"Possibly," Alves assented, "though she didn't know anything."

"Well, my advice to you is to make that right just as soon as ever you can. He's willing?"

"I should never let him," Alves exclaimed vehemently; "least of all now!"

"Well, I suppose folks must live their own way. But you don't catch me taking a man in that easy fashion, so that he can get out when he wants to."

Alves tried to change the subject, but her admission had so startled her friend that the usual gossip was impossible. When the visitors rose to go, Sommers proposed showing them the way back by a wagon road that led to the improved part of the park, across the deserted Court of Honor. He and Alves accompanied them as far as the northern limits of the park. The rain clouds were gone, and a cold, clear sky had taken their place. On their return along the esplanade beside the lake Sommers chatted in an easy frame of mind.

"I guess Webber will get Miss M'Gann, and I am glad of it. Dresser wouldn't do anything more than fool with her. He will get on now; those promoters and capitalists are finding him a clever tool. They will keep him steady. It isn't the fear of the Lord that will keep men like Dresser in line; it's the fear of their neighbors' opinions and of an empty stomach!"

"Don't you—wish you had a chance like his?" Alves asked timidly.

The young doctor laughed aloud.

"You don't know me yet. It isn't that I don't want to. It's because I can't—no glory to me. But, Alves, we are all right. I can get enough in one way or another to keep the temple over our heads, and I can work now. I have something in view; it won't be just chasing about the streets."

This reference to his own work both pleased and saddened her. The biologist, who had befriended him before, had given him some work in his laboratory. The work was not well paid, but the association with the students, which aroused his intellectual appetites, had given him a new spur. What saddened her was that it was all entirely beyond her sphere of influence, of usefulness to him. Living, as they should, in an almost savage isolation, she dreaded his absorption in anything apart from her. There were other reliefs, consolations, and hopes than those she held. He was slipping away into a silent region—man's peculiar world—of thought and dream and speculation, an intangible, ideal, remote, unloving world. Some day she would knock at his heart and find it occupied.

She leaned heavily upon his arm, loath to have his footsteps so firm, his head so erect, his eyes so far away, his voice so silent.

"You are not sorry," she murmured, ashamed of iterating this foolish question, that demanded one answer—an answer never wholly satisfying.

"For what?" he asked, interrupting his thought and glancing out into the black waters.

"For me—for all this fight for life alone away from the people who are succeeding, for grinding along unrecognized—"

He stopped and kissed her gently, striving to quiet her excited mood.

"For if you did, I would put myself there, in the water beside the piers," she cried.

He smiled at her passionate threat, as at the words of an emotional child. Underneath his gentleness, his kindness, his loving ways, she felt this trace of scepticism. He did not bother his head with what was beginning to wring her soul. In a few minutes she spoke again:

"Miss M'Gann thinks Dr. Leonard knows why I was dismissed. Mrs. Ducharme, she said, had been hanging about the Everglade School district. I remember having seen her several times."

Sommers dropped her arm and strode forward.

"What did she know?" he asked harshly.

"I don't see how she could know anything except suspicions. You know she was queer and a great talker."

Sommers's face worked. He was about to speak when Alves went on.

"I told Jane we had never been married; she asked me where we were married. I suppose I ought not to have told her. I didn't want to."

"It is of no importance," Sommers answered. "It's our own business, anyway; but it makes no difference as we live now whether she knows it or not."

"I am glad you feel so," Alves replied with relief. Then in a few moments she added, "I was afraid she might tell people; it might get to your old friends."

Sommers replied in the same even tone,

"Well? and what can they do about it?"

"I wonder what a woman like Miss Hitchcock thinks about such matters,—about us, if she knew."

"She would not think. She would avoid the matter as she would a case of drunkenness."

The arm within his trembled. She said nothing more until they reached the little portico. She paused there, leaning against one of the crumbling columns, looking out into the night. From the distance beyond the great pier that stretched into the lake came the red glare of the lighthouse.

Sommers had gone in and was preparing the room for the night. She could hear him whistle as he walked to and fro, carrying out dishes, arranging the chairs and tables. He maintained an even mood, took the accidents of his fate as calmly as one could, and was always gentle. He had some well of happiness hidden to her. She went in, took off her cloak, and prepared to undress. His clothes, the nicety he preserved about personal matters, had taught her much of him. Her clothes had always been common, of the wholesale world; he had had his luxuries, his refinements, his individual tastes. Gradually, as his more expensive clothes had worn out, he had replaced them with machine-made articles of cheap manufacture. His belongings were like hers now. She was bringing him a little closer to her in such ways,—food and lodging and raiment. But not in thought and being. Behind those deep-set eyes passed a world of thought, of conjecture and theory and belief, that rarely expressed itself outwardly.

She let down her hair and began to take off her plain, unlovely clothes. Thus she approached the common human basis, the nakedness and simplicity of life. Her eyes lingered thoughtfully on her body; she touched herself as she unbuttoned, unlaced, cast aside the armor of convention and daily life.

"Howard!" she cried imperiously. He stopped his whistling and looked at her and smiled.

"Do you like me, Howard?" She blushed at the childishness of her eager question. But she demanded the expected answer with the insistence of unsatisfied love. And when he failed to reply at the moment, surprised by her mood, she knelt by his chair and grasped his knees.

"Isn't it all that you want, just the temple and me? Am I not enough to make up for the world and success and pleasure? I can make you love, and when you love you do not think."

She rose and faced him with gleaming eyes, stretching out her bare arms, deploying her whole woman's strength and beauty in mute appeal.

"Why do you ask?" he demanded, troubled.

"O Howard, you do not feel the mist that creeps in between us, though we are close together. Sometimes I think you are farther away than even in the old times, when I first saw you at the hospital. You think, think, and I can't get at your thought. Why is it so?"

He yielded to her entreating arms and eyes, as he had so often before in like moments, when the need to put aside the consciousness of existence, of the world as it appears, had come to one of them or both. Yet it seemed that this love was like some potent spirit, whose irresistible power waned, sank, each time demanding a larger draught of joy, a more delirious tension of the nerves.

"Nothing makes any difference," he answered. "I was born and lived for this."

She had charmed the evil mood, and for the time her heart was satisfied.

But when she lay by his side at night her arm stole about his, as if to clutch him, fearful lest in the empty reaches of sleep he might escape, lest his errant man's thoughts and desires might abandon her for the usual avenues of life. Long after he had fallen into the regular sleep of night, she lay awake by his side, her eyes glittering with passion and defeat. Even in these limits of life, when the whole world was banned, it seemed impossible to hold undisturbed one's joy. In the loneliest island of the human sea it would be thus—division and ultimate isolation.



CHAPTER VI

The summer burned itself out, and the autumn winds pierced the rotten staff walls of the temple. They were no nearer to moving into better quarters than they had been in the spring. The days had come when there was little food, and the last precarious dollar had been spent. They lived on the edge of defeat, and such an existence to earnest people is sombre.

Finally the tide turned. The manager of a large manufacturing plant in Burnside, one of the little factory hamlets south of the city, asked Sommers to take charge of an epidemic of typhoid that had broken out among the operatives. The regular physician of the corporation had proved incompetent, and the annual visitation of the disease threatened to be unprecedented. Sommers spent his days and nights in Burnside for several weeks. When he had time to think, he wondered why the manager employed him. If the Hitchcocks had been in the city, he should have suspected that they had a hand in the matter. But he remembered having seen in a newspaper some months before that the Hitchcocks were leaving for Europe. He did not trouble himself greatly, however, over the source of the gift, thankful enough for the respite, and for the chance of renewed activity. When the time for settlement came, the manager liberally increased the amount of the doctor's modest bill. The check for three hundred dollars seemed a very substantial bulwark against distress, and the promise of the company's medical work after the new year was even more hopeful. Alves was eager to move from the dilapidated temple to an apartment where Sommers could have a suitable office. But Sommers objected, partly from prudential reasons, partly from fear that unpleasant things might happen to Alves, should they come again where people could talk. And then, to Alves's perplexity, he developed strange ideas about money getting.

"The physician should receive the very minimum of pay possible for his existence," he told her once, when she talked of the increase in his income. "He works in the dark, and he is in luck if he happens to do any good. In waging his battle with mysterious nature, he only unfits himself by seeking gain. In the same way, to a lesser degree, the law and the ministry should not be gainful professions. When the question of personal gain and advancement comes in, the frail human being succumbs to selfishness, and then to error. Like the artist, the doctor, the lawyer, the clergyman, the teacher should be content to minister to human needs. The professions should be great monastic orders, reserved for those who have the strength to renounce ease and luxury and power."

The only tangible comfort that Alves derived from this unusually didactic speech was the assurance that he would not be drawn away from her. She bowed to his conception, and sought to help him. While he was attending the cases in Burnside, she did some work as nurse. Beginning casually to help on an urgent case, she went on to other cases, training herself, learning to take his place wherever she could. She thought to come closer to him in this way, but she suspected that he understood her motive, that her work did not seem quite sincere to him. She was looking for payment in love.

When she was not engaged in nursing, she was more often alone than she had been the year before. The Keystone people visited the temple rarely. Miss M'Gann seemed always a little constrained, when Alves met her, and Dresser was living on the North Side. One December morning, when Alves was alone, she noticed a carriage coming slowly down the unfinished avenue. It stopped a little distance from the temple, and a woman got out. After giving the coachman an order, she took the foot-path that Alves and Sommers had worn. Alves came out to the portico to meet the stranger, who hastened her leisurely pace on catching sight of a person in the temple. At the foot of the rickety steps the stranger stopped.

"You are Miss Hitchcock," Alves said quickly. "Won't you come in?"

"How did you know!" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed, and added without waiting for a reply: "Let's sit here on the steps—the sun is so warm and nice. I've been a long time in coming to see you," her voice rippled on cordially, while Alves watched her. "But we've been out of the city so much of the time,—California, North Carolina, and abroad."

Alves nodded. The young woman's ease of manner and luxurious dress intimidated her. She sat down on the step above Miss Hitchcock, and she had the air of examining the other woman without committing herself.

"But, how did you know me?" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed, with a little laugh of satisfaction.

"Dr. Sommers has told me about you."

"Did he! He didn't tell any one of his marriage." The bluntness of the speech was relieved by the confidential manner in which Miss Hitchcock leaned forward to the other woman.

"It was sudden," Alves replied coolly.

"I know! But we, my father and I, had a right to feel hurt. We knew him so well, and we should have liked to know you."

"Thank you."

"But we had no cards—you disappeared—hid yourselves—and you turn up in this unique place! It's only by chance that I've found you now."

"We didn't send out cards. We are such simple people that we don't expect—"

Miss Hitchcock blushed at the challenge, and interrupted to save the speech from its final ungraciousness.

"Of course, but we are different. We have always been so interested in Dr. Sommers. He was such a promising man."

Alves made no effort to reply. She resented Miss Hitchcock's efforts to reach her, and withdrew into her shell. This young woman with her attendant brougham belonged to the world that she liked to feel Sommers had renounced for her sake. She disliked the world for that reason.

"Is he doing well?" Miss Hitchcock asked bluntly. "He was so brilliant in his studies and at the hospital! I was sorry that he left, that he felt he ought to start for himself. He had a good many theories and ideals. We didn't agree,"—she smiled winningly at the grave woman, "but I have had time to understand somewhat—only I couldn't, I can't believe that my father and his friends are all wrong." Miss Hitchcock rushed on heedlessly, to Alves's perplexity; she seemed desperately eager to establish some kind of possible understanding between them. But this cold, mature woman, in her plain dress, repelled her. She could not prevent herself from thinking thoughts that were unworthy of her.

Why had he done it! What had this woman to give that the women of her set could not equal and more than equal? The atmosphere of her brougham, of her costly gown and pretty hat contrasted harshly with the dingy temple and dead weeds of the waste land. Dr. Lindsay had said much, and insinuated more, about the entanglement that had ruined the promising young surgeon. Was it this woman's sensual power—she rejected the idea on the instant. Dr. Sommers was not that kind, in spite of anything that Lindsay might say. She could not understand it—his devotion to this woman, his giving up his chances. It was all a part of some scheme beyond her power to grasp fully.

"I want to know you," she said at last, after an awkward silence. "Won't you let me?"

Alves leaned slightly forward, and spoke slowly.

"You are very kind, but I don't see any good in it. We don't belong to your world, and you would show him all the time what he has to get along without. Not that he wouldn't do it again," she added proudly, noticing the girl's lowered gaze. "I don't think that he would like to have me say that he had given up anything. But he's got his way to make, here, and it is harder work than you imagine."

"I don't see, then, why you refuse to let me—his old friends—help him." Miss Hitchcock spoke impatiently. She was beginning to feel angry with this impassive woman, who was probably ignorant of the havoc she had done.

"He doesn't want any help!" Alves retorted. "We are not starving now. I can help him. I will help him and be enough for him. He gave it up for me."

"Can you get him friends and practice?" Miss Hitchcock asked sharply. "Can you make it possible for him to do the best work, and stand high in his profession? Will you help him to the place where he can make the most of himself, and not sell his soul for bread?"

These questions fell like taunts upon the silent woman. She seemed to feel beneath them the boast, 'I could have done all that, and much more!' These words were like the rest of this fashionable young woman—her carriage, her clothes, her big house, her freshness of person—all that she did not have. Alves retorted:

"He won't let any one push him, I know. What he wants, he will be glad to get by himself. And," she added passionately, "I will help him. If I stand in his way,—and he can't do what he wants to do,—I will take myself out of his life."

Boast for boast, and the older woman's passionate words seemed to ring the stronger. They looked at each other defiantly. At last Miss Hitchcock pulled her wrap about her, and rose to go. A final wave of regret, of yearning not to be thrust out in this way from these lives made her say:

"I am sorry you couldn't have let me be a little friendly. I wanted to have you to dinner,"—she smiled at the dull practicality of her idea; "but I suppose you won't come."

"He may do as he likes," Alves said, in a more conciliatory manner.

"But he can't!" the girl smiled back good-humoredly. "One doesn't go to dinner without one's wife, especially when one's wife doesn't like the hostess."

Alves laughed at the frank speech. She might have liked this eager, fresh young woman, who took things with such dash and buoyancy, if she could have known her on even terms. As they stood facing each other, a challenge on Miss Hitchcock's face, Alves noticed the doctor's figure in the road beyond.

"I think that is Dr. Sommers coming. He can answer your question for himself."

Sommers was approaching from Blue Grass Avenue; his eyes were turned in the direction of the lake, so that he did not see the women on the steps of the temple until Miss Hitchcock turned and held out her hand. Then he started, perceptibly enough to make Alves's lips tighten once more.

"I have been calling on your wife," Miss Hitchcock explained, talking fast. "But she doesn't like me, won't ask me to come again."

"We shall be very glad to see you," Alves interposed quickly. "But I make no calls."

Miss Hitchcock declined to sit down, and Sommers accompanied her to the waiting carriage. Alves watched them. Miss Hitchcock seemed to be talking very fast, and her head was turned toward his face.

Miss Hitchcock was answering Sommers's inquiries about Colonel and Mrs. Hitchcock. The latter had died over a year ago, and Colonel Hitchcock had been in poor health.

"He has some bitter disappointments," Miss Hitchcock said gravely. "His useful, honorable, unselfish life is closing sadly. We have travelled a good deal; we have just come back from Algiers. It is good to be back in Chicago!"

"I have noticed that the Chicagoan repeats that formula, no matter how much he roams. He seems to travel merely to experience the bliss of returning to the human factory."

"It isn't a factory to me. It is home," she replied simply.

"So it is to us, now. We are earning our right to stay within its gates."

"Are things—going better?" Miss Hitchcock asked hesitatingly. She scanned the doctor's face, as if to read in the grave lines the record of the year.

"We are alive and clothed," he replied tranquilly.

"What a frightful way to put it!"

"The lowest terms—and not very different from others." His eye rested upon the glossy horses and the spotless victoria.

"No!" Miss Hitchcock answered dispiritedly. "But I won't think of it that way. I am coming to see you again, if I may?"

"You were very good to look us up," he answered evasively.

They lingered, speaking slowly, as if loath to part in this superficial manner. He told her of his employment in Burnside, and remarked slowly,

"I wonder who could have put the manager on my track."

"I wonder," she repeated, looking past him.

"You see I didn't start quite at the scratch," he added, his face relaxing into a smile.

"I shouldn't quarrel about that handicap."

"No, I am not as ready to quarrel as I once was."

Her face had the eager expression of interest and vitality that he remembered. She seemed to have something more that she wanted to say, but she simply held out her hand, with a warm "good-by," and stepped into the carriage.

When he returned to the temple, Alves was busy getting their dinner. She paused, and glancing at Sommers remarked, "How beautiful she is!"

"She is a good woman. She ought to marry," he responded.

"Why?"

"Because she is so sound and fine at bottom."

"You were glad to see her again."

"Did I show it unduly?"

"I knew you were, and she knows it."

When he looked at her a few moments later, her eyes were moist.



CHAPTER VII

"Pshaw! pshaw!" Dr. Leonard exclaimed, in a coaxing tone. "I'm disappointed, Alves. 'Tain't natural. I mean to see him and show him what harm it is."

"No, no, don't speak of it again, at least to him," Alves pleaded anxiously. "He would do that, or anything, if he thought I wanted it. I don't want it, I tell you; I'm happier as it is."

"S'pose there are children?" the old dentist asked, in a convincing tone.

"I hope there never will be."

"Now, that shows how wrong you are, how fussed up—why, what's marriage for if it ain't for children? I guess I've had as hard a struggle as most to keep head to the tide, but I couldn't spare the children. Now, I'll get our minister to do the job. You and the doctor come out next Sunday to my house, and after the evening service we'll slip over to the church and make it all right."

Alves smiled at the earnest kindness of the old dentist, but shook her head firmly. Dr. Leonard gathered up his overcoat and silk hat, but seemed loath to go. He peered out of the windows that Sommers had put into the big doors of the temple.

"It's like your living out here in this ramshackle old chicken-coop, when you might have a tidy flat on Paulina Street; and the doctor could have a desk in my office next door to his old boss." Dr. Leonard spoke testily, and Alves laid her hand soothingly on his arm.

"I guess we aren't made to be like other people."

"You won't have any happiness so long as you defy God's law."

"Did I have any when I lived according to it?"

The dentist, at the end of his arguments, turned the door-knob.

"Some day, Alves, he will reproach you justly for what you've done."

"I shall be dead before that day."

"I've no patience with you, talking of death and hoping you'll never have children."

The old dentist stumbled out into the portico, and, without further words, trudged down the road. Alves lingered in the open door in spite of the intense cold, and watched him, with an unwonted feeling of loneliness. The few people that touched her solitary life seemed to draw back, repelled by something unusual, unsafe in her and her situation. Why was she so obstinate about this trivial matter of a ceremony that counted for so much with most people? At first her refusal had been a sentiment, merely, an instinctive, unreasoned decision. Now, however, there were stronger causes: she would not consent to tie his hands, to make him realize the irrevocableness of his step. Time might come when...

And why had she so stoutly denied a wish for children? These days her thoughts went back often to her dead child—the child of the man she had married. Preston's share in the child was so unimportant now! To the mother belonged the child. Perhaps it was meant to be so in order that something might come to fill the empty places of a woman's heart. If she had children, what difference would that ignorance of the man she loved, that division from him, make? The man had his work, his ideas—the children of his soul; and the woman had the children of her body. Each went his way and worked his life into the fabric of the world. Love! Love was but an episode, an accident of the few blossoming years of life. To woman there was the gift of children, and to man the gift of labor. She wondered if this feeling would increase as the years passed. Would she think more and more of the child she had had, the other man's child? And less of him whom she loved?

"Trying to make an icicle of yourself?" a jovial voice called out; the next moment Dresser came up the steps. The portico shook as he stamped his feet. He wore a fur-lined coat, and carried a pair of skates. His face, which had grown perceptibly fuller since his connection with The Investor's Monthly, was red with cold.

"The ice on the lake is first-rate, Alves, and I skated up the shore to see if I could get you for a spin."

"I am glad you came," Alves said, with new life. "I was kind of lonely and blue, and the doctor is off on a case the other side of nowhere."

"Just the time," responded Dresser, who seemed to have the good luck at present of making "right connections."

They skated down the lagoon to the blackened Court of Honor, through this little pond, around the dismantled figure of Chicago, out into the open lake beside the long pier. The ice was black and without a scratch. They dashed on toward the centre of the lake, Alves laughing in pure exultation over the sport. They had left far behind the few skaters that had ventured beyond the lagoon, and taking hands they flew for a mile down the shore. Then Alves proposed that they should go back to the temple for a cup of tea. The wind was up, beating around the long, black pier behind them, and when they turned, they caught it full in the face. Alves, excited by the tussle, bent to the task with a powerful swing; Dresser skated fast behind her. As they neared the long pier, instead of turning in toward the esplanade, Alves struck out into the lake to round the obstruction and enter the yacht pool beyond. Dresser kept the pace with difficulty. As she neared the end of the pier, she gave a little cry; Dresser saw her leap, then heard a warning shout,

"Look out—the pool!" As he scuttled away from the oily water where the drifts opened, he saw Alves clinging to the rim of ice on the piles.

"Don't be afraid," she called back. "I can crawl under the pier and get up on the cross-bars. Go on to the shore."

While he protested she vanished, and in a minute he saw her reappear above, waving her hand to him. She took off her skates leisurely, wrung out her skirt, and walked along the pier. He skated up as close as he could, stammering his admiration and fears. When he reached the shore, she was already running down the path to the temple. He followed more leisurely, and found her, in a dry skirt, stirring up the fire in the stove.

"That was a close call," he gasped admiringly, throwing his skates into the corner.

"Wasn't it fine?" she laughed. "I'd like days and days of that—flying ahead, with a hurricane behind."

She shovelled some coal into the ugly little stove, and gayly set about preparing tea. Dresser had never seen her so strong and light-hearted as she was this afternoon. They made tea and toasted crackers, chaffing each other and chattering like boy and girl. After their meal Dresser lit his pipe and crouched down by the warm stove.

"I wish you were like this oftener," he murmured admiringly. "Gay and ready for anything!"

"I don't believe I shall be as happy as this for weeks. It comes over me sometimes."

She leaned forward, her face already subdued with thought.

"It makes you beautiful to be happy," Dresser said, with clumsy self-consciousness.

Alves's eyes responded quickly, and she leaned a little farther forward, pondering the words. Suddenly Dresser took her hand, and then locked her in his arms. Even in the roughness of his passion, he could not fail to see her white face. She struggled in his grasp without speaking, as if knowing that words would be useless. And Dresser, too embarrassed by his act to speak, dragged her closer to him.

"Don't touch me," she gasped; "what have I done!"

"I will kiss you," the man cried. "What difference is it, anyway?"

He wrested her from the low chair, and she fell without power to save herself, to struggle further. The room was swimming before her eyes, and Dresser had his arms about her. Then the door opened, and she saw Sommers enter. Her eyes filled with tears.

"What is the matter?" he exclaimed, looking sharply about at the upset chair, the prostrate form, and Dresser's red face.

"She has fallen—fainted," Dresser stammered. Alves seemed to acquiesce for a moment, and her head sank back; then she opened her eyes and looked at Sommers pitifully.

"No, Howard. Help me."

Sommers raised her, his face much troubled. While he held her, she spoke brokenly, trying to hide her face.

"You must know. He kissed me. I don't know why. Make him go away. O Howard, what am I?"

Sommers dropped his arm from Alves and started toward Dresser, who was edging away.

"What is this?"

His dictatorial tone made Dresser pause.

"She told you. I was a fool. I tried to kiss her."

Sommers took him by the arm without a word.

"Yes, I am going. Don't make a row about it. You needn't get into a state about it. She isn't Mrs. Sommers, you know!"

"Oh!" Alves groaned, closing her eyes again. "How can he say that!"

Sommers dropped his arm.

"Who told you that Alves was not my wife?" he asked drearily.

"Every one knows it. Lindsay has the whole story. You—"

"Don't say anything more," Sommers interrupted sternly. "You are too nasty to kill."

His tone was quiet. He seemed to be questioning himself what he should do. Finally, opening the door, he grasped Dresser by the neck and flung him into the sand outside. Then he closed the door and turned to Alves. She was crouching before the fire, sobbing to herself. He stroked her hair soothingly.

"We must conform," he said at last.

She shook her head. "It is too late to stop that talk. I was wrong to care about not having the ceremony, and it was foolish to tell Jane. But—to have him think, his touch—how can you ever kiss me again! You let him go," she added, her passion flaming up; "I would have killed him. Why didn't you let me kill him?"

"That is savage," he replied sadly. "What good is it to answer brutality by crime? You cannot save your skirts from the dirt," he concluded softly to himself. "I knew the fellow was bad; I knew it eight years ago, when he took a Swiss girl to Augsburg and left her there. But I said to myself then that, like many men, he had his moods of the beast which he could not control, and thought no more about it. Now his mood of the beast touches me. Society keeps such men in check; he will marry Laura Lindsay and make an excellent, cringing husband, waiting for Lindsay's savings. You see," he ended, turning to his work-table, "I suppose he felt released from the bonds of society by the way we live, by—it all."

Alves rose and walked to and fro.

"Do you think," she asked at last, "that anything I could have done—he could have felt that I—encouraged him?"

"I don't think anything more about it," Sommers answered, closing his lips firmly. "It is part of the mire; we must avert our eyes, Alves."

But in spite of his mild, even gentle way of dealing with the affair, he could not fall into his routine of work. He got up from the table and, finding the room too warm, threw open a window to let the clear, cold winter air rush over his face. He stood there a long time, plunged in thought, while Alves waited for him to come back to her. At last she could bear it no longer. She crept over to his side and placed her head close to his.

"I wish you would even hate me, would be angry, would feel it," she whispered. "Will you ever care to kiss me again?"

"Foolish woman!" Sommers answered, taking her face in his hands. "Why should that make any difference to me, any more than if a drunken brute had struck you?"

"But it does," she asserted sadly. "Everything does, Howard—all the past: that I let my husband touch me; that I had to live with him; that you had to know it, him—it all makes, oh, such a difference!"

"No," he responded, in a high voice. "By God, it makes no difference—only one thing." He paused. Then with a wrench he went on, "Alves, did you—did you—" But he could not make himself utter the words, and before he had mastered his hesitation she had broken in impetuously:

"No, I am right; the great happiness that I wanted to give you must come from the spirit and body of a woman untouched by the evil of living in the world. The soiled people like me should not—"

He closed her lips with a kiss.

"Don't blaspheme our life," he answered tenderly. "One cannot live unspotted except in the heart."

He kissed her again, tenderly, lovingly. But the kiss did not assuage her burning shame; it savored of pity, of magnificent charity.



CHAPTER VIII

One still, frozen winter day succeeded another in changeless iteration. The lake was a solid floor of gray ice as far as one could see. Along the shore between the breakwaters the ice lay piled in high waves, with circles of clear, shining glass beyond. A persistent drift from the north and east, day after day, lifted the sheets of surface ice and slid them over the inner ledges. At night the lake cracked and boomed like a battery of powerful guns, one report starting another until the shore resounded with the noise. The perpetual groaning of the laboring ice, the rending and riving of the great fields, could be heard as far inshore as the temple all through the still night.

Early every morning Sommers with Alves would start for the lake. At this hour only an occasional fisherman could be seen, cutting fresh holes in the ice and setting his lines. Sommers preferred to skate in the mornings, for later in the day the smooth patches of inshore ice were frequented by people from the city. He loved solitude, it seemed to Alves, more and more. In the Keystone days he had been indifferent to the people of the house; now he avoided people except as they needed him professionally. She attributed it, wrongly, to a feeling of pride. In reality, the habit of self-dependence was gaining, and the man was thrusting the world into the background. For hours Sommers never spoke. Always sparing of words, counting them little, despising voluble people, he was beginning to lose the power of ready speech. Thus, living in one of the most jostling of the world's taverns, they lived as in the heart of the Arizona desert.

They skated in these long silences, enjoying the exhilaration of the exercise, the bitter air, the views of the huge, silent city. Now and then they paused instinctively to watch the scene, without speaking, like great lovers that are mute. Starting from the sheltered pool, where the yachts lay in summer, they skirted the dark piles of the long pier, around which the black water gurgled treacherously. Beyond the pier there was a snakelike, oozing crack, which divided the inshore ice from the more open fields outside. This they followed until they found a chance to cross, and then they sped away toward the little island made by the "intake" of the water works.

These windless mornings the bank of city smoke northward was like gray powder, out of which the skyscrapers stretched their lofty heads. The buildings along the shore, etched in the transparent air, breathing silently white mists of steam, lay like a mirage wonderfully touched with purplish shadows. The great steel works rose to the south, visibly near, mysteriously remote. The ribbons of fiery smoke from their furnaces were the first signs of the city's awakening from its lethargic industrial sleep. The beast was beginning to move along its score of miles of length. But out here in the vacancies of the lake it seemed still torpid.

Eastward, beyond the dot which the "intake" made, the lake was a still arctic field, furrowed by ice-floes, snowy here, with an open pool of water there, ribbed all over with dark crevasses of oozing water. In the far east lay the horizon line of shimmering, gauzy light, as if from beyond the earth's rim was flooding in the brilliance of a perpetual morning. North and south, east and west, along the crevasses the lake smoked in the morning sun, as the vapor from the water beneath rose into the icy air. Savage, tranquil, immense, the vast field of ice was like the indifferent face of nature, like unto death.

One morning, as they waited breathlessly listening to the silence of the ice sea, the lake groaned close beside them, and suddenly the floe on which they stood parted from the field nearer shore. In a few minutes the lane of open water was six feet in width. Sommers pointed to it, and without a word they struck out to the north, weaving their way in and out of the floes, now clambering over heaved-up barriers of ice, now flying along an unscarred field, again making their way cautiously across sheets of shivered surface ice that lay like broken glass beside a crevasse. Finally, they reached the inner field. Sommers looked at his watch, and said:

"We might as well go ashore here. That was rather a narrow chance. I must look in at the Keystone to see how Webber is. I shouldn't wonder if he had typhoid."

"I wish we could go on," Alves replied regretfully. "I was hoping the lane ran on and on for miles."

She put her hands under his coat and leaned against him, looking wistfully into the arctic sea.

"Let me go back!" she pleaded. "I should like to skate on, on, for days!"

"You can't go back without me. Some day, if this weather keeps up, we'll try for the Michigan shore."

"I should like to end things in this way," she continued musingly; "just us two, to plunge on and on and on into that quiet ice-field, until, at last, some pool shot up ahead—and then! To go out like that, quenched right in the heat of our lives; not chilled, piece by piece."

Sommers moved impatiently.

"It isn't time for that."

"No?" she asked rather than assented, and turned her face to the city. "I am not sure; sometimes I think it is the ripe time. There can be nothing more."

Sommers did not answer, but began to skate slowly. Half an hour later they climbed over the hills of shore ice, and he hurried away to the Keystone. Alves walked slowly south on the esplanade. The gray sea of ice was covered now with the winter sun. The pools and crevasses sent up sheets of steam. Her eyes followed the ice lingeringly. Once she turned back to the lake, but finally she started across the frozen grass plots in the direction of the temple. She could see from a distance a black figure seated on the portico, and she hastened her steps. She recognized the familiar squat, black-clothed person of Mrs. Ducharme. There, in the sunlight between the broken pillars, this gloomy figure seemed of ill omen. Alves regretted that she had turned back from the ice.

Mrs. Ducharme showed no sign of life until Alves reached the steps. She was worn and unkempt. A ragged straw hat but partly disguised her rumpled hair. Alves recalled what Miss M'Gann had said about her drinking.

"I've been to see you two, three times," Mrs. Ducharme said, in a hoarse, grumbling tone; "but you'se always out. This time I was a-going to wait if I'd stayed all night."

"Come in," Alves answered, unlocking the door. The woman dragged herself into the temple.

"Not so tidy a place as you and the other one had," she remarked mournfully.

Alves waited for her to declare her errand; but as she seemed in no haste to speak, she asked,

"Did you ever find Ducharme?"

The Duchesse nodded sombrely, closing her eyes.

"The woman shook him time of the strikes, when his money was gone."

"Well, isn't that what you wanted?"

Mrs. Ducharme nodded her head slowly.

"She made him bad. He drinks, awful sometimes, and whenever I say anything, he says he's going back to Peory, to that woman."

Alves waited for the expected request for money. "They'se awful, these men; but a woman can't get on without 'em, no more than the men without us. Only the men don't care much which one. Any one will do for a time. Do you find the new one any better?"

"I am very happy," Alves replied with a flush; "but I don't care to talk about my affairs."

"You needn't be so close," the woman exclaimed irritably. "I know all about you. The real one was a fine gentleman, even if he did liquor bad."

"I told you," Alves repeated, "that I didn't care to talk of my affairs. What do you want?"

"I've come here to talk of your affairs," Mrs Ducharme answered insolently. "And I guess you'll listen. He,—I don't mean the doctor,—the real 'un, came of rich, respectable folks. He told me all about it, and got me to write 'em for money, and his sister sent him some."

"So that was where he obtained the money to drink with when he got out of the cottage!" Alves exclaimed.

The woman nodded, and added, "He gave me some, too."

Alves rose and opened the door.

"I don't see why you came here," she said briefly, pointing to the door.

But Mrs. Ducharme merely laughed and kept her seat.

"Did he, the doctor feller, ever ask you anything about his death?" she asked.

Alves looked at her blankly.

"When he signed that paper you gave the undertaker?" continued the Duchesse.

"I don't know what you mean!" Alves exclaimed, closing the door and walking away from the woman.

"How did he die?" Mrs. Ducharme whispered.

"You know as well as I," Alves cried, terrified now by the mysterious air the woman assumed.

"Yes!" Mrs. Ducharme whispered again. "I know as well as you. I know, and I can tell. I know how the wife gave him powders,—sleeping powders the doctor ordered,—the doctor who was hanging around, and ran off with her just after the funeral."

The woman's scheme of extracting blackmail flashed instantly into Alves's mind.

"You foul creature," she gasped, "you know it is an abominable lie—"

"Think so? Well, Ducharme didn't think so when I told him, and there are others that 'ud believe it, if I should testify to it!"

Alves walked to and fro, overwhelmed by the thoughts of the evil which was around her. At last she faced Mrs. Ducharme, who was watching her closely.

"I see what it means. You want money—blackmail, and you think you've got a good chance. But I will not give you a cent. I will tell Dr. Sommers first, and let him deal with you."

"The doctor! What does he say about his dying quiet and nice as he did? I guess the doctor'll see the point."

Alves started. What did Sommers think? What were his half-completed inquiries? What did his conduct the night of Preston's death mean? This wretched affair was like a curse left to injure her by the miserable creature she had once been tied to. But Sommers would believe her! She had given Preston but one powder, and he had said two were safe. She must tell him exactly what she had done.

"You had better go now," she said to the woman more calmly. "I shall let Dr. Sommers know what your story is. He will answer you."

"Better not tell him," the woman replied, with a laugh. "He knows all he wants to—or I'd 'a' gone to him at once. When he hears about the scrape, he'll run and leave you. You ain't married, anyway!"

"Go," Alves implored.

Mrs. Ducharme rose and stood irresolutely.

"I don't want much, not to trouble you. I'll give you a day to think this over, and to-morrer morning I'll be here at nine sharp to get your answer."

When the woman had gone, Alves tried to reason the matter out calmly. She had been too excited. The charge was simply preposterous, and, inexperienced as she was, she felt that nothing could be made of it in any court. But the mere suggestion of a court, of a public inquiry, alarmed her, not for herself but for Sommers, who would suffer grievously. And it did not seem easy to discuss the matter with him as she must now; it would bring up distressing scenes. Her face burned at the thought. The woman's tale was plausible. Had Sommers wondered about the death? Gradually it came over her that Sommers had always suspected this thing. She was sure of it. He had not spoken of it because he wished to protect her from her own deed. But, now, he would not believe her. The Ducharme woman's tale would fit in with his surmises. No! he must believe her. And beside this last fear, the idea of publicity, of ventilating the old scandal, thus damning him finally and hounding him out of his little practice, faded into inconsequence. The terrible thing was that for eighteen months he had carried this belief about her in his heart.

She tried to divert her excited mind from the throng of suspicions and fears by preparing dinner. One o'clock came, then two, and Sommers did not arrive. Mrs. Ducharme might have waited for him at the entrance to the avenue, and he might have turned back to debate with himself what he should do. But she acquitted him of that cowardice.

* * * * *

As the afternoon wore on, her mind turned to the larger thoughts of their union. She saw with sudden clearness what she had done to this man she loved. She had taken him from his proper position in the world; she had forced him to push his theories of revolt beyond sane limits. She had isolated him, tied him, and his powers would never be tested. A man like him could never be happy, standing outside the fight with his equals. Worse yet, she had soiled the reverences of his nature. What was she but a soiled thing! The tenderness of his first passion had sprung amid the rank growth of her past with its sordid little drama. And the soil in her fate had tarnished their lives ever since, until this grievous...

And what had she given him? Love,—every throb of her passionate body, every desire and thought. Was this enough? There sounded the sad note of defeat: it was not, could not be, would never be enough! No man ever lived from love alone. Passion was a torrid desert. Already she had felt him fading out of her life, withdrawing into the mysterious recesses of his soul. He did not know it; he did not willingly put her away. But as each plant of the field was destined to grow its own way, side by side with its fellows, so human souls grew singly by themselves from some irresistible inner force. And she was but the parasite that fed upon this soul.

The room stifled her. She fetched her cape and hat. They were lying upon his table, and as she took them she could see the sheets of an unfinished letter. The writing was firm and fine, with the regular alignment and spacing of one who is deft about handwork. Her eye glanced over the page; the letter was in answer to a doctor in Baltimore, who had asked him to cooperate in preparing a surgical monograph. "I should like extremely to be with you in this," ran the lines, like the voice of the speaking man, "but—and the refusal pains me more than you know—I cannot in honesty undertake the work. I have not suitable conditions. It is eighteen months since I entered a hospital, and I am behind the times. And, for the present, I see no prospect of being in a condition to undertake the work. I advise you to try Muller, or—" There the letter broke off, unfinished. She raised it to her lips and kissed it. This was another sign, and she would heed it. To be a full man he must return to the poor average world, or be less than the trivial people he had always despised.

When she opened the door, the level rays of the western sun blinded her. There was no wind. Eastward the purple shadows had thickened, effacing the line of light along the horizon. The frozen lake stretched, ridged and furrowed, into the gloom. Toward it she walked,—slowly, irresistibly drawn by its limitless bosom.

She had boasted to Miss Hitchcock, "I will take myself out of his life, if need be." It was not an empty, woman's boast. She was strong enough to do what she willed. The time had come. She would not see him again. To break with words the ties between them would but dishonor them both. They must not discuss this thing. At the shore of the pool where they had put on their skates in the morning she paused, shaken with a new thought. The woman would come back on the morrow, and, without one word of denial from her, would tell him that terrible lie, confirming his old suspicions. She must see him,—she could not leave him with that foul memory,—and she returned to the temple in the hope that he was already there. The little building, however, was empty and desolate, and she sat down by the fire to wait.

The story, the denial of it, no longer seemed important. She would write him what she had to say, and go away. She would tell him that she had not poisoned her husband like a sick dog, and he would believe the solemn last words. She took a sheet of paper from his table and wrote hesitatingly:

"Dear Howard: I am leaving you——forever." Then she began again and again, but at last she came back to the first words and wrote on desperately: "I cannot make you understand it all. But one thing I must tell you, and you must believe it. That horrible woman, Mrs. Ducharme, was here this morning and told me that I had given opiates to my husband when he was ill in the cottage, and had killed him, and that you knew it. Somehow I remembered things that made me know you thought so, had always thought so. Perhaps you will still think it must have been so, her story is so terribly probable.

"O Howard, you used to think that it would be right—but I couldn't. I might have in time, but I couldn't then. I did nothing to hasten his death. Believe this, if you love me the least.

"That isn't the sole reason why I leave you. But it is all like that. I ruin the world for you. Love is not all,—at least for a man,—and somehow with me you cannot have the rest and love. We were wrong to rebel—I was wrong to take my happiness. I longed so! I have been so happy!

"Alves."

It seemed pitifully inadequate—a few wavering lines—to tell the tale of the volumes in her heart. But with a sigh she pushed back the chair and gathered her hat and cape. Once more she hesitated, and seeing that the fire in the stove was low, replenished it. Then she turned swiftly away, locked the door,—putting the key where they hid it, in the hollow of a pillar,—and walked rapidly in the direction of the lake.

It was already nearly dusk. Little groups of skaters were sauntering homeward from the lagoons and the patches of inshore ice. The lake was gray and stern. She gained the esplanade, with a vague purpose of walking into the city, of taking the train for Wisconsin. But as she passed the long pier, the desire to walk out on the ice seized her once more. With some difficulty she gained the black ice after scrambling over the debris piled high against the beach. When she reached the clear spaces she walked slowly toward the open lake. The gloom of the winter night was already gathering; as she passed the head of the pier, a park-guard hailed her, with some warning cry. She paid no attention, but walked on, slowly picking her way among the familiar ice hills, in and out of the floes.

Once beyond the head of the pier she was absolutely alone in the darkening sea of ice. The cracks and crevasses were no longer steaming; instead, a thin shell of ice was coating over the open surfaces. But she knew all these spots and picked her way carefully. The darkness had already enveloped the shore. Beyond, on all sides, rose small white hills of drifted ice, making a little arctic ocean, with its own strange solitude, its majestic distances, its titanic noises; for the fields of ice were moving in obedience to the undercurrents, the impact from distant northerly winds. And as they moved, they shrieked and groaned, the thunderous voices hailing from far up the lake and pealing past the solitary figure to the black wastes beyond. This tumult of the lake increased in fury, yet with solemn pauses of absolute silence between the reports. At first Alves stood still and listened, fearful, but as she became used to the noise, she walked on calm, courageous, and strangely at peace in the clamor. Once she faced the land, where the arc lights along the esplanade made blue holes in the black night. Eastward the radiant line of illumined horizon reappeared, creating a kind of false daybreak.

So this was the end as she had wished it—alone in the immensity of the frozen lake. This was like the true conception of life—one vast, ever darkening sphere filled with threatening voices, where she and others wandered in sorrow, in regret, in disappointment, and, also, in joy. Oh! that redeemed it. Her joy had been so beautiful, so true to the promise of God in the pitiful heart of man. She said to herself that she had tasted it without sin, and now had the courage to put it away from her before it turned to a draught bitter to her and to others. There were more joys in this life than the fierce love for man: the joy over a child, which had been given to her and taken away; the joy of triumph, the joy—but why should she remember the others? Her joy had its own perfection. For all the tears and waste of living, this one passion had been given—a joy that warmed her body in the cold gloom of the night.

There loomed in her path a black wall of broken ice. She drew herself slowly over the crest of the massed blocks. Beyond lay a pleasant blackness of clear water, into which she plunged,—still warm with the glow of her perfect happiness.



CHAPTER IX

Webber had a well-developed case of typhoid, and Sommers had him moved to St. Isidore's. The doctor accompanied him to the hospital, and once within the doors of his old home, he lingered chatting with the house physician, who had graduated from the Philadelphia school shortly after Sommers had left. The come and go of the place, the air of excitement about the hospital, stirred Sommers as nothing in months had done. Then the attention paid him by the internes and the older nurses, who had kept alive in their busy little world the tradition of his brilliant work, aroused all the vanity in his nature. When he was about to tear himself away from the pleasant antiseptic odor and orderly bustle, the house physician pressed him to stay to luncheon. He yielded, longing to hear the talk about cases, and remembering with pleasure the unconventional manners and bad food of the St. Isidore mess-table. After luncheon he was urged to attend an operation by a well-known surgeon, whose honest work he had always admired. It was late in the afternoon when he finally started to leave, and then a nurse brought word that Webber was anxious to see him about some business. He found Webber greatly excited and worried over money matters. To his surprise he learned that the foppish, quiet-mannered clerk had been dabbling in the market. He held some Distillery common stock, and, also, Northern Iron—two of the new "industrials" that were beginning to sprout in Chicago.

"You must ask the brokers to sell if the market is going against me," the clerk exclaimed feverishly. "Perhaps, if I am to be tied up here a long time, they'd better sell, anyway."

"Yes," Sommers assented; "you must get it off your mind."

So, with a promise to see White and Einstein, the brokers, at once, and look after the stock, he soothed the sick man.

"You're a good fellow," Webber sighed. "It's about all I have. I'll tell you some time why I went in—I had very direct information."

Sommers cut him short and hastened away. By the time he had found White and Einstein's office, a little room about as large as a cigar shop in the basement of a large building on La Salle Street, the place was deserted. A stenographer told him, with contempt in her voice, that the Exchange had been closed for two hours. Resolving to return the first thing in the morning, he started for the temple. He had two visits to make that he had neglected for Webber's case, but he would wait until the evening and take Alves with him. He had not seen her for hours. For the first time in months he indulged himself in a few petty extravagances as he crossed the city to get his train. The day had excited him, had destroyed the calm of his usual controlled, plodding habits. The feverish buoyancy of his mood made it pleasant to thread the chaotic streams of the city streets. It was intoxicating to rub shoulders with men once more.

At Sixtieth Street he left the train and strode across the park, his imagination playing happy, visionary tunes. He would drop in to-morrow at St. Isidore's on his way back from White and Einstein's. He must see more of those fellows at Henry's clinic; they seemed a good set. And he was not sure that he should answer the Baltimore man so flatly. He would write for further details. When he reached the temple, he found the place closed, and he thought that Alves had gone to see one of his cases for him. The key was in its usual hiding-place, and the fire looked as if it had been made freshly. He had just missed her. So he filled a pipe, and hunted along the table for the unfinished letter to the Baltimore man. It was blotted, he noticed, and he would have to copy it in any case. As he laid it aside, his eyes fell upon a loose sheet of note-paper covered with Alves's unfamiliar writing. He took it up and read it, and then looked around him to see her, to find her there in the next room. The letter was so unreal!

"Alves!" he called out, the pleasant glow of hope fading in his heart. How he had forgotten her! She must be suffering so much! Mechanically he put on his hat and coat and left the temple, hiding the key in the pillar. She could not have been gone long,—the room had the air of her having just left it. He should surely find her nearby; he must find her. Whipped by the intolerable imagination of her suffering, he passed swiftly down the sandy path toward the electric lights, that were already lamping silently along the park esplanade. He chose this road, unconsciously feeling that she would plunge out that way. What had the Ducharme woman said? What had made her take this harsh step, macerating herself and him just as they were beginning to breathe without fear? He sped on, into the gullies by the foundations of the burnt buildings, up to the new boulevard. After one moment of irresolution he turned to the right, to the lake. That icy sea had fascinated her so strongly! He shivered at the memory of her words. Once abreast of the pier he did not pause, but swiftly clambered out over the ice hills and groped his way along the black piles of the pier. The vastness of the field he had to search! But he would go, even across the floes of ice to the Michigan shore. He was certain that she was out there, beyond in the black night, in the gloom of the rending ice.

Suddenly, as he neared the end of the pier, the big form of a man, bearing, dragging a burden, loomed up out of the dark expanse. It came nearer, and Sommers could make out the uniform of a park-guard. He was half-carrying, half-dragging the limp form of a woman. Sommers tried to hail him, but he could not cry. At last the guard called out when he was within a few feet:

"Give me a hand, will you. It's a woman,—suicide, I guess," he added more gently.

Sommers walked forward and took the limp form. The drenched garments were already frosting in the cold. He turned the flap of the cape back from the face.

"It is my wife," he said quietly.

"I saw her from the pier goin' out, and I called to her," the guard replied, "but she kept on all the faster. Then I went back to the shore and got on the ice and followed her as fast as I could, but—"

Together they lifted her and carried her in over the rough shore ice up to the esplanade.

"We live over there." Sommers pointed in the direction of the temple. The man nodded; he seemed to know the young doctor.

"I shall not need your help," Sommers continued, wrapping the stiff cape about the yielding form. He took her gently in his arms, staggered under the weight, then started slowly along the esplanade. The guard followed for a few steps; but as the doctor seemed able to carry his burden alone, he turned back toward the city.

Sommers walked on slowly. The stiff cape slipped back from Alves's head, revealing in the blue electric light the marble-white pallor of the flesh, the closed eyes. Sommers stopped to kiss the cold face, and with the movement Alves's head nestled forward against his hot neck. Tears rose to his eyes and fell against her cheek; he started on once more, tracing carefully the windings of the path.

* * * * *

So this was the end! The little warmth and love of his cherishing arms about her cold body completed the pittance of happiness she had craved.

The story was too dark for him to comprehend now—from that first understanding moment in St. Isidore's receiving room to this. Here was his revolt, in one cold burden of dead love. She had left him in some delusion that it would be better thus, that by this means he would find his way, free and unshackled, back to the world of his fellows. And, perhaps, like a creature of love, she had blindly felt love's slow, creeping paralysis, love's ultimate death. Even now, as he staggered along the lighted avenue of the park, in the silence of death and of night, that pregnant reproach oppressed his heart. He had not loved her enough! She had felt a wall that was building impalpably between them, a division of thought and of feeling. She had put her arms against his man's world of secret ambition and desire and had found it cold.

She had struggled for her bit of happiness, poor, loving woman! She had suffered under her past error, her marriage with Preston, and had endured, until, suddenly relieved, she had embraced her happiness, only to find it slowly vanishing in her warm hands. He had suspected her of grasping this happiness without scruple, clamorously; but her sweet white lips spoke out the falseness of this accusation. It was bitter to know that he had covered her with this secret suspicion. He owed her a sea of pardons!

So he labored on into the dark stretches of the park, among the debris of the devastated buildings, up the little sandy hills, out of the park to the lonely temple. Already his self-reproach seemed trivial. He knew how little his concealed suspicions had to do with bringing about this catastrophe. That misunderstanding was but a drop in the stream of fate, which was all too swift for her strength. He paused at the last turn of the road and rested, settling his burden more closely in his arms, drawing her to him in the unavailing embrace of regret. Another kind of life, he said,—some average marriage with children and home would have given her more fully the human modicum of joy. But his heart rejected also this reproach. In no other circumstance could he place her justly. She was so amply made for joy—so strong to love, to endure; so true to the eternal passions. But not mere household love, the calm minutes of interlude in the fragments of a busy day! They would not satisfy the deep thirst for love in her heart. He had given the best he had—all, nearly all, as few men could give, as most men never give. He must content himself there.

He started again and strode on to the end of the journey. Within the temple he placed her on their bed, taking off her stiff clothes and preparing her for sleep. Then he remade the fire, and opening a window for the low night wind to draw across her face as she liked to have it, he sat down for his vigil.

Yes, it was the end! It was the end of his little personal battle with the world, the end of judging and striving, the end of revolt. He should live on, strangely enough, into many years, but not as they had tried to live in self-made isolation. He should return to that web of life from which they had striven to extricate themselves. She bade him go back to that fretwork, unsolvable world of little and great, of domineering and incompetent wills, of the powerful rich struggling blindly to dominate and the weak poor struggling blindly to keep their lives: the vast web of petty greeds and blind efforts. He should return, but humbly, with the crude dross of his self-will burnt out. They had rebelled together; they had had their wills to themselves; and that was ended. It could not have been otherwise. They could never have known each other in the world; they had to withdraw themselves apart. He looked at her afresh, lying on the pillow by his side, her hair twining carelessly about the white arm. She was infinitely greater than he,—so undivided and complete a soul! She had left him for the commoner uses of life. And all the stains of their experience had been removed, washed out by the pure accomplishment of her end.

Already so cold, so sweetly distant, that face,—so done with life and with him! He leaned over it and burst into tears. The dream of the summer night had passed away.



CHAPTER X

Mrs. Ducharme returned to the temple at an early hour the next morning. Sommers saw her mumbling to herself as she came across the park. Before she knocked, he opened the door; she started back in fear of the sombre, bearded face with the blood-shot eyes that seemed lying in wait for her.

"Is the missus at home?" she murmured, drawing back from the door.

"Come in," the doctor ordered.

As soon as she entered, Sommers locked the door.

"Now," he said quietly, pointing to a chair, "the whole story and no lies."

The woman looked at the doctor and trembled; then she edged toward the inner door. Sommers locked this, flung the key on the table, and pointed again to the chair.

"What did you tell her yesterday?" he demanded.

Mrs. Ducharme began an incoherent tale about her head hurting her, about the sin which the "healer" commanded her to rid her conscience of. Sommers interrupted her.

"Answer my questions. Did you threaten her?"

The woman nodded her head.

"Did you accuse her of drugging her husband?"

She nodded her head again reluctantly; then cried out,—"Let me go! I'll have the police on you two."

Sommers stood over the woman as if he were about to lay hands on her.

"You know the facts. Tell them. What happened to Preston that day?"

"He'd been drinking."

"You got him the liquor?"

She nodded.

"Then you gave him a powder from that box in Mrs. Preston's room?"

The woman looked terrified, and did not answer.

"If you don't tell me every word of truth," Sommers said, slowly drawing a little syringe from his pocket, "you will never see anything again."

"Yes, I gave him a powder."

"One?"

She nodded, her hands shaking.

"Two?"

"Yes," she gasped. "I was afraid Mrs. Preston would find out what I had done, and one powder wasn't enough, didn't keep him quiet. So I put two more in—thought it wouldn't do no harm. Then I guess Mrs. Preston gave him some, when she came in. But you can't touch me," she added impudently. "The healer said you had done a criminal act in signing that certificate. You and she better look out."

Sommers stepped across the room and opened the inner door. Mrs. Ducharme gave one glance at the silent figure and shrieked:

"You killed her! You killed her! Let me out!"

Sommers closed the door softly and returned to the shrieking creature.

"Keep quiet," Sommers ordered sternly, "while I think what to do with you."

She held her tongue and sat as still as her quaking nerves permitted. Sommers reviewed rapidly the story as he had made it out. At first it occurred to him, as it had to Alves, that the woman had been drinking. But his practised eyes saw more surely than Alves, and he judged that her conduct had been the result of mental derangement. Probably the blow over the eye, from which she was suffering when she came to Lindsay's office, had hurt the brain. Otherwise, she would not have been silly enough to go to Alves with her foolish story. It was possible, also, that the night of Preston's death she had not known what she was doing. His resentment gave place to disgust. The sole question was what to do with her. She would talk, probably, and in some way he must avoid that danger for a few days, at least. Then it would not matter to Alves or to him what she said.

Finally he turned to the miserable, shaking figure, and said sternly:

"You have committed one murder, and, perhaps, two. But I will not kill you now, or put out your eyes, unless you get troublesome. Have you any money? I thought not. You are going with me to the railroad station, where I shall buy you a ticket."

He unlocked the door and motioned to the woman. She followed him to the station without protest, fascinated by his strong will. Sommers bought a ticket to St. Louis and handed it to her with a dollar.

"Remember, if I see or hear of you again,"—he put his finger in his waistcoat pocket, significantly. "And there are other powders," he added grimly.

"Ducharme has gone back to Peory. I s'pose I can stop off there?" she asked timidly, as the express arrived.

"You can stop off anywhere on your way to hell," the doctor replied indifferently. "But keep away from Chicago. There is no quicker way of making that journey to hell than to come back here."

Mrs. Ducharme trembled afresh and bundled herself on board the train.

Sommers returned to the temple, feeling assured that the next few hours would not be disturbed by the ill-omened creature. This vulgar, brutal act had to be performed; he had been preparing himself for it since daylight, when his mind had resumed the round of cause and effect that answers for life. It was over now, and he could return to Alves. There were other petty things to be done, but not yet. As he came across the park he noticed that the door of the temple was open. Some one had entered while he was away. At his step on the portico a figure rose from the inner room and came to meet him. It was Louise Hitchcock. The traces of tears lay on her face.

"I knew this morning," she said gently. "I thought you might be alone—and so I came."

"Sit down," Sommers replied wearily. In a few moments he added, "I suppose you saw it in the papers—the guard must have told. Strange! that even in death the world must meddle with her, the world that cared nothing for her."

"I am sorry." Miss Hitchcock blushed as she spoke. "I will go away—I didn't mean to intrude—I thought—"

"No, don't go! I didn't mean you. I wanted to be alone, all alone for a little while, but I am glad now that you came, that you cared to come. You didn't know Alves."

"She wouldn't let me know her," Miss Hitchcock protested gently.

"Yes, I remember. You see, our life was peculiar. I think Alves was afraid of you, of all the world."

"I knew how you loved her," Miss Hitchcock exclaimed irrelevantly.

Sommers tried to answer. He felt like talking to this warm-hearted woman; he wanted to talk, but he could not phrase the complex feeling in his heart. Everything about Alves had something in it he could not make another, even the most sympathetic soul in the world, understand. It was like trying to explain an impression of a whole life.

"There is so much I can't tell any one," he said at last, with a wan smile. "Don't misunderstand—you'd have to know the whole, and I couldn't begin to make you know it."

"Don't try," she said, tears coming to her eyes. "I know that it has been noble and generous—on both sides," she added.

"It has ended," he answered drearily. "I don't know where to begin."

"Can't I send for some one, some friend?" she suggested.

"I haven't any friend," he replied absently. "And Alves wouldn't want any one. She would have done everything for me. I will do everything for her."

"Then I will stay here, while you are away," Miss Hitchcock replied quickly. "Don't hurry. I will wait here in this room."

Sommers thought a moment and then answered gently: "I think not. I think Alves would rather be alone. Let me go back to the city with you. I have some errands there."

Miss Hitchcock's face expressed her disappointment. She had triumphed impulsively over so many conventions in coming to him unasked that she felt doubly hurt.

"Very well. Only you will not always put me outside, in this way?" she implored, bravely stifling her pride. "It will not be so easy to say it later, and it will hurt if you refuse to have anything to do with my father and me."

"I shall not refuse," Sommers responded warmly. "I am grateful for what you want to do."

"You know—" She completed the sentence with a sigh and prepared to accompany him. Sommers locked the door, putting the key in the usual hiding-place, and together they crossed the park to the railroad station. There they separated.

"I shall not come out to-morrow," Miss Hitchcock said, as if she had arrived at the decision after some wavering.

He did not urge her to come, and they shook hands.

"Remember," she said hesitatingly, "that ideas don't separate people. You must trust people, those who understand and care."

"I shan't forget," he answered humbly.

On the train he remembered Webber's business, and as soon as he reached the city he went to the brokers' office. The morning session of the Exchange had just closed, and Einstein was fluttering in and out of his private office, sending telegrams and telephone messages. Sommers got his ear for a moment and explained his errand.

"I don't know anything about the stocks," he concluded. "But I think you had best close his account, as it will be some weeks before he should be troubled with such things."

"Damn shame!" Einstein remarked irritably, removing his cigar from his mouth. "I could have got him out even this morning. Now, it's too late."

As Sommers seemed ignorant of the market, the broker went on to explain, meanwhile sending a telegram:

"Most of his is Consolidated Iron—one of Carson's new promotions. Porter is in it, and a lot of big men. Splendid thing, but these new industrials are skittish as colts, and the war talk is like an early frost. Yesterday it was up to ninety, but to-day, after that Venezuelan business in the Senate, it backed down ten points. That about cleans our friend out."

"He doesn't own the stock, then?" Sommers asked.

Einstein looked at the doctor pityingly.

"He's taken a block of two hundred on margins. We hold some Baking Powder common for him, too. But he owns that."

Sommers lingered about, irresolute. He didn't like to take the responsibility of selling out Webber, nor the equal responsibility of doing nothing. Miss M'Gann's hopes, he reflected, hung on this stock trade.

"What is the prospect to-morrow?" Sommers asked timidly. He felt out of place in all the skurry of the brokers' office, where men were drinking in the last quotations as the office boy scratched them on the board.

"Dunno. Can't tell. Good, if the Senate doesn't shoot off its mouth any more."

"How much is Webber margined for?"

"Say, Phil," Einstein sang out to his partner, who came out from another cubbyhole, "how much has Webber on Iron?"

"Six points," White replied. He nodded to Sommers. The doctor remembered White as one of the negative figures of his early months in Chicago,—a smiling, slim, youthful college boy. Evidently he was the genteel member of the firm. Sommers thought again. He could not wait. "Will you carry him five points more?" he asked.

"Can you put up the money?" White replied indifferently.

"No," the doctor admitted. "But I will try to get it at once."

Einstein shook his head. But White asked, good-naturedly, "Are you sure?"

"I think so," the doctor replied.

"Well, that'll tide him over; the market is sure to go back next week."

Sommers escaped from the heated room with its noise and jostling men. He realized vaguely that he had made himself responsible for a thousand dollars—foolishly, he thought now. He had done it on the spur of the moment, with the idea that he would save Webber from a total loss, and thereby save Miss M'Gann. He felt partly responsible, too; for if he had not lingered at St. Isidore's yesterday, he could have delivered the order before the reaction had set in. He wondered, however, at his ready promise to find the thousand dollars for the extra margin. As he had told Miss Hitchcock, he had not a friend in the world to whom he could apply for help. Even the last duties to Alves he must perform alone, and to those he turned himself now.

As he passed the Athenian Building, he remembered Dr. Leonard and went up to his office. The old dentist was the one friend in Chicago whom Alves would want near her to-morrow. Dr. Leonard came frowning out of his office, and without asking Sommers to sit down listened to what he had to say.

"Yes," he replied, without unwrinkling his old face, "I saw it in the papers. I'll come, of course I'll come. I set an awful store by Alves, poor girl! There weren't nothing right for her in this world. Maybe there will be in the next."

Sommers made no reply. He felt the kind old dentist's reproach.

"Young feller," the dentist exclaimed sharply as Sommers turned to go, "I mistrust you have much to answer for in that poor girl's case. Does your heart satisfy you that you have treated her right?"

Sommers bowed his head humbly before this blunt speech. In the sense that Dr. Leonard meant, perhaps, he was not guilty, but in other ways he was not sure. It was a difficult thing to treat any human soul justly and tenderly. The doctor took his silence for confession.

"Well," he added, turning away and adjusting his spectacles that were lodged above his watery blue eyes, "I ain't no call to blame you. It's enough blame anyway to have hurt her—there wasn't a nicer woman ever born."

As Sommers left the Athenian Building, his mind reverted to the talk with the brokers. He was glad that he had undertaken to save Webber from his loss. Alves would have liked it. Miss M'Gann had been kind to her when she was learning how to teach. Probably Webber would lose the money in some other venture, but he would do what he could to save the clerk's little capital now. Where could he get the money? There was but one person on whom he could call, and overcoming his dislike of the errand he went at once to Miss Hitchcock.

The house was pleasantly familiar. As he waited for Miss Hitchcock in the little library that belonged especially to her, he could detect no changes in the conglomerate furnishing of the house. He had half expected to find that it had yielded to the younger generation, but something had arrested the march of innovation. The steel engravings still hung in the hall, and the ugly staircase had not been reformed. Colonel Hitchcock came into the house, and without looking into the study went upstairs. Sommers started to intercept him in the hall, but restrained the impulse. Miss Hitchcock appeared in a few moments, advancing to greet him with a frank smile, as if it were the most natural thing to meet him there.

"I have come to ask you to do something for me," Sommers began at once, still standing, "because, as I told you, I have no one else to ask for help."

"You take the bloom off kindnesses in a dreadfully harsh way," Miss Hitchcock responded sadly.

"But it's something one doesn't usually ask of a young woman," Sommers added. He told her briefly the circumstances that led to his visit. "I haven't literally any friend of whom I could properly ask five cents."

"Don't say that. It sounds so forlorn!"

"Does it? I never thought about it before. I suppose it is a reflection upon a man that at thirty-three he hasn't any one in the world to ask a favor of. It looks as if he had lived a pretty narrow life."

"Hard, not narrow," Miss Hitchcock interposed quickly. "I will send the money to-morrow. John will take it to the brokers, if you will write them a note."

As he still stood, she went on, to avoid the awkward silence: "Those horrid industrials! I am sure Uncle Brome will lose everything in them. He's a born gambler. Mr. Carson has got him interested in these new things."

"Is his picture still on exhibition?" Sommers inquired, with a faint smile.

"I don't know. I haven't seen much of them lately." She spoke as if Carson and his kind were completely indifferent to her. Her next remark surprised Sommers.

"I think I can see now why you felt as you did about—well, Mr. Carson. He is a sort of shameless ideal held up before such people as this young man who is speculating. Isn't that it?"

Sommers nodded.

"Uncle Brome, too? When he makes several hundred thousand dollars in Consolidated Iron, every clerk, every little man who knows anything about it has all his bad, greedy, envious passions aroused."

The doctor smiled at the serious manner in which the young woman explored the old ground of their differences.

"But," she concluded, "they aren't all like Mr. Carson and Uncle Brome. You mustn't make that mistake. And Uncle Brome is so generous, too. It is hard to understand."

"No," Sommers said, preparing to leave. "Of course they are not all alike, and it is hard to judge. No man knows what he is doing—to any great extent."

"What will you do?" Miss Hitchcock asked abruptly.

As Sommers's careworn face flushed, she added hurriedly,—"How cruel of me! Of course you don't know. That will settle itself."

"I have had some notion of trying for a hospital again. It doesn't take much to live. And I don't believe in a doctor's making money. If it isn't the hospital—well, there's enough to do."

Miss Hitchcock thought a moment, and then remarked unexpectedly, "I like that idea!"

"About all my kick over things has come to that point. There are some people who should be willing to—no, not willing, who should want to do things without any pay. The world needs them. Most people are best off in the struggle for bread, but the few who see how—unsatisfying that end is, should be willing to work without profits. Good-by."

As they shook hands, Sommers added casually: "I shouldn't wonder if I went away from Chicago—for a time. I don't know now, but I'll let you know, if you care to have me."

"Of course I shall care to know!"

Miss Hitchcock's voice trembled, and then steadied itself, as she added,—"And I am glad you are thinking of it."

* * * * *

With a sense of relief Sommers found himself alone, and free to return to the temple, to Alves, for the last time. The day had been crowded with insistent, petty details, and he marvelled that he had submitted to them patiently. In the chamber where the dead woman lay it was strangely still— deserted by all things human. He locked the doors and sat down for his second night of watch, reproaching himself for the hours he had lost this day. But when he looked at the cold, white face upon the pillow, that already seemed the face of one who had travelled far from this life, he felt that it had been best as it was. He kissed the silent lips and covered the face; he would not look at it again. Alves had gone. To-morrow he would lay this body in the little burial plot of the seminary above the Wisconsin lakes.

Already Alves had bequeathed him something of herself. She had returned him to his fellow-laborers with a new feeling toward them, a humbleness he had never known, a desire to adjust himself with them. He was sensitive to the kindness of the day,—White's friendly trust, Leonard's just words, Miss Hitchcock's generosity. As the sense of this life faded from the woman he loved, the dawn of a fairer day came to him. And his heart ached because she for whom he had desired every happiness might never respond to human joy.



CHAPTER XI

During the next two years the country awoke from its torpor, feeling the blood tingle in its strong limbs once more, and rubbing its eyes in wonder at its own folly. Some said the spirit of hope was due to the gold basis; some said it was the good crops; some said it was the prospect of national expansion. In any event the country got tired of its long fit of sulks; trade revived, railroads set about mending their tracks, mills opened—a current of splendid vitality began to throb. Men took to their business with renewed avidity, content to go their old ways, to make new snares and to enter them, all unconscious of any mighty purpose. Those at the faro tables of the market increased the stakes and opened new tables. New industrial companies sprung up overnight like mushrooms, watered and sunned by the easy optimism of the hour. The rumors of war disturbed this hothouse growth. But the "big people" took advantage of these to squeeze the "little people," and all worked to the glory of the great god. In the breast of every man on the street was seated one conviction: 'This is a mighty country, and I am going to get something out of it.' The stock market might bob up and down; the gamblers might gain or lose their millions; the little politicians of the hour might talk blood and iron by the pound of Congressional Record; but the great fact stared you in the face—every one was hopeful; for every one there was much good money somewhere. It was a rich time in which to live.

Remote echoes of this optimism reached Sommers. He learned, chiefly through the newspapers, that Mr. R. G. Carson had emerged from the obscurity of Chicago and had become a celebrity upon the metropolitan stage after "the successful flotation of several specialties." Mr. Brome Porter, he gathered from the same source, had built himself a house in New York, and altogether shaken the dust of Chicago from his feet. Sommers passed him occasionally in the unconsolidated air of Fifth Avenue, but the young doctor had long since sunk out of Brome Porter's sphere of consciousness. Sommers thought Porter betrayed his need of Carlsbad more than ever, and he wondered if the famous gambler had beguiled Colonel Hitchcock into any of his ventures. But Sommers did not trouble himself seriously with the new manifestations of gigantic greed. Unconscious of the fact that from collar-button to shoe-leather he was assisting Mr. Carson's industries to yield revenues on their water-logged stocks, he went his way in his profession and labored. For the larger part of the time he was an assistant in a large New York hospital, where he found enough hard work to keep his thoughts from wandering to Carson, Brome Porter, and Company. In the feverish days that preceded the outbreak of the Cuban war, he heard rumors that Porter had been caught in the last big "flotation," and was heavily involved. But the excitement of those days destroyed the importance of the news to the public and to him.