Keywords: On the Divide,Eric Hermannson's Soul,The Enchanted Bluff,The Bohemian Girl,The Troll Garden,Flavia and Her Artists,The Sculptor's Funeral,A Death in the Desert,The Garden Lodge,The Marriage of Phaedra,A Wagner Matinee,Paul's Case,Mystery, Suspense, History, Gothic, Literature, Anti-Semitism

Contents:

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The Troll Garden and Selected Stories .............................................................................................................1

Willa Cather .............................................................................................................................................1

Near Rattlesnake Creek, on the side of a little draw stood Canute's shanty. North, east, south, stretched the

level Nebraska plain of long rustred grass that undulated constantly in the wind. To the west the ground was

broken and rough, and a narrow strip of timber wound along the turbid, muddy little stream that had scarcely

ambition enough to crawl over its black bottom. If it had not been for the few stunted cottonwoods and elms

that grew along its banks, Canute would have shot himself years ago. The Norwegians are a timberloving

people, and if there is even a turtle pond with a few plum bushes around it they seem irresistibly drawn

As to the shanty itself, Canute had built it without aid of any kind, for when he first squatted along the banks

of Rattlesnake Creek there was not a human being within twenty miles. It was built of logs split in halves, the

chinks stopped with mud and plaster. The roof was covered with earth and was supported by one gigantic

beam curved in the shape of a round arch. It was almost impossible that any tree had ever grown in that

shape. The Norwegians used to say that Canute had taken the log across his knee and bent it into the shape he

wished. There were two rooms, or rather there was one room with a partition made of ash saplings

interwoven and bound together like big straw basket work. In one corner there was a cook stove, rusted and

broken. In the other a bed made of unplaned planks and poles. it was fully eight feet long, and upon it was a

heap of dark bed clothing. There was a chair and a bench of colossal proportions. There was an ordinary

kitchen cupboard with a few cracked dirty dishes in it, and beside it on a tall box a tin washbasin. Under the

bed was a pile of pint flasks, some broken, some whole, all empty. On the wood box lay a pair of shoes of

almost incredible dimensions. On the wall hung a saddle, a gun, and some ragged clothing, conspicuous

among which was a suit of dark cloth, apparently new, with a paper collar carefully wrapped in a red silk

handkerchief and pinned to the sleeve. Over the door hung a wolf and a badger skin, and on the door itself a

brace of thirty or forty snake skins whose noisy tails rattled ominously every time it opened. The strangest

things in the shanty were the wide windowsills. At first glance they looked as though they had been ruthlessly

hacked and mutilated with a hatchet, but on closer inspection all the notches and holes in the wood took form

and shape. There seemed to be a series of pictures. They were, in a rough way, artistic, but the figures were

heavy and labored, as though they had been cut very slowly and with very awkward instruments. There were

men plowing with little horned imps sitting on their shoulders and on their horses' heads. There were men

praying with a skull hanging over their heads and little demons behind them mocking their attitudes. There

were men fighting with big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All about these pictures were blooming

vines and foliage such as never grew in this world, and coiled among the branches of the vines there was

always the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every flower there was a serpent's head. It was a veritable

Dance of Death by one who had felt its sting. In the wood box lay some boards, and every inch of them was

cut up in the same manner. Sometimes the work was very rude and careless, and looked as though the hand of

the workman had trembled. It would sometimes have been hard to distinguish the men from their evil

geniuses but for one fact, the men were always grave and were either toiling or praying, while the devils were

always smiling and dancing. Several of these boards had been split for kindling and it was evident that the

It was the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled into his shanty carrying a basket of. cobs, and

after filling the stove, sat down on a stool and crouched his seven foot frame over the fire, staring drearily out

of the window at the wide gray sky. He knew by heart every individual clump of bunch grass in the miles of

red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of its early

summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had

seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper

years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had

He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet heavily as though they were burdens to him. He

looked out of the window into the hog corral and saw the pigs burying themselves in the straw before the

shed. The leaden gray clouds were beginning to spill themselves, and the snow flakes were settling down

over the white leprous patches of frozen earth where the hogs had gnawed even the sod away. He shuddered

and began to walk, trampling heavily with his ungainly feet. He was the wreck of ten winters on the Divide

and he knew what that meant. Men fear the winters of the Divide as a child fears night or as men in the North

Seas fear the still dark cold of the polar twilight. His eyes fell upon his gun, and he took it down from the

wall and looked it over. He sat down on the edge of his bed and held the barrel towards his face, letting his

forehead rest upon it, and laid his finger on the trigger. He was perfectly calm, there was neither passion nor

despair in his face, but the thoughtful look of a man who is considering. Presently he laid down the gun, and

reaching into the cupboard, drew out a pint bottle of raw white alcohol. Lifting it to his lips, he drank

greedily. He washed his face in the tin basin and combed his rough hair and shaggy blond beard. Then he

stood in uncertainty before the suit of dark clothes that hung on the wall. For the fiftieth time he took them in

his hands and tried to summon courage to put them on. He took the paper collar that was pinned to the sleeve

of the coat and cautiously slipped it under his rough beard, looking with timid expectancy into the cracked,

splashed glass that hung over the bench. With a short laugh he threw it down on the bed, and pulling on his

It was a physical necessity for him to get away from his cabin once in a while. He had been there for ten

years, digging and plowing and sowing, and reaping what little the hail and the hot winds and the frosts left

him to reap. Insanity and suicide are very common things on the Divide. They come on like an epidemic in

the hot wind season. Those scorching dusty winds that blow up over the bluffs from Kansas seem to dry up

the blood in men's veins as they do the sap in the corn leaves. Whenever the yellow scorch creeps down over

the tender inside leaves about the ear, then the coroners prepare for active duty; for the oil of the country is

burned out and it does not take long for the flame to eat up the wick. It causes no great sensation there when a

Dane is found swinging to his own windmill tower, and most of the Poles after they have become too careless

and discouraged to shave themselves keep their razors to cut their throats with.

It may be that the next generation on the Divide will be very happy, but the present one came too late in life.

It is useless for men that have cut hemlocks among the mountains of Sweden for forty years to try to be

happy in a country as flat and gray and naked as the sea. It is not easy for men that have spent their youth

fishing in the Northern seas to be content with following a plow, and men that have served in the Austrian

army hate hard work and coarse clothing on the loneliness of the plains, and long for marches and excitement

and tavern company and pretty barmaids. After a man has passed his fortieth birthday it is not easy for him to

change the habits and conditions of his life. Most men bring with them to the Divide only the dregs of the

Canute Canuteson was as mad as any of them, but his madness did not take the form of suicide or religion but

of alcohol. He had always taken liquor when he wanted it, as all Norwegians do, but after his first year of

solitary life he settled down to it steadily. He exhausted whisky after a while, and went to alcohol, because its

effects were speedier and surer. He was a big man and with a terrible amount of resistant force, and it took a

great deal of alcohol even to move him. After nine years of drinking, the quantities he could take would seem

fabulous to an ordinary drinking man. He never let it interfere with his work, he generally drank at night and

on Sundays. Every night, as soon as his chores were done, he began to drink. While he was able to sit up he

would play on his mouth harp or hack away at his window sills with his jackknife. When the liquor went to

his head he would lie down on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone and

in solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awful loneliness and level of the Divide. Milton

made a sad blunder when he put mountains in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. All mountain

peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plains that, because of their utter lack of spirituality and the mad

Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish

man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. Canute was none of these, but he

was morose and gloomy, and liquor took him through all the hells of Dante. As he lay on his giant's bed all

the horrors of this world and every other were laid bare to his chilled senses. He was a man who knew no joy,

a man who toiled in silence and bitterness. The skull and the serpent were always before him, the symbols of

When the first Norwegians near enough to be called neighbors came, Canute rejoiced, and planned to escape

from his bosom vice. But he was not a social man by nature and had not the power of drawing out the social

side of other people. His new neighbors rather feared him because of his great strength and size, his silence

and his lowering brows. Perhaps, too, they knew that he was mad, mad from the eternal treachery of the

plains, which every spring stretch green and rustle with the promises of Eden, showing long grassy lagoons

full of clear water and cattle whose hoofs are stained with wild roses. Before autumn the lagoons are dried up,

So instead of becoming a friend and neighbor to the men that settled about him, Canute became a mystery

and a terror. They told awful stories of his size and strength and of the alcohol he drank.

They said that one night, when he went out to see to his horses just before he went to bed, his steps were

unsteady and the rotten planks of the floor gave way and threw him behind the feet of a fiery young stallion.

His foot was caught fast in the floor, and the nervous horse began kicking frantically. When Canute felt the

blood trickling down into his eyes from a scalp wound in his head, he roused himself from his kingly

indifference, and with the quiet stoical courage of a drunken man leaned forward and wound his arms about

the horse's hind legs and held them against his breast with crushing embrace. All through the darkness and

cold of the night he lay there, matching strength against strength. When little Jim Peterson went over the next

morning at four o'clock to go with him to the Blue to cut wood, he found him so, and the horse was on its fore

knees, trembling and whinnying with fear. This is the story the Norwegians tell of him, and if it is true it is no

One spring there moved to the next "eighty" a family that made a great change in Canute's life. Ole Yensen

was too drunk most of the time to be afraid of any one, and his wife Mary was too garrulous to be afraid of

any one who listened to her talk, and Lena, their pretty daughter, was not afraid of man nor devil. So it came

about that Canute went over to take his alcohol with Ole oftener than he took it alone, After a while the report

spread that he was going to marry Yensen's daughter, and the Norwegian girls began to tease Lena about the

great bear she was going to keep house for. No one could quite see how the affair had come about, for

Canute's tactics of courtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparently never spoke to her at all: he would sit

for hours with Mary chattering on one side of him and Ole drinking on the other and watch Lena at her work.

She teased him, and threw flour in his face and put vinegar in his coffee, but he took her rough jokes with

silent wonder, never even smiling. He took her to church occasionally, but the most watchful and curious

people never saw him speak to her. He would sit staring at her while she giggled and flirted with the other

Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam laundry. She came home every Sunday, and always

ran across to Yensens to startle Lena with stories of ten cent theaters, firemen's dances, and all the other

esthetic delights of metropolitan life. In a few weeks Lena's head was completely turned, and she gave her

father no rest until he let her go to town to seek her fortune at the ironing board. From the time she came

home on her first visit she began to treat Canute with contempt. She had bought a plush cloak and kid gloves,

had her clothes made by the dress maker, and assumed airs and graces that made the other women of the

neighborhood cordially detest her. She generally brought with her a young man from town who waxed his

The neighbors teased Canute a good deal until he knocked one of them down. He gave no sign of suffering

from her neglect except that he drank more and avoided the other Norwegians more carefully than ever, He

lay around in his den and no one knew what he felt or thought, but little Jim Peterson, who had seen him

glowering at Lena in church one Sunday when she was there with the town man, said that he would not give

an acre of his wheat for Lena's life or the town chap's either; and Jim's wheat was so wondrously worthless

Canute had bought a new suit of clothes that looked as nearly like the town man I s as possible. They had cost

him half a millet crop; for tailors are not accustomed to fitting giants and they charge for it. He had hung

those clothes in his shanty two months ago and had never put them on, partly from fear of ridicule, partly

from discouragement, and partly because there was something in his own soul that revolted at the littleness of

Lena was at home just at this time. Work was slack in the laundry and Mary had not been well, so Lena

She was washing in the side kitchen, singing loudly as she worked. Mary was on her knees, blacking the

stove and scolding violently about the young man who was coming out from town that night. The young man

had committed the fatal error of laughing at Mary's ceaseless babble and had never been forgiven.

"He is no good, and you will come to a bad end by running with him! I do not see why a daughter of mine

should act so. I do not see why the Lord should visit such a punishment upon me as to give me such a

Lena tossed her head and answered curtly, "I don't happen to want to marry any man right away, and so long

as Dick dresses nice and has plenty of money to spend, there is no harm in my going with him."

"Money to spend? Yes, and that is all he does with it I'll be bound. You think it very fine now, but you will

change your tune when you have been married five years and see your children running naked and your

cupboard empty. Did Anne Hermanson come to any good end by marrying a town man?"

"I don't know anything about Anne Hermanson, but I know any of the laundry girls would have Dick quick

"Yes, and a nice lot of store clothes huzzies you are too. Now there is Canuteson who has an 'eighty' proved

"And hair that ain't been cut since he was a baby, and a big dirty beard, and he wears overalls on Sundays,

and drinks like a pig. Besides he will keep. I can have all the fun I want, and when I am old and ugly like you

Canute drew his hand back from the latch as though it were red hot. He was not the kind of man to make a

good eavesdropper, and he wished he had knocked sooner. He pulled himself together and struck the door

"God! Canute, how you scared us! I thought it was crazy Lou he has been tearing around the neighborhood

trying to convert folks. I am afraid as death of him. He ought to be sent off, I think. He is just as liable as not

to kill us all, or burn the barn, or poison the dogs. He has been worrying even the poor minister to death, and

he laid up with the rheumatism, too! Did you notice that he was too sick to preach last Sunday? But don't

stand there in the cold, come in. Yensen isn't here, but he just went over to Sorenson's for the mail; he won't

Canute followed her, looking steadily in front of him and not noticing Lena as he passed her. But Lena's

vanity would not allow him to pass unmolested. She took the wet sheet she was wringing out and cracked

him across the face with it, and ran giggling to the other side of the room. The blow stung his cheeks and the

soapy water flew in his eves, and he involuntarily began rubbing them with his hands. Lena giggled with

delight at his discomfiture, and the wrath in Canute's face grew blacker than ever. A big man humiliated is

vastly more undignified than a little one. He forgot the sting of his face in the bitter consciousness that he had

made a fool of himself He stumbled blindly into the living room, knocking his head against the door jamb

because he forgot to stoop. He dropped into a chair behind the stove, thrusting his big feet back helplessly on

Ole was a long time in coming, and Canute sat there, still and silent, with his hands clenched on his knees,

and the skin of his face seemed to have shriveled up into little wrinkles that trembled when he lowered his

brows. His life had been one long lethargy of solitude and alcohol, but now he was awakening, and it was as

"Yensen," he said quietly, "I have come to see if you will let me marry your daughter today."

Ole braced his staggering knees against the bedstead, and stammered eloquently: "Do you think I will marry

my daughter to a drunkard? a man who drinks raw alcohol? a man who sleeps with rattle snakes? Get out of

my house or I will kick you out for your impudence." And Ole began looking anxiously for his feet.

Canute answered not a word, but he put on his hat and went out into the kitchen. He went up to Lena and said

The tones of his voice startled her, and she said angrily, dropping the soap, "Are you drunk?"

"If you do not come with me, I will take youyou had better come," said Canute quietly.

She lifted a sheet to strike him, but he caught her arm roughly and wrenched the sheet from her. He turned to

the wall and took down a hood and shawl that hung there, and began wrapping her up. Lena scratched and

fought like a wild thing. Ole stood in the door, cursing, and Mary howled and screeched at the top of her

voice. As for Canute, he lifted the girl in his arms and went out of the house. She kicked and struggled, but

the helpless wailing of Mary and Ole soon died away in the distance, and her face was held down tightly on

Canute's shoulder so that she could not see whither he was taking her. She was conscious only of the north

wind whistling in her ears, and of rapid steady motion and of a great breast that heaved beneath her in quick,

irregular breaths. The harder she struggled the tighter those iron arms that had held the heels of horses

crushed about her, until she felt as if they would crush the breath from her, and lay still with fear. Canute was

striding across the level fields at a pace at which man never went before, drawing the stinging north winds

into his lungs in great gulps. He walked with his eyes half closed and looking straight in front of him, only

lowering them when he bent his head to blow away the snow flakes that settled on her hair. So it was that

Canute took her to his home, even as his bearded barbarian ancestors took the fair frivolous women of the

South in their hairy arms and bore them down to their war ships. For ever and anon the soul becomes weary

of the conventions that are not of it, and with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is unable

to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by force what it cannot win by cunning.

When Canute reached his shanty he placed the girl upon a chair, where she sat sobbing. He stayed only a few

minutes. He filled the stove with wood and lit the lamp, drank a huge swallow of alcohol and put the bottle in

his pocket. He paused a moment, staring heavily at the weeping girl, then he went off and locked the door and

Wrapped in flannels and soaked with turpentine, the little Norwegian preacher sat reading his Bible, when he

heard a thundering knock at his door, and Canute entered, covered with snow and his beard frozen fast to his

"Come in, Canute, you must be frozen," said the little man, shoving a chair towards his visitor.

Canute remained standing with his hat on and said quietly, "I want you to come over to my house tonight to

A dangerous light came in the big Norwegian's eye. "I want you to come over to my house to marry me to

"No, I can't, it would kill an ox to go out in a storm like this, and my rheumatism is bad tonight."

He took down the preacher's bearskin coat and bade him put it on while he hitched up his buggy. He went out

and closed the door softly after him. Presently he returned and found the frightened minister crouching before

the fire with his coat lying beside him. Canute helped him put it on and gently wrapped his head in his big

muffler. Then he picked him up and carried him out and placed him in his buggy. As he tucked the buffalo

robes around him be said: "Your horse is old, he might flounder or lose his way in this storm. I will lead

The minister took the reins feebly in his hands and sat shivering with the cold. Sometimes when there was a

lull in the wind, he could see the horse struggling through the snow with the man plodding steadily beside

him. Again the blowing snow would hide them from him altogether. He had no idea where they were or what

direction they were going. He felt as though he were being whirled away in the heart of the storm, and he said

all the prayers he knew. But at last the long four miles were over, and Canute set him down in the snow while

he unlocked the door. He saw the bride sitting by the fire with her eyes red and swollen as though she had

Lena began to cry and moan afresh, begging the minister to take her home. He looked helplessly at Canute.

"My daughter, do you take this step of your own free will?" asked the minister in a trembling voice.

"No, sir, I don't, and it is disgraceful he should force me into it! I won't marry him."

"Then, Canute, I cannot marry you," said the minister, standing as straight as his rheumatic limbs would let

"Are you ready to marry us now, sir?" said Canute, laying one iron hand on his stooped shoulder. The little

preacher was a good man, but like most men of weak body he was a coward and had a horror of physical

suffering, although he had known so much of it. So with many qualms of conscience he began to repeat the

marriage service. Lena sat sullenly in her chair, staring at the fire. Canute stood beside her, listening with his

head bent reverently and his hands folded on his breast. When the little man had prayed and said amen,

"I will take you home, now," he said as he carried him out and placed him in his buggy, and started off with

him through the fury of the storm, floundering among the snow drifts that brought even the giant himself to

After she was left alone, Lena soon ceased weeping. She was not of a particularly sensitive temperament, and

had little pride beyond that of vanity. After the first bitter anger wore itself out, she felt nothing more than a

healthy sense of humiliation and defeat. She had no inclination to run away, for she was married now, and in

her eyes that was final and all rebellion was useless. She knew nothing about a license, but she knew that a

preacher married folks. She consoled herself by thinking that she had always intended to marry Canute

She grew tired of crying and looking into the fire, so she got up and began to look about her. She had heard

queer tales about the inside of Canute's shanty, and her curiosity soon got the better of her rage. One of the

first things she noticed was the new black suit of clothes hanging on the wall. She was dull, but it did not take

a vain woman long to interpret anything so decidedly flattering, and she was pleased in spite of herself. As

she looked through the cupboard, the general air of neglect and discomfort made her pity the man who lived

"Poor fellow, no wonder he wants to get married to get somebody to wash up his dishes. Batchin's pretty hard

It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled. She looked at the windowsill and gave a little

shudder and wondered if the man were crazy. Then she sat down again and sat a long time wondering what

"It is queer Dick didn't come right over after me. He surely came, for he would have left town before the

storm began and he might just as well come right on as go back. If he'd hurried he would have gotten here

before the preacher came. I suppose he was afraid to come, for he knew Canuteson could pound him to jelly,

The weary hours wore on and Lena began to grow horribly lonesome. It was an uncanny night and this was

an uncanny place to be in. She could hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more

terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they told of the big log

overhead and she was afraid of those snaky things on the windowsills. She remembered the man who had

been killed in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazy Lou's white face glaring into

the window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she thought the latch must be loose and took the

lamp to look at it. Then for the first time she saw the ugly brown snake skins whose death rattle sounded

Outside the door she heard a heavy sound as of a big dog getting up and shaking himself. The door opened

He went out and got an armful of wood and a basket of cobs and filled the stove. Then he went out and lay in

She spoke again and it seemed as though her mouth was close up to the keyhole. She spoke lower than he

had ever heard her speak before, so low that he had to put his ear up to the lock to hear her.

For a moment she heard no noise at all, then something like a groan. With a cry of fear she opened the door,

and saw Canute stretched in the snow at her feet, his face in his hands, sobbing on the doorstep.

It was a great night at the Lone Star schoolhousea night when the Spirit was present with power and when

God was very near to man. So it seemed to Asa Skinner, servant of God and Free Gospeller. The schoolhouse

was crowded with the saved and sanctified, robust men and women, trembling and quailing before the power

of some mysterious psychic force. Here and there among this cowering, sweating multitude crouched some

poor wretch who had felt the pangs of an awakened conscience, but had not yet experienced that complete

divestment of reason, that frenzy born of a convulsion of the mind, which, in the parlance of the Free

Gospellers, is termed "the Light." On the floor before the mourners' bench lay the unconscious figure of a

man in whom outraged nature had sought her last resort. This "trance" state is the highest evidence of grace

Before the desk stood Asa Skinner, shouting of the mercy and vengeance of God, and in his eyes shone a

terrible earnestness, an almost prophetic flame. Asa was a converted train gambler who used to run between

Omaha and Denver. He was a man made for the extremes of life; from the most debauched of men he had

become the most ascetic. His was a bestial face, a. face that bore the stamp of Nature's eternal injustice. The

forehead was low, projecting over the eyes, and the sandy hair was plastered down over it and then brushed

back at an abrupt right angle. The chin was heavy, the nostrils were low and wide, and the lower lip hung

loosely except in his moments of spasmodic earnestness, when it shut like a steel trap. Yet about those coarse

features there were deep, rugged furrows, the scars of many a handtohand struggle with the weakness of

the flesh, and about that drooping lip were sharp, strenuous lines that had conquered it and taught it to pray.

Over those seamed cheeks there was a certain pallor, a greyness caught from many a vigil. It was as though,

after Nature had done her worst with that face, some fine chisel had gone over it, chastening and almost

transfiguring it. Tonight, as his muscles twitched with emotion, and the perspiration dropped from his hair

and chin, there was a certain convincing power in the man. For Asa Skinner was a man possessed of a belief,

of that sentiment of the sublime before which all inequalities are leveled, that transport of conviction which

seems superior to all laws of condition, under which debauchees have become martyrs; which made a tinker

an artist and a cameldriver the founder of an empire. This was with Asa Skinner tonight, as he stood

It might have occurred to an impartial observer that Asa Skinner's God was indeed a vengeful God if he could

reserve vengeance for those of his creatures who were packed into the Lone Star schoolhouse that night. Poor

exiles of all nations; men from the south and the north, peasants from almost every country of Europe, most

of them from the mountainous, nightbound coast of Norway. Honest men for the most part, but men with

whom the world had dealt hardly; the failures of all countries, men sobered by toil and saddened by exile,

who had been driven to fight for the dominion of an untoward soil, to sow where others should gather, the

Never had Asa Skinner spoken more earnestly than now. He felt that the Lord had this night a special work

for him to do. Tonight Eric Hermannson, the wildest lad on all the Divide, sat in his audience with a fiddle on

his knee, just as he had dropped in on his way to play for some dance. The violin is an object of particular

abhorrence to the Free Gospellers. Their antagonism to the church organ is bitter enough, but the fiddle they

regard as a very incarnation of evil desires, singing forever of worldly pleasures and inseparably associated

Eric Hermannson had long been the object of the prayers of the revivalists. His mother had felt the power of

the Spirit weeks ago, and special prayermeetings had been held at her house for her son. But Eric had only

gone his ways laughing, the ways of youth, which are short enough at best, and none too flowery on the

He slipped away from the prayermeetings to meet the Campbell boys in Genereau's saloon, or hug the

plump little French girls at Chevalier's dances, and sometimes, of a summer night, he even went across the

dewy cornfields and through the wildplum thicket to play the fiddle for Lena Hanson, whose name was a

reproach through all the Divide country, where the women are usually too plain and too busy and too tired to

depart from the ways of virtue. On such occasions Lena, attired in a pink wrapper and silk stockings and tiny

pink slippers, would sing to him, accompanying herself on a battered guitar. It gave him a delicious sense of

freedom and experience to be with a woman who, no matter how, had lived in big cities and knew the ways

of town folk, who had never worked in the fields and had kept her hands white and soft, her throat fair and

tender, who had heard great singers in Denver and Salt Lake, and who knew the strange language of flattery

Yet, careless as he seemed, the frantic prayers of his mother were not altogether without their effect upon

Eric. For days he had been fleeing before them as a criminal from his pursuers, and over his pleasures had

fallen the shadow of something dark and terrible that dogged his steps. The harder he danced, the louder he

sang, the more was he conscious that this phantom was gaining upon him, that in time it would track him

down. One Sunday afternoon, late in the fall, when he had been drinking beer with Lena Hanson and listening

to a song which made his cheeks burn, a rattlesnake had crawled out of the side of the sod house and thrust its

ugly head in under the screen door. He was not afraid of snakes, but he knew enough of Gospellism to feel

the significance of the reptile lying coiled there upon her doorstep. His lips were cold when he kissed Lena

The final barrier between Eric and his mother's faith was his violin, and to that he clung as a man sometimes

will cling to his dearest sin, to the weakness more precious to him than all his strength, In the great world

beauty comes to men in many guises, and art in a hundred forms, but for Eric there was only his violin.

It stood, to him, for all the manifestations of art; it was his only bridge into the kingdom of the soul.

It was to Eric Hermannson that the evangelist directed his impassioned pleading that night.

"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Is there a Saul here tonight who has stopped his ears to that gentle

pleading, who has thrust a spear into that bleeding side? Think of it, my brother; you are offered this

wonderful love and you prefer the worm that dieth not and the fire which will not be quenched. What right

have you to lose one of God's precious souls? Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"

A great joy dawned in Asa Skinner's pale face, for he saw that Eric Hermannson was swaying to and fro in

his seat. The minister fell upon his knees and threw his long arms up over his head.

"O my brothers! I feel it coming, the blessing we have prayed for. I tell you the Spirit is coming! just a little

more prayer, brothers, a little more zeal, and he will be here. I can feel his cooling wing upon my brow. Glory

The whole congregation groaned under the pressure of this spiritual panic. Shouts and hallelujahs went up

from every lip. Another figure fell prostrate upon the floor. From the mourners' bench rose a chant of terror

"Eating honey and drinking wine, Glory to the bleeding Lamb! I am my Lord's and he is mine, Glory to the

The hymn was sung in a dozen dialects and voiced all the vague yearning of these hungry lives, of these

people who had starved all the passions so long, only to fall victims to the barest of them all, fear.

A groan of ultimate anguish rose from Eric Hermannson's bowed head, and the sound was like the groan of a

The minister rose suddenly to his feet and threw back his head, crying in a loud voice:

"Lazarus, come forth! Eric Hermannson, you are lost, going down at sea. In the name of God, and Jesus

Christ his Son, I throw you the life line. Take hold! Almighty God, my soul for his!" The minister threw his

Eric Hermannson rose to his feet; his lips were set and the lightning was in his eyes. He took his violin by the

neck and crushed it to splinters across his knee, and to Asa Skinner the sound was like the shackles of sin

For more than two years Eric Hermannson kept the austere faith to which he had sworn himself, kept it until a

girl from the East came to spend a week on the Nebraska Divide. She was a girl of other manners and

conditions, and there were greater distances between her life and Eric's than all the miles which separated

Rattlesnake Creek from New York City. Indeed, she had no business to be in the West at all; but ah! across

what leagues of land and sea, by what improbable chances, do the unrelenting gods bring to us our fate!

It was in a year of financial depression that Wyllis Elliot came to Nebraska to buy cheap land and revisit the

country where he had spent a year of his youth. When he had graduated from Harvard it was still customary

for moneyed gentlemen to send their scapegrace sons to rough it on ranches in the wilds of Nebraska or

Dakota, or to consign them to a living death in the sagebrush of the Black Hills. These young men did not

always return to the ways of civilized life. But Wyllis Elliot had not married a halfbreed, nor been shot in a

cowpunchers' brawl, nor wrecked by bad whisky, nor appropriated by a smirched adventuress. He had been

saved from these things by a girl, his sister, who had been very near to his life ever since the days when they

read fairy tales together and dreamed the dreams that never come true. On this, his first visit to his father's

ranch since he left it six years before, he brought her with him. She had been laid up half the winter from a

sprain received while skating, and had had too much time for reflection during those months. She was restless

and filled with a desire to see something of the wild country of which her brother had told her so much. She

was to be married the next winter, and Wyllis understood her when she begged him to take her with him on

this long, aimless jaunt across the continent, to taste the last of their freedom together. it comes to all women

of her typethat desire to taste the unknown which allures and terrifies, to run one's whole soul's length out

It had been an eventful journey. Wyllis somehow understood that strain of gypsy blood in his sister, and he

knew where to take her. They had slept in sod houses on the Platte River, made the acquaintance of the

personnel of a thirdrate opera company on the train to Deadwood, dined in a camp of railroad constructors

at the world's end beyond New Castle, gone through the Black Hills on horseback, fished for trout in Dome

Lake, watched a dance at Cripple Creek, where the lost souls who hide in the hills gathered for their besotted

revelry. And now, last of all, before the return to thraldom, there was this little shack, anchored on the windy

crest of the Divide, a little black dot against the flaming sunsets, a scented sea of cornland bathed in

Margaret Elliot was one of those women of whom there are so many in this day, when old order, passing,

giveth place to new; beautiful, talented, critical, unsatisfied, tired of the world at twentyfour. For the

moment the life and people of the Divide interested her. She was there but a week; perhaps had she stayed

longer, that inexorable ennui which travels faster even than the Vestibule Limited would have overtaken her.

The week she tarried there was the week that Eric Hermannson was helping Jerry Lockhart thresh; a week

It was on Thursday and they were to leave on Saturday. Wyllis and his sister were sitting on the wide piazza

of the ranchhouse, staring out into the afternoon sunlight and protesting against the gusts of hot wind that

"This wind is the real thing; you don't strike it anywhere else. You remember we had a touch of it in Algiers

"I hope it's paid you, Sis. Roughing it's dangerous business; it takes the taste out of things."

"Paid? Why, Wyllis, I haven't been so happy since we were children and were going to discover the ruins of

Troy together some day. Do you know, I believe I could just stay on here forever and let the world go on its

own gait. It seems as though the tension and strain we used to talk of last winter were gone for good, as

Wyllis brushed the ashes of his pipe away from the silk handkerchief that was knotted about his neck and

"No, you're mistaken. This would bore you after a while. You can't shake the fever of the other life. I've tried

it. There was a time when the gay fellows of Rome could trot down into the Thebaid and burrow into the

sandhills and get rid of it. But it's all too complex now. You see we've made our dissipations so dainty and

respectable that they've gone further in than the flesh, and taken hold of the ego proper. You couldn't rest,

"You don't waste words, Wyllis, but you never miss fire. I talk more than you do, without saying half so

much. You must have learned the art of silence from these taciturn Norwegians. I think I like silent men."

"Naturally," said Wyllis, "since you have decided to marry the most brilliant talker you know."

Both were silent for a time, listening to the sighing of the hot wind through the parched morningglory vines.

"Tell me, Wyllis, were many of the Norwegians you used to know as interesting as Eric Hermannson?"

"Who, Siegfried? Well, no. He used to be the flower of the Norwegian youth in my day, and he's rather an

exception, even now. He has retrograded, though. The bonds of the soil have tightened on him, I fancy."

"Siegfried? Come, that's rather good, Wyllis. He looks like a dragonslayer. What is it that makes him so

different from the others? I can talk to him; he seems quite like a human being."

"Well," said Wyllis, meditatively, "I don't read Bourget as much as my cultured sister, and I'm not so well up

in analysis, but I fancy it's because one keeps cherishing a perfectly unwarranted suspicion that under that

"Something like that," said Margaret, thoughtfully, "except that it's more than a suspicion, and it isn't

"I always have my doubts about loquacious souls," Wyllis remarked, with the unbelieving smile that had

Margaret went on, not heeding the interruption. "I knew it from the first, when he told me about the suicide of

his cousin, the Bernstein boy. That kind of blunt pathos can't be summoned at will in anybody. The earlier

novelists rose to it, sometimes, unconsciously. But last night when I sang for him I was doubly sure. Oh, I

haven't told you about that yet! Better light your pipe again. You see, he stumbled in on me in the dark when

I was pumping away at that old parlour organ to please Mrs. Lockhart It's her household fetish and I've

forgotten how many pounds of butter she made and sold to buy it. Well, Eric stumbled in, and in some

inarticulate manner made me understand that he wanted me to sing for him. I sang just the old things, of

course. It's queer to sing familiar things here at the world's end. It makes one think how the hearts of men

have carried them around the world, into the wastes of Iceland and the jungles of Africa and the islands of the

Pacific. I think if one lived here long enough one would quite forget how to be trivial, and would read only

the great books that we never get time to read in the world, and would remember only the great music, and

the things that are really worth while would stand out clearly against that horizon over there. And of course I

played the intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana for him; it goes rather better on an organ than most things

do. He shuffled his feet and twisted his big hands up into knots and blurted out that he didn't know there was

any music like that in the world. Why, there were tears in his voice, Wyllis! Yes, like Rossetti, I heard his

tears. Then it dawned upon me that it was probably the first good music be had ever heard in all his life.

Think of it, to care for music as he does and never to hear it, never to know that it exists on earth! To long for

it as we long for other perfect experiences that never come. I can't tell you what music means to that man. I

never saw any one so susceptible to it. It gave him speech, he became alive. When I had finished the

intermezzo, he began telling me about a little crippled brother who died and whom he loved and used to carry

everywhere in his arms. He did not wait for encouragement. He took up the story and told it slowly, as if to

himself, just sort of rose up and told his own woe to answer Mascagni's. It overcame me."

"Poor devil," said Wyllis, looking at her with mysterious eyes, "and so you've given him a new woe. Now

he'll go on wanting Grieg and Schubert the rest of his days and never getting them. That's a girl's

Jerry Lockhart came out of the house screwing his chin over the unusual luxury of a stiff white collar, which

his wife insisted upon as a necessary article of toilet while Miss Elliot was at the house. Jerry sat down on the

"Well, I've got the music for your dance, Miss Elliot. Olaf Oleson will bring his accordion and Mollie will

play the organ, when she isn't lookin' after the grub, and a little chap from Frenchtown will bring his

"Delightful! Mr. Lockhart, that dance will be the feature of our trip, and it's so nice of you to get it up for us.

"See here, Lockhart, I'll settle with you for backing her in this scheme," said Wyllis, sitting up and knocking

the ashes out of his pipe. "She's done crazy things enough on this trip, but to talk of dancing all night with a

gang of halfmad Norwegians and taking the carriage at four to catch the six o'clock train out of

"Wyllis, I leave it to your sovereign power of reason to decide whether it isn't easier to stay up all night than

to get up at three in the morning. To get up at three, think what that means! No, sir, I prefer to keep my vigil

"But what do you want with the Norwegians? I thought you were tired of dancing."

"So I am, with some people. But I want to see a Norwegian dance, and I intend to. Come, Wyllis, you know

how seldom it is that one really wants to do anything nowadays. I wonder when I have really wanted to go to

a party before. It will be something to remember next month at Newport, when we have to and don't want to.

Remember your own theory that contrast is about the only thing that makes life endurable. This is my party

and Mr. Lockhart's; your whole duty tomorrow night will consist in being nice to the Norwegian girls. I'll

warrant you were adept enough at it once. And you'd better be very nice indeed, for if there are many such

young Valkyries as Eric's sister among them, they would simply tie you up in a knot if they suspected you

Wyllis groaned and sank back into the hammock to consider his fate, while his sister went on.

Lockhart took out his knife and began sharpening it on the sole of his plowshoe.

"Well, I guess we'll have a couple dozen. You see it's pretty hard to get a crowd together here any more. Most

of 'em have gone over to the Free Gospellers, and they'd rather put their feet in the fire than shake 'em to a

Margaret made a gesture of impatience. "Those Free Gospellers have just cast an evil spell over this country,

"Well," said Lockhart, cautiously, "I don't just like to pass judgment on any Christian sect, but if you're to

know the chosen by their works, the Gospellers can't make a very proud showin', an' that's a fact. They're

responsible for a few suicides, and they've sent a goodsized delegation to the state insane asylum, an' I don't

see as they've made the rest of us much better than we were before. I had a little herdboy last spring, as

square a little Dane as I want to work for me, but after the Gospellers got hold of him and sanctified him, the

little beggar used to get down on his knees out on the prairie and pray by the hour and let the cattle get into

the corn, an' I had to fire him. That's about the way it goes. Now there's Eric; that chap used to be a hustler

and the spryest dancer in all this sectioncalled all the dances. Now he's got no ambition and he's glum as a

"Eric? Why, he must dance, we can't let him off," said Margaret, quickly. "Why, I intend to dance with him

"I'm afraid he won't dance. I asked him this morning if he'd help us out and he said, 'I don't dance now, any

"'The Miller of Hofbau, the Miller of Hofbau, O my Princess!'" chirped Wyllis, cheerfully, from his

The red on his sister's cheek deepened a little, and she laughed mischievously. "We'll see about that, sir. I'll

Every night Eric rode over to St. Anne, a little village in the heart of the French settlement, for the mail. As

the road lay through the most attractive part of the Divide country, on several occasions Margaret Elliot and

her brother had accompanied him. Tonight Wyllis had business with Lockhart, and Margaret rode with Eric,

mounted on a frisky little mustang that Mrs. Lockhart had broken to the sidesaddle. Margaret regarded her

escort very much as she did the servant who always accompanied her on long rides at home, and the ride to

the village was a silent one. She was occupied with thoughts of another world, and Eric was wrestling with

He rode with his eyes riveted on that slight figure before him, as though he wished to absorb it through the

optic nerves and hold it in his brain forever. He understood the situation perfectly. His brain worked slowly,

but he had a keen sense of the values of things. This girl represented an entirely new species of humanity to

him, but he knew where to place her. The prophets of old, when an angel first appeared unto them, never

Eric was patient under the adverse conditions of his life, but he was not servile. The Norse blood in him had

not entirely lost its selfreliance. He came of a proud fisher line, men who were not afraid of anything but the

ice and the devil, and he had prospects before him when his father went down off the North Cape in the long

Arctic night, and his mother, seized by a violent horror of seafaring life, had followed her brother to America.

Eric was eighteen then, handsome as young Siegfried, a giant in stature, with a skin singularly pure and

delicate, like a Swede's; hair as yellow as the locks of Tennyson's amorous Prince, and eyes of a fierce,

He had in those days a certain pride of bearing, a certain confidence of approach, that usually accompanies

physical perfection. It was even said of him then that he was in love with life, and inclined to levity, a vice

most unusual on the Divide. But the sad history of those Norwegian exiles, transplanted in an arid soil and

under a scorching sun, had repeated itself in his case. Toil and isolation had sobered him, and he grew more

and more like the clods among which he laboured. It was as though some redhot instrument had touched for

a moment those delicate fibers of the brain which respond to acute pain or pleasure, in which lies the power

of exquisite sensation, and had seared them quite away. It is a painful thing to watch the light die out of the

eyes of those Norsemen, leaving an expression of impenetrable sadness, quite passive, quite hopeless, a

shadow that is never lifted. With some this change comes almost at once, in the first bitterness of

homesickness, with others it comes more slowly, according to the time it takes each man's heart to die.

Oh, those poor Northmen of the Divide! They are dead many a year before they are put to rest in the little

The peculiar species of hypochondria to which the exiles of his people sooner or later succumb had not

developed in Eric until that night at the Lone Star schoolhouse, when he had broken his violin across his

knee. After that, the gloom of his people settled down upon him, and the gospel of maceration began its work.

"If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out," et cetera. The pagan smile that once hovered about his lips was gone,

and he was one with sorrow. Religion heals a hundred hearts for one that it embitters, but when it destroys, its

work is quick and deadly, and where the agony of the cross has been, joy will not come again. This man

understood things literally: one must live without pleasure to die without fear; to save the soul, it was

The sun hung low above the cornfields when Margaret and her cavalier left St. Anne. South of the town there

is a stretch of road that runs for some three miles through the French settlement, where the prairie is as level

as the surface of a lake. There the fields of flax and wheat and rye are bordered by precise rows of slender,

tapering Lombard poplars. It was a yellow world that Margaret Elliot saw under the wide light of the setting

The girl gathered up her reins and called back to Eric, "It will be safe to run the horses here, won't it?"

"Yes, I think so, now," he answered, touching his spur to his pony's flank. They were off like the wind. It is

an old saying in the West that newcomers always ride a horse or two to death before they get broken in to the

country. They are tempted by the great open spaces and try to outride the horizon, to get to the end of

something. Margaret galloped over the level road, and Eric, from behind, saw her long veil fluttering in the

wind. It had fluttered just so in his dreams last night and the night before. With a sudden inspiration of

courage he overtook her and rode beside her, looking intently at her halfaverted face. Before, he had only

stolen occasional glances at it, seen it in blinding flashes, always with more or less embarrassment, but now

he determined to let every line of it sink into his memory. Men of the world would have said that it was an

unusual face, nervous, finely cut, with clear, elegant lines that betokened ancestry. Men of letters would have

called it a historic face, and would have conjectured at what old passions, long asleep, what old sorrows

forgotten time out of mind, doing battle together in ages gone, had curved those delicate nostrils, left their

unconscious memory in those eyes. But Eric read no meaning in these details. To him this beauty was

something more than colour and line; it was a flash of white light, in which one cannot distinguish colour

because all colours are there. To him it was a complete revelation, an embodiment of those dreams of

impossible loveliness that linger by a young man's pillow on midsummer nights; yet, because it held

something more than the attraction of health and youth and shapeliness, it troubled him, and in its presence he

felt as the Goths before the white marbles in the Roman Capitol, not knowing whether they were men or

gods. At times he felt like uncovering his head before it, again the fury seized him to break and despoil, to

find the clay in this spiritthing and stamp upon it. Away from her, he longed to strike out with his arms, and

take and hold; it maddened him that this woman whom he could break in his hands should be so much

stronger than he. But near her, he never questioned this strength; he admitted its potentiality as he admitted

Tonight, when he rode so close to her that he could have touched her, he knew that he might as well reach out

Margaret stirred uneasily under his gaze and turned questioningly in her saddle.

"I want to ask you if I go to New York to work, if I maybe hear music like you sang last night? I been a purty

Margaret looked at him with surprise, and then, as she studied the outline of his face, pityingly.

"Well, you mightbut you'd lose a good deal else. I shouldn't like you to go to New Yorkand be poor,

you'd be out of atmosphere, some way," she said, slowly. Inwardly she was thinking: There he would be

altogether sordid, impossiblea machine who would carry one's trunks upstairs, perhaps. Here he is every

inch a man, rather picturesque; why is it? "No," she added aloud, "I shouldn't like that."

Margaret turned her face to hide a smile. She was a trifle amused and a trifle annoyed. Suddenly she spoke

"But I'll tell you what I do want you to do, Eric. I want you to dance with us tomorrow night and teach me

Eric straightened himself in his saddle and his eyes flashed as they had done in the Lone Star schoolhouse

"Yes, I will," he said, quietly, and he believed that he delivered his soul to hell as he said it.

They had reached the rougher country now, where the road wound through a narrow cut in one of the bluffs

along the creek, when a beat of hoofs ahead and the sharp neighing of horses made the ponies start and Eric

rose in his stirrups. Then down the gulch in front of them and over the steep clay banks thundered a herd of

wild ponies, nimble as monkeys and wild as rabbits, such as horse traders drive east from the plains of

Montana to sell in the farming country. Margaret's pony made a shrill sound, a neigh that was almost a

scream, and started up the clay bank to meet them, all the wild blood of the range breaking out in an instant.

Margaret called to Eric just as he threw himself out of the saddle and caught her pony's bit. But the wiry little

animal had gone mad and was kicking and biting like a devil. Her wild brothers of the range were all about

her, neighing, and pawing the earth, and striking her with their forefeet and snapping at her flanks. It was the

"Drop the reins and hold tight, tight!" Eric called, throwing all his weight upon the bit, struggling under those

frantic forefeet that now beat at his breast, and now kicked at the wild mustangs that surged and tossed about

him. He succeeded in wrenching the pony's head toward him and crowding her withers against the clay bank,

"Hold tight, tight!" he shouted again, launching a kick at a snorting animal that reared back against Margaret's

saddle. If she should lose her courage and fall now, under those hoofs He struck out again and again,

kicking right and left with all his might. Already the negligent drivers had galloped into the cut, and their

long quirts were whistling over the heads of the herd. As suddenly as it had come, the struggling, frantic

wave of wild life swept up out of the gulch and on across the open prairie, and with a long despairing whinny

of farewell the pony dropped her head and stood trembling in her sweat, shaking the foam and blood from her

Eric stepped close to Margaret's side and laid his hand on her saddle. "You are not hurt?" he asked, hoarsely.

As he raised his face in the soft starlight she saw that it was white and drawn and that his lips were working

"No, no, not at all. But you, you are suffering; they struck you!" she cried in sharp alarm.

"No, it is not that," he spoke rapidly now, with his hands clenched at his side. "But if they had hurt you, I

would beat their brains out with my hands. I would kill them all. I was never afraid before. You are the only

beautiful thing that has ever come close to me. You came like an angel out of the sky. You are like the music

you sing, you are like the stars and the snow on the mountains where I played when I was a little boy. You

are like all that I wanted once and never had, you are all that they have killed in me. I die for you tonight,

tomorrow, for all eternity. I am not a coward; I was afraid because I love you more than Christ who died for

me, more than I am afraid of hell, or hope for heaven. I was never afraid before. If you had fallenoh, my

God!" He threw his arms out blindly and dropped his head upon the pony's mane, leaning ]imply against the

animal like a man struck by some sickness. His shoulders rose and fell perceptibly with his laboured

breathing. The horse stood cowed with exhaustion and fear. Presently Margaret laid her hand on Eric's head

"No, he has gone with the herd. I will lead yours, she is not safe. I will not frighten you again." His voice was

still husky, but it was steady now. He took hold of the bit and tramped home in silence.

When they reached the house, Eric stood stolidly by the pony's head until Wyllis came to lift his sister from

"The horses were badly frightened, Wyllis. I think I was pretty thoroughly scared myself," she said as she

took her brother's arm and went slowly up the hill toward the house. "No, I'm not hurt, thanks to Eric. You

must thank him for taking such good care of me. He's a mighty fine fellow. I'll tell you all about it in the

morning, dear. I was pretty well shaken up and I'm going right to bed now. Good night."

When she reached the low room in which she slept, she sank upon the bed in her riding dress, face

"Oh, I pity him! I pity him!" she murmured, with a long sigh of exhaustion. She must have slept a little.

When she rose again, she took from her dress a letter that had been waiting for her at the village postoffice.

It was closely written in a long, angular hand, covering a dozen pages of foreign notepaper, and began:

My Dearest Margaret: if I should attempt to say how like a winter hath thine absence been, I should incur the

risk of being tedious. Really, it takes the sparkle out of everything. Having nothing better to do, and not

caring to go anywhere in particular without you, I remained in the city until Jack Courtwell noted my general

despondency and brought me down here to his place on the sound to manage some openair theatricals he is

getting up. As You Like It is of course the piece selected. Miss Harrison plays Rosalind. I wish you had been

here to take the part. Miss Harrison reads her lines well, but she is either a maidenallforlorn or a tomboy;

insists on reading into the part all sorts of deeper meanings and highly coloured suggestions wholly out of

harmony with the pastoral setting. Like most of the professionals, she exaggerates the emotional element and

quite fails to do justice to Rosalind's facile wit and really brilliant mental qualities. Gerard will do Orlando,

but rumor says he is epris of your sometime friend, Miss Meredith, and his memory is treacherous and his

My new pictures arrived last week on the Gascogne. The Puvis de Chavannes is even more beautiful than I

thought it in Paris. A pale dreammaiden sits by a pale dreamcow and a stream of anemic water flows at her

feet. The Constant, you will remember, I got because you admired it. It is here in all its florid splendour, the

whole dominated by a glowing sensuosity. The drapery of the female figure is as wonderful as you said; the

fabric all barbaric pearl and gold, painted with an easy, effortless voluptuousness, and that white, gleaming

line of African coast in the background recalls memories of you very precious to me. But it is useless to deny

that Constant irritates me. Though I cannot prove the charge against him, his brilliancy always makes me

Here Margaret stopped and glanced at the remaining pages of this strange loveletter. They seemed to be

filled chiefly with discussions of pictures and books, and with a slow smile she laid them by.

She rose and began undressing. Before she lay down she went to open the window. With her hand on the sill,

she hesitated, feeling suddenly as though some danger were lurking outside, some inordinate desire waiting to

spring upon her in the darkness. She stood there for a long time, gazing at the infinite sweep of the sky.

"Oh, it is all so little, so little there," she murmured. "When everything else is so dwarfed, why should one

expect love to be great? Why should one try to read highly coloured suggestions into a life like that? If only I

could find one thing in it all that mattered greatly, one thing that would warm me when I am alone! Will life

As she raised the window, she heard a sound in the plum bushes outside. It was only the housedog roused

from his sleep, but Margaret started violently and trembled so that she caught the foot of the bed for support.

Again she felt herself pursued by some overwhelming longing, some desperate necessity for herself, like the

outstretching of helpless, unseen arms in the darkness, and the air seemed heavy with sighs of yearning. She

fled to her bed with the words, "I love you more than Christ who died for me!" ringing in her ears.

About midnight the dance at Lockhart's was at its height. Even the old men who had come to "look on"

caught the spirit of revelry and stamped the floor with the vigor of old Silenus. Eric took the violin from the

Frenchmen, and Minna Oleson sat at the organ, and the music grew more and more characteristicrude, half

mournful music, made up of the folksongs of the North, that the villagers sing through the long night in

hamlets by the sea, when they are thinking of the sun, and the spring, and the fishermen so long away. To

Margaret some of it sounded like Grieg's Peer Gynt music. She found something irresistibly infectious in the

mirth of these people who were so seldom merry, and she felt almost one of them. Something seemed

struggling for freedom in them tonight, something of the joyous childhood of the nations which exile had not

killed. The girls were all boisterous with delight. Pleasure came to them but rarely, and when it came, they

caught at it wildly and crushed its fluttering wings in their strong brown fingers. They had a hard life enough,

most of them. Torrid summers and freezing winters, labour and drudgery and ignorance, were the portion of

their girlhood; a short wooing, a hasty, loveless marriage, unlimited maternity, thankless sons, premature age

and ugliness, were the dower of their womanhood. But what matter? Tonight there was hot liquor in the glass

Tonight Eric Hermannson had renewed his youth. He was no longer the big, silent Norwegian who had sat at

Margaret's feet and looked hopelessly into her eyes. Tonight he was a man, with a man's rights and a man's

power. Tonight he was Siegfried indeed. His hair was yellow as the heavy wheat in the ripe of summer, and

his eyes flashed like the blue water between the ice packs in the north seas. He was not afraid of Margaret

tonight, and when he danced with her he held her firmly. She was tired and dragged on his arm a little, but the

strength of the man was like an all pervading fluid, stealing through her veins, awakening under her heart

some nameless, unsuspected existence that had slumbered there all these years and that went out through her

throbbing fingertips to his that answered. She wondered if the hoydenish blood of some lawless ancestor,

long asleep, were calling out in her tonight, some drop of a hotter fluid that the centuries had failed to cool,

and why, if this curse were in her, it had not spoken before. But was it a curse, this awakening, this wealth

before undiscovered, this music set free? For the first time in her life her heart held something stronger than

herself, was not this worthwhile? Then she ceased to wonder. She lost sight of the lights and the faces and the

music was drowned by the beating of her own arteries. She saw only the blue eyes that flashed above her, felt

only the warmth of that throbbing hand which held hers and which the blood of his heart fed. Dimly, as in a

dream, she saw the drooping shoulders, high white forehead and tight, cynical mouth of the man she was to

marry in December. For an hour she had been crowding back the memory of that face with all her strength.

"Let us stop, this is enough," she whispered. His only answer was to tighten the arm behind her. She sighed

and let that masterful strength bear her where it would. She forgot that this man was little more than a savage,

that they would part at dawn. The blood has no memories, no reflections, no regrets for the past, no

"Let us go out where it is cooler," she said when the music stopped; thinking, I am growing faint here, I shall

be all right in the open air. They stepped out into the cool, blue air of the night.

Since the older folk had begun dancing, the young Norwegians had been slipping out in couples to climb the

"Forty feet, about. I not let you fall." There was a note of irresistible pleading in his voice, and she felt that he

tremendously wished her to go. Well, why not? This was a night of the unusual, when she was not herself at

all, but was living an unreality. Tomorrow, yes, in a few hours, there would be the Vestibule Limited and the

"Well, if you'll take good care of me. I used to be able to climb, when I was a little girl."

Once at the top and seated on the platform, they were silent. Margaret wondered if she would not hunger for

that scene all her life, through all the routine of the days to come. Above them stretched the great Western

sky, serenely blue, even in the night, with its big, burning stars, never so cold and dead and far away as in

denser atmospheres. The moon would not be up for twenty minutes yet, and all about the horizon, that wide

horizon, which seemed to reach around the world, lingered a pale white light, as of a universal dawn. The

weary wind brought up to them the heavy odours of the cornfields. The music of the dance sounded faintly

from below. Eric leaned on his elbow beside her, his legs swinging down on the ladder. His great shoulders

looked more than ever like those of the stone Doryphorus, who stands in his perfect, reposeful strength in the

Louvre, and had often made her wonder if such men died forever with the youth of Greece.

She was somewhat startled by this reply, and more startled when this taciturn man spoke again.

"You soon forget about this country, I guess." It seemed to him now a little thing to lose his soul for this

woman, but that she should utterly forget this night into which he threw all his life and all his eternity, that

"No, Eric, I will not forget. You have all been too kind to me for that. And you won't be sorry you danced this

"I never be sorry. I have not been so happy before. I not be so happy again, ever. You will be happy many

The mighty resignation of his tone alarmed and touched her. It was as when some great animal composes

She sighed, but did not answer him. He drew a little closer and looked into her eyes.

"Yes, but I cannot put it into words. Perhaps if I could do that, I could cure it."

He clasped his hands together over his heart, as children do when they pray, and said falteringly, "If I own all

"Thank you, Eric; I believe you would. But perhaps even then I should not be happy. Perhaps I have too

She did not take her hand away from him; she did not dare. She sat still and waited for the traditions in which

she had always believed to speak and save her. But they were dumb. She belonged to an ultrarefined

civilization which tries to cheat nature with elegant sophistries. Cheat nature? Bah! One generation may do it,

perhaps two, but the third Can we ever rise above nature or sink below her? Did she not turn on Jerusalem

as upon Sodom, upon St. Anthony in his desert as upon Nero in his seraglio? Does she not always cry in

brutal triumph: "I am here still, at the bottom of things, warming the roots of life; you cannot starve me nor

This woman, on a windmill tower at the world's end with a giant barbarian, heard that cry tonight, and she

was afraid! Ah! the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear ourselves! Until then we have not

"Come, Eric, let us go down; the moon is up and the music has begun again," she said.

He rose silently and stepped down upon the ladder, putting his arm about her to help her. That arm could

have thrown Thor's hammer out in the cornfields yonder, yet it scarcely touched her, and his hand trembled as

it had done in the dance. His face was level with hers now and the moonlight fell sharply upon it. All her life

she had searched the faces of men for the look that lay in his eyes. She knew that that look had never shone

for her before, would never shine for her on earth again, that such love comes to one only in dreams or in

impossible places like this, unattainable always. This was Love's self, in a moment it would die. Stung by the

agonized appeal that emanated from the man's whole being, she leaned forward and laid her lips on his. Once,

twice and again she heard the deep respirations rattle in his throat while she held them there, and the riotous

force under her head became an engulfing weakness. He drew her up to him until he felt all the resistance go

out of her body, until every nerve relaxed and yielded. When she drew her face back from his, it was white

"Let us go down, oh, my God! let us go down!" she muttered. And the drunken stars up yonder seemed

reeling to some appointed doom as she clung to the rounds of the ladder. All that she was to know of love she

"The devil is loose again," whispered Olaf Oleson, as he saw Eric dancing a moment later, his eyes blazing.

But Eric was thinking with an almost savage exultation of the time when he should pay for this. Ah, there

would be no quailing then! if ever a soul went fearlessly, proudly down to the gates infernal, his should go.

For a moment he fancied he was there already, treading down the tempest of flame, hugging the fiery

hurricane to his breast. He wondered whether in ages gone, all the countless years of sinning in which men

had sold and lost and flung their souls away, any man had ever so cheated Satan, had ever bartered his soul

The carriage was brought to the door and Wyllis Elliot and his sister said goodbye. She could not meet Eric's

eyes as she gave him her hand, but as he stood by the horse's head, just as the carriage moved off, she gave

him one swift glance that said, "I will not forget." In a moment the carriage was gone.

Eric changed his coat and plunged his head into the water tank and went to the barn to hook up his team. As

he led his horses to the door, a shadow fell across his path, and he saw Skinner rising in his stirrups. His

rugged face was pale and worn with looking after his wayward flock, with dragging men into the way of

The minister's shoulders drooped, and an expression of profound discouragement settled over his haggard

"Eric, I didn't look for this from you. I thought God had set his mark on you if he ever had on any man. And

it is for things like this that you set your soul back a thousand years from God. 0 foolish and perverse

Eric drew himself up to his full height and looked off to where the new day was gilding the corntassels and

flooding the uplands with light. As his nostrils drew in the breath of the dew and the morning, something

from the only poetry he had ever read flashed across his mind, and he murmured, half to himself, with

We had our swim before sundown, and while we were cooking our supper the oblique rays of light made a

dazzling glare on the white sand about us. The translucent red ball itself sank behind the brown stretches of

cornfield as we sat down to eat, and the warm layer of air that had rested over the water and our clean sand

bar grew fresher and smelled of the rank ironweed and sunflowers growing on the flatter shore. The river was

brown and sluggish, like any other of the halfdozen streams that water the Nebraska corn lands. On one

shore was an irregular line of bald clay bluffs where a few scrub oaks with thick trunks and flat, twisted tops

threw light shadows on the long grass. The western shore was low and level, with cornfields that stretched to

the skyline, and all along the water's edge were little sandy coves and beaches where slim cottonwoods and

The turbulence of the river in springtime discouraged milling, and, beyond keeping the old red bridge in

repair, the busy farmers did not concern themselves with the stream; so the Sandtown boys were left in

undisputed possession. In the autumn we hunted quail through the miles of stubble and fodder land along the

flat shore, and, after the winter skating season was over and the ice had gone out, the spring freshets and

flooded bottoms gave us our great excitement of the year. The channel was never the same for two successive

seasons. Every spring the swollen stream undermined a bluff to the east, or bit out a few acres of cornfield to

the west and whirled the soil away, to deposit it in spumy mud banks somewhere else. When the water fell

low in midsummer, new sand bars were thus exposed to dry and whiten in the August sun. Sometimes these

were banked so firmly that the fury of the next freshet failed to unseat them; the little willow seedlings

emerged triumphantly from the yellow froth, broke into spring leaf, shot up into summer growth, and with

their mesh of roots bound together the moist sand beneath them against the batterings of another April. Here

and there a cottonwood soon glittered among them, quivering in the low current of air that, even on breathless

days when the dust hung like smoke above the wagon road, trembled along the face of the water.

It was on such an island, in the third summer of its yellow green, that we built our watch fire; not in the

thicket of dancing willow wands, but on the level terrace of fine sand which had been added that spring; a

little new bit of world, beautifully ridged with ripple marks, and strewn with the tiny skeletons of turtles and

fish, all as white and dry as if they had been expertly cured. We had been careful not to mar the freshness of

the place, although we often swam to it on summer evenings and lay on the sand to rest.

This was our last watch fire of the year, and there were reasons why I should remember it better than any of

the others. Next week the other boys were to file back to their old places in the Sandtown High School, but I

was to go up to the Divide to teach my first country school in the Norwegian district. I was already homesick

at the thought of quitting the boys with whom I had always played; of leaving the river, and going up into a

windy plain that was all windmills and cornfields and big pastures; where there was nothing wilful or

unmanageable in the landscape, no new islands, and no chance of unfamiliar birdssuch as often followed

Other boys came and went and used the river for fishing or skating, but we six were sworn to the spirit of the

stream, and we were friends mainly because of the river. There were the two Hassler boys, Fritz and Otto,

sons of the little German tailor. They were the youngest of us; ragged boys of ten and twelve, with sunburned

hair, weatherstained faces, and pale blue eyes. Otto, the elder, was the best mathematician in school, and

clever at his books, but he always dropped out in the spring term as if the river could not get on without him.

He and Fritz caught the fat, horned catfish and sold them about the town, and they lived so much in the water

There was Percy Pound, a fat, freckled boy with chubby cheeks, who took half a dozen boys' storypapers

and was always being kept in for reading detective stories behind his desk. There was Tip Smith, destined by

his freckles and red hair to be the buffoon in all our games, though he walked like a timid little old man and

had a funny, cracked laugh. Tip worked hard in his father's grocery store every afternoon, and swept it out

before school in the morning. Even his recreations were laborious. He collected cigarette cards and tin

tobaccotags indefatigably, and would sit for hours humped up over a snarling little scrollsaw which he

kept in his attic. His dearest possessions were some little pill bottles that purported to contain grains of wheat

from the Holy Land, water from the Jordan and the Dead Sea, and earth from the Mount of Olives. His father

had bought these dull things from a Baptist missionary who peddled them, and Tip seemed to derive great

The tall boy was Arthur Adams. He had fine hazel eves that were almost too reflective and sympathetic for a

boy, and such a pleasant voice that we all loved to hear him read aloud. Even when he had to read poetry

aloud at school, no one ever thought of laughing. To be sure, he was not at school very much of the time. He

was seventeen and should have finished the High School the year before, but he was always off somewhere

with his gun. Arthur's mother was dead, and his father, who was feverishly absorbed in promoting schemes,

wanted to send the boy away to school and get him off his hands; but Arthur always begged off for another

year and promised to study. I remember him as a tall, brown boy with an intelligent face, always lounging

among a lot of us little fellows, laughing at us oftener than with us, but such a soft, satisfied laugh that we felt

rather flattered when we provoked it. In afteryears people said that Arthur had been given to evil ways as a

]ad, and it is true that we often saw him with the gambler's sons and with old Spanish Fanny's boy, but if he

learned anything ugly in their company he never betrayed it to us. We would have followed Arthur anywhere,

and I am bound to say that he led us into no worse places than the cattail marshes and the stubble fields.

These, then, were the boys who camped with me that summer night upon the sand bar.

After we finished our supper we beat the willow thicket for driftwood. By the time we had collected enough,

night had fallen, and the pungent, weedy smell from the shore increased with the coolness. We threw

ourselves down about the fire and made another futile effort to show Percy Pound the Little Dipper. We had

"You see those three big stars just below the handle, with the bright one in the middle?" said Otto Hassler;

"that's Orion's belt, and the bright one is the clasp." I crawled behind Otto's shoulder and sighted up his arm

to the star that seemed perched upon the tip of his steady forefinger. The Hassler boys did seinefishing at

Percy gave up the Little Dipper and lay back on the sand, his hands clasped under his head. "I can see the

North Star," he announced, contentedly, pointing toward it with his big toe. "Anyone might get lost and need

"How do you suppose Columbus felt when his compass didn't point north any more?" Tip asked.

Otto shook his head. "My father says that there was another North Star once, and that maybe this one won't

last always. I wonder what would happen to us down here if anything went wrong with it?"

Arthur chuckled. "I wouldn't worry, Ott. Nothing's apt to happen to it in your time. Look at the Milky Way!

We lay back and looked, meditating, at the dark cover of the world. The gurgle of the water had become

heavier. We had often noticed a mutinous, complaining note in it at night, quite different from its cheerful

daytime chuckle, and seeming like the voice of a much deeper and more powerful stream. Our water had

always these two moods: the one of sunny complaisance, the other of inconsolable, passionate regret.

"Queer how the stars are all in sort of diagrams," remarked Otto. "You could do most any proposition in

geometry with 'em. They always look as if they meant something. Some folks say everybody's fortune is all

But Arthur only laughed at him. "You're thinking of Napoleon, Fritzey. He had a star that went out when he

began to lose battles. I guess the stars don't keep any close tally on Sandtown folks."

We were speculating on how many times we could count a hundred before the evening star went down

behind the cornfields, when someone cried, "There comes the moon, and it's as big as a cart wheel!"

We all jumped up to greet it as it swam over the bluffs behind us. It came up like a galleon in full sail; an

"When the moon came up red like that, the Aztecs used to sacrifice their prisoners on the temple top," Percy

"Go on, Perce. You got that out of Golden Days. Do you believe that, Arthur?" I appealed.

Arthur answered, quite seriously: "Like as not. The moon was one of their gods. When my father was in

As we dropped down by the fire again some one asked whether the MoundBuilders were older than the

Aztecs. When we once got upon the MoundBuilders we never willingly got away from them, and we were

"Must have been a big cat jumping," said Fritz. "They do sometimes. They must see bugs in the dark. Look

There was a long, silvery streak on the water, and where the current fretted over a big log it boiled up like

"Suppose there ever was any gold hid away in this old river?" Fritz asked. He lay like a little brown Indian,

close to the fire, his chin on his hand and his bare feet in the air. His brother laughed at him, but Arthur took

"Some of the Spaniards thought there was gold up here somewhere. Seven cities chuck full of gold, they had

it, and Coronado and his men came up to hunt it. The Spaniards were all over this country once."

"Long enough before. Before the Pilgrim Fathers, Perce. Maybe they came along this very river. They always

"I wonder where this river really does begin?" Tip mused. That was an old and a favorite mystery which the

map did not clearly explain. On the map the little black line stopped somewhere in western Kansas; but since

rivers generally rose in mountains, it was only reasonable to suppose that ours came from the Rockies. Its

destination, we knew, was the Missouri, and the Hassler boys always maintained that we could embark at

Sandtown in floodtime, follow our noses, and eventually arrive at New Orleans. Now they took up their old

argument. "If us boys had grit enough to try it, it wouldn't take no time to get to Kansas City and St. Joe."

We began to talk about the places we wanted to go to. The Hassler boys wanted to see the stockyards in

Kansas City, and Percy wanted to see a big store in Chicago. Arthur was interlocutor and did not betray

Tip rolled over on his elbow and poked the fire, and his eyes looked shyly out of his queer, tight little face.

Tip's Uncle Bill was a wanderer, bitten with mining fever, who had drifted into Sandtown with a broken arm,

"Aw, it's down in New Mexico somewheres. There aren't no railroads or anything. You have to go on mules,

and you run out of water before you get there and have to drink canned tomatoes."

"There's a big red rock there that goes right up out of the sand for about nine hundred feet. The country's flat

all around it, and this here rock goes up all by itself, like a monument. They call it the Enchanted Bluff down

there, because no white man has ever been on top of it. The sides are smooth rock, and straight up, like a

wall. The Indians say that hundreds of years ago, before the Spaniards came, there was a village away up

there in the air. The tribe that lived there had some sort of steps, made out of wood and bark, bung down over

the face of the bluff, and the braves went down to hunt and carried water up in big jars swung on their backs.

They kept a big supply of water and dried meat up there, and never went down except to hunt. They were a

peaceful tribe that made cloth and pottery, and they went up there to get out of the wars. You see, they could

pick off any war party that tried to get up their little steps. The Indians say they were a handsome people, and

they had some sort of queer religion. Uncle Bill thinks they were CliffDwellers who had got into trouble

"One time the braves were down hunting and an awful storm came upa kind of waterspoutand when

they got back to their rock they found their little staircase had been all broken to pieces, and only a few steps

were left hanging away up in the air. While they were camped at the foot of the rock, wondering what to do, a

war party from the north came along and massacred 'em to a man, with all the old folks and women looking

on from the rock. Then the war party went on south and left the village to get down the best way they could.

Of course they never got down. They starved to death up there, and when the war party came back on their

way north, they could hear the children crying from the edge of the bluff where they had crawled out, but

they didn't see a sign of a grown Indian, and nobody has ever been up there since."

"There couldn't have been many people up there," Percy demurred. "How big is the top, Tip?"

"Oh, pretty big. Big enough so that the rock doesn't look nearly as tall as it is. The top's bigger than the base.

The bluff is sort of worn away for several hundred feet up. That's one reason it's so hard to climb."

"Nobody knows how they got up or when. A hunting party came along once and saw that there was a town up

Otto rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. "Of course there must be some way to get up there. Couldn't

Tip's little eyes were shining with excitement. "I know a way. Me and Uncle Bill talked it over. There's a kind

of rocket that would take a rope overlifesavers use 'emand then you could hoist a rope ladder and peg it

down at the bottom and make it tight with guy ropes on the other side. I'm going to climb that there bluff, and

"Bones, maybe, or the ruins of their town, or pottery, or some of their idols. There might be 'most anything up

"Dead sure. Hardly anybody ever goes down there. Some hunters tried to cut steps in the rock once, but they

didn't get higher than a man can reach. The Bluff's all red granite, and Uncle Bill thinks it's a boulder the

glaciers left. It's a queer place, anyhow. Nothing but cactus and desert for hundreds of miles, and yet right

under the Bluff there's good water and plenty of grass. That's why the bison used to go down there."

Suddenly we heard a scream above our fire, and jumped up to see a dark, slim bird floating southward far

above usa whooping crane, we knew by her cry and her long neck. We ran to the edge of the island,

hoping we might see her alight, but she wavered southward along the rivercourse until we lost her. The

Hassler boys declared that by the look of the heavens it must be after midnight, so we threw more wood on

our fire, put on our jackets, and curled down in the warm sand. Several of us pretended to doze, but I fancy

we were really thinking about Tip's Bluff and the extinct people. Over in the wood the ring doves were

calling mournfully to one another, and once we heard a dog bark, far away. "Somebody getting into old

Tommy's melon patch," Fritz murmured sleepily, but nobody answered him. By and by Percy spoke out of

"Whoever gets to the Bluff first has got to promise to tell the rest of us exactly what he finds," remarked one

Somewhat reassured, I dropped off to sleep. I must have dreamed about a race for the Bluff, for I awoke in a

kind of fear that other people were getting ahead of me and that I was losing my chance. I sat up in my damp

clothes and looked at the other boys, who lay tumbled in uneasy attitudes about the dead fire. It was still dark,

but the sky was blue with the last wonderful azure of night. The stars glistened like crystal globes, and

trembled as if they shone through a depth of clear water. Even as I watched, they began to pale and the sky

brightened. Day came suddenly, almost instantaneously. I turned for another look at the blue night, and it was

gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and all manner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the

willows. A breeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy smell of ripened corn. The boys rolled over

and shook themselves. We stripped and plunged into the river just as the sun came up over the windy bluffs.

When I came home to Sandtown at Christmas time, we skated out to our island and talked over the whole

Although that was twenty years ago, none of us have ever climbed the Enchanted Bluff. Percy Pound is a

stockbroker in Kansas City and will go nowhere that his red touring car cannot carry him. Otto Hassler went

on the railroad and lost his foot braking; after which he and Fritz succeeded their father as the town tailors.

Arthur sat about the sleepy little town all his lifehe died before he was twentyfive. The last time I saw

him, when I was home on one of my college vacations, he was sitting in a steamer chair under a cottonwood

tree in the little yard behind one of the two Sandtown saloons. He was very untidy and his hand was not

steady, but when he rose, unabashed, to greet me, his eyes were as clear and warm as ever. When I had talked

with him for an hour and heard him laugh again, I wondered how it was that when Nature had taken such

pains with a man, from his hands to the arch of his long foot, she had ever lost him in Sandtown. He joked

about Tip Smith's Bluff, and declared he was going down there just as soon as the weather got cooler; he

I was perfectly sure when I left him that he would never get beyond the high plank fence and the comfortable

shade of the cottonwood. And, indeed, it was under that very tree that he died one summer morning.

Tip Smith still talks about going to New Mexico. He married a slatternly, unthrifty country girl, has been

much tied to a perambulator, and has grown stooped and grey from irregular meals and broken sleep. But the

worst of his difficulties are now over, and he has, as he says, come into easy water. When I was last in

Sandtown I walked home with him late one moonlight night, after he had balanced his cash and shut up his

store. We took the long way around and sat down on the schoolhouse steps, and between us we quite revived

the romance of the lone red rock and the extinct people. Tip insists that he still means to go down there, but

he thinks now he will wait until his boy Bert is old enough to go with him. Bert has been let into the story,

The transcontinental express swung along the windings of the Sand River Valley, and in the rear seat of the

observation car a young man sat greatly at his ease, not in the least discomfited by the fierce sunlight which

beat in upon his brown face and neck and strong back. There was a look of relaxation and of great passivity

about his broad shoulders, which seemed almost too heavy until he stood up and squared them. He wore a

pale flannel shirt and a blue silk necktie with loose ends. His trousers were wide and belted at the waist, and

his short sack coat hung open. His heavy shoes had seen good service. His reddishbrown hair, like his

clothes, had a foreign cut. He had deepset, dark blue eyes under heavy reddish eyebrows. His face was kept

clean only by close shaving, and even the sharpest razor left a glint of yellow in the smooth brown of his skin.

His teeth and the palms of his hands were very white. His head, which looked hard and stubborn, lay

indolently in the green cushion of the wicker chair, and as he looked out at the ripe summer country a teasing,

not unkindly smile played over his lips. Once, as he basked thus comfortably, a quick light flashed in his

eves, curiously dilating the pupils, and his mouth became a hard, straight line, gradually relaxing into its

former smile of rather kindly mockery. He told himself, apparently, that there was no point in getting excited;

and he seemed a master hand at taking his ease when he could. Neither the sharp whistle of the locomotive

nor the brakeman's call disturbed him. It was not until after the train had stopped that he rose, put on a

Panama hat, took from the rack a small valise and a flute case, and stepped deliberately to the station

platform. The baggage was already unloaded, and the stranger presented a check for a battered soleleather

"Can you keep it here for a day or two?" he asked the agent. "I may send for it, and I may not."

"Depends on whether you like the country, I suppose?" demanded the agent in a challenging tone.

The agent shrugged his shoulders, looked scornfully at the small trunk, which was marked "N.E.," and

handed out a claim check without further comment. The stranger watched him as he caught one end of the

trunk and dragged it into the express room. The agent's manner seemed to remind him of something amusing.

"It's big enough for us," snapped the agent, as he banged the trunk into a corner.

That remark, apparently, was what Nils Ericson had wanted. He chuckled quietly as he took a leather strap

from his pocket and swung his valise around his shoulder. Then he settled his Panama securely on his head,

turned up his trousers, tucked the flute case under his arm, and started off across the fields. He gave the town,

as he would have said, a wide berth, and cut through a great fenced pasture, emerging, when he rolled under

the barbed wire at the farther corner, upon a white dusty road which ran straight up from the river valley to

the high prairies, where the ripe wheat stood yellow and the tin roofs and weathercocks were twinkling in the

fierce sunlight. By the time Nils had done three miles, the sun was sinking and the farm wagons on their way

home from town came rattling by, covering him with dust and making him sneeze. When one of the farmers

pulled up and offered to give him a lift, he clambered in willingly. The driver was a thin, grizzled old man

with a long lean neck and a foolish sort of beard, like a goat's. "How fur ye goin'?" he asked, as he clucked to

"Oh, the Old Lady Ericson's!" He turned and looked at Nils. "La, me! If you're goin' out there you might a' rid

out in the automobile. That's a pity, now. The Old Lady Ericson was in town with her auto. You might 'a'

"'Deed an' she has! She runs into town every night about this time for her mail and meat for supper. Some

folks say she's afraid her auto won't get exercise enough, but I say that's jealousy."

"Oh, yes! we have fourteen in all. But nobody else gets around like the Old Lady Ericson. She's out, rain er

shine, over the whole county, chargin' into town and out amongst her farms, an' up to her sons' places. Sure

you ain't goin' to the wrong place?" He craned his neck and looked at Nils' flute case with eager curiosity.

"The old woman ain't got any piany that I knows on. Olaf, he has a grand. His wife's musical: took lessons in

"I'm going up there tomorrow," said Nils imperturbably. He saw that the driver took him for a piano tuner.

"Oh, I see!" The old man screwed up his eyes mysteriously. He was a little dashed by the stranger's

"I'm one o' Miss Ericson's tenants. Look after one of her places. I did own the place myself once, but I lost it

a while back, in the bad years just after the World's Fair. Just as well, too, I say. Lets you out o' payin' taxes.

The Ericsons do own most of the county now. I remember the old preacher's favorite text used to be, 'To them

that hath shall be given.' They've spread something wonderfulrun over this here country like bindweed.

But I ain't one that begretches it to 'em. Folks is entitled to what they kin git; and they're hustlers. Olaf, he's in

the Legislature now, and a likely man fur Congress. Listen, if that ain't the old woman comin' now. Want I

Nils shook his head. He heard the deep chugchug of a motor vibrating steadily in the clear twilight behind

them. The pale lights of the car swam over the hill, and the old man slapped his reins and turned clear out of

the road, ducking his head at the first of three angry snorts from behind. The motor was running at a hot, even

speed, and passed without turning an inch from its course. The driver was a stalwart woman who sat at ease

in the front seat and drove her car bareheaded. She left a cloud of dust and a trail of gasoline behind her. Her

"Whew! I sometimes say I'd as lief be before Mrs. Ericson as behind her. She does beat all! Nearly seventy,

and never lets another soul touch that car. Puts it into commission herself every morning, and keeps it tuned

up by the hitchbar all day. I never stop work for a drink o' water that I don't hear her a churnin' up the road.

I reckon her darterinlaws never sets down easy nowadays. Never know when she'll pop in. Mis' Otto, she

says to me: 'We're so afraid that thing'll blow up and do Ma some injury yet, she's so turrible venturesome.'

Says I: 'I wouldn't stew, Mis' Otto; the old lady'll drive that car to the funeral of every darterinlaw she's

The stranger heard vaguely what the old man was saying. Just now he was experiencing something very

much like homesickness, and he was wondering what had brought it about. The mention of a name or two,

perhaps; the rattle of a wagon along a dusty road; the rank, resinous smell of sunflowers and ironweed, which

the night damp brought up from the draws and low places; perhaps, more than all, the dancing lights of the

motor that had plunged by. He squared his shoulders with a comfortable sense of strength.

The wagon, as it jolted westward, climbed a pretty steady upgrade. The country, receding from the rough

river valley, swelled more and more gently, as if it had been smoothed out by the wind. On one of the last of

the rugged ridges, at the end of a branch road, stood a grim square house with a tin roof and double porches.

Behind the house stretched a row of broken, windracked poplars, and down the hill slope to the left

straggled the sheds and stables. The old man stopped his horses where the Ericsons' road branched across a

"That's the old lady's place. Want I should drive in?" "No, thank you. I'll roll out here. Much obliged to you.

His passenger stepped down over the front wheel, and the old man drove on reluctantly, looking back as if he

As Nils was crossing the dry creek he heard the restive tramp of a horse coming toward him down the hill.

Instantly he flashed out of the road and stood behind a thicket of wild plum bushes that grew in the sandy

bed. Peering through the dusk, be saw a light horse, under tight rein, descending the hill at a sharp walk. The

rider was a slender womanbarely visible against the dark hillsidewearing an oldfashioned derby hat

and a long riding skirt. She sat lightly in the saddle, with her chin high, and seemed to be looking into the

distance. As she passed the plum thicket her horse snuffed the air and shied. She struck him, pulling him in

sharply, with an angry exclamation, "Blazne!" in Bohemian. Once in the main road, she let him out into a

lope, and they soon emerged upon the crest of high land, where they moved along the skyline, silhouetted

against the band of faint colour that lingered in the west. This horse and rider, with their free, rhythmical

gallop, were the only moving things to be seen on the face of the flat country. They seemed, in the last sad

light of evening, not to be there accidentally, but as an inevitable detail of the landscape.

Nils watched them until they had shrunk to a mere moving speck against the sky, then he crossed the sand

creek and climbed the hill. When he reached the gate the front of the house was dark, but a light was shining

from the side windows. The pigs were squealing in the hog corral, and Nils could see a tall boy, who carried

two big wooden buckets, moving about among them. Halfway between the barn and the house, the windmill

wheezed lazily. Following the path that ran around to the back porch, Nils stopped to look through the screen

door into the lamplit kitchen. The kitchen was the largest room in the house; Nils remembered that his older

brothers used to give dances there when he was a boy. Beside the stove stood a little girl with two light

yellow braids and a broad, flushed face, peering anxiously into a frying pan. In the diningroom beyond, a

large, broadshouldered woman was moving about the table. She walked with an active, springy step. Her

face was heavy and florid, almost without wrinkles, and her hair was black at seventy. Nils felt proud of her

as he watched her deliberate activity; never a momentary hesitation, or a movement that did not tell. He

waited until she came out into the kitchen and, brushing the child aside, took her place at the stove. Then he

Mrs. Ericson turned away from the stove and stood staring at him. "Bring the lamp, Hilda, and let me look."

Nils laughed and unslung his valise. "What's the matter, Mother? Don't you know me?"

Mrs. Ericson put down the lamp. "You must be Nils. You don't look very different, anyway."

"Oh, I left that in town. I thought it might not be convenient for you to have company so near

"Don't be foolish, Nils." Mrs. Ericson turned back to the stove. "I don't thresh now. I hitched the wheat land

onto the next farm and have a tenant. Hilda, take some hot water up to the company room, and go call little

The towhaired child, who had been standing in mute amazement, took up the teakettle and withdrew,

"Who's the youngster?" Nils asked, dropping down on the bench behind the kitchen stove.

"Six years. There are two boys. One stays with Peter and one with Anders. Olaf is their guardeen."

There was a clatter of pails on the porch, and a tall, lanky boy peered wonderingly in through the screen door.

He had a fair, gentle face and big grey eyes, and wisps of soft yellow hair hung down under his cap. Nils

sprang up and pulled him into the kitchen, hugging him and slapping him on the shoulders. "Well, if it isn't

The boy reddened tinder his sunburn and freckles, and hung his head. "I guess it's Nils," he said shyly.

"You're a good guesser," laughed Nils giving the lad's hand a swing. To himself he was thinking: "That's why

the little girl looked so friendly. He's taught her to like me. He was only six when I went away, and he's

Eric stood fumbling with his cap and smiling. "You look just like I thought you would," he ventured.

"Go wash your hands, Eric," called Mrs. Ericson. "I've got cob corn for supper, Nils. You used to like it. I

guess you don't get much of that in the old country. Here's Hilda; she'll take you up to your room. You'll want

Mrs. Ericson went into the diningroom to lay another plate, and the little girl came up and nodded to Nils as

if to let him know that his room was ready. He put out his hand and she took it, with a startled glance up at

his face. Little Eric dropped his towel, threw an arm about Nils and one about Hilda, gave them a clumsy

During supper Nils heard exactly how much land each of his eight grown brothers farmed, how their crops

were coming on, and how much livestock they were feeding. His mother watched him narrowly as she talked.

"You've got better looking, Nils," she remarked abruptly, whereupon he grinned and the children giggled.

Eric, although he was eighteen and as tall as Nils, was always accounted a child, being the last of so many

sons. His face seemed childlike, too, Nils thought, and he had the open, wandering eves of a little boy. All the

After supper Nils went out to the front porch and sat down on the step to smoke a pipe. Mrs. Ericson drew a

rockingchair up near him and began to knit busily. It was one of the few Old World customs she had kept

"He's helping Hilda with the dishes. He does it of his own will; I don't like a boy to be too handy about the

Nils smiled a little in the dark. It was just as well to shift the line of conversation. "What are you knitting

"Baby stockings. The boys keep me busy." Mrs. Ericson chuckled and clicked her needles.

"His second wife has no children. She's too proud. She tears about on horseback all the time. But she'll get

caught up with, yet. She sets herself very high, though nobody knows what for. They were low enough

Nils puffed away at his pipe in silence, and Mrs. Ericson knitted on. In a few moments she added grimly:

"She was down here tonight, just before you came. She'd like to quarrel with me and come between me and

Olaf, but I don't give her the chance. I suppose you'll be bringing a wife home some day."

"Well, perhaps it's best as it is," suggested Mrs. Ericson hopefully. "You'd never be contented tied down to

the land. There was roving blood in your father's family, and it's come out in you. I expect your own way of

life suits you best." Mrs. Ericson had dropped into a blandly agreeable tone which Nils well remembered. It

seemed to amuse him a good deal and his white teeth flashed behind his pipe. His mother's strategies had

always diverted him, even when he was a boythey were so flimsy and patent, so illy proportioned to her

vigor and force. "They've been waiting to see which way I'd jump," he reflected. He felt that Mrs. Ericson

"I don't suppose you've ever got used to steady work," she went on presently. "Men ain't apt to if they roam

around too long. It's a pity you didn't come back the year after the World's Fair. Your father picked up a good

bit of land cheap then, in the hard times, and I expect maybe he'd have give you a farm. it's too bad you put

Nils laughed and shook the ashes out of his pipe. "I'd have missed a lot if I had come back then. But I'm sorry

"Well, I suppose we have to miss things at one end or the other. Perhaps you are as well satisfied with your

own doings, now, as you'd have been with a farm," said Mrs. Ericson reassuringly.

"Land's a good thing to have," Nils commented, as he lit another match and sheltered it with his hand.

His mother looked sharply at his face until the match burned out. "Only when you stay on it!" she hastened to

Eric came round the house by the path just then, and Nils rose, with a yawn. "Mother, if you don't mind, Eric

"Very well; only don't stay long. I'll sit up and wait for you. I like to lock up myself."

Nils put his hand on Eric's shoulder, and the two tramped down the hill and across the sand creek into the

dusty highroad beyond. Neither spoke. They swung along at an even gait, Nils puffing at his pipe. There was

no moon, and the white road and the wide fields lay faint in the starlight. Over everything was darkness and

thick silence, and the smell of dust and sunflowers. The brothers followed the road for a mile or more without

finding a place to sit down. Finally, Nils perched on a stile over the wire fence, and Eric sat on the lower step.

"Yes; but people don't bother about promises they make to babies. Did you really know you were going away

"I don't see how you did it, Nils. Not many fellows could." Eric rubbed his shoulder against his brother's

"The hard thing was leaving home you and father. It was easy enough, once I got beyond Chicago. Of course

"Always. Do you still sleep in our little room? Is that cottonwood still by the window?"

"You remember how we always said the leaves were whispering when they rustled at night? Well, they

always whispered to me about the sea. Sometimes they said names out of the geography books. In a high

"How funny, Nils," said Eric dreamily, resting his chin on his hand. "That tree still talks like that, and 'most

They sat a while longer, watching the stars. At last Eric whispered anxiously: "Hadn't we better go back now?

Mother will get tired waiting for us." They rose and took a short cut home, through the pasture.

The next morning Nils woke with the first flood of light that came with dawn. The whiteplastered walls of

his room reflected the glare that shone through the thin window shades, and he found it impossible to sleep.

He dressed hurriedly and slipped down the hall and up the back stairs to the halfstory room which be used to

share with his little brother. Eric, in a skimpy nightshirt, was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes,

his pale yellow hair standing up in tufts all over his head. When he saw Nils, he murmured something

confusedly and hustled his long legs into his trousers. "I didn't expect you'd be up so early, Nils," he said, as

"Oh, you thought I was a dude, did you?" Nils gave him a playful tap which bent the tall boy up like a clasp

knife. "See here: I must teach you to box." Nils thrust his hands into his pockets and walked about. "You

He took down a bent, withered piece of sapling that hung over the dresser. "If this isn't the stick Lou

"Yes; you never used to let me play with that. Just how did he do it, Nils? You were with father when he

"Yes. Father was going off to preach somewhere, and, as we drove along, Lou's place looked sort of forlorn,

and we thought we'd stop and cheer him up. When we found him father said he'd been dead a couple days.

He'd tied a piece of binding twine round his neck, made a noose in each end, fixed the nooses over the ends

The simplicity of the boy's question set Nils laughing. He clapped little Eric on the shoulder. "What made

"Oh, well! But his hogs had the cholera, and all up and died on him, didn't they?"

"Sure they did; but he didn't have cholera; and there were plenty of bogs left in the world, weren't there?"

"Well, but, if they weren't his, how could they do him any good?" Eric asked, in astonishment.

"Oh, scat! He could have had lots of fun with other people's hogs. He was a chump, Lou Sandberg. To kill

yourself for a pig think of that, now!" Nils laughed all the way downstairs, and quite embarrassed little

Eric, who fell to scrubbing his face and hands at the tin basin. While he was parting his wet hair at the kitchen

looking glass, a heavy tread sounded on the stairs. The boy dropped his comb. "Gracious, there's Mother. We

must have talked too long." He hurried out to the shed, slipped on his overalls, and disappeared with the

Mrs. Ericson came in, wearing a clean white apron, her black hair shining from the application of a wet

"No, thank you, Nils. It's no trouble to make a cob fire, and I like to manage the kitchen stove myself" Mrs.

Ericson paused with a shovel full of ashes in her hand. "I expect you will be wanting to see your brothers as

soon as possible. I'll take you up to Anders' place this morning. He's threshing, and most of our boys are over

Mrs. Ericson went on taking out the ashes, and spoke between shovels. "No; Olaf's wheat is all in, put away

in his new barn. He got six thousand bushel this year. He's going to town today to get men to finish roofing

"Biggest one in the county, and almost done. You'll likely be here for the barnraising. He's going to have a

supper and a dance as soon as everybody's done threshing. Says it keeps the voters in good humour. I tell him

Mrs. Ericson frowned as she blew into the faint smoke curling up about the cobs. "Yes; he holds it in trust for

the children, Hilda and her brothers. He keeps strict account of everything he raises on it, and puts the

Nils smiled as he watched the little flames shoot up. The door of the back stairs opened, and Hilda emerged,

her arms behind her, buttoning up her long gingham apron as she came. He nodded to her gaily, and she

twinkled at him out of her little blue eyes, set far apart over her wide cheekbones.

"There, Hilda, you grind the coffeeand just put in an extra handful; I expect your Cousin Nils likes his

Nils turned to look at the little girl, who gripped the coffee grinder between her knees and ground so hard that

her two braids bobbed and her face flushed under its broad spattering of freckles. He noticed on her middle

finger something that had not been there last night, and that had evidently been put on for company: a tiny

gold ring with a clumsily set garnet stone. As her hand went round and round he touched the ring with the tip

Hilda glanced toward the shed door through which Mrs. Ericson had disappeared. "My Cousin Clara gave me

Mrs. Olaf EricsonClara Vavrika, as many people still called herwas moving restlessly about her big

bare house that morning. Her husband had left for the county town before his wife was out of bedher

lateness in rising was one of the many things the Ericson family had against her. Clara seldom came

downstairs before eight o'clock, and this morning she was even later, for she had dressed with unusual care.

She put on, however, only a tightfitting black dress, which people thereabouts thought very plain. She was a

tall, dark woman of thirty, with a rather sallow complexion and a touch of dull salmon red in her cheeks,

where the blood seemed to burn under her brown skin. Her hair, parted evenly above her low forehead, was

so black that there were distinctly blue lights in it. Her black eyebrows were delicate halfmoons and her

lashes were long and heavy. Her eyes slanted a little, as if she had a strain of Tartar or gypsy blood, and were

sometimes full of fiery determination and sometimes dull and opaque. Her expression was never altogether

amiable; was often, indeed, distinctly sullen, or, when she was animated, sarcastic. She was most attractive in

profile, for then one saw to advantage her small, wellshaped head and delicate ears, and felt at once that

The entire management of Mrs. Olaf's household devolved upon her aunt, Johanna Vavrika, a superstitious,

doting woman of fifty. When Clara was a little girl her mother died, and Johanna's life had been spent in

ungrudging service to her niece. Clara, like many selfwilled and discontented persons, was really very apt,

without knowing it, to do as other people told her, and to let her destiny be decided for her by intelligences

much below her own. It was her Aunt Johanna who had humoured and spoiled her in her girlhood, who had

got her off to Chicago to study piano, and who had finally persuaded her to marry Olaf Ericson as the best

match she would be likely to make in that part of the country. Johanna Vavrika had been deeply scarred by

smallpox in the old country. She was short and fat, homely and jolly and sentimental. She was so broad, and

took such short steps when she walked, that her brother, Joe Vavrika, always called her his duck. She adored

her niece because of her talent, because of her good looks and masterful ways, but most of all because of her

Clara's marriage with Olaf Ericson was Johanna's particular triumph. She was inordinately proud of Olaf's

position, and she found a sufficiently exciting career in managing Clara's house, in keeping it above the

criticism of the Ericsons, in pampering Olaf to keep him from finding fault with his wife, and in concealing

from every one Clara's domestic infelicities. While Clara slept of a morning, Johanna Vavrika was bustling

about, seeing that Olaf and the men had their breakfast, and that the cleaning or the butter making or the

washing was properly begun by the two girls in the kitchen. Then, at about eight o'clock, she would take

Clara's coffee up to her, and chat with her while she drank it, telling her what was going on in the house. Old

Mrs. Ericson frequently said that her daughterinlaw would not know what day of the week it was if

Johanna did not tell her every morning. Mrs. Ericson despised and pitied Johanna, but did not wholly dislike

her. The one thing she hated in her daughterinlaw above everything else was the way in which Clara could

come it over people. It enraged her that the affairs of her son's big, barnlike house went on as well as they

did, and she used to feel that in this world we have to wait overlong to see the guilty punished. "Suppose

Johanna Vavrika died or got sick?" the old lady used to say to Olaf. "Your wife wouldn't know where to look

for her own dishcloth." Olaf only shrugged his shoulders. The fact remained that Johanna did not die, and,

although Mrs. Ericson often told her she was looking poorly, she was never ill. She seldom left the house,

and she slept in a little room off the kitchen. No Ericson, by night or day, could come prying about there to

find fault without her knowing it. Her one weakness was that she was an incurable talker, and she sometimes

This morning Clara was tying a winecoloured ribbon about her throat when Johanna appeared with her

coffee. After putting the tray on a sewing table, she began to make Clara's bed, chattering the while in

"Well, Olaf got off early, and the girls are baking. I'm going down presently to make some poppyseed bread

for Olaf. He asked for prune preserves at breakfast, and I told him I was out of them, and to bring some

Clara poured her coffee. "Ugh! I don't see how men can eat so much sweet stuff. In the morning, too!"

Her aunt chuckled knowingly. "Bait a bear with honey, as we say in the old country."

"Olaf? Oh, no! He was in fine spirits. He's never cross if you know how to take him. I never knew a man to

make so little fuss about bills. I gave him a list of things to get a yard long, and he didn't say a word; just

"I can well believe he didn't say a word," Clara remarked with a shrug. "Some day he'll forget how to talk."

"Oh, but they say he's a grand speaker in the Legislature. He knows when to keep quiet. That's why he's got

such influence in politics. The people have confidence in him." Johanna beat up a pillow and held it under her

"Maybe we could make people believe we were wise, Aunty, if we held our tongues. Why did you tell Mrs.

Ericson that Norman threw me again last Saturday and turned my foot? She's been talking to Olaf."

Johanna fell into great confusion. "Oh, but, my precious, the old lady asked for you, and she's always so

angry if I can't give an excuse. Anyhow, she needn't talk; she's always tearing up something with that motor

When her aunt clattered down to the kitchen, Clara went to dust the parlour. Since there was not much there

to dust, this did not take very long. Olaf had built the house new for her before their marriage, but her interest

in furnishing it had been short lived. It went, indeed, little beyond a bathtub and her piano. They had

disagreed about almost even, other article of furniture, and Clara had said she would rather have her house

empty than full of things she didn't want. The house was set in a hillside, and the west windows of the parlour

looked out above the kitchen yard thirty feet below. The east windows opened directly into the front yard. At

one of the latter, Clara, while she was dusting, heard a low whistle. She did not turn at once, but listened

intently as she drew her cloth slowly along the round of a chair. Yes, there it was:

She turned and saw Nils Ericson laughing in the sunlight, his hat in his hand, just outside the window. As she

crossed the room he leaned against the wire screen. "Aren't you at all surprised to see me, Clara Vavrika?"

"No; I was expecting to see you. Mother Ericson telephoned Olaf last night that you were here."

Nils squinted and gave a long whistle. "Telephoned? That must have been while Eric and I were out walking.

Clara lifted the screen, and Nils swung his leg across the windowsill. As he stepped into the room she said:

He threw his hat on the piano. "Oh, I do sometimes. You see, I'm ahead of her now. I'm supposed to be in

Anders' wheatfield. But, as we were leaving, Mother ran her car into a soft place beside the road and sank

up to the hubs. While they were going for the horses to pull her out, I cut away behind the stacks and

escaped." Nils chuckled. Clara's dull eyes lit up as she looked at him admiringly.

"You've got them guessing already. 1 don't know what your mother said to Olaf over the telephone, but be

came back looking as if he'd seen a ghost, and he didn't go to bed until a dreadful hourten o'clock, I should

think. He sat out on the porch in the dark like a graven image. It had been one of his talkative days, too."

They both laughed, easily and lightly, like people who have laughed a great deal together; but they remained

"Anders and Otto and Peter looked as if they had seen ghosts, too, over in the threshing field. What's the

Clara gave him a quick, searching look. "Well, for one thing, they've always been afraid you have the other

"Yes. A later one. They knew your father made another, but they never knew what he did with it. They

almost tore the old house to pieces looking for it. They always suspected that he carried on a clandestine

correspondence with you, for the one thing he would do was to get his own mail himself. So they thought he

might have sent the new will to you for safekeeping. The old one, leaving everything to your mother, was

made long before you went away, and it's understood among them that it cuts you outthat she will leave all

the property to the others. Your father made the second will to prevent that. I've been hoping you had it. It

would be such fun to spring it on them." Clara laughed mirthfully, a thing she did not often do now.

"No, I'm not. But I'd like something to happen to stir them all up, just for once. There never was such a

family for having nothing ever happen to them but dinner and threshing. I'd almost be willing to die, just to

Nils bent over the piano and began pecking at the keys with the finger of one hand. "I wouldn't? My dear

Clara flushed darkly and frowned. "I didn't believe you would ever come back" she said defiantly.

"Eric believed I would, and he was only a baby when I went away. However, all's well that ends well, and I

haven't come back to be a skeleton at the feast. We mustn't quarrel. Mother mill be here with a search warrant

pretty soon." He swung round and faced her, thrusting his hands into his coat pockets. "Come, you ought to

be glad to see me, if you want something to happen. I'm something, even without a will. We can have a little

She echoed him, "I think we can!" They both laughed and their eyes sparkled. Clara Vavrika looked ten years

"You know, I'm so tickled to see mother," Nils went on. "I didn't know I was so proud of her. A regular pile

driver. How about little pigtails, down at the house? Is Olaf doing the square thing by those children?"

Clara frowned pensively. "Olaf has to do something that looks like the square thing, now that he's a public

man!" She glanced drolly at Nils. "But he makes a good commission out of it. On Sundays they all get

together here and figure. He lets Peter and Anders put in big bills for the keep of the two boys, and he pays

them out of the estate. They are always having what they call accountings. Olaf gets something out of it, too.

I don't know just how they do it, but it's entirely a family matter, as they say. And when the Ericsons say

Just then the angry honkhonk of an approaching motor sounded from down the road. Their eyes met and

they began to laugh. They laughed as children do when they can not contain themselves, and can not explain

the cause of their mirth to grown people, but share it perfectly together. When Clara Vavrika sat down at the

piano after he was gone, she felt that she had laughed away a dozen years. She practised as if the house were

When Nils greeted his mother and climbed into the front seat of the motor beside her, Mrs. Ericson looked

grim, but she made no comment upon his truancy until she had turned her car and was retracing her

revolutions along the road that ran by Olaf's big pasture. Then she remarked dryly:

"If I were you I wouldn't see too much of Olaf's wife while you are here. She's the kind of woman who can't

see much of men without getting herself talked about. She was a good deal talked about before he married

Mrs. Ericson shrugged her massive shoulders. "Olaf don't seem to have much luck, when it comes to wives.

The first one was meek enough, but she was always ailing. And this one has her own way. He says if he

quarreled with her she'd go back to her father, and then he'd lose the Bohemian vote. There are a great many

Bohunks in this district. But when you find a man under his wife's thumb you can always be sure there's a

Nils thought of his own father, and smiled. "She brought him a good deal of money, didn't she, besides the

Mrs. Ericson sniffed. "Well, she has a fair half section in her own name, but I can't see as that does Olaf

much good. She will have a good deal of property some day, if old Vavrika don't marry again. But I don't

Nils laughed outright. "Come, Mother, don't let your prejudices carry you that far. Money's money. Old

Mrs. Ericson spoke up angrily. "Oh, I know you always stood up for them! But hanging around there when

you were a boy never did you any good, Nils, nor any of the other boys who went there. There weren't so

many after her when she married Olaf, let me tell you. She knew enough to grab her chance."

Nils settled back in his seat. "Of course I liked to go there, Mother, and you were always cross about it. You

never took the trouble to find out that it was the one jolly house in this country for a boy to go to. All the rest

of you were working yourselves to death, and the houses were mostly a mess, full of babies and washing and

flies. oh, it was all rightI understand that; but you are young only once, and I happened to be young then.

Now, Vavrika's was always jolly. He played the violin, and I used to take my flute, and Clara played the

piano, and Johanna used to sing Bohemian songs. She always had a big supper for usherrings and pickles

and poppyseed bread, and lots of cake and preserves. Old Joe had been in the army in the old country, and

he could tell lots of good stories. I can see him cutting bread, at the head of the table, now. I don't know what

"And all the time he was taking money that other people had worked hard in the fields for," Mrs. Ericson

"So do the circuses, Mother, and they're a good thing. People ought to get fun for some of their money. Even

As they crossed the sand creek and turned into her own place, Mrs. Ericson observed, "There's Olaf's buggy.

He's stopped on his way from town." Nils shook himself and prepared to greet his brother, who was waiting

Olaf was a big, heavy Norwegian, slow of speech and movement. His head was large and square, like a block

of wood. When Nils, at a distance, tried to remember what his brother looked like, he could recall only his

heavy head, high forehead, large nostrils, and pale blue eyes, set far apart. Olaf's features were rudimentary:

the thing one noticed was the face itself, wide and flat and pale; devoid of any expression, betraying his fifty

years as little as it betrayed anything else, and powerful by reason of its very stolidness. When Olaf shook

hands with Nils he looked at him from under his light eyebrows, but Nils felt that no one could ever say what

that pale look might mean. The one thing he had always felt in Olaf was a heavy stubbornness, like the

unyielding stickiness of wet loam against the plow. He had always found Olaf the most difficult of his

"Oh, I may stay forever," Nils answered gaily. "I like this country better than I used to."

"Exactly. I think it's about ready to live in nowand I'm about ready to settle down." Nils saw his brother

lower his big head ("Exactly like a bull," he thought.) "Mother's been persuading me to slow down now, and

Olaf made a deep sound in his throat. "Farming ain't learned in a day," he brought out, still looking at the

"Oh, I know! But I pick things up quickly." Nils had not meant to antagonize his brother, and he did not

know now why he was doing it. "Of course," he went on, "I shouldn't expect to make a big success, as you

fellows have done. But then, I'm not ambitious. I won't want much. A little land, and some cattle, maybe."

Olaf still stared at the ground, his head down. He wanted to ask Nils what he had been doing all these years,

that he didn't have a business somewhere he couldn't afford to leave; why he hadn't more pride than to come

back with only a little soleleather trunk to show for himself, and to present himself as the only failure in the

family. He did not ask one of these questions, but he made them all felt distinctly.

"Humph!" Nils thought. "No wonder the man never talks, when he can butt his ideas into you like that

without ever saying a word. I suppose he uses that kind of smokeless powder on his wife all the time. But I

guess she has her innings." He chuckled, and Olaf looked up. "Never mind me, Olaf. I laugh without knowing

"Eric," said Olaf slowly, "is a spoiled kid. He's just let his mother's best cow go dry because he don't milk her

If he don't do any good among strangers, he never will." This was a long speech for Olaf, and as he finished it

Nils shrugged his shoulders. "Same old tricks," he thought. "Hits from behind you every time. What a whale

of a man!" He turned and went round to the kitchen, where his mother was scolding little Eric for letting the

Joe Vavrika's saloon was not in the county seat, where Olaf and Mrs. Ericson did their trading, but in a

cheerfuller place, a little Bohemian settlement which lay at the other end of the county, ten level miles north

of Olaf's farm. Clara rode up to see her father almost every day. Vavrika's house was, so to speak, in the back

yard of his saloon. The garden between the two buildings was inclosed by a high board fence as tight as a

partition, and in summer Joe kept beer tables and wooden benches among the gooseberry bushes under his

little cherry tree. At one of these tables Nils Ericson was seated in the late afternoon, three days after his

return home. Joe had gone in to serve a customer, and Nils was lounging on his elbows, looking rather

mournfully into his half emptied pitcher, when he heard a laugh across the little garden. Clara, in her riding

habit, was standing at the back door of the house, under the grapevine trellis that old Joe had grown there

"Come out and keep your father and me company. We've been gossiping all afternoon. Nobody to bother us

She shook her head. "No, I never come out here any more. Olaf doesn't like it. I must live up to my position,

"You mean to tell me you never come out and chat with the boys, as you used to? He has tamed you! Who

"I come out on Sundays, when father is alone, and read the Bohemian papers to him. But I am never here

"Talking, as I told you. I've been telling him about my travels. I find I can't talk much at home, not even to

Clara reached up and poked with her ridingwhip at a white moth that was fluttering in the sunlight among

"Where can I tell them? Not in Olaf's house, certainly. What's the matter with our talking here?" He pointed

persuasively with his hat to the bushes and the green table, where the flies were singing lazily above the

Clara looked back and laughed. "You might try and see. I can leave you if I don't want you. Eric's mare can't

Nils went into the bar and attempted to pay his score. Big Joe, six feet four, with curly yellow hair and

mustache, clapped him on the shoulder. "Not a Goddamn a your money go in my drawer, you hear? Only

next time you bring your flute, tetetetetety." Joe wagged his fingers in imitation of the flute player's

"My Clara, she come allatime Sundays an' play for me. She not like to play at Ericson's place." He shook

his yellow curls and laughed. "Not a Goddamn a fun at Ericson's. You come a Sunday. You likea fun. No

forget de flute." Joe talked very rapidly and always tumbled over his English. He seldom spoke it to his

Nils swung himself into the saddle and trotted to the west of the village, where the houses and gardens

scattered into prairie land and the road turned south. Far ahead of him, in the declining light, he saw Clara

Vavrika's slender figure, loitering on horseback. He touched his mare with the whip, and shot along the

white, level road, under the reddening sky. When he overtook Olaf's wife he saw that she had been crying.

"Oh, I get blue sometimes. It was awfully jolly living there with father. I wonder why I ever went away."

Nils spoke in a low, kind tone that he sometimes used with women: "That's what I've been wondering these

many years. You were the last girl in the country I'd have picked for a wife for Olaf. What made you do it,

"I suppose I really did it to oblige the neighbours"Clara tossed her head. "People were beginning to

"Yeswhy I didn't get married. I suppose I didn't like to keep them in suspense. I've discovered that most

Nils bent his head toward her and his white teeth flashed. "I'd have gambled that one girl I knew would say,

Clara shook her head mournfully. "You see, they have it on you, Nils; that is, if you're a woman. They say

you're beginning to go off. That's what makes us get married: we can't stand the laugh."

Nils looked sidewise at her. He had never seen her head droop before. Resignation was the last thing he

Clara drew herself up. "Oh, I never thought you'd come back. Not after I stopped writing to you, at least. That

"It never occurred to you, then, that the meanest thing you could do to me was to marry Olaf?"

Nils smoothed his horse's mane with his glove. "You know, Clara Vavrika, you are never going to stick it out.

You'll cut away some day, and I've been thinking you might as well cut away with me."

Clara threw up her chin. "Oh, you don't know me as well as you think. I won't cut away. Sometimes, when

I'm with father, I feel like it. But I can hold out as long as the Ericsons can. They've never got the best of me

yet, and one can live, so long as one isn't beaten. If I go back to father, it's all up with Olaf in politics. He

knows that, and he never goes much beyond sulking. I've as much wit as the Ericsons. I'll never leave them

"Yesunless I go away with a man who is cleverer than they are, and who has more money."

Nils whistled. "Dear me, you are demanding a good deal. The Ericsons, take the lot of them, are a bunch to

beat. But I should think the excitement of tormenting them would have worn off by this time."

"Then why don't you cut away? There are more amusing games than this in the world. When I came home I

thought it might amuse me to bully a few quarter sections out of the Ericsons; but I've almost decided I can

Clara took in her breath sharply. "Ah, you have got the other will! That was why you came home!"

Clara struck her horse with the whip, and in a bound she was far ahead of him. Nils dropped one word,

"Damn!" and whipped after her; but she leaned forward in her saddle and fairly cut the wind. Her long riding

skirt rippled in the still air behind her. The sun was just sinking behind the stubble in a vast, clear sky, and the

shadows drew across the fields so rapidly that Nils could scarcely keep in sight the dark figure on the road.

When he overtook her he caught her horse by the bridle. Norman reared, and Nils was frightened for her; but

"Let me go, Nils Ericson!" she cried. "I hate you more than any of them. You were created to torture me, the

She struck her horse again and galloped away from him. Nils set his teeth and looked thoughtful. He rode

slowly home along the deserted road, watching the stars come out in the clear violet sky.

They flashed softly into the limpid heavens, like jewels let fall into clear water. They were a reproach, he felt,

to a sordid world. As he turned across the sand creek, he looked up at the North Star and smiled, as if there

were an understanding between them. His mother scolded him for being late for supper.

On Sunday afternoon Joe Vavrika, in his shirt sleeves arid carpet slippers, was sitting in his garden, smoking

a longtasseled porcelain pipe with a hunting scene painted on the bowl. Clara sat under the cherry tree,

reading aloud to him from the, weekly Bohemian papers. She had worn a white muslin dress under her riding

habit, and the leaves of the cherry tree threw a pattern of sharp shadows over her skirt. The black cat was

dozing in the sunlight at her feet, and Joe's dachshund was scratching a hole under the scarlet geraniums and

dreaming of badgers. Joe was filling his pipe for the third time since dinner, when he heard a knocking on the

fence. He broke into a loud guffaw and unlatched the little door that led into the street. He did not call Nils by

name, but caught him by the hand and dragged him in. Clara stiffened and the colour deepened under her

dark skin. Nils, too, felt a little awkward. He had not seen her since the night when she rode away from him

and left him alone on the level road between the fields. Joe dragged him to the wooden bench beside the

"You bring de flute," he cried, tapping the leather case under Nils' arm. "Ah, dasa good' Now we have some

liddle fun like old times. I got somet'ing good for you." Joe shook his finger at Nils and winked his blue eye,

a bright clear eye, full of fire, though the tiny bloodvessels on the ball were always a little distended. "I got

somet'ing for you from"he paused and waved his hand "Hongarie. You know Hongarie? You wait!" He

Nils looked at Clara, who sat frigidly with her white skirts drawn tight about her. "He didn't tell you he had

asked me to come, did he? He wanted a party and proceeded to arrange it. Isn't he fun? Don't be cross; let's

Clara smiled and shook out her skirt. "Isn't that like Father? And he has sat here so meekly all day. Well, I

won't pout. I'm glad you came. He doesn't have very many good times now any more. There are so few of his

Joe came back with a flask in one hand and three wine glasses caught by the stems between the fingers of the

other. These he placed on the table with an air of ceremony, and, going behind Nils, held the flask between

him and the sun, squinting into it admiringly. "You know dis, Tokai? A great friend of mine, he bring dis to

me, a present out of Hongarie. You know how much it cost, dis wine? Chust so much what it weigh in gold.

Nobody but de nobles drink him in Bohemie. Many, many years I save him up, dis Tokai." Joe whipped out

his official corkscrew and delicately removed the cork. "De old man die what bring him to me, an' dis wine

he lay on his belly in my cellar an' sleep. An' now," carefully pouring out the heavy yellow wine, "an' now he

wake up; and maybe he wake us up, too!" He carried one of the glasses to his daughter and presented it with

Clara shook her head, but, seeing her father's disappointment, relented. "You taste it first. I don't want so

Joe sampled it with a beatific expression, and turned to Nils. "You drink him slow, dis wine. He very soft, but

After a second glass Nils declared that he couldn't take any more without getting sleepy. "Now get your

But Joe settled back in his wooden rocker and wagged his big carpet slipper. "Nonononononono! No

play fiddle now any more: too much ache in de finger," waving them, "allatime rheumatic. You play de

"I've forgotten all the Bohemian songs I used to play with you and Johanna. But here's one that will make

Clara pout. You remember how her eyes used to snap when we called her the Bohemian Girl?" Nils lifted his

flute and began "When Other Lips and Other Hearts," and Joe hummed the air in a husky baritone, waving

his carpet slipper. "Ohhh, dasa fine music," he cried, clapping his hands as Nils finished. "Now 'Marble

"There's one more you always played," Clara said quietly, "I remember that best." She locked her hands over

her knee and began "The Heart Bowed Down," and sang it through without groping for the words. She was

Joe flashed out his red silk handkerchief and blew his nose, shaking his head. "Nonononononono!

Nils put his lips to the instrument, and Joe lay back in his chair, laughing and singing, "Oh, Evelina, Sweet

Evelina!" Clara laughed, too. Long ago, when she and Nils went to high school, the model student of their

class was a very homely girl in thick spectacles. Her name was Evelina Oleson; she had a long, swinging

walk which somehow suggested the measure of that song, and they used mercilessly to sing it at her.

"Dat ugly Oleson girl, she teach in de school," Joe gasped, "an' she still walks chust like dat, yupa, yupa,

yesyesyesyesyesyesyes! Dis time you haf to drink, and Clara she haf to, so she show she not jealous.

So, we all drink to your girl. You not tell her name, eh? Nonono, I no make you tell. She pretty, eh? She

make good sweetheart? I bet!" Joe winked and lifted his glass. "How soon you get married?"

Joe threw out his chest. "Dasa way boys talks. No way for mans. Mans say, 'You come to de church, an' get

"Maybe Nils hasn't got enough to keep a wife," put in Clara ironically. "How about that, Nils?" she asked him

Nils looked at her coolly, raising one eyebrow. "oh, I can keep her, all right."

"With my wife, I'll decide that," replied Nils calmly. "I'll give her what's good for her."

Clara made a wry face. "You'll give her the strap, I expect, like old Peter Oleson gave his wife."

"When she needs it," said Nils lazily, locking his hands behind his head and squinting up through the leaves

of the cherry tree. "Do you remember the time I squeezed the cherries all over your clean dress, and Aunt

Johanna boxed my ears for me? My gracious, weren't you mad! You had both hands full of cherries, and I

squeezed 'em and made the juice fly all over you. I liked to have fun with you; you'd get so mad."

"We did have fun, didn't we? None of the other kids ever had so much fun. We knew how to play."

Nils dropped his elbows on the table and looked steadily across at her. "I've played with lots of girls since,

Clara laughed. The late afternoon sun was shining full in her face, and deep in the back of her eyes there

shone something fiery, like the yellow drops of Tokai in the brown glass bottle. "Can you still play, or are

"Don't you ever work, then?" She had not intended to say it. It slipped out because she was confused enough

"I work between times." Nils' steady gaze still beat upon her. "Don't you worry about my working, Mrs.

Ericson. You're getting like all the rest of them." He reached his brown, warm hand across the table and

dropped it on Clara's, which was cold as an icicle. "Last call for play, Mrs. Ericson!" Clara shivered, and

suddenly her hands and cheeks grew warm. Her fingers lingered in his a moment, and they looked at each

other earnestly. Joe Vavrika had put the mouth of the bottle to his lips and was swallowing the last drops of

the Tokai, standing. The sun, just about to sink behind his shop, glistened on the bright glass, on his flushed

face and curly yellow hair. "Look," Clara whispered, "that's the way I want to grow old."

On the day of Olaf Ericson's barnraising, his wife, for once in a way, rose early. Johanna Vavrika had been

baking cakes and frying and boiling and spicing meats for a week beforehand, but it was not until the day

before the party was to take place that Clara showed any interest in it. Then she was seized with one of her

fitful spasms of energy, and took the wagon and little Eric and spent the day on Plum Creek, gathering vines

By four o'clock in the afternoon buggies and wagons began to arrive at the big unpainted building in front of

Olaf's house. When Nils and his mother came at five, there were more than fifty people in the barn, and a

great drove of children. On the ground floor stood six long tables, set with the crockery of seven flourishing

Ericson families, lent for the occasion. In the middle of each table was a big yellow pumpkin, hollowed out

and filled with woodbine. In one corner of the barn, behind a pile of green andwhite striped watermelons,

was a circle of chairs for the old people; the younger guests sat on bushel measures or barbedwire spools,

and the children tumbled about in the haymow. The box stalls Clara had converted into booths. The

framework was hidden by goldenrod and sheaves of wheat, and the partitions were covered 'With wild

grapevines full of fruit. At one of these Johanna Vavrika watched over her cooked meats, enough to provision

an army; and at the next her kitchen girls had ranged the icecream freezers, and Clara was already cutting

pies and cakes against the hour of serving. At the third stall, little Hilda, in a bright pink lawn dress,

dispensed lemonade throughout the afternoon. Olaf, as a public man, had thought it inadvisable to serve beer

in his barn; but Joe Vavrika had come over with two demijohns concealed in his buggy, and after his arrival

"Hasn't Cousin Clara fixed things lovely?" little Hilda whispered, when Nils went up to her stall and asked

Nils leaned against the booth, talking to the excited little girl and watching the people. The barn faced the

west, and the sun, pouring in at the big doors, filled the whole interior with a golden light, through which

filtered fine particles of dust from the haymow, where the children were romping. There was a great

chattering from the stall where Johanna Vavrika exhibited to the admiring women her platters heaped with

fried chicken, her roasts of beef, boiled tongues, and baked hams with cloves stuck in the crisp brown fat and

garnished with tansy and parsley. The older women, having assured themselves that there were twenty kinds

of cake, not counting cookies, and three dozen fat pies, repaired to the corner behind the pile of watermelons,

put on their white aprons, and fell to their knitting and fancywork. They were a fine company of old women,

and a Dutch painter would have loved to find them there together, where the sun made bright patches on the

floor and sent long, quivering shafts of gold through the dusky shade up among the rafters. There were fat,

rosy old women who looked hot in their best black dresses; spare, alert old women with brown, darkveined

hands; and several of almost heroic frame, not less massive than old Mrs. Ericson herself. Few of them wore

glasses, and old Mrs. Svendsen, a Danish woman, who was quite bald, wore the only cap among them. Mrs.

Oleson, who had twelve big grandchildren, could still show two braids of yellow hair as thick as her own

wrists. Among all these grandmothers there were more brown heads than white. They all had a pleased,

prosperous air, as if they were more than satisfied with themselves and with life. Nils, leaning against Hilda's

lemonade stand, watched them as they sat chattering in four languages, their fingers never lagging behind

"Look at them over there," he whispered, detaining Clara as she passed him. "Aren't they the Old Guard? I've

just counted thirty hands. I guess they've wrung many a chicken's neck and warmed many a boy's jacket for

In reality he fell into amazement when he thought of the Herculean labours those fifteen pairs of hands had

performed: of the cows they had milked, the butter they had made, the gardens they had planted, the children

and grandchildren they had tended, the brooms they had worn out, the mountains of food they had cooked. It

made him dizzy. Clara Vavrika smiled a hard, enigmatical smile at him and walked rapidly away. Nils' eyes

followed her white figure as she went toward the house. He watched her walking alone in the sunlight, looked

at her slender, defiant shoulders and her little hardset head with its coils of blueblack hair. "No," he

reflected; "she'd never be like them, not if she lived here a hundred years. She'd only grow more bitter. You

can't tame a wild thing; you can only chain it. People aren't all alike. I mustn't lose my nerve." He gave

Hilda's pigtail a parting tweak and set out after Clara. "Where to?" he asked, as he came upon her in the

"Let me go with you. I never get a moment alone with you. Why do you keep out of my way?"

Nils followed her down the stairs and to the far corner of the cellar, where a basement window let in a stream

of light. From a swinging shelf Clara selected several glass jars, each labeled in Johanna's careful hand. Nils

"It is. It's some French brandy father gave me when I was married. Would you like some? Have you a

When she brought them, Nils took them from her and put them down on the windowsill. "Clara Vavrika, do

Clara shrugged her shoulders. "Boys are always crazy about somebody or another. I dare say some silly has

"Because I didn't come back, you mean? I had to get on, you know, and it was hard sledding at first. Then I

"And then I began to think about you more than I had since I first went away. I began to wonder if you were

really as you had seemed to me when I was a boy. I thought I'd like to see. I've had lots of girls, but no one

ever pulled me the same way. The more I thought about you, the more I remembered how it used to be like

hearing a wild tune you can't resist, calling you out at night. It had been a long while since anything had

pulled me out of my boots, and I wondered whether anything ever could again." Nils thrust his hands into his

coat pockets and squared his shoulders, as his mother sometimes squared hers, as Olaf, in a clumsier manner,

squared his. "So I thought I'd come back and see. Of course the family have tried to do me, and I rather

thought I'd bring out father's will and make a fuss. But they can have their old land; they've put enough sweat

into it." He took the flask and filled the two glasses carefully to the brim. "I've found out what I want from

the Ericsons. Drink skoal, Clara." He lifted his glass, and Clara took hers with downcast eyes. "Look at me,

The barn supper began at six o'clock and lasted for two hilarious hours. Yense Nelson had made a wager that

he could eat two whole fried chickens, and he did. Eli Swanson stowed away two whole custard pies, and

Nick Hermanson ate a chocolate layer cake to the last crumb. There was even a cooky contest among the

children, and one thin, slablike Bohemian boy consumed sixteen and won the prize, a gingerbread pig which

Johanna Vavrika had carefully decorated with red candies and burnt sugar. Fritz Sweiheart, the German

carpenter, won in the pickle contest, but he disappeared soon after supper and was not seen for the rest of the

evening. Joe Vavrika said that Fritz could have managed the pickles all right, but he had sampled the

While the supper was being cleared away the two fiddlers began to tune up for the dance. Clara was to

accompany them on her old upright piano, which had been brought down from her father's. By this time Nils

had renewed old acquaintances. Since his interview with Clara in the cellar, he had been busy telling all the

old women how young they looked, and all the young ones how pretty they were, and assuring the men that

they had here the best farmland in the world. He had made himself so agreeable that old Mrs. Ericson's

friends began to come up to her and tell how lucky she was to get her smart son back again, and please to get

him to play his flute. Joe Vavrika, who could still play very well when he forgot that he had rheumatism,

caught up a fiddle from Johnny Oleson and played a crazy Bohemian dance tune that set the wheels going.

Olaf, in a frock coat and a solemn madeup necktie, led the grand march with his mother. Clara had kept well

out of that by sticking to the piano. She played the march with a pompous solemnity which greatly amused

"Oh, aren't you rubbing it into them, Clara Vavrika? And aren't you lucky to have me here, or all your wit

The fiddles struck up a polka, and Nils convulsed Joe Vavrika by leading out Evelina Oleson, the homely

schoolteacher. His next partner was a very fat Swedish girl, who, although she was an heiress, had not been

asked for the first dance, but had stood against the wall in her tight, highheeled shoes, nervously fingering a

lace handkerchief. She was soon out of breath, so Nils led her, pleased and panting, to her seat, and went over

to the piano, from which Clara had been watching his gallantry. "Ask Olena Yenson," she whispered. "She

Olena, too, was rather inconveniently plump, handsome in a smooth, heavy way, with a fine colour and

goodnatured, sleepy eyes. She was redolent of violet sachet powder, and had warm, soft, white hands, but

she danced divinely, moving as smoothly as the tide coming in. "There, that's something like," Nils said as he

released her. "You'll give me the next waltz, won't you? Now I must go and dance with my little cousin."

Hilda was greatly excited when Nils went up to her stall and held out his arm. Her little eyes sparkled, but she

declared that she could not leave her lemonade. Old Mrs. Ericson, who happened along at this moment, said

she would attend to that, and Hilda came out, as pink as her pink dress. The dance was a schottische, and in a

moment her yellow braids were fairly standing on end. "Bravo!" Nils cried encouragingly. "Where did you

Nils found Eric sitting with a group of boys who were too awkward or too shy to dance, and told him that he

The boy screwed up his shoulders. "Aw, Nils, I can't dance. My feet are too big; I look silly."

Nils had never spoken to him so sharply before, and Eric made haste to scramble out of his corner and brush

Clara nodded approvingly. "Good for you, Nils. I've been trying to get hold of him. They dance very nicely

"I'm obliged to you for teaching him. There's no reason why he should grow up to be a lout."

"He'll never be that. He's more like you than any of them. Only he hasn't your courage." From her slanting

eyes Clara shot forth one of those keen glances, admiring and at the same time challenging, which she seldom

bestowed on any one, and which seemed to say, "Yes, I admire you, but I am your equal."

Clara was proving a much better host than Olaf, who, once the supper was over, seemed to feel no interest in

anything but the lanterns. He had brought a locomotive headlight from town to light the revels, and he kept

skulking about as if he feared the mere light from it might set his new barn on fire. His wife, on the contrary,

was cordial to every one, was animated and even gay. The deep salmon colour in her cheeks burned vividly,

and her eyes were full of life. She gave the piano over to the fat Swedish heiress, pulled her father away from

the corner where he sat gossiping with his cronies, and made him dance a Bohemian dance with her. In his

youth Joe had been a famous dancer, and his daughter got him so limbered up that every one sat around and

applauded them. The old ladies were particularly delighted, and made them go through the dance again. From

their corner where they watched and commented, the old women kept time with their feet and hands, and

whenever the fiddles struck up a new air old Mrs. Svendsen's white cap would begin to bob.

Clara was waltzing with little Eric when Nils came up to them, brushed his brother aside, and swung her out

among the dancers. "Remember how we used to waltz on rollers at the old skating rink in town? I suppose

people don't do that any more. We used to keep it up for hours. You know, we never did moon around as

other boys and girls did. It was dead serious with us from the beginning. When we were most in love with

each other, we used to fight. You were always pinching people; your fingers were like little nippers.

A regular snapping turtle, you were. Lord, how you'd like Stockholm! Sit out in the streets in front of cafes

and talk all night in summer. just like a receptionofficers and ladies and funny English people. Jolliest

people in the world, the Swedes, once you get them going. Always drinking thingschampagne and stout

mixed, halfandhalf, serve it out of big pitchers, and serve plenty. Slow pulse, you know; they can stand a

"No; I could tell that when you were looking at the old women there this afternoon. They're the kind you

really admire, after all; women like your mother. And that's the kind you'll marry."

"Is it, Miss Wisdom? You'll see who I'll marry, and she won't have a domestic virtue to bless herself with.

She'll be a snapping turtle, and she'll be a match for me. All the same, they're a fine bunch of old dames over

"You won't, when you look back on them from Stockholm or Budapest. Freedom settles all that. Oh, but

you're the real Bohemian Girl, Clara Vavrika!" Nils laughed down at her sullen frown and began mockingly

"Oh, how could a poor gypsy maiden like me Expect the proud bride of a baron to be?"

"I don't care. They can't gossip. It's all in the family, as the Ericsons say when they divide up little Hilda's

patrimony amongst them. Besides, we'll give them something to talk about when we hit the trail. Lord, it will

be a godsend to them! They haven't had anything so interesting to chatter about since the grasshopper year.

It'll give them a new lease of life. And Olaf won't lose the Bohemian vote, either. They'll have the laugh on

him so that they'll vote two apiece. They'll send him to Congress. They'll never forget his barn party, or us.

They'll always remember us as we're dancing together now. We're making a legend. Where's my waltz,

The musicians grinned, looked at each other, hesitated, and began a new air; and Nils sang with them, as the

"When other lips and other hearts Their tale of love shall tell, In language whose excess imparts The power

The old women applauded vigorously. "What a gay one he is, that Nils!" And old Mrs. Svendsen's cap

The moonlight flooded that great, silent land. The reaped fields lay yellow in it. The straw stacks and poplar

windbreaks threw sharp black shadows. The roads were white rivers of dust. The sky was a deep, crystalline

blue, and the stars were few and faint. Everything seemed to have succumbed, to have sunk to sleep, under

the great, golden, tender, midsummer moon. The splendour of it seemed to transcend human life and human

fate. The senses were too feeble to take it in, and every time one looked up at the sky one felt unequal to it, as

if one were sitting deaf under the waves of a great river of melody. Near the road, Nils Ericson was lying

against a straw stack in Olaf's wheat field. His own life seemed strange and unfamiliar to him, as if it were

something he had read about, or dreamed, and forgotten. He lay very still, watching the white road that ran in

front of him, lost itself among the fields, and then, at a distance, reappeared over a little hill. At last, against

this white band he saw something moving rapidly, and he got up and walked to the edge of the field. "She is

passing the row of poplars now," he thought. He heard the padded beat of hoofs along the dusty road, and as

she came into sight he stepped out and waved his arms. Then, for fear of frightening the horse, he drew back

and waited. Clara had seen him, and she came up at a walk. Nils took the horse by the bit and stroked his

"What are you doing out so late, Clara Vavrika? I went to the house, but Johanna told me you had gone to

"Not far, but I want to talk to you tonight; I have something to say to you. I can't talk to you at the house,

Clara laughed. "He won't be sitting there now. He's in bed by this time, and asleepweighing a thousand

Nils plodded on across the stubble. "Are you really going to spend the rest of your life like this, night after

night, summer after summer? Haven't you anything better to do on a night like this than to wear yourself and

Norman out tearing across the country to your father's and back? Besides, your father won't live forever, you

know. His little place will be shut up or sold, and then you'll have nobody but the Ericsons. You'll have to

Clara moved her head restlessly. "Don't talk about that. I try never to think of it. If I lost Father I'd lose

"Bah! You'd lose a good deal more than that. You'd lose your race, everything that makes you yourself.

Clara put her hands up to her face. "I haven't, Nils Ericson, I haven't! Say anything to me but that. I won't

Nils led the horse up to a straw stack, and turned to Clara, looking at her intently, as he had looked at her that

Sunday afternoon at Vavrika's. "But why do you fight for that so? What good is the power to enjoy, if you

never enjoy? Your hands are cold again; what are you afraid of all the time? Ah, you're afraid of losing it;

that's what's the matter with you! And you will, Clara Vavrika, you will! When I used to know youlisten;

you've caught a wild bird in your hand, haven't you, and felt its heart beat so hard that you were afraid it

would shatter its little body to pieces? Well, you used to be just like that, a slender, eager thing with a wild

delight inside you. That is how I remembered you. And I come back and find youa bitter woman. This is a

perfect ferret fight here; you live by biting and being bitten. Can't you remember what life used to be? Can't

you remember that old delight? I've never forgotten it, or known its like, on land or sea."

He drew the horse under the shadow of the straw stack. Clara felt him take her foot out of the stirrup, and she

slid softly down into his arms. He kissed her slowly. He was a deliberate man, but his nerves were steel when

he wanted anything. Something flashed out from him like a knife out of a sheath. Clara felt everything

slipping away from her; she was flooded by the summer night. He thrust his hand into his pocket, and then

held it out at arm's length. "Look," he said. The shadow of the straw stack fell sharp across his wrist, and in

the palm of his hand she saw a silver dollar shining. "That's my pile," he muttered; "will you go with me?"

Clara lifted her head and pulled herself together. "Are you crazy, Nils? We couldn't go away like that."

"That's the only way we ever will go. You can't sit on the bank and think about it. You have to plunge. That's

the way I've always done, and it's the right way for people like you and me. There's nothing so dangerous as

sitting still. You've only got one life, one youth, and you can let it slip through your fingers if you want to;

nothing easier. Most people do that. You'd be better off tramping the roads with me than you are here." Nils

held back her head and looked into her eyes. "But I'm not that kind of a tramp, Clara. You won't have to take

in sewing. I'm with a Norwegian shipping line; came over on business with the New York offices, but now

I'm going straight back to Bergen. I expect I've got as much money as the Ericsons. Father sent me a little to

get started. They never knew about that. There, I hadn't meant to tell you; I wanted you to come on your own

Clara looked off across the fields. "It isn't that, Nils, but something seems to hold me. I'm afraid to pull

"I know all about that. One has to tear loose. You're not needed here. Your father will understand; he's made

like us. As for Olaf, Johanna will take better care of him than ever you could. It's now or never, Clara

Clara clung to him and hid her face against his shoulder. "Not tonight," she whispered. "Sit here and talk to

me tonight. I don't want to go anywhere tonight. I may never love you like this again."

Nils laughed through his teeth. "You can't come that on me. That's not my way, Clara Vavrika. Eric's mare is

over there behind the stacks, and I'm off on the midnight. It's goodbye, or off across the world with me. My

carriage won't wait. I've written a letter to Olaf, I'll mail it in town. When he reads it he won't bother usnot

if I know him. He'd rather have the land. Besides, I could demand an investigation of his administration of

Cousin Henrik's estate, and that would be bad for a public man. You've no clothes, I know; but you can sit up

tonight, and we can get everything on the way. Where's your old dash, Clara Vavrika? What's become of your

Bohemian blood? I used to think you had courage enough for anything. Where's your nervewhat are you

Clara drew back her head, and he saw the slumberous fire in her eyes. "For you to say one thing, Nils

"I never say that thing to any woman, Clara Vavrika." He leaned back, lifted her gently from the ground, and

whispered through his teeth: "But I'll never, never let you go, not to any man on earth but me! Do you

Clara sank down on a sheaf of wheat and covered her face with her hands. She did not know what she was

going to do whether she would go or stay. The great, silent country seemed to lay a spell upon her. The

ground seemed to hold her as if by roots. Her knees were soft under her. She felt as if she could not bear

separation from her old sorrows, from her old discontent. They were dear to her, they had kept her alive, they

were a part of her. There would be nothing left of her if she were wrenched away from them. Never could she

pass beyond that skyline against which her restlessness had beat so many times. She felt as if her soul had

built itself a nest there on that horizon at which she looked every morning and every evening, and it was dear

to her, inexpressibly dear. She pressed her fingers against her eyeballs to shut it out. Beside her she heard the

tramping of horses in the soft earth. Nils said nothing to her. He put his hands under her arms and lifted her

"We shall have to ride fast to catch the midnight train. A last gallop, Clara Vavrika. Forward!"

There was a start, a thud of hoofs along the moonlit road, two dark shadows going over the hill; and then the

great, still land stretched untroubled under the azure night. Two shadows had passed.

A year after the flight of Olaf Ericson's wife, the night train was steaming across the plains of Iowa. The

conductor was hurrying through one of the day coaches, his lantern on his arm, when a lank, fairhaired boy

"Red Oak, Iowa. But you go through to Chicago, don't you?" He looked down, and noticed that the boy's eyes

"Yes. But I was wondering whether I could get off at the next place and get a train back to Omaha."

"Forty minutes. You'd better make up your mind, so I can tell the baggageman to put your trunk off."

"Oh, never mind about that! I mean, I haven't got any," the boy added, blushing.

Eric Ericson crumpled down in his seat and put his brown hand to his forehead. He had been crying, and he

had had no supper, and his head was aching violently. "Oh, what shall I do?" he thought, as he looked dully

Ever since Nils had run away with his brother's wife, life at home had been hard for little Eric. His mother

and Olaf both suspected him of complicity. Mrs. Ericson was harsh and faultfinding, constantly wounding the

Joe Vavrika heard often from his daughter. Clara had always been fond of her father, and happiness made her

kinder. She wrote him long accounts of the voyage to Bergen, and of the trip she and Nils took through

Bohemia to the little town where her father had grown up and where she herself was born. She visited all her

kinsmen there, and sent her father news of his brother, who was a priest; of his sister, who had married a

horsebreederof their big farm and their many children. These letters Joe always managed to read to little

Eric. They contained messages for Eric and Hilda. Clara sent presents, too, which Eric never dared to take

home and which poor little Hilda never even saw, though she loved to hear Eric tell about them when they

were out getting the eggs together. But Olaf once saw Eric coming out of Vavrika's house the old man had

never asked the boy to come into his saloonand Olaf went straight to his mother and told her. That night

Mrs. Ericson came to Eric's room after he was in bed and made a terrible scene. She could be very terrifying

when she was really angry. She forbade him ever to speak to Vavrika again, and after that night she would

not allow him to go to town alone. So it was a long while before Eric got any more news of his brother. But

old Joe suspected what was going on, and he carried Clara's letters about in his pocket. One Sunday he drove

out to see a German friend of his, and chanced to catch sight of Eric, sitting by the cattle pond in the big

pasture. They went together into Fritz Oberlies' barn, and read the letters and talked things over. Eric

admitted that things were getting hard for him at home. That very night old Joe sat down and laboriously

Things got no better for Eric. His mother and Olaf felt that, however closely he was watched, he still, as they

said, "heard." Mrs. Ericson could not admit neutrality. She had sent Johanna Vavrika packing back to her

brother's, though Olaf would much rather have kept her than Anders' eldest daughter, whom Mrs. Ericson

installed in her place. He was not so highhanded as his mother, and he once sulkily told her that she might

better have taught her granddaughter to cook before she sent Johanna away. Olaf could have borne a good

deal for the sake of prunes spiced in honey, the secret of which Johanna had taken away with her.

At last two letters came to Joe Vavrika: one from Nils, enclosing a postal order for money to pay Eric's

passage to Bergen, and one from Clara, saying that Nils had a place for Eric in the offices of his company,

that he was to live with them, and that they were only waiting for him to come. He was to leave New York on

one of the boats of Nils' own line; the captain was one of their friends, and Eric was to make himself known

Nils' directions were so explicit that a baby could have followed them, Eric felt. And here he was, nearing

Red Oak, Iowa, and rocking backward and forward in despair. Never had he loved his brother so much, and

never had the big world called to him so hard. But there was a lump in his throat which would not go down.

Ever since nightfall he had been tormented by the thought of his mother, alone in that big house that had sent

forth so many men. Her unkindness now seemed so little, and her loneliness so great. He remembered

everything she had ever done for him: how frightened she had been when he tore his hand in the cornsheller,

and how she wouldn't let Olaf scold him. When Nils went away he didn't leave his mother all alone, or he

The train whistled. The conductor came in, smiling not unkindly. "Well, young man, what are you going to

"Yes, thank you. I'll let you know." The conductor went out, and the boy doubled up with misery. He couldn't

let his one chance go like this. He felt for his breast pocket and crackled Nils' letter to give him courage. He

didn't want Nils to be ashamed of him. The train stopped. Suddenly he remembered his brother's kind,

twinkling eyes, that always looked at you as if from far away. The lump in his throat softened. "Ah, but Nils,

Nils would understand!" he thought. "That's just it about Nils; he always understands."

A lank, pale boy with a canvas telescope stumbled off the train to the Red Oak siding, just as the conductor

The next night Mrs. Ericson was sitting alone in her wooden rockingchair on the front porch. Little Hilda

had been sent to bed and had cried herself to sleep. The old woman's knitting was on her lap, but her hands

lay motionless on top of it. For more than an hour she had not moved a muscle. She simply sat, as only the

Ericsons and the mountains can sit. The house was dark, and there was no sound but the croaking of the frogs

Eric did not come home by the road, but across the fields, where no one could see him. He set his telescope

down softly in the kitchen shed, and slipped noiselessly along the path to the front porch. He sat down on the

step without saying anything. Mrs. Ericson made no sign, and the frogs croaked on. At last the boy spoke

Eric slid along the step nearer to her. "Oh, Mother, why did you?" he asked sorrowfully. "Why didn't you get

"I didn't want anybody to know I was in need of a boy," said Mrs. Ericson bitterly. She looked straight in

front of her and her mouth tightened. "I always meant to give you the home farm," she added.

The boy stared and slid closer. "Oh, Mother," he faltered, "I don't care about the farm. I came back because I

"Very well," said Mrs. Ericson. Her hand went out from her suddenly and rested on his head. Her fingers

twined themselves in his soft, pale hair. His tears splashed down on the boards; happiness filled his heart.

As the train neared Tarrytown, Imogen Willard began to wonder why she had consented to be one of Flavia's

house party at all. She had not felt enthusiastic about it since leaving the city, and was experiencing a

prolonged ebb of purpose, a current of chilling indecision, under which she vainly sought for the motive

Perhaps it was a vague curiosity to see Flavia's husband, who had been the magician of her childhood and the

hero of innumerable Arabian fairy tales. Perhaps it was a desire to see M. Roux, whom Flavia had announced

as the especial attraction of the occasion. Perhaps it was a wish to study that remarkable woman in her own

Imogen admitted a mild curiosity concerning Flavia. She was in the habit of taking people rather seriously,

but somehow found it impossible to take Flavia so, because of the very vehemence and insistence with which

Flavia demanded it. Submerged in her studies, Imogen had, of late years, seen very little of Flavia; but Flavia,

in her hurried visits to New York, between her excursions from studio to studioher luncheons with this

lady who had to play at a matinee, and her dinners with that singer who had an evening concerthad seen

enough of her friend's handsome daughter to conceive for her an inclination of such violence and assurance

as only Flavia could afford. The fact that Imogen had shown rather marked capacity in certain esoteric lines

of scholarship, and had decided to specialize in a well sounding branch of philology at the Ecole des

Chartes, had fairly placed her in that category of "interesting people" whom Flavia considered her natural

When Imogen stepped upon the station platform she was immediately appropriated by her hostess, whose

commanding figure and assurance of attire she had recognized from a distance. She was hurried into a high

tilbury and Flavia, taking the driver's cushion beside her, gathered up the reins with an experienced hand.

"My dear girl," she remarked, as she turned the horses up the street, "I was afraid the train might be late. M.

"To think of M. Roux's being in this part of the world at all, and subject to the vicissitudes of river boats!

Why in the world did he come over?" queried Imogen with lively interest. "He is the sort of man who must

"Oh, we have a houseful of the most interesting people," said Flavia, professionally. "We have actually

managed to get Ivan Schemetzkin. He was ill in California at the close of his concert tour, you know, and he

is recuperating with us, after his wearing journey from the coast. Then there is Jules Martel, the painter;

Signor Donati, the tenor; Professor Schotte, who has dug up Assyria, you know; Restzhoff, the Russian

chemist; Alcee Buisson, the philologist; Frank Wellington, the novelist; and Will Maidenwood, the editor of

Woman. Then there is my second cousin, Jemima Broadwood, who made such a hit in Pinero's comedy last

"Well, she is a most remarkable person; one of those advanced German women, a militant iconoclast, and this

drive will not be long enough to permit of my telling you her history. Such a story! Her novels were the talk

of all Germany when I was there last, and several of them have been suppressedan honor in Germany, I

understand. 'At Whose Door' has been translated. I am so unfortunate as not to read German."

"I'm all excitement at the prospect of meeting Miss Broadwood," said Imogen. "I've seen her in nearly

everything she does. Her stage personality is delightful. She always reminds me of a nice, clean,

pinkandwhite boy who has just had his cold bath, and come down all aglow for a run before breakfast."

"Yes, but isn't it unfortunate that she will limit herself to those minor comedy parts that are so little

appreciated in this country? One ought to be satisfied with nothing less than the best, ought one?" The

peculiar, breathy tone in which Flavia always uttered that word "best," the most worn in her vocabulary,

"I don't at all agree with you," she said reservedly. "I thought everyone admitted that the most remarkable

thing about Miss Broadwood is her admirable sense of fitness, which is rare enough in her profession."

Flavia could not endure being contradicted; she always seemed to regard it in the light of a defeat, and

"Look, my dear," she cried, "there is Frau Lichtenfeld now, coming to meet us. Doesn't she look as if she had

Imogen saw a woman of immense stature, in a very short skirt and a broad, flapping sun hat, striding down

the hillside at a long, swinging gait. The refugee from Valhalla approached, panting. Her heavy, Teutonic

features were scarlet from the rigor of her exercise, and her hair, under her flapping sun hat, was tightly

befrizzled about her brow. She fixed her sharp little eves upon Imogen and extended both her hands.

Imogen was quite as tall as her hostess; but everything, she reflected, is comparative. After the introduction

"Ah, no!" cried the giantess, drooping her head in humorous caricature of a timehonored pose of the

heroines of sentimental romances. "It has never been my fate to be fitted into corners. I have never known the

Laughing, Flavia started the ponies, and the colossal woman, standing in the middle of the dusty road, took

off her wide hat and waved them a farewell which, in scope of gesture, recalled the salute of a plumed

When they arrived at the house, Imogen looked about her with keen curiosity, for this was veritably the work

of Flavia's hands, the materialization of hopes long deferred. They passed directly into a large, square hall

with a gallery on three sides, studio fashion. This opened at one end into a Dutch breakfast room, beyond

which was the large dining room. At the other end of the hall was the music room. There was a smoking

room, which one entered through the library behind the staircase. On the second floor there was the same

general arrangement: a square hall, and, opening from it, the guest chambers, or, as Miss Broadwood termed

When Imogen went to her room, the guests had begun to return from their various afternoon excursions. Boys

were gliding through the halls with ice water, covered trays, and flowers, colliding with maids and valets who

carried shoes and other articles of wearing apparel. Yet, all this was done in response to inaudible bells, on

felt soles, and in hushed voices, so that there was very little confusion about it.

Flavia had at last built her house and hewn out her seven pillars; there could be no doubt, now, that the

asylum for talent, the sanatorium of the arts, so long projected, was an accomplished fact. Her ambition had

long ago outgrown the dimensions of her house on Prairie Avenue; besides, she had bitterly complained that

in Chicago traditions were against her. Her project had been delayed by Arthur's doggedly standing out for

the Michigan woods, but Flavia knew well enough that certain of the rarae aves"the best"could not be

lured so far away from the seaport, so she declared herself for the historic Hudson and knew no retreat. The

establishing of a New York office had at length overthrown Arthur's last valid objection to quitting the lake

country for three months of the year; and Arthur could be wearied into anything, as those who knew him

Flavia's house was the mirror of her exultation; it was a temple to the gods of Victory, a sort of triumphal

arch. In her earlier days she had swallowed experiences that would have unmanned one of less torrential

enthusiasm or blind pertinacity. But, of late years, her determination had told; she saw less and less of those

mysterious persons with mysterious obstacles in their path and mysterious grievances against the world, who

had once frequented her house on Prairie Avenue. In the stead of this multitude of the unarrived, she had now

the few, the select, "the best." Of all that band of indigent retainers who had once fed at her board like the

suitors in the halls of Penelope, only Alcee Buisson still retained his right of entree. He alone had

remembered that ambition hath a knapsack at his back, wherein he puts alms to oblivion, and he alone had

been considerate enough to do what Flavia had expected of him, and give his name a current value in the

world. Then, as Miss Broadwood put it, "he was her first real one,"and Flavia, like Mohammed, could

"The House of Song," as Miss Broadwood had called it, was the outcome of Flavia's more exalted strategies.

A woman who made less a point of sympathizing with their delicate organisms, might have sought to plunge

these phosphorescent pieces into the tepid bath of domestic life; but Flavia's discernment was deeper. This

must be a refuge where the shrinking soul, the sensitive brain, should be unconstrained; where the caprice of

fancy should outweigh the civil code, if necessary. She considered that this much Arthur owed her; for she, in

her turn, had made concessions. Flavia had, indeed, quite an equipment of epigrams to the effect that our

century creates the iron genii which evolve its fairy tales: but the fact that her husband's name was annually

painted upon some ten thousand threshing machines in reality contributed very little to her happiness.

Arthur Hamilton was born and had spent his boyhood in the West Indies, and physically he had never lost the

brand of the tropics. His father, after inventing the machine which bore his name, had returned to the States to

patent and manufacture it. After leaving college, Arthur had spent five years ranching in the West and

traveling abroad. Upon his father's death he had returned to Chicago and, to the astonishment of all his

friends, had taken up the businesswithout any demonstration of enthusiasm, but with quiet perseverance,

marked ability, and amazing industry. Why or how a selfsufficient, rather ascetic man of thirty, indifferent

in manner, wholly negative in all other personal relations, should have doggedly wooed and finally married

While Imogen was dressing she heard a knock at her door, and a young woman entered whom she at once

recognized as Jemima Broadwood"Jimmy" Broadwood she was called by people in her own profession.

While there was something unmistakably professional in her frank savoirfaire, "Jimmy's" was one of those

faces to which the rouge never seems to stick. Her eyes were keen and gray as a windy April sky, and so far

from having been seared by calcium lights, you might have fancied they had never looked on anything less

bucolic than growing fields and country fairs. She wore her thick, brown hair short and parted at the side;

and, rather than hinting at freakishness, this seemed admirably in keeping with her fresh, boyish countenance.

She extended to Imogen a large, wellshaped hand which it was a pleasure to clasp.

"Ah! You are Miss Willard, and I see I need not introduce myself. Flavia said you were kind enough to

express a wish to meet me, and I preferred to meet you alone. Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Why, certainly not," said Imogen, somewhat disconcerted and looking hurriedly about for matches.

"There, be calm, I'm always prepared," said Miss Broadwood, checking Imogen's flurry with a soothing

gesture, and producing an oddly fashioned silver matchcase from some mysterious recess in her dinner

gown. She sat down in a deep chair, crossed her patentleather Oxfords, and lit her cigarette. "This

matchbox," she went on meditatively, "once belonged to a Prussian officer. He shot himself in his bathtub,

Imogen had not yet found any suitable reply to make to this rather irrelevant confidence, when Miss

Broadwood turned to her cordially: "I'm awfully glad you've come, Miss Willard, though I've not quite

decided why you did it. I wanted very much to meet you. Flavia gave me your thesis to read."

"On the contrary," remarked Miss Broadwood. "I thought it decidedly lacked humor."

"I meant," stammered Imogen, beginning to feel very much like Alice in Wonderland, "I meant that I thought

Miss Broadwood laughed heartily. "Now, don't let my rudeness frighten you. Really, I found it very

interesting, and no end impressive. You see, most people in my profession are good for absolutely nothing

else, and, therefore, they have a deep and abiding conviction that in some other line they might have shone.

Strange to say, scholarship is the object of our envious and particular admiration. Anything in type impresses

us greatly; that's why so many of us marry authors or newspapermen and lead miserable lives." Miss

Broadwood saw that she had rather disconcerted Imogen, and blithely tacked in another direction. "You see,"

she went on, tossing aside her halfconsumed cigarette, "some years ago Flavia would not have deemed me

worthy to open the pages of your thesisnor to be one of her house party of the chosen, for that matter. I've

Pinero to thank for both pleasures. It all depends on the class of business I'm playing whether I'm in favor or

not. Flavia is my second cousin, you know, so I can say whatever disagreeable things I choose with perfect

good grace. I'm quite desperate for someone to laugh with, so I'm going to fasten myself upon youfor, of

course, one can't expect any of these gypsydago people to see anything funny. I don't intend you shall lose

the humor of the situation. What do you think of Flavia's infirmary for the arts, anyway?"

"Well, it's rather too soon for me to have any opinion at all," said Imogen, as she again turned to her dressing.

"One of them?" echoed Miss Broadwood. "One of the artists? My offense may be rank, my dear, but I really

don't deserve that. Come, now, whatever badges of my tribe I may bear upon me, just let me divest you of

Imogen turned from the mirror in blank astonishment and sat down on the arm of a chair, facing her visitor. "I

can't fathom you at all, Miss Broadwood," she said frankly. "Why shouldn't you take yourself seriously?

What's the use of beating about the bush? Surely you know that you are one of the few players on this side of

"Thank you, my dear. Now we are quite even about the thesis, aren't we? Oh, did you mean it? Well, you are

a clever girl. But you see it doesn't do to permit oneself to look at it in that light. If we do, we always go to

pieces and waste our substance astarring as the unhappy daughter of the Capulets. But there, I hear Flavia

coming to take you down; and just remember I'm not one of themthe artists, I mean."

Flavia conducted Imogen and Miss Broadwood downstairs. As they reached the lower hall they heard voices

from the music room, and dim figures were lurking in the shadows under the gallery, but their hostess led

straight to the smoking room. The June evening was chilly, and a fire had been lighted in the fireplace.

Through the deepening dusk, the firelight flickered upon the pipes and curious weapons on the wall and

threw an orange glow over the Turkish hangings. One side of the smoking room was entirely of glass,

separating it from the conservatory, which was flooded with white light from the electric bulbs. There was

about the darkened room some suggestion of certain chambers in the Arabian Nights, opening on a court of

palms. Perhaps it was partially this memoryevoking suggestion that caused Imogen to start so violently

when she saw dimly, in a blur of shadow, the figure of a man, who sat smoking in a low, deep chair before

the fire. He was long, and thin, and brown. His long, nerveless hands drooped from the arms of his chair. A

brown mustache shaded his mouth, and his eyes were sleepy and apathetic. When Imogen entered he rose

"I am glad you arrived promptly, Miss Willard," he said with an indifferent drawl. "Flavia was afraid you

"Oh, very, thank you, Mr. Hamilton," she replied, feeling that he did not particularly care whether she replied

Flavia explained that she had not yet had time to dress for dinner, as she had been attending to Mr. Will

Maidenwood, who had become faint after hurting his finger in an obdurate window, and immediately excused

herself As she left, Hamilton turned to Miss Broadwood with a rather spiritless smile.

"Well, Jimmy," he remarked, "I brought up a piano box full of fireworks for the boys. How do you suppose

"We can't, unless we steel ourselves to deny there are any on the premises," said Miss Broadwood, seating

herself on a low stool by Hamilton's chair and leaning back against the mantel. "Have you seen Helen, and

"She met me at the station, with her tooth wrapped up in tissue paper. I had tea with her an hour ago. Better

sit down, Miss Willard;" he rose and pushed a chair toward Imogen, who was standing peering into the

conservatory. "We are scheduled to dine at seven, but they seldom get around before eight."

By this time Imogen had made out that here the plural pronoun, third person, always referred to the artists. As

Hamilton's manner did not spur one to cordial intercourse, and as his attention seemed directed to Miss

Broadwood, insofar as it could be said to be directed to anyone, she sat down facing the conservatory and

watched him, unable to decide in how far he was identical with the man who had first met Flavia Malcolm in

her mother's house, twelve years ago. Did he at all remember having known her as a little girl, and why did

his indifference hurt her so, after all these years? Had some remnant of her childish affection for him gone on

living, somewhere down in the sealed caves of her consciousness, and had she really expected to find it

possible to be fond of him again? Suddenly she saw a light in the man's sleepy eyes, an unmistakable

expression of interest and pleasure that fairly startled her. She turned quickly in the direction of his glance,

and saw Flavia, just entering, dressed for dinner and lit by the effulgence of her most radiant manner. Most

people considered Flavia handsome, and there was no gainsaying that she carried her fiveandthirty years

splendidly. Her figure had never grown matronly, and her face was of the sort that does not show wear. Its

blond tints were as fresh and enduring as enameland quite as hard. Its usual expression was one of tense,

often strained, animation, which compressed her lips nervously. A perfect scream of animation, Miss

Broadwood had called it, created and maintained by sheer, indomitable force of will. Flavia's appearance on

any scene whatever made a ripple, caused a certain agitation and recognition, and, among impressionable

people, a certain uneasiness, For all her sparkling assurance of manner, Flavia was certainly always ill at ease

and, even more certainly, anxious. She seemed not convinced of the established order of material things,

seemed always trying to conceal her feeling that walls might crumble, chasms open, or the fabric of her life

fly to the winds in irretrievable entanglement. At least this was the impression Imogen got from that note in

Hamilton's keen, quick, satisfied glance at his wife had recalled to Imogen all her inventory of speculations

about them. She looked at him with compassionate surprise. As a child she had never permitted herself to

believe that Hamilton cared at all for the woman who had taken him away from her; and since she had begun

to think about them again, it had never occurred to her that anyone could become attached to Flavia in that

deeply personal and exclusive sense. It seemed quite as irrational as trying to possess oneself of Broadway at

When they went out to dinner Imogen realized the completeness of Flavia's triumph. They were people of one

name, mostly, like kings; people whose names stirred the imagination like a romance or a melody. With the

notable exception of M. Roux, Imogen had seen most of them before, either in concert halls or lecture rooms;

Opposite her sat Schemetzkin, the Russian pianist, a short, corpulent man, with an apoplectic face and

purplish skin, his thick, irongray hair tossed back from his forehead. Next to the German giantess sat the

Italian tenor the tiniest of menpale, with soft, light hair, much in disorder, very red lips, and fingers

yellowed by cigarettes. Frau Lichtenfeld shone in a gown of emerald green, fitting so closely as to enhance

her natural floridness. However, to do the good lady justice, let her attire be never so modest, it gave an effect

of barbaric splendor. At her left sat Herr Schotte, the Assyriologist, whose features were effectually

concealed by the convergence of his hair and beard, and whose glasses were continually falling into his plate.

This gentleman had removed more tons of earth in the course of his explorations than had any of his

confreres, and his vigorous attack upon his food seemed to suggest the strenuous nature of his accustomed

toil. His eyes were small and deeply set, and his forehead bulged fiercely above his eves in a bony ridge. His

heavy brows completed the leonine suggestion of his face. Even to Imogen, who knew something of his work

and greatly respected it, he was entirely too reminiscent of the Stone Age to be altogether an agreeable dinner

companion. He seemed, indeed, to have absorbed something of the savagery of those early types of life which

Frank Wellington, the young Kansas man who had been two years out of Harvard and had published three

historical novels, sat next to Mr. Will Maidenwood, who was still pale from his recent sufferings and carried

his hand bandaged. They took little part in the general conversation, but, like the lion and the unicorn, were

always at it, discussing, every time they met, whether there were or were not passages in Mr. Wellington's

works which should be eliminated, out of consideration for the Young Person. Wellington had fallen into the

hands of a great American syndicate which most effectually befriended struggling authors whose struggles

were in the right direction, and which had guaranteed to make him famous before he was thirty. Feeling the

security of his position he stoutly defended those passages which jarred upon the sensitive nerves of the

young editor of Woman. Maidenwood, in the smoothest of voices, urged the necessity of the author's

recognizing certain restrictions at the outset, and Miss Broadwood, who joined the argument quite without

invitation or encouragement, seconded him with pointed and malicious remarks which caused the young

editor manifest discomfort. Restzhoff, the chemist, demanded the attention of the entire company for his

exposition of his devices for manufacturing ice cream from vegetable oils and for administering drugs in

Flavia, always noticeably restless at dinner, was somewhat apathetic toward the advocate of peptonized

chocolate and was plainly concerned about the sudden departure of M. Roux, who had announced that it

would be necessary for him to leave tomorrow. M. Emile Roux, who sat at Flavia's right, was a man in

middle life and quite bald, clearly without personal vanity, though his publishers preferred to circulate only

those of his portraits taken in his ambrosial youth. Imogen was considerably shocked at his unlikeness to the

slender, blackstocked Rolla he had looked at twenty. He had declined into the florid, settled heaviness of

indifference and approaching age. There was, however, a certain look of durability and solidity about him;

the look of a man who has earned the right to be fat and bald, and even silent at dinner if he chooses.

Throughout the discussion between Wellington and Will Maidenwood, though they invited his participation,

he remained silent, betraying no sign either of interest or contempt. Since his arrival he had directed most of

his conversation to Hamilton, who had never read one of his twelve great novels. This perplexed and troubled

Flavia. On the night of his arrival Jules Martel had enthusiastically declared, "There are schools and schools,

manners and manners; but Roux is Roux, and Paris sets its watches by his clock." Flavia bad already repeated

this remark to Imogen. It haunted her, and each time she quoted it she was impressed anew.

Flavia shifted the conversation uneasily, evidently exasperated and excited by her repeated failures to draw

the novelist out. "Monsieur Roux," she began abruptly, with her most animated smile, "I remember so well a

statement I read some years ago in your 'Mes Etudes des Femmes' to the effect that you had never met a

really intellectual woman. May I ask, without being impertinent, whether that assertion still represents your

"I meant, madam," said the novelist conservatively, "intellectual in a sense very special, as we say of men in

"And you still think a woman so constituted a mythical personage?" persisted Flavia, nodding her head

"Une Meduse, madam, who, if she were discovered, would transmute us all into stone," said the novelist,

bowing gravely. "If she existed at all," he added deliberately, "it was my business to find her, and she has cost

me many a vain pilgrimage. Like Rudel of Tripoli, I have crossed seas and penetrated deserts to seek her out.

I have, indeed, encountered women of learning whose industry I have been compelled to respect; many who

have possessed beauty and charm and perplexing cleverness; a few with remarkable information and a sort of

"And Mrs. Browning, George Eliot, and your own Mme. Dudevant?" queried Flavia with that fervid

enthusiasm with which she could, on occasion, utter things simply incomprehensible for their banalityat

her feats of this sort Miss Broadwood was wont to sit breathless with admiration.

"Madam, while the intellect was undeniably present in the performances of those women, it was only the

stick of the rocket. Although this woman has eluded me I have studied her conditions and perturbances as

astronomers conjecture the orbits of planets they have never seen. if she exists, she is probably neither an

artist nor a woman with a mission, but an obscure personage, with imperative intellectual needs, who absorbs

Flavia, still nodding nervously, fixed a strained glance of interrogation upon M. Roux. "Then you think she

would be a woman whose first necessity would be to know, whose instincts would be satisfied only with the

The novelist lifted his dull eyes to his interlocutress with an untranslatable smile and a slight inclination of

his shoulders. "Exactly so; you are really remarkable, madam," he added, in a tone of cold astonishment.

After dinner the guests took their coffee in the music room, where Schemetzkin sat down at the piano to drum

ragtime, and give his celebrated imitation of the boardingschool girl's execution of Chopin. He flatly refused

to play anything more serious, and would practice only in the morning, when he had the music room to

himself. Hamilton and M. Roux repaired to the smoking room to discuss the necessity of extending the tax on

manufactured articles in Franceone of those conversations which particularly exasperated Flavia.

After Schemetzkin had grimaced and tortured the keyboard with malicious vulgarities for half an hour,

Signor Donati, to put an end to his torture, consented to sing, and Flavia and Imogen went to fetch Arthur to

play his accompaniments. Hamilton rose with an annoyed look and placed his cigarette on the mantel. "Why

yes, Flavia, I'll accompany him, provided he sings something with a melody, Italian arias or ballads, and

As Flavia had remarked to Imogen, "Arthur really played accompaniments remarkably well." To hear him

recalled vividly the days of her childhood, when he always used to spend his business vacations at her

mother's home in Maine. He had possessed for her that almost hypnotic influence which young men

sometimes exert upon little girls. It was a sort of phantom love affair, subjective and fanciful, a precocity of

instinct, like that tender and maternal concern which some little girls feel for their dolls. Yet this childish

infatuation is capable of all the depressions and exaltations of love itself, it has its bitter jealousies, cruel

Summer after summer she had awaited his coming and wept at his departure, indifferent to the gayer young

men who had called her their sweetheart and laughed at everything she said. Although Hamilton never said

so, she had been always quite sure that he was fond of her. When he pulled her up the river to hunt for fairy

knolls shut about by low, hanging willows, he was often silent for an hour at a time, yet she never felt he was

bored or was neglecting her. He would lie in the sand smoking, his eyes halfclosed, watching her play, and

she was always conscious that she was entertaining him. Sometimes he would take a copy of "Alice in

Wonderland" in his pocket, and no one could read it as he could, laughing at her with his dark eyes, when

anything amused him. No one else could laugh so, with just their eyes, and without moving a muscle of their

face. Though he usually smiled at passages that seemed not at all funny to the child, she always laughed

gleefully, because he was so seldom moved to mirth that any such demonstration delighted her and she took

the credit of it entirely to herself Her own inclination had been for serious stories, with sad endings, like the

Little Mermaid, which he had once told her in an unguarded moment when she had a cold, and was put to bed

early on her birthday night and cried because she could not have her party. But he highly disapproved of this

preference, and had called it a morbid taste, and always shook his finger at her when she asked for the story.

When she had been particularly good, or particularly neglected by other people, then he would sometimes

melt and tell her the story, and never laugh at her if she enjoyed the "sad ending" even to tears. When Flavia

had taken him away and he came no more, she wept inconsolably for the space of two weeks, and refused to

learn her lessons. Then she found the story of the Little Mermaid herself, and forgot him.

Imogen had discovered at dinner that he could still smile at one secretly, out of his eyes, and that he had the

old manner of outwardly seeming bored, but letting you know that he was not. She was intensely curious

about his exact state of feeling toward his wife, and more curious still to catch a sense of his final adjustment

to the conditions of life in general. This, she could not help feeling, she might get againif she could have

him alone for an hour, in some place where there was a little river and a sandy cove bordered by drooping

That evening, before retiring, Flavia entered her husband's room, where be sat in his smoking jacket, in one

"I suppose it's a grave responsibility to bring an ardent, serious young thing like Imogen here among all these

fascinating personages," she remarked reflectively. "But, after all, one can never tell. These grave, silent girls

"Oh, so that is your plan?" queried her husband dryly. "I was wondering why you got her up here. She doesn't

Flavia paid no heed to this jeering remark, but repeated, "No, after all, it may not be a bad thing."

"Then do consign her to that shaken reed, the tenor," said her husband yawning. "I remember she used to

"And then," remarked Flavia coquettishly, "after all, I owe her mother a return in kind. She was not afraid to

"Good morning, my dear girl, whatever are you doing up so early? They never breakfast before eleven. Most

Miss Broadwood looked particularly fresh and encouraging in her blue serge walking skirt, her open jacket

displaying an expanse of stiff, white shirt bosom, dotted with some almost imperceptible figure, and a dark

blueandwhite necktie, neatly knotted under her wide, rolling collar. She wore a white rosebud in the lapel

of her coat, and decidedly she seemed more than ever like a nice, clean boy on his holiday. Imogen was just

hoping that they would breakfast alone when Miss Broadwood exclaimed, "Ah, there comes Arthur with the

children. That's the reward of early rising in this house; you never get to see the youngsters at any other

Hamilton entered, followed by two dark, handsome little boys. The girl, who was very tiny, blonde like her

mother, and exceedingly frail, he carried in his arms. The boys came up and said good morning with an ease

and cheerfulness uncommon, even in wellbred children, but the little girl hid her face on her father's

"She's a shy little lady," he explained as he put her gently down in her chair. "I'm afraid she's like her father;

she can't seem to get used to meeting people. And you, Miss Willard, did you dream of the White Rabbit or

"Oh, I dreamed of them all! All the personages of that buried civilization," cried Imogen, delighted that his

estranged manner of the night before had entirely vanished and feeling that, somehow, the old confidential

"Come, William," said Miss Broadwood, turning to the younger of the two boys, "and what did you dream

"We dreamed," said William gravelyhe was the more assertive of the two and always spoke for both"we

dreamed that there were fireworks hidden in the basement of the carriage house; lots and lots of fireworks."

His elder brother looked up at him with apprehensive astonishment, while Miss Broadwood hastily put her

napkin to her lips and Hamilton dropped his eyes. "If little boys dream things, they are so apt not to come

true," he reflected sadly. This shook even the redoubtable William, and he glanced nervously at his brother.

"Generally that is the very best reason for their vanishing," said Arthur gravely.

"Oh, come! You're making these children talk like a Maeterlinck dialogue," laughed Miss Broadwood.

Flavia presently entered, a book in her hand, and bade them all good morning. "Come, little people, which

story shall it be this morning?" she asked winningly. Greatly excited, the children followed her into the

garden. "She does then, sometimes," murmured Imogen as they left the breakfast room.

"Oh, yes, to be sure," said Miss Broadwood cheerfully. "She reads a story to them every morning in the most

picturesque part of the garden. The mother of the Gracchi, you know. She does so long, she says, for the time

when they will be intellectual companions for her. What do you say to a walk over the hills?"

As they left the house they met Frau Lichtenfeld and the bushy Herr Schottethe professor cut an

astonishing figure in golf stockingsreturning from a walk and engaged in an animated conversation on the

"Aren't they the most attractive little children," exclaimed Imogen as they wound down the road toward the

"Yes, and you must not fail to tell Flavia that you think so. She will look at you in a sort of startled way and

say, 'Yes, aren't they?' and maybe she will go off and hunt them up and have tea with them, to fully

appreciate them. She is awfully afraid of missing anything good, is Flavia. The way those youngsters manage

"Yes, they just fancy them and no more. The chemist remarked the other day that children are like certain

salts which need not be actualized because the formulae are quite sufficient for practical purposes. I don't see

"I have always been rather curious to know what Arthur thinks of it all," remarked Imogen cautiously.

"Thinks of it!" ejaculated Miss Broadwood. "Why, my dear, what would any man think of having his house

turned into an hotel, habited by freaks who discharge his servants, borrow his money, and insult his

"Bah!" interrupted Miss Broadwood impatiently, "why did he in the first place? That's the question."

"Exactly so," said Miss Broadwood sharply, as she snapped the lid of her matchbox.

"I suppose that is a question rather beyond us, and certainly one which we cannot discuss," said Imogen. "But

his toleration on this one point puzzles me, quite apart from other complications."

"Toleration? Why this point, as you call it, simply is Flavia. Who could conceive of her without it? I don't

know where it's all going to end, I'm sure, and I'm equally sure that, if it were not for Arthur, I shouldn't

"Such an absurd state of things can't go on indefinitely. A man isn't going to see his wife make a guy of

herself forever, is he? Chaos has already begun in the servants' quarters. There are six different languages

spoken there now. You see, it's all on an entirely false basis. Flavia hasn't the slightest notion of what these

people are really like, their good and their bad alike escape her. They, on the other hand, can't imagine what

she is driving at. Now, Arthur is worse off than either faction; he is not in the fairy story in that he sees these

people exactly as they are, but he is utterly unable to see Flavia as they see her. There you have the situation.

Why can't he see her as we do? My dear, that has kept me awake o' nights. This man who has thought so

much and lived so much, who is naturally a critic, really takes Flavia at very nearly her own estimate. But

now I am entering upon a wilderness. From a brief acquaintance with her you can know nothing of the icy

fastnesses of Flavia's self esteem. It's like St. Peter's; you can't realize its magnitude at once. You have to

grow into a sense of it by living under its shadow. It has perplexed even Emile Roux, that merciless dissector

of egoism. She has puzzled him the more because be saw at a glance what some of them do not perceive at

once, and what will be mercifully concealed from Arthur until the trump sounds; namely, that all Flavia's

artists have done or ever will do means exactly as much to her as a symphony means to an oyster; that there is

no bridge by which the significance of any work of art could be conveyed to her."

"Then, in the name of goodness, why does she bother?" gasped Imogen. "She is pretty, wealthy,

"That's what M. Roux has kept asking himself. I can't pretend to analyze it. She reads papers on the Literary

Landmarks of Paris, the Loves of the Poets, and that sort of thing, to clubs out in Chicago. To Flavia it is

more necessary to be called clever than to breathe. I would give a good deal to know that glum Frenchman's

diagnosis. He has been watching her out of those fishy eyes of his as a biologist watches a hemisphereless

For several days after M. Roux's departure Flavia gave an embarrassing share of her attention to Imogen.

Embarrassing, because Imogen had the feeling of being energetically and futilely explored, she knew not for

what. She felt herself under the globe of an air pump, expected to yield up something. When she confined the

conversation to matters of general interest Flavia conveyed to her with some pique that her one endeavor in

life had been to fit herself to converse with her friends upon those things which vitally interested them. "One

has no right to accept their best from people unless one gives, isn't it so? I want to be able to give!" she

declared vaguely. Yet whenever Imogen strove to pay her tithes and plunged bravely into her plans for study

next winter, Flavia grew absentminded and interrupted her by amazing generalizations or by such

embarrassing questions as, "And these grim studies really have charm for you; you are quite buried in them;

"I rather feel as though I had got in here under false pretenses," Imogen confided to Miss Broadwood. "I'm

"Ah," chuckled Jemima, "you are not equal to these heart to heart talks with Flavia. You utterly fail to

communicate to her the atmosphere of that untroubled joy in which you dwell. You must remember that she

gets no feeling out of things herself, and she demands that you impart yours to her by some process of

psychic transmission. I once met a blind girl, blind from birth, who could discuss the peculiarities of the

Barbizon school with just Flavia's glibness and enthusiasm. Ordinarily Flavia knows how to get what she

wants from people, and her memory is wonderful. One evening I heard her giving Frau Lichtenfeld some

random impressions about Hedda Gabler which she extracted from me five years ago; giving them with an

impassioned conviction of which I was never guilty. But I have known other people who could appropriate

your stories and opinions; Flavia is infinitely more subtle than that; she can soak up the very thrash and drift

After some days of unsuccessful effort, Flavia withdrew herself, and Imogen found Hamilton ready to catch

her when she was tossed afield. He seemed only to have been awaiting this crisis, and at once their old

intimacy reestablished itself as a thing inevitable and beautifully prepared for. She convinced herself that she

had not been mistaken in him, despite all the doubts that had come up in later years, and this renewal of faith

set more than one question thumping in her brain. "How did he, how can he?" she kept repeating with a tinge

When Imogen and Arthur were returning from a walk before luncheon one morning about a week after M.

Roux's departure, they noticed an absorbed group before one of the hall windows. Herr Schotte and Restzhoff

sat on the window seat with a newspaper between them, while Wellington, Schemetzkin, and Will

Maidenwood looked over their shoulders. They seemed intensely interested, Herr Schotte occasionally

pounding his knees with his fists in ebullitions of barbaric glee. When imogen entered the hall, however, the

men were all sauntering toward the breakfast room and the paper was lying innocently on the divan. During

luncheon the personnel of that window group were unwontedly animated and agreeable all save Schemetzkin,

whose stare was blanker than ever, as though Roux's mantle of insulting indifference had fallen upon him, in

addition to his own oblivious self absorption. Will Maidenwood seemed embarrassed and annoyed; the

chemist employed himself with making polite speeches to Hamilton. Flavia did not come down to

lunchand there was a malicious gleam under Herr Schotte's eyebrows. Frank Wellington announced

nervously that an imperative letter from his protecting syndicate summoned him to the city.

After luncheon the men went to the golf links, and Imogen, at the first opportunity, possessed herself of the

newspaper which had been left on the divan. One of the first things that caught her eye was an article headed

"Roux on Tuft Hunters; The Advanced American Woman as He Sees Her; Aggressive, Superficial, and

Insincere." The entire interview was nothing more nor less than a satiric characterization of Flavia, aquiver

with irritation and vitriolic malice. No one could mistake it; it was done with all his deftness of portraiture.

Imogen had not finished the article when she heard a footstep, and clutching the paper she started

precipitately toward the stairway as Arthur entered. He put out his hand, looking critically at her distressed

"Wait a moment, Miss Willard," he said peremptorily, "I want to see whether we can find what it was that so

Imogen grew quite white as he opened the journal. She reached forward and crumpled it with her hands.

"Please don't, please don't," she pleaded; "it's something I don't want you to see. Oh, why will you? it's just

Arthur had gently loosed her hands, and he pointed her to a chair. He lit a cigar and read the article through

without comment. When he had finished it he walked to the fireplace, struck a match, and tossed the flaming

"You are right," he remarked as he came back, dusting his hands with his handkerchief. "It's quite impossible

to comment. There are extremes of blackguardism for which we have no name. The only thing necessary is to

see that Flavia gets no wind of this. This seems to be my cue to act; poor girl."

Imogen looked at him tearfully; she could only murmur, "Oh, why did you read it!"

Hamilton laughed spiritlessly. "Come, don't you worry about it. You always took other people's troubles too

seriously. When you were little and all the world was gay and everybody happy, you must needs get the Little

Mermaid's troubles to grieve over. Come with me into the music room. You remember the musical setting I

once made you for the Lay of the Jabberwock? I was trying it over the other night, long after you were in bed,

and I decided it was quite as fine as the ErlKing music. How I wish I could give you some of the cake that

Alice ate and make you a little girl again. Then, when you had got through the glass door into the little

garden, you could call to me, perhaps, and tell me all the fine things that were going on there. What a pity it is

that you ever grew up!" he added, laughing; and Imogen, too, was thinking just that.

At dinner that evening, Flavia, with fatal persistence, insisted upon turning the conversation to M. Roux. She

had been reading one of his novels and had remembered anew that Paris set its watches by his clock. Imogen

surmised that she was tortured by a feeling that she had not sufficiently appreciated him while she had had

him. When she first mentioned his name she was answered only by the pall of silence that fell over the

company. Then everyone began to talk at once, as though to correct a false position. They spoke of him with

a fervid, defiant admiration, with the sort of hot praise that covers a double purpose. Imogen fancied she

could see that they felt a kind of relief at what the man had done, even those who despised him for doing it;

that they felt a spiteful hate against Flavia, as though she had tricked them, and a certain contempt for

themselves that they had been beguiled. She was reminded of the fury of the crowd in the fairy tale, when

once the child had called out that the king was in his night clothes. Surely these people knew no more about

Flavia than they had known before, but the mere fact that the thing had been said altered the situation. Flavia,

Hamilton lounged, fingering the stem of his wineglass, gazing down the table at one face after another and

studying the various degrees of selfconsciousness they exhibited. Imogen's eyes followed his, fearfully.

When a lull came in the spasmodic flow of conversation, Arthur, leaning back in his chair, remarked

deliberately, "As for M. Roux, his very profession places him in that class of men whom society has never

been able to accept unconditionally because it has never been able to assume that they have any ordered

notion of taste. He and his ilk remain, with the mountebanks and snake charmers, people indispensable to our

civilization, but wholly unreclaimed by it; people whom we receive, but whose invitations we do not accept."

Fortunately for Flavia, this mine was not exploded until just before the coffee was brought. Her laughter was

pitiful to hear; it echoed through the silent room as in a vault, while she made some tremulously light remark

about her husband's drollery, grim as a jest from the dying. No one responded and she sat nodding her head

like a mechanical toy and smiling her white, set smile through her teeth, until Alcee Buisson and Frau

After dinner the guests retired immediately to their rooms, and Imogen went upstairs on tiptoe, feeling the

echo of breakage and the dust of crumbling in the air. She wondered whether Flavia's habitual note of

uneasiness were not, in a manner, prophetic, and a sort of unconscious premonition, after all. She sat down to

write a letter, but she found herself so nervous, her head so hot and her hands so cold, that she soon

abandoned the effort. just as she was about to seek Miss Broadwood, Flavia entered and embraced her

"My dearest girl," she began, "was there ever such an unfortunate and incomprehensible speech made before?

Of course it is scarcely necessary to explain to you poor Arthur's lack of tact, and that he meant nothing. But

they! Can they be expected to understand? He will feel wretchedly about it when he realizes what he has

done, but in the meantime? And M. Roux, of all men! When we were so fortunate as to get him, and he made

himself so unreservedly agreeable, and I fancied that, in his way, Arthur quite admired him. My dear, you

have no idea what that speech has done. Schemetzkin and Herr Schotte have already sent me word that they

must leave us tomorrow. Such a thing from a host!" Flavia paused, choked by tears of vexation and despair.

Imogen was thoroughly disconcerted; this was the first time she had ever seen Flavia betray any personal

emotion which was indubitably genuine. She replied with what consolation she could. "Need they take it

"Which he knows nothing whatever about, and with whom he has no sympathy," interrupted Flavia. "Ah, my

dear, you could not be expected to understand. You can't realize, knowing Arthur as you do, his entire lack of

any aesthetic sense whatever. He is absolutely nil, stone deaf and stark blind, on that side. He doesn't mean to

be brutal, it is just the brutality of utter ignorance. They always feel itthey are so sensitive to

unsympathetic influences, you know; they know it the moment they come into the house. I have spent my life

apologizing for him and struggling to conceal it; but in spite of me, he wounds them; his very attitude, even

in silence, offends them. Heavens! Do I not know? Is it not perpetually and forever wounding me? But there

has never been anything so dreadful as thisnever! If I could conceive of any possible motive, even!"

"But, surely, Mrs. Hamilton, it was, after all, a mere expression of opinion, such as we are any of us likely to

venture upon any subject whatever. It was neither more personal nor more extravagant than many of M.

"But, Imogen, certainly M. Roux has the right. It is a part of his art, and that is altogether another matter. Oh,

this is not the only instance!" continued Flavia passionately, "I've always had that narrow, bigoted prejudice

"I think you mistake his attitude," replied Imogen, feeling a flush that made her ears tingle. "That is, I fancy

he is more appreciative than he seems. A man can't be very demonstrative about those thingsnot if he is a

real man. I should not think you would care much about saving the feelings of people who are too narrow to

admit of any other point of view than their own." She stopped, finding herself in the impossible position of

attempting to explain Hamilton to his wife; a task which, if once begun, would necessitate an entire course of

enlightenment which she doubted Flavia's ability to receive, and which she could offer only with very poor

"That's just where it stings most"here Flavia began pacing the floor"it is just because they have all

shown such tolerance and have treated Arthur with such unfailing consideration that I can find no reasonable

pretext for his rancor. How can he fail to see the value of such friendships on the children's account, if for

nothing else! What an advantage for them to grow up among such associations! Even though he cares nothing

about these things himself he might realize that. Is there nothing I could say by way of explanation? To them,

I mean? If someone were to explain to them how unfortunately limited he is in these things"

"I'm afraid I cannot advise you," said Imogen decidedly, "but that, at least, seems to me impossible."

Flavia took her hand and glanced at her affectionately, nodding nervously. "Of course, dear girl, I can't ask

you to be quite frank with me. Poor child, you are trembling and your hands are icy. Poor Arthur! But you

must not judge him by this altogether; think how much he misses in life. What a cruel shock you've had. I'll

Next morning she awoke after a troubled and restless night. At eight o'clock Miss Broadwood entered in a red

"Up, up, and see the great doom's image!" she cried, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "The hall is full of

trunks, they are packing. What bolt has fallen? It's you, ma cherie, you've brought Ulysses home again and

the slaughter has begun!" she blew a cloud of smoke triumphantly from her lips and threw herself into a chair

Imogen, rising on her elbow, plunged excitedly into the story of the Roux interview, which Miss Broadwood

heard with the keenest interest, frequently interrupting her with exclamations of delight. When Imogen

reached the dramatic scene which terminated in the destruction of the newspaper, Miss Broadwood rose and

took a turn about the room, violently switching the tasselled cords of her bathrobe.

"Stop a moment," she cried, "you mean to tell me that he had such a heavensent means to bring her to her

"Use it?" cried Imogen unsteadily. "Of course he didn't! He bared his back to the tormentor, signed himself

over to punishment in that speech he made at dinner, which everyone understands but Flavia. She was here

for an hour last night and disregarded every limit of taste in her maledictions."

"My dear!" cried Miss Broadwood, catching her hand in inordinate delight at the situation, "do you see what

he has done? There'll be no end to it. Why he has sacrificed himself to spare the very vanity that devours him,

put rancors in the vessels of his peace, and his eternal jewel given to the common enemy of man, to make

"Isn't he always that?" cried Imogen hotly. "He's like a pillar of sanity and law in this house of shams and

swollen vanities, where people stalk about with a sort of madhouse dignity, each one fancying himself a king

or a pope. If you could have heard that woman talk of him! Why, she thinks him stupid, bigoted, blinded by

middleclass prejudices. She talked about his having no aesthetic sense and insisted that her artists had always

shown him tolerance. I don't know why it should get on my nerves so, I'm sure, but her stupidity and

"Yes, as opposed to his singular fineness, they are calculated to do just that," said Miss Broadwood gravely,

wisely ignoring Imogen's tears. "But what has been is nothing to what will be. Just wait until Flavia's black

swans have flown! You ought not to try to stick it out; that would only make it harder for everyone. Suppose

you let me telephone your mother to wire you to come home by the evening train?"

"Anything, rather than have her come at me like that again. It puts me in a perfectly impossible position, and

"Of course it does," said Miss Broadwood sympathetically, "and there is no good to be got from facing it. I

will stay because such things interest me, and Frau Lichtenfeld will stay because she has no money to get

away, and Buisson will stay because he feels somewhat responsible. These complications are interesting

enough to coldblooded folk like myself who have an eye for the dramatic element, but they are distracting

Miss Broadwood's counsel was all the more generous seeing that, for her, the most interesting element of this

denouement would be eliminated by Imogen's departure. "If she goes now, she'll get over it," soliloquized

Miss Broadwood. "If she stays, she'll be wrung for him and the hurt may go deep enough to last. I haven't the

heart to see her spoiling things for herself." She telephoned Mrs. Willard and helped Imogen to pack. She

even took it upon herself to break the news of Imogen's going to Arthur, who remarked, as he rolled a

"Right enough, too. What should she do here with old cynics like you and me, Jimmy? Seeing that she is

brim full of dates and formulae and other positivisms, and is so girt about with illusions that she still casts a

shadow in the sun. You've been very tender of her, haven't you? I've watched you. And to think it may all be

gone when we see her next. 'The common fate of all things rare,' you know. What a good fellow you are,

Arthur went with them to the station. Flavia was so prostrated by the concerted action of her guests that she

was able to see Imogen only for a moment in her darkened sleeping chamber, where she kissed her

hysterically, without lifting her head, bandaged in aromatic vinegar. On the way to the station both Arthur

and Imogen threw the burden of keeping up appearances entirely upon Miss Broadwood, who blithely rose to

the occasion. When Hamilton carried Imogen's bag into the car, Miss Broadwood detained her for a moment,

whispering as she gave her a large, warm handclasp, "I'll come to see you when I get back to town; and, in

the meantime, if you meet any of our artists, tell them you have left Caius Marius among the ruins of

A group of the townspeople stood on the station siding of a little Kansas town, awaiting the coming of the

night train, which was already twenty minutes overdue. The snow had fallen thick over everything; in the

pale starlight the line of bluffs across the wide, white meadows south of the town made soft, smoke colored

curves against the clear sky. The men on the siding stood first on one foot and then on the other, their hands

thrust deep into their trousers pockets, their overcoats open, their shoulders screwed up with the cold; and

they glanced from time to time toward the southeast, where the railroad track wound along the river shore.

They conversed in low tones and moved about restlessly, seeming uncertain as to what was expected of them.

There was but one of the company who looked as though he knew exactly why he was there; and he kept

conspicuously apart; walking to the far end of the platform, returning to the station door, then pacing up the

track again, his chin sunk in the high collar of his overcoat, his burly shoulders drooping forward, his gait

heavy and dogged. Presently he was approached by a tall, spare, grizzled man clad in a faded Grand Army

suit, who shuffled out from the group and advanced with a certain deference, craning his neck forward until

"I reckon she's agoin' to be pretty late ag'in tonight, Jim," he remarked in a squeaky falsetto. "S'pose it's the

"I don't know," responded the other man with a shade of annoyance, speaking from out an astonishing

The spare man shifted the quill toothpick he was chewing to the other side of his mouth. "It ain't likely that

anybody from the East will come with the corpse, I s'pose," he went on reflectively.

"It's too bad he didn't belong to some lodge or other. I like an order funeral myself. They seem more

appropriate for people of some reputation," the spare man continued, with an ingratiating concession in his

shrill voice, as he carefully placed his toothpick in his vest pocket. He always carried the flag at the G. A. R.

The heavy man turned on his heel, without replying, and walked up the siding. The spare man shuffled back

to the uneasy group. "Jim's ez full ez a tick, ez ushel," he commented commiseratingly.

Just then a distant whistle sounded, and there was a shuffling of feet on the platform. A number of lanky boys

of all ages appeared as suddenly and slimily as eels wakened by the crack of thunder; some came from the

waiting room, where they had been warming themselves by the red stove, or halfasleep on the slat benches;

others uncoiled themselves from baggage trucks or slid out of express wagons. Two clambered down from

the driver's seat of a hearse that stood backed up against the siding. They straightened their stooping

shoulders and lifted their heads, and a flash of momentary animation kindled their dull eyes at that cold,

vibrant scream, the worldwide call for men. It stirred them like the note of a trumpet; just as it had often

The night express shot, red as a rocket, from out the eastward marsh lands and wound along the river shore

under the long lines of shivering poplars that sentineled the meadows, the escaping steam hanging in gray

masses against the pale sky and blotting out the Milky Way. In a moment the red glare from the headlight

streamed up the snowcovered track before the siding and glittered on the wet, black rails. The burly man

with the disheveled red beard walked swiftly up the platform toward the approaching train, uncovering his

head as he went. The group of men behind him hesitated, glanced questioningly at one another, and

awkwardly followed his example. The train stopped, and the crowd shuffled up to the express car just as the

door was thrown open, the spare man in the G. A. B. suit thrusting his head forward with curiosity. The

express messenger appeared in the doorway, accompanied by a young man in a long ulster and traveling cap.

The group on the platform swayed and shuffled uneasily. Philip Phelps, the banker, responded with dignity:

"We have come to take charge of the body. Mr. Merrick's father is very feeble and can't be about."

"Send the agent out here," growled the express messenger, "and tell the operator to lend a hand."

The coffin was got out of its rough box and down on the snowy platform. The townspeople drew back

enough to make room for it and then formed a close semicircle about it, looking curiously at the palm leaf

which lay across the black cover. No one said anything. The baggage man stood by his truck, waiting to get at

the trunks. The engine panted heavily, and the fireman dodged in and out among the wheels with his yellow

torch and long oilcan, snapping the spindle boxes. The young Bostonian, one of the dead sculptor's pupils

who had come with the body, looked about him helplessly. He turned to the banker, the only one of that

black, uneasy, stoopshouldered group who seemed enough of an individual to be addressed.

The man with the red heard for the first time stepped up and joined the group. "No, they have not come yet;

the family is scattered. The body will be taken directly to the house." He stooped and took hold of one of the

"Take the long hill road up, Thompsonit will be easier on the horses," called the liveryman as the

undertaker snapped the door of the hearse and prepared to mount to the driver's seat.

Laird, the redbearded lawyer, turned again to the stranger: "We didn't know whether there would be anyone

with him or not," he explained. "It's a long walk, so you'd better go up in the hack." He pointed to a single,

battered conveyance, but the young man replied stiffly: "Thank you, but I think I will go up with the hearse.

They clambered up over the wheels and drove off in the starlight tip the long, white hill toward the town. The

lamps in the still village were shining from under the low, snowburdened roofs; and beyond, on every side,

the plains reached out into emptiness, peaceful and wide as the soft sky itself, and wrapped in a tangible,

When the hearse backed up to a wooden sidewalk before a naked, weatherbeaten frame house, the same

composite, illdefined group that had stood upon the station siding was huddled about the gate. The front

yard was an icy swamp, and a couple of warped planks, extending from the sidewalk to the door, made a sort

of rickety footbridge. The gate hung on one hinge and was opened wide with difficulty. Steavens, the young

The grating sound made by the casket, as it was drawn from the hearse, was answered by a scream from the

house; the front door was wrenched open, and a tall, corpulent woman rushed out bareheaded into the snow

and flung herself upon the coffin, shrieking: "My boy, my boy! And this is how you've come home to me!"

As Steavens turned away and closed his eyes with a shudder of unutterable repulsion, another woman, also

tall, but flat and angular, dressed entirely in black, darted out of the house and caught Mrs. Merrick by the

shoulders, crying sharply: "Come, come, Mother; you mustn't go on like this!" Her tone changed to one of

obsequious solemnity as she turned to the banker: "The parlor is ready, Mr. Phelps."

The bearers carried the coffin along the narrow boards, while the undertaker ran ahead with the coffinrests.

They bore it into a large, unheated room that smelled of dampness and disuse and furniture polish, and set it

down under a hanging lamp ornamented with jingling glass prisms and before a "Rogers group" of John

Alden and Priscilla, wreathed with smilax. Henry Steavens stared about him with the sickening conviction

that there had been some horrible mistake, and that he had somehow arrived at the wrong destination. He

looked painfully about over the clovergreen Brussels, the fat plush upholstery, among the handpainted

china plaques and panels, and vases, for some mark of identification, for something that might once

conceivably have belonged to Harvey Merrick. It was not until he recognized his friend in the crayon portrait

of a little boy in kilts and curls hanging above the piano that he felt willing to let any of these people

"Take the lid off, Mr. Thompson; let me see my boy's face," wailed the elder woman between her sobs. This

time Steavens looked fearfully, almost beseechingly into her face, red and swollen under its masses of strong,

black, shiny hair. He flushed, dropped his eyes, and then, almost incredulously, looked again. There was a

kind of power about her facea kind of brutal handsomeness, even, but it was scarred and furrowed by

violence, and so colored and coarsened by fiercer passions that grief seemed never to have laid a gentle finger

there. The long nose was distended and knobbed at the end, and there were deep lines on either side of it; her

heavy, black brows almost met across her forehead; her teeth were large and square and set far apartteeth

that could tear. She filled the room; the men were obliterated, seemed tossed about like twigs in an angry

The daughterthe tall, rawboned woman in crepe, with a mourning comb in her hair which curiously

lengthened her long face sat stiffly upon the sofa, her hands, conspicuous for their large knuckles, folded in

her lap, her mouth and eyes drawn down, solemnly awaiting the opening of the coffin. Near the door stood a

mulatto woman, evidently a servant in the house, with a timid bearing and an emaciated face pitifully sad and

gentle. She was weeping silently, the corner of her calico apron lifted to her eyes, occasionally suppressing a

Feeble steps were heard on the stairs, and an old man, tall and frail, odorous of pipe smoke, with shaggy,

unkept gray hair and a dingy beard, tobacco stained about the mouth, entered uncertainly. He went slowly up

to the coffin and stood, rolling a blue cotton handkerchief between his hands, seeming so pained and

embarrassed by his wife's orgy of grief that he had no consciousness of anything else.

"There, there, Annie, dear, don't take on so," he quavered timidly, putting out a shaking hand and awkwardly

patting her elbow. She turned with a cry and sank upon his shoulder with such violence that he tottered a

little. He did not even glance toward the coffin, but continued to look at her with a dull, frightened, appealing

expression, as a spaniel looks at the whip. His sunken cheeks slowly reddened and burned with miserable

shame. When his wife rushed from the room her daughter strode after her with set lips. The servant stole up

to the coffin, bent over it for a moment, and then slipped away to the kitchen, leaving Steavens, the lawyer,

and the father to themselves. The old man stood trembling and looking down at his dead son's face. The

sculptor's splendid head seemed even more noble in its rigid stillness than in life. The dark hair had crept

down upon the wide forehead; the face seemed strangely long, but in it there was not that beautiful and chaste

repose which we expect to find in the faces of the dead. The brows were so drawn that there were two deep

lines above the beaked nose, and the chin was thrust forward defiantly. It was as though the strain of life had

been so sharp and bitter that death could not at once wholly relax the tension and smooth the countenance

into perfect peace as though he were still guarding something precious and holy, which might even yet be

The old man's lips were working under his stained beard. He turned to the lawyer with timid deference:

"Phelps and the rest are comin' back to set up with Harve, ain't they?" he asked. "Thank 'ee, Jim, thank 'ee."

He brushed the hair back gently from his son's forehead. "He was a good boy, Jim; always a good boy. He

was ez gentle ez a child and the kindest of 'em allonly we didn't none of us ever onderstand him." The tears

"Martin, Martin. Oh, Martin! come here," his wife wailed from the top of the stairs. The old man started

timorously: "Yes, Annie, I'm coming." He turned away, hesitated stood for a moment in miserable indecision;

then he reached back and patted the dead man's hair softly, and stumbled from the room.

"Poor old man, I didn't think he had any tears left. Seems as if his eyes would have gone dry long ago. At his

Something in his tone made Steavens glance up. While the mother had been in the room the young man had

scarcely seen anyone else; but now, from the moment he first glanced into Jim Laird's florid face and

bloodshot eyes, he knew that he had found what he had been heartsick at not finding beforethe feeling, the

The man was red as his beard, with features swollen and blurred by dissipation, and a hot, blazing blue eye.

His face was strainedthat of a man who is controlling himself with difficultyand he kept plucking at his

beard with a sort of fierce resentment. Steavens, sitting by the window, watched him turn down the glaring

lamp, still its jangling pendants with an angry gesture, and then stand with his hands locked behind him,

staring down into the master's face. He could not help wondering what link there could have been between

From the kitchen an uproar was sounding; when the dining room door opened the import of it was clear.

The mother was abusing the maid for having forgotten to make the dressing for the chicken salad which had

been prepared for the watchers. Steavens had never heard anything in the least like it; it was injured,

emotional, dramatic abuse, unique and masterly in its excruciating cruelty, as violent and unrestrained as had

been her grief of twenty minutes before. With a shudder of disgust the lawyer went into the dining room and

"Poor Roxy's getting it now," he remarked when he came back. "The Merricks took her out of the poorhouse

years ago; and if her loyalty would let her, I guess the poor old thing could tell tales that would curdle your

blood. She's the mulatto woman who was standing in here a while ago, with her apron to her eyes. The old

woman is a fury; there never was anybody like her for demonstrative piety and ingenious cruelty. She made

Harvey's life a hell for him when he lived at home; he was so sick ashamed of it. I never could see how he

"He was wonderful," said Steavens slowly, "wonderful; but until tonight I have never known how

"That is the true and eternal wonder of it, anyway; that it can come even from such a dung heap as this," the

lawyer cried, with a sweeping gesture which seemed to indicate much more than the four walls within which

"I think I'll see whether I can get a little air. The room is so close I am beginning to feel rather faint,"

murmured Steavens, struggling with one of the windows. The sash was stuck, however, and would not yield,

so he sat down dejectedly and began pulling at his collar. The lawyer came over, loosened the sash with one

blow of his red fist, and sent the window up a few inches. Steavens thanked him, but the nausea which had

been gradually climbing into his throat for the last halfhour left him with but one desirea desperate

feeling that he must get away from this place with what was left of Harvey Merrick. Oh, he comprehended

well enough now the quiet bitterness of the smile that he had seen so often on his master's lips!

He remembered that once, when Merrick returned from a visit home, he brought with him a singularly feeling

and suggestive basrelief of a thin, faded old woman, sitting and sewing something pinned to her knee; while

a fulllipped, fullblooded little urchin, his trousers held up by a single gallows, stood beside her, impatiently

twitching her gown to call her attention to a butterfly he had caught. Steavens, impressed by the tender and

delicate modeling of the thin, tired face, had asked him if it were his mother. He remembered the dull flush

The lawyer was sitting in a rocking chair beside the coffin, his head thrown back and his eyes closed.

Steavens looked at him earnestly, puzzled at the line of the chin, and wondering why a man should conceal a

feature of such distinction under that disfiguring shock of beard. Suddenly, as though he felt the young

"Was he always a good deal of an oyster?" he asked abruptly. "He was terribly shy as a boy."

"Yes, he was an oyster, since you put it so," rejoined Steavens. "Although he could be very fond of people, he

always gave one the impression of being detached. He disliked violent emotion; he was reflective, and rather

distrustful of himself except, of course, as regarded his work. He was surefooted enough there. He

distrusted men pretty thoroughly and women even more, yet somehow without believing ill of them. He was

Steavens went on and on, reconstructing that whole miserable boyhood. All this raw, biting ugliness had been

the portion of the man whose tastes were refined beyond the limits of the reasonablewhose mind was an

exhaustless gallery of beautiful impressions, and so sensitive that the mere shadow of a poplar leaf flickering

against a sunny wall would be etched and held there forever. Surely, if ever a man had the magic word in his

fingertips, it was Merrick. Whatever he touched, he revealed its holiest secret; liberated it from enchantment

and restored it to its pristine loveliness, like the Arabian prince who fought the enchantress spell for spell.

Upon whatever he had come in contact with, he had left a beautiful record of the experiencea sort of

Steavens understood now the real tragedy of his master's life; neither love nor wine, as many had conjectured,

but a blow which had fallen earlier and cut deeper than these could have donea shame not his, and yet so

unescapably his, to bide in his heart from his very boyhood. And withoutthe frontier warfare; the yearning

of a boy, cast ashore upon a desert of newness and ugliness and sordidness, for all that is chastened and old,

At eleven o'clock the tall, flat woman in black crepe entered, announced that the watchers were arriving, and

asked them "to step into the dining room." As Steavens rose the lawyer said dryly: "You go onit'll be a

good experience for you, doubtless; as for me, I'm not equal to that crowd tonight; I've had twenty years of

As Steavens closed the door after him be glanced back at the lawyer, sitting by the coffin in the dim light,

The same misty group that had stood before the door of the express car shuffled into the dining room. In the

light of the kerosene lamp they separated and became individuals. The minister, a pale, feeblelooking man

with white hair and blond chinwhiskers, took his seat beside a small side table and placed his Bible upon it.

The Grand Army man sat down behind the stove and tilted his chair back comfortably against the wall,

fishing his quill toothpick from his waistcoat pocket. The two bankers, Phelps and Elder, sat off in a corner

behind the dinner table, where they could finish their discussion of the new usury law and its effect on chattel

security loans. The real estate agent, an old man with a smiling, hypocritical face, soon joined them. The

coalandlumber dealer and the cattle shipper sat on opposite sides of the hard coalburner, their feet on the

nickelwork. Steavens took a book from his pocket and began to read. The talk around him ranged through

various topics of local interest while the house was quieting down. When it was clear that the members of the

family were in bed the Grand Army man hitched his shoulders and, untangling his long legs, caught his heels

The banker laughed disagreeably and began trimming his nails with a pearlhandled pocketknife.

The restless Grand Army man shifted his position again, getting his knees still nearer his chin. "Why, the ole

The other banker spoke up. "I reckon he means by that Harve ain't asked him to mortgage any more farms

"Seems like my mind don't reach back to a time when Harve wasn't bein' edycated," tittered the Grand Army

There was a general chuckle. The minister took out his handkerchief and blew his nose sonorously. Banker

Phelps closed his knife with a snap. "It's too bad the old man's sons didn't turn out better," he remarked with

reflective authority. "They never hung together. He spent money enough on Harve to stock a dozen cattle

farms and he might as well have poured it into Sand Creek. If Harve had stayed at home and helped nurse

what little they had, and gone into stock on the old man's bottom farm, they might all have been well fixed.

But the old man had to trust everything to tenants and was cheated right and left."

"Harve never could have handled stock none," interposed the cattleman. "He hadn't it in him to be sharp. Do

you remember when he bought Sander's mules for eightyearolds, when everybody in town knew that

Sander's fatherinlaw give 'em to his wife for a wedding present eighteen years before, an' they was

Everyone chuckled, and the Grand Army man rubbed his knees with a spasm of childish delight.

"Harve never was much account for anything practical, and he shore was never fond of work," began the

coalandlumber dealer. "I mind the last time he was home; the day he left, when the old man was out to the

barn helpin' his hand hitch up to take Harve to the train, and Cal Moots was patchin' up the fence, Harve, he

come out on the step and sings out, in his ladylike voice: 'Cal Moots, Cal Moots! please come cord my

"That's Harve for you," approved the Grand Army man gleefully. "I kin hear him howlin' yet when he was a

big feller in long pants and his mother used to whale him with a rawhide in the barn for lettin' the cows git

foundered in the cornfield when he was drivin' 'em home from pasture. He killed a cow of mine thataway

onc'ta pure Jersey and the best milker I had, an' the ole man had to put up for her. Harve, he was watchin'

the sun set acros't the marshes when the anamile got away; he argued that sunset was oncommon fine."

"Where the old man made his mistake was in sending the boy East to school," said Phelps, stroking his goatee

and speaking in a deliberate, judicial tone. "There was where he got his head full of traipsing to Paris and all

such folly. What Harve needed, of all people, was a course in some firstclass Kansas City business college."

The letters were swimming before Steavens's eyes. Was it possible that these men did not understand, that the

palm on the coffin meant nothing to them? The very name of their town would have remained forever buried

in the postal guide had it not been now and again mentioned in the world in connection with Harvey

Merrick's. He remembered what his master had said to him on the day of his death, after the congestion of

both lungs had shut off any probability of recovery, and the sculptor had asked his pupil to send his body

home. "It's not a pleasant place to be lying while the world is moving and doing and bettering," he had said

with a feeble smile, "but it rather seems as though we ought to go back to the place we came from in the end.

The townspeople will come in for a look at me; and after they have had their say I shan't have much to fear

from the judgment of God. The wings of the Victory, in there"with a weak gesture toward his studio

The cattleman took up the comment. "Forty's young for a Merrick to cash in; they usually hang on pretty

"His mother's people were not longlived, and Harvey never had a robust constitution," said the minister

mildly. He would have liked to say more. He had been the boy's Sundayschool teacher, and had been fond

of him; but he felt that he was not in a position to speak. His own sons had turned out badly, and it was not a

year since one of them had made his last trip home in the express car, shot in a gambling house in the Black

"Nevertheless, there is no disputin' that Harve frequently looked upon the wine when it was red, also

variegated, and it shore made an oncommon fool of him," moralized the cattleman.

Just then the door leading into the parlor rattled loudly, and everyone started involuntarily, looking relieved

when only Jim Laird came out. His red face was convulsed with anger, and the Grand Army man ducked his

head when he saw the spark in his blue, bloodshot eye. They were all afraid of Jim; he was a drunkard, but he

could twist the law to suit his client's needs as no other man in all western Kansas could do; and there were

many who tried. The lawyer closed the door gently behind him, leaned back against it and folded his arms,

cocking his head a little to one side. When he assumed this attitude in the courtroom, ears were always

"I've been with you gentlemen before," he began in a dry, even tone, "when you've sat by the coffins of boys

born and raised in this town; and, if I remember rightly, you were never any too well satisfied when you

checked them up. What's the matter, anyhow? Why is it that reputable young men are as scarce as

millionaires in Sand City? It might almost seem to a stranger that there was some way something the matter

with your progressive town. Why did Ruben Sayer, the brightest young lawyer you ever turned out, after he

had come home from the university as straight as a die, take to drinking and forge a check and shoot himself?

Why did Bill Merrit's son die of the shakes in a saloon in Omaha? Why was Mr. Thomas's son, here, shot in a

gambling house? Why did young Adams burn his mill to beat the insurance companies and go to the pen?"

The lawyer paused and unfolded his arms, laying one clenched fist quietly on the table. "I'll tell you why.

Because you drummed nothing but money and knavery into their ears from the time they wore

knickerbockers; because you carped away at them as you've been carping here tonight, holding our friends

Phelps and Elder up to them for their models, as our grandfathers held up George Washington and John

Adams. But the boys, worse luck, were young and raw at the business you put them to; and how could they

match coppers with such artists as Phelps and Elder? You wanted them to be successful rascals; they were

only unsuccessful ones that's all the difference. There was only one boy ever raised in this borderland

between ruffianism and civilization who didn't come to grief, and you hated Harvey Merrick more for

winning out than you hated all the other boys who got under the wheels. Lord, Lord, how you did hate him!

Phelps, here, is fond of saying that he could buy and sell us all out any time he's a mind to; but he knew

Harve wouldn't have given a tinker's damn for his bank and all his cattle farms put together; and a lack of

"Old Nimrod, here, thinks Harve drank too much; and this from such as Nimrod and me!"

"Brother Elder says Harve was too free with the old man's moneyfell short in filial consideration, maybe.

Well, we can all remember the very tone in which brother Elder swore his own father was a liar, in the county

court; and we all know that the old man came out of that partnership with his son as bare as a sheared lamb.

But maybe I'm getting personal, and I'd better be driving ahead at what I want to say."

The lawyer paused a moment, squared his heavy shoulders, and went on: "Harvey Merrick and I went to

school together, back East. We were dead in earnest, and we wanted you all to be proud of us some day. We

meant to be great men. Even 1, and I haven't lost my sense of humor, gentlemen, I meant to be a great man. I

came back here to practice, and I found you didn't in the least want me to be a great man. You wanted me to

be a shrewd lawyer oh, yes! Our veteran here wanted me to get him an increase of pension, because he had

dyspepsia; Phelps wanted a new county survey that would put the widow Wilson's little bottom farm inside

his south line; Elder wanted to lend money at 5 per cent a month and get it collected; old Stark here wanted to

wheedle old women up in Vermont into investing their annuities in real estate mortgages that are not worth

the paper they are written on. Oh, you needed me hard enough, and you'll go on needing me; and that's why

"Well, I came back here and became the damned shyster you wanted me to be. You pretend to have some sort

of respect for me; and yet you'll stand up and throw mud at Harvey Merrick, whose soul you couldn't dirty

and whose hands you couldn't tie. Oh, you're a discriminating lot of Christians! There have been times when

the sight of Harvey's name in some Eastern paper has made me hang my head like a whipped dog; and, again,

times when I liked to think of him off there in the world, away from all this hog wallow, doing his great work

"And we? Now that we've fought and lied and sweated and stolen, and hated as only the disappointed

strugglers in a bitter, dead little Western town know how to do, what have we got to show for it? Harvey

Merrick wouldn't have given one sunset over your marshes for all you've got put together, and you know it.

It's not for me to say why, in the inscrutable wisdom of God, a genius should ever have been called from this

place of hatred and bitter waters; but I want this Boston man to know that the drivel he's been hearing here

tonight is the only tribute any truly great man could ever have from such a lot of sick, side tracked,

burntdog, landpoor sharks as the herepresent financiers of Sand Cityupon which town may God have

The lawyer thrust out his hand to Steavens as he passed him, caught up his overcoat in the hall, and had left

the house before the Grand Army man had had time to lift his ducked head and crane his long neck about at

Next day Jim Laird was drunk and unable to attend the funeral services. Steavens called twice at his office,

but was compelled to start East without seeing him. He had a presentiment that he would hear from him

again, and left his address on the lawyer's table; but if Laird found it, he never acknowledged it. The thing in

him that Harvey Merrick had loved must have gone underground with Harvey Merrick's coffin; for it never

spoke again, and Jim got the cold he died of driving across the Colorado mountains to defend one of Phelps's

Everett Hilgarde was conscious that the man in the seat across the aisle was looking at him intently. He was a

large, florid man, wore a conspicuous diamond solitaire upon his third finger, and Everett judged him to be a

traveling salesman of some sort. He had the air of an adaptable fellow who had been about the world and who

The "High Line Flyer," as this train was derisively called among railroad men, was jerking along through the

hot afternoon over the monotonous country between Holdridge and Cheyenne. Besides the blond man and

himself the only occupants of the car were two dusty, bedraggledlooking girls who had been to the

Exposition at Chicago, and who were earnestly discussing the cost of their first trip out of Colorado. The four

uncomfortable passengers were covered with a sediment of fine, yellow dust which clung to their hair and

eyebrows like gold powder. It blew up in clouds from the bleak, lifeless country through which they passed,

until they were one color with the sagebrush and sandhills. The grayandyellow desert was varied only by

occasional ruins of deserted towns, and the little red boxes of station houses, where the spindling trees and

sickly vines in the bluegrass yards made little green reserves fenced off in that confusing wilderness of sand.

As the slanting rays of the sun beat in stronger and stronger through the car windows, the blond gentleman

asked the ladies' permission to remove his coat, and sat in his lavender striped shirt sleeves, with a black silk

handkerchief tucked carefully about his collar. He had seemed interested in Everett since they had boarded

the train at Holdridge, and kept glancing at him curiously and then looking reflectively out of the window, as

though he were trying to recall something. But wherever Everett went someone was almost sure to look at

him with that curious interest, and it had ceased to embarrass or annoy him. Presently the stranger, seeming

satisfied with his observation, leaned back in his seat, halfclosed his eyes, and began softly to whistle the

"Spring Song" from Proserpine, the cantata that a dozen years before had made its young composer famous in

a night. Everett had heard that air on guitars in Old Mexico, on mandolins at college glees, on cottage organs

in New England hamlets, and only two weeks ago he had heard it played on sleighbells at a variety theater in

Denver. There was literally no way of escaping his brother's precocity. Adriance could live on the other side

of the Atlantic, where his youthful indiscretions were forgotten in his mature achievements, but his brother

had never been able to outrun Proserpine, and here he found it again in the Colorado sand hills. Not that

Everett was exactly ashamed of Proserpine; only a man of genius could have written it, but it was the sort of

Everett unbent a trifle and smiled at his neighbor across the aisle. Immediately the large man rose and,

"Dusty ride, isn't it? I don't mind it myself; I'm used to it. Born and bred in de briar patch, like Br'er Rabbit.

I've been trying to place you for a long time; I think I must have met you before."

"Thank you," said Everett, taking the card; "my name is Hilgarde. You've probably met my brother,

The traveling man brought his hand down upon his knee with such vehemence that the solitaire blazed.

"So I was right after all, and if you're not Adriance Hilgarde, you're his double. I thought I couldn't be

mistaken. Seen him? Well, I guess! I never missed one of his recitals at the Auditorium, and he played the

piano score of Proserpine through to us once at the Chicago Press Club. I used to be on the Commercial there

before I 146 began to travel for the publishing department of the concern. So you're Hilgarde's brother, and

here I've run into you at the jumpingoff place. Sounds like a newspaper yarn, doesn't it?"

The traveling man laughed and offered Everett a cigar, and plied him with questions on the only subject that

people ever seemed to care to talk to Everett about. At length the salesman and the two girls alighted at a

The train pulled into Cheyenne at nine o'clock, late by a matter of four hours or so; but no one seemed

particularly concerned at its tardiness except the station agent, who grumbled at being kept in the office

overtime on a summer night. When Everett alighted from the train he walked down the platform and stopped

at the track crossing, uncertain as to what direction he should take to reach a hotel. A phaeton stood near the

crossing, and a woman held the reins. She was dressed in white, and her figure was clearly silhouetted against

the cushions, though it was too dark to see her face. Everett had scarcely noticed her, when the switch engine

came puffing up from the opposite direction, and the headlight threw a strong glare of light on his face.

Suddenly the woman in the phaeton uttered a low cry and dropped the reins. Everett started forward and

caught the horse's head, but the animal only lifted its ears and whisked its tail in impatient surprise. The

woman sat perfectly still, her head sunk between her shoulders and her handkerchief pressed to her face.

Another woman came out of the depot and hurried toward the phaeton, crying, "Katharine, dear, what is the

Everett hesitated a moment in painful embarrassment, then lifted his hat and passed on. He was accustomed

to sudden recognitions in the most impossible places, especially by women, but this cry out of the night had

While Everett was breakfasting the next morning, the headwaiter leaned over his chair to murmur that there

was a gentleman waiting to see him in the parlor. Everett finished his coffee and went in the direction

indicated, where he found his visitor restlessly pacing the floor. His whole manner betrayed a high degree of

agitation, though his physique was not that of a man whose nerves lie near the surface. He was something

below medium height, squareshouldered and solidly built. His thick, closely cut hair was beginning to show

gray about the ears, and his bronzed face was heavily lined. His square brown hands were locked behind him,

and he held his shoulders like a man conscious of responsibilities; yet, as he turned to greet Everett, there was

"Good morning, Mr. Hilgarde," he said, extending his hand; "I found your name on the hotel register. My

name is Gaylord. I'm afraid my sister startled you at the station last night, Mr. Hilgarde, and I've come around

"Ah! The young lady in the phaeton? I'm sure I didn't know whether I had anything to do with her alarm or

"Oh, it's nothing you could help, sir, I fully understand that. You see, my sister used to be a pupil of your

brother's, and it seems you favor him; and when the switch engine threw a light on your face it startled her."

Everett wheeled about in his chair. "Oh! Katharine Gaylord! Is it possible! Now it's you who have given me a

"Is she doing here?" said Gaylord, grimly filling out the pause. "You've got at the heart of the matter. You

"No, I had never heard a word of that. The last I knew of her she was singing in London. My brother and I

correspond infrequently and seldom get beyond family matters. I am deeply sorry to hear this. There are more

"What I'm trying to say, Mr. Hilgarde, is that she wants to see you. I hate to ask you, but she's so set on it. We

live several miles out of town, but my rig's below, and I can take you out anytime you can go."

"I can go now, and it will give me real pleasure to do so," said Everett, quickly. "I'll get my hat and be with

When he came downstairs Everett found a cart at the door, and Charley Gaylord drew a long sigh of relief as

"You see, I think I'd better tell you something about my sister before you see her, and I don't know just where

to begin. She traveled in Europe with your brother and his wife, and sang at a lot of his concerts; but I don't

"Very little, except that my brother always thought her the most gifted of his pupils, and that when I knew her

Everett saw that Gaylord's mind was quite engrossed by his grief. He was wrought up to the point where his

reserve and sense of proportion had quite left him, and his trouble was the one vital thing in the world.

"She was a great woman, as you say, and she didn't come of a great family. She had to fight her own way

from the first. She got to Chicago, and then to New York, and then to Europe, where she went up like

lightning, and got a taste for it all; and now she's dying here like a rat in a hole, out of her own world, and she

can't fall back into ours. We've grown apart, some way miles and miles apartand I'm afraid she's

"It's a very tragic story that you are telling me, Gaylord," said Everett. They were well out into the country

now, spinning along over the dusty plains of red grass, with the raggedblue outline of the mountains before

"Tragic!" cried Gaylord, starting up in his seat, "my God, man, nobody will ever know how tragic. It's a

tragedy I live with and eat with and sleep with, until I've lost my grip on everything. You see she had made a

good bit of money, but she spent it all going to health resorts. It's her lungs, you know. I've got money

enough to send her anywhere, but the doctors all say it's no use. She hasn't the ghost of a chance. It's just

getting through the days now. I had no notion she was half so bad before she came to me. She just wrote that

she was all run down. Now that she's here, I think she'd be happier anywhere under the sun, but she won't

leave. She says it's easier to let go of life here, and that to go East would be dying twice. There was a time

when I was a brakeman with a run out of Bird City, Iowa, and she was a little thing I could carry on my

shoulder, when I could get her everything on earth she wanted, and she hadn't a wish my $80 a month didn't

cover; and now, when I've got a little property together, I can't buy her a night's sleep!"

Everett saw that, whatever Charley Gaylord's present status in the world might be, he had brought the

brakeman's heart up the ladder with him, and the brakeman's frank avowal of sentiment. Presently Gaylord

"You can understand how she has outgrown her family. We're all a pretty common sort, railroaders from

away back. My father was a conductor. He died when we were kids. Maggie, my other sister, who lives with

me, was a telegraph operator here while I was getting my grip on things. We had no education to speak of. I

have to hire a stenographer because I can't spell straightthe Almighty couldn't teach me to spell. The things

that make up life to Kate are all Greek to me, and there's scarcely a point where we touch any more, except in

our recollections of the old times when we were all young and happy together, and Kate sang in a church

choir in Bird City. But I believe, Mr. Hilgarde, that if she can see just one person like you, who knows about

the things and people she's interested in, it will give her about the only comfort she can have now."

The reins slackened in Charley Gaylord's hand as they drew up before a showily painted house with many

gables and a round tower. "Here we are," he said, turning to Everett, "and I guess we understand each other."

They were met at the door by a thin, colorless woman, whom Gaylord introduced as "my sister, Maggie." She

asked her brother to show Mr. Hilgarde into the music room, where Katharine wished to see him alone.

When Everett entered the music room he gave a little start of surprise, feeling that he had stepped from the

glaring Wyoming sunlight into some New York studio that he had always known. He wondered which it was

of those countless studios, high up under the roofs, over banks and shops and wholesale houses, that this

room resembled, and he looked incredulously out of the window at the gray plain that ended in the great

The haunting air of familiarity about the room perplexed him. Was it a copy of some particular studio he

knew, or was it merely the studio atmosphere that seemed so individual and poignantly reminiscent here in

Wyoming? He sat down in a reading chair and looked keenly about him. Suddenly his eye fell upon a large

photograph of his brother above the piano. Then it all became clear to him: this was veritably his brother's

room. If it were not an exact copy of one of the many studios that Adriance had fitted up in various parts of

the world, wearying of them and leaving almost before the renovator's varnish had dried, it was at least in the

same tone. In every detail Adriance's taste was so manifest that the room seemed to exhale his personality.

Among the photographs on the wall there was one of Katharine Gaylord, taken in the days when Everett had

known her, and when the flash of her eye or the flutter of her skirt was enough to set his boyish heart in a

tumult. Even now, he stood before the portrait with a certain degree of embarrassment. It was the face of a

woman already old in her first youth, thoroughly sophisticated and a trifle hard, and it told of what her

brother had called her fight. The camaraderie of her frank, confident eyes was qualified by the deep lines

about her mouth and the curve of the lips, which was both sad and cynical. Certainly she had more good will

than confidence toward the world, and the bravado of her smile could not conceal the shadow of an unrest

that was almost discontent. The chief charm of the woman, as Everett had known her, lay in her superb figure

and in her eyes, which possessed a warm, lifegiving quality like the sunlight; eyes which glowed with a sort

of perpetual salutat to the world. Her head, Everett remembered as peculiarly wellshaped and proudly

poised. There had been always a little of the imperatrix about her, and her pose in the photograph revived all

his old impressions of her unattachedness, of how absolutely and valiantly she stood alone.

Everett was still standing before the picture, his hands behind him and his head inclined, when he heard the

door open. A very tall woman advanced toward him, holding out her hand. As she started to speak, she

coughed slightly; then, laughing, said, in a low, rich voice, a trifle husky: "You see I make the traditional

Everett was acutely conscious that while addressing him she was not looking at him at all, and, as he assured

her of his pleasure in coming, he was glad to have an opportunity to collect himself. He had not reckoned

upon the ravages of a long illness. The long, loose folds of her white gown had been especially designed to

conceal the sharp outlines of her emaciated body, but the stamp of her disease was there; simple and ugly and

obtrusive, a pitiless fact that could not be disguised or evaded. The splendid shoulders were stooped, there

was a swaying unevenness in her gait, her arms seemed disproportionately long, and her hands were

transparently white and cold to the touch. The changes in her face were less obvious; the proud carriage of

the head, the warm, clear eyes, even the delicate flush of color in her cheeks, all defiantly remained, though

She sat down upon the divan and began nervously to arrange the pillows. "I know I'm not an inspiring object

to look upon, but you must be quite frank and sensible about that and get used to it at once, for we've no time

to lose. And if I'm a trifle irritable you won't mind?for I'm more than usually nervous."

"Don't bother with me this morning, if you are tired," urged Everett. "I can come quite as well tomorrow."

"Gracious, no!" she protested, with a flash of that quick, keen humor that he remembered as a part of her. "It's

solitude that I'm tired to death ofsolitude and the wrong kind of people. You see, the minister, not content

with reading the prayers for the sick, called on me this morning. He happened to be riding by on his bicycle

and felt it his duty to stop. Of course, he disapproves of my profession, and I think he takes it for granted that

I have a dark past. The funniest feature of his conversation is that he is always excusing my own vocation to

mecondoning it, you knowand trying to patch up my peace with my conscience by suggesting possible

Everett laughed. "Oh! I'm afraid I'm not the person to call after such a serious gentlemanI can't sustain the

situation. At my best I don't reach higher than low comedy. Have you decided to which one of the noble uses

Katharine lifted her hands in a gesture of renunciation and exclaimed: "I'm not equal to any of them, not even

She laughed and went on nervously: "The parson's not so bad. His English never offends me, and he has read

Gibbon's Decline and Fall, all five volumes, and that's something. Then, he has been to New York, and that's

a great deal. But how we are losing time! Do tell me about New York; Charley says you're just on from there.

How does it look and taste and smell just now? I think a whiff of the Jersey ferry would be as flagons of

codliver oil to me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or she wear? Are the trees

still green in Madison Square, or have they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden

Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating changes of weather? Who has your brother's

old studio now, and what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall?

What do people go to see at the theaters, and what do they eat and drink there in the world nowadays? You

see, I'm homesick for it all, from the Battery to Riverside. Oh, let me die in Harlem!" She was interrupted by

a violent attack of coughing, and Everett, embarrassed by her discomfort, plunged into gossip about the

professional people he had met in town during the summer and the musical outlook for the winter. He was

diagraming with his pencil, on the back of an old envelope he found in his pocket, some new mechanical

device to be used at the Metropolitan in the production of the Rheingold, when he became conscious that she

Katharine was lying back among the pillows, watching him through halfclosed eyes, as a painter looks at a

picture. He finished his explanation vaguely enough and put the envelope back in his pocket. As he did so she

said, quietly: "How wonderfully like Adriance you are!" and he felt as though a crisis of some sort had been

He laughed, looking up at her with a touch of pride in his eyes that made them seem quite boyish. "Yes, isn't

it absurd? It's almost as awkward as looking like Napoleonbut, after all, there are some advantages. It has

Katharine smiled and gave him a quick, meaning glance from under her lashes. "Oh, it did that long ago.

What a haughty, reserved youth you were then, and how you used to stare at people and then blush and look

cross if they paid you back in your own coin. Do you remember that night when you took me home from a

"It was the silence of admiration," protested Everett, "very crude and boyish, but very sincere and not a little

painful. Perhaps you suspected something of the sort? I remember you saw fit to be very grownup and

"I believe I suspected a pose; the one that college boys usually affect with singers'an earthen vessel in love

with a star,' you know. But it rather surprised me in you, for you must have seen a good deal of your brother's

pupils. Or had you an omnivorous capacity, and elasticity that always met the occasion?"

"Don't ask a man to confess the follies of his youth," said Everett, smiling a little sadly; "I am sensitive about

some of them even now. But I was not so sophisticated as you imagined. I saw my brother's pupils come and

go, but that was about all. Sometimes I was called on to play accompaniments, or to fill out a vacancy at a

rehearsal, or to order a carriage for an infuriated soprano who had thrown up her part. But they never spent

"Yes", observed Katharine, thoughtfully, "I noticed it then, too; but it has grown as you have grown older.

That is rather strange, when you have lived such different lives. It's not merely an ordinary family likeness of

feature, you know, but a sort of interchangeable individuality; the suggestion of the other man's personality in

your face like an air transposed to another key. But I'm not attempting to define it; it's beyond me; something

"I remember," Everett said seriously, twirling the pencil between his fingers and looking, as he sat with his

head thrown back, out under the red window blind which was raised just a little, and as it swung back and

forth in the wind revealed the glaring panorama of the deserta blinding stretch of yellow, flat as the sea in

dead calm, splotched here and there with deep purple shadows; and, beyond, the raggedblue outline of the

mountains and the peaks of snow, white as the white clouds"I remember, when I was a little fellow I used

to be very sensitive about it. I don't think it exactly displeased me, or that I would have had it otherwise if I

could, but it seemed to me like a birthmark, or something not to be lightly spoken of. People were naturally

always fonder of Ad than of me, and I used to feel the chill of reflected light pretty often. It came into even

my relations with my mother. Ad went abroad to study when he was absurdly young, you know, and mother

was all broken up over it. She did her whole duty by each of us, but it was sort of generally understood

among us that she'd have made burnt offerings of us all for Ad any day. I was a little fellow then, and when

she sat alone on the porch in the summer dusk she used sometimes to call me to her and turn my face up in

the light that streamed out through the shutters and kiss me, and then I always knew she was thinking of

"Poor little chap," said Katharine, and her tone was a trifle huskier than usual. "How fond people have always

been of Adriance! Now tell me the latest news of him. I haven't heard, except through the press, for a year or

more. He was in Algeria then, in the valley of the Chelif, riding horseback night and day in an Arabian

costume, and in his usual enthusiastic fashion he had quite made up his mind to adopt the Mohammedan faith

and become as nearly an Arab as possible. How many countries and faiths has be adopted, I wonder?

Probably he was playing Arab to himself all the time. I remember he was a sixteenthcentury duke in

"Oh, that's Adriance," chuckled Everett. "He is himself barely long enough to write checks and be measured

"He was writing an Algerian suite for the piano then; it must be in the publisher's hands by this time. I have

Everett drew a letter from his pocket. "This came about a month ago. It's chiefly about his new opera, which

"I think I shall keep it as a hostage, so that I may be sure you will come again. Now I want you to play for

me. Whatever you like; but if there is anything new in the world, in mercy let me hear it. For nine months I

have heard nothing but 'The Baggage Coach Ahead' and 'She Is My Baby's Mother.'"

He sat down at the piano, and Katharine sat near him, absorbed in his remarkable physical likeness to his

brother and trying to discover in just what it consisted. She told herself that it was very much as though a

sculptor's finished work had been rudely copied in wood. He was of a larger build than Adriance, and his

shoulders were broad and heavy, while those of his brother were slender and rather girlish. His face was of

the same oval mold, but it was gray and darkened about the mouth by continual shaving. His eyes were of the

same inconstant April color, but they were reflective and rather dull; while Adriance's were always points of

highlight, and always meaning another thing than the thing they meant yesterday. But it was hard to see why

this earnest man should so continually suggest that lyric, youthful face that was as gay as his was grave. For

Adriance, though he was ten years the elder, and though his hair was streaked with silver, had the face of a

boy of twenty, so mobile that it told his thoughts before he could put them into words. A contralto, famous

for the extravagance of her vocal methods and of her affections, had once said to him that the shepherd boys

who sang in the Vale of Tempe must certainly have looked like young Hilgarde; and the comparison had

As Everett sat smoking on the veranda of the InterOcean House that night, he was a victim to random

recollections. His infatuation for Katharine Gaylord, visionary as it was, had been the most serious of his

boyish love affairs, and had long disturbed his bachelor dreams. He was painfully timid in everything relating

to the emotions, and his hurt had withdrawn him from the society of women. The fact that it was all so done

and dead and far behind him, and that the woman had lived her life out since then, gave him an oppressive

sense of age and loss. He bethought himself of something he had read about "sitting by the hearth and

remembering the faces of women without desire," and felt himself an octogenarian.

He remembered how bitter and morose he had grown during his stay at his brother's studio when Katharine

Gaylord was working there, and how he had wounded Adriance on the night of his last concert in New York.

He had sat there in the box while his brother and Katharine were called back again and again after the last

number, watching the roses go up over the footlights until they were stacked half as high as the piano,

brooding, in his sullen boy's heart, upon the pride those two felt in each other's workspurring each other to

their best and beautifully contending in song. The footlights had seemed a hard, glittering line drawn sharply

between their life and his; a circle of flame set about those splendid children of genius. He walked back to his

hotel alone and sat in his window staring out on Madison Square until long after midnight, resolving to beat

no more at doors that he could never enter and realizing more keenly than ever before how far this glorious

world of beautiful creations lay from the paths of men like himself. He told himself that he had in common

Everett's week in Cheyenne stretched to three, and he saw no prospect of release except through the thing he

dreaded. The bright, windy days of the Wyoming autumn passed swiftly. Letters and telegrams came urging

him to hasten his trip to the coast, but he resolutely postponed his business engagements. The mornings he

spent on one of Charley Gaylord's ponies, or fishing in the mountains, and in the evenings he sat in his room

writing letters or reading. In the afternoon he was usually at his post of duty. Destiny, he reflected, seems to

have very positive notions about the sort of parts we are fitted to play. The scene changes and the

compensation varies, but in the end we usually find that we have played the same class of business from first

to last. Everett had been a stopgap all his life. He remembered going through a looking glass labyrinth when

he was a boy and trying gallery after gallery, only at every turn to bump his nose against his own

facewhich, indeed, was not his own, but his brother's. No matter what his mission, east or west, by land or

sea, he was sure to find himself employed in his brother's business, one of the tributary lives which helped to

swell the shining current of Adriance Hilgarde's. It was not the first time that his duty had been to comfort, as

best he could, one of the broken things his brother's imperious speed had cast aside and forgotten. He made

no attempt to analyze the situation or to state it in exact terms; but he felt Katharine Gaylord's need for him,

and he accepted it as a commission from his brother to help this woman to die. Day by day he felt her

demands on him grow more imperious, her need for him grow more acute and positive; and day by day he

felt that in his peculiar relation to her his own individuality played a smaller and smaller part. His power to

minister to her comfort, he saw, lay solely in his link with his brother's life. He understood all that his

physical resemblance meant to her. He knew that she sat by him always watching for some common trick of

gesture, some familiar play of expression, some illusion of light and shadow, in which he should seem wholly

Adriance. He knew that she lived upon this and that her disease fed upon it; that it sent shudders of

remembrance through her and that in the exhaustion which followed this turmoil of her dying senses, she

slept deep and sweet and dreamed of youth and art and days in a certain old Florentine garden, and not of

The question which most perplexed him was, "How much shall I know? How much does she wish me to

know?" A few days after his first meeting with Katharine Gaylord, he had cabled his brother to write her. He

had merely said that she was mortally ill; he could depend on Adriance to say the right thingthat was a part

of his gift. Adriance always said not only the right thing, but the opportune, graceful, exquisite thing. His

phrases took the color of the moment and the thenpresent condition, so that they never savored of

perfunctory compliment or frequent usage. He always caught the lyric essence of the moment, the poetic

suggestion of every situation. Moreover, he usually did the right thing, the opportune, graceful, exquisite

thingexcept, when he did very cruel thingsbent upon making people happy when their existence touched

his, just as he insisted that his material environment should be beautiful; lavishing upon those near him all the

warmth and radiance of his rich nature, all the homage of the poet and troubadour, and, when they were no

Three weeks after Everett had sent his cable, when he made his daily call at the gaily painted ranch house, he

found Katharine laughing like a schoolgirl. "Have you ever thought," she said, as he entered the music room,

"how much these seances of ours are like Heine's 'Florentine Nights,' except that I don't give you an

opportunity to monopolize the conversation as Heine did?" She held his hand longer than usual, as she

greeted him, and looked searchingly up into his face. "You are the kindest man living; the kindest," she

Everett's gray face colored faintly as he drew his hand away, for he felt that this time she was looking at him

and not at a whimsical caricature of his brother. "Why, what have I done now?" he asked, lamely. "I can't

She drew a letter with a foreign postmark from between the leaves of a book and held it out, smiling. "You

got him to write it. Don't say you didn't, for it came direct, you see, and the last address I gave him was a

place in Florida. This deed shall be remembered of you when I am with the just in Paradise. But one thing

you did not ask him to do, for you didn't know about it. He has sent me his latest work, the new sonata, the

most ambitious thing he has ever done, and you are to play it for me directly, though it looks horribly

intricate. But first for the letter; I think you would better read it aloud to me."

Everett sat down in a low chair facing the window seat in which she reclined with a barricade of pillows

behind her. He opened the letter, his lashes halfveiling his kind eyes, and saw to his satisfaction that it was a

long onewonderfully tactful and tender, even for Adriance, who was tender with his valet and his stable

boy, with his old gondolier and the beggarwomen who prayed to the saints for him.

The letter was from Granada, written in the Alhambra, as he sat by the fountain of the Patio di Lindaraxa. The

air was heavy, with the warm fragrance of the South and full of the sound of splashing, running water, as it

had been in a certain old garden in Florence, long ago. The sky was one great turquoise, heated until it

glowed. The wonderful Moorish arches threw graceful blue shadows all about him. He had sketched an

outline of them on the margin of his notepaper. The subtleties of Arabic decoration had cast an unholy spell

over him, and the brutal exaggerations of Gothic art were a bad dream, easily forgotten. The Alhambra itself

had, from the first, seemed perfectly familiar to him, and he knew that he must have trod that court, sleek and

brown and obsequious, centuries before Ferdinand rode into Andalusia. The letter was full of confidences

about his work, and delicate allusions to their old happy days of study and comradeship, and of her own

work, still so warmly remembered and appreciatively discussed everywhere he went.

As Everett folded the letter he felt that Adriance had divined the thing needed and had risen to it in his own

wonderful way. The letter was consistently egotistical and seemed to him even a trifle patronizing, yet it was

just what she had wanted. A strong realization of his brother's charm and intensity and power came over him;

he felt the breath of that whirlwind of flame in which Adriance passed, consuming all in his path, and himself

even more resolutely than he consumed others. Then he looked down at this white, burntout brand that lay

"I think I can scarcely answer his letter, but when you see him next you can do that for me. I want you to tell

him many things for me, yet they can all be summed up in this: I want him to grow wholly into his best and

greatest self, even at the cost of the dear boyishness that is half his charm to you and me. Do you understand

"I know perfectly well what you mean," answered Everett, thoughtfully. "I have often felt so about him

myself. And yet it's difficult to prescribe for those fellows; so little makes, so little mars."

Katharine raised herself upon her elbow, and her face flushed with feverish earnestness. "Ah, but it is the

waste of himself that I mean; his lashing himself out on stupid and uncomprehending people until they take

him at their own estimate. He can kindle marble, strike fire from putty, but is it worth what it costs him?"

"Come, come," expostulated Everett, alarmed at her excitement. "Where is the new sonata? Let him speak for

He sat down at the piano and began playing the first movement, which was indeed the voice of Adriance, his

proper speech. The sonata was the most ambitious work he had done up to that time and marked the transition

from his purely lyric vein to a deeper and nobler style. Everett played intelligently and with that sympathetic

comprehension which seems peculiar to a certain lovable class of men who never accomplish anything in

"How he has grown!" she cried. "What the three last years have done for him! He used to write only the

tragedies of passion; but this is the tragedy of the soul, the shadow coexistent with the soul. This is the

tragedy of effort and failure, the thing Keats called hell. This is my tragedy, as I lie here spent by the

racecourse, listening to the feet of the runners as they pass me. Ah, God! The swift feet of the runners!"

She turned her face away and covered it with her straining hands. Everett crossed over to her quickly and

knelt beside her. In all the days he had known her she had never before, beyond an occasional ironical jest,

given voice to the bitterness of her own defeat. Her courage had become a point of pride with him, and to see

"Don't do it," he gasped. "I can't stand it, I really can't, I feel it too much. We mustn't speak of that; it's too

When she turned her face back to him there was a ghost of the old, brave, cynical smile on it, more bitter than

the tears she could not shed. "No, I won't be so ungenerous; I will save that for the watches of the night when

I have no better company. Now you may mix me another drink of some sort. Formerly, when it was not if I

should ever sing Brunnhilde, but quite simply when I should sing Brunnhilde, I was always starving myself

and thinking what I might drink and what I might not. But broken music boxes may drink whatsoever they

list, and no one cares whether they lose their figure. Run over that theme at the beginning again. That, at

least, is not new. It was running in his head when we were in Venice years ago, and he used to drum it on his

glass at the dinner table. He had just begun to work it out when the late autumn came on, and the paleness of

the Adriatic oppressed him, and he decided to go to Florence for the winter, and lost touch with the theme

during his illness. Do you remember those frightful days? All the people who have loved him are not strong

enough to save him from himself! When I got word from Florence that he had been ill I was in Nice filling a

concert engagement. His wife was hurrying to him from Paris, but I reached him first. I arrived at dusk, in a

terrific storm. They had taken an old palace there for the winter, and I found him in the librarya long, dark

room full of old Latin books and heavy furniture and bronzes. He was sitting by a wood fire at one end of the

room, looking, oh, so worn and pale!as he always does when he is ill, you know. Ah, it is so good that you

do know! Even his red smoking jacket lent no color to his face. His first words were not to tell me how ill he

had been, but that that morning he had been well enough to put the last strokes to the score of his Souvenirs

d'Automne. He was as I most like to remember him: so calm and happy and tired; not gay, as he usually is,

but just contented and tired with that heavenly tiredness that comes after a good work done at last. Outside,

the rain poured down in torrents, and the wind moaned for the pain of all the world and sobbed in the

branches of the shivering olives and about the walls of that desolated old palace. How that night comes back

to me! There were no lights in the room, only the wood fire which glowed upon the hard features of the

bronze Dante, like the reflection of purgatorial flames, and threw long black shadows about us; beyond us it

scarcely penetrated the gloom at all, Adriance sat staring at the fire with the weariness of all his life in his

eves, and of all the other lives that must aspire and suffer to make up one such life as his. Somehow the wind

with all its worldpain had got into the room, and the cold rain was in our eyes, and the wave came up in

both of us at oncethat awful, vague, universal pain, that cold fear of life and death and God and hopeand

we were like two clinging together on a spar in midocean after the shipwreck of everything. Then we heard

the front door open with a great gust of wind that shook even the walls, and the servants came running with

lights, announcing that Madam had returned, 'and in the book we read no more that night.'"

She gave the old line with a certain bitter humor, and with the hard, bright smile in which of old she had

wrapped her weakness as in a glittering garment. That ironical smile, worn like a mask through so many

years, had gradually changed even the lines of her face completely, and when she looked in the mirror she

saw not herself, but the scathing critic, the amused observer and satirist of herself. Everett dropped his head

"Ah, yes, I cared," she replied, closing her eyes with a longdrawn sigh of relief; and lying perfectly still, she

went on: "You can't imagine what a comfort it is to have you know how I cared, what a relief it is to be able

to tell it to someone. I used to want to shriek it out to the world in the long nights when I could not sleep. It

seemed to me that I could not die with it. It demanded some sort of expression. And now that you know, you

Everett continued to look helplessly at the floor. "I was not sure how much you wanted me to know," he said.

"Oh, I intended you should know from the first time I looked into your face, when you came that day with

Charley. I flatter myself that I have been able to conceal it when I chose, though I suppose women always

think that. The more observing ones may have seen, but discerning people are usually discreet and often kind,

for we usually bleed a little before we begin to discern. But I wanted you to know; you are so like him that it

is almost like telling him himself. At least, I feel now that he will know some day, and then I will be quite

sacred from his compassion, for we none of us dare pity the dead. Since it was what my life has chiefly

meant, I should like him to know. On the whole I am not ashamed of it. I have fought a good fight."

"Oh! Never at all in the way that you mean. Of course, he is accustomed to looking into the eyes of women

and finding love there; when he doesn't find it there he thinks he must have been guilty of some discourtesy

and is miserable about it. He has a genuine fondness for everyone who is not stupid or gloomy, or old or

preternaturally ugly. Granted youth and cheerfulness, and a moderate amount of wit and some tact, and

Adriance will always be glad to see you coming around the corner. I shared with the rest; shared the smiles

and the gallantries and the droll little sermons. It was quite like a Sundayschool picnic; we wore our best

clothes and a smile and took our turns. It was his kindness that was hardest. I have pretty well used my life up

Katharine laughed and began to play nervously with her fan. "It wasn't in the slightest degree his fault; that is

the most grotesque part of it. Why, it had really begun before I ever met him. I fought my way to him, and I

Everett rose and stood hesitating. "I think I must go. You ought to be quiet, and I don't think I can hear any

She put out her hand and took his playfully. "You've put in three weeks at this sort of thing, haven't you?

Well, it may never be to your glory in this world, perhaps, but it's been the mercy of heaven to me, and it

Everett knelt beside her, saying, brokenly: "I stayed because I wanted to be with you, that's all. I have never

cared about other women since I met you in New York when I was a lad. You are a part of my destiny, and I

She put her hands on his shoulders and shook her head. "No, no; don't tell me that. I have seen enough of

tragedy, God knows. Don't show me any more just as the curtain is going down. No, no, it was only a boy's

fancy, and your divine pity and my utter pitiableness have recalled it for a moment. One does not love the

dying, dear friend. If some fancy of that sort had been left over from boyhood, this would rid you of it, and

that were well. Now go, and you will come again tomorrow, as long as there are tomorrows, will you not?"

She took his hand with a smile that lifted the mask from her soul, that was both courage and despair, and full

For ever and for ever, farewell, Cassius; If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; If not, why then, this

The courage in her eyes was like the clear light of a star to him as he went out.

On the night of Adriance Hilgarde's opening concert in Paris Everett sat by the bed in the ranch house in

Wyoming, watching over the last battle that we have with the flesh before we are done with it and free of it

forever. At times it seemed that the serene soul of her must have left already and found some refuge from the

storm, and only the tenacious animal life were left to do battle with death. She labored under a delusion at

once pitiful and merciful, thinking that she was in the Pullman on her way to New York, going back to her

life and her work. When she aroused from her stupor it was only to ask the porter to waken her half an hour

out of Jersey City, or to remonstrate with him about the delays and the roughness of the road. At midnight

Everett and the nurse were left alone with her. Poor Charley Gaylord had lain down on a couch outside the

door. Everett sat looking at the sputtering night lamp until it made his eyes ache. His head dropped forward

on the foot of the bed, and he sank into a heavy, distressful slumber. He was dreaming of Adriance's concert

in Paris, and of Adriance, the troubadour, smiling and debonair, with his boyish face and the touch of silver

gray in his hair. He heard the applause and he saw the roses going up over the footlights until they were

stacked half as high as the piano, and the petals fell and scattered, making crimson splotches on the floor.

Down this crimson pathway came Adriance with his youthful step, leading his prima donna by the hand; a

The nurse touched him on the shoulder; he started and awoke. She screened the lamp with her hand. Everett

saw that Katharine was awake and conscious, and struggling a little. He lifted her gently on his arm and

began to fan her. She laid her hands lightly on his hair and looked into his face with eyes that seemed never to

Everett went to call her brother, but when they came back the madness of art was over for Katharine.

Two days later Everett was pacing the station siding, waiting for the westbound train. Charley Gaylord

walked beside him, but the two men had nothing to say to each other. Everett's bags were piled on the truck,

and his step was hurried and his eyes were full of impatience, as he gazed again and again up the track,

watching for the train. Gaylord's impatience was not less than his own; these two, who had grown so close,

had now become painful and impossible to each other, and longed for the wrench of farewell.

As the train pulled in Everett wrung Gaylord's hand among the crowd of alighting passengers. The people of

a German opera company, en route to the coast, rushed by them in frantic haste to snatch their breakfast

during the stop. Everett heard an exclamation in a broad German dialect, and a massive woman whose figure

persistently escaped from her stays in the most improbable places rushed up to him, her blond hair disordered

by the wind, and glowing with joyful surprise she caught his coat sleeve with her tightly gloved hands.

Everett quickly withdrew his arm and lifted his hat, blushing. "Pardon me, madam, but I see that you have

mistaken me for Adriance Hilgarde. I am his brother," he said quietly, and turning from the crestfallen singer,

When Caroline Noble's friends learned that Raymond d'Esquerre was to spend a month at her place on the

Sound before he sailed to fill his engagement for the London opera season, they considered it another striking

instance of the perversity of things. That the month was May, and the most mild and florescent of all the

blueandwhite Mays the middle coast had known in years, but added to their sense of wrong. D'Esquerre,

they learned, was ensconced in the lodge in the apple orchard, just beyond Caroline's glorious garden, and

report went that at almost any hour the sound of the tenor's voice and of Caroline's crashing accompaniment

could be heard floating through the open windows, out among the snowy apple boughs. The Sound,

steelblue and dotted with white sails, was splendidly seen from the windows of the lodge. The garden to the

left and the orchard to the right had never been so riotous with spring, and had burst into impassioned bloom,

as if to accommodate Caroline, though she was certainly the last woman to whom the witchery of Freya could

be attributed; the last woman, as her friends affirmed, to at all adequately appreciate and make the most of

Of course, they admitted, Caroline was musicalwell, she ought to be!but in that, as in everything, she

was paramountly coolheaded, slow of impulse, and disgustingly practical; in that, as in everything else, she

had herself so provokingly well in hand. Of course, it would be she, always mistress of herself in any

situation, she, who would never be lifted one inch from the ground by it, and who would go on

superintending her gardeners and workmen as usualit would be she who got him. Perhaps some of them

suspected that this was exactly why she did get him, and it but nettled them the more.

Caroline's coolness, her capableness, her general success, especially exasperated people because they felt

that, for the most part, she had made herself what she was; that she had cold bloodedly set about complying

with the demands of life and making her position comfortable and masterful. That was why, everyone said,

she had married Howard Noble. Women who did not get through life so well as Caroline, who could not

make such good terms either with fortune or their husbands, who did not find their health so unfailingly good,

or hold their looks so well, or manage their children so easily, or give such distinction to all they did, were

The impression of cold calculation, of having a definite policy, which Caroline gave, was far from a false

one; but there was this to be said for herthat there were extenuating circumstances which her friends could

If Caroline held determinedly to the middle course, if she was apt to regard with distrust everything which

inclined toward extravagance, it was not because she was unacquainted with other standards than her own, or

had never seen another side of life. She had grown up in Brooklyn, in a shabby little house under the

vacillating administration of her father, a music teacher who usually neglected his duties to write orchestral

compositions for which the world seemed to have no especial need. His spirit was warped by bitter

vindictiveness and puerile selfcommiseration, and he spent his days in scorn of the labor that brought him

bread and in pitiful devotion to the labor that brought him only disappointment, writing interminable scores

It was not a cheerful home for a girl to grow up in. The mother, who idolized her husband as the music lord

of the future, was left to a lifelong battle with broom and dustpan, to neverending conciliatory overtures to

the butcher and grocer, to the making of her own gowns and of Caroline's, and to the delicate task of

The son, Heinrich, a painter, Caroline's only brother, had inherited all his father's vindictive sensitiveness

without his capacity for slavish application. His little studio on the third floor had been much frequented by

young men as unsuccessful as himself, who met there to give themselves over to contemptuous derision of

this or that artist whose industry and stupidity had won him recognition. Heinrich, when he worked at all, did

newspaper sketches at twentyfive dollars a week. He was too indolent and vacillating to set himself

seriously to his art, too irascible and poignantly selfconscious to make a living, too much addicted to lying

late in bed, to the incontinent reading of poetry, and to the use of chloral to be anything very positive except

painful. At twentysix he shot himself in a frenzy, and the whole wretched affair had effectually shattered his

mother's health and brought on the decline of which she died. Caroline had been fond of him, but she felt a

certain relief when he no longer wandered about the little house, commenting ironically upon its shabbiness,

a Turkish cap on his head and a cigarette hanging from between his long, tremulous fingers.

After her mother's death Caroline assumed the management of that bankrupt establishment. The funeral

expenses were unpaid, and Auguste's pupils had been frightened away by the shock of successive disasters

and the general atmosphere of wretchedness that pervaded the house. Auguste himself was writing a

symphonic poem, Icarus, dedicated to the memory of his son. Caroline was barely twenty when she was

called upon to face this tangle of difficulties, but she reviewed the situation candidly. The house had served

its time at the shrine of idealism; vague, distressing, unsatisfied yearnings had brought it low enough. Her

mother, thirty years before, had eloped and left Germany with her music teacher, to give herself over to

lifelong, drudging bondage at the kitchen range. Ever since Caroline could remember, the law in the house

had been a sort of mystic worship of things distant, intangible and unattainable. The family had lived in

successive ebullitions of generous enthusiasm, in talk of masters and masterpieces, only to come down to the

cold facts in the case; to boiled mutton and to the necessity of turning the diningroom carpet. All these

emotional pyrotechnics had ended in petty jealousies, in neglected duties, and in cowardly fear of the little

From her childhood she had hated it, that humiliating and uncertain existence, with its glib tongue and empty

pockets, its poetic ideals and sordid realities, its indolence and poverty tricked out in paper roses. Even as a

little girl, when vague dreams beset her, when she wanted to lie late in bed and commune with visions, or to

leap and sing because the sooty little trees along the street were putting out their first pale leaves in the

sunshine, she would clench her hands and go to help her mother sponge the spots from her father's waistcoat

or press Heinrich's trousers. Her mother never permitted the slightest question concerning anything Auguste

or Heinrich saw fit to do, but from the time Caroline could reason at all she could not help thinking that many

things went wrong at home. She knew, for example, that her father's pupils ought not to be kept waiting half

an hour while he discussed Schopenhauer with some bearded socialist over a dish of herrings and a spotted

tablecloth. She knew that Heinrich ought not to give a dinner on Heine's birthday, when the laundress had not

been paid for a month and when he frequently had to ask his mother for carfare. Certainly Caroline had

served her apprenticeship to idealism and to all the embarrassing inconsistencies which it sometimes entails,

and she decided to deny herself this diffuse, ineffectual answer to the sharp questions of life.

When she came into the control of herself and the house she refused to proceed any further with her musical

education. Her father, who had intended to make a concert pianist of her, set this down as another item in his

long list of disappointments and his grievances against the world. She was young and pretty, and she had

worn turned gowns and soiled gloves and improvised hats all her life. She wanted the luxury of being like

other people, of being honest from her hat to her boots, of having nothing to hide, not even in the matter of

stockings, and she was willing to work for it. She rented a little studio away from that house of misfortune

and began to give lessons. She managed well and was the sort of girl people liked to help. The bills were paid

and Auguste went on composing, growing indignant only when she refused to insist that her pupils should

study his compositions for the piano. She began to get engagements in New York to play accompaniments at

song recitals. She dressed well, made herself agreeable, and gave herself a chance. She never permitted

herself to look further than a step ahead, and set herself with all the strength of her will to see things as they

are and meet them squarely in the broad day. There were two things she feared even more than poverty: the

part of one that sets up an idol and the part of one that bows down and worships it.

When Caroline was twentyfour she married Howard Noble, then a widower of forty, who had been for ten

years a power in Wall Street. Then, for the first time, she had paused to take breath. It took a substantialness

as unquestionable as his; his money, his position, his energy, the big vigor of his robust person, to satisfy her

that she was entirely safe. Then she relaxed a little, feeling that there was a barrier to be counted upon

Caroline had been married for six years when Raymond d'Esquerre came to stay with them. He came chiefly

because Caroline was what she was; because he, too, felt occasionally the need of getting out of Klingsor's

garden, of dropping down somewhere for a time near a quiet nature, a cool head, a strong hand. The hours he

had spent in the garden lodge were hours of such concentrated study as, in his fevered life, he seldom got in

anywhere. She had, as he told Noble, a fine appreciation of the seriousness of work.

One evening two weeks after d'Esquerre had sailed, Caroline was in the library giving her husband an

account of the work she had laid out for the gardeners. She superintended the care of the grounds herself. Her

garden, indeed, had become quite a part of her; a sort of beautiful adjunct, like gowns or jewels. It was a

"What do you think, Caroline, of having the garden lodge torn down and putting a new summer house there

at the end of the arbor; a big rustic affair where you could have tea served in midsummer?" he asked.

"The lodge?" repeated Caroline looking at him quickly. "Why, that seems almost a shame, doesn't it, after

"Are you going to be sentimental about it? Why, I'd sacrifice the whole place to see that come to pass. But I

Noble took up his book again and Caroline went into the music room to practice. She was not ready to have

the lodge torn down. She had gone there for a quiet hour every day during the two weeks since d'Esquerre

had left them. It was the sheerest sentiment she had ever permitted herself. She was ashamed of it, but she

Caroline went to bed soon after her husband, but she was not able to sleep. The night was close and warm,

presaging storm. The wind had fallen, and the water slept, fixed and motionless as the sand. She rose and

thrust her feet into slippers and, putting a dressing gown over her shoulders, opened the door of her husband's

room; he was sleeping soundly. She went into the hall and down the stairs; then, leaving the house through a

side door, stepped into the vinecovered arbor that led to the garden lodge. The scent of the June roses was

heavy in the still air, and the stones that paved the path felt pleasantly cool through the thin soles of her

slippers. Heatlightning flashed continuously from the bank of clouds that had gathered over the sea, but the

shore was flooded with moonlight and, beyond, the rim of the Sound lay smooth and shining. Caroline had

the key of the lodge, and the door creaked as she opened it. She stepped into the long, low room radiant with

the moonlight which streamed through the bow window and lay in a silvery pool along the waxed floor. Even

that part of the room which lay in the shadow was vaguely illuminated; the piano, the tall candlesticks, the

picture frames and white casts standing out as clearly in the halflight as did the sycamores and black poplars

of the garden against the still, expectant night sky. Caroline sat down to think it all over. She had come here

to do just that every day of the two weeks since d'Esquerre's departure, but, far from ever having reached a

conclusion, she had succeeded only in losing her way in a maze of memoriessometimes bewilderingly

confused, sometimes too acutely distinctwhere there was neither path, nor clue, nor any hope of finality.

She had, she realized, defeated a lifelong regimen; completely confounded herself by falling unaware and

incontinently into that luxury of reverie which, even as a little girl, she had so determinedly denied herself,

she had been developing with alarming celerity that part of one which sets up an idol and that part of one

It was a mistake, she felt, ever to have asked d'Esquerre to come at all. She had an angry feeling that she had

done it rather in selfdefiance, to rid herself finally of that instinctive fear of him which had always troubled

and perplexed her. She knew that she had reckoned with herself before he came; but she had been equal to so

much that she had never really doubted she would be equal to this. She had come to believe, indeed, almost

arrogantly in her own malleability and endurance; she had done so much with herself that she had come to

think that there was nothing which she could not do; like swimmers, overbold, who reckon upon their

strength and their power to hoard it, forgetting the everchanging moods of their adversary, the sea.

And d'Esquerre was a man to reckon with. Caroline did not deceive herself now upon that score. She

admitted it humbly enough, and since she had said goodby to him she had not been free for a moment from

the sense of his formidable power. It formed the undercurrent of her consciousness; whatever she might be

doing or thinking, it went on, involuntarily, like her breathing, sometimes welling up until suddenly she

found herself suffocating. There was a moment of this tonight, and Caroline rose and stood shuddering,

looking about her in the blue duskiness of the silent room. She had not been here at night before, and the

spirit of the place seemed more troubled and insistent than ever it had in the quiet of the afternoons. Caroline

brushed her hair back from her damp forehead and went over to the bow window. After raising it she sat

down upon the low seat. Leaning her head against the sill, and loosening her nightgown at the throat, she

halfclosed her eyes and looked off into the troubled night, watching the play of the heatlightning upon the

Yes, she knew, she knew well enough, of what absurdities this spell was woven; she mocked, even while she

winced. His power, she knew, lay not so much in anything that he actually hadthough he had so muchor

in anything that he actually was, but in what he suggested, in what he seemed picturesque enough to have or

be and that was just anything that one chose to believe or to desire. His appeal was all the more persuasive

and alluring in that it was to the imagination alone, in that it was as indefinite and impersonal as those cults of

idealism which so have their way with women. What he had was that, in his mere personality, he quickened

and in a measure gratified that something without whichto womenlife is no better than sawdust, and to

the desire for which most of their mistakes and tragedies and astonishingly poor bargains are due.

D'Esquerre had become the center of a movement, and the Metropolitan had become the temple of a cult.

When he could be induced to cross the Atlantic, the opera season in New York was successful; when he

could not, the management lost money; so much everyone knew. It was understood, too, that his superb art

had disproportionately little to do with his peculiar position. Women swayed the balance this way or that; the

opera, the orchestra, even his own glorious art, achieved at such a cost, were but the accessories of himself;

like the scenery and costumes and even the soprano, they all went to produce atmosphere, were the mere

Caroline understood all this; tonight was not the first time that she had put it to herself so. She had seen the

same feeling in other people, watched for it in her friends, studied it in the house night after night when he

D'Esquerre's arrival in the early winter was the signal for a feminine hegira toward New York. On the nights

when he sang women flocked to the Metropolitan from mansions and hotels, from typewriter desks,

schoolrooms, shops, and fitting rooms. They were of all conditions and complexions. Women of the world

who accepted him knowingly as they sometimes took champagne for its agreeable effect; sisters of charity

and overworked shopgirls, who received him devoutly; withered women who had taken doctorate degrees

and who worshipped furtively through prism spectacles; business women and women of affairs, the Amazons

who dwelt afar from men in the stony fastnesses of apartment houses. They all entered into the same

romance; dreamed, in terms as various as the hues of fantasy, the same dream; drew the same quick breath

when he stepped upon the stage, and, at his exit, felt the same dull pain of shouldering the pack again.

There were the maimed, even; those who came on crutches, who were pitted by smallpox or grotesquely

painted by cruel birth stains. These, too, entered with him into enchantment. Stout matrons became slender

girls again; worn spinsters felt their cheeks flush with the tenderness of their lost youth. Young and old,

however hideous, however fair, they yielded up their heat whether quick or latentsat hungering for the

Sometimes, when the house was crowded from the orchestra to the last row of the gallery, when the air was

charged with this ecstasy of fancy, he himself was the victim of the burning reflection of his power. They

acted upon him in turn; he felt their fervent and despairing appeal to him; it stirred him as the spring drives

the sap up into an old tree; he, too, burst into bloom. For the moment he, too, believed again, desired again,

But it was not in these exalted moments that Caroline had learned to fear him most. It was in the quiet, tired

reserve, the dullness, even, that kept him company between these outbursts that she found that exhausting

drain upon her sympathies which was the very pith and substance of their alliance. It was the tacit admission

of disappointment under all this glamour of successthe helplessness of the enchanter to at all enchant

himselfthat awoke in her an illogical, womanish desire to in some way compensate, to make it up to him.

She had observed drastically to herself that it was her eighteenth year he awoke in herthose hard years she

had spent in turning gowns and placating tradesmen, and which she had never had time to live. After all, she

reflected, it was better to allow one's self a little youthto dance a little at the carnival and to live these

things when they are natural and lovely, not to have them coming back on one and demanding arrears when

they are humiliating and impossible. She went over tonight all the catalogue of her selfdeprivations; recalled

how, in the light of her father's example, she had even refused to humor her innocent taste for improvising at

the piano; how, when she began to teach, after her mother's death, she had struck out one little indulgence

after another, reducing her life to a relentless routine, unvarying as clockwork. It seemed to her that ever

since d'Esquerre first came into the house she had been haunted by an imploring little girlish ghost that

The storm had held off unconscionably long; the air within the lodge was stifling, and without the garden

waited, breathless. Everything seemed pervaded by a poignant distress; the hush of feverish, intolerable

expectation. The still earth, the heavy flowers, even the growing darkness, breathed the exhaustion of

protracted waiting. Caroline felt that she ought to go; that it was wrong to stay; that the hour and the place

were as treacherous as her own reflections. She rose and began to pace the floor, stepping softly, as though in

fear of awakening someone, her figure, in its thin drapery, diaphanously vague and white. Still unable to

shake off the obsession of the intense stillness, she sat down at the piano and began to run over the first act of

the Walkure, the last of his roles they had practiced together; playing listlessly and absently at first, but with

gradually increasing seriousness. Perhaps it was the still heat of the summer night, perhaps it was the heavy

odors from the garden that came in through the open windows; but as she played there grew and grew the

feeling that he was there, beside her, standing in his accustomed place. In the duet at the end of the first act

she heard him clearly: "Thou art the Spring for which I sighed in Winter's cold embraces." Once as he sang it,

he had put his arm about her, his one hand under her heart, while with the other he took her right from the

keyboard, holding her as he always held Sieglinde when he drew her toward the window. She had been

wonderfully the mistress of herself at the time; neither repellent nor acquiescent. She remembered that she

had rather exulted, then, in her selfcontrolwhich he had seemed to take for granted, though there was

perhaps the whisper of a question from the hand under her heart. "Thou art the Spring for which I sighed in

Winter's cold embraces." Caroline lifted her hands quickly from the keyboard, and she bowed her head in

The storm broke and the rain beat in, spattering her nightdress until she rose and lowered the windows. She

dropped upon the couch and began fighting over again the battles of other days, while the ghosts of the slain

rose as from a sowing of dragon's teeth, The shadows of things, always so scorned and flouted, bore down

upon her merciless and triumphant. It was not enough; this happy, useful, wellordered life was not enough.

It did not satisfy, it was not even real. No, the other things, the shadowsthey were the realities. Her father,

poor Heinrich, even her mother, who had been able to sustain her poor romance and keep her little illusions

amid the tasks of a scullion, were nearer happiness than she. Her sure foundation was but made ground, after

all, and the people in Klingsor's garden were more fortunate, however barren the sands from which they

The lodge was still and silent; her fit of weeping over, Caroline made no sound, and within the room, as

without in the garden, was the blackness of storm. Only now and then a flash of lightning showed a woman's

Toward morning, when the occasional rumbling of thunder was heard no more and the beat of the raindrops

upon the orchard leaves was steadier, she fell asleep and did not waken until the first red streaks of dawn

shone through the twisted boughs of the apple trees. There was a moment between world and world, when,

neither asleep nor awake, she felt her dream grow thin, melting away from her, felt the warmth under her

heart growing cold. Something seemed to slip from the clinging hold of her arms, and she groaned

protestingly through her parted lips, following it a little way with fluttering hands. Then her eyes opened

wide and she sprang up and sat holding dizzily to the cushions of the couch, staring down at her bare, cold

The dream was gone, but the feverish reality of it still pervaded her and she held it as the vibrating string

holds a tone. In the last hour the shadows had had their way with Caroline. They had shown her the

nothingness of time and space, of system and discipline, of closed doors and broad waters. Shuddering, she

thought of the Arabian fairy tale in which the genie brought the princess of China to the sleeping prince of

Damascus and carried her through the air back to her palace at dawn. Caroline closed her eyes and dropped

her elbows weakly upon her knees, her shoulders sinking together. The horror was that it had not come from

without, but from within. The dream was no blind chance; it was the expression of something she had kept so

close a prisoner that she had never seen it herself, it was the wail from the donjon deeps when the watch slept.

Only as the outcome of such a night of sorcery could the thing have been loosed to straighten its limbs and

measure itself with her; so heavy were the chains upon it, so many a fathom deep, it was crushed down into

darkness. The fact that d'Esquerre happened to be on the other side of the world meant nothing; had he been

here, beside her, it could scarcely have hurt her selfrespect so much. As it was, she was without even the

extenuation of an outer impulse, and she could scarcely have despised herself more had she come to him here

in the night three weeks ago and thrown herself down upon the stone slab at the door there.

Caroline rose unsteadily and crept guiltily from the lodge and along the path under the arbor, terrified lest the

servants should be stirring, trembling with the chill air, while the wet shrubbery, brushing against her,

At breakfast her husband looked across the table at her with concern. "It seems to me that you are looking

rather fagged, Caroline. It was a beastly night to sleep. Why don't you go up to the mountains until this hot

weather is over? By the way, were you in earnest about letting the lodge stand?"

Caroline laughed quietly. "No, I find I was not very serious. I haven't sentiment enough to forego a summer

house. Will you tell Baker to come tomorrow to talk it over with me? If we are to have a house party, I should

Noble gave her a glance, halfhumorous, halfvexed. "Do you know I am rather disappointed?" he said. "I

had almost hoped that, just for once, you know, you would be a little bit foolish."

"Not now that I've slept over it," replied Caroline, and they both rose from the table, laughing.

The sequence of events was such that MacMaster did not make his pilgrimage to Hugh Treffinger's studio

until three years after that painter's death. MacMaster was himself a painter, an American of the Gallicized

type, who spent his winters in New York, his summers in Paris, and no inconsiderable amount of time on the

broad waters between. He had often contemplated stopping in London on one of his return trips in the late

autumn, but he had always deferred leaving Paris until the prick of necessity drove him home by the quickest

Treffinger was a comparatively young man at the time of his death, and there had seemed no occasion for

haste until haste was of no avail. Then, possibly, though there had been some correspondence between them,

MacMaster felt certain qualms about meeting in the flesh a man who in the flesh was so diversely reported.

His intercourse with Treffinger's work had been so deep and satisfying, so apart from other appreciations, that

he rather dreaded a critical juncture of any sort. He had always felt himself singularly inept in personal

relations, and in this case he had avoided the issue until it was no longer to be feared or hoped for. There still

remained, however, Treffinger's great unfinished picture, the Marriage of Phaedra, which had never left his

studio, and of which MacMaster's friends had now and again brought report that it was the painter's most

The young man arrived in London in the evening, and the next morning went out to Kensington to find

Treffinger's studio. It lay in one of the perplexing bystreets off Holland Road, and the number he found on a

door set in a high garden wall, the top of which was covered with broken green glass and over which a

budding lilac bush nodded. Treffinger's plate was still there, and a card requesting visitors to ring for the

attendant. In response to MacMaster's ring, the door was opened by a cleanly built little man, clad in a

shooting jacket and trousers that had been made for an ampler figure. He had a fresh complexion, eyes of that

common uncertain shade of gray, and was closely shaven except for the incipient muttonchops on his ruddy

cheeks. He bore himself in a manner strikingly capable, and there was a sort of trimness and alertness about

him, despite the toogenerous shoulders of his coat. In one hand he held a bulldog pipe, and in the other a

copy of Sporting Life. While MacMaster was explaining the purpose of his call he noticed that the man

surveyed him critically, though not impertinently. He was admitted into a little tank of a lodge made of

whitewashed stone, the back door and windows opening upon a garden. A visitor's book and a pile of

catalogues lay on a deal table, together with a bottle of ink and some rusty pens. The wall was ornamented

"The studio is h'only open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays," explained the manhe referred to

himself as "Jymes""but of course we make exceptions in the case of pynters. Lydy Elling Treffinger 'erself

is on the Continent, but Sir 'Ugh's orders was that pynters was to 'ave the run of the place." He selected a key

from his pocket and threw open the door into the studio which, like the lodge, was built against the wall of

MacMaster entered a long, narrow room, built of smoothed planks, painted a light green; cold and damp even

on that fine May morning. The room was utterly bare of furnitureunless a stepladder, a model throne, and a

rack laden with large leather portfolios could be accounted suchand was windowless, without other

openings than the door and the skylight, under which hung the unfinished picture itself. MacMaster had never

seen so many of Treffinger's paintings together. He knew the painter had married a woman with money and

had been able to keep such of his pictures as he wished. These, with all of 182 his replicas and studies, he had

left as a sort of common legacy to the younger men of the school he had originated.

As soon as he was left alone MacMaster sat down on the edge of the model throne before the unfinished

picture. Here indeed was what he had come for; it rather paralyzed his receptivity for the moment, but

At one o'clock he was standing before the collection of studies done for Boccaccio's Garden when he heard a

"Pardon, sir, but I was just about to lock up and go to lunch. Are you lookin' for the figure study of Boccaccio

'imself?" James queried respectfully. "Lydy Elling Treffinger give it to Mr. Rossiter to take down to Oxford

"Did he never paint out his studies, then?" asked MacMaster with perplexity. "Here are two completed ones

"I don't know as I could say as to that, sir," replied James, smiling indulgently, "but that was 'is way. That is

to say, 'e pynted out very frequent, but 'e always made two studies to stand; one in watercolors and one in

oils, before 'e went at the final pictureto say nothink of all the pose studies 'e made in pencil before he

begun on the composition proper at all. He was that particular. You see, 'e wasn't so keen for the final effect

as for the proper pyntin' of 'is pictures. 'E used to say they ought to be well made, the same as any other

h'article of trade. I can lay my 'and on the pose studies for you, sir." He rummaged in one of the portfolios

and produced half a dozen drawings, "These three," he continued, "was discarded; these two was the pose he

"That's in Paris, as I remember," James continued reflectively. "It went with the Saint Cecilia into the Baron

H's collection. Could you tell me, sir, 'as 'e it still? I don't like to lose account of them, but some 'as

"H's collection is still intact, I believe," replied MacMaster. "You were with Treffinger long?"

"From my boyhood, sir," replied James with gravity. "I was a stable boy when 'e took me."

"That's it, sir. Nobody else ever done anything around the studio. I always mixed 'is colors and 'e taught me to

do a share of the varnishin'; 'e said as 'ow there wasn't a 'ouse in England as could do it proper. You ayn't

looked at the Marriage yet, sir?" he asked abruptly, glancing doubtfully at MacMaster, and indicating with his

"Not very closely. I prefer to begin with something simpler; that's rather appalling, at first glance," replied

"Well may you say that, sir," said James warmly. "That one regular killed Sir 'Ugh; it regular broke 'im up,

When MacMaster walked back to High Street to take his bus his mind was divided between two exultant

convictions. He felt that he had not only found Treffinger's greatest picture, but that, in James, he had

discovered a kind of cryptic index to the painter's personalitya clue which, if tactfully followed, might lead

Several days after his first visit to the studio, MacMaster wrote to Lady Mary Percy, telling her that he would

be in London for some time and asking her if he might call. Lady Mary was an only sister of Lady Ellen

Treffinger, the painter's widow, and MacMaster had known her during one winter he spent at Nice. He had

known her, indeed, very well, and Lady Mary, who was astonishingly frank and communicative upon all

subjects, had been no less so upon the matter of her sister's unfortunate marriage.

In her reply to his note Lady Mary named an afternoon when she would be alone. She was as good as her

word, and when MacMaster arrived he found the drawing room empty. Lady Mary entered shortly after he

was announced. She was a tall woman, thin and stiffly jointed, and her body stood out under the folds of her

gown with the rigor of cast iron. This rather metallic suggestion was further carried out in her heavily

knuckled hands, her stiff gray hair, and her long, boldfeatured face, which was saved from freakishness only

"Really," said Lady Mary, taking a seat beside him and giving him a sort of military inspection through her

nose glasses, "really, I had begun to fear that I had lost you altogether. It's four years since I saw you at Nice,

"Well, incidentally, I came to see Treffinger's studio and his unfinished picture. Since I've been here, I've

decided to stay the summer. I'm even thinking of attempting to do a biography of him."

"Not exactly. I had really no intention of anything so serious when I came. It's his last picture, I fancy, that

has rather thrust it upon me. The notion has settled down on me like a thing destined."

"You'll not be offended if I question the clemency of such a destiny," remarked Lady Mary dryly. "Isn't there

"Such as they are. Oh, I've read them all"here MacMaster faced Lady Mary triumphantly. "He has quite

"I know well enough what you think, and I daresay we are not much on art," said Lady Mary with tolerant

good humor. "We leave that to peoples who have no physique. Treffinger made a stir for a time, but it seems

that we are not capable of a sustained appreciation of such extraordinary methods. In the end we go back to

the pictures we find agreeable and unperplexing. He was regarded as an experiment, I fancy; and now it

seems that he was rather an unsuccessful one. If you've come to us in a missionary spirit, we'll tolerate you

"That really doesn't daunt me, Lady Mary," declared MacMaster blandly. "As I told you, I'm a man with a

Lady Mary laughed her hoarse, baritone laugh. "Bravo! And you've come to me for inspiration for your

MacMaster smiled with some embarrassment. "Not altogether for that purpose. But I want to consult you,

Lady Mary, about the advisability of troubling Lady Ellen Treffinger in the matter. It seems scarcely

legitimate to go on without asking her to give some sort of grace to my proceedings, yet I feared the whole

"I think she would prefer to be consulted," replied Lady Mary judicially. "I can't understand how she endures

to have the wretched affair continually raked up, but she does. She seems to feel a sort of moral

responsibility. Ellen has always been singularly conscientious about this matter, insofar as her light

goes,which rather puzzles me, as hers is not exactly a magnanimous nature. She is certainly trying to do

what she believes to be the right thing. I shall write to her, and you can see her when she returns from Italy."

"I want very much to meet her. She is, I hope, quite recovered in every way," queried MacMaster,

"No, I can't say that she is. She has remained in much the same condition she sank to before his death. He

trampled over pretty much whatever there was in her, I fancy. Women don't recover from wounds of that

"Oh I give him his dues. He was a colorist, I grant you; but that is a vague and unsatisfactory quality to marry

"But, my dear Lady Mary," expostulated MacMaster, "and just repress me if I'm becoming too personalbut

it must, in the first place, have been a marriage of choice on her part as well as on his."

Lady Mary poised her glasses on her large forefinger and assumed an attitude suggestive of the clinical

lecture room as she replied. "Ellen, my dear boy, is an essentially romantic person. She is quiet about it, but

she runs deep. I never knew how deep until I came against her on the issue of that marriage. She was always

discontented as a girl; she found things dull and prosaic, and the ardor of his courtship was agreeable to her.

He met her during her first season in town. She is handsome, and there were plenty of other men, but I grant

you your scowling brigand was the most picturesque of the lot. In his courtship, as in everything else, he was

theatrical to the point of being ridiculous, but Ellen's sense of humor is not her strongest quality. He had the

charm of celebrity, the air of a man who could storm his way through anything to get what he wanted. That

sort of vehemence is particularly effective with women like Ellen, who can be warmed only by reflected heat,

and she couldn't at all stand out against it. He convinced her of his necessity; and that done, all's done."

"I can't help thinking that, even on such a basis, the marriage should have turned out better," MacMaster

"The marriage," Lady Mary continued with a shrug, "was made on the basis of a mutual misunderstanding.

Ellen, in the nature of the case, believed that she was doing something quite out of the ordinary in accepting

him, and expected concessions which, apparently, it never occurred to him to make. After his marriage he

relapsed into his old habits of incessant work, broken by violent and often brutal relaxations. He insulted her

friends and foisted his own upon hermany of them well calculated to arouse aversion in any wellbred girl.

He had Ghillini constantly at the housea homeless vagabond, whose conversation was impossible. I don't

say, mind you, that he had not grievances on his side. He had probably overrated the girl's possibilities, and

he let her see that he was disappointed in her. Only a large and generous nature could have borne with him,

and Ellen's is not that. She could not at all understand that odious strain of plebeian pride which plumes itself

As MacMaster drove back to his hotel he reflected that Lady Mary Percy had probably had good cause for

dissatisfaction with her brotherinlaw. Treffinger was, indeed, the last man who should have married into

the Percy family. The son of a small tobacconist, he had grown up a signpainter's apprentice; idle, lawless,

and practically letterless until he had drifted into the night classes of the Albert League, where Ghillini

sometimes lectured. From the moment he came under the eye and influence of that erratic Italian, then a

political exile, his life had swerved sharply from its old channel. This man had been at once incentive and

guide, friend and master, to his pupil. He had taken the raw clay out of the London streets and molded it

anew. Seemingly he had divined at once where the boy's possibilities lay, and had thrown aside every canon

of orthodox instruction in the training of him. Under him Treffinger acquired his superficial, yet facile,

knowledge of the classics; had steeped himself in the monkish Latin and medieval romances which later gave

his work so naive and remote a quality. That was the beginning of the wattle fences, the cobble pave, the

brown roof beams, the cunningly wrought fabrics that gave to his pictures such a richness of decorative

As he had told Lady Mary Percy, MacMaster had found the imperative inspiration of his purpose in

Treffinger's unfinished picture, the Marriage of Phaedra. He had always believed that the key to Treffinger's

individuality lay in his singular education; in the Roman de la Rose, in Boccaccio, and Amadis, those works

which had literally transcribed themselves upon the blank soul of the London street boy, and through which

he had been born into the world of spiritual things. Treffinger had been a man who lived after his

imagination; and his mind, his ideals and, as MacMaster believed, even his personal ethics, had to the last

been colored by the trend of his early training. There was in him alike the freshness and spontaneity, the frank

brutality and the religious mysticism, which lay well back of the fifteenth century. In the Marriage of Phaedra

MacMaster found the ultimate expression of this spirit, the final word as to Treffinger's point of view.

As in all Treffinger's classical subjects, the conception was wholly medieval. This Phaedra, just turning from

her husband and maidens to greet her husband's son, giving him her first fearsome glance from under her

halflifted veil, was no daughter of Minos. The daughter of heathenesse and the early church she was;

doomed to torturing visions and scourgings, and the wrangling of soul with flesh. The venerable Theseus

might have been victorious Charlemagne, and Phaedra's maidens belonged rather in the train of Blanche of

Castile than at the Cretan court. In the earlier studies Hippolytus had been done with a more pagan

suggestion; but in each successive drawing the glorious figure bad been deflowered of something of its serene

unconsciousness, until, in the canvas under the skylight, he appeared a very Christian knight. This male

figure, and the face of Phaedra, painted with such magical preservation of tone under the heavy shadow of the

veil, were plainly Treffinger's highest achievements of craftsmanship. By what labor he had reached the

seemingly inevitable composition of the picturewith its twenty figures, its plenitude of light and air, its

From James's attitude toward the picture MacMaster could well conjecture what the painter's had been. This

picture was always uppermost in James's mind; its custodianship formed, in his eyes, his occupation. He was

manifestly apprehensive when visitorsnot many came nowadayslingered near it. "It was the Marriage as

killed 'im," he would often say, "and for the matter 'o that, it did like to 'av been the death of all of us."

By the end of his second week in London MacMaster had begun the notes for his study of Hugh Treffinger

and his work. When his researches led him occasionally to visit the studios of Treffinger's friends and

erstwhile disciples, he found their Treffinger manner fading as the ring of Treffinger's personality died out in

them. One by one they were stealing back into the fold of national British art; the hand that had wound them

up was still. MacMaster despaired of them and confined himself more and more exclusively to the studio, to

such of Treffinger's letters as were availablethey were for the most part singularly negative and

He could not himself have traced the successive steps by which he was gradually admitted into James's

confidence. Certainly most of his adroit strategies to that end failed humiliatingly, and whatever it was that

built up an understanding between them must have been instinctive and intuitive on both sides. When at last

James became anecdotal, personal, there was that in every word he let fall which put breath and blood into

MacMaster's book. James had so long been steeped in that penetrating personality that he fairly exuded it.

Many of his very phrases, mannerisms, and opinions were impressions that he had taken on like wet plaster in

his daily contact with Treffinger. Inwardly he was lined with castoff epitheliums, as outwardly he was clad

in the painter's discarded coats. If the painter's letters were formal and perfunctory, if his expressions to his

friends had been extravagant, contradictory, and often apparently insincerestill, MacMaster felt himself not

entirely without authentic sources. It was James who possessed Treffinger's legend; it was with James that he

had laid aside his pose. Only in his studio, alone, and face to face with his work, as it seemed, had the man

invariably been himself. James had known him in the one attitude in which he was entirely honest; their

relation had fallen well within the painter's only indubitable integrity. James's report of Treffinger was

distorted by no hallucination of artistic insight, colored by no interpretation of his own. He merely held what

he had heard and seen; his mind was a sort of camera obscura. His very limitations made him the more literal

One morning, when MacMaster was seated before the Marriage of Phaedra, James entered on his usual round

"I've 'eard from Lydy Elling by the post, sir," he remarked, "an' she's give h'orders to 'ave the 'ouse put in

"She spends most of her time abroad?" queried MacMaster; on the subject of Lady Treffinger James

"Well, you could 'ardly say she does that, sir. She finds the 'ouse a bit dull, I daresay, so durin' the season she

stops mostly with Lydy Mary Percy, at Grosvenor Square. Lydy Mary's a h'only sister." After a few moments

he continued, speaking in jerks governed by the rigor of his dusting: "H'only this morning I come upon this

scarfpin," exhibiting a very striking instance of that article, "an' I recalled as 'ow Sir 'Ugh give it me when 'e

was acourting of Lydy Elling. Blowed if I ever see a man go in for a 'oman like 'im! 'E was that gone, sir. 'E

never went in on anythink so 'ard before nor since, till 'e went in on the Marriage therethough 'e mostly

went in on things pretty keen; 'ad the measles when 'e was thirty, strong as cholera, an' come close to dyin' of

'em. 'E wasn't strong for Lydy Elling's set; they was a bit too stiff for 'im. A free an' easy gentleman, 'e was; 'e

liked 'is dinner with a few friends an' them jolly, but 'e wasn't much on what you might call big affairs. But

once 'e went in for Lydy Elling 'e broke 'imself to new paces; He give away 'is rings an' pins, an' the tylor's

man an' the 'aberdasher's man was at 'is rooms continual. 'E got 'imself put up for a club in Piccadilly; 'e

starved 'imself thin, an' worrited 'imself white, an' ironed 'imself out, an' drawed 'imself tight as a bow string.

The next week, in consequence of an invitation from Lady Ellen Treffinger, MacMaster went one afternoon

to take tea with her. He was shown into the garden that lay between the residence and the studio, where the

tea table was set under a gnarled pear tree. Lady Ellen rose as he approachedhe was astonished to note how

tall she wasand greeted him graciously, saying that she already knew him through her sister. MacMaster felt

a certain satisfaction in her; in her reassuring poise and repose, in the charming modulations of her voice and

the indolent reserve of her full, almond eyes. He was even delighted to find her face so inscrutable, though it

chilled his own warmth and made the open frankness he had wished to permit himself impossible. It was a

long face, narrow at the chin, very delicately featured, yet steeled by an impassive mask of selfcontrol. It

was behind just such finely cut, closesealed faces, MacMaster reflected, that nature sometimes hid

astonishing secrets. But in spite of this suggestion of hardness he felt that the unerring taste that Treffinger

had always shown in larger matters had not deserted him when he came to the choosing of a wife, and he

admitted that he could not himself have selected a woman who looked more as Treffinger's wife should look.

While he was explaining the purpose of his frequent visits to the studio she heard him with courteous interest.

"I have read, I think, everything that has been published on Sir Hugh Treffinger's work, and it seems to me

"I believe they are rather inadequate," she remarked vaguely. She hesitated a moment, absently fingering the

ribbons of her gown, then continued, without raising her eyes; "I hope you will not think me too exacting if I

ask to see the proofs of such chapters of your work as have to do with Sir Hugh's personal life. I have always

MacMaster hastily assured her as to this, adding, "I mean to touch on only such facts in his personal life as

"I see your meaning, I think," said Lady Ellen, looking at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

When MacMaster stopped at the studio on leaving the house he stood for some time before Treffinger's one

portrait of himself, that brigand of a picture, with its full throat and square head; the short upper lip blackened

by the closeclipped mustache, the wiry hair tossed down over the forehead, the strong white teeth set hard

on a short pipestem. He could well understand what manifold tortures the mere grain of the man's strong red

and brown flesh might have inflicted upon a woman like Lady Ellen. He could conjecture, too, Treffinger's

impotent revolt against that very repose which had so dazzled him when it first defied his daring; and how

once possessed of it, his first instinct had been to crush it, since he could not melt it.

Toward the close of the season Lady Ellen Treffinger left town. MacMaster's work was progressing rapidly,

and he and James wore away the days in their peculiar relation, which by this time had much of friendliness.

Excepting for the regular visits of a Jewish picture dealer, there were few intrusions upon their solitude.

Occasionally a party of Americans rang at the little door in the garden wall, but usually they departed

speedily for the Moorish hall and tinkling fountain of the great show studio of London, not far away.

This Jew, an Austrian by birth, who had a large business in Melbourne, Australia, was a man of considerable

discrimination, and at once selected the Marriage of Phaedra as the object of his especial interest. When,

upon his first visit, Lichtenstein had declared the picture one of the things done for time, MacMaster had

rather warmed toward him and had talked to him very freely. Later, however, the man's repulsive personality

and innate vulgarity so wore upon him that, the more genuine the Jew's appreciation, the more he resented it

and the more base he somehow felt it to be. It annoyed him to see Lichtenstein walking up and down before

the picture, shaking his head and blinking his watery eyes over his nose glasses, ejaculating: "Dot is a chem, a

chem! It is wordt to gome den dousant miles for such a bainting, eh? To make Eurobe abbreciate such a work

of ardt it is necessary to take it away while she is napping. She has never abbreciated until she has lost, but,"

James had, from the first, felt such a distrust of the man that he would never leave him alone in the studio for

a moment. When Lichtenstein insisted upon having Lady Ellen Treffinger's address James rose to the point of

insolence. "It ayn't no use to give it, noway. Lydy Treffinger never has nothink to do with dealers."

MacMaster quietly repented his rash confidences, fearing that he might indirectly cause Lady Ellen

annoyance from this merciless speculator, and he recalled with chagrin that Lichtenstein had extorted from

him, little by little, pretty much the entire plan of his book, and especially the place in it which the Marriage

By this time the first chapters of MacMaster's book were in the hands of his publisher, and his visits to the

studio were necessarily less frequent. The greater part of his time was now employed with the engravers who

were to reproduce such of Treffinger's pictures as he intended to use as illustrations.

He returned to his hotel late one evening after a long and vexing day at the engravers to find James in his

room, seated on his steamer trunk by the window, with the outline of a great square draped in sheets resting

"Why, James, what's up?" he cried in astonishment, glancing inquiringly at the sheeted object.

"No, now I think of it, I haven't even looked at a paper. I've been at the engravers' plant all day. I haven't seen

James drew a copy of the Times from his pocket and handed it to him, pointing with a tragic finger to a

paragraph in the social column. It was merely the announcement of Lady Ellen Treffinger's engagement to

James took the paper, turned to another page, and silently pointed to a paragraph in the art notes which stated

that Lady Treffinger had presented to the Xgallery the entire collection of paintings and sketches now in

her late husband's studio, with the exception of his unfinished picture, the Marriage Of Phaedra, which she

had sold for a large sum to an Australian dealer who had come to London purposely to secure some of

MacMaster pursed up his lips and sat down, his overcoat still on. "Well, James, this is something of

"Lord, you don't know 'er, sir," said James bitterly, still staring at the floor in an attitude of abandoned

MacMaster started up in a flash of enlightenment, "What on earth have you got there, James? It's notsurely

Yes, it is, sir," broke in the man excitedly. "It's the Marriage itself. It ayn't agoing to H'Australia, no'ow!"

"But man, what are you going to do with it? It's Lichtenstein's property now, as it seems."

It ayn't, sir, that it ayn't. No, by Gawd, it ayn't!" shouted James, breaking into a choking fury. He controlled

himself with an effort and added supplicatingly: "Oh, sir, you ayn't agoing to see it go to H'Australia, w'ere

they send convic's?" He unpinned and flung aside the sheets as though to let Phaedra plead for herself.

MacMaster sat down again and looked sadly at the doomed masterpiece. The notion of James having carried

it across London that night rather appealed to his fancy. There was certainly a flavor about such a highhanded

"I got a fourwheeler and come over direct, sir. Good job I 'appened to 'ave the chaynge about me."

"You came up High Street, up Piccadilly, through the Haymarket and Trafalgar Square, and into the Strand?"

MacMaster laughed delightedly. "It was a beautiful idea, James, but I'm afraid we can't carry it any further."

"I was thinkin' as 'ow it would be a rare chance to get you to take the Marriage over to Paris for a year or two,

"I'm afraid that's out of the question, James. I haven't the right stuff in me for a pirate, or even a vulgar

smuggler, I'm afraid." MacMaster found it surprisingly difficult to say this, and he busied himself with the

lamp as he said it. He heard James's hand fall heavily on the trunk top, and he discovered that he very much

"Well, sir," remarked James in a more formal tone, after a protracted silence; "then there's nothink for it but

"And how about your character, James? The evidence would be heavy against you, and even if Lady

"Blow my character!your pardon, sir," cried James, starting to his feet. "W'at do I want of a character? I'll

chuck the 'ole thing, and damned lively, too. The shop's to be sold out, an' my place is gone any'ow. I'm

agoing to enlist, or try the gold fields. I've lived too long with h'artists; I'd never give satisfaction in livery

For a moment MacMaster was almost equal to abetting James in his theft. He reflected that pictures had been

whitewashed, or hidden in the crypts of churches, or under the floors of palaces from meaner motives, and to

save them from a fate less ignominious. But presently, with a sigh, he shook his head.

"No, James, it won't do at all. It has been tried over and over again, ever since the world has been agoing and

pictures amaking. It was tried in Florence and in Venice, but the pictures were always carried away in the

end. You see, the difficulty is that although Treffinger told you what was not to be done with the picture, he

did not say definitely what was to be done with it. Do you think Lady Treffinger really understands that he

"Well, sir, it was like this, sir," said James, resuming his seat on the trunk and again resting the picture

against his knee. "My memory is as clear as glass about it. After Sir 'Ugh got up from 'is first stroke, 'e took a

fresh start at the Marriage. Before that 'e 'ad been working at it only at night for a while back; the Legend was

the big picture then, an' was under the north light w'ere 'e worked of a morning. But one day 'e bid me take

the Legend down an' put the Marriage in its place, an' 'e says, dashin' on 'is jacket, 'Jymes, this is a start for

"From that on 'e worked at the night picture in the mornin'a thing contrary to 'is custom. The Marriage

went wrong, and wrongan' Sir 'Ugh agettin' seedier an' seedier every day. 'E tried models an' models, an'

smudged an' pynted out on account of 'er face goin' wrong in the shadow. Sometimes 'e layed it on the colors,

an' swore at me an' things in general. He got that discouraged about 'imself that on 'is low days 'e used to say

to me: 'Jymes, remember one thing; if anythink 'appens to me, the Marriage is not to go out of 'ere unfinished.

It's worth the lot of 'em, my boy, an' it's not agoing to go shabby for lack of pains.' 'E said things to that effect

"He was workin' at the picture the last day, before 'e went to 'is club. 'E kept the carriage waitin' near an hour

while 'e put on a stroke an' then drawed back for to look at it, an' then put on another, careful like. After 'e 'ad

'is gloves on, 'e come back an' took away the brushes I was startin' to clean, an' put in another touch or two.

'It's acomin', Jymes,' 'e says, 'by gad if it ayn't.' An' with that 'e goes out. It was cruel sudden, w'at come after.

"That night I was lookin' to 'is clothes at the 'ouse when they brought 'im 'ome. He was conscious, but w'en I

ran downstairs for to 'elp lift 'im up, I knowed 'e was a finished man. After we got 'im into bed 'e kept lookin'

restless at me and then at Lydy Elling and ajerkin' of 'is 'and. Finally 'e quite raised it an' shot 'is thumb out

toward the wall. 'He wants water; ring, Jymes,' says Lydy Elling, placid. But I knowed 'e was pointin' to the

"'Lydy Treffinger,' says I, bold, 'he's pointin' to the studio. He means about the Marriage; 'e told me today as

"He smiled an' nodded slight an' closed 'is eyes. 'Thank you, Jymes,' says Lydy Elling, placid. Then 'e opened

"'Of course I'll try to do as you'd wish about the picture, 'Ugh, if that's w'at's troublin' you,' she says quiet.

With that 'e closed 'is eyes and 'e never opened 'em. He died unconscious at four that mornin'.

"You see, sir, Lydy Elling was always cruel 'ard on the Marriage. From the first it went wrong, an' Sir 'Ugh

was out of temper pretty constant. She came into the studio one day and looked at the picture an 'asked 'im

why 'e didn't throw it up an' quit aworriting 'imself. He answered sharp, an' with that she said as 'ow she didn't

see w'at there was to make such a row about, no'ow. She spoke 'er mind about that picture, free; an' Sir 'Ugh

swore 'ot an' let a 'andful of brushes fly at 'is study, an' Lydy Elling picked up 'er skirts careful an' chill, an'

drifted out of the studio with 'er eyes calm and 'er chin 'igh. If there was one thing Lydy Elling 'ad no

comprehension of, it was the usefulness of swearin'. So the Marriage was a sore thing between 'em. She is

uncommon calm, but uncommon bitter, is Lydy Elling. She's never come anear the studio since that day she

went out 'oldin' up of 'er skirts. W'en 'er friends goes over she excuses 'erself along o' the strain.

"I'll tell you what I'll do, James, and it's our only hope. I'll see Lady Ellen tomorrow. The Times says she

returned today. You take the picture back to its place, and I'll do what I can for it. If anything is done to save

it, it must be done through Lady Ellen Treffinger herself, that much is clear. I can't think that she fully

understands the situation. If she did, you know, she really couldn't have any motive" He stopped suddenly.

Somehow, in the dusky lamplight, her small, closesealed face came ominously back to him. He rubbed his

forehead and knitted his brows thoughtfully. After a moment he shook his head and went on: "I am positive

that nothing can be gained by highhanded methods, James. Captain Gresham is one of the most popular men

in London, and his friends would tear up Treffinger's bones if he were annoyed by any scandal of our

makingand this scheme you propose would inevitably result in scandal. Lady Ellen has, of course, every

legal right to sell the picture. Treffinger made considerable inroads upon her estate, and, as she is about to

marry a man without income, she doubtless feels that she has a right to replenish her patrimony."

He found James amenable, though doggedly skeptical. He went down into the street, called a carriage, and

saw James and his burden into it. Standing in the doorway, he watched the carriage roll away through the

drizzling mist, weave in and out among the wet, black vehicles and darting cab lights, until it was swallowed

up in the glare and confusion of the Strand. "It is rather a fine touch of irony," he reflected, "that he, who is so

out of it, should be the one to really care. Poor Treffinger," he murmured as, with a rather spiritless smile, he

The next afternoon MacMaster kept his promise. When he arrived at Lady Mary Percy's house he saw

preparations for a function of some sort, but he went resolutely up the steps, telling the footman that his

business was urgent. Lady Ellen came down alone, excusing her sister. She was dressed for receiving, and

MacMaster had never seen one so beautiful. The color in her cheeks sent a softening glow over her small,

MacMaster apologized for his intrusion and came unflinchingly to the object of his call. He had come, he

said, not only to offer her his warmest congratulations, but to express his regret that a great work of art was to

Lady Treffinger looked at him in wideeyed astonishment. Surely, she said, she had been careful to select the

best of the pictures for the X gallery, in accordance with Sir Hugh Treffinger's wishes.

"And did hepardon me, Lady Treffinger, but in mercy set my mind at restdid he or did he not express

any definite wish concerning this one picture, which to me seems worth all the others, unfinished as it is?"

Lady Treffinger paled perceptibly, but it was not the pallor of confusion. When she spoke there was a sharp

tremor in her smooth voice, the edge of a resentment that tore her like pain. "I think his man has some such

impression, but I believe it to be utterly unfounded. I cannot find that he ever expressed any wish concerning

the disposition of the picture to any of his friends. Unfortunately, Sir Hugh was not always discreet in his

"Captain Gresham, Lady Ellingham, and Miss Ellingham," announced a servant, appearing at the door.

There was a murmur in the hall, and MacMaster greeted the smiling Captain and his aunt as he bowed

To all intents and purposes the Marriage of Phaedra was already entombed in a vague continent in the Pacific,

I received one morning a letter, written in pale ink on glassy, bluelined notepaper, and bearing the postmark

of a little Nebraska village. This communication, worn and rubbed, looking as though it had been carried for

some days in a coat pocket that was none too clean, was from my Uncle Howard and informed me that his

wife had been left a small legacy by a bachelor relative who had recently died, and that it would be necessary

for her to go to Boston to attend to the settling of the estate. He requested me to meet her at the station and

render her whatever services might be necessary. On examining the date indicated as that of her arrival I

found it no later than tomorrow. He had characteristically delayed writing until, had I been away from home

The name of my Aunt Georgiana called up not alone her own figure, at once pathetic and grotesque, but

opened before my feet a gulf of recollection so wide and deep that, as the letter dropped from my hand, I felt

suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the

familiar surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farm boy my aunt had known, scourged

with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and sore from the corn husking. I felt the knuckles of my

thumb tentatively, as though they were raw again. I sat again before her parlor organ, fumbling the scales

with my stiff, red hands, while she, beside me, made canvas mittens for the huskers.

The next morning, after preparing my landlady somewhat, I set out for the station. When the train arrived I

had some difficulty in finding my aunt. She was the last of the passengers to alight, and it was not until I got

her into the carriage that she seemed really to recognize me. She had come all the way in a day coach; her

linen duster had become black with soot, and her black bonnet gray with dust, during the journey. When we

arrived at my boardinghouse the landlady put her to bed at once and I did not see her again until the next

Whatever shock Mrs. Springer experienced at my aunt's appearance she considerately concealed. As for

myself, I saw my aunt's misshapen figure with that feeling of awe and respect with which we behold

explorers who have left their ears and fingers north of Franz Josef Land, or their health somewhere along the

Upper Congo. My Aunt Georgiana had been a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory, somewhere back in

the latter sixties. One summer, while visiting in the little village among the Green Mountains where her

ancestors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of the most idle and shiftless of all the

village lads, and had conceived for this Howard Carpenter one of those extravagant passions which a

handsome country boy of twentyone sometimes inspires in an angular, spectacled woman of thirty. When

she returned to her duties in Boston, Howard followed her, and the upshot of this inexplicable infatuation was

that she eloped with him, eluding the reproaches of her family and the criticisms of her friends by going with

him to the Nebraska frontier. Carpenter, who, of course, had no money, had taken a homestead in Red

Willow County, fifty miles from the railroad. There they had measured off their quarter section themselves

by driving across the prairie in a wagon, to the wheel of which they had tied a red cotton handkerchief, and

counting off its revolutions. They built a dugout in the red hillside, one of those cave dwellings whose

inmates so often reverted to primitive conditions. Their water they got from the lagoons where the buffalo

drank, and their slender stock of provisions was always at the mercy of bands of roving Indians. For thirty

But Mrs. Springer knew nothing of all this, and must have been considerably shocked at what was left of my

kinswoman. Beneath the soiled linen duster which, on her arrival, was the most conspicuous feature of her

costume, she wore a black stuff dress, whose ornamentation showed that she had surrendered herself

unquestioningly into the hands of a country dressmaker. My poor aunt's figure, however, would have

presented astonishing difficulties to any dressmaker. Originally stooped, her shoulders were now almost bent

together over her sunken chest. She wore no stays, and her gown, which trailed unevenly behind, rose in a

sort of peak over her abdomen. She wore illfitting false teeth, and her skin was as yellow as a Mongolian's

from constant exposure to a pitiless wind and to the alkaline water which hardens the most transparent cuticle

I owed to this woman most of the good that ever came my way in my boyhood, and had a reverential

affection for her. During the years when I was riding herd for my uncle, my aunt, after cooking the three

mealsthe first of which was ready at six o'clock in the morningand putting the six children to bed, would

often stand until midnight at her ironing board, with me at the kitchen table beside her, hearing me recite

Latin declensions and conjugations, gently shaking me when my drowsy head sank down over a page of

irregular verbs. It was to her, at her ironing or mending, that I read my first Shakespeare', and her old

textbook on mythology was the first that ever came into my empty hands. She taught me my scales and

exercises, tooon the little parlor organ, which her husband had bought her after fifteen years, during which

she had not so much as seen any instrument, but an accordion that belonged to one of the Norwegian

farmhands. She would sit beside me by the hour, darning and counting while I struggled with the "Joyous

Farmer," but she seldom talked to me about music, and I understood why. She was a pious woman; she had

the consolations of religion and, to her at least, her martyrdom was not wholly sordid. Once when I had been

doggedly beating out some easy passages from an old score of Euryanthe I had found among her music

books, she came up to me and, putting her hands over my eyes, gently drew my head back upon her shoulder,

saying tremulously, "Don't love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken from you. Oh, dear boy, pray that

When my aunt appeared on the morning after her arrival she was still in a semisomnambulant state. She

seemed not to realize that she was in the city where she had spent her youth, the place longed for hungrily

half a lifetime. She had been so wretchedly trainsick throughout the journey that she bad no recollection of

anything but her discomfort, and, to all intents and purposes, there were but a few hours of nightmare

between the farm in Red Willow County and my study on Newbury Street. I had planned a little pleasure for

her that afternoon, to repay her for some of the glorious moments she had given me when we used to milk

together in the strawthatched cowshed and she, because I was more than usually tired, or because her

husband had spoken sharply to me, would tell me of the splendid performance of the Huguenots she had seen

in Paris, in her youth. At two o'clock the Symphony Orchestra was to give a Wagner program, and I intended

to take my aunt; though, as I conversed with her I grew doubtful about her enjoyment of it. Indeed, for her

own sake, I could only wish her taste for such things quite dead, and the long struggle mercifully ended at

last. I suggested our visiting the Conservatory and the Common before lunch, but she seemed altogether too

timid to wish to venture out. She questioned me absently about various changes in the city, but she was

chiefly concerned that she had forgotten to leave instructions about feeding halfskimmed milk to a certain

weakling calf, "old Maggie's calf, you know, Clark," she explained, evidently having forgotten how long I

had been away. She was further troubled because she had neglected to tell her daughter about the freshly

opened kit of mackerel in the cellar, which would spoil if it were not used directly.

I asked her whether she had ever heard any of the Wagnerian operas and found that she had not, though she

was perfectly familiar with their respective situations, and had once possessed the piano score of The Flying

Dutchman. I began to think it would have been best to get her back to Red Willow County without waking

From the time we entered the concert hall, however, she was a trifle less passive and inert, and for the first

time seemed to perceive her surroundings. I had felt some trepidation lest she might become aware of the

absurdities of her attire, or might experience some painful embarrassment at stepping suddenly into the world

to which she had been dead for a quarter of a century. But, again, I found how superficially I had judged her.

She sat looking about her with eyes as impersonal, almost as stony, as those with which the granite Rameses

in a museum watches the froth and fret that ebbs and flows about his pedestalseparated from it by the lonely

stretch of centuries. I have seen this same aloofness in old miners who drift into the Brown Hotel at Denver,

their pockets full of bullion, their linen soiled, their haggard faces unshaven; standing in the thronged

corridors as solitary as though they were still in a frozen camp on the Yukon, conscious that certain

experiences have isolated them from their fellows by a gulf no haberdasher could bridge.

We sat at the extreme left of the first balcony, facing the arc of our own and the balcony above us, veritable

hanging gardens, brilliant as tulip beds. The matinee audience was made up chiefly of women. One lost the

contour of faces and figures indeed, any effect of line whateverand there was only the color of bodices

past counting, the shimmer of fabrics soft and firm, silky and sheer: red, mauve, pink, blue, lilac, purple, ecru,

rose, yellow, cream, and white, all the colors that an impressionist finds in a sunlit landscape, with here and

there the dead shadow of a frock coat. My Aunt Georgiana regarded them as though they had been so many

When the musicians came out and took their places, she gave a little stir of anticipation and looked with

quickening interest down over the rail at that invariable grouping, perhaps the first wholly familiar thing that

had greeted her eye since she had left old Maggie and her weakling calf. I could feel how all those details

sank into her soul, for I had not forgotten how they had sunk into mine when. I came fresh from plowing

forever and forever between green aisles of corn, where, as in a treadmill, one might walk from daybreak to

dusk without perceiving a shadow of change. The clean profiles of the musicians, the gloss of their linen, the

dull black of their coats, the beloved shapes of the instruments, the patches of yellow light thrown by the

green shaded lamps on the smooth, varnished bellies of the cellos and the bass viols in the rear, the restless,

windtossed forest of fiddle necks and bowsI recalled how, in the first orchestra I had ever heard, those long

bow strokes seemed to draw the heart out of me, as a conjurer's stick reels out yards of paper ribbon from a

The first number was the Tannhauser overture. When the horns drew out the first strain of the Pilgrim's

chorus my Aunt Georgiana clutched my coat sleeve. Then it was I first realized that for her this broke a

silence of thirty years; the inconceivable silence of the plains. With the battle between the two motives, with

the frenzy of the Venusberg theme and its ripping of strings, there came to me an overwhelming sense of the

waste and wear we are so powerless to combat; and I saw again the tall, naked house on the prairie, black and

grim as a wooden fortress; the black pond where I had learned to swim, its margin pitted with sundried

cattle tracks; the raingullied clay banks about the naked house, the four dwarf ash seedlings where the

dishcloths were always hung to dry before the kitchen door. The world there was the flat world of the

ancients; to the east, a cornfield that stretched to daybreak; to the west, a corral that reached to sunset;

The overture closed; my aunt released my coat sleeve, but she said nothing. She sat staring at the orchestra

through a dullness of thirty years, through the films made little by little by each of the three hundred and

sixtyfive days in every one of them. What, I wondered, did she get from it? She had been a good pianist in

her day I knew, and her musical education had been broader than that of most music teachers of a quarter of a

century ago. She had often told me of Mozart's operas and Meyerbeer's, and I could remember hearing her

sing, years ago, certain melodies of Verdi's. When I had fallen ill with a fever in her house she used to sit by

my cot in the eveningwhen the cool, night wind blew in through the faded mosquito netting tacked over

the window, and I lay watching a certain bright star that burned red above the cornfieldand sing "Home to

our mountains, O, let us return!" in a way fit to break the heart of a Vermont boy near dead of homesickness

I watched her closely through the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, trying vainly to conjecture what that seething

turmoil of strings and winds might mean to her, but she sat mutely staring at the violin bows that drove

obliquely downward, like the pelting streaks of rain in a summer shower. Had this music any message for

her? Had she enough left to at all comprehend this power which had kindled the world since she had left it? I

was in a fever of curiosity, but Aunt Georgiana sat silent upon her peak in Darien. She preserved this utter

immobility throughout the number from The Flying Dutchman, though her fingers worked mechanically

upon her black dress, as though, of themselves, they were recalling the piano score they had once played.

Poor old hands! They had been stretched and twisted into mere tentacles to hold and lift and knead with; the

palms unduly swollen, the fingers bent and knottedon one of them a thin, worn band that had once been a

wedding ring. As I pressed and gently quieted one of those groping hands I remembered with quivering

Soon after the tenor began the "Prize Song," I heard a quick drawn breath and turned to my aunt. Her eyes

were closed, but the tears were glistening on her cheeks, and I think, in a moment more, they were in my eyes

as well. It never really died, then the soul that can suffer so excruciatingly and so interminably; it withers

to the outward eye only; like that strange moss which can lie on a dusty shelf half a century and yet, if placed

in water, grows green again. She wept so throughout the development and elaboration of the melody.

During the intermission before the second half of the concert, I questioned my aunt and found that the "Prize

Song" was not new to her. Some years before there had drifted to the farm in Red Willow County a young

German, a tramp cowpuncher, who had sung the chorus at Bayreuth, when he was a boy, along with the other

peasant boys and girls. Of a Sunday morning he used to sit on his ginghamsheeted bed in the hands'

bedroom which opened off the kitchen, cleaning the leather of his boots and saddle, singing the "Prize Song,"

while my aunt went about her work in the kitchen. She had hovered about him until she had prevailed upon

him to join the country church, though his sole fitness for this step, insofar as I could gather, lay in his boyish

face and his possession of this divine melody. Shortly afterward he had gone to town on the Fourth of July,

been drunk for several days, lost his money at a faro table, ridden a saddled Texan steer on a bet, and

disappeared with a fractured collarbone. All this my aunt told me huskily, wanderingly, as though she were

"Well, we have come to better things than the old Trovatore at any rate, Aunt Georgie?" I queried, with a

Her lip quivered and she hastily put her handkerchief up to her mouth. From behind it she murmured, "And

you have been hearing this ever since you left me, Clark?" Her question was the gentlest and saddest of

The second half of the program consisted of four numbers from the Ring, and closed with Siegfried's funeral

march. My aunt wept quietly, but almost continuously, as a shallow vessel overflows in a rainstorm. From

time to time her dim eyes looked up at the lights which studded the ceiling, burning softly under their dull

glass globes; doubtless they were stars in truth to her. I was still perplexed as to what measure of musical

comprehension was left to her, she who had heard nothing but the singing of gospel hymns at Methodist

services in the square frame schoolhouse on Section Thirteen for so many years. I was wholly unable to

gauge how much of it had been dissolved in soapsuds, or worked into bread, or milked into the bottom of a

The deluge of sound poured on and on; I never knew what she found in the shining current of it; I never knew

how far it bore her, or past what happy islands. From the trembling of her face I could well believe that

before the last numbers she had been carried out where the myriad graves are, into the gray, nameless burying

grounds of the sea; or into some world of death vaster yet, where, from the beginning of the world, hope has

The concert was over; the people filed out of the hall chattering and laughing, glad to relax and find the living

level again, but my kinswoman made no effort to rise. The harpist slipped its green felt cover over his

instrument; the flute players shook the water from their mouthpieces; the men of the orchestra went out one

by one, leaving the stage to the chairs and music stands, empty as a winter cornfield.

I spoke to my aunt. She burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly. "I don't want to go, Clark, I don't want to go!"

I understood. For her, just outside the door of the concert hall, lay the black pond with the cattletracked

bluffs; the tall, unpainted house, with weathercurled boards; naked as a tower, the crookbacked ash

seedlings where the dishcloths hung to dry; the gaunt, molting turkeys picking up refuse about the kitchen

It was Paul's afternoon to appear before the faculty of the Pittsburgh High School to account for his various

misdemeanors. He had been suspended a week ago, and his father had called at the Principal's office and

confessed his perplexity about his son. Paul entered the faculty room suave and smiling. His clothes were a

trifle outgrown, and the tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn; but for all that

there was something of the dandy about him, and he wore an opal pin in his neatly knotted black

fourinhand, and a red carnation in his buttonhole. This latter adornment the faculty somehow felt was not

properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension.

Paul was tall for his age and very thin, with high, cramped shoulders and a narrow chest. His eyes were

remarkable for a certain hysterical brilliancy, and he continually used them in a conscious, theatrical sort of

way, peculiarly offensive in a boy. The pupils were abnormally large, as though he were addicted to

belladonna, but there was a glassy glitter about them which that drug does not produce.

When questioned by the Principal as to why he was there Paul stated, politely enough, that he wanted to come

back to school. This was a lie, but Paul was quite accustomed to lying; found it, indeed, indispensable for

overcoming friction. His teachers were asked to state their respective charges against him, which they did

with such a rancor and aggrievedness as evinced that this was not a usual case, Disorder and impertinence

were among the offenses named, yet each of his instructors felt that it was scarcely possible to put into words

the real cause of the trouble, which lay in a sort of hysterically defiant manner of the boy's; in the contempt

which they all knew he felt for them, and which he seemingly made not the least effort to conceal. Once,

when he had been making a synopsis of a paragraph at the blackboard, his English teacher had stepped to his

side and attempted to guide his hand. Paul had started back with a shudder and thrust his hands violently

behind him. The astonished woman could scarcely have been more hurt and embarrassed had he struck at her.

The insult was so involuntary and definitely personal as to be unforgettable. in one way and another he had

made all his teachers, men and women alike, conscious of the same feeling of physical aversion. In one class

he habitually sat with his hand shading his eyes; in another he always looked out of the window during the

recitation; in another he made a running commentary on the lecture, with humorous intention.

His teachers felt this afternoon that his whole attitude was symbolized by his shrug and his flippantly red

carnation flower, and they fell upon him without mercy, his English teacher leading the pack. He stood

through it smiling, his pale lips parted over his white teeth. (His lips were continually twitching, and be had a

habit of raising his eyebrows that was contemptuous and irritating to the last degree.) Older boys than Paul

had broken down and shed tears under that baptism of fire, but his set smile did not once desert him, and his

only sign of discomfort was the nervous trembling of the fingers that toyed with the buttons of his overcoat,

and an occasional jerking of the other hand that held his hat. Paul was always smiling, always glancing about

him, seeming to feel that people might be watching him and trying to detect something. This conscious

expression, since it was as far as possible from boyish mirthfulness, was usually attributed to insolence or

As the inquisition proceeded one of his instructors repeated an impertinent remark of the boy's, and the

Principal asked him whether he thought that a courteous speech to have made a woman. Paul shrugged his

"I don't know," he replied. "I didn't mean to be polite or impolite, either. I guess it's a sort of way I have of

The Principal, who was a sympathetic man, asked him whether he didn't think that a way it would be well to

get rid of. Paul grinned and said he guessed so. When he was told that he could go he bowed gracefully and

His teachers were in despair, and his drawing master voiced the feeling of them all when he declared there

was something about the boy which none of them understood. He added: "I don't really believe that smile of

his comes altogether from insolence; there's something sort of haunted about it. The boy is not strong, for one

thing. I happen to know that he was born in Colorado, only a few months before his mother died out there of

The drawing master had come to realize that, in looking at Paul, one saw only his white teeth and the forced

animation of his eyes. One warm afternoon the boy had gone to sleep at his drawing board, and his master

had noted with amazement what a white, blueveined face it was; drawn and wrinkled like an old man's

about the eyes, the lips twitching even in his sleep, and stiff with a nervous tension that drew them back from

His teachers left the building dissatisfied and unhappy; humiliated to have felt so vindictive toward a mere

boy, to have uttered this feeling in cutting terms, and to have set each other on, as it were, in the gruesome

game of intemperate reproach. Some of them remembered having seen a miserable street cat set at bay by a

As for Paul, he ran down the hill whistling the "Soldiers' Chorus" from Faust, looking wildly behind him now

and then to see whether some of his teachers were not there to writhe under his lightheartedness. As it was

now late in the afternoon and Paul was on duty that evening as usher at Carnegie Hall, he decided that he

would not go home to supper. When he reached the concert hall the doors were not yet open and, as it was

chilly outside, he decided to go up into the picture galleryalways deserted at this hourwhere there were

some of Raffelli's gay studies of Paris streets and an airy blue Venetian scene or two that always exhilarated

him. He was delighted to find no one in the gallery but the old guard, who sat in one corner, a newspaper on

his knee, a black patch over one eye and the other closed. Paul possessed himself of the peace and walked

confidently up and down, whistling under his breath. After a while he sat down before a blue Rico and lost

himself. When he bethought him to look at his watch, it was after seven o'clock, and he rose with a start and

ran downstairs, making a face at Augustus, peering out from the cast room, and an evil gesture at the Venus

When Paul reached the ushers' dressing room half a dozen boys were there already, and he began excitedly to

tumble into his uniform. It was one of the few that at all approached fitting, and Paul thought it very

becomingthough he knew that the tight, straight coat accentuated his narrow chest, about which he was

exceedingly sensitive. He was always considerably excited while be dressed, twanging all over to the tuning

of the strings and the preliminary flourishes of the horns in the music room; but tonight he seemed quite

beside himself, and he teased and plagued the boys until, telling him that he was crazy, they put him down on

Somewhat calmed by his suppression, Paul dashed out to the front of the house to seat the early comers. He

was a model usher; gracious and smiling he ran up and down the aisles; nothing was too much trouble for

him; he carried messages and brought programs as though it were his greatest pleasure in life, and all the

people in his section thought him a charming boy, feeling that he remembered and admired them. As the

house filled, he grew more and more vivacious and animated, and the color came to his cheeks and lips. It

was very much as though this were a great reception and Paul were the host. just as the musicians came out to

take their places, his English teacher arrived with checks for the seats which a prominent manufacturer had

taken for the season. She betrayed some embarrassment when she handed Paul the tickets, and a hauteur

which subsequently made her feel very foolish. Paul was startled for a moment, and had the feeling of

wanting to put her out; what business had she here among all these fine people and gay colors? He looked her

over and decided that she was not appropriately dressed and must be a fool to sit downstairs in such togs. The

tickets had probably been sent her out of kindness, he reflected as he put down a seat for her, and she had

When the symphony began Paul sank into one of the rear seats with a long sigh of relief, and lost himself as

he had done before the Rico. It was not that symphonies, as such, meant anything in particular to Paul, but the

first sigh of the instruments seemed to free some hilarious and potent spirit within him; something that

struggled there like the genie in the bottle found by the Arab fisherman. He felt a sudden zest of life; the

lights danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable splendor. When the soprano

soloist came on Paul forgot even the nastiness of his teacher's being there and gave himself up to the peculiar

stimulus such personages always had for him. The soloist chanced to be a German woman, by no means in

her first youth, and the mother of many children; but she wore an elaborate gown and a tiara, and above all

she had that indefinable air of achievement, that worldshine upon her, which, in Paul's eyes, made her a

After a concert was over Paul was always irritable and wretched until he got to sleep, and tonight he was even

more than usually restless. He had the feeling of not being able to let down, of its being impossible to give up

this delicious excitement which was the only thing that could be called living at all. During the last number

he withdrew and, after hastily changing his clothes in the dressing room, slipped out to the side door where

the soprano's carriage stood. Here he began pacing rapidly up and down the walk, waiting to see her come

Over yonder, the Schenley, in its vacant stretch, loomed big and square through the fine rain, the windows of

its twelve stories glowing like those of a lighted cardboard house under a Christmas tree. All the actors and

singers of the better class stayed there when they were in the city, and a number of the big manufacturers of

the place lived there in the winter. Paul had often hung about the hotel, watching the people go in and out,

At last the singer came out, accompanied by the conductor, who helped her into her carriage and closed the

door with a cordial auf wiedersehen which set Paul to wondering whether she were not an old sweetheart of

his. Paul followed the carriage over to the hotel, walking so rapidly as not to be far from the entrance when

the singer alighted, and disappeared behind the swinging glass doors that were opened by a Negro in a tall hat

and a long coat. In the moment that the door was ajar it seemed to Paul that he, too, entered. He seemed to

feel himself go after her up the steps, into the warm, lighted building, into an exotic, tropical world of shiny,

glistening surfaces and basking ease. He reflected upon the mysterious dishes that were brought into the

dining room, the green bottles in buckets of ice, as he had seen them in the supper party pictures of the

Sunday World supplement. A quick gust of wind brought the rain down with sudden vehemence, and Paul

was startled to find that he was still outside in the slush of the gravel driveway; that his boots were letting in

the water and his scanty overcoat was clinging wet about him; that the lights in front of the concert hall were

out and that the rain was driving in sheets between him and the orange glow of the windows above him.

There it was, what be wantedtangibly before him, like the fairy world of a Christmas pantomimebut

mocking spirits stood guard at the doors, and, as the rain beat in his face, Paul wondered whether he were

He turned and walked reluctantly toward the car tracks. The end had to come sometime; his father in his

nightclothes at the top of the stairs, explanations that did not explain, hastily improvised fictions that were

forever tripping him up, his upstairs room and its horrible yellow wallpaper, the creaking bureau with the

greasy plush collarbox, and over his painted wooden bed the pictures of George Washington and John Calvin,

and the framed motto, "Feed my Lambs," which had been worked in red worsted by his mother.

Half an hour later Paul alighted from his car and went slowly down one of the side streets off the main

thoroughfare. It was a highly respectable street, where all the houses were exactly alike, and where

businessmen of moderate means begot and reared large families of children, all of whom went to Sabbath

school and learned the shorter catechism, and were interested in arithmetic; all of whom were as exactly alike

as their homes, and of a piece with the monotony in which they lived. Paul never went up Cordelia Street

without a shudder of loathing. His home was next to the house of the Cumberland minister. He approached it

tonight with the nerveless sense Of defeat, the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and

commonness that he had always had when he came home. The moment he turned into Cordelia Street he felt

the waters close above his head. After each of these orgies of living he experienced all the physical

depression which follows a debauch; the loathing of respectable beds, of common food, of a house penetrated

by kitchen odors; a shuddering repulsion for the flavorless, colorless mass of everyday existence; a morbid

The nearer he approached the house, the more absolutely unequal Paul felt to the sight of it all: his ugly

sleeping chamber; the cold bathroom with the grimy zinc tub, the cracked mirror, the dripping spiggots; his

father, at the top of the stairs, his hairy legs sticking out from his nightshirt, his feet thrust into carpet slippers.

He was so much later than usual that there would certainly be inquiries and reproaches. Paul stopped short

before the door. He felt that he could not be accosted by his father tonight; that he could not toss again on that

miserable bed. He would not go in. He would tell his father that he had no carfare and it was raining so hard

Meanwhile, he was wet and cold. He went around to the back of the house and tried one of the basement

windows, found it open, raised it cautiously, and scrambled down the cellar wall to the floor. There he stood,

holding his breath, terrified by the noise he had made, but the floor above him was silent, and there was no

creak on the stairs. He found a soapbox, and carried it over to the soft ring of light that streamed from the

furnace door, and sat down. He was horribly afraid of rats, so he did not try to sleep, but sat looking

distrustfully at the dark, still terrified lest he might have awakened his father. In such reactions, after one of

the experiences which made days and nights out of the dreary blanks of the calendar, when his senses were

deadened, Paul's head was always singularly clear. Suppose his father had heard him getting in at the window

and had come down and shot him for a burglar? Then, again, suppose his father had come down, pistol in

hand, and he had cried out in time to save himself, and his father had been horrified to think how nearly he

had killed him? Then, again, suppose a day should come when his father would remember that night, and

wish there had been no warning cry to stay his hand? With this last supposition Paul entertained himself until

The following Sunday was fine; the sodden November chill was broken by the last flash of autumnal

summer. In the morning Paul had to go to church and Sabbath school, as always. On seasonable Sunday

afternoons the burghers of Cordelia Street always sat out on their front stoops and talked to their neighbors on

the next stoop, or called to those across the street in neighborly fashion. The men usually sat on gay cushions

placed upon the steps that led down to the sidewalk, while the women, in their Sunday "waists," sat in rockers

on the cramped porches, pretending to be greatly at their ease. The children played in the streets; there were

so many of them that the place resembled the recreation grounds of a kindergarten. The men on the

stepsall in their shirt sleeves, their vests unbuttonedsat with their legs well apart, their stomachs

comfortably protruding, and talked of the prices of things, or told anecdotes of the sagacity of their various

chiefs and overlords. They occasionally looked over the multitude of squabbling children, listened

affectionately to their highpitched, nasal voices, smiling to see their own proclivities reproduced in their

offspring, and interspersed their legends of the iron kings with remarks about their sons' progress at school,

On this last Sunday of November Paul sat all the afternoon on the lowest step of his stoop, staring into the

street, while his sisters, in their rockers, were talking to the minister's daughters next door about how many

shirtwaists they had made in the last week, and bow many waffles someone had eaten at the last church

supper. When the weather was warm, and his father was in a particularly jovial frame of mind, the girls made

lemonade, which was always brought out in a redglass pitcher, ornamented with forgetmenots in blue

enamel. This the girls thought very fine, and the neighbors always joked about the suspicious color of the

Today Paul's father sat on the top step, talking to a young man who shifted a restless baby from knee to knee.

He happened to be the young man who was daily held up to Paul as a model, and after whom it was his

father's dearest hope that he would pattern. This young man was of a ruddy complexion, with a compressed,

red mouth, and faded, nearsighted eyes, over which he wore thick spectacles, with gold bows that curved

about his ears. He was clerk to one of the magnates of a great steel corporation, and was looked upon in

Cordelia Street as a young man with a future. There was a story that, some five years agohe was now

barely twentysixhe had been a trifle dissipated, but in order to curb his appetites and save the loss of time

and strength that a sowing of wild oats might have entailed, he had taken his chief's advice, oft reiterated to

his employees, and at twenty one had married the first woman whom he could persuade to share his

fortunes. She happened to be an angular schoolmistress, much older than he, who also wore thick glasses, and

The young man was relating how his chief, now cruising in the Mediterranean, kept in touch with all the

details of the business, arranging his office hours on his yacht just as though he were at home, and "knocking

off work enough to keep two stenographers busy." His father told, in turn, the plan his corporation was

considering, of putting in an electric railway plant in Cairo. Paul snapped his teeth; he had an awful

apprehension that they might spoil it all before he got there. Yet he rather liked to hear these legends of the

iron kings that were told and retold on Sundays and holidays; these stories of palaces in Venice, yachts on the

Mediterranean, and high play at Monte Carlo appealed to his fancy, and he was interested in the triumphs of

these cash boys who had become famous, though he had no mind for the cashboy stage.

After supper was over and he had helped to dry the dishes, Paul nervously asked his father whether he could

go to George's to get some help in his geometry, and still more nervously asked for carfare. This latter request

he had to repeat, as his father, on principle, did not like to hear requests for money, whether much or little. He

asked Paul whether he could not go to some boy who lived nearer, and told him that he ought not to leave his

schoolwork until Sunday; but he gave him the dime. He was not a poor man, but he had a worthy ambition to

come up in the world. His only reason for allowing Paul to usher was that he thought a boy ought to be

Paul bounded upstairs, scrubbed the greasy odor of the dishwater from his hands with the illsmelling soap

he hated, and then shook over his fingers a few drops of violet water from the bottle he kept hidden in his

drawer. He left the house with his geometry conspicuously under his arm, and the moment he got out of

Cordelia Street and boarded a downtown car, he shook off the lethargy of two deadening days and began to

The leading juvenile of the permanent stock company which played at one of the downtown theaters was an

acquaintance of Paul's, and the boy had been invited to drop in at the Sundaynight rehearsals whenever he

could. For more than a year Paul had spent every available moment loitering about Charley Edwards's

dressing room. He had won a place among Edwards's following not only because the young actor, who could

not afford to employ a dresser, often found him useful, but because he recognized in Paul something akin to

It was at the theater and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This

was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love. The moment he inhaled the gassy,

painty, dusty odor behind the scenes, he breathed like a prisoner set free, and felt within him the possibility of

doing or saying splendid, brilliant, poetic things. The moment the cracked orchestra beat out the overture

from Martha, or jerked at the serenade from Rigoletto, all stupid and ugly things slid from him, and his senses

Perhaps it was because, in Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness, that a certain

element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty. Perhaps it was because his experience of life

elsewhere was so full of Sabbath school picnics, petty economies, wholesome advice as to how to succeed

in life, and the inescapable odors of cooking, that he found this existence so alluring, these smartly clad men

and women so attractive, that he was so moved by these starry apple orchards that bloomed perennially under

It would be difficult to put it strongly enough how convincingly the stage entrance of that theater was for Paul

the actual portal of Romance. Certainly none of the company ever suspected it, least of all Charley Edwards.

It was very like the old stories that used to float about London of fabulously rich Jews, who had subterranean

halls there, with palms, and fountains, and soft lamps and richly appareled women who never saw the

disenchanting light of London day. So, in the midst of that smokepalled city, enamored of figures and grimy

toil, Paul had his secret temple, his wishing carpet, his bit of blueand white Mediterranean shore bathed in

Several of Paul's teachers had a theory that his imagination had been perverted by garish fiction, but the truth

was that he scarcely ever read at all. The books at home were not such as would either tempt or corrupt a

youthful mind, and as for reading the novels that some of his friends urged upon himwell, he got what he

wanted much more quickly from music; any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel organ. He needed

only the spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses, and he could make

plots and pictures enough of his own. It was equally true that he was not stagestrucknot, at any rate, in the

usual acceptation of that expression. He had no desire to become an actor, any more than he had to become a

musician. He felt no necessity to do any of these things; what he wanted was to see, to be in the atmosphere,

float on the wave of it, to be carried out, blue league after blue league, away from everything.

After a night behind the scenes Paul found the schoolroom more than ever repulsive; the bare floors and

naked walls; the prosy men who never wore frock coats, or violets in their buttonholes; the women with their

dull gowns, shrill voices, and pitiful seriousness about prepositions that govern the dative. He could not bear

to have the other pupils think, for a moment, that he took these people seriously; he must convey to them that

he considered it all trivial, and was there only by way of a jest, anyway. He had autographed pictures of all

the members of the stock company which he showed his classmates, telling them the most incredible stories

of his familiarity with these people, of his acquaintance with the soloists who came to Carnegie Hall, his

suppers with them and the flowers he sent them. When these stories lost their effect, and his audience grew

listless, he became desperate and would bid all the boys goodby, announcing that he was going to travel for

a while; going to Naples, to Venice, to Egypt. Then, next Monday, he would slip back, conscious and

nervously smiling; his sister was ill, and he should have to defer his voyage until spring.

Matters went steadily worse with Paul at school. In the itch to let his instructors know how heartily he

despised them and their homilies, and how thoroughly he was appreciated elsewhere, he mentioned once or

twice that he had no time to fool with theorems; addingwith a twitch of the eyebrows and a touch of that

nervous bravado which so perplexed themthat he was helping the people down at the stock company; they

The upshot of the matter was that the Principal went to Paul's father, and Paul was taken out of school and put

to work. The manager at Carnegie Hall was told to get another usher in his stead; the doorkeeper at the

theater was warned not to admit him to the house; and Charley Edwards remorsefully promised the boy's

The members of the stock company were vastly amused when some of Paul's stories reached

themespecially the women. They were hardworking women, most of them supporting indigent husbands or

brothers, and they laughed rather bitterly at having stirred the boy to such fervid and florid inventions. They

The eastbound train was plowing through a January snowstorm; the dull dawn was beginning to show gray

when the engine whistled a mile out of Newark. Paul started up from the seat where he had lain curled in

uneasy slumber, rubbed the breathmisted window glass with his hand, and peered out. The snow was

whirling in curling eddies above the white bottom lands, and the drifts lay already deep in the fields and

along the fences, while here and there the long dead grass and dried weed stalks protruded black above it.

Lights shone from the scattered houses, and a gang of laborers who stood beside the track waved their

Paul had slept very little, and he felt grimy and uncomfortable. He had made the allnight journey in a day

coach, partly because he was ashamed, dressed as he was, to go into a Pullman, and partly because he was

afraid of being seen there by some Pittsburgh businessman, who might have noticed him in Denny Carson's

office. When the whistle awoke him, he clutched quickly at his breast pocket, glancing about him with an

uncertain smile. But the little, claybespattered Italians were still sleeping, the slatternly women across the

aisle were in openmouthed oblivion, and even the crumby, crying babies were for the nonce stilled. Paul

When he arrived at the Jersey City station he hurried through his breakfast, manifestly ill at ease and keeping

a sharp eye about him. After he reached the Twentythird Street station, he consulted a cabman and had

himself driven to a men'sfurnishings establishment that was just opening for the day. He spent upward of

two hours there, buying with endless reconsidering and great care. His new street suit he put on in the fitting

room; the frock coat and dress clothes he had bundled into the cab with his linen. Then he drove to a hatter's

and a shoe house. His next errand was at Tiffany's, where he selected his silver and a new scarf pin. He would

not wait to have his silver marked, he said. Lastly, he stopped at a trunk shop on Broadway and had his

It was a little after one o'clock when he drove up to the Waldorf, and after settling with the cabman, went into

the office. He registered from Washington; said his mother and father had been abroad, and that he had come

down to await the arrival of their steamer. He told his story plausibly and had no trouble, since he volunteered

to pay for them in advance, in engaging his rooms; a sleeping room, sitting room, and bath.

Not once, but a hundred times, Paul had planned this entry into New York. He had gone over every detail of

it with Charley Edwards, and in his scrapbook at home there were pages of description about New York

hotels, cut from the Sunday papers. When he was shown to his sitting room on the eighth floor he saw at a

glance that everything was as it should be; there was but one detail in his mental picture that the place did not

realize, so he rang for the bellboy and sent him down for flowers. He moved about nervously until the boy

returned, putting away his new linen and fingering it delightedly as he did so. When the flowers came he put

them hastily into water, and then tumbled into a hot bath. Presently he came out of his white bathroom,

resplendent in his new silk underwear, and playing with the tassels of his red robe. The snow was whirling so

fiercely outside his windows that he could scarcely see across the street, but within the air was deliciously

soft and fragrant. He put the violets and jonquils on the taboret beside the couch, and threw himself down,

with a long sigh, covering himself with a Roman blanket. He was thoroughly tired; he had been in such haste,

he had stood up to such a strain, covered so much ground in the last twentyfour hours, that he wanted to

think how it had all come about. Lulled by the sound of the wind, the warm air, and the cool fragrance of the

It had been wonderfully simple; when they had shut him out of the theater and concert hall, when they had

taken away his bone, the whole thing was virtually determined. The rest was a mere matter of opportunity.

The only thing that at all surprised him was his own couragefor he realized well enough that he had always

been tormented by fear, a sort of apprehensive dread that, of late years, as the meshes of the lies he had told

closed about him, had been pulling the muscles of his body tighter and tighter. Until now he could not

remember the time when he had not been dreading something. Even when he was a little boy it was always

therebehind him, or before, or on either side. There had always been the shadowed corner, the dark place

into which he dared not look, but from which something seemed always to be watching himand Paul had

But now he had a curious sense of relief, as though he had at last thrown down the gauntlet to the thing in the

Yet it was but a day since he had been sulking in the traces; but yesterday afternoon that he had been sent to

the bank with Denny Carson's deposit, as usualbut this time he was instructed to leave the book to be

balanced. There was above two thousand dollars in checks, and nearly a thousand in the bank notes which he

had taken from the book and quietly transferred to his pocket. At the bank he had made out a new deposit

slip. His nerves had been steady enough to permit of his returning to the office, where he had finished his

work and asked for a full day's holiday tomorrow, Saturday, giving a perfectly reasonable pretext. The

bankbook, be knew, would not be returned before Monday or Tuesday, and his father would be out of town

for the next week. From the time he slipped the bank notes into his pocket until he boarded the night train for

New York, he had not known a moment's hesitation. It was not the first time Paul had steered through

How astonishingly easy it had all been; here he was, the thing done; and this time there would be no

awakening, no figure at the top of the stairs. He watched the snowflakes whirling by his window until he fell

When he awoke, it was three o'clock in the afternoon. He bounded up with a start; half of one of his precious

days gone already! He spent more than an hour in dressing, watching every stage of his toilet carefully in the

mirror. Everything was quite perfect; he was exactly the kind of boy he had always wanted to be.

When he went downstairs Paul took a carriage and drove up Fifth Avenue toward the Park. The snow had

somewhat abated; carriages and tradesmen's wagons were hurrying soundlessly to and fro in the winter

twilight; boys in woolen mufflers were shoveling off the doorsteps; the avenue stages made fine spots of

color against the white street. Here and there on the corners were stands, with whole flower gardens blooming

under glass cases, against the sides of which the snowflakes stuck and melted; violets, roses, carnations, lilies

of the valleysomehow vastly more lovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow.

When he returned, the pause of the twilight had ceased and the tune of the streets had changed. The snow was

falling faster, lights streamed from the hotels that reared their dozen stories fearlessly up into the storm,

defying the raging Atlantic winds. A long, black stream of carriages poured down the avenue, intersected

here and there by other streams, tending horizontally. There were a score of cabs about the entrance of his

hotel, and his driver had to wait. Boys in livery were running in and out of the awning stretched across the

sidewalk, up and down the red velvet carpet laid from the door to the street. Above, about, within it all was

the rumble and roar, the hurry and toss of thousands of human beings as hot for pleasure as himself, and on

The boy set his teeth and drew his shoulders together in a spasm of realization; the plot of all dramas, the text

of all romances, the nervestuff of all sensations was whirling about him like the snowflakes. He burnt like a

When Paul went down to dinner the music of the orchestra came floating up the elevator shaft to greet him.

His head whirled as he stepped into the thronged corridor, and he sank back into one of the chairs against the

wall to get his breath. The lights, the chatter, the perfumes, the bewildering medley of colorhe had, for a

moment, the feeling of not being able to stand it. But only for a moment; these were his own people, he told

himself. He went slowly about the corridors, through the writing rooms, smoking rooms, reception rooms, as

though he were exploring the chambers of an enchanted palace, built and peopled for him alone.

When he reached the dining room he sat down at a table near a window. The flowers, the white linen, the

manycolored wineglasses, the gay toilettes of the women, the low popping of corks, the undulating

repetitions of the Blue Danube from the orchestra, all flooded Paul's dream with bewildering radiance. When

the roseate tinge of his champagne was addedthat cold, precious, bubbling stuff that creamed and foamed

in his glass Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world at all. This was what all the world was

fighting for, he reflected; this was what all the struggle was about. He doubted the reality of his past. Had he

ever known a place called Cordelia Street, a place where faggedlooking businessmen got on the early car;

mere rivets in a machine they seemed to Paul,sickening men, with combings of children's hair always

hanging to their coats, and the smell of cooking in their clothes. Cordelia StreetAh, that belonged to

another time and country; had he not always been thus, had he not sat here night after night, from as far back

as he could remember, looking pensively over just such shimmering textures and slowly twirling the stem of

a glass like this one between his thumb and middle finger? He rather thought he had.

He was not in the least abashed or lonely. He had no especial desire to meet or to know any of these people;

all he demanded was the right to look on and conjecture, to watch the pageant. The mere stage properties

were all he contended for. Nor was he lonely later in the evening, in his lodge at the Metropolitan. He was

now entirely rid of his nervous misgivings, of his forced aggressiveness, of the imperative desire to show

himself different from his surroundings. He felt now that his surroundings explained him. Nobody questioned

the purple; he had only to wear it passively. He had only to glance down at his attire to reassure himself that

He found it hard to leave his beautiful sitting room to go to bed that night, and sat long watching the raging

storm from his turret window. When he went to sleep it was with the lights turned on in his bedroom; partly

because of his old timidity, and partly so that, if he should wake in the night, there would be no wretched

moment of doubt, no horrible suspicion of yellow wallpaper, or of Washington and Calvin above his bed.

Sunday morning the city was practically snowbound. Paul breakfasted late, and in the afternoon he fell in

with a wild San Francisco boy, a freshman at Yale, who said he had run down for a "little flyer" over Sunday.

The young man offered to show Paul the night side of the town, and the two boys went out together after

dinner, not returning to the hotel until seven o'clock the next morning. They had started out in the confiding

warmth of a champagne friendship, but their parting in the elevator was singularly cool. The freshman pulled

himself together to make his train, and Paul went to bed. He awoke at two o'clock in the afternoon, very

On the part of the hotel management, Paul excited no suspicion. There was this to be said for him, that he

wore his spoils with dignity and in no way made himself conspicuous. Even under the glow of his wine he

was never boisterous, though he found the stuff like a magician's wand for wonderbuilding. His chief

greediness lay in his ears and eyes, and his excesses were not offensive ones. His dearest pleasures were the

gray winter twilights in his sitting room; his quiet enjoyment of his flowers, his clothes, his wide divan, his

cigarette, and his sense of power. He could not remember a time when he had felt so at peace with himself.

The mere release from the necessity of petty lying, lying every day and every day, restored his selfrespect.

He had never lied for pleasure, even at school; but to be noticed and admired, to assert his difference from

other Cordelia Street boys; and he felt a good deal more manly, more honest, even, now that he had no need

for boastful pretensions, now that he could, as his actor friends used to say, "dress the part." It was

characteristic that remorse did not occur to him. His golden days went by without a shadow, and he made

On the eighth day after his arrival in New York he found the whole affair exploited in the Pittsburgh papers,

exploited with a wealth of detail which indicated that local news of a sensational nature was at a low ebb. The

firm of Denny Carson announced that the boy's father had refunded the full amount of the theft and that they

had no intention of prosecuting. The Cumberland minister had been interviewed, and expressed his hope of

yet reclaiming the motherless lad, and his Sabbathschool teacher declared that she would spare no effort to

that end. The rumor had reached Pittsburgh that the boy had been seen in a New York hotel, and his father

Paul had just come in to dress for dinner; he sank into a chair, weak to the knees, and clasped his head in his

hands. It was to be worse than jail, even; the tepid waters of Cordelia Street were to close over him finally

and forever. The gray monotony stretched before him in hopeless, unrelieved years; Sabbath school, Young

People's Meeting, the yellowpapered room, the damp dishtowels; it all rushed back upon him with a

sickening vividness. He had the old feeling that the orchestra had suddenly stopped, the sinking sensation that

the play was over. The sweat broke out on his face, and he sprang to his feet, looked about him with his

white, conscious smile, and winked at himself in the mirror, With something of the old childish belief in

miracles with which he had so often gone to class, all his lessons unlearned, Paul dressed and dashed

He had no sooner entered the dining room and caught the measure of the music than his remembrance was

lightened by his old elastic power of claiming the moment, mounting with it, and finding it allsufficient. The

glare and glitter about him, the mere scenic accessories had again, and for the last time, their old potency. He

would show himself that he was game, he would finish the thing splendidly. He doubted, more than ever, the

existence of Cordelia Street, and for the first time he drank his wine recklessly. Was he not, after all, one of

those fortunate beings born to the purple, was he not still himself and in his own place? He drummed a

nervous accompaniment to the Pagliacci music and looked about him, telling himself over and over that it

He reflected drowsily, to the swell of the music and the chill sweetness of his wine, that he might have done it

more wisely. He might have caught an outbound steamer and been well out of their clutches before now. But

the other side of the world had seemed too far away and too uncertain then; he could not have waited for it;

his need had been too sharp. If he had to choose over again, he would do the same thing tomorrow. He looked

affectionately about the dining room, now gilded with a soft mist. Ah, it had paid indeed!

Paul was awakened next morning by a painful throbbing in his head and feet. He had thrown himself across

the bed without undressing, and had slept with his shoes on. His limbs and hands were lead heavy, and his

tongue and throat were parched and burnt. There came upon him one of those fateful attacks of

clearheadedness that never occurred except when he was physically exhausted and his nerves hung loose. He

His father was in New York; "stopping at some joint or other," he told himself. The memory of successive

summers on the front stoop fell upon him like a weight of black water. He had not a hundred dollars left; and

he knew now, more than ever, that money was everything, the wall that stood between all he loathed and all

he wanted. The thing was winding itself up; he had thought of that on his first glorious day in New York, and

had even provided a way to snap the thread. It lay on his dressing table now; he had got it out last night when

he came blindly up from dinner, but the shiny metal hurt his eyes, and he disliked the looks of it.

He rose and moved about with a painful effort, succumbing now and again to attacks of nausea. It was the old

depression exaggerated; all the world had become Cordelia Street. Yet somehow he was not afraid of

anything, was absolutely calm; perhaps because he had looked into the dark corner at last and knew. It was

bad enough, what he saw there, but somehow not so bad as his long fear of it had been. He saw everything

clearly now. He had a feeling that he had made the best of it, that he had lived the sort of life he was meant to

live, and for half an hour he sat staring at the revolver. But he told himself that was not the way, so he went

When Paul arrived in Newark he got off the train and took another cab, directing the driver to follow the

Pennsylvania tracks out of the town. The snow lay heavy on the roadways and had drifted deep in the open

fields. Only here and there the dead grass or dried weed stalks projected, singularly black, above it. Once well

into the country, Paul dismissed the carriage and walked, floundering along the tracks, his mind a medley of

irrelevant things. He seemed to hold in his brain an actual picture of everything he had seen that morning. He

remembered every feature of both his drivers, of the toothless old woman from whom he had bought the red

flowers in his coat, the agent from whom he had got his ticket, and all of his fellow passengers on the ferry.

His mind, unable to cope with vital matters near at hand, worked feverishly and deftly at sorting and grouping

these images. They made for him a part of the ugliness of the world, of the ache in his head, and the bitter

burning on his tongue. He stooped and put a handful of snow into his mouth as he walked, but that, too,

seemed hot. When he reached a little hillside, where the tracks ran through a cut some twenty feet below him,

The carnations in his coat were drooping with the cold, he noticed, their red glory all over. It occurred to him

that all the flowers he had seen in the glass cases that first night must have gone the same way, long before

this. It was only one splendid breath they had, in spite of their brave mockery at the winter outside the glass;

and it was a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run. Paul

took one of the blossoms carefully from his coat and scooped a little hole in the snow, where he covered it up.

Then he dozed awhile, from his weak condition, seemingly insensible to the cold.

The sound of an approaching train awoke him, and he started to his feet, remembering only his resolution,

and afraid lest he should be too late. He stood watching the approaching locomotive, his teeth chattering, his

lips drawn away from them in a frightened smile; once or twice he glanced nervously sidewise, as though he

were being watched. When the right moment came, he jumped. As he fell, the folly of his haste occurred to

him with merciless clearness, the vastness of what he had left undone. There flashed through his brain,

clearer than ever before, the blue of Adriatic water, the yellow of Algerian sands.

He felt something strike his chest, and that his body was being thrown swiftly through the air, on and on,

immeasurably far and fast, while his limbs were gently relaxed. Then, because the picturemaking

mechanism was crushed, the disturbing visions flashed into black, and Paul dropped back into the immense