"Not so fast!" interrupted Arved. "I'm an anarchist, but I don't believe in blowing up innocent policemen. Neither do you, Quell. You wouldn't hurt a bartender! Give an anarchist plenty to drink, and he sheds his anarchy like a shirt. There are, I have noticed, three stages in the career of a revolutionist: destruction, instruction, construction. He begins the first at twenty, at forty he is teaching, at sixty he believes in society—especially if he has money in the bank." Quell regarded the speaker sourly.

"You are a wonder, Arved. You fly off on a wild tangent stimulated by the mere sound of a word. Who said anything about dynamite-anarchy? There's another sort that men of brains—madmen if you will—believe and indirectly teach. Emerson was one, though he hardly knew it. Thoreau realized it for him, however. Don't you remember his stern rebuke when Emerson visited him in Concord jail: 'Henry, why art thou here?' meekly inquired the mystic man. 'Ralph, why art thou not here?' was the counter-question. Thoreau had brave nerves. To live in peace in this malicious swamp of a world we must all wear iron masks until we are carted off to the domino-park; pious people call it the cemetery. Now, I'm going to sleep. I'm tired of all this jabbering. We are crazy for sure, or else we wouldn't talk so much."

Arved grumbled, "Yes, I've noticed that when a man in an asylum begins to suspect his keepers of madness he's mighty near lunacy himself."

"You have crazy blue eyes, Arved! Where's that flask—I'm dry again! Let's sleep."

They drained the bottle and were soon dozing, while about them buzzed the noon in all its torrid splendour.

When they awoke it was solid night. They yawned and damned the darkness, which smelt like stale india-rubber, so Quell said. They cursed life and the bitter taste in their mouths. Quell spoke of his thirst in words that startled the easy-going Arved, who confessed that if he could rid himself of the wool in his throat, he would be comparatively happy. Then they stumbled along, bumping into trees, feeling with outstretched arms, but finding nothing to guide them save the few thin stars in the torn foliage overhead. Without watches, they could catch no idea of the hour. The night was far spent, declared Arved; he discovered that he was very hungry. Suddenly, from the top of a steep, slippery bank they pitched forward into the highroad.

Arved put out his hand, searching for his comrade. "Quell, Quell!" he whispered. Quell rose darkly beside him, a narrow lath of humanity. Locking arms, both walked briskly until, turning a sharp, short corner, they beheld, all smiling in the night, a summer garden, well lighted and full of gay people, chattering, singing, eating, drinking—happy! The two fugitives were stunned for a moment by such a joyful prospect. Tears came slowly to their eyes, yet they never relaxed their gait. Arriving at an outlying table and seats, they bethought themselves of their appearance, of money, of other disquieting prospects; but, sitting down, they boldly called a waiter.

Luckily it was a country girl who timidly took their order for beer and sandwiches. And they drank eagerly, gobbling the food as soon as it came, ordering more so noisily that they attracted attention. The beer made them brave. As they poured down glass after glass, reckless of the reckoning, insolent to the servant, they began wrangling over the subject that had possessed their waking hours.

"Look here, Quell!" Arved exclaimed crustily, "you said I had crazy blue eyes. What about your own red ones? Crazy! Why, they glow now like a rat's. Poets may be music-mad, drunk with tone—"

"And other things," sneered the painter.

"—but at least their work is great when it endures; it does not fade away on rotten canvas."

"Now, I know you ought to be in the Brain-College, Arved, where your friends could take the little green car that goes by the grounds and see you on Sunday afternoons if weather permits."

His accent seemed deliberately insulting to Arved, who, however, let it pass because of their mutual plight. If they fell to fighting, detection would ensue. So he answered in placatory phrases:—

"Yes, my friend, we both belong to the same establishment, for we are men of genius. As the cat said to Alice, 'We must be mad or else we shouldn't be here.' I started to tell you why my people thought I had better take the cure. I loved the moon too much and loathed sunlight. If I had never tried to write lunar poetry—the tone quality of music combined with the pictorial evocation of painting—I might be in the bosom of my family now instead of—"

"Drinking with a crazy painter, eh?" Quell was very angry. He shouted for drinks so rapidly that he alarmed the more prudent Arved; and as they were now the last guests, the head waiter approached and curtly bade them leave. In an instant he was dripping with beer thrown at him—glass and all—by the irate Quell. A whistle sounded, two other waiters rushed out, and the battle began. Arved, aroused by the sight of his friend on the ground with three men hammering his head, gave a roar like the trumpeting of an elephant. A chair was smashed over a table, and, swinging one-half of it, he made a formidable onslaught. Two of the waiters were knocked senseless and the leader's nose and teeth crushed in by the rude cudgel. The morose moon started up, a tragic hieroglyph in the passionless sky. Quell, seeing its hated disk, howled, his face aflame with exaltation. Then he leaped like a hoarsely panting animal upon the poet; a moment and they were in the grass clawing each other. And the moon foamed down upon them its magnetic beams until darkness, caused by a coarse blanket, enveloped, pinioned, smothered them. When the light shone again, they were sitting in a wagon, their legs tightly bound....

They began singing. The attendant interrupted:—

"Will you fellows keep quiet? How can a man drive straight, listening to your cackle?"

Arved touched his temple significantly and nudged Quell.

"Another one of us. Another rebel of the moon!"

"Shut up or I'll gag you both!" imperiously commanded the doctor, as the wheels of the ambulance cut the pebbly road. They were entering the asylum; now they passed the porter's lodge. In the jewelled light of a senescent moon, his wife and little daughter gazed at them curiously, without semblance of pity or fear. Then, as if shot from the same vocal spring-board, the voices of poet and painter merged into crazy rhythmatic chanting:—

"Rebels of the moon, rebels of the moon! We are, we are, the rebels of the moon!"

And the great gates closed behind them with a brazen clangour—metal gates of the moon-rebels.



V

THE SPIRAL ROAD

There can be nothing good, as we know it, nor anything evil, as we know it, in the eye of the Omnipresent and the Omniscient.—Oriental Proverb.

I

THE STRAND OF DREAMS

"I must see him if only for a minute. I can't go back to the city after coming so far. Please—" but the girl's face disappeared and the rickety door, which had been opened on a chain, was slammed after this imperative speech, and Gerald Shannon found himself staring exasperatedly at its rusty exterior. To have travelled on foot such a distance only to be turned away like a beggar enraged him. Nor was the prospect of returning over the path which had brought him to Karospina's house a cheering one. He turned and saw that a low, creeping mist had obliterated every vestige of the trail across the swamp lands. There was no sun, and the twilight of a slow yellow day in late September would soon, in complicity with the fog, leave him totally adrift on this remote strand—he could hear the curving fall and hiss of the breakers, the monotonous rumour of the sea. So he was determined to face Karospina, even if he had to force his way into the house.

Two hours earlier, at the little railway station, they had informed him that the road was easy flatland for the greater part of the way. He had offered money for a horse or even a wheel; but these were luxuries on this bleak, poverty-ridden coast. As there was no alternative, Gerald had walked rapidly since three o'clock. And he had not been told the truth about the road; where the oozing, green, unwholesome waters were not he stepped, sometimes sinking over his ankles in the soft mud. Not a sign of humanity served him for comfort or compass. He had been assured that if he kept his back to the sun he would reach his destination. And he did, but not without many misgivings. It was the vision of a squat tower-like building, almost hemmed in by a monster gas reservoir, fantastic wooden galleries, and the gigantic silhouettes of strange machinery, that relieved his mind. But this house and its surroundings soon repelled him. His reception was the final disenchantment.

He played a lively tattoo with his blackthorn stick on the panels of the door. For five minutes this continued, interspersed with occasional loud calls for Karospina. At last the siege was raised. After preliminary unboltings, unbarrings, and the rattling of the chain, Gerald saw before him a middle-aged man with a smooth face and closely shaven head, who quietly asked his name and business.

"I have a letter for you, Mr. Karospina—if you are that gentleman—and as I have put myself to much trouble in getting to you, I think I deserve a little consideration."

"A letter, my worthy sir! And for me? Who told you to come here? How do you know my name?" This angered the young man.

"It is from Prince K. The Prince. Now are you satisfied?" he added, as his questioner turned red and then paled as if the news were too startling for his nerves.

"Come in, come in!" he cried. "Mila, Mila, here is a guest. Fetch tea to the laboratory." He literally dragged Shannon within doors and led him across a stone corridor to a large room, but not before he had bolted and barred the entrance to his mysterious fortress. Seeing the other's look of quiet amusement, he laughed himself:—

"Wolves, my dear sir, wolves, human wolves, prowl on the beach at night, and while I have no treasures, it is well to be on the safe side. Mila, Mila, the tea, the tea." There was a passionate intensity in his utterance that attracted Gerald from his survey of the chamber. He saw that in the light Karospina was a much older man than he had at first supposed. But the broad shoulders, the thick chest, and short, powerful figure and bullet head belied his years. Incredulously his visitor asked himself if this were the wonderful, the celebrated Karospina, chemist, revolutionary, mystic, nobleman, and millionnaire. A Russian, he knew that—yet he looked more like the monk one sees depicted on the canvases of the early Flemish painters. His high, wide brow and deep-set, dark eyes proclaimed the thinker; and because of his physique, he might have posed as a prize-fighter.

He took the letter and read it as the door opened and the girl came in with the tea. She wore her hair braided in two big plaits which hung between her shoulders, and her bold, careless glance from eyes sea-blue made the Irishman forget his host and the rigours of the afternoon. A Russian beauty, with bare, plump arms, and dressed in peasant costume; but—a patrician! Her fair skin and blond hair filled him with admiration. What the devil!—he thought, and came near saying it aloud.

"My niece, Princess Mila Georgovics, Mr. Shannon." Gerald acknowledged the introduction with his deepest bow. He was dazzled. He had come to this dreary place to talk politics. But now this was out of the question. And he began explaining to the Princess; Mila he had fancied was some slattern waiting on the old fanatic of a prince. He told Mila this in a few words, and soon the pair laughed and chatted. In the meantime Karospina, who had finished the letter, began to pace the apartment. Apparently he had forgotten the others.

"Tea, tea, where's the tea?" he presently shouted. As they drank, he said: "The prince asks an impossibility, Mr. Shannon. Say to him, no, simply no; he will understand, and so will you, I hope. I'm done with all militant movements. I'm converted to the peace party. What's the use of liberty to people who won't know what to do with it when they get it? Tolstoy is right. Let the peasant be shown how to save his soul—that and a little to eat and drink and a roof are all he needs in this life."

Gerald was startled. He had expected to find an "advanced" leader of the Bakounine type. Instead, a man of the "vegetarian" order,—as he had heard them called,—who talked religion instead of dynamite;—and after all the bother of bringing the letter down to this remote country! Decidedly the princess was more enjoyable than a reformed anarchist. She was gazing at him seriously now, her society manner gone. Her nose, rather large for the harmony of her face, palpitated with eagerness. Evidently, thought Gerald, the young lady is the real revolutionist in this curious household. He also ventured to say so to her, but she did not meet his smiling declaration. Her uncle, irritated by his interrupted discourse, exclaimed:—

"Never mind what the Princess Mila thinks, Mr. Shannon. Women change their minds. The chief matter just now is that you cannot go away to-night. You would lose your way, perhaps be drowned. Can you sleep on a hard bed?" He was assured by Gerald that, if he had been turned away, he would have slept in an outhouse, even under one of those windmills he saw in such number on the strand. Karospina smiled.

"Hardly there—that is, if you expected to awaken." Then he left the room, saying that some one must see to the supper. His niece burst into laughter. Gerald joined in.

"He's always like that, fussy, nervous, but with a heart of gold, Mr.—Mr. Shannon. Thank you. It's an Irish name, is it not? And you look like an Irishman; a soldier, too, I fancy!"

Gerald blushed. "A soldier in the cause of humanity," he answered, "but no longer a hireling in the uniform of kings." He felt so foolish after this brave bit of rhetoric that he kept his eyes on the floor. In an instant she was at his side.

"Give me your hand—comrade!" she said, with a peculiar intonation. "Oh! if you only knew how I longed to meet the right men. Uncle is a convert—no, hardly a backslider; but he swears by the regenerating process instead of violence. Formerly the cleverest living chemist, he now—oh! I shame to say it—he now indulges in firework displays instead of manufacturing bombs with which to execute tyrants." She slowly dropped his hand and her eyes wore a clairvoyant expression. He was astounded.

"Fireworks! Doesn't the prince hold by his old faith—he, a pupil of Bakounine, Netschajew, and Kropotkin?" Just then the prince came in, bearing a tray. He seemed happy.

"Here, sit down, dear sir, and partake of a few things. We live so far from civilization that we seldom get a good chicken. But eggs I can offer you, eggs and ham, cooked by me on an electric machine."

"You have no servants?" Gerald ventured.

"Not one. I can't trust them near my—toys. The princess plays Chopin mazourkas after she makes the beds in the morning, and in the afternoon she is my assistant in the laboratory." Again the young man looked about him. If the room was a laboratory, where were the retorts, the oven, the phials, the jars, the usual apparatus of a modern chemist? He saw nothing, except an old-fashioned electric fan and a few dusty books. The fireworks—were those overgrown wheels and gaunt windmills and gas-house the secret of the prince's self-banishment to this dreary coast? What dreams did he seek to incarnate on this strand, in this queer tower, locked away from the world with a charming princess—a fairy princess whose heart beat with love for the oppressed, in whose hand he might some time see the blazing torch of freedom? He, himself, was enveloped by the hypnotism of the place. Mila spoke:—

"I fear I must leave you. I am studying to-night and—I go early to rest. Pray dine as well as you can, with such a chef." She smiled mischievously at her uncle, courtesied in peasant fashion to the bewildered Gerald, who put out his hand, fain to touch hers, and disappeared. The prince gazed inquiringly at the young man.

"Revolutionists soon become friends, do they not? The Princess Mila is part Russian, part Roumanian,—my sister married a Roumanian,—hence her implacable political attitude. I can't lead her back to civilized thinking. She sees war in the moon, sun, and stars. And I—I have forsworn violence. Ah! if I could only make the prince change. Bakounine's death had no effect; Netschajew's fate did not move him; nor was Illowski's mad attempt to burn down Paris with his incendiary symphony an example to our prince that those who take up the sword perish by the sword. Ah, Tolstoy, dear Leon Nikolaievitch, you showed me the true way to master the world by love and not by hate! Until I read—but there, it's late. Come with me to your room. You may smoke and sleep when you will. In the morning I will show you my—toys." They shook hands formally and parted.

His bed was hard, and his room cheerless, but anything, even a haymow, rather than walking back to the station. After he went to his bed, he rehearsed the day's doings from the three hours' ride in the train to the tower. How weary he was! Hark—some one played the piano! A Chopin mazourka! It was the princess. Mila! How lovely her touch!... Mila! What a lovely name! A sleeping princess. A prince with such a sleepy head. How the girl could play ... along the spiral road he saw the music glow in enigmatic figures of fire....

II

THE PANACEA OF CORUSCATION

He seemed to be uttering her name when he awoke. It was daylight; the sun poured its rays over his face, and he asked himself how he could have fallen asleep leaving the lamp burning on the table near his bed. He must have slept long, for he felt rested, cheerful—happy. As he dressed he speculated whether it was the sunshine, or the prospect of going back to life, or—or—Did he wish to return so soon? He wondered what Mila was doing. Then he went into the stone corridor and coughed as a hint that he was up. Not a sound but the persistent fall at a distance of some heavy metallic substance. It must be Karospina in his workshop, at his rockets, pinwheels, torpedoes, and firecrackers. What a singular change in a bloodthirsty revolutionist. And how childish! Had he squandered his millions on futile experimentings? What his object, what his scheme, for the amelioration of mankind's woes? Gerald's stomach warned him that coffee and rolls were far dearer to him than the downfall of tyranny's bastions, and impatiently he began whistling. The rhythmic thud never ceased. He noticed an open door at the back of the house, and he went out, his long legs carrying him about the yard, toward the beach. The air was glorious, a soft breeze blowing landward from the ocean. He almost forgot his hunger in the face of such a spectacle. The breakers were racing in, and after crumbling, they scudded, a film of green, crested by cottony white, across the hard sand to the young man's feet. He felt exhilarated. And his hunger returned. Then Mila's voice sounded near him. She carried a basket and fairly ran in her eagerness.

"Mr. Shannon, Mr. Shannon, good Prince Gerald—" he was amazed; where could she have heard his Christian name?—"your breakfast. Wait—don't swim the seas to New York for it. Here it is." She opened the basket and handed him a jug of coffee and showed him the rolls inside. Without the slightest embarrassment he thanked her and drank his coffee, walking; he ate the bread, and felt, as he expressed it, like leading a forlorn hope. They went on, the cutting sunshine and sparkling breeze alluring them to vague distances. It was long after midday when they marched back at a slower pace, Gerald swinging the basket like a light-hearted boy, instead of the desperado he fancied himself.

Entering the house, Mila hunted up some cold meat, and with fresh tea and stale bread they were contented. The formidable pyrotechnist did not appear, and so the young people enjoyed the day in each other's company. She conducted him like a river through the lands of sociology, Dostoiewsky, and Chopin. She played, but made him sit in the hall, for the piano was in her private room. And then they began to exchange confidences. It was dusk before the prince returned, in the attire of a workingman, his face and hands covered with soot and grease. A hard day's labour, he said, and did not seem surprised to see Shannon.

After supper he asked Gerald if he would smoke a pipe with him in his laboratory. Mila must have bored him enough by this time! They lighted their pipes; but Mila refused to be sent away. She sat down beside her uncle and put her elbows on the table—white, strong arms she had, and Gerald only took his eyes from their pleasing contemplation to lift them to hers. He was fast losing what little prudence he had; he was a Celt, and he felt that he had known Mila for a century.

"Young man," said Prince Karospina, sharply, "you have the message I gave you last night! Well—and you will say no, to my beloved friend K., without knowing why. And you will think that you have been dealing with a man whose hard head has turned to the mush of human kindness,—an altruist. Ah! I know how you fellows despise the word. But what have Kropotkin, Elisee Reclus, Jean Grave, or the rest accomplished? To build up, not to tear down, should be the object of the scientific anarch. Stop! You need not say the earth has to be levelled and ploughed before sowing the seed. That suits turnip fields, not the garden of humanity. Educate the downtrodden into liberty, is my message, not the slaughtering of monarchs. How am I going to go about it? Ah! that's my affair, my dear sir. After I read a certain book by Tolstoy, I realized that art was as potent an agent for mischief as the knout. Music—music is rooted in sex; it works miracles of evil—"

"Now, uncle, I won't hear a word against Chopin," said Mila, looking toward Gerald for approval.

"Music, Mila, in the hands of evil men is an instrument dangerous to religion, to civilization. What of Illowski and his crazy attack on Paris and St. Petersburg? You remember, Shannon! Leave Wagner out of the question—there is no fusion of the arts in his music drama—only bad verse, foolish librettos, dealing with monsters and gods, and indifferent scene-painting. Moreover, this new music is not understood by the world. Even if the whole of mankind could be assembled on the roof of the world and at a preconcerted signal made to howl the Marseillaise, it would not be educated to the heights I imagine. Stage plays—Shakespeare has no message for our days; Ibsen is an anarchist—he believes in placing the torpedo under the social ark. Painting—it is an affair for state galleries and the cabinets of wealthy amateurs. Literature is a dead art—every one writes and reads and no one understands. Religion! Ah! Yes, religion; the world will be a blackened cinder or cometary gas before the love of God is stamped from its heart. But religion and art must go hand in hand. Divorced, art has fallen into the Slough of Despond; else has been transformed into an acrid poison wherewith men's souls are destroyed as if by a virulent absinthe. United with religion, art is purified. All art sprang from religion. All great art, from a Greek statue to a Gothic cathedral, from a Bach fugue to Michael Angelo, was religious. Therefore, if we are to reach the hearts of the people, we must make art the handmaid of religion." He stopped for breath. Gerald interposed:—

"But, dear prince, you say 'art.' What art—painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, drama—?"

"One art," harshly cried the now excited man, as he pounded the table with his hard fist. "One art, my art, the fusion of all the arts. I, Prince Igorovitch Karospina, tell you that I have discovered the secret of the arts never dreamed of by Wagner and his futile, painted music on a painted stage; I have gone, not to art, but to nature—colour, fire, the elements. The eye is keener than the ear, vision is easier comprehended than tone. Ah! I have you interested at last."

He began walking as if to overtake a missing idea. His niece watched him cynically.

"I fear you are boring Mr. Shannon," she said in her most birdlike accents. Her uncle turned on her.

"I don't care if I am. Go to bed! I am nearing the climax of a lifetime, and I feel that I must talk to a sympathetic ear. You are not bored, dear friend. I have pondered this matter for more than thirty years. I have studied all the arts—painting particularly; and with colour, with colourful design I mean to teach mankind the great lessons of the masters and of religion."

"Ah, you will exhibit in large halls, panoramic pictures, I suppose," interrupted Shannon.

"Nothing of the sort," was the testy reply. "For thousands of years the world has been gazing upon dead stones and canvases, reading dead words. Dead—all, I tell you, all of these arts. And painting is only in two dimensions—a poor copy of nature. The theatre has its possibilities, but is too restricted in space. Music is alive. It moves; but its message is not articulate to all. I want an art that will be understood and admired at a glance by the world from pole to pole. I want an art that will live and move and tell a noble tale. I want an art that will appeal to the eye by its colouring and the soul by its beautiful designs. Where is that legend-laden art? Hitherto it has not existed. I have found it. I have tracked it down until I am the master who by a touch can liberate elemental forces, which will not destroy, like those of Illowski's, but will elevate the soul and make mankind one great nation, one loving brotherhood. Ah! to open once more those doors of faith closed by the imperious dogmas of science—open them upon a lovely land of mystery. Mankind must have mystery. And beyond each mystery lies another. This will be our new religion."

Gerald had caught the enthusiasm of this swelling prologue and rose, his face alight with curiosity.

"And that art is—is—?" he stammered.

"That art is—pyrotechny." It was too much for the young man's nerves, and he fell back in his chair, purple with suppressed laughter. Angrily darting at him and catching his left shoulder in a vicelike grip, Karospina growled:

"You fool, how dare you mock something you know nothing of?" He shook his guest roughly.

"Uncle, uncle, be patient! Tell Mr. Shannon, and he, too, will become a believer. I believe in you. I believe in him, Mr. Shannon. Don't sneer! Tell him, uncle." Mila's words, almost imploring in their tone, calmed the infuriated inventor, who left the room. He reentered in a moment, his head dripping, and he was grinning broadly.

"Whenever I encounter a refractory pattern in my fireworks—as you call them—I am compelled to throw a bucket of water over it to quench its too ardent spirits. I have just done the same to my own head, dear Mr. Shannon, and I ask your pardon for my rudeness. Get some fresh tea, Mila, strong tea, Mila." Pipes were relighted and the conversation resumed.

"I forgot in my obsession, in what Jacob Boehme calls 'the shudder of divine excitement,' that I was talking to one of the uninitiated. I suppose you think by pyrotechny I mean the old-fashioned methods of set pieces, ghastly portraits in fire, big, spouting wheels, rockets, war scenes from contemporary history, seaside stuff, badly done—and flowery squibs. My boy, all that, still admired by our country cousins, is the very infancy of my art. In China, where nearly everything was invented ages ago, in China I learned the first principles, also the possibilities of the art of fireworks; yes, call it by its humble title. In China I have seen surprising things at night. Pagodas blown across the sky, an army of elephants in pursuit, and all bathed in the most divine hues imaginable. But their art suffers from convention. They accomplish miracles considering the medium they work in—largely gunpowder. And their art has no meaning, no message, no moral principle, no soul. Years ago I discovered all the aids necessary to the pyrotechnist. I am not a chemist for nothing. If I can paint a fair imitation of a Claude Monet on canvas, I can also produce for you a colourless gas which, when handled by a virtuoso, produces astonishing illusions. In the open air, against the dark background of the horizon, I can show you the luminous dots planewise of the Impressionists; or I can give you the broad, sabrelike brushwork of Velasquez, or the imperial tintings of Titian. I can paint pictures on the sky. I can produce blazing symphonies. I will prove to you that colour is also music. This sounds as if I were a victim to that lesion of the brain called 'coloured-audition.' Perhaps! Not Helmholtz or Chevreul can tell me anything new in the science of optics. I am the possessor of the rainbow secrets—for somewhere in Iceland, a runic legend runs, there is a region vast as night, where all the rainbows—worn out or to be used—drift about in their vapoury limbo. I have the key to this land of dreams. Over the earth I shall float my rainbows of art like a flock of angels. With them I propose to dazzle the eyes of mankind, to arouse sleeping souls. From the chords of the combined arts I shall extort nobler cadences, nobler rhythms, for men to live by, for men to die for!"

Shannon was impressed. Through the smoke of his host's discourse he discovered genuine fire. The philosopher took his hand and led him to the window.

"Stand there a moment!" he adjured. Mila joined him and after turning the lamp to a pin-head of light, their shoulders touching—for the window was narrow—they peered into the night. They were on the side of the water. Suddenly Gerald exclaimed:—

"What's that light out at sea—far out? It looks like the moon!"

"It is the sun," coolly replied his companion. They saw arise from the waters a majestic, glowing sphere of light, apparently the size of the sun. It flooded the country with its glare, and after sailing nearly in front of the house it shrank into a scarlet cross not larger than a man's hand. Then in a shower of sparks it ceased, its absence making the blackness almost corporeal. Instinctively the hands of the two indulged in a long pressure, and Mila quickly adjusted the lamp. But Gerald still stood at the window a prey to astonishment, terror, stupefaction.

Karospina entered. His face was slightly flushed and in his eyes there burned the sombre fire of the fanatic. Triumphantly he regarded his young friend.

"That was only a little superfluous gas—nothing I cared to show you. Read the newspapers to-morrow, and you will learn that a big meteor burst off the north coast the night before, and fell into the sea." Then he moved closer and whispered:—

"The time is at hand. Within three weeks—not later than the middle of October—I shall make my first public test. 'Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills, to the rivers and to the valleys: Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places.'"

His voice rose in passion, his face worked in anger, and he shook his clenched fists at an imaginary universe. So this man of peace was a destroyer, after all! Gerald aroused him. Again he asked pardon. Mila was nowhere to be seen, and with a sinking at the heart new to his buoyant temperament, Gerald bade the magician good night. It was arranged that he would leave the next day, for, like Milton, he was haunted by "the ghost of a linen decency." But that night he did not sleep, and no sound of music came to his ears from Mila's chamber. Once he tried to open his window. It was nailed down.

A gray day greeted his tired eyes. In an hour he was bidding his friends good-by and thanking them for their hospitality. He had hoped that Mila would accompany him a few steps on his long journey, but she made no sign beyond a despairing look at her uncle, who was surly, as if he had felt the reaction from too prolonged a debauch of the spirit. Gerald lit his pipe, kissed the hand of Mila with emphasis, and parted from them. He had not gone a hundred yards before he heard soft footsteps tracking him. He turned and was disappointed to see that it was only Karospina, who came up to him, breathing heavily, and in his catlike eyes the fixed expression of monomania. He stuttered, waving his arms aloft.

"The time is at hand and the end of all things shall be accomplished. You shall return for the great night. You shall hear of it in the world. Tell K. that I said no! He must be with us at the transfiguration of all things, when mankind shall go up the spiral road of perfection."

Gerald Shannon fairly ran to escape knowing more about the universal panacea. And when he turned for the last time the sea and tower and man were blotted out by wavering mists of silver.

III

THE FIERY CHARIOT

The young man soon heard of Karospina's project. A week before the event the newspapers began describing the experiments of the new Russian wonder-worker, but treated the matter with calm journalistic obliviousness to any but its most superficial aspects. A scientific pyrotechnist was a novelty, particularly as the experimentings were to be given with the aid of a newly discovered gas. Strange rumours of human levitations, of flying machines seen after dark at unearthly heights, were printed. This millionnaire, who had expended fortunes in trying to accomplish what Maxim and Langley had failed in achieving, was a good peg upon which to hang thrilling gossip. He promised to convince the doubting ones that at last man would come into the empire of the air, and by means of fireworks. In searching carefully all the published reports Gerald was relieved not to encounter the name of Mila.

That celebrated afternoon he found himself, after the distressingly crowded cars, in company with many thousands, all clamouring and jostling on the road to the tower. This time there were vehicles and horses, though not in any degree commensurate with the crowd; but the high tax imposed by the speculators gave him an opportunity of securing a seat with a few others in a carriage drawn by four horses. Gingerly they made their way down the narrow road—time was not gained, for the packed mass of humans refused to separate. Fuming at the delay, he was forced to console himself with smoking and listening to the stories told of Karospina and his miracles. They were exaggerated. Karospina here, Karospina there—the name of this modern magician was hummed everywhere in the brisk October air. A little man who occupied the seat with Shannon informed him that he knew some one who had worked for Karospina. He declared that it was no uncommon sight for the conjurer—he was usually called by that name—to float like a furled flag over his house when the sun had set. Also he had been seen driving in the sky a span of three fiery horses in a fiery chariot across the waters of the bay, while sitting by his side was the star-crowned Woman of the Apocalypse clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet. Gerald held his counsel; but the grandeur of the spectacle he had witnessed still shook his soul—if he had not been the victim of a hallucination! The journey seemed endless.

At last the strand came into view with the squat tower, the rusting machinery, and the reservoir back of the house. There were, however, changes in the scene. Within a quarter of a mile of the beach tents were set and booths erected. Seemingly all the city had rushed to this place, and the plain, with its swampy surfaces, was dotted by masses of noisy men and women. Gerald, finding that approach to the house was impossible from the land side, made a wide detour, and on reaching the shore he was gratified to find it empty. The local constabulary, powerless to fight off the mob near the house, had devoted their energies to clearing the space about the gas retorts. After much bother, and only by telling his name, did he pass the police cordon. Once inside, he rushed to the back door and found, oh! great luck—Mila. Dressed in white, to his taste she was angelic. He had great difficulty in keeping his arms pinioned to his side; but his eyes shone with the truth beating at the bars of his bosom, and Mila knew it. He felt this and was light-headed in his happiness.

They greeted. Mila's face wore a serious expression.

"I'm very glad you have come down. I think uncle will be glad also. I am happy to see you again; I have missed you these past weeks. But my happiness is nothing just now, Gerald! [He started.] My uncle, you must speak with him. From brooding so much over the Holy Scriptures, and the natural excitement of his discoveries—they are so extraordinary, dear friend, that he means always to keep them to himself, for he rightly believes that the governments of the world would employ them for wicked purposes, war, the destruction of weaker nations—he has become overwrought. You may not know it, he has a very strong, sane head on his shoulders; but this scheme for lifting up the masses, I suspect, may upset his own equilibrium. And his constant study of the Apocalypse and the Hebraic revelations—it has filled him with strange notions. Understand me: a man who can swim in the air like a fish in the sea is apt to become unstrung. He has begun to identify himself with the prophets. He insists on showing biblical pictures,—worse still, appearing in them himself."

"How 'appearing in them'?" asked Gerald, wonderingly.

"In actual person. I, too, have promised to go with him."

"In a transparency of fire, you mean? Isn't it dangerous?" She hung her head.

"No, in mid air, in a fiery chariot," she murmured.

"The Woman of the Apocalypse!" he cried. "Oh! Princess Mila, dearest Mila Georgovics, promise me that you will not risk such a crazy experiment." Gerald pressed his fingers to his throbbing temples.

"It is no experiment at all," she said, in almost inaudible tones; "last night we flew over the house." He stared at her, his hands trembling, and no longer able to play the incredulous.

"But, dear friend, I fear one other thing; the gas which uncle has discovered is so tenuous that it is a million times lighter than air; but it is ever at a terrible tension—I mean it is dangerous if not carefully treated. Last summer, one afternoon, a valve broke and a large quantity escaped from the reservoir, luckily on the ocean side. It caused a storm and water-spouts, and destroyed a few vessels. The coruscating gas creates a vacuum into which the air rushes with incredible velocity. So promise me that while we are flying you will stay with the police at the gas machines and keep off the crowd. Promise!"

"But I shan't permit you to go up with this renegade to the revolutionary cause—" he began impetuously. She put warning fingers to her lips. In the white flowing robes of an antique priest, Karospina came out to them and took Gerald by the hand. He was abstracted and haggard, and his eyes glared about him. He chanted in a monotone:—

"The time is at hand. Soon you will see the Angels of the Seals. I shall show the multitude Death on the Pale Horse and the vision of Ezekiel. And you shall behold the star called Wormwood, the great star of the third angel, which shall fall like a burning lamp upon the waters and turn them bitter. And at the last you will see the chariot of Elijah caught up to heaven in a fiery whirlwind. In it will be seated the Princess Mila—we, the conquerors of the wicked world."

"Yes, but only as an image, an illusion," ejaculated the unhappy lover, "not in reality."

"As she is," imperiously answered Karospina, and seizing Mila by the arm, said, "Come!" She threw a kiss to Gerald and in her eyes were tears. He saw them and could have wept himself. He followed the sacrificial pair as far as the reservoir, muttering warnings in which were mixed the fates of Phaethon and Simon Magus—that heretic who mimicked the miracles of the apostles.

* * * * *

It was now dark; the order to extinguish all lights on the moor had been obeyed. Only a panting sound as if from a wilderness of frightened animals betrayed the presence of thousands. As long as the sun shone there had been a babel of sound; at the disappearance of our parent planet, a hushed awe had fallen with the night. Gone the rude joking and wrangling, the crying of children, and the shrill laughter of the women. A bitter breeze swept across from the waters, and the stars were mere twinkling points.

Then from the vault of heaven darted a ribbon of emerald fire. It became a luminous spiral when it touched the sea of glass, which was like unto a floor of crystal. This was the sign of Karospina's undertaking, his symbol of the road to moral perfection. Gerald recalled Whistler's pyrotechnical extravaganzas. Following this came a pale moon which emerged from the north; a second, a third, a fourth, started up from the points of the compass, and after wabbling in the wind like gigantic balloons, merged overhead in an indescribable disk which assumed the features of Michael Angelo's Moses. Here is a new technique, indeed, thought Gerald; yet he could not detect its moral values.

A golden landscape was projected on land and sea. A central aisle of waters, paved by the golden rays of a lyric sun high overhead, was embellished on either side by the marmoreal splendours of stately palaces. An ilex inclined its graceful head to its liquid image; men moved the blocks that made famous in the mouth of the world Queen Dido's Carthage. Clouds of pearl-coloured smoke encircled the enchanting picture. And the galleys came and went in this symphonic, glittering spectacle.

"Turner would have died of envy," said Gerald aloud. There was a remarkable vibration of life, not as he had seen it in mechanical bioscopes, but the vivid life of earth and sunshine.

The scenes that succeeded were many: episodes from profane and sacred histories; simulacra of the great saints. A war between giants and pygmies was shown with all its accompanying horrors. The firmament dripped crimson. The four cryptic creatures of Ezekiel's vision came out of the north, a great cloud of "infolding fire" and the colour was amber. A cyclopean and dazzling staircase thronged by moving angelic shapes, harping mute harps, stretched from sea to sky, melting into the milky way like the tail of a starry serpent. Followed the opening of the dread prophetic seals; but, after an angel had descended from heaven, his face as the sun and at his feet pillars of fire, the people, prostrate like stalks of corn beaten by a tempest, worshipped in fear. These things were supernatural. The heavens were displaying the glory of God.

Not knowing whether the signs in the skies might be construed as blasphemous, and lost in fathomless admiration for the marvellous power of the wizard, Gerald sought to get closer to Karospina and Mila. But wedged in by uniformed men, and the darkness thick as an Egyptian plague, he despairingly awaited the apotheosis. His eyes were sated by the miracles of harmonies—noiseless harmonies. It was a new art, and one for the peoples of the earth. Never had the hues of the universe been so assembled, grouped, and modulated. And the human eye, adapting itself to the new synthesis of arabesque and rhythm, evoked order and symbolism from these novel chords of colour. There were solemn mountains of opalescent fire which burst and faded into flaming colonnades, and in an enchanting turquoise effervescence became starry spears and scimiters and sparkling shields, and finally the whole mass would reunite and evaporate into brilliant violet auroras or seven-tailed, vermilion-coloured comets. There were gleaming rainbows of unknown tints—strange scales of chromatic pigments; "a fiery snow without wind;" and once a sun, twice the size of our own, fell into the ocean; and Gerald could have sworn that he felt a wave of heated air as if from a furnace; that he heard a seething sound, as if white-hot metal had come in contact with icy water. Consumed by anxiety for Mila's safety, he wished that these soundless girandoles, this apocalypse of architectural fire and weaving flame, would end.

He had not long to wait. A shrewd hissing apprised him that something unusual was about to occur. Like the flight of a great rocket a black object quickly mounted to the zenith. It did not become visible for several seconds; Gerald's nerves crisped with apprehension. The apparition was an incandescent chariot; in it sat Karospina, and beside him—oh! the agony of her lover—Mila Georgovics. As the fiery horses swooped down, he could see her face in a radiant nimbus of meteors, which encircled the equipage. Karospina proudly directed its course over the azure route, and once he passed Gerald at a dangerously low curve earthward, shouting:—

"The Spiral! The Spiral!"

It was his last utterance; possibly through some flaw in the mechanism, the chariot zig-zagged and then drove straight upon the reservoir. To the reverberation of smashed steel and blinding fulguration the big sphere was split open and Mila with Karospina vanished in the nocturnal gulf.

Gerald, stunned by the catastrophe, threw himself down, expecting a mighty explosion; the ebon darkness was appalling after the scintillating rain of fire. But the liberated gas in the guise of an elongated cloud had rushed seaward, and there gathering density and strength, assumed the shape of a terrific funnel, an inky spiral, its gyrating sides streaked with intermittent flashes. Its volcanic roaring and rapid return to land was a signal for vain flight—the miserable lover knew it to be the flamboyant ether of the pyromaniac transformed into a trumpeting tornado. And he hoped that it would not spare him, as this phantasm twirled and ululated in the heavens, a grim portent of the iron wrath of the Almighty. In a twinkling it had passed him, high in the dome of heaven, only to erase in a fabulous blast the moaning multitude. And prone upon the strand between the stormy waters and the field of muddy dead, Gerald Shannon prayed for a second cataclysm which might bring oblivion to him alone.



VI

A MOCK SUN

Where are the sins of yester-year?

I

The grating of the carriage wheels awoke her from the dream which had lightly brushed away the night and the vision of the Arc de Triomphe—looming into the mystery of sky and stars, its monumental flanks sprawling across the Place de l'Etoile. She heard her name called by Mrs. Sheldam as their coachman guided his horses through the gateway of the Princesse de Lancovani's palace.

"Now, Ermentrude! Wake up, dear; we are there," said Mrs. Sheldam, in her kind, drawling tones. Mr. Sheldam sighed and threw away the unlighted cigar he had bitten during the ride along the Champs Elysees. Whatever the evening meant for his wife and niece, he saw little entertainment in store for himself; he did not speak French very well, he disliked music and "tall talk"; all together he wished himself at the Grand Hotel, where he would be sure to meet some jolly Americans. Their carriage had halted in front of a spacious marble stairway, lined on either side with palms, and though it was a June night, the glass doors were closed.

Ermentrude's heart was in her throat, not because of the splendour, to which she was accustomed; but it was to be her first meeting with a noble dame, whose name was historic, at whose feet the poets of the Second Empire had prostrated themselves, passionately plucking their lyres; the friend of Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz, of Manet, Degas, Monet; the new school—this wonderful old woman knew them all, from Goncourt and Flaubert to Daudet and Maupassant. Had she not, Ermentrude remembered as she divested herself of her cloak, sent a famous romancer out of the house because he spoke slightingly of the Pope? Had she not cut the emperor dead when she saw him with a lady not his empress? What a night this would be in the American girl's orderly existence! And he was to be there, he had promised the princess.

Her heart was overflowing when she was graciously received by the great lady who stood in the centre of a group at the back of the drawing-room—a lofty apartment in white and gold, the panels painted by Baudry, the furniture purest Empire. She noted the height and majestic bearing of this cousin of kings, noted the aquiline nose drooped over a contracted mouth—which could assume most winning curves, withal shaded by suspicious down, that echoed in hue her inky eyebrows. The eyes of the princess were small and green and her glance penetrating. Her white hair rolled imperially from a high, narrow forehead.

Ermentrude bore herself with the utmost composure. She adored the Old World, adored genius, but after all she was an Adams of New Hampshire, her sister the wife of a former ambassador. It was more curiosity than gaucherie that prompted her to hold the hand offered her and scrutinize the features as if to evoke from the significant, etched wrinkles the tremendous past of this hostess. The princess was pleased.

"Ah, Miss Adams," she said, in idiomatic English, "you have candid eyes. You make me feel like telling stories when you gaze at me so appealingly. Don't be shocked"—the girl had coloured—"perhaps I shall, after a while."

Mr. Sheldam had slipped into a corner behind a very broad table and under the shaded lamps examined some engravings. Mrs. Sheldam talked in hesitating French to the Marquis de Potachre, an old fellow of venerable and burlesque appearance. His fierce little white mustaches were curled ceilingward, but his voice was as timid as honey. He flourished his wizened hand toward Miss Adams.

"Charming! Delightful! She has something English in her insouciant pose, and is wholly American in her cerebral quality. And what colouring, what gorgeous brown hair! What a race, madame, is yours!"

Mrs. Sheldam began to explain that the Adams stock was famous, but the marquis did not heed her. He peered at her niece through a gold-rimmed monocle. The princess had left the group near the table and with two young men slowly moved down the salon. Miss Adams was immediately surrounded by some antiquated gentlemen wearing orders, who paid her compliments in the manner of the eighteenth century. She answered them with composure, for she was sure of her French, sure of herself—the princess had not annihilated her. Her aunt, accompanied by the marquis, crossed to her, and the old nobleman amused her with his saturnine remarks.

"Time was," he said, "when one met here the cream of Parisian wit and fashion: the great Flaubert, a noisy fellow at times, I vow; Dumas fils; Cabanel, Gerome, Duran; ever-winning Carolus—ah, what men! Now we get Polish pianists, crazy Belgians, anarchistic poets, and Neo-impressionists. I have warned the princess again and again."

"Becasse!" interrupted the lady herself. "Monsieur Rajewski has consented to play a Chopin nocturne. And here are my two painters, Miss Adams—Messieurs Bla and Maugre. They hate each other like the Jesuits and Jansenists of the good old days of Pascal."

"She likes to display her learning," grumbled the marquis to Mrs. Sheldam. "That younger man, Bla, swears by divided tones; his neighbour, Maugre, paints in dots. One is always to be recognized a half-mile away by his vibrating waterscapes—he calls them Symphonies of the Wet; the other goes in for turkeys in the grass, fowls that are cobalt-blue daubs, with grass a scarlet. It's awful on the optic nerves. Pointillisme, Maugre names his stuff. Now, give me Corot—"

"Hush, hush!" came in energetic sibilants from the princess, who rapped with her Japanese walking-stick for silence. Mr. Sheldam woke up and fumbled the pictures as Rajewski, slowly bending his gold-dust aureole until it almost grazed the keyboard, began with deliberate accents a nocturne. Miss Adams knew his playing well, but its poetry was not for her this evening; rather did the veiled tones of the instrument form a misty background to the human tableau. So must Chopin have woven his magic last century, and in a salon like this—the wax candles burning with majestic steadiness in the sculptured sconces; the huge fireplace, monumental in design, with its dull brass garnishing; the subdued richness of the decoration into which fitted, as figures in a frame, the various guests. Even the waxed floor seemed to take on new reverberations as the pianoforte sounded the sweet despair of the Pole. To her dismay Ermentrude caught herself drifting away from the moment's hazy charm to thoughts of her poet. It annoyed her, she sharply reminded herself, that she could not absolutely saturate herself with the music and the manifold souvenirs of the old hotel; perhaps this may have been the spell of Rajewski's playing....

The music ceased. A dry voice whispered in her ear:—

"Great artist, that chap Rajewski. Had to leave Russia once because he wouldn't play the Russian national hymn for the Czar. Bless me, but he was almost sent to Siberia—and in irons too. Told me here in this very room that he was much frightened. They lighted fires in Poland to honour his patriotism. He acknowledged that he would have played twenty national hymns, but he couldn't remember the Russian one, or never knew it—anyhow, he was christened a patriot, and all by a slip of the memory. Now, that's luck, isn't it?"

She began to dislike this cynical old man with his depreciating tales of genius. She knew that her idols often tottered on clay feet, but she hated to be reminded of that disagreeable reality. She went to Monsieur Rajewski and thanked him prettily in her cool new voice, and again the princess nodded approval.

"She is chic, your little girl," she confided in her deep tones to Mrs. Sheldam, whose tired New England face almost beamed at the compliment.

"We were in Hamburg at the Zooelogical Garden; I always go to see animals," declaimed the princess, in the midst of a thick silence. "For you know, my friends, one studies humanity there in the raw. Well, I dragged our party to the large monkey cage, and we enjoyed ourselves—immensely! And what do you think we saw! A genuine novelty. Some mischievous sailor had given an overgrown ape a mirror, and the poor wretch spent its time staring at its image, neglecting its food and snarling at its companions. The beast would catch the reflection of another ape in the glass and quickly bound to a more remote perch. The keeper told me that for a week his charge had barely eaten. It slept with the mirror held tightly in its paws. Now, what did the mirror mean to the animal! I believe"—here she became very vivacious—"I really believe that it was developing self-consciousness, and in time it would become human. On our way back from Heligoland, where we were entertained on the emperor's yacht at the naval manoeuvres, we paid another visit to our monkey house. The poor, misguided brute had died of starvation. It had become so vain, so egotistical, so superior, that it refused food and wasted away in a corner, gazing at itself, a hairy Narcissus, or rather the perfect type of your modern Superman, who contemplates his ego until his brain sickens and he dies quite mad."

Every one laughed. Mrs. Sheldam wondered what a Superman was, and Ermentrude felt annoyed. Zarathustra was another of her gods, and this brusquely related anecdote did not seem to her very spirituelle. But she had not formulated an answer when she heard a name announced, a name that set her heart beating. At last! The poet had kept his word. She was to meet in the flesh the man whose too few books were her bibles of art, of philosophy, of all that stood for aspiration toward a lovely ideal in a dull, matter-of-fact world.

"Now," said the princess, as if smiling at some hidden joke, "now you will meet my Superman." And she led the young American girl to Octave Keroulan and his wife, and, after greeting them in her masculine manner, she burst forth:—

"Dear poet! here is one of your adorers from overseas. Guard your husband well, Madame Lys."

So he was married. Well, that was not such a shocking fact. Nor was Madame Keroulan either—a very tall, slim, English-looking blonde, who dressed modishly and evidently knew that she was the wife of a famous man. Ermentrude found her insipid; she had studied her face first before comparing the mental photograph of the poet with the original. Nor did she feel, with unconscious sex rivalry, any sense of inferiority to the wife of her admired one. He was nearly forty, but he looked older; gray hairs tinged his finely modelled head. His face was shaven, and with the bulging brow and full jaw he was more of the German or Belgian than French. Black hair thrown off his broad forehead accented this resemblance; a composer rather than a prose-poet and dramatist, was the rapid verdict of Ermentrude. She was not disappointed, though she had expected a more fragile type. The weaver of moonshine, of mystic phrases, of sweet gestures and veiled sonorities should not have worn the guise of one who ate three meals a day and slept soundly after his mellow incantations. Yet she was not—inheriting, as she did, a modicum of sense from her father—disappointed.

The conversation did not move more briskly with the entrance of the Keroulans. The marquis sullenly gossiped with Mr. Sheldam; the princess withdrew herself to the far end of the room with her two painters. Rajewski was going to a soiree, he informed them, where he would play before a new picture by Carriere, as it was slowly undraped; no one less in rank than a duchess would be present! A little stiffly, Ermentrude Adams assured the Keroulans of her pleasure in meeting them. The poet took it as a matter of course, simply, without a suspicion of posed grandeur. Ermentrude saw this with satisfaction. If he had clay feet,—and he must have them; all men do,—at least he wore his genius with a sense of its responsibility. She held tightly her hands and leaned back, awaiting the precious moment when the oracle would speak, when this modern magician of art would display his cunning. But he was fatuously commonplace in his remarks.

"I have often told Madame Keroulan that my successes in Europe do not appeal to me as those in far-away America. Dear America—how it must enjoy a breath of real literature!"

Mrs. Sheldam sat up primly, and Ermentrude was vastly amused. With a flash of fun she replied:—

"Yes, America does, Monsieur Keroulan. We have so many Europeans over there now that our standard has fallen off from the days of Emerson and Whitman. And didn't America give Europe Poe?" She knew that this boast had the ring of the amateur, but it pleased her to see how it startled him.

"America is the Great Bribe," he pursued. "You have no artists in New York."

"Nor have we New Yorkers," the girl retorted. "The original writing natives live in Europe."

He looked puzzled, but did not stop. "You have depressed literature to the point of publication," he solemnly asserted. This was too much and she laughed in mockery. Husband and wife joined her, while Mrs. Sheldam trembled at the audacity of her niece—whose irony was as much lost on her as it was on the poet.

"But you publish plays and books, do you not?" Ermentrude naively asked.

Madame Keroulan interposed in icy tones:—

"Mademoiselle Adams misunderstands. Monsieur Keroulan is the Grand Disdainer. Like his bosom friend, Monsieur Mallarme, he cares little for the Philistine public—"

He interrupted her: "Lys, dear friend, you must not bore Miss Adams with my theories of art and life. She has read me—"

Ermentrude gave him a grateful glance. He seemed, despite his self-consciousness, a great man—how great she could not exactly define. His eyes—two black diamonds full of golden reflections, the eyes of a conqueror, a seer—began to burn little bright spots into her consciousness, and, selfishly, she admitted, she wished the two women would go away and leave her to interrogate her idol in peace. There were so many things to ask him, so many difficult passages in The Golden Glaze and Hesitations, above all in that great dramatic poem, The Voices, which she had witnessed in Paris, with its mystic atmosphere of pity and terror. She would never forget her complex feelings, when at a Paris theatre, she saw slowly file before her in a Dream-Masque the wraith-like figures of the poet, their voices their only corporeal gift. Picture had dissolved into picture, and in the vapours of these crooning enchantments she heard voices of various timbres enunciating in monosyllables the wisdom of the ages, the poetry of the future. This play was, for her, and for Paris, too, the last word in dramatic art, the supreme nuance of beauty. Everything had been accomplished: Shakespeare, Moliere, Ibsen; yet here was a new evocation, a fresh peep at untrodden paths. In bliss that almost dissolved her being, the emotional American girl reached her hotel, where she tried to sleep. When her aunt told her of the invitation tendered by the princess, a rare one socially, she was in the ninth heaven of the Swedenborgians. Any place to meet Octave Keroulan!

And now he sat near her signalling, she knew, her sympathies, and as the fates would have it two dragons, her aunt and his wife, guarded the gateway to the precious garden of his imagination. She could have cried aloud her chagrin. Such an inestimable treasure was genius that to see it under lock and key invited indignation. The time was running on, and her great man had said nothing. He could, if he wished, give her a million extraordinary glimpses of the earth and the air and the waters below them, for his eyes were mirrors of his marvellous and many-coloured soul; but what chance had he with a conjugal iceberg on one side, a cloud of smoke—poor Aunt Sheldam—on the other! She felt in her fine, rhapsodic way like a young priestess before the altar, ready to touch with a live coal the lips of the gods, but withheld by a malignant power. For the first time in her life Ermentrude Adams, delicately nurtured in a social hothouse, realized in wrath the major tyranny of caste.

The evening wore away. Mrs. Sheldam aroused her husband as she cast a horrified glance at the classic prints he had been studying. The princess dismissed her two impressionists and came over to the poet. She, too plainly, did not care for his wife, and as the party broke up there was a sense of relief, though Ermentrude could not conceal her dissatisfaction. Her joy was sincere when Madame Keroulan asked Miss Adams and her aunt to call. It was slightly gelid, the invitation, though accepted immediately by Ermentrude. The convenances could look out for themselves; she would not go back to America without an interview. The princess raised her hand mockingly.

"What, I go to one of your conferences! Not I, cher poete. Keep your mysteries for your youthful disciples." She looked at Ermentrude, who did not lower her eyes—she was triumphant now. Perhaps he might say something before they parted. He did not, but the princess did.

"Beware, young America, of my Superman! You remember the story of the ape with the mirror!"

Ermentrude flushed with mortification. This princess was decidedly rude at times. But she kept her temper and thanked the lady for a unique evening. Her exquisite youth and grace pleased the terrible old woman, who then varied her warning.

"Beware," she called out in comical accents as they slowly descended the naked marble staircase, "of the Sleeping Princess!"

The American girl looked over her shoulder.

"I don't think your Superman has a mirror at all."

"Yes, but his princess holds one for him!" was the jesting reply.

The carriage door slammed. They rolled homeward, and Ermentrude suffered from a desperate sense of the unachieved. The princess had been impertinent, the Keroulans rather banal. Mrs. Sheldam watched her charge's face in the intermittent lights of the Rue de Rivoli.

"I think your poet a bore," she essayed. Then she shook her husband—they had reached their hotel.

II

It was the garden of a poet, she declared, as, with the Keroulans and her aunt, Ermentrude sat and slowly fanned herself, watching the Bois de Boulogne, which foamed like a cascade of green opposite this pretty little house in Neuilly. The day was warm and the drive, despite the shaded, watered avenues, a dusty, fatiguing one. Mrs. Sheldam had, doubtfully, it is true, suggested the bourgeois comfort of the Metropolitain, but she was frowned on by her enthusiastic niece. What! ride underground in such weather? So they arrived at the poet's not in the best of humour, for Mrs. Sheldam had quietly chidden her charge on the score of her "flightiness." These foreign celebrities were well enough in their way, but—! And now Ermentrude, instead of looking Octave Keroulan in the face, preferred the vista of the pale blue sky, awash with a scattered, fleecy white cloud, the rolling edges of which echoed the dazzling sunshine. The garden was not large, its few trees were of ample girth, and their shadows most satisfying to eyes weary of the city's bright, hard surfaces. There were no sentimental plaster casts to disturb the soft harmonies of this walled-in retreat, and if Ermentrude preferred to regard with obstinacy unusual in her mobile temperament the picture of Paris below them, it was because she felt that Keroulan was literally staring at her.

A few moments after their arrival and with the advent of tea, he had accomplished what she had fervently wished for the night she had met him—he succeeded, by several easy moves, in isolating her from her aunt, and, notwithstanding her admiration, her desire to tap with her knuckles the metal of her idol and listen for a ring of hollowness, she was alarmed. Yet, perversely, she knew that he would not exhibit his paces before his wife—naturally a disinterested spectator—or before her aunt, who was hardly "intimate" enough. The long-desired hour found her disquieted. She did not have many moments to analyze these mixed emotions, for he spoke, and his voice was agreeably modulated.

"You, indeed, honour the poor poet's abode with your youth and your responsive soul, Miss Adams. I thank you, though my gratitude will seem as poor as my hospitality." She looked at him now, a little fluttered. "You bring to me across seas the homage of a fresh nation, a fresh nature." She beat a mental retreat at these calm, confident phrases; what could he know of her homage? "And if Amiel has said, 'Un paysage est un etat de l'ame,' I may amend it by calling my soul a state of landscape, since it has been visited by your image." This was more reassuring, if exuberant.

"Man is mere inert matter when born, but his soul is his own work. Hence, I assert: the Creator of man is—man." Now she felt at ease. This wisdom, hewn from the vast quarry of his genius, she had encountered before in his Golden Glaze, that book which had built temples of worship in America wherein men and women sought and found the pabulum for living beautifully. He was "talking" his book. Why not? It was certainly delightful plagiarism!

"You know, dear young lady," he continued, and his eyes, with their contracting and expanding disks, held her attention like a clear flame, "do you know that my plays, my books, are but the drama of my conscience exteriorized? Out of the reservoirs of my soul I draw my inspiration. I have an aesthetic horror of evidence; like Renan, I loathe the deadly heresy of affirmation; I have the certitude of doubt, for are we poets not the lovers of the truth decorated? When I built my lordly palace of art, it was not with the ugly durability of marble. No; like the Mohammedan who constructed his mosque and mingled with the cement sweet-smelling musk, so I dreamed my mosque into existence with music wedded to philosophy. Music and philosophy are the twin edges of my sword. Ah! you smile and ask, Where is Woman in this sanctuary? She is not barred, I assure you. My music—is Woman. Beauty is a promise of happiness, Stendhal says. I go further: Life—the woman one has; Art—the woman one loves!"

She was startled. Her aunt and Madame Keroulan had retired to the end of the garden, and only a big bee, brumming overhead, was near. He had arisen with the pontifical air of a man who has a weighty gospel to expound. He encircled with his potent personality the imagination of his listener; the hypnotic quality of his written word was carried leagues farther in effect by his trained, soothing voice. Flattered, no longer frightened, her nerves deliciously assaulted by this coloured rhetoric, Ermentrude yielded her intellectual assent. She did not comprehend. She felt only the rhythms of his speech, as sound swallowed sense. He held her captive with a pause, and his eloquent eyes—they were of an extraordinary lustre—completed the subjugation of her will.

"Only kissed hands are white," he murmured, and suddenly she felt a velvety kiss on her left hand. Ermentrude did not pretend to follow the words of her aunt and Madame Keroulan as they stopped before a bed of June roses. Nor did she remember how she reached the pair. The one vivid reality of her life was the cruel act of her idol. She was not conscious of blushing, nor did she feel that she had grown pale. His wife treated her with impartial indifference, at times a smile crossing her face, with its implication—to Ermentrude—of selfish reserves. But this hateful smile cut her to the soul—one more prisoner at his chariot wheels, it proclaimed! Keroulan was as unconcerned as if he had written a poetic line. He had expected more of an outburst, more of a rebuff; the absolute snapping of the web he had spun surprised him. His choicest music had been spread for the eternal banquet, but the invited one tarried. Very well! If not to-day, to-morrow! He repeated a verse of Verlaine, and with his wife dutifully at his side bowed to the two Americans and told them of the pleasure experienced. Ermentrude, her candid eyes now reproachful and suspicious, did not flinch as she took his hand—it seemed to melt in hers—but her farewell was conventional. In the street, before they seated themselves in their carriage, Mrs. Sheldam shook her head.

"Oh, my dear! What a woman! What a man! I have such a story to tell you. No wonder you admire these people. The wife is a genius—isn't she handsome?—but the man—he is an angel!"

"I didn't see his wings, auntie," was the curt reply.

III

The Sheldams always stayed at the same hotel during their annual visits to Paris. It was an old-fashioned house with an entrance in the Rue Saint-Honore and another in the Rue de Rivoli. The girl sat on a small balcony from which she could view the Tuileries Gardens without turning her head; while looking farther westward she saw the Place de la Concorde, its windy spaces a chessboard for rapid vehicles, whose wheels, wet from the watered streets, ground out silvery fire in the sun-rays of this gay June afternoon. Where the Avenue des Champs Elysees began, a powdery haze enveloped the equipages, overblown with their summer toilets, all speeding to Longchamps. It was racing day, and Ermentrude, feigning a headache, had insisted that her uncle and aunt go to the meeting. It would amuse them, she knew, and she wished to be alone. Nearly a week had passed since the visit to Neuilly, and she had been afraid to ask her aunt what Madame Keroulan had imparted to her—afraid and also too proud. Her sensibility had been grievously wounded by the plainly expressed feelings of Octave Keroulan. She had reviewed without prejudice his behaviour, and she could not set down to mere Latin gallantry either his words or his action. No, there was too much intensity in both,—ah, how she rebelled at the brutal disillusionment!—and there were, she argued, method and sequence in his approach and attack. If she had been the average coquetting creature, the offence might not have been so mortal. But, so she told herself again and again,—as if to frighten away lurking darker thoughts, ready to spring out and devour her good resolutions,—she had worshipped her idol with reservations. His poetry, his philosophy, were so inextricably blended that they smote her nerves like the impact of some bright perfume, some sharp chord of modern music. Dangerously she had filed at her emotions in the service of culture and she was now paying the penalty for her ardent confidence. His ideas, vocal with golden meanings, were never meant to be translated into the vernacular of life, never to be transposed from higher to lower levels; this base betrayal of his ideals she felt Keroulan had committed. Had he not said that love should be like "un baiser sur un miroir"? Was he, after all, what the princess had called him? And was he only a mock sun swimming in a firmament of glories which he could have outshone?

A servant knocked and, not receiving a response, entered with a letter. The superscription was strange. She opened and read:—

DEAR AND TENDER CHILD: I know you were angry with me when we parted. I am awaiting here below your answer to come to you and bare my heart. Say yes!

"Is the gentleman downstairs?" she asked. The servant bowed. The blood in her head buzzing, she nodded, and the man disappeared. Standing there in the bright summer light, Ermentrude Adams saw her face in the oval glass, above the fireplace, saw its pallor, the strained expression of the eyes, and like a drowning person she made a swift inventory of her life, and, with the insane hope of one about to be swallowed up by the waters, she grasped at a solitary straw. Let him come; she would have an explanation from him! The torture of doubt might then be brought to an end....

Some one glided into the apartment. Turning quickly, Ermentrude recognized Madame Keroulan. Before she could orient herself that lady took her by both hands, and uttering apologetic words, forced the amazed girl into a chair.

"Don't be frightened, dear young lady. I am not here to judge, but to explain. Yes, I know my husband loves you. But do not believe in him. He is a terrific man." This word she emphasized as if doubtful of its meaning. "Ah, if you but knew the inferno of my existence! There are so many like you—stop, do not leave! You are not to blame. I, Lillias Keroulan, do not censure your action. My husband is an evil man and a charlatan. Hear me out! He has only the gift of words. He steals all his profundities of art from dead philosophers. He is not a genuine poet. He is not a dramatist. I swear to you that he is now the butt of artistic Paris. The Princesse de Lancovani made him—she is another of his sort. He was the mode; now he is desperate because his day has passed. He knows you are rich. He desires your money, not you. I discovered that he was coming here this day. Oh, I am cleverer than he. I followed. Here I am to save you from him—and from yourself—he is not now below in the salon."

"Please go away!" indignantly answered Ermentrude. She was furious at this horrible, plain-spoken, jealous creature. Save her from herself—as if ever she had wavered! The disinterested adoration she had entertained for the great artist—what a hideous ending was this! The tall, blond woman with the narrow, light blue eyes watched the girl. How could any one call her handsome, Ermentrude wondered! Then her visitor noticed the crumpled letter on the table. With a gesture of triumph she secured it and smiling her superior smile she left, closing the door softly behind her.

Only kissed hands are white! Ermentrude threw herself on the couch, her cheeks burning, her heart tugging in her bosom like a ship impatient at its anchorage. And was this the sordid end of a beautiful dream?...

"Do you know, dearest, we have had such news!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldam as she entered, and so charged with her happiness that she did not notice the drawn features of her niece. "Charlie, Charlie will be here some time next week. He arrives at Havre. He has just cabled his father. Let us go down to meet the boy." Charlie was the only son of the Sheldams and fonder of his cousin than she dare tell herself. She burst into tears, which greatly pleased her aunt.

In the train, eight days later, Ermentrude sat speechless in company with her aunt and uncle. But as the train approached Havre she remembered something.

"Aunt Clara," she bravely asked, "do you recall the afternoon we spent at the Keroulans'? What did Madame Keroulan tell you then? Is it a secret?" She held tightly clenched in her hand the arm-rest at the side of the compartment.

"Oh, dear, no! The madame was very chatty, very communicative. It's funny I've not told you before. She confessed that she was the happiest woman on earth; not only was she married to a grand genius,—for the life of me I can't see where that comes in!—but he was a good man into the bargain. It appears that his life is made weary by women who pester him with their attentions. Even our princess—yes, the princess; isn't it shocking?—was a perfect nuisance until Mr. Keroulan assured her that, though he owed much of his success in the world to her, yet he would never betray the trust reposed in him by his wife. What's the matter, dear, does the motion of the car affect you? It does rock! And he shows her all the letters he gets from silly women admirers—oh, these foreign women and their queer ways! And he tells her the way they make up to him when he meets them in society."

Ermentrude shivered. The princess also! And with all her warning about the Superman! Now she understood. Then she took the hand of Mrs. Sheldam, and, stroking it, whispered:—

"Auntie, I'm so glad I am going to Havre, going to see Charlie soon." The lids of her eyes were wet. Mrs. Sheldam had never been so motherly.

"You are a darling!" she answered, as she squeezed Ermentrude's arm. "But there is some one who doesn't seem to care much for Havre." She pointed out Mr. Sheldam, who, oblivious of picturesque Normandy through which the train was speeding, slept serenely. Ermentrude envied him his repose. He had never stared into the maddening mirror which turned poets into Supermen and—sometimes monsters. Had she herself not gazed into this distorting glass? The tune of her life had never sounded so discouragingly faint and inutile. Perhaps she did not posses the higher qualities that could extort from a nature so rich and various as Octave Keroulan's its noblest music! Perhaps his wife had told the truth to Mrs. Sheldam and had lied to her! And then, through a merciful mist of tears, Ermentrude saw Havre, saw her future.



VII

ANTICHRIST

To wring from man's tongue the denial of his existence is proof of Satan's greatest power.—PERE RAVIGNAN.

The most learned man and the most lovable it has been my good fortune to know is Monsignor Anatole O'Bourke—alas! I should write, was, for his noble soul is gathered to God. I met him in Paris, when I was a music student. He sat next to me at a Pasdeloup concert in the Cirque d'Hiver, how many years ago I do not care to say. A casual exclamation betrayed my nationality, and during the intermission we drifted into easy conversation. Within five minutes he held me enthralled, did this big-souled, large-brained Irishman from the County Tipperary. We discussed the programme—a new symphonic poem by Rimski-Korsakoff, Sadko, had been alternately hissed and cheered—and I soon learned that my companion mourned a French mother and rejoiced in the loving presence of a very Celtic father. From the former he must have inherited his vigorous, logical intellect; the latter had evidently endowed him with a robust, jovial temperament, coupled with a wonderful perception of things mystical.

After the concert we walked slowly along the line of the boulevards. It was early May, and the wheel of green which we traversed, together with the brilliant picture made by the crowds, put us both in a happy temper. It was not long before Monsignor heard the confession of my ideals. He smiled quickly when I raved of music, but the moment I drifted into the theme of mysticism—the transposition is ever an easy one—I saw his interest leap to meet mine.

"So, you have read St. John of the Cross?" I nodded my head.

"And St. Teresa, that marvellous woman? The Americans puzzle me," he continued. "You are the most practical people on the globe and yet the most idealistic. When I hear of a new religion, I am morally certain that it is evolved in America."

"A new religion!" I started. This phrase had often assailed me, both in print and in the depths of my imagination. He divined my thought—ah! he was a wonder-worker in the way he noted a passing nuance.

"When we wear out the old one, it will be time for a new religion," he blandly announced; "you Americans, because of your new mechanical inventions, fancy you have free entry into the domain of the spiritual. But come, my dear young friend. Here is my hotel. Can't I invite you to dinner?" We had reached the Boulevard Malsherbe and, as I was miles out of my course, I consented. The priest fascinated me with his erudition, which swam lightly on the crest of his talk. He was, so I discovered during the evening, particularly well versed in the mystical writers, in the writings of the Kabbalists and the books of the inspired Northman, Swedenborg. As we sat drinking our coffee at one of the little tables in the spacious courtyard, I revived the motive of a new religion.

"Monsignor, have you ever speculated on the possible appearance of a second Mahomet, a second Buddha? What if, from some Asiatic jungle, there sallied out upon Europe a terrible ape-god, a Mongolian with exotic eyes and the magnetism of a religious madman—"

"You are speaking of Antichrist?" he calmly questioned.

"Antichrist! Do you really believe in the Devil's Messiah?"

"Believe, man! why, I have seen him."

I leaned back in my chair, wondering whether I should laugh or look solemn. He noted my indecision, and his eyes twinkled—they were the blue-gray of the Irish, the eyes of a seer or an amiable ironist.

"Listen! but first let us get some strong cigars. Garcon!" As we smoked our panatelas he related this history:—

"You ask me if I believe in an Antichrist, thereby betraying your slender knowledge of the Scriptures—you will pardon the liberty! I may refer you not only to John's Epistles, to the revelations of the dreamer of Patmos, but to so many learned doctors of the faith that it would take a week merely to enumerate the titles of their works all bearing on the mysterious subject. Our Holy Mother the Church has held aloof from any doctrinal pronouncements. The Antichrist has been predicted for the past thousand years. I recall as a boy poring over the map of the world which a friend of my mother had left with her. This lady my father called 'the angel with the moulting wings,' because she was always in an ecstatic tremor over the second coming of the Messiah. She would go to the housetop at least once every six months, and there, with a band of pious deluded geese dressed in white flowing robes, would inspect the firmament for favourable signs. Nothing ever happened, as we know, yet the predictions sown about the borders of that strange-looking chart have in a measure come true.

"There were the grimmest and most resounding quotations from the Apocalypse. 'Babylon is fallen, is fallen!' hummed in my ears for many a day. And the pale horse also haunted me. What would I have given to hear the music of that 'voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of great thunder.' I mean the 'harpers harping with their harps' the 'new song before the throne, before the four beasts and the elders.' It is recorded that 'no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.' That is a goodly multitude. Let us hope we shall be of it. Learned Sir Thomas Browne asked what songs the sirens sang. I prefer to hear that wonderful 'harped' song.

"But I wander. The fault lies in that wondrous map of the world, with its pictured hordes of Russians sweeping down upon Europe and America like a plague of locusts, the wicked unbaptized Antichrist at the head of them, waving a cross held in reversed fashion. Don't ask me the meaning of this crazy symbolism. The sect to which my mother's friend belonged—God bless her, for she was a dear weak-minded lady—must have set great store by these signs. I admit that as a boy they scared me. Sitting here now, after forty years, I can still see those cryptograms. However, to my tale. About ten years ago I was in Paris, and in my capacity as Monsignor I had to attend a significant gathering at the embassy of the Russian ambassador in this city of light." He waved his left hand, from which I caught the purple fire of amethyst.

"It was a notable affair, and I don't mind telling you now that it was largely political. I had just returned from a secret mission at Rome, and I was forced to mingle with diplomatic people. Prince Wronsky was the representative of the Czar at that time in France, a charming man with a flavour of diablerie in his speech. He was a fervent Greek Catholic, like most of his countrymen, and it pleased him to fence mischievously with me on the various dogmas of our respective faiths. He called himself the Catholic; I was only a Roman Catholic. I told him I was satisfied.

"On this particular night he was rather agitated when I made my salutations. He whispered to me that madame the princess had that very day presented him with a son and heir. Naturally I congratulated him. His restlessness increased as the evening wore on. At last he beckoned to me—we were very old friends—to follow him into his library. There he hesitated.

"'I want you to do me a favour, an odd one; but as you are known to me so long I venture to ask it. Do go upstairs and see my boy—' His tone was that of entreaty. I smiled.

"'Dear prince, I am, as a priest, hardly a judge of children. But if you wish it—is there anything wrong with the little chap's health?'

"'God forbid!' he ejaculated and piously crossed himself. We went to the first etage of his palace—he was gorgeously housed—and there he said:—

"'Madame is in another wing of our apartments—go in here—the child is attended by the nurse.' With that he pushed me through a swinging door and left me standing in a semi-lighted chamber. I was very near ill temper, I assure you, for my position was embarrassing. The room was large and heavily hung with tapestries. A nurse, a hag, a witch, a dark old gypsy creature, came over to me and asked me, in Russian:—

"'Do you wish to see his Royal Highness the King of Earth and Heaven?' Thinking she was some stupid moujik's wife, I nodded my head seriously, though amused by the exalted titles. She put up a thin hand and I tiptoed to a cradle of gold and ivory—it certainly seemed so to my inexperienced eyes—the nurse parted the curtains, and there I saw—I saw—but my son, you will think I exaggerate—I saw the most exquisite baby in the universe. You laugh at an old bachelor's rhapsody! In reality I don't care much for children. But that child, that supreme morsel of humanity, was too much for me. I stood and stared and stood and stared, and all the while the tiny angel was smiling in my eyes, oh! such a celestial smile. From his large blue eyes, like flowers, he smiled into my very soul. I was chained to the floor as if by lead. Every fibre of my soul, heart, and brain went out to that little wanderer from the infinite. It was a pathetic face, full of suppressed sorrow—Dieu! but he was older than his father. I found my mind beginning to wander as if hypnotized. I tried to divert my gaze, but in vain. Some subtle emanation from this extraordinary child entered my being, and then, as if a curtain were being slowly lowered, a mist encompassed my soul; I was ceding, I felt, the immortal part of me to another, and all the time I was smiling at the baby and the baby smiling back. I remember his long blond hair, parted in the middle and falling over his shoulders; but even that remarkable trait for an infant a few hours old did not puzzle me, for my sanity was surely being undermined by the persistent gaze of the boy. I vaguely recall passing my hand across my breast as if to stop the crevice through which my personality was filtering; I was certain that my soul was about to be stolen by that damnable child. Then the nurse dropped something, and my thoughts came back,—they were surely on the road to hell, for they were red and flaming when I got hold of them,—and the spell, or whatever it was, snapped.

"I looked up and noticed the woman maliciously smiling—if it had been in the days of the inquisition, I would have sent her to the faggots, for she was a hell-hag. The child had fallen back in his cradle as if the effort of holding my attention had exhausted him. Then it struck me that there was something unholy about this affair, and I resolutely strode to the crib and seized the baby.

"'What changeling is this?' I demanded in a loud voice, for the being that twisted in my grip was two or two hundred years old.

"'Lay him down, you monster!' clamoured the nurse, as I held the squirming bundle by both hands. It was a task—and I'm very strong. A superhuman strength waged against my muscles; but I was an old football half-back at the university, so I conquered the poor little devil. It moaned like a querulous old man; the nurse, throwing her weight upon me, forced me to let go my hold. As I did so the baby turned on its face, its dainty robe split wide open, and to my horror I saw on its back, between its angelically white shoulders, burnt in as if by branding irons, the crucifix—and upside down!"

I shuddered. I knew. He lowered his voice and spoke in detached phrases.

"It was—oh! that I live to say it—it was the dreaded Antichrist—yes, this Russian baby—it was predicted that he would be born in Russia—I trembled so that my robes waved in an invisible wind. The reversed cross—the mark of the beast—the sign by which we are to know the Human Satan—the last opponent of Christianity. I confess that I was discomposed at the sight of this little fiend, for it meant that the red star, the baleful star of the north, would rise in the black heavens and bloody war spread among the nations of the earth. It also meant that doomsday was not far off, and, good Christian as I believe myself to be, a shiver ran down my spine at the idea of Gabriel's trump and the resurrection of the dead. Yes, I shan't deny it—so material are the sons of men, I among them! And the very thought of Judgment Day and its blasting horrors withered my heart. Still something had to be done, prophecy or no prophecy. To fulfil the letter of the law this infernal visitor was let loose from hell. There was one way, so I grasped—"

"Great God, Monsignor, you didn't strangle the demon?" I cried.

"No, no—something better. I rushed over to a marble wash-basin and seized a ewer of water, and, going back to the crib, despite the frantic remonstrances of the old sorceress, I baptized the Antichrist in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Before my eyes I saw the inverted cross vanish. Then I soundly spanked the presumptuous youngster and, running down the staircase, I sought the prince and said to him:—

"'Your boy is now a Roman, not a Greek Catholic. We are quits!'"

The idea of a spanked Antichrist disconsolately roaming the earth, unwilling to return to his fiery home for fear of a scolding, his guns of evil spiked, his virus innocuous, his mission of spiritual destruction a failure—for what could a baptized devil's child do but pray and repent?—all this dawned upon me, and I burst into laughter, the worthy Monsignor discreetly participating. His bizarre recital proved to me that, despite his Gallic first name, Monsignor Anatole O'Bourke hailed from the County Tipperary.



VIII

THE ETERNAL DUEL

What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?

—D.G. ROSSETTI, Vain Virtues.

The face set him to a strange wondering; he sat at the coffin and watched it. His wife's face it was, and above the sorrow of irrevocable parting floated the thought that she did not look happy as she lay in her bed of death. Monross had seen but two dead faces before, those of his father and mother. Both had worn upon the mask which death models an expression of relief. But this face, the face of his wife, of the woman with whom he had lived—how many years! He asked himself why he shuddered when he looked down at it, shuddered and also flushed with indignation. Had she ever been happy? How many times had she not voiced her feelings in the unequivocal language of love! Yet she seemed so hideously unhappy as she stretched before him in her white robes of death. Why? What secret was this disclosed at the twelfth hour of life, on the very brink of the grave? Did death, then, hold the solution to the enigma of the conquering Sphinx!

Monross, master of psychology, tormented by visions of perfection, a victim to the devouring illusion of the artist,—Monross asked himself with chagrin if he had missed the key in which had sounded the symphony of this woman's life. This woman! His wife! A female creature, long-haired, smiling, loquacious—though reticent enough when her real self should have flashed out signals of recognition at him—this wife, the Rhoda he had called day and night—what had she been?