaction, and taking him by the ears as by handles, kissed him gaily. Then she went back to her own cher ami, who wasn't in the least disturbed.

"It is like kissing thy maiden aunt, Jacques," she told him. "Now, with thee—" They looked at each other eloquently, and Peter Champneys, whose eyes had followed the girl, smiled crookedly. An unaccountable gloom descended upon him. All these lusty young men shouting and laughing around him, all these handsome, ardent young women, snatched what joy from life they could; they lived their hour, knowing how brief that hour must be. They ate to-day, starved to-morrow; but they were rich because they loved, because they laughed, because theirs was the passionate unforced comradeship, the intoxicating joy of youth. Peter Champneys, whose good luck was being celebrated, looked at his penniless, hilarious comrades, and twisted a smile of desperate gaiety to his lips. He had never in his life felt more utterly alone.

The affair ended at six o'clock the next morning, in a last glad, mad romp up the Boul' Miche. Peter and Stocks waved good-by to the last revelers, looking somewhat jaded in the fresh morning air. The two young men, both rather tired, walked slowly. Venders in clacking sabots pushed their carts ahead of them, shouting their wares. Crowds of working-people poured through the streets. At a little restaurant they knew, they had coffee and rolls. While they were drinking, a girl came in. Peter looked up and saw Denise.

His first thought was that she would have been lovely if she hadn't been so thin. Then he saw how shabby she was, and how neat. Nothing could have been more charming than her chestnut hair, or her blue eyes that had a look of innocence, or her fair and transparent complexion, though one could have wished she were rosier. She did not look around with the quick, alert, bright glance of the Parisienne whom everything interests and amuses; she had the abstracted and sad air of a child who suffers, and whom suffering bewilders.

Stocks said, in a low voice, tinged with pity:

"L'amie de Dangeau."

Peter received that announcement with a shock of surprise and distaste. Dangeau was such an utter brute! Handsome in his way, without conscience or pity, Dangeau would have eaten his mother's heart to satisfy his own hunger, or wiped his feet upon his father's beard. The gifted, intellectual, and rapacious savage seized whatever came near him that pleased his fancy or aroused his curiosity, extracted the pith, and tossed aside what no longer amused or served him. There was no generosity in him, only an insatiable and ferocious demand that life should give him more, always more! Peter, who both admired and detested him, was sorry for this gentle creature fallen into his remorseless claws. And he wondered, as decent men must, at the fatal fascination animals like Dangeau seem to possess for women.

He saw her occasionally after that, always alone. Plainly, things were not well with her. Her pale face grew paler and thinner; her dress shabbier. The look of bewilderment was now a look of pain. Her eyes were heavy, as if they wept too much. Peter watched her with a troubled heart. One day Henri, the garcon, murmured confidentially, as she left the cafe after a particularly slim meal:

"These thin little blondes, they do not last long. That one was like a rose when I first saw her. Pauvre enfant!" And he looked after her with a compassionate glance.

"She seems—different," said Peter. "It is not well with her?"

"Alas, no! She is from the provinces, Monsieur, come to Paris to earn more. And so she wearied her ami. You know him, Monsieur; he is a restless man, quickly tiring—that sculptor! Also, he feared she would fall sick upon his hands—you see how frail she is, and he abhors all that is not robust." And Henri made an expressive gesture. He added: "She is of the sort that love, Monsieur; and, you understand, that is fatal!"

"And how does she manage now?" asked Peter.

Henri shrugged significantly. Peter drummed on the table and scowled. A little girl, from the provinces! One understood now how she had fallen into Dangeau's hands, and how, inevitably, he had tired, and tossed her aside like a wilted flower. And now she was facing slow starvation—Oh, damn!

Peter slipped some change into Henri's palm. "You are a man of sense, Henri. Also, I see that you have a good heart," said he. "Now we must see what we can do for this poor little Mademoiselle, you and I. You will place before her the best the house affords—I leave that to you. And when she protests you will say to her: 'Your venerable godfather has arranged for it, Mademoiselle. His orders are, that you come here, seat yourself, tap once with your forefinger upon the table,—and your orders will be obeyed.'"

"And if she questions further, Monsieur?"

"Explain that you obey orders, but do not know her godfather," said Peter, gravely.

"Trust me, Monsieur!" cried the delighted Henri. And from that moment the kindly fellow adored Peter Champneys.

The little game began the next day. Denise gave her tiny order; Henri came back with a loaded tray, whose savory contents he placed before her. Out of the corner of his eye Peter could see the girl's astonished face when Henri politely insisted that the meal was hers—that her venerable godfather had ordered it for her! She looked timidly and fearfully around; but nobody was paying the slightest attention to her, and after deftly arranging the dishes, Henri had whisked himself off. She waited for a few minutes; but Henri hadn't come back. And then, because she was almost famished, she ate what had been given her. Peter felt his eyes blur.

Henri came back to her presently with wine. He dusted the bottle lovingly, and filled her glass with a flourish. She looked up with a tremulous smile:

"My godfather's order, Henri?"

"Your venerable godfather's order, Mademoiselle," he replied sedately. When she had finished her dinner, he glibly, and with an expressionless countenance repeated Peter's instructions: she was to come in, seat herself, tap with her forefinger, and give her orders, which would be instantly obeyed! No, he did not know her godfather. Nor did Monsieur le patron. No, he might not even take the sous she offered him: all, all, had been arranged, Mademoiselle!

She hesitated. Then she called for pen and paper, and scribbled in violet ink:

MONSIEUR MY GODFATHER, I see that the good God still permits miracles. You are one. Accept, then, a poor girl's thanks and prayers! Thy godchild, DENISE.

She gave this to Henri, who received it respectfully. Then she went out, feeling very much better and brighter because of a sadly needed dinner. She was bewildered, and excited; but she wasn't afraid. She accepted her miracle, which had come just in the nick of time, gratefully, with a childlike simplicity. But she used her blue eyes, and one day they met Peter Champneys's, regarding her with a good and kind satisfaction; for indeed she looked much better and brighter, now that she was no longer half starved. Denise had encountered other eyes, men's eyes; but none had ever met hers with just such a look as she saw in these clear and golden ones. A flash of intuition came to her. Only one person in the world could have eyes like that—it must be, it was, he! And she watched him with an absorbed and breathless interest.

In these small restaurants of the Quartier one sits so close to one's neighbors, in a busy hour, that conversation isn't difficult; it is, rather, inevitable.

"Monsieur," said the young girl, bravely and yet timidly, on an occasion when they almost touched elbows, "Monsieur,—is it you who have a god-daughter?"

"Mademoiselle," stammered Peter, who hadn't expected the question. "I do not know your godfather!" And then he turned red to his ears.

Her face broke into a swift and flashing smile. She looked so like a happy child that Peter had to smile back at her, and presently they were chatting like old acquaintances. After that they always managed to dine together.

They found each other delightful. That gloomy sense of loneliness which had oppressed Peter vanished in the girl's presence. As for Denise, no one had ever been so kind, so gentle, so generous to her as this wonderful Monsieur Champneys. She grew quite beautiful; her eyes were a child's eyes, her face like one of those little sweet pinkish-white roses one sees in old-fashioned gardens.

She had no relations; neither had Peter. And so he took Denise into his life, just as he had once taken a lost kitten out of the dusk on the Riverton Road: there really was nothing else for him to do! He had for her something of the same whimsical and compassionate affection that had made him share his glass of milk with the little cat. She belonged to him; there was nobody else.

She was rather a silent creature, Denise. She had none of that Latin vivacity which wearies the listener, but her love for him showed itself in a thousand gracious ways, in innumerable small services, in loving looks. Just to touch him was a never-failing joy to her. She delighted to stroke his face, to trace with her small fingers the outline of his features. "That is the pattern on the inside of my heart," she told him. She had a quick, light tread, pleasant to listen to, and her rare and lovely laughter was always a delicious surprise, as if one heard an unexpected chime of little bells.

Her housewifely ways, her pretty anxiety about spending money, amused him tenderly. When she could perform some small service for him, she hummed little hymns to the Virgin. Her ministrations extended to Stocks and the Checkleighs, whose shirts she mended so expertly that they didn't have to borrow so many of Peter's. She was so happy that Peter Champneys grew happy watching her. It hadn't seemed possible to Denise that anybody like him could exist; yet here he was, and she belonged to him!

Nobody had ever loved Peter Champneys in quite the same way. She had so real and true a genius for loving that she exhaled affection as a flower exhales perfume. Loving was an instinct with Denise. She would steal to his side, slip her arm around his neck, kiss him on the eyes—"thy beautiful eyes, Pierre!"—and cuddle her cheek against his, with so exquisite a tenderness in touch and look that the young man's kind heart melted in his breast. He couldn't speak. He could only gather her close, pressing his black head against her soft young bosom.

Her cruel experience with Dangeau was not forgotten; but that had been capture by force, and she remembered it as a black background against which the bright colors of this present happiness showed with a heavenlier radiance. Peter himself didn't guess how wholly his little comrade loved him, though he did realize her utter selflessness. She never asked him troublesome questions, never annoyed him with irritating jealousy, made no demands upon him. Was he not himself? Very well, then: did not that suffice? Denise didn't think: she felt. She had the exquisite wisdom of the heart, and in her small hands the flower of Peter Champneys's youth opened and blossomed. He was young, he was loved, he was busy. Oh, but it was a good world to be alive in! He whistled while he worked. And how he worked! To this period belong those angelic heads, chestnut-haired, wistfully smiling, with blue eyes that look deep into one's heart. The airy butterfly that signs these canvases is not so much a symbol as a prescience.

When was it he first noticed that for all his love and care he wasn't going to be able to keep Denise? How did he learn that the great last lover was wooing her away? She was not less happy. A deep and still joy radiated from her, her eyes had the clear and cloudless happiness of a child's. But he observed that on their pleasant excursions into the country she tired quickly. Her little light feet didn't run any more. She preferred to sit cuddled against his side, holding his hand in both hers, her head pressed against his shoulder. She didn't talk, but then, he was used to her silence; that was one of her sweetest charms. Her cheek grew thinner, but the rose in it deepened. Then the pretty dresses he loved to lavish upon her began to hang loosely upon her little body.

It was a frightened young man who called in doctors and specialists. But, as Henri had once told him, they do not last long, these frail blondes. Also, she was of the sort that loves—and that, you understand, is fatal!

Stocks, who had made a great pet of Peter's pretty sweetheart, blubbered when he learned the truth, and the younger Checkleigh, who delighted to sketch her, left off because his hand shook so, and he couldn't see clearly. The Spanish student in the velvet coat, who could sing lustily to a guitar, came and sang for her, not the ribald songs the Quartier heard from him, but the beautiful and soft love songs he had heard as a child in Andalusia—how love is an immortal rose one carries through the gates of the grave into the gates of paradise. And the Quartier, which knows so much sorrow as well as so much joy, came with its gayest gossip to make her smile. Peter himself lived in a sort of tormented daze.—It was Denise, his little Denise, who was going!

Denise herself was the calmest and cheerfulest of them all. Her high destiny had been to love Peter Champneys, and she had fulfilled it. The good, the kind God had given her that which in her estimation outweighed everything else. She had lived, she had loved. Now she could go, and go content.

"It is better so," she told him, with that piercing good sense of the French which is like a spiritual insight. "Very dear one, suppose I had been called upon to let thee go: how could I have endured that?" And she added, pressing his fingers, "Do not grieve, my adored Pierre. Observe that I am but a poor little one to whom in thy goodness of heart thou hast been kind: but thou art all my life—all of me, Pierre."

He put his head against her side, and she stroked it, whispering,

"I had but a little while to stay, beloved. Because of thee, that stay has been happy—oh, very, very happy!"

"You have given me all I ever had of youth and love," said Peter.

"Ah, but I am glad!" she said naively. "Because of that, I think you must remember!" She looked at him with her blue eyes suddenly full of tears. "It is only when I think you may forget that I am afraid, it is then as if the dark pressed upon me," she said in a whisper sharp with pain. "I lie still and dream how great you will become, how much beloved—for who could fail to love you, Pierre? And I am glad. It rests my heart, which is all yours. But when I begin to remember how I have been but a little, little part of your life, who have been all of mine, when I think you may forget, then I am afraid, I am afraid!" And she looked at him like a frightened child who is being left alone to go to sleep in the dark.

Peter picked her up, wrapped in the bedquilt, and held her in his arms. She was very light. It was as if he held a little ghost. She shook her bright hair over his shoulders and breast, and he hid his quivering face in it, as in a veil. Presently, in a soft voice:

"Godfather!"

"Yes, my little sweetheart."

"Very dear and precious godfather,—a long, long time from now, when She comes, She whom you will love as I love you, tell her about me."

"Denise, Denise!" cried poor Peter, straining her to him.

"Tell her I had blue eyes, and a fair face, and bright, bright hair, Godfather. She will like to know. Say, 'Her whole wisdom lay in loving me with all her heart—that poor Denise!' Then tell her that she cannot love you more, my Pierre,—but that in my grave I shall despise her if she dares to love you less."

"I—Oh, my God!" strangled Peter, and he felt as if his heart were being wrenched out of his breast. He was in his twenties, and the girl in his arms was all he knew of love.

Some six weeks later Denise died as quietly as she had lived, her small cold hands clinging to Peter Champneys's, her blue eyes with their untroubled, loving gaze fixed upon his face. When that beloved face faded from her the world itself had faded from Denise.

He hadn't dreamed one could suffer as he was called upon to suffer then. The going of little Denise seemed to have torn away a living and quivering part of his spirit. She had loved him absolutely, and Peter couldn't forget that. His gratitude was an anguish. It is not the duration but the depths of an experience which makes its ineffaceable impression upon the heart.

Mrs. Hemingway saw his changed looks with concern. If she and her husband suspected anything, they did not torment him with questions; they didn't even appear to notice that he was silent and abstracted.

"What on earth is the matter with the boy?" worried Mrs. Hemingway. "John, do you think it's a—"

"Petticoat? What else should it be?"

"I can't bear to think of Peter getting himself into some sort of scrape with possibly some miserable woman—who will prey upon him," murmured Mrs. Hemingway.

"Peter's not the sort that falls for adventuresses. He might fall in love with some girl, and be cut up if she didn't reciprocate. That's what's the matter with him now, if I'm not mistaken."

Hemingway took Peter fishing with him. It is a pleasant place, the Seine near Poissy. Hemingway let Peter sit in a boat all day, and didn't seem to observe that the line wasn't once drawn in. The river was rippling, the sky bright blue, the wind sweet. All around them were other boats, full of people who appeared to be happy. And Hemingway's silent companionship was strong and kind and serene. Insensibly Peter reacted to his surroundings, to the influence of the shining day. When they were returning to Paris that evening, he looked at his big compatriot gratefully. Then he told him. Hemingway listened in silence. Then:

"I'm damned glad she had you," said he, and polished his eyeglasses, and put his hand on Peter's shoulder with a consoling and sympathetic touch. Hemingway understood. He was that sort.

Youth departs, love perishes, faith faints; but that we may never be left hopeless, work remains and saves us. Peter's work came to his succor. Just at this crucial time his Eminence the Austrian Cardinal appeared, and Peter hadn't time to mope.

The cardinal had seen the picture of Emma Campbell and her cat. He had seen an enchanting sketch of the Spanish student in the velvet coat, recently purchased by a friend of his. And now his own portrait must be painted. He was so great a cardinal, of so striking a personality, that his own noble family had an immense pride in him, and the Vatican, along with certain great temporal powers, took him very seriously. So the painting of the cardinal's portrait wouldn't be a light undertaking, to be given at random. This and that great painter was urged upon him. But the astonishing portrait of that old colored woman and her cat decided his Eminence, who had a will of his own. Here was his artist! Also, he insisted upon the cat.

The anticlerical press of Paris was insisting that the cardinal's stay in the French capital was of sinister import. The cardinal smiled, and Peter Champneys besought his gods to let him get that smile on canvas. His Eminence was an ideal sitter. He spoke English beautifully, and it pleased him to converse with the lanky young American painter in his mother tongue. He felt drawn to the young man, and when the cardinal liked one, he was irresistible. Peter was so fascinated by this brilliant and versatile aristocrat, so deeply interested in the psychology of a great Roman prelate, a prince of the Church, that he forgot everything except that he was a creative artist—and a great sitter, a man worthy of his best, was to be portrayed.

He gave his whole heart to his task, and he brought to it a new sense of values, born of suffering. When he had finished, you could see the cardinal's soul looking at you from the canvas. The smile Peter prayed to catch curves his lips, a smile that baffles and enchants. He wears his red robes, and one fine, aristocratic hand with the churchly ring on it rests upon the magnificent cat lying on the table beside him. That superb "Cardinal with the Cat" put the seal upon Peter Champneys's reputation as a great artist.

He knew what he had achieved. Yet his lips quivered and his eyes were smileless when, down in the left-hand corner, he painted in the Red Admiral.



CHAPTER XVI

THE OTHER MAN

In Florence the nascent swan-feathers of Anne Champneys grew into perfect plumage. She was like a spirit new-born to another world, with all the dun-colored ties of a darker existence swept away, and only a residue of thought and feeling left of its former experience. This bright and rosy world, enriched by nature and art, was so new, its values were so different, that at first she was dazed into dumbness by it.

She came face to face with beauty and art made a part of daily life. She thought she had never seen color, or flowers, or even a real sky, until now. An existence unimaginably rich, vistas that receded into an almost fabled past, opened and spread before her glamourously. The vividness of her impressions, her reaction to this new phase of experience, the whole-souled ardor with which she flung herself into the study of Italian, her eagerness to know more, her delight in the fine old house in which they had set up their household gods, amused and charmed Mrs. Vandervelde. She felt as if she were teaching and training an unspoiled, delighted, and delightful child, and contact with this fresh and eager spirit stimulated her own.

Many of her former school friends, girls belonging to fine Florentine families, some now noble matrons, mothers of families, one or two great conventual superioresses, still resided in the city, and these welcomed their beloved Marcia delightedly. There were, too, the American and English colonies, and a coterie of well-known artists. Marcia Vandervelde was a born hostess, a center around which the brightest and cleverest naturally revolved. She changed the large, drafty rooms of the old palace into charming reflections of her own personality. A woman of wide sympathies and cultivated tastes, she delighted in the clever cosmopolitan society that gathered in her drawing-room; and it was in this opalescent social sea that she launched young Mrs. Champneys.

Mrs. Champneys was at first but a mild success, a sort of pale luminosity reflected from the more dominant Mrs. Vandervelde. But it so happened, that a gifted young Italian lost his heart at sight to her red hair and green eyes, and discovering that she had no heart of her own—at least, none for him—he wrote, in a sort of frenzy of inspiration, a very fine sonnet sequence narrating his hapless passion. The poet had been as extravagantly assertive as poets in love usually are, and the sonnets were really notable; so the young man was swept into a gust of fame; all Italy read his verse and sympathized with him. The object of a popular poet's romantic and unfortunate love is always the object of curiosity and interest, as Anne Champneys discovered to her surprise and annoyance.

"He was such a little idiot!" she told Marcia Vandervelde, disgustedly. "Always sighing and rolling his eyes, and looking at one like a sick calf,—more than once I was tempted to catch him by the shoulders and shake him!"

"He's a poet, my child," said Mrs. Vandervelde, mischievously, "and you're the lady in the case. It's been the making of him, and it hasn't done you any harm: you'll be a legend in your own lifetime."

Marcia was quite right. The poet's love clung to Anne like an intangible perfume, and a halo of romance encircled her red head. The Florentines discovered that she was beautiful; the English and Americans, cooler in judgment, found her charming. And a noted German artist came along and declared that he had found in her his ideal Undine.

Mrs. Peter remained unchanged and unimpressed. She shrugged indifferent shoulders; she wasn't particularly interested in herself as the object of poetic adoration.

She was, however, immensely interested in the beauty and romance of Florence. The street crowds, so vivacious, so good-humored, the vivid Florentine faces, enchanted her. More astonishing than storied buildings, or even imperishable art, were the figures that moved across the red-and-gold background of the city's history,—figures like Dante, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and that great prior of San Marco whose "soul went out in fire." Curiously enough, it was Savonarola who made the most profound impression upon her. It seemed to her that the immortal monk still dominated Florence, and when she saw his old worn crucifix in his cell at San Marco, something awoke in her spirit,—a sense of religious values. Religion, then, was not a mere fixed convention, subscribed to as a sort of proof of conservatism and respectability; religion was really a fixed reality, an eternal power. She read everything that she could lay her hands on covering the history of Fra Girolamo. Then she bought a picture of his red Indian-like visage, and hung it up in her room. The titanic reformer remained, a shadowy but very deep power, in the background of her consciousness, and it was this long-dead preacher who taught her to pray. He won her profoundest reverence and faith, because he had been true, he had sealed his faith with his life; she felt that she could trust him. His honesty appealed to her own.

It was such curious phases as this of the girl's unfolding character, that made her a never-failing source of interest to Marcia Vandervelde. Under her superimposed, surface indifference, Marcia reflected, Anne had a deep strain of pure unworldliness, vast possibilities. Give Anne an ideal, once arouse her enthusiasm, and she was capable of tossing aside the world for it. Marcia was vastly interested, too, in the serene detachment of the girl's attitude toward all those with whom she came in contact. One might evoke interest, sympathy, compassion, even a quiet friendliness, but her heart remained quiet, aloof, secure from invasion. Handsome young men who fell in love with her—and there were several such—seemed unable to stir any emotion in her, except perhaps, an impatient resentment. Marcia, of course, knew nothing of Glenn Mitchell. But Anne Champneys remembered him poignantly. She had learned her lesson.

They had been some six or eight months in Florence when Mr. Berkeley Hayden put in his appearance, somewhat to Mrs. Vandervelde's surprise. She had not expected this! She studied her old friend speculatively. H'm! She remembered the pale face of the young Italian poet whose sad sonnets all Italy was reading with delight. Then she looked at the red-headed source of those sonnets,—and she had no doubt as to the cause of Mr. Hayden's appearance in Florence at this time,—and wondered a bit. The situation gave a fillip to her imagination; it was piquant. One wondered how it would end.

Peter Champneys? Marcia scented disruption, where that impalpable relationship was concerned. She was ignorant as to Anne's real feelings and intentions in regard to her absentee husband. Anne never mentioned him. She bore his name, she held herself rigidly aloof from all lovers; herein one saw her sole concessions to the tie binding her. Marcia didn't see how it was possible that the two should avoid hating each other; the mere fact that they had been arbitrarily forced upon each other by the imperious will of old Chadwick, would inevitably militate against any hope of future affection between them. And now here was Berkeley Hayden, quite as imperious as Chadwick Champneys had ever been, and who was quite as successful in getting what he wanted.

Anne had welcomed Mr. Hayden gladly. She was honestly delighted to see him. Florence had taught her, signally, the depths of her own lack of culture, and this biting knowledge increased her respect for Mr. Berkeley Hayden. Marcia was immensely clever, charmingly cultivated, a woman of the world in the best sense, but Anne's native shrewdness told her that Marcia's knowledge was not equal to Hayden's. His culture was surer and deeper. He was more than a mere amateur; he knew. He stood apart, in her mind, and just a little higher than anybody else. She turned to him eagerly, and there was established between them, almost unconsciously, the most potent, perfect, and dangerous of all relationships, because it is the most beautiful and natural,—that, in which the man is the teacher and the woman the pupil.

Hayden saw her, too, to greater advantage, here under this Florentine sky, against the background of perhaps the most beautiful city in the world. She glowed, splendidly young and vivid. She did not laugh often, but when she did, it was like a peal of music; it came straight from her heart and went direct to yours. It was as catching as fire, as exhilarating as the chime of sleigh-bells on a frosty Thanksgiving morning, as clear and true as a redbird's whistle; and it had tucked away in it a funny, throaty chuckle so irresistibly infectious that suspicious old St. Anthony himself, would have joined in accord with it, had he heard its silver echo in his wilderness. Berkeley Hayden's immortal soul stood on the tiptoe of ecstasy when Anne Champneys laughed.

She no longer thought of herself as Nancy Simms; she knew herself now as Anne Champneys, a newer and better personality dominating that old, unhappy, ignorant self. If at times the man glimpsed that other shadowy self of hers, it was part of her mysterious appeal, her enthralling, baffling charm. It invested her with a shade of inscrutable, prescient sorrow, as of old unhappy far-off things. He hadn't the faintest idea of Nancy Simms, a creature utterly foreign to his experience. And because she did not love him, Anne Champneys never spoke of that old self, never confided in him. He did not know her as she had been, he only knew her as she was now. That, however, fully satisfied his critical taste. The marvel of her alabaster skin, fleckless and flawless, the glory of her glittering red hair, the sea-depths of her cool, gray-green eyes, the reserve of her expression, the virginal curve of her lip, enchanted him. He liked the tall, slender strength of her, the lightness of her step, her grace when she danced, her spirited pose when she rode. Here was the woman, the one woman, to bear his name, to be the mistress of his house. She was the only woman he had ever really wished to marry. And she was nominally married to Peter Champneys.

Hayden was honorable. Had hers been a real marriage, had she been a happy wife, he would have respected the tie that bound her, and gone his way. But the situation was exceptional. She wasn't really a wife at all, and like Mrs. Vandervelde, he could see in such a marriage nothing but a cause for mutual disgust and dislike. Well, then, if he loved her, and Peter Champneys didn't, he certainly was not working Peter Champneys any harm in winning away from him a wife he didn't want. Why should he stand aside and let her go, for such a shadow as that ceremony had been? The Champneys money? That meant nothing weighed in the balance with his desire. He could give her as much, and more, than she would forego. Mrs. Berkeley Hayden would eclipse Mrs. Peter Champneys.

Deliberately, then, but delicately, after his fashion, Hayden set himself to win Anne Champneys. He felt that his passion for her gave him the right. He meant to make her happy. She could have her marriage annulled. Then she would become Mrs. Berkeley Hayden. Even the fact that he really knew very little about her did not trouble him. He coveted her, and he meant to have her.

He read the young Italian's sonnets, which she had inspired, and they made him thoughtful. He could readily understand the depths of feeling such a woman could arouse. Had she no heart, as the Italian lamented? He wondered. It came to him that she was, in truth, detached, sufficient to herself, an ungregarious creature moving solitarily in a mysterious world all her own. What did she think? What did she feel? He didn't know. He was allowed to see certain aspects of her intelligence, and her quickness of perception, the delicacy of her fancy, her childlike and morning freshness, and a pungently shrewd Americanism that flashed out at odd and unexpected moments, never failed to delight him. But her deeper thoughts, her real feelings, her heart, remained sealed and closed to him.

He saw half-pleasedly, half-jealously the interest she aroused in other men. Nothing but her almost unbelievable indifference held his jealousy in check. He reflected with satisfaction that she was on a friendlier footing with him than with any other man of her acquaintance, that she had a more instant welcome for him than for any other, and for which cause he was cordially hated by several otherwise amiable gentlemen. And then he waxed gloomy, remembering how emotionless, how impersonal, that friendship really was. At times he laughed at himself wryly, recalling the passionate friendship other women had lavished upon him, and how wearisome it had been to him, how he had wished to escape it. If but a modicum of that passion had been bestowed upon him by this girl, how changed the world would be for him!

And in the meantime Anne Champneys liked him serenely, was grateful to him, aware that his intellect was as a key that was unlocking her own; welcomed him openly and was maddeningly respectful to him. This made him rage. What did she think he was, anyhow? An old professor, an antiquarian, an archaeologist? She might as well consider him an antediluvian at once!

"Marcia," he said to Mrs. Vandervelde one evening, "I want you to tell me all you know about this Champneys business. Just exactly how does the affair stand?" Anne had been carried off by some American friends, the smart throng that had filled Mrs. Vandervelde's rooms had gone, and Hayden and his hostess had the big, softly lighted drawing-room to themselves. At his query Mrs. Vandervelde turned in her chair, shading her eyes with her hand the better to observe him.

"Why, you know as much as I do, Berkeley! You know how and why the marriage was contracted, and what hinges upon it," said she, cautiously.

He made an impatient gesture. "I want to know what she's going to do. Surely she isn't going to allow herself to be bound by that old lunatic's will, is she?"

"He wasn't an old lunatic; he was an old genius. Jason had an almost superstitious reverence for his judgment. Somehow, his plans always managed to come out all right,—in the end. Even when they seemed wild, they came out all right. They're still coming out all right."

"And you think this insane marriage is likely to come out all right in the end, too?" he asked sharply.

"I don't know. Stranger things have happened. Why shouldn't this?"

"Why should it? That fellow Champneys—"

"Is said to be a great painter. At least, he is certainly a very successful one. Whether or not he can make good as Anne Champneys's husband remains to be seen." Mrs. Vandervelde was not above the innate feminine cattiness. Hayden rose abruptly and began to pace the room. He was vaguely aware that he had been astrally scratched across the nose.

"And you think a girl like Anne will be willing to play patient Griselda?" he asked, scornfully.

"I don't know. You think she shouldn't?"

"I think she shouldn't. I tell you frankly he doesn't deserve it."

"Oh, as for that!" said Mrs. Vandervelde, airily.

Hayden paused in his restless walk, and looked at her earnestly.

"Berkeley," said she, changing her light tone, "am I to understand that you are—really in earnest?"

"I am so much in earnest," he replied, deliberately, "that I do not mind telling you, Marcia, that I want this girl. More, I mean to have her, if I can make her care for me."

She considered this carefully. He had never known what it meant to have his wishes thwarted, and now he would move heaven and earth to win Anne Champneys. Well, but!—She liked Hayden, and she didn't think, all things considered, that Anne Champneys could do better, if she wished to have her marriage to Peter annulled, than to marry Berkeley. But how would Jason consider such a move? Jason had been greatly attached to old Mr. Champneys. Indeed, his connection with that astute old wizard had just about doubled their income. Jason wouldn't be likely to look with friendly eyes upon this bringing to naught, what he knew had been Champneys's fondest scheme. She said, after a pause:

"Does Anne know?"

"Who knows what Anne knows? But on the face of it, I should say she doesn't. At least, she doesn't appear to. I have been very—circumspect," said he, moodily. And he added angrily: "She seems to regard me as a sort of cicerone, a perambulating, vocal Baedeker!"

Mrs. Vandervelde smiled openly. "It is your surest hold upon her. I shouldn't cavil at it, if I were you. To Anne you are the sum total of human knowledge. Your dictum is the last word to be said about anything."

But Berkeley still looked sulky. The idea of being what Sydney Smith said Macaulay was—a book in breeches—didn't appeal to him at all.

"What would you advise me to do?" he asked, after a pause.

She said reflectively: "Let her alone for a while, Berkeley. If her liking for you grows naturally into affection,—and it may, you know,—that would be best. If you try to force it, you may drive her from you altogether. I tell you frankly, she is not in the least interested in any man as a lover, so far as I can judge."

He was forced to admit the truth of this. She wasn't. She seemed to dislike any faintest sign of loverliness from any man toward her. Hayden had observed her icy attitude toward the painter who had fancied he found in her his ideal Undine, and who showed too openly his desire to help her gain a soul for herself. The idea that she might look at him as she had looked at the painter was highly unpleasant to him. He asked again:

"But what am I to do?"

"Nothing," said Mrs. Vandervelde, succinctly.

"But suppose she falls in love with somebody else."

"She is more likely to fall in love with you, I should imagine, if you keep quiet for a while and allow her to do so. Just remain her guide, philosopher, and friend, can't you?"

The clever, cosmopolitan Mr. Berkeley Hayden tugged at his short mustache and looked astonishingly like a sulky school-boy.

"Well, if you think that's the best thing I can do—" he began.

"I know it is," said she. And she reflected that even the cleverest man, when he is really in love, is something of a fool.

Here Anne herself came in and the three dined together, a statuesque maid in a yellow bodice and a purple skirt waiting on them. Agata's "Si?" was like a flute-note, and the two women loved to see her moving about their rooms. It was like having Hebe wait on them.

Anne turned to Hayden eagerly. She wished his opinion of a piece of tapestry an antiquarian in the Via Ricasoli wished to sell her. Would he go and look at it with her? And there was an old lamp she fancied but of the genuineness of which she wasn't sure. And she added, dropping her voice, that she'd gotten a copy of one of Fra Girolamo Savonarola's sermons, beautifully done on vellum, evidently by some loving monkish follower of his. Didn't he want to see it? She looked at him eagerly. Mrs. Vandervelde, catching his eye, smiled.

Hayden played his part beautifully, concealing the tumult of his feelings under the polished surface of the serene manner that Anne so greatly admired. He made himself indispensable; he gave her his best, unstintedly, and Hayden at his best was inimitable. Marcia Vandervelde regarded him with new respect and admiration. Berkeley was really wonderful!

When he took his departure, Anne Champneys felt that the glamour of Florence had departed with him. It was as if the sunshine had been withdrawn, along with that polished presence, that gem-like mind. She missed him to an extent that astonished her. She thought that even Giotto's Campanile looked bleak, the day Berkeley Hayden left.

"I'm going to miss you hideously," she told him truthfully.

"I hope so," he said guardedly. He did not wish to show too plainly how overjoyed he was at that admission. "And I'm going to hope you'll find me necessary in New York. I'm looking forward to seeing you in New York, you know. I have two new pictures I want you to see."

Her face brightened. "Your being there will make me glad to go back to New York," she said happily. And Hayden had to resist a wild impulse to shout, to catch her in his arms. He went away with hope in his heart.

But Mrs. Vandervelde, watching her closely, thought she was too open in her regret. N-no, Anne wasn't in love with Hayden—yet. She picked up her studies, to which he had given impetus, with too hearty a zest. And when he wrote her amusing, witty, delightful letters, she was too willing to have Marcia read them.

They remained in Italy six months or so more; and then one day Anne returned from a picnic, and said to Marcia abruptly:

"Would you mind if I asked you to leave Florence,—if I should want to go home?"

Marcia said quietly: "No. If you wish to go, we will go. Are you tired of Italy?"

Anne Champneys looked at her with wide eyes. For a moment she hesitated, then ran to Marcia, and clung to her with her head against her friend's shoulder.

"You're so good to me—and I care so much for you,—I'll tell you the truth," she said in a whisper. "I—I heard something to-day, Marcia,—he's coming to Rome—soon. And of course he'll come here, too."

"He?—Who?"

"Peter Champneys," said Peter's wife, and literally shook in her shoes. Her clasp tightened. Marcia put her arms around her, and felt, to her surprise, that Anne was frightened.

"You are sure?"

"Yes. I heard it accidentally, but I am sure. You know how pretty the Arno is at the spot where we picnicked. We strolled about, and I—didn't want to talk to anybody, so I slipped away by myself. There were a couple of English artists painting near by, and just as I came up I overheard what they were saying. Marcia,—they were talking about—him. They said he'd been called to Rome to paint somebody's picture,—the pope's, maybe,—and they'd probably see him here, later. They seemed to be—friends of his, from the way they spoke." She shivered. "Italy isn't big enough to hold us two!" she said, desperately. "Marcia, I can't—run the risk of meeting Peter Champneys. Not until I have to. I—I've got to get away!" Her voice broke.

"All right, dear. We'll go," said Marcia, soothingly. "Jason's about finished his work in Brazil, and he'll be back in New York by this. Do you want to go directly home?"

"Yes," said Anne Champneys. "Italy's a very little place compared with America. Let's go back to America, Marcia."

Mrs. Vandervelde stroked the red head. It seemed to her that fate was playing into Mr. Berkeley Hayden's hands.



CHAPTER XVII

THE GUTTER-CANDLE

Although the Champneys house was tightly closed, with the upper door and windows boarded up, the blonde person in shoddy fineries rang the area bell on the chance that there must be a caretaker somewhere about the premises. She felt that when one has come upon such an errand as hers, one mustn't leave any stone unturned; and she couldn't trust to a haphazard letter. An impassive and immaculate Japanese opened the door, and stood looking at her without any expression at all. Had the blonde person baldly stated her errand, the Japanese would probably have closed the door and that would have been the end of it. But she didn't speak; after a sharp glance at him she opened her gay hand-bag, extracted a slip of paper, handed it to him, and stood waiting.

The Japanese read: "I wish you'd do what you can, for my sake," and saw that it was addressed to Mr. Chadwick Champneys and signed by Mr. Peter Champneys. It had evidently been carefully kept, and for a long time, as the creases showed. The Japanese stood reflecting for a few moments, then beckoned the blonde person inside the house, ushering her into a very neat basement sitting-room.

"For you?" he asked, glancing at the slip of paper.

"Me? No. I come for a lady friend o' mine. You might tell 'em she's awful sick an' scared,—just about all in, she is,—or she wouldn't of sent. But he said she was to come here an' hand in that slip I've just gave you. That's how I come to bring it."

"All right. You wait," said the Japanese, and glided from the room. It was the first time Hoichi had received any message from the new master, as he knew Mr. Peter Champneys to be; if the message was genuine, he was sure that Mr. Chadwick Champneys, had he been alive, would have investigated it. Hoichi couldn't imagine how the blonde person had gotten hold of such a slip of paper, signed by Mr. Peter Champneys. If there was some trick behind it, some ulterior motive underlying it, then Hoichi proposed to have the trickster taught a needed lesson. He was a suspicious man and visions of clever robbers planning a raid on the premises rose before him. He would run no risks, take no chances. He rang up Mr. Jason Vandervelde, fortunately caught the lawyer at home, and faithfully repeated the blonde person's message. He insisted that the signature was genuine; he had seen many letters addressed to the late Mr. Champneys by his nephew, and he would recognize that writing anywhere. He asked to be instructed.

"Tell her to wait half an hour and I'll be there," said the lawyer upon reflection.

The blonde person was leaning back in a Morris chair, tiredly, when Vandervelde was ushered into the basement sitting-room. He recognized her type with something of a shock. She was what might be called—charitably—a peripatetic person, and she reeked of very strong perfume. The lawyer's eyes narrowed, while he explained briefly that he represented the Champneys interests. Would she explain as concisely as possible just why and for whom she had come?

She explained ramblingly. Mr. Vandervelde gathered that a certain "lady friend" of hers, one Gracie Cantrell, now in the hospital, said her prayers to Mr. Peter Champneys, whom she had met on a time, and who had advised her if ever she needed help to apply to his uncle, and to tell him that he had sent her. Feeling herself down and out now, she had done so.

"Honest to Gawd, the poor little simp thinks this feller's a angel. Why,—when she gets out o' her head, she don't rave about nothin' but him, beggin' him to help her. Ain't it somethin' fierce, though?" The blonde person dabbed at her eyes with a scented handkerchief.

Mr. Vandervelde rubbed his nose thoughtfully. A girl down and out, a waif in a city ward, in her delirium calling upon Peter Champneys for help, didn't sound at all good to him. In connection with that penciled slip which seemed to imply that she had a right to expect help, it smacked of possible heart-interest—sob-stuff—so dear to enterprising special writers for a yellow press. He couldn't understand how or where Peter had met the girl; possibly some youthful foolishness back there in Carolina. Maybe she'd followed him north, to become what her friendship with such as the blonde person indicated. Vandervelde was a cautious man and he thought he had better investigate that message, written before Chadwick Champneys's death.

"My car's outside," he told the blonde person briefly. "We'll see this Gracie at once and find out just what's to be done."

It was past the hour for visitors, but Vandervelde's card procured them admittance to the ward where Gracie lay. At sight of the big-eyed, white-faced, wasted little creature who looked at him with such a frightened and beseeching stare, Vandervelde's suspicions of her died. No matter what she had been,—and the house-physician's brief comment on her case left him in no doubt,—this poor wrecked bit of humanity beached upon the bleak shore of a charity ward was harmless. He absolved her of all evil intent, of any desire to obtain anything under false pretenses. He even absolved the blonde person, who despite her brassy hair, her hectic face, had of a sudden become a kind, gentle, and soothing presence. "Well, dearie, you got a straight tip from that feller. All I had to do was to show that piece o' paper he give you, and this kind gent'man come right off to see you," said the blonde cheerfully. "An' now maybe he'll be wantin' to talk with you, so I'll leave you be. Good night, dearie," and she stepped away quietly, a trail of perfume in her wake, so that Vandervelde's nose involuntarily wrinkled.

Gracie lay and looked at her visitor.

"You ain't his uncle. You don't look nothin' at all like him," said she, disappointedly.

"No. His uncle is dead. I'm the lawyer who has the estate in charge. So you can tell me just exactly what you know about Mr. Peter Champneys, and then tell me what I can do for you."

He spoke so kindly that Gracie's spirits revived. She told him just exactly what she knew about Mr. Peter Champneys, which of course was very, very little. Yet this much was luminously clear: of all the men Gracie had ever encountered, of all her experiences, Peter Champneys and the hour he had sat and talked with her stood out clearest, clean, touched with a soft and pure light, a solitary sweet remembrance in a sodden and sordid existence.

"Like a angel, he was. I never seen nobody with such a way o' lookin' at you. Never pretended he didn't understand, but treated me like a lady. I couldn't never forget him. I kep' the piece o' paper he give me, mostly because it was somethin' belongin' to him an' it sort o' proved I hadn't dreamed him. I never meant to ask for no help—but when I come here—an' there wasn't nothin' else to do, I kep' rememberin' he said I was to go to his uncle an' say he'd sent me. I—I'm scared! My Gawd!—I'm scared!"

He remembered once seeing a trapped rabbit die of sheer terror. This girl, trapped by the inevitable, reminded him unpleasantly of the rabbit. His kind heart contracted. He asked gently:

"What is it you are so afraid of, Gracie? Try to tell me just what you want me to do for you." Perspiration appeared upon her forehead. She clutched him with a skeleton hand.

"I'm scared o' bein' cut up!" she whispered fearfully. "Oh, for Gawdsake, save me from bein' cut up!" Her eyes widened; in her thin breast you could see her laboring heart thumping. "I want you keep 'em from cuttin' me up!" she repeated feverishly.

"Cutting you up!" Vandervelde looked at her wonderingly.

"Yes. I heard 'em say I didn't have no chanst. They put you in the morgue—afterward—when you're folks like me, and then the doctors come and get you and cut you up. I don't want to be cut up! For Christ's sake, don't you let 'em cut me up!"

Vandervelde felt a sort of sick horror. He couldn't quite understand Gracie's psychology; her unreasoning, ignorant terror.

"Why, my poor girl, what a notion! You—" he stammered.

"I been treated bad enough alive without bein' cut up when I'm dead," said she, interrupting him. "I get to thinkin' about it, wakin' up here in the night. He said his folks'd help me if I asked 'em."

"Of course, of course! Certainly we'll help!" said Vandervelde hastily.

"If I had any money saved up, 't wouldn't be so bad. But I ain't. We never do. I—I been sick a long time. What clothes I had they kep' against the rent I was owin', when they told me to get out. An' I walked an' walked,—an' then one o' them cops in Central Park, he seen me, an' next thing I knew I was here."

She was getting hysterical, and he saw that it was quite useless to try to reason with her; the one way to allay her terror was to make the promise she implored.

"Well, now that your message has reached us, Gracie, you need not be afraid any more, because what you fear won't happen; it can't happen. There!—Put it out of your mind."

She stared at him intently, and decided that this large, fair man was one to be implicitly trusted.

"You bein' one o' his people, if you say it won't happen, then it won't happen," she told him, and fetched a great sight of relief. "Oh! I was that scared I 'most died! I—I just naturally can't bear the idea o' bein' turned over to them doctors." And she shuddered.

"Well, now that you're satisfied you won't be, suppose you tell me something more immediate that I can do for you. Isn't there something you'd like?"

"I'd like it most of anything if you'd tell me somethin' about him," she said timidly. "I know I got no right to ast, me bein' what I am," she added, apologetically. "You see, nobody ever behaved to me like he did, an' I can't forget him."

She looked so pathetically eager, her look was so humble, that Vandervelde couldn't find it in his heart to deny the request. He found himself telling her that Peter Champneys had become a great painter, that he had never returned to America, and that his wife also was abroad.