With hasty fingers she struggled with the intricate hooks of her evening frock. Out of it finally, and slipping off her silk stockings and thin shoes she went quickly to the big clothes closet, chose a short country skirt, a pair of golf stockings, thick shoes and a tam-o'-shanter, made for the drawer in which were her sport shirts and sweaters and before the old round-faced clock on the mantelpiece could recover from his astonishment became once more the Joan-all-alone for whom he had ticked away the hours. Then to the window, and hand over hand down the creeper again and away across the sleeping garden to the woods.

The fairies were out. Their laughter was blown to her like thistledown. But she was a woman now and only Martin called her—Martin who had married her for love but was not her husband yet. Oh, where was Martin?

And as she went quickly along the winding path through the trees the moon dropped pools of light in her way, the scrub oaks threw out their arms to hold her back and hosts of little shadows seemed to run out to catch at her frock. But on went Joan, just to get a sight of the house that was Martin's and hers and to cast her spirit forward to the time when he and she would live there as they had not lived in the city.

She marvelled and rejoiced at the change that had come over her,—gradually, underminingly,—a change, the seeds of which had been thrown by Alice, watered by Palgrave and forced by the disappearance of Martin, and brought to bloom in the silent hours of wakeful nights when the thought of all the diffidence and deference of Martin won her gratitude and respect. In the strong, frank and rather harsh light that had been flung on her way of life it was Martin, Martin, who stood out clean and tender and lenient—Martin, who had developed from the Paul of the woods, the boy chum, her fellow adventurer, her sexless Knight, into the man who had won her love and whom she needed and ached for and longed to find. She had been brought up with a round turn, found herself face to face with the truth of things and, deaf to the incessant jangle of the Merry-go-round, had discovered that Martin was not merely the gallant and obliging boy, playing a game, trifling on the edge of reality, but the man with the other blade of the penknife who, like his prototype in the fairy tale, had the ordained right to her as she had to him.

And as she went on through the silvered trees, with a sort of dignity, her chin high, her eyes sparkling like stars, her mouth soft and sweet, it was to see the roof under which she would begin her married life again, rightly, honestly and as a woman, crossing the bridge between thoughtlessness and responsibility with a true sense of its meaning,—not in cold blood.

She came out to the road, dry and white, bordered by coarse grasses and wild flowers all asleep, with their petals closed over their eyes, opened the gate that led into the long avenue, splashed through the patches of moonlight on the driveway and came finally to the door under which she had stood that other time with dancing eyes and racing blood and "Who cares?" ringing in her head.

There was no light to be seen in any of the front windows. The house seemed to be fast asleep. How warm and friendly and unpretentious it looked, and there was all about it the same sense of strength that there was about Martin. In which window had they stood in the dark, looking out on to a world that they were going to brave together? Was it in the right wing? Yes. She remembered that tree whose branches turned over like a waterfall and something that looked like a little old woman in a shawl bending to pick up sticks but which was an old stump covered with creepers.

She went round, her heart fluttering like a bird, all her femininity stirred at the thought of what this house must mean and shelter—and drew up short with a quick intake of breath. A wide streak of yellow light fell through open French windows across the veranda and on to the grass, all dew-covered. Some one was there ... a woman's voice, not merry, and with a break in it.... When the cat's away, the mice, in the shape of one of the servants...

Joan went on again. What a joke to peep in! She wouldn't frighten the girl or walk in and ask questions. It was, as yet, too much Marty's house for that—and, after all, what harm was she doing by sitting up on such a lovely night? The only thing was it was Martin's very own room filled with his intimate things and with his father's message written largely on a card over the fireplace—"We count it death to falter, not to die."

But she went on, unsuspecting, her hand unconsciously clasped in the stern relentless hand of Fate, who never forgets to punish.... A shadow crossed the yellow patch. There was the sound of a pipe being knocked out on one of the firedogs. A man was there, then. Should she take one look, or go back? She would go back. It was none of her business, unfortunately. But she was drawn on and on, until she could see into the long, low, masculine room.

A man was sitting on the arm of a sofa, a man with square shoulders and a deep chest, a man with his strong young face turned to the light, smiling—

"Marty," cried Joan. "Marty!" and went up and across the veranda and into the room. "Why, Marty," and held out her hand, all glad and tremulous.

And Martin got on his feet and stood in amazement, wide-eyed, and suddenly white.

"You here!" cried Joan. "I've been waiting and wondering, but I didn't call because I wanted you to come back for yourself and not for me. It's been a long week, Marty, and in every hour of it I've grown. Can't you see the change?"

And Martin looked at her, and his heart leaped, and the blood blazed in his veins and he was about to go forward and catch her in his arms with a great cry...

"Oh, hello, Lady-bird; who'd have expected to see you!"

Joan wheeled to the left.

Lying full stretched on the settee, her settee, was a girl with her hands under her bobbed hair, a blue dress caught up under one knee, her bare arms agleam, her elfin face all white and a smile round her too red lips.

("White face and red lips and hair that came out of a bottle.")

Martin said something, inarticulately, and moved a chair forward. The girl spoke again, cheerily, in the spirit of good-fellowship, astonished a little, but too comfortable to move.

But a cold hand was laid on Joan's heart, and all that rang in her brain were the words that Alice had used,—"white face and red lips and hair that came out of a bottle.... Don't YOU be the one to turn his armor into common broadcloth."

And for a moment she stood, looking from Marty to the girl and back to Marty, like one struck dumb, like one who draws up at the very lip of a chasm.... And in that cruel and terrible minute her heart seemed to break and die. Marty, Marty in broadcloth, and she had put it in his hands. She had turned him away from her room and lost him. There's not one thing that any of us can do or say that doesn't react on some one else to hurt or bless.

With a little gasp, the sense of all this going home to her, Tootles scrambled awkwardly off the settee, dropping a book and a handkerchief. This, then, this beautiful girl who belonged to a quarter of life of which she had sometimes met the men but never the women, was Martin's wife—the wife of the man whom she loved to adoration.

"Why, then, you're—you're Mrs. Gray," she stammered, her impertinence gone, her hail-fellow-well-met manner blown like a bubble.

Catching sight of the message, "We count it death to falter not to die," Joan summoned her pride, put up her chin and gave a curious little bow. "Forgive me," she said, "I'm trespassing," and not daring to look at Marty, turned and went out. She heard him call her name, saw his sturdy shadow fall across the yellow patch, choked back a sob, started running, and stumbled away and away, with the blood from her heart bespattering the grasses and the wild flowers, and the fairies whimpering at her heels,—and, at last, climbing back into the room that knew and loved and understood, threw herself down on its bosom in a great agony of grief.

"Be kind to me, old room, be kind to me. It's Joan-all-alone,—all alone."



PART THREE

THE GREAT EMOTION

I

Mrs. Alan Hosack, bearing a more than ever remarkable resemblance to those ship's figureheads that are still to be seen in the corners of old lumber yards, led the way out to the sun porch. Her lavish charms, her beaming manner, her clear blue eye, milky complexion, reddish hair, and the large bobbles and beads with which she insisted upon decorating herself made Howard Cannon's nickname of Cornucopia exquisitely right. She was followed by Mrs. Cooper Jekyll and a man servant, whose arms were full of dogs and books and newspapers.

"The dogs on the ground, Barrett," she said, "the books and papers on the table there, my chair on the right-hand side of it and bring that chair forward for Mrs. Jekyll. We will have the lemonade at once. Tell Lestocq that I shall not want the car before lunch, ask Miss Disberry to telephone to Mrs. John Ward Harrison and say that I will have tea with her this afternoon with pleasure, and when those two good little Sisters of Mercy finally arrive,—I could see them, all sandy, struggling along the road from my room, Augusta; dear me, what a life,—they are to be given luncheon as usual and the envelope that is on the hall table. That will do, I think."

The man servant was entirely convinced that it would.

"And now, make yourself comfortable, dear Augusta, and tell me everything. So very kind of you to drive over like this on such a sunny morning. Yes, that's right. Take off that lugubrious Harem veil,—the mark of a Southampton woman,—and let me see your beautiful face. Before I try to give you a chance to speak I must tell you, and I'm sure you won't mind with your keen sense of humor, how that nice boy, Harry Oldershaw, describes those things. No, after all, perhaps I don't think I'd better. For one reason, it was a little bit undergraduate, and for another, I forget." She chuckled and sat down, wabbling for a moment like an opulent blancmange.

Minus the strange dark blue thing which had hidden her ears and nose and mouth and which suggested nothing but leprosy, Mrs. Jekyll became human, recognizable and extremely good to look at. She wore her tight-fitting suit of white flannel like a girl and even in that clear detective light she did not look a day over thirty. She painted with all the delicacy of an artist. She was there, as a close friend of Alice Palgrave, to discover why Gilbert had not gone with her to the Maine coast.

"I haven't heard from you since we left town," she said, beating about the bush, "and being in the neighborhood I thought it would be delightful to catch a glimpse of you and hear your news. I have none, except that I have just lost the butler who has been with me for so long, and Edmond is having his portrait painted again for some club or institution. It's the ninth time, I believe. He likes it. It's a sort of rest cure."

"And how did you lose that very admirable butler? Illness or indiscretion?"

"Neither. Commerce, I suppose one might call it. It appears that one of these get-rich-quick munition men offered him double his wages to leave me, and Derbyshire couldn't resist it. He came to me with tears in his eyes and told me that he had to make the sacrifice owing to the increased cost of living. He has a family, you know. He said that the comic atmosphere of his new place might bring on neuritis, but he must educate his three boys. Really, there is a great deal of unsung heroism in the world, isn't there? In the meantime, I am trying to get accustomed to a Swiss, who's probably a German spy and who will set up a wireless installation on the roof." Then she dropped her baited hook. "You have a large house party, I suppose."

"Yes," said Mrs. Hosack, swinging her foot to keep the flies away. The wind was off the land.

"Primrose is so depressed if the house isn't full. And so the d'Oylys are here,—Nina more Junoesque than ever and really quite like an Amazon in bathing clothes; Enid Ouchterlony, a little bitter, I'm afraid, at not being engaged to any one yet,—men are horribly scared of an intelligent girl and, after all, they don't marry for intelligence, do they?—Harry Oldershaw, Frank Milwood and Courtney Millet, all nice boys, and I almost forgot to add, Joan Gray, that charming girl. My good man is following at her heels like a bob-tailed sheep dog. Poor old dear! He's arrived at that pathetic period of a man's life when almost any really blond girl still in her teens switches him into a second state of adolescence and makes him a most ridiculous object—what the novelists call the 'Forty-nine feeling,' I believe."

Bennett brought the lemonade and hurried away before his memory could be put to a further strain. "Tell me about Joan Gray," said Mrs. Jekyll, letting out her line. "There's probably no truth in it, but I hear that she and Martin have agreed to differ. How quickly these romantic love matches burn themselves out. I always say that a marriage made in Heaven breaks up far sooner than one made on earth. It has so much farther to fall. Whose fault is it, hers or his?"

Mrs. Hosack bent forward and endeavored to lower her voice. She was a kind-hearted woman who delighted to see every one happy and normal. "I'm very worried about those two, my dear," she answered. "There are all sorts of stories afloat,—one to the effect that Martin has gone off with a chorus girl, another that Joan only married him to get away from her grandparents and a third that they quarreled violently on the way home from church and have not been on speaking terms since. I daresay there are many others, but whatever did happen, and something evidently did, Joan is happy enough, and every man in the house is sentimental about her. Look out there, for instance."

Mrs. Jekyll followed her glance and saw a girl in bathing clothes sitting on the beach under a red and blue striped umbrella encircled by the outstretched forms of half a dozen men. Beyond, on the fringe of a sea alive with bursting breakers, several girls were bathing alone.

"H'm," said Mrs. Jekyll. "I should think that the second story is the true one. A tip-tilted nose, chestnut hair and brown eyes are better to flirt with than marry. Well, I must run away if I'm to be back to lunch. I wish I could stay, but Edmond and his artist may kill my new butler unless I intervene. They are both hotly pro-Ally. By the way, I hear that Alice Palgrave has gone to the Maine coast with her mother, who is ill again; I wonder where Gilbert is going?"

"Well, I had a very charming letter from him two days ago, asking me if he could come and stay with us. He loves this house and the beach, and I always cheer him up, he said, and he is very lonely without Alice. Of course I said yes, and he will be here this afternoon."

Whereupon, having landed her fish, Mrs. Jekyll rose to go. Gilbert Palgrave and Joan Gray,—there was truth in that story, as she had thought. She had heard of his having been seen everywhere with Joan night after night, and her sister-in-law, who lived opposite to the little house in East Sixty-seventh Street, had seen him leaving in the early hours of the morning more than once. A lucky strike, indeed. Intuition was a wonderful gift. She was highly pleased with herself.

"Good-by, my dear," she said. "I will drive over again one day this week and see how you are all getting on in this beautiful corner of the world. My love to Prim, please, and do remember me to the little siren."

And away she went, leaving Mrs. Hosack to wonder what was the meaning of her rather curious smile. Only a hidebound prejudice on the part of the Ministries of all the nations has precluded women from the Diplomatic Service.



II

"Ah, here you are," said Hosack, scrambling a little stiffly out of a hammock. "Well, have you had a good ride?"

Joan came up the steps with Harry Oldershaw, the nice boy. She was in white linen riding kit, with breeches and brown top boots. A man's straw hat sat squarely on her little head and there was a brown and white spotted tie under her white silk collar. Color danced on her cheeks, health sparkled in her eyes and there was a laugh of sheer high spirits floating behind her like the blown petals of a daisy.

"Perfectly wonderful," she said. "I love the country about here, with the little oaks and sturdy ferns. It's so springy. And aren't the chestnut trees in the village a sight for the blind? I don't wonder you built a house in Easthampton, Mr. Hosack. Are we too late for tea?"

Hosack ran his eyes over her and blinked a little as though he had looked at the sun. "Too late by an hour," he said, with a sulky glance at young Oldershaw. "I thought you were never coming back." His resentment of middle age and jealousy of the towering youth of the sun-tanned lad who had been Joan's companion were a little pitiful.

Harry caught his look and laughed with the sublime audacity of one who believes that he ranks among the Immortals. To him forty-nine seemed to be a colossal sum of years, almost beyond belief. It was pathetic of this old fellow to imagine that he had any right to the company of a girl so springlike as Joan. "If we hadn't worn the horses to a frazzle," he said, "we shouldn't have been back till dark. Have a drink, Joan?"

"Yes, water. Buckets of it. Hurry up, Harry."

The boy, triumphant at being in favor, swung away, and Joan flung her crop on to a cane sofa. "Where's everybody?" she asked.

"What's it matter," said Hosack. "Sit here and talk to me for a change. I've hardly had a word with you all day." He caught her hand and drew her into the swinging hammock. "What a pretty thing you are," he added, with a catch in his breath. "I know," said Joan. "Otherwise, probably, I shouldn't be here, should I?" She forgot all about him, and an irresistible desire to tease, at the sight of the sea which, a stone's throw from the house, pounded on the yellow sweep of sand and swooped up in large half circles of glistening water. "I've a jolly good mind to have another dip before changing. What do you say?"

"No, don't," said Hosack, a martyr to the Forty-nine-feeling. "Concentrate on me for ten minutes, if only because, damn it, I'm your host."

Joan pushed his hand away. "I've given up concentrating," she said. "I gave it a turn a little while ago, but it led nowhere, so why worry? I'm on the good old Merry-go-round again, and if it doesn't whack up to the limit of its speed I'll know the reason why. There's a dance at the Club to-night, isn't there?"

"Yes, but we don't go."

She was incredulous. "Don't go,—to a dance? Why?"

"It's rather a mixed business," he said. "The hotel pours its crowd out. It isn't amusing. We can dance here if you want to."

But her attention was caught by young Oldershaw who came out carrying a glass and a jug of iced water. She sprang up and went to meet him, the dance forgotten, Hosack forgotten. Her mood was that of a bird, irresponsible, restless. "Good for you," she said, and drank like a thirsty plant. "Nothing like water, is there?" She smiled up at him.

He was as pleased with himself as though he owned the reservoir. "Have another?"

"I should think so." And she drank again, put the glass down on the first place that came to hand, relieved him of the jug, put it next to the glass, caught hold of his muscular arm, ran him down the steps, and along the board path to the beach. "I'll race you to the sea," she cried, and was off like a mountain goat. He was too young to let her beat him and waited for her with the foam frothing round his ankles and a broad grin on his attractive face.

He was about to cheek her when she held up a finger and with a little exclamation of delight pointed to the sky behind the house. The sun was setting among a mass of royal clouds. A golden wand had touched the dunes and the tips of the scrub and all over the green of the golf course, still dotted with scattered figures, waves of reflected lusters played. To the left of the great red ball one clear star sparkled like an eye. Just for a moment her lips trembled and her young breasts rose and fell, and then she threw her head up and wheeled round and went off at a run. Not for her to think back, or remember similar sights behind the woods near Marty's place. Life was too short for pain. "Who Cares?" was her motto once more, and this time joy-riding must live up to its name.

Harry Oldershaw followed, much puzzled at Joan's many quick changes of mood. Several times during their irresponsible chatter on the beach between dips her laughter had fallen suddenly, like a dead bird, and she had sat for several minutes as far away from himself and the other men as though they were cut off by a thick wall. Yesterday, in the evening after dinner, during which her high spirits had infected the whole table, he had walked up and down the board path with her under the vivid white light of a full moon, and she had whipped out one or two such savage things about life that he had been startled. During their ride that afternoon, too, her bubbling chatter of light stuff about people and things had several times shifted into comments as to the conventions that were so careless as to make him ask himself whether they could really have come from lips so fresh and young. And why had that queer look of almost childlike grief come into her eyes a moment ago at the sight of ah everyday sunset? He was mightily intrigued. She was a queer kid, he told himself, as changeable and difficult to follow as some of the music by men with such weird names as Rachmaninoff and Tschaikowsky that his sister was so precious fond of playing. But she was unattached and frightfully pretty and always ready for any fun that was going, and she liked him more than the others, and he liked being liked, and although not hopelessly in love was ready and willing and even anxious to be walked on if she would acknowledge his existence in no other way. It was none of his business, he told himself, to speculate as to what she was trying to hide away in the back of her mind, from herself as well as from everybody else. This was his last vacation as a Yale man, and he was all out to make the most of it.

As soon as he was at her side she ran her hand through his arm and fell into step. The shadow had passed, and her eyes were dancing again. "It appears that the Hosacks turn up their exclusive noses at the club dances," she said. "What are we going to do about it?"

"There's one to-night, isn't there? Do you want to go?"

"Of course I do. I haven't danced since away back before the great wind. Let's sneak off after dinner for an hour without a word to a soul and get our fill of it. There's to be a special Jazz band to-night, I hear, and I simply can't keep away. Are you game, Harry?"

"All the way," said young Oldershaw, "and it will be the first time in the history of the Hosacks that any members of their house parties have put in an appearance at the club at night. No wonder Easthampton has nicknamed the place St. James's Palace, eh?"

Joan shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, my dear boy," she said, "life's too short for all that stuff, and there's no hobby so painful as cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. And, after all, what's the matter with Easthampton people? I'd go to a chauffeurs' ball if the band was the right thing. Wouldn't you?"

"With you," said Harry. "Democracy forever!"

"Oh, I'm not worrying about democracy. I'm out for a good time under any conditions. That's the only thing that matters. Now let's go back and change. It's too late to bathe. I'll wear a new frock to-night, made for fox-trotting, and if Mrs. Hosack wants to know where we've been when we come back as innocent as spring lambs, leave it to me. Men can't lie as well as women can."

"It won't be Mrs. Hosack who'll ask," said Harry. "Bridge will do its best to rivet her ubiquitous mind. It's the old man who'll be peeved. He's crazy about you, you know."

Joan laughed. "He's very nice and means awfully well and all that," she said, "but of course he isn't to be taken seriously. No men of middle age ought to be. They all say the same things with the same expressions as though they got them from the same books, and their gambolling makes their joints creak. It's all like playing with a fire of damp logs. I like something that can blaze and scorch. The game counts then."

"Then you ought to like me," said Harry, doing his best to look the very devil of a fellow. Even he had to join in Joan's huge burst of merriment. He had humor as well as a sense of the ridiculous, and the first made it possible for him to laugh at himself,—a rare and disconcerting gift which would utterly prevent his ever entering the Senate.

"You might grow a moustache and wax the tips, Harry," she said, when she had recovered sufficiently well to be able to speak. "Curl your hair with tongs and take dancing lessons from a tango lizard or go in for a course of sotto voce sayings from a French portrait painter, but you'd still remain the Nice Boy. That's why I like you. You're as refreshing and innocuous as a lettuce salad, and you may glare as much as you like. I hope you'll never be spoilt. Come on. We shall be late for dinner." And she made him quicken his step through the dry sand.

Being very young he was not quite sure that he appreciated that type of approval. He had liked to imagine that he was distinctly one of the bold bad boys, a regular dog and all that. He had often talked that sort of thing in the rooms of his best chums whose mantelpieces were covered with the photographs of little ladies, and he hoarded in his memory two episodes at least of jealous looks from engaged men. But, after all, with Joan, who was married, although it was difficult to believe it, it wouldn't be wise to exert the whole force of the danger that was in him. He would let her down lightly, he told himself, and grinned as he said it. She was right. He was only a nice boy, and that was because he had had the inestimable luck to possess a mother who was one in a million.

The rather pretentious but extremely civilized house that stood alone in all its glory between the sea and the sixth hole was blazing with lights as they returned to it. The color had gone out of the sky and other twinkling eyes had appeared, and the breeze, now off the sea, had a sting to it. Toad soloists were trying their voices for their evening concert in near-by water and crickets were at work with all their well-known enthusiasm. Bennett, with a sunburned nose, was tidying up the veranda, and some one with a nice light touch was playing the rhythmic jingles of Jerome Kern on the piano in the drawing-room.

Still with her hand on Harry Oldershaw's arm, Joan made her way across the lofty hall, caught sight of Gilbert Palgrave coming eagerly to meet her, and waved her hand.

"Oh, hello, Gilbert," she cried out. "Welcome to Easthampton," and ran upstairs.

With a strange contraction of the heart, Palgrave watched her out of sight. She was his dream come to life. All that he was and hoped to be he had placed forever at her feet. Dignity, individualism, egoism,—all had fallen before this young thing. She was water in the desert, the north star to a man without a compass. He had seen her and come into being.

Good God, it was wonderful and awful!

But who was that cursed boy?



III

Six weeks had dropped off the calendar since the night at Martin's house.

Facing Grandmother Ludlow in the morning with her last handful of courage Joan had told her that she had been called back to town. She had left immediately after breakfast in spite of the protests and entreaties of every one, including her grandfather, down whose wrinkled cheeks the tears had fallen unashamed. With a high head and her best wilful manner she had presented to them all in that old house the bluff of easy-mindedness only to burst like a bubble as soon as the car had turned the corner into the main road. She had gone to the little house in New York, and with a numbed heart and a constant pain in her soul, had packed some warm-weather clothes and, leaving her maid behind, hidden herself away in the cottage, on the outskirts of Greenwich, of an old woman who had been in the service of her school. As a long-legged girl of twelve she had stayed there once with her mother for several days before going home for the holidays. She felt like a wounded animal, and her one desire was to drag herself into a quiet place to die.

It seemed to her then, under the first stupendous shock of finding that Marty was with that girl, that death was the next certain thing. Day after day and night after night, cut to the quick, she waited for it to lay its cold hand upon her and snuff her out like a tired candle, whose little light was meaningless in a brutal world. Marty, even Marty, was no longer a knight, and she had put him into broadcloth.

Not in the sun, but in the shadow of a chestnut all big with bloom, her days had passed in lonely suffering. Death was in the village, that was certain. She had seen a little procession winding along the road to the cemetery the morning after her arrival. She was ready. Nothing mattered now that Marty, even Marty, had done this thing while she had been waiting for him to come and take her across the bridge, anxious to play the game to the very full, eager to prove to him that she was no longer the kid that he thought her who had coolly shown him her door. "I am here, Death," she whispered, "and I want you. Come for me."

All her first feelings were that she ought to die, that she had failed and that her disillusion as to Marty had been directly brought about by herself. She saw it all honestly and made no attempt to hedge. By day, she sat quietly, big-eyed, amazingly childlike, waiting for her punishment, watched by the practical old woman, every moment of whose time was filled, with growing uneasiness and amazement. By night she lay awake as long as she could, listening for the soft footstep of the one who would take her away. At meals, the old woman bullied for she was of the school that hold firmly to the belief that unless the people who partake of food do not do so to utter repletion a personal insult is intended. At other times she went out into the orchard and sat with Joan and, burning with a desire to cheer her up, gave her, in the greatest detail, the story of all the deaths, diseases and quarrels that had ever been known to the village. And every day the good sun warmed and encouraged the earth, drew forth the timid heads of plants and flowers, gave beauty even to the odd corners once more and did his allotted task with a generosity difficult to praise too highly. And Death paid visits here and there but passed the cottage by. At the beginning of the second week, Nature, who has no patience with any attempt to refute her laws, especially on the part of those who are young and vigorous, took Joan in hand. "What is all this, my girl?" she said, "sitting here with your hands in your lap while everybody and everything is working and making and preparing. Stir yourself, bustle up, get busy, there's lots to be done in the springtime if the autumn is to bear fruit. You're sound and whole for all that you've been hurt. If you were not, Death would be here without your calling him. Up you get, now." And, with good-natured roughness, she laid her hand under Joan's elbow, gave a hoist and put her on her feet.

Whereupon, in the natural order of things, Joan turned from self-blame to find a victim who should be held responsible for the pain that she had suffered, and found the girl with the red lips and the white face and the hair that came out of a bottle. Ah, yes! It was she who had caught Marty when he was hurt and disappointed. It was she who had taken advantage of his loneliness and dragged him clown to her own level, this girl whom she had called Fairy and who had had the effrontery to go up to the place on the edge of the woods that was the special property of Marty and herself. And for the rest of the week, with the sap running eagerly in her veins once more, she moved restlessly about the orchard and the garden, heaping coals of fire on to the all too golden head of Tootles.

Then came the feeling of wounded pride, the last step towards convalescence. Marty had chosen between herself and this girl. Without giving her a real chance to put things right he had slipped away silently and taken Tootles with him. Not she, but the girl with the red lips and the pale face and the hair that came out of a bottle had stripped Marty of his armor, and the truth of it was that Marty, yes, even Marty, was not really a knight but a very ordinary man.

Out of the orchard and the garden she went, once she had arrived at this stage, and tramped the countryside with her ears tuned to catch the alluring strains of the mechanical music of the Round-about. She had not only been making a fool of herself but had been made to look a fool, she thought. Her pain and suffering and disillusion had been wasted. All these dull and lonely days had been wasted and thrown away. Death must have laughed to see her sitting in the shadow of the apple trees waiting for a visit that was undeserved. Marty could live and enjoy himself without her. That was evident. Very well, then, she could live and enjoy herself without Marty. The earth was large enough for them both, and if he could find love in the person of that small girl she could surely find it in one or other of the men who had whispered in her ear. Also there was Gilbert Palgrave, who had gone down upon his knees.

And that was the end of her isolation, her voluntary retirement. Back she went to the City of Dreadful Nonsense, bought clothes and shoes and hats, found an invitation to join a house party at Southampton, made no effort to see or hear from Marty, and sprang back into her seat in the Merry-go-round. "Who Cares?" she cried again. "Nobody," she answered. "What I do with my life matters to no one but myself. Set the pace, my dear, laugh and flirt and play with fire and have a good time. A short life and a merry one."

And then she joined the Hosacks, drank deep of the wine of adulation, and when, at odd times, the sound of Marty's voice echoed in her memory, she forced it out and laughed it away. "Who Cares?" was his motto too,—red lips and white face and hair that came out of a bottle!

And now here was Gilbert Palgrave with the fire of love in his eyes.



IV

When Mrs. Hosack rose from the dinner table and sailed Olympically into the drawing-room, surrounded by graceful light craft in the persons of Primrose and her girl friends, the men, as usual, followed immediately. The house was bridge mad, and the tables called every one except Joan, the nice boy, and Gilbert Palgrave.

During the preliminaries of an evening which would inevitably run into the small hours, Joan went over to the piano and, with what was a quite unconscious touch of irony, played one of Heller's inimitable "Sleepless Nights," with the soft pedal down. The large imposing room, a chaotic mixture of French and Italian furniture with Flemish tapestries and Persian rugs, which accurately typified the ubiquitous mind of the hostess, was discreetly lighted. The numerous screened windows were open and the soft warm air came in tinged with the salt of the sea.

Palgrave, refusing to cut in, stood about like a disembodied spirit, with his eyes on Joan, from whom, since his arrival, he had received only a few fleeting glances. He watched the cursed boy, as he had labelled him, slip over to her, lean across the piano and talk eagerly. He went nearer and caught, "the car in half an hour," and "not a word to a soul." After which, with jealousy gnawing at his vitals, he saw Harry Oldershaw moon about for a few minutes and then make a fishlike dart out of the room. He had been prepared to find Joan amorously surrounded by the men of the party but not on terms of sentimental intimacy with a smooth-faced lad. In town she had shown preference for sophistication. He went across to the piano and waited impatiently for Joan to finish the piece which somehow fitted into his mood. "Come out," he said, then, "I want to speak to you."

But Joan let her fingers wander into a waltz and raised her eyebrows. "Do I look so much like Alice that you can order me about?" she asked.

He turned on his heel with the look of a dog at which a stone had been flung by a friend, and disappeared.

Two minutes later there was a light touch on his arm, and Joan stood at his side on the veranda. "Well, Gilbert," she said, "it's good to see you again."

"So good that I might be a man touting for an encyclopedia," he answered angrily.

She sat upon the rough stone wall and crossed her little feet. Her new frock was white and soft and very perfectly simple. It demanded the young body of a nymph,—and was satisfied. The magic of the moon was on her. She might have been Spring resting after a dancing day.

"If you were," she said, taking a delight in unspoiling this immaculate man, "I'm afraid you'd never get an order from me. Of all things the encyclopedia must be accompanied by a winning smile and irresistible manners. I suppose you've done lots of amusing things since I saw you last."

He went nearer so that her knees almost touched him. "No," he said. "Only one, and that was far from amusing. It has marked me like a blow. I've been waiting for you. Where have you been, and why haven't you taken the trouble to write me a single letter?"

"I've been ill," she said. "Yes, I have. Quite ill. I deliberately set out to hurt myself and succeeded. It was an experiment that I sha'n't repeat. I don't regret it. It taught me something that I shall never forget. Never too young to learn, eh? Isn't it lovely here? Just smell the sea, and look at those lights bobbing up and down out there. I never feel any interest in ships in the daytime, but at night, when they lie at anchor, and I can see nothing but their lonely eyes, I would give anything to be able to fly round them like a gull and peep into their cabins. Do they affect you like that?"

Palgrave wasn't listening to her. It was enough to look at her and refresh his memory. She had been more than ever in his blood all these weeks. She was like water in a desert or sunlight to a man who comes up from a mine. He had found her again and he thanked whatever god he recognized for that, but he was forced to realize from her imperturbable coolness and unaffected ease that she was farther away from him than ever. To one of his temperament and schooling this was hard to bear with any sort of self-control. The fact that he wanted her of all the creatures on earth, that she, alone among women, had touched the fuse of his desire, and that, knowing this, she could sit there a few inches from his lips and put a hundred miles between them, maddened him, from whom nothing hitherto had been impossible.

"Have I got to begin all over again?" he asked, with a sort of petulance.

"Begin what, Gilbert?" There was great satisfaction in playing with one who thought that he had only to touch a bell to bring the moon and the sun and the stars to his bidding.

"Good God," he cried out. "You're like wet sand on which a man expects to find yesterday's footmarks. Hasn't anything of me and the things I've said to you remained in your memory?"

"Of course," she said. "I shall never forget the night you took me to the Brevoort, for instance, and supplied the key to all the people with unkempt hair and comic ties."

Some one on the beach below shot out a low whistle.

A little thrill ran through Joan. In ten minutes, perhaps less, she would be dancing once more to the lunatic medley of a Jazz band, dancing with a boy who gave her all that she needed of him and asked absolutely nothing of her; dancing among people who were less than the dust in the scheme of things, so far as she was concerned, except to give movement and animation to the room and to be steered through. That was the right attitude towards life and its millions, she told herself. As salt was to an egg so was the element of false romance to this Golf Club dance. In a minute she would get rid of Palgrave, yes, even the fastidious Gilbert Palgrave, who had never been able quite to disguise the fact that his love for her was something of a condescension; she would fly in the face of the unwritten law of the pompous house on the dunes and mingle with what Hosack had called the crowd from the hotel. It was all laughable and petty, but it was what she wanted to do. It was all in the spirit of "Who Cares?" that she had caught at again. Why worry as to what Mrs. Hosack might say or Palgrave might feel? Wasn't she as free as the air to follow her whims without a soul to make a claim upon her or to hold out a hand to stop?

Through these racing thoughts she heard Palgrave talking and crickets rasping and frogs croaking and a sudden burst of laughter and talk in the drawing-room,—and the whistle come again.

"Yes," she said, because yes was as good as any other word. "Well, Gilbert, dear, if you're not an early bird you will see me again later,"—and jumped down from the wall.

"Where are you going?"

"Does that matter?"

"Yes, it does. I want you here. I've been waiting all these weeks."

She laughed. "It's a free country," she said, "and you have the right to indulge in any hobby that amuses you. Au revoir, old thing." And she spread out her arms like wings and flew to the steps and down to the beach and away with some one who had sent out a signal.

"That boy," said Palgrave. "I'm to be turned down for a cursed boy! By God, we'll know about that."

And he followed, seeing red.

He saw them get into a low-lying two-seater built on racing lines, heard a laugh flutter into the air, watched the tail light sweep round the drive and become smaller and smaller along the road.

So that was it, was it? He had been relegated to the hangers-on, reduced to the ranks, put into the position of any one of the number of extraneous men who hung round this girl-child for a smile and a word! That was the way he was to be treated, he, Gilbert Palgrave, the connoisseur, the decorative and hitherto indifferent man who had refused to be subjected to any form of discipline, who had never, until Joan had come into his life, allowed any one to put him a single inch out of his way, who had been triumphantly one-eyed and selfish,—that was the way he was to be treated by the very girl who had fulfilled his once wistful hope of making him stand, eager and startled and love-sick among the chaos of individualism and indolence, who had shaken him into the Great Emotion! Yes, by God, he'd know about that.

Bare-headed and surging with untranslatable anger he started walking. He was in no mood to go into the drawing-room and cut into a game of bridge and show his teeth and talk the pleasant inanities of polite society. All the stucco of civilization fell about him in slabs as he made his way with long strides out of the Hosacks' place, across the sandy road and on to the springy turf of the golf links. It didn't matter where he went so long as he got elbow room for his indignation, breathing space for his rage and a wide loneliness for his blasphemy....

He had stood humble and patient before this virginal girl. He had confessed himself to her with the tremendous honesty of a man made simple by an overwhelming love. She was married. So was he. But what did that matter to either of them whose only laws were self-made? The man to whom she was not even tied meant as little to her as the girl he had foolishly married meant or would ever mean to him. He had placed himself at her beck and call. In order to give her amusement he had taken her to places in which he wouldn't have been seen dead, had danced his good hours of sleep away for the pleasure of seeing her pleased, had revolutionized his methods with women and paid her tribute by the most scrupulous behavior and, finally, instead of setting out to turn her head with pearls and diamonds and carry her by storm while she was under the hypnotic influence of priceless glittering things for bodily adornment, which render so many women easy to take, he had recognized her as intelligent and paid her the compliment of treating her as such, had stated his case and waited for the time when the blaze of love would set her alight and bring her to his arms.

There was something more than mere egotism in all this,—the natural egotism of a man of great wealth and good looks, who had walked through life on a metaphorical red carpet pelted with flowers by adoring women to whom even virtue was well lost in return for his attention. Joan, like the spirit of spring, had come upon Palgrave at that time of his life when youth had left him and he had stood at the great crossroads, one leading down through a morass of self-indulgence to a hideous senility, the other leading up over the stones of sacrifice and service to a dignified usefulness. Her fresh young beauty and enthusiasm, her golden virginity and unself-consciousness, her unaffected joy in being alive, her superb health and vitality had shattered his conceit and self-obsession, broken down his aloofness and lack of scruple and filled the empty frame that he had hung in his best thoughts with her face and form.

There was something of the great lover about Palgrave in his new and changed condition. He had laid everything unconditionally at the feet of this young thing. He had shown a certain touch of bigness, of nobility, he of all men, when, after his outburst in the little drawing-room that night, he had stood back to wait until Joan had grown up. He had waited for six weeks, going through tortures of Joan-sickness that were agonizing. He had asked her to do what she could for him in the way of a little kindness, but had not received one single line. He was prepared to continue to wait because he knew his love to be so great that it must eventually catch hold of her like the licking flame of a prairie fire. It staggered him to arrive at the Hosacks' place and find her fooling with a smooth-faced lad. It outraged him to be left cold, as though he were a mere member of the house party and watch her to whom he had thrown open his soul go joy-riding with a cursed boy. It was, in a sort of way, heresy. It proved an almost unbelievable inability to realize the great thing that this was. Such love as his was not an everyday affair, to be treated lightly and carelessly. It was, on the contrary, rare and wonderful and as such to be, at any rate, respected. That's how it seemed to him, and by God he would see about it.

He drew up short, at last, on his strange walk across the undulating course. The light from the Country Club streamed across his feet, and the jangle of the Jazz band broke into his thoughts. From where he stood, surprised to find himself in civilization, he could see the crowd of dancers through the open windows of what resembled a huge bungalow, at one side of which a hundred motor cars were parked. He went nearer, drawn forward against his will. He was in no mood to watch a summer dance of the younger set. He made his way to the wide veranda and stood behind the rocking chairs of parents and friends. But not for more than fifty seconds. There was Joan, with her lovely laughing face alight with the joy of movement, held in the arms of the cursed boy. Between two chairs he went, into and across the room in which he was a trespasser, tapped young Oldershaw sharply on the arm, cut into the dance, and before the boy could recover from his surprise, was out of reach with Joan against his heart.

"Oh, well done, Gilbert," said Joan, a little breathlessly. "When Marty did that to you at the Crystal Room..."

She stopped, and a shadow fell on her face and a little tremble ran across her lips.

Smoking a cigarette on the veranda young Oldershaw waited for the dance to end. It was encored several times but being a sportsman and having achieved a monopoly of Joan during all the previous dances, he let this man enjoy his turn. He was a great friend of hers, she had said on the way to the club, and was, without doubt, a very perfect person with his wide-set eyes and well-groomed head, his smooth moustache and the cleft on his chin. He didn't like him. He had decided that at a first glance. He was too supercilious and self-assured and had a way of looking clean through men's heads. He conveyed the impression of having bought the earth,—and Joan. A pity he was too old for a year or two of Yale. That would make him a bit more of a man.

When presently the Jazzers paused in order to recuperate,—every one of them deserving first aid for the wounded,—and Joan came out for a little air with Palgrave, Harry strolled up. This was his evening, and in a perfectly nice way he conveyed that impression by his manner. He was, moreover, quite determined to give nothing more away. He conveyed that, also.

"Shall we sit on the other side?" he asked. "The breeze off the sea keeps the mosquitoes away a bit."

Refusing to acknowledge his existence Palgrave guided Joan towards a vacant chair. He went on with what he had been saying and swung the chair round.

Joan was smiling again.

Oldershaw squared his jaw. "I advise against this side, Joan," he said. "Let me take you round."

He earned a quick amused look and a half shrug of white shoulders from Joan. Palgrave continued to talk in a low confidential voice. He regarded Oldershaw's remarks as no more of an interruption than the chorus of the frogs. Oldershaw's blood began to boil, and he had a queer prickly sensation at the back of his neck. Whoo, but there'd have to be a pretty good shine in a minute, he said to himself. This man Palgrave must be taught.

He marched up to Joan and held out his arm. "We may as well get back," he said. "The band's going to begin again."

But Joan sat down, looking from one man to the other. All the woman in her revelled in this rivalry,—all that made her long-dead sisters crowd to the arenas, wave to armored knights in deadly combat, lean forward in grand stands to watch the Titanic struggles of Army and Navy, Yale and Harvard on the football field. Her eyes danced, her lips were parted a little, her young bosom rose and fell.

"And so you see," said Palgrave, putting his hand on the back of her chair, "I can stay as long as the Hosacks will have me, and one day I'll drive you over to my bachelor cottage on the dune. It will interest you."

"The only thing that has any interest at the moment is dancing," said Oldershaw loudly. "By the way, you don't happen to be a member of the club, do you, Mr. Palgrave?"

With consummate impudence Palgrave caught his eye and made a sort of policeman gesture. "Run away, my lad," he said, "run away and amuse yourself." He almost asked for death.

With a thick mutter that sounded like "My God," Oldershaw balanced himself to hit, his face the color of a beet-root,—and instantly Joan was on her feet between them with a hand on the boy's chest.

"No murder here," she said, "please!"

"Murder!" echoed Palgrave, scoffing.

"Yes, murder. Can't you see that this boy could take you and break you like a dry twig? Let's go back, all three of us. We don't want to become the center of a sight-seeing crowd." And she took an arm of each shaking man and went across the drive to where the car was parked.

And so the danger moment was evaded,—young Oldershaw warm with pride, Palgrave sullen and angry. They made a trio which had its prototypes all the way back to the beginning of the world.

It did Palgrave no good to crouch ignominiously on the step of the car which Oldershaw drove back hell for leather.

The bridge tables were still occupied. The white lane was still across the sea. Frogs and crickets still continued their noisy rivalry, but it was a different climate out there on the dunes from that of the village with its cloying warmth.

Palgrave went into the house at once with a brief "Thank you." Joan waited while Harry put the car into a garage. Bed made no appeal. Bridge bored,—it required concentration. She would play the game of sex with Gilbert if he were to be found. So the boy had to be disposed of.

"Harry," she said, when he joined her, chuckling at having come top dog out of the recent blaze, "you'd better go straight to bed now. We're going to be up early in the morning, you know."

"Just what I was thinking," he answered. "By Jove, you've given me a corking good evening. The best of my young life. You ... you certainly are,—well, I don't know how to do you justice. I'd have to be a poet." He fumbled for her hand and kissed it a little sheepishly.

They went in. "You're a nice boy, Harry," she said. There was something in his charming simplicity and muscular strength that reminded her of,—but she refused to let the name enter her mind.

"I could have broken that chap like a dry twig, too, easy. Who does he think he is?" He would have pawned his life at that moment for the taste of her lips.

She stood at the bottom of the stairs and held out her hand. "Good night, old boy," she said.

And he took it and hurt it. "Good night, Joany," he answered.

That pet name hurt her more than his eager grasp. It was Marty's own word—Marty, who—who—

She threw up her head and stamped her foot, and slammed the door of her thoughts. "Who cares?" she said to herself, challenging life and fate. "Come on. Make things move."

She saw Palgrave standing alone in the library looking at the sea. "You might be Canute," she said lightly.

His face was curiously white. "I'm off in the morning," he said. "We may as well say good-by now."

"Good-by, then," she answered.

"I can't stay in this cursed place and let you play the fool with me."

"Why should you?"

"There'll be Hosack and the others as well as your new pet."

"That's true."

He caught her suddenly by the arms. "Damn you," he said. "I wish to God I'd never seen you."

She laughed. "Cave man stuff, eh?"

He let her go. She had the most perfect way of reducing him to ridicule.

"I love you," he said. "I love you. Aren't you going to try, even to try, to love me back?"

"No."

"Not ever?"

"Never." She went up to him and stood straight and slim and bewitching, eye to eye. "If you want me to love you, make me. Work for it, move Heaven and earth. You can't leave it to me. I don't want to love you. I'm perfectly happy as I am. If you want me, win me, carry me off my feet and then you shall see what it is to be loved. It's entirely up to you, understand that. I shall fight against it tooth and nail, but I give you leave to do your best. Do you accept the challenge?"

"Yes," he said, and his face cleared, and his eyes blazed.



V

At the moment when the Nice Boy, as brown as the proverbial berry, was playing a round of golf with Joan within sound of the sea, Howard Oldershaw, his cousin, drove up to the little house in East Sixty-fifth Street to see Martin.

He, too, had caught the sun, and his round fat face was rounder and fatter than ever. He, too, had the epitome of health, good nature, and misdirected energy. He performed a brief but very perfect double shuffle on the top step while waiting for the door to open, and then barged past the constitutionally unsurprised man servant, sang out a loud woo-hoo and blew into the library like an equinoctial gale.

Pipe in mouth, and wearing a thin silk dressing gown, Martin was standing under the portrait of his father. He slipped something quickly into his pocket and turned about. It was a photograph of Joan.

"Well, you Jack-o'-Lantern," he said. "It's better late than never, I suppose."

Howard sent his straw hat spinning across the room. It landed expertly in a chair. "My dear chap, your note's been lying in my apartment for a week, snowed under my bills. I drove back this morning, washed the bricks out of my eyes and came right around. What are you grumbling about?"

"I'm not grumbling. When you didn't show up in answer to my note I telephoned, and they told me you were away. Where've you been?"

"Putting in a week at the Field Club at Greenwich," replied Howard, filling a large cigarette case from the nearest box, as was his most friendly habit. "Two sweaters, tennis morning, noon and night, no sugar, no beer, no butter, no bread, gallons of hot water—and look at me! Martin, it's a tragedy. If I go on like this, it's me for Barnum's Circus as the world's prize pig. What's the trouble?"

There was not the usual number of laughter lines round Martin's eyes, but one or two came back at the sight and sound of his exuberant friend. "No trouble," he said, lying bravely. "I got here the day you left and tried to find you. That's all. I wanted you to come down to Shinnecock and play golf. Everybody else seems to be at Plattsburg, and I was at a loose end."

"Golf's no good to me. It wouldn't reduce me any more than playing the piano with somebody dying in the next room. Been here all the week?"

"Yes," said Martin.

"What? In this fug hole, with the sun shining? Out with it, Martin. Get it off your chest, old son."

Just for an instant Martin was hugely tempted to make a clean breast of everything to this good-hearted, tempestuous person, under whose tight skin there was an uncommon amount of shrewdness. But it meant dragging Joan into open discussion, and that was all against his creed. He had inherited from his father and his father's father an absolute incapability of saying anything to anybody about his wife. And so he slammed the door of his soul and presented an enigmatical front.

"There's nothing on my chest," he said. "Business downtown has kept me here,—legal stuff and that sort of thing. But I'm free now. Got any suggestions?"

Howard accepted this. If a pal was determined not to confide and get invaluable advice, what was the use of going for him with a can opener? But one good look at the face whose every expression he knew so well convinced him that something was very much the matter. "Why, good Lord," he said to himself, "the old thing looks as if he'd been working night and day for an examination and had been plucked. I wonder which of the two girls is at the back of all this,—the wife or the other?" Rumors had reached his way about both.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"I don't care," said Martin. "Any damn thing so long as it's something with somebody. What's it matter?"

He didn't quite manage to hide the little quiver in his voice, and it came to Howard Oldershaw for the first time how young they both were to be floundering on the main road, himself with several entanglements and money worries, his friend married and with another complication. They were both making a pretty fine hash of things, it seemed, and just for a moment, with something of boyishness that still remained behind his sophistication, he wished that they were both back at Yale, unhampered and unencumbered, their days filled with nothing but honest sport and good lectures and the whole joy of life.

"It's like this with me, Martin," he said, with a rather rueful grin. "I'm out of favor at home just now and broke to the wide. There are one or two reasons why I should lie low for a while, too. How about going out to your place in the country? I'll hit the wily ball with you and exercise your horses, lead the simple life and, please God, lose some flesh, and guarantee to keep you merry and bright in my well-known, resilient way. What do you say, old son?"

Martin heartily appreciated Howard's sound method of swinging everything round to himself and trying to make out that it was all on his side to go out to the house in which Joan ought to be. He was not a horseman or a golfer, and the simple life had few attractions for him. Well, that was friendship.

"Thanks, old man," he said. "That's you to the life, but I vote we get a change from golf and riding. Come down to Devon with me, and let's do some sailing. You remember Gilmore? I had a letter from him this morning, asking if I'd like to take his cottage and yawl. Does that sound good?"

"Great," cried Howard. "Sailing—that's the game, and by gum, swimming's the best of all ways of dropping adipose deposit. Wire Gilmore and fix it. I'll drive you out to-morrow. By the way, I found a letter from my cousin Harry among the others. He's in that part of the world. He's frightfully gone on your wife, it appears."

Martin looked up quickly. "Where is she?" he asked.

"Why, they're both staying at the Hosacks' place at Easthampton. Didn't you know that?" He was incredulous.

"No," said Martin.

Howard metaphorically clapped his hand over his mouth. Questions were on the tip of his tongue. If Martin were not in the mood to take him into his confidence, however, there must be a good reason for it, but,—not to know where his wife was! What on earth was at the bottom of all this? "All right," he said. "I've one or two things I must do, and I'll be round in the morning, or is that too soon?"

"The sooner the better," said Martin. "I'll send the cook and Judson down by the early train. They'll have things in shape by the time we show up. I'm fed up with New York and can smell the water already. Will you dine with me to-night and see a show?"

"I can't," said Howard, and laughed.

"I see. To-morrow, then."

"Right. Great work. So long, old son. Get busy and do what you have to do to-day, then we can leave this frying pan to-morrow with nothing on our minds."

"I haven't anything to do," said Martin.

Howard picked up his hat and caught it with his head in the manner of a vaudeville artist. But he didn't go. He stood waiting, keyed to a great sympathy. There was something in Martin's voice and at the back of his eyes which made him see him plainly and suddenly as a man standing all alone and wounded. But he waited in vain. There was a curious silence,—a rather painful and embarrassing silence, during which these two lads, who had been pretending to be men, dodged each other's eyes.

And then Howard, with an uncharacteristic awkwardness, and looking very young, made a quick step forward, and with a sort of gentle roughness grasped Martin by the arm. "But you've got something to say," he said. "Good God, man, have we been pals for nothing? I hide nothing from you. I can help."

But Martin shook his head. He tried to speak and failed. There was something hard in his throat. But he put his hand very warmly on his friend's shoulder for a moment and turned away abruptly. "Joan, Joan," he cried in his heart, "what are you doing, what are we both doing? Why are we killing the days that can never come back?"

He heard Howard go out. He heard the front door close and the honk of the horn. And for a long time he stood beneath the portrait of the man who had gone so far away and who alone could have helped him.

The telephone bell rang.

Martin was spoken to by the girl that lived in the rabbit warren in West Forty-sixth Street in the rooms below those of Tootles. "Can you come round at once?" she asked. "It's about Tootles—urgent."

And Martin answered, "Yes, now, at once."

After all, then, there might be something to do.



VI

Master of all the sky, the sun fell warmly on the city, making delicious shadows, gliding giant buildings, streaming across the park, chasing the endless traffic along the Avenue, and catching at points of color. It was one of those splendid mornings of full-blown Tune, when even New York,—that paradox of cities,—had beauty. It was too early in the year for the trees to have grown blowsy and the grass worn and burnt. The humidity of midsummer was held back by the energy of a merry breeze which teased the flags and sent them spinning against the oriental blue of the spotless sky.

Martin walked to West Forty-sixth Street. There was an air of half-time about the Avenue. The ever-increasingly pompous and elaborate shops, whose window contents never seem to vary, wore a listless, uninterested expression like that of a bookmaker during the luncheon hour at the races. Their glittering smile, their enticement and solicitation, their tempting eye-play were relaxed. The cocottes of Monte Carlo at the end of the season could not have assumed a greater indifference. But there were the same old diamonds and pearls, the same old canvases, the same old photographs, the same old antiques, the same old frocks and shoes and men's shirtings, the same old Persian rugs and Japanese ware, the same cold, hard plates and china, the very same old hats and dinks and dressing-gowns and cut flowers and clubs, and all the same doormen in the uniforms that are a cross between those of admirals and generals, the men whose only exercise during the whole of the year is obtained by cutting ice and sweeping snow from just their particular patch of pavement. In all the twists and changes, revolutions and cross currents, upheavals and in-fallings that affect this world, there is one great street which, except for a new building here and there, resolutely maintains its persistent sameness. Its face is like that of a large, heavily made-up and not unbeautiful woman, veil-less and with some dignity but only two expressions, enticement and indifference. A man may be lost at the North Pole, left to die on the west coast of Africa, married in London, or forcibly detained in Siberia, but, let him return to life and New York, and he will find that whatever elsewhere Anno Domini may have defaced and civilization made different, next to nothing has happened to Fifth Avenue.

Martin had told Howard of the way he had found Joan on the hill, how she had climbed out of window that night and come to him to be rescued and how he had brought her to town to find Alice Palgrave away and married her. All that, but not one word of his having been shown the door on the night of the wedding, of her preference for Palgrave, her plunge into night life, or his own odd hut human adventure with Susie Capper as a result of the accident. But for the fact that it wasn't his way to speak about his wife whatever she did or left undone, Martin would have been thankful to have made a clean breast of everything. Confession is good for the soul, and Martin's young soul needed to be relieved of many bewilderments and pains and questionings. He wished that he could have continued the story to Howard of the kid's way Joan had treated him,—a way which had left him stultified,—of how, touched by the tragedy that had reduced the poor little waif of the chorus to utter grief and despair, he had taken her out to the country to get healing in God's roofless cathedral, and of how, treating her, because of his love and admiration of Joan, with all the respect and tenderness that he would have shown a sister, it had given him the keenest pleasure and delight to help her back to optimism and sanity. He would like to have told Howard all the simple and charming details of that good week, giving him a sympathetic picture of the elfish Tootles enjoying her brief holiday out in the open, and of her recovery under the inspiration of trees and flowers and brotherliness, to all of which she was so pathetically unaccustomed. He wouldn't have told of the many efforts made by Tootles to pay him back in the only way that seemed to her to be possible, even if he had known of them,—he had not been on the lookout for anything of that sort. Nor would he, of course, have gone into the fact that Tootles loved him quite as much as he loved Joan,—he knew nothing of that. But he would have said much of the joy that turned cold at the sight of Joan's face when she saw Tootles lying on the sofa in his den, of her rush to get away, of the short, sharp scene which followed her unexpected visit, and of his having driven Tootles back to town the following morning at her urgent request,—a curious, quiet Tootles with the marks of a sleepless night on her face. Also he would have said something of his wild despair at having been just ten minutes too late to find Joan at the house in East Sixty-fifth Street, of his futile attempts to discover where she had gone, and of the ghastly, mystifying days back in the country, waiting and wondering and writing letters that he never posted,—utterly unaware of the emotion which had prompted Joan to walk into his den that night, but quite certain of the impression that she had taken away with her.

It was with a sense of extraordinary isolation that Martin walked down Fifth Avenue. Two good things had, however, come out of his talk with Howard Oldershaw. One was the certainty of this man's friendship. The other the knowledge of the place at which Joan was staying. This last fact made him all the more anxious to get down to the cottage. Devon was only a short drive from Easthampton, and that meant the possibility of seeing and speaking to Joan. Good God, if only she could understand a little of what she meant to him, and how he craved and pined for her.

The dressmaker on the street floor of the rabbit warren had gone out of business. Failed probably, poor thing. Tootles had once said that the only people she ever saw in the shop were pressing creditors. A colored woman of bulbous proportions and stertorous breathing was giving a catlick to the dirty stairway. A smell of garlic and onions met Martin on his way to the rooms of Tootles' friend, and on the first landing he drew back to let two men pass down who looked like movie actors. They wore violet ties and tight-fitting jackets with trench belts and short trousers that should have been worn by their younger brothers. The actor on the next floor, unshaven and obviously just out of bed, was cooking breakfast in his cubby-hole. He wore the upper part of his pajamas and a pair of incredibly dirty flannel trousers. The marks of last night's grease paint were on his temples and eyebrows. He hummed a little song to the accompaniment of sizzling bacon.

When Martin knocked on the door of the apartment of the girl to whom he had never spoken except over the telephone and whose name he remembered to be Irene Stanton, a high-pitched, nasal voice cried out.

"Come right in." He went right in and was charged at by a half-bred Chow whose bark was like a gunman's laugh, and a tiny pink beast which worked itself into a state of hysterical rage. But when a high-heeled shoe was flung at them from the bedroom, followed by a volley of fruit-carrier words of the latest brand, they retired, awed and horror-stricken, to cover.

Martin found himself in a small, square living room with two windows looking over the intimate backs of other similar houses. Under the best of conditions it was not a room of very comfortable possibilities. In the hands of its present occupant, it was, to Martin's eyes, the most depressing and chaotic place he had ever seen. The cheap furniture and the cheaper wall paper went well with a long-unwhite-washed ceiling and smudged white paint. A line of empty beer bottles which stood on a mantelpiece littered with unframed photographs and dog-eared Christmas cards struck a note so blase that it might almost have been committed for a reason. On the square mission table in the center there was a lamp with a belaced pink shade at a cock-eyed angle which resembled the bonnet of a streetwalker in the early hours of the morning. An electric iron stood coldly beneath it with its wire attached to a fixture in the wall. Various garments littered the chairs and sofa, and jagged pieces of newspaper which had been worried by the dogs covered the floor.

But the young woman who shortly made her appearance was very different from the room. Her frock was neat and clean, her face most carefully made up, her shoes smart. She had a wide and winning grin, teeth that should have advertised a toothpaste, and a pair of dimples which ought to have been a valuable asset to any chorus. "Why, but you HAVE done a hustle," she said. "I haven't even had time to tidy up a bit." She cleared a chair and shook a finger at the dogs, who, sneaking out from under the sofa, were eyeing her with apprehensive affection. The Chow's mother had evidently lost her heart to a bulldog. "Excuse the look of this back attic," she added. "I've got to move, and I'm in the middle of packing."

"Of course," said Martin, eager to know why he had been sent for. "It's about Tootles, you said."

"Very much so." She sat on the edge of the table, crossed her arms, and deliberately looked Martin over with expert eyes. Knowing as much about men as a mechanic of a main-road motor-repairing shop knows about engines, her examination was acute and thorough.

Martin waited quietly, amused at her coolness, but impatient to come to cues. She was a good sort, he knew. Tootles had told him so, and he was certain that she had asked to see him out of friendship for the girl upstairs.

Her first question was almost as disconcerting and abrupt as a Zeppelin bomb. "What did you do to Tootles?"

Martin held her examining gaze. "Nothing, except give her a bit of a holiday," he said.

"I saw you go off with her that morning." She smiled and her eyes became a little more friendly. "She wrote me a letter from your place and said she'd found out what song writers meant by the word heaven."

"Did she?" said Martin. "I'm glad."

It came to her in a flash that her little pal had fallen in love with this boy and instantly she understood the mystery of Tootles' change of method and point of view—her moping, her relaxed grip on life. She meant almost nothing to the boy and knew it.

"But don't you think you might have been to see her since you brought her back?" she asked.

"I've been very worried," said Martin simply.

"Is that so?" and then, after another pause, this girl said a second astonishing thing. "I wish I didn't see in you a man who tells the truth. I wish you were just one of the ordinary sort that comes our way. I should know how to deal with you better."

"Tell me what you mean," said Martin.

"Shall I? All right, I will." She stood up with her hands on her hips. "If you'd played the usual game with little Tootles and dropped her cold, I wouldn't let you get out of this room without coming up to scratch. I'd make you cough up a good-sized check. There's such a thing as playing the game even by us strap-hangers, you know. As it is, I can see that you were on the square, that you're a bit of a poet or something and did Tootles a good turn for nothing, and honestly, I don't know the next move. You don't owe her anything, you see."

"Is money the trouble?" asked Martin.

Irene Stanton shot out an odd, short laugh. "Let me tell you something," she said. "You know what happened at the dress rehearsal of 'The Ukelele Girl'? Well, the word's gone around about her chucking the show at the last minute, and it's thumbs down for Tootles. She hadn't a nickel when she came back from your place, and since then she's pawned herself right down to the bone to pay her rent and get a few eats. She wouldn't take nothing from me because I'm out too, and this is a bad time to get into anything new. Only two things can stop her from being put out at the end of the week. One's going across the passage to the drunken fellow that writes music, and the other's telling the tale to you. She won't do either. I've never seen her the way she is now. She sits around, staring at the wall, and when I try to put some of her usual pep into her she won't listen. She's all changed since that taste of the country, and I figure she won't get on her feet again without a big yank up. She keeps on saying to herself, like a sort of song, 'Oh, Gawd, for a sight of the trees,' and I've known girls end it quick when they get that way."

Martin got up. "Where do you keep your pen and ink?" he asked. Poor old Tootles. There certainly was something to do.

Irene bent forward eagerly. "Are you going to see her through this snag?"

"Of course I am."

"Ah, that's the talk. But wait a second. We got to be tricky about this." She was excited and tremendously in earnest. "If she gets to know I've been holding out the hat to you, we're wasting time. Give me the money, see? I'll make up a peach of a story about how it came to me,—the will of a rich uncle in Wisconsin or something, you know,—and ask her to come and help me blow it in somewhere on the coast, see? She gave me three weeks' holiday once. It's my turn now, me being in luck.... But perhaps you don't trust me?"

"You trust me," said Martin, and gave her one of his honest smiles.

He caught sight of a bottle of ink on the window sill. There was a pen of sorts there also. He brought them to the table and made out a check in the name of his fellow conspirator. He was just as anxious as she was to put "a bit of pep" into the little waif who had sat beneath the portrait of his father. There was no blotting paper, so he waved it in the air before handing it over.

A rush of tears came to Irene's eyes when she saw what he had written. She held out her hand, utterly giving up an attempt to find words.

"Thank you for calling up," said Martin, doing his best to be perfectly natural and ordinary. "I wish you'd done so sooner. Poor old Tootles. Write to the Devon Yacht Club, Long Island, and let me know how you get on. We've all three been up against some rotten bad luck, haven't we? Good-by, then. I'll go up to Tootles now."

"No, no," she said, "don't. That'd bring my old uncle to life right away. She'd guess you was in on this, all right. Slip off and let me have a chance with my movie stuff." With a mixture of emotion and hilarity she suddenly waved the check above her head. "Can you imagine the fit the receiving teller at my little old bank'll throw when I slip this across as if it meant nothing to me?"

And then she caught up one of Martin's hands and did the most disconcerting thing of all. She pressed it to her lips and kissed it.

Martin got as red as a beet. "Well, then, good-by," he said, making for the door. "Good luck."

"Good-by and good luck to you. My word, but you've made optimism sprout all over my garden, and I thought the very roots of it were dead."

For a few minutes after Martin was gone, she danced about her appalling room, and laughed and cried and said the most extraordinary things to her dogs. The little pink beast became hysterical again, and the Chow leaped into a bundle of under-clothing and worried the life out of it. Finally, having hidden the check in a safe place, the girl ran upstairs to break the good news of her uncle's death to Tootles. Why, they could do the thing like ladies, the pair of them. It was immense, marvellous, almost beyond belief! That old man of Wisconsin deserved a place in Heaven.... Heaven—Devon.

It was an inspiration. "Gee, but that's the idea!" she said to herself. "Devon—and the sight of that boy. That'll put the pep back, unless I'm the original nut. And if he doesn't care about her now, he may presently. Others have."

And when she went in, there was Tootles staring at the wall, and through it and away beyond at the place Martin had called the Cathedral, and at Martin, with his face dead-white because Joan had turned and gone.



VII

It was a different Tootles who, ten days later, sat on a bank of dry ferns that overlooked a superb stretch of water and watched the sun go down. The little half-plucked bird of the Forty-sixth Street garret with the pale thin face and the large tired eyes had almost become the fairy of Joan's hill once more, the sun-tanned little brother of Peter Pan again. A whole week of the air of Devon and the smell of its pines, of the good wholesome food provided by the family with whom she and Irene were lodging, of long rambles through the woods, of bathing and sleeping, and the joy of finding herself among trees had performed that "yank" of which her fellow chorus lady had spoken.

Tootles was on her feet again. Her old zest to live had been given back to her by the wonder and the beauty of sky and water and trees. A child of nature, hitherto forced to struggle for her bread in cities, she was revived and renewed and refreshed by the sweet breath and the warm welcome of that simple corner of God's earth to which Irene had so cunningly brought her. Her starved, city-ridden spirit had blossomed and become healthy out there in the country like a root of Creeping Jenny taken from a pot on the window-sill of a slum house and put back into good brown earth.

The rough and ready family with whom they were lodging kept a duck farm, and it was to this white army of restless, greedy things that Tootles owed her first laugh. Tired and smut-bespattered after a tedious railway journey she had eagerly and with childish joy gone at once to see them fed, the old and knowing, the young and optimistic, and all the yellow babies with uncertain feet and tiny noises. After that, a setting sun which set fire to the sky and water and trees, melting and mingling them together, and Tootles turned the corner. The motherless waif slept that night on Nature's maternal breast and was comforted.

The warm-hearted Irene was proud of herself. Devon—Heaven—it was indeed an inspiration. The only fly in her amber came from the fact that Martin was away. But when she discovered that he and his friend had merely gone for a short trip on the yawl she waited with great content for their return, setting the seeds in Tootles' mind, with infinite diplomacy and feminine cunning, of a determination to use all her wiles to win even a little bit of love from Martin as soon as she saw him again.

Playing the part of one who had unexpectedly benefited from the will of an almost-forgotten relative she never, of course, said a word of why she had chosen Devon for this gorgeous holiday. Temporarily wealthy it was not necessary to look cannily at every nickel. Before leaving New York she had bought herself and Tootles some very necessary clothes and saw to it that they lived on as much of the fat of the land as could be obtained in the honest and humble house in which she had found a large two-bedded room. Her cigarettes were Egyptian now and on the train she had bought half a dozen new novels at which she looked with pride. Hitherto she had been obliged to read only those much-handled blase-looking books which went the round of the chorus. Conceive what that meant! Also she had brought with her a bottle of the scent that was only, so far as she knew, within reach of leading ladies. Like the cigarettes and the books, this was really for Tootles to use, but she borrowed a little from time to time.

As for Irene Stanton, then, she was having, and said so, the time of her young life. She richly deserved it, and if her kindness and thoughtfulness, patience and sympathy had not been entered in the big volume of the Recording Angel that everlasting young woman must have neglected her pleasant job for several weeks.

And, as for Tootles, it is true that her bobbed hair still owed its golden brilliance to a bottle, but the white stuff on her face had been replaced by sunburn, and her lips were red all by themselves.

She was watching the last of the great red globe when her friend joined her. There had been a race of sloops that afternoon, and there was unusual animation on the quay and at the little club house. A small power boat, on which were the starter and judges and others, had just put in with a good deal of splutter and fuss. On the stoop of the club a small band was playing, and a bevy of young people were dancing. Following in the wake of the last sloop a yawl with a dingey in tow was coming towards the quay.

Seeing that Tootles was in one of her ecstatic moods and was deaf to remarks, Irene saved her words to cool her porridge and watched the incoming yawl. She did so at first without much interest. It was merely a sailboat to her city eyes, and her good lines and good management meant nothing. But as she came nearer something familiar in the cut of the man at her helm caught her attention. Surely those broad shoulders and that deep chest and small head could belong only to Martin Gray? They did, they did. It was that boy at last, that boy about whom Tootles had gone dippy, that boy whose generosity had made their holiday possible, that boy the first sight of whom would put the last touch to Tootles' recovery—that boy who, if her friend set her mind and feminine charm to work, might, it seemed to the practical Irene, make her future safe. Strap-hangers had very few such chances.

With a tremendous effort she sat wordless and waited, knowing that Martin must come that way to his cottage. With all her sense of the dramatic stirred she watched the business of coming to anchor with some impatience and when finally the dingey was hauled in and the two men got aboard, loosed off and rowed to shore, excitement sent the blood tingling through her veins. She heard them laugh and look up towards the club, now almost deserted; cars were being driven inland in quick succession. She watched them, hatless and sun-tanned, come nearer and nearer. She got up as if to go, hesitated, caught Martin's eye, gave an exclamation of well-acted amazement and waved her hand. "Well," she cried out, "for Heaven's sake! I never thought you meant this little old Devon!"

Howard had long ago caught sight of the two girls and wondered if they were pretty, hoping they would remain until he could decide the point for himself. They were, both of them, and Martin knew them. Good enough. He stood by while Martin greeted the one who spoke and then saw the other wake suddenly at the sound of his friend's voice, stumble to her feet and go forward with a little cry.

"Why, Tootles," said Martin warmly. "I never thought of seeing you here. How well you look."

It was like dreaming true. Tootles could only smile and cling to his hand.

"By Jove, the other girl," thought Howard, with what, after all, was only an easy touch of intuition. The girl's face told her story. "What will this mean?" Then there were introductions, questions and answers, laughter, jokes, a quick exchange of glances between Martin and Irene, in which he received and acknowledged her warning, and a little silence.

"Come up to the cottage and have dinner with us," said Martin, breaking it rather nervously. "Can you?"

Tootles nodded. Devon—Heaven. How perfectly the words rhymed.

"You couldn't keep us away with a stick," said Irene. This was the way things should go. Also, the jovial, fat person with the roving eyes might brighten things considerably for her.

"Great work!" Said Howard.

And then, taking Tootle's arm and breaking into enthusiastic details of the sailing trip, Martin led the way up to the cottage among the firs. It was good to have been able to put little Tootles into spirits again.

Howard followed with Irene. "Gee whiz!" he said to himself, "some dimples!"

A few miles away as the crow flies Gilbert Palgrave In his bedroom in St. James's Palace cursed himself and life because Joan was still as difficult to win as sunshine was to bottle.

And up in the sky that hung above them all the angels were lighting the stars.



VIII

Martin was not given to suspicion. He accepted people at their face value and believed in human nature. It never occurred to him, then, that the apparently ingenuous and disarming Irene, with her straight glance and wide smile, had brought Tootles to Devon except by accident or for anything but health and peace. He was awfully glad to see them. They added to the excellent effect upon his spirits which had been worked by the constant companionship of the irrepressible Howard, before whose habitual breeziness depression could stand little chance.

Also he had youth and health and plenty to do in gorgeous weather, and so his case, which he had been examining rather morbidly, assumed a less painful aspect. His love and need of Joan remained just as strong, but the sense of martyrdom brought about by loneliness and self-analysis left him. Once more he assured himself that Joan was a kid and must have her head until she became a woman and faced facts. Over and over again he repeated to himself the creed that she had flung into the teeth of fate, and in this he found more excuse than she deserved for the way in which she had used him to suit her purpose and put him into the position of a big elder brother whose duty it was to support her, in loco parentis, and not interfere with her pastimes. However much she fooled and flirted, he had an unshakable faith in her cleanness and sweetness, and if he continued to let her alone, to get fed up with what she called the Merry-go-round, she would one day come home and begin all over again. She was a kid, just a kid as she had said, and why, after all, should she be bullied and bully-ragged before she had had time to work it off? That's how he argued.

Meanwhile, he was, thankfully enough, no longer alone. Here were Howard and the two girls and the yawl and the sun, and he would keep merry and bright until Joan came back. He was too proud and sensitive to go to Joan and have it all out with her and thus dispel what had developed into a double misunderstanding, and too loyal to go to Joan's mother and tell his story and beg for help. Like Joan and Howard, and who knows how many other young things in the world, he was paying the inevitable penalty for believing that he could face the problems of life unassisted, unadvised and was making a dreadful hash of it in consequence. He little knew that his kindness to Tootles had made Joan believe that he had exchanged his armor for broadcloth and put her in a "who cares?" mood far more dangerous than the one which had sent her into the night life of New York, or that, owing to Tootles, she was, at that very moment, for the fun of the thing, driving Gilbert Palgrave to a state of anger and desperation which might lead to tragedy. Poor young things, misguided and falsely proud and at a loose end! What a waste of youth and spring which a few wise words of counsel would retrieve and render blessed.

And as for Tootles, with her once white face and red lips and hair that came out of a bottle, Martin was to her what Joan was to Palgrave and for the same reason. Irene's hints and innuendos had taken root. Caring nothing for the practical side of her friend's point of view,—the assured future business,—all her energies were bent to attract Martin, all that was feminine in her was making a huge effort to win, by hook or crook, somehow soon, an answer, however temporary, to her love. Never mind what happened after these summer weeks were over. What matter if she went mad so that she had her day? She had never come across any man like this young Martin, with his clean eyes and sensitive soul and honest hands, his, to her, inconceivable capacity of "being brother," his puzzling aloofness from the lure of sex. She didn't understand what it meant to a boy of Martin's type to cherish ideals and struggle to live up to a standard that had been set for him by his father. In her daily fight for mere self-preservation, in which joy came by accident, any such thing as principle seemed crazy. Her street—Arab interpretation of the law of life was to snatch at everything that she could reach because there was so much that was beyond her grasp. Her love for Martin was the one passion of her sordid little life, and she would be thankful and contented to carry memories back to her garret which no future rough-and-tumble could ever take away or blot out.

For several days after the first of many dinners with the boys, Tootles played her cards with the utmost care. The foursome became inseparable, bathing, sailing and motoring from morning to night. If there was any truth in the power of propinquity, it must have been discovered then. Howard attached himself to Irene whom he found something more than merry and amusing,—a girl of indomitable courage and optimism, in fact. He liked her immensely. And so Tootles paired off with Martin and had innumerable opportunities of putting forward the challenge of sex. She took them all, but with the most carefully considered subtlety. She descended to nothing obvious, as was to be expected from one of her type, which was not famous for such a thing as self-restraint. She paid great attention to her appearance and kept a close watch on her tongue. She played what she imagined was the part of a little lady, toned down her usual exuberance, her too loud laugh and her characteristic habit of giving quick and smart back answers. But in all her long talks with Martin she hinted ever so lightly that she and he had not been thrown together from opposite poles without a reason. She tried to touch his mind with the thought that it was to become what she said it might the night of the accident,—a romance, a perfectly private little affair of their own, stolen from their particular routine, which could be ended at a moment's notice. She tried to wrap the episode up in a page of poetry which might have been torn from a little book by Francois Villon and give it a wistfulness and charm that she thought would appeal to him. But it was not until one more than usually exquisite night, when the spirit of July lingered in the air and the warmth of the sun still lay among the stars, that she made her first step towards her goal. Howard and Irene had wandered down to the water, and she was left with Martin sitting elfishly among the ferns on the bank below the cottage and above the silver lapping water. Martin, very much alive to the magic spell of the night, with the young sap stirring in his veins, lay at her feet, and she put her hand caressingly on his head and began to talk in a half whisper.

"Boy, oh, boy," she said, "what shall I do without you when this dream comes to an end?"

"Dream again," said Martin.

"Down there in the city, so far away from trees?"

"Why not? We can take our dreams with us wherever we go. But it isn't coming to an end yet."

"How long will it last?"

"Until the sun gets cold," said Martin, catching her mood, "and there's a chill in the air."

She slipped down a little so that he should see the light in her eyes. There was hardly an inch between their lips, and the only sound was the beating of her heart. Youth and July and the scent of honeysuckle.

"I thought I was dead when you helped me out of that wreck," she went on in a quivering voice, and her long-fingered hand on his face. "I think I must be really dead to-night. Surely this is too sweet to be life."

"Dear little Tootles," said Martin softly. She was so close that he could feel the rise and fall of her breasts. "Don't let's talk of death. We're too young."

The sap was stirring in his veins. She was like a fairy, this girl, who ought never to have wandered into a city.

"Martin," she said, "when the sun gets cold and there's a chill in the air will you ever come back to this hour in a dream?"