"No. I'd never have done that. I gambled in another way, though. I

thought I saw a chance to sell a certain commodity at that particular

time and I plunged and sent for a large quantity of it. It looked sure.

I have a friend over there and got it on credit. I banked on an

immediate sale and a big profit. But something delayed the shipping in

Hong Kong. When it arrived the market was swamped. Some one else had

had the same idea. I had to pay for the goods, as well as other big

outstanding bills, or go into bankruptcy. So I took the bonds. It

wasn't easy. But there was nothing else to do.... There were about ten

thousand dollars left and I tried another coup. That failed too."

"How is it possible to go on with the business?"

"It isn't. I have closed out. But I have escaped bankruptcy. People on

the street think that I wanted to get into the real estate

business--with Andrew Weston, a young man who has recently come here

from Los Angeles. He's doing fairly well and has a good office. He

wanted a hustler and a partner who had good connections. But it is slow

work. There are the old firms, again, to compete with. I wouldn't have

looked at it if I'd had any choice, but it was a case of a port in a

storm."

"Well? Is that all? There is another matter to discuss. Our future mode

of living."

"No, it isn't all. I wish you would tell Gora something. I can never go

through this again. While she was away--in Honolulu--that lawyer of my

aunt sent out ten thousand dollars' worth more of stock, that had been

looked upon as so much waste paper, but suddenly appreciated--some

little railroad that was abandoned half finished, but has since been

completed. This had been left to Gora alone. We had some correspondence

and he sent it to me as Gora was traveling. It came at the wrong time

for me ... on top of everything else.... I plunged in a new mine Bob

Cheever and Baseom Luning were interested in. It turned out to be no

good. We lost every cent."

II

Alexina sat cold and rigid. Once she pinched her arm. She fancied it

had turned to stone.

He dropped into a chair and leaning forward twisted his hands together.

"If you knew ... if you knew ... what I have been through.... At first

it was only the anxiety and excitement. But afterward, when it was over

... when there was nothing left to speculate with ... then I realized

what I had done ... I ... a thief ... a thief.... I had been so proud

of my honor, my honesty. I never had believed that I could even be

tempted. And I went to pieces like a cheaply built schooner in its

first storm. There's nothing, it seems, in being well brought up, when

circumstances are too strong for you."

Alexina forebore the obvious reply. "Of course you were a little mad,"

she said, rather at a loss.

"No, I wasn't. I'd always been a cool speculator, and I'd never taken

long chances in business before. It all looked too good and I got in

too deep. But if I could have repaid it all I'd feel nearly as

demoralized. That I should have stolen ... and from women...."

Again Alexina restrained herself. The dead monotonous voice went on.

"I thought once or twice of killing myself. It didn't seem to me that I

had the right to live. I had always had the best ideals, the strictest

sense of right and wrong ... It does not seem possible even now."

Alexina could endure no more. Another moment and she felt that she

should be looking straight into a naked soul. She felt so sorry for him

that she quite forgot her own wrongs or her horror of his misdeeds. She

wished that she still loved him, he looked so forlorn and in need of

the physical demonstrations of sympathy; but although she was prepared

to defend him if need be, and help him as best she could, she felt that

she would willingly die rather than touch him.... She wondered if souls

in dissolution subtly wafted their odors of corruption if you drew too

close....

"Well, what is done is done," she said briskly. "I'll tell Gora and

engage that she will never mention it. You have suffered enough. Now

let us discuss ways and means. Does this new business permit you to

contribute anything to the household expenses?"

"I'm afraid not. It takes time to work up a business."

"Then we must live on what I have left, and you know what taxes are. I

suppose I had better look for a job."

"What?" He seemed to spring out of his apathy, and stared at her

incredulously. "You?"

"Yes. We must have more money. I could sell the flats and go into the

decorating business."

"And advertise to all San Francisco that I am a failure! Do you think I

could fool them then!"

"Are you sure you have fooled them now! They must know you would have

stuck to the old business if it had paid."

"It isn't the first time a man has changed his business. But if you go

out to earn money--why, I'd be a laughing stock."

"Then we shall have to give up the house. The city has long wanted this

lot--"

"That would never do, either. Everybody knows how devoted you are to

your old home ... and after fixing it up...."

"Well, what, do you suggest? You know perfectly well we can't go on."

"My brain seems to have stopped. I can't do much thinking. But ... well

... you might sell the flats and we could go on as before until my

business begins to pay."

"Sacrifice more of my capital? That I won't do. Why don't you see if

you can get back with Cheever Harrison and Cheever? I know that Bob--"

"I won't go back to being a salaried man. You can't go back like that

when you've been in the other class." He beat a fist into a palm. "Why

couldn't Bob Cheever have left me alone? So long as I didn't know

anything about Society I never thought about it. Why couldn't your

family have let me stay where I was? I should have been head clerk with

a good salary by this time, and we would have arranged our expenses

accordingly when your mother died. Why can't men give a young fellow a

better chance when he goes into business for himself? Every man trying

to cut every other man's throat. What chance has a young fellow with a

small capital?"

"Do you know that you have blamed everybody but yourself? However ...

perhaps you are right.... Mr. Kirkpatrick puts it down to the system. I

feel more inclined to trace it straight back to old Dame Nature--all

the ancestral inheritances down in our sub-cellars. We are as we are

made and our characters are certainly our fate. I suppose you will at

least resign from the club?"

He set his lips in the hard line that made him look the man of

character his ancestor, John Dwight, had been when he legislated in the

first Congress. "No, I shall not resign. It would be bad business in

two ways: they would know I was hard up, and I should no longer meet in

the same way the men who can give me a leg up in business."

"Are you sure those are the only reasons?"

To this he did not deign to reply, and she asked: "Do you mean that you

shall go on speculating?"

"I've nothing to speculate with. I mean that the men I cultivate can

help me in business."

"They don't seem to have done much in the past. However ... At least

I'll send in our resignations to the Golf Club. As we use it so seldom

no one will notice. Now I'm going upstairs to think it all over.

To-morrow I shall do something. I don't know what it will be, yet."

He stood up. "Promise me," he said with firm masculine insistence,

"that you will neither go into any sort of money-making scheme or sell

this house." His tones had distinctly more life in them and he had

recovered his usual bearing of the lordly but gallant male. His eyes

were as stern as his lips.

Alexina stared at him for a moment in amazement, then reflected that

apparently the stupider a man was the more difficult he was to

understand. She nodded amiably.

"No doubt I'll think of some other way out. Will let you know at dinner

time. Don't expect me at breakfast. Good-night."

CHAPTER XIII

I

Alexina was driving her little car up the avenue at Rincona on the

following morning when she saw Joan running toward her through the park

and signaling to her to stop.

"What is it?" she asked in some alarm as Joan arrived panting. "Any one

ill?"

"Not so's you'd notice it. Leave your car here and come with me. Sneak

after me quietly and don't say a word."

Much mystified, Alexina ran her car off the road and followed her niece

by a devious route toward the house. Joan interested her mildly; she

had fulfilled some of her predictions but not all. She did not go with

the "fast set" even of the immediate neighborhood; that is to say the

small group called upon, as they indubitably "belonged," but wholly

disapproved of, who entertained in some form or other every day and

every night, played poker for staggering stakes, danced the wildest of

the new dances, made up brazenly, and found tea and coffee indifferent

stimulants. Two of Joan's former schoolmates belonged to this active

set, but she was only permitted to meet them at formal dinners and

large parties. She had rebelled at first, but her mother's firm hand

was too much for her still undeveloped will, and later she had

concluded "there was nothing in it anyhow; just the whole tiresome

society game raised to the nth degree." Moreover, she was socially as

conventional as her mother and her good gray aunts, and although full

of the mischief of youth, and longing to "do something," no prince

having captured her fancy, enough of what Alexina called the sound

Ballinger instincts remained to make her disapprove of "fast lots," and

she had progressed from radical eighteen to critical twenty-one. She

worked off her superfluous spirits at the outdoor games which may be

indulged in California for eight months of the year, rode horseback

every day, used all her brothers' slang she could remember when in the

society of such uncritical friends as her young Aunt Alexina, and bided

her time. Sooner or later she was determined to "get out and

hustle,"--"shake a leg." That would be the only complete change from

her present life, not matrimony and running with fast sets. She wanted

more money, she wanted to live alone, and, while devoted to her family,

she wanted interests they could not furnish, "no, not in a thousand

years."

II

Joan's slim boyish athletic figure darted on ahead and then approached

the rear of the house on tiptoe. Alexina followed in the same stealthy

fashion, feeling no older at the moment than her niece. The verandah

did not extend as far as the music room, which had been built a

generation later, and the windows were some eight feet from the ground.

A ladder, however, abridged the distance, and Alexina, obeying a

gesture from Joan, climbed as hastily as her narrow skirt would permit

and peered through the outside shutters, which had been carefully

closed.

The room was not dark, however. The electricity had been turned on and

shone down upon an amazing sight.

Clad in black bloomers and stockings lay a row of six women flat on the

floor, while in front of them stood a woman thin to emaciation, who was

evidently talking rapidly. Alexina's mouth opened as widely as her

eyes. She had heard of Devil Worship, of strange and awful rites that

took place at midnight in wickedest Paris. Had an expurgated edition

been brought to chaste Alta--plus Menlo--plus Atherton, by Mrs. Hunter

or Mrs. Thornton, or any of those fortunate Californians who visited

the headquarters of fashion and sin once a year? They would do a good

deal to vary the monotony of life. But that they should have corrupted

Maria ... the impeccable, the superior, the unreorientable Maria!

Maria, with whom contentment and conservatism were the first articles

of the domestic and the socio-religious creed!

For there lay Maria, extended full length; and on her calm white face

was a look of unholy joy. Beside her, as flat as if glued to the inlaid

floor, were Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Thornton, Coralie Geary, Mrs. Brannan,

another old friend of Maria, and--yes--Tom's sister, Susan Delling,

austere in her virtues, kind to all, conscientiously smart, and with a

fine mahogany complexion that made even a merely powdered woman feel

not so much a harlot as a social inferior.

What on earth ... what on earth....

The thin loquacious stranger clapped her hands. Up went six pairs of

legs. Two remained in mid-air, Mrs. Geary's and Mrs. Brannan's having

met an immovable obstacle shortly above the hip-joints. Three bent

backward slowly but surely until they approached the region of the

neck. Maria's flew unerringly, effortlessly, up, back, until they

tapped the floor behind her head. Alexina almost shouted "Bravo." Maria

was a real sport.

Six times they repeated this fascinating rite, and then, obeying

another peremptory command, they rolled over abruptly and balanced on

all fours. Alexina could stand no more. She dropped down the ladder and

ran after Joan, who was disappearing round the corner of the house.

III

"Well, I never!" she exclaimed. "Maria! Your mo--"

"She gained three pounds, for the first time in her life, and you know

her figure is her only vanity. This woman came along and the whole

Peninsula is crazy about her. She's taken the fat off every woman in

New York, and came out with letters to a lot of women. Mother fell for

her hard. I nearly passed away when I peeked through that shutter the

first time. Mother! She's the best of the bunch, though. But they're

all having a perfectly grand time. New interest for middle-age--what?"

"Don't be cruel. Heavens, how hot they all looked! I could hear them

gasp. Hope their arteries are all right. Are they going to stay to

lunch?"

"No. There's a big one on in Burlingame. Mother's not going, though.

It's at that Mrs. Cutts', new Burlingame stormer, that Anne Montgomery

coaches and caters for and who gives wonderful entertainments. Mother

and Aunt Susan won't go, but nearly all the others do."

"Anne Montgomery. I haven't seen her since mother died."

"You look as if an idea had struck you. She's useful no end, they say;

is now a social secretary to a lot of new people, and sells the 'real

lace' and other superfluous luxuries of some of our old families for

the cold coin that buys comforts."

"Fine idea. But I'm glad your mother will be alone. I've come down to

have a talk with her."

"Thanks. I'll take the hint."

CHAPTER XIV

I

Alexina went up to Joan's room to remain until the gong sounded for

luncheon, when she drifted down innocently and kissed the somewhat

furtive-looking Maria, who was in chaste duck and fresh from a bath.

"So glad to see you, darling," she murmured almost effusively. "I hope

you haven't waited long. A number of my friends have a lesson every

Thursday morning, and meet at one house or another."

"Irregular French verbs, I suppose. So fascinating, and one does forget

so. I thought I'd never brush up my French."

Not for anything would she have forced Maria into the most innocent

equivocation, and she rattled on about her wonderful summer as people

are expected to do after their first visit to Europe.

No time could have been more propitious for this necessary

understanding with Maria, who was feeling amiable, apologetic, as

limber as Joan, and almost as warm. She had also lost two-thirds of a

pound.

II

Alexina began as soon as Joan left them alone on the shady side of the

wide piazza.

"I have a lot of things to tell you," she said nervously. "I have to

make certain economies and I want the benefit of your advice."

Mrs. Abbott looked up from her embroidery. "Of course, darling. I was

afraid you were going a little too fast for young people."

"That is not it. I always managed well enough.... You know we've never

gone the limit: polo at Burlingame and Monterey, gambling, big parties

and all the rest of it. I've never run into debt or spent any of my

capital. But..."

Maria began to feel anxious and took off the large round shell-rimmed

spectacles that enlarged stitches and print. "Yes?"

"You know I had bonds--about forty thousand dollars' worth--those that

mother left: I spent those that Ballinger and Geary gave me on the

house and one thing and another."

"Yes?" Mrs. Abbott was now alarmed. She had a very keen sense of the

value of money, like most persons that have inherited it, and was

extremely conservative in its use.

"Well, you see, I thought I saw a chance to treble it--we never really

had enough--and I speculated and lost it."

Alexina was a passionate lover of the truth, but she could always lie

like a gentleman.

Maria Abbott readjusted her spectacles and took a stitch or two in her

linen. She was aghast and did not care to speak for a moment. She was

no fool and Tom had told her that Mortimer had changed his business and

might bluff the street, but could never bluff him. She knew quite as

well as if Alexina had confessed it that Mortimer had lost the money,

either in his business or in stocks; although of course she was far

from suspecting the whole truth.

III

"That is dreadful," she said finally. "I wish you had consulted Tom. He

understands stocks as he does everything else."

"I thought I had the best tips. However--the thing is done, and the

point is that I must make great changes. Mortimer is not making as much

as he was, either; he came to the conclusion that he couldn't get

anywhere in that business on so small a capital, and has gone into real

estate. It will be some time before he makes enough to keep things

going in the old way. I made all my plans last night and came down to

ask you if you could take James. He has been with us so long; I can't

let him go to strangers. Then I shall turn out all those high-priced

servants and get a woman to do general housework. Alice says her aunt

always gets green ones from an agency and breaks them in. They are

quite cheap. I shall help her, of course, and if she doesn't know much

about cooking I know a little and can learn more. I shall shut up the

big drawing-room, put everything into moth balls, and give out that the

doctor has ordered me to rest this winter, to go to bed every night at

eight. That will stop people coming up three or four times a week to

dance. And I can sell the new clothes I brought from Paris and New York

to Polly Roberts. She's just my height and weight. Of course I must

tell the girls the truth--that I'm economizing; but wild horses

wouldn't drag it out of them. I don't care tuppence, but Morty says it

would hurt his business. I rather like the idea of working. I'm tired

of the old round, and would like to get a job if Morty wasn't so

opposed--says it would ruin him."

"I should think so. At least let us wash our dirty linen at home.... I

have been thinking while you talked. I've only spent two whole winters

in town since I married, end I've always thought I'd love to live in

the old house. I've rather envied you, Alexina, dear ... it is so full

of happy memories for me. I did have such a good time as a girl ...

such a good, simple time.... I'm wondering if Tom wouldn't rent it for

the winter and spring. He's been doing splendidly these last two or

three years, and he owned some of the property west of Twin Peaks that

is building up so fast. I know he sold it for quite a lot.... And I

sometimes wonder if he doesn't get as tired of living in the same place

year after year as I do. He could play golf at the Ingleside.... I am

sure he will.... It would be the very best thing all round. Then we

could run the house, and you and Mortimer would pay something--never

mind what.... People would think it was the other way, if they thought

anything about it. Families often double up in that fashion."

"Maria! I can't believe it. It would be too perfect a solution,

provided of course that we pay all we cost. I should insist upon

keeping the slips as usual. You are an angel."

"We Groomes and Ballingers always stand by one another, don't we? The

Abbotts, too. Besides, it will certainly be no sacrifice on any of our

parts. It will mean a great deal to me to spend six months in town, and

I know that Tom has grown as tired of motoring back and forth every day

as he used to be of the train."

"It will be heavenly just having you." Alexina spoke with perfect

sincerity. She had not faltered before the prospect of work, but that

of Mortimer's society unrelieved for an indefinite time had filled her

with something like panic. It had been the one test of her powers of

endurance of which she had not felt assured.

"That will give us time, too, to get on our feet again. Morty is very

hopeful of this new business. I shall go out very little, and as Joan

will be the natural center of attraction it will be understood that her

friends, not mine, have the run of the house."

Maria nodded. "It's just the thing for Joan. Really a godsend. She

worries me more than all three of the boys. They are east at school for

the winter and of course don't come home for the Christmas holidays. If

you want to be housekeeper you may. I don't know anything I should like

better than a rest from ordering dinner, after all these years."

"Perfect! I'll also take care of my room and Morty's. Then I'd be sure

I wasn't really imposing on you. You're a dead game sport, Maria, and

I'd like to drink your health."

CHAPTER XV

I

Mortimer looked nonplussed when Alexina informed him at dinner of the

immediate solution of their difficulties. He detested Tom and Maria

Abbott; there were certain things he could forget in his aristocratic

wife's presence, far as she had withdrawn, but never in theirs.

Moreover he feared Abbott. He was as keen as a hawk; an unconsidered

word and he might as well have told the whole story. Well, he never

talked much anyhow; he would merely talk less.

When Alexina asked him if he had any better plan to propose he was

forced to shrug his shoulders and set his lips in a straight line of

resignation. When she told him what her original plan had been he was

so appalled, so humiliated at the bare thought of his wife in a

servant's apron (to say nothing of the culinary arrangements) that he

almost warmed to the Abbotts.

II

Ten days later, on the eve of the Abbotts' arrival, the equanimity of

spirit he was striving to regain by the simple process of thinking of

something else when his late delinquencies obtruded themselves,

received a severe shock. Alexina handed him a cheque for ten thousand

dollars and asked him to place it to Gora's account in the bank where

she kept her savings.

"Where did you get it?" he asked stupidly, staring at the slip of paper

so heavily freighted.

"Anne Montgomery sold some of my things to a good-natured ignoramus

whose husband made a fortune in Tonopah. She doesn't know how to buy

and Anne advises her."

"What did you sell? Your jewels?"

"Some. I never wear anything but the pearls anyhow; and it's bad taste

to wear jewels unless you're wealthy. I had some old lace that is hard

to buy now, and real lace isn't the fashion any more. New rich people

always think it's just the thing. I also sold her two of the biggest

and clumsiest of the Italian pieces. She is crazy about them. Anne told

her that they were as good as a passport."

Mortimer sprang to the only, the naïve, the eternal masculine

conclusion.

"You do love me still!" The dull eyes of his spirit flashed with the

sudden rejuvenation of his heavy body. "I never really believed you had

ceased to care.... you were capricious like all women ... a little

spoilt. I knew that if I had patience ... Only a loving wife would do

such a thing."

Alexina made a wry face at the banality of his climax, although the

fatuous outburst had barely amused her.

"No, I don't love you in the least, Mortimer, and never shall. Make up

your mind to that. Love some one else if you like.... I did this for

two reasons: I did not have the courage to tell Gora the truth--and

that I was too unjust and penurious to restore the money you had taken;

and as your wife it would have hurt my pride unbearably."

"And you are not afraid to trust me with this money?" he asked, his

voice toneless.

"Not in the least. There's no other way to manage it and I fancy you

know what would happen if you didn't hand it over. There is such a

thing as the last straw."

CHAPTER XV

I

It was a week later. Alexina was changing her dress. Maria had asked a

number of her girlhood friends in for luncheon, and they were to

exchange reminiscences in the old house over a table laden as of yore

with the massive Ballinger silver, English cutglass, and French china.

Alexina was about to take refuge with Janet Maynard.

Her door opened unceremoniously and Gora entered.

Alexina caught her breath as she saw her sister-in-law's eyes. They

looked like polar seas in a tropical storm.

"Why, Gora, dear," she said lightly. "I thought you were on an

important case."

"Man died last night. I have just been to see Mortimer. When I got his

note--just three lines--saying that he had received a cheque from Utica

and deposited it to my account I knew at once--as soon as I had time to

think--there was something wrong. The natural thing would have been to

call me up--couldn't tell me the good news too soon.... And there was a

hollow ring about that note.... Well, as soon as I woke up to-day I

went straight down to his office. I had to wait an hour. When he came

in and saw me he turned green. I marched him into a back room and

corkscrewed the truth out of him--the whole truth. Then I blasted him.

He knows exactly what one person in this world thinks of him, what

everybody else would think of him if he were found out. I gathered that

you had let him down easy. Your toploftical pride, I suppose. Well, I

must have a good plebeian streak in me somewhere and for the first time

I was glad of it. When I left him he looked shrunken to half his

natural size. His eyes looked like a dead fish's and all the muscles of

his face had given Way. He looked as if he were going to die and I wish

he would. Faugh! A thief in the family. That at least we never had

before."

"Don't be too sure. Remember nobody else knows about Morty, and

everybody'll go on thinking he's honest. Half our friends may be

thieves for all we know, and as for our ancestors--what are you doing?"

II

Gora had taken a roll of yellow bills from her purse. She counted them

on the table; ten bills denominating a thousand dollars each.

"I won't take them." said Alexina stiffy. "I think you are horrid,

simply horrid."

"And do you imagine I would keep it? I What do you take me for?"

"I am in a way responsible for Mortimer's debts--his partner."

"That cuts no ice with me--nor with you. That is not the reason you

sold your jewels and laces and those superb--Oh, you poor child! If I'm

furious, it's more for you than on any other account. You don't deserve

such a fate--"

"I don't deserve to have you treat me so ungratefully. I can't get my

things back. I wanted you to have the money more than I eared for those

things, anyhow. I have no use for the money. I don't owe anything and

the rent Tom pays me for six months will help me to run the house for

the rest of the year and pay taxes besides. So, you just keep it, Gora.

It's yours and that's the end of it."

"This is the end of it as far as I'm concerned." She opened the secret

drawer of the cabinet and stuffed in the bills. "They're safe from any

sort of burglars there. But not from fire. Bank them to-morrow."

"I'll not touch them."

"Nor I either."

III

Gora threw her hat on the floor and sitting down before the table

thrust her hands into her hair and tugged at the roots. "I always do

this when I'm excited--which is oftener than you think. What dreams I

had that first night--I got his note late and was too tired to reason,

to suspect.... I just dreamed until I fell asleep. I'd start for

England a week later--for England!"

Goose flesh made Alexina's delicate body feel like a cold nutmeg

grater. "England?"

"Yes! ... ah ... you see, it's the only place where literary

recognition counts for anything."

"Oh? I rather thought the British authors looked upon Uncle Sam in the

light of a fairy godfather. Our recognition counts for a good deal, I

should say. I never thought you were snobbish."

"I'm not really. Only London is a sort of Mecca for writers just as

Paris is for women of fashion.... Just fancy being feted in London

after you had written a successful novel."

"I'd far rather receive recognition in my own country," said Alexina,

elevating her classic American profile. She was not feeling in the

least patriotic, however. "You'd see your friend Gathbroke, though.

That would be jolly. Do take the money, Gora, and don't be a goose."

"That subject's closed. Don't let me keep you. James told me that Maria

is having a luncheon, and I suppose that means you are going out. I'll

rest here for awhile if you don't mind."

CHAPTER XVI

I

Mortimer went off that night and got drunk. It was the first time in

his life and possibly his last, but he made a thorough job of it. He

took the precaution to telephone to the house that he was going out of

town, but when he returned two days later he experienced a distinct

pleasure in telling Alexina what he had done. Alexina, who still hoped

that she would always be able to regard Life as God's good joke, rather

sympathized with him, and assured him that he would have nothing to

apprehend from Gora in the future: she had no more fervent wish than to

keep out of his way.

II

He found himself on the whole very comfortable. Maria was always most

kind, Alexina polite and amiable, and Tom "decent." Joan liked him as

well as she liked anybody, and when the family spent a quiet evening at

home he undertook to improve her dancing and she was correspondingly

grateful; it had been her weak point. The fiction was carefully

preserved that the Dwights were conferring a favor on the Abbotts and

that all expenses were equally shared. In time he came to believe it,

and his hours of deep depression, when he had pondered over his

inexplicable roguery, grew rarer and finally ceased. After all he had

had nothing to lose as far as Alexina was concerned; one's sister

hardly mattered (Did women matter much, anyhow?); and his sense of

security, which he hugged at this time as the most precious thing he

had ever possessed, at last made him a little arrogant. He had done

what he should not, of course, but it was over and done with, ancient

history; and where other men had gone to State's Prison for less, he

had been protected like an infant from a rude wind. He knew that he

would never do it again and that his position in life was as assured as

it ever had been.

III

He spent a good many evenings at the club, and Maria found him a

willing cavalier when Tom "drew the line" at dancing parties. Alexina,

who had sold her car to Janet and her new gowns to Polly, had announced

that she was bored with dancing and should devote the winter to study.

She spent the evenings either in her library upstairs or with her

friends. Mortimer saw her only at the table.

He wondered if Tom Abbott would rent the house every winter. A pleasant

feeling of irresponsibility was beginning to possess his jaded spirit.

He made a little money occasionally, but he was no longer expected to

hand anything over when the first of the month came round--a date that

had haunted him like a nightmare for four long years. Pie could spend

it on himself, and he felt an increasing pleasure in doing so.

CHAPTER XVII

I

Gray naked trees; orchards of prune and peach and cherry, mile after

mile. Orange trees in small wayside gardens heavy-laden with golden

fruit. Tall accacias a mass of canary colored bloom. Opulent palms

shivering against a gray sky. Close mountains green and dense with

forest trees, their crests filagreed with redwoods. Far mountains

lifting their bleak ridges above bare brown hills thirsting for rain.

The heavy rains were due. It was late in January. Alexina and several

of her friends were motoring back to the city through the Santa Clara

Valley, after luncheon with the Price Ruylers at their home on the

mountain above Los Gatos. As it was Sunday there was an even number of

men in the party, and Alexina, maneuvered into Jimmie Thorne's

roadster, was enduring with none of the sweet womanly graciousness

which was hers to summon at will, one of those passionate declarations

of love which no beautiful young woman out of love with her husband may

hope to escape; and not always when in. Alexina had grown skillful in

eluding the reckless verbalisms of love, but when one is packed into a

small motor car with a determined man, desperately in love, one might

as well try to wave aside the whirlwind.

Jimmie Thorne was a fine specimen of the college-bred young American of

good family and keen professional mind. He has no place in this

biography save in so far as he jarred the inner forces of Alexina's

being, and he fell at Château-Thierry.

II

Alexina lifted her delicate profile and gave it as sulky an expression

as she could assume. She really liked him, but was annoyed at being

trapped.

"I don't in the least wish to marry you."

"Everybody knows you don't care a straw for Dwight. You could easily

get a divorce--"

"On what grounds! Besides, I don't want to. I'd have to be really off

my head about a man even to think of such a thing. Our family has kept

out of the divorce courts. And I don't care two twigs for you, Jimmie

dear."

"I don't believe it. That is, I know I could make you care. You don't

know what love is--"

"I suppose you are about to say that you think I think I am cold, and

that if I labor under this delusion it is only because the right man

hasn't come along. Well, Jimmie dear, you would only be the sixteenth.

I suppose men will keep on saying it until I am forty--forty-five--what

is the limit these days? I know exactly what I am and you don't."

"I'm not going to be put off by words. Remember I'm a lawyer of sorts.

God! I wish I'd been here when you married that codfish, instead of

studying law at Columbia, Do you mean to tell me I couldn't have won

you!"

"No. Almost any man can win a little goose of eighteen if circumstances

favor him. Twenty-five is another! matter. Oh, but vastly another! Even

if I'd never married before I'm not at all sure I should have fallen in

love with you."

"Yes, you would. You're frozen over, that's all."

Alexina sighed, and not with exasperation. He was very charming,

magnetic, companionable. He was handsome and clever and manly. She

could feel the warmth of his young virile body through their fur coats,

and her own trembled a little.... It suddenly came to her that she no

longer owed Mortimer anything. Their "partnership" had been dissolved

by his own act. If she could have loved Jimmie Thorne with something

beyond the agreeable response of the mating-season (any season is the

mating season in California) ... that was the trouble. He was not

individual enough to hold her. Life had been too kind to him. Save for

this unsatisfied passion he was perfectly content with life. Such men

do not "live." They may have charm, but not fascination.... Perhaps it

was as well after all that she had married Mortimer. Another man might

not have been so easily disposed of.

"Jimmie dear, if it were a question of a few months, and I made a cult

of men as some women do, it would be all right. But marry another man

that I am not sure--that I know I don't want to spend my life with. Oh,

no."

He looked somewhat scandalized. Like many American men he was even more

conventional than most women are; he was, moreover, a man's man,

spending most of his leisure in their society, either at the club or in

out-of-door sports, and he divided women rigidly into two classes.

Alexina was his first love and his last; and as he went over the top

and crumpled up he thought of her.

"I wouldn't have a rotten affair with you. You're not made for that

sort of thing--"

"Well, you're not going to have one, so don't bother to buckle on your

armor." She relented as she looked into his miserable eyes, and took

his hand impulsively. "I'm sorry ... sorry.... I wish ... you are worth

it ... but it's not on the map."

CHAPTER XVIII

I

Gora's novel was published in February. Aileen Lawton, Sibyl Bascom,

Alice Thorndyke, Polly Roberts, and Janet Maynard organized a campaign

to make it the fashion. They went about with copies under their arms,

on the street, in the shops, at luncheons, even at the matinée, and

"could talk of nothing else." Sibyl and Janet bought a dozen copies

each and sent them to friends and acquaintances with the advice to read

it at once unless they wished to be hopelessly out of date: it was "all

the rage in New York."

As a matter of fact, with the exception of Aileen and possibly Janet,

the book almost terrified them with its pounding vigor and grim

relentless logic, even its romantic realism, which made its tragedy

more poignant and sinister by contrast; and, again with the exception

of Aileen, they were little interested in Gora. But they were loyally

devoted to Alexina and obeyed, as a matter of course, her request to

help her make the book a success. They worked with the sterner

determination as Alexina in her own efforts was obliged to be extremely

subtle.

Besides, it, was rather thrilling not only to know a real, author but

almost to have her in the family as it were. Their industrious sowing

bore an abundant harvest and Gora's novel became the fashion. Whether

people hated it or not, and most of them did, they discussed it

continually, and when a book meets with that happy fate personal

opinions matter little.

II

Maria thought the book was "awful" and forbade Joan to read it. Joan

thought (to Alexina) that it was simply the most terribly fascinating

book she had ever read and made her despise society more than ever and

more determined to light out and see life for herself first chance she

got. Tom Abbott thought it a remarkable book for a woman to have

written; a man might have written it. Judge Lawton read it twice.

Mortimer declined to read it. He had not forgiven Gora; moreover,

although his social position was now planetary, it annoyed him

excessively to hear his sister alluded to continually as an author.

Even the men at the club were reading the damned book.

III

Bohemia stood off for some time. It was only recently they had learned

that Gora Dwight was a Californian. They had read her stories, but as

she had been the subject of no publicity whatever they had inferred

that, like many another, she had dwelt in their midst only long enough

to acquire material. When they learned the truth, and particularly

after her inescapable novel appeared, they were indignant that she had

not sought her muse at Carmel-by-the-Sea, or some other center of

mutual admiration; affiliated herself; announced herself, at the very

least. There was a very sincere feeling among them that any attempt on

the part of a rank outsider to achieve literary distinction was

impertinent as well as unjustifiable.... It was impossible that he or

she could be the real thing.

When they discovered that she was affiliated more or less with

fashionable society, nurse though she might be, and that those

frivolous and negligible beings were not only buying her book by the

ton but giving her luncheons and dinners and teas, their disgust knew

no bounds and they tacitly agreed that she should be tabû in the only

circles where recognition counted.

IV

But Gora, who barely knew of their existence, little recked that she

had been weighed, judged, and condemned. Her old dream had come true.

Society, the society which should have been her birthright and was not,

had thrown open its doors to her at last and everybody was outdoing

everybody else in flattering and entertaining her.

Not that she was deceived for a moment as to the nature of her success

with the majority of the people whose names twinkled so brightly in the

social heavens. She more than suspected the "plot" but cared little for

the original impulse of the book's phenomenal success in San Francisco

and its distinguished faubourgs. She was square with her pride, her

youthful bitterness had its tardy solace, her family name was rescued

from obscurity. She knew that this belated triumph rang hollow, and

that she really cared very little about it; but the strength and

tenacity of her nature alone would have forced her to quaff every drop

of the cup so long withheld. Even if she had been desperately bored she

would have accepted these invitations to houses so long indifferent to

her existence, and as a matter of fact she welcomed the sudden lapse

into frivolity after her years of hard and almost unremitting work. She

had played little in her life; and a year later when she was working

eighteen hours a day without rest, in conditions that seemed to have

leapt into life from the blackest pages of history, she looked back

upon her one brief interval of irresponsibility, gratified vanity, and

bodily indolence, as at a bright star low on the horizon of a dark and

terrible night.

V

There was one small group of women, Gora soon discovered, that stood

for something besides amusement, sharply as some of them were

identified with all that was brilliant in the social life of the city.

They read all that was best in serious literature and fiction as soon

after it came out as their treadmill would permit, and they gave

somewhat more time to it than to poker. It was this small group, led by

Mrs. Hunter, that in common with several wealthy and clever Jewish

women, with intellectual members of old families that had long since

dropped out of a society that gave them too little to be worth the

drain on their limited means, and with one or two presidents of women's

clubs, made up the small attendance at the lectures on literary and

political subjects, delivered either by some local light, or European

specialist in the art of charming the higher intelligence of American

women without subjecting it to undue fatigue.

This small but distinguished band discussed Gora separately and

collectively and placed the seal of approval upon her. With them her

arrival was genuine and permanent.

It was hardly a step from their favor to the many women's clubs of the

city, and she was invited to be the luncheon or afternoon guest at one

after another until all had entertained the rising star and she had

learned to make the little speeches expected of her without turning to

ice.

VI

The local intelligenzia, those that assured one another how great were

each and all, and whose poems or stories found an occasional

hospitality in the eastern magazines, who toiled over "precious"

paragraphs of criticism or whose single achievement had been a play for

the mid-summer jinks of the Bohemian Club; these and their associates,

the artists and sculptors, still held aloof, more and more annoyed that

Gora Dwight should have had the bad taste to be discovered by the

Philistines, and should be flying across the high heavens in spite of

their tabû.

Gora had gradually become aware of their existence, and their attitude,

which both amused and piqued her. She knew now that if she had been one

of them they would have beaten the big drum and proclaimed to the world

(of California) that she was "great," "a genius," the legitimate

successor of Ambrose Bierce, whom she remotely resembled, and Bret

Harte, whom she did not resemble at all. This they would have done if

only to prove that California no longer "knocked" as in the mordant

nineties, nor waited for the anile East to set the seal of its dry

approval before discovering that a new volcano was sending forth its

fiery swords in their midst.

But it was extremely doubtful if society and upper club circles would

have taken any notice of her. Both had acquired the habit, however

unjustly, of regarding their local intelligenzia (with the exception of

the few who kept themselves wholly apart from all groups) as worshipers

of small gods, and preferred to take their cues from London or New

York. They plumed themselves upon having discovered Gora Dwight and

sometimes wondered how it had happened.

But Bohemia is hardly a trades union; it is indeed anarchistic and

knows no boss. Gora might not be invited to Carmel this many a day, nor

yet to Berkeley, nor to sundry other parnassi, but there was one club

in San Francisco whose curiosity got the better of it, and she was

invited to be the guest of the evening at the home of the Seven Arts

Club on the twentieth of April in the fateful year of nineteen-fourteen.

VII

The Seven Arts Club had been organized by a group of painters,

architects, authors, sculptors, musicians, actors and poets, most of

whom had long since found various degrees of fame and moved to New

York, Europe, or the romantic wilderness.

It still had seventy times seven votaries of the seven arts on its list

and few had found fame as yet outside their hospitable state--where

log-rolling is as amiable as the climate--but all save the elders were

expecting it and many made a fair living. They met once a week, and a

part of the evening pleasure of the literary wing was to "place"

authors. They were willing to swallow the British authors whole (they

did in fact "discover" one or two of them, as the musical critics had

discovered such a rara avis as Tetrazzini, or the dramatic critics many

a now famous player); but they were excessively critical of all who

owed their origin to the United States of America, and particularly of

those who had loved and lost the sovereign state of California.

Naturally all were more or less radical (except the cynical and now

somewhat anæmic elders who gave up hope for a world that had ceased to

hold out hope to them). The artists were disturbed by futurism and

cubism, although as neither paid they were forced to devote the greater

part of their inspiration to the marketable California scenery.

But the writers: potential or locally arrived novelists, playwrights,

poets, essayists, were the real intelligenzia! They went about with the

radical weeklies of the East (or Berkeley) under their arms and

discoursed under their breath (when foregathered in small and ardent

groups) upon The Revolution, the day of Judgment for all but honest

Labor, and hissed their hatred of Capital. And if they had much in

common with those "intellectuals" to be found in every land who caress

the chin of radicalism with one hand and plunge the other into the

pocket of capital as far as permitted, who shall blame them? One must

live and one must have something to excite one's intellect when sex,

the stand-by, takes its well-earned rest.

Several of these ardent ladies and gentlemen, with the sanction of the

Club's President, a business man whose contributions were the financial

mainstay of the Seven Arts, and who sincerely envied the gifted

members, denying them nothing, invited James Kirkpatrick to be the

guest of an evening and deliver an address on Socialism and the

Proletariat. He replied that he would come and spit on them if they

liked but that he had as much use for parlor socialists as he had for

damned fools and posers of any sort. Life was too short. As for Labor

it knew how to take care of itself and had about as crying a need of

their "support" as a healthy human body had of lice and other parasites.

They were not discouraged however, merely pronouncing him a "creature,"

and were not at all flattered or surprised when Gora Dwight accepted

their invitation and asked permission to bring her friends, Mrs.

Mortimer Dwight and Miss Aileen Lawton.

CHAPTER XIX

I

The wildflowers were on the green hills: the flame-colored velvet

skinned poppy, the purple and yellow lupins, the pale blue "babyeyes,"

buttercups, dandelions and sweetbrier, fields of yellow mustard. The

gardens about the Bay and down the Peninsula were almost licentious in

their vehement indulgence in color. Every flower that grows north,

south, east, west, on the western hemisphere and the eastern, was to be

found in some one of these gardens of Central California; the

poinsettia cheek by jowl with periwinkle and the hedges of marguerite;

heavy-laden trees of magnolia above beds of Russian violets.

Pomegranate trees and sweet peas, bridal wreath and camellia, begonia,

fuchsias, heliotrope, hydrangea, chrysanthemums, roses, roses,

roses.... Little orchards of almond trees, their blossoms a pink mist

against a clear blue sky.... The mariposa lily was awake in the

forests; infinitesimal yellow pansies made a soft carpet for the feet

of the deer and the puma.... In the old Spanish towns of the south, the

Castilian roses were in bloom and as sweet and pink and poignant as

when Rezánov sailed through the Golden Gate in the April of

eighteen-six, or Chonita Iturbi y Moncada, the doomswoman, danced on

the hearts of men in Monterey.... From end to end of the great Santa

Clara Valley the fruit trees were in bloom, a hundred thousand acres

and more of pure white blossoms or delicate pink. Bascom Luning took

Alexina over it one day in his air-car, as she called it, and from

above it looked like a scented sea that was all foam.

But no such riot and glory had come to San Francisco. This was the

season for winds that seemed to blow from the four points of the

compass at once and of ghostly fogs that stole up and down the streets

of the city, abandoning the hills to bank in the valleys, as if seeking

warmth; abruptly deserting the lowlands to prowl along the heights,

always searching, searching, these pure white lovely fogs of San

Francisco, for something lost and never found.

II

"I hope they're not too artistic to keep their rooms warm," said

Aileen, as they drove from her house where Gora and Alexina had dined,

down to the Club of the Seven Arts. "I have smoked so much, intending

to prove in public how really virtuous a society girl is, in contrast

to Bohemia, that I'm nearly frozen."

"Keep your wrap on," said Alexina. "Who cares? I have always been wild

to get into real Bohemian circles, meet authors and artists. We do lead

the most provincial life. All circles should overlap--the best of all,

anyhow. That is the way I would remold society if I were rich and

powerful--"

"Good heavens Alex, you are not idealizing this crowd we are going to

meet to-night? They're just a lot of second and third raters--"

"What do you know about them?"

"I keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds. I know

more or less what it must be. Besides, the last time I was in New York

I was taken several times to the restaurants and studios of Greenwich

Village. I could only convey my opinion of it in many swear words. This

must be a sort of chromo of it.... Gora, are you as wildly excited as

Alex is? I know she is because her spine is rigid; and she is probably

colder than I am."

"Well, anyhow," said Alexina defiantly, "it will be something I never

saw before."

"It will, darling. Well. Gora, what do you anticipate?"

Gora laughed. "I wonder? I don't think I've thought much about it. The

circumstances of my life have developed the habit of switching off my

imagination except when I am at my desk. I've also formed the habit of

taking things as they come. I'll manage to extract something from this,

one way or another."

III

The car stopped before a narrow house in the rebuilt portion of the

city. The door was opened immediately and the three guests of honor,

apparently very late, as a large room beyond the vestibule appeared to

be crowded, were marshaled up a narrow stair into a dressing-room under

the eaves.

"Looks like the loft of a barn," grumbled Aileen. There was no

attendant to hear. "Well, I'm not going to leave my cloak, for several

reasons--only one of which is that if this room is a sample my

ill-covered bones will rattle together downstairs."

She wore a gown of black chiffon with a green jade necklace and a band

of green in her fashionably done fair hair. Alexina's gown was a soft

white satin that fitted closely and made her look very tall and slim

and round, the corsage trimmed with the only color she ever wore. Her

hair was done in a classic knot and held with a comb--a present from

Aileen--designed from periwinkles and green leaves and sparkling

dew-drops.

Gora shook out the skirt of her only evening-gown, a well-made black

satin, very severe, but always relieved by a flower of some sort.

To-night she wore a poinsettia, whose peculiarly vivid red brought out

the warm browns of her skin and hair. She had a superb neck and

shoulders and bust, and the skin of her body was a delicate honey color

that melted imperceptibly into the deeper tones of her throat and face.

"Alexina," she said, "let us perish but exhibit all our points. Your

arms and hands were modeled for some untraced Greek ancestress and born

again. Your neck is almost as good as mine, if not quite so solid...."

She had a spot of crimson on her high cheek bones and admitted to the

discerning Aileen that she was the least bit excited. After all, the

keenest brains of San Francisco might be down in that long raftered

room they had glimpsed, and in any case she was about to be judged by a

new standard.

"Oh, don't let that worry you," Aileen began.

A door at the end of the room opened abruptly and a small woman came

forward almost panting. "I just ran up those stairs," she cried. "But I

was bound to be the first. I used to go to school with your mother down

on Bush Street--dear Minnie Morrison!"

She was a woman of fifty or sixty, with a nose like an inflamed button,

eyes that watered freely, and a shabby black hat somewhat on one side.

"But my mother never went to school in San Francisco," said Gora

stiffly, and eyeing this first precipitate member of the intellectual

world with profound disfavor.

"Oh, yes, she did. We were the most intimate friends. To think that

dear Minnie's daughter--"

"Her name was not Minnie Morrison--"

"Oh, yes, it was--"

"Don't mind her so much, Gora dear." Aileen did not trouble to lower

her voice. "She's drunk. Let's go down."

Another woman entered the same door almost as hastily, but she was a

stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such

a withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of

the Seven Arts slunk out and could be heard stumbling down the stairs.

"I followed as soon as some one told me that Miss Skeers had come up

here," she said apologetically. "She is not always herself, poor thing.

Once she was quite distinguished as a local magazine writer, but ...

well, you know ... all people do not have the good fortune to have

their genius universally recognized, and the results are sometimes

disastrous. We are so proud to welcome you to-night, Miss Dwight,

and--and--your charming friends. I am Jane Upton Halsey." She appeared

to think no further explanation necessary.

"Oh, yes," murmured the bewildered Gora. "It was you who wrote to me."

"Exactly. I am chairman of the reception committee." She looked

expectant, then piqued, and added hastily: "Will you come downstairs?

What lovely gowns. I should like to paint you all."

She herself was a symphony in pink ("dago pink," whispered Aileen

wickedly), and she wore a small pink silk turban, apparently made from

the same bolt as the gown.

"Perhaps we should have worn hats," said Gora nervously. "I didn't

know--I thought..."

"You are just all right. Anything goes here. We wear what's becoming,

what we can afford, and what is our own idea of the right thing. Nobody

criticizes anybody else."

"Now, this is life!" said Alexina to Aileen. "You will admit we never

found anything like that before."

"Just you watch and catch them criticizing us.... Rather

effective--what?"

They were descending a staircase that led directly into the crowded

room below, and they looked down upon a mass of upturned expectant

faces, Gora was ahead with Miss Halsey, and as she reached the floor

the faces changed their angle; it was apparent that they were not

interested in her satellites.

"Let's stop here for a moment and watch," said Alexina. "It's too

interesting. They look as if they'd eat her alive."

The whole company seemed to be seething about Gora, and as they were

rapidly presented by Miss Halsey and passed on they produced the

effect, in the inner circles, of a maelstrom. On the outer edge the

women frankly stood on chairs to get a better look at the new lion, or

pushed forward with frenzied determination to the fixed center of the

whirlpool, whose gracious smile was becoming strained.

"Poor Gora!" said Aileen. "We do it better. A few picked souls at a

time; or, even when it's a tea, just casual introductions at decent

intervals, and not too many references to the immortal work."

"It's simply great for Gora, anyhow; for, big or little, they're her

own sort. And they're not snobs, They don't care tuppence for us."

"You're right there. I went to a big reception of all the arts in Paris

once and the only people any one kowtowed to were two disgustingly rich

New York women who had never done anything. But no one can be blamed

for national characteristics. Heavens! What an olla podrida!"

Some of the men were in evening dress, but the greater number were not.

They were of all ages, shaves, neckties and haircuts. The women wore

every variety of hat, from an immense sailor perched above an immense

fat face, above an immense shirtwaist bust, to minute turbans and

waving plumes. They wore tailored suits, high "one piece" frocks of any

material from chiffon to serge, symphonic confections like Miss

Halsey's, and flowing robes presumably artistic. None wore full evening

dress except the guests of honor. All, however, did not wear hats, and

they arranged their hair as individually as Alexina.

IV

"This may be our chance to see the art exhibit," said Aileen. "They'll

remember us in time, or Gora will...."

They descended into the room but had waited too long. Miss Halsey,

turning the guest of honor over to the second in command, a woman of

portentous seriousness, made her way hastily to the mere butterflies;

who endeavored vainly to slink away under cover of the rotating crowd.

"You won't think me rude, I hope," she cried, "but I had to start

things going, and it is awkward for all to introduce three people at a

time."

"You were most considerate," said Alexina amiably. "But we only came to

witness Gora's triumph, and we enjoy looking on, anyhow.... We were

about to look at the pictures...."

"You must meet some of our more brilliant members," said Miss Halsey

firmly. "They would never forgive me, and have been almost as excited

at meeting two such distinguished members of society as at meeting Miss

Dwight herself. Now, if you ... if you ... that is..."

"Our names are Jane Boughton and Mamie Featherhurst," supplied Aileen,

transfixing the lady with her wicked green eyes.

"Oh, yes, to be sure ... there has been so much to think of ... but

your names are so often in the society columns ... it seems to me I

recall that one of you is the daughter of a famous judge--"

"Boughton. He's under indictment, you know, for graft, bribery, and

corruption."

"Oh ... ah ... how unfortunate," Miss Halsey's jaw fell. Even she had

heard--vaguely in her studio--of the scandal of Judge Boughton, and she

wondered how she had been so absent-minded as to invite a member of his

family to the club.

"You see," said Aileen coolly. "I am not fit to associate with your

members, and as Miss Featherhurst is still my loyal friend, we'll just

go over and sit in a corner--"

"Indeed you shall do nothing of the kind. You are our guests,

and--please for this evening forget everything else."

"You nasty little beast," hissed Alexina into Aileen's discomforted

ear. "She's worth two of you."

"So she is," said Aileen contritely, "I'll behave better."

Miss Halsey, who had been signaling several members and rounding up

others, returned, Alexina blazed her eyes at Aileen, who murmured

hastily to the hostess: "I was just joking. I am Judge Lawton's

daughter, and this is Mrs. Mortimer Dwight, Gora's sister-in-law. I'd

never have told such a whopper but I'm so nervous and shy. I didn't

think I could go through the ordeal."

"Oh, you poor child. Well, you'll find we're not terrible in the least.

Now, don't try to remember names. They'll remember yours--better than I

did!"

Another small eddying circle formed about the luminaries from a lower

sphere. This proved to be much like similar performances in any stratum

of society. All murmured platitudes, or nothing. Nobody tried to be

original or witty. Alexina and Aileen gradually disengaged themselves

and were making their way toward the pictures that turned the four

walls into a harmonious mass of color, when an old man came tottering

up. He had bright, eyes and a pleasant face.

"Which is Mrs. Dwight?" he asked eagerly. Alexina bent her lofty head

and smiled down upon him.

"Of course. Little Alexina. I remember you when you were a dear little

girl and I used to see you playing about the house when I went up to

have a good powwow with that clever grandfather of yours, Alex

Groome--one of the ablest politicians this town ever had; and straight,

damn straight."

"Alexander Groome was my father."

"Oh, no, he wasn't. He was your grandfather. You are the daughter ...

let me see ... there were two or three young ladies.... I remember when

they came out in the eighties ... and a boy or two...."

"I am sorry to be rude, but Alexander Groome was my father. I came

along rather late."

"Impossible! ... Well, I suppose you know best..." and he drifted off.

"This seems to be a home for incurables," said Aileen. "I am sure I

don't know how I shall get through the evening. Gora has a slight sense

of humor, you have quite a keen one, but mine is positively

fiendish.... Oh, Lord!"

Miss Halsey was trailing them, her hand resting lightly on the arm of

another woman.

"Now this is something like," whispered Aileen. "Witch of Endor got up

to look like Carmen."

The oncoming luminary was a singular-looking woman who may have been

considerably less so in the privacy of her dressing-room; she had

evidently expended much thought upon supplementing the niggardliness of

Nature. Her unwashed-looking black hair was dressed very high and stuck

with immense pins. Large, circular, highly colored, imitation jade

rings dangled in tiers from her ear-lobes, and at least eight rows of

colored beads covered the front of her loose, fringed, embroidered,

beaded gown. She had a haggard face, deeply lined and badly painted,

but something, an emanation perhaps, seemed to proclaim that she was

still young.

"This, dear Mrs. Dwight and Miss Lawton, is Alma De Quincey Smith, with

whose work you are of course familiar. She had her reception last week

but was only too glad to come to-night and extend the welcoming hand of

the east to our new daughter of the west."

Miss De Quincey Smith barely gave her time to finish. She darted

forward and grasped Aileen's hand. "Oh, you must let me tell you how

wonderful I think your unique green eyes go with that jade. I've been

watching you!" She spoke with the eager unthinking impulsiveness of a

child, which, oddly, made her look like a very old woman.

"Too nice of you," murmured Aileen, who was determined to behave.

"And you!" she cried, turning to Alexina. "Your eyes simply blaze. You

look like a long white arum lily. And dusky hair, not merely black. Oh,

I do think you are both too wonderful, and I am sure all these splendid

artists here will want to paint you."

Alexina and Aileen were not accustomed to such spontaneous and

unbridled admiration and they thought Miss Smith quite fascinating if

rather queer. But Miss Smith did not number tact among her gifts and

rushed on.

"Gora Dwight is too wonderful looking for words. We are all crazy over

her. All the artists want to paint her already. Her coloring and style

are unique and she suggests tragedy--with those marvelous pale eyes in

that dark face--those heavy dark brows and heavy masses of hair. I have

suggested that Folkes--your greatest portrait painter, you know,--paint

her as Medea, or as the Genius of the Revolution, How proud you must be

of her!"

"So we are," murmured Aileen. "We think she is the only woman writer in

America worth mentioning. Why don't you paint her yourself?"

"I? I am not an artist--with the brush! I am an author, Alma De Quincey

Smith."

"Oh!..." Aileen's voice trailed off vaguely, "What do you write? Plays?

Essays?..."

"I--why, I'm one of the best--my stories appear constantly in the best

magazines." Miss Smith, who had been deserted some time since by Miss

Halsey, looked abject, helpless, and infuriated.

"Oh! We only read the worst. It must be wonderful to be famous. Come,

Alex, we must see the pictures. They're going to have music and supper

later."

V

"Nevertheless," said Alexina, "they are real as far as they go, and

they really do things, good or bad. They work, they aspire; they dream,

and perhaps with reason, of a glorious future, when they will be as

famous and successful as the founders of the club. Even if they fail

they will have had the wonderful dream. Nothing can take that from

them. I envy them--envy them!"

They were standing in a far corner of the room, after having examined

three or four admirable and many passable paintings. Aileen looked at

her in surprise. They had both been remarking upon the comic aspects of

the intellectual life, and Alexina's outburst was unexpected. Aileen

had seldom seen her vehement since they had outgrown their youthful

habit of wrangling. She was still more astonished when she turned from

a view of the Latin-seeming roofs of San Francisco from Twin Peaks, to

Alexina's face. It looked drawn and desperate.

"Well, most of them will fail," she said lightly. "Look at these

pictures! That is what is the matter with California--too much talent.

You must be as individual as a talking monkey to get your head above

the crowd. All these poor devils are doomed to the local reputation."

"Even so they have something to live for, mean something, do something.

What do I mean to myself or anyone? What have I accomplished? The man I

married is a dummy-husband; means nothing to me nor I to him. I have no

children. Even my housekeeping for Maria is a farce; James really does

it all. I mean nothing to society now that I can no longer entertain

it. I haven't even a decent vice. I don't smoke and gamble like you,

nor have lovers like some of the others. I'm simply a

nonentity--nothing!"

"You have personality ... beauty...." Aileen was completely at a loss.

"I hate being banal like that Smith idiot ... but you are the

perfection of a type. That is something. And you cultivate your mind--"

"My mind! What does it amount to? Anybody can pack a brain. I'd like

one of those that gives out something, however little. But I can't help

that. The point is I don't live. I don't care a hang about personality

that doesn't get anywhere, and I care still less about being a finished

type--that's the work of dead and gone ancestors, anyhow, not mine....

I wish I could fall in love with James Kirkpatrick. I'd feel more

justified in my own eyes if I were living with him over in the

Mission--"

"His old mother would chase you out with a broom and use Biblical

language. Of course I know you must be bored, Alex dear. Can't you

manage to go abroad and live for a time?"

"No, I can't, and I don't see what difference that would make. But I'll

tell you what I shall do. If Tom and Maria want to rent the house next

year they can have it but I'll not live there. I'll not be 'held up'

any longer. I'll stand on my own feet--in other words get a job.

No--I've some loose money, I'll start in business."

"Good for you. Perhaps dad'll let me go in with you. Don't imagine I

don't get sick of my racketing life; and when I have a spasm of reform

I nearly take seriously to drink, I'm so bored. Would you have me for

partner?"

"Wouldn't I? That is if you would be serious about it. I am, let me

tell you. The whole family can perform suttee for all I care. I'm going

to do something that will give me a place in the main stream of life."

"Trust me. I have been considering Bob's fifteenth proposal--Mr.

Cheever has promised him a full partnership the day he marries, and it

wouldn't be so bad. Bobby is a good sport, and we'd live the out-door

life at Burlingame instead of the in--sports ... tournaments ... polo

... cut out dissipation. We've both really had enough of it. But I

believe business would be more interesting. After all that's what you

marry for unless you want children--which I don't--to be interested.

What'll we be? Decorators?"

"I suppose so. But all this has only just come to a head, although I

know now that it has been slowly gathering force in my deepest deeps.

If we do I'll take Alice on. She's sick of the game too and she has

simply ripping ideas."

"Perfect. 'Dwight, Thorn--', no, 'Thorndyke, Lawton and Dwight.' I'm

too excited--convicts must feel like that when they tunnel a hole and

get out. It will be our real, our first adventure."

CHAPTER XX

I

But two weeks later Aileen told Alexina that although she had cannily

waited for what she believed to be the propitious moment and told her

father about the great scheme, she had never seen him so upset. She

stormed, argued, wept, but he was adamant. He would give her neither a

cent nor his permission. When she accused him of inconsistency (he had

supported woman's suffrage) he replied that women forced to work needed

the franchise and no fair-minded man would withhold it; and if for no

other reason he would forbid his daughter to go out and compete with

women who must work whether they wanted to or not.

But that was only one point.

What did progress mean if women deliberately dropped from a higher

plane to a lower? What had their ancestors worked for, possibly died

for? It was their manifest duty to their class, to their family, to go

up not down.

Moreover, when women had men to support them and insisted upon forcing

their way into the business world, they made men ridiculous and

undermined society. It was dangerous, damned dangerous. If he had his

way not a woman in any class, outside of nursing and domestic service,

should work. He'd tax every male in the land, according to his income

or wage, to say nothing of the rich women, and keep every last one of

the unportioned in idleness rather than risk the downfall of male

supremacy in the world.

He hated every form of publicity for the women of his class. If he had

his way their names, much less photographs, should never appear in the

public press. Society should be sacrosanct. Its traditions should be

handed on, not lowered.... Charity boards and settlement work, perhaps,

but no further exposure to the vulgar gaze ... he was glad she had

never gone in for the last.

Civilization would be meaningless without that small class at the top

that proved what Earth could accomplish in the way of breeding, the

refinements of life, the beauty of distinction, in making an art of

leisure, of pleasure--quite as much an art as writing books or painting

pictures.

If the men in the younger nations had to work, at least they were able

to prove to the older that the exquisite creatures they bred and

protected were second to none on this planet, at least.

If women had genius that was another question. Let them give it to the

world, by all means. That was their personal gift to civilization....

He was not bigoted like some men, even young men, who thought it a

disgrace for a lady publicly to transfer herself to the artistic plane

and compete with men for laurels.... But when it came to stripping off

the delicate badges that only the higher civilization could confer, and

struggling tooth and nail with the mob for no reason whatever--it was

disloyal, ungrateful and monstrous.

He was no snob. He thought himself better than no man. (Different,

yes.) But in regard to women, the women of his class, the class of his

father before him, and of his father's father, he had his ideals, his

convictions.

That was all.

II

"In short, he's modern but not too modern. My twentieth-century

arguments were brushed aside as mere fads. And yet there's probably not

an important case tried in any court in either hemisphere that he

doesn't read--learn something from if he can. He takes in the leading

newspapers and reviews of America and Europe and even reads the best

modern novels as carefully as he ever read Thackeray and Dickens--says

they are the real social chronicles. He's a profound student of

history, and the history of the present interests him just as much--he

has those Balkans under a microscope; and collects all the data on

every important strike here and elsewhere. And yet where women are

concerned he is a fossil. An American fossil--worst sort. Some of the

young ones are just as bad ... I'll have to give in. I can't break his

heart. I suppose I'll marry Bobby."

III

Alice Thorndyke also shook her head. "I'd like to, Alex, but frankly I

haven't the courage. Your friends all stick to you like perfect dears

when you step down and out and set up shop, and are so kind you feel

like a street walker in a house of refuge. But secretly they hate it

and they don't feel toward you in the same way at all. They may not

know enough to express it, but what they really feel is that you have

threatened the solidity of the order and lowered yourself as well as

them. One day they may have more sense but not in our time, I am

afraid."

Nevertheless, Alexina persisted in her determination. One could succeed

alone. She would not be the first. She was by no means sure, however,

what she wanted to do, and made up her mind to take no step before the

following winter. When the Abbotts returned to Rincona in May they took

James with them. Alexina closed Ballinger House, although Mortimer

slept there and a Filipino came in every morning to make his breakfast

and bed; and took a cottage in Ross with Janet Maynard whose mother had

gone south to visit old lady Bascom, and who craved the wild peace of

Marin County after too much San Francisco and Burlingame.

Marin, with its magnificent redwood forests on the coast, fed by the

fogs of the Pacific, its ancient sunlit woods of oak and madroño and

manzanita, its mountains and rocky hills and peaceful fertile valleys,

is perhaps the most beautiful county in California, and its towns and

villages are still almost primitive in spite of the many fashionable

residents whose homes are close to or in them. The ocean pounds its

western base, Mount Tamalpais is its proudest possession, it has a

haunted looking lake; and a part of it embraces one of the many

ramifications of the Bay of San Francisco, and commands a superb view

of city and island and mountain. But it has a heavy brooding peace that

seems to relax the social conscience. Entertaining is intermittent, and

its inhabitants return to their winter in San Francisco deeply

refreshed. It has its paradoxes like the rest of California. On a stark

little peninsula, jutting out from bare hills into the Bay, is San

Quentin, one of the State's Prisons, and along the edges of the marsh

are Chinese hamlets and shrimp fisheries.

IV

Alexina and Janet purposed to spend the summer reading, idling in the

sweet-scented garden, walking in the early morning, riding horseback in

the late afternoon, taking tea at the club house at San Rafael, or

Belvedere, perhaps, but "cutting out" all social dissipations. Janet

was now twenty-six and beginning to feel the strain as well as

seriously to consider what she should do with the rest of her life. She

had great wealth, she was blasée as a result of doing everything she

chose to do, in public or in private, and she was nearly two

generations younger than Judge Lawton. Nevertheless, she perceived no

allurement in the business world, and the only alternative seemed

marriage. Not in California, however. No surprises there. She might

take her fortune to London and become a peeress of the realm. When

change became imperative better go up than down.

Alexina had never felt the attractions of dissipation and was not

afflicted with moral ennui; but she was tired from much thinking and

brooding and intimate personal contacts. She wanted the deep

refreshment of the summer before girding up for the winter--before

making her plunge into the world of business and toil.

But she was soon to discover that she had girded up her loins, or at

all events brightened up her corpuscles and reposed her brain cells,

for a far different purpose.

CHAPTER XXI

I

It is possible that only two people in California, barring German

spies, leapt instantly to the conclusion that the Sarajevo bomb meant a

European War. The Judge, because he had the historical background and

knew his modern Europe as he knew his chessboard; and Alexina because

she recalled conversations she had had in France the summer before with

people close to the Government, to say nothing of mysterious allusions

in the letters of Olive de Morsigny; who may have thought it wise not

to trust all she knew to the post, or may have been too busy with her

intensive nursing course to enter into particulars.

Janet shrugged her large statuesque shoulders when Alexina communicated

her fears. What was war to her? England at least would have sense

enough to keep out of it. Aileen came over after a convincing talk with

her father looking as worried as if some nation or other were training

their guns on the Golden Gate.

"Dad says it's the world war ... that we'll be dragged in ... that

Germany has had it up her sleeve for years ... believes that bomb was

made in Berlin ... nothing under heaven could have averted this

impending war but a huge standing army in Great Britain ... hasn't Lord

Roberts been crying out for it?.... Dad and I dined at his house one

night in London and the only picture in the dining-room was an oil

painting of the Kaiser in a red uniform, done expressly for Lord

Roberts ... funny world ... and now Britain's got a civil war on her

hands and mutinous officers who won't go over and shoot men of their

own class in Ulster.... Russia hasn't built her strategic railways--all

the money used up in graft.... Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! who'd have thought

it? ... Twentieth century and all the rest of it."

"Twentieth century ... war ... how utterly absurd.... I don't wish to

be rude ... but really..."

This from every one to whom Alexina and Aileen, or even Judge Lawton,

communicated their fears.

II

One day Alexina and Aileen met in San Francisco by appointment and

telephoned to James Kirkpatrick, asking him to lunch with them at the

California Market. He accepted with alacrity, and laughed genially at

their apprehensions. War? War? Not on your life. There'll never be

another war. Socialists won't permit it. The kaiser? To hell with the

kaiser. (Excuse me.) He, James Kirkpatrick, was in frequent

correspondence with certain German socialists. They would declare

themselves in the coming International Congress for the general strike

if any sovereign--or President--dared to try to put over a war on the

millions of determined socialists, syndicalists, internationalists, and

communists in Great Britain and Europe; he'd get the surprise of his

life. Socialism was determined there should never be another war--the

burden and life-toll of which was always borne by the poor man. He

didn't believe any of those fool sovereigns, not even the crazy kaiser,

would attempt it, knowing what they did; but if they turned out to be

deaf and blind, well, just watch out for the Great Strike. That would

be the most portentous, the most awe-inspiring event in history.

And then he dismissed a prospective European war as unworthy of further

attention and held forth with extreme acrimony on the subject of the

Great Colorado Strike; which rose to passionate denunciation of the

miserable make-shift called civilization which, would permit such a

horror in the very heart of a great and prosperous nation. But with the

new system ... the new system ... there would not be even these

abominable little civil wars ... for that was what we had right here in

our own country ... no need to use up your gray matter bothering about

European states....

He was so convincing that Alexina and Aileen thanked him warmly and

went to their respective destinations lulled and comforted.

Nevertheless, the war made its grand début on August first, and Mr.

Kirkpatrick, who had started on one of the passenger ships leaving New

York for the International Socialist Congress, climbed ignominiously

over the side and returned to the great ironic city on a tug.

III

Two letters came from Olive to Alexina and one to each of her other old

friends, imploring them to come over and help. They could nurse. They

could run canteens. Oeuvres. She wanted to show France what her

friends, her countrywomen, could do.

But the war would be over in three months.... Only Judge Lawton

believed it would be a long war. Others hardly comprehended there was a

war at all.... Such things don't happen in these days. (Who in that

wondrous smiling land could think upon war anywhere?) ... It would be

too funny if it were not for those dreadful pictures of the Belgian

refugees.... Poor things.... Maria and other good women immediately

began knitting for them ... sat for hours on the verandahs, all in

white, knitting, knitting ... but talking of anything of war.... It

simply was a horrid dream and soon would be over.... Their husbands all

said so ... three months.... German army irresistible ... modern

implements of war must annihilate whole armies very quickly, and the

Germans had the most and the best.... Rotten shame (said Burlingame)

and the Germans not even good sportsmen.

James Kirkpatrick, who avoided his former pupils, consoled himself with

the thought that at least Britain would be licked ... she'd get what

was coming to her, all right, and Ireland would be free.... Anyhow it

would soon be over.... When April nineteen-seventeen came he damned the

socialist party for its attitude and enlisted: "I was a man and an

American first, wasn't I?" he wrote to Alexina. "I guess your flag ...

oh, hell! (Excuse me.)"

IV

In December, nineteen-fourteen, Alexina and Alice Thorndyke (who

grasped the entering wedge with both ruthless white little hands) went

to France. Aileen was not strong enough to nurse so she bade a

passionate good-by to her friends and engaged herself to Bob Cheever.

Jimmie Thorne went to France as an ambulance driver, and Bascom Luning

to join the Lafayette Escadrille. Gora sailed six months later to offer

her services to England. In the case of a nurse there was much red tape

to unravel.

A fair proportion of the women left behind continued to knit. As time

went on branches of certain French war-relief organizations were

formed, and run by such capable women as Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Hunter,

who had many friends among the American women living in France; now

toiling day and night at their oeuvres.

Alexina and Olive de Morsigny, after a year of nursing, when what

little flesh they had left could stand no more, founded an oeuvre of

their own, and Sibyl Bascom and Aileen Cheever did fairly well with a

branch in San Francisco, Alexina's relatives quite wonderfully in New

York and Boston; although they were already interested in many others.

V

Certain interests in California, notably the orchards and canneries,

were violently anti-British during the first years of the war, as the

blockade shut off their immense exports to Germany, and those that

failed, or closed temporarily, realized the incredible: that a war in

Europe could affect California, even as the Civil War affected the

textile factories of England. To them it was a matter of indifference,

until nineteen-seventeen, who won the war so long as one side smashed

the other and was quick about it.

Owners and directors of copper mines--but let us draw a veil over the

sincere robust instincts of human nature.

The Club of Seven Arts was proudly and vociferously pro-German. Not

that they cared a ha'penny damn really for Germany, but it was a far

more original attitude than all this sobbing over France ... and then

there was Reinhardt, the Secessionist School, the adorable jugendstyl.

And the atrocity stories were all lies anyway. The bourgeois president

resigned, but no one else paid any attention to them.

In nineteen-seventeen a few declared themselves pacifists and

conscientious objectors, and, little recking what they were in for,

marched off triumphantly to a military prison, feeling like Christ and

longing for a public cross.

The others, those that were young enough, shouldered a gun and went to

the front with high hearts and hardened muscles. Democracy über alles.

The women enlisted in the Red Cross and the Y.W.C.A., and worked with

grim enthusiasm, either at home or in France.

VI

By this time California, almost on another planet as she was, with her

abundance unchecked, and her skies smiling for at least three-fourths

of the year, admitted there was a real war in the world, as bad (or

worse) as any you could read about in history. The war films in the

motion picture houses were quite wonderful, but too terrible.

They also discussed it, especially on those days when the streets

echoed with the march of departing regiments in khaki, or one's own

son, or one's friend's son enlisted or was drafted, or it was their day

at Red Cross headquarters.

All the older women were at work now, and all but the most

irreclaimably frivolous of the young ones. Even Tom and Maria Abbott

made no protest against Joan's joining the Woman's Motor Corps; and,

dressed in a smart, gray, boyish uniform, she drove her car at all

hours of the day and night. She was not only sincerely anxious to

serve, but she knew, and sheltered girls all over the land knew,--to

say nothing of the younger married women--that this was the beginning

of their real independence, the knell of the old order. They were

freed. Even the reënforced concrete minds of the last generation

imperceptibly crumbled and were as imperceptibly modernized in the

rebuilding.

A good many of the women, old and young, continued to gamble furiously

out of their hours of work; but the majority of the girls did not.

Those with naturally serious minds were absorbed, uplifted, keen,

calculating. They did not even dance. They realized that they had

wonderful futures in a changing world. It was "up to them."

VII

Mortimer was beyond the draft age, but, possibly owing to his gallant

fearless appearance, it was rather expected that he would enlist. He

did not, however, nor did he join the Red Cross or the Y.M.C.A., nor

volunteer for some Government work, as so many of the men of his age

and class were doing as a matter of course.

War news bored him excessively. He was making two or three hundred

dollars a month; he lived at the Club when Maria Abbott occupied

Ballinger House--Tom went to Washington--and he was extremely

comfortable. In the Club he always felt like a blood, forgot for the

time being that he was not a rich man, like the majority of its

members, and there was always a group of nice quiet contented fellows,

glad to play bridge with him in the evening. On the whole, he

congratulated himself, he had not done so badly, although he had

resigned all hope of being a millionaire--unless he made a lucky

strike.... But it did not make so much difference in California ... and

when Alexina had had enough of horrors they would settle down again

very comfortably to the old life.... There was very good dancing at the

restaurants (upstairs) where one met nice girls of sorts who didn't

care a hang about this infernal war ... one of them ... but he was

extremely careful ... he would never be divorced; that was positive ...

as for society he did not miss it particularly ... the dancing at the

restaurants was better and he didn't have to talk ... whether people

stopped asking him or not, now that his wife was away, or whether they

entertained or not, didn't so much matter. He had the Club. That was

the all important pivot of his life, his altar, his fetish ... a lot he

cared what went so long as he had that.

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I

I

The Embassy was a blinding glare of light from the ground floor to the

upper story, visible above the wide staircase. After four years of

legal tenebration it was obvious that the ambassador's intention was to

celebrate the Armistice as well as the visit of his King to Paris with

an almost impish demonstration of the recaptured right to extravagance,

obliterate the dry economical past. The ambassador's country might be

intolerably poor after the war, but like many other prudent nobles he

had invested money in North and South America, and was able to

entertain his sovereign out of his private purse. He had made up his

mind to give the first brilliant function following the sudden end of

La Grande Guerre and one that it would be difficult for even Paris to

eclipse.

All Paris had burst forth into illumination of street and shop after

nightfall, but Alexina had seen no such concentrated blaze as this; and

her eyes, long accustomed to a solitary globe high in the ceiling of

her room, blinked a little, strong as they were. She had come with the

Marquis and Marquise de Morsigny, and after they had passed the long

receiving line where the King in his simple worn uniform stood beside

the resplendent ambassador, her friends' attention had been diverted to

a group of acquaintances chattering excitedly over the startling

munificence that seemed to them prophetic of a swift renaissance.

They moved off unconsciously, and Alexina remained alone near one of

the long windows behind the receiving line; but she felt secure in her

insignificance and quite content to gaze uninterruptedly at the

greatest function she had ever seen. After the bitter hard work, the

long monotonies, the brief terrible excitements, of the past four

years, and the depressed febrile atmosphere of Paris during the last

year when avions dropped their bombs nearly every night, and Big Bertha

struck terror to each quarter in turn, this gay and gorgeous scene

recalled one's most extravagant dreams of fairy-land and Arabia; and

Alexina felt like a very young girl. Even the almost constant sensation

of fatigue, mental and bodily, fell from her as she forgot that she had

worked from nine until six for three years in her oeuvre, often walking

the miles to and from her hotel or pension to avoid the crowded trains;

the distasteful food; the tremors that had shaken even her tempered

soul when the flashing of the German guns, drawing ever nearer, could

be seen at night on the horizon.

And Paris had been so dark!

She reveled almost sensuously in the excessiveness of the contrast,

quite unconcerned that her white gown was several years out of date.

For that matter there were few gowns, in these vast rooms, of this

year's fashion. Although Paris had begun to dance wildly the day the

Armistice was declared, not only in sheer reaction from a long devotion

to its ideal of duty, but that the American officers should have the

opportunity to discover the loveliness and charm of the French maiden,

the women had not yet found time to renew their wardrobes, and the only

gowns in the room less than four years old were worn by the newly

arrived Americans of the Peace Commission and the ladies of the

Embassy. The most striking figures were the French Generals in their

horizon blue uniforms and rows of orders on their hardy chests.

Of jewels there were few. When the German drive in March seemed

irresistible, jewels had been sent to distant estates, or to banks in

Marseilles and Lyons, and there had been no time to retrieve them after

the ambassador sent out his sudden invitations. Alexina smiled as she

recalled Olive de Morsigny's lament over the absence of her tiara.

European women of society take their jewels very seriously, and there

was not a Frenchwoman present who did not possess a tiara, however

old-fashioned.

But the cold luminosity of jewels would have been extinguished to-night

under this really terrific down-pour of light. The tall candelabra

against the tapestried or the white and gold walls were relieved of

duty; Paris had had enough of candlelight; the four immense chandeliers

of this reception room, either of which would have illuminated a

restaurant, had been rewired and blazed like suns. Suspended from the

ceiling, festooned between the candelabra and the chandeliers, were

clusters and loops of glass tupils and roses, each concealing an

electric bulb. Alexina reflected that the soft haze of candles might be

more artistic and becoming, but was grateful nevertheless for this

rather tasteless fury of light, symptomatic as it was; and understood

the ambassador's revolt against the enforced economies of a long war,

his desire to do honor to his unassuming little sovereign.

II

The room, whose lofty ceiling was supported along the center by three

massive pillars, was already crowded, and people entered constantly.

Every embassy was represented, all the grande noblesse of Paris and

even a stray Bourbon and Bonaparte. A few of the guests were the more

distinguished American residents of Paris and their gowns were as out

of date if as inimitably cut as the Frenchwomen's, for they had worked

as hard. But Alexina ceased to notice them. She had become aware that

two American officers, standing still closer to the window, were

talking. One of them had parted the curtains and was looking out.

"By Jove," he said. "Strikes me this is rather risky. Six long windows

opening on the garden, and the King standing directly in front of one

of them. Fine chance for some filthy Bolshevik or anarchist."

"Oh, nonsense," said the other absently; his eyes were roving over the

room. "Wish I could take to one of these French girls ... feel it a

sort of duty to increase the rapport and all that ... but although the

married women and the other sort of girls are a long sight more

fascinating than ours, the upper--"

"American girls for me. But I'm still jumpy, and this sort of

carelessness makes me nervous, particularly as the story is going about

that the King came near being assassinated in the station of his home

town when he was leaving. Man fired point blank at his face, but gun

didn't go off or some one knocked up the man's arm. Did you notice that

he looked about rather apprehensively when he arrived, at the station

yesterday? No wonder, poor devil."

III

Alexina moved off, making her way slowly, but finally was forced to

halt near the row of pillars. She was looking through the opposite door

at the fantastic illuminations of the hall and reception rooms beyond,

when, without a second's warning flicker, every light in the house went

out.

Simultaneously the high clatter of voices ceased as if the old familiar

cry of "_Alerte_" had sounded in the street. Involuntarily, as people

in real life do act, her hands clutched her heart, her mouth opened to

relieve her lungs. A Frenchman whispered beside her. "The King! A plot!"

She waited to hear screams from the women, wild ejaculations from the

men. But the years of war and danger had extinguished the weak and

exalted the strong. Beyond the almost inaudible gasp of her neighbor

Alexina heard nothing. The silence was as profound as the darkness and

that was abysmal; she could not see the white of her gown.

All, she knew, were waiting for the sound of a pistol shot, or of a

groan as the King fell with a knife in his back.

Then she became aware that men were forcing their way through the

crowd; she was almost flung into the arms of a man behind her. Later

she knew that a group of officers had surrounded their King and rushed

him up the room to place him in front of the central pillar, but at the

moment she believed that they were either carrying out his body, or

that a group of anarchists was escaping.

IV

Then one man lit a match. She saw a pale strained face, the eyes roving

excitedly above the flickering flame. Then another match was struck,

then another. Those that had no matches struck their briquets, and

these burned with a tiny yellow flame. One or two took down candles and

lit them. All over the room, in little groups, or widely separated,

Alexina saw face after face, white and anxious, appear. The bodies were

invisible. The faces hung, pallid disks, in the dark.

Her attention was suddenly arrested by a face above the small steady

flame of a briquet. It was a thin worn face, probably that of an

officer recently discharged from hospital. His expression was ironic

and unperturbed and his eyes flashed about the room exhibiting a lively

curiosity. An Englishman, probably; nothing there of the severity of

the American military countenance; although, to be sure, that had

relaxed somewhat these last weeks under the blandishments of Paris.

Nevertheless ... quite apart from the military, there was the curious

unanalyzable difference between the extremely well-bred American face

and the extremely well-bred English face. It might be that the older

civilization did not take itself quite so seriously....

V

Obeying an impulse, which, she assured herself later, was but the

sudden reaction to frivolity from the horror that had possessed her,

she took a match unceremoniously from the hand of a neighbor, lit it

and held it below her own face. The man's eyes met hers instantly,

opened a little wider, then narrowed.

She looked at him steadily ... interested ... something ... somewhere

... stirring. The match burnt her fingers and was hastily extinguished.

At the same time she became aware of a fuller effulgence just beyond

the pillars and that people were moving on, some retreating toward the

hall. She was carried forward and a little later turned her head,

forgetting for a moment the humorous face that still had seemed to

beckon above the white disks that inspired her with no interest

whatever.

Against the central pillar stood the King, and on either side of him

two officers of his suite, as rigid as men in armor, held aloft each a

great candelabra taken from the wall. All the candles in the branches

had been lit and shone down on the composed and somewhat expressionless

face of the King. The strange group looked like a picture in some old

cathedral window.

The scene lasted only a moment. Then the King, bowing courteously, left

the room, still between the candelabra; and, followed by his

ambassador, whose face was far paler than his, ascended the staircase.

VI

A Frenchman beside Alexina cursed softly and she learned the meaning of

the dramatic finale to a superb but rather dull function. There had

been no attempt at assassination. A lead fuse had melted; the

ambassador, who had taxed his imagination to honor his King, had

forgotten to give the order that electricians remain on guard to avert

just such a calamity as this.

As the explanation ran round the room people began to laugh and chatter

rapidly as if they feared the sudden reaction might end in hysteria.

But although all the candles had now been lit, the effort to revive the

mild exhilaration of the evening was fruitless. They wanted to get

away. Many still believed that a plot had been balked, and that the

assassins were lurking in one of the many rooms of the hotel.

Alexina met Olive de Morsigny in the dressing-room, and found her white

and shaking, although for four years she had proved herself a woman of

strong nerves as well as of untiring effort.

"Great heaven!" she whispered, as she helped Alexina on with her wrap.

"If he had been assassinated! In Paris! I thought André would faint.

His last wound is barely healed. Come, let us get out of this. Who

knows? ... In Paris!..."

Their car had to wait its turn. As Alexina stood with her silent

friends in the porte cochère the certainty grew that some one was

watching her. That officer! Who else? She flashed her eyes over the

crowd about her, then into the densely packed hall behind. But she

encountered no pair of eyes even remotely humorous, no face in any

degree familiar.... Later she whirled about again.... There was a

pillar ... easy to dodge behind it.... At this moment André took her

elbow and gently piloted her into the car.

CHAPTER II

I

Alexina in the weariness of reaction climbed the long stairs of her

pension in Passy.

Sibyl Bascom, whose husband being on government duty in Washington left

her free to go to France, and who rolled bandages all day long in the

great hospital in Neuilly; Janet Maynard and Alice Thorndyke, who ran a

canteen in the environs of Paris, and herself, had lived until the

Armistice in a comfortable hotel not far from the house of Olive de

Morsigny, and found much solace together. But their hotel had been

commandeered for one of the Commissions; Sibyl had taken refuge with

her sister-in-law, and Alexina, Janet, and Alice had found with no

little difficulty vacant rooms in a second-rate pension in Passy. The

food was even worse than at the hotel, the rooms were barely heated,

and as trams at Alexina's hours were airless and jammed, and taxicabs

in swarming Paris as scarce as tiaras, with drivers of an unsurpassable

effrontery, she was forced to walk three miles a day in all weathers.

It is true that she could have rented a limousine for a thousand francs

a month, but it was almost a religion with workers of her class to

economize rigorously and give all their surplus to the oeuvre of their

devotion. Janet and Alice went back and forth in one of the supply

camions of the Y.M.C.A.

II

Alexina passed Janet's room softly. She saw a light under the door and

inferred that she and Alice were playing poker and consuming many

cigarettes, that being their idea of recuperation between one hard

day's work and the next. She was in no mood for talking.

Her room was stuffy as well as cold; the furniture and curtains had

probably not been changed since the second empire. She opened one of

the long windows and stepped out on the balcony. The Seine was nearly

in flood after the heavy rains, but it reflected the stars to-night and

many long banners of light from the almost festive banks.

It was bitterly cold and she closed her window in a moment and moved

about her room. It was too cold to undress. She was inured to

discomforts and thankful that she had been brought up in San Francisco,

which is seldom warm; but she longed for a few creature comforts

nevertheless. During the war she had sustained herself with the thought

of the men in the trenches, but now that their lot was ameliorated she

felt that she had a right to what comforts she could find. The

difficulty was to find them. With Paris overflowing. Generals sleeping

in servants' rooms under the roof, soldiers, even officers, picking up

women on the streets if only to have a bed for the night, and hotel

after hotel being requisitioned for the various Peace Commissions and

their illimitable suites, conditions were likely to grow worse. Olive

de Morsigny had repeatedly offered hospitality, but she preferred her

independence.

To leave was impossible. Her oeuvre must continue for several months.

Sick and wounded men do not recover miraculously with the cessation of

hostilities. No doubt she should be grateful for this refuge, and now

that the war was over it might be possible to buy petrol for an oil

stove.

Then she became aware that it was not only the cold that made her

restless. The rigidly enforced calm of her inner life had received a

shock to-night and not from the imagined assassination of a king.

She went suddenly to her mirror and looked at herself intently ...

shook her head with a frown. She had always been slim; she was now very

thin. The roundness and color had left her cheeks. They were

pale--almost hollow. Janet and Alice had rejoiced in the lack of fats

and sweets, both having a tendency to plumpness had achieved without

effort the most fashionable slenderness that anxious woman could wish.

But she had not had a pound to lose. It seemed to her that she was

almost plain. Her eyes retained their dazzling brilliancy, a trick of

nature that old age alone no doubt could conquer, but there were dark

stains beneath the lower lashes.

She let down her hair. It was the same soft dusky mass as ever. Her

teeth were as even and bright; her lips had not lost their curves, but

they were pink, not red. She was anæmic, no doubt. Why, in heaven's

name, shouldn't she be? Even Olive, whose major domo, driving a Ford,

had paid daily visits to the farms and brought back what eggs, chickens

and other succulences the peasants would part with for coin, had lost

her brilliant color and the full lines of her beautiful figure. She had

rouged to-night and looked as lovely as when Morsigny had captured her,

but her magnificent gown had been too hastily taken in by an elderly

inefficient maid--her young one having patriotically deserted her for

munitions long since, and sagged on her bones as she expressed it.

Sibyl, who was in bed with the flu, had offered to lend her one of the

new ones she had had the forethought to buy in New York before sailing,

and was only a year old, but Olive had feared the critical eyes of

French women who had not replenished their evening wardrobe since

nineteen-fourteen.

Alexina did not feel particularly consoled because others had looked no

better than she. Until to-night she had given little thought to her

looks, but she now felt a renewed interest in herself, and the frown

was as much for this revival as for her wilted beauty.

Her evening wrap was very warm and she sat down in the hard arm-chair

and huddled into its folds, covering the lower part of her body with a

hideous brown quilt. No doubt the sheets were damp, and she knew that

she could not sleep. Why shiver in bed?

III

Was it Gathbroke? It was long since she had thought of him. She had not

even seen his photograph for four or five years. If it were, he had

changed even more since that photograph had been taken than after she

had dismissed him at Rincona.

She was by no means sore that it was he. The light of a briquet was not

precisely searching, and for the most part he had looked like more than

one war-worn British officer she had seen during her long residence in

Paris.... It was something in the eyes ... she could have vowed they

were hazel ... their expression had altered; it was that of a somewhat

ironic man of the world, which had changed as she watched them to the

piercing alertness of a man of action ... but after ... was it perhaps

an emanation of the personality that had so impressed her angry young

soul and refused to be obliterated?

But what of it? He might be married. Love another woman. All officers

and soldiers during the war had looked about eagerly for love, when not

already supplied, and given themselves up to it, indifferent as they

may have been before.... Life seemed shorter every time they went back

to the front.

And if not why should he be attracted to her again! He had loved her

for a moment when she had been in the first flush of her exquisite

youth. That was twelve years ago. She was now thirty. True, thirty,

to-day, was but the beginning of a woman's third youth, and a few weeks

in the California sunshine and nourished by the California abundance

would restore her looks, no doubt of that. But she would look no better

as long as she remained in Paris.... Nor did she wish to return to

California ... and beyond all question he must have forgotten, lost all

interest in her long since.

Still--there had been an eager upspringing light in his eyes ... was it

recognition? ... merely the passing impulse of flirtation over a match

and a briquet? ... No doubt she would never see him again.

CHAPTER III

I

Did she want to?

She had gone through many and extraordinary phases during these years

of close personal contact with the martial history of Europe, as

precisely different from the first twenty-six years of her life as

peace from war.

During those months of nineteen-fifteen when she had worked in

hospitals close to the front as auxiliary nurse, all the high courage

of her nature which she had inherited from a long line of men who had

fought in the Civil War, the Revolution, and in the colonial wars

before that, and the tribal wars that came after, and all that she had

inherited from those foremothers whose courage, as severely tested, had

never failed either their men or their country; in short, the

inheritance of the best American tradition; had risen automatically to

sustain her during that period of incessant danger and horror. She had

been firm and smiling for the consolation of wounded men when under

direct shell fire. She had felt so profound a pity for the mutilated

patient men that it had seemed to cleanse her of every selfish impulse

fostered by a too sheltered life. She had bathed so many helpless

bodies that she lost all sense of sex and felt herself a part of the

eternal motherhood of the world. She had once thrown herself over the

bed of a politely protesting poilu, covering his helpless body with her

own, as a shell from a taube came through the roof.

That had been a wonderful, a noble and exalted (not to say

exhilarating) period; a period that made her almost grateful for a war

that revealed to her such undreamed of possibilities in her soul. She

might smile at it in satiric wonder in the retrospect, but at least it

was ineradicable in her memory.

If it could but have lasted! But it had not. Insensibly she accepted

suffering, sacrifice, pity, as a matter of course, even as danger and

death. It had been the romance of war she had experienced in spite of

its horrors, and no romance lives after novelty has fled. For months

nothing seemed to affect her bodily resistance to fatigue, and as

exaltation dropped, as the monotony of nursing, even of danger, left

her mind more and more free, as war grew more and more to seem, the

normal condition of life, more and more she became conscious of herself.

II

Life at the front is very primitive. Social relations as the world

knows them cease to exist. The habits of the past are almost forgotten.

It is death and blood; shells shrieking, screaming, whining, jangling;

the boom of great guns as if Nature herself were in a constant

electrical orgasm; hideous stench; torn bodies, groans, cries, still

more terrible silences of brave men in torment; incessant

unintermittent danger. Above all, blood, blood, blood. She believed she

should smell it as long as she lived. She knew it in every stage from

the fresh dripping blood of men rushed from the field to the evacuation

hospitals, to the black caked and stinking blood of men rescued from No

Man's Land endless days and nights after they had fallen.

All that was elementary in her strong nature, inherited from strong,

full-blooded, often reckless and ruthless men, gradually welled to the

surface. She was possessed by a savage desire for life, a bitter

inordinate passion for life. Why not, when life might be extinguished

at any moment? What was there in life but life? Farcical that anything

else could ever have mattered.

Civilization--by which men meant the varied and pleasant times of

peace--seemed incredibly insipid and out of date. It had no more

relation to this war-zone than her youth to this swift and terrible

maturity.

She was in many hospitals--rushed where an indomitable and tireless

auxiliary nurse was most in demand--some under the direction of the

noblesse division of the Red Cross, others under the bourgeois; and in

more than one were English and American girls, long resident in France,

or, in the latter case, come from America like herself to serve the

country for which they had a romantic passion. The majority, of course,

were Frenchwomen, young (in their first freedom), middle-aged, elderly.

Of these some were placid, emotionless, extinguished, consistently

noble, selfless, profoundly and simply religious, as correct in every

thought and deed as the best bourgeois peace society of any land.

But others! Alexina had been horrified at first at the wanderings off

after nightfall of women who had nursed like scientific angels by day,

accompanied by men who were never more men than when any moment might

turn them into carrion. But with her mental suppleness she had quickly

readjusted her point of view. There is nothing as sensual as war. It is

the quintessential carnality. Renan once wrote a story of the French

Revolution, "The Abbess Juarre," in which his thesis was that if

warning were given that the world would end in three days the entire

population of the globe would give itself over to an orgy of sex; sex

being life itself. It is the obsession of the doomed consumptive, the

doomed spinster, the last thought of a man with the rope round his neck.

How much more under the terrific stimulation of war, the constant

heedless annihilation of life in its flower and its maturity? Man's

inveterate enemy, death, shrieking its derision in the very shells of

man's one inviolable right, the right to drift into eternity through

the peaceful corridors of old age. War is a monstrous anachronism and a

monstrous miscarriage of justice. The ignorant feel it less. It is the

enlightened, the intelligent, accustomed to the higher delights of

civilization, to the perfecting of such endowments, however modest, as

their ancestors have transmitted and peace has encouraged, with

ambitions and hopes and dreams, that resent however sub-consciously the

constant snarling of death at their heels. All the forces of mind and

body and spirit become formidable in a reckless hatred of the gross

injustice of a fate that individually not one of them has deserved.