The Danger Mark

Robert William Chambers

Chapter 1 THE SEAGRAVES

All day Sunday they had raised the devil from attic to cellar; Mrs. Farren was in tears, Howker desperate. Not one out of the fifteen servants considered necessary to embellish the Seagrave establishment could do anything with them after Kathleen Severn's sudden departure the week before.

When the telegram announcing her mother's sudden illness summoned young Mrs. Severn to Staten Island, every servant in the household understood that serious trouble was impending for them.

Day by day the children became more unruly; Sunday they were demons; and Mrs. Farren shuddered to think what Monday might bring forth.

The day began ominously at breakfast with general target practice, ammunition consisting of projectiles pinched from the interior of hot muffins. Later, when Mrs. Farren ventured into the schoolroom, she found Scott Seagrave drawing injurious pictures of Howker on the black-board, and Geraldine sorting lumps of sugar from the bowl on the breakfast-tray, which had not yet been removed.

"Dearies," she began, "it is after nine o'clock and——"

"No school to-day, Mrs. Farren," interrupted Scott cheerfully; "we haven't anything to do till Kathleen comes back, and you know it perfectly well!"

"Yes, you have, dearie; Mrs. Severn has just sent you this list of lessons." She held out a black-edged envelope.

Geraldine, who had been leisurely occupied in dropping cologne on a lump of sugar, thrust the lump into her pink mouth and turned sharply on Mrs. Farren.

"What list?" she demanded. "Give that letter to me… . Oh, Scott! Did you ever hear of anything half so mean? Kathleen's written out about a thousand questions in geography for us!"

"I can't stand that sort of interference!" shouted Scott, dropping his chalk and aiming a kick at the big papier-maché globe. "I'm sorry Kathleen's mother is probably going to die, but I've had enough geography, too."

"Mrs. Severn's mother died on Friday," said the housekeeper solemnly.

The children paused, serious for a moment in the presence of the incomprehensible.

"We're sorry," said Geraldine slowly… . "When is Kathleen coming back?"

"Perhaps to-night, dearie——"

Scott impatiently detached the schoolroom globe from its brass axis: "I'm sorry, too," he said; "but I'm tired of lessons. Now, Mrs. Farren, watch me! I'm going to kick a goal from the field. Here, you hold it, Geraldine; Mrs. Farren, you had better try to block it and cheer for Yale!"

Geraldine seized the globe, threw herself flat on the floor, and, head on one side, wriggled, carefully considering the angle. Then, tipping the globe, she adjusted it daintily for her brother to kick.

"A little higher, please; look out there, Mrs. Farren!" said Scott calmly; "Harvard is going to score this time. Now, Geraldine!"

Thump! came the kick, but Mrs. Farren had fled, and the big globe struck the nursery door and bounced back minus half of South America.

For ten minutes the upper floors echoed with the racket. Geraldine fiercely disputed her brother's right to kick every time; then, as usual, when she got what she wanted, gave up to Scott and let him monopolise the kicking until, satiated, he went back to the black-board, having obliterated several continents from the face of the globe.

"You might at least be polite enough to hold it for me to kick," said his sister. "What a pig you are, Scott."

"Don't bother me; I'm drawing Howker. You can't kick straight, anyway——"

"Yes, I can!"

Scott, intent on his drawing, muttered:

"I wish there was another boy in this house; I might have a little fun to-day if there was anybody to play with."

There ensued a silence; then he heard his sister's light little feet flying along the hallway toward their bedrooms, but went on calmly with his drawing, using some effective coloured crayon on Howker's nose. Presently he became conscious that Geraldine had re-entered the room.

"What are you going to do to-day?" he asked, preoccupied.

Geraldine, dressed in her brother's clothes, was kneeling on one knee and hastily strapping on a single roller-skate.

"I'll show you," she said, rising and shaking the dark curls out of her eyes. "Come on, Scott, I'm going to misbehave all day. Look at me! I've brought you the boy you wanted to play with."

Her brother turned, considered her with patronising toleration, then shrugged his shoulders.

"You look like one, but you're no good," he said.

"I can be just as bad as any boy!" she insisted. "I'll do whatever you do; I'll do worse, I tell you. Dare me to do something!"

"You don't dare skate backward into the red drawing-room! There's too much bric-a-brac."

She turned like a flash and was off, hopping and clattering down-stairs on her single skate, and a moment later she whirled into the red drawing-room backward and upset a Sang-de-boeuf jar, reducing the maid to horrified tears and the jar to powder.

Howker strove in vain to defend his dining-room when Scott appeared on one skate; but the breakfast-room and pantry were forcibly turned into rinks; the twins swept through the halls, met and defeated their nurses, Margaret and Betty, tumbled down into the lower regions, from there descended to the basement, and whizzed cheerily through the kitchen, waving two skateless legs.

There Mrs. Bramton attempted to buy them off with tribute in the shape of cup-cakes.

"Sure, darlints, they do be starvin' yez," purred Mrs. Bramton. "Don't I know the likes o' them? Now roon away quietlike an' ladylike——"

"Like a hen," retorted Scott. "I want some preserves."

"That's all very well," said Geraldine with her mouth full, "but we expected to skate about the kitchen and watch you make pastry. Kindly begin, Mrs. Bramton."

"I'd like to see what's inside of that chicken over there," said Scott. "And I want you to give me some raisins, Mrs. Bramton——"

"I'm dying for a glass of milk," added Geraldine. "Get me some dough, somebody; I'm going to bake something."

Scott, who, devoured by curiosity, had been sniffing around the spice cupboard, sneezed violently; a Swedish kitchen-maid threw her apron over her head, weak with laughter.

"If you're laughing at me, I'll fix you, Olga!" shouted Scott in a rage; and the air was suddenly filled with balls of dough. Mrs. Bramton fled before the storm; a well-directed volley drove the maids to cover and stampeded the two cats.

"Take whatever is good to eat, Geraldine. Hurrah! The town surrenders! Loot it! No quarter!" shouted Scott. However, when Howker arrived they retired hastily with pockets full of cinnamon sticks, olives, prunes, and dried currants, climbing triumphantly to the library above, where they curled up on a leather divan, under the portrait of their mother, to divide the spoils.

"Am I bad enough to suit you?" inquired Geraldine with pardonable pride.

"Pooh! That's nothing. If I had another boy here I'd—I'd——"

"Well, what?" demanded Geraldine, flushing. "I tell you I can misbehave as well as any boy. Dare me to do anything and you'll see! I dare you to dare me!"

Scott began: "Oh, it's all very easy for a girl to talk——"

"I don't talk; I do it! And you know perfectly well I do!"

"You're a girl, after all, even if you have got on my clothes——"

"Didn't I throw as much dough at Olga and Mrs. Bramton as you did?"

"You didn't hit anybody."

"I did! I saw a soft, horrid lump stick to Olga!"

"Pooh! You can't throw straight——"

"That's a lie!" said Geraldine excitedly.

Scott bristled:

"If you say that again——"

"All right; go and get the boxing-gloves. You did tell a lie, Scott, because I did hit Olga!"

Scott hastily unstrapped his lone skate, cast it clattering from him, and sped up-stairs. When he returned he hurled a pair of boxing-gloves at Geraldine, who put them on, laced them, trembling with wrath, and flew at her brother as soon as his own gloves were fastened.

They went about their business like lightning, swinging, blocking, countering. Twice she gave him inviting openings and then punished him savagely before he could get away; then he attempted in-fighting, but her legs were too nimble. And after a while he lost his head and came at her using sheer weight, which set her beside herself with fury.

Teeth clenched, crimson-cheeked, she side-stepped, feinted, and whipped in an upper-cut. Then, darting in, she drove home her left with all her might; and Scott went down with an unmistakable thud.

"One—two—three—four," she counted, "and you did tell a lie, didn't you? Five—six—Oh, Scott! I've made your nose bleed horridly! Does it hurt, dear? Seven—eight——"

The boy, still confused, rose and instinctively assumed the classic attitude of self-defence; but his sister threw down her gloves and offered him her handkerchief, saying: "You've just got to be fair to me now, Scott. Tell me that I throw straight and that I did hit Olga!"

He hesitated; wiped his nose:

"I take it back. You can throw straight. Ginger! What a crack you just gave me!"

She was all compunction and honey now, hovering around him where he stood stanching honourable wounds. After a while he laughed. "Thunder!" he exclaimed ruefully; "my nose seems to be growing for fair. You're all right, Geraldine."

"Here's my last cup-cake, if you like," said his sister, radiant.

Embarrassed a little by defeat, but nursing no bitterness, he sat down on the leather divan again and permitted his sister to feed him and tell him that his disaster was only an accident. He tried to think so, too, but serious doubts persisted in his mind. There had been a clean-cut finish to that swing and jab which disturbed his boy's conceit.

"We'll try it again," he began. "I'm all right now, if you like——"

"Oh, Scott, I don't want to!"

"Well, we ought to know which of us really can lick the other——"

"Why, of course, you can lick me every time. Besides, I wouldn't want to be able to lick you—except when I'm very, very angry. And I ought not to become angry the way I do. Kathleen tries so hard to make me stop and reflect before I do things, but I can't seem to learn… . Does your nose hurt?"

"Not in the least," said her brother, reddening and changing the subject. "I say, it looks as though it were going to stop raining."

He went to the window; the big Seagrave house with its mansard roof, set in the centre of an entire city block, bounded by Madison and Fifth Avenues and by Ninety-fifth and Ninety-sixth Streets, looked out from its four red brick façades onto strips of lawn and shrubbery, now all green and golden with new grass and early buds.

It was topsy-turvy, March-hare weather, which perhaps accounted for the early April dementia that possessed the children at recurring intervals, and which nothing ever checked except the ultimate slumber of infantile exhaustion.

If anybody in the house possessed authority to punish them, nobody exercised it. Servants grown gray in the Seagrave service endured much, partly for the children's sakes, partly in memory of the past; but the newer and younger domestics had less interest in the past glories and traditions of an old New York family which, except for two little children, ten years old, had perished utterly from the face of the land.

The entire domestic régime was a makeshift—had been almost from the beginning. Mrs. Farren, the housekeeper, understood it; Howker, the butler, knew it; Lacy knew it—he who had served forty years as coachman in the Seagrave family.

For in all the world there remained not one living soul who through ties of kinship was authorised to properly control these children. Nor could they themselves even remember parental authority; and only a shadowy recollection of their grandfather's lax discipline survived, becoming gradually, as time passed, nothing more personal to them than a pleasant legend kept alive and nourished in the carefully guarded stories told them by Kathleen Severn and by Anthony Seagrave's old servants.

Yet, in the land, and in his own city of Manhattan, their grandfather had been a very grand man, with his large fortune, now doubled and still increasing; he had been a very distinguished man in the world of fashion with his cultivated taste in art and wine and letters and horses; he had been a very important man, too, in the civic, social, and political construction of New York town, in the quaint days when the sexton of Old Trinity furnished fashionable hostesses with data concerning the availability of social aspirants. He had been a courtly and fascinating man, too. He had died a drunkard.

Now his grandchildren were fast forgetting him. The town had long since forgotten him. Only an old friend or two and his old servants remembered what he had been, his virtues, his magnificence, his kindness, and his weakness.

But if the Seagrave twins possessed neither father nor mother to exercise tender temporal and spiritual suzerainty in the nursery, and if no memory of their grandfather's adoring authority remained, the last will and testament of Anthony Seagrave had provided a marvellous, man-created substitute for the dead: a vast, shadowy thing which ruled their lives with passionless precision; which ordered their waking hours even to the minutest particulars; which assumed machine-like charge of their persons, their personal expenses, their bringing-up, their schooling, the items of their daily routine.

This colossal automaton, almost terrifyingly impersonal, loomed always above them, throwing its powerful and gigantic shadow across their lives. As they grew old enough to understand, it became to them the embodiment of occult and unpleasant authority which controlled their coming and going; which chose for them their personal but not their legal guardian, Kathleen Severn; which fixed upon the number of servants necessary for the house that Anthony Seagrave directed should be maintained for his grandchildren; which decided what kind of expenses, what sort of clothing, what recreations, what accomplishments, what studies, what religion they should be provided with.

And the name of this enormous man-contrived machine which took the place of father and mother was the Half Moon Trust Company, acting as trustee, guardian, and executor for two little children, who neither understood why they were sometimes very unruly or that they would one day be very, very rich.

As for their outbreaks, an intense sense of loneliness for which they were unable to account was always followed by a period of restlessness sure to culminate in violent misbehaviour.

Such an outbreak had been long impending. So when a telegram called away their personal guardian, Kathleen Severn, the children broke loose with the delicate fury of the April tempest outside, which all the morning had been blotting the western windows with gusts of fragrant rain.

The storm was passing now; light volleys of rain still arrived at intervals, slackening as the spring sun broke out, gilding naked branches and bare brown earth, touching swelling buds and the frail points of tulips which pricked the soaked loam in close-set thickets.

From the library bay windows where they stood, the children noticed dandelions in the grass and snowdrops under the trees and recognised the green signals of daffodil and narcissus.

Already crocuses, mauve, white, and yellow, glimmered along a dripping privet hedge which crowned the brick and granite wall bounding the domain of Seagrave. East, through the trees, they could see the roofs of electric cars speeding up and down Madison Avenue, and the houses facing that avenue. North and south were quiet streets; westward Fifth Avenue ran, a sheet of wet, golden asphalt glittering under the spring sun, and beyond it, above the high retaining wall, budding trees stood out against the sky, and the waters of the Park reservoirs sparkled behind.

"I am glad it's spring, anyway," said Geraldine listlessly.

"What's the good of it?" asked Scott. "We'll have to take all our exercise with Kathleen just the same, and watch other children having good times. What's the use of spring?"

"Spring is tiresome," admitted Geraldine thoughtfully.

"So is winter. I think either would be all right if they'd only let me have a few friends. There are plenty of boys I'd like to have some fun with if they'd let me."

"I wonder," mused Geraldine, "if there is anything the matter with us, Scott?"

"Why?"

"Oh—I don't know. People stare at us so—nurses always watch us and begin to whisper as soon as we come along. Do you know what a boy said to me once when I skated very far ahead of Kathleen?"

"What did he say?" inquired Scott, flattening his nose against the window-pane to see whether it still hurt him.

"He asked me if I were too rich and proud to play with other children. I was so surprised; and I said that we were not rich at all, and that I never had had any money, and that I was not a bit proud, and would love to stay and play with him if Kathleen permitted me."

"Did Kathleen let you? Of course she didn't."

"I told her what the boy said and I showed her the boy, but she wouldn't let me stay and play."

"Kathleen's a pig."

"No, she isn't, poor dear. They make her act that way—Mr. Tappan makes her. Our grandfather didn't want us to have friends."

"I'll tell you what," said Scott impatiently, "when I'm old enough, I'll have other boys to play with whether Kathleen and—and that Thing—likes it or not."

The Thing was the Half Moon Trust Company.

Geraldine glanced back at the portrait over the divan:

"Do you know," she ventured, "that I believe mother would have let us have fun."

"I'll bet father would, too," said Scott. "Sometimes I feel like kicking over everything in the house."

"So do I and I generally do it," observed Geraldine, lifting a slim, graceful leg and sending a sofa-cushion flying.

When they had kicked all the cushions from the sofas and divans, Scott suggested that they go out and help Schmitt, the gardener, who, at that moment, came into view on the lawn, followed by Olsen wheeling a barrowful of seedlings in wooden trays.

So the children descended to the main hall and marched through it, defying Lang, the second man, refusing hats and overshoes; and presently were digging blissfully in a flower-bed under the delighted directions of Schmitt.

"What are these things, anyway?" demanded Scott, ramming down the moist earth around a fragile rootlet from which trailed a green leaf or two.

"Dot vas a verpena, sir," explained the old gardener. "Now you shall vatch him grow."

The boy remained squatting for several minutes, staring hard at the seedling.

"I can't see it grow," he said to his sister, "and I'm not going to sit here all day waiting. Come on!" And he gave her a fraternal slap.

Geraldine wiped her hands on her knickerbockers and started after him; and away they raced around the house, past the fountains, under trees by the coach-house, across paths and lawns and flower-beds, tearing about like a pair of demented kittens. They frisked, climbed trees, chased each other, wrestled, clutched, tumbled, got mad, made up, and finally, removing shoes and stockings, began a game of leapfrog.

Horror-stricken nurses arrived bearing dry towels and footgear, and were received with fury and a volley of last year's horse-chestnuts. And when the enemy had been handsomely repulsed, the children started on a tour of exploration, picking their way with tender, naked feet to the northern hedge.

Here Geraldine mounted on Scott's shoulders and drew herself up to the iron railing which ran along the top of the granite-capped wall between hedge and street; and Scott followed her, both pockets stuffed with chestnuts which he had prudently gathered in the shrubbery.

In the street below there were few passers-by. Each individual wayfarer, however, received careful attention, Scott having divided the chestnuts, and the aim of both children being excellent.

They had been awaiting a new victim for some time, when suddenly Geraldine pinched her brother with eager satisfaction:

"Oh, Scott! there comes that boy I told you about!"

"What boy?"

"The one who asked me if I was too rich and proud to play with him. And that must be his sister; they look alike."

"All right," said Scott; "we'll give them a volley. You take the nurse and I'll fix the boy… . Ready… . Fire!"

The ambuscade was perfectly successful; the nurse halted and looked up, expressing herself definitely upon the manners and customs of the twins; the boy, who appeared to be amazingly agile, seized a swinging wistaria vine, clambered up the wall, and, clinging to the outside of the iron railing, informed Scott that he would punch his head when a pleasing opportunity presented itself.

"All right," retorted Scott; "come in and do it now."

"That's all very well for you to say when you know I can't climb over this railing!"

"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Scott, thrilled at the chance of another boy on the grounds even if he had to fight him; "I'll tell you what!" sinking his voice to an eager whisper; "You run away from your nurse as soon as you get into the Park and I'll be at the front door and I'll let you in. Will you?"

"Oh, please!" whispered Geraldine; "and bring your sister, too!"

The boy stared at her knickerbockers. "Do you want to fight my sister?" he asked.

"I? Oh, no, no, no. You can fight Scott if you like, and your sister and I will have such fun watching you. Will you?"

His nurse was calling him to descend, in tones agitated and peremptory; the boy hesitated, scowled at Scott, looked uncertainly at Geraldine, then shot a hasty and hostile glance at the interior of the mysterious Seagrave estate. Curiosity overcame him; also, perhaps, a natural desire for battle.

"Yes," he said to Scott, "I'll come back and punch your head for you."

And very deftly, clinging like a squirrel to the pendant wistaria, he let himself down into the street again.

The Seagrave twins, intensely excited, watched them as far as Fifth Avenue, then rapidly drawing on their shoes and stockings, scrambled down to the shrubbery and raced for the house. Through it they passed like a double whirlwind; feeble and perfunctory resistance was offered by their nurses.

"Get out of my way!" said Geraldine fiercely; "do you think I'm going to miss the first chance for some fun that I've ever had in all my life?"

At the same moment, through the glass-sheeted grill Scott discovered two small figures dashing up the drive to the porte-cochère. And he turned on Lang like a wild cat.

Lang, the man at the door, was disposed to defend his post; Scott prepared to fly at him, but his sister intervened:

"Oh, Lang," she pleaded, jumping up and down in an agony of apprehension, "please, please, let them in! We've never had any friends." She caught his arm piteously; he looked fearfully embarrassed, for the Seagrave livery was still new to him; nor, during his brief service, had he fully digested the significance of the policy which so rigidly guarded these little children lest rumour from without apprise them of their financial future and the contaminating realisation undermine their simplicity.

As he stood, undecided, Geraldine suddenly jerked his hand from the bronze knob and Scott flung open the door.

"Come on! Quick!" he cried; and the next moment four small pairs of feet were flying through the hall, echoing lightly across the terrace, then skimming the lawn to the sheltering shrubbery beyond.

"The thing to do," panted Scott, "is to keep out of sight." He seized his guests by the arms and drew them behind the rhododendrons. "Now," he said, "what's your name? You, I mean!"

"Duane Mallett," replied the boy, breathless. "That's my sister, Naïda. Let's wait a moment before we begin to fight; Naïda and I had to run like fury to get away from our nurse."

Naïda was examining Geraldine with an interest almost respectful.

"I wish they'd let me dress like a boy," she said. "It's fun, isn't it?"

"Yes. They don't let me do it; I just did it," replied Geraldine. "I'll get you a suit of Scott's clothes, if you like. I can get the boxing-gloves at the same time. Shall I, Scott?"

"Go ahead," said Scott; "we can pretend there are four boys here." And, to Duane, as Geraldine sped cautiously away on her errand: "That's a thing I never did before."

"What thing?"

"Play with three boys all by myself. Kathleen—who is Mrs. Severn, our guardian—is always with us when we are permitted to speak to other boys and girls."

"That's babyish," remarked Duane in frank disgust. "You are a mollycoddle."

The deep red of mortification spread over Scott's face; he looked shyly at Naïda, doubly distressed that a girl should hear the degrading term applied to him. The small girl returned his gaze without a particle of expression in her face.

"Mollycoddles," continued Duane cruelly, "do the sort of things you do. You're one."

"I—don't want to be one," stammered Scott. "How can I help it?"

Duane ignored the appeal. "Playing with three boys isn't anything," he said. "I play with forty every day."

"W-where?" asked Scott, overwhelmed.

"In school, of course—at recess—and before nine, and after one. We have fine times. School's all right. Don't you even go to school?"

Scott shook his head, too ashamed to speak. Naïda, with a flirt of her kilted skirts, had abruptly turned her back on him; yet he was miserably certain she was listening to her brother's merciless catechism.

"I suppose you don't even know how to play hockey," commented Duane contemptuously.

There was no answer.

"What do you do? Play with dolls? Oh, what a molly!"

Scott raised his head; he had grown quite white. Naïda, turning, saw the look on the boy's face.

"Duane doesn't mean that," she said; "he's only teasing."

Geraldine came hurrying back with the boxing-gloves and a suit of Scott's very best clothes, halting when she perceived the situation, for Scott had walked up to Duane, and the boys stood glaring at one another, hands doubling up into fists.

"You think I'm a molly?" asked Scott in a curiously still voice.

"Yes, I do."

"Oh, Scott!" cried Geraldine, pushing in between them, "you'll have to hammer him well for that——"

Naïda turned and shoved her brother aside:

"I don't want you to fight him," she said. "I like him."

"Oh, but they must fight, you know," explained Geraldine earnestly. "If we didn't fight, we'd really be what you call us. Put on Scott's clothes, Naïda, and while our brothers are fighting, you and I will wrestle to prove that I'm not a mollycoddle——"

"I don't want to," said Naïda tremulously. "I like you, too——"

"Well, you're one if you don't!" retorted Geraldine. "You can like anybody and have fun fighting them, too."

"Put on those clothes, Naïda," said Duane sternly. "Are you going to take a dare?"

So she retired very unwillingly into the hedge to costume herself while the two boys invested their fists with the soft chamois gloves of combat.

"We won't bother to shake hands," observed Scott. "Are you ready?"

"Yes, you will, too," insisted Geraldine; "shake hands before you begin to fight!"

"I won't," retorted Scott sullenly; "shake hands with anybody who calls me—what he did."

"Very well then; if you don't, I'll put on those gloves and fight you myself."

Duane's eyes flew wide open and he gazed upon Geraldine with newly mixed emotions. She walked over to her brother and said:

"Remember what Howker told us that father used to say—that squabbling is disgraceful but a good fight is all right. Duane called you a silly name. Instead of disputing about it and calling each other names, you ought to settle it with a fight and be friends afterward… . Isn't that so, Duane?"

Duane seemed doubtful.

"Isn't it so?" she repeated fiercely, stepping so swiftly in front of him that he jumped back.

"Yes, I guess so," he admitted; and the sudden smile which Geraldine flashed on him completed his subjection.

Naïda, in her boy's clothes, came out, her hands in her pockets, strutting a little and occasionally bending far over to catch a view of herself as best she might.

"All ready!" cried Geraldine; "begin! Look out, Naïda; I'm going to throw you."

Behind her the two boys touched gloves, then Scott rushed his man.

At the same moment Geraldine seized Naïda.

"We are not to pull hair," she said; "remember! Now, dear, look out for yourself!"

Of that classic tournament between the clans of Mallett and Seagrave the chronicles are lacking. Doubtless their ancestors before them joined joyously in battle, confident that all details of their prowess would be carefully recorded by the family minstrel.

But the battle of that Saturday noon hour was witnessed only by the sparrows, who were too busy lugging bits of straw and twine to half-completed nests in the cornices of the House of Seagrave, to pay much attention to the combat of the Seagrave children, who had gone quite mad with the happiness of companionship and were expressing it with all their might.

Naïda's dark curls mingled with the grass several times before Geraldine comprehended that her new companion was absurdly at her mercy; and then she seized her with all the desperation of first possession and kissed her hard.

"It's ended," breathed Geraldine tremulously, "and nobody gained the victory and—you will love me, won't you?"

"I don't know—I'm all dirt." She looked at Geraldine, bewildered by the passion of the lonely child's caresses. "Yes—I do love you, Geraldine. Oh, look at those boys! How perfectly disgraceful! They must stop—make them stop, Geraldine!"

Hair on end, grass-stained, dishevelled, and unspeakably dirty, the boys were now sparring for breath. Grime and perspiration streaked their countenances. Duane Mallett wore a humorously tinted eye and a prehensile upper lip; Scott's nose had again yielded to the coy persuasion of a left-handed jab and the proud blood of the Seagraves once more offended high heaven on that April day.

Geraldine, one arm imprisoning Naïda's waist, walked coolly in between them:

"Don't let's fight any more. The thing to do is to get Mrs. Bramton to give you enough for four to eat and bring it back here. Scott, please shake hands with Duane."

"I wasn't licked," muttered Scott.

"Neither was I," said Duane.

"Nobody was licked by anybody," announced Geraldine. "Do get something to eat, Scott; Naïda and I are starving!"

After some hesitation the boys touched gloves respectfully, and Scott shook off his mitts, and started for the kitchen.

And there, to his horror and surprise, he was confronted by Mrs. Severn, black hat, crape veil, and gloves still on, evidently that instant arrived from those occult and, as the children supposed, distant bournes of Staten Island, where the supreme mystery of all had been at work.

"Oh, Scott!" she exclaimed tremulously, "what on earth has happened? What is all this that Mrs. Farren and Howker have been telling me?"

The boy stood petrified. Then there surged over him the memory of his brief happiness in these new companions—a happiness now to be snatched away ere scarcely tasted. Into the child's dirty, disfigured face came a hunted expression; he looked about for an avenue of escape, and Kathleen Severn caught him at the same instant and drew him to her.

"What is it, Scott? Tell me, darling!"

"Nothing… . Yes, there is something. I opened the front door and let a strange boy and girl in to play with us, and I've just been fighting with him, and we were having such good times—I—" his voice broke—"I can't bear to have them go—so soon——"

Kathleen looked at him for a moment, speechless with consternation. Then:

"Where are they, Scott?"

"In the—the hedge."

"Out there?"

"Yes."

"Who are they?"

"Their names are Duane Mallett and Naïda Mallett. We got them to run away from their nurse. Duane's such a bully fellow." A sob choked him.

"Come with me at once," said Kathleen.

Behind the rhododendrons smiling peace was extending its pinions; Duane had produced a pocketful of jack-stones, and the three children were now seated on the grass, Naïda manipulating the jacks with soiled but deft fingers.

Duane was saying to Geraldine:

"It's funny that you didn't know you were rich. Everybody says so, and all the nurses in the Park talk about it every time you and Scott walk past."

"If I'm rich," said Geraldine, "why don't I have more money?"

"Don't they let you have as much as you want?"

"No—only twenty-five cents every month… . It's my turn, Naïda! Oh, bother! I missed. Go on, Duane——"

And, glancing up, her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth as Kathleen Severn, in her mourning veil and gown, came straight up to where they sat.

"Geraldine, dear, the grass is too damp to sit on," said Mrs. Severn quietly. She turned to the youthful guests, who had hastily risen.

"You are Naïda Mallett, it seems; and you are Duane? Please come in now and wash and dress properly, because I am going to telephone to your mother and ask her if you may remain to luncheon and play in the nursery afterward."

Dazed, the children silently followed her; one of her arms lay loosely about the shoulders of her own charges; one encircled Naïda's neck. Duane walked cautiously beside his sister.

In the house the nurses took charge; Geraldine, turning on the stairs, looked back at Kathleen Severn.

"Are you really going to let them stay?"

"Yes, I am, darling."

"And—and may we play together all alone in the nursery?"

"I think so… . I think so, dear."

She ran back down the stairs and impetuously flung herself into Kathleen's arms; then danced away to join the others in the blessed regions above.

Mrs. Severn moved slowly to the telephone, and first called up and reassured Mrs. Mallett, who, however, knew nothing about the affair, as the nurse was still scouring the Park for her charges.

Then Mrs. Severn called up the Half Moon Trust Company and presently was put into communication with Colonel Mallett, the president. To him she told the entire story, and added:

"It was inevitable that the gossip of servants should enlighten the children sooner or later. The irony of it all is that this gossip filtered in here through your son, Duane. That is how the case stands, Colonel Mallett; and I have used my judgment and permitted the children this large liberty which they have long needed, believe me, long, long needed. I hope that your trust officer, Mr. Tappan, will approve."

"Good Lord!" said Colonel Mallett over the wire. "Tappan won't stand for it! You know that he won't, Mrs. Severn. I suppose, if he consults us, we can call a directors' meeting and consider this new phase of the case."

"You ought to; the time is already here when the children should no longer suffer such utter isolation. They must make acquaintances, they must have friends, they should go to parties like other children—they ought to be given outside schooling sooner or later. All of which questions must be taken up by your directors as soon as possible, because my children are fast getting out of hand—fast getting away from me; and before I know it I shall have a young man and a young girl to account for—and to account to, colonel——"

"I'll sift out the whole matter with Mr. Tappan; I'll speak to Mr. Grandcourt and Mr. Beekman to-night. Until you hear from us, no more visitors for the children. By the way, is that matter—the one we talked over last month—definitely settled?"

"Yes. I can't help being worried by the inclination she displays. It frightens me in such a child."

"Scott doesn't show it?"

"No. He hates anything like that."

"Do the servants thoroughly understand your orders?"

"I'm a little troubled. I have given orders that no more brandied peaches are to be made or kept in the house. The child was perfectly truthful about it. She admitted filling her cologne bottle with the syrup and sipping it after she was supposed to be asleep."

"Have you found out about the sherry she stole from the kitchen?"

"Yes. She told me that for weeks she had kept it hidden and soaked a lump of sugar in it every night… . She is absolutely truthful, colonel. I've tried to make her understand the danger."

"All right. Good-bye." Kathleen Severn hung up the receiver with a deep indrawn breath.

From the nursery above came a joyous clamour and trampling and shouting.

Suddenly she covered her face with her black-gloved hands.

Chapter 2 IN TRUST

The enfranchisement of the Seagrave twins proceeded too slowly to satisfy their increasing desire for personal liberty and their fast-growing impatience of restraint.

Occasionally, a few carefully selected and assorted children were permitted to visit them in relays, and play in the nursery for limited periods without the personal supervision of Kathleen or the nurses; but no serious innovation was attempted, no radical step taken without authority from old Remsen Tappan, the trust officer of the great Half Moon Trust Company.

There could be no arguing with Mr. Tappan.

Shortly before Anthony Seagrave died he had written to his old friend Tappan:

"If I live, I shall see to it that my grandchildren know nothing of the fortune awaiting them until they become of age—which will be after I am ended. Meanwhile, plain food and clothing, wholesome home seclusion from the promiscuity of modern child life, and an exhaustive education in every grace, fashion, and accomplishment of body and intellect is the training I propose for the development in them of the only thing in the world worth cultivating—unterrified individualism.

"The ignorance which characterises the conduct of modern institutes of education reduces us all to one mindless level, reproducing ad nauseam what is known as 'average citizens.' This nation is already crawling with them; art, religion, letters, government, business, human ideals remain embryonic because the 'average citizen' can conceive nothing higher, can comprehend nothing loftier even when the few who have escaped the deadly levelling grind of modern methods of education attempt to teach the masses to think for themselves.

"That is bad enough in itself—but add to cut-and-dried pedagogy the outrageous liberty which modern pupils are permitted in school and college, and add to that the unheard-of luxury in which they live—and the result is stupidity and utter ruin.

"My babies must have discipline, system, frugality, and leisure for individual development drilled into them. I do not wish them to be ignorant of one single modern grace and accomplishment; mind and body must be trained together like a pair of Morgan colts.

"But I will not have them victims of pedagogy; I will not have them masters of their time and money until they are of age; I will not permit them to choose companions or pursuits for their leisure until they are fitted to do so.

"If there is in them, latent, any propensity toward viciousness—any unawakened desire for that which has been my failing—hard work from dawn till dark is the antidote. An exhausted child is beyond temptation.

"If I pass forward, Tappan, before you—and it is likely because I am twenty years older and I have lived unwisely—I shall arrange matters in such shape that you can carry out something of what I have tried to begin, far better than I, old friend; for I am strong in theory and very weak in practice; they are such dear little things! And when they cry to be taken up—and a modern trained nurse says 'No! let them cry!' good God! Remsen, I sometimes sneak into their thoroughly modern and scientifically arranged nursery, which resembles an operating room in a brand-new hospital, and I take up my babies and rock them in my arms, terrified lest that modern and highly trained nurse discover my infraction of sanitary rule and precept.

"I don't know; babies were born, and survived cradles and mothers' arms and kisses long before sterilised milk and bacilli were invented.

"You see I am weak in more ways than one. But I do mean to give them every chance. It isn't that these old arms ache for them, that this rather tired heart weakens when they cry for God knows what, and modern science says let them cry!—it is that, deep in me, Tappan, a heathenish idea persists that what they need more than hygienics and scientific discipline is some of that old-fashioned love—love which rocks them when it is not good for them—love which overfeeds them sometimes so that they yell with old-fashioned colic—love which ventures a bacilli-laden kiss. Friend, friend—I am very unfit! It will be well for them when I move on. Only try to love them, Tappan. And if you ever doubt, kill them with indulgence, rather than with hygiene!"

He died of pneumonia a few weeks later. He had no chance. Remsen Tappan picked up the torch from the fallen hand and, blowing it into a brisk blaze, shuffled forward to light a path through life for the highly sterilised twins.

So the Half Moon Trust became father and mother to the Seagrave children; and Mr. Tappan as dry nurse prescribed the brand of intellectual pap for them and decided in what manner it should be administered.

Now home tuition and the "culture of the indiwidool" was a personal hobby of Mr. Tappan, and promiscuous schools his abomination. Had not his own son, Peter Stuyvesant Tappan, been reared upon unsteady legs to magnificent physical and intellectual manhood under this theory?

So there was to be no outside education for the youthful Seagraves; from the nursery schoolroom no chance of escape remained. As they grew older they became wild to go to school; stories of schoolrooms and playgrounds and studies and teachers and jolly fellowship and vacations, brought to them from outside by happier children, almost crazed them with the longing for it.

It was hard for them when their little friends the Malletts were sent abroad to school; Naïda, now aged twelve, to a convent, and Duane, who was now fifteen, three years older than the Seagrave twins, accompanied his mother and a tutor, later to enter some school of art in Paris and develop whatever was in him. For like all parents, Duane's had been terribly excited over his infantile efforts at picture-making—one of the commonest and earliest developed of talents, but which never fails to amaze and delight less gifted parents and which continues to overstock the world with mediocre artists.

So it was arranged that Colonel Mallett should spend every summer abroad with his wife to watch the incubation of Duane's Titianesque genius and Naïda's unbelievable talent for music; and when the children came to bid good-bye to the Seagrave twins, they seized each other with frantic embraces, vowing lifelong fidelity. Alas! it is those who depart who forget first; and at the end of a year, Geraldine's and Scott's letters remained unanswered.

At the age of thirteen, after an extraordinary meeting of the directors of the Half Moon Trust Company, it was formally decided that a series of special tutors should now be engaged to carry on to the bitter end the Tappan-Seagrave system of home culture; and the road to college was definitely closed.

"I want my views understood," said Mr. Tappan, addressing the board of solemn-visaged directors assembled in session to determine upon the fate of two motherless little children. "Indiwidoolism is nurtured in excloosion; the elimination of the extraneous is necessary for the dewelopment of indiwidoolism. I regard the human indiwidool as sacred. Like a pearl"—he pronounced it "poil"—"it can grow in beauty and symmetry and purity and polish only when nourished in seclusion. Indiwidoolism is a poil without price; and the natal mansion, gentlemen—if I may be permitted the simulcritude—is its oyster.

"My old friend, Anthony Seagrave, shared with me this unalterable conwiction. I remember in the autumn of 1859——"

The directors settled themselves in their wadded arm-chairs; several yawned; some folded their hands over their ample stomachs. The June atmosphere was pleasantly conducive to the sort of after-luncheon introspection which is easily soothed by monotones of the human voice.

And while Mr. Tappan droned on and on, some of the directors watched him with one eye half open, thinking of other things, and some listened, both eyes half closed, thinking of nothing at all.

Many considered Mr. Tappan a very terrible old man, though why terrible, unless the most rigid honesty and bigoted devotion to duty terrifies, nobody seemed to know.

Long Island Dutch—with all that it implies—was the dull stock he rooted in. Born a poor farmer's son, with a savage passion for learning, he almost destroyed his eyesight in lonely study under the flicker of tallow dips. All that had ever come to him of knowledge came in these solitary vigils. Miry and sweating from the plough he mastered the classics, law, chemistry, engineering; and finally emerging heavily from the reek of Long Island fertiliser, struck with a heavy surety at Fortune and brought her to her knees amidst a shower of gold. And all alone he gathered it in.

On Coenties Slip his warehouse still bore the legend: "R. Tappan: Iron." All that he had ever done he had done alone. He knew of no other way; believed in no other way.

Plain living, plainer clothing, tireless thinking undisturbed—that had been his childhood; and it had suited him.

Never but once had he made any concession to custom and nature, and that was only when, desiring an heir, he was obliged to enter into human partnership to realise the wish.

His son was what his father had made him under the iron cult of solitary development; and now, the father, loyal in his own way to the memory of his old friend Anthony Seagrave, meant to do his full duty toward the orphaned grandchildren.

So it came to pass that tutors and specialists replaced Kathleen in the schoolroom; and these ministered to the twin "poils," who were now fretting through their thirteenth year, mad with desire for boarding-school.

Four languages besides their own were adroitly stuffed into them; nor were letters, arts, and sciences neglected, nor the mundane and social patter, accomplishments, and refinements, including poise, pose, and deportment.

Specialists continued to guide them indoors and out; they rode every morning at eight with a specialist; they drove in the Park between four and five with the most noted of four-in-hand specialists; fencing, sparring, wrestling, swimming, gymnastics, were all supervised by specialists in those several very important and scientific arts; and specialists also taught them hygiene: how to walk, sit, breathe; how to masticate; how to relax after the manner of the domestic cat.

They had memory lessons; lessons in personal physiology, and in first aid to themselves.

Specialists cared for their teeth, their eyes, their hair, their skin, their hands and feet.

Everything that was taught them, done for them, indirectly educated them in the science of self-consideration and deepened an unavoidably natural belief in their own overwhelming importance. They had not been born so.

But in the house of Seagrave everything revolved around and centred in them; everything began for them and ended for them alone. They had no chance.

True, they were also instructed in theology and religion; they became well grounded in the elements of both,—laws, by-laws, theory, legends, proverbs, truisms, and even a few abstract truths. But there was no meaning in either to these little prisoners of self. Seclusion is an enemy to youth; solitude its destruction.

When the twins were fifteen they went to their first party. A week of superficial self-restraint and inward delirium was their preparation, a brief hour of passive bewilderment the realisation. Dazed by the sight and touch and clamor of the throng, they moved and spoke as in a vision. The presence of their own kind in such numbers confused them; overwhelmed, they found no voices to answer the call of happiness. Their capacity to respond was too limited.

As in a dream they were removed earlier than anybody else—taken away by a footman and a maid with decorous pomp and circumstance, carefully muffled in motor robes, and embedded in a limousine.

The daily papers, with that lofty purpose which always characterises them, recorded next morning the important fact that the famous Seagrave twins had appeared at their first party.

 

Between the ages of fifteen and sixteen the twins might have entered Harvard, for the entrance examinations were tried on both children, and both passed brilliantly.

For a year or two they found a substitute for happiness in pretending that they were really at college; they simulated, day by day, the life that they supposed was led there; they became devoted to their new game. Excited through tales told by tutor and friend, they developed a passionate loyalty for their college and class; they were solemnly elected to coveted societies, they witnessed Harvard victories, they strove fiercely for honours; their ideals were lofty, their courage clean and high.

So completely absorbed in the pretence did they become that their own tutors ventured to suggest to Mr. Tappan that such fiercely realistic mimicry deserved to be rewarded. Unfortunately, the children heard of this; but the Trust Officer's short answer killed their interest in playing at happiness, and their junior year began listlessly and continued without ambition. There was no heart in the pretence. Their interest had died. They studied mechanically because they were obliged to; they no longer cared.

That winter they went to a few more parties—not many. However, they were gingerly permitted to witness their first play, and later, the same year, were taken to "Lohengrin" at the opera.

During the play, which was a highly moral one, they sat watching, listening, wide-eyed as children.

At the opera Geraldine's impetuous soul soared straight up to paradise with the first heavenly strains, and remained there far above the rigid, breathless little body, bolt upright in its golden sarcophagus of the grand tier.

Her physical consciousness really seemed to have fled. Until the end she sat unaware of the throngs, of Scott and Kathleen whispering behind her, of several tall, broad-shouldered, shy young fellows who came into their box between the acts and tried to discuss anything at all with her, only to find her blind, deaf, and dumb.

These were the only memories of her first opera—confused, chaotic brilliancy, paradise revealed: and long, long afterward, the carriage flying up Fifth Avenue through darkness all gray with whirling snow.

 

Their eighteenth year dragged, beginning in physical and intellectual indifference, but promised stormily as they became more accustomed to glimpses of an outside world—a world teeming with restless young people in unbelievable quantities.

Scott had begun to develop two traits: laziness and a tendency to sullen, unspoken wrath. He took more liberty than was officially granted him—more than Geraldine dared take—and came into collision with Kathleen more often now. He boldly overstayed his leave in visiting his few boy friends for an afternoon; he returned home alone on foot after dusk, telling the chauffeur to go to the devil. Again and again he remained out to dinner without permission, and, finally, one afternoon quietly and stealthily cut his studies, slipped out of the house, and reappeared about dinner-time, excited, inclined to be boisterously defiant, admitting that he had borrowed enough money from a friend to go to a matinée with some other boys, and that he would do it again if he chose.

Also, to Kathleen's horror, he swore deliberately at table when Mr. Tappan's name was mentioned; and Geraldine looked up with startled brown eyes, divining in her brother something new—something that unconsciously they both had long, long waited for—the revolt of youth ere youth had been crushed for ever from the body which encased it.

"Damn him," repeated Scott, a little frightened at his own words and attitude; "I've had enough of this baby business; I'm eighteen and I want two things: some friends to go about with freely, and some money to do what other boys do. And you can tell Mr. Tappan, for all I care."

"What would you buy with money that is not already provided for, Scott?" asked Kathleen, gently ignoring his excited profanity.

"I don't know; there is no pleasure in using things which that fool of a Trust Company votes to let you have. Anyway, what I want is liberty and money."

"What would you do with what you call liberty, dear?"

"Do? I'd—I'd—well, I'd go shooting if I wanted to. I'd buy a gun and go off somewhere after ducks."

"But your father's old club on the Chesapeake is open to you. Shall I ask Mr. Tappan?"

"Oh, yes: I know," he sneered, "and Mr. Tappan would send some chump of a tutor there to teach me. I don't want to be taught how to hit ducks. I want to find out for myself. I don't care for that sort of thing," he repeated savagely; "I just ache to go off somewhere with a boy of my own age where there's no club and no preserve and no tutor; and where I can knock about and get whatever there is to get without anybody's help."

Geraldine said: "You have more liberty now than I have, Scott. What are you howling for?"

"The only real liberty I have I take! Anyway, you have enough for a girl of your age. And you'd better shut up."

"I won't shut up," she retorted irritably. "I want liberty as much as you do. If I had any, I'd go to every play and opera in New York. And I'd go about with my friends and I'd have gowns fitted, and I'd have tea at Sherry's, and I'd shop and go to matinees and to the Exchange, and I'd be elected a member of the Commonwealth Club and play basket-ball there, and swim, and lunch and—and then have another fitting——"

"Is that what you'd do with your liberty?" he sneered. "Well, I don't wonder old Tappan doesn't give you any money."

"I do need money and decent gowns. I'm sick of the frumpy prunes-and-prisms frocks that Kathleen makes me wear——"

Kathleen's troubled laugh interrupted her:

"Dearest, I do the best I can on the allowance made you by Mr. Tappan. His ideas on modern feminine apparel are perhaps not yours or mine."

"I should say not!" returned Geraldine angrily. "There isn't a girl of my age who dresses as horridly as I do. I tell you, Mr. Tappan has got to let me have money enough to dress decently. If he doesn't, I—I'll begin to give him as much trouble as Scott does—more, too!"

She set her teeth and stared at her glass of water.

"What about my coming-out gown?" she asked.

"I have written him about your début," said Kathleen soothingly.

"Oh! What did the old beast say?"

"He writes," began Kathleen pleasantly, "that he considers eighteen an unsuitable age for a young girl to make her bow to New York society."

"Did he say that?" exclaimed Geraldine, furious. "Very well; I shall write to Colonel Mallett and tell him I simply will not endure it any longer. I've had enough education; I'm suffocated with it! Besides, I dislike it. I want a dinner-gown and a ball-gown and my hair waved and dressed on top of my head instead of bunched half way! I want to have an engagement pad—I want to have places to go to—people expecting me; I want silk stockings and pretty underclothes! Doesn't that old fool understand what a girl wants and needs?"

She half rose from her seat at the table, pushing away the fruit which a servant offered; and, laying her hands flat on the cloth, leaned forward, eyes flashing ominously.

"I'm getting tired of this," she said. "If it goes on, I'll probably run away."

"So will I," said Scott, "but I've good reasons. They haven't done anything to you. You're making a terrible row about nothing."

"Yes, they have! They've suppressed me, stifled me, bottled me up, tinkered at me, overgroomed me, dressed me ridiculously, and stuffed my mind. And I'm starved all the time! O Kathleen, I'm hungry! hungry! Can't you understand?

"They've made me into something I was not. I've never yet had a chance to be myself. Why couldn't they let me be it? I know—I know that when at last they set me free because they have to—I—I'll act like a fool; I'll not know what to do with my liberty—I'll not know how to use it—how to understand or be understood… . Tell Mr. Tappan that! Tell him that it is all silly and wrong! Tell him that a young girl never forgets when other girls laugh at her because she never had any money, and dresses like a frump, and wears her hair like a baby!… And if he doesn't listen to us, some day Scott and I will show him and the others how we feel about it! I can make as much trouble as Scott can; I'll do it, too——"

"Geraldine!"

"Very well. I'm boiling inside when I think of—some things. The injustice of a lot of hateful, snuffy old men deciding on what sort of underclothes a young girl shall wear!… And I will make my début! I will! I will!"

"Dearest——"

"Yes, I will! I'll write to them and complain of Mr. Tappan's stingy, unjust treatment of us both——"

"Let me do the writing, dear," said Kathleen quietly. And she rose from the table and left the dining-room, both arms around the necks of the Seagrave twins, drawing them close to her sides—closer when her sidelong glance caught the sullen bitterness on the darkening features of the boy, and when on the girl's fair face she saw the flushed, wide-eyed, questioning stare.

When the young, seeking reasons, gaze questioningly at nothing, it is well to divine and find the truthful answer, lest their other selves, evoked, stir in darkness, counselling folly.

The answer to such questions Kathleen knew; who should know better than she? But it was not for her to reply. All she could do was to summon out of the vasty deep the powers that ruled her wards and herself; and these, convoked in solemn assembly because of conflict with their Trust Officer, might decide in becoming gravity such questions as what shall be the proper quality and cost of a young girl's corsets; and whether or not real lace and silk are necessary for attire more intimate still.

 

During the next two years the steadily increasing friction between Remsen Tappan and his wards began seriously to disturb the directors of the Half Moon Trust. That worthy old line company viewed with uneasiness the revolutionary tendencies of the Seagrave twins as expressed in periodical and passionate letters to Colonel Mallett. The increasing frequency of these appeals for justice and for intervention fore-shadowed the desirability of a conference. Besides, there was a graver matter to consider, which implicated Scott.

When Kathleen wrote, suggesting a down-town conference to decide delicate questions concerning Geraldine's undergarments and Scott's new gun, Colonel Mallett found it more convenient to appoint the Seagrave house as rendezvous.

And so it came to pass one pleasant Saturday afternoon in late October that, in twos and threes, a number of solemn old gentlemen, faultlessly attired, entered the red drawing-room of the Seagrave house and seated themselves in an impressive semicircle upon the damask chairs.

They were Colonel Stuart Mallett, president of the institution, just returned from Paris with his entire family; Calvin McDermott, Joshua Hogg, Carl Gumble, Friedrich Gumble; the two vice-presidents, James Cray and Daniel Montross; Myndert Beekman, treasurer; Augustus Varick, secretary; the Hon. John D. Ellis; Magnelius Grandcourt 2d, and Remsen Tappan, Trust Officer.

If the pillars of the house of Seagrave had been founded upon millions, the damask and rosewood chairs in the red drawing-room now groaned under the weight of millions. Power, authority, respectability, and legitimate affluence sat there majestically enthroned in the mansion of the late Anthony Seagrave, awaiting in serious tribunal the appearance of the last of that old New York family.

Mrs. Severn came in first; the directors rose as one man, urbane, sprightly, and gallant. She was exceedingly pretty; they recognised it. They could afford to.

Compositely they were a smooth, soft-stepping, soft-voiced, company. An exception or two, like Mr. Tappan, merely accented the composite impression of rosy-cheeked, neatly shaven, carefully dressed prosperity. They all were cautious of voice, moderate of speech, chary of gesture. There was always an impressive pause before a director of the Half Moon Trust answered even the most harmless question addressed to him. Some among them made it a conservative rule to swallow nothing several times before speaking at all. It was a safe habit to acquire. Aut prudens aut nullus.

Geraldine's starched skirts rustled on the stairway. When she came into the room the directors of the Half Moon Trust were slightly astonished. During the youth of the twins, the wives of several gentlemen present had called at intervals to inspect the growth of Anthony Seagrave's grandchildren, particularly those worthy and acquisitive ladies who had children themselves. The far-sighted reap rewards. Some day these baby twins would be old enough to marry. It was prudent to remember such details. A position as an old family friend might one day prove of thrifty advantage in this miserably mercenary world where dog eats dog, and dividends are sometimes passed. God knows and pities the sorrows of the rich.

Geraldine, her slim hand in Colonel Mallett's, courtesied with old-time quaintness, then her lifted eyes swept the rosy, rotund countenances before her. To each she courtesied and spoke, offering the questioning hand of amity.

The thing that seemed to surprise them was that she had grown since they had seen her. Time flies when hunting safe investments. The manners she retained, like her fashion of wearing her hair, and the cut and length of her apparel were clearly too childish to suit the tall, slender, prettily rounded figure—the mature oval of the face, the delicately firm modelling of the features.

This was no child before them; here stood adorable adolescence, a hint of the awakening in the velvet-brown eyes which were long and slightly slanting at the corners; hints, too, in the vivid lips, in the finer outline of the profile, in faint bluish shadows under the eyes, edging the curved cheeks' bloom.

They had not seen her in two years or more, and she had grown up. They had merely stepped down-town for a hasty two years' glance at the market, and, behind their backs, the child had turned into a woman.

Hitherto they had addressed her as "Geraldine" and "child," when a rare interview had been considered necessary. Now, two years later, unconsciously, it was "Miss Seagrave," and considerable embarrassment when the subject of intimate attire could no longer be avoided.

But Geraldine, unconscious of such things, broached the question with all the directness characteristic of her.

"I am sorry I was rude in my last letter," she said gravely, turning to Mr. Tappan. "Will you please forgive me?… I am glad you came. I do not think you understand that I am no longer a little girl, and that things necessary for a woman are necessary for me. I want a quarterly allowance. I need what a young woman needs. Will you give these things to me, Mr. Tappan?"

Mr. Tappan's dry lips cracked apart; he swallowed grimly several times, then his long bony fingers sought the meagre ends of his black string tie:

"In the cultiwation of the indiwidool," he began harshly, and checked himself, when Geraldine flushed to her ear tips and stamped her foot. Self-control had gone at last.

"I won't listen to that!" she said, breathless; "I've listened to it for ten years—as long as I can remember. Answer me honestly, Mr. Tappan! Can I have what other women have—silk underwear and stockings—real lace on my night dresses—and plenty of it? Can I have suitable gowns and furs, and have my hair dressed properly? I want you to answer; can I make my début this winter and have the gowns I require—and the liberty that girls of my age have?" She turned on Colonel Mallett: "The liberty that Naïda has had is all I want; the sort of things you let her have all I ask for." And appealing to Magnelius Grandcourt, who stood pursing his thick lips, puffed out like a surprised pouter pigeon: "Your daughter Catherine has more than I ask; why do you let her have what you consider bad for me? Why?"

Mr. Grandcourt swallowed several times, and spoke in an undertone to Joshua Hogg. But he did not reply to Geraldine.

Remsen Tappan turned his iron visage toward Colonel Mallett—ignoring Geraldine's questions.

"In the cultiwation of the indiwidool," he began again dauntlessly——

"Isn't there anybody to answer me?" asked Geraldine, turning from one to another.

"Concerning the cultiwation——"

"Answer me!" she flashed back. There were tears in her voice, but her eyes blazed.

"Miss Seagrave," interposed old Mr. Montross gravely, "I beg of you to remember——"

"Let him answer me first! I asked him a perfectly plain question. It—it is silly to ignore me as though I were a foolish child—as though I didn't know my mind."

"I think, Mr. Tappan, perhaps if you could give Miss Seagrave a qualified answer to her questions—make some preliminary statement—" began Mr. Cray cautiously.

"Concerning what?" snapped Tappan with a grim stare.

"Concerning my stockings and my underwear," said Geraldine fiercely. "I'm tired of dressing like a servant!"

Mr. Tappan's rugged jaw opened and shut with another snap.

"I'm opposed to any such innowation," he said.

"And—my coming out this winter? And my quarterly allowance? Answer me!"

"Time enough when you turn twenty-one, Miss Seagrave. Cultiwation of mind concerns you now, not cultiwation of raiment."

"That—that—" stammered Geraldine, "is s-su-premely s-silly." The tears reached her eyes; she brushed them away angrily.

Mallett coughed and glanced at Myndert Beekman, then past the secretary, Mr. Varick, directly at Mr. Tappan.

"If you could see your way to—ah—accede to some—a number—perhaps, in a measure, to all of Miss Seagrave's not unreasonable requests, Mr. Tappan——"

He hesitated, looked dubiously at Mr. Montross, who nodded. Mr. Cray, also, made an almost imperceptible sign of concurrence. Magnelius Grandcourt, the sixty-year enfant terrible of the company, dreaded for his impulsive outbursts—though the effect of these outbursts was always very carefully considered before-hand—stepped jauntily across the floor, and lifting Geraldine's hand to his rather purplish lips, saluted it with a flourish.

"Oh, I say, Tappan, let Miss Seagrave have what she wants!" he exclaimed with a hearty disregard of caution, which outwardly disturbed but inwardly deceived nobody except Geraldine and Mrs. Severn.

Colonel Mallett thought: "The acquisitive beast is striking attitudes on his fool of a son's account."

Mr. Tappan's small iron-gray eyes bored two holes through the inward motives of Mr. Grandcourt, and his mouth tightened till the seamed lips were merely a line.

"I think, Magnelius," said Colonel Mallett coldly, "that it is, perhaps, the sense of our committee that the time has practically arrived for some change—perhaps radical change—in the—in the—ah—the hitherto exceedingly wise regulations——"

"May I have real lace?" cried Geraldine—"Oh, I beg your pardon, Colonel Mallett, for interrupting, but I was perfectly crazy to know what you were going to say."

Other people have been crazier and endured more to learn what hope the verdict of ponderous authority might hold for them.

Colonel Mallett, a trifle ruffled at the interruption, swallowed several times and then continued without haste to rid himself of a weighty opinion concerning the début and the petticoats of the Half Moon's ward. He might have made the child happy in one word. It took him twenty minutes.

Concurring opinions were then solemnly delivered by every director in turn except Mr. Tappan, who spoke for half an hour, doggedly dissenting on every point.

But the days of the old régime were evidently numbered. He understood it. He looked across at the crackled portrait of his old friend Anthony Seagrave; the faded, painted features were obliterated in a bar of slanting sunlight.

So, concluding his dissenting opinion, and having done his duty, he sat down, drawing the skirts of his frock-coat close around his bony thighs. He had done his best; his reward was this child's hatred—which she already forgot in the confused delight of her sudden liberation.

Dazed with happiness, to one after another Geraldine courtesied and extended the narrow childlike hand of amity—even to him. Then, as though treading on invisible pink clouds, she floated out and away up-stairs, scarcely conscious of passing her brother on the stairway, who was now descending for his turn before the altar of authority.

 

When Scott returned he appeared to be unusually red in the face. Geraldine seized him ecstatically:

"Oh, Scott! I am to come out, after all—and I'm to have my quarterly, and gowns, and everything. I could have hugged Mr. Grandcourt—the dear! I was so frightened—frightened into rudeness—and then that beast of a Tappan scared me terribly. But it is all right now—and what did they promise you, poor dear?"

Scott's face still remained flushed as he stood, hands in his pockets, head slightly bent, tracing with the toe of his shoe the carpet pattern.

"You want to know what they promised me?" he asked, looking up at his sister with an unpleasant laugh. She poured a few drops of cologne onto a lump of sugar, placed it between her lips, and nodded:

"They did promise you something—didn't they?"

"Oh, certainly. They promised to make it hot for me if I ever again borrowed money on notes."

"Scott! did you do that?"

"Give my note? Certainly. I needed money—I've told old tabby Tappan so again and again. In a year I'll have all the money I need—so what's the harm if I borrow a little and promise to pay when I'm of age?"

Geraldine considered a moment: "It's curious," she reflected, "but do you know, Scott, I never thought of doing that. It never occurred to me to do it! Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because," said her brother with an embarrassed laugh, "it's not exactly a proper thing to do, I believe. Anyway, they raised a terrible row about it. Probably that's why they have at last given me a decent quarterly allowance; they think it's safer, I suppose—and they're right. The stingy old fossils."

The boyish boast, the veiled hint of revolt and reprisal vaguely disturbed Geraldine's sense of justice.

"After all," she said, "they have meant to be kind. They didn't know how, that's all. And, Scott, do let us try to be better now. I'm ashamed of my rudeness to them. And I'm going to be very, very good to Kathleen and not do one single thing to make her unhappy or even to bother Mr. Tappan… . And, oh, Scott! my silks and laces! my darling clothes! All is coming true! Do you hear? And, Scott! Naïda and Duane are back and I'm dying to see them. Duane is twenty-three, think of it!"

She seized him and spun him around.

"If you don't hug me and tell me you're fond of me, I shall go mad. Tell me you're fond of me, Scott! You do love me, don't you?"

He kissed his sister with preoccupied toleration: "Whew!" he said, "your breath reeks of cologne!

"As for me," he added, half sullenly, "I'm going to have a few things I want, now… . And do a few things, too."

But what these things were he did not specify. Nor did Geraldine have time to speculate, so occupied was she now with preparations for the wonderful winter which was to come true at last—which was already beginning to come true with exciting visits to that magic country of brilliant show-windows which, like an enchanted city by itself, sparkles from Madison Square to the Plaza between Fourth Avenue and Broadway.

 

Into this sparkling metropolitan zone she hastened with Kathleen; all day long, week after week, she flitted from shop to shop, never satisfied, always eager to see, to explore. Yet two things Kathleen noticed: Geraldine seemed perfectly happy and contented to view the glitter of vanity fair without thought of acquiring its treasures for herself; and, when reminded that she was there to buy, she appeared to be utterly ignorant of the value of money, though a childhood without it was supposed to have taught her its rarity and preciousness.

The girl's personal tastes were expensive; she could linger in ecstasy all the morning over piles of wonderful furs without envy, without even thinking of them for herself; but when Kathleen mentioned the reason of their shopping, Geraldine always indicated sables as her choice, any single piece of which would have required half her yearly allowance to pay for.

And she was for ever wishing to present things to Kathleen; silks that were chosen, model gowns that they examined together, laces, velvets, jewels, always her first thought seemed to be that Kathleen should have what they both enjoyed looking at so ardently; and many a laughing contest they had as to whether her first quarterly allowance should be spent upon herself or her friends.

On the surface it would appear that unselfishness was the key to her character. That was impossible; she had lived too long alone. Yet Geraldine was clearly not acquisitive; though, when she did buy, her careless extravagance worried Kathleen. Spendthrift—in that she cared nothing for the money value of anything—her bright, piquant, eager face was a welcome sight to the thrifty metropolitan shopkeeper at Christmas-tide. A delicate madness for giving obsessed her; she bought a pair of guns for Scott, laces and silks for Kathleen, and for the servants everything she could think of. Nobody was forgotten, not even Mr. Tappan, who awoke Christmas morning to gaze grimly upon an antique jewelled fob all dangling with pencils and seals. In the first flush of independence it gave her more pleasure to give than to acquire.

Also, for the first time in her life, she superintended the distribution of her own charities, flying in the motor with Kathleen from church to mission, eager, curious, pitiful, appalled, by turns. Sentiment overwhelmed her; it was a new kind of pleasure.

 

One night she arose shivering from her warm bed, and with ink and paper sat figuring till nearly dawn how best to distribute what fortune she might one day possess, and live an exalted life on ten dollars a week.

Kathleen found her there asleep, head buried in the scattered papers, limbs icy to the knees; and there ensued an interim of bronchitis which threatened at one time to postpone her début.

But the medical profession of Manhattan came to the rescue in battalions, and Geraldine was soon afoot, once more drifting ecstatically among the splendours of the shops, thrilling with the nearness of the day that should set her free among unnumbered hosts of unknown friends.

Who would these unknown people turn out to be? What hearts were at that very moment destined to respond in friendship to her own?

Often lying awake, nibbling her scented lump of sugar, the darkness reddening, at intervals, as embers of her bedroom fire dropped glowing to the hearth, she pictured to herself this vast, brilliant throng awaiting to welcome her as one of them. And her imagination catching fire, through closed lids she seemed to see heavenly vistas of youthful faces—a thousand arms outstretched in welcome; and she, advancing, eyes dim with happiness, giving herself to this world of youth and friendship—crossing the threshold—leaving for ever behind her the past with its loneliness and isolation.

It was of friendships she dreamed, and the blessed nearness of others, and the liberty to seek them. She promised herself she would never, never again permit herself to be alone. She had no definite plans, except that. Life henceforth must be filled with the bright shapes of comrades. Life must be only pleasure. Never again must sadness come near her. A miraculous capacity for happiness seemed to fill her breast, expanding with the fierce desire for it, until under the closed lids tears stole out, and there, in the darkness, she held out her bare arms to the world—the kind, good, generous, warm-hearted world, which was waiting, just beyond her threshold, to welcome her and love her and companion her for ever.

Chapter 3 THE THRESHOLD

She awoke tired; she had scarcely closed her eyes that night. The fresh odour of roses filled her room when her maid arrived with morning gifts from Kathleen and Scott.

She lay abed until noon. They started dressing her about three. After that the day became unreal to her.

 

Manhattan was conventionally affable to Geraldine Seagrave, also somewhat curious to see what she looked like. Fifth Avenue and the neighbouring side streets were jammed with motors and carriages on the bright January afternoon that Geraldine made her bow, and the red and silver drawing-rooms, so famous a generation ago, were packed continually.

What people saw was a big, clumsy house expensively overdecorated in the appalling taste of forty years ago, now screened by forests of palms and vast banks of flowers; and they saw a number of people popularly identified with the sort of society which newspapers delight to revere; and a few people of real distinction; and a young girl, noticeably pale, standing beside Kathleen Severn and receiving the patronage of dowagers and beaux, and the impulsive clasp of fellowship from fresh-faced young girls and nice-looking, well-mannered young fellows.

The general opinion seemed to be that Geraldine Seagrave possessed all the beauty which rumour had attributed to her as her right by inheritance, but the animation of her clever mother was lacking. Also, some said that her manners still smacked of the nursery; and that, unless it had been temporarily frightened out of her, she had little personality and less charm.

Nothing, as a matter of fact, had been frightened out of her; for weeks she had lived in imagination so vividly through that day that when the day really arrived it found her physically and mentally unresponsive; the endless reiteration of names sounded meaninglessly in her ears, the crowding faces blurred. She was passively satisfied to be there, and content with the touch of hands and the pleasant-voiced formalities of people pressing toward her from every side.

 

Afterward few impressions remained; she remembered the roses' perfume, and a very fat woman with a confusing similarity of contour fore and aft who blocked the lines and rattled on like a machine-gun saying dreadfully frank things about herself, her family, and everybody she mentioned.

Naïda Mallett, whom she had not seen in many years, she had known immediately, and now remembered. And Naïda had taken her white-gloved hand shyly, whispering constrained formalities, then had disappeared into the unreality of it all.

Duane, her old playmate, may have been there, but she could not remember having seen him. There were so many, many youths of the New York sort, all dressed alike, all resembling one another—many, many people flowing past her where she stood submerged in the silken ebb eddying around her.

 

These were the few hazy impressions remaining—she was recalling them now while dressing for her first dinner dance. Later, when her maid released her with a grunt of Gallic disapproval, she, distraite, glanced at her gown in the mirror, still striving to recall something definite of the day before.

"Was Duane there?" she asked Kathleen, who had just entered.

"No, dear… . Why did you happen to think of Duane Mallett?"

"Naïda came… . Duane was such a splendid little boy… . I had hoped——"

Mrs. Severn said coolly:

"Duane isn't a very splendid man. I might as well tell you now as later."

"What in the world do you mean, Kathleen?"

"I mean that people say he was rather horrid abroad. Some women don't mind that sort of thing, but I do."

"Horrid? How?"

"He went about Europe with unpleasant people. He had too much money—and that is ruinous for a boy. I hate to disillusion you, but for several years people have been gossipping about Duane Mallett's exploits abroad; and they are not savoury."

"What were they? I am old enough to know."

"I don't propose to tell you. He was notoriously wild. There were scandals. Hush! here comes Scott."

"For Heaven's sake, pinch some colour into your cheeks!" exclaimed her brother; "we're not going to a wake!"

And Kathleen said anxiously: "Your gown is perfection, dear; are you a trifle tired? You do look pale."

"Tired?" repeated Geraldine—"not in the least, dearest… . If I seem not to be excited, I really am, internally; but perhaps I haven't learned how to show it… . Don't I look well? I was so preoccupied with my gown in the mirror that I forgot to examine my face."

Mrs. Severn kissed her. "You and your gown are charming. Come, we are late, and that isn't permitted to débutantes."

 

It was Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt who was giving the first dinner and dance for Geraldine Seagrave. In the cloak-room she encountered some very animated women of the younger married set, who spoke to her amiably, particularly a Mrs. Dysart, who said she knew Duane Mallett, and who was so friendly that a bit of colour warmed Geraldine's pallid cheeks and still remained there when, a few minutes later, she saluted her heavily jewelled hostess and recognised in her the fat fore-and-aft lady of the day before.

Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt, glittering like a South American scarab, detained her with the smallest and chubbiest hands she had ever seen inside of gloves.

"My dear, you look ghastly," said her hostess. "You're probably scared to death. This is my son, Delancy, who is going to take you in, and I'm wondering about you, because Delancy doesn't get on with débutantes, but that can't be helped. If he's pig enough not to talk to you, it wouldn't surprise me—and it's just as well, too, for if he likes anybody he compromises them, but it's no use your ever liking a Grandcourt, for all the men make rotten husbands—I'm glad Rosalie Dysart threw him over for poor Jack Dysart; it saved her a divorce! I'd get one if I could; so would Magnelius. My husband was a judge once, but he resigned because he couldn't send people up for the things he was doing himself."

Mrs. Grandcourt, still gabbling away, turned to greet new arrivals, merely switching to another subject without interrupting her steady stream of outrageous talk. She was celebrated for it—and for nothing else.

Geraldine, bewildered and a little horrified, looked at her billowy, bediamonded hostess, then at young Delancy Grandcourt, who, not perceptibly abashed by his mother's left-handed compliments, lounged beside her, apparently on the verge of a yawn.

"My mother says things," he explained patiently; "nobody minds 'em… . Shall we exchange nonsense—or would you rather save yourself until dinner?"

"Save myself what?" she asked nervously.

"The nuisance of talking to me about nothing. I'm not clever."

Geraldine reddened.

"I don't usually talk about nothing."

"I do," he said. "I never have much to say."

"Is that because you don't like débutantes?" she asked coldly.

"It's because they don't care about me… . If you would talk to me, I'd really be grateful."

He flushed and stepped back awkwardly to allow room for a slim, handsome man to pass between them. The very ornamental man did not pass, however, but calmly turned toward Geraldine, and began to talk to her.

She presently discovered his name to be Dysart; and she also discovered that Mr. Dysart didn't know her name; and, for a moment after she had told him, surprise and a confused sense of resentment silenced her, because she was quite certain now that they had never been properly presented.

That negligence of conventions was not unusual in this new world she was entering, she had already noticed; and this incident was evidently another example of custom smilingly ignored. She looked up questioningly, and Dysart, instantly divining the trouble, laughed in his easy, attractive fashion—the fashion he usually affected with women.

"You seemed so fresh and cool and sweet all alone in this hot corner that I simply couldn't help coming over to hear whether your voice matched the ensemble. And it surpasses it. Are you going to be resentful?"

"I'm too ignorant to be—or to laugh about it as you do… . Is it because I look a simpleton that you come to see if I really am?"

"Are you planning to punish me, Miss Seagrave?"

"I'm afraid I don't know how."

"Fate will, anyway, unless I am placed next you at dinner," he said with his most reassuring smile, and rose gracefully.

"I'm going to fix it," he added, and, pushing his way toward his hostess, disappeared in the crush.

Later young Grandcourt reappeared from the crush to take her in. Every table seated eight, and, sure enough, as she turned involuntarily to glance at her neighbour on the right, it was Dysart's pale face, cleanly cut as a cameo, that met her gaze. He nodded back to her with unfeigned satisfaction at his own success.

"That's the way to manage," he said, "when you want a thing very much. Isn't it, Miss Seagrave?"

"You did not ask me whether I wanted it," she said.

"Don't you want me here? If you don't—" His features fell and he made a pretence of rising. His pale, beautifully sculptured face had become so fearfully serious that she coloured up quickly.

"Oh, you wouldn't do such a thing—now! to embarrass me."

"Yes, I would—I'd do anything desperate."

But she had already caught the flash of mischief, and realising that he had been taking more or less for granted in tormenting her, looked down at her plate and presently tasted what was on it.

"I know you are not offended," he murmured. "Are you?"

She knew she was not, too; but she merely shrugged. "Then why do you ask me, Mr. Dysart?"

"Because you have such pretty shoulders," he replied seriously.

"What an idiotic reply to make!"

"Why? Don't you think you have?"

"What?"

"Pretty shoulders."

"I don't think anything about my shoulders!"

"You would if there was anything the matter with them," he insisted.

Once or twice he turned his handsome dark gaze on her while she was dissecting her terrapin.

"They tip up a little—at the corners, don't they?" he inquired anxiously. "Does it hurt?"

"Tip up? What tips up?" she demanded.

"Your eyes."

She swung around toward him, confused and exasperated; but no seriousness was proof against the delighted malice in Dysart's face; and she laughed a little, and laughed again when he did. And she thought that he was, perhaps, the handsomest man she had ever seen. All débutantes did.

Young Grandcourt turned from the pretty, over-painted woman who, until that moment, had apparently held him interested when his food failed to monopolise his attention, and glanced heavily around at Geraldine.

All he saw was the back of her head and shoulders. Evidently she was not missing him. Evidently, too, she was having a very good time with Dysart.

"What are you laughing about?" he asked wistfully, leaning forward to see her face.

Geraldine glanced back across her shoulder.

"Mr. Dysart is trying to be impertinent," she replied carelessly; and returned again to the impertinent one, quite ready for more torment now that she began to understand how agreeable it was.

But Dysart's expression had changed; there was something vaguely caressing in voice and manner as he murmured:

"Do you know there is something almost divine in your face."

"What did you say?" asked Geraldine, looking up from her ice in its nest of spun sugar.

"You so strenuously reject the truthful compliments I pay you, that perhaps I'd better not repeat this one."

"Was it really more absurd flattery?"

"No, never mind… ." He leaned back in his chair, absently turning the curious, heavily chiselled ring on his little finger, but every few moments his expressive eyes reverted to her. She was eating her ice with all the frank enjoyment of a schoolgirl.

"Do you know, Miss Seagrave, that you and I are really equipped for better things than talking nonsense."

"I know that I am," she observed… . "Isn't this spun sugar delicious!"

"Yes; and so are you."

But she pretended not to hear.

He laughed, then fell silent; his dreamy gaze shifted from vacancy to her—and, casually, across the room, where it settled lightly as a butterfly on his wife, and there it poised for a moment's inexpressive examination. Scott Seagrave was talking to Rosalie; she did not notice her husband.

After that, with easy nonchalance approaching impudence, he turned to his own neglected dinner partner, Sylvia Quest, who received his tardy attentions with childish irritation. She didn't know any better. And there was now no time to patch up matters, for the signal to rise had been given and Dysart took Sylvia to the door with genuine relief. She bored him dreadfully since she had become sentimental over him. They always did.

Lounging back through the rising haze of tobacco-smoke he encountered Peter Tappan and stopped to exchange a word.

"Dancing?" he inquired, lighting his cigarette.

Tappan nodded. "You, too, of course." For Dysart was one of those types known in society as a "dancing man." He also led cotillions, and a morally blameless life as far as the more virile Commandments were concerned.

He said: "That little Seagrave girl is rather fetching."

Tappan answered indifferently:

"She resembles the general run of this year's output. She's weedy. They all ought to marry before they go about to dinners, anyway."

"Marry whom?"

"Anybody—Delancy, here, for instance. You know as well as I do that no woman is possible unless she's married," yawned Tappan. "Isn't that so, Delancy?" clapping Grandcourt on the shoulder.

Grandcourt said "yes," to be rid of him; but Dysart turned around with his usual smile of amused contempt.

"You think so, too, Delancy," he said, "because what is obvious and ready-made appeals to you. You think as you eat—heavily—and you miss a few things. That little Seagrave girl is charming. But you'd never discover it."

Grandcourt slowly removed the fat cigar from his lips, rolled it meditatively between thick forefinger and thumb:

"Do you know, Jack, that you've been saying that sort of thing to me for a number of years?"

"Yes; and it's just as true now as it ever was, old fellow."

"That may be; but did it ever occur to you that I might get tired hearing it… . And might, possibly, resent it some day?"

For a long time Dysart had been uncomfortably conscious that Grandcourt had had nearly enough of his half-sneering, half-humourous frankness. His liking for Grandcourt, even as a schoolboy, had invariably been tinged with tolerance and good-humoured contempt. Dysart had always led in everything; taken what he chose without considering Grandcourt—sometimes out of sheer perversity, he had taken what Grandcourt wanted—not really wanting it himself—as in the case of Rosalie Dene.

"What are you talking about resenting?—my monopolising your dinner partner?" asked Dysart, smiling. "Take her; amuse yourself. I don't want her."

Grandcourt inspected his cigar again. "I'm tired of that sort of thing, too," he said.

"What sort of thing?"

"Contenting myself with what you don't want."

Dysart lit a cigarette, still smiling, then shrugged and turned as though to go. Around them through the smoke rose the laughing clamour of young men gathering at the exit.

"I want to tell you something," said Grandcourt heavily. "I'm an ass to do it, but I want to tell you."

Dysart halted patiently.

"It's this," went on Grandcourt: "between you and my mother, I've never had a chance; she makes me out a fool and you have always assumed it to be true."

Dysart glanced at him with amused contempt.

A heavy flush rose to Grandcourt's cheek-bones. He said slowly:

"I want my chance. You had better let me have it when it comes."

"What chance do you mean?"

"I mean—a woman. All my life you've been at my elbow to step in. You took what you wanted—your shadow always falls between me and anybody I'm inclined to like… . It happened to-night—as usual… . And I tell you now, at last, I'm tired of it."

"What a ridiculous idea you seem to have of me," began Dysart, laughing.

"I'm afraid of you. I always was. Now—let me alone!"

"Have you ever known me, since I've been married—" He caught Grandcourt's eye, stammered, and stopped short. Then: "You certainly are absurd. Delancy! I wouldn't deliberately interfere with you or disturb a young girl's peace of mind. The trouble with you is——"

"The trouble with you is that women take to you very quickly, and you are always trying to see how far you can arouse their interest. What's the use of risking heartaches to satisfy curiosity?"

"Oh, I don't have heartaches!" said Dysart, intensely amused.

"I wasn't thinking of you. I suppose that's the reason you find it amusing… . Not that I think there's any real harm in you——"

"Thanks," laughed Dysart; "it only needed that remark to damn me utterly. Now go and dance with little Miss Seagrave, and don't worry about my trying to interfere."

Grandcourt looked sullenly at him. "I'm sorry I spoke, now," he said. "I never know enough to hold my tongue to you."

He turned bulkily on his heel and left the dining-hall. There were others, in throngs, leaving—young, eager-faced fellows, with a scattering of the usual "dancing" men on whom everybody could always count, and a few middle-aged gentlemen and women of the younger married set to give stability to what was, otherwise, a débutante's affair.

Dysart, strolling about, booked a dance or two, performed creditably, made his peace, for the sake of peace, with Sylvia Quest, whose ignorant heart had been partly awakened under his idle investigations. But this was Sylvia's second season, and she would no doubt learn several things of which she heretofore had been unaware. Just at present, however, her heart was very full, and life's outlook was indeed tragic to a young girl who believed herself wildly in love with a married man, and who employed all her unhappy wits in the task of concealing it.

A load of guilt lay upon her soul; the awful fact that she adored him frightened her terribly; that she could not keep away from him terrified her still more. But most of all she dreaded that he might guess her secret.

"I don't know why you thought I minded your not—not talking to me during dinner," she faltered. "I was having a perfectly heavenly time with Peter Tappan."

"Do you mean that?" murmured Dysart. He could not help playing his part, even when it no longer interested him. To murmur was as natural to him as to breathe.

She looked up piteously. "I would rather have talked to you," she said. "Peter Tappan is only an overgrown boy. If you had really cared to talk to me—" She checked herself, flushing deeply.

O Lord! he thought, contemplating in the girl's lifted eyes the damage he had not really expected to do. For it had, as usual, surprised him to realise, too late, how dangerous it is to say too much, and look too long, and how easy it is to awaken hearts asleep.

Dancing was to be general before the cotillion. Sylvia would have given him as many dances as he asked for; he danced once with her as a great treat, resolving never to experiment any more with anybody… . True, it might have been amusing to see how far he could have interested the little Seagrave girl—but he would renounce that; he'd keep away from everybody.

But Dysart could no more avoid making eyes at anything in petticoats than he could help the tenderness of his own smile or the caressing cadence of his voice, or the subtle, indefinite something in him which irritated men but left few women indifferent and some greatly perturbed as he strolled along on his amusing journey through the world.

He was strolling on now, having managed to leave Sylvia planted; and presently, without taking any particular trouble to find Geraldine, discovered her eventually as the centre of a promising circle of men, very young men and very old men—nothing medium and desirable as yet.

For a while, amused, Dysart watched her at her first party. Clearly she was inexperienced; she let these men have their own way and their own say; she was not handling them skilfully; yet there seemed to be a charm about this young girl that detached man after man from the passing throng and added them to her circle—which had now become a half circle, completely cornering her.

Animated, shyly confident, brilliant-eyed, and flushed with the excitement of attracting so much attention, she was beginning to lose her head a little—just a little. Dysart noticed it in her nervous laughter; in a slight exaggeration of gesture with fan and flowers; in the quick movement of her restless little head, as though it were incumbent upon her to give to every man confronting her his own particular modicum of attention—which was not like a débutante, either; and Dysart realised that she was getting on.

So he sauntered up, breaking through the circle, and reminded Geraldine of a dance she had not promised him.

She knew she had not promised, but she was quite ready to give it—had already opened her lips to assent—when a young man, passing, swung around abruptly as though to speak to her, hesitating as Geraldine's glance encountered his without recognition.

But, as he started to move on, she suddenly knew him; and at the same moment Kathleen's admonition rang in her ears. Her own voice drowned it.

"Oh, Duane!" she exclaimed, stretching out her hand across Dysart's line of advance.

"You are Geraldine Seagrave, are you not?" he asked smilingly, retaining her hand in such a manner as practically to compel her to step past Dysart toward him.

"Of course I am. You might have known me had you been amiable enough to appear at my coming out."

He laughed easily, still retaining her hand and looking down at her from his inch or two of advantage. Then he casually inspected Dysart, who, not at all pleased, returned his gaze with a careless unconcern verging on offence. Few men cared for Dysart on first inspection—or on later acquaintance; Mallett was no exception.

Geraldine said, with smiling constraint:

"It has been so very jolly to see you again." And withdrew her hand, adding: "I hope—some time——"

"Won't you let me talk to you now for a moment or two? You are not going to dismiss me with that sort of come-back—after all these years—are you?"

He seemed so serious about it that the girl coloured up.

"I—that is, Mr. Dysart was going to—to—" She turned and looked at Dysart, who remained planted where she had left him, exceedingly wroth at experiencing the sort of casual treatment he had so often meted out to others. His expression was peevish. Geraldine, confused, began hurriedly:

"I thought Mr. Dysart meant to ask me to dance."

"Meant to?" interrupted Mallett, laughing; "I mean to ask for this dance, and I do."

Once more she turned and encountered Dysart's darkening gaze, hesitated, then with a nervous, gay little gesture to him, partly promise, partly adieu, she took Mallett's arm.

It was the first glimmer of coquetry she had ever deliberately displayed; and at the same instant she became aware that something new had been suddenly awakened in her—something which stole like a glow through her veins, exciting her with its novelty.

"Do you know," she said, "that you have taken me forcibly away from an exceedingly nice man?"

"I don't care."

"Oh—but might I not at least have been consulted?"

"Didn't you want to come?" he asked, stopping short. There was something overbearing in his voice and his straight, unwavering gaze.

She didn't know how to take it, how to meet it. Voice and manner required some proper response which seemed to be beyond her experience.

She did not answer; but a slight pressure of her bare arm set him in motion again.

The phenomenon interested her; to see what control over this abrupt young man she really had she ventured a very slight retrograde arm-pressure, then a delicate touch to right, to left, and forward once more. It was most interesting; he backed up, guided right and left, and started forward or halted under perfect control. What had she been afraid of in him? She ventured to glance around, and, encountering a warmly personal interest in his gaze, instantly assumed that cold, blank, virginal mask which the majority of young girls discard at her age.

However, her long-checked growth in the arts of womanhood had already recommenced. She had been growing fast, feverishly, and was just now passing that period where the desire for masculine admiration innocently rules all else, but where the discovery of it chills and constrains.

She passed it at that moment. The next time their glances met she smiled a little. A new epoch in her life had begun.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked. "Are we not going to dance?"

"I thought we might sit out a dance or two in the conservatory—one or two——"

"One," she said decidedly. "Here are some palms. Why not sit here?"

There were a number of people about; she saw them, too, noted his hesitation, understood it.

"We'll sit here," she said, and stood smilingly regarding him while he lugged up two chairs to the most retired corner.

Slowly waving her fan, she seated herself and surveyed the room.

It is quite true that reunion after many years usually ends in constraint and indifference. If she felt slightly bored, she certainly looked it. Neither of them resembled the childish recollections or preconceived notions of the other. They found themselves inspecting one another askance, as though furtively attempting to surprise some familiar feature, some resemblance to a cherished memory.

But the changes were too radical; their eyes, looking for old comrades, encountered the unremembered eyes of strangers—for they were strangers—this tall young man, with his gray eyes, pleasantly fashioned mouth, and cleanly moulded cheeks; and this long-limbed girl, who sat, knees crossed, one long, slim foot nervously swinging above its shadow on the floor.

In spite of his youth there was in his manner, if not in his voice, something tinged with fatigue. She thought of what Kathleen had said about him; looked up, instinctively questioning him with curious, uncomprehending eyes; then her gaze wandered, became lost in smiling retrospection as she thought of Dysart, peevish; and she frankly regretted him and his dance.

Young Mallett stirred, passed a rather bony hand over his shaven upper lip, and said abruptly: "I never expected you'd grow up like this. You've turned into a different kind of girl. Once you were chubby of cheek and limb. Do you remember how you used to fight?"

"Did I?"

"Certainly. You hit me twice in the eye because I lost my temper sparring with Scott. Your hands were small but heavy in those days… . I imagine they're heavier now."

She laughed, clasped both pretty hands over her knee, and tilted back against the palm, regarding him from dark, velvety eyes.

"You were a curiously fascinating child," he said. "I remember how fast you could run, and how your hair flew—it was thick and dark, with rather sunny high lights; and you were always running—always on the go… . You were a remarkably just girl; that I remember. You were absolutely fair to everybody."

"I was a very horrid little scrub," she said, watching him over her gently waving fan, "with a dreadful temper," she added.

"Have you it now?"

"Yes. I get over it quickly. Do you find Scott very much changed?"

"Well, not as much as you. Do you find Naïda changed?"

"Not nearly as much as you."

They smiled. The slight embarrassment born of polite indifference brightened into amiable interest, tinctured by curiosity.

"Duane, have you been studying painting all these years?"

"Yes. What have you been doing all these years?"

"Nothing." A shadow fell across her face. "It has been lonely—until recently. I began to live yesterday."

"You used to tell me you were lonely," he nodded.

"I was. You and Naïda were godsends." Something of the old thrill stirred her recollection. She leaned forward, looking at him curiously; the old memory of him was already lending him something of the forgotten glamour.

"How tall you are!" she said; "how much thinner and—how very impressively grown-up you are, Duane. I didn't expect you to be entirely a man so soon—with such a—an odd—expression——"

He asked, smiling: "What kind of an expression have I, Geraldine?"

"Not a boyish one; entirely a man's eyes and mouth and voice—a little too wise, as though, deep inside, you were tired of something; no, not exactly that, but as though you had seen many things and had lived some of them——"

She checked herself, lips softly apart; and the memory of what she had heard concerning him returned to her.

Confused, she continued to laugh lightly, adding: "I believe I was afraid of you at first. Ought I to be, still? You know more than I do—you know different kinds of things: your face and voice and manner show it. I feel humble and ignorant in the presence of so distinguished a European artist."

They were laughing together now without a trace of constraint; and she was aware that his interest in her was unfeigned and unmistakably the interest of a man for a woman, that he was looking at her as other men had now begun to look at her, speaking as other men spoke, frankly interested in her as a woman, finding her agreeable to look at and talk to.

In the unawakened depths of her a conviction grew that her old playmate must be classed with other men—man in the abstract—that indefinite and interesting term, hinting of pleasures to come and possibilities unimagined.

"Did you paint pictures all the time you were abroad?" she asked.

"Not every minute. I travelled a lot, went about, was asked to shoot in England and Austria… . I had a good time."

"Didn't you work hard?"

"No. Isn't it disgraceful!"

"But you exhibited in three salons. What were your pictures?"

"I did a portrait of Lady Bylow and her ten children."

"Was it a success?"

He coloured. "They gave me a second medal."

"Oh, I am so glad!" she exclaimed warmly. "And what were your others?"

"A thing called 'The Witch.' Rather painful."

"What was it?"

"Life size. A young girl arrested in bed. Her frightened beauty is playing the deuce with the people around. I don't know why I did it—the painting of textures—her flesh, and the armour of the Puritan guard, the fur of the black cat—and—well, it was academic and I was young."

"Did they reward you?"

"No."

"What was the third picture?"

"Oh, just a girl," he said carelessly.

"Did they give you a prize for it?"

"Y-yes. Only a mention."

"Was it a portrait?"

"Yes—in a way."

"What was it? Just a girl?"

"Yes."

"Who was she?"

"Oh, just a girl——"

"Was she pretty?"

"Yes. Shall we dance this next——"

"No. Was she a model?"

"She posed——"

Geraldine, lips on the edge of her spread fan, regarded him curiously.

"That is a very romantic life, isn't it?" she murmured.

"What?"

"Yours. I don't know much about it; Kathleen took me to hear 'La Bohême'; and I found Murger's story in the library. I have also read 'Trilby.' Did you—were you—was life like that when you studied in the Latin Quarter?"

He laughed. "Not a bit. I never saw that species of life off the stage."

"Oh, wasn't there any romance?" she asked forlornly.

"Well—as much as you find in New York or anywhere."

"Is there any romance in New York?"

"There is anywhere, isn't there? If only one has the instinct to recognise it and a capacity to comprehend it."

"Of course," she murmured, "there are artists and studios and models and poverty everywhere… . I suppose that without poverty real romance is scarcely possible."

He was still laughing when he answered:

"Financial conditions make no difference. Romance is in one's self—or it is nowhere."

"Is it in—you?" she asked audaciously.

He made no pretence of restraining his mirth.

"Why, I don't know, Geraldine. Lots of people have the capacity for it. Poverty, art, a studio, a velvet jacket, and models are not essentials… . You ask if it is in me. I think it is. I think it exists in anybody who can glorify the commonplace. To make people look with astonished interest at something which has always been too familiar to arrest their attention—only your romancer can accomplish this."

"Please go on," she said as he ended. "I'm listening very hard. You are glorifying commonplaces, you know."

They both laughed; he, a little red, disconcerted, piqued, and withal charmed at her dainty thrust at himself.

"I was talking commonplaces," he admitted, "but how was I to know enough not to? Women are usually soulfully receptive when a painter opens a tin of mouldy axioms… . I didn't realise I was encountering my peer——"

"You may be encountering more than that," she said, the excitement of her success with him flushing her adorably.

"Oh, I've heard how terribly educated you and Scott are. No doubt you can floor me on anything intellectual. See here, Geraldine, it's simply wicked!—you are so soft and pretty, and nobody could suspect you of knowing such a lot and pouncing out on a fellow for trying a few predigested platitudes on you——"

"I don't know anything, Duane! How perfectly horrid of you!"

"Well, you've scared me!"

"I haven't. You're laughing at me. You know well enough that I don't know the things you know."

"What are they, in Heaven's name?"

"Things—experiences—matters that concern life—the world, men, everything!"

"You wouldn't be interesting if you knew such things," he said. She thought there was the same curious hint of indifference, something of listlessness, almost fatigue in the expression of his eyes. And again, apparently apropos of nothing, she found herself thinking of what Kathleen had said about this man.

"I don't understand you," she said, looking at him.

He smiled, and the ghost of a shadow passed from his eyes.

"I was talking at random."

"I don't think you were."

"Why not?"

She shook her head, drawing a long, quiet breath. Silent, lips resting in softly troubled curves, she thought of what Kathleen had said about this man. What had he done to disgrace himself?

A few moments later she rose with decision.

"Come," she said, unconsciously imperious.

He looked across the room and saw Dysart.

"But I haven't begun to tell you—" he began; and she interrupted smilingly:

"I know enough about you for a while; I have learned that you are a very wonderful young man and that I'm inclined to like you. You will come to see me, won't you?… No, I can't remain here another second. I want to go to Kathleen. I want you to ask her to dance, too… . Please don't urge me, Duane. I—this is my first dinner dance—yes, my very first. And I don't intend to sit in corners—I wish to dance; I desire to be happy. I want to see lots and lots of men, not just one… . You don't know all the lonely years I must make up for every minute now, or you wouldn't look at me in such a sulky, bullying way… . Besides—do you think I find you a compensation for all those delightful people out yonder?"

He glanced up and saw Dysart still watching them. Suddenly he dropped his hand over hers.

"Perhaps you may find that compensation in me some day," he said. "How do you know?"

"What a silly thing to say! Don't paw me, Duane; you hurt my hand. Look at what you've done to my fan!"

"It came between us. I'm sorry for anything that comes between us."

Both were smiling fixedly; he said nothing for a moment; their gaze endured until she flinched.

"Silly," she said, "you are trying to tyrannise over me as you did when we were children. I remember now——"

"You did the bullying then."

"Did I? Then I'll continue."

"No, you won't; it's my turn."

"I will if I care to!"

"Try it."

"Very well. Take me to Kathleen."

"Not until I have the dances I want!"

Again their eyes met in silence. Dark little lights glimmered in hers; his narrowed. The fixed smile died out.

"The dances you want!" she repeated. "How do you propose to secure them? By crushing my fingers or dragging me about by my hair? I want to tell you something, Duane: these blunt, masterful men are very amusing on the stage and in fiction, but they're not suitable to have tagging at heel——"

"I won't do any tagging at heel," he said; "don't count on it."

"I have no inclination to count on you at all," she retorted, thoroughly irritated.

"You will have it some day."

"Oh! Do you think so?"

"Yes… . I didn't mean to speak the way I did. Won't you give me a dance or two?"

"No. I had no idea how horrid you could be… . I was told you were… . Now I can believe it. Take me to Kathleen; do you hear me?"

After a step or two he said, not looking at her:

"I'm really sorry, Geraldine. I'm not a brute. Something about that fellow Dysart upset me."

"Please don't talk about it any more."

"No… . Only I am glad to see you again, and I do care for your regard."

"Then earn it," she said unevenly, as her anger subsided. "I don't know very much about men in the world, but I know enough to understand when they're offensive."

"Was I?"

"Yes… . Because you carried me away with a high hand, you thought it the easiest way to take with me on every occasion… . Duane, do you know, in some ways, we are somewhat alike? And that is why we used to fight so."

"I believe we are," he said slowly. "But—I was never able to keep away from you."

"Which makes our outlook rather stormy, doesn't it?" she said, turning to him with all of her old sweet friendly manner. "Do let us agree, Duane. Mercy on us! we ought to adore each other—unless we have forgotten the quarrelsome but adorable friendship of our childhood. I thought you were the perfection of all boys."

"I thought there was no girl to equal you, Geraldine."

She turned audaciously, not quite knowing what she was saying:

"Think so now, Duane! It will be good for us both."

"Do you mean it?"

"Not—seriously," she said… . "And, Duane, please don't be too serious with me. I am—you make me uncertain—you make me uncomfortable. I don't know just what to say to you or just how it will be taken. You mustn't be—that way—with me; you won't, will you?"

He was silent for a moment; then his face lighted up. "No," he said, laughing; "I'll open another can of platitudes… . You're a dear to forgive me."

 

Dancing had been general before the cotillion; débutantes continued to arrive in shoals from other dinners, a gay, rosy, eager throng, filling drawing-rooms, conservatory, and library with birdlike flutter and chatter, overflowing into the breakfast-room, banked up on the stairs in bright-eyed battalions.

The cotillion, led by Jack Dysart dancing alone, was one of those carefully thought out intellectual affairs which shakes New York society to its intellectual foundations.

In one figure Geraldine came whizzing into the room in a Palm Beach tricycle-chair trimmed with orchids and propelled by Peter Tappan; and from her seat amid the flowers she distributed favours—live white cockatoos, clinging, flapping, screeching on gilded wands; fans spangled with tiny electric jewels; parasols of pink silk set with incandescent lights; crystal cages containing great, pale-green Luna moths alive and fluttering; circus hoops of gilt filled with white tissue paper, through which the men jumped.

There was also a Totem-pole figure—and other things, including supper and champagne, and the semi-obscurity of conservatory and stairs; and there was the usual laughter to cover heart-aches, and the inevitable torn gowns and crushed flowers; and a number of young men talking too loud and too much in the cloak-room, and Rosalie Dysart admitting to Scott Seagrave in the conservatory that nobody really understood her; and Delancy Grandcourt edging about the outer borders of the flowery, perfumed vortex, following Geraldine and losing her a hundred times.

On one of these occasions she was captured by Duane Mallett and convoyed to the supper-room, where later she became utterly transfigured into a laughing, blushing, sparkling, delicious creature, small ears singing with her first venturesome glass of champagne.

All the world seemed laughing with her; life itself was only an endless bubble of laughter, swelling the gay, unending chorus; life was the hot breeze from scented fans stirring a thousand roses; life was the silken throng and its whirling and its feverish voices crying out to her to live!

Her childhood's playmate had come back a stranger, but already he was being transformed, through the magic of laughter, into the boy she remembered; awkwardness of readjusting her relations with him had entirely vanished; she called him dear Duane, laughed at him, chatted with him, appealed, contradicted, rebuked, tyrannised, until the young fellow was clean swept off his feet.

Then Dysart came, and for the second time the note of coquetry was struck, clearly, unmistakably, through the tension of a moment's preliminary silence; and Duane, dumb, furious, yielded her only when she took Dysart's arm with a finality that became almost insolent as she turned and looked back at her childhood's comrade, who followed, scowling at Dysart's graceful back.

Confused by his hurt and his anger, which seemed out of all logical proportion to the cause of it, he turned abruptly and collided with Grandcourt, who had edged up that far, waiting for the opportunity of which Dysart, as usual, robbed him.

Grandcourt apologised, muttering something about Mrs. Severn wishing him to find Miss Seagrave. He stood, awkwardly, looking after Geraldine and Dysart, but not offering to follow them.

"Lot of débutantes here—the whole year's output," he said vaguely. "What a noisy supper-room—eh, Mallett? I'm rather afraid champagne is responsible for some of it."

Duane started forward, halted.

"Did you say Mrs. Severn wants Miss Seagrave?"

"Y—yes… . I'd better go and tell her, hadn't I?"

He flushed heavily, but made no movement to follow Geraldine and Dysart, who had now entered the conservatory and disappeared.

For a full minute, uncomfortably silent, the two men stood side by side; then Duane said in a constrained voice:

"I'll speak to Miss Seagrave, if you'll find her brother and Mrs. Severn"; and walked slowly toward the palm-set rotunda.

When he found them—and he found them easily, for Geraldine's overexcited laughter warned and guided him—Dysart, her fan in his hands, looked up at Duane intensely annoyed, and the young girl tossed away a half-destroyed rose and glanced up, the laughter dying out from lips and eyes.

"Kathleen sent for you," said Duane drily.

"I'll come in a minute, Duane."

"In a moment," repeated Dysart insolently, and turned his back.

The colour surged into Mallett's face; he turned sharply on his heel.

"Wait!" said Geraldine; "Duane—do you hear me?"

"I'll take you back," began Dysart, but she passed in front of him and laid her hand on Mallett's arm.

"Won't you wait for me, Duane?"

And suddenly things seemed to be as they had been in their childhood, the resurgence swept them both back to the old and stormy footing again.

"Duane!"

"What?"

"I tell you to wait for me—here!" She stamped her foot.

He scowled—but waited. She turned on Dysart:

"Good-night!"—offering her hand with decision.

Dysart began: "But I had expected——"

"Good-night!"

Dysart stared, took the offered hand, hesitated, started to speak, thought better of it, made a characteristically graceful obeisance, and an excellent exit, all things considered.

Geraldine drew a deep breath, moved forward through the flower-set dimness a step or two, halted, and, as Mallett came up, passed her arm through his.

"Duane," she said, "the champagne has gone to my head."

"Nonsense!"

"It has! My cheeks are queer—the skin fits too tight. My legs don't belong to me—but they'll do."

She laughed and turned toward him; her feverish breath touched his cheek.

"My first dinner! Isn't it disgraceful? But how could I know?"

"You mustn't let it scare you."

"It doesn't. I don't care. I knew something would go wrong. I—the truth is, that I don't know how to act—how to accept my liberty. I don't know how to use it. I'm a perfect fool… . Do you think Kathleen will notice this? Isn't it terrible! She never dreamed I would touch any wine. Do I look—queer?"

"No. It isn't so, anyway—and you'll simply lean on me——"

"Oh, my knees are perfectly steady. It's only that they don't seem to belong to me. I'm—I'm excited—I've laughed too much—more than I have ever laughed in all the years of my life put together. You don't know what I mean, do you, Duane? But it's true; I've talked to-night more than I ever have in any one week… . And it's gone to my head—all this—all these people who laugh with me over nothing—follow me, tell me I am pretty, ask me for dances, favours, beg me for a word with them—as though I would need asking or urging!—as though my impulse is not to open my heart to every one of them—open my arms to them—thank them on my knees for being here—for being nice to me—all these boys who make little circles around me—so funny, so quaint in their formality——"

She pressed his arm tighter.

"Let me rattle on—let me babble, Duane. I've years of silence to make up for. Let me talk like a fool; you know I'm not one… . Oh, the happiness of this one night!—the happiness of it! I never shall have enough dancing, never enough of pleasure… . I—I'm perfectly mad over pleasure; I like men… . I suppose the champagne makes me frank about it—but I don't care—I do like men——"

"That one?" demanded Mallett, halting her on the edge of the palms which screened the conservatory doors.

"You mean Mr. Dysart? Yes—I—do like him."

"Well, he's married, and you'd better not," he snapped.

"C-can't I like him?" in piteous astonishment which set the colour flying into his face.

"Why, yes—of course—I didn't mean——"

"What did you mean? Isn't it—shouldn't he be——"

"Oh, it's all right, Geraldine. Only he's a sort of a pig to keep you away from—others——"

"Other—pigs?"

He turned sharply, seized her, and forcibly turned her toward the light. She made no effort to control her laughter, excusing it between breaths:

"I didn't mean to turn what you said into ridicule; it came out before I meant it… . Do let me laugh a little, Duane. I simply cannot care about anything serious for a while—I want to be frivolous——"

"Don't laugh so loud," he whispered.

She released his arm and sank down on a marble seat behind the flowering oleanders.

"Why are you so disagreeable?" she pouted. "I know I'm a perfect fool, and the champagne has gone to my silly head—and you'll never catch me this way again… . Don't scowl at me. Why don't you act like other men? Don't you know how?"

"Know how?" he repeated, looking down into the adorably flushed face uplifted. "Know how to do what?"

"To flirt. I don't. Everybody has tried to teach me to-night—everybody except you … Duane… . I'm ready to go home; I'll go. Only my head is whirling so—Tell me—are you glad to see me again?… Really?… And you don't mind my folly? And my tormenting you?… And my—my turning your head a little?"

"You've done that," he said, forcing a laugh.

"Have I?… I knew it… . You see, I am horridly truthful to-night. In vino veritas! … Tell me—did I, all by myself, turn that too-experienced head of yours?"

"You're doing it now," he said.

She laughed deliciously. "Now? Am I? Yes, I know I am. I've made a lot of men think hard to-night… . I didn't know I could; I never before thought of it… . And—even you, too?… You're not very serious, are you?"

"Yes, I am. I tell you, Geraldine, I'm about as much in love with you as——"

"In love!"

"Yes——"

"No!"

"Yes, I am——"

But she would not have it put so crudely.

"You dear boy," she said, "we'll both be quite sane to-morrow… . No, I don't mind your kissing my hand—I'm dreadfully tired, anyway… . We'll find Kathleen, shall we? My head doesn't buzz much."

"Geraldine," he said, deliberately encircling her waist, "you are only the same small girl I used to know, after all."

"Y-yes, I'm afraid so."

"And you're not really old enough to really care for anybody, are you?"

"Care?"

"Love."

"No, I'm not. Don't talk to me that way, Duane."

He drew her suddenly into his arms and kissed her on the cheek twice, and again on the mouth, as, crimson, breathless, she strained away from him.

"Duane!" she gasped—"why did you?" Then the throbbing of her body and crushed lips made her furious. "Why did you do that?" she cried fiercely—but her voice ended in a dry sob; she covered her head and face with bare arms; her hands tightened convulsively and clenched.

"Oh," she said, "how could you!—when I came to you—feeling—afraid of myself! I know you now. You are what they say you are."

"What do they say I am?" he stammered.

"Horrid—I don't know—wild!—whatever that implies… . I didn't care—I didn't care even to understand, because I thought you generous and nice to me—and I was so confident of you that I came with you and told you I had had some champagne which made my head swim… . And you—did this! It—it was contemptible."

He bit his lip, but said nothing.

"Why did you do it?" she demanded, dropping her arms from her face and staring at him. "Is that the sort of thing you did abroad?"

"Can't you see I'm in love with you?" he said.

"Oh! Is that love? Then keep it for your models and—and Bohemian grisettes! A decent man couldn't have done such a thing to me. I—I loathe myself for being silly and weak enough to have touched that wine, but I have more contempt for you than I have for myself. What you did was cowardly!"

Much of the colour had fled from her face; her eyes, bluish underneath the lower lids, turned wearily, helplessly in search of Kathleen.

"I knew I was unfit for liberty," she said, half to herself. "What an ending to my first pleasure!"

"For Heaven's sake, Geraldine," he broke out, "don't take an accident so tragically——"

"I want Kathleen. Do you hear?"

"Very well; I'll find her… . And, whatever you say or think, I am in love with you," he added fiercely.

His voice, his words, were meaningless; she was conscious only of the heavy pulse in throat and temple, of the desire for her room and darkness. Lights, music, the scent of dying flowers, laughter, men, all had become abhorrent. Something within her lay bruised and stunned; and, as never before, the vast and terrible phantom of her loneliness rose like a nightmare to menace her.

Later Kathleen came and took her away.

Chapter 4 THE YEAR OF DISCRETION

Her first winter resembled, more or less, the first winter of the average débutante.

Under the roof of the metropolitan social temple there was a niche into which her forefathers had fitted. Within the confines of this she expected, and was expected, to live and move and have her being, and ultimately wing upward to her God, leaving the consecrated cubby-hole reserved for her descendants.

She did what her sister débutantes did, and some things they did not do, was asked where they were asked, decorated the same tier of boxes at the opera, appeared in the same short-skirted entertainments of the Junior League, saw what they saw, was seen where they were seen, chattered, danced, and flirted with the same youths, was smitten by the popular "dancing" man, convalesced in average time, smoked her first cigarette, fell a victim to the handsome and horrid married destroyer, recovered with a shock when, as usual, he overdid it, played at being engaged, was kissed once or twice, adored Sembrich, listened ignorantly but with intuitive shudders to her first scandals, sent flowers to Ethel Barrymore, kept Lent with the pure fervour of a conscience troubled and untainted, drove four in the coaching parade, and lunched afterward at the Commonwealth Club, where her name was subsequently put up for election.

Spectacular charities lured her from the Plaza to Sherry's, from Sherry's to the St. Regis; church work beguiled her; women's suffrage, led daintily in a series of circles by Fashion and Wealth, enlisted her passive patronage. She even tried the slums, but the perfume was too much for her.

All the small talk and epigrams of the various petty impinging circles under the social dome passed into and out of her small ears—gossip, epigrams, aphorisms, rumours, apropos surmises, asides, and off-stage observations, subtle with double entendre, harmless and otherwise.

She met people of fashion, of wealth, and both; and now and then encountered one or two of those men and women of real distinction whose names and peregrinations are seldom chronicled in the papers.

She heard the great artists of the two operas sing in private; was regaled with information concerning the remarkable decency or indecency of their private careers. She saw fashionable plays which instructed the public about squalor, murder, and men's mistresses, which dissected very skilfully and artistically the ethics of moral degradation. And being as healthy and curious as the average girl, she found in the theatres material with which to inform herself about certain occult mysteries concerning which, heretofore, she had been left mercifully in doubt.

In spite of Kathleen, it was inevitable that she should acquire from the fashionable in literature, music, and the drama, that sorry and unnecessary wisdom which ages souls.

And if what she saw or heard ever puzzled her, there was always somebody, young or old, to enlighten her innocent perplexity; and with each illumination she shrank a little less aloof from this shabby wisdom gilded with "art," which she could not choose but accept as fact, but the depravity of which she never was entirely able to comprehend.

In March the Seagrave twins arrived at the alleged age of discretion. On their twenty-first birthday the Half Moon Trust Company went solemnly into court and rendered an accounting of its stewardship; the yearly reports which it had made during the term of its trusteeship were brought forward, examined by the court, and the great Half Moon Trust Company was given an honourable discharge. It had done its duty. The twins were masters of their financial and moral fate.

It was about that moribund period of the social solstice when the fag end of the season had fizzled out like a wet firecracker in the April rains; and Geraldine and Kathleen were tired, mentally and bodily. And Scott was buying polo ponies from a British friend and shotguns from a needy gentleman from Long Island.

It had been rather trying work to rid Geraldine of the aspirants for her fortune; during the winter she was proposed to under almost every conceivable condition and circumstance. Kathleen had been bored and badgered and bothered and importuned to the verge of exhaustion; Scott was used, shamelessly, without his suspecting it, and he generally had in tow a string of financially spavined aspirants who linked arms with him from club to club, from theatre to opera, from grille to grille, until he was pleasantly bewildered at his own popularity.

Geraldine was surprised, confused, shamed, irritated in turn with every new importunity. But she remained sensible enough to be quite frank and truthful with Kathleen, except for an exciting secret engagement with Bunbury Gray which lasted for two weeks. And Kathleen was given strength sufficient for each case as it presented itself; and now the fag end of the season died out; the last noble and indigent foreigner had been eluded; the last old beau foiled; the last squab-headed dancing man successfully circumvented. And now the gallinaceous half of the world was leaving town in noisy and glittering migration, headed for temporary roosts all over the globe, from Newport to Nova Scotia, from Kineo to Kara Dagh.

Country houses were opening throughout the Western Hemisphere; Long Island stirred from its long winter lethargy, stung into active life by the Oyster Bay mosquito; town houses closed; terrace, pillar, portico, and windows were already being boarded over; lace curtains came down; textiles went to the cleaners; the fresh scent of camphor and lavender lingered in the mellow half-light of rooms where furniture and pictures loomed linen-shrouded and the polished floor echoed every footstep.

In the sunny gloom of the Seagrave house Geraldine found a grateful retreat from the inspiring glare and confused racket of her first winter; ample time for rest, reverie, and reflection, with only a few intimates to break her meditations, only informality to reckon with, and plenty of leisure to plan for the summer.

Around the house, trees and rhododendrons were now in freshest bloom, flower-beds fragrant, grass tenderly emerald. The moving shadows of maple leaves patterned the white walls of her bedroom; wind-blown gusts of wistaria fragrance, from the long, grapelike, violet-tinted bunches swaying outside the window, puffed out her curtains every morning.

At night subtler perfumes stole upward from the dark garden; the roar of traffic from the avenues was softened; carriage lights in the purpling dusk of the Park moved like firebugs drifting through level wooded vistas. Across the reservoir lakes the jewelled night-zone of the West Side sparkled, reflected across the water in points of trembling flame; south, a gemmed bar of topaz light, upright against the sky, marked the Plaza; beyond, sprinkled into space like constellations dusting endless depths, the lights of the city receded far as the eye could see.

In the zenith the sky is always tinted with the strange, sinister night-glow of the metropolis, red as fire-licked smoke when fog from the bay settles, pallid as the very shadow of light when nights are clear; but it is always there—always will be there after the sun goes down into the western seas, and the eyes of the monstrous iron city burn on through the centuries.

 

One morning late in April Geraldine Seagrave rode up under the porte-cochère with her groom, dismounted, patted her horse sympathetically, and regarded with concern the limping animal as the groom led him away to the stables. Then she went upstairs.

To Kathleen, who was preparing to go out, she said:

"I had scarcely entered the Park, my dear, when poor Bibi pulled up lame. No, I told Redmond not to saddle another; I suppose Duane will be furious. Where are you going?"

"I don't know. Shall I wait for you? I've ordered a victoria."

"No, thanks. You look so pretty this morning, Kathleen. Sometimes you appear younger than I do. Scott was pig enough to say so the other day when I had a headache. It's true enough, too," she added, smiling.

Kathleen Severn laughed; she looked scarcely more than twenty-five and she knew it.

"You pretty thing!" exclaimed Geraldine, kissing her, "no wonder you attract the really interesting men and leave me the dreadful fledglings! It's bad of you; and I don't see why I'm stupid enough to have such an attractive woman for my closest"—a kiss—"dearest friend! Even Duane is villain enough to tell me that he finds you overwhelmingly attractive. Did you know it?"

Geraldine's careless gaiety seemed spontaneous enough; yet there was the slightest constraint in Kathleen's responsive smile:

"Duane isn't to be taken seriously," she said.

"Not by any means," nodded Geraldine, twirling her crop.

"I'm glad you understand him," observed Kathleen, gazing at the point of her sunshade. She looked up presently and met Geraldine's dark gaze. Again there came that almost imperceptible hesitation; then:

"I certainly do understand Duane Mallett," said Geraldine carelessly.

"Shall I wait for you?" asked Kathleen. "We can lunch out together and drive in the Park later."

"I'm too lazy even to take off my boots and habit. Where's that volume of Mendez you thought fit to hide from me, you wretch?"

"Why on earth did you buy it?"

"I bought it because Rosalie Dysart says Mendez is a great modern master of prose——"

"And Rosalie is a great modern mistress of pose. Don't read Mendez."

"Isn't it necessary for a girl to read——"

"No, it isn't!"

"I don't want to be ignorant. Besides, I'm—curious to know——"

"Be decently curious, dearest. There's a danger mark; don't cross it."

"I don't wish to."

She stretched out her arms, crop in hand, doubled them back, and head tipped on one side, yawned shamelessly at her own laziness.

"Scott is becoming very restless," she said.

"About going away?"

"Yes. I really do think, Kathleen, that we ought to have some respectable country place to go to. It would be nice for Scott and the servants and the horses; and you and I need not stay there if it bores us——"

"Is he still thinking of that Roya-Neh place? It's horridly expensive to keep up. Oh, I knew quite well that Scott would bully you into consenting——"

"Roya-Neh seems to suit us both," admitted the girl indifferently. "The shooting and fishing naturally attract Scott; they say it's secluded enough for you and me to recuperate in; and if we ever want any guests, it's big enough to entertain dozens in… . I really don't care one way or the other; you know I never was very crazy about the country—and poison ivy, and mosquitoes and oil-smelling roads, and hot nights, and the perfume of fertilisers——"

"You poor child!" laughed Kathleen; "you don't know anything about the country except where you've been on Long Island in the immediate vicinity of your grandfather's horrid old place."

"Is it any more agreeable up there near Canada?"

"Roya-Neh is very lovely—of course—but—it's certainly not a wise investment, dear."

"Well, if Scott and I buy it, we'd never wish to sell it——"

"Suppose you were obliged to?"

Geraldine's velvet eyes widened lazily:

"Obliged to? Oh—yes—you mean if we went to smash."

Then her gaze became remote as she stood slowly tapping her gloved palm with her riding-crop.

"I think I'll dress," she said absently.

"Good-bye, then," nodded Kathleen.

"Good-bye," said the girl, turning lightly away across the hall. Kathleen's eyes followed the slender retreating figure, so slimly compact in its buoyancy. There was always something fascinatingly boyish in Geraldine's light, free carriage—just a touch of carelessness in the poise—almost a swing at times to the step. Duane had once said: "She has a bully walk!" Kathleen thought of it as, passing a mirror, she caught sight of herself. And the sudden glimpse of her own warm, rich beauty in all its exquisite maturity startled her. Surely she seemed to be growing younger.

She was. Dark-violet eyes, ruddy hair, a superb figure, a skin so white that it looked fragrant, made Kathleen Severn amazingly attractive. Men found her, to their surprise, rather unresponsive. She was amiable enough, nicely formal, and perfectly bred, it is true, but inclined to that sort of aloofness which is marked by lapses of inattention and the smiling silences of preoccupation.

She had married, very young, an army officer convalescing from Texan fever. He died suddenly on the very eve of their postponed wedding-trip. This was enough to account for lapses of inattention in any woman.

But Kathleen Severn had never been demonstrative. She was slow to care for people. Besides, the responsibility of bringing up the Seagrave twins had been sufficient to subdue anybody's spirits. She was only nineteen and a widow of a month when her distant relative, Magnelius Grandcourt, found her the position as personal guardian of the twins, then aged nine. Now they were twenty-one and she thirty-one; twelve years of service, twelve years of steady fidelity, which long ago had become a changeless and passionate devotion, made up of all she might have given to the dead, and of the unborn happiness she had never known. What other sort of love, if there was any, lay within her undeveloped, nobody knew because nobody had ever aroused it.

Sunshine transformed into great golden transparencies the lowered shades in the living room where Geraldine stood, pensive, distraite, idly twirling her crop by the loop. Presently it flew off her gloved forefinger and fell clattering across the carpetless floor. She bathed and dressed leisurely; later, when luncheon was brought to her, she dropped into a low, wide chair and, ignoring everything except the strawberries, turned her face to the breeze which was softly rattling the southern curtains.

Errant thoughts, light as summer fleece, drifted across her mind. Often, in such moments, she strove to realise that she was now mistress of herself; but never could completely.

"For example: if I want to buy Roya-Neh," she mused, biting into an enormous strawberry, "I can do it… . All I have to do is to say that I'll buy it… . And I can live there if I choose—as long as I choose… . It's a very agreeable sensation… . I can have anything I fancy, without asking Mr. Tappan… . It's rather odd that I don't want anything."

She crossed her ankles and lay back watching the sun-moats floating.

"Suppose," she murmured with perverse humour, "that I wished to build a bungalow in Timbuctoo … or stand on my head, now, this very moment! Nobody on earth could stop me… . I believe I will stand on my head for a change."

The sudden smile made the curve of her cheek delicious. She sprang to her feet, spread her napkin on the polished floor, then gravely bending double, placed both palms flat on the square of damask, balanced and raised her body until the straight, slim limbs were rigidly pointed toward heaven.

Down tumbled her hair; her cheeks crimsoned; then dainty as a lithe and spangled athlete, she turned clean over in the air, landing lightly on both feet breathing fast.

"It's disgraceful!" she murmured; "I am certainly out of condition. Late hours are my undoing. Also cigarettes. I wish I didn't like to smoke."

She lighted one and strolled about the room, knotting up her dark hair, heels clicking sharply over the bare, polished floor.

Lacking a hair-peg, she sauntered off to her own apartments to find one, where she remained, lolling in the chaise-longue, alternately blowing smoke rings into the sunshine and nibbling a bonbon soaked in cologne. Only a girl can accomplish such combinations. How she ever began this silly custom of hers she couldn't remember, except that, when a small child, somebody had forbidden her to taste brandied peach syrup, which she adored; and the odour of cologne being similarly pleasant, she had tried it on her palate and found that it produced agreeable sensations.

It had become a habit. She was conscious of it, but remained indifferent because she didn't know anything about habits.

So all that sunny afternoon she lay in the chaise-longue, alternately reading and dreaming, her scented bonbons at her elbow. Later a maid brought tea; and a little later Duane Mallett was announced. He sauntered in, a loosely knit, graceful figure, still wearing his riding-clothes and dusty boots of the morning.

Geraldine Seagrave had had time enough to discover, during the past winter, that her old playfellow was not at all the kind of man he appeared to be. Women liked him too easily and he liked them without effort. There was always some girl in love with him until he was found kissing another. His tastes were amiably catholic; his caress instinctively casual. Beauty when responsive touched him. No girl he knew needed to remain unconsoled.

The majority of women liked him; so did Geraldine Seagrave. The majority instinctively watched him; so did she. In close acquaintance the man was a disappointment. It seemed as though there ought to be something deeper in him than the lightly humourous mockery with which he seemed to regard his very great talent—a flippancy that veiled always what he said and did and thought until nobody could clearly understand what he really thought about anything; and some people doubted that he thought at all—particularly the thoughtless whom he had carelessly consoled.

Women were never entirely indifferent concerning him; there remained always a certain amount of curiosity, whether they found him attractive or otherwise.

His humourous indifference to public opinions, bordering on effrontery, was not entirely unattractive to women, but it always, sooner or later, aroused their distrust.

The main trouble with Duane Mallett seemed to be his gaily cynical willingness to respond to any advance, however slight, that any pretty woman offered. This responsive partiality was disconcerting enough to make him dreaded by ambitious mothers, and an object of uneasy interest to their decorative offspring who were inclined to believe that a rescue party of one might bring this derelict into port and render him seaworthy for the voyage of life under their own particular command.

Besides, he was a painter. Women like them when they are carefully washed and clothed.

 

As Duane Mallett strolled into the living-room, Geraldine felt again, as she so often did, a slight sense of insecurity mingle with her liking for the man, or what might have been liking if she could ever feel absolute confidence in him. She had been, at times, very close to caring a great deal for him, when now and again it flashed over her that there must be in him something serious under his brilliant talent and the idle perversity which mocked at it.

But now she recognised in his smile and manner everything that kept her from ever caring to understand him—the old sense of insecurity in his ironical formality; and her outstretched hand fell away from his with indifference.

"I didn't have the happiness of riding with you, after all," he said, serenely seating himself and dropping one lank knee over the other. "Promises wouldn't be valuable unless somebody broke a lot now and then."

"You probably had the happiness of riding with some other woman."

He nodded.

"Who, this time?"

"Rosalie Dysart."

Rumour had been busy with their names recently. The girl's face became expressionless.

"Sorry you didn't come," he said, looking out of the window where the flapping shade revealed a lilac in bloom.

"How long did you wait for me?"

"About a minute. Then Rosalie passed——"

"Rosalies will always continue to pass through your career, my omnivorous friend… . Did it even occur to you to ride over here and find out why I missed our appointment?"

"No; why didn't you come?"

"Bibi went lame. I'd have had another horse saddled if I hadn't seen you, over my shoulder, join Mrs. Dysart."

"Too bad," he commented listlessly.

"Why? You had a perfectly good time without me, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes, pretty good. Delancy Grandcourt was out after luncheon, and when Rosalie left he stuck to me and talked about you until I let my horse bolt, and it stirred up a few mounted policemen and riding-schools, I can tell you!"

"Oh, so you lunched with Mrs. Dysart?"

"Yes. Where is Kathleen?"

"Driving," said the girl briefly. "If you don't care for any tea, there is mineral water and a decanter over there."

He thanked her, rose and mixed himself what he wanted, and began to walk leisurely about, the ice tinkling in the glass which he held. At intervals he quenched his thirst, then resumed his aimless promenade, a slight smile on his face.

"Has anything particularly interesting happened to you, Duane?" she asked, and somehow thought of Rosalie Dysart.

"No."

"How are your pictures coming on?"

"The portrait?" he asked absently.

"Portrait? I thought all the very grand ladies you paint had left town. Whose portrait are you painting?"

Before he answered, before he even hesitated, she knew.

"Rosalie Dysart's," he said, gazing absently at the lilac-bush in flower as the wind-blown curtain revealed it for a moment.

She lifted her dark eyes curiously. He began to stir the ice in his glass with a silver paper-cutter.

"She is wonderfully beautiful, isn't she?" said the girl.

"Overwhelmingly."

Geraldine shrugged and gazed into space. She didn't exactly know why she had given that little hitch to her shoulders.

"I'd like to paint Kathleen," he observed.

A flush tinted the girl's cheeks. She said nervously:

"Why don't you ask her?"

"I've meant to. Somehow, one doesn't ask things lightly of Kathleen."

"One doesn't ask things of some women at all," she remarked.

He looked up; she was examining her empty teacup with fixed interest.

"Ask what sort of thing?" he inquired, walking over to the table and resting his glass on it.

"Oh, I don't know what I meant. Nothing. What is that in your glass? Let me taste it… . Ugh! It's Scotch!"

She set back the glass with a shudder. After a few moments she picked it up again and tasted it disdainfully.

"Do you like this?" she demanded with youthful contempt.

"Pretty well," he admitted.

"It tastes something like brandied peaches, doesn't it?"

"I never noticed that it did."

And as he remained smilingly aloof and silent, at intervals, tentatively, uncertain whether or not she exactly cared for it, she tasted the iced contents of the tall, frosty glass and watched him where he sat loosely at ease flicking at sun-moats with the loop of his riding-crop.

"I'd like to see a typical studio," she said reflectively.

"I've asked you to mine often enough."

"Yes, to tea with other people. I don't mean that way. I'd like to see it when it's not all dusted and in order for feminine inspection. I'd like to see a man's studio when it's in shape for work—with the gr-r-reat painter in a fine frenzy painting, and the model posing madly——"

"Come on, then! If Kathleen lets you, and you can stand it, come down and knock some day unexpectedly."

"O Duane! I couldn't, could I?"

"Not with propriety. But come ahead."

"Naturally, impropriety appeals to you."

"Naturally. To you, too, doesn't it?"

"No. But wouldn't it astonish you if you heard a low, timid knocking some day when you and your Bohemian friends were carousing and having a riotous time there——"

"Yes, it would, but I'm afraid that low, timid knocking couldn't be heard in the infernal uproar of our usual revelry."

"Then I'd knock louder and louder, and perhaps kick once or twice if you didn't come to the door and let me in."

He laughed. After a moment she laughed, too; her dark eyes were very friendly now. Watching the amusement in his face, she continued to sip from his tall, frosted glass, quite unconscious of any distaste for it. On the contrary, she experienced a slight exhilaration which was gradually becoming delightful to her.

"Scotch-and-soda is rather nice, after all," she observed. "I had no idea—What is the matter with you, Duane?"

"You haven't swallowed all that, have you?"

"Yes, is it much?"

He stared, then with a shrug: "You'd better cut out that sort of thing."

"What?" she asked, surprised.

"What you're doing."

"Tasting your Scotch? Pooh!" she said, "it isn't strong. Do you think I'm a baby?"

"Go ahead," he said, "it's your funeral."

Legs crossed, chin resting on the butt of his riding-crop, he lay back in his chair watching her.

Women of her particular type had always fascinated him; Fifth Avenue is thronged with them in sunny winter mornings—tall, slender, faultlessly gowned girls, free-limbed, narrow of wrist and foot; cleanly built, engaging, fearless-eyed; and Geraldine was one of a type characteristic of that city and of the sunny Avenue where there pass more beautiful women on a December morning than one can see abroad in half a dozen years' residence.

How on earth this hemisphere has managed to evolve them out of its original material nobody can explain. And young Mallett, recently from the older hemisphere, was still in a happy trance of surprise at the discovery.

Lounging there, watching her where she sat warmly illumined by the golden light of the window-shade, he said lazily:

"Do you know that Fifth Avenue is always thronged with you, Geraldine? I've nearly twisted my head off trying not to miss the assorted visions of you which float past afoot or driving. Some day one of them will unbalance me. I'll leap into her victoria, ask her if she'd mind the temporary inconvenience of being adored by a stranger; and if she's a good sport she'll take a chance. Don't you think so?"

"It's more than I'd take with you," said the girl.

"You've said that several times."

He laughed, then looked up at her half humorously, half curiously.

"You would be taking no chances, Geraldine."

"I'd be taking chances of finding you holding some other girl's hands within twenty-four hours. And you know it."

"Hasn't anybody ever held yours?"

Displeasure tinted her cheeks a deeper red, but she merely shrugged her shoulders.

It was true that in the one evanescent and secret affair of her first winter she had not escaped the calf-like transports of Bunbury Gray. She had felt, if she had not returned them, the furtively significant pressure of men's hands in the gaiety and whirl of things; ardent and chuckle-headed youth had declared itself in conservatories and in corners; one impetuous mauling from a smitten Harvard boy of eighteen had left her furiously vexed with herself for her passive attitude while the tempest passed. True, she had vigorously reproved him later. She had, alas, occasion, during her first season, to reprove several demonstrative young men for their unconventionally athletic manner of declaring their suits. She had been far more severe with the humble, unattractive, and immobile, however, than with the audacious and ornamental who had attempted to take her by storm. A sudden if awkward kiss followed by the fiery declaration of the hot-headed disturbed her less than the persistent stare of an enamoured pair of eyes. As a child the description of an assault on a citadel always interested her, but she had neither sympathy nor interest in a siege.

Now, musing there in the sunlight on the events of her first winter, she became aware that she had been more or less instructed in the ways of men; and, remembering, she lifted her disturbed eyes to inspect this specimen of a sex which often perplexed but always interested her.

"What are you smiling about, Duane?" she asked defiantly.

"Your arraignment of me when half the men in town have been trying to marry you all winter. You've made a reputation for yourself, too, Geraldine."

"As what?" she asked angrily.

"A head-twister."

"Do you mean a flirt?"

"Oh, Lord! Only the French use that term now. But that's the idea, Geraldine. You are a born one. I fell for the first smile you let loose on me."

"You seem to have been a sort of general Humpty Dumpty for falls all your life, Duane," she said with dangerous sweetness.

"Like that immortal, I've had only one which permanently shattered me."

"Which was that, if you please?"

"The fall you took out of me."

"In other words," she said disdainfully, "you are beginning to make love to me again."

"No… . I was in love with you."

"You were in love with yourself, young man. You are on such excellent terms with yourself that you sympathise too ardently with any attractive woman who takes the least and most innocent notice of you."

He said, very much amused: "I was perfectly serious over you, Geraldine."

"The selfish always take themselves seriously."

It was she, however, who now sat there bright-eyed and unsmiling, and he was still laughing, deftly balancing his crop on one finger, and glancing at her from time to time with that glimmer of ever-latent mockery which always made her restive at first, then irritated her with an unreasoning desire to hurt him somehow. But she never seemed able to reach him.

"Sooner or later," she said, "women will find you out, thoroughly."

"And then, just think what a rush there will be to marry me!"

"There will be a rush to avoid you, Duane. And it will set in before you know it—" She thought of the recent gossip coupling his name with Rosalie's, reddened and bit her lip in silence. But somehow the thought irritated her into speech again:

"Fortunately, I was among the first to find you out—the first, I think."

"Heavens! when was that?" he asked in pretended concern, which infuriated her.

"You had better not ask me," she flashed back. "When a woman suddenly discovers that a man is untrustworthy, do you think she ever forgets it?"

"Because I once kissed you? What a dreadful deed!"

"You forget the circumstances under which you did it."

He flushed; she had managed to hurt him, after all. He began patiently:

"I've explained to you a dozen times that I didn't know——"

"But I told you!"

"And I couldn't believe you——"

"But you expect me to believe you?"

He could not exactly interpret her bright, smiling, steady gaze.

"The trouble with you is," she said, "that there is nothing to you but good looks and talent. There was once, but it died—over in Europe—somewhere. No woman trusts a man like you. Don't you know it?"

His smile did not seem to be very genuine, but he answered lightly:

"When I ask people to have confidence in me, it will be time for them to pitch into me."

"Didn't you once ask me for your confidence—and then abuse it?" she demanded.

"I told you I loved you—if that is what you mean. And you doubted it so strenuously that, perhaps I might be excused for doubting it myself… . What is the use of talking this way, Geraldine?"

There was a ring of exasperation in her laughter. She lifted his glass, sipped a little, and, looking over it at him:

"I drink to our doubts concerning each other: may nothing ever occur to disturb them."

Her cheeks had begun to burn, her eyes were too bright, her voice unmodulated.

"Whether or not you ever again take the trouble to ask me to trust you in that way," she said, "I'll tell you now why I don't and why I never could. It may amuse you. Shall I?"

"By all means," he replied amiably; "but it seems to me as though you are rather rough on me."

"You were rougher with me the first time I saw you, after all those years. I met you with perfect confidence, remembering what you once were. It was my first grown-up party. I was only a fool of a girl, merely ignorant, unfit to be trusted with a liberty I'd never before had… . And I took one glass of champagne and it—you know what it did… . And I was bewildered and frightened, and I told you; and—you perhaps remember how my confidence in my old play-fellow was requited. Do you?"

Reckless impulse urged her on. Heart and pulses were beating very fast with a persistent desire to hurt him. Her animation, brilliant colour, her laughter seemed to wing every word like an arrow. She knew he shrank from what she was saying, in spite of his polite attention, and her fresh, curved cheek and parted lips took on a brighter tint. Something was singing, seething in her veins. She lifted her glass, set it down, and suddenly pushed it from her so violently that it fell with a crash. A wave of tingling heat mounted to her face, receded, swept back again. Confused, she straightened up in her chair, breathing fast. What was coming over her? Again the wave surged back with a deafening rush; her senses struggled, the blood in her ran riot. Then terror clutched her. Neither lips nor tongue were very flexible when she spoke.

"Duane—if you don't mind—would you go away now? I've a wretched headache."

He shrugged and stood up.

"It's curious," he said reflectively, "how utterly determined we seem to be to misunderstand each other. If you would give me half a chance—well—never mind."

"I wish you would go," she murmured, "I really am not well." She could scarcely hear her own voice amid the deafening tumult of her pulses. Fright stiffened the fixed smile on her lips. Her plight paralysed her for a moment.

"Yes, I'll go," he answered, smiling. "I usually am going somewhere—most of the time."

He picked up hat, gloves, and crop, looked down at her, came and stood at the table, resting one hand on the edge.

"We're pretty young yet, Geraldine… . I never saw a girl I cared for as I might have cared for you. It's true, no matter what I have done, or may do… . But you're quite right, a man of that sort isn't to be considered"—he laughed and pulled on one glove—"only—I knew as soon as I saw you that it was to be you or—everybody. First, it was anybody; then it was you—now it's everybody. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," she managed to say. The dizzy waves swayed her; she rested her cheeks between both hands and, leaning there heavily, closed her eyes to fight against it. She had been seated on the side of a lounge; and now, feeling blindly behind her, she moved the cushions aside, turned and dropped among them, burying her blazing face. Over her the scorching vertigo swept, subsided, rose, and swept again. Oh, the horror of it!—the shame, the agonised surprise. What was this dreadful thing that, for the second time, she had unwittingly done? And this time it was so much more terrible. How could such an accident have happened to her? How could she face her own soul in the disgrace of it?

Fear, loathing, frightened incredulity that this could really be herself, stiffened her body and clinched her hands under her parted lips. On them her hot breath fell irregularly.

Rigid, motionless, she lay, breathing faster and more feverishly. Tears came after a long while, and with them relaxation and lassitude. She felt that the dreadful thing which had seized and held her was letting go its hold, was freeing her body and mind; and as it slowly released her and passed on its terrible silent way, she awoke and sat up with a frightened cry—to find herself lying on her own bed in utter darkness.

A moment later her bedroom door opened without a sound and the light from the hall streamed over Kathleen's bare shoulders and braided hair.

"Geraldine?"

The girl scarcely recognised Kathleen's altered voice. She lay listening, silent, motionless, staring at the white figure.

"Dearest, I thought you called me. May I come in?"

"I am not well."

But Kathleen entered and stood beside the bed, looking down at her in the dim light.

"Dearest," she began tremulously, "Duane told me you had a headache and had gone to your room to lie down, so I didn't disturb you——"

"Duane," faltered the girl, "is he here? What did he say?"

"He was in the library before dinner when I came in, and he warned me not to waken you. Do you know what time it is?"

"No."

"It is after midnight… . If you feel ill enough to lie here, you ought to be undressed. May I help you?"

There was no answer. For a moment Kathleen stood looking down at the girl in silence; then a sudden shivering seized her; she strove to control it, but her knees seemed to give way under it and she dropped down beside the bed, throwing both arms around Geraldine's neck.

"Oh, don't, don't!" she whimpered. "It is too terrible! It ruined your father and your grandfather! Darling, I couldn't bear to tell you this before, but now I've got to tell you! It is in your blood. Seagraves die of it! Do you understand?"

"W-what?" stammered the girl.

"That all their lives they did what—what you have done to-day—that you have inherited their terrible inclinations. Even as a little child you frightened me. Have you forgotten what you and I talked over and cried over after your first party?"

The girl said slowly: "I don't know how—it—happened, Kathleen. Duane came in… . I tasted what he had in his glass… . I don't know why I did it. I wish I were dead!"

"There is only one thing to do—never to touch anything—anything——"

"Y-yes, I know that I must not. But how was I to know before? Will you tell me?"

"You understand now, thank God!"

"N-not exactly… . Other girls seem to do as they please without danger… . It is amazing that such a horrible thing should happen to me——"

"It is a shameful thing that it should happen to any woman. And the horror of it is that almost every hostess in town lets girls of your age run the risk. Darling, don't you know that the only chance a woman has with the world is in her self-control? When that goes, her chances go, every one of them! Dear—we have latent in us much the same vices that men have. We have within us the same possibilities of temptations, the same capacity for excesses, the same capabilities for resistance. Because you are a girl, you are not immune from unworthy desires."

"I know it. The—the dreadful thing about it is that I do desire such things. Perhaps I had better not even nibble sugar scented with cologne——"

"Do you do that?" faltered Kathleen.

"I did not know there was any danger in it," sobbed the girl. "You have scared me terribly, Kathleen."

"Is that true about the cologne?"

"Y-yes."

"You don't do it now, do you?"

"Yes."

"You don't do it every day, do you?"

"Yes, several times."

"How long"—Kathleen's lips almost refused to move—"how long have you done this?"

"For a long time. I've been ashamed of it. It's—it's the alcohol in it that I like, isn't it? I never thought of it in that way till now."

Kathleen, on her knees by the bedside, was crying silently. The girl slipped from her arms, turned partly over, and lying on her back, stared upward through the darkness.

So this was the secret reason that, unsuspected, had long been stirring her to instinctive uneasiness, which had made her half ashamed, half impatient with this silly habit which already inconvenienced her. Yet even now she could not feel any real alarm; she could not understand that the fangs of a habit can poison when plucked out. Of course there was now only one thing to do—keep aloof from everything. That would be easy. The tingling warmth of the perfume was certainly agreeable, but she must not risk even such a silly indulgence as that. Really, it was a very simple matter. She sat up, supporting her weight on one arm.

"Kathleen, darling," she whispered, bending forward and drawing the elder woman up onto the bed, "you mustn't be frightened about me. I've learned some things I didn't know. Do you think Duane—" In the darkness the blood scorched her face, the humiliation almost crushed her. But she went on: "Do you think Duane suspects that—that——"

"I don't think Duane suspects anything," said Kathleen, striving to steady her voice. "You came in here as soon as you felt—ill; didn't you?"

"I—yes——"

She could say no more. How she came to be on her bed in her own room she could not remember. It seemed to her as though she had fallen asleep on the lounge. Somehow, after Duane had gone, she must have waked and gone to her own room. But she could not recollect doing it.

Now she realised that she was tired, wretched, feverish. She suffered Kathleen to undress her, comb her hair, bathe her, and dry the white, slender body and limbs in which the veins still burned and throbbed.

When at length she lay between the cool sheets, silent, limp, heavy-lidded, Kathleen turned out the electric brackets and lighted the candle.

"Dear," she said, trying to speak cheerfully, "do you know what your brother has done?"

"What?" asked Geraldine drowsily.

"He has bought Roya-Neh, if you please, and he invites you to draw a check for half of it and to move there next week. As for me, I was furious with him. What do you think?"

Her voice softened to a whisper; she bent over the girl, looking closely at the closed lids. Under them a faint bluish tint faded into the whiteness of the cheek.

"Darling, darling!" whispered Kathleen, bending closer over the sleeping girl, "I love you so—I love you so!" And even as she said it, between the sleeper's features and her own floated the vision of Scott's youthfully earnest face; and she straightened suddenly to her full height and laid her hand on her breast in consternation. Under the fingers' soft pressure her heart beat faster. Again, with new dismay, this incredible sensation was stealing upon her, threatening to transform itself into something real, something definite, something not to be stifled or ignored.

She extinguished the candle; as she felt her way out of the darkness, arms extended, far away in the house she heard a door open and shut, and she bent over the balustrade to listen.

"Is that you, Scott?" she called softly.

"Yes; Duane and I did some billiards at the club." He looked up at her, the same slight pucker between his brows, boyishly slender in his evening dress. "You're not going to bed at once, are you, Kathleen, dear?"

"Yes, I am," she said briefly, backing into her own room, but holding the door ajar so that she could look out at him.

"Oh, come out and talk to a fellow," he urged; "I'm quite excited about this Roya-Neh business——"

"You're a perfect wretch, Scott. I don't want to talk about your unholy extravagance."

The boy laughed and stood at ease looking at the pretty face partly disclosed between door and wall with darkness for a velvety background.

"Just come out into the library while I smoke one cigarette," he began in his wheedling way. "I'm dying to talk to you about the game-preserve——"

"I can't; I'm not attired for a tête-à-tête with anything except my pillow."

"Then put on one of those fetching affairs you wear sometimes——"

"Oh, Scott, you are a nuisance!"

When, a few moments later, she came into the library in a delicate shimmering thing and little slippers of the same elusive tint, Scott jumped up and dragged a big chair forward.

"You certainly are stunning, Kathleen," he said frankly; "you look twenty with all the charm of thirty. Sit here; I've a map of the Roya-Neh forest to show you."

He drew up a chair for himself, lifted a big map from the table, and, unrolling it, laid it across her knees. Then he began to talk enthusiastically about lake and stream and mountain, and about wild boar and deer and keepers and lodges; and she bent her pretty head over the map, following his moving pencil with her eyes, sometimes asking a question, sometimes tracing a road with her own delicate finger.

Once or twice it happened that their hands touched en passant; and at the light contact, she was vaguely aware that somewhere, deep within her, the same faint dismay awoke; that in her, buried in depths unsuspected, something incredible existed, stirred, threatened.

"Scott, dear," she said quietly, "I am glad you are happy over Roya-Neh forest, but it was too expensive, and it troubles me; so I'm going to sleep to dream over it."

"You sweet little goose!" laughed the boy impulsively, passing his arm around her. He had done it so often to this nurse and mother.

They both rose abruptly; the map dropped; his arm fell away from her warm, yielding body.

He gazed at her flushed face rather stupidly, not realising yet that the mother and nurse and elder sister had vanished like a tinted bubble in that strange instant—that Kathleen was gone—that, in her calm, sweet, familiar guise stood a woman—a stranger, exquisite, youthful, with troubled violet eyes and vivid lips, looking at him as though for the first time she had met his gaze across the world.

She recovered her composure instantly.

"I'm sorry, Scott, but I'm too sleepy to talk any more. Besides, Geraldine isn't very well, and I'm going to doze with one eye open. Good-night, dear."

"Good-night," said the boy vacantly, not offering the dutiful embrace to which he and she had so long and so lightly been accustomed.

Chapter 5 ROYA-NEH

Late on a fragrant mid-June afternoon young Seagrave stood on the Long Terrace to welcome a guest whose advent completed a small house-party of twelve at Roya-Neh.

"Hello, Duane!" cried the youthful landowner in all the pride of new possession, as Mallett emerged from the motor; "frightfully glad to see you, old fellow! How is it in town? Did you bring your own rods? There are plenty here. What do you think of my view? Isn't that rather fine?"—looking down through the trees at the lake below. "There are bass in it. Those things standing around under the oaks are only silly English fallow deer. Sorry I got 'em. What do you think of my house? It's merely a modern affair worked up to look old and colonial… . Yes, it certainly does resemble the real thing, but it isn't. No Seagraves fit and bled here. Those are Geraldine's quarters up there behind the leaded windows. Those are Kathleen's where the dinky woodbine twineth. Mine face the east, and yours are next. Come on out into the park——"

"Not much!" returned young Mallett. "I want a bath!"

"The park," interrupted Scott excitedly, "is the largest fenced game-preserve in America! It's only ten minutes to the Sachem's Gate, if we walk fast."

"I want a bath and fresh linen."

"Don't you care to see the trout? Don't you want to try to catch a glimpse of a wild boar? I should think you'd be crazy to see——"

"I'm crazy about almost any old thing when I'm well scrubbed; otherwise, I'm merely crazy. That was a wild trip up. I'm all over cinders."

A woman came quietly out onto the terrace, and Duane instantly divined it, though his back was toward her and her skirts made no sound.

"Oh, is that you, Kathleen?" he cried, pivoting. "How d'ye do?" with a vigorous handshake. "Every time I see you you're three times as pretty as I thought you were when I last saw you."

"Neat but involved," said Kathleen Severn. "You have a streak of cinder across that otherwise fascinating nose."

"I don't doubt it! I'm going. Where's Geraldine?"

"Having her hair done in your honour; return the compliment by washing your face. There's a maid inside to show you."

"Show me how to wash my face!" exclaimed Duane, delighted. "This is luxury——"

"I want him to see the Gray Water before it's too late, with the sunlight on the trees and the big trout jumping," protested Scott.

"I'll do my own jumping if you'll furnish the tub," observed Duane. "Where's that agreeable maid who washes your guests' faces?"

Kathleen nodded an amused dismissal to them. Arm in arm they entered the house, which was built out of squared blocks of field stone. Scott motioned the servants aside and did the piloting himself up a broad stone stairs, east along a wide sunny corridor full of nooks and angles and antique sofas and potted flowers.

"Not that way," he said; "Dysart is in there taking a nap. Turn to the left."

"Dysart?" repeated Duane. "I didn't know there was to be anybody else here."

"I asked Jack Dysart because he's a good rod. Kathleen raised the deuce about it when I told her, but it was too late. Anyway, I didn't know she had no use for him. He's certainly clever at dry-fly casting. He uses pneumatic bodies, not cork or paraffine."

"Is his wife here?" asked Duane carelessly.

"Yes. Geraldine asked her as soon as she heard I'd written to Jack. But when I told her the next day that I expected you, too, she got mad all over, and we had a lively talk-fest. What was there wrong in my having you and the Dysarts here at the same time? Don't you get on?"

"Charmingly," replied Duane airily… . "It will be very interesting, I think. Is there anybody else here?"

"Delancy Grandcourt. Isn't he the dead one? But Geraldine wanted him. And there's that stick of a Quest girl, and Bunbury Gray. Naïda came over this afternoon from the Tappans' at Iron Hill—thank goodness——"

"I didn't know my sister was to be here."

"Yes; and you make twelve, counting Geraldine and me and the Pink 'uns."

"You didn't tell me it was to be a round-up," repeated Duane, absently surveying his chintz-hung quarters. "This is a pretty place you've given me. Where do you get all your electric lights? Where do you get fancy plumbing in this wilderness?"

"Our own plant," explained the boy proudly. "Isn't that corking water? Look at it—heavenly cold and clear, or hot as hell, whichever way you're inclined—" turning on a silver spigot chiselled like a cherub. "That water comes from Cloudy Lake, up there on that dome-shaped mountain. Here, stand here beside me, Duane, and you can see it from your window. That's the Gilded Dome—that big peak. It's in our park. There are a few elk on it, not many, because they'd starve out the deer. As it is, we have to cut browse in winter. For Heaven's sake, hurry, man! Get into your bath and out again, or we'll miss the trout jumping along Gray Water and Hurryon Brook."

"Let 'em jump!" retorted Duane, forcibly ejecting his host from the room and locking the door. Then, lighting a cigarette, he strolled into the bath room and started the water running into the porcelain tub.

He was in excellent spirits, quite undisturbed by the unexpected proximity of Rosalie Dysart or the possible renewal of their hitherto slightly hazardous friendship. He laid his cigarette aside for the express purpose of whistling while undressing.

Half an hour later, bathed, shaved, and sartorially freshened, he selected a blue corn-flower from the rural bouquet on his dresser, drew it through his buttonhole, gave a last alluring twist to his tie, surveyed himself in the mirror, whistled a few bars, was perfectly satisfied with himself, then, unlocking the door, strolled out into the corridor. Having no memory for direction, he took the wrong turn.

A distractingly pretty maid laid aside her sewing and rose from her chair to set him right; he bestowed upon her his most courtly thanks. She was unusually pretty, so he thanked her again, and she dimpled, one hand fingering her apron's edge.

"My child," said he gravely, "are you by any fortunate chance as good as you are ornamental?"

She replied that she thought she was.

"In that case," he said, "this is one of those rare occasions in a thankless world where goodness is amply and instantly rewarded."

She made a perfunctory resistance, but looked after him, smiling, as he sauntered off down the hallway, rearranging the blue corn-flower in his button-hole. At the turn by the window, where potted posies stood, he encountered Rosalie Dysart in canoe costume—sleeves rolled up, hair loosened, becomingly tanned, and entirely captivating in her thoughtfully arranged disarray.

"Why, Duane!" she exclaimed, offering both her hands with that impulsively unstudied gesture she carefully cultivated for such occasions.

He took them; he always took what women offered.

"This is very jolly," he said, retaining the hands and examining her with unfeigned admiration. "Tell me, Mrs. Dysart, are you by any fortunate chance as good as you are ornamental?"

"I heard you ask that of the maid around the corner," said Rosalie coolly. "Don't let the bucolic go to your head, Mr. Mallett." And she disengaged her hands, crossed them behind her, and smiled back at him. It was his punishment. Her hands were very pretty hands, and well worth holding.

"That maid," he said gravely, "has excellent manners. I merely complimented her upon them… . What else did you—ah—hear, Mrs. Dysart?"

"What one might expect to hear wherever you are concerned. I don't mind. The things you do rather gracefully seem only offensive when other men do them… . Have you just arrived?"

"An hour ago. Did you know I was coming?"

"Geraldine mentioned it to everybody, but I don't think anybody swooned at the news… . My husband is here."

She still confronted him, hands behind her, with an audacity which challenged—her whole being was always a delicate and perpetual challenge. There are such women. Over her golden-brown head the late summer sunlight fell, outlining her full, supple figure and bared arms with a rose light.

"Well?" she asked.

"If only you were as good as you are ornamental," he said, looking at her impudently. "But I'm afraid you're not."

"What would happen to me if I were?"

"Why," he said with innocent enthusiasm, "you would have your reward, too, Mrs. Dysart."

"The sort of reward which I heard you bestow a few moments ago upon that maid? I'm no longer the latter, so I suppose I'm not entitled to it, am I?"

The smile still edged her pretty mouth; there was an instant when matters looked dubious for her; but a door opened somewhere, and, still smiling, she slipped by him and vanished into a neighbouring corridor.

Howker, the old butler, met him at the foot of the stairs.

"Tea is served on the Long Terrace, sir. Mr. Seagrave wishes to know whether you would care to see the trout jumping on the Gray Water this evening? If so, you are please not to stop for tea, but go directly to the Sachem's Gate. Redmond will guide you, sir."

"All right, Howker," said Duane absently; and strolled on along the hall, thinking of Mrs. Dysart.

The front doors swung wide, opening on the Long Terrace, which looked out across a valley a hundred feet below, where a small lake glimmered as still as a mirror against a background of golden willows and low green mountains.

There were a number of young people pretending to take tea on the terrace; and some took it, and others took other things. He knew them all, and went forward to greet them. Geraldine Seagrave, a new and bewitching coat of tan tinting cheek and neck, held out her hand with all the engaging frankness of earlier days. Her clasp was firm, cool, and nervously cordial—the old confident affection of childhood once more.

"I am so glad you came, Duane. I've really missed you." And sweeping the little circle with an eager glance; "You know everybody, I think. The Dysarts have not yet appeared, and Scott is down at the Gate Lodge. Come and sit by me, Duane."

Two or three girls extended their hands to him—Sylvia Quest, shy and quiet; Muriel Wye, white-skinned, black-haired, red-lipped, red-cheeked, with eyes like melted sapphires and the expression of a reckless saint; and his blond sister, Naïda, who had arrived that afternoon from the Tappans' at Iron Hill, across the mountain.

Delancy Grandcourt, uncouth and highly coloured, stood up to shake hands; Bunbury Gray, a wiry, bronzed little polo-playing squadron man, hailed Duane with enthusiasm.

"Awfully glad to see you, Bunny," said Duane, who liked him immensely—"oh, how are you?" offering his hand to Reginald Wye, a hard-riding, hard-drinking, straight-shooting young man, who knew nothing on earth except what concerned sport and the drama. He and his sister of the sapphire eyes and brilliant cheeks were popularly known as the Pink 'uns.

Jack Dysart arrived presently, graceful, supple, always smilingly, elaborate of manner, apparently unconscious that he was not cordially admired by the men who returned his greeting. Later, Rosalie, came, enchantingly demure in her Greuze-like beauty. Chardin might have made her; possibly Fragonard. She did not resemble the Creator's technique. Dresden teacups tinkled, ice clattered in tall glasses, the two fountains splashed away bravely, prettily modulated voices made agreeable harmony on the terrace, blending with the murmur of leaves overhead as the wind stirred them to gossip. Over all spread a calm evening sky.

"Tea, dear?" asked Geraldine, glancing up at Mrs. Dysart. Rosalie shook her head with a smile.

Lang, the second man, was flitting about, busy with a decanter of Scotch. A moment later Rosalie signified her preference for it with a slight nod. Geraldine, who sat watching indifferently the filling of Mrs. Dysart's glass, suddenly leaned back and turned her head sharply, as though the aroma from glass and decanter were distasteful to her. In a few minutes she rose, walked over to the parapet, and stood leaning against the coping, apparently absorbed in the landscape.

The sun hung low over the flat little tree-clad mountains, which the lake, now inlaid with pink and gold, reflected. A few fallow deer moved quietly down there, ruddy spots against the turf.

Duane, carrying his glass with him, rose and stepped across the strip of grass to her side, and, glancing askance at her, was on the point of speaking when he discovered that her eyes were shut and her face colourless and rigid.

"What is it?" he asked surprised. "Are you feeling faint, Geraldine?"

She opened her eyes, velvet dark and troubled, but did not turn around.

"It's nothing," she answered calmly. "I was thinking of several things."

"You look so white——"

"I am perfectly well. Bend over the parapet with me, Duane. Look at those rocks down there. What a tumble! What a death!"

He placed his glass between them on the coping, and leaned over. She did not notice the glass for a moment. Suddenly she wheeled, as though he had spoken, and her eyes fell on the glass.

"What is the matter?" he demanded, as she turned on her heel and moved away.

"I'm a trifle nervous, I believe. If you want to see the big trout breaking on Hurryon, you'd better come with me."

She was walking swiftly down the drive to the south of the house. He overtook her and fell into slower step beside her.

The sun had almost disappeared behind the mountains; bluish haze veiled the valley; a horizon of dazzling yellow flecked with violet faded upward to palest turquoise. High overhead a feathered cloud hung, tinged with rose.

The south drive was bordered deep in syringas, all over snowy bloom; and as they passed they inhaled the full fragrance of the flowers with every breath.

"It's like heaven," said Duane; "and you are not incongruous in the landscape, either."

She looked around at him; the smile that curved her mouth had the faintest suspicion of tenderness about it.

She said slowly:

"Do you realise that I am genuinely glad to see you? I've been horrid to you. I don't yet really believe in you, Duane. I detest some of the things you are and say and do; but, after all, I've missed you. Incredible as it sounds, I've been a little lonely without you."

He said gaily: "When a woman becomes accustomed to chasing the family cat out of the parlour with the broom, she misses the sport when the cat migrates permanently."

"Have you migrated—permanently? O Duane! I thought you did care for me—in your own careless fashion——"

"I do. But I'm not hopelessly enamoured of your broom-stick!"

Her laugh was a little less spontaneous, as she answered:

"I know I have been rather free with my broom. I'm sorry."

"You have made some sweeping charges on that cat!" he said, laughing.

"I know I have. That was two months ago. I don't think I am the morally self-satisfied prig I was two months ago… . I'd be easier on anything now, even a cat. But don't think I mean more than I do mean, Duane," she added hastily. "I've missed you a little. I want you to be nice to me… . After all, you're the oldest friend I have except Kathleen."

"I'll be as nice as you'll let me," he said. They turned from the driveway and entered a broad wood road. "As nice as you'll let me," he repeated.

"I won't let you be sentimental, if that's what you mean," she observed.

"Why?"

"Because you are you."

"In a derogatory sense?"

"Somewhat. I might be like you if I were a man, and had your easy, airy, inconsequential way with women. But I won't let you have it with me, my casual friend. Don't hope for it."

"What have I ever done——"

"Exactly what you're doing now to Rosalie—what you did to a dozen women this winter—what you did to me"—she turned and looked at him—"the first time I ever set eyes on you since we were children together. I know you are not to be taken seriously; almost everybody knows that! And all the same, Duane, I've thought about you a lot in these two months up here, and—I'm happy that you've come at last… . You won't mistake me and try to be sentimental with me, will you?"

She laid her slim, sun-tanned hand on his arm; they walked on together through the woodland where green bramble sprays glimmered through clustering tree trunks and the fading light turned foliage and undergrowth to that vivid emerald which heralds dusk.

"Duane," she said, "I'm dreadfully restless and I cannot account for it… . Perhaps motherless girls are never quite normal; I don't know. But, lately, the world has seemed very big and threatening around me… . Scott is nice to me, usually; Kathleen adorable… . I—I don't know what I want, what it is I miss."

Her hand still rested lightly on his arm as they walked forward. She was speaking at intervals almost as though talking in an undertone to herself:

"I'm in—perplexity. I've been troubled. Perhaps that is what makes me tolerant of you; perhaps that's why I'm glad to see you… . Trouble is a new thing to me. I thought I had troubles—perhaps I had as a child. But this is deeper, different, disquieting."

"Are you in love?" he asked.

"No."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Then what——"

"I can't tell you. Anyway, it won't last. It can't, … Can it?"

She looked around at him, and they both laughed a little at her inconsequence.

"I feel better for pretending to tell you, anyway," she said, as they halted before high iron gates hung between two granite posts from which the woven wire fence of the game park, ten feet high, stretched away into the darkening woods on either hand.

"This is the Sachem's Gate," she said; "here is the key; unlock it, please."

Inside they crossed a stream dashing between tanks set with fern and tall silver birches.

"Hurryon Brook," she said. "Isn't it a beauty? It pours into the Gray Water a little farther ahead. We must hasten, or it will be too dark to see the trout."

Twice again they crossed the rushing brook on log bridges. Then through the trees stretching out before them they caught sight of the Gray Water, crinkling like a flattened sheet of hammered silver.

Everywhere the surface was starred and ringed and spattered by the jumping fish; and now they could hear them far out, splash! slap! clip-clap! splash!—hundreds and hundreds jumping incessantly, so that the surface of the water was constantly broken over the entire expanse.

Now and then some great trout, dark against the glimmer, leaped full length into the air; everywhere fish broke, swirled, or rolled over, showing "colour."

"There is Scott," she whispered, attuning her voice to the forest quiet—"out there in that canoe. No, he hasn't taken his rod; he seldom does; he's perfectly crazy over things of this sort. All day and half the night he's out prowling about the woods, not fishing, not shooting, just mousing around and listening and looking. And for all his dreadfully expensive collection of arms and rods, he uses them very little. See him out there drifting about with the fish breaking all around—some within a foot of his canoe! He'll never come in to dress for dinner unless we call him."

And she framed her mouth with both hands and sent a long, clear call floating out across the Gray Water.

"All right; I'll come!" shouted her brother. "Wait a moment!"

They waited many moments. Dusk, lurking in the forest, peered out, casting a gray net over shore and water. A star quivered, another, then ten, and scores and myriads.

They had found a seat on a fallen log; neither seemed to have very much to say. For a while the steady splashing of the fish sounded like the uninterrupted music of a distant woodland waterfall. Suddenly it ceased as if by magic. Not another trout rose; the quiet was absolute.

"Is not this stillness delicious?" she breathed.

"It is sweeter when you break it."

"Please don't say such things… . Can't you understand how much I want you to be sincere to me? Lately, I don't know why, I've seemed to feel so isolated. When you talk that way I feel more so. I—just want—a friend."

There was a silence; then he said lightly:

"I've felt that way myself. The more friends I make the more solitary I seem to be. Some people are fashioned for a self-imprisonment from which they can't break out, and through which no one can penetrate. But I never thought of you as one of those."

"I seem to be at times—not exactly isolated, but unable to get close to—to Kathleen, for example. Do you know, Duane, it might be very good for me to have you to talk to."

"People usually like to talk to me. I've noticed it. But the curious part of it is that they have nothing to give me in exchange for my attention."

"What do you mean?"

He laughed. "Oh, nothing. I amuse people; I know it. You—and everybody—say I am all cleverness and froth—not to be taken seriously. But did it ever occur to you that what you see in me you evoke. Shallowness provokes shallowness, levity, lightness, inconsequence—all are answered by their own echo… . And you and the others think it is I who answer."

He laughed, not looking at her:

"And it happens that you—and the others—are mistaken. If I appear to be what you say I am, it is merely a form of self-defence. Do you think I could endure the empty nonsense of a New York winter if I did not present to it a surface like a sounding-board and let Folly converse with its own echo—while, behind it, underneath it, Duane Mallett goes about his own business."

Astonished, not clearly understanding, she listened in absolute silence. Never in all her life had she heard him speak in such a manner. She could not make out whether bitterness lay under his light and easy speech, whether a maliciously perverse humour lurked there, whether it was some new mockery.

He said carelessly: "I give what I receive. And I have never received any very serious attention from anybody. I'm only Duane Mallett, identified with the wealthy section of society you inhabit, the son of a wealthy man, who went abroad and dabbled in colour and who paints pictures of pretty women. Everybody and the newspapers know me. What I see of women is a polished coquetry that mirrors my fixed smirk; what I see of men is less interesting."

He looked out through the dusk at the darkening water:

"You say you are beginning to feel isolated. Can anybody with any rudiment of intellect feel otherwise in the social environment you and I inhabit—where distinction and inherited position count for absolutely nothing unless propped up by wealth—where any ass is tolerated whose fortune and lineage pass inspection—where there is no place for intelligence and talent, even when combined with breeding and lineage, unless you are properly ballasted with money enough to forget that you have any?"

He laughed.

"So you feel isolated? I do, too. And I'm going to get out. I'm tired of decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin, frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the players half dead with ennui and their neighbour's wives——"

"Duane!"

"Oh, Lord, you're a world-wise graduate at twenty-two! Truth won't shock you, more's the pity… . As for the game—I'm done with it; I can't stand it. The amusement I extract doesn't pay. Good God! and you wonder why I kiss a few of you for distraction's sake, press a finger-tip or two, brush a waist with my sleeve!"

He laughed unpleasantly, and bent forward in the darkness, clasped hands hanging between his knees.

"Duane," she said in astonishment, "what do you mean? Are you trying to quarrel with me, just when, for the first time, something in this new forest country seemed to be drawing us together, making us the comrades we once were?"

"We're too old to be comrades. That's book rubbish. Men and women have nothing in common, intellectually, unless they're in love. For company, for straight conversation, for business, for sport, a man would rather be with men. And either you and I are like everybody else or we're going to really care for each other. Not for your pretty face and figure, or for my grin, my six feet, and thin shanks; I can care for face and figure in any woman. What's the use of marrying for what you'll scarcely notice in a month?… If you are you, Geraldine, under all your attractive surface there's something else which you have never given me."

"Wh—what?" she asked faintly.

"Intelligent interest in me."

"Do you mean," she said slowly, "that you think I underestimate you?"

"Not as I am. I don't amount to much; but I might if you cared."

"Cared for you?"

"No, confound it! Cared for what I could be."

"I—I don't think I understand. What could you be?"

"A man, for one thing. I'm a thing that dances. A fashionable portrait painter for another. The combination is horrible."

"You are a successful painter."

"Am I? Geraldine, in all the small talk you and I have indulged in since my return from abroad, have you ever asked me one sincere, intelligent, affectionate question about my work?"

"I—yes—but I don't know anything about——"

He laughed, and it hurt her.

"Don't you understand," she said, "that ordinary people are very shy about talking art to a professional——"

"I don't want you to talk art. Any little thing with blue eyes and blond curls can do it. I wanted you to see what I do, say what you think, like it or damn it—only do something about it! You've never been to my studio except to stand with the perfumed crowd and talk commonplaces in front of a picture."

"I can't go alone."

"Can't you?" he asked, looking closely at her in the dusk, so close that she could see every mocking feature.

"Yes," she said in a low, surprised voice, "I could go alone—anywhere—with you… . I didn't realise it before, Duane."

"You never tried. You once mistook an impulse of genuine passion for the sort of thing I've done since. You made a terrific fuss about being kissed when I saw, as soon as I saw you, that I wanted to win you, if you'd let me. Since then you've chosen the key-note of our relations, not I, and you don't like my interpretation of my part."

For a while she sat silent, preoccupied with this totally new revelation of a man about whom she supposed she had long ago made up her mind.

"I'm glad we've had this talk," she said at last.

"I am, too. I haven't asked you to fall in love with me; I haven't asked for your confidence. I've asked you to take an intelligent, affectionate interest in what I might become, and perhaps you and I won't be so lonely if you do."

He struck a match in the darkness and lighted a cigarette. Close inshore Scott Seagrave's electric torch flashed. They heard the velvety scraping of the canoe, the rattle and thump as he flung it, bottom upward, on the sandy point.

"Hello, you people! Where are you?"—sweeping the wood's edge with his flash-light—"oh, there you are. Isn't this glorious? Did you ever see such a sight as those big fellows jumping?"

"Meanwhile," said his sister, rising, "our guests are doubtless yelling with hunger. What time is it, Duane? Half-past eight? Please hurry, Scott; we've got to get back and dress in five minutes!"

"I can do it easily," announced her brother, going ahead to light the path. And all the way home he discussed aloud upon the stripping, hatching, breeding, care, and diseases of trout, never looking back, and quite confident that they were listening attentively to his woodland lecture.

"Duane," she said, lowering her voice, "do you think all our misunderstandings are ended?"

"Certainly," he replied gaily. "Don't you?"

"But how am I going to make everybody think you are not frivolous?"

"I am frivolous. There's lots of froth to me—on top. You know that sort of foam you see on grass-stems in the fields. Hidden away inside is a very clever and busy little creature. He uses the froth to protect himself."

"Are you going to froth?"

"Yes—until——"

"Until what?"

"You——"

"Go on."

"Shall I say it?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, unless you and I find each other intellectually satisfactory."

"You said only a man—in love with a woman—could find her interesting in that way."

"Yes. What of it?"

"Nothing… . Only I'm afraid you'll have to froth, then," she said, laughing. "I haven't any intention of falling in love with you, Duane, and you'll find me stupid if I don't. Do you know that what you intimate is very horrid?"

"Why?"

"Yes, it is. Besides, it's a sort of threat——"

"A threat?"

"Certainly. You threaten to—you know perfectly well what you threaten to do unless I immediately consider the possibility of our—caring for each other—sentimentally."

"But what do you care if you don't care?"

"I—don't. All the same it's horrid and—and unfair. Suppose I was frothy and behaved——"

"Misbehaved?"

"Yes. Just because you wouldn't agree to take a sentimental interest in me?"

"I would agree! I'll agree now!"

"Suppose you wouldn't?"

"I can't imagine——"

"Oh, Duane, be honest! And I'll tell you flatly—if you do misbehave. Just because I don't particularly desire to rush into your arms——"

"But I haven't threatened to."

Unconsciously she laid her hand on his arm again, slipping it a little way under.

"You're just as you were years ago—just the dearest of playmates. We're not too old to play, are we?"

"I can't with you; it's too dangerous."

"What nonsense! Yes, you can. You like me for my intelligence in spite of what you say about men and women——"

"I wouldn't care for your intelligence if I were not in——"

"Duane, stop, please!"

"In danger," he continued blandly, "of proving my proposition."

"You are insufferable. I am as intelligent as you."

"I know it, but it wouldn't attract me unless——"

"It ought to," she said hastily. "And, Duane, I'm going to make you take me into account. I'm going to exercise a man's privilege with you by—by saying frankly—several things——"

"What things?"

The amused mockery in his voice gave her courage.

"For one thing, I'm going to tell you that people—gossip—that there are—are——"

"Rumours?" he asked in pretended anxiety.

"Yes… . About you and—of course they are silly and contemptible; but what's the use of being attentive enough to a woman—careless enough to give colour to them?"

After an interval he said: "Perhaps you'll tell me who beside myself these rumours concern?"

"You know, don't you?"

"There might be several," he said coolly. "Who is it?"

For a moment a tiny flash of anger made her cheeks hot. Then she said:

"You know perfectly well it's Rosalie. I think we have become good enough comrades for me to use a man's privilege——"

"Men wouldn't permit themselves that sort of privilege," he said, laughing.

"Aren't men frank with their friends?" she demanded hotly.

"About as frank as women."

"I thought—" She hesitated, tingling with the old desire to hurt him, flick him in the raw, make him wince in his exasperating complacency. Then, "I've said it anyhow. I'm trying to show an interest in you—as you asked me to do——"

He turned in the darkness, caught her hand:

"You dear little thing," he whispered, laughing.

Chapter 6 ADRIFT

During the week the guests at Roya-Neh were left very much to their own devices. Nobody was asked to do anything; there were several good enough horses at their disposal, two motor cars, a power-boat, canoes, rods, and tennis courts and golf links. The chances are they wanted sea-bathing. Inland guests usually do.

Scott Seagrave, however, concerned himself little about his guests. All day long he moused about his new estate, field-glasses dangling, cap on the back of his head, pockets bulging with untidy odds and ends until the increasing carelessness of his attire and manners moved Kathleen Severn to protest.

"I don't know what is the matter with you, Scott," she said. "You were always such a fastidious boy—even dandified. Doesn't anybody ever cut your hair? Doesn't somebody keep your clothes in order?"

"Yes, but I tear 'em again," he replied, carefully examining a small dark-red newt which he held in the palm of one hand. "I say, Kathleen, look at this little creature. I was messing about under the ledges along Hurryon Brook, and found this amphibious gentleman occupying the ground-floor apartment of a flat stone."

Kathleen craned her dainty neck over the shoulder of his ragged shooting coat.

"He's red enough to be poisonous, isn't he? Oh, do be careful!"

"It's only a young newt. Take him in your hand; he's cool and clammy and rather agreeable."

"Scott, I won't touch him!"

"Yes, you will!" He caught her by the arm; "I'm going to teach you not to be afraid of things outdoors. This lizard-like thing is perfectly harmless. Hold out your hand!"

"Oh, Scott, don't make me——"

"Yes, I will. I thought you and I were going to be in thorough accord and sympathy and everything else."

"Yes, but you mustn't bully me."

"I'm not. I merely want you to get over your absurd fear of live things, so that you and I can really enjoy ourselves. You said you would, Kathleen."

"Can't we be in perfect sympathy and roam about and—and everything, unless I touch such things?"

He said reproachfully, balancing the little creature on his palm: "The fun is in being perfectly confident and fearless. You have no idea how I like all these things. You said you were going to like 'em, too."

"I do—rather."

"Then take this one and pet it."

She glanced at the boy beside her, realising how completely their former relations were changing.

Long ago she had given all her heart to the Seagrave children—all the unspent passion in her had become an unswerving devotion to them. And now, a woman still young, the devotion remained, but time was modifying it in a manner sometimes disquieting. She tried not to remember that now, in Scott, she had a man to deal with, and tried in vain; and dealt with him weakly, and he was beginning to do with her as he pleased.

"You do like to bully me, don't you?" she said.

"I only want you to like to do what I like to do."

She stood silent a moment, then, with a shudder, held out her hand, fingers rigid and wide apart.

"Oh!" she protested, as he placed the small dark-red amphibian on the palm, where it crinkled up and lowered its head.

"That's the idea!" he said, delighted. "Here, I'll take it now. Some day you'll be able to handle snakes if you'll only have patience."

"But I don't want to." She stood holding out the contaminated hand for a moment, then dropped on her knees and scrubbed it vigorously in the brook.

"You see," said Scott, squatting cheerfully beside her, "you and I don't yet begin to realise the pleasure that there is in these woods and streams—hidden and waiting for us to discover it. I wouldn't bother with any other woman, but you've always liked what I like, and its half the fun in having you see these things. Look here, Kathleen, I'm keeping a book of field notes." He extracted from his stuffed pockets a small leather-covered book, fished out a stylograph, and wrote the date while she watched over his shoulder.

"Discovered what seems to be a small dark-red newt under a stone near Hurryon Brook. Couldn't make it bite me, so let Kathleen hold it. Query: Is it a land or water lizard, a salamander, or a newt; and what does it feed on and where does it deposit its eggs?"

Kathleen's violet eyes wandered to the written page opposite.

"Did you really see an otter, Scott?"

"Yes, I did!" he exclaimed. "Out in the Gray Water, swimming like a dog. That was yesterday afternoon. It's a scarce creature here. I'll tell you what, Kathleen; we'll take our luncheon and go out and spend the day watching for it."

"No," she said, drying her hands on her handkerchief, "I can't spend every minute of the day with you. Ask some other woman."

"What other woman?" She was gazing out at the sunlit ripples. A little unquiet thrill leaped through her veins, but she went on carelessly:

"Take some pretty woman out with you. There are several here——"

"Pretty woman," he repeated. "Do you think that's the only reason I want you to come?"

"Only reason? What a silly thing to say, Scott. I am not a pretty woman to you—in that sense——"

"You are the prettiest I ever saw," he said, looking at her; and again the unquiet thrill ran like lightning through her veins. But she only laughed carelessly and said:

"Oh, of course, Geraldine and I expect our big brother to say such things."

"It has nothing to do with Geraldine or with brothers," he said doggedly. She strove to laugh, caught his gaze, and, discountenanced, turned toward the stream.

"We can cross on the stepping stones," she suggested. And after a moment: "Are you coming?"

"See here, Kathleen," he said, "you're not acting squarely with me."

"What do you mean?"

"No, you're not. I'm a man, and you know it."

"Of course you are, Scott."

"Then I wish you'd recognise it. What's the use of mortifying me when I act—speak—behave as any man behaves who—who—is—fond of a—person."

"But I don't mean to—to mortify you. What have I done?"

He dug his hands into the pockets of his riding breeches, took two or three short turns along the bank, came back to where she was standing.

"You probably don't remember," he said, "one night this spring when—when—" He stopped short. The vivid tint in her cheeks was his answer—a swift, disconcerting answer to an incomplete question, the remainder of which he himself had scarcely yet analysed.

"Scott, dear," she said steadily, in spite of her softly burning cheeks, "I will be quite honest with you if you wish. I do know what you've been trying to say. I am conscious that you are no longer the boy I could pet and love and caress without embarrassment to either of us. You are a man, but try to remember that I am several years older——"

"Does that matter!" he burst out.

"Yes, dear, it does… . I care for you—and Geraldine—more than for anybody in the world. I understand your loyalty to me, Scott, and I—I love it. But don't confuse it with any serious sentiment."

"I do care seriously."

"You make me very happy. Care for me very, very seriously; I want you to; I—I need it. But don't mistake the kind of affection that we have for each other for anything deeper, will you?"

"Don't you want to care for me—that way?"

"Not that way, Scott."

"Why?"

"I've told you. I am so much older——"

"Couldn't you, all the same?"

She was trembling inwardly. She leaned against a white birch-tree and passed one hand across her eyes and upward through the thick burnished hair.

"No, I couldn't," she whispered.

The boy walked to the edge of the brook. Past him hurried the sun-tipped ripples; under them, in irregular wedge formation, little ones ahead, big ones in the rear, lay a school of trout, wavering silhouettes of amber against the bottom sands.

One arm encircling the birch-tree, she looked after him in silence, waiting. And after a while he turned and came back to her:

"I suppose you knew I fell in love with you that night when—when—you remember, don't you?"

She did not answer.

"I don't know how it happened," he said: "something about you did it. I want to say that I've loved you ever since. It's made me serious… . I haven't bothered with girls since. You are the only woman who interests me. I think about you most of the time when I'm not doing something else," he explained naïvely. "I know perfectly well I'm in love with you because I don't dare touch you—and I've never thought of—of kissing you good-night as we used to before that night last spring… . You remember that we didn't do it that night, don't you?"

Still no answer, and Kathleen's delicate, blue-veined hands were clenched at her sides and her breath came irregularly.

"That was the reason," he said. "I don't know how I've found courage to tell you. I've often been afraid you would laugh at me if I told you… . If it's only our ages—you seem as young as I do… ." He looked up, hopefully; but she made no response.

The boy drew a long breath.

"I love you, anyway," he said. "And that's how it is."

She neither spoke nor stirred.

"I suppose," he went on, "because I was such a beast of a boy, you can never forget it."

"You were the sweetest, the best—" Her voice broke; she swung about, moved away a few paces, stood still. When he halted behind her she turned.

"Dearest," she said tremulously, "let me give you what I can—love, as always—solicitude, companionship, deep sympathy in your pleasures, deep interest in your amusements… . Don't ask for more; don't think that you want more. Don't try to change the loyalty and love you have always had for something you—neither of us understand—neither of us ought to desire—or even think of——"

"Why?"

"Can't you understand? Even if I were not too old in years, I dare not give up what I have of you and Geraldine for this new—for anything more hazardous… . Suppose it were so—that I could venture to think I cared for you that way? What might I put in peril?—Geraldine's affection for me—perhaps her relations with you… . And the world is cynical, Scott, and you are wealthy even among very rich men, and I was your paid guardian—quite penniless—engaged to care for and instruct——"

"Don't say such things!" he said angrily.

"The world would say them—your friends—perhaps Geraldine might be led to doubt—Oh, Scott, dear, I know, I know! And above all—I am afraid. There are too many years between us—too many blessed memories of my children to risk… . Don't try to make me care for you in any other way."

A quick flame leaped in his eyes.

"Could I?"

"No!" she exclaimed, appalled.

"Then why do you ask me not to try? I believe I could!"

"You cannot! You cannot, believe me. Won't you believe me? It must not happen; it is all wrong—in every way——"

He stood looking at her with a new expression on his face.

"If you are so alarmed," he said slowly, "you must have already thought about it. You'll think about it now, anyway."

"We are both going to forget it. Promise that you will!" She added hurriedly: "Drop my hand, please; there is Geraldine—and Mr. Grandcourt, too!… Tell me—do my eyes look queer? Are they red and horrid?… Don't look at me that way. For goodness' sake, don't display any personal interest in me. Go and turn over some flat rocks and find some lizards!"

Geraldine, bare-armed and short-skirted, came swinging along the woodland path, Delancy Grandcourt dogging her heels, as usual, carrying a pair of rods and catching the artificial flies in the bushes at every step.

"We're all out of trout at the house!" she called across to the stream to her brother. "Jack Dysart is fishing down the creek with Naïda and Sylvia. Where is Duane?"

"Somewhere around, I suppose," replied Scott sulkily. His sister took a running jump, cleared the bank, and alighted on a rock in the stream. Poised there she looked back at Grandcourt, laughed, sprang forward from stone to stone, and leaped to the moss beside Kathleen.

"Hello, dear!" she nodded. "Where did you cross? And where is Duane?"

"We crossed by the log bridge below," replied Kathleen. She added: "Duane left us half an hour ago. Wasn't it half an hour ago, Scott?" with a rising inflection that conveyed something of warning, something of an appeal. But on Scott's face the sullen disconcerted expression had not entirely faded, and his sister inspected him curiously. Then without knowing why, exactly, she turned and looked at Kathleen.

There was a subdued and dewy brilliancy in Kathleen's eyes, a bright freshness to her cheeks, radiantly and absurdly youthful; and something else—something so indefinable, so subtle, that only another woman's instinct might divine it—something invisible and inward, which transfigured her with a youthful loveliness almost startling.

They looked at one another. Geraldine, conscious of something she could not understand, glanced again at her sulky brother.

"What's amiss, Scott?" she asked. "Has anything gone wrong anywhere?"

Scott, pretending to be very busy untangling Grandcourt's cast from the branches of a lusty young birch, said, "No, of course not," and the girl, wondering, turned to Kathleen, who sustained her questioning eyes without a tremor.

"What's the matter with Scott?" asked his sister. "He's the guiltiest-looking man—why, it's absurd, Kathleen! Upon my word, the boy is blushing!"

"What!" exclaimed Scott so furiously that everybody laughed. And presently Geraldine asked again where Duane was.

"Rosalie Dysart is canoeing on the Gray Water, and she hailed him and he left us and went down to the river," said Kathleen carelessly.

"Did Duane join her?"

"I think so—" She hesitated, watching Geraldine's sombre eyes. "I really don't know," she added. And, in a lower voice: "I wish either Duane or Rosalie would go. They certainly are behaving unwisely."

Geraldine turned and looked through the woods toward the Gray Water.

"It's their affair," she said curtly. "I've got to make Delancy fish or we won't have enough trout for luncheon. Scott!" calling to her brother, "your horrid trout won't rise this morning. For goodness' sake, try to catch something beside lizards and water-beetles!"

For a moment she stood looking around her, as though perplexed and preoccupied. There was sunlight on the glade and on the ripples, but the daylight seemed to have become duller to her.

She walked up-stream for a little distance before she noticed Grandcourt plodding faithfully at her heels.

"Oh!" she said impatiently, "I thought you were fishing. You must catch something, you know, or we'll all go hungry."

"Nothing bites on these bally flies," he explained.

"Nothing bites because your flies are usually caught in a tree-top. Trout are not arboreal. I'm ashamed of you, Delancy. If you can't keep your line free in the woods"—she hesitated, then reddening a little under her tan—"you had better go and get a canoe and find Duane Mallett and help him catch—something worth while."

"Don't you want me to stay with you?" asked the big, awkward fellow appealingly. "There's no fun in being with Rosalie and Duane."

"No, I don't. Look! Your flies are in that bush! Untangle them and go to the Gray Water."

"Won't you come, too, Miss Seagrave?"

"No; I'm going back to the house… . And don't you dare return without a decent brace of trout."

"All right," he said resignedly. The midges bothered him; he mopped his red face, tugged at the line, but the flies were fast in a hazel bush.

"Damn this sort of thing," he muttered, looking piteously after Geraldine. She was already far away among the trees, skirts wrapped close to avoid briers, big straw hat dangling in one hand.

As she walked toward the Sachem's Gate she was swinging her hat and singing, apparently as unconcernedly as though care rested lightly upon her young shoulders.

Out on the high-road a number of her guests whizzed past in one of Scott's motors; there came a swift hail, a gust of wind-blown laughter, and the car was gone in a whirl of dust. She stood in the road watching it recede, then walked forward again toward the house.

Her accustomed elasticity appeared to have left her; the sun was becoming oppressive; her white-shod feet dragged a little, which was so unusual that she straightened her head and shoulders with nervous abruptness.

"What on earth is the matter with me?" she said, half aloud, to herself.

During these last two months, and apparently apropos of nothing at all, an unaccustomed sense of depression sometimes crept upon her.

At first she disregarded it as the purely physical lassitude of spring, but now it was beginning to disquiet her. Once a hazy suspicion took shape—hastily dismissed—that some sense, some temporarily suppressed desire was troubling her. The same idea had awakened again that evening on the terrace when the faint odour from the decanter attracted her. And again she suspected, and shrank away into herself, shocked, frightened, surprised, yet still defiantly incredulous.

Yet her suspicions had been correct. It was habit, disturbed by the tardiness of accustomed tribute, that stirred at moments, demanding recognition.

Since that night in early spring when fear and horror of herself had suddenly checked a custom which she had hitherto supposed to be nothing worse than foolish, twice—at times inadvertently, at times deliberately—she had sought relief from sleepless nervousness and this new depression in the old and apparently harmless manner of her girlhood. For weeks now she had exercised little control of herself, feeling immune, yet it scared her a little to recognise again in herself the restless premonitions of desire. For here, in the sunshine of the forest-bordered highway, that same dull uneasiness was stirring once more.

It was true, other things had stirred her to uneasiness that morning—an indefinable impression concerning Kathleen—a definite one which concerned Rosalie Dysart and Duane, and which began to exasperate her.

All her elasticity was gone now; tired without reason, she plodded on along the road in her little white shoes, head bent, brown eyes brooding, striving to fix her wandering thoughts on Duane Mallett to fight down the threatening murmurs of a peril still scarcely comprehended.

"Anyway," she said half aloud, "even if I ever could care for him, I dare not let myself do it with this absurd inclination always threatening me."

She had said it! Scarcely yet understanding the purport of her own words, yet electrified, glaringly enlightened by them, she halted. A confused sense that something vital had occurred in her life stilled her heart and her breathing together.

After a moment she straightened up and walked forward, turned across the lawn and into the syringa-bordered drive.

There was nobody in the terrace except Bunbury Gray in a brilliant waistcoat, who sat smoking a very large faïence pipe and reading a sporting magazine. He got up with alacrity when he saw her, fetched her a big wicker chair, evidently inclined to let her divert him.

"Oh, I'm not going to," she observed, sinking into the cushions. For a moment she felt rather limp, then a quiver passed through her, tightening the relaxed nerves.

"Bunbury," she said, "do you know any men who ever get tired of idleness and clothes and their neighbours' wives?"

"Sure," he said, surprised, "I get tired of those things all right. I've got enough of this tailor, for example," looking at his trousers. "I'm tired of idleness, too. Shall we do something and forget the cut of my clothes?"

"What do you do when you tire of people and things?"

"Change partners or go away. That's easy."

"You can't change yourself—or go away from yourself."

"But I don't get tired of myself," he explained in astonishment. She regarded him curiously from the depths of her wicker chair.

"Bunbury, do you remember when we were engaged?"

He grinned. "Rather. I wouldn't mind being it again."

"Engaged?"

"Sure thing. Will you take me on again, Geraldine?"

"I thought you cared for Sylvia Quest."

"I do, but I can stop it."

She still regarded him with brown-eyed curiosity.

"Didn't you really tire of our engagement?"

"You did. You said that my tailor is the vital part of me."

She laughed. "Well, you are only a carefully groomed combination of New York good form and good nature, aren't you?"

"I don't know. That's rather rough, isn't it? Or do you really mean it that way?"

"No, Bunny dear. I only mean that you're like the others. All the men I know are about the same sort. You all wear too many ties and waistcoats; you are, and say, and do too many kinds of fashionable things. You play too much tennis, drink too many pegs, gamble too much, ride and drive too much. You all have too much and too many—if you understand that! You ask too much and you give too little; you say too much which means too little. Is there none among you who knows something that amounts to something, and how to say it and do it?"

"What the deuce are you driving at, Geraldine?" he asked, bewildered.

"I'm just tired and irritable, Bunny, and I'm taking it out on you… . Because you were always kind—and even when foolish you were often considerate… . That's a new waistcoat, isn't it?"

"Well—I don't—know," he began, perplexed and suspicious, but she cut him short with a light little laugh and reached out to pat his hand.

"Don't mind me. You know I like you… . I'm only bored with your species. What do you do when you don't know what to do, Bunny?"

"Take a peg," he said, brightening up. "Do you—shall I call somebody——"

"No, please."

She extended her slim limbs and crossed her feet. Lying still there in the sunshine, arms crooked behind her head, she gazed straight out ahead. Light breezes lifted her soft bright hair; the same zephyrs bore from tennis courts on the east the far laughter and calling of the unseen players.

"Who are they?" she inquired.

"The Pink 'uns, Naïda, and Jack Dysart. There's ten up on every set," he added, "and I've side obligations with Rosalie and Duane. Take you on if you like; odds are on the Pink 'uns. Or I'll get a lump of sugar and we can play 'Fly Loo.'"

"No, thanks."

A few moments later she said:

"Do you know, somehow, recently, the forest world—all this pretty place of lakes and trees—" waving her arm toward the horizon—"seems to be tarnished with the hard living and empty thinking of the people I have brought into it… . I include myself. The region is redolent of money and the things it buys. I had a better time before I had any or heard about it."

"Why, you've always had it——"

"But I didn't know it. I'd like to give mine away and do something for a living."

"Oh, every girl has that notion once in a lifetime."

"Have they?" she asked.

"Sure. It's hysteria. I had it myself once. But I found I could keep busy enough doing nothing without presenting my income to the Senegambians and spending life in a Wall Street office. Of course if I had a pretty fancy for the artistic and useful—as Duane Mallett has—I suppose I'd get busy and paint things and sell 'em by the perspiration of my brow——"

She said disdainfully: "If you were never any busier than Duane, you wouldn't be very busy."

"I don't know. Duane seems to keep at it, even here, doesn't he?"

She looked up in surprise: "Duane hasn't done any work since he's been here, has he?"

"Didn't you know? What do you suppose he's about every morning?"

"He's about—Rosalie," she said coolly. "I've never seen any colour box or easel in their outfit."

"Oh, he keeps his traps at Hurryon Lodge. He's made a lot of sketches. I saw several at the Lodge. And he's doing a big canvas of Rosalie down there, too."

"At Hurryon Lodge?"

"Yes. Miller lets them have the garret for a studio."

"I didn't know that," she said slowly.

"Didn't you? People are rather catty about it."

"Catty?"

Sheer surprise silenced her for a while, then hurt curiosity drove her to questions; but little Bunbury didn't know much more about the matter, merely shrugging his shoulders and saying: "It's casual but it's all right."

Later the tennis players, sunburned and perspiring, came swinging up from the courts on their way to the showers. Bunbury began to settle his obligations; Naïda and the Pink 'uns went indoors; Jack Dysart, handsome, dishevelled, sat down beside Geraldine, fastening his sleeves.

"I lost twice twenty," he observed. "Bunny is in fifty, I believe. Duane and Rosalie lose."

"Is that all you care about the game?" she asked with a note of contempt in her voice.

"Oh, it's good for one's health," he said.

"So is confession, but there's no sport in it. Tell me, Mr. Dysart, don't you play any game for it's own sake?"

"Two, mademoiselle," he said politely.

"What two?"

"Chess is one."

"What is the other?"

"Love," he replied, smiling at her so blandly that she laughed. Then she thought of Rosalie, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say something impudent. But "Do you do that game very well?" was all she said.

"Would you care to judge how well I do it?"

"As umpire? Yes, if you like."

He said: "We will umpire our own game, Miss Seagrave."

"Oh, we couldn't do that, could we? We couldn't play and umpire, too." Suddenly the thought of Duane and Rosalie turned her bitter and she said:

"We'll have two perfectly disinterested umpires. I choose your wife for one. Whom do you choose?"

Over his handsome face the slightest muscular change passed, but far from wincing he nodded coolly.

"One umpire is enough," he said. "When our game is well on you may ask Rosalie to judge how well I've done it—if you care to."

The bright smile she wore changed. Her face was now only a lovely dark-eyed mask, behind which her thoughts had suddenly begun racing—wild little thoughts, all tumult and confusion, all trembling, too, with some scarcely understood hurt lashing them to recklessness.

"We'll have two umpires," she insisted, scarcely knowing what she said. "I'll choose Duane for the second. He and Rosalie ought to be able to agree on the result of our game."

Dysart turned his head away leisurely, then looked around again unsmiling.

"Two umpires? Soit! But that means you consent to play."

"Play?"

"Certainly."

"With you?"

"With me."

"I'll consider it… . Do you know we have been talking utter nonsense?"

"That's part of the game."

"Oh, then—do you assume that the—the game has already begun?"

"It usually opens that way, I believe."

"And where does it end, Mr. Dysart?"

"That is for you to say," he replied in a lower voice.

"Oh! And what are the rules?"

"The player who first falls really in love loses. There are no stakes. We play as sportsmen—for the game's sake. Is it understood?"

She hesitated, smiling, a little excited, a little interested in the way he put things.

At that same moment, across the lawn, Rosalie and Duane strolled into view. She saw them, and with a nervous movement, almost involuntary, she turned her back on them.

Neither she nor Dysart spoke. She gazed very steadily at the horizon, as though there were sounds beyond the green world's rim. A few seconds later a shadow fell over the terrace at her feet—two shadows intermingled. She saw them on the grass at her feet, then quietly lifted her head.

"We caught no trout," said Rosalie, sitting down on the arm of the chair that Duane drew forward. "I fussed about in that canoe until Duane came along, and then we went in swimming."

"Swimming?" repeated Geraldine, dumfounded.

Rosalie balanced herself serenely on her chair-arm.

"Oh, we often do that."

"Swim—where?"

"Why across the Gray Water, child!"

"But—there are no bath houses——"

Rosalie laughed outright.

"Quite Arcadian, isn't it? Duane has the forest on one side of the Gray Water for a dressing-room, and I the forest on the other side. Then we swim out and shake hands in the middle. Our bathing dresses are drying on Miller's lawn. Please do tell me somebody is scandalised. I've done my best to brighten up this house party."

Dysart, really discountenanced, but not showing it, lighted a cigarette and asked pleasantly if the water was agreeable.

"It's magnificent," said Duane; "it was like diving into a lake of iced Apollinaris. Geraldine, why on earth don't you build some bath houses on the Gray Waters?"

Perhaps she had not heard his question. She began to talk very animatedly to Rosalie about several matters of no consequence. Dysart rose, stretched his sunburned arms with over-elaborate ease, tossed away his cigarette, picked up his tennis bat, and said: "See you at luncheon. Are you coming, Rosalie?"

"In a moment, Jack." She went on talking inconsequences to Geraldine; her husband waited, exchanging a remark or two with Duane in his easy, self-possessed fashion.

"Dear," said Rosalie at last to Geraldine, "I must run away and dry my hair. How did we come out at tennis, Jack?"

"All to the bad," he replied serenely, and nodding to Geraldine and Duane he entered the house, his young wife strolling beside him and twisting up her wet hair.

Duane seated himself and crossed his lank legs, ready for an amiable chat before he retired to dress for luncheon; but Geraldine did not even look toward him. She was lying deep in the chair, apparently relaxed and limp; but every nerve in her was at tension, every delicate muscle taut and rigid, and in her heart was anger unutterable, and close, very close to the lids which shadowed with their long fringe the brown eyes' velvet, were tears.

"What have you been up to all the morning?" he asked. "Did you try the fishing?"

"Yes."

"Anything doing?"

"No."

"I thought they wouldn't rise. It's too clear and hot. That's why I didn't keep on with Kathleen and Scott. Two are enough on bright water. Don't you think so?"

She said nothing.

"Besides," he added, "I knew you had old Grandcourt running close at heel and that made four rods on Hurryon. So what was the use of my joining in?"

She made no reply.

"You didn't mind, did you?" he asked carelessly.

"No."

"Oh, all right," he nodded, not feeling much relieved.

The strange blind anger still possessed her. She lay there immobile, expressionless, enduring it, not trying even to think why; yet her anger was rising against him, and it surged, receded helplessly, flushed her veins again till they tingled. But her lids remained closed; the lashes rested softly on the curve of her cheeks; not a tremor touched her face.

"I am wondering whether you are feeling all right," he ventured uneasily, conscious of the tension between them.

With an effort she took command of herself.

"The sun was rather hot. It's a headache; I walked back by the road."

"With the faithful one?"

"No," she said evenly, "Mr. Grandcourt remained to fish."

"He went to worship and remained to fish," said Duane, laughing. The girl lifted her face to look at him—a white little face so strange that the humour died out in his eyes.

"He's a good deal of a man," she said. "It's one of my few pleasant memories of this year—Mr. Grandcourt's niceness to me—and to all women."

She set her elbow on the chair's edge and rested her cheek in her hollowed hand. Her gaze had become remote once more.

"I didn't know you took him so seriously," he said in a low voice. "I'm sorry, Geraldine."

All her composure had returned. She lifted her eyes insolently.

"Sorry for what?"

"For speaking as I did."

"Oh, I don't mind. I thought you might be sorry for yourself."

"Myself?"

"And your neighbour's wife," she added.

"Well, what about myself and my neighbour's wife?"

"I'm not familiar with such matters." Her face did not change, but the burning anger suddenly welled up in her again. "I don't know anything about such affairs, but if you think I ought to I might try to learn." She laughed and leaned back into the depths of her chair. "You and I are such intimate friends it's a shame I shouldn't understand and sympathise with what most interests you."

He remained silent, gazing down at his shadow on the grass, hands clasped loosely between his knees. She strove to study him calmly; her mind was chaos; only the desire to hurt him persisted, rendered sterile by the confused tumult of her thoughts.

Presently, looking up:

"Do you doubt that things are not right between—my neighbour's wife—and me?" he inquired.

"The matter doesn't interest me."

"Doesn't it?"

"No."

"Then I have misunderstood you. What is the matter that does interest you, Geraldine?"

She made no reply.

He said, carelessly good-humoured: "I like women. It's curious that they know it instinctively, because when they're bored or lonely they drift toward me… . Lonely women are always adrift, Geraldine. There seems to be some current that sets in toward me; it catches them and they drift in, linger, and drift on. I seem to be the first port they anchor in… . Then a day comes when they are gone—drifting on at hazard through the years——"

"Wiser for their experience at Port Mallett?"

"Perhaps. But not sadder, I think."

"A woman adrift has no regrets," she said with contempt.

"Wrong. A woman who is in love has none."

"That is what I mean. The hospitality of Port Mallett ought to leave them with no regrets."

He laughed. "But they are not loved," he said. "They know it. That's why they drift on."

She turned on him white and tremulous.

"Haven't you even the excuse of caring for her?"

"Who?"

"A neighbour's wife—who comes drifting into your hospitable haven!"

"I don't pretend to love her, if that is what you mean," he said pleasantly.

"Then you make her believe it—and that's dastardly!"

"Oh, no. Women don't love unless made love to. You've only read that in books."

She said a little breathlessly: "You are right. I know men and women only through books. It's time I learned for myself."

Chapter 7 TOGETHER

The end of June and of the house party at Roya-Neh was now near at hand, and both were to close with a moonlight fête and dance in the forest, invitations having been sent to distant neighbours who had been entertaining similar gatherings at Iron Hill and Cloudy Mountain—the Grays, Beekmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts.

Silks and satins, shoe buckles and powdered hair usually mark the high tide of imaginative originality among this sort of people. So it was to be the inevitable Louis XVI fête—or as near to it as attenuated, artistic intelligence could manage, and they altered Duane's very clever and correct sketches to suit themselves, careless of anachronism, and sent the dainty water-colour drawings to town in order that those who sweat and sew in the perfumed ateliers of Fifth Avenue might use them as models.

"The fun—if there's any in dressing up—ought to lie in making your own costumes," observed Duane. But nobody displayed any inclination to do so. And now, on hurry orders, the sewers in the hot Fifth Avenue ateliers sewed faster. Silken and satin costumes, paste jewelry and property small-swords were arriving by express; maids flew about the house at Roya-Neh, trying on, fussing with lace and ribbon, bodice and flowered pannier, altering, retrimming, adjusting. Their mistresses met in one another's bedrooms for mysterious confabs over head-dress and coiffure, lace scarf, and petticoat.

As for the men, they surreptitiously tried on their embroidered coats and breeches, admired themselves in secrecy, and let it go at that, returning with embarrassed relief to cards, tennis, and the various forms of amiable idleness to which they were accustomed. Only Englishmen can masquerade seriously.

Later, however, the men were compelled to pay some semblance of attention to the general preparations, assemble their foot-gear, head-gear, stars, orders, sashes, swords, and try them on for Duane Mallett—to that young man's unconcealed dissatisfaction.

"You certainly resemble a scratch opera chorus," he observed after passing in review the sheepish line-up in his room. "Delancy, you're the limit as a Black Mousquetier—and, by the way, there weren't any in the reign of Louis XVI, so perhaps that evens up matters. Dysart is the only man who looks the real thing—or would if he'd remove that monocle. As for Bunny and the Pink 'un, they ought to be in vaudeville singing la-la-la."

"That's really a compliment to our legs," observed Reggie Wye to Bunbury Gray, flourishing his property sword and gracefully performing a pas seul à la Gênée.

Dysart, who had been sullen all day, regarded them morosely.

Scott Seagrave, in his conventional abbé's costume of black and white, excessively bored, stood by the window trying to catch a glimpse of the lake to see whether any decent fish were breaking, while Scott walked around him critically, not much edified by his costume or the way he wore it.

"You're a sad and self-conscious-looking bunch," he concluded. "Scott, I suppose you'll insist on wearing your mustache and eyeglasses."

"You bet," said Scott simply.

"All right. And kindly beat it. I want to try on my own plumage in peace."

So the costumed ones trooped off to their own quarters with the half-ashamed smirk usually worn by the American male who has persuaded himself to frivolity. Delancy Grandcourt tramped away down the hall banging his big sword, jingling his spurs, and flapping his loose boots. The Pink 'un and Bunbury Gray slunk off into obscurity, and Scott wandered back through the long hall until a black-and-red tiger moth attracted his attention, and he forgot his annoying appearance in frantic efforts to capture the brilliant moth.

Dysart, who had been left alone with Duane in the latter's room, contemplated himself sullenly in the mirror while Duane, seated on the window sill, waited for him to go.

"You think I ought to eliminate my eye-glass?" asked Dysart, still inspecting himself.

"Yes, in deference to the conventional prejudice of the times. Nobody wore 'em at that period."

"You seem to be a stickler for convention—of the Louis XVI sort more than for the XIX century variety," remarked Dysart with a sneer.

Duane looked up from his bored contemplation of the rug.

"You think I'm unconventional?" he asked with a smile.

"I believe I suggested something of the sort to my wife the other day."

"Ah," said Duane blandly, "does she agree with you, Dysart?"

"No doubt she does, because your tendencies toward the unconventional have been the subject of unpleasant comment recently."

"By some of your débutante conquests? You mustn't believe all they tell you."

"My own eyes and ears are competent witnesses. Do you understand me now?"

"No. Neither do you. Don't rely on such witnesses, Dysart; they lack character to corroborate them. Ask your wife to confirm me—if you ever find time enough to ask her anything."

"That's a damned impudent thing to say," returned Dysart, staring at him. A dull red stained his face, then faded.

Duane's eyebrows went up—just a shade—yet so insolently that the other stepped forward, the corners of his mouth white and twitching.

"I can speak more plainly," he said. "If you can't appreciate a pleasant hint I can easily accommodate you with the alternative."

There was silence for a moment.

"Dysart," said Duane, "what chance do you think you'd have in landing the—alternative?"

"That concerns me," said Dysart; and the pinched muscles around the mouth grew whiter and the man looked suddenly older. Duane had never before noticed how gray his temples were growing.

He said in a voice under perfect control: "You're right; the chances you care to take with me concern yourself. As for your ill-humour, I suppose I have earned it by being attentive to your wife. What is it you wish; that my hitherto very harmless attentions should cease?"

"Yes," said Dysart, and his square jaw quivered.

"Well, they won't. It takes the sort of man you are to strike classical attitudes. And, absurd as the paradox appears—and even taking into consideration your notorious indifference to your wife and your rather silly reputation as a débutante chaser—I do believe, Dysart, that, deep inside of you somewhere, there is enough latent decency to have inspired this resentment toward me—a resentment perfectly natural in any man who acts squarely toward his wife—but rather far fetched in your case."

Dysart, pallid, menacing, laid his hand on a chair.

The other laughed.

"As bad as that?" he asked contemptuously. "Don't do it, Dysart; it isn't in your line. You're only a good-looking, popular, dancing man; all your deviltry is in your legs, and I'd be obliged if they'd presently waft you out of my room."

"I suppose," said Dysart unsteadily, "that you would make yourself noisily ridiculous if I knocked your blackguard head off."

"It's only in novels that people are knocked down successfully and artistically," admitted the other. "In everyday life they resent it. Yes—if you do anything hysterical there will be some sort of a disgraceful noise, I suppose. It's shoot or suit in these unromantic days, Dysart, otherwise the newspapers laugh at you."

Dysart's well-shaped fists relaxed, the chair dropped, but even when he let it go murder danced in his eyes.

"Yes," he said, "it's shoot or a suit in these days; you're perfectly right, Mallett. And we'll let it go at that for the present."

He stood a moment, straight, handsome, his clearly stencilled eyebrows knitted, watching Duane. Whatever in the man's face and figure was usually colourless, unaccented, irresolute, disappeared as he glared rigidly at the other.

For there is no resentment like the resentment of the neglectful, no jealousy like the jealousy of the faithless.

"To resume, in plain English," he said, "keep away from my wife, Mallett. You comprehend that, don't you?"

"Perfectly. Now get out!"

Dysart hesitated for the fraction of a second longer, as though perhaps expecting further reply, then turned on his heel and walked out.

Later, while Duane was examining his own costume preparatory to trying it on, Scott Seagrave's spectacled and freckled visage protruded into the room. He knocked as an after-thought.

"Rosalie sent me. She's dressed in all her gimcracks and wants your expert opinion. I've got to go——"

"Where is she?"

"In her room. I'm going out to the hatchery with Kathleen——"

"Come and see Rosalie with me, first," said Duane, passing his arm through Scott's and steering him down the sunny corridor.

When they knocked, Mrs. Dysart admitted them, revealing herself in full costume, painted and powdered, the blinds pulled down, and the electric lights burning behind their rosy shades.

"It's my final dress rehearsal," she explained. "Mr. Mallett, is my hair sufficiently à la Lamballe to suit you?"

"Yes, it is. You're a perfect little porcelain figurette! There's not an anachronism in you or your make-up. How did you do it?"

"I merely stuck like grim death to your sketches," she said demurely.

Scott eyed her without particular interest. "Very corking," he said vaguely, "but I've got to go down to the hatchery with Kathleen, so you won't mind if I leave——"

He closed the door behind him before anybody could speak. Duane moved toward the door.

"It's a charming costume," he said, "and most charmingly worn; your hair is exactly right—not too much powder, you know——"

"Where shall I put my patch? Here?"

"Higher."

"Here?"

He came back to the centre of the room where she stood.

"Here," he said, indenting the firm, cool ivory skin with one finger, "and here. Wear two."

"And my rings—do you think that my fingers are overloaded?" She held out her fascinating smooth little hands. He supported them on his upturned palms and examined the gems critically.

They talked for a few moments about the rings, then: "Thank you so much," she said, with a carelessly friendly pressure. "How about my shoes? Are the buckles of the period?"

One of her hands encountered his at hazard, lingered, dropped, the fingers still linked lightly in his. She bent over, knees straight, and lifted the hem of her petticoat, displaying her Louis XVI footwear.

"Shoes and buckles are all right," he said; "faultless, true to the period—very fascinating… . I've got to go—one or two things to do——"

They examined the shoes for some time in silence; still bending over she turned her dainty head and looked around and up at him. There was a moment's pause, then he kissed her.

"I was afraid you'd do that—some day," she said, straightening up and stepping back one pace, so that their linked hands now hung pendant between them.

"I was sure of it, too," he said. "Now I think I'd better go—as all things are en règle, even the kiss, which was classical—pure—Louis XVI… . Besides, Scott was idiot enough to shut the door. That's Louis XVI, too, but too much realism is never artistic."

"We could open the door again—if that's why you're running away from me."

"What's the use?"

She glanced at the door and then calmly seated herself.

"Do you think that we are together too much?" she asked.

"Hasn't your husband made similar observations?" he replied, laughing.

"It isn't for him to make them."

"Hasn't he objected?"

"He has suddenly and unaccountably become disagreeable enough to make me wish he had some real grounds for his excitement!" she said coolly, and closed her teeth with a little click. She added, between them: "I'm inclined to give him something real to howl about."

He said: "You're adrift. Do you know it?"

"Certainly I know it. Are you prepared to offer salvage? I'm past the need of a pilot."

He smiled. "You haven't drifted very far yet—only as far as Mallett Harbour. That's usually the first port—for derelicts. Anchors are dropped rather frequently there—but, Rosalie, there's no safe mooring except in the home port."

Her pretty, flushed face grew very serious as she looked up questioningly.

"Isn't there an anchorage near you, Duane? Are you quite sure?"

"Why, no, dear, I'm not sure. But let me tell you something: it isn't in me to love again. And that isn't square to you."

After a silence she repeated: "Again? Have you been in love?"

"Yes."

"Are you embittered? I thought only callow fledglings moped."

"If I were embittered I'd offer free anchorage to all comers. That's the fledgling idea—when blighted—be a 'deevil among the weemin,'" he said, laughing.

"You have that hospitable reputation now," she persisted, unsmiling.

"Have I? Judge for yourself then—because no woman I ever knew cares anything for me now."

"You mean that if any of them had anything intimate to remember they'd never remain indifferent?"

"Well—yes."

"They'd either hate you or remember you with a certain tenderness."

"Is that what happens?" he asked, amused.

"I think so," she said thoughtfully… . "As for what you said, you are right, Duane; I am adrift… . You—or a man like you could easily board me—take me in tow. I'm quite sure that something about me signals a pilot; and that keen eyes and bitter tongues have noted it. And I don't care. Nor do I know yet what my capabilities for evil are… . Do you care to—find out?"

"It wouldn't be a square deal to you, Rosalie."

"And—if I don't care whether it's a square deal or not?"

"Why, dear," he said, covering her nervous, pretty hand with both of his, "I'd break your heart in a week."

He laughed, dropped her fingers, stepped back to the door, and, laying his hand on the knob, said evenly:

"That husband of yours is not the sort of man I particularly take to, but I believe he's about the average if you'd care to make him so."

She coloured with surprise. Then something in her scornful eyes inspired him with sudden intuition.

"As a matter of fact," he said lightly, "you care for him still."

"I can very easily prove the contrary," she said, walking slowly up to him, close, closer, until the slight tremor of contact halted her and her soft, irregular breath touched his face.

"What a girl like you needs," he laughed, taking her into his arms, "is a man to hold her this way—every now and then, and"—he kissed her—"tell her she is incomparable—which I cannot truthfully tell you, dear." He released her at arms' length.

"I don't know whose fault it is," he went on: "I don't know whether he still really cares for you in spite of his weak peregrinations to other shrines; but you still care for him. And it's up to you to make him what he can be—the average husband. There are only two kinds, Rosalie, the average and the bad."

She looked straight into his eyes, but the deep, mantling colour belied her audacity.

"Do you know," she said, "that we haven't—lived together for two years?"

"I don't want to know such things," he said gently.

"Well, you do know now. I—am—very much alone. You see I have already become capable of saying anything—and of doing it, too."

There came a reckless glimmer into her eyes; she set her teeth—a trick of hers; the fresh lips parted slightly under her rapid breathing.

"Do you think," she said unevenly, "that I'm going on all my life like this—without anything more than the passing friendship of men to balance the example he sets me?"

"No, I think something is bound to happen, Rosalie. May I suggest what ought to happen?"

She nodded thoughtfully; only the quiver of her lower lip betrayed the tension of self-control.

"Take him back," he said.

"I no longer care for him."

"You are mistaken."

After a moment she said: "I don't think so; truly I don't. All consideration for him has died in me. His conduct doesn't matter—doesn't hurt me any more——"

"Yes, it does. He's just a plain ass—an average ass—ownerless, and, like all asses, convinced that he can take care of himself. Go and put the halter on him again."

"Go—and—what do you mean?"

"Tether him. You did once. It's up to you; it's usually up to a woman when a man wanders untethered. What one woman, or a dozen, can do with a man his wife can do in the same fashion! What won him in the beginning always holds good until he thinks he has won you. Then the average man flourishes his heels. He is doing it. What won him was not you alone, or love, alone; it was his uncertainty of both that fascinated him. That's what charms him in others; uncertainty. Many men are that way. It's a sporting streak in us. If you care for him now—if you could ever care for him, take him as you took him first… . Do you want him again?"

She stood leaning against the door, looking down. Much of her colour had died out.

"I don't know," she said.

"I do."

"Well—do I?"

"Yes."

"You think so? Why?"

"Because he's adrift, too. And he's rather weak, rather handsome, easily influenced—unjust, selfish, vain, wayward—just the average husband. And every wife ought to be able to manage these lords of creation, and keep them out of harm… . And keep them in love, Rosalie. And the way to do it is the way you did it first… . Try it." He kissed her gaily, thinking he owed that much to himself.

And through the door which had swung gently ajar, Geraldine Seagrave saw them, and Rosalie saw her.

For a moment the girl halted, pale and rigid, and her heart seemed to cease its beating; then, as she passed with averted head, Rosalie caught Duane's wrists in her jewelled grasp and released herself with a wrench.

"You've given me enough to think over," she said. "If you want me to love you, stay—and close that door—and we'll see what happens. If you don't—you had better go at once, Duane. And leave my door open—to see what else fate will send me." She clasped her hands behind her back, laughing nervously.

"It's like the old child's game—'open your mouth and close your eyes and see what God will send you?'—usually something not at all resembling the awaited bonbon… . Good-bye, my altruistic friend—and thank you for your XXth Century advice, and your Louis XVI assistance."

"Good-bye," he returned smilingly, and sauntered back toward his room where his own untried finery awaited him.

Ahead, far down the corridor, he caught sight of Geraldine, and called to her, but perhaps she did not hear him for he had to put on considerable speed to overtake her.

"In these last few days," he said laughingly, "I seldom catch a glimpse of you except when you are vanishing into doorways or down corridors."

She said nothing, did not even turn her head or halt; and, keeping pace with her, he chatted on amiably about nothing in particular until she stopped abruptly and looked at him.

"I am in a hurry. What is it you want, Duane?"

"Why—nothing," he said in surprise.

"That is less than you ask of—others." And she turned to continue her way.

"Is there anything wrong, Geraldine?" he asked, detaining her.

"Is there?" she replied, shaking off his hand from her arm.

"Not as far as I'm concerned."

"Can't you even tell the truth?" she asked with a desperate attempt to laugh.

"Wait a minute," he said. "Evidently something has gone all wrong——"

"Several things, my solicitous friend; I for one, you for another. Count the rest for yourself."

"What has happened to you, Geraldine?"

"What has always threatened."

"Will you tell me?"

"No, I will not. So don't try to look concerned and interested in a matter that regards me alone."

"But what is it that has always threatened you?" he insisted gently, coming nearer—too near to suit her, for she backed away toward the high latticed window through which the sun poured over the geraniums on the sill. There was a seat under it. Suddenly her knees threatened to give way under her; she swayed slightly as she seated herself; a wave of angry pain swept through her setting lids and lips trembling.

"Now I want you to tell me what it is that you believe has always threatened you."

"Do you think I'd tell you?" she managed to say. Then her self-possession returned in a flash of exasperation, but she controlled that, too, and laughed defiantly, confronting him with pretty, insolent face uptilted.

"What do you want to know about me? That I'm in the way of being ultimately damned like all the rest of you?" she said. "Well, I am. I'm taking chances. Some people take their chances in one way—like you and Rosalie; some take them in another—as I do… . Once I was afraid to take any; now I'm not. Who was it said that self-control is only immorality afraid?"

"Will you tell me what is worrying you?" he persisted.

"No, but I'll tell you what annoys me if you like."

"What?"

"Fear of notoriety."

"Notoriety?"

"Certainly—not for myself—for my house."

"Is anybody likely to make it notorious?" he demanded, colouring up.

"Ask yourself… . I haven't the slightest interest in your personal conduct"—there was a catch in her voice—"except when it threatens to besmirch my own home."

The painful colour gathered and settled under his cheek-bones.

"Do you wish me to leave?"

"Yes, I do. But you can't without others knowing how and why."

"Oh, yes, I can——"

"You are mistaken. I tell you others will know. Some do know already. And I don't propose to figure with a flaming sword. Kindly remain in your Eden until it's time to leave—with Eve."

"Just as you wish," he said, smiling; and that infuriated her.

"It ought to be as I wish! That much is due me, I think. Have you anything further to ask, or is your curiosity satisfied?"

"Not yet. You say that you think something threatens you? What is it?"

"Not what threatens you," she said in contempt.

"That is no answer."

"It is enough for you to know."

He looked her hard in the eyes. "Perhaps," he said in a low voice, "I know more about you than you imagine I do, Geraldine—since last April."

She felt the blood leave her face, the tension crisping her muscles; she sat up very straight and slender among the cushions and defied him.

"What do you—think you know?" she tried to sneer, but her voice shook and failed.

He said: "I'll tell you. For one thing, you're playing fast and loose with Dysart. He's a safe enough proposition—but what is that sort of thing going to arouse in you?"

"What do you mean?" Her voice cleared with an immense relief. He noted it.

"It's making you tolerant," he said quietly, "familiar with subtleties, contemptuous of standards. It's rubbing the bloom off you. You let a man who is married come too close to you—you betray enough curiosity concerning him to do it. A drifting woman does that sort of thing, but why do you cut your cables? Good Lord, Geraldine, it's a fool business—permitting a man an intimacy——"

"More harmless than his wife permits you!" she retorted.

"That is not true."

"You are supposed to lie about such things, aren't you?" she said, reddening to the temples. "Oh, I am learning your rotten code, you see—the code of all these amiable people about me. You've done your part to instruct me that promiscuous caresses are men's distraction from ennui; Rosalie evidently is in sympathy with that form of amusement—many men and women among whom I live in town seem to be quite as casual as you are… . I did have standards once, scarcely knowing what they meant; I clung to them out of instinct. And when I went out into the world I found nobody paying any attention to them."

"You are wrong."

"No, I'm not. I go among people and see every standard I set up, ignored. I go to the theatre and see plays that embody everything I supposed was unthinkable, let alone unutterable. But the actors utter everything, and the audience thinks everything—and sometimes laughs. I can't do that—yet. But I'm progressing."

"Geraldine——"

"Wait!… My friends have taught me a great deal during this last year—by word, precept, and example. Things I held in horror nobody notices enough to condone. Take treachery, for example. The marital variety is all around me. Who cares, or is even curious after an hour's gossip has made it stale news? A divorce here, a divorce there—some slight curiosity to see who the victims may marry next time—that curiosity satisfied—and so is everybody. And they go back to their business of money-getting and money-spending—and that's what my friends have taught me. Can you wonder that my familiarity with it all breeds contempt enough to seek almost any amusement in sheer desperation—as you do?"

"I have only one amusement," he said.

"What?"

"Painting."

"And your model," she nodded with a short laugh. "Don't forget her. Your pretences are becoming tiresome, Duane. Your pretty model, Mrs. Dysart, poses less than you do."

Another wave of heart-sickness and anger swept over her; she felt the tears burning close to her lids and turned sharply on him:

"It's all rotten, I tell you—the whole personnel and routine—these people, and their petty vices and their idleness and their money! I—I do want to keep myself above it—clean of it—but what am I to do? One can't live without friends. If I don't gamble I'm left alone; if I don't flirt I'm isolated. If one stands aloof from everything one's friends go elsewhere. What can I do?"

"Make decent friends. I'm going to."

He bent forward and struck his knee with his closed fist.

"I'm going to," he repeated. "I've waited as long as I can for you to stand by me. I could have even remained among these harmless simians if you had cared for me. You're all the friend I need. But you've become one of them. It isn't in you to take an intelligent interest in me, or in what I care for. I've stood this sort of existence long enough. Now I'm all through with it."

She stared. Anger, astonishment, exasperation moved her in turn. Bitterness unlocked her lips.

"Are you expecting to take Mrs. Dysart with you to your intellectual solitude?"

"I would if I—if we cared for each other," he said, calmly seating himself.

She said, revolted: "Can't you even admit that you are in love with her? Must I confess that I could not avoid seeing you with her in her own room—half an hour since? Will that wring the truth out of you?"

"Oh, is that what you mean?" he said wearily. "I believe the door was open… . Well, Geraldine, whatever you saw won't harm anybody. So come to your own conclusions… . But I wish you were out of all this—with your fine insight and your clear intelligence, and your sweetness—oh, the chances for happiness you and I might have had!"

"A slim chance with you!" she said.

"Every chance; perhaps the only chance we'll ever have. And we've missed it."

"We've missed nothing"—a sudden and curious tremor set her heart and pulses beating heavily—"I tell you, Duane, it doesn't matter whom people of our sort marry because we'll always sicken of our bargain. What chance for happiness would I run with such a man as you? Or you with a girl like me?"

She lay back among the cushions, with a tired little laugh. "We are like the others of our rotten sort, only less aged, less experienced. But we have, each of us, our own heritage, our own secret depravity." She hesitated, reddening, caught his eye, stammered her sentence to a finish and flinched, crimsoning to the roots of her hair.

He stood up, paced the room for a few moments, came and stood beside her.

"Once," he said very low, "you admitted that you dare go anywhere with me. Do you remember?"

"Yes."

"Those are your rooms, I believe," pointing to a closed door far down the south corridor.

"Yes."

"Take me there now."

"I—cannot do that——"

"Yes, you can. You must."

"Now?—Duane."

"Yes, now—now! I tell you our time is now if it ever is to be at all. Don't waste words."

"What do you want to say to me that cannot be said here?" she asked in consternation.

He made no answer, but she found herself on her feet and moving slowly along beside him, his hand just touching her arm as guide.

"What is it, Duane?" she asked fearfully, as she laid her hand on the knob and turned to look at his altered face.

He made no answer. She hesitated, shivered, opened the door, hesitated again, slowly crossed the threshold, turned and admitted him.

The western sun flooded the silent chamber of rose and gray; a breeze moved the curtains, noiselessly; the scent of flowers freshened the silence.

There was a divan piled with silken cushions; he placed several for her; she stood irresolute for a moment, then, with a swift, unquiet side glance at him, seated herself.

"What is it?" she asked, looking up, her face beginning to reflect the grave concern in his.

"I want you to marry me, Geraldine."

"Is—is that what——"

"Partly. I want you to love me, too. But I'll attend to that if you'll marry me—I'll guarantee that. I—I will guarantee—more than that."

She was still looking up, searching his sombre face. She saw the muscles tighten along the jaw; saw the grave lines deepening. A sort of bewildered fear possessed her.

"I—am not in love with you, Duane." She added hastily, "I don't trust you either. How could I——"

"Yes, you do trust me."

"After what you have done to Rosalie——"

"You know that all is square there. Say so!"

She gazed at the floor, convinced, but not answering.

"Do you believe I love you?"

She shook her head, eyes still on the floor.

"Tell me the truth! Look at me!"

She said with an effort: "You think you care for me… . You believe you do, I suppose——"

"And you believe it, too! Give me my chance—take your own!"

"My chance?"—with a flash of anger.

"Yes; take it, and give me mine. I tell you, Geraldine, we are going to need each other desperately some day. I need you now—to-morrow you'll need me more; and the day after, and after that in perilous days to follow our need will be the greater for these hours wasted—can't you understand by this time that we've nothing to hold us steady through the sort of life we're born to except—each other——"

His voice suddenly broke; he dropped down on the couch beside her, imprisoning her clasped hands on her knees. His emotion, the break in his voice, excited them both.

"Are you trying to frighten me and take me by storm?" she demanded, forcing a smile. "What is the matter, Duane? What do you mean by peril?… You are scaring me——"

"Little Geraldine—my little comrade! Can't you understand? It isn't only my selfish desire for you—it isn't all for myself!—I care more for you than that. I love you more deeply than a mere lover! Must I say more to you? Must I even hurt you? Must I tell you what I know—of you?"

"W-what?" she asked, startled.

He looked at her miserably. In his eyes she read a meaning that terrified her.

"Duane—I don't—understand," she faltered.

"Yes you do. Let's face it now!"

"F-face what?" Her voice was only a whisper.

"I can tell you if you'll love me. Will you?"

"I don't understand," she repeated in white-lipped distress. "Why do you look at me so strangely? And you tell me that I—know… . What is it that I know? Couldn't you tell me? I am—" Her voice failed.

"Dear—do you remember—once—last April that you were—ill?… And awoke to find yourself on your own bed?"

"Duane!" It was a cry of terror.

"Dearest! Dearest! Do you think I have not known—since then—what has troubled you—here——"

She stared at him in crimsoned horror for an instant, then with a dry sob, bowed her head and covered her face with desperate hands. For a moment her whole body quivered, then she collapsed. On his knees beside her he bent and touched with trembling lips her arms, her knees, the slim ankles desperately interlocked, the tips of her white shoes.

"Dearest," he whispered brokenly, "I know—I know—believe me. I have fought through worse, and won out. You said once that something had died out in me—while I was abroad. It did not die of itself, dear. But it left its mark… . You say self-control is only depravity afraid… . That is true; but I have made my depravity fear me. I can do what I please with it now; I can tempt it, laugh at it, silence it. But it cost me something to make a slave of it—what you saw in my face is the claw-mark it left fighting me to the death."

Very straight on his knees beside her he bent again, pressing her rigid knees with his lips.

"I need you, Geraldine—I need all that is best in you; you must love me—take me as an ally, dear, against all that is worst in you. I'll love you so confidently that we'll kill it—you and I together—my strength and yours, my bitter and deep understanding and your own sweet contempt for weakness wherever it may be, even in yourself."

He touched her; and she shuddered under the light caress, still bent almost double, and covering her face with both hands. He bent over her, one knee on the divan.

"Let's pull ourselves together and talk sense, Geraldine," he said with an effort at lightness.

"Don't you remember that bully little girl who swung her fists in single combat and uppercut her brother and me whenever her sense of fairness was outraged? The time has come when you, who were so fair to others, are going to be fair to yourself by marrying me——"

She dropped both hands and stared at him out of wide, tear-wet eyes.

"Fair to myself—at your expense, Duane?"

"What do you mean? I love you."

"Am I to let you—you marry me—knowing—what you know? Is that what you call my sense of fairness?" And, as he attempted to speak:

"Oh, I have thought about it already!—I must have been conscious that this would happen some day—that—that I was capable of caring for you—and it alarmed me——"

"Are you capable of loving me?"

"Duane, you must not ask me that!"

"Tell me!"

But she pushed him back, and they faced each other, her hands remaining on his shoulders. She strove piteously to endure his gaze, flinched, strove to push him from her again—but the slender hands lay limply against him. So they remained, her hands at intervals nervously tightening and relaxing on his shoulders, her tearful breath coming faster, the dark eyes closing, opening, turning from him, toward him, searching, now in his soul, now in her own, her self-command slipping from her.

"It is cowardly in me—if I do it," she said in the ghost of a voice.

"Do what?"

"Let you risk—what I m-might become."

"You little saint!"

"Some saints were depraved at first—weren't they?" she said without a smile. "Oh, Duane, Duane, to think I could ever be here speaking to you about—about the horror that has happened to me—looking into your face and giving up my dreadful secret to you—laying my very soul naked before you! How can I look at you——"

"Because I love you. Now give me the right to your lips and heart!"

There was a long silence. Then she tried to smile.

"My—my lips? I—thought you took such things—lightly——"

She hesitated, glanced up at him, then began to tremble.

"Duane—if you are in earnest about our—about an engagement—promise me that I may be released if I—think best——"

"Why?"

"I—I might fail——"

"The more need of me. But you can't fail——"

"Yes, but if I should, dear. Will you release me? I cannot—I will not engage myself to you—unless you promise to let me go if I think it best. You know what my word means. Give it back to me if matters go wrong with me. Will you?"

"But I am going to marry you now!" he said with a short, excited laugh.

"Now!" she repeated, appalled.

"Certainly, to make sure of you. We don't need a license in this State. There's a parson at West Gate Village… . I intend to make sure of you now. You can keep it a secret if you like. When you return to town we can have everything en règle—engagement announced, cards, church wedding, and all that. Meanwhile I'm going to be sure of you."

"W-when?"

"This afternoon."

His excitement thrilled her; a vivid colour surged over neck and brow.

"Duane, I did not dream that you cared so much, so truly—Oh, I—I do love you then!—I love you, Duane! I love you!"

He drew her suddenly into his arms, close, closer; she lifted her face; he kissed her; and she gave him her heart with a sob.

"You will wait for m-me, won't you?" she stammered, striving to keep her reason through the delicious tumult that swept her senses. "Before I m-marry you I must be quite certain that you take no risk——"

She looked up into his steady eyes; a passion of tenderness overwhelmed her, and her locked arms tightened around his neck.

"Oh," she whispered, "you are the boy I loved so long, so long ago—my comrade Duane—my own little boy! How was I to know I loved you this way, too? How could I understand!"

Already the glamour of the past was transfiguring the man for her, changing him back into the lad she had ruled so long ago, glorifying him—drawing them together into that golden age where her ears already caught the far cries and laughter of the past.

Now, her arms around him, she looked at him and looked at him as though she had not set eyes on him since then.

"Of course, I love you," she said impatiently, as though surprised and hurt that he or she had ever doubted it. "You always were mine; you are mine! Nobody else could ever have had you—no matter what you did—or what I did… . And nobody except you could ever, ever have had me. That is perfectly plain now… . Oh, you—you darling"—she murmured, drawing his face against hers. Tears sprang to her brown eyes; her mouth quivered.

"You will love me, won't you? Because I'm going quite mad about you, Duane… . I don't think I know just what I'm saying—or what I'm doing."

She drew him closer; he caught her, crushing her in his arms, and she yielded, clung to him for a moment, drew back in flushed resistance, still bewildered by her own passion. Then, into her eyes came that divine beauty which comes but once on earth—innocence awakened; and the white lids drooped a little, and the mouth quivered, surrendering with a sigh.

 

"You never have, never could love any other man? Say it. I know it, but—say it, sweetheart!"

"Only you, Duane."

"Are you happy?"

"I am in heaven."

She closed her eyes—opening them almost immediately and passing one hand across his face as though afraid he might have vanished.

"You are there yet," she murmured with a faint smile.

"So are you," he whispered, laughing—"my little dream girl—my little brown-eyed, brown-haired, long-legged, swift-running, hard-hitting——"

"Oh, do you remember that dreadful blow I gave you when we were sparring in the library? Did it hurt you, my darling—I was sure it did, but you never would admit it. Tell me now," she coaxed, adorable in her penitence.

"Well—yes, it did." He laughed under his breath—"I don't mind telling you now that it fractured the bridge of my nose."

"What!"—in horror. "That perfectly delicious straight nose of yours!"

"Oh, I had it fixed," he said, laughing. "If you deal me no more vital blows than that I'll never mind——"

"I—deal you a—a blow, Duane! I!"

"For instance, by not marrying me right away——"

"Dear—I can't."

The smile had died out in her eyes and on her lips.

"You know I can't, don't you?" she said tenderly. "You know I've got to be fair to you." Her face grew graver. "Dear—when I stop and try to think—it dismays me to understand how much in love with you I am… . Because it is too soon… . It would be safer to wait before I start to love you—this way. There is a cowardly streak in me—a weak streak——"

"What blessed nonsense you do talk, don't you?"

"No, dear."

She moved slightly toward him, settling close, as though within the circle of his arms lay some occult protection.

For a while she lay very close to him, her pale face pressed against his shoulder, brown eyes remote. Neither spoke. After a long time she laid her hands on his arms, gently disengaging them, and, freeing herself, sprang to her feet. A new, lithe and lovely dignity seemed to possess her—an exquisite, graceful, indefinable something which lent a hint of splendour to her as she turned and looked down at him.

Then, mischievously tender, she stooped and touched her childish mouth to his—her cheek, her throat, her hair, her lids, her hands, in turn all brushed his lips with fragrance—the very ghost of contact, the exquisite mockery of caress.

"If you don't go at once," she murmured, "I'll never let you go at all. Wait—let me see if anybody is in the corridor——"

She opened the door and looked out.

"Not a soul," she whispered, "our reputations are still intact. Good-bye—I'll put on a fresh gown and meet you in ten minutes!… Where? Oh, anywhere—anywhere, Duane. The Lake. Oh, that is too far away! Wait here on the stairs for me—that isn't so far away—just sit on the stairs until I come. Do you promise? Truly? Oh, you angel boy!… Yes—but only one more, then—to be quite sure that you won't forget to wait on the stairs for me… ."

Chapter 8 AN AFTERGLOW

Deliciously weary, every fibre in her throbbing with physical fatigue, she had nevertheless found it impossible to sleep.

The vivid memory of Duane holding her in his arms, while she gave her heart to him with her lips, left her tremulous and confused by emotions of which she yet knew little.

Toward dawn a fever of unrest drove her from her hot, crushed pillows to the cool of the open casements. The morning was dark and very still; no breeze stirred; a few big, widely scattered stars watched her. For a long while she stood there trying to quiet the rapid pulse and fast breathing; and at length, with an excited little laugh, she sank down among the cushions on the window-seat and lay back very still, her head, with its glossy, disordered hair, cradled in her arms.

"Is this love?" she said to herself. "Is this what it is doing to me? Am I never again going to sleep?"

But she could not lie still; her restless hands began groping about in the darkness, and presently the fire from a cigarette glimmered red.

She remained quiet for a few moments, elbow among the pillows, cheek on hand, watching the misty spirals float through the open window. After a while she sat up nervously and tossed the cigarette from her. Like a falling star the spark whirled earthward in a wide curve, glowed for a few seconds on the lawn below, and slowly died out.

Then an inexplicable thing occurred. Unthinkingly she had turned over and extended her arm, searching in the darkness behind her. There came a tinkle, a vague violet perfume, and the starlight fell on her clustering hair and throat as she lifted and drained the brimming glass.

Suddenly she stood up; the frail, crystal glass fell from her fingers, splintering on the stone sill; and with a quick, frightened intake of breath, lips still wet and scented, and the fire of it already stealing through her veins, she awoke to stunned comprehension of what she had done.

For a moment only startled astonishment dominated her. That she could have done this thing so instinctively and without forethought or intent, seemed impossible. She bowed her head in her hands, striving desperately to recollect the circumstances; she sprang to her feet and paced the darkened room, trying to understand. A terrified and childish surprise possessed her, which changed slowly to anger and impatience as she began to realise the subtle treachery that habit had practised on her—so stealthy is habit, betraying the body unawares.

Overwhelmed with consternation, she seated herself to consider the circumstances; little flashes of alarm assisted her. Then a sort of delicate madness took possession of her, deafening her ears to the voice of fear. She refused to be afraid.

As she sat there, both hands unconsciously indenting her breast, the clamour and tumult of her senses drowned the voice within.

No, she would not be afraid!—though the burning perfume was mounting to her head with every breath and the glow grew steadily in her body, creeping from vein to vein. No, she would not be afraid. It could never happen again. She would be on her guard after this… . Besides, the forgetfulness had been so momentary, the imprudence so very slight … and it had helped her, too—it was already making her sleepy … and she had needed something to quiet her—needed sleep… .

After a long while she turned languidly and picked up the little crystal flask from the dresser—an antique bit of glass which Rosalie had given her.

Dawn whitened the edges of the sky; the birds were becoming very noisy. She lifted the curiously cut relic; an imprisoned fluid glimmered with pale-violet light—some scented French distillation which Rosalie affected because nobody else had ever heard of it—an aromatic, fiery essence, faintly perfumed.

For a moment the girl gazed at it curiously. Then, on deliberate impulse, she filled another glass.

"One thing is certain," she said to herself; "if I am capable of controlling myself at all, I must begin now. If I should touch this it would be excess… . I would like to, but"—she flung the contents from the window—"I won't. And that is the way I am able to control myself."

She smiled, set the glass aside, and raised her eyes to the paling stars. When at last she stretched herself out on the bed, dawn was already lighting the room, but she fell asleep at once.

It was a flushed and rather heavy slumber, not perfectly natural; and when Kathleen entered at nine o'clock, followed by Geraldine's maid with the breakfast-tray, the girl still lay with face buried in her hair, breathing deeply and irregularly, her lashes wet with tears.

The maid retired; Kathleen bent low over the feverishly parted lips, kissed them, hesitated, drew back sharply, and cast a rapid glance around the room. Then she went over to the dressing-table and lifted Rosalie's antique flaçon; and set it back slowly, as the girl turned her face on the pillow and opened her eyes.

"Is that you, Kathleen?"

"Yes, dear."

For a few seconds she lay quite motionless, then, rising on one elbow, she passed the backs of her fingers across her lids, laughed sleepily, and straightened up, freeing her eyes from the confusion of her hair.

"I've had horrid dreams. I've been crying in my sleep. Come here," she said, stretching out her arms, and Kathleen went slowly.

The girl pulled her head down, linking both arms around her neck:

"You darling, can you ever guess what miracle happened to me yesterday?"

"No… . What?"

"I promised to marry Duane Mallett!"

There was no reply. The girl clung to her excitedly, burying her face against Kathleen's cheek, then released her with a laugh, and saw her face—saw the sorrowful amazement in it, the pain.

"Kathleen!" she exclaimed, startled, "what is the matter?"

Mrs. Severn dropped down on the bed's edge, her hands loosely clasped. Geraldine's brown eyes searched hers in hurt astonishment.

"Aren't you glad for me, Kathleen? What is it? Why do you—" And all at once she divined, and the hot colour stained her from brow to throat. Kathleen bent forward swiftly and caught her in her arms with a smothered cry; but the girl freed herself and leaned back, breathing fast.

"Duane knows about me," she said. "I told him."

"He knew before you told him, my darling."

Another wave of scarlet swept Geraldine's face.

"That is true… . He found out—last April… . But he and I are not afraid. I promised him—" And her voice failed as the memory of the night's indulgence flashed in her brain.

Kathleen began: "You promised me, too—" And her voice also failed.

There was a silence; the girl's eyes turned miserably toward the dressing-table, closed with a slow, inward breath which ended like a sob; and again she was in Kathleen's arms—struggled from them only to drop her head on Kathleen's knees and lie, tense face hidden, both hands clenched. The wave of grief and shame swept her and passed.

After a while she spoke in a hard little voice:

"It is foolish to say I cannot control myself… . I did not think what I was doing last night—that was all. Duane knows my danger—tendency, I mean. He isn't worried; he knows that I can take care of myself——"

"Don't marry him until you know you can."

"But I am perfectly certain of myself now!"

"Only prove it, darling. Be frank with me. Who in the world loves you as I do, Geraldine? Who desires happiness for you as I do? What have I in life besides you and Scott?… And lately, dearest—I must speak as I feel—something—some indefinable constraint seems to have grown between you and me—something—I don't exactly know what—that threatens our intimate understanding——"

"No, there is nothing!"

"Be honest with me, dear. What is it?"

The girl lay silent for a while, then:

"I don't know myself. I have been—worried. It may have been that."

"Worried about yourself, you poor lamb?"

"A little… . And a little about Duane."

"But, darling, if Duane loves you, that is all cleared up, isn't it?"

"Yes… . But for a long time he and Rosalie made me perfectly wretched… . I didn't know I was in love with him, either… . And I couldn't sleep very much, and I—I simply couldn't tell you how unhappy they were making me—and I—sometimes—now and then—in fact, very often, I—formed the custom of—doing what I ought not to have done—to steady my nerves—in fact, I simply let myself go—badly."

"Oh, my darling! My darling! Couldn't you have told me—let me sit with you, talk, read to you—love you to sleep? Why did you do this, Geraldine?"

"Nothing—very disgraceful—ever happened. It only helped me to sleep when I was excited and miserable… . I—I didn't care what I did—Duane and Rosalie made me so wretched. And there seemed no use in my trying to be different from others, and I thought I might as well be as rotten as everybody. But I tried and couldn't—I tried, for instance, to misbehave with Jack Dysart, but I couldn't—and I only hated myself and him and Rosalie and Duane!"

She sat up, flushed, dishevelled, lips quivering. "I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week! I gambled with the Pink 'uns and swore as fashionably as I knew how! I scorched my tongue with cigarettes; I sat in Bunny Gray's room with the door bolted and let him teach me how to make silver fizzes and Chinese juleps out of Rose wine and saki! I let Jack Dysart retain my hand—and try to kiss me—several times——"

"Geraldine!"

"I did. I wanted to be horrid."

She sat there breathing fast, her big brown eyes looking defiantly at Kathleen, but the child's mouth quivered beyond control and the nervous hands tightened and relaxed.

"How bad have I been, Kathleen? It sounds pretty bad to tell it. But Muriel says 'damn!' and Rosalie says 'the devil!' and when anything goes wrong and I say, 'Oh, fluff!' I mean swearing, so I thought I'd do it… . And almost every woman I know smokes and has her favourite cocktail, and they all bet and play for stakes; and from what I hear talked about, nobody's conduct is modified because anybody happens to be married——"

The horror in Kathleen's blue eyes checked her; she hid her face in her hands for a moment, then flung out her arms and crushed Kathleen to her breast.

"I'm going to tell Duane how I've behaved. I couldn't rest until he knows the very worst … how fearfully common and bad a girl I can be. Darling, don't break down. I don't want to go any closer to the danger line than I've been. And, oh, I'm so ashamed, so humiliated—I—I wish I could go to Duane as—as clean and sweet and innocent as he would have me. For he is the dearest boy—and I love him so, Kathleen. I'm so silly about him… . I've got to tell him how I behaved, haven't I?"

"Are—are you going to?"

"Of course I am!" … She drew away and sat up very straight in bed, serious, sombre-eyed, hands clasped tightly about her knees.

"Do you know," she said, as though to herself, "it is curious that a trivial desire for anything like that"—pointing to Rosalie's gift—"should make me restless—annoy me, cause me discomfort. I can't understand why it should actually torment me. It really does, sometimes."

"That is the terrible part of it," faltered Kathleen. "For God's sake, keep clear of anything with even the faintest odour of alcohol about it… . Where did you find that cut-glass thing?"

"Rosalie gave it to me."

"What is in it?"

"I don't know—crême de something or other."

Kathleen took the girl's tightly clasped hands in hers:

"Geraldine, you've got to be square to Duane. You can't marry him until you cleanse yourself, until you scour yourself free of this terrible inclination for stimulants."

"H-how can I? I don't intend, ever again, to——"

"Prove it then. Let sufficient time elapse——"

"How long? A—year?"

"Dear, if you will show a clean record of self-control for a year I ask no more. It ought not to be difficult for you to dominate this silly weakness. Your will-power is scarcely tainted. What fills me with fear is this habit you have formed of caressing danger—this childish trifling with something which is still asleep in you—with all that is weak and ignoble. It is there—it is in all of us—in you, too. Don't rouse it; it is still asleep—merely a little restless in its slumber—but, oh, Geraldine! Geraldine!—if you ever awake it!—if you ever arouse it to its full, fierce consciousness——"

"I won't," said the girl hastily. "Oh, I won't, I won't, Kathleen, darling. I do know it's in me—I feel that if I ever let myself go I could be reckless and wicked. But truly, truly, I won't. I—darling, you mustn't cry—please, don't—because you are making me cry. I cried in my sleep, too… . I ought to be very happy—" She forced a laugh through the bright tears fringing her lashes, bent forward swiftly, kissed Kathleen, and sprang from the bed.

"I want my bath and breakfast!" she cried. "If I'm to be a Louis XVI doll this week, it's time my face was washed and my sawdust reinforced. Do fix my tray, dear, while I'm in the bath—and ring for my maid… . And when you go down you may tell Duane to wait for me on the stairs. It's good discipline; he'll find it stupid because I'll be a long time—but, oh, Kathleen, it is perfectly heavenly to bully him!"

 

Later she sent a note to him by her maid:

"TO THE ONLY MAN IN THE WORLD, ON THE STAIRS.

"Patient Sir: If you will go to the large beech-tree beyond Hurryon Gate and busy yourself by carving upon it certain initials intertwined within the circumscribed outlines of a symbol popularly supposed to represent a human heart, your industry will be presently and miraculously rewarded by the apparition of her who presumably occupies no inconsiderable place in your affections."

At the Hurryon Gate Duane found Rosalie trying to unlock it, a dainty, smiling Rosalie, fresh as a blossom, and absurdly like a schoolgirl with her low-cut collar, snowy neck, and the thick braid of hair. Under her arm she carried her bathing-dress.

"I'm going for a swim; I nearly perished with the heat last night… . Did you sleep well, Duane?"

"Rather well."

She hesitated, looked up: "Are you coming with me?"

"I have an appointment."

"Oh!… Are you going to let me go alone?"

He laughed: "I've no choice; I really have an appointment this morning."

She inspected him, drew a step nearer, laid both hands lightly on his shoulders.

"Duane, dear," she said, "are you really going to let me drift past you out to sea—after all?"

"What else can I do? Besides, you are not going to drift."

"Yes, I am. You were very nice to me yesterday."

"It was you who were very sweet to me… . But I told you how matters stand. You care for your husband."

"Yes, you did tell me. But it is not true. I thought about it all night long; I find that I do not care for him—as you told me I did."

He said, smiling: "Nor do you really care for me."

"I could care."

Her hands still lay lightly on his shoulders; he smilingly disengaged them, saluted the finger tips, and swung them free.

"No, you couldn't," he said—"nor could I."

She clasped her hands behind her, confronting him with that gaily audacious allure which he knew so well:

"Does a man really care whether or not he is in love with a woman before he makes love to her?"

"Do you want an honest answer?"

"Please."

"Well, then—if she is sufficiently attractive, a man doesn't usually care."

"Am I sufficiently attractive?"

"Yes."

"Then—why do you hesitate?… I know the rules of the game. When one wearies, the other must pretend to… . And then they make their adieux very amiably… . Isn't that a man's ideal of an affair with a pretty woman?"

He laughed: "I suppose so."

"So do I. You are no novice, are you—as I am?"

"Are you a novice, Rosalie?"

"Yes, I am. You probably don't believe it. It is absurd, isn't it, considering these lonely years—considering what he has done—that I haven't anything with which to reproach myself."

"It is very admirable," he said.

"Oh, yes, theoretically. I was too fastidious—perhaps a little bit too decent. It's curious how inculcated morals and early precepts make mountains out of what is really very simple travelling. If a woman ceases to love her husband, she is going to miss too much in life if she's afraid to love anybody else… . I suppose I have been afraid."

"It's rather a wholesome sort of fear," he said.

"Wholesome as breakfast-food. I hate it. Besides, the fear doesn't exist any more," shaking her head. "Like the pretty girls in a very popular and profoundly philosophical entertainment, I've simply got to love somebody"—she smiled at him—"and I'd prefer to fall honestly and disgracefully in love with you—if you'd give me the opportunity." There was a pause. "Otherwise," she concluded, "I shall content myself with doing a mischief to your sex where I can. I give you the choice, Duane—I give you the disposal of myself. Am I to love—you?—or be loved by God knows whom—and make him suffer for it"—she set her little even teeth—"and pay back to men what man has done to me?"

"Nonsense," he said good-humouredly; "isn't there anything except playing at love that counts in the world?"

"Nothing counts without it. I've learned that much."

"Some people have done pretty well without it."

"You haven't. You might have been a really good painter if you cared for a woman who cared for you. There's no tenderness in your work; it's all technique and biceps."

He said gravely: "You are right."

"Am I?… Do you think you could try to care for me—even for that reason, Duane—to become a better painter?"

"I'm afraid not," he said pleasantly.

There was a silence; her expression changed subtly, then the colour came back and she smiled and nodded adieu.

"Good-bye," she said; "I'm going to get into all sorts of mischief. The black flag is hoisted. Malheur aux hommes!"

"There's one now," said Duane, laughing as Delancy Grandcourt's bulk appeared among the trees along Hurryon Water. "Lord! what a bungler he is on a trout-stream!"

Rosalie turned and gazed at the big, clumsy young man who was fishing with earnestness and method every unlikely pool in sight.

"Does he belong to anybody?" she asked, considering him. "I want to do real damage. He is usually at Geraldine's heels, isn't he?"

"Oh, let him alone," said Duane; "he's an awfully decent fellow. If a man of that slow, plodding, faithful species ever is thoroughly aroused by a woman, it will be a lively day for his tormentor."

Rosalie's blue eyes sparkled: "Will it?"

"Yes, it will. You had better not play hob with Delancy. Are you intending to?"

"I don't know. Look at the man! That's the fourth time he's landed his line in a bush! He'll fall into that pool if he's not—mercy!—there he goes! Did you ever see such a genius for clumsiness?"

She was moving forward through the trees as she spoke; Duane called after her in a warning voice:

"Don't try to do anything to disturb him. It's not good sport; he's a mighty decent sort, I tell you."

"I won't play any tricks on your good young man," she said with a shrug of contempt, and sauntered off toward the Gray Water. Her path, however, crossed Grandcourt's, and as she stepped upon the footbridge she glanced down, where, wading gingerly in mid-stream, Delancy floundered and panted and barely contrived to maintain a precarious footing, while sending his flies sprawling down the rapids.

"Good-morning," she nodded, as he caught sight of her. He attempted to take off his cap, slipped, wallowed, and recovered his balance by miracle alone.

"There's a thumping big trout under that bridge," he informed her eagerly; "he ran downstream just now, but I can't seem to raise him."

"You splash too much. You'd probably raise him if you raised less of something else."

"Is that it?" he inquired innocently. "I try not to, but I generally manage to raise hell with every pool before I get a chance to fish it. I'll show you just where he lies. Watch!"

His cast of flies whistled wildly; there was a quick pang of pain in her shoulder and she gave a frightened cry.

"Good Lord! Have I got you?" he exclaimed, aghast.

"You certainly have," she retorted, exasperated, "and you had better come up and get this hook out! You'll need it if you want to fish any more."

Dripping and horrified, he scrambled up the bank to the footbridge; she flinched, but made no sound, as he freed her from the hook; a red stain appeared on the sleeve of her waist, above the elbow.

"It's fortunate that it was a b-barbless hook," he stammered, horribly embarrassed and contemplating with dismay the damage he had accomplished; "otherwise," he added, "we would have had to cut out the hook. We're rather lucky, I think. Is it very painful?"

"Sufficiently," she said, disgusted. "But I suppose this sort of thing is nothing unusual for you."

"I've hooked one or two people," he admitted, reddening. "I suppose you won't bother to forgive me, but I'm terribly sorry. If you'll let me put a little mud on it——"

She disdained to reply. He hovered about her, clumsily solicitous, and whichever way she turned, he managed to get underfoot, until, thoroughly vexed, she stood stock-still and opened her arms with a hopeless gesture:

"What are you trying to do, Delancy? Do you want to embrace me? I wish you wouldn't leap about me like a great Dane puppy!"

The red surged up into his face anew:

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I'm very sorry."

She looked at him curiously: "I beg yours—you big, silly boy. Don't blush at me. Great Danes are exceedingly desirable property, you know… . Did you wish to be forgiven for anything? What on earth are you doing with that horrid fistful of muck?"

"I only want to put some mud on that wound, if you'll let me. It's good for hornet stings——"

She laughed and backed away: "Do you believe there is any virtue in mud, Delancy?—good, deep mire—when one is bruised and sore and lonely and desperate? Oh, don't try to understand—what a funny, confused, stupid way you have of looking at me! I remember you used to look at me that way sometimes—oh, long ago—before I was married, I think."

The heavy colour which surged so readily to his temples began to amuse her; she leaned back against the bridge rail and contemplated him with smiling disdain.

"Do you know," she said, "years ago, I had a slight, healthy suspicion that you were on the verge of falling in love with me."

He tried to smile, but the colour died out in his face.

"Yes, I was on the verge," he contrived to answer.

"Why didn't you fall over?"

"I suppose it was because you married Jack Dysart," he said simply.

"Was that all?"

"All?" He thought he perceived the jest, and managed to laugh again.

"Really, I am perfectly serious," repeated Rosalie. "Was that all that prevented you from falling in love with me—because I was married?"

"I think so," he said. "Wasn't it reason enough?"

"I didn't know it was enough for a man. I don't believe I know exactly how men consider such matters… . You've managed to hook that fly into my gown again! And now you've torn the skirt hopelessly! What a devastating sort of creature you are, Delancy! You used to step on my slippers at dancing school, and, oh, Heaven! how I hated you… . Where are you going?" for he had begun to walk away, reeling in his wet line as he moved, his grave, highly coloured face lowered, troubled eyes intent on what he was doing.

When she spoke, he halted and raised his head, and she saw the muscles flexed under the bronze skin of the jaw—saw the lines of pain appear where his mouth tightened. All of the clumsy boy in him had vanished; she had never troubled herself to look at him very closely, and it surprised her to see how worn his face really was under the eyes and cheek-bones—really surprised her that there was much of dignity, even of a certain nobility, in his quiet gaze.

"I asked you where you are going?" she repeated with a faint smile.

"Nowhere in particular."

"But you are going somewhere, I suppose."

"I suppose so."

"In my direction?"

"I think not."

"That is very rude of you, Delancy—when you don't even know where my direction lies. Do you think," she demanded, amused, "that it is particularly civil of a man to terminate an interview with a woman before she offers him his congé?"

He finished reeling in his line, hooked the drop-fly into the reel-guide, shifted his creel, buttoned on the landing-net, and quietly turned around and inspected Mrs. Dysart.

"I want to tell you something," he said. "I have never, even as a boy, had from you a single word which did not in some vague manner convey a hint of your contempt for me. Do you realise that?"

"W-what!" she faltered, bewildered.

"I don't suppose you do realise it. People generally feel toward me as you feel; it has always been the fashion to tolerate me. It is a legend that I am thick-skinned and stupidly slow to take offence. I am not offended now… . Because I could not be with you… . But I am tired of it, and I thought it better that you should know it—after all these years."

Utterly confounded, she leaned back, both hands tightening on the hand-rail behind her, and as she comprehended the passionless reproof, a stinging flush deepened over her pretty face.

"Had you anything else to say to me?" he asked, without embarrassment.

"N-no."

"Then may I take my departure?"

She lifted her startled blue eyes and regarded him with a new and intense curiosity.

"Have I, by my manner or speech, ever really hurt you?" she asked. "Because I haven't meant to."

He started to reply, hesitated, shook his head, and his pleasant, kindly smile fascinated her.

"You haven't intended to," he said. "It's all right, Rosalie——"

"But—have I been horrid and disagreeable? Tell me."

In his troubled eyes she could see he was still searching to excuse her; slowly she began to recognise the sensitive simplicity of the man, the innate courtesy so out of harmony with her experience among men. What, after all, was there about him that a woman should treat with scant consideration, impatience, the toleration of contempt? His clumsy manner? His awkwardness? His very slowness to exact anything for himself? Or had it been the half-sneering, half-humourous attitude of her husband toward him which had insensibly coloured her attitude?

She had known Delancy Grandcourt all her life—that is, she had neglected to know him, if this brief revelation of himself warranted the curiosity and interest now stirring her.

"Were you really ever in love with me?" she asked, so frankly that the painful colour rose to his hair again, and he stood silent, head lowered, like a guilty boy caught in his sins.

"But—good heavens!" she exclaimed with an uneasy little laugh, "there's nothing to be ashamed of in it! I'm not laughing at you, Delancy; I am thinking about it with—with a certain re—" She was going to say regret, but she substituted "respect," and, rather surprised at her own seriousness, she fell silent, her uncertain gaze continually reverting to him.

She had never before noticed how tall and well-built he was, in spite of the awkwardness with which he moved—a great, big powerful machine, continually checked and halted, as though by some fear that his own power might break loose and smash things. That seemed to be the root of his awkwardness—unskilful self-control—a vague consciousness of the latent strength of limb and body and will, which habit alone controlled, and controlled unskilfully.

She had never before known a man resembling this new revelation of Grandcourt. Without considering or understanding why, she began to experience an agreeable sense of restfulness and security in the silence which endured between them. He stood full in the sunlight, very deeply preoccupied with the contents of his fly-book; she leaned back on the sun-scorched railing of the bridge, bathing-suit tucked under one arm, listening to the melody of the rushing stream below. It seemed almost like the intimacy of old friendship, this quiet interval in the sun, with the moving shadows of leaves at their feet and the music of the water in their ears—a silence unbroken save by that, and the pure, sweet call-note of some woodland bird from the thickets beyond.

"What fly are you trying?" she asked, dreamily conscious of the undisturbed accord.

"Wood-ibis—do you think they might come to it?" he asked so naturally that a sudden glow of confidence in him, in the sunlit world around her, warmed her.

"Let me look at your book?"

He brought it. Together they fumbled the brilliantly patterned aluminum leaves, fumbling with tufted silks and feathers, until she untangled a most alluringly constructed fly and drew it out, presenting it to him between forefinger and thumb.

"Shall we try it?"

"Certainly," he said.

Duane, carving hieroglyphics on the bark of the big beech, raised his head and looked after them.

"That's a pretty low trick," he said to himself, as they sauntered away toward the Gray Water. And he scowled in silence and continued his carving.

Chapter 9 CONFESSION

So many guests were arriving from Iron Hill, Cloudy Mountain, and West Gate Village that the capacity of Roya-Neh was overtaxed. Room had to be made somehow; Geraldine and Naïda Mallett doubled up; twin beds were installed for Dysart and Bunny Gray; Rosalie took in Sylvia Quest with a shrug, disdaining any emotion, even curiosity, concerning the motherless girl whose imprudences with Jack Dysart had furnished gossip sufficient to last over from the winter.

The Tappans appeared with their guests, old Tappan grimmer, rustier, gaunter than usual; his son and heir, Peter—he of the rambling and casual legs—more genial, more futile, more acquiescent than ever. The Crays, Beckmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts arrived; Catharine Grandcourt shared Mrs. Severn's room; Scott Seagrave went to quarters at the West Gate, and Duane was driven forth and a cot-bed set up for him in his studio at Hurryon Lodge.

The lawns and terraces of Roya-Neh were swarming with eager, laughing young people; white skirts fluttered everywhere in the sun; tennis-courts and lake echoed with the gay tumult, motors tooted, smart horses and showy traps were constantly drawing up or driving off; an army of men from West Gate Village were busy stringing lanterns all over the grounds, pitching pavilions in the glade beyond Hurryon Gate, and decorating everything with ribbons, until Duane suggested to Scott that they tie silk bows on the wild squirrels, as everything ought to be as Louis XVI as possible. He himself did actually so adorn several respectable Shanghai hens which he caught at their oviparous duties, and the spectacle left Kathleen weak with laughter.

As for Duane, he suddenly seemed to have grown years younger. All that was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from surface cynicism—quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness had disappeared, too. If it had remained unnoticed, even undetected before, now its absence was noticeable, for there was no longer any attitude about him, no policy to sustain, nothing of that humourous, bantering sophistication which ignores conventionality. For it is always a conscious effort to ignore it, an attitude to disregard what custom has sanctioned.

Kathleen had never realised what a really sweet and charming fellow he was until that morning, when he took her aside and told her of his engagement.

"Do you know," he said, "it is as though life had stopped for me many years ago when Geraldine and I were playmates; it's exactly as though all the interval of years in between counted less than a dream, and now, at last, I am awake and taking up real life again… . You see, Kathleen, as a matter of fact, I'm incomplete by myself. I'm only half of a suit of clothes; Geraldine always wore the rest of me."

"However," said Kathleen mischievously, "you've been very tireless in trying on, they say. It's astonishing you never found a good fit——"

"That was all part of the dream interval," he interrupted, a little out of countenance, "everything was absurdly unreal. Are you going to be nice to me, Kathleen?"

"Of course I am, you blessed boy!" she said, taking him in her vigorous young arms and kissing him squarely and thoroughly. Then she held him at arms' length and looked him very gravely in the eyes:

"Love her a great deal, Duane," she said in a low voice; "she needs it."

"I could not help doing it."

But Kathleen repeated:

"Love her enough. She will be yours to make—yours to unmake, to mould, fashion, remould—with God's good help. Love her enough."

"Yes," he said, very soberly.

A slight constraint fell between them; they spoke of the fête, and Kathleen presently left to superintend details which never worried her, never disturbed the gay and youthful confidence which had always from the beginning marked her successful superintendence of the house of Seagrave.

Geraldine and Scott were very busy playing hostess and host, receiving new-comers, renewing friendships interrupted by half a summer's separation; but there was very little to do except to be affable, for Kathleen's staff of domestics was perfectly adequate—the old servants of the house of Seagrave, who were quite able by themselves to maintain the household traditions and whip into line of duty the new and less conscientious recruits below stairs.

A great many people were gathered on the terrace when Duane descended the stairs, on his way to inspect his temporary quarters in Miller's loft, at Hurryon Lodge.

He stopped and spoke to many, greeted Delancy Grandcourt's loquacious and rotund mother, politely listened to her scandalous budget of gossip, shook hands cordially with her big, handsome daughter, Catharine, a strapping girl, with the shyly honest eyes of her brother and the rather heavy but shapely body and limbs of an indolent Juno. A harsh voice pronounced his name; old Mr. Tappan extended a dry hand and bored him through with eyes like holes burnt in a blanket.

"And do you still cultiwate the fine arts, young man?" he inquired, as sternly as though he privately suspected Duane of maltreating them.

Duane shook hands with him.

"The school of the indiwidool," continued Mr. Tappan, "is what artists need. Woo the muses in solitude; cultiwate 'em in isolation. Didn't Benjamin West live out in the backwoods? And I guess he managed to make good without raising hell in the Eekole di Boze Arts with a lot of dissipated wagabonds at his elbow, inculcating immoral precepts and wasting his time and his father's money."

And he looked very hard at Duane, who winced, but agreed with him solemnly.

Geraldine, on the edge of a circle of newly arrived guests, leaned over and whispered mischievously:

"Is that what you did at the Ecole des Beaux Arts? Did you behave like all that or did you cultivate the indiwidool?"

He shook hands again, solemnly, with Mr. Tappan, stepped back, and joined her.

"Where on earth have you been hiding?" she inquired.

"You said that if I carved certain cabalistic signs on the big beech-tree you would presently appear to me in a pink cloud—you faithless little wretch!"

"How could I? Three motor-loads arrived from Iron Hill before I was half dressed, and ever since I've been doing my traditional duty; and," in a lower voice, "I was perfectly crazy to go to the beech-tree all the time. Did you wait long, you poor boy?"

"Man is born to wait. I came back just now to find you… . I told Kathleen," he added, radiant.

"What?" she whispered, flushing deliciously. "Oh, pooh! I told her about it this morning—the very first thing. We both snivelled. I didn't sleep at all last night… . There's something I wish to tell you——"

The gay smile suddenly died out in her eyes; a strange, wistful tenderness softened them, touching her lips, too, which always gave that very young, almost childish pathos to her expression. She put out her hand instinctively and touched him.

"I want to be alone with you, Duane—for a little while."

"Shall I go to the beech-tree and wait?"

She glanced around with a hopeless gesture:

"You see? Other people are arriving and I've simply got to be here. I don't see how I can get away before luncheon. Where were you going just now?"

"I thought I'd step over to the studio to see what sort of a shake-down you've given me to repose on."

"I wish you would. Poor child, I do hope you will be comfortable. It's perfectly horrid to send you out of the house——"

"Oh, I don't mind," he nodded, laughing, and she gave him a shy glance of adieu and turned to receive another guest.

In his extemporized studio at Hurryon Lodge he found that old Miller had already provided him with a washstand and accessories, a new tin tub and a very comfortable iron bed.

The place was aromatic with the odour of paints, varnishes, turpentine, and fixative; he opened the big window, let in air and sunshine, and picked up a sheaf of brushes, soft and pliable from a fresh washing in turpentine and black soap.

Confronting him on a big improvised easel was the full-length, half-reclining portrait of Rosalie Dysart—a gay, fascinating, fly-away thing after the deliberately artificial manner of the French court painters who simpered and painted a hundred and fifty years ago. Ribbons fluttered from the throat and shoulder of this demure, fair-skinned, and blue-eyed creature, who was so palpably playing at masquerade. A silken parody of a shepherdess—a laughing, dainty, snowy-fingered aristocrat, sweet-lipped, provocative, half reclining under a purposely conventional oak, between the branches of which big white clouds rolled in a dark-blue sky—this was Rosalie as Duane had painted her with all the perversely infernal skill of a brush always tipped with a mockery as delicate as her small, bare foot, dropping below the flowered petticoat.

The unholy ease with which he had done it gave him a secret thrill of admiration. It was apparently all surface—the exquisite masquerader, the surrounding detail, the technical graciousness and flow of line and contour, the effortless brush-work. Yet, with an ease which demanded very respectful consideration, he had absorbed and transmitted the frivolous spirit of the old French masters, which they themselves took so seriously; the portrait was also a likeness, yet delightfully permeated with the charm of a light-minded epoch; and somehow, behind and underneath it all, a brilliant mockery sparkled—the half-amused, half-indifferent brilliancy of the painter himself. It was there for any who could appreciate it, and it was quite irresistible, particularly since he had, after a dazzling preliminary study or two from a gamekeeper's small, chubby son, added, fluttering in mid-air, a pair of white-winged Loves, chubby as cherubs but much more Gallic.

Nobody excepting Rosalie and himself had seen the picture. What he meant to do with it he did not know, half ashamed as he was of its satiric cleverness. Painters would hate it—stand hypnotised, spellbound the while—and hate it, for they are a serious sort, your painters of pictures, and they couldn't appreciate an art which made fun of art; they would execrate the uncanny mastery and utterly miss the gay perversity of the performance, and Duane knew it and laughed wickedly. What a shock! What would sober, seriously inclined people think if an actor who was eminently fitted to play Lear, should bow to his audience and earnestly perform a very complicated and perfect flip-flap?

Amused with his own disrespectful reflections, he stood before the picture, turning from it with a grin from time to time to compare it with some dozen vigorous canvases hanging along the studio wall—studies that he knew would instantly command the owlish respect of the truly earnest—connoisseurs, critics, and academicians in this very earnest land of ours.

There was a Sargent-like portrait of old Miller, with something of that great master's raucous colouring and perhaps intentional discords, and all of his technical effrontery; and here, too, lurked that shadow of mockery ever latent in the young man's brush—something far more subtle than caricature or parody—deeper than the imitation of manner—something like the evanescent caprice of a strong hand, which seems to threaten for a second, then passes on lightly, surely, transforming its menace into a caress.

There were two adorable nude studies of Miller's granddaughters, aged six and seven—quaintly and engagingly formal in their naïve astonishment at finding themselves quite naked. There was a fine sketch of Howker, wrinkled, dim-eyed, every inch a butler, every fibre in him the dignified and self-respecting, old-time servant, who added his dignity to that of the house he had served so long and well. The latter picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety drawing and harmonious arrangements in mud.

For in Duane's work, from somewhere deep within, there radiated outward something of that internal glow which never entirely fades from the canvases of the old masters—which survives mould and age, the opacity of varnish, and the well-intentioned maltreatment of unbaked curators.

There was no mystery about it; he prepared his canvas with white-lead, gave it a long sun-bath, modelled in bone-black and an earth-red, gave it another bath in the sun, and then glazed. This, a choice of permanent colours, and oil as a medium, was the mechanical technique.

Standing there, thoughts remote, idly sorting and re-sorting his brushes, he heard the birds singing on the forest's edge, heard the wind in the pines blowing, with the sound of flowing water, felt the warmth of the sun, breathed the mounting freshness from the fields. Life was still very, very young; it had only begun since love had come, and that was yesterday.

And as he stood there, happy, a trifle awed as he began to understand what life might hold for him, there came quick steps on the stair, a knock, her voice outside his door:

"Duane! May I come in?"

He sprang to the door; she stepped inside, breathing rapidly, delicately flushed from her haste.

"I couldn't stand it any longer, so I left Scott to scrape and bow and pull his forelock. I've got to go back in a few minutes. Are you glad to see me?"

He took her in his arms.

"Dearest, dearest!" she murmured, looking at him with all her heart in her brown eyes.

So they stood for a little while, her mouth and body acquiescent to his embrace.

"Such a long, long time since I saw you. Nearly half an hour," he said.

"Yes." She drew away a little:

"Do you know," she said, looking about her, over his shoulder, "I have never been here since you took it as a studio."

She caught a glimpse of the picture on the easel, freed herself, and, retaining his hand in both of hers, gazed curiously at Rosalie's portrait.

"How perfectly charming!" she said. "But, Duane, there's a sort of exquisite impudence about what you've done! Did you mean to gently and disrespectfully jeer at our mincing friends, Boucher, Nattier, et al.?"

"I knew you'd understand!" he exclaimed, delighted. "Oh, you wonderful little thing—you darling!" He caught her to him again, but she twisted away and tucked one arm under his:

"Don't, Duane; I want to see these things. What a perfectly dear study of Miller's kiddies! Oh, it is too lovable, too adorable! You wouldn't sell that—would you?"

"Of course not; it's yours, Geraldine."

After a moment she looked up at him:

"Ours?" she asked; but the smile faded once more from eyes and lips; she suffered him to lead her from canvas to canvas, approved them or remained silent, and presently turned and glanced toward the small iron bed. Manner and gaze had become distrait.

"You think this will be comfortable, Duane?" she inquired listlessly.

"Perfectly," he said.

She disengaged her hand from his, walked over to the lounge, turned, and signed for him to seat himself. Then she dropped to her knees and settled down on the rug at his feet, laying her soft cheek against his arm.

"I have some things to tell you," she said in a low voice.

"Very serious things?" he asked, smiling.

"Very."

"All right; I am listening."

"Very serious things," she repeated, gazing through the window, where green tree-tops swayed in the breezy sunlight; and she pressed her cheek closer to his arm.

"I have not been very—good," she said.

He looked at her, suppressed the smile that twitched at his mouth, and waited.

"I wish I could give myself to you as clean and sweet and untainted as—as you deserve… . I can't; and before we go any further I must tell you——"

"Why, you blessed child," he exclaimed, half laughing, half serious. "You are not going to confess to me, are you?"

"Duane, I've got to tell you everything. I couldn't rest unless I was perfectly honest with you."

"But, dear," he said, a trifle dismayed, "such confidences are not necessary. Nor am I fit to hear your list of innocent transgressions——"

"Oh, they are not very innocent. Let me tell you; let me cleanse myself as much as I can. I don't want to have any secrets from you, Duane. I want to go to you as guiltless as confession can make me. I want to begin clean. Let me tell you. Couldn't you let me tell you, Duane?"

"And I, dear? Do—do you expect me to tell you? Do you expect me to do as you do?"

She looked up at him surprised; she had expected it. Something in his face warned her of her own ignorance.

"I don't know very much about men, Duane. Are there things you cannot say to me?"

"One or two, dear."

"Do you mean until after we are married?"

"Not even then. There is no use in your knowing."

She had never considered that, either.

"But ought I to know, Duane?"

"No," he said miserably, "you ought not."

She sat upright for a few seconds longer, gazing thoughtfully at space, then pressed her pale face against his knee again in silent faith and confidence.

"Anyway, I know you will be fair to me in your own way," she said. "There is only one way that I know how to be fair to you. Listen."

And in a shamed voice she forced herself to recite her list of sins; repeating them as she had confessed them to Kathleen. She told him everything; her silly and common imprudence with Dysart, which, she believed, had bordered the danger mark; her ignoble descent to what she had always held aloof from, meaning demoralisation in regard to betting and gambling and foolish language; and last, but most shameful, her secret and perilous temporising with a habit which already was making self-denial very difficult for her. She did not spare herself; she told him everything, searching the secret recesses of her heart for some small sin in hiding, some fault, perhaps, overlooked or forgotten. All that she held unworthy in her she told this man; and the man, being an average man, listened, head bowed over her fragrant hair, adoring her, wretched in heart and soul with the heavy knowledge of all he dare not tell or forget or cleanse from him, kneeling repentant, in the sanctuary of her love and confidence.

She told him everything—sins of omission, childish depravities, made real only by the decalogue. Of indolence, selfishness, unkindness, she accused herself; strove to count the times when she had yielded to temptation.

He was reading the first human heart he had ever known—a heart still strangely untainted, amid a society where innocence was the exception, doubtful wisdom the rule, and where curiosity was seldom left very long in doubt.

His hands fell over hers as her voice ceased, but he did not speak.

She waited a little while, then, with a slight nestling movement, turned and hid her face on his knees.

"With God's help," she whispered, "I will subdue what threatens me. But I am afraid of it! Oh, Duane, I am afraid."

He managed to steady his voice.

"What is it, darling, that seems to tempt you," he asked; "is it the taste—the effect?"

"The—effect. If I could only forget it—but I can't help thinking about it—I suppose just because it's forbidden—For days, sometimes, there is not the slightest desire; then something stirs it up in me, begins to annoy me; or the desire comes sometimes when I am excited or very happy, or very miserable. There seems to be some degraded instinct in me that seeks for it whenever my emotions are aroused… . I must be honest with you; I—I feel that way now—because, I suppose, I am a little excited."

He raised her and took her in his arms.

"But you won't, will you? Simply tell me that you won't."

She looked at him, appalled by her own hesitation. Was it possible, after the words she had just uttered, the exaltation of confession still thrilling her, that she could hesitate? Was it morbid over-conscientiousness in the horror of a broken promise to him that struck her silent?

"Say it, Geraldine."

"Oh, Duane! I've said it so often to Kathleen and myself! Let me promise myself again—and keep my word. Let me try that way, dear, before I—I promise you?"

There was a feverish colour in her face; she spoke rapidly, like one who temporises, trying to convince others and over-ride the inward voice; her slender hands were restless on his shoulders, her eyes lowered, avoiding his.

"Perhaps if you and Kathleen, and I, myself, were not so afraid—perhaps if I were not forbidden—if I had your confidence and my own that I would not abuse my liberty, it might be easier to refrain. Shall we try it that way, Duane?"

"Do you think it best?"

"I think—I might try that way. Dear, I have so much to sustain me now—so much more at stake! Because there is the dread of losing you—for, Duane, until I am mistress of myself, I will never, never marry you—and do you suppose I am going to risk our happiness? Only leave me free, dear; don't attempt to wall me in at first, and I will surely find my way."

She sprang up, trying to smile, hesitated, then slowly came back to where he was standing and put her arms around his neck.

"Good-bye until luncheon," she said. "I must go back to my neglected guests—I am going to run all the way as fast as my legs can carry me! Kathleen will be dreadfully mortified. Do you love me?… Even after my horrid confessions?… Oh, you darling!… Now that you know the very worst, I begin to feel as clean and fresh as though I had just stepped from the bath… . And I will try to be what you would have me, dear… . Because I am quite crazy about you—oh, completely mad!"

She bent impulsively and kissed his hands, freed herself with a breathless laugh, and turned and fled.

For a long time her lover stood there, motionless, downcast, clenched fists in his pockets, face to face with the past. And that which lay behind him was that which lies behind what is commonly known to the world as the average man.