"My friend," said Desire (he loved her odd, old-fashioned way of calling him "my friend"), "I admit that you have tempted me. But—I can't. It wouldn't be fair. It is easy to feel sure for one's self but it's another thing to be sure for others. A marriage of that kind would not satisfy you. You say your outlook is wider than mine and of course it is. But I have seen more than you think. Even men who are tremendously interested in their work, like you, want—other things. They want what they call love, even if to them it always sinks to second place, if indeed it means nothing more than distraction. And love would mean more than that to you. I have an instinct which tells me that, in your case, love will come. You must be free to take it."

It was final. He felt its finality, and more than ever he swore that it should not be so. There must be an argument somewhere—wait!

"Supposing," said Spence haltingly, "Supposing.... supposing I am not free now? Supposing love has come—and gone?"

He was not a good liar. But his very ineptitude helped him here. It tangled the words on his tongue, it brought a convincing dew upon his forehead. "I'd rather not talk about it," he finished. "But you see what I mean."

"Yes. I hadn't thought of that. It might make a difference. I should want to be very sure. If there were any chance—"

"There is no chance. Positively none. That experience, which you say you feel was a necessary experience in my case, is over and done with. It cannot recur. I am not the man to—to—" he was really unable to go on. But she finished it for him.

"To love twice," said Desire, looking out over the sea. "Yes I can understand that—what did you say?"

"I think I may be able to walk now," said the professor.



CHAPTER IX

With the recovery of a leg sufficiently workable in the matter of climbing stairs, Dr. Farr's boarder had resigned the family couch in the sitting-room and had retired to his spartan chamber under the eaves. From its open window that night he watched the moon. Let nothing happen to the universe in the meantime, and there would be a full moon on Friday night. The professor hoped that nothing would happen.

She had not exactly said "Yes" yet. He must not forget that. But it could do no harm to feel reasonably sure that she was going to. He did not conceal from himself that he had brought things off remarkably well. That last argument of his had been a masterpiece of strategy. There were other, shorter, words which might have described it. But they were not such pleasant words. And when a thing is necessary it is just as well to be pleasant about it. No harm had been done. Quite the opposite. Desire's one valid objection had been neatly and effectually disposed of. And now the matter could be dropped. It would be forgotten.... What did it amount to in any case? Other men lied every day saying they had never loved. He had lied only once in saying that he had.... At the same time it might be very embarrassing to.... yes, certainly, the matter must be dropped!

They would, he supposed, find it necessary to elope.... No sense in looking for trouble! The old gentleman had been odder than ever the last day or so. He had ceased even to pretend that his guest's presence was anything but an annoyance. He had refused utterly to enter into any connected conversation and had been restless and erratic to a degree. "Too muchy moon-devil," according to Li Ho. That very afternoon he had met them coming down from their talk upon the rocks and the ironic courtesy of his greeting had been little less than baleful. At supper he had remarked sentimentally upon the flight of time, referring to the nearness of Friday in a way eminently calculated to speed the parting guest.

Friday, at latest, then? If they were to go they would go on Friday.—Friday and the full moon.

In the meantime he felt no desire for sleep. The moon, perhaps? Certainly there is nothing in the mere business-like prospect of engaging a permanent secretary to cause insomnia. The professor supposed it was simply his state of health in general. It might be a good idea to drop a line to his medical man. He had promised to report symptoms. Besides, it was only fair to prepare John. The candle was burnt out, but the moon would do—pad on knee, he began to write....

"Beloved Bones—I am writing in the hope that the thought of you may cause cerebral exhaustion. I find the moon too stimulating. Otherwise I rejoice to report myself recovered. I can walk. I can climb hills. I can un-climb hills, which is much worse, and I eat so much that I'm ashamed to look my board money in the face. You might gently prepare Aunt Caroline by some mention of an improved appetite.

I had a letter from Aunt Caroline yesterday. That is to say, three letters. When you included (by request) "positively no letter writing" in my holiday menu, you did not make it plain who it was that was positively not to write. So, although she tells me sadly that she expects no answers, Aunt Caroline positively does. I may say at once that I know all the news.

On the other hand, there is some news which Aunt Caroline does not know. Owing to your embargo on letters, I have not been able to inform my Aunt of the progress of my book, nor of my discovery of the perfect secretary. I have not, in short, been able to tell her anything.

So you will have to do it for me.

But first, as man to man, I want to ask you a question. Having found, by an extraordinary turn of luck, the perfect secretary, would you consider me sane if I let her go? Of course you would not. I asked myself the same question yesterday and received the same answer.

So I have asked her to marry me.

I put it that way because I know you like to have things broken to you. And now, having heard all your objections (oh, yes, I can hear them. Distance is only an idea) I shall proceed to answer them.—

No. It is not unwise to marry a young girl whom I scarcely know. Why man! That is part of the game. Think of the boredom of having to live with some one you know? Someone in whose house of life you need expect no odd corners, no unlooked for turnings, no steps up, or down, no windows with a view? Only a madman would face such monotony.

No. It is not unfair to the other party. The other party has a mind and is quite capable of making it up. She will not marry me unless she jolly well wants to. Far more than most people, I think, she has the gift of decision. Neither is it as if what I have to offer her were not bona fide. Take me on my merits and I'm not a bad chap. My life may have been tame but it has been clean. (Only don't tell Aunt Caroline). I have a sufficiency of money. What I promise, I shall perform. And as for ancestors—Well, I refer everyone to Aunt Caroline for ancestors. If Miss Desire marries me she will receive all that is in the bond and any little frills which I may be able to slip in. (There will not be many frills, though, for my lady is proud.)

Yes. Aunt Caroline will make a fuss. I trust you will bear up under it for my sake. I think it will be well for her to learn of my marriage sufficiently long before our return to insure resignation, at least, upon our arrival. After the storm the calm, and although, with my dear Aunt, the calm is almost the more devastating, I trust you will acquit yourself with fortitude.

And now we come to the only valid objection, which you have, strong-mindedly, left until the last—my prospective father-in-law! He is a very objectionable old party, and I do not mind your saying so. But one simply can't have everything. And Bainbridge is a long way from Vancouver. Also, as a husband I can take precedence, and, by George, I'll do it! So you see your objection is really an extra inducement. It is only by marrying the daughter of Dr. Farr that I can protect Dr. Farr's daughter.

Are you satisfied now? I don't know whether I mentioned it, but she hasn't actually said "yes" yet. She had certain objections, or rather a certain objection which I found it necessary to meet in a—a somewhat regrettable manner. I was compelled to adopt strategy. She thought our proposed contract (we do things in a business manner) might not be quite fair to me. She was ready to admit that I was getting a good thing in secretaries but she feared that, later on, I might wish to make a change. I had to meet this scruple somehow and I seemed to know by instinct that she would not believe me if I expounded those theories of love and marriage which you know I so strongly hold. Pure reason would not appeal to her. So I had to fall back upon sentiment. Instead of saying, "I shall never love. It is impossible," I said, "I have loved. It is over."

Sound tactics, don't you think? ... Well I don't care what you think! I have to get this girl safely placed somehow.

We shall have to elope probably. Fancy, an elopement at thirty-five! The father seems to consider her continued presence here as vital to his interest, though why, neither of us can understand. Well, I'm not exactly afraid of the old chap but it will certainly be easier for her if there are no wild farewells. Therefore we shall probably fold our tent like the Arabs and steal away as silently as the "Tillicum" will allow.

Li Ho will have to be told. He will know anyway, so we may as well tell him. It appears that whatever may be the reasons for keeping a young girl buried here, they do not extend to Li Ho. It will not be the first time that his Chinese inscrutability has assisted at a (temporary) departure.

I shall let Aunt Caroline know as soon as the act is irrevocable and shall inform you at the same time so that you may not be unprepared. You realize, I suppose, that you will be accused of being accessory? Didn't you tell me that a trip would do me good?

We shall not come home for a few weeks. My secretary has spoken of an old Indian whom she knows, a perfect mine of simon-pure folk-lore. He lives some-where up the coast, about a day's journey, I think. We may visit him. With her to interpret for me, I may get some very valuable notes. I may add that we are both very keen on notes. When we have done what can be done out here, we shall come home. The fall and winter we shall spend upon the book. My secretary will insist upon attending to business first. And then—well, then she wants to go shopping. So we shall have to go where the good shops are.

What does she wish to buy? Oh, not much—just life, the assorted kind.

B. H. S.



CHAPTER X

It was the day before Friday. Friday, so very near, seemed already palpably present in the surcharged air of the cottage. No one mentioned it, but that made its nearness more potent. At his usual hour for dictation, Professor Spence had come out upon the narrow veranda. But, although his secretary was there, pencil in hand, he had not dictated. Instead he had sat contemplating Friday so long that his secretary tapped her foot in impatience.

"Are you really lazy?" she asked, "Or are you just pretending to be?"

"I am really lazy. All truly gifted people are. You know what Wilde says, 'Real industry is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.'"

The prompt, "Who is Wilde?" of the secretary did not disconcert him. He had discovered that her ignorance was as unusual as her knowledge.

"Who is Wilde? Oh, just a little bit of English literature. Christian name of Oscar. You'll come across him when you go shopping."

A faint pucker appeared between the secretary's eye-brows.

"You are coming shopping, aren't you?" asked Spence, faintly stressing the verb.

"I—want to."

"That's settled then."

The pucker grew more pronounced. The secretary resigned all hope of dictation and laid down her pencil.

"Tomorrow," reminded Spence gently, "is Friday."

"Yes, I know. And if I go, do I—we—go tomorrow?"

"It would be advisable."

"The time doesn't matter," mused Desire. "But—do you mind if I speak quite plainly?"

"Not at all. You have hardened me to plain speaking."

"I have been thinking over what you told me. It does make a difference. I see that I need not be afraid of—of what I was afraid of. It's as if—as if we had both had the measles."

"You can take—" began Spence, but stopped him-self. It would never do to remind her that one may take the measles twice.

"Of course you won't believe it, not for a long time anyway," she went on in the tone of an indulgent grand-mother, "but love is only an episode. You are fortunate to be well over it."

Spence sighed. He hadn't intended to sigh. It just happened. Fortunately it was the correct thing.

"I don't want to distress you," kindly, "but we were rather vague the other night. I understood the main fact, but that is about all. You didn't tell me what happened after."

The professor's chair, which had been tilted negligently back, came down with a thud.

"After?" he murmured meekly. "After—?"

"I mean," prompted Desire gently, "did she marry the other man?"

"The other man? I—I don't know." The professor was willing to be truthful while he could. But instantly he saw that it wouldn't do.

"You—don't—know?" If ever incredulity breathed in any voice it breathed in hers. It gave our weak-kneed liar the brace that he needed.

"No," he said sadly, "they were to have been married—I have never heard."

"Oh! Then, of course, she did not live in your home town."

"Didn't she?" asked Spence, momentarily off guard. "Oh, I see what you mean—no, naturally not."

"I thought that perhaps you might have been boy and girl together," dreamily. "It so often happens."

"It does," said Spence. "But it didn't."

"And is there no one—no friend, from whom you could naturally inquire? You feel you wouldn't care to ask anyone?"

"Ask? Good heavens, no—certainly not!"

"Men are queer," said Desire naively. "A woman would just simply have to ask."

"She would."

"You think me inquisitive?" Her quick brain had not missed the dry implication of his tone. "But you see I had to know something. It's all right, I'm sure. But it would have been so much—more comfortable if she were quite married."

(Oh course it would—why in thunder hadn't he thought of that? The professor was much annoyed with himself.)

"She is probably quite, utterly married long ago," he said gloomily. "What possible difference can it make?"

"None. Don't look so bitter! Perhaps I should not have asked questions. I won't ask any more—except one. Would you mind very much telling me her name?"

Her name!

The harassed man looked wildly around. But there was no escape. Not even Sami was in sight. Only a jeering crow flapped black wings and laughed discordantly.

"Just her first name, you know," added Desire reasonably.

"Oh yes—certainly. No, of course I don't mind. I am quite willing to tell you her name. But—do you mean her real name or—or—the name she was usually called?" The professor was sparring wildly for time.

"Wasn't she called by her real name?"

"Well—er—not always."

Desire's eyebrows became very slanting. "Any name will do," she said coldly.

The professor gathered himself together. "Her name," he said triumphantly, "Was—is Mary."

He had done well for himself this time! His questioner was plainly satisfied with the name Mary. Perhaps lying gets easier as you go on. He hoped so.

"My mother's name was Mary," said Desire. "It is a lovely name."

Spence felt very proud of himself. Not only had he produced a lovely name in the space of three seconds and a half, but he had also provided a not-to-be-missed opportunity of changing the subject.

"I suppose you do not remember your mother," he said tentatively.

"Oh yes, I do, although I was quite small when she died. Father says I fancy some of the things I remember. Perhaps I do. I always dream very vividly. And fact and dream are easily confused in a child's mind. My most distinct memories are detached, like pictures, without any before or after to explain them. There is one, for instance, about waking up in the woods at night, wrapped in my mother's shawl and seeing her face, all frightened and white, with the moon, like a great, silver eye, shining through the trees. But I can't imagine why my mother would be hiding in the woods at night."

"Why hiding?"

"There is a sense of hiding that comes with the memory—without anything to account for it But, although I do not remember connected incidents very well, I remember her—the feeling of having her with me. And the terrible emptiness afterwards. If she had gone quite away, all at once, I couldn't have borne it."

"Do you mean that she had a long illness?" asked Spence, greatly interested.

"No. She died suddenly. It was just—you will call it silly imagination—" she broke off uncertainly.

"I might call it imagination without the adjective."

"Yes. But it wasn't. It was real. The sense, I mean, that she hadn't gone away. Nothing that wasn't real would have been of the slightest use."

"It all depends on how we define reality. What seems real at one time may seem unreal at another."

She nodded.

"That is just what has happened. I am not sure, now. The sense of nearness left me as I grew up. But at that time, I lived by it. Do you find the idea absurd?"

"Why should I? Our knowledge of our own consciousness is the absurdity. All we know is that our normal waking consciousness is only one special type. Around it lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different, and quite as real. Sometimes we, or it, or they, break through. I am paraphrasing James. Do you know James?"

"I have read 'Daisy Miller.'"

"This James was the Daisy Miller man's brother."

"Did he believe in the possibility of the dead helping the living?"

"He believed in all kinds of possibilities. But I don't think he considered that possibility proven."

"It couldn't be proved, could it?" asked Desire thoughtfully. "Experiences like that are so intensely individual. One cannot pass them on."

"Can you describe yours at all?"

"Hardly. It was just a feeling of Presence. A sense of her being there. It came at all sorts of times and in all sorts of places. We lived in Vancouver when mother died. It was a much smaller town then, not like the city you have seen. But after her death we moved about a great deal, never staying very long anywhere, until we came here. There were—experiences." Her eyes hardened. "But, as long as I had that sense I am speaking of, I was safe. I used to have long crying fits in the dark, a kind of blind terror of everything. And after one of them it nearly always came. I never questioned it. Never once did I ask myself, 'Is it mother?'. I just knew that it was. There seemed nothing unusual about it."

"Was there no one, no woman, to take care of you?"

"There were—women." Desire's lips tightened into a thin red line. "We did not travel alone. Once I remember terrifying a—a friend of father's who was 'looking after' me. She heard me crying in my little, dark room one night, and as soon as she could slip away, came in. She was a kindly sort. But when she got there I was quite content and happy—which surprised her much more than the crying had done. She asked me what had 'shut me up,' and I said 'My mother is here—go away.' She turned quite pasty-white and the candle shook so that the hot grease fell upon my hands."

"What a life for a child!" exclaimed Spence in sudden rage. "Desire dear, you must come with me! I couldn't—couldn't leave you here. I—oh, dash it! I mean, it's so evident, isn't it, that we need each other?"

"You really and truly need me?" doubtfully.

"Really and truly."

"But if I come, you ought to know something of the life I have lived. You must realize that I am not an innocent young girl."

"Aren't you?" The professor found it difficult to say this with the proper inflection. It did not sound as business-like as he could have wished. But she was too much absorbed to notice.

"No. I've seen things which young girls do not see. I have heard things which are never whispered before them. No one cared particularly what I saw or heard. When I was smaller there was always someone—some 'housekeeper.' They were all kinds. None of them ever stayed long. Looking back, it seems as if they passed like lurid shadows. Only one of them seemed a real person. The others were husks. Her name was Lily. She was very stout, her face was red and her voice loud. But there was something real about Lily. And she was fond of children. She liked me. She went out of her lazy way to teach me wisdom—oh, yes, it was wisdom," in answer to Spence's horrified exclamation, "hard, sordid wisdom, the only wisdom which would have helped me through the back alleys of those days. I am unspeakably grateful to Lily. She spared me much, and once she saved me—I can't tell you about that," she finished simply.

Spence bit his lip on a word to which the expression of his face gave force and meaning. But Desire was not looking at him.

"Do you see why I am different from other girls?" She asked gravely.

The professor restrained himself. "I see that you are different," he said. "I don't care why. But I'm glad that you have told me what you have. It explains something that has bothered me—" he paused seeking words. But she caught up his thought with lightning intuition.

"You mean it explains why marriage isn't beautiful to me, like it may be to a sheltered girl? Yes. I wanted you to see that. It may be holy, but it isn't holy to me. I want to live my life apart from all that. To me it is smirched and sodden and hateful. And now, do you still wish me to come and be your secretary?"

"Now more than ever," said Spence. It was only the sealing of a business transaction. But greatly to his annoyance he could not entirely control a certain warmth and eagerness.

Desire held out a frank hand.

"Then I will marry you when you are ready," she said.



CHAPTER XI

Being a delayed letter from Dr. John Rogers to his friend and patient, Benis Hamilton Spence.

DEAR Idiot: I knew you would get it—and you got it. Perhaps after this you will learn to treat your sciatic nerve with proper respect. But there is a worse complaint than sciatica. It lasts longer. Certain symptoms of it are indicated in the things which your letter leaves unsaid. Beans, old thing, you alarm me.

Now here is a sporting offer. If you'll drop it and come home at once I'll promise never to tell Aunt Caroline. Come the moment you can put foot to the ground. And, until then, I recommend strict seclusion and no nursing. Nursing might well be fatal. Stick to Li Ho. He is your only chance.

Your Aunt Caroline sends her love. (I told her I was writing you directions for further treatment). She feels the deprivation of your letters keenly. She can't see why the writing of a nice, chatty letter to one's only living Aunt should prove an undue drain upon nervous energy. Life has taught her not to expect consideration from relatives, but it does seem hard that her only sister's boy should treat her as if she were the scarlet fever. To allow himself to be ordered away from home for a rest cure was certainly less than courteous. To anyone not understanding the situation it would almost imply that his home was not restful. And after all the trouble she had taken even to the extent of strained relations with those Macfarland people who own a rooster. If the slight had been aimed entirely at herself she could have taken it silently, but when it included the three or four charming girls whom she had asked to visit (one at a time) for the purpose of providing pleasant company, she felt obliged to protest. Although protest, she knew, was useless. All this, however, she could have borne. The thing that she could scarcely forgive was the slight offered to his native town by a departure three days before the set date, thereby turning his "going away" tea into a "gone away"—an action considered by all (invited) Bainbridge as a personal insult.

Pause here for breath.

To continue. Your Aunt Caroline does not believe in rest cures anyway. She thinks poultices are much more effective. It stands to reason that if a thing is in, it ought to come out. Rest cures are just laziness. But, thank goodness, she never expected anything from the Spence family but laziness. And she had told her sister so before she married into it....

Allow an hour here for ancestral history with appropriate comment and another hour for a brief review of your own conduct from youth up and we come within measurable distance of a few words by me. I took up the point of the four or five nice girls who had been invited to visit. I put the whole thing down to shock and pointed out that patience is required. A return to physical normality, I said, would doubtless bring with it a reviving interest in the sex. It was indeed very fortunate, I told her, that you were, at present, indifferent. Any question of selecting a life partner in your present nervous state would be most dangerous. Your power of judgment, I pointed out, was temporarily jarred and out of gear. You might marry anybody. The only safe, the only humane way, was to give you time to recover yourself.

"Power of judgment!" said Aunt Caroline. "Do you mean to tell me that my sister's son is in danger of becoming an idiot?"

I said not exactly an idiot. Yet your strong disinclination toward marriage could certainly be traced to a shocked condition of the nerves. Certain fixed ideas—

"Fixed ideas!" said your Aunt. She has a particularly annoying habit of repeating one's words. "Benis has always had fixed ideas—though when he was young," she added with satisfaction, "I knew how to unfix them. If this absurd rest cure can do anything to cure chronic stubbornness, I've nothing to say. Why, even his father was easier to manage."

"Benis," I said, "considers himself very like his father."

"Does he?" retorted your dear Aunt with withering scorn. "He is just as much like his father as a lemon is like a lobster."

This ended our conversation. But the effect of it is still with me. Last night I dreamed of lemons and today I prescribed lobster for a man with acute dyspepsia. I tell you what, you old shirker, it's up to you to come home and bear your own Aunt. I'm through. Bones.

P.S. The office nurse has been changed since you left. I have now Miss Watkins, returned from overseas. I think you knew her—name of Mary? Very good looking—almost her only fault.

P.P.S. What you say about your pleasant old gentle-man with the umbrella sounds very much like masked epilepsy. Ought to be under treatment. I should say dangerous.

S.O.S. Aunt Caroline has just 'phoned to know whether all letter-writing is barred or if not, wouldn't it be helpful if you were to drop a line to a few of your young-friends? For herself she expects nothing, but she does think, etc., etc., etc.!

Come back! B.



CHAPTER XII

Comprising a lengthy letter from, Benis Spence to John Rogers, M.D.

DEAR and Venerable Bones: Your fatherly letter came too late. What was going to happen has happened. But I will be honest and admit that its earlier arrival would have made no difference. Calm yourself with the thought that our fates are written upon our foreheads. I have been able to read mine for some little time now. For there are some things which are impossible and leaving Desire here was one of them.

I call her "Desire" to you because it is what you will be calling her soon. Strange, how that small fact seems to place her' Fancy my marrying someone whom you would naturally call "Mrs. Spence"? There are such people. All Aunt Caroline's young friends are like that. You would say, "I have looked forward to meeting you, Mrs. Spence," and she would giggle and say, "Oh, Dr. Rogers, I have heard my husband speak of you so often!" But Desire will say, "So this is John." And then she will look at you with that detached yet interested look and you will find yourself saying "Desire" before you think of it. You see, she belongs.

But before I bring you up to date with regard to recent events, I had better tell you a few facts about my more remote past. I refer to Mary. I have already told you that I found a past necessary. At that time I hoped that something fairly abstract would do. But Desire does not like abstractions. She likes to "know where she is." So I had to tell her about Mary. I'll tell you, too, before I forget details and for heaven's sake get them right! You never can tell when your knowledge may be needed. In the first place there is the name. I'm rather proud of that. I had to choose it at a moment's notice and I did not hesitate. Desire herself says it is a lovely name. And so safe—amn't I right in the impression that every second girl in Bainbridge and elsewhere is called Mary? Mary, my Mary, might be anybody.

Here, then, are the main facts. I have had (pre-war) a serious attachment. It was an affection tragically misplaced. She did not love me. She loved another. She may, or may not, have married him. (It would have been better to have had the marriage certain, but I didn't see it in time.) I will never care for another woman. Her name was Mary. Please tabulate this romance where you can put your hand on it. I may need your help at any time. As a doctor your aid would be invaluable should it become necessary for Mary to decease.

And now to leave romance for reality. Your long and lucid discourse on masked epilepsy was most helpful. It was almost as informing as Li Ho's diagnosis of "moon-devil." Both have the merit of leaving the inquirer with an open mind. However—let's get on. If you have had my later letters you will know that circumstances indicated an elopement. But the more I thought of eloping, the more I disliked the idea. My father was not a man who would have eloped. And, in spite of Aunt Caroline's lobsters and lemons, I am very like my father. "That I have stolen away this old man's daughter—" Somehow it seemed very Othelloish. I decided to simply tell Dr. Farr, calmly and reasonably, that Desire and I had decided to marry. I did tell him. I was calm and reasonable. But he wasn't.

There is a bit of sound tactics which says, "Never let the enemy surprise you." But how is one to keep him from doing it if he insists? The surer you are that the enemy is going to do a certain thing, the more surprised you are when he doesn't. Now I felt sure that when Dr. Farr heard the news he would have a fit. I expected him to use language and even his umbrella. But nothing of this kind happened. He simply sat there like a slightly faded and vague old gentleman and said "So?"—just like that.

I assured him, as delicately as possible that it was so.

Then, without warning, he began to weep. John, it was horrible! I can't describe it. You would have to see his blurred old face and depthless eyes before you could understand. Tears are healthy, normal things. They were never meant for faces like his. I must have said something, in a kind of horror, for he got up suddenly and trotted off into the woods, without as much as a whisper.

It looked like an easy victory. But I knew it wasn't. I admit that I felt rather sorry we had not eloped. Li Ho made me still sorrier.

"Not much good, you make honorable Boss cly," said Li Ho. "Gettie mad heap better."

I felt that, as usual, Li Ho was right. And, just here, let me interpose that I am quite sure Li Ho can speak perfectly good English if he wishes. He certainly understands it. I have tried to puzzle him often by measured and academic speech and never yet has he missed the faintest shade of meaning. So I did not waste time with Pigeon English. I told him the facts briefly.

"Me no likee," said Li Ho.

"You don't have to," said I.

Li Ho explained that it was not the contemplated marriage which received his disapproval but the circumstances surrounding it. "Me muchy glad Missy get mallied," said he. "Ladies so do, velly nice! When you depart to go?"

"Tomorrow," I said. Since we had given up the elopement it seemed more dignified to wait and depart by daylight.

Li Ho shook his head.

"You no wait tomolla," said he, "You go tonight. You go click."

"We can't go too quickly to suit me," I said. "It is for Miss Desire to decide."

"Me tell Missy," he said and hurried away.

Somehow, Li Ho always knows where to find Desire. She vanishes from my ken often, but never from his. He must have found her quickly this time for she came at once. She looked troubled.

"Li Ho says we had better go tonight," she said.

"Can you be ready?"

"Yes. It isn't that. It's just that it would seem more—more sensible by daylight. But Li Ho says you have told father, and that father was—upset. He said something about tonight being the full moon. But I can't see why that should matter. Do you?"

"Only that it will be easy to cross the Inlet."

"It can't be that. Li Ho can take the Tillicum' over on the darkest night. It has something to do with father. He seems to think that the full moon affects him. And it's true that he often goes off on the mountain about that time. But I can't see why that should hurry us."

I did not see it either. And yet I felt that I should like to hurry.

"We certainly will not go unless you wish," I began. But Li Ho interrupted me in his colorless way.

"Alice same go this eveling," he said blandly. "No take 'Tillicum' tomolla. Velly busy tomolla. Velly busy next day. Velly busy all week."

"Look here," I said, "you'll do exactly what your mistress tells you."

His celestial impudence was making me hot. But Desire stopped me. "It's no use," she explained. "I have really no authority. And he means what he says. We must go tonight or wait indefinitely."

I was eager to be gone. But it went against the grain to be hustled off by a Chinaman. Perhaps my face showed as much, for Desire went on. "You needn't feel like that about it. He doesn't intend to be impudent. He probably thinks he has a very real reason for getting us away. And Li Ho's reasons are liable to be good ones. We had better go."

The rest of the day was uneventful, save for the incident of Sami. I think I told you about Sami, didn't I? A kind of brown familiar who follows Desire about. He is a baby Indian as much a part of the mountain as the leaping squirrels and not nearly so tame. He is the one thing here that I think Desire is sorry to leave. And for this reason I hoped he wouldn't appear before we were gone. I had done all my packing—easy enough since I had scarcely unpacked—and I could hear Desire moving about doing hers. The place seemed particularly peaceful. I could, have felt almost sorry to leave my cool, bare room with its tree-stump for a table and all the forest just outside. But as I sat there by the window there came upon me, for the second time that day, a mounting hurry to be gone. There was nothing to account for it, but I distinctly felt an inward "Hurry! Hurry!" So propelling was it that only the knowledge that the "Tillicum" would not float until high tide kept me from finding Desire and begging her to come away at once. I did go so far as to wander restlessly down into the garden where she had gone to feed the chickens. Perhaps I would have gone farther and mentioned my misgivings but just then Sami came and I forgot all about them. I don't believe I have ever seen any child so frightened as that little Indian! He simply fell through the bushes behind the chicken house and shot, like a small, brown catapult, into Desire's arms. His round face was actually grey with fear. And he huddled in her big apron shivering, for all the world like some terrified animal.

Naturally the first thing to do was to get the thing that had frightened him. An axe seemed a likely weapon, so, picking it up, I slid into the bushes at the point where Sami had come out of them.

Perfect serenity was there! The afternoon light lay golden on the moss above the fallen trees. No hidden scurrying in the underbrush told of wild, wood things hastening to safety from some half-sensed danger. No broken branches or trampled earth told of any past or present struggle. There was no trace of any fearsome creature having passed along that peaceful trail.

I searched thoroughly and found nothing. On my way back to the clearing I met Li Ho.

'"Find anything, Li Ho?" I asked eagerly.

The Celestial grinned.

"Find honorable self," said he. "Missy she send. Missy heap scared along of you."

"Nonsense!" I said. "I can take care of myself. Even if it had been a bear, I had an axe."

"Bear!" said Li Ho. And then he laughed. Did you ever hear a Chinaman laugh? I never had. Not this Chinaman anyway. It was so startling that I forgot what I was saying. Next moment I could have sworn that he had not laughed at all.

We found Sami, much comforted, sitting upon Desire's lap, a thing he could seldom be induced to do. At our entrance he began to shiver again but soon quieted. Desire had tried questioning but it was of no use. He either couldn't, or wouldn't, say anything about what had frightened him. Desire was inclined to think that he did not know. But I was not so sure. It's a fairly well established fact that children simply can't speak of certain terrors. And the more frightened they are the more powerful is the inhibition. In any case it was useless to question Sami so we fed him instead and presently he went to sleep.

I suppose we all forgot him. I know I did. One doesn't elope every day. And it was never Sami's way to insist upon his presence as ordinary children do. Li Ho departed to tinker with the "Tillicum" and afterwards returned to give us a late supper. Desire kept out of my way. One might almost have thought that she was shy—if so, a most perplexing development. For why should she feel shy? It wasn't as if we had not put the whole affair on a perfectly business basis. Perhaps there is some elemental magic in names, so that, to a woman, the very word "marriage" has power to provoke certain nervous reactions?

However that may be, even Desire forgot Sami. We left the house just as the clearing began to grow brighter with light from the still hidden moon, and we were halfway down to the boat landing before anyone thought of him. Oddly enough it was I who remembered. "Sami!" I exclaimed, with a little throb of nameless fear. "We have forgotten Sami."

Desire, I thought, looked surprised and somewhat vexed at her oversight. But displayed no trace of the consternation which had suddenly fallen on me.

"He is all right," she said. "He will sleep till morning unless his mother comes for him."

"Where you leave um?" asked Li Ho briefly. He had already set down the bag he was carrying.

"In my own bed."

"Me go get!" said Li Ho.

But I had not waited. I had started to "go get" myself. The sense of breathless hurry was on me again. I did not pause to argue that the child was perfectly safe. I forgot that I had ever been lame. Perhaps that sciatic nerve is only mortal mind anyway. When I came out into the clearing the cottage was turning silver in the first rays of the full moon. Very peaceful and secure it looked. And yet I hurried!

I made no noise. To myself I explained this by a desire not to waken the youngster. No use frightening him. I stole, as quietly as one of his own ancestors, to the foot of the stairs. The door of Desire's room was open. I could see a moonlit bar across the dark landing....

I think I went straight up that stair. I hope so. You know that one of my worst nervous troubles has been a dread that I might fail in some emergency? I dread a sort of nerve paralysis.... But I got up the stair. The fear that seemed to push me back wasn't personal, or physical—one might call it psychic fear, only that the word explains nothing.... I looked in at the open door. There seemed to be nothing there but the moonlight. The room must have been almost as bare as my own. But over on the far side, beyond the zone of the window, was the dim whiteness of a bed. I could see nothing clearly—but the Fear was there. I dragged, actually dragged, my feet across the floor—my sight growing clearer, until at last—I saw!

I think I shouted, but it was so like a nightmare that I may not have made a sound.... The dragging weight must have left my feet as I sprang forward ... but it is all confused! And the whole thing lasted only a minute.

In that minute I had seen what I would have sworn was not human. Even while I knew It for the little old man with the umbrella, I had no sense of its humanness. Something bent above the bed—the old man's face was there, the thin figure, the white hair, and yet it seemed the wildest absurdity to call the Fury who wore them by any human name.

The eyes looked at me—eyes without depth or meaning—eyes like bits of blue steel reflecting the light of Tophet—, incarnate evil, blazing, peering ... I caught a glimpse of long, thin hands, like claws, around the folded umbrella, a flash of something bright at the ferrule ... and then the picture dissolved like an image passing from a dimly lighted screen. Before I could skirt the bed, whatever had been upon the other side of it had melted into the darkness beyond the moon. I bent over the bed. Sami was there—Sami, rolled shapelessly in the concealing bedclothes, his round face hidden in the pillow, his black hair just a blot of darkness on the white.... It might have been Desire lying there! ...

I found the door through which the Thing had slipped. But it was useless to try to follow. There was no one in the house nor in the moonlit clearing. And Desire and Li Ho were waiting on the trail. I picked up the still sleeping child and blundered down to them.

It seemed incredible to hear Desire's laugh.

"Good gracious!" she said. "You're carrying him upside down."

She had had no hint of danger. But with Li Ho it was different. He fell back beside me when Desire had relieved me of the child. I could feel his inscrutable eyes upon my face.

"You see um," said Li Ho. It was an assertion, not a question.

I nodded.

"No be scare," muttered he. "Missy all safe. Everything all safe now. Li Ho go catch um. Li Ho catch um good. All light—tomolla."

"You mean you can manage him and he'll be all right tomorrow?" I said. "But—what is it!"

The Celestial shrugged.

"Muchy devil maybe. Muchy moon-devil, plaps. Velly bad."

"There's a knife in that umbrella, Li Ho."

But though his eyes looked blandly into mine, I couldn't tell whether this was news to Li Ho or not....

Well, that's the story. I've written it down while it's fresh, sparing comment. Desire sang as we crossed the Inlet; little, low snatches of song with a hint of freedom in them. She had made her choice and it is never her way to look back. The old "Tillicum" rattled and chugged and the damp crept in around our feet. But the water was a path of gold and the sky a bowl of silver—and as an example of present day elopements it had certainly been fairly exciting.

Yours, Benis.



CHAPTER XIII

Desire Spence bent earnestly over the writing pad which lay open upon her knee.

"Mrs. Benis Hamilton Spence," she wrote. And then:

"Mrs. B. Hamilton Spence."

And then:

"Mrs. Benis H. Spence."

Over this last she sucked her pencil thoughtfully.

"One more!" prompted her husband encouragingly. "Don't decide before you inspect our full line of goods."

"Initials, only, lack character," objected Desire. "There is nothing distinctive about 'Mrs. B. H. Spence'. It doesn't balance well, either. I think I'll decide upon the 'Benis H.' I like it—although I have never heard of 'Benis' as a name before."

"You are not supposed to have heard of it," explained its owner complacently. "It is a very exclusive name, a family name. My mother's paternal grandmother was a Benis."

Desire was not attending. "Your nickname, too, is odd," she mused. "How on earth could anyone make 'Beans' out of 'Benis Hamilton?'"

"Very easily—but how did you know that anyone had?"

"Oh, from a touching inscription on one of your books, 'To Beans—from Bones.'"

"Well—there's a whole history in that. It happened by a well defined process of evolution. When I went to school I had to have a name. A school boy's proper name is no good to him. Proper names are simply not done. But the christening party found my combination rather a handful. No one could do anything with Benis and the obvious shortening of Hamilton was considered too Biblical. 'Ham', however, suggested 'Piggy'. This might have done had there not already existed a 'Piggy' with a prior right. 'Piggy' suggested 'Pork', but 'Pork' isn't a name. 'Pork' suggested 'Beans'. And once more behold the survival of the fittest."

Desire laughed.

The professor listened to her laugh with a strained expression which relaxed when no words followed it.

"I was afraid," he admitted penitently, "that you might want to know why 'Pork' is not as much a name as 'Beans'."

"But—it isn't."

"Quite so. Only you are the first member of your delightful sex who has ever perceived it. You are a perceptive person, Mrs. Spence."

It was the fourth day of their Business Honeymoon. Four days ago they had landed from the cheerful little coast steamer whose chattering load of summer campers they had left behind on the route. For four sun-bright days and dew-sweet nights they had found themselves sole possessors of a bay so lovely that it seemed to have emerged bodily from a green and opal dream.

"'Friendly Bay,' they calls it," a genial deckhand told them, grinning. "But you folks will be the only friends anywheres about. There's a sort of farm across the point, though, and maybe you could hit the trail by climbing, if you get too fed up with the scenery."

"Oh, we shan't want any company," said the new Mrs. Spence innocently—a remark so disappointing in its unembarrassed frankness that the deck-hand lost interest and decided that they were "just relations" after all.

They had carried their camp with them, and, from where they now sat, they could see its canvas gleaming ivory white against its background of green. Desire's eyes, as she raised them from her name-building, lingered upon it proudly. It was such a wonderful camp!—her first experience of what money, unconsidered save as a purchasing agent, can do. Even her personal outfit was something of a revelation. How deliciously keen and new was this consciousness of clothes—the smart high-laced boots, the soft, sand-colored coat and skirt, the knickers which felt so easy and so trim, the cool, silk shirt with its wide collar, the dainty, intimate things beneath! She would have been less than woman, had the possession of these things failed to meet some need,—some instinct, deep within, which her old, bare life had daily mortified.

And it had all been so easy, so natural! How could she ever have hesitated to make the change? Even her pride was left to her, intact. He, her friend, had given and she had taken, but in this there had been no spoiling sense of obligation, for, presently, she too was to give and to give unstintedly: new strength and skill seemed already tingling in her firm, quick hands; new vigor and inspiration stirred in her eager brain—and both hands and brain were to be her share of giving—her partnership offering in this pact of theirs. She was eager, eager to begin.

But already they had been four days in camp without a beginning. So far they had not even looked for the trail which was to lead them to the cabin of Hawk-Eye Charlie whose store of Indian lore had been the reason for their upcoast journey. This delay of the expeditionary party was due to no fault of its secretary. During the past four days she had proposed the search for the trail four times, one proposal per day. And each day the chief expeditioner had voted a postponement. The chief expeditioner was lazy. At least that was the excuse he made. And Desire, who was not lazy, might have fretted at the inaction had she believed him. But she knew it was not laziness which had drawn certain new lines about the expeditioner's mouth and deepened the old ones on his forehead. It was not laziness which lay behind the strained look in his eyes and the sudden return of his almost vanished limp. These things are not symptoms of indolence. They are symptoms of nerves. And Desire knew something of nerves. What she did not know, in the present case, was their exciting cause. Neither could she understand this new reticence on the part of their victim nor his reluctance to admit the obvious. She puzzled much about these problems while the lazy one rested in the sun and the quiet, golden days wrought the magic of their cure.

And Spence, mere man that he was, fancied that she noticed nothing. The pleasant illusion hastened his recovery. It tended to restore a complacency, rudely disturbed by an enforced realization of his own back-sliding. He had been quite furious upon discovering that the "little episode" of the moonlit cottage had filched from him all his new won strength and nervous stamina, leaving him sleepless and unstrung, ready to jump at the rattling of a stone. More and more, there grew in him a fierce disdain of weakness and a cold determination to beat Nature at her own game. Let him once again be "fit" and wily indeed would be the trick which would steal his fitness from him.

Meanwhile, laziness was as good a camouflage as anything and lying on the grass while Desire chose her name was pleasant in the extreme.

"Names," murmured the lazy one dreamily, "are things. When a thing is 'named true' its name and itself become inseparable and identical. That is why all magic is wrought by names. It becomes simply a matter of knowing the right ones."

"Is that a very new idea, or a very old one?"

"All ideas are ageless, so it must be both."

"I wonder how they named things in the very, very first?" mused Desire. "Did they just sit in the sun, as we are sitting, and think and think, until suddenly—they knew?"

"Very likely. There is a legend that, in the beginning, everything was named true—fire, water, earth, air—so that the souls of everything knew their names and were ruled by those who could speak them. But, as the race grew less simple and more corrupt, the true names were obscured and then lost altogether. Only once or twice in all the ages has come some master who has known their secret—such, perhaps, as He who could speak peace to the wind and walk upon the sea and change the water into wine."

Desire nodded. "Yes," she said. "It feels like that—as if one had forgotten. Sometimes when I have been in the woods alone or drifting far out on the water, where there was no sound but its own voice, it has seemed as if I had only to think—hard—hard—in order to remember! Only one never does."

"But one may—there is always the chance. I fancied I was near it once—in a shell hole. The stars were big and close and the earth seemed light and ready to float away. I almost had it then—my lips were just moving upon some mighty word—but someone came. They found me and carried me in ... I say, the sun is climbing up, let's follow it."

Hand in hand they followed the line of the sinking sun up the slippery slope. They both knew where they were going, for every evening of their stay they had wandered there to sit awhile in the little deserted Indian burying-ground which lay, white fenced and peaceful, facing the flaming west. When they had found it first it had seemed to give the last touch of beauty to that beautiful place.

"It is so different," said Desire, searching carefully, as was her way, for the proper word. "It is so—so beautifully dead. It ought to be like that," she went on thoughtfully. "I never realized before why our cemeteries are so sad—it is because we will not let them really die—we dress them up with flowers—a kind of ghastly life in death. But this—"

They looked around them at the little white-fenced spot with its great centre cross, grey and weather-beaten, and all its smaller crosses clustering round. There was warmth here, the warmth of sun upon a western slope. There was life, too, the natural life of grass and vine, the cheerful noise of birds and squirrels and bees. And, for color, there were harmonies in all the browns and greens and yellows of the rocky soil.

"Let us sit here. They won't mind. They are all sleeping so happily," Desire had declared. "And the crosses make it seem like one large family—see how that wild rose vine has spread itself over a whole group of graves! It is so friendly."

Spence had fallen in with her humor, and had come indeed to love this place where even the sun paused lingeringly before the mountains swallowed it up.

This afternoon he flung himself down beside their favorite rose-vine with the comfortable sense of well-being which comes with returning health. Even more than Desire, he wondered that he had ever hesitated before an arrangement so eminently satisfying. If ever events had justified an impulse, his impulse, he felt, had been justified. He stole a glance at Desire as she sat in pleasant silence gazing into the sunset. She was happier already, and younger. Something of that hard maturity was fading from her eyes—the tiny dented corners of her lips were softer.... Oh, undoubtedly he had done the right thing! And everything had run so smoothly. There had been no trouble. No unlocked for Nemesis had dogged his steps even in the matter of that small strategy concerning his unhappy past. He had been unduly worried about that, owing probably to early copy-book aphorisms. Honesty is the best policy. Yes, but—nothing had happened. Mary, bless her, was already only a memory. She had played her part and slipped back into the void from whence she came. He could forget her very name with impunity. A faint smile testified to a conscience lulled to warm security.

But security is a dangerous thing. It tempts the fates. Even while our strategist smiled, the girl who sat so silently beside him was wondering about that smile—and other things. He was much better, she reflected, if he could find his passing thoughts amusing. Amusement at one's own fancies is a healthy sign. And today she had noticed, also, that his laziness was almost natural. Perhaps it might be safe now to say what she had made up her mind should be said. But not too abruptly. When next she spoke it was merely to continue their previous discussion.

"Do you think people may have 'true' names, too?" she asked presently. "Just ordinary people, like you and me?"

Spence nodded. "Always noting," he added, "that you and I are not ordinary people."

"Then if anyone knew another's true name, and used it, the other could not help responding?"

"Um-m. I suppose not."

"Perhaps that is what love is," said Desire.

Even then no presentiment of coming trouble stirred beneath Spence's dangerous serenity. Perhaps it was because the air had made him comfortably drowsy. He merely nodded, deftly swallowing a yawn. Desire went on:

"Then love is only complete understanding?"

"Always thought it might be some trifle like that," murmured the drowsy one. "But don't ask me. How should I know? That is," rousing hastily, "I do know, of course. And it is. There's a squirrel eating your hat."

Desire changed the position of the hat. But the subject remained and she resumed it dreamily.

"Then in order that it might be quite complete, the understanding would have to be mutual. If only one loved, there would always be a lack."

"Not a doubt of it!" said Spence firmly.

"Well, then—don't you see?"

"See? See what? That squirrel's eating your hat again."

"Go away!" said Desire to the squirrel. And, when it had gone, "Don't you see?" she repeatedly gravely.

The professor always loved her gravity. And he had not seen. He was, in fact, almost asleep. "You tell me," he said, rushing upon destruction.

Then Desire said what she had made up her mind to say. He never knew exactly what it was because before she actually said the word "Mary," he was too sleepy, and afterwards he was too dazed.

Mary! The word went through him like an electric shock. It tingled to his criminal toes. It whirled through his cringing brain like a pinwheel suddenly lighted. It exploded like a bomb in the recesses of his false content.

Desire was talking about Mary! Talking about her in that frank and unembarrassed way which he had always admired. But good heavens! didn't she realize that Mary was dead and buried? No. She evidently did not. Far from it. When he was able to listen intelligently once more, Desire was saying:

"... and, to a man like you, philosophy should be such a help. I feel you will be far, far less unhappy if you do not shut yourself up with your memories. Do you suppose I have not noticed how nervous and worn out you have been since the night we came away? Why have you tried to hide it?"

"I haven't—"

"Yes you have. Please, please don't quibble. And hidden things are so dangerous. It isn't as if I would not understand. You ought to give me credit for a little knowledge of human nature. I knew perfectly well that when you married me—you would think of Mary. You could hardly help it."

The professor sat up. He was not at all sleepy now. Mary had "murdered sleep." But he was still dazed.

"Wait a moment." He raised a restraining hand. "Let me get this right. You say you have noticed a certain lack of energy in my manner of late?"

"Anyone must have noticed it."

"But I explained it, didn't I?"

"Yes?" The slight smile on Desire's lips was sufficient comment on the explanation. The professor began to feel injured.

"Then I gather, further, that you do not accept the explanation?"

"Don't be cross! How could I? I have eyes. And my point is simply that there is no need for any concealment between us. You promised that we should be friends. Friends help friends when they are in trouble."

The professor rumpled his hair The pinwheel in his brain was slowing down. Already the marvelous something which accepts and adjusts the unexpected was hard at work restoring order. Mary was not dead. He had to reckon with Mary. Very well, let Mary look to her-self. Let her beware how she harassed a desperate man! Let her—but he was not pushed to extremes yet.

"I thought," he said slowly, "that we had tacitly agreed not to reopen this subject."

Desire looked surprised.

"And I still think that it would be better, much better to ignore it altogether."

"Oh, but it wouldn't," said Desire. "See how dreadfully dumpy you have been since Friday."

"I have not been dumpy. But supposing I have, there may be other reasons. What if I can honorably assure you that I have not been thinking of the past at all?"

"Then I should want to know what you have been thinking of."

"But supposing I were to go further and say that my thoughts are my own property?"

"That would be horridly rude, don't you think? And you are not at all a rude person. If you'll risk it, I will."

Her smile was insufferably secure.

"You are willing to risk a great deal," snapped Spence. "But if it's truth you want—"

He almost confessed then. The temptation to slay Mary with a few well chosen words almost overpowered him. But he looked at the expectant face beside him and faltered. Mary would not die alone. With her would die this newborn comradeship. And Desire's smile, though insufferable, was sweet. How would it feel to see that bright look change and pale to cold dislike? Already in imagination he shivered under the frozen anger of that frank glance.

He could not risk it!

Should he then, ignoring Mary, ascribe his symptoms to their true cause? By dragging out the horror of that moonlit night, he could account for any vagary of nerves. But that way of escape was equally impossible. He could not let that shadow fall across her path of new-found freedom. Nor would he, in any case, gain much by such postponement. The wretched professor began to realize that the devil is indeed the father of lies and that he who sups with him needs a long spoon.

Meanwhile, Desire was waiting.

He felt that he would like to shake her—sitting there with untroubled air and face like an inquiring sphinx—to shake her and kiss her and tell her that there wasn't any Mary and—he brought himself up with a start. What nonsense was this!

"Look here," he said irritably, "you are all wrong. You really are. It's perfectly true I've been feeling groggy. But there doesn't have to be a reason for that, unfortunately. Old Bones warned me that I might expect all kinds of come-backs. But I'm almost right again now. Another day or two of this heavenly place and I shan't know that I have a nerve."

"Yes," critically. "You are better. I should say that the worst was over."

"I'm sure it is. Supposing we leave it at that."

Desire smiled her shadowy smile. "Very well. But I wanted you to know that I understand. It's so silly to go on pretending not to see, when one does see. And it's only natural that things should seem more poignant for a time. Only you will recover much more quickly if you adopt a sensible attitude. I do not say, 'do not think of Mary,' I say 'think of her openly.'"

"How," said Spence, "does one think openly?"

"One talks."

"You wish me to talk of Mary?"

"It will be so good for you!" warmly.

They looked for a moment into each other's eyes. And Spence was conscious of a second shock. Was there, was there the faintest glint of something which was not all sympathy in those grey depths of hers? Before his conscious mind had even formulated the question, his other mind had asked and answered it, and, with the lightning speed of the subconscious, had acted. The professor became aware of a complete change of outlook. His remorse and timidity left him. His brain worked clearly.

"Very well," said the professor.

The worm had turned!



CHAPTER XIV

Mornings are beautiful all over the earth but Nature keeps a special kind of morning for early summer use at Friendly Bay. In sudden clearness, in chill sweetness, in almost awful purity there is no other morning like it. It wrings the human soul quite clear of everything save wonder at its loveliness.

Desire never bathed until the sun was up, not because she feared the dawn-cold water but because she would not stir the unbroken beauty of its opal tide. With the first rays of the sun, the spell would break, the waves would dance again, the gulls would soar and dip, the crabs would scuttle across the shining sand, the round wet head of a friendly seal would pop up here and there to say good-morning. Then, Desire would swim—far out—so far that Spence, watching her, would feel his heart contract. He could not follow her—yet. But he never begged her not to take the risk, if risk there were. Why should she lose one happy thrill in her own joyous strength because he feared? Better that she should never come back from these long, glorious swims than that he should have held her from them by so much as a gesture.

And she always did come back, glowing, dripping, laughing, her head as sleek as a young seal's, salt upon her lips and on her wave-whipped cheek. Spence, whose swims were shorter and more sedate, would usually have breakfast ready.

But upon this particular morning Desire loitered. Though the smell of bacon was in the air, she sat pensively in the shallows of an outgoing tide and flung shells at the crabs. She would have told you that she was thinking. But had she used the word "feeling" she would have been nearer the truth. And the thing which she obscurely felt was that something had mysteriously altered for the worse in a world which, of late, had shown remarkable promise. It was a small thing. She hardly knew what it was. Merely a sense of dissonance somewhere.

Whatever it was, it had not been there yesterday. Yesterday morning she had felt no desire to sit in the shallows and throw shells at crabs. Yesterday morning her mind had been full of that happy inconsequence which feels no need of thought. Today was different. Mentally she shook herself with some irritation. "What is the matter with you?" she asked. But the self she addressed seemed oddly reluctant. "Come now," said Desire, hitting an especially big crab, "out with it! There's no use pretending that you don't know." Thus adjured, the self offered one single and sulky word. The word was "Mary." "Oh, nonsense!" said Desire hastily.

But there it was. She had forced the answer and had to make the best of it. Her memory trailed back. Once started, it had small difficulty in tracking her dissatisfaction to its real beginning. Everything, it reminded her, had been perfect until she and Benis had sat upon the hill in the sunset and talked about Mary. Something had happened then. Like a certain ancestress she had coveted the fruit of knowledge and knowledge had been given her. Not at once—Benis had at first been distinctly reluctant—but by gentle persistence she had won through his cool reserve. Abruptly and without visible reason, his attitude had changed. He had said in that drawling voice of his, "You wish me to talk about Mary?" And then, suddenly, he had talked.

He had told her several things. The color of Mary's hair, for instance. Her hair was yellow. Benis had been insistent in pointing out that when he said "yellow" he did not mean goldish or bronze, or fawn-colored or tow-colored or Titian, but just yellow. "Do you see that patch of sky over there where the mountain dips?" he had said. "Mary's hair was yellow, like that."

That patch of sky, as Desire remembered it, was very beautiful. Quite too beautiful to be compared to any-one's hair. No doubt it was only in Benis's imagination that Mary's hair was anything like it.

But nevertheless it was there that the world had gone wrong. It was while Benis had sat gazing into that patch of amber sky that Desire, gazing too, had, for the first time, realized the Other. Up until then, Mary had been an abstraction—thenceforth she was a personality. That made all the difference. Desire, throwing shells at crabs, admitted that, for her, there had been no Mary until she had heard that her hair was yellow.

It was ridiculous but it was true. Mary without hair had been a gentle and retiring shade. A phantom in whom it had been possible to take an academic interest. But no shade has a right to hair like an amber sunset. Desire threw a shell viciously. Very little more, she felt, and she would positively dislike Mary!

She jumped up and stamped in the shallow water. The crabs, big and little, scuttled away.

"Hurr-ee!" called the professor waving a frying-pan.

"Com-ing!" Desire's voice rose gaily. For the present, her small dissatisfaction vanished with the crabs.

"This coffee has been made ten minutes," grumbled the getter-of-breakfast with a properly martyred air. "Whatever were you doing?"

"Thinking."

"It isn't done. Not before breakfast."

"I was thinking," fibbed Desire, "that I have never been so spoiled in my life and that it can't go on. My domestic conscience is beginning to murmur. As soon as we are at home, you will be expected to stay in bed until you smell the coffee coming up the stairs."

"Aunt Caroline," said the professor, "does not believe in coffee for breakfast, except on Sunday."

"I do."

"Eh? Oh—I see. Well, I'll put my money on you. Only I hope you aren't really set on making it yourself. Because the cook would leave.'"

"Good gracious! Do we have a cook?"

"We do. At least, we did. Also a maid. But maids, I understand, are greatly diminished. There appear to have been tragedies in Bainbridge. Have you eaten sufficient bacon to listen calmly to an extract from Aunt Caroline's last? Sit tight, then—

"'As to what the world is coming to in the matter of domestic service,'" writes Aunt Caroline, "I do not know. I do not wish to worry you, Benis, but as you will be marrying some day, in spite of that silly doctor of yours who insists that it's not to be thought of, you may as well be conversant with the situation. To put it briefly—I have been without competent help for two weeks. You know, dear boy, that I am easily satisfied. I expect very little from anyone. But I think that I am entitled to prompt and willing service. That, at the very least! Yet I must tell you that Mabel, my cook, has left me most ungratefully after only three months' notice! She is to be married to Bob Summers, the plumber. (Lieutenant Robert Summers, since the war, if you please!) Well, she can never say I did not warn her. I did not mince matters. I told her exactly what married life is, and why I have never tried it. But the foolish girl is beyond advice. I have had two cooks since Mabel, but one insisted upon whistling in the kitchen and the other served omelette made with one egg. My wants are trifling, as you know, but one cannot abrogate all personal dignity—'

"Do you get the subtle connection between the one egg and Aunt Caroline's personal dignity?" asked Spence with anxiety. "Because if you don't, I'll never be able to ask you to live in Bainbridge. I may as well confess now that it was only my serene confidence in your sense of humor which permitted me to marry you at all. I should never have dared to offer Aunt Caroline as an 'in-law' to anyone who couldn't see a joke."

"You are very fond of her all the same," said Desire shrewdly. "And though she expects very little from anyone, she evidently adores you. She can't be all funny. There must be an Aunt Caroline, deep down, that is not funny at all. I think I'm rather afraid of her. Only you have so often said that she wished you to get married—"

"Excuse me, my dear. What I said was, 'Aunt Caroline wished to get me married.' The position of the infinitive is the important thing. Aunt Caroline never intended me to do it all by myself."

"Oh. Then, in that case, she may resent your having done it."

"Resent," cheerfully, "is a feeble word. It doesn't express Aunt Caroline at all."

"You take it calmly."

"Well, you see I've got you to fight for me now."

They looked at each other over the empty coffee cups and laughed.

It is easy to laugh on a fine morning. But if they had known where Aunt Caroline was at that moment—how-ever, they didn't.

"Once," said Spence "my Aunt read a book upon Eugenics. I don't know how it happened. It was one of those inexplicable events for which no one can account. It made a deep impression. She has studied me ever since with a view to scientific matrimony. Alas, my poor relative!"

"I once read a book upon Eugenics, too," said Desire with a reminiscent smile. "It seemed sensible. Of course I was not personally interested and that always makes a difference. One thing occurred to me, though—it didn't seem to give Nature credit for much judgment."

Benis chuckled. "No, it wouldn't. Terrible old blunderer, Nature! Always working for the average. Never seems to have heard the word 'specialize.' We've got her there."

"Then you think—"

"Oh no," hastily, "I don't. I observe results with interest, that is all."

Desire began to collect the breakfast dishes. "That was where the book seemed weak," she said thoughtfully. "It hadn't much to say about results. It dealt mostly with consequences. They," she added after a pause, "were rather frightening."

The professor glanced at her sharply. Had she been worrying over this? Had she connected it with that dreadful old man whom she called father? But her face was quite untroubled as she went on.

"I think they've missed something, though," she said. "There must be something more than the things they tabulate. Some subtle force of life which isn't physical at all. Something that uses physical things as tools. If its tools are fine, it will do finer work, but if its tools are blunt it will work with them anyway. And it gets things done."

"By Jove!" said Spence. This was one of Desire's "windows with a view." He was always stumbling upon them. But he knew she was shy of comment. "We'll tell Aunt Caroline that," he murmured hopefully. "It may distract her mind." ...

That day they found and followed the trail to the shack of Hawk-Eye Charlie. It proved to be neither long nor arduous. The professor managed it with ease. But he would have been quite unable to manage the hawk-eyed one without the expert aid of his secretary. To his unaccustomed mind their quarry was almost witless and exceedingly dirty. But Desire knew her Indian.

"It isn't what he is, but what he knows," she explained. "And he has a retiring nature."

So very retiring was it that only fair words, aided by tactful displays of tea and tobacco, could penetrate its reservations. Desire was quite unhurried. But presently she began to extract bits of carefully hidden knowledge. It had to be slow work, for, witless as he of the hawk-eye seemed, he was well aware of the value (in tobacco) of a wise conservation. He who babbles all he knows upon first asking is a fool. But he who withholds beyond patience is a fool also. Was it not so? Desire agreed that a middle course is undoubtedly the path of wisdom. She added, carelessly, that the white-man-who-wished-stories was in no hurry. Neither had he come seeking much for little. Payment would be made strictly on account of value received. The tea was good. And the tobacco exceptionally strong, as anyone could tell from a distance. Why then should the hawk-eyed one delay his own felicity?

This hastened matters considerably and the secretary's note-book was soon busy. Spence felt his oldtime keenness revive. And Desire was happy for was not this her work at last? It was a profitable day. Should anyone care to know its results, and the results of others like it, they may look up chapter six, section two, of Spence's Primitive Psychology, unabridged edition. Here they will find that the fables of Hawk-Eye Charlie, properly classified and commented upon, have added considerably to our knowledge of a fascinating subject. But far be it from us to steal the professor's thunder. We are not writing a book upon primitive psychology. We are interested only in the sigh of pleasurable satisfaction with which the professor's secretary closed her fat note-book and called it a day.

From that point our interest leads us back to camp along the trail through the warm June woods with the late sunlight hanging like golden gauze behind the fretted screens of green. We are interested in sunsets and in basket suppers eaten in the dim coolness of a miniature canyon through which rushed and tumbled an icy stream from, the snow peaks far above. We are interested in a breathless race with a chattering squirrel during which Desire's hair came down—a bit of glorious autumn in the deep green wood—and the tying of it up again (a lengthy process) by the professor with cleverly plaited stems of tender bracken. All these trifles interest us because, to those two who knew them, they remained fresh and living memories when the note-book and its contents were buried in the dust of yesterday.

It was twilight when they came out of the wood. The sun had gone and taken its golden trappings with it. A clear, still light was everywhere and, in the brilliant green of the far sky, a pale star shone. They watched it brighten as the green grew dark. A wonderful purple blueness spread upon the distant hills.

Desire sighed happily.

"It is the end of the first day of real work," she said. "The end and the beginning."

Her companion, usually like wax to her moods, made no answer. He did not seem to hear. His gaze seemed drowned in that wonderful blue. Desire, who had been unaccountably content, felt suddenly lonely and disturbed.

"What is it?" she asked. Her voice had fallen from its glad note. She put out her hand, touching his coat sleeve timidly. It was the first time she had ever touched him save in service. But if her touch brought a thrill there was no> sign of it. Her voice dropped still lower, "What are you thinking of?" she almost whispered.

The professor did not answer. Instead he turned to her with a sad smile. (Very well done, too!)

Desire dropped her hand with a sharp exclamation. "Oh," she said, "I forgot! You were thinking—"

The professor's smile smote her.

"Her eyes were blue like that!" he said.

Desire tripped over a fallen branch. And, when she recovered herself, "Purple, do you mean?" she asked. "I have always thought purple eyes were a myth."

"Now you are making fun," said the professor after a reproachful pause.

"How do you mean—making fun?"

"'I never saw a purple cow,'" quoted he patiently.

"Oh, I wasn't!" cried Desire in distress.

Spence begged her pardon. But he did it abstractedly. His eyes were still upon the sky.

"You'll fall over that root," prophesied she grimly. "Do look where you are going!"

The professor returned to earth with difficulty. "Sorry!" he murmured. "I doubt if I should allow these moods to bother you. But you told me it might do me good to talk."

"Not all the time!" said Desire a trifle tartly.

He looked surprised. "But—" he began.

"Oh, I'm so hungry!" said Desire. "Do let's hurry."

She hastened ahead down the slope towards the camp. The tents lay in the shadow now but, as they neared them, a flickering light shot up as if in welcome. Desire paused.

"Someone lighting a fire!" she exclaimed in surprise. "Who can it be?"

Against the glow of the new-lit blaze a tall figure lifted itself and a clear whistle cut the silence of the Bay.

Spence's graceful melancholy dropped from him like a forgotten cloak.

"Bones!" he gasped in an agitated whisper. "Oh, my prophetic soul, my doctor!"

Another figure rose against the glow—a wider figure who called shrilly through a cupped hand.

"Ben—is!"

"My Aunt!" said the professor.

He sat down suddenly behind a boulder.



CHAPTER XV

To understand Aunt Caroline's arrival at Friendly Bay we should have to understand Aunt Caroline, and that, as Euclid says, is absurd. Therefore we shall have to take the arrival for granted. The only light which she herself ever shed upon the matter was a statement that she "had a feeling." And feelings, to Aunt Caroline, were the only reliable things in a strictly unreliable world. To follow a feeling across a continent was a trifle to a determined character such as hers. To insist upon Dr. Rogers following it, too, was a matter of course.

"I shall need an escort," said Aunt Caroline to that astonished physician, "and you will do very nicely. If Benis is off his head, as you suggest, it is my plain duty to look into the matter and your plain duty, as his medical adviser, to accompany me. I am a woman who demands little from her fellow creatures, knowing perfectly well that she won't get it, but I naturally refuse to undertake the undivided responsibility of a deranged nephew galavanting, by your own orders, Doctor, at the ends of the earth."

"I did not say he was deranged," began the doctor helplessly, "and you said you didn't believe me anyway."

"Don't quote me to excuse yourself." Aunt Caroline sailed serenely on. "At least preserve the courage of your convictions. There is certainly something the matter with Benis. He has answered none of my letters. He has completely ignored my lettergrams. To my telegram of Thursday telling him that I had been compelled to discharge my third cook since Mabel for wiping dishes on a hand towel, he replied only by silence. And the telegraph people say that the message was never delivered owing to lack of address. Easy as I am to satisfy, things like this cannot be allowed to continue. My nephew must be found."

"But we don't know where to look for him," objected her victim weakly.

Aunt Caroline easily rose superior to this.

"We have a map, I hope? And Vancouver, heathenish name! must be marked on it somewhere. If not, the railroad people can tell us."

"But he is not in Vancouver."

"There—or thereabouts. When we get there we can ask the policeman, or," with a grim twinkle, "we can enquire at the asylums. You forget that my nephew is a celebrated man even if he is a fool."

The doctor gave in. He hadn't had a chance from the beginning, for Aunt Caroline could answer objections far faster than he could make them. They arrived at the terminus just four days after the expeditionary party had left for Friendly Bay.

If Aunt Caroline were surprised at finding more than one policeman in Vancouver, she did not admit it. Neither did the general atmosphere of ignorance as to Benis daunt her in the least. She adhered firmly to her campaign of question asking and found it fully justified when inquiry at the post-office revealed that all letters for Professor Benis H. Spence were to be delivered to the care of the Union Steamship Company. From the Union Steamship Company to the professor's place of refuge was an easy step. But Dr. Rogers, to whom this last inquiry had been intrusted, returned to the hotel with a careful jauntiness of manner which ill accorded with a disturbed mind.

"Well, we've found him," he announced cheerfully. "And now, if we are wise, I think we'll leave him alone. He is camping up the coast at a place called Friendly Bay—no hotels, no accommodation for ladies—he is evidently perfectly well and attending to business. You know he came out here partly to get material for his book? Well, that's what he's doing. Must be, because there are only Indians up there."

"Indians? What do you mean—Indians? Wild ones?"

"Fairly wild."

Aunt Caroline snorted. She is one of the few ladies left who possess this Victorian, accomplishment. "And you advise my leaving my sister's child in his present precarious state of mind alone among fairly wild Indians?"

"Well—er—that's just it, you see. He isn't alone—not exactly."

"What do you mean—not exactly?"

"I mean that his—er—secretary is with him. He has to have a secretary on account of never being sure whether receive is 'ie' or 'ei.' They are quite all right, though. The captain of the boat says so. And naturally on a trip of that kind, research you know, a man doesn't like to be interrupted."

Aunt Caroline arose. "When does the next boat leave?" She asked calmly.

"But—dash it all! We're not invited. We can't butt in. I—I won't go."

Aunt Caroline, admirable woman, knew when she was defeated. She had a formula for it, a formula which seldom failed to turn defeat into victory. When all else failed, Aunt Caroline collapsed. She collapsed now. She had borne a great deal, she had not complained, but to be told that her presence would be a "butting in" upon the only living child of her only dead sister was more than even her fortitude could endure! No, she wouldn't take a glass of water, water would choke her. No, she wouldn't lie down. No, she wouldn't lower her voice. What did hotel people matter to her? What did anything matter? She had come to the end. Accustomed to ingratitude as she was, hardened to injustice and desertion, there were still limits—

There were. The doctor had reached his. Hastily he explained that she had mistaken his meaning. And, to prove it, engaged passage at once, for the next upcoast trip, on the same little steamer which a few days earlier had carried Mr. and Mrs. Benis H. Spence.

It was a heavenly day. The mountains lifted them-selves out of veils of tinted mist, the islands lay like jewels—but Aunt Caroline, impervious to mere scenery, turned her thought severely inward.

"I suppose," she said to her now subdued escort, "that we shall have to pay the secretary a month's salary. Benis will scarcely wish to take him back east with us."

The doctor attempted to answer but seemed to have some trouble with his throat.

"It's the damp air," said Aunt Caroline. "Have a troche. If Benis really needs a secretary I think I can arrange to get one for him. Do you remember Mary Davis? Her mother was an Ashton—a very good family. But unfortunate. The girls have had to look out for themselves rather. Mary took a course. She could be a secretary, I'm sure. Benis could always correct things afterward. And she is not too young. Just about the right age, I should think. They used to know each other. But you know what Benis is. He simply doesn't—your cold is quite distressing, Doctor. Do take a troche."

The doctor took one.

"Of course Benis may object to a lady secretary—"

"By Jove," said Rogers as if struck with a brilliant idea. "Perhaps his secretary is a lady!"

"How do you mean—a lady! Don't be absurd, Doctor. You said yourself there was no proper hotel. Benis is discreet. I'll say that for him."

The doctor's brilliance deserted him. He twiddled his thumbs. But although Aunt Caroline's repudiation of his suggestion had been unhesitating there was a gleam of new uneasiness in her eye. She said no more. It was indeed quite half an hour before she remarked explosively.

"Unless it were an Indian!"

Her companion turned from the scenery in pained surprise.

"An Indian what?" he asked blankly.

"An Indian secretary—a female one."

"Nonsense. Indians aren't secretaries."

But Aunt Caroline had "had a feeling." "It was your-self who suggested that she might be a girl," she declared stubbornly, "and if she is a girl, she must be an Indian. Indians are different—look at Pullman porters."

The doctor gasped.

"Even I don't mind a Pullman porter," finished Aunt Caroline grandly.

"That's very nice," the doctor struggled to adjust him-self. "But Pullman porters are not Indians, and even if they were I can't quite see how it affects Benis and his lady secretary."

"The principle," said Aunt Caroline, "is the same."

Rogers wondered if his brain were going. At any rate he felt that he needed a smoke. Aunt Caroline did not like smoke, so comparative privacy was assured. Also, a good smoke might show him a way out of his difficulty.

It didn't. At the end of the second cigar the cold fact, imparted by the clerk in the steamship office, that Professor Spence and wife had preceded them upon this very boat, was still a cold fact and nothing more. The long letter from the bridegroom which would have made things plain had passed him on his trip across the continent and was even now lying, with other unopened mail, in his Bainbridge office.

If Benis were married, then the bride could be no other than the nurse-secretary he had written about in that one inconsequent letter to which he, Rogers, had replied with unmistakable warning. But the thing seemed scarcely credible. If it were a fact, then it might very easily be a tragedy also. Marriage in such haste and under such circumstances could scarcely be other than a mistake, and considering the quality of Benis Spence, a most serious one.

John Rogers was very fond of his eccentric friend and the threatened disaster loomed almost personal. He felt himself to blame too, for the advice which had thrown Spence directly from the frying-pan of Aunt Caroline into the fire of a sterner fate. Add to all this a keen feeling of unwarranted intrusion and we have some idea of the state of mind with which Dr. John Rogers saw the white tents of the campers as the steamer put in at Friendly Bay.

"There are two tents," said Aunt Caroline lowering her lorgnette. "I shall be quite comfortable."

The doctor did not smile. His sense of humor was suffering from temporary exhaustion and his strongest consciousness was a feeling of relief that neither Benis nor anyone else appeared to notice their arrival. Even the unique spectacle of a middle-aged lady in elastic-sided boots proceeding on tiptoe, and with all the tactics of a scouting party, toward the evidently deserted tents provoked no demonstration from anyone.

"They're not here!" called the scouting party in a carrying whisper.

"Obviously not." The doctor wiped his heated fore-head. "Probably they've gone for the night. Then you'll have to marry me to save my reputation."

"Jokes upon serious subjects are in very bad taste, young man," said Aunt Caroline. But her rebuke was half-hearted. She looked uneasy. "John," she added with sudden suspicion, "you don't suppose they could have known we were coming?"

"How could they possibly?"

"If she is an Indian, they might. I've heard of such things. I—oh, John! Look!"

"Snake?" asked John callously. Nevertheless he followed Aunt Caroline's horrified gaze and saw, with a thrill of more normal interest, a pair of dainty moccasins whose beaded toes protruded from the flap of one of the tents.

"Indian!" gasped Aunt Caroline. "Oh John!"

"Not a bit of it!" Our much tried physician spoke with salutary shortness. "They may be Indian-made but that's all. I'll eat my hat if it's an Indian who has worn them. Did you ever see an Indian with a foot like that?"

Indignation enabled Aunt Caroline to disclaim acquaintance with any Indian feet whatever.

"It's a white girl's moccasin," he assured her. "Lots of girls wear them in camp. Or," hastily, "it may be a curiosity. Benis may be making a collection."

Aunt Caroline snorted. Her gaze was fixed with almost piteous intensity upon the tent.

"D'you think I might go in?" she faltered.

"You might" said John carefully.

Aunt Caroline sighed.

"How dreadful to have traditions!" she murmured. "There's no real reason why I shouldn't go in. And," with grim honesty, "if you weren't here watching I believe I'd do it. Anyway we may have to, if they don't come soon. I can't sit on this grass. I'm sure it's damp."

"I'll get you a chair from Benis's tent," offered John unkindly. "There are no traditions to forbid that, are there?"

"No. And, John—you might look around a little? Just to make sure."

The doctor nodded. He had every intention of looking around. He felt, in fact, entitled to any knowledge which his closest observation might bring him. But the tent was almost empty. That at least proved that the tent belonged to Spence. He was a man with an actual talent for bareness and spareness in his sleeping quarters. Even his room at school had possessed that man-made neatness which one associates with sailor's cabins and the cells of monks. The camp-bed was trimly made, a dressing-gown lay across a canvas chair, a shaving mug hung from the centre pole—there was not so much as a hairpin anywhere.

John crossed thoughtfully to the folding stand which stood with its portable reading lamp beside the bed. There was one unusual thing there, a photograph. Benis, as his friend knew, was an expert amateur photographer—but he never perched his photographs upon stands. This one must be an exception, and exceptions are illuminating.

It was still quite light inside the tent and the doctor could see the picture clearly. It was an extraordinarily good one, quite in the professor's happiest style. Composition, lighting, timing, all were perfect. But it is doubtful if John Rogers noticed any of these excellencies. He was absorbed at once and utterly in the personality of the person photographed. This was a girl, bending over a still pool. The pose was one of perfectly arrested grace and the face which was lifted, as if at the approach of someone, looked directly out of the picture and into Roger's eyes. It was the most living picture he had ever seen. The lips were parted as if for speech, there was a smile behind the widely opened eyes. And both face and form were beautiful.

The doctor straightened up with a sharply drawn breath. It seemed that something had happened. For one flashing instant some inner knowledge had linked him with his own unlived experience. It was gone as soon as it came. He did not even realize it, save as a sense of strangeness. Yet, as a chemist lifts a vial and drops the one drop which changes all within his crucible, so some magic philtre tinged John Roger's cup of life in that one stolen look.