Dedic­ated
to
My Brother

Epigraph

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink be­neath the lake,
The shad­ows lengthen
In Car­cosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Car­cosa.

Songs that the Hy­ades shall sing,
Where flap the tat­ters of the King,
Must die un­heard in
Dim Car­cosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, un­sung, as tears un­shed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Car­cosa.

Cassilda’s Song in The King in Yel­low, Act I, Scene 2

The King in Yellow

The Repairer of Reputations

“Ne rail­lons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que la nôtre. … Voila toute la différence.”

I

Toward the end of the year 1920 the gov­ern­ment of the Un­ited States had prac­tic­ally com­pleted the pro­gramme, ad­op­ted dur­ing the last months of Pres­id­ent Win­throp’s ad­min­is­tra­tion. The coun­try was ap­par­ently tran­quil. Every­body knows how the Tar­iff and La­bour ques­tions were settled. The war with Ger­many, in­cid­ent on that coun­try’s seizure of the Samoan Is­lands, had left no vis­ible scars upon the re­pub­lic, and the tem­por­ary oc­cu­pa­tion of Nor­folk by the in­vad­ing army had been for­got­ten in the joy over re­peated naval vic­tor­ies, and the sub­sequent ri­dicu­lous plight of Gen­eral Von Garten­laube’s forces in the State of New Jer­sey. The Cuban and Hawaiian in­vest­ments had paid one hun­dred per­cent and the ter­rit­ory of Samoa was well worth its cost as a coal­ing sta­tion. The coun­try was in a su­perb state of de­fence. Every coast city had been well sup­plied with land for­ti­fic­a­tions; the army un­der the par­ental eye of the Gen­eral Staff, or­gan­ized ac­cord­ing to the Prus­sian sys­tem, had been in­creased to 300,000 men, with a ter­rit­orial re­serve of a mil­lion; and six mag­ni­fi­cent squad­rons of cruis­ers and battle­ships patrolled the six sta­tions of the nav­ig­able seas, leav­ing a steam re­serve amply fit­ted to con­trol home wa­ters. The gen­tle­men from the West had at last been con­strained to ac­know­ledge that a col­lege for the train­ing of dip­lo­mats was as ne­ces­sary as law schools are for the train­ing of bar­ris­ters; con­sequently we were no longer rep­res­en­ted abroad by in­com­pet­ent pat­ri­ots. The na­tion was pros­per­ous; Ch­icago, for a mo­ment para­lyzed after a second great fire, had risen from its ru­ins, white and im­per­ial, and more beau­ti­ful than the white city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Every­where good ar­chi­tec­ture was re­pla­cing bad, and even in New York, a sud­den crav­ing for de­cency had swept away a great por­tion of the ex­ist­ing hor­rors. Streets had been widened, prop­erly paved and lighted, trees had been planted, squares laid out, el­ev­ated struc­tures de­mol­ished and un­der­ground roads built to re­place them. The new gov­ern­ment build­ings and bar­racks were fine bits of ar­chi­tec­ture, and the long sys­tem of stone quays which com­pletely sur­roun­ded the is­land had been turned into parks which proved a god­send to the pop­u­la­tion. The sub­sid­iz­ing of the state theatre and state op­era brought its own re­ward. The Un­ited States Na­tional Academy of Design was much like European in­sti­tu­tions of the same kind. Nobody en­vied the Sec­ret­ary of Fine Arts, either his cab­inet po­s­i­tion or his port­fo­lio. The Sec­ret­ary of Forestry and Game Pre­ser­va­tion had a much easier time, thanks to the new sys­tem of Na­tional Moun­ted Po­lice. We had profited well by the latest treat­ies with France and Eng­land; the ex­clu­sion of for­eign-born Jews as a meas­ure of self-pre­ser­va­tion, the set­tle­ment of the new in­de­pend­ent negro state of Suanee, the check­ing of im­mig­ra­tion, the new laws con­cern­ing nat­ur­al­iz­a­tion, and the gradual cent­ral­iz­a­tion of power in the ex­ec­ut­ive all con­trib­uted to na­tional calm and prosper­ity. When the gov­ern­ment solved the In­dian prob­lem and squad­rons of In­dian cav­alry scouts in nat­ive cos­tume were sub­sti­tuted for the pi­ti­able or­gan­iz­a­tions tacked on to the tail of skel­et­on­ized re­gi­ments by a former Sec­ret­ary of War, the na­tion drew a long sigh of re­lief. When, after the co­lossal Con­gress of Re­li­gions, bigotry and in­tol­er­ance were laid in their graves and kind­ness and char­ity began to draw war­ring sects to­gether, many thought the mil­len­nium had ar­rived, at least in the new world which after all is a world by it­self.

But self-pre­ser­va­tion is the first law, and the Un­ited States had to look on in help­less sor­row as Ger­many, Italy, Spain and Bel­gium writhed in the throes of an­archy, while Rus­sia, watch­ing from the Cau­casus, stooped and bound them one by one.

In the city of New York the sum­mer of 1899 was sig­nal­ized by the dis­mant­ling of the El­ev­ated Rail­roads. The sum­mer of 1900 will live in the memor­ies of New York people for many a cycle; the Dodge Statue was re­moved in that year. In the fol­low­ing winter began that agit­a­tion for the re­peal of the laws pro­hib­it­ing sui­cide which bore its fi­nal fruit in the month of April, 1920, when the first Govern­ment Lethal Cham­ber was opened on Wash­ing­ton Square.

I had walked down that day from Dr. Archer’s house on Madison Av­enue, where I had been as a mere form­al­ity. Ever since that fall from my horse, four years be­fore, I had been troubled at times with pains in the back of my head and neck, but now for months they had been ab­sent, and the doc­tor sent me away that day say­ing there was noth­ing more to be cured in me. It was hardly worth his fee to be told that; I knew it my­self. Still I did not grudge him the money. What I minded was the mis­take which he made at first. When they picked me up from the pave­ment where I lay un­con­scious, and some­body had mer­ci­fully sent a bul­let through my horse’s head, I was car­ried to Dr. Archer, and he, pro­noun­cing my brain af­fected, placed me in his private asylum where I was ob­liged to en­dure treat­ment for in­san­ity. At last he de­cided that I was well, and I, know­ing that my mind had al­ways been as sound as his, if not sounder, “paid my tu­ition” as he jok­ingly called it, and left. I told him, smil­ing, that I would get even with him for his mis­take, and he laughed heart­ily, and asked me to call once in a while. I did so, hop­ing for a chance to even up ac­counts, but he gave me none, and I told him I would wait.

The fall from my horse had for­tu­nately left no evil res­ults; on the con­trary it had changed my whole char­ac­ter for the bet­ter. From a lazy young man about town, I had be­come act­ive, en­er­getic, tem­per­ate, and above all—oh, above all else—am­bi­tious. There was only one thing which troubled me, I laughed at my own un­eas­i­ness, and yet it troubled me.

Dur­ing my con­vales­cence I had bought and read for the first time, The King in Yel­low. I re­mem­ber after fin­ish­ing the first act that it oc­curred to me that I had bet­ter stop. I star­ted up and flung the book into the fire­place; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open on the hearth in the fire­light. If I had not caught a glimpse of the open­ing words in the second act I should never have fin­ished it, but as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes be­came riv­eted to the open page, and with a cry of ter­ror, or per­haps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shak­ing to my bed­room, where I read it and re­read it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a hor­ror which at times as­sails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I can­not for­get Car­cosa where black stars hang in the heav­ens; where the shad­ows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the af­ter­noon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pal­lid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beau­ti­ful, stu­pendous cre­ation, ter­rible in its sim­pli­city, ir­res­ist­ible in its truth—a world which now trembles be­fore the King in Yel­low. When the French gov­ern­ment seized the trans­lated cop­ies which had just ar­rived in Paris, Lon­don, of course, be­came eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an in­fec­tious dis­ease, from city to city, from con­tin­ent to con­tin­ent, barred out here, con­fis­cated there, de­nounced by Press and pul­pit, cen­sured even by the most ad­vanced of lit­er­ary an­arch­ists. No def­in­ite prin­ciples had been vi­ol­ated in those wicked pages, no doc­trine pro­mul­gated, no con­vic­tions out­raged. It could not be judged by any known stand­ard, yet, al­though it was ac­know­ledged that the su­preme note of art had been struck in The King in Yel­low, all felt that hu­man nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the es­sence of purest poison lurked. The very banal­ity and in­no­cence of the first act only al­lowed the blow to fall af­ter­ward with more aw­ful ef­fect.

It was, I re­mem­ber, the 13th day of April, 1920, that the first Govern­ment Lethal Cham­ber was es­tab­lished on the south side of Wash­ing­ton Square, between Wooster Street and South Fifth Av­enue. The block which had formerly con­sisted of a lot of shabby old build­ings, used as cafés and res­taur­ants for for­eign­ers, had been ac­quired by the gov­ern­ment in the winter of 1898. The French and Italian cafés and res­taur­ants were torn down; the whole block was en­closed by a gil­ded iron rail­ing, and con­ver­ted into a lovely garden with lawns, flowers and foun­tains. In the centre of the garden stood a small, white build­ing, severely clas­sical in ar­chi­tec­ture, and sur­roun­ded by thick­ets of flowers. Six Ionic columns sup­por­ted the roof, and the single door was of bronze. A splen­did marble group of the Fates stood be­fore the door, the work of a young Amer­ican sculptor, Boris Yvain, who had died in Paris when only twenty-three years old.

The in­aug­ur­a­tion ce­re­mon­ies were in pro­gress as I crossed University Place and entered the square. I threaded my way through the si­lent throng of spec­tat­ors, but was stopped at Fourth Street by a cor­don of po­lice. A re­gi­ment of Un­ited States lan­cers were drawn up in a hol­low square round the Lethal Cham­ber. On a raised tribune fa­cing Wash­ing­ton Park stood the Governor of New York, and be­hind him were grouped the Mayor of New York and Brook­lyn, the In­spector-Gen­eral of Po­lice, the Com­mand­ant of the state troops, Co­l­onel Liv­ing­ston, mil­it­ary aid to the Pres­id­ent of the Un­ited States, Gen­eral Blount, com­mand­ing at Governor’s Is­land, Ma­jor-Gen­eral Hamilton, com­mand­ing the gar­rison of New York and Brook­lyn, Ad­miral Buffby of the fleet in the North River, Sur­geon-Gen­eral Lance­ford, the staff of the Na­tional Free Hos­pital, Sen­at­ors Wyse and Frank­lin of New York, and the Com­mis­sioner of Public Works. The tribune was sur­roun­ded by a squad­ron of hus­sars of the Na­tional Guard.

The Governor was fin­ish­ing his reply to the short speech of the Sur­geon-Gen­eral. I heard him say: “The laws pro­hib­it­ing sui­cide and provid­ing pun­ish­ment for any at­tempt at self-de­struc­tion have been re­pealed. The gov­ern­ment has seen fit to ac­know­ledge the right of man to end an ex­ist­ence which may have be­come in­tol­er­able to him, through phys­ical suf­fer­ing or men­tal des­pair. It is be­lieved that the com­munity will be be­nefited by the re­moval of such people from their midst. Since the pas­sage of this law, the num­ber of sui­cides in the Un­ited States has not in­creased. Now the gov­ern­ment has de­term­ined to es­tab­lish a Lethal Cham­ber in every city, town and vil­lage in the coun­try, it re­mains to be seen whether or not that class of hu­man creatures from whose des­pond­ing ranks new vic­tims of self-de­struc­tion fall daily will ac­cept the re­lief thus provided.” He paused, and turned to the white Lethal Cham­ber. The si­lence in the street was ab­so­lute. “There a pain­less death awaits him who can no longer bear the sor­rows of this life. If death is wel­come let him seek it there.” Then quickly turn­ing to the mil­it­ary aid of the Pres­id­ent’s house­hold, he said, “I de­clare the Lethal Cham­ber open,” and again fa­cing the vast crowd he cried in a clear voice: “Cit­izens of New York and of the Un­ited States of Amer­ica, through me the gov­ern­ment de­clares the Lethal Cham­ber to be open.”

The sol­emn hush was broken by a sharp cry of com­mand, the squad­ron of hus­sars filed after the Governor’s car­riage, the lan­cers wheeled and formed along Fifth Av­enue to wait for the com­mand­ant of the gar­rison, and the moun­ted po­lice fol­lowed them. I left the crowd to gape and stare at the white marble Death Cham­ber, and, cross­ing South Fifth Av­enue, walked along the west­ern side of that thor­ough­fare to Bleecker Street. Then I turned to the right and stopped be­fore a dingy shop which bore the sign:

Haw­berk, Ar­mourer.

I glanced in at the door­way and saw Haw­berk busy in his little shop at the end of the hall. He looked up, and catch­ing sight of me cried in his deep, hearty voice, “Come in, Mr. Cas­taigne!” Con­stance, his daugh­ter, rose to meet me as I crossed the threshold, and held out her pretty hand, but I saw the blush of dis­ap­point­ment on her cheeks, and knew that it was an­other Cas­taigne she had ex­pec­ted, my cousin Louis. I smiled at her con­fu­sion and com­pli­men­ted her on the ban­ner she was em­broid­er­ing from a col­oured plate. Old Haw­berk sat riv­et­ing the worn greaves of some an­cient suit of ar­mour, and the ting! ting! ting! of his little ham­mer soun­ded pleas­antly in the quaint shop. Presently he dropped his ham­mer, and fussed about for a mo­ment with a tiny wrench. The soft clash of the mail sent a thrill of pleas­ure through me. I loved to hear the mu­sic of steel brush­ing against steel, the mel­low shock of the mal­let on thigh pieces, and the jingle of chain ar­mour. That was the only reason I went to see Haw­berk. He had never in­ter­ested me per­son­ally, nor did Con­stance, ex­cept for the fact of her be­ing in love with Louis. This did oc­cupy my at­ten­tion, and some­times even kept me awake at night. But I knew in my heart that all would come right, and that I should ar­range their fu­ture as I ex­pec­ted to ar­range that of my kind doc­tor, John Archer. However, I should never have troubled my­self about vis­it­ing them just then, had it not been, as I say, that the mu­sic of the tink­ling ham­mer had for me this strong fas­cin­a­tion. I would sit for hours, listen­ing and listen­ing, and when a stray sun­beam struck the in­laid steel, the sen­sa­tion it gave me was al­most too keen to en­dure. My eyes would be­come fixed, dilat­ing with a pleas­ure that stretched every nerve al­most to break­ing, un­til some move­ment of the old ar­mourer cut off the ray of sun­light, then, still thrill­ing secretly, I leaned back and listened again to the sound of the pol­ish­ing rag, swish! swish! rub­bing rust from the riv­ets.

Con­stance worked with the em­broid­ery over her knees, now and then paus­ing to ex­am­ine more closely the pat­tern in the col­oured plate from the Met­ro­pol­itan Mu­seum.

“Who is this for?” I asked.

Haw­berk ex­plained, that in ad­di­tion to the treas­ures of ar­mour in the Met­ro­pol­itan Mu­seum of which he had been ap­poin­ted ar­mourer, he also had charge of sev­eral col­lec­tions be­long­ing to rich am­a­teurs. This was the miss­ing greave of a fam­ous suit which a cli­ent of his had traced to a little shop in Paris on the Quai d’Or­say. He, Haw­berk, had ne­go­ti­ated for and se­cured the greave, and now the suit was com­plete. He laid down his ham­mer and read me the his­tory of the suit, traced since 1450 from owner to owner un­til it was ac­quired by Tho­mas Stain­bridge. When his su­perb col­lec­tion was sold, this cli­ent of Haw­berk’s bought the suit, and since then the search for the miss­ing greave had been pushed un­til it was, al­most by ac­ci­dent, loc­ated in Paris.

“Did you con­tinue the search so per­sist­ently without any cer­tainty of the greave be­ing still in ex­ist­ence?” I de­man­ded.

“Of course,” he replied coolly.

Then for the first time I took a per­sonal in­terest in Haw­berk.

“It was worth some­thing to you,” I ven­tured.

“No,” he replied, laugh­ing, “my pleas­ure in find­ing it was my re­ward.”

“Have you no am­bi­tion to be rich?” I asked, smil­ing.

“My one am­bi­tion is to be the best ar­mourer in the world,” he answered gravely.

Con­stance asked me if I had seen the ce­re­mon­ies at the Lethal Cham­ber. She her­self had no­ticed cav­alry passing up Broad­way that morn­ing, and had wished to see the in­aug­ur­a­tion, but her father wanted the ban­ner fin­ished, and she had stayed at his re­quest.

“Did you see your cousin, Mr. Cas­taigne, there?” she asked, with the slight­est tremor of her soft eye­lashes.

“No,” I replied care­lessly. “Louis’ re­gi­ment is man­oeuv­ring out in Westchester County.” I rose and picked up my hat and cane.

“Are you go­ing up­stairs to see the lun­atic again?” laughed old Haw­berk. If Haw­berk knew how I loathe that word “lun­atic,” he would never use it in my pres­ence. It rouses cer­tain feel­ings within me which I do not care to ex­plain. However, I answered him quietly: “I think I shall drop in and see Mr. Wilde for a mo­ment or two.”

“Poor fel­low,” said Con­stance, with a shake of the head, “it must be hard to live alone year after year poor, crippled and al­most de­men­ted. It is very good of you, Mr. Cas­taigne, to visit him as of­ten as you do.”

“I think he is vi­cious,” ob­served Haw­berk, be­gin­ning again with his ham­mer. I listened to the golden tinkle on the greave plates; when he had fin­ished I replied:

“No, he is not vi­cious, nor is he in the least de­men­ted. His mind is a won­der cham­ber, from which he can ex­tract treas­ures that you and I would give years of our life to ac­quire.” ’

Haw­berk laughed.

I con­tin­ued a little im­pa­tiently: “He knows his­tory as no one else could know it. Noth­ing, how­ever trivial, es­capes his search, and his memory is so ab­so­lute, so pre­cise in de­tails, that were it known in New York that such a man ex­is­ted, the people could not hon­our him enough.”

“Non­sense,” muttered Haw­berk, search­ing on the floor for a fallen rivet.

“Is it non­sense,” I asked, man­aging to sup­press what I felt, “is it non­sense when he says that the tas­sets and cuis­sards of the enamelled suit of ar­mour com­monly known as the ‘Prince’s Emblazoned’ can be found among a mass of rusty the­at­rical prop­er­ties, broken stoves and rag­picker’s re­fuse in a gar­ret in Pell Street?”

Haw­berk’s ham­mer fell to the ground, but he picked it up and asked, with a great deal of calm, how I knew that the tas­sets and left cuis­sard were miss­ing from the “Prince’s Emblazoned.”

“I did not know un­til Mr. Wilde men­tioned it to me the other day. He said they were in the gar­ret of 998 Pell Street.”

“Non­sense,” he cried, but I no­ticed his hand trem­bling un­der his leath­ern ap­ron.

“Is this non­sense too?” I asked pleas­antly, “is it non­sense when Mr. Wilde con­tinu­ally speaks of you as the Mar­quis of Avon­shire and of Miss Con­stance—”

I did not fin­ish, for Con­stance had star­ted to her feet with ter­ror writ­ten on every fea­ture. Haw­berk looked at me and slowly smoothed his leath­ern ap­ron.

“That is im­possible,” he ob­served, “Mr. Wilde may know a great many things—”

“About ar­mour, for in­stance, and the ‘Prince’s Emblazoned,’ ” I in­ter­posed, smil­ing.

“Yes,” he con­tin­ued, slowly, “about ar­mour also—may be—but he is wrong in re­gard to the Mar­quis of Avon­shire, who, as you know, killed his wife’s tra­ducer years ago, and went to Aus­tralia where he did not long sur­vive his wife.”

“Mr. Wilde is wrong,” mur­mured Con­stance. Her lips were blanched, but her voice was sweet and calm.

“Let us agree, if you please, that in this one cir­cum­stance Mr. Wilde is wrong,” I said.

II

I climbed the three dilap­id­ated flights of stairs, which I had so of­ten climbed be­fore, and knocked at a small door at the end of the cor­ridor. Mr. Wilde opened the door and I walked in.

When he had double-locked the door and pushed a heavy chest against it, he came and sat down be­side me, peer­ing up into my face with his little light-col­oured eyes. Half a dozen new scratches covered his nose and cheeks, and the sil­ver wires which sup­por­ted his ar­ti­fi­cial ears had be­come dis­placed. I thought I had never seen him so hideously fas­cin­at­ing. He had no ears. The ar­ti­fi­cial ones, which now stood out at an angle from the fine wire, were his one weak­ness. They were made of wax and painted a shell pink, but the rest of his face was yel­low. He might bet­ter have rev­elled in the lux­ury of some ar­ti­fi­cial fin­gers for his left hand, which was ab­so­lutely fin­ger­less, but it seemed to cause him no in­con­veni­ence, and he was sat­is­fied with his wax ears. He was very small, scarcely higher than a child of ten, but his arms were mag­ni­fi­cently de­veloped, and his thighs as thick as any ath­lete’s. Still, the most re­mark­able thing about Mr. Wilde was that a man of his mar­vel­lous in­tel­li­gence and know­ledge should have such a head. It was flat and poin­ted, like the heads of many of those un­for­tu­nates whom people im­prison in asylums for the weak-minded. Many called him in­sane, but I knew him to be as sane as I was.

I do not deny that he was ec­cent­ric; the mania he had for keep­ing that cat and teas­ing her un­til she flew at his face like a de­mon, was cer­tainly ec­cent­ric. I never could un­der­stand why he kept the creature, nor what pleas­ure he found in shut­ting him­self up in his room with this surly, vi­cious beast. I re­mem­ber once, glan­cing up from the ma­nu­script I was study­ing by the light of some tal­low dips, and see­ing Mr. Wilde squat­ting mo­tion­less on his high chair, his eyes fairly blaz­ing with ex­cite­ment, while the cat, which had risen from her place be­fore the stove, came creep­ing across the floor right at him. Be­fore I could move she flattened her belly to the ground, crouched, trembled, and sprang into his face. Howl­ing and foam­ing they rolled over and over on the floor, scratch­ing and claw­ing, un­til the cat screamed and fled un­der the cab­inet, and Mr. Wilde turned over on his back, his limbs con­tract­ing and curl­ing up like the legs of a dy­ing spider. He was ec­cent­ric.

Mr. Wilde had climbed into his high chair, and, after study­ing my face, picked up a dog’s-eared ledger and opened it.

“Henry B. Mat­thews,” he read, “book­keeper with Whysot Whysot and Com­pany, deal­ers in church or­na­ments. Called April 3rd. Repu­ta­tion dam­aged on the racetrack. Known as a welcher. Repu­ta­tion to be re­paired by August 1st. Re­tainer five dol­lars.” He turned the page and ran his fin­ger­less knuckles down the closely-writ­ten columns.

“P. Greene Dusen­berry, Min­is­ter of the Gospel, Fair­beach, New Jer­sey. Repu­ta­tion dam­aged in the Bowery. To be re­paired as soon as pos­sible. Re­tainer one hun­dred dol­lars.”

He coughed and ad­ded, “Called, April 6th.”

“Then you are not in need of money, Mr. Wilde,” I in­quired.

“Listen,” he coughed again.

“Mrs. C. Hamilton Chester, of Chester Park, New York City. Called April 7th. Repu­ta­tion dam­aged at Dieppe, France. To be re­paired by Octo­ber 1st. Re­tainer five hun­dred dol­lars.

“Note.—C. Hamilton Chester, Cap­tain USS Avalanche, ordered home from South Sea Squad­ron Octo­ber 1st.”

“Well,” I said, “the pro­fes­sion of a Re­pairer of Repu­ta­tions is luc­rat­ive.”

His col­our­less eyes sought mine, “I only wanted to demon­strate that I was cor­rect. You said it was im­possible to suc­ceed as a Re­pairer of Repu­ta­tions; that even if I did suc­ceed in cer­tain cases it would cost me more than I would gain by it. Today I have five hun­dred men in my em­ploy, who are poorly paid, but who pur­sue the work with an en­thu­si­asm which pos­sibly may be born of fear. These men enter every shade and grade of so­ci­ety; some even are pil­lars of the most ex­clus­ive so­cial temples; oth­ers are the prop and pride of the fin­an­cial world; still oth­ers, hold un­dis­puted sway among the ‘Fancy and the Talent.’ I choose them at my leis­ure from those who reply to my ad­vert­ise­ments. It is easy enough, they are all cow­ards. I could treble the num­ber in twenty days if I wished. So you see, those who have in their keep­ing the repu­ta­tions of their fel­low-cit­izens, I have in my pay.”

“They may turn on you,” I sug­ges­ted.

He rubbed his thumb over his cropped ears, and ad­jus­ted the wax sub­sti­tutes. “I think not,” he mur­mured thought­fully, “I sel­dom have to ap­ply the whip, and then only once. Besides, they like their wages.”

“How do you ap­ply the whip?” I de­man­ded.

His face for a mo­ment was aw­ful to look upon. His eyes dwindled to a pair of green sparks.

“I in­vite them to come and have a little chat with me,” he said in a soft voice.

A knock at the door in­ter­rup­ted him, and his face re­sumed its ami­able ex­pres­sion.

“Who is it?” he in­quired.

“Mr. Stey­lette,” was the an­swer.

“Come to­mor­row,” replied Mr. Wilde.

“Im­possible,” began the other, but was si­lenced by a sort of bark from Mr. Wilde.

“Come to­mor­row,” he re­peated.

We heard some­body move away from the door and turn the corner by the stair­way.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“Arnold Stey­lette, owner and Ed­itor in Chief of the great New York daily.”

He drummed on the ledger with his fin­ger­less hand adding: “I pay him very badly, but he thinks it a good bar­gain.”

“Arnold Stey­lette!” I re­peated amazed.

“Yes,” said Mr. Wilde, with a self-sat­is­fied cough.

The cat, which had entered the room as he spoke, hes­it­ated, looked up at him and snarled. He climbed down from the chair and squat­ting on the floor, took the creature into his arms and caressed her. The cat ceased snarling and presently began a loud purring which seemed to in­crease in timbre as he stroked her. “Where are the notes?” I asked. He poin­ted to the table, and for the hun­dredth time I picked up the bundle of ma­nu­script en­titled—

“The Im­per­ial Dyn­asty of Amer­ica.”

One by one I stud­ied the well-worn pages, worn only by my own hand­ling, and al­though I knew all by heart, from the be­gin­ning, “When from Car­cosa, the Hy­ades, Has­tur, and Alde­baran,” to “Cas­taigne, Louis de Cal­va­dos, born Decem­ber 19th, 1877,” I read it with an eager, rapt at­ten­tion, paus­ing to re­peat parts of it aloud, and dwell­ing es­pe­cially on “Hil­dred de Cal­va­dos, only son of Hil­dred Cas­taigne and Edythe Landes Cas­taigne, first in suc­ces­sion,” etc., etc.

When I fin­ished, Mr. Wilde nod­ded and coughed.

“Speak­ing of your le­git­im­ate am­bi­tion,” he said, “how do Con­stance and Louis get along?”

“She loves him,” I replied simply.

The cat on his knee sud­denly turned and struck at his eyes, and he flung her off and climbed on to the chair op­pos­ite me.

“And Dr. Archer! But that’s a mat­ter you can settle any time you wish,” he ad­ded.

“Yes,” I replied, “Dr. Archer can wait, but it is time I saw my cousin Louis.”

“It is time,” he re­peated. Then he took an­other ledger from the table and ran over the leaves rap­idly. “We are now in com­mu­nic­a­tion with ten thou­sand men,” he muttered. “We can count on one hun­dred thou­sand within the first twenty-eight hours, and in forty-eight hours the state will rise en masse. The coun­try fol­lows the state, and the por­tion that will not, I mean Cali­for­nia and the North­w­est, might bet­ter never have been in­hab­ited. I shall not send them the Yel­low Sign.”

The blood rushed to my head, but I only answered, “A new broom sweeps clean.”

“The am­bi­tion of Caesar and of Na­po­leon pales be­fore that which could not rest un­til it had seized the minds of men and con­trolled even their un­born thoughts,” said Mr. Wilde.

“You are speak­ing of the King in Yel­low,” I groaned, with a shud­der.

“He is a king whom em­per­ors have served.”

“I am con­tent to serve him,” I replied.

Mr. Wilde sat rub­bing his ears with his crippled hand. “Per­haps Con­stance does not love him,” he sug­ges­ted.

I star­ted to reply, but a sud­den burst of mil­it­ary mu­sic from the street be­low drowned my voice. The twen­ti­eth dra­goon re­gi­ment, formerly in gar­rison at Mount St. Vin­cent, was re­turn­ing from the man­oeuvres in Westchester County, to its new bar­racks on East Wash­ing­ton Square. It was my cousin’s re­gi­ment. They were a fine lot of fel­lows, in their pale blue, tight-fit­ting jack­ets, jaunty bus­bys and white rid­ing breeches with the double yel­low stripe, into which their limbs seemed moul­ded. Every other squad­ron was armed with lances, from the metal points of which fluttered yel­low and white pen­nons. The band passed, play­ing the re­gi­mental march, then came the col­onel and staff, the horses crowding and tramp­ling, while their heads bobbed in uni­son, and the pen­nons fluttered from their lance points. The troop­ers, who rode with the beau­ti­ful Eng­lish seat, looked brown as ber­ries from their blood­less cam­paign among the farms of Westchester, and the mu­sic of their sabres against the stir­rups, and the jingle of spurs and car­bines was de­light­ful to me. I saw Louis rid­ing with his squad­ron. He was as hand­some an of­ficer as I have ever seen. Mr. Wilde, who had moun­ted a chair by the win­dow, saw him too, but said noth­ing. Louis turned and looked straight at Haw­berk’s shop as he passed, and I could see the flush on his brown cheeks. I think Con­stance must have been at the win­dow. When the last troop­ers had clattered by, and the last pen­nons van­ished into South Fifth Av­enue, Mr. Wilde clambered out of his chair and dragged the chest away from the door.

“Yes,” he said, “it is time that you saw your cousin Louis.”

He un­locked the door and I picked up my hat and stick and stepped into the cor­ridor. The stairs were dark. Grop­ing about, I set my foot on some­thing soft, which snarled and spit, and I aimed a mur­der­ous blow at the cat, but my cane shivered to splin­ters against the bal­us­trade, and the beast scur­ried back into Mr. Wilde’s room.

Passing Haw­berk’s door again I saw him still at work on the ar­mour, but I did not stop, and step­ping out into Bleecker Street, I fol­lowed it to Wooster, skir­ted the grounds of the Lethal Cham­ber, and cross­ing Wash­ing­ton Park went straight to my rooms in the Be­ne­dick. Here I lunched com­fort­ably, read the Her­ald and the Meteor, and fi­nally went to the steel safe in my bed­room and set the time com­bin­a­tion. The three and three-quarter minutes which it is ne­ces­sary to wait, while the time lock is open­ing, are to me golden mo­ments. From the in­stant I set the com­bin­a­tion to the mo­ment when I grasp the knobs and swing back the solid steel doors, I live in an ec­stasy of ex­pect­a­tion. Those mo­ments must be like mo­ments passed in Paradise. I know what I am to find at the end of the time limit. I know what the massive safe holds se­cure for me, for me alone, and the ex­quis­ite pleas­ure of wait­ing is hardly en­hanced when the safe opens and I lift, from its vel­vet crown, a dia­dem of purest gold, blaz­ing with dia­monds. I do this every day, and yet the joy of wait­ing and at last touch­ing again the dia­dem, only seems to in­crease as the days pass. It is a dia­dem fit for a King among kings, an Em­peror among em­per­ors. The King in Yel­low might scorn it, but it shall be worn by his royal ser­vant.

I held it in my arms un­til the alarm in the safe rang harshly, and then ten­derly, proudly, I re­placed it and shut the steel doors. I walked slowly back into my study, which faces Wash­ing­ton Square, and leaned on the win­dow sill. The af­ter­noon sun poured into my win­dows, and a gentle breeze stirred the branches of the elms and maples in the park, now covered with buds and tender fo­liage. A flock of pi­geons circled about the tower of the Me­morial Church; some­times alight­ing on the purple tiled roof, some­times wheel­ing down­ward to the lo­tus foun­tain in front of the marble arch. The garden­ers were busy with the flower beds around the foun­tain, and the freshly turned earth smelled sweet and spicy. A lawn mower, drawn by a fat white horse, clinked across the green sward, and wa­ter­ing-carts poured showers of spray over the as­phalt drives. Around the statue of Peter Stuyves­ant, which in 1897 had re­placed the mon­stros­ity sup­posed to rep­res­ent Garibaldi, chil­dren played in the spring sun­shine, and nurse girls wheeled elab­or­ate baby car­riages with a reck­less dis­reg­ard for the pasty-faced oc­cu­pants, which could prob­ably be ex­plained by the pres­ence of half a dozen trim dra­goon troop­ers lan­guidly lolling on the benches. Through the trees, the Wash­ing­ton Me­morial Arch glistened like sil­ver in the sun­shine, and bey­ond, on the east­ern ex­tremity of the square the grey stone bar­racks of the dra­goons, and the white gran­ite ar­til­lery stables were alive with col­our and mo­tion.

I looked at the Lethal Cham­ber on the corner of the square op­pos­ite. A few curi­ous people still lingered about the gil­ded iron rail­ing, but in­side the grounds the paths were deser­ted. I watched the foun­tains ripple and sparkle; the spar­rows had already found this new bathing nook, and the basins were covered with the dusty-feathered little things. Two or three white pea­cocks picked their way across the lawns, and a drab col­oured pi­geon sat so mo­tion­less on the arm of one of the Fates, that it seemed to be a part of the sculp­tured stone.

As I was turn­ing care­lessly away, a slight com­mo­tion in the group of curi­ous loiter­ers around the gates at­trac­ted my at­ten­tion. A young man had entered, and was ad­van­cing with nervous strides along the gravel path which leads to the bronze doors of the Lethal Cham­ber. He paused a mo­ment be­fore the Fates, and as he raised his head to those three mys­ter­i­ous faces, the pi­geon rose from its sculp­tured perch, circled about for a mo­ment and wheeled to the east. The young man pressed his hand to his face, and then with an un­defin­able ges­ture sprang up the marble steps, the bronze doors closed be­hind him, and half an hour later the loiter­ers slouched away, and the frightened pi­geon re­turned to its perch in the arms of Fate.

I put on my hat and went out into the park for a little walk be­fore din­ner. As I crossed the cent­ral drive­way a group of of­ficers passed, and one of them called out, “Hello, Hil­dred,” and came back to shake hands with me. It was my cousin Louis, who stood smil­ing and tap­ping his spurred heels with his rid­ing-whip.

“Just back from Westchester,” he said; “been do­ing the bu­colic; milk and curds, you know, dairy­maids in sun­bon­nets, who say ‘haeow’ and ‘I don’t think’ when you tell them they are pretty. I’m nearly dead for a square meal at Del­monico’s. What’s the news?”

“There is none,” I replied pleas­antly. “I saw your re­gi­ment com­ing in this morn­ing.”

“Did you? I didn’t see you. Where were you?”

“In Mr. Wilde’s win­dow.”

“Oh, hell!” he began im­pa­tiently, “that man is stark mad! I don’t un­der­stand why you—”

He saw how an­noyed I felt by this out­burst, and begged my par­don.

“Really, old chap,” he said, “I don’t mean to run down a man you like, but for the life of me I can’t see what the deuce you find in com­mon with Mr. Wilde. He’s not well bred, to put it gen­er­ously; he is hideously de­formed; his head is the head of a crim­in­ally in­sane per­son. You know your­self he’s been in an asylum—”

“So have I,” I in­ter­rup­ted calmly.

Louis looked startled and con­fused for a mo­ment, but re­covered and slapped me heart­ily on the shoulder. “You were com­pletely cured,” he began; but I stopped him again.

“I sup­pose you mean that I was simply ac­know­ledged never to have been in­sane.”

“Of course that—that’s what I meant,” he laughed.

I dis­liked his laugh be­cause I knew it was forced, but I nod­ded gaily and asked him where he was go­ing. Louis looked after his brother of­ficers who had now al­most reached Broad­way.

“We had in­ten­ded to sample a Brun­swick cock­tail, but to tell you the truth I was anxious for an ex­cuse to go and see Haw­berk in­stead. Come along, I’ll make you my ex­cuse.”

We found old Haw­berk, neatly at­tired in a fresh spring suit, stand­ing at the door of his shop and sniff­ing the air.

“I had just de­cided to take Con­stance for a little stroll be­fore din­ner,” he replied to the im­petu­ous vol­ley of ques­tions from Louis. “We thought of walk­ing on the park ter­race along the North River.”

At that mo­ment Con­stance ap­peared and grew pale and rosy by turns as Louis bent over her small gloved fin­gers. I tried to ex­cuse my­self, al­leging an en­gage­ment up­town, but Louis and Con­stance would not listen, and I saw I was ex­pec­ted to re­main and en­gage old Haw­berk’s at­ten­tion. After all it would be just as well if I kept my eye on Louis, I thought, and when they hailed a Spring Street hor­se­car, I got in after them and took my seat be­side the ar­mourer.

The beau­ti­ful line of parks and gran­ite ter­races over­look­ing the wharves along the North River, which were built in 1910 and fin­ished in the au­tumn of 1917, had be­come one of the most pop­u­lar prom­en­ades in the met­ro­polis. They ex­ten­ded from the bat­tery to 190th Street, over­look­ing the noble river and af­ford­ing a fine view of the Jer­sey shore and the High­lands op­pos­ite. Cafés and res­taur­ants were scattered here and there among the trees, and twice a week mil­it­ary bands from the gar­rison played in the kiosks on the para­pets.

We sat down in the sun­shine on the bench at the foot of the eques­trian statue of Gen­eral Sheridan. Con­stance tipped her sun­shade to shield her eyes, and she and Louis began a mur­mur­ing con­ver­sa­tion which was im­possible to catch. Old Haw­berk, lean­ing on his ivory headed cane, lighted an ex­cel­lent ci­gar, the mate to which I po­litely re­fused, and smiled at va­cancy. The sun hung low above the Staten Is­land woods, and the bay was dyed with golden hues re­flec­ted from the sun-warmed sails of the ship­ping in the har­bour.

Brigs, schoon­ers, yachts, clumsy ferry­boats, their decks swarm­ing with people, rail­road trans­ports car­ry­ing lines of brown, blue and white freight cars, stately sound steam­ers, dé­classé tramp steam­ers, coast­ers, dredgers, scows, and every­where per­vad­ing the en­tire bay im­pudent little tugs puff­ing and whist­ling of­fi­ciously;—these were the craft which churned the sun­light wa­ters as far as the eye could reach. In calm con­trast to the hurry of sail­ing ves­sel and steamer a si­lent fleet of white war­ships lay mo­tion­less in mid­stream.

Con­stance’s merry laugh aroused me from my rev­erie.

“What are you star­ing at?” she in­quired.

“Noth­ing—the fleet,” I smiled.

Then Louis told us what the ves­sels were, point­ing out each by its re­l­at­ive po­s­i­tion to the old Red Fort on Governor’s Is­land.

“That little ci­gar shaped thing is a tor­pedo boat,” he ex­plained; “there are four more ly­ing close to­gether. They are the Tar­pon, the Fal­con, the Sea Fox, and the Octopus. The gun­boats just above are the Prin­ceton, the Champlain, the Still Water and the Erie. Next to them lie the cruis­ers Faragut and Los Angeles, and above them the battle ships Cali­for­nia, and Dakota, and the Wash­ing­ton, which is the flag ship. Those two squatty look­ing chunks of metal which are anchored there off Castle Wil­liam are the double tur­reted mon­it­ors Ter­rible and Mag­ni­fi­cent; be­hind them lies the ram, Os­ceola.”

Con­stance looked at him with deep ap­proval in her beau­ti­ful eyes. “What loads of things you know for a sol­dier,” she said, and we all joined in the laugh which fol­lowed.

Presently Louis rose with a nod to us and offered his arm to Con­stance, and they strolled away along the river wall. Haw­berk watched them for a mo­ment and then turned to me.

“Mr. Wilde was right,” he said. “I have found the miss­ing tas­sets and left cuis­sard of the ‘Prince’s Emblazoned,’ in a vile old junk gar­ret in Pell Street.”

“998?” I in­quired, with a smile.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Wilde is a very in­tel­li­gent man,” I ob­served.

“I want to give him the credit of this most im­port­ant dis­cov­ery,” con­tin­ued Haw­berk. “And I in­tend it shall be known that he is en­titled to the fame of it.”

“He won’t thank you for that,” I answered sharply; “please say noth­ing about it.”

“Do you know what it is worth?” said Haw­berk.

“No, fifty dol­lars, per­haps.”

“It is val­ued at five hun­dred, but the owner of the ‘Prince’s Emblazoned’ will give two thou­sand dol­lars to the per­son who com­pletes his suit; that re­ward also be­longs to Mr. Wilde.”

“He doesn’t want it! He re­fuses it!” I answered an­grily. “What do you know about Mr. Wilde? He doesn’t need the money. He is rich—or will be—richer than any liv­ing man ex­cept my­self. What will we care for money then—what will we care, he and I, when—when—”

“When what?” de­man­ded Haw­berk, as­ton­ished.

“You will see,” I replied, on my guard again.

He looked at me nar­rowly, much as Doc­tor Archer used to, and I knew he thought I was men­tally un­sound. Per­haps it was for­tu­nate for him that he did not use the word lun­atic just then.

“No,” I replied to his un­spoken thought, “I am not men­tally weak; my mind is as healthy as Mr. Wilde’s. I do not care to ex­plain just yet what I have on hand, but it is an in­vest­ment which will pay more than mere gold, sil­ver and pre­cious stones. It will se­cure the hap­pi­ness and prosper­ity of a con­tin­ent—yes, a hemi­sphere!”

“Oh,” said Haw­berk.

“And even­tu­ally,” I con­tin­ued more quietly, “it will se­cure the hap­pi­ness of the whole world.”

“And in­cid­ent­ally your own hap­pi­ness and prosper­ity as well as Mr. Wilde’s?”

“Ex­actly,” I smiled. But I could have throttled him for tak­ing that tone.

He looked at me in si­lence for a while and then said very gently, “Why don’t you give up your books and stud­ies, Mr. Cas­taigne, and take a tramp among the moun­tains some­where or other? You used to be fond of fish­ing. Take a cast or two at the trout in the Rangelys.”

“I don’t care for fish­ing any more,” I answered, without a shade of an­noy­ance in my voice.

“You used to be fond of everything,” he con­tin­ued; “ath­let­ics, yacht­ing, shoot­ing, rid­ing—”

“I have never cared to ride since my fall,” I said quietly.

“Ah, yes, your fall,” he re­peated, look­ing away from me.

I thought this non­sense had gone far enough, so I brought the con­ver­sa­tion back to Mr. Wilde; but he was scan­ning my face again in a man­ner highly of­fens­ive to me.

“Mr. Wilde,” he re­peated, “do you know what he did this af­ter­noon? He came down­stairs and nailed a sign over the hall door next to mine; it read:

Mr. Wilde,
Re­pairer of Repu­ta­tions.
Third Bell.

“Do you know what a Re­pairer of Repu­ta­tions can be?”

“I do,” I replied, sup­press­ing the rage within.

“Oh,” he said again.

Louis and Con­stance came strolling by and stopped to ask if we would join them. Haw­berk looked at his watch. At the same mo­ment a puff of smoke shot from the case­mates of Castle Wil­liam, and the boom of the sun­set gun rolled across the wa­ter and was reechoed from the High­lands op­pos­ite. The flag came run­ning down from the flag­pole, the bugles soun­ded on the white decks of the war­ships, and the first elec­tric light sparkled out from the Jer­sey shore.

As I turned into the city with Haw­berk I heard Con­stance mur­mur some­thing to Louis which I did not un­der­stand; but Louis whispered “My darling,” in reply; and again, walk­ing ahead with Haw­berk through the square I heard a mur­mur of “sweet­heart,” and “my own Con­stance,” and I knew the time had nearly ar­rived when I should speak of im­port­ant mat­ters with my cousin Louis.

III

One morn­ing early in May I stood be­fore the steel safe in my bed­room, try­ing on the golden jew­elled crown. The dia­monds flashed fire as I turned to the mir­ror, and the heavy beaten gold burned like a halo about my head. I re­membered Ca­milla’s ag­on­ized scream and the aw­ful words echo­ing through the dim streets of Car­cosa. They were the last lines in the first act, and I dared not think of what fol­lowed—dared not, even in the spring sun­shine, there in my own room, sur­roun­ded with fa­mil­iar ob­jects, re­as­sured by the bustle from the street and the voices of the ser­vants in the hall­way out­side. For those poisoned words had dropped slowly into my heart, as death-sweat drops upon a bed-sheet and is ab­sorbed. Trem­bling, I put the dia­dem from my head and wiped my fore­head, but I thought of Has­tur and of my own right­ful am­bi­tion, and I re­membered Mr. Wilde as I had last left him, his face all torn and bloody from the claws of that devil’s creature, and what he said—ah, what he said. The alarm bell in the safe began to whirr harshly, and I knew my time was up; but I would not heed it, and re­pla­cing the flash­ing circlet upon my head I turned de­fi­antly to the mir­ror. I stood for a long time ab­sorbed in the chan­ging ex­pres­sion of my own eyes. The mir­ror re­flec­ted a face which was like my own, but whiter, and so thin that I hardly re­cog­nized it. And all the time I kept re­peat­ing between my clenched teeth, “The day has come! the day has come!” while the alarm in the safe whirred and clam­oured, and the dia­monds sparkled and flamed above my brow. I heard a door open but did not heed it. It was only when I saw two faces in the mir­ror:—it was only when an­other face rose over my shoulder, and two other eyes met mine. I wheeled like a flash and seized a long knife from my dress­ing-table, and my cousin sprang back very pale, cry­ing: “Hil­dred! for God’s sake!” then as my hand fell, he said: “It is I, Louis, don’t you know me?” I stood si­lent. I could not have spoken for my life. He walked up to me and took the knife from my hand.

“What is all this?” he in­quired, in a gentle voice. “Are you ill?”

“No,” I replied. But I doubt if he heard me.

“Come, come, old fel­low,” he cried, “take off that brass crown and toddle into the study. Are you go­ing to a mas­quer­ade? What’s all this the­at­rical tin­sel any­way?”

I was glad he thought the crown was made of brass and paste, yet I didn’t like him any the bet­ter for think­ing so. I let him take it from my hand, know­ing it was best to hu­mour him. He tossed the splen­did dia­dem in the air, and catch­ing it, turned to me smil­ing.

“It’s dear at fifty cents,” he said. “What’s it for?”

I did not an­swer, but took the circlet from his hands, and pla­cing it in the safe shut the massive steel door. The alarm ceased its in­fernal din at once. He watched me curi­ously, but did not seem to no­tice the sud­den ceas­ing of the alarm. He did, how­ever, speak of the safe as a bis­cuit box. Fear­ing lest he might ex­am­ine the com­bin­a­tion I led the way into my study. Louis threw him­self on the sofa and flicked at flies with his eternal rid­ing-whip. He wore his fa­tigue uni­form with the braided jacket and jaunty cap, and I no­ticed that his rid­ing-boots were all splashed with red mud.

“Where have you been?” I in­quired.

“Jump­ing mud creeks in Jer­sey,” he said. “I haven’t had time to change yet; I was rather in a hurry to see you. Haven’t you got a glass of some­thing? I’m dead tired; been in the saddle twenty-four hours.”

I gave him some brandy from my medi­cinal store, which he drank with a grim­ace.

“Damned bad stuff,” he ob­served. “I’ll give you an ad­dress where they sell brandy that is brandy.”

“It’s good enough for my needs,” I said in­dif­fer­ently. “I use it to rub my chest with.” He stared and flicked at an­other fly.

“See here, old fel­low,” he began, “I’ve got some­thing to sug­gest to you. It’s four years now that you’ve shut your­self up here like an owl, never go­ing any­where, never tak­ing any healthy ex­er­cise, never do­ing a damn thing but por­ing over those books up there on the man­tel­piece.”

He glanced along the row of shelves. “Na­po­leon, Na­po­leon, Na­po­leon!” he read. “For heaven’s sake, have you noth­ing but Na­po­leons there?”

“I wish they were bound in gold,” I said. “But wait, yes, there is an­other book, The King in Yel­low.” I looked him stead­ily in the eye.

“Have you never read it?” I asked.

“I? No, thank God! I don’t want to be driven crazy.”

I saw he re­gret­ted his speech as soon as he had uttered it. There is only one word which I loathe more than I do lun­atic and that word is crazy. But I con­trolled my­self and asked him why he thought The King in Yel­low dan­ger­ous.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, hast­ily. “I only re­mem­ber the ex­cite­ment it cre­ated and the de­nun­ci­ations from pul­pit and Press. I be­lieve the au­thor shot him­self after bring­ing forth this mon­stros­ity, didn’t he?”

“I un­der­stand he is still alive,” I answered.

“That’s prob­ably true,” he muttered; “bul­lets couldn’t kill a fiend like that.”

“It is a book of great truths,” I said.

“Yes,” he replied, “of ‘truths’ which send men frantic and blast their lives. I don’t care if the thing is, as they say, the very su­preme es­sence of art. It’s a crime to have writ­ten it, and I for one shall never open its pages.”

“Is that what you have come to tell me?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “I came to tell you that I am go­ing to be mar­ried.”

I be­lieve for a mo­ment my heart ceased to beat, but I kept my eyes on his face.

“Yes,” he con­tin­ued, smil­ing hap­pily, “mar­ried to the sweetest girl on earth.”

“Con­stance Haw­berk,” I said mech­an­ic­ally.

“How did you know?” he cried, as­ton­ished. “I didn’t know it my­self un­til that even­ing last April, when we strolled down to the em­bank­ment be­fore din­ner.”

“When is it to be?” I asked.

“It was to have been next Septem­ber, but an hour ago a des­patch came or­der­ing our re­gi­ment to the Presi­dio, San Fran­cisco. We leave at noon to­mor­row. To­mor­row,” he re­peated. “Just think, Hil­dred, to­mor­row I shall be the hap­pi­est fel­low that ever drew breath in this jolly world, for Con­stance will go with me.”

I offered him my hand in con­grat­u­la­tion, and he seized and shook it like the good-natured fool he was—or pre­ten­ded to be.

“I am go­ing to get my squad­ron as a wed­ding present,” he rattled on. “Cap­tain and Mrs. Louis Cas­taigne, eh, Hil­dred?”

Then he told me where it was to be and who were to be there, and made me prom­ise to come and be best man. I set my teeth and listened to his boy­ish chat­ter without show­ing what I felt, but—

I was get­ting to the limit of my en­dur­ance, and when he jumped up, and, switch­ing his spurs till they jingled, said he must go, I did not de­tain him.

“There’s one thing I want to ask of you,” I said quietly.

“Out with it, it’s prom­ised,” he laughed.

“I want you to meet me for a quarter of an hour’s talk to­night.”

“Of course, if you wish,” he said, some­what puzzled. “Where?”

“Any­where, in the park there.”

“What time, Hil­dred?”

“Mid­night.”

“What in the name of—” he began, but checked him­self and laugh­ingly as­sen­ted. I watched him go down the stairs and hurry away, his sabre banging at every stride. He turned into Bleecker Street, and I knew he was go­ing to see Con­stance. I gave him ten minutes to dis­ap­pear and then fol­lowed in his foot­steps, tak­ing with me the jew­elled crown and the silken robe em­broidered with the Yel­low Sign. When I turned into Bleecker Street, and entered the door­way which bore the sign—

Mr. Wilde,
Re­pairer of Repu­ta­tions.
Third Bell.

I saw old Haw­berk mov­ing about in his shop, and ima­gined I heard Con­stance’s voice in the par­lour; but I avoided them both and hur­ried up the trem­bling stair­ways to Mr. Wilde’s apart­ment. I knocked and entered without ce­re­mony. Mr. Wilde lay groan­ing on the floor, his face covered with blood, his clothes torn to shreds. Drops of blood were scattered about over the car­pet, which had also been ripped and frayed in the evid­ently re­cent struggle.

“It’s that cursed cat,” he said, ceas­ing his groans, and turn­ing his col­our­less eyes to me; “she at­tacked me while I was asleep. I be­lieve she will kill me yet.”

This was too much, so I went into the kit­chen, and, seiz­ing a hatchet from the pantry, star­ted to find the in­fernal beast and settle her then and there. My search was fruit­less, and after a while I gave it up and came back to find Mr. Wilde squat­ting on his high chair by the table. He had washed his face and changed his clothes. The great fur­rows which the cat’s claws had ploughed up in his face he had filled with col­lo­dion, and a rag hid the wound in his throat. I told him I should kill the cat when I came across her, but he only shook his head and turned to the open ledger be­fore him. He read name after name of the people who had come to him in re­gard to their repu­ta­tion, and the sums he had amassed were start­ling.

“I put on the screws now and then,” he ex­plained.

“One day or other some of these people will as­sas­sin­ate you,” I in­sisted.

“Do you think so?” he said, rub­bing his mu­til­ated ears.

It was use­less to ar­gue with him, so I took down the ma­nu­script en­titled “Im­per­ial Dyn­asty of Amer­ica,” for the last time I should ever take it down in Mr. Wilde’s study. I read it through, thrill­ing and trem­bling with pleas­ure. When I had fin­ished Mr. Wilde took the ma­nu­script and, turn­ing to the dark pas­sage which leads from his study to his bed­cham­ber, called out in a loud voice, “Vance.” Then for the first time, I no­ticed a man crouch­ing there in the shadow. How I had over­looked him dur­ing my search for the cat, I can­not ima­gine.

“Vance, come in,” cried Mr. Wilde.

The fig­ure rose and crept to­wards us, and I shall never for­get the face that he raised to mine, as the light from the win­dow il­lu­min­ated it.

“Vance, this is Mr. Cas­taigne,” said Mr. Wilde. Be­fore he had fin­ished speak­ing, the man threw him­self on the ground be­fore the table, cry­ing and grasp­ing, “Oh, God! Oh, my God! Help me! For­give me! Oh, Mr. Cas­taigne, keep that man away. You can­not, you can­not mean it! You are dif­fer­ent—save me! I am broken down—I was in a mad­house and now—when all was com­ing right—when I had for­got­ten the King—the King in Yel­low and—but I shall go mad again—I shall go mad—”

His voice died into a chok­ing rattle, for Mr. Wilde had leapt on him and his right hand en­circled the man’s throat. When Vance fell in a heap on the floor, Mr. Wilde clambered nimbly into his chair again, and rub­bing his mangled ears with the stump of his hand, turned to me and asked me for the ledger. I reached it down from the shelf and he opened it. After a mo­ment’s search­ing among the beau­ti­fully writ­ten pages, he coughed com­pla­cently, and poin­ted to the name Vance.

“Vance,” he read aloud, “Os­good Oswald Vance.” At the sound of his name, the man on the floor raised his head and turned a con­vulsed face to Mr. Wilde. His eyes were in­jec­ted with blood, his lips tume­fied. “Called April 28th,” con­tin­ued Mr. Wilde. “Oc­cu­pa­tion, cash­ier in the Seaforth Na­tional Bank; has served a term of for­gery at Sing Sing, from whence he was trans­ferred to the Asylum for the Crim­inal In­sane. Pardoned by the Governor of New York, and dis­charged from the Asylum, Janu­ary 19, 1918. Repu­ta­tion dam­aged at Sheep­shead Bay. Ru­mours that he lives bey­ond his in­come. Repu­ta­tion to be re­paired at once. Re­tainer $1,500.

“Note.—Has em­bezzled sums amount­ing to $30,000 since March 20, 1919, ex­cel­lent fam­ily, and se­cured present po­s­i­tion through uncle’s in­flu­ence. Father, Pres­id­ent of Seaforth Bank.”

I looked at the man on the floor.

“Get up, Vance,” said Mr. Wilde in a gentle voice. Vance rose as if hyp­not­ized. “He will do as we sug­gest now,” ob­served Mr. Wilde, and open­ing the ma­nu­script, he read the en­tire his­tory of the Im­per­ial Dyn­asty of Amer­ica. Then in a kind and sooth­ing mur­mur he ran over the im­port­ant points with Vance, who stood like one stunned. His eyes were so blank and va­cant that I ima­gined he had be­come half-wit­ted, and re­marked it to Mr. Wilde who replied that it was of no con­sequence any­way. Very pa­tiently we poin­ted out to Vance what his share in the af­fair would be, and he seemed to un­der­stand after a while. Mr. Wilde ex­plained the ma­nu­script, us­ing sev­eral volumes on her­aldry, to sub­stan­ti­ate the res­ult of his re­searches. He men­tioned the es­tab­lish­ment of the Dyn­asty in Car­cosa, the lakes which con­nec­ted Has­tur, Alde­baran and the mys­tery of the Hy­ades. He spoke of Cassilda and Ca­milla, and soun­ded the cloudy depths of Demhe, and the Lake of Hali. “The scal­loped tat­ters of the King in Yel­low must hide Yhtill forever,” he muttered, but I do not be­lieve Vance heard him. Then by de­grees he led Vance along the rami­fic­a­tions of the Im­per­ial fam­ily, to Uoht and Thale, from Naotalba and Phantom of Truth, to Al­dones, and then toss­ing aside his ma­nu­script and notes, he began the won­der­ful story of the Last King. Fas­cin­ated and thrilled I watched him. He threw up his head, his long arms were stretched out in a mag­ni­fi­cent ges­ture of pride and power, and his eyes blazed deep in their sock­ets like two em­er­alds. Vance listened stu­pefied. As for me, when at last Mr. Wilde had fin­ished, and point­ing to me, cried, “The cousin of the King!” my head swam with ex­cite­ment.

Con­trolling my­self with a su­per­hu­man ef­fort, I ex­plained to Vance why I alone was worthy of the crown and why my cousin must be ex­iled or die. I made him un­der­stand that my cousin must never marry, even after re­noun­cing all his claims, and how that least of all he should marry the daugh­ter of the Mar­quis of Avon­shire and bring Eng­land into the ques­tion. I showed him a list of thou­sands of names which Mr. Wilde had drawn up; every man whose name was there had re­ceived the Yel­low Sign which no liv­ing hu­man be­ing dared dis­reg­ard. The city, the state, the whole land, were ready to rise and tremble be­fore the Pal­lid Mask.

The time had come, the people should know the son of Has­tur, and the whole world bow to the black stars which hang in the sky over Car­cosa.

Vance leaned on the table, his head bur­ied in his hands. Mr. Wilde drew a rough sketch on the mar­gin of yes­ter­day’s Her­ald with a bit of lead pen­cil. It was a plan of Haw­berk’s rooms. Then he wrote out the or­der and af­fixed the seal, and shak­ing like a palsied man I signed my first writ of ex­e­cu­tion with my name Hil­dred-Rex.

Mr. Wilde clambered to the floor and un­lock­ing the cab­inet, took a long square box from the first shelf. This he brought to the table and opened. A new knife lay in the tis­sue pa­per in­side and I picked it up and handed it to Vance, along with the or­der and the plan of Haw­berk’s apart­ment. Then Mr. Wilde told Vance he could go; and he went, sham­bling like an out­cast of the slums.

I sat for a while watch­ing the day­light fade be­hind the square tower of the Jud­son Me­morial Church, and fi­nally, gath­er­ing up the ma­nu­script and notes, took my hat and star­ted for the door.

Mr. Wilde watched me in si­lence. When I had stepped into the hall I looked back. Mr. Wilde’s small eyes were still fixed on me. Be­hind him, the shad­ows gathered in the fad­ing light. Then I closed the door be­hind me and went out into the dark­en­ing streets.

I had eaten noth­ing since break­fast, but I was not hungry. A wretched, half-starved creature, who stood look­ing across the street at the Lethal Cham­ber, no­ticed me and came up to tell me a tale of misery. I gave him money, I don’t know why, and he went away without thank­ing me. An hour later an­other out­cast ap­proached and whined his story. I had a blank bit of pa­per in my pocket, on which was traced the Yel­low Sign, and I handed it to him. He looked at it stu­pidly for a mo­ment, and then with an un­cer­tain glance at me, fol­ded it with what seemed to me ex­ag­ger­ated care and placed it in his bosom.

The elec­tric lights were spark­ling among the trees, and the new moon shone in the sky above the Lethal Cham­ber. It was tire­some wait­ing in the square; I wandered from the Marble Arch to the ar­til­lery stables and back again to the lo­tus foun­tain. The flowers and grass ex­haled a fra­grance which troubled me. The jet of the foun­tain played in the moon­light, and the mu­sical splash of fall­ing drops re­minded me of the tinkle of chained mail in Haw­berk’s shop. But it was not so fas­cin­at­ing, and the dull sparkle of the moon­light on the wa­ter brought no such sen­sa­tions of ex­quis­ite pleas­ure, as when the sun­shine played over the pol­ished steel of a corse­let on Haw­berk’s knee. I watched the bats dart­ing and turn­ing above the wa­ter plants in the foun­tain basin, but their rapid, jerky flight set my nerves on edge, and I went away again to walk aim­lessly to and fro among the trees.

The ar­til­lery stables were dark, but in the cav­alry bar­racks the of­ficers’ win­dows were bril­liantly lighted, and the sally­port was con­stantly filled with troop­ers in fa­tigue, car­ry­ing straw and har­ness and bas­kets filled with tin dishes.

Twice the moun­ted sen­try at the gates was changed while I wandered up and down the as­phalt walk. I looked at my watch. It was nearly time. The lights in the bar­racks went out one by one, the barred gate was closed, and every minute or two an of­ficer passed in through the side wicket, leav­ing a rattle of ac­coutre­ments and a jingle of spurs on the night air. The square had be­come very si­lent. The last home­less loiterer had been driven away by the grey-coated park po­lice­man, the car tracks along Wooster Street were deser­ted, and the only sound which broke the still­ness was the stamp­ing of the sen­try’s horse and the ring of his sabre against the saddle pom­mel. In the bar­racks, the of­ficers’ quar­ters were still lighted, and mil­it­ary ser­vants passed and re­passed be­fore the bay win­dows. Twelve o’clock soun­ded from the new spire of St. Fran­cis Xavier, and at the last stroke of the sad-toned bell a fig­ure passed through the wicket be­side the port­cullis, re­turned the sa­lute of the sen­try, and cross­ing the street entered the square and ad­vanced to­ward the Be­ne­dick apart­ment house.

“Louis,” I called.

The man pivoted on his spurred heels and came straight to­ward me.

“Is that you, Hil­dred?”

“Yes, you are on time.”

I took his offered hand, and we strolled to­ward the Lethal Cham­ber.

He rattled on about his wed­ding and the graces of Con­stance, and their fu­ture pro­spects, call­ing my at­ten­tion to his cap­tain’s shoulder-straps, and the triple gold ar­abesque on his sleeve and fa­tigue cap. I be­lieve I listened as much to the mu­sic of his spurs and sabre as I did to his boy­ish babble, and at last we stood un­der the elms on the Fourth Street corner of the square op­pos­ite the Lethal Cham­ber. Then he laughed and asked me what I wanted with him. I mo­tioned him to a seat on a bench un­der the elec­tric light, and sat down be­side him. He looked at me curi­ously, with that same search­ing glance which I hate and fear so in doc­tors. I felt the in­sult of his look, but he did not know it, and I care­fully con­cealed my feel­ings.

“Well, old chap,” he in­quired, “what can I do for you?”

I drew from my pocket the ma­nu­script and notes of the Im­per­ial Dyn­asty of Amer­ica, and look­ing him in the eye said:

“I will tell you. On your word as a sol­dier, prom­ise me to read this ma­nu­script from be­gin­ning to end, without ask­ing me a ques­tion. Prom­ise me to read these notes in the same way, and prom­ise me to listen to what I have to tell later.”

“I prom­ise, if you wish it,” he said pleas­antly. “Give me the pa­per, Hil­dred.”

He began to read, rais­ing his eye­brows with a puzzled, whim­sical air, which made me tremble with sup­pressed an­ger. As he ad­vanced his, eye­brows con­trac­ted, and his lips seemed to form the word “rub­bish.”

Then he looked slightly bored, but ap­par­ently for my sake read, with an at­tempt at in­terest, which presently ceased to be an ef­fort. He star­ted when in the closely writ­ten pages he came to his own name, and when he came to mine he lowered the pa­per, and looked sharply at me for a mo­ment. But he kept his word, and re­sumed his read­ing, and I let the half-formed ques­tion die on his lips un­answered. When he came to the end and read the sig­na­ture of Mr. Wilde, he fol­ded the pa­per care­fully and re­turned it to me. I handed him the notes, and he settled back, push­ing his fa­tigue cap up to his fore­head, with a boy­ish ges­ture, which I re­membered so well in school. I watched his face as he read, and when he fin­ished I took the notes with the ma­nu­script, and placed them in my pocket. Then I un­fol­ded a scroll marked with the Yel­low Sign. He saw the sign, but he did not seem to re­cog­nize it, and I called his at­ten­tion to it some­what sharply.

“Well,” he said, “I see it. What is it?”

“It is the Yel­low Sign,” I said an­grily.

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said Louis, in that flat­ter­ing voice, which Doc­tor Archer used to em­ploy with me, and would prob­ably have em­ployed again, had I not settled his af­fair for him.

I kept my rage down and answered as stead­ily as pos­sible, “Listen, you have en­gaged your word?”

“I am listen­ing, old chap,” he replied sooth­ingly.

I began to speak very calmly.

“Dr. Archer, hav­ing by some means be­come pos­sessed of the secret of the Im­per­ial Suc­ces­sion, at­temp­ted to de­prive me of my right, al­leging that be­cause of a fall from my horse four years ago, I had be­come men­tally de­fi­cient. He pre­sumed to place me un­der re­straint in his own house in hopes of either driv­ing me in­sane or pois­on­ing me. I have not for­got­ten it. I vis­ited him last night and the in­ter­view was fi­nal.”

Louis turned quite pale, but did not move. I re­sumed tri­umphantly, “There are yet three people to be in­ter­viewed in the in­terests of Mr. Wilde and my­self. They are my cousin Louis, Mr. Haw­berk, and his daugh­ter Con­stance.”

Louis sprang to his feet and I arose also, and flung the pa­per marked with the Yel­low Sign to the ground.

“Oh, I don’t need that to tell you what I have to say,” I cried, with a laugh of tri­umph. “You must re­nounce the crown to me, do you hear, to me.”

Louis looked at me with a startled air, but re­cov­er­ing him­self said kindly, “Of course I re­nounce the—what is it I must re­nounce?”

“The crown,” I said an­grily.

“Of course,” he answered, “I re­nounce it. Come, old chap, I’ll walk back to your rooms with you.”

“Don’t try any of your doc­tor’s tricks on me,” I cried, trem­bling with fury. “Don’t act as if you think I am in­sane.”

“What non­sense,” he replied. “Come, it’s get­ting late, Hil­dred.”

“No,” I shouted, “you must listen. You can­not marry, I for­bid it. Do you hear? I for­bid it. You shall re­nounce the crown, and in re­ward I grant you ex­ile, but if you re­fuse you shall die.”

He tried to calm me, but I was roused at last, and draw­ing my long knife barred his way.

Then I told him how they would find Dr. Archer in the cel­lar with his throat open, and I laughed in his face when I thought of Vance and his knife, and the or­der signed by me.

“Ah, you are the King,” I cried, “but I shall be King. Who are you to keep me from Em­pire over all the hab­it­able earth! I was born the cousin of a king, but I shall be King!”

Louis stood white and ri­gid be­fore me. Sud­denly a man came run­ning up Fourth Street, entered the gate of the Lethal Temple, tra­versed the path to the bronze doors at full speed, and plunged into the death cham­ber with the cry of one de­men­ted, and I laughed un­til I wept tears, for I had re­cog­nized Vance, and knew that Haw­berk and his daugh­ter were no longer in my way.

“Go,” I cried to Louis, “you have ceased to be a men­ace. You will never marry Con­stance now, and if you marry any­one else in your ex­ile, I will visit you as I did my doc­tor last night. Mr. Wilde takes charge of you to­mor­row.” Then I turned and dar­ted into South Fifth Av­enue, and with a cry of ter­ror Louis dropped his belt and sabre and fol­lowed me like the wind. I heard him close be­hind me at the corner of Bleecker Street, and I dashed into the door­way un­der Haw­berk’s sign. He cried, “Halt, or I fire!” but when he saw that I flew up the stairs leav­ing Haw­berk’s shop be­low, he left me, and I heard him ham­mer­ing and shout­ing at their door as though it were pos­sible to arouse the dead.

Mr. Wilde’s door was open, and I entered cry­ing, “It is done, it is done! Let the na­tions rise and look upon their King!” but I could not find Mr. Wilde, so I went to the cab­inet and took the splen­did dia­dem from its case. Then I drew on the white silk robe, em­broidered with the Yel­low Sign, and placed the crown upon my head. At last I was King, King by my right in Has­tur, King be­cause I knew the mys­tery of the Hy­ades, and my mind had soun­ded the depths of the Lake of Hali. I was King! The first grey pen­cil­lings of dawn would raise a tem­pest which would shake two hemi­spheres. Then as I stood, my every nerve pitched to the highest ten­sion, faint with the joy and splend­our of my thought, without, in the dark pas­sage, a man groaned.

I seized the tal­low dip and sprang to the door. The cat passed me like a de­mon, and the tal­low dip went out, but my long knife flew swifter than she, and I heard her screech, and I knew that my knife had found her. For a mo­ment I listened to her tum­bling and thump­ing about in the dark­ness, and then when her frenzy ceased, I lighted a lamp and raised it over my head. Mr. Wilde lay on the floor with his throat torn open. At first I thought he was dead, but as I looked, a green sparkle came into his sunken eyes, his mu­til­ated hand trembled, and then a spasm stretched his mouth from ear to ear. For a mo­ment my ter­ror and des­pair gave place to hope, but as I bent over him his eye­balls rolled clean around in his head, and he died. Then while I stood, trans­fixed with rage and des­pair, see­ing my crown, my em­pire, every hope and every am­bi­tion, my very life, ly­ing pros­trate there with the dead mas­ter, they came, seized me from be­hind, and bound me un­til my veins stood out like cords, and my voice failed with the par­oxysms of my fren­zied screams. But I still raged, bleed­ing and in­furi­ated among them, and more than one po­lice­man felt my sharp teeth. Then when I could no longer move they came nearer; I saw old Haw­berk, and be­hind him my cousin Louis’ ghastly face, and farther away, in the corner, a wo­man, Con­stance, weep­ing softly.

“Ah! I see it now!” I shrieked. “You have seized the throne and the em­pire. Woe! woe to you who are crowned with the crown of the King in Yel­low!”

(Ed­itor’s Note—Mr. Cas­taigne died yes­ter­day in the Asylum for Crim­inal In­sane.)

The Mask

Ca­milla

You, sir, should un­mask.

Stranger

Indeed?

Cassilda

Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside dis­guise but you.

Stranger

I wear no mask.

Ca­milla

Ter­ri­fied, aside to Cassilda.

No mask? No mask!

The King in Yel­low, Act I, Scene 2

I

Al­though I knew noth­ing of chem­istry, I listened fas­cin­ated. He picked up an Easter lily which Geneviève had brought that morn­ing from Notre Dame, and dropped it into the basin. In­stantly the li­quid lost its crys­tal­line clear­ness. For a second the lily was en­vel­oped in a milk-white foam, which dis­ap­peared, leav­ing the fluid opales­cent. Changing tints of or­ange and crim­son played over the sur­face, and then what seemed to be a ray of pure sun­light struck through from the bot­tom where the lily was rest­ing. At the same in­stant he plunged his hand into the basin and drew out the flower. “There is no danger,” he ex­plained, “if you choose the right mo­ment. That golden ray is the sig­nal.”

He held the lily to­ward me, and I took it in my hand. It had turned to stone, to the purest marble.

“You see,” he said, “it is without a flaw. What sculptor could re­pro­duce it?”

The marble was white as snow, but in its depths the veins of the lily were tinged with palest azure, and a faint flush lingered deep in its heart.

“Don’t ask me the reason of that,” he smiled, no­ti­cing my won­der. “I have no idea why the veins and heart are tin­ted, but they al­ways are. Yes­ter­day I tried one of Geneviève’s gold­fish—there it is.”

The fish looked as if sculp­tured in marble. But if you held it to the light the stone was beau­ti­fully veined with a faint blue, and from some­where within came a rosy light like the tint which slum­bers in an opal. I looked into the basin. Once more it seemed filled with clearest crys­tal.

“If I should touch it now?” I de­man­ded.

“I don’t know,” he replied, “but you had bet­ter not try.”

“There is one thing I’m curi­ous about,” I said, “and that is where the ray of sun­light came from.”

“It looked like a sun­beam true enough,” he said. “I don’t know, it al­ways comes when I im­merse any liv­ing thing. Per­haps,” he con­tin­ued, smil­ing, “per­haps it is the vi­tal spark of the creature es­cap­ing to the source from whence it came.”

I saw he was mock­ing, and threatened him with a mahl­stick, but he only laughed and changed the sub­ject.

“Stay to lunch. Geneviève will be here dir­ectly.”

“I saw her go­ing to early mass,” I said, “and she looked as fresh and sweet as that lily—be­fore you des­troyed it.”

“Do you think I des­troyed it?” said Boris gravely.

“Des­troyed, pre­served, how can we tell?”

We sat in the corner of a stu­dio near his un­fin­ished group of the Fates. He leaned back on the sofa, twirl­ing a sculptor’s chisel and squint­ing at his work.

“By the way,” he said, “I have fin­ished point­ing up that old aca­demic Ari­adne, and I sup­pose it will have to go to the Salon. It’s all I have ready this year, but after the suc­cess the Madonna brought me I feel ashamed to send a thing like that.”

The Madonna, an ex­quis­ite marble for which Geneviève had sat, had been the sen­sa­tion of last year’s Salon. I looked at the Ari­adne. It was a mag­ni­fi­cent piece of tech­nical work, but I agreed with Boris that the world would ex­pect some­thing bet­ter of him than that. Still, it was im­possible now to think of fin­ish­ing in time for the Salon that splen­did ter­rible group half shrouded in the marble be­hind me. The Fates would have to wait.

We were proud of Boris Yvain. We claimed him and he claimed us on the strength of his hav­ing been born in Amer­ica, al­though his father was French and his mother was a Rus­sian. Every­one in the Beaux Arts called him Boris. And yet there were only two of us whom he ad­dressed in the same fa­mil­iar way—Jack Scott and my­self.

Per­haps my be­ing in love with Geneviève had some­thing to do with his af­fec­tion for me. Not that it had ever been ac­know­ledged between us. But after all was settled, and she had told me with tears in her eyes that it was Boris whom she loved, I went over to his house and con­grat­u­lated him. The per­fect cor­di­al­ity of that in­ter­view did not de­ceive either of us, I al­ways be­lieved, al­though to one at least it was a great com­fort. I do not think he and Geneviève ever spoke of the mat­ter to­gether, but Boris knew.

Geneviève was lovely. The Madonna-like pur­ity of her face might have been in­spired by the Sanc­tus in Gounod’s Mass. But I was al­ways glad when she changed that mood for what we called her “April Man­oeuvre.” She was of­ten as vari­able as an April day. In the morn­ing grave, dig­ni­fied and sweet, at noon laugh­ing, ca­pri­cious, at even­ing whatever one least ex­pec­ted. I pre­ferred her so rather than in that Madonna-like tran­quil­lity which stirred the depths of my heart. I was dream­ing of Geneviève when he spoke again.

“What do you think of my dis­cov­ery, Alec?”

“I think it won­der­ful.”

“I shall make no use of it, you know, bey­ond sat­is­fy­ing my own curi­os­ity so far as may be, and the secret will die with me.”

“It would be rather a blow to sculp­ture, would it not? We paint­ers lose more than we ever gain by pho­to­graphy.”

Boris nod­ded, play­ing with the edge of the chisel.

“This new vi­cious dis­cov­ery would cor­rupt the world of art. No, I shall never con­fide the secret to any­one,” he said slowly.

It would be hard to find any­one less in­formed about such phe­nom­ena than my­self; but of course I had heard of min­eral springs so sat­ur­ated with silica that the leaves and twigs which fell into them were turned to stone after a time. I dimly com­pre­hen­ded the pro­cess, how the silica re­placed the ve­get­able mat­ter, atom by atom, and the res­ult was a du­plic­ate of the ob­ject in stone. This, I con­fess, had never in­ter­ested me greatly, and as for the an­cient fossils thus pro­duced, they dis­gus­ted me. Boris, it ap­peared, feel­ing curi­os­ity in­stead of re­pug­nance, had in­vest­ig­ated the sub­ject, and had ac­ci­dent­ally stumbled on a solu­tion which, at­tack­ing the im­mersed ob­ject with a fe­ro­city un­heard of, in a second did the work of years. This was all I could make out of the strange story he had just been telling me. He spoke again after a long si­lence.

“I am al­most frightened when I think what I have found. Scient­ists would go mad over the dis­cov­ery. It was so simple too; it dis­covered it­self. When I think of that for­mula, and that new ele­ment pre­cip­it­ated in metal­lic scales—”

“What new ele­ment?”

“Oh, I haven’t thought of nam­ing it, and I don’t be­lieve I ever shall. There are enough pre­cious metals now in the world to cut throats over.”

I pricked up my ears. “Have you struck gold, Boris?”

“No, bet­ter;—but see here, Alec!” he laughed, start­ing up. “You and I have all we need in this world. Ah! how sin­is­ter and cov­et­ous you look already!” I laughed too, and told him I was de­voured by the de­sire for gold, and we had bet­ter talk of some­thing else; so when Geneviève came in shortly after, we had turned our backs on al­chemy.

Geneviève was dressed in sil­very grey from head to foot. The light glin­ted along the soft curves of her fair hair as she turned her cheek to Boris; then she saw me and re­turned my greet­ing. She had never be­fore failed to blow me a kiss from the tips of her white fin­gers, and I promptly com­plained of the omis­sion. She smiled and held out her hand, which dropped al­most be­fore it had touched mine; then she said, look­ing at Boris—

“You must ask Alec to stay for lunch­eon.” This also was some­thing new. She had al­ways asked me her­self un­til today.

“I did,” said Boris shortly.

“And you said yes, I hope?” She turned to me with a charm­ing con­ven­tional smile. I might have been an ac­quaint­ance of the day be­fore yes­ter­day. I made her a low bow. “J’avais bien l’hon­neur, ma­dame,” but re­fus­ing to take up our usual ban­ter­ing tone, she mur­mured a hos­pit­able com­mon­place and dis­ap­peared. Boris and I looked at one an­other.

“I had bet­ter go home, don’t you think?” I asked.

“Hanged if I know,” he replied frankly.

While we were dis­cuss­ing the ad­vis­ab­il­ity of my de­par­ture Geneviève re­appeared in the door­way without her bon­net. She was won­der­fully beau­ti­ful, but her col­our was too deep and her lovely eyes were too bright. She came straight up to me and took my arm.

“Luncheon is ready. Was I cross, Alec? I thought I had a head­ache, but I haven’t. Come here, Boris;” and she slipped her other arm through his. “Alec knows that after you there is no one in the world whom I like as well as I like him, so if he some­times feels snubbed it won’t hurt him.”

“À la bon­heur!” I cried, “who says there are no thun­der­storms in April?”

“Are you ready?” chanted Boris. “Aye ready;” and arm-in-arm we raced into the din­ing-room, scan­dal­iz­ing the ser­vants. After all we were not so much to blame; Geneviève was eight­een, Boris was twenty-three, and I not quite twenty-one.

II

Some work that I was do­ing about this time on the dec­or­a­tions for Geneviève’s bou­doir kept me con­stantly at the quaint little hotel in the Rue Sainte-Cé­cile. Boris and I in those days la­boured hard but as we pleased, which was fit­fully, and we all three, with Jack Scott, idled a great deal to­gether.

One quiet af­ter­noon I had been wan­der­ing alone over the house ex­amin­ing curios, pry­ing into odd corners, bring­ing out sweet­meats and ci­gars from strange hid­ing-places, and at last I stopped in the bathing-room. Boris, all over clay, stood there wash­ing his hands.

The room was built of rose-col­oured marble ex­cept­ing the floor, which was tes­sel­lated in rose and grey. In the centre was a square pool sunken be­low the sur­face of the floor; steps led down into it, sculp­tured pil­lars sup­por­ted a fres­coed ceil­ing. A de­li­cious marble Cu­pid ap­peared to have just alighted on his ped­es­tal at the up­per end of the room. The whole in­terior was Boris’ work and mine. Boris, in his work­ing-clothes of white can­vas, scraped the traces of clay and red mod­el­ling wax from his hand­some hands, and coquet­ted over his shoulder with the Cu­pid.

“I see you,” he in­sisted, “don’t try to look the other way and pre­tend not to see me. You know who made you, little hum­bug!”

It was al­ways my role to in­ter­pret Cu­pid’s sen­ti­ments in these con­ver­sa­tions, and when my turn came I re­spon­ded in such a man­ner, that Boris seized my arm and dragged me to­ward the pool, de­clar­ing he would duck me. Next in­stant he dropped my arm and turned pale. “Good God!” he said, “I for­got the pool is full of the solu­tion!”

I shivered a little, and dryly ad­vised him to re­mem­ber bet­ter where he had stored the pre­cious li­quid.

“In Heaven’s name, why do you keep a small lake of that grue­some stuff here of all places?” I asked.

“I want to ex­per­i­ment on some­thing large,” he replied.

“On me, for in­stance?”

“Ah! that came too close for jest­ing; but I do want to watch the ac­tion of that solu­tion on a more highly or­gan­ized liv­ing body; there is that big white rab­bit,” he said, fol­low­ing me into the stu­dio.

Jack Scott, wear­ing a paint-stained jacket, came wan­der­ing in, ap­pro­pri­ated all the Ori­ental sweet­meats he could lay his hands on, looted the ci­gar­ette case, and fi­nally he and Boris dis­ap­peared to­gether to visit the Lux­em­bourg Gallery, where a new sil­ver bronze by Rodin and a land­scape of Monet’s were claim­ing the ex­clus­ive at­ten­tion of artistic France. I went back to the stu­dio, and re­sumed my work. It was a Renais­sance screen, which Boris wanted me to paint for Geneviève’s bou­doir. But the small boy who was un­will­ingly dawdling through a series of poses for it, today re­fused all bribes to be good. He never res­ted an in­stant in the same po­s­i­tion, and in­side of five minutes I had as many dif­fer­ent out­lines of the little beg­gar.

“Are you pos­ing, or are you ex­ecut­ing a song and dance, my friend?” I in­quired.

“Whichever mon­sieur pleases,” he replied, with an an­gelic smile.

Of course I dis­missed him for the day, and of course I paid him for the full time, that be­ing the way we spoil our mod­els.

After the young imp had gone, I made a few per­func­tory daubs at my work, but was so thor­oughly out of hu­mour, that it took me the rest of the af­ter­noon to undo the dam­age I had done, so at last I scraped my palette, stuck my brushes in a bowl of black soap, and strolled into the smoking-room. I really be­lieve that, ex­cept­ing Geneviève’s apart­ments, no room in the house was so free from the per­fume of to­bacco as this one. It was a queer chaos of odds and ends, hung with thread­bare tapestry. A sweet-toned old spinet in good re­pair stood by the win­dow. There were stands of weapons, some old and dull, oth­ers bright and mod­ern, fes­toons of In­dian and Turk­ish ar­mour over the man­tel, two or three good pic­tures, and a pipe-rack. It was here that we used to come for new sen­sa­tions in smoking. I doubt if any type of pipe ever ex­is­ted which was not rep­res­en­ted in that rack. When we had se­lec­ted one, we im­me­di­ately car­ried it some­where else and smoked it; for the place was, on the whole, more gloomy and less in­vit­ing than any in the house. But this af­ter­noon, the twi­light was very sooth­ing, the rugs and skins on the floor looked brown and soft and drowsy; the big couch was piled with cush­ions—I found my pipe and curled up there for an un­ac­cus­tomed smoke in the smoking-room. I had chosen one with a long flex­ible stem, and light­ing it fell to dream­ing. After a while it went out, but I did not stir. I dreamed on and presently fell asleep.

I awoke to the sad­dest mu­sic I had ever heard. The room was quite dark, I had no idea what time it was. A ray of moon­light silvered one edge of the old spinet, and the pol­ished wood seemed to ex­hale the sounds as per­fume floats above a box of san­dal­wood. Someone rose in the dark­ness, and came away weep­ing quietly, and I was fool enough to cry out “Geneviève!”

She dropped at my voice, and, I had time to curse my­self while I made a light and tried to raise her from the floor. She shrank away with a mur­mur of pain. She was very quiet, and asked for Boris. I car­ried her to the di­van, and went to look for him, but he was not in the house, and the ser­vants were gone to bed. Per­plexed and anxious, I hur­ried back to Geneviève. She lay where I had left her, look­ing very white.

“I can’t find Boris nor any of the ser­vants,” I said.

“I know,” she answered faintly, “Boris has gone to Ept with Mr. Scott. I did not re­mem­ber when I sent you for him just now.”

“But he can’t get back in that case be­fore to­mor­row af­ter­noon, and—are you hurt? Did I frighten you into fall­ing? What an aw­ful fool I am, but I was only half awake.”

“Boris thought you had gone home be­fore din­ner. Do please ex­cuse us for let­ting you stay here all this time.”

“I have had a long nap,” I laughed, “so sound that I did not know whether I was still asleep or not when I found my­self star­ing at a fig­ure that was mov­ing to­ward me, and called out your name. Have you been try­ing the old spinet? You must have played very softly.”

I would tell a thou­sand more lies worse than that one to see the look of re­lief that came into her face. She smiled ad­or­ably, and said in her nat­ural voice: “Alec, I tripped on that wolf’s head, and I think my ankle is sprained. Please call Marie, and then go home.”

I did as she bade me, and left her there when the maid came in.

III

At noon next day when I called, I found Boris walk­ing rest­lessly about his stu­dio.

“Geneviève is asleep just now,” he told me, “the sprain is noth­ing, but why should she have such a high fever? The doc­tor can’t ac­count for it; or else he will not,” he muttered.

“Geneviève has a fever?” I asked.

“I should say so, and has ac­tu­ally been a little light­headed at in­ter­vals all night. The idea!—gay little Geneviève, without a care in the world—and she keeps say­ing her heart’s broken, and she wants to die!”

My own heart stood still.

Boris leaned against the door of his stu­dio, look­ing down, his hands in his pock­ets, his kind, keen eyes clouded, a new line of trouble drawn “over the mouth’s good mark, that made the smile.” The maid had or­ders to sum­mon him the in­stant Geneviève opened her eyes. We waited and waited, and Boris, grow­ing rest­less, wandered about, fuss­ing with mod­el­ling wax and red clay. Sud­denly he star­ted for the next room. “Come and see my rose-col­oured bath full of death!” he cried.

“Is it death?” I asked, to hu­mour his mood.

“You are not pre­pared to call it life, I sup­pose,” he answered. As he spoke he plucked a sol­it­ary gold­fish squirm­ing and twist­ing out of its globe. “We’ll send this one after the other—wherever that is,” he said. There was fe­ver­ish ex­cite­ment in his voice. A dull weight of fever lay on my limbs and on my brain as I fol­lowed him to the fair crys­tal pool with its pink-tin­ted sides; and he dropped the creature in. Falling, its scales flashed with a hot or­ange gleam in its angry twist­ings and con­tor­tions; the mo­ment it struck the li­quid it be­came ri­gid and sank heav­ily to the bot­tom. Then came the milky foam, the splen­did hues ra­di­at­ing on the sur­face and then the shaft of pure se­rene light broke through from seem­ingly in­fin­ite depths. Boris plunged in his hand and drew out an ex­quis­ite marble thing, blue-veined, rose-tin­ted, and glisten­ing with opales­cent drops.

“Child’s play,” he muttered, and looked wear­ily, long­ingly at me—as if I could an­swer such ques­tions! But Jack Scott came in and entered into the “game,” as he called it, with ar­dour. Noth­ing would do but to try the ex­per­i­ment on the white rab­bit then and there. I was will­ing that Boris should find dis­trac­tion from his cares, but I hated to see the life go out of a warm, liv­ing creature and I de­clined to be present. Pick­ing up a book at ran­dom, I sat down in the stu­dio to read. Alas! I had found The King in Yel­low. After a few mo­ments, which seemed ages, I was put­ting it away with a nervous shud­der, when Boris and Jack came in bring­ing their marble rab­bit. At the same time the bell rang above, and a cry came from the sick­room. Boris was gone like a flash, and the next mo­ment he called, “Jack, run for the doc­tor; bring him back with you. Alec, come here.”

I went and stood at her door. A frightened maid came out in haste and ran away to fetch some rem­edy. Geneviève, sit­ting bolt up­right, with crim­son cheeks and glit­ter­ing eyes, babbled in­cess­antly and res­isted Boris’ gentle re­straint. He called me to help. At my first touch she sighed and sank back, clos­ing her eyes, and then—then—as we still bent above her, she opened them again, looked straight into Boris’ face—poor fever-crazed girl!—and told her secret. At the same in­stant our three lives turned into new chan­nels; the bond that held us so long to­gether snapped forever and a new bond was forged in its place, for she had spoken my name, and as the fever tor­tured her, her heart poured out its load of hid­den sor­row. Amazed and dumb I bowed my head, while my face burned like a live coal, and the blood surged in my ears, stu­pefy­ing me with its clam­our. In­cap­able of move­ment, in­cap­able of speech, I listened to her fe­ver­ish words in an agony of shame and sor­row. I could not si­lence her, I could not look at Boris. Then I felt an arm upon my shoulder, and Boris turned a blood­less face to mine.

“It is not your fault, Alec; don’t grieve so if she loves you—” but he could not fin­ish; and as the doc­tor stepped swiftly into the room, say­ing—“Ah, the fever!” I seized Jack Scott and hur­ried him to the street, say­ing, “Boris would rather be alone.” We crossed the street to our own apart­ments, and that night, see­ing I was go­ing to be ill too, he went for the doc­tor again. The last thing I re­col­lect with any dis­tinct­ness was hear­ing Jack say, “For Heaven’s sake, doc­tor, what ails him, to wear a face like that?” and I thought of The King in Yel­low and the Pal­lid Mask.

I was very ill, for the strain of two years which I had en­dured since that fatal May morn­ing when Geneviève mur­mured, “I love you, but I think I love Boris best,” told on me at last. I had never ima­gined that it could be­come more than I could en­dure. Out­wardly tran­quil, I had de­ceived my­self. Al­though the in­ward battle raged night after night, and I, ly­ing alone in my room, cursed my­self for re­bel­li­ous thoughts un­loyal to Boris and un­worthy of Geneviève, the morn­ing al­ways brought re­lief, and I re­turned to Geneviève and to my dear Boris with a heart washed clean by the tem­pests of the night.

Never in word or deed or thought while with them had I be­trayed my sor­row even to my­self.

The mask of self-de­cep­tion was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of me. Night lif­ted it, lay­ing bare the stifled truth be­low; but there was no one to see ex­cept my­self, and when the day broke the mask fell back again of its own ac­cord. These thoughts passed through my troubled mind as I lay sick, but they were hope­lessly en­tangled with vis­ions of white creatures, heavy as stone, crawl­ing about in Boris’ basin—of the wolf’s head on the rug, foam­ing and snap­ping at Geneviève, who lay smil­ing be­side it. I thought, too, of the King in Yel­low wrapped in the fant­astic col­ours of his tattered mantle, and that bit­ter cry of Cassilda, “Not upon us, oh King, not upon us!” Fever­ishly I struggled to put it from me, but I saw the lake of Hali, thin and blank, without a ripple or wind to stir it, and I saw the towers of Car­cosa be­hind the moon. Alde­baran, the Hy­ades, Alar, Has­tur, glided through the cloud-rifts which fluttered and flapped as they passed like the scal­loped tat­ters of the King in Yel­low. Among all these, one sane thought per­sisted. It never wavered, no mat­ter what else was go­ing on in my dis­ordered mind, that my chief reason for ex­ist­ing was to meet some re­quire­ment of Boris and Geneviève. What this ob­lig­a­tion was, its nature, was never clear; some­times it seemed to be pro­tec­tion, some­times sup­port, through a great crisis. Whatever it seemed to be for the time, its weight res­ted only on me, and I was never so ill or so weak that I did not re­spond with my whole soul. There were al­ways crowds of faces about me, mostly strange, but a few I re­cog­nized, Boris among them. After­ward they told me that this could not have been, but I know that once at least he bent over me. It was only a touch, a faint echo of his voice, then the clouds settled back on my senses, and I lost him, but he did stand there and bend over me once at least.

At last, one morn­ing I awoke to find the sun­light fall­ing across my bed, and Jack Scott read­ing be­side me. I had not strength enough to speak aloud, neither could I think, much less re­mem­ber, but I could smile feebly, as Jack’s eye met mine, and when he jumped up and asked eagerly if I wanted any­thing, I could whis­per, “Yes—Boris.” Jack moved to the head of my bed, and leaned down to ar­range my pil­low: I did not see his face, but he answered heart­ily, “You must wait, Alec; you are too weak to see even Boris.”

I waited and I grew strong; in a few days I was able to see whom I would, but mean­while I had thought and re­membered. From the mo­ment when all the past grew clear again in my mind, I never doubted what I should do when the time came, and I felt sure that Boris would have re­solved upon the same course so far as he was con­cerned; as for what per­tained to me alone, I knew he would see that also as I did. I no longer asked for any­one. I never in­quired why no mes­sage came from them; why dur­ing the week I lay there, wait­ing and grow­ing stronger, I never heard their name spoken. Pre­oc­cu­pied with my own search­ings for the right way, and with my feeble but de­term­ined fight against des­pair, I simply ac­qui­esced in Jack’s reti­cence, tak­ing for gran­ted that he was afraid to speak of them, lest I should turn un­ruly and in­sist on see­ing them. Mean­while I said over and over to my­self, how would it be when life began again for us all? We would take up our re­la­tions ex­actly as they were be­fore Geneviève fell ill. Boris and I would look into each other’s eyes, and there would be neither ran­cour nor cow­ardice nor mis­trust in that glance. I would be with them again for a little while in the dear in­tim­acy of their home, and then, without pre­text or ex­plan­a­tion, I would dis­ap­pear from their lives forever. Boris would know; Geneviève—the only com­fort was that she would never know. It seemed, as I thought it over, that I had found the mean­ing of that sense of ob­lig­a­tion which had per­sisted all through my de­li­rium, and the only pos­sible an­swer to it. So, when I was quite ready, I beckoned Jack to me one day, and said—

“Jack, I want Boris at once; and take my dearest greet­ing to Geneviève. …”

When at last he made me un­der­stand that they were both dead, I fell into a wild rage that tore all my little con­vales­cent strength to atoms. I raved and cursed my­self into a re­lapse, from which I crawled forth some weeks af­ter­ward a boy of twenty-one who be­lieved that his youth was gone forever. I seemed to be past the cap­ab­il­ity of fur­ther suf­fer­ing, and one day when Jack handed me a let­ter and the keys to Boris’ house, I took them without a tremor and asked him to tell me all. It was cruel of me to ask him, but there was no help for it, and he leaned wear­ily on his thin hands, to re­open the wound which could never en­tirely heal. He began very quietly—

“Alec, un­less you have a clue that I know noth­ing about, you will not be able to ex­plain any more than I what has happened. I sus­pect that you would rather not hear these de­tails, but you must learn them, else I would spare you the re­la­tion. God knows I wish I could be spared the telling. I shall use few words.

“That day when I left you in the doc­tor’s care and came back to Boris, I found him work­ing on the Fates. Geneviève, he said, was sleep­ing un­der the in­flu­ence of drugs. She had been quite out of her mind, he said. He kept on work­ing, not talk­ing any more, and I watched him. Be­fore long, I saw that the third fig­ure of the group—the one look­ing straight ahead, out over the world—bore his face; not as you ever saw it, but as it looked then and to the end. This is one thing for which I should like to find an ex­plan­a­tion, but I never shall.

“Well, he worked and I watched him in si­lence, and we went on that way un­til nearly mid­night. Then we heard the door open and shut sharply, and a swift rush in the next room. Boris sprang through the door­way and I fol­lowed; but we were too late. She lay at the bot­tom of the pool, her hands across her breast. Then Boris shot him­self through the heart.” Jack stopped speak­ing, drops of sweat stood un­der his eyes, and his thin cheeks twitched. “I car­ried Boris to his room. Then I went back and let that hellish fluid out of the pool, and turn­ing on all the wa­ter, washed the marble clean of every drop. When at length I dared des­cend the steps, I found her ly­ing there as white as snow. At last, when I had de­cided what was best to do, I went into the labor­at­ory, and first emp­tied the solu­tion in the basin into the waste-pipe; then I poured the con­tents of every jar and bottle after it. There was wood in the fire­place, so I built a fire, and break­ing the locks of Boris’ cab­inet I burnt every pa­per, note­book and let­ter that I found there. With a mal­let from the stu­dio I smashed to pieces all the empty bottles, then load­ing them into a coal-scuttle, I car­ried them to the cel­lar and threw them over the red-hot bed of the fur­nace. Six times I made the jour­ney, and at last, not a vestige re­mained of any­thing which might again aid in seek­ing for the for­mula which Boris had found. Then at last I dared call the doc­tor. He is a good man, and to­gether we struggled to keep it from the pub­lic. Without him I never could have suc­ceeded. At last we got the ser­vants paid and sent away into the coun­try, where old Ro­sier keeps them quiet with stor­ies of Boris’ and Geneviève’s travels in dis­tant lands, from whence they will not re­turn for years. We bur­ied Boris in the little cemetery of Sèvres. The doc­tor is a good creature, and knows when to pity a man who can bear no more. He gave his cer­ti­fic­ate of heart dis­ease and asked no ques­tions of me.”

Then, lift­ing his head from his hands, he said, “Open the let­ter, Alec; it is for us both.”

I tore it open. It was Boris’ will dated a year be­fore. He left everything to Geneviève, and in case of her dy­ing child­less, I was to take con­trol of the house in the Rue Sainte-Cé­cile, and Jack Scott the man­age­ment at Ept. On our deaths the prop­erty re­ver­ted to his mother’s fam­ily in Rus­sia, with the ex­cep­tion of the sculp­tured marbles ex­ecuted by him­self. These he left to me.

The page blurred un­der our eyes, and Jack got up and walked to the win­dow. Presently he re­turned and sat down again. I dreaded to hear what he was go­ing to say, but he spoke with the same sim­pli­city and gen­tle­ness.

“Geneviève lies be­fore the Madonna in the marble room. The Madonna bends ten­derly above her, and Geneviève smiles back into that calm face that never would have been ex­cept for her.”

His voice broke, but he grasped my hand, say­ing, “Cour­age, Alec.” Next morn­ing he left for Ept to ful­fil his trust.

IV

The same even­ing I took the keys and went into the house I had known so well. Everything was in or­der, but the si­lence was ter­rible. Though I went twice to the door of the marble room, I could not force my­self to enter. It was bey­ond my strength. I went into the smoking-room and sat down be­fore the spinet. A small lace handker­chief lay on the keys, and I turned away, chok­ing. It was plain I could not stay, so I locked every door, every win­dow, and the three front and back gates, and went away. Next morn­ing Al­cide packed my valise, and leav­ing him in charge of my apart­ments I took the Ori­ent ex­press for Con­stantinople. Dur­ing the two years that I wandered through the East, at first, in our let­ters, we never men­tioned Geneviève and Boris, but gradu­ally their names crept in. I re­col­lect par­tic­u­larly a pas­sage in one of Jack’s let­ters reply­ing to one of mine—

“What you tell me of see­ing Boris bend­ing over you while you lay ill, and feel­ing his touch on your face, and hear­ing his voice, of course troubles me. This that you de­scribe must have happened a fort­night after he died. I say to my­self that you were dream­ing, that it was part of your de­li­rium, but the ex­plan­a­tion does not sat­isfy me, nor would it you.”

Toward the end of the second year a let­ter came from Jack to me in In­dia so un­like any­thing that I had ever known of him that I de­cided to re­turn at once to Paris. He wrote: “I am well, and sell all my pic­tures as artists do who have no need of money. I have not a care of my own, but I am more rest­less than if I had. I am un­able to shake off a strange anxi­ety about you. It is not ap­pre­hen­sion, it is rather a breath­less ex­pect­ancy—of what, God knows! I can only say it is wear­ing me out. Nights I dream al­ways of you and Boris. I can never re­call any­thing af­ter­ward, but I wake in the morn­ing with my heart beat­ing, and all day the ex­cite­ment in­creases un­til I fall asleep at night to re­call the same ex­per­i­ence. I am quite ex­hausted by it, and have de­term­ined to break up this mor­bid con­di­tion. I must see you. Shall I go to Bom­bay, or will you come to Paris?”

I tele­graphed him to ex­pect me by the next steamer.

When we met I thought he had changed very little; I, he in­sisted, looked in splen­did health. It was good to hear his voice again, and as we sat and chat­ted about what life still held for us, we felt that it was pleas­ant to be alive in the bright spring weather.

We stayed in Paris to­gether a week, and then I went for a week to Ept with him, but first of all we went to the cemetery at Sèvres, where Boris lay.

“Shall we place the Fates in the little grove above him?” Jack asked, and I answered—

“I think only the Madonna should watch over Boris’ grave.” But Jack was none the bet­ter for my home­com­ing. The dreams of which he could not re­tain even the least def­in­ite out­line con­tin­ued, and he said that at times the sense of breath­less ex­pect­ancy was suf­foc­at­ing.

“You see I do you harm and not good,” I said. “Try a change without me.” So he star­ted alone for a ramble among the Chan­nel Is­lands, and I went back to Paris. I had not yet entered Boris’ house, now mine, since my re­turn, but I knew it must be done. It had been kept in or­der by Jack; there were ser­vants there, so I gave up my own apart­ment and went there to live. In­stead of the agit­a­tion I had feared, I found my­self able to paint there tran­quilly. I vis­ited all the rooms—all but one. I could not bring my­self to enter the marble room where Geneviève lay, and yet I felt the long­ing grow­ing daily to look upon her face, to kneel be­side her.

One April af­ter­noon, I lay dream­ing in the smoking-room, just as I had lain two years be­fore, and mech­an­ic­ally I looked among the tawny Eastern rugs for the wolf-skin. At last I dis­tin­guished the poin­ted ears and flat cruel head, and I thought of my dream where I saw Geneviève ly­ing be­side it. The hel­mets still hung against the thread­bare tapestry, among them the old Span­ish mor­ion which I re­membered Geneviève had once put on when we were amus­ing ourselves with the an­cient bits of mail. I turned my eyes to the spinet; every yel­low key seemed elo­quent of her caress­ing hand, and I rose, drawn by the strength of my life’s pas­sion to the sealed door of the marble room. The heavy doors swung in­ward un­der my trem­bling hands. Sun­light poured through the win­dow, tip­ping with gold the wings of Cu­pid, and lingered like a nim­bus over the brows of the Madonna. Her tender face bent in com­pas­sion over a marble form so ex­quis­itely pure that I knelt and signed my­self. Geneviève lay in the shadow un­der the Madonna, and yet, through her white arms, I saw the pale azure vein, and be­neath her softly clasped hands the folds of her dress were tinged with rose, as if from some faint warm light within her breast.

Bend­ing, with a break­ing heart, I touched the marble drapery with my lips, then crept back into the si­lent house.

A maid came and brought me a let­ter, and I sat down in the little con­ser­vat­ory to read it; but as I was about to break the seal, see­ing the girl linger­ing, I asked her what she wanted.

She stammered some­thing about a white rab­bit that had been caught in the house, and asked what should be done with it. I told her to let it loose in the walled garden be­hind the house, and opened my let­ter. It was from Jack, but so in­co­her­ent that I thought he must have lost his reason. It was noth­ing but a series of pray­ers to me not to leave the house un­til he could get back; he could not tell me why, there were the dreams, he said—he could ex­plain noth­ing, but he was sure that I must not leave the house in the Rue Sainte-Cé­cile.

As I fin­ished read­ing I raised my eyes and saw the same maid­ser­vant stand­ing in the door­way hold­ing a glass dish in which two gold­fish were swim­ming: “Put them back into the tank and tell me what you mean by in­ter­rupt­ing me,” I said.

With a half-sup­pressed whim­per she emp­tied wa­ter and fish into an aquar­ium at the end of the con­ser­vat­ory, and turn­ing to me asked my per­mis­sion to leave my ser­vice. She said people were play­ing tricks on her, evid­ently with a design of get­ting her into trouble; the marble rab­bit had been stolen and a live one had been brought into the house; the two beau­ti­ful marble fish were gone, and she had just found those com­mon live things flop­ping on the din­ing-room floor. I re­as­sured her and sent her away, say­ing I would look about my­self. I went into the stu­dio; there was noth­ing there but my canvases and some casts, ex­cept the marble of the Easter lily. I saw it on a table across the room. Then I strode an­grily over to it. But the flower I lif­ted from the table was fresh and fra­gile and filled the air with per­fume.

Then sud­denly I com­pre­hen­ded, and sprang through the hall­way to the marble room. The doors flew open, the sun­light streamed into my face, and through it, in a heav­enly glory, the Madonna smiled, as Geneviève lif­ted her flushed face from her marble couch and opened her sleepy eyes.

In the Court of the Dragon

“Oh, thou who burn’st in heart for those who burn
In Hell, whose fires thy­self shall feed in turn;
How long be cry­ing—‘Mercy on them.’ God!
Why, who art thou to teach and He to learn?”

In the Church of St. Barn­abé ves­pers were over; the clergy left the al­tar; the little choir­boys flocked across the chancel and settled in the stalls. A Suisse in rich uni­form marched down the south aisle, sound­ing his staff at every fourth step on the stone pave­ment; be­hind him came that elo­quent preacher and good man, Mon­sei­gneur C——.

My chair was near the chancel rail, I now turned to­ward the west end of the church. The other people between the al­tar and the pul­pit turned too. There was a little scrap­ing and rust­ling while the con­greg­a­tion seated it­self again; the preacher moun­ted the pul­pit stairs, and the or­gan vol­un­tary ceased.

I had al­ways found the or­gan-play­ing at St. Barn­abé highly in­ter­est­ing. Learned and sci­entific it was, too much so for my small know­ledge, but ex­press­ing a vivid if cold in­tel­li­gence. Moreover, it pos­sessed the French qual­ity of taste: taste reigned su­preme, self-con­trolled, dig­ni­fied and reti­cent.

Today, how­ever, from the first chord I had felt a change for the worse, a sin­is­ter change. Dur­ing ves­pers it had been chiefly the chancel or­gan which sup­por­ted the beau­ti­ful choir, but now and again, quite wan­tonly as it seemed, from the west gal­lery where the great or­gan stands, a heavy hand had struck across the church at the se­rene peace of those clear voices. It was some­thing more than harsh and dis­son­ant, and it be­trayed no lack of skill. As it re­curred again and again, it set me think­ing of what my ar­chi­tect’s books say about the cus­tom in early times to con­sec­rate the choir as soon as it was built, and that the nave, be­ing fin­ished some­times half a cen­tury later, of­ten did not get any bless­ing at all: I wondered idly if that had been the case at St. Barn­abé, and whether some­thing not usu­ally sup­posed to be at home in a Chris­tian church might have entered un­detec­ted and taken pos­ses­sion of the west gal­lery. I had read of such things hap­pen­ing, too, but not in works on ar­chi­tec­ture.

Then I re­membered that St. Barn­abé was not much more than a hun­dred years old, and smiled at the in­con­gru­ous as­so­ci­ation of me­di­aeval su­per­sti­tions with that cheer­ful little piece of eight­eenth-cen­tury ro­coco.

But now ves­pers were over, and there should have fol­lowed a few quiet chords, fit to ac­com­pany med­it­a­tion, while we waited for the ser­mon. In­stead of that, the dis­cord at the lower end of the church broke out with the de­par­ture of the clergy, as if now noth­ing could con­trol it.

I be­long to those chil­dren of an older and sim­pler gen­er­a­tion who do not love to seek for psy­cho­lo­gical sub­tleties in art; and I have ever re­fused to find in mu­sic any­thing more than melody and har­mony, but I felt that in the labyrinth of sounds now is­su­ing from that in­stru­ment there was some­thing be­ing hunted. Up and down the ped­als chased him, while the manu­als blared ap­proval. Poor devil! who­ever he was, there seemed small hope of es­cape!

My nervous an­noy­ance changed to an­ger. Who was do­ing this? How dare he play like that in the midst of di­vine ser­vice? I glanced at the people near me: not one ap­peared to be in the least dis­turbed. The pla­cid brows of the kneel­ing nuns, still turned to­wards the al­tar, lost none of their de­vout ab­strac­tion un­der the pale shadow of their white he­ad­dress. The fash­ion­able lady be­side me was look­ing ex­pect­antly at Mon­sei­gneur C——. For all her face be­trayed, the or­gan might have been singing an Ave Maria.

But now, at last, the preacher had made the sign of the cross, and com­manded si­lence. I turned to him gladly. Thus far I had not found the rest I had coun­ted on when I entered St. Barn­abé that af­ter­noon.

I was worn out by three nights of phys­ical suf­fer­ing and men­tal trouble: the last had been the worst, and it was an ex­hausted body, and a mind be­numbed and yet acutely sens­it­ive, which I had brought to my fa­vour­ite church for heal­ing. For I had been read­ing The King in Yel­low.

“The sun aris­eth; they gather them­selves to­gether and lay them down in their dens.” Mon­sei­gneur C—— de­livered his text in a calm voice, glan­cing quietly over the con­greg­a­tion. My eyes turned, I knew not why, to­ward the lower end of the church. The or­gan­ist was com­ing from be­hind his pipes, and passing along the gal­lery on his way out, I saw him dis­ap­pear by a small door that leads to some stairs which des­cend dir­ectly to the street. He was a slender man, and his face was as white as his coat was black. “Good rid­dance!” I thought, “with your wicked mu­sic! I hope your as­sist­ant will play the clos­ing vol­un­tary.”

With a feel­ing of re­lief—with a deep, calm feel­ing of re­lief, I turned back to the mild face in the pul­pit and settled my­self to listen. Here, at last, was the ease of mind I longed for.

“My chil­dren,” said the preacher, “one truth the hu­man soul finds hard­est of all to learn: that it has noth­ing to fear. It can never be made to see that noth­ing can really harm it.”

“Curi­ous doc­trine!” I thought, “for a Cath­olic priest. Let us see how he will re­con­cile that with the Fath­ers.”

“Noth­ing can really harm the soul,” he went on, in, his coolest, clearest tones, “be­cause—”

But I never heard the rest; my eye left his face, I knew not for what reason, and sought the lower end of the church. The same man was com­ing out from be­hind the or­gan, and was passing along the gal­lery the same way. But there had not been time for him to re­turn, and if he had re­turned, I must have seen him. I felt a faint chill, and my heart sank; and yet, his go­ing and com­ing were no af­fair of mine. I looked at him: I could not look away from his black fig­ure and his white face. When he was ex­actly op­pos­ite to me, he turned and sent across the church straight into my eyes, a look of hate, in­tense and deadly: I have never seen any other like it; would to God I might never see it again! Then he dis­ap­peared by the same door through which I had watched him de­part less than sixty seconds be­fore.

I sat and tried to col­lect my thoughts. My first sen­sa­tion was like that of a very young child badly hurt, when it catches its breath be­fore cry­ing out.

To sud­denly find my­self the ob­ject of such hatred was ex­quis­itely pain­ful: and this man was an ut­ter stranger. Why should he hate me so?—me, whom he had never seen be­fore? For the mo­ment all other sen­sa­tion was merged in this one pang: even fear was sub­or­din­ate to grief, and for that mo­ment I never doubted; but in the next I began to reason, and a sense of the in­con­gru­ous came to my aid.

As I have said, St. Barn­abé is a mod­ern church. It is small and well lighted; one sees all over it al­most at a glance. The or­gan gal­lery gets a strong white light from a row of long win­dows in the clerestory, which have not even col­oured glass.

The pul­pit be­ing in the middle of the church, it fol­lowed that, when I was turned to­ward it, whatever moved at the west end could not fail to at­tract my eye. When the or­gan­ist passed it was no won­der that I saw him: I had simply mis­cal­cu­lated the in­ter­val between his first and his second passing. He had come in that last time by the other side-door. As for the look which had so up­set me, there had been no such thing, and I was a nervous fool.

I looked about. This was a likely place to har­bour su­per­nat­ural hor­rors! That clear-cut, reas­on­able face of Mon­sei­gneur C——, his col­lec­ted man­ner and easy, grace­ful ges­tures, were they not just a little dis­cour­aging to the no­tion of a grue­some mys­tery? I glanced above his head, and al­most laughed. That fly­away lady sup­port­ing one corner of the pul­pit can­opy, which looked like a fringed dam­ask table­cloth in a high wind, at the first at­tempt of a ba­silisk to pose up there in the or­gan loft, she would point her gold trum­pet at him, and puff him out of ex­ist­ence! I laughed to my­self over this con­ceit, which, at the time, I thought very amus­ing, and sat and chaffed my­self and everything else, from the old harpy out­side the rail­ing, who had made me pay ten centimes for my chair, be­fore she would let me in (she was more like a ba­silisk, I told my­self, than was my or­gan­ist with the an­aemic com­plex­ion): from that grim old dame, to, yes, alas! Mon­sei­gneur C—— him­self. For all de­vout­ness had fled. I had never yet done such a thing in my life, but now I felt a de­sire to mock.

As for the ser­mon, I could not hear a word of it for the jingle in my ears of

“The skirts of St. Paul has reached.
Hav­ing preached us those six Lent lec­tures,
More unc­tu­ous than ever he preached,”

keep­ing time to the most fant­astic and ir­rev­er­ent thoughts.

It was no use to sit there any longer: I must get out of doors and shake my­self free from this hate­ful mood. I knew the rude­ness I was com­mit­ting, but still I rose and left the church.

A spring sun was shin­ing on the Rue St. Honoré, as I ran down the church steps. On one corner stood a bar­row full of yel­low jon­quils, pale vi­ol­ets from the Rivi­era, dark Rus­sian vi­ol­ets, and white Ro­man hy­acinths in a golden cloud of mimosa. The street was full of Sunday pleas­ure-seekers. I swung my cane and laughed with the rest. Someone over­took and passed me. He never turned, but there was the same deadly ma­lig­nity in his white pro­file that there had been in his eyes. I watched him as long as I could see him. His lithe back ex­pressed the same men­ace; every step that car­ried him away from me seemed to bear him on some er­rand con­nec­ted with my de­struc­tion.

I was creep­ing along, my feet al­most re­fus­ing to move. There began to dawn in me a sense of re­spons­ib­il­ity for some­thing long for­got­ten. It began to seem as if I de­served that which he threatened: it reached a long way back—a long, long way back. It had lain dormant all these years: it was there, though, and presently it would rise and con­front me. But I would try to es­cape; and I stumbled as best I could into the Rue de Rivoli, across the Place de la Con­corde and on to the Quai. I looked with sick eyes upon the sun, shin­ing through the white foam of the foun­tain, pour­ing over the backs of the dusky bronze river-gods, on the faraway Arc, a struc­ture of amethyst mist, on the count­less vis­tas of grey stems and bare branches faintly green. Then I saw him again com­ing down one of the chest­nut al­leys of the Cours la Reine.

I left the river­side, plunged blindly across to the Champs Elysées and turned to­ward the Arc. The set­ting sun was send­ing its rays along the green sward of the Rond-point: in the full glow he sat on a bench, chil­dren and young moth­ers all about him. He was noth­ing but a Sunday loun­ger, like the oth­ers, like my­self. I said the words al­most aloud, and all the while I gazed on the ma­lig­nant hatred of his face. But he was not look­ing at me. I crept past and dragged my leaden feet up the Av­enue. I knew that every time I met him brought him nearer to the ac­com­plish­ment of his pur­pose and my fate. And still I tried to save my­self.

The last rays of sun­set were pour­ing through the great Arc. I passed un­der it, and met him face to face. I had left him far down the Champs Elysées, and yet he came in with a stream of people who were re­turn­ing from the Bois de Boulogne. He came so close that he brushed me. His slender frame felt like iron in­side its loose black cov­er­ing. He showed no signs of haste, nor of fa­tigue, nor of any hu­man feel­ing. His whole be­ing ex­pressed one thing: the will, and the power to work me evil.

In an­guish I watched him where he went down the broad crowded Av­enue, that was all flash­ing with wheels and the trap­pings of horses and the hel­mets of the Garde Re­pub­li­caine.

He was soon lost to sight; then I turned and fled. Into the Bois, and far out bey­ond it—I know not where I went, but after a long while as it seemed to me, night had fallen, and I found my­self sit­ting at a table be­fore a small café. I had wandered back into the Bois. It was hours now since I had seen him. Phys­ical fa­tigue and men­tal suf­fer­ing had left me no power to think or feel. I was tired, so tired! I longed to hide away in my own den. I re­solved to go home. But that was a long way off.

I live in the Court of the Dragon, a nar­row pas­sage that leads from the Rue de Rennes to the Rue du Dragon.

It is an “im­passe”; tra­vers­able only for foot pas­sen­gers. Over the en­trance on the Rue de Rennes is a bal­cony, sup­por­ted by an iron dragon. Within the court tall old houses rise on either side, and close the ends that give on the two streets. Huge gates, swung back dur­ing the day into the walls of the deep arch­ways, close this court, after mid­night, and one must enter then by ringing at cer­tain small doors on the side. The sunken pave­ment col­lects un­sa­voury pools. Steep stair­ways pitch down to doors that open on the court. The ground floors are oc­cu­pied by shops of second­hand deal­ers, and by iron work­ers. All day long the place rings with the clink of ham­mers and the clang of metal bars.

Un­sa­voury as it is be­low, there is cheer­ful­ness, and com­fort, and hard, hon­est work above.

Five flights up are the ateliers of ar­chi­tects and paint­ers, and the hid­ing-places of middle-aged stu­dents like my­self who want to live alone. When I first came here to live I was young, and not alone.

I had to walk a while be­fore any con­vey­ance ap­peared, but at last, when I had al­most reached the Arc de Tri­omphe again, an empty cab came along and I took it.

From the Arc to the Rue de Rennes is a drive of more than half an hour, es­pe­cially when one is con­veyed by a tired cab horse that has been at the mercy of Sunday fête-makers.

There had been time be­fore I passed un­der the Dragon’s wings to meet my en­emy over and over again, but I never saw him once, and now refuge was close at hand.

Be­fore the wide gate­way a small mob of chil­dren were play­ing. Our con­ci­erge and his wife walked among them, with their black poodle, keep­ing or­der; some couples were waltz­ing on the side­walk. I re­turned their greet­ings and hur­ried in.

All the in­hab­it­ants of the court had trooped out into the street. The place was quite deser­ted, lighted by a few lan­terns hung high up, in which the gas burned dimly.

My apart­ment was at the top of a house, halfway down the court, reached by a stair­case that des­cen­ded al­most into the street, with only a bit of pas­sage­way in­ter­ven­ing, I set my foot on the threshold of the open door, the friendly old ru­in­ous stairs rose be­fore me, lead­ing up to rest and shel­ter. Look­ing back over my right shoulder, I saw him, ten paces off. He must have entered the court with me.

He was com­ing straight on, neither slowly, nor swiftly, but straight on to me. And now he was look­ing at me. For the first time since our eyes en­countered across the church they met now again, and I knew that the time had come.

Retreat­ing back­ward, down the court, I faced him. I meant to es­cape by the en­trance on the Rue du Dragon. His eyes told me that I never should es­cape.

It seemed ages while we were go­ing, I re­treat­ing, he ad­van­cing, down the court in per­fect si­lence; but at last I felt the shadow of the arch­way, and the next step brought me within it. I had meant to turn here and spring through into the street. But the shadow was not that of an arch­way; it was that of a vault. The great doors on the Rue du Dragon were closed. I felt this by the black­ness which sur­roun­ded me, and at the same in­stant I read it in his face. How his face gleamed in the dark­ness, draw­ing swiftly nearer! The deep vaults, the huge closed doors, their cold iron clamps were all on his side. The thing which he had threatened had ar­rived: it gathered and bore down on me from the fathom­less shad­ows; the point from which it would strike was his in­fernal eyes. Hope­less, I set my back against the barred doors and de­fied him.

There was a scrap­ing of chairs on the stone floor, and a rust­ling as the con­greg­a­tion rose. I could hear the Suisse’s staff in the south aisle, pre­ced­ing Mon­sei­gneur C—— to the sac­risty.

The kneel­ing nuns, roused from their de­vout ab­strac­tion, made their rev­er­ence and went away. The fash­ion­able lady, my neigh­bour, rose also, with grace­ful re­serve. As she de­par­ted her glance just flit­ted over my face in dis­ap­proval.

Half dead, or so it seemed to me, yet in­tensely alive to every trifle, I sat among the leis­urely mov­ing crowd, then rose too and went to­ward the door.

I had slept through the ser­mon. Had I slept through the ser­mon? I looked up and saw him passing along the gal­lery to his place. Only his side I saw; the thin bent arm in its black cov­er­ing looked like one of those dev­il­ish, name­less in­stru­ments which lie in the dis­used tor­ture-cham­bers of me­di­aeval castles.

But I had es­caped him, though his eyes had said I should not. Had I es­caped him? That which gave him the power over me came back out of ob­li­vion, where I had hoped to keep it. For I knew him now. Death and the aw­ful abode of lost souls, whither my weak­ness long ago had sent him—they had changed him for every other eye, but not for mine. I had re­cog­nized him al­most from the first; I had never doubted what he was come to do; and now I knew while my body sat safe in the cheer­ful little church, he had been hunt­ing my soul in the Court of the Dragon.

I crept to the door: the or­gan broke out over­head with a blare. A dazzling light filled the church, blot­ting the al­tar from my eyes. The people faded away, the arches, the vaul­ted roof van­ished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathom­less glare, and I saw the black stars hanging in the heav­ens: and the wet winds from the lake of Hali chilled my face.

And now, far away, over leagues of toss­ing cloud-waves, I saw the moon drip­ping with spray; and bey­ond, the towers of Car­cosa rose be­hind the moon.

Death and the aw­ful abode of lost souls, whither my weak­ness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard his voice, rising, swell­ing, thun­der­ing through the flar­ing light, and as I fell, the ra­di­ance in­creas­ing, in­creas­ing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yel­low whis­per­ing to my soul: “It is a fear­ful thing to fall into the hands of the liv­ing God!”

The Yellow Sign

“Let the red dawn sur­mise
What we shall do,
When this blue star­light dies
And all is through.”

I

There are so many things which are im­possible to ex­plain! Why should cer­tain chords in mu­sic make me think of the brown and golden tints of au­tumn fo­liage? Why should the Mass of Sainte Cé­cile bend my thoughts wan­der­ing among cav­erns whose walls blaze with ragged masses of vir­gin sil­ver? What was it in the roar and tur­moil of Broad­way at six o’clock that flashed be­fore my eyes the pic­ture of a still Bre­ton forest where sun­light filtered through spring fo­liage and Sylvia bent, half curi­ously, half ten­derly, over a small green liz­ard, mur­mur­ing: “To think that this also is a little ward of God!”

When I first saw the watch­man his back was to­ward me. I looked at him in­dif­fer­ently un­til he went into the church. I paid no more at­ten­tion to him than I had to any other man who lounged through Wash­ing­ton Square that morn­ing, and when I shut my win­dow and turned back into my stu­dio I had for­got­ten him. Late in the af­ter­noon, the day be­ing warm, I raised the win­dow again and leaned out to get a sniff of air. A man was stand­ing in the court­yard of the church, and I no­ticed him again with as little in­terest as I had that morn­ing. I looked across the square to where the foun­tain was play­ing and then, with my mind filled with vague im­pres­sions of trees, as­phalt drives, and the mov­ing groups of nurse­maids and hol­i­day­makers, I star­ted to walk back to my easel. As I turned, my list­less glance in­cluded the man be­low in the church­yard. His face was to­ward me now, and with a per­fectly in­vol­un­tary move­ment I bent to see it. At the same mo­ment he raised his head and looked at me. In­stantly I thought of a coffin-worm. Whatever it was about the man that re­pelled me I did not know, but the im­pres­sion of a plump white grave-worm was so in­tense and naus­eat­ing that I must have shown it in my ex­pres­sion, for he turned his puffy face away with a move­ment which made me think of a dis­turbed grub in a chest­nut.

I went back to my easel and mo­tioned the model to re­sume her pose. After work­ing a while I was sat­is­fied that I was spoil­ing what I had done as rap­idly as pos­sible, and I took up a palette knife and scraped the col­our out again. The flesh tones were sal­low and un­healthy, and I did not un­der­stand how I could have painted such sickly col­our into a study which be­fore that had glowed with healthy tones.

I looked at Tessie. She had not changed, and the clear flush of health dyed her neck and cheeks as I frowned.

“Is it some­thing I’ve done?” she said.

“No—I’ve made a mess of this arm, and for the life of me I can’t see how I came to paint such mud as that into the can­vas,” I replied.

“Don’t I pose well?” she in­sisted.

“Of course, per­fectly.”

“Then it’s not my fault?”

“No. It’s my own.”

“I am very sorry,” she said.

I told her she could rest while I ap­plied rag and tur­pen­tine to the plague spot on my can­vas, and she went off to smoke a ci­gar­ette and look over the il­lus­tra­tions in the Cour­rier Français.

I did not know whether it was some­thing in the tur­pen­tine or a de­fect in the can­vas, but the more I scrubbed the more that gan­grene seemed to spread. I worked like a beaver to get it out, and yet the dis­ease ap­peared to creep from limb to limb of the study be­fore me. Alarmed, I strove to ar­rest it, but now the col­our on the breast changed and the whole fig­ure seemed to ab­sorb the in­fec­tion as a sponge soaks up wa­ter. Vig­or­ously I plied palette-knife, tur­pen­tine, and scraper, think­ing all the time what a séance I should hold with Duval who had sold me the can­vas; but soon I no­ticed that it was not the can­vas which was de­fect­ive nor yet the col­ours of Ed­ward. “It must be the tur­pen­tine,” I thought an­grily, “or else my eyes have be­come so blurred and con­fused by the af­ter­noon light that I can’t see straight.” I called Tessie, the model. She came and leaned over my chair blow­ing rings of smoke into the air.

“What have you been do­ing to it?” she ex­claimed

“Noth­ing,” I growled, “it must be this tur­pen­tine!”

“What a hor­rible col­our it is now,” she con­tin­ued. “Do you think my flesh re­sembles green cheese?”

“No, I don’t,” I said an­grily; “did you ever know me to paint like that be­fore?”

“No, in­deed!”

“Well, then!”

“It must be the tur­pen­tine, or some­thing,” she ad­mit­ted.

She slipped on a Japan­ese robe and walked to the win­dow. I scraped and rubbed un­til I was tired, and fi­nally picked up my brushes and hurled them through the can­vas with a for­cible ex­pres­sion, the tone alone of which reached Tessie’s ears.

Never­the­less she promptly began: “That’s it! Swear and act silly and ruin your brushes! You have been three weeks on that study, and now look! What’s the good of rip­ping the can­vas? What creatures artists are!”

I felt about as much ashamed as I usu­ally did after such an out­break, and I turned the ruined can­vas to the wall. Tessie helped me clean my brushes, and then danced away to dress. From the screen she re­galed me with bits of ad­vice con­cern­ing whole or par­tial loss of tem­per, un­til, think­ing, per­haps, I had been tor­men­ted suf­fi­ciently, she came out to im­plore me to but­ton her waist where she could not reach it on the shoulder.

“Everything went wrong from the time you came back from the win­dow and talked about that hor­rid-look­ing man you saw in the church­yard,” she an­nounced.

“Yes, he prob­ably be­witched the pic­ture,” I said, yawn­ing. I looked at my watch.

“It’s after six, I know,” said Tessie, ad­just­ing her hat be­fore the mir­ror.

“Yes,” I replied, “I didn’t mean to keep you so long.” I leaned out of the win­dow but re­coiled with dis­gust, for the young man with the pasty face stood be­low in the church­yard. Tessie saw my ges­ture of dis­ap­proval and leaned from the win­dow.

“Is that the man you don’t like?” she whispered.

I nod­ded.

“I can’t see his face, but he does look fat and soft. Some­way or other,” she con­tin­ued, turn­ing to look at me, “he re­minds me of a dream—an aw­ful dream I once had. Or,” she mused, look­ing down at her shapely shoes, “was it a dream after all?”

“How should I know?” I smiled.

Tessie smiled in reply.

“You were in it,” she said, “so per­haps you might know some­thing about it.”

“Tessie! Tessie!” I pro­tested, “don’t you dare flat­ter by say­ing that you dream about me!”

“But I did,” she in­sisted; “shall I tell you about it?”

“Go ahead,” I replied, light­ing a ci­gar­ette.

Tessie leaned back on the open win­dowsill and began very ser­i­ously.

“One night last winter I was ly­ing in bed think­ing about noth­ing at all in par­tic­u­lar. I had been pos­ing for you and I was tired out, yet it seemed im­possible for me to sleep. I heard the bells in the city ring ten, el­even, and mid­night. I must have fallen asleep about mid­night be­cause I don’t re­mem­ber hear­ing the bells after that. It seemed to me that I had scarcely closed my eyes when I dreamed that some­thing im­pelled me to go to the win­dow. I rose, and, rais­ing the sash, leaned out. Twenty-fifth Street was deser­ted as far as I could see. I began to be afraid; everything out­side seemed so—so black and un­com­fort­able. Then the sound of wheels in the dis­tance came to my ears, and it seemed to me as though that was what I must wait for. Very slowly the wheels ap­proached, and, fi­nally, I could make out a vehicle mov­ing along the street. It came nearer and nearer, and when it passed be­neath my win­dow I saw it was a hearse. Then, as I trembled with fear, the driver turned and looked straight at me. When I awoke I was stand­ing by the open win­dow shiv­er­ing with cold, but the black-plumed hearse and the driver were gone. I dreamed this dream again in March last, and again awoke be­side the open win­dow. Last night the dream came again. You re­mem­ber how it was rain­ing; when I awoke, stand­ing at the open win­dow, my night­dress was soaked.”

“But where did I come into the dream?” I asked.

“You—you were in the coffin; but you were not dead.”

“In the coffin?”

“Yes.”

“How did you know? Could you see me?”

“No; I only knew you were there.”

“Had you been eat­ing Welsh rarebits, or lob­ster salad?” I began, laugh­ing, but the girl in­ter­rup­ted me with a frightened cry.

“Hello! What’s up?” I said, as she shrank into the em­bras­ure by the win­dow.

“The—the man be­low in the church­yard;—he drove the hearse.”

“Non­sense,” I said, but Tessie’s eyes were wide with ter­ror. I went to the win­dow and looked out. The man was gone. “Come, Tessie,” I urged, “don’t be fool­ish. You have posed too long; you are nervous.”

“Do you think I could for­get that face?” she mur­mured. “Three times I saw the hearse pass be­low my win­dow, and every time the driver turned and looked up at me. Oh, his face was so white and—and soft? It looked dead—it looked as if it had been dead a long time.”

I in­duced the girl to sit down and swal­low a glass of Mars­ala. Then I sat down be­side her, and tried to give her some ad­vice.

“Look here, Tessie,” I said, “you go to the coun­try for a week or two, and you’ll have no more dreams about hearses. You pose all day, and when night comes your nerves are up­set. You can’t keep this up. Then again, in­stead of go­ing to bed when your day’s work is done, you run off to pic­nics at Sulzer’s Park, or go to the El­dor­ado or Coney Is­land, and when you come down here next morn­ing you are fagged out. There was no real hearse. There was a soft-shell crab dream.”

She smiled faintly.

“What about the man in the church­yard?”

“Oh, he’s only an or­din­ary un­healthy, every­day creature.”

“As true as my name is Tessie Rear­don, I swear to you, Mr. Scott, that the face of the man be­low in the church­yard is the face of the man who drove the hearse!”

“What of it?” I said. “It’s an hon­est trade.”

“Then you think I did see the hearse?”

“Oh,” I said dip­lo­mat­ic­ally, “if you really did, it might not be un­likely that the man be­low drove it. There is noth­ing in that.”

Tessie rose, un­rolled her scen­ted handker­chief, and tak­ing a bit of gum from a knot in the hem, placed it in her mouth. Then draw­ing on her gloves she offered me her hand, with a frank, “Good­night, Mr. Scott,” and walked out.

II

The next morn­ing, Tho­mas, the bell­boy, brought me the Her­ald and a bit of news. The church next door had been sold. I thanked Heaven for it, not that be­ing a Cath­olic I had any re­pug­nance for the con­greg­a­tion next door, but be­cause my nerves were shattered by a blatant ex­horter, whose every word echoed through the aisle of the church as if it had been my own rooms, and who in­sisted on his r’s with a nasal per­sist­ence which re­vol­ted my every in­stinct. Then, too, there was a fiend in hu­man shape, an or­gan­ist, who reeled off some of the grand old hymns with an in­ter­pret­a­tion of his own, and I longed for the blood of a creature who could play the dox­o­logy with an amend­ment of minor chords which one hears only in a quar­tet of very young un­der­gradu­ates. I be­lieve the min­is­ter was a good man, but when he bel­lowed: “And the Lorrrrd said unto Moses, the Lorrrd is a man of war; the Lorrrd is his name. My wrath shall wax hot and I will kill you with the sworrrrd!” I wondered how many cen­tur­ies of pur­gat­ory it would take to atone for such a sin.

“Who bought the prop­erty?” I asked Tho­mas.

“Nobody that I knows, sir. They do say the gent wot owns this ’ere ’Amilton flats was lookin’ at it. ’E might be a-bildin’ more stu­dios.”

I walked to the win­dow. The young man with the un­healthy face stood by the church­yard gate, and at the mere sight of him the same over­whelm­ing re­pug­nance took pos­ses­sion of me.

“By the way, Tho­mas,” I said, “who is that fel­low down there?”

Tho­mas sniffed. “That there worm, sir? ’Es night-watch­man of the church, sir. ’E maikes me tired a-sit­tin’ out all night on them steps and lookin’ at you in­sultin’ like. I’d a punched ’is ’ed, sir—beg par­don, sir—”

“Go on, Tho­mas.”

“One night a comin’ ’ome with ’Arry, the other Eng­lish boy, I sees ’im a sit­tin’ there on them steps. We ’ad Molly and Jen with us, sir, the two girls on the tray ser­vice, an’ ’e looks so in­sultin’ at us that I up and sez: ‘Wat you look­ing hat, you fat slug?’—beg par­don, sir, but that’s ’ow I sez, sir. Then ’e don’t say nothin’ and I sez: ‘Come out and I’ll punch that pud­din’ ’ed.’ Then I hopens the gate an’ goes in, but ’e don’t say nothin’, only looks in­sultin’ like. Then I ’its ’im one, but, ugh! ’is ’ed was that cold and mushy it ud sicken you to touch ’im.”

“What did he do then?” I asked curi­ously.

“ ’Im? Nawthin’.”

“And you, Tho­mas?”

The young fel­low flushed with em­bar­rass­ment and smiled un­eas­ily.

“Mr. Scott, sir, I ain’t no cow­ard, an’ I can’t make it out at all why I run. I was in the 5th Lawn­cers, sir, bu­gler at Tel-el-Ke­bir, an’ was shot by the wells.”

“You don’t mean to say you ran away?”

“Yes, sir; I run.”

“Why?”

“That’s just what I want to know, sir. I grabbed Molly an’ run, an’ the rest was as frightened as I.”

“But what were they frightened at?”

Tho­mas re­fused to an­swer for a while, but now my curi­os­ity was aroused about the re­puls­ive young man be­low and I pressed him. Three years’ so­journ in Amer­ica had not only mod­i­fied Tho­mas’ cock­ney dia­lect but had given him the Amer­ican’s fear of ri­dicule.

“You won’t be­lieve me, Mr. Scott, sir?”

“Yes, I will.”

“You will lawf at me, sir?”

“Non­sense!”

He hes­it­ated. “Well, sir, it’s Gawd’s truth that when I ’it ’im ’e grabbed me wrists, sir, and when I twis­ted ’is soft, mushy fist one of ’is fin­gers come off in me ’and.”

The ut­ter loath­ing and hor­ror of Tho­mas’ face must have been re­flec­ted in my own, for he ad­ded:

“It’s or­ful, an’ now when I see ’im I just go away. ’E maikes me hill.”

When Tho­mas had gone I went to the win­dow. The man stood be­side the church-rail­ing with both hands on the gate, but I hast­ily re­treated to my easel again, sickened and hor­ri­fied, for I saw that the middle fin­ger of his right hand was miss­ing.

At nine o’clock Tessie ap­peared and van­ished be­hind the screen with a merry “Good morn­ing, Mr. Scott.” When she had re­appeared and taken her pose upon the model-stand I star­ted a new can­vas, much to her de­light. She re­mained si­lent as long as I was on the draw­ing, but as soon as the scrape of the char­coal ceased and I took up my fix­at­ive she began to chat­ter.

“Oh, I had such a lovely time last night. We went to Tony Pastor’s.”

“Who are ‘we’?” I de­man­ded.

“Oh, Mag­gie, you know, Mr. Whyte’s model, and Pinkie McCormick—we call her Pinkie be­cause she’s got that beau­ti­ful red hair you artists like so much—and Liz­zie Burke.”

I sent a shower of spray from the fix­at­ive over the can­vas, and said: “Well, go on.”

“We saw Kelly and Baby Barnes the skirt-dan­cer and—and all the rest. I made a mash.”

“Then you have gone back on me, Tessie?”

She laughed and shook her head.

“He’s Liz­zie Burke’s brother, Ed. He’s a per­fect gen’l’man.”

I felt con­strained to give her some par­ental ad­vice con­cern­ing mash­ing, which she took with a bright smile.

“Oh, I can take care of a strange mash,” she said, ex­amin­ing her chew­ing gum, “but Ed is dif­fer­ent. Liz­zie is my best friend.”

Then she re­lated how Ed had come back from the stock­ing mill in Low­ell, Mas­sachu­setts, to find her and Liz­zie grown up, and what an ac­com­plished young man he was, and how he thought noth­ing of squan­der­ing half-a-dol­lar for ice-cream and oysters to cel­eb­rate his entry as clerk into the wool­len de­part­ment of Macy’s. Be­fore she fin­ished I began to paint, and she re­sumed the pose, smil­ing and chat­ter­ing like a spar­row. By noon I had the study fairly well rubbed in and Tessie came to look at it.

“That’s bet­ter,” she said.

I thought so too, and ate my lunch with a sat­is­fied feel­ing that all was go­ing well. Tessie spread her lunch on a draw­ing table op­pos­ite me and we drank our claret from the same bottle and lighted our ci­gar­ettes from the same match. I was very much at­tached to Tessie. I had watched her shoot up into a slender but ex­quis­itely formed wo­man from a frail, awk­ward child. She had posed for me dur­ing the last three years, and among all my mod­els she was my fa­vour­ite. It would have troubled me very much in­deed had she be­come “tough” or “fly,” as the phrase goes, but I never no­ticed any de­teri­or­a­tion of her man­ner, and felt at heart that she was all right. She and I never dis­cussed mor­als at all, and I had no in­ten­tion of do­ing so, partly be­cause I had none my­self, and partly be­cause I knew she would do what she liked in spite of me. Still I did hope she would steer clear of com­plic­a­tions, be­cause I wished her well, and then also I had a selfish de­sire to re­tain the best model I had. I knew that mash­ing, as she termed it, had no sig­ni­fic­ance with girls like Tessie, and that such things in Amer­ica did not re­semble in the least the same things in Paris. Yet, hav­ing lived with my eyes open, I also knew that some­body would take Tessie away some day, in one man­ner or an­other, and though I pro­fessed to my­self that mar­riage was non­sense, I sin­cerely hoped that, in this case, there would be a priest at the end of the vista. I am a Cath­olic. When I listen to high mass, when I sign my­self, I feel that everything, in­clud­ing my­self, is more cheer­ful, and when I con­fess, it does me good. A man who lives as much alone as I do, must con­fess to some­body. Then, again, Sylvia was Cath­olic, and it was reason enough for me. But I was speak­ing of Tessie, which is very dif­fer­ent. Tessie also was Cath­olic and much more de­vout than I, so, tak­ing it all in all, I had little fear for my pretty model un­til she should fall in love. But then I knew that fate alone would de­cide her fu­ture for her, and I prayed in­wardly that fate would keep her away from men like me and throw into her path noth­ing but Ed Burkes and Jimmy McCormicks, bless her sweet face!

Tessie sat blow­ing rings of smoke up to the ceil­ing and tink­ling the ice in her tum­bler.

“Do you know that I also had a dream last night?” I ob­served.

“Not about that man,” she laughed.

“Ex­actly. A dream sim­ilar to yours, only much worse.”

It was fool­ish and thought­less of me to say this, but you know how little tact the av­er­age painter has. “I must have fallen asleep about ten o’clock,” I con­tin­ued, “and after a while I dreamt that I awoke. So plainly did I hear the mid­night bells, the wind in the tree-branches, and the whistle of steam­ers from the bay, that even now I can scarcely be­lieve I was not awake. I seemed to be ly­ing in a box which had a glass cover. Dimly I saw the street lamps as I passed, for I must tell you, Tessie, the box in which I re­clined ap­peared to lie in a cush­ioned wagon which jol­ted me over a stony pave­ment. After a while I be­came im­pa­tient and tried to move, but the box was too nar­row. My hands were crossed on my breast, so I could not raise them to help my­self. I listened and then tried to call. My voice was gone. I could hear the trample of the horses at­tached to the wagon, and even the breath­ing of the driver. Then an­other sound broke upon my ears like the rais­ing of a win­dow sash. I man­aged to turn my head a little, and found I could look, not only through the glass cover of my box, but also through the glass panes in the side of the covered vehicle. I saw houses, empty and si­lent, with neither light nor life about any of them ex­cept­ing one. In that house a win­dow was open on the first floor, and a fig­ure all in white stood look­ing down into the street. It was you.”

Tessie had turned her face away from me and leaned on the table with her el­bow.

“I could see your face,” I re­sumed, “and it seemed to me to be very sor­row­ful. Then we passed on and turned into a nar­row black lane. Presently the horses stopped. I waited and waited, clos­ing my eyes with fear and im­pa­tience, but all was si­lent as the grave. After what seemed to me hours, I began to feel un­com­fort­able. A sense that some­body was close to me made me un­close my eyes. Then I saw the white face of the hearse-driver look­ing at me through the coffin-lid—”

A sob from Tessie in­ter­rup­ted me. She was trem­bling like a leaf. I saw I had made an ass of my­self and at­temp­ted to re­pair the dam­age.

“Why, Tess,” I said, “I only told you this to show you what in­flu­ence your story might have on an­other per­son’s dreams. You don’t sup­pose I really lay in a coffin, do you? What are you trem­bling for? Don’t you see that your dream and my un­reas­on­able dis­like for that in­of­fens­ive watch­man of the church simply set my brain work­ing as soon as I fell asleep?”

She laid her head between her arms, and sobbed as if her heart would break. What a pre­cious triple don­key I had made of my­self! But I was about to break my re­cord. I went over and put my arm about her.

“Tessie dear, for­give me,” I said; “I had no busi­ness to frighten you with such non­sense. You are too sens­ible a girl, too good a Cath­olic to be­lieve in dreams.”

Her hand tightened on mine and her head fell back upon my shoulder, but she still trembled and I pet­ted her and com­for­ted her.

“Come, Tess, open your eyes and smile.”

Her eyes opened with a slow lan­guid move­ment and met mine, but their ex­pres­sion was so queer that I hastened to re­as­sure her again.

“It’s all hum­bug, Tessie; you surely are not afraid that any harm will come to you be­cause of that.”

“No,” she said, but her scar­let lips quivered.

“Then, what’s the mat­ter? Are you afraid?”

“Yes. Not for my­self.”

“For me, then?” I de­man­ded gaily.

“For you,” she mur­mured in a voice al­most in­aud­ible. “I—I care for you.”

At first I star­ted to laugh, but when I un­der­stood her, a shock passed through me, and I sat like one turned to stone. This was the crown­ing bit of idiocy I had com­mit­ted. Dur­ing the mo­ment which elapsed between her reply and my an­swer I thought of a thou­sand re­sponses to that in­no­cent con­fes­sion. I could pass it by with a laugh, I could mis­un­der­stand her and as­sure her as to my health, I could simply point out that it was im­possible she could love me. But my reply was quicker than my thoughts, and I might think and think now when it was too late, for I had kissed her on the mouth.

That even­ing I took my usual walk in Wash­ing­ton Park, pon­der­ing over the oc­cur­rences of the day. I was thor­oughly com­mit­ted. There was no back out now, and I stared the fu­ture straight in the face. I was not good, not even scru­pu­lous, but I had no idea of de­ceiv­ing either my­self or Tessie. The one pas­sion of my life lay bur­ied in the sun­lit forests of Brit­tany. Was it bur­ied forever? Hope cried “No!” For three years I had been listen­ing to the voice of Hope, and for three years I had waited for a foot­step on my threshold. Had Sylvia for­got­ten? “No!” cried Hope.

I said that I was no good. That is true, but still I was not ex­actly a comic op­era vil­lain. I had led an easy­going reck­less life, tak­ing what in­vited me of pleas­ure, de­plor­ing and some­times bit­terly re­gret­ting con­sequences. In one thing alone, ex­cept my paint­ing, was I ser­i­ous, and that was some­thing which lay hid­den if not lost in the Bre­ton forests.

It was too late for me to re­gret what had oc­curred dur­ing the day. Whatever it had been, pity, a sud­den ten­der­ness for sor­row, or the more bru­tal in­stinct of grat­i­fied van­ity, it was all the same now, and un­less I wished to bruise an in­no­cent heart, my path lay marked be­fore me. The fire and strength, the depth of pas­sion of a love which I had never even sus­pec­ted, with all my ima­gined ex­per­i­ence in the world, left me no al­tern­at­ive but to re­spond or send her away. Whether be­cause I am so cow­ardly about giv­ing pain to oth­ers, or whether it was that I have little of the gloomy Pur­itan in me, I do not know, but I shrank from dis­claim­ing re­spons­ib­il­ity for that thought­less kiss, and in fact had no time to do so be­fore the gates of her heart opened and the flood poured forth. Oth­ers who ha­bitu­ally do their duty and find a sul­len sat­is­fac­tion in mak­ing them­selves and every­body else un­happy, might have with­stood it. I did not. I dared not. After the storm had abated I did tell her that she might bet­ter have loved Ed Burke and worn a plain gold ring, but she would not hear of it, and I thought per­haps as long as she had de­cided to love some­body she could not marry, it had bet­ter be me. I, at least, could treat her with an in­tel­li­gent af­fec­tion, and whenever she be­came tired of her in­fatu­ation she could go none the worse for it. For I was de­cided on that point al­though I knew how hard it would be. I re­membered the usual ter­min­a­tion of Platonic li­ais­ons, and thought how dis­gus­ted I had been whenever I heard of one. I knew I was un­der­tak­ing a great deal for so un­scru­pu­lous a man as I was, and I dreamed the fu­ture, but never for one mo­ment did I doubt that she was safe with me. Had it been any­body but Tessie I should not have bothered my head about scruples. For it did not oc­cur to me to sac­ri­fice Tessie as I would have sac­ri­ficed a wo­man of the world. I looked the fu­ture squarely in the face and saw the sev­eral prob­able end­ings to the af­fair. She would either tire of the whole thing, or be­come so un­happy that I should have either to marry her or go away. If I mar­ried her we would be un­happy. I with a wife un­suited to me, and she with a hus­band un­suit­able for any wo­man. For my past life could scarcely en­title me to marry. If I went away she might either fall ill, re­cover, and marry some Ed­die Burke, or she might reck­lessly or de­lib­er­ately go and do some­thing fool­ish. On the other hand, if she tired of me, then her whole life would be be­fore her with beau­ti­ful vis­tas of Ed­die Burkes and mar­riage rings and twins and Har­lem flats and Heaven knows what. As I strolled along through the trees by the Wash­ing­ton Arch, I de­cided that she should find a sub­stan­tial friend in me, any­way, and the fu­ture could take care of it­self. Then I went into the house and put on my even­ing dress, for the little faintly-per­fumed note on my dresser said, “Have a cab at the stage door at el­even,” and the note was signed “Edith Carmichel, Met­ro­pol­itan Theatre.”

I took sup­per that night, or rather we took sup­per, Miss Carmichel and I, at Solari’s, and the dawn was just be­gin­ning to gild the cross on the Me­morial Church as I entered Wash­ing­ton Square after leav­ing Edith at the Brun­swick. There was not a soul in the park as I passed along the trees and took the walk which leads from the Garibaldi statue to the Hamilton Apart­ment House, but as I passed the church­yard I saw a fig­ure sit­ting on the stone steps. In spite of my­self a chill crept over me at the sight of the white puffy face, and I hastened to pass. Then he said some­thing which might have been ad­dressed to me or might merely have been a mut­ter to him­self, but a sud­den furi­ous an­ger flamed up within me that such a creature should ad­dress me. For an in­stant I felt like wheel­ing about and smash­ing my stick over his head, but I walked on, and en­ter­ing the Hamilton went to my apart­ment. For some time I tossed about the bed try­ing to get the sound of his voice out of my ears, but could not. It filled my head, that mut­ter­ing sound, like thick oily smoke from a fat-ren­der­ing vat or an odour of noi­some de­cay. And as I lay and tossed about, the voice in my ears seemed more dis­tinct, and I began to un­der­stand the words he had muttered. They came to me slowly as if I had for­got­ten them, and at last I could make some sense out of the sounds. It was this:

“Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

“Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

“Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

I was furi­ous. What did he mean by that? Then with a curse upon him and his I rolled over and went to sleep, but when I awoke later I looked pale and hag­gard, for I had dreamed the dream of the night be­fore, and it troubled me more than I cared to think.

I dressed and went down into my stu­dio. Tessie sat by the win­dow, but as I came in she rose and put both arms around my neck for an in­no­cent kiss. She looked so sweet and dainty that I kissed her again and then sat down be­fore the easel.

“Hello! Where’s the study I began yes­ter­day?” I asked.

Tessie looked con­scious, but did not an­swer. I began to hunt among the piles of canvases, say­ing, “Hurry up, Tess, and get ready; we must take ad­vant­age of the morn­ing light.”

When at last I gave up the search among the other canvases and turned to look around the room for the miss­ing study I no­ticed Tessie stand­ing by the screen with her clothes still on.

“What’s the mat­ter,” I asked, “don’t you feel well?”

“Yes.”

“Then hurry.”

“Do you want me to pose as—as I have al­ways posed?”

Then I un­der­stood. Here was a new com­plic­a­tion. I had lost, of course, the best nude model I had ever seen. I looked at Tessie. Her face was scar­let. Alas! Alas! We had eaten of the tree of know­ledge, and Eden and nat­ive in­no­cence were dreams of the past—I mean for her.

I sup­pose she no­ticed the dis­ap­point­ment on my face, for she said: “I will pose if you wish. The study is be­hind the screen here where I put it.”

“No,” I said, “we will be­gin some­thing new;” and I went into my ward­robe and picked out a Moor­ish cos­tume which fairly blazed with tin­sel. It was a genu­ine cos­tume, and Tessie re­tired to the screen with it en­chanted. When she came forth again I was as­ton­ished. Her long black hair was bound above her fore­head with a circlet of tur­quoises, and the ends, curled about her glit­ter­ing girdle. Her feet were en­cased in the em­broidered poin­ted slip­pers and the skirt of her cos­tume, curi­ously wrought with ar­abesques in sil­ver, fell to her ankles. The deep metal­lic blue vest em­broidered with sil­ver and the short Maur­esque jacket spangled and sewn with tur­quoises be­came her won­der­fully. She came up to me and held up her face smil­ing. I slipped my hand into my pocket, and draw­ing out a gold chain with a cross at­tached, dropped it over her head.

“It’s yours, Tessie.”

“Mine?” she faltered.

“Yours. Now go and pose,” Then with a ra­di­ant smile she ran be­hind the screen and presently re­appeared with a little box on which was writ­ten my name.

“I had in­ten­ded to give it to you when I went home to­night,” she said, “but I can’t wait now.”

I opened the box. On the pink cot­ton in­side lay a clasp of black onyx, on which was in­laid a curi­ous sym­bol or let­ter in gold. It was neither Ar­abic nor Chinese, nor, as I found af­ter­wards, did it be­long to any hu­man script.

“It’s all I had to give you for a keep­sake,” she said tim­idly.

I was an­noyed, but I told her how much I should prize it, and prom­ised to wear it al­ways. She fastened it on my coat be­neath the lapel.

“How fool­ish, Tess, to go and buy me such a beau­ti­ful thing as this,” I said.

“I did not buy it,” she laughed.

“Where did you get it?”

Then she told me how she had found it one day while com­ing from the Aquar­ium in the Bat­tery, how she had ad­vert­ised it and watched the pa­pers, but at last gave up all hopes of find­ing the owner.

“That was last winter,” she said, “the very day I had the first hor­rid dream about the hearse.”

I re­membered my dream of the pre­vi­ous night but said noth­ing, and presently my char­coal was fly­ing over a new can­vas, and Tessie stood mo­tion­less on the model-stand.

III

The day fol­low­ing was a dis­astrous one for me. While mov­ing a framed can­vas from one easel to an­other my foot slipped on the pol­ished floor, and I fell heav­ily on both wrists. They were so badly sprained that it was use­less to at­tempt to hold a brush, and I was ob­liged to wander about the stu­dio, glar­ing at un­fin­ished draw­ings and sketches, un­til des­pair seized me and I sat down to smoke and twiddle my thumbs with rage. The rain blew against the win­dows and rattled on the roof of the church, driv­ing me into a nervous fit with its in­ter­min­able pat­ter. Tessie sat sew­ing by the win­dow, and every now and then raised her head and looked at me with such in­no­cent com­pas­sion that I began to feel ashamed of my ir­rit­a­tion and looked about for some­thing to oc­cupy me. I had read all the pa­pers and all the books in the lib­rary, but for the sake of some­thing to do I went to the book­cases and shoved them open with my el­bow. I knew every volume by its col­our and ex­amined them all, passing slowly around the lib­rary and whist­ling to keep up my spir­its. I was turn­ing to go into the din­ing-room when my eye fell upon a book bound in ser­pent skin, stand­ing in a corner of the top shelf of the last book­case. I did not re­mem­ber it, and from the floor could not de­cipher the pale let­ter­ing on the back, so I went to the smoking-room and called Tessie. She came in from the stu­dio and climbed up to reach the book.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The King in Yel­low.”

I was dum­foun­ded. Who had placed it there? How came it in my rooms? I had long ago de­cided that I should never open that book, and noth­ing on earth could have per­suaded me to buy it. Fear­ful lest curi­os­ity might tempt me to open it, I had never even looked at it in book­stores. If I ever had had any curi­os­ity to read it, the aw­ful tragedy of young Cas­taigne, whom I knew, pre­ven­ted me from ex­plor­ing its wicked pages. I had al­ways re­fused to listen to any de­scrip­tion of it, and in­deed, nobody ever ven­tured to dis­cuss the second part aloud, so I had ab­so­lutely no know­ledge of what those leaves might re­veal. I stared at the pois­on­ous mottled bind­ing as I would at a snake.

“Don’t touch it, Tessie,” I said; “come down.”

Of course my ad­mon­i­tion was enough to arouse her curi­os­ity, and be­fore I could pre­vent it she took the book and, laugh­ing, danced off into the stu­dio with it. I called to her, but she slipped away with a tor­ment­ing smile at my help­less hands, and I fol­lowed her with some im­pa­tience.

“Tessie!” I cried, en­ter­ing the lib­rary, “listen, I am ser­i­ous. Put that book away. I do not wish you to open it!” The lib­rary was empty. I went into both draw­ing-rooms, then into the bed­rooms, laun­dry, kit­chen, and fi­nally re­turned to the lib­rary and began a sys­tem­atic search. She had hid­den her­self so well that it was half-an-hour later when I dis­covered her crouch­ing white and si­lent by the lat­ticed win­dow in the stor­e­room above. At the first glance I saw she had been pun­ished for her fool­ish­ness. The King in Yel­low lay at her feet, but the book was open at the second part. I looked at Tessie and saw it was too late. She had opened The King in Yel­low. Then I took her by the hand and led her into the stu­dio. She seemed dazed, and when I told her to lie down on the sofa she obeyed me without a word. After a while she closed her eyes and her breath­ing be­came reg­u­lar and deep, but I could not de­term­ine whether or not she slept. For a long while I sat si­lently be­side her, but she neither stirred nor spoke, and at last I rose, and, en­ter­ing the un­used stor­e­room, took the book in my least in­jured hand. It seemed heavy as lead, but I car­ried it into the stu­dio again, and sit­ting down on the rug be­side the sofa, opened it and read it through from be­gin­ning to end.

When, faint with ex­cess of my emo­tions, I dropped the volume and leaned wear­ily back against the sofa, Tessie opened her eyes and looked at me. …

We had been speak­ing for some time in a dull mono­ton­ous strain be­fore I real­ized that we were dis­cuss­ing The King in Yel­low. Oh the sin of writ­ing such words—words which are clear as crys­tal, limpid and mu­sical as bub­bling springs, words which sparkle and glow like the poisoned dia­monds of the Medi­cis! Oh the wicked­ness, the hope­less dam­na­tion of a soul who could fas­cin­ate and para­lyze hu­man creatures with such words—words un­der­stood by the ig­nor­ant and wise alike, words which are more pre­cious than jew­els, more sooth­ing than mu­sic, more aw­ful than death!

We talked on, un­mind­ful of the gath­er­ing shad­ows, and she was beg­ging me to throw away the clasp of black onyx quaintly in­laid with what we now knew to be the Yel­low Sign. I never shall know why I re­fused, though even at this hour, here in my bed­room as I write this con­fes­sion, I should be glad to know what it was that pre­ven­ted me from tear­ing the Yel­low Sign from my breast and cast­ing it into the fire. I am sure I wished to do so, and yet Tessie pleaded with me in vain. Night fell and the hours dragged on, but still we mur­mured to each other of the King and the Pal­lid Mask, and mid­night soun­ded from the misty spires in the fog-wrapped city. We spoke of Has­tur and of Cassilda, while out­side the fog rolled against the blank win­dowpanes as the cloud waves roll and break on the shores of Hali.

The house was very si­lent now, and not a sound came up from the misty streets. Tessie lay among the cush­ions, her face a grey blot in the gloom, but her hands were clasped in mine, and I knew that she knew and read my thoughts as I read hers, for we had un­der­stood the mys­tery of the Hy­ades and the Phantom of Truth was laid. Then as we answered each other, swiftly, si­lently, thought on thought, the shad­ows stirred in the gloom about us, and far in the dis­tant streets we heard a sound. Nearer and nearer it came, the dull crunch­ing of wheels, nearer and yet nearer, and now, out­side be­fore the door it ceased, and I dragged my­self to the win­dow and saw a black-plumed hearse. The gate be­low opened and shut, and I crept shak­ing to my door and bolted it, but I knew no bolts, no locks, could keep that creature out who was com­ing for the Yel­low Sign. And now I heard him mov­ing very softly along the hall. Now he was at the door, and the bolts rot­ted at his touch. Now he had entered. With eyes start­ing from my head I peered into the dark­ness, but when he came into the room I did not see him. It was only when I felt him en­vel­ope me in his cold soft grasp that I cried out and struggled with deadly fury, but my hands were use­less and he tore the onyx clasp from my coat and struck me full in the face. Then, as I fell, I heard Tessie’s soft cry and her spirit fled: and even while fall­ing I longed to fol­low her, for I knew that the King in Yel­low had opened his tattered mantle and there was only God to cry to now.

I could tell more, but I can­not see what help it will be to the world. As for me, I am past hu­man help or hope. As I lie here, writ­ing, care­less even whether or not I die be­fore I fin­ish, I can see the doc­tor gath­er­ing up his powders and phi­als with a vague ges­ture to the good priest be­side me, which I un­der­stand.

They will be very curi­ous to know the tragedy—they of the out­side world who write books and print mil­lions of news­pa­pers, but I shall write no more, and the father con­fessor will seal my last words with the seal of sanc­tity when his holy of­fice is done. They of the out­side world may send their creatures into wrecked homes and death-smit­ten firesides, and their news­pa­pers will bat­ten on blood and tears, but with me their spies must halt be­fore the con­fes­sional. They know that Tessie is dead and that I am dy­ing. They know how the people in the house, aroused by an in­fernal scream, rushed into my room and found one liv­ing and two dead, but they do not know what I shall tell them now; they do not know that the doc­tor said as he poin­ted to a hor­rible de­com­posed heap on the floor—the livid corpse of the watch­man from the church: “I have no the­ory, no ex­plan­a­tion. That man must have been dead for months!”

I think I am dy­ing. I wish the priest would—

The Demoiselle d’Ys

“Mais je croy que je
Suis des­cendu on puiz
Ténébreux on­quel disoit
Her­aclytus estre Vereté cachée.”

“There be three things which are too won­der­ful for me, yea, four which I know not:

“The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a ser­pent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.”

I

The ut­ter des­ol­a­tion of the scene began to have its ef­fect; I sat down to face the situ­ation and, if pos­sible, re­call to mind some land­mark which might aid me in ex­tric­at­ing my­self from my present po­s­i­tion. If I could only find the ocean again all would be clear, for I knew one could see the is­land of Groix from the cliffs.

I laid down my gun, and kneel­ing be­hind a rock, lighted a pipe. Then I looked at my watch. It was nearly four o’clock. I might have wandered far from Kerse­lec since day­break.

Stand­ing the day be­fore on the cliffs be­low Kerse­lec with Goul­ven, look­ing out over the sombre moors among which I had now lost my way, these downs had ap­peared to me level as a meadow, stretch­ing to the ho­ri­zon, and al­though I knew how de­cept­ive is dis­tance, I could not real­ize that what from Kerse­lec seemed to be mere grassy hol­lows were great val­leys covered with gorse and heather, and what looked like scattered boulders were in real­ity enorm­ous cliffs of gran­ite.

“It’s a bad place for a stranger,” old Goul­ven had said: “you’d bet­ter take a guide;” and I had replied, “I shall not lose my­self.” Now I knew that I had lost my­self, as I sat there smoking, with the sea-wind blow­ing in my face. On every side stretched the moor­land, covered with flower­ing gorse and heath and gran­ite boulders. There was not a tree in sight, much less a house. After a while, I picked up the gun, and turn­ing my back on the sun tramped on again.

There was little use in fol­low­ing any of the brawl­ing streams which every now and then crossed my path, for, in­stead of flow­ing into the sea, they ran in­land to reedy pools in the hol­lows of the moors. I had fol­lowed sev­eral, but they all led me to swamps or si­lent little ponds from which the snipe rose peep­ing and wheeled away in an ec­stasy of fright. I began to feel fa­tigued, and the gun galled my shoulder in spite of the double pads. The sun sank lower and lower, shin­ing level across yel­low gorse and the moor­land pools.

As I walked my own gi­gantic shadow led me on, seem­ing to lengthen at every step. The gorse scraped against my leg­gings, crackled be­neath my feet, shower­ing the brown earth with blos­soms, and the brake bowed and bil­lowed along my path. From tufts of heath rab­bits scur­ried away through the bracken, and among the swamp grass I heard the wild duck’s drowsy quack. Once a fox stole across my path, and again, as I stooped to drink at a hur­ry­ing rill, a heron flapped heav­ily from the reeds be­side me. I turned to look at the sun. It seemed to touch the edges of the plain. When at last I de­cided that it was use­less to go on, and that I must make up my mind to spend at least one night on the moors, I threw my­self down thor­oughly fagged out. The even­ing sun­light slanted warm across my body, but the sea-winds began to rise, and I felt a chill strike through me from my wet shoot­ing-boots. High over­head gulls were wheel­ing and toss­ing like bits of white pa­per; from some dis­tant marsh a sol­it­ary cur­lew called. Little by little the sun sank into the plain, and the zenith flushed with the af­ter­glow. I watched the sky change from palest gold to pink and then to smoul­der­ing fire. Clouds of midges danced above me, and high in the calm air a bat dipped and soared. My eye­lids began to droop. Then as I shook off the drowsi­ness a sud­den crash among the bracken roused me. I raised my eyes. A great bird hung quiv­er­ing in the air above my face. For an in­stant I stared, in­cap­able of mo­tion; then some­thing leaped past me in the ferns and the bird rose, wheeled, and pitched head­long into the brake.

I was on my feet in an in­stant peer­ing through the gorse. There came the sound of a struggle from a bunch of heather close by, and then all was quiet. I stepped for­ward, my gun poised, but when I came to the heather the gun fell un­der my arm again, and I stood mo­tion­less in si­lent as­ton­ish­ment. A dead hare lay on the ground, and on the hare stood a mag­ni­fi­cent fal­con, one talon bur­ied in the creature’s neck, the other planted firmly on its limp flank. But what as­ton­ished me was not the mere sight of a fal­con sit­ting upon its prey. I had seen that more than once. It was that the fal­con was fit­ted with a sort of leash about both talons, and from the leash hung a round bit of metal like a sleigh-bell. The bird turned its fierce yel­low eyes on me, and then stooped and struck its curved beak into the quarry. At the same in­stant hur­ried steps soun­ded among the heather, and a girl sprang into the cov­ert in front. Without a glance at me she walked up to the fal­con, and passing her gloved hand un­der its breast, raised it from the quarry. Then she deftly slipped a small hood over the bird’s head, and hold­ing it out on her gaunt­let, stooped and picked up the hare.

She passed a cord about the an­imal’s legs and fastened the end of the thong to her girdle. Then she star­ted to re­trace her steps through the cov­ert. As she passed me I raised my cap and she ac­know­ledged my pres­ence with a scarcely per­cept­ible in­clin­a­tion. I had been so as­ton­ished, so lost in ad­mir­a­tion of the scene be­fore my eyes, that it had not oc­curred to me that here was my sal­va­tion. But as she moved away I re­col­lec­ted that un­less I wanted to sleep on a windy moor that night I had bet­ter re­cover my speech without delay. At my first word she hes­it­ated, and as I stepped be­fore her I thought a look of fear came into her beau­ti­ful eyes. But as I humbly ex­plained my un­pleas­ant plight, her face flushed and she looked at me in won­der.

“Surely you did not come from Kerse­lec!” she re­peated.

Her sweet voice had no trace of the Bre­ton ac­cent nor of any ac­cent which I knew, and yet there was some­thing in it I seemed to have heard be­fore, some­thing quaint and in­defin­able, like the theme of an old song.

I ex­plained that I was an Amer­ican, un­ac­quain­ted with Fin­istère, shoot­ing there for my own amuse­ment.

“An Amer­ican,” she re­peated in the same quaint mu­sical tones. “I have never be­fore seen an Amer­ican.”

For a mo­ment she stood si­lent, then look­ing at me she said. “If you should walk all night you could not reach Kerse­lec now, even if you had a guide.”

This was pleas­ant news.

“But,” I began, “if I could only find a peas­ant’s hut where I might get some­thing to eat, and shel­ter.”

The fal­con on her wrist fluttered and shook its head. The girl smoothed its glossy back and glanced at me.

“Look around,” she said gently. “Can you see the end of these moors? Look, north, south, east, west. Can you see any­thing but moor­land and bracken?”

“No,” I said.

“The moor is wild and des­ol­ate. It is easy to enter, but some­times they who enter never leave it. There are no peas­ants’ huts here.”

“Well,” I said, “if you will tell me in which dir­ec­tion Kerse­lec lies, to­mor­row it will take me no longer to go back than it has to come.”

She looked at me again with an ex­pres­sion al­most like pity.

“Ah,” she said, “to come is easy and takes hours; to go is dif­fer­ent—and may take cen­tur­ies.”

I stared at her in amazement but de­cided that I had mis­un­der­stood her. Then be­fore I had time to speak she drew a whistle from her belt and soun­ded it.

“Sit down and rest,” she said to me; “you have come a long dis­tance and are tired.”

She gathered up her pleated skirts and mo­tion­ing me to fol­low picked her dainty way through the gorse to a flat rock among the ferns.

“They will be here dir­ectly,” she said, and tak­ing a seat at one end of the rock in­vited me to sit down on the other edge. The af­ter­glow was be­gin­ning to fade in the sky and a single star twinkled faintly through the rosy haze. A long waver­ing tri­angle of wa­ter­fowl drif­ted south­ward over our heads, and from the swamps around plover were call­ing.

“They are very beau­ti­ful—these moors,” she said quietly.

“Beau­ti­ful, but cruel to strangers,” I answered.

“Beau­ti­ful and cruel,” she re­peated dream­ily, “beau­ti­ful and cruel.”

“Like a wo­man,” I said stu­pidly.

“Oh,” she cried with a little catch in her breath, and looked at me. Her dark eyes met mine, and I thought she seemed angry or frightened.

“Like a wo­man,” she re­peated un­der her breath, “How cruel to say so!” Then after a pause, as though speak­ing aloud to her­self, “How cruel for him to say that!”

I don’t know what sort of an apo­logy I offered for my in­ane, though harm­less speech, but I know that she seemed so troubled about it that I began to think I had said some­thing very dread­ful without know­ing it, and re­membered with hor­ror the pit­falls and snares which the French lan­guage sets for for­eign­ers. While I was try­ing to ima­gine what I might have said, a sound of voices came across the moor, and the girl rose to her feet.

“No,” she said, with a trace of a smile on her pale face, “I will not ac­cept your apo­lo­gies, mon­sieur, but I must prove you wrong, and that shall be my re­venge. Look. Here come Has­tur and Raoul.”

Two men loomed up in the twi­light. One had a sack across his shoulders and the other car­ried a hoop be­fore him as a waiter car­ries a tray. The hoop was fastened with straps to his shoulders, and around the edge of the circlet sat three hooded fal­cons fit­ted with tink­ling bells. The girl stepped up to the fal­coner, and with a quick turn of her wrist trans­ferred her fal­con to the hoop, where it quickly sidled off and nestled among its mates, who shook their hooded heads and ruffled their feath­ers till the belled jesses tinkled again. The other man stepped for­ward and bow­ing re­spect­fully took up the hare and dropped it into the game-sack.

“These are my piqueurs,” said the girl, turn­ing to me with a gentle dig­nity. “Raoul is a good fauc­on­nier, and I shall some day make him grand ven­eur. Has­tur is in­com­par­able.”

The two si­lent men sa­luted me re­spect­fully.

“Did I not tell you, mon­sieur, that I should prove you wrong?” she con­tin­ued. “This, then, is my re­venge, that you do me the cour­tesy of ac­cept­ing food and shel­ter at my own house.”

Be­fore I could an­swer she spoke to the fal­con­ers, who star­ted in­stantly across the heath, and with a gra­cious ges­ture to me she fol­lowed. I don’t know whether I made her un­der­stand how pro­foundly grate­ful I felt, but she seemed pleased to listen, as we walked over the dewy heather.

“Are you not very tired?” she asked.

I had clean for­got­ten my fa­tigue in her pres­ence, and I told her so.

“Don’t you think your gal­lantry is a little old-fash­ioned?” she said; and when I looked con­fused and humbled, she ad­ded quietly, “Oh, I like it, I like everything old-fash­ioned, and it is de­light­ful to hear you say such pretty things.”

The moor­land around us was very still now un­der its ghostly sheet of mist. The plovers had ceased their call­ing; the crick­ets and all the little creatures of the fields were si­lent as we passed, yet it seemed to me as if I could hear them be­gin­ning again far be­hind us. Well in ad­vance, the two tall fal­con­ers strode across the heather, and the faint jingling of the hawks’ bells came to our ears in dis­tant mur­mur­ing chimes.

Sud­denly a splen­did hound dashed out of the mist in front, fol­lowed by an­other and an­other un­til half-a-dozen or more were bound­ing and leap­ing around the girl be­side me. She caressed and quieted them with her gloved hand, speak­ing to them in quaint terms which I re­membered to have seen in old French ma­nu­scripts.

Then the fal­cons on the circlet borne by the fal­coner ahead began to beat their wings and scream, and from some­where out of sight the notes of a hunt­ing-horn floated across the moor. The hounds sprang away be­fore us and van­ished in the twi­light, the fal­cons flapped and squealed upon their perch, and the girl, tak­ing up the song of the horn, began to hum. Clear and mel­low her voice soun­ded in the night air.

“Chas­seur, chas­seur, chassez en­core,
Quit­tez Rosette et Jean­neton,
Ton­ton, ton­ton, ton­taine, ton­ton,
Ou, pour, ra­battre, dès l’au­rore,
Que les Amours soi­ent de plan­ton,
Ton­ton, ton­taine, ton­ton.”

As I listened to her lovely voice a grey mass which rap­idly grew more dis­tinct loomed up in front, and the horn rang out joy­ously through the tu­mult of the hounds and fal­cons. A torch glimmered at a gate, a light streamed through an open­ing door, and we stepped upon a wooden bridge which trembled un­der our feet and rose creak­ing and strain­ing be­hind us as we passed over the moat and into a small stone court, walled on every side. From an open door­way a man came and, bend­ing in sa­luta­tion, presen­ted a cup to the girl be­side me. She took the cup and touched it with her lips, then lower­ing it turned to me and said in a low voice, “I bid you wel­come.”

At that mo­ment one of the fal­con­ers came with an­other cup, but be­fore hand­ing it to me, presen­ted it to the girl, who tasted it. The fal­coner made a ges­ture to re­ceive it, but she hes­it­ated a mo­ment, and then, step­ping for­ward, offered me the cup with her own hands. I felt this to be an act of ex­traordin­ary gra­cious­ness, but hardly knew what was ex­pec­ted of me, and did not raise it to my lips at once. The girl flushed crim­son. I saw that I must act quickly.

“Ma­demois­elle,” I faltered, “a stranger whom you have saved from dangers he may never real­ize emp­ties this cup to the gentlest and love­li­est host­ess of France.”

“In His name,” she mur­mured, cross­ing her­self as I drained the cup. Then step­ping into the door­way she turned to me with a pretty ges­ture and, tak­ing my hand in hers, led me into the house, say­ing again and again: “You are very wel­come, in­deed you are wel­come to the Château d’Ys.”

II

I awoke next morn­ing with the mu­sic of the horn in my ears, and leap­ing out of the an­cient bed, went to a cur­tained win­dow where the sun­light filtered through little deep-set panes. The horn ceased as I looked into the court be­low.

A man who might have been brother to the two fal­con­ers of the night be­fore stood in the midst of a pack of hounds. A curved horn was strapped over his back, and in his hand he held a long-lashed whip. The dogs whined and yelped, dan­cing around him in an­ti­cip­a­tion; there was the stamp of horses, too, in the walled yard.

“Mount!” cried a voice in Bre­ton, and with a clat­ter of hoofs the two fal­con­ers, with fal­cons upon their wrists, rode into the court­yard among the hounds. Then I heard an­other voice which sent the blood throb­bing through my heart: “Piriou Louis, hunt the hounds well and spare neither spur nor whip. Thou Raoul and thou Ga­ston, see that the eper­vier does not prove him­self ni­ais, and if it be best in your judg­ment, faites cour­toisie à l’oiseau. Jardiner un oiseau, like the mué there on Has­tur’s wrist, is not dif­fi­cult, but thou, Raoul, may­est not find it so simple to gov­ern that hagard. Twice last week he foamed au vif and lost the bec­cade al­though he is used to the leurre. The bird acts like a stu­pid branchier. Paître un hagard n’est pas si fa­cile.”

Was I dream­ing? The old lan­guage of fal­conry which I had read in yel­low ma­nu­scripts—the old for­got­ten French of the middle ages was sound­ing in my ears while the hounds bayed and the hawks’ bells tinkled ac­com­pani­ment to the stamp­ing horses. She spoke again in the sweet for­got­ten lan­guage:

“If you would rather at­tach the longe and leave thy hagard au bloc, Raoul, I shall say noth­ing; for it were a pity to spoil so fair a day’s sport with an ill-trained sors. Essimer abais­ser—it is pos­sibly the best way. Ça lui don­nera des reins. I was per­haps hasty with the bird. It takes time to pass à la filière and the ex­er­cises d’es­cap.”

Then the fal­coner Raoul bowed in his stir­rups and replied: “If it be the pleas­ure of Ma­demois­elle, I shall keep the hawk.”

“It is my wish,” she answered. “Fal­conry I know, but you have yet to give me many a les­son in au­tours­erie, my poor Raoul. Sieur Piriou Louis mount!”

The hunts­man sprang into an arch­way and in an in­stant re­turned, moun­ted upon a strong black horse, fol­lowed by a piqueur also moun­ted.

“Ah!” she cried joy­ously, “speed Gle­marec René! speed! speed all! Sound thy horn, Sieur Piriou!”

The sil­very mu­sic of the hunt­ing-horn filled the court­yard, the hounds sprang through the gate­way and gal­lop­ing hoof-beats plunged out of the paved court; loud on the draw­bridge, sud­denly muffled, then lost in the heather and bracken of the moors. Distant and more dis­tant soun­ded the horn, un­til it be­came so faint that the sud­den carol of a soar­ing lark drowned it in my ears. I heard the voice be­low re­spond­ing to some call from within the house.

“I do not re­gret the chase, I will go an­other time. Cour­tesy to the stranger, Pela­gie, re­mem­ber!”

And a feeble voice came quaver­ing from within the house, “Cour­toisie.”

I stripped, and rubbed my­self from head to foot in the huge earthen basin of icy wa­ter which stood upon the stone floor at the foot of my bed. Then I looked about for my clothes. They were gone, but on a settle near the door lay a heap of gar­ments which I in­spec­ted with as­ton­ish­ment. As my clothes had van­ished, I was com­pelled to at­tire my­self in the cos­tume which had evid­ently been placed there for me to wear while my own clothes dried. Everything was there, cap, shoes, and hunt­ing doublet of sil­very grey homespun; but the close-fit­ting cos­tume and seam­less shoes be­longed to an­other cen­tury, and I re­membered the strange cos­tumes of the three fal­con­ers in the court­yard. I was sure that it was not the mod­ern dress of any por­tion of France or Brit­tany; but not un­til I was dressed and stood be­fore a mir­ror between the win­dows did I real­ize that I was clothed much more like a young hunts­man of the middle ages than like a Bre­ton of that day. I hes­it­ated and picked up the cap. Should I go down and present my­self in that strange guise? There seemed to be no help for it, my own clothes were gone and there was no bell in the an­cient cham­ber to call a ser­vant; so I con­ten­ted my­self with re­mov­ing a short hawk’s feather from the cap, and, open­ing the door, went down­stairs.

By the fire­place in the large room at the foot of the stairs an old Bre­ton wo­man sat spin­ning with a dis­taff. She looked up at me when I ap­peared, and, smil­ing frankly, wished me health in the Bre­ton lan­guage, to which I laugh­ingly replied in French. At the same mo­ment my host­ess ap­peared and re­turned my sa­luta­tion with a grace and dig­nity that sent a thrill to my heart. Her lovely head with its dark curly hair was crowned with a he­ad­dress which set all doubts as to the epoch of my own cos­tume at rest. Her slender fig­ure was ex­quis­itely set off in the homespun hunt­ing-gown edged with sil­ver, and on her gaunt­let-covered wrist she bore one of her pet­ted hawks. With per­fect sim­pli­city she took my hand and led me into the garden in the court, and seat­ing her­self be­fore a table in­vited me very sweetly to sit be­side her. Then she asked me in her soft quaint ac­cent how I had passed the night, and whether I was very much in­con­veni­enced by wear­ing the clothes which old Pela­gie had put there for me while I slept. I looked at my own clothes and shoes, dry­ing in the sun by the garden-wall, and hated them. What hor­rors they were com­pared with the grace­ful cos­tume which I now wore! I told her this laugh­ing, but she agreed with me very ser­i­ously.

“We will throw them away,” she said in a quiet voice. In my as­ton­ish­ment I at­temp­ted to ex­plain that I not only could not think of ac­cept­ing clothes from any­body, al­though for all I knew it might be the cus­tom of hos­pit­al­ity in that part of the coun­try, but that I should cut an im­possible fig­ure if I re­turned to France clothed as I was then.

She laughed and tossed her pretty head, say­ing some­thing in old French which I did not un­der­stand, and then Pela­gie trot­ted out with a tray on which stood two bowls of milk, a loaf of white bread, fruit, a plat­ter of hon­ey­comb, and a flagon of deep red wine. “You see, I have not yet broken my fast be­cause I wished you to eat with me. But I am very hungry,” she smiled.

“I would rather die than for­get one word of what you have said!” I blur­ted out, while my cheeks burned. “She will think me mad,” I ad­ded to my­self, but she turned to me with spark­ling eyes.

“Ah!” she mur­mured. “Then Mon­sieur knows all that there is of chiv­alry—”

She crossed her­self and broke bread. I sat and watched her white hands, not dar­ing to raise my eyes to hers.

“Will you not eat?” she asked. “Why do you look so troubled?”

Ah, why? I knew it now. I knew I would give my life to touch with my lips those rosy palms—I un­der­stood now that from the mo­ment when I looked into her dark eyes there on the moor last night I had loved her. My great and sud­den pas­sion held me speech­less.

“Are you ill at ease?” she asked again.

Then, like a man who pro­nounces his own doom, I answered in a low voice: “Yes, I am ill at ease for love of you.” And as she did not stir nor an­swer, the same power moved my lips in spite of me and I said, “I, who am un­worthy of the light­est of your thoughts, I who ab­use hos­pit­al­ity and re­pay your gentle cour­tesy with bold pre­sump­tion, I love you.”

She leaned her head upon her hands, and answered softly, “I love you. Your words are very dear to me. I love you.”

“Then I shall win you.”

“Win me,” she replied.

But all the time I had been sit­ting si­lent, my face turned to­ward her. She, also si­lent, her sweet face rest­ing on her up­turned palm, sat fa­cing me, and as her eyes looked into mine I knew that neither she nor I had spoken hu­man speech; but I knew that her soul had answered mine, and I drew my­self up feel­ing youth and joy­ous love cours­ing through every vein. She, with a bright col­our in her lovely face, seemed as one awakened from a dream, and her eyes sought mine with a ques­tion­ing glance which made me tremble with de­light. We broke our fast, speak­ing of ourselves. I told her my name and she told me hers, the Demois­elle Jeanne d’Ys.

She spoke of her father and mother’s death, and how the nine­teen of her years had been passed in the little for­ti­fied farm alone with her nurse Pela­gie, Gle­marec René the piqueur, and the four fal­con­ers, Raoul, Ga­ston, Has­tur, and the Sieur Piriou Louis, who had served her father. She had never been out­side the moor­land—never even had seen a hu­man soul be­fore, ex­cept the fal­con­ers and Pela­gie. She did not know how she had heard of Kerse­lec; per­haps the fal­con­ers had spoken of it. She knew the le­gends of Loup Garou and Jeanne la Flamme from her nurse Pela­gie. She em­broidered and spun flax. Her hawks and hounds were her only dis­trac­tion. When she had met me there on the moor she had been so frightened that she al­most dropped at the sound of my voice. She had, it was true, seen ships at sea from the cliffs, but as far as the eye could reach the moors over which she gal­loped were des­ti­tute of any sign of hu­man life. There was a le­gend which old Pela­gie told, how any­body once lost in the un­ex­plored moor­land might never re­turn, be­cause the moors were en­chanted. She did not know whether it was true, she never had thought about it un­til she met me. She did not know whether the fal­con­ers had even been out­side, or whether they could go if they would. The books in the house which Pela­gie, the nurse, had taught her to read were hun­dreds of years old.

All this she told me with a sweet ser­i­ous­ness sel­dom seen in any­one but chil­dren. My own name she found easy to pro­nounce, and in­sisted, be­cause my first name was Philip, I must have French blood in me. She did not seem curi­ous to learn any­thing about the out­side world, and I thought per­haps she con­sidered it had for­feited her in­terest and re­spect from the stor­ies of her nurse.

We were still sit­ting at the table, and she was throw­ing grapes to the small field birds which came fear­lessly to our very feet.

I began to speak in a vague way of go­ing, but she would not hear of it, and be­fore I knew it I had prom­ised to stay a week and hunt with hawk and hound in their com­pany. I also ob­tained per­mis­sion to come again from Kerse­lec and visit her after my re­turn.

“Why,” she said in­no­cently, “I do not know what I should do if you never came back;” and I, know­ing that I had no right to awaken her with the sud­den shock which the avowal of my own love would bring to her, sat si­lent, hardly dar­ing to breathe.

“You will come very of­ten?” she asked.

“Very of­ten,” I said.

“Every day?”

“Every day.”

“Oh,” she sighed, “I am very happy. Come and see my hawks.”

She rose and took my hand again with a child­like in­no­cence of pos­ses­sion, and we walked through the garden and fruit trees to a grassy lawn which was bordered by a brook. Over the lawn were scattered fif­teen or twenty stumps of trees—par­tially im­bed­ded in the grass—and upon all of these ex­cept two sat fal­cons. They were at­tached to the stumps by thongs which were in turn fastened with steel riv­ets to their legs just above the talons. A little stream of pure spring wa­ter flowed in a wind­ing course within easy dis­tance of each perch.

The birds set up a clam­our when the girl ap­peared, but she went from one to an­other, caress­ing some, tak­ing oth­ers for an in­stant upon her wrist, or stoop­ing to ad­just their jesses.

“Are they not pretty?” she said. “See, here is a fal­con-gen­til. We call it ‘ig­noble,’ be­cause it takes the quarry in dir­ect chase. This is a blue fal­con. In fal­conry we call it ‘noble’ be­cause it rises over the quarry, and wheel­ing, drops upon it from above. This white bird is a ger­fal­con from the north. It is also ‘noble!’ Here is a mer­lin, and this tierce­let is a fal­con-her­oner.”

I asked her how she had learned the old lan­guage of fal­conry. She did not re­mem­ber, but thought her father must have taught it to her when she was very young.

Then she led me away and showed me the young fal­cons still in the nest. “They are termed ni­ais in fal­conry,” she ex­plained. “A branchier is the young bird which is just able to leave the nest and hop from branch to branch. A young bird which has not yet moulted is called a sors, and a mué is a hawk which has moulted in cap­tiv­ity. When we catch a wild fal­con which has changed its plumage we term it a hagard. Raoul first taught me to dress a fal­con. Shall I teach you how it is done?”

She seated her­self on the bank of the stream among the fal­cons and I threw my­self at her feet to listen.

Then the Demois­elle d’Ys held up one rosy-tipped fin­ger and began very gravely.

“First one must catch the fal­con.”

“I am caught,” I answered.

She laughed very pret­tily and told me my dressage would per­haps be dif­fi­cult, as I was noble.

“I am already tamed,” I replied; “jessed and belled.”

She laughed, de­lighted. “Oh, my brave fal­con; then you will re­turn at my call?”

“I am yours,” I answered gravely.

She sat si­lent for a mo­ment. Then the col­our heightened in her cheeks and she held up her fin­ger again, say­ing, “Listen; I wish to speak of fal­conry—”

“I listen, Count­ess Jeanne d’Ys.”

But again she fell into the rev­erie, and her eyes seemed fixed on some­thing bey­ond the sum­mer clouds.

“Philip,” she said at last.

“Jeanne,” I whispered.

“That is all—that is what I wished,” she sighed—“Philip and Jeanne.”

She held her hand to­ward me and I touched it with my lips.

“Win me,” she said, but this time it was the body and soul which spoke in uni­son.

After a while she began again: “Let us speak of fal­conry.”

“Be­gin,” I replied; “we have caught the fal­con.”

Then Jeanne d’Ys took my hand in both of hers and told me how with in­fin­ite pa­tience the young fal­con was taught to perch upon the wrist, how little by little it be­came used to the belled jesses and the chap­eron à cor­nette.

“They must first have a good ap­pet­ite,” she said; “then little by little I re­duce their nour­ish­ment; which in fal­conry we call pât. When, after many nights passed au bloc as these birds are now, I pre­vail upon the hagard to stay quietly on the wrist, then the bird is ready to be taught to come for its food. I fix the pât to the end of a thong, or leurre, and teach the bird to come to me as soon as I be­gin to whirl the cord in circles about my head. At first I drop the pât when the fal­con comes, and he eats the food on the ground. After a little he will learn to seize the leurre in mo­tion as I whirl it around my head or drag it over the ground. After this it is easy to teach the fal­con to strike at game, al­ways re­mem­ber­ing to ‘faire cour­toisie á l’oiseau’, that is, to al­low the bird to taste the quarry.”

A squeal from one of the fal­cons in­ter­rup­ted her, and she arose to ad­just the longe which had be­come whipped about the bloc, but the bird still flapped its wings and screamed.

“What is the mat­ter?” she said. “Philip, can you see?”

I looked around and at first saw noth­ing to cause the com­mo­tion, which was now heightened by the screams and flap­ping of all the birds. Then my eye fell upon the flat rock be­side the stream from which the girl had risen. A grey ser­pent was mov­ing slowly across the sur­face of the boulder, and the eyes in its flat tri­an­gu­lar head sparkled like jet.

“A couleuvre,” she said quietly.

“It is harm­less, is it not?” I asked.

She poin­ted to the black V-shaped fig­ure on the neck.

“It is cer­tain death,” she said; “it is a vi­per.”

We watched the rep­tile mov­ing slowly over the smooth rock to where the sun­light fell in a broad warm patch.

I star­ted for­ward to ex­am­ine it, but she clung to my arm cry­ing, “Don’t, Philip, I am afraid.”

“For me?”

“For you, Philip—I love you.”

Then I took her in my arms and kissed her on the lips, but all I could say was: “Jeanne, Jeanne, Jeanne.” And as she lay trem­bling on my breast, some­thing struck my foot in the grass be­low, but I did not heed it. Then again some­thing struck my ankle, and a sharp pain shot through me. I looked into the sweet face of Jeanne d’Ys and kissed her, and with all my strength lif­ted her in my arms and flung her from me. Then bend­ing, I tore the vi­per from my ankle and set my heel upon its head. I re­mem­ber feel­ing weak and numb—I re­mem­ber fall­ing to the ground. Through my slowly glaz­ing eyes I saw Jeanne’s white face bend­ing close to mine, and when the light in my eyes went out I still felt her arms about my neck, and her soft cheek against my drawn lips.

When I opened my eyes, I looked around in ter­ror. Jeanne was gone. I saw the stream and the flat rock; I saw the crushed vi­per in the grass be­side me, but the hawks and blocs had dis­ap­peared. I sprang to my feet. The garden, the fruit trees, the draw­bridge and the walled court were gone. I stared stu­pidly at a heap of crum­bling ru­ins, ivy-covered and grey, through which great trees had pushed their way. I crept for­ward, drag­ging my numbed foot, and as I moved, a fal­con sailed from the tree­tops among the ru­ins, and soar­ing, mount­ing in nar­row­ing circles, faded and van­ished in the clouds above.

“Jeanne, Jeanne,” I cried, but my voice died on my lips, and I fell on my knees among the weeds. And as God willed it, I, not know­ing, had fallen kneel­ing be­fore a crum­bling shrine carved in stone for our Mother of Sor­rows. I saw the sad face of the Vir­gin wrought in the cold stone. I saw the cross and thorns at her feet, and be­neath it I read:

“Pray for the soul of the
Demois­elle Jeanne D’Ys,
who died
in her youth for love of
Philip, a Stranger.
AD 1573.”

But upon the icy slab lay a wo­man’s glove still warm and fra­grant.

The Prophets’ Paradise

“If but the Vine and Love Ab­jur­ing Band
Are in the Proph­ets’ Paradise to stand,
Alack, I doubt the Proph­ets’ Paradise,
Were empty as the hol­low of one’s hand.”

The Studio

He smiled, say­ing, “Seek her through­out the world.”

I said, “Why tell me of the world? My world is here, between these walls and the sheet of glass above; here among gil­ded flagons and dull jew­elled arms, tar­nished frames and can­vasses, black chests and high-backed chairs, quaintly carved and stained in blue and gold.”

“For whom do you wait?” he said, and I answered, “When she comes I shall know her.”

On my hearth a tongue of flame whispered secrets to the whiten­ing ashes. In the street be­low I heard foot­steps, a voice, and a song.

“For whom then do you wait?” he said, and I answered, “I shall know her.”

Foot­steps, a voice, and a song in the street be­low, and I knew the song but neither the steps nor the voice.

“Fool!” he cried, “the song is the same, the voice and steps have but changed with years!”

On the hearth a tongue of flame whispered above the whiten­ing ashes: “Wait no more; they have passed, the steps and the voice in the street be­low.”

Then he smiled, say­ing, “For whom do you wait? Seek her through­out the world!”

I answered, “My world is here, between these walls and the sheet of glass above; here among gil­ded flagons and dull jew­elled arms, tar­nished frames and can­vasses, black chests and high-backed chairs, quaintly carved and stained in blue and gold.”

The Phantom

The Phantom of the Past would go no fur­ther.

“If it is true,” she sighed, “that you find in me a friend, let us turn back to­gether. You will for­get, here, un­der the sum­mer sky.”

I held her close, plead­ing, caress­ing; I seized her, white with an­ger, but she res­isted.

“If it is true,” she sighed, “that you find in me a friend, let us turn back to­gether.”

The Phantom of the Past would go no fur­ther.

The Sacrifice

I went into a field of flowers, whose petals are whiter than snow and whose hearts are pure gold.

Far afield a wo­man cried, “I have killed him I loved!” and from a jar she poured blood upon the flowers whose petals are whiter than snow and whose hearts are pure gold.

Far afield I fol­lowed, and on the jar I read a thou­sand names, while from within the fresh blood bubbled to the brim.

“I have killed him I loved!” she cried. “The world’s athirst; now let it drink!” She passed, and far afield I watched her pour­ing blood upon the flowers whose petals are whiter than snow and whose hearts are pure gold.

Destiny

I came to the bridge which few may pass.

“Pass!” cried the keeper, but I laughed, say­ing, “There is time;” and he smiled and shut the gates.

To the bridge which few may pass came young and old. All were re­fused. Idly I stood and coun­ted them, un­til, wear­ied of their noise and lam­ent­a­tions, I came again to the bridge which few may pass.

Those in the throng about the gates shrieked out, “He comes too late!” But I laughed, say­ing, “There is time.”

“Pass!” cried the keeper as I entered; then smiled and shut the gates.

The Throng

There, where the throng was thick­est in the street, I stood with Pi­er­rot. All eyes were turned on me.

“What are they laugh­ing at?” I asked, but he grinned, dust­ing the chalk from my black cloak. “I can­not see; it must be some­thing droll, per­haps an hon­est thief!”

All eyes were turned on me.

“He has robbed you of your purse!” they laughed.

“My purse!” I cried; “Pi­er­rot—help! it is a thief!”

They laughed: “He has robbed you of your purse!”

Then Truth stepped out, hold­ing a mir­ror. “If he is an hon­est thief,” cried Truth, “Pi­er­rot shall find him with this mir­ror!” but he only grinned, dust­ing the chalk from my black cloak.

“You see,” he said, “Truth is an hon­est thief, she brings you back your mir­ror.”

All eyes were turned on me.

“Ar­rest Truth!” I cried, for­get­ting it was not a mir­ror but a purse I lost, stand­ing with Pi­er­rot, there, where the throng was thick­est in the street.

The Jester

“Was she fair?” I asked, but he only chuckled, listen­ing to the bells jingling on his cap.

“Stabbed,” he tittered. “Think of the long jour­ney, the days of peril, the dread­ful nights! Think how he wandered, for her sake, year after year, through hos­tile lands, yearn­ing for kith and kin, yearn­ing for her!”

“Stabbed,” he tittered, listen­ing to the bells jingling on his cap.

“Was she fair?” I asked, but he only snarled, mut­ter­ing to the bells jingling on his cap.

“She kissed him at the gate,” he tittered, “but in the hall his brother’s wel­come touched his heart.”

“Was she fair?” I asked.

“Stabbed,” he chuckled. “Think of the long jour­ney, the days of peril, the dread­ful nights! Think how he wandered, for her sake, year after year through hos­tile lands, yearn­ing for kith and kin, yearn­ing for her!”

“She kissed him at the gate, but in the hall his brother’s wel­come touched his heart.”

“Was she fair?” I asked; but he only snarled, listen­ing to the bells jingling in his cap.

The Green Room

The Clown turned his powdered face to the mir­ror.

“If to be fair is to be beau­ti­ful,” he said, “who can com­pare with me in my white mask?”

“Who can com­pare with him in his white mask?” I asked of Death be­side me.

“Who can com­pare with me?” said Death, “for I am paler still.”

“You are very beau­ti­ful,” sighed the Clown, turn­ing his powdered face from the mir­ror.

The Love Test

“If it is true that you love,” said Love, “then wait no longer. Give her these jew­els which would dis­hon­our her and so dis­hon­our you in lov­ing one dis­hon­oured. If it is true that you love,” said Love, “then wait no longer.”

I took the jew­els and went to her, but she trod upon them, sob­bing: “Teach me to wait—I love you!”

“Then wait, if it is true,” said Love.