"Listen," said Madame Mineur; "I wish to speak with you seriously, my dear friend." She made a movement as if to place her hand on his shoulder, but his expression—his face was in the light—caused her to transfer her plump fingers to her coiffure, which she touched dexterously. Hubert was disappointed.

"I am listening," he answered; "is it a sermon, or consent—to that portrait? Come, give in—Elaine." He had never called her by this name before, and he anxiously awaited the result. But she did not relax her grave attitude.

"You must know, Monsieur Falcroft, what anxieties we undergo about Berenice. She is too wild for a French girl, too wild for her age—"

"Oh, let her enjoy her youth," he interrupted.

"Alas! that youth will be soon a thing of the past," she sighed. "Berenice is past eighteen, and her father and I must consider her future. Figure to yourself—she dislikes young men, eligible or not, and you are the only man she tolerates."

"And I am hopelessly ineligible," he laughingly said.

"Why?" asked the mother, quietly.

"Why! Do you know that I am nearing forty? Do you see the pepper and salt in my hair? After one passes twoscore it is time to think of the past, not of the future. I am over the brow of the hill; I see the easy decline of the road—it doesn't seem as long as when I climbed the other half." He smiled, threw back his strong shoulders, and inhaled a huge breath of air.

"Truly you are childish," she said; "you are at the best part of your life, of your career. Yes, Theophile, my husband, who is so chary in his praise, said that you would go far if you cared." Her low, warm voice, with its pleading inflections, thrilled him. He took her by the wrist.

"And would it please you, if I went far?" She trembled.

"Not too far, dear friend—remember Berenice."

"I remember no one but you," he impatiently answered; and relaxing his hold, he moved so that the moonlight shone on her face. She was pale. In her eyes there were fright and hope, decision and delight. He admired her more than ever.

"Let me paint you, Elaine, these next few weeks. It will be a surprise for Mineur. And I shall have something to cherish. Never mind about Berenice. She is a child. I am a middle-aged man. Between us is the wall—of the years. Never should it be climbed. While you—"

"Be careful—Hubert. Theophile is your friend."

"He is not. I never cared for him. He dragged me out here after he had been drinking too much, and when I saw you I could not stay away. Hear me—I insist! Berenice is nice, but the wall is too high for her to climb; it might prove a—"

"How do you know the wall is too steep for Berenice?" the girl cried as she scaled the top with apish agility, where, after a few mocking steps in the moonlight, she sank down breathless beside Hubert, and laughed so loudly that her mother was fearful of hysteria.

"Berenice! Berenice!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, Berenice is all right, mamma. Master Hubert, I want you to paint my portrait before papa returns—that's to be in four weeks, isn't it?" The elder pair regarded her disconcertedly.

"Oh, you needn't look so dismal. I'll not tell tales out of school. Hubert and mamma flirting! What a glorious jest! Isn't life a jest, Hubert? Let's make a bargain! If you paint mamma, you paint me, also. Then—you see—papa will not be jealous, and—and—" She was near tears her mother felt, and she leaned over Hubert and took the girl's hand. She grazed the long fingers of the painter, who at once caught both feminine hands in his.

"Now I have you both," he boasted, and was shocked by a vicious tap on the cheek—Berenice in rage pulled her left hand free. Silence ensued. Hubert prudently began to roll another cigarette, and Madame Mineur retreated out of the moonlight, while Berenice turned her back and soon began to hum. The artist spoke first:

"See here, you silly Berenice, turn around! I want to talk to you like a Dutch uncle—as we say in the United States. Of course I'll paint you. But I begin with your mother. And if you wish me to like you better than ever, don't say such things as you did. It hurts your—mother." His voice dropped into its deepest bass. She faced him, and he saw the glitter of wet eyelashes. She was charming, with her hair in disorder, her eyes two burning points of fire.

"I beg your pardon, mamma; I beg your pardon, Hubert. I'll be good the rest of this evening. Isn't it lovely?" She sniffed in the breeze with dilating nostrils, and the wild look of her set him to wondering how such a gentle mother could have such a gypsy daughter. Perhaps it was the father—yes, the old man had been an Apache in his youth according to the slang of the studios.

"But you must paint me as I wish, not as you will," resumed Berenice. "I hate conventional portraits. Papa Mineur chills me with his cabinet pictures of haughty society ladies, their faces as stiff as their starched gowns."

"Oh, Berenice, will you never say polite things of your father?"

"Never," she defiantly replied. "He wouldn't believe me if I did. No, Hubert, I want to pose as Ophelia. Oh, don't laugh, please!" They could not help it, and she leaped to the grass and called out:—

"I don't mean a theatrical Ophelia, singing songs and spilling flowers; I mean Ophelia drowned—" she threw herself on the sward, her arms crossed on her bosom, and in the moonlight they could see her eyes closed as if by death.

"Help me down, Hubert. That girl will go mad some day." He reached the earth and he gave her a hand. Berenice had arisen. Sulkily she said:—

"Shall I step into the Dark Tarn of Auber and float for you? I'll make a realistic picture, my Master Painter—who paints without imagination." And then she darted into the shrubbery and was lost to view. Without further speech the two regained the path and returned to the house.

II

THE CRIMSON SPLASH

When Eloise was asked by Berenice how long Monsieur Mineur would remain away on his tour, she did not reply. Rather, she put a question herself: why this sudden solicitude about the little-loved stepfather. Berenice jokingly answered that she thought of slipping away to Switzerland for a vacance on her own account. Eloise, who was not agreeable looking, viewed her charge suspiciously.

"Young lady, you are too deep for me. But you'll bear watching," she grimly confessed. Berenice skipped about her teasingly.

"I know something, but I won't tell, unless you tell."

"What is it?"

"Will you tell?"

"Yes."

"When is he coming back, and where is he now?" she insisted.

"Your father, you half-crazy child, expects to return in a month—by the first of June. And if you wish to wire or write him, let me know."

"Now I won't tell you my secret," and she was off like a gale of wind. Eloise shook her head and wondered.

In the atelier Hubert painted. Elaine sat on a dais, her hands folded in her lap; about her head twisted nun's-veiling gave her the old-fashioned quality of a Cosway miniature—the very effect he had sought. It was to be a "pretty" affair, this picture, with its subdued lighting, the face being the only target he aimed at; all the rest, the suave background, the gauzy draperies, he would brush in—suggest rather than state.

"I'll paint her soul, that sensitive soul of hers which tremulously peeps out of her eyes," he thought. Elaine was a patient subject. She took the pose naturally and scarcely breathed during the weary sittings. He recalled the early gossip and sought to evoke her as a professional model. But he gave up in despair. She was hopelessly "ladylike," and to interpret her adequately, only the decorative patterns of earlier men—Mignard, Van Loo, Nattier, Largilliere—would translate her native delicacy.

For nearly four weeks he had laboured on the face, painting it in with meticulous touches only to rub it out with savage disgust. To transcribe those tranquil, liquid eyes, their expression more naive than her daughter's—this had proved too difficult a problem for the usually facile technique of Falcroft. Give him a brilliant virtuoso theme and he could handle it with some of the sweep and splendour of the early Carolus Duran or the brutal elegance of the later Boldini. But Madame Mineur was a pastoral. She did not express nervous gesture. She was seldom dynamic. To "do" her in dots like the pointillistes or in touches after the manner of the earlier impressionists would be ridiculous. Her abiding charm was her repose. She brought to him the quiet values of an eighteenth-century eclogue—he saw her as a divinely artificial shepherdess watching an unreal flock, while the haze of decorative atmosphere would envelop her, with not a vestige of real life on the canvas. Yet he knew her as a natural, lovable woman, a mother who had suffered and would suffer because of her love for her only child. It was a paradox, like many other paradoxes of art.

The daughter—ah! perhaps she might better suit his style. She was admirable in her madcap carelessness and exotic colouring. Decidedly he would paint her when this picture was finished—if it ever would be.

Berenice avoided entering the studio during these sittings. She no longer jested with her mother about the picture, and with Hubert she preserved such an air of dignity that he fancied he had offended her. He usually came to Villiers-le-Bel on an early train three or four times a week and remained at Chalfontaine until ten o'clock. Never but once had a severe storm forced him to stay overnight. Since the episode on the wall he had not attempted any further advances. He felt happy in the company of Elaine, and gazing into her large eyes rested his spirit. It was true—he no longer played with ease the role of a soul-hunter. His youth had been troubled by many adventures, many foolish ones, and now he felt a calm in the midway of his life and that desire for domestic ease which sooner or later overtakes all men. He fancied himself painting Elaine on just such tranquil summer afternoons under a soft light. And oh! the joys of long walks, discreet gossip, and dinners at a well-served table with a few chosen friends. Was he, after all, longing for the flesh-pots of the philistine—he, Hubert Falcroft, who had patrolled the boulevards like other sportsmen of midnight!

At last the picture began to glow with that inner light he had so patiently pursued. Elaine Mineur looked at him from the canvas with veiled sweetness, a smile almost enigmatic lurking about her lips. Deepen a few lines and her expression would be one of contented sleekness. That Hubert had missed by a stroke. It was in her eyes that her chief glory abided. They were pathetic without resignation, liquid without humidity, indescribable in colouring and form. Their full cup and the accents which experience had graven under them were something he had never dreamed of realizing. It was a Cosway; but a Cosway broadened and without a hint of genteel namby-pamby or overelaborate finesse. Hubert was fairly satisfied. Madame Mineur had little to say. During the sittings she seldom spoke, and if their eyes met, the richness of her glance was a compensation for her lack of loquacity. Hubert did not complain. He was in no hurry. To be under the same roof with this adorable woman was all that he asked.

The day after he had finished his picture, he returned to Chalfontaine for the midday breakfast. Berenice was absent—in her room with a headache, her mother explained. The weather was sultry. He questioned Elaine during the meal. Had Berenice's temper improved? They passed out to the balcony where their coffee was served, and when he lighted his cigarette, Madame Mineur begged to be excused. She had promised Cousin Eloise to pay some calls. He strolled over the lawn, watching the hummocks of white clouds which piled up in architectural masses across the southern sky. Then he remembered the portrait and mounted to the atelier. As he put his hand on the knob of the door he thought he heard some one weeping. Suddenly the door was pulled from his grasp and Berenice appeared. Her hair hung on her shoulders. She was in a white dressing-gown. Her face was red and her eyes swollen. She did not attempt to move. Affectionately Hubert caught her in his arms and asked about her headache.

"It is better," she answered in scarcely audible accents.

"Why, you poor child! I hope you are not going to be ill! Have you been racing in the sun without your hat?"

"No. I haven't been out of doors since yesterday."

"What's the matter, little Berenice? Has some one been cross with her?" She pushed him from her violently.

"Hubert Falcroft, when you treat me as a woman and not as a child—"

"But I am treating you as a woman," he said. Her dark face became tragic. She had emerged from girlhood in a few hours. And as he held her closer some perverse spirit entered into his soul. Her vibrating youth and beauty forced him to gaze into her blazing eyes until he saw the pupils contract.

"Let me go!" she panted. "Let me free! I am not a doll. Go to your portrait and worship it. Let me free!"

"And what if I do not?" Something of her rebellious feeling filled his veins. He felt younger, stronger, fiercer. He put his arms about her neck and, after a silent battle, kissed her. Then she pushed by him and disappeared. He could see nothing, after the shock of the adventure, for some moments, and the semi-obscurity of the atelier was grateful to his eyes. A picture stood on the easel, but it was not, he fancied, the portrait. He went to the centre of the room where hung the cords that controlled the curtains covering the glass roof. Then in the flood of light he barely recognized the head of Elaine. It was on the easel, and with a sharp pain at his heart he saw across the face a big crimson splash.

* * * * *

III

MOON-RAYS

The dewy brightness of tangled blush roses had faded in the vague twilight; through the aisles of the little wood leading to the pool the light timidly flickered as Hubert and Elaine walked with the hesitating steps of perplexed persons. They had not spoken since they left the house—there in a few hurried words he told her of the accident and noted with sorrow the look of anguish in her eyes. Without knowing why, they went in the direction of the wall.

There was no moon when they reached the highroad. It would rise later, Elaine said in her low, slightly monotonous voice. Hubert was so stunned by the memory of his ruined picture that he forgot his earlier encounter with Berenice—that is, in describing it he had failed to minutely record his behaviour. But in the cool evening air his conscience became alive and he guiltily wondered whether he dare tell his misconduct—no, imprudence? Why not? She regarded him as a possible husband for Berenice—but how embarrassing! He made up his mind to say nothing; when the morrow came he would write Elaine the truth and bid her good-by. He could not in honour continue to visit this home where resided the woman he loved—with a jealous daughter. Why jealous? What a puzzle, and what an absurd one! He helped Elaine to a seat on the wall and sat near her. For several minutes neither spoke. They were again facing the pool, which looked in the dusk like a cracked mirror.

"It is not clear yet to me," murmured Elaine. "That the unfortunate child has always been more or less morbid and sick-brained, I have been aware. The world, marriage, and active existence will mend all that, I hope. I fear she is a little spoilt and selfish. And she doesn't love me very much. She has inherited all her father's passion for Poe's tales. My dear friend, she is jealous—that's the only solution of this shocking act. She disliked the idea of my portrait from the start. You remember on this spot hardly a month ago she challenged you to paint her as the drowned Ophelia!—and all her teasing about Monsieur Mineur and his jealousy, and—"

"Our flirtation," added Hubert, sadly.

"Oh, pray do not say such a thing! She is so hot-headed, so fond of you. Yes, I saw it from the beginning, and your talk about the insurmountable wall of middle-age did not deceive me. I only hope that will not be a tragic wall for her, for you—or for me...."

Her words trailed into a mere whisper. He put his hand over hers and again they were silent. About them the green of the forest had been transformed by the growing night into great clumps of velvety darkness and the vault overhead was empty of stars. June airs fanned their discontent into mild despair, and simultaneously they dreamed of another life, of a harmonious existence far from Paris, into which the phantom of Theophile Mineur would never intrude. Yet they made no demonstration of their affection—they would have been happy to sit and dream on this moon-haunted wall, near this nocturnal pool, forever. Hubert pictured Berenice in her room, behind bolted doors, lying across the bed weeping, or else staring in sullen repentance at the white ceiling. Why had she indulged in such vandalism? The portrait was utterly destroyed by the flaring smear laid on with a brush in the hand of an enraged young animal. What sort of a woman might not develop from this tempestuous girl! He knew that he had mortally offended her by his rudeness. But it was after, not before, the cruel treatment of his beloved work. Yet, how like a man had been his rapid succumbing to transitory temptation! For it was transitory—of that he was sure. The woman he loved, with a reverent love, was next to him, and if his pulse did not beat as furiously at this moment as earlier in the day, why—all the better. He was through forever with his boyish recklessness.

"Another peculiar thing," broke in Elaine, as if she had been thinking aloud, "is that Berenice has been pestering Eloise for her father's address."

"Her father's address?" echoed her companion.

"Yes; but whether she wrote to him Eloise could not say."

"Why should she write to him? She dislikes him—dislikes him almost as much—" he was about to pronounce his own name. She caught him up.

"Yes, that is the singular part of this singular affair. She felt slighted because you painted my portrait before hers. I confess I have had my misgivings. You should have been more considerate of her feelings, Hubert, my friend." She paused and sighed. For him the sigh was a spark that blew up the magazine of his firmest resolves. He had been touching her hands fraternally. His arm embraced her so that she could not escape, as this middle-aged man told his passion with the ardour of an enamoured youth.

"You dare not tell me you do not care for me! Elaine—let us reason. I loved you since the first moment I met you. It is folly to talk of Mineur and my friendship for him. I dislike, I despise him. It is folly to talk of Berenice and her childish pranks. What if she did cruelly spoil my work, our work! She will get over it. Girls always do get over these things. Let us accept conditions as they are. Say you love me—a little bit—and I'll be content to remain at your side, a friend, always that. I'll paint you again—much more beautifully than before." He was hoarse from the intensity of his feelings. The moon had risen and tipped with its silver brush the tops of the trees.

"And—my husband? And Berenice?"

"Let things remain as they are." He pressed her to him. A crackling in the underbrush and a faint plash in the lake startled them asunder. They listened with ears that seemed like beating hearts. There was no movement; only a night bird plaintively piped in the distance and a clock struck the quarter.

Elaine, now thoroughly frightened, tried to get down from the wall. Hubert restrained her, and as they stood thus, a moaning like the wind in autumnal leaves reached them. The moon-rays began to touch the water, and suddenly a nimbus of light formed about a floating face in the pool. The luminous path broadened, and to their horror they saw Berenice, her hair outspread, her arms crossed on her young bosom, lying in the little lake. Elaine screamed:—

"My God! My God! It is Berenice!—Berenice, I am punished for my wickedness to you!" Hubert, stunned by the vision, did not stir, as the almost fainting mother gripped his neck.

And then the eyes of the whimsical girl opened. A malicious smile distorted her pretty face. Slowly she arose, a dripping ghost in white, and pointing her long, thin fingers in the direction of the Ecouen road she mockingly cried:—

"There is some one to see your portrait at last, dear Master Painter." And saying this she vanished in the gloom, instantly followed by her agitated mother.

Hubert turned toward the wall, and upon it he recognized the stepfather of Berenice. After staring at each other like two moon-struck wights, the American spoke:—

"I swear that I, alone, am to blame for this—" The other wore the grin of a malevolent satyr. His voice was thick.

"Why apologize, Hubert? You know that it has been my devoted wish that you marry Berenice." He swayed on his perch. Hubert's brain was in a fog.

"Berenice!" said he.

"Yes—Berenice. Why not? She loves you."

"Then—you—Madame Mineur—" stammered Hubert. The Frenchman placed his finger on his nose and slyly whispered:—

"Don't be afraid! I'll not tell my wife that I caught Berenice with you alone in the park—you Don Juan! Now to the portrait—I must see that masterpiece of yours. Berenice wrote me about it." He nodded his head sleepily.

"Berenice wrote you about it!" was the mechanical reply.

"I'll join you and we'll go to the house." He tried to step down, but rolled over at Hubert's feet.

"What a joke is this champagne," he growled as he was lifted to his tottering legs. "We had a glorious time this afternoon before I left Paris. Hurrah! You're to be my son-in-law. And, my boy, I don't envy you—that's the truth. With such a little demon for a wife—I pity you, pity you—hurrah!"

"I am more to be despised," muttered Hubert Falcroft, as they moved away from the peaceful moonlit wall.



XIII

A SENTIMENTAL REBELLION

I came not to send peace, but a sword.... I am come to send fire on the earth.

I

Her living room was a material projection of Yetta Silverman's soul. The apartment on the north side of Tompkins Square, was small, sunny, and comfortable. From its windows in spring and summer she could see the boys and girls playing around the big, bare park, and when her eyes grew tired of the street she rested them on her beloved books and pictures. On one wall hung the portraits of Herzen, Bakounine and Kropotkin—the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of the anarchistic movement, as she piously called them. Other images of the propaganda were scattered over the walls: Netschajew—the St. Paul of the Nihilists—Ravachol, Octave Mirbeau, Jean Grave, Reclus, Spies, Parsons, Engels, and Lingg—the last four victims of the Haymarket affair, and the Fenians, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, the Manchester martyrs. Among the philosophers, poets, and artists were Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Max Stirner—a rare drawing—Ibsen, Thoreau, Emerson—the great American individualists—Beethoven, Zola, Richard Strauss, Carlyle, Nietzsche, Gorky, Walt Whitman, Dostoiewsky, Mazzini, Rodin, Constantin Meunier, Shelley, Turgenieff, Bernard Shaw, and finally the kindly face and intellectual head of the lawyer who so zealously defended the Chicago anarchists. This diversified group, together with much revolutionary literature, poems, pamphlets, the works of Proudhon, Songs Before Sunrise, by Swinburne, and a beautiful etching of Makart's proletarian Christ, completed, with an old square pianoforte, the ensemble of an individual room, a room that expressed, as her admirers said, the strong, suffering soul of Yetta Silverman, Russian anarchist, agitator, and exile.

"Come in," she cried out in her sharp, though not unpleasant, voice. A thin young man entered. She clapped her hands.

"Oh, so you changed your mind!" He looked at her over his glasses with his weak, blue eyes, the white of which predominated. Simply dressed, he nevertheless gave the impression of superior social station. He was of the New England theological-seminary type—narrow-chested, gaunt as to visage, by temperament drawn to theology, or, in default of religious belief, an ardent enthusiast in sociology. The contracted temples, uncertain gaze, and absence of fulness beneath the eyes betrayed the unimaginative man. Art was a sealed book to him, though taxation fairly fired his suspicious soul. He was nervous because he was dyspeptic, and at one time of his career he mistook stomach trouble for a call to the pulpit. And he was a millionnaire more times than he took the trouble to count.

"Yes," he timidly replied, "I did change my wavering mind—as you call that deficient organ of mine—and so I returned. I hope I don't disturb you!"

"No, not yet. I am sitting with my hands folded in my lap, like the women of your class—ladies, you call them." She accented the title, without bitterness. A cursory estimate of her appearance would have placed her in the profession of a trained nurse, or perhaps in the remotest analysis, a sewing woman of superior tastes. She was small, wiry, her head too large for her body; but the abounding nervous vitality, the harsh fire that burned in her large brown eyes, and the firm mouth would have attracted the attention of the most careless. Her mask, with its high Slavic cheek-bones and sharp Jewish nose, proclaimed her a magnetic woman. In her quarter on the far East Side the children called her "Aunt Yetta." She was a sister of charity in the guise of a revolutionist.

"You sit but you think, and my ladies never think," he answered, in his boyish voice. He seemed proud to be so near this distinguished creature. Had she not been sent to Siberia, driven out of France and Germany, and arrested in New York for her incendiary speeches? She possessed the most extraordinary power over an audience. Once, at Cooper Union, Arthur had seen her control a crazy mob bent on destroying the building because a few stupid police had interfered with the meeting. Among her brethren Yetta Silverman was classed with Louise Michel, Sophia Perowskaia, and Vera Zassoulitch, those valiant women, true guardian angels, veritable martyrs to the cause. He thought of them as he watched the delicate-looking young woman before him.

Arthur was too chilly of blood to fall in love with her; his admiration was purely cerebral. He was unlucky enough to have had for a father a shrewd, visionary man, that curious combination of merchant and dreamer once to be found in New England. A follower of Fourier, a friend of Emerson, the elder Wyartz had gone to Brook Farm and had left it in a few months. Dollars, not dreams, was his true ambition. But he registered his dissatisfaction with this futile attempt by christening his only son, Arthur Schopenhauer; it was old Wyartz's way of getting even with the ideal. Obsessed from the age of spelling by his pessimistic middle name, the boy had grown up in a cloudy compromise of rebellion and the church. For a few years he vacillated; he went to Harvard, studied the Higher Criticism, made a trip abroad, wrote a little book recording the contending impulses of his pale, harassed soul—Oscillations was the title—and returned to Boston a mild anarch. Emerson the mystic, transposed to the key of France, sometimes makes bizarre music.

She arose and, walking over to him, put her hand nonchalantly on his shoulder.

"Arthur, comrade, what do you mean to do with yourself—come, what will all this enthusiasm bring forth?" He fumbled his glasses with his thumb and index finger—a characteristic gesture—and nervously regarded her before answering. Then he smiled at his idea.

"We might marry and fight the great fight together like the Jenkins crowd."

"Marry!" she exclaimed—her guttural Russian accent manifested itself when she became excited—"marry! You are only a baby, Arthur Schopenhauer Wyartz—Herrgott, this child bears such a name!—and while I am sure the thin Yankee blood of the Jenkins family needed a Jewish wife, and a Slav, I am not that way of thinking for myself. I am married to the revolution." Her eyes dwelt with reverence on her new Christian saints, those Christs of the gutter, who had sacrificed their lives in the modern arena for the idea of liberty, who were thrown to the wild beasts and slaughtered by the latter-day pagans of wealth, and barbarians in purple. He followed her glance. It lashed him to jerky enthusiasm.

"I am not joking," he earnestly asserted, "so pardon my rashness. Only believe in my sincerity. I am no anarch on paper. I am devoted to your cause and to you, Yetta, to my last heart's blood. Do you need my wealth? It is yours. You can work miracles with millions in America. Take it all."

"It's not money we need, but men," she answered darkly. "Your millions, which came to you innocently enough, represent the misery of—how many? Let the multi-millionnaires give away their money to found theological colleges and libraries—my party will have none of it. Its men are armed by the ideas that we prefer. I don't blame the rich or the political tyrants—the mob has to be educated, the unhappy proletarians, who have so long submitted to the crack of the whip that they wouldn't know what to do with their freedom if they had it. All mobs believe alike in filth and fire, whether antique slaves free for their day's Saturnalia, or the Paris crowds of '93. Their ideas of happiness are pillage, bloodshed, drunkenness, revenge. Every popular uprising sinks the people deeper in their misery. Every bomb thrown discredits the cause of liberty."

Astonished by this concession, Arthur wondered how she had ever earned her reputation as the Russian "Red Virgin," as an unequivocal terrorist. Thus he had heard her hailed at all the meetings which she addressed. But she did not notice his perturbation, she was following another train.

"You Americans do not love money as much as the Europeans—who hoard it away, who worship it on their naked knees; but you do something worse—you love it for the sake of the sport, a cruel sport for the poor. You go into speculation as the English go after big game. It is a sport. This sport involves food—and you gamble with wheat and meat for counters, while starving men and women pay for the game. America is yet rich enough to afford this sport, but some day it will become crowded like Europe, and then, beware! Wasn't it James Hinton who said that 'Overthrowing society means an inverted pyramid getting straight'?

"And America," she continued, "bribes us with the gilded sentimental phrases of Rousseau, Mirabeau, and Thomas Paine woven into your national constitution, with its presumptuous declaration that all men are born free and equal—shades of Darwin and Nietzsche!—and that universal suffrage is a panacea for all evils. In no country boasting itself Christian is there a system so artfully devised for keeping the poor free and unequal, no country where so-called public opinion, as expressed in the press, is used to club the majority into submission. And you are all proud of this liberty—a liberty at which the despised serf in Russia or the man of the street in London sneers—there is to-day more individual liberty in England and Germany than in the United States. Don't smile! I can prove it. As for France or Italy—they are a hundred years ahead of you in municipal government. But I shan't talk blue-books at you, Arthur!"

"Why not, why not?" he quickly interposed. "You always impress me by your easy handling of facts. And why won't my money be of use to the social revolution?" Scornfully she started up again and began walking.

"Why? Because convictions can't be bought with cash! Why! Because philanthropy is the most selfish of vices. You may do good here and there—but you do more harm. You create more paupers, you fine gentlemen, with your Mission houses and your Settlement workers! You are trying to cover the ugly sores with a plaster of greenbacks. It won't heal the sickness—it won't heal it, I tell you." Her eyes were flaming and she stamped the floor passionately.

"We workers on the East Side have a name for you millionnaires. We call you the White Mice. You have pretty words and white lies, pretty ways and false smiles. Lies! lies! lies! You are only giving back, with the aid of your superficial fine ladies, the money stolen from the true money earners. You have discovered the Ghetto—you and the impertinent newspaper men. And like the reporters you come down to use us for 'copy.' You live here in comfort among us and then go away, write a book about our wretchedness and pose as altruistic heroes in your own silly set. How I loathe that word—altruism! As if the sacrifice of your personality does not always lead to self-deception, to hypocrisy! It is an excuse for the busybody-rich to advertise their charities. If they were as many armed as Briareus or the octopus, their charity would be known to each and every hand on their arms. These sentimental anarchs! They even marry our girls and carry them off to coddle their conscience with gilded gingerbread. Yet they would turn their backs on Christ if he came to Hester Street—Christ, the first modern anarch, a destructionist, a proletarian who preached fire and sword for the evil rich of his times. Nowadays he would be sent to Blackwell's Island for six months as a disturber of the peace or for healing without a license from the County Medical Association!"

"Like Johann Most," he ventured. She blazed at the name.

"No jokes, please. Most, too, has suffered. But I am no worshipper of bombs—and beer." This made him laugh, but as the laugh was not echoed he stared about him.

"But Yetta,—we must begin somewhere. I wish to become—to become—something like you.—"

She interrupted him roughly:

"To become—you an anarch! You are a sentimental rebel because your stomach is not strong enough for the gourmands who waste their time at your clubs. If your nerves were sound you might make a speech. But the New England conscience of your forefathers—they were nearly all clergymen, weren't they?—has ruined your strength. The best thing you can do, my boy, is to enter a seminary and later go to China as a missionary; else turn literary and edit an American edition of Who's Who in Hell! But leave our East Side alone. Do you know what New York reminds me of? Its centre is a strip of green and gold between two smouldering red rivers of fire—the East and West Sides. If they ever spill over the banks, all the little parasites of greater parasites, the lawyers, brokers, bankers, journalists, ecclesiastics, and middle men, will be devoured. Oh, what a glorious day! And oh, that terrible night when we marched behind the black flag and muffled drums down Broadway, that night in 1887 when the four martyrs were murdered, the hero Lingg having killed himself. What would you have done in those awful times?"

"Try me," he muttered, as he pulled down his cuffs, "try me!"

"Very well, I'll try you. Like Carlo Cafiero, the rich Italian anarch, you must give your money to us—every cent of it. Come with me to-night. I address a meeting of the brethren at Schwab's place—you know, the saloon across the street, off the square. We can eat our supper there, and then—"

"Try me," he reiterated, and his voice was hoarse with emotion, his pulse painfully irregular.

II

Notwithstanding his vows of heroism, Arthur could not force himself to like the establishment of Schwab, where the meeting was to take place. It was a beer-saloon, not one of those mock-mediaeval uptown palaces, but a long room with a low ceiling, gaslit and shabby. The tables and chairs of hard, coarse wood were greasy—napkins and table-cloths were not to be mentioned, else would the brethren suspect the presence of an aristocrat. At the upper end, beyond the little black bar, there was a platform, upon it a table, a pianoforte, and a stool. Still he managed to conceal his repugnance to all these uninviting things and he sipped his diluted Rhine wine, ate his sandwich—an unpalatable one—under the watchful eyes of his companion. By eight o'clock the room was jammed with working-people, all talking and in a half dozen tongues. Occasionally Yetta left him to join a group, and where she went silence fell. She was the oracle of the crowd. At nine o'clock Arthur's head ached. He had smoked all his Turkish cigarettes, the odour of which caused some surprise—there was a capitalist present and they knew him. Only Yetta prevented disagreeable comment. The men, who belonged to the proletarian class, were poorly dressed and intelligent; the women wore shawls on their heads and smoked bad cigarettes. The saloon did not smell nice, Arthur thought. He had offered Yetta one of his imported cigarettes, but she lighted a horrible weed and blew the smoke in his face.

At ten o'clock he wished himself away. But a short, stout man with a lopsided face showing through his tangled beard, stood up and said in German:—

"All who are not our friends, please leave the house."

No one stirred. The patron went from group to group saluting his customers and eying those who were not. Whether any password or signal was given Arthur could not say. When the blond, good-natured Schwab reached him, Yetta whispered in his ear. The host beamed on the young American and gave him a friendly poke in the back; Arthur felt as if he had been knighted. He said this to Yetta, but her attention was elsewhere. The doors and windows were quickly shut and bolted. She nudged his elbow—for they were sitting six at the table, much to his disgust; the other four drank noisily—and he followed her to the top of the room. A babble broke out as they moved along.

"It's Yetta's new catch. Yetta's rich fellow. Wait until she gets through with him—poor devil." These broken phrases made him shiver, especially as Yetta's expression, at first enigmatic, was now openly sardonic. What did she mean? Was she only tormenting him? Was this to be his test, his trial? His head was almost splitting, for the heat was great and the air bad. Again he wished himself home.

They reached the platform. "Jump up, Arthur, and help me," she commanded. He did so. But his discomfiture only grew apace with the increased heat—the dingy ceiling crushed him—and the rows in front, the entire floor seemed transformed to eyes, malicious eyes. She told him to sit down at the piano and play the Marseillaise. Then standing before the table she drew from her bosom a scarlet flag, and accompanied by the enthusiastic shoutings she led the singing. Arthur at the keyboard felt exalted. Forgotten the pains of a moment before. He hammered the keys vigorously, extorting from the battered instrument a series of curious croakings. Some of the keys did not "speak," some gave forth a brazen clangour from the rusty wires. No one cared. The singing stopped with the last verse.

"Now La Ravachole for our French brethren." This combination of revolutionary lyrics—Ca Ira and Carmagnole—was chanted fervidly. Then came for the benefit of the German the stirring measures from the Scotch-German John Henry Mackay's Sturm:—

Das ist der Kampf, den allnaechtlich Bevor das Dunkel zerrinnt, Einsam und gramvoll auskaempt Des Jahrhunderts verlorenes Kind.

Yetta waved her long and beautifully shaped hands—they were her solitary vanity. The audience became still. She addressed them at first in deliberate tones, and Arthur noted that the interest was genuine—he wondered how long his fat-witted club friends could endure or appreciate the easy manner in which Yetta Silverman quoted from great thinkers, and sprinkled these quotations with her own biting observations.

"Richard Wagner—who loved humanity when he wrote Siegfried and regretted that love in Parsifal!

"Richard Wagner—who loved ice-cream more than Dresden's freedom—Wagner: the Swiss family bell-ringer of '48!

"To Max Stirner, Ibsen, and Richard Strauss belongs the twentieth century!

"Nietzsche—the anarch of aristocrats!

"Karl Marx—or the selfish Jew socialist!

"Lassalle—the Jew comedian of liberty!

"Bernard Shaw—the clever Celt who would sacrifice socialism for an epigram.

"Curse all socialists!" she suddenly screamed.

Arthur, entranced by the playful manner with which she disposed of friend and foe, was aghast at this outbreak. He saw another Yetta. Her face was ugly and revengeful. She sawed the air with her thin arms.

"Repeat after me," she adjured her hearers, "the Catechism of Sergei Netschajew, but begin with Herzen's noble motto: 'Long live chaos and destruction!'"

"Long live chaos and destruction!" was heartily roared.

The terrific catechism of the apostle Netschajew made Arthur shake with alternate woe and wrath. It was bloody-minded beyond description. Like a diabolic litany boomed the questions and answers:—

"Day and night we must have but one thought—inexorable destruction." And Arthur recalled how this pupil of Bakounine had with the assistance of Pryow and Nicolajew beguiled a certain suspected friend, Ivanow, into a lonely garden and killed him, throwing the body into a lake. After that Netschajew disappeared, though occasionally showing himself in Switzerland and England. Finally, in 1872, he was nabbed by the Russian government, sent to Siberia, and—!

Ugh! thought Arthur, what a people, what an ending! And Yetta—why did she now so openly proclaim destruction as the only palliative for social crime when she had so eloquently disclaimed earlier in the day the propaganda by force, by dagger, and dynamite?—He had hardly asked himself the question when there came a fierce rapping of wooden clubs at door and window. Instantly a brooding hush like that which precedes a hurricane fell upon the gathering. But Yetta did not long remain silent.

"Quick, Arthur, play the Star-Spangled Banner! It's the police. I want to save these poor souls—" she added, with a gulp in her throat; "quick, you idiot, the Star-Spangled Banner." But Arthur was almost fainting. His ringers fell listlessly on the keys, and they were too weak to make a sound. The police! he moaned, as the knocking deepened into banging and shouting. What a scandal! What a disgrace! He could never face his own world after this! To be caught with a lot of crazy anarchists in a den like this!—Smash, went the outside door! And the newspapers! They would laugh him out of town. He, Arthur Schopenhauer Wyartz, the Amateur Anarch! He saw the hideous headlines. Why, the very daily in which some of his fortune was invested would be the first to mock him most!

The assault outside increased. He leaped to the floor, where Yetta was surrounded by an excited crowd. He plucked her sleeve. She gazed at him disdainfully.

"For God's sake, Yetta, get me out of this—this awful scrape. My mother, my sisters—the disgrace!" She laughed bitterly.

"You poor chicken among hawks! But I'll help you—follow me." He reached the cellar stairs, and she showed him a way by which he could walk safely into the alley, thence to the street back of their building. He shook her hand with the intensity of a man in the clutches of the ague.

"But you—why don't you go with me?" he asked, his teeth chattering.

The brittle sound of glass breaking was heard. She answered, as she took his feverish hand:—

"Because, you brave revolutionist, I must stick to my colours. Farewell!" And remounting the stairs, she saw the bluecoats awaiting her.

"I hope the police will catch him anyhow," she said. It was her one relapse into femininity, and as she quietly surrendered she did not regret it.

III

Old Koschinsky's store on the avenue was the joy of the neighbourhood. For hours, their smeary faces flattened against the glass, the children watched the tireless antics of the revolving squirrels; the pouter pigeons expand their breasts into feathered balloons; the goldfish, as they stolidly swam, their little mouths open, their eyes following the queer human animals imprisoned on the other side of the plate-glass window. Canary birds by the hundreds made the shop a trying one for sensitive ears. There were no monkeys. Koschinsky, whose heart was as soft as butter, though he was a formidable revolutionist—so he swore over at Schwab's—declared that monkeys were made in the image of tyrannical humans. He would have none of them. Parrots? There were enough of the breed around him, he told the gossiping women, who, with their scheitels, curved noses, and shining eyes, lent to the quarter its Oriental quality.

It was in Koschinsky's place that Arthur first encountered Yetta. He was always prowling about the East Side in search of sociological prey, and the modest little woman with her intelligent and determined face attracted him strongly. They fell into easy conversation near a cage of canaries, and the acquaintance soon bloomed into a friendship. A week after the raid on Schwab's, Arthur, very haggard and nervous, wandered into Koschinsky's. The old man greeted him:—

"Hu! So you've just come down from the Island! Well—how did you like it up there? Plenty water—eh?" The sarcasm was too plain, and the young man, mumbling some sort of an answer, turned to go.

"Hold on there!" said Koschinsky. "I expect a very fine bird soon. You'd better wait. It was here only last night; and the bird asked whether you had been in." Arthur started.

"For me? Miss Silverman?"

"I said a bird," was the dogged reply. And then Yetta walked up to Arthur and asked:—

"Where have you been? Why haven't you called?" He blushed.

"I was ashamed."

"Because you were so, so—frightened, that night?"

"Yes."

"But nothing came of the affair. The police could get no evidence. We had no flags—"

"That scarlet one I saw you with—what of it?" She smiled.

"Did you look in your pockets when you got home? I stuffed the flag in one of them while we were downstairs." He burst into genteel laughter.

"No, I threw off my clothes in such disgust that night that I vowed I would never get into them again. I gave the suit to my valet."

"Your valet," she gravely returned; "he may become one of us."

"Fancy, when I reached the house—I went up in a hansom, for I was bareheaded—my mother was giving the biggest kind of a ball. I had no end of trouble trying to sneak in unobserved."

She regarded him steadily. "Isn't it strange," she went on, "how the bull-dog police of this town persecute us—and they should be sympathetic. They had to leave their own island because of tyranny. Yet as soon as they step on this soil they feel themselves self-constituted tyrants. Something of the sort happened with your own ancestors—" she looked at him archly—"the Pilgrim Fathers were not very tolerant to the Quakers, the Jews, Catholics, or any sect not their own. Now you do not seem to have inherited that ear-slicing temperament—"

"Oh, stop, Yetta! Don't make any more fun of me. I confess I am cowardly—I hate rows and scandals—"

"'What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his liberty?'"

"Yes, I know. But this was such a nasty little affair. The newspapers would have driven me crazy."

"But suppose, for the sake of argument," she said, "that the row would not have appeared in the newspapers—what then?"

"What do you mean? By Jove, there was nothing in the papers, now that I come to think of it. I went the next morning out to Tuxedo and forgot—what do you mean by this mystery, Yetta?"

"I mean this—suppose, for the sake of further argument, I should tell you that there was no row, no police, no arrests!" He gasped.

"O-h, what an ass I made of myself. So that was your trial! And I failed. Oh, Yetta, Yetta—what shall I say?" The girl softened. She took both his hands in her shapely ones and murmured:—

"Dear little boy, I treated you roughly. Forgive me! There was a real descent by the police—it was no deception. That's why I asked you to play the Star-Spangled Banner—"

"Excuse me, Yetta; but why did you do that? Why didn't you meet the police defiantly chanting the Marseillaise? That would have been braver—more like the true anarchist." She held down her head.

"Because—because—those poor folks—I wanted to spare them as much trouble with the police as possible," she said in her lowest tones.

"And why," he pursued triumphantly, "why did you preach bombs after assuring me that reform must come through the spiritual propaganda?" She quickly replied:—

"Because our most dangerous foe was in the audience. You know. The man with the beard who first spoke. He has often denounced me as lukewarm; and then you know words are not as potent as deeds with the proletarians. One assassination is of more value than all the philosophy of Tolstoy. And that old wind-bag sat near us and watched us—watched me. That's why I let myself go—" she was blushing now, and old Koschinsky nearly dropped a bird-cage in his astonishment.

"Yetta, Yetta!" Arthur insisted, "wind-bag, you call your comrade? Were you not, just for a few minutes, in the same category? Again she was silent.

"I feel now," he ejaculated, as he came very close to her, "that we must get outside of these verbal entanglements. I want you to become my wife." His heart sank as he thought of his mother's impassive, high-bred air—with such a figure for a Fifth Avenue bride! The girl looked into his weak blue eyes with their area of saucer-like whiteness. She shook her stubborn head.

"I shall never marry. I do not believe in such an institution. It degrades women, makes tyrants of men. No, Arthur—I am fond of you, perhaps—" she paused,—"so fond that I might enter into any relation but marriage,—that never!"

"And I tell you, Yetta, anarchy or no anarchy, I could never respect the woman if she were not mine legally. In America we do these things differently—" he was not allowed to finish.

She glared at him, then she strode to the shop door and opened it.

"Farewell to you, Mr. Arthur Schopenhauer Wyartz, amateur anarchist. Better go back to your mother and sisters! Mein Gott, Schopenhauer, too!" He put his Alpine hat on his bewildered head and without a word went out. She did not look after him, but walked over to the old bird-fancier and sat on his leather-topped stool. Presently she rested her elbows on her knees and propped her chin with her gloveless hands. Her eyes were red. Koschinsky peeped at her and shook his head.

"Yetta—you know what I think!—Yetta, the boy was right! You shouldn't have asked him for the Star-Spangled Banner! The Marseillaise would have been better."

"I don't care," she viciously retorted.

"I know, I know. But a nice boy—so well fixed."

"I don't care," she insisted. "I'm married to the revolution."

"Yah, yah! the revolution, Yetta—" he pushed his lean, brown forefinger into the cage of an enraged canary—"the revolution! Yes, Yetta Silverman, the revolution!" She sighed.



XIV

HALL OF THE MISSING FOOTSTEPS

So I saw in my dream that the man began to run.

—Pilgrim's Progress.

I

As the first-class carriage rolled languidly out of Balak's only railway station on a sultry February evening, Pobloff, the composer, was not sorry.

"I wish it were Persia instead of Ramboul," he reflected. Luga, his wife, he had left weeping at the station; but since the day she disappeared with his orchestra for twenty-four hours, Pobloff's affection had gradually cooled; he was leaving the capital without a pang on a month's leave of absence—a delicate courtesy of the king's extended to a brother ruler, though a semi-barbarous one, the khedive of Ramboul.

Pobloff was not sad nor was he jubilantly glad. The journey was an easy one; a night and day and the next night would see him, God willing,—he crossed himself,—in the semi-tropical city of Nirgiz. From Balak to Nirgiz, from southeastern Europe to Asia Minor!

The heir-apparent was said to be a music-loving lad, very much under the cunning thumb of his grim old aunt, who, rumour averred, wore a black beard, and was the scourge of her little kingdom. All that might be changed when the prince would reach his majority; his failing health and morbid melancholy had frightened the grand vizier, and the king of Balakia had been petitioned to send Pobloff, the composer, designer of inimitable musical masques, Pobloff, the irresistible interpreter of Chopin, to the aid of the ailing youth.

So this middle-aged David left his nest to go harp for a Saul yet in his adolescence. What his duties were to be Pobloff had not the slightest idea. He had received no special instructions; a member of the royal household bore him the official mandate and a purse fat enough to soothe his wife's feelings. After appointing his first violin conductor of the Balakian Orchestra during his absence, the fussy, stout, good-natured Russian (he was born at Kiew, 1865, the biographical dictionaries say) secured a sleeping compartment on the Ramboul express, from the windows of which he contemplated with some satisfaction the flat land that gradually faded in the mists of night as the train tore its way noisily over a rude road-bed.

II

Pobloff slept. He usually snored; but this evening he was too fatigued. He heard not the sudden stoppages at lonely way stations where hoarse voices and a lantern represented the life of the place; he did not heed the engine as it thirstily sucked water from a tank in the heart of the Karpakians; and he was surprised, pleased, proud, when a hot February sun, shining through his window, awoke him.

It was six o'clock of a fine morning, and the train was toiling up a precipitous grade to the spine of the mountain, where the down-slope would begin and air-brakes rule. Pobloff looked about him. He scratched his long nose, a characteristic gesture, and began wondering when coffee would be ready. He pressed the bell. The guard entered, a miserable bandit who bravely wore his peaked hat with green plumes a la Tyrol. He spoke four tongues and many dialects; Pobloff calculated his monthly salary at forty roubles.

"No, Excellency, the coffee will be hot and refreshing at Kerb, where we arrive about seven." He cleared his throat, put out his hand, bowed low, and disappeared. The composer grumbled. Kerb!—not until that wretched eyrie in the clouds! And such coffee! No matter. Pobloff never felt in robuster health; his irritable nerves were calmed by a sound night's sleep. The air was fresher than down in the malarial valley, where stood the shining towers of Balak; he could see them pinked by the morning sun and low on the horizon. All together he was glad....

Hello, this must be Kerb! A moment later Pobloff bellowed for the guard; he had shattered the electric annunciator by his violence. Then, not waiting to be served, he ran into the vestibule, and soon was on the station platform, inhaling huge drafts of air into his big chest. Ah! It was glorious up there. What surprised him was the number of human beings clambering over the steps, running and gabbling like a lot of animals let loose from their cages. The engineer beside his quivering machine enjoyed his morning coffee. And there were many turbaned pagans and some veiled women mixed with the crowd.

The sparkling of bright colours and bizarre costumes did not disturb Pobloff, who had lived too long on anonymous borders, where Jew, Christian, Turk, Slav, African, and outlandish folk generally melted into a civilization which still puzzled ethnologists.

A negro, gorgeously clad, guarding closely a slim female, draped from head to foot in virginal white, attracted the musician. The man's face was monstrous in its suggestion of evil, and furthermore shocking, because his nose was a gaping hole. Evidently a scimiter had performed this surgical operation, Pobloff mused.

The giant's eyes offended him, they so stared, and threateningly.

Pobloff was not a coward. After his adventure in Balak, he feared neither man nor devil, and he insolently returned the black fellow's gaze. They stood about a buffet and drank coffee. The young woman—her outlines were girlish—did not touch anything; she turned her face in Pobloff's direction, so he fancied, and spoke at intervals to her attendant.

"I must be a queer-looking bird to this Turk and her keeper—probably some Georgian going to a rich Mussulman's harem in company with his eunuch," Pobloff repeated to himself.

A gong was banged. Before its strident vibrations had ceased troubling the thin morning air, the train began to move slowly out of Kerb. Pobloff again was glad.

He remained on the rear platform of his car as long as the white station, beginning to blister under a tropical sun, was in sight. Then he sought his compartment. His amazement and rage were great when he found the two window seats occupied by the negro and the mysterious creature. Pobloff's bag was tumbled in a corner, his overcoat, hat, and umbrella tossed to the other end of the room. The big black man bared his teeth smilingly, the shrouded girl shrank back as if in fear.

"Well, I'll be—!" began the composer. Then he leaned over and pushed the button, the veins in his forehead like whipcords, his throat parched with wrath. But to no avail—the bell was broken. Pobloff's first impulse was to take the smiling Ethiopian by the neck and pitch him out. There were several reasons why he did not: the giant looked dangerous; he plainly carried a brace of pistols, and at least one dagger, the jewelled handle of which flashed over his glaring sash of many tints. And then the lady—Pobloff was very gallant, too gallant, his wife said. The bell would not ring! What was he to do? He soon made up his mind, supple Slav that he was. With a muttered apology he sank back and closed his eyes in polite despair.

His consternation was overwhelming when a voice addressed him in Russian, a contralto voice of some indefinable timbre, the voice of a female, yet not without epicene intonations. His eyes immediately opened. From her gauze veiling the young woman spoke:—

"We are sorry to derange you. The guard made a mistake. Pardon!" The tone was slightly condescending, as if the goddess behind the cloud had deigned to notice a mere mortal. Her attendant was smiling, and to Pobloff his grin resembled a newly sliced watermelon. But her voice filled him with ecstasy. His ear, as sensitive as the eye of a Claude Monet, noted every infinitesimal variation in tone-colour, and each shade was a symbol for the fantastic imagination of this poetic composer. The girlish voice affected him strangely. It pierced his soul like a poniard. It made his spine chilly. It evoked visions of white women languorously moving in processional attitudes beneath the chaste rays of an implacable moon. The voice modulated into crisp morning inflections:—

"You are going far, Excellency?" She knew him! And the slave who grinned and grinned and never spoke—what was he? She seemed to follow Pobloff's thought.

"Hamet is dumb. His tongue was cut at the same time he lost his nose. It all happened at the siege of Yerkutz."

Pobloff at last found words.

"Poor fellow!" he said sympathetically, and then forgot all about the mutilated one. "You are welcome to this compartment," he assured her in his oiliest manner. "What surprises me is that I did not see your Serene Highness when we left Balak." She started at the title that he bestowed upon her, and he inwardly chuckled. Clever dog, Pobloff, clever dog! Her eyes were brilliant despite obstructing veils.

"I was en route to Balak yesterday, but my servant became ill and I stopped over night at Kerb." Pobloff was entranced. She was undoubtedly a young dame of noble birth and her freedom, the freedom of a European woman, delighted him. It also puzzled.

"How is it—?" he asked.

But they had begun that fearful descent, at once the despair and delight of engineers. The mountain fell away rapidly as the long, clumsy train raced down its flank at a breakneck pace. Pobloff shivered and clutched the arms of his seat. He saw nothing but deep blue sky and the tall top of an occasional tree. The racket was terrific, the heat depressing. She sat in her corner, apparently sleeping, while the giant smiled, always smiled, never removing his ugly eyes from the perspiring countenance of Pobloff.

As they neared earth's level, midday was over. Pobloff hungered. Before he could go in search of the ever absent guard, the woman suddenly sat up, clapped her hands, and said something; but whether it was Turkish, Roumanian, or Greek, he couldn't distinguish. A hamper was hauled from under the seat by the servant, and to his joy Pobloff saw white rolls, grapes, wine, figs, and cheese. He bowed and began eating. The others looked at him and for a moment he could have sworn he heard faint laughter.

"I am so hungry," he said apologetically. "And you, Serenity, won't you join me?" He offered her fruit. It was declined with a short nod. He was dying to smoke, and, behold! priceless Turkish tobacco was thrust into his willing hand. He rolled a stout cigarette, lighted it. Then a sigh reached his ears. "The lady smokes," he thought, and slyly chuckled.

A sound of something tearing was heard, and a pair of beautiful hands reached for the tobacco. In a few moments the slender fingers were pressing a cigarette; the slave lighted a wax fusee; the lady took it, put the cigarette in a rent of her veil, and a second volume of odorous vapour arose. Pobloff leaned back, stupefied. A Mohammedan woman smoking in a Trans-Caucasian railway carriage before a Frank! Stupendous! He felt unaccountably gay.

"This is joyful," he said aloud. She smoked fervently. "Western manners are certainly invading the East," he continued, hoping to hear again that voice of marvellous resonance. She smoked. "Why, even Turkish women have been known to study music in Paris."

"I am not a Turk," she said in her deepest chest tones.

"Pardon! A Russian, perhaps? Your accent is perfect. I am a Russian." She did not reply.

The day declined, and there was no more conversation. As the train devoured leagues of swampy territory, villages were passed. The journey's end was nearing. Soon meadows were seen surrounding magnificent villas. A wide, shallow river was crossed, the Oxal; Pobloff knew by his pocket map that Nirgiz was nigh. And for the first time in twenty-four hours he sorrowed. Despite his broad invitations and unmistakable hints, he could not trap his travelling companion into an avowal of her identity, of her destination. Nothing could be coaxed from the giant, and it was with a sinking heart—Pobloff was very sentimental—that he saw the lights of Nirgiz; a few minutes later the train entered the Oriental station. In the heat, the clamour of half a thousand voices, yelling unknown jargons, his resolution to keep his companions in view went for naught. Beset by jabbering porters, he did not have an opportunity to say farewell to the veiled lady; with her escort she had disappeared when the car stopped—and without a word of thanks! Pobloff was wretched.

III

It was past nine o'clock as he roamed the vast garden surrounding the Palace of a Thousand Sounds—thus named because of the tiny bells tinkling about its marble dome. He had eaten an unsatisfying meal in a small antechamber, waited upon by a stupid servant. And worse still, the food was ill cooked. On presenting his credentials, earlier in the evening, the grand vizier, a sneaky-appearing man, had welcomed him coldly, telling him that her Serene Highness was too exhausted to receive so late in the day; she had granted too many audiences that afternoon.

"And the prince?" he queried. The prince was away hunting by moonlight, and could not be seen for at least a day. In the interim, Pobloff was told to make himself at home, as became such a distinguished composer and artistic plenipotentiary of Balakia's king. Then he was bowed out of the chamber, down the low malachite staircase, into his supper room. It was all very disturbing to a man of Pobloff's equable disposition.

He thought of Luga, his little wife, his dove; but not long. She did not appeal to his heart of hearts; she was a coquette. Pobloff sighed. He was midway in his mortal life, a dangerous period for susceptible manhood. He lifted moist eyes to the stars; the night was delicious. He rested upon a cushioned couch of stone. About him the moonlight painted the trees, until they seemed like liquefied ermine; the palace arose in pyramidal surges of marble to the sky, meeting the moonbeams as if in friendly defiance, and casting them back to heaven with triumphant reflections. And the stillness, profound as the tomb, was punctuated by glancing fireflies. Pobloff hummed melodiously.

"A night to make music," whispered a deep, sweet voice. Before he could rise, his heart bounding as if stung to its centre, a woman, swathed in white, sat beside him, touched him, put such a pressure upon his shoulder that his blood began to stir. It was she. He stumbled in his speech. She laughed, and he ground his teeth, for this alone saved him from foolishness, from mad behaviour.

"Maestro—you could make music this lovely night?" Pobloff started.

"In God's name, who are you, and what are you doing here? Where did you go this evening? I missed you. Ah! unhappy man that I am, you will drive me crazy!"

She did not smile now, but pressed close to him.

"I am a prisoner—like yourself," she replied simply.

"A prisoner! How a prisoner? I am not a prisoner, but an envoy from my king to the sick princeling."

She sighed.

"The poor, mad prince," she said, "he is in need of your medicine, sadly. He sent for me a year ago, and I am now his prisoner for life."

"But I saw you on the train, a day's journey hence," interrupted the musician.

"Yes, I had escaped, and was being taken back by black Hamet when we met."

Pobloff whistled. So the mystery was disclosed. A little white slave from the seraglio of this embryo tyrant had flown the cage! No wonder she was watched, little surprise that she did not care to eat. He straightened himself, the hair on his round head like porcupine quills.

"My dear young lady," he exclaimed in accents paternal, "leave all to me. If you do not wish to stay in this place, you may rely on me. When I see this same young man,—he must be a nice sprig of royalty!—I propose to tell him what I think of him." Pobloff threw out his chest and snorted with pride. Again he fancied that he heard suppressed laughter. He darted glances in every direction, but the fall of distant waters smote upon his ears like the crepuscular music of Chopin. His companion shook with ill-suppressed emotion. It was some time before she could speak.

"Pobloff," she begged, in her dangerous contralto, a contralto like the medium register of a clarinet, "Pobloff, let me adjure you to be careful. Your coming here has caused political disturbances. The aunt of the prince hates music as much as he adores it. She is no party to your invitation. So be on your guard. Even now there may be spies in the shrubbery." She put her hand on his arm. It was too much. In an instant, despite her feeble struggle, the ardent musician grasped the creature that had tantalized him since morning, and kissed her a dozen times. His head whirled. Pobloff! Pobloff! a voice cried in his brain—and only yesterday you left your Luga, your pretty pigeon, your wife!

The girl was dragged away from him. In the moonshine he saw the grinning Hamet, suspiciously observing him. The runaway stood up and pressed Pobloff's hand desperately, uttering the cry of her forlorn heart:—

"Don't play in the great hall; don't play in that accursed place. You will be asked, but refuse. Make any excuse, but do not set foot on its ebon floors."

He was so confused by the strangeness of this adventure, so confused by the admonition of the unknown when he saw her white draperies disappear, that his jaw fell and his courage wavered. A moment later two oddly caparisoned soldiers, bearing lights, approached, and in the name of her Highness invited him make midnight music in the Palace of a Thousand Sounds.

IV

Seated before a Steinway grand pianoforte, an instrument that found its way to this far-away province through the caprice of some artistic potentate, Pobloff nervously preluded. Notwithstanding the warning of the girl, he had allowed himself to be convoyed to the great Hall of Ebony, and there, quite alone, he sat waiting for some cue to begin. None came. He glanced curiously about him. For all the signs of humanity he might as well have been on the heights of Kerb, out among its thorny groves, or in its immemorial forests. He preluded as he gazed around. He could see, by the dim light of two flambeaux set in gold sconces, column after column of blackness receding into inky depths of darkness. A fringe of light encircled his instrument, and beside him was a gallery, so vast that it became a gulf of the infinite at a hundred paces. Now, Pobloff was a brave man. He believed that once upon a time he had peered into strange crevices of space; what novelty could existence hold for him after that shuddering experience? Again he looked into the tenebrous recesses of the hall. He saw nothing, heard nothing.

His fingers went their own way over the keyboard. Finally, following some latent impulse, they began to shape the opening measures of Chopin's Second Ballade, the one of the enigmatic tonalities, sometimes called The Lake of the Mermaids. It began with the chanting, childish refrain, a Lithuanian fairy-tale of old, and as its naive, drowsy, lulling measures—the voices of wicked, wooing sirens—sang and sank in recurrent rhythms, Pobloff heard—this time he was sure—the regular reverberation of distant footsteps. It was as if the monotonous beat of the music were duplicated in some sounding mirror, some mirror that magnified hideously, hideously mimicked the melody. Yet these footfalls murmured as a sea-shell. Every phrase stood out before the pianist, exquisitely clear; his brain had only once before harboured such an exalted mood. There was the expectation of great things coming to pass; dim rumours of an apocalyptic future, when the glory that never was on sea or land should rend the veil of the visible and make clear all that obscures and darkens. The transfiguration which informs the soul of one taken down in epileptic seizure possessed him. Every cranny of his being was flooded with overmastering light—and the faint sound of footsteps marking sinister time to his music, drew closer, closer.

Shaking off an insane desire to join his voice in the immortal choiring of the Cherubim, Pobloff dashed into the passionate storm-scream of the music, and like a pack of phantom bloodhounds the footsteps pressed him in the race. He played as run men from starving wolves in Siberian wastes. To stop would mean—God! what would it mean? These were no mortal steps that crowded upon his sonorous trail. His fingers flew over the keys as he finished the scurrying tempests of tone. Again the first swaying refrain, and Pobloff heard the invisible multitude of feet pause in the night, as if waiting the moment when the Ballade would cease. He quivered; the surprises and terrors were telling upon his well-seasoned nerves.

Still he sped on, fearing the tremendous outburst at the close, where Chopin throws overboard his soul, and with blood-red sails signals the hellish Willis, the Lamias of the lake, to his side. Ah, if Pobloff could but thus portion his soul as hostage to the infernal host that now hemmed him in on all sides! Riding over the black and white rocks of his keyboard, he felt as if in the clutches of an unknown force. He discerned death in the distance—death and the unknown horror—and was powerless to resist. Still the galloping of unseen feet, horrible, naked flesh, that clattered and scraped the earth; the panting, hoarse and subdued, of a mighty pack, whose thirst for destruction, for revenge, was unslaked. And always the same trampling of human feet! Were they human? Did not resilient bones tell the tale of brutes viler than men? The glimmering lights seemed cowed, as they sobbed in vacuity and slowly expired.

Pobloff no longer asked himself what it meant; he was become a maniac, pursued by deathless devils. He could have flown to the end of the universe in this Ballade; but, at last, his heart cracking, head bursting, face livid, overtaken by the Footsteps of the Missing, he smashed both fists upon the keys and fell forward despairingly....

* * * * *

... The gigantic, noseless negro, the grand vizier himself, sternly regarded the prince, who stood, torch in hand, near the shattered pianoforte. The dumb spoke:—

"Let us hope, Exalted Highness, that your masquerades and mystifications are over forever. To-day's prankish sport may put us to trouble for a satisfactory explanation." He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the prostrate composer. "And hasheesh sometimes maddens for a lifetime!" He lightly touched the drugged Pobloff with his enormous foot.

The youthful runaway ashamedly lowered his head—in reality he adored music with all the fulness of his cruel, faunlike nature.



XV

THE CURSORY LIGHT

To this day Pinton could never explain why he looked out of that pantry window. He had reached his home in a hungry condition. He was tired and dead broke, so he had resolved to forage. He had listened for two or three, perhaps five, minutes in the hall of his boarding-house; then he went, soft-footed, to Mrs. Hallam's pantry on the second floor. He was sure that it was open, he was equally sure that it contained something edible on its hospitable shelves. Ah! who has not his bread at midnight stolen, ye heavenly powers, ye know him not!

Pinton, however, knew one thing, and that was a ravenous desire to sink his teeth into pie, custard, or even bread. He felt with large, eager hands along the wall on the pantry side. With feverish joy he touched the knob—a friendly knob, despite its cold, distant glaze—of the door he sought.

Pinton gave a tug, and then his heart stopped beating. The door was locked. Something like a curse, something like a prayer, rose to his lips, and his arms fell helplessly to his side.

Mrs. Hallam, realizing that it was Saturday night—the predatory night of the week—had secured her pastry, her confitures, her celebrated desserts; and so poor Pinton, all his sweet teeth furiously aching, his mouth watering, stood on the hither side of Paradise, a baffled peri in pantaloons!

After a pause, full of pain and troublous previsions of a restless, discontented night, Pinton grew angry and pulled at the knob of the door, thinking, perhaps, that it might abate a jot of its dignified resistance. It remained immovable, grimly antagonistic, until his fingers grew hot and cold as they touched a bit of cold metal.

The key in the lock! In a second it was turned, and the hungry one was within and restlessly searching and fumbling for food. He felt along the lower shelves and met apples, oranges, and sealed bottles containing ruined, otherwise miscalled preserved, fruit. He knelt on the dresser and explored the upper shelf. Ah, here was richness indeed! Pies, pies, cakes, pies, frosted cakes, cakes sweating golden, fruity promises, and cakes as icy as the hand of charity. Pinton was happy, glutton that he was, and he soon filled the pockets of his overcoat. What Mrs. Hallam might say in the morning he cared not. Let the galled jade wince, his breakfast appetite would be unwrung; and then he started violently, lost his balance, and almost fell to the floor.

Opposite him was the window of the pantry, which faced the wall of the next house. Pinton had never been in the pantry by daylight, so he was rudely shocked by the glance of a light—a cursory, moving light. It showed him a window in the other house and a pair of stairs. It flickered about an old baluster and a rusty carpet, it came from below, it mounted upward and was lost to view.

The burglar of pies, the ravisher of cakes, was almost shocked by this unexpected light. He watched it dancing fantastically on the discoloured wall of the house; he wondered—ill at ease—if it would flash in his face. His surmise was realized, for a streak of illumination reached the narrow chamber in which he cowered, and then he was certain some one was looking at him. He never budged, for he was too frightened. Suddenly the light vanished and a head was dimly silhouetted in the window opposite. It nodded to Pinton. Pinton stared stupidly, and the head disappeared. The hungry man, his appetite now gone, was numb and terrified.

What did it mean, who was the man? A detective, or a friend of Mrs. Hallam's in a coign from which the plunderers of her pantry could be noted? Beady repentance stood out on Pinton's forehead.

And the light came back. This time it was intelligible, for it was a lantern in the hand of a young man of about thirty. His face was open and smiling. He wore his hair rather long for an American, and it was blond and curling.

He surveyed Pinton for a moment, then he said, in a most agreeable voice:—

"What luck, old pal?"

Pinton dropped his pies, slammed the window, and got to his bedroom as fast as his nervous legs could carry him. He undressed in a nightmare, and did not sleep until the early summer sun shot hot shafts of heat into his chamber.

With a shamed Sabbath face he arose, dressed, and descended to his morning meal. Mrs. Hallam was sitting in orotund silence, but seemed in good humour. She asked him casually if he had enjoyed his Saturday evening, and quite as casually damned the wandering cats that had played havoc in her pantry. She remarked that leaving windows open was a poor practice, even if hospitable in appearance, and nervous Mr. Pinton drank his coffee in silent assent and then hurried off to the church where he trod the organ pedals for a small salary's sake.

The following Friday was rehearsal night, and the organist left his choir in a bad humour. His contralto had not attended, and as she was the only artiste and the only good-looking girl of the lot, Pinton took it into his head to become jealous. She had not paid the slightest attention to him, so he could not attribute her absence to a personal slight; but he felt aggrieved and vaguely irritated.

Pinton's musicianship was not profound. He had begun life as an organ salesman. He manipulated the cabinet organ for impossible customers in Wisconsin, and he came to New York because he was offered a better chance.

The inevitable church position occurred. Then came Zundel voluntaries and hard pedal practice. At last Mendelssohn's organ sonatas were reached and with them a call—organists, like pastors, have calls—to a fashionable church. The salary was fair and Mr. Pinton grew side-whiskers.

He heard Paderewski play Chopin, and became a crazy lover of the piano. He hired a small upright and studied finger exercises. He consulted a thousand books on technic, and in the meantime could not play Czerny's velocity studies.

He grew thin, and sought the advice of many pianists. He soon found that pressing your foot on the swell and pulling couplers for tone colour were not the slightest use in piano playing. Subtle finger pressures, the unloosening of the muscles, the delicate art of nuance, the art unfelt by many organists, all were demanded of the pianist, and Pinton almost despaired.

He grew contemptuous of the king of instruments as he essayed the C major invention of Bach. He sneered at stops and pedals, and believed, in his foolish way, that all polyphony was bound within the boards of the Well-Tempered Clavichord. Then the new alto came to the choir, and Pinton—at being springtide, when the blood is in the joyful mood—thought that he was in love. He was really athirst.

This Friday evening he was genuinely disappointed and thirsty. He turned with a sinking heart and parched throat into Pop Pusch's dearly beloved resort. Earlier in his life he had often solaced himself with the free lunch that John, the melancholy waiter, had dispensed. Pinton's mind was a prey to many emotions as he entered the famous old place. He sat down before a brown table and clamoured for amber beer.

He was not alone at the table. As Pinton put the glass of Pilsner to his lips he met the gaze of two sardonic eyes. He could not finish his glass. He returned the look of the other man and then arose, with a nervous jerk that almost upset the table.

"Sit down, old pal; don't be crazy. I'll never say a word. Sit down, you fool; don't you see people are looking at you?"

The voice was low, kindly in intonation, but it went through Pinton like a saw biting its way into wood.

He sat down all in a heap. He knew the eyes; he knew the voice. It was the owner of the dark lantern—the mysterious man in the other house of that last Saturday night. Pinton felt as if he were about to become ill.

"Lord, but you are a nervous one!" said the other, most reassuringly. "Sit still and I'll order brandy. It will settle your stomach."

That brought Pinton to his senses at once.

"No, no, I'll be all right in a moment," he said rather huskily. "I never drink spirits. Thank you, all the same."

"Don't mention it," said the man, and he tossed off his Wuerzburger. Each man stealthily regarded the other. Pinton saw the stranger of the lantern and staircase. Close by he was handsome and engaging. His hair was worn like a violin virtuoso's, and his hands were white, delicate, and well cared for. He spoke first.

"How did you make out on that job?—I don't fancy there was much in it. Boarding-houses, you know!"

Pinton, every particle of colour leaving his flabby face, asked:—

"What job?"

The stranger looked at him keenly and went on rather ironically:—

"You are the most nervous duck I ever ran across. When I saw you last your pocket was full of the silver plate of that pantry, and I can thank you for a fright myself, for when I saw you, I was just getting ready to crack a neat little crib. Say! why didn't you flash your glim at me or make some friendly signal at least? You popped out of sight like a prairie rabbit when a coyote heaves in view."

Pinton felt the ground heave beneath him. What possible job could the man mean? What was a "glim," and what did the fellow suggest by silver plate? Then it struck him all of a sudden. Heavens! he was taken for a burglar by a burglar. His presence in the pie pantry had been misinterpreted by a cracksman; and he, the harmless organist of Dr. Bulgerly's church, was claimed as the associate of a dangerous, perhaps notorious, thief. Pinton's cup of woe overflowed.

He arose, put on his hat, and started to go. The young man grasped his arm, and said in a most conciliatory fashion:—

"Perhaps I have hurt your sensitive nature. It was far from my intention to do so. I saluted you at first in the coarse, conventional manner which is expected by members of our ancient and honourable craft, and if I have offended you, I humbly beg your pardon."

His accent was that of a cultivated gentleman. Pinton, somewhat assured, dropped back in his seat, and, John passing by just then, more beer was ordered.

"Hear me before you condemn me," said the odd young man. "My name is Blastion and I am a burglar by profession. When I saw you the other night, at work on the premises next door to me, I was struck by your refined face. I said to myself: 'At last the profession is being recruited by gentlemen, men of culture, men of refinement. At last a profitable, withal risky, pursuit is being dignified, nay, graced, by the proper sort of person.' And I saluted you in a happy, haphazard fashion, and then you flew the coop. Pardon my relapse into the vernacular."

Pinton felt that it was time to speak.

"Pardon me, if I interrupt you, Mr. Blastion; but I fear we are not meeting on equal ground. You take me for a—for a man of your profession. Indeed, sir, you are mistaken. When you discovered me last Saturday night I was in the pantry of Mrs. Hallam, my boarding-house keeper, searching for pie. I am not a burglar—pardon my harsh expression; I am, instead, an organist by profession."

The pallor of the burglar's countenance testified to the gravity of his feeling. He stared and blushed, looked apprehensively at the various groups of domino players in the back room, then, pulling himself together, he beckoned to melancholy John, and said:—

"Johann, two more beers, please. Yes?"

Pinton became interested. There was something appealing in the signal the man flashed from his eyes when he realized that he had unbosomed himself to a perfect stranger, and not to a member of his beloved guild. The organist put his hand on the man's arm and said—faint memories of flatulent discourses from the Reverend Bulgerly coming to his aid: "Be not alarmed, my friend. I will not betray you. I am a musician, but I respect art ever, even when it reveals itself in manifold guises."

Pinton felt that he was a man of address, a fellow of some wit; his confidential and rather patronizing pose moved his companion, who slyly grimaced.

"So you are an organist and not a member of the noble Knights of the Centrebit and Jimmy?" he asked rather sarcastically.

"Yes," admitted Pinton, "I am an organist, and an organist who would fain become a pianist." The other started.

"I am a pianist myself, and yet I cannot say that I would like to play the organ."

"You are a pianist?" said Pinton, in a puzzled voice.

"Well, why not? I studied in Paris, and I suppose my piano technic stood me in good stead in my newer profession. Just look at my hands if you doubt my word."

Aghast, the organist examined the shapely hands before him. Without peradventure of a doubt they were those of a pianist, an expert pianist, and one who had studied assiduously. He was stupefied. A burglar and a pianist! What next?

Mr. Blastion continued his edifying remarks: "Yes, I studied very hard. I was born in the Southwest, and went to Paris quite young. I had good fingers and was deft at sleight-of-hand tricks. I could steal a handkerchief from a rabbi—which is saying volumes—and I played all the Chopin etudes before I was fifteen. At twenty-one I knew twenty-five concertos from memory, and my great piece was the Don Juan Fantasy. Oh, I was a wonder! When Liszt paid his last visit to Paris I played before him at the warerooms of the Pleyels.

"Monsieur Theodore Ritter was anxious for his old master to hear such a pupil. I assure you there must be some congenital twist of evil in me, for I couldn't for the life of me forbear picking the old fellow's pockets and lifting his watch. Now don't look scandalized, Mr. —— eh? Oh! thank you very much, Mr. Pinton. If you are born that way, all the punishments and preachments—excuse the alliteration—will not stand in your way as a warning. I have done time—I mean I have served several terms of imprisonment, but luckily not for a long period. I suffered most by my incarceration in not having a piano. Not even a dumb keyboard was allowed, and I practised the Jackson finger exercises in the air and thus kept my fingers limber. On Saturdays the warden allowed me, as a special favour, to practise on the cabinet organ—an odious instrument—so as to enable me to play on Sundays in chapel. Of course no practice was needed for the wretched music we poor devils howled once a week, but I gained one afternoon in seven for study by my ruse.

"Oh, the joy of feeling the ivory—or bone—under my expectant fingers! I played all the Chopin, Henselt, and Liszt etudes on the miserable keyboard of the organ. Yes, of course, without wind. It was, I assure you, a truly spiritual consolation. You can readily imagine if a man has been in the habit of practising all day, even if he does 'burgle' at night, that to be suddenly deprived of all instrumental resources is a bitter blow."

Pinton stuttered out an affirmative response. Then both arose after paying their checks, and the organist shook the burglar's hand at the corner, after first exacting a promise that Blastion should play for him some morning.

"With pleasure, my boy. You're a gentleman and an artist, and I trust you absolutely." And he walked away, whistling with rare skill the D flat valse of Chopin.

"You can trust me, I swear!" Pinton called after him, and then went unsteadily homeward, full of generous resolves and pianistic ambitions. As he intermittently undressed he discovered, to his rage and amazement, that both his purse and watch had disappeared. The one was well filled; the other, gold. Blastion's technic had proved unimpeachable.



XVI

AN IRON FAN

Effinghame waited for Dr. Arn in the study, a small chamber crowded with the contents of the universe—so it seemed to the visitor. There was a table unusual in size, indeed, big enough to dissect a body thereon. It was littered with books and medical publications and was not very attractive. The walls were covered with original drawings of famous Japanese masters, and over the fireplace hung a huge fan, dull gray in colouring, with long sandalwood spokes. Not a noteworthy example of Japanese art, thought Effinghame, as he glanced without marked curiosity at its neutral tinting, though he could not help wondering why the cunning artificers of the East had failed to adorn the wedge-shaped surfaces of this fan with their accustomed bold and exquisite arabesques.

He impatiently paced the floor. His friend had told him to come at nine o'clock in the evening. It was nearly ten. Then he began to finger things. He fumbled the papers in the desk. He examined the two Japanese swords—light as ivory, keen as razors. He stared at each of the prints, at Hokusai, Toyokimi, Kuniyoshi, Kiyonaga, Kiosai, Hiroshighe, Utamaro, Oukoyo-Ye,—the doctor's taste was Oriental. And again he fell to scrutinizing the fan. It was large, ugly, clumsy. What possessed Arn to place such a sprawling affair over his mantel? Tempted to touch it, he discovered that it was as silky as a young bat's wing. At last, his curiosity excited, he lifted it with some straining to the floor. What puzzled him was its weight. He felt its thin ribs, its soft, paper-like material, and his fingers chilled as they closed on the two outermost spokes. They were of metal, whether steel or iron he could not determine. A queer fan this, far too heavy to stir the air, and—

Effinghame held the fan up to the light. He had perceived a shadowy figure in a corner. It resolved itself into a man's head—bearded, scowling, crowned with thorns or sunbeams. It was probably a Krishna. But how came such a face on a Japanese fan? The type was Oriental, though not Mongolian, rather Semitic. It vaguely recalled to Effinghame a head and face he had seen in a famous painting. But where and by whom? It wore a vile expression, the eyes mean and revengeful; there was a cruel mouth and a long, hooked, crafty nose. The forehead was lofty, even intellectual, and bore its thorns—yes, he was sure they were thorns—like a conqueror. Just then Dr. Arn entered and laughed when he saw the other struggling with the fan.

"My Samurai fan!" he exclaimed, in his accustomed frank tones; "how did you discover it so soon?"

"You've kept me here an hour. I had to do something," answered the other, sulkily.

"There, there, I apologize. Sit down, old man. I had a very sick patient to-night, and I feel worn out. I'll ring for champagne." They talked about trifling personal matters, when suddenly Effinghame asked:—

"Why Samurai? I had supposed this once belonged to some prehistoric giant who could waft it as do ladies their bamboo fans, when they brush the dust from old hearts—as the Spanish poet sang."