"It's a great deal of money, dear," said Mrs. Leighton to Natalie. "What shall we do?"

For a moment Natalie did not reply, and when she spoke, it was not in answer. She said:

"Mother, where is Lew? I want him." Her low voice quivered with desire.

Mrs. Leighton put her fingers into Natalie's soft hair and drew the girl's head against her breast. A lump rose in her throat. She longed to murmur comfort, but she had long since lost the habit of words. What was life worth if she could not buy with it happiness for this her only remaining love?

"Darling," she whispered at last, "whatever you wish, whatever you say, we'll do. Do you think—would you like to go back to—to Nadir—and look for Lewis?"

Natalie divined the sacrifice in those halting words. Her thin arms went up around Ann Leighton's neck. She pressed her face hard against her mother's shoulder. She wanted to cry, but could not. Without raising her face, she shook her head and said:

"No, no. I don't want ever to go back to Nadir. Lew is not there. That night—that night after we buried father I went out on the hills and called for Lew. He did not answer. Suddenly I just knew he wasn't there. I knew that he was far, far away."

Ann Leighton did not try to reason against instinct. She softly rocked Natalie to and fro, her pale eyes fixed on the setting sun. Gradually the sunset awoke in her mind a stabbing memory. Here on this bench she had sat, Natalie, a baby, in her lap, and in the shelter of her arms little Lewis and—and Shenton, her boy. By yonder rail she had stood with her unconscious boy in her arms, and day had suddenly ceased as though beyond the edge of the world somebody had put out the light forever. Her pale eyes grew luminous. The unaccustomed tears welled up in them and trickled down the cheeks that had known so long a drought. They rained on Natalie's head.

"Mother!" cried Natalie, looking up—"Mother!" Then she buried her face again in Ann's bosom, and together they sobbed out all the oppressing pain and grief of life's heavy moment. Not by strength alone, but also by frailty, do mothers hold the hearts of their children. Natalie, hearing and feeling her mother sob, passed beyond the bourn of generations and knew Ann and herself as one in an indivisible, quivering humanity.

Mammy's chair stopped rocking. She listened; then she got up and came out on the veranda. Her eyes fell upon mother and daughter huddled together in the dusk. She hovered over them. Her loose clothes made her seem ample, almost stolid.

"Wha' fo' you chilun's crying?" she demanded.

"We're not crying," sobbed Natalie.

"Huh!" snorted mammy. "Yo' jes come along outen this night air, bof of yo', an' have yo' suppah. Come on along, Miss Ann. Come on along, yo' young Miss Natalie."

"Just a minute, mammy; in just a minute," gasped Natalie. "You go put supper on the table." Then she rose to her feet, and drew her mother up to her. "Kiss me," she said and smiled. She was suddenly strong again with the strength of youth.

Ann kissed her and she, too, almost smiled.

"Well, dear?" she said.

"We're going away," said Natalie, holding protecting arms around her mother. "We're going to sell this place, and then we're just going away into another world. This one's too rough for just women. We'll go see that old house Aunt Jed left to me. I want to live just once in a house that has had more than one life."

Day after day the ship moved steadily northward on an even keel. Upon mammy, Natalie, and Mrs. Leighton a miracle began to descend. Years fell from their straightening shoulders. At the end of a week, Ann Leighton, kneeling alone in her cabin, began her nightly devotions with a paean that sounded strangely in her own ears: "Oh, Thou Who hast redeemed my life from destruction, crowned me with loving-kindness and tender mercies, Who hast satisfied my mouth with good things so that my youth is renewed like the eagle's!"



CHAPTER XXVII

Among Leighton's many pet theories was one that he called the axiom of the propitious moment. Any tyro at life could tell that a thing needed saying; skill came in knowing how to wait to say it. At Lady Derl's dinner Leighton had decided to go away for several months. He had something to say to Lewis before he went, but he passed nervous days waiting to say it. Then came the propitious moment. They were sitting alone over a cheerful small fire that played a sort of joyful accompaniment to the outdoor struggle of spring against the cold.

"In every society," said Leighton, breaking a long silence, "where women have been numerically predominant, the popular conception of morality has been lowered. Your historical limitations are such that you'll have to take my say-so for the truth of that generality."

"Yes, sir," said Lewis.

"Man's greatest illusion in regard to woman," continued Leighton, "is that she's fastidious. Men are fastidious and vulgar; women are neither fastidious nor vulgar. There's a reason. Women have been too intimately connected through the ages with the slops of life to be fastidious. That's driven them to look upon natural things with natural eyes. They know that vulgarity isn't necessary, and they revolt from it. These are all generalities, of course."

"Yes, sir," said Lewis.

"Women are very wonderful. They are an unconscious incarnation of knowledge. Knowledge bears the same relation to the wise that liquor does to the man who decided the world would be better without alcohol and started to drink it all up. Man's premier temptation is to drink up women. Lots of men start to do it, but that's as far as they get. One woman can absorb a dozen men; a dozen men can't absorb one woman. Women—any one woman—is without end. Am I boring you?"

"No, sir," said Lewis. "You are giving me a perspective."

"You've struck the exact word. Since we met, I've given you several of my seven lives, but there's one life a man can't pass on to his son—his life with relation to women. He can only give, as you said, a perspective."

Leighton chose a cigar carefully and lit it.

"Formerly woman had but one mission," he went on. "She arrived at it when she arrived at womanhood. The fashionable age for marriage was fifteen. Civilization has pushed it along to twenty-five. Those ten cumulative years have put a terrific strain on woman. On the whole, she has stood it remarkably well. But as modernity has reduced our animalism, it has increased our fundamental immorality and put a substantial blot on woman's mission as a mission. Woman has had to learn to dissemble charmingly, but in the bottom of her heart she has never believed that her mission is intrinsically shameful. That's why every woman feels her special case of sinning is right—until she gets caught. Do you follow me?"

"I think so," said Lewis.

"Well, if you've followed me, you begin to realize why a superfluity of women threatens conventional life. There are an awful lot of women in this town, Lew."

Leighton rose to his feet and started walking up and down, his hands clasped behind him, his head dropped.

"I haven't been feeding you on all these generalities just to kill time. A generality would be worth nothing if it weren't for its exceptions. Women are remarkable for the number of their exceptions. You are crossing a threshold into a peculiarly lax section and age of woman. I want you to believe and to remember that the world still breeds noble and innocent women."

Leighton stopped, threw up his head, and fixed Lewis with his eyes.

"Do you know what innocence is? Ask the average clergyman to describe innocence to you, and when he gets through, think a bit, take off the tinsel words with which he has decked out his graven image, and you'll find what? Ignorance enshrined. Every clergy the world has seen has enshrined ignorance, and ignorance has no single virtue that a sound turnip does not share."

Leighton stopped and faced his son.

"Now, my boy," he said, "here comes the end of the sermon. Beware of the second-best in women. Many a man trades his soul not for the whole world, but for a bed-fellow." He paused. "I believe," he continued, flushing, "I still believe that for every man there is an all-embracing woman to whom he is all-embracing. Thank God! I'm childish enough to believe in her still, though I speak through soiled lips—the all-embracing woman who alone can hold you and that you alone can hold."

Lewis stared absently into the fire.

"'The worlds of women are seven,'" he repeated, half to himself: "'spirit, weed, flower, the blind, the visioned, libertine, and saint. None of these is for thee. For each child of love there is a woman that holds the seven worlds within a single breast. Hold fast to thy birthright, even though thou journey with thy back unto the light.'"

"What—where—what's that?" stammered Leighton, staring at his son.

Lewis looked up and smiled.

"Only Old Immortality. Do you remember her? The old woman who told my fortune. She said that. D'you know, I think she must have been a discarded Gipsy. I never thought of it before. I didn't know then what a Gipsy was."

"Gipsy or saint, take it from me, she was, and probably is, a wise woman," said Leighton. "Somehow I'm still sure she can never die. Do you remember all she said when she told you your fortune?"

"Yes," said Lewis; "I think I do. Every once in a while I've said it over to myself."

"I wish you'd write down what she said and—and leave it on my table for me. You'll have to do it tonight, for I'm off to-morrow. Old Ivory and I have shot so much game we've grown squeamish about it, but it seems there's a terrific drought and famine on in the game country of the East Coast, and all the reserves have been thrown open. The idea is meat for the natives and a thinning out of game in the overstocked country. We are going out this time not as murderers, but as philanthropists."

"I'd like to go, too," said Lewis, his eyes lighting. "Won't you let me?"

"Not this trip, my boy," said Leighton. "I hate to refuse you anything, but don't think I'm robbing you. I'm not. I merely don't wish you to eat life too fast. Times will come when you'll need to go away. Just now you've got things enough to hunt right here. One of them is art. You may think you've arrived, but you haven't—not yet."

"I know I haven't," said Lewis.

Leighton nodded.

"Ever heard this sort of thing? 'Art is giving something for nothing. Art is the ensnaring of beauty in an invisible mesh. Art is the ideal of common things. Art is a mirage stolen from the heavens and trapped on a bit of canvas or on a sheet of paper or in a lump of clay.' And so on and so on."

Lewis smiled.

"As a matter of fact," continued Leighton, "those things are merely the progeny of art. Art itself is work, and its chief end is expression with repression. Remember that—with repression. Many an artist has missed greatness by mistaking license for originality and producing debauch. I don't want you to do that. I want you to stay here by yourself for a while and work; not with your hands, necessarily, but with your mind. Get your perspective of life now. Most of the pathetic 'what-might-have-beens' in the lives of men and women are due to misplaced proportions that made them struggle greatly for little things."

Lewis looked up and nodded.

"Dad, you've got a knack of saying things that are true in a way that makes them visible. When you talk, you make me feel as though some one had drawn back the screen from the skylight."

Leighton shrugged his shoulders. For a long moment he was silent; then he said:

"A life like mine has no justification if it can't let in light, even though it be through stained glass."

Lewis caught a wistful look in his father's eyes. He felt a sudden surge of love such as had come to him long years before when he had first sounded the depths of his father's tenderness. "There's no light in all the world like cathedral light, Dad," he said with a slight tremble in his voice, "and it shines through stained glass."

"Thanks, boy, thanks," said Leighton; then he smiled, and threw up his head. Lewis had learned to know well that gesture of dismissal to a mood.

"Just one more word," continued his father. "When you do get down to working with your hands, don't forget repression. Classicism bears the relation to art that religion does to the world's progress. It's a drag-anchor—a sound measure of safety—despised when seas are calm, but treasured against the hour of stress. Let's go and eat."

Lewis rose and put his hand on his father's arm.

"I'll not forget this talk, Dad," he said.

"I hope you won't, boy," said Leighton. "It's harder for me to talk to you than you think. I'm driven and held by the knowledge that there are only two ways in which a father can lose his son. One is by talking too much, the other's by not talking enough. The old trouble of the devil and the deep, blue sea; the frying-pan and the fire. Come, we've been bandying the sublime; let's get down to the level of stomachs and smile. The greatest thing about man is the range of his octaves."



CHAPTER XXVIII

For a week Lewis missed his father very much. Every time he came into the flat its emptiness struck him, robbed him of gaiety, and made him feel as though he walked in a dead man's shoes. He was very lonely.

"Helton," he said one night, "I wish things could talk—these old chairs and the table and that big worn-out couch, for instance."

"Lucky thing they can't, sir," mumbled Helton, holding the seam of the table-cloth in his teeth while he folded it.

"Why?" said Lewis. "Why should it be lucky they can't? Don't you suppose if they had the power of talk, they'd have the power of discretion as well, just as we have?"

"I don't know about that, sir," said Helton. "Things is servants just like us serving-men is. The more wooden a serving-man is in the matter of talk, the easier it is for 'im to get a plice. If you ask me, sir, I would s'y as chairs is wooden and walls stone an' brick for the comfort of their betters, an' that they 'aven't any too much discretion as it is, let alone talking."

"Nelton," said Lewis, "I've been waiting to ask you something. I wonder if you could tell me."

"Can't s'y in the dark," said Nelton.

"It's this," said Lewis. "Everybody here—all dad's friends except Lady Derl—call him Grapes Leighton. Why? I've started to ask him two or three times, but somehow something else seems to crop up in his mind, and he doesn't give me a chance to finish."

Nelton's lowered eyes flashed a shrewd look at Lewis's face.

"The exercise of discretion ennobles the profession," he said, and stopped, a dazed, pleased look in his face at hearing his own rhyme. He laid the table-cloth down, took from his pocket the stub of a pencil, and wrote the words on his cuff. Then he picked up the cloth, laid it over his arm, and opened the door. As he went out he paused and said over his shoulder: "Master Lewis, it would hurt the governor's feelin's if you asked him or anybody else how he got the nime of Gripes."

Let a man but feel lonely, and his mind immediately harks along the back trail of the past. In his lonely week Lewis frequently found himself thinking back. It was only by thinking back that he could stay in the flat at all. Now for the first time he realized that he had been stepping through life with seven-league boots. The future could not possibly hold for him the tremendous distances of his past. How far he had come since that first dim day at Consolation Cottage!

To every grown-up there is a dim day that marks the beginning of things, the first remembered day of childhood. Lewis could not fasten on any memory older than the memory of a rickety cab, a tall, gloomy man, and then a white-clad group on the steps of Consolation Cottage. Black mammy, motherly Mrs. Leighton, curly-headed Shenton, and little Natalie, with her 'wumpled' skirt, who had stood on tiptoe to put her lips to his, appeared before him now as part of the dawn of life.

As he looked back, he saw that the sun had risen hot on his day of life. It had struck down Shenton, blasted the Reverend Orme, withered Ann Leighton, and had turned plump little Natalie's body into a thin, wiry home for hope. Natalie had always demanded joy even of little things. Did she still demand it? Where was Natalie? Lewis asked himself the question and felt a twinge of self-reproach. Life had been so full for him that he had not stopped to think how empty it might be for Natalie, his friend.

How little he had done to trace her! Only the one letter. He decided to write again, this time to Dom Francisco. If only he could talk to Natalie, what long tours it would take to tell and to hear all! A faint flush of anticipation was rising to his cheeks when a rap on the door startled him. Before he could look around Nelton announced, "A lady to see you, sir."

Lewis leaped to his feet and stepped forward. Had one of the miracles he had been taught to believe in come to pass? Had prayer been answered? The lady raised her arms and started to take off her veil. Then she turned her back to Lewis.

"Do untie it for me," she drawled in the slow voice of Lady Violet Manerlin.

Lewis felt his face fall, and was glad she had her back to him. He undid her veil with steady, leisurely fingers.

"This is awfully good of you," he said. "How did you know I was alone?"

"Telephoned Nelton, and told him not to say anything."

Vi took off her hat and jacket as well as her veil, and tossed the lot into a chair. Then she sat down in a corner of the big couch before the fire, doubled one foot under her, tapped the floor with the other, and yawned. Lewis offered her a cigarette, took one himself, and then shared a match with her.

"It's good of you to take it so calmly," said Vi. "Are you one of the fools that must always have an explanation? I'll give you one, if you like."

"Don't bother," said Lewis, smiling. "You've been bored—horribly bored. You looked out of the window, and saw the green things in the park, and remembered that there was only one bit in your list of humanity as green and fresh as they, and you headed straight for it."

"Yes," drawled Vi, "like a cow making for the freshest tuft of grass in the pasture. Thanks; but I'm almost sorry you told me why I came. That's the disappointing thing to us women. When we think we're doing something original, somebody with a brain comes along and reduces it to first elements, and we find we've only been natural."

Lewis straddled a chair, folded his arms on the back of it, and looked Vi over with a professional eye. She was posed for a painter, not for a sculptor, but even so he found her worth looking at. A woman can't sit on one foot, tap the floor with the other, and lean back, without showing the lines of her body.

"Mere length," said Lewis, "is a great handicap to a woman, but add proportion to length, and you have the essentials of beauty. Short and pretty; long and beautiful. D'you get that? A short woman may be beautiful as a table decoration, but let her stand up or lie down and, presto! she's just pretty."

Vi reached out one long arm toward the fire, and nicked off the ash from her cigarette. She tried to hide the tremor that Lewis's words brought to her limbs and the color that his frankly admiring eyes brought to the pallor of her cheeks. She was a woman that quivered under admiration.

"Have you never—don't you ever kiss women?" she asked, looking at him with slanted eyes.

Lewis shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, I suppose so. That is—well, to tell you the truth, I don't remember."

For a second Vi stared at him; then she laughed, and he laughed with her.

"Oh! oh!" she cried, "I believe you're telling the truth!"

They sat and talked. Nelton brought in tea; then they sat and talked some more. A distant bell boomed seven o'clock. Vi started, rose slowly to her feet, and stretched.

"Have you got your invitation for the Ruttle-Marter fancy-dress ball next week?" she asked, stifling a yawn.

"No," said Lewis; "don't know 'em."

"That doesn't matter," said Vi. "I'll see that you get a card to-morrow. I'd like you to come. Nobody is supposed to know it, but I'm going to dance. Will you come?"

"Oh, yes," said Lewis, rising; "I'll come. I've been a bit lonely since dad went away." Then he smiled. "So I was wrong, after all."

"Wrong?" said Vi, staring at him, "When, how?"

"This is what you really came for—to ask me to see you dance," he said, laughing.

"Oh, was it?" said Vi. "I'm always wondering why I do things. Well, I suppose I'd better go, but I hate to. I've been so comfy here. If you'd only press me, I might stay for dinner."

Lewis shook his head.

"Better not."

"Why?"

"Well, you're married, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Vi, grimly, her eyes narrowing.

"Well," said Lewis, "you've heard dad talk. He says marriage is just an insurance policy to the mind of woman."

"Yes," said Vi, "and that the best place to keep it is away from the fire. Your dad's insight is simply weird. But if you think you're going to start on life where he left off, let me tell you you'll be chewing a worn-out cud."

Lewis laughed.

"You would be right if I were to live life over on his lines. But I won't. He doesn't want me to. He never said so, but I just know."

Vi shrugged her shoulders.

"You have a lot of sense," she said. "There's nothing women dislike more. Good-by." She held out her hand and stepped toward him. She seemed to misjudge the distance and half lose her balance. The full length of her quivering body came up against Lewis. He felt her hot, sweet breath almost on his mouth. He flushed. His arms started up from his sides and then dropped again.

"Touch and go!" he gasped.

"Which?" drawled Vi, her mouth almost on his, her wide, gray eyes so near that he closed his to save himself from blindness.

"Better make it 'go,'" said Lewis, and grinned.

"You've saved yourself," said Vi, with a laugh. "If you hadn't grinned, I'd have kissed you."



CHAPTER XXIX

Lewis went to the Ruttle-Marter ball determined to be gay. He searched for Vi, but did not find her. By twelve o'clock he had to admit that he was more than bored, and said so to a neighbor.

"That's impossible," said the neighbor, yawning. "Boredom is an ultimate. There's nothing beyond it; consequently, you can't be more than bored."

"You're wrong," said Lady Derl from behind them. "For a man there's always something beyond boredom: there's going home."

"Touche," cried Lewis and then suddenly straightened. While they had been chatting, the curtain of the improvised stage at one end of the ball-room had gone up. In the center of the stage stood a figure that Lewis would have recognized at once even if he had not been a participant in the secret.

The figure was that of a tall woman. Her dark hair—and there was plenty of it—was done in the Greek style. So were her clothes, if such filmy draperies could be justly termed clothes. They were caught up under her breasts, and hung in airy loops to a little below her knees. They were worn so skilfully that art did not appear. They fluttered about her softly moving limbs, but never flew. The woman was apparently blindfolded—with chiffon. The foamy bandage proved an efficient mask. Chiffon and draperies were of that color known to connoisseurs as cuisse de nymphe.

A buzz of interested questioning swept over the company. Mrs. Ruttle-Marter, who had been quite abandoned for over an hour, suddenly found herself the center of a curious and eager group.

"Who is she?" "What is she?" "Where did you get her?"

The trembling hostess, flushed by the first successful moment in many dreary seasons, was almost too gulpy to speak. But words came at last.

"Really, my dear Duchess, I don't know who she is. I don't know where she comes from or what she is. I only know her price and the name of her dance. If I told the price, well, there wouldn't be any rush in this crowd to engage her." So early did power lead the long-suffering Mrs. Ruttle-Marter to lap at revenge!

"Well, tell us the name of her dance, anyway," said a tall, soldierly gray-head that was feeling something for the first time in twenty years. "Do hurry! She's going to begin."

"I can do that," said Mrs. Ruttle-Marter. "Her dance is called 'Love is blind.'"

"Love is blind," repeated Lewis to Lady Derl. "Let's see what she makes of it."

People did not note just when the music began. They suddenly realized it. It was so with Vi's dance. So gradually did her body sway into motion that somebody who had been staring at her from the moment she appeared whispered, "Why, she's dancing!" only when the first movement was nearing its close.

The music was doubly masked. It was masked behind the wings and behind the dance. It did not seem interwoven with movement, but appeared more as a soft background of sound to motion. So it remained through all the first part of the dance which followed unerringly all the traditions of Greek classicism, depending for expression entirely on swaying arms and body.

"Who would have thought it!" whispered Lewis. "To do something well at a range of two thousand years! That's more than art; it's genius."

"It's not genius," whispered back Lady Derl; "it's just body. What's more, I think I recognize the body."

"Well," said Lewis, "what if you do? Play the game."

"So I'm right, eh? Oh, I'll play the game, and hate her less into the bargain."

So suddenly that it startled, came a crashing chord. The dancer quivered from head to foot, became very still, as though she listened to a call, and then swirled into the rhythm of the music. The watchers caught their breath and held it. The new movement was alien to anything the marbled halls of Greece are supposed to have seen; yet it held a haunting reminder, as though classicism had suddenly given birth to youth.

The music swelled and mounted. So did the dance. Wave followed on ripple, sea on wave, and on the sea the foaming, far-flung billow. Limb after limb, the whole supple body of the blind dancer came into play; yet there was no visible tension. Never dead, never hard, but limp,—as limp as flowing, rushing water,—she whirled and swayed through all the emotions until, at the highest pitch of the mounting music, she fell prone, riven by a single, throbbing sob. Down came the curtain. The music faded away in a long, descending sweep.

Men shouted hoarsely, unaware of what they were crying out, and women for once clapped to make a noise, and split their gloves. A youth, his hair disordered and a hectic flush in his cheeks, rushed straight for the stage, crying, "Who is she?"

Lewis stuck out his foot and tripped him. Great was his fall, and the commotion thereof switched the emotions of the throng back to sanity. Conventional, dogged clapping and shouts of "Bis! Bis!" were relied on to bring the curtain up again, and relied on in vain. Once more Mrs. Ruttle-Marter was surrounded and beseeched to use her best efforts. As she acceded, a servant handed Lewis a scribbled note. "Come and take me out of this. Vi," he read. He slipped out behind the servant.

In the cab they were silent for a long time. Lewis's eyes kept wandering over Vi, conventional once more, and lazing in her corner.

"Well," she drawled at last, "what did you think of it?"

"Think of it?" said Lewis. "There were three times when I wanted to shout, 'Hold that pose!' After that—well, after that my brain stopped working."

"Do you mean it?" asked Vi.

"Mean what?"

"About wanting me to hold a pose."

"Yes," said Lewis; "of course. What of it?"

"What of it? Why, I will. When?"

"Do you mean it?" asked Lewis.

Vi nodded.

"Name your own time."

"To-morrow," said Vi, "at ten."

The following morning Lewis was up early, putting his great, bare studio in fitting order, and trying to amplify and secure the screened-in corner which previous models had frequently damned as a purely tentative dressing-room. Promptly at ten Vi appeared.

"Where's your maid?" asked Lewis. "You've simply got to have a maid along for this sort of thing."

"You're wrong," said Vi. "It's just the sort of thing one doesn't have a maid for. It's easier to trust two to keep quiet than to keep a maid from vain imaginings. And—it's a lot less expensive."

"Well," said Lewis, "where's your costume?"

"Here," said Vi, "in my recticule."

They laughed. Ten minutes later Vi appeared in her filmy costume. Lewis's face no longer smiled. He was sitting on a bench at the farther end of the room, solemnly smoking a pipe. He did not seem to notice that Vi's whole body was suffused, nervous.

"Dance," said Lewis.

Vi hesitated a moment and then danced, at first a little stiffly. But her mind gradually concentrated on her movements; she began to catch the impersonal working atmosphere of a model.

"Hold that!" cried Lewis, and, a second later: "No, that will never do. You've stiffened. Try again."

Over and over Vi tried to catch the pose and keep it until, without a word, she crossed the room, threw herself on a couch, and began to cry from pure exhaustion. When she had partly recovered, she suddenly awoke to the fact that Lewis had not come to comfort her. She looked up. Lewis was still sitting on the bench. He was filling a fresh pipe.

"Blown over?" he asked casually. "Come on. At it again."

At the end of another half-hour Vi gave up the struggle. She had caught the pose twice, but she had been unable to hold it.

"I give it up," she wailed. "I'll simply never be able to stay that way."

"If you were a professional dancer," said Lewis, "I'd say 'nonsense' to that. But you're not. I'm afraid it would take you weeks, perhaps months, to get the stamina. Take it easy now while I make some tea."

"Tea in the morning!" said Vi. "I can't stand it. I'd rather have a glass of port or something like that."

"I've no doubt you would, but you're not going to get it," said Lewis, calmly, as he went about the business of brewing tea.

Vi finished her first cup, and asked for a second.

"It's quite a bracer, after all," she said. "I feel a lot better." She rose and went to the model's throne at one side of the room. "Is this where they stand?" she asked.

Lewis nodded.

Vi climbed the throne, and took a pose. Her face was turned from Lewis, her right arm half outstretched, her left at her side. She was in the act of stepping. Her long left thigh was salient, yet withdrawing. It was the pose of one who leads the way.

"This is the pose you will do me in," she said.

For a moment Lewis was silent, then he said gravely:

"No, you don't really want me to do you that way."

"I do, and you will," said Vi, without looking around.

For another long moment Lewis was silent.

"All right," he said at last. "Come down. Dress yourself. You've had enough for to-day."



CHAPTER XXX

Weeks passed. Lewis worked steadily at his figure of Vi. From the time the wires had been set and the rough clay slapped on them, he had never allowed her to see the figure.

"It's no use asking," he said. "You're no master at this art. The workman who shows unfinished stuff to anybody but a master is a fool."

"Well, when, then?" asked Vi, impatiently, after weeks had lengthened to months.

"Almost any day now," said Lewis; but before 'any day' came around, something happened that materially delayed the satisfaction of Vi's curiosity.

Lady Derl had frequently drafted Lewis into dinners that she thought would be stupid for her without him. As a result, the inevitable in London happened. It became a habit to invite Lewis when Lady Derl was coming. He never took her in,—her rank and position made that impossible,—but he was there, somewhere at the lower end of the table, where she could watch him when she felt bored and occasionally read in the astonished faces of his neighbors the devastation he had caused by some remark; for Lewis, like his father, had a way of saying things. The difference was that Leighton's mots were natural and malicious, while Lewis's were only natural. On the whole, Lewis created the greater sensation.

The night after Lewis had said "Almost any day now" to Vi, he found himself at a semi-diplomatic dinner next to a young person who, like himself, seemed to find the affair a bit heavy.

"What did they invite you for?" asked Lewis.

"They couldn't help it," replied the young person, stifling a yawn. "I'm the wife of the charge of the Brazilian legation. And you?"

"Oh, I'm here just to take Lady Derl home."

The young person's eyes showed a gleam of interest as they glanced up the table to where Lady Derl sat and reigned an easy queen in that assembly.

"Oh," she said, "are you? Why you?"

"Well," said Lewis, "I suppose it's because I'm the only man in town that always remembers Lady Derl's beauty and gray hair at the same time."

The young person smiled.

"I believe I've heard of you. Leighton is your name, isn't it?"

"It's only five minutes since I was introduced," said Lewis, smiling, "and you made me say it over three times."

"Ah, yes," said the lady, unperturbed, "but five minutes is a long time—sometimes. Is Leighton a common name?"

"Not as common as some," said Lewis. "Why?"

"Nothing, only I know some Leightons in Brazil."

Lady Derl saw Lewis start, and quickly lay down his fork. She watched in vain through the rest of that dinner for a conversational sensation at his end of the table. When they were in the carriage and on the way home she asked:

"Well, what was it?"

"What was what?" said Lewis, out of a reverie.

"What did that Senhora What's-her-name have to tell you that made you forget to eat?"

"She was telling me about an old pal of mine," said Lewis. "Did dad ever tell you where he found me?"

"Yes," said Lady Derl; "he said he found you in the geometrical center of nowhere, surrounded by equal parts of wilderness."

"That's what he thought," said Lewis; "but there was a home tucked into the wilderness. It had been my home for a great many years. People had been kind to me there—Mrs. Leighton; Natalie, my pal; an old darky named just mammy; and, in a way, the Reverend Orme. After I'd been away a year, I wrote back. They had gone. I've just found out where they are, all but the Reverend Orme. I reckon he must be dead."

"And you're going to write?"

"Write?" said Lewis. "No, I'm not going to write. I'm just going." For a moment they were silent, then he said, "There's something about hearing of people what were kind to you that makes you feel awfully lonely."

Lady Derl reached out and took his hand. Their hands lay together on his knee. The drive came to an end, and they had said nothing more. As they stood under the light of the outer hall Helene turned to Lewis.

"When are you going?"

"To-morrow."

She held up her lips to him.

"Kiss me good-by, Boy."

He kissed her, and for a moment gripped her wrists.

"Helene," he said, "you've been awfully good to me, too. I—I don't forget."

"You don't forget," repeated Lady Derl. "That's why I kissed you. Don't be hard on your little pal when you find her. Remember, you've gone a long way alone."

As Lewis strode away rapidly toward the flat, the fragrance of Helene clung to him. It clung to him so long that he forgot Vi—forgot even to leave a note for her explaining his sudden departure. When he reached Santos, three weeks later, it didn't seem worth while to cable.

As Lewis stepped out of the station at San Paulo, he felt himself in a dream. He crossed the street into the public gardens and looked back. He had never seen a station like that. It was beautiful. It had the spirit of a cathedral raised by some pagan as a shrine to the commercial age. Had the railroad bred a dreamer?

Several motor-cars for hire lined the curb. Lewis stepped up to one of the drivers.

"How did they come to build that?" he asked in Portuguese, with a nod toward the station.

The driver shrugged his shoulders.

"Too much money," he said. "The charter limits them to twenty-five per cent, profits. They had such a surplus, they told the architect he could go as high as he liked. He went pretty high." The driver winked at his own joke, but did not smile.

"I want you by the hour," said Lewis. "Do you know Mrs. Leighton's house—Street of the Consolation?"

The driver shook his head.

"There's no such house," he said.

"Well, you know the Street of the Consolation? Drive there. Drive slowly."

On the way Lewis stared, unbelieving, at the things he saw. Gone were the low, thick-walled buildings that memory had prepared him for; gone the funny little street-cars drawn by galloping, jack-rabbit mules. In their stead were high, imposing fronts, with shallow doorways and heavy American electric trams.

The car shot out upon a mighty viaduct. Lewis leaned out and looked down. Here was something that he could remember—the valley that split the city in two, and up and down the sides of which he had often toiled as a boy. Suddenly they were across, and a monster building blotted all else from his sight. He looked up at the massive pile. "What is it?" he asked.

"Theater built by the state," answered the driver, without looking around. "Cost millions."

"Reis?" asked Lewis, smiling.

"Reis? Bah!" grunted the driver. "Pounds."

The street left the level and started to climb. Lewis looked anxiously to right and left. He saw a placard that read, "Street of the Consolation."

"Stop!" he cried.

The driver drew up at the curb.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"This isn't the Street of the Consolation," said Lewis, dismayed. "Where's the big cotton-tree and the priest's house, and—and the bamboos? Where are the bamboos?"

The driver looked around curiously.

"I remember them, the bamboos," he said, nodding. "They're gone."

"Wait here," said Lewis.

He stepped out of the car and started to walk slowly up the hill. He felt a strange sinking of the heart. In his day there had been no sidewalk, only a clay path, beaten hard by the feet of three children on their way to school. In his day the blank row of houses had been a mud taipa wall, broken just here by the little gate of the priest's house. In his day there had been that long, high-plumed bank of bamboos, forever swaying and creaking, behind the screen of which had lain the wonder realm of childhood.

He came to the spot where the gate to Consolation Cottage had been. The old wooden gate and the two friendly, square brick pillars on which it had swung were gone; but in their stead rose a wondrous structure of scrolled wrought iron between two splendid granite shafts.

Lewis stood on tiptoe and gazed through the gate, up the driveway, to where Consolation Cottage had once stood. Through the tepid haze of a beautiful tropical garden he saw a high villa. It did not look back at him. It seemed to be watching steadily from its hilltop the spread of the mighty city in the valley below.

Lewis was brought to himself with a start. Somebody behind him cried out, "O-la!" He turned to find two impatient horses almost on top of him. A footman was springing from his place beside the coachman to open the gate.

Lewis stepped aside. In the smart victoria sat a lady alone. She was dressed in white, and wore a great, black picture-hat. Lewis glanced at her face. He recognized the Anglo-Saxon pallor. Out of the dead-white shone two dark eyes, unnaturally bright. He raised his hat.

"I beg your pardon," he began in English.

The gate had swung open. The horses were plunging on the taut reins. The lady drew her skirts in at her side and nodded. Lewis stepped into the carriage. The horses shot forward and up the drive.



CHAPTER XXXI

"It was the only way," said the lady as Lewis handed her out of the carriage. "The horses wouldn't wait, once the gates were open. What did you wish to say?"

"I—I wanted to ask you about the Leightons," stammered Lewis. "They used to live here. That is—"

"I know," said the lady. "Come up on the veranda."

That veranda made Consolation Cottage seem farther away than ever to Lewis. Its floor was tiled. Its roof was cleverly arranged to give a pergola effect. It was quite vine-covered. The vines hid the glass that made it rain-proof. In one corner rugs were placed, wicker chairs, a swinging book-rack, and a tea-table. The lady motioned to Lewis to sit down. She sat down herself and started drawing off her long gloves. She looked curiously at Lewis's face.

"You're a Leighton yourself, aren't you? Some relative to Mrs. Leighton and Natalie?"

Lewis nodded.

"A cousin in some Scotch degree to Natalie," he said; "I don't know just what." Then he turned his eyes frankly on her.

"Where are they—Mrs. Leighton and—and Natalie?"

"They are gone," said the lady. "They sold out here almost a year ago and went back to the States. I have the address somewhere. I'll get it for you." She went, but was back in a moment.

"Thanks," said Lewis. He did not look at her any more or around him. His eyes fixed vaguely on distance, as one's eyes do when the mind tells them they are not wanted.

The lady sat perfectly still and silent. The silence grew and grew until by its own weight it suddenly brought Lewis back to the present and confusion. He colored. His lips were opening in apology when the lady spoke.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

Lewis gave her a grateful look.

"I've been playing about the old place," he said, smiling. "Not alone. Natalie, Shenton, and I. We've been racing through the pineapple-patch, lying on our backs under an orange-tree, visiting the stables, and—and Manoel's little house, hiding in the bramble-patch, and peeking over the priest's wall." Lewis waved his hand at the scene that made his words so incongruous. "Sounds to you like rank nonsense, I suppose."

The lady shook her head.

"No," she said—"no, it doesn't sound like nonsense."

Then he asked her about Natalie. She told him many little things. At the end she said:

"I feel that I've told you nothing. Natalie is one of those persons that we generally call a 'queer girl' because we haven't the intelligence or the expression to define them. Our local wit said that she was a girl whom every man considered himself good enough for, but that considered herself too good for any man. That was unjust, but it sounded true because sooner or later all the eligibles lined up before Natalie—and in vain." The lady frowned. "But she wasn't selfish or hard. She used to let them hang on till they just dropped off. She was one of those women that nothing surprises. Her train was made up of the ugly and the handsome—bore, prude, wit, and libertine. She gave them all something; you could feel it. I think she got tired of giving and never taking."

"Is she so beautiful?" asked Lewis.

"Beautiful? Oh, no," said the lady, and then suddenly stopped and straightened. She laughed. "Now I look back on it all, it seems she must be beautiful, but—but I know she isn't. Now I'm talking nonsense."

"No, you 're not," said Lewis. "There are women like that." He reached out for his hat and stick.

"You're not going?" said the lady. "You'll stay to tea?"

Lewis shook his head.

"You've been very kind," he said, "but I must be going."

Without rising, she took the hand that he held out and then sat and watched his erect figure swing down the drive to the gate. Suddenly she remembered him. They had been together in school. She did not call him back. Bores are people that misjudge the values of impressions. The lady was not a bore; she was a wise woman.

By traveling overland to Rio, Lewis caught the newest and finest of the big steam-packets plying between Buenos Aires and Southampton. This old world of his had been moving apace in more ways than one. The years since, with his father, he had made this same trip were comparatively few, but during them progress had more than taken a long stride; it had crossed a line.

He dressed for dinner at eight. As he stepped into the dining-room, he paused and stared. It was like walking into some smart London restaurant after the theater. Gone were the long ship-boards at which for generations human beings had been lined up like cattle at a trough. In their place were scattered small tables, round and square, of a capacity varying from two to eight.

Around the tables wealth rioted. There were wealthy coffee-planters, who spent a yearly fortune on their annual trip to Paris, surrounded by their wives and such of their offspring as were old enough to escape the nursery table; planters, sheep- and cattle-men from the Argentine, some of them married, all accompanied; and women. Lewis had never before seen so many beautiful women at one time. It was the boat of the season. Over all hung an atmosphere of vintage wines.

Lewis was shown to a seat at a table for two. His vis-a-vis was a rare, lonely little man. The black studs in his shirt seemed to explain him. He was sour and morose till he found Lewis could speak French, then he bubbled over with information. It transpired that the room was alive with situations.

"This is a crowded boat, but see the lady over there?"

Lewis's eyes followed the speaker's backward nod. He saw a remarkably beautiful blonde in evening dress sitting alone at a table for four. She kept her eyes steadily on her plate.

"We call her the Duchess," continued the little man. "She belongs to De la Valla, the sugar king. He's got his daughters with him, so she had to sit at another table, and he paid four passages for her so she'd be kept alone."

Lewis nodded politely.

"Now slant your eyes over my left shoulder," continued the little man.

To Lewis's surprise, he saw another beautiful woman, a bright-eyed brunette, sitting alone at a table for four. He turned, interested, to his table companion for the explanation.

"Ah-ha!" said the little man, "you begin to wake up. That, my friend, is Mlle. Folly Delaires. She's been playing in Buenos Aires. When she saw people staring at the Duchess, she stepped up to the purser's office and laid down the cash for a table for four. At first we thought it was just vanity and a challenge, but we know her better now. She's just the devil of mischief and several other things in the flesh. We ought all to be grateful for her."

Lewis looked curiously at Mlle. Delaires. He watched to see her get up. She passed close to him. She did not have the height that his training had taught him was essential to beauty, but she had certain attributes that made one suddenly class height with other bloodless statistics. From her crown of brown hair to her tiny slippers she was alive. Vitality did not radiate from her, but it seemed to lurk, like a constant, in her whole body and in her every supple movement. Lewis did not see it, but she was of the type that forever takes and never gives.

As she passed close by him he felt an utterly new sensation, as though he were standing in a garden of narcotics, and lassitude were stealing through his limbs. When she had gone, a single memory clung to him—the memory of the wonderful texture of her skin. He had read in a child's book of physiology that our skin breathes. The affirmation had meant nothing to him beyond mechanics; now, suddenly, it meant much. He had seen, felt, this woman's skin breathe, and its breath had been like the fragrance of a flower.

For the first time in his life Lewis looked on woman with blind eyes. During almost three weeks the years that he had lived in familiar contact with women stood him in good stead. He never spoke to the bright-eyed rival to the Duchess, but he watched her from afar. Men swarmed about her. She stood them as long as they amused her, and then would suddenly shake them all off. There were days when she would let no one come near her. There was no day when any man could say he had been favored above another.

Then came an evening when Lewis had dressed unusually early and slipped up to the boat-deck to cool off before dinner. He sat down on a bench and half closed his eyes. When he opened them again he saw a woman—the woman, Folly Delaires—standing with her back to him at the rail. He had not heard or seen her come. Almost without volition he arose and stepped to the rail. He leaned on it beside her. She did not move away.

"I want to kiss you," said Lewis, and trembled as he heard his own words.

The woman did not start. She turned her face slowly toward his.

"And I want you to," she said.



CHAPTER XXXII

Within two weeks of Lewis's departure for South America, Leighton returned from his shooting-trip. Despite the fact that he had not written telling Lewis he was coming, he felt a great chagrin at finding the flat deserted except for the ever-faithful Nelton.

"Where's the boy?" was Leighton's first question. Even as he stepped across the threshold he felt that he stepped into an empty house.

"South America," said Nelton, relieving his master of hat, stick, and gloves.

"South America!" cried Leighton, dismayed, and then smiled. "Well, he's getting his dad's tricks early. What for?"

"Don't know, sir. Mr. Lewis said as you'd get it from her ladyship."

Lady Derl was out of town. Leighton followed her, stayed two days, decided her momentary entourage was not to his taste, and returned to London. He reached the flat in the afternoon, just in time to receive a caller. The caller was Vi.

"Hallo!" said Leighton as Nelton showed her in, "this is fortune. Take off your things and stay."

"I will—some of them," drawled Vi; "but not just yet." She sat down.

"What on earth are you doing in town?" asked Leighton.

"Well," said Vi, "up to three weeks ago I was here at the beck and call of your son. Then he suddenly took French leave." She turned and faced Leighton. "Where has he gone? It isn't like one of you to be rude in little things."

"I don't think Lew meant to be rude," said Leighton. "He's gone to South America. He heard about some cousins he 'd lost track of, and he just bolted the next morning."

"Cousins!" said Vi. "I didn't know any one still went in for family ties to the extent of South America, short of a fat death."

"No," said Leighton, smiling; there's no money in this trip. Why were you at his beck and call?"

"Model," said Vi, coolly. "He's been doing me."

"Doing you!" said Leighton, looking at her curiously.

"There, there," said Vi, "don't let your imagination run away with you. Not in the nude. By the way, can you let me have the key? I left something in the studio, and I didn't like to go to Nelton."

"Certainly," said Leighton. "I'll walk by there with you."

Vi gave a shrug of protest, but Leighton's back was already turned. He fetched the key, and together they walked over to Lewis's atelier. When they had climbed the stairs and were at the door, Vi said a little breathlessly and without a drawl:

"Do you mind very much not coming in? I won't be but a minute."

Leighton glanced at her, surprised. "Not at all," he said, and handed her the key. He took out a cigarette and lit it as she opened the door and closed it behind her. He started pacing up and down the bare hall. Presently he grew impatient, and glanced at his watch; then he stopped short in his tracks. From behind the closed door came unmistakably the sound of a woman sobbing.

Leighton did not hesitate. He threw open the door and walked in. Except for Vi, curled up in a little heap on the couch, the atelier was very still, vast, somber. In its center shone a patch of light. In the patch of light, on a low working pedestal, stood a statue. On the floor were a tumbled cloth and a fallen screen. Leighton stood stock-still and stared.

The sculptured figure was that of a woman veiled in draperies that were merely suggested. Her face, from where Leighton stood, was turned away. Her right arm was half outstretched, her left hung at her side, but it was peculiarly turned, as though to draw the watcher on. Then there was the left thigh. Once the eye fell on that, all else was forgotten. Into this sinking sweep had gone all the artist's terrific force of expression and suggestion. No live man would have thought of the figure as "Woman Leading the Way," once his eyes had fallen on that thigh. To such a one the statue named itself with a single flash to the brain, and the name it spoke was "Invitation."

Leighton's first impulse was one of unbounded admiration—the admiration we give to unbounded power. Then realization and a frown began to come slowly to his face. Vi, crumpled up on the couch, and sobbing hard, dry sobs,—the sobs that bring age,—-helped him to realization. Lewis, his boy, had done a base thing.

Without moving, Leighton glanced about the room till his eyes fell on the mallet. Then he stepped quickly to it, picked it up, and crossed to the statue. Beneath his quick blows the brittle clay fell from the skeleton wires in great, jagged chunks. With his foot he crushed a few of them to powder. He tossed the mallet aside, and glanced at Vi. She was still crying, but she had half risen at the sound of his blows, and was staring at him through wet eyes.

Leighton started walking up and down, the frown still on his brow. Finally he came to a stop before the couch.

"Vi," he said—"Vi, listen! You must tell me something. It isn't a fair question, but never mind that."

She lifted a tear-stained face.

"Vi," said Leighton, tensely, "did he follow?"

Vi raised herself on her arms and stared at him for a moment before she gasped:

"You fool, do you suppose I would have cared if he had followed?" Then shame gripped her, and she threw herself full-length again, face down. Her shoulders shook, but she made no sound.

Leighton waited half an hour. He spent the time walking up and down and smoking cigarettes. He was no longer frowning. At the end of the half-hour he caught Vi by the arms and lifted her to her feet.

"Come on," he said.

Vi stared at him as one half-awakened.

"I don't want to go anywhere," she said. "I'm very well here."

"Nonsense!" said Leighton, "you don't realize what you're doing to yourself. On my word, you look positively puttyish."

"Puttyish!" cried Vi, a flush of anger rising to her face. "Grapes, you're brutal! Since when have you learned to trample on a woman?"

"That's better," said Leighton, coolly. "I thought it would rouse you a bit."

Vi almost smiled at herself. She laid her hand on Leighton's arm and turned him toward the door.

"And they still say that no man knows women," she said. She paused and looked back at the fragments of the statue. Her lips twisted. "Even boys," she added, "pick out our naked souls and slap them in our faces."

As they walked slowly toward the flat, Vi said:

"I know why you had to ask that question. I'm glad you did. You were misjudging Lew. But you can be sure of one thing: no one but us three ever saw that statue; I know now that no one but just Lew and myself were ever meant to see it. He didn't want to model me that way. When I asked for it, he hesitated, then suddenly he gave in." She paused for a moment, then she added, "I believe it's part of a man's job to know when to trample on women."



CHAPTER XXXIII

It was night at the flat. There was just chill enough in the air to justify a cozy little fire. Through the open windows came the low hum of London, subdued by walls and distance to the pitch of a friendly accompaniment to talk. In two great leathern chairs, half facing each other, Vi and Leighton sat down, the fire between them.

They had been silent for a long time. Vi had been twisting her fingers, staring at them. Her lips were half open and mobile. She was even flushed. Suddenly she locked her hands and leaned forward.

"Grapes," she said without a drawl, "I have seen myself. It is terrible. Nothing is left."

Leighton rose and stepped into his den. He came back slowly with two pictures in his hands.

"Look at these," he said. "If you were ten years older, you'd only have to glance at them, and they'd open a door to memory."

Vi gazed at the pictures, small paintings of two famous Spanish dancers. One was beautiful, languorous, carnal; the other was neither languorous nor carnal despite her wonderful body, and she was certainly not beautiful. Vi laid the second picture down and held the first. Then almost unconsciously she reached out her hand for the discarded picture. Gradually the face that was not beautiful drew her until attention grew into absorption. The portrait of the languorous beauty fell to her lap and then slipped to the floor, face down. Leighton laughed.

Vi glanced up.

"Why?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," said Leighton, "except that the effect those pictures had on you is an exact parallel to the way the two originals influenced men. For that——" Leighton waved a hand at the picture on the floor—"men gave all they possessed in the way of worldly goods, and then Wondered why they'd done it. But for her—the one you 're looking at——"

He broke off. "You never heard of De Larade? De Larade spent all of his short life looking for animate beauty, and worshiping it when he found it. But he died leaning too far over a balcony to pick a flower for the Woman you're staring at."

"Why?" asked Vi again. "You knew her, of course. Tell me about her."

"I'm going to," said Leighton. "The first time I saw her on the stage she seemed to me merely an extra-graceful and extra-sensuous Spanish dancer. Nothing to rave over, nothing to stimulate a jaded palate. I could have met her; I decided I didn't want to. Later on I did meet her, not in her dressing-room, but at a house where she was the last person I expected to see."

Leighton picked up a cigarette, lighted it, and sat down.

"The place ought to have protected her," he continued, "but when you've seen two thirds of a woman's body, it takes a lot of atmosphere to make you forget it. We were in a corner by ourselves. I can't remember just what I did. Probably laid my hand on her arm with intent. Well, Vi, she didn't thrill the way your blood and mine has thrilled an occasion. She just shrank. Then she frowned, and the frown made her look really ugly. 'Don't forget,' she whispered to me, 'that I'm a married woman. I never forget it—not for one minute.'"

Leighton blew a cloud of smoke at the fire. It twisted into wreaths and whirled up the chimney.

"Quite a facer, eh?" he went on. "But it didn't down me. It only woke me up. 'Have you ever had a man sit down with you beside him and hold you so,' I asked her, 'with your back to his knees, your head in his hands and his eyes and his mouth close to yours—a man that wasn't trying to get to a single goal, but was content to linger with you in the land of dreams?'

"Believe me, Vi, the soul of a pure woman that every man thinks he has a right to make love to is the shyest of all souls. Such a woman sheds innuendo and actions with the proverbial ease of a duck disposing of a shower. But just words—the right words—will bring tears to her eyes. Well, I'd stumbled on the right words."

"'No,' she said, with a far-away look, 'I've never had a man hold me like that. Why?'"

"'Why?' I said, 'Because I will—some day.'"

"'You!'"

"I can't give you all the derision she put into that 'you!' Then her face and her eyes went as hard as flint. 'Money?' she asked, and I answered, 'No; love.'"

Leighton looked at his cigarette end and flipped it into the fire.

"She laughed, of course, and when she laughed she became to me the most unattainable and consequently the most desirable of women. I was at that age.

"Well, to cut the story short, I went mad over her, but it wasn't the madness that loses its head. It was just cunning—the cunning with a touch of fanaticism that always reaches its goal. I laid seige to her by day and by night, and at last, one day, she sent for me. She was alone; I could see that she meant us to be alone. She made me sit down. She stood in front of me. To my eyes she had become beautiful. I wanted her, really wanted her.

"What she said was this: 'I've sent for you because, if you keep on, you're going to win. No, don't get up. Before you keep on, I want to tell you something about myself—about what I believe with all my soul. I don't have to tell you that I'm a good woman; you know it. The first time you saw me dance you were rather disgusted, weren't you? I nodded. 'What do you think of my dancing now?"

"I remember my answer to that. It was: 'You possess people gradually, you hold them forever. It's more than personality with you, it's power.'

"Her eyes were fastened on me. They drew mine. 'That's right,' she said; 'look at me. I want you to look at me. You see I'm an ugly woman.' I cried out in protest, and I meant it. Her face went suddenly hard. 'You fool,' she said, 'say that I'm pretty—say it now!' And I cried out at her, 'Not when you look like that. But you can assume beauty. You know it.'

"She seemed to pause in her thoughts at that and smiled. 'Can I—for you?' she asked in a way that made her divine. Then she jerked herself back. 'I'm an ugly woman. My body is wonderful. Look!' She raised her long arms, which were bare, gave a half-turn, and glanced at me over her shoulder. An apparently simple movement, but it was consummate in grace and display. 'You see?' she said, with a flashing smile. Then she turned and stood stolidly. 'I didn't have a body worth speaking of once. What I've got I made—every bit of it.'

"She sat down sidewise on a chair, folded her arms on the back of it, and looked at me over them. 'I have that power you were speaking of. Do you know just in what consists a woman's power over a man? I'll tell you: in keeping eternally just one thing that he wants.'

"She paused a long time on that, then she went on: 'Some women hold their own in the world and their men by beauty, others by wit, others by culture, breeding, and occasionally there's a woman clever enough to hold her place and her man by wealth. I've got none of these things. I've got only one great gift of God by which I hold my power. When that's gone, all is gone. Wise people have told me so. I know it is true.' She rose slowly, came and stood close beside me. 'It's—it's this—that I'm still my own. Do you want to—to rob me?"

Leighton paused, staring into the fire.

"That was the time," he said, "I went off on my longest shooting-trip. I never saw her again." He looked up. Vi was very pale.

"You have been cruel—cruel to me," she said.

Leighton sprang to his feet and started walking up and down.

"I have not," he said. "The trouble with you women is you're forever wanting to have your cake and eat it, too. If you thought I was going to comfort you with sophist assurances that there's a way out of paying the price for the kind of life you've led, you were just wrong. What I'm trying to do is to give you a prescription for an individual sick soul, not a well one."

He stopped and pointed at the picture lying on Vi's lap.

"Don't you see where her philosophy helps you? You've got all the elements of power that she lacked—beauty, wit, breeding, wealth, and—yes—and mind. She had that, too, but she didn't know it. With all that of your cargo left, can't you trade honestly with life? Can't you make life worth while, not only just to yourself? You'll be trading in compensations, it's true."

Leighton started walking up and down again.

"In one of my many brilliant moments," he went on, "I defined a compensation to Lewis as something that doesn't quite compensate. There you have the root of most of the sadness in life. But believe me, my dear girl, almost all the live people you and I know are trading in compensations, and this is what I want you to fasten on. Some of them do it nobly."

Leighton stood with folded arms, frowning at the floor. Vi looked up at him but could not catch his eye. She rose, picked up her wraps, and then came and stood before him. She laid her fingers on his arms.

"Grapes," she said, still without a drawl, "you have helped me—a lot. Good night." She held up her lips.

"No, Vi," said Leighton, gravely. "Just give up paying even for kindness with a kiss."

Vi nodded her head.

"You're right; only—that kiss wouldn't have been as old as I." She turned from him. "I don't think I'll call you 'Grapes' any more."

"Yes, you will," said Leighton. "We're born into one name; we earn another. We've got a right to the one we earn. You see, even a man can't have his cake——"

But, with a wave of her hand, Vi was gone. Leighton heard Nelton running down the stairs to call a cab for her.



CHAPTER XXXIV

Mlle. Folly Delaires was not born within a stone's throw of the Paris fortifications, as her manager would have liked you to believe, but in an indefinite street in Cockneydom, so like its mates that, in the words of Folly herself, she had to have the homing instinct of a pigeon to find it at all. Folly's original name had been—but why give it away? She was one of those women who are above and beyond a name—of a class, or, rather, of a type that a relatively merciful world produces sparingly. She was all body and no soul.

From the moment that Lewis kissed Folly, and then kissed her several times more, discovering with each essay depths in the art which even his free and easy life had never given him occasion to dream of, he became infatuated—so infatuated that the following dialogue passed over him and did not wake him.

"Why are you crying?" asked Lewis, whom tears had never before made curious.

"I'm crying," gasped Folly, stamping her little foot, "because it's taken so long!"

Lewis looked down at her brown head, buried against his shoulder, and asked dreamily:

"Are you spirit and flower, libertine and saint?"

To which Folly replied: "Well, I was the flower-girl once in a great hit, and I played 'The Nun' last season, you remember. As for spirits, I had the refusal of one of the spirit parts in the first "Blue Bird" show, but there were too many of them, so I turned it down. I'd have felt as though I'd gone back to the chorus. Libertine," she mused finally—"what is a libertine?"

Lewis's father could have looked at Folly from across the street and given her a very complete and charming definition for a libertine in one word. But Lewis had not yet reached that wisdom which tells us that man learns to know himself last of all. He did not realize that your true-born libertine never knows it. Whatever Folly's life may have been, and he thought he had no illusions on that score, he seized upon her question as proving that she still held the potential bloom of youth and a measure of innocence.

To do her justice, Folly was young, and also she had asked her question in good faith. As to innocence—well, what has never consciously existed, causes no lack. Folly's little world was exceedingly broad in one way and as narrow in another, but, like few human worlds, it contained a miracle. The miracle was that it absolutely satisfied her. She dated happiness, content, and birth itself from the day she went wrong.

She had the appearance of being frank, open, and lovable, just as she had that appearance of culture which every woman of her type gets from the cultivated class of men they prey upon. Pet her, and she murmured softly in the king's best English: scratch her, and, like the rock that Moses struck, she burst forth in a surprising torrent. Without making others merry, she was eternally merry. Without ever feeling the agony of thirst, she instilled thirst. A thousand broken-hearted women might have looked on her as an avenging sword, if the sword hadn't been two-edged. She had a motto, a creed, a philosophy, packed into four words: "Be loved; never love."

If both parts of this creed had not been equally imperative, Lewis might have escaped. His aloofness was what doomed him. Like all big-game hunters, Folly loved the rare trophy, the thing that's hard to get. By keeping his distance, Lewis pressed the spring that threw her into action. Almost instinctively she concentrated on him all her forces of attraction, and Folly's forces of attraction, once you pressed the spring, were simply dynamic. Beneath that soft, breathing skin of hers was such store of vitality, intensity, and singleness of purpose as only the vividly monochromatic ever bring to bear on life.

Lewis, unconsciously in very deep waters indeed, reached London in a state of ineffable happiness. Not so Folly. Lewis had awakened in her desire. With her, desire was merely the prelude to a natural consummation. Folly was worried because one of the first and last things Lewis had said to her was, "Darling, when will you marry me?" To which she had replied, but without avail, "Let's think about that afterward."

When Lewis reached the flat on a Saturday night, he did not have to tell his father that something wonderful had happened. Leighton saw it in his face—a face suddenly become more boyish than it had ever been before. They rushed feverishly through dinner, for Lewis's mood was contagious. Then they went into the living-room, and straight for the two big leather chairs which, had they lacked that necessary measure of discretion which Nelton had assigned to them, might have told of many a battle of the mind with the things that are.

"Well, Boy," said Leighton, "what is it?"

"Dad," cried Lewis, with beaming face, "I've found the woman—the all-embracing woman."

Leighton's mind wandered back to the tales of Lewis's little pal Natalie.

"Tell me about her—again," he said genially.

"Again!" cried Lewis. "But you've never heard of her—not from me, anyway."

"What's her name?" asked Leighton, half aroused.

"Her name," said Lewis, smiling absently into the fire, "is Folly—Folly Delaires."

Leighton was a trained stalker of dangerous game. Surprise never startled him into movement. It stilled him. Old Ivory had once said of him that he could make his heart stop beating at the smell of elephant; which is quite a different thing from having your heart stop beating on its own hook. When Lewis said, "Folly—Folly Delaires," Leighton suddenly became intensely still. He remained still for so long that Lewis looked up.

"Well, Dad, what Is it?" he asked, still smiling. "Have you heard of her?"

"Yes," said Leighton, quietly, "I've heard of her. I've even seen her. She's a beautiful—she has a beautiful body. Tell me just how it happened."

Then Lewis talked, and Leighton appeared to listen. He knew all the stages of that via dolorosa too well to have to pay close attention to Lewis's description, of the first emotional step of man toward man's surest tribulation.

There was no outburst from Leighton when Lewis finished. On the contrary, he made an effort to hide his thoughts, and succeeded so well that, had it not been for a touch of bitterness in his smile, Lewis might have been led to think that with this active calm his father would have received the announcement of his son's choice of any woman.

"Dad," said Lewis, troubled, "why do you smile like that?"

"I am smiling," said Leighton, "at the tragedy of philanthropy. Any man can get; it takes a genius to give. There are things I've got that I'd like to give you now—on the eve of your greatest trouble." Lewis threw up his head in amazement. He would have protested but, with a half-raised hand, Leighton stilled him. "No," he went on, "I don't expect you to acquire prescience all in a moment, nor do I expect myself to acquire the genius of giving to a sudden need in half an hour. Let's let things stand this way. You love Folly Delaires; I don't. I don't want to be converted, and you don't. But one of us has simply got to be, because—well—because I like to think we've lived too long together in spirit to take to two sides of a fence now."

Lewis felt a sudden depression fall on him, all the more terible for the exaltation that had preceded it.

"Two sides of a fence, Dad?" he said. "That can never be. I—I've just got to convert you. When you know her, she'll help me."

The two rose to their feet on a common impulse. Leighton laid his hand on Lewis's shoulder.

"Boy," he said, "forgive me for making your very words my own. I have no illusions as to the power of woman. She is at once the supreme source of happiness and of poignant suffering. You think your woman will help you; I think she'll help me. That neutralizes her a bit, doesn't it? It reduces our battle to the terms of single combat—unless one of us is right about Folly."

"But, Dad," stammered Lewis, "I don't want a battle."

Leighton pressed his hand down. Unconsciously Lewis straightened under the pressure.

"Listen to this," said Leighton. "The battles of life aren't served up like the courses at a dinner that you can skip at will. In life we have to fight. Mostly we have to fight people we love for things we love better. Sometimes we fight them for the very love we bear them. You and I are going to fight each other because we can't help it. Let's fight like gentlemen—to the finish—and smile. My boy, you don't know Folly."

"It's you who don't know Folly, Dad," said Lewis, He tried to smile, but his lips twitched treacherously. Not since Leighton had gambled with him, and won all he possessed, had such a blow been dealt to his faith.



CHAPTER XXXV

Both Lewis and his father passed a miserable night, but not even Nelton could have guessed it when the two met in the morning for a late Sunday breakfast. Leighton felt a touch of pride in the bearing of his son. He wondered if Lewis had taken to heart a saying of his: "To feel sullen is human nature; to show it is ill breeding." He decided that he hadn't, on the grounds that no single saying is ever more than a straw tossed on the current of life.

When they had finished breakfast in their accustomed cheerful silence, Leighton settled down to a long cigar and his paper.

"I suppose you're off to see your lady," he said casually.

Lewis laughed.

"Not yet. She isn't up until twelve ever."

"Doesn't get up until twelve?" said Leighton. "You've found that out, eh?"

"I didn't say 'doesn't get up'; I said 'isn't.' She gets up early enough, but it takes her hours. I've never even heard of a woman that takes such care of herself."

Leighton laid his paper aside.

"By the way," he said, "I've a confession to make to you, one that has worried me for some days. Your little affair drove it out of my mind last night."

"Well, Dad, go ahead," said Lewis. "I won't be hard on you."

"Have you any recollection of what you were working on before you went away?"

For a moment Lewis's face looked blank, then suddenly it flushed. He turned sharp eyes on his father.

"I left the studio locked," he said.

Leighton colored in his turn.

"I forgive you that," he said quietly. "Just after I came back to town Vi called and told me she had been posing for you. She said she had left something in the studio that she wanted to fetch herself. She asked me for the key."

Lewis's hands were clenched.

"Well?" he asked.

"I went with her—to the door. She asked me to wait outside. She was gone a long time. I heard her sobbing——"

"Sobbing? Vi?"

Leighton nodded.

"So—so I went in."

Father and son looked steadily at each other for a moment. Then Lewis said:

"You've forgiven me for my thought, Dad; now I beg your pardon for it. I suppose you saw that that bit of modeling was never intended for the Salon? It was meant for Vi—because—well, because I liked her enough to——"

"I know," interrupted Leighton. "Well, it worked. It worked as such cures seldom do. While Vi was sobbing her heart out on the couch, I smashed up the statue with a mallet. That's my confession."

Lewis did not move.

"Did you hear what I said?" asked Leighton. "I smashed up your model of Vi."

"I heard you, Dad," said Lewis. "But you mustn't expect me to get excited over it, because it's what I should have done myself, once she had seen it."

"When I did it," continued Leighton, "I had no doubts; but since then I've thought a lot. I want you to know that if that cast had gone into marble or bronze, it would have had the eternal life of art itself."

Lewis flushed with pleasure. He knew that such praise from his father must have been weighed a thousand times before it gained utterance. Only from one other man on earth could commendation bring such a thrill. As the name of Le Brux came to his mind, it fell from his father's lips.

"Le Brux has been giving me an awful talking to."

"Le Brux!" cried Lewis. "Has he been here?"

"Only in spirit," said Leighton, smiling. "And this is what he said in his voice of thunder: 'If I had been here, I would have stood by that figure with a mallet and smashed the head of any man that raised a finger against it. What is the world coming to when a mere life weighs more in the balance than the most trifling material expression of eternity?

"'But, Master,' I said, 'a gentleman must always remember the woman.'

"To which he replied, 'What business has an artist to be anything so small as a mere gentleman? It is not alone for fame and repute that we great have our being. If by the loss of my single soul I can touch a thousand other souls to life, bring sight to the blind and hearing to ears that would not hear, what, then, is my soul? Nothing.'"

Leighton stopped and leaned forward.

"Then he said this, and the thunder was gone from his voice: 'When all the trappings of the world's religions have rotted away, the vicarious intention and example of Christ will still stand and bring a surge to the hearts of unforgetful men. Thou child, believe me, what humanity has gained of the best is founded solidly on sacrifice—on the individual ruin of many men and women and little children.'"

Leighton paused. Lewis was sitting with locked hands. He was trying to detach his mind from personalities.

"That's a great sophistry, isn't it?" he said.

"Do you know the difference between a sophistry and a great sophistry?" asked Leighton. "A sophistry is a lie; a great sophistry is merely super-truth."

"I can see," he went on, "that it's difficult for you to put yourself outside sculpture. Let's switch off to literature, because literature, next to music, is the supreme expression in art. I heard one of the keenest men in London say the other day, 'The man who writes a book that everybody agrees with is one of two things: a mere grocer of amusement or a mental pander to cash.'

"You've read Irving's tales of the Catskills and of the Alhambra. Vignettes. I think I remember seeing you read Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter." I pick out two Americans because to-day our country supports more literary grocers and panders than the rest of the world put together. It isn't the writers' fault altogether. You can't turn a nation from pap in a day any more than you can wean a baby on lobster a la Newburg.

"But to get back. You might say that Irving gives the lie to my keen friend unless you admit, as I do, that Irving was not a writer of books so much as a painter of landscapes. He painted the scenes that were dear to his heart, and in his still blue skies he hung the soft mists of fable, of legend, and of the pageant of a passing race. Hawthorne was his antithesis—a painter of portraits of the souls of men and women. That's the highest achievement known to any branch of art." Leighton paused. "Do you know why those two men wrote as they did?"

Lewis shook his head.

"Because, to put it in unmistakable English, they had something on their chest, and they had to get it off. Irving wrote to get away from life. Hawthorne never wrote to get away from life,—he wrote himself into it forever and forever."

Leighton paused to get his cigar well alight.

"And now," he went on, "we come to the eternal crux. Which is beauty? Irving's placid pictures of light, or Hawthorne's dark portrayals of the varying soul of man?" He turned to Lewis. "What's your idea of a prude?"

"A prude," stammered Lewis—"why a prude's a person with an exaggerated idea of modesty, isn't it?"

"Bah!" said Leighton, "you are as flat as a dictionary. A prude is a far more active evil than that. A prude, my boy, is one who has but a single eye, and that in the back of his head, and who keeps his blind face set toward nature. If he would be content to walk backward, the world would get along more easily, and would like him better the farther he walked. The reason the live world has always hated prudes is that it's forever being stumbled on by them. Your prude clutches Irving to the small of his back and cries, 'This alone is beauty!' But any man with two eyes looks and answers, 'You are wrong; this is beauty alone.'

"And now do you see where we've come out? To make a thing of beauty alone is to bring a flash of joy to a hard-pressed world. But joy is never a force, not even an achievement. It's merely an acquisition. It isn't alive. The man who writes on paper or in stone one throbbing cry of the soul has lifted the world by the power of his single arm. He alone lives. And it is written that you shall know life above all the creatures that are in sea and land and in the heavens above the earth by this sign: sole among the things that are, life is its own source and its own end."

Leighton stopped.

"You see now," he added, "why half of me is sorry that it let the other half smash up that cast. What claim has a puny person against one flicker of eternal truth?"

"Yes," said Lewis, slowly, "I see. I can follow your logic to the very end. I can't answer it. All I know is that I myself—I couldn't have paid the price, nor—nor let Vi pay it."

"And to tell you the truth," said Leighton with a smile, "I don't know that I'm sorry." Lewis rose to his feet.

"Well, Dad," he said, "it's about twelve o'clock."

"Go ahead, my boy," said Leighton. "Bring the lady to lunch to-day or any other day—if she'll come. Just telephone Nelton."



CHAPTER XXXVI

DURING the next few days Leighton saw little of his son and nothing of Folly, but he learned quite casually that the lady was occupying an apartment overlooking Hyde Park. From that it was easy for him to guess her address, and one morning, without saying anything to Lewis of his plans, he presented himself at Folly's door. A trim maid opened to his ring.

"Is Mlle. Delaires in, my dear?" asked Leighton.

The maid stiffened, and peered intently at Leighton, who stood at ease in the half-dusk of the hall. When she had quite made out his trim, well-dressed figure, she decided not to be as haughty as she had at first intended.

"Miss Delaires," she said, without quite unbending, however, "is not in to callers at half after ten; she's in her bath."

"I am fortunate," remarked Leighton, coolly. "Will you take her my card?" He weighted it with a sovereign.

"Oh, sir," said the maid, "it's not fair for me to take it. She won't be seeing you. I can promise."

"Where shall I wait?" asked Leighton, stepping past her.

"This way, sir."

He was shown into a small, but dainty, sitting-room. The door beyond was ajar, and before the maid closed it he caught a glimpse of a large bedroom still in disarray. In the better light the maid glanced at his face and then at his card.

"What kin are you to Mr. Lewis Leighton, please, sir?" she asked.

"I have every reason to believe that I'm his father," said Leighton, smiling.

"I should say you had, sir," answered the maid, with a laugh, "if looks is a guaranty. But even so she won't see you, I'm afraid."

"I don't mind much if she doesn't," said Leighton. "Just to have had this chat with you makes it a charming morning."

In saying that Miss Delaires was in her bath, the maid had committed an anachronism. Folly was not in her bath. She had been in her bath over an hour ago; now she was in her bandages.

Folly's bath-room was not as large as her bedroom, but it was larger than anything since Rome. To the casual glance, its tiled floor and walls and its numerous immaculate fittings, nickel-trimmed and glass-covered, gave the impression of a luxurious private-clinic theater. Standing well away from one wall was, in fact, a glass operating-table of the latest and choicest design. A more leisurely inspection of the room, however, showed this operating-table to be the only item—if a large-boned Swedish masseuse be omitted—directly reminiscent of a surgery. All the other glittering appliances, including an enormous porcelain tub, were subtly allied to the cult of healthy flesh.

At the moment when the maid entered with Leighton's card, Folly was virtually indistinguishable. She could only be guessed at in the mummy-like form extended, but not stretched, if you please, on the operating-table. Her face, all but a central oval, was held in a thin mask of kidskin, and her whole body, from neck to peeping pink toes, was wrapped closely in bandages soaked with cold cream. The bath-tub was still half-full of tepid water, from which rose faint exhalations of the latest attar, so delicate that they attained deception, and made one look around instinctively for flowers.

Folly's big brown eyes seemed to be closed, but in reality they were fixed on a little clock in plain, white porcelain, to match the room, which stood on a glass shelf high on the wall in front of her. "I'm sure that old clock has stopped," she cried petulantly to the masseuse. "Tell me if it's ticking."

"Ut's ticking," said the masseuse, patiently. Then she added, as though she were reciting: "Be mindful. Youth is a fund that can be saved up like pennies. The tenure of youth and beauty is determined by the amount and the quality—"

"Of relaxation," chanted Folly, breaking in. "It is not enough that the body be relaxed; wrinkles come from the mind. Relax your mind even as you relax your fingers and your toes. Tra-la-la, la-la!" Folly wriggled the free tips of her pink toes. She felt the maid come in. "What do you want, Marie?"

"Nothing, Miss," said the maid; "only I think something must of happened."

"Nothing, only something's happened," mimicked Folly. "Well, what's happened?"

"It's Mr. Lewis's governor, Miss, please. He's here, and he says he just must see you."

"So you let him in, did you? At half-past ten in the morning? How much did he give you?"

"Oh, nothing at all, Miss." Marie paused. "He's that charming he didn't have to give me anything."

"H—m—m!" said Folly. "Well, go ask him what he wants."

"He won't say, Miss. He's that troubled he just keeps his eyes on the floor, an' says as he has something private he must tell you. Perhaps Mr. Lewis has broke his leg. I'm sure I don't know."

"Come on, Buggins," said Miss Delaires to the masseuse. "Don't you hear? There's a gentleman waiting to see me."

Buggins shook her head.

"The hour ut is not finish," she said calmly. "Five minutes yet." And for five long minutes Folly had to wait. Then the masseuse went swiftly into action. Off came the mask and the long, moist bandages. As the bandages uncoiled, Marie rolled them up tightly and placed them, one after the other, on the glass shelves of a metal sterilizer. Buggins rolled up her white sleeves, and entered forthwith on the major rite.

First she massaged Folly's full, round neck; then her swift, deep fingers, passed down one arm and felt out every muscle, every joint, to the tips of Folly's fingers. Back up the arm again, across the bosom, and down the other arm. Back to the neck once more, and then down and around the body to the very last joint of Folly's very last and very little toe.

Folly let go a great sigh, sprang from the table, and stood erect, young and alive in every fiber, in the center of the blue and white bath-rug. The film of cold cream was quite gone. But the masseuse was not yet content. She caught up a soft, scented towel and passed it deftly over arms, body, and legs, not forgetting the last little toe. When she finished, she was on her knees. She looked up and nodded to Folly's inquiring glance.

Folly gave a little laugh of pure delight, and stretched. She held her doubled fists high above her head. Her whole body glowed in an even, unblemished pink. Verily, it seemed to breathe; it breathed with the breath of flowers. And no wonder!

When she had finished stretching, Marie was holding ready a gown of silk,—dark blue, with a foam of lace at the throat and on the broad half-sleeves,—and Buggins had placed lamb's-wool slippers just before her feet. But Folly was too full of animal to be even so softly imprisoned just yet. With a chuckle of mischief, she gave them each a quick push and darted across the room and out by the door.

Maid and masseuse followed her into the bedroom with protesting cries. The bedroom had been put in order. Only the bed itself, dressed merely in a fresh white sheet and pillows, looked a little naked, for the bedclothes proper had been carried out to air. In the center of the bed was Folly, curled up like a kitten. Her hair had tumbled down into two thick, loose braids. She submitted now to the gown, and wrapped herself carefully in it. Propped high against the pillows, a braid of brown hair falling forward over each shoulder, and her bare arms lying still at her sides, she looked very demure indeed and very sweet.

"Bring tea, Marie," she said softly, "and show in Daddy Leighton."



CHAPTER XXXVII

LEIGHTON'S first feeling on entering Folly's bedroom was one of despair. All his knowledge of the highways and byways of the feminine mind was only enough to make him recognize, as he glanced about the room, that he was about to encounter more! than a personality, that he was face to face with a force.

The most illuminating thing that can be said about Folly's bedroom is that Leighton saw the bedroom—the whole of it—before he consciously saw Folly. The first impression that the room gave was one of fresh air—the weighted air of a garden in bloom, however, rather than that of some wind-swept plain. The next, was one of an even and almost stolid tone, neither feminine nor masculine, in the furnishings. They were masterfully impersonal.

To Leighton, who had had the run of every grade of greasy, professional dressing-room, chaotic and slovenly beyond description, and of boudoirs, professional and otherwise, each in its appropriate measure a mirror of the character of its occupant, the detachment of this big room came as a shock. There were only eight pieces of furniture, of which four were chairs, yet there was no sense of emptiness. The proportions of the remaining objects would have dwarfed a far larger space.

Along the whole length of one wall stood an enormous press in mahogany, with sliding-doors. Two of the doors were slightly open, for Folly knew that clothes, like people and flowers, need a lot of air. Leighton caught a glimpse of filmy nothings hanging on racks; of other nothings, mostly white, stacked on deep shelves; of a cluster of hats clinging like orchids to invisible bumps; and last and least, of tiny slippers all in a row.

At right angles to the press, but well away from it, stood a dressing-table surmounted by a wide, low swivel-mirror. The table was covered with tapestry under glass. The dull gleam of the tapestry seemed to tone down and control the glittering array of toilet articles in monogrammed gold. Facing the press, stood a large trinity cheval-glass, with swinging wings. In the center of the room was the bed. Behind the bed and on each side of it were two high windows. They carried no hangings, but were fitted with three shades, differing in weight and color, and with adjustable porcelain Venetian blinds which could be made to exclude light without excluding air.

Folly's bed was a mighty structure. Like the rest of the furniture, it was of mahogany. It was a four-poster, but posts would be a misleading term applied to the four fluted pillars that carried the high canopy. The canopy itself was trimmed with no tassels or hangings except for a single band of thick tapestry brought just low enough to leave the casual observer in doubt as to whether there really was a canopy at all.

Having taken in all the surroundings at a glance, Leighton's eyes finally fell upon Folly. She lay in a puzzling, soft glow of light. Resting high on the pillows, she reached scarcely half-way down the length of the great bed. For a second they looked at each other solemnly. Then Leighton's glance passed from her face to the two braids of hair, down the braids to her bare arms demurely still at her sides, down her carefully wrapped figure, down, down to her pink toes. Folly was watching that glance. As it reached her toes, she gave them a quick wriggle. Leighton jumped as if some one had shot at him, and solemnity made a bolt through the open windows, hotly pursued by a ripple and a rumble of laughter.