Carryl Guy Wetmore
The Transgression of Andrew Vane: A Novel

 

For the things ye do, when your life is new,

And your sin is sinned with a smile,

Ye shall pay full sore, ye men, though the score

The Fates hold back for a while:

Ye shall pay, at the end, for your frauded friend,

For the secret your lips betray,

For the lust and the lie, to the Gods on High

Ye shall pay – ye shall pay – ye shall pay!

   

Ye shall pay ten-fold, with your heart's best gold,

Ah, tempted women and true!

Ye shall render account, to the full amount,

For each beautiful thing ye do.

For the youth ye yield, for the soul ye shield,

For the pitiful prayers ye pray,

'Tis the fancy of Fate that, soon or late,

Ye shall pay – ye shall pay – ye shall pay!

 

PROLOGUE

For months past, she had felt that she was weakening, that the crescent wretchedness of five long years – an uninterrupted descent from level to level, on each of which the thorns of disillusion caught at, and tore from her, some shred of hope or self-respect – had done its work at last. Her courage and her faith, inherited, the one from the mental, the other from the moral, vigour of a rigid and uncompromising Puritan ancestry, were slipping from her. What the end was to be, she did not dare to ask; but it lay there ahead, grim and ominous, gradually taking form, through the mist of the immediate future. Its very suggestion of divergence from all that was familiar to her, of being even a degree more monstrous than what she had already suffered, sickened and appalled her, who had never known a dread of mere death, but drew back with unspeakable fear before the looming of this unknown, ultimate degradation.

John Vane had wooed his wife with the easy confidence born of adequate position, adequate means, and more than adequate ability. Four years of Harvard had taught him to believe life in the little Western town which had been his birthplace, to be, for a man of literary bent, a practical impossibility; and when he stepped easily from the halls of his Alma Mater into the offices of a Boston magazine, it was a practical renunciation of his early environment, and an expression of his resolve to follow in the actual as well as the metaphorical footprints of some of the greatest figures in American literature.

Six months later, he announced his engagement to Helen Sterling, the only daughter of a pioneer in copper, whose character had long since built him up a reputation, to which, later, the five figures of his income lent an added lustre. From first to last, from the occasion of the young collegian's presentation to the reigning belle of her season to the moment when she said, "I, Helen, do take thee, John" – and the rest of it – there was, by way of proving the rule, never a stumbling-block in the exceptionally smooth course of their love. They were made for each other, people said, and no one subscribed more confidently to this opinion than themselves.

But – and does ever a honeymoon pass without the uneasy awakening of that latent 'But'? – Helen was not a month older before she was forced to the unwilling conclusion that there was a singular, intangible something lacking in her husband's character. It was not that he was not gifted; for that, his most casual acquaintance knew him to be; – or in love with her; for of that he gave evidence almost as conclusive as would have been furnished by the ceaseless reiteration of that spoken devotion which a woman craves, without hope of receiving, from the man she loves. But things had come to him so easily, so independent of any effort of his own, that he was become the chief of optimists, imbued with the serene and confident laisser aller of the clan; and, now that association was making her intimate with his methods of work, she found them to be wholly haphazard, inspired merely by the whim of the moment, unregulated by any remotest evidence of system. His performances were the meaningless flashes and snaps of Chinese crackers, not the steady and purposeful, if less imposing, fire of a skilfully laid fuse, leading on to great results. His confidence in his own ability, in the certainty of his ultimate triumph, was so absolute that he was content with the minimum of endeavor, oblivious to the fact that only statues can remain thus passive with the assurance that laurel wreaths will be laid before them. He did not realize that the living must pluck their laurels for themselves.

Lacking the initiative which is its indispensable ally, Vane nevertheless possessed all the impatience of restraint or routine characteristic of the creative faculty. A year of editorial work was sufficient to convince him that it was not possible for such a temperament as his to be trammelled by fixed hours, and strait-jacketed by observance of detail. He resigned his position, on the plea of devoting himself entirely to writing, and there ensued a period during which he sunned himself in society's favour, and received his share of flattery in return for several trifles contributed to the magazines, but created nothing worthy even of the infinitesimal effort which he made. A man had to think, to arrange, to compose, he told his wife. Rome was not built in a day, and the mere manual act of transferring his thoughts to paper was a trifle, when contrasted with the process of incubation. So month after month dragged by, and little by little, as his novelty wore off, John Vane dropped out of society's consideration as a literary potentiality, and came to be regarded as nothing more than one of many good-looking, agreeable men-about-town, to whom, in the matter of his wife and his worldly weal, the Fates had been generous beyond the ordinary.

One of the first unmistakable signs of degeneration was his now constant complaint that he was unappreciated. The average man's share of applause is in strict proportion to his deserts. In Vane's case the allowance had been appreciably in excess of his due, but it was exhausted at last; and flattery is a drug which, with indulgence, becomes, a necessity. Deprived of it, he grew fretful and impatient, made occasional abortive efforts at performance of the great things formerly expected of him, and talked savagely of prejudice when his manuscripts came back from the editors, accompanied by polite notes wherein the pill of non-availability was sugar-coated with reference to the pleasure of examining his work, and the regret with which it was returned.

For a time he had his wife's most loyal support and sympathy. She liked to believe that what he said was true, that literary excellence counted for nothing in a commercial age, and that a man who would not conform to silly superficial standards had no chance of recognition. But Helen was a woman to whom a goose was a goose, and a swan a swan, at all times, and regardless of ownership. Moreover, she had been a lover of the best in literature since first she had been given the run of her father's library, and sat for entire afternoons curled into a big arm-chair, skipping the long words of Thackeray or Charles Lamb. Her critical sense, thus perfected, was now too alert to allow of any treachery to standard. Intensely loyal she was, but intensely just, as well; and all her eagerness to believe her husband what he claimed to be could not blind her to the mediocrity, often the utter worthlessness, of his later work. With revelation arose, naturally, an ardent desire to aid him, and strict sincerity, which was her most admirable quality, pointed to candour as the only adequate means. With his resentment of her counsel came her first disheartening insight into the shallowness and perversity of his nature. That he could accuse her of attempting to belittle him, rank her as at one with those who misunderstood him, hurt her more keenly than if he had turned and cursed her. It was the parting of their ways, the first decisive step on the road which she was to follow wearily for five years of discouragement and disillusion.

With the waning of his popularity Vane renounced Boston, as he had renounced his birthplace, and they moved to New York. Here, for a time, he contributed listlessly to the humorous weeklies and the less pretentious magazines; but reputation of the kind he sought was not to be won by mere facility in rhyming or in writing around a dozen illustrations; and, presently, he reverted to his old complaint of prejudice and non-appreciation. Then a chance acquaintance led him into speculation. Where abler men failed, John Vane was swept into complete disaster. In a transient panic, he was caught long of a big line of stocks, tried to average too soon, and was finally forced to let go his holdings at about the bottom of the market.

It was ruin, absolute and utter; but Helen almost welcomed it, in the belief that the spur of a necessity he had never known before would goad him to the achievement of better things. But the character of John Vane was not the stuff whereof is made the moral phœnix. He shrivelled before the fire of defeat, and sank hopelessly into the ashes of surrender.

They moved from their luxurious apartment to a cheap hotel, thence to a cheaper one, thence to a boarding-house. The backward path was strewn with unsettled bills, and loans never to be repaid. Vane wrote spasmodically for the daily papers, and for such of the magazines as would still accept his work, and, on the pittance thus earned, and the generosity of Helen's father, they contrived to exist, in a fashion, for something over two years.

But, given the temperament of John Vane, the next development was inevitable. At first Helen sturdily refused to believe that a new demon had entered the hell which he was making of her life. She met him, at night, with an attempt at a smile, deliberately ignoring his unsteady gait, his sodden face, his hot, rank breath. But the evidence was plain, constant, incontestable. Drink had gripped him, and she knew too well that whatever of weakness laid hand upon her husband never relinquished hold.

So another year went by, the gulf between them widening and widening. Finally, he struck her – and then, or the first time, that final degradation, that ominous, unknowable end of hope and self-respect, loomed, hideous and shadowy, through the fog before her. Unable to interpret its significance, she told herself, nevertheless, that it was very near.

They were living in Kingsbridge, in a little frame house into which a man who had known her husband in his Wall Street days had come, in settlement of a bad debt, and which he had offered them, for charity's sake, at a paltry annual rental. The same Samaritan had given Vane a small position in his office, and the latter now went to and fro, between the city and its gruesome little neighbour on the Harlem, taking leave of his wife with a curt, contemptuous nod, and returning, bloated and foul-breathed, to pass the evenings in a semi-stupor.

The chance had been too good to be disregarded, but life under such conditions was no better than sheer existence. The cottage was one of a squat, ill-favoured row on a side street, within a stone's throw of the railway station. They had found it equipped, in a way, with cheap, yellowish furniture, worn and faded carpets, and kitchen utensils distinguished by the grime of many meals and the musty inheritance of insufficient washings. About the house there was a stale, moist smell of plaster, and the plot of turf in the little front yard was dry and discoloured, like the mats of imitation grass in the establishment of a country photographer. Helen had striven to redeem the desolation of the tiny living-room with the few pictures and articles of furniture which she had contrived to save from the wreck of their former fortunes; but the attempt was not successful. The rare prints were out of place against the tawdry wall-paper, and the few pieces of Sheraton and Chippendale to which she had clung took on, in such surroundings, the shabbiness of what was already there.

She was obliged to do her own marketing and cooking and housework, since a servant, in their straitened circumstances, was out of the question: and not the least part of her martyrdom was the purchase of scrawny yellow fowls, and vegetables of a freshness past, and their preparation in the dingy little kitchen, which left an odour of frying lard on the very clothes she wore.

Vane had left her, an hour before, on his way to the city; and now, as the weight of depression became intolerable, she took her hat, locked the door behind her, and started for a long walk over the hill-roads back of the town. This had lately come to be her habit. It was something to escape, even for half a day, from the dispirited little suburb, with its sallow frame houses, its patched fences, and its cinder-strewn roadways, along which lean cats slunk guiltily, and dishevelled fowls picked their way in search of food. Up on the hills, the air of late November was keen and chill, and grayed with a drifting smoke-mist from distant fires of dried leaves. The brown grass was veiled here and there with thin patches of snow, stippled with faint shadows, cast by the filial oak-leaves, which cling longer than any other to the maternal bough. As Helen passed, squirrels darted nimbly away to a safe distance, and then sat up to watch her, with their fore paws held coquettishly against their breasts. It was all very sane and healthy, all in wonderful contrast to her morbid life in the shadow of John Vane's personality.

There had been no children – a fact which, in happier hours, she had deplored, but for which she was now profoundly grateful. There are things which it is easier to bear alone. To share with another – and that other her child – the humiliation of her ill-starred association with her husband, would but have been to double the burden's weight. In her own case the period of martyrdom was well-nigh done. For his son and hers it would simply be at its beginning, tragic in its boundless possibilities of shame.

As the thought came of the motherhood thus denied her, she wondered why she had been faithful to John Vane. Once she had believed in him, and so strong had been this faith that some shreds of it yet remained, to bind her to him through all the unspeakably humiliating days of his gradual but inevitable degradation. Nor was her fidelity of the negative, meaningless kind which is strong simply because unassailed. As a woman of the world, she had, more than once, been brought into contact with men lax in their scrupulosity, but scrupulous in their laxity. She had had her temptations, her chances of escape; and the price to be paid was not exorbitant, in view of the relief to be obtained. But upon these she had resolutely turned her back, hoping against hope for the miracle which never came. Even now, her father's door stood wide to her, and every instinct of reason impelled her to a separation. But Vane had not only killed her love for him; he had destroyed her very taste for life itself, under any circumstances whatever. She clung to him now, not because she loved him, not because it was impossible to do without him, but because he had sapped her youth, her faith, her craving for anything short of oblivion.

She stood for a long time, motionless, at a point where a little stream tinkled pleasantly over the stones beneath its first thin sheathing of ice. The trees, saving only the oaks, were bare, and stood stiffly, in close proximity, in the weird, white brilliance of contre-lumière; and for a few moments the barren tranquillity of the scene was indescribably restful. Then the light changed, as a slow cloud crept across the sun, and, with the coming of the resultant shadow, Helen, always exquisitely sensible to the moods of nature, returned suddenly to a consciousness of her extremity. It was not real, then, this negative beauty, this serene simplicity of nun-like, early winter; it was not real, her own unwonted calm! What was actual, material, inevitable, was the personality of the man who dominated her life like an evil spirit, using her as his chattel, abusing her as his slave. Abruptly, the whole course of their association spread itself before her, up to her last glimpse of him, that morning, shambling on his way to the miserable daily duty to which he had sunk. And this was the life which she had been so eager to share with him, the life which, in those early days, his promises had made to seem so fair! Together, they were to have seen the world – the wonderful, great world, that had shone in the distance, like a Promised Land, from the Pisgah of her girlish imaginings: London, Paris, Rome, the Nile, Greece, India, and Japan. They were to have seen them all – drunk, in company, of the wine of beauty and inspiration, doubling their individual pleasures with the magic wand of mutual comprehension, as he should turn the treasures found along their enchanted way into such words as men preserve to praise, and she stand at his side, the first to read and reverence. And now? For the first time, the full splendour of the dream, the full squalor of the reality, swept down upon her. She saw him, diverted from his own ideals, and ignorant of hers, taking the initial step upon his downward way, no foot of which was ever to be retraced: drunken, debauched, impotent to write one worthy word, skulking, shamefaced and sodden, through a world of sunlight and manly endeavour, like some noisome prowler of the night, surprised, far from its lair, by the dawn of sweet young day. She was no more than a girl, and already it was too late. The blitheness of life was gone, never to return. For a moment she stood with her worn hands crushed against her face, and then she stretched her arms upward to their full length, and cried aloud, "Ah, God! Ah, God!" to the chill, clear sky of the November day.

A voice at her side aroused her before she realized that she was not alone. At the sound she turned guiltily, and found herself face to face with a man she had never seen. He stood quite near, hat in hand, surveying her with cool, steel-blue eyes. In that first instant, with a perception sharpened by her mental anguish, she became suddenly as familiar with every detail of his appearance as if they had been intimates for years. He was tall and slender, and unmistakably young; and, in singular contrast to his pallid complexion, his lips, under the thin mustache, were full and red, with a strange, sensual crookedness that was half a smile and half a sneer. There was about him a curious, compellant air of mastery and self-possession, as of one sure of himself, and accustomed to control; and his first words, under their veneer of polite solicitude, were, in their total lack of surprise or idle curiosity, significant of the trained man of the world, while the quaint, foreign flavour of the title by which he addressed her was equally suggestive of the cosmopolite.

"You are in distress, madame?"

Helen paused before replying. With the instinctive delicacy of her sex, she realized that in the approach of a stranger who had surprised her in a betrayal of extreme emotion there was something which she would do well to resent; and yet she was come to one of those crises which every woman knows; when the need of sympathy, even the most casual, was imperative – when, albeit at the sacrifice of conventionality, she was fain to seek support, to grasp a firm hand, to hear a friendly, though an unknown, voice. Pride, her stanch ally through all the bitter hours of her despair, had weakened at this the most crucial point, and, like a frightened child, she would have run for reassurance into the arms of the veriest passer-by.

"Perhaps," she answered presently. "But, believe me, the expression of my feeling was purely involuntary. I thought myself alone. There are, ordinarily, few passers by this road."

He had replaced his hat now, and was no longer looking at her, but down across the shelving slope of hillside, spiked with slender trees, as close-set as the bristles of a giant brush. When he spoke again, his tone had curiously assumed the existence of a relation between them, as if, instead of total strangers, they had been old acquaintances, come together at this spot, and exchanging impressions of the scene before them.

"Strange," he said slowly, "that you should be in distress, when Nature, which always seems to me the most sympathetic of companions, is wrapped in so great repose. In my dealings with humanity, I've frequently met with misunderstanding; but never, in the attitude of Nature, a lack of what I felt to be completest comprehension of my mood. She always seems to divine our difficulties, and to have some little helpful hint, some small parable, which, if we read it aright, will point out the solution of our problem, or at least serve to soothe the momentary pang. This little stream at our feet, for example: how it preaches the lesson that while we must meet with days that are cold, unsympathetic, drear, it's not only possible, but best, to preserve, under the ice in which adversity wraps our hearts, the life and laughter which friendlier suns have taught us! I wonder if that is not the secret of all human contentment – to resign oneself to the chilling touch of the wintry days of life, secure in the knowledge that summer will return, the compensation be made manifest, and the wrong turned to right."

The rebuff which was on Helen's lips an instant before was never spoken. It was one of those moments when the intuitive assertion of dignity and self-reliance lays down its arms before the need of comfort and companionship. She did not look at him, but in her silence there was that which encouraged him to continue.

"You don't resent my speaking to you in this way?" he asked. "After all, why should you? You are a bubble on this strange, erratic stream of life, and I another. Bubble does not ask bubble the reason of their meeting, at some predestined spot between source and sea. Instead, they touch, perhaps to drift apart again after a moment; perhaps, as one often sees them, to unite in one larger, better, brighter bubble than either had been before. Neither cares a tittle for its chance companion's previous history, or for what the other bubbles say. Curiosity as to another's past is the prerogative of small-spirited man, as is also the dread of adverse criticism. Now the commingling bubbles are one of Nature's little parables, and my conception of ideal sympathy."

His eyes were upon her now, and, strangely impelled, her own came round to meet them.

"I'm not wholly sure that I get your meaning," she said, feeling that he exacted a reply. "Is it that association and sympathy are merely the result of chance?"

"Chance is only a word that we use to express the workings of a force beyond our understanding." He stooped and picked up a little stone, weighed it momentarily in his palm, and then, reversing his hand, let it fall. "One would hardly be apt to call it chance," he added, "that, after leaving my hand, that pebble reached the ground. If we understood destiny as we understand gravitation, we should not say that our present meeting was due to chance, but rather that it was the logical outcome of a natural law."

There was a long pause, during which he glanced at her more than once, with the seemingly careless but actually keenly observant air of a skilled physician studying a nervous patient. She was a little frightened, she confessed to herself, as she gathered her wits, staring at the bit of river which was visible from where they stood, and the slopes beyond. For weeks she had been prey to an apathy which was only broken, at intervals, by an outburst of passionate revolt. Now, in some inexplicable fashion, the burden seemed to have slipped from her shoulders, and the feeling of depression was replaced by one of uplifting, of unreasonable exhilaration. The sensation was vaguely familiar to her, and, groping for a clue, she found its parallel in the preliminary action of ether, which she had taken a year or so before. Through the growing, not unpleasurable, dizziness which came upon her thus, the man's voice made its way.

"Let me try to explain myself more clearly," he was saying. "Something – God, or chance, or destiny, or whatever you choose to call it – led me around that last turn of the road at a moment when, if I'm not mistaken, a fellow being came to the snapping-point of self-control. I can't think our meeting without significance. I believe I was sent to help you. The question is, whether you're broad and generous and courageous enough to take for granted a formal introduction, and the gradual evolution of acquaintance into intimacy, up to the moment when you would naturally turn to me, as your most loyal friend, for sympathy. And I think you will do that."

Once more Helen looked at him. Her mind was curiously clouded, but the sensation gave her no uneasiness. Instead, she felt that she was smiling.

"I think you will do it," he repeated.

He was holding out his hand with the confidence of one who knows it will be accepted, and, after a moment, she laid her own within it. His fingers closed firmly on hers, and, of a sudden, the world drew in about her, graying, as under the touch of fog. Her last perception was of his eyes fixed full on hers with an expression of quiet amusement.

"I'm faint," she murmured, "I am – faint – "

When she came to herself, his eyes still held her.

"In the strange, unknowable book of Fate," he said, "it was written, from the beginning of time, that you and I should meet upon a dull hillside in late November, and – and that all that has been should be!"

Before she had time to answer, he had left her.

Briefly she stood, dizzy and perplexed, and then, after one great leap, her heart seemed to shudder and stand still. She was in the sordid little living-room of the Kingsbridge cottage, and outside the day was glooming into twilight!

Without power to move, she watched from the window the man who had just gone, pass down the path and through the gate, and, turning, wave a farewell, before he hurried away in the direction of the station. Then she was fully aroused by the entrance of the postman, and went slowly to meet him at the door. There was only one letter, but this was directed in her husband's unsteady hand, and, as she opened it, the contents leapt at her like a blow:

"HELEN:"

"Let me be as brief as you will think me brutal. When this reaches you I shall already be far at sea – with another woman. I have seen how you despised me, and I think that you know this, and that I hate you for it. I shall not ask you to forgive me, for I, too, have many things to forgive. If you had understood me, much that has happened might never have been. But what is past is past. Let us bury it and have done."

"JOHN."

For minutes, which seemed an eternity, Helen stood, fingering the wretched sheet, and gazing straight before her with blank, unwinking eyes. Then, with a rush, came remembrance, and with it a great wave of relief. Before she fully comprehended her intention, she was at the gate of the cottage. But there she halted, with a nameless sense of loss and desperation. From the distance had come the yelp of a signalled locomotive, and then a dozen short, choking pants, as it dragged the reluctant train into motion. He had gone!

"But he will come back!" she murmured, "and, that he may come sooner, I will write."

It was only towards the end of her black, sleepless night that she remembered that she did not even know his name.

Late autumn slid gloomily into winter, and winter into spring, before she realized that he would never come. To her father she had written nothing of Vane's desertion. For a year past, his name had not been mentioned in their letters, so the omission was no longer noted, and Mr. Sterling's remittances enabled her to live in material comfort. She clung to the forlorn little cottage with a vague feeling that by it alone could she be traced when He should come back for her; but took a servant, a slovenly little wench, who moved in a circumambient odour of carbolic acid, and amassed dust under beds and sofas as a miser hoards his gold.

Helen herself saw nothing, heeded nothing. Save in the impulse which followed her reading of Vane's letter, her mind was never wholly clear from the shadow which had descended upon it at the moment of that hand-grip on the hillside. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, she sat at the window, motionless, listening for the creak of the gate, the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path, which would tell her that He had returned.

With spring the disillusion came, and she crept back to the shelter of her father's house, but to no change, save slow and listless surrender to the inevitable. Sometimes they heard her whispering to herself, as she sat, with some book which they had brought her, unopened on her knee – odd scraps of sentences, and broken phrases, without apparent relevancy or connection. The family physician, a friend from boyhood of Andrew Sterling, tapped his forehead significantly at such times as these, and the hands of the two men would meet in a grasp of mutual understanding.

One night in late August her child was born, and the west wind that brought a new soul to the Sterling door, pausing an instant in its passing, gathered up, and in its kind arms bore away, on its pathless flight into the Great Unknown, the tired spirit of Helen Vane.

CHAPTER I
MR. CARNBY RECEIVES A LETTER

Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy Carnby furnished to the reflective observer a striking illustration of the circumstance that extremes not only meet, but, not infrequently, marry. Mrs. Carnby confessed to fifty, and was in reality forty-seven. As, in any event, incredulity answers "Never!" when a woman makes mention of her age, she preferred that the adverb should be voiced with flattering emphasis and in her presence, rather than sarcastically and behind her back. She was nothing if not original.

Mrs. Carnby was distinctly plain, a fact which five minutes of her company effectually deprived of all significance: her power of attraction being as forceful as that of a magnet, and similar to a magnet's in its absence of outward evidence. She was a woman of temperate but kaleidoscopic enthusiasms, who had retained enough of the atmosphere of each to render her interesting to a variety of persons. Prolonged experience of the world had invested her with an admirable broad-mindedness, which caused her to tread the notoriously dangerous paths of the American Colony, in which she was a constant and conspicuous figure, with the assurance of an Indian fakir walking on broken glass – pleasurably appreciative of the risk, that is, while assured by consummate savoir faire against cutting her feet. Her fort was tact. She had at one and the same time a faculty for forgetting confidences which commended her to women, and a knack of remembering them which endeared her to men. It was with the latter that she was preëminently successful. What might have been termed her masculine method was based on the broad, general principle that the adult male is most interested in the persons most interested in him, and it never failed, in its many modifications, of effect. Men told her of their love-affairs, for example, with the same unquestioning assurance wherewith they intrusted their funds to a reputable banker; and were apt to remember the manner in which their confidences were received, longer than the details of the confidences themselves. And when you can listen for an hour, with every evidence of extreme interest, to a man's rhapsodies about another woman, and, at the end, send him away with a distinct recollection of the gown you wore, or the perfume on the handkerchief he picked up for you, then, dear lady, there is nothing more to be said.

Mr. Jeremy Carnby infrequently accompanied his wife to a reception or a musicale, somewhat as Chinese idols and emperors are occasionally produced in public – as an assurance of good faith, that is, and in proof of actual existence. As it is not good form to flaunt one's marriage certificate in the faces of society, an undeniable, flesh-and-blood husband is, perhaps, the next best thing – when exhibited, of course, with that golden mean of frequency which lies between a hint of henpeck on the one side and a suggestion of neglect upon the other. Mrs. Carnby blazed in the social firmament of the American Colony with the unwavering fixity of the Polar Star: Jeremy appeared rarely, but with extreme regularity, like a comet of wide orbit, as evidence that the marital solar system was working smoothly and well.

Mrs. Carnby was, and not unreasonably, proud of Jeremy. They had lived twenty-five years in Paris, and, to the best of her knowledge and belief, he was as yet unaware, at least in a sentimental sense, that other women so much as existed. Since one cannot own the Obélisque or the Vénus de Milo, it is assuredly something to have a husband who never turns his head on the Avenue du Bois, or finds a use for an opera-glass at the Folies-Bergère. Jeremy was not amusing, still less brilliant, least of all popular; but he was preëminently loyal and unfeignedly affectionate – qualities sufficiently rare in the world in which Mrs. Carnby lived, and moved, and had the greater portion of her being, to recommend themselves strongly to her shrewd, uncompromising mind. In her somewhat over-furnished life he occupied a distinct niche, which one else could have filled; and in this, to her way of thinking, he was unique – as a husband. After foie gras and champagne, Mrs. Carnby always breakfasted on American hominy, a mealy red apple, and a glass of milk. She was equally careful, however, to take the meal in company with Jeremy. He was part of the treatment.

The Carnby hôtel was one of the number in the Villa Dupont. One turned in through a narrow gateway, from the sordid dinginess of the Rue Pergolèse, and, at a stone's throw from the latter's pungent cheese and butter shops, and grimy charbonneries, came delightfully into the shade of chestnuts greener than those exposed to the dust of the great avenues, and to the sound of fountains plashing into basins buried in fresh turf. It was very quiet, like some charming little back street at St. Germain or Versailles, and the houses, with their white walls and green shutters and glass-enclosed porticos, were more like country villas than Parisian hôtels. The gay stir of the boulevards and the Avenue du Bois might, to all seeming, have been a hundred kilometres distant, so still and simple was this little corner of the capital. Jeremy frankly adored it. He had a great office looking out upon the Place de l'Opéra, and when he rose from his desk, his head aching with the reports and accounts of the mighty insurance company of which he was the European manager, and went to the window in search of distraction, it was only to have his eyes met by a dizzier hodge-podge than that of the figures he had left – the moil of camions, omnibuses, and cabs, threading in and out at the intersection of the six wide driveways, first up and down, and then across, as the brigadier in charge regulated the traffic with sharp trills of his whistle, which jerked up the right arms of the policemen at the crossings, as if some one had pulled the strings of so many marionettes with white batons in their hands. All this was not irritating, or even displeasing, to Jeremy. He was too thorough an American, despite his long residence in Paris, and too keen a business man, notwithstanding his wife's fortune, not to derive satisfaction from every evidence of human energy. The Place de l'Opéra appealed to the same instincts in his temperament that would have been gratified by the sight of a stop-cylinder printing-machine in action. But, not the less for that, his heart was domiciled in the hôtel in the Villa Dupont.

On a certain evening in mid-April, Jeremy had elaborated his customary half-hour walk homeward with a detour by way of the Boulevard Malesherbes, the Parc Monceau, and the Avenue Hoche, and it was close upon six when he let himself in at his front door, and laid his derby among the shining top-hats of his wife's callers, on the table in the antichambre. Through the half-parted curtains at the salon door came scraps of conversation, both in French and English, and the pleasant tinkle of cups and saucers; and, as he passed, he had a glimpse of several well-groomed men, in white waistcoats and gaiters, sitting on the extreme edges of their chairs, with their toes turned in, their elbows on their knees, and tea-cups in their hands; and smartly-dressed women, with big hats, and their veils tucked up across their noses, nibbling at petits fours. He turned into his study with a feeling of satisfaction. It was incomprehensible to his mind, this seemingly universal passion for tea and sweet cakes; but if the institution was to exist under his roof at all, it was gratifying to know that, albeit the tea was the finest Indian overland, and the sweet cakes from the Maison Gagé, it was not for these reasons alone that the 16th Arrondissement was eager, and the 7th not loath, to be received at the hôtel in the Villa Dupont. Jeremy knew that his wife was the most popular woman in the Colony, as to him she was the best and most beautiful in the world. Before he touched the Temps or the half-dozen letters which lay upon his table, he leaned forward, with his elbows on the silver-mounted blotter, and his temples in his hands, and looked long at her photograph smiling at him out of its Russian enamel frame. If the world, which laughed at him for his prim black neckties and his common-sense shoes, even while it respected him for his business ability, had seen him thus, it would have shared his wife's knowledge that Jeremy Carnby was an uncommonly good sort.

He opened his letters carefully, slitting the envelopes with a slender paper-knife, and endorsing each one methodically with the date of receipt before passing on to the next. All were private and personal, his voluminous business mail being handled at his office by a secretary and two stenographers. With characteristic loyalty, Jeremy wrote regularly to a score of old acquaintances and poor relations in the States, most of whom he had seen but once or twice in the twenty-five years of his exile, and read their replies with interest, often with emotion: and his own left hand knew not how many cheques had been signed, and cheering words written, by his unassuming right, in reply to the plaints and appeals of his intimates of former years. For the steady, white light of Jeremy Carnby's kindliness let never a glint of its brightness pass through the closely-woven bushel of his modesty.

He hesitated with the last letter in his hand, reread it slowly, and then lit a cigar and sat looking fixedly at his inkstand, blowing out thin coils of smoke. So Mrs. Carnby found him, as she swept in, dropped into a big red-leather arm-chair, and slid smoothly into an especial variety of small talk, wherewith she was wont to smooth the business wrinkles from his forehead, and bring him into a frame of mind proper to an appreciation of the efforts of their chef.

"If it isn't smoking a cigar at fifteen minutes before the dinner-hour!" she began, with an assumption of indignation. "Really, Jeremy, you're getting quite revolutionary in your ways. I think I shall tell Armand that hereafter we shall begin dinner with coffee, have salad with the Rüdesheimer, and take our soup in the conservatory."

Mr. Carnby laid down his cigar.

"I lit it absent-mindedly," he answered. "Have they gone?"

"No, of course not, stupid!" retorted his wife. "They're all out there. I told them to wait until we'd finished dinner. Now, Jeremy! why will you ask such questions?"

"It was stupid of me," he admitted.

"And to punish you, I shall tell you who they were," announced Mrs. Carnby. "I might do worse and tell you all they said. You're so – so comfortable, Jeremy. When I'm on the point of boiling over because of the inanities of society I can always come in here and open my safety-valve, and you don't care a particle, do you, if I fill your study full of conversational steam?"

Jeremy smiled pleasantly.

"You nice person!" added his wife. "Well, here goes. First, there was that stupid Mrs. Maitland. She told me all about her portrait. It seems Benjamin-Constant is painting it – and I thought the others would never come. Finally, however, they did – the Villemot girls and Mrs. Sidney Kane, and a few men – Daulas and De Bousac and Gerald Kennedy and that insufferable little Lister man. Then Madame Palffy. It makes me furious every time I hear her called 'madame.' The creature was born in Worcester – and do you know, Jeremy, I'm positive she buys her gowns at an upholsterer's? No mere dressmaker could lend her that striking resemblance to a sofa, which is growing stronger every day! Her French is too impossible. She was telling Daulas about something that never happened to her on her way out to their country place, and I heard her say 'compartiment de dames soûles' quite distinctly. I can't imagine how she contrives to know so many things that aren't so. One would suppose she'd stumble over a real, live fact now and again, if only by accident. And her husband's no better. Trying to find the truth in one of his stories severely taxes one's aptitude in long division. I saw him at the Hatzfeldts' musicale night before last. Pazzini was playing, and Palffy was sound asleep in a corner, after three glasses of punch. I really felt sorry that a man with such a wife should be missing something attractive, and I was going to poke him surreptitiously with my fan, but Tom Radwalader said, 'Better let the lying dog sleep!' He positively is amusing, that Radwalader man!"

Mrs. Carnby looked up at her husband for the admiring smile which was the usual guarantee that she had amused him, but only to find Jeremy's eyes once more riveted upon the inkstand, and the cigar between his thin lips again.

"My dear Jeremy," she said, "I'm convinced that you've not heard one syllable of my carefully prepared discourse."

"My dear Louisa," responded Mr. Carnby with unwonted readiness, "I'm convinced that I have not. The truth of the matter is," he added apologetically, "that I've received an unusual letter."

"It must indeed be unusual if it can cause you to ignore my conversation," said Louisa Carnby.

"That is perfectly true," said Jeremy with conviction.

His wife rose, came over to his side, and kissed him on the tip of his nose.

"Good my lord," she said, "I think I like your tranquil endorsement of the compliments I make for myself better than those which other men invent out of their own silly heads! Am I to know what is in your unusual letter?"

"Why not?" asked Jeremy seriously.

"Why not, indeed?" said Mrs. Carnby. "I have taken you for better or worse. There's so little 'worse' about the contract, Jeremy, that I stand ready to accept such as there is in a willing spirit, even when it comes in the form of a dull letter."

Jeremy looked up at her with his familiar smile.

"Louisa," he said, "if I were twenty years of age, I should ask nothing better than the chance to marry you again."

"Man! but thou'rt the cozener!" exclaimed Mrs. Carnby. "Thou'dst fair turn the head of a puir lassis. There – that'll do. Go on with your letter!"

"It's from Andrew Sterling," said Jeremy. "You'll remember him, I think, in Boston. He was a friend of my father's, and kept a friendly eye on me after the old gentleman's death. We've always corresponded, more or less regularly, and now he writes to say – but perhaps I'd best read you that part of his letter."

"Undoubtedly," put in his wife. "That is, if you can. People write so badly, nowadays."

"Um – um – " mumbled Jeremy, skipping the introductory sentences. "Ah! Here we have it. Mr. Sterling says: 'Now for the main purpose of this letter. My poor daughter's only son, Andrew Sterling Vane, is sailing to-day on the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. He has been obliged to leave Harvard, as his health is not robust, and I have thought that perhaps the sea-voyage and some months in Paris might put him in shape – '"

"Good Lord!" broke in Mrs. Carnby. "Imagine some months in Paris by way of rest-cure!"

"'And so,'" continued Jeremy, "'I'm sending him over, in hopes that the change may be of benefit. He is a singular lad – sensitive in the extreme, and utterly inexperienced – and I am going to ask if, "for auld lang syne," you will be so good as to make him welcome. I don't mean, of course, that I expect you to exercise any sort of supervision. The boy must take care of himself, like all of us, but I would like to feel that, in a strange city, there is one place where he may find a hint of home."

Jeremy paused.

"Go on!" observed Mrs. Carnby.

"There is really nothing more of importance," said her husband, "except that I've also received a note from young Vane. He's at the Ritz."

"Of course!" ejaculated Mrs. Carnby. "Paying two louis per diem for his room, and making semi-daily trips to Morgan, Harjes'. They're wonderful, these tourist bank-accounts. Their progress from a respectable amount to absolute zero is as inevitable as the recession of the sea from high-water mark to dead low tide – a steady withdrawal from the bank, my dear Jeremy! How old might the young gentlemen be?"

Mr. Carnby made a mental calculation.

"His mother was about my own age," he said presently. "I know she and I used to go to dancing-school together. And she died in childbirth, if I remember rightly. Her husband was a scamp – ran off with another woman. I never saw him. That would make the boy about twenty or twenty-one."

"He will be rather good-looking," said Mrs. Carnby reflectively, "with a general suggestion of soap and cold water about him. He will wear preposterously heavy boots with the soles projecting all around like little piazzas, and a straw hat, and dog-skin gloves with seams like small hedges, and turned back at the wrists. They're all exactly alike, the young Americans one sees over here. One would think they came by the dozen, in a box. And when he is sitting down he will be hitching at his trousers all the time, so that the only thing one remembers about him afterwards is the pattern of his stockings."

"We ought to invite him to dinner," suggested Jeremy.

"Without doubt," agreed his wife; "but to breakfast first, I think – and on Sunday. One can judge a man's character so well by the way he behaves at Sunday breakfast. If he fidgets, and drinks quantities of water, then he's dissipated! I don't know why Saturday night is always fatal to dissipated men, but it is. If his top hat looks as if it had been brushed the wrong way, then he's religious, and has been to church. I shall go out and inspect it while you're smoking. If he does all the talking, he's an ass; and if I do it all, he's a fool."

"You're a difficult critic, my dear," said Jeremy. "You must remember he is only twenty or so."

"To be twenty or so in appearance is a man's misfortune," replied Mrs. Carnby. "To be twenty or so in behaviour is his fault. I'll write to him to-night, and ask him to breakfast on Sunday, tout à fait en famille, and we'll try him on a – you don't mind my calling you a dog, Jeremy?"

"Not in the least," said Mr. Carnby.

"Eh bien!" said his wife. "We'll have him to breakfast on Sunday, and try him on a dog! If he's presentable and amusing, I shall make him my exclusive property. If he's dull, I shall tell him Madame Palffy is a woman he should cultivate assiduously. I send her all the people who don't pass muster at my dinners. She has them next day, like warmed-over vol-au-vents. My funeral baked meats do coldly furnish forth her breakfast-table."

"When you wish to appear most unmerciful, my dear," said Jeremy, "you always pick out Madame Palffy; and whenever you do, I spoil the effect of what you say by thinking of – "

"Margery?" put in Mrs. Carnby. "Yes, of course, that's my soft spot, Jeremy. There's only one thing which Margery Palffy ought to be that she isn't, and that's – ahem! – an orphan."

CHAPTER II
NEW FRIENDS AND OLD

In ordinary, Mrs. Carnby was one of the rare mortals who succeed in disposing as well as in proposing, but there were times when there was not even a family resemblance between her plans and her performances. She had fully intended that young Vane should be the only guest at her Sunday breakfast, but as she came out of church that morning into the brilliant sunlight of the Avenue de l'Alma, she found herself face to face with the Ratchetts, newly returned from Monte Carlo, and promptly bundled the pair of them into her victoria. Furthermore, as the carriage swung round the Arc, and into the Avenue du Bois, she suddenly espied Mr. Thomas Radwalader, lounging, with an air of infinite boredom, down the plage.

"There's that Radwalader, thinking about himself again!" she exclaimed, digging her coachman in the small of his ample back with the point of her tulle parasol. "Positively, it would be cruelty to animals not to rescue him. Arretez, Benoit!"

Radwalader came up languidly as the carriage stopped.

"Where are you going?" demanded Mrs. Carnby, after greetings had been exchanged.

"Home," answered Radwalader. "I met Madame Palffy back there a bit, and couldn't get away for ten minutes. You know, it's shocking on the nerves, that kind of thing, so I thought I'd drop in at my quarters for a pick-me-up."

"Well, if I'm not a pick-you-up, I'm sure I don't know what is," said Mrs. Carnby. "You're to come to breakfast. You'll have to walk, though. We're three already, you see, and I don't want people to take my carriage for a panier à salade. I hadn't the most remote intention of asking you; but when a man tells me he's been talking for ten minutes to that Palffy, I always take him in and give him a good square meal."

"You're very kind," said Radwalader. "Are you going to play bridge afterwards? If so, I must go home for more money."

"Nothing of the sort!" said Mrs. Carnby emphatically. "There's a protégé of Jeremy's coming to breakfast – a Bostonian, twenty years young, and over here for his health. You must all go, directly after coffee. I'm going to spend the afternoon feeding him with sweet spirits of nitre out of a spoon, and teaching him his catechism. Perhaps you'd like to stay and learn yours?"

"I think I know it," laughed Radwalader.

"If you do, it's one of your own fabrication, then – with just a single question and answer. 'What is my duty toward myself? My duty toward myself is, under all circumstances, to do exactly as I dee please.'"

"If that were the case, my good woman, I should live up to my profession of faith, not only by accepting your invitation, as I mean to do, but by staying the entire afternoon."

"That's very nicely said indeed," answered Mrs. Carnby. "Allez, Benoit!"

Twenty minutes later the whole party were assembled in her salon. Carnby, caught by his wife as he was scuttling into his study, was now doing his visibly inadequate best to entertain Philip Ratchett, who stood gloomily before him, with his legs far apart, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the top button of his host's waistcoat. He was a typical Englishman, of the variety which leans against door-jambs in the pages of Punch, and makes unfortunate remarks beginning with "I say – " about the relatives of the stranger addressed. Society bored him to the verge of extinction, but it is only fair to say that he repaid the debt with interest. He was tolerated – as many a man before and after him has been – for the sake of his wife.

Mrs. Ratchett patronized, with equal ardour, a sewing-class which fabricated unmentionable garments of red flannel for supposedly grateful heathen, and a society for psychical research which boasted of liberal-mindedness because it was willing to admit that, at the dawn of the twentieth century, the causes of certain natural phenomena yet remained unexplained. Her entire conception of life underwent a radical change whenever she read a new book, which she did at fortnightly intervals. She was thirty, clever, and frankly beautiful, hence a factor in the Colony.

The fifth member of the company in Mrs. Carnby's salon, Mr. Thomas Radwalader, enjoyed the truly Parisian distinction of being an impecunious bachelor who did not accept all the invitations he received. He might have been thirty-five or forty-five or fifty-five. His smooth-shaven, impassive face offered no indication whatever of his age. He was already quite gray, but, in contrast to this, his speech was tinged with a frivolity, rather pleasant than otherwise, which hinted at youth. Mrs. Carnby had once described him as being "dappled with knowledge," and this, in common with the majority of Mrs. Carnby's estimates, came admirably near to being exact. Radwalader's actual fund of information was far less ample than was indicated by the facility with which he talked on any and every subject, but he was master of the science of selection. He judged others – and rightly – by himself, and went upon the often-proven theory that a polished brilliant attracts more attention than an uncut Koh-i-nur. He made the superficial things of life his own, and on the rare occasions when the trend of conversation led him out of his depth, he caught at the life-belt of epigram, and had found his feet again before men better informed had finished floundering. He lived in a tiny apartment, on the safe side of nothing a year, and kept up appearances with a skill that was little short of genius. Gossip passed him by, a circumstance for which he was devoutly grateful, though it was due less to chance than to management.

Such was the company into which Mr. Andrew Sterling had despatched his grandson – in hopes that the change might be of benefit. As he came through the portières, young Vane proved to tally, in the main essentials of appearance, with Mrs. Carnby's prophetic estimate. He was somewhat more than rather good-looking, and essentially American, with the soap-and-cold-water suggestion strongly to the fore. Mrs. Carnby always noted three things about a man before she spoke to him – his hands, his linen, and his eyes. In the first two Andrew Vane qualified immediately; in the third his hostess was forced to confess herself at a loss. In singular contrast to a complexion dark almost to swarthiness, his eyes were large and of an intense steel-blue. He met those of another squarely, not alone with the frankness characteristic of youth, but with the strange calm of confidence typical of men accustomed to the command of a battle-ship or an army corps. Mrs. Carnby, in ordinary the most self-possessed of women, gave, almost guiltily, before the keen, clear eyes of Andrew Vane.

"He has no business whatever to have eyes like that, at his age," she told herself, almost angrily. "They ought to grow in a man's head, after he has seen everything there is to be seen."

The thought was involuntary, but it recalled to her memory where she had seen their like before.

"Radwalader has them," she added mentally. "Good Lord! Radwalader! And this child hasn't even graduated!"

During the brief interval between the general introduction and the announcement of breakfast, she studied her new guest with unwonted interest. He was of the satisfactory medium height at which a man is neither contemptible nor clumsy, slight in build, but straight as an arrow, with narrow hips and a square backward fling of shoulder which spoke of resolution.

"He has 'No Compromise' written all over his back," said Mrs. Carnby to herself. "I should believe everything he told me, and not be afraid of what I told him."

Then she noted that he was eminently at ease. There is something out of the common about twenty that keeps its hands hanging at its sides, and its feet firmly planted, without suggesting a tailor's dummy. Andrew was talking to Mr. Carnby about his grandfather and Boston, and from the first to the last word of the short colloquy he did not once shift his position. As he stood thus, in some curious fashion consideration of his years was completely eliminated from one's thought of him. He was deferential, but in the negative manner of guest to host, rather than in the positive of youth to age; and, at the same time, he was assertive, but with the force of personality, not the conspicuity of awkwardness. He fitted into his surroundings instantly, like a wisely placed bibelot, but he dominated them as well.

"That Palffy," was Mrs. Carnby's final resolve, "shall get him only over my dead body."

And so, unconsciously, Andrew scored his first Parisian triumph.

For the first ten minutes of breakfast, Mrs. Carnby, at whose left he sat, let him designedly alone. It was her belief that men, like saddle-horses, should be given their heads in strange territory, and left to find themselves – this in contrast to the policy of her social rival, Madame Palffy, who boasted of being able to draw out the best there was in a new acquaintance in the first quarter-hour of conversation. In this she was probably correct, though in a sense which she did not perceive – for few good qualities survived the strain of that initial quarter-hour.

But if Mrs. Carnby's attention appeared to be engrossed by Radwalader on her right, and Mrs. Ratchett beyond Radwalader, she kept, nevertheless, a weather eye on Andrew; and when, presently, his spoon tinkled on his bouillon saucer, she turned to him.

"I've been watching you," she began, "to see how you would take to French oysters. It's a test I always apply to newcomers from America. If they eat only one Marennes verte, I know at once that they approve of forty-story buildings, and are going to talk about 'getting back to God's country'; if they eat all six, I know I may venture to hint that there are advantages about living in Paris, without having my head bitten off for being an expatriate."

"It would seem your head is quite safe, so far as I am concerned," laughed Andrew, "for I finished off my half-dozen, and thought them very good."

"Then you have the soul of a Parisian in the body of a Bostonian," affirmed Mrs. Carnby. "A liking for Marennes vertes is a survival of a previous state of existence. Here's Mr. Radwalader, for instance, who can't abide them, even after Heaven knows how many years in Paris."

"They taste so much like two-sou pieces that, whenever I eat them, they make me feel like a frog savings-bank," said Radwalader.

"There you are!" cried Mrs. Carnby triumphantly. "That would never have arisen as an objection in the mind of any one who had known what it is to be a Parisian."

"Or a frog savings-bank," said Radwalader. "No, I suppose not. I can't seem to live down the fact that I was born in the shadow of Independence Hall. But I'm doing so much to make up for the bad beginnings of my present incarnation, that I shall undoubtedly be a Parisian in my next. Have you been here long, Mr. Vane?"

"Three days."

"Do you speak French?" put in Mrs. Carnby. "No? What a pity! You've no idea what a difference it makes."

"I've only such a smattering as one gets in school and college," said Andrew. "Of course I didn't know I was coming over here. But, after all, one seems to get on very well with English."

"That's just the trouble, Mr. Vane," volunteered Mrs. Ratchett. "So many Americans are content just to 'get on' over here. That isn't the cue to Paris at all! It only means that you and she are on terms of bowing acquaintance. You'll never get to know her till you can talk to her in her own tongue."

"Or listen to her talk to you," observed Radwalader. "So long as we're using the feminine gender – "

"Oh!" interrupted Mrs. Carnby. "A remark like that does come with extreme grace from you, I must say. Here," she added, turning to Mrs. Ratchett, and indicating Radwalader with her fish-fork, "here's a man, my dear, who spent two solid hours of last Monday telling me the story of his life. And it reminded me precisely of a peacock – one long, stuck-up tale with a hundred I's in it. Radwalader, you're a brute!"

Carnby, with his eyes fixed vacantly upon a spot midway between a pepper-mill and a little dish of salted almonds, appeared to be revolving some complicated business problem in his mind; and, as his wife caught sight of him, her fish-fork swung round a quarter-circle in her fingers, like a silver weathercock, until, instead of Radwalader, it indicated the point of her husband's nose.

"That person," she said to Andrew, "is either in Trieste or Buda. His company has an incapable agent in both cities, and whenever he glares at vacancy, like a hairdresser's image, I know he is in either one town or the other. With practice, I shall come to detect the shade of difference in his expression which will tell me which it is. Mr. Ratchett – some more of the éperlans?"

Ratchett was deeply engaged in dressing morsels of smelts in little overcoats of sauce tartare, assisting them carefully with his knife to scramble aboard his fork, and, having braced them there firmly with cubes of creamed potato, conveying the whole arrangement to his mouth, where he instantly secured it from escape by popping in a piece of bread upon its very heels. He looked up, as Mrs. Carnby spoke to him, murmured "'k you," and immediately returned to the business in hand. Radwalader and Mrs. Ratchett had fallen foul of each other over a chance remark of his, and were now just disappearing into a fog of art discussion, from which, in his voice, an abrupt "Besnard" popped, at intervals, as indignantly as a ball from a Roman candle, or, in hers, the word "Whistler" rolled forth with an inflection which suggested the name of a cathedral.

"Tell me a little about yourself," said Mrs. Carnby, turning again to Andrew.

"If it's to be about myself," he answered, "I think it's apt to be little indeed. I've been in college almost three years, but I've been kept back, more or less, by a touch of fever I picked up on a trip to Cuba. It crops out every now and again, and knocks me into good-for-nothingness for a while. I'm not sure that I shall go back to Harvard. You see, I want to do something."

"What?" demanded Mrs. Carnby.

"I'm not sure. I'm over here in search of a hint."

"And a very excellent idea, too!" said his hostess. "Because, if you will keep your eyes open in the American Colony, you'll see about everything which a man ought not to do; and after that it should be comparatively easy to make a choice among the few things that remain."

"You're not very flattering to the American Colony," said Andrew.

"That's because I belong to it," replied Mrs. Carnby, "and you'll find I'm about the only woman in it, able to speak French, who will make that admission. I belong to it, and I love it – for its name. It's about as much like America as a cold veal cutlet with its gravy coagulated – if you've ever seen that! – is like the same thing fresh off the grill. But I don't allow any one but myself to say so!"

"You're patriotic," suggested Andrew.

"Only passively. I'm extremely doubtful as to the exact location of 'God's country,' and, even if you were to prove to my satisfaction that it lies between Seattle and Tampa, I'm not sure I should want to live there. America's a kind of conservatory on my estate. I don't care to sit in it continually, but, at the same time, I don't like to have other people throwing stones through the roof. But about what you want to do?"

"I really haven't the most remote idea. I want it to be something worth while – something which will attract attention."

"Nothing does, nowadays," said Mrs. Carnby, "except air-ships and remarriage within two hours of divorce."

"What are you talking about?" asked Mrs. Ratchett, suddenly abandoning the argument in which it was evident that she was coming out second best.

"My choice of a profession," replied Andrew. "I don't want to make a mistake. But everything seems to be overcrowded."

"Exactly," observed Radwalader. "It isn't so much a question of selecting what's right as of getting what's left. Haven't you a special talent?"

"I'm afraid not," said Andrew.

"And if you had, it wouldn't do you much good in the States," commented Mrs. Carnby. "Nothing counts over there but money and social position. It's the only country on earth where it's less blessed to be gifted than received."

"I had thought of civil engineering," said Andrew.

"Civil engineering?" repeated Mrs. Carnby. "But, my dear Mr. Vane, that's not a profession. It's only a synonym for getting on in society. We're all of us civil engineers!"

She pushed back her chair as she spoke.

"We'll wait for you in the salon," she added, "and, meanwhile, Mrs. Ratchett and I will think up a profession for Mr. Vane. Jeremy, you're to give them the shortest cigars you have."

"I was once in the same quandary," said Radwalader to Andrew, when the men were left alone, "and concluded to let Time answer the question for me. You may have noticed that Time is prone to reticence. So far, he has not committed himself one way or another."

"I'm afraid I haven't the patience for that," said Andrew. "Besides, it's different in America. One has to do something over there. It's almost against the law to be idle."

"Of course. The only remedy for that is to live in Paris. You might do that. It's a profession all by itself – of faith, if nothing else. Only one has need of the golden means."

"I think I am a homeopathist, so far as Europe is concerned," said Andrew. "I'm already a little homesick for the Common."

"It's a bad pun," answered Radwalader, "but is there anything in America but – the common?"

"You can't expect me to agree with you there."

"I don't. I never expect any one to agree with me. It takes all the charm out of conversation. You may remember that Mark Twain once said that it's a difference of opinion which makes horse-races. He should have made it human races. That would have been truer, and so, more original. But a homeopathist is only a man who has never tried allopathy. You must let me convert you by showing you something of Paris. If I've any profession at all, it's that of guide."

"You're very kind," said Andrew, "but you mustn't let your courtesy put you to inconvenience on my account. There must be a penalty attached to knowing Paris well, in the form of fellow country-men who want to be shown about."

"'Never a rose but has its thorn,'" quoted Radwalader. "If you know Paris well, you're overrun; and if you don't, you're run over. Of the two, the former is the less objectionable. When we leave here, perhaps you'd like to go out to the races for a while? If you haven't been, Auteuil is well worth seeing of a Sunday afternoon."

"I should be very glad," said Andrew.

"Then we'll consider it agreed. I see Carnby is getting to his feet. He is about to make his regular postprandial speech. It is one to be commended for its brevity."

"The ladies?" suggested Jeremy interrogatively.

"By all means!" said Radwalader, as his cigarette sizzled into the remainder of his coffee. "It's a toast to which we all respond."

"By the way," said Ratchett, as they moved toward the portières, "I was going to ask you chaps about membership in the Volney."

The three men gathered in a group, and Andrew, seeing that they were about to speak of something in which he had no concern, passed into the salon. Here he was surprised to find three women instead of two – still more surprised when the newcomer wheeled suddenly, and came toward him with both hands outstretched.

"How do you do?" she said. "What a charming surprise! Mrs. Carnby was just speaking of you, and I've been telling her what jolly times we used to have last summer at Beverly. How delightful to find you here! Mrs. Carnby's my dearest friend, you must know, Mr. Vane."

"Miss Palffy is one of the few people to whom I always feel equal," observed Mrs. Carnby.

"I can say the same, I'm sure," agreed Andrew.

"That means that you and I are to be friends as well, then," answered Mrs. Carnby, "because things that are equal to the same thing are bound to be equal to each other. Are you going out with Jeremy, Margery?"

"Yes – our usual Sunday spree, you know. He's a dear!"

She bent over as she spoke and buried her nose in one of the big roses on the table.

"Lord, girl, but I'm glad to see you again!" said the inner voice of Andrew Vane.

CHAPTER III
THE GIRL IN RED

The saddling-bell was whirring for the third race as Andrew and Radwalader slipped in at the main entrance of Auteuil, and made their way rapidly through the throng behind the tribunes, in the direction of the betting-booths beyond.

"We'll just have time to place our bets," said Radwalader, as he scanned the bulletins. "Numbers two, five, six, and eleven are out. Scratch them off your programme and we'll take our pick of the rest."

"You'll have to advise me," answered Andrew. "One couldn't very well be more ignorant of the horses than I am."

"I never give advice," said Radwalader, with an air of seriousness. "I used to, long ago. I went about vaccinating my friends, as it were, with counsel, but none of it ever took, or was taken – whichever way you choose to put it – so I gave it up. Besides, a French race-horse is like the girl one elects to marry. The choice is purely a matter of luck, and there's no depending upon the record of previous performances. I've always thought that if I had to choose a wife, I'd prefer to do it in the course of a game of blind-man's buff. The one I caught I'd keep. Then the choice would at least be unprejudiced. Shut your eyes, my dear Vane, and stick your pencil-point through your programme. Then open them and bet on the horse nearest the puncture." And he went through this little performance himself with the utmost solemnity. "It's Vivandière," he added. "I shall stake a louis on Vivandière."

"And I, for originality's sake, shall choose Mathias, with my eyes open," said Andrew, laughing, as they took their places in line before the booth.

"Well, you couldn't do better," observed his companion. "He's a willing little beast, and not unlikely to romp home in the lead. I'd bet on him myself, except that I'm so damnably unlucky that it really wouldn't be fair to you, Vane. I never back a horse but what he falls. I had ten louis up, last Sunday, on a steeplechase, and the water-jump was so full of the horses I'd chosen that, upon my soul, you couldn't see the water! It was for all the world like the sunken road at Waterloo after the charge of the cuirassiers."

When they had purchased their tickets, Radwalader led the way to the front of the tribunes, and, mounting upon the bench along the rail, turned his back upon the course, and began to survey the throng in the tiers of seats above.

"This is my favourite way of introducing a newcomer to Paris," he said presently. "She never appears to better advantage than when she is togged out in her Sunday-go-to-race-meeting-best."

With his stick he began to point out people here and there, until, from a narrow gateway to their right, the horses filed out upon the track, and they turned, resting their elbows on the railing, to watch them go by.

"That's Vivandière," said Radwalader. "Poor animal! She runs the best possible chance of breaking her neck. If the jockey so much as suspected that I'd her number in my pocket, he'd probably have taken out a policy on his life. There's Mathias – the little chestnut. He looks in rattling good form. I suspect you haven't thrown away that louis."

"It wouldn't be a very ruinous loss, in any event," said Andrew.

Radwalder was choosing a cigarette from his case.

"I wonder," he answered, rolling it between his fingers, "if you'd mind my asking you if you mean that? To some people it would be a consideration; to others, none whatever. It isn't conventional, or even good form, to pry into a man's finances, but we shall probably be going about together, more or less, during your stay, and in such a case I always like to know how a man stands in regard to expenses. I don't want to embarrass you by proposing things you don't feel you can afford, still less to be a clog upon you when you wish to go beyond my means."

He looked up, smiling frankly.

"Don't misunderstand me," he added. "It's not in the least an idle curiosity. I'm an old friend of Mrs. Carnby's, and it would be a great pleasure to do anything to make your visit a success. But, if you'll trust me, I'd be glad to know how you propose to live. You don't think me impertinent?"

"Not in the least," said Andrew. "I understand perfectly. It's a very sensible point of view. And I'll say candidly that my grandfather, Mr. Sterling, has been very generous; so that, unless I'm totally reckless, there's no reason why I shouldn't have the best of everything." He paused for a moment, and then added: "My letter of credit is for thirty thousand francs."

"Thank you," said Radwalader. "It makes things easier. I'd forgotten for the moment your relationship to Mr. Sterling, or I shouldn't have needed to take the liberty of speaking as I did. I met him once in Boston, I think. Isn't he called the 'Copper Czar'?"

"I believe he is," replied Andrew. "But there's not much in nicknames, you know."

"No, of course not," agreed his companion. "There goes the bell. For once, it's a fair start."

Far away, beyond the thickly-peopled stretch of the pelouse, a group of gaily-coloured dots went rocking rapidly to the left, vanished for an instant at the turn, and then flashed into view again in the form of jockeys standing stiffly in their stirrups, as the horses swept down the transverse stretch. People were shouting all about them, and in Andrew's unaccustomed ears the blood surged and hammered madly. He was at the age when there is nothing more inspiring than such a play of life and action, under the open sky and over the close-cropped turf. The ripple of lithe muscles along the sleek flanks of the horses; the set, smooth-shaven faces of the rigid jockeys; the gleam of sunlight and colour; and the deep, crescendo voice of the multitude, swelling to thunder as the racers flew past – all these set his pulses tingling, until he, too, cried out impulsively in his excitement. It was his first horse-race, and his first glimpse of Paris into the bargain. There is more than enough in the combination to set young blood aglow.

"Houp! Houp! Houp!" With sharp, staccato cries of encouragement, the jockeys were raising their mounts at the water-jump, over which they sailed gallantly, one after another, like great brown birds, until the very last. There was a lisp of grazed twigs, a long "A-ah!" from pelouse and pesage alike, a dull splash which sent the spray flying high in silver beads and then a jockey in a crimson blouse rolled heavily forward on the turf, arose, stamped his foot, and swore profusely in picturesque cockney at his mare, who had regained her feet and, with dangling rein and saddle all askew, stood looking back at him, as if uncertain whether to stop and inquire after his injuries or go on alone. Abruptly deciding upon the latter as the wiser course, she set off at a leisurely gallop, to the accompaniment of shrill, sarcastic comments from the crowd, and an additional exposition of the jockey's astonishing wealth of vocabulary.

"Voilà!" sighed Radwalader. "That was Vivandière! What did I tell you? It's absolutely inhuman of me to bet on a horse. And look at Mathias! He's twenty metres ahead of the rest, and going better every minute. You've hit it this time, Vane. There's one comfort. You'll win back my louis, at all events. It's something to know that the money's not going out of the family."

The crowd was already shouting "Mathias! C'est Mathias qui gagne!" as Andrew bent forward to see the horses wheel again into the transverse cut. Mathias was far in the lead, and seemed to gain yet more at the hurdle. The race was practically over, a thousand yards from the finish, and, as Mathias flashed past the post, a winner by twenty lengths, and Vivandière came ambling complacently in, at the end of the procession, with the stirrups bouncing grotesquely up and down, Radwalader replaced his field-glass with a deep sigh of resignation, and the two men went back toward the bulletins to see the posting of the payments.

It appeared, when the figures snapped into place, that Mathias returned one hundred and ten francs, which meant a clear gain of ten louis. Andrew had "hit it" in good earnest.

"I think I shall adopt horse-racing as my profession," he laughed, as they cashed the ticket at the caisse. "Let's see: forty dollars a race, six races a day, seven days to the week – two-forty – twenty-eight – fourteen – sixteen – sixteen hundred and eighty dollars a week. By Jove! That's not bad, by way of a start!"

"The start's the easiest part of it," observed Radwalader. "Even Vivandière can manage that. It's the finish that counts, and the finish of horse-racing is commonly the penitentiary. It's the only profession where the hard labor comes at the end instead of at the beginning."

"I think I'll hang on to what I've won, then," answered Andrew. "If you've nothing better to do, perhaps you'll help me to spend part of it on a dinner to-night. You know all the best places. And now, if you don't mind, I'd like to walk about a bit, and see the people."

"I accept both proposals with pleasure," said his companion. "We might dine at the Tour d'Argent, if you like. I haven't had one of Frédéric's ducks in a little eternity."

Back of the tribunes the crowd was greater now than it had been at the time of their arrival. There was the usual gay commingling of elaborate spring toilettes, brilliant parasols, white waistcoats, gloves, and gaiters, and red and blue uniforms; and, all about them, a babble of brilliant nothings. It was, as Radwalader had said, Paris at her best. He resumed his comments, which had been interrupted by the race, punctuating each sentence with a nod, or a few words, in French or English, to passing acquaintances, and flicking the gravel with the point of his stick.

"I envy you your first impressions, my dear Vane. It's an old story with me, all this, but I remember quite distinctly my first day on a French racecourse. It seemed to me the most wonderful spot on earth. I'd always lived in Philadelphia, and from Philadelphia to Paris is something in the nature of a resurrection. For the first time in my life, I saw people in possession of something to live for, instead of merely something to live on. There wasn't so much as a wrinkle of anxiety in sight. Then and there, I adopted Paris as my permanent abode. You know this town is a kind of metaphorical fly-paper. When once one has settled, one stops buzzing and banging one's head against the window-screens of circumstance."

"And flops over, and dies?" asked Andrew. "It seems to me that's the unpleasant part about fly-paper."

"I'm not sure of that," said Radwalader. "I'd have to have the fly's word for it. All of us must die in one manner or another, and perhaps being suffocated by a surfeit of sugar and molasses is not the most disagreeable way. However, you are only going to browse along the edges."

"There are some stunning women here," said Andrew.

"That's singularly à propos," replied Radwalader. "Are there any in particular whom you'd like to meet? I know about all of them."

"Oh, do you?" said Andrew. "I hadn't noticed you bow."

For a fraction of a second Radwalader glanced at his companion's face. Then —

"Hadn't you?" he said, with a short laugh. "I'm afraid your eyes have been too busy with the women themselves to take note of my salutations."

The next moment he doffed his hat ceremoniously to a little black-eyed creature with a superb triple string of pearls hanging almost to the waist of her black lace gown.

"That's Suzanne Derval," he explained, as they passed. "She's one of the brightest women in Paris."

"And alone?" said Andrew.

"Her escort," answered Radwalader, with an almost imperceptible pause between the words, "is probably placing his bet. As I said before, if there's any one you want to meet – "

"Well, there is," replied Andrew, colouring a little. "We passed a girl in red back there a bit. It's possible you know her. I'm afraid you think me a good deal of a boy."

"I'm afraid you think a good deal of a girl," laughed Radwalader. "No, my dear chap. Or, rather, if your desire is an evidence of extreme youth, then the majority of men are fit subjects for a crèche. Come along, and we'll try to track your scarlet siren."

"We'll not have much difficulty," said Andrew, as they turned. "There she is now. Do you see? By the tree – in red."

"Oh," answered Radwalader, "oh, yes. That's Mirabelle Tremonceau. Your 'red' is cerise, as a matter of fact, but that's as near as the average man comes to the colour of a woman's gown."

"I can't imagine one spending much time in learning such things."

"Anywhere but in Paris, perhaps not. Here the knowledge is vital. It's part of one's education – like being able to distinguish a Louis Quatorze chair from a Louis Quinze, or a Fragonard from a Boucher ten feet away. If you want to meet Mademoiselle Tremonceau, I'll be very glad to present you."

"I might wait here while you ask her," suggested Andrew.

"Eh?" said Radwalader. "Oh, yes – by all means."

The girl was talking with an officer of chasseurs, on the turf, a short distance away. She was tall and slender, very pale, with magnificent violet eyes and golden-bronze hair. From the gauze aigrettes on her hat to the tips of her patent-leather shoes, her costume was absolutely flawless. Her gown, of cherry-coloured crêpe de Chine, pailleté with silver, breathed from its every fold the talismanic word "Paquin," and the Lalique ornament of emeralds and ruddy gold which swung at her throat by a slender chain said as plainly "Charlier." There was not a dot missing from her veil, not the suggestion of a wrinkle in her white gloves, and not a displeasing note in the harmony of the whole.

"There's nothing wrong about the boy's judgment," was Radwalader's mental comment. "He's picked out the prettiest and best gowned woman in Paris. And it couldn't be better," he added, with an odd little smile.

Mademoiselle Tremonceau greeted him with a nod, a gloved hand, and a "Comment vas-tu?"

"B'en, pas mal, merci," answered Radwalader. With his left hand he caressed his chin reflectively, and, as if this had been a signal – which indeed it was – the girl turned to the young chasseur, who was staring at the intruder out of round, resentful eyes, and dismissed him with a hint.

"You've had fifteen minutes of my time, mon cher."

Then, as he retired, discomfited, she faced Radwalader again, and seemed to search his face for the answer to some unspoken question.

"I want to present one of my friends," he said, as if replying. "Mr. Andrew Vane – an American who has been in Paris three days. We'll have to speak English. Have I your permission?"

"You're strangely ceremonious of a sudden," answered Mademoiselle Tremonceau. "I don't seem to remember your asking permission before."

"It was his suggestion," observed Radwalader laconically.

For a moment the girl made no reply. Her questioning look had observably become more keen, and with one finger she picked at the turquoise matrix in the handle of her parasol.

"Well?" she said finally.

"Galetteux," said Radwalader. "Go softly, my friend."

Mademoiselle Tremonceau bowed with ineffable dignity.

"You have my gracious permission to present him," she said.

Whistling softly, as was his habit when pleased, the air of "Au Clair de la Lune," Radwalader observed their meeting from the corners of his eyes, and was struck, as Mrs. Carnby had been, by Andrew's perfect repose. They spoke in English, of trivialities – Paris, the weather, the crowd, and the victory of Mathias – and, as the saddling-bell rang for the fifth race, all walked out together to the trackside. Here Radwalader left them, to place his bet, and Andrew found two little wooden chairs on which they seated themselves to await his return.

"You and Mr. Radwalader are old friends?" asked the girl.

"On the contrary," said Andrew, "we met for the first time only this morning."

"Oh! And what do you think of him?"

"I find him very agreeable," said Andrew; "a little cynical, perhaps, but clever – and cleverness, to twist an English saying, covers a multitude of sins."

"Yes, he's clever," answered Mademoiselle Tremonceau. "There are the horses. Are you coming to tea?" she added, after a silence, as Radwalader rejoined them.

Radwalader turned to Andrew.

"The poet says that opportunity has no back hair," he observed. "I think we might grasp at this forelock, don't you?"

"Since Mademoiselle Tremonceau is so kind, I should say, by all means."

They watched the race in silence, and then:

"I can find room for you both in the victoria," suggested the girl.

"Better yet!" said Radwalader with alacrity, "provided Vane takes the strapontin. The only place where I feel my age is in my knees. Since you've never occupied Mademoiselle Tremonceau's strapontin, my dear Vane, you can have no idea of the physical discomfort attendant upon being a little lower than an angel. Think of my having won – even a placé! Shall we go now? I abhor the crush at the end. Give me a minute to cash my ticket, and then we'll look up the carriage."

"Do you speak French?" said Mademoiselle Tremonceau to Andrew, as Radwalader strolled off in the direction of the caisse.

"I seem to be able to say what I want when the occasion arises," he answered, "but I much prefer English. I am trying to adjust myself to new conditions, and I need all my energy for the task, without undertaking a strange language at the same time. You can have no idea how one's first visit to Paris sends preconceived notions tumbling about one's ears. So far, the Eiffel Tower is the only thing which looked as I expected it would. There's a surprise at every turn."

"For example?"

"Well, for example, French women. Even so far as my own town of Boston we know you're beautiful, and beautifully gowned, although nothing short of personal experience can teach one to what an extent. But I've always been brought up to believe that you were so hemmed in by conventionality, so strictly watched, that a chap wasn't allowed so much as to say 'Good-morning' to one of you, so long as you were unmarried, at least, except under the eyes of mothers and fathers and guardians. But it seems that it's not so at all."

As he spoke, Mademoiselle Tremonceau's lips parted in a little smile, and as he paused, she slipped in an apparently irrelevant question.

"Are you married, Mr. Vane?"

"Good gracious, no!" said Andrew. "I suppose I may as well confess that I'm only twenty."

Mademoiselle Tremonceau looked off across the track to where, in the interval preceding the next race, the restless thousands circled to and fro about the betting-booths of the pelouse, in the manner of a multitude of ants preparing to carry off a bulky bit of carrion. Then she drew her veil tight, with a charmingly feminine little moue which shortened her upper lip, tilted her chin, and set her eyelids fluttering.

"Twenty?" she echoed. "My age precisely. Tiens! C'est plutô drôlatique ça! Here's Mr. Radwalader, at last. Did you get your payment? Only twenty-two fifty? Well, that is your other louis back, at all events. Don't you want to run along after the carriage, as long as you know how? Mr. Vane will attend to me, I'm sure, and we'll meet you at the right of the main entrance. Here's the carriage number. Simon is the brigadier in charge to-day. Tell him it's for me, and you won't have to wait."

Radwalader undertook this commission with cheerfulness, although the pace at which he started toward the gate was distinctly incompatible with even the most liberal conception of "running along." Evidently he was not unique in his abhorrence of the crush at the end. Many were already making their way from the pesage, and the crowd behind the tribunes was densest about the sorties. Andrew and Mademoiselle Tremonceau followed him, five minutes later.

"I wonder if you mind my taking your arm?" asked the girl. "I'm always a little nervous, going out."

"With pleasure," said Andrew, adding, as her glove touched his sleeve, "I was going to suggest it, but I don't know French etiquette as yet, and I was afraid I might be presuming."

He was unconscious that, as they passed through the throng, many heads were turned, among them that of the young officer of chasseurs, who drew the end of his mustache between his lips, and gnawed it savagely. A perfectly appointed victoria, drawn up at the edge of the driveway, was awaiting them, with Radwalader standing at the step.

It was close upon seven o'clock when the two men emerged from Mademoiselle Tremonceau's apartments on the Avenue Henri Martin, and, hailing a passing cab, set off for the Tour d'Argent. Radwalader evinced no desire to talk, as they bowled across to and then down the Champs Elysées, and Andrew was conscious of being grateful for the silence. He wanted to think. He did not wholly understand the hour and a half which had just gone by. There had been no sign of Mademoiselle Tremonceau's family. Tea was served in a salon crowded with elaborate furniture, and softly illumined by rose-shaded electric globes on bronze appliques. Liveried servants came and went noiselessly, through tapestry curtains, and over an inlaid floor, polished to mirror-like brilliance, and strewn with mounted skins. The double marqueterie tea-table gleamed with a silver samovar and candlesticks, Baccarat glass, and thin, cream-coloured cups and saucers, with a crest in raised gold. Here and there, huge Gloire de Dijon roses leaned sleepily from silver vases, and, on a little stand, a great bunch of wild violets breathed summer from a blue Sèvres bowl. An indefinable atmosphere of luxury and languor pervaded the room. From the girl herself came a faint hint of some strangely sweet, but wholly unfamiliar, fragrance, which Andrew had not noted in the open air. He watched her, fascinated, as her slender white hands, with their blazing jewels, went to and fro among the cups and saucers. Her every movement was deliciously and suggestively feminine, as had been her tightening of her veil, an hour before, and exquisitely languid and deliberate, as if the day had been a thousand hours long instead of twenty-four. She said but little, Radwalader maintaining a running thread of his half-banter, half-philosophy, with its ingenious double-meanings and contortions of the commonplace, whereby, in some fashion of his own, he contrived to simulate and stimulate conviction.

Andrew had found, presently, that he was growing sleepy. The abrupt change from the cool air of outer afternoon to the perfume-laden atmosphere of Mademoiselle Tremonceau's salon, the drone of Radwalader's voice, the soft light, in contrast to the sunshine they had left – all contributed to his drowsiness. Once, for nearly a minute, the whole room melted, as it were, into one golden-gray mist, through which silver and glass and fabrics glowed only as harmonious notes of colour, and wherein the face of his hostess seemed to float like a reflection in troubled water. Then, as suddenly, every detail of his surroundings appeared to bulge at him out of the haze, and stood fixed and clear. For an instant he thought that Radwalader had raised his voice. He seemed to be speaking very loudly; but, when the first nervous start had passed, Andrew realized that this was his own imagining, and that neither of his companions had noticed his momentary somnolence.

At the end, he had held Mademoiselle Tremonceau's hand for a second beyond the limit of convention. She made no motion to withdraw it, but looked him frankly in the eyes.

"We've been neglecting you, haven't we?" she said. "Mr. Radwalader and I are such old friends, that we're inclined to selfishness, and apt to forget that our talk is not as interesting to others as to ourselves. Perhaps you'll come in to tea on Tuesday, about five, and I'll try to prove myself a more considerate hostess."

"Thank you," said Andrew. "I shall be very pleased – though I suspect you are undertaking the impossible."

The fiacre was passing the Rond Point when Radwalader spoke.

"This is the hour when Paris seems to me supremely to deserve her title of siren," he said. "In spring and summer, at least, I always try to pass it out of doors. There is a fascination for me, that never grows stale, in the coming of twilight, when the street-lamps begin to wink, and the cafés are lighting up. Did you ever feel softer air or see a more tenderly saffron sky? And this constant murmur of passing carriages, this hum of voices, broken, more often than anywhere else on earth, by laughter – isn't it life, as one never understands the word elsewhere? Isn't it full of suggestion and appeal? I've never been able to analyze the charm of the Champs Elysées at sunset, more nearly than to say that it seems to blot out one's remembrance of everything in the world that is sordid and commonplace, and to bring boldly to the fore the significance of all that is sweet and gay. Can you imagine considering the price of stocks or the drift of politics just now? I can't. I think of flowers, and Burgundy in slender-stemmed glasses, and tziganes playing waltz music, and women with good teeth, laughing. I smell roses and trèfle. I see mirrors, and candlesticks with openwork shades, silver over red, and sleek waiters bending down with bottles swathed in napkins. I hear violins and the swish of silk skirts. I taste caviar – and I feel– that I have underestimated Providence, after all!"

"There is no Paris but Paris, and Radwalader is her prophet!" laughed Andrew.

"That suggests a religion," said the other, "and I suppose, all said and done, that Paris is my religion. How did you like Mirabelle Tremonceau?"

"Even more than I expected."

"That's well – and very unusual. One almost always expects too much of a beautiful woman. Beauty has this in common with an inherited fortune – that it's apt to paralyze individual effort. Looking into mirrors and cutting coupons don't leave one much time for anything else. But she's exceptional. You're right in liking her, and what's more, you'll probably like her better and better as time goes on."

"She asked me if I was married," said Andrew.

"Did she?" answered Radwalader. "Well – are you?"

"No, assuredly not."

"Engaged, perhaps."

Instead of replying, Andrew glanced curiously at his companion, his lips set in a thin, straight line. Radwalader met his glance fairly.

"I beg your pardon, Vane," he said immediately. "That was unwarranted impertinence, which you're quite justified in resenting. I'm too prone to trifling, and the remark slipped out thoughtlessly. Pray consider it unsaid."

"With the best will in the world," said Andrew heartily. "There is nothing more admirable, I always think, than a frank apology."

In the words there was a faint, curiously suggestive echo of the tone in which Radwalader was wont to voice his glittering generalities.

CHAPTER IV
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

Madame Raoul Palffy would, in all probability, have been intensely surprised and entirely incredulous had any one informed her that hers was an irritating personality. But the fact remained. She was flagrantly complacent, and her placidity enraged one immeasurably, and goaded nervous temperaments to the verge of frenzy. Tradespeople had been known to grit their teeth and swear almost audibly at her, and at least two guards upon the Métropolitain had lost their positions because her leisurely manner of locomotion had moved them irresistibly to breaches of the courteous treatment enjoined upon them by the General Manager's notice to the public.

Madame Palffy was a large, florid person with a partiality for jet and crimson velvet, and whose passing, much in the manner of a frigate under full sail, was apt to be fatal to fragile ornaments standing unwarily too near to table-edges. About her there was always a suggestion of imminent explosion, due to her chronic shortness of breath, the extreme snugness of her gowns, and the fashion in which her pudgy palms, unmercifully compressed into white gloves two sizes too small, crowded desperately out of the little ovals across which the top buttons yearned toward their proper holes. Harmoniously, her face was fat, and dappled all over with ruddy pink, with the eyes, nose, and mouth crowded together in the centre, as if for sociability's sake, or in fear of sliding off the smooth slopes of her cheeks and chin. Her hair, with its variety of puffs and curls, appeared to have been laid out by a landscape gardener.

As for Raoul Palffy, all that one was apt to remember about him was the fact that he had married a Miss Barrister of Worcester. He was as completely eclipsed by this injudicious proceeding as if he had been elected Vice-President of the United States. He closely resembled a frog on the point of suffocation. With a loyalty worthy of a better cause, he imbibed vast quantities of the wine of his native Bordeaux, and became each year more shockingly apoplectic in appearance. Out of his wife's sight, he swelled magnificently, like a red balloon, and, between ignorance and exaggeration, was hardly on bowing terms with veracity: in her presence, he was another man. It was more than anything as if some one had taken a pin to the red balloon. As a natural result of their relative assertiveness, the couple moved, for the most part, not in the French society to which Monsieur Palffy's connections warranted their aspiring, but in that of the Colony, where his wife's pretensions and her deplorable mismanipulation of her adopted tongue were less conspicuously burlesque. After twenty years of Paris, Madame Palffy still said nom de plume and café noir.

It was to renew acquaintance with parents so curiously contrasted that Margery Palffy had returned from ten years of almost continuous residence in the States. To say that she proved a surprise to them would be to do but faint justice to the mental perturbation with which they surveyed this tall, self-possessed young person, who was, in practically every particular, a total stranger. Her father, with his characteristic lack of enterprise, had promptly given her up. He had neither the faculty of rendering, nor that of inspiring, affection; and this his daughter seemed, from the very outset, to understand, and tacitly to accept. They rarely met, except at dinner, and then with such a desperate lack of common interests as prevented any interchange of conversation beyond the merest commonplaces. Madame Palffy, on the contrary, made an earnest, if inept, attempt to fill, in her daughter's life, a place which she had long since forfeited; and, to the best of her ability, Margery strove to meet her half-way. But the gap made by their years of separation was now too wide to be effectually bridged. Madame Palffy was artificial from the summit of her elaborate coiffure to the tips of her inadequately ample shoes: her daughter, in every detail of her sound and sensible make-up, was a convincing product of all that is best, sincerest, and most wholesome in American education. The two could no more mix than oil and water. It was to Mrs. Carnby and her husband that Margery turned for sympathy, with an instant recognition of qualities appealingly akin to her own: and these two received her with open arms. For them, three months had sufficed to render Margery Palffy indispensable, and the same period served to prove to the girl, not only her need of friendship, but that here lay the means of its satisfaction. As Madame Palffy complacently observed to Mrs. Carnby.

"I think that Margery feels that there's no place like home."

And as Mrs. Carnby replied, with extreme relish:

"I'm sure of it. It must be a most comforting conviction!"

Margery Palffy, whose attitude toward the society to which she was a comparatively recent recruit was sufficiently indicated by her desire to be called "Miss" instead of "Mademoiselle," was accustomed to reserve her Sunday afternoons for Mr. Carnby. They would go to the Bois, to walk and watch the driving, or take a bateau mouche to Suresnes and return, or even slip out to Versailles or St. Germain. Jeremy was a man of small enthusiasms, but he shared with his wife a profound affection, of the type which is always pathetic in the childless, for this tall, slender girl, as fresh and sweet as a ripe fig, grown on the family thistle of the Palffys. An impulse, which, in the light of its results, could only be regarded as an inspiration, had prompted Madame Palffy to send her daughter, at the age of nine, to be educated in the States. A sound and rational school in Connecticut, and ten vacations in the superbly invigorating air of the North Shore under the care of a sensibly indulgent aunt, had forthwith performed a miracle. A thin, brown child, with an affected lisp, was now grown straight and tall, with an eye to measure a putt or a friend, a hand which knew the touch of a tiller and a rein, and a voice to win a dog, a child, or a man. Margery Palffy was very beautiful withal, with her russet-brown hair, her finely chiselled features, and her confident smile. She impressed one immediately as having arranged her hair herself – by bunching it all up together, and then giving it one inspirited twist which accomplished more than all the system in the world. Some one – not her mother! – knew what kind of gown she ought to wear, but – what was more important – she knew how to wear it. One would have said that her eyes were by Helleu and her nose by George du Maurier. Men looked to their hearts when her mouth was open, and to their consciences when it was closed – tight-closed! A laugh to make them worship her, a frown to make them despise themselves, a suggestion that she was capable of giving all she would expect from another, a somewhat stronger suggestion that she would be apt to expect a considerable deal, very clean-cut, very sane, very good form – such was Margery Palffy at what might be called her worst. As for Margery Palffy at her best, as yet even the most casual of Colony gossips had never more than hinted at a love-affair.

Madame Palffy having attended two church services, and observed with gratification that her new bonnet was far more imposing than the bonnets, old and new, of her fellow worshippers, had now sought the seclusion of her Empire boudoir. She was, above all things, consistent. In this sacred spot she ventured to lay aside her society manner, but, beyond this, she made no concessions to privacy. Her lounging-gown would have been presentable at a garden-party, and she devoted five minutes to rearranging her hair, before sinking massively upon the chaise-longue, and giving her thoughts free rein.

An unusually brilliant week had drawn to a close the evening before. Madame Palffy's dinner-table had groaned beneath its burden of silver and chiselled glass, and her box at "Louise" had presented to the auditorium such a background of white linen and vicuna as had sent poisonous darts to the hearts of a dozen ambitious and observant mothers.

The reason was not far to seek. From the moment of her début, two months before, Margery Palffy had been a tremendous success. Her beauty, her novelty, her shrewd wit and unfailing gaiety had swept through the Colony as a sickle through corn. Madame Palffy smiled to herself as she reviewed the past few weeks. Her daughter's had been a name to conjure with.

But, almost immediately, the smile became a sigh. Beneath her satisfaction in Margery's triumph, the ambitious lady felt that there was something lacking – and that something was a complete understanding of the girl herself. Since her return from the States, her mother had been slowly and reluctantly forced to the conviction that there was that in her nature which it was beyond one's power to grasp, and her apparent frankness and simplicity made the failure to read her doubly hard to analyze. Her interest in life and the society world about her was unquestionable. Fresh and unspoiled, she trod the social labyrinth undeviatingly, received the flatteries, even the open devotion, of half a hundred men with caution, and remained – herself. And Madame Palffy, to whom social success was a guarantee of a status so little lower than the seraphim as to make the difference unworthy of consideration, looked with growing admiration upon that of her beautiful daughter, and treasured every evidence thereof deep in her pompous heart. The difficulty lay in the fact that Margery impressed not only the world in general by her dignity, but abashed her ambitious parent as well. Madame Palffy was content to have her daughter talk in parables, if she would, and be as impartial as justice itself, but afterwards, when the lights were out and the guests had departed, she wanted the parables explained and the preferences laid bare. And this was precisely the confidential relation which she had never been able to establish. In public she figured naturally as Margery's confidant and mentor. In private she was, in reality, hardly nearer to her than was the newest of her new acquaintances.

In this state of affairs Madame Palffy distinctly perceived all the elements of a dilemma. As was naturally to be expected, her daughter had no sooner been restored to her, than the ambitious lady's mind began to wrestle with the problem of a suitable marriage – or "alliance," as she preferred to think of it. To this intent, she had selected the Vicomte de Boussac, whom she was wont to call, for no apparent reason, "one of her boys." Nothing was further from the Vicomte's intention than a marriage à la mode, imbued as he was with the national predilection for marriage au mois, but he had a habit – had De Boussac – of describing himself as enchanté with whatsoever might be proposed to him by one of the opposite sex. He was enchanté to meet Madame's beautiful daughter, enchanté to act as their escort on any and every occasion, enchanté, above all, at Madame's disregard of conventionality, whereby he was permitted to enjoy frequent tête-à-têtes with Margery. But he had an eye for the boundary-line. He smiled with inimitable charm at Madame Palffy's transparent hints, derived considerable diversion from her daughter's society, and, throughout, behaved in a manner nothing short of exemplary. At the end of three months, during which Margery's début had come and gone, the wistful matchmaker was frankly in despair.

A beneficent Providence had begrudged Madame Palffy a very liberal allowance of diplomacy, and, this failing, she was now resolved upon a desperate move, nothing less than a complete revelation of her plans, and an appeal to Margery for confirmation of her hopes. Whenever she considered this approaching ordeal, she seemed suddenly to lose a cube-shaped section of her vital organs. Just now the sensation was oppressive: for she had taken the decisive step that very morning, and requested Margery to attend her at five o'clock; and, over there on the mantel, the hands of her little ormolu clock were galloping inconsiderately over the last quarter before the fatal hour. Even as she glanced apprehensively at its face, the tinkle of the five strokes broke the silence, and she had barely time to secure the lavender salts from her dressing-table, when there came a tap at the door.

"Entrez!"

Margery had been walking, and with her entrance into the room came an indescribable suggestion of the open air. Her face was radiant, and the violets at her belt, brought suddenly from the slight chill without into the warmth of her mother's boudoir, seemed to heave a perfumed sigh of relief. The girl's brown eyes, aglow with youth and health, the proud poise of her head, and her firm hands, ungloved and guiltless of rings, were all in marked contrast to the heavy woman throned upon the divan, and languidly sniffing at her salts. It was a confronting of nature and art, unmistakably to the latter's disadvantage. Somehow, the hopelessness of her self-appointed task was more than ever apparent to the ambitious Madame Palffy.

"And where do you suppose I've been?" began Margery.

"Not to church, I know," said her mother. "I half expected to see you, but I was alone in the pew."

"No, not to church. Once a day is enough, surely. I've been with Mr. Carnby to the Jardin d'Acclimatation."

"Good gracious, my dear, what a plebeian expedition! What were you doing – visiting the serres?"

"Nothing half so dignified. We were at the menagerie, feeding the monkeys with gingernuts."

Madame Palffy simply gasped. There are some situations with which words are impotent to deal.

"Monkeys," continued Margery, "are adorable. They are sufficiently human to be typical, and then there's the advantage that one can stare at them to one's heart's content, without being thought ill-mannered. I saw lots of our friends – Mr. Radwalder, for instance, as vain as life and twice as loquacious; and one haughty young creature who held himself aloof, despising the rest, and taking no pains to conceal it. That was Monsieur de Boussac. His manner was so unmistakable that I actually found myself bowing, as our eyes met."

"Margery!"

"It's the solemn truth, mother; the Vicomte has a dual existence."

"But my dear child – the monkey-house! What could Jeremy Carnby have been thinking of, to take you to such a place?"

"He didn't. I took him."

"But one never knows what one might catch there – typhoid – or – or fleas, my dear!"

Madame Palffy shuddered, and returned to her salts.

"Fleas, mother? I never thought of that possibility, but if I had, it would only have been an added inducement. Never having met a flea, I am sure I should enjoy the experience. You know what somebody says? 'Incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God.' And, above all things, I adore courage."

Here was an auspicious beginning to a serious conversation! In sheer desperation, Madame Palffy assumed her society manner.

"Margery," she said, "you're quite old enough to take care of yourself; though, to speak frankly, you have a somewhat peculiar method of doing so. Let us abandon the monkeys for the present. I have something to say to you. I – I – "

She hesitated for an instant, and then proceeded resolutely.

"I've been thinking of you a great deal, of late, and you must forgive me if I speak unreservedly to you. It's because of my affection for you, and my deep interest in your welfare."

She did not see the slight contraction of her daughter's eyebrows, and it was well for her peace of mind that she did not. It argued ill for a sympathetic reception of her carefully formulated appeal.

"I'm sure, my dear mother, that it's very far from my desire to resent anything you say. Why should I? Has any one a better right to speak – er – unreservedly?"

"I've been more than proud of you always," continued Madame Palffy, "more than proud, my dear. You've been a great comfort to me, and, if I do say it, a wonderful success in the Colony. I remember no débutante in ten years who has received so much attention, and the fact that it has not spoiled you shows how worthy of it all you are. And now," she added, with an uneasy smile, "for la grande serieux."

Again that curious drawing together of Miss Palffy's eyebrows.

"Le grand serieux?" she repeated. She detested feeling her way in the dark, and now groped dexterously for a clue. "That's usually taken to mean something quite alien to our present conversation."

"Not at all," said her mother, catching at this opening, "not at all alien, my dear. In fact, Margery, what I want to ask you is this. Er – have you ever thought of marrying?"

"Yes – often," said Margery promptly.

The two words were characteristic of their curious relations, as Madame Palffy realized, with a little inward sigh of despair. They answered her question fully, and they answered it not at all.

"You don't understand me, perhaps," she went on. "I mean, have you ever seen – here in Paris, for instance – any particular man whom it has seemed to you you might – er – love? Now – there is De Boussac – "

"Ah!"

"Wait a moment, my dear. Let me finish. I'll not conceal from you that it has been a dear wish of mine to see you married to him. I've known him since he was a baby. He's titled, rich, very talented, and more than moderately good-looking. His position is irreproachable, and his family goes straight back indefinitely."

She stopped nervously. The speech which she had mentally prepared, descriptive of De Boussac's desirability, had been some ten times this length. In some fashion, Margery's eyes had shorn it of verbiage, and reduced it, as it were, to its lowest terms.

"But, my dear mother, this is the first inkling I've had of any such idea. I can't imagine that Monsieur de Boussac has ever breathed a word on the subject. Don't you think the first mention should come from him? I've no reason to suppose that he cares a straw for me."

"He does – I know he does," broke in Madame Palffy eagerly. "You're quite wrong in supposing he's never spoken of it. Remember, these things are managed differently over here. You have the American idea. In Paris one speaks first to the girl's parents."

Margery shrugged her shoulders. A kind of instinct told her that she must ask no questions if she would be told no lies.

"And there's another objection," she said. "I don't want to marry him. He may have money, but money isn't everything. Indeed, it's entered very near the foot of my list of the things to be desired in life. As to position, my own is sufficiently good to make his immaterial. We go back indefinitely ourselves, you know; although, to be sure, I've found some things in the family records which seemed to suggest that it might have been better not to have gone back so far. Last, but very far from least, I don't love him, and, in view of the fact that, if he really had the slightest feeling for me, I should, in all probability, have known of it long ago, I must say, my dear mother, that your suggestion strikes me as having all the elements of a screaming farce."

At this point Madame Palffy applied a minute handkerchief to her eyes, and began to weep softly.

"How cruelly you speak!" she moaned, "and I – I meant it all for the best."

Fortunately, Mrs. Carnby had never seen Madame Palffy cry. As it was, she imagined that nothing about that lady could be more irritating than her smile. But Margery, under whose faultlessly-fitting jacket beat the tenderest and most considerate of hearts, was moved. She watched her mother in silence for a moment, and then went across to the divan, and, kneeling beside it, took Madame Palffy's available hand in hers.

"I did speak cruelly," she said, "and I'm sorry. Let me see if I can't put it more considerately, so that you'll understand. Love is – has always been – to me the most sacred thing on earth. I've watched, as every girl must watch, for its coming, believing that its touch would transform all life. There can be, it seems to me, but one man in the world able to do that, and I'm content to wait for him, without trying to hurry the future, or aid fate or Providence, whichever it may be, in the disposal of my heart. I've been glad all my life that we were not rich enough for our means to be an object. Of course, poverty has barred many out from happiness, but it pleases me to think that when a man seeks me, there can be no doubt that it is for myself alone. Not only that, but I've hoped that he would be poor as well, and it's been my pride that, when I searched my heart, I found that wish deep within it, without affectation, without a hint of uncertainty. I'm old-fashioned, I suppose, and out of touch with the times, but I hold the faith that was before riches or social position came into the world – I hold to love, the love of a strong man for a pure woman, the love of a good woman for an honest man! Let me but start honestly, with no motive that I am ashamed to tell, no thought governing my action save reverence for those three great responsibilities – love, marriage, and motherhood, and I have no fear of what may come."

As the girl was speaking, Madame Palffy's sobs grew fainter, and finally she forgot to dab at her eyes with the morsel of lace. She was interested.

"It's this great reverence which I have for love," continued Margery, "that prompted me to answer impatiently when you spoke of Monsieur de Boussac. You didn't mean to hurt me, of course: I know that. But, to me, it was as if you'd torn away the veil before my holy of holies, and cast out the image I had cherished there, and were thrusting a grinning golden idol in its place. I want love to come into my life freely – not to be invited to dinner, and announced by the butler. There will be no question in my mind when it has really come, no measuring of the man with a yardstick. I shall feel that he is for me, even before he asks me to be his. Above all, the question must come from his lips, and the answer be for his ears alone. No man loving me as I would be loved would be content to employ an ambassador."

Here Madame Palffy came to herself, and moaned again.

"I don't mean to reproach you, mother. I believe, and I'm very glad to believe, that you've always had my happiness in view. But, in the nature of things, there are many points upon which our ideas are bound to differ, and this is one. You thought it best that I should be educated in America, and you mustn't be surprised to find me American as a result. Look back. Do you realize that I've not spent six full months in Paris since I was a little girl? Now that I've come back to you, I can't readjust all my ideas in a moment. I want to please you, dear, in any way I can, but I'm an American all through, and you – well, perhaps you're more French than you realize, yourself. We must try to grow together, but in many ways it will not be easy. We must be patient with each other, dear."

"I see what you mean," said Madame Palffy mournfully. "We're as far apart as the poles."

"Not quite that, I think," answered Margery, with a smile, "but, in some respects, three thousand miles. Let us try to remember that: it will make things easier."

"It's a terrible disappointment to me," came lugubriously from the handkerchief.

"I'm sorry," answered Margery, "very sorry. But I'm sure that I could never love Monsieur de Boussac, and sure that I could never even believe in his love unless he himself should tell me of it. I think we understand each other now, mother. If I'd had any idea of this before, I might have spared you this talk. But, painful as it has been, it has, at all events, brought us nearer together. Don't let us speak of it again."

Then Madame Palffy unaccountably touched her zenith.

"No," she agreed, rising majestically from the divan, "no, we'll not speak of it again. It must make no change between us. I love you very dearly, Margery, and I wish I could have seen you his wife, but if it cannot be, that's all there is to it. Let's dress for dinner, my dear," and, bending over, she kissed the air affectionately, a half-inch from her daughter's cheek. "You're a strange girl," she added, "and I don't pretend to understand you. But choose your own husband. I shall like him for your sake."

As Margery left the room, Madame Palffy turned to the mirror, and surveyed with a sigh the ravages which this emotional half-hour had made in her appearance. For the three following days she was a mute martyr, and relished the rôle immeasurably.

Margery, dressing for dinner, hummed softly to herself, smiling as no one of her Paris friends had ever seen her smile.

 

"'Ah, Moon of my Delight, that knows no wane,

The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again'" —

 

Andrew Vane had played an accompaniment to that a hundred times, in her aunt's big shore house at Beverly.

CHAPTER V
THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT

On the following Thursday morning, the bell of St. Germain-des-Prés was striking the hour of eleven when Monsieur Jules Vicot opened his eyes, instantly closed them again, and groaned. It was the hour which he disliked more than any other of the twenty-four, this of awakening, and from day to day it did not differ in essential details. The weather might be hot or cold, fair or foul, wet or dry – that was one thing and not important. What was important – what, in the estimation of Monsieur Vicot, distinguished this hour so unenviably from its fellows, was the variety of distressing physical symptoms which, in his own person, inevitably accompanied it. They were symptoms long familiar to Monsieur Vicot – a feeling under his eyelids which appeared to indicate the presence of coarse sand; a throbbing of the heart which seemed, inexplicably, to be taking place in his throat; a dull pain at his temples and back of his ears which prompted him to hold his head sedulously balanced, lest a sudden movement to right or left occasion an acuter pang; finally, a taste on his tongue which suggested a commingling of fur, blotting-paper, and raw quinces.

Presently Monsieur Vicot opened his eyes once more and fixed them upon the window, from which, from his position, nothing was visible save sky of an intense blue. Against this background a number of small reddish-brown blotches swam slowly to and fro, and among these tiny whorls of a light gray colour expanded and contracted with inconceivable rapidity. At one time these symptoms had caused him peculiar uneasiness. Now he ignored them. They were less disturbing to his equanimity than the remarkable twitching of his fingers. For two years he had made a point of keeping his hands in the side pockets of his jacket, save when he found it absolutely necessary to use them. He no longer made gestures. They are desirable as aids to expression, but only when steady.

The majority of men, in waking, apply themselves to consideration of the day which lies before them. It was Monsieur Jules Vicot's custom, on the contrary, to undertake a mental review of the night which lay behind. The review was not always complete. Often there were gaps, and, more frequently, he found himself completely at a loss to account for his return to his room on the cinquième of 70, Rue St. Benoit, and the indisputable fact that he was in bed, with his clothes reposing, with something not unrelated to order, on the solitary chair.

Now, as he surveyed it, he assured himself for the thousandth time that it was not a cheerful room. Abundant sunlight, the recompense of Nature for six flights of stairs, was its sole redeeming virtue. For the rest, everything belonging to Monsieur Vicot was applied to some use entirely foreign to the original purpose for which it had been designed. An ink-stand served him as a candlestick, his chair was at once table and clothes-rack, a ramshackle sofa played the rôle of bed, and a frouzy plush table-cover was his rug. An astonishing accumulation of cigarette-ends and empty bottles suggested slovenliness in the occupant. On the contrary, they stood for his economical instincts. It is not every one who knows that twenty cigarette-ends make a pipe-ful of tobacco, and that as many empty brandy-flasks may be exchanged for a full half-pint, but the knowledge, if rare, is useful.

"It is a pig-pen," said Monsieur Jules Vicot to himself, "and very appropriate at that!"

Then he set to work upon his matutinal review of the preceding night. His recollections were more than usually hazy. After a wretched dinner at La Petite Chaise, rendered yet more unpalatable by the proprietor's unpleasant references to certain previous repasts, as yet unpaid, came a distinct hour or so of leaning on the parapet of the Quai d'Orléans, in dreamy contemplation of a man clipping a black poodle on the cobblestones below; then another period, of gradually lessening clearness, in a little wine-shop on the Rue de Beaune; then – nothing.

"Well, I was drunk," reflected Monsieur Vicot; but again manifested his dissimilarity from the majority of men by not committing himself in respect to his intentions for the future.

He arose with an air of languor, yawned, looked dubiously at one trembling hand, shook his head, and then surveyed himself in a triangular bit of looking-glass tacked against the wall.

Candour is oftentimes a depressing thing – particularly in a mirror. Monsieur Vicot's glass showed him a clean-shaven face almost devoid of colour; eyes, the blackness of which seemed to have soaked out, like water-colour through blotting-paper, into gray-blue circles on the lower lids; hair almost white; a thin nose with widely dilated nostrils; a tremulous mouth; and a weak, receding chin. It was a face which might have been handsome before becoming a document with the signatures of the seven cardinal vices written large upon it. Now it was evidence which even Monsieur Vicot could not ignore. He leered defiantly at it, mixed himself a stiff drink of cheap brandy and water, and forthwith applied himself to his toilet.

Seeing the result which he presently achieved, one perceived him to be a man of a certain ability under crushing limitations. With a broken comb, a well-worn brush, which he applied, with admirable impartiality, to both his hair and his coat, a morsel of soap, and some cold water, Monsieur Vicot accomplished what was little short of a miracle; and when, a half-hour later, he emerged upon the Rue St. Benoit and turned toward the boulevard, his appearance was akin to respectability. Luck and his face were against him, but incidental obstacles he contrived to overcome.

He took a mazagran and a roll at the Deux Magots, fortified himself with a package of vertes, and swung aboard a passing tram. At one o'clock he was sauntering down the Rue de Villejust, with his hands in his pockets. Suddenly he stopped, looked intently for an instant at a certain window on a level with his eye, and then went on at a brisker gait. He had abruptly become cheerful, and that for no apparent reason. There is, commonly, nothing particularly enlivening in the aspect of a blue jar in an apartment window; yet that, and nothing else, was what had arrested the attention of Monsieur Jules Vicot, and brought the tune he was whistling to his lips.

Mr. Thomas Radwalader occupied a rez de chaussée on the Rue de Villejust, which differed from the ordinary run of Paris apartments in that its doorway gave directly on the street, independent of the loge de concierge, and, what was more important, of the concierges themselves. Yet the latter held that Radwalader was a gentleman of becomingly regular habits. He kept one servant, a bonne on the objectively safe side of fifty, who cooked and marketed for him; maintained, throughout his quarters, a neatness which would have put the proverbial pin to shame; and, in general, ministered to his material well-being more competently than the average man-servant. That she was not likely to wear his clothes, use his razors, or pilfer his tobacco was half a bachelor's domestic problem solved at the very outset. On the debit side of the account, she pottered eternally, and was an ardent advocate of protracted conversation; but these tendencies Radwalader had managed, in the course of their five years of association, to temper to a considerable degree; so that now she was as near to perfection in her particular sphere as a mere mortal is apt to be. Her name was Eugénie Dufour, and in her opinion the entire system of mundane and material things revolved about the person of Thomas Radwalader.

In view of his avowed love of luxury, the latter's quarters were distinguished by severe, almost military, simplicity. Without exception, the rooms were carpeted, but there were no draperies either at doors or windows. The salon, of which the solitary window opened on the street, was Louis Seize in style, with straight-backed chairs, upholstered in dark-red brocade, a grand piano which had belonged to Radwalader's mother, and a large print of the period, simply framed, in the exact centre of each wall-panel. There were no ornaments, save a white Sèvres bust of Marie Antoinette on the mantel, two reading-lamps, and a few odds and ends of silver, ivory, and enamel, which had the guilty air of unavoidable gifts, rather than the easy assurance of chosen bibelots. Some books in old bindings, a stand of music, and a tea-table with its service – and that was all.

Separated from this salon by double doors was what had formerly been a bedroom, but which now, for want of a better name, Radwalader called La Boîte. This was his sanctum sanctorum, wherein one might reasonably have looked to find the confusion dear to the happy estate of bachelorhood. But here again was evident, though in a lesser degree, the austerity which characterized the salon. One naturally expected a litter of periodicals, pipes, and papers; but, on the contrary, the large table was almost clear, and the interior of the writing-desk, which stood open by the window, revealed only symmetrical piles of note-paper, envelopes, and blotters, and writing paraphernalia of the ordinary office variety. In the chimney-place was a brazier on a low tripod, and from this, each morning, the worthy Eugénie removed a quantity of ashes – ashes which had entered the room in the form of Radwalader's correspondence of the previous day. In one corner stood a small safe, and on top of this were boxes of cigars, and cigarettes of eight or ten varieties, but all arranged as methodically as the contents of the desk. The remaining wall-space was occupied by book-shelves, in which no single volume was an inch out of line.

The opinion of Radwalader's concierges as to the regularity of his habits was seemingly based on fact. Eugénie lived with her brother in the Chaussée d'Antin, and went to and fro every day, regardless of weather, on top of the Rue Taitbout-La Muette tram. With characteristic regularity and promptitude, she had never once failed, during the five years of her service, to awaken her patron at eight o'clock. Radwalader invariably replied with a cheerful "Bien!" and five minutes later was splashing in his bath. His coffee was served at nine, his mornings, in general, spent in La Boîte. He took déjeuner at one, and then went out, returning only to dress for dinner, which he rarely had at home. Midnight found him again in La Boîte, bending over a book or some papers at his desk. Then only it was that the door of his safe stood open. In all this there was, assuredly, no evidence of aught but tastes so quiet as to savour of asceticism. But then Radwalader was a man who believed in a place for everything and everything in its place.

His visitors were few, save only on Thursday afternoons, when he was known to be at home. Then a dozen or so of men lounged in his salon, which was reinforced for the occasion by chairs from the other rooms, and several little tables for whiskey and tobacco. Eugénie did not appear. They were served, when there was need of service, by a middle-aged man-servant with a furtive eye and a hand that trembled nervously when handling glasses and decanters; for which reason those of Radwalader's guests to whom the situation was most familiar preferred to help themselves. They reproached him, when more important topics were exhausted, with the apparent decrepitude of this retainer, whose name was Jules. But their host made it plain that he had good and sufficient reasons for employing him. He had grown up in his mother's family in Philadelphia, said Radwalader, first as page and then as butler. When the Radwalader millions went by the board, Jules had remained with the family through sheer loyalty, accepting but half the wages he had formerly earned. Once he had even saved Radwalader's life in the surf at Atlantic City. Later he had taken to drink, gone rapidly to pieces, and, at last, had been discharged as a hopeless case. They had given him a reference, for charity's sake, on the strength of which he had found a place as travelling valet; but once in Paris, his old weakness had returned, and so he had lost his position, and never chanced upon another. Then Radwalader had found him stranded, begging on the boulevards, and, for the sake of the old days, had given him clothes and money, and found him occasional employment, such as this Thursday service, by means of which he contrived to eke out a living, such as it was. At other times, when he was not drunk, he drove a cab for the Compagnie Urbaine. (This last, the most incongruous feature of Radwalader's explanation, was, curiously enough, the only one which had the slightest foundation in fact!)

"My best quality is gratitude," Radwalader concluded. "He saved my life; so I give him such of my clothes as become unfit for publication, and pay him five francs every Thursday for not being of the least assistance. I'm afraid you'll have to put up with him. It's a case of 'love me, love my dog.'"

And this, under its thin veneer of cynicism, was taken as an indication of a very admirable instinct on Radwalader's part, for which men admired him. They continued to make fun of Jules, but, after this defence of him, they nodded to him on entering, and spoke to him by name.

Andrew Vane joined the gathering in Radwalader's rooms on the Thursday following their Sunday at Auteuil. It was observable that, without exception, the guests were men who had done, or were going to do, something out of the ordinary. No one of them seemed to be in the present tense of achievement. They talked slowly, choosing their words with noticeable care, with an eye to their effect, and switching ever and anon in a new direction, as irresponsibly as a fly in mid-air. To Andrew the atmosphere was not only that of another city, but of another world. From art to literature, from literature to music, from music to the stage, the talk drifted, punctuated with names of men and things whereof he did not remember ever to have heard. Save for their air of having but just stepped out of a barber's chair, they were men of a general type familiar to him – well dressed, evenly poised. The scene might have been Boston or New York, save for one thing: in all that was said, there was never the most remote hint of actual interest. The opinions were like those of more than usually brilliant schoolboys, putting into their own phraseology certain fundamental axioms. The speakers, with the sole exception of Radwalader, gave the impression of being unutterably tired, and of playing with words with the unique intent of passing the time. Your American has but little leisure for grammar, and less for eloquence, but in what he says there is always present the vivifying spark of vital and intimate concern. His theories are jewels in the rough, but one is conscious of the ceaseless clink-clink of the tool which is busily transforming them into fame and fortune. The men in Radwalader's salon were toying with gems long since cut and polished, whose sole virtue lay in the new light caught by their facets, as the result of some unexpected turn. Radwalader himself went farther. He combined the confidence of the American in his future with that of the Frenchman in his past. Andrew had thought him cynical, but he gained by contrast with his companions. The others seemed merely to be giving thought to what they said, but he to be saying what he thought.

"I'm almost remorseful at having asked you to join us this afternoon," he began, when the introductions were over. "Whenever I see a man in a strange crowd, it reminds me of society's phrase at parting – 'I've enjoyed myself immensely!' It has the distinction of being the only polite remark which has any claim upon veracity. Usually, one hasn't enjoyed anything else! Of course, for the moment, you feel like a brook-trout in salt water. But it's a crowd that I think you'll like, when the grossly overestimated element of novelty wears off. Let me tell you, in a word, who they are, and what they stand for. That's De Boussac at the piano. He knows four major and two minor chords in every key of the gamut, and contrives to fashion, out of the six, an accompaniment for anything you may ask of him. Beside him, leaning over the music, is Lister. He's a would-be playwright, with a mother who has gained the nickname of the 'Jail-breaker,' because she never finishes a sentence. You'll meet her some day and be amused. To the left is Rafferty – who's popular because, just now, brogue happens to rhyme with vogue. Then, Clavercil. He thinks he's not understood, without realizing that his sole ground for dissatisfaction lies in the fact that he is. He's a fool, pure and simple, who inherited a fortune from his uncle – a bully old chap who never made a mistake in his life, and only the one I have mentioned, in his death. Next, Wisby – who paints things as they are not, and will be famous when the public gets educated down to him. The man helping himself to whiskey is Berrith. He wrote 'The Foibles of Fate' in the early '90's, and has been living ever since on the dregs of its success – a 'one-book author' with a vengeance. That's Ford, by the window, with the red hair. He's a crank on aerial navigation, and says his air-ship will be the solution of the problem. I've already christened it 'Eve,' with an eye to its share in another fall of man."

Radwalader lowered his voice.

"On your right is Barclay-Jones. Barclay was his mother's name, and when he came abroad he hyphenated it with his father's. The combination always reminds me of a rather stylish tug-boat with its towline attached to a scow on a mud-flat. The man listening to him is Gerald Kennedy, the singer. He hasn't advanced beyond the Tommy Tucker stage yet, but he's a good sort, an Englishman, a friend of Mrs. Carnby and of the Ratchetts. On my left are Norrich, Peake, and Pfeffer, in the order named. Pfeffer is the only married man in the crowd. He married in haste, and his leisure is employed to the full. He gets his pin-money from his wife, and a prick of the pin goes with every franc. Norrich is on the staff of the Paris Herald. Peake, like Clavercil, is simply the disbursing agent of an inherited fortune."

Radwalader paused, lighted a cigarette, and smiled at Andrew frankly.

"Finis!" he said. "Do you think me very uncharitable? I hope not. It seems so much better to get men's bad qualities out of the way and done with at the start, and then to find out their good points, one by one, in a succession of pleasant surprises. It's a crowd you'll like, when once you get the point of view. You've been used to poise, and at first you won't like pose. But, after all, the difference lies only in the eye – a pun's only permissible when it tells the truth. We all pose over here. You will, yourself, if you stay long enough. It's as contagious as smallpox. And, by the way, I was talking with Peake about you only yesterday. He's going to the States next week, and wants to find some one to occupy his apartment while he's away. If you're not thinking of remaining at the Ritz, you couldn't do better than to take it. It's a charming little place, on the Rue Boissière, near the Place d'Iéna, perfectly furnished, and with a balcony and bath. Of course, the rent's no object to him. All he wants is some one to keep it aired and clean."

"It can't do any harm to ask him about it," said Andrew. "To tell you the truth, I've rather been thinking of doing something of the kind."

"No sooner said than done," agreed Radwalader, and, leaning forward across Norrich, he added: "I say, Peake, move up here, will you?

"I've been telling Vane about your apartment," he continued, as Peake drew close to them, dragging his chair by the arms, "and he seems to think he might like to have a look at it. He's over here for quite a time, you know, and he certainly couldn't be as comfortable anywhere else."

"I hope you'll take the place, Mr. Vane," said Peake. "I've always maintained that a man of my tastes had no business in the States; but it seems I have, after all. I think I told you, Radwalader – my late, lamented Aunt Esther, you know. She threatened to leave me nothin' but her good will, and now she's popped off, saddlin' me with everythin' she had in the world."

"That's what she meant by her good will, probably," observed Radwalader.

"P'r'aps," said Peake, with a little nod. "But the c'lamity's just as great. She was a good-hearted creature, but she belonged to the black-walnut and marble-group period. Her sideboard weighed a ton, and she had wax flowers in her 'parlour.' And I'm to sell nothin', my good man! It's all to go to my wife! Why, the very thought's enough to keep any woman from marryin' me. Oh, my dear Radwalader, I mourn my find, I do indeed."

"But about the apartment?" suggested Radwalader.

"Oh! Well, all I can say, Mr. Vane, is that I'm sure you'll be comfortable. It's a modest box, at best; but it suits me, and will probably suit you. 'Man wants but little here below' – a bath, sunlight, a good bed, and cleanliness – that's all. You'll find 'em at my place. Radwalader'll get you a valet de chambre, no doubt. I'd throw mine in, if I hadn't already thrown him out. The wife of my concierge is doin' for me till I go. I can't say more. Two hundred francs a month. I'll be back by the first of August – I can't miss Trouville, you know, Radwalader – and the chances are I'll have to evict you, Mr. Vane. I know I wouldn't leave that apartment except at the business end of a pitch-fork!"

"It sounds like the very thing I want," said Andrew, with a smile at the other's eloquence.

"And there's actually some prospect of your getting it," drawled Radwalader. "What an exceptional animal you are, Vane!"

"Come 'round to-morrow mornin' to breakfast, both of you," said Peake. "Then you can have a look over the place, Mr. Vane, and judge for yourself. If you like it, we'll clinch a bargain on the spot."

"Very well," agreed Andrew. "Shall I stop for you, Mr. Radwalader?"

"By all means. About twelve."

"Then that's settled!" observed Peake, with an air of profound satisfaction. "I positively must have a whiskey, Radwalader. I'm quite exhausted. I haven't talked so much business in a year."

For an hour the conversation was general, and presently thereafter Radwalader was alone. For a time he stood by the salon table, idly fingering a paper-cutter and scowling. Then he stepped noiselessly to the door, listened briefly but intently, and abruptly flung it open and looked out into the antichambre.

"Not this time!" observed Jules laconically, from the dining-room beyond, where he was languidly polishing wine-glasses.

"I'm glad to see you profit by experience," retorted Radwalader. "Come here."

The faithful servitor came slowly across the hallway, glanced about the empty salon, helped himself liberally from the whiskey decanter, swallowed the raw spirit at a gulp, and flung himself heavily into a chair.

"Fire away!" he remarked. "I hope it's something worth while. I don't mind saying I'm hard up."

CHAPTER VI
A REVOLT SUPPRESSED

"I've passed the window every day for a week," continued Monsieur Jules Vicot, "because I hardly thought you were in earnest in your threat to throw me over, and when I saw the jar there again, this morning, I found I was quite right. You'd thought better of it – eh? You wanted to see me. It's just as well, perhaps – for both of us."

There was a suggestion of defiance in his tone which contrasted curiously with the tremor of his hand, as he lit a cigarette.

"I might have taken the liberty of calling on one of your Thursdays, without any summons," he added, as Radwalader made no reply. As he spoke, he glanced up, met the other's steady eyes, and immediately looked away again.

"It doesn't do to push a partner too far," he concluded, with the hint of a whine.

There was a long pause, which was evidently extremely disconcerting to Monsieur Vicot. He removed his cigarette from his lips several times, and as often replaced it, his hand trembling violently. Radwalader never took his eyes from him, but sat, smiling slightly, with his elbow resting on the arm of his chair, and his hand raised and open. There was not a quiver in his fingers, a fact which was duly noted, as it was intended to be, by his companion.

"Have you lost your tongue?" demanded the latter presently, with manifest irritation.

"Oh, by no means, my excellent Jules," answered Radwalader, easily. "I was simply reflecting how I might submit a few facts for your consideration in a manner which would render a repetition of the communication unnecessary. There seems to be some misunderstanding. I think I'm not slow to appreciate another's meaning. I make bold to suppose that you desire to intimidate me?"

Monsieur Vicot fidgeted uneasily, discarded his cigarette, lit another, shrugged his shoulders, and gripped the arms of his chair.

"I think it's time we understood each other," resumed Radwalader, still smiling. "It's long since we spoke of certain things – trivialities, maybe, such as forgery, theft, and blackmail – "

"As to blackmail – " put in the other, with an attempt at bravado.

"Exactly," agreed Radwalader. "You're about to say that we're in the same boat. So we are, but not – to quote the old epigram – but not with the same skulls. I'm not a fool, my good Jules. You are. I walk in the bed of running streams, you in fresh-fallen snow. The inference is plain. My hold upon you is in black and white, and deposited, as you know, in my safe-deposit vault at the bank. It's as comforting as an insurance policy. In case of my sudden disappearance – "

"Oh, chuck it!" said Vicot.

"Whereas your hold upon me," swerved off Radwalader pleasantly, "also as you know, is as substantial as the cigarette-ash you've just flicked upon my carpet."

"Chuck that, too," put in Vicot, sullenly. "What's the use of all this talk? You've the whip-hand, Radwalader, and you know it."

"Then remember it, by God!" exclaimed the other. His assumption of smiling pleasantly was gone like a wisp of smoke. He had risen suddenly, and, with his fist clenched on the table-edge, was leaning over his companion as if he would crush him by the very force of his personality. His steel-blue eyes had hardened, and at the corners of his lips hovered a sneering smirk which suggested a panther.

"Then remember it," he reiterated, "and remember it for all time! What I say, I say once. After that – I act. You snivelling drunkard! You wretched, nerve-racked lump of bluff! You threaten me? Did you suppose I'd forgotten that I could have sent you to the galleys five years ago, just because I haven't mentioned the fact since then? Do you imagine I can't send you there now? Do you think I'd hesitate for a wink about throwing you overboard, body and soul, if I didn't find you useful? Do you fancy I'm afraid of you? God! What a maggot it is! Look at those hands, you whelp! I've seen you grovel, and I've heard you whine, and what a man will do once he'll do again under like conditions. It's too late for you to pit your will against mine, my friend! You gave yourself away five years ago, when first I put on the thumbscrews, and I know at just which turn of them you're going to whimper again!"

To all appearance, the white heat of Radwalader's passion was gone as suddenly as it had come. With the last words, his face resumed its normal expression of placidity, and, before he continued, he began to pace slowly up and down the room, with his thumbs in the pockets of his trousers. Vicot had made no motion, save, at the other's contemptuous reference to his hands, to fold his arms. Now he sank a little farther into his chair, and, under lowered lids, his eyes slid to and fro, following his companion's march.

"If you didn't understand the situation before," resumed Radwalader, "it's probable that you do now. As it happens, I don't fear God, man, or devil; but even if I were as timid as a rabbit, I wouldn't fear you! You're a convenience, that's all – an instrument to do that part of my work which is a trifle too dirty for a gentleman's hands. So long as you do it to my satisfaction, I see fit to pay you, and pay you well; and you're free to drink like the swine you are, and go to the devil your own way. But the indispensable man doesn't exist, my good Jules, and the moment you kick over the traces, out you go! I discarded you last month because I don't like people who listen at doors, even if I'm not fool enough to give them an opportunity of hearing anything. If I've chosen to call for you again, it's simply that I've work for you, and assuredly not because I'm in any fear of consequences. Pray get that into your head as speedily, and keep it there as long, as possible. There are plenty of others to take your place. As for partners, you're as much mine as the coyote is the wolf's, and no more. So you've said enough on that point."

"What's the job?" put in Vicot, as the other paused.

"If you haven't forgotten certain things in the past few weeks, you know what it means when I sit close to one man and talk only to him whenever you're in the room."

"Never to forget his face," answered Vicot, as if responding to a question in the catechism. "Is it another game of shadow?"

"To an extent, yes. But it will be more in the open than usual. You won't have to skulk. Do you think you can accustom yourself to the change?"

"Get on!" said Vicot impatiently. "I suppose it's the young chap?"

"Yes. He's to take Remson Peake's apartment, in all probability – or some other. And you, my excellent Jules, are to be his valet de chambre."

"Humph!" commented the other, without any evidence of surprise. "And the pay?"

"What's usual from him, I suppose," said Radwalader, "and from me double."

"Say three hundred francs a month, all told?"

"About that."

Radwalader seated himself again, and, leaning forward, continued more earnestly, making a little church and steeple of his linked fingers.

"First, visitors – their names, or, if not that, their appearance, as accurately as possible. Next, letters – both incoming and outgoing – particularly the latter. Steam them, and take copies whenever it seems best. Keep an eye especially on anything relating to – well, to women in general. If any come to the apartment, make good use of your remarkable faculty for eavesdropping, which was so lamentably misapplied here. Keep your hands off his tobacco and wine. Be respectful. Get him to talk as much as possible, and remember what he says. Stay sober – if you can. And report to me immediately if anything important turns up."

"When do I begin?"

"I can't tell. In a few days, probably. I'll let you know."

Vicot rose slowly.

"What a blackguard you are, Radwalader!" he said, almost admiringly.

"That's not the greatest compliment I've known you to pay me," drawled Radwalader. "Imitation is the sincerest flattery."

The other poured himself another half-glass of whiskey, set it on the table-edge, and stood looking down at it.

"And I was once a gentleman!" he said.

"Oh, don't get maudlin," answered Radwalader. "We were all of us something unprofitable once. The main fact, by your own confession, is that, as a gentleman, you couldn't make enough to keep body and soul together; and that, as a scalawag, you can turn over three hundred francs a month. The world is full of gentlemen. They're a drug on the market. But accomplished scoundrels are rare, my good Vicot."

"You'll have a deal to answer for one of these days, Radwalader."

Radwalader shrugged his shoulders.

"One never has to answer so long as there are no questions asked," he said flippantly. "You'd better take your tipple and go home. Preaching doesn't become you in the least degree."

"I want to know," said Vicot slowly, taking up his glass, "what you mean to do. I've pulled many a chestnut out of the fire for you, Radwalader, and if I haven't burned my fingers in doing it, I've soiled them enough, God knows. You haven't any scruple about calling me names, and I take your insults because I'd starve to death if I didn't. But I've a conscience, and it cuts me, now and again."

"Bank-notes make good court-plaster," observed Radwalader.

"Yes, but there are some things which I've done that I won't do again. I don't want to be mixed up in another affair like that of young Baxter. Do you ever think of that morning at the Morgue?"

"I wasn't made to look backward," said Radwalader. "Providence put my eyes in the front of my head, and I know how to take a hint."

"Well, I think of it – often," said Vicot, with something like a shudder. "He repaid me in my own coin, that boy. If I shadowed him in his life, he shadows me in his death. Even brandy doesn't blot him out of my mind. When I shut my eyes at night, I can see him, sitting in that ghastly chair, with his face, all purple, looking through the cloudy glass – as truly murdered by us who stood looking at him, as if we had pitched him into the lake at Auteuil with our own hands!"

"Oh, rot!" exclaimed Radwalader. "You know what that means, don't you? Other men see centipedes and blue rats: you see Baxter, that's all. Cut off the liquor, and you won't know there ever was such a thing as a Morgue. Baxter was a silly ass. He tried to do things with ten thousand francs that a sane man wouldn't attempt with a hundred. I let him go his pace, and I was as surprised as the next chap when I found how short his rope was. I held his notes for double the amount he had in the beginning. Did I come down on his family for them, after he chose the easiest way of evading payment? Not a bit of it. I burned them."

"Policy," commented Vicot briefly.

"Is the best honesty," supplemented Radwalader.

"He was daft on baccarat, and if he had to lose, why not to me as well as another? And a man who drowns himself for ten thousand francs isn't worth considering."

He crossed to the piano, and, seating himself, let his fingers stray up and down the keyboard through a maze of curiously intermingling minor chords. Then he began to hum softly, looking up, with his eyes half-closed, as if trying to recall the words. After a moment, he struck a final note, low in the bass, and, with his foot on the pedal, listened until the sound died down to silence.

"I want to know what you mean to do," reiterated Vicot obstinately.

"Well, you won't, and that's flat. The job is for you to take or leave, as you see fit. Only I want yes or no, and, after that, no more talk. I'm a hard man to make angry, but you've done it once to-day, and that's once too often for your good. Why, what are you thinking of, man? You've known me for five years. Did you ever see me hesitate or back down? Did you ever find a screw loose in my work, or so much as a scrap of paper to incriminate me? Did you ever know me to leave a footprint in the mud we've been through together – or let you leave one either, for that matter? A man like you would land in Mazas inside of a week, if he tinkered with business like mine, without a head like mine to guide him! Look here. You've been useful to me, Vicot, and, though you've been paid enough to make us quits, I'm not ungrateful to you in my own way. Continue to stick by me and I'll stick by you. Throw it all over, if you will, and you can go your way, with a handsome present to boot. But let me hear any more of such drivel as you've given me to-day, and, as God lives, my man, I'll smooch you off the face of the earth, as I'd smooch a green caterpillar off a page of my book! You'd be a smear of slime, my friend, and nothing more – and I'd turn the page, and go on reading!"

Radwalader had not raised his tone, as on the former occasion, or even risen, but his voice rasped the silence of the salon like a diamond on thin glass.

"Is it yes, or no?" he added.

Vicot swallowed the spirit in his glass, and looked across at him with his eyes watering and blinking.

"You know which," he said.

"Say it!"

"It's yes," said Vicot sulkily; "but if I wasn't the cur I am, I'd tell you to go to hell – you and all your works!"

Radwalader closed the piano gently.

"If it affords you any satisfaction to hear it," he answered, rising with a yawn, "I think it likely that the injunction is entirely superfluous. We sha'n't gain anything by prolonging this interview. It's four minutes to six, and I must dress for dinner. When I want you, I'll stick the blue jar in the window. Meanwhile, here's fifty francs on account. I'll get Mr. Vane to pay you in advance."

Vicot stood silent for a moment, the bill crackling as he folded it between his trembling fingers.

"Is that his name?" he asked.

"That's his name. Au revoir."

And Radwalader went to the window, flung it open, and drew a deep breath of the soft, spring-evening air. A girl was selling violets on the corner, and he beckoned to her, and bought a bunch of Palmas, leaning down from the sill to take them. Plunging his face into the fragrant purple mass, he dropped a two-franc piece into her hand with a gesture which bade her keep the coin.

"Comme monsieur est bon!" said the girl, smiling up at him.

Only one other figure was in sight, that of Monsieur Jules Vicot, with his head bent, and his hands in his pockets, turning, at a snail's pace, into the Avenue Victor Hugo. From him Radwalader's eyes came back to the face of the flower-girl.

"You were just in time," he said, with his nose among the violets. "The air was getting a little close."

Then he shut the window, leaving her looking up, smiling, and wrinkling her forehead at the same time, and went back into his bedroom, whistling "Au Clair de la Lune."

CHAPTER VII
A PLEDGE OF FRIENDSHIP

The following week found Andrew fairly installed en garçon, with a man-servant, recommended by Radwalader, presiding over his boots and apparel, and a fat apple-cheeked concierge preparing his favourite dishes in a fashion which suggested that all former cooks of his experience had been the veriest tyros. It had taken but a week at the Ritz to disgust him with the elaborate pomposity of life at a fashionable hotel, and, in its unpretentious way, Remson Peake's apartment was a gem. A tiled bath, with a porcelain tub; a bedchamber in white and sage-green, with charmingly odd, splay-footed furniture of the Glasgow school; a severely simple dining-room, with curtains and upholstery of heavy crimson damask; a study with furniture of marqueterie mahoghany, a huge divan, and a club-fender upon which to cock one's feet; a pantry and a kitchen like a doll's – it was complete, inviting, and equipped in every detail. For Andrew it had a very special charm. His whole life had been, to a great extent, subordinate to the presence and personality of his grandfather. Even college had not brought him the usual accompaniment of rooms at Claverly or Beck, for – and it was to his credit – he had never so much as suggested leaving Mr. Sterling alone in the big house on Beacon Hill. But even an influence as kindly as this gentle, indulgent old man's may irk. Now, for the first time, Andrew found himself the practical master of his movements. And Remson Peake's apartment had the rare, almost unique, quality of disarming criticism. One had no suggestions to make. One would – given the opportunity – have done the same in every particular.

And so, the faint qualms of homesickness having worn off in the course of his initial fortnight in the capital, Andrew found himself supremely contented, and discovered a new charm in life at every turn. Radwalader was the essence of courtesy and consideration, invariable in his good humour, tireless in his efforts to amuse and entertain the young protégé of his good friend Mrs. Carnby. Paris, he told Andrew, was like a box of delicate pastilles, each of which should be allowed to melt slowly on the tongue: it disagreed with those who attempted to swallow the whole box of its attractions at a gulp. So they went about Andrew's sight-seeing in a leisurely manner, taking the Louvre and the Luxembourg by half-hours, and sandwiching in a church, a monument, or a celebrated street, on the way; for it was another theory of Radwalader's that a franc found on the pavement, or in the pocket of a discarded waistcoat, is more gratifying than fifty deliberately earned.

"It's the things you happen on which you will enjoy," he said, "not those you go to work to find, by taking a tram or walking a mile. Unpremeditated discoveries, like unpremeditated dissipations, are always the most successful. There's nothing so flat as a plan."

As was to be expected, Mrs. Carnby was not able to monopolize Andrew. Mrs. Ratchett took him into her good graces, and, as was usual with her where men were concerned, contrived to make him think of her between his calls. And there were many others – women characteristic of the American Colony, whose husbands were never served up except with dinner. It was as Mrs. Carnby told him:

"If a bachelor has manners, discretion, and presentable evening dress, he need never pay for a dinner in Paris, so long as the Colony knows of his existence. And remember this. Nothing is dearer to a woman's heart than a man at five o'clock. She will excuse anything, if you'll give her a chance to remember how many lumps you take and whether it's cream or lemon. Attend to your teas, my young friend, and you can do just about as you like about your p's and q's!"

Madame Palffy, too, seeking whom she might entertain (which, in her case, was equivalent to devouring), collected young men as geologists collect specimens of minerals. The analogy was strengthened by her predilection for chipping off portions – the darker portions – of their characters, and handing these around for the edification of her friends. She cultivated Andrew assiduously, though it was not for this reason that he dropped in so frequently at tea-time. Margery, with her clean-cut beauty, appealed to him in a very special sense. They had in common many memories of the free, open-air, sane, and wind-blown life of the North Shore; and now, when they idled through portions of "The Persian Garden," which had been the fad at Beverly, it was by way of getting a whiff of sea air, and an echo of the laughter that had been.

Often he found himself looking at her admiringly. She had the knack of satisfying one's sense of what ought to be. Her dress was almost always of a studied simplicity which depended for its effect entirely upon colour and fit, and could have been bettered in neither. Not the least factor in her striking beauty was its purity, its freedom from the smallest suggestion of artificiality. She was singularly alive, admirably clear-eyed and strong, and in her fresh propriety there was always a challenge to the open air and the full light of day. She had, even in the ballroom, an indefinable hint of out-of-doors. The contrast between her personality and that of Parisian women – of Mirabelle Tremonceau, for example – was the contrast between the clean, dull linen of a New England housekeeper and the dainty shams of an exhibition bedroom; between a physician's hands and a manicure's; between the keen, salt air of the North Shore and that of a tropical island. Her femininity impressed where that of others merely charmed. The majority of women are pink: Margery Palffy was a soft, clear cream.

Nevertheless, Andrew seemed to feel, rather than to see, a subtle alteration in her. A few months had given her a new reserve, almost an attitude of distrust, which puzzled and eluded him. Their talks at Beverly had been different from these. There, they had spoken much of the future, of what they hoped and believed: here they skirted, instead of boldly boarding, serious topics, and were fallen unconsciously, but immediately, into the habit of chaffing each other over meaningless trifles. He was baffled and disconcerted by the change. There was much which he had come to say. He had rehearsed it all many times, and remembering the charming lack of constraint which had characterized all their former intercourse, to say it had seemed comparatively easy. But now he was like a man who has been recalling his fluent renderings, at school or college, of the classic texts, but, suddenly confronted with the same passages, cannot translate a word.

Again, the presence of her family depressed him with something of her own visible distress, humiliated him with something of her own evident shame. There was no such thing as making allowances for either Monsieur or Madame Palffy. From the moment of one's first glimpse of them, they were hopelessly and irretrievably impossible. Not that they had the faintest suspicion of this. They were supremely self-satisfied, and moved massively through life with a firm conviction that they fulfilled all requirements. Madame, with her frightful French, was as complacent in a conversation with a duchess of the Faubourg as was Monsieur, with his feeble and flatulent observations upon subjects of which he had no knowledge, in a company of after-dinner smokers. It was impossible to exaggerate their preternatural idiocy. A bale of cotton, suddenly introduced into polite society, could have manifested no more stupendous lack of resource than they. It was only when tempted with the bait of gossip – most probably untrue – that they rose heavily to the surface of the conversation instead of floundering in its depths. Half the Colony detested them, all of the Colony laughed at them, and none of the Colony believed them. In short – they were Monsieur and Madame Palffy. There was no more to be said.

Had Margery been farther from him, curiously enough she would have been far more readily approached in the manner which Andrew had planned. He was far from comprehending that it was her vital and intimate interest in him which showed her that he would note all the defects of the deplorable frame wherein he thus found her placed. The very fact that they had known each other under different and happier conditions forced her to assume the defensive now that other circumstances were patent to his eyes. She was intensely proud. There must be no chance for him to pity her. So, she assumed a gaiety which she was far from feeling, and sought in the by-ways of banter a refuge from the broader and more open road of surrender. On her side and on his it was a more mature case of the painful embarrassment incidental to the early stages of a children's party. They had played unrestrainedly together, as it were, but now, in the artificial light of a society strange to both of them, were stricken dumb.

From the strain of this baffling position Andrew sought relief in the company of Mirabelle Tremonceau. Here was no constraint, no unuttered solemnities to come up choking into the throat. She was very beautiful, very inconsequent, very gay; but the same light insouciance which in Margery distressed and humiliated him, because of the unsounded deeps which lay below, attracted and amused him in Mirabelle, by simple reason of its essential shallowness. She was altogether different from any woman he had ever known, but her novelty meant no more to him than a part of that charmingly sparkling and intoxicating wine of Paris of which he was learning to take deep draughts. Never for an instant did it alter the strength of the original purpose which had brought him from America, but it went far toward lessening the keen disappointment which Margery's apparent disregard of that purpose caused him. In the latter's presence he was exquisitely sensitive to the possible significance of every word. He thought too much, and the sombre current of these reflections too often darkened the surface of conversation, turned her uneasy and unnatural, and sent him away in a fit of the blues. With Mirabelle, on the contrary, he never thought at all. Since he had nothing to ask of her beyond what she had already granted him – the privilege of her friendship and the fascination of her presence – he enjoyed these to the full. It was his consuming desire for another and more tender relation with Margery that caused him to be blind to the promise of that which existed – almost to despise it.

Minutes grew into hours with unbelievable celerity in the company of Mirabelle Tremonceau. With something akin to intuition, all unsuspecting as he was, he said nothing of her to Mrs. Carnby, to Margery, or even to Radwalader. At the first, there was but one who could have told him whither he was tending – but Thomas Radwalader had all-sufficient reasons for holding his tongue. Yet, back of his slight infatuation, there lay in Andrew's mind a little sense of guilt. He could not have laid finger upon the quality of his indiscretion, but he felt indefinitely that all was not right. He recognized, or seemed to recognize, in Mirabelle a fruit forbidden, but told himself that it was a passing episode. He was confident that the way would yet lie open for the attainment of his heart's desire, and meanwhile he would amuse himself and say nothing. Your ostrich, with his silly head buried in the sand, is not the only creature that fatuously underestimates both its own desirability and the perspicacity of those interested in its movements. Twice, in the afternoon, Andrew had driven with Mirabelle in the Allée des Acacias. She gave him the seat at her right, and people turned to look at the passing victoria, as they had turned and looked on the afternoon when she took his arm at the gate of Auteuil.

But better than driving was the time passed, daily, in her apartment on the Avenue Henri Martin. It was on the fifth floor, running the whole width of the house, and with a broad balcony looking down upon the rows of trees below. A corner of this balcony was enclosed by gay awnings, and made garden-like by azaleas and potted palms. Mademoiselle Tremonceau had a great lounging chair, and a table for books and bon-bons, and Andrew sprawled at her feet, on red cushions, with his back against the balcony rail, his hands linked behind his head, and his long legs stretched out upon a Persian rug. All this was the most unexpected feature of his new life, and hence the most attractive. It was as far as possible removed from a suggestion of metropolitan existence. May was already upon them, and the air above the wide and shaded avenue was indescribably soft and sweet. The roar of the city mounted to their high coign only in a subdued murmur, as of the sea at a distance. Birds came and went, twittering on the cornice above their heads. The sun soaked through Andrew's serge and linen, and sent pleasurable little thrills of warmth through the muscles of his broad back. A faint perfume came to him from the roses on the table. A delicious, indefinable languor hung upon his surroundings. He was vaguely reminded of afternoons at Newport and Nahant – afternoons when everything smelt of new white flannel, warm leaves, and the fox-terrier blinking and quivering on his knee – when the only sounds were the whine of insects in the vines, the rasping snore of locusts in the nearest trees, and the snarl of passing carriage-wheels on a Macadam driveway. He could close his eyes and remember it all, and know that what had been, was good. He could open them, and feel that what was, was better!

As is always the case, when sympathy is pregnant with prophecy, Andrew's acquaintance with Mirabelle Tremonceau had grown into friendship before he realized the change. At first he had made excuses for the frequency of his calls; but at the end of three weeks the daily visit had come, in his eyes as well as hers, to be a matter of course.

So it was that three o'clock would find him upon her balcony, or in a cushioned corner of her divan; and whereas, at the outset, he had been but one of several men present, he discovered of a sudden not only that for four days had he found her alone at the accustomed hour, but that she refused herself to other callers when the maître d'hôtel brought in their cards. He was not insensible to the compliment, but it was one he had experienced before.

That afternoon, the maître d'hôtel had not even taken his name, but ushered him directly through the salon to the Venetian blind at the window, and lifted this to let him pass out upon the balcony. Mademoiselle Tremonceau was in her great chair, with a yellow-covered novel perched, tent-like, upon her knee. She smiled as he came out, and gave him her hand. Andrew bent over and kissed it, before taking his seat. It was a trick of the Frenchmen he had met at Mrs. Carnby's – one of the things which are courtesies in Paris, and impertinence elsewhere. The girl's hand lay for an instant against his lips. It was as soft as satin, and smelt faintly of orris, and her fingers closed on his with a little friendly pressure.

"You were expecting me?" he asked, as he dropped upon the cushions beside her.

"I'd given you up," she answered. "It's ten minutes past three."

"Am I as regular as that?" he laughed. "I was lunching at my friend Mrs. Carnby's, and we didn't get up from table till long after two. I came directly over."

Mirabelle looked away across the house-tops with a little frown.

"What is it?" asked Andrew. "Anything gone wrong?"

"Oh no! My thoughts wouldn't be a bargain at a penny. Tell me – have you seen Mr. Radwalader lately?"

"Last night. We went to the Français."

"You continue to like him?"

"I think we should never be intimate friends. Apart from the difference in our ages and opinions, there's something about him which I don't seem to get at – like shaking a gloved hand, if you know what I mean."

"Ye-es," said Mirabelle slowly. "It's odd you should have noticed that."

"But it's ungrateful of me to mention even that small objection," continued Andrew. "He's been the soul of kindness, and has shown me all over Paris, introduced me everywhere, and, in general, explained things. I've learned more in three weeks with him than I could have learned myself in a year. So, you see, I couldn't very well help liking him, even if I wanted to help it – which I don't. Why do you ask?"

For an instant Mirabelle's slender hand fluttered toward him with an odd little tentative gesture, and then went back to her cheek.

"I'm not sure," she answered. "Perhaps only for lack of anything else to say. People have told me that they disliked Mr. Radwalader – that they distrusted him."

"I suppose we're all of us disliked and distrusted – by somebody," said Andrew. "But, so far as I'm concerned, Radwalader's my friend. Perhaps you don't know me well enough yet to understand that that means a great deal."

"You're very loyal you mean?" suggested the girl.

"I hope so – yes. I have few friends; but those I have, I care for and respect and, if necessary, defend. They can't be talked against in my presence."

"I wonder," said Mirabelle slowly, "if I'm one of the happy few."

"Decidedly!" said Andrew heartily.

"Do you mean," she continued, "that you care for me as you care for these other friends, that you – that you respect me, and that you'd defend me – if necessary?"

"Decidedly, decidedly! I hope I've proved the first two, and I hope there'll never be any cause to prove the last. But if there is, you may count on me."

Mirabelle looked at him for a moment, and then leaned back and closed her eyes.

"Thank you," she said. "You don't know what that means to me."

"Why, how serious you are over it!" laughed Andrew. "Does it seem to you so very wonderful? To me it appears to be the most natural thing in the world."

"Ah, to you, perhaps," answered Mirabelle. "But to me – yes, it does seem very wonderful. You see – I've never had it said to me before!"

CHAPTER VIII
A PARLEY AND A PRAYER

May was close upon the heels of June before there came a change, but one afternoon, as Andrew paused in his playing, an atmosphere of new intimacy seemed to touch him. He had been alone with Margery for half an hour, and something in the music – or was it only fancy? – told him that her thoughts were occupied with him. She had greeted him with a little air of weariness – but not unfriendly – and, as he took her hand, she looked at him with some indefinite question in her eyes. The impression made by this gained on him as they talked, and, more strongly, as he played. Once or twice he was upon the point of turning abruptly and seeking the clue, but he had been so long perplexed, so long uncertain, that he hesitated still. If only she would give him an opening, if she would but come, as she had often come at Beverly, to lean above him, humming the words of some song into which he had unconsciously drifted, then had he had the courage to turn, to grip her hands, to ask her…

"I wonder if we would, even if we could," she said.

"What?" asked Andrew.

"How should you be expected to know? I've been a thousand miles away – thinking of Omar. I mean whether we would 'shatter it to bits, and then remould it nearer to the heart's desire.'"

Andrew swung round on the piano-stool, slowly chafing his palms together. He did not dare trust himself to look at her. For the first time since they had met in Paris, he caught an echo of the old life in her tone.

"I wonder if we could, even if we would," he answered. "I think so – perhaps. Whatever set you thinking about that?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Margery, with a short laugh. "Sometimes, in my own little way, I'm quite a philosopher! I was just thinking that if any of us were given the chance to change things – everything – shatter 'the sorry scheme of things' into bits, as Omar says – we should perhaps make an equally sorry bungle of the task of reconstruction. We're always saying 'If!' but when it actually came to the point, do you suppose we'd really want anything to be different?"

Again that singular, appealing query in her eyes. It was the old Margery at last, simple, serious, and candid. There was a responsive light in Andrew's face as he replied:

"Some things, no doubt. I don't think I could suggest a desirable change in you – except one. Will you let me tell you?"

Margery nodded.

"It's more of a restoration than a change," continued Andrew. "I'd like to see you, in every respect, precisely as you were at Beverly."

"And am I not? A little older, of course, and bound to be more dignified, as becomes a young woman in society; but for the rest, I'd be sorry to think you find a change in me."

Andrew wheeled back to the piano, and refingered a few chords.

"Now that you've seen the world," he said presently, "tell me what pleases you most in life."

And he faced her again, smiling.

"Motion!" replied Margery promptly. "I can't explain that, but I know it's so. Motion! I don't care what kind, just so long as it shows that the world is alive and happy. I love to see things run and leap – a man, or a horse, or a dog. I love the surf, the trees in a wind; all evidences of strength, of activity, of – well, of life in every and any form. Not so much dancing. That always seems to me to be a forced, an artificial kind of movement, unless it's very smoothly done – and you know, almost every one hops! But I could watch swimming and driving and rowing for hours, and, for that matter, any outdoor sport – racing, football, lacrosse – anything which gives one the idea that men are glad to be alive!"

"How curious!" said Andrew.

"Curious? Why?"

"Because that's a man's point of view, not a girl's. I ask you what pleases you most in life, and I expect that you're going to say music, or flowers, or the play. Instead, you cut out remorselessly everything which one naturally associates with a woman's way of amusing herself, and give me an answer which sounds as if it came from one of the lads at St. Paul's. That's the way they used to talk, exactly. It was all rush, vim, get-up-and-get-out, with them. If you know what I mean, they breathed so hard and talked so fast that it always seemed to me as if they'd just come in from running in a high wind."

"Yes," agreed Margery, with a nod. "I know. That's what I like. That's what I call the glad-to-be-alive atmosphere."

There fell a little silence. Andrew's fine eyes were tiptoeing from point to point of the big, over-furnished salon with a kind of amazed disgust. He had not known that there were so many hideous things in the world. Madame Palffy worshipped at the twin altars of velvet and gilt paint. Much of what now encumbered the room and smote the eye had been picked up in Venice, at the time of her ponderous honeymoon with the apoplectic Palffy. That was twenty years before, when the calle back of the Piazza were filled with those incalculable treasures of tapestry, carved wood, and ivory now in the palazzi of rich Venetians – if, indeed, they are not in Cluny. But the Palffys were as stupid as they were pompous. They moved heavily round and round the Piazza, and furnished their prospective salon out of the front windows of smirking charlatans. The irreparable and damning results of their selection, as Andrew now surveyed them, had been modified – or, more exactly, exaggerated – by the subsequent purchases of two decades in the flamboyant bazars of the Friedrichs Strasse, in the "art departments" of the big shops on Regent and Oxford streets, and in the degenerate galleries of the Palais Royal. Madame Palffy's idea of statuary was a white marble greyhound asleep upon a cushion of red sarrancolin: and her taste ran to Bohemian glass, to onyx vases, and to plaques with broad borders of patterned gilt, enclosing heads of simpering Neapolitan girls – these last to hang upon the wall. There were spindle-legged chairs, with backs like golden harps, and seats of brocade wherein salmon-pink and turquoise-blue wrestled for supremacy; and in front of the huge mantel (logically decked with a red lambrequin) there was a velvet ottoman in the form of a mushroom, whereon when Monsieur Palffy sat, his resemblance to a suffocating frog became absolutely startling. The rest of the furniture was so massive as to suggest that it could have been moved to its present position by no agency less puissant than a glacier, and, for the most part, the upholstery was tufted, and so tightly stuffed that one slid about on the chairs and sofas as if they had been varnished. The room contained four times as much of everything as was appropriate or even decent, and this gave all the furnishings the air of being on exhibition and for sale. One's imagination, however, was not apt to embrace the possibility, under any conceivable circumstances, of voluntary purchase.

Presently Andrew's eyes came back to Margery. It was evident that she had been watching him: for she smiled whimsically.

"Well?" she suggested.

"Can you guess what I was thinking?" he asked, with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

"In part, I imagine," said Margery. "Wasn't it something like this: that, as a matter of fact, I have pretty well shattered my scheme of things to bits and remoulded it – and that the new arrangement is not altogether a success?"

"I don't seem to see you in these surroundings," returned Andrew evasively. "At Beverly you seemed to 'belong': you were all of a piece with the life. Here – well, it's different. That was why I asked you that question, and that was why I thought there was something about you which I wanted to see changed – or restored. You know we used to be very open with each other, very good friends in every sense of the word; but now something's come between us. I've felt it all along, and I thought perhaps it was that you'd stopped caring for the things that used to mean most to you, that new interests, and perhaps your success and the compliments that people pay you, had cut the old ties, and that you had new ideas and ideals. I've felt – I've felt, Miss Palffy, that I'd forfeited even the small place I had in your life. You've been holding me at a distance, haven't you? I've thought so. I asked you that question to see if I was right or wrong, and to my surprise I find that you are apparently the same as ever. You still love all that made the sympathy between us. Well, then, the fault must be in me. Tell me: what have I done, that you treat me almost as a stranger?"

"I'm sorry, very sorry," said Margery earnestly. "If I've given you any such impression, believe me, it was quite without reason or even intention. I've always looked upon you as one of my best friends. Surely, I've not been holding you at a distance: that must have been a fancy of yours. You must know that you're always welcome here, that I'm always glad to see you. Please believe that."

But the little restraint was there!

"I can't quite explain what I mean," said Andrew. "You see, Paris is a queer sort of place. It upsets all one's notions. There's so much that's strange and interesting and new all about us that we're apt to find the old things growing dim. I know, in my own case, that I'm wiser for these few weeks, and perhaps" – he laughed unevenly – "sadder! Forgive me for thinking that it might have been the same with you. This big city is so full of fascinations of one sort or another, that one can hardly be blamed if one is distracted at the first. Until I saw you that Sunday at Mrs. Carnby's, I'd never realized what a difference a few months might make. Your voice brought back – a lot! I forgot that it was all in the past, that we couldn't pick up things as they were in Beverly – the sailing, the bathing, the horseback rides, the golf, and all the rest. Those months had made you a woman and me a man. Much that we used to do and say was done and said and finished with forever. But I did hope that the spirit of the thing would remain, that we'd 'grown parallel to each other,' as Mrs. Carnby says, and that we'd be nearer together, instead of farther apart, for the separation. But no! It isn't a fancy on my part. There's something changed. Do you remember Wordsworth? 'There hath passed away a glory from the earth' – and, Miss Palffy, there has, there has! I know I'm not wrong – something's come between us, and that something is just what I've said – Paris! Isn't it?"

"Yes!" she answered, with her eyes on his.

But Andrew Vane, the blind, did not understand.

Margery rose, almost with a shudder, crossed the room, and stood at the window opening upon the balcony. Below, a whirling stream of cabs, bound in from Longchamp, split around the island in the centre of the place, merged again upon the opposite side, and went rocking and rattling on, up the Avenue Victor Hugo, toward the Arc. In curious contrast to this continuous and flippant clatter, the harsh bell of St. Honoré d'Eylau was striking six.

"I hate it!" said the girl. "I couldn't attempt to make you understand how I loathe Paris, and how home-sick for America I am. Here – I can't express it, but the shallowness and the insincerity and the – the immorality of these people gets into one's blood. It's all pretence, sham, and heartless, cynical impurity. At first I didn't see it – I didn't understand. I was dazzled with the lights, and the fountains, and the gaiety. I was lonely – yes: but when I remembered all there was to see and do, remembered that here is the best in art and music and what not, I thought I should be happy. But it's the beauty of a tropical swamp, Mr. Vane – there's poison in the air! You wouldn't think I'd feel that, would you? – but I do. It's all around me. I can't shut it out. I meet it here, there – everywhere. It sickens me. It chokes me. It's just as if something that I couldn't fight against, that was bound to conquer me in the end, struggle as I might, were trying to rob me of all my beliefs, and ideals, and trust in the honour of men and the goodness of women. I hate it! I'd give – oh, what wouldn't I give! – to be back in America, on the good, clean North Shore, where things – where things are straight!"

She turned upon him suddenly, her eyes full of a strange trouble that was almost fear.

"Do you see?" she added.

"Yes," said Andrew slowly. "I think I see. That's what I meant; that's how I thought you would feel. I'm sorry. You're right, of course: Paris is no place for a girl – like you."

"It's no place for any one who loves what's clean and decent," said Margery hotly. "It's no place for a man! I'm not supposed to know, am I, about such things? And perhaps I don't. I couldn't tell you exactly what I mean, even if I wanted to. But I feel it here." She laid her hand upon her throat. "I feel the danger that I can't describe. It strangles me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid for its influence upon any one for whom – for whom I might care. I'm afraid for myself. It's nothing definite, you see, and that's just where it seems to me to be so dangerous. Do you remember when we were reading Tennyson at Beverly – 'The Lotus Eaters'?"

She paused for an instant, and then, looking away from him again, recited the lines:

 

"'For surely now our household hearths are cold:

Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:

And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.

Or else the island princes over-bold

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings,

Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,

And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things,

Is there confusion in the little isle?

Let what is broken so remain.'"

 

There was something in her voice more eloquent than the music of the words. Andrew came forward a step, as if he would have touched her, but she looked up and met his eyes.

"And you're afraid – ?" he began.

"I'm afraid," she answered, "that we've come to a land where it seems always afternoon; and that if we don't take heed, my friend, we may not fight a good fight, we may not keep the faith."

She made an odd little weary gesture.

"Will you play some of the 'Garden' now?" she asked. "I think I should like it. I'm just the least bit blue."

Andrew hesitated, but the words he wanted would not come. He turned back to the piano, fingered the music doubtfully for a moment, and then began to play. There was no need to voice the words. They both knew them well, and they fitted, as, somehow, the verse of Omar has a knack of doing.

 

"Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who

Before us passed the Door of Darkness through,

Not one returns to tell us of the Road

Which to discover we must travel too."

 

"I'm glad I know you," he broke in impulsively, with his fingers on the keys. "You're a good friend."

Margery made no reply.

"My grandfather, who's the best old chap in all the world," continued Andrew, playing the following crescendo softly, "is the only other person of whom I can feel that as you make me feel it. He always calls me 'Andy.' I rather like that silly little name. I wonder – "

He swung round, facing her.

"I think we're both of us a trifle homesick, Miss Palffy. I wonder if you'd mind – calling me – that?"

He looked down for a second, and in that second Margery Palffy moistened her lips. When she spoke, it seemed to her that her voice sounded harsh and dry.

"I shall be very glad, if you wish it – Andy."

"Thank you. And I – ?"

"If you like – yes. After all, as you say, we're friends – and a little homesick."

"Thank you, Margery."

Andrew resumed his playing, turning a few pages.

 

"Ah, Love, could you and I with Fate conspire

To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire,

Would we not shatter it to bits – and then

Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!"

 

Behind him, the girl, unseen, unheard, was whispering a word for every chord. Once, her hand went out toward the smooth, close-cropped head, bent in eager attention above the score.

"Ah, Love!" said the music.

"Ah, love!" whispered Margery Palffy.

"What a lot there is in this!" exclaimed Andrew, crashing into two sharps.

"Yes."

Once more, to Margery, her voice seemed cold and hard.

"The good old days at Beverly – what?" said Andrew.

"Yes."

Andrew dawdled with the andante.

 

"Ah, Moon of my Delight, that knows no wane – "

 

"I must be going," he said, and rose to take her hand.

"I wonder," he added, retaining it, "if you know that I would give the world to ask you just one question – and be certain of the answer?"

"Not now," said Margery steadily, "not now, please. I have many things to think of. Listen. I'm going down to Poissy – to the Carnbys', to-morrow. I know they mean to ask you over Sunday; and then, my friend, you can ask me – whatever you will. No, please. Good-by."

From the window she watched him stroll across to the little island in the centre of the place, there pause to await the coming of the tram, and then, mounting to the impériale, light a cigarette. Presently, with hee-hawing of its donkey-horn, the tram swerved into the avenue again.

The girl leaned her cheek against the heavy curtain. The tram dwindled into the distance – toward the Arc – toward the brilliant centre of Paris – toward danger! Then, in a still small voice, she prayed:

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who – who trespass against us. And lead us – lead us not into temptation: but deliver us from evil…"

CHAPTER IX
THE WOMAN IN THE CASE

In the sun-spangled stretch of shade under the acacias of the Villa Rossignol four drank coffee and talked of Andrew Vane. Mrs. Carnby had remained in Paris three weeks beyond her usual time; first, because the weather had been no more than bearably warm; and second, because the decorator who was renovating the salon of the villa had been somewhat more than bearably slow. The first of June, however, found her at Poissy, and the Villa Rossignol once more prepared to receive and discharge a continually varying stream of guests with the regularity of a self-feeding press.

There was something very admirable about the hospitality of the Villa Rossignol. In the first place, there were fourteen bedrooms; and in the second, a hostess who never made plans for her guests; and in the third, no fixed hour for first breakfast. People came by unexpected trains, and, finding every one out, ordered, as the sex might be, whiskey and cigarettes, or tea and a powder-box, and were served, and, in general, made themselves at home, till Mrs. Carnby returned from driving or canoeing. And seemingly there was always a saddle-horse at liberty in the stable, no matter how many might be riding; and a vacant corner to be found, inside or out, without regard to the number of tête-à-têtes already in progress. In a word, Mrs. Carnby knew to perfection how laisser aller and whom laisser venir– the which, all said and done, appear to be the qualities most admirable in an out-of-town hostess, by very reason, perhaps, of their being the least common.

So, at all events, thought Mrs. Carnby's three guests as they took their coffee-cups from her and, sipping the first over-hot spoonfuls cautiously, shuffled a few topics of conversation, in an attempt to find one which invited elaboration. They were consumedly comfortable: for breakfast had been served on the stroke of one, with five members of the house-party absent. The remaining three were grateful for a punctuality which was not concerned with the greatest good of the greatest number.

"It was so wise of you not to wait breakfast, Louisa," observed Mrs. Ratchett, and her voice resembled as much as anything the purr of a particularly well-bred kitten. "I was as hollow as a shell an hour ago. By this time I'd infallibly have caved in."

"It's nothing short of imbecile to wait for people who're out in an automobile," replied Mrs. Carnby. "Whenever any one brings a machine down here, and takes some of my guests to ride, I have all the clocks in the house regulated, and order Armand to announce breakfast and dinner on the stroke of the hour. It's only just to the sane people who may happen to be visiting me."

"In the present instance," put in Radwalader, "it's to be supposed that the others will have sense enough to get breakfast at the spot nearest available to that of the breakdown."

"The breakdown? You take a deal for granted, Radwalader," said Gerald Kennedy, gazing up into the shifting foliage of the acacias.

"I, too, have been en auto," answered Radwalader, "and am familiar with the inevitable feature of a run. At this moment Andrew Vane is in his shirt-sleeves and a pitiful perspiration, violently turning a crank and talking under his breath. Or else he's flat on his back, under the car, with only his feet sticking out. Can you believe otherwise, after the evidence of those five vacant chairs?"

"How sensible we are, we four!" smiled Mrs. Ratchett.

"Ours is the conservatism of the lilies of the field," supplemented Radwalader. "We spin not, therefore neither do we toil."

"I fancy Vane is regretting having left his chauffeur to breakfast in the servant's hall," said Kennedy.

"And I, that, if anything, Vane is the better mechanician of the two," said Radwalader. "The boy's aptitude is really quite astounding. He learned that machine in an hour, Pivert tells me, and now knows it better than Pivert himself. He's only renting it by the week, you know, but old Mr. Sterling will be called upon for the purchase-price, if I'm not mistaken, before he's a month older."

"One might be justified in remarking," said Mrs. Ratchett, "that Andrew Vane is – er – going it – don't you think? – in a fashion little short of precipitous."

"Wein – Weib – Gesang," murmured Kennedy, with his eyes in the trees.

"I know he sings," commented Mrs. Carnby, "but I hadn't heard of his drinking."

"Or of his – oh yes I had, too!" Mrs. Ratchett caught herself up abruptly, with a suspicion of a blush. "Some one told me he was fast going to the – er – "

"Cats?" suggested Kennedy amiably.

"Gerald, you're indecent!" exclaimed Mrs. Carnby. "And remember, I won't listen to gossip about my guests – except Madame Palffy. For the moment, Mr. Vane's reputation is under the protection of mine."

Radwalader leaned back in his chair, and yawned without shame.

"Vane is developing, that's all," he said. "It's a thing rather to be desired than otherwise. Paris does such a deal for the raw American, in the way of opening his eyes. Vane is just beginning to 'learn how.' I've no doubt that in Boston he ate his lettuce with sugar and vinegar, and thought it effeminate to have his nails manicured. Now that he's acquiring the art of living, pray make some allowance for the crude colouring of his exquisses. The finished picture will be a creation of marked merit, I warrant you. I've seen a good bit of Vane, and he can be trusted to take care of himself."

"The question is whether he can be trusted to have other people take care of him," said Mrs. Ratchett viciously, looking at Radwalader over the edge of her coffee-cup.

"I don't think you dangerous, dear lady."

"Radwalader is always so unselfish," said Mrs. Carnby. "He escapes embarrassing situations by walking out on other people's heads."

"I deserved it," laughed Mrs. Ratchett. "But I really wasn't thinking of you, Radwalader. I heard there was a lady in the case of Mr. Vane."

"I credit him with more originality," said Radwalader. "No, believe me, the facts are no more than must be expected in a young man who has been tied to apron-strings for an appreciable number of years."

"Not that old Mr. Sterling wears aprons," observed Mrs. Carnby.

"And not that I was referring to old Mr. Sterling. I had in mind the very estimable United States of America, which wash so much dirty linen in public that it would be something more than surprising if there were not a supply of particularly starchy apron-strings continually on hand – in Boston in particular. Vane has been taught her creed, which is to make a necessity of virtue. His daily fare has been a rechauffé of worn-out fallacies. I haven't a doubt but what he's been instructed that an honest man is the noblest work of God, and I've no idea that he's ever understood till now that vice is its own reward, or how immaterial it is whether a thing is gold or not, so long as it really glitters."

He turned a tiny glass of fine into his coffee, and continued, stirring it thoughtfully:

"What happens when you turn your stable-bred colt out to pasture for the first time? Doesn't he kick up his heels and snort? Assuredly. And we don't take that as an evidence, do we, that, all in good time, he won't run neck and neck with the best of them, and perhaps carry off the Grand Prix? I always believe in cultivating charity, if only for one comfortable quality attributed to it. Let's be charitable in the case of Vane. He's only kicking up his heels and snorting."

"If you're going to assume the mantle of charity with the view of covering the multitude of your sins – !" suggested Mrs. Carnby.

"We'll have to send it to the tailor's to have the tucks let out," said Radwalader, with infinite good humour. "Exactly, dear friend. Forgive me my little sermon. You see, the physician doesn't preach, as a rule, and I'm afraid the priest is equally unapt to practise. You must pardon me my shortcomings. I can't very well be all things to all men – much less to one woman. And, while we are on this subject, it may interest you to know that Vane has chosen his profession: he's going to be a novelist."

"Do you mean that he's going to write novels?" asked Mrs. Carnby.

Radwalader appeared to reflect.

"No," he said presently. "I think I mean that he's going to be a novelist. I stand open to correction," he added, with an affected air of humility.

"By no means," answered Mrs. Carnby. "Probably I don't understand. It sounds to me a good deal like saying he's going to be a German Emperor or a Pope – that's all."

"Nevertheless, I'm quite sure that's what I mean. He has read me several chapters of a novel upon which he's at work, and I must say that they display a knowledge of women which, in a man of his years, is nothing less than remarkable."

"That's not impossible," put in Mrs. Carnby. "I had a letter, only yesterday, from a woman who knows him, and it appears that he's as good as engaged to a very charming young American."

"However," said Radwalader mildly, "I think the knowledge of women displayed by Vane in the chapters he was so good as to read to me is hardly such as one would expect to deduce from the fact that he is as good as engaged to a very charming young American."

"His choice of a profession must be a very recent resolution," said Mrs. Carnby. "To be sure, until to-day, I haven't seen him in a week."

"An eternity in Paris," said Kennedy. "Extra-ordinary people, the Americans! Not content with securing monopolies of tramways and industrial trusts over here, they appear to control a monopoly of feminine consideration as well. I confess – though only to the acacias – that I'm in the least degree weary of the subject of Mr. Andrew Vane. Radwalader, I'll give you twenty at cannons."

"Done!" said Radwalader, rising.

"The cigars are on the corner-table in the billiard-room," observed Mrs. Carnby, "and the Scotch is on the dining-room buffet, with ice and soda. Don't call the servants for a half-hour, at least: it irritates them immeasurably to have their eating confused with other people's drinking."

"I really don't mean it as gossip," said Mrs. Ratchett, as the men vanished into the house. "I'm interested in Mr. Vane. He seems more rational and cleaner-cut than the American cubs one sees over here as a rule; and if he's only going to go the way of the rest of them – if there's a woman in the case – "

Mrs. Carnby shrugged her shoulders. "Andrew Vane has been in Paris for ten weeks," she said. "I think it not improbable that Paris will be in Andrew Vane for the rest of his natural life."

"Then there is a woman in the case!" exclaimed Mrs. Ratchett.

"So you say, my dear."

Mrs. Ratchett's pointed slipper began to beat an impatient tattoo on the grass.

"Could anything be more ludicrous than for us two to beat about the bush in this fashion?" she broke out, after a moment. "You know perfectly what I mean, Louisa – what one always means, in short, by 'a woman in the case'!"

"Yes, of course I know," agreed Mrs. Carnby frankly. "The women one speaks of as being in cases are always more or less disreputable. Well, there is a woman in the case of our young friend – and a very engaging woman at that."

"Engaging appears to be a habit with Mr. Vane's flames," said Mrs. Ratchett. "It's a little hard on the one in America. And pray where did you see her? – the other, I mean."

"Oh, here, there, and everywhere. Vane made the mistake, at first, of trying to carry on his little affair sub rosa. People are always seen when they try not to be, you know. Lately, I believe, they've been going about quite openly, so it has been almost impossible to keep track of them."

"But how do you arrive at the conclusion that the lady – "

"Isn't respectable? I've walked up the Opéra Comique stairway behind her, my dear, and there was no mistaking the social grade of her petticoats. They were entirely beyond a reputable woman's means. And you're quite right. It's downright hard on the other one. She's like my own daughter – Margery Palffy is."

"Margery Palffy! Why, how very surprising! I thought you said the girl was in America."

"No – I said 'a charming young American.' And it's really not surprising at all. My letter was from Mrs. Johnny Barrister – Madame Palffy's sister-in-law, you know. She always took charge of Margery during the summer vacations. They've a big house at Beverly, which I've never seen, and heaps of money. That's how Mr. Vane met Margery, I suppose: he seems to have had the run of the house. Molly Barrister mentioned him casually, but quite as if the engagement were a matter of course – quite as if he had come over here on purpose to see Margery."

"The lady with – er – the petticoats," suggested Mrs. Ratchett, "strikes me in the light of evidence to the contrary."

"One can never tell," said Mrs. Carnby. "He wouldn't be the first man to drive tandem. There's apt to be a leader, you see – a high-stepping, showy thoroughbred, that attracts all the attention, and does none of the work: and then, an earnest, faithful little cob, as wheeler. After a time, a man gets tired of the frills and furbelows, sells the leader to break some other fellow's neck, and settles down. Then you'll see the earnest little wheeler as much appreciated as may be, and dragging the domestic tilbury along at a rational, bourgeois rate of speed. One can never tell, my dear."

"All that," observed Mrs. Ratchett dryly, "doesn't ring true, Louisa, and – what's worse – it isn't even clever. You're fond of Margery Palffy."

"It's froth!" exclaimed Mrs. Carnby, "the kind of froth one sticks on the top of a horrid little pudding to conceal its disgusting lack of merit. Don't ask me what I think of men, Ethel. I couldn't tell you, without employing certain violent expletives, and nowadays no really original woman swears!"

A distant, whirring snore, very faint at first, had grown louder as they were speaking, and now swelled into a muffled roar, as Andrew's automobile lunged up the driveway, and stopped, sobbing, before the villa. Mrs. Carnby raised her voice, to carry across the lawn:

"Have you had breakfast?"

Andrew, turning from the automobile, waved his hand in reply.

"We broke down near the Pavilion Henri Quatre," he called. "The others had breakfast while I was making repairs. I coffeed so late that I wasn't hungry. I knew that I could hold over till tea-time."

The party, five in number, came chattering toward them across the lawn. Old Mrs. Lister led the way, followed by her son and Madame Palffy, whom Mrs. Carnby always invited to Poissy for the first Sunday of the season – "to get it over with," as she had been heard to say. Behind were Andrew and Margery. Jeremy was to bring Palffy, De Boussac, and Ratchett down by the late train, and these, with Kennedy, Radwalader, and Mrs. Ratchett, completed the house-party.

Mrs. Lister, whom Radwalader had described to Andrew as "the jail-breaker, because she never finishes a sentence," plunged abruptly into one of her disconnected prolations, addressing herself to Mrs. Carnby:

"Of course, we are most reprehensibly late – but you see – I don't understand about these things – Mr. Vane said – it's so difficult to comprehend – but it was something that the gravel – or was it the dust? – at all events – and I always say that meals above all things – but then accidents are simply bound to occur – I do hope you didn't wait – and it was delightful – my first experience – but of course we had to – there was no telling how long – though fortunately – and I'm quite fagged out, dear Mrs. Carnby – as I say to Jack – when one is young, you know – but when one gets to fifty-four – though I don't complain – I think one should never regret – and I enjoyed the drive – or does one say ride? – it's so difficult – "

She paused for breath, and Madame Palffy took up the tale.

"It was fas– cinating, fas– cinating," she said, "and most exciting. I reached St. Germain quite en déshabille. Mr. Vane kindly took Margery on the front seat. Mrs. Lister and I sat behind, and Mr. Lister on the floor, with his feet on the step. It was flying."

And she waved her fat hands, and sank ponderously into a chair.

"My most humble apologies, Mrs. Carnby," said Andrew. "It couldn't really be helped, and I provided my crew with sufficient nourishment to keep them alive till dinner."

"You're forgiven," replied his hostess, "only don't do it again. After all," she added, looking Andrew wickedly in the eye, "your crime, like dear old Sir Peter Teazle's, carried its punishment along with it."

"Now I come to think of it," observed young Lister vacuously, "she's his second wife, Madame Palffy – or is she? Do you know the Flament-Gontouts, Mrs. Carnby? No? They live up in the Monceau quarter. She was an American, a Bostonian. Her maiden name was Fayne – sister of Clarence Fayne, the painter, who married Mary Clemin, the daughter of Anthony Clemin, who used to own the Parker House – "

He did not appear to be addressing any one in particular, which was fortunate, as no one had ever been known to vouchsafe him the compliment of attention. He spoke with as much variety of expression as an accountant making comparisons, and invariably, as now, upon the subject of birth, marriage, and death – a hopelessly dull young man.

"He write plays?" said Mrs. Carnby, when the purpose of his presence in Paris had been explained to her. "Never! But he may have written the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis."

"I'm afraid that's quite cold," said Mrs. Carnby, as, in compliance with a request, she handed Andrew a cup of coffee, "but it's your own fault."

"Never mind," he laughed. "Coffee is one of the few things which are more or less good all the way up and down the thermometer from thirty-two to two hundred and twelve."

Mrs. Carnby looked at him critically, as he stirred, and told herself that he came up strikingly well to many standards. His hair was neither too short nor too long, he was perfectly shaved, his stock was tied to a nicety, his clothes were on friendly terms with him, his hands were excellently well-kept – and an hour before he had been tinkering with a motor! – and his teeth were even and studiously cared for. He was an aristocrat, a patrician, from his head to his heels – and it would be a pity, thought Mrs. Carnby, to have him go the way of what Mrs. Ratchett had called "the rest of them" – the way of Tommy Clavercil, for example, whose late affaire had been so crudely mismanaged that he was no longer invited to the best tables in the Colony, or the way of Radwalader's young acquaintance, Ernest Baxter, who ended up in the Morgue. And then there was Margery —

Mrs. Carnby's eyes came round to her, instantly narrowed, and dropped. There are moments when the souls of us come to their twin windows, and look out, and shout our secrets to the veriest passer-by. Margery was looking at Andrew Vane – and Mrs. Carnby saw!

"Good Lord!" she thought. "Then at least half of the story's true – and I'm afraid that's about fifty per cent. too much!"

"The list of my offences isn't complete, as yet, Mrs. Carnby," said Andrew. "I very stupidly left my camera at the Pavilion. I'm afraid I shall have to go back for it."

Once more Mrs. Carnby looked at him.

"I'll go with you," she said suddenly. "I haven't had a chance to see how your machine runs, as yet, and, besides, every one of these lazy people will be wanting to take a nap presently. I know them of old. I never nap myself. It's a fattening habit."

"Delighted to have you, I'm sure, Mrs. Carnby."

There was the slightest trace of hesitation in Andrew's voice, but Mrs. Carnby rose to her feet.

"I may be back to tea, and I may be back to-morrow," she said to the others. "One never knows, en automobile."

She was still frowning perplexedly, as Andrew steered the automobile deftly out of the gate.

"It's turned a bit windy," he said. "We didn't use the dust-cloths coming over, but there's one under the seat. What do you say – shall we have it?"

He bent forward, as she nodded, and dragged the cloth from its place beneath them. Something heavy rapped smartly on Mrs. Carnby's foot, and she looked down with a little exclamation.

"What's that?"

"That?" answered Andrew. "Why – er, that's my camera."

Mrs. Carnby leaned back in her seat, drawing the dust-cloth smoothly over her knees.

"Don't you think," she said deliberately, "that you had better tell me your real reason for wanting to go back to St. Germain – and wanting to go back alone?"