Tales of Men and Ghosts....................................................................................................................................1

Edith Wharton ..........................................................................................................................................1

The Bolted Door .....................................................................................................................................1

His Father's Son ....................................................................................................................................27

The Daunt Diana ...................................................................................................................................37

The Debt ................................................................................................................................................44

Full Circle .............................................................................................................................................53

The Legend ...........................................................................................................................................68

The Eyes ................................................................................................................................................85

The Blond Beast ....................................................................................................................................96

Afterward ............................................................................................................................................112

The Letters ..........................................................................................................................................131

HUBERT GRANICE, pacing the length of his pleasant lamplit library, paused to compare his watch with

In exactly three minutes Mr. Peter Ascham, of the eminent legal firm of Ascham and Pettilow, would have

his punctual hand on the doorbell of the flat. It was a comfort to reflect that Ascham was so punctual the

suspense was beginning to make his host nervous. And the sound of the doorbell would be the beginning of

Granice resumed his pacing. Each time he reached the end of the room opposite the door he caught his

reflection in the Florentine mirror above the fine old walnut credencehe had picked up at Dijon saw

himself spare, quickmoving, carefully brushed and dressed, but furrowed, gray about the temples, with a

stoop which he corrected by a spasmodic straightening of the shoulders whenever a glass confronted him: a

As he summed himself up thus for the third or fourth time the door opened and he turned with a thrill of relief

to greet his guest. But it was only the manservant who entered, advancing silently over the mossy surface of

"Mr. Ascham telephones, sir, to say he's unexpectedly detained and can't be here till eightthirty."

Granice made a curt gesture of annoyance. It was becoming harder and harder for him to control these

reflexes. He turned on his heel, tossing to the servant over his shoulder: "Very good. Put off dinner."

Down his spine he felt the man's injured stare. Mr. Granice had always been so mildspoken to his people

no doubt the odd change in his manner had already been noticed and discussed below stairs. And very likely

they suspected the cause. He stood drumming on the writingtable till he heard the servant go out; then he

threw himself into a chair, propping his elbows on the table and resting his chin on his locked hands.

He wondered irritably what could have detained his guest. Some professional matter, no doubt the

punctilious lawyer would have allowed nothing less to interfere with a dinner engagement, more especially

since Granice, in his note, had said: "I shall want a little business chat afterward."

But what professional matter could have come up at that unprofessional hour? Perhaps some other soul in

misery had called on the lawyer; and, after all, Granice's note had given no hint of his own need! No doubt

Ascham thought he merely wanted to make another change in his will. Since he had come into his little

property, ten years earlier, Granice had been perpetually tinkering with his will.

Suddenly another thought pulled him up, sending a flush to his sallow temples. He remembered a word he

had tossed to the lawyer some six weeks earlier, at the Century Club. "Yes my play's as good as taken. I

shall be calling on you soon to go over the contract. Those theatrical chaps are so slippery I won't trust

anybody but you to tie the knot for me!" That, of course, was what Ascham would think he was wanted for.

Granice, at the idea, broke into an audible laugh a queer stagelaugh, like the cackle of a baffled villain in

a melodrama. The absurdity, the unnaturalness of the sound abashed him, and he compressed his lips angrily.

He lowered his arms and pulled open the upper drawer of the writingtable. In the righthand corner lay a

thick manuscript, bound in paper folders, and tied with a string beneath which a letter had been slipped. Next

to the manuscript was a small revolver. Granice stared a moment at these oddly associated objects; then he

took the letter from under the string and slowly began to open it. He had known he should do so from the

moment his hand touched the drawer. Whenever his eye fell on that letter some relentless force compelled

It was dated about four weeks back, under the letterhead of "The Diversity Theatre." "MY DEAR MR.

"I have given the matter my best consideration for the last month, and it's no use the play won't do. I have

talked it over with Miss Melrose and you know there isn't a gamer artist on our stage and I regret to

tell you she feels just as I do about it. It isn't the poetry that scares her or me either. We both want to do all

we can to help along the poetic drama we believe the public's ready for it, and we're willing to take a big

financial risk in order to be the first to give them what they want. But we don't believe they could be made to

want this. The fact is, there isn't enough drama in your play to the allowance of poetry the thing drags all

"If this was your first play I'd say: Try again. But it has been just the same with all the others you've shown

me. And you remember the result of 'The Lee Shore,' where you carried all the expenses of production

yourself, and we couldn't fill the theatre for a week. Yet 'The Lee Shore' was a modern problem play

much easier to swing than blank verse. It isn't as if you hadn't tried all kinds "

Granice folded the letter and put it carefully back into the envelope. Why on earth was he rereading it, when

he knew every phrase in it by heart, when for a month past he had seen it, night after night, stand out in letters

Good God as if he were likely to forget it! He relived it all now in a drowning flash: the persistent

rejection of the play, his sudden resolve to put it on at his own cost, to spend ten thousand dollars of his

inheritance on testing his chance of success the fever of preparation, the drymouthed agony of the "first

night," the flat fall, the stupid press, his secret rush to Europe to escape the condolence of his friends!

No he had tried all kinds: comedy, tragedy, prose and verse, the light curtainraiser, the short sharp

drama, the bourgeoisrealistic and the lyricalromantic finally deciding that he would no longer

"prostitute his talent" to win popularity, but would impose on the public his own theory of art in the form of

five acts of blank verse. Yes, he had offered them everything and always with the same result.

Ten years of it ten years of dogged work and unrelieved failure. The ten years from forty to fifty the

best ten years of his life! And if one counted the years before, the silent years of dreams, assimilation,

preparation then call it half a man's lifetime: half a man's lifetime thrown away!

And what was he to do with the remaining half? Well, he had settled that, thank God! He turned and glanced

anxiously at the clock. Ten minutes past eight only ten minutes had been consumed in that stormy rush

through his whole past! And he must wait another twenty minutes for Ascham. It was one of the worst

symptoms of his case that, in proportion as he had grown to shrink from human company, he dreaded more

and more to be alone. . . . But why the devil was he waiting for Ascham? Why didn't he cut the knot himself?

Since he was so unutterably sick of the whole business, why did he have to call in an outsider to rid him of

He opened the drawer again and laid his hand on the revolver. It was a small slim ivory toy just the

instrument for a tired sufferer to give himself a "hypodermic" with. Granice raised it slowly in one hand,

while with the other he felt under the thin hair at the back of his head, between the ear and the nape. He knew

just where to place the muzzle: he had once got a young surgeon to show him. And as he found the spot, and

lifted the revolver to it, the inevitable phenomenon occurred. The hand that held the weapon began to shake,

the tremor communicated itself to his arm, his heart gave a wild leap which sent up a wave of deadly nausea

to his throat, he smelt the powder, he sickened at the crash of the bullet through his skull, and a sweat of fear

He laid away the revolver with an oath and, pulling out a colognescented handkerchief, passed it

tremulously over his brow and temples. It was no use he knew he could never do it in that way. His

attempts at selfdestruction were as futile as his snatches at fame! He couldn't make himself a real life, and

he couldn't get rid of the life he had. And that was why he had sent for Ascham to help him. . .

The lawyer, over the Camembert and Burgundy, began to excuse himself for his delay.

"I didn't like to say anything while your man was about but the fact is, I was sent for on a rather unusual

"Oh, it's all right," said Granice cheerfully. He was beginning to feel the usual reaction that food and

company produced. It was not any recovered pleasure in life that he felt, but only a deeper withdrawal into

himself. It was easier to go on automatically with the social gestures than to uncover to any human eye the

"My dear fellow, it's sacrilege to keep a dinner waiting especially the production of an artist like yours."

Mr. Ascham sipped his Burgundy luxuriously. "But the fact is, Mrs. Ashgrove sent for me."

Granice raised his head with a quick movement of surprise. For a moment he was shaken out of his

Ascham smiled. "I thought you'd be interested; I know your passion for causes celebres. And this promises to

be one. Of course it's out of our line entirely we never touch criminal cases. But she wanted to consult me

as a friend. Ashgrove was a distant connection of my wife's. And, by Jove, it isa queer case!" The servant

"No serve it in the library," said Granice, rising. He led the way back to the curtained confidential room.

While the coffee and cigars were being served he fidgeted about the library, glancing at his letters the

usual meaningless notes and bills and picking up the evening paper. As he unfolded it a headline caught

He read on with a thumping heart found the name of a young author he had barely heard of, saw the title

of a play, a "poetic drama," dance before his eyes, and dropped the paper, sick, disgusted. It was true, then

Granice turned to the servant, who seemed to be purposely lingering. "I shan't need you this evening, Flint.

He fancied the man's acquiescence implied surprise. What was going on, Flint seemed to wonder, that Mr.

Granice should want him out of the way? Probably he would find a pretext for coming back to see. Granice

As the door closed he threw himself into an armchair and leaned forward to take a light from Ascham's cigar.

"Tell me about Mrs. Ashgrove," he said, seeming to himself to speak stiffly, as if his lips were cracked.

"Probably not. As a matter of fact, she wanted my advice about her choice of counsel. There was nothing

"I'm more and more convinced that whoever poisoned Ashgrove knew his business, and will consequently

"You like it? I get them over from Cuba." Granice examined his own reflectively. "Then you believe in the

"Of course I do. Look about you look back for the last dozen years none of the big murder problems

are ever solved." The lawyer ruminated behind his blue cloud. "Why, take the instance in your own family:

I'd forgotten I had an illustration at hand! Take old Joseph Lenman's murder do you suppose that will ever

As the words dropped from Ascham's lips his host looked slowly about the library, and every object in it

stared back at him with a stale unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at that room! It was as

dull as the face of a wife one has wearied of. He cleared his throat slowly; then he turned his head to the

"By Jove! You've had a theory all this time? It's odd you never mentioned it. Go ahead and tell me. There are

certain features in the Lenman case not unlike this Ashgrove affair, and your idea may be a help."

Granice paused and his eye reverted instinctively to the table drawer in which the revolver and the manuscript

lay side by side. What if he were to try another appeal to Rose Melrose? Then he looked at the notes and bills

on the table, and the horror of taking up again the lifeless routine of life of performing the same automatic

He stood before Ascham, and the lawyer lay back staring up at him. Then he broke into another laugh.

"Why, this is glorious! You murdered him, did you? To inherit his money, I suppose? Better and better! Go

on, my boy! Unbosom yourself! Tell me all about it! Confession is good for the soul."

Granice waited till the lawyer had shaken the last peal of laughter from his throat; then he repeated doggedly:

The two men looked at each other for a long moment, and this time Ascham did not laugh.

There was another pause, and Granice, with a vague underlying sense of amusement, saw his guest's look

"It's not a joke. It's the truth. I murdered him." He had spoken painfully at first, as if there were a knot in his

"I'm perfectly well. But I murdered my cousin, Joseph Lenman, and I want it known that I murdered him."

"Yes. That's why I sent for you. I'm sick of living, and when I try to kill myself I funk it." He spoke quite

"But I suppose," Granice continued, "there's no doubt this would be murder in the first degree? I'm sure of the

Ascham drew a long breath; then he said slowly: "Sit down, Granice. Let's talk."

He began by a quick survey of his early years the years of drudgery and privation. His father, a charming

man who could never say "no," had so signally failed to say it on certain essential occasions that when he

died he left an illegitimate family and a mortgaged estate. His lawful kin found themselves hanging over a

gulf of debt, and young Granice, to support his mother and sister, had to leave Harvard and bury himself at

eighteen in a broker's office. He loathed his work, and he was always poor, always worried and in illhealth.

A few years later his mother died, but his sister, an ineffectual neurasthenic, remained on his hands. His own

health gave out, and he had to go away for six months, and work harder than ever when he came back. He

had no knack for business, no head for figures, no dimmest insight into the mysteries of commerce. He

wanted to travel and write those were his inmost longings. And as the years dragged on, and he neared

middleage without making any more money, or acquiring any firmer health, a sick despair possessed him.

He tried writing, but he always came home from the office so tired that his brain could not work. For half the

year he did not reach his dim uptown flat till after dark, and could only "brush up" for dinner, and afterward

lie on the lounge with his pipe, while his sister droned through the evening paper. Sometimes he spent an

evening at the theatre; or he dined out, or, more rarely, strayed off with an acquaintance or two in quest of

what is known as "pleasure." And in summer, when he and Kate went to the seaside for a month, he dozed

through the days in utter weariness. Once he fell in love with a charming girl but what had he to offer her,

in God's name? She seemed to like him, and in common decency he had to drop out of the running.

Apparently no one replaced him, for she never married, but grew stoutish, grayish, philanthropic yet how

sweet she had been when he had first kissed her! One more wasted life, he reflected. . .

But the stage had always been his masterpassion. He would have sold his soul for the time and freedom to

write plays! It was in him he could not remember when it had not been his deepestseated instinct. As the

years passed it became a morbid, a relentless obsession yet with every year the material conditions were

more and more against it. He felt himself growing middleaged, and he watched the reflection of the process

in his sister's wasted face. At eighteen she had been pretty, and as full of enthusiasm as he. Now she was

sour, trivial, insignificant she had missed her chance of life. And she had no resources, poor creature, was

fashioned simply for the primitive functions she had been denied the chance to fulfil! It exasperated him to

think of it and to reflect that even now a little travel, a little health, a little money, might transform her,

make her young and desirable. . . The chief fruit of his experience was that there is no such fixed state as age

or youth there is only health as against sickness, wealth as against poverty; and age or youth as the

At this point in his narrative Granice stood up, and went to lean against the mantelpiece, looking down at

Ascham, who had not moved from his seat, or changed his attitude of rigid fascinated attention.

"Then came the summer when we went to Wrenfield to be near old Lenman my mother's cousin, as you

know. Some of the family always mounted guard over him generally a niece or so. But that year they were

all scattered, and one of the nieces offered to lend us her cottage if we'd relieve her of duty for two months. It

was a nuisance for me, of course, for Wrenfield is two hours from town; but my mother, who was a slave to

family observances, had always been good to the old man, so it was natural we should be called on and

"You never knew Joseph Lenman? Well, picture to yourself an amoeba or some primitive organism of that

sort, under a Titan's microscope. He was large, undifferentiated, inert since I could remember him he had

done nothing but take his temperature and read the Churchman. Oh, and cultivate melons that was his

hobby. Not vulgar, outofdoor melons his were grown under glass. He had miles of it at Wrenfield

his big kitchengarden was surrounded by blinking battalions of greenhouses. And in nearly all of them

melons were grown early melons and late, French, English, domestic dwarf melons and monsters:

every shape, colour and variety. They were petted and nursed like children a staff of trained attendants

waited on them. I'm not sure they didn't have a doctor to take their temperature at any rate the place was

full of thermometers. And they didn't sprawl on the ground like ordinary melons; they were trained against

the glass like nectarines, and each melon hung in a net which sustained its weight and left it free on all sides

to the sun and air. . . "It used to strike me sometimes that old Lenman was just like one of his own melons

the palefleshed English kind. His life, apathetic and motionless, hung in a net of gold, in an equable warm

ventilated atmosphere, high above sordid earthly worries. The cardinal rule of his existence was not to let

himself be 'worried.' . . I remember his advising me to try it myself, one day when I spoke to him about Kate's

bad health, and her need of a change. 'I never let myself worry,' he said complacently. 'It's the worst thing for

the liver and you look to me as if you had a liver. Take my advice and be cheerful. You'll make yourself

happier and others too.' And all he had to do was to write a cheque, and send the poor girl off for a holiday!

"The hardest part of it was that the money halfbelonged to us already. The old skinflint only had it for life,

in trust for us and the others. But his life was a good deal sounder than mine or Kate's and one could

picture him taking extra care of it for the joke of keeping us waiting. I always felt that the sight of our hungry

"Well, I tried to see if I couldn't reach him through his vanity. I flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in

his melons. And he was taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine days he was driven to

the greenhouses in his ponychair, and waddled through them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat

Turk in his seraglio. When he bragged to me of the expense of growing them I was reminded of a hideous old

Lothario bragging of what his pleasures cost. And the resemblance was completed by the fact that he couldn't

eat as much as a mouthful of his melons had lived for years on buttermilk and toast. 'But, after all, it's my

only hobby why shouldn't I indulge it?' he said sentimentally. As if I'd ever been able to indulge any of

"One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell to drag herself up to the big house, she

asked me to go and spend the afternoon with cousin Joseph. It was a lovely soft September afternoon a

day to lie under a Roman stonepine, with one's eyes on the sky, and let the cosmic harmonies rush through

one. Perhaps the vision was suggested by the fact that, as I entered cousin Joseph's hideous black walnut

library, I passed one of the undergardeners, a handsome fullthroated Italian, who dashed out in such a

hurry that he nearly knocked me down. I remember thinking it queer that the fellow, whom I had often seen

"Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened windows, his fat hands folded on his protuberant

waistcoat, the last number of the Churchmanat his elbow, and near it, on a huge dish, a fat melon the

fattest melon I'd ever seen. As I looked at it I pictured the ecstasy of contemplation from which I must have

roused him, and congratulated myself on finding him in such a mood, since I had made up my mind to ask

him a favour. Then I noticed that his face, instead of looking as calm as an eggshell, was distorted and

whimpering and without stopping to greet me he pointed passionately to the melon.

"'Look at it, look at it did you ever see such a beauty? Such firmness roundness such delicious

smoothness to the touch?' It was as if he had said 'she' instead of 'it,' and when he put out his senile hand and

"Then he told me what had happened. The Italian undergardener, who had been specially recommended for

the melonhouses though it was against my cousin's principles to employ a Papist had been assigned

to the care of the monster: for it had revealed itself, early in its existence, as destined to become a monster, to

surpass its plumpest, pulpiest sisters, carry off prizes at agricultural shows, and be photographed and

celebrated in every gardening paper in the land. The Italian had done well seemed to have a sense of

responsibility. And that very morning he had been ordered to pick the melon, which was to be shown next

day at the county fair, and to bring it in for Mr. Lenman to gaze on its blonde virginity. But in picking it,

what had the damned scoundrelly Jesuit done but drop it drop it crash on the sharp spout of a

wateringpot, so that it received a deep gash in its firm pale rotundity, and was henceforth but a bruised,

"The old man's rage was fearful in its impotence he shook, spluttered and strangled with it. He had just

had the Italian up and had sacked him on the spot, without wages or character had threatened to have him

arrested if he was ever caught prowling about Wrenfield. 'By God, and I'll do it I'll write to Washington

I'll have the pauper scoundrel deported! I'll show him what money can do!' As likely as not there was

some murderous Blackhand business under it it would be found that the fellow was a member of a

'gang.' Those Italians would murder you for a quarter. He meant to have the police look into it. . . And then he

grew frightened at his own excitement. 'But I must calm myself,' he said. He took his temperature, rang for

his drops, and turned to the Churchman. He had been reading an article on Nestorianism when the melon was

brought in. He asked me to go on with it, and I read to him for an hour, in the dim close room, with a fat fly

"All the while one phrase of the old man's buzzed in my brain like the fly about the melon. 'I'll show him

what money can do!' Good heaven! If I could but show the old man! If I could make him see his power of

giving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous egotism! I tried to tell him something about my situation

and Kate's spoke of my illhealth, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing to write, to make myself a name

I stammered out an entreaty for a loan. 'I can guarantee to repay you, sir I've a halfwritten play as

"I shall never forget his glassy stare. His face had grown as smooth as an eggshell again his eyes peered

"'A halfwritten play a play of yoursas security?' He looked at me almost fearfully, as if detecting the first

symptoms of insanity. 'Do you understand anything of business?' he enquired mildly. I laughed and

"He leaned back with closed lids. 'All this excitement has been too much for me,' he said. 'If you'll excuse me,

I'll prepare for my nap.' And I stumbled out of the room, blindly, like the Italian."

Granice moved away from the mantelpiece, and walked across to the tray set out with decanters and

sodawater. He poured himself a tall glass of sodawater, emptied it, and glanced at Ascham's dead cigar.

The lawyer shook his head, and Granice went on with his tale. He told of his mounting obsession how the

murderous impulse had waked in him on the instant of his cousin's refusal, and he had muttered to himself:

"By God, if you won't, I'll make you." He spoke more tranquilly as the narrative proceeded, as though his

rage had died down once the resolve to act on it was taken. He applied his whole mind to the question of how

the old man was to be "disposed of." Suddenly he remembered the outcry: "Those Italians will murder you

for a quarter!" But no definite project presented itself: he simply waited for an inspiration.

Granice and his sister moved to town a day or two after the incident of the melon. But the cousins, who had

returned, kept them informed of the old man's condition. One day, about three weeks later, Granice, on

getting home, found Kate excited over a report from Wrenfield. The Italian had been there again had

somehow slipped into the house, made his way up to the library, and "used threatening language." The

housekeeper found cousin Joseph gasping, the whites of his eyes showing "something awful." The doctor

was sent for, and the attack warded off; and the police had ordered the Italian from the neighbourhood.

But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had "nerves," and lost his taste for toast and buttermilk. The

doctor called in a colleague, and the consultation amused and excited the old man he became once more

an important figure. The medical men reassured the family too completely! and to the patient they

recommended a more varied diet: advised him to take whatever "tempted him." And so one day, tremulously,

prayerfully, he decided on a tiny bit of melon. It was brought up with ceremony, and consumed in the

presence of the housekeeper and a hovering cousin; and twenty minutes later he was dead. . .

"But you remember the circumstances," Granice went on; "how suspicion turned at once on the Italian? In

spite of the hint the police had given him he had been seen hanging about the house since 'the scene.' It was

said that he had tender relations with the kitchenmaid, and the rest seemed easy to explain. But when they

looked round to ask him for the explanation he was gone gone clean out of sight. He had been 'warned' to

leave Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to heart that no one ever laid eyes on him again."

Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the lawyer's, and he sat for a moment, his head thrown

back, looking about the familiar room. Everything in it had grown grimacing and alien, and each strange

"It was I who put the stuff in the melon," he said. "And I don't want you to think I'm sorry for it. This isn't

'remorse,' understand. I'm glad the old skinflint is dead I'm glad the others have their money. But mine's

no use to me any more. My sister married miserably, and died. And I've never had what I wanted."

"Why, to getwhat I wanted what I fancied was in reach! I wanted change, rest, life, for both of us

wanted, above all, for myself, the chance to write! I travelled, got back my health, and came home to tie

myself up to my work. And I've slaved at it steadily for ten years without reward without the most distant

hope of success! Nobody will look at my stuff. And now I'm fifty, and I'm beaten, and I know it." His chin

His hand on Granice's shoulder, as he turned to go "District Attorney be hanged; see a doctor, see a

doctor!" he had cried; and so, with an exaggerated laugh, had pulled on his coat and departed.

Granice turned back into the library. It had never occurred to him that Ascham would not believe his story.

For three hours he had explained, elucidated, patiently and painfully gone over every detail but without

At first Ascham had feigned to be convinced but that, as Granice now perceived, was simply to get him to

expose himself, to entrap him into contradictions. And when the attempt failed, when Granice triumphantly

met and refuted each disconcerting question, the lawyer dropped the mask suddenly, and said with a

goodhumoured laugh: "By Jove, Granice you'll write a successful play yet. The way you've worked this all

Granice swung about furiously that last sneer about the play inflamed him. Was all the world in a

"I did it, I did it," he muttered sullenly, his rage spending itself against the impenetrable surface of the other's

mockery; and Ascham answered with a smile: "Ever read any of those books on hallucination? I've got a

Left alone, Granice cowered down in the chair before his writingtable. He understood that Ascham thought

The horror of it broke out over him in a cold sweat he sat there and shook, his eyes hidden in his icy

hands. But gradually, as he began to rehearse his story for the thousandth time, he saw again how

incontrovertible it was, and felt sure that any criminal lawyer would believe him.

"That's the trouble Ascham's not a criminal lawyer. And then he's a friend. What a fool I was to talk to a

friend! Even if he did believe me, he'd never let me see it his instinct would be to cover the whole thing

up. . . But in that case if he did believe me he might think it a kindness to get me shut up in an asylum.

. ." Granice began to tremble again. "Good heaven! If he should bring in an expert one of those damned

alienists! Ascham and Pettilow can do anything their word always goes. If Ascham drops a hint that I'd

better be shut up, I'll be in a straitjacket by tomorrow! And he'd do it from the kindest motives be quite

right to do it if he thinks I'm a murderer!" The vision froze him to his chair. He pressed his fists to his

bursting temples and tried to think. For the first time he hoped that Ascham had not believed his story.

"But he did he did! I can see it now I noticed what a queer eye he cocked at me. Good God, what shall

He started up and looked at the clock. Halfpast one. What if Ascham should think the case urgent, rout out

an alienist, and come back with him? Granice jumped to his feet, and his sudden gesture brushed the morning

paper from the table. Mechanically he stooped to pick it up, and the movement started a new train of

The new idea in his mind had revived his flagging energy. He would act act at once. It was only by thus

planning ahead, committing himself to some unavoidable line of conduct, that he could pull himself through

the meaningless days. Each time he reached a fresh decision it was like coming out of a foggy weltering sea

into a calm harbour with lights. One of the queerest phases of his long agony was the intense relief produced

"That the office of the Investigator? Yes? Give me Mr. Denver, please. . . Hallo, Denver. . . Yes, Hubert

Granice. . . . Just caught you? Going straight home? Can I come and see you . . . yes, now . . . have a talk? It's

rather urgent . . . yes, might give you some firstrate 'copy.' . . . All right!" He hung up the receiver with a

laugh. It had been a happy thought to call up the editor of the Investigator Robert Denver was the very

Granice put out the lights in the library it was odd how the automatic gestures persisted! went into the

hall, put on his hat and overcoat, and let himself out of the flat. In the hall, a sleepy elevator boy blinked at

him and then dropped his head on his folded arms. Granice passed out into the street. At the corner of Fifth

Avenue he hailed a crawling cab, and called out an uptown address. The long thoroughfare stretched before

him, dim and deserted, like an ancient avenue of tombs. But from Denver's house a friendly beam fell on the

pavement; and as Granice sprang from his cab the editor's electric turned the corner.

The two men grasped hands, and Denver, feeling for his latchkey, ushered Granice into the brightlylit hall.

"Disturb me? Not a bit. You might have, at ten tomorrow morning . . . but this is my liveliest hour . . . you

Granice had known Robert Denver for fifteen years watched his rise through all the stages of journalism

to the Olympian pinnacle of the Investigator'seditorial office. In the thickset man with grizzling hair there

were few traces left of the hungryeyed young reporter who, on his way home in the small hours, used to

"bob in" on Granice, while the latter sat grinding at his plays. Denver had to pass Granice's flat on the way to

his own, and it became a habit, if he saw a light in the window, and Granice's shadow against the blind, to go

"Well this is like old times a good old habit reversed." The editor smote his visitor genially on the

shoulder. "Reminds me of the nights when I used to rout you out. . . How's the play, by the way? There isa

play, I suppose? It's as safe to ask you that as to say to some men: 'How's the baby?'"

Denver laughed goodnaturedly, and Granice thought how thick and heavy he had grown. It was evident,

even to Granice's tortured nerves, that the words had not been uttered in malice and the fact gave him a

new measure of his insignificance. Denver did not even know that he had been a failure! The fact hurt more

"Come in come in." The editor led the way into a small cheerful room, where there were cigars and

decanters. He pushed an armchair toward his visitor, and dropped into another with a comfortable groan.

He beamed at Granice over his pipebowl, and the latter, lighting his cigar, said to himself: "Success makes

Then he turned, and began: "Denver, I want to tell you " The clock ticked rhythmically on the

mantelpiece. The little room was gradually filled with drifting blue layers of smoke, and through them the

editor's face came and went like the moon through a moving sky. Once the hour struck then the

rhythmical ticking began again. The atmosphere grew denser and heavier, and beads of perspiration began to

"No. It isstuffy in here. Wait I'll do it myself." Denver pushed down the upper sash, and returned to his

chair. "Well go on," he said, filling another pipe. His composure exasperated Granice.

The editor remained unmoved. "Who says I don't believe you? And how can I tell till you've finished?"

Granice went on, ashamed of his outburst. "It was simple enough, as you'll see. From the day the old man

said to me, 'Those Italians would murder you for a quarter,' I dropped everything and just worked at my

scheme. It struck me at once that I must find a way of getting to Wrenfield and back in a night and that led

to the idea of a motor. A motor that never occurred to you? You wonder where I got the money, I

suppose. Well, I had a thousand or so put by, and I nosed around till I found what I wanted a secondhand

racer. I knew how to drive a car, and I tried the thing and found it was all right. Times were bad, and I bought

it for my price, and stored it away. Where? Why, in one of those noquestionsasked garages where they

keep motors that are not for family use. I had a lively cousin who had put me up to that dodge, and I looked

about till I found a queer hole where they took in my car like a baby in a foundling asylum. . . Then I

practiced running to Wrenfield and back in a night. I knew the way pretty well, for I'd done it often with the

same lively cousin and in the small hours, too. The distance is over ninety miles, and on the third trial I

did it under two hours. But my arms were so lame that I could hardly get dressed the next morning. . .

"Well, then came the report about the Italian's threats, and I saw I must act at once. . . I meant to break into

the old man's room, shoot him, and get away again. It was a big risk, but I thought I could manage it. Then

we heard that he was ill that there'd been a consultation. Perhaps the fates were going to do it for me!

Granice stopped and wiped his forehead: the open window did not seem to have cooled the room.

"Then came word that he was better; and the day after, when I came up from my office, I found Kate

laughing over the news that he was to try a bit of melon. The housekeeper had just telephoned her all

Wrenfield was in a flutter. The doctor himself had picked out the melon, one of the little French ones that are

hardly bigger than a large tomato and the patient was to eat it at his breakfast the next morning.

"In a flash I saw my chance. It was a bare chance, no more. But I knew the ways of the house I was sure

the melon would be brought in over night and put in the pantry icebox. If there were only one melon in the

icebox I could be fairly sure it was the one I wanted. Melons didn't lie around loose in that house every

one was known, numbered, catalogued. The old man was beset by the dread that the servants would eat them,

and he took a hundred mean precautions to prevent it. Yes, I felt pretty sure of my melon . . . and poisoning

was much safer than shooting. It would have been the devil and all to get into the old man's bedroom without

his rousing the house; but I ought to be able to break into the pantry without much trouble.

"It was a cloudy night, too everything served me. I dined quietly, and sat down at my desk. Kate had one

of her usual headaches, and went to bed early. As soon as she was gone I slipped out. I had got together a sort

of disguise red beard and queerlooking ulster. I shoved them into a bag, and went round to the garage.

There was no one there but a halfdrunken machinist whom I'd never seen before. That served me, too. They

were always changing machinists, and this new fellow didn't even bother to ask if the car belonged to me. It

"Well, I jumped in, ran up Broadway, and let the car go as soon as I was out of Harlem. Dark as it was, I

could trust myself to strike a sharp pace. In the shadow of a wood I stopped a second and got into the beard

"I left the car in a dark lane behind the Lenman place, and slipped through the kitchengarden. The

melonhouses winked at me through the dark I remember thinking that they knew what I wanted to know.

. . . By the stable a dog came out growling but he nosed me out, jumped on me, and went back. . . The

house was as dark as the grave. I knew everybody went to bed by ten. But there might be a prowling servant

the kitchenmaid might have come down to let in her Italian. I had to risk that, of course. I crept around

by the back door and hid in the shrubbery. Then I listened. It was all as silent as death. I crossed over to the

house, pried open the pantry window and climbed in. I had a little electric lamp in my pocket, and shielding it

with my cap I groped my way to the icebox, opened it and there was the little French melon . . . only

"I stopped to listen I was quite cool. Then I pulled out my bottle of stuff and my syringe, and gave each

section of the melon a hypodermic. It was all done inside of three minutes at ten minutes to twelve I was

back in the car. I got out of the lane as quietly as I could, struck a back road that skirted the village, and let

the car out as soon as I was beyond the last houses. I only stopped once on the way in, to drop the beard and

ulster into a pond. I had a big stone ready to weight them with and they went down plump, like a dead body

Granice stopped speaking and looked across the smokefumes at his listener; but Denver's face remained

The question startled Granice. He was about to explain, as he had explained to Ascham; but suddenly it

occurred to him that if his motive had not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry much less weight

with Denver. Both were successful men, and success does not understand the subtle agony of failure. Granice

"Not an atom: in the man of action. The mere fact of your talking of remorse proves to me that you're not the

Denver's lips tightened sceptically about his freshlyfilled pipe. "What was your motive, then? You must

"I'll tell you " And Granice began again to rehearse the story of his failure, of his loathing for life. "Don't

say you don't believe me this time . . . that this isn't a real reason!" he stammered out piteously as he ended.

Denver meditated. "No, I won't say that. I've seen too many queer things. There's always a reason for wanting

"Believe that you're sick of the job? Yes. And that you haven't the nerve to pull the trigger? Oh, yes that's

easy enough, too. But all that doesn't make you a murderer though I don't say it proves you could never

"Well how did you make all those trial trips without exciting your sister's curiosity? I knew your night

habits pretty well at that time, remember. You were very seldom out late. Didn't the change in your ways

"No; because she was away at the time. She went to pay several visits in the country soon after we came back

from Wrenfield, and was only in town for a night or two before before I did the job."

"Yes blinding. She didn't know anything when she had that kind. And her room was at the back of the

Denver again meditated. "And when you got back she didn't hear you? You got in without her knowing

"Yes. I went straight to my work took it up at the word where I'd left off why, Denver, don't you

"Yes; how you found me when you looked in that morning, between two and three . . . your usual hour . .

Granice gave a short laugh. "In my old coat with my pipe: looked as if I'd been working all night, didn't I?

Denver uncrossed his legs and then crossed them again. "I didn't know whether youremembered that."

Granice swung round in his chair. "Why, man alive! That's why I'm here now. Because it was you who spoke

for me at the inquest, when they looked round to see what all the old man's heirs had been doing that night

you who testified to having dropped in and found me at my desk as usual. . . . I thought thatwould appeal to

Denver smiled. "Oh, my journalistic sense is still susceptible enough and the idea's picturesque, I grant

"Well, but how about the other chap's testimony I mean that young doctor: what was his name? Ned

Ranney. Don't you remember my testifying that I'd met him at the elevated station, and told him I was on my

way to smoke a pipe with you, and his saying: 'All right; you'll find him in. I passed the house two hours ago,

and saw his shadow against the blind, as usual.' And the lady with the toothache in the flat across the way:

"Simple enough. Before starting I rigged up a kind of mannikin with old coats and a cushion something to

cast a shadow on the blind. All you fellows were used to seeing my shadow there in the small hours I

"Simple enough, as you say. But the woman with the toothache saw the shadow move you remember she

"Yes; and she was right. It didmove. I suppose some extraheavy dray must have jolted by the flimsy

building at any rate, something gave my mannikin a jar, and when I came back he had sunk forward, half

There was a long silence between the two men. Granice, with a throbbing heart, watched Denver refill his

pipe. The editor, at any rate, did not sneer and flout him. After all, journalism gave a deeper insight than the

law into the fantastic possibilities of life, prepared one better to allow for the incalculableness of human

Denver stood up with a shrug. "Look here, man what's wrong with you? Make a clean breast of it! Nerves

gone to smash? I'd like to take you to see a chap I know an exprizefighter who's a wonder at pulling

"Oh, oh " Granice broke in. He stood up also, and the two men eyed each other. "You don't believe me,

Denver shook his head. "I might think so if I hadn't happened to know that you wantedto. There's the hitch,

"Of course! If somebody else had accused you, the story might have been worth looking into. As it is, a child

Granice turned sullenly toward the door. What was the use of arguing? But on the threshold a sudden impulse

drew him back. "Look here, Denver I daresay you're right. But will you do just one thing to prove it? Put

my statement in the Investigator, just as I've made it. Ridicule it as much as you like. Only give the other

fellows a chance at it men who don't know anything about me. Set them talking and looking about. I don't

care a damn whether youbelieve me what I want is to convince the Grand Jury! I oughtn't to have come to

a man who knows me your cursed incredulity is infectious. I don't put my case well, because I know in

advance it's discredited, and I almost end by not believing it myself. That's why I can't convince you. It's a

vicious circle." He laid a hand on Denver's arm. "Send a stenographer, and put my statement in the paper.

But Denver did not warm to the idea. "My dear fellow, you seem to forget that all the evidence was pretty

thoroughly sifted at the time, every possible clue followed up. The public would have been ready enough then

to believe that you murdered old Lenman you or anybody else. All they wanted was a murderer the

most improbable would have served. But your alibi was too confoundedly complete. And nothing you've told

me has shaken it." Denver laid his cool hand over the other's burning fingers. "Look here, old fellow, go

THE perspiration was rolling off Granice's forehead. Every few minutes he had to draw out his handkerchief

For an hour and a half he had been talking steadily, putting his case to the District Attorney. Luckily he had a

speaking acquaintance with Allonby, and had obtained, without much difficulty, a private audience on the

very day after his talk with Robert Denver. In the interval between he had hurried home, got out of his

evening clothes, and gone forth again at once into the dreary dawn. His fear of Ascham and the alienist made

it impossible for him to remain in his rooms. And it seemed to him that the only way of averting that hideous

peril was by establishing, in some sane impartial mind, the proof of his guilt. Even if he had not been so

incurably sick of life, the electric chair seemed now the only alternative to the straitjacket.

As he paused to wipe his forehead he saw the District Attorney glance at his watch. The gesture was

significant, and Granice lifted an appealing hand. "I don't expect you to believe me now but can't you put

Allonby smiled faintly under his heavy grayish moustache. He had a ruddy face, full and jovial, in which his

keen professional eyes seemed to keep watch over impulses not strictly professional.

"Well, I don't know that we need lock you up just yet. But of course I'm bound to look into your statement

Granice rose with an exquisite sense of relief. Surely Allonby wouldn't have said that if he hadn't believed

"That's all right. Then I needn't detain you. I can be found at any time at my apartment." He gave the address.

The District Attorney smiled again, more openly. "What do you say to leaving it for an hour or two this

evening? I'm giving a little supper at Rector's quiet, little affair, you understand: just Miss Melrose I

He waited for four days four days of concentrated horror. During the first twentyfour hours the fear of

Ascham's alienist dogged him; and as that subsided, it was replaced by the exasperating sense that his avowal

had made no impression on the District Attorney. Evidently, if he had been going to look into the case,

Allonby would have been heard from before now. . . . And that mocking invitation to supper showed clearly

Granice was overcome by the futility of any farther attempt to inculpate himself. He was chained to life a

"prisoner of consciousness." Where was it he had read the phrase? Well, he was learning what it meant. In the

glaring nighthours, when his brain seemed ablaze, he was visited by a sense of his fixed identity, of his

irreducible, inexpugnable selfness, keener, more insidious, more unescapable, than any sensation he had ever

known. He had not guessed that the mind was capable of such intricacies of selfrealization, of penetrating so

deep into its own dark wind ings. Often he woke from his brief snatches of sleep with the feeling that

something material was clinging to him, was on his hands and face, and in his throat and as his brain

cleared he understood that it was the sense of his own loathed personality that stuck to him like some thick

Then, in the first morning hours, he would rise and look out of his window at the awakening activities of the

street at the streetcleaners, the ashcart drivers, and the other dingy workers flitting hurriedly by through

the sallow winter light. Oh, to be one of them any of them to take his chance in any of their skins!

They were the toilers the men whose lot was pitied the victims wept over and ranted about by altruists

and economists; and how gladly he would have taken up the load of any one of them, if only he might have

shaken off his own! But, no the iron circle of consciousness held them too: each one was handcuffed to

his own hideous ego. Why wish to be any one man rather than another? The only absolute good was not to be

. . . And Flint, coming in to draw his bath, would ask if he preferred his eggs scrambled or poached that

On the fifth day he wrote a long urgent letter to Allonby; and for the succeeding two days he had the

occupation of waiting for an answer. He hardly stirred from his rooms, in his fear of missing the letter by a

moment; but would the District Attorney write, or send a representative: a policeman, a "secret agent," or

On the third morning Flint, stepping softly as if, confound it! his master were ill entered the library

Granice read the name J. B. Hewson and underneath, in pencil, "From the District Attorney's office."

Mr. Hewson was a slight sallow nondescript man of about fifty the kind of man of whom one is sure to

see a specimen in any crowd. "Just the type of the successful detective," Granice reflected as he shook hands

And it was in that character that Mr. Hewson briefly introduced himself. He had been sent by the District

Attorney to have "a quiet talk" with Mr. Granice to ask him to repeat the statement he had made about the

His manner was so quiet, so reasonable and receptive, that Granice's selfconfidence returned. Here was a

sensible man a man who knew his business it would be easy enough to make himsee through that

ridiculous alibi! Granice offered Mr. Hewson a cigar, and lighting one himself to prove his coolness

He was conscious, as he proceeded, of telling it better than ever before. Practice helped, no doubt; and his

listener's detached, impartial attitude helped still more. He could see that Hewson, at least, had not decided in

advance to disbelieve him, and the sense of being trusted made him more lucid and more consecutive. Yes,

DESPAIRINGLY, Granice gazed up and down the shabby street. Beside him stood a young man with bright

prominent eyes, a smooth but not too smoothlyshaven face, and an Irish smile. The young man's nimble

He tilted his head back and surveyed the halffinished front of a brick and limestone flathouse that reared

"Yes," said Granice, discouraged. "And even if I hadn't been, I know the garage was just opposite Leffler's

over there." He pointed across the street to a tumbledown stable with a blotched sign on which the words

The young man dashed across to the opposite pavement. "Well, that's something may get a clue there.

Granice had felt a return of confidence since he had enlisted the interest of the Explorer's"smartest" reporter.

If there were moments when he hardly believed his own story, there were others when it seemed impossible

that every one should not believe it; and young Peter McCarren, peering, listening, questioning, jotting down

notes, inspired him with an exquisite sense of security. McCarren had fastened on the case at once, "like a

leech," as he phrased it jumped at it, thrilled to it, and settled down to "draw the last drop of fact from it,

and had not let go till he had." No one else had treated Granice in that way even Allonby's detective had

not taken a single note. And though a week had elapsed since the visit of that authorized official, nothing had

been heard from the District Attorney's office: Allonby had apparently dropped the matter again. But

McCarren wasn't going to drop it not he! He positively hung on Granice's footsteps. They had spent the

greater part of the previous day together, and now they were off again, running down clues.

But at Leffler's they got none, after all. Leffler's was no longer a stable. It was condemned to demolition, and

in the respite between sentence and execution it had become a vague place of storage, a hospital for

brokendown carriages and carts, presided over by a bleareyed old woman who knew nothing of Flood's

garage across the way did not even remember what had stood there before the new flathouse began to

"Well we may run Leffler down somewhere; I've seen harder jobs done," said McCarren, cheerfully

As they walked back toward Sixth Avenue he added, in a less sanguine tone: "I'd undertake now to put the

Granice's heart sank. Yes there was the weak spot; he had felt it from the first! But he still hoped to

convince McCarren that his case was strong enough without it; and he urged the reporter to come back to his

"Sorry, Mr. Granice, but I'm due at the office now. Besides, it'd be no use till I get some fresh stuff to work

"Well, Mr. Granice, the stars in their courses are against you, as the bard says. Can't get a trace of Flood, or

of Leffler either. And you say you bought the motor through Flood, and sold it through him, too?"

Granice wrinkled his brows. "Why, Flood yes, Flood himself. I sold it back to him three months later."

"Flood? The devil! And I've ransacked the town for Flood. That kind of business disappears as if the earth

"That brings us back to the poison," McCarren continued, his notebook out. "Just go over that again, will

And Granice went over it again. It had all been so simple at the time and he had been so clever in covering

up his traces! As soon as he decided on poison he looked about for an acquaintance who manufactured

chemicals; and there was Jim Dawes, a Harvard classmate, in the dyeing business just the man. But at the

last moment it occurred to him that suspicion might turn toward so obvious an opportunity, and he decided on

a more tortuous course. Another friend, Carrick Venn, a student of medicine whom irremediable illhealth

had kept from the practice of his profession, amused his leisure with experiments in physics, for the exercise

of which he had set up a simple laboratory. Granice had the habit of dropping in to smoke a cigar with him on

Sunday afternoons, and the friends generally sat in Venn's workshop, at the back of the old family house in

Stuyvesant Square. Off this workshop was the cupboard of supplies, with its row of deadly bottles. Carrick

Venn was an original, a man of restless curious tastes, and his place, on a Sunday, was often full of visitors: a

cheerful crowd of journalists, scribblers, painters, experimenters in divers forms of expression. Coming and

going among so many, it was easy enough to pass unperceived; and one afternoon Granice, arriving before

Venn had returned home, found himself alone in the workshop, and quickly slipping into the cupboard,

But that had happened ten years ago; and Venn, poor fellow, was long since dead of his dragging ailment. His

old father was dead, too, the house in Stuyvesant Square had been turned into a boardinghouse, and the

shifting life of New York had passed its rapid sponge over every trace of their obscure little history. Even the

optimistic McCarren seemed to acknowledge the hopelessness of seeking for proof in that direction.

"And there's the third door slammed in our faces." He shut his notebook, and throwing back his head, rested

"Yes: but the one that weakens all the others. Why the deuce do you want this thing known? Why do you

Granice looked at him hopelessly, trying to take the measure of his quick light irreverent mind. No one so full

of a cheerful animal life would believe in the craving for death as a sufficient motive; and Granice racked his

brain for one more convincing. But suddenly he saw the reporter's face soften, and melt to a naive

Granice stared a moment, and then leapt at the opening. "That's it the memory of it . . . always . . ."

McCarren nodded vehemently. "Dogged your steps, eh? Wouldn't let you sleep? The time came when you

The reporter struck his fist on the table. "God, sir! I don't suppose there's a human being with a drop of warm

The Celtic imagination was aflame, and Granice mutely thanked him for the word. What neither Ascham nor

Denver would accept as a conceivable motive the Irish reporter seized on as the most adequate; and, as he

said, once one could find a convincing motive, the difficulties of the case became so many incentives to

"Remorse remorse," he repeated, rolling the word under his tongue with an accent that was a clue to the

psychology of the popular drama; and Granice, perversely, said to himself: "If I could only have struck that

He saw that from that moment McCarren's professional zeal would be fanned by emotional curiosity; and he

profited by the fact to propose that they should dine together, and go on afterward to some musichall or

theatre. It was becoming necessary to Granice to feel himself an object of preoccupation, to find himself in

another mind. He took a kind of gray penumbral pleasure in riveting McCarren's attention on his case; and to

feign the grimaces of moral anguish became a passionately engrossing game. He had not entered a theatre for

months; but he sat out the meaningless performance in rigid tolerance, sustained by the sense of the reporter's

Between the acts, McCarren amused him with anecdotes about the audience: he knew every one by sight, and

could lift the curtain from every physiognomy. Granice listened indulgently. He had lost all interest in his

kind, but he knew that he was himself the real centre of McCarren's attention, and that every word the latter

"See that fellow over there the little driedup man in the third row, pulling his moustache? Hismemoirs

Granice, following his glance, recognized the detective from Allonby's office. For a moment he had the

"Caesar, if hecould talk !" McCarren continued. "Know who he is, of course? Dr. John B. Stell, the

Granice, with a start, bent again between the heads in front of him. "Thatman the fourth from the aisle?

McCarren laughed. "Well, I guess I've been in court enough to know Stell when I see him. He testifies in

A cold shiver ran down Granice's spine, but he repeated obstinately: "That's not Dr. Stell."

"Not Stell? Why, man, I knowhim. Look here he comes. If it isn't Stell, he won't speak to me."

The little driedup man was moving slowly up the aisle. As he neared McCarren he made a slight gesture of

"How'do, Doctor Stell? Pretty slim show, ain't it?" the reporter cheerfully flung out at him. And Mr. J. B.

Granice sat benumbed. He knew he had not been mistaken the man who had just passed was the same

man whom Allonby had sent to see him: a physician disguised as a detective. Allonby, then, had thought him

insane, like the others had regarded his confession as the maundering of a maniac. The discovery froze

But he knew in advance what McCarren's answer would be. "Hewson? J. B. Hewson? Never heard of him.

But that was J. B. Stell fast enough I guess he can be trusted to know himself, and you saw he answered to

SOME days passed before Granice could obtain a word with the District Attorney: he began to think that

But when they were face to face Allonby's jovial countenance showed no sign of embarrassment. He waved

his visitor to a chair, and leaned across his desk with the encouraging smile of a consulting physician.

The other's face did not lose its composure. "Because I looked up your story first and there's nothing in it."

"Absolutely nothing. If there is, why the deuce don't you bring me proofs? I know you've been talking to

Peter Ascham, and to Denver, and to that little ferret McCarren of the Explorer. Have any of them been able

"About Stell? I had to, my dear fellow: it's part of my business. Stell isa detective, if you come to that

The trembling of Granice's lips increased, communicating itself in a long quiver to his facial muscles. He

"In you? Oh, he thinks it's overwork overwork and too much smoking. If you look in on him some day at

his office he'll show you the record of hundreds of cases like yours, and advise you what treatment to follow.

The District Attorney's large hand, outstretched on his desk, had an almost imperceptible gesture, and a

moment later, as if an answer to the call of an electric bell, a clerk looked in from the outer office.

"Sorry, my dear fellow lot of people waiting. Drop in on Stell some morning," Allonby said, shaking

McCarren had to own himself beaten: there was absolutely no flaw in the alibi. And since his duty to his

journal obviously forbade his wasting time on insoluble mysteries, he ceased to frequent Granice, who

dropped back into a deeper isolation. For a day or two after his visit to Allonby he continued to live in dread

of Dr. Stell. Why might not Allonby have deceived him as to the alienist's diagnosis? What if he were really

being shadowed, not by a police agent but by a maddoctor? To have the truth out, he suddenly determined

The physician received him kindly, and reverted without embarrassment to the conditions of their previous

meeting. "We have to do that occasionally, Mr. Granice; it's one of our methods. And you had given Allonby

Granice was silent. He would have liked to reaffirm his guilt, to produce the fresh arguments which had

occurred to him since his last talk with the physician; but he feared his eagerness might be taken for a

"Nothing more. And I should advise you to knock off tobacco. You smoke a good deal, don't you?"

He developed his treatment, recommending massage, gymnastics, travel, or any form of diversion that did not

Granice interrupted him impatiently. "Oh, I loathe all that and I'm sick of travelling."

"H'm. Then some larger interest politics, reform, philanthropy? Something to take you out of yourself."

"Above all, don't lose heart. I see hundreds of cases like yours," the doctor added cheerfully from the

On the doorstep Granice stood still and laughed. Hundreds of cases like his the case of a man who had

committed a murder, who confessed his guilt, and whom no one would believe! Why, there had never been a

case like it in the world. What a good figure Stell would have made in a play: the great alienist who couldn't

But as he walked away, his fears dispelled, the sense of listlessness returned on him. For the first time since

his avowal to Peter Ascham he found himself without an occupation, and understood that he had been carried

through the past weeks only by the necessity of constant action. Now his life had once more become a

stagnant backwater, and as he stood on the street corner watching the tides of traffic sweep by, he asked

himself despairingly how much longer he could endure to float about in the sluggish circle of his

The thought of selfdestruction recurred to him; but again his flesh recoiled. He yearned for death from other

hands, but he could never take it from his own. And, aside from his insuperable physical reluctance, another

motive restrained him. He was possessed by the dogged desire to establish the truth of his story. He refused to

be swept aside as an irresponsible dreamer even if he had to kill himself in the end, he would not do so

He began to write long letters to the papers; but after the first had been published and commented on, public

curiosity was quelled by a brief statement from the District Attorney's office, and the rest of his

communications remained unprinted. Ascham came to see him, and begged him to travel. Robert Denver

dropped in, and tried to joke him out of his delusion; till Granice, mistrustful of their motives, began to dread

the reappearance of Dr. Stell, and set a guard on his lips. But the words he kept back engendered others and

still others in his brain. His inner self became a humming factory of arguments, and he spent long hours

reciting and writing down elaborate statements of his crime, which he constantly retouched and developed.

Then gradually his activity languished under the lack of an audience, the sense of being buried beneath

deepening drifts of indifference. In a passion of resentment he swore that he would prove himself a murderer,

even if he had to commit another crime to do it; and for a sleepless night or two the thought flamed red on his

darkness. But daylight dispelled it. The determining impulse was lacking and he hated too promiscuously to

choose his victim. . . So he was thrown back on the unavailing struggle to impose the truth of his story. As

fast as one channel closed on him he tried to pierce another through the sliding sands of incredulity. But

every issue seemed blocked, and the whole human race leagued together to cheat one man of the right to die.

Thus viewed, the situation became so monstrous that he lost his last shred of selfrestraint in contemplating

it. What if he were really the victim of some mocking experiment, the centre of a ring of holidaymakers

jeering at a poor creature in its blind dashes against the solid walls of consciousness? But, no men were

not so uniformly cruel: there were flaws in the close surface of their indifference, cracks of weakness and pity

Granice began to think that his mistake lay in having appealed to persons more or less familiar with his past,

and to whom the visible conformities of his life seemed a final disproof of its one fierce secret deviation. The

general tendency was to take for the whole of life the slit seen between the blinders of habit: and in his walk

down that narrow vista Granice cut a correct enough figure. To a vision free to follow his whole orbit his

story would be more intelligible: it would be easier to convince a chance idler in the street than the trained

intelligence hampered by a sense of his antecedents. This idea shot up in him with the tropic luxuriance of

each new seed of thought, and he began to walk the streets, and to frequent outoftheway chophouses

and bars in his search for the impartial stranger to whom he should disclose himself.

At first every face looked encouragement; but at the crucial moment he always held back. So much was at

stake, and it was so essential that his first choice should be decisive. He dreaded stupidity, timidity,

intolerance. The imaginative eye, the furrowed brow, were what he sought. He must reveal himself only to a

heart versed in the tortuous motions of the human will; and he began to hate the dull benevolence of the

average face. Once or twice, obscurely, allusively, he made a beginning once sitting down at a man's side

in a basement chophouse, another day approaching a lounger on an eastside wharf. But in both cases the

premonition of failure checked him on the brink of avowal. His dread of being taken for a man in the clutch

of a fixed idea gave him an unnatural keenness in reading the expression of his interlocutors, and he had

provided himself in advance with a series of verbal alternatives, trapdoors of evasion from the first dart of

He passed the greater part of the day in the streets, coming home at irregular hours, dreading the silence and

orderliness of his apartment, and the critical scrutiny of Flint. His real life was spent in a world so remote

from this familiar setting that he sometimes had the mysterious sense of a living metempsychosis, a furtive

One humiliation he was spared: the desire to live never revived in him. Not for a moment was he tempted to a

shabby pact with existing conditions. He wanted to die, wanted it with the fixed unwavering desire which

alone attains its end. And still the end eluded him! It would not always, of course he had full faith in the

dark star of his destiny. And he could prove it best by repeating his story, persistently and indefatigably,

pouring it into indifferent ears, hammering it into dull brains, till at last it kindled a spark, and some one of

It was a mild March day, and he had been loitering on the westside docks, looking at faces. He was

becoming an expert in physiognomies: his eagerness no longer made rash darts and awkward recoils. He

knew now the face he needed, as clearly as if it had come to him in a vision; and not till he found it would he

speak. As he walked eastward through the shabby reeking streets he had a premonition that he should find it

that morning. Perhaps it was the promise of spring in the air certainly he felt calmer than for many days. .

He turned into Washington Square, struck across it obliquely, and walked up University Place. Its

heterogeneous passers always allured him they were less hurried than in Broadway, less enclosed and

At Union Square he felt a sudden relapse into discouragement, like a votary who has watched too long for a

sign from the altar. Perhaps, after all, he should never find his face. . . The air was languid, and he felt tired.

He walked between the bald grassplots and the twisted trees, making for an empty seat. Presently he passed

a bench on which a girl sat alone, and something as definite as the twitch of a cord made him stop before her.

He had never dreamed of telling his story to a girl, had hardly looked at the women's faces as they passed.

His case was man's work: how could a woman help him? But this girl's face was extraordinary quiet and

wide as a clear evening sky. It suggested a hundred images of space, distance, mystery, like ships he had

seen, as a boy, quietly berthed by a familiar wharf, but with the breath of far seas and strange harbours in

their shrouds. . . Certainly this girl would understand. He went up to her quietly, lifting his hat, observing the

"I am a stranger to you," he began, sitting down beside her, "but your face is so extremely intelligent that I

feel. . . I feel it is the face I've waited for . . . looked for everywhere; and I want to tell you "

He felt a hand on his own arm; turned and confronted a policeman. Instantly he understood that he was being

He was conscious that a crowd was forming, and that the girl's frightened face had disappeared. But what did

he care about her face? It was the policeman who had really understood him. He turned and followed, the

IN the charming place in which he found himself there were so many sympathetic faces that he felt more than

It was a bad blow, at first, to find that he had not been arrested for murder; but Ascham, who had come to

him at once, explained that he needed rest, and the time to "review" his statements; it appeared that reiteration

had made them a little confused and contradictory. To this end he had willingly acquiesced in his removal to

a large quiet establishment, with an open space and trees about it, where he had found a number of intelligent

companions, some, like himself, engaged in preparing or reviewing statements of their cases, and others

For a time he was content to let himself go on the tranquil current of this existence; but although his auditors

gave him for the most part an encouraging attention, which, in some, went the length of really brilliant and

helpful suggestion, he gradually felt a recurrence of his old doubts. Either his hearers were not sincere, or else

they had less power to aid him than they boasted. His interminable conferences resulted in nothing, and as the

benefit of the long rest made itself felt, it produced an increased mental lucidity which rendered inaction

more and more unbearable. At length he discovered that on certain days visitors from the outer world were

admitted to his retreat; and he wrote out long and logically constructed relations of his crime, and furtively

This occupation gave him a fresh lease of patience, and he now lived only to watch for the visitors' days, and

scan the faces that swept by him like stars seen and lost in the rifts of a hurrying sky.

Mostly, these faces were strange and less intelligent than those of his companions. But they represented his

last means of access to the world, a kind of subterranean channel on which he could set his "statements"

afloat, like paper boats which the mysterious current might sweep out into the open seas of life.

One day, however, his attention was arrested by a familiar contour, a pair of bright prominent eyes, and a

chin insufficiently shaved. He sprang up and stood in the path of Peter McCarren.

The journalist looked at him doubtfully, then held out his hand with a startled deprecating, "Why ?"

"You didn't know me? I'm so changed?" Granice faltered, feeling the rebound of the other's wonder.

"Yes: that's what I'm here for to rest. And I've taken the opportunity to write out a clearer statement "

Granice's hand shook so that he could hardly draw the folded paper from his pocket. As he did so he noticed

that the reporter was accompanied by a tall man with grave compassionate eyes. It came to Granice in a wild

"Perhaps your friend he isyour friend? would glance over it or I could put the case in a few words

if you have time?" Granice's voice shook like his hand. If this chance escaped him he felt that his last hope

was gone. McCarren and the stranger looked at each other, and the former glanced at his watch. "I'm sorry we

can't stay and talk it over now, Mr. Granice; but my friend has an engagement, and we're rather pressed "

Granice continued to proffer the paper. "I'm sorry I think I could have explained. But you'll take this, at

The stranger looked at him gently. "Certainly I'll take it." He had his hand out. "Goodbye."

He stood watching the two men move away from him through the long light hall; and as he watched them a

tear ran down his face. But as soon as they were out of sight he turned and walked hastily toward his room,

Outside the building the two men stood still, and the journalist's companion looked up curiously at the long

"Strange case! I suppose there's never been one just like it? He's still absolutely convinced that he committed

The stranger reflected. "And there was no conceivable ground for the idea? No one could make out how it

started? A quiet conventional sort of fellow like that where do you suppose he got such a delusion? Did

McCarren stood still, his hands in his pockets, his head cocked up in contemplation of the barred windows.

"He murdered the man all right. I tumbled on the truth by the merest accident, when I'd pretty nearly chucked

"Sure as you live. Only don't split on me. It's about the queerest business I ever ran into. . . Do about it? Why,

what was I to do? I couldn't hang the poor devil, could I? Lord, but I was glad when they collared him, and

The tall man listened with a grave face, grasping Granice's statement in his hand.

"Here take this; it makes me sick," he said abruptly, thrusting the paper at the reporter; and the two men

AFTER his wife's death Mason Grew took the momentous step of selling out his business and moving from

For years he had secretly nursed the hope of such a change, but had never dared to suggest it to Mrs. Grew, a

woman of immutable habits. Mr. Grew himself was attached to Wingfield, where he had grown up,

prospered, and become what the local press described as "prominent." He was attached to his ugly brick

house with sandstone trimmings and a castiron arearailing neatly sanded to match; to the similar row of

houses across the street, the "trolley" wires forming a kind of aerial pathway between, and the sprawling vista

closed by the steeple of the church which he and his wife had always attended, and where their only child had

It was hard to snap all these threads of association, visual and sentimental; yet still harder, now that he was

alone, to live so far from his boy. Ronald Grew was practising law in New York, and there was no more

chance of returning to live at Wingfield than of a river's flowing inland from the sea. Therefore to be near

him his father must move; and it was characteristic of Mr. Grew, and of the situation generally, that the

"Why you bury yourself in that hole I can't think," had been Ronald's comment; and Mr. Grew simply replied

that rents were lower in Brooklyn, and that he had heard of a house that would suit him. In reality he had said

to himself being the only recipient of his own confidences that if he went to New York he might be on

the boy's mind; whereas, if he lived in Brooklyn, Ronald would always have a good excuse for not popping

over to see him every other day. The sociological isolation of Brooklyn, combined with its geographical

nearness, presented in fact the precise conditions for Mr. Grew's case. He wanted to be near enough to New

York to go there often, to feel under his feet the same pavement that Ronald trod, to sit now and then in the

same theatres, and find on his breakfasttable the journals which, with increasing frequency, inserted

Ronald's name in the sacred bounds of the society column. It had always been a trial to Mr. Grew to have to

wait twentyfour hours to read that "among those present was Mr. Ronald Grew." Now he had it with his

coffee, and left it on the breakfasttable to the perusal of a "hired girl" cosmopolitan enough to do it justice.

In such ways Brooklyn attested the advantages of its propinquity to New York, while remaining, as regards

It was not that Ronald shirked his filial obligations, but rather because of his heavy sense of them, that Mr.

Grew so persistently sought to minimize and lighten them. It was he who insisted, to Ronald, on the immense

"Any way you look at it, it makes a big hole in the day; and there's not much use in the ragged rim left. You

say you're dining out next Sunday? Then I forbid you to come over here for lunch. Do you understand me,

sir? You disobey at the risk of your father's malediction! Where did you say you were dining? With the

Waltham Bankshires again? Why, that's the second time in three weeks, ain't it? Big blowout, I suppose?

Gold plate and orchids opera singers in afterward? Well, you'd be in a nice box if there was a fog on the

river, and you got hung up halfway over. That'd be a handsome return for the attention Mrs. Bankshire has

shown you singling out a whippersnapper like you twice in three weeks! (What's the daughter's name

Daisy?) No, sir don't you come fooling round here next Sunday, or I'll set the dogs on you. And you

wouldn't find me in anyhow, come to think of it. I'm lunching out myself, as it happens yes sir, lunching

out. Is there anything especially comic in my lunching out? I don't often do it, you say? Well, that's no reason

why I never should. Who with? Why, with with old Dr. Bleaker: Dr. Eliphalet Bleaker. No, you wouldn't

Gradually Ronald's insistence became less difficult to overcome. With his customary sweetness and tact (as

Mr. Grew put it) he began to "take the hint," to give in to "the old gentleman's" growing desire for solitude.

"I'm set in my ways, Ronny, that's about the size of it; I like to go tickticking along like a clock. I always

did. And when you come bouncing in I never feel sure there's enough for dinner or that I haven't sent

Maria out for the evening. And I don't want the neighbors to see me opening my own door to my son. That's

the kind of cringing snob I am. Don't give me away, will you? I want 'em to think I keep four or five

powdered flunkeys in the hall day and night same as the lobby of one of those Fifth Avenue hotels. And if

Ronald yielded after the proper amount of resistance his intuitive sense, in every social transaction, of the

proper amount of force to be expended, was one of the qualities his father most admired in him. Mr. Grew's

perceptions in this line were probably more acute than his son suspected. The souls of short thickset men,

with chubby features, muttonchop whiskers, and pale eyes peering between folds of fat like almond kernels

in halfsplit shells souls thus encased do not reveal themselves to the casual scrutiny as delicate emotional

instruments. But in spite of the dense disguise in which he walked Mr. Grew vibrated exquisitely in response

to every imaginative appeal; and his son Ronald was perpetually stimulating and feeding his imagination.

Ronald in fact constituted his father's one escape from the impenetrable element of mediocrity which had

always hemmed him in. To a man so enamoured of beauty, and so little qualified to add to its sum total, it

was a wonderful privilege to have bestowed on the world such a being. Ronald's resemblance to Mr. Grew's

early conception of what he himself would have liked to look might have put new life into the discredited

theory of prenatal influences. At any rate, if the young man owed his beauty, his distinction and his winning

manner to the dreams of one of his parents, it was certainly to those of Mr. Grew, who, while outwardly

devoting his life to the manufacture and dissemination of Grew's Secure Suspender Buckle, moved in an

enchanted inward world peopled with all the figures of romance. In this high company Mr. Grew cut as

brilliant a figure as any of its noble phantoms; and to see his vision of himself suddenly projected on the outer

world in the shape of a brilliant popular conquering son, seemed, in retrospect, to give to that image a belated

objective reality. There were even moments when, forgetting his physiognomy, Mr. Grew said to himself that

if he'd had "half a chance" he might have done as well as Ronald; but this only fortified his resolve that

Ronald's ability to do well almost equalled his gift of looking well. Mr. Grew constantly affirmed to himself

that the boy was "not a genius"; but, barring this slight deficiency, he was almost everything that a parent

could wish. Even at Harvard he had managed to be several desirable things at once writing poetry in the

college magazine, playing delightfully "by ear," acquitting himself honorably in his studies, and yet holding

his own in the fashionable sporting set that formed, as it were, the gateway of the temple of Society. Mr.

Grew's idealism did not preclude the frank desire that his son should pass through that gateway; but the wish

was not prompted by material considerations. It was Mr. Grew's notion that, in the rough and hurrying current

of a new civilization, the little pools of leisure and enjoyment must nurture delicate growths, material graces

as well as moral refinements, likely to be uprooted and swept away by the rush of the main torrent. He based

his theory on the fact that he had liked the few "society" people he had met had found their manners

simpler, their voices more agreeable, their views more consonant with his own, than those of the leading

Ronald's sympathies needed no urging in the same direction. He took naturally, dauntlessly, to all the high

and exceptional things about which his father's imagination had so long sheepishly and ineffectually

hovered from the start he was what Mr. Grew had dreamed of being. And so precise, so detailed, was Mr.

Grew's vision of his own imaginary career, that as Ronald grew up, and began to travel in a widening orbit,

his father had an almost uncanny sense of the extent to which that career was enacting itself before him. At

Harvard, Ronald had done exactly what the hypothetical Mason Grew would have done, had not his actual

self, at the same age, been working his way up in old Slagden's button factory the institution which was

later to acquire fame, and even notoriety, as the birthplace of Grew's Secure Suspender Buckle. Afterward, at

a period when the actual Grew had passed from the factory to the bookkeeper's desk, his invisible double had

been reading law at Columbia precisely again what Ronald did! But it was when the young man left the

paths laid out for him by the parental hand, and cast himself boldly on the world, that his adventures began to

bear the most astonishing resemblance to those of the unrealized Mason Grew. It was in New York that the

scene of this hypothetical being's first exploits had always been laid; and it was in New York that Ronald was

to achieve his first triumph. There was nothing small or timid about Mr. Grew's imagination; it had never

stopped at anything between Wingfield and the metropolis. And the real Ronald had the same cosmic vision

as his parent. He brushed aside with a contemptuous laugh his mother's tearful entreaty that he should stay at

Wingfield and continue the dynasty of the Grew Suspender Buckle. Mr. Grew knew that in reality Ronald

winced at the Buckle, loathed it, blushed for his connection with it. Yet it was the Buckle that had seen him

through Groton, Harvard and the Law School, and had permitted him to enter the office of a distinguished

corporation lawyer, instead of being enslaved to some sordid business with quick returns. The Buckle had

been Ronald's fairy godmother yet his father did not blame him for abhorring and disowning it. Mr. Grew

himself often bitterly regretted having bestowed his own name on the instrument of his material success,

though, at the time, his doing so had been the natural expression of his romanticism. When he invented the

Buckle, and took out his patent, he and his wife both felt that to bestow their name on it was like naming a

Mrs. Grew had never learned to know better; but Mr. Grew had discovered his error before Ronald was out of

school. He read it first in a black eye of his boy's. Ronald's symmetry had been marred by the insolent fist of

a fourth former whom he had chastised for alluding to his father as "Old Buckles;" and when Mr. Grew heard

the epithet he understood in a flash that the Buckle was a thing to blush for. It was too late then to dissociate

his name from it, or to efface from the hoardings of the entire continent the picture of two gentlemen, one

contorting himself in the abject effort to repair a broken brace, while the careless ease of the other's attitude

proclaimed his trust in the Secure Suspender Buckle. These records were indelible, but Ronald could at least

be spared all direct connection with them; and from that day Mr. Grew resolved that the boy should not return

"You'll see," he had said to Mrs. Grew, "he'll take right hold in New York. Ronald's got my knack for taking

"But the way you took hold was in business," objected Mrs. Grew, who was large and literal.

Mr. Grew's chest collapsed, and he became suddenly conscious of his comic face in its rim of sandy

whiskers. "That's not the only way," he said, with a touch of wistfulness which escaped his wife's analysis.

"Well, of course you could have written beautifully," she rejoined with admiring eyes.

The couple exchanged a glance, innocently allusive and amused on the wife's part, and charged with a sudden

"Well, I've got to be going along to the office now," he merely said, dragging himself out of his

This had happened while Ronald was still at school; and now Mrs. Grew slept in the Wingfield cemetery,

under a lifesize theological virtue of her own choosing, and Mr. Grew's prognostications as to Ronald's

ability to "take right hold" in New York were being more and more brilliantly fulfilled.

RONALD obeyed his father's injunction not to come to luncheon on the day of the Bankshires' dinner; but in

the middle of the following week Mr. Grew was surprised by a telegram from his son.

Mr. Grew received the telegram after breakfast. To peruse it he had lifted his eye from a paragraph of the

morning paper describing a fancydress dinner which had taken place the night before at the Hamilton

"Among the couples who afterward danced in the Poets' Quadrille were Miss Daisy Bankshire, looking more

Petrarch and Laura! Well if anything meant anything, Mr. Grew supposed he knew what that meant. For

weeks past he had noticed how constantly the names of the young people appeared together in the society

notes he so insatiably devoured. Even the soulless reporter was getting into the habit of coupling them in his

Mr. Grew dropped the telegram, wiped his eyeglasses, and reread the paragraph. "Miss Daisy Bankshire . .

. more than usually lovely. . ." Yes; she was lovely. He had often seen her photograph in the papers seen

her represented in every conceivable attitude of the mundane game: fondling her prize bulldog, taking a

fence on her thoroughbred, dancing a gavotte, all patches and plumes, or fingering a guitar, all tulle and lilies;

and once he had caught a glimpse of her at the theatre. Hearing that Ronald was going to a fashionable

firstnight with the Bankshires, Mr. Grew had for once overcome his repugnance to following his son's

movements, and had secured for himself, under the shadow of the balcony, a stall whence he could observe

the Bankshire box without fear of detection. Ronald had never known of his father's presence at the play; and

for three blessed hours Mr. Grew had watched his boy's handsome dark head bent above the dense fair hair

and white averted shoulder that were all he could catch of Miss Bankshire's beauties.

He recalled the vision now; and with it came, as usual, its ghostly double: the vision of his young self

bending above such a white shoulder and such shining hair. Needless to say that the real Mason Grew had

never found himself in so enviable a situation. The late Mrs. Grew had no more resembled Miss Daisy

Bankshire than he had looked like the happy victorious Ronald. And the mystery was that from their dull

faces, their dull endearments, the miracle of Ronald should have sprung. It was almost fantastically as

if the boy had been a changeling, child of a Latmian night, whom the divine companion of Mr. Grew's early

reveries had secretly laid in the cradle of the Wingfield bedroom while Mr. And Mrs. Grew slept the deep

The young Mason Grew had not at first accepted this astral episode as the complete cancelling of his claims

on romance. He too had grasped at the highhung glory; and, with his fatal tendency to reach too far when he

reached at all, had singled out the prettiest girl in Wingfield. When he recalled his stammered confession of

love his face still tingled under her cool bright stare. The wonder of his audacity had struck her dumb; and

"Don't be too discouraged, you know have you ever thought of trying Addie Wicks?"

All Wingfield would have understood the gibe: Addie Wicks was the dullest girl in town. And a year later he

He looked up from the perusal of Ronald's telegram with this memory in his mind. Now at last his dream was

coming true! His boy would taste of the joys that had mocked his thwarted youth and his dull gray

middleage. And it was fitting that they should be realized in Ronald's destiny. Ronald was made to take

happiness boldly by the hand and lead it home like a bridegroom. He had the carriage, the confidence, the

high faith in his fortune, that compel the wilful stars. And, thanks to the Buckle, he would have the

exceptional setting, the background of material elegance, that became his conquering person. Since Mr. Grew

had retired from business his investments had prospered, and he had been saving up his income for just such

a contingency. His own wants were few: he had transferred the Wingfield furniture to Brooklyn, and his

sittingroom was a replica of that in which the long years of his married life had been spent. Even the florid

carpet on which Ronald's tottering footsteps had been taken was carefully matched when it became too

threadbare. And on the marble centretable, with its chenillefringed cover and bunch of dyed pampas grass,

lay the illustrated Longfellow and the copy of Ingersoll's lectures which represented literature to Mr. Grew

when he had led home his bride. In the light of Ronald's romance, Mr. Grew found himself reliving, with a

strange tremor of mingled pain and tenderness, all the poor prosaic incidents of his own personal history.

Curiously enough, with this new splendor on them they began to emit a small faint ray of their own. His

wife's armchair, in its usual place by the fire, recalled her placid unperceiving presence, seated opposite to

him during the long drowsy years; and he felt her kindness, her equanimity, where formerly he had only

ached at her obtuseness. And from the chair he glanced up at the large discolored photograph on the wall

above, with a brittle brown wreath suspended on a corner of the frame. The photograph represented a young

man with a poetic necktie and untrammelled hair, leaning negligently against a Gothic chairback, a roll of

music in his hand; and beneath was scrawled a bar of Chopin, with the words: " Adieu, Adele."

The portrait was that of the great pianist, Fortune Dolbrowski; and its presence on the wall of Mr. Grew's

sittingroom commemorated the only exquisite hour of his life save that of Ronald's birth. It was some time

before the latter memorable event, a few months only after Mr. Grew's marriage, that he had taken his wife to

New York to hear the great Dolbrowski. Their evening had been magically beautiful, and even Addie, roused

from her habitual inexpressiveness, had quivered into a momentary semblance of life. "I never I never

" she gasped out helplessly when they had regained their hotel bedroom, and sat staring back entranced at the

evening's evocations. Her large immovable face was pink and tremulous, and she sat with her hands on her

"I'd like to write him just how I felt I wisht I knew how!" she burst out suddenly in a final effervescence

"Would you? I feel that way too," he said with a sheepish laugh. And they continued to stare at each other

Mr. Grew recalled the scene as he gazed up at the pianist's faded photograph. "Well, I owe her that anyhow

poor Addie!" he said, with a smile at the inconsequences of fate. With Ronald's telegram in his hand he

"A CLEAR twentyfive thousand a year: that's what you can tell 'em with my compliments," said Mr. Grew,

It struck him that Ronald's gift for looking his part in life had never so romantically expressed itself. Other

young men, at such a moment, would have been red, damp, tight about the collar; but Ronald's cheek was

Mr. Grew leaned back, his hands thrust carelessly in his pockets, as though to divert attention from the

agitation of his features. He had often pictured himself rolling out that phrase to Ronald, and now that it was

Ronald listened in silence, lifting a nervous hand to his slight dark moustache, as though he, too, wished to

hide some involuntary betrayal of emotion. At first Mr. Grew took his silence for an expression of gratified

"I see here, my boy; did you expect more? Isn't it enough?" Mr. Grew cleared his throat. "Do they expect

more?' he asked nervously. He was hardly able to face the pain of inflicting a disappointment on Ronald at

Ronald moved uneasily in his chair and his eyes wandered upward to the laurelwreathed photograph of the

" Is it that, Ronald? Speak out, my boy. We'll see, we'll look round I'll manage somehow."

"No, no," the young man interrupted, abruptly raising his hand as though to silence his father.

Mr. Grew recovered his cheerfulness. "Well, what's the matter than, if she's willing?"

Mr. Grew sat speechless a moment, staring blankly at his son; then he emitted a puzzled laugh. "My money?

What are you talking about? What's this about my money? Why, it ain't mine, Ronny; it's all yours every

"No, no, it's not mine not even in the sense you mean. Not in any sense. Can't you understand my feeling

"Feeling so? I don't know how you're feeling. I don't know what you're talking about. Are you too proud to

Mr. Grew flushed to the rim of his bristling whiskers. "Know? Know what? Can't you speak?"

Ronald hesitated, and the two men faced each other for a long strained moment, during which Mr. Grew's

"What's the meaning of this? Is it because you've done something . . . something you're ashamed of . . .

ashamed to tell me?" he suddenly gasped out; and walking around the table he laid his hand on his son's

"It's not that. Why do you make it so hard for me?" Ronald broke out with passion. "You must have known

"Happen? What was sure to hap ?" Mr. Grew's question wavered on his lip and passed into a tremulous

laugh. "Is it something I've done that you don't approve of? Is it is it the Buckle you're ashamed of,

Ronald laughed too, impatiently. "The Buckle? No, I'm not ashamed of the Buckle; not any more than you

are," he returned with a sudden bright flush. "But I'm ashamed of all I owe to it all I owe to you when

when " He broke off and took a few distracted steps across the room. "You might make this easier for

"Make what easier? I know less and less what you're driving at," Mr. Grew groaned.

Ronald's walk had once more brought him beneath the photograph on the wall. He lifted his head for a

"Even before you gave me those letters after my mother's death even before that, I suspected. I don't

know how it began . . . perhaps from little things you let drop . . . you and she . . . and resemblances that I

couldn't help seeing . . . in myself . . . How on earth could you suppose I shouldn't guess? I always thought

Ronald nodded with white lips. "You must remember giving them to me the day after the funeral."

Mr. Grew nodded back. "Of course. I wanted you to have everything your mother valued."

"Knowing what?" Mr. Grew stood staring helplessly at his son. Suddenly his look caught at a clue that

seemed to confront it with a deeper bewilderment. "You thought you thought those letters . . .

"Oh, it wasn't only the letters. There were so many other signs. My love of music my all my feelings

about life . . . and art. . . And when you gave me the letters I thought you must mean me to know."

Mr. Grew had grown quiet. His lips were firm, and his small eyes looked out steadily from their creased lids.

"I meant to wait till I could earn my living, and then repay you . . . as far as I can ever repay you. . . But now

that there's a chance of my marrying . . . and your generosity overwhelms me . . . I'm obliged to speak."

"I see," said Mr. Grew again. He let himself down into his chair, looking steadily and not unkindly at the

Ronald made a protesting movement. "Is anything to be gained by it? You can't change me change what I

feel. The reading of those letters transformed my whole life I was a boy till then: they made a man of me.

From that moment I understood myself." He paused, and then looked up at Mr. Grew's face. "Don't imagine I

don't appreciate your kindness your extraordinary generosity. But I can't go through life in disguise. And I

Ronald raised his head quickly. "Oh, you don't know her, sir! She thinks no worse of me for knowing my

secret. She is above and beyond all such conventional prejudices. She's proud of my parentage " he

straightened his slim young shoulders "as I'm proud of it . . . yes, sir, proud of it. . ."

Mr. Grew sank back into his seat with a dry laugh. "Well, you ought to be. You come of good stock. And

you're father's son, every inch of you!" He laughed again, as though the humor of the situation grew on him

"Your father's son, and no mistake." Mr. Grew leaned forward. "You're the son of as big a fool as yourself.

The young man's flush deepened to crimson; but Mr. Grew checked his reply with a decisive gesture. "Here

he sits, with all your young nonsense still alive in him. Don't you see the likeness? If you don't, I'll tell you

"I supposed they did when I gave them to you; but you've given it a twist that needs straightening out." Mr.

Grew squared his elbows on the table, and looked at the young man across the giftbooks and the dyed

Ronald gave back his look in frowning perplexity. "You wrote them? I don't understand. His letters are all

Mr. Grew hesitated, puckering his thick lids. "Well, I guess she kinder thought it was a joke. Your mother

Ronald continued to bend a puzzled frown on the question. "I don't understand," he reiterated.

Mr. Grew cleared his throat with a nervous laugh. "Well, I don't know as you ever will quite. But this is

the way it came about. I had a toughish time of it when I was young. Oh, I don't mean so much the fight I had

to put up to make my way there was always plenty of fight in me. But inside of myself it was kinder

lonesome. And the outside didn't attract callers." He laughed again, with an apologetic gesture toward his

broad blinking face. "When I went round with the other young fellows I was always the forlorn hope the

one that had to eat the drumsticks and dance with the leftovers. As sure as there was a blighter at a picnic I

had to swing her, and feed her, and drive her home. And all the time I was mad after all the things you've got

poetry and music and all the joyforever business. So there were the pair of us my face and my

"Then your mother came along and took pity on me. It sets up a gawky fellow to find a girl who ain't

ashamed to be seen walking with him Sundays. And I was grateful to your mother, and we got along

firstrate. Only I couldn't say things to her and she couldn't answer. Well one day, a few months after

we were married, Dolbrowski came to New York, and the whole place went wild about him. I'd never heard

any good music, but I'd always had an inkling of what it must be like, though I couldn't tell you to this day

how I knew. Well, your mother read about him in the papers too, and she thought it'd be the swagger thing to

go to New York and hear him play so we went. . . I'll never forget that evening. Your mother wasn't easily

stirred up she never seemed to need to let off steam. But that night she seemed to understand the way I

felt. And when we got back to the hotel she said suddenly: 'I'd like to tell him how I feel. I'd like to sit right

"There was paper and pens there before us, and I pulled a sheet toward me, and began to write. 'Is this what

you'd like to say to him?' I asked her when the letter was done. And she got pink and said: 'I don't understand

it, but it's lovely.' And she copied it out and signed her name to it, and sent it."

That's how it began; and that's where I thought it would end. But it didn't, because Dolbrowski answered. His

first letter was dated January 10, 1872. I guess you'll find I'm correct. Well, I went back to hear him again,

and I wrote him after the performance, and he answered again. And after that we kept it up for six months.

Your mother always copied the letters and signed them. She seemed to think it was a kinder joke, and she

was proud of his answering my letters. But she never went back to New York to hear him, though I saved up

enough to give her the treat again. She was too lazy, and she let me go without her. I heard him three times in

New York; and in the spring he came to Wingfield and played once at the Academy. Your mother was sick

and couldn't go; so I went alone. After the performance I meant to get one of the directors to take me in to see

him; but when the time came, I just went back home and wrote to him instead. And the month after, before he

went back to Europe, he sent your mother a last little note, and that picture hanging up there. . ."

"The blood crept again to Ronald's face. "Are you sure of that, sir?" he asked in a trembling voice.

"Sure as I am that I'm sitting here. Why, she was too lazy to look at his letters after the first novelty wore off.

She copied the answers just to humor me but she always said she couldn't understand what we wrote."

Mr. Grew looked at his son thoughtfully. "I suppose it is, to you. You've only had to put out your hand and

get the things I was starving for music, and good talk, and ideas. Those letters gave me all that. You've

read them, and you know that Dolbrowski was not only a great musician but a great man. There was nothing

beautiful he didn't see, nothing fine he didn't feel. For six months I breathed his air, and I've lived on it ever

"Yes a little. But why write in my mother's name? Why make it a sentimental correspondence?"

Mr. Grew reddened to his bald temples. "Why, I tell you it began that way, as a kinder joke. And when I saw

that the first letter pleased and interested him, I was afraid to tell him I couldn't tell him. Do you suppose

Ronald suddenly looked at him with new eyes. "But he must have thought your letters very beautiful to go

Ronald pursued his idea. "Where are all your letters, I wonder? Weren't they returned to you at his death?"

Mr. Grew laughed. "Lord, no. I guess he had trunks and trunks full of better ones. I guess Queens and

"Well, they weren't bad," said Mr. Grew drily. "But I'll tell you one thing, Ronny," he added suddenly.

Ronald raised his head with a quick glance, and Mr. Grew continued: "I'll tell you where the best of those

letters is it's in you. If it hadn't been for that one look at life I couldn't have made you what you are. Oh, I

know you've done a good deal of your own making but I've been there behind you all the time. And you'll

never know the work I've spared you and the time I've saved you. Fortune Dolbrowski helped me do that. I

never saw things in little again after I'd looked at 'em with him. And I tried to give you the big view from the

Mr. Grew paused, and for a long time Ronald sat motionless, his elbows on the table, his face dropped on his

"Look at here, Ronald Grew do you want me to tell you how you're feeling at this minute? Just a mite let

down, after all, at the idea that you ain't the romantic figure you'd got to think yourself. . . Well, that's natural

enough, too; but I'll tell you what it proves. It proves you're my son right enough, if any more proof was

needed. For it's just the kind of fool nonsense I used to feel at your age and if there's anybody here to

laugh at it's myself, and not you. And you can laugh at me just as much as you like. . ."

Ringham Finney threw himself back into his chair with the smile of the collector who has a good thing to

show. He knew he had a good listener, at any rate. I don't think much of Ringham's snuffboxes, but his

anecdotes are usually worth while. He's a psychologist astray among bibelots, and the best bits he brings back

from his raids on Christie's and the Hotel Drouot are the fragments of human nature he picks up on those

historic battlefields. If his flair in enamel had been half as good we should have heard of the Finney

He really has queer fatuous investigator! an unusually sensitive touch for the human texture, and the

specimens he gathers into his museum of heterogeneous memories have almost always some mark of the rare

and chosen. I felt, therefore, that I was really to be congratulated on the fact that I didn't know what had

become of the Daunt Diana, and on having before me a long evening in which to learn. I had just led my

friend back, after an excellent dinner at Foyot's, to the shabby pleasant sittingroom of my rivegauche hotel;

and I knew that, once I had settled him in a good armchair, and put a box of cigars at his elbow, I could trust

YOU remember old Neave, of course? Little Humphrey Neave, I mean. We used to see him pottering about

Rome years ago. He lived in two tiny rooms over a wine shop, on polenta and lentils, and prowled among the

refuse of the Ripetta whenever he had a few soldi to spend. But you've been out of the collector's world for so

He was always a queer chap, Neave; years older than you and me, of course and even when I first knew

him, in my raw Roman days, he gave me an extraordinary sense of age and experience. I don't think I've ever

known any one who was at once so intelligent and so simple. It's the precise combination that results in

He told me once how he'd come to Rome. He was originaire of Mystic, Connecticut and he wanted to get

as far away from it as possible. Rome seemed as far as anything on the same planet could be; and after he'd

worried his way through Harvard with shifts and shavings that you and I can't imagine he contrived to

get sent to Switzerland as tutor to a chap who'd failed in his examinations. With only the Alps between, he

wasn't likely to turn back; and he got another fellow to take his pupil home, and struck out on foot for the

I'm telling you these early details merely to give you a notion of the man's idealism. There was a cool

persistency and a headlong courage in his dash for Rome that one wouldn't have guessed in the little pottering

chap we used to know. Once on the spot, he got more tutoring, managed to make himself a name for coaxing

balky youths to take their fences, and was finally able to take up the more congenial task of expounding "the

antiquities" to cultured travellers. I call it more congenial but how it must have seared his soul! Fancy

unveiling the sacred scars of Time to ladies who murmur: "Was this actually the spot ?" while they

absently feel for their hatpins! He used to say that nothing kept him at it but the exquisite thought of

accumulating the lire for his collection. For the Neave collection, my dear fellow, began early, began almost

with his Roman life, began in a series of little nameless odds and ends, broken trinkets, torn embroideries, the

amputated extremities of maimed marbles: things that even the ragpicker had pitched away when he sifted

his haul. But they weren't nameless or meaningless to Neave; his strength lay in his instinct for identifying,

putting together, seeing significant relations. He was a regular Cuvier of bricabrac. And during those early

years, when he had time to brood over trifles and note imperceptible differences, he gradually sharpened his

instinct, and made it into the delicate and redoubtable instrument it is. Before he had a thousand francs' worth

of anticaglie to his name he began to be known as an expert, and the big dealers were glad to consult him. But

Well, some fifteen years ago, in London, I ran across Neave at Christie's. He was the same little man we'd

known, effaced, bleached, indistinct, like a poor "impression" as unnoticeable as one of his own early

finds, yet, like them, with a quality, if one had an eye for it. He told me he still lived in Rome, and had

contrived, by fierce selfdenial, to get a few decent bits together "piecemeal, little by little, with fasting

He had run over to London for his annual "lookround" I fancy one or another of the big collectors

usually paid his journey and when we met he was on his way to see the Daunt collection. You know old

Daunt was a surly brute, and the things weren't easily seen; but he had heard Neave was in London, and had

sent yes, actually sent! for him to come and give his opinion on a few bits, including the Diana. The

little man bore himself discreetly, but you can imagine his pride. In his exultation he asked me to come with

him "Oh, I've the grandes et petites entrees, my dear fellow: I've made my conditions " and so it

For that collection was his fate: or, one may say, it was embodied in the Diana who was queen and goddess of

the realm. Yes I shall always be glad I was with Neave when he had his first look at the Diana. I see him

now, blinking at her through his white lashes, and stroking his seedy wisp of a moustache to hide a twitch of

the muscles. It was all very quiet, but it was the coup de foudre. I could see that by the way his hands

trembled when he turned away and began to examine the other things. You remember Neave's hands thin,

sallow, dry, with long inquisitive fingers thrown out like antennae? Whatever they hold bronze or lace,

hard enamel or brittle glass they have an air of conforming themselves to the texture of the thing, and

sucking out of it, by every fingertip, the mysterious essence it has secreted. Well, that day, as he moved

about among Daunt's treasures, the Diana followed him everywhere. He didn't look back at her he gave

himself to the business he was there for but whatever he touched, he felt her. And on the threshold he

turned and gave her his first free look the kind of look that says: "You're mine."

It amused me at the time the idea of little Neave making eyes at any of Daunt's belongings. He might as

well have coquetted with the Kohinoor. And the same idea seemed to strike him; for as we turned away from

the big house in Belgravia he glanced up at it and said, with a bitterness I'd never heard in him: "Good Lord!

To think of that lumpy fool having those things to handle! Did you notice his stupid stumps of fingers? I

suppose he blunted them gouging nuggets out of the gold fields. And in exchange for the nuggets he gets all

that in a year only has to hold out his callous palm to have that great ripe sphere of beauty drop into it!

That's my idea of heaven to have a great collection drop into one's hand, as success, or love, or any of the

big shining things, drop suddenly on some men. And I've had to worry along for nearly fifty years, saving and

paring, and haggling and intriguing, to get here a bit and there a bit and not one perfection in the lot! It's

The outbreak was so unlike Neave that I remember every word of it: remember, too, saying in answer: "But,

He stared a moment and smiled. "Have all that, and grope my way through it like a blind cave fish? What a

question! But the sense that it's always the blind fish that live in that kind of aquarium is what makes

anarchists, sir!" He looked back from the corner of the square, where we had paused while he delivered

himself of this remarkable metaphor. "God, I'd like to throw a bomb at that place, and be in at the looting!"

And with that, on the way home, he unpacked his grievance pulled the bandage off the wound, and

showed me the ugly mark it had made on his little white soul. It wasn't the struggling, stinting, selfdenying

that galled him it was the inadequacy of the result. It was, in short, the old tragedy of the discrepancy

between a man's wants and his power to gratify them. Neave's taste was too exquisite for his means was

like some strange, delicate, capricious animal, that he cherished and pampered and couldn't satisfy.

"Don't you know those little glittering lizards that die if they're not fed on some wonderful tropical fly? Well,

my taste's like that, with one important difference if it doesn't get its fly, it simply turns and feeds on me.

Oh, it doesn't die, my taste worse luck! It gets larger and stronger and more fastidious, and takes a bigger

That was all. Year by year, day by day, he had made himself into this delicate register of perceptions and

sensations as far above the ordinary human faculty of appreciation as some scientific registering

instrument is beyond the rough human senses only to find that the beauty which alone could satisfy him

was unattainable that he was never to know the last deep identification which only possession can give.

He had trained himself in short, to feel, in the rare great thing such an utterance of beauty as the Daunt

Diana, say a hundred elements of perfection, a hundred reasons why, imperceptible, inexplicable even, to

the average "artistic" sense; he had reached this point by a long austere process of discrimination and

rejection, the renewed great refusals of the intelligence which perpetually asks more, which will make no pact

with its self of yesterday, and is never to be beguiled from its purpose by the wiles of the nextbestthing.

Oh, it's a poignant case, but not a common one; for the nextbestthing usually wins. . .

You see, the worst of Neave's state was the fact of his not being a mere collector, even the collector raised to

his highest pitch of efficiency. The whole thing was blent in him with poetry his imagination had

romanticized the acquisitive instinct, as the religious feeling of the Middle Ages turned passion into love.

And yet his could never be the abstract enjoyment of the philosopher who says: "This or that object is really

mine because I'm capable of appreciating it." Neave wanted what he appreciated wanted it with his touch

It was hardly a year afterward that, coming back from a long tour in India, I picked up a London paper and

read the amazing headline: "Mr. Humphrey Neave buys the Daunt collection". . . I rubbed my eyes and read

again. Yes, it could only be our old friend Humphrey. "An American living in Rome . . . one of our most

discerning collectors"; there was no mistaking the description. I clapped on my hat and bolted out to see the

first dealer I could find; and there I had the incredible details. Neave had come into a fortune two or three

million dollars, amassed by an uncle who had a corsetfactory, and who had attained wealth as the creator of

the Mystic Superstraight. (Corsetfactory sounds odd, by the way, doesn't it? One had fancied that the

corset was a personal, a highly specialized garment, more or less shaped on the form it was to modify; but,

after all, the Tanagras were all made from two or three moulds and so, I suppose, are the ladies who wear

The uncle had a son, and Neave had never dreamed of seeing a penny of the money; but the son died

suddenly, and the father followed, leaving a codicil that gave everything to our friend. Humphrey had to go

out to "realize" on the corsetfactory; and his description of that . . . Well, he came back with his money in

his pocket, and the day he landed old Daunt went to smash. It all fitted in like a Chinese puzzle. I believe

Neave drove straight from Euston to Daunt House: at any rate, within two months the collection was his, and

I was in Rome the following spring, and you'd better believe I looked him up. A big porter glared at me from

the door of the Palazzo Neave: I had almost to produce my passport to get in. But that wasn't Neave's fault

the poor fellow was so beset by people clamouring to see his collection that he had to barricade himself,

literally. When I had mounted the state Scalone, and come on him, at the end of half a dozen echoing saloons,

in the farthest, smallest reduit of the vast suite, I received the same welcome that he used to give us in his

little den over the wine shop. "Well so you've got her?" I said. For I'd caught sight of the Diana in passing,

against the bluish blur of an old verdure just the background for her poised loveliness. Only I rather

"Had to? But you wanted to, didn't you? You used to say it was your idea of heaven to stretch out your

hand and have a great ripe sphere of beauty drop into it. I'm quoting your own words, by the way."

Neave blinked and stroked his seedy moustache. "Oh, yes. I remember the phrase. It's true it is the last

luxury." He paused, as if seeking a pretext for his lack of warmth. "The thing that bothered me was having to

He got up. "Come and take a look round. I want to show you two or three things new attributions I've

The interest of showing me the things seemed to dispel the vague apathy I had felt in him. He grew keen

again in detailing his redistribution of values, and above all in convicting old Daunt and his advisers of their

repeated aberrations of judgment. "The miracle is that he should have got such things, knowing as little as he

did what he was getting. And the egregious asses who bought for him were no better, were worse in fact,

since they had all sorts of humbugging wrong reasons for admiring what old Daunt simply coveted because it

Never had Neave had so wondrous a field for the exercise of his perfected faculty; and I saw then how in the

real, the great collector's appreciations the keenest scientific perception is suffused with imaginative

sensibility, and how it's to the latter undefinable quality that in the last resort he trusts himself.

Nevertheless, I still felt the shadow of that hovering apathy, and he knew I felt it, and was always breaking

off to give me reasons for it. For one thing, he wasn't used to his new quarters hated their bigness and

formality; then the requests to show his things drove him mad. "The women oh, the women!" he wailed,

and interrupted himself to describe a heavyfooted German Princess who had marched past his treasures as if

she were inspecting a cavalry regiment, applying an unmodulated Mugneeficent to everything from the

"Not that she was half as bad as the other kind," he added, as if with a last effort at optimism. "The kind who

discriminate and say: 'I'm not sure if it's Botticelli or Cellini I mean, but one of that school, at any rate.' And

the worst of all are the ones who know up to a certain point: have the schools, and the dates and the jargon

pat, and yet wouldn't know a Phidias if it stood where they hadn't expected it."

He had all my sympathy, poor Neave; yet these were trials inseparable from the collector's lot, and not always

without their secret compensations. Certainly they did not wholly explain my friend's attitude; and for a

moment I wondered if it were due to some strange disillusionment as to the quality of his treasures. But no!

the Daunt collection was almost above criticism; and as we passed from one object to another I saw there was

no mistaking the genuineness of Neave's pride in his possessions. The ripe sphere of beauty was his, and he

A year later came the amazing announcement the Daunt collection was for sale. At first we all supposed it

was a case of weeding out (though how old Daunt would have raged at the thought of anybody's weeding his

collection!) But no the catalogue corrected that idea. Every stick and stone was to go under the hammer.

The news ran like wildfire from Rome to Berlin, from Paris to London and New York. Was Neave ruined,

then? Wrong again the dealers nosed that out in no time. He was simply selling because he chose to sell;

But you may be sure the trade had found an answer to the riddle; and the answer was that, on close

inspection, Neave had found the collection less impeccable than he had supposed. It was a preposterous

answer but then there was no other. Neave, by this time, was pretty generally recognized as having the

subtlest flair of any collector in Europe, and if he didn't choose to keep the Daunt collection it could be only

In a flash this report had gone the rounds and the buyers were on their guard. I had run over to London to see

the thing through, and it was the queerest sale I ever was at. Some of the things held their own, but a lot

and a few of the best among them went for half their value. You see, they'd been locked up in old Daunt's

house for nearly twenty years, and hardly shown to any one, so that the whole younger generation of dealers

and collectors knew of them only by hearsay. Then you know the effect of suggestion in such cases. The

undefinable sense we were speaking of is a ticklish instrument, easily thrown out of gear by a sudden fall of

temperature; and the sharpest experts grow shy and selfdistrustful when the cold current of depreciation

touches them. The sale was a slaughter and when I saw the Daunt Diana fall at the wink of a little

For my part, I had never believed that Neave had sold the collection because he'd "found it out"; and within a

year my incredulity was justified. As soon as the things were put in circulation they were known for the

marvels they are. There was hardly a poor bit in the lot; and my wonder grew at Neave's madness. All over

Europe, dealers began to be fighting for the spoils; and all kinds of stuff were palmed off on the unsuspecting

Meanwhile, what was Neave doing? For a long time I didn't hear, and chance kept me from returning to

Rome. But one day, in Paris, I ran across a dealer who had captured for a song one of the best Florentine

bronzes in the Daunt collection a marvellous plaquette of Donatello's. I asked him what had become of it,

and he said with a grin: "I sold it the other day," naming a price that staggered me.

And he was, do you know and at prices that would have made a sane man shudder! A few weeks later I

ran across his tracks in London, where he was trying to get hold of a Penicaud enamel another of his

scattered treasures. Then I hunted him down at his hotel, and had it out with him.

He wouldn't tell me at first: stared and laughed and denied. But I took him off to dine, and after dinner, while

we smoked, I happened to mention casually that I had a pull over the man who had the Penicaud and at

"Yes, I'm buying them back, Finney it's true." He laughed nervously, twitching his moustache. And then

"You know how I'd hungered and thirsted for the real thing you quoted my own phrase to me once, about

the 'ripe sphere of beauty.' So when I got my money, and Daunt lost his, almost at the same moment, I saw

the hand of Providence in it. I knew that, even if I'd been younger, and had more time, I could never hope,

nowadays, to form such a collection as that. There was the ripe sphere, within reach; and I took it. But when I

got it, and began to live with it, I found out my mistake. It was a mariage de convenance there'd been no

wooing, no winning. Each of my little old bits the rubbish I chucked out to make room for Daunt's glories

had its own personal history, the drama of my relation to it, of the discovery, the struggle, the capture, the

first divine moment of possession. There was a romantic secret between us. And then I had absorbed its

beauties one by one, they had become a part of my imagination, they held me by a hundred threads of

farreaching association. And suddenly I had expected to create this kind of intense personal tie between

myself and a roomful of new cold alien presences things staring at me vacantly from the depths of

unknown pasts! Can you fancy a more preposterous hope? Why, my other things, my own things, had wooed

me as passionately as I wooed them: there was a certain little bronze, a little Venus Callipyge, who had drawn

me, drawn me, drawn me, imploring me to rescue her from her unspeakable surroundings in a vulgar

bricabrac shop at Biarritz, where she shrank out of sight among sham Sevres and Dutch silver, as one has

seen certain women rare, shy, exquisite made almost invisible by the vulgar splendours surrounding

them. Well! that little Venus, who was just a specious seventeenth century attempt at the 'antique,' but who

had penetrated me with her pleading grace, touched me by the easily guessed story of her obscure,

anonymous origin, was more to me imaginatively yes! more than the cold bought beauty of the Daunt

He smiled contemptuously. "A professional beauty, my dear fellow expected every head to be turned

"Yes, I know. You're thinking of what we felt that day we first saw her in London. Many a poor devil has

sold his soul as the result of such a first sight! Well, I sold her instead. Do you want the truth about her? Elle

"And so you're impenitent?" I paused. "And yet you're buying some of the things back?"

Neave laughed again, ironically. "I knew you'd find me out and call me to account. Well, yes: I'm buying

back." He stood before me half sheepish, half defiant. "I'm buying back because there's nothing else as good

in the market. And because I've a queer feeling that, this time, they'll be mine. But I'm ruining myself at the

It was true: Neave was ruining himself. And he's gone on ruining himself ever since, till now the job's nearly

done. Bit by bit, year by year, he has gathered in his scattered treasures, at higher prices than the dealers ever

dreamed of getting. There are fabulous details in the story of his quest. Now and then I ran across him, and

was able to help him recover a fragment; and it was wonderful to see his delight in the moment of reunion.

Finally, about two years ago, we met in Paris, and he told me he had got back all the important pieces except

"Didn't care?" He leaned across the restaurant table that divided us. "Well, no, in a sense I didn't. I wanted her

to want me, you see; and she didn't then! Whereas now she's crying to me to come to her. You know where

Yes, I knew: in the centre of Mrs. Willy P. Goldmark's yellow and gold drawingroom, under a

thousandcandlepower chandelier, with reflectors aimed at her from every point of the compass. I had seen

her wincing and shivering there in her outraged nudity at one of the Goldmark "crushes."

Well, last month I was in Rome, for the first time in six or seven years, and of course I looked about for

Neave. The Palazzo Neave was let to some rich Russians, and the splendid new porter didn't know where the

proprietor lived. But I got on his trail easily enough, and it led me to a strange old place in the Trastevere, an

ancient crevassed black palace turned tenement house, and fluttering with pauper clotheslines. I found

Neave under the leads, in two or three cold rooms that smelt of the cuisine of all his neighbours: a poor

shrunken little figure, seedier and shabbier than ever, yet more alive than when we had made the tour of his

The collection was around him again, not displayed in tall cabinets and on marble tables, but huddled on

shelves, perched on chairs, crammed in corners, putting the gleam of bronze, the opalescence of old glass, the

pale lustre of marble, into all the angles of his low dim rooms. There they were, the proud presences that had

stared at him down the vistas of Daunt House, and shone in cold transplanted beauty under his own painted

cornices: there they were, gathered in humble promiscuity about his bent shabby figure, like superb wild

As we went from bit to bit, as he lifted one piece after another, and held it to the light of his low windows, I

saw in his hands the same tremor of sensation that I had noticed when he first examined the same objects at

Daunt House. All his life was in his fingertips, and it seemed to communicate life to the exquisite things he

touched. But you'll think me infected by his mysticism if I tell you they gained new beauty while he held

We went the rounds slowly and reverently; and then, when I supposed our inspection was over, and was

turning to take my leave, he opened a door I had not noticed, and showed me into a slit of a room beyond. It

was a mere monastic cell, scarcely large enough for his narrow iron bed and the chest which probably held

his few clothes; but there, in a niche of the bare wall, facing the foot of the bed there stood the Daunt

I gasped at the sight and turned to him; and he looked back at me without speaking.

He smiled as if from the depths of some secret rapture. "Call it magic, if you like; but I ruined myself doing

I stared at him in silence, breathless with the madness and the wonder of it; and suddenly, red to the ears, he

flung out his boyish confession. "I lied to you that day in London the day I said I didn't care for her. I

always cared always worshipped always wanted her. But she wasn't mine then, and I knew it, and she

knew it . . . and now at last we understand each other." He looked at me shyly, and then glanced about the

bare cold cell. "The setting isn't worthy of her, I know; she was meant for glories I can't give her; but

beautiful things, my dear Finney, like beautiful spirits, live in houses not made with hands. . ."

His face shone with extraordinary sweetness as he spoke; and I saw he'd got hold of the secret we're all after.

No, the setting isn't worthy of her, if you like. The rooms are as shabby and mean as those we used to see him

in years ago over the wine shop. I'm not sure they're not shabbier and meaner. But she rules there at last, she

shines and hovers there above him, and there at night, I doubt not, steals down from her cloud to give him the

I YOU remember it's not so long ago the talk there was about Dredge's "Arrival of the Fittest"? The

talk has subsided, but the book of course remains: stands up, in fact, as the tallest thing of its kind since

I'm not wrong, at any rate, in calling it the most important contribution yet made to the development of the

Darwinian theory, or rather to the solution of the awkward problem about which that theory has had to make

such a circuit. Dredge's hypothesis will be contested, may one day be disproved; but at least it has swept out

of the way all previous conjectures, including of course Lanfear's magnificent attempt; and for our generation

of scientific investigators it will serve as the first safe bridge across a murderous black whirlpool.

It's all very interesting there are few things more stirring to the imagination than that sudden projection of

the new hypothesis, light as a cobweb and strong as steel, across the intellectual abyss; but, for an idle

observer of human motives, the other, the personal, side of Dredge's case is even more interesting and

Personal side? You didn't know there was one? Pictured him simply as a thinking machine, a highly

specialized instrument of precision, the result of a long series of "adaptations," as his own jargon would put

it? Well, I don't wonder if you've met him. He does give the impression of being something out of his own

laboratory: a delicate scientific instrument that reveals wonders to the initiated, and is absolutely useless in an

In his youth it was just the other way. I knew him twenty years ago, as an awkward lout whom young Archie

Lanfear had picked up at college, and brought home for a visit. I happened to be staying at the Lanfears' when

the boys arrived, and I shall never forget Dredge's first appearance on the scene. You know the Lanfears

always lived very simply. That summer they had gone to Buzzard's Bay, in order that Professor Lanfear

might be near the Biological Station at Wood's Holl, and they were picnicking in a kind of sketchy bungalow

without any attempt at elegance. But Galen Dredge couldn't have been more awestruck if he'd been

suddenly plunged into a Fifth Avenue ballroom. He nearly knocked his shock head against the low

doorway, and in dodging this peril trod heavily on Mabel Lanfear's foot, and became hopelessly entangled in

her mother's draperies though how he managed it I never knew, for Mrs. Lanfear's dowdy muslins ran to

When the Professor himself came in it was ten times worse, and I saw then that Dredge's emotion was a

tribute to the great man's proximity. That made the boy interesting, and I began to watch. Archie, always

enthusiastic but vague, had said: "Oh, he's a tremendous chap you'll see " but I hadn't expected to see

quite so clearly. Lanfear's vision, of course, was sharper than mine; and the next morning he had carried

Dredge is the son of a Baptist minister. He comes from East Lethe, New York State, and was working his

way through college waiting at White Mountain hotels in summer when Archie Lanfear ran across

him. There were eight children in the family, and the mother was an invalid. Dredge never had a penny from

his father after he was fourteen; but his mother wanted him to be a scholar, and "kept at him," as he put it, in

the hope of his going back to "teach school" at East Lethe. He developed slowly, as the scientific mind

generally does, and was still adrift about himself and his tendencies when Archie took him down to Buzzard's

Bay. But he had read Lanfear's "Utility and Variation," and had always been a patient and curious observer of

nature. And his first meeting with Lanfear explained him to himself. It didn't, however, enable him to explain

himself to others, and for a long time he remained, to all but Lanfear, an object of incredulity and conjecture.

" Why my husband wants him about " poor Mrs. Lanfear, the kindest of women, privately lamented to her

friends; for Dredge, at that time they kept him all summer at the bungalow had one of the most

encumbering personalities you can imagine. He was as inexpressive as he is today, and yet oddly obtrusive:

The poor Lanfears almost died of him that summer, and the pity of it was that he never suspected it, but

continued to lavish on them a floundering devotion as uncomfortable as the endearments of a dripping dog

all out of gratitude for the Professor's kindness! He was full, in those days, of raw enthusiasms, which he

forced on any one who would listen when his first shyness had worn off. You can't picture him spouting

sentimental poetry, can you? Yet I've seen him petrify a whole group of Mrs. Lanfear's callers by suddenly

discharging on them, in the strident drawl of Western New York, "Barbara Frietchie" or "The Queen of the

May." His taste in literature was uniformly bad, but very definite, and far more assertive than his views on

biological questions. In his scientific judgments he showed, even then, a remarkable temperance, a

precocious openness to the opposite view; but in literature he was a furious propagandist, aggressive,

Lanfear, of course, had been struck from the first by his gift of accurate observation, and by the fact that his

eagerness to learn was offset by his reluctance to conclude. I remember Lanfear's telling me that he had never

known a lad of Dredge's age who gave such promise of uniting an aptitude for general ideas with the

plodding patience of the accumulator of facts. Of course when Lanfear talked like that of a young biologist

his fate was sealed. There could be no question of Dredge's going back to "teach school" at East Lethe. He

must take a course in biology at Columbia, spend his vacations at the Wood's Holl laboratory, and then, if

All this meant his virtual adoption by the Lanfears. Most of Lanfear's fortune went in helping young students

"Dredge will be my biggest dividend you'll see!" he used to say, in the chrysalis days when poor Galen

was known to the world of science only as a perpetual slouching presence in Mrs. Lanfear's drawingroom.

And Dredge, it must be said, took his obligations simply, with that kind of personal dignity, and quiet sense

of his own worth, which in such cases saves the beneficiary from abjectness. He seemed to trust himself as

The comic part of it was that his only idea of making what is known as "a return" was to devote himself to the

Professor's family. When I hear pretty women lamenting that they can't coax Professor Dredge out of his

laboratory I remember Mabel Lanfear's cry to me: "If Galen would only keep away!" When Mabel fell on the

ice and broke her leg, Galen walked seven miles in a blizzard to get a surgeon; but if he did her this service

one day in the year, he bored her by being in the way for the other three hundred and sixtyfour. One would

have imagined at that time that he thought his perpetual presence the greatest gift he could bestow; for, except

on the occasion of his fetching the surgeon, I don't remember his taking any other way of expressing his

In love with Mabel? Not a bit! But the queer thing was that he did have a passion in those days a blind,

hopeless passion for Mrs. Lanfear! Yes: I know what I'm saying. I mean Mrs. Lanfear, the Professor's wife,

poor Mrs. Lanfear, with her tight hair and her loose figure, her blameless brow and earnest eyeglasses, and

her perpetual attitude of mild misapprehension. I can see Dredge cowering, long and manyjointed, in a

diminutive drawingroom chair, one squaretoed shoe coiled round an exposed ankle, his knees clasped in a

knot of red knuckles, and his spectacles perpetually seeking Mrs. Lanfear's eyeglasses. I never knew if the

poor lady was aware of the sentiment she inspired, but her children observed it, and it provoked them to

irreverent mirth. Galen was the predestined butt of Mabel and Archie; and secure in their mother's virtuous

obtuseness, and in her worshipper's timidity, they allowed themselves a latitude of banter that sometimes

turned their audience cold. Dredge meanwhile was going on obstinately with his work. Now and then he had

queer fits of idleness, when he lapsed into a state of sulky inertia from which even Lanfear's admonitions

could not rouse him. Once, just before an examination, he suddenly went off to the Maine woods for two

weeks, came back, and failed to pass. I don't know if his benefactor ever lost hope; but at times his

confidence must have been sorely strained. The queer part of it was that when Dredge emerged from these

eclipses he seemed keener and more active than ever. His slowly growing intelligence probably needed its

At last Dredge finished his course and went to Germany; and when he came back he was a new man was,

in fact, the Dredge we all know. He seemed to have shed his blundering, encumbering personality, and come

to life as a disembodied intelligence. His fidelity to the Lanfears was unchanged; but he showed it negatively,

by his discretions and abstentions. I have an idea that Mabel was less disposed to deride him, might even

have been induced to softer sentiments; but I doubt if Dredge even noticed the change. As for his

exgoddess, he seemed to regard her as a motherly household divinity, the guardian genius of the darning

needle; but on Professor Lanfear he looked with a deepening reverence. If the rest of the family had

FROM that day Dredge's progress continued steadily. If not always perceptible to the untrained eye, in

Lanfear's sight it never deviated, and the great man began to associate Dredge with his work, and to lean on

him more and more. Lanfear's health was already failing, and in my confidential talks with him I saw how he

counted on Galen Dredge to continue and amplify his doctrine. If he did not describe the young man as his

predestined Huxley, it was because any such comparison between himself and his great predecessors would

have been repugnant to his taste; but he evidently felt that it would be Dredge's role to reveal him to posterity.

And the young man seemed at that time to take the same view of his calling. When he was not busy about

Lanfear's work he was recording their conversations with the diligence of a biographer and the accuracy of a

naturalist. Any attempt to question or minimize Lanfear's theories roused in his disciple the only flashes of

wrath I have ever seen a scientific discussion provoke in him. In defending his master he became almost as

Such filial dedication must have been all the more precious to Lanfear because, about that time, it became

evident that Archie would never carry on his father's work. He had begun brilliantly, you may remember, by

a little paper on Limulus Polyphemus that attracted a good deal of notice when it appeared in the Central

Blatt; but gradually his zoological ardour yielded to an absorbing passion for the violin, which was followed

by a sudden plunge into physics. At present, after a sideglance at the drama, I understand he's devoting what

"Archie's got a delightful little mind," Lanfear used to say to me, rather wistfully, "but it's just a highly

polished surface held up to the show as it passes. Dredge's mind takes in only a bit at a time, but the bit stays,

and other bits are joined to it, in a hard mosaic of fact, of which imagination weaves the pattern. I saw just

how it would be years ago, when my boy used to take my meaning in a flash, and answer me with clever

objections, while Galen disappeared into one of his fathomless silences, and then came to the surface like a

dripping retriever, a long way beyond Archie's objections, and with an answer to them in his mouth."

It was about this time that the crowning satisfaction of Lanfear's career came to him: I mean, of course, John

Weyman's gift to Columbia of the Lanfear Laboratory, and the founding, in connection with it, of a chair of

Experimental Evolution. Weyman had always taken an interest in Lanfear's work, but no one had supposed

that his interest would express itself so magnificently. The honour came to Lanfear at a time when he was

fighting an accumulation of troubles: failing health, the money difficulties resulting from his irrepressible

generosity, his disappointment about Archie's career, and perhaps also the persistent attacks of the new

"If I hadn't Galen I should feel the game was up," he said to me once, in a fit of halfreal, halfmocking

despondency. "But he'll do what I haven't time to do myself, and what my boy can't do for me."

That meant that he would answer the critics, and triumphantly affirm Lanfear's theory, which had been rudely

"A scientific hypothesis lasts till there's something else to put in its place. People who want to get across a

river will use the old bridge till the new one's built. And I don't see any one who's particularly anxious, in this

case, to take a contract for the new one," Lanfear ended; and I remember answering with a laugh: "Not while

It was generally known that Lanfear had not long to live, and the Laboratory was hardly opened before the

question of his successor in the chair of Experimental Evolution began to be a matter of public discussion. It

was conceded that whoever followed him ought to be a man of achieved reputation, some one carrying, as the

French say, a considerable "baggage." At the same time, even Lanfear's critics felt that he should be

succeeded by a man who held his views and would continue his teaching. This was not in itself a difficulty,

for German criticism had so far been mainly negative, and there were plenty of good men who, while they

questioned the permanent validity of Lanfear's conclusions, were yet ready to accept them for their

provisional usefulness. And then there was the added inducement of the Laboratory! The Columbia Professor

of Experimental Evolution has at his disposal the most complete instrument of biological research that

modern ingenuity has yet produced; and it's not only in theology or politics que Paris vaut bien une messe!

There was no trouble about finding a candidate; but the whole thing turned on Lanfear's decision, since it was

tacitly understood that, by Weyman's wish, he was to select his successor. And what a cry there was when he

Not in the scientific world, though. The specialists were beginning to know about Dredge. His remarkable

paper on Sexual Dimorphism had been translated into several languages, and a furious polemic had broken

out over it. When a young fellow can get the big men fighting over him his future is pretty well assured. But

Dredge was only thirtyfour, and some people seemed to feel that there was a kind of deflected nepotism in

"If he could choose Dredge he might as well have chosen his own son," I've heard it said; and the irony was

that Archie will you believe it? actually thought so himself! But Lanfear had Weyman behind him, and

when the end came the Faculty at once appointed Galen Dredge to the chair of Experimental Evolution.

For the first two years things went quietly, along accustomed lines. Dredge simply continued the course

which Lanfear's death had interrupted. He lectured well even then, with a persuasive simplicity surprising in

the slow, inarticulate creature one knew him for. But haven't you noticed that certain personalities reveal

themselves only in the more impersonal relations of life? It's as if they woke only to collective contacts, and

If there was anything to criticize in that first part of the course, it was the avoidance of general ideas, of those

brilliant rockets of conjecture that Lanfear's students were used to seeing him fling across the darkness. I

remember once saying this to Archie, who, having recovered from his absurd disappointment, had returned to

"Oh, that's Galen all over. He doesn't want to jump into the ring till he has a big swishing knockdown

argument in his fist. He'll wait twenty years if he has to. That's his strength: he's never afraid to wait."

I thought this shrewd of Archie, as well as generous; and I saw the wisdom of Dredge's course. As Lanfear

himself had said, his theory was safe enough till somebody found a more attractive one; and before that day

Dredge would probably have accumulated sufficient proof to crystallize the fluid hypothesis. III

THE third winter I was off collecting in Central America, and didn't get back till Dredge's course had been

going for a couple of months. The very day I turned up in town Archie Lanfear descended on me with a

I found the Lanfear ladies in a state of incoherent distress, which Archie's own indignation hardly made more

intelligible. But gradually I put together their fragmentary charges, and learned that Dredge's lectures were

"It amounts to just this," Archie said, controlling his women with the masterful gesture of the weak man.

"Just for a handful of silver he left us," Mabel sobbed in parenthesis, while Mrs. Lanfear tearfully cited

Archie silenced them again. "The ugly part of it is that he must have had this up his sleeve for years. He must

have known when he was asked to succeed my father what use he meant to make of his opportunity. What

he's doing isn't the result of a hasty conclusion: it means years of work and preparation."

Archie broke off to explain himself. He had returned from Europe the week before, and had learned on

arriving that Dredge's lectures were stirring the world of science as nothing had stirred it since Lanfear's

"Utility and Variation." And the incredible outrage was that they owed their sensational effect to the fact of

I own that I was staggered: the case looked ugly, as Archie said. And there was a veil of reticence, of secrecy,

about Dredge, that always kept his conduct in a halflight of uncertainty. Of some men one would have said

Archie hadn't seen him as yet; and Mrs. Lanfear had sent for me because she wished me to be present at the

interview between the two men. The Lanfear ladies had a touching belief in Archie's violence: they thought

him as terrible as a natural force. My own idea was that if there were any broken bones they wouldn't be

Dredge's; but I was too curious as to the outcome not to be glad to offer my services as moderator.

First, however, I wanted to hear one of the lectures; and I went the next afternoon. The hall was jammed, and

I saw, as soon as Dredge appeared, what increased security and ease the interest of his public had given him.

He had been clear the year before, now he was also eloquent. The lecture was a remarkable effort: you'll find

the gist of it in Chapter VII of "The Arrival of the Fittest." Archie sat at my side in a white rage; he was too

clever not to measure the extent of the disaster. And I was almost as indignant as he when we went to see

I saw at a glance that the latter suspected nothing; and it was characteristic of him that he began by

questioning me about my finds, and only afterward turned to reproach Archie for having been back a week

"You know I'm up to my neck in this job. Why in the world didn't you hunt me up before this?"

The question was exasperating, and I could understand Archie's stammer of wrath.

"Hunt you up? Hunt you up? What the deuce are you made of, to ask me such a question instead of

Dredge bent his slow calm scrutiny on his friend's quivering face; then he turned to me.

"The matter?" shrieked Archie, his clenched fist hovering excitedly above the desk by which he stood; but

"Careful I've got a Kallima in that jar there." He pushed a chair forward, and added quietly: "Sit down."

Archie, ignoring the gesture, towered pale and avenging in his place; and Dredge, after a moment, took the

"The matter?" Archie reiterated with rising passion. "Are you so lost to all sense of decency and honour that

you can put that question in good faith? Don't you really know what's the matter?"

"Oh, damn your scientific hairsplitting! Don't you know you're insulting my father's memory?" Dredge

"Oh, that's it, is it? Then you'd better sit down. If you don't see at once it'll take some time to make you."

"Sit down, Archie," I said, setting the example; and he obeyed, with a gesture that made his consent a protest.

Dredge seemed to notice nothing beyond the fact that his visitors were seated. He reached for his pipe, and

filled it with the care which the habit of delicate manipulations gave to all the motions of his long, knotty

"It was not necessary to hear even that one. You must know the talk they're making. If notoriety is what

"Well, I'm not sorry to make a noise," said Dredge, putting a match to his pipe.

Archie bounded in his chair. "There's no easier way of doing it than to attack a man who can't answer you!"

Dredge raised a sobering hand. "Hold on. Perhaps you and I don't mean the same thing. Tell me first what's in

The request steadied Archie, who turned on Dredge a countenance really eloquent with filial indignation.

"It's an odd question for you to ask; it makes me wonder what's in yours. Not much thought of my father, at

any rate, or you couldn't stand in his place and use the chance he's given you to push yourself at his expense."

"Well, not precisely: I think what he really feels is that, if your convictions didn't permit you to continue his

father's teaching, you might perhaps have done better to sever your connection with the Lanfear lectureship."

"Then you and he regard the Lanfear lectureship as having been founded to perpetuate a dogma, not to try

"Certainly not," Archie broke in. "But there's a question of taste, of delicacy, involved in the case that can't be

decided on abstract principles. We know as well as you that my father meant the laboratory and the

lectureship to serve the ends of science, at whatever cost to his own special convictions; what we feel and

you don't seem to is that you're the last man to put them to that use; and I don't want to remind you why."

A slight redness rose through Dredge's sallow skin. "You needn't," he said. "It's because he pulled me out of

my hole, woke me up, made me, shoved me off from the shore. Because he saved me ten or twenty years of

muddled effort, and put me where I am at an age when my best working years are still ahead of me. Every

one knows that's what your father did for me, but I'm the only person who knows the time and trouble that it

It was well said, and I glanced quickly at Archie, who was never closed to generous emotions.

"Well, then," Dredge continued, his voice deepening and losing its nasal edge, "I had to pay him back, didn't

The sudden drop flung Archie back on his prepared attitude of irony. "It would be the natural inference

"Just so. And I'm not so very different. I knew your father wanted a successor some one who'd try and tie

Dredge paused to relight his pipe. "Looks that way," he conceded. "This year anyhow."

"Yes. When I took up the job I saw it just as your father left it. Or rather, I didn't see any other way of going

"Gradually? So that you had time to look round you, to know where you were, to see you were fatally

committed to undoing the work he had done?" "Oh, yes I had time," Dredge conceded.

Dredge refilled his pipe, and then turned in his seat so that he looked squarely at Archie.

"Yes: supposing he'd found out the things I've found out in the last year or two. You'll see what they are, and

how much they count, if you'll run over the report of the lectures. If your father'd been alive he might have

There was a silence which Archie at last broke by saying: "But he didn't, and you did. There's the difference."

"The difference? What difference? Would your father have suppressed the facts if he'd found them? It's you

who insult his memory by implying it! And if I'd brought them to him, would he have used his hold over me

"Certainly not. But can't you see it's his death that makes the difference? He's not here to defend his case."

Dredge laughed, but not unkindly. "My dear Archie, your father wasn't one of the kind who bother to defend

their case. Men like him are the masters, not the servants, of their theories. They respect an idea only as long

as it's of use to them; when it's usefulness ends they chuck it out. And that's what your father would have

Archie reddened. "Don't you assume a good deal in taking it for granted that he would have had to in this

Dredge reflected. Yes: I was going too far. Each of us can only answer for himself. But to my mind your

"Should I have been of any use if I had? And did your father ever ask anything of me but to be of as much

It was Archie's turn to reflect. "No. That was what he always wanted, of course."

"That's the way I've always felt. The first day he took me away from East Lethe I knew the debt I was piling

up against him, and I never had any doubt as to how I'd pay it, or how he'd want it paid. He didn't pick me out

and train me for any object but to carry on the light. Do you suppose he'd have wanted me to snuff it out

because it happened to light up a fact he didn't fancy? I'm using his oil to feed my torch with: yes, but it isn't

really his torch or mine, or his oil or mine: they belong to each of us till we drop and hand them on."

Archie turned a sobered glance on him. "I see your point. But if the job had to be done I don't see that you

"There's where we differ. If I did it at all I had to do it in the best way, and with all the authority his backing

gave me. If I owe your father anything, I owe him that. It would have made him sick to see the job badly

done. And don't you see that the way to honour him, and show what he's done for science, was to spare no

advantage in my attack on him that I'm proving the strength of his position by the desperateness of my

assault?" Dredge paused and squared his lounging shoulders. "After all," he added, "he's not down yet, and if

I leave him standing I guess it'll be some time before anybody else cares to tackle him."

There was a silence between the two men; then Dredge continued in a lighter tone: "There's one thing,

though, that we're both in danger of forgetting: and that is how little, in the long run, it all counts either way."

He smiled a little at Archie's outraged gesture. "The most we can any of us do even by such a magnificent

effort as your father's is to turn the great marching army a hair's breadth nearer what seems to us the right

direction; if one of us drops out, here and there, the loss of headway's hardly perceptible. And that's what I'm

He rose from his seat, and walked across to the hearth; then, cautiously resting his shoulderblades against

the mantelshelf jammed with miscellaneous specimens, he bent his musing spectacles on Archie.

"Your father would have understood why I've done, what I'm doing; but that's no reason why the rest of you

should. And I rather think it's the rest of you who've suffered most from me. He always knew what I was

there for, and that must have been some comfort even when I was most in the way; but I was just an ordinary

nuisance to you and your mother and Mabel. You were all too kind to let me see it at the time, but I've seen it

since, and it makes me feel that, after all, the settling of this matter lies with you. If it hurts you to have me go

on with my examination of your father's theory, I'm ready to drop the lectures tomorrow, and trust to the

Lanfear Laboratory to breed up a young chap who'll knock us both out in time. You've only got to say the

There was a pause while Dredge turned and laid his extinguished pipe carefully between a jar of embryo

GEOFFREY BETTON woke rather late so late that the winter sunlight sliding across his warm red carpet

Strett, the valet, had been in, drawn the bath in the adjoining dressingroom, placed the crystal and silver

cigarettebox at his side, put a match to the fire, and thrown open the windows to the bright morning air. It

brought in, on the glitter of sun, all the shrill crisp morning noises those piercing notes of the American

thoroughfare that seem to take a sharper vibration from the clearness of the medium through which they pass.

Betton raised himself languidly. That was the voice of Fifth Avenue below his windows. He remembered that

when he moved into his rooms eighteen months before, the sound had been like music to him: the complex

orchestration to which the tune of his new life was set. Now it filled him with horror and weariness, since it

had become the symbol of the hurry and noise of that new life. He had been far less hurried in the old days

when he had to be up by seven, and down at the office sharp at nine. Now that he got up when he chose, and

his life had no fixed framework of duties, the hours hunted him like a pack of bloodhounds.

He dropped back on his pillows with a groan. Yes not a year ago there had been a positively sensuous joy

in getting out of bed, feeling under his bare feet the softness of the sunlit carpet, and entering the shining tiled

sanctuary where his great porcelain bath proffered its renovating flood. But then a year ago he could still call

up the horror of the communal plunge at his earlier lodgings: the listening for other bathers, the dodging of

shrouded ladies in "crimping"pins, the cold wait on the landing, the reluctant descent into a blotchy tin bath,

and the effort to identify one's soap and nailbrush among the promiscuous implements of ablution. That

memory had faded now, and Betton saw only the dark hours to which his blue and white temple of

refreshment formed a kind of glittering antechamber. For after his bath came his breakfast, and on the

He remembered and that memory had not faded! the thrill with which he had opened the first missive

in a strange feminine hand: the letter beginning: "I wonder if you'll mind an unknown reader's telling you all

Mind? Ye gods, he minded now! For more than a year after the publication of "Diadems and Faggots" the

letters, the inane indiscriminate letters of condemnation, of criticism, of interrogation, had poured in on him

by every post. Hundreds of unknown readers had told him with unsparing detail all that his book had been to

them. And the wonder of it was, when all was said and done, that it had really been so little that when

their thick broth of praise was strained through the author's anxious vanity there remained to him so small a

sediment of definite specific understanding! No it was always the same thing, over and over and over

again the same vague gush of adjectives, the same incorrigible tendency to estimate his effort according to

each writer's personal preferences, instead of regarding it as a work of art, a thing to be measured by

He smiled to think how little, at first, he had felt the vanity of it all. He had found a savour even in the grosser

evidences of popularity: the advertisements of his book, the daily shower of "clippings," the sense that, when

he entered a restaurant or a theatre, people nudged each other and said "That's Betton." Yes, the publicity had

been sweet to him at first. He had been touched by the sympathy of his fellowmen: had thought

indulgently of the world, as a better place than the failures and the dyspeptics would acknowledge. And then

his success began to submerge him: he gasped under the thickening shower of letters. His admirers were

really unappeasable. And they wanted him to do such preposterous things to give lectures, to head

movements, to be tendered receptions, to speak at banquets, to address mothers, to plead for orphans, to go up

in balloons, to lead the struggle for sterilized milk. They wanted his photograph for literary supplements, his

autograph for charity bazaars, his name on committees, literary, educational, and social; above all, they

wanted his opinion on everything: on Christianity, Buddhism, tight lacing, the drughabit, democratic

government, female suffrage and love. Perhaps the chief benefit of this demand was his incidentally learning

from it how few opinions he really had: the only one that remained with him was a rooted horror of all forms

of correspondence. He had been unutterably thankful when the letters began to fall off.

"Diadems and Faggots" was now two years old, and the moment was at hand when its author might have

counted on regaining the blessed shelter of oblivion if only he had not written another book! For it was the

worst part of his plight that his first success had goaded him to the perpetration of this particular folly that

one of the incentives (hideous thought!) to his new work had been the desire to extend and perpetuate his

popularity. And this very week the book was to come out, and the letters, the cursed letters, would begin

Wistfully, almost plaintively, he contemplated the breakfasttray with which Strett presently appeared. It

bore only two notes and the morning journals, but he knew that within the week it would groan under its

A hundred and fifty thousand volumes! And an average of three readers to each! Half a million of people

would be reading him within a week, and every one of them would write to him, and their friends and

The two notes looked harmless enough, and the calligraphy of one was vaguely familiar. He opened the

envelope and looked at the signature: Duncan Vyse. He had not seen the name in years what on earth

could Duncan Vyse have to say? He ran over the page and dropped it with a wondering exclamation, which

"Nothing. Yes that is " Betton picked up the note. "There's a gentleman, a Mr. Vyse, coming to see me

Strett glanced at the clock. "Yes, sir. You'll remember that ten was the hour you appointed for the secretaries

As he got into them, in the state of irritable hurry that had become almost chronic with him, he continued to

think about Duncan Vyse. They had seen a lot of each other for the few years after both had left Harvard: the

hard happy years when Betton had been grinding at his business and Vyse poor devil! trying to write.

The novelist recalled his friend's attempts with a smile; then the memory of one small volume came back to

him. It was a novel: "The Lifted Lamp." There was stuff in that, certainly. He remembered Vyse's tossing it

down on his table with a gesture of despair when it came back from the last publisher. Betton, taking it up

indifferently, had sat riveted till daylight. When he ended, the impression was so strong that he said to

himself: "I'll tell Apthorn about it I'll go and see him tomorrow." His own secret literary yearnings gave

him a passionate desire to champion Vyse, to see him triumph over the ignorance and timidity of the

publishers. Apthorn was the youngest of the guild, still capable of opinions and the courage of them, a

personal friend of Betton's, and, as it happened, the man afterward to become known as the privileged

publisher of "Diadems and Faggots." Unluckily the next day something unexpected turned up, and Betton

forgot about Vyse and his manuscript. He continued to forget for a month, and then came a note from Vyse,

who was ill, and wrote to ask what his friend had done. Betton did not like to say "I've done nothing," so he

The following day he was called to the West on business, and was gone a month. When he came back, there

was another note from Vyse, who was still ill, and desperately hard up. "I'll take anything for the book, if

they'll advance me two hundred dollars." Betton, full of compunction, would gladly have advanced the sum

himself; but he was hard up too, and could only swear inwardly: "I'll write to Apthorn." Then he glanced

again at the manuscript, and reflected: "No there are things in it that need explaining. I'd better see him."

Once he went so far as to telephone Apthorn, but the publisher was out. Then he finally and completely

One Sunday he went out of town, and on his return, rummaging among the papers on his desk, he missed

"The Lifted Lamp," which had been gathering dust there for half a year. What the deuce could have become

of it? Betton spent a feverish hour in vainly increasing the disorder of his documents, and then bethought

himself of calling the maidservant, who first indignantly denied having touched anything ("I can see that's

true from the dust," Betton scathingly interjected), and then mentioned with hauteur that a young lady had

Vyse, of course Vyse had sent her for his manuscript! He was always mixed up with some woman, and it

was just like him to send the girl of the moment to Betton's lodgings, with instructions to force the door in his

absence. Vyse had never been remarkable for delicacy. Betton, furious, glanced over his table to see if any of

his own effects were missing one couldn't tell, with the company Vyse kept! and then dismissed the

matter from his mind, with a vague sense of magnanimity in doing so. He felt himself exonerated by Vyse's

The sense of magnanimity was still uppermost when the valet opened the door to announce "Mr. Vyse," and

His first thought was that the man facing him from the hearthrug was the very Duncan Vyse of old: small,

starved, bleachedlooking, with the same sidelong movements, the same queer air of anaemic truculence.

Betton lowered himself luxuriously into one of his vast Maple armchairs. He had grown stouter in the last

year, and the cushion behind him fitted comfortably into the crease of his nape. As he leaned back he caught

sight of his image in the mirror between the windows, and reflected uneasily that Vyse would not find him

"Oh, perfectly." Betton laughed apologetically. "Only well, the fact is, you may not understand what

rubbish a secretary of mine would have to deal with. In advertising for one I never imagined I didn't aspire

Betton's affable gesture protested. "My dear fellow . You see it's not business what I'm in now," he

Vyse's thin lips seemed to form a noiseless " Isn't it?" which they instantly transposed into the audibly reply:

"I inferred from your advertisement that you want some one to relieve you in your literary work. Dictation,

"Well, no: not that either. I type my own things. What I'm looking for is somebody who won't be above

Betton began to feel a vague embarrassment. He had supposed that such a proposal would be instantly

rejected. "It would be only for an hour or two a day if you're doing any writing of your own?" he threw

"No. I've given all that up. I'm in an office now business. But it doesn't take all my time, or pay enough to

"In that case, my dear fellow if you could come every morning; but it's mostly awful bosh, you know,"

"Well, that depends " Betton sketched the obligatory smile. "But I was thinking of the letters you'll have

to answer. Letters about my books, you know I've another one appearing next week. And I want to be

beforehand now dam the flood before it swamps me. Have you any idea of the deluge of stuff that people

As Betton spoke, he saw a tinge of red on Vyse's thin cheek, and his own reflected it in a richer glow of

There was a pause, groping and desperate on Betton's part, sardonically calm on his visitor's.

"Yes; we've changed places, as it were." Vyse paused. "But about these letters you dictate the answers?"

"Lord, no! That's the reason why I said I wanted somebody er well used to writing. I don't want to

have anything to do with them not a thing! You'll have to answer them as if they were written to you "

Betton pulled himself up again, and rising in confusion jerked open one of the drawers of his writingtable.

"Here this kind of rubbish," he said, tossing a packet of letters onto Vyse's knee.

Vyse slipped off the band and began to open the letters. While he was glancing over them Betton again

caught his own reflection in the glass, and asked himself what impression he had made on his visitor. It

occurred to him for the first time that his highcoloured wellfed person presented the image of commercial

rather than of intellectual achievement. He did not look like his own idea of the author of "Diadems and

Vyse laid the letters aside. "I think I can do it if you'll give me a notion of the tone I'm to take." "The

"Oh, of course: I expect you to sign for me. As for the tone, say just what you'd well, say all you can

"I've never had this kind of thing to write. When do you wish me to begin?" Vyse enquired, ignoring the

"The book's out on Monday. The deluge will begin about three days after. Will you turn up on Thursday at

this hour?" Betton held his hand out with real heartiness. "It was great luck for me, your striking that

advertisement. Don't be too harsh with my correspondents I owe them something for having brought us

THE deluge began punctually on the Thursday, and Vyse, arriving as punctually, had an impressive pile of

letters to attack. Betton, on his way to the Park for a ride, came into the library, smoking the cigarette of

"How many of 'em? Twenty? Good Lord! It's going to be worse than 'Diadems.' I've just had my first quiet

breakfast in two years time to read the papers and loaf. How I used to dread the sight of my letterbox!

"Here's rather an exceptional one lady, evidently. I thought you might want to answer it yourself "

"Exceptional?" Betton ran over the mauve pages and tossed them down. "Why, my dear man, I get hundreds

like that. You'll have to be pretty short with her, or she'll send her photograph."

He clapped Vyse on the shoulder and turned away, humming a tune. "Stay to luncheon," he called back gaily

After luncheon Vyse insisted on showing a few of his answers to the first batch of letters. "If I've struck the

"My dear fellow, they're beautiful too beautiful. I'll be let in for a correspondence with every one of these

Vyse, at this, meditated for a while above a blank sheet. "All right how's this? he said, after another

Betton glanced over the page. "By George by George! Won't she see it?" he exulted, between fear and

The letters continued to pour in for several weeks after the appearance of "Abundance." For five or six

blissful days Betton did not even have his mail brought to him, trusting to Vyse to single out his personal

correspondence, and to deal with the rest according to their agreement. During those days he luxuriated in a

sense of wild and lawless freedom; then, gradually, he began to feel the need of fresh restraints to break, and

learned that the zest of liberty lies in the escape from specific obligations. At first he was conscious only of a

vague hunger, but in time the craving resolved into a shamefaced desire to see his letters.

"After all, I hated them only because I had to answer them"; and he told Vyse carelessly that he wished all his

At first he pushed aside those beginning: "I have just laid down 'Abundance' after a third reading," or: "Every

day for the last month I have been telephoning my bookseller to know when your novel would be out." But

little by little the freshness of his interest revived, and even this stereotyped homage began to arrest his eye.

At last a day came when he read all the letters, from the first word to the last, as he had done when "Diadems

and Faggots" appeared. It was really a pleasure to read them, now that he was relieved of the burden of

replying: his new relation to his correspondents had the glow of a loveaffair unchilled by the contingency of

One day it struck him that the letters were coming in more slowly and in smaller numbers. Certainly there

had been more of a rush when "Diadems and Faggots" came out. Betton began to wonder if Vyse were

exercising an unauthorized discrimination, and keeping back the communications he deemed least important.

This sudden conjecture carried the novelist straight to his library, where he found Vyse bending over the

writingtable with his usual inscrutable pale smile. But once there, Betton hardly knew how to frame his

"There's a note a personal note I ought to have had this morning. Sure you haven't kept it back by

Betton had foreseen the answer. "Not even the worst twaddle about my book?" he suggested lightly, pushing

"Well, perhaps it's safer," Betton conceded, as if the idea were new to him. With an embarrassed hand he

"Those are yesterday's," said the secretary; "here are today's," he added, pointing to a meagre trio.

"H'm only these?" Betton took them and looked them over lingeringly. "I don't see what the deuce that

chap means about the first part of 'Abundance' 'certainly justifying the title' do you?"

Vyse was silent, and the novelist continued irritably: "Damned cheek, his writing, if he doesn't like the book.

And his morning ride was embittered by the discovery that it was unexpectedly disagreeable to have Vyse

read any letters which did not express unqualified praise of his books. He began to fancy there was a latent

rancour, a kind of baffled sneer, under Vyse's manner; and he decided to return to the practice of having his

mail brought straight to his room. In that way he could edit the letters before his secretary saw them.

Vyse made no comment on the change, and Betton was reduced to wondering whether his imperturbable

composure were the mask of complete indifference or of a watchful jealousy. The latter view being more

agreeable to his employer's selfesteem, the next step was to conclude that Vyse had not forgotten the

episode of "The Lifted Lamp," and would naturally take a vindictive joy in any unfavourable judgments

passed on his rival's work. This did not simplify the situation, for there was no denying that unfavourable

criticisms preponderated in Betton's correspondence. "Abundance" was neither meeting with the unrestricted

welcome of "Diadems and Faggots," nor enjoying the alternative of an animated controversy: it was simply

found dull, and its readers said so in language not too tactfully tempered by regretful comparisons with its

predecessor. To withhold unfavourable comments from Vyse was, therefore, to make it appear that

correspondence about the book had died out; and its author, mindful of his unguarded predictions, found this

even more embarrassing. The simplest solution would be to get rid of Vyse; and to this end Betton began to

One evening, finding himself unexpectedly disengaged, he asked Vyse to dine; it had occurred to him that, in

the course of an afterdinner chat, he might delicately hint his feeling that the work he had offered his friend

Vyse thanked him, and appeared, punctually at eight, in all the shabbiness of his daily wear. He looked paler

and more shyly truculent than usual, and Betton, from the height of his florid stature, said to himself, with the

sudden professional instinct for "type": "He might be an agent of something a chap who carries deadly

Vyse, it was to appear, did carry a deadly secret; but one less perilous to society than to himself. He was

simply poor inexcusably, irremediably poor. Everything failed him, had always failed him: whatever he

This was the confession that, reluctantly, yet with a kind of whitelipped bravado, he flung at Betton in

answer to the latter's tentative suggestion that, really, the letteranswering job wasn't worth bothering him

"If you mean you're paying me more than it's worth, I'll take less," Vyse rushed out after a pause.

Betton anxiously stroked his silken ankle. "You do it beautifully, too beautifully. I mean what I say: the

"Oh, hang shame," Vyse interrupted. "Do you know why I said I shouldn't have time to dress tonight?

Because I haven't any evening clothes. As a matter of fact, I haven't much but the clothes I stand in. One

thing after another's gone against me; all the infernal ingenuities of chance. It's been a slow Chinese torture,

the kind where they keep you alive to have more fun killing you." He straightened himself with a sudden

blush. "Oh, I'm all right now getting on capitally. But I'm still walking rather a narrow plank; and if I do

Betton stared into the fire without answering. He knew next to nothing of Vyse's history, of the mischance or

mismanagement that had brought him, with his brains and his training, to so unlikely a pass. But a pang of

compunction shot through him as he remembered the manuscript of "The Lifted Lamp" gathering dust on his

"Not that it would have made any earthly difference since he's evidently never been able to get the thing

published." But this reflection did not wholly console Betton, and he found it impossible, at the moment, to

DURING the ensuing weeks the letters grew fewer and fewer, and Betton foresaw the approach of the fatal

day when his secretary, in common decency, would have to say: "I can't draw my pay for doing nothing."

The thought was intolerable, and Betton cursed his weakness in not having dismissed the fellow before such a

"If I tell him I've no use for him now, he'll see straight through it, of course; and then, hang it, he looks so

This consideration came after the other, but Betton, in rearranging them, put it first, because he thought it

looked better there, and also because he immediately perceived its value in justifying a plan of action that was

"Poor devil, I'm damned if I don't do it for him!" said Betton, sitting down at his desk.

Three or four days later he sent word to Vyse that he didn't care to go over the letters any longer, and that

The next time he lounged in, on his way to his morning ride, he found his secretary's pen in active motion.

His tone irritated Betton: it had the inane optimism of the physician reassuring a discouraged patient.

"No: they've just got their second wind. Here's one from a Chicago publisher never heard the name

offering you thirty per cent. on your next novel, with an advance royalty of twenty thousand. And here's a

chap who wants to syndicate it for a bunch of Sunday papers: big offer, too. That's from Ann Arbor. And this

"Well, it's from a girl a lady and she thinks she's the only person who understands 'Abundance' has

"This one's from a lady, too married woman. Says she's misunderstood, and would like to correspond."

"Oh, Lord," said Betton. "What are you looking at?" he added sharply, as Vyse continued to bend his

"I was only thinking I'd never seen such short letters from women. Neither one fills the first page."

Vyse reflected. "I'd like to meet a woman like that," he said wearily; and Betton laughed again.

The letters continued to pour in, and there could be no farther question of dispensing with Vyse's services.

But one morning, about three weeks later, the latter asked for a word with his employer, and Betton, on

entering the library, found his secretary with half a dozen documents spread out before him.

"I don't know: can't make out." His voice had a faint note of embarrassment. "Do you remember a note signed

Hester Macklin that came three or four weeks ago? Married misunderstood Western army post

"A short note," Vyse went on: "the whole story in half a page. The shortness struck me so much and the

The secretary pulled his thin moustache with a nervous laugh. "If you mean I'm an ass, you're right. Look

here." He held out an envelope stamped with the words: "Dead Letter Office." "My effusion has come back to

Betton seemed for an instant to share his secretary's embarrassment; then he burst into an uproarious laugh.

Vyse shrugged his shoulders. "Yes; but the interesting question is why on earth didn't your answer come

"The official one the one I wrote in your name. If she's unknown, what's become of that?"

Betton stared at him with eyes wrinkled by amusement. "Perhaps she hadn't disappeared then."

Vyse disregarded the conjecture. "Look here I believe all these letters are a hoax," he broke out.

Betton stared at him with a face that turned slowly red and angry. "What are you talking about? All what

"These I've spread out here: I've been comparing them. And I believe they're all written by one man."

Burton's redness turned to a purple that made his ruddy moustache seem pale. "What the devil are you driving

"Well, just look at it," Vyse persisted, still bent above the letters. "I've been studying them carefully those

that have come within the last two or three weeks and there's a queer likeness in the writing of some of

them. The g's are all like corkscrews. And the same phrases keep recurring the Ann Arbor newsagent

uses the same expressions as the President of the Girls' College at Euphorbia, Maine."

Betton laughed. "Aren't the critics always groaning over the shrinkage of the national vocabulary? Of course

Betton laughed again, but Vyse continued without heeding him: "Look here, Betton could Strett have

"Strett?" Betton roared. " Strett?" He threw himself into his armchair to shake out his mirth at greater ease.

"I'll tell you why. Strett always posts all my answers. He comes in for them every day before I leave. He

posted the letter to the misunderstood party the letter from you that the Dead Letter Office didn't return. I

A measurable silence followed the emission of this ingenious conjecture; then Betton observed with gentle

irony: "Extremely neat. And of course it's no business of yours to supply any valid motive for this remarkable

Vyse had an odd smile under his thin moustache. "Every house is a madhouse at some time or another."

Betton rose with a careless shake of the shoulders. "This one will be if I talk to you much longer," he said,

BETTON did not for a moment believe that Vyse suspected the valet of having written the letters.

"Why the devil don't he say out what he thinks? He was always a tortuous chap," he grumbled inwardly.

The sense of being held under the lens of Vyse's mute scrutiny became more and more exasperating. Betton,

by this time, had squared his shoulders to the fact that "Abundance" was a failure with the public: a confessed

and glaring failure. The press told him so openly, and his friends emphasized the fact by their

circumlocutions and evasions. Betton minded it a good deal more than he had expected, but not nearly as

much as he minded Vyse's knowing it. That remained the central twinge in his diffused discomfort. And the

He had set aside all sentimental pretexts for retaining Vyse; but a practical argument replaced them. "If I ship

him now he'll think it's because I'm ashamed to have him see that I'm not getting any more letters."

For the letters had ceased again, almost abruptly, since Vyse had hazarded the conjecture that they were the

product of Strett's devoted pen. Betton had reverted only once to the subject to ask ironically, a day or two

later: "Is Strett writing to me as much as ever?" and, on Vyse's replying with a neutral headshake, had

added with a laugh: "If you suspect him you might as well think I write the letters myself!"

"There are very few today," said Vyse, with his irritating evasiveness; and Betton rejoined squarely: "Oh,

A few mornings later he felt a rush of shame at his own tergiversations, and stalked into the library with

Vyse started back with one of his anaemic blushes. "I was hoping you'd be in. I wanted to speak to you.

Betton drew a quick breath of relief. The man had some sense of decency, then! He meant to dismiss himself.

"I told you so, my dear fellow; the book's a flat failure," he said, almost gaily.

Vyse made a deprecating gesture. "I don't know that I should regard the absence of letters as the ultimate test.

But I wanted to ask you if there isn't something else I can do on the days when there's no writing." He turned

his glance toward the booklined walls. "Don't you want your library catalogued?" he asked insidiously.

"Had it done last year, thanks." Betton glanced away from Vyse's face. It was piteous, how he needed the job!

"I see. . . . Of course this is just a temporary lull in the letters. They'll begin again as they did before. The

Betton felt a rush of puerile joy at the suggestion. Actually, he hadn't thought of that!

The letters in fact began again more gradually and in smaller numbers. But their quality was different, as

Vyse had predicted. And in two cases Betton's correspondents, not content to compress into one rapid

communication the thoughts inspired by his work, developed their views in a succession of really remarkable

letters. One of the writers was a professor in a Western college; the other was a girl in Florida. In their

language, their point of view, their reasons for appreciating "Abundance," they differed almost diametrically;

but this only made the unanimity of their approval the more striking. The rush of correspondence evoked by

Betton's earlier novel had produced nothing so personal, so exceptional as these communications. He had

gulped the praise of "Diadems and Faggots" as undiscriminatingly as it was offered; now he knew for the first

time the subtler pleasures of the palate. He tried to feign indifference, even to himself; and to Vyse he made

no sign. But gradually he felt a desire to know what his secretary thought of the letters, and, above all, what

he was saying in reply to them. And he resented acutely the possibility of Vyse's starting one of his

clandestine correspondences with the girl in Florida. Vyse's notorious lack of delicacy had never been more

vividly present to Betton's imagination; and he made up his mind to answer the letters himself.

He would keep Vyse on, of course: there were other communications that the secretary could attend to. And,

if necessary, Betton would invent an occupation: he cursed his stupidity in having betrayed the fact that his

Vyse showed no surprise when Betton announced his intention of dealing personally with the two

correspondents who showed so flattering a reluctance to take their leave. But Betton immediately read a

criticism in his lack of comment, and put forth, on a note of challenge: "After all, one must be decent!"

Vyse looked at him with an evanescent smile. "You'll have to explain that you didn't write the first answers."

"Why not?" The secretary absently drew an arabesque on the blottingpad. "Of course they'll keep it up

Betton blushed, but faced the issue. "Hang it all, I sha'n't be sorry. They interest me. They're remarkable

The spring, that year, was delicious to Betton. His college professor continued to address him tersely but

cogently at fixed intervals, and twice a week eight serried pages came from Florida. There were other letters,

too; he had the solace of feeling that at last "Abundance" was making its way, was reaching the people who,

as Vyse said, read slowly because they read intelligently. But welcome as were all these proofs of his restored

authority they were but the background of his happiness. His life revolved for the moment about the

personality of his two chief correspondents. The professor's letters satisfied his craving for intellectual

recognition, and the satisfaction he felt in them proved how completely he had lost faith in himself. He

blushed to think that his opinion of his work had been swayed by the shallow judgments of a public whose

taste he despised. Was it possible that he had allowed himself to think less well of "Abundance" because it

was not to the taste of the average novelreader? Such false humility was less excusable than the crudest

appetite for praise: it was ridiculous to try to do conscientious work if one's selfesteem were at the mercy of

popular judgments. All this the professor's letters delicately and indirectly conveyed to Betton, with the result

that the author of "Abundance" began to recognize in it the ripest flower of his genius.

But if the professor understood his book, the girl in Florida understood him; and Betton was fully alive to the

superior qualities of discernment which this process implied. For his lovely correspondent his novel was but

the startingpoint, the pretext of her discourse: he himself was her real object, and he had the delicious sense,

as their exchange of thoughts proceeded, that she was interested in "Abundance" because of its author, rather

than in the author because of his book. Of course she laid stress on the fact that his ideas were the object of

her contemplation; but Betton's agreeable person had permitted him some insight into the incorrigible

subjectiveness of female judgments, and he was pleasantly aware, from the lady's tone, that she guessed him

to be neither old nor ridiculous. And suddenly he wrote to ask if he might see her. . . .

The answer was long in coming. Betton fumed at the delay, watched, wondered, fretted; then he received the

He wrote back more urgently, and awaited the reply with increasing eagerness. A certain shyness had kept

him from once more modifying the instructions regarding his mail, and Strett still carried the letters directly

to Vyse. The hour when he knew they were passing under the latter's eyes was now becoming intolerable to

Betton, and it was a profound relief when the secretary, suddenly advised of his father's illness, asked

Vyse departed just after Betton had despatched to Florida his second missive of entreaty, and for ten days he

tasted the furtive joy of a first perusal of his letters. The answer from Florida was not among them; but Betton

said to himself "She's thinking it over," and delay, in that light, seemed favourable. So charming, in fact, was

this phase of sentimental suspense that he felt a start of resentment when a telegram apprised him one

Betton had slept later than usual, and, springing out of bed with the telegram in his hand, he learned from the

clock that his secretary was due in half an hour. He reflected that the morning's mail must long since be in;

and, too impatient to wait for its appearance with his breakfasttray, he threw on a dressinggown and went

to the library. There lay the letters, half a dozen of them: but his eye flew to one envelope, and as he tore it

The letter was dated a few days after its writer must have received his own: it had all the qualities of grace

and insight to which his unknown friend had accustomed him, but it contained no allusion, however indirect,

to the special purport of his appeal. Even a vanity less ingenious than Betton's might have read in the lady's

silence one of the most familiar motions of consent; but the smile provoked by this inference faded as he

turned to his other letters. For the uppermost bore the superscription "Dead Letter Office," and the document

Betton studied the ironic "Unknown" for an appreciable space of time; then he broke into a laugh. He had

suddenly recalled Vyse's similar experience with "Hester Macklin," and the light he was able to throw on that

obscure episode was searching enough to penetrate all the dark corners of his own adventure. He felt a rush

of heat to the ears; catching sight of himself in the glass, he saw a red ridiculous congested countenance, and

dropped into a chair to hide it between flushed fists. He was roused by the opening of the door, and Vyse

Betton's only answer was an inarticulate murmur of derision; then he pushed forward the letter with the

Vyse peered at the envelope, and turned it over slowly in his hands. Betton's eyes, fixed on him, saw his face

decompose like a substance touched by some powerful acid. He clung to the envelope as if to gain time.

"It's from the young lady you've been writing to at Swazee Springs?" he asked at length.

"Well I suppose she's gone away," continued Vyse, rebuilding his countenance rapidly.

"Yes; and in a community numbering perhaps a hundred and seventyfive souls, including the dogs and

chickens, the local postoffice is so ignorant of her movements that my letter has to be sent to the Dead

Vyse meditated on this; then he laughed in turn. "After all, the same thing happened to me with 'Hester

"Just so," said Betton, bringing down his clenched fist on the table. " Just so," he repeated, in italics.

He caught his secretary's glance, and held it with his own for a moment. Then he dropped it as, in pity, one

"The very day my letter was returned from Swazee Springs she wrote me this from there," he said, holding up

"Yes, it's funny; it's funny," said Betton. He leaned back, his hands in his pockets, staring up at the ceiling,

and noticing a crack in the cornice. Vyse, at the corner of the writingtable, waited.

"Shall I get to work?" he began, after a silence measurable by minutes. Betton's gaze descended from the

"I've got your seat, haven't I?" he said, rising and moving away from the table.

Vyse, with a quick gleam of relief, slipped into the vacant chair, and began to stir about vaguely among the

"Yes it was touch and go when I got there." Another pause, while Vyse began to classify the letters.

"And I suppose," Betton continued in a steady tone, "your anxiety made you forget your usual precautions

whatever they were about this Florida correspondence, and before you'd had time to prevent it the Swazee

Vyse lifted his head with a quick movement. "What do you mean?" he asked, pushing his chair back.

"I mean that you saw I couldn't live without flattery, and that you've been ladling it out to me to earn your

Vyse sat motionless and shrunken, digging the blottingpad with his pen. "What on earth are you driving at?"

"Though why the deuce," Betton continued in the same steady tone, "you should need to do this kind of work

when you've got such faculties at your service those letters were magnificent, my dear fellow! Why in the

Vyse straightened himself with an effort. "What are you talking about, Betton? Why the devil do you think I

Betton held back his answer, with a brooding face. "Because I wrote 'Hester Macklin's' to myself!"

Vyse sat stockstill, without the least outcry of wonder. "Well ?" he finally said, in a low tone.

"And because you found me out (you see, you can't even feign surprise!) because you saw through it at a

glance, knew at once that the letters were faked. And when you'd foolishly put me on my guard by pointing

out to me that they were a clumsy forgery, and had then suddenly guessed that I was the forger, you drew the

natural inference that I had to have popular approval, or at least had to make you think I had it. You saw that,

to me, the worst thing about the failure of the book was having you know it was a failure. And so you applied

your superior your immeasurably superior abilities to carrying on the humbug, and deceiving me as I'd

tried to deceive you. And you did it so successfully that I don't see why the devil you haven't made your

Vyse remained silent, his head slightly bent under the mounting tide of Betton's denunciation.

"The way you differentiated your people characterised them avoided my stupid mistake of making the

women's letters too short and logical, of letting my different correspondents use the same expressions: the

amount of ingenuity and art you wasted on it! I swear, Vyse, I'm sorry that damned postoffice went back on

But at this height they suddenly paused, drew back on themselves, and began to recede before the spectacle

of Vyse's pale distress. Something warm and emotional in Betton's nature a lurking kindliness, perhaps,

for any one who tried to soothe and smooth his writhing ego softened his eye as it rested on the drooping

"Look here, Vyse I'm not sorry not altogether sorry this has happened!" He moved slowly across the

room, and laid a friendly palm on Vyse's shoulder. "In a queer illogical way it evens up things, as it were. I

did you a shabby turn once, years ago oh, out of sheer carelessness, of course about that novel of yours

I promised to give to Apthorn. If I had given it, it might not have made any difference I'm not sure it

wasn't too good for success but anyhow, I dare say you thought my personal influence might have helped

you, might at least have got you a quicker hearing. Perhaps you thought it was because the thing was so good

that I kept it back, that I felt some nasty jealousy of your superiority. I swear to you it wasn't that I clean

forgot it. And one day when I came home it was gone: you'd sent and taken it. And I've always thought since

you might have owed me a grudge and not unjustly; so this . . . this business of the letters . . . the

"It's not sympathy?" broke in Betton, the moisture drying out of his voice. He withdrew his hand from Vyse's

shoulder. "What is it, then? The joy of uncovering my nakedness? An eye for an eye? Is it that?"

Vyse rose from his seat, and with a mechanical gesture swept into a heap all the letters he had sorted.

"I'm stone broke, and wanted to keep my job that's what it is," he said wearily . . .

ARTHUR BERNALD could never afterward recall just when the first conjecture flashed on him: oddly

enough, there was no record of it in the agitated jottings of his diary. But, as it seemed to him in retrospect, he

had always felt that the queer man at the Wades' must be John Pellerin, if only for the negative reason that he

couldn't imaginably be any one else. It was impossible, in the confused pattern of the century's intellectual

life, to fit the stranger in anywhere, save in the big gap which, some five and twenty years earlier, had been

left by Pellerin's unaccountable disappearance; and conversely, such a man as the Wades' visitor couldn't

have lived for sixty years without filling, somewhere in space, a nearly equivalent void.

At all events, it was certainly not to Doctor Wade or to his mother that Bernald owed the hint: the good

unconscious Wades, one of whose chief charms in the young man's eyes was that they remained so robustly

untainted by Pellerinism, in spite of the fact that Doctor Wade's younger brother, Howland, was among its

The incident had begun by Bernald's running across Doctor Robert Wade one hot summer night at the

University Club, and by Wade's saying, in the tone of unprofessional laxity which the shadowy stillness of

the place invited: "I got hold of a queer fish at St. Martin's the other day case of heatprostration picked

up in Central Park. When we'd patched him up I found he had nowhere to go, and not a dollar in his pocket,

The opening roused his hearer's attention. Bob Wade had an odd unformulated sense of values that Bernald

"Oh, every age full of years, and yet with a lot left. He called himself sixty on the books."

"Sixty's a good age for some kinds of living. And age is of course purely subjective. How has he used his

"Well part of them in educating himself, apparently. He's a scholar humanities, languages, and so

"Decayed? Not much!" cried the doctor with his accustomed literalness. "I only mentioned that side of

Winterman his name's Winterman because it was the side my mother noticed first. I suppose women

"Well there again. . . . When I took him down to the country, looking rather like a tramp from a 'Shelter,'

with an untrimmed beard, and a suit of reachmedowns he'd slept round the Park in for a week, I felt sure

my mother'd carry the silver up to her room, and send for the gardener's dog to sleep in the hall the first night.

"Not a bit of it! You're out again. We don't love him, either of us. But we feel him the air's charged with

And Bernald agreed that he would see, the following Sunday. Wade's inarticulate attempts to characterize the

stranger had struck his friend. The human revelation had for Bernald a poignant and everrenewed interest,

which his trade, as the dramatic critic of a daily paper, had hitherto failed to discourage. And he knew that

Bob Wade, simple and undefiled by literature Bernald's specific affliction had a free and personal way

of judging men, and the diviner's knack of reaching their hidden springs. During the days that followed, the

young doctor gave Bernald farther details about John Winterman: details not of fact for in that respect his

visitor's reticence was baffling but of impression. It appeared that Winterman, while lying insensible in

the Park, had been robbed of the few dollars he possessed; and on leaving the hospital, still weak and

halfblind, he had quite simply and unprotestingly accepted the Wades' offer to give him shelter till such time

"Well, writing. Some kind of writing." Doctor Bob always became vague and clumsy when he approached

the confines of literature. "He means to take it up again as soon as his eyes get right."

Bernald groaned. "Oh, Lord that finishes him; and me! He's looking for a publisher, of course he wants

"A line of what? What kind of literature can one keep corked up for twenty years?"

Wade surprised him. "The real kind, I should say. But I don't know Winterman's line," the doctor added. "He

speaks of the things he used to write merely as 'stuff that wouldn't sell.' He has a wonderfully confidential

way of not telling one things. But he says he'll have to do something for his living as soon as his eyes are

patched up, and that writing is the only trade he knows. The queer thing is that he seems pretty sure of selling

now. He even talked of buying the bungalow of us, with an acre or two about it."

"The studio down by the shore that we built for Howland when he thought he meant to paint." (Howland

Wade, as Bernald knew, had experienced various "calls.") "Since he's taken to writing nobody's been near it. I

offered it to Winterman, and he camps there cooks his meals, does his own housekeeping, and never

comes up to the house except in the evenings, when he joins us on the verandah, in the dark, and smokes

"More than he need be. My mother actually wanted him to stay on in the house in her pink chintz room.

Think of it! But he says houses smother him. I take it he's lived for years in the open."

"I can't make out, except that it was somewhere in the East. 'East of everything beyond the dayspring. In

places not on the map.' That's the way he put it; and when I said: 'You've been an explorer, then?' he smiled in

his beard, and answered: 'Yes; that's it an explorer.' Yet he doesn't strike me as a man of action: hasn't the

Wade reflected. His range of observation was not large, but within its limits it was exact and could give an

"He's worked a lot with his hands, but that's not what they were made for. I should say they were

extraordinarily delicate conductors of sensation. And his eye his eye too. He hasn't used it to dominate

people: he didn't care to. He simply looks through 'em all like windows. Makes me feel like the fellows who

think they're made of glass. The mitigating circumstance is that he seems to see such a glorious landscape

BERNALD came on two successive Sundays; and the second time he lingered till the Tuesday.

"Here he comes!" Wade had said, the first evening, as the two young men, with Wade's mother sat in the

sultry dusk, with the Virginian creeper drawing, between the verandah arches, its black arabesques against a

In the darkness Bernald heard a step on the gravel, and saw the red flit of a cigar through the shrubs. Then a

looselymoving figure obscured the patch of sky between the creepers, and the red spark became the centre

of a dim bearded face, in which Bernald discerned only a broad white gleam of forehead.

It was the young man's subsequent impression that Winterman had not spoken much that first evening; at any

rate, Bernald himself remembered chiefly what the Wades had said. And this was the more curious because

he had come for the purpose of studying their visitor, and because there was nothing to divert him from that

purpose in Wade's halting communications or his mother's artless comments. He reflected afterward that

there must have been a mysteriously fertilizing quality in the stranger's silence: it had brooded over their talk

Mrs. Wade, apparently apprehensive lest her son should have given Bernald an exaggerated notion of their

"He's not what you or Howland would call intellectual "(Bernald writhed at the coupling of the names)

"not in the least literary; though he told Bob he used to write. I don't think, though, it could have been what

Howland would call writing." Mrs. Wade always mentioned her younger son with a reverential drop of the

voice. She viewed literature much as she did Providence, as an inscrutably mystery; and she spoke of

Howland as a dedicated being, set apart to perform secret rites within the veil of the sanctuary.

"I shouldn't say he had a quick mind," she continued, reverting apologetically to Winterman. "Sometimes he

hardly seems to follow what we're saying. But he's got such sound ideas when he does speak he's never

silly. And clever people sometimes are, don't you think so?" Bernald groaned an unqualified assent. "And

he's so capable. The other day something went wrong with the kitchen range, just as I was expecting some

friends of Bob's for dinner; and do you know, when Mr. Winterman heard we were in trouble, he came and

took a look, and knew at once what to do? I told him it was a dreadful pity he wasn't married!"

Close on midnight, when the session on the verandah ended, and the two young men were strolling down to

the bungalow at Winterman's side, Bernald's mind reverted to the image of the fertilizing cloud. There was

something brooding, pregnant, in the silent presence beside him: he had, in place of any circumscribing

impression of the individual, a large hovering sense of manifold latent meanings. And he felt a distinct thrill

of relief when, halfway down the lawn, Doctor Bob was checked by a voice that called him back to the

In the lowceilinged bungalow Winterman had to grope for the lamp on his desk, and as its light struck up

into his face Bernald's sense of the rareness of his opportunity increased. He couldn't have said why, for the

face, with its ridged brows, its shabby greyish beard and blunt Socratic nose, made no direct appeal to the

eye. It seemed rather like a stage on which remarkable things might be enacted, like some shaggy moorland

landscape dependent for form and expression on the clouds rolling over it, and the bursts of light between;

and one of these flashed out in the smile with which Winterman, as if in answer to his companion's thought,

So he'd known all along that they hadn't yet and had guessed that, with Bernald, one might!

The young man's glow of pleasure was so intense that it left him for a moment unable to meet the challenge;

and in that moment he felt the brush of something winged and summoning. His spirit rose to it with a rush;

but just as he felt himself poised between the ascending pinions, the door opened and Bob Wade plunged in.

"Too bad! I'm so sorry! It was from Howland, to say he can't come tomorrow after all." The doctor panted

"I tried my best to pull it off for you; and my brother wants to come he's keen to talk to you and see what

he can do. But you see he's so tremendously in demand. He'll try for another Sunday later on."

Winterman nodded with a whimsical gesture. "Oh, he'll find me here. I shall work my time out slowly." He

pointed to the scattered sheets on the kitchen table which formed his writing desk.

"Not slowly enough to suit us," Wade answered hospitably. "Only, if Howland could have come he might

have given you a tip or two put you on the right track shown you how to get in touch with the public."

Winterman, his hands in his sagging pockets, lounged against the bare pine walls, twisting his pipe under his

beard. "Does your brother enjoy the privilege of that contact?" he questioned gravely.

Wade stared a little. "Oh, of course Howland's not what you'd call a popular writer; he despises that kind of

thing. But whatever he says goes with well, with the chaps that count; and every one tells me he's written

the book on Pellerin. You must read it when you get back your eyes." He paused, as if to let the name sink in,

but Winterman drew at his pipe with a blank face. "You must have heard of Pellerin, I suppose?" the doctor

continued. "I've never read a word of him myself: he's too big a proposition for me. But one can't escape the

talk about him. I have him crammed down my throat even in hospital. The internes read him at the clinics. He

tumbles out of the nurses' pockets. The patients keep him under their pillows. Oh, with most of them, of

course, it's just a craze, like the last new game or puzzle: they don't understand him in the least. Howland says

that even now, twentyfive years after his death, and with his books in everybody's hands, there are not

twenty people who really understand Pellerin; and Howland ought to know, if anybody does. He's what's

their great word? interpreted him. You must get Howland to put you through a course of Pellerin."

And as the young men, having taken leave of Winterman, retraced their way across the lawn, Wade continued

"I wish I could get Howland to take an interest in Winterman: this is the third Sunday he's chucked us. Of

course he does get bored with people consulting him about their writings but I believe if he could only

talk to Winterman he'd see something in him, as we do. And it would be such a godsend to the poor man to

have some one to advise him about his work. I'm going to make a desperate effort to get Howland here next

It was then that Bernald vowed to himself that he would return the next Sunday at all costs. He hardly knew

whether he was prompted by the impulse to shield Winterman from Howland Wade's ineptitude, or by the

desire to see the latter abandon himself to the full shamelessness of its display; but of one fact he was

blissfully assured and that was of the existence in Winterman of some quality which would provoke

Howland to the amplest exercise of his fatuity. "How he'll draw him how he'll draw him!" Bernald

chuckled, with a security the more unaccountable that his one glimpse of Winterman had shown the latter

only as a passive subject for experimentation; and he felt himself avenged in advance for the injury of

THAT this hope was to be frustrated Bernald learned from Howland Wade's own lips, the day before the two

"I can't really, my dear fellow," the Interpreter lisped, passing a polished hand over the faded smoothness of

his face. "Oh, an authentic engagement, I assure you: otherwise, to oblige old Bob I'd submit cheerfully to

looking over his foundling's literature. But I'm pledged this week to the Pellerin Society of Kenosha: I had a

hand in founding it, and for two years now they've been patiently waiting for a word from me the Fiat

Lux, so to speak. You see it's a ministry, Bernald I assure you, I look upon my calling quite religiously."

As Bernald listened, his disappointment gradually changed to relief. Howland, on trial, always turned out to

be too insufferable, and the pleasure of watching his antics was invariably lost in the impulse to put a

"If he'd only keep his beastly pink hands off Pellerin," Bernald groaned, thinking of the thick manuscript

condemned to perpetual incarceration in his own desk by the publication of Howland's "definitive" work on

the great man. One couldn't, after Howland Wade, expose one's self to the derision of writing about Pellerin:

the eagerness with which Wade's book had been devoured proved, not that the public had enough appetite for

another, but simply that, for a stomach so undiscriminating, anything better than Wade had given it would be

too good. And Bernald, in the confidence that his own work was open to this objection, had stoically locked it

up. Yet if he had resigned his exasperated intelligence to the fact that Wade's book existed, and was already

passing into the immortality of perpetual republication, he could not, after repeated trials, adjust himself to

the author's talk about Pellerin. When Wade wrote of the great dead he was egregious, but in conversation he

was familiar and fond. It might have been supposed that one of the beauties of Pellerin's hidden life and

mysterious taking off would have been to guard him from the fingering of anecdote; but biographers like

Howland Wade were born to rise above such obstacles. He might be vague or inaccurate in dealing with the

few recorded events of his subject's life; but when he left fact for conjecture no one had a firmer footing.

Whole chapters in his volume were constructed in the conditional mood and packed with hypothetical detail;

and in talk, by the very law of the process, hypothesis became affirmation, and he was ready to tell you

confidentially the exact circumstances of Pellerin's death, and of the "distressing incident" leading up to it.

Bernald himself not only questioned the form under which this incident was shaping itself before posterity,

but the mere radical fact of its occurrence: he had never been able to discover any break in the dense cloud

enveloping Pellerin's later life and its mysterious termination. He had gone away that was all that any of

them knew: he who had so little, at any time, been with them or of them; and his going had so slightly stirred

the public consciousness that even the subsequent news of his death, laconically imparted from afar, had

dropped unheeded into the universal scrapbasket, to be long afterward fished out, with all its details

missing, when some enquiring spirit first became aware, by chance encounter with a twopenny volume in a

London bookstall, not only that such a man as John Pellerin had died, but that he had ever lived, or written.

It need hardly be noted that Howland Wade had not been the pioneer in question: his had been the wiser part

of swelling the chorus when it rose, and gradually drowning the other voices by his own insistent note. He

had pitched the note so screamingly, and held it so long, that he was now the accepted authority on Pellerin,

not only in the land which had given birth to his genius but in the Europe which had first acclaimed it; and it

was the central point of pain in Bernald's sense of the situation that a man who had so yearned for silence as

Bernald's talk with the Interpreter had revived this ache to the momentary exclusion of other sensations; and

he was still sore with it when, the next afternoon, he arrived at Portchester for his second Sunday with the

At the station he had the surprise of seeing Winterman's face on the platform, and of hearing from him that

"Mrs. Wade wanted to put you off, but I believe the message came too late; so she sent me down to break the

Perhaps because they were the first conventional words that Bernald had heard him speak, the young man

"She wanted to send a carriage," Winterman added, "but I told her we'd walk back through the woods." He

looked at Bernald with a sudden kindness that flushed the young man with pleasure.

"Oh, no. I'm pulling myself together. Getting back to work is the slowest part of the business: not on account

of my eyes I can use them now, though not for reading; but some of the links between things are missing.

The walk through the woods remained in Bernald's memory as an enchanted hour. He used the word literally,

as descriptive of the way in which Winterman's contact changed the face of things, or perhaps restored them

to their primitive meanings. And the scene they traversed one of those little untended woods that still, in

America, fringe the tawdry skirts of civilization acquired, as a background to Winterman, the hush of a

spot aware of transcendent visitings. Did he talk, or did he make Bernald talk? The young man never knew.

He recalled only a sense of lightness and liberation, as if the hard walls of individuality had melted, and he

were merged in the poet's deeper interfusion, yet without losing the least sharp edge of self. This general

impression resolved itself afterward into the sense of Winterman's wide elemental range. His thought

encircled things like the horizon at sea. He didn't, as it happened, touch on lofty themes Bernald was

gleefully aware that, to Howland Wade, their talk would hardly have been Talk at all but Winterman's

mind, applied to lowly topics, was like a powerful lens that brought out microscopic delicacies and

The lack of Sunday trains kept Doctor Bob for two days on the scene of his surgical duties, and during those

two days Bernald seized every moment of communion with his friend's guest. Winterman, as Wade had said,

was reticent as to his personal affairs, or rather as to the practical and material conditions to which the term is

generally applied. But it was evident that, in Winterman's case, the usual classification must be reversed, and

that the discussion of ideas carried one much farther into his intimacy than any specific acquaintance with the

"That's exactly what Howland Wade and his tribe have never understood about Pellerin: that it's much less

Bernald pulled himself up with a jerk, and turned to look full at his companion. It was late on the Monday

evening, and the two men, after an hour's chat on the verandah to the tune of Mrs. Wade's knittingneedles,

"Come and have a pipe before you turn in," Winterman had said; and they had sat on together till midnight,

with the door of the bungalow open on a heaving moonlit bay, and summer insects bumping against the

chimney of the lamp. Winterman had just bent down to refill his pipe from the jar on the table, and Bernald,

jerking about to catch him in the yellow circle of lamplight, sat speechless, staring at a fact that seemed

suddenly to have substituted itself for Winterman's face, or rather to have taken on its features.

"No, they never saw that Pellerin's ideas were Pellerin. . . ." He continued to stare at Winterman. "Just as this

The thought uttered itself in a kind of inner shout, and Bernald started upright with the violent impact of his

conclusion. Again and again in the last fortyeight hours he had exclaimed to himself: "This is as good as

Pellerin." Why hadn't he said till now: "This is Pellerin"? . . . Surprising as the answer was, he had no choice

but to take it. He hadn't said so simply because Winterman was better than Pellerin that there was so much

more of him, so to speak. Yes; but it came to Bernald in a flash wouldn't there by this time have been

any amount more of Pellerin? . . . The young man felt actually dizzy with the thought. That was it there

was the solution of the haunting problem! This man was Pellerin, and more than Pellerin! It was so fantastic

Winterman, at the same moment, brought his palm down with a sudden crash on the pile of manuscript

"My match wasn't out. In another minute the destruction of the library of Alexandria would have been a trifle

compared to what you'd have seen." Winterman, with his large deep laugh, shook out the smouldering sheets.

"And I should have been a pensioner on Doctor Bob the Lord knows how much longer!"

Bernald pulled himself together. "You've really got going again? The thing's actually getting into shape?"

"This particular thing is in shape. I drove at it hard all last week, thinking our friend's brother would be down

Winterman, looming against the moonlight, slowly turned a dusky shaggy head toward him.

Bernald wavered, torn between loyalty to his friends and the grotesqueness of answering in the affirmative.

After all, it was none of his business to furnish Winterman with an estimate of Howland Wade.

"Well, you see, you've never told me what your line is," he answered, temporizing.

"No, because nobody's ever told me. It's exactly what I want to find out," said the other genially.

"And you expect Wade ?" "Why, I gathered from our good Doctor that it's his trade. Doesn't he explain

Winterman gazed out musingly upon the moontouched dusk of waters. "And what is Pellerinism?" he asked.

They stood for a minute facing each other, among the uncertain swaying shadows of the room, with the sea

breathing through it as something immense and inarticulate breathed through young Bernald's thoughts; then

DAWN found them there, and the risen sun laid its beams on the rough floor of the bungalow, before either

of the men was conscious of the passage of time. Bernald, vaguely trying to define his own state in retrospect,

The gist of fact at the core of the extraordinary experience was simply that John Pellerin, twentyfive years

earlier, had voluntarily disappeared, causing the rumour of his death to be reported to an inattentive world;

"You'll hardly believe it of me; I hardly believe it of myself; but I went away in a rage of disappointment, of

wounded pride no, vanity! I don't know which cut deepest the sneers or the silence but between

them, there wasn't an inch of me that wasn't raw. I had just the one thing in me: the message, the cry, the

revelation. But nobody saw and nobody listened. Nobody wanted what I had to give. I was like a poor devil

of a tramp looking for shelter on a bitter night, in a town with every door bolted and all the windows dark.

And suddenly I felt that the easiest thing would be to lie down and go to sleep in the snow. Perhaps I'd a

vague notion that if they found me there at daylight, frozen stiff, the pathetic spectacle might produce a

reaction, a feeling of remorse. . . . So I took care to be found! Well, a good many thousand people die every

day on the face of the globe; and I soon discovered that I was simply one of the thousands; and when I made

that discovery I really died and stayed dead a year or two. . . . When I came to life again I was off on the

under side of the world, in regions unaware of what we know as 'the public.' Have you any notion how it

shifts the point of view to wake under new constellations? I advise any who's been in love with a woman

under Cassiopeia to go and think about her under the Southern Cross. . . . It's the only way to tell the pivotal

truths from the others. . . . I didn't believe in my theory any less there was my triumph and my

vindication! It held out, resisted, measured itself with the stars. But I didn't care a snap of my finger whether

anybody else believed in it, or even knew it had been formulated. It escaped out of my books my poor

stillborn books like Psyche from the chrysalis and soared away into the blue, and lived there. I knew

then how it frees an idea to be ignored; how apprehension circumscribes and deforms it. . . . Once I'd learned

that, it was easy enough to turn to and shift for myself. I was sure now that my idea would live: the good ones

are selfsupporting. I had to learn to be so; and I tried my hand at a number of things . . . adventurous,

menial, commercial. . . . It's not a bad thing for a man to have to live his life and we nearly all manage to

dodge it. Our first round with the Sphinx may strike something out of us a book or a picture or a

symphony; and we're amazed at our feat, and go on letting that first work breed others, as some animal forms

reproduce each other without renewed fertilization. So there we are, committed to our first guess at the riddle;

and our works look as like as successive impressions of the same plate, each with the lines a little fainter;

whereas they ought to be if we touch earth between times as different from each other as those other

creatures jellyfish, aren't they, of a kind? where successive generations produce new forms, and it

"Well, I proved my first guess, off there in the wilds, and it lived, and grew, and took care of itself. And I said

'Some day it will make itself heard; but by that time my atoms will have waltzed into a new pattern.' Then, in

Cashmere one day, I met a fellow in a caravan, with a dogeared book in his pocket. He said he never stirred

without it wanted to know where I'd been, never to have heard of it. It was my guess in its twentieth

edition! . . . The globe spun round at that, and all of a sudden I was under the old stars. That's the way it

happens when the ballast of vanity shifts! I'd lived a third of a life out there, unconscious of human opinion

because I supposed it was unconscious of me. But now now! Oh, it was different. I wanted to know

what they said. . . . Not exactly that, either: I wanted to know what I'd made them say. There's a difference. . .

So much Bernald retained of his companion's actual narrative; the rest was swept away under the tide of

wonder that rose and submerged him as Pellerin at some indefinitely later stage of their talk picked up

his manuscript and began to read. Bernald sat opposite, his elbows propped on the table, his eyes fixed on the

swaying waters outside, from which the moon gradually faded, leaving them to make a denser blackness in

the night. As Pellerin read, this density of blackness which never for a moment seemed inert or unalive

was attenuated by imperceptible degrees, till a greyish pallour replaced it; then the pallour breathed and

Something of the same nature went on in the young man's mind while he watched and listened. He was

conscious of a gradually withdrawing light, of an interval of obscurity full of the stir of invisible forces, and

then of the victorious flush of day. And as the light rose, he saw how far he had travelled and what wonders

the night had prepared. Pellerin had been right in saying that his first idea had survived, had borne the test of

time; but he had given his hearer no hint of the extent to which it had been enlarged and modified, of the

fresh implications it now unfolded. In a brief flash of retrospection Bernald saw the earlier books dwindle and

fall into their place as mere precursors of this fuller revelation; then, with a leap of helpless rage, he pictured

Howland Wade's pink hands on the new treasure, and his prophetic feet upon the lecture platform.

"IT won't do oh, he let him down as gently as possible; but it appears it simply won't do."

Doctor Bob imparted the ineluctable fact to Bernald while the two men, accidentally meeting at their club a

few nights later, sat together over the dinner they had immediately agreed to consume in company.

Bernald had left Portchester the morning after his strange discovery, and he and Bob Wade had not seen each

other since. And now Bernald, moved by an irresistible instinct of postponement, had waited for his

companion to bring up Winterman's name, and had even executed several conversational diversions in the

hope of delaying its mention. For how could one talk of Winterman with the thought of Pellerin swelling

"Yes; the very day Howland got back from Kenosha I brought the manuscript to town, and got him to read it.

"No. He said: 'Before you let him loose on me I'll go over the stuff, and see if it's at all worth while.'"

"Between ourselves, he found it was of no account at all. Queer, isn't it, when the man . . . but of course

literature's another proposition. Howland says it's one of the cases where an idea might seem original and

striking if one didn't happen to be able to trace its descent. And this is straight out of bosh by Pellerin. . . .

Yes: Pellerin. It seems that everything in the article that isn't pure nonsense is just Pellerinism. Howland

thinks poor Winterman must have been tremendously struck by Pellerin's writings, and have lived too much

out of the world to know that they've become the textbooks of modern thought. Otherwise, of course, he'd

"It's not conceivably in any sense a development of Pellerin's idea: a logical step farther?" "Logical?

Bernald sat silent, divided between the fierce satisfaction of seeing the Interpreter rush upon his fate, and the

despair of knowing that the state of mind he represented was indestructible. Then both emotions were swept

away on a wave of pure joy, as he reflected that now, at last, Howland Wade had given him back John

The possession was one he did not mean to part with lightly; and the dread of its being torn from him

"Why, unexpectedly, as he does most things. You can never tell which way he'll jump. I thought he'd take a

high tone, or else laugh it off; but he did neither. He seemed awfully cast down. I wished myself well out of

the job when I saw how cut up he was." Bernald thrilled at the words. Pellerin had shared his pang, then

"Oh, I told him straight out what Howland said. I thought it fairer. And his answer to that was the rummest

"I believed him, because I know him. But the public won't the critics won't. And if it's a pure coincidence

"It bothers me awfully," Wade continued, knitting his kindly brows, "because I could see what a blow it was

to him. He's got to earn his living, and I don't suppose he knows how to do anything else. At his age it's hard

to start fresh. I put that to Howland asked him if there wasn't a chance he might do better if he only had a

little encouragement. I can't help feeling he's got the essential thing in him. But of course I'm no judge when

it comes to books. And Howland says it would be cruel to give him any hope." Wade paused, turned his

wineglass about under a meditative stare, and then leaned across the table toward Bernald. "Look here do

you know what I've proposed to Winterman? That he should come to town with me tomorrow and go in the

evening to hear Howland lecture to the Uplift Club. They're to meet at Mrs. Beecher Bain's, and Howland is

to repeat the lecture that he gave the other day before the Pellerin Society at Kenosha. It will give Winterman

a chance to get some notion of what Pellerin was: he'll get it much straighter from Howland than if he tried to

plough through Pellerin's books. And then afterward as if accidentally I thought I might bring him and

Howland together. If Howland could only see him and hear him talk, there's no knowing what might come of

it. He couldn't help feeling the man's force, as we do; and he might give him a pointer tell him what line to

take. Anyhow, it would please Winterman, and take the edge off his disappointment. I saw that as soon as I

Mrs. Beecher Bain, large, smiling, diffuse, reached out parenthetically from the incoming throng on her

threshold to waylay Bernald with the question as he was about to move past her in the wake of his

"Oh, keep straight on, Mr. Winterman!" she interrupted herself to call after the latter. "Into the back

drawingroom, please! And remember, you're to sit next to me in the corner on the left, close under the

She renewed her interrogative clutch on Bernald's sleeve. "Most curious! Doctor Wade has been telling me

all about him how remarkable you all think him. And it's actually true that he's never heard of Pellerin? Of

course as soon as Doctor Wade told me that, I said 'Bring him!' It will be so extraordinarily interesting to

watch the first impression. Yes, do follow him, dear Mr. Bernald, and be sure that you and he secure the

seats next to me. Of course Alice Fosdick insists on being with us. She was wild with excitement when I told

On the indulgent lips of Mrs. Beecher Bain conjecture speedily passed into affirmation; and as Bernald's

companion, broad and shaggy in his visibly new evening clothes, moved down the length of the crowded

rooms, he was already, to the ladies drawing aside their skirts to let him pass, the interesting Huron of the

How far he was aware of the character ascribed to him it was impossible for Bernald to discover. He was as

unconscious as a tree or a cloud, and his observer had never known any one so alive to human contacts and

yet so secure from them. But the scene was playing such a lively tune on Bernald's own sensibilities that for

the moment he could not adjust himself to the probable effect it produced on his companion. The young man,

of late, had made but rare appearances in the group of which Mrs. Beecher Bain was one of the most

indefatigable hostesses, and the Uplift Club the chief medium of expression. To a critic, obliged by his trade

to cultivate convictions, it was the essence of luxury to leave them at home in his hours of ease; and Bernald

gave his preference to circles in which less finality of judgment prevailed, and it was consequently less

But in his fresher days he had known the spell of the Uplift Club and the thrill of moving among the

Emancipated; and he felt an odd sense of rejuvenation as he looked at the rows of faces packed about the

embowered platform from which Howland Wade was presently to hand down the eternal verities. Many of

these countenances belonged to the old days, when the gospel of Pellerin was unknown, and it required

considerable intellectual courage to avow one's acceptance of the very doctrines he had since demolished.

The latter moral revolution seemed to have been accepted as submissively as a change in hairdressing; and

it even struck Bernald that, in the case of many of the assembled ladies, their convictions were rather newer

One of the most interesting examples of this facility of adaptation was actually, in the person of Miss Alice

Fosdick, brushing his elbow with exotic amulets, and enveloping him in Arabian odours, as she leaned

forward to murmur her sympathetic sense of the situation. Miss Fosdick, who was one of the most advanced

exponents of Pellerinism, had large eyes and a plaintive mouth, and Bernald had always fancied that she

"Yes, I know Isabella Bain told me all about him. (He can't hear us, can he?) And I wonder if you realize

how remarkably interesting it is that we should have such an opportunity now I mean the opportunity to

see the impression of Pellerinism on a perfectly fresh mind. (You must introduce him as soon as the lecture's

over.) I explained that to Isabella as soon as she showed me Doctor Wade's note. Of course you see why,

don't you?" Bernald made a faint motion of acquiescence, which she instantly swept aside. "At least I think I

can make you see why. (If you're sure he can't hear?) Why, it's just this Pellerinism is in danger of

becoming a truism. Oh, it's an awful thing to say! But then I'm not afraid of saying awful things! I rather

believe it's my mission. What I mean is, that we're getting into the way of taking Pellerin for granted as

we do the air we breathe. We don't sufficiently lead our conscious life in him we're gradually letting him

become subliminal." She swayed closer to the young man, and he saw that she was making a graceful attempt

to throw her explanatory net over his companion, who, evading Mrs. Bain's hospitable signal, had cautiously

"Did you hear what I was saying, Mr. Winterman? (Yes, I know who you are, of course!) Oh, well, I don't

really mind if you did. I was talking about you about you and Pellerin. I was explaining to Mr. Bernald

that what we need at this very minute is a Pellerin revival; and we need some one like you to whom his

message comes as a wonderful new interpretation of life to lead the revival, and rouse us out of our

"You see," she went on winningly, "it's not only the big public that needs it (of course their Pellerin isn't

ours!) It's we, his disciples, his interpreters, who discovered him and gave him to the world we, the

Chosen People, the Custodians of the Sacred Books, as Howland Wade calls us it's we, who are in

perpetual danger of sinking back into the old stagnant ideals, and practising the Seven Deadly Virtues; it's we

who need to count our mercies, and realize anew what he's done for us, and what we ought to do for him!

And it's for that reason that I urged Mr. Wade to speak here, in the very inner sanctuary of Pellerinism,

exactly as he would speak to the uninitiated to repeat, simply, his Kenosha lecture, 'What Pellerinism

means'; and we ought all, I think, to listen to him with the hearts of little children just as you will, Mr.

"Alice, dear " Mrs. Bain murmured with a deprecating gesture; and Howland Wade, emerging between

A pang of commiseration shot through Bernald as he saw him there, so innocent and so exposed. His plump

pulpy body, which made his evening dress fall into intimate and wrapperlike folds, was like a wide surface

spread to the shafts of irony; and the mild ripples of his voice seemed to enlarge the vulnerable area as he

leaned forward, poised on confidential fingertips, to say persuasively: "Let me try to tell you what

Bernald moved restlessly in his seat. He had the obscure sense of being a party to something not wholly

honourable. He ought not to have come; he ought not to have let his companion come. Yet how could he have

done otherwise? John Pellerin's secret was his own. As long as he chose to remain John Winterman it was no

one's business to gainsay him; and Bernald's scruples were really justifiable only in respect of his own

presence on the scene. But even in this connection he ceased to feel them as soon as Howland Wade began to

IT had been arranged that Pellerin, after the meeting of the Uplift Club, should join Bernald at his rooms and

spend the night there, instead of returning to Portchester. The plan had been eagerly elaborated by the young

man, but he had been unprepared for the alacrity with which his wonderful friend accepted it. He was

beginning to see that it was a part of Pellerin's wonderfulness to fall in, quite simply and naturally, with any

arrangements made for his convenience, or tending to promote the convenience of others. Bernald felt that his

extreme docility in such matters was proportioned to the force of resistance which, for nearly half a lifetime,

had kept him, with his back to the wall, fighting alone against the powers of darkness. In such a scale of

At the close of Howland Wade's discourse, Bernald, charged with his prodigious secret, had felt the need to

escape for an instant from the liberated rush of talk. The interest of watching Pellerin was so perilously great

that the watcher felt it might, at any moment, betray him. He lingered in the crowded drawingroom long

enough to see his friend enclosed in a mounting tide, above which Mrs. Beecher Bain and Miss Fosdick

actively waved their conversational tridents; then he took refuge, at the back of the house, in a small dim

library where, in his younger days, he had discussed personal immortality and the problem of consciousness

In this retreat he surprised Mr. Beecher Bain, a quiet man with a mild brow, who was smoking a surreptitious

cigar over the last number of the Strand. Mr. Bain, at Bernald's approach, dissembled the Strand under a copy

of the Hibbert Journal, but tendered his cigarcase with the remark that stocks were heavy again; and Bernald

On his return to the drawingroom he found that the tide had set toward the suppertable, and when it finally

"Hullo, old man! Where have you been all this time? Winterman? Oh, he's talking to Howland: yes, I

managed it finally. I believe Mrs. Bain has steered them into the library, so that they shan't be disturbed. I

gave her an idea of the situation, and she was awfully kind. We'd better leave them alone, don't you think?

Bernald's secret leapt in his bosom, and he devoted himself to the task of distributing sandwiches and

champagne while his pulses danced to the tune of the cosmic laughter. The vision of Pellerin and his

Interpreter, face to face at last, had a Cyclopean grandeur that dwarfed all other comedy. "And I shall hear of

it presently; in an hour or two he'll be telling me about it. And that hour will be all mine mine and his!"

The dizziness of the thought made it difficult for Bernald to preserve the balance of the supperplates he was

distributing. Life had for him at that moment the completeness which seems to defy disintegration.

The throng in the diningroom was thickening, and Bernald's efforts as purveyor were interrupted by

frequent appeals, from ladies who had reached repleteness, that he should sit down a moment and tell them

all about his interesting friend. Winterman's fame, trumpeted abroad by Miss Fosdick, had reached the four

corners of the Uplift Club, and Bernald found himself fabricating de toutes pieces a Winterman legend which

should in some degree respond to the Club's demand for the human document. When at length he had

acquitted himself of this obligation, and was free to work his way back through the lessening groups into the

drawingroom, he was at last rewarded by a glimpse of his friend, who, still densely encompassed, towered

Their eyes met across the crowd; but Bernald gathered only perplexity from the encounter. What were

Pellerin's eyes saying to him? What orders, what confidences, what indefinable apprehension did their long

look impart? The young man was still trying to decipher their complex message when he felt a tap on the

arm, and turned to encounter the rueful gaze of Bob Wade, whose meaning lay clearly enough on the surface

"I mean with Howland. Winterman won't. Howland doesn't take to him. Says he's crude frightfully crude.

"Oh, I know," Bernald exulted. It was the word he had waited for he saw it now! Once more he was lost in

wonder at Howland's miraculous faculty for always, as the naturalists said, being true to type.

"So I'm afraid it's all up with his chance of writing. At least I can do no more," said Wade, discouraged.

Bernald pressed him for farther details. "Does Winterman seem to mind much? Did you hear his version?"

He turned away to join the circle from which, a few minutes before, Pellerin's eyes had vainly and

enigmatically signalled to him; but the circle had dispersed, and Pellerin himself was not in sight.

Bernald, looking about him, saw that during his brief aside with Wade the party had passed into the final

phase of dissolution. People still delayed, in diminishing groups, but the current had set toward the doors, and

every moment or two it bore away a few more lingerers. Bernald, from his post, commanded the clearing

perspective of the two drawingrooms, and a rapid survey of their length sufficed to assure him that Pellerin

was not in either. Taking leave of Wade, the young man made his way back to the drawingroom, where only

a few hardened feasters remained, and then passed on to the library which had been the scene of the late

momentous colloquy. But the library too was empty, and drifting back uncertainly to the inner drawingroom

Bernald found Mrs. Beecher Bain domestically putting out the wax candles on the mantelpiece.

"Dear Mr. Bernald! Do sit down and have a little chat. What a wonderful privilege it has been! I don't know

She made way for him, hospitably, in a corner of the sofa to which she had sunk; and he echoed her vaguely:

"I can't express to you how it affected me! As Alice said, it was a resurrection it was as if John Pellerin

"We all felt it every one of us! I don't wonder the Greeks it was the Greeks? regarded eloquence as

a supernatural power. As Alice says, when one looked at Howland Wade one understood what they meant by

Bernald rose and held out his hand. "Oh, I see it was Howland who made you feel as if Pellerin were in

"Why, of course. But why are you rushing off?" "Because I must hunt up my friend, who's not used to such

"Your friend?" Mrs. Bain had to collect her thoughts. "Oh, Mr. Winterman, you mean? But he's gone

"Gone?" Bernald exclaimed, with an odd twinge of foreboding. Remembering Pellerin's signal across the

crowd, he reproached himself for not having answered it more promptly. Yet it was certainly strange that his

"Oh, perfectly. He went half an hour ago. But you needn't hurry home on his account, for Alice Fosdick

"Yes. You know what strange hours she keeps. She told me she was going to give him a Welsh rabbit, and

"Oh, if she's going to explain " Bernald murmured. But his amazement at the news struggled with a

confused impatience to reach his rooms in time to be there for his friend's arrival. There could be no stranger

spectacle beneath the stars than that of John Pellerin carried off by Miss Fosdick, and listening, in the small

hours, to her elucidation of his doctrines; but Bernald knew enough of his sex to be aware that such an

experiment may present a less humorous side to its subject than to an impartial observer. Even the Uplift

Club and its connotations might benefit by the attraction of the unknown; and it was conceivable that to a

traveller from Mesopotamia Miss Fosdick might present elements of interest which she had lost for the

frequenters of Fifth Avenue. There was, at any rate, no denying that the affair had become unexpectedly

In the charmed contemplation of these possibilities Bernald sat over his fire, listening for Pellerin's ring. He

had arranged his modest quarters with the reverent care of a celebrant awaiting the descent of his deity. He

guessed Pellerin to be unconscious of visual detail, but sensitive to the happy blending of sensuous

impressions: to the intimate spell of lamplight on books, and of a deep chair placed where one could watch

the fire. The chair was there, and Bernald, facing it across the hearth, already saw it filled by Pellerin's

lounging figure. The autumn dawn came late, and even now they had before them the promise of some

untroubled hours. Bernald, sitting there alone in the warm stillness of his room, and in the profounder hush of

his expectancy, was conscious of gathering up all his sensibilities and perceptions into one

exquisitelyadjusted instrument of notation. Until now he had tasted Pellerin's society only in unpremeditated

snatches, and had always left him with a sense, on his own part, of waste and shortcoming. Now, in the lull of

this dedicated hour, he felt that he should miss nothing, and forget nothing, of the initiation that awaited him.

And catching sight of Pellerin's pipe, he rose and laid it carefully on a table by the armchair.

"No. I've never had any news of him," Bernald heard himself repeating. He spoke in a low tone, and with the

They were addressed to Miss Fosdick, into whose neighbourhood chance had thrown him at a dinner, a year

or so later than their encounter at the Uplift Club. Hitherto he had successfully, and intentionally, avoided

Miss Fosdick, not from any animosity toward that unconscious instrument of fate, but from an intense

reluctance to pronounce the words which he knew he should have to speak if they met.

Now, as it turned out, his chief surprise was that she should wait so long to make him speak them. All

through the dinner she had swept him along on a rapid current of talk which showed no tendency to linger or

turn back upon the past. At first he ascribed her reserve to a sense of delicacy with which he reproached

himself for not having previously credited her; then he saw that she had been carried so far beyond the point

at which they had last faced each other, that it was by the merest hazard of associated ideas that she was now

finally borne back to it. For it appeared that the very next evening, at Mrs. Beecher Bain's, a Hindu Mahatma

was to lecture to the Uplift Club on the Limits of the Subliminal; and it was owing to no less a person than

Howland Wade that this exceptional privilege had been obtained. "Of course Howland's known all over the

world as the interpreter of Pellerinism, and the Aga Gautch, who had absolutely declined to speak anywhere

in public, wrote to Isabella that he could not refuse anything that Mr. Wade asked. Did you know that

Howland's lecture, 'What Pellerinism Means,' has been translated into twentytwo languages, and gone into a

fifth edition in Icelandic? Why, that reminds me," Miss Fosdick broke off "I've never heard what became

of your queer friend what was his name? whom you and Bob Wade accused me of spiriting away after

that very lecture. And I've never seen you since you rushed into the house the next morning, and dragged me

With a sharp effort Bernald gathered himself together to have it out. "Well, what did you do with him?" he

She laughed her appreciation of his humour. "Just what I told you, of course. I said goodbye to him on

Bernald looked at her. "It's really true, then, that he didn't go home with you?"

She bantered back: "Have you suspected me, all this time, of hiding his remains in the cellar?" And with a

droop of her fine lids she added: "I wish he had come home with me, for he was rather interesting, and there

Bernald helped himself to a nectarine, and Miss Fosdick continued on a note of amused curiosity: "So you've

Miss Fosdick's interest seemed to be revived by the strangeness of the case. "It's rather creepy, isn't it? What

could have happened? You don't suppose he could have been waylaid and murdered?" she asked with

She scanned him incredulously. "But what's your theory for you must have a theory? What in the world

Bernald returned her look and hesitated. "Do you happen to remember the last thing he said to you the

"The last thing?" She poised her fork above the peach on her plate. "I don't think he said anything. Oh, yes

when I reminded him that he'd solemnly promised to come back with me and have a little talk he said he

She glanced at him as if suspecting a trap. "Dear me, how flat! I always inclined to a mysterious murder. But

She began to cut her peach, but paused above a lifted bit to ask, with a renewal of animation in her expressive

eyes: "By the way, had you heard that Howland Wade has been gradually getting farther and farther away

from Pellerinism? It seems he's begun to feel that there's a Positivist element in it which is narrowing to any

one who has gone at all deeply into the Wisdom of the East. He was intensely interesting about it the other

day, and of course I do see what he feels. . . . Oh, it's too long to tell you now; but if you could manage to

come in to tea some afternoon soon any day but Wednesday I should so like to explain "

WE had been put in the mood for ghosts, that evening, after an excellent dinner at our old friend Culwin's, by

Seen through the haze of our cigars, and by the drowsy gleam of a coal fire, Culwin's library, with its oak

walls and dark old bindings, made a good setting for such evocations; and ghostly experiences at first hand

being, after Murchard's brilliant opening, the only kind acceptable to us, we proceeded to take stock of our

group and tax each member for a contribution. There were eight of us, and seven contrived, in a manner more

or less adequate, to fulfil the condition imposed. It surprised us all to find that we could muster such a show

of supernatural impressions, for none of us, excepting Murchard himself and young Phil Frenham whose

story was the slightest of the lot had the habit of sending our souls into the invisible. So that, on the

whole, we had every reason to be proud of our seven "exhibits," and none of us would have dreamed of

Our old friend, Mr. Andrew Culwin, who had sat back in his armchair, listening and blinking through the

smoke circles with the cheerful tolerance of a wise old idol, was not the kind of man likely to be favoured

with such contacts, though he had imagination enough to enjoy, without envying, the superior privileges of

his guests. By age and by education he belonged to the stout Positivist tradition, and his habit of thought had

been formed in the days of the epic struggle between physics and metaphysics. But he had been, then and

always, essentially a spectator, a humorous detached observer of the immense muddled variety show of life,

slipping out of his seat now and then for a brief dip into the convivialities at the back of the house, but never,

as far as one knew, showing the least desire to jump on the stage and do a "turn."

Among his contemporaries there lingered a vague tradition of his having, at a remote period, and in a

romantic clime, been wounded in a duel; but this legend no more tallied with what we younger men knew of

his character than my mother's assertion that he had once been "a charming little man with nice eyes"

"He never can have looked like anything but a bundle of sticks," Murchard had once said of him. "Or a

phosphorescent log, rather," some one else amended; and we recognized the happiness of this description of

his small squat trunk, with the red blink of the eyes in a face like mottled bark. He had always been possessed

of a leisure which he had nursed and protected, instead of squandering it in vain activities. His carefully

guarded hours had been devoted to the cultivation of a fine intelligence and a few judiciously chosen habits;

and none of the disturbances common to human experience seemed to have crossed his sky. Nevertheless, his

dispassionate survey of the universe had not raised his opinion of that costly experiment, and his study of the

human race seemed to have resulted in the conclusion that all men were superfluous, and women necessary

only because some one had to do the cooking. On the importance of this point his convictions were absolute,

and gastronomy was the only science which he revered as dogma. It must be owned that his little dinners

were a strong argument in favour of this view, besides being a reason though not the main one for the

Mentally he exercised a hospitality less seductive but no less stimulating. His mind was like a forum, or some

open meetingplacefor the exchange of ideas: somewhat cold and draughty, but light, spacious and orderly

a kind of academic grove from which all the leaves had fallen. In this privileged area a dozen of us were

wont to stretch our muscles and expand our lungs; and, as if to prolong as much as possible the tradition of

what we felt to be a vanishing institution, one or two neophytes were now and then added to our band.

Young Phil Frenham was the last, and the most interesting, of these recruits, and a good example of

Murchard's somewhat morbid assertion that our old friend "liked 'em juicy." It was indeed a fact that Culwin,

for all his mental dryness, specially tasted the lyric qualities in youth. As he was far too good an Epicurean to

nip the flowers of soul which he gathered for his garden, his friendship was not a disintegrating influence: on

the contrary, it forced the young idea to robuster bloom. And in Phil Frenham he had a fine subject for

experimentation. The boy was really intelligent, and the soundness of his nature was like the pure paste under

a delicate glaze. Culwin had fished him out of a thick fog of family dulness, and pulled him up to a peak in

Darien; and the adventure hadn't hurt him a bit. Indeed, the skill with which Culwin had contrived to

stimulate his curiosities without robbing them of their young bloom of awe seemed to me a sufficient answer

to Murchard's ogreish metaphor. There was nothing hectic in Frenham's efflorescence, and his old friend had

not laid even a fingertip on the sacred stupidities. One wanted no better proof of that than the fact that

"There's a side of him you fellows don't see. I believe that story about the duel!" he declared; and it was of

the very essence of this belief that it should impel him just as our little party was dispersing to turn

back to our host with the absurd demand: "And now you've got to tell us about your ghost!"

The outer door had closed on Murchard and the others; only Frenham and I remained; and the vigilant servant

who presided over Culwin's destinies, having brought a fresh supply of sodawater, had been laconically

Culwin's sociability was a nightblooming flower, and we knew that he expected the nucleus of his group to

tighten around him after midnight. But Frenham's appeal seemed to disconcert him comically, and he rose

from the chair in which he had just reseated himself after his farewells in the hall.

" My ghost? Do you suppose I'm fool enough to go to the expense of keeping one of my own, when there are

so many charming ones in my friends' closets? Take another cigar," he said, revolving toward me with a

Frenham laughed too, pulling up his slender height before the chimneypiece as he turned to face his short

"Oh," he said, "you'd never be content to share if you met one you really liked."

Culwin had dropped back into his armchair, his shock head embedded in its habitual hollow, his little eyes

"Ah, you have, then!" Frenham pounced on him in the same instant, with a sidewise glance of victory at me;

but Culwin cowered gnomelike among his cushions, dissembling himself in a protective cloud of smoke.

"What's the use of denying it? You've seen everything, so of course you've seen a ghost!" his young friend

persisted, talking intrepidly into the cloud. "Or, if you haven't seen one, it's only because you've seen two!"

The form of the challenge seemed to strike our host. He shot his head out of the mist with a queer

"Yes," he suddenly flung at us on a shrill jerk of laughter; "it's only because I've seen two!"

The words were so unexpected that they dropped down and down into a fathomless silence, while we

continued to stare at each other over Culwin's head, and Culwin stared at his ghosts. At length Frenham,

without speaking, threw himself into the chair on the other side of the hearth, and leaned forward with his

"OH, of course they're not show ghosts a collector wouldn't think anything of them . . . Don't let me raise

your hopes . . . their one merit is their numerical strength: the exceptional fact of their being two. But, as

against this, I'm bound to admit that at any moment I could probably have exorcised them both by asking my

doctor for a prescription, or my oculist for a pair of spectacles. Only, as I never could make up my mind

whether to go to the doctor or the oculist whether I was afflicted by an optical or a digestive delusion I

left them to pursue their interesting double life, though at times they made mine exceedingly comfortable . . .

"Yes uncomfortable; and you know how I hate to be uncomfortable! But it was part of my stupid pride,

when the thing began, not to admit that I could be disturbed by the trifling matter of seeing two

"And then I'd no reason, really, to suppose I was ill. As far as I knew I was simply bored horribly bored.

But it was part of my boredom I remember that I was feeling so uncommonly well, and didn't know

how on earth to work off my surplus energy. I had come back from a long journey down in South

America and Mexico and had settled down for the winter near New York, with an old aunt who had

known Washington Irving and corresponded with N. P. Willis. She lived, not far from Irvington, in a damp

Gothic villa, overhung by Norway spruces, and looking exactly like a memorial emblem done in hair. Her

personal appearance was in keeping with this image, and her own hair of which there was little left

"I had just reached the end of an agitated year, with considerable arrears to make up in money and emotion;

and theoretically it seemed as though my aunt's mild hospitality would be as beneficial to my nerves as to my

purse. But the deuce of it was that as soon as I felt myself safe and sheltered my energy began to revive; and

how was I to work it off inside of a memorial emblem? I had, at that time, the agreeable illusion that

sustained intellectual effort could engage a man's whole activity; and I decided to write a great book I

forget about what. My aunt, impressed by my plan, gave up to me her Gothic library, filled with classics in

black cloth and daguerrotypes of faded celebrities; and I sat down at my desk to make myself a place among

their number. And to facilitate my task she lent me a cousin to copy my manuscript.

"The cousin was a nice girl, and I had an idea that a nice girl was just what I needed to restore my faith in

human nature, and principally in myself. She was neither beautiful nor intelligent poor Alice Nowell!

but it interested me to see any woman content to be so uninteresting, and I wanted to find out the secret of her

content. In doing this I handled it rather rashly, and put it out of joint oh, just for a moment! There's no

fatuity in telling you this, for the poor girl had never seen any one but cousins . . .

"Well, I was sorry for what I'd done, of course, and confoundedly bothered as to how I should put it straight.

She was staying in the house, and one evening, after my aunt had gone to bed, she came down to the library

to fetch a book she'd mislaid, like any artless heroine on the shelves behind us. She was pinknosed and

flustered, and it suddenly occurred to me that her hair, though it was fairly thick and pretty, would look

exactly like my aunt's when she grew older. I was glad I had noticed this, for it made it easier for me to do

what was right; and when I had found the book she hadn't lost I told her I was leaving for Europe that week.

"Europe was terribly far off in those days, and Alice knew at once what I meant. She didn't take it in the least

as I'd expected it would have been easier if she had. She held her book very tight, and turned away a

moment to wind up the lamp on my desk it had a ground glass shade with vine leaves, and glass drops

around the edge, I remember. Then she came back, held out her hand, and said: 'Goodbye.' And as she said

it she looked straight at me and kissed me. I had never felt anything as fresh and shy and brave as her kiss. It

was worse than any reproach, and it made me ashamed to deserve a reproach from her. I said to myself: 'I'll

marry her, and when my aunt dies she'll leave us this house, and I'll sit here at the desk and go on with my

book; and Alice will sit over there with her embroidery and look at me as she's looking now. And life will go

on like that for any number of years.' The prospect frightened me a little, but at the time it didn't frighten me

as much as doing anything to hurt her; and ten minutes later she had my seal ring on my finger, and my

"You'll wonder why I'm enlarging on this familiar incident. It's because the evening on which it took place

was the very evening on which I first saw the queer sight I've spoken of. Being at that time an ardent believer

in a necessary sequence between cause and effect I naturally tried to trace some kind of link between what

had just happened to me in my aunt's library, and what was to happen a few hours later on the same night;

"I went up to bed with rather a heavy heart, for I was bowed under the weight of the first good action I had

ever consciously committed; and young as I was, I saw the gravity of my situation. Don't imagine from this

that I had hitherto been an instrument of destruction. I had been merely a harmless young man, who had

followed his bent and declined all collaboration with Providence. Now I had suddenly undertaken to promote

the moral order of the world, and I felt a good deal like the trustful spectator who has given his gold watch to

the conjurer, and doesn't know in what shape he'll get it back when the trick is over . . . Still, a glow of

selfrighteousness tempered my fears, and I said to myself as I undressed that when I'd got used to being

good it probably wouldn't make me as nervous as it did at the start. And by the time I was in bed, and had

blown out my candle, I felt that I really was getting used to it, and that, as far as I'd got, it was not unlike

"I closed my eyes on this image, and when I opened them it must have been a good deal later, for my room

had grown cold, and the night was intensely still. I was waked suddenly by the feeling we all know the

feeling that there was something near me that hadn't been there when I fell asleep. I sat up and strained my

eyes into the darkness. The room was pitch black, and at first I saw nothing; but gradually a vague glimmer at

the foot of the bed turned into two eyes staring back at me. I couldn't see the face attached to them on

account of the darkness, I imagined but as I looked the eyes grew more and more distinct: they gave out a

"The sensation of being thus gazed at was far from pleasant, and you might suppose that my first impulse

would have been to jump out of bed and hurl myself on the invisible figure attached to the eyes. But it wasn't

my impulse was simply to lie still . . . I can't say whether this was due to an immediate sense of the

uncanny nature of the apparition to the certainty that if I did jump out of bed I should hurl myself on

nothing or merely to the benumbing effect of the eyes themselves. They were the very worst eyes I've ever

seen: a man's eyes but what a man! My first thought was that he must be frightfully old. The orbits were

sunk, and the thick redlined lids hung over the eyeballs like blinds of which the cords are broken. One lid

drooped a little lower than the other, with the effect of a crooked leer; and between these pulpy folds of flesh,

with their scant bristle of lashes, the eyes themselves, small glassy disks with an agatelike rim about the

"But the age of the eyes was not the most unpleasant thing about them. What turned me sick was their

expression of vicious security. I don't know how else to describe the fact that they seemed to belong to a man

who had done a lot of harm in his life, but had always kept just inside the danger lines. They were not the

eyes of a coward, but of some one much too clever to take risks; and my gorge rose at their look of base

astuteness. Yet even that wasn't the worst; for as we continued to scan each other I saw in them a tinge of

"At that I was seized by an impulse of rage that jerked me out of bed and pitched me straight on the unseen

figure at its foot. But of course there wasn't any figure there, and my fists struck at emptiness. Ashamed and

cold, I groped about for a match and lit the candles. The room looked just as usual as I had known it

"As soon as the room was dark again the eyes reappeared; and I now applied myself to explaining them on

scientific principles. At first I thought the illusion might have been caused by the glow of the last embers in

the chimney; but the fireplace was on the other side of my bed, and so placed that the fire could not possibly

be reflected in my toilet glass, which was the only mirror in the room. Then it occurred to me that I might

have been tricked by the reflection of the embers in some polished bit of wood or metal; and though I couldn't

discover any object of the sort in my line of vision, I got up again, groped my way to the hearth, and covered

what was left of the fire. But as soon as I was back in bed the eyes were back at its foot.

"They were an hallucination, then: that was plain. But the fact that they were not due to any external dupery

didn't make them a bit pleasanter to see. For if they were a projection of my inner consciousness, what the

deuce was the matter with that organ? I had gone deeply enough into the mystery of morbid pathological

states to picture the conditions under which an exploring mind might lay itself open to such a midnight

admonition; but I couldn't fit it to my present case. I had never felt more normal, mentally and physically; and

the only unusual fact in my situation that of having assured the happiness of an amiable girl did not

seem of a kind to summon unclean spirits about my pillow. But there were the eyes still looking at me . . .

"I shut mine, and tried to evoke a vision of Alice Nowell's. They were not remarkable eyes, but they were as

wholesome as fresh water, and if she had had more imagination or longer lashes their expression might

have been interesting. As it was, they did not prove very efficacious, and in a few moments I perceived that

they had mysteriously changed into the eyes at the foot of the bed. It exasperated me more to feel these

glaring at me through my shut lids than to see them, and I opened my eyes again and looked straight into their

"And so it went on all night. I can't tell you what that night was, nor how long it lasted. Have you ever lain in

bed, hopelessly wide awake, and tried to keep your eyes shut, knowing that if you opened 'em you'd see

something you dreaded and loathed? It sounds easy, but it's devilish hard. Those eyes hung there and drew

me. I had the vertige de l'abime, and their red lids were the edge of my abyss. . . . I had known nervous hours

before: hours when I'd felt the wind of danger in my neck; but never this kind of strain. It wasn't that the eyes

were so awful; they hadn't the majesty of the powers of darkness. But they had how shall I say? a

physical effect that was the equivalent of a bad smell: their look left a smear like a snail's. And I didn't see

what business they had with me, anyhow and I stared and stared, trying to find out . . .

"I don't know what effect they were trying to produce; but the effect they did produce was that of making me

pack my portmanteau and bolt to town early the next morning. I left a note for my aunt, explaining that I was

ill and had gone to see my doctor; and as a matter of fact I did feel uncommonly ill the night seemed to

have pumped all the blood out of me. But when I reached town I didn't go to the doctor's. I went to a friend's

rooms, and threw myself on a bed, and slept for ten heavenly hours. When I woke it was the middle of the

night, and I turned cold at the thought of what might be waiting for me. I sat up, shaking, and stared into the

darkness; but there wasn't a break in its blessed surface, and when I saw that the eyes were not there I

"I had left no word for Alice when I fled, because I meant to go back the next morning. But the next morning

I was too exhausted to stir. As the day went on the exhaustion increased, instead of wearing off like the

lassitude left by an ordinary night of insomnia: the effect of the eyes seemed to be cumulative, and the

thought of seeing them again grew intolerable. For two days I struggled with my dread; but on the third

evening I pulled myself together and decided to go back the next morning. I felt a good deal happier as soon

as I'd decided, for I knew that my abrupt disappearance, and the strangeness of my not writing, must have

been very painful for poor Alice. That night I went to bed with an easy mind, and fell asleep at once; but in

"Well, I simply couldn't face them; and instead of going back to my aunt's I bundled a few things into a trunk

and jumped onto the first steamer for England. I was so dead tired when I got on board that I crawled straight

into my berth, and slept most of the way over; and I can't tell you the bliss it was to wake from those long

stretches of dreamless sleep and look fearlessly into the darkness, knowing that I shouldn't see the eyes . . .

"I stayed abroad for a year, and then I stayed for another; and during that time I never had a glimpse of them.

That was enough reason for prolonging my stay if I'd been on a desert island. Another was, of course, that I

had perfectly come to see, on the voyage over, the folly, complete impossibility, of my marrying Alice

Nowell. The fact that I had been so slow in making this discovery annoyed me, and made me want to avoid

explanations. The bliss of escaping at one stroke from the eyes, and from this other embarrassment, gave my

freedom an extraordinary zest; and the longer I savoured it the better I liked its taste.

"The eyes had burned such a hole in my consciousness that for a long time I went on puzzling over the nature

of the apparition, and wondering nervously if it would ever come back. But as time passed I lost this dread,

"The second year found me settled in Rome, where I was planning, I believe, to write another great book a

definitive work on Etruscan influences in Italian art. At any rate, I'd found some pretext of the kind for taking

a sunny apartment in the Piazza di Spagna and dabbling about indefinitely in the Forum; and there, one

morning, a charming youth came to me. As he stood there in the warm light, slender and smooth and

hyacinthine, he might have stepped from a ruined altar one to Antinous, say but he'd come instead

from New York, with a letter (of all people) from Alice Nowell. The letter the first I'd had from her since

our break was simply a line introducing her young cousin, Gilbert Noyes, and appealing to me to befriend

him. It appeared, poor lad, that he 'had talent,' and 'wanted to write'; and, an obdurate family having insisted

that his calligraphy should take the form of double entry, Alice had intervened to win him six months' respite,

during which he was to travel on a meagre pittance, and somehow prove his ultimate ability to increase it by

his pen. The quaint conditions of the test struck me first: it seemed about as conclusive as a mediaeval

'ordeal.' Then I was touched by her having sent him to me. I had always wanted to do her some service, to

justify myself in my own eyes rather than hers; and here was a beautiful embodiment of my chance.

"Well, I imagine it's safe to lay down the general principle that predestined geniuses don't, as a rule, appear

before one in the spring sunshine of the Forum looking like one of its banished gods. At any rate, poor Noyes

wasn't a predestined genius. But he was beautiful to see, and charming as a comrade too. It was only when he

began to talk literature that my heart failed me. I knew all the symptoms so well the things he had 'in him,'

and the things outside him that impinged! There's the real test, after all. It was always punctually,

inevitably, with the inexorableness of a mechanical law it was always the wrong thing that struck him. I

grew to find a certain grim fascination in deciding in advance exactly which wrong thing he'd select; and I

"The worst of it was that his betise wasn't of the too obvious sort. Ladies who met him at picnics thought him

intellectual; and even at dinners he passed for clever. I, who had him under the microscope, fancied now and

then that he might develop some kind of a slim talent, something that he could make 'do' and be happy on;

and wasn't that, after all, what I was concerned with? He was so charming he continued to be so charming

that he called forth all my charity in support of this argument; and for the first few months I really

"Those months were delightful. Noyes was constantly with me, and the more I saw of him the better I liked

him. His stupidity was a natural grace it was as beautiful, really, as his eyelashes. And he was so gay, so

affectionate, and so happy with me, that telling him the truth would have been about as pleasant as slitting the

throat of some artless animal. At first I used to wonder what had put into that radiant head the detestable

delusion that it held a brain. Then I began to see that it was simply protective mimicry an instinctive ruse

to get away from family life and an office desk. Not that Gilbert didn't dear lad! believe in himself.

There wasn't a trace of hypocrisy in his composition. He was sure that his 'call' was irresistible, while to me it

was the saving grace of his situation that it wasn't, and that a little money, a little leisure, a little pleasure

would have turned him into an inoffensive idler. Unluckily, however, there was no hope of money, and with

the grim alternative of the office desk before him he couldn't postpone his attempt at literature. The stuff he

turned out was deplorable, and I see now that I knew it from the first. Still, the absurdity of deciding a man's

whole future on a first trial seemed to justify me in withholding my verdict, and perhaps even in encouraging

him a little, on the ground that the human plant generally needs warmth to flower.

"At any rate, I proceeded on that principle, and carried it to the point of getting his term of probation

extended. When I left Rome he went with me, and we idled away a delicious summer between Capri and

Venice. I said to myself: 'If he has anything in him, it will come out now; and it did. He was never more

enchanting and enchanted. There were moments of our pilgrimage when beauty born of murmuring sound

seemed actually to pass into his face but only to issue forth in a shallow flood of the palest ink . . .

"Well the time came to turn off the tap; and I knew there was no hand but mine to do it. We were back in

Rome, and I had taken him to stay with me, not wanting him to be alone in his dismal pension when he had to

face the necessity of renouncing his ambition. I hadn't, of course, relied solely on my own judgment in

deciding to advise him to drop literature. I had sent his stuff to various people editors and critics and

they had always sent it back with the same chilling lack of comment. Really there was nothing on earth to say

"I confess I never felt more shabbily than I did on the day when I decided to have it out with Gilbert. It was

well enough to tell myself that it was my duty to knock the poor boy's hopes into splinters but I'd like to

know what act of gratuitous cruelty hasn't been justified on that plea? I've always shrunk from usurping the

functions of Providence, and when I have to exercise them I decidedly prefer that it shouldn't be on an errand

of destruction. Besides, in the last issue, who was I to decide, even after a year's trial, if poor Gilbert had it in

"The more I looked at the part I'd resolved to play, the less I liked it; and I liked it still less when Gilbert sat

opposite me, with his head thrown back in the lamplight, just as Phil's is now . . . I'd been going over his last

manuscript, and he knew it, and he knew that his future hung on my verdict we'd tacitly agreed to that.

The manuscript lay between us, on my table a novel, his first novel, if you please! and he reached over

"I stood up and cleared my throat, trying to keep my eyes away from his face and on the manuscript.

"'Oh, look here, don't take on so, my dear fellow! I'm not so awfully cut up as all that!' His hands were on my

shoulders, and he was laughing down on me from his full height, with a kind of mortallystricken gaiety that

"He was too beautifully brave for me to keep up any humbug about my duty. And it came over me suddenly

how I should hurt others in hurting him: myself first, since sending him home meant losing him; but more

particularly poor Alice Nowell, to whom I had so uneasily longed to prove my good faith and my immense

"But my intuition was like one of those lightning flashes that encircle the whole horizon, and in the same

instant I saw what I might be letting myself in for if I didn't tell the truth. I said to myself: 'I shall have him

for life' and I'd never yet seen any one, man or woman, whom I was quite sure of wanting on those terms.

Well, this impulse of egotism decided me. I was ashamed of it, and to get away from it I took a leap that

"'The thing's all right, and you're all wrong!' I shouted up at him; and as he hugged me, and I laughed and

shook in his incredulous clutch, I had for a minute the sense of selfcomplacency that is supposed to attend

"Gilbert, of course, was for celebrating his emancipation in some spectacular manner; but I sent him away

alone to explode his emotions, and went to bed to sleep off mine. As I undressed I began to wonder what their

aftertaste would be so many of the finest don't keep! Still, I wasn't sorry, and I meant to empty the bottle,

"After I got into bed I lay for a long time smiling at the memory of his eyes his blissful eyes. . . Then I fell

asleep, and when I woke the room was deathly cold, and I sat up with a jerk and there were the other eyes

"It was three years since I'd seen them, but I'd thought of them so often that I fancied they could never take

me unawares again. Now, with their red sneer on me, I knew that I had never really believed they would

come back, and that I was as defenceless as ever against them . . . As before, it was the insane irrelevance of

their coming that made it so horrible. What the deuce were they after, to leap out at me at such a time? I had

lived more or less carelessly in the years since I'd seen them, though my worst indiscretions were not dark

enough to invite the searchings of their infernal glare; but at this particular moment I was really in what might

have been called a state of grace; and I can't tell you how the fact added to their horror . . .

"But it's not enough to say they were as bad as before: they were worse. Worse by just so much as I'd learned

of life in the interval; by all the damnable implications my wider experience read into them. I saw now what I

hadn't seen before: that they were eyes which had grown hideous gradually, which had built up their baseness

coralwise, bit by bit, out of a series of small turpitudes slowly accumulated through the industrious years.

Yes it came to me that what made them so bad was that they'd grown bad so slowly . . .

"There they hung in the darkness, their swollen lids dropped across the little watery bulbs rolling loose in the

orbits, and the puff of fat flesh making a muddy shadow underneath and as their filmy stare moved with

my movements, there came over me a sense of their tacit complicity, of a deep hidden understanding between

us that was worse than the first shock of their strangeness. Not that I understood them; but that they made it

so clear that some day I should . . . Yes, that was the worst part of it, decidedly; and it was the feeling that

"For they got into the damnable habit of coming back. They reminded me of vampires with a taste for young

flesh, they seemed so to gloat over the taste of a good conscience. Every night for a month they came to claim

their morsel of mine: since I'd made Gilbert happy they simply wouldn't loosen their fangs. The coincidence

almost made me hate him, poor lad, fortuitous as I felt it to be. I puzzled over it a good deal, but couldn't find

any hint of an explanation except in the chance of his association with Alice Nowell. But then the eyes had let

up on me the moment I had abandoned her, so they could hardly be the emissaries of a woman scorned, even

if one could have pictured poor Alice charging such spirits to avenge her. That set me thinking, and I began

to wonder if they would let up on me if I abandoned Gilbert. The temptation was insidious, and I had to

stiffen myself against it; but really, dear boy! he was too charming to be sacrificed to such demons. And so,

THE fire crumbled, sending up a flash which threw into relief the narrator's gnarled red face under its

greyblack stubble. Pressed into the hollow of the dark leather armchair, it stood out an instant like an

intaglio of yellowish redveined stone, with spots of enamel for the eyes; then the fire sank and in the shaded

Phil Frenham, sitting in a low chair on the opposite side of the hearth, one long arm propped on the table

behind him, one hand supporting his thrownback head, and his eyes steadily fixed on his old friend's face,

had not moved since the tale began. He continued to maintain his silent immobility after Culwin had ceased

to speak, and it was I who, with a vague sense ofdisappointment at the sudden drop of the story, finally asked:

Culwin, so sunk into his chair that he seemed like a heap of his own empty clothes, stirred a little, as if in

surprise at my question. He appeared to have halfforgotten what he had been telling us.

"How long? Oh, off and on all that winter. It was infernal. I never got used to them. I grew really ill."

Frenham shifted his attitude silently, and as he did so his elbow struck against a small mirror in a bronze

frame standing on the table behind him. He turned and changed its angle slightly; then he resumed his former

attitude, his dark head thrown back on his lifted palm, his eyes intent on Culwin's face. Something in his stare

embarrassed me, and as if to divert attention from it I pressed on with another question:

"He wore me out wore everybody out. He kept on pouring out his lamentable twaddle, and hawking it up

and down the place till he became a thing of terror. I tried to wean him from writing oh, ever so gently,

you understand, by throwing him with agreeable people, giving him a chance to make himself felt, to come to

a sense of what he really had to give. I'd foreseen this solution from the beginning felt sure that, once the

first ardour of authorship was quenched, he'd drop into his place as a charming parasitic thing, the kind of

chronic Cherubino for whom, in old societies, there's always a seat at table, and a shelter behind the ladies'

skirts. I saw him take his place as 'the poet': the poet who doesn't write. One knows the type in every

drawingroom. Living in that way doesn't cost much I'd worked it all out in my mind, and felt sure that,

with a little help, he could manage it for the next few years; and meanwhile he'd be sure to marry. I saw him

married to a widow, rather older, with a good cook and a wellrun house. And I actually had my eye on the

widow . . . Meanwhile I did everything to facilitate the transition lent him money to ease his conscience,

introduced him to pretty women to make him forget his vows. But nothing would do him: he had but one idea

in his beautiful obstinate head. He wanted the laurel and not the rose, and he kept on repeating Gautier's

axiom, and battering and filing at his limp prose till he'd spread it out over Lord knows how many thousand

sloppy pages. Now and then he would send a pailful to a publisher, and of course it would always come back.

"At first it didn't matter he thought he was 'misunderstood.' He took the attitudes of genius, and whenever

an opus came home he wrote another to keep it company. Then he had a reaction of despair, and accused me

of deceiving him, and Lord knows what. I got angry at that, and told him it was he who had deceived himself.

He'd come to me determined to write, and I'd done my best to help him. That was the extent of my offence,

"That seemed to strike home, and he didn't answer for a minute. Then he said: 'My time's up and my money's

"'I mean refusing this offer of Mrs. Ellinger's: to be her secretary at a salary of five thousand dollars. There

"He flung out his hand with a violence that struck the letter from mine. 'Oh, I know well enough what's in it!'

"He made none at the minute, but turned away slowly to the door. There, with his hand on the threshold, he

stopped to ask, almost under his breath: 'Then you really think my stuff's no good?'

"I was tired and exasperated, and I laughed. I don't defend my laugh it was in wretched taste. But I must

plead in extenuation that the boy was a fool, and that I'd done my best for him I really had.

"He went out of the room, shutting the door quietly after him. That afternoon I left for Frascati, where I'd

promised to spend the Sunday with some friends. I was glad to escape from Gilbert, and by the same token,

as I learned that night, I had also escaped from the eyes. I dropped into the same lethargic sleep that had come

to me before when their visitations ceased; and when I woke the next morning, in my peaceful painted room

above the ilexes, I felt the utter weariness and deep relief that always followed on that repairing slumber. I

put in two blessed nights at Frascati, and when I got back to my rooms in Rome I found that Gilbert had gone

. . . Oh, nothing tragic had happened the episode never rose to that. He'd simply packed his manuscripts

and left for America for his family and the Wall Street desk. He left a decent little note to tell me of his

decision, and behaved altogether, in the circumstances, as little like a fool as it's possible for a fool to behave

CULWIN paused again, and again Frenham sat motionless, the dusky contour of his young head reflected in

"And what became of Noyes afterward?" I finally asked, still disquieted by a sense of incompleteness, by the

Culwin twitched his shoulders. "Oh, nothing became of him because he became nothing. There could be

no question of 'becoming' about it. He vegetated in an office, I believe, and finally got a clerkship in a

consulate, and married drearily in China. I saw him once in Hong Kong, years afterward. He was fat and

"And the eyes?" I asked, after another pause which Frenham's continued silence made oppressive.

Culwin, stroking his chin, blinked at me meditatively through the shadows. "I never saw them after my last

talk with Gilbert. Put two and two together if you can. For my part, I haven't found the link."

He rose stiffly, his hands in his pockets, and walked over to the table on which reviving drinks had been set

"You must be parched after this dry tale. Here, help yourself, my dear fellow. Here, Phil " He turned back

Frenham still sat in his low chair, making no response to his host's hospitable summons. But as Culwin

advanced toward him, their eyes met in a long look; after which, to my intense surprise, the young man,

turning suddenly in his seat, flung his arms across the table, and dropped his face upon them.

"Phil what the deuce? Why, have the eyes scared you? My dear boy my dear fellow I never had

He broke into a chuckle at the thought, and halted on the hearthrug, his hands still in his pockets, gazing

down in honest perplexity at the youth's bowed head. Then, as Frenham still made no answer, he moved a

"Cheer up, my dear Phil! It's years since I've seen them apparently I've done nothing lately bad enough to

call them out of chaos. Unless my present evocation of them has made you see them; which would be their

His bantering appeal quivered off into an uneasy laugh, and he moved still nearer, bending over Frenham,

"Phil, my dear boy, really what's the matter? Why don't you answer? Have you seen the eyes?"

Frenham's face was still pressed against his arms, and from where I stood behind Culwin I saw the latter, as if

under the rebuff of this unaccountable attitude, draw back slowly from his friend. As he did so, the light of

the lamp on the table fell full on his perplexed congested face, and I caught its sudden reflection in the mirror

Culwin saw the reflection also. He paused, his face level with the mirror, as if scarcely recognizing the

countenance in it as his own. But as he looked his expression gradually changed, and for an appreciable space

of time he and the image in the glass confronted each other with a glare of slowly gathering hate. Then

Culwin let go of Frenham's shoulders, and drew back a step, covering his eyes with his hands . . .

IT had been almost too easy that was young Millner's first feeling, as he stood again on the Spence

doorstep, the great moment of his interview behind him, and Fifth Avenue rolling its grimy Pactolus at his

Halting there in the winter light, with the clang of the ponderous vestibule doors in his ears, and his eyes

carried down the perspective of the packed interminable thoroughfare, he even dared to remember

Rastignac's apostrophe to Paris, and to hazard recklessly under his small fair moustache: "Who knows?"

He, Hugh Millner, at any rate, knew a good deal already: a good deal more than he had imagined it possible

to learn in half an hour's talk with a man like Orlando G. Spence; and the loudrumouring city spread out

A gust of wind, whirling down from the dizzy height of the building on the next corner, drove sharply

through his overcoat and compelled him to clutch at his hat. It was a bitter January day, a day of fierce light

and air, when the sunshine cut like icicles and the wind sucked one into black gulfs at the street corners. But

Millner's complacency was like a warm lining to his shabby coat, and heaving steadied his hat he continued

to stand on the Spence threshold, lost in the vision revealed to him from the Pisgah of its marble steps. Yes, it

was wonderful what the vision showed him. . . . In his absorption he might have frozen fast to the doorstep

if the Rhadamanthine portals behind him had not suddenly opened to let out a slim furcoated figure, the

figure, as he perceived, of the youth whom he had caught in the act of withdrawal as he entered Mr. Spence's

study, and whom the latter, with a wave of his affable hand, had detained to introduce as "my son Draper."

It was characteristic of the odd friendliness of the whole scene that the great man should have thought it

worth while to call back and name his heir to a mere humble applicant like Millner; and that the heir should

shed on him, from a pale highbrowed face, a smile of such deprecating kindness. It was characteristic,

equally, of Millner, that he should at once mark the narrowness of the shoulders sustaining this ingenuous

head; a narrowness, as he now observed, imperfectly concealed by the wide fur collar of young Spence's

expensive and badly cut coat. But the face took on, as the youth smiled his surprise at their second meeting, a

look of almost plaintive goodwill: the kind of look that Millner scorned and yet could never quite resist.

"Mr. Millner? Are you er waiting?" the lad asked, with an intention of serviceableness that was like a

"For my motor? No," Millner jested in his frank free voice. "The fact is, I was just standing here lost in the

contemplation of my luck" and as his companion's pale blue eyes seemed to shape a question, "my

extraordinary luck," he explained, "in having been engaged as your father's secretary."

"Oh," the other rejoined, with a faint colour in his sallow cheek. "I'm so glad," he murmured: "but I was sure

Millner averted his gaze first, almost fearful of its betraying the added sense of his own strength and dexterity

"Sure? How could any one be sure? I don't believe in it yet!" he laughed out in the irony of his triumph.

The boy's words did not sound like a mere civility Millner felt in them an homage to his power. "Oh, yes:

Millner tingled again with this tribute to his physical straightness and bloom. Yes, he looked his part, hang it

"If you're walking, then, can I go along a little way?" And he nodded southward down the shabby gaudy

That, again, was part of the high comedy of the hour that Millner should descend the Spence steps at

young Spence's side, and stroll down Fifth Avenue with him at the proudest moment of the afternoon; O. G.

Spence's secretary walking abroad with O. G. Spence's heir! He had the scientific detachment to pull out his

watch and furtively note the hour. Yes it was exactly forty minutes since he had rung the Spence

doorbell and handed his card to a gelid footman, who, openly sceptical of his claim to be received, had left

"Some day," Miller grinned to himself, "I think I'll take that footman as furnaceman or to do the boots."

And he pictured his marble palace rising from the earth to form the mausoleum of a footman's pride.

Only forty minutes ago! And now he had his opportunity fast! And he never meant to let it go! It was

incredible, what had happened in the interval. He had gone up the Spence steps an unknown young man, out

of a job, and with no substantial hope of getting into one: a needy young man with a mother and two limp

sisters to be helped, and a lengthening figure of debt that stood by his bed through the anxious nights. And he

went down the steps with his present assured, and his future lit by the hues of the rainbow above the pot of

gold. Certainly a fellow who made his way at that rate had it "in him," and could afford to trust his star.

Descending from this joyous flight he stooped his ear to the discourse of young Spence.

"My father'll work you rather hard, you know: but you look as if you wouldn't mind that."

Millner pulled up his inches with the selfconsciousness of the man who had none to waste. "Oh, no, I shan't

"Just so," Draper Spence assented eagerly. "That's what I feel. And you'll find that whatever my father

Millner tightened his lips on a grin. He was thinking only of where the work would lead him, not in the least

of where it might land the eminent Orlando G. Spence. But he looked at his companion sympathetically.

"Oh, I don't know." They had paused at a crossing, and young Draper, with a dubious air, stood striking his

agateheaded stick against the curbstone. "I believe in a purpose, don't you?" he asked, lifting his blue eyes

"A purpose? I should rather say so! I believe in nothing else," cried Millner, feeling as if his were something

Young Spence seemed relieved. "Yes I tie up to that. There is a Purpose. And so, after all, even if I don't

agree with my father on minor points . . ." He coloured quickly, and looked again at Millner. "I should like to

"For father, not me." Draper hesitated, with another selfconfessing smile. "Father thinks I talk too much

that I keep going in and out of things. He doesn't believe in analyzing: he thinks it's destructive. But it hasn't

destroyed my ideals." He looked wistfully up and down the clanging street. "And that's the main thing, isn't

it? I mean, that one should have an Ideal." He turned back almost gaily to Millner. "I suspect you're a

"Revolutionist? Rather! I belong to the Red Syndicate and the Black Hand!" Millner joyfully assented.

Young Draper chuckled at the enormity of the joke. "First rate! We'll have incendiary meetings!" He pulled

an elaborately armorial watch from his enfolding furs. "I'm so sorry, but I must say goodbye this is my

street," he explained. Millner, with a faint twinge of envy, glanced across at the colonnaded marble edifice in

His companion looked surprised. "Oh, no: I never go there. It's too boring." And he brought out, after one of

the pauses in which he seemed rather breathlessly to measure the chances of his listener's indulgence: "I'm

Millner, for a moment or two, stood watching the slim figure wind its way through the mass of vehicles to the

opposite corner; then he pursued his own course down Fifth Avenue, measuring his steps to the rhythmic

His own destination being the small shabby flat off University Place where three tender females awaited the

result of his mission, he had time, on the way home, after abandoning himself to a general sense of triumph,

to dwell specifically on the various aspects of his achievement. Viewed materially and practically, it was a

thing to be proud of; yet it was chiefly on aesthetic grounds because he had done so exactly what he had

set out to do that he glowed with pride at the afternoon's work. For, after all, any young man with the

proper "pull" might have applied to Orlando G. Spence for the post of secretary, and even have penetrated as

far as the great man's study; but that he, Hugh Millner, should not only have forced his way to this fastness,

but have established, within a short half hour, his right to remain there permanently: well, this, if it proved

anything, proved that the first rule of success was to know how to live up to one's principles.

"One must have a plan one must have a plan," the young man murmured, looking with pity at the vague

faces which the crowd bore past him, and feeling almost impelled to detain them and expound his doctrine.

But the planlessness of average human nature was of course the measure of his opportunity; and he smiled to

think that every purposeless face he met was a guarantee of his own advancement, a rung in the ladder he

Yes, the whole secret of success was to know what one wanted to do, and not to be afraid to do it. His own

history was proving that already. He had not been afraid to give up his small but safe position in a realestate

office for the precarious adventure of a private secretaryship; and his first glimpse of his new employer had

convinced him that he had not mistaken his calling. When one has a "way" with one as, in all modesty,

Millner knew he had not to utilize it is a stupid waste of force. And when he had learned that Orlando G.

Spence was in search of a private secretary who should be able to give him intelligent assistance in the

execution of his philanthropic schemes, the young man felt that his hour had come. It was no part of his plan

to associate himself with one of the masters of finance: he had a notion that minnows who go to a whale to

learn how to grow bigger are likely to be swallowed in the process. The opportunity of a clever young man

with a cool head and no prejudices (this again was drawn from life) lay rather in making himself

indispensable to one of the beneficent rich, and in using the timidities and conformities of his patron as the

means of his scruples about formulating these principles to himself. It was not for nothing that, in his college

days, he had hunted the hypothetical "moral sense" to its lair, and dragged from their concealment the various

selfadvancing sentiments dissembled under its edifying guise. His strength lay in his precocious insight into

the springs of action, and in his refusal to classify them according to the accepted moral and social sanctions.

To a young man so untrammelled by prejudice it was selfevident that helpless philanthropists like Orlando

G. Spence were just as much the natural diet of the strong as the lamb is of the wolf. It was pleasanter to eat

than to be eaten, in a world where, as yet, there seemed to be no third alternative; and any scruples one might

feel as to the temporary discomfort of one's victim were speedily dispelled by that larger scientific view

which took into account the social destructiveness of the benevolent. Millner was persuaded that every

individual woe mitigated by the philanthropy of Orlando G. Spence added just so much to the sumtotal of

human inefficiency, and it was one of his favourite subjects of speculation to picture the innumerable social

"We're all born to prey on each other, and pity for suffering is one of the most elementary stages of egotism.

Until one has passed beyond, and acquired a taste for the more complex forms of the instinct "

He stopped suddenly, checked in his advance by a sallow wisp of a dog which had plunged through the press

of vehicles to hurl itself between his legs. Millner did not dislike animals, though he preferred that they

should be healthy and handsome. The dog under his feet was neither. Its cringing contour showed an

injudicious mingling of races, and its meagre coat betrayed the deplorable habit of sleeping in coalholes and

subsisting on an innutritious diet. In addition to these physical disadvantages, its shrinking and inconsequent

movements revealed a congenital weakness of character which, even under more favourable conditions,

would hardly have qualified it to become a useful member of society; and Millner was not sorry to notice that

it moved with a limp of the hind leg that probably doomed it to speedy extinction.

The absurdity of such an animal's attempting to cross Fifth Avenue at the most crowded hour of the afternoon

struck him as only less great than the irony of its having been permitted to achieve the feat; and he stood a

moment looking at it, and wondering what had moved it to the attempt. It was really a perfect type of the

human derelict which Orlando G. Spence and his kind were devoting their millions to perpetuate, and he

reflected how much better Nature knew her business in dealing with the superfluous quadruped.

An elderly lady advancing in the opposite direction evidently took a less dispassionate view of the case, for

she paused to remark emotionally: "Oh, you poor thing!" while she stooped to caress the object of her

sympathy. The dog, with characteristic lack of discrimination, viewed her gesture with suspicion, and met it

with a snarl. The lady turned pale and shrank away, a chivalrous male repelled the animal with his umbrella,

and two idle boys backed his action by a vigorous "Hi!" The object of these hostile demonstrations,

apparently attributing them not to its own unsocial conduct, but merely to the chronic animosity of the

universe, dashed wildly around the corner into a side street, and as it did so Millner noticed that the lame leg

left a little trail of blood. Irresistibly, he turned the corner to see what would happen next. It was deplorably

clear that the animal itself had no plan; but after several inconsequent and contradictory movements it

plunged down an area, where it backed up against the iron gate, forlornly and foolishly at bay.

Millner, still following, looked down at it, and wondered. Then he whistled, just to see if it would come; but

this only caused it to start up on its quivering legs, with desperate turns of the head that measured the chances

"Oh, hang it, you poor devil, stay there if you like!" the young man murmured, walking away.

A few yards off he looked back, and saw that the dog had made a rush out of the area and was limping

furtively down the street. The idle boys were in the offing, and he disliked the thought of leaving them in

control of the situation. Softly, with infinite precautions, he began to follow the dog. He did not know why he

was doing it, but the impulse was overmastering. For a moment he seemed to be gaining upon his quarry, but

with a cunning sense of his approach it suddenly turned and hobbled across the frozen grassplot adjoining a

shuttered house. Against the wall at the back of the plot it cowered down in a dirty snowdrift, as if

disheartened by the struggle. Millner stood outside the railings and looked at it. He reflected that under the

shelter of the winter dusk it might have the luck to remain there unmolested, and that in the morning it would

probably be dead of cold. This was so obviously the best solution that he began to move away again; but as

Millner consigned them to the devil, and stood sternly watching them till the first stage of the journey had

carried them around the nearest corner; then, after pausing to look once more up and down the empty street,

laid his hand on the railing, and vaulted over it into the grassplot. As he did so, he reflected that, since pity

for suffering was one of the most elementary forms of egotism, he ought to have remembered that it was

"My chief aim in life?" Orlando G. Spence repeated. He threw himself back in his chair, straightened the

tortoiseshell pincenez, on his short blunt nose, and beamed down the luncheon table at the two young men

His glance rested on his son Draper, seated opposite him behind a barrier of Georgian silver and orchids; but

his words were addressed to his secretary who, stylograph in hand, had turned from the seductions of a

mushroom souffle in order to jot down, for the Sunday Investigator, an outline of his employer's views and

intentions respecting the newly endowed Orlando G. Spence College for Missionaries. It was Mr. Spence's

practice to receive in person the journalists privileged to impart his opinions to a waiting world; but during

the last few months and especially since the vast project of the Missionary College had been in process of

development the pressure of business and beneficence had necessitated Millner's frequent intervention,

and compelled the secretary to snatch the sense of his patron's elucubrations between the courses of their

Young Millner had a healthy appetite, and it was not one of his least sacrifices to be so often obliged to curb

it in the interest of his advancement; but whenever he waved aside one of the triumphs of Mr. Spence's chef

he was conscious of rising a step in his employer's favour. Mr. Spence did not despise the pleasures of the

table, though he appeared to regard them as the reward of success rather than as the alleviation of effort; and

it increased his sense of his secretary's merit to note how keenly the young man enjoyed the fare which he

was so frequently obliged to deny himself. Draper, having subsisted since infancy on a diet of truffles and

terrapin, consumed such delicacies with the insensibility of a traveller swallowing a railway sandwich; but

Millner never made the mistake of concealing from Mr. Spence his sense of what he was losing when duty

"My chief aim in life!" Mr. Spence repeated, removing his eyeglass and swinging it thoughtfully on his

finger. ("I'm sorry you should miss this souffle, Millner: it's worth while.) Why, I suppose I might say that my

chief aim in life is to leave the world better than I found it. Yes: I don't know that I could put it better than

that. To leave the world better than I found it. It wouldn't be a bad idea to use that as a headline. 'Wants to

leave the world better than he found it.' It's exactly the point I should like to make in this talk about the

Mr. Spence paused, and his glance once more reverted to his son, who, having pushed aside his plate, sat

"And it's the point I want to make with you, too, Draper," his father continued genially, while he turned over

with a critical fork the plump and perfectly matched asparagus which a footman was presenting to his notice.

"I want to make you feel that nothing else counts in comparison with that no amount of literary success or

"Oh, I do feel that," Draper murmured, with one of his quick blushes, and a glance that wavered between his

father and Millner. The secretary kept his eyes on his notes, and young Spence continued, after a pause:

"Only the thing is isn't it? to try and find out just what does make the world better?"

"To try to find out?" his father echoed compassionately. "It's not necessary to try very hard. Goodness is what

"Yes, yes, of course," his son nervously interposed; "but the question is, what is good "

Mr. Spence, with a darkening brow, brought his fist down emphatically on the damask. "I'll thank you not to

Draper's head reared itself a trifle higher on his thin neck. "I was not going to blaspheme; only there may be

"There's where you're mistaken, Draper. There's only one way: there's my way," said Mr. Spence in a tone of

"I know, father; I see what you mean. But don't you see that even your way wouldn't be the right way for you

His father looked at him with mingled bewilderment and reprobation. "Do you mean to say that the fact of

"I do . . . yes . . . in a specific sense . . ." young Draper falteringly maintained; and Mr. Spence turned with a

"I don't understand your scientific jargon, Draper; and I don't want to. What's the next point, Millner?

Millner, keenly aware that an aromatic savarin au rhum was describing an arc behind his head previous to

being rushed back to the pantry under young Draper's indifferent eye, stiffened himself against this last

assault of the enemy, and read out firmly: " What relation do you consider that a man's business conduct

Mr. Spence mused a moment. "Why, that's a stupid question. It goes over the same ground as the other one. A

At this point the butler's murmur in his ear caused him to push back his chair, and to arrest Millner's

interrogatory by a rapid gesture. "Yes; I'm coming. Hold the wire." Mr. Spence rose and plunged into the

adjoining "office," where a telephone and a Remington divided the attention of a young lady in spectacles

As the door closed, the butler, having placed the coffee and liqueurs on the table, withdrew in the rear of his

battalion, and the two young men were left alone beneath the Rembrandts and Hobbemas on the diningroom

There was a moment's silence between them; then young Spence, leaning across the table, said in the lowered

Millner, who had rapidly taken an opulent purple fig from the fruitdish nearest him, paused in surprise in the

"I mean," Draper hastened on, "the question as to the relation between business and private morality. It's such

Millner, despatching the fig, glanced down at his notes. "I don't think your father meant to dodge the

Young Draper continued to look at him intently. "You think he imagined that his answer really covers the

The son of the house glanced away with a sigh. "You know things about him that I don't," he said wistfully,

"Oh, as to that (may I give myself some coffee?)" Millner, in his walk around the table to fill his cup,

paused a moment to lay an affectionate hand on Draper's shoulder. "Perhaps I know him better, in a sense:

Draper considered this. "And your idea is that he acts on principles he has never thought of testing or

Millner looked up quickly, and for an instant their glances crossed. "How do you mean?"

"I mean: that he's an inconscient instrument of goodness, as it were? A a sort of blindly beneficent force?"

The other smiled. "That's not a bad definition. I know one thing about him, at any rate: he's awfully upset at

A shadow fell on young Spence's candid brow. "I know. But what can I do about it? That's what I was

thinking of when I tried to show him that goodness, in a certain sense, is purely subjective: that one can't do

good against one's principles." Again his glance appealed to Millner. " You understand me, don't you?"

Millner stirred his coffee in a silence not unclouded by perplexity. "Theoretically, perhaps. It's a pretty

question, certainly. But I also understand your father's feeling that it hasn't much to do with real life:

especially now that he's got to make a speech in connection with the founding of this Missionary College. He

may think that any hint of internecine strife will weaken his prestige. Mightn't you have waited a little

"How could I, when I might have been expected to take a part in this performance? To talk, and say things I

The door opened and Mr. Spence reentered the room. As he did so his son rose abruptly as if to leave it.

Mr. Spence looked at his watch. "You can't be in more of a hurry than I am; and I've got seven minutes and a

half." He seated himself behind the coffee tray, lit a cigar, laid his watch on the table, and signed to

Draper to resume his place. "No, Millner, don't you go; I want you both." He turned to the secretary. "You

know that Draper's given up his Bible Class? I understand it's not from the pressure of engagements " Mr.

Spence's narrow lips took an ironic curve under the straightclipped stubble of his moustache "it's on

"I know: you'll tell me it's some scientific quibble that I don't understand. I've never had time to go in for

intellectual hairsplitting. I've found too many people down in the mire who needed a hand to pull them out.

A busy man has to take his choice between helping his fellowmen and theorizing about them. I've preferred

to help. (You might take that down for the Investigator, Millner.) And I thank God I've never stopped to ask

what made me want to do good. I've just yielded to the impulse that's all." Mr. Spence turned back to his

son. "Better men than either of us have been satisfied with that creed, my son."

Draper was silent, and Mr. Spence once more addressed himself to his secretary. "Millner, you're a reader:

I've caught you at it. And I know this boy talks to you. What have you got to say? Do you suppose a Bible

Millner paused a moment, feeling all through his nervous system the fateful tremor of the balance. "That's

"Ah; you were? That's good. Then I'll only say one thing more. Your doing what you've done at this

particular moment hurts me more, Draper, than your teaching the gospel of Jesus could possibly have hurt

those young men over in Tenth Avenue." Mr. Spence arose and restored his watch to his pocket. "I shall want

The door closed on him, and for a while the two young men sat silent behind their cigar fumes. Then Draper

Spence broke out, with a catch in his throat: "That's what I can't bear, Millner, what I simply can't bear: to

hurt him, to hurt his faith in me! It's an awful responsibility, isn't it, to tamper with anybody's faith in

THE twenty minutes prolonged themselves to forty, the forty to fifty, and the fifty to an hour; and still

During the two years of his secretaryship the young man had learned the significance of such postponements.

Mr. Spence's days were organized like a railway timetable, and a delay of an hour implied a casualty as

farreaching as the breaking down of an express. Of the cause of the present derangement Hugh Millner was

ignorant; and the experience of the last months allowed him to fluctuate between conflicting conjectures. All

were based on the indisputable fact that Mr. Spence was "bothered" had for some time past been

"bothered." And it was one of Millner's discoveries that an extremely parsimonious use of the emotions

underlay Mr. Spence's expansive manner and fraternal phraseology, and that he did not throw away his

feelings any more than (for all his philanthropy) he threw away his money. If he was bothered, then, it could

be only because a careful survey of his situation had forced on him some unpleasant fact with which he was

not immediately prepared to deal; and any unpreparedness on Mr. Spence's part was also a significant

Obviously, Millner's original conception of his employer's character had suffered extensive modification; but

no final outline had replaced the first conjectural image. The two years spent in Mr. Spence's service had

produced too many contradictory impressions to be fitted into any definite pattern; and the chief lesson

Millner had learned from them was that life was less of an exact science, and character a more incalculable

element, than he had been taught in the schools. In the light of this revised impression, his own footing

seemed less secure than he had imagined, and the rungs of the ladder he was climbing more slippery than

they had looked from below. He was not without the reassuring sense of having made himself, in certain

small ways, necessary to Mr. Spence; and this conviction was confirmed by Draper's reiterated assurance of

his father's appreciation. But Millner had begun to suspect that one might be necessary to Mr. Spence one

day, and a superfluity, if not an obstacle, the next; and that it would take superhuman astuteness to foresee

how and when the change would occur. Every fluctuation of the great man's mood was therefore anxiously

noted by the young meteorologist in his service; and this observer's vigilance was now strained to the utmost

by the little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, adumbrated by the banker's unpunctuality.

When Mr. Spence finally appeared, his aspect did not tend to dissipate the cloud. He wore what Millner had

learned to call his "backdoor face": a blank barred countenance, in which only an occasional twitch of the

lids behind his glasses suggested that some one was on the watch. In this mood Mr. Spence usually seemed

unconscious of his secretary's presence, or aware of it only as an arm terminating in a pen. Millner,

accustomed on such occasions to exist merely as a function, sat waiting for the click of the spring that should

set him in action; but the pressure not being applied, he finally hazarded: "Are we to go on with the

Mr. Spence, who had been pacing up and down between the desk and the fireplace, threw himself into his

"I don't understand this new notion of Draper's," he said abruptly. "Where's he got it from? No one ever

He turned his eyes on Millner, who had the sense of being scrutinized through a groundglass window which

left him visible while it concealed his observer. The young man let his pen describe two or three vague

Mr. Spence looked hard at him. "That's all right," he said. "I want my son to have everything. But what's the

point of mixing up ideas and principles? I've seen fellows who did that, and they were generally trying to

borrow five dollars to get away from the sheriff. What's all this talk about goodness? Goodness isn't an idea.

It's a fact. It's as solid as a business proposition. And it's Draper's duty, as the son of a wealthy man, and the

prospective steward of a great fortune, to elevate the standards of other young men of young men who

haven't had his opportunities. The rich ought to preach contentment, and to set the example themselves. We

have our cares, but we ought to conceal them. We ought to be cheerful, and accept things as they are not

go about sowing dissent and restlessness. What has Draper got to give these boys in his Bible Class, that's so

much better than what he wants to take from them? That's the question I'd like to have answered?"

Mr. Spence, carried away by his own eloquence, had removed his pincenez and was twirling it about his

extended forefinger with the gesture habitual to him when he spoke in public. After a pause, he went on,

with a drop to the level of private intercourse: "I tell you this because I know you have a good deal of

influence with Draper. He has a high opinion of your brains. But you're a practical fellow, and you must see

what I mean. Try to make Draper see it. Make him understand how it looks to have him drop his Bible Class

just at this particular time. It was his own choice to take up religious teaching among young men. He began

with our officeboys, and then the work spread and was blessed. I was almost alarmed, at one time, at the

way it took hold of him: when the papers began to talk about him as a formative influence I was afraid he'd

lose his head and go into the church. Luckily he tried University Settlement first; but just as I thought he was

settling down to that, he took to worrying about the Higher Criticism, and saying he couldn't go on teaching

fairytales as history. I can't see that any good ever came of criticizing what our parents believed, and it's a

queer time for Draper to criticize my belief just as I'm backing it to the extent of five millions."

Millner remained silent; and, as though his silence were an argument, Mr. Spence continued combatively:

"Draper's always talking about some distinction between religion and morality. I don't understand what he

means. I got my morals out of the Bible, and I guess there's enough left in it for Draper. If religion won't

make a man moral, I don't see why irreligion should. And he talks about using his mind well, can't he use

that in Wall Street? A man can get a good deal farther in life watching the market than picking holes in

Genesis; and he can do more good too. There's a time for everything; and Draper seems to me to have mixed

Mr. Spence replaced his eyeglasses, and stretching his hand to the silver box at his elbow, extracted from it

one of the long cigars sheathed in goldleaf which were reserved for his private consumption. The secretary

hastened to tender him a match, and for a moment he puffed in silence. When he spoke again it was in a

"I've got about all the bother I can handle just now, without this nonsense of Draper's. That was one of the

Trustees of the College with me. It seems the Flashlight has been trying to stir up a fuss " Mr. Spence

paused, and turned his pincenez on his secretary. "You haven't heard from them?" he asked.

He detected a gleam of relief behind Mr. Spence's glasses. "It may be just malicious talk. That's the worst of

good works; they bring out all the meanness in human nature. And then there are always women mixed up in

them, and there never was a woman yet who understood the difference between philanthropy and business."

He drew again at his cigar, and then, with an unwonted movement, leaned forward and mechanically pushed

Millner, as mechanically, took one of the virginally cinctured cigars, and began to undo its wrappings. It was

the first time he had ever been privileged to detach that golden girdle, and nothing could have given him a

better measure of the importance of the situation, and of the degree to which he was apparently involved in it.

"You remember that San Pablo rubber business? That's what they've been raking up," said Mr. Spence

Millner paused in the act of striking a match. Then, with an appreciable effort of the will, he completed the

gesture, applied the flame to his cigar, and took a long inhalation. The cigar was certainly delicious.

Mr. Spence, drawing a little closer, leaned forward and touched him on the arm. The touch caused Millner to

turn his head, and for an instant the glance of the two men crossed at short range. Millner was conscious,

first, of a nearer view than he had ever had of his employer's face, and of its vaguely suggesting a seamed

sandstone head, the kind of thing that lies in a corner in the court of a museum, and in which only the round

enamelled eyes have resisted the wear of time. His next feeling was that he had now reached the moment to

which the offer of the cigar had been a prelude. He had always known that, sooner or later, such a moment

would come; all his life, in a sense, had been a preparation for it. But in entering Mr. Spence's service he had

not foreseen that it would present itself in this form. He had seen himself consciously guiding that gentleman

up to the moment, rather than being thrust into it by a stronger hand. And his first act of reflection was the

resolve that, in the end, his hand should prove the stronger of the two. This was followed, almost

immediately, by the idea that to be stronger than Mr. Spence's it would have to be very strong indeed. It was

odd that he should feel this, since as far as verbal communication went it was Mr. Spence who was

asking for his support. In a theoretical statement of the case the banker would have figured as being at

Millner's mercy; but one of the queerest things about experience was the way it made light of theory. Millner

felt now as though he were being crushed by some inexorable engine of which he had been playing with the

He had always been intensely interested in observing his own reactions, and had regarded this faculty of

selfdetachment as of immense advantage in such a career as he had planned. He felt this still, even in the act

of noting his own bewilderment felt it the more in contrast to the odd unconsciousness of Mr. Spence's

attitude, of the incredible candour of his selfabasement and selfabandonment. It was clear that Mr. Spence

was not troubled by the repercussion of his actions in the consciousness of others; and this looked like a

Through the hum of these swarming thoughts Mr. Spence's voice was going on. "That's the only rag of proof

they've got; and they got it by one of those nasty accidents that nobody can guard against. I don't care how

conscientiously a man attends to business, he can't always protect himself against meddlesome people. I don't

pretend to know how the letter came into their hands; but they've got it; and they mean to use it and they

mean to say that you wrote it for me, and that you knew what it was about when you wrote it. . . . They'll

Mr. Spence, restoring his cigar to his lips, puffed at it slowly. In the pause that followed there was an instant

during which the universe seemed to Hugh Millner like a soundingboard bent above his single

consciousness. If he spoke, what thunders would be sent back to him from that intently listening vastness?

The universal ear bent closer, as if to catch the least articulation of Millner's narrowed lips; but when he

opened them it was merely to reinsert his cigar, and for a short space nothing passed between the two men

"What do you mean to do? There's the point," Mr. Spence at length sent through the rings.

Oh, yes, the point was there, as distinctly before Millner as the tip of his expensive cigar: he had seen it

coming quite as soon as Mr. Spence. He knew that fate was handing him an ultimatum; but the sense of the

formidable echo which his least answer would rouse kept him doggedly, and almost helplessly, silent. To let

Mr. Spence talk on as long as possible was no doubt the best way of gaining time; but Millner knew that his

silence was really due to his dread of the echo. Suddenly, however, in a reaction of impatience at his own

The sound of his voice cleared his mind and strengthened his resolve. It was odd how the word seemed to

shape the act, though one knew how ancillary it really was. As he talked, it was as if the globe had swung

around, and he himself were upright on its axis, with Mr. Spence underneath, on his head. Through the

ensuing interchange of concise and rapid speech there sounded in Millner's ears the refrain to which he had

walked down Fifth Avenue after his first talk with Mr. Spence: "It's too easy it's too easy it's too easy."

Yes, it was even easier than he had expected. His sensation was that of the skilful carver who feels his good

As he went on talking, this surprised sense of mastery was like wine in his veins. Mr. Spence was at his

mercy, after all that was what it came to; but this new view of the case did not lessen Millner's sense of

Mr. Spence's strength, it merely revealed to him his own superiority. Mr. Spence was even stronger than he

had suspected. There could be no better proof of that than his faith in Millner's power to grasp the situation,

and his tacit recognition of the young man's right to make the most of it. Millner felt that Mr. Spence would

have despised him even more for not using his advantage than for not seeing it; and this homage to his

capacity nerved him to greater alertness, and made the concluding moments of their talk as physically

When the conclusion was reached, and Millner stood at the goal, the golden trophy in his grasp, his first

conscious thought was one of regret that the struggle was over. He would have liked to prolong their talk for

the purely aesthetic pleasure of making Mr. Spence lose time, and, better still, of making him forget that he

was losing it. The sense of advantage that the situation conferred was so great that when Mr. Spence rose it

was as if Millner were dismissing him, and when he reached his hand toward the cigarbox it seemed to be

THERE had been only one condition attached to the transaction: Millner was to speak to Draper about the

Bible Class. The condition was easy to fulfil. Millner was confident of his power to deflect his young friend's

purpose; and he knew the opportunity would be given him before the day was over. His professional duties

despatched, he had only to go up to his room to wait. Draper nearly always looked in on him for a moment

before dinner: it was the hour most propitious to their elliptic interchange of words and silences.

Meanwhile, the waiting was an occupation in itself. Millner looked about his room with new eyes. Since the

first thrill of initiation into its complicated comforts the showerbath, the telephone, the manyjointed

readinglamp and the vast mirrored presses through which he was always hunting his scant outfit

Millner's room had interested him no more than a railwaycarriage in which he might have been travelling.

But now it had acquired a sort of historic significance as the witness of the astounding change in his fate. It

was Corsica, it was Brienne it was the kind of spot that posterity might yet mark with a tablet. Then he

reflected that he should soon be leaving it, and the lustre of its monumental mahogany was veiled in pathos.

Why indeed should he linger on in bondage? He perceived with a certain surprise that the only thing he

It was odd, it was inconsequent, it was almost exasperating, that such a regret should obscure his triumph.

Why in the world should he suddenly take to regretting Draper? If there were any logic in human likings, it

should be to Mr. Spence that he inclined. Draper, dear lad, had the illusion of an "intellectual sympathy"

between them; but that, Millner knew, was an affair of reading and not of character. Draper's temerities

would always be of that kind; whereas his own well, his own, put to the proof, had now definitely classed

him with Mr. Spence rather than with Mr. Spence's son. It was a consequence of this new condition of his

having thus distinctly and irrevocably classed himself that, when Draper at length brought upon the scene

his shy shamble and his wistful smile, Millner, for the first time, had to steel himself against them instead of

In the new order upon which he had entered, one principle of the old survived: the point of honour between

allies. And Millner had promised Mr. Spence to speak to Draper about his Bible Class. . . .

Draper, thrown back in his chair, and swinging a loose leg across a meagre knee, listened with his habitual

gravity. His downcast eyes seemed to pursue the vision which Millner's words evoked; and the words, to their

"You know, dear boy, I perfectly see your father's point. It's naturally distressing to him, at this particular

"Why, naturally, as I say! Just as he's making, as it were, his public profession of faith. You know, to men

like your father convictions are irreducible elements they can't be split up, and differently combined. And

your exegetical scruples seem to him to strike at the very root of his convictions."

Draper pulled himself to his feet and shuffled across the room. Then he turned about, and stood before his

"Is it that or is it this?" he said; and with the word he drew a letter from his pocket and proffered it silently

The latter, as he unfolded it, was first aware of an intense surprise at the young man's abruptness of tone and

gesture. Usually Draper fluttered long about his point before making it; and his sudden movement seemed as

mechanical as the impulsion conveyed by some strong spring. The spring, of course, was in the letter; and to

it Millner turned his startled glance, feeling the while that, by some curious cleavage of perception, he was

He and Draper were face to face across the sheet which had dropped between them. The youth's features were

tightened by a smile that was like the ligature of a wound. He looked white and withered.

"Ah you knew, then?" Millner sat still, and after a moment Draper turned from him, walked to the hearth,

and leaned against the chimney, propping his chin on his hands. Millner, his head thrown back, stared up at

the ceiling, which had suddenly become to him the image of the universal soundingboard hanging over his

Millner remained silent. He had perceived, with the surprise of a mathematician working out a new problem,

that the lie which Mr. Spence had just bought of him was exactly the one gift he could give of his own free

will to Mr. Spence's son. This discovery gave the world a strange new topsyturvyness, and set Millner's

Millner righted himself, and grasped the arms of his chair as if that too were reeling. "About this

"It's that, of course, in any case. But the point is whether it's true or not." Draper bent down, and picking up

the crumpled letter, smoothed it out between his fingers. "The point, is, whether my father, when he was

publicly denouncing the peonage abuses on the San Pablo plantations over a year ago, had actually sold out

his stock, as he announced at the time; or whether, as they say here how do they put it? he had simply

transferred it to a dummy till the scandal should blow over, and has meanwhile gone on drawing his forty per

Millner had never before heard his young friend put a case with such unadorned precision. His language was

like that of Mr. Spence making a statement to a committee meeting; and the resemblance to his father flashed

"You see why I've brought this letter to you I couldn't go to him with it!" Draper's voice faltered, and the

"And since they say here that you know: that they've got your letter proving it " The muscles of Draper's

face quivered as if a blinding light had been swept over it. "For God's sake, Millner it's all right?"

Draper fell back a step and looked almost sternly at his friend. "You know that's not what I mean. I don't care

a straw what they think they've got to go on. I want to know if my father's all right. If he is, they can say what

Millner, again, felt himself under the concentrated scrutiny of the ceiling. "Of course, of course. I

Millner looked compassionately at the boy's struggling face. Decidedly, the battle was to the strong, and he

was not sorry to be on the side of the legions. But Draper's pain was as awkward as a material obstacle, as

"You know what I'm driving at, Millner." Again Mr. Spence's committeemeeting tone sounded oddly

through his son's strained voice. "If my father's so awfully upset about my giving up my Bible Class, and

letting it be known that I do so on conscientious grounds, is it because he's afraid it may be considered a

criticism on something he has done which which won't bear the test of the doctrines he believes in?"

Draper, with the last question, squared himself in front of Millner, as if suspecting that the latter meant to

evade it by flight. But Millner had never felt more disposed to stand his ground than at that moment.

"No by Jove, no! It's not that." His relief almost escaped him in a cry, as he lifted his head to give back

"Oh, on anybody's you like on yours!" Millner could hardly restrain a laugh of relief. It was vertiginous to

find himself spared, after all, the need of an altruistic lie: he perceived that they were the kind he least liked.

Draper took a deep breath. "You don't Millner, a lot depends on this you don't really think my father

They looked at each other again, and Draper's tension was suddenly relieved by a free boyish laugh. "It's his

Draper turned back to the armchair he had left, and let his narrow figure sink down into it as into a bath.

Then he looked over at Millner with a smile. "I can see that I've been worrying him horribly. So he really

thinks I'm on the road to perdition? Of course you can fancy what a sick minute I had when I thought it might

be this other reason the damnable insinuation in this letter." Draper crumpled the paper in his hand, and

leaned forward to toss it into the coals of the grate. "I ought to have known better, of course. I ought to have

remembered that, as you say, my father can't conceive how conduct may be independent of creed. That's

where I was stupid and rather base. But that letter made me dizzy I couldn't think. Even now I can't

very clearly. I'm not sure what my convictions require of me: they seem to me so much less to be considered

than his! When I've done half the good to people that he has, it will be time enough to begin attacking their

beliefs. Meanwhile meanwhile I can't touch his. . . ." Draper leaned forward, stretching his lank arms

along his knees. His face was as clear as a spring sky. "I won't touch them, Millner Go and tell him so. . .

In the study a half hour later Mr. Spence, watch in hand, was doling out his minutes again. The peril

conjured, he had recovered his dominion over time. He turned his commanding eyeglasses on Millner.

"It's all settled, then? Tell Draper I'm sorry not to see him again tonight but I'm to speak at the dinner of

the Legal Relief Association, and I'm due there in five minutes. You and he dine alone here, I suppose? Tell

him I appreciate what he's done. Some day he'll see that to leave the world better than we find it is the best we

can hope to do. (You've finished the notes for the Investigator? Be sure you don't forget that phrase.) Well,

Smooth and compact in his glossy evening clothes, Mr. Spence advanced toward the study door; but as he

Mr. Spence turned on him a look in which impatience was faintly tinged with apprehension. "What else is

Millner stood his ground. "It won't take longer than that. I want to tell you that, if you can conveniently

Millner was conscious of reddening as he spoke. His redness deepened under Mr. Spence's dispassionate

"Well, I suppose that's natural enough. You'll want to make a start for yourself now. Only, of course, for the

"Nearly." Millner paused, as if in search of an appropriate formula. But after a moment he gave up the search,

and pulled from his pocket an envelope which he held out to his employer. "I merely want to give this back."

The hand which Mr. Spence had extended dropped to his side, and his sandcoloured face grew chalky.

"Give it back?" His voice was as thick as Millner's. "What's happened? Is the bargain off?"

Millner continued to hold out the envelope. "You do know, now. It's worth that. It's worth my place."

Mr. Spence, standing motionless before him, hesitated for an appreciable space of time. His lips parted once

or twice under their squareclipped stubble, and at last emitted: "How much more do you want?"

Millner broke into a laugh. "Oh, I've got all I want all and more!" "What from the others? Are you

"No, you are," said Millner with a sudden recovery of composure. "But you're safe you're as safe as you'll

Mr. Spence slowly moistened his lips with his tongue, and removing his pincenez, took a long hard look at

"That I mean what I say?" Millner glanced past the banker's figure at his rich densely coloured background of

Spanish leather and mahogany. He remembered that it was from this very threshold that he had first seen Mr.

The assertion, laughingly flung out six months earlier in a bright June garden, came back to Mary Boyne with

a sharp perception of its latent significance as she stood, in the December dusk, waiting for the lamps to be

The words had been spoken by their friend Alida Stair, as they sat at tea on her lawn at Pangbourne, in

reference to the very house of which the library in question was the central, the pivotal "feature." Mary

Boyne and her husband, in quest of a country place in one of the southern or southwestern counties, had, on

their arrival in England, carried their problem straight to Alida Stair, who had successfully solved it in her

own case; but it was not until they had rejected, almost capriciously, several practical and judicious

suggestions that she threw it out: "Well, there's Lyng, in Dorsetshire. It belongs to Hugo's cousins, and you

The reasons she gave for its being obtainable on these terms its remoteness from a station, its lack of

electric light, hotwater pipes, and other vulgar necessities were exactly those pleading in its favor with

two romantic Americans perversely in search of the economic drawbacks which were associated, in their

"I should never believe I was living in an old house unless I was thoroughly uncomfortable," Ned Boyne, the

more extravagant of the two, had jocosely insisted; "the least hint of 'convenience' would make me think it

had been bought out of an exhibition, with the pieces numbered, and set up again." And they had proceeded

to enumerate, with humorous precision, their various suspicions and exactions, refusing to believe that the

house their cousin recommended was really Tudor till they learned it had no heating system, or that the

village church was literally in the grounds till she assured them of the deplorable uncertainty of the

"It's too uncomfortable to be true!" Edward Boyne had continued to exult as the avowal of each disadvantage

was successively wrung from her; but he had cut short his rhapsody to ask, with a sudden relapse to distrust:

"And the ghost? You've been concealing from us the fact that there is no ghost!"

Mary, at the moment, had laughed with him, yet almost with her laugh, being possessed of several sets of

independent perceptions, had noted a sudden flatness of tone in Alida's answering hilarity.

"Yes, yes; but that won't do. I don't want to have to drive ten miles to see somebody else's ghost. I want one

His rejoinder had made Alida laugh again, and it was then that she had flung back tantalizingly: "Oh, there is

"Never know it?" Boyne pulled her up. "But what in the world constitutes a ghost except the fact of its being

"But if it's once been identified as an unearthly visitant, why hasn't its signalement been handed down in the

"And then suddenly " Mary spoke up as if from some cavernous depth of divination "suddenly, long

She was oddly startled at the sepulchral sound with which her question fell on the banter of the other two, and

she saw the shadow of the same surprise flit across Alida's clear pupils. "I suppose so. One just has to wait."

"Oh, hang waiting!" Ned broke in. "Life's too short for a ghost who can only be enjoyed in retrospect. Can't

But it turned out that in the event they were not destined to, for within three months of their conversation

with Mrs. Stair they were established at Lyng, and the life they had yearned for to the point of planning it out

It was to sit, in the thick December dusk, by just such a widehooded fireplace, under just such black oak

rafters, with the sense that beyond the mullioned panes the downs were darkening to a deeper solitude: it was

for the ultimate indulgence in such sensations that Mary Boyne had endured for nearly fourteen years the

souldeadening ugliness of the Middle West, and that Boyne had ground on doggedly at his engineering till,

with a suddenness that still made her blink, the prodigious windfall of the Blue Star Mine had put them at a

stroke in possession of life and the leisure to taste it. They had never for a moment meant their new state to be

one of idleness; but they meant to give themselves only to harmonious activities. She had her vision of

painting and gardening (against a background of gray walls), he dreamed of the production of his

longplanned book on the "Economic Basis of Culture"; and with such absorbing work ahead no existence

could be too sequestered; they could not get far enough from the world, or plunge deep enough into the past.

Dorsetshire had attracted them from the first by a semblance of remoteness out of all proportion to its

geographical position. But to the Boynes it was one of the everrecurring wonders of the whole incredibly

compressed island a nest of counties, as they put it that for the production of its effects so little of a

given quality went so far: that so few miles made a distance, and so short a distance a difference.

"It's that," Ned had once enthusiastically explained, "that gives such depth to their effects, such relief to their

least contrasts. They've been able to lay the butter so thick on every exquisite mouthful."

The butter had certainly been laid on thick at Lyng: the old gray house, hidden under a shoulder of the downs,

had almost all the finer marks of commerce with a protracted past. The mere fact that it was neither large nor

exceptional made it, to the Boynes, abound the more richly in its special sense the sense of having been

for centuries a deep, dim reservoir of life. The life had probably not been of the most vivid order: for long

periods, no doubt, it had fallen as noiselessly into the past as the quiet drizzle of autumn fell, hour after hour,

into the green fishpond between the yews; but these backwaters of existence sometimes breed, in their

sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion, and Mary Boyne had felt from the first the occasional brush of

The feeling had never been stronger than on the December afternoon when, waiting in the library for the

belated lamps, she rose from her seat and stood among the shadows of the hearth. Her husband had gone off,

after luncheon, for one of his long tramps on the downs. She had noticed of late that he preferred to be

unaccompanied on these occasions; and, in the tried security of their personal relations, had been driven to

conclude that his book was bothering him, and that he needed the afternoons to turn over in solitude the

problems left from the morning's work. Certainly the book was not going as smoothly as she had imagined it

would, and the lines of perplexity between his eyes had never been there in his engineering days. Then he had

often looked fagged to the verge of illness, but the native demon of "worry" had never branded his brow. Yet

the few pages he had so far read to her the introduction, and a synopsis of the opening chapter gave

evidences of a firm possession of his subject, and a deepening confidence in his powers.

The fact threw her into deeper perplexity, since, now that he had done with "business" and its disturbing

contingencies, the one other possible element of anxiety was eliminated. Unless it were his health, then? But

physically he had gained since they had come to Dorsetshire, grown robuster, ruddier, and freshereyed. It

was only within a week that she had felt in him the undefinable change that made her restless in his absence,

and as tonguetied in his presence as though it were she who had a secret to keep from him!

The thought that there was a secret somewhere between them struck her with a sudden smart rap of wonder,

The room itself might have been full of secrets. They seemed to be piling themselves up, as evening fell, like

the layers and layers of velvet shadow dropping from the low ceiling, the dusky walls of books, the

The ghost Alida's imperceptible ghost after figuring largely in the banter of their first month or two at

Lyng, had been gradually discarded as too ineffectual for imaginative use. Mary had, indeed, as became the

tenant of a haunted house, made the customary inquiries among her few rural neighbors, but, beyond a vague,

"They du say so, Ma'am," the villagers had nothing to impart. The elusive specter had apparently never had

sufficient identity for a legend to crystallize about it, and after a time the Boynes had laughingly set the

matter down to their profitandloss account, agreeing that Lyng was one of the few houses good enough in

"And I suppose, poor, ineffectual demon, that's why it beats its beautiful wings in vain in the void," Mary had

"Or, rather," Ned answered, in the same strain, "why, amid so much that's ghostly, it can never affirm its

separate existence as the ghost." And thereupon their invisible housemate had finally dropped out of their

references, which were numerous enough to make them promptly unaware of the loss.

Now, as she stood on the hearth, the subject of their earlier curiosity revived in her with a new sense of its

meaning a sense gradually acquired through close daily contact with the scene of the lurking mystery. It

was the house itself, of course, that possessed the ghostseeing faculty, that communed visually but secretly

with its own past; and if one could only get into close enough communion with the house, one might surprise

its secret, and acquire the ghostsight on one's own account. Perhaps, in his long solitary hours in this very

room, where she never trespassed till the afternoon, her husband had acquired it already, and was silently

carrying the dread weight of whatever it had revealed to him. Mary was too wellversedin the code of the

spectral world not to know that one could not talk about the ghosts one saw: to do so was almost as great a

breach of goodbreeding as to name a lady in a club. But this explanation did not really satisfy her. "What,

after all, except for the fun of the frisson," she reflected, "would he really care for any of their old ghosts?"

And thence she was thrown back once more on the fundamental dilemma: the fact that one's greater or less

susceptibility to spectral influences had no particular bearing on the case, since, when one did see a ghost at

"Not till long afterward," Alida Stair had said. Well, supposing Ned had seen one when they first came, and

had known only within the last week what had happened to him? More and more under the spell of the hour,

she threw back her searching thoughts to the early days of their tenancy, but at first only to recall a gay

confusion of unpacking, settling, arranging of books, and calling to each other from remote corners of the

house as treasure after treasure of their habitation revealed itself to them. It was in this particular connection

that she presently recalled a certain soft afternoon of the previous October, when, passing from the first

rapturous flurry of exploration to a detailed inspection of the old house, she had pressed (like a novel heroine)

a panel that opened at her touch, on a narrow flight of stairs leading to an unsuspected flat ledge of the roof

the roof which, from below, seemed to slope away on all sides too abruptly for any but practised feet to

The view from this hidden coign was enchanting, and she had flown down to snatch Ned from his papers and

give him the freedom of her discovery. She remembered still how, standing on the narrow ledge, he had

passed his arm about her while their gaze flew to the long, tossed horizonline of the downs, and then

dropped contentedly back to trace the arabesque of yew hedges about the fishpond, and the shadow of the

"And now the other way," he had said, gently turning her about within his arm; and closely pressed to him,

she had absorbed, like some long, satisfying draft, the picture of the graywalled court, the squat lions on the

It was just then, while they gazed and held each other, that she had felt his arm relax, and heard a sharp

Distinctly, yes, she now recalled she had seen, as she glanced, a shadow of anxiety, of perplexity, rather, fall

across his face; and, following his eyes, had beheld the figure of a man a man in loose, grayish clothes, as

it appeared to her who was sauntering down the limeavenue to the court with the tentative gait of a

stranger seeking his way. Her shortsighted eyes had given her but a blurred impression of slightness and

grayness, with something foreign, or at least unlocal, in the cut of the figure or its garb; but her husband had

apparently seen more seen enough to make him push past her with a sharp "Wait!" and dash down the

A slight tendency to dizziness obliged her, after a provisional clutch at the chimney against which they had

been leaning, to follow him down more cautiously; and when she had reached the attic landing she paused

again for a less definite reason, leaning over the oak banister to strain her eyes through the silence of the

brown, sunflecked depths below. She lingered there till, somewhere in those depths, she heard the closing of

a door; then, mechanically impelled, she went down the shallow flights of steps till she reached the lower

The front door stood open on the mild sunlight of the court, and hall and court were empty. The library door

was open, too, and after listening in vain for any sound of voices within, she quickly crossed the threshold,

He looked up, as if surprised at her precipitate entrance, but the shadow of anxiety had passed from his face,

"The man we saw coming toward the house." He seemed honestly to reflect. "The man? Why, I thought I saw

Peters; I dashed after him to say a word about the stabledrains, but he had disappeared before I could get

Boyne shrugged his shoulders. "So I thought; but he must have got up steam in the interval. What do you say

That was all. At the time the occurrence had been less than nothing, had, indeed, been immediately

obliterated by the magic of their first vision from Meldon Steep, a height which they had dreamed of

climbing ever since they had first seen its bare spine heaving itself above the low roof of Lyng. Doubtless it

was the mere fact of the other incident's having occurred on the very day of their ascent to Meldon that had

kept it stored away in the unconscious fold of association from which it now emerged; for in itself it had no

mark of the portentous. At the moment there could have been nothing more natural than that Ned should dash

himself from the roof in the pursuit of dilatory tradesmen. It was the period when they were always on the

watch for one or the other of the specialists employed about the place; always lying in wait for them, and

dashing out at them with questions, reproaches, or reminders. And certainly in the distance the gray figure

Yet now, as she reviewed the rapid scene, she felt her husband's explanation of it to have been invalidated by

the look of anxiety on his face. Why had the familiar appearance of Peters made him anxious? Why, above

all, if it was of such prime necessity to confer with that authority on the subject of the stabledrains, had the

failure to find him produced such a look of relief? Mary could not say that any one of these considerations

had occurred to her at the time, yet, from the promptness with which they now marshaled themselves at her

summons, she had a sudden sense that they must all along have been there, waiting their hour.

Weary with her thoughts, she moved toward the window. The library was now completely dark, and she was

As she peered out into it across the court, a figure shaped itself in the tapering perspective of bare lines: it

looked a mere blot of deeper gray in the grayness, and for an instant, as it moved toward her, her heart

She had time, in that long instant, to feel suddenly that the man of whom, two months earlier, she had a brief

distant vision from the roof was now, at his predestined hour, about to reveal himself as not having been

Peters; and her spirit sank under the impending fear of the disclosure. But almost with the next tick of the

clock the ambiguous figure, gaining substance and character, showed itself even to her weak sight as her

husband's; and she turned away to meet him, as he entered, with the confession of her folly.

"It's really too absurd," she laughed out from the threshold, "but I never can remember!"

Her hand was on his sleeve, and he kept it there, but with no response in his gesture or in the lines of his

"Me just now?" His arm dropped away, and he turned from her with a faint echo of her laugh. "Really,

"Yes, I give it up I give it up. Have you?" she asked, turning round on him abruptly.

The parlormaid had entered with letters and a lamp, and the light struck up into Boyne's face as he bent

"Have you?" Mary perversely insisted, when the servant had disappeared on her errand of illumination.

"Have I what?" he rejoined absently, the light bringing out the sharp stamp of worry between his brows as he

turned over the letters. "Given up trying to see the ghost." Her heart beat a little at the experiment she was

Her husband, laying his letters aside, moved away into the shadow of the hearth.

"Well, of course," Mary persisted, "the exasperating thing is that there's no use trying, since one can't be sure

He was unfolding the paper as if he had hardly heard her; but after a pause, during which the sheets rustled

spasmodically between his hands, he lifted his head to say abruptly, "Have you any idea how long?"

Mary had sunk into a low chair beside the fireplace. From her seat she looked up, startled, at her husband's

"No; none. Have you" she retorted, repeating her former phrase with an added keenness of intention.

Boyne crumpled the paper into a bunch, and then inconsequently turned back with it toward the lamp.

"Lord, no! I only meant," he explained, with a faint tinge of impatience, "is there any legend, any tradition, as

"Not that I know of," she answered; but the impulse to add, "What makes you ask?" was checked by the

With the dispersal of shadows, and the repetition of the daily domestic office, Mary Boyne felt herself less

oppressed by that sense of something mutely imminent which had darkened her solitary afternoon. For a few

moments she gave herself silently to the details of her task, and when she looked up from it she was struck to

the point of bewilderment by the change in her husband's face. He had seated himself near the farther lamp,

and was absorbed in the perusal of his letters; but was it something he had found in them, or merely the

shifting of her own point of view, that had restored his features to their normal aspect? The longer she looked,

the more definitely the change affirmed itself. The lines of painful tension had vanished, and such traces of

fatigue as lingered were of the kind easily attributable to steady mental effort. He glanced up, as if drawn by

She took the letter he held out in exchange for the cup she proffered him, and, returning to her seat, broke the

seal with the languid gesture of the reader whose interests are all inclosed in the circle of one cherished

Her next conscious motion was that of starting to her feet, the letter falling to them as she rose, while she held

He had risen at the same instant, almost as if hearing her cry before she uttered it; and for a perceptible space

of time he and she studied each other, like adversaries watching for an advantage, across the space between

"What's what? You fairly made me jump!" Boyne said at length, moving toward her with a sudden,

halfexasperated laugh. The shadow of apprehension was on his face again, not now a look of fixed

foreboding, but a shifting vigilance of lips and eyes that gave her the sense of his feeling himself invisibly

"This article from the 'Waukesha Sentinel' that a man named Elwell has brought suit against you

that there was something wrong about the Blue Star Mine. I can't understand more than half."

They continued to face each other as she spoke, and to her astonishment, she saw that her words had the

"Oh, that!" He glanced down the printed slip, and then folded it with the gesture of one who handles

something harmless and familiar. "What's the matter with you this afternoon, Mary? I thought you'd got bad

She stood before him with her undefinable terror subsiding slowly under the reassuring touch of his

"Certainly I knew about it; and it's all right." "But what is it? I don't understand. What does this man accuse

"Oh, pretty nearly every crime in the calendar." Boyne had tossed the clipping down, and thrown himself

comfortably into an armchair near the fire. "Do you want to hear the story? It's not particularly interesting

"Oh, he's a fellow I put into it gave him a hand up. I told you all about him at the time."

"I daresay. I must have forgotten." Vainly she strained back among her memories. "But if you helped him,

"Oh, probably some shyster lawyer got hold of him and talked him over. It's all rather technical and

His wife felt a sting of compunction. Theoretically, she deprecated the American wife's detachment from her

husband's professional interests, but in practice she had always found it difficult to fix her attention on

Boyne's report of the transactions in which his varied interests involved him. Besides, she had felt from the

first that, in a community where the amenities of living could be obtained only at the cost of efforts as

arduous as her husband's professional labors, such brief leisure as they could command should be used as an

escape from immediate preoccupations, a flight to the life they always dreamed of living. Once or twice, now

that this new life had actually drawn its magic circle about them, she had asked herself if she had done right;

but hitherto such conjectures had been no more than the retrospective excursions of an active fancy. Now, for

the first time, it startled her a little to find how little she knew of the material foundation on which her

She glanced again at her husband, and was reassured by the composure of his face; yet she felt the need of

He answered both questions at once: "I didn't speak of it at first because it did worry me annoyed me,

rather. But it's all ancient history now. Your correspondent must have got hold of a back number of the

There was a just perceptible delay in Boyne's reply. "The suit's been withdrawn that's all."

But she persisted, as if to exonerate herself from the inward charge of being too easily put off. "Withdrawn

She was still struggling with a dimly felt perplexity at the back of her thoughts.

He paused, as if with a slight return of his former uncertainty. "I've just had the news now; but I've been

She made no answer, and was aware only, after a short interval of waiting, that he had risen, and strolling

across the room, had placed himself on the sofa at her side. She felt him, as he did so, pass an arm about her,

she felt his hand seek hers and clasp it, and turning slowly, drawn by the warmth of his cheek, she met the

"It's all right it's all right?" she questioned, through the flood of her dissolving doubts; and "I give you my

One of the strangest things she was afterward to recall out of all the next day's incredible strangeness was the

It was in the air when she woke in her lowceilinged, dusky room; it accompanied her downstairs to the

breakfasttable, flashed out at her from the fire, and reduplicated itself brightly from the flanks of the urn

and the sturdy flutings of the Georgian teapot. It was as if, in some roundabout way, all her diffused

apprehensions of the previous day, with their moment of sharp concentration about the newspaper article,

as if this dim questioning of the future, and startled return upon the past, had between them liquidatedthe

arrears of some haunting moral obligation. If she had indeed been careless of her husband's affairs, it was, her

new state seemed to prove, because her faith in him instinctively justified such carelessness; and his right to

her faith had overwhelmingly affirmed itself in the very face of menace and suspicion. She had never seen

him more untroubled, more naturally and unconsciously in possession of himself, than after the

crossexamination to which she had subjected him: it was almost as if he had been aware of her lurking

It was as clear, thank Heaven! as the bright outer light that surprised her almost with a touch of summer when

she issued from the house for her daily round of the gardens. She had left Boyne at his desk, indulging

herself, as she passed the library door, by a last peep at his quiet face, where he bent, pipe in his mouth, above

his papers, and now she had her own morning's task to perform. The task involved on such charmed winter

days almost as much delighted loitering about the different quarters of her demesne as if spring were already

at work on shrubs and borders. There were such inexhaustible possibilities still before her, such opportunities

to bring out the latent graces of the old place, without a single irreverent touch of alteration, that the winter

months were all too short to plan what spring and autumn executed. And her recovered sense of safety gave,

on this particular morning, a peculiar zest to her progress through the sweet, still place. She went first to the

kitchengarden, where the espaliered peartrees drew complicated patterns on the walls, and pigeons were

fluttering and preening about the silveryslated roof of their cot. There was something wrong about the

piping of the hothouse, and she was expecting an authority from Dorchester, who was to drive out between

trains and make a diagnosis of the boiler. But when she dipped into the damp heat of the greenhouses, among

the spiced scents and waxy pinks and reds of oldfashioned exotics, even the flora of Lyng was in the

note! she learned that the great man had not arrived, and the day being too rare to waste in an artificial

atmosphere, she came out again and paced slowly along the springy turf of the bowlinggreen to the gardens

behind the house. At their farther end rose a grass terrace, commanding, over the fishpond and the yew

hedges, a view of the long housefront, with its twisted chimneystacks and the blue shadows of its roof

Seen thus, across the level tracery of the yews, under the suffused, mild light, it sent her, from its open

windows and hospitably smoking chimneys, the look of some warm human presence, of a mind slowly

ripened on a sunny wall of experience. She had never before had so deep a sense of her intimacy with it, such

a conviction that its secrets were all beneficent, kept, as they said to children, "for one's good," so complete a

trust in its power to gather up her life and Ned's into the harmonious pattern of the long, long story it sat there

She heard steps behind her, and turned, expecting to see the gardener, accompanied by the engineer from

Dorchester. But only one figure was in sight, that of a youngish, slightly built man, who, for reasons she

could not on the spot have specified, did not remotely resemble her preconceived notion of an authority on

hothouse boilers. The newcomer, on seeing her, lifted his hat, and paused with the air of a gentleman

perhaps a traveler desirous of having it immediately known that his intrusion is involuntary. The local

fame of Lyng occasionally attracted the more intelligent sightseer, and Mary halfexpected to see the

stranger dissemble a camera, or justify his presence by producing it. But he made no gesture of any sort, and

after a moment she asked, in a tone responding to the courteous deprecation of his attitude: "Is there any one

"I came to see Mr. Boyne," he replied. His intonation, rather than his accent, was faintly American, and

Mary, at the familiar note, looked at him more closely. The brim of his soft felt hat cast a shade on his face,

which, thus obscured, wore to her shortsighted gaze a look of seriousness, as of a person arriving "on

Past experience had made Mary equally sensible to such claims; but she was jealous of her husband's

morning hours, and doubtful of his having given any one the right to intrude on them.

"Then I'm afraid, this being his workingtime, that he can't receive you now. Will you give me a message, or

The visitor, again lifting his hat, briefly replied that he would come back later, and walked away, as if to

regain the front of the house. As his figure receded down the walk between the yew hedges, Mary saw him

pause and look up an instant at the peaceful housefront bathed in faint winter sunshine; and it struck her,

with a tardy touch of compunction, that it would have been more humane to ask if he had come from a

distance, and to offer, in that case, to inquire if her husband could receive him. But as the thought occurred to

her he passed out of sight behind a pyramidal yew, and at the same moment her attention was distracted by

the approach of the gardener, attended by the bearded pepperandsalt figure of the boilermaker from

The encounter with this authority led to such farreaching issues that they resulted in his finding it expedient

to ignore his train, and beguiled Mary into spending the remainder of the morning in absorbed confabulation

among the greenhouses. She was startled to find, when the colloquy ended, that it was nearly luncheontime,

and she half expected, as she hurried back to the house, to see her husband coming out to meet her. But she

found no one in the court but an undergardener raking the gravel, and the hall, when she entered it, was so

silent that she guessed Boyne to be still at work behind the closed door of the library.

Not wishing to disturb him, she turned into the drawingroom, and there, at her writingtable, lost herself in

renewed calculations of the outlay to which the morning's conference had committed her. The knowledge that

she could permit herself such follies had not yet lost its novelty; and somehow, in contrast to the vague

apprehensions of the previous days, it now seemed an element of her recovered security, of the sense that, as

She was still luxuriating in a lavish play of figures when the parlormaid, from the threshold, roused her with

a dubiously worded inquiry as to the expediency of serving luncheon. It was one of their jokes that Trimmle

announced luncheon as if she were divulging a state secret, and Mary, intent upon her papers, merely

She felt Trimmle wavering expressively on the threshold as if in rebuke of such offhand acquiescence; then

her retreating steps sounded down the passage, and Mary, pushing away her papers, crossed the hall, and

went to the library door. It was still closed, and she wavered in her turn, disliking to disturb her husband, yet

anxious that he should not exceed his normal measure of work. As she stood there, balancing her impulses,

the esoteric Trimmle returned with the announcement of luncheon, and Mary, thus impelled, opened the door

Boyne was not at his desk, and she peered about her, expecting to discover him at the bookshelves,

somewhere down the length of the room; but her call brought no response, and gradually it became clear to

The parlormaid appeared to hesitate between the obvious duty of obeying orders and an equally obvious

conviction of the foolishness of the injunction laid upon her. The struggle resulted in her saying doubtfully,

"He's gone out," Trimmle announced, with the superior air of one who has respectfully waited for the

Mary's previous conjecture had been right, then. Boyne must have gone to the gardens to meet her, and since

she had missed him, it was clear that he had taken the shorter way by the south door, instead of going round

to the court. She crossed the hall to the glass portal opening directly on the yew garden, but the parlormaid,

after another moment of inner conflict, decided to bring out recklessly, "Please, Madam, Mr. Boyne didn't go

"He went out of the front door, up the drive, Madam." It was a matter of principle with Trimmle never to

"Up the drive? At this hour?" Mary went to the door herself, and glanced across the court through the long

tunnel of bare limes. But its perspective was as empty as when she had scanned it on entering the house.

Trimmle seemed to surrender herself to a last struggle with the forces of chaos.

"The gentleman? What gentleman?" Mary wheeled about, as if to front this new factor.

Only the fact that Mary was very hungry, and that she wanted to consult her husband about the greenhouses,

would have caused her to lay so unusual an injunction on her attendant; and even now she was detached

enough to note in Trimmle's eye the dawning defiance of the respectful subordinate who has been pressed too

"I couldn't exactly say the hour, Madam, because I didn't let the gentleman in," she replied, with the air of

"Go and ask Agnes, then," Mary interjected. Trimmle still wore her look of patient magnanimity. "Agnes

would not know, Madam, for she had unfortunately burnt her hand in trying the wick of the new lamp from

town " Trimmle, as Mary was aware, had always been opposed to the new lamp "and so Mrs. Dockett

Mary looked again at the clock. "It's after two! Go and ask the kitchenmaid if Mr. Boyne left any word."

She went into luncheon without waiting, and Trimmle presently brought her there the kitchenmaid's

statement that the gentleman had called about one o'clock, that Mr. Boyne had gone out with him without

leaving any message. The kitchenmaid did not even know the caller's name, for he had written it on a slip of

paper, which he had folded and handed to her, with the injunction to deliver it at once to Mr. Boyne.

Mary finished her luncheon, still wondering, and when it was over, and Trimmle had brought the coffee to

the drawingroom, her wonder had deepened to a first faint tinge of disquietude. It was unlike Boyne to

absent himself without explanation at so unwonted an hour, and the difficulty of identifying the visitor whose

summons he had apparently obeyed made his disappearance the more unaccountable. Mary Boyne's

experience as the wife of a busy engineer, subject to sudden calls and compelled to keep irregular hours, had

trained her to the philosophic acceptance of surprises; but since Boyne's withdrawal from business he had

adopted a Benedictine regularity of life. As if to make up for the dispersed and agitated years, with their

"standup" lunches and dinners rattled down to the joltings of the diningcar, he cultivated the last

refinements of punctuality and monotony, discouraging his wife's fancy for the unexpected; and declaring

that to a delicate taste there were infinite gradations of pleasure in the fixed recurrences of habit.

Still, since no life can completely defend itself from the unforeseen, it was evident that all Boyne's

precautions would sooner or later prove unavailable, and Mary concluded that he had cut short a tiresome

visit by walking with his caller to the station, or at least accompanying him for part of the way.

This conclusion relieved her from farther preoccupation, and she went out herself to take up her conference

with the gardener. Thence she walked to the village postoffice, a mile or so away; and when she turned

downs, and as Boyne, meanwhile, had probably returned from the station by the highroad, there was little

likelihood of their meeting on the way. She felt sure, however, of his having reached the house before her; so

sure that, when she entered it herself, without even pausing to inquire of Trimmle, she made directly for the

library. But the library was still empty, and with an unwonted precision of visual memory she immediately

observed that the papers on her husband's desk lay precisely as they had lain when she had gone in to call him

Then of a sudden she was seized by a vague dread of the unknown. She had closed the door behind her on

entering, and as she stood alone in the long, silent, shadowy room, her dread seemed to take shape and sound,

to be there audibly breathing and lurking among the shadows. Her shortsighted eyes strained through them,

halfdiscerning an actual presence, something aloof, that watched and knew; and in the recoil from that

intangible propinquity she threw herself suddenly on the bellrope and gave it a desperate pull.

The long, quavering summons brought Trimmle in precipitately with a lamp, and Mary breathed again at this

"Very well, Madam. But Mr. Boyne is not in," said Trimmle, putting down the lamp.

"But who was the gentleman?" Mary gasped out, with the sharp note of some one trying to be heard through a

"That I couldn't say, Madam." Trimmle, standing there by the lamp, seemed suddenly to grow less round and

Mary, through her agitation, was aware that they were both designating the unknown visitor by a vague

pronoun, instead of the conventional formula which, till then, had kept their allusions within the bounds of

custom. And at the same moment her mind caught at the suggestion of the folded paper.

She moved to the desk, and began to turn over the scattered documents that littered it. The first that caught

her eye was an unfinished letter in her husband's hand, with his pen lying across it, as though dropped there at

"My dear Parvis," who was Parvis? "I have just received your letter announcing Elwell's death, and

She tossed the sheet aside, and continued her search; but no folded paper was discoverable among the letters

and pages of manuscript which had been swept together in a promiscuous heap, as if by a hurried or a startled

"But the kitchenmaid saw him. Send her here," she commanded, wondering at her dullness in not thinking

Trimmle, at the behest, vanished in a flash, as if thankful to be out of the room, and when she reappeared,

conducting the agitated underling, Mary had regained her selfpossession, and had her questions pat.

The gentleman was a stranger, yes that she understood. But what had he said? And, above all, what had he

looked like? The first question was easily enough answered, for the disconcerting reason that he had said so

little had merely asked for Mr. Boyne, and, scribbling something on a bit of paper, had requested that it

The kitchenmaid was not sure, but supposed it was, since he had written it in answer to her inquiry as to

The kitchenmaid did not think that Mr. Boyne had said anything, but she could not be sure, for just as she

had handed him the paper and he was opening it, she had become aware that the visitor had followed her into

"But then, if you left them in the library, how do you know that they went out of the house?"

This question plunged the witness into momentary inarticulateness, from which she was rescued by Trimmle,

who, by means of ingenious circumlocutions, elicited the statement that before she could cross the hall to the

back passage she had heard the gentlemen behind her, and had seen them go out of the front door together.

"Then, if you saw the gentleman twice, you must be able to tell me what he looked like."

But with this final challenge to her powers of expression it became clear that the limit of the kitchenmaid's

endurance had been reached. The obligation of going to the front door to "show in" a visitor was in itself so

subversive of the fundamental order of things that it had thrown her faculties into hopeless disarray, and she

could only stammer out, after various panting efforts at evocation, "His hat, mum, was differentlike, as you

"Different? How different?" Mary flashed out at her, her own mind, in the same instant, leaping back to an

image left on it that morning, but temporarily lost under layers of subsequent impressions.

"His hat had a wide brim, you mean? and his face was pale a youngish face?" Mary pressed her, with a

whitelipped intensity of interrogation. But if the kitchenmaid found any adequate answer to this challenge,

it was swept away for her listener down the rushing current of her own convictions. The stranger the

stranger in the garden! Why had Mary not thought of him before? She needed no one now to tell her that it

was he who had called for her husband and gone away with him. But who was he, and why had Boyne

It leaped out at her suddenly, like a grin out of the dark, that they had often called England so little "such a

A confoundedly hard place to get lost in! That had been her husband's phrase. And now, with the whole

machinery of official investigation sweeping its flashlights from shore to shore, and across the dividing

straits; now, with Boyne's name blazing from the walls of every town and village, his portrait (how that

wrung her!) hawked up and down the country like the image of a hunted criminal; now the little compact,

populous island, so policed, surveyed, and administered, revealed itself as a Sphinxlike guardian of abysmal

mysteries, staring back into his wife's anguished eyes as if with the malicious joy of knowing something they

In the fortnight since Boyne's disappearance there had been no word of him, no trace of his movements. Even

the usual misleading reports that raise expectancy in tortured bosoms had been few and fleeting. No one but

the bewildered kitchenmaid had seen him leave the house, and no one else had seen "the gentleman" who

accompanied him. All inquiries in the neighborhood failed to elicit the memory of a stranger's presence that

day in the neighborhood of Lyng. And no one had met Edward Boyne, either alone or in company, in any of

the neighboring villages, or on the road across the downs, or at either of the local railwaystations. The sunny

English noon had swallowed him as completely as if he had gone out into Cimmerian night.

Mary, while every external means of investigation was working at its highest pressure, had ransacked her

husband's papers for any trace of antecedent complications, of entanglements or obligations unknown to her,

that might throw a faint ray into the darkness. But if any such had existed in the background of Boyne's life,

they had disappeared as completely as the slip of paper on which the visitor had written his name. There

remained no possible thread of guidance except if it were indeed an exception the letter which Boyne

had apparently been in the act of writing when he received his mysterious summons. That letter, read and

reread by his wife, and submitted by her to the police, yielded little enough for conjecture to feed on. "I have

just heard of Elwell's death, and while I suppose there is now no farther risk of trouble, it might be safer "

That was all. The "risk of trouble" was easily explained by the newspaper clipping which had apprised Mary

of the suit brought against her husband by one of his associates in the Blue Star enterprise. The only new

information conveyed in the letter was the fact of its showing Boyne, when he wrote it, to be still

apprehensive of the results of the suit, though he had assured his wife that it had been withdrawn, and though

the letter itself declared that the plaintiff was dead. It took several weeks of exhaustive cabling to fix the

identity of the "Parvis" to whom the fragmentary communication was addressed, but even after these

inquiries had shown him to be a Waukesha lawyer, no new facts concerning the Elwell suit were elicited. He

appeared to have had no direct concern in it, but to have been conversant with the facts merely as an

acquaintance, and possible intermediary; and he declared himself unable to divine with what object Boyne

This negative information, sole fruit of the first fortnight's feverish search, was not increased by a jot during

the slow weeks that followed. Mary knew that the investigations were still being carried on, but she had a

vague sense of their gradually slackening, as the actual march of time seemed to slacken. It was as though the

days, flying horrorstruck from the shrouded image of the one inscrutable day, gained assurance as the

distance lengthened, till at last they fell back into their normal gait. And so with the human imaginations at

work on the dark event. No doubt it occupied them still, but week by week and hour by hour it grew less

absorbing, took up less space, was slowly but inevitably crowded out of the foreground of consciousness by

the new problems perpetually bubbling up from the vaporous caldron of human experience.

Even Mary Boyne's consciousness gradually felt the same lowering of velocity. It still swayed with the

incessant oscillations of conjecture; but they were slower, more rhythmical in their beat. There were moments

of overwhelming lassitude when, like the victim of some poison which leaves the brain clear, but holds the

body motionless, she saw herself domesticated with the Horror, accepting its perpetual presence as one of the

These moments lengthened into hours and days, till she passed into a phase of stolid acquiescence. She

watched the familiar routine of life with the incurious eye of a savage on whom the meaningless processes of

civilization make but the faintest impression. She had come to regard herself as part of the routine, a spoke of

the wheel, revolving with its motion; she felt almost like the furniture of the room in which she sat, an

insensate object to be dusted and pushed about with the chairs and tables. And this deepening apathy held her

fast at Lyng, in spite of the urgent entreaties of friends and the usual medical recommendation of "change."

Her friends supposed that her refusal to move was inspired by the belief that her husband would one day

return to the spot from which he had vanished, and a beautiful legend grew up about this imaginary state of

waiting. But in reality she had no such belief: the depths of anguish inclosing her were no longer lighted by

flashes of hope. She was sure that Boyne would never come back, that he had gone out of her sight as

completely as if Death itself had waited that day on the threshold. She had even renounced, one by one, the

various theories as to his disappearance which had been advanced by the press, the police, and her own

agonized imagination. In sheer lassitude her mind turned from these alternatives of horror, and sank back into

No, she would never know what had become of him no one would ever know. But the house knew; the

library in which she spent her long, lonely evenings knew. For it was here that the last scene had been

enacted, here that the stranger had come, and spoken the word which had caused Boyne to rise and follow

him. The floor she trod had felt his tread; the books on the shelves had seen his face; and there were moments

when the intense consciousness of the old, dusky walls seemed about to break out into some audible

revelation of their secret. But the revelation never came, and she knew it would never come. Lyng was not

one of the garrulous old houses that betray the secrets intrusted to them. Its very legend proved that it had

accomplice, the incorruptible custodian of the mysteries it had surprised. And Mary Boyne, sitting face to

face with its portentous silence, felt the futility of seeking to break it by any human means.

"I don't say it wasn't straight, yet don't say it was straight. It was business."

Mary, at the words, lifted her head with a start, and looked intently at the speaker.

When, half an hour before, a card with "Mr. Parvis" on it had been brought up to her, she had been

immediately aware that the name had been a part of her consciousness ever since she had read it at the head

of Boyne's unfinished letter. In the library she had found awaiting her a small neutraltinted man with a bald

head and gold eyeglasses, and it sent a strange tremor through her to know that this was the person to whom

Parvis, civilly, but without vain preamble, in the manner of a man who has his watch in his hand, had

set forth the object of his visit. He had "run over" to England on business, and finding himself in the

neighborhood of Dorchester, had not wished to leave it without paying his respects to Mrs. Boyne; without

asking her, if the occasion offered, what she meant to do about Bob Elwell's family.

The words touched the spring of some obscure dread in Mary's bosom. Did her visitor, after all, know what

Boyne had meant by his unfinished phrase? She asked for an elucidation of his question, and noticed at once

that he seemed surprised at her continued ignorance of the subject. Was it possible that she really knew as

"I know nothing you must tell me," she faltered out; and her visitor thereupon proceeded to unfold his

story. It threw, even to her confused perceptions, and imperfectly initiated vision, a lurid glare on the whole

hazy episode of the Blue Star Mine. Her husband had made his money in that brilliant speculation at the cost

of "getting ahead" of some one less alert to seize the chance; the victim of his ingenuity was young Robert

Parvis, at Mary's first startled cry, had thrown her a sobering glance through his impartial glasses.

"Bob Elwell wasn't smart enough, that's all; if he had been, he might have turned round and served Boyne the

same way. It's the kind of thing that happens every day in business. I guess it's what the scientists call the

survival of the fittest," said Mr. Parvis, evidently pleased with the aptness of his analogy.

Mary felt a physical shrinking from the next question she tried to frame; it was as though the words on her

Mr. Parvis surveyed the question dispassionately. "Oh, no, I don't. I don't even say it wasn't straight." He

glanced up and down the long lines of books, as if one of them might have supplied him with the definition

he sought. "I don't say it wasn't straight, and yet I don't say it was straight. It was business." After all, no

Mary sat staring at him with a look of terror. He seemed to her like the indifferent, implacable emissary of

"But Mr. Elwell's lawyers apparently did not take your view, since I suppose the suit was withdrawn by their

"Oh, yes, they knew he hadn't a leg to stand on, technically. It was when they advised him to withdraw the

suit that he got desperate. You see, he'd borrowed most of the money he lost in the Blue Star, and he was up a

"Well, he didn't kill himself, exactly. He dragged on two months before he died." Parvis emitted the statement

They sat opposite each other in silence, he swinging his eyeglass thoughtfully about his finger, she,

"But if you knew all this," she began at length, hardly able to force her voice above a whisper, "how is it that

when I wrote you at the time of my husband's disappearance you said you didn't understand his letter?"

Parvis received this without perceptible discomfiture. "Why, I didn't understand it strictly speaking. And it

wasn't the time to talk about it, if I had. The Elwell business was settled when the suit was withdrawn.

Still Parvis did not hesitate. "Well, to begin with, I supposed you knew more than you appear to I mean

about the circumstances of Elwell's death. And then people are talking of it now; the whole matter's been

She remained silent, and he continued: "You see, it's only come out lately what a bad state Elwell's affairs

were in. His wife's a proud woman, and she fought on as long as she could, going out to work, and taking

sewing at home, when she got too sick something with the heart, I believe. But she had his bedridden

mother to look after, and the children, and she broke down under it, and finally had to ask for help. That

attracted attention to the case, and the papers took it up, and a subscription was started. Everybody out there

liked Bob Elwell, and most of the prominent names in the place are down on the list, and people began to

Parvis broke off to fumble in an inner pocket. "Here," he continued, "here's an account of the whole thing

from the 'Sentinel' a little sensational, of course. But I guess you'd better look it over."

He held out a newspaper to Mary, who unfolded it slowly, remembering, as she did so, the evening when, in

that same room, the perusal of a clipping from the "Sentinel" had first shaken the depths of her security.

As she opened the paper, her eyes, shrinking from the glaring headlines, "Widow of Boyne's Victim Forced

to Appeal for Aid," ran down the column of text to two portraits inserted in it. The first was her husband's,

taken from a photograph made the year they had come to England. It was the picture of him that she liked

best, the one that stood on the writingtable upstairs in her bedroom. As the eyes in the photograph met

hers, she felt it would be impossible to read what was said of him, and closed her lids with the sharpness of

"I thought if you felt disposed to put your name down " she heard Parvis continue.

She opened her eyes with an effort, and they fell on the other portrait. It was that of a youngish man, slightly

built, in rough clothes, with features somewhat blurred by the shadow of a projecting hatbrim. Where had

she seen that outline before? She stared at it confusedly, her heart hammering in her throat and ears. Then she

She heard Parvis start to his feet, and was dimly aware that she had slipped backward into the corner of the

sofa, and that he was bending above her in alarm. With an intense effort she straightened herself, and reached

"It's the man! I should know him anywhere!" she cried in a voice that sounded in her own ears like a scream.

Parvis's voice seemed to come to her from far off, down endless, fogmuffled windings.

"Mrs. Boyne, you're not very well. Shall I call somebody? Shall I get a glass of water?"

"No, no, no!" She threw herself toward him, her hand frantically clenching the newspaper. "I tell you, it's the

Parvis took the journal from her, directing his glasses to the portrait. "It can't be, Mrs. Boyne. It's Robert

"Robert Elwell?" Her white stare seemed to travel into space. "Then it was Robert Elwell who came for him."

"Came for Boyne? The day he went away?" Parvis's voice dropped as hers rose. He bent over, laying a

fraternal hand on her, as if to coax her gently back into her seat. "Why, Elwell was dead! Don't you

"Don't you remember Boyne's unfinished letter to me the one you found on his desk that day? It was

written just after he'd heard of Elwell's death." She noticed an odd shake in Parvis's unemotional voice.

Yes, she remembered: that was the profoundest horror of it. Elwell had died the day before her husband's

disappearance; and this was Elwell's portrait; and it was the portrait of the man who had spoken to her in the

garden. She lifted her head and looked slowly about the library. The library could have borne witness that it

was also the portrait of the man who had come in that day to call Boyne from his unfinished letter. Through

the misty surgings of her brain she heard the faint boom of halfforgotten words words spoken by Alida

Stair on the lawn at Pangbourne before Boyne and his wife had ever seen the house at Lyng, or had imagined

She looked again at Parvis. He was trying to conceal his disturbance under what he imagined to be an

expression of indulgent commiseration; but the edges of his lips were blue. "He thinks me mad; but I'm not

mad," she reflected; and suddenly there flashed upon her a way of justifying her strange affirmation.

She sat quiet, controlling the quiver of her lips, and waiting till she could trust her voice to keep its habitual

level; then she said, looking straight at Parvis: "Will you answer me one question, please? When was it that

She saw that he was growing still more afraid of her. "I have a reason," she insisted gently.

Parvis picked up the newspaper. "We might see here," he said, still humoring her. He ran his eyes down the

She caught the words from him. "The 20th, wasn't it?" With a sharp look at her, he verified. "Yes, the 20th.

"I know now." Her white stare continued to travel past him. "Sunday, the 20th that was the day he came

"Yes, twice." She breathed it at him with dilated eyes. "He came first on the 20th of October. I remember the

date because it was the day we went up Meldon Steep for the first time." She felt a faint gasp of inward

"We saw him from the roof," she went on. "He came down the limeavenue toward the house. He was

dressed just as he is in that picture. My husband saw him first. He was frightened, and ran down ahead of me;

"Yes." Their two whispers seemed to grope for each other. "I couldn't think what had happened. I see now.

He tried to come then; but he wasn't dead enough he couldn't reach us. He had to wait for two months; and

She nodded at Parvis with the look of triumph of a child who has successfully worked out a difficult puzzle.

But suddenly she lifted her hands with a desperate gesture, pressing them to her bursting temples.

"Oh, my God! I sent him to Ned I told him where to go! I sent him to this room!" she screamed out.

She felt the walls of the room rush toward her, like inward falling ruins; and she heard Parvis, a long way off,

as if through the ruins, crying to her, and struggling to get at her. But she was numb to his touch, she did not

know what he was saying. Through the tumult she heard but one clear note, the voice of Alida Stair, speaking

"You won't know till afterward," it said. "You won't know till long, long afterward."

UP the long hill from the station at St.Cloud, Lizzie West climbed in the cold spring sunshine. As she

breasted the incline, she noticed the first waves of wistaria over courtyard railings and the high lights of new

foliage against the walls of ivymatted gardens; and she thought again, as she had thought a hundred times

She was on her way to the Deerings' house, in a street near the hilltop; and every step was dear and familiar

to her. She went there five times a week to teach little Juliet Deering, the daughter of Mr. Vincent Deering,

the distinguished American artist. Juliet had been her pupil for two years, and day after day, during that time,

Lizzie West had mounted the hill in all weathers; sometimes with her umbrella bent against a driving rain,

sometimes with her frail cotton parasol unfurled beneath a fiery sun, sometimes with the snow soaking

through her patched boots or a bitter wind piercing her thin jacket, sometimes with the dust whirling about

her and bleaching the flowers of the poor little hat that had to "carry her through" till next summer.

At first the ascent had seemed tedious enough, as dull as the trudge to her other lessons. Lizzie was not a

heavensent teacher; she had no born zeal for her calling, and though she dealt kindlyand dutifully with her

pupils, she did not fly to them on winged feet. But one day something had happened to change the face of

life, and since then the climb to the Deering house had seemed like a dreamflight up a heavenly stairway.

Her heart beat faster as she remembered it no longer in a tumult of fright and selfreproach, but softly,

It was on a day of the previous October that she had stopped, after Juliet's lesson, to ask if she might speak to

Juliet's papa. One had always to apply to Mr. Deering if there was anything to be said about the lessons. Mrs.

Deering lay on her lounge upstairs, reading greasy relays of dogeared novels, the choice of which she left

to the cook and the nurse, who were always fetching them forher from the cabinet de lecture; and it was

understood inthe house that she was not to be "bothered" about Juliet. Mr. Deering's interest in his daughter

was fitful rather than consecutive; but at least he was approachable, and listened sympathetically, if a little

absently, stroking his long, fair mustache, while Lizzie stated her difficulty or put in her plea for maps or

"Yes, yes of course whatever you think right," he would always assent, sometimes drawing a

fivefranc piece from his pocket, and laying it carelessly on the table, or oftener saying,with his charming

But this time Lizzie had not come to ask for maps or copybooks, or even to hint, in crimson misery, as

once, poor soul! she had had to do, that Mr. Deering had overlooked her last little account

had probably not noticed that she had left it, some two months earlier, on a corner of his littered

writingtable. That hour had been bad enough, though he had done his best to make it easy to carry it off

gallantly and gaily; but this was infinitely worse. For she had come to complain of her pupil; to say that,

much as she loved little Juliet, it was useless, unless Mr. Deering could "do something," to go on with the

"It wouldn't be honest I should be robbing you; I'm not sure that I haven't already," she half laughed,

through mounting tears, as she put her case. Little Juliet would not work, would not obey. Her poor, little,

drifting existence floated aimlessly between the kitchen and the lingerie, and all the groping tendrils ofher

It was the same kind of curiosity that Mrs. Deering, overhead in her drugscented room, lavished on her

dogeared novels and onthe "society notes" of the morning paper; but since Juliet's horizon was not yet wide

enough to embrace these loftier objects,her interest was centered in the anecdotes that Celeste and Suzanne

brought back from the market and the library. That these were not always of an edifying nature the child's

artless prattle too often betrayed; but unhappily they occupied her fancy to the complete exclusion of such

nourishing items as dates and dynasties, and the sources of the principal European rivers.

At length the crisis became so acute that poor Lizzie felt herself bound to resign her charge or ask Mr.

Deering's intervention; and for Juliet's sake she chose the harder alternative. It was hard to speak to him not

onlybecause one hated still more to ascribe it to such vulgar causes, but becauseone blushed to bring them to

the notice of a spirit engaged with higher things. Mr. Deering was very busy at that moment: he had a new

picture "on." And Lizzie entered the studio with the flutterof one profanely intruding on some sacred rite; she

And then and then how differently it had all turned out! Perhaps it wouldn't have, if she hadn't been

such a goose she who so seldom cried, so prided herself on a stoic control of her little twittering cageful of

"feelings." But if she had cried, it was because he had looked at her so kindly, so softly, and because she had

nevertheless felt him so pained and shamed by what she said. The pain, of course, lay for both in the

implication behind her words in the one word they left unspoken. If little Juliet was as she was, it was

because of the mother upstairs the mother who had given her child her futile impulses, and grudged her

the care that might have guided them. The wretched case so obviously revolved in its own vicious circle that

when Mr. Deering had murmured, "Of course if my wife were not an invalid," they both turned with a

simultaneous spring to the flagrant "bad example" of Celeste and Suzanne, fastening on that with a mutual

insistence that ended inhis crying out, "All the more, then, how can you leave her to them?"

"But if I do her no good?" Lizzie wailed; and it was then that, when he took her hand and assured her

gently, "But you do,you do!" it was then that, in the traditional phrase, she "brokedown," and her

"You do me good, at any rate you make the houseseem less like a desert," she heard him say; and the next

moment she felt herself drawn to him, and they kissed each other through her weeping.

They kissed each other there was the new fact. One does not, if one is a poor little teacher living in Mme.

Clopin's Pension Suisse at Passy, and if one has pretty brown hair and eyes that reach out trustfully to other

eyes one does not, under these common but defenseless conditions, arrive at the age of twentyfive

without being now and then kissed, waylaid once by a noisy student between two doors, surprised once by

one's graybearded professoras one bent over the "theme" he was correcting, but these episodes, if they

tarnish the surface, do not reach the heart: itis not the kiss endured, but the kiss returned, that lives. And

As she drew back from it, something new awoke in her something deeper than the fright and the shame,

and the penitent thought of Mrs. Deering. A sleeping germ of life thrilled and unfolded, and started out

blindly to seek the sun. She might have felt differently, perhaps, the shame and penitence might have

prevailed, had she not known him so kind and tender, and guessed him so baffled, poor, and disappointed.

She knew the failure of his married life, and she divined a corresponding failure in his artistic career. Lizzie,

who had made her own faltering snatch at the same laurels, brought her thwarted proficiency to bear on the

question of his pictures, which she judged to be extremely brilliant, but suspected of having somehowfailed

to affirm their merit publicly. She understood that he had tasted an earlier moment of success: a mention, a

medal, something official and tangible; then the tide of publicity had somehow setthe other way, and left him

stranded in a noble isolation. It was extraordinary and unbelievable that any one so naturally eminent and

exceptional should have been subject to the same vulgar necessities that governed her own life, should have

known povertyand obscurity and indifference. But she gathered that this had been the case, and felt that it

formed the miraculous link between them. For through what medium less revealing than that of

sharedmisfortune would he ever have perceived so inconspicuous an object as herself? And she recalled now

how gently his eyes had rested on her from the first the gray eyes that might have seemed mocking if they

She remembered how he had met her the first day, when Mrs. Deering's inevitable headache had prevented

her from receiving the new teacher, and how his few questions had at once revealed his interest in the little

stranded, compatriot, doomed to earn a precarious living so far from her native shore. Sweet as the moment

of unburdening had been, she wondered afterward what had determined it: how she, so shy and sequestered,

had found herselfletting slip her whole povertystricken story, even to the avowalof the ineffectual "artistic"

tendencies that had drawn her to Paris, and had then left her there to the dry task of tuition. She wondered at

first, but she understood now; she understood everything after he had kissed her. It was simply because he

She thought of this now as she mounted the hill in the spring sunshine, and she thought of all that had

happened since. The intervening months, as she looked back at them, were merged in a vast golden haze,

through which here and there rose the outline of a shining island. The haze was the general enveloping sense

of his love, and the shining islands were the days they had spent together. They had never kissed again under

his own roof. Lizzie's professional honor had a keen edge, but she had been spared the vulgar necessity of

making him feel it. It was of theessence of her fatality that he always "understood" when his failing to do so

But her Thursdays and Sundays were free, and it soon became a habit to give them to him. She knew, for her

peace of mind, onlytoo much about pictures, and galleries and churches had been the one bright outlet from

the grayness of her personal atmosphere. For poetry, too, and the other imaginative forms of literature, she

had always felt more than she had hitherto had occasion to betray; and now all these folded sympathies shot

out their tendrils to the light. Mr. Deering knew how to express with unmatched clearness and competence

the thoughts that trembled in her mind: to talk with him was to soar up into the azure on the outspread wings

of his intelligence, and look down dizzily yet distinctly, on all the wonders and glories of the world. She was

a little ashamed, sometimes, to find how few definite impressions she brought back from these flights; but

that was doubtless because her heart beatso fast when he was near, and his smile made his words like a long

quiver of light. Afterward, in quieter hours, fragments of theirtalk emerged in her memory with wondrous

precision, every syllable as minutely chiseled as some of the delicate objects in crystal or ivory that he

pointed out in the museums they frequented. It wasalways a puzzle to Lizzie that some of their hours should

On the morning in question she was reliving all these memories with unusual distinctness, for it was a

fortnight since she had seen her friend. Mrs. Deering, some six weeks previously, had gone to visit a relation

at St.Raphael; and, after she had been a month absent, her husband and the little girl had joined her.

Lizzie'sadieux to Deering had been made on a rainy afternoon in the damp corridors of the Aquarium at the

Trocadero. She could not receive him at her own pension. That a teacher should bevisited by the father of a

pupil, especially when that father wasstill, as Madame Clopin said, si bien, was against that lady's austere

Helvetian code. From Deering's first tentative hint of another solution Lizzie had recoiled in a wild

unreasoned flurry of all her scruples, he took her "No, no, no!" as he tookall her twists and turns of

conscience, with eyes halftender and halfmocking, and an instant acquiescence which was the finest

So they continued to meet in museums and galleries, or to extend, on fine days, their explorations to the

suburbs, where now and then, in the solitude of grove or garden, the kiss renewed itself, fleeting, isolated, or

prolonged in a shy, silent pressure of the hand. But on the day of his leavetaking the rain kept them under

cover; and as they threaded the subterranean windings of the Aquarium, and Lizzie looked unseeingly at the

monstrous faces glaring at her through walls of glass, she felt like a poor drowned wretch at the bottom of the

sea, with all her glancing, sunlit memories rolling over her like the waves of its surface.

"You'll never see him again never see him again," the wavesboomed in her ears through his last words;

and when she had said goodby to him at the corner, and had scrambled, wet and shivering, into the Passy

omnibus, its great, grinding wheels took up the derisive burden "Never see him, never see him again."

All that was only two weeks ago, and here she was, as happy as a lark, mounting the hill to his door in the

spring sunshine. Soweak a heart did not deserve such a radiant fate; and Lizzie saidto herself that she would

THE cracked bell tinkled sweetly through her heart as she stood listening for the scamper of Juliet's feet.

Juliet, anticipatingthe laggard Suzanne, almost always opened the door for her governess, not from any

unnatural zeal to hasten the hour of her studies, but from the irrepressible desire to see what was going on in

the street. But on this occasion Lizzie listened vainly for astep, and at length gave the bell another twitch.

Doubtless someunusually absorbing incident had detained the child belowstairs;thus only could her absence

A third ring produced no response, and Lizzie, full of dawning fears, drew back to look up at the shabby,

blistered house. She saw that the studio shutters stood wide, and then noticed, without surprise, that Mrs.

Deering's were still unopened. No doubt Mrs.Deering was resting after the fatigue of the journey.

Instinctively Lizzie's eyes turned again to the studio; and as she looked, she saw Deering at the window. He

caught sight of her, and an instant later came to the door. He looked paler than usual, and she noticed that he

He looked at her gravely, almost solemnly; then, without answering, he led her down the passage to the

"My wife is dead she died suddenly ten days ago. Didn't you see it in the papers?"

Lizzie, with a little cry, sank down on the rickety divan. She seldom saw a newspaper, since she could not

afford one for her own perusal, and those supplied to the Pension Clopin were usually in the hands of its more

privileged lodgers till long after the hour when she set out on her morning round.

Deering was silent. He stood a little way off, twisting an unlit cigarette in his hand, and looking down at her

She, too, felt the constraint of the situation, the impossibility of finding words that, after what had passed

between them, should seem neither false nor heartless; and at last she exclaimed, standing up: "Poor little

"Juliet is not here. I left her at St.Raphael with the relations with whom my wife was staying."

"Oh," Lizzie murmured, feeling vaguely that this added to the difficulty of the moment. How differently she

Deering made no reply, but, turning on his heel, walked the length of the studio, and then halted vaguely

before the picture on the easel. It was the landscape he had begun the previous autumn, with the intention of

sending it to the Salon that spring. But it was still unfinished seemed, indeed, hardly moreadvanced than

on the fateful October day when Lizzie, standing before it for the first time, had confessed her inability to

dealwith Juliet. Perhaps the same thought struck its creator, for hebroke into a dry laugh, and turned from the

Under his protracted silence Lizzie roused herself to the fact that, since her pupil was absent, there was no

reason for her remaining any longer; and as Deering again moved toward her she said with an effort: "I'll go,

Lizzie heard him with a drop of the heart. Was everything to be changed in their lives? But of course; how

could she have dreamed it would be otherwise? She could only stupidly repeat: "Not coming back? Not this

"Probably not, since are friends are so good as to keep her. The fact is, I've got to go to America. My wife left

Lizzie stood before him, a cold knife in her breast. "I see I see," she reiterated, feeling all the while that

"It's a nuisance, having to pull up stakes," he went on, with a fretful glance about the studio.

She lifted her eyes slowly to his face. "Shall you be gone long?" she took courage to ask.

"There again I can't tell. It's all so frightfully mixed up." He met her look for an incredibly long, strange

Lizzie felt a rush of moisture to her lashes, and the old, familiar wave of weakness at her heart. She raised her

hand to her face with an instinctive gesture, and as she did so he held out his arms.

And she went went with a sweet, wild throb of liberation, with the sense that at last the house was his, that

shewas his, if he wanted her; that never again would that silent, rebuking presence in the room above

He pushed back her veil and covered her face with kisses. "Don't cry, you little goose!" he said.

THAT they must see each other again before his departure, in someplace less exposed than their usual haunts,

was as clear to Lizzie as it appeared to be to Deering. His expressing the wish seemed,indeed, the sweetest

testimony to the quality of his feeling, since, in the first weeks of the most perfunctory widowerhood, a man

of his stamp is presumed to abstain from light adventures. If, then, at such a moment, he wished so much to

be quietly and gravely with her, it could be only for reasons she did not call by name, but of which she felt

the sacred tremor in her heart; and it would have seemed incredibly vain and vulgar to put forward, at such a

crisis, the conventional objections by means of which such littleexposed existences defend the treasure of

In such a mood as this one may descend from the Passy omnibus at the corner of the Pont de la Concorde

(she had not let him fetch her in a cab) with a sense of dedication almost solemn, and may advance to meet

one's fate, in the shape of a gentleman of melancholy elegance, with an autotaxi at his call, as one has

Even the experienced waiter ushering them into an upper roomof the quiet restaurant on the Seine could

hardly have supposed their quest for seclusion to be based on sentimental motives, so soberly did Deering

give his orders, while his companion sat small and grave at his side. She did not, indeed, mean to let her

private pang obscure their hour together: she was already learning that Deering shrank from sadness. He

should see that she had courage and gaiety to face their coming separation, and yet give herself meanwhile to

this completer nearness; but she waited, as always, for him to strike the opening note.

Looking back at it later, she wondered at the mild suavity of the hour. Her heart was unversed inhappiness,

but he had found the tone to lull her apprehensions, and make her trust her fate for any golden wonder.

Deepest of all, he gave her the sense of something tacit and confirmed between them, as if his tenderness

Such proof as he offered came, therefore, as a kind of crowning luxury, the flower of a profoundly rooted

sentiment; andhere again the instinctive reserves and defenses would have seemed to vulgarize what his trust

ennobled. But if all the tender casuistries of her heart were at his service, he took no grave advantage of them.

Even when they sat alone after dinner, with the lights of the river trembling through their one low window,

and the vast rumor of Paris inclosing them in a heart of silence, he seemed, as much as herself, under the spell

of hallowing influences. She felt it most of all as she yielded to the arm hepresently put about her, to the long

caress he laid on her lips and eyes: not a word or gesture missed the note of quiet union, or cast a doubt, in

That pact, as she reviewed it through a sleepless night, seemed to have consisted mainly, on his part, in

pleadings for full and frequent news of her, on hers in the assurance that it shouldbe given as often as he

asked it. She had felt an intense desirenot to betray any undue eagerness, any crude desire to affirm anddefine

her hold on him. Her life had given her a certain acquaintance with the arts of defense: girls in her situation

were commonly supposed to know them all, and to use them as occasion called. But Lizzie's very need of

them had intensified her disdain. Just because she was so poor, and had always, materially, so to count her

change and calculate her margin, she would at least know the joy of emotional prodigality, would give her

heart as recklessly as the rich their millions. She was sure now that Deering loved her, and if he had seized

the occasion of their farewell to give her some definitely worded sign of his feeling if, more plainly, he

had asked her to marry him, his doing so would have seemed less like a proof of his sincerity than of his

suspecting in her the need of a verbal warrant. That he had abstained seemed to show that he trusted her as

she trusted him, and that they were one most of all in this deep security of understanding.

She had tried to make him divine all this in the chariness of her promise to write. She would write; of course

she would. Buthe would be busy, preoccupied, on the move: it was for him to lether know when he wished a

"Intrusions?" He had smiled the word away. "You can't wellintrude, my darling, on a heart where you're

already established,to the complete exclusion of other lodgers." And then, taking her hands, and looking up

from them into her happy, dizzy eyes: "You don't know much about being in love, do you, Lizzie?" he

It seemed easy enough to reject this imputation in a kiss; but she wondered afterward if she had not deserved

it. Was she really cold and conventional, and did other women give more richly and recklessly? She found

that it was possible to turn about every one of her reserves and delicacies so that they looked like selfish

scruples and petty pruderies, and at this game she came in time to exhaust all the resources of an

Meanwhile the first days after Deering's departure wore a soft, refracted light like the radiance lingering after

sunset. He, at any rate, was taxable with no reserves, nocalculations, and his letters of farewell, from train and

steamer, filled her with long murmurs and echoes of his presence. How he loved her, how he loved her

She was not sure of possessing the same aptitude. Unused tothe expression of personal emotion, she

fluctuated between the impulse to pour out all she felt and the fear lest her extravagance should amuse or

even bore him. She never lost the sense that what was to her the central crisis of experience must be a mere

episode in a life so predestined as his to romantic accidents. All that she felt and said would be subjected to

the test of comparison with what others had already given him: from all quarters of the globeshe saw

passionate missives winging their way toward Deering, forwhom her poor little swallowflight ofdevotion

could certainly not make a summer. But such moments were succeeded by others in which she raised her

head and dared inwardly to affirm her conviction that no woman had ever loved him just as she had, and that

none, therefore, had probably found just such things to say to him. And this conviction strengthened the other

less solidly based belief that he also, for the same reason,had found new accents to express his tenderness,

and that the three letters she wore all day in her shabby blouse, and hid all night beneath her pillow, surpassed

They gave her, at any rate, during the weeks that she wore them on her heart, sensations even more complex

and delicate thanDeering's actual presence had ever occasioned. To be with him was always like breasting a

bright, rough sea, that blinded while it buoyed her: but his letters formed a still pool of contemplation,above

which she could bend, and see the reflection of the sky, and the myriad movements of life that flitted and

gleamed below the surface. The wealth of his hidden life that was what most surprised her! It was

incredible to her now that she had had no inkling of it, but had kept on blindly along the narrow track of

habit, like a traveler climbing a road in a fog, who suddenly finds himself on a sunlit crag between blue

leagues of sky and dizzy depths of valley. And the odd thing was that all the people about her the whole

world of the Passy pension were still plodding along the same dull path, preoccupied with the pebbles

There were wild hours when she longed to cry out to them what one saw from the summit and hours of

tremulous abasement when she asked herself why her happy feet had been guided there,while others, no

doubt as worthy, stumbled and blundered in obscurity. She felt, in particular, a sudden urgent pity for the two

or three other girls at Mme. Clopin's girls older, duller, less alive than she, and by that very token more

appealingly flung upon her sympathy. Would they ever know? Had they ever known? those were the

questions that haunted her as she crossed her companions on the stairs, faced them at the dinnertable, and

listened to their poor, pining talk in the dimlit slipperyseated salon. One ofthe girls was Swiss, the other

English; the third, Andora Macy, was ayoung lady from the Southern States who was studying French with

the ultimate object of imparting it to the inmates of a girls' school at Macon, Georgia.

Andora Macy was pale, faded, immature. She had a drooping Southern accent, and a manner which

fluctuated between arch audacity and fits of panicky hauteur. She yearned to be admired,and feared to be

insulted; and yet seemed tragically conscious that she was destined to miss both these extremes of sensation,

or to enjoy them only at second hand in the experiences of her more privileged friends.

It was perhaps for this reason that she took a wistful interest in Lizzie, who had shrunk from her at first, as

the depressing image of her own probable future, but to whom she had now suddenly become an object of

THE LETTERS IN THREE PARTS: PART II By EDITH WHARTON Author of "The House of Mirth," etc.

THE story opens in the August CENTURY, with a scene between Vincent Deering, an American artist living

in Paris, and Lizzie West, whofor two years has been daygoverness to the artist's young daughter, a

discouraging pupil, mainly because she is neglected by an indolent, novelreading mother. In the privacy of

the studio,Lizzie West tells the artist that she must resign her fruitless charge. Deering pleads that in such

case little Juliet will be hopelessly neglected, and in the teacher's wavering attitude he kisses her and

establishes a relation of confidence and affection, which is discreetly cultivated, until, through the sudden

death of Mrs. Deering, the teacher has reason to expect a devotion withoutevasion or concealment. But

Deering's reserved attitude awakens feelings of uncertainty, until the affectionate interview which precedes

his departure for America to settle his late wife's estate. His fervent letters of farewell from train and steamer,

and one on his arrival in New York, make her eager for the next. This is the situation at the opening of the

MISS MACY's room was next to Miss West's, and the Southerner's knock often appealed to Lizzie's

hospitality when Mme. Clopin's early curfew had driven her boarders from the salon. It sounded thus one

evening just as Lizzie, tired from an unusually long day of tuition, was in the act of removing her dress. She

was in too indulgent a mood to withhold her "Come in," and as Miss Macy crossed the threshold, Lizzie felt

that Vincent Deering's first letter the letter from the train had slipped from her loosened bodice to the

Miss Macy, as promptly noting the fact, darted forward to recover the letter. Lizzie stooped also,fiercely

jealous of her touch; but the other reached the precious paper first, andas she seized it, Lizzie knew that she

had seen whence it fell, and was weaving round the incident a rapid web of romance.

Lizzie blushed with annoyance. "It's too stupid, having no pockets! If one gets a letter as she is going out in

Miss Macy looked at her with swimming eyes. "It's warm fromyour heart!" she breathed, reluctantly yielding

Lizzie laughed, for she knew better: she knew it was the letter that had warmed her heart. Poor Andora Macy!

Shewould never know. Her bleak bosom would never take fire from such a contact. Lizzie looked at her with

The next evening, on her return home, she found Andora hovering in the entrance hall.

"I thought you'd like me to put this in your own hand," MissMacy whispered significantly, pressing a letter

It was Deering's letter from the steamer. Lizzie blushed tothe forehead, but without resenting Andora's

divination. She could not have breathed a word of her bliss, but she was not altogethersorry to have it

guessed, and pity for Andora's destitution yielded to the pleasure of using it as a mirror for her own

abundance. DEERING wrote again on reaching New York, a long, fond, dissatisfied letter, vague in its

indication of his own projects,specific in the expression of his love. Lizzie brooded over every syllable of it

till they formed the undercurrent of all her waking thoughts, and murmured through her midnight dreams; but

That would come, no doubt, when he had had time to look about and get his bearings. She counted up the

days that must elapse before she received his next letter, and stole down early to peepat the papers, and learn

when the next American mail was due. Atlength the happy date arrived, and she hurried distractedly through

the day's work, trying to conceal her impatience by the endearments she bestowed upon her pupils. It was

That evening, on Mme. Clopin's threshold, her heart beat so wildly that she had to lean a moment against the

doorpost beforeentering. But on the hall table, where the letters lay, there was none for her.

She went over them with a feverish hand, her heart dropping down and down, as she had sometimes fallen

down an endless stairway in a dream the very same stairway up which she had seemed to flywhen she

climbed the long hill to Deering's door. Then it suddenly struck her that Andora might have found and

secreted her letter, and with a spring she was on the actual stairs and rattling Miss Macy's doorhandle.

Miss Macy, turning from the toilettable, inclosed her in attenuated arms. "Oh, darling, did you expect one

"But, dearest, I've watched for you, and there'sbeen nothing, absolutely nothing."

Day after day, for the ensuing weeks, the same scene reenacted itself with endless variations. Lizzie, after the

first sharp spasm of disappointment, made no effort to conceal her anxiety from Miss Macy, and the fond

Andora was charged to keep a vigilant eyeupon the postman's coming, and to spy on the bonne for possible

negligence or perfidy. But these elaborate precautions remained fruitless, and no letter from Deering came.

During the first fortnight of silence Lizzie exhausted all the ingenuities of explanation. She marveled

afterward at the reasons she had found for Deering's silence: there were moments when she almost argued

herself into thinking it more natural than his continuing to write. There was only one reason which her

intelligence consistently rejected, and that was the possibility that he had forgotten her, that the wholeepisode

had faded from his mind like a breath from a mirror. From that she resolutely turned her thoughts, aware that

if she suffered herself to contemplate it, the motive power of life would fail, and she would no longer

If she had had leisure to indulge her anguish she might havebeen unable to keep such speculations at bay. But

she had to be up and working: the blanchisseuse had to be paid, and Mme. Clopin's weekly bill, and all the

little "extras" that even her frugal habits had to reckon with. And in the depths of her thought dwelt the

dogging fear of illness and incapacity, goading her to work while she could. She hardly remembered the time

when she had been without that fear; it was second nature now, and it kept her on her feet when other

incentives might have failed. In the blankness of her misery shefelt no dread of death; but the horror of being

In the first weeks of silence she wrote again and again to Deering, entreating him for a word, for a mere sign

of life. From the first she had shrunk from seeming to assert any claim on his future, yet in her aching

bewilderment she now charged herself with having been too possessive, too exacting in her tone. She told

herself that his fastidiousness shrank from any but a "light touch," and that hers had not been light enough.

She should havekept to the character of the "little friend," the artless consciousness in which tormented

genius may find an escape from its complexities; and instead, she had dramatized their relation, exaggerated

her own part in it, presumed, forsooth, to share the front of the stage with him, instead of being content to

But though to herself she admitted, and even insisted on, the episodical nature of the experience, on the fact

that for Deeringit could be no more than an incident, she was still convinced that his sentiment for her,

His had not been the attitude of the unscrupulous male seeking a vulgar "advantage." For a moment he had

really needed her, andif he was silent now, it was perhaps because he feared that she had mistaken the nature

It was of the very essence of Lizzie's devotion that it sought instinctively the larger freedom of its object; she

could not conceive of love under any form of exaction or compulsion. To make this clear to Deering became

an overwhelming need, and in a last short letter she explicitly freed him from whatever sentimental obligation

its predecessors might have seemed to impose. In thisstudied communication she playfully accused herself of

having unwittingly sentimentalized their relation, affirming, in selfdefense, a retrospective astuteness, a

sense of the impermanence of the tenderer sentiments, that almost put Deering in the fatuous position of

having mistaken coquetry for surrender. And she ended gracefully with a plea for the continuance of the

friendly regardwhich she had "always understood" to be the basis of their sympathy. The document, when

completed, seemed to her worthy of what she conceived to be Deering's conception of a woman of the world,

and she found a spectral satisfaction in the thought of making her final appearance before him in that

distinguished character. But she was never destined to learn what effect the appearance produced; for the

THE fresh spring sunshine which had so often attended Lizzie Weston her dusty climb up the hill of

St.Cloud beamed on her, some two years later, in a scene and a situation of altered import.

The horsechestnuts of the ChampsElysees filtered its rays through the symmetrical umbrage inclosing the

graveled space about Daurent's restaurant, and Miss West, seated at a table within that privileged circle,

presented to the light a hat much better able to sustain its scrutiny than those which had sheltered the brow of

Her dress was in keeping with the hat, and both belonged to a situation rich in such possibilities as the act of

a leisurely luncheon at Daurent's in the opening week of the Salon. Her companions, of both sexes, confirmed

and emphasized this impression by an elaborateness of garb and an ease of attitude implying the largest range

of selection between the forms of Parisian idleness; and even Andora Macy, seated opposite, as in the place

of cohostess or companion, reflected, in coy grays and mauves, the festal note of the occasion.

This note reverberated persistently in the ears of a solitary gentleman straining for glimpses of the group from

a table wedgedin the remotest corner of the garden; but to Miss West herself the occurrence did not rise

above the usual. For nearly a year she had been acquiring the habit of such situations, and the act of offering a

luncheon at Daurent's to her cousins, the Harvey Mearses of Providence, and their friend Mr. Jackson Benn,

produced in herno emotion beyond the languid glow which Mr. Benn's presence was beginning to impart to

"It's frightful, the way you've got used to it," Andora Macyhad wailed in the first days of her friend's

transfigured fortune, when Lizzie West had waked one morning to find herself among the heirs of an old and

miserly cousin whose testamentary dispositions had formed, since her earliest childhood, the subject of

pleasantry and conjecture in her own improvident family. Old Hezron Mears had never given any sign of life

to the luckless Wests; had perhaps hardly been conscious of including them in the carefully drawn will

which, following the old American convention, scrupulously divided his hoarded millions among his kin. It

was by a mere genealogical accident that Lizzie, falling just within the golden circle, found herself possessed

of a pittance sufficient to release her from the prospect of a long gray future in Mme. Clopin's pension.

The release had seemed wonderful at first; yet she presentlyfound that it had destroyed her former world

without giving her anew one. On the ruins of the old pension life bloomed the only flower that had ever

sweetened her path; and beyond the sense of present ease, and the removal of anxiety for the future, her

reconstructed existence blossomed with no compensating joys. Shehad hoped great things from the

opportunity to rest, to travel, to look about her, above all, in various artful feminine ways, to be"nice" to the

companions of her less privileged state; but such widenings of scope left her, as it were, but the more

conscious of the empty margin of personal life beyond them. It was not till she woke to the leisure of her new

Their very emptiness made her strain to pack them with transient sensations: she was like the possessor of an

unfurnished house, with random furniture and bricabrac perpetually pouring in "on approval." It was in

this experimental character that Mr. Jackson Benn had fixed her attention, and the languid effort of her

imagination to adjust him to her requirements was seconded by thefond complicity of Andora and the smiling

approval of her cousins. Lizzie did not discourage these demonstrations: she suffered serenely Andora's

allusions to Mr. Benn's infatuation, and Mrs. Mears's casual boast of his business standing. All the better

ifthey could drape his narrow squareshouldered frame and round unwinking countenance in the trailing

"I never saw anything like the way these Frenchmen stare! Doesn't it make you nervous, Lizzie?" Mrs. Mears

broke out suddenly, ruffling her feather boa about an outraged bosom. Mrs.Mears was still in that stage of

Lizzie roused herself from the contemplation of Mr. Benn's round baby cheeks and the square blue jaw

resting on his perpendicular collar. "Is some one staring at me?" she asked with a smile.

"Don't turn round, whatever you do! There just over there,between the rhododendrons the tall fair man

alone at that table. Really, Harvey, I think you ought to speak to the headwaiter, orsomething; though I

suppose in one of these places they'd only laugh at you," Mrs. Mears shudderingly concluded.

Her husband, as if inclining to this probability, continued the undisturbed dissection of his chicken wing; but

Mr. Benn, perhaps aware that his situation demanded a more punctilious attitude, sternly revolved upon the

"What, that fellow all alone over there? Why, he'snot French; he's an American," he then proclaimed with a

"Oh!" murmured Mrs. Mears, as perceptibly disappointed, and Mr. Benn continued carelessly: "He came over

on the steamer with me. He's some kind of an artist a fellow named Deering. He wasstaring at me, I guess:

wondering whether I was going to remember him. Why, how d' 'e do? How are you? Why, yes, of course;

with pleasure my friends, Mrs. Harvey Mears Mr. Mears; my friends Miss Macy and Miss West."

EVEN through his smile Lizzie had seen, in the first moment, how changed he was; and the impression of the

change deepened to the point of pain when, a few days later, in reply to his brief note,she accorded him a

That the first sight of his writing the first answer to hisletters should have come, after three long years,

in the shape of this impersonal line, too curt to be called humble, yet confessing to a consciousness of the past

by the studied avoidance of its language! As she read, her mind flashed back over what she had dreamed his

letters would be, over the exquisite answers she had composed above his name. There was nothing exquisite

in the conventional lines before her; but dormant nerves began to throb again at the mere touch of the paper

he had touched, and she threw the little note into the fire before she dared to reply to it.

Now that he was actually before her again, he became, as usual, the one live spot in her consciousness. Once

more her tormented throbbing self sank back passive and numb, but now withall its power of suffering

mysteriously transferred to the presence, so known, yet so unknown, at the opposite corner of herhearth. She

was still Lizzie West, and he was still Vincent Deering; but the Styx rolled between them, and she saw his

face through its fog. It was his face, really, rather than his words,that told her, as she furtively studied it, the

tale of failure and slow discouragement which had so blurred its handsome lines. Shekept afterward no

precise memory of the actual details of his narrative: the pain it evidently cost him to impart it was so much

the sharpest fact in her new vision of him. Confusedly, however,she gathered that on reaching America he

had found his wife's small property gravely impaired; and that, while lingering on to securewhat remained of

it, he had contrived to sell a picture or two, and had even known a brief moment of success, during which he

received orders and set up a studio. But inexplicably the tide had ebbed,his work remained on his hands, and

a tedious illness, with its miserable sequel of debt, soon wiped out his small advantage. There followed a

period of eclipse, still more vaguely pictured, during which she was allowed to infer that he had tried his hand

at divers means of livelihood, accepting employment from a fashionable housedecorator, designing

wallpapers, illustrating magazine articles, and acting for a time, she dimly understood, as the social tout of a

new hotel desirous of advertising its restaurant. These disjointed facts were strung on a slender thread of

personal allusions references to friends who had been kind (jealously, she guessed them to be women),

and to enemies who had darkly schemed against him. But, true to his tradition of "correctness," he carefully

avoided the mention of names, and left her trembling conjectures to grope dimly through an alien crowded

As she listened, her private pang was merged in the intolerable sense of his unhappiness. Nothing he had said

explained or excused his conduct to her; but he had suffered, he had been lonely, had been humiliated, and

she suddenly felt, witha fierce maternal rage, that there was no conceivable justification for any scheme of

things in which such facts were possible. She could not have said why: she simply knew that it hurt too much

Gradually it came to her that her unconsciousness of any personal grievance was due to her having so

definitely determinedher own future. She was glad she had decided, as she now felt she had, to marry Jackson

Benn, if only for the sense of detachment it gave her in dealing with the case of Vincent Deering. Her

personal safety insured her the requisite impartiality, and justified her in dwelling as long as she chose on the

last lines of a chapter to which her own act had deliberately fixed the close. Any lingering hesitations as to

the finality of her decision were dispelled by the imminent need of making it known to Deering; and when

her visitor paused in his reminiscences to say, with a sigh, "But many things have happened to you too," his

words did not so much evokethe sense of her altered fortunes as the image of the protector to whom she was

"Yes, many things; it's three years," she answered. Deering sat leaning forward, in his sad exiled elegance,

hiseyes gently bent on hers; and at his side she saw the solid form of Mr. Jackson Benn, with shoulders

preternaturally squared by the cut of his tight black coat, and a tall shiny collar sustaining his baby cheeks

"Three years," he repeated, musingly taking up her words. "I've so often wondered what they'd brought you."

She lifted her head with a quick blush, and the terrified wish that he should not, at the cost of all his notions

"Do you suppose I haven't?" His look dwelt on her. "Yes, Idaresay that was what you thought of me."

She had her answer pat "Why, frankly, you know, I didn't think of you." But the mounting tide of her poor

dishonored memories swept it indignantly away. If it was his correctness toignore, it could never be hers to

" Was that what you thought of me?" she heard himrepeat in a tone of sad insistence; and at that, with a quick

lift of her head, she resolutely answered: "How could I know what to think? I had no word from you."

If she had expected, and perhaps almost hoped, that this answer would create a difficulty for him, the gaze of

quiet fortitude with which he met it proved that she had underestimatedhis resources.

"That you shouldn't have a word not a syllable. Oh, I kept it through everything!"

Lizzie's heart was sounding in her ears the old confused rumor of the sea of life, but through it she

He sat motionless, still holding her with a look so gentle that it almost seemed forgiving.

Then abruptly he rose, and crossing the space between them, sat down in a chair at her side. The deliberation

of his movement might have implied a forgetfulness of changed conditions, and Lizzie, as if thus viewing it,

drew slightly back; but he appeared not to notice her recoil, and his eyes, at last leaving her face,slowly and

approvingly made the round of the small bright drawingroom. "This is charming. Yes, things have changed

A moment before she had prayed that he might be spared the error of a vain return upon the past. It was as if

all her retrospective tenderness, dreading to see him at such a disadvantage, rose up to protect him from it.

But his evasiveness exasperated her, and suddenly she felt the inconsistent desire tohold him fast, face to face

"Ah, your letters!" Keeping her gaze on his in a passion ofunrelenting fixity, she could detect in him no

confusion, not theleast quiver of a sensitive nerve. He only gazed back at her more sadly.

All the demons of selftorture were up in her now, and she loosed them on him, as if to escape from their

Deering hardly seemed to hear her question. He merely shifted his attitude, leaning a little nearer to her, but

without attempting, by the least gesture, to remind her of the privilegeswhich such nearness had once implied.

He looked at her with grave surprise. "And do you resent mytelling you even now?"

His parries were incredible. They left her with a breathless sense of thrusting at emptiness, and a desperate,

And now, with a sudden turn, he gave her the final surprise of meeting her squarely on her own ground.

He gave her again his look of disarming patience. "Do I need to? Hasn't my whole wretched story told you?"

"Yes, since I could only answer them in one way by protesting my love and my longing."

There was a long pause of resigned expectancy on his part, on hers, of a wild confused reconstruction of her

"Because I found, when I reached America, that I was a pauper; that my wife's money was gone, and that

what I could earn I've so little gift that way! was barely enough to keep Juliet clothed and educated. It

Lizzie felt herself driven back, panting upon the last defenses of her incredulity. "You might at least have told

"It's wonderful you shouldn't see! Simply that I couldn't write you that. Anything else not that!"

It was his first direct appeal to her compassion, and for a moment it nearly unsettled the delicate poise of her

sympathies, and sent them trembling in the direction of scorn and irony. Buteven as the impulse rose, it was

stayed by another sensation. Once again, as so often in the past, she became aware of a fact which,in his

absence, she always failed to reckon with the fact of thedeep irreducible difference between his image in

her mind and hisactual self, the mysterious alteration in her judgment produced by the inflections of his

voice, the look of his eyes, the whole complex pressure of his personality. She had phrased it once

selfreproachfully by saying to herself that she "never could rememberhim," so completely did the sight of

him supersede the counterfeit about which her fancy wove its perpetual wonders. Bright and breathing as that

counterfeit was, it became a gray figment of the mind at the touch of his presence; and on this occasion the

immediate result was to cause her to feel his possible unhappiness with an intensity beside which her private

"I suffered horribly," he repeated, "and all the more that Icouldn't make a sign, couldn't cry out my misery.

There was onlyone escape from it all to hold my tongue, and pray that you might hate me."

The blood rushed to Lizzie's forehead. "Hate you you prayed that I might hate you?"

He rose from his seat, and moving closer, lifted her hand gently in his. "Yes; because your letters showed me

Her hand lay motionless, with the warmth of his flowing through it, and her thoughts, too her poor

fluttering stormy thoughts felt themselves suddenly penetrated by the same soft current of communion.

"And I meant to keep my resolve," he went on, slowly releasing his clasp. "I meant to keep it even after the

random stream of things swept me back here in your way; but when I saw you the other day, I felt that what

had been possible at a distance was impossible now that we were near each other. How was it possibleto see

He had moved away, but not to resume his seat. He merely paused at a little distance, his hand resting on a

Lizzie's heart contracted. He was going, then, and this washis farewell. He was going, and she could find no

He considered her with his faint grave smile. "It's not necessary, at any rate, that you should do so now. Time

and circumstances have made me so harmless that's exactly why I've dared to venture back. And I wanted

to tell you how I rejoice inyour good fortune. It's the only obstacle between us that I can't bring myself to

Lizzie sat silent, spellbound, as she listened, by the sudden evocation of Mr. Jackson Benn. He stood there

again, between herself and Deering, perpendicular and reproachful, but less solid and sharply outlined than

before, with a look in his small hard eyes that desperately wailed for reembodiment.

Deering was continuing his farewell speech. "You're rich now, you're free. You will marry." She vaguely saw

"It's not true that I'm engaged!" she broke out. They were the last words she had meant to utter; they were

hardly related to her conscious thoughts; but she felt her whole will suddenly gathered up in the irrepressible

impulse to repudiate and fling away from her forever the spectral claim of Mr. Jackson Benn.

THE LETTERS IN THREE PARTS: PART III BY EDITH WHARTON Author of "The House of Mirth,"

etc. WITH PICTURES BY SIGISMOND DE IVANOWSKI THIS story opened in the August CENTURY,

with a scene between Vincent Deering, an American artist living in Paris, and Lizzie West, who for two years

had been daygoverness to the artist's young daughter, a discouraging pupil, mainly because she was

neglected by an indolent, novelreading mother. In the privacy of the studio, Lizzie West told the artist that

she must resign her fruitless charge. Deering pleaded that in such case little Juliet would be hopelessly

neglected, and in the teacher's wavering attitude he kissed her and established a relation of confidence and

affection, which was discreetly cultivated, until, through the sudden death of Mrs. Deering, the teacher had

reason to expect a devotion without evasion or concealment. Deering departed for America to settle his late

wife's estate, but his fervent lettersof farewell from train and steamer, with one on his arrival in New York,

In the Second Part, the hardworking teacher after sending many letters to Deering, which were unanswered,

adjusted herself to the situation, and finally, through a moderate legacy, rearrangedher life on a scale of

comparative comfort. After an interval ofthree years Deering returned to Paris. He protested that his silence

had been due to his unwillingness to make her a partner to the illfortune which had marked his return to

America, and tactfully reawakened her love. The concluding chapters, given below, begin at a period in their

IT was the firm conviction of Andora Macy that every object in the Vincent Deerings' charming little house

The house was full of pretty things, some not obviously applicable to the purpose; but Miss Macy's casuistry

was equal tothe baby's appetite, and the baby's mother was no match for them in the art of defending her

possessions. There were moments, in fact, when Lizzie almost fell in with Andora's summary division of her

works of art into articles safe or unsafe for the baby to lick, or resisted it only to the extent of occasionally

substituting some less precious or less perishable object for the particular fragility on which her son's desire

was fixed. And it was with this intention that, on a certain fair spring morning which worethe added luster

of being the baby's second birthday she had murmured, with her mouth in his curls, and one hand holding

a bitof Chelsea above his dangerous clutch: "Wouldn't he rather have that beautiful shiny thing over there in

The two friends were together in Lizzie's little morningroom the room she had chosen, on acquiring the

house, because, when she sat there, she could hear Deering's step as he paced up and down before his easel in

the studio she had built for him. His step had been less regularly audible than she had hoped, for, after three

years of wedded bliss, he had somehow failed to settle downto the great work which was to result from that

privileged state;but even when she did not hear him she knew that he was there, above her head, stretched out

divan from Passy, and smoking endless cigarettes while he skimmed the morning papers; and the sense of his

Lizzie herself, on the day in question, was engaged in a more arduous task than the study of the morning's

news. She had neverunlearned the habit of orderly activity, and the trait she least understood in her husband's

character was his way of letting the loose ends of life hang as they would. She had been disposed at first to

ascribe this to the chronic incoherence of his first menage; but now she knew that, though he basked under

therule of her beneficent hand, he would never feel any active impulse to further its work. He liked to see

things fall into place about him at a wave of her wand; but his enjoyment of her household magic in no way

diminished his smiling irresponsibility, and it was with one of its least amiable consequences that his wife

Before them stood two travelworn trunks and a distended portmanteau, which had shed their contents in

heterogeneous heapsover Lizzie's rosy carpet. They represented the hostages left byher husband on his

somewhat precipitate departure from a New Yorkboardinghouse, and indignantly redeemed by her on her

learning, in a curt letter from his landlady, that the latter was not disposedto regard them as an equivalent for

Lizzie had not been shocked by the discovery that her husband had left America in debt. She had too sad an

acquaintance with the economic strain to see any humiliation in such accidents; but it offended her sense of

order that he should not have liquidated his obligation in the three years since their marriage. He took her

remonstrance with his usual disarming grace, and left her to forward the liberating draft, though her delicacy

had provided him with a bankaccount which assured his personal independence. Lizzie had discharged the

duty without repugnance, since she knewthat his delegating it to her was the result of his goodhumored

indolence and not of any design on her exchequer. Deering was not dazzled by money; his altered fortunes

had tempted him to no excesses: he was simply too lazy to draw the check, as he had been too lazy to

"No, dear! No!" Lizzie lifted the Chelsea figure higher. "Can't you find something for him, Andora, among

that rubbish over there? Where's the beaded bag you had in your hand just now? I don't think it could hurt

Miss Macy, bag in hand, rose from her knees, and stumbled through the slough of frayed garments and old

studio properties. Before the group of mother and son she fell into a raptured attitude.

"Do look at him reach for it, the tyrant! Isn't he just like the young Napoleon?"

Lizzie laughed and swung her son in air. "Dangle it before him, Andora. If you let him have it too quickly, he

Andora slowly lowered the shining bag till the heir of the Deerings closed his masterful fist upon it. "There

my Chelsea'ssafe!" Lizzie smiled, setting her boy on the floor, and watchinghim stagger away with his

Andora stood beside her, watching too. "Have you any idea where that bag came from, Lizzie?"

Mrs. Deering, bent above a pile of discollared shirts, shook an inattentive head. "I never saw such wicked

washing! There isn't one that's fit to mend. The bag? No; I've not the least idea."

Andora surveyed her dramatically. "Doesn't it make you utterly miserable to think that some woman may

Lizzie, bowed in anxious scrutiny above the shirts, broke into an unruffled laugh. "Really, Andora, really

six, seven, nine; no, there isn't even a dozen. There isn't a whole dozen of anything. I don't see how men live

Andora broodingly pursued her theme. "Do you mean to tell me it doesn't make you jealous to handle these

Lizzie shook her head again, and, straightening herself witha smile, tossed a bundle in her friend's direction.

"No, it doesn't make me the least bit jealous. Here, count these socks for me, like a darling."

Andora moaned, "Don't you feel anything at all?" asthe socks landed in her hollow bosom; but Lizzie, intent

upon her task, tranquilly continued to unfold and sort. She felt a great deal as she did so, but her feelings were

too deep and delicate for the simplifying process of speech. She only knew that each article she drew from

the trunks sent through her the long tremor of Deering's touch. It was part of her wonderful new life that

everything belonging to him contained an infinitesimal fraction of himself a fraction becoming visible in

the warmth of her love as certain secret elements become visible in rare intensities of temperature. And in the

case of the objects before her, poor shabby witnesses of his days of failure, what they gave out acquired a

special poignancy from its contrast to his present cherished state. His shirts were all in round dozens now,

and washed as carefully as old lace. As for his socks, she knew the pattern of every pair, and would have

liked to see the washerwoman who dared to mislay one, or bring it home with the colors "run"! And in these

homely tokens of his wellbeing she saw the symbol of what her tenderness had brought him. He was safe in

it, encompassed by it, morally and materially, and she defied the embattled powers of malice to reach him

through the armor of her love. Such feelings, however, were not communicable, even had one desired to

express them: they wereno more to be distinguished from the sense of life itself than bees from the

Lizzie lifted her head to smile a moment at her son, who satthroned on a heap of studio rubbish, with Andora

before him on adoring knees. She thought vaguely, "Poor Andora!" and then resumed the discouraged

inspection of a buttonless white waistcoat. The next sound she was aware of was a fluttered exclamation from

Lizzie looked up more quickly. She was aware that Andora's pronoun had changed its object, and was now

applied to Deering. And it struck her as odd, and slightly disagreeable, that a letter of hers should be found

"Give the bag to Aunt Andora, darling! Here look inside, and see what else a big big boy can find there!

Lizzie rose with a shade of impatience and crossed the floorto the romping group beside the other trunk.

"What is it? Give me the letters, please." As she spoke, she suddenly recalled the day when, in Mme. Clopin's

Andora had lifted a look of startled conjecture. "Why, thisone's never been opened! Do you suppose that

Lizzie laughed. Andora's imaginings were really puerile. "What awful woman? His landlady? Don't be such a

goose, Andora. How can it have been kept back from him,when we've found it here among his things?"

Andora held out the letter, and Lizzie took it. The writingwas hers; the envelop bore the Passy postmark; and

"Why, so are the others all unopened!" Andora threw out on a rising note; but Lizzie, stooping over,

"Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie " Andora, still on her knees, continued to hold back the packet, her pale face paler

with anger and compassion. "Lizzie, they're the letters I used to post for you the letters he never answered!

The two women faced each other, Andora kneeling, Lizzie motionless before her, the letters in her hand. The

blood had rushed to her face, humming in her ears, and forcing itself into the veins of her temples like hot

"It must have been some plot some conspiracy!" Andora cried, so fired by the ecstasy of invention that for

Lizzie turned away her eyes with an effort, and they rested on the boy, who sat at her feet placidly sucking

the tassels of the bag. His mother stooped and extracted them from his rosy mouth, which a cry of wrath

immediately filled. She lifted him in her arms, and for the first time no current of life ran from his bodyinto

hers. He felt heavy and clumsy, like some one else's child;and his screams annoyed her.

Lizzie, in some dark hollow of herself, heard the echo of a laugh. Andora always thought she knew how

Andora, from the door, cried out: "I'll be back at once. Remember, love, you're not alone!"

But Lizzie insisted, "Go with them I wish you to go with them," in the tone to which Miss Macy had

The door closed on her outraged back, and Lizzie stood alone. She looked about the disordered room, which

offered a dreary image of the havoc of her life. An hour or two ago everything about her had been so

exquisitely ordered, without and within; her thoughtsand emotions had lain outspread before her like delicate

jewels laid away symmetrically in a collector's cabinet. Now they had been tossed down helterskelter among

the rubbish there on the floor, and had themselves turned to rubbish like the rest. Yes, there lay her life at her

She knelt and picked up her letters, ten in all, and examined the flaps of the envelops. Not one had been

opened not one. Asshe looked, every word she had written fluttered to life, and every feeling prompting it

sent a tremor through her. With vertiginousspeed and microscopic vision she was reliving that whole period

of her life, stripping bare again the black ruin over which the drift of three happy years had fallen.

She laughed at Andora's notion of a conspiracy of the letters having been "kept back." She required no

extraneous aid in deciphering the mystery: her three years' experience of Deering shed on it all the light she

needed. And yet a moment before shehad believed herself to be perfectly happy! Now it was the worstpart of

She knew so well how it must have happened. The letters hadreached him when he was busy, occupied with

something else, and had been put aside to be read at some future time a time which nevercame. Perhaps

on his way to America, on the steamer, even, he had met "some one else" the "some one" who lurks,

veiled and ominous, in the background of every woman's thoughts about her lover. Or perhaps he had been

merely forgetful. She had learned from experience that the sensations which he seemed to feel with the most

exquisite intensity left no reverberations in his mind thathe did not relive either his pleasures or his pains.

She needed no better proof of that than the lightness of his conduct toward hisdaughter. He seemed to have

taken it for granted that Juliet would remain indefinitely with the friends who had received her after her

mother's death, and it was at Lizzie's suggestion that the littlegirl was brought home and that they had

established themselves atNeuilly to be near her school. But Juliet once with them, he became the model of a

tender father, and Lizzie wondered that he had not felt the child's absence, since he seemed so affectionately

Lizzie had noted all this in Juliet's case, but had taken for granted that her own was different; that she formed,

for Deering,the exception which every woman secretly supposes herself to formin the experience of the man

she loves. Certainly, she had learned by this time that she could not modify his habits, but she imagined that

she had deepened his sensibilities, had furnished him with an "ideal" angelic function! And she now saw

that the fact of her letters her unanswered letters having, on his own assurance, "meant so much" to

There they lay now, the letters, precisely as when they had left her hands. He had not had time to read them;

and there had been a moment in her past when that discovery would have been thesharpest pang imaginable

to her heart. She had traveled far beyond that point. She could have forgiven him now for having

She sat down, and looked again vaguely about the room. Suddenly she heard his step overhead, and her heart

contracted. She was afraid he was coming down to her. She sprang up and bolted the door; then she dropped

into the nearest chair, tremulous and exhausted, as if the pushing of the bolt had required an immense

muscular effort. A moment later she heard him on the stairs, andher tremor broke into a cold fit of shaking. "I

She listened apprehensively for his touch on the handle of the door. He would come in, humming a tune, to

ask some idle question and lay a caress on her hair. But no, the door was bolted; she was safe. She continued

to listen, and the step passed on. He had not been coming to her, then. He must have gone downstairs to

fetchsomething another newspaper, perhaps. He seemed to read little else, and she sometimes wondered

when he had found time to store the material that used to serve for their famous "literary" talks. The wonder

shot through her again, barbed with a sneer. At that moment it seemed to her that everything he had ever done

She heard the housedoor close, and started up. Was he going out? It was not his habit to leave the house in

She crossed the room to the window, and saw him walking, with a quick decided step, between the budding

lilacs to the gate. What could have called him forth at that unwonted hour? It was odd that he should not have

told her. The fact that she thought it odd suddenly showed her how closely their lives were interwoven.

Shehad become a habit to him, and he was fond of his habits. But toher it was as if a stranger had opened the

gate and gone out. She wondered what he would feel if he knew that she felt that.

"In an hour he will know," she said to herself, with a kind of fierce exultation; and immediately she began to

dramatize the scene. As soon as he came in she meant to call him up to her room and hand him the letters

without a word. For a moment she gloated on the picture; then her imagination recoiled from it. She was

humiliated by the thought of humiliating him. She wanted to keephis image intact; she would not see him.

He had lied to her about her letters had lied to her when he found it to his interest to regain her favor. Yes,

there was thepoint to hold fast. He had sought her out when he learned that she was rich. Perhaps he had

come back from America on purpose to marry her; no doubt he had come back on purpose. It was incredible

that she had not seen this at the time. She turned sick at the thought of her fatuity and of the grossness of his

arts. Well, the event proved that they were all heneeded. But why had he gone out at such an hour? She was

Turning from the window, she sat down again. She wondered what she meant to do next. No, she would not

show him the letters; she would simply leave them on his table and go away. She would leave the house with

her boy and Andora. It was a relief to feela definite plan forming itself in her mind something that her

uprooted thoughts could fasten on. She would go away, of course;and meanwhile, in order not to see him, she

would feign a headache, and remain in her room till after luncheon. Then she and Andora would pack a few

things, and fly with the child while he was dawdling about upstairs in the studio. When one's house fell, one

Her thoughts were checked by the impossibility of picturing what would happen next. Try as she would, she

could not see herself and the child away from Deering. But that, of course, was because of her nervous

weakness. She had youth, money, energy: all the trumps were on her side. It was much more difficult to

imagine what would become of Deering. He was so dependent on her, and they had been so happy together!

The fact struck her as illogical, and even immoral, and yet she knew he had been happy with her. It never

happened like that in novels: happiness "built on a lie" always crumbled, and buried the presumptuous

architect beneath the ruins. According to the laws of every novel she had ever read, Deering, having deceived

her once, would inevitably have gone on deceiving her. Yet she knew he had not gone on deceiving her.

She tried again to picture her new life. Her friends, of course, would rally about her. But the prospect left her

cold; she did not want them to rally. She wanted only one thing the life she had been living before she had

given her baby the embroideredbag to play with. Oh, why had she given him the bag? She had been so happy,

they had all been so happy! Every nerve in her clamored for her lost happiness, angrily, unreasonably, as the

boy had clamored for his bag! It was horrible to know too much; there was always blood in the foundations.

Parents "kept things" from children protected them from all the dark secrets of pain and evil. And was any

life livable unless it were thus protected? Could any one look in the Medusa's face and live?

But why should she leave the house, since it was hers? Here, with her boy and Andora, she could still make

for herself the semblance of a life. It was Deering who would have to go; he would understand that as soon as

She pictured him in the act of going leaving the house as he had left it just now. She saw the gate closing

on him for the last time. Now her vision was acute enough: she saw him as distinctlyas if he were in the

room. Ah, he would not like returning to the old life of privations and expedients! And yet she knew he

Suddenly a new thought rushed through her mind. What if Andora had rushed to him with the tale of the

discovery of the letters with the "Fly, you are discovered!" of romantic fiction? What if he had left her for

good? It would not be unlikehim, after all. Under his wonderful gentleness he was always evasive and

inscrutable. He might have said to himself that he would forestall her action, and place himself at once on the

defensive. It might be that she had seen him go out of the gate forthe last time.

She looked about the room again, as if this thought had given it a new aspect. Yes, this alone could explain

her husband's going out. It was past twelve o'clock, their usual luncheon hour, and he was scrupulously

punctual at meals, and gently reproachful if shekept him waiting. Only some unwonted event could have

caused himto leave the house at such an hour and with such marks of haste. Well, perhaps it was better that

Andora should have spoken. She mistrusted her own courage; she almost hoped the deed had been done for

her. Yet her next sensation was one of confused resentment. She said to herself, "Why has Andora

interfered?" She felt baffled and angry, as though her prey had escaped her. If Deering had been in the house,

she would have gone to him instantly and overwhelmed him with her scorn. But he had gone out, and she did

not know where he had gone, and oddly mingled with her anger against him wasthe latent instinct of

vigilance, thesolicitude of the woman accustomed to watch over the man she loves. It would be strange never

to feel that solicitude again, never to hear him say, with his hand on her hair: "Why, you foolish child, were

The sense of his touch was so real that she stiffened herself against it, flinging back her head as if to throw off

his hand. The mere thought of his caress was hateful; yet she felt it in all her traitorous veins. Yes, she felt it,

but with horror and repugnance. It was something she wanted to escape from, and the fact of struggling

against it was what made its hold so strong. It was as though her mind were sounding her body to make sure

To escape from the sensation, she rose and went again to thewindow. No one was in sight. But presently the

gate began to swing back, and her heart gave a leap she knew not whether up ordown. A moment later the

gate opened slowly to admit a perambulator, propelled by the nurse and flanked by Juliet and Andora.

Lizzie's eyes rested on the familiar group as if she hadnever seen it before, and she stood motionless, instead

Suddenly there was a step on the stairs, and she heard Andora's agitated knock. She unbolted the door, and

Lizzie loosened herself gently. She looked at Andora with afeeling of estrangement which she could not

Lizzie sat down with a confused sense of relief, which welled up to her throat and made speech difficult.

Suddenly light came to Andora. "I understand, dearest. Youdon't feel able to see him yourself. You want me

to go to him for you." She looked about her, scenting the battle. "You're right,darling. As soon as he comes in

She followed Lizzie, who without answering her had turned mechanically back to the window. As they stood

"There he is now!" Lizzie felt Andora's fervent clutch uponher arm. "Where are the letters? I will go down at

once. You allow me to speak for you? You trust my woman's heart? Oh, believe me, darling," Miss Macy

As her husband advanced up the path she had a sudden trembling vision of their three years together. Those

years were her wholelife; everything before them had been colorless and unconscious, like the blind life of

the plant before it reaches the surface ofthe soil. They had not been exactly what she dreamed; but if they had

taken away certain illusions, they had left richer realities in their stead. She understood now that she had

gradually adjusted herself to the new image of her husband as he was, as he would always be. He was not the

hero of her dream, but he was the man she loved, and who had loved her. For she saw now, in this last wide

flash of pity and initiation, that, as a solid marble may bemade out of worthless scraps of mortar, glass and

pebbles, so outof mean mixed substances may be fashioned a love that will bear the stress of life.

"I shall hand him the letters without a word. You may rely,love, on my sense of dignity. I know everything

Deering had reached the doorstep. Lizzie continued to watch him in silence till he disappeared under the

glazed roof of the porch below the window; then she turned and looked almost compassionately at her friend.

"Oh, poor Andora, you don't know anything you don't know anything at all!" she said.