"Is the lady he's married to as nice as him? I sure hope she's good enough for him," was Gracie's comment.

Seeing how mortally weak she was, Vandervelde took his departure, promising to see her again. He had a further interview with the house-physician and the head nurse. Whatever could be done for her would be done, but they had handled too many Gracies to be optimistic about this particular one. They knew how quickly these gutter-candles flicker out.

Commonplace as the girl was, she managed to win Vandervelde's interest and sympathy. That she had won young Peter Champneys's didn't surprise him. He was glad that she had had that one disinterested and kindly deed to look back to. The boy's quixotic behavior brought a smile to the lawyer's lips. Fancy his wishing to send such a girl to his uncle and being sure that old Chadwick wouldn't misunderstand! Gracie cast a new light upon Peter Champneys, and a very likable one. Vandervelde had seen in the uncle something of that same unworldliness that the nephew displayed, and it had established the human equation between Peter and the shrewd old man.

Busy as he was, he managed to see Gracie again. She had refused to be put into a private room; she preferred the ward.

"It's not fittin'," she said. "Anyhow, I don't want to stay by myself. When I wake up at night I want to feel people around me,—even sick people's better than nobody. It's sort o' comfortin' to have comp'ny," and she stayed in the ward, sharing with less fortunate ones the fruit and flowers Vandervelde had sent to her. Once the gripping fear that had obsessed her had been dispelled, once she was sure of a protecting kindness that might be relied upon, she proved a gay little body. As the blonde person said, Gracie wasn't a bad sort at all. As a matter of fact, neither was the blonde person. Vandervelde saw that, and it troubled his complacent satisfaction with things. He saw in the waste of these women an effect of that fatally unmoral energy ironically called modern civilization. He wondered how Marcia, or Peter's wife, would react to Gracie. Should he tell them about her? N-no, he rather thought not.

Marcia had cabled that she and Anne were leaving Italy—were, in fact, on their way home. During his wife's absence he had had to make two or three South American trips, to safeguard certain valuable Champneys interests. The trips had been highly successful and interesting, and he hadn't disliked them, but Vandervelde was incurably domestic; he liked Marcia at the household helm.

"I wanted to hire half a dozen brass-bands to meet you," he told his wife the morning of her arrival, and kissed her brazenly. "Marcia, you are prettier than ever! As for Anne—" At sight of Anne Champneys his eyes widened.

"Why, Anne!—Why Anne!" He took off his glasses, polished them, and stared at his ward. Marcia smiled the pleased smile of the artist whose work is being appreciated by a competent critic. She was immensely proud of the tall fair girl, so poised, so serene, so decorative.

"As a target for the human eye," said Vandervelde, fervently, "you're more than a success: you're a riot!"

Anne slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. "I'm glad you like me," said she, frankly. "It's so nice when the right people like one."

Hayden was not in town. He didn't, as a matter of fact, know that they had left Italy, for Anne's last letter had said nothing of any intention to return to America shortly. Anne felt curiously disappointed that he wasn't at the pier with Jason to meet them. She was surprised at her own eagerness to see him. He pleased her more than any man she had ever met, and her impatience grew with his absence.

Marcia, a born general, was already planning with masterly attention to details the social career of Mrs. Peter Champneys. With the forces that she could command, the immense power that Berkeley Hayden would swing in her favor, and the Champneys money, that career promised to be unusually brilliant, when one considered Anne herself.

The Champneys house was to be reopened. In the main, as Chadwick Champneys had planned it, it pleased Marcia's critical taste. Anne herself appreciated as she had been unable to do when she first came to it. She liked its fine Aubusson carpets, its lovely old rosewood and mahogany furniture, its uncluttered stateliness. But there were certain changes and improvements she wished made, and she took a businesslike pleasure in supervising the carrying out of her orders. The portrait of Mr. Chadwick Champneys, painted the year before his death hung over the library mantel and seemed to watch her thoughtfully, critically, with its fine brown eyes. The girl he had snatched from obscure slavery liked to study the visage of the old monomaniac who had been the god in the machine of her existence. Her judgment of him now was clear-eyed but cold. He had been liberal because it fell in with his plans. He had never been loving.

She was sitting in the library one morning, looking up at him rather somberly. Workmen came and went, and somewhere in the back regions a hammer kept up a steady tapping.

"Mr. Hayden," said Hoichi, as he ushered that gentleman into the room.

She turned her head and looked at him for a full moment, before rising to greet him: one of Anne Champneys's long, still, mysterious looks, that made his heart feel as if it were a candle, blown and shaken by the wind. Then she smiled and held out her hand. It was good to see him again! She was prouder of his friendship than of anything that had yet come to her. It gave her a sense of security, raised her in her own estimation.

She explained, eagerly, the changes and improvements she was planning, and he went over the house with her. He liked it as Marcia liked it; once or twice he offered suggestions; the relationship of pupil and master was at once resumed,—but this time the pupil was more advanced.

Then he took her out to lunch. It was with difficulty that he restrained the exuberant delight he felt; just to have her with him went to his head. "Marcia's advice was wise, but my behavior's going to be otherwise, if I don't keep a tight hold upon myself," he told himself.

He jealously watched her social progress, and he contributed not a little toward it. He had a sense of proprietorship in her, and he did not mean that she should be just one among many; he wished her to be a great luminary around which lesser lights revolved. Under Marcia Vandervelde's wing, then, Mrs. Peter Champneys was launched, and from the very first she was a success. She played her part beautifully, though she was curiously apathetic about her triumphs. The incense of adulation did not make as sweet an odor in her nostrils as one might have supposed. Anne Champneys was oddly lacking in personal vanity, and she retained her sense of values, she was able to see things in their just proportions. That she had created a sensation didn't turn her red head. But she had a feeling that she had, in a sense, kept her word to Chadwick Champneys, discharged part of her debt. This was what he had wished her to accomplish. Very well, she had accomplished it. She was glad. But she sensed a certain hollowness under it all. Sometimes, alone in her room, she would stand and look long and earnestly at the red Indian face of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, brought from Florence and now hanging on her wall. That room had changed. It was plain and simple, almost austere; the "honest monk" who had died in the fire, and the wooden crucifix under him, seemed to dominate it. That treasure of a maid whom Marcia had secured for her, secretly sniffed at Mrs. Champneys's bed-chamber. She couldn't understand it. It wasn't in keeping with the rest of the house. For, it was a brilliant house, as the home of an exceedingly fashionable, wealthy, and handsome woman should be.

Anne bore the name of Champneys like a conquering banner. What had happened on a smaller scale in Florence, happened on a large scale here at home. Something of the Champneys story had crept out,—the early marriage, which had kept all the wealth in the family; the departure of the bridegroom to become an artist, and the fact that he had really become a noted one. The halo of romance encircled her head. She was considered beautiful and clever, and the glamour of much money added to the impression she created; but she was also considered cold, inaccessible, and perhaps, as the Italian had said, without a heart. She became, as Marcia had laughingly predicted, a legend in her own lifetime.

Jason Vandervelde watched her speculatively. He adored Anne, and he hoped she wasn't going to be spoiled by all the pother made over her. And he watched with a growing concern Berkeley Hayden's quiet, persistent, deliberate pursuit of her. Jason wasn't under any illusions about the Champneys marriage, but he had, as his wife said, an almost superstitious respect for Chadwick Champneys, and that marriage had been the old man's darling plan. It was upon that he had builded, and Vandervelde hated to see that plan brought to naught. Anne wouldn't really lose, of course,—Hayden could give her as much as she might forego,—but Vandervelde somehow didn't relish the idea. That girl Gracie, lingering on in the hospital ward, had brought the real Peter Champneys poignantly close to his trustee. He couldn't help thinking that if Anne could know that real Peter, there might be a hope that old Chadwick's judgment would be once more vindicated. At the same time, he cared a great deal for Berkeley Hayden, and the latter wanted Anne. And when Hayden wanted anything, he generally got it. What Anne herself thought, or what she might know, he couldn't determine. And Marcia, when he ventured to speak to her about the matter, said cryptically:

"Why worry? What is to be, will be. Kismet, Jason, kismet!"

* * * * *

On a certain afternoon the house-physician telephoned Mr. Vandervelde that the girl Gracie was very low, and that she had asked for him. Vandervelde finished the letter he was dictating to his secretary, gave a few further instructions to that faithful animal, and had himself driven to the hospital. He couldn't explain his feelings where Gracie was concerned. There was something to blame, somewhere, for these Gracies. It made him feel a bit remorseful, as if he and his sort had left something undone.

The house-physician said that Gracie's hold upon life was a mystery and a miracle; by all the laws she should have been gone some months since. She had certainly taken her time about dying! Her little, sharp, immature face had lost all earthliness; only the eyes were alive. They looked at Vandervelde gratefully. He had been very kind, and Gracie was trying to thank him.

"Good-by," said Gracie. "You been white. Tell him—I couldn't never forget him." She put out a claw of a hand, and the big man took it.

"Is there—anything else I can do for you, Gracie? Isn't there something you'd like?" The business of seeing Gracie go wasn't at all pleasant.

Her eyes of a sudden sparkled. She smiled.

"There's one thing I been wanting awful bad. But I ain't sure I ought to ask."

"Tell me, my child, tell me."

"I want to see her," said Gracie, unexpectedly.

"Her?"

"His wife. I got no right to ast, but I want somethin' awful to see his wife. Just once before I—I go, I want to see her."

Vandervelde felt bewildered. He had never spoken of Gracie to Marcia, or to Anne. They were so far removed from this poor little derelict that he was not sure they would understand. He said after a moment's painful reflection:

"My poor child, I will see what I can do. But if I—that is, if she—" He paused, not knowing exactly how to put his dilemma into words without wounding her. But Gracie understood.

"You mean if she won't come? That's what I want to know," said she, enigmatically. So weak was she that with the words on her lips she dropped into sudden slumber. He stood looking down upon her irresolutely. Then he tiptoed away, meeting at the door the house-physician.

"How long?" asked the lawyer, jerkily.

"Probably until morning. Or at any minute," said the doctor, indifferently. He thought it the best thing Gracie could do.

Vandervelde nodded. Then, moved by one of those impulses under the influence of which the most conservative and careful people do things that astonish nobody more than themselves, he got into his car and went after Anne Champneys.

* * * * *

Anne was for the moment alone. The spring dusk had just fallen, and she was glad to sit for a breathing-space in the shadowy room. Berkeley Hayden had just left. His visit had been momentous, and as a result she was shaken to the depths. She had come face to face with destiny, and she was called upon to make a decision.

For the first time Hayden had broken the rigid rule of conduct he had set for himself. He felt that he could endure no more. He had to know. They had chatted pleasantly, idly. But of a sudden Berkeley had risen from his chair, gone to the window, looked out, turned and faced her.

"Anne," said he, directly, "what are you going to do about Peter Champneys?"

She started as if she had received an electric shock. After a moment, looking at him with a confused and startled stare, she stammered:

"W-why do you ask!"

"I have to know," said Hayden, and his voice trembled. "You must be aware, Anne, that I love you. I have loved you from the first moment of our meeting. You are the only woman I have ever really wished to marry. That is why I must ask you: What are you going to do about Peter Champneys?"

"I—I don't know," said she, twisting her fingers.

"Do you fancy you might be able to love him,—later?"

"No," said she, violently. "No!"

"Why, then, do you not have this abominable marriage annulled?" he demanded. "I know nothing of Champneys, except that he's an artist,—and, truth forces me to say, a great one. But if he doesn't love you, if you do not love him, do you think anything but misery is ahead for you both, if you decide to carry out the terms of that promise extorted from you?"

She shrank back in her chair. She made no reply, and Hayden came and stood directly before her, looking down at her.

"And I—am I nothing to you Anne? I love you. What of me, Anne?"

"What can I say?" said she, falteringly. "I am not free."

"If you were free, would you marry me? For that is what I am asking you to do,—free yourself, and marry me."

She lifted her troubled eyes. "If I were free," she said, "if I were free—Berkeley, give me time to consider this. It isn't only the annulling of my marriage to a man I had never seen until the day I married him, and have never seen since,—it's the breaking of my promise to Uncle Chadwick—" They were in the library, and she looked up at the portrait above the mantel. Hayden's glance followed hers.

"He had no right to extort any such promise from you!" he cried. "Anne, think it over! Weigh Peter Champneys and me in the balance. And,—let the best man win, Anne. Will you?"

She regarded him steadfastly. "Yes," she said.

"And when you have decided, you will let me know?"

"I will let you know," said she, smiling faintly.

Berkeley took her hand and kissed it. He looked deep into her eyes. Then he left her. He had been very quiet, but his passion for her glowed in his eyes, rang in his voice, and was in the lips that kissed her palm.

She had not been in the least thrilled by it, but she was not displeased. She liked him. As for loving him, she didn't think it was really in her to love anybody. Looking back upon her youthful infatuation for Glenn Mitchell, she smiled at herself twistedly. She knew now that she had been in love with the bright shadow of love.

But, she reflected, if she did not love Hayden, she respected him, she was proud of him; he represented all that was best and most desirable in her present life. Life with Berkeley Hayden wouldn't be empty. And life as she faced it now was as empty as a shell that has lost even the faintest echo of the sea. Despite its outward glitter, its mother-of-pearl sheen, she was beginning to be more and more aware of its innate hollowness. Her young and healthy nature cried out against its futility. She was in the May morning of her existence, and yet the joy of youth eluded her.

She had, perhaps, one more year of freedom. Then,—Peter Champneys. Berkeley might well ask what she was going to do about it! Was she to accept as final that contract which would make her the unloved wife of an unloved husband? Now that she had grown somewhat older and considerably wiser, now that her horizon had widened, her sense of values broadened, she perceived that she owed to herself, to her sacredest instincts, the highest duty. She did not like to break her pledged word; but that pledge wronged Berkeley, wronged her, wronged Peter.

Her feeling toward that unknown husband was one of stark terror, a sick dislike that had grown stronger with the years. In her mind he remained unchanged. She saw him as the gawky, shrinking boy, his lips apart, his eyes looking at her with uncontrollable aversion. Oh, no! Life with Peter Champneys was unthinkable! There remained, then, Berkeley Hayden. It wasn't unpleasant to think of Berkeley Hayden. It made one feel safe, and assured; there was a glamour of gratified pride about it,—Nancy Simms,—Mrs. Peter Champneys,—Mrs. Berkeley Hayden. A little smile touched her lips.

Into these not unpleasant musings Mr. Jason Vandervelde irrupted himself, with the astounding request that she come with him now, immediately, to a hospital where a girl unknown to her prayed to see her. Hoichi had turned the lights on upon Mr. Vandervelde's entrance, and Anne looked at her visitor wonderingly.

"I do sound wild," admitted Jason, "but if you could have seen the poor thing's face when she asked to see you—Anne, she'll be dead before morning." The big man's glance was full of entreaty.

"But if she doesn't know me, why on earth should she wish to see me,—at such a time?" asked Anne, still more astonished.

Flounderingly Vandervelde tried to tell her. A questionable girl, to whom Peter Champneys had been kind,—she couldn't exactly gather how. Dying in a hospital, and before she went wishing to see Peter Champneys's wife.

Peter Champneys's wife, fortunately for herself, was still too near and close to the plain people to consider such a request an outrageous impertinence, to be refused as a matter of course. The terrible power of money had not come to her soon enough to make her consider herself of different and better clay than her fellow mortals. She wasn't haughty. The heart she was not supposed to possess stirred uncomfortably. She looked at Vandervelde questioningly.

"You wish me to go?"

"I leave that to you entirely," said he, uncomfortably. "But," he blurted, "I think it would be mighty decent of you."

"I will go," she said.

When they reached the hospital, the blonde person was with Gracie. The blonde person had been crying, and it had not improved her appearance. Her nose looked like a pink wedge driven into the white triangle of her face. Screens had been placed around the bed. A priest with a rosy, good-humored face was just leaving.

Gracie turned her too-large eyes upon Peter Champneys's wife with a sort of unearthly intensity, and Anne Champneys looked down at her with a certain compassion. Anne had a bourgeois sense of respectability, and she had involuntarily stiffened at sight of the blonde drab sitting by the bedside, staring at her with sodden eyes. She hadn't expected the blonde. She ignored her and looked, instead, at Gracie. One could be decently sorry for Gracie.

A faint frown puckered Gracie's brows. Her hand in the blonde person's tightened its grasp. After a moment she said gravely:

"You came?"

"Yes," said Anne, mechanically. "I came. You wished to see me?" Her tone was inquiring.

"I wanted to see if you was good enough—for him," said the gutter-candle, as if she were throwing a light into the secret places of Anne Champneys's soul. "You ain't. But you could be."

Vandervelde had the horrid sensation as of walking in a nightmare. He wished somebody in mercy would wake him up.

Anne's brows came together. She bent upon Gracie one of her long, straight, searching looks.

"Thank you—for comin'," murmured Gracie. "You got a heart." Her eyelids flickered.

"I am glad I came, if it pleases you to see me," said Anne. "Is that all you wished to say to me!"

"I wanted to see—if you was good enough for him," murmured Gracie again. "You ain't. But remember what I'm tellin' you: you could be." Her eyes closed. She fell into a light slumber, holding the blonde person's hand. Vandervelde touched Anne on the arm, and they went out.

As they drove home Vandervelde told her, as well as he could, all that the little wrecked vessel which was now nearing its last harbor had told him. He was deeply moved. He said, patting her hand.

"It was decent of you to come. You're a little sport, Anne."

For a while she was silent. Peter Champneys, then, was capable of kindness. He could do a gentle and generous deed. And perhaps he also was finding the heavy chain of his promise to his uncle, of his marriage to herself, galling and wearisome. She reached a woman's swift decision.

"I'm going to be a better sport," said she. "I'm going to reward Peter Champneys by setting him free. I shall have our marriage annulled."



CHAPTER XVIII

KISMET!

Peter Champneys was packing up for a summer's work on the coast when he received Vandervelde's letter, advising him that Mrs. Champneys had instituted proceedings to have her marriage annulled. The attorney added that by this action on Anne's part the entire Champneys estate reverted to him, Peter Champneys, with the exception of fifty thousand dollars especially allotted to Anne by Chadwick Champneys's will. Vandervelde took it for granted there would be no opposition from Peter. He hoped his client would find it possible to visit America shortly, there being certain details he should see to in person.

Opposition? Peter's sensation was one of overwhelming relief. This was lifting from his spirit the weight of an intolerable burden: he felt profoundly grateful to that red-haired woman who had had the courage to take her fate in her own hands, forego great wealth, and sever a bond that threatened to become an iron yoke. He couldn't but respect her for that; he determined that she shouldn't be too great a loser. He thought she should have half the estate, at the very least.

He had never had the commercial mind. He had never asked that the allowance settled upon him by his uncle should be increased. As his own earnings far outstripped his modest needs, that allowance had been used to allay those desperate cases of want always confronting the kindly in a great city. The Champneys estate back there in America had bulked rather negligently in his mind, obscured and darkened by the formidable figure of the wife who went with it. She had loomed so hugely in the foreground that other considerations had been eclipsed. And now this ogress, moved thereto God knew why, had of a sudden opened her hand and set him free!

That strenuous and struggling childhood of his, whose inner life and aspirations had been so secret and so isolated, had taken the edge off his gregariousness. He did not continuously feel the herd-necessity to rub shoulders with others. The creative mind is essentially isolated. Peter loved his fellows with a quiet, tolerant affection, but he remained as it were to himself, standing a little apart. His heart was like a deep, still, hidden pool, in which a few stars only have room to shine.

A successful man, he had been romantically adored by many idle women and angled for by many an interested one. At times he had lightly lent himself to those amiable French arrangements of good comradeship which end naturally and without bitterness, leaving both parties with a satisfied sense of having received very good measure. He had never been able to deceive himself that he loved. He had loved Denise, but there had been in his affection for her more of compassion than passion, as Denise herself had known. She remained in his memory like a perfume. That had been his one serious liaison. But the woman he could really love with his fullest powers, and to whom he could give his best, had not yet appeared.

Mrs. Hemingway had been troubled by his celibacy. She had persisted in her desire to have him marry young, his wife being some one of her girl friends. She wished to see Peter set up an establishment, which would presently center around a nursery full of adorable babies who would bring with them that tender and innocent happiness young children alone are able to confer. To dispel these pleasant day-dreams of hers, Peter had found it necessary to tell her of his American marriage.

Mrs. Hemingway was astonished, a little chagrined, but not hopeless. He should bring his young wife to Paris. To make her understand that marriage as it really was, to explain his own attitude toward it, Peter made a swift and frightfully accurate little sketch of Nancy Simms as she had appeared to him that memorable morning.

His friend was appalled. It took Peter some time to explain his uncle to Mrs. Hemingway. At the best, she thought, he had been insane. Not even the fact that Peter was co-heir to the Champneys fortune consoled her for what she considered a block to his happiness, a blight upon his life. The more she thought about that marriage, the more she disliked it; and as the time approached for Peter literally to sacrifice himself upon the altar, Mrs. Hemingway grew more and more perturbed, though she wasn't so troubled about it as Emma Campbell was. Emma's terror of "dat gal" had grown with the years. Neither of them ventured to question Peter, but Emma Campbell began to have frequent spells of "wrastlin' wid de sperit," and her long, lugubrious "speretuals" were dismal enough to set one's teeth on edge. She would howl piercingly:

"Befo' dis time anothuh yeah, I ma-ay be gone, Een some ole lone-some graveyahd, O Lawd, ho-ow long?"

She had left the high Montmartre cottage and had come down to keep house for Peter, his being a very simple menage. Oddly, the denizens of the Quartier didn't faze her in the least. She chuckled over them, an old negro woman's sinful chuckle. She made no slightest attempt to conquer the French language, which she didn't in the least admire. She learned the equivalents for a few phrases of her own,—"I hongry," "How much?" "Gimme dat," and "Mistuh Peter gone out," and on this slight foundation she managed to keep a fairly firm footing. The frequenters of Peter's studio were delighted with Emma Campbell; they recognized her artistic availability, and she and her black cat were borrowed liberally.

As a rule, she was willing to lend herself to art, and was a patient model, until one rash young man took it into his head, that he must have Emma Campbell as a favorite old attendant upon the Queen of Sheba he proposed to paint. He was a very earnest young German, that painter, speaking fairly good English. Emma had liked him more than most; but her faith received a blow from which it never recovered. That young man wished to paint her au naturel—her, Emma Campbell, who had been a member in good standing of the Young Sons and Daughters of Zion, the Children of Mary Magdalen, and the Burying Society of the Sons and Daughters of the Rising Star in the Bonds of Love! In the altogether! Emma Campbell gasped like a hooked fish. She made a nozzle of her mouth and protruded her eyes. She said ominously:

"I bawn nekked, but I ain't had nuttin' to do wid dat. Dat de fust en de last time I show up wid mah rind out o' doors. I been livin' in clo'es evuh sence, en I 'speck to die in clo'es."

The artist, who wanted Emma in his picture, tried to make her understand. He reasoned with her manfully:

"Ach, silly nigger-woman! Clothes, clothes! What are clothes! See, now: you are the Queen of Sheba's old slave. Your large black feet and legs are bare, a glittering amulet swings between your withered breasts of an old African, you wear heavy bracelets and anklets, around your lean flanks is a little, thin striped apron, and you hold in your hand the great fan of peacock feathers! Magnificent! You are the queen's old slave, imbecile!"

"Is I? Boy, is you evuh hear tell o' Mistuh Abe Linkum? Aftuh Gin'ral Sherman bun down de big house smack en smoove, en tote off all de cow en mule en hawg en t'ing, en dem Yankees tief all de fowl, en we-all run lak rabbit, Mistuh Linkum done sen' word we 's free. En jus' lak Mistuh Linkum say, hit 's so; aftuh us git shet o' Gin'ral Sherman, we 's free. All dat time I been a-wearin' clo'es, en now you come en tarrygate me, sayin' I got to stan' up in de nekked rind en wave fedders 'cause I in slaveryment? You bes' ain't let Mistuh Peter Champneys hear you talkin' lak dat!"

The bewildered and baffled young man raved in three languages, but Emma Campbell flatly refused either to be in "slaveryment" or in the "nekked rind." Visions of herself being caught and painted bare-legged, with a trifling little dab of an apron tied around her waist even as one ties a bit of ribbon around the cat's neck, and of this scandal being ferreted out by the deacons, sisters, and brethren, of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Riverton, South Carolina, haunted her and made her projeck darkly. When she ventured to voice her opinion to Mist' Peter, he clapped her on the back and grinned. Emma Campbell began to look with a jaundiced eye upon art and the votaries of art.

She was relieved when Peter decided to spend the summer on the coast; she was a coast woman herself, and she longed for the smell of the sea. And then, to add to her joy, had come this last, astonishing news: "dat gal" was going to divorce Mist' Peter! That incomprehensible marriage would be done away with, that grim, red-headed dragoness would go out of their lives! Emma's speretuals took a more hopeful trend; and Peter whistled while he worked.

He had written Vandervelde that he couldn't forego his summer's work, but would probably be in New York that autumn. In the meantime, let Vandervelde look after his interests as usual and see to it that Mrs. Champneys was more adequately and liberally provided for. He forgot to inquire as to the real value of his possessions. He did say to himself soberly:

"Jingo! This thing sounds like money—as if I were a mighty rich man! I'll have to do something about this!"

But he wasn't overly upset, or even very greatly interested. His real concern had never been money; it had been, like Rousseau's and Millet's, to make the manifestation of life his first thought, to make a man really breathe, a tree really vegitate.

And so he went to the coast, as happy as a school-boy on a holiday. The sea fascinated him, and the faces of the men who go down to the sea in ships. It was going to be the happiest and most fruitful summer he had known for years. He bade the Hemingways a gay farewell. Mrs. Hemingway, he noted, looked at him speculatively. Her matrimonial plans for him had revived.

He worked gloriously. He ate like a school-boy, and slept like one, dreamlessly. What was happening in the outside world didn't interest him; what he had to do was to catch a little of the immortal and yet shifting loveliness of the world and imprison it on a piece of canvas. He didn't get any of the newspapers. When he smoked at night with his friend the cure, a gentle, philosophic old priest who had known a generation of painter-folk and loved this painter with a fatherly affection, he heard passing bits of world gossip. The priest took several papers, and liked to talk over with his artist friend what he had read. It was the priest, pale and perturbed, who told him that war was upon the world. Peter didn't believe it. In his heart he thought that the fear of war with her great neighbor had become a monomania with the French.

"It will be a bad war, the worst war the world has ever known. We shall suffer frightfully: but in the end we shall win," said the cure, walking up and down before his cottage. He fingered his beads as he spoke.

France began to mobilize. And then Peter Champneys realized that the French fear hadn't been so much a monomania as a foreknowledge. The thing stunned him. He wished to protest, to cry out against the monstrousness of what was happening. But his voice was a reed in a hurricane; he was a straw in a gigantic whirlpool. He felt his helplessness acutely.

He couldn't work any more; he couldn't sleep; he couldn't eat. There is a France that artists love more than they may ever love any woman. Peter Champneys knew that France. Nobody hated and loathed war more than he, born and raised in a land, and among a people, stripped and darkened by it. And that had been but a drop in the bucket, compared with what was now threatening France. He couldn't idly stand by and see that happen! He thought of all that France had given him, all that France meant to him. The faces of all those comrades of the Quartier rose before him; and gently, wistfully appealing, the sweet face of little lost Denise. He packed his paintings finished and unfinished, and went to tell his friend the cure farewell, bending his pagan knees to receive the old man's blessing. The cure, too, was part of that which is the spirit of France.

They were enlisting in the Quartier. Peter was one of very many. When the preliminaries were passed and he had put on the uniform of a private soldier of the republic, he felt rather a fool. He wasn't in the least enthusiastic. There was a thing to be done, and he meant to help in its accomplishment; but he wasn't going to shout over it or pretend that he liked doing it.

When he went to tell Mrs. Hemingway good-by, just before his regiment left, she put her arms around him and kissed him. She was going to stay in Paris, and Emma Campbell would stay in her house. Emma Campbell had been very silent. She had acute and very unpleasant recollections of one war. She didn't understand what this one was about, but she didn't like it. And when she saw Peter in uniform, saying good-by, going away to get himself killed, maybe, she broke into a whimper:

"Oh, Miss Maria! Oh, Miss Maria! Look at we-all chile! Oh, my Gawd, Miss Maria, we-all 's chile 's gwine to de war!"

Peter put his arm around her shoulder. His face twitched. Emma said in a low voice: "I help Miss Maria wean 'im, en he bit me on de knuckles wid 'is fust toofs. Nevuh had no trouble wid 'im, 'cept to dust 'is britches wunst in a w'ile. Ah, Lawd! I sho did love dat chile! Use to rake chips for de wash-pot fire, en sit roun' en wait for ole Emma Campbell to fix 'is sweet 'taters for 'im. Me en Miss Maria's chile. En now he soldier en gwine to de war! Me en 'im far fum home, en he gwine to de war!" She threw her white apron over her head. Emma hated to have anybody see her cry.

So Peter Champneys went to the war, along with the other artists of France, and was made use of in many curious ways. Presently he was taken out of his squad, and set at other work where the quick and sure eye, and deft, trained hand, of the painter were needed.

He saw unbelievable, unimaginable things, things so unspeakable that his soul seemed to die within him. The word glory made him shudder. There was a duty to do, and he did it to the best of his ability, without noise, without fear. Wherever he looked around him, other men were doing the same thing. Every now and then, after some particularly nightmarish experiences, he would be called out—he himself questioned why—and kissed on both cheeks, and a medal or so would be pinned upon him. He accepted it all politiely, apathetically; it was all a part of the game. And the game itself seemed never-ending. It went on and on, and on.

It seemed to him that he wasn't Peter Champneys the artist any more, the lover of beauty, the man who was to rebuild the house of his forebears, and for whom a great fortune was waiting over there in America. He was just a soul in torment, living his bit of hell, hating it with a cold impatience, an incurable anger. One thing only kept him from losing all hope for mankind: at times he had piercing, blinding glimpses of the soul of plain men laid bare. With torment, a humanity larger even than his art was born in him.

At the end of the third year a sniper got him. He was wounded so badly that at first it was thought a leg would have to be amputated. But even in that hideous welter of the nations, Peter Champneys wasn't unknown. Overburdened and busy as they were, doctors and nurses fought for the life of the American artist. He came to to hear a poilu in his ward praising the saints that it was his hand and not the painter's that had gone, and another say philosophically that if one of two had to be blinded, he was glad M. Champneys's eyes had been saved.

"You will see for us, Monsieur," said he cheerfully. And in his heart Peter swore to himself that he would. He would see for the plain people, the common people of God.

As soon as he was able to be moved, the Hemingways and Emma Campbell came and took him home. Now, a spirit like his cannot see and hear and know such things as Peter had been experiencing for three years, without showing signs of the conflict. Peter had changed physically as well as spiritually. His face had paled to an ivory tone, the features had a cameo sharpness and purity of outline; cheeks and chin were covered with a heavy, jet-black beard,—as if his countenance were in morning for its lost boyishness. And out of this thin, quiet, black-haired, black-bearded face looked a pair of golden eyes of an almost intolerable clarity. Don Pedro Mrs. Hemingway called him laughingly, and El Conquistador. Secretly, she was immensely proud of him.

Peter didn't recuperate as quickly and completely as had been hoped. He was weary with an almost hopeless weariness, and Mrs. Hemingway, who watched him with the affection of an older sister, was worried about his condition. She didn't like his apathy. He was as gentle, as considerate, and even more exquisitely sympathetic than of old. But in all things that concerned himself, he was quietly disinterested. She and Hemingway had several long talks. Then Hemingway began to get busy. Presently he suggested, that it might be a very good idea if Peter should go over to America for a while, and look after those interests to which he hadn't given a thought since he had put on a uniform. After all, Hemingway reminded him, his uncle had placed considerable trust in him. It was only fair now that Chadwick Champneys's wishes should come in for at least a little attention, wasn't it?

Peter pondered this idea, and found it just. Besides, he wasn't unwilling to go back to America now that he didn't have to face that girl. He wondered, vaguely, what had become of her. Had she found happiness for herself? He hoped so. Yes, he'd rather like to see New York again. He couldn't be of any further use here now, and he couldn't do his own work, for all inspiration seemed to have left him. He felt empty, arid, useless.

He might just as well act upon Hemingway's suggestion, and find out how things were over there. And after he'd seen Vandervelde, he'd go down south and visit that tiny brown house on the cove, and the River Swamp, and Neptune's old cabin, and the cemetery alongside the Riverton Road. It seemed to him that he smelled the warm, salt-water odors of the coast country again, saw the gray moss swaying in the river breeze, heard a mocking-bird break into sudden song. A homesick longing for Carolina came upon him. Oh, for the flat coast country, the marsh between blue water and blue sky, the swamp bays in flower, a Red Admiral fluttering above a thistle in a corner of an old worm-fence!

Emma Campbell discovered this homesick longing in herself, too. Emma was hideously afraid of the passage across, but she was willing to risk it, just to get "over home" once more. She thought of herself sitting in her place in Mount Zion Church, with ole Br'er Shadrach Timmons liftin' up de tune, fat Sist' Mindy Sawyer fanning herself with a palm-leaf fan and swaying back and forth in time to the speretual, and busybody Deacon Williams rolling his eye to see that nobody took too long a swallow out of the communion cup he passed around. She thought of possum parties, with accompaniments of sweet 'taters and possum gravy. Her lip trembled, tears rolled down her black cheeks. She had been living in the midst of air raids, her ears had been stunned with the roar of Big Bertha. Now she nevuh wanted to hear nuttin' louder dan bull-frawg in de river so long as she lived. She was sorry to leave Mrs. Hemingway, for whom she had acquired a great affection. And she had one real grief: Satan had gone to the heaven of black cats, so she couldn't take him back to Carolina. She wouldn't replace the dear, funny, cuddly beastie with a French cat. French cats were amiable animals, very nice in their way, but they weren't, they couldn't be, "we-all's folks" as the Carolina cat had been.

Hemingway arranged everything. And so one morning, Peter Champneys walking with a stick, and old Emma Campbell, stiffly erect and rustling in a black silk frock that Mrs. Hemingway had bought for her, turned their faces to America once more.

Vandervelde, who met them in response to Hemingway's cable, knew Emma Campbell at sight, but failed to recognize in the tall, distinguished, very foreign-looking gentleman, the gangling Peter Champneys he had seen married to Nancy Simms. He kept staring at Peter, and the corners of his mouth curled more than usual. And he liked him, with the instantaneous liking of one large-natured man for another. Vandervelde had never approved of the annulment of the Champneys marriage, although Marcia did. Not even the fact that Anne was going to marry Berkeley Hayden, had been able to convince Vandervelde that the bringing to naught of Chadwick Champneys's plans could be right. And looking at Peter Champneys now, he was more than ever convinced that a mistake had been made. That little gutter-girl, Gracie, had been right about Peter Champneys; and Anne had been wrong.

Vandervelde asked, presently, if Peter wished to see the reporters. Once they scented him, they would be clamoring at his heels. And then Peter learned to his surprise and annoyance that he was something of a hero and very much of a celebrity. His expression made Vandervelde chuckle. But, the attorney demanded, could a famous artist, a man who for distinguished and unusual service had been decorated by two governments, the heir to the Champneys millions, and one of the figures of a social romance, hope to hide his light under a bushel basket? Nothing doing! He was a figure of international importance, a lion whom the public wanted to hear roar.

Peter shuddered. The thought of being interviewed by one of those New York super-reporters made him feel limp. Couldn't they understand he didn't want to talk? Didn't they understand that those who had really seen, those who knew, weren't doing any talking? Why,—they couldn't! As for himself, his nerves were rasped raw. Luckily, Vandervelde understood.

He asked Vandervelde a few perfunctory questions, and learned that things were very much all right. He signed certain papers presented to him. Then he asked abruptly if Mrs. Champneys had been as liberally provided for as she should have been, and learned that Mrs. Champneys had flatly refused to accept a penny more than the actual amount given her by Chadwick Champneys's will. Vandervelde added, after a moment, that he thought Mrs. Champneys intended to remarry. At that Peter looked somewhat surprised. He thought him a bold man who of his own free will ordained to marry Nancy Simms Champneys! He murmured, politely, that he hoped she would be happy, but failed to ask the name of his successor. What was Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?

He was in Vandervelde's office, then, and the telephone began to ring. Three several times Vandervelde answered the questions where, when, how might the reporter at the other end of the wire get in touch with Mr. Peter Champneys. Had he really returned to New York? Been decorated several times, hadn't he? What was his latest picture? What were his present and future plans? Could Mr. Vandervelde give any information? In each case Mr. Vandervelde said he couldn't. He hung up the receiver and looked at the celebrity, who seemed gloomy.

The lawyer was a tower of strength. He started Emma Campbell, who didn't want to linger in New York, on her way to Riverton. Emma wanted to get home as fast as the fastest train could carry her. But Peter didn't want to go back to Riverton—yet. And then Vandervelde made a suggestion which rather pleased Peter. Why not go to a little place he knew, a quiet and very beautiful place on the Maine coast? Very few people knew of its existence. Vandervelde had stumbled upon it on a motor trip a few years before, and he was rather jealous of his discovery. The people were sturdy, independent Maine folk, the climate and scenery unsurpassed; Peter would be well looked after by the old lady to whom Vandervelde would recommend him. And to make perfectly sure that he'd be undisturbed, to drop more completely out of the world and find the rest he needed, why not call himself, say, Mr. Jones, or Mr. Smith, letting Peter Champneys the artist hide for a while behind that homely disguise? Vandervelde almost stammered in his eagerness. His eyes shone, his face flushed. He leaned across his desk, watching Peter with a curious intensity.

Peter liked the idea of the Maine coast. Sea and forest, open spaces, quietude; plain folk going about their own business, letting him go about his. Long days to loaf through, in which to reorganize his existence in accordance with his newer values. Isolation was the balm his spirit craved. Let him have that, let it help him to become his own man again, and he'd be ready to face life and work like a giant refreshed.

"You'll go?" Vandervelde's voice was studiously restrained; he had lowered his lids to hide the eagerness of his eyes.

"I think such a place as you describe is exactly what I need," said Peter.

"I'm quite sure it is. And the sooner you go, the better."

Peter got up and walked around the office. A typewriter was clacking monotonously, the telephone bell was constantly ringing. Peter turned his head restlessly.

Vandervelde had made his suggestion at precisely the right moment. Peter felt grateful to him. Very nice man, Vandervelde. Kind as he could be, too! One liked and trusted him. Clever of him to have so instantly understood just what Peter most craved!

"I quite agree with you," said Peter. "I'll start to-night."

Vandervelde leaned back in his chair. His heart thumped. He drew a deep breath, the corners of his mouth curling noticeably, and beamed at Peter Champneys through his glasses. He said aloud, cheerfully, "Well, why not?"



CHAPTER XIX

THE POWER

Grandma Baker's cottage formed the extreme right horn of the crescent that was the village. The middle of the crescent backed up against a hill, the horns dipped toward the shore-line and the water. Near Grandma Baker's front gate were currant bushes, and a path bordered with dahlias and gillyflowers led to the door, which had two stone slabs for steps, and on both sides of which were large lilac bushes,—she called them "lay-locks." Behind the house were apple-trees, and more currant bushes, as well as gooseberries and raspberries. A herb garden grew under her kitchen windows, so that her kitchen and pantry always smelled of thyme and wintergreen, and her bedrooms were fragrant with lavender.

The quiet gentleman to whom she had given an upper room that looked out upon woods and waters, a bit of pasture, a stretch of coast, and a pale blue sky full of sudsy clouds, thought that Mr. Jason Vandervelde's fervent praises hadn't done justice to this bit of untouched Eden tucked away in a bend of the Maine coast. It gave him what his heart craved—beauty, fragrance, stillness. A few weather-beaten old men, digging clams, dragging lobster-pots, or handling a boat. A few quiet women, busy with household affairs. No one to have to talk to. No one to ask him questions. There was but one other visitor in the village, Grandma Baker told him, a young widow,—"a nice common sort of a woman," who was staying up the street with Mis' Thatcher.

Mr. Johnston, as the gentleman called himself, hadn't seen the "nice common sort of a woman" yet, though he had been here a whole week, and he wasn't in the least curious about her. He didn't know that when you're a "nice common sort of a woman" to these Maine folk, you're receiving high praise from sturdy democrats. The phrase, to him, called up a good, homely creature, amiably innocuous, placidly cow-like.

Mr. Johnston slept in a four-poster, under a patchwork quilt that aroused poignant memories. At his own request he ate in a corner of the big kitchen, near the window opening upon the herb garden. Already he had struck up a firm friendship with his brisk, strong old landlady.

"Fit in the war, didn't ye?" asked the old lady, genially.

Mr. Johnston's face took on a look of weariness and obstinacy. Grandma Baker smiled cheerfully.

"Tell the truth and shame the devil," she chirped. "You fit, but you needn't be scared I'll ask you any questions about it. I mind Abner, my husband, comin' back from Virginia after he'd fit the hull dratted Civil War straight through and helped win it. And he wouldn't open his trap. Couldn't bear havin' to talk about it. Some men's like that. Ornery, o' course, but you got to humor 'em. You put me a hull lot in mind o' my Abner." And she looked with great kindliness upon the taciturn person known to her as Mr. Johnston. True to her word, she asked him no questions. She fed him, and let him alone.

He was so weary, at first, that he didn't want to do anything but lie under a tree idly for long drowsy hours, as he had lain under the trees on the edge of the River Swamp years before. This Maine landscape, so rugged and yet so tender, had a brooding and introspective calm, as of a serene and strong old man who has lived a vigorous, simple, and pure life, and to the jangled nerves and tired mind of Peter Champneys it was like the touch of a healing hand. With every day he felt his strength of mind and body returning, and the restless perturbation that had tormented him receding, fading. These green and gracious trees, bathed in a lucent light, this sweet sea-wind, and the voice of the waters, a voice monotonously soothing, helped him to find himself,—and to find himself newer, fresher, a more vital personality. This newer Peter Champneys was not going to be, perhaps, so easy-going a chap. He was more insistent, he was sterner; to the art-conscience, in itself a troublesome possession, he was adding the race-conscience, which questions, demands, and will have nothing short of the truth. He had been forced to see things as they are, things stripped of pleasant trappings and made brutally bare; and his conscience and his courage now arose to face facts. Any misery, rather than be slave to shams! Any grief to bear, any price to pay, but let him possess his own soul, let him have the truth!

He could not sit in judgment upon himself as an artist only; he had to take himself seriously as a very wealthy man in an hour when very wealthy men stood, so to speak, before the tribunal of the conscience of mankind. He could not afford to be crushed by the burden of much money. Neither could he ignore the stern question: what was he going to do with the Champneys wealth? He wished that that red-headed woman had taken half of it off his hands!

The Champneys money made him very thoughtful this morning, walking with his hands behind his back, his head bare to the wind. The water rippled in the sunlight. Out on the horizon a solitary sail glimmered. The semicircle of village houses resembled the white beads of a broken necklace, lying exactly where they'd fallen. He turned a small headland, and the village vanished.

He had a pleasant sense of being alone with this rocky coast, with its salty-sweet wind, its blue water, its limitless sky, from which poured a flood of clear, pale golden sunlight. And then, as if out of the heart of them all, came a figure immensely alive, the light focusing upon her as if she were the true meaning of the picture in which she appeared; as if this background were not accidental, but had been chosen and arranged for her with delicate and deliberate care.

He thought he had never seen any woman's body so superbly free in its movement: she had the grace of a birch stirred by a spring wind. The poise of her shoulders, the sweep of her garments blown by the sea-breeze, the joyous and vigorous grace of her whole attitude, reminded him of the winged Victory. So might that splendid vision have walked upon the glad Greek coast in the bright light of the world's morning.

The woman walked swiftly, lightly, her head held high, her long loose hair blown about her like flame. Where the rough path narrowed between two large boulders, he had paused to allow her to pass; and so they came face to face, he the taller by a head. She lifted her cool, gray-green eyes that had in them the silvery sparkle of the sea, and met his golden gaze. Her face framed in her flaming mane was warmly pale, the brow thoughtful, the mouth virginal. For a long moment they regarded each other steadily, wonderingly; and in that single moment the eternal miracle occurred by which life and the face of the world changed for them.

That long, clear, grave gaze pierced her heart like a golden poniard. He was of a thin body and visage, but the effect was of virility, not weakness,—as if the soul of him, like a blade in a scabbard, had fretted the body fine. There was a quiet stateliness in his bearing, a simple and unaffected dignity, to which the thick, blue-black hair, the foreign beard, and the aquiline features lent an added touch of distinction. One was reminded of those dangerously mild and rather sad faces of Spanish soldiers which look at one from Velasquez's canvases. This man might wear a ruff and a velvet doublet, or, better yet, a coat of mail, she reflected, instead of the well-cut but rather worn gray tweeds that clothed him.

She was not conscious of her flying hair, or the wind-blown disorder of her skirts. She was conscious, rather, that for the first time a man was looking at her as from a height, and she was filled with a beautiful astonishment, a sort of divine amazement, as if it were toward this that always, inevitably, she had been moving,—and now it was here! Her blood leaped to it, and went racing fierily through her veins, as if there had been poured into it the elixir of life. She was gloriously conscious of her youth and her womanhood. A quick and vivid rush of warm blood stained her, brow to bosom. Her every-day mind was saying, "It is the stranger who's staying at Grandma Baker's—the gentleman who's been ill." But beyond and behind her every-day mind, her heart was shouting, exultant, ecstatic, and very sure: "It is You! It is You!"

In quick sympathy with that bright flush of hers the blood showed for an instant in his pale face. He had been staring at her! An agitation new to him, an emotion to which all others he had ever experienced were childishly mild, filled him as the resistless sweep of the sea at flood tide fills the shallows of the shores. Love did not come to him gently and insidiously, but as with the overwhelming rush of great waters. This, then, must be that "nice, common sort of a woman" staying with the Widow Thatcher, at the other end of the village—this woman clothed with the sun of her red hair, and with the sea in her eyes! A smile curved his lips. His kindling glance played over her like lightning, and said to her: "I know you. I have always known you. Do you not recognize me? I am I,—and you are You!"

Had he obeyed his instincts, he would have flung himself before her and clasped her around the knees. Being a modern gentleman, he had to stand aside, bowing, and let her pass. She, too, bowed slightly. She went by with her quick and resilient tread, her cheek royally red. A wind roared in her ears, her heart beat thickly.

When she had turned the little headland she paused, and mechanically braided her hair. Her fingers shook, and she breathed as if she had been running. The incredible, the unbelievable, had pounced upon her as from a clear sky, and the world was never again to be the same. She had been so sure, so safe, with her pleasant life all mapped out before her, like the raked and swept paths of an ordered and formal garden; a life in which reason and convention and culture and wealth should rule, and from which tumultuous and tormenting passions and disorderly emotions should be rigidly excluded. In that ordered existence, she would be, if not happy, at least satisfied and proud. And now! A strange man in passing had looked into her eyes; love had come, and the gates of her formal garden had been pulled down, wild nature threatened to invade and overrun her trimmed and clipped borders and her smooth lawns.

The Widow Thatcher commented approvingly upon her fine color when she appeared at the house.

"You just stay here a leetle mite longer, Mis' Riley, and you'll be that changed you won't know yourself," said the kindly woman, heartily.

"I'm sure of that!" murmured her guest.

The red-haired lady who called herself Mrs. Riley—Riley had been her mother's name—had been, up to this time, an altogether satisfying guest, simple, friendly, with a sound and healthy appetite, and well deserving that praiseful "nice, common sort of a woman" bestowed upon her. Now, mysteriously, she changed. She wasn't less friendly, but her appetite was capricious and she would fall into reveries, sudden fits of gravity, sitting beside the window, staring somberly out at the waters. She would snatch up her hat and go out, get as far as the gate, and return to the house. Mrs. Thatcher heard her pacing up and down her room, when she should have been sound asleep. She would laugh, and then sigh upon the heels of it, break into fitful singing, and fall into sudden silence in the midst of her song.

"She's gettin' religion," the widow reflected. "The Spirit's workin' on her. 'T ain't nothin' I can do except pray for her." And the simple soul got on her knees and besought Heaven that the stranger under her roof might "escape whatever trouble 't is that's threatenin' her, O Lord, an' save her soul alive!"

Although the widow didn't know it, her guest had come to the dividing of the ways. She had come to this quiet place to find peace, to rest, to escape from the world for a breathing-space. And in this quiet place that which had missed her in the great outside world had come to her, the most tremendous of all powers had seized upon her. The situation was not without a sly and ironical humor.

She wondered what Marcia would say if she should write to her: "I have fallen in love at sight, hopelessly, irremediably, head over ears, with, a strange man who passed me on the shore. He wears gray tweeds. His name, I am told, is Johnston. That's all I know about him, except that I seem to have known him since the beginning of all things. He is as familiar to my heart as my blood is, and all he had to do to make me love him was to look at me. Yes! I love him as I could never love anybody but him. He's the one man."

She could fancy Marcia's astonishment, her shocked "Oh, but Anne, there's Berkeley Hayden!"

And indeed, there was Berkeley Hayden!

When Anne had determined to have her marriage to Peter Champneys annulled, Marcia had upheld her, though Jason hadn't liked it at all. If he hadn't exactly opposed her course, he had tried to dissuade her from it. But she had persisted, and as the case was simple and quite clear her freedom was a foregone conclusion, though there were, of course, the usual formalities, the usual wearisome delays.

She had closed the Champneys house, and gone to Marcia, who wanted her. Jason, too, had insisted that she should make her home with them for the time being. And then had come the war, and she and Marcia found themselves swept into the whirlpool of work it involved. But not even the tremendous news that filled all the newspapers had kept the Champneys romance from being featured. Her case received very much more notice than pleased her. She was weary of her own photographs, sick of the interest she aroused.

Hayden kept discreetly in the background. He behaved beautifully. But he knew that Anne was going to marry him. Jason and Marcia knew it. Anne herself knew it. Now that the war was on, a good many of his plans would have to be postponed, but when Anne had secured her freedom, and things had righted themselves, they two would take up life as he wished to live it. All the women of his family had occupied prominent social positions: his wife should surpass them all. She should be the acknowledged leader, the most brilliant figure of her day. Nothing less than this would satisfy him.

For all his esthetic tastes, Hayden was an immensely able and capable man of business. He had not the warmth of heart that at times obscured Jason Vandervelde's judgment, nor the touch of unworldliness that marked the behavior of the Champneys men. His intellect had a cold, clear brilliancy, diamond-bright, diamond-hard; to this he added tact, and the power of organizing and directing and of getting results. In certain crises such men are invaluable.

Hayden hated war. It was, so to speak, an uncouth and barbarous gesture, a bestial and bellowing voice. He felt constrained to offer his services, and even before America became actually involved he was able to render valuable aid. There were delicate and dangerous missions where his tact, his diplomacy, and his shrewd, cold, unimpassioned intelligence won the stakes for which he played. This in itself was good; but for the time being it took him away from Anne. He saw her only occasionally. She, like him, was immersed in work. Once or twice he was able to snatch her from the thick of things and carry her off with him to lunch or to dinner. She enjoyed these small oases in the desert of work. She liked to watch his clever, composed face, to listen to his modulated voice. The serene ease of his manner soothed her. She was tremendously proud of Hayden. She was glad he cared for her. This seemed to her an excellent foundation for their marriage. They would please and interest each other; neither would be bored! And when, leaning across the table one day at lunch, he looked at her with unwonted fire in his quiet eyes, and said in a low voice: "Just as soon as this business is finished, as soon as we've cleaned up the mess, I'm going to claim you, Anne. It's all I can do to wait!" Anne met his eyes, smiled slightly, and nodded. A faint flush rose to her cheek, and a deeper one rose to his. For a moment he touched her hand.

"You understand you are promised to me," he said. "If I dared show you what I really feel, Anne—" and he glanced around the crowded dining-room, and smiled.

She smiled in return, tranquilly. She was not stirred. His touch had no power to thrill her. She was comfortably content that things should be as they were, that was all. Yet her very lack of emotion added to her charm for him. He disliked emotional women. Excess of affection would have bored him. It smacked of crudeness, and he had an epicurean distaste for crudeness.

Busy as he was, he found time to select the ring he wished her to wear. He was fastidious and hyper-critical to a degree, and he wished her ring to suit her, to be flawless. It was really a work of art, and Anne Champneys wondered at her own coolness when she received the exquisite jewel. She understood his feeling, she appreciated the beauty of the gem, yet it left her unmoved. It gratified her woman's vanity; it did not stir her to one heart-throb. She accepted it, not indifferently, but placidly. After a while she would accept a plain gold ring from him just as placidly. This was her fate. She did not quarrel with it.

Marcia watched her pleasedly. She loved Anne Champneys, she admired Hayden exceedingly, and that they should marry each other seemed natural and inevitable. Hayden was just the man she would have chosen for Anne. Even the fact that Jason wasn't altogether happy about it couldn't dampen Marcia's delight in the affair. Jason would come around, in time. He was too fond of Anne not to.

"Well, you're free," he had told Anne, the day that the Champneys marriage was declared null and void, and both parties had received the right to remarry, as a matter of course. "You are free. I'm sure I hope you won't regret it!"

"Why should I regret it?" wondered Anne, good-humoredly. But the big man shook his head, remembering Chadwick Champneys.

Hayden had become more and more involved in war work; he was in constant demand, he was sent hither and thither to attend to this and that troublesome affair. Twice he had to go abroad. At home, Anne's work called her into the homes of soldiers; she came in close contact with the families of the men who were fighting, and what she saw she was never able to forget. She got down to bed-rock. Her own early life made her acutely understanding. Where Marcia would have been blind, Anne saw; where the woman who had never known poverty and hardship would have remained deaf, the woman who had slaved in the Baxters' kitchen, who had been an overworked, unloved child in bondage, heard, and understood to the core of her soul what she was hearing. These voices from the depths were not inarticulate to Anne!

When Berkeley came back from his second voyage abroad, he was more impatient than she had ever seen him. The end was in sight then, as he knew, and he saw no reason for further delay. He urged Anne to marry him. Why should they waste time? When he consulted Marcia, she agreed with him. Everybody, she said, was getting married. Why shouldn't he and Anne? Already the rumor of their engagement had crept out. There were hints of it in the social chatter of the papers. Why not announce it formally, and have the marriage follow immediately?

But Anne Champneys found herself in a curious mood. The nervous strain of war work, perhaps, was accountable. She meant to marry Berkeley; but she didn't want to marry him at once. She did not object to having their engagement announced. He could shout it from the housetops if that pleased him. But in the meanwhile she wanted a little rest, a little freedom. She wished to be fetterless, free to come and go as she pleased. No work, no interviews, no photographers, no weary hours with dressmakers and tailors. No envy because Berkeley Hayden was going to marry her, no wearisome comments, idle flattery hiding spite, no gossip violating all privacies. A raging impatience against it all assailed her. It seemed to her that she had never been allowed really to think or to act for herself disinterestedly, that she had never been free. Always she had been in bondage! Oh, for just a little hour of freedom, in the open, to be just as ordinary and inconspicuous as in her heart of hearts she would have preferred to be, left to herself!

Marcia said her nerves were unstrung, and no wonder, considering how she'd worked, and what she'd seen. Jason came vigorously to her rescue. He advised her to go off somewhere and get acquainted with herself. To drop out of things for a while, and treat herself to the rest she needed. Cut and run! Scuttle for cover!

"You've been overdoing things, of course. You've been Lady Bountiful, and first-aider, and last-leaver. Like the Lord and a thumping good lie, you've been a very present help in time of trouble. But there's such a thing as being too steady on the job. You need a change of people, scene, and mind. Take it."

This conversation occurred on a morning in his office, where she had gone on some slight business, and with concern he had noticed her tired eyes. At his advice she brightened.

"Marcia thinks I should marry Berkeley, immediately, and let him take me away, but—"

"But you aren't ready to rush into matrimony just yet?" Vandervelde growled. "I should think you wouldn't be! If Hadyen's managed to exist this long without a wife, I take it for granted he can exist unwed a little longer. You are certain you mean to marry him?"

"Oh, yes, I am certain I mean to marry him," said Anne, flatly. "But I—that is, not so soon."

"I think I understand, Anne," said the big man, kindly. "Look here, you just tell 'em all to wait! Tell 'em you're tired. Then you pick yourself up and light out for a while, by yourself. Chuck the madding throng and all that, Anne, and beat it for the open!"

"Oh, how I wish I could!" she sighed. "You don't know how I long for a chance to be just me by myself! I want to stay with people who have never heard the name of Champneys or Hayden and who wouldn't care if my name happened to be Mudd! I want plain living and plain thinking and plain people. I—I'll come back to—everything I should come back to, afterward. But first I want to be free! Just for a little while I want to be free!"

"But how could you manage it?" mused Vandervelde. "The lady who divorced Peter Champneys and is going to marry Berkeley Hayden can't pick herself up 'unbeknownst' and hope to get away with it. Not in these days of good reporting! You're copy, you understand."

"But I don't want to be Mrs. Peter Champneys! I don't want to be the woman Berkeley Hayden's going to marry! I want to be just me!" she cried. "I want to go to some place where nobody's ever heard either of those names! Some little place where there are water and trees—and not much else. Like, say,—Jason! Do you remember that place you found, in Maine, I think? You babbled about it. Said you were going to go there if ever you wanted to get out of the world. Said it was Eden before the serpent entered. Where's that place, Jason? Why can't I go there, just as myself—" she paused, and looked at him hopefully.

"I don't see why you can't," said he, cheerfully.

And so Anne, who didn't wish to be Mrs. Peter Champneys, or the woman whom Berkeley Hayden was to marry, or anybody but herself, came to the out-of-the-way nook on the Maine shore, and was welcomed by the Widow Thatcher.

She found the place idyllic. She liked its skies unclouded by smoke, translucent skies in which silver mountains of clouds reared themselves out of airy continents that shifted and drifted before the wind. She liked its clean, pure, untainted air. And she liked contact with these simple souls, men who labored, women who knew birth and death and were not afraid of either. It came to her that her own contacts with and concepts of life—and death—had always, been more or less artificial. Perhaps these simple and laborious folk had the substance of things of which she and her sort had but the shadow. And then she asked herself: Well, but couldn't one, anywhere, in any circumstances, make life real for oneself, meet facts unafraid? Get at the truths, somehow? That's what she had to find out!

And of a sudden she had been answered. The reality, the truth, the real meaning of life was made plain to her when a man she didn't know, and yet knew to the last fiber of her soul, had paused to look into her eyes.

For two or three days she went no further than the rambling garden at the back of the house. She tried to read, and couldn't. From every page those eyes looked at her. There was more in that remembered glance than in any book ever written, and she was torn between the desire to meet it again and the fear of meeting it.

On the night of the third day she sat with her elbows on her windowsill, looking out at the moonlight night. A sweet wind touched her face, like the breath of love. There arose the scent of quiet places, of trees and flowers and herbs, mingled with the vast breathing of the sea. And she thought the sea called to her, an imperious and yet caressing voice in the night. She stirred restlessly. Down there on the shore-line, where she had met him, the rocks would glint with silvery reflections, the water would come fawning to one's feet, the wind would pounce upon one like a rough lover. She stirred restlessly. The small bedroom seemed to hold her like a cage. And again the sea called, a wild and compelling voice.

Her blood stirred to the magic of the night. Her eyes gleamed, her cheek reddened. She listened for a moment, intently. The Widow Thatcher slept the sleep of the good housekeeper. No one was stirring. She could have the night, the wind, the sea, to herself. Noiselessly she stole downstairs and let herself out.

Out there, with the scent of the summer night greeting her, with bushes brushing her lightly with their green fingers, her heart leaped joyously. She flung her arms over her head and went running down the path to the water, a tall white figure with flying hair. Then she turned the small headland, and the village dropped behind her. Overhead the big gold lamp of the moon lighted shore and sea. And here came the sea-wind, bracing, strong, and sweet. At the rush of it she laughed aloud, and the wind seized upon her laughter and tossed it into the night like airy bells.

She slackened her wild race when she neared the great boulders shutting in the little narrow path where she had met him, and stood flushed, panting, her shining glance uplifted, her bright hair framing the sweetness of her face. And even as she paused, he stepped out of the shadow and confronted her. As if he had been awaiting her. As if he had known she must come. He said, in a voice vibrant with fierce joy:

"It is You!"

She answered, in a shaking tone, like a child: "Yes, I had to come," and stood there looking at him, face uplifted, lips apart.

He drew nearer. "Why?" said he, in a whisper. "Why?"

She did not reply. For a long moment they regarded each other, passion-pale in the moonlight.

"Was it because—you knew I must be here!" he asked.

Her hands went to her leaping heart. She had no faintest notion of concealing the truth, for there was no coquetry in her. These two facing each other were as honest as the rocky coast, as unabashed as the wind. They had no more thought of subterfuges and conventions than the sea had. They were as real as nature itself.

He bent upon her his compelling glance, which seemed to lift her as upon golden pinions. She was thrillingly conscious of his nearness.

"You knew I would be here?" he repeated.

She drew a deep breath. "Yes!" she sighed.

And at that, inevitably, irresistibly, they rushed together. He caught her in a mighty embrace and she gave him back his kiss with a heavenly shamelessness, a glorious passion, naive and pure. It was as if she were born anew in the fire of his lips. For she was sure, with a crystal clarity. This man whose heart beat against hers was her high destiny. Body and soul, she was his. His kiss was the chrism of life. And he, fallen into the same divine lunacy, was equally sure. He had been born a man to hold this strong sweet body in his arms, to meet this spirit that complemented his own. Not in high and lonely altitudes whose cold stillness chilled the heart, but by simple paths to peace, in a simple and passionate woman's love, could he gain the purple heights!



CHAPTER XX

AND THE GLORY

He had said quietly: "You are going to marry me!"

And she had replied, as if there could be no possible doubt about it:

"Yes, I am going to marry you."

"Because you love me better than anything or anybody else in all the world, even as I love you."

"Because I love you better than anything or anybody else in all the world," she repeated.

"So far, so good. When, Beloved Lady?"

At that she hesitated for a space and fell silent. He pressed her head closer, and bending his tall head laid his cheek to hers.

"When?"

"Presently. But before that, dearest and best of men, there are so many, many things I wish to tell you, so many things I wish you to know! I wish you to know me. Everything about me! For once upon a time there was a sad, neglected child, a piteous child I must make you acquainted with. There was an ignorant and undisciplined young girl—"

"You?"

She nodded sorrowfully. His clasp tightened. He slipped a hand beneath her chin, tilted her face upward, and kissed her eyes that had suddenly filled with tears, her lips that quivered.

"Beloved Lady, I understand: for there was once upon a time a sad, neglected child, an ugly little lad, barefooted and poverty-stricken after his mother's death. There was an ignorant and undisciplined boy—"

"You?" Her arms went around him protectingly, in a mothering and tender clasp.

"Who else? And being very ignorant indeed, he sold himself into bondage for a mess of pottage, and was thrall for weary years. He got exactly what he paid for. And life was ashes upon his head and wormwood in his mouth, and his heart was empty in his breast, because he snatched at shadows. And then one day the door of his prison was opened by the keeper, and he said, 'Now I am free!' But it was his fate to go down into hell for a season. There were times when he asked himself, 'Why don't I blow out my brains and escape?' Nothing but the simple faith and heroism of common men about him saved him from despair. One day a blinded soldier said, 'See for us!' So he began to see,—but still without hope, still without happiness, until he came here and found—you." His voice was melted gold.

She had listened breathlessly. And after a pause she asked:

"Who was—the keeper of his prison?"

"The woman to whom he had been married."

Her arms fell from him. She tried to draw herself away, but he held her all the closer.

"Do not think unkindly of her. I don't think she really knew she was an ogress! After all, she did unlock the door and say, 'Go!' And—well, here I am, darling woman. And I'm going to marry you!"

"Did you never love her?"

"Never. I was so frightfully unhappy that the best I could do was not to hate her. I'm afraid she hated me—poor ogress! Well! That's all over and done with. Like an evil dream. I'm here, and you're going to marry me." Very gently he drew her arms around him again. "Ah, hold fast to me! Hold fast! I have waited for you so long, I need you so much!" he breathed.

"I don't seem able to help myself!" she sighed. And she asked seriously: "What do the people who love you most call you when they speak to you?"

The brown and bearded faces of comrades rose before him, their voices sounded in his ears.

"Pierre."

"Pierre," said she, bravely, as if to call him by his name emboldened her, "I too have been freed from a hateful marriage. Sometime I will tell you all about it. But—oh, do not let us talk about it now! I cannot bear to think of him! I cannot bear to have his shadow, even, fall upon me now, or come near you!" That gangling bridegroom in his ill-fitting suit, with his wincing mouth, his eyes full of disgust and aversion, his air of a man sentenced to death—or marriage with herself—came before her, and she shivered.

Despite her words a horrible jealousy of that unknown man assailed him. He asked fiercely:

"You loved him, once?"

"Oh, no! Oh, no! Never! I—why, Pierre, until you came, I didn't even know what love meant! Once that ignorant, undisciplined girl I spoke of, thought she loved a boy. She didn't. She loved the idea of love. And once again, Pierre, because my life was so empty, and because I didn't know any better, I thought I should be willing to marry somebody else. I thought that somebody else could fill my life. But now I know that could never be. You are here."

He looked at her with infinite tenderness. There were things he, too, would have to tell her, by and by. And he was sure that the woman whose coming little Denise had seemed to foreknow, would understand. He said gravely:

"Yes, we have found each other. That is all that really matters. Nothing, nobody else, counts with you and me." And then, of a sudden, he laughed happily: "And, Beloved Lady, I do not know your name! I can't call you 'Mrs. Riley,' can I? By what name, then, shall the one who loves you most call you?"

"Anne." And she asked eagerly: "Do you like it?"

He started. Anne! Strange that the name that had been his chiefest unhappiness should now become his chiefest joy! Strange that he hadn't guessed Anne could be the most beautiful of all names for a woman! Like it? Of course he liked it! Wasn't it hers?

"Anne, you haven't yet said when you will marry me."

"Oh, but you are sure of that!" she parried.

"I am so sure of it that I am quite capable of taking you by the hair and dragging you off to the parson's, if you try to make me wait. Anne! Remember that ever since I was that barefooted, lonely child I have been waiting for you. My dear, I need you so greatly!"

She said passionately: "You cannot need me as I need you. You are yourself. You couldn't be anything else. You were you before you ever saw me. But I—I couldn't be my real self until you came and looked at me and kissed me."

He felt humble, and reverent, and at the same time exultant. When she said presently, "I must go now," he released her reluctantly. They walked hand in hand, pausing at the small headland beyond which the village came in sight. She took both his hands and held them against her breast.

"You are my one man. I love you so much that I am going to give my whole life into your hands, as fully and as freely as I shall some day give my spirit into the hands of God. But, Pierre, there are those who have been very, very kind to me, those to whom I owe—well, explanations. When I have made those explanations and—and settled my accounts,—then all the rest of my life is yours."

"You are very, very sure, Anne?" His voice was wistful.

"My love for you," she said proudly, "is the one great reality. I am surer of that than I have ever been of anything in this world." And she stood there looking at him with her heart in her eyes. Of a sudden, with a little cry, she pulled his head down to her, kissed him upon the mouth, pushed him from her, and fled.

When she reached her room again, she couldn't sleep, but knelt by her window and watched the skies pale and then flush like a young girl's face, and the morning-star blaze and pale, and the sun come up over a bright and beautiful world in which she herself was, she felt, new-born. Far in the background of things, unreal as a dream, hovered the unlovely figure of Nancy Simms, and nearer, but still almost as unreal, the bright, cold figure of Anne Champneys, that Anne Champneys who had wished to marry Berkeley Hayden to gratify pride and ambition. The woman kneeling by the window, watching the glory of the morning, looked back upon those two as a winged butterfly might remember its caterpillar crawlings.

All that glittering life Anne Champneys had planned for herself? Swept away as if it had been a bit of tinsel! Money? Position? She laughed low to herself. She didn't care whether her man had possessions or lacked them. All she asked was that he should be himself—and hers. All that Milly had been to Chadwick Champneys—the passionate lover, the perfect comrade, the friend nothing daunted, no wind of fortune could change—Anne could be, would be to Pierre.

There was but one shadow upon her new happiness: she hated to disappoint Marcia. Marcia had set her heart upon the Hayden marriage. It was toward that consummation, so devoutly to be hoped, that Marcia had planned. And just when that plan was nearing perfection Anne was going to have to frustrate it. She hated to hurt Hayden himself, and the thought of his angry disappointment was painful to her. She liked Hayden. She would always like him. But she couldn't marry him. To marry Hayden, loving Pierre, would have been to work them both an irremediable injury. A sort of horror of what she had been about to do came upon her. The bare thought of it made her recoil.

Her native shrewdness told her that Hayden's immense pride would come to his aid. The fact that she had dared to desire somebody else, to prefer another to his lordly self would be enough to prove to Hayden that she wasn't worthy of his affections. He would feel that he had been deceived in her. She couldn't help hoping that he wouldn't altogether despise her. She hoped that Marcia wouldn't be too angry to forgive her. And then her thoughts merged into a prayer: Oh dear God, help her to make Pierre happy, to grow to his stature, to be worthy of him!

* * * * *

Back there on the beach he lay with his head in his arms, humble before the power and the glory that had come to him. This, this was the face he had always sought, the beauty that had so long eluded him! Beauty, mere physical beauty, appealed to him as it always appeals to an artist, but it had never had the power to hold him for any length of time. It had palled upon him. To satisfy his demand, beauty must have upon it the ineffable imprint of the soul. This woman's face was as baffling, as inexplicable, in its way, as was Mona Lisa's. One wasn't sure that she was beautiful; one was only sure that she was unforgetable, and that after other faces had faded from the memory, hers remained to haunt the heart. And that red hair of hers, like the hair of a Norse sun-goddess!

He fell into pleasant dreams. He was going to take her down south with him; he wanted her to see that little brown house in South Carolina, to know the tide-water gurgling in the Riverton coves, and mocking-birds singing to the moonlit night, and the voice of the whippoorwill out of the thickets. She must know the marshes, and the live-oaks hung with moss. All the haunts of his childhood she should know, and old Emma Campbell would sit and talk to her about his mother. They would stay in the little house hallowed by his mother's mild spirit. And he would show her that first sketch of the Red Admiral. And afterward they two would plan how to make the best use of the Champneys money. He was very, very sure of her sympathy and her understanding. Why, you couldn't look into her eyes without knowing how exquisite her sympathy would be!

He was so stirred, so thrilled, that the creative power that had seemed to fail him, that had left him so emptily alone these many bitter months, came to him with a rush. He got to his feet and went tramping up and down the strip of shore, his eyes clouded with visions. Before his mind's eye the picture he meant to paint took shape and form and color. And as he walked home he whistled like a happy boy.

He had brought his materials along with him as a matter of habit. With his powers at high tide, in the first glamour of a great passion, he set himself to work next morning to portray her as his heart knew her.

He worked steadily, stopping only when the light failed. He was so absorbed in his task that he forgot his body. But Grandma Baker was a wise old woman, and she came at intervals and forced food upon him. Then he slept, and awoke with the light to rush back to his work. His old rare gift of visualizing a face in its absence had grown with the years; and this was the face of all faces. There was not a shade or a line of that face he didn't know. And after a while she appeared upon his canvas, breathing, immensely alive, with the inmost spirit of her informing her gray-green eyes, her virginal mouth, her candid and thoughtful brow. There she stood, Anne as Peter Champneys knew and loved her.

He had done great work in his time. But this was painted with the blood of his heart. This was his high-water mark. It would take its place with those immortal canvases that are the slow accretions of the ages, the perfectest flowerings of genius. He was swaying on his feet when he painted in the Red Admiral. Then he flung himself upon his bed and slept like a dead man.

When he awoke, she seemed to be a living presence in his room. He gasped, and sat with his hands between his knees, staring at her almost unbelievingly. He looked at the Red Admiral above his signature, and fetched a great, sighing breath.