Title: The Foolish Virgin
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Author: Thomas Dixon
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The Foolish Virgin
Thomas Dixon
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Table of Contents
The Foolish Virgin..............................................................................................................................................1
Thomas Dixon ..........................................................................................................................................1
The Foolish Virgin
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The Foolish Virgin
Thomas Dixon
I. A FRIENDLY WARNING
II. TEMPTATION
III. FATE
IV. DOUBTS AND FEARS
V. WINGS OF STEEL
VI. BESIDE THE SEA
VII. A VAIN APPEAL
VIII. JIM'S TRIAL
IX. ELLA'S SECRET
X. THE WEDDING
XI. "UNTIL DEATH"
XII. THE LOTOSEATERS
XIII. THE REAL MAN
XIV. UNWELCOME GUESTS
XV. A LITTLE BLACK BAG
XVI. THE AWAKENING
XVII. THE SURRENDER
XVIII. TO THE NEW GOD
XIX. NANCE'S STOREHOUSE
XX. TRAPPED
XXI. THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE
XXII. DELIVERANCE
XXIII. THE DOCTOR
XXIV. THE CALL DIVINE
XXV. THE MOTHER
XXVI. A SOUL IS BORN
XXVII. THE BABY
XXVIII. WHAT IS LOVE?
XXIX. THE NEW MAN
TO GERTRUDE ATHERTON WITH GRATITUDE AND ADMIRATION
LEADING CHARACTERS OF THE STORY
MARY ADAMS, An OldFashioned Girl.
JIM ANTHONY, A Modern Youth.
JANE ANDERSON, An Artist.
ELLA, A Scrubwoman.
NANCE OWENS, Jim Anthony's Mother.
A DOCTOR, Whose Call was Divine.
THE BABY, A Mascot.
CHAPTER I. A FRIENDLY WARNING
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Mary Adams, you're a fool!"
The single dimple in a smooth red cheek smiled in answer.
"You're repeating yourself, Jane"
"You won't give him one hour's time for just three sittings?"
"Not a second for one sitting"
"Hopeless!"
Mary smiled provokingly, her white teeth gleaming in obstinate good humor.
"He's the most distinguished artist in America"
"I've heard so."
"It would be a liberal education for a girl of your training to know such a man"
"I'll omit that course of instruction."
The younger woman was silent a moment, and a flush of anger slowly mounted her temples. The blue eyes
were fixed reproachfully on her friend.
"You really thought that I would pose?"
"I hoped so."
"Alone with a man in his studio for hours?"
Jane Anderson lifted her dark brows.
"Why, no, I hardly expected that! I'm sure he would take his easel and palette out into the square in front of
the Plaza Hotel and let you sit on the base of the Sherman monument. The crowds would cheer and inspire
himbah! Can't you have a little common sense? There are a few brutes among artists, as there are in all
professionseven among the superintendents of your schools. Gordon's a great creative genius. If you'd try
to flirt with him, he'd stop his work and send you home. You'd be as safe in his studio as in your mother's
nursery. I've known him for ten years. He's the gentlest, truest man I've ever met. He's doing a canvas on
which he has set his whole heart."
"He can get professional models."
"For his usual work, yesbut this is the head of the Madonna. He saw you walking with me in the Park last
week and has been to my studio a halfdozen times begging me to take you to see him. Please, Mary dear, do
this for my sake. I owe Gordon a debt I can never pay. He gave me the cue to the work that set me on my
feet. He was big and generous and helpful when I needed a friend. He asked nothing in return but the
privilege of helping me again if I ever needed it. You can do me an enormous favorplease."
Mary Adams rose with a gesture of impatience, walked to her window and gazed on the torrent of humanity
pouring through Twentythird Street from the beehives of industry that have changed this quarter of New
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York so rapidly in the last five years. She turned suddenly and confronted her friend.
"How could you think that I would stoop to such a thing?"
"Stoop!"
"Yes," she snapped, "pose for an artist! I'd as soon think of rushing stark naked through Twentythird
Street at noon!"
The older woman looked at her flushed face, suppressed a sharp answer, broke into a fit of laughter and threw
her arms around Mary's neck.
"Honey, you're such a hopeless little fool, you're delicious! You know that I love youdon't you?"
The pretty lips quivered.
"Yes."
"Could I possibly ask you to do a thing that would harm a single brown hair of your head?"
The firm hand of the older girl touched a rebellious lock with tenderness.
"Of course not, from your point of view, Jane dear," the stubborn lips persisted. "But you see it's not my point
of view. You're older than I"
Jane smiled.
"Hoity toity, Miss! I'm just twentyeight and you're twentyfour. Age is not measured by calendars these
days."
"I didn't mean that," the girl apologized. "But you're an artist. You're established and distinguished. You
belong to a different world."
Jane Anderson laid her hand softly on her friend's.
"That's just it, dear. I do belong to a different worlda big new world of whose existence you are not quite
conscious. You are living in the old, old world in which women have groped for thousands of years. I don't
mind confessing that I undertook this job of getting you to pose for Gordon for a double purpose. I wished to
do something to repay the debt I owe himbut I wished far more to be of help to you. You're living in the
Dark Ages, and it's a dangerous thing for a pretty girl to live in the Dark Ages and date her letters from New
York today"
"I don't understand you in the least."
"And I'm afraid you never will."
She paused suddenly and changed her tone.
"Tell me now, are you happy in your work?"
"I'm earning sixty dollars a monthmy position is secure"
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"But are you happy in it?"
"I don't expect to teach school all my life," was the vague answer.
"Exactly. You loathe the sight of a schoolroom. You do the task they set you because your father's a
clergyman and can't support his big family. You're waiting and longing for the day of your deliverance
isn't it so?"
"Perhaps."
"And that day of deliverance?"
"Will come when I meet my Fate!"
"You'll meet him, too!"
"I will"
Jane Anderson shook her fine head.
"And may the Lord have mercy on your poor little soul when you do!"
"And why, pray?"
"Because you're the most helpless and defenseless of all the things He created."
Mary smiled.
"I've managed to take pretty good care of myself so far."
"And you willuntil the thunderbolt falls."
"The thunderbolt?"
"Until you meet your Fate."
"I'll have someone to look after me then."
"We'll hope so anyhow," was the quick retort.
"But can't you see, Jane dear, that we look at life from such utterly different angles. You glory in your work.
It's your inspirationthe breath you breathe. I don't believe in women working for money. I don't believe
God ever meant us to work when He made us women. He made us women for something more wonderful. I
don't see anything good or glorious in the fact that half the torrent of humanity you see down there pouring
through the street from those factories and offices is made up of women. They are wageearnersso much
the worse. They are forcing the scale of wages for men lower and lower. They are paying for it in weakened
bodies and sickly, hopeless children. We should not shout for joy; we should cry. God never meant for
woman to be a wageearner!"
A sob caught her voice and she paused.
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The artist watched her emotion with keen interest.
"Neither do I believe that God means to force woman at last to do the tasks of man. But she's doing them,
dearand it must be so until a brighter day dawns for humanity. The new world that opens before us will
never abolish marriage, but it has opened our eyes to know what it means. You refuse to open yours. You
refuse to see this new world about you. I've begged you to join one of my clubs. You refuse. I beg you to
meet and know such men of genius as Gordon"
"As an artist's model!"
"It's the only way on earth you can meet him. You stick to your narrow, hidebound conventional life and
dream of the Knight who will suddenly appear some day out of the mists and clouds. You dream of the Fate
God has prepared for you in His mysterious Providence. It's funny how that idea persists even today in
novels. As a matter of fact we know that the oldfashioned girl met her Fate because her shrewd mother
planned the meetingplanned it with cunning and stratagem. You're alone in a great modern city, with all
the conditions of the life of the old regime reversed or blotted out. Your mother is not here. And if she were,
her schemes to bring about the mysterious meeting of the Fates would be impossible. You outgrew the limits
of your village life. Your highly trained mind landed you in New York. You've fought your way to a
competent living in five years and kept yourself clean and unspotted from the world. Granted. But how many
men have you met who are your equals in culture and character?"
Jane paused and held Mary's gaze with steady persistence.
"How manyhonest?"
"None as yet," she confessed.
"But you live in the one fond, imperishable hope! It's the only thing that keeps you alive and going this
idea of your Fate. It's an obsessionthis mysterious Knight somewhere in the future riding to meet
you"
"I'll find him, never fear," the girl laughed.
"Of course you will. You'll make him out of whole cloth if it's necessary. Our ideals are really the same when
you come to analyze my wider outlook."
The artist paused and laughed softly.
"The same?" the girl asked incredulously.
"Certainly. Mine is based on intelligence, howeveryours on blind instinct perverted and twisted by the
idiotic fiction you read morning, noon and night."
"I don't see it," Mary answered emphatically. "Your ideal is fame, achievement, the applause of the
worldmine just a home and a baby"
Jane laughed softly.
"And that's all you know about me?"
"Isn't it true?"
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"You've been in this room five years, haven't you?" the older girl asked musingly.
"Yes"
"And though you've kept your lamp trimmed and burning, you haven't yet seen a man whom you could
recognize as your equal."
"I'm only twentyfour."
"In these five years I've met a hundred men my equal."
"And smashed the conventions of Society whenever you saw fit."
"Without breaking a single law of reason or common sense. In the meantime I've met two men who have
really made love to me. I thought I loved one of themuntil I met the other. The second proved himself to
be an unprincipled scoundrel. If I had held your views of life and hated my work, I would have married this
man and lived to awake in a prison whose only door was Death. But I loved my work. Life meant more than
one man who was not worth an hour's tears. I turned to my studio and he slipped back into the gutter where
he belonged. I'll meet MY Fate some day, too, dear. I'm waiting and watchingbut with clear eyes and
unafraid. I'll know mine when he comes, I shall not be blinded by passion or the fear of drudgery. Can't you
see this bigger world of realities?"
The dimple flashed again in the smooth red cheek.
"It's not for me, Jane. I'm just a modest little home body. I'll bide my time"
"And eat your foolish heart out here between the narrow walls of this cell you've built for yourself. I should
think you'd die living here alone."
The girl flushed.
"I'm not lonely"
"Don't fib! I know better. Your birds and kitten occupy daily about thirty minutes of the time that's your own.
What do you do with the rest of it?"
"Sit by my window, watch the crowds stream through the streets below, read and dream and think"
"Yesread love stories and dream about your Knight."
"Well?"
"It's morbid and unhealthy. You've hedged yourself about with the old conventions and imagine you're
safeand you areuntil you meet HIM!"
"I'll know how to behavenever fear."
"You mean you'll know how instantly to blindfold, halter and lead him to the Little Church Around the
Corner?"
Mary moved uneasily.
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"And what else should I do with him?"
"Compare him with other men. Weigh him in the balances of a remorseless commonsense. Study him under
a microscope and keep your reason clear. The girl who rushes into marriage in a great city under the
conditions in which you and I live is a fool. More girls are ruined in New York by marriage than by any other
process. The thunderbolt out of the blue hasn't struck you yet, but when it does"
"I'll tell you, Jane."
"Will you, honestly?"
The question was asked with wistful tenderness.
"I promise. And you mustn't think I don't appreciate this visit and the chance you've given again to enter the
`big world' you're always telling me about. I just can't do it, dear. It's not my world."
"All right, my little foolish virgin, have it your own way. When you're lonely, run up to my studio to see me.
I won't ask you to pose or meet any of the dangerous men of my circle. We'll lock the doors and have a snug
time all by ourselves."
"I'll remember."
The clock in the Metropolitan Tower chimed the hour of five, and Jane Anderson rose with a quick,
business like movement.
"Don't hurry," Mary protested. "I know I've been stubborn, but I've been so happy in your coming. I do get
lonelyfrightfully lonely, sometimesdon't think I'm ungrateful"
"You're dangerously beautiful, child," the artist said, with enthusiasm. "And remember that I love you no
matter how silly you aregoodby."
"You won't stay for a cup of tea? I meant to ask you an hour ago."
"No, I've an engagement with a dreadful man whom I've no idea of ever marrying. I'm going to dinner with
himjust to study the animal at dose range."
With a jolly laugh and quick, firm step she was gone.
Mary snatched the kitten from his snug bed between the pillows of the windowseat and pressed his fuzzy
head under her chin.
"She tempted us terribly, Kitty darling, but we didn't let her find outdid we? You know deep down in your
cat's soul that I was just dying to meet the distinguished Gordonbut such high honors are not for home
bodies like you and me"
She dropped on the seat and closed her eyes for a long time. The kitten watched her wonderingly sure of a
sudden outbreak with each passing moment. Two soft paws at last touched her cheeks and two bright eyes
sought in vain for hers. The little nose pressed closer and kissed the drooping eyelids until they opened. He
curled himself on her bosom and began to sing a gentle lullaby. For a long while she lay and listened to the
music of love with which her pet sought to soothe the ache within.
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The clock in the tower chimed six.
She lifted her body and placed her head on a pillow beside the window. The human torrent below was now at
its flood. Two streams of humanity flowed eastward along each broad sidewalk. Hundreds were pouring in
endless procession across Madison Square. The cars in Broadway north and South were jammed. Every day
she watched this crowd hurrying, hurrying away into the twilightand among all its hundreds of thousands
not an eye was ever lifted to hersnot one man or woman among them cared whether she lived or died.
It was horrible, this loneliness of the desert in an ocean of humanity! For the past year it had become an
increasing horror to look into the silent faces of this crowd of men and women and never feel the touch of a
friendly hand or hear the sound of a human voice in greeting.
And yet this endless procession held for her a supreme fascination. Somewhere among its myriads of
tramping feet, walked the one man created for her. She no more doubted this than she doubted God Himself.
It was His law. He had ordained it so. She had grown so used to the throngs below her window and so loved
the little park with its splashing fountain that she had refused to follow her landlady uptown when the
brownstone boardinghouse facing the Square had been turned into a studio building.
Instead of moving she had wheedled the landlord into allowing her to cut off a small space from her room for
a private bath and kitchenette, built a box couch across the window large enough for a three quarter mattress
and covered it with velour. For five dollars a week she had thus secured a little home in which was combined
a sittingroom, bedroom, bath and kitchenette.
It had its drawbacks, of course. The Professor downstairs who taught music sometimes gave a special lesson
at night, and the Italian sculptor who worked on the top floor used a hammer at the most impossible hours.
But on the whole she liked it better than the tiresome routine of boarding. She was not afraid at night. The
stampandcoin man who occupied the first floor, lived with his wife and baby in the rear. The janitress had
a room on the floor above hers. Two elderly women workers of ability in the mechanical arts occupied the
rear of her floor, and a dear little fat woman of fifty who drew designs for the New England weavers of
cotton goods lived in the room adjoining hers.
She had never spoken to any of these people, but Ella, the janitress, who cleaned up her place every morning,
had told her their history. Ella was a sociable soul, her face an eternal study and an inscrutable mystery. She
spoke both German and English and yet never a word of her own life's history passed her lips. She had loved
Mary from the moment she cocked her queer drawn face to one side and looked at her with the one good eye
she possessed. She was always doing little things for her comfortand never asked tips for it. If Mary
offered to pay she smiled quietly and spoke in the softest drawl: "Oh, that's nothing, child Ach, Gott im
Himmelnein!"
This oneeyed, homely woman who cleaned up her room for three dollars a month, and Jane Anderson, were
the only friends she had among the six million people whose lives centered on Manhattan Island.
Man had yet to darken her door. The little room had been carefully fitted, however, to receive her Knight
when the great event of his coming should be at hand.
The box couch was built of hard wood paneling and was covered with pillows of soft leather and silk. The
bedclothes were carefully stored in the locker beneath the mattress cushion. No one would ever suspect its
use as a bed. The bathroom was fitted with a bureau and no signs of a sleeping apartment disfigured the effect
of her one library, parlor, and receptionroom. A desk and bookcase stood at either end of the box couch.
The bookcase was filled with fictionlove stories exclusively.
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A large birdcage swung from a staple in the window and two canaries peered cautiously from their perches at
the kitten in her lap. She had trained him to ignore this cage.
The crowds below were thinning down. A light snow was falling. The girl lifted her pet and kissed his cold
nose.
"We must get our own dinner tonight, Mr. Thomascatit's snowing outside. And did you hear what she said,
Kitty dear`More girls are ruined by marriage in New York than by any other process!' A good joke,
Kitty!You and I know better than that if we do live in our own tiny world! We'll risk it some day, anyhow,
won't we?"
The kitten purred his assent and Mary bustled over the little gas stove humming an old love song her mother
had taught her in a faroff village in Kentucky.
CHAPTER II. TEMPTATION
Her kitchenette was a model of order and cleanliness. The carpenter who built its neat cupboard and fitted the
drawers beneath the tiny gas range, had outdone himself in its construction. He had given the wood work
four coats of immaculate white paint without extra charge. Mary had insisted on paying for it, but he waved
the proffered money aside with a gesture that spoke louder than words:
"Pooh! That's nothing to what I'd like to do for you."
She was not surprised when he called the following Saturday and stood at her door awkwardly fumbling his
hat, trying to ask her to spend the afternoon and evening at Coney Island with him. There was no mistaking
the manner in which he made this request.
She had refused him as gently as possiblea big, awkward, goodnatured, ignorant boy he was, with the
eyes of a St. Bernard dog. He apologized for his presumption and never repeated the offense.
Somehow her conquests had all been in this class.
The tall, blushing German youth from the butcher's around the corner had been slipping extra cuts into her
bundle and making awkward advances until she caught him redhanded with a pound of lamb chops which
he failed to explain. She read him a lecture on honesty that discouraged him. It was not so much what she
said, as the way she said it, that wounded his sensitive nature.
The ice man she had not yet entirely subdued. Tony Bonelli had the advantage of pretending not to
understand her orders of dismissal. He merely smiled in his sad Italian way and continued to pack her ice
box so full the lid would never close.
She was reminded at every turn tonight of these futile conquests of the impossible. They all smelled of the
back stairs and the kitchen. Her people had been slaveholders in the old regime of southern Kentucky. A
kindly tolerant contempt for the pretensions of a servant class was bred in the bone of her being.
And yet their tribute to her beauty had its compensations. It was the promise of triumph when he for whom
she waited should step from the throng and lift his hat. Just how he was going to do this without a breach of
the proprieties of life, she couldn't see. It would come. It must come. It was Fate.
In twenty minutes her coffeepot was boiling, the lamb chops broiled to perfection and she was seated before
the dainty, snowwhite table, the kitten softly begging at her feet. Half an hour later, every dish and pot and
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pan was back in its place in perfect order. She prided herself on her mastery of the details of cooking and the
most economical administration of every dollar devoted to housekeeping. She studied cooking in the best
schools the city afforded. She meant to show her Knight a thing or two in this line when the time came. His
wife would not be an ignorant slattern, the victim of incompetent servants. No servant could fool her. She
would know the business of the house down to its minutest detail.
Not that she loved dishwashing and potpolishing and scrubbing. It was simply a part of the Game of Life
she must play in the ideal home she would build. There was no drudgery in it for this reason. She was a
soldier on the drill grounds preparing for the battle on the successful issue of which hung her happiness and
the happiness of the one of whom she dreamed. She might miss some of the dangerous fun which Jane
Anderson could enjoy without a scratch, but she would make sure of the fundamental things which Jane
would never stop to consider.
She threw herself on the couch in her favorite position against the pillows, drew the kitten into her arms and
hugged him violently.
"It's all right, Mr. Thomascat; we'll show them," she purred softly. "We'll see who wins at last, the eagle who
soars or the little wren in the hedge close beside the garden wallwe'll see, Kittywe'll see!"
The room was still, the noise of the streetcars below muffled with the first soft blanket of snow. The street
lamps flickered in the wind with a pale subdued light that scarcely brought out the furnishings of her nest.
She was in the habit of dreaming in this window for hours with only the light from the lamps on the street.
The Square, deserted by its tramp lovers, lay white and still and cold. The old battle with the Blue Devils was
on again within. The fight with Jane had been easy. She had always found it easy to face temptation in the
concrete. The moment Satan appeared in human shape she was up in arms and ready for the fray. It was this
silent hour she dreaded when the defenses of the soul were down.
There was no use to lie to herself. She was utterly lonely and heartsick.
She had guarded the portals of life with religious carewith a care altogether unnecessary as events had
proved. There had been no crush of rude men to assault her. Only an awkward carpenter, a butcher's boy and
the ice man! It was incredible. Of all the men whose restless feet pressed the pavements of New York, not
one, save these three, had apparently cared whether she lived or died.
The men whom she met in her duties in the schoolroom she had found utterly devoid of imagination and
beneath contempt. They had each been obviously on guard against the machinations of the female of the
species. They had, each of them, shown plainly their fear and hatred of women teachers. The feeling was
mutual. God knows she had no desire to encroach on their domain any longer than absolutely necessary.
Perhaps she was making a mistake. The thought was strangling. Only the girl who waived conventions in the
rushing tide of the modern city's life seemed to live at all. The others merely existed. Jane Anderson lived!
There could be no mistake about that. She had mastered the ugly mob. Its cruel loneliness was to her a thing
unknown. But Jane was an exceptionthe one woman in a thousand who could defy conventions and yet
keep her soul and body clean.
The offer she had made had proved a terrible temptation. The artist who had asked with such eagerness to use
her head for his portrait of the Madonna on the canvas he was executing for the new cathedral, had long
appealed to her vivid imagination. Two prints of his famous work hung on her walls. She had always wished
to know him. He had married a Southern girl.
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That was just the pointhe WAS married!
No girl could afford to be shut up alone in a studio with a fascinating married man for three hours or half
an hour. What if she should fall in love with him at first sight! Such things had happened. They could happen
again. Only tragedy could be the end of such an event. It was too dangerous to consider for a moment.
She would have consented had it been possible for Jane to chaperon her. That would have been obviously
ridiculous. No artist with any selfrespect would tolerate such a reflection on his honesty. No girl could
afford to confess her fears in this brazen fashion.
The necessity for her refusal had depressed her beyond any experience she had passed through in the dreary
desert of the past five years.
She lifted the sleeping kitten and whispered passionately:
"Am I a silly fool, Kitty? Am I?"
The tears came at last. She lay back on the pillows and let them pour down her cheeks without protest or
effort at selfcontrol. Every nerve of her strong, healthy body ached for the love and companionship of men
which she had denied herself with an iron will. At nineteen it had been easy. The sheer animal joy in life had
been enough. With the growth of each year the ache within had become more and more insistent. With each
ripening season of body and mind, the hunger of love had grown more and more maddening. How long could
she keep up this battle with every instinct of her being?
She rose at last, determined to go to Jane, confess that she had been a fool, and step out into the new world,
New York's world, and begin to live.
She seized her hat and furs and put them on with feverish haste.
"God knows it's time I beganI'll be an old maid in another year and dry upugh!"
She looked in the quaint oval mirror that hung beside her door and lifted her head with a touch of pride.
She had reached the street and started for the Broadway car before she suddenly remembered that Jane was
"dining with a dangerous man."
She couldn't turn back to that little room tonight without new courage. Her decision was instantaneous. She
couldn't surrender to the flesh and the devil by yielding to Jane.
She would go to prayermeeting!
Religion had always been a very real thing in her life. Her father was a Methodist presiding elder. She would
have gone to the meeting tonight in the first place but for the snow. Dr. Craddock, the new sensational pastor
of the Temple, was giving a series of Wednesdaynight talks that had aroused wide interest and drawn
immense crowds.
His theme tonight was one that promised all sorts of sensations"The Woman of the Future." The only
trouble with the Doctor was that the substance of his discourses sometimes failed to make good the startling
suggestions of his titles. No mattershe would go. She felt a sense of righteous pride infighting her way to
the church through the first storm of the winter.
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In spite of the snow the church was crowded. The subject announced had evidently touched a vital spot in
modern life. More people were thinking about "The Woman of the Future" than she had suspected. The
crowd sat with eager, upturned faces.
The first halfhour's prayer and song service had just begun. Mary joined in the singing of the stirring
evangelistic hymns with enthusiasm. Something in their battlecry melody caught her spirit instantly tonight
and her whole being responded. In ten minutes she was a good shouting Methodist and supremely happy
without knowing why. She never paused to ask. Her nature was profoundly religious and she had been born
and bred in the atmosphere of revivals. Her father was an aggressive evangelist both in his character and
methods of work, and she was his own daughtera child of emotion.
The individuals in the eager crowd which packed the popular church meant nothing to her personally. They
had passed before her unseeing eyes Sunday after Sunday the past five years as mere shadows of an unknown
world which swallowed them up the moment they reached the street. She had never seen the inside of one of
their homes. Not one of them had drawn close enough to her to venture an invitation.
Two of the stewards she knew personallyone a bricklayer, the other a baker on Eighth Avenue. The
preacher she had met in a purely formal way as the bishop of the flock. She liked Dr. Craddock. He was
known in the ministry as a live wire. He was a man of vigorous physiquejust turning fifty, magnetic,
eloquent and popular with the masses.
Mary was curious tonight as to what the preacher would say on "The Woman of the Future." The Methodist
Church had been a pioneer in the modern Feminist movement, having long ago admitted women to the full
ordination of the ministry. Craddock, however, had been known for his conservatism in the woman
movement. He abhorred the idea of woman's suffrage as a dangerous revolution and the fact that he
consented to treat the topic at all was a reluctant confession of its menacing importance.
With keen interest, the girl saw him rise at last. A breathless hush fell on the crowd. He walked deliberately
to the edge of the platform and gazed into the faces of the people.
"I have often been asked," he slowly began, "where I get my sermons." He paused and laughed. "I'll be
perfectly honest with you. Sometimes I get them from the Biblesometimes from the book of life. The
genesis of this talk tonight is very definite. I found it in the liquid depths of a little girl's eyes. She asked a
simple question that set me thinkingnot only about the subject of her query but on the vaster issues that
grew out of it. She looked up into my face the other night after my call for volunteers for the new mission we
are beginning in the slums of the East Side, and asked me if the girls were not going to be given the chance to
do something worth while in this church's work.
"I couldn't honestly answer her offhand and in my groping I forgot the child and her question. I saw a
visiona vision of that broader, nobler future toward which human civilization is now swiftly moving.
"I say deliberately that it is swiftly moving, because the progress of the world during the last fifty years has
been greater than in any five hundred years of the past.
"The older I grow the stronger becomes my conviction that the problems of the age in which we now live
cannot be solved by masculine brain and brawn alone. The problems of the city and the nation and the great
fundamental social questions that involve the foundations of modern life will find no solution until the heart
and brain of woman are poured into the crucible of our test.
"They talk about a woman's sphere
As though it had a limit:
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There's not a place in earth or heaven,
There's not a task to mankind given,
There's not a blessing or a woe,
There's not a whisper yes or no,
There's not a life, or death, or birth
That has a feather's weight of worth
Without a woman in it!
"The difference between a man and a woman is one that makes them the complementary parts of a perfect
unit. God made man in His own imagemale and female. The person of God therefore combines these two
elements unseparated. The mind of God is both male and female. In man we have the strength which lifts and
tugs and fights the elements. This is the aspect turned primarily toward matter. In woman we have the finer
qualities of the Spirit turned toward the source of all spirit in God. The idea of a masculine deity is a false
assumption of the Dark Ages. God is both male and female.
"I used to wonder why Jesus Christ was a man, until I realized that the Incarnation expressed the depth of
human need. God stooped lower in assuming the form of man. The form of the divine revelation through
Jesus Christ was determined solely by this depth of human need"
For half an hour in impetuous eloquence, in telling incidents wet with tears and winged with hope, he held his
listeners in a spell. It was not until the burst of applause which greeted his closing sentence had died away
that Mary Adams realized that another landmark had toppled before the onrushing flood of modern
Feminism. The conservatism of Doctor Craddock had yielded at last to the inevitable. He, too, had joined the
ranks of the prophets who preach of a Woman's Day of Emancipation.
And yet it never occurred to her that this fact had the slightest bearing on her personal outlook on life. On the
contrary she felt in the spiritual elation of the triumphant eloquence of her favorite preacher a renewal of her
simple religious faith. At the bottom of that religion lay the foundation of life itselfher conception of
marriage as the supreme and only expression of woman's power in the world.
She walked back to her home on the Square, in a glow of ecstatic emotion.
Surely God had miraculously saved her this night from the wiles of the Devil! No matter what this eloquent
discourse had meant to others, it had renewed her faith in the oldfashioned woman and the old fashioned
ways of the oldfashioned home. Her vision was once more clear. She was glad Jane Anderson had come to
put her to the test. She had been tried in the fires of hell and came forth unscorched.
She stood beside her window dreaming again of the home she would build when her Knight should stand
before her revealed in beauty no words could describe. The moon was shining now in solemn glory on the
white shrouded Square. Temptation had only strengthened the fiber of her soul. She knelt in the moonlight
beside her couch and prayed that God should ever keep her faith serene. She rose with a sense of peace and
joy. God would hear and answer the cry of her heart. The City might be the Desertit was still God's world
and not a sparrow that twittered in those bare trees or chattered on her windowledge in the morning could
fall to the ground without His knowledge. God had put this deathless passion in her heart; He could not deny
it expression. She could bide His time. If the day of her deliverance were near, it was good. If God should
choose to try her faith in loneliness and tears, it was His way to make the revelation of glory the more
dazzling when it came.
She drew the covering about her warm young body with the firm faith that her hour was close at hand, and
fell asleep to dream of her Knight.
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CHAPTER III. FATE
Mary waked next morning with the delicious sense of impending happiness. A wonderful dream had come to
thrill her halfconscious moments, repeating itself in increasing vividness and beauty with each awakening.
The vision had been interrupted by the unusual noise of the snow machines on the car tracks, and yet she had
fallen asleep after each break and picked up the rapturous scene at the exact moment of its interruption.
She was married and madly in love with her husband. His face she could never see quite clearly. His business
kept him away from home on long trips. But his baby was always therea laughing, wonderful boy whose
chubby hands persisted in pulling her hair down into her face each time she bent over his cradle to kiss him.
Ella was chattering in German to someone on the stairs. She wondered again for the hundredth time how this
poor, slovenly, oneeyed, illkempt creature, scrubwoman and janitress, could speak two languages with
such ease. Her English, except in excitement, seemed equally fluent with her German. How did such a
woman fall so low? She was industrious and untiring in her work. She never touched liquor or drugs. She was
kind and thoughtful and watched over her tenants with a motherly care for which no landlord could pay in
dollars and cents. She was on her knees on the stairs now, scrubbing down the steps to be crowded again with
muddy feet from the street below.
Mary lay for half an hour snuggling under the warm blankets, weaving a romance about Ella's life. A great
love for some heroic man who died and left her in poverty could alone explain the mystery that hung about
her. She never spoke of her life or people. Mary had ventured once to ask her. A wan smile flitted across the
haggard face for a moment, and she answered in low tones that closed the subject.
"I haven't any people, dear," she said slowly. "They are dead long ago."
The girl wondered if it were really true. In her joy this morning she felt her heart go out to the pathetic,
drooping figure on the stairs. She wished that every living creature might share the secret joy that filled her
soul.
She drew the kitten from his nest beside her pillow and rubbed her cheek against his little cold nose. He
always waked her with a kiss on her eyelids and then coiled himself back for a tiny catnap until she could
make up her mind to rise.
She sprang from the couch with sudden energy and stretched her dainty figure with a prodigious yawn.
"Gracious, Kitty, we must hurry!" she cried, thrusting her bare feet into a pair of embroidered slippers and
throwing her blue flannel kimono on over her nightdress.
The coffeepot was boiling busily when she had bathed and dressed. Each detail of her domestic schedule
was given an extra care this morning. The stove was carefully polished, each pot and pan placed in its rack
with a precision that spoke an unusual joy within the heart of the housewife.
And through it all she hummed a lullaby that haunted her from the memories of a happy childhood.
Breakfast over, the kitten fed, the birds given their bath, their sand and seed, she couldn't stop until the whole
place had been thoroughly cleaned and dusted. Exactly why she had done this on Thursday morning it was
impossible to say. Some hidden force within had impelled her.
Then back into the dream world her mind flew on joyous wings. It was a sign from God in answer to prayer.
Why not? The Bible was full of such revelations in ancient times. God was not dead because the world was
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modern and we had steam and electricity. The routine of school was no longer dull. Around each
commonplace child hung a halo of romance. They were lovechildren today. She wove a dream of
tenderness, of chivalry, and heroic deeds about them all. She searched each face for some line of beauty
caught in the vision of her own baby who had looked into her heart from the mists of eternity.
Three days passed in a sort of trance. Never had she felt surer of life and the full fruition of every hope and
faith. Just how this marvelous blossoming would come, she could not guess. Her chances of meeting her Fate
were no better than at any moment of the past years of drab disillusionment, and yet, for some reason, her
foolish heart kept singing.
Why?
There could be but one answer. The event was impending. Such things could be feltnot reasoned out.
She applied herself to her teaching with a new energy and thoroughness. She must do this work well and
carry into the real life that must soon begin the consciousness of every duty faithfully performed.
A boy asked her a question about a little flower which grew in a warm crevice of the stone wall on which the
iron fence of the school yard rested. She blushed at her failure to enlighten him and promised to tell him on
Monday.
Botany was not one of her tasks but she felt the tribute to her personality in his question, and she would take
pains to make her answer full and interesting.
Saturday afternoon she hurried to the Public Library, on Fifth Avenue and Fortysecond Street, to look up
every reference to this flower.
The boulevard of the Metropolis was thronged with eager thousands. Handsome men and beautifully dressed
women passed each other in endless procession on its crowded pavements. The cabs and automobiles, two
abreast on either side, moved at a snail's pace, so dense were the throngs at each crossing. Her fancy was
busy weaving about each throbbing tonneau and limousine a story of love. Not a wheel was turning in all that
long line of shining vehicles that didn't carry a woman or was hurrying to do a woman's bidding.
Her hero was coming, too, somewhere in the crowd with his gloved hand on one of those wheels. She could
feel his breath on her cheek as he handed her into the seat by his side and then the sudden leap of the car into
space and away on the wings of lightning into the future!
She ascended the broad steps of the majestic building with quick, springing strength. She loved this glorious
library, with its lofty, arched ceilings. The sense of eternity that brooded over it and filled the stately rooms
rested and inspired her.
Besides, she forgot her poverty in this temple of all time. Within its walls she belonged to the great
aristocracy of brains and culture of which this palace was the supreme expression. And it was hers. Andrew
Carnegie had given the millions to build it and the city of New York granted the site on land that was worth
many millions more. But it was all built for her convenience, her comfort and inspiration. Every volume of its
vast and priceless collection was hershers to hold in her hands, read and ponder and enjoy. Every officer
and manager in its inclosure was her servantto come at her beck and call and do her bidding. The little
room on Twentythird Street was the symbol of the future. This magnificent building was the realization of
the present.
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She smiled pleasantly to the polite assistant who received her order slip, and took her seat on the waiting line
until her books were delivered.
This magnificent room with its lofty ceilings of golden panels and drifting clouds had always brought to her a
peculiar sense of restful power. The consciousness of its ownership had from the first been most intimate. No
man can own what he cannot appreciate. He may possess it by legal documents, but he cannot own it unless
he has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to feel its charm. This appreciation Mary Adams possessed by
inheritance from her student father who devoured books with an insatiate hunger. Nowhere in all New York's
labyrinth did she feel as perfectly at home as in this readingroom. The quiet which reigned without apparent
sign or warning seemed to belong to the atmosphere of the place. It was unthinkable that any man or woman
should be rude or thoughtless enough to break it by a loud word.
This room was hers day or night, winter or summer, always heated and lighted, and a hundred swift, silent
servants at hand to do her bidding. Around the room on serried shelves, dressed in leather aprons, stood
twentyfive thousand more servants of the centuries of the past ready to answer any question her heart or
brain might ask of the world's life since the dawn of Time.
In the stackroom below, on sixtythree miles of shelves, stood a million others ready to come at her
slightest nod. She loved to dream here of the future, in the moments she must wait for these messengers she
had summoned. In this magic room the past ceased to be. These myriads of volumes made the past a myth. It
was all the living, throbbing presentwith only the golden future to be explored.
Her number flashed in red letters on the electric blackboard.
She rose and carried her books to the seat number assigned her near the center of the southern division of the
room on the extreme left beside the bookcases containing the dictionaries of all languages.
Her seat was on the aisle which skirted the shelves. She found the full description of the flower in which she
was interested, made her notes and closed the volume with a lazy movement of her slender, graceful hand.
She lifted her eyes and they rested on a remarkablelooking young man about her own age who stood gazing
in an embarrassed, helpless sort of way at the row of ponderous volumes marked "The Century Dictionary."
He was evidently a newcomer. By his embarrassment she could easily tell that it was the first time he had
ever ventured into this room.
He looked at the books, apparently puzzled by their number. He raised his hand and ran his fingers nervously
through the short, thick, red hair which covered his wellshaped head.
The girl's attention was first fixed by the strange contrast between his massive jaw and short neck which
spoke the physical strength of an ox, and the slender gracefully tapering fingers of his small hand. The wrist
was small, the fingers almost feminine in their lines.
He caught her look of curious interest and to her horror, smiled and walked straight to her seat.
There was no mistaking his determination to speak. It was useless to drop her eyes or turn aside. He would
certainly follow.
She blushed and gazed at him in a timid, helpless fashion while he bent over her seat and whispered
awkwardly:
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"You look kind and obliging, misscould you help me a little?"
His tone was so genuine in its appeal, so distressed and hesitating, it was impossible to resent his question.
"If I canyes," was the prompt answer.
"You won't mind?" he asked, fumbling his hat.
"Nowhat is it?"
Mary had recovered her composure as his distress had increased and looked steadily into his steel blue eyes
inquiringly.
"You see," he went on, in low hurried tones, "I'm all worked up about the mountains of North Carolina
thinkin' o' goin' down there to Asheville in a car, an' I want to look the bloomin' place up and kind o' get my
bearin's before I start. A lawyer friend o' mine told me to come here and I'd find all the maps in the Century
Dictionary. The man at the desk out there told me to come in this room and look in the shelves on the left and
take it right out. Gee, the place is so big, I get all rattled. I found the Century Dictionary on that shelf"
He paused and smiled helplessly.
"I thought a dictionary was one bookthere's a dozen of 'em marked alike. I'm afraid to pull 'em all down an'
I don't know where to begin COULD you help meplease?"
"Certainly, with pleasure," she answered, quickly rising and leading the way back to the shelf at which he had
been gazing.
"You want the atlas volume," she explained, drawing the book from the shelf and returning to the seat.
He followed promptly and bent over her shoulder while she pointed out the map of North Carolina, the
position of Asheville and the probable route he must follow to get there.
"Thanks!" he exclaimed gratefully.
"Not at all," she replied simply. "I'm only too glad to be of service to you."
Her answer emboldened him to ask another question.
"You don't happen to know anything about that country down there, do you?"
"Why, yes. I know a great deal about it"
"Sure enough?"
"I've been through Asheville many times and spent a summer there once."
"Did you?"
His tones implied that he plainly regarded her as a prodigy of knowledge. His whole attitude suggested at
once the mind of an alert, interested boy asking his teacher for information on a subject near to his heart. It
was impossible to resist his appeal.
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"Why, yes," Mary went on in low, rapid tones. "My people live in the Kentucky mountains."
He bent low and gently touched her arm.
"Say, we can't talk in hereI'm afraid. Would it be asking too much of you to come out in the park, sit down
on a bench and tell me about it? I'll never know how to thank you, if you will?"
It was absurd, of course, such a request, and yet his interest was so keen, his deference to her superior
knowledge so humble and appealing, to refuse seemed ungracious. She hesitated and rose abruptly.
"Just a momentI'll return my books and then we'll go. You can replace this volume on the shelf where we
got it."
"Thank yoo, miss," he responded gratefully. "You're awfully kind."
"Don't mention it," she laughed.
In a moment she was walking by his side down the smooth marble stairs and out through the grand entrance
into Fifth Avenue. The strange part about it was, she was not in the least excited over a very unconventional
situation. She had allowed a handsomely groomed, young, redhaired adventurer to pick her up without the
formality of an introduction, in the Public Library. She hadn't the remotest idea of his namenor had he of
hersyet there was something about him that seemed oddly familiar. They must have known one another
somewhere in childhood and forgotten each other's faces.
The sun was shining in clear, steady brilliancy in a cloudless sky. The snow had quickly melted and it was
unusually warm for early December. They turned into the throng of Fifth Avenue and at the corner of
Fortysecond Street he paused and hesitated and looked at her timidly:
"Say," he began haltingly, "there's an awful crowd of bums on those seats in the Square behind the
buildingyou know Central Park, don't you?"
Mary smiled.
"Quite wellI've spent many happy hours in its quiet walks."
"You know that place the other side of the Mall that ragged hill covered with rocks and trees and mountain
laurel?"
"I've been there often."
"Would you mind going there where it's quietI've such a lot o' things I want to ask youyou won't mind
the walk, will you?"
"Certainly notwe'll go there," Mary responded in even, businesslike tones.
"Because, if you don't want to walk I'll call a cab, if you'll let me"
"Not at all," was the quick answer. "I love to walk."
It was impossible for the girl to repress a smile at her ridiculous situation! If any human being had told her
yesterday that she, Mary Adams, an old fashioned girl with oldfashioned ideas of the proprieties of life,
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would have allowed herself to be picked up by an utter stranger in this unceremonious way, she would have
resented the assertion as a personal insultyet the preposterous and impossible thing had happened and she
was growing each moment more and more deeply interested in the study of the remarkable youth by her side.
He was not handsome in the conventional sense. His features were too strong for that. An enemy might have
called them coarse. Their first impression was of enormous strength and exhaustless vitality. He walked with
a quick, military precision and planted his small feet on the pavement with a soft, sure tread that suggested
the strength of a young tiger.
The one feature that puzzled her was the size of his hands and feet. They were remarkably small and
remarkable for their slender, graceful lines.
His eyes were another interesting feature. The lids drooped with a careless Oriental languor, as though he
would shut out the glare of the full daylight, and yet the pupils flashed with a cold steel blue fire. One look
into his eyes and there could be no doubt that the man behind them was an interesting personality.
She wondered what his business could be. Not a lawyer or doctor or teacher certainly. His timidity in
handling books was clear proof on that point. He was well groomed. His clothes were made by a firstclass
tailor.
Her heart thumped with a sudden fear. Perhaps he was some sort of criminal. His questions may have been a
trick to lure her away. . . .
They had just crossed the broad plaza at Fifty ninth Street and entered the walkway that leads to the Mall.
She stopped suddenly.
"It's too far to the hill beyond the Mall," she began hesitatingly. "We'll find a seat in one of the little rustic
houses along the Fiftyninth Street side"
"Sure, if you say so," he agreed.
He accepted the suggestion so simply, she regretted her suspicions, instantly changed her mind and said,
smiling:
"No, we'll go on where we started. The long walk will do me good."
"All right," he laughed; "whatever you say's the law. I'm the little boy that does just what his teacher says."
She blushed and shot him a surprised look.
"Who told you that I was a teacher?" she asked, with a smile.
"Lord, nobody! I had no idea of such a thing. It never popped into my head that you do anything at all. You
know, I was awful scared when I spoke to you?"
"Were you?" she laughed.
"Surest thing you know! I'd 'a' never screwed up my courage to do it if you hadn't 'a' looked so kind and
gentle and sweet. I just knew you couldn't turn me down"
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There was no mistaking the genuineness of the apology for his presumption. She smiled a gracious answer,
and threw the last ugly suspicion to the winds.
He broke into a laugh and lifted his hand in the sudden gesture of a traffic policeman commanding a halt.
"What is it?" she asked.
"You know I was so excited I clean forgot to introduce myself! What do you think o' that? You'll excuse me,
won't you? My name's Jim Anthony. I'm sorry I can't give you any references to my folks. I haven't anyI'm
a lost sheep in New Yorkno father or mother. That's why I'm so excited about this trip I'm plannin' down
South. I hear I've got some people down there."
He stopped suddenly as if absorbed in the thought. Her heart went out to him in sympathy for this confession
of his orphaned life.
"I'm Mary Adams," she smiled in answer. "I'm a teacher in the public schools."
"Geethat accounts for it! I thought you looked like you knew everything in those books. And you've been
to Asheville, too?"
"Yes."
"Suppose it's not as big a burg as New York?"
"Hardlyit's just a hustling mountain town of about twentyfive thousand people."
"Lot o' swells from around New York live down there, they tell me."
"Yes, the Vanderbilts have a beautiful castle just outside."
"Some mountains near Asheville?"
"Hundreds of square miles."
"Mountains in every direction?"
"As far as the eye can reach, one blue range piled above another until they're lost in the dim skies on the
horizon."
"Gee, it may be pretty hard to find your folks if they just live in the mountains near Asheville?"
"Unless your directions are more explicitI should think so."
"You know, I thought the mountains near Asheville was a bunch o' hills off one side like the Palisades, that
you couldn't miss if you tried. I've never been outside of New Yorksince I can remember. I'd love to see
real mountains."
The last sentence was spoken in a wistful pathos that touched Mary with its irresistible appeal. Her mother
instincts responded to it in quick sympathy.
"You've missed a lot," she answered gravely.
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"I'll bet I have. It's a rotten old town, this New York"
He paused, and a queer light flashed from his steel eyes.
"Until you get your hand on its throat," he added, bringing his square jaws together.
Mary lifted her face with keen interest.
"And you've got it by the throat?"
"That's just whatlittle girl!" he cried, with a ring of pride. "You see, I'm an inventor and I won a little pile
on my first trick. I've got a machineshop in a room eightbyten over on the East Side."
"A machineshop all your own?"
"Yep."
"I'd like to see it some day."
He shook his head emphatically.
"It's too dirty. I couldn't let a pretty girl like you in such a place." He paused and resumed the tone of his
narrative where she interrupted him. "You see, I've just put a new crimp in a carburetor for the automobile
folks. They're tickled to death over it and I've got automobiles to burn. Will you go to ride with me
tomorrow?"
The teacher broke into a joyous laugh.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked awkwardly.
"Well, in the language of New York, that would be going some, wouldn't it?"
"And why not, I'd like to know?" he cried with scorn. "Who's to tell us we can't? You've no kids to bother
you tomorrow. I'm my own boss. You've seen Asheville, but you've never seen New York until you sit down
beside me in a big sixcylinder racing car I'm handlin' next week. Let me show it to you. I'll swing her
around to your door at eight o'clock. In twenty five minutes we'll clear the Bronx and shoot into New
Rochelle. There'll be no cops out to bother us, and not a wheel in sight. It'll do you good. Let me take you! I
owe you that much for bein' so nice to me today. Will you go with me?"
Mary hesitated.
"I'll think it over and let you know."
"Got a telephone?"
"No."
"Then you'll have to tell me before I gowon't you?"
"I suppose so," she answered demurely.
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They passed the big fountain beyond the Mall and skirted the lake to the bridge, crossed, walked along the
water's edge to the laurelcovered crags and found a seat alone in the summer house that hides among the
trees on its highest point.
The roar of the city was dim and far away. The only sounds to break the stillness were the laughter of lovers
along the walks below and the distant cry of steamers in the harbor and rivers.
"You'd almost think you're in the mountains up here, now wouldn't you?" he asked, after a moment's silence.
"Yes. I call this park my country estate. It costs me nothing to keep it in perfect order. The city pays for it all.
But I own it. Every tree and shrub and flower and blade of grass, every statue and bird and animal in it is
mine. I couldn't get more joy out of them if I had them inclosed behind an iron fence, and the deed to the land
in my pocketnot half as much, for I'd be lonely and miserable without someone to see and enjoy it all with
me."
"Gee, that's so, ain't it? I never looked at it like that before."
He gazed at her a long time in silent admiration, and then spoke briskly.
"Now tell me about this North Carolina and all those miles and square miles of mountains."
"You've a piece of paper and pencil?"
He lifted his hand schoolboy fashion:
"Johnny on the spot, teacher!"
A blankbook and pencil he threw in her lap and leaned close.
"Tear the leaves out, if you like."
"No, I'll just draw the maps on the pages and leave them for you to study."
With deft touch she outlined in rough on the first page, the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Virginia and North Carolina, tracing his possible route by Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Dover, Norfolk
and Raleigh, or by Washington, Richmond, and Danville to Greensboro.
"Either route you see," she said softly, "leads to Salisbury, where you strike the foothills of the mountains. It's
about two hundred miles from there to Asheville and `The Land of the Sky.'"
For two hours she answered his eager, boyish questions about the country and its people, his eyes wide with
admiration at her knowledge.
The sun was sinking in a sea of scarlet and purple clouds behind the tall buildings beside the Park before she
realized that they had been talking for more than two hours.
She sprang to her feet, blushing and confused.
"Mercy, I had no idea it was so late."
"Whyis it late?" he asked incredulously.
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"We must hurry"
She brushed the stray ringlets of hair from her forehead, laughed and hurried down the pathway.
They crossed the Park and took the Madison Avenue line to Twentythird Street. They were silent in the car.
The roar of the traffic was deafening after the quiet of the summer house among the trees.
"I can see you home?" he inquired appealingly.
"We get off at Twentythird Street."
They stood on the steps at her door beside the Square and there was a moment's awkward silence.
He lifted his hat with a little chivalrous bow.
"Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock in my car?"
She smiled and hesitated.
"You'll have a bully time!"
"It's Sunday," she stammered.
"Sure, that's why I asked you."
"I don't like to miss my church."
"You go to church every Sunday?" he asked in amazement.
"Yes."
"Well, just this once then. It'll do you good. And I'll drive as careful as a farmer."
"All right," she said in low tones, and extended her hand:
"Good night"
"Good night, teacher!" he responded with a boyish wave of his slender hand and quickly disappeared in the
crowd.
She rushed up the stairs, her cheeks aflame, her heart beating a tattoo of foolish joy.
She snatched the kitten from sleep and whispered in his tiny ear:
"Oh, Kitty dear, I've had such an adventure! I've spent the happiest, silliest afternoon of my life! I'm going to
have a more wonderful day tomorrow. I just feel it. In a big racing automobile if you please, Mr. Thomascat!
Sorry I can't take you but the dust would blind you, Kitty dear. I'm sorry to tell you that you'll have to stay at
home all day alone and keep house. It's too bad. But I'll fix your milk and bread before I go and you must
promise me on your sacred Persian cat's honor not to look at my birds!"
She hugged him violently and he purred his soft answer in song.
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"Oh, Kitty, I'm so happyso foolishly happy!"
CHAPTER IV. DOUBTS AND FEARS
Mary attempted no analysis of her emotions. It was all too sudden, too stunning. She was content to feel and
enjoy the first overwhelming experience of life. Hour after hour she lay among the pillows of her couch in the
dim light of the street lamps and lazily watched the passing Saturday evening crowds. The world was
beautiful.
She undressed at last and went to bed, only to toss wideeyed for hours.
A hundred times she reenacted the scene in the Library and recalled her first impression of Jim's personality.
What could such an utterly unforeseen and extraordinary meeting mean except that it was her Fate? Certainly
he could not have planned it. Certainly she had not foreseen such an event. It had never occurred to her in the
wildest flights of fancy that she could meet and speak to a man under such conditions, to say nothing of the
walk in the Park and the hours she spent in the little summer house.
And the strangest part of it all was that she could see nothing wrong in it from beginning to end. It had
happened in the simplest and most natural way imaginable. By the standards of conventional propriety her act
was the maddest folly; and yet she was still happy over it.
There was one disquieting trait about him that made her a little uneasy. He used the catchwords of the street
gamins of New York without any consciousness of incongruity. She thought at first that he did this as the
Southern boy of culture and refinement unconsciously drops into the tones and dialect of the negro, by daily
association. His constant use of the expressive and characteristic "Gee" was startling, to say the least. And yet
it came from his lips in such a boyish way she felt sure that it was due to his embarrassment in the unusual
position in which he had found himself with her.
His helplessness with the dictionary was proof, of course, that he was no scholar. And yet a boy might have a
fair education in the schools of today and be unfamiliar with this ponderous and dignified encyclopedia of
words. It was impossible to believe that he was illiterate. His clothes, his carriage, even his manners made
such an idea preposterous.
Besides, no inventor could be really illiterate. He may have been forced to work and only attended night
schools. But if he were a mechanic, capable of making a successful improvement on one of the most delicate
and important parts of an automobile, he must have studied the principles involved in his inventions.
His choice of a profession appealed to her imagination, too. It showed independence and initiative. It opened
boundless possibilities. He might be an obscure and poorly educated boy today. In five years he could be a
millionaire and the head of some huge business whose interests circled the world.
The tired brain wore itself out at last in eager speculations, and she fell into a fitful stupor. The roar of the
streetcars waked her at daylight, and further sleep was out of the question. She rose, dressed quickly and got
her breakfast in a quiver of nervous excitement over the adventure of the coming automobile.
As the hour of eight drew nearer, her doubts of the propriety of going became more acute.
"What on earth has come over me in the past twenty four hours?" she asked of herself. "I've known this man
but a day. I don't KNOW him at all, and yet I'm going to put my life in his hands in that racing machine.
Have I gone crazy?"
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She was not in the least afraid of him. His face and voice and personality all seemed familiar. Her brain and
commonsense told her that such a trip with an utter stranger was dangerous and foolish beyond words. In
his automobile, unaccompanied by a human soul and unacquainted with the roads over which they would
travel, she would be absolutely in his power.
She set her teeth firmly at last, her mind made up.
"It's too mad a risk. I was crazy to promise. I won't go!"
She had scarcely spoken her resolution when the soft call of the autohorn echoed below. She stood
irresolute for a moment, and the call was repeated in plaintive, appealing notes.
She tried to hold fast to her resolutions, but the impulse to open the window and look out was resistless. She
turned the oldfashioned brass knob, swung her windows wide on their hinges and leaned out.
His keen eyes were watching. He lifted his cap and waved. She answered with the flutter of her
handkerchiefand all resolutions were off.
"Of course, I'll go," she cried, with a laugh. "It's a glorious dayI may never have such a chance again."
CHAPTER V. WINGS OF STEEL
She threw on her furs and hurried downstairs. Her surrender was too sudden to realize that she was being
driven by a power that obscured reason and crushed her will.
Reason made one more vain cry as she paused at the door below to draw on her gloves.
"You have refused every invitation to see or know the unconventional world into which thousands of women
in New York, cleareyed and unafraid, enter daily. You'd sooner die than pose an hour in Gordon's studio,
and on a Sabbath morning you cut your church and go on a day's wild ride with a man you have known but
fifteen hours!"
And the voice inside quickly answered:
"But that's different! Gordon's a married man. My chevalier is not! I have the right to go, and he has the
right."
It was settled anyhow before this little controversy arose at the street door, but the ready answer she gave
eased her conscience and cleared the way for a happy, exciting trip.
He leaped from the big, ugly racer to help her in, stopped and looked at her light clothing.
"That's your heaviest coat?"
"Yes. It isn't cold."
"I've one for you."
He drew an enormous fur coat from the car and held it up for her arms.
"You think I'll need that?" she asked.
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His white teeth gleamed in a friendly smile.
"Take it from me, Kiddo, you certainly will!"
She winced just a little at the common expression, but he said it with such a quick, boyish enthusiasm, she
wondered whether he were quoting the expression from the Bowery boy's vocabulary or using it in a
facetious personal way.
"I knew you'd need it. So I brought it for you," he added genially.
"Thanks," she murmured, lifting her arms and drawing the coat about her trim figure.
He helped her into the car and drew from his pocket a light pair of goggles.
"Now these, and you're all hunkydory!"
"Will I need these, too?" she asked incredulously.
"Will you!" he cried. "You wouldn't ask that question if you knew the horse we've got hitched to this benzine
buggy today. He's got wings believe me! It's all I can do to hold him on the ground sometimes."
"You'll drive carefully?" she faltered.
He lifted his hand.
"With you settin' beside me, my first name's `Caution.'"
She fumbled the goggles in a vain effort to lift her arms over her head to fasten them on. He sprang into the
seat by her side and promptly seized them.
"Let me fix 'em."
His slender, skillful fingers adjusted the band and brushed a stray ringlet of hair back under the furs. The
thrill of his touch swept her with a sudden dizzy sense of excitement. She blushed and drew her head down
into the collar of the shaggy coat.
He touched the wheel, and the gray monster leaped from the curb and shot down the street. The single
impulse carried them to the crossing. He had shut off the power as the machine gracefully swung into Fourth
Avenue. The turn made, another leap and the car swept up the Avenue and swung through Twentysixth
Street into Fifth Avenue. Again the power was off as he made the turn into Fifth Avenue at a snail's pace.
"Can't let her out yet," he whispered apologetically. "Had to make these turns. There's no room for her inside
of town."
Mary had no time to answer. He touched the wheel, and the car shot up the deserted Avenue. She gasped for
breath and braced her feet, her whole being tingling with the first exhilarating consciousness that she too was
possessed of the devil of speed madness. It was glorious! For the first time in her life, space and distance lost
their meaning. She was free as the birds in the heavens. She was flying on the wings of this gray, steel
monster through space. The palaces on the Avenue whirled by in dim ghostlike flashes. They flew through
Central Park into Seventysecond Street and out into the Drive. The waters of the river, broad and cool,
flashing in the morning sun, rested her eyes a moment and then faded in a twinkling. They had leaped the
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chasm beyond Grant's Tomb, plunged into Broadway and before she could get her bearings, swept up the hill
at One Hundred and Fiftyfifth Street, slipped gracefully across the iron bridge and in a jiffy were lost in a
gray cloud of dust on the Boston Turnpike.
When the first intoxicating joy of speed had spent itself, she found herself shuddering at the daring turns he
made, missing a curb by a hair's breadth grazing a trolley by half an inch. Her fears were soon forgotten.
The hand on the wheel was made of steel, too.
The throbbing demon encased within the hood obeyed his slightest whim. She glanced at the square, massive
jaw with furtive admiration.
Without turning his head he laughed.
"You like it, teacher?"
"I'm in Heaven!"
"You won't worry about church then, will you?"
"Not today."
They stopped at a roadhouse, and he put in more gasoline, lifted the casing from the engine, touched each
vital part, examined his tires, and made sure that his machine was at its best.
She watched him with a growing sense of his strength of character, his poise and executive ability. He was an
awkward, stammering boy in the Library yesterday. Today with this machine in his hand he was the master of
Time and Space.
She yielded herself completely to the delicious sense of his protection. The extraordinary care he was giving
the machine was a plain avowal of his deep regard for her comfort and happiness. She had been in one or two
moderately moving cars driven by careful chauffeurs through Central Park. She had always felt on those trips
with Jane Anderson like a poor relation from the country imposing on a rich friend.
This trip was all her own. The car and its master were there solely for her happiness. Her slightest whim was
law for both. It was sweet, this sense of power. She began to lift her body with a touch of pride.
She laughed now at fears. What nonsense! No Knight of the Age of Chivalry could treat her with more
deference. He had tried already to get her to stop for a bite of lunch.
"Don't you want a thing to eat?" he persisted.
"Not a thing. I've just had my breakfast. It's only nine o'clock"
"I know, but we've come thirty miles and the air makes you hungry. We ought to eat about six good meals a
day."
She shook her head.
"Nonot yet. I'm too happy with these new wings. I want to fly some morecome on"
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He lifted his hand in his favorite gesture of obedience.
"'Nuff saidwe'll streak it back now by another road, hump it through town and jump over the Brooklyn
Bridge. I'll show you Coney Island and then I know you'll want a hot dog anyhow."
He crossed the country and darted into Broadway. Before she could realize it, the last tree and field were lost
behind in a cloud of dust, and they were again in the crowded streets of the city. The deep growl of his horn
rang its warnings for each crossing and Mary watched the timid women scramble to the sidewalks five and
six blocks ahead.
It was delicious. She had always been the one to scramble before. Her heart went out in a wave of tenderness
to the man by her side, strong, daring, masterful, her chevalier, her protector and admirer.
Yes, her admirer! There was no doubt on that point. The moment he relaxed the tension of his hand on the
wheel, his deep, mysterious eyes beneath the drooping lids were fixed on hers in open, shameless admiration.
Their cold fire burned into her heart and thrilled to her fingertips.
In spite of his deference and his obedience to her whim, she felt the iron grip of his personality on her
imagination. Whatever his education, his origin or his environment, he was a power to be reckoned with.
No other type of man had ever appealed to her. Her conception of a real man had always been one who did
his own thinking and commanded rather than asked the respect of others.
She had thrown the spell of her beauty over this headstrong, masterful man. He was wax in her hands. A
delicious sense of power filled her. She had never known what happiness meant before. She floated through
space. The spinning lines of towering buildings on Broadway passed as mists in a dream.
As the velvet feet of the car touched the great bridge she lazily opened her eyes for a moment and gazed
through the lacework of steel at the broad sweep of the magnificent harbor. The dark blue hills of Staten
Island framed the picture.
He was right. She had never seen New York before. Never before had its immense panorama been swept
within two hours. Never before had she realized its dimensions. She had always felt stunned and crushed in
the effort to conceive it. Today she had wings. The city lay at her feet, conquered. She was mistress of Time
and Space.
Again her sidelong glance swept the lines of Jim Anthony's massive jaw. She laughed softly.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"Nothing. I'm just happy."
She blushed and wondered if he had read her thoughts by some subtle power of clairvoyance. She was
speculating on the effects of love at first sight on such a man. Would he hesitate, back and fill and hang on
for months trying in vain to gain the courage to speak? Or would he spring with the leap of a young tiger the
moment he realized what he wanted?
Her own attitude was purely one of joyous expectancy. It would, of course, be a long time before her feelings
could take any definite attitude toward a man. For the moment she was supremely happy. It was enough. She
made no effort to probe her feelings. She might return to earth tomorrow. Today she was in Heaven. She
would make the most of it.
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They skimmed the wooded cliffs of Bay Ridge, her heart beating in ecstasy at the revelation of beauty of
whose existence she had not dreamed.
"I bet you never saw this drive before, now did you?" he asked with boyish enthusiasm.
"Noit's wonderful."
"Some vieweh?"
"Entrancing!"
"You know when I make my pile, I'd like a palace of white marble perched on this cliff with the windows on
the south looking out over Sandy Hook, and the windows on the west looking over that fort on the top of
Staten Island with its black eyes gazing over the sea. How would you like that?"
She turned away to mask the smile she couldn't repress.
"That would be splendid, wouldn't it?"
"I like the water, don't you?"
"I love it."
"Water and hills both right together! I reckon my father must 'a' been a seacaptain and my mother from the
mountains"
He said this with a pathos that found the girl's heart. What a pitiful, lonely life, a boy's without even the
memory of a mother or father! The mother instinct rose in a resistless flood of pity. Her eyes grew suddenly
dim.
"Well," he said briskly, "now for the dainty job! I've got to jump my way through that Coney Island bunch.
You see my low speed's a racing pace for an everyday car. All I can do in a crowd is to jump from one
crossing to the next and cut her power off every time. You can bet I'll make a guy or two jump with me"
"You won't hurt anyone?" she pleaded.
"Lord, no! I wouldn't dare to put her through that mob in the afternoon. I'd kill a regiment of 'em. But it's
earlyjust the shank of the morning. There's nobody down here yet."
The car suddenly leaped into the Avenue that runs through the heart of Coney Island, the deepthroated horn
screaming its warning. The crowd scattered like sheep before a lion.
The girl laughed in spite of her effort at self control.
"Watch 'em hump!" Jim grunted.
"It's funny, isn't it?"
"When you're in the caryes. It don't seem so funny when you're on foot. Well, some people were made to
walk and some to ride. I had to hoof it at first. I like riding betterdon't you?"
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"To be perfectly honestyes!"
The car leaped forward again, the horn screaming. The wheel passed within a foot of a fat woman's skirt.
With a cry of terror she fled to the sidewalk and shook her fist at Jim, her face purple with anger.
He waved his hand back at her:
"Never touched you, dearie! Never touched you!"
Mary lost all fear of accident and watched him handle the machine with the skill of a master. She could
understand now the spirit of deviltry in a chauffeur who knows his business. It seemed a wicked, cruel thing
from the groundthis swift plunge of a car as if bent on murder. But now that she felt the sure, velvet grip of
the brake in a master's hand, she saw that the danger was largely a myth.
It was fun to see people jump at the approach of an avalanche of steel that always stopped just short of harm.
Of course, it took a steady nerve and muscle to do the trick. The man by her side had both. He was always
smiling. Nothing rattled him.
Her trust was now implicit. She relaxed the tension of the first two hours of doubt and fear, and yielded to the
spell of his strength. It seemed inseparable from the throbbing will of the giant machine. He was its incarnate
spirit. She was being swept through space now on the wings of omnipotent powerbut power always
obedient to her whim.
With steady, even pulse they glided down the long, broad Avenue to Prospect Park, swung through its
winding lanes, on through the streets of Brooklyn and once more into the open road.
"Now for Long Beach and a good lunch!" he cried. "I'll show you somethingbut you'll have to shut your
eyes to see it."
With a sudden bound, the car leaped into the air, and shot through the sky with the hiss and shriek of a
demon.
The girl caught her breath and instinctively gripped his arm.
"Look out, Kiddo!" he shouted. "Don't touch meor we'll both land in Kingdom Come. I ain't ready for a
harp just yet. I'd rather fool with this toy for a while down here."
She braced her feet and gripped the sides of the car, gasping for breath, steadied herself at last and crouched
low among the furs to guard her throat from the icy daggers of the wind.
The landscape whirled in a circle of trees and sky, while above the dark line of hills hung the boiling cauldron
of cloudbanked heavens.
"Are you game?" he called above the roar.
"Yes," she gasped. "Don't stop"
Her soul had risen at last to the ecstasy of the mania for speed that fired the man's spirit and nerved his hand.
It was inconceivable until experiencedthis awful joy! Her spirit sank with childish disappointment as he
slowly lowered the power.
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"Got to take a sharp curve down there," he explained. "We turn to the right for the meadows and the
Beachhow was that?"
"Wonderful," she cried, with dancing eyes. "Let her go again if you want toI'm gamenow."
Jim laughed.
"A little rattled at first?"
"Yes"
"Well, we can't let her out on this road. It's too narrowhave to take a ditch sometimes to pass. That
wouldn't do for an eightymile clip, you knownow would it?"
"Hardly."
"I might risk it alonebut my first name's `Old Man Caution' todayyou get me?"
Mary nodded and turned her head away again.
"I got you the first time, sir," she answered playfully taking his tone.
He ran the car into the garage at the Beach, sprang out and lifted Mary to the ground with quick, firm hand.
They threw off their heavy coats and left them.
"Look out for this junk now, sonny," he cried to the attendant, tossing him a half dollar.
"Sure, Mike!"
"Fill her up to the chin by the time we get back."
"Righto!"
Quickly they walked to the hotel and in five minutes were seated beside a window in the diningroom,
watching the lazy roll of the sea sweep in on the sands at low tide.
"I'm hungry as a wolf!" he whispered.
"So am I"
"We'll eat everything in sightstart at the top and come down."
He handed her the menu card and watched her from the depths beneath the drooping eyelids.
Conscious of his gaze and rejoicing in its frank admiration, she ordered the dinner with instinctive good taste.
No effort at conversation was made by either. They were both too hungry. As Jim lighted his cigarette when
the coffee was served, he leaned back in his chair and watched the breakers in silence.
"That's the best dinner I ever had in my life," he said slowly.
"It was good. We were hungry."
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"I've been hungry before, many a time. It was something else, too." He paused and rose abruptly. "Let's walk
up the Beach."
"I'd love to," she answered, slowly rising.
CHAPTER VI. BESIDE THE SEA
They strolled leisurely along the boardwalk, found the sand, walked in the firm, dry line of the highwater
mark for a mile to the east, and sat down on a clump of seagrass on the top of a sand dune.
"I like this!" she cried joyously.
"So do I," he answered soberly, and lapsed into silence.
The sun was warm and genial. The wind had died, and the waves of the rising tide were creeping up the long,
sloping stretches of the sand with a lazy, soothing rush. A winter gull poised above their heads and soared
seaward. The smoke of an ocean liner streaked the horizon as she swept toward the channel off Sandy Hook.
Jim looked at the girl by his side and tried to speak. She caught the strained expression in his strong face and
lowered her eyes.
He began to trace letters in the sand.
She knew with unerring instinct that he had made his first desperate effort to speak his love and failed. Would
he give it up and wait for weeks and possibly monthsor would he storm the citadel in one mad rush at the
beginning?
He found his voice at last. He had recovered from the panic of his first impulse.
"Well, how do you like my idea of a good day as far as you've gone?" he asked lightly.
She met his gaze with perfect frankness. "The happiest day I ever spent in my life," she confessed.
"Honest?"
"Honest."
"Oh, shuckswhat's the use!" he cried, with sudden fierce resolution. "You've got me, Kiddo, you've got
me! I've been eatin' out of your hand since the minute I laid my eyes on you in that big room. I'm all yours.
You can do anything you want with me. For God's sake, tell me that you like me a little."
The blood slowly mounted to her cheeks in red waves of tremulous emotion.
"I like you very much," she said in low tones.
He seized her hand and held it in a desperate grip.
"I love you, Kiddo," he went on passionately. "You don't mind me calling you Kiddo? You're so dainty and
pretty and sweet, and that dimple keeps coming in your cheek, it just seems like that's the wordyou don't
mind?"
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"No"
"You don't know how I've been starvin' all my life for the love of a pure girl like you. You're the first one I
ever spoke to. I was scared to death yesterday when I saw you. But I'd 'a' spoke to you if it killed me in my
tracks. I couldn't help it. It just looked like an angel had dropped right down out of the gold clouds from that
ceilin'. I was afraid I'd lose you in the crowd and never see you again. It didn't seem you were a stranger
anyhowI didn't seem strange to you, did I?"
Her lips quivered, and she was silent.
"Didn't you feel like you'd known me somewhere before?" he pleaded.
"Yes."
"I just felt you did, and that's what give me courage. Oh, Kiddo, you've got to love me a little I've never
been loved by a human soul in all my life. The first thing I remember was hidin' under a stoop from a brute
who beat me every night. I ran away and slept in barrels and crawled into coal shutes till I was big enough to
earn a livin' sellin' papers. For years I never knew what it meant to have enough to eat. I just scratched and
fought my way through the streets like a little hungry wolf till I got in a blacksmith's shop down on South
Street and learned to handle tools. I was quick and smart, and the old man liked me and let me sleep in the
shop. I had enough to eat then and got strong as an ox. I went to the night schools and learned to read and
write. I don't know anything, but I'm quick and you can teach meyou will, won't you?"
"I'll try," was the low answer.
"You do like me, Kiddo? Say it again!"
She rose to her feet and looked out over the sea, her face scarlet.
"Yes, I do," she said at last.
With a sudden resistless sweep he clasped her in his arms and kissed her lips.
Her heart leaped in mad response to the first kiss a lover had ever given. Her body quivered and relaxed in his
embrace. It was sweetit was wonderful beyond words.
He kissed her again, and she clung to him, lifting her eyes to his at last in a long, wondering gaze and then
pressed her own lips to his.
"Oh, my God, Kiddo, you love me! It beats the world, don't it? Love at first sight for both of us!
I've heard about it, but I didn't think it would ever happen to me like thisdid you?"
She shook her head and bit her lips as the tears slowly dimmed her eyes.
"It takes my breath," she murmured. "I can't realize what it all means. It seems too wonderful to be true."
"And you won't turn me down because I don't know who my father and mother was?"
"Nomy heart goes out to you in a great pity for your lonely, wretched boyhood."
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"I couldn't help thatnow could I?"
"Of course not. It's wonderful that you've made your way alone and won the fight of life."
He gripped her hands and held her at arms' length, devouring her with his deep, slumbering eyes.
"Gee, but you're a brick, little girl! I thought you were an angel when I first saw you. Now I know it. Just
watch me work for you! I'll show you a thing or two. You'll marry me right away, won't you?"
He bent close, his breath on her lips.
Her eyes drooped under his passionate gaze, and the tears slowly stole down her cheeks. Her hour of life had
struck! So suddenly, so utterly unexpectedly, it rang a thunderbolt from the clear sky.
"You will, won't you?" he pleaded.
She smiled at him through her tears and slowly said:
"I can't say yes today."
"Whywhy?"
"You've swept me off my feetII can't think."
"I don't want you to thinkI want you to marry me right now."
"I must have a little time."
His face fell in despair.
"Say, little girl, don't turn me downyou'll kill me."
"I'm not turning you down," she protested tenderly. "I only want time to see that I'm not crazy. I have to
pinch myself to see if I'm awake. It all seems a dream"she paused and lifted her radiant face to his "a
beautiful dreamthe most wonderful my soul has ever seen. I must be sure it's real!"
He drew her into his arms, and her body again relaxed in surrender as his lips touched hers.
"Isn't that the real thing?" he laughed.
She lay very still, her eyes closed, her face a scarlet flame. She was frightened at the swift realization of its
overwhelming reality. The touch of his hand thrilled to the last fiber and nerve of her body. Her own
trembling fingers clung to him with desperate longing tenderness. She roused herself with an effort and drew
away.
"That's enough now. I must have a little common sense. Let's go"
He clung to her hand.
"You'll let me come to see you, tomorrow night?"
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"Yes"
"And the next nightand every night this week what's the difference? There's nobody to say no, is there?"
"No one."
"You'll let me?"
"Tomorrow sure. Maybe you won't want to come the next night."
"Maybe I won't! Just wait and see!"
He seized both hands again and held her at arms' length.
"Don't go yetjust let me look at you a minute more! The only girl I ever had in my lifeand she's the
prettiest thing God ever made on this earth. Ain't I the lucky boy?"
"We must go now," she cried, blushing again under his burning eyes.
He dropped her hands suddenly and saluted military fashion.
"All right, teacher! I'm the little boy that does exactly what he's told."
They strolled leisurely along the shining sands in silence. Now and then his slender hand caught hers and
crushed it. The moment he touched her a living flame flashed through her bodyand through every moment
of contact her nerves throbbed and quivered as if a musician were sweeping the strings of a harp. If this were
not love, what could it be?
Her whole being, body and soul, responded to his. Her body moved instinctively toward his, drawn by some
hidden, resistless power. Her hands went out to meet his; her lips leaped to his.
She must test it with time, of course. And yet she knew by a deep inner sense that time could only fan the
flame that had been kindled into consuming fire that must melt every barrier between them.
She had asked him nothing of himself, his business or his future, and knew nothing except what he had told
her in the first impetuous rush of his confession of love. No matter. The big thing today was the fact of love
and the new radiance with which it was beginning to light the world. The effect was stunning. Their
conversation had been the simplest of commonplace questions and answersand yet the day was the one
miracle of her lifeher happiness something unthinkable until realized.
She had not asked time in order to know him better. She had only asked time to see herself more clearly in
the new experience. Not for a moment did she raise the question of the worthiness of the man she loved. It
was inconceivable that she should love a man not worthy of her. The only questions asked were
soulsearching ones put to herself.
Through the sweet, cool drive homeward, a hundred times she asked within:
"Is this love?"
And each time the answer came from the depths:
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"Yesyesa thousand times yes. It's the voice of God. I feel it and I know it."
He throttled the racer down to the lowest speed and took the longest road home.
Again and again he slipped his left hand from the wheel and pressed hers.
"You won't let anybody knock me behind my back, now will you, little girl?"
She pressed his hand in answer.
"I ain't got a single friend in all God's world to stand up for me but just you."
"You don't need anyone," she whispered.
"You'll give me a chance to get back at 'em if any of your friends knock me, won't you?"
"Why should they dislike you?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, I ain't exactly one o' the highflyers now am I?"
"I'm glad you're not."
"Sure enough?"
"Yes."
"Then it's me for you, Kiddo, for this world and the next."
The car swung suddenly to the curb and Mary lifted her eyes with a start to find herself in front of her home.
Jim sprang to the ground and lifted her out.
"Keep this coat," he whispered. "We'll need it tomorrow. What time is your school out?"
"At three o'clock."
"I can come at four?"
"You don't have to work tomorrow?"
He hesitated a moment.
"No, I'm on a vacation till after Christmas. They're putting through my new patent."
He followed her inside the door and held her hand in the shadows of the hall.
"All right, at four," she said.
"I'll be here."
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He stooped and kissed her, turned and passed quickly out.
She stood for a moment in the shadows and listened to the throb of the car until it melted into the roar of the
city's life, her heart beating with a joy so new it was pain.
CHAPTER VII. A VAIN APPEAL
A week passed on the wings of magic.
Every day at four o'clock the car was waiting at her door. The drab interior of the schoolroom had lost its
terror. No annoyance could break the spell that reigned within. Her patience was inexhaustible, her temper
serene.
Walking with swift step down the Avenue to her home she wondered vaguely how she could have been
lonely in all the music and the wonder of New York's marvelous life. The windows of the stores were already
crowded with Christmas cheer, and busy thousands passed through their doors. Each man or woman was a
swift messenger of love. Somewhere in the shadows of the city's labyrinth a human heart would beat with
quickened joy for every step that pressed about these crowded counters. Love had given new eyes to see, new
ears to hear and a new heart to feel the joys and sorrows of life.
She hadn't given her consent yet. She was still asking her silly heart to be sure of herself. Of her lover, the
depth and tenderness, the strength and madness of his love, there could be no doubt. Each day he had given
new tokens.
For Saturday afternoon she had told him not to bring the car.
When they reached Fifth Avenue, across the Square, he stopped abruptly and faced her with a curious, uneasy
look:
"Say, tell me why you wanted to walk?"
"I had a good reason," she said evasively.
"Yes, but why? It's a sin to lay that car up a day like this. Look here"
He stopped and tried to gulp down his fears.
"Look hereyou're not going to throw me down after leading me to the very top of the roof, are you?"
She looked up with tender assurance.
"Not today"
"Then why hoof it? Let me run round to the garage and shoot her out. You can wait for me at the Waldorf.
I've always wanted to push my buzzwagon up to that big joint and wait for my girl to trip down the steps."
"No. I've a plan of my own today. Let me have my way."
"All rightojust so you're happy."
"I am happy," she answered soberly.
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At the foot of the broad stairs of the Library she paused and looked up smilingly at its majestic front.
"Come in a moment," she said softly.
He followed her wonderingly into the vaulted hall and climbed the grand staircase to the readingroom. She
walked slowly to the shelf on which the Century Dictionary rested and looked laughingly at the seat in which
she sat Saturday afternoon a week ago at exactly this hour.
Jim smiled, leaned close and whispered:
"I got you, KiddoI got you! Get out of here quick or I'll grab you and kiss you!"
She started and blushed.
"Don't you dare!"
"Beat it thenbeat itor I can't help it!"
She turned quickly and they passed through the catalogue room and lightly down the stairs.
He held her soft, round arm with a grip that sent the blood tingling to the roots of her brown hair.
"You understand now?" she whispered.
"You bet! We walk the same way up the Avenue, through the Park to the little house on the laurel hill. And
you're goin' to be sweet to me today, my KiddoI just feel it. I"
"Don't be too sure, sir!" she interrupted, solemnly.
He laughed aloud.
"You can't fool me nowand I'm crazy as a June bug! You know I like to walkif I can be with you!"
At the Park entrance she stopped again and smiled roguishly.
"We'll find a seat in one of the summer houses along the Fiftyninth Street side."
"All right," he responded.
"Nowe'll go on where we started!"
With a laugh, she slipped her hand through his arm.
"You were a little scared of me last Saturday about this time, weren't you?"
"Just a little"
"It hurt me, too, but I didn't let you know."
"I'm sorry."
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"It's all right nowit's all right. Gee I but we've traveled some in a week, haven't we?"
"I've known you more than a week," she protested gayly.
"SureI've known you since I was born."
They walked through the stately rows of elms on the Mall in joyous silence. Crowds of children and nurses,
lovers and loungers, filled the seats and thronged the broad promenade.
Scarcely a word was spoken until they reached the rustic house nestling among the trees on the hill.
"Just a week by the calendar," she murmured. "And I've lived a lifetime."
"It's all right thenlittle girl? You'll marry me right away? Whentonight?"
"Hardly!"
"Tomorrow, then?"
She drew the glove from her hand and held the slender fingers up before him.
"You can get the ring"
"Gee! I do have to get a ring, don't I?"
"Yes"
"Why didn't you tell me? You know I never got married before."
"I should hope not!"
He seized her hand and kissed it, drew her into his arms, held her crushed and breathless and released her
with a quick, impulsive movement.
"You'll help me get it?" he asked eagerly.
"If you like."
"A big white sparkler?"
"Nono"
"No?"
"A plain little gold band."
"Let me get you a big diamond!"
"Noa plain gold band."
"It's all settled then?"
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"We're engaged. You're my fiance."
"But for God's sake, Kiddohow long do I have to be a fiance?"
A ripple of laughter rang through the trees.
"Don't you think we've done pretty well for seven days?"
"I could have settled it in seven minutes after we met," he answered complainingly. "You won't tell me the
day yet?"
"Not yet"
"All right, we'll just have to take blessings as they come, then."
Through the beautiful afternoon they sat side by side with closepressed hands and planned the future which
love had given. A modest flat far up among the trees on the cliffs overlooking the Hudson, they decided on.
"We'll begin with that," he cried enthusiastically, "but we won't stay there long. I've got big plans. I'm going
to make a million. The white house down by the sea for me, a yacht out in the front yard and a halfdozen
thundering autos in the garage. If this deal I'm on now goes through, I'll make my pile in a year"
They rose as the shadows lengthened.
"I must go home and feed my pets," she sighed.
"All right," he responded heartily. "I'll get the car and be there in a jiffy. We'll take a spin out to a roadhouse
for dinner."
She lifted her eyes tenderly.
"You can come right up to my roomnow that we're engaged."
He swept her into his arms again, and held her in unresisting happiness.
It was dark when he swung the gray car against the curb and sprang out. He didn't blow his horn for her to
come down. The privilege she had granted was too sweet and wonderful. He wouldn't miss it for the world.
The stairs were dark. Ella was late this afternoon getting back to her work. His light footstep scarcely made a
sound. He found each step with quick, instinctive touch. The building seemed deserted. The tenants were all
on trips to the country and the seashore. The day was one of rare beauty and warmth. Someone was fumbling
in the dark on the third floor back.
He made his way quickly to her room, and softly knocked, waited a moment and knocked again. There was
no response. He couldn't be mistaken. He had seen her lean out of that window every day the past week.
Perhaps she was busy in the kitchenette and the noise from the street made it impossible to hear.
He placed his hand on the doorknob.
From the darkness of the hall, in a quick, tiger leap, Ella threw herself on him and grappled for his throat.
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"What are you doing at that door, you dirty thief?" she growled.
"Here! Here! What'ellwhat's the matter with you?" he gasped, gripping her hands and tearing them from
his neck. "I'm no thief!"
"You are! You are, too!" she shrieked. "I heard you sneak in the door downstairsheard you slippin' like a
cat upstairs! Get out of here before I call a cop!"
She was savagely pushing him back to the landing of the stairs. With a sudden lurch, Jim freed himself and
gripped her hands.
"Cut it! Cut it! Or I'll knock your block off! I've come to take my girl to ride"
He drew a match and quickly lighted the gas as Mary's footstep echoed on the stairs below.
"Well, she's coming nowwe'll see," was the sullen answer.
Ella surveyed him from head to foot, her one eye gleaming in angry suspicion.
Mary sprang up the last step and saw the two confronting each other. She had heard the angry voices from
below.
"Why, Ella, what's the matter?" she gasped.
"He was trying to break into your room"
Jim threw up his hands in a gesture of rage, and Mary broke into a laugh.
"Why, nonsense, Ella, I asked him to come! This is Mr. Anthony,"her voice dropped,"my fiance."
Ella's figure relaxed with a look of surprise.
"Oh, ja?" she murmured, as if dazed.
"Yescome in," she said to Jim. "Sorry I was out. I had to run to the grocer's for the Kitty."
Ella glared at Jim, turned and began to light the other hall lamps without any attempt at apology.
Jim entered the room with a look of awe, took in its impression of sweet, homelike order and recovered
quickly his composure.
"Gee, you're the dandy little housekeeper! I could stay here forever."
"You like it?"
"It's a bird's nest " He glanced in the mirror and saw the print of Ella's fingers on his collar. "Will you look at
that?" he growled.
"It's too bad," she said, sympathetically.
"You know I thought a shetiger had got loose from the Bronx and jumped on me."
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"I'm awfully sorry," she apologized. "Ella's very fond of me. She was trying to protect me. She couldn't see
who it was in the dark."
"No; I reckon not," Jim laughed.
"I've changed our plans for the evening," she announced. "We won't go to ride tonight. I want you to bring
my best friend to dinner with us at Mouquin's. Go after her in the car. I want to impress her"
"I got you, Kiddo! She's goin' to look me over eh? All right, I'll stop at the store and get a clean collar. I
wouldn't like her to see the print of that tiger's claw on my neck."
"There's her address the Gainsborough Studios. Drop me at Mouquin's and I'll have the table set in one of the
small rooms upstairs. I'll meet you at the door."
Jim glanced at the address, put it in his pocket and helped her draw on her heavy coat.
"You'll be nice to Jane? I want her to like you. She's the only real friend I've ever had in New York."
"I'll do my best for you, little girl," he promised.
He dropped her at the wooden cottagefront on Sixth Avenue near Twentyeighth Street, and returned in
twenty minutes with Jane.
As the tall artist led the way upstairs, Jim whispered:
"Say, for God's sake, let me out of this!"
"Why?"
"She's a frost. If I have to sit beside her an hour I'll catch cold and die. I swear it; save me! Save my life!"
"Sh! It's all right. She's fine and generous when you know her."
They had reached the door and Mary pushed him in. There was no help for it. He'd have to make the most of
it.
The dinner was a dismal failure.
Jane Anderson was polite and genial, but there was a straight look of wonder in her clear gray eyes that froze
the blood in Jim's veins.
Mary tried desperately for the first halfhour to put him at his ease. It was useless. The attack of Ella had
upset his nerves, and the unexpressed hostility of Jane had completely crushed his spirits. He tried to talk
once, stammered and lapsed into a sullen silence from which nothing could stir him.
The two girls at last began to discuss their own affairs and the dinner ended in a sickening failure that
depressed and angered Mary.
The agony over at last, she rose and turned to Jim:
"You can go now, sirI'll take Jane home with me for a friendly chat."
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"Thank God!" he whispered, grinning in spite of his effort to keep a straight face.
"Tomorrow?" he asked in low tones.
"At eight o'clock."
Jim bowed awkwardly to Jane, muttered something inarticulate and rushed to his car.
The two girls walked in silence through Twenty eighth Street to Broadway and thence across the Square.
Seated in her room, Mary could contain her pentup rage no longer.
"Jane Anderson, I'm furious with you! How could you be so rudeso positively insulting!"
"Insulting?"
"Yes. You stared at him in cold disdain as if he were a toad under your feet!"
"I assure you, dear"
"Why did you do it?"
The artist rose, walked to the window, looked out on the Square for a moment, extended her hand and laid it
gently on Mary's shoulder.
"You've made up your mind to marry this man, honey?"
"I certainly have," was the emphatic answer.
Jane paused.
"And all in seven days?"
"Seven days or seven yearswhat does it matter? He's my matewe loveit's Fate."
"It's incredible!"
"What's incredible?"
"Such madness."
"Perhaps love is madnessthe madness that makes life worth the candle. I've never lived before the past
week."
"And you, the dainty, cultured, pious little saint, will marry thisthis"
"Say it! I want you to be frank"
"Perfectly frank?"
"Absolutely."
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"This coarse, ugly, illiterate brute"
"Jane Anderson, how dare you!" Mary sprang to her feet, livid with rage.
"I asked if I might be frank. Shall I lie to you? Or shall I tell you what I think?"
"Say what you please; it doesn't matter," Mary interrupted angrily.
"I only speak at all because I love you. Your commonsense should tell you that I speak with reluctance. But
now that I have spoken, let me beg of you for your father's sake, for your dead mother's sake, for my
sakeI'm your one disinterested friend and you know that my love is realfor the sake of your own soul's
salvation in this world and the nextdon't marry that brute! Commit suicide if you willjump off the
bridgetake poison, cut your throat, blow your brains outbut, oh dear God, not this!"
"And why, may I ask?" was the cold question.
"He's in no way your equal in culture, in character, in any of the essentials on which the companionship of
marriage must be based"
"He's a diamond in the rough," Mary staunchly asserted.
"He's in the rough, all right! The only diamond about him is the one in his red scarf`Take it from me,
Kiddo! Take it from me!'"
Her last sentence was a quotation from Jim, her imitation of his slang so perfect Mary's cheeks flamed anew
with anger.
"I'll teach him to use good Englishnever fear. In a month he'll forget his slang and his red scarf."
"You mean that in a month you'll forget to use good English and his style of dress will be yours. Oh, honey,
can't you see that such a man will only drag you down, down to his level? Can it be possible that you that
you really love him?"
"I adore him and I'm proud of his love!"
"Now listen! You believe in an indissoluble marriage, don't you?"
"Yes"
"It's the first article of your creedthat marriage is a holy sacrament, that no power on earth or in hell can
ever dissolve its bonds? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, my dear! They always havethey always
will, I suppose. This is peculiarly true of your type of womanthe dainty, clinging girl of religious
enthusiasm. You're peculiarly susceptible to the physical power of a brutal lover. Your soul glories in
submission to this force. The more coarse and brutal its attraction the more abject and joyful the surrender.
Your religion can't save you because your religion is purely emotionalit is only another manifestation of
your sex emotions."
"How can you be so sacrilegious!" the girl interrupted with a look of horror.
"It may shock you, dear, but I'm telling you one of the simplest truths of Nature. You'd as well know it now
as later. The moment you wake to realize that your emotions have been deceived and bankrupted, your faith
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will collapse. At least keep, your grip on common sense. Down in the cowardly soul of every weak
woman perhaps of every womanis the insane desire to be dominated by a superior brute force. The
woman of the lower classesthe peasant of Russia, for example, whose sex impulses are of all races the
most violent refuses with scorn the advances of the man who will not strike her. The man who can't beat
his wife is beneath contempthe is no man at all"
Mary broke into a laugh.
"Really, Jane, you cease to be serious you're a joke. For Heaven's sake use a little commonsense yourself.
You can't be warning me that my lover is marrying me in order to use his fists on me?"
"Perhaps not, dear,"the artist smiled; "there might be greater depths for one of your training and character.
I'm just telling you the plain truth about the haste with which you're rushing into this marriage. There's
nothing divine in it. There's no true romance of lofty sentiment. It's the simplest and most elemental of all the
brutal facts of animal life. That it is resistless in a woman of your culture and refinement makes it all the
more pathetic"
The girl rose with a gesture of impatience.
"It's no use, Jane dear; we speak a different language. I don't in the least know what you're talking about, and
what's more, I'm glad I don't. I've a vague idea that your drift is indecent. But we're different. I realize that. I
don't sit in judgment on you. You're wasting your breath on me. I'm going into this marriage with my eyes
wide open. It's the fulfillment of my brightest hopes and aspirations. That I shall be happy with this man and
make him supremely happy I know by an intuition deeper and truer than reason. I'm going to trust that
intuition without reservation."
"All right, honey," the artist agreed with a smile. "I won't say anything more, except that you're fooling
yourself about the depth of this intuitive knowledge. Your infatuation is not based on the verdict of your
deepest and truest instincts."
"On what, then?"
"The crazy ideals of the novels you've been readingthat's all."
"Ridiculous!"
"You're absolutely sure, for instance, that God made just one man the mate of one woman, aren't you?"
"As sure as that I live."
"Where did you learn it?"
"So long ago I can't remember."
"Not in your Bible?"
"No."
"The Sunday school?"
"No."
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"Craddock didn't tell you that, did he?"
"Hardly"
"I thought not. He has too much horsesense in spite of his emotional gymnastics. You learned it in the first
dimenovel you read."
"I never read a dimenovel in my life," she interrupted, indignantly.
"I knowyou paid a dollar and a quarter for it but it was a dimenovel. The philosophy of this school of
trash you have built into a creed of life. How can you be so blind? How can you make so tragic a blunder?"
"That's just it, Jane: I couldn't if your impressions of his character were true. I couldn't make a mistake about
so vital a question. I couldn't love him if he really were a coarse, illiterate brute. What you see is only on the
surface. He hasn't had his chance yet"
"Who is he? What does he do? Who are his people?"
"He has no people"
"I thought not."
"I love him all the more deeply," she went on firmly, "because of his miserable childhood. I'll do my best to
make up for the years of cruelty and hunger and suffering through which he passed. What right have you to
sit in judgment on him without a hearing? You've known him two hours"
Jane shrugged her shoulders.
"Two minutes was quite enough."
"And you judge by what standard?"
"My five senses, and my sixth sense above all. One look at his square bulldog jaw, his massive neck and the
deformity of his delicate hands and feet! I hear the ignorant patois of the East Side underworld. I smell the
brimstone in his suppressed rage at my dislike. There's something uncanny in the sensuous droop of his heavy
eyelids and the glitter of his steelblue eyes. There's something incongruous in his whole personality. I was
afraid of him the moment I saw him."
Mary broke into hysterical laughter.
"And if my five senses and my intuitions contradict yours? Who is to decide? If I loved him on sight If I
looked into his eyes and saw the soul of my mate? If their cold fires thrill me with inexpressible passion? If I
see in his massive neck and jaw the strength of an irresistible manhood, the power to win success and to
command the world? If I see in his slender hands and small feet lines of exquisite beautyam I to crush my
senses and strangle my love to please your idiotic prejudice?"
Jane threw up her hands in despair.
"Certainly not! If you're blind and deaf I can't keep you from committing suicide. I'd lock you up in an
asylum for the insane if I had the power to save you from the clutches of the brute."
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Mary drew herself erect and faced her friend.
"Please don't repeat that word in my hearing there's a limit to friendship. I think you'd better go"
Jane rose and walked quickly to the door, her lips pressed firmly.
"As you likeour lives will be far apart from tonight. It's just as well."
She closed the door with a bang and reached the head of the stairs before Mary threw her arms around her
neck.
"Please, dear, forgive medon't go in anger."
The older woman kissed her tenderly, glad of the dim light to hide her own tears.
"There, it's all right, honeyI won't remember it. Forgive me for my ugly words."
"I love him, JaneI love him! It's Fate. Can't you understand?"
"Yes, dear, I understand, and I'll love you alwaysgoodby."
"You'll come to my wedding?"
"Perhaps"
"I'll let you know"
Another kiss, and Jane Anderson strode down the stairs and out into the night with a sickening, helpless fear
in her heart.
CHAPTER VIII. JIM'S TRIAL
The quarrel had left Mary in a quiver of exalted rage. How dare a friend trample her most sacred feelings!
She pitied Jane Anderson and her tribethese modern feminine leaders of a senseless revolution against
manthey were crazy. They had all been disappointed in some individual and for that reason set themselves
up as the judges of mankind.
"Thank God my soul has not been poisoned!" she exclaimed aloud with fervor. "How strange that these
women who claim such clear vision can be so stupidly blind!"
She busied herself with her little household, and made up her mind once and for all time to be done with such
friendships. The friendship of such women was a vain thing. They were vicious cats at heartnot like her
gentle Persian kitten whose soul was full of sleepy sunlight. These modern insurgents were wild, half
starved stray cats that had been hounded and beaten until they had lapsed into their elemental brute instincts.
They were so aggravating, too, they deserved no sympathy.
Again she thanked God that she was not one of themthat her heart was still capable of romantic lovea
love so sudden and so overwhelming that it could sweep life before it in one mad rush to its glorious end.
She woke next morning with a dull sense of depression. The room was damp and chilly. It was storming. The
splash of rain against the window and the muffled roar from the street below meant that the wind was high
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and the day would be a wretched one outside.
They couldn't take their ride.
It was a double disappointment. She had meant to have him dash down to Long Beach and place the ring on
her finger seated on that same bright sanddune overlooking the sea. Instead, they must stay indoors. Jim was
not at his best indoors. She loved him behind the wheel with his hand on the pulse of that racer. The machine
seemed a part of his being. He breathed his spirit into its steel heart, and together they swept her on and on
over billowy clouds through the gates of Heaven.
There was no help for it. They would spend the time together in her room planning the future. It would be
sweetthese intimate hours in her home with the man she loved.
Should she spend a whole day alone there with him? Was it just proper? Was it really safe? Nonsense! The
vile thoughts which Jane had uttered had poisoned her, after all. She hated her self that she could remember
them. And yet they filled her heart with dread in spite of every effort to laugh them off.
"How could Jane Anderson dare say such things?" she muttered angrily. "`A coarse, illiterate brute!' It's a lie!
a lie! a lie!" She stamped her foot in rage. "He's strong and brave and masterfula man among men he's
my mate and I love him!"
And yet the frankness with which her friend had spoken had in reality disturbed her beyond measure.
Through every hour of the day her uneasiness increased. After all she was utterly alone and her life had been
pitifully narrow. Her knowledge of men she had drawn almost exclusively from romantic fiction.
It was just a little strange that Jim persisted in living so completely in the present and the future. He had told
her of his pitiful childhood. He had told her of his business. It had been definitethe simple statement he
madeand she accepted it without question until Jane Anderson had dropped these ugly suspicions. She
hated the meddler for it.
In the light of such suspicions the simplest, bravest man might seem a criminal. How could her friend be
blind to the magnetism of this man's powerful personality? Bah! She was jealous of their perfect happiness.
Why are women so contemptible?
She began a careful study of every trait of her lover's character, determined to weigh him by the truest
standards of manhood. Certainly he was no weakling. The one abomination of her soul was the type of the
city degenerate she saw simpering along Broadway and Fifth Avenue at times. Jim was brave to the point of
rashness. No man with an ounce of cowardice in his being could handle a car in every crisis with such cool
daring and perfect control. He was strong. He could lift her body as if it were a feather. His arms crushed her
with terrible force. He could earn a living for them both. There could be no doubt about that. His faultless
clothes, the ease with which he commanded unlimited credit among the automobile manufacturers and
dealersevery supply store on Broadway seemed to know himleft no doubt on that score.
There was just a bit of mystery and reserve about his career as an inventor. His first success that had given
him a start he had not explained. The big deal about the new carburetor she could, of course, understand. He
had a workshop all his own. He had told her this the first day they met. She would ask him to take her to see
it this afternoon. The storm would prevent the trip to the Beach. She would ask this, not because she doubted
his honesty, but because she really wished to see the place in which he worked. It was her workshop now, as
well as his.
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For a moment her suspicions were sickening. Suppose he had romanced about his workshop and his room?
Supposed he lived somewhere in the squalid slums of the lower East Side and his people, after all, were
alive? Perhaps a drunken father and a coarse, brutal motherand sisters
She stopped with a frown and clenched her fists.
She would ask Jim to show her his workshop. That would be enough. If he had told her the truth about that
she would make up to him in tender abandonment of utter trust for every suspicion she harbored.
The car was standing in front of her door. He waved for her to come down.
"Jump right in!" he called gayly. "I've got an extra rubber blanket for you."
"In the storm, Jim?" she faltered.
"Surest thing you know. It's great to fly through a storm. You can just ride on its wings. Throw on your
raincoat and come on quick! I'm going to run down to the Beach. Who's afraid of an old storm with this thing
under us?"
Her heart gave a bound. Her longing had reached her lover and brought him through the storm to do her
bidding. It was wonderfulthis oneness of soul and body.
She was happy againsupremely, divinely happy. The man by her side knew and understood. She knew and
understood. She loved this daring spirit that rose to the windthis iron will that brooked no interference with
his plans, even from Nature, when it crossed his love.
The sting of the raindrops against her cheek was exhilarating. The car glided over the swimming roadway
like a great gray gull skimming the beach at low tide. Her soul rose. The sun of a perfect faith and love was
shining now behind the clouds.
She nestled close to his side and watched him tenderly from the corners of her halfclosed eyes, her whole
being content in his strength. The idea of dashing through a blinding rain to the Beach on such a day would
have been to her mind an unthinkable piece of madness. She was proud of his daring. It would be hers to
shield from the storms of life. She loved the rugged lines of his massive jaw in profile. How could Jane be
such a fool as to call him ugly!
The weather, of course, prevented them from walking up the Beach to their sanddune. The walk would have
been all rightbut it was out of the question to sit down there and give her the ring in the pouring rain. She
knew this as well as he. She knew, too, that he had the ring in his pocket, though he had carefully refrained
from referring to it in any way.
He led her to a secluded nook behind a pillar in the little parlor. The hotel was deserted. They had the
building almost to themselves. A log fire crackled in the open fireplace, and he drew a settee close. The wind
had moderated and the rain was pouring down in straight streams, rolling in soft music on the roof.
He drew the ring from his pocket. "Well, Kiddo, I got it. The fellow said this was all right."
He held the tiny gold band before her shining eyes.
"Slip it on!" she whispered.
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"Which one?"
"This one, silly!"
She extended her third finger, as he pressed the ring slowly on.
"Seems to me a mighty little one and a mighty cheap one, but he said it was the thing."
"It's all right, dear," she whispered. "Kiss me!"
He pressed his lips to hers and held them until she sank back and lifted her hand in warning.
"Be careful!"
"Whose afraid?" Jim muttered, glancing over his shoulder toward the door. "Now tell me what day
tomorrow?"
"Nonsense, man!" she cried. "Give me time to breathe"
"What for?"
"Just to realize that I'm engagedto plan and think and dream of the wonderful day."
"We're losing time"
"We'll never live these wonderful hours over again, dear."
Jim's face fell and his voice was pitiful in its funereal notes: "Lord, I thought the ring settled it."
"And so it does, dearit does"
"Not if that longlegged spider that took dinner with us the other night gets in her fine work. I'll bet that she
handed me a few when you got home?"
Mary was silent.
"Now didn't she?"
"To the best of her abilityyesbut I didn't mind her silly talk."
"Gee, but I'd love to give her a bouquet of poison ivy!"
"We had an awful quarrel"
"And you stood up for me?"
"You know I did!"
"All right, I don't give a tinker's damn what anybody says if you stand by me! In all this world there's just
youfor me. There's never been anybody elseand there never will be. I'm that kind."
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"And I love you for it!" she cried, with rapture pressing his hand in both of hers.
"What did she say about me, anyhow?"
"Nothing worth repeating. I've forgotten it."
Jim held her gaze.
"It's funny how you love anybody the minute you lay eyes on 'emor hate 'em the same way. I wanted to
choke her the minute she opened her yap to me."
"Forget it, dear," she broke in briskly. "I want you to take me to see your workshop tomorrowwill you?"
A flash of suspicion shot from the depths of his eyes.
"Did she tell you to ask me that?"
"Of course not! I'm just interested in everything you do. I want to see where you work."
"It's no place for a sweet girl to gothat part of town."
"But I'll be with you."
"I don't want you to go down there," he sullenly maintained.
"But why, dear?"
"It's a low, dirty place. I had to locate the shop there to get the room I needed for the rent I could pay. It's not
fit for you. I'm going to move uptown in a little while."
"Please let me go," she pleaded.
He shook his head emphatically.
"No."
She turned away to hide the tears. The first real, hideous fear she had ever had about him caught her heart in
spite of every effort to fight it down. His workshop might be a myth after all. He had failed in the first test to
which she had put him. It was horrible. All the vile suggestions of Jane Anderson rushed now into her
memory.
She struggled bravely to keep her head and not break down. It was beyond her strength. A sob strangled her,
and she buried her face in her hands.
Jim looked at her in helpless anguish for a moment, started to gather her in his arms and looked around the
room in terror.
He leaned over her and whispered tensely:
"For God's sake, Kiddodon'tdon't do that! I didn't mean to hurt youhonest, I didn't. Don't cry any
more and I'll take you right down to the black hole, and let you sleep on the floor if you want to. Gee! I'll give
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you the whole place, tools, junk and all"
She lifted her head.
"Will you, Jim?"
"Sure I will! We start this minute if you want to go."
She glanced over his shoulder to see that no one was looking, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him
again and again.
"It was the first time you ever said no, dear, and it hurt. I'm happy again now. If you'll just let me see you in
the shop for five minutes I'll never ask you again."
"All righttomorrow when you get out of school. I'll take you down. Holy Mike, that was a dandy kiss!
Let's quarrel againstart something else."
She rose laughing and brushed the last trace of tears from her eyes.
"Let's eat dinner nowI'm hungry."
"By George, I'd forgot all about the feed!"
By eight o'clock the storm had abated; the rain suddenly stopped, and the moon peeped through the clouds.
He drove the big racer back at a steady, even stride on her lowest notch of speedhalf the time with only his
right hand on the wheel and his left gripping hers.
As the lights of Manhattan flashed from the hills beyond the Queensborough Bridge, he leaned close and
whispered:
"Happy?"
"Perfectly."
The car was waiting the next day at halfpast three.
"It's not far," he said, nodding carelessly. "You needn't put on the coat. Be there in a jiffy."
Down Twentythird Street to Avenue A, down the avenue to Eighteenth Street, and then he suddenly swung
the machine through Eighteenth into Avenue B and stopped below a low, red brick building on the corner.
He set his brakes with a crash, leaped out and extended his hands.
"I didn't like to take you up these stairs at the back of that saloon, little girl, but you would come. Now don't
blame me"
She pressed his arm tenderly.
"Of course I won't blame you. I'm proud and happy to share your life and help you. I'm surprised to see
everything so quiet down here. I thought all the East Side was packed with crowded tenements."
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"No," he answered, in a matteroffact way. "About the only excitement we have in this quarter is an
occasional gas explosion in the plant over there, and the noise of the secondhand material men unloading
iron. The tenements haven't been built here yet."
He led her quickly past the back door of the saloon and up two narrow flights of stairs to the top of the
building, drew from his pocket the key to a heavy padlock and slipped the crooked bolt from the double
staples. He unlocked the door with a second key and pushed his way in.
"All righto," he cried.
The straight, narrow hall inside was dark. He fumbled in his pocket and lit the gas.
"The workshop first, or my sleeping den?"
"The workshop first!" she whispered excitedly.
She had made the reality of this shop the supreme test of Jim's word and character. She was in a fever of
expectant uncertainty as to its equipment and practical use.
He unlocked the door leading to the front.
"That's my denwe'll come back here."
He passed quickly to the further end of the hall and again used two keys to open the door, and held it back for
her to enter.
"I'm sorry it's so dirtyif you get your pretty dress all ruinedit's not my fault, you know."
Mary surveyed the room with an exclamation of delight.
"Oh, what a wonderful place! Why, Jim, you're a magician!"
There could be no doubt about the practical use to which the shop was being put. Its one small window
opened on a fire escape in the narrow court in the rear. A skylight in the middle opened with a hinge on the
roof and flooded the space with perfect light. An iron ladder swung from the skylight and was hooked up
against the ceiling by a hasp fastened to a staple over a workbench. On one side of the room was a tiny
blacksmith's forge, an anvil, hammers and a complete set of tools for working in rough iron. A small gasoline
engine supplied the power which turned his lathe and worked the drills, saw and plane. On the other side of
the room was arranged a fairly complete chemical laboratory with several retorts, and an oxyhydrogen
blowpipe capable of developing the powerful heat used in the melting and brazing of metals. Beneath the
benches were piled automobile supplies of every kind.
"You know how to use all these machines, Jim?" she asked in wonder.
"Sure, and then some!" he answered with a wave of his slender hand.
"You're a wizard"
"Now the den?" he said briskly.
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She followed him through the hall and into the large front corner room overlooking Avenue B and Eighteenth
Street. The morning sun flooded the front and the afternoon sun poured into the side windows. The furniture
was solid mahoganya bed, bureau, chiffonier, couch and three chairs. The windows were fitted with
woodpaneled shutters, shades and heavy draperies. A thick, soft carpet of faded red covered the floor.
"It's a nice room, Jim, but I'd like to dust it for you," she said with a smile.
"Sure. I'm for giving you the right to dust it every morning, Kiddo, beginning now. Let's find a preacher
tonight!"
She blushed and moved a step toward the door.
"Just a little while. You know it's been only ten days since we met"
"But we've lived some in that time, haven't we?"
"An eternity, I think," she said reverently.
"I want to marry right now, girlie!" he pleaded desperately. "If that spider gets you in her den again, I just feel
like it's good night for me."
"Nonsense. You can't believe me such a silly child. I'm a woman. I love you. Do you think the foolish
prejudice of a friend could destroy my love for the man whom I have chosen for my mate?"
"No, but I want it fixed and then it's fixedand they can say what they please. Marry me tonight! You've got
the ring. You're going to in a little while, anyhow. What's the use to wait and lose these days out of our life?
What's the sense of it? Don't you know me by this time? Don't you trust me by this time?"
She slipped her hand gently into his.
"I trust you utterly. And I feel that I've known you since the day I was born"
"Then whywhy wait a minute?"
"You can't understand a girl's feelings, dearonly a little while and it's all right."
He sat down on the couch in silence, rose and walked to the window. She watched him struggling with deep
emotion.
He turned suddenly.
"Look here, Kiddo, I've got to leave on that trip to the mountains of North Carolina. I've got to get down there
before Christmas. I must be back here by the first of the year. GeeI can't go without you! You don't want to
stay here without me, do you?"
A sudden pallor overspread her face. For the first time she realized how their lives had become one in the
sweet intimacy of the past ten days.
"You must go now?" she gasped.
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"Yes. I've made my arrangements. I've business back here the first of the year that can't wait. Marry me and
go with me. We'll take our honeymoon down there. By George, we'll go together in the car! Every day by
each other's side over hundreds and hundreds of miles! Say, ain't you game? Come on! It's a crime to send me
away without you. How can you do it?"
"I can'tI'm afraid," she faltered.
"You'll marry me, then?"
"Yes!" she whispered. "What is the latest day you can start?"
"Next Saturday, if we go in the car"
"All right,"she was looking straight into the depths of his soul now"next Saturday."
He clasped her in his arms and held her with desperate tenderness.
CHAPTER IX. ELLA'S SECRET
The consummation of her life's dream was too near, too sweet and wonderful for Jane's croakings to distress
Mary Adams beyond the moment. She had, of course, wished her friend to be present at the weddingyet
the curt refusal had only aroused anew her pity at stupid prejudices. It was out of the question to ask her
father to leave his work in the Kentucky mountains and come all the way to New York. She would surprise
him with the announcement. After all, she was the one human being vitally concerned in this affair, and the
only one save the man whose life would be joined to hers.
In five minutes after the painful scene with Jane she had completely regained her composure, and her face
was radiant with happiness when she waved to Jim. He was standing before the door in the car, waiting to
take her to the City Hall to get the marriage license.
"Gee!" he cried, "you're the prettiest, sweetest thing that ever walked this earth, with those cheeks all flaming
like a rose! Are you happy?"
"Gloriously."
She motioned him to keep his seat and sprang lightly to his side.
"Aren't you happy, sir?" she added gayly.
"I am, yesbut to tell you the truth, I'm beginning to get scared. You know what to do, don't you, when we
get before that preacher?"
"Of course, silly"
"I never saw a wedding in my life."
She pressed his hand tenderly.
"Honestly, Jim?"
"I swear it. You'll have to tell me how to behave."
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"We'll rehearse it all tonight. I'll show you. I've seen hundreds of people married. My father's a preacher, you
know."
"Yes, I know that," he went on solemnly; "that's what gives me courage. I knew you'd understand everything.
I'm counting on you, Kiddoif you fall down, we're gone. I'll run like a turkey."
"It's easy," she laughed.
"And this license businesshow do we go about that? What'll they do to us?"
"Nothing, goose! We just march up to the clerk and demand the license. He asks us a lot of questions"
"Questions! What sort of questions?"
"The names of your father and motherwhether you've been married before and where you live and how old
you are"
"Ask you about your business?" he interrupted, sharply.
"No. They think if you can pay the license fee you can support your wife, I suppose."
"How much is it?"
"I don't know, here. It used to be two dollars in Kentucky."
"That's cheapmust come higher in this burg. I brought along a hundred."
"Nonsense."
"There's a lot of graft in this town. I'll be ready. I've got to get 'emdon't care how high they come."
"There'll be no graft in this, Jim," she protested gayly.
"Well, it'll be the first time I ever got by without itbelieve me!"
The ease with which the license was obtained was more than Jim could understand. All the way back from
the City Hall he expected to be held up at every corner. He kept looking over his shoulder to see if they were
being followed.
Arrived in her room, they discussed their plans for the day of days.
"I'll come round soon in the morning, and we'll spend the whole day at the Beach," he suggested.
She lifted her hands in protest.
"Nono!"
"No?"
"Not on our weddingday, Jim!"
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"Why?"
"It's not good form. The groom should not see the bride that day until they meet at the altar."
"Let's change it!"
"No, sir, the old way's the best. I'll spend the day in saying goodby to the past. You'll call for me at six
o'clock. We'll go to Dr. Craddock's house and be married in time for our wedding dinner."
The lover smiled, and his drooping eyelids fell still lower as he watched her intently.
"I want that dinner here in this little place, Kiddo"
She blushed and protested.
"I thought we'd go to the Beach and spend the night there."
"Here, girlie, here! I love this little place it's so like you. Get the old wildcat who cleans up for you to fix
us a dinner here all by ourselves wouldn't she?"
"She'd do anything for meyes."
"Then fix it hereI want to be just with you don't you understand?"
"Yes," she whispered. "But I'd rather spend that first day of our new life in a strange placeand the Beach
we both lovehadn't you just as leave go there, Jim?"
"No. The waiters will stare at us, and hear us talk"
"We can have our meals served in our room.
"This is better," he insisted. "I want to spend one day here alone with you, before we gojust to feel that
you're all mine. You see, if I walk in here and own the place, I'll know that better than any other way. I've just
set my heart on it, Kiddowhat's the difference?"
She lifted her lips to his.
"All right, dear. It shall be as you wish. Tomorrow I will be all yoursin life, in death, in eternity. Your
happiness will be the one thing for which I shall plan and work."
Ella was very happy in the honor conferred on her. She was given entire charge of the place, and spent the
day in feverish preparation for the dinner. She insisted on borrowing a larger table from the little fat woman
next door, to hold the extra dishes. She dressed herself in her best. Her raven black hair was pressed smooth
and shining down the sides of her pale temples.
The work was completed by three o'clock in the afternoon, and Mary lay in her window lazily watching the
crowds scurrying home. The offices closed early on Saturday afternoons.
Ella was puttering about the room, adding little touches here and there in a pretense of still being busy. As a
matter of fact, she was watching the girl from her one eye with a wistful tenderness she had not dared as yet
to express in words. Twice Mary had turned suddenly and seen her thus. Each time Ella had started as if
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caught in some act of mischief and asked an irrelevant question to relieve her embarrassment.
Mary could feel her single eye fixed on her now in a deep, brooding look. It made her uncomfortable.
She turned slowly and spoke in gentle tones.
"You've been so sweet to me today, Ellafather and mother and best friend. I'll never forget your kindness.
You'd better rest awhile now until we go to Dr. Craddock's. I want you to be there, too"
"To see the marriageja?" she asked softly.
"Yes."
"Oh, no, my dear, noI stay here and wait for you to come. I keep the lights burning bright. I welcome the
bride and groom to their little homeja."
A quick glance of suspicion shot from Mary's blue eyes. Could it be possible that this forlorn scrubwoman
would carry her hostility to her lover to the same point of ungracious refusal to witness the ceremony? It was
nonsense, of course. Ella would feel out of place in the minister's parlor, that was all. She wouldn't insist.
"All right, Ella; you can receive us here with ceremony. You'll be our maid, butler, my father, my mother and
my friends!"
There was a moment's silence and still no move on Ella's part to go. The girl felt her single eye again fixed on
her in mysterious, wistful gaze. She would send her away if it were possible without hurting her feelings.
Mary lifted her eyes suddenly, and Ella stirred awkwardly and smiled.
"I hope you are very happy, meine liebeja?"
"I couldn't be happier if I were in Heaven," was the quick answer.
"I'm so glad"
Again an awkward pause.
"I was once young and pretty like you, meine liebe," she began dreamily, "slim and straight and
jollyalways laughing."
Mary held her breath in eager expectancy. Ella was going to lift the veil from the mystery of her life, stirred
by memories which the coming wedding had evoked.
"And you had a thrilling romanceElla? I always felt it."
Again silence, and then in low tones the woman told her story.
"Jaa romance, too. I was so young and foolishjust a baby myselfnot sixteen. But I was full of life and
fun, and I had a way of doing what I pleased.
"The man was older than meOh, a lot olderwith gray hairs on the side of his head. I was wild about him.
I never took to kids. They didn't seem to like me"
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She paused as if hesitating to give her full confidence, and quickly went on:
"My folks were German. They couldn't speak English. I learned when I was five years old. They didn't like
my lover. We quarrel day and night. I say they didn't like him because they could not speak his language.
They say he was bad. I fight for him, and run away and marry him"
Again she paused and drew a deep breath.
"Ah, I was one happy little fool that year! He make good wages on the docksa stevedore. They had a
strike, and he got to drinking. The baby came"
She stopped suddenly.
"You had a little baby, Ella?" the girl asked in a tender whisper.
"Jaja" she sobbed"so sweet, so goodso quietso beautiful she was. I was very happylike a little
girl with a dollonly she laugh and cry and coo and pull my hair! He stop the drink a little while when she
come, and he got work. And then he begin worse and worse. It seem like he never loved me any more after
the baby. He curse me, he quarrel. He begin to strike me sometimes. I laugh and cry at first and make up and
try again"
Again she paused as if for courage to go on, and choked into silence.
"Yesand then?" the girl asked.
"And then he come home one night wild drunk. He stumble and fall across the cradle and hurt my baby so
she never cryjust lie still and trembleher eyes wide open at first and then they droop and close and she
die!
"He laugh and curse and strike me, and I fight him like a tiger. He was stronghe throw me down on the
floor and gouge my eye out with his big claw"
"Oh, my God," Mary sobbed.
Ella sprang to her feet and bent over the girl with trembling eagerness.
"You keep my secret, meine liebe?"
"Yesyes"
"I never tell a soul on earth what I tell you now I just eat my heart out and keep still all the years, I can tell
youja?"
"Yes, I'll keep it sacredgo on"
"When I know he gouge my eye out, I go wild. I get my hand on his throat and choke him still. I drag him to
the stairs and throw him head first all the way down to the bottom. He fall in a heap and lie still. I run down
and drag him to the door. I kick his face and he never move. He was dead. I kick him againand again. And
then I laughI laughI laugh in his dead faceI was so glad I kill him!"
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She sank in a paroxysm of sobs on the floor, and the girl touched her smooth black hair tenderly, strangled
with her own emotions.
Ella rose at last and brushed the tears from her hollow cheeks.
"Now, you know, meine liebe! Why I tell you this today, I don't knowmaybe I must! I dream once like you
dream today"
The girl slipped her arms around the drooping, pathetic figure and stroked it tenderly.
"The sunshine is for some, maybe," Ella went on pathetically; "for some the clouds and the storms. I hope
you are very, very happy today and all the days"
"I will be, Ella, I'm sure. I'll always love you after this."
"Maybe I make you sad because I tell you"
"Nono! I'm glad you told me. The knowledge of your sorrow will make my life the sweeter. I shall be
more humble in my joy."
It never occurred to the girl for a moment that this lonely, broken woman had torn her soul's deepest secret
open in a last pathetic effort to warn her of the danger of her marriage. The wistful, helpless look in her eye
meant to Mary only the anguish of memories. Each human heart persists in learning the big lessons of life at
first hand. We refuse to learn any other way. The tragedies of others interest us as fiction. We make the
application to othersnever to ourselves.
Jim's familiar footstep echoed through the hall, and Mary sprang to the door with a cry of joy.
CHAPTER X. THE WEDDING
Ella hurried into the kitchenette and busied herself with dinner. Jim's unexpectedly early arrival broke the
spell of the tragedy to which Mary had listened with breathless sympathy. Her own future she faced without a
shadow of doubt or fear.
Her reproaches to Jim were entirely perfunctory, on the sin of his early call on their weddingday.
"Naughty boy!" she cried with mock severity. "At this unseemly hour!"
He glanced about the room nervously.
"Anybody in there?"
He nodded toward the kitchenette.
"Only Ella"
"Send her away."
"What's the matter?"
"Quick, Kiddoquick!"
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Mary let Ella out from the little private hall without her seeing Jim, and returned.
"For heaven's sake, man, what ails you?" she asked excitedly.
"SayI forgot that thing already. We got to go over it again. What if I miss it?"
"The ceremony?"
"Yep"
He mopped his brow and looked at his watch.
"By the time we get to that preacher's house, I won't know my first name if you don't help me."
Mary laughed softly and kissed him.
"You can't miss it. All you've got to do is say, `I will' when he asks you the question, put the ring on my
finger when he tells you, and repeat the words after himhe and I will do the rest."
"Say my question over again."
"`Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance, in the holy estate of
matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all
others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?'"
She looked at him and laughed.
"Why don't you answer?"
"Now?"
"Yesthat's the end of the question. Say, `I will.'"
"Oh, I will all right! What scares me is that I'll jump in on him and say `I will' before he gets halfway
through. Seems to me when he says, `Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?' I'll just have to
choke myself there to keep from saying, `You bet your life I will, Parson!'"
"It won't hurt anything if you say, `I will' several times," she assured him.
"It wouldn't queer the job?"
"Not in the least. I've often heard them say, `I will' two or three times. Wait until you hear the words, `so long
as ye both shall live'"
"`So long as ye both shall live,'" he repeated solemnly.
"The other speech you say after the minister."
"He won't bite off more than I can chew at one time, will he?"
"No, sillyjust a few words"
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"Because if he does, I'll choke."
Jim drew his watch again, mopped his brow, and gazed at Mary's serene face with wonder.
"Say, Kiddo, you're immenseyou're as cool as a cucumber!"
"Of course. Why not? It's my day of joy and perfect peacethe day I've dreamed of since the dawn of
maidenhood. I'm marrying the man of my choicethe one man God made for me of all men on earth. I know
thisI'm content."
"Let me hang around here till timewon't you?" he asked helplessly.
"We must have Ella come back to fix the table."
"Sure. I just didn't want her to hear me tell you that I had cold feet. I'm better now."
Ella moved about the room with soft tread, watching Jim with sullen, concentrated gaze when he was not
looking.
The lovers sat on the couch beside the window, holding each other's hands and watching in silence the
hurrying crowds pass below. Now that his panic was over, Jim began to breathe more freely, and the time
swiftly passed.
As the shadows slowly fell, they rang the bell at the parson's house beside the church, and his good wife
ushered them into the parlor. The little Craddocks crowded insix of them, two girls and four boys, their
ages ranging from five to nineteen.
Sweet memories crowded the girl's heart from her happy childhood. She had never missed one of these affairs
at home. Her father was a very popular minister and his home the Mecca of lovers for miles around.
Craddock, like her father, was inclined to be conservative in his forms. Marriage he held with the old
theologians to be a holy sacrament. He never used the newfangled marriage vows. He stuck to the formula
of the Book of Common Prayer.
When she stood before the preacher in this beautiful familiar scene which she had witnessed so many times at
home, Mary's heart beat with a joy that was positively silly. She tried to be serious, and the dimple would
come in her cheek in spite of every effort.
As Craddock's musical voice began the opening address, the memory of a foolish incident in her father's life
flashed through her mind, and she wondered if Jim in his excitement had forgotten his pocketbook and
couldn't pay the preacher.
"Dearly beloved," he began, "we are gathered together here in the sight of God"
Mary tried to remember that she was in the sight of God, but she was so foolishly happy she could only
remember that funny scene. A longlegged Kentucky mountain bridegroom at the close of the ceremony had
turned to her father and drawled:
"Well, parson, I ain't got no money with mebut I want to give ye five dollars. I've got a fine dawg. He's
worth ten. I'll send him to ye fur fiveif it's all right?"
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The children had giggled and her father blushed.
"Oh, that's all right," he had answered. "Money's no matter. Forget the five. I hope you'll be very happy."
Two weeks later a crate containing the dog had come by express. On the tag was scrawled:
Dear Parson:I like Nancy so well, I send ye the hole dawg, anyhow.
She hadn't a doubt that Jim would feel the same waybut she hoped he hadn't forgotten his pocketbook.
The scene had flashed through her mind in a single moment. She had bitten her lips and kept from laughing
by a supreme effort. Not a word of the solemn ceremonial, however, had escaped her consciousness.
"And in the face of this company," the preacher's rich voice was saying, "to join together this Man and this
Woman in holy Matrimony; which is commended of St. Paul to be honorable among all men: and therefore is
not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the
fear of God. Into this holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. If any man can show just
cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his
peace."
Craddock paused, and his piercing eyes searched the man and woman before him.
"I require to charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts
shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in
Matrimony, ye do now confess it"
Again he paused. The perspiration stood in beads on Jim's forehead, and he glanced uneasily at Mary from
the corners of his drooping eyes. A smile was playing about her mouth, and Jim was cheered.
"For be ye well assured," the preacher continued, "that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as
God's Word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful."
He turned with deliberation to Jim and transfixed him with the first question of the ceremony. The groom was
hypnotized into a state of abject terror. His ears heard the words; the mind recorded but the vaguest idea of
what they meant.
"Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of
Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all
others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?"
Jim's mouth was open; his lower jaw had dropped in dazed awe, and he continued to stare straight into the
preacher's face until Mary pressed his arm and whispered:
"Jim!"
"I willyes, I willyou bet I will!" he hastened to answer.
The children giggled, and the preacher's lips twitched.
He turned quickly to Mary.
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"Wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance, in the holy estate of
Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health; and,
forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?"
With quick, clear voice, Mary answered:
"I will."
"Please join your right hands and repeat after me:"
He fixed Jim with his gaze and spoke with deliberation, clause by clause:
"I, James, take thee, Mary, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for
worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according
to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth."
Jim's throat at first was husky with fear, but he caught each clause with quick precision and repeated them
without a hitch.
He smiled and congratulated himself: "I got ye that time, old cull!"
The preacher's eyes sought Mary's:
"I, Mary, take thee, James, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for
worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death do us part,
according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth."
In the sweetest musical voice, quivering with happiness, the girl repeated the words.
Again the preacher's eyes sought Jim's:
AND THE MAN SHALL GIVE UNTO THE WOMAN A RING
The groom fumbled in his pocket and found at last the ring, which he handed to Mary. The minister at once
took it from her hand and handed it back to Jim.
The bride lifted her left hand, deftly extending the fourth finger, and the groom slipped the ring on, and held
it firmly gripped as he had been instructed.
"With this ring I thee wed"
"With this ring I thee wed" Jim repeated firmly.
"and with all my worldly goods I thee endow"
"and with all my worldly goods I thee endow"
"In the Name of the Father"
"In the Name of the Father"
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"and of the Son"
"and of the Son"
"and of the Holy Ghost"
"and of the Holy Ghost"
"Amen!"
"Amen!"
The voice of the preacher's prayer that followed rang faraway and unreal to the heart of the girl. Her vivid
imagination had leaped the years. Her spirit did not return to earth and time and place until the minister
seized her right hand and joined it to Jim's.
"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder!
"Forasmuch as James Anthony and Mary Adams have consented together in holy wedlock, and have
witnessed the same before God and this company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth, each to the
other, and have declared the same by giving and receiving a Ring, and by joining hands; I pronounce that
they are Man and Wife, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
The preacher lifted his hands solemnly above their heads.
"God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless, preserve, and keep you; the Lord mercifully with
His favor look upon you, and fill you with all spiritual benediction and grace; that ye may so live together in
this life, that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting. AMEN."
The preacher took Mary's hand.
"Your father is my friend, child. This is for him"
He bent quickly and kissed her lips, while Jim gasped in astonishment.
The minister's wife congratulated them both. The two older children smilingly advanced and added their
voices in good wishes.
Mary whispered to Jim:
"Don't forget the preacher's fee!"
"Lord, how much? Will fifty be enough? It's all I've got."
"Give him twenty. We'll need the rest."
It was not until they were seated in the waiting cab and sank back among the shadows, that Jim crushed her in
his arms and kissed her until she cried for mercy.
"The gall of that preacher, kissing you!" he muttered savagely. "You know, I come within an ace of pasting
him one on the nose!"
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CHAPTER XI. "UNTIL DEATH"
The lights burned in the hall with unusual brightness. Ella stood in the open door of the room, through which
the light was streaming. With its radiance came the perfume of rosesthe scrubwoman's gift of love. The
room was a bower of gorgeous flowers. She had spent her last cent in this extravagance. Mary swept the
place with a look of amazement.
"Oh, Ella," she cried, "how could you be so silly!"
"You like them, ja?" Ella asked softly.
"They're gloriousbut you should not have made such a sacrifice for me."
"For myself, maybe, I do itall for myself to make me happy, too, tonight."
She dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand and placed the chairs beside the beautifully set table.
"Dinner is all ready," she announced cheerfully. "And shall I go now and leave you? Or will you let me serve
your dinner first?"
A sudden panic seized the bride.
"Stay and serve the dinner, Ella, if you will," she quickly answered.
Jim frowned, but seated himself in businesslike fashion.
"All right; I'm ready for it, old girl!"
With soft tread and swift, deft touch, Ella served the dinner, standing prim and stiff and ghostlike behind
Jim's chair between the courses.
The bride watched her, fascinated by the pallor of her haggard face and the queer suggestion of Death which
her appearance made in spite of the background of flowers. She had dressed herself in a simple skirt and
shirtwaist of spotless white. The material seemed to be draped on her tall figure, thin to emaciation. The
chalklike pallor of her face brought out with startling sharpness the deep, hollow caverns beneath her
straight eyebrows. Her single eye shone unusually bright.
Gradually the grim impression grew that Death was hovering over her bridal feasta foolish fancy which
persisted in her highlywrought nervous state. Yet the idea, once fixed, could not be crushed. In vain she
used her will to bring her wandering mind back to the joyous present. Each time she lifted her eyes they
rested upon the silent, white figure with its single eye piercing the depths of her soul.
She could endure it no longer. She nodded and smiled wanly at Ella.
"You may go now!"
The woman gazed at the bride in surprise.
"I shall come againyes?"
"Tomorrow morning, Ella, you may help me."
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The white figure paused uncertainly at the door, and her drawling voice breathed her parting word tenderly:
"Good night!"
The bride closed her eyes and answered.
"Good night, Ella!"
The door closed. Jim rose quickly and bolted it.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed fervently. He fixed his slumbering eyes on his wife for a moment, saw the
frightened look, walked quickly back to the table and took his seat.
"Now, Kiddo, we can eat in peace."
"Yes, I'd rather be alone," she sighed.
"I must say," Jim went on briskly, "that parson of yours did give us a run for our money."
"I like the old, long ceremony best."
"Well, you see, I ain't never had much choice but do you know what I thought was the best thing in it?"
"Nowhat?"
"UNTIL DEATH DO US PART! Gee how he did ring out on that! His voice sounded to me like a big bell
somewhere away up in the clouds. Did you hear me sing it back at him?"
Mary smiled nervously.
"You had found your voice then."
"You bet I had! I muffed that first one, though, didn't I?"
"A little. It didn't matter." She answered mechanically.
He fixed his eyes on her again.
"Hungry, Kiddo?"
"No," she gasped.
"What's the use!" he cried in low, vibrant tones, springing to his feet. "I don't want to eat this stuffI just
want to eat you!"
Mary rose tremblingly and moved instinctively to meet him.
He clasped her form in his arms and crushed with cruel strength.
"Until death do us part!" he whispered passionately.
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She answered with a kiss.
CHAPTER XII. THE LOTOSEATERS
It was eleven o'clock next morning before Ella ventured to rap softly on the door. They had just finished
breakfast. The bride was clearing up the table, humming a song of her childhood.
Jim caught her in his arms.
"Once more before she comes!"
"Don't kill me!" she laughed.
Jim lounged in the window and smoked his cigarette while Ella and Mary chattered in the kitchenette.
In half an hour the scrubwoman had made her last trip with the extra dishes, and the little home was spick
and span.
Mary sprang on the couch and snuggled into Jim's arms.
"I've changed our plans" he began thoughtfully.
"We won't give up our honeymoon trip?" she cried in alarm. "That's one dream we MUST live, Jim, dear. I've
set my heart on it."
"Sure we willsure," he answered quickly. "But not in that car."
"Why?"
Jim grinned.
"Because I like you betteryou get me, Kiddo?"
She pressed close and whispered:
"I think so."
"You see, that fool car might throw a tire or two. Believe me, it'll be a job to have her on my hands for a
thousand miles. Of course, if I didn't know you, little girl, it would be all sorts of fun. But, honest to God, this
game beats the world."
He bent low and kissed her again.
"Where'll we go, then?" she murmured.
"That's what I'm tryin' to dope out. I like the sea. It lulls me just like whisky puts a drunkard to sleep. I wish
we could get where it's bright and warm and the sun shines all the time. We could stay two weeks and then
jump on the train and be in Asheville the day before Christmas."
Mary sprang up excitedly.
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"I have it! We'll go to Floridaaway down to the Keys. It's the dream of my life to go there!"
"The Keys what's that?" he asked, puzzled.
"The Keys are little sand islands and reefs that jut out into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The
railroad takes us right there."
"It's warm and sunny there now?"
"Just like summer up here. We can go in bathing in the surf every day."
Jim sprang to his feet.
"Got a bathing suit?"
Yesa beauty. I've never worn it here."
"Why?"
"It seemed so bold."
"All right. Maybe we can get a Key all by ourselves for two weeks."
"Wouldn't it be glorious!"
"We'll try it, anyhow. I'll buy the doggoned thing if they don't ask too much. Pack your traps. I'll go down to
the shop and get my things. We'll be ready to start in an hour."
By four o'clock they were seated in the drawing room of a Pullman car on the Florida Limited, gazing
entranced at the drab landscape of the Jersey meadows.
Three days later, Jim had landed his boat on a tiny sand reef a halfmile off the coast of Florida with a tent
and complete outfit for camping. Like two romping children, they tied the boat to a stake and rushed over the
sanddunes to the beach. They explored their domain from end to end within an hour. Not a tree obscured the
endless panorama of sea and bay and waving grass on the great solemn marshes. Piles of soft, warm seaweed
lay in long, dark rows along the hightide mark.
Mary selected a sanddune almost exactly the height and shape of the one on which they sat at Long Beach
the day he told her of his love.
"Here's the spot for our home!" she cried. "Don't you recognize it?"
"Can't say I've ever been here before. Oh, I got youI got you! Long Beachsure! What do you think of
that?"
He hurried to the boat and brought the tent. Mary carried the spade, the pole and pegs.
In half an hour the little white home was shining on the level sand at the foot of their favorite dune. The door
was set toward the open sea, and the stove securely placed beneath an awning which shaded it from the sun's
rays.
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"Now, Kiddo, a plunge in that shining water the first thing. I'll give you the tent. I'll chuck my things out
here."
In a fever of joyous haste she threw off her clothes and donned the dainty, onepiece bathing suit. She flew
over the sand and plunged into the water before Jim had finished changing to his suit.
She was swimming and diving like a duck in the lazy, beautiful waters of the Gulf when he reached the
beach.
"Come on! Come on!" she shouted.
He waved his hand and finished his cigarette.
"It's glorious! It's midsummer!" she called.
With a quick plunge he dived into the water, disappeared and stayed until she began to scan the surface
uneasily. With a splash he rose by her side, lifting her screaming in his arms. Her bathingcap was brushed
off, and he seized her long hair in his mouth, turned and with swift, strong beat carried her unresisting body
to the beach.
He drew her erect and looked into her smiling face.
"That's the way I'd save you if you had called for help. How'd you like it?"
"It was sweet to give up and feel myself in your power, dear!"
His drooping eyes were devouring her exquisite figure outlined so perfectly in the clinging suit.
"I was afraid to wear this in New York," she said demurely.
"I can't blame you. If you'd ever have gone on the beach at Coney Island in that, there'd have been a riot."
He lifted her in his arms and kissed her.
"And you're all mine, Kiddo! It's too good to be true! I'm afraid to wake up mornings now for fear I'll find
I've just been dreaming."
They plunged again in the water, and side by side swam far out from the shore, circled gracefully and
returned.
Hours they spent snuggling in the warm sand. Not a sound of the world beyond the bay broke the stillness.
The music of the water's soft sighing came on their ears in sweet, endless cadence. The wind was gentle and
brushed their cheeks with the softest caress. Far out at sea, whitewinged sails were spreadso far away
they seemed to stand in one spot forever. The deep cry of an ocean steamer broke the stillness at last.
"We must dress for dinner, Jim!" she sighed.
"Why, Kiddo?"
"We must eat, you know."
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"But why dress? I like that style on you. It's too much trouble to dress."
"All right!" she cried gayly. "We'll have a little informal dinner this evening. I love to feel the sand under my
feet."
He gathered the wood from the dry drifts above the waterline and kindled a fire. The saltsoaked sticks
burned fiercely, and the dinner was cooked in a jiffy a fresh chicken he had bought, sweet potatoes, and
delicious buttered toast.
They sat in their bathing suits on campstools beside the folding table and ate by moonlight.
The dinner finished, Mary cleared the wooden dishes while Jim brought heaps of the dry, spongy sea grass
and made a bed in the tent. He piled it two feet high, packed it down to a foot, and then spread the sheets and
blankets.
"All ready for a stroll down the avenue, Kiddo?" he called from the door.
"Fifth Avenue or Broadway?" she laughed.
"Oh, the Great White Wayyou couldn't miss it! Just look at the shimmer of the moon on the sands! Ain't it
great?"
Hand in hand, they strolled on the beach and bathed in the silent flood of the moonlit nightno prying eyes
near save the stars of the friendly southern skies.
"The moon seems different down here, Jim!" she whispered.
"It is different," he answered with boyish enthusiasm. "It's all so still and white!"
"Could we stay here forever?"
He shook his head emphatically.
"Not on your life. This little boy has to work, you know. Old man John D. Rockefeller might, but it's early for
a young financier to retire."
"A whole week, then?"
"Sure! For a week we'll forget New York."
They sat down on the sanddune behind the tent and watched the waters flash in the silvery light, the world
and its fevered life forgotten.
"You're the only thing real tonight, Jim!" she sighed.
"And you're the world for me, Kiddo!"
She waked at dawn, with a queer feeling of awe at the weird, gray light which filtered through the cotton
walls. A sense of oneness with Nature and the beat of Her eternal heart filled her soul. The soft wash of the
water on the sands seemed to be keeping time to the throb of her own pulse.
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She peered curiously into the face of her sleeping lover. She had never seen him asleep before. She started at
the transformation wrought by the closing of his heavy eyelids and the complete relaxation of his features.
The strange, steelblue coloring of his eyes had always given his face an air of mystery and charm. The
complete closing of the heavy lids and the slight droop of the lower jaw had worked a frightful change. The
romance and charm had gone, and instead she saw only the coarse, brutal strength.
She frowned like a spoiled child, put her dainty hand under his chin and pressed his mouth together.
"Wake up, sir!" she whispered. "I don't like your expression!"
He refused to stir, and she drew the tips of her fingers across his ears and eyelids.
He rubbed his eyes and muttered:
"What t'ell?"
"Let's take a bath in the sea before sunrisecome on!"
The sleeper groaned heavily, turned over, and in a moment was again dead to the world.
Mary's eyes were wide now with excitement. The hours were too marvelous to be lost in sleep. She could
sleep when they must return to the tiresome world with its endless crowds of people.
She rose softly, ran barefoot to the beach, threw her nightdress on the sand and plunged, her white, young
body trembling with joy, into the water.
It was marvelousthis wonderful hush of the dawn over the infinite sea. The air and water melted into a
pearl gray. Far out toward the east, the waters began to blush at the kiss of the coming sun. The pearl gray
slowly turned into purple. So startling was the vision, she swam inshore and stood kneedeep in the
shallows to watch the magic changes. In breathless wonder she saw the sea and sky and shore turn into a
trembling cloud of dazzling purple. A moment before, she had caught the water up in her hand and poured it
out in a stream of pearls. She lifted a handful and poured it out now, each drop a dazzling amethyst. And even
while she looked, the purple was changing to scarletthe amethyst into rubies!
A great awe filled her in the solemn hush. She stood in Nature's vast cathedral, close to God's hearther life
in harmony with His eternal laws.
How foolish and artificial were the ways of the faraway, drab, prosaic world of clothes and houses and
furnishings! If she could only live forever in this dreamworld!
Even while the thought surged through her heart, she lifted her head and saw the red rim of the sun suddenly
break through the sea, and started lest the white light of day had revealed her to some passing boatman
hurrying to his nets.
Her keen eye quickly swept the circle of the wide, silent world of sanddunes, marsh and waters. No prying
eye was near. Only the morning star still gleaming above saw. And they were twin sisters.
Four days flew on velvet wings before the first cloud threw its shadow across her life. Jim always slept until
nine o'clock, and refused with dogged good natured indifference to stir when she had asked him to get the
wood for breakfast. It was nothing, of course, to walk a hundred yards to the beach and pick up the wood, and
she did it. The hurt that stung was the feeling that he was growing indifferent.
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She felt for the first time an impulse to box his lazy jaws as he yawned and turned over for the dozenth time
without rising. He looked for all the world like a bulldog curled up on his bed of grass.
She shook him at last.
"Jim, dear, you must get up now! Breakfast is almost ready and it won't be fit to eat if you don't come on."
He opened his heavy eyelids and gazed at her sleepily.
"All righto! Just as you sayjust as you say."
"Hurry! Breakfast will be ready before you can dress."
"Gee! Breakfast all ready! You're one smart little wifie, Kiddo."
The compliment failed to please. She was sure that he had been fully awake twice before and pretended to be
asleep from sheer laziness and indifference.
The thought hurt.
When they sat down at last to breakfast, she looked into his halfclosed eyes with a sudden start.
"Why, Jim, your eyes are red!"
"Yes?"
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
"You're illwhat is it?"
He grinned sheepishly.
"You couldn't guess now, could you?"
"You haven't been drinking!" she gasped.
"No," he drawled lazily, "I wouldn't say drinking I just took one big swallow last nightmakes you sleep
good when you're tired. Good medicine! I always carry a little with me."
A sickening wave went over her. Not that she felt that he was going to be a drunkard. But the utter
indifference with which he made the announcement was a painful revelation of the fact that her opinion on
such a question was not of the slightest importance. That he was now master of the situation he evidently
meant that she should see and understand at once.
She refused to accept the humiliating position without a struggle and made up her mind to try at once to mold
his character. She would begin by getting him to cut the slang from his conversation.
"You remember the promise you made me one day before we were married, Jim?" she asked brightly.
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"Which one? You know a fellow's not responsible for what he promises to get his girl. All's fair in love and
war, they say"
"I'm going to hold you to this one, sir," she firmly declared.
"All right, little bright eyes," he responded cheerfully as he lit a cigarette and sent the smoke curling above
his red head.
She sat for a while in silence, studying the man before her. The task was delicate and difficult. And she had
thought it a mere pastime of love! As her fiance, he had been wax in her hands. As her husband, he was a
lazy, headstrong, obstinate young animal grinning goodnaturedly at her futile protests. How long would he
grin and bear her suggestions with patience? The transition from this lazy grin to the growl of an angry
bulldog might be instantaneous.
She would move with the utmost cautionbut she would move and at once. It would be a test of character
between them. She edged her chair close to his, drew his head down in her lap and ran her fingers through his
thick, red hair.
"Still love me, Jim?" she smiled.
"Crazier over you every dayand you know it, too, you sly little puss," he answered dreamily.
"You WILL make good your promises?"
"Sure, I willsurest thing you know!"
"You see, Jim dear," she went on tenderly, "I want to be proud of you"
"Well, ain't you?"
"Of course I am, silly. I know you and understand you. But I want all the world to respect you as I do." She
paused and breathed deeply. "They've got to do it, too, they've got to"
"Sure, I'll knock their block offif they don't!" he broke in.
She raised her finger reprovingly and shook her head.
"That's just the trouble: you can't do it with your fists. You can't compel the respect of cultured men and
women by physical force. We've got to win with other weapons."
"All right, Kiddodope it out for me," he responded lazily. "Dope it out"
Her lips quivered with the painful recognition of the task before her. Yet when she spoke, her voice was low
and sweet and its tones even. She gave no sign to the man whose heavy form rested in her arms.
"Then from today we must begin to cut out every word of slangit's a bargain?"
"Sure, MikeI promised!"
"Cut `Sure Mike!'"
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She raised her finger severely.
"All right, teacher," he drawled. "What'll we put in Sure Mike's place? I've found him a handy man!"
"Say `certainly.'"
Jim grinned goodnaturedly.
"Aw hell, Kiddothat sounds punk!"
"And HELL, Jim, isn't a nice word"
"Gee, Kid, now look herecan't get along with out HELLleave me that one just a little while."
She shook her head.
"No."
"No?"
"And PUNK is expressive, but not suited to parlor use."
"All rightt'ell with PUNK!" He turned and looked. "What's the matter now?" he asked.
"Don't you realize what you've just said?"
"What did I say?"
She turned away to hide a tear.
He threw his arms around her neck and drew her lips down to his.
"Ah, don't worry, KiddoI'll do better next time. Honest to God, I will. That's enough for today. Just let's
love now. T'ell with the rest."
She smiled in answer.
"You promise to try honestly?"
He raised his hand in solemn vow.
"S'help me!"
Each day's trial ended in a laugh and a kiss until at last Jim refused to promise any more. He grinned in
obstinate, goodnatured silence and let her do the worrying.
She watched him with growing wonder and alarm. He gradually lapsed into little coarse, ugly habits at the
table. She tried playfully to correct them. He took it goodnaturedly at first and then ignored her suggestions
as if she were a kitten complaining at his feet.
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She studied him with baffling rage at the mystery of his personality. The long silences between them grew
from hour to hour. She could see that he was restless now at the isolation of their sandisland home. The
queer lights and shadows that played in his cold blue eyes told only too plainly that his mind was back again
in the world of battle. He was fighting something, too.
She was glad of it. She could manage him better there. She would throw him into the company of educated
people and rouse his pride and ambition. She heard his announcement of their departure on the eighth day
with positive joy.
"Well, Kiddo," he began briskly, "we've got to be moving. Time to get back to work now. The old town and
the little shop down in Avenue B have been calling me."
"Today, Jim?" she asked quickly.
"Right away. We'll catch the first train north, stop two days, Christmas Eve and Christmas, in Asheville, and
then for old New York!"
The journey along the new railroad built on concrete bridges over miles of beautiful waters was one of
unalloyed joy. They had passed over this stretch of marvelous engineering at night on their trip down and had
not realized its wonders. For hours the train seemed to be flying on velvet wings through the ocean.
She sat beside her lover and held his hand. In spite of her enthusiasm, he would doze. At every turn of
entrancing view she would pinch his arm:
"Look, Jim! Look!"
He would lift his heavy eyelids, grunt good naturedly and doze again.
In the diningcar she was in mortal terror at first lest he should lapse into the coarse table manners into which
he had fallen in camp. She laid his napkin conspicuously on his plate and saw that he had opened and put it in
place across his lap before ordering the meals.
The moment he found himself in a crowd, the lights began to flash in his eyes, his broad shoulders lifted and
his whole being was at once alert and on guard. He followed his wife's lead with unerring certainty.
She renewed her faith in his early reformation, though his character was a puzzle. He seemed to be forever
watching out of the corners of his slumbering eyes. She wondered what it meant.
CHAPTER XIII. THE REAL MAN
They arrived in Asheville the night before Christmas Eve. Jim listened to his wife's prattle about the
wonderful views with quiet indifference.
They stopped at the Battery Park Hotel, and she hoped the waning moon would give them at least a glimpse
of the beautiful valley of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers and the dark, towering ranges of mountains
among the stars. She made Jim wait on the balcony of the room for half an hour, but the clouds grew denser
and he persisted in nodding.
His head dipped lower than usual, and she laughed.
"Poor old sleepyhead!"
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"For the love o' Mike, Kiddome for the hay. Won't them mountains wait till morning?"
"All right!" she answered cheerily. "I'll pull you out at sunrise. The sunrise from our window will be
glorious."
He rose and stretched his body like a young, well fed tiger.
"I think it's prettier from the bed. But have it your own wayhave it your own way. I'll agree to anything if
you lemme go to sleep now."
She rose as the first gray fires of dawn began to warm the cloudbanks on the eastern horizon, stood beside
her window and watched in silent ecstasy. Jim was sleeping heavily. She would not wake him until the glory
of the sunrise was at its height. She loved to watch the changing lights and shadows in sky and valley and on
distant mountain peaks as the light slowly filtered over the eastern hills.
She had recovered from the depression of the last days of their camp. The journey back into the world had
improved Jim's manners. There could be no doubt about his ambitions. His determination to be a millionaire
was the lever she now meant to work in raising his social aspirations.
Why should she feel depressed?
Their married life had just begun. The two weeks they had passed on their honeymoon had been happy
beyond her dreams of happiness. Somehow her imagination had failed to give any conception of the wonder
and glory of this revelation of life. His little lapses of selfishness on their sand island no doubt came from
ignorance of what was expected of him.
For one thing she felt especially thankful. There had been no ugly confessions of a shady past to cloud the joy
of their love. Her lover might be ignorant of the ways of polite society. He was equally free of its sinister
vices. She thanked God for that. The soul of the man she had married was clean of all memories of women.
The love he gave was fierce in its unrestrained passionbut it was all hers. She gloried in its strength.
She made up her mind, standing there in the soft light of the dawn, that she would bend his iron will to her
own in the growing, sweet intimacy of their married life and threw her fears to the winds.
The thin, fleecy clouds that hung over the low range of the eastern foreground were all aglow now, with
every tint of the rainbow, while the sun's bed beyond the hills was flaming in scarlet and gold.
She clapped her hands in ecstasy.
"Jim! Jim, dear!"
He made no response, and she rushed to his side and whispered:
"You must see this sunriseget up quick, quick, dear. It's wonderful."
"What's the matter?" he muttered.
"The sunrise over the mountainsquickit's glorious."
His heavy eyelids drooped and closed. He dropped on the pillow and buried his face out of sight.
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"Ah, Jim dear, do comejust to please me."
"I'm dead, Kiddodead to the world," he sighed. "Don't like to see the sun rise. I never did. Come on back
and let's sleep"
His last words were barely audible. He was breathing heavily as his lips ceased to move.
She gave it up, returned to the window and watched the changing colors until the white light from the sun's
face had touched with life the last shadows of the valleys and flashed its signals from the farthest towering
peaks.
Her whole being quivered in response to the beauty of this glorious mountain world. The air was wine. She
loved the sapphire skies and the warm, lazy, caressing touch of the sun of the South.
A sense of bitterness came, just for a moment, that the man she had chosen for her mate had no eye to see
these wonders and no ear to hear their music. During the madness of his whirlwind courtship she had gotten
the impression that his spirit was sensitive to beautyto the waters of the bay, the sea and the wooded hills.
She must face the facts. Their stay on the island had convinced her that he had eyes only for her. She must
make the most of it.
It was ten o'clock before Jim could be persuaded to rise and get breakfast. She literally pulled him up the
stairs to the observatory on the tower of the hotel.
"What's the game, Kiddo? What's the game?" he grumbled.
"Ask me no questions. But do just as I tell you; come on!"
Her face was radiant, her hair in a tangle of riotous beauty about her forehead and temples, her eyes
sparkling.
"Don't look till I tell you!" she cried, as they emerged on the little minaret which crowns the tower.
"Now open and see the glory of the Lord!" she cried with joyous awe.
The day was one of matchless beauty. The clouds that swung low in the early morning had floated higher and
higher till they hung now in shining billows above the highest balsamcrowned peaks in the distance.
In every direction, as far as the eye could reach, north, south, east, west, the dark ranges mounted in the azure
skies until the farthest dim lines melted into the heavens.
"Oh, Jim dear, isn't it wonderful! We're lucky to get this view on our first day. It's such a good omen."
Jim opened his eyes lazily and puffed his cigarette in a calm, patronizing way.
"Tough sledding we'd have had with an automobile over those hills," he said. "We'll try it after lunch,
though."
"We'll go for a ride?" she cried joyfully.
"Yep. Got to hunt up the folks. The mountains near Asheville!" he said with disgust. "I should say they are
nearand far, too. Holy smoke, I'll bet we get lost!"
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"Nonsense"
"Where's the Black Mountains, I wonder?" he asked suddenly.
"Over there!" She pointed to the giant peaks projecting here and there in dim, blue waves beyond the Great
Craggy Range in the foreground.
"Holy Moses! Do we have to climb those crags before we start?"
"To go to Black Mountain?"
"Yes. That's where the lawyer said they lived, under Cattail Peak in the Black Mountain Rangewherever
t'ell that is."
"No, no! You don't climb the Great Craggy; you go around this end of it and follow the Swannanoa River
right up to the foot of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak this side of the Rockies. The Cattail is just beyond
Mount Mitchell."
"You've been there?" he asked in surprise.
"Once, with a party from Asheville. We spent three days and slept in caves."
"Suppose you'd know the way now?"
"We couldn't miss it. We follow the bed of the Swannanoa to its source"
"Then that settles it. We'll go by ourselves. I don't want any mutt along to show us the way. We couldn't get
lost nohow, could we?"
"Of course notall the roads lead to Asheville. We can ask the way to the house you want, when we reach
the little stopping place at the foot of Mount Mitchell."
"Gee, Kid, you're a wonder!" he exclaimed admiringly. "Couldn't get along without you, now could I?"
"I hope not, sir!"
"You bet I couldn't! We'll start right away. The roads will give us a jolt"
He turned suddenly to go.
"Waitwait a minute, dear," she pleaded. "You haven't seen this gorgeous view to the southwest, with
Mount Pisgah looming in the center like some vast cathedral spirelook, isn't it glorious?"
"Fine! Fine!" he responded in quick, businesslike tones.
"You can look for days and weeks and not begin to realize the changing beauty of these mountains, clothed in
eternal green! Just think, dear, Mount Pisgah, there, is forty miles away, and it looks as if you could stroll
over to it in an hour's walk. And there are twentythree magnificent peaks like that, all of them more than six
thousand feet high"
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She paused with a frown. He was neither looking nor listening. He had fallen into a brown study; his mind
was miles away.
"You're not listening, Jimnor seeing anything," she said reproachfully.
"NoKiddo, we must get ready for that trip. I've got a letter for a lawyer downtown. I'll find him and hire a
car. I'll be back here for you in an hour. You'll be ready?"
"Right away, in half an hour"
"Just pack a suitcase for us both. We'll stay one night. I'll take a bag, too, that I have in my trunk."
It was noon before he returned with a staunch touring car ready for the trip. He opened the little steamer trunk
which he had always kept locked and took from it a small leather bag. He placed it on the floor, and, in spite
of careful handling, the ring of metal inside could be distinctly heard.
"What on earth have you got in that queer black bag?" she asked in surprise.
"Oh, just a lot o' junk from the shop. I thought I might tinker with it at odd times. I don't want to leave it here.
It's got one of my new models in it."
He carried the bag in his hand, refusing to allow the porter who came for the suitcase to touch it.
He threw the suitcase in the bottom of the tonneau. The bag he stowed carefully under the cushions of the
rear seat. The moment he placed his hand on the wheel of the machine, he was at his best. Every trace of the
street gamin fell from him. Again he was the eagleeyed master of time and space. The machine answered
his touch with more than human obedience. He knew how to humor its mood. He conserved its power for a
hill with unerring accuracy and threw it over the grades with rarely a pause to change his speeds. He could
turn the sharp curves with such swift, easy grace that he scarcely caused Mary's body to swerve an inch. He
could sense a rough place in the road and glide over it with velvet touch.
A tire blew out, five miles up the stream from Asheville, and the easy, businesslike deliberation with which
he removed the old and adjusted the new, was a revelation to Mary of a new phase of his character.
He never once grunted, or swore, or lost his poise, or manifested the slightest impatience. He set about his
task coolly, carefully, skillfully, and finished it quickly and silently.
His long silences at last began to worry her. An invisible barrier had reared itself between them. The
impression was purely mentalbut it was none the less real and distressing.
There was a look of aloof absorption about him she had never seen before. At first she attributed it to the
dread of meeting his kinsfolk for the first time, his fear of what they might be like or what they might think of
him.
He answered her questions cheerfully but mechanically. Sometimes he stared at her in a cold, impersonal way
and gave no answer, as if her questions were an impertinence and she were not of sufficient importance to
waste his breath on.
Unable at last to endure the strain, she burst out impatiently:
"What on earth's the matter with you, Jim?"
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"Why?" he asked softly.
"You haven't spoken to me in half an hour, and I've asked you two questions."
"Just studying about something, Kiddo, something big. I'll tell you sometime, maybenot now."
Slowly a great fear began to shape itself in her heart. The real man behind those slumbering eyes she had
never known. Who was he?
CHAPTER XIV. UNWELCOME GUESTS
While she was yet puzzling over the strange mood of absorbed brooding into which Jim had fallen, his face
suddenly lighted, and he changed with such rapidity that her uneasiness was doubled.
They had reached the stretches of deep forest at the foot of the Black Mountain ranges. The Swannanoa had
become a silver thread of laughing, foaming spray and deep, still pools beneath the rocks. The fields were
few and small. The little clearings made scarcely an impression in the towering virgin forests.
"Great guns, Kiddo!" he exclaimed, "this is some country! By George, I had no idea there was such a place so
close to New York!"
She looked at him with uneasy surprise. What could be in his mind? The solemn gorge through which they
were passing gave no entrancing views of clouds or sky or towering peaks. Its wooded cliffs hung ominously
overhead in threatening shadows. The scene had depressed her after the vast sunlit spaces of sky, of shining
valleys and cloudcapped, sapphire peaks on which they had turned their backs.
"You like this, Jim?" she asked.
"It's greatgreat!"
"I thought that waterfall we just passed was very beautiful."
"I didn't see it. But this is something like it. You're clean out of the world hereand there ain't a railroad in
twenty miles!"
The deeper the shadows of tree and threatening crag, the higher Jim's strange spirit seemed to rise.
She watched him with increasing fear. How little she knew the real man! Could it be possible that this lonely,
unlettered boy of the streets of lower New York, starved and stunted in childhood, had within him the soul of
a great poet? How else could she explain the sudden rapture over the threatening silences and shadows of
these mountain gorges which had depressed her? And yet his utter indifference to the glories of beautiful
waters, his blindness at noon before the most wonderful panorama of mountains and skies on which she had
ever gazed, contradicted the theory of the poetic soul. A poet must see beauty where she had seen itand a
thousand wonders her eyes had not found.
His elation was uncanny. What could it mean?
He was driving now with a skill that was remarkable, a curious smile playing about his drooping, Oriental
eyelids. A wave of fierce resentment swept her heart. She was a mere plaything in this man's life. The real
man she had never seen. What was he thinking about? What grim secret lay behind the mysterious smile that
flickered about the corners of those eyes? He was not thinking of her. The mood was new and cold and
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cynical, for all the laughter he might put in it.
She asked herself the question of his past, his people, his real lifehistory. The only answer was his baffling,
mysterious smile.
A frown suddenly clouded his face.
"Hello! Ye're running right into a man's yard!"
Mary lifted her head with quick surprise.
"Why yes, it's the stopping place for the parties that climb Mount Mitchell. I remember it. We stayed all night
here, left our rig, and started next morning at sunrise on horseback to climb the trail."
"Pretty near the jumpingoff place, then," he remarked. "We'll ask the way to Cattail Peak."
He stopped the car in front of the lowpitched, weatherstained frame house and blew the horn.
A mountain woman with three openeyed, silent children came slowly to meet them.
She smiled pleasantly, and without embarrassment spoke in a pleasant drawl:
"Won't you 'light and look at your saddle?"
The expression caught Jim's fancy, and he broke into a roar of laughter. The woman blushed and laughed
with him. She couldn't understand what was the matter with the man. Why should he explode over the simple
greeting in which she had expressed her pleasure at their arrival?
Anyhow, she was an innkeeper's wife, and her business was to make folks feel at homeso she laughed
again with Jim.
"You know that's the funniest invitation I ever got in a car," he cried at last. "We fly in these things
sometimes. And when you said, `Won't you 'light,'"he paused and turned to his wife"I could just feel
myself up in the air on that big old racer's back."
"Won't youall stay all night with us?" the soft voice drawled again.
"Thank you, not tonight," Mary answered.
She waited for Jim to ask the way.
"Nonot tonight," he repeated. "You happen to know an old woman by the name of Owens who lives up
here?"
"Nance Owens?"
"That's her name."
"Lord, everybody knows old Nance!" was the smiling answer.
"She ain't got good sense!" the towheaded boy spoke up.
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"Sh!" the mother warned, boxing his ears.
"She's a little queer, that's all. Everybody knows her in Buncombe and Yancey counties. Her house is built
across the county line. She eats in Yancey and sleeps in Buncombe"
"Yes," broke in the boy joyously, "an' when the Sheriff o' Yancey comes, she moves back into Buncombe.
She's some punkin's on a green gourd vine, she isif she ain't got good sense."
His mother struck at him again, but he dodged the blow and finished his speech without losing a word.
"Could you tell us the way to her house?"
"Keep right on this road, and you can't miss it."
"How far is it?"
"Oh, not far."
"No; right at the bottom o' the Cat'stail," the boy joyfully explained.
"He means the foot o' Cattail Peak!" the mother apologized.
"How many miles?"
"Just a little waysye can't miss it; the third house you come to on this road."
"You'll be there in three shakes of a sheep's tailin that thing!" the boy declared.
Jim waved his thanks, threw in his gear, and the car shot forward on the level stretch of road beyond the
house. He slowed down when out of sight.
"Gee! I'd love to have that kid in a woodshed with a nice shingle all by ourselves for just ten minutes."
"The people spoil him," Mary laughed. "The people who stop there for the Mount Mitchell climb. He was a
baby when I was there six years ago"she paused and a rapt look crept into her eyes"a beautiful little
baby, her firstborn, and she was the happiest thing I ever saw in my life."
Her voice sank to a whisper.
A vision suddenly illumined her own soul, and she forgot her anxiety over Jim's queer moods.
Deeper and deeper grew the shadows of crag, gorge, and primeval forest. The speedometer on the footboard
registered five miles from the Mount Mitchell house. They had passed two cabins by the way, and still no
sign of the third.
"Why couldn't she tell us how many miles, I'd like to know?" Jim grumbled.
"It's the way of the mountain folk. They're noncommittal on distances."
He stopped the car and lighted the lamps.
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"Going to be dark in a minute," he said. "But I like this place," he added.
He picked his way with care over the narrow road. They crossed the little stream they were trailing, and the
car crawled over the rocks along the banks at a snail's pace.
An owl called from a dead treetop silhouetted against an open space of sky ahead.
"Must be a clearing there," Jim muttered.
He stopped the car and listened for the sounds of life about a house.
A vast, brooding silence filled the world. A wolf howled from the edge of a distant crag somewhere
overhead.
"For God's sake!" Jim shivered. "What was that?"
"Only a mountain wolf crying for company."
"Wolves up here?" he asked in surprise.
"A fewharmless, timid, lonesome fellows. It makes me sorry for them when I hear one."
"Great country! I like it!" Jim responded.
Again she wondered why. What a queer mixture of strength and mysterythis man she had married!
He started the car, turned a bend in the road, and squarely in front, not more than a hundred yards away,
gleamed a light in a cabin windowfour tiny panes of glass.
"By Geeminy, we come near stopping in the front yard without knowing it!" he exclaimed. "Didn't we?"
"I'm glad she's at home!" Mary exclaimed. "The light shines with a friendly glow in these deep shadows."
"Afraid, Kiddo?" he asked lightly.
"I don't like these dark places."
"All right when you get used to 'emsafer than daylight."
Again her heart beat at his queer speech. She shivered at the thought of this uncanny trait of character so
suddenly developed today. She made an effort to throw off her depression. It would vanish with the sun
tomorrow morning.
He picked his way carefully among the trees and stopped in front of the cabin door. The little house sat back
from the road a hundred feet or more.
He blew his horn twice and waited.
A sudden crash inside, and the light went out. He waited a moment for it to come back.
Only darkness and dead silence.
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"Suppose she dropped dead and kicked over the lamp?" Jim laughed.
"She probably took the lamp into another room."
"No; it went out too quickand it went out with a crash."
He blew his horn again.
Still no answer.
"Hello! Hello!" he called loudly.
Someone stirred at the door. Jim's keen ear was turned toward the house.
"I heard her bar the door, I'll swear it."
"How foolish, Jim!" Mary whispered. "You couldn't have heard it."
"All the same I did. Here's a pretty kettle of fish! The old hellion's not even going to let us in."
He seized the lever of his horn and blew one terrific blast after another, in weird, uncanny sobs and wails,
ending in a shriek like the last cry of a lost soul.
"Don't, Jim!" Mary cried, shivering. "You'll frighten her to death."
"I hope so."
"Go up and speak to herand knock on the door."
He waited again in silence, scrambled out of the car, and fumbled his way through the shadows to the dark
outlines of the cabin. He found the porch on which the front door opened.
His light foot touched the log with sure step, and he walked softly to the cabin wall. The door was not yet
visible in the pitch darkness. His auto lights were turned the other way and threw their concentrated rays far
down into the deep woods.
He listened intently for a moment and caught the catlike tread of the old woman inside.
"I sayhello, in there!" he called.
Again the sound of her quick, furtive step told him that she was on the alert and determined to defend her
castle against all comers. What if she should slip an old rifle through a crack and blow his head off?
She might do it, too!
He must make her open the door.
"Say, what's the matter in there?" he asked persuasively.
A moment's silence, and then a gruff voice slowly answered:
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"They ain't nobody at home!"
"The hell they ain't!" Jim laughed.
"No!"
"Who are you?"
She hesitated and then growled back:
"None o' your business. Who are you?"
"We're strangers up herelost our way. It's coldwe got to stop for the night."
"Ye can'tthey's nobody home, I tell ye!" she repeated with sullen emphasis.
Jim broke into a genial laugh.
"Ah! Come on, old girl! Open up and be sociable. We're not revenue officers or sheriffs. If you've got any
good mountain whiskey, I'll help you drink it."
"Who are ye?" she repeated savagely.
"Ah, just a couple o' gentle, cooing turtledoves a bride and groom. Loosen up, old girl; it's Christmas
Eveand we're just a couple o' gentle cooin' doves"
Jim kept up his persuasive eloquence until the light of the candle flashed through the window, and he heard
her slip the heavy bar from the door.
He lost no time in pushing his way inside.
Nance threw a startled look at his enormous, shaggy fur coatat the shining aluminum goggles almost
completely masking his face. She gave a low, breathless scream, hurled the doorbar crashing to the floor
and stared at him like a wild, hunted animal at bay, her thin hands trembling, the irongray hair tumbling
over her forehead.
"Oh, my God!" she wailed, crouching back.
Jim gazed at her in amazement. He had forgotten his goggles and fur coat.
"What's the matter?" he asked in highkeyed tones of surprise.
Nance made no answer but crouched lower and attempted to put the table between them.
"What t'ell Bill ails youwill you tell me?" he asked with rising wrath.
"I THOUGHT you wuz the devil," the old woman panted. "Now I KNOW it!"
Jim suddenly remembered his goggles and coat, and broke into a laugh.
"Oh!"
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He removed his goggles and cap, threw back his big coat and squared his shoulders with a smile.
"How's that?"
Nance glowered at him with illconcealed rage, looked him over from head to foot, and answered with a
snarl:
"'Tain't much betteref ye ax ME!"
"Gee! But you're a sociable old wildcat!" he exclaimed, starting back as if she had struck him a blow.
His eye caught the dried skin of a young wildcat hanging on the log wall.
"No wonder you skinned your neighbor and hung her up to dry," he added moodily.
He took in the room with deliberate insolence while the old woman stood awkwardly watching him, shifting
her position uneasily from one foot to the other.
In all his miserable life in New York he could not recall a room more bare of comforts. The rough logs were
chinked with pieces of wood and daubed with red clay. The door was made of rough boards, the ceiling of
hewn logs with split slabs laid across them. An oldfashioned, tall spinning wheel, dirty and unused, sat in
the corner. A rough pine table was in the middle of the floor and a smaller one against the wall. On this side
table sat two rusty flatirons, and against it leaned an ironing board. A dirty piece of turkeyred calico hung
on a string for a portiere at the opening which evidently led into a sort of kitchen somewhere in the darkness
beyond.
The walls were decorated at intervals. A huge bunch of onions hung on a wooden peg beside the wild cat
skin. Over the window was slung an oldfashioned muzzleloading musket. The sling which held it was
made of a pair of ancient homemade suspenders fastened to the logs with nails. Beneath the gun hung a
cow's horn, cut and finished for powder, and with it a dirty gamebag. Strings of red peppers were strung
along each of the walls, with here and there bunches of popcorn in the ears. A pile of black walnuts lay in one
corner of the cabin and a pile of hickory nuts in another.
A threelegged wooden stool and a splitbottom chair stood beside the table, and a haircloth couch, which
looked as if it had been saved from the Ark, was pushed near the wall beside the door.
Across this couch was thrown a ragged patchwork quilt, and a pillow covered with calico rested on one end,
with the mark of a head dented deep in the center.
Jim shrugged his shoulders with a look of disgust, stepped quickly to the door and called:
"Come on in, Kid!"
Nance fumbled her thin hands nervously and spoke with the faintest suggestion of a sob in her voice.
"I ain't got nothin' for ye to eat"
"We've had dinner," he answered carelessly.
He stepped to the door and called:
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"Bring that little bag from under the seat, Kiddo."
He held the door open, and the light streamed across the yard to the car. He watched her steadily while she
raised the cushion of the rear seat, lifted the bag and sprang from the car. His keen eye never left her for an
instant until she placed it in his hands.
"Mercy, but it's heavy!" she panted, as she gave it to him.
He took it without a word and placed it on the table in the center of the room.
Nance glared at him sullenly.
"There's no place for ye, I tell ye"
Jim faced her with mock politeness.
"For them kind wordsthanks!"
He bowed low and swept the room with a mocking gesture.
"There ain't no room for ye," the old woman persisted.
Jim raised his voice to a squeaking falsetto with deliberate purpose to torment her.
"I got ye the first time, darlin'!" he exclaimed, lifting his hands above her as if to hold her down. "We must
linger awhile for your nameanyhow, we mustn't forget that. This is Mrs. Nance Owens?"
The old woman started and watched him from beneath her heavy eyebrows, answering with sullen emphasis:
"Yes."
Again Jim lifted his hands above his head and waved her to earth.
"Well! Don't blame me! I can't help it, you know"
He turned to his wife and spoke with jolly good humor.
"It's the place, all right. Set down, Kiddotake off your hat and things. Make yourself at home."
Nance flew at him in a sudden frenzy at his assumption of insolent ownership of her cabin.
"There's no place for ye to sleep!" she fairly shrieked in his face.
Again Jim's arms were over her head, waving her down.
"All right, sweetheart! We're from New York. We don't sleep. We've come all the way down here to the
mountains of North Carolina just to see you. And we're goin' to sit up all night and look at ye"
He sat down deliberately, and Nance fumbled her hands with a nervous movement.
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Mary's heart went out in sympathy to the forlorn old creature in her embarrassment. Her dress was dirty and
ragged, an illfitting gingham, the elbows out and her bare, bony arms showing through. The waist was too
short and always slipping from the belt of wrinkled cloth beneath which she kept trying to stuff it.
Mary caught her restless eye at last and held it in a friendly look.
"Please let us stay!" she pleaded. "We can sleep on the flooranywhere."
"You bet!" Jim joined in. "Married two weeksand I don't care whether it rains or whether it pours or how
long I have to stand outdoorsif I can be with you, Kid."
The old woman hesitated until Mary's smile melted its way into her heart.
Her lips trembled, and her watery blue eyes blinked.
"Well," she began grumblingly, "thar's a little single bed in that shedroom thar for youef he'll sleep in
here on the sofy."
Jim leaped to his feet.
"What do ye think of that? Bully for the old gal! Kinder slow at first. As the poet sings of the little bedbug,
she ain't got no wingsbut she gets there just the same!"
He drew the electric torch from his pocket and advanced on Nance.
"By GollyI'll have another look at you."
Nance backed in terror at the sight of the revolverlike instrument.
"What's that?" she gasped.
"Just a little Gatlin' gun!" he cried jokingly. He pressed the button, and the light flashed squarely in the old
woman's eyes.
"God 'lmightydon't shoot!" she screamed.
Jim doubled with laughter.
"For the love o' Mike!"
Nance leaned against the side table and wiped the perspiration from her brow.
"Lord! I thought you'd kilt me!" she panted, still trembling.
"Ah, don't be foolish!" Jim said persuasively. "It can't hurt you. Here, take it in your handI'll show you
how to work it. It's to nose round dark places under the buzzwagon."
He held it out to Nance.
"Here, take it and press the button."
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The old woman drew back.
"NonoI'm skeered! No"
Jim thrust the torch into her hand and forced her to hold it.
"Oh, come on, it's easy. Push your finger right down on the button."
Nance tried it gingerly at first, and then laughed at the ease with which it could be done. She flashed it on the
floor again and again.
"Why, it's like a big lightnin' bug, ain't it?"
She turned the end of it up to examine more closely, pushed the button unconsciously, and the light flashed in
her eyes. She jumped and handed it quickly to Jim.
"Or a jack o' lanternhere, take it," she cried, still trembling.
Jim threw his hands up with a laugh.
"Can you beat it!"
Backing quickly to the door, Nance called nervously to Mary:
"I'll get your room ready in a minute, ma'am." She paused and glanced at Jim.
"And thar's a shed out thar you can put your devil wagon in"
She slipped through the dirty calico curtains, and Mary saw her go with wondering pity in her heart.
CHAPTER XV. A LITTLE BLACK BAG
Mary watched Nance, with a quick glance at Jim. Again he had forgotten that he had a wife. She had studied
this strange absorption with increasing uneasiness. During the long, beautiful drive of the afternoon beside
laughing waters, through scenes of unparalleled splendor, through valleys of entrancing peace, the still,
sapphire skies bending above with clear, Southern Christmas benediction, he had not once pressed her hand,
he had not once bent to kiss her.
Each time the thought had come, she fought back the tears. She had made excuses for him. He was absorbed
in the memories of his miserable childhood in New York, perhaps. The approaching meeting with his
relatives had awakened the old hunger for a mother's love that had been denied him. The scenes through
which they were passing had perhaps stirred the currents of his subconscious being.
And yet why should such memories estrange his spirit from hers? The effect should be the opposite. In the
remembrance of his loneliness and suffering, he should instinctively turn to her. The love with which she had
unfolded his life should redeem the past.
He was standing now with his heavy chin silhouetted against the flickering light of the candle on the table.
His hand closed suddenly on the handle of the bag with the swift clutch of an eagle's claw. She started at the
ugly picture it made in the dim rays of the candle.
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What were the thoughts seething behind the mask of his face? She watched him, spellbound by his complete
surrender to the mood that had dominated him from the moment he had touched the deep forests of the Black
Mountain range. A grim elation ruled even his silences. The man standing there rigid, his face a smiling,
twitching mask, was a stranger. This man she had never known, or loved. And yet they were bound for life in
the tenderest and strongest ties that can hold the human soul and body.
She tossed her head and threw off the ugly thought. It was morbid nonsense! She was just hungry for a kiss,
and in his new environment he had forgotten himself as many thoughtless men had forgotten before and
would forget again.
"Jim!" she whispered tenderly.
He made no answer. His thick lips were drawn in deep, twisted lines on one side, as if he had suddenly
reached a decision from which there could be no appeal.
She raised her voice slightly.
"Jim?"
Not a muscle of his body moved. The drawn lines of the mouth merely relaxed. His answer was scarcely
audible.
"Yep"
"She's gone!"
"Yep"
She moved toward him wistfully.
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
His square jaw still held its rigid position silhouetted in sharp profile against the candle's light. He answered
slowly and mechanically.
"What?"
His indifference was more than the sore heart could bear. The pentup tears of the afternoon dashed in flood
against the barriers of her will.
"Youhaven'tkissedmetoday," she stammered, struggling with each word to save a break.
Still he stood immovable. This time his answer was tinged with the slightest suggestion of amusement.
"No?"
She staggered against the table beside the door and gripped its edge desperately.
"Oh" she gasped. "Don't you love me any more?"
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With his sullen head still holding its position of indifference, his absorption in the idea which dominated his
mind still unbroken, he threw out one hand in a gesture of irritation.
"Cut it, Kid! Cut it!"
His tones were not only indifferent; they were contemptuously indifferent.
With a sob, she sank into the chair and buried her face in her arms.
"You're tired! I see it now; you've tired of me. Ohit's not possibleit's not possible!"
The torrent came at last in a flood of utter abandonment.
Jim turned, looked at her and threw up his hands in temporary surrender.
"Oh, for God's sake!" he muttered, crossing deliberately to her side. He stood and let her sob.
With a quick change of mood, he drew her to her feet, swept her swaying form into his arms, crushed her and
covered her lips with kisses.
"How's that?"
She smiled through her tears.
"I feel better"
Jim laughed.
"For better or worse`until Death do us part' that's what you said, Kid, and you meant it, too, didn't you?"
He seized both of her arms, held them firmly and gazed into her eyes with steady, stern inquiry.
She looked up with uneasy surprise.
"Of courseI meant it," she answered slowly.
He held her arms gripped close and said:
"Wellwe'll see!"
His hands relaxed, and he turned away, rubbing his square chin thoughtfully.
She watched him in growing amazement. What could be the mystery back of this new twist of his elusive
mind?
He laid his hand on the black bag again, smiled, and turned and faced her with expanding good humor.
"Great scheme, this marryin', Kid! And you believe in it exactly as I do, don't you?"
"How do you mean?" she faltered.
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"That it binds and holds both our lives as only Almighty God can bind and hold?"
"Yesnothing else IS marriage."
"That's what I say, too!"
He placed his hands on her shoulders.
"Great scheme!" he repeated. "I get a pretty girl to work for me for nothing for the balance of my life." He
paused and lifted the slender forefinger of his right hand. "And you pledged your pious soulI memorized
the words, every one of them: `I, Mary, take thee, James, to my wedded husbandTO HAVE AND TO
HOLD from this day forward, FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,
to love, cherish AND OBEY, TIL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE;
AND THEREUNTO I GIVE THEE MY TROTH '"
He paused, lifted his head and smiled grimly: "That's some promise, believe me, Kiddo! `AND OBEY'you
meant it all, didn't you?"
She would have hedged lightly over that ugly old word which still survived in the ceremony Craddock had
used, but for the sinister suggestion in his voice back of the playful banter. He had asked it half in jest, half in
earnest. She had caught by the subtle sixth sense the tragic idea in that one word that he was going to hold her
to it. The thought was too absurd!
"OBEYyou meant it, didn't you?" he repeated grimly.
A smile played about the corners of her mouth as she answered dreamily:
"YesIIPROMISED!"
"That's why I set my head on you from the first you're good and sweetyou're the real thing."
Again she caught the sinister suggestion in his tone and threw him a startled look.
"What has come over you today, Jim?" she asked.
He hesitated and answered carelessly.
"Oh, nothing, Kiddojust been thinking a little about business. Got to go to work, you know." He returned
to the table and touched the bag lightly.
"Watch out now for this bag while I put up the carand don't forget that curiosity killed the cat."
Quick as a flash, she asked:
"What's in it?"
Jim threw up his hands and laughed.
"Didn't I tell you that curiosity killed a cat?" He pointed to the skin on the wall. "That's what stretched that
wildcat's hide up there! She got too near the old musket!"
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"Anyhow, I'm not afraid of her endwhat's in it?"
Jim scratched his red head and looked at her thoughtfully.
"You asked me that once before today, didn't you?"
"Yes"
"Well, it's a little secret of mine. Take my adviceput your hand on it, but not in it."
Again the sinister look and tone chilled her.
"I don't like secrets between us, Jim," she said.
She looked at the bag reproachfully, and he watched her keenlythen laughed.
"I'd as well tell you and be done with it; you'll go in it anyhow."
She tossed her head with a touch of angry pride. He took her hand, led her across the room and placed it on
the valise.
"I've got five thousand dollars in gold in that bag."
She drew back, surprised beyond the power of speech.
"And I'm going to give it to this old woman"
To herwhy?" she gasped.
"She's my mother."
"Your MOTHER?"
"Yes."
"IIthoughtyou told me she was dead."
"No. I said that I didn't know who she was."
He paused, and a queer brooding look crept into his face.
"I haven't seen her since I was a little duffer three years old. This room and these wild crags and trees come
back to me nowjust a glimpse of them here and there. I've always remembered them. I thought I'd dreamed
it"
"You rememberhow wonderful!" she breathed reverently. She understood now, and the clouds lifted.
"The skunk I called my daddy," Jim went on thoughtfully, "took me to New York. He said that my mother
deserted me when I was a kid. I believed him at first. But when he beat me and kicked me into the streets, I
knew he was a liar. When I got grown I began to think and wonder about her. I hired a lawyer that knew my
daddy, and he found her here"
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With a cry of joy, she seized his arms:
"Tell her quick! Oh, you're big and fine and generous, Jimand I knew it! They said that you were a brute. I
knew they lied. Tell her quick!"
He lifted his hand in protest.
"NopeI'm going to put up a little job on the old girlshow her the money tonight, get her wild at the sight
of itand give it to her Christmas morning. We've only a few hours to wait"
"Oh, give it to her nowJim! Give it to her now!"
He shook his head and walked to the door.
"I want to say something to her first and give her time to think it over. Look out for the bag, and I'll bring in
the things."
He swung the rough board door wide, slammed it and disappeared in the darkness.
The young wife watched the bag a moment with consuming curiosity. She had fiercely resented his insulting
insinuations at her curiosity, and yet she was wild to look at that glowing pile of gold inside and picture the
old woman's joyous surprise.
Her hand touched the lock carelessly and drew back as if her finger had been burned. She put her hands
behind her and crossed the room.
"I won't be so weak and silly!" she cried fiercely.
She heard Jim cranking the car. It would take him five minutes more to start it, get it under the shed and bring
in the suitcase and robes.
"Why shouldn't I see it!" she exclaimed. "He has told me about it." She hesitated and struggled for a moment,
quickly walked back to the bag and touched the spring. It yielded instantly.
"Why, it's not even locked!" she cried in tones of surprise at her silly scruples.
Her hand had just touched the gold when Nance entered.
She snapped the bag and smiled at the old woman carelessly. What a sweet surprise she would have
tomorrow morning!
Nance crossed slowly, glancing once at the girl wistfully as if she wanted to say something friendly, and then,
alarmed at her presumption, hurried on into the little shedroom.
Mary waited until she returned.
"Room's all ready in thar, ma'am," she drawled, passing into the kitchen without a pause.
"All rightthank you," Mary answered.
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She quickly opened the bag, thrust her hand into the gold and withdrew it, holding a costly green leather
jewelrycase of exquisite workmanship. There could be no mistake about its value.
With a cry of joy, she started back, staring at the little box.
"Another surprise! And for me! Oh, Jim, man, you're glorious! My Christmas present, of course! I mustn't
look at itI won't!"
She pushed the case from her toward the bag and drew it back again.
"What's the difference? I'll take one little, tiny peep."
She touched the spring and caught her breath. A string of pearls fit for the neck of a princess lay shining in its
soft depths. She lifted them with a sigh of delight. Her eye suddenly rested on a stanza of poetry scrawled on
the satin lining in the trembling hand of an old man she had known.
She dropped the pearls with a cry of terror. Her face went white, and she gasped for breath. The jewel case
in her hand she had seen before. It had belonged to the old gentleman who lived in the front room on the first
floor of her building in the days when it was a boarding house. The wife he had idolized was long ago dead.
This string of pearls from her neck the old man had worshiped for years. The stanza from "The Rosary" he
had scrawled in the lining one day in Mary's presence. He had moved uptown with the landlady. Two months
ago a burglar had entered his room, robbed and shot him.
"It's impossibleimpossible!" she gasped. "Oh, dear Godit's impossible! Of course the burglar pawned
them, and Jim bought them without knowing. Of course! My nerves are on edge todayhow silly of
me"
Jim's footsteps suddenly sounded on the porch, and she thrust the jewelcase back into the bag with desperate
effort to pull herself together.
CHAPTER XVI. THE AWAKENING
For a moment she felt the foundations of the moral and physical world sinking beneath her feet. Dizziness
swept her senses. She gripped the table, leaning heavily against it, her eye watching the door with feverish
terror for Jim's appearance.
She had never fainted in her life. It was absurd, but the room was swimming now in a dim blur. Again she
gripped the table and set her teeth. She simply would not give up. Why should she leap to the worst possible
explanation of the jewels? The hatred of old Ella for Jim and the furious antagonism of Jane Anderson had
poisoned her mind, after all. It was infamous that she could suspect her husband of crime merely because two
silly women didn't like him.
He could explain the jewels. He, of course, asked no questions of the pawnbroker. They were probably sold
at auction and he bought them.
It seemed an eternity from the time Jim's foot step echoed on the little porch until he pushed the door open
and hastily entered, his arms piled with lap robes, coats and the dresssuit case in his hand.
He walked with quick, firm step, threw the coats and robes on the couch and placed the suitcase at its head.
He hadn't turned toward her and his face was still in profile while he removed the gloves from his pockets,
threw them on the robes, and drew the scarlet woolen neckpiece from his throat.
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She was studying him now with new terrorstricken eyes. Never had she seen his jaw look so big and brutal.
Never had the droop of his eyelids suggested such menace. Never had the contrast of his slender hands and
feet suggested such hideous possibilities.
"Merciful God! No! No!" she kept repeating in her soul while her dilated eyes stared at him in sheer horror of
the suggestion which the jewels had roused.
She drew a deep breath and strangled the idea by her will.
"I'll at least be as fair as a jury," she thought grimly. "I'll not condemn him without a hearing."
Jim suddenly became aware of the menace of her silence. She had not moved a muscle, spoken or made the
slightest sound since he had entered. He had merely taken in the room at a glance and had seen her standing
in precisely the same place beside the table.
He saw now that she was leaning heavily against it.
He raised his head and faced her with a sudden, bold stare, and his voice rang in tones of sharp command.
"Well?"
She tried to speak and failed. She had not yet sufficiently mastered her emotions.
"What's the matter?" he growled.
"Jim" she gasped.
He took a step toward her with set teeth.
"You've been in that bagWell?"
Her face was white, her voice husky.
"Those jewels, Jim"
A cunning smile played about his mouth and he shook his head.
"I tried to keep my little secret from you till Christmas morning; but you're on to my curves now, Kiddo, and
I'll have to 'fess up"
"You bought them for me?" she asked with trembling eagerness.
"Who else do you reckon I'd buy 'em for? I was going to surprise you, too, tomorrow morning. You've
spoiled the fun."
She had slipped close to his side and he could hear her quick intake of breath.
"That'ssosweet of you, Jim. I'm sorryI spoiled the surpriseyou'dplanned"
"Oh, what's the difference!" he broke in carelessly. "It's all the same five minutes after, anyhow. Well, don't
you like 'em? Why don't you say something?"
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"They're wonderful, Jim. Wherewheredid you buy them?"
He held her gaze in silence for an instant and fenced.
"Isn't that a funny question, Kiddo?" he said in low tones. "I once heard the old man I worked with in the
shop say that you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth."
"I just want to know," she insisted.
"I'm not going to tell you!" he said with a dry laugh.
"Why not?"
"Because you keep asking."
"You wish to tease me?"
"Maybe."
"Please!"
"Why do you want to know? Are you afraid they're fakes?"
"No, they're beautifulthey're wonderful."
"Well, if you don't want them," he broke in angrily, "I'll keep them. I'll sell them."
"Don't tease me, Jim!" she begged. "I don't mind if you bought them at a pawnshopif that's why you
won't tell me. That is the reason, isn't it? Honestly, isn't it?"
She asked the question with eager intensity. She had persuaded herself that it was so and the horror had been
lifted. She pressed close with smiling, trembling lips:
"I don't mind that, Jim! You got them from a pawn broker, of course, didn't you?"
He looked at her with a puzzled expression and hesitated.
"Didn't you?" she repeated.
"NoI didn't!" was the curt answer.
"You didn't?" she echoed feebly.
"No!"
With a quick breath she unconsciously drew back and he glared at her angrily.
"Say, what'ell's the matter with you, anyhow? Have you gone crazy?"
"Youwon'ttell mewhere you bought them?" she asked slowly.
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He faced her squarely and spoke with deliberate contempt:
"It'snoneof your business!"
She held his gaze with steady determination.
"That string of pearls belongs to the man who once lived in the front room of my old building in New York.
He moved uptown with my landlady. A few months ago a burglar robbed and shot him"
She stopped, seized his arm and cried with strangling horror:
"Jim! Jim! Where did you get them?"
"Now I know you've gone crazy! You don't suppose that's the only string of pearls in the world, do you? Did
you count 'em? Did you weigh 'em?"
"Where did you get them?" she demanded.
"What put it into your head that that string of pearls belonged to your old boarder?"
"I saw him write the stanza of poetry on the satin lining of that case. I've heard him recite it over and over
again in his piping voice: `Each bead a pearlmy rosary!' I KNOW that they belonged to him!"
His mouth twitched angrily and he faced her, speaking with cold, brutal frankness.
"I might keep on lying to you, Kiddo, and get away with it. But what's the use? You've got to know. It's just
as well nowI did that jobYes!"
Her face blanched.
"Youaburglara murderer!"
Jim followed her with quick, angry gestures.
"All I wanted was his money! He foughtit was his life or mine"
"A murderer!"
"I just went after his moneyI tell youbesides, he didn't die; he got well. If he'd kept still he wouldn't
have lost his pearls and he wouldn't have been hurt"
"And I stood up for you against them all!" she answered in a dazed whisper. "They told meJane Anderson
with brutal frankness, Ella with the heart rending, timid confession of her own tragic lifethey told me that
you were bad. I said they were liars. I said that they envied our happiness. I believed that you were big and
brave and fine. I stood by you and married you!"
She paused and looked at him steadily. In a rush of suppressed passion she seized his arm with a violence that
caused his heavy eyelids to lift in amused surprise.
"Oh, Jimit's not true! It's not trueit's not true! For God's sake, tell me that you're joking! that you're
teasing me! You can't mean it! I won't believe itI won't believe it!"
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Her head sank until it rested piteously against his breast. He stood with his face turned awkwardly away and
then moved his body until she was forced to stand erect.
He touched her shoulder gently and spoke soothingly:
"Come, now, Kid, don't take on so. I'll quit the business when I make my pile."
She drew back instinctively and he followed:
"I'll never touch another penny of yours. There's blood on it!"
"Rot!" he went on soothingly. "It's good Wall Street cashgot it exactly like they got theirsgot it because
I was quicker and smarter than the fellow that had it. I use a jimmy, they use a tickerthat's all the
difference."
She drew her figure to its full height.
"I'm goingJim"
"Where?"
His voice rasped like a file against steel.
"Home!"
"Your home's with me."
"I won't live with a thief!"
He stepped squarely before her and spoke with deliberate menace.
"You'renotgoing!"
"Get out of my way!" she cried defiantly.
His big jaw closed with a snap and his figure became rigid. The candle's yellow light threw a strange glare on
his face, convulsed. The blue flames of hell were in the glitter of his steel eyes.
Her heart sank in a dull wave of terror. She tried to gauge the depth of his brutal rage. There was no standard
by which to measure it. She had never seen that look in his face before. His whole being was transformed by
some sinister power.
She was afraid to move, but her mind was alert in this moment of supreme trial. She hadn't used her last
weapon yet. The fact that he held her with such terrible determination was proof of the spell she had cast over
him. She might save him. He couldn't have been a criminal long. She formed her new battleline with quick
decision.
CHAPTER XVII. THE SURRENDER
How long she gazed into the convulsed face of the man who had squared himself before her, mattered little
measured by the tick of the watch in her belt. Into the mental anguish endured a life's agony had been
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pressed. It could not have been more than twenty seconds, and yet it marked the birth of a new being within
the soul of a woman. She had been searching only for her own happiness. The search had entangled another
in the meshes of her life. Too much had been lived in the past two weeks to be undone by a word and
forgotten in a day. She had attempted, cowardlike, to run.
She saw now in the consuming flame of a great sorrow that the man before her had some rights which the
purest woman must reckon with. He might be a burglar. At least it was her duty to try to save him from
himself. Her surrender of the past weeks was a tie that would bind them through all eternity. There was no
chemistry of earth or heaven or hell that could erase its memories. Her life was no longer her ownthis
man's was bound with hers. She must face the facts. She would make one honest, brave effort to save him. To
do this she would give all without reservationpride must be cast to the winds.
Her voice suddenly changed to tears.
"Oh, Jim, you do love me, don't you?"
His body slowly relaxed, his eyes shifted, and he shrugged his square shoulders.
"What'ell did I marry you for?"
"Tell medo you?" she demanded.
"You know that I love you. What do you ask me such a fool question for? I love you with a love that can kill.
Do you hear me? That's why you're not going anywhere without me."
There was no mistaking the depth of his passion. She trembled to realize its power and yet it was the lever by
which she must move him.
"Then you've got to give this life up. You're young and brave and strong. You can earn an honest living. You
haven't been in this longI feel it, I know it. Have you?"
"No!"
"How long?"
"Eight months."
"Oh, Jim, dear, you must give it up now for my sake. I'll work with you and work for you. I'll teach, I'll sew,
I'll scrub, I'll slave for you day and nightif you're only clean and honest."
He turned on her fiercely.
"Cut it, Kidcut it! I'm out for the stuff now. I'm going to get rich and I'm going to get rich QUICKthat's
all that's the matter with me!"
"But, Jim," she broke in tenderly"you did earn an honest living. Your workshop proves that."
"I've used that to improve my tools and melt the swag the past year. The shop's all right."
"But you did make a successful invention?"
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"You bet I did," he answered savagely, "and that's why I quit the business. Three years ago I took down a big
automobile and worked out an improvement in the transmission that settled the question of heavy draft
machines. I took it to a lawyer in Wall Street and he took it to a man that had money. Between the two of 'em,
they didn't do a thing to me! They were going to put my patent on the market and make me a millionaire.
God, I was crazy"
He paused and squared his shoulders with a deep breath.
"They put it on the market all right and they made some millionairesbut I wasn't one of 'em, Kiddo! They
got me to sign a paper that skinned me out of every dollar as slick as you can pull an eel through your fingers.
I hired another lawyer and gave him half he could get to beat 'em. He fought like a tiger and two days before I
met you he got his verdict and they paid itjust ten thousand dollars. Think of itten thousand dollars! And
each of them got a million cash. They sold it outright for two millions and a half. My lawyer got five
thousand dollars, and I got five thousand dollars. That's mine, anyhow. It's in that bag there. I'm working on a
new set of tools now in my shop. I'm going to get that money back from the two thieves who stole it from me
by law. I'll take it by force, the way they took it. If I can croak them both in the fightwell, there'll be two
thieves less to rob honest men and women, that's all."
"Oh, Jim!" Mary gasped, lifting a trembling hand to her throat as if to tear open her collar. "You're mad. You
don't know what you're saying"
"Don't fool yourself, Kiddo," he interrupted fiercely. "My eyes are open now, and I've got a level head back
of 'em, too. I've doped it all out. You ought to 'a' heard that lawyer give me a few lessons in business when
he'd skinned me and salted my hide. He was goodnatured and confidential. He seemed to love me. `Business
is war, sonny,' he piped, between the puffs of the big Havana cigar he was smoking`war! war to the knife!
We got you off your guard and put the knife into you at the right minute that's all. Don't take it so hard!
Invent something else and keep your eyes peeled. You ought to love us for giving you an education in
business early in life. You're young. You won't have to learn your lesson again. Go to work, sonny, in your
shop, and turn out another new tool for the advancement of trade!'"
He paused and smiled grimly.
"I've done it, too! I've just finished a little invention that'll crack any safe in New York in twenty minutes
after I touch it."
He broke into a dry laugh, sat down and deliberately lighted a fresh cigarette.
She studied his face with beating heart. Was he lost beyond all hope of reformation? Or was this the boyish
bravado of an amateur criminal poisoned by the consciousness of wrong? She tried to think. She felt the red
blood pounding through her heart and beating against her brain in suffocating waves of despair.
In vivid flashes the scene of her marriage but two weeks ago, came back in tormenting memories. The
solemn words she had spoken kept ringing like the throb of a funeral bell far up in the starlit heavens
"I, MARY ADAMS, TAKE THEE, JAMES ANTHONY, TO MY WEDDED HUSBAND, TO HAVE AND
TO HOLD . . . FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS AND IN
HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH, AND TO OBEY, TILL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO
GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCE; AND THERETO I GIVE THEE MY TROTH."
The last solemn prayer kept ringing its deeptoned message over all
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"GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON, GOD THE HOLY GHOST, BLESS, PRESERVE, AND KEEP
YOU; THE LORD MERCIFULLY WITH HIS FAVOR LOOK UPON YOU, AND FILL YOU WITH ALL
SPIRITUAL BENEDICTION AND GRACE; THAT YE MAY SO LIVE TOGETHER IN THIS LIFE,
THAT IN THE WORLD TO COME YE MAY HAVE LIFE EVERLASTING. AMEN."
In a sudden rush of desperate pity for herself and the man to whom she was bound, she dropped on her knees
by his side, slipped her arms about his neck and clung to him, sobbing.
"Oh, Jim, Jim, man," she whispered hoarsely. "I can't see you sink into hell like this! Have you no real love in
your heart for the woman who has given all? Have mercy on me! Have mercy! You can't mean the hideous
things you've just said! You've been crazed by your losses. You're just a boy yet. Life is all before you.
You're only twentyfour. I'm just twentyfour. We can both begin anew. I've never lived until these past
weeksneither have you. You couldn't drag me down into a life of crime"
Her head sank and her voice choked into silence. He made no movement of his hand to soothe her. His voice
was not persuasive. It was hard and cold.
"I'm not asking you to help me on any of my jobs," he said. "I'm the financier of the family. You can say the
prayers and keep house."
"Knowing that you are a criminal? That your hands are stained with human blood?"
"Why not?" he snapped, the blue blaze flashing again in his eyes. "Suppose you were the wife of the
gentlemanly lawyerthief who robbed me, using the law instead of a jimmywould you bother your little
head about my business? Does his wife ask him where he got it? Does anybody know or care? He lives on
Fifth Avenue now. He bought a palace up there the day after he got my money. We passed it on the way to
the Park the day I met you. A line of carriages was standing in front and finely dressed women were running
up the red carpet that led down the stoop and under the canopy to the curb. Did any of the gay dames who
smiled and smirked at that thief's wife ask how he got the money to buy the house? Not much. Would they
have cared if they had known? They'd have called him a shrewd lawyerthat's all! Do you reckon his wife
worries about such tricks of trade? Why should mine worry?"
She gripped his hand with desperate pleading.
"Oh, Jim, dear, you can't be a criminal at heart! I wouldn't have loved you if it had been true. I can't believe
it! I won't believe it. You're posing. You don't mean this. You can't mean it. You're going to return every
dishonest dollar that you've taken."
"You don't know what you're talking about!"
He closed his jaw with a snap and leaned close in eager, tense excitement.
"Do you know how much junk I've piled into a little box in my shop the past three months?"
"I don't careI don't want to know!"
"You've got to careyou've got to know now! It's worth a hundred thousand dollars, do you hear? A
hundred thousand dollars! It would take me a lifetime to earn that on a salary. In two weeks after we get
back to New York with my new invention that lawyer advised me to make, I'll go through his houseI'll
open his safe, I'll take every diamond, every pearl and every scrap of stolen jewelry his wife's wearing. And I
won't leave a fingerprint on the window sill. I've got two of his servants working for me.
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"In six months I'll be worth half a million. In a year I'll pull off the big haul I'm planning and I'll be a
millionaire. We'll retire from business then just like they did. We'll build our marble palace down at Bay
Ridge and our yacht will nod in the harbor. We'll spend our summers in Europe when we like and every snob
and fool in New York will fall over himself to meet me. And every woman will envy my wife. I'm young,
Kiddo, but I've cut my eye teeth. You've just been born. I'm running the business end of this thing. You think
you can reform me. You canAFTER I'VE MADE OUR PILE. I'll join the church then and sing louder than
that lawyer. But if you think you're going to stop my business career at this stage of the gameforget it,
forget it!"
He sprang up with a quick movement of his tense body and threw her off. She rose and watched his restless
steps as he paced the floor. Her mind was numb as if from a mortal blow. She brushed the tangled ringlets of
brown hair back from her forehead, drew the handkerchief from her belt and wiped the perspiration from her
brow.
Before she could gather the strength to speak, he wheeled suddenly and confronted her:
"I've known from the first, Kiddo, that you're not the kind to help in this business. I don't expect it. I don't ask
it. I need a ranch like this down here for storage. I'm going to take the old woman into partnership with me."
She started back in an instinctive recoil of horror.
"Your MOTHER?"
He nodded.
"Yep!"
She drew a step nearer and peered into his set face.
"YOU WILL MAKE YOUR OWN MOTHER A CRIMINAL?"
"Sure!" he growled. "That's what I came down here for."
"She won't do it!"
"She won't, eh?" he sneered. "Look at this hog pen!"
He swept the bare, wretched cabin with a gesture of contempt and shrugged his shoulders.
"Look at the rags she's wearing," he went on savagely. "When we talk it over tonight with that five thousand
dollars in gold shining in her eyesI'm going to show her a lot o' things she never saw before, Kiddotake
it from me!"
She answered in slow, even tones:
"I can't live with you, Jim."
The blue flames beneath the drooping eyelids were leaping now in the yellow glare of the candle's rays. The
muscles of his body were knotted. His voice came from his throat a low growl.
"Do you know who you're fooling with?"
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The blood of a clean life flamed in her cheeks and nerved her with reckless daring. Her figure stiffened and
her voice rang with defiant scorn:
"Yes. I know at lasta thief who would drag his own mother down to hell with him!"
Not a muscle of his powerful body moved; his face was a stolid mask. He threw his words slowly through his
teeth:
"Now you listen to me. You're my wife. I didn't invent this marriage game. I played it as I found it. And that's
the way you're going to play it. You're good and sweet and cleanI like that kind, and I won't have no other.
You're mine. MINE, do you hear! Mine for lifebody and soul`FOR BETTER FOR WORSE, FOR
RICHER FOR POORER, IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, TO LOVE, CHERISH'"
He paused and thrust his massive jaw squarely into her face:
"`AND OBEY!'" he hissed, "`UNTIL DEATH DO US PART, ACCORDING TO GOD'S HOLY
ORDINANCE'you said it, didn't you?"
"Yes"
"Well?"
She turned from him with sudden aversion:
"I didn't know what you were"
"Nobody ever knows BEFORE they're married!" he broke in savagely. "You took your chances. I took
mine`FOR BETTER FOR WORSE.' We'll just say now it's for worse and let it go at that!"
The little body stiffened.
"I'll die first!"
He held her gaze without words, searching the depths of her being with the cold, blue flame in his drooping
eyes. If she were bluffing, it was easy. She could talk her head off for all he cared. If she meant it, he might
have his hands full unless he mastered the situation at once and for all time.
There was no sign of yielding to his iron will. An indomitable soul had risen in her frail body and defied him.
His decision was instantaneous.
"Oh, you'll die sooner than live with meeh?"
There was something hideous in the cold venom with which he drawled the words. Her heart fairly stopped
its beating. With the last ounce of courage left, she held her place and answered:
"Yes!"
With the sudden crouch of a tiger he drew his clenched fist to strike.
"Forget it!"
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She sprang back with terror, her body trembling in pitiful weakness.
"You snivelling little coward!" he growled.
"Oh, Jim, Jim," she faltered,"youyoucouldn't strike me!"
A step nearer and he stood over her, his big, flat head thrust forward, his eyes gleaming, his muscles knotted
in blind rage.
"NoI won't STRIKE you," he whispered. "I'll just KILL youthat's all!"
With the leap of an infuriated beast he sprang on her and his sharp fingers gripped her throat.
The world went black and she felt herself sinking into a bottomless abyss. With maniac energy she tore his
hands from her throat and the warm blood streamed from the gash his nails had torn.
Jim! Jim! For God's sake!" she moaned in abject terror.
With a sullen growl, his fingers, sharp as a leopard's claw, found her neck again and closed with a grip that
sent the blood surging to her brain and her eyes starting from their sockets.
The one hideous thought that flashed through her mind was that he was going to plunge his claws into her
eyes and blind her for life. He could hold her his prisoner then. She made a last desperate struggle for breath,
her hands relaxed, she drooped and sank to the couch toward which he had hurled her in the first rush of his
assault.
He lifted her and choked the slender neck again to make sure, loosed his hands and the limp body dropped on
the couch and was still.
He stood watching her in silence, his arms at his side.
"Damned little fool!" he muttered. "I had to give you that lesson. The sooner the better!"
He waited with contemptuous indifference until she slowly recovered consciousness. She lay motionless for a
long time and then slowly opened her eyes.
Thank God! They had not been gouged out as poor Ella's. She didn't mind the warm blood that soaked her
collar and ran down her neck. If he would only spare her eyes. Blindness had been her one unspeakable
terror. She closed her eyes again and silently prayed for strength. Her strength was gone. Wave after wave of
sickening, cowardly terror swept her prostrate soul. She could feel his sullen presencehis body with its
merciless strength towering above her. She dared not look. She knew that he was watching her with cruel
indifference. A single cry, a single word and he might thrust his claw into her eyes and the light of the world
would go out forever.
Her terror was too hideous; she could endure it no longer. She must move. She must try to save herself. She
lifted her head and caught his steady, venomous gaze.
A quick, sliding movement of abject fear and she was erect, facing him and backing away silently.
He followed with even step, his gaze holding her as the eyes of a snake its victim. She would not let him
know her terror of blindness. She preferred death a thousand times. If he would only kill her outright it was
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all the mercy she would ask.
"Youwon'tkillmeJim!" she sobbed. "Please please, don't kill me!"
He lifted his sharp finger and followed her toward the shedroom door, his voice the triumphant cry of an
eagle above his prey.
"`FOR BETTER, FOR WORSEUNTIL DEATH DO US PART!'"
Her heart gave a bound of cowardly joy. He had relented. He would not blind her. She could live. She was
young and life was sweet.
She tried to smile her surrender through her tears as she backed slowly away from his ominous finger.
"Yes, I'll tryJim. I'll try`UNTIL DEATH DO US PARTUNTIL DEATHUNTIL DEATH'"
Her voice broke into a flood of tears as she blindly felt her way through the door and into the darkened room.
He paused on the threshold, held the creaking board shutter in his hand and broke into a laugh.
"The world ain't big enough for you to get away from me, Kiddo. Good nighta good little wife now and it's
all right!"
CHAPTER XVIII. TO THE NEW GOD
Jim closed the door of the little shedroom with a bang, and stood listening a moment to the sobs inside.
"`UNTIL DEATH DO US PART,' Kiddo!" he laughed grimly.
He turned back into the room and saw Nance standing at the opposite entrance between the calico curtains, an
old, battered, flickering lantern in her hand. A white wool shawl was thrown over the gray head and fell in
long, filmy waves about her thin figure. Her deep sunken eyes were exaggerated in the dim light of lantern
and candle. She smiled wanly.
He stopped short at the apparition; a queer shiver of superstitious fear shook him. The white form of Death
suddenly and noiselessly appearing from the darkness could not have been more uncanny. He had wondered
vaguely while the quarrel with his wife was progressing, what had become of his mother. As the fight had
reached its height, he had forgotten her.
She looked at him, blinking her eyes and trying to smile.
"Where the devil have you been, old gal?" he asked nervously.
"Nowhere," she answered evasively.
"You've been mighty quiet on the trip anyhow. I see you've brought something back from nowhere."
Nance glanced down at the jug she carried in her left hand and laughed.
"What is it?" he asked.
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"Nothin'"
"Nothin' from nowhere sounds pretty good to me when I see it in a brown jug on Christmas Eve. You're all
right, old gal! I was just going to ask if you had a little mountain dew. You're a mind reader. I'll bet the
warehouse you keep that stored in is some snug harboreh?"
"They ain't never found it yit!" she giggled.
"And I'll bet they won'tbully for you!"
She took down a tin cup from a shelf and placed it beside the jug.
"Another glass, sweetheart"
The old woman stared at him in surprise, walked to the shelf and brought another tin cup.
"What do ye want with two?" she asked in surprise.
Jim moved toward the stool beside the table.
"Sit down."
"Me?"
"Sure. Let's be sociable. It's Christmas Eve, isn't it?"
"Yeah!" Nance answered cheerfully, taking her seat and glancing timidly at her guest.
Jim seized the jug, poured out two drinks of corn whiskey, handed her one and raised his:
"Well, here's lookin' at you, old girl."
He paused, lowered his cup and smiled.
"But say, give me a toast." He nodded toward the shedroom. "I'm on my honeymoon, you know."
His hostess laughed timidly and glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. She wished to be sociable and
make up as best she could for her rudeness on their arrival.
"I ain't never heard but one fur honeymooners," she said softly.
"Let's have it. I've never heard a toast for honeymooners in my life. It'll be new to mefire away!"
Nance fumbled her faded dress with her left hand and laughed again.
"'May ye live long and prosper an' all yer troubles be LITTLE ONES!'"
She laughed aloud at the old, wormeaten joke and Jim joined.
"Bully! Bully, old girlbully!"
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He lifted his cup and drained it at one draught and Nance did the same.
He seized the jug and poured another drink for each.
"Once more"
He leaned across the table.
"And here's one for you." He squared his body and lifted his cup:
"To all your little onesno matter how big they are!"
Jim drained his liquor without apparently noticing her agitation, though he was watching her keenly from the
corner of his eye.
The cup she held was lowered slowly until the whiskey poured over her dress and on the floor. Her thin
figure drooped pathetically and her voice was the faintest sob:
"IIain't gotnone!"
"I heard you had a boy," Jim said carelessly.
The drooping figure shot upright as if a bolt of lightning had swept her. She stared at him in tense silence,
trying to gather her wits before she answered.
"Who told you anything about me?" she demanded sternly.
"A fellow in New York," Jim continued with studied carelessness"said he used to live down here."
"He LIVED down here?" she repeated blankly.
"Yepcome now, loosen up and tell us about the kid."
"There ain't nuthin' ter tellhe's dead," she cried pathetically.
"He said you deserted the child and left him to starve."
"He said that?" she growled.
"Yep."
He was silent again and watched her keenly.
She fumbled her dress and glanced nervously across the table as if afraid to ask more. Unable to wait for him
to speak, she cried nervously at last:
"Wellwellwhat else did he say?"
"That he took the little duffer to New York and raised him."
"RAISED him?"
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She fairly screamed the words, springing to her feet trembling from head to foot.
"Till he was big enough to kick into the streets to shuffle for himself."
"The scoundrel said he was dead."
Her voice was far away and sank into dreamy silence. She was living the hideous, lonely years again with a
heart starved for love.
Jim's voice broke the spell:
"Then you didn't desert him?" The man's eyes held hers steadily.
She stared at him blankly and spoke with rushing indignation:
"Desert himmy babymy own flesh and blood? There's never been a minute since I looked into his eyes
that I wouldn't 'a' died fur him."
She paused and sobbed.
"He had such pretty eyes, stranger. They looked like your'nonly they wuz puttier and bluer."
She lifted her faded dress, brushed the tears from her cheeks and went on rapidly:
"When I found his drunken brute of a daddy was a liar and had another wife, I wouldn't live with him. He
tried to make me but I kicked him out of the house and he stole the boy to get even with me." Her voice
broke, she dropped her head and choked back the tears. "He did get even with me, toohe did," she sobbed.
Jim watched her in silence until the paroxysm had spent itself.
"You think you'd know this boy now if you found him?"
She bent close, her breath coming in quick gasps.
"My God, mister, do you think I COULD find him?"
"He lives in New York; his name is Jim Anthony."
"Yesyes?" she said in a dazed way. "He called hisself Walter Anthonyhe wuz a stranger from the North
and my boy's name was Jim." She paused and bent eagerly across the table. "New York's an awful big place,
ain't it?"
"Some town, old gal, take it from me."
"COULD I find him?"
"If you've got money enough. You said you'd know him. How?"
"I'd know him!" she answered eagerly. "The last quarrel we had was about a mark on his neck. He wuz a
spunky little one. You couldn't make him cry. His devil of a daddy used to stick pins in him and laugh
because he wouldn't cry. The last dirty trick he tried was what ended it all. He pushed a live cigar agin his
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little neck until I smelled it burnin' in the next room. I knocked him down with a chair, drove him from the
house and told him I'd kill him if he ever put his foot inside the door agin.
He stole my boy the next nightbut he'll carry that scar to his grave."
"You'd love this boy now if you found him in New York as bad as his father ever was?" Jim asked with a
curious smile.
"Yeshe's mine!" was the quick, firm answer.
Jim watched her intently.
"I looked Death in the face for him," she went on fiercely. "I'd dive to the bottom o' hell to find him if I
knowed he wuz thar But what's the use to talk; that devil killed him! I've waked up many a night
stranglin' with a dream when I seed the drunken brute burnin' an' beatin' an' torturin' him to death. The feller
you've heard about ain't him. 'Tain't no use to make me hope an' then kill me"
"He's not dead, I tell you. I know."
Jim's voice rang with conviction so positive the old woman's breath came in quick gasps and she smiled
through her eager tears.
"And I MIGHT find him?"
"IF you've got money enough! Money can do anything in this world."
He opened the black bag, thrust both hands into it and threw out a handful of yellow coin which he allowed to
pour through his fingers and rattle into a tin plate which had been left on the table.
Her eyes sparkled with avarice.
"It's your'nall your'n?" she breathed hungrily.
"I'm taking it down South to invest for a fool who thinks"he stopped and laughed"who thinks it's bad
luck to keep money that's stained with blood"
Nance started back.
"Got blood on it?"
Jim spoke in confidential appeal.
"That wouldn't make any difference to you, would it?"
She shook her gray locks and glanced at the pile of yellow metal, hungrily.
"II wouldn't like it with blood marks!"
He lifted a handful of coin, clinked it musically in his hands and held it in his open palms before her.
"Look! Look at it close! You don't see any blood marks on it, do you?"
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Her eyes devoured it.
"No."
He seized her hand, thrust a halfdozen pieces into it and closed her thin fingers over it.
"Feel of itlook at it!"
Her hands gripped the gold. She breathed quickly, broke into a laugh, caught herself in the middle of it, and
lapsed suddenly into silence.
"Feels good, don't it?" he laughed.
Nance grinned, her uneven, discolored gleaming ominously in the flicker of the candle.
"Don't it?" he repeated.
"Yeah!"
He lifted another handful and threw it in the air, catching it again.
"That's the stuff that makes the world go 'round. There's your only friend, old girl! Others promise wellbut
in the scratch they fail."
"Yeahwhen the scratch comes they fail!" Nance echoed.
"Money never fails!" Jim continued eagerly. "It's the god that knows no right or wrong"
He touched the pile in the plate and drew the bag close for her to see.
"How much do you guess is there?"
Nance gazed greedily into the open bag and looked again at the shining heap in the plate.
"I dunnoa million, I reckon."
The man laughed.
"Not quite that much! But enough to make you rich for lifeIF you had it."
The old woman turned away pathetically and shook her gray head.
"I wouldn't have to work no more, would I?"
Her thin hands touched the faded, dirty dress.
"And I could buy me a decent dress," her voice sank to a whisper, "and I could find my boy."
"You bet you could!" Jim exclaimed. "There's just one god in this world now, old girlthe Almighty
Dollar!"
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He paused and leaned close, persuasively:
"Suppose now, the man that got that money had to kill a fool to take itwhat of it? You don't get big money
any other way. A burglar watches his chance, takes his life in his hands and drills his way into a house. He
finds a fool there who fights. It's not his fault that the man was born a fool, now is it?"
"Mebbe not"
"Of course not. A burglar kills but one to get his pile, and then only because he must, in selfdefence. A big
gambling capitalist corners wheat, raises the price of bread and starves a hundred thousand children to death
to make his. It's not stained with blood. Every dollar is soaked in it! Who cares?"
"Yeahwho cares?" Nance growled fiercely.
Jim smiled at his easy triumph.
"It's dog eat dog and the devil take the hindmost now!"
"That's soain't it?" she agreed.
"You bet! Business is business and the best man's the man that gets there. Steal a hundred dollars, you go to
the penitentiaryfoolish! Don't do it. Steal a million and go to the Senate!"
"Yeah!" Nance laughed.
"Moneymoney for its own sake," he rushed on savagely"right or wrong. That's all there is in it today,
old girltake it from me!"
He paused and his smile ended in a sneer.
"Man shall eat bread in the sweat of his brow? Only fools SWEAT!"
Nance turned her face away, sighed softly, glancing back at Jim furtively.
"I reckon that's so, too. Have another drink, stranger?"
She poured another cup of whiskey and one for herself. She raised hers as if to drink and deftly threw the
contents over her shoulder.
Jim seized the jug and poured again.
"Once more. Come, I've another toast for you. You'll drink this one I know."
He lifted his cup and rose a little unsteadily. Nance stood with uplifted cup watching him.
"As the poet sings," he began with a bow to the old woman:
"France has her lily, England the rose,
Everybody knows where the shamrock grows
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Scotland has her thistle flowerin' on the hill,
But the American Emblemis a One Dollar Bill!"
He broke into a boisterous laugh.
"How's that, old girl?"
"That's bully, stranger!"
He lifted high his cup.
"We drink to the Almighty Dollar!"
"To the Almighty Dollar!" Nance echoed, clinking her cup against his."
He drained it while she again emptied hers over her shoulder.
"By golly, you're all right, old girl. You're a good fellow!" he cried jovially.
"Yeahhave another?" she urged.
She filled his cup and placed it on his side of the table. His eye had rested on the gold. He ignored the
invitation, lifted a handful of gold and dropped it with musical clinking into the plate.
"Blood markstommyrot!" he sneered.
"Yeahtommyrot!" she echoed. "That's what I say, too!"
Jim wagged his head sagely:
"Now you're talking sense, old girl!"
He leaned across the table and pointed his finger straight into her face.
"And don't you forget what I'm tellin' ye tonight get money, get money!"
He stopped suddenly and a sneer curled his lips.
"Oh I Get it `fairly'get it `squarely'but whatever you doby God!GET IT!"
His uplifted hand crashed downward and gripped the gold. His fingers slowly relaxed and the coin clinked
into the plate.
Nance watched him eagerly.
"Yeah, that's itget it," she breathed slowly.
Jim lifted his drooping eyes to hers.
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"If you've GOT it, you're a godyou can do no wrong. Nobody's goin' to ask you HOW you got it; all they
want to know is HAVE you got it!"
"Yeah, nobody's goin' to ask you HOW you got it, Nance repeated, "they just want to know HAVE you got
it! Yeahyeah!"
"You bet!"
Jim's head sank in the first stupor of liquor and he dropped into the chair.
The old woman leaned eagerly over the plate of gold and clutched the coin with growing avarice. Her fingers
opened and closed like a bird of prey. She touched it lovingly and held it in her hands a long time watching
Jim's nodding head with furtive glances. She dropped a handful of coin into the plate and watched its effect
on the drooping head.
He looked up and his eyes fell again.
"Bedtime, I reckon," Nance said.
"Yeppretty tired. I'll turn in."
The old woman glided sidewise to the table near the kitchen door, picked up the lantern and started to feel her
way backwards through the calico curtains.
"See you in the mornin', old gal," Jim drawled "Christmas mornin'an' I got somethin' else to tell ye in
the mornin'"
Again his head sank to the table.
"All right, mistergood night!" Nance answered, slowly feeling her way through the opening, watching him
intently.
Jim lifted his head and nodded heavily for a moment. His hand slipped from the table and he drew himself up
sharply and rose, holding to the table for support.
He picked up the plate of coin, poured it back in the bag, snapped the lock and walked with the bag
unsteadily to the couch. He placed the bag under the pillow and pressed the soft feathers down over it, turned
back to the table and extinguished the candle by a quick, square blow of his open palm on the flame.
He staggered to the couch, pushed the coats to the floor, dropped heavily, drew the laprobe over him and in
five minutes was sound asleep.
CHAPTER XIX. NANCE'S STOREHOUSE
The cabin was still. Only the broken sobbing of the woman in the little shedroom came faint and low on old
Nance's ears.
She slipped from the kitchen into the shadows of a tree near the house and listened until the sobbing ceased.
She crept close to the shed and stood silent and ghostlike beside its daubed walls. Immovable as a cat
crouching in the hedge to spring on her prey, she waited until the waning moon had sunk behind the crags.
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She laid her ear close to a crack in the logs from which she had once pushed the red mud to let in the light.
All was still at last. The sobbing had stopped. The young wife was sound asleep.
She had wondered vaguely at first about the crying, but quickly made up her mind that it was only a lover's
quarrel. She was glad of it. The girl would bar her door and sulk all night. So much the better. There would
be no danger of her entering the living room where Jim slept.
She would wait a little longer to make sure she was asleep. A half hour passed. The whiteshrouded figure
stood immovable, her keen ears tuned for the slightest sounds from within.
The stars were shining in unusual brilliance. She could see her way through the shadows even better than in
full moon. A wolf was crying again for his mate from a distant crag. She had grown used to his howls. He
had come close to her cabin once in the daytime. She had tried to creep on him and show her friendliness.
But he had fled in terror at the first glimpse of her dress through the parting underbrush.
An owl was calling from his dead treetop down the valley. She smiled at his familiar, tremulous call. Her
own eyes were wide as his tonight. No sight or sound of Nature among the crags about her cabin had for her
spirit any terror. The night was her mantle.
She added to the meager living which she had wrung from her mountain farm by trading with the illicit
distillers of the backwoods of Yancey County. Too ignorant to run a distillery of her own, she had stored their
goods with such skill that the hidingplace had never been discovered. She loved good whiskey herself. She
had tried to find in its fiery depths the dreams of happiness life had so cruelly denied her.
The hidingplace of this whiskey had puzzled the revenue officers of every administration for years. They
had watched her house day and night. Not one of them had ever struck the trail to her storehouse.
The game had excited her imagination. She loved its daring and danger. That there was the slightest element
of wrong or crime in her association with the moonshiners of her native heath had never for a moment
entered her mind. It was no crime to make whiskey. This was the first article of the creed of the true North
Carolina mountaineer. They had from the first declared that the tax levied by the Federal Government on the
product of their industry was an infamous act of tyranny. They had fought this tyranny for two generations.
They would fight it as long as there was breath in their bodies and a single load of powder and buckshot for
their rifles.
Nance considered herself a heroine in the pride of her soul for the shrewd and successful defiance she had
given the revenue officers for so many years.
She had been too cunning to even allow one of her own people to know the secret of her store house. For that
reason it had never been discovered. She always stored the whiskey temporarily in the potato shed or under
the cabin floor until night and then alone carried it to the place she had discovered.
She laughed softly at the thought of this deep hidingplace tonight. Its temperature never varied winter or
summer. Not a track had ever been left at its door. She might live a hundred years and, unless some spying
eye should see her enter, its existence could never be suspected.
She tipped softly into the kitchen, walked to the door of the livingroom and listened to the even, heavy
breathing of the man on the couch.
Once more the faint echo of a sob in the shed beyond came to her keen ears. She stood for five minutes. It
was not repeated. She had only imagined it. The girl was still asleep.
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She turned noiselessly back into the kitchen, put a box of matches in her pocket, felt her way to the low shelf
on which she had placed the battered lantern, picked it up and shook it to make sure the oil was sufficient.
She stepped lightly into the yard, pushed open the gate of the splitboard garden fence, walked along the
edge to the corner and selected a spade from the tools that leaned against the boards.
Carrying the spade and unlighted lantern in her left hand, she glided from the yard into the woods. Her right
hand before her to feel for underbrush or overhanging bough, she made her way rapidly to the swiftflowing
mountain brook.
Arrived at the water whose musical ripple had guided her steps, she removed her shoes and placed them
beside a tree. She wore no stockings. The faded skirt she raised and tucked into her belt. She could wade knee
deep now without hindrance.
Seizing the spade and lantern, she made her way slowly and carefully downstream for three hundred yards
and paused beside a shelving ledge which projected halfway across the brook.
She paused and listened again for full ten minutes, immovable as the rock on which her thin, bony hand
rested. The stars were looking, but they could only peep through the network of overhanging trees.
Feeling her way along the rock until the ledge rose beyond her reach, she bent low and waded through a still
pool of eddying water straight under the mountainside for more than a hundred feet. Her extended right
hand had felt for the stone ceiling above her head until it ran abruptly out of reach.
She straightened her body and took a deep breath. Ten steps she counted carefully and placed her bare feet on
the dry rock beyond the water.
Carefully picking her way up the sloping bank until she reached a stretch of soft earth, she sank to her hands
and knees and crawled through an opening less than three feet in height.
"Thar now!" she laughed. "Let 'em find me if they can!"
She lighted her lantern and seated herself on a boulder to restone hundred and fifty feet in the depths of a
mountain. The cavern was ten feet in height and fifty feet in length. The projecting ledges of rock made
innumerable shelves on which a merchant might have displayed his wares.
The old woman was too shrewd for that. Her jugs were carefully planted in the ground behind two fallen
boulders, and their hidingplace concealed by a layer of drift which she had gathered from the edge of the
water. She had taken this precaution against the day when some curious explorer might stumble on her secret
as she had found it hunting ginsing roots in the woods overhead. Her foot had slipped suddenly through a
hole in the soft mould. She peered cautiously below and could see no bottom. She dropped a stone and heard
it strike in the depths. She made her way down the side of the crag and found the opening through the still
eddying waters. The hole through the roof she had long ago plugged and covered with earth and dry leaves.
She carried her lantern and spade to the further end of her storehouse and dug a hole in the earth about two
feet in depth. The earth she carefully placed in a heap.
"That's the place!" she giggled excitedly.
She left her lantern burning, dropped again on the soft, mouldcovered earth and quickly emerged on the
stone banks of the wide, still pool. Her hand high extended above her head, she waded through the water until
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she touched the heavy ceiling, lowered her body again to a stooping position and rapidly made her way out
into the bed of the brook.
She passed eagerly along the babbling path and stopped with sure instinct at the tree beside whose trunk she
had placed her shoes.
In five minutes she had made her way through the woods and reached the house. She tipped into the kitchen
and stood in the doorway or the livingroom watching her sleeping guest. The even breathing assured her
that all was well. Her plan couldn't fail. She listened again for the sobs in the shed room.
She was sure once that she heard them. Five minutes passed and still she was uncertain. To avoid any
possible accident she tipped back through the kitchen, circled the house and placed her ear against the crack
in the logs.
The girl was sobbingor was she praying? She crouched beside the wall, waited and listened. The night
wind stirred the dead leaves at her feet. She lifted her head with a sudden start, laughed softly and bent again
to listen.
CHAPTER XX. TRAPPED
The sobbing in the little room was the only sound that came from one of the grimmest battlefields from
which the soul of a woman ever emerged alive.
To the first rush of cowardly tears Mary had yielded utterly. She had fallen across the highpuffed feather
mattress of the bed, shivering in humble gratitude at her escape from the horror of blindness. The grip of his
clawlike fingers on her throat came back to her now in sickening waves. The blood was still trickling from
the wound which his nails had made when she tore them loose in her first mad fight for breath.
She lifted her body and breathed deeply to make sure her throat was free. God in heaven! Could she ever
forget the hideous sinking of body and soul down into the depths of the black abyss! She had seen the face of
Death and it was horrible. Life, warm and throbbing, was sweet. She loved it. She hated Death.
Yesshe was a coward. She knew it now, and didn't care.
She sprang to her feet with sudden fear. He might attack her again to make sure that her soul had been
completely crushed.
She crept to the door and felt its edges.
"Yes, thank God, there's a place for the bar!" She shivered.
She ran her trembling fingers carefully along the rough logs and found it in the corner. She slipped it
cautiously into the iron sockets, staggered to the bed and dropped in grateful assurance of safety for the
moment. She buried her face in the pillow to fight back the sobs. How great her fall! She could crawl on her
hands and knees to Jane Anderson now and beg for protection. The last shred of pretense was gone. The
bankrupt soul stood naked and shivering, the last rag torn from pride.
What a miserable fight she had made, too, when put to the test! Ella had at least proved herself worthy to live.
The scrubwoman had risen in the strength of desperation and killed the beast who had maimed her. She had
only sunk a limp mass of shivering, helpless cowardice and fled from the room whining and pleading for
mercy.
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She could never respect herself again. The scene came back in vivid flashes. His eyes, glowing like two balls
of blue fire, froze the blood in her veinshis voice the rasping cold steel of a file. And this coarse, ugly beast
had held her in the spell of love. She had clung to him, kissed him in rapture and yielded herself to him soul
and body. And he had gripped her delicate throat and choked her into insensibility, dropping her limp form
from his hands like a strangled rat. She could remember the half conscious moment that preceded the total
darkness as she felt his grip relax.
He would choke and beat her again, too. He had said it in the sneering laughter at the door.
"A good little wife now and it's all right!"
And if you're not obedient to my whims I'll choke you until you are! That was precisely what he meant. That
he was capable of any depth of degradation, and that he meant to drag her with him, there could be no longer
the shadow of a doubt.
She could not endure another scene like that. She sprang to her feet again, shivering with terror. She could
hear the hum of the conversation in the next room. He was persuading his mother to join in his criminal
career. He was busy with his oily tongue transforming the simple, ignorant, lonely old woman into an
avaricious fiend who would receive his bloodstained booty and rejoice in it.
He was laughing again. She put her trembling hands over her ears to shut out the sound. He had laughed at
her shame and cowardice. It made her flesh creep to hear it.
She would escape. The mountain road was dark and narrow and crooked. She would lose her way in the
night, perhaps. No matter. She could keep warm by walking. At dawn she would find her way to a cabin and
ask protection. If she could reach Asheville, a telegram would bring her father. She wouldn't lose a minute.
Her hat and coat were in the livingroom. She would go bareheaded and without a coat. In the morning she
could borrow one from the woman at the Mount Mitchell house.
She crept cautiously along the walls of the room searching for a door or window. There must be a way out.
She made the round without discovering an opening of any kind. There must be a window of some kind high
up for ventilation. There was no glass in it, of course. It was closed by a board shutterif she could reach it.
She began at the door, found the corner of the room and stretched her arms upward until they touched the
low, rough joist. Over every foot of its surface she ran her fingers, carefully feeling for a window. There was
none!
She found an open crack and peered through. The stars were shining cold and clear in the December sky. The
twinkling heavens reminded her that it was Christmas Eve. The dawn she hoped to see in the woods, if she
could escape, would be Christmas morning. There was no time for idle tears of selfpity.
The one thought that beat in every throb of her heart now was to escape from her cell and put a thousand
miles between her body and the beast who had strangled her. She might break through the roof! As a rule the
shedrooms of these rude mountain cabins were covered with split boards lightly nailed to narrow strips
eighteen inches apart. If there were no ceiling, or if the ceiling were not nailed down and she should move
carefully, she might break through near the eaves and drop to the ground. The cabin was not more than nine
feet in height.
She raised herself on the footrail of the bed and felt the ceiling. There could be no mistake. It was there. She
pressed gently at first and then with all her might against each board. They were nailed hard and fast.
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She sank to the bed again in despair. She had barred herself in a prison cell. There was no escape except by
the door through which the beast had driven her. And he would probably draw the couch against it and sleep
there.
And then came the crushing conviction that such flight would be of no avail in a struggle with a man of Jim's
character. His laughing words of triumph rang through her soul now in all their full, sinister meaning.
"The world ain't big enough for you to get away from me, Kiddo!"
It wasn't big enough. She knew it with tragic and terrible certainty. In his blind, brutal way he loved her with
a savage passion that would halt at nothing. He would follow her to the ends of the earth and kill any living
thing that stood in his way. And when he found her at last he would kill her.
How could she have been so blind! There was no longer any mystery about his personality. The slender hands
and feet, which she had thought beautiful in her infatuation, were merely the hands and feet of a thief. The
strength of jaw and neck and shoulders had made him the most daring of all thievesa burglar.
His strange moods were no longer strange. He laughed for joy at the wild mountain gorges and crags because
he saw safety for the hidingplace of priceless jewels he meant to steal.
There could be no escape in divorce from such a brute. He was happy in her cowardly submission. He would
laugh at the idea of divorce. Should she dare to betray the secrets of his life of crime, he would kill her as he
would grind a snake under his heel.
A single clause from the marriage ceremony kept ringing its knell"until DEATH DO US PART!"
She knelt at last and prayed for Death.
"Oh, dear God, let me die, let me die!"
Suicide was a crime unthinkable to her pious mind. Only God now could save her in his infinite mercy.
She lay for a long time on the floor where she had fallen in utter despair. The tears that brought relief at first
had ceased to flow. She had beaten her bleeding wings against every barrier, and they were beyond her
strength.
Out of the first stupor of complete surrender, her senses slowly emerged. She felt the bare boards of the floor
and wondered vaguely why she was there.
The hum of voices again came to her ears. She lay still and listened. A single terrible sentence she caught. He
spoke it with such malignant power she could see through the darkness the flames of hell leaping in his eyes.
"Nobody's going to ask you HOW you got itall they want to know is HAVE you got it!"
She laughed hysterically at the idea of reformation that had stirred her to such desperate appeal in the first
shock of discovery. As well dream of reforming the Devil as the man who expressed his philosophy of life in
that sentence! Blood dripped from every word, the blood of the innocent and the helpless who might
consciously or unconsciously stand in his way. The man who had made up his mind to get rich quick, no
matter what the cost to others, would commit murder without the quiver of an eyelid. If she had ever had a
doubt of this fact, she could have none after her experience of tonight.
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She wondered vaguely of the effects he was producing on his ignorant old mother. Her words were too low
and indistinct to be heard. But she feared the worst. The temptation of the gold he was showing her would be
more than she could resist.
She staggered to her feet and fell limp across the bed. The iron walls of a life prison closed about her crushed
soul. The one door that could open was Death and only God's hand could lift its bars.
CHAPTER XXI. THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE
Hour after hour Nance stood beside the wall of the shedroom and with the patience of a cat waited for the
sobs to cease and the girl to be quiet.
Mary had risen from the bed once and paced the floor in the dark for more than an hour, like a frightened,
wild animal, trapped and caged for the first time in life. With growing wonder, Nance counted the beat of her
footfall, five steps one way and five backround after round, round after round, in ceaseless repetition.
"Goddlemighty, is she gone clean crazy!" she exclaimed.
The footsteps stopped at last and the low sobs came once more from the bed. The old woman crouched down
on a stone beside the log wall and drew the shawl about her shoulders.
A rooster crowed for midnight. Still the restless thing inside was stirring. Nance rose uneasily. Her lantern
was still burning in her storehouse under the cliff. The wick might eat so low it would explode. She had heard
that such things happened to lamps. It was foolish to have left it burning, anyhow.
She glided noiselessly from the house into the woods, entered her hidden door exactly as she had done
before, extinguished the lantern, placed it on a shelving rock and put a dozen matches beside it.
In ten minutes she had returned to the house and crouched once more against the wall of the shed.
The low, pleading voice was praying. She pressed her ear to the crack and heard distinctly. She must be
patient. Her plan was sure to succeed if she were only patient. No woman could sob and pray and walk all
night. She must fall down unconscious from sheer exhaustion before day.
The old woman slipped into the kitchen, took up the quilt which she had spread on the floor for her bed,
wrapped it about her thin shoulders and returned to her watch.
Again and again she rose, believing her patience had won, and placed her ear to the crack only to hear a
sound within which told her only too plainly that the girl was yet awake. Sometimes it was a sigh, sometimes
she cleared her throat, sometimes she tossed restlessly. One spoken sentence she heard again and again:
"Oh, dear God, have mercy on my lost soul!"
"What can be the matter with the fool critter!" Nance muttered. "Is she moanin' for sin? To be shore, they
don't have no revival meetings this time o' year!"
She had known sinners to mourn through a whole summer sometimes, but never in all her experience in
religious revivals had a mourner carried it over into winter. The dancing had always eased the tension and
brought a relapse to sinful thoughts.
The hours dragged until the roosters began to crow for day. It would soon be light.
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She must act now. There was no time to lose. She pressed her ear to the crack once more and held it five
minutes.
Not a sound came from within. The broken spirit had yielded to the stupor of exhaustion at last.
With swift, cat's tread Nance circled the cabin and entered the kitchen. The quilt she carefully spread on the
floor leading to the entrance to the livingroom, crossed it softly and stood in the doorway with her long
hands on the calico hangings.
For five minutes she remained immovable and listened to the deep, regular breathing of the sleeping man.
Her wits were keen, her eyes wide. She could see the dim outlines of the furniture by the starlight through the
window. Small objects in the room were, of course, invisible. To light a candle was not to be thought of. It
might wake the sleeper.
She knew how to make the light without a noise or its rays reaching his face. He had startled her with the
electric torch because of its novelty. She was no longer afraid. She would know how to press the button. He
had left the thing lying on the table beside the black bag. He might have hidden the gold. He would not
remember in his drunken stupor to move the electric torch.
She glided ghostlike into the room. Her bare feet were velvet. She knew every board in the floor. There was
one near the table that creaked. She counted her steps and cleared the spot without a sound.
Her thin fingers found the edge of the table and slipped with uncanny touch along its surface until her hand
closed on the rounded form of the torch.
Without moving in her tracks she turned the light on the table and in every nook and corner of the room
beyond. She slowly swung her body on a pivot, flashing the light into each shadow and over every inch of
floor, turning always in a circle toward the couch.
Satisfied that the object she sought was nowhere in the circle she had covered, she moved a step from the
table and winked the light beneath it. She squatted on the floor and flashed it carefully over every inch of its
boards from one corner of the room to the other and under the couch.
She rose softly, glided behind the head of the sleeping man and stood back some six feet, lest the flash of the
torch might disturb him. She threw its rays behind the couch and slowly raised them until they covered the
dirty pillow on which Jim was sleeping. There beneath the pillow lay the bag with its precious treasure. He
was sleeping on it. She had feared this, but felt sure that the whiskey he had drunk would hold him in its
stupor until late next morning.
She crouched low and fixed the light's ray slowly on the bag that her hand might not err the slightest in its
touch. She laid her bony fingers on it with a slow, imperceptible movement, held them there a moment and
moved the bag the slightest bit to test the sleeper's wakefulness. To her surprise he stirred instantly.
"What'ell!" he growled sleepily.
She stood motionless until he was breathing again with deep, even, heavy throb. Gliding back to the table,
she flashed the light again on the bag and studied its position. His big neck rested squarely across it. To move
it without waking him was a physical impossibility.
Here was a dilemma she had not fully faced. She had not believed it possible for him to place the bag where
she could not get it. Her only purpose up to this moment had been to take it and store it safely beneath the
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soft earth in the inner recess of the cave. He would miss it in the morning, of course. She would express her
amazement. The bar would be down from the front door. Someone had robbed him. The money could never
be found.
She had made up her mind to take it the moment he had convinced her that his philosophy of life was true.
His eloquence had transformed her from an ignorant old woman, content with her poverty and dirt, into a
dangerous and daring criminal.
There was no such thing as failure to be thought of now for a moment. The spade in the inner room of her
storehouse could be put to larger use if necessary. With the strength of the madness now on her she could
carry his body on her back through the woods. The world would be none the wiser. He had quarreled with his
wife, and left her in a rage that night. That was all she knew. The sheriff of neither county could afford to
bother his head long over an insolvable mystery. Besides, both sheriffs were her friends.
Her decision was instantaneous when once she saw that it was safe.
She smiled over the grim irony of the thinghis words kept humming in her ears, his voice, low and
persuasive:
"Suppose now the man that got that money had to kill a fool to take itwhat of it? You don't get big money
any other way!"
On the shelf beside the door was a butcher knife which she also used for carving. She had sharpened its point
that night to carve her Christmas turkey next day.
She raised the torch and flashed its rays on the shelf to guide her hand, crept to the wall, took down the knife
and laid the electric torch in its place.
Steadying her body against the wall, her arms outspread, she edged her way behind the couch and bent over
the sleeping man until by his breathing she had located his heart.
She raised her tall figure and brought the knife down with a crash into his breast. With a sudden wrench she
drew it from the wound and crouched among the shadows watching him with widedilated eyes.
The stricken sleeper gasped for breath, his writhing body fairly leaped into the air, bounded on the couch and
stood erect. He staggered backward and lurched toward her. The crouching figure bent low, gripping the
knife and waiting for her chance to strike the last blow.
Strangling with blood, Jim opened his eyes and saw the old woman creeping nearer through the gray light of
the dawn.
He threw his hands above his head and tried to shout his warning. She was on him, her trembling hand
feeling for his throat, before he could speak.
Struggling, in his weakened condition, to tear her fingers away, he gasped:
"Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you're doing?"
"I just want yer money," she whispered. "That's all, and I'm agoin' ter have it!"
Her fingers closed and the knife sank into his neck.
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She sprang back and watched him lurch and fall across the couch. His body writhed a moment in agony and
was still.
Holding the knife in her hand, she tore open the bag and thrust her itching fingers into the gold, gripping it
fiercely.
"Nobody's goin' to ask ye how ye got itthey just want to know HAVE ye got ityeah! Yeah"
The last word died on her lips. The door of the shedroom suddenly opened and Mary stood before her.
CHAPTER XXII. DELIVERANCE
The first dim noises of the tragedy in the livingroom Mary's stupefied senses had confused with a nightmare
which she had been painfully fighting.
The torch in Nance's hand had flashed through a crack into her face once. It was the flame of a revolver in the
hands of a thief in Jim's den in New York. She merely felt it. Her eyes had been gouged out and she was
blind. A gang of his coarse companions were holding a council, cursing, drinking, fighting. Jim had sprung
between two snarling brutes and knocked the revolver into the air. The flame had scorched her face.
With an oath he had slapped her.
"Get out, you damned little fool!" he growled. "You're always in the way when you're not wanted. Nobody
can ever find you when there's work to be done"
"But I can't see, Jim dear," she pleaded. "I do not know when things are out of place"
"You're a liar!" he roared. "You know where every piece of junk stands in this room better than I do. I can't
bring a friend into that door that you don't know it. You can hear the swish of a woman's skirt on the stairs
four stories below"
"I only asked you who the woman was who came in with you, Jim"
His fingers gripped her throat and stopped her breath. Through the roar of surging blood she could barely
hear the vile words he was dinning into her ears.
"I know you just asked me, you nosing little devil, and it's none of your business! She's a pal of mine, if you
want to know, the slickest thief that ever robbed a flat. She's got more sense in a minute than you'll ever have
in a lifetime. She's going to live here with me now. You can sleep on the cot in the kitchen. And you come
when she calls, if you know what's good for your lazy hide. I've told her to thrash the life out of you if you
dare to give her any impudence."
She had cowered at his feet and begged him not to beat her again. The fumes of whiskey and stale beer filled
the place.
Jim turned from her to quell a new fight at the other end of the room. Another woman was there, coarse,
dirty, beastly. She drew a knife and demanded her share of the night's robberies. She was trying to break from
the men who held her to stab Jim. They were all fighting and smashing the furniture
She sprang from the bed with a cry of horror. The noise was real! It was not a dream. The beast inside was
stumbling in the dark. His passions fired by liquor, he was fumbling to find his way into her room.
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She rushed to the door and put her shoulder against the bar, panting in terror.
She heard his strangling cry:
"Here! Here! Great God! Do you know what you're doing?"
And then his mother's voice, mad with greed, cruel, merciless:
"I just want yer moneythat's all, an' I'm goin' to have it!"
She heard the clinch in the struggle and the dull blow of the knife. In a sudden flash she saw it all. He had
succeeded in rousing Nance's avarice and transforming her into a fiend. Without knowing it she was stabbing
her own son to death in the room in which he had been born!
She tried to scream and her lips refused to move. She tried to hurry to the rescue and her knees turned to
water.
Gasping for breath, she drew the bar from her prison door and walked slowly into the room.
Nance's tall, bony figure was still crouched over the open bag, her left hand buried in the gold, her right
gripping the knife, her face convulsed with greedavarice and murder blended into perfect helllit unity at
last.
Jim lay on his back, limp and still, obliquely across the couch, his breast bared in the struggle, the blood
oozing a widening scarlet blot on his white shirt. His head had fallen backward over the edge and could not
be seen.
Without moving a muscle, her body crouching, Nance spoke:
"You wuz awakeyou heered?"
"Yes!"
The gleaming eyes burned through the gray dawn, two points of scintillating, hellish light fixed in purpose on
the intruder.
She had only meant to take the money. The fool had fought. She killed him because she had to. And now the
sobbing, sniveling little idiot who had kept her waiting all night had stuck her nose into some thing that didn't
concern her. If she opened her mouth, the gallows would be the end.
She would open it too. Of course she would. She was his wife. They had quarreled, but the simpleton would
blab. Nance knew this with unerring instinct. It was no use to offer her half the money. She didn't have sense
enough to take it. She knew those pious, baby faceswell, there was room for two in the cave under the
cliff. It was daylight now. No matter; it was Christmas morning. No man or woman ever darkened her door
on Christmas day. She could hide their bodies until dark, and then it was easy. She would be in New York
herself before anyone could suspect the meaning of that automobile in the shed or the owners would trouble
themselves to come after it.
Again her decision was quick and fierce. Her hand was on the bag. She would hold it against the world, all
hell and heaven.
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With the leap of a tigress she was on the girl, the bag gripped in her left hand, the knife in her right.
To her amazement the trembling figure stood stock still gazing at her with a strange look of pity.
"Well!" Nance growled. "I ain't goin' ter be took now I've got this moneyI'm goin' to New York ter find my
boy!"
She lifted the knife and stopped in sheer stupor of surprise at the girl's immovable body and staring eyes. Had
she gone crazy? What on earth could it mean? No girl of her youth and beauty could look death in the face
without a tremor. No woman in her right senses could see the body of her dead husband lying there red and
yet quivering without a sign. It was more than even Nance's nerves could endure.
She lowered the knife and peered into the girl's set face and glanced quickly about the room. Could she have
called help? Was the house surrounded? It was impossible. She couldn't have escaped. What did it mean?
The old woman drew back with a terror she couldn't understand.
"What are you looking at me like that for?" she panted.
Mary held her gaze in lingering pity. Her heart went out now to the miserable creature trembling in the
presence of her victim. The blow must fall that would crush the soul out of her body at one stroke. The gray
hair had tumbled over her distorted features, the ragged dress had been torn from her throat in the struggle
and her flat, bony breast was exposed.
"You don'thavetogotoNew Yorktofind yourboy!" the strained voice said at last.
Nance frowned in surprise and flew back at her in rage.
"Yes I do, toohe lives thar!"
The little figure straightened above the crouching form.
"He's here!"
Nance sank slowly against the table and rested the bag on the edge of the chair. Its weight was more than she
could bear. She tried to glance over her shoulder at the body on the couch and her courage failed. The first
suspicion of the hideous truth flashed through her stunned mind. She couldn't grasp it at once.
"Whar?" she whispered hoarsely.
Mary lifted her arm slowly and pointed to the couch.
"There!"
Nance glared at her a moment and broke into a hysterical laugh.
"It's a liea liea lie!"
"It's true"
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"Yer're just a lyin' ter me ter get away an give me upbut ye won't do itlittle Missold Nance is too
smart for ye this time. Who told you that?"
"He told me tonight!"
"He told you?" she repeated blankly.
"Yes."
"You're a liar!" she growled. "And I'll prove it you move out o' your tracks an' I'll cut your throat. My
boy's got a scar on his neckI know right whar to look for it. Don't you move now till I seeI know you're
a liar"
She turned and with the quick trembling fingers of her right hand tore the shirt back from the neck and saw
the scar. She still held the bag in her left hand. The muscles slowly relaxed and the bag fell endwise to the
floor, the gold crashing and rolling over the boards. She stared in stupor and threw both hands above her
streaming gray hair.
"Lord God Almighty!" she shrieked. "Why didn't I think that he wuz somebody else's boy if he weren't
mine!"
The thin body trembled and crumpled beside the couch.
The girl lifted her head in a look of awe as if in prayer.
"And God has set me free! free! free!"
CHAPTER XXIII. THE DOCTOR
Mary stood overwhelmed by the tragedy she had witnessed. For the time her brain refused to record
sensations. She had seen too much, felt too much in the past eight hours. Soul and body were numb.
The first impressions of returning consciousness were fixed on Nance. She had risen suddenly from the floor
and smoothed the hair back from Jim's forehead with tender touch as if afraid to wake him. She drew the quilt
from the kitchen floor, spread it over the body, and lifted her eyes to Mary's. It was only too plain.
Reason had gone.
She tipped close and put her fingers on her lips.
"Sh! We mustn't wake him. He's tired. Let him sleep. It's my boy. He's come home. We'll fix him a fine
Christmas dinner. I've got a turkey. I'll bake a cake" she paused and laughed softly. "I've got eggs too,
fresh laid yesterday. We'll make egg nog all day and all night. I ain't had no Christmas since that devil stole
him. We'll have one this time, won't we?"
The girl's wits were again alert. She must run for help. A minute to humor the old woman's delusion and she
might return before any harm came to her. Jim had not moved a muscle. It was plain that he was beyond help.
"Yes," Mary answered cheerfully. "You fix the cakeand I'll get the wood to make a fire."
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Nance laughed again.
"We'll have the dinner all ready for him when he wakes, won't we?"
"Yes. I'll be back in a few minutes."
Nance hurried into the kitchen humming an old song in a faltering voice that sent the cold chills down the
girl's spine.
Mary slipped quietly through the door and ran with swift, sure foot down the narrow road along which the
machine had picked its way the afternoon before. The cabin they had passed last could not be more than a
mile.
She made no effort to find the logs for pedestrians when the road crossed the brook. She plunged straight
through the babbling waters with her shoes, regardless of skirts.
Panting for breath, she saw the smoke curling from the cabin chimney a quarter of a mile away.
"Thank God!" she cried. "They're awake!"
She was so glad to have reached her goal, her strength suddenly gave way and she dropped to a boulder by
the wayside to rest. In two minutes she was up and running with all her might.
She rushed to the door and knocked.
A mountaineer in shirtsleeves and stockings answered with a look of mild wonder.
"For God's sake come and help me. I must have a doctor quick. We spent the night at Mrs. Owens'. She's lost
her mind completelya terrible thing has happenedyou'll help me?"
"Cose I will, honey," the mountaineer drawled. "Jest ez quick ez I get on my shoes."
"Is there a doctor near?" she asked breathlessly.
He answered without looking up:
"The best one that God ever sent to a sick bed. He don't charge nobody a cent in these parts. He just heals the
sick because hit's his callin'. Come from somewhar up North and built hisself a fine log house up on the side
of the mountains. Hit's full of all the medicines in the world, too"
"Will you ask him to come for me?" Mary broke in.
"I'll jump on my hoss an' have him thar in half a' hour. You can run right back, honey, and look out for the po'
ole critter till we get thar."
"Thank you! Thank you!" she answered grate fully.
"Not at all, not at all!" he protested as he swung through the door and hurried to the lowpitched sheds in
which his horse and cow were stabled. "Be thar in no time!"
When Mary returned, Nance was still busy in the kitchen. She had built a fire and put the turkey in the oven.
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Mary was counting the minutes now until the doctor should come. The old woman's prattle about the return
of her lost boy, so big and strong and handsome, had become unendurable. She felt that she should scream
and collapse unless help came at once. She looked at her watch. It was just thirtyfive minutes from the time
she had left the cabin in the valley below.
She sprang to her feet with a smothered cry of joy. The beat of a horse's hoof at full gallop was ringing down
the road.
In two minutes the Doctor's firm footstep was heard at the kitchen door.
Nance turned with a look of glad surprise.
"Well, fur the land sake, ef hit ain't Doctor Mulford! Come right in!" she cried.
The Doctor seized her hand.
"And how is my good friend, Mrs. Owens, this morning?" he asked cheerfully.
Mary was studying him with deep interest. She had asked herself the question a hundred times how much she
could tell himwhat to say and what to leave unsaid. One glance at his calm, intellectual face was enough.
He was a man of striking appearance, six feet tall, fortyfive years of age, hair prematurely gray and a slight
stoop to his broad shoulders. His brown eyes seemed to enfold the old woman in their sympathy.
Nance was chattering her answer to his greeting.
"Oh, I'm feelin' fine, Doctor" she dropped her voice confidentially"and you're just in time for a good
dinner. My boy that was lost has come home. He's a great big fellow, wears fine clothes and come up the
mountain all the way in a devil wagon." She put her hand to her mouth. "Sh! He's asleep! We won't wake him
till dinner! He's all tired out."
The Doctor nodded understandingly and turned toward Mary.
"And this young lady?"
"Oh, that's his wife from New Yorkain't she purty?"
The Doctor saw the delicate hands trembling and extended his.
No word was spoken. None was needed. There was healing in his touch, healing in his whole being. No man
or woman could resist the appeal of his personality. Their secrets were yielded with perfect faith.
"Come with me quickly," Mary whispered.
"I understand," he answered carelessly.
Turning again to Nance, he said with easy confidence:
"I'll not disturb you with your cooking, Mrs. Owens. Go right on with it. I'll have a little chat with your son's
wife. If she's from New York I want to ask her about some of my people up there"
"All right," Nance answered, "but don't you wake HIM! Go with her inter the shedroom."
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"We'll go on tiptoe!" the Doctor whispered.
Nance nodded, smiled and bent again over the oven.
Mary led him quickly through the livingroom, head averted from the couch, and into the prison cell in
which she had passed the night. The physician glanced with a startled look at the gold still scattered on the
floor.
She seized his hand and swayed.
He touched the brown hair of her bared head gently and pressed her hand.
"Steady, now, child, tell me quickly."
"Yes, yes," she gasped, "I'll tell you the truth"
He held her gaze.
"And the whole truthit's best."
Mary nodded, tried to speak and failed. She drew her breath and steadied herself, still gripping his hand.
"I will," she began faintly. "He's dead"
She paused and nodded toward the livingroom.
"The manher son?"
"Yes. We came last night from Asheville. We were on our honeymoon. We haven't been married but three
weeks. I never knew the truth about his life and character until last night when he told me that this old woman
was his mother. I found a case of jewels in the bag he carriedjewels that belonged to a man in New York
who was robbed and shot. I recognized the case. He confessed to me at last in cold, brutal words that he was a
thief. I couldn't believe it at first. I tried to make him give up his criminal career. He laughed at me. He
gloried in it. I tried to leave him. He choked me into insensibility and drove me into this cell, where I spent
the night. He brought the gold that you saw on the floor which he had honestly made to give to his old
motherbut for a devilish purpose. He showed it to her last night to rouse her avarice and make her first
agree to hide his stolen goods. He succeeded too well. Before he had revealed himself she slipped into the
room at daylight while he slept in a drunken stupor, murdered him and took the money. The struggle waked
me and I rushed in. She gripped her knife to kill me. I told her that she had murdered her own son and she
went mad"
She paused for breath and her lips trembled piteously.
"You know what to do, Doctor?"
"Yes!"
"And you'll help me?"
He smiled tenderly and nodded his head.
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"God knows you need it, child!"
The nerves snapped at last, and she sank a limp heap at his feet.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE CALL DIVINE
The Doctor threw off his coat and took charge of the stricken house. He sent his waiting messenger for a
faithful nurse, a mountain woman whom he had trained, and began the fight for Mary's life. The collapse into
which she had fallen would require weeks of patient care. There was no immediate danger of death, and
while he awaited the arrival of help, he turned into the livingroom to examine the body of the slain husband.
The head had fallen backward over the side of the lounge and a pool of blood, still warm and red, lay on the
floor in a widening circle beneath it. His quick eye took in its significance at a glance. He sprang forward,
ripped the shirt wide open and applied his ear to the breast.
"He's still alive!" he cried excitedly.
He examined the ugly wound in the left side and found that the knife had penetrated the lung. The heart had
not been touched. The blow on the neck had not been fatal. The shock of the final stroke had merely choked
the wounded man into collapse from the hemorrhage of the left lung. The position into which the body had
fallen across the couch had gradually cleared the accumulated blood. There was a chance to save his life.
In ten minutes he had applied stimulants and restored respiration, but the deep wheeze from the stricken lung
told only too plainly the dangerous character of the wound. It would be a bitter fight. His enormous vitality
might win. The chances were against him.
Jim's lips moved and he tried to speak.
The Doctor placed his hand on his mouth and shook his head. The drooping eyelids closed in grateful
obedience.
The beat of horses' hoofs echoed down the mountain road. His nurse and messenger were coming. He
decided at once to move Mary to his own house. She must regain consciousness in new surroundings or her
chance of survival would be slender. To awake in this miserable cabin, the scene of the tragedy she had
witnessed, might be instantly fatal. Besides she must not yet know that the brute who had choked her was
alive and might still hold the power of life and death over her frail body. She believed him dead. It was best
so. He might be dead and buried before she recovered consciousness. The fever that burned her brain would
completely cloud reason for days.
He hastily improvised a stretcher with a blanket and two strong quiltingpoles which stood in the corner of
the room. Nance helped him without question. She obeyed his slightest suggestion with childlike submission.
He placed Mary on the stretcher, wrapped her body in another warm blanket and turned to his nurse and
messenger:
"Carry her to my house. Walk slowly and rest whenever you wish. Don't wake her. Tell Aunt Abbie to put
her to bed in the south room overlooking the valley. Don't leave her a minute, Betty. She's in the first collapse
of brain fever. You know what to do. I'll be there in an hour. You come back here, John. I want you."
The mountaineer nodded and seized one end of the stretcher. The nurse took up the other and the Doctor held
wide the cabin door as they passed out.
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For three weeks he fought the grim battle with Death for the two young lives the Christmas tragedy had thrust
into his hands. He gave his entire time day and night to the desperate struggle.
When pneumonia had developed and Jim's life hung by a hair, he slept on the couch in the livingroom of the
cabin and had Nance make for herself a bed on the floor of the kitchen.
The old woman remained an obedient child. She cooked the Doctor's meals and did the work about the house
and yard as if nothing had disturbed her habits of lonely plodding. She believed implicitly all that was told
her. Her son had pneumonia from cold he had taken in the long drive from Asheville. The house must be kept
quiet. John Sanders was helping her nurse him. She was sure the Doctor would save him.
Even the knife with which she had stabbed him made no impression on her numbed senses. The Doctor had
scoured every trace of blood from the blade and put it back in its place on the shelf, lest she should miss it
and ask questions. She used it daily without the slightest memory of the frightful story it might tell.
Each morning before going to the cabin the Doctor watched with patience for the first signs of returning
consciousness in Mary's feverwracked body. The day she lifted her grateful eyes to his and her lips moved
in a tremulous question he raised his hand gently.
"Sh! Childdon't talk! It's all right. You're getting better. I've been with you every day. You're in my house
now. You'll soon be yourself again."
She smiled wanly, put her delicate hand on his and pressed it gratefully.
"I understand. You thank meyou say that I am good to you. But I'm not. This is my life. I heal the sick
because I must. I love this battle royal with Death. He beats me sometimesbut I never quit. I'm always
tramping on his trail, and I've won this fight!"
The calm brown eyes held her in a spell and she smiled again.
"Sleep now," he said soothingly. "Sleep day and night. Just wake to take a little foodthat's all and Nature
will do the rest."
He stroked her hand gently until her eyelids closed.
Two days later Jim clung to the Doctor's hand and insisted on talking.
"Better wait a little longer, boy," the physician answered kindly. "You're not out of the woods yet"
"I can't waitDoc" Jim pleaded. "I've just got to ask you something."
"All right. You can talk five minutes."
"My wife, Doc, how is she? You took her to your house, John told me. She'll get well?"
"Yes. She's rapidly recovering now."
"What does she say about me?"
"She thinks you're dead."
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"You haven't told her?"
"No."
"Why?"
"She had all she could stand"
Jim stared in silence.
"You think she'd be sorry to know I am alive?" he asked slowly.
"It would be a great shock."
The steel blue eyes slowly filled with tears.
"God! I am rotten, ain't I?"
"There's no doubt about that, my son," was the firm answer.
"Why did you fight so hard to save meI wonder?"
"An old feud between Death and me."
Jim suddenly seized the Doctor's hand.
"Say, you can't fool meyou're a good one, Doc. You've been a friend to me and you've got to help
nowyou've just got to. You're the only one on earth who can. You've a great big heart and you can't go
back on a fellow that's down and out. Give me a chance! You willwon't you?"
The hot fingers gripped the Doctor's hand with pleading tenderness.
The brown eyes searched Jim's soul.
"If you can show me it's worth while"
The fingers tightened their grip in silence.
"Just give me a chance, Doc," he said at last, "and I'll show you! I ain't never had a chance to really know
what was right and what was wrong. If I'd a lived here with my old mother she'd have told me. You know
what it is to be a stray dog on the streets of New York? Even then, I'd have kept straight if I hadn't been
robbed by a lawyer and his pal. I didn't know what I was doin' till that night here in this cabin honest to
God, I didn't"
He paused for breath and a tear stole down his cheek. He fought for control of his emotions and went on in
low tones.
"I didn't knowtill I saw my old mother creepin' on me in the shadows with that big knife gleamin' in her
hand! I tried to stop her and I couldn't. I tried to yell and strangled with blood. I saw the flames of hell in her
eyes and I had kindled them there God! I never knew until that minute! I'm broken and bruised lyin' on the
rocks now in the lowest pit Give me your hand, Doc! You're my only friendI'm goin' straight from
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now onso help me God!"
He paused again for breath and sought the actor's eyes.
"You'll stand by me, won't you?"
A friendly grip closed on the trembling fingers.
"YesI'll help youif I can."
CHAPTER XXV. THE MOTHER
Mary was resting in the chair beneath the southern windows of the sunparlor of the Doctor's bungalow. He
had built his home of logs cut from the mountainside. Its rooms were supplied with every modern
convenience and comfort. Clear spring water from the cliff above poured into the cypress tank constructed
beneath the roof. An overflow pipe sent a sparkling, bubbling and laughing through the lawn, refreshing the
wild flowers planted along its edges.
The view from the window looking south was one of ravishing beauty and endless charm. Perched on a rising
spur of the Black Mountain the house commanded a view of the long valley of the Swannanoa opening at the
lower end into the wide, sunlit sweep of the lower hills around Asheville. Upward the balsamcrowned peaks
towered among the clouds and stars.
No two hours of the day were just alike. Sometimes the sun was raining showers of diamonds on the
trembling treetops of the valleys while the blackest storm clouds hung in ominous menace around Mount
Mitchell and the Cattail. Sometimes it was raining in the valleythe rain cloud a level sheet of gray cloth
stretching from the foot of the lawn across to the crags beyond, while the sun wrapped the little bungalow in a
warm, white mantle.
Mary had never tired of this enchanted world during the days of her convalescence. The Doctor, with firm
will, had lifted every care from her mind. She had gratefully submitted to his orders, and asked no questions.
She began to wonder vaguely about his life and people and why he had left the world in which a man of his
culture and power must have moved, to bury himself in these mountain wilds. She wondered if he had
married, separated from his wife and chosen the life of a recluse. He volunteered no information about
himself.
When not attending his patients he spent his hours in the greenhouse among his flowers or in the long library
extension of the bungalow. More than five thousand volumes filled the solid shelves. A massive oak table,
ten feet in length and four feet wide, stood in the center of the room, always generously piled with books,
magazines and papers. At the end of this table he kept the row of books which bore immediately on the theme
he was studying.
Beside the window opening on the view of the valley stood his oldfashioned desksix feet long, its top a
labyrinth of pigeonholes and tiny drawers.
He pursued his studies with boyish enthusiasm and chattered of them to Mary by the hourwith never a
word passing his lips about himself.
Aunt Abbie, the cook, brought her a cup of tea, and Mary volunteered a question.
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"Do you know the Doctor's people, Auntie?" she asked hesitatingly.
"Lord, child, he's a mystery to everybody! All we know is that he's the best man that ever walked the earth.
He won't talk and the mountain folks are too polite to nose into his business. He saved my boy's life one
summer, and when he was strong and well and went back to Asheville to his work, I had nothin' to do but to
hold my hands, and I come here to cook for him. He tries to pay me wages but I laugh at him. I told him if he
could save my boy's life for nothin' I reckon I could cook him a few good meals without pay"
Her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them off, laughed and added:
"He lets me alone now and don't pester me no more about money."
Her tea and toast finished, Mary placed the tray on the table, rose with a sudden look of pain, and made her
way slowly to the library.
A warm fire of hardwood logs sparkled in the big stone fireplace. The Doctor was out on a visit to a patient.
He had given her the freedom of the place and had especially insisted that she use his books and make his
library her resting place whenever her mind was fagged. She had spent many quiet hours in its inspiring
atmosphere.
She seated herself at his desk and studied the calendar which hung above it. A sudden terror overwhelmed
her; she buried her face in her arms and burst into tears.
She was still lying across the desk, sobbing, when the Doctor walked into the room.
He touched her hair reproachfully with his firm hand.
"Why, what's this? My little soldier has disobeyed orders?"
"I don't want to live now," she sobbed.
"And why not?"
"IIam going to be a mother," she whispered.
"So?"
"The mother of a criminal! Oh, Doctor, it's horrible! Why did you let me live? The hell I passed through that
night was enoughGod knows! This will be unendurable. I've made up my mindI'll die first"
"Rubbish, child! Rubbish!" he answered with a laugh. "Where did you get all this misinformation?"
"You know what my husband was. How can you ask?"
"Because I happen to know also his wifethe mothertobe of this supposed criminal who has just set sail
for the shores of our planetand I know that she is one of the purest and sweetest souls who ever lost her
way in the jungles of the world. If you were the criminal, dear heart, the case might be hopeless. But you're
not. You are only the innocent victim of your own folly. That doesn't count in the game of Nature"
"What do you mean?" she asked breathlessly.
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"Simply this: The part which the male plays in the reproduction of the race is small in comparison with the
role of the female. He is merely a supernumerary who steps on the stage for a moment and speaks one word
announcing the arrival of the queen. The queen is the mother. She plays the star role in the drama of Heredity.
She is never off the stage for a single moment. We inherit the most obvious physical traits from our male
ancestors but even these may be modified by the will of the mother."
"Modified by the will of the mother?" she repeated blankly.
"Certainly. There are yet long days and weeks and months before your babe will be bornat least seven
months. There's not a sight or sound of earth or heaven that can reach or influence this coming human being
save through your eyes and ears and touch and soul. Almighty God can speak His message only through you.
You are his ambassador on earth in this solemn hour. What your husband was, is of little importance. There is
not a moment, waking or sleeping, day or night, that does not bring to you its divine opportunity. This human
life is yoursabsolutely to mold and fashion in body and mind as you will."
"You're just saying this to keep me from suicide," Mary interrupted.
"I am telling you the simplest truth of physical life. You can even change the contour of your baby's head if
you like. You think in your silly fears that the bull neck and jaw of the father will reappear in the child. It
might be so unless you see fit to change it. All any father can do is to transmit general physical traits unless
modified by the will of the mother."
"You mean that I can choose even the personal appearance of my child?" she asked in blank amazement.
"Exactly that. Choose the type of man you wish your babe to be and it shall be so. Who in all the world
would you prefer that he resemble?"
"You," she answered promptly.
He smiled gently.
"That pays me for all my trouble, child! No doctor ever got a bigger fee than that. Banks may fail, but I'll
never lose it. Your choice simplifies that matter very much. You won't need a picture in your room"
"A picture could determine the features of an unborn babe?" she asked incredulously.
"Beyond a doubt, and it will determine character sometimes. I knew a mother in the mountains of Vermont
who hung the picture of a ship under full sail in her livingroom. She bore seven sons. Not one of them ever
saw the ocean until he was grown and yet all of them became sailors. This was not an accident. In her age and
loneliness she blamed God for taking her children from her. Yet she had made sailors of them all by the
selection of a single piece of furniture in her room. Nature has a way of starting her children on their journey
through this world very nearly equal each a bundle of possibilities in the hands of a mother. A father may
transmit physical disease, if his body is unsound. Such marriages should be prohibited by law. But
ninetenths of the spiritual traits out of which character is formed are the work of the mother. A criminal
mother will bring into the world only criminals. A criminal male may be the father of a saint. The
responsibility of shaping the destiny of the race rests with the mother"
The Doctor sprang to his feet and paced the floor, his arms gripped behind his back in deep thought. He
paused before the enraptured listener and hesitated to speak the thought in his mind.
He lifted his hand suddenly, his decision apparently made.
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"It is of the utmost importance to the race that our mothers shall be pure. Better certainly if both father and
mother are so. It is indispensable that the mother shall be! On this elemental fact rests the dual standard of sex
morals. On this fact rests the hope of a glorified humanity through the development of an intelligent
motherhood. Stay here with me until your child is born and I'll prove the truth of every word I've
spoken"
"Oh, if I only could!"
"Why not?"
"I couldn't impose such a burden on you!" she faltered.
"You would confer on me the highest honor, if you will allow me to direct you in this experiment."
There was no mistaking his honesty and earnestness. There was no refusing the appeal.
"You really wish me to stay?" she asked.
"I beg of you to stay! You will bring to me a new inspirationnew faithnew courage to fight. Will you?"
She extended her hand.
"Yes."
"And you will agree to follow my instructions?"
"Absolutely."
"Good. We begin from this moment. I give you my first orders. Forget that James Anthony ever lived. Forget
the tragedy of Christmas Eve. You are going to be a mother. All other events in life pale before this fact. God
has conferred on you the highest honor He can give to mortal. Keep your soul serene, your body strong. You
are to worry about nothing"
"I must pay you for this extra expense I impose, Doctor. I have a thousand dollars in bank in New York," she
interrupted.
"Certainly, if you will be happier. My home is now your sanitarium. You are my patient. Your board will cost
me about eight dollars a week. All right. You can pay that if you wish.
"Take no thought now except on the business of being a mother. I will make myself your father, your brother,
your guardian, your physician, your friend and companion. I will give you at once a course of reading. You
are to think only beautiful thoughts, see beautiful things, dream beautiful dreams, hear beautiful music. I'm
going to make you climb these mountain peaks with me for the next three months and live among the clouds.
I'm going to refit your room with new furniture and pictures and place in it a phonograph with the best music.
When you are strong enough you can work for me three hours a day as my secretary. You use the
typewriter?"
"I'm an expert"
"Good! I'm writing a book which I'm going to call `The Rulers of the World.' It is a study of Motherhood. I
am one who believes that the redemption of humanity awaits the realization by woman of her divine call.
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When woman knows that she is really a co creator with God in the reproduction of the race, a new era will
dawn for mankind. You promise me faithfully to obey my instructions?"
"Faithfully."
"You're a wonderful subject on which to make an experiment. You are youngin the first dawn of the glory
of womanhood. Your body is beautiful, your mind singularly pure and sweet. You must give me at once the
full power of your will in its concentration on Truth and Beauty. The success or failure of this experiment
will depend almost entirely on your mentality and the use you make of it during these months in which your
babe is being formed. Whatever the shape of the body there is one eternal certainty only YOUR mind can
reach the soul of this child. If the father were the veriest fiend who ever existed and should concentrate his
mind to the task, not one thought from his darkened soul could reach your babe! YOUR mind will be the
everbrooding, enfolding spirit forming and fashioning character."
He paused and his deep brown eyes flashed with enthusiasm.
"Think of it! You are now creating an immortal being whose word may bend a million wills to his. And you
are doing this mighty work solely by your mind. The physical processes are simple and automatic.
"The first lesson you must learn and hold with deathless grip is that thoughts are things. A thought can kill
the body. A thought can heal the body. If I am successful as a physician it is because I use this power with my
patients. With some I use drugs, with others none. With all I use every ounce of mental power which God has
given me. You will remember this?"
"Yes."
He walked to the shelves and drew down a volume of poetry.
"Read these poems until you are tired todaythen sleep. I'll give you a good novel tomorrow and when
you've read it, a volume of philosophy. When we climb the peaks, I'll give you a study of these rocks that will
tell you the story of their birth, their life, and their coming death. We'll learn something of the birds and
flowers next spring. We'll dream great dreams and think great thoughtsyou and Iin these wonderful days
and weeks and months which God shall give us together."
She looked up at him through her tears:
"Oh, Doctor, you have not only saved a miserable life: you have saved my soul!"
CHAPTER XXVI. A SOUL IS BORN
It was more than a month after the experiment began before the Doctor ventured to hint of Jim's survival. He
had waited patiently until Mary's strength had been fully restored and her mind filled with the new
enthusiasm for motherhood. He could tell her now with little risk. And yet he ventured on the task with
reluctance. He found her seated at her favorite window overlooking the deep blue valley of the Swannanoa, a
volume of poetry in her lap.
He touched her shoulder and she smiled in cheerful response.
"You are content?" he asked.
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"A strange peace is slowly stealing into my heart," she responded reverently. "I shall learn to love life again
when my baby comes to help me."
"You remember your solemn promise?"
"Have I not kept it?" she murmured.
"Faithfullyand I remind you of it that you may not forget today for a moment that your work is too high
and holy to allow a shadow to darken your spirit even for an hour. I have something to tell you that may
shock a little unless I warn you"
She lifted her eyes with a quick look of uneasiness, and studied his immovable face.
"You couldn't guess?" he laughed.
She shook her head in puzzled silence.
"Suppose I were to tell you," he went on evenly, "that I found a spark of life in your husband's body that
morning and drew him back from the grave?"
Her eyes closed and she stretched her hand toward the Doctor.
He clasped the fingers firmly between both his palms, held and stroked them gently.
"You did save him?" she breathed.
"Yes."
"Thank God his poor old mother is not a murderer! But he is dead to me. I shall never see him again
never!"
"I thought you would feel that way," the Doctor quietly replied.
"You won't let him come here?" she asked suddenly.
"He won't try unless you consent"
Mary shuddered.
"You don't know him"
The Doctor smiled.
"I'm afraid you don't know him now, my child."
"He has changed?"
"The old, old miracle over again. He has been literally born againthis time of the spirit."
"It's incredible!"
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"It's true. He's a new man. I think his reformation is the real thing. He's young. He's strong. He has brains. He
has personality"
Mary lifted her hand.
"All I ask of him is to keep out of my sight. The world is big enough for us both. The past is now a
nightmare. If I live to be a hundred years old, with my dying breath I shall feel the grip of his fingers on my
throat"
She paused and closed her eyes.
"Forget it! Forget it!" the Doctor laughed. "We have more important things to think of now."
"He wishes to see me?"
"Begs every day that I ask you."
"And you have hesitated these long weeks?"
"Your strength and peace of mind were of greater importance than his happiness, my dear. Let him wait until
you please to see him."
"He'll wait forever," was the firm answer.
Jim smiled grimly when his friend bore back the message.
"I'll never give up as long as there's breath in my body," he cried, bringing his square jaws together with a
snap.
"That's the way to talk, my boy," the Doctor responded.
"Anyhow you believe in me, Doc, don't you?"
"Yes."
"And you'll help me a little on the way if it gets darkwon't you?"
"If I canyou may always depend on me."
Jim clasped his outstretched hand gratefully.
"Well, I'm going to make good."
There was something so genuine and manly in the tones of his voice, he compelled the Doctor's respect. A
smaller man might have sneered. The healer of souls and bodies had come to recognize with unerring instinct
the true and false note in the human voice.
His heart went out in a wave of sympathy for the lonely, miserable young animal who stood before him now,
trembling with the first sharp pains of the immortal thing that had awaked within. He slipped his arm about
Jim's shoulders and whispered:
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"I'll tell you something that may help you when the way gets darkthe wife is going to bear you a child."
"No!"
"Yes."
"God! That's great, ain't it?"
Jim choked into silence and looked up at the Doctor with dimmed eyes.
"Say, Doc, you hit me hard when you brought what she saidbut that's good news! Watch me work my
hands to the boneyou know it's my kid and she can't keep me from workin' for it if she tries now can she?"
"No."
"There's just one thing that'll hang over me like a black cloud," he mused sorrowfully.
"I know, boyyour mother's darkened mind."
Jim nodded.
"When I see that queer glitter in her eyes it goes through me like a knife. Will she ever get over it?"
"We can't tell yet. It takes time. I believe she will."
"You'll do the best you can for her, Doc?" he pleaded pathetically. "You won't forget her a single day? If you
can't cure her, nobody can."
"I'll do my level best, boy."
Jim pressed his hand again.
"Gee, but you've been a friend to me! I didn't know that there were such men in the world as you!"
For six months the Doctor watched the transplanted child of the slums grow into a sturdy manhood in his new
environment. He snapped at every suggestion his friend gave and with quick wit improved on it. He not only
discovered and developed a mica mine on his mother's farm, he invented new machinery for its working that
doubled the market output. Within six weeks from the time he began his shipments the mine was paying a
steady profit of more than five hundred dollars a month. He had made just one trip to New York and secretly
returned to the police every stolen jewel and piece of plunder taken, with a full confession of the time and
place of the crime. He had shipped his tools and machinery from the workshop on the east side before his
sensational act and made good his departure for the South.
The tools and machinery he installed in a new workshop which he built in the yard of Nance's cabin. Here he
worked day and night at his blacksmith forge making the iron hinges, and irons, shovels, tongs, fire sets and
iron work complete for a log bungalow of seven rooms which he was building on the sunny slope of the
mountain which overlooks the valley toward Asheville.
The Doctor had lent Jim the blueprints of his own home and he was quietly duplicating it with loving care.
His wife might refuse to see him but he could build a home for their boy. For his sake she couldn't refuse it.
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With childlike obedience Nance followed him every day and watched the workmen rear the beautiful
structure under Jim's keen eyes and skillful hands. The man's devotion to his mother was pathetic. Only the
Doctor knew the secret of his pitiful care, and he kept his own counsel.
CHAPTER XXVII. THE BABY
The last roses of summer were bursting their topmost buds into full bloom on the lawn of the Doctor's
bungalow. The martins that built each year in the little boxes he had set on poles around his garden were
circling and chattering far up in the sapphire skies of a late September day. Their leaders had sensed the
coming frost and were drilling for their long march across the world to their winter home. The chestnut burrs
were bursting in the woods. The silent sun wrapped Indian Summer had begun. Not a cloud flecked the
skies.
A quiet joy filled the soul of the woman who smiled and heard her summons.
"You are not afraid?" the Doctor asked.
She turned her grateful eyes to his.
"The peace of God fills the worldand I owe it all to you."
"Nonsense. Your sturdy will and cultivated mind did the work. I merely made the suggestion."
"You are not going to give me an anesthetic, are you?" she said evenly.
"Why did you ask that?"
"Because I wish to feel and know the pain and glory of it all."
"You don't wish to take it?"
"Not unless you say I should."
"What a wonderful patient you are, child! What a beautiful spirit!" He looked at her intently. "Well, I'm older
and wiser in experience than you. I'm glad you added that clause `unless you say I should.' I'm going to say it.
After all my talks to you on our return to the truths and simplicity of Nature you are perhaps surprised. You
needn't be. I'm going to put you into a gentle sleep. Nature will then do her physical work automatically. I do
this because our daughters are the inheritors of the sins of their mothers for centuries. The overrefinement of
nerves, the hothouse methods of living, and the maiming of their bodies with the inventions of fashion have
made the pains of this supreme hour beyond endurance. This should not be. It will not be so when our race
has come into its own. But it will take many generations and perhaps many centuries before we reach the
ideal. No physician who has a soul could permit a woman of your physique, your culture and refinement to
walk barefoot and blindfolded into such a hell of physical torture. I will not permit it."
He walked quietly into his laboratory, prepared the sleeping powders and gave them to her.
Six hours later she opened her eyes with eager wonder. Aunt Abbie was busy over a bundle of fluffy clothes.
The Doctor was standing with his arms folded behind his back, his fine, cleanshaven face in profile looking
thoughtfully over the sunlit valley. There was just one moment of agonized fear. If they had failed! If her
child were hideousor deformed! Her lips moved in silent prayer.
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"Doctor?" she whispered.
In a moment he was bending over her, a look of exaltation in his brown eyes.
"Tell me quick!"
"A wonderful boy, little mother! The most beautiful babe I have ever seen. He didn't even cry just opened
his big, wide eyes and grunted contentedly."
"Give him to me."
Aunt Abbie laid the warm bundle in her arms and she pressed it gently until the sweet, red flesh touched her
own. She lay still for a moment, a smile on her lips.
"Lift him and let me look!"
"What a funny little pug nose," she laughed.
"Yesexactly like his mother's!" the Doctor replied.
She gazed with breathless reverence.
"He is beautiful, isn't he?" she sighed.
"And you have observed the chin and mouth?"
"Exactly like yours. It's wonderful!"
CHAPTER XXVIII. WHAT IS LOVE?
Eighteen months swiftly passed with the little mother and her boy still in Dr. Mulford's sanitarium. She had
allowed herself to be persuaded that he had the right to be her guide and helper in the first year's training of
the child.
The boy had steadily grown in strength and beauty of body and mind. The Doctor persuaded her to spend one
more winter basking in his sunparlor and finishing the final chapters of his book. Her mind was singularly
clever and helpful in the interpretation of the experiences and emotions of motherhood.
She had stubbornly resisted every suggestion to see her husband or allow him to see the child. The Doctor
had managed twice to give Jim an hour with the baby while she had gone to Asheville on shopping trips. He
was rewarded for his trouble in the devotion with which the young father worshiped his son. The Doctor
watched the slumbering fires kindle in the man's deep blue eyes with increasing wonder at the strength and
tenderness of his newfound soul.
Jim had completed the furnishing of the bungalow with the advice and guidance of his friend, and every room
stood ready and waiting for its mistress. He had insisted on making every piece of furniture for Mary's room
and the nursery adjoining. The Doctor was amazed at the mechanical genius he displayed in its construction.
He had taken a month's instruction at a cabinet maker's in Asheville and the bed, bureau, tables and chairs
which he had turned out were astonishingly beautiful. Their lines were copied from old models and each
piece was a work of art. The iron work was even more tastefully and beautifully wrought. He had toiled day
and night with an enthusiasm and patience that gave the physician a new revelation in the possibility of the
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development of human character.
His friend came at last with a cheering message. He began smilingly:
"I'm going to make the big fight today, boy, to get her to see you."
"You think she will?"
"There's a good chance. Her savings have all been used up from her bank account in New York. She is
determined to go to her father in Kentucky. I'll have a talk with her, bring her over to the bungalow, show her
through it on the pretext of its model construction and then you can tell her that you built it with your own
hands for her and the baby. You might be loafing around the place about that time."
Jim's hand was suddenly lifted.
"I got ye, Doc, I got ye! I'll be thereall day."
"Don't let her see you until I give the signal."
"Caution's my name."
"We'll see what happens."
Jim pressed close.
"Say, Doc, if you know how to pray, I wish you'd send up a little word for me while you're talkin' to her.
Could ye now?"
"I'll do my best for you, boyand I think you've got a chance. She's been watching the blue eyes of that baby
lately with a rather curious look of unrest."
"They're just like mine, ain't they?" Jim broke in with pride.
"Time has softened the old hurt," the Doctor went on. "The boy may win for you"
The square jaw came together with a smash.
"GeeI hope so. I'll wait there all day for you and I'm goin' to try my own hand at a little prayer or two on
the side while I'm waiting. Maybe God'll think He's hit me hard enough by this time to give me another trial."
With a friendly wave of his hand the Doctor hurried home.
He found Mary seated under the rose trellis beside the drive, watching for his coming. The day was still and
warm for the end of April. Birds were singing and chattering in every branch and tree. A quail on the top
fencerail of the wheat field called loudly to his mate.
The boy was screaming his joy over a new wagon to which Aunt Abbie had hitched his goat. He drove by in
style, lifted his chubby hand to his mother and shouted:
"Doodby, Docter!"
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The Doctor waved a smiling answer, and lapsed into a long silence.
He waked at last from his absorption to notice that Mary was daydreaming. The fair brow was drawn into
deep lines of brooding.
"Why shadows in your eyes a day like this, little mother?" he asked softly.
"Just thinking"
"About a past that you should forget?"
"Yes and no," she answered thoughtfully. "I was just thinking in this flood of spring sunlight of the mystery
of my love for such a man as the one I married. How could it have been possible to really love him?"
"You are sure that you loved him?"
"Sure."
"How did you know?"
"By all the signs. I trembled at his footstep. The touch of his hand, the sound of his voice thrilled me. I was
drawn by a power that was resistless. I was mad with happiness those wonderful days that preceded our
marriage. I was madder still during our honeymoonuntil the shadows began to fall that fatal Christmas
Eve." She paused and her lips trembled. "Oh, Doctor, what is love?"
The drooping shoulders of the man bent lower. He picked up a pebble from the ground and flicked it
carelessly across the drive, lifted his head at last and asked earnestly:
"Shall I tell you the truth?"
"Yesyour own particular brand, pleasethe truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."
"I'll try," he began soberly. "If I were a poet, naturally I would use different language. As I'm only a prosaic
doctor and physiologist I may shock your ideals a little."
"No matter," she interrupted. "They couldn't well get a harder jolt than they have had already."
He nodded and went on:
"There are two elemental human forces that maintain lifehunger and love. They are both utterly simple,
otherwise they could not be universal. Hunger compels the race to live. Love compels it to reproduce itself.
There has never been anything mysterious about either of these forces and there never will beexcept in the
imagination of sentimentalists.
"Nature begins with hunger. For about thirteen years she first applies this force to the development of the
body before she begins to lay the foundation of the second. Until this second development is complete the
passion known as love cannot be experienced.
"What is this second development? Very simple again. At the base of the brain of every child there is a
vacant space during the first twelve or fifteen years. During the age of twelve to fourteen in girls, thirteen to
fifteen in boys, this vacant space is slowly filled by a new lobe of the brain and with its growth comes the
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consciousness of sex and the development of sex powers.
"This new nerve center becomes on maturity a powerful physical magnet. The moment this magnet comes
into contact with an organization which answers its needs, as certain kinds of food answer the needs of
hunger, violent desire is excited. If both these magnets should be equally powerful, the disturbance to both
will be great. The longer the personal association is continued the more violent becomes this disturbance,
until in highly sensitive natures it develops into an obsession which obscures reason and crushes the will.
"The meaning of this impulse is again very simple the unconscious desire of the male to be a father, of the
female to become a mother."
"And there is but one man on earth who could thus affect me?" Mary asked excitedly.
"Rubbish! There are thousands."
"Thousands?"
"Literally thousands. The reason you never happen to meet them is purely an accident of our poor social
organization. Every woman has thousands of true physical mates if she could only meet them. Every man has
thousands of true physical mates if he could only meet them. And in every such meeting, if mind and body
are in normal condition, the same violent disturbance would resultwhether married or single, free or
bound.
"Marriage therefore is not based merely on the passion of love. It is a crime for any man or woman to marry
without love. It is the sheerest insanity to believe that this passion within itself is sufficient to justify
marriage. All who marry should love. Many love who should not marry.
"The institution of marriage is the great SOCIAL ordinance of the race. Its sanctity and perpetuity are not
based on the violence of the passion of love, but something else."
He paused and listened to the call of the quail again from the field.
"You hear that bob white calling his mate?"
"Yesand she's answering him now very softly. I can hear them both."
"They have mated this spring to build a home and rear a brood of young. Within six months their babies will
all be full grown and next spring a new alignment of lovers will be made. Their marriage lasts during the
period of infancy of their offspring. This is Nature's law.
"It happens in the case of man that the period of infancy of a human being is about twentyfour years. This is
the most wonderful fact in nature. It means that the capacity of man for the improvement of his breed is
practically limitless. A quail has a few months in which to rear her young. God gives to woman a quarter of a
century in which to mold her immortal offspring. Because the period of infancy of one child covers the entire
period of motherhood capacity, marriage binds for life, and the sanctity of marriage rests squarely on this law
of Nature."
He paused again and looked over the sunlit valley.
"I wish our boys and girls could all know these simple truths of their being. It would save much unhappiness
and many tragic blunders.
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"You were swept completely off your feet by the rush of the first emotion caused by meeting a man who was
your physical mate. You imagined this emotion to be a mysterious revelation which can come but once. Your
imagination in its excited condition, of course, gave to your firstfound mate all sorts of divine attributes
which he did not possess. You were `in love' with a puppet of your own creation, and hypnotized yourself
into the delusion that James Anthony was your one and only mate, your knight, your hero.
"In a very important sense this was true. Your intuitions could not make a mistake on so vital an issue. But
you immediately rushed into marriage and your union has been perfected by the birth of a child. Whether you
are happy or unhappy in marriage does not depend on the reality of love. Happiness in marriage is based on
something else."
"On what?"
"The joy and peace that comes from oneness of spirit, tastes, culture and character. I know this from the
deepest experiences of life and the widest observation."
"You have loved?" she asked softly.
"Twice"
A silence fell between them.
"Shall I tell you, little mother?" he finally asked quietly.
"Please."
He seated himself and looked into the skies beyond the peaks across the valley.
"Ten years ago I met my first mate. The meeting was fortunate for both. She was a woman of gentle birth, of
beautiful spirit. Our courtship was ideal. We thought alike, we felt alike, she loved my profession evenan
unusual trait in a woman. She thought it so noble in its aims that the petty jealousy that sometimes wrecks a
doctor's life was to her an unthinkable crime. The first year was the nearest to heaven that I had ever gotten
down here.
"And then, little mother, by one of those inexplicable mysteries of nature she died when our baby was born.
For a while the light of the world went out. I quit New York, gave up my profession and came here just to lie
in the sun on this mountainside and try to pull myself together. I didn't think life could ever be worth living
again. But it was. I found about me so much of human needso much ignorance and helplessnessso much
to pity and love, I forgot the ache in my own heart in bringing joy to others.
"I had money enough. I gave up the ambitions of greed and strife and set my soul to higher tasks. For nine
years I've devoted my leisure hours to the study of Motherhood as the hope of a nobler humanity. But for the
great personal sorrow that came to me in the death of my wife and baby I should never have realized the
truths I now see so clearly.
"And then the other woman suddenly came into my life. I never expected to love againnot because I
thought it impossible, but because I thought it improbable in my little world here that I could ever again meet
a woman I would ask to be my wife. But she dropped one day out of the sky."
He paused and took a deep breath.
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"I recognized her instantly as my mate, gentle and pure and capable of infinite joy or infinite pain. She did
not realize the secret of my interest in her. I didn't expect it. I knew that under the conditions she could not.
But I waited."
He paused and searched for Mary's eyes.
"And you married her?" she asked in even tones.
"I have never allowed her to know that I love her."
"Why?"
"She was married."
Mary threw him a startled look and he went on evenly:
"I could have used my power over mind and body to separate her from her husband. I confess that I was
tempted. But there was a child. Their union had been sealed with the strongest tie that can bind two human
beings. I have never allowed her to realize that she might love me. Had I chosen to break the silence between
us I could have revealed this to her, taken her and torn her from the man to whom she had borne a babe. I had
no right to commit that crime, no matter how deep the love that cried for its own. Marriage is based on the
period of infancy of the child which spans the maternal life of woman. God had joined these two people
together and no man had the right to put them asunder!"
"And you gave her up?"
"I had to, little mother. On the recognition of this eternal law the whole structure of our civilization rests."
Mary bent her gaze steadily on his face for a moment in silence.
"And you are telling me that I should be reconciled to the man who choked me into insensibility?"
"I am telling you that he is the father of your sonthat he has rights which you cannot deny; that when you
gave yourself to him in the first impulse of love a deed was done which Almighty God can never undo. Your
tragic blunder was the rush into marriage with a man about whose character you knew so little. It's the timid,
shrinking, homeloving girl that makes this mistake. You must face it now. You are responsible as deeply
and truly as the man who married you. That he happened at that moment to be a brute and a criminal is no
more his fault than yours. It was YOUR business to KNOW before you made him the father of your child."
"I tried to appeal to his better nature that awful night," Mary interrupted, "but he only laughed at me!"
"You owe him another trial, little motheryou owe it to his boy, too."
Mary shook her head bitterly.
"I can'tI just can't!"
"You won't see him once?"
She sprang to her feet trembling.
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"Nono!"
"I don't think it's fair."
"I'm afraid of him! You can't understand his power over my will."
"Come, come, this is sheer cowardicegive the devil his dues. Face him and fight it out. Tell him you're
done forever with him and his life, if you willbut don't hedge and trim and run away like this. I'm ashamed
of you."
"I won't see himI've made up my mind."
The Doctor threw up both hands.
"All right. If you won't, you won't. We'll let it go at that."
He paused and changed his tones to friendly personal interest.
"And you're determined to leave me and take my kid away tomorrow?"
"We must go. I've no money to pay my board. I can't impose on you"
"It's going to be awfully lonely."
He looked at her with a strange, deep gaze, lifted his stooping shoulders with sudden resolution and changed
his manner to light banter.
"I suppose I couldn't persuade you to give me that boy?"
She smiled tenderly.
"You know his father did leave his mark on him after all! The eyes are all his. Of course, I will admit that
those drooping lids have often been the mark of geniusperhaps a genius for evil in this case. If you don't
want to take the risknow's your chance. I will"
Mary shook her head in reproachful protest.
"Don't tease me, dear doctor man. I've just this one day more with you. I'm counting each precious hour."
"Forgive me!" he cried gayly. "I won't tease you any more. Come, we'll run over now and see our neighbor's
new bungalow before you go. You admire this one and threaten to duplicate it. He has built a better one."
"I don't believe it."
"You'll go?"
"If you wish it"
"Good. We'll take the boy, too. He can drive his new wagon the whole way. It's only half a mile.
CHAPTER XXIX. THE NEW MAN
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The door of the bungalow stood wide open. Mary paused in rapture over the rich beds of wood violets that
carpeted the spaces between the drive and the log walls.
"Aren't they beautiful!" she cried. "A perfect carpet of dazzling green and purple!"
"Come right in," the Doctor urged from the steps. "My neighbor's a patient of mine. He hasn't moved in yet
but he told me always to make myself at home."
Mary lifted the boy from his wagon, tied the goat and led the child into the house. The Doctor showed her
through without comment. None was needed. The woman's keen eye saw at a glance the perfection of care
with which the master builder had wrought the slightest detail of every room. The floors were immaculate
native hardwoodits grain brought out through shining mirrors of clean varnish. There was not one shoddy
piece of work from the kitchen sink to the big open fireplace in the spacious hall and livingroom.
"It's exquisite!" she exclaimed at last. "It seems all handmadedoesn't it?"
"It is, too. The owner literally built it with his own handsa work of love."
"For himself?" Mary asked with a smile.
"For the woman he loves, of course! My neighbor's a sort of crank and insisted on expressing himself in this
way. Come, I want you to see two rooms upstairs."
He led her into the room Jim had built for his wife.
"Observe this furniture, if you please."
"Don't tell me that he built that too?" she laughed.
"That's exactly what I'm going to tell you."
"Impossible!" she protested. "Why, the line and finish would do credit to the finest artisan in America."
"So I say. Look at the perfect polish of that table! It's like the finish of a rosewood piano." He touched the
smooth surface.
"Of course you're joking?" Mary answered. "No amateur could have done such work."
"So I'd have said if I had not seen him do it."
"What on earth possessed him to undertake such a task?"
"The love of a beautiful womanwhat else?"
"He learned a tradejust to furnish this room with his own hand?"
"Yes."
"His love must be the real thing," she mused.
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"That's what I've said. Look at this iron work, toothe stately andirons in that big fireplace, the shovel, the
tongs, and the massive strophinges on the doors."
"He did that, too?" she asked in amazement.
"Every piece of iron on the place he beat out with his own hand at his forge."
"And all for the love of a woman? The age of romance hasn't passed after all, has it?"
"No."
Mary paused before the window looking south.
"What a glorious view!" she cried. "It's even grander than yours, Doctor."
"Yes. I claim some of the credit, though, for that. I helped him lay out the grounds."
"Who is this remarkable man?" she asked at last.
"A friend of mine. I'll introduce him directly. He should be here at any moment now."
"We're intruding," Mary whispered. "We must go. I mustn't look any more. I'll be coveting my neighbor's
house."
The doctor turned to the window and signaled to someone on the lawn, as Mary hurried down the stairs.
She fairly ran into Jim, who was being pulled into the house by the boy.
"'Ook, Mamma! 'Ook! I found a Daddy! He says he be my Daddy if you let him. Please let him. I want a
Daddy, an' I like him. Please!"
Jim blushed and trembled and lifted his eyes appealingly, while Mary stood white and still watching him in a
sort of helpless terror.
The child moved on to his wagon.
"Say, little girl," Jim began in low tones, "it's been a thousand years since I saw you. Don't drive me
awayjust give me one chance for God's sake and this baby's that He sent us! I've gone straight. I've sent
back every dishonest dollar. I'm earning a clean living down here and a good one. I've practiced for two years
cutting out the slang, too."
He paused for breath and she turned her head away.
"Just listen a minute! I know I was a beast that night. I'm not the same now. I've been through the fires of hell
and I've come out a cleaner man. Let me show you how much I love you! Life's too short, but just give me a
chance. If I could undo that awful hour when I hurt you so, I'd crawl 'round the world on my hands and
kneesand I'll show you that I mean it! I built this house for you and the baby."
Mary turned suddenly with wide dilated eyes.
"YouYOU built this house?" she gasped.
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"I've worked on it every hour, day and night, the past two years when I wasn't earning a living in the mine. I
made every stick of that furniture in the rooms up therefor you and my boy. The house is yourswhether
you let me stay or not."
"II can't take it, Jim," she faltered.
"You've got to, girlie. You can't throw a gift like this back in a fellow's faceit cost too much! Your money's
all gone. You've got to bring up that kid. He's mine, too. I'm man enough to support my wife and baby and
I'm going to do it. I don't care what you say. You've got to let me. I'm going to work for you, live for you and
die for youwhether you stay with me or not. I've got the right to do that, you know."
She lifted her head and faced him squarely for the first time, amazed at the new dignity and strength of his
quiet bearing.
"You HAVE changed, Jim"
Her eyes sought the depths of his soul in a moment's silence, and she slowly extended her hand:
"We'll try again!"
He bent and kissed the tips of her fingers reverently.
They stood for a moment hand in hand and looked over the sunlit valley of the Swannanoa shimmering in
peace and beauty between its sheltering walls of blue mountains. The bees were humming spring music
among the flowers at their feet and the faint odor of fruit trees in blossom came from the orchard Jim had
planted two years before.
"I'll show you, little girlI'll show you!" he whispered tensely.
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