"It would be to the devil," said Mrs. Beekman half-seriously. "That's

where such men come from, and that's where they go back--and if you

could follow round the circle, I guess you'd find it mile-stoned with

silly girls."

"Oh, if I went, I would stay to the end," cried Phyllis. "No putting me

off at a way-station. I'd take a through ticket."

"And get there alone," put in Mrs. Beekman. "Men like that don't go far

with any girl. They are a power for mischief, and they weren't much

wrong in the old days to run them out of town--vagabonds and strolling

players, you know. I guess in those times they used to take chickens,

too, and anything portable. A bad lot, my dear, and they aren't any

better to-day."

This was a poor return for a twenty-dollar hat, and without knowing

exactly why, it made Phyllis exceedingly miserable. She felt a

diminishing affection for Mrs. Beekman; and the world altogether

suddenly took on a cold and dismal aspect. Her spirits were not revived

by finding her father sitting up for her.

"What was the play?" he asked, taking her wraps.

"_Moths_, Papa."

"What? Twice?"

"Oh, I thought it would amuse me to see it again, and besides, Mrs.

Beekman preferred it to anything else in town, and I really went for her

sake, you know. It's a charity to take her out sometimes; her life is

so monotonous, and one feels so sorry for her."

Mr. Ladd waited, smiling in advance, for another humorous take-off of

the piece. But there was no fun in Phyllis that night. She drank a

glass of water, kissed him good night, and went silently up to bed.

"She doesn't seem very well," he thought, with a shade of concern, and

remembered that she had been pale and tired for some days past. "If she

doesn't pick up in a day or two, I believe I'll get the doctor."

Had he seen her an hour later, his misgivings would have increased.

Kneeling beside her bed, her face crushed in the coverlet, she was

weeping softly and heart-brokenly to herself.

*CHAPTER VIII*

Friday, the day that followed, was memorable to her for its decisiveness

and remorse. She took a long ride, and between canters, busied her head

with plans of escape. Washington, Florida, Europe--it mattered little

where--so long as she got away at once. She looked at herself

dispassionately, and the more she looked the more utterly despicable did

she seem. She was undoubtedly in love with this cheap, showy

actor--(somehow in the sunshine his genius had withered, and he seemed

to share the general tawdriness of gum and apples and shop-boy

sentiment)--crazily in love, infatuated; and to refuse to admit it was

but to hide her head in the sand, like an ostrich.

The comparison was not a pretty one, but then she was not looking for

pretty comparisons. In fact, as far as her feelings for Adair were

concerned, she was eager to find words that could make her wince. She

said them out loud, exulting in their brutality; gross words, picked up

she hardly knew where, and put out of mind as unclean and horrible. To

use them now was a form of self-flagellation, and she laid on the whip

with a will. It was good for a little fool, she said viciously. Lash!

lash! It would keep her out of mischief. Lash! lash! Let her understand

once for all what it really meant, even if the skin curled off her back.

On her return home she stopped at the telegraph-office to carry out her

intention of volunteering a visit to Aunt Sarah's. Night or day, in

season or out, there she always had a refuge. If blood in Aunt Sarah's

case, was not thicker than water, there was the more robust bond of hard

cash always to be relied upon. A niece who descended in a shower of

gold could count with confidence on the bread and salt of hospitality,

and the sincerest of welcoming kisses. There is something to be said

for people you can count on with confidence. An affectionate,

love-you-like-a-daughter aunt might have made excuses. A money-loving,

pleasure-loving, wholly selfish aunt, living very much above her income,

was one of the certainties of life.

But as she reined in her horse, and the groom ran to give her his hand

to dismount, she wondered, after all, whether she would telegraph. The

flagellation had been very successful; the September sunshine had killed

the pitiful glimmer of the footlights; the crisp invigorating air had

brought sanity with every breath. No, indeed, she would not telegraph,

she was not half the fool she had thought herself; it was a girlish

weakness to exaggerate everything--infatuation included. She would

telephone to that nice New Yorker instead and invite him to tea. That

oldish man with the charming distinction and courtesy, who had shown

symptoms of infatuation, too.--Yes, a good whipping to be followed by

two hours of an excessively devoted Mr. Van Suydam, and perhaps a

boy-and-girl-evening later with the carpet up--and why should anybody be

scared of anything?

So the telegram was not sent; and a young lady, very much restored, and

looking adorably fresh and pretty on her Kentucky mare, came galloping

up Chestnut Avenue in excellent spirits and appetite.

As for Mr. Van Suydam--he threw over a big reception to come, and was so

agreeable and eager, in such a sweet, restrained, smiling way, that he

was allowed to hold a little hand a long, long while, and murmur a whole

heartful of tender things that amounted virtually to a

declaration--which was cruel of Phyllis, not to say unladylike and

shocking; for with half-shut eyes she tried to imagine it was quite

another man who was wooing her, and abandoned herself to the fiction

with a waywardness that was inexcusable. But however unjust it was

towards Mr. Van Suydam, who was an honorable man, and meant what he

said, and was naturally much elated--his suit did Phyllis good, and even

as dummy for another, an inevitable comparison would insist upon

obtruding itself. Caste is very strong; it is difficult to associate

good-breeding, honor and distinction with a ten-twenty-thirty cent star;

and though Mr. Van Suydam, was nothing to Phyllis personally she could

not help realizing the high value she set on the qualities he

exemplified--so high, indeed, that it began to seem impossible for her

to care seriously for any man without them.

An evening with the sparrows rounded out that day of good resolves and

healthy common sense. She danced with a zest that no

genuinely-infatuated person could have felt, and told ghost stories

afterwards before the fire, and listened to others being told, with

shudders of unaffected enjoyment. "And my dear, when she looked at that

man again, _she saw that his throat was cut from ear to ear!_"--It was a

jolly evening, innocently hilarious, and as wholesome as an ocean

breeze. Morbidity and introspection could not persist in an atmosphere

so genially youthful. Phyllis never thought once of Cyril Adair, and

flirted outrageously with Sam Hargreaves, convulsing the sparrows by

sharing his ice-cream spoon. Ordinarily quiet and backward, and even a

little disdainful, she showed herself in wild spirits that night, and

her audacity, humor and gaiety were irresistible.

It was very discouraging, after a night's sleep, as untroubled as a

babe's, to awaken again with a dull ache within her, and to discover,

with hopeless despondency, that she was not cured at all. Alas for the

girlish armor she had striven so hard to put about her--Mr. Van Suydam,

Sam Hargreaves, the bitter, ugly things she had said to herself, the

defiant resolutions. Where was that pride she had stung to fury? Where

was that sense of caste which yesterday had seemed so peremptory?

The morning found her bereft of everything, wretched, defenseless, with

no longer even the will to fly. She was under the spell once more, and

powerless to throw it off. Her whole prepossession was to see Adair

again, cost what it might. Nothing else mattered. She was mad,

infatuated, contemptible to herself--but she could only be appeased by

the sight of him. Yet how was it possible? How could she contrive it?

She could not well ask Mrs. Beekman a second time. That any one should

suspect her secret was intolerable--she would rather have died. The

circle of her girl friends was too small to arrange another

theater-party without submitting herself to unbearable innuendoes and

home-thrusts. Those young women had a preternatural instinct for

detecting the dawn of love. In other things they might be stupid and

blind, but for this they were as watchful as hawks, and as merciless as

only twenty can be. What of her admirers then--Mr. Van Suydam, say, or

good-natured, fat Sam? But they could be very sharp, too--and besides,

she could not be so forward as to seek an invitation. Young girls in

Carthage had a great deal of liberty--but it had its limits. Perhaps

she could take one of the house-maids with her to the matinee--it was

Saturday and the piece was given twice. But this would appear queer,

especially if it reached her father.

There seemed nothing for it but to dress very plainly and go by herself.

It was something to remember that matinees practically existed for women

only--though attending one alone was unheard of in Phyllis' set. It was

less a social law than a sort of fact. Girls went to matinees in pairs

apparently--always had--and apparently always would. "Who did you go

with, my dear?" was an inevitable question. Well, if necessary, one

could meet that with a fib; and if one were found out, it was no great

crime after all--but rather a mild escapade that a blush could condone.

Of course a box was out of the question. She could not sit solitary in

a box for the whole house to gape at. But there was nothing to prevent

her buying two orchestra seats, so that any one recognizing her might

draw a natural deduction. An adjoining empty seat was almost a

chaperon, besides permitting her to widen her distance from an

unpleasant neighbor. If there should be two unpleasant neighbors, she

could always rise and walk out.

At two she was passing the Thalia Theater with an air of well-feigned

unconcern, though her steps grew slower, and she stole quick frightened

glances at the bustling entrance. She felt the need of such a

preliminary survey before she could screw her courage up to the point of

joining the in-going throng, who by daylight looked so depressingly

dingy and common that she was fairly daunted by the sight of them. Even

in the plainest clothes she possessed, she felt that she would be

noticeable among people like that, and this was brought home to her the

more by the impudent stare of several young men, who parted, none too

politely, for her to pass. They knew she had no business there alone;

that she belonged to another world; and there was speculation, as well

as forward admiration, in the looks they cast at her. She felt they had

somehow divined her hesitating purpose, and were grinning at her

humiliation. She quickened her pace, and got by with fiercely flaming

cheeks, and a desolating sense of failure.

But the desire was so overmastering that after a few minutes she turned,

and again coerced her reluctant feet. Impudent young men could do her

no harm. What a coward she had been to let them disconcert her. She

would put down her sixty cents, and enter boldly, telling herself she

was a factory girl, whose young man happened to be late. She might even

leave the second ticket at the box-office with the phantom's name on

it--though no, that would mean too much talking, and she distrusted her

voice. But, anyhow, nothing was going to keep her out of the theater.

Didn't soldiers walk tip to breastworks, bristling with guns and

cannons--whole rows of them, with probably a very similar shakiness in

their legs? She would advance on that box-office in the same

spirit--right, left, right, left--rubadub, rubadub--with sixty cents in

her hot little hand.

She had scarcely reached the outskirts of the crowd when she suddenly

heard her name called aloud. It went through her like a knife, and she

hardly dared turn her guilty head. There, beside the curb, in a big

automobile, was Mr. Van Suydam, with a party of women in veils and furs,

all signaling to her. There ensued an animated conversation. Where was

she going? Why shouldn't she jump in with them? Mr. Van Suydam would

sit on the floor of the tonneau, and give her his place. They were so

insistent that it was not easy to refuse. She fibbed manfully, and

invented pressing engagements.... At last they rolled off, waving their

hands....

But this chance meeting cost her all the poor courage she possessed.

Why, she could not explain to herself--but it was gone, and there was

nothing for it but to hasten away. She felt she had escaped detection

by a hair; the precious matinee was lost; her eyes smarted with

disappointment and chagrin. She rankled with the injustice of it,

too--the unmerited and unsought disaster that this infatuation really

was. She was so wholly innocent of any blame. She had done

nothing--absolutely nothing--to incur it. If you caught measles or

smallpox every one was sorry for you; it was admittedly a misfortune for

which you were in no way responsible. But if you caught love (she

smiled at her own phrase), it was an unspeakable disgrace! Yet what was

the difference? Did it not lie outside one's self? How unjust it was,

then, to make a criminal of a woman for what was beyond her power to

control; and the exasperating part was that she felt a criminal to

herself!

Her heart was heavy with shame. One instinct made her love

unreasonably; another instinct arrogated the right to criticize with

unsparing venom. What a contradiction! What a cruel heritage from all

those thousands of dead people who had gone to make her body and her

mind with odds and ends of themselves! She had done no harm, yet some

blind, unknown, malignant force was grinding her under its heel. She

understood now why old-fashioned people believed so implicitly in the

devil. It was their crude explanation of the unexplainable.

She locked herself in her room, and impelled by a thought that had been

dancing dizzily in her head, opened her desk, and drew out a sheet of

note-paper. She managed to write: "Dear Mr. Adair"; and then, blushing

crimson, covered her face with her hands, and began to tremble with an

uncontrollable emotion. To continue that letter--to send it--was to

outrage every feeling of modesty within her. Under the circumstances

any letter, however cold or conventional, was an avowal. She might

almost as well write "_je t'adore_" under her photograph, and leave it

at the stage-door. But that blind, unknown, malignant force, after a

moment of respite, again drove her on. She might shiver and blush, but

the compulsion of it was like iron, and she had to obey.

"Dear Mr. Adair," she wrote, "I have seen _Moths_ twice, and may I, a

mere member of the public, and altogether unknown to you, take the great

liberty of expressing my admiration of your wonderful performance?" She

stopped at the last word, and debated it over with herself--quite

coolly, considering the throes she had been in a minute before. No,

"performance" would not do. Bears performed; so did acrobats; it was not

the right word at all.--She took another sheet of paper, and began

again: "Dear Mr. Adair: I have seen _Moths_ twice, and may I, a mere

member of the public, and altogether unknown to you, take the great

liberty of expressing my admiration of your powerful portrayal of a

noble nature struggling against an illicit passion? Nothing I have ever

seen on the stage has moved me so deeply, and though praise from an

absolute stranger may seem little in your eyes, I can not resist the

impulse that makes me write. Trusting you will receive this in the

spirit that prompts it, believe me, in sincere homage, Phyllis Ladd."

She read it, and re-read it till the words lost all meaning. What would

he think of it? What sort of person would it conjure up to him? The

hand, and the paper, and the engraved address all denoted refinement and

good taste. It would be quite evident to him that she was a lady, with

a social position of the best--that is, if he knew what Chestnut Avenue

meant in Carthage, and especially such a number as 214. But there was

nothing to show that she was young, or unmarried--or--or--good-looking.

The letter might just as well have been written by a matron of fifty.

If only she could have added "aged twenty-one, and generally considered

a very pretty woman." She would have liked him to know that, even if

she were never to see him again; would have liked to tantalize his

curiosity in regard to the unknown Phyllis Ladd whose name was signed at

the end.--Though he probably received bushels of notes. All actors were

said to. And being a man he would probably like some of the warmer ones

better--those from frankly adoring shop-girls, hampered neither by

social position nor backwardness. Hers would be pushed to one side, and

never thought of again. Oh, the little fool she was to send it! What

could come of it but shame, and good Heavens, hadn't she had enough of

that already?

But undeterred, and wilful in spite of everything, she addressed an

envelope, folded her letter inside it, and went out to drop it herself

into the box. As it slipped from her fingers she felt an intense

pleasure in her daring. It was only a coward who took no risks. There

was her letter in the box gone beyond retaking. For better or worse,

for good or evil, it had started on its road, and let come what might.

*CHAPTER IX*

The next morning, towards noon, Cyril Adair was lounging over the bar of

the Good Fellows' Grotto, with one well-shod foot perched on the metal

rest below. Before him was a Martini cocktail, and the admiring,

deferential face of Larry, the bar-keeper. Adair stood the scrutiny of

daylight better than most actors. Late hours, dissipation and

grease-paint had not impaired a fine and ruddy skin that the morning

razor left as fresh as a boy's. His brown eyes were clear, and there

was about him an air of unassailable health that was enhanced by broad

shoulders, a neck as firm as any ever cut from Greek marble, and a

finely-swelling chest--the physique, in fact, of what he had some

pretensions to be--a good, welter-weight boxer. His skill in this

direction was well known, and his readiness when tipsy to exercise it on

any one unfortunate enough to offend him, was one of the scandals of his

stormy and scandalous life. His engagements, nine times out of ten, had

the knack of ending in the police court, with raw beefsteak for the

plaintiff's eye, and the option of "seven day's hard" for the uncontrite

defendant. Even when stark sober--and to do him justice he drank only

in fits and starts, with long intermissions between--there was something

subtly formidable in the man, and people instinctively made way for him,

and treated him with a respect verging on fear.

He was over-dressed in what was the last accentuation of the prevailing

fashion--with far too much braided cuff, with far too startling a

waistcoat, with far too extravagant a tie and pin--and worse than

anything, wore them all with assertiveness and self-complacency. Though

his manners were good (when he liked,) and his address agreeable, and

even ingratiating, he was too showy, too self-satisfied, too elaborately

at ease, and his assurance seemed to rest, not on the conventional

groundwork of birth and breeding, but rather on his power and will to

knock you through the door if he cared to take the trouble.

Of course, he was profoundly ignorant, knowing nothing, reading little,

his life bounded by the footlights on one side, and the stage-door on

the other--and like all such men perpetually nervous lest he should be

found out. His inherent ability was enormous--as enormous as his

vanity. He had fought his way up from nothing--from the muddy streets

in which he had sold papers, and begged, and starved, his whole boyhood

long. He was full of instincts that had never had the chance of

becoming anything more--instincts, which, if cultivated, might have made

him a very different man. He was passionately fond of bad music;

delighted in the only pictures he knew, those in hotels and saloons; he

had, stored away in a memory that never forgot anything, half the plays

of Shakespeare, and thousands of lines of trashy verse. A savage, in

fact, in the midst of our civilization, which, after trying to grind him

into powder, and denying him everything, was unjust enough to despise

him heartily for what he had made of himself unaided. Could he have

refrained from taking offense at trifles, and from punching people's

heads, he could easily have retained the high place he had once held on

the New York stage. He had no one to thank but himself if he were now

touring the country in a fifty-class company, with an enemy in every

manager who had ever employed him. He had a strong, unusual talent. In

the delineation of somber and misunderstood natures, contradictory,

pent-up, heroic--the out and out bad man with a spark of good--he was

admitted by metropolitan critics to have no equal in America. Others

copied him slavishly and made successes, while he, their inspiration and

their model, remained comparatively unknown. There were times when he

felt very badly about it, but a pretty face and a provocative petticoat

could always divert his attention. Needless to say he had not to look

far to find either.

"Larry," he asked nonchalantly, "do you know any people in Carthage here

named Ladd?"

"I don't believe I do, Mr. Adair," returned Larry, scratching his head.

"Leastways, none except Robert T. R. Ladd, the railroad president."

Larry was unable to conceive that this mighty name could possibly have

any bearing on Adair's question. "No, I don't believe I do."

"Oh, the railroad president? Any family?"

"Just one daughter."

"Well, go on--tell me about her."

"Why, there isn't much to say, except people call her the prettiest girl

in Carthage--but then they always say that of a millionaire's

daughter--Emma Satterlee would turn the milk sour, and yet in the

society notes--"

"Did you ever see her?--No, no, I don't mean that one--the railroad

man's--the Ladd girl?"

"Yes, I saw her onst in a church fair. She hit _me_ all right. Slender

brunette, very aristocracy, with the kind of eyes that if you're _fond_

of brunettes--seem like--"

"How old is she?"

"Hell, how do I know! Twenty--twenty-one--something around there. Just

a girl."

"And the prettiest one in Carthage?" repeated Adair, sipping his

cocktail as though the description pleased him.

"Well, I would leave _my_ happy home for her," said Larry, with a grin.

"Pretty--I'd say she was pretty--pretty enough to eat."

"Lives out Chestnut Avenue way, doesn't she?"

"Yes, in the stone house that's set back in a kind of park, with a big

gate in front and a driveway. The Ladds' are at the top of the top, you

know. My, I felt I was breaking into the swell bunch myself when she

told my fortune for a dollar. If I had had the nerve and the money I

guess she would be telling it yet! And she smiled so sweet when she

took it, like I was as good as anybody. God forgive me if I seem to

talk disrespectful of her, for she's a lady through and through, and I

knew it even if I was only a bar-keeper."

"Toss you for the drinks," said Adair, draining his glass. "Hand over

the box, Larry."

"Sure Mike," said the bar-keeper rattling the dice.

Adair encountered an acquaintance, a commercial traveler named Hellman,

on the sidewalk outside.

"Just the fellow I wanted to see," he cried. "Hellman, there is such a

word as temerity, isn't there?"

"Bet your life," said Hellman. "The temerity of my playing _Hamlet_,

you know--the temerity of you thinking yourself a better-looking man

than I am--the temerity of--"

"And you spell it t-e-m-e-r-i-t-y?" interrupted Adair.

"Yes, why?"

"Oh, I used it in a letter I was writing to a girl, and I didn't want to

mail it till I was sure." He showed the envelope in his hand, with his

thumb hiding the name.

"Always at it," said Hellman, with an unpleasant laugh. "Who are you

throwing the handkerchief at now?"

"The prettiest girl in Carthage," returned Adair genially. "There's a

box over there--let's drop it in."

And together they crossed the street, and sent the letter on its way.

It was to Phyllis, begging in warm but respectful language for the

privilege of calling on her.

*CHAPTER X*

"Dear Mr. Adair: I hardly expected you to reply to my note, nor could I

have thought it would please you so much as you say. Indeed, I hope you

will not misjudge it--or me--for it was written on the same impulse that

makes one applaud in the theater itself, and with no ulterior idea.

Frankly, I do not think I ought to ask you to call--the circumstances

are so peculiar--and it is all so against the conventionalities. In

Washington or New York it would be different, but this little

place--like all little places--is strait-laced beyond belief. It will

be my loss more than yours, which perhaps will be some consolation to

you. Yet it seems too stupid to say no--that is, if you really _do_

want to come--and I am going to ask you after all. Surely a little talk

over a cup of tea to-morrow at five ought not to arrest the stars in

their courses, or bring down the pillars of the universe on our

unfortunate heads? And if any one should come in, we might say that we

had met before in Washington? That would place our acquaintance on a

more correct footing, and save me, at least, the possibility of

embarrassment. Is this asking too much of you? Sincerely yours,

Phyllis Ladd."

*CHAPTER XI*

There are men who pursue women with a skill, zest and pertinacity that

others do bears or tigers, and with very much the same hardihood and

delight. In the rich preserves of the world, so well stocked with youth

and beauty, they find an unending enjoyment, and an unending occupation.

No sooner have they brought down one, and beheld her bleeding and

stricken at their feet, than they are up and off, with another notch on

their gun, and fresh ardor in their hearts. They are debarred from

taking the tangible trophies of skin and head; a slipper, a glove, a

bundle of letters are often all they have to show; but within them wells

the satisfaction of the hunter who has made a "kill."

Amongst this race of sportsmen there were few hardier or more daring

than Cyril Adair. That the game was cruel or cowardly had never

occurred to him. The women he knew--all of the lower class--frequently

played their side of it with eyes wide open, and ran--not to escape--but

with the full intention of being caught. This is not urged in his

extenuation. Often he was not aware of the subterfuge. Women to him

were but prey, and in more venerable times he would have waylaid any

lady he favored, with a club.

Behold him in immaculate afternoon costume, striding along Chestnut

Avenue--boutonniere, silk-hat, cane, new suede gloves, etc.--a devil of

a fellow in his own estimation, with an air and a swagger that reflected

his profound contentment with himself. He had never gone a-hunting

before in such a splendid wood. The thought that he was actually going

to invade one of those imposing mansions made his pulses leap. How big

they were, how aristocratic! What incomes they represented! What

mysteries of ease and luxury lay hidden behind those stately windows!

He was tremendously stirred; tremendously excited. He swelled with

self-complacency. He was hardly over thirty, he was handsome, he was a

genius--and the women loved him!

A man-servant admitted him. Yes, Miss Ladd was expecting him. His hat

and cane were taken, while he gazed, somewhat daunted, at the immense

hall in which he found himself. He had a confused sense of tapestries;

of stone bas-reliefs very worn and old; of oriental rugs; of

strange-looking, moldy chairs, straight-backed and carved, with massive

arms, on which there was still the fading gilt of the fifteenth

century.--He was led through another room of a similar cold and spacious

magnificence, and then up-stairs to the drawing-room. Here he was left,

while the man departed to inform his mistress of the visitor's arrival.

The elegance and beauty with which Adair found himself surrounded fairly

took his breath away. His only standard was that of fashionable hotels,

yet here was something that made the splendors of the Waldorf or the

Auditorium seem suddenly tawdry in comparison. His instinctive good

taste was ravished by the old Venetian brocades, the rich dark pictures,

the Sheriton furniture, the harmonious blending of all these, and so

many other half-seen and half-comprehended things into a gracious and

exquisite whole. Near him was the table set out for tea, with silver

that it was a joy to look at; and about the little island it made in the

vastness of the room was a wealth of red roses, marking as it were the

boundaries of coziness and intimacy.

Adair's complacency was not proof against such aristocratic and

undreamed of surroundings. His exultation fell, and pangs of self-pity

assailed him. What was he but a child of the gutter, an outcast--a man

full of yearning for the unattainable, who had been starved and kept

down by merciless circumstances? Such swift transitions were not

unusual in his peculiar and contradictory nature. After all, he was an

artist, even if often a brute and a fool, and somewhere within him, very

much overlaid and shrouded, there was a spark of the divine fire. Yes,

he said to himself, he was coarse and common, and ignorant and

unrefined. He had done much with himself; he had achieved wonders,

considering the handicap he had always been under--but admitting all

that, what enormous deficiencies still remained! How ill at ease he was

in such a room as this! How hard he would have to strive to hide his

lack of knowledge and breeding! He had almost wished he had never come.

In such a place he was an intruder--a boor--condemned to blunder through

a part with no author's lines to help him.

As it turned out, nothing could have been more fortunate for him than

this dejected mood. First appearances are everything, and he might

easily--so easily--have made an intolerable impression. Indeed, in the

cold fit, almost the terror, succeeding the impulse that had caused

Phyllis to invite him, she was prepared to find him forward, and perhaps

eager to take advantage of her recklessness, and misconstrue it. At the

hint of such a thing she would have frozen; and the fact that she would

only have had herself to blame would have doubled her humiliation. A

woman who makes the first advances to a man is more capable than any of

sudden revulsions. Her pride is on edge, and morbidly apprehensive.

But the grave, quiet, handsome man awaiting her dispelled these fancies

as soon as their eyes had met. He thanked her with an embarrassment not

unbecoming under the circumstances, for the unconventionality that had

given him the privilege of meeting her. His smile as he said this was

charming; his respect and courtesy beyond reproach; that other nature of

his, the artist-nature, so quick and responsive in its intuitions warned

him to put a guard on himself. Besides, if the room had over-awed him,

how much more overpowering was the apparition of this slim and radiant

woman, the mistress of all this splendor, whose pure dark face filled

him with an indefinable sense of another world in which he was but a

clod. Though he was a connoisseur of pretty women, and had possessed in

his disreputable past many of greater physical beauty than Phyllis, not

one of them had had the least pretensions to what in her appealed to him

so strongly--distinction. From her glossy hair to the tips of her

little feet, she was the embodiment of race, of high-breeding and high

spirit; it was as marked in her girlish beauty as in any thoroughbred.

She was the child of those who had admitted no superior save their God

and their King.

Adair found himself bereft of all his assurance. The professional

besieger, accustomed to advance with sureness and precision,

unaccountably held back, hardly knowing why his heart had turned to

water. It seemed presumptuous enough that he should even talk on terms

of equality with one so immeasurably above him. His humility was

painful. He stammered. He colored. His hand trembled on his tea-cup

as he strove to keep alive a conversation of the usual commonplaces.

"Miss Ladd," he said suddenly, "you mustn't think I am a

gentleman--because I am not. I am not accustomed to this kind of thing;

you are the first lady I--I've ever met." He arrested the expostulation

on her lips and went on hurriedly. "It's much better to tell you that

right off. I don't know those books you speak of; I don't know anything

very much; I am awfully uncultivated and ignorant. There, I have said

it! It will make me feel more comfortable, and it will be lots better

than pretending I am something I'm not."

"You are a great actor, Mr. Adair."

"My God," he returned with simplicity, "sometimes I'm not so sure that I

am." Then he burst into laughter at his own artlessness--a delightful

laugh, contagious and musical, that no one could hear without liking him

the better. Phyllis laughed, too, and somehow with it the ice seemed

broken, and constraint disappeared. "Miss Ladd," he went on, "people

like you, and places like this, are the realities which we try so hard

to copy with our poor theatrical pasteboard and calico. I used to hate

Mansfield for saying we ought to work as servants amongst--well, people

we couldn't meet in any other way, and yet the ones we are audacious

enough to represent on the stage. He meant it as an insult, of

course--but he was right in some ways. Just seeing you pour tea makes

me feel how badly we do even that!"

Phyllis, naturally, was touched and flattered.

"Why, we just pour it anyhow," she said, smiling.

"Precisely," exclaimed Adair, "and now let me do it our way!" He drew

nearer the table, put his hand to the tea-pot, and grimacing at an

imaginary company, proceeded to pour and pass several imaginary cups

with a grotesque affectation of grace and elegance. "Two lumps, dear

Sir James?--Patricia, the Bishop is famishing for some almond cake.--Oh,

mercy me, and what's become of the Dook?" It was an admirable bit of

mimicry, and so gay and captivating in its satire that Phyllis thought

she had never seen anything so clever. She laughed with delight and

clapped her hands.

"Though you shock me, too," she protested. "Correze mustn't do things

like that--it isn't in keeping."

"Correze?"

"Yes, you are not Mr. Adair to me, though I know that's your name, and I

have invited you. I can only think of you as Correze."

"Was I as good as that in the part?"

"I told you what I thought of it in my note."

"And you really meant it?"

"Would I have written if I hadn't? It was an awful thing to do. I

can't think of it without burning with shame.--How can you say you are

not a gentleman, Mr. Adair? Only a gentleman would have put the right

construction on it."

He was questioning her face with his fine eyes. His intuition again

stood him in good stead. This was not provocation, it was innocence.

To himself he said: "No, it is impossible."

Then aloud: "It was the only construction--and I felt childishly

pleased. We're great children, you know, we actors; and after all, are

we to blame for liking approbation? Just think a moment. How close it

all is to the ridiculous, our standing up there and declaiming all sorts

of red-hot emotions, with painted paper on one side, and bald-headed

fiddlers on the other! Doesn't it sometimes come over a man--sort of

shoot through him--the feeling of what a monkey-spectacle he is making

of himself? _You_ go ahead and play Lady Macbeth in a nightgown; rage

and strut before those cold, scornful faces. Then let one amongst them

cry: 'Bravo, bravo,' and give you a hand!--My Lord, you'd give him your

watch and chain, your diamond pin--don't you see, he returns you your

self-respect, makes your work worth the doing?--and that's what your

note did for me, Miss Ladd."

"Oh, Mr. Adair, don't talk to me about the cold, scornful faces at your

performance. I was there twice, and saw how they called you out!"

"Miss Ladd," he said, his strong, handsome, eager face whimsically

alight, "let me confess the honest truth--an actor simply can't have

enough admiration!"

"You worry me for fear I didn't make mine warm enough! For really, Mr.

Adair, in all sincerity, I--"

"Well, go on."

"Bravo, bravo!" Her lips parted mockingly over her white teeth as she

pretended to applaud madly. It was the daintiest teasing, and more

charming in the intimacy it implied than any downright praise. Adair

glowed with a pleasure so honest and boyish that Phyllis might be

forgiven for not suspecting the baser depths he hid so well.

"I'm a conceited ass," he admitted, "and after all, isn't it enough to

turn a man's head to be here with you, and feel I owe it to the ginger I

put into Correze? Most people get their friends by introductions and

all that, but I just snatched you out of a whole theater full of

strangers. For you are my friend, aren't you, Miss Ladd?"

"Yes, Correze."

"You'll be making me jealous of the chap," he cried running his hands

through his hair with make-believe exasperation. "I think he is a good

deal of a whining humbug myself, and the sly way he throws bouquets at

himself is disgusting. Miss Ladd, I am ever so much nicer than he

is--really I am--though I see I shall never be able to convince you."

"No reason why you shouldn't try."

"Perhaps I am ashamed to," he returned, with an intensity of expression

that became him well. "You find me in a wretched little theater, the

cheapest of cheap stars--the hoodlum's pet, the shop-girl's dream--and

how can it help coloring your whole idea of me? You admire my Correze,

but for me myself how can you have anything but contempt? No,

no--listen--it's true--and the more you knew of my history the more

contemptuous you'd be. I've been rated very high; I've had every chance

in the world; I've played with the biggest kind of people,

and--succeeded. Yet I have always been the dog who hanged himself. No,

there is no mystery about it--there never is with a man who is

sinking--a man of ability. It's his own fault every time--every, every

time."

His earnestness made Phyllis thrill. Adair was playing his best

role--himself, and playing it with the fire and eloquence he could

always bring to it. His voice, incomparable in the beauty and range of

its tones, was never so effective as when tinged with emotion. Nothing

was more manly, more sincere, more moving. It rose and fell in cadences

that lingered in the ear after the words themselves were

spoken--veritable music, affecting not only the listener, but the

musician as well. Under the spell of it he now found himself tempted

into strange confidences. Never before had he spoken of his childhood

and early life except to lie, to brag, to romance. Yet here, to his own

wonder, and impelled by he hardly knew what, he was unbosoming himself

of the whole ignoble truth. That instinct of his, so often wiser than

himself, so diabolically helpful, was showing him the right road. Had

Phyllis been some little milliner this would have been no road at all;

such a one would have been too familiar with the seamy side of life to

find any glamour in the tale; such a one would have preferred the bogus

palaces and bogus splendors his instinct would then have indicated.

Phyllis' intelligence was too keen thus to be deceived; even genuine

splendors would have interested her less than this pitiful story of the

slums; it not only touched her sensibility to the quick, but enhanced

Adair in her tender and sympathetic eyes.

His father had been an Englishman--a remittance man named Mayne--George

Cyril Augustus Fitzroy Mayne. Whether his pretensions were justified or

not, and they were inordinate, including "Wales" and "Cambridge," he was

beyond all doubt a gentleman, with grand manners, a back like a ramrod,

and a curt, military directness in speaking. He used to say "dammy";

was fond of alluding to himself as "an old Hussar"; was wont to remark

that a gentleman could always be told by his hat and his boots; and

once, when attacked on the street, had shown extraordinary courage and

adroitness in defending himself with a light cane. This was about all

Adair remembered of him, except that he drank hard; had recurring fits

of delirium tremens in which he raged and fought like a wild beast; and

finally, dying in a hospital ward, was buried like a dog in the Potter's

Field.

Adair's mother had been an Irish peasant girl. She was kind and

warm-hearted, and spoke with a brogue; she was always laughing and

singing, even under circumstances when a right-minded person would have

thrown himself into the East River. She drank, too. Everybody drank.

He used to be given sips from her glass, and knew what it was to be

tipsy before he was eight. It was about that time he began to sell

papers on the streets, for his father was dead, and his mother-- Well,

he wouldn't go into that. But in her way she had always been good to

him. She wouldn't let the men beat him. When she was sent to the

Island for the second time he thought his little heart would break. She

didn't last long after that. How could she, gone as she was in

consumption, and drinking like a fish? Oh, what a hell it was--what a

hell! His pennies were all his own now, though he often had to fight to

keep them. He was always fighting to keep them--first in desperation,

then by degrees with some coolness and science. The bigger boys coached

him; egged him on; he became a regular little bantam. They'd make up a

purse--a quarter or something--and set two little wretches to pounding

each other. Anything was allowed, you know--biting, kicking, scrooging,

hair pulling! There was only one rule, and that was to win.

Well, so it went on, till he was sixteen or thereabouts, the toughest

young tough you could see on Avenue A. He was nicknamed Fighting Joe,

and they used to get up cheap little matches for him in the back rooms

of saloons--real fighting, stripped to the waist, and four ounce gloves.

His only ambition was to get into the prize ring, and in his dreams at

night he would see his picture in the _Police Gazette_. Then the

Settlement workers came--a pale-looking outfit, with Mission furniture

and leaflets. They were regarded as a great infliction--as an insult to

an honest tough neighborhood. It was the correct thing to break their

windows, and lambast their followers. Fighting Joe took a prominent

part in this righteous task. What did it matter that several of them

were women? What did such brutes care for that? If ever there was a

young savage on earth it was he.

One of the women was tall and pretty--not very young--twenty-eight or

twenty-nine perhaps. Miss Cooke, she was--Miss Grace Cooke. She would

never see him but what she would turn white with anger and fear. You

see, everything was put down to him, all that he did do, and all that he

didn't--and totaling up both sides of it, it ran to a lot. He couldn't

begin to remember the caddish things he was answerable for; he didn't

care to try; my God, what a brute he was, what a brute! And yet he

admired this woman; guessed he was in love with her in a calfy way; took

every chance to see her--and insult her! Of course, there wasn't the

faintest reason why he shouldn't have walked into the Settlement, said

he was sorry, and have been received with open arms. But people like

that can't say they are sorry--they don't know how. Besides, the social

disgrace of it would have been awful! Joe Mayne running with that

gospel gang! The thing was incredible.

Late one winter afternoon he saw her in the midst of a crowd of

hobbledehoys, hooting and jeering at her. She was walking as fast as

she dared, looking straight ahead of her, and pretending not to notice.

It was dark; the street was empty; and if she was scared she had mighty

good reason for it. One of the fellows lurched against her, and down

she went on the sidewalk; as she tried to rise another rolled her over,

and tore her hat off. Of course, it was a great joke, and they were all

roaring with laughter. Then it was he came running up--Joe--and when

she saw him she gave him a look he would remember to the day he died.

Oh, the terror of it--the shrinking! But he smashed one on the jaw,

caught another between the eyes, and lifted her up, half fainting as she

was, and tried with his dirty hands to smooth her hair, and put on her

hat again.--That's how they came to be friends; that's how he came to be

landed in the Settlement; everything real in his life dated from that

moment.

He was with them two years; with them as long as she lived. There

wasn't a good quality in him that she didn't put there. On census

forms, and such things, when asked his religion, he always felt inclined

to write: "Grace Cooke." By God, it would have been the truth. She was

his religion yet, far though he had fallen away from it--oh, so far--!

She stood for everything that was good and beautiful and noble. It

wasn't love. It was beyond all love. She was a Madonna, a saint, and he

had had the privilege to kneel at her feet--a Caliban of the slums, a

tough, a hoodlum, unworthy to touch the hem of her garment. Then she

died, and that was the end of it. He didn't care for the Settlement

after she died. He got a job as chucker-out in a low place called the

Crystal Palace. There was a dais, and performers used to sing. He

thought he would try it himself, and made quite a hit. Then he began

giving recitations--_The Fi-erman's Dream_, and that kind of thing, and

they caught on. He owed it all to Grace Cooke, who had taught him to

read--(not ordinary reading, he had picked that up somehow for

himself)--but real reading, dramatic reading. From this it was a step to

monologues in costume, and from that to the vaudeville stage.

Sitting there in the growing dusk, and in an atmosphere so conducive to

confidence, Adair unfolded his early life with a tender, persuasive and

charming humor. He often laughed; often he was silent; again and again

he would look up, and seek Phyllis' eyes in a lingering glance as though

to assure himself of her interest. For once in his life he was shy; the

slim, pretty hand he gazed at so covetously was safe from any touch of

his; something told him that the least familiarity would cost him all he

had gained.--It was not policy on his part. He was too humble to think

of policy. To be with her alone seemed presumption enough--to feel her

sympathy, her friendship. Not a word or act of his should mar that

wonderful day.

He rose, apologizing for having stayed so long.

"It is your own fault," he said, holding out his hand, "you've made me

forget everything."

"I'm afraid it was the other way round, Mr. Adair," she returned, trying

to smile, and thankful for the darkness that veiled her face.

"Am I ever to see you again?"

She shook her head.

"You mean it is good-by, Miss Ladd?"

"Yes, it's good-by."

Her hand was in his, so soft, so motionless, yet somehow so reluctant to

leave his grasp. His head was turning; he could not go like that. No,

no, he could not. He suddenly pulled her towards him, and caught her in

his arms, kissing her hair, her cheek, her mouth, with a passion that

cared little whether she was crushed or smothered in his embrace. Good

God, what was he doing? After holding back so long, what diabolical

folly had tempted him to this? Yet she had said it was good-by. He had

nothing to lose. Let her pant and struggle and tremble, he would take

tribute of her beauty nevertheless, however much she was insulted or

outraged. His lips were wet with her tears. He forced her to receive

his kisses on her mouth, exulting in the strength that allowed her no

escape. But was she resisting him? A tremor of maddening delight shot

through his frame. Her mouth was seeking his, and he heard her

whispering breathlessly: "I love you, I love you, I love you!"

It was so unexpected, so surprising, that he let her free. She sank

into a chair and covered her burning face, repelling him as he threw

himself on his knees beside her.

"If you don't go, I shall never forgive you!" she exclaimed. "Haven't

you shamed me enough? Do you want me to die of humiliation?" Then, from

the heart, came the woman's cry: "What will you think of me?"

That instinct, which in Adair took the place of conscience, honor, all

the conventional virtues and restraints, again came steadfastly to his

help. He bent down; kissed her on the brow; and getting his hat and

cane abruptly took his departure.

*CHAPTER XII*

The dictionary with unhesitating positiveness informs us that

infatuation is "unreasonable or extravagant passion." But are there not

those who have stayed unreasonably impassioned to the end, those whose

earthly parting has been but at the grave? And does not love of the

admitted, recognized, unextravagant, very much approved,

bless-you-my-children kind only too often ring out its knell in the

divorce court? That Phyllis was infatuated with this good-looking scamp

was beyond question, if by that one meant his physical attraction held

her as much a slave as any of our ravished ancestors in the Vikings'

boats. Her will was gone; her judgment; all her nicely-balanced

highly-critical young-ladyism. It was horrifying to her to realize it;

her powerlessness was at once an agony and a delight; it came over her,

with a frightening sense of injustice, that a woman's happiness lies

beyond herself, and is for ever dependent on some man.

Naturally she sat down, and wrote him a sad little letter. He was to

forget everything that had passed, and not misjudge her for an

uncontrollable impulse. Were he to presume upon it, she would not only

die of shame, but would be forced to perceive that her trust had been

misplaced. As a gentleman and a man of honor--and she knew him to be

both--he would understand that it was impossible for them ever to meet

again, and that her good-by was indeed irrevocable. But her good wishes

would always attend him, and she would sign herself, in all sincerity,

his friend, Phyllis Ladd. This done, she waited in a fever of

impatience for his answer, hoping, dreading, tumultuously inconsistent,

hot fits and cold succeeding each other in her troubled and anxious

heart.

It may be imagined how unkindly Adair took her commands. In his large,

straggling hand, and over six sheets of hotel paper he expressed his

energetic dissent. It was a trite letter--flowery and theatrical--her

haunting eyes, the memory of her adorable beauty, the despair of a man

who had found love only to lose it, etc. Had Phyllis been herself it

would have made her smile. Nothing, indeed, could have shown how far she

had traveled on the road of illusion than her acceptance of these

well-worn phrases. The tears sprang to her eyes at the smooth and

nicely-rounded description of his wretchedness; she glowed and thrilled

at the praise of herself, its boldness redeemed by what she ascribed to

a lover's ardor; the pathetic plea for another meeting was irresistible.

It might be unwise; it was sure to be painful; but, after all, it was

his right. He loved her; he bowed to her decision; his life was hard at

best, and now doubly so; what he asked was so little for her to give,

yet to him it was everything--to see her once more before they parted

for ever.

They met this time at the corner of a remote street. He was very pale,

very quiet, and it was not a lie he told her that he had been unable to

sleep for thinking of her. Had she known better what those thoughts

were she would have shrunk from him. But, fortunately or not, she did

not know. She, too, was quiet and pale, and it was with the sense of an

impending fate that she took his arm, and slowly walked with him along

the foot-path. Unconsciously he was more masterful with her, now that

she was away from that daunting house, and that awe-inspiring

drawing-room. The sanctity that had enveloped her there had largely

disappeared. Here was a situation he was used to--a distractingly

pretty girl, a sidewalk rendezvous, and an infatuation that needed but

the right handling to bring it to the proper conclusion.

Yet with everything so plain--and apparently so easy, Adair himself was

in a whirl of strange and new emotions. Something had pierced his

colossal selfishness, and was disturbing him. It was annoying at a time

when he needed all his wits about him, and he resented it as a symptom

of unmanly weakness. One drop of real love in that ocean of sham was

threatening to poison the whole. He did not put it thus concretely. He

only knew that he was uncomfortable, and not rising as he should to the

occasion. Except for that far-away Grace Cooke he had never known a

decent woman. His counterfeit love had been lavished on counterfeit

innocence: and counterfeit purity. Fooling, he had always been fooled.

But this proud and melting young beauty lay outside of all his

experience. Had she defended herself he would have known better how to

attack. But she made no demur when he took her hand and kissed it; she

did not resist, when, after looking up and down the street to see if

they had it to themselves, he caught her boldly in his arms, and crushed

her against himself, murmuring a torrent of words that came so readily

to his practised lips. How radiantly she smiled when he tore off a tiny

corner of her letter, and told her she had to eat it as a punishment.

Her saucy obedience put him in a seventh heaven, and it was with a sort

of ecstasy that he snatched it from her, fearful lest it might do her

harm. That letter, in one sense, had been disposed of almost as soon as

they had met. She had tried, for a moment or two, to adhere to it, and

to make him see the necessity of that good-by. But under the glamour of

his presence she faltered and broke down, and all that was left of the

matter was her incoherent plea for forgiveness. What tenderness she put

into this request! There never could be a good-by between them--never,

never--and her eyes swam with tears at her disloyalty to him.

Both felt an uplifting gaiety and light-heartedness, as she said, in

extenuation of her happy laughter, that they were like people who had

grown rich overnight, for had they not discovered an enormous nugget--a

nugget of love? It had been lying there for any to find, but they had

been the lucky ones! They had a right to be excited, hadn't they? The

only really serious thing was the fact that they might have missed it.

They might have stubbed against it, and passed on--like idiots. She

developed this fantasy with captivating grace and archness, Adair

meanwhile lost in admiration, not only of the delicate fancy that kept

him smiling, but of her varying expressions so revealing of unexpected

charm. She grew prettier and prettier to him--more kissable, more

adorable. He kept forgetting his ulterior purpose in the rapture of

being with her; he forgot his conceit, forgot his role; he was

perilously near being in love. Perhaps he was in love. At any rate,

when he recollected to take advantage of this unconcealed regard for

him--of all this young ardor and innocent passion--the words somehow

would not leave his tongue.

Her sensitive mouth, so responsive to every look of his, the sweet

candor of her eyes, her transparent belief in him--all forbade. There

would be time enough for that; and having made this concession to his

manhood, he straightway put the idea by, dimly realizing to himself that

it was unpleasant to him. It takes a bad man to appreciate and exalt

the best of women; he sees her in such a contrasting light; her baser

sisters give her by relief an angelic brightness. It is not for nothing

that they say the reformed rake makes the best husband. Not that Adair

had gone so far as this, however. He was not reformed, and cold chills

would have run down his back at the horrid prospect; while his own brief

career as a husband had left him with a hatred for the word and the

institution. It was merely a fleeting impulse, stronger for the moment

than he was, and induced by his artist love of beauty, which included

this time in its comprehension, a rare, gracious and exquisite nature.

They were together for nearly two hours, and when they were forced at

last to part it seemed as though only the half had been said. Yet not

for an instant had they ever got near the realities. With Adair these

were consciously avoided. It was one thing to say: "I love you," with

mellow vibrations, and impassioned eyes; quite another to descend to the

practical considerations that might reasonably be expected to follow.

He felt neither in the humor to lie, nor to palter with the ugly truth,

and in a sort of anger dismissed both alternatives. He was intoxicated

with her; she mounted to his brain like wine; he only knew one thing,

that come what might, she should never get away from him. This was all

his dizzy head could hold. The future could take care of itself.

As for Phyllis she was in that rapt state of happiness when a woman can

do nothing but glow and worship. Had not the king descended from his

throne for her? At last was not her long heart-hunger gloriously

appeased? Was she not so possessed with this demigod that all other

sublunary concerns seemed to vanish into insignificance? She walked on

air; she exulted in the memory of his caresses; she was the more

precious to herself now that she was his, now that she belonged to him

so utterly. She hoarded every compliment he had paid her; and wondered,

in delicious doubt, though not altogether unconvinced, whether she could

be, indeed, all that she had seemed to him. As for the deeper questions,

she had the woman's faculty of answering them in formless dreams.

They were settled in a vague, tender and altogether perfect manner.

He--and she--and a billowing bliss on which they floated evermore, hand

pressed in hand, mouth against mouth, in an ineffable and transcendant

content.

Adair, once beyond her influence, was aware of a certain sagging of that

higher nature she had conjured into being. Not that he loved her any

less; he was on fire for her, and his coarse passion was inflamed a

thousandfold by their second meeting. But, as he said to himself, he

had muffed it. He was not the first man to feel a twinge of guilt at

having been _good_. He was a child of his world, of his conditions,

upbringing and environment, and ought not to be blamed over-much--rather

commended for the first faint stirrings of an embryo conscience, which,

if it had died all too soon, was still a spark of grace.

The performance tired him more than usual. He was slack, and could not

get into his part. As a consequence, to offset his disinclination, he

overplayed, and left the theater thoroughly exasperated, and out of

heart. He took supper moodily by himself, and though ordinarily

abstemious--for no one with his complexion could be accused of habitual

excess--he drank high-ball after high-ball with a brutal satisfaction in

fuddling himself. He grew wickeder with every gulp, more cold-blooded

and determined. He would see this thing through, by God. He would take

her with him on the road. She was ripe for it; she was crazy about

him--lady and all, there was the devil in her all right. The nicest

women were the worst when they let themselves go. What a fool he had

been ever to bother with the other kind. He had always been a cheap

fellow, pleased with cheap things--with raddled actresses, and silly

tiresome shop-girls. Here was a little piece that put them all in the

shade; prettier than the prettiest, dewy fresh, with a twist to

everything she said so that it was an endless pleasure to be with her.

She was so quick, so daintily impudent, so finely bred and educated.

God, what an armful! God, what a little mistress for a tired and lonely

man, sick to death of common women!

He reeled up-stairs, half drunk, and sought his room, to sleep the sleep

of perfect health and perfect digestion. Whatever else Adair was, he

was a sound and vigorous human animal, with a constitution of iron. No

dreams disturbed his repose--no spectral finger of remorse pointed at

him. A child could not have lain more peacefully on its cot than he.

It will be asked why he could not Have married Phyllis properly and

honestly? Apart from other considerations was she not the only daughter

of a millionaire father? How did Adair come to overlook this very

obvious advantage, and embark instead on all the troubles and vexations

attending an illicit connection? To answer this question it is

necessary to go back four or five years, and rake up his marriage with

Ruby Raeburn, the dancer. She, too, had been the daughter of a rich

man--Laidlaw Wright, the Michigan lumber king. Adair had thought he was

doing a very good thing for himself. To have a father-in-law who is a

"lumber king" has a pleasant sound. Without knowing exactly how it was

to happen, he looked forward confidently to a flow of dollars in his

direction, either in cash, or vicariously in royal "tips." Surely a

lumber king would take care of his own--and of his own's husband. Ruby

herself had not been above reproach in holding out the bait, and

everybody had congratulated him, or sneered at him for "marrying money."

Alas, for the disillusion that followed. Laidlaw Wright was the

hardest-fisted man on the Lakes, and no bulldog, guarding a lunch

basket, could have shown more formidable fangs than he at any hand

slipping towards his money-bags. Adair learned the sad truth that when

you possess the millionaire's daughter, it does not necessarily follow

that you possess the millionaire. His dead body must too often be

crossed first--and this event, however desirable, can not be unduly

hurried.

And meanness was not the only drawback to Laidlaw Wright's character.

He could spend money as viciously as he withheld it, and make of it a

whip of scorpions for the scourging of sons-in-law. When Adair's

domestic unhappiness reached the acute stage, the cantankerous old

fellow jumped into the ring, snorting battle and destruction. Money was

poured out like water; giants of the bar were retained at enormous fees;

detective bureaus' worked night and day. Adair was shadowed; his door

was burst open at a time of all others when he would have much preferred

to have it stay shut; statutes of which he had never dreamed, lying

hidden and unrepealed in the dark recesses of the law, were evoked

against him with startling effect. He was sent to prison in default of

the bail he could not give. Then after eighteen weary days, which the

giants of the bar would willingly have made eighteen months, he was

tried, and his case dismissed. But as he left the court room he was

again arrested. That implacable old man, with his cohorts of lawyers

and detectives, had furbished up fresh charges. The indictment was a

mile long. Again there was bail, default, and gnashing of teeth in a

stinking cell. Of course, he had legal remedies, but these involved

legal tender. He had spent his last dollar; legal remedies had to be

paid for, and he had nothing to pay with. A wealthy and vindictive man,

if he choose to do so, and does not grudge the outlay, can make our

judicial machinery into a most serviceable steam-roller.

After the divorce, when all seemed settled and done with, there were

alimony bomb-shells to be contended with. This tribute on his

son-in-law's freedom became the obsessing prepossession of Laidlaw

Wright's life. He subordinated the lumber business to collecting this

forty-five dollars a week, until it became Adair's fixed and unalterable

purpose to escape payment by every means in his power. North or South,

East or West, the battle went on. Injunctions, contempt proceedings,

printed forms in immense envelopes, beginning with the familiar phrase:

"You are cited to appear before Judge So-and-So to show cause why that

you, etc., etc."--rained on Adair's head wherever Saturday night might

find it. Incidentally eyes were blackened; blood streamed on box-office

floors; bandaged functionaries and limping attorneys cried for vengeance

in shabby court rooms--and not only cried, but often got it, in a

heaping measure. And afar, the lumber king, like a horrible spider whose

net covered the country from sea to sea, kept the wires busy and hot

with hate.

When Ruby was killed in what was called "the hansom cab mystery"--an

ugly affair that was never really cleared up--the old man probably

mourned less for her than for the loss of his cheerless hobby--the

persecution of Cyril Adair. However wealthy you are, you can not move

the legal steam-roller without at least a pretense of justification; and

now the justification lay with Ruby Raeburn in the grave, as stilled as

her dancing feet, as finished and done with as the life that had gone

out so tragically.

It had all left Adair with a profound hatred of marriage, and a still

profounder hatred of rich fathers-in-law. The one suggested jail,

mortification, alimony, raided box-offices, large and determined

individuals bursting in your doors; the other an unrelenting monster,

pitiless and crafty, trailing after you night and day, like a

bloodhound. There was no glamour to Adair in Robert Ladd's millions,

but rather a sinister and awful significance; and as for marrying

Phyllis, and putting his head again in that noose--who that had been in

hell ever willingly went back to it? The very thought made him shudder.

He might be weak and impulsive, and easily swept off his feet by her

damned beauty--but he wasn't as weak and impulsive as _that_!

*CHAPTER XIII*

As had been previously arranged he met her the next day at the same

place. He had come in a closed cab, which he had left a couple of

blocks away, and he insisted on their returning to it, and having out

their talk in its shelter. Phyllis demurred at first; it wore an

unpleasant look to her; it was not fear exactly--she trusted Adair too

absolutely for that--but rather a disinclination in which good taste

played the bigger part. It seemed to her low, and discreditable, and

unworthy. Her love was too fine a thing, and too dear to her, to have

it associated with dingy cushions, a dirty floor carpet, and the

vulgarizing secrecy of that shabby interior. It took some persuasion to

get her to consent; and though she did so at last under the spell of

that irresistible voice, it was with a sudden quenching of the

brightness that had illumined her heart.

But it never occurred to her to think the worse of Adair. A man could

not be expected to have the sensitiveness of a woman. His love was like

himself, robust and masterful; he fastened a string to your little

collar, and dragged you after him with a splendid insouciance. Every

one of your four little paws might be holding back; you might be

whimpering most pitifully, but if he wanted a closed cab, in you had to

go, whether you liked it or not. Not that you would have had him

different; it was sweet to submit; and if he were big, and direct, and

unshakable--so, too, was his love.

They drove slowly through the suburban streets, locked in each other's

arms. He kissed her back to happiness, to rapture, the discreet

twilight screening them in its shadow. Her qualms disappeared, her

reluctance, her shrinkings from the ugliness and commonness of that

horrid old box. Nothing mattered so long as they could be together, and

in her exaltation she even suffered some pangs of remorse for having

resisted his pleadings at all.--She had never cared for children, but as

her arms were clasped about his neck, she felt a welling tenderness for

him that opened her understanding to the love of a mother for her

babe--the divine compassion, the exquisite desire to protect and shield,

the willingness, if need be, to die herself rather than to have it

suffer the least of harm. She whispered this to him in words so sincere

and moving, with eyes so moist, and lips so quivering, and her whole

young face so glorified by the shining soul within, that Adair would

have been less than human had he not succumbed.

He was abashed; his carefully rehearsed plans were glad to creep out of

sight and hide; it would have needed very little for him to fall on his

knees, penitent and ashamed, and blurt out--not the truth; the truth

wasn't tellable--but enough to make him seem less of a beast to himself,

less of a hypocrite and villain. But he paused midway; and the impulse,

which, if he had allowed it to control him might have carried him into

unsuspected regions of honor and manliness, died still-born; and left

him--if not exactly what he had been--at least not so very much the

better.

With everything so favorable to his purpose, it continued to be a

mystery to him that he still held back. This backwardness, this fear,

was a new sensation. He had won prettier women in his day, and had won

them briskly and straightforwardly, move by move, with cool

premeditation.

Why should he falter at this one, like a ninny? What was it about her

that checked and daunted him? She had flung herself at him; she had

neither the will nor the knowledge to protect herself; she was as

innocent as a child, and had delivered herself over to him as

guilelessly. But it was not her innocence that stood in his way; he had

no such scruples about innocence; innocence, if anything, ought to have

whetted the pursuit. It was something subtler than that--this

withholding force. It was more as though she were some proud young queen

who had been craftily made drunk with drugs, and then had been abandoned

in her helplessness to become the sport of a passing soldier.... How

surprised Adair would have been had he been told that the love always on

his lips, profaned with every breath he drew, a lie in every sense save

the very lowest, was, in all good earnest, stealthily making entry in

his heart!

Making? Why, it had been there from the first, all unknown to him. But

like many a man the devious road seemed to him the straighter; it was

the one he meant to follow, anyhow, lead where it might; he would

overcome this strange squeamishness that annoyed and bewildered him.

What an ass he was! He remembered his first deer, and how the rifle had

shaken in his hands--how his teeth had chattered--how it had calmly

walked past him, not twelve yards away, and disappeared unscathed. The

boys had called it "buck fever," and had guyed him. Hell, this was a

kind of buck fever, too, though without the excuse of inexperience ...

but still there was no sense in hurrying matters. There was plenty of

time, old fellow, plenty of time.

Thus the day lingered out in talk and vows and kisses, with nothing

achieved in any direction, and the situation apparently unchanged. Love

has a wonderful power of floating on without ever touching the banks of

reality! And when one of the lovers keeps the bark deliberately in

mid-stream, and the other poor lunatic is so lost in ecstasy that her

understanding is in the skies--hours can pass like minutes, and darkness

descend all unawares.

Again they kissed and parted, and Phyllis returned home in the sweet

weariness of one who has drunk deep of the cup of love. No unanswered

questions fretted her, no disturbing thoughts of why he had been silent

on the most important thing of all. She was young, fresh, pretty,

well-born and rich--why then should she doubt? What, to a little

milliner, would have been the inevitable and all-engrossing conjecture,

troubled her not a bit. Men had been proposing to her for two years;

love out of wedlock, while it might be familiar in books, was

inconceivably remote to her; marriage was like breathing; it was one of

the great unconsidered facts of life; one loved--one married.

Her preoccupation was rather with closer and dearer things--the varying

expressions of that fine and intensely alive face; the mouth with its

ever changing charm; that, smiling, could lift one to paradise, that,

laughing, seemed to gladden the whole world; the eyes so lustrous, so

melting, and yet that at a word could turn so fierce; the wavy hair that

was such a joy to her to caress; the broad shoulders that had pillowed

her girlish head, and had given her such a comforting sense of vigor and

strength--all her own by the divinest of divine rights. Womanlike, she

was trying to merge herself in the man she loved; to subordinate her own

individuality in his; to become, if she could, a slim, small, dainty

counterpart of this God-given creature who had stooped to her from high

Heaven itself.

She ate a good dinner and enjoyed it; drank a glass of claret with a

connoisseur-like satisfaction in its fine bouquet; for she came of a

stock with a royal taste for pleasure, in little things as well as big.

If her father appeared somewhat constrained, and more grave and silent

than was his wont, she ascribed it to nothing more than a hard day at

the office; and exerted herself with all her superabundant good humor to

amuse and distract him. But for once she was unsuccessful, and as the

meal proceeded his brown study increased. After dinner, as usual when

they were alone, they went up to his "den," the custom being for him to

smoke a cigar while she glanced over the evening papers, and read to him

what seemed to be of interest. As she stood leaning negligently against

the mantelpiece she was surprised to notice that he did not settle

himself in his usual chair. He came up to her instead, and she felt a

sudden knocking at the heart as her uplifted eyes met his.

"How long has this been going on?" he demanded in a low voice.

"What do you mean, Papa?"

He paused as though to control himself.--She knew very well what he

meant, and shivers ran down her back.

"Your carrying on with this actor fellow. This--this Adair." He snapped

out the name as though it tasted bitter on his lips--spat it--his gray

mustache bristling.

She was panic-stricken; her knees weakened beneath her; she had only

presence of mind enough to tell herself that lies could not help her.

But lies or not, at that moment she could not have uttered a word. It

was all she could do to hold to the mantel for support.

Mr. Ladd drew out his pocket-book, and from it a letter.

"A man like that always has some female consort," he went on brutally,

"some woman of his own class who follows his shabby fortunes, and

considers him for the time being as her especial property; and who

protects herself when that property is in danger by ways that suggest

themselves to vulgar and common minds. At least, I do not consider it

an unjust inference that this anonymous letter--"

Phyllis uttered a little cry, and hid her face in her hands.--So that

was what it was?--She ought to have suspected it. But even in her shame

a dart of jealousy passed through her heart. Who was this woman who was

trying to rob her of Adair?

"It is a typical letter of the kind," continued Mr. Ladd, with grim

persistence, "and written in a hand supposed to be disguised, as though

anything could disguise the greater matter of the writer's innate

vileness and swinishness. It starts with the usual pretense of good

will, of friendly warning; and then passes, with hardly a transition, to

charges that in a police court would entail its being cleared of any

women amongst the spectators. Frankly, Phyllis, it is abominable--though

I am going to read it to you, not with the idea of causing you pain, of

punishing you, but to show you much better than any words of mine could

do, the sort of cattle you are getting mixed up with. One judges men by

the company they keep; whoever this woman is, it may be presumed she

knows Adair well, and is a friend of his; otherwise what could prompt

all this venom? The letter is a mass of lies, but it has a side-light

value on this man you're letting fool you. They are a squalid,

contemptible crew, and all tarred with the same stick."

He stopped to put his glasses on his nose; and smoothing out the letter,

began deliberately to read it: "'You ought to know the goings-on of that

girl of yours, and if nobody else is enough your friend to tell you,

I--'"

But Phyllis cried out before he could proceed further.

"Oh, Papa," she exclaimed in passionate entreaty, "don't, don't! You

mustn't! You're degrading me! I--I can't stand it!"

"You know my reasons for wanting you to hear it," he said coldly.

"And you are going to force me to?"

"Yes, I am--for your own good, Phyllis."

As their eyes met something within her seemed to break. In all her life

her father had been everything that was kind and gentle and indulgent.

His arms had ever been her refuge; she had cried out her baby sorrows on

his shoulder; how often, in contrast to other girls, she had thought

herself the most fortunate of women to have such a father. Now, in her

direst need he was pitiless and inflexible. He was determined to

humiliate her with that horrible letter--for his manner, everything,

said that it was horrible. To gain his point he was willing to sweep

away the fabric of all these years. Oh, the stupidity of it, the

cruelty! Nothing could ever be the same again between them after that.

He could degrade her, but it would cost him every iota of her love.

Her bosom swelled. Her anger was at so white a heat that she no longer

felt the fears and shrinkings that had at first assailed her; her heart

beat high, but to another and a fiercer measure.

What a moment for him to begin again: "'You ought to know the goings-on

of that girl of yours, and if nobody else--'"

"Papa, _Papa_!"

"My dear, you must not interrupt me. I insist on--"

"Then let me read it to myself."

He paused, looking at her in indecision; and from her to the coals in

the grate. She perceived the meaning of his hesitation, and laughed

scornfully.

"Oh, you can trust me," she said, holding out her hand. "Do you want my

word, or what? I won't destroy it. Rest assured I shall give you the

pleasure of knowing I am reading every word of it."

He resigned it to her, tugging at his mustache, and watching her

covertly as she moved nearer the light and began to read. He marveled

at her composure, her decision. She was not evading the ugly task--her

eyes moved too slowly for that, and her face reflected too clearly the

unsparing comments on her behavior.

It was coarse beyond belief. Only a man half out of his wits could have

allowed any woman of his family to read such a thing. Many of the

expressions she had never heard before, but it is a peculiarity of gross

Anglo-Saxon to be readily understood. Nothing was lost on Phyllis,

either in the description of the man she loved, or the accusations of

the vilest kind leveled at herself. It was an infamous production,

soiling and disgusting, nakedly spiteful, and nakedly pornographic.

She perused it unflinchingly to the end; studied the signature, "One who

knows," and handed it back to her father.

"I thought people were put in prison for writing such letters," she said

in an even voice.

"So they are," he returned curtly, "though that isn't quite the point."

"What is the point?"

"To know how much of it is true."

Again her composure startled him. "Is it possible you believe any of

it?" she asked.

"Yes, I do," he said.--He was holding the letter in his hand, like a

lawyer in court, cross-examining a witness. He was determined to get at

the bottom of all this.

"Is it true you went to the theater twice?"

"As a spectator--yes."

"Is it true that you wrote a letter to him?"

"Yes."

"Is it true you invited him here?"

"Yes, he came once."

"And it's true you met him afterwards on one of the streets in the

Richmond district?"

"Yes."

"It's true you let him kiss you there before everybody--embrace you--hug

you like a silly servant-girl?"

She ignored the insult, and answered imperturbably: "It was a deserted

place; I didn't know any one was spying on us."

"And it's true to-day you met him again?"

"Yes."

"And drove together in a closed cab?"

"Yes."

"Now, Phyllis, my girl, on your honor; I am asking you this as your

father; I have the right to ask it, and the right to a sacredly truthful

answer--the affair has gone no further than this?"

"No."

"On your honor?"

"On my honor."

"And all the rest of it?"--He touched the letter.

"Lies, Papa--revolting, hideous lies."

He stumbled towards his chair; seated himself in it; reached for the

cigar-box. He had expected a scene; he had expected tears, pleading,

and repentance. He had a penetrating sense of having mismanaged

everything. Perhaps he ought not to have shown her that letter. It had

shocked her through and through, but not in the way he had intended. He

had meant it to be like a surgeon's knife--one sure swift stroke, and

she was to rise cured, disillusioned. The effect had been

disconcertingly different; he had affronted her to the quick, he had

roused a defiance all the more to be feared because it was cool,

subdued, controlled--the kind that is apt to last.--He lit his cigar,

and blew out breath after breath of smoke. He must not make another

mistake. He would think a little while before he began again.

She glided slowly towards the door, but with an air so unconcerned, so

free from any suggestion of flight, that he suspected nothing. The fact

of her leaving the door ajar seemed to imply an immediate return.

Several minutes passed before he suddenly became uneasy. So peremptory

was his conviction that she was near that he cried: "Phyllis, Phyllis,"

before rising to find out what had become of her. But she was not in

the corridor outside. He sought her boudoir--nor was she here either.

Her bedroom off it? It was empty, too. Thoroughly alarmed, he descended

the stairs, softly calling out, "Phyllis, Phyllis!" He was answered by

a servant's voice below: "Is it you, Sir?"

"Yes, Henry, I am looking for Miss Phyllis?"

"She went out a minute ago, Sir."

"Went out?"

"Yes, Sir."

Good God, she was gone!

*CHAPTER XIV*

Once outside the door, she had raced downstairs like the wind, put on

her hat anyhow, and sped into the darkness, without waiting for wrap or

gloves. Her first idea had been to reach the theater, but as she turned

down side streets in order to evade pursuit and get the Fairmount Avenue

car line, she realized that this involved too much time. Her watch,

hastily looked at under a lamp, showed that it was after eight o'clock,

and that she could not hope to gain the theater before the first act

began. She decided to telephone instead, and accordingly, walking very

fast, and sometimes running until a pain in her side forced her to

desist, she made her way to Fairmount Avenue, and to a drug-store she

knew to be there. It was the matter of a moment to look up the number

of the Thalia Theater, unhook the receiver, and get central.

"Nick-el," murmured that impersonal arbiter of human destinies.

"I don't understand--please give me my number, I'm in such a hurry."

"Nick-el!"

"Drop a nickel in the slot, Miss," said the clerk helpfully.

She had come away without her purse. She hadn't a penny!

As quick as thought she pulled off one of her rings, and laid it on the

counter.

"I have forgotten my purse," she said. "Please let me have a quarter,

and I'll redeem the ring to-morrow."

She had been resourceful enough to recollect she needed more than a

nickel--there was the trolley fare to the theater and back.

The clerk took the ring with no great willingness; examined it with

every apparent intention of denying her request; then examined her with

the same sharp look. The horrid creature recognized her, and his manner

changed to a cringing deference. "Oh, Miss Ladd, I beg your pardon, I

didn't know it was you, Miss Ladd. A quarter? Why certainly, Miss

Ladd. Only too happy to oblige you, Miss Ladd. Take back your ring,

and pay any time at your convenience, Miss Ladd." He rang open his cash

register, and passed her three nickels and a dime, together with the

ring. "Put it back where it belongs," he said, smirking and rubbing his

hands. "My, what would the boss say to me if I told him I had kept Miss

Phyllis Ladd's ring!"

She thanked him, and again gave the number at the telephone, dropping in

the nickel that had cost her so much. The clerk, though he had moved

away, was all eyes and ears, and she had an unpleasant sensation of

being watched. But it was too late to draw back now. Her need was too

urgent, too desperate for such irritating trifles to deter her from her

purpose. The horrid creature would stare. Well, let him stare! He

would chatter about it, too, of course. Well, let him chatter!

"Thalia Theater--box-office."

"I want to speak to Mr. Adair at once."

"It's impossible--he's in his dressing-room, and we ring up in eight

minutes."

"I simply have to speak to him."

"Can't do it--it's against the rules."

"Oh, you must, you simply must!"

"Who are you?"

"Miss Ladd!"

"Who did you say?"

"Miss Ladd--L-A-D-D."

"What is it, please, that you want to see Mr. Adair about?"

"Something very important."

"I'm sorry, but I can't do it."

"No, no, please. Mr. Adair will never forgive you if you don't." Then

she had an inspiration. Where or how she had learned the name she hardly

knew, but it flashed across her mind at this moment. "Is Mr. Merguelis

there?"

"I am Mr. Merguelis."

"Mr. Tom Merguelis?"

"Yes."

"Then you might know who I am. Mr. Adair--"

"Oh, say, yes--you're not the little lady that he--"

"Yes, that's me."

"But, my dear, he's in his dressing-room, and that's on the level."

"I simply must talk to him for a second, and you must go and get him."

"Hello, hello--is that you? Hello--yes, my dear, I'm sending for him.

Please hold the line."

What an age it seemed, standing there with the receiver to her ear, and

her heart bursting with impatience. Meaningless scraps of talk strained

her attention; when these stopped she was in terror lest she had been

cut off; at last there was the peculiar jarring and disturbance that

showed someone getting into touch at the other end, followed by Adair's

strong clear challenge.

"Who wants Mr. Adair?"

"I do--it's Phyllis."

"Oh, my little girl, I'm in a frightful rush. Hurry up, tell me what's

the matter?"

"I want to see you as soon as I can--something awful has happened."

"What?"

"I can't tell you here--but can't you guess?"

"Trouble at home?"

"Yes."

"Found out?"

"Yes."

"Your father?"

"Yes."

Adair paused. Events were moving faster than he had anticipated. He

was both thrilled and bewildered at the suddenness of it all.

"It's risky," he said, in a voice that shook a little, "but you'll have

to come up and see me here--there's nothing else for it."

"That's what I want to do," she answered.

"I'll fix it up with the door-keeper to take you to my dressing-room.

Just say you have an appointment with me, and he'll understand. Wait

there for me until the first act is over--will you?"

"Yes, Cyril."

"And you will excuse me if I run? They'll have to hold the curtain as

it is."

"Yes, yes--and I'll be there."

"Au revoir, sweetheart!"

"Good-by--I won't be long."

The stage-door, like most stage-doors, was to be found in a cut-throat

alley, so dark, dangerous, and forbidding in its aspect that it took all

of Phyllis' courage to enter it. A ratty-looking individual, so

compactly built into the entrance that he could open the door by a shove

of his boot, exerted this labor-saving device in answer to her knock,

and glowered at her from over the paper he was reading.

"What do you want?" demanded the ratty individual.

"I have an appointment with Mr. Adair."

He rose without a word; and leading her up some steps, guided her inside

the theater. In the twilight of the wings were some stage-hands in

overalls; an actor whom she recognized as the wicked prince, sitting on

a soap-box, waiting listlessly for his cue; from the stage itself came

the sound of voices raised to an unreal pitch, and strangely exciting

and fantastic, in a cadence that was neither recitative nor speech. She

could not help noticing, even in her agitation, the shabby, dilapidated,

disorderly appearance of everything--the ropes, the dusty props, the

frayed material of the scenes, the general air of

comfortlessness--receiving the shock that comes to every one on first

seeing the theater from the wrong side. But the ratty individual gave

her no time to take more than a passing glance, leading the way with

whispered warnings through a gorge of canvas, and down a twisting iron

stair to the dressing-rooms below. He stopped at one of the little

cabin-like doors, opened it, and ushered her in. Then he left her, and

shuffled away with diminishing footfalls.

The dressing-room was bald, bare, uncarpeted, and painted a staring

white. Below a mirror flanked by two flaring gas-jets there ran a sort

of shelf on which were grease-paints, crayons, brushes, a pot of

cold-cream, a pot of rouge, and other necessaries for "making up." From

nails on the wall--common, every-day nails--there straggled an untidy

line of men's clothes. On a box in the corner was a wash-basin,

pitcher, soap, and a towel that was none too clean. Three empty chairs,

and a wall decoration completed the picture. The wall decoration was a

printed notice, in large and emphatic letters: "Smoking positively

prohibited in this theater. Ladies must not use alcohol curling-irons."

Most young women, in a situation so equivocal and so unfamiliar, would

have been ill at ease, frightened, apprehensive of many vague and dimly

suspected dangers. But Phyllis' faith in Adair had none of this

faltering quality. She loved, and loving she trusted. Her tremors had

ended the moment the door had closed her in--the moment, in fact, when

the others would have trembled most. To her, on the contrary, the little

room breathed security for the very reason that it was Adair's. With

adorable folly she pressed kisses on all his outstretched possessions;

nuzzled her cheek against his coat; put her little foot beside one of

his big man's shoes, delighting in the contrast--and altogether felt

greatly comforted and refreshed.

After a while she heard a tremendous commotion overhead that swelled,

sank and swelled again as the house broke into applause at the end of

the act. There was a lumbering, scratchy, pattering sound as of a dozen

pianos being moved at once by stalwart men in slippers--it was the new

scene being set. The passageway outside, previously so still, resounded

with a rush of feet--with exclamations and laughter as the company

scudded to make their respective changes. The door was flung open, and

there, brisk and smiling, on the threshold stood Correze!

Phyllis ran to his arms, and hiding her face against him began to cry.

She was so happy, so wretched; the misery of that last hour had tried

her more than she knew; her joy at seeing Adair seemed to exhaust the

little strength she had left, and her conflicting emotions could find

vent only in tears. How sweet it was to be petted, to be soothed--to

feel so small, and weak, and helpless in that powerful clasp! Her tears

flowed afresh. Flowed at the thought of her love for him, of his love

for her, at the beauty, wonder, and solace of it all. Nothing could

ever harm them as long as they had each other, nothing, nothing.

She made him take a chair, and seating herself at his feet crossed her

arms on his knees and looked up at him. In this position it seemed

easier to confide, easier to answer his persistent questions, easier at

the same time to satisfy her craving to nestle close. As Adair heard of

the letter he turned as black as a thunder-cloud and his hands clenched.

"I know whom I've to thank for that!" he exclaimed furiously. "The

damned little treacherous hound, I could choke her for it! I've seen

something working in her eyes all along, but I never dreamed she could

be as low and contemptible as that! And so she was keeping tab on us,

was she, with all her mean little eyes and ears, the dyed toad!"

"Cyril, you really know who it is?"

He made a hissing sound--a disgusted assent. "She isn't twenty feet from

here," he exclaimed, "unless she is at the key-hole this moment." He

rose; stepped to the door, and looked out. "Not here," he said.

"But tell me, is she one of the actresses in the company?"

"Never you mind," he returned roughly; and then, with a quick remorse at

the look in Phyllis' face, he apologized in a roundabout fashion by

denouncing the stage in general. "It's a low, dirty business," he

cried, "and the people in it are a low, dirty lot; and I guess I'm not

so damned much better myself; and if you had a spark of sense you'd

clear out, and never see me again! Do you hear what I'm telling you,

little chap? Do you hear, Phyllis girl?" He put down his hand, and

caught her ear between his thumb and finger, giving it a shake. "Skin

out, you darling baby. Your father's right. Go back with my

compliments, and tell him I said so!"

His jeering tone hurt her; there was too much sincerity in his

self-contempt, too genuine a ring to his proposed dismissal. The

contradictory creature, stung to the quick by that letter, and

indignantly conscious of much of its truth, was floundering towards

righteousness, like a walrus after a floe. Hell, he didn't mean her any

harm. Let her get out.

"You'd better hurry," he said, pinching her ear again. "I'm just a

cheap actor, as common as the dirt in the road, and you're a beautiful

young lady a million times too good for this kind of game. All that you

can get out of it is dishonor and disgrace. Go away--let's drop

it--love somebody who's worth loving."

He tried to push her from him, but she clung only the tighter, her face

paling at his earnestness, and stubbornly looking up at his.

"You couldn't say that if you were--what you say you are."

"How do you know it isn't a trick!" he exclaimed, "just another move in

the game--just to get you a little further out of your depth, and then

drown you?" His hands closed round her neck with brutal pleasure in her

youth, her softness, her delicacy, her powerlessness.

"It's strange," he said wonderingly, "but at this moment when you have

never been more tempting to me, I am willing to let you go--want to let

you go. It's the first good resolution in my life, yet you stick here

like an infatuated little noodle, waiting for it to pass."

She snuggled closer against him.

"Am I tempting?"

"My God, yes."

"And you love me?"

"Oh, my darling, I do, I do!"

"And wouldn't it be nice for a poor little lonesome cheap actor, who's

really a great big splendid noble person of genius, if he only knew

it--to have me to pet him and love him and adore him, and kiss away his

morbid, silly moods, and make such a darling baby of him that he'd burst

out crying if I were out of his sight a minute?"

He looked at her sharply for an underlying meaning--a comprehension--an

assent. But her candor and innocence were transparent; the purity

beneath those limpid depths shone like a diamond in a pool. Her love

took no thought of anything base or wrong, either in him or in her; all

she sought was the assurance that he loved her, and wanted her; and this

achieved she was content to leave the rest to him with unquestioning

faith. She did not come of the class to whom marriage is vividly seen

as a protection, a safe-guard, a coveted lien on a pocket-book and a

man, enforceable by the police; to her it was more one of those

inevitable formalities that attend all the big events of life, from

being born to being buried, and which one accepts as a matter of course.

Adair, in a gust of passion, caught her up on his knees, and crushed her

unresisting body in his arms. Everything was forgotten in the maddening

rapture of the moment. The fragrance of her young beauty over-mastered

him. His head reeled in the greatest of all intoxications--the

woman-drunkenness that makes men crazy. Between his clenched teeth he

whispered: "You are mine, and I am going to keep you--you shall never

get away now. You had your chance, but it's gone, fool that I was ever

to offer it. But now I'll kill you first; do you hear, Phyllis, I'll

kill you first, for you're mine, body and soul, and you've gone too far

ever to draw back." His voice sank lower; he was beside himself; all he

knew was that she was shaking convulsively--that her face, her lips were

burning--that love, shame, devouring fever all flamed in the eyes she

tried to hide from him.

A knock at the door startled him to his feet. Rap, rap, rap!

"You're called, Mr. Adair," said the voice from without.

"All right, Williams!"

His quick, matter-of-fact tone was as much a shock to Phyllis as the

interruption itself. To fall from the clouds, and then land so squarely

and coolly on the earth below was a performance disturbing to witness.

It seemed to cast suspicion on his sincerity up above. But the

misgiving was a fleeting one, for as he turned to her, she perceived in

his air of concern and resolution that she was still the dominant

thought in his mind.

"See here, Phyllis," he said, speaking fast, "this means only one thing.

The company leaves Saturday night after the show to jump to Ferrisburg.

You must come with me--that's all there is to it.--Will you?"

She bowed her head, for somehow she could not answer in words.

"It won't do for us to see each other till then; but you ring me up on

Saturday between twelve and one at the St. Charles Hotel, and we'll fix

up the dates. Have you got that straight?"

She bowed her head again, more overcome than ever.

"Don't worry about a trunk, or any damned foolishness of that sort.

Trunks have busted more elopements than six-shooters--just a nightie and

a tooth-brush, and we'll manage the rest at Ferrisburg!" His glance

sought for some evasion, some backwardness, but there was neither.

"It's the only thing to do," she said simply. "Only, only--" She was

holding fast to his hand, swaying a little.