Returning to the library, he busied himself with his main undertaking. He was anxious that nothing should be left behind that could give Olivia additional pain, while whatever she might care to have, her mother's letters to himself or other family documents, might be ready to her hand. It was the kind of detail to which he could easily give his attention. He worked methodically and phlegmatically, steeling himself to a grim suppression of regret. He was almost sorry to finish the task, since it forced his mind to come again face to face with facts. The clock struck two as he closed the last drawer and knew that that part of his preparation was completed.

In reading the old letters with their echoes of old incidents, old joys, old jokes, old days in Paris, Rome, or England, he had been so wafted back to another time that on pushing in the drawer, which closed with a certain click of finality, the realization of the present rolled back on his soul with a curious effect of amazement. For a few minutes it was as if he had never understood it, never thought of it, before. They were going to make him, Henry Guion, a prisoner, a criminal, a convict! They were going to clip his hair, and shave his beard, and dress him in a hideous garb, and shut him in a cell! They were going to give him degrading work to do and degrading rules to keep, and degrading associates to live with, as far as such existence could be called living with any one at all. They were going to do this for year upon year, all the rest of his life, since he never could survive it. He was to have nothing any more to come in between him and his own thoughts—his thoughts of Olivia brought to disgrace, of the Clay heirs brought to want, of the Rodman heirs and the Compton heirs deprived of half their livelihood! He had called it that evening the Strange Ride with Morrowby Jukes to the Land of the Living Dead, but it was to be worse than that. It was to be worse than Macbeth with his visions of remorse; it was to be worse than Vathek with the flame burning in his heart; it was to be worse than Judas—who at least could hang himself.

He got up and went to a mirror in the corner of the room. The mere sight of himself made the impossible seem more impossible. He was so fine a specimen—he could not but know it!—so much the free man, the honorable man, the man of the world! He tried to see himself with his hair clipped and his beard shaven and the white cravat and waistcoat replaced by the harlequin costume of the jailbird. He tried to see himself making his own bed, and scrubbing his own floor, and standing at his cell door with a tin pot in his hand, waiting for his skilly. It was so absurd, so out of the question, that he nearly laughed outright. He was in a dream—in a nightmare! He shook himself, he pinched himself, in order to wake up. He was ready in sudden rage to curse the handsome, familiar room for the persistence of its reality, because the rows of books and the Baxter prints and the desks and chairs and electric lights refused to melt away like things in a troubled sleep.

It was then that for the first time he began to taste the real measure of his impotence. He was in the hand of the law. He was in the grip of the sternest avenging forces human society could set in motion against him; and, quibbles, shifts, and subterfuges swept aside, no one knew better than himself that his punishment would be just.

It was a strange feeling, the feeling of having put himself outside the scope of mercy. But there he was! There could never be a word spoken in his defense, nor in any one's heart a throb of sympathy toward him. He had forfeited everything. He could expect nothing from any man, and from his daughter least of all. The utmost he could ask for her was that she should marry, go away, and school herself as nearly as might be to renounce him. That she should do it utterly would not be possible; but something would be accomplished if pride or humiliation or resentment gave her the spirit to carry her head high and ignore his existence.

It was incredible to think that at that very instant she was sleeping quietly, without a suspicion of what was awaiting her. Everything was incredible—incredible and impossible. As he looked around the room, in which every book, every photograph, every pen and pencil, was a part of him, he found himself once more straining for a hope, catching at straws. He took a sheet of paper, and sitting down at his desk began again, for the ten thousandth time, to balance feverishly his meagre assets against his overwhelming liabilities. He added and subtracted and multiplied and divided with a sort of frenzy, as though by dint of sheer forcing the figures he could make them respond to his will.

Suddenly, with a gesture of mingled anger and hopelessness, he swept the scribbled sheets and all the writing paraphernalia with a crash to the floor, and, burying his face in his hands, gave utterance to a smothered groan. It was a cry, not of surrender, but of protest—of infinite, exasperated protest, of protest against fate and law and judgment and the eternal principles of right and wrong, and against himself most of all. With his head pressed down on the bare polished wood of his desk, he hurled himself mentally at an earth of adamant and a heaven of brass, hurled himself ferociously, repeatedly, with a kind of doggedness, as though he would either break them down or dash his own soul to pieces.

"O God! O God!"

It was an involuntary moan, stifled in his fear of becoming hysterical, but its syllables arrested his attention. They were the syllables of primal articulation, of primal need, condensing the appeal and the aspiration of the world. He repeated them:

"O God! O God!"

He repeated them again. He raised his head, as if listening to a voice.

"O God! O God!"

He continued to sit thus, as if listening.

It was a strange, an astounding thought to him that he might pray. Though the earth of adamant were unyielding, the heaven of brass might give way!

He dragged himself to his feet.

He believed in God—vaguely. That is, it had always been a matter of good form with him to go to church and to call for the offices of religion on occasions of death or marriage. He had assisted at the saying of prayers and assented to their contents. He had even joined in them himself, since a liturgical service was a principle in the church to which he "belonged." All this, however, had seemed remote from his personal affairs, his life-and-death struggles—till now. Now, all at once, queerly, it offered him something—he knew not what. It might be nothing better than any of the straws he had been clutching at. It might be no more than the effort he had just been making to compel two to balance ten.

He stood in the middle of the room under the cluster of electric lights and tried to recollect what he knew, what he had heard, of this Power that could still act when human strength had reached its limitations. It was nothing very definite. It consisted chiefly of great phrases, imperfectly understood: "Father Almighty," "Saviour of the World," "Divine Compassion" and such like. He did not reason about them, or try to formulate what he actually believed. It was instinctively, almost unconsciously, that he began to speak; it was brokenly and with a kind of inward, spiritual hoarseness. He scarcely knew what he was doing when he found himself saying, mentally:

"Save me!... I'm helpless!... I'm desperate!... Save me!... Work a miracle!... Father!... Christ! Christ! Save my daughter!... We have no one—but—but You!... Work a miracle! Work a miracle!... I'm a thief and a liar and a traitor—but save me! I might do something yet—something that might render me—worth salvation—but then—I might not.... Anyhow, save me!... O God! Father Almighty!... Almighty! That means that You can do anything!... Even now—You can do—anything!... Save us!... Save us all!... Christ! Christ! Christ!"

* * * * *

He knew neither when nor how he ceased, any more than when or how he began. His most clearly defined impression was that of his spirit coming back from a long way off to take perception of the fact that he was still standing under the cluster of electric lights and the clock was striking three. He was breathless, exhausted. His most urgent physic need was that of air. He strode to the window-door leading out to the terraced lawn, and, throwing it open, passed out into the darkness.

There was no mist at this height above the Charles. The night was still, and the moon westering. The light had a glimmering, metallic essence, as from a cosmic mirror in the firmament. Long shadows of trees and shrubbery lay across the grass. Clear in the moonlit foreground stood an elm, the pride of Tory Hill—springing as a single shaft for twice the measure of a man—springing and spreading there into four giant branches, each of which sprang and spread higher into eight—so springing and spreading, springing and spreading still—rounded, symmetrical, superb—till the long outermost shoots fell pendulous, like spray from a fountain of verdure. The silence held the suggestion of mighty spiritual things astir. At least the heaven was not of brass, if the earth continued to be of adamant. On the contrary, the sky was high, soft, dim, star-bestrewn, ineffable. It was spacious; it was free; it was the home of glorious things; it was the medium of the eternal.

He was not reassured; he was not even comforted; what relief he got came only from a feeling—a fancy, perhaps—that the weight had been eased, that he was freed for a minute from the crushing pressure of the inevitable. It would return again and break him down, but for the moment it was lifted, giving him room and power to breathe. He did breathe—long deep draughts of the cool night air that brought refreshment and something like strength to struggle on.

He came back into the room. His pens and papers were scattered on the floor, and ink from the overturned inkstand was running out on the Oriental rug. It was the kind of detail that before this evening would have shocked him; but nothing mattered now. He was too indifferent to lift his hand and put the inkstand back into its place. Instead, he threw himself on a couch, turning his face to the still open window and drinking in with thirsty gasps the blessed, revivifying air.



V

Guion awoke in a chill, gray light, to find himself covered with a rug, and his daughter, wrapped in a white dressing-gown, bending above him. Over her shoulder peered the scared face of a maid. His first sensation was that he was cold, his first act to pull the rug more closely about him. His struggle back to waking consciousness was the more confused because of the familiar surroundings of the library.

"Oh, papa, what's the matter?"

He threw the coverlet from him and dragged himself to a sitting posture.

"What time is it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. "I must have dropped off to sleep. Is dinner ready?"

"It's half-past six in the morning, papa dear. Katie found you here when she came in to dust the room. The window was wide open and all these things strewn about the floor. She put the rug on you and came to wake me. What is it? What's happened? Let me send for the doctor."

With his elbow on his knee, he rested his forehead on his hand. The incidents of the night came back to him. Olivia seated herself on the couch beside him, an arm across his shoulder.

"I'm cold," was all he said.

"Katie, go and mix something hot—some whisky or brandy and hot water—anything! And you, papa dear, go to bed. I'll call Reynolds and he'll help you."

"I'm cold," he said again.

Rising, he crawled to the mirror into which he had looked last night, shuddering at sight of his own face. The mere fact that he was still in his evening clothes, the white waistcoat wrinkled and the cravat awry, shocked him inexpressibly.

"I'm cold," he said for the third time.

But when he had bathed, dressed, and begun his breakfast, the chill left him. He regained the mastery of his thoughts and the understanding of his position. A certain exaltation of suffering which had upheld him during the previous night failed him, however, now, leaving nothing but a sense of flat, commonplace misery. Thrown into relief by the daylight, the facts were more relentless—not easier of acceptance.

As he drank his coffee and tried to eat he could feel his daughter watching him from the other end of the table. Now and then he screened himself from her gaze by pretending to skim the morning paper. Once he was startled. Reflected in the glass of a picture hanging on the opposite wall he caught the image of a man in a blue uniform, who mounted the steps and rang the door-bell.

"Who's that?" he asked, sharply. He dared not turn round to see.

"It's only the postman, papa darling. Who else should it be?"

"Yes; of course." He breathed again. "You mustn't mind me, dear. I'm nervous. I'm—I'm not very well."

"I see you're not, papa. I saw it last night. I knew something was wrong."

"There's something—very wrong."

"What is it? Tell me."

Leaning on the table, with clasped hands uplifted, the loose white lace sleeves falling away from her slender wrists, she looked at him pleadingly.

"We've—that is, I've—lost a great deal of money."

"Oh!" The sound was just above her breath. Then, after long silence, she asked: "Is it much?"

He waited before replying, seeking, for the last time, some mitigation of what he had to tell her.

"It's all we have."

"Oh!" It was the same sound as before, just audible—a sound with a little surprise in it, a hint of something awed, but without dismay.

He forced himself to take a few sips of coffee and crumble a bit of toast.

"I don't mind, papa. If that's what's troubling you so much, don't let it any longer. Worse things have happened than that." He gulped down more coffee, not because he wanted it, but to counteract the rising in his throat. "Shall we have to lose Tory Hill?" she asked, after another silence.

He nodded an affirmative, with his head down.

"Then you mean me to understand what you said just now—quite literally. We've lost all we have."

"When everything is settled," he explained, with an effort, "we shall have nothing at all. It will be worse than that, since I sha'n't be able to pay all I owe."

"Yes; that is worse," she assented, quietly.

Another silence was broken by his saying, hoarsely:

"You'll get married—"

"That will have to be reconsidered."

"Do you mean—on your part?"

"I suppose I mean—on everybody's part?"

"Do you think he would want to—you must excuse the crudity of the question—do you think he would want to back out?"

"I don't know that I could answer that. It isn't quite to the point. Backing out, as you call it, wouldn't be the process—whatever happened."

He interrupted her nervously. "If this should fall through, dear, you must write to your Aunt Vic. You must eat humble pie. You were too toplofty with her as it was. She'll take you."

"Take me, papa? Why shouldn't I stay with you? I'd much rather."

He tried to explain. It was clearly the moment at which to do it.

"I don't think you understand, dear, how entirely everything has gone to smash. I shall probably—I may say, certainly—I shall have to—to go—"

"I do understand that. But it often happens—especially in this country—that things go to smash, and then the people begin again. There was Lulu Sentner's father. They lost everything they had—and she and her sisters did dressmaking. But he borrowed money, and started in from the beginning, and now they're very well off once more. It's the kind of thing one hears of constantly—in this country."

"You couldn't hear of it in my case, dear, because—well, because I've done all that. I've begun again, and begun again. I've used up all my credit—all my chances. The things I counted on didn't come off. You know that that happens sometimes, don't you?—without any one being to blame at all?"

She nodded. "I think I've heard so."

"And now," he went on, eager that she should begin to see what he was leading her up to—"and now I couldn't borrow a thousand dollars in all Boston, unless it was from some one who gave it to me as a charity. I've borrowed from every one—every penny for which I could offer security—and I owe—I owe hundreds of thousands. Do you see now how bad it is?"

"I do see how bad it is, papa. I admit it's worse than I thought. But all the same I know that when people have high reputations other people trust them and help them through. Banks do it, don't they? Isn't that partly what they're for? It was Pierpoint & Hargous who helped Lulu Sentner's father. They stood behind him. She told me so. I'm positive that with your name they'd do as much for you. You take a gloomy outlook because you're ill. But there's no one in Boston—no one in New England—more esteemed or trusted. When one can say, 'All is lost save honor,' then, relatively speaking, there's very little lost at all."

He got up from the table and went to his room. After these words it was physically impossible for him to tell her anything more. He had thought of a means which might bring the fact home to her through the day by a process of suggestion. Packing a small bag with toilet articles and other necessaries, he left it in a conspicuous place.

"I want Reynolds to give it to my messenger in case I send for it," he explained to her, when he had descended to the dining-room again.

She was still sitting where he left her, at the head of the table, pale, pensive, but not otherwise disturbed.

"Does that mean that you're not coming home to-night?"

"I—I don't know. Things may happen to—to prevent me."

"Where should you go?—to New York?"

"No; not to New York."

He half hoped she would press the question, but when she spoke it was only to say:

"I hope you'll try to come home, because I'm sure you're not well. Of course I understand it, now I know you've had so much to upset you. But I wish you'd see Dr. Scott. And, papa," she added, rising, "don't have me on your mind—please don't. I'm quite capable of facing the world without money. You mayn't believe it, but I am. I could do it—somehow. I'm like you. I've a great deal of self-reliance, and a great deal of something else—I don't quite know what—that has never been taxed or called on. It may be pride, but it isn't only pride. Whatever it is, I'm strong enough to bear a lot of trouble. I don't want you to think of me at all in any way that will worry you."

She was making it so hard for him that he kissed her hastily and went away. Her further enlightenment was one more detail that he must leave, as he had left so much else, to fate or God to take care of. For the present he himself had all he could attend to.

Half-way to the gate he turned to take what might prove his last look at the old house. It stood on the summit of a low, rounded hill, on the site made historic as the country residence of Governor Rodney. Governor Rodney's "Mansion" having been sacked in the Revolution by his fellow-townsmen, the neighborhood fell for a time into disrepute under the contemptuous nickname of Tory Hill. On the restoration of order the property, passed by purchase to the Guions, in whose hands, with a continuity not customary in America, it had remained. The present house, built by Andrew Guion, on the foundations of the Rodney Mansion, in the early nineteenth century, was old enough according to New England standards to be venerable; and, though most of the ground originally about it had long ago been sold off in building-lots, enough remained to give an impression of ample outdoor space. Against the blue of the October morning sky the house, with its dignified Georgian lines, was not without a certain stateliness—rectangular, three-storied, mellow, with buff walls, buff chimneys, white doorways, white casements, white verandas, a white balustrade around the top, and a white urn at each of the four corners. Where, as over the verandas, there was a bit of inclined roof, russet-red tiles gave a warmer touch of color. From the borders of the lawn, edged with a line of shrubs, the town of Waverton, merging into Cambridge, just now a stretch of crimson-and-orange woodland, where gables, spires, and towers peeped above the trees, sloped gently to the ribbon of the Charles. Far away, and dim in the morning haze, the roofed and steepled crest of Beacon Hill rose in successive ridges, to cast up from its highest point the gilded dome of the State House as culmination to the sky-line. Guion looked long and hard, first at the house, then at the prospect. He walked on only when he remembered that he must reserve his forces for the day's possibilities, that he must not drain himself of emotion in advance. If what he expected were to come to pass, the first essential to his playing the man at all would lie in his keeping cool.

So, on reaching his office, he brought all his knowledge of the world into play, to appear without undue self-consciousness before his stenographer, his bookkeeper, and his clerks. The ordeal was the more severe because of his belief that they were conversant with the state of his affairs. At least they knew enough to be sorry for him—of that he was sure; though there was nothing on this particular morning to display the sympathy, unless it was the stenographer's smile as he passed her in the anteroom, and the three small yellow chrysanthemums she had placed in a glass on his desk. In the nods of greeting between him and the men there was, or there seemed to be, a studied effort to show nothing at all.

Once safely in his own office, he shut the door with a sense of relief in the seclusion. It crossed his mind that he should feel something of the same sort when locked in the privacy of his cell after the hideous publicity of the trial. From habit as well as from anxiety he went straight to a mirror and surveyed himself again. Decidedly he had changed since yesterday. It was not so much that he was older or more care-worn—he was different. Perhaps he was ill. He felt well enough, except for being tired, desperately tired; but that could be accounted for by the way in which he had spent the night. He noticed chiefly the ashy tint of his skin, the dullness of his eyes, and—notwithstanding the fact that his clothes were of his usual fastidiousness—a curious effect of being badly dressed more startling to him than pain. He was careful to brush his beard and twist his long mustache into its usual upward, French-looking curve, so as to regain as much as possible the air of his old self, before seating himself at his desk to look over his correspondence. There was a pile of letters, of which he read the addresses slowly without opening any of them.

What was the use? He could do nothing. He had come to the end. He had exhausted all the possibilities of the situation. Besides, his spirit was broken. He could feel it. Something snapped last night within him that would never be whole, never even be mended, again. It was not only the material resources under his control that he had overtaxed, but the spring of energy within himself, leaving him no more power of resilience.

An hour may have passed in this condition of dull suspense, when he was startled by the tinkle of his desk telephone. It was with some effort that he leaned forward to answer the call. Not that he was afraid—now; he only shrank from the necessity of doing anything.

"Mr. Davenant would like to see you," came the voice of the stenographer from the anteroom.

There was nothing to reply but, "Ask Mr. Davenant to come in." He uttered the words mechanically. He had not thought of Davenant since he talked with Olivia on the stairs—a conversation that now seemed a curiously long time ago.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr. Guion," the visitor said, apologetically, with a glance at the letters on the desk.

"Not at all, my dear fellow," Guion said, cordially, from force of habit, offering his hand without rising from the revolving chair. "Sit down. Have a cigar. It's rather a sharp morning for the time of year."

The use of the conventional phrases of welcome helped him to emerge somewhat from his state of apathy. Davenant declined the cigar, but seated himself near the desk, in one of the round-backed office chairs. Not being a man easily embarrassed by silences, he did not begin to speak at once, and during the minute his hesitation lasted Guion bethought him of Olivia's remark, "That sort of Saxon-giant type is always good-looking." Davenant was good-looking, in a clear-skinned, clear-eyed way. Everything about him spoke of straight-forwardness and strength, tempered perhaps by the boyish quality inseparable from fair hair, a clean, healthily ruddy complexion, and a direct blue glance that rested on men and things with a kind of pensive wondering. All the same, the heavy-browed face on a big, tense neck had a frowning, perhaps a lowering expression that reminded Guion of a young bull before he begins to charge. The lips beneath the fair mustache might be too tightly and too severely compressed, but the smile into which they broke over regular white teeth was the franker and the more engaging because of the unexpected light. If there was any physical awkwardness about him, it was in the management of his long legs; but that difficulty was overcome by his simplicity. It was characteristic of Guion to notice, even at such a time as this, that Davenant was carefully and correctly dressed, like a man respectful of social usages.

"I came in to see you, Mr. Guion," he began, apparently with some hesitation, "about what we were talking of last night."

Guion pulled himself together. His handsome eyebrows arched themselves, and he half smiled.

"Last night? What were we talking of?"

"We weren't talking of it, exactly. You only told us."

"Only told you—what?" The necessity to do a little fencing brought some of his old powers into play.

"That you wanted to borrow half a million dollars. I've come in to—to lend you that sum—if you'll take it."

For a few seconds Guion sat rigidly still, looking at this man. The import and bearing of the words were too much for him to grasp at once. All his mind was prepared to deal with on the spur of the moment was the fact of this offer, ignoring its application and its consequences as things which for the moment lay outside his range of thought.

As far as he was able to reflect, it was to assume that there was more here than met the eye. Davenant was too practised as a player of "the game" to pay a big price for a broken potsherd, unless he was tolerably sure in advance that within the potsherd or under it there lay more than its value. It was not easy to surmise the form of the treasure nor the spot where it was hidden, but that it was there—in kind satisfactory to Davenant himself—Guion had no doubt. It was his part, therefore, to be astute and wary, not to lose the chance of selling, and yet not to allow himself to be overreached. If Davenant was playing a deep game, he must play a deeper. He was sorry his head ached and that he felt in such poor trim for making the effort. "I must look sharp," he said to himself; "and yet I must be square and courteous. That's the line for me to take." He tried to get some inspiration for the spurt in telling himself that in spite of everything he was still a man of business. When at last he began to speak, it was with something of the feeling of the broken-down prize-fighter dragging himself bleeding and breathless into the ring for the last round with a young and still unspent opponent.

"I didn't suppose you were in—in a position—to do that."

"I am." Davenant nodded with some emphasis.

"Did you think that that was what I meant when I—I opened my heart to you last night?"

"No. I know it wasn't. My offer is inspired by nothing but what I feel."

"Good!" It was some minutes before Guion spoke again. "If I remember rightly," he observed then, "I said I would sell my soul for half a million dollars. I didn't say I wanted to borrow that amount."

"You may put it in any way you like," Davenant smiled. "I've come with the offer of the money. I want you to have it. The terms on which you'd take it don't matter to me."

"But they do to me. Don't you see? I'd borrow the money if I could. I couldn't accept it in any other way. And I can't borrow it. I couldn't pay the interest on it if I did. But I've exhausted my credit. I can't borrow any more."

"You can borrow what I'm willing to lend, can't you?"

"No; because Tory Hill is mortgaged for all it will stand. I've nothing else to offer as collateral—"

"I'm not asking for collateral. I'm ready to hand you over the money on any terms you like or on no terms at all."

"Do you mean that you'd be willing to—to—to give it to me?"

"I mean, sir," he explained, reddening a little, "that I want you to have the money to use—now. We could talk about the conditions afterward and call them what you please. If I understood you correctly last night, you're in a tight place—a confoundedly tight place—"

"I am; but—don't be offended!—it seems to me you'd put me in a tighter."

"How's that?"



"It's a little difficult to explain." He leaned forward, with one of his nervous, jerky movements, and fingered the glass containing the three chrysanthemums, but without taking his eyes from Davenant. So far he was quite satisfied with himself. "You see, it's this way. I've done wrong—very wrong. We needn't go into that, because you know it as well as I. But I'm willing to pay the penalty. That is, I'm ready to pay the penalty. I've made up my mind to it. I've had to—of course. But if I accepted your offer, you'd be paying it, not I."

"Well, why shouldn't I? I've paid other people's debts before now—once or twice—when I didn't want to. Why shouldn't I pay yours, when I should like the job?"

Davenant attempted, by taking something like a jovial tone, to carry the thing off lightly.

"There's no reason why you shouldn't do it; there's only a reason why I shouldn't let you."

"I don't see why you shouldn't let me. It mayn't be just what you'd like, but it's surely better than—than what you wouldn't like at all."

Taking in the significance of these words, Guion colored, not with the healthy young flush that came so readily to Davenant's face, but in dabbled, hectic spots. His hand trembled, too, so that some of the water from the vase he was holding spilled over on the desk. It was probably this small accident, making him forget the importance of his role, that caused him to jump up nervously and begin pacing about the room.

Davenant noticed then what he had not yet had time for—the change that had taken place in Guion in less than twenty hours. It could not be defined as looking older or haggard or ill. It could hardly be said to be a difference in complexion or feature or anything outward. As far as Davenant was able to judge, it was probably due, not to the loss of self-respect, but to the loss of the pretense at self-respect; it was due to that desolation of the personality that comes when the soul has no more reason to keep up its defenses against the world outside it, when the Beautiful Gate is battered down and the Veil of the Temple rent, while the Holy of Holies lies open for any eye to rifle. It was probably because this was so that Guion, on coming back to his seat, began at once to be more explanatory than there was any need for.

"I haven't tried to thank you for your kind suggestion, but we'll come to that when I see more clearly just what you want."

"I've told you that. I'm not asking for anything else."

"So far you haven't asked for anything at all; but I don't imagine you'll be content with that. In any case," he hurried on, as Davenant seemed about to speak, "I don't want you to be under any misapprehension about the affair. There's nothing extenuating in it whatever—that is, nothing but the intention to 'put it back' that goes with practically every instance of"—he hesitated long—"every instance of embezzlement," he finished, bravely. "It began this way—"

"I don't want to know how it began," Davenant said, hastily. "I'm satisfied with knowing the situation as it is."

"But I want to tell you. In proportion as I'm open with you I shall expect you to be frank with me."

"I don't promise to be frank with you."

"Anyhow, I mean to set you the example."

He went on to speak rapidly, feverishly, with that half-hysterical impulse toward confession from the signs of which Davenant had shrunk on the previous evening. As Guion himself had forewarned, there was nothing new or unusual in the tale. The situations were entirely the conventional ones in the drama of this kind of unfaithfulness. The only element to make it appealing, an element forcibly present to Davenant's protective instincts, was the contrast between what Guion had been and what he was to-day.

"And so," Guion concluded, "I don't see how I could accept this money from you. Any honorable man—that is," he corrected, in some confusion, "any sane man—would tell you as much."

"I've already considered what the sane man and the honorable man would tell me. I guess I can let them stick to their opinion so long as I have my own."

"And what is your opinion? Do you mind telling me? You understand that what you're proposing is immoral, don't you?"

"Yes—in a way."

Guion frowned. He had hoped for some pretense at contradiction.

"I didn't know whether you'd thought of that."

"Oh yes, I've thought of it. That is, I see what you mean."

"It's compounding a felony and outwitting the ends of justice and—"

"I guess I'll do it just the same. It doesn't seem to be my special job to look after the ends of justice; and as for compounding a felony—well, it'll be something new."

Guion made a show of looking at him sharply. The effort, or the pretended effort, to see through Davenant's game disguised for the moment his sense of humiliation at this prompt acceptance of his own statement of the case.

"All the same," he observed, trying to take a detached, judicial tone, "your offer is so amazing that I presume you wouldn't make it unless you had some unusual reason."

"I don't know that I have. In fact, I know I haven't."

"Well, whatever its nature, I should like to know what it is."

"Is that necessary?"

"Doesn't it strike you that it would be—in order? If I were to let you do this for me you'd be rendering me an extraordinary service. We're both men of business, men of the world; and we know that something for nothing is not according to Hoyle."

Davenant looked at him pensively. "That is, you want to know what I should be pulling off for myself?"

"That's about it."

"I don't see why that should worry you. If you get the money—"

"If I get the money I put myself in your power."

"What of that? Isn't it just as well to be in my power as in the power of other people?"

Again Guion winced inwardly, but kept his self-control. He was not yet accustomed to doing without the formulas of respect from those whom he considered his inferiors.

"Possibly," he said, not caring to conceal a certain irritation; "but even so I should like to know in case I were in your power what you'd expect of me."

"I can answer that question right away. I shouldn't expect anything at all."

"Then you leave me more in the dark than ever."

Davenant still eyed him pensively. "Do I understand you to be suspicious of my motives?"

"Suspicious might not be the right word. Suppose we said curious."

Davenant reflected. Perhaps it was his mastery of the situation that gave him unconsciously a rock-like air of nonchalance. When he spoke it was with a little smile, which Guion took to be one of condescension. Condescension in the circumstances was synonymous with insolence.

"Well, sir, suppose I allowed you to remain curious? What then?"

They were the wrong words. It was the wrong manner. Guion looked up with a start. His next words were uttered in the blind instinct of the haughty-headed gentleman who thinks highly of himself to save the moment's dignity.

"In that case I think we must call the bargain off."

Davenant shot out of his seat. He, too, was not without a current of hot blood.

"All right, sir. It's for you to decide. Only, I'm sorry. Good-by!" He held out his hand, which Guion, who was now leaning forward, toying with the pens and pencils on the desk, affected not to see. A certain lack of ease that often came over Davenant at moments of leave-taking or greeting kept him on the spot. "I hoped," he stammered, "that I might have been of some use to you, and that Miss Guion—"

Guion looked up sharply. "Has she got anything to do with it?"

"Nothing," Davenant said, quickly, "nothing whatever."

"I didn't see how she could have—" Guion was going on, when Davenant interrupted.

"She has nothing to do with it whatever," he repeated. "I was only going to say that I hoped she might have got through her wedding without hearing anything about—all this—all this fuss."

In uttering the last words he had moved toward the door. His hand was on the knob and he was about to make some repetition of his farewells when Guion spoke again. He was leaning once more over the desk, his fingers playing nervously with the pens and pencils. He made no further effort to keep up his role of keen-sighted man of business. His head was bent, so that Davenant could scarcely see his face, and when he spoke his words were muffled and sullen.

"Half a million would be too much. Four hundred and fifty thousand would cover everything."

"That would be all the same to me," Davenant said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

But he went back to the desk and took his seat again.



VI

Having watched through the window her father pass down the avenue on his way to town, Miss Guion reseated herself mechanically in her place at the breakfast-table in order to think. Not that her thought could be active or coherent as yet; but a certain absorption of the facts was possible by the simple process of sitting still and letting them sink in. As the minutes went by, it became with her a matter of sensation rather than of mental effort—of odd, dream-like sensation, in which all the protecting walls and clearly defined boundary-lines of life and conduct appeared to be melting away, leaving an immeasurable outlook on vacancy. To pass abruptly from the command of means, dignity, and consideration out into a state in which she could claim nothing at all was not unlike what she had often supposed it might be to go from the pomp and circumstance of earth as a disembodied spirit into space. The analogy was rendered the more exact by her sense, stunned and yet conscious, of the survival of her own personality amid what seemed a universal wreckage. This persistence of the ego in conditions so vast and vague and empty as to be almost no conditions at all was the one point on which she could concentrate her faculties.

It was, too, the one point on which she could form an articulated thought. She was Olivia Guion still! In this slipping of the world from beneath her feet she got a certain assurance from the affirmation of her identity. She was still that character, compounded of many elements, which recognized as its most active energies insistence of will and tenacity of pride. She could still call these resources to her aid to render her indestructible. Sitting slightly crouched, her hands clasped between her knees, her face drawn and momentarily older, her lips set, her eyes tracing absently the arabesques chased on the coffee-urn, she was inwardly urging her spirit to the buoyancy that cannot sink, to the vitality that rides on chaos. She was not actively or consciously doing this; in the strictest sense she was not doing it at all; it was doing itself, obscurely and spontaneously, by the operation of subliminal forces of which she knew almost nothing, and to which her personality bore no more than the relation of a mountain range to unrecordable volcanic fusions deep down in the earth.

When, after long withdrawal within herself, she changed her position, sighed, and glanced about her, she had a curious feeling of having traveled far, of looking back on the old familiar things from a long way off. The richly wrought silver, the cheerful Minton, the splendidly toned mahogany, the Goya etchings on the walls, things of no great value, but long ago acquired, treasured, loved, had suddenly become useless and irrelevant. She had not lost Tory Hill so much as passed beyond it—out into a condition where nothing that preceded it could count, and in which, so far as she was concerned, existence would have to be a new creation, called afresh out of that which was without form and void.

She experienced the same sensation, if it was a sensation, when, a half-hour later, she found herself roaming dreamily rather than restlessly about the house. She was not anticipating her farewell of it; it had only ceased to be a background, to have a meaning; it was like the scenery, painted and set, after the play is done. She herself had been removed elsewhere, projected into a sphere where the signs and seasons were so different from anything she had ever known as to afford no indications—where day did not necessarily induce light, nor night darkness, nor past experience knowledge. In the confounding of the perceptive powers and the reeling of the judgment which the new circumstances produced, she clung to her capacity to survive and dominate like a staggered man to a stanchion.

In the mean time she was not positively suffering from either shock or sorrow. From her personal point of view the loss of money was not of itself an overpowering calamity. It might entail the disruption of lifelong habits, but she was young enough not to be afraid of that. In spite of a way of living that might be said to have given her the best of everything, she had always known that her father's income was a small one for his position in the world. As a family they had been in the habit of associating on both sides of the Atlantic, with people whose revenues were twice and thrice and ten times their own. The obligation to keep the pace set by their equals had been recognized as a domestic hardship ever since she could remember, though it was a mitigating circumstance that in one way or another the money had always been found. Guion, Maxwell & Guion was a well which, while often threatening to run dry, had never failed to respond to a sufficiently energetic pumping. She had known the thought, however—fugitive, speculatory, not dwelt upon as a real possibility—that a day might come when it would do so no more.

It was a thought that went as quickly as it came, its only importance being that it never caused her a shudder. If it sometimes brought matter for reflection, it was in showing her to herself in a light in which, she was tolerably sure, she never appeared to anybody else—as the true child of the line of frugal forebears, of sea-scouring men and cheese-paring women, who, during nearly two hundred years of thrift, had put penny to penny to save the Guion competence. Standing in the cheerful "Colonial" hall which their stinting of themselves had made it possible to build, and which was still furnished chiefly with the objects—a settle, a pair of cupboards, a Copley portrait, a few chairs, some old decorative pottery—they had lived with, it afforded one more steadying element for her bewilderment to grasp at, to feel herself their daughter.

There was, indeed, in the very type of her beauty a hint of a carefully calculated, unwasteful adaptation of means to ends quite in the spirit of their sparing ways. It was a beauty achieved by nature apparently with the surest, and yet with the slightest, expenditure of energy—a beauty of poise, of line, of delicacy, of reserve—with nothing of the superfluous, and little even of color, beyond a gleam of chrysoprase in fine, gray eyes and a coppery, metallic luster in hair that otherwise would have passed as chestnut brown. It was a beauty that came as much from repose in inaction as from grace in movement, but of which a noticeable trait was that it required no more to produce it in the way of effort than in that of artifice. Through the transparent whiteness of the skin the blue of each clearly articulated vein and the rose of each hurrying flush counted for its utmost in the general economy of values.

It was in keeping with this restraint that in all her ways, her manners, her dress, her speech, her pride, there should be a meticulous simplicity. It was not the simplicity of the hedge-row any more than of the hothouse; it was rather that of some classic flower, lavender or crown-imperial, growing from an ancient stock in some dignified, long-tended garden. It was thus a simplicity closely allied to sturdiness—the inner sturdiness not inconsistent with an outward semblance of fragility—the tenacity of strength by which the lavender scents the summer and the crown-imperial adorns the spring, after the severest snows.

It was doubtless, this vitality, drawn from deep down in her native soil, that braced her now, to simply holding fast intuitively and almost blindly till the first force of the shock should have so spent itself that the normal working of the faculties might begin again. It was the something of which she had just spoken to her father—the something that might be pride but that was not wholly pride, which had never been taxed nor called on. She could not have defined it in a more positive degree; but even now, when all was confusion and disintegration, she was conscious of its being there, an untouched treasure of resources.

In what it supplied her with, however, there was no answer to the question that had been silently making itself urgent from the first word of her father's revelations: What was to happen with regard to her wedding? It took the practical form of dealing with the mere outward paraphernalia—the service, the bridesmaids, the guests, the feast. Would it be reasonable, would it be decent, to carry out rich and elaborate plans in a ruined house? Further than that she dared not inquire, though she knew very well there was still a greater question to be met. When, during the course of the morning, Drusilla Fane came to see her, Olivia broached it timidly, though the conversation brought her little in the way of help.

Knowing all she knew through the gossip of servants, Drusilla felt the necessity of being on her guard. She accepted Olivia's information that her father had met with losses as so much news, and gave utterance to sentiments of sympathy and encouragement. Beyond that she could not go. She was obliged to cast her condolences in the form of bald generalities, since she could make but a limited use of the name of Rupert Ashley as a source of comfort. More clearly than any one in their little group she could see what marriage with Olivia in her new conditions—the horrible, tragic conditions that would arise if Peter could do nothing—would mean for him. She weighed her words, therefore, with an exactness such as she had not displayed since her early days among the Sussex Rangers, measuring the little more and the little less as in an apothecary's balances.

"You see," Olivia said, trying to sound her friend's ideas, "from one point of view I scarcely know him."

"You know him well enough to be in love with him." Drusilla felt that that committed her to nothing.

"That doesn't imply much—not necessarily, that is. You can be in love with people and scarcely know them at all. And it often happens that if you knew them better you wouldn't be in love with them."

"And you know him well enough to be sure that he'll want to do everything right."

"Oh yes; I'm quite sure of that. I'm only uncertain that—everything right—would satisfy me."

Drusilla reflected. "I see what you mean. And, of course, you want to do—everything right—yourself."

Olivia glanced up obliquely under her lashes.

"I see what you mean, too."

"You mustn't see too much." Drusilla spoke hastily. She waited in some anxiety to see just what significance Olivia had taken from her words; but when the latter spoke it was to pass on to another point.

"You see, he didn't want to marry an American, in the first place."

"Well, no one forced him into that. That's one thing he did with his eyes open, at any rate."

"His doing it was a sort of—concession."

Drusilla looked at her with big, indignant eyes.

"Concession to what, for pity's sake?"

"Concession to his own heart, I suppose." Olivia smiled, faintly. "You see, all other things being equal, he would have preferred to marry one of his own countrywomen."

"It's six of one and half a dozen of the other. If he'd married one of his own countrywomen, the other things wouldn't have been equal. So there you are."

"But the other things aren't equal now. Don't you see? They're changed."

"You're not changed." Drusilla felt these words to be dangerous. It was a relief to her that Olivia should contradict them promptly.

"Oh yes, I am. I'm changed—in value. With papa's troubles there's a depreciation in everything we are."

Drusilla repeated these words to her father and mother at table when she went home to luncheon. "If she feels like that now," she commented, "what will she say when she knows all?—if she ever has to know it."

"But she hasn't changed," Mrs. Temple argued.

"It doesn't make any difference in her."

Drusilla shook her head. "Yes, it does, mother dear. You don't know anything about it."

"I know enough about it," Mrs. Temple declared, with some asperity, "to see that she will be the same Olivia Guion after her father has gone to prison as she was in the days of her happiness. If there's any change, it will be to make her a better and nobler character. She's just the type to be—to be perfected through suffering."

"Y-y-es," Drusilla admitted, her head inclined to one side. "That might be quite true in one way; but it wouldn't help Rupert Ashley to keep his place in the Sussex Rangers."

"Do you mean to say they'd make him give it up?"

"They wouldn't make him, mother dear. He'd only have to."

"Well, I never did! If that's the British army—"

"The British army is a very complicated institution. It fills a lot of different functions, and it's a lot of different things. It's one thing from the point of view of the regiment, and another from that of the War Office. It's one thing on the official side, and another on the military, and another on the social. You can't decide anything about it in an abstract, offhand way. Rupert Ashley might be a capital officer, and every one might say he'd done the honorable thing in standing by Olivia; and yet he'd find it impossible to go on as colonel of the Rangers when his father-in-law was in penal servitude. There it is in a nutshell. You can't argue about it, because that's the way it is."

Rodney Temple said nothing; but he probably had these words in his mind when he, too, early in the afternoon, made his way to Tory Hill. Olivia spoke to him of her father's losses, though her allusions to Colonel Ashley were necessarily more veiled than they had been with Mrs. Fane.

"The future may be quite different from what I expected. I can't tell yet for sure. I must see how things—work out."

"That's a very good way, my dear," the old man commended. "It's a large part of knowledge to know how to leave well enough alone. Nine times out of ten life works out better by itself than we can make it."

"I know I've got to feel my way," she said, meaning to agree with him.

"I don't see why."

She raised her eyebrows in some surprise. "You don't see—?"

"No, I don't. Why should you feel your way? You're not blind."

"I feel my way because I don't see it."

"Oh yes, you do—all you need to see."

"But I don't see any. I assure you it's all confusion."

"Not a bit, my dear. It's as plain as a pikestaff—for the next step."

"I don't know what you mean by the next step."

"I suppose the next step would be—well, let us say what you've got to do to-day. That's about as much ground as any one can cover with a stride. You see that, don't you? You've got to eat your dinner, and go to bed. That's all you've got to settle for the moment."

Her lips relaxed in a pale smile. "I'm afraid I must look a little farther ahead than that."

"What for? What good will it do? You won't see anything straight. It's no use trying to see daylight two hours before dawn. People are foolish enough sometimes to make the attempt, but they only strain their eyesight. For every step you've got to take there'll be something to show you the line to follow."

"What?" She asked the question chiefly for the sake of humoring him. She was not susceptible to this kind of comfort, nor did she feel the need of it.

"W-well," the old man answered, slowly, "it isn't easy to tell you in any language you'd understand."

"I can understand plain English, if that would do."

"You can make it do, but it doesn't do very well. It's really one of those things that require what the primitive Christians called an unknown tongue. Since we haven't got that as a means of communication—" He broke off, stroking his long beard with a big handsome hand, but presently began again.

"Some people call it a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Some people have described it by other figures of speech. The description isn't of importance—it's the Thing."

She waited a minute, before saying in a tone that had some awe in it, as well as some impatience: "Oh, but I've never seen anything like that. I never expect to."

"That's a pity; because it's there."

"There? Where?"

"Just where one would look for it—if one looked at all. When it moves," he went on, his hand suiting the action to the word, on a level with his eyes, "when it moves, you follow it, and when it rests, you wait. It's possible—I don't know—I merely throw out the suggestion—no one can really know but yourself, because no one but yourself can see it—but it's possible that at this moment—for you—it's standing still."

"I don't know what I gain either by its moving or its standing still, so long as I don't see it."

"No, neither do I," he assented, promptly.

"Well, then?" she questioned.

"Shall I tell you a little story?" He smiled at her behind his stringy, sandy beard, while his kind old eyes blinked wistfully.

"If you like. I shall be happy to hear it." She was not enthusiastic. She was too deeply engrossed with pressing, practical questions to find his mysticism greatly to the point.

He took a turn around the drawing-room before beginning, stopping to caress the glaze of one of the K'ang-hsi vases on the mantelpiece, while he arranged his thoughts.

"There was once a little people," he began, turning round to where she sat in the corner of a sofa, her hands clasped in her lap—"there was once a little people—a mere handful, who afterward became a race—who saw the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, and followed it. That is to say, some of them certainly saw it, enough of them to lead the others on. For a generation or two they were little more than a band of nomads; but at last they came to a land where they fought and conquered and settled down."

"Yes? I seem to have heard of them. Please go on."

"It was a little land, rather curiously situated between the Orient and the West, between the desert and the sea. It had great advantages both for seclusion within itself and communication with the world outside. If a divine power had wanted to nourish a tender shoot, till it grew strong enough to ripen seed that would blow readily into every corner of the globe, it probably couldn't have done better than to have planted it just there."

She nodded, to show that she followed him.

"But this little land had also the dangers attendant on its advantages. To the north of it there developed a great power; to the south of it another. Each turned greedy eyes on the little buffer state. And the little buffer state began to be very wise and politic and energetic. It said, 'If we don't begin to take active measures, the Assyrian, or the Egyptian, whoever gets here first, will eat us up. But if we buy off the one, he will protect us against the other.'"

"That seems reasonable."

"Yes; quite reasonable: too reasonable. They forgot that a power that could lead them by fire and cloud could protect them even against conscript troops and modern methods of fighting. They forgot that if so much trouble had been taken to put them where they were, it was not that—assuming that they behaved themselves—it was not that they might be easily rooted out. Instead of having confidence within they looked for an ally from without, and chose Egypt. Very clever; very diplomatic. There was only one criticism to be made on the course taken—that it was all wrong. There was a man on the spot to tell them so—one of those fellows whom we should call pessimists if we hadn't been taught to speak of them as prophets. 'You are carrying your riches,' he cried to them, 'on the shoulders of young asses, and your treasures on the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit you. For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose. Your strength is—to sit still!'" As he stood looking down at her his kindly eyes blinked for a minute longer, before he added, "Do you see the point?"

She smiled and nodded. "Yes. It isn't very obscure. Otherwise expressed it might be, When in doubt, do nothing."

"Exactly; do nothing—till the pillar of cloud begins to move."

Out of the old man's parable she extracted just one hint that she considered useful. In the letter which she proceeded to write Rupert Ashley as soon as she was alone, a letter that would meet him on his arrival in New York, she gave a statement of such facts as had come to her knowledge, but abstained from comments of her own, and from suggestions. She had intended to make both. She had thought it at first her duty to take the initiative in pointing out the gulf of difficulties that had suddenly opened up between her lover and herself. It occurred to her now that she might possibly discern the leading of the pillar of cloud from self-betrayal on his part. She would note carefully his acts, his words, the expressions of his face. She had little doubt of being able to read in them some indication of her duty. This in itself was a relief. It was like being able to learn a language instead of having to invent one. Nevertheless, as she finished her letter she was impelled to add:

"We have asked some three hundred people to the church for the 28th. Many of them will not be in town, as the season is still so early; but I think it wisest to withdraw all invitations without consulting you further. This will leave us free to do as we think best after you arrive. We can then talk over everything from the beginning."

With the hint thus conveyed she felt her letter to be discreetly worded. By the time she had slipped down the driveway to the box at the gate and posted it with her own hands her father had returned.

She had ordered tea in the little oval sitting-room they used when quite alone, and told the maid to say she was not receiving if anybody called. She knew her father would be tired, but she hoped that if they were undisturbed he would talk to her of his affairs. There was so much in them that was mysterious to her. Notwithstanding her partial recovery from the shock of the morning, she still felt herself transported to a world in which the needs were new to her, and the chain of cause and effect had a bewildering inconsequence. For this reason it seemed to her quite in the order of things—the curiously inverted order now established, in which one thing was as likely as another—that her father should stretch himself in a comfortable arm-chair and say nothing at all till after he had finished his second cup of tea. Even then he might not have spoken if her own patience had held out.

"So you didn't go away, after all," she felt it safe to observe.

"No, I didn't."

"Sha'n't you have to go?"

There was an instant's hesitation.

"Perhaps not. In fact—I may almost definitely say—not. I should like another cup of tea."

"That makes three, papa. Won't it keep you awake?"

"Nothing will keep me awake to-night."

The tone caused her to look at him more closely as she took the cup he handed back to her. She noticed that his eyes glittered and that in either cheek, above the line of the beard, there was a hectic spot. She adjusted the spirit-lamp, and, lifting the cover of the kettle, looked inside.

"Has anything happened?" she asked, doing her best to give the question a casual intonation.

"A great deal has happened." He allowed that statement to sink in before continuing. "I think"—he paused long—"I think I'm going to get the money."

She held herself well in hand, though at the words the old familiar landmarks of her former world seemed to rise again, rosily, mistily, like the walls of Troy to the sound of Apollo's lute. She looked into the kettle again to see if the water was yet boiling, taking longer than necessary to peer into the quiet depth.

"I'm so glad." She spoke as if he had told her he had shaken hands with an old friend. "I thought you would."

"Ah, but you never thought of anything like this."

"I knew it would be something pretty good. With your name, there wasn't the slightest doubt of it."

Had he been a wise man he would have let it go at that. He was not, however, a wise man. The shallow, brimming reservoir of his nature was of the kind that spills over at a splash.

"The most extraordinary thing has happened," he went on. "A man came to my office to-day and offered to lend me—no, not to lend—practically to give me—enough money to pull me through."

She held a lump of sugar poised above his cup with the sugar-tongs. Her astonishment was so great that she kept it there. The walls of the city which just now had seemed to be rising magically faded away again, leaving the same unbounded vacancy into which she had been looking out all day.

"What do you mean by—practically to give you?"

"The man said lend. But my name is good for even more than you supposed, since he knows, and I know, that I can offer him no security."

"How can he tell, then, that you'll ever pay it back?"

"He can't tell. That's just it."

"And can you tell?" She let the lump of sugar fall with a circle of tiny eddies into the cup of tea.

"I can tell—up to a point." His tone indicated some abatement of enthusiasm.

"Up to what point?"

"Up to the point that I'll pay it back—if I can. That's all he asks. As a matter of fact, he doesn't seem to care."

She handed him his cup. "Isn't that a very queer way to lend money?"

"Of course it's queer. That's why I'm telling you. That's what makes it so remarkable—such a—tribute—to me, I dare say that sounds fatuous, but—"

"It doesn't sound fatuous so much as—"

"So much as what?"

The distress gathering in her eyes prepared him for her next words before she uttered them.

"Papa, I shouldn't think you'd take it."

He stared at her dully. Her perspicacity disconcerted him. He had expected to bolster up the ruins of his honor by her delighted acquiescence. He had not known till now how much he had been counting on the justification of her relief. It was a proof, however, of the degree to which his own initiative had failed him that he cowered before her judgment, with little or no protest.

"I haven't said I'd take it—positively."

"Naturally. Of course you haven't."

He dabbled the spoon uneasily in his tea, looking downcast. "I don't quite see that," he objected, trying to rally his pluck, "why it should be—naturally."

"Oh, don't you? To me it's self-evident. We may have lost money, but we're still not—recipients of alms."

"This wasn't alms. It was four hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

She was plainly awe-struck. "That's a great deal; but I supposed it would be something large. And yet the magnitude of the sum only makes it the more impossible to accept."

"Y-es; of course—if you look at it in that way." He put back his cup on the table untasted.

"Surely it's the only way to look at it? Aren't you going to drink your tea?"

"No, I think not. I've had enough. I've—I've had enough—of everything."

He sank back wearily into the depths of his arm-chair. The glitter had passed from his eyes; he looked ill. He had clearly not enough courage to make a stand for what he wanted. She could see how cruelly he was disappointed. After all, he might have accepted the money and told her nothing about it! He had taken her into his confidence because of that need of expansion that had often led him to "give away" what a more crafty man would have kept to himself. She was profiting by his indiscretion to make what was already so hard for him still harder. Sipping her tea slowly, she turned the subject over and over in her mind, seeking some ground on which to agree with him.

She did this the more conscientiously, since she had often reproached herself with a fixity of principle that might with some show of reason be called too inflexible. Between right and wrong other people, especially the people of her "world," were able to see an infinitude of shadings she had never been able to distinguish. She half accepted the criticism often made of her in Paris and London that her Puritan inheritance had given an inartistic rigidity to her moral prospect. It inclined her to see the paths of life as ruled and numbered like the checker-board plan of an American city, instead of twisting and winding, quaintly and picturesquely, with round-about evasions and astonishing short-cuts, amusing to explore, whether for the finding or the losing of the way, as in any of the capitals long trodden by the feet of men. Between the straight, broad avenues of conduct, well lighted and well defined, there lay apparently whole regions of byways, in which those who could not easily do right could wander vaguely, without precisely doing wrong, following a line that might be termed permissible. Into this tortuous maze her spirit now tried to penetrate, as occasionally, to visit some historic monument, she had plunged into the slums of a medieval town.

It was an exercise that brought her nothing but a feeling of bewilderment. Having no sense of locality for this kind of labyrinth, she could only turn round and round confusedly. All she could do, when from the drooping of her father's lids she feared he was falling off to sleep, leaving the question unsettled, was to say, helplessly:

"I suppose you'll be sorry now for having told me."

He lifted his long lashes, that were like a girl's, and looked at her. The minutes that had passed had altered his expression. There was again a sparkle of resolve, perhaps of relief, in his glance. Without changing his position, he spoke drowsily, and yet reassuringly, like a man with a large and easy grasp of the situation. She was not sure whether it was a renewal of confidence on his part or a bit of acting.

"No, dear, no. I wanted to get your point of view. It's always interesting to me. I see your objections—of course. I may say that I even shared some of them—till—"

She allowed him a minute in which to resume, but, as he kept silence, she ventured to ask:

"Does that mean that you don't share them now?"

"I see what there is to be said—all round. It isn't to be expected, dear, that you, as a woman, not used to business—"

"Oh, but I didn't understand that this was business. That's just the point. To borrow money might be business—to borrow it on security, you know, or whatever else is the usual way—but not to take it as a present."

He jerked himself up into a forward posture. When he replied to her, it was with didactic, explanatory irritation.

"When I said that, I was legitimately using language that might be called exaggerated. Hyperbole is, I believe, the term grammarians use for it. I didn't expect you, dear, to take me up so literally. It isn't like you. You generally have more imagination. As a matter of fact, Davenant's offer was that of a loan—"

"Oh! So it was—that man?"

"Yes; it was he. He expressly spoke of it as a loan. I myself interpreted it as a gift simply to emphasize its extraordinary generosity. I thought you'd appreciate that. Do you see?"

"Perfectly, papa; and it's the extraordinary generosity that seems to me just what makes it impossible. Why should Mr. Davenant be generous to us? What does he expect to gain?"

"I had that out with him. He said he didn't expect to gain anything."

"And you believed him?"

"Partly; though I suppose he has something up his sleeve. It wasn't my policy to question him too closely about that. It's not altogether my first concern. I need the money."

"But you don't need the money—in that way, papa?"

"I need it in any way. If Davenant will let me have it—especially on such terms—I've no choice but to take it."

"Oh, don't, papa. I'm sure it isn't right. I—I don't like him."

"Pff! What's that got to do with it? This is business."

"No, papa. It's not business. It's a great deal more—or a great deal less—I don't know which."

"You don't know anything about it at all, dear. You may take that from me. This is a man's affair. You really must leave it to me to deal with it." Once more he fell back into the depth of his arm-chair and closed his eyes. "If you don't mind, I think I should like a little nap. What have you got so especially against Davenant, anyhow?"

"I've nothing against him—except that I've never liked him."

"What do you know about him? When did you ever see him?"

"I haven't seen him for years—not since Drusilla used to bring him to dances, when we were young girls. She didn't like it particularly, but she had to do it because he was her father's ward and had gone to live with them. He was uncouth—aggressive. Wasn't he a foundling, or a street Arab, or something like that? He certainly seemed so. He wasn't a bit—civilized. And once he—he said something—he almost insulted me. You wouldn't take his money now, papa?"

There was no answer. He breathed gently. She spoke more forcibly.

"Papa, you wouldn't let a stranger pay your debts?"

He continued to breathe gently, his eyes closed, the long black lashes curling on his cheek.

"Papa, darling," she cried, "I'll help you. I'll take everything on myself. I'll find a way—somehow. Only, don't do this."

He stirred, and murmured sleepily.

"You attend to your wedding, dear. That'll be quite enough for you to look after."

"But I can't have a wedding if Mr. Davenant has to pay for it. Don't you see? I can't be married at all."

When he made no response to this shot, she understood finally that he meant to let the subject drop.



VII

It was in the nature of a relief to Olivia Guion when, on the following day, her father was too ill to go to his office. A cold, caused by the exposure of two nights previous, and accompanied by a rising temperature, kept him confined to his room, though not to bed. The occurrence, by maintaining the situation where it was, rendered it impossible to take any irretrievable step that day. This was so much gain.

She had slept little; she had passed most of the night in active and, as it seemed to her, lucid thinking. Among the points clearest to her was the degree to which she herself was involved in the present business. In a measure, the transfer of a large sum of money from Peter Davenant to her father would be an incident more vital to her than to any one else, since she more than any one else must inherit its moral effects. While she was at a loss to see what the man could claim from them in return for his generosity, she was convinced that his exactions would be not unconnected with herself. If, on the other hand, he demanded nothing, then the lifelong obligation in the way of gratitude that must thus be imposed on her would be the most intolerable thing of all. Better any privation than the incurring of such a debt—a debt that would cover everything she was or could become. Its magnitude would fill her horizon; she must live henceforth in the world it made, her very personality would turn into a thing of confused origin, sprung, it was true, from Henry and Carlotta Guion in the first place, but taking a second lease of life from the man whose beneficence started her afresh. She would date back to him, as barbarous women date to their marriage or Mohammedans to the Flight. It was a relation she could not have endured toward a man even if she loved him; still less was it sufferable with one whom she had always regarded with an indefinable disdain, when she had not ignored him. The very possibility that he might purchase a hold on her inspired a frantic feeling, like that of the ermine at pollution.

Throughout the morning she was obliged to conceal from her father this intense opposition—or, at least to refrain from speaking of it. When she made the attempt he grew so feverish that the doctor advised the postponement of distressing topics till he should be better able to discuss them. She could only make him as comfortable as might be, pondering while she covered him up in the chaise-longue, putting his books and his cigars within easy reach, how she could best convert him to her point of view. It was inconceivable to her that he would persist in the scheme when he realized how it would affect her.

She had gone down to the small oval sitting-room commanding the driveway, thinking it probable that Drusilla Fane might come to see her. Watching for her approach, she threw open the French window set in the rounded end of the room and leading out to the Corinthian-columned portico that adorned what had once been the garden side of the house. There was no garden now, only a stretch of elm-shaded lawn, with a few dahlias and zinnias making gorgeous clusters against the already gorgeous autumn-tinted shrubbery. On the wall of a neighboring brick house, Virginia creeper and ampelopsis added fuel to the fire of surrounding color, while a maple in the middle distance blazed with all the hues that might have flamed in Moses's burning bush. It was one of those days of the American autumn when the air is shot with gold, when there is gold in the light, gold on the foliage, gold on the grass, gold on all surfaces, gold in all shadows, and a gold sheen in the sky itself. Red gold like a rich lacquer overlay the trunks of the occasional pines, and pale-yellow gold, beaten and thin, shimmered along the pendulous garlands of the American elms, where they caught the sun. It was a windless morning and a silent one; the sound of a hammer or of a motorist's horn, coming up from the slope of splendid woodland that was really the town, accentuated rather than disturbed the immediate stillness.

To Olivia Guion this quiet ecstasy of nature was uplifting. Its rich, rejoicing quality restored as by a tonic her habitual confidence in her ability to carry the strongholds of life with a high and graceful hand. Difficulties that had been paramount, overpowering, fell all at once into perspective, becoming heights to be scaled rather than barriers defying passage. For the first time in the twenty-four hours since the previous morning's revelations, she thought of her lover as bringing comfort rather than as creating complications.

Up to this minute he had seemed to withdraw from her, to elude her. As a matter of fact, though she spoke of him rarely and always with a purposely prosaic touch, he was so romantic a figure in her dreams that the approach of the sordid and the ugly had dispelled his image. It was quite true, as she had said to Drusilla Fane, that from one point of view she didn't know him very well. She might have said that she didn't know him at all on any of those planes where rents and the price of beef are factors. He had come into her life with much the same sort of appeal as the wandering knight of the days of chivalry made to the damsel in the family fortress. Up to his appearing she had thought herself too sophisticated and too old to be caught by this kind of fancy, especially as it was not the first time she had been exposed to it. In the person of Rupert Ashley, however, it presented itself with the requisite limitations and accompaniments. He was neither so young nor so rich nor of such high rank as to bring a disproportionate element into their romance, while at the same time he had all the endowments of looks, birth, and legendary courage that the heroine craves in the hero. When he was not actually under her eyes, her imagination embodied him most easily in the svelte elegance of the King Arthur beside Maximilian's tomb at Innspruck.

Their acquaintance had been brief, but illuminating—one of those friendships that can afford to transcend the knowledge of mere outward personal facts to leap to the things of the heart and the spirit. It was one of the commonplaces of their intimate speech together that they "seemed to have known each other always"; but now that it was necessary for her to possess some practical measure of his character, she saw, with a sinking of the heart, that they had never passed beyond the stage of the poetic and pictorial.

Speculating as to what he would say when he received her letter telling of her father's misfortunes, she was obliged to confess that she "had not the remotest idea." Matters of this sort belonged to a world on which they had deliberately turned their backs. That is to say, she had turned her back on it deliberately, though by training knowing its importance, fearing that to him it would seem mundane, inappropriate, American. This course had been well enough during the period of a high-bred courtship, almost too fastidiously disdainful of the commonplace; but now that the Fairy Princess had become a beggar-maid, while Prince Charming was Prince Charming still, it was natural that the former should recognize its insufficiency. She had recognized it fully yesterday; but this morning, in the optimistic brightness of the golden atmosphere, romance came suddenly to life again and confidence grew strong. Drusilla had said that she, Olivia, knew him well enough to be sure that he would want to do—everything right. They would do everything right—together. They would save her father whom she loved so tenderly, from making rash mistakes, and—who knew?—find a way, perhaps, to rescue him in his troubles and shelter his old age.

She was so sure of herself to-day, and so nearly sure of Ashley, that even the shock of seeing Peter Davenant coming up the driveway, between the clumps of shrubbery, brought her no dismay. She was quick in reading the situation. It was after eleven o'clock; he had had time to go to Boston, and, learning that her father was not at his office, had come to seek him at home.

She made her arrangements promptly. Withdrawing from the window before he could see her, she bade the maid say that, Mr. Guion being ill, Miss Guion would be glad to see Mr. Davenant, if he would have the kindness to come in. To give an air of greater naturalness to the mise-en-scene, she took a bit of embroidery from her work-basket, and began to stitch at it, seating herself near the open window. She was not without a slight, half-amused sense of lying in ambush, as if some Biblical voice were saying to her, "Up! for the Lord hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand."

* * * * *

"My father isn't well," she explained to Davenant, when she had shaken hands with him and begged him to sit down. "I dare say he may not be able to go out for two or three days to come."

"So they told me at his office. I was sorry to hear it."

"You've been to his office, then? He told me you were there yesterday. That's partly the reason why I've ventured to ask you to come in."

She went on with her stitching, turning the canvas first on one side and then on the other, sticking the needle in with very precise care. He fancied she was waiting for him to "give himself away" by saying something, no matter what. Having, however, a talent for silence without embarrassment, he made use of it, knowing that by means of it he could force her to resume.

He was not at ease; he was not without misgiving. It had been far from his expectation to see her on this errand, or, for the matter of that, on any errand at all. It had never occurred to him that Guion could speak to her of a transaction so private, so secret, as that proposed between them. Since, then, his partner in the undertaking had been foolish, Davenant felt the necessity on his side of being doubly discreet. Moreover, he was intuitive enough to feel her antipathy toward him on purely general grounds. "I'm not her sort," was the summing-up of her sentiments he made for himself. He could not wholly see why he excited her dislike since, beyond a moment of idiotic presumption long ago, he had never done her any harm.

He fancied that his personal appearance, as much as anything, was displeasing to her fastidiousness. He was so big, so awkward; his hands and feet were so clumsy. A little more and he would have been ungainly; perhaps she considered him ungainly as it was. He had tried to negative his defects by spending a great deal of money on his clothes and being as particular as a girl about his nails; but he felt that with all his efforts he was but a bumpkin compared with certain other men—Rodney Temple, for example—who never took any pains at all. Looking at her now, her pure, exquisite profile bent over her piece of work, while the sun struck coppery gleams from her masses of brown hair, he felt as he had often felt in rooms filled with fragile specimens of art—flower-like cups of ancient glass, dainty groups in Meissen, mystic lovelinesses wrought in amber, ivory, or jade—as if his big, gross personality ought to shrink into itself and he should walk on tiptoe.

"I understand from my father," she said, when she found herself obliged to break the silence, "that you've offered to help him in his difficulties. I couldn't let the occasion pass without telling you how much I appreciate your generosity."

She spoke without looking up; words and tone were gently courteous, but they affected him like an April zephyr, that ought to bring the balm of spring, and yet has the chill of ice in it.

"Haven't you noticed," he said, slowly, choosing his words with care, "that generosity consists largely in the point of view of the other party? You may give away an old cloak, for the sake of getting rid of it; but the person who receives it thinks you kind."

"I see that," she admitted, going on with her work, "and yet there are people to whom I shouldn't offer an old cloak, even if I had one to give away."

He colored promptly. "You mean that if they needed anything you'd offer them the best you had."

"I wonder if you'd understand that I'm not speaking ungraciously if I said that—I shouldn't offer them anything at all?"

He put up his hand and stroked his long, fair mustache. It was the sort of rebuke to which he was sensitive. It seemed to relegate him to another land, another world, another species of being from those to which she belonged. It was a second or two before he could decide what to say. "No, Miss Guion," he answered then; "I don't understand that point of view."

"I'm sorry. I hoped you would."

"Why?"

She lifted her clear gray eyes on him for the briefest possible look. "Need I explain?"

The question gave him an advantage he was quick to seize. "Not at all, Miss Guion. You've a right to your own judgments. I don't ask to know them."

"But I think you ought. When you enter into what is distinctly our private family affair, I've a right to give my opinion."

"You don't think I question that?"

"I'm afraid I do. I imagine you're capable of carrying your point, regardless of what I feel."

"But I've no point to carry. I find Mr. Guion wanting to borrow a sum of money that I'm prepared to lend. It's a common situation in business."

"Ah, but this is not business. It's charity."

"Did Mr. Guion tell you so?"

"He did. He told me all about it. My father has no secrets from me."

"Did he use the word—charity?"

"Almost. He said you offered him a loan, but that it really was a gift."

His first impulse was to repudiate this point of view, but a minute's reflection decided him in favor of plain speaking. "Well," he said, slowly, "suppose it was a gift. Would there be any harm in it?"

"There wouldn't be any harm, perhaps; there would only be an—impossibility." She worked very busily, and spoke in a low voice, without looking up. "A gift implies two conditions—on the one side the right to offer, and on the other the freedom to take."

"But I should say that those conditions existed—between Mr. Guion and me."

"But not between you and me. Don't you see? That's the point. To any such transaction as this I have to be, in many ways, the most important party."

Again he was tempted to reject this interpretation; but, once more, on second thought, he allowed it to go uncontested. When he spoke it was to pass to another order of question.

"I wonder how much you know?"

"About my father's affairs? I know everything."

"Everything?"

"Yes; everything. He told me yesterday. I didn't expect him to come home last night at all; but he came—and told me what you had proposed."

"You understood, then," Davenant stammered, "that he might have to—to—go away?"

"Oh, perfectly."

"And aren't you very much appalled?"

The question was wrung from him by sheer astonishment. That she should sit calmly embroidering a sofa-cushion, with this knowledge in her heart, with this possibility hanging over her, seemed to him to pass the limits of the human. He knew there were heroic women; but he had not supposed that with all their heroism they carried themselves with such sang-froid. Before replying she took time to search in her work-basket for another skein of silk.

"Appalled is scarcely the word. Of course, it was a blow to me; but I hope I know how to take a blow without flinching."

"Oh, but one like this—"

"We're able to bear it. What makes you think we can't? If we didn't try, we should probably involve ourselves in worse."

"But how could there be worse?"

"That's what I don't know. You see, when my father told me of your kind offer, he didn't tell me what you wanted."

"Did he say I wanted anything?"

"He said you hadn't asked for anything. That's what leaves us so much in the dark."

"Isn't it conceivable—" he began, with a slightly puzzled air.

"Not that it matters," she interrupted, hurriedly. "Of course, if we had anything with which to compensate you—anything adequate, that is—I don't say that we shouldn't consider seriously the suggestion you were good enough to make. But we haven't. As I understand it, we haven't anything at all. That settles the question definitely. I hope you see."

"Isn't it conceivable," he persisted, "that a man might like to do a thing, once in a way, without—"

"Without asking for an equivalent in return? Possibly. But in this case it would only make it harder for me."

"How so?"

"By putting me under an overwhelming obligation to a total stranger—an obligation that I couldn't bear, while still less could I do away with it."

"I don't see," he reasoned, "that you'd be under a greater obligation to me in that case than you are to others already."

"At present," she corrected, "we're not under an obligation to any one. My father and I are contending with circumstances; we're not asking favors of individuals. I know we owe money—a great deal of money—to a good many people—"

"Who are total strangers, just like me."

"Not total strangers just like you—but total strangers whom I don't know, and don't know anything about, and who become impersonal from their very numbers."

"But you know Mrs. Rodman and Mrs. Clay. They're not impersonal."

All he saw for the instant was that she arrested her needle half-way through the stitch. She sat perfectly still, her head bent, her fingers rigid, as she might have sat in trying to catch some sudden, distant sound. It was only in thinking it over afterward that he realized what she must have lived through in the seconds before she spoke.