It of course forced out the stereotyped reply: "I can leave it."

Mr. Ladd, in silence, looked at her long and steadily; then he bent his

head. She saw nothing but the iron-gray hair; the stooping, dejected

shoulders; the hand, lying as limp as dead, on the damask cloth.

"Papa?"

No answer.

"Papa?"

She ran to his side, all revolt gone, her only thought to comfort him.

Her bare arms entwined themselves about his neck in a paroxysm of

remorse; her bosom swelled; her voice was incoherent as she lavished her

young tenderness upon him. It was a moment that would decide her life.

Had her father left the initiative to her, had he been content to accept

mutely these tokens of her surrender--he would have won, then and there,

and nothing again would ever have come between them. But with blind

stupidity he had to persevere with the intention their clash had

interrupted.

"I will tell you my real reason for wanting you to get away," he said.

"It wasn't what you thought at all--it was to spare you unnecessary

pain. Last night I sent Reynolds, our best secret-service man, to New

York with _carte blanche_ to confer with the Pinkertons and ransack this

fellow's record from top to bottom. From what Reynolds told me he

already knew--I mean what's said down-town, I believe it will be a black

one, so black that there won't be any question about your giving him

up--just on the facts brought out--facts that can not be disproved or

contested. Reynolds--"

"But, Papa, I don't understand. You are setting detectives to go back

over his life, like a criminal? _Detectives?_"

"Yes."

"But how dishonorable, how infamous!"

"Oh, it's done every day; it's common, my dear; if the man's straight it

can't hurt him--but if he has anything to hide, why, we turn on the

search-light, and find out what's wrong.--It's all done secretly; he

won't know; don't worry about that.--I expect a full report in a few

days, and would rather not have you here when I get it."

"And do you think that's fair or right, or anything but--fiendish?"

"How do you know he isn't married, Phyllis?"--he shot this at her

mercilessly. "How do you know anything except what he's told you? You

may be willing to believe him, and all that--but I'm your father, and I

want to _know_, and by God, I'm going to know!"

"Papa, don't!"

"Aha, you're not very confident, are you?"

"He's a man. I don't doubt he's been foolish, and bad, and fast, but to

see it written down cold-bloodedly on sheets of paper is more than I can

bear. I am willing to ignore that; I am willing to take him as he is

_now_. Oh, Papa, a woman can forgive so much."

"Yes, my dear, and a great deal that a father never could."

"I beg you, Papa, I implore you to telegraph to them to stop."

"It's too late--besides it has to be done; I insist on it; I'm going to

strip that man's past to the bone."

"Even if it costs you me? Even if this is the end of everything between

us?"

"Fiddle-de-dee, these theatrics are unworthy of you! You're going to

take the noon train to Sarah's, and behave yourself; and this business,

however disagreeable to both of us, has got to go through."

Her lips tightened mutinously. She was not a young woman who could be

driven.

"I'll stay here, or walk right out of your house--and you know where."

"Then stay," he cried, rising wrathfully, "and may God forgive you for

the misery you are bringing down on me. I'm only trying to do what's

best, and you treat me as though I was one of that fellow's cruel

parents on the stage! It's no time to mince matters, and I tell you

straight out, Phyllis, he's a blackguard and a scoundrel, and when you

see the Pinkertons' report, I guess you'll go down on your knees and beg

my pardon for your heartlessness and obstinacy."

He glared at her, expecting a retort that would add fresh fuel to his

anger, but she was silent, downcast, trembling. The answer she made was

to herself, inaudible save to her anguished soul: "Oh, that Saturday

night were here!"

*CHAPTER XVI*

The four days that followed were almost unendurable in the strain they

entailed. Phyllis was heavy with her secret; beset by emotions so

conflicting that they seemed to rend her to pieces; forlorn and desolate

under her father's studied coldness. The detectives' report did not

come, or was withheld perhaps,--but the apprehension of it was always

hanging horribly above her head. It was not the facts themselves she

feared most, though she dreaded them, too; it was to hear them

tauntingly on her father's lips; to be forced to stand, and listen, and

cringe at what the human ferrets had unearthed.--Anxious days; leaden

days; sad, introspective, interminable days, never to be recalled in

after life without a peculiar depression.

On Saturday, at the stroke of noon, she was in a telephone booth, with

shivers cascading down her back, and the eagerest heart in Carthage

thumping under her breast. In the time she took to get her number, she

had decided to go, not to go--then again to go, then again not to go.

It was awful, and she couldn't; it was awful, and she would!

"Hello, is that the St. Charles Hotel?"

"Yes, Chincholchell, whodyerwant?"

"Mr. Cyril Adair?"

"Hold the line."

He must have been waiting there for his voice answered immediately,

abrupt and deep: "Hello, is that you?"

"Yes,--you know who."

"Is it all right--you are coming?"

"If you want me to."

His only answer to that was a laugh that shook the wire. How manly and

confident it sounded in contrast to her own quavering whisper!

"Now, listen, you darling baby, and get this right. We're to pick up

the Alleghany local at ten minutes past midnight, and at half-past

eleven I'll have Tom Merguelis waiting for you in a cab, across the

Avenue on the southeastern corner. Can you manage to get out of the

house, do you think?"

"Oh, yes."

"No trunk, you know--just the few things you need, and the fewer the

better."

"I understand."

"Find Tom--that's all you have to do--and the rest is for him."

"Yes, Cyril."

"Say it as though you meant it! I'd rather have you back out now than

fail me at the last moment. That's an awful faint 'yes.'"

"Don't blame me if I'm scared--you'd be scared too, in my place."

"Well, how scared are you going to be at half-past eleven--that's the

real point of it?"

"Cyril, dearest?"

"Yes, my darling."

"I'm coming, I want to come, I'm crazy to come--and you mustn't think

for a single moment that I won't."

"That's the way to talk!"

"And you'll be good to me, won't you?"

"My precious!"

"And love me, oh, so well?"

"Yes, yes!"

"And I'll try to be the best little wife that ever made a man warm, and

comfortable, and happy--and I'm going to keep your heart-buttons sewed

on as well as the others--and darn your beautiful big soul with

girl-silk--and dress you every day in a lovely new suit of kisses, so

that people will turn round on the street, and ask who's your tailor!

And Cyril?"

"Yes, sweetheart?".

"I'm the happiest girl in the world, and the luckiest! And I'm not

scared a bit, and I'll be there at half-past eleven, and I love you, and

I'm going to run away with you; and I'm glad I'm going to run away with

you, and I'm twenty-one, and my own mistress, and as bold as brass, and

six policemen couldn't stop me, and I'm just a little slave panting for

her master, and I've gnawed the ropes through with my teeth, and no one

shall ever tie me up again, or keep me away from you, Amen!"

Again there was that manly, confident laugh.

"I think that little slave had better run home again and pretend to tie

up," he said. "It would spoil everything if your father got wind of

this--I know those rich old fellows--they can be a power for mischief

whether the law is on their side or not. Good-by, my darling, take care

of yourself, and look out for Tommy at eleven thirty. Good-by!"

"I hope we will never say that word to each other again," exclaimed

Phyllis. "It's a horrid word and I hate it. Good-by, Cyril, and don't

forget your little slave, counting the minutes at home!"

"Ta, ta, my lamb, I won't forget her. Couldn't if I would, ta, ta!"

There is no harder task than to fold one's hands and wait. Adair had

his matinee and his evening performance to engross his thoughts, and

allay to some degree his fever of anticipation. But Phyllis had no such

resource. Restless, nervous, on edge with suspense--fits of joy

alternating with craven terror--she wore out the longest afternoon of

her life, and an evening that was more trying still. Her father, to make

matters worse, attempted some advances; spoke to her with unexpected

kindness; hovered on the brink of another appeal. What a little Judas

she felt, sitting opposite him for perhaps the last time, and

maintaining a constraint that was, indeed, her armor, for if she

responded at all she knew she would never go that night. So she parried

and fenced, and kept the conversation impersonal at any hazard, while

his face grew steadily more overcast, and the lines of his forehead

deepened. She excused herself early, pleading fatigue, and relaxed her

attitude to kiss him tenderly good night.

"It'll all come right before long," she murmured softly. "Good night,

my darling daddy, and remember I love you whatever happens."

She was off before he could take advantage of a mood so melting. But he

felt much consoled, nevertheless.

"She's coming round," he said to himself. "I might have known she

would. That's the comfort of her being such a good girl, and so

intelligent!"

Up-stairs, the young lady thus complacently described was stripping off

her dinner gown, and wondering what dress she would replace it with.

She was the daintiest of soubrettes in her long dark-red silk stockings,

and Watch, her Russian poodle, gazed at her with an approving,

first-row-of-the-orchestra expression that made him look too wicked and

dissipated for anything. She gave him a gentle kick on the nose to

remind him that staring wasn't gentlemanly, and finally chose a blue

tailor-made by Redfern. When this was on, the rest of her preparations

were easy. She could not well take Watch, so she took his collar, and

this was the first to go into the little hand-bag. A nightgown

followed, a pair of stockings, tooth-brush, comb and brush,

tooth-powder, some handkerchiefs, the photographs of her father and

mother, still in their frames, and a pair of patent leather slippers

with gilt buckles. Surely no little bride of her importance and social

position had ever set forth with so slender a trousseau. There it all

was, dog-collar below, slippers on top, in a bag no bigger than an

exaggerated purse. She smiled a little tremulously as she looked at it,

touched as only a woman could be by the magnitude of her sacrifice. Her

clothes and her father--tears for both, thus equally abandoned, suffused

her eyes.

The next thing was a note of farewell, to be found the following morning

on her unused pillow. "I am going away with Mr. Adair," she wrote,

"taking my own life in my own hands for better or worse. Whether we are

to be friends--you and I--depends entirely upon yourself, although

alienation from you will be very hard for me to bear. Forgive me if you

can, and do not let your disappointment and chagrin embitter you against

me; or what would hurt me almost as much--against him. To-night when I

kissed you it was good-by, and if it is for ever it will be your own

fault, and very, very cruel, for I love you, dearest father, I love you.

Ever your devoted Phyllis."

By half-past nine everything was ready; and it was with a consuming

impatience that she went into her boudoir with Watch, and ensconsed

herself on the sofa to wait. A confidential Russian poodle can be of

great help to a young lady in distress. Watch's sympathy; Watch's

certainty of everything coming out right; Watch's implied determination

to soften the blow to Mr. Ladd; Watch's willingness to whine over the

general tragedy of things--all were whimsically comforting. Best of

all, he could listen for ever and ever with one ear cocked up, and never

lose for an instant his air of highly gratified interest. And what

didn't he hear during that hour and three quarters on the sofa! What

secrets of longing and tenderness, of girlish hopes, of girlish dreams,

of delicious falterings and trepidations--all breathed into that woolly

ear!

Then came the suffocating moment of departure--the quieting of an unruly

friend--the peeping from the door; the tip-toeing down the stairs; the

panicky stops to cower and listen; the stealthy passage of the great dim

hall; the groping for bolts and chains; the heavy door swinging heavily

back; the cold, dark, starry night beyond; the egress into it; the wild

sense of escape and freedom; the sound of gravel under the eager little

feet; the gate-way; the wide silent Avenue; the glimmering lights of the

cab at the farther corner; and--

"Yes, I'm Tom Merguelis, Miss. Jump in--everything is ready."

She discovered herself sitting beside a very tall, very thin young man,

who smiled down at her in a quizzical, friendly manner not unsuggestive

of the Cheshire Cat. That vague, deprecatory grin was as much a part of

Mr. Merguelis as his sandy hair, his retreating chin, and the whole

amiable vacancy of his expression. His youth had been passed before the

public as "assistant" to Professor Theophilus Blitz, the exhibiting

hypnotist, who was accustomed nightly to run pins into him; make him

drink kerosene under the impression it was beer; smack his lips over

furniture-polish; eat potato peelings for sausages; bark like a dog,

meow like a cat, make love to a bolster, and generally disport himself

to the astonishment and horror of clodhopper audiences. Six years of

this had left Tommy without a digestion, and that fixed and bewildered

grin, which to Phyllis, under the unusual circumstances of their

meeting, seemed to her not without a satiric quality.

But as they drove through the deserted streets she realized her mistake,

and corrected so unjust a first impression. The artless, gawky creature

idolized Adair, and was proud beyond measure to be serving him so

romantically. It gave him an extraordinary fellow-feeling for Phyllis

to have her also on her knees at the shrine of the demigod; and he

overflowed with a hero-worship so naive and sincere that she could not

help liking him--grin and all. Indeed, it seemed a happy augury for her

own future that Adair could excite so profound an admiration in those

about him. Mr. Merguelis seemed as infatuated as she, and saw nothing

strange in these midnight proceedings. There was approval in that

everlasting grin. Would she please call him Tommy? Mr. Adair called

him Tommy. They shook hands on it in the semi-darkness, and she knew she

had found a friend.

Phyllis expected that Cyril would be waiting for her at the station, and

was much cast down to learn that she was to remain alone with Tommy

until the train arrived. "Then we'll all bustle on board together, and

nobody will notice you," explained Tommy. The good sense of this was

apparent, yet at the same time she could not help feeling a little

forlorn and slighted. "Nobody will notice you," said Young Lochinvar's

Tommy.--Now that the die was cast, why should she not be noticed? She

was ready to avow herself Adair's before all the world, and why not on

that dark, ill-lighted platform, when her courage was nearly spent and

her slim young body drooping?

They sat on a bench, and waited in a corner of the vast cavern, she with

her bag in her lap, Tommy with his unrelaxing grin fixed on space.

Waited and waited, while stragglers passed, immigrants with babies and

bundles, hurrying couples returning to the suburbs from a night in town.

Above the noise there suddenly rose a louder thunder. It was the train

bursting in with a roar, hissing steam and grinding its brakes as it

slowed down, throbbing majestically. Tommy seized her by the arm and

ran along the platform.

"Day car reserved for Steinberger's theatrical company?"

"Third car back."

"Day car reserved for Steinberger's theatrical company?"

"Jump in!"

Others were scrambling in, too. Phyllis had a fleeting glimpse of Miss

de Vere, still with dabs of make-up on her sulky, handsome face; of the

wicked Prince, loaded down with baggage, and excitedly taking the

direction of everything on his shoulders; of a stout, authoritative Jew

with a diamond pin, who was staring at her with a greedy curiosity, and

that cattleman's look, as of one who could tell the shape, age,

attractiveness, and market value of a human heifer at a single glance.

They jostled into the empty car, a dozen or more, settling themselves

anywhere, anyhow, like a big boisterous family. Tommy and Phyllis

slipped into a seat at the farther end, and they had hardly done so

before the latter felt a hand reach over and touch her cheek; and

turning, saw Adair! Tommy sprang up, and made way for him, Adair taking

the vacated place as though by right.

Whatever pique she might have held against him vanished in the magic of

his presence. His hand, closing on hers, communicated peace and

resolution. No longer was she afraid, or lonely, or sad, or uneasily

conscious of those other prying and speculating occupants of the car.

The goal was attained; stronger shoulders than her own now lifted her

burden; she had run her race, and could now lie, all spent and weary, in

that haven of heart's content. His musical voice flowed on in caressing

cadences. Had Tommy carried out his instructions? Had Tommy explained

the need of an unobtrusive departure, so that any chance reporter or

busybody might be put off the scent?--Oh, the poor baby, how neglected

she must have felt, on this the night of nights; how utterly ignored and

forgotten!

He drew her head against his cheap fur coat, and stroked her cheek and

tresses--his sweetheart, his darling, his little bride! It was sweet to

be petted; sweeter still to enjoy the luxury of self-pity as he

expatiated with smiling exaggeration on her sad, miserable, wretched

waiting with Tommy, in the sad, miserable, wretched station! She closed

her sleepy eyes, and nestled closer, awake only to catch every soft word

of endearment. Of these she could not have enough. It was heavenly to

doze away with: "I love you, I love you, I love you," falling in that

insatiable little ear; heavenly to feel that big hand playing with her

hair, and tempting kisses as it lingered against her mouth; heavenly to

feel so weak, and small, and helpless, and tired against that muscular

arm. Divine mystery of love! Divine the dependence of woman on man, of

man on woman, neither complete without the other, and each so

different... "My little bride" ... "I love you, ... I love you, ... I

love you..."

The train rumbled through the darkness. The seats held the huddled

figures of the company, all as limp as sacks, as oblivion stole upon

them. Feet were cocked up; hats were pulled over brows; haggard women,

pale men, sprawling in disorder, and through long familiarity as

unrestrained as some low, coarse family--sloppy slippers and frank

stockings to the garter; unbuttoned collars, unbuttoned vests; dirty

cuffs on racks--the squalid evidences of a squalid intimacy.

Looking down at that pure profile, and inhaling with every breath the

fragrance of an exquisite young womanhood which would be his so soon to

take, and, if he wished, to fling away, shattered and destroyed beyond

all mending, Adair felt, with dawning comprehension, and mingled elation

and pain, all that had gone to put this creature so infinitely above

him.

What care, what money, what anxious thought had been lavished to make

her what she was. How incessant the effort; how jealous the guarding

through all these years; how elaborate and costly the training to fit

her for the proud, high position to which she had been born. It came

over him with a strange new perception that the very innocence of her

surrender was but another proof of that queenly rearing. She was not of

a world where women suspected or bargained. They lived their gracious

lives within triple walls, unaware of the sentinels and outposts for

ever watching over them. And what were the sensations of the lucky

thief, who had closed his fingers on the prize, and run? They were not

altogether as joyful as one might have thought. The thief was very much

bemused. That trusting head, snuggled against his breast, was causing a

curious commotion in the heart beneath.

But he overcame the unmanly weakness. Hell, he would take what the gods

had sent him. He hadn't raised a hand to get her; she had thrown

herself at him; oh, she knew what she was doing, well enough, though she

probably expected him to marry her. Perhaps he would, later on. He

wasn't prepared right there to say he wouldn't. But there was plenty of

time for that. He hoped she wouldn't turn out to be one of the crying,

troublesome kind. Add a Laidlaw Wright father-in-law to that, and one

might as well shoot oneself--what with writs, attachments, box-office

seizures, injunctions, citations "to show cause," detectives going

through your pockets, black eyes, fines, contempt-proceedings--all

raining on a fellow in buckets! He smiled grimly at the recollection.

No more of that for him.--Well, if she didn't like the other way, she

would just have to make the best of it. Her innocence here again would

be a great help. The poor little lamb believed every word he said.

Besides, with women, kisses could always atone for everything.

The train rumbled on and on. Adair succumbed to a fitful and uneasy

slumber, through which there ran a thread of tormenting dreams. He had

lost her; they had become separated, and over the heads of a crowd he

saw her disappearing in a vortex of hurrying people; he struggled

unavailingly to follow, swearing, hitting out, shouldering and elbowing

like a madman; the cruel reality of it awakened him to find her sleeping

in his arms. He awakened her, too,--roughly,--to share his relief, his

joy. He made her hold him round the neck; made her kiss him, all sleepy

as she was; crushed and cuddled her in a transport of sudden passion.

Then he nodded off again, his lips resting on her silken hair,

blissfully content, and no longer afraid to close his heavy lids.

They were bundled off at Ferrisburg at three in the morning, all of them

so sodden with sleep that they could scarcely keep their eyes open. A

dilapidated bus, and a freckled boy received them, the former

representing the Clarendon Hotel, the latter, Miss MacGlidden's

theatrical boarding-house. The company divided accordingly, with some

grumpy facetiousness, the lesser members trailing away on foot after the

boy, the principals climbing into the bus,--the trunks of both stacked

high on the platform to await the morning.

The hotel, in spite of its fine name, was a bare, dismal, ramshackle

place; and the lowered lights, and uncarpeted floors gave it a

peculiarly forbidding air as the doors were unlocked to admit them.

Phyllis, clinging to her lover's arm, and overcome with weariness, took

little heed of the arrangements being made for their accommodation. She

had no idea of the _Cyril Adair and wife_ that was being written almost

under her nose. Even when she accompanied Cyril up-stairs at the heels

of a yawning darky, she was equally unaware that her room was also to be

his. No sleepy child at her father's side could have been more

trusting.

The darky shuffled off, leaving them alone together in the big, cold

bedroom. Adair took her in his arms, and kissed her, murmuring

something that she only half heard and altogether failed to understand.

All that she grasped was that he would return in a little while--that

she was to undress, and go to bed, while he went down to get his

dress-suit case. He opened her own little bag, and laughed as he

arranged the contents on the chiffonier, she with blushes, struggling to

restrain him. Then he was gone, and when she went to lock the door, she

found that the key was gone, also.

She took off her hat, her cloak, her bodice, and with no light save a

pair of wretched candles began to brush her unloosened hair. A terrible

misgiving was stealing over her which she tried to allay by prolonging

this familiar task. The missing key, the talk of coming back--what was

she to think? A deadly fear struck at her heart. It was not all for

her honor. There was more at stake than even that--the greater disaster

of Adair's unworthiness. Could this be the love for which she had

abandoned everything? Was it all a lie, a fraud, a trick? She suddenly

seemed to lose the strength to stand, sinking into the nearest, chair,

huddled and trembling.

No, no, he could not be so inconceivably base. She was wrong. His love

was as real as hers. He was incapable of such coldblooded

premeditation. Everything she had was his. It was not that. The

thought of giving herself to him had filled her with an unreasoning joy.

But to be cheated, to barter her life, her soul in exchange for his

pretense--oh, she would have rather died! She would have starved for

him, would have sold the clothes off her back for him, would have borne

unflinchingly odium, contempt, disgrace, asking only that he love her

well. But without that--! It was for him to choose; she had no

resistance left; but if it were, indeed, all a lie she would kill

herself the next day. One could outlive many things, but not _that_.

There are some cheats that leave one with no redress save death.

She heard his step in the corridor; heard the door softly open; looked

up with dilating eyes to learn her fate. The words Adair meant to say

never were said. He stopped, staring down at her with a gaze as

questioning as her own. It was one of those instants that decide

eternities. All that she had thought, all that she had dreaded were

articulate in the piteous face she raised to his. It was a look, which,

mysteriously, for that perceptive instant was open for him to read.

"They have got me a room on the other side of the house," he said, "but

I had to come back first to say good night." He ran over to her, kissed

her lightly on her bared shoulder, pressed a great handful of her hair

across his lips, and hurried away before temptation could overmaster

him.

There was no one to be found anywhere, but he remembered the stove still

burning in the bar-room, and the empty chairs gathered socially about

it. Thither he made his way through the silent office and corridors, and

drawing his cheap fur coat close about him, settled himself to pass what

little remained of the night. There was sawdust on the floor,

spittoons, scraps of sausage-rind; the air stank stalely of beer and

spirits; the single gas-jet, turned very low, flickered over the nude

women that decorated the mean, fly-blown walls, and flickered, too, over

a man, half-slumbering in a chair, who, but glimmeringly to himself, had

taken the turning road of his life.

*CHAPTER XVII*

The sensation of most runaway couples, after filling up a blank form,

and having a marriage service gabbled over them by a shabby stranger in

a frock-coat, is one of unmixed astonishment at the facility of the

whole proceeding. A dog-license is no harder to obtain, and the

formalities attending vaccination are even greater.

Phyllis emerged from the Reverend Josiah Lyell's with a ring on her

finger, and a cardboard certificate on which the Almighty, angels, and

forked lightning were depicted above her name and Adair's. The first

discussion of their married life was what to do with this monstrosity.

Phyllis was for tearing it up, but Adair, superstitiously afraid of bad

luck, insisted stoutly on its being retained.

"I'll hide it at the bottom of my trunk," he said.

They returned to the carriage, which was awaiting them as composedly as

though nothing in particular had happened in the ten-minute interval.

Adair wished to take a drive before going back to the hotel, thinking

that the air and repose would be soothing for their nerves,--but to his

surprise Phyllis demurred.

"I've been married your way," she said, "now you must come and be

married mine."

"Yours, Phyllis?"

"Yes, tell him to drive to a Catholic church."

He gave the order good-humoredly. "Aren't you satisfied?" he asked.

"Do you want more angels and forked lightning?"

"You see, I've always been a sort of Catholic," she explained. "Not a

good Catholic, but a poor little straggler, galloping on half a mile

behind, like a baby sheep that's got left. I've never liked the

confession part of it, but really, Cyril, there's a sort of whiff of

Heaven about a Catholic church that I need occasionally. It's just as

though you were awfully hungry, and went in to smell a beautiful dinner

a long way off!"

"All right, Phyllis, if we are going to get married we might as well do

it thoroughly," assented Adair. "If you think that beautiful dinner

will help us any, let's go and smell it by all means."

As kind fate would have it, it was rather an attractive church, and

better still it was altogether deserted. The autumn sunshine was

streaming through stained-glass windows; a faint perfume of incense

lingered in the air; the peace and solitude gave an added dignity to the

altar, with its suffering pale Christ, its tall candles, its effulgent

brasses gleaming in the rosy light. Phyllis made Adair kneel at her

side, and holding his hand tightly in hers, prayed silently with

downcast eyes, and the least quiver of a smile at the corner of her

lips.

On their way out they stopped at the font. She crossed herself, touched

her fingers to the water, and scattered some drops on Adair's face.

"That's that you will always love me," she said, with captivating

solemnity, "that's that you will always be true to me; and that's

that--I may die first!"

Adair dabbled his own hand in the holy water, as though the act had a

religious significance, "Oh, God," he said, looking up in all

seriousness, "if there is a God--take care of this sweet wife of mine,

and guard her from every harm; and if there isn't, I swear by this I am

going to do it myself just as well as I know how!"

They kissed each other, and were about to go, when Phyllis noticed the

poor-box. She slipped off her best ring, a little diamond such as girls

are permitted to wear, and unhesitatingly dropped it in. Adair, caught

by the picturesqueness of the offering, would have sacrificed his

horseshoe pin had he not been prevented.

"No, that's too pretty," she cried jealously. "Haven't you something you

don't like that God _would_?"

A little rummaging discovered a gold pencil-case which seemed to fulfill

this demand--at least on Adair's side--and it forthwith followed the

ring. Then they sought the open air.

"Now, at last I feel really married," said Phyllis gaily, as they

climbed back into the carriage. "What a strange, dizzy, _safe_ sort of

feeling it gives one. And just think I could hug you right now before

the driver, and that old lady with the basket, and that little boy

blowing his baby brother's nose--and nobody could say Boo!"

[Illustration: She waited for him at the stage-door.--_Page_ 284]

She alarmed Adair by pretending to carry the hugging into effect until

he tried to push her away, and told her to behave. She replied with a

delighted, bubbling outcry over her new freedom: "Oh, but I'm married

now, and can do just what I like, and can have breakfast in bed with you

every morning, and put my shoes out with yours to be blacked, and I'm

Mrs. Adair, and have a wedding-ring, and a certificate with forked

lightning on it!" She exultantly popped up her feet on the seat in

front, showing a shocking amount of black silk stocking with a bravado

that made him grab at her skirt to pull it down; and in the ensuing romp

there was more silk stocking still, and so much happy laughter on her

part, and scandalized protestation on his that the driver turned round,

and they were all but disgraced.

The narrowness of the escape sobered her, and for the rest of the drive

she was demureness itself. What a joy it was to recline with half-shut

eyes, and let the air fan away all the troubled memories of the night

before! Mind and body craved repose, and mind and body found it in the

cradle-like movement of the carriage. Adair was very tired, too, and

willing enough to share his pretty companion's mood. Deliciously

conscious of each other, though more asleep than awake, they abandoned

themselves to the fresh bright morning, and breathed in deep drafts of

contentment.

On their return to the hotel, the carriage stopped and Tommy Merguelis

jumped up on the step. His perennial grin, and withered, foolish face

was not unclouded by a certain anxiety. He dropped a bunch of roses

into Phyllis' lap, with an awkward compliment which got as far as she

was a rose herself, and then ended midway with a terrified giggle.

"I'm awful sorry," he said, addressing Adair, "but you're wanted at the

theater, Mr. Adair, and I've been chasing around after you for the last

half-hour. They want you to rehearse right off with Miss Clarke, and

coach her a bit in the business."

"Why, what's the matter with De Vere?" asked Adair, surprised.

A slight glaze seemed to spread itself over the grin.

"She won't be in the bill for a day or two," said Tommy. "She's been

suddenly taken awful bad." He paused, seeking a decorous name for the

attack in question, and finally veiled it in the obscurity of a foreign

language: "A crisis de nerves," he added.

"Oh, tantrums?" said Adair in a plainer tongue. "What a confounded

nuisance!"

"She kept yelling and yelling until we got the doctor," went on Tommy;

"and then on top of that Miss Clarke had to get into a hair-pulling

match with Miss Larkins--and so I think you had better hurry, Mr. Adair,

if there's to be anything doing to-night."

"Great Lord, I think so, too!" cried the latter, to whom, like all

stars, the evening performance was next to a religion. "You go on to

the hotel," he went on, turning to Phyllis, "and make yourself as

comfortable as you can." The vexation in his voice was even a better

apology than the one in words. "I'm damned sorry," he said. "It's the

most infernal shame. Forgive me, Phyllis, please do, and try not to

mind."

Thus it was that she drove to the hotel alone, while Adair and Tommy

strode off to quiet the tempest in the theater, and start a tedious and

prolonged rehearsal with Miss de Vere's understudy.

Phyllis went to her room, and found one alleviation of its loneliness in

examining that mysterious object, her wedding-ring. It was so strange,

so unfamiliar, so charged with significance and finality. Just a

trifling hoop of gold, and yet with what myriad meanings. Probably in

days gone by, when of brass or iron it was riveted on the neck, little

brides mirrored themselves in pools with a similar awe at their altered

state, and a similar questioning of the unknown future.

For better or worse, for good or evil, her life was linked to Adair's

beyond all recalling, and the emblem of their compact glittered on the

hand she gazed at so long and earnestly.

But you can not hypnotize yourself for ever with a wedding-ring--even

one not two hours old. There was another matter that called more

insistently for her attention. Cyril had promised her two hundred and

fifty dollars for her clothes, and it behooved her to get pen and ink,

and begin making her calculations. This she did with much erasing, much

crinkling of girlish brows--with a profound, wise-baby expression as

though all the world were at stake. There was a delicious immodesty in

spending Adair's money for such laced and ribboned

femininities--nightgowns, stockings, chemises, and what she wrote down

ambiguously as "those things," and colored as she wrote it. How

thrilling it was, and how exquisitely shocking! Oh, dear, what nice

ones they would have to be,--twenty-five dollars gone for six in the

twinkling of an eye, for surely economy here would be a crime, men being

notoriously fond of--

"Mrs. Adair?"

Her new name was so unfamiliar that she hesitated before answering:

"Come in."

"A gentleman to see you, Mrs. Adair."

The door opened, and there on the threshold stood her father! His face

was white, his eyes morose and sunken, his whole air so formidable that

in the first shock of recognition Phyllis could do no more than stare at

him in terror.

"May I enter?" he asked, in that deeper intonation of his which he never

used except under some special stress. As he spoke he looked about

sharply, and with a bristling hostility as though expecting to discover

a second occupant of the room.

"Mr. Adair isn't here," she said, answering the silent question. "I am

all alone, Papa."

She would have kissed him, but he brushed past her to a chair, and

seated himself heavily, laying his silk hat and his gloves on the floor

beside him. Thus stalwartly in possession of the chamber, he appeared

more formidable than ever, and the deliberate gaze he bent on Phyllis

was masterful and menacing.

"So you've gone and thrown away your life," he said at last. "Forgive

me, my dear, if I am not able to congratulate you upon it."

"I married Mr. Adair this morning, if that's what you mean." She hardly

knew how to say more without adding to her offense. Her father was

bound to put her in the wrong whatever reply she made. A terrible

hopelessness weighed her down, and crushed the unspoken appeal on her

lips.

"Thrown away like that," he repeated, with a gesture. "You, who had

everything; you, with beauty, position, money, brains--my God, the folly

of it--the cruel, wicked, heartless folly of it!"

"Don't, Papa!" she pleaded. "It's done, and so what's the good of

wounding me now?"

"Done!" he cried out bitterly. "That depends on what you mean by the

word. I will call it done in six months when you will leave him for

good, and he will name his price for a divorce. That's the way

adventurers marry money nowadays. They enjoy the girl till they are

tired of her, and then sell!"

Phyllis struggled to keep her composure under the affront. "You are

very unjust," she returned in a low voice that trembled in spite of

herself. "You are determined to think the worst of him, and make it

impossible for us ever to be friends. But you are wrong, Papa. He's not

an adventurer, nor anything like it. Surely I ought to know better than

you, and if I have been willing to love him, and marry him--"

"Oh, I'm not going to argue with you about him," interrupted Mr. Ladd

harshly. "You believe in him now, of course. One can't reason with

lunatics, and I shan't try. I'll give you six months--perhaps even

less--and then I want you to remember what I am saying to you now."

"That you were right?"--Her voice was scornful.--"Oh, Papa, this is

unworthy of you."

"Phyllis," he retorted, "that's the last thing on earth I would ever say

to you. If you should come back to me disillusioned, broken, utterly

weary of the muddle you have made of it all, you will find everything

unchanged between us and the whole matter as ignored as though it had

never been. That's what you are to remember--that my heart and my purse

will never be closed against you."

"Though both are dependent on my giving up my husband?"

"He will give you up, my dear, fast enough."

"How dare you say that, Papa--how dare you!" A mist of anger was in her

eyes, and two spots of crimson glowed dangerously on her cheeks. Never

in her life had she been more roused; up to that moment she had still

hoped to save the day and win her father over, but now she perceived the

irrevocable nature of what was being said. Yet outwardly, at least, she

restrained herself, and hid within her quivering breast a tumult that

seemed to rend her to pieces.

"If I seem to be misjudging Mr. Adair it is only because I know more

about him that you do," continued Mr. Ladd in a tone not untinged with a

grim satisfaction. Even as he spoke he drew out a thick packet, and

unfolded it on his knee. It was a mass of typewriting, with here and

there a notorial seal on paper of a different color, and an occasional

newspaper cutting neatly pasted in the center of a little sea of

comment. "Here we have him in black and white," he went on, "and

frankly, Phyllis, he offers you a very poor promise of a happy married

life."

"And you expect me on my wedding morning to sit down and read these

things--these abominable slanders your detectives have scraped

together?"

"Oh, no. But I demand to have Mr. Adair sit down and answer them."

"Would you believe him if he did?"

"Facts are facts. He can't deny them."

"And you called _me_ unreasonable? Oh, Papa!"

Mr. Ladd ignored the taunt.

"When he appreciates that his whole disreputable past is known to me,"

he went on, with the same inflexible composure, "he may condescend to

consider--an arrangement."

"An arrangement?--What do you mean?"

"I have brought a blank check with me," he explained. "He can name

anything--and get it. I'd rather pay more now than less later."

His brutality overwhelmed her. It took her a few seconds to understand

the incredible baseness he imputed to Adair. In the light of this her

father's previous insults paled to insignificance. She was too stunned

to make any reply, and for a while could do nothing but look at him in

speechless wonder. Then she rose, and rang the bell.

"The marriage could be annulled," said Mr. Ladd, oblivious of everything

except his one preoccupation. "The next thing is to keep the newspapers

quiet, and that I can do. We'll go abroad--"

The darky came running up with a pitcher of ice water. No one ever rang

for anything else in the Clarendon Hotel. He entered, jingling the ice.

"Show this gentleman out," said Phyllis, "and I want you to remember I

shall not be home to him again."

"Phyllis!"

The entreaty in his voice moved her not a bit, nor the outstretched

hand, veined, wrinkled and shaking.

"It's conceivable I may forgive you for this, Papa," she exclaimed,

"though God knows it will be hard. But if you offer that check to Cyril

I shall hate you till the day I die!"

"Have it your own way then," he returned dully, and with a curious break

in his voice. "Take your own wilful road, and come back to me when your

heart's broken. I'll be waiting for you, Phyllis, and ready to forget

and forgive."

She disdained to make any reply. The darky officiously gathered up the

silk hat and gloves from the floor, and presented them to Mr. Ladd. The

latter, with a last look at his daughter's unrelenting face, turned in

silence, and passed out.

"The stairs are to the left, sah," said the darky.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

Whether disillusion was finally destined to arrive or not, there was

certainly not a hint of it during those succeeding weeks. There was no

happier little bride in America, than Phyllis Adair, and intimate

acquaintance with that extraordinary creature, man, only redoubled her

delight in him. The bigness, directness, simplicity, intolerance, and

dog-like devotion of her husband were an unfailing joy to her. No

little girl who had been given a coveted St. Bernard could have taken

more anxious, eager, excited care of him. She would feed Adair with the

daintiest morsels from her own plate; she would exert every faculty she

possessed to amuse and distract him when he fell into one of his

despondent moods; she would mock him with such pretty archness when he

grew irritable over trifles. "Damn it all, where did that fool Williams

put my patent leather shoes?"--"Damn it all, you will find them in the

bottom of the wardrobe neatly ranged with the others," she would answer.

No matter how ill his humor she always found the means to make him

smile; her quick wit, or her slim, audacious body each exultantly

willing to tease and bewitch him.

Of all human gifts surely that of loving has received the least general

recognition. A genius for music, a genius for mathematics or natural

history, or sculpture, or mechanics, is at once admitted and acclaimed.

But what of a genius for loving, which of all is infinitely the rarest?

The trouble is that every one is conceited enough to think that he (or

she) is a wonder at it. But frankly, do we really indeed see so many

love-geniuses about us? Are we not rather struck instead by an almost

universal love-poverty? If the husband stays drearily at home every

night of his life, and if the wife is entirely absorbed in the baby, are

we not asked enthusiastically to applaud a happy home? This is the

national ideal, and tens of thousands are yawning heroically through it.

But where's love in any but half-pint sizes? Everybody insists it is

there in barrelfuls, much as they insisted in the fairy tale in the case

of the man with the invisible clothes.--We are not defending hubby when

he gets tangled up with the blonde lady, but emotionally speaking (only

_emotionally_, be it understood), it may be an upward step. If you have

a ten per cent. capacity to love, it is hard to be fobbed off with a

four per cent. partner.

Phyllis was one of the chosen few in whom the capacity to love was

inordinate. Her one thought was to make herself indispensable to the

man to whom she had given herself. Adair was the last thing in her head

at night, the first at dawn. Hardly was there an act of hers in which

his personality was not a contributing factor. Her insatiable ambition

was to please and delight him, and her brain was ever busy to find fresh

ways, and improve on the old. Her finesse, her humor, her ardent and

tender imagination--all were enlisted to a single end. Passion she had

in plenty, for she was of a voluptuous nature, and the blood coursed

hotly in her veins--but she had more than that to give him, and was

possessed of a thousand captivating arts to ensnare this love that was

said to be so elusive, and bind it tight with a myriad silken threads.

It will be asked was Adair worthy of so supreme a devotion? Is it not

enough to answer that he was not altogether unworthy? There was a lot

of human clay in the creature, and while Phyllis was exerting all her

blithe young ardor to keep the altar-fires aflame, he was content to

look on lazily, and man-like, take many things for granted. Had she

been no better, their love would have run the ordinary course, and

perished fast enough on the rocks of habit and satiety. Adair's

spiritual side was all but dormant. He was encased in materialism as

stoutly as some of us in fat; whatever gropings he had toward higher

things were all in the direction of the stage. Feelings he could not

initiate himself he took here ready made, and showed almost a genius in

their comprehension. He presented a paradox of one who could admirably

"get into" any written character, and yet who was wholly unable to "get

into" his own.

Phyllis knew much more what laid beneath than he. To her the yearning,

troubled, inarticulate soul of the man appealed as pathetically as the

sight of some great, ashamed, bearded fellow who had never been taught

to read. In the finer sense Adair had never been taught anything. His

instincts alone had saved him from being a clod. In his fight up from

the bottom he had arrived a good deal splashed with mud; and Phyllis,

figuratively speaking, rolled back her sleeves, and set herself to

tubbing him.

He was extraordinarily submissive in this respect, extraordinarily

grateful and responsive. He made no pretense of hiding his ignorance,

but questioned her like a child, and often as artlessly. At thirty-four

he was having the universe reconstructed for him, and the process filled

him with astonishment. Phyllis read aloud to him from such unheard-of

authors as Thackeray, Carlyle, Hardy, Stevenson, and Meredith until

these strange names became quite familiar. She could read French, too,

translating as she went, while he sat back, profoundly respectful and

impressed, his humility tinged with the zest of ownership. Yes, her

youth, her beauty, her intelligence, her love, all were his; and as he

gazed at her through the haze of his cigar, the words often fell

heedlessly on his ear as he felt the mantling of a divine contentment.

Yet he could be very masterful on some matters. Phyllis was not allowed

to receive the advances of the company, or to associate with any of its

members, a prohibition not a little difficult to obey in the course of

their constant traveling together. But if Phyllis shrank from being

rude, Adair suffered from no similar delicacy, and was brutally direct

in making his wishes plain to his stage companions. It was not only

that he feared Lydia de Vere, whose yellowish eyes were full of enmity,

and whose powers for mischief he well knew; but in contrast to his

dainty wife these theater-people somehow began to strike him as

tarnished and common, and he was jealously reluctant to expose her to

their familiarities. Intercourse with Phyllis was sharpening his

critical faculty; his view-point was insensibly changing; there were

even times when he realized his own deficiencies.--Tommy Merguelis was

the one exception he made. The lanky young man, when weighed in the new

scales, was found to be less wanting than the others. There was

something sensitive and refined about Tommy. Ill-health, pins, and years

of furniture-polish had been as cleansing fires. He was a humble person

who would accept his humble inch and grin gratefully, and not reach out

for an ell. Yes, Phyllis might be friends with Tommy.

With them on their travels from town to town went a punching-bag, which

Adair inflated and set up as soon as their trunks were unpacked. Every

morning, stripped to the waist, Phyllis had to double up her little

fists, and start a-pummelling for ten furious minutes. There could be

no begging off from this daily rite; it was one of the iron rules of

married life; pleadings, caresses, protests all were in vain. An icy

bath had to follow, and if she hesitated too long on the brink, or

showed too mutinous a row of toes, Adair would jump up, and tumble her

in as mercilessly as a boy with a puppy. At night, too, he was no less

rigid in regard to her prayers. His own religion was very nebulous. He

never prayed himself nor went to church; but apparently that was no

reason why Phyllis should be similarly backward. It gave him a peculiar

pleasure to see her kneeling beside the bed, her night dress flowing

about her slender, girlish body, and her hair drawn back, and held by a

circlet of red ribbon. He knew no prettier picture, nor was it without

a tender and uplifting value. For it was his name that moved on her

lips, and who would not have been proud to send so enchanting a little

deputy to plead for one before the Throne of Grace? Then it was that he

seemed to love her best; and though all unaware of it, he, too, was

praying in the deeper, unspoken language of the heart.

"You've forgotten your prayers!"

"Oh, it was so cold--I thought I wouldn't to-night."

"Jump up!"

"It's so cosy here with you--and you ought to have said it sooner--and

anyhow, I won't."

"Jump up!"

"Oh, Cyril, that hurts!"

"Of course, it hurts."

"It's wicked to pinch as hard as that."

"It's wickeder not to say your prayers."

"Oh, Cyril, don't, _don't_!"

"Jump up, then."

"I'm not in the right frame of mind now--you have pinched it all

away.--All right, all right, don't--I'll do it! Though I don't think a

pinch-prayer would be as good as a real one. Do you?"

"This is the prayer-rush time--God won't notice it."

"Not even if I am black and blue? Why, the angels will be shocked."

"They are that already with the fuss you have made. Roll out, you bad

little chap,--out with you!"

Sometimes Adair was sharp with her--impatient and fretful. He made very

little effort to control his moods, which, as with most artists, were as

changeable and capricious as those of a child. Nine women out of ten

would have retorted in kind, and the honeymoon period would have

insensibly passed, and with it much of the charm and rapture of their

union. It was due to no help of Adair's that they did not descend to

the ordinary plane of married life, with its deliquescence of nearly

everything beautiful and romantic--occasional harshness on one side,

tears and pin-prickings on the other, and departing illusions on both.

People can still get along very tolerably in this manner, and remain

fairly fond and faithful, but no one can contend it is the poet's ideal.

It was certainly not Phyllis', and she was determined to avoid such a

catastrophe.

In her ambitious little head the honeymoon was to be only the beginning

of a sweeter intimacy beyond. She saw, lying latent in Adair, a

capacity to love as great as her own (she was presumptuous enough to

think that no one could love any better), and her one consuming endeavor

was to draw it forth. Whether or not the prize was worth the winning

never occurred to her. This big, splendid, untamed man-animal was hers,

with all his weaknesses and defects, with all his fine qualities and

bad, and she had accepted the responsibility of him with naive

self-confidence. To love was her vocation, and she set herself to it

with delight.

Her unfailing gaiety, her pretty artifices to amuse and cajole him, her

constant study of means to give him pleasure--all were as the drops that

wear away the stone. High-spirited, quick-tempered, and with a

sensitiveness that a glance could wound, she yet put such a rein upon

herself that no provocation could draw from her an unkind word. She

might grow suddenly silent, her mouth might quiver, her eyes glisten,

but no sharp retort ever passed her lips. There are many men with whom

this would not have answered. To some, indeed, an exquisite gentleness

and forbearance almost tempts their harshness. Feeling themselves in

the wrong their vanity is insulted, and with morbid perversity they go

from bad to worse. But Adair was not of this sort. With all his faults

he was a man of generous instincts, and capable of quick and headlong

repentances. He could come in like a thunder-cloud, on edge with

nerves, snappish, morose, ready to fly off the tangent at a trifle--and

five minutes later would be sitting at Phyllis' feet, his face in her

lap, conquered, contrite, declaiming hotly against himself, his

ill-temper all striking inward.

These lapses of his helped his love much more than they hurt it, and

through them he began to acquire some self-control, some degree of

consideration--some shame. In him devotion brought out devotion.

Instead of resenting Phyllis' strategems to keep him good-humored and

happy, he was touched to the quick. It was a new idea, this of keeping

love alight; of consecrating thought and care to it and guarding the

precious flame from extinction. It dawned upon him as something

entirely novel and unheard-of. Yet it was beautiful; he approved of it

heartily. He innocently ascribed the invention to Phyllis, and as usual

was tremendously impressed. It made him wonder whether she ever thought

of anything else but love. As he grew to know her better he saw that it

inspired all she did--that every impulse and every action sprang from

it.

Had he been a king, and she the transient, pretty butterfly of the

moment, she could not have striven harder to fascinate and hold him.

Her saucy tongue, her fancifulness, her audacity, her often-declared

determination to be as much sweetheart as wife--all were as spice to a

love that might otherwise have cloyed. To adore a man is not

enough--there is nothing the poor darling silly animal gets tired of so

soon as being adored.--One had to keep him interested, captivated,

filling in one's own little person all his complicated needs of passion,

comradeship, entertainment, variety, and mental recreation. But how

well one was repaid! If one gave a whole harem's worth of love, one

received a whole harem's worth back, and sweetest of all one could watch

the unfolding and ripening of a really fine nature. She was sure her

infatuation had guided her truly in that respect; that her choice had

fallen on a man with heart and soul big enough to repay her devotion.

He might be rough, but she had never a moment's doubt as to the diamond,

nor as to her ability to shape and polish it.

It was a process, unfortunately, that could not be hurried. Against her

in the endeavor were the ingrained habits and wilfulness of twenty

years. From his boyhood up Adair had lived in an atmosphere of

unrestraint, a Bohemian of Bohemians, without ties, care-free, the whim

of the moment his only guide. Some backslidings on his part were

inevitable and Phyllis, with all her illusions, was sane and cool enough

to foresee them. It was hardly a surprise to her, therefore, though

frightening and dismaying, when late one night, after awaiting him in

vain, Tommy Merguelis appeared unexpectedly in his stead. Any stranger

to the young man would have judged him to be in high spirits; his

shrill, nervous laugh was louder than usual; and he stammered and

giggled as though bubbling over with an unextinguishable good nature.

To Phyllis' practised eyes, however, these were ominous signs, and her

breath came a little quickly, as she asked news of her husband.

"Oh, he's all right," said Tommy, standing with one hand on the

door-knob, and showing no inclination to enter the room. "Oh, Mr. Adair

is all right--and hee, hee, don't you worry about him. He's detained,

that's all, and he sent me to say he might be late, and, and--"

"And what?"

"They've got him into a game down at Mr. Feld's--the owner of the

theater, hee, hee--and he couldn't well refuse, or at least--"

"Oh, Tommy, please--I don't understand."

"Just a little game of draw."

"Cards?"

"Yes--poker."

This did not strike Phyllis as anything very terrible.

"And he sent you to tell me he would be late?" she inquired, much

reassured.

Tommy lied manfully. As a matter of fact he had invented the

message--and the errand--to shield Adair, who had forgotten everything

in the absorption of the game. "Yes," he said, "he can't manage to be

back to supper with you, and is awful sorry about it, and hopes you

won't mind." Though Tommy could lie, he could not act. His anxiety was

obvious; he wriggled uncomfortably; and his silly, convulsive smile

presaged some disagreeable revelation. Phyllis, now thoroughly alarmed,

and with characteristic directness went straight for the truth.

"Tommy, has he been drinking?"

"Oh, ah, well, hee, hee--yes, he has."

"And they are playing high?"

"A dollar limit."

"And you came here to warn me? Don't deny it,"

"Oh, ah, well, hee, hee--yes, I did, Mrs. Adair."--As Phyllis paused,

troubled, uncertain, full of distress, Tommy added: "I don't know as it

wouldn't be a good plan for you to come along with me and get him."

"Would he come?"

"Anybody would come for you, Mrs. Adair."

"Surely he doesn't often gamble, Tommy. He has never spoken to me of

it?"

"Oh, there's nothing he don't do when the fit takes him. Hee, hee, he's

that kind, you know--temperamental."

The word, and the woebegone indulgence with which it was uttered made

Phyllis smile. Her humor was always close to the surface, even when

there were tears between.

"You are a dear, good fellow," she said, "and I'll never forget your

kindness to-night, though as for doing anything, I am going to stay

here."

He was amazed at the gentleness of her tone.

"I am never going to be his taskmaster," she went on, as much to herself

as to Tommy. "As far as I am concerned he shall always be as free as

air. If I went after him at all, it would be to sit on his knee, and

drink with him."

Tommy's scandalized face again made her laugh.

"Don't be afraid," she said with tremulous gaiety, "I won't do it this

evening, anyhow. Now run away, Tommy, and tell them down-stairs we

shan't need any supper after all."

She shut the door after him, and stood with her back to it, forlornly

regarding the empty room. She was more than hurt, more than mortified.

She had to ask herself if she had failed.

*CHAPTER XIX*

It was dawn when Adair staggered in, undressed and rolled in beside her.

Her long vigil had been succeeded by an overpowering slumber, and she

was not aware of his return until the streaming sunshine awakened her

toward nine o'clock. She wondered at first why her heart was so heavy,

and then, with reviving recollection, sat up, and gazed at her sleeping

husband. Even a debauch could not impair his fine complexion, and the

thick, black hair clustered against the ruddy skin softened Phyllis'

expression as she studied his face long and earnestly. The charm of

that vigorous manhood was irresistible, and whatever lurking grudge she

still had against Adair was lost in a fresh access of tenderness. His

uneasy breathing, his hot dry forehead, his parched and parted lips, all

appealed as well to the woman in her--the mother, the nurse.

For once the routine of punching-bag and bath was forgone, and her first

task on rising was to set about preparing breakfast. This, with the

pair, was a trifling matter, consisting of rolls, cream and butter

ordered over night and set outside their door on a tray every morning,

and the coffee Phyllis made herself over a spirit lamp. She was thus

busily engaged when she was conscious of a movement on the bed, and

turned to see her husband lowering at her with bloodshot eyes. Awake,

he looked disheveled, surly, ill and exasperated. His head was

splitting, and he was in one of those vile humors when a man avenges his

physical distress on those about him. He pushed Phyllis away as she ran

over to him, and told her roughly to leave him alone. The offer of a

cup of coffee outraged him. Groaning and swearing, he pulled himself

into a sitting posture, and in a voice as intentionally disagreeable as

he could make it demanded some hot water.

Holding the cup in both hands, he began to drink it in angry little

sips, finding a malign satisfaction in the change that had come over

Phyllis. Pale, silent, wounded and frightened, she was utterly at loss

to know what to do. Every word was a stab, and she had a stupefying

feeling that the end had come. Her only coherent thought, the only

manifestation of resentment within her, was to contribute nothing to

bring about the catastrophe. If Adair were determined to pull down

their little paradise about their ears, and destroy for ever the filmy

and poetic fabric of a perfect love, she, at least, would hold herself

innocent of the sacrilege. But, oh, the pang of it, the heartrending

misery, the disillusion!

"Now, go ahead," he said sullenly. "I'm ready--go ahead!"

She faltered and trembled in asking him what he meant.

He burst out with a scornful laugh.

"I was drunk last night," he said, "you know that as well as I do, and

here I am ready to take my medicine--can't avoid it, I know that--and

want to get it over with. You wouldn't be a woman if you didn't pay me

out."

The vulgarity of the conception stung her.

"I--I don't pay people out," she said simply.

"Oh, no, you're the quiet kind," he went on with an ugly jeer, intent

somehow on putting her in the wrong. "You don't say anything, but you

sit there and freeze a fellow--and oh, my God, yes, cry! There you go,

cry, cry, cry!"

She did break down for a moment under his deliberate cruelty, but

quickly rallying, came over, and sat beside him on the bed.

"Don't, don't quarrel with me," she said pitifully, and then added with

a gleam of humor, "after all, it wasn't I that was drunk, you know."

She put out her hand, and for a while he permitted it to lie against his

aching forehead. All would have been well had he not unfortunately

spilled his cup. At this his latent fury broke out anew.

"For God's sake, don't crowd all over me!" he cried. "Sit over there,

where we can talk like sensible people. You have made me all wet with

the damned stuff."

The fault was his own, and due to his unsteady hands, but he was

wilfully pleased to put her in the wrong. He glowered at her with

savage reproach as she moved a little farther away in obedience to his

command. She was disconcertingly quiet, and it seemed to him an added

injustice to be cheated of a scene. There was nothing but her anguished

eyes, and her drooping and utterly dispiriting attitude to tell him how

well he was succeeding.

"You're a little fool," he announced inconsequently.

He waited for her to answer, but she made no sign of having heard him,

sitting there stricken, numb.

"To have tied up with such a damned goat," he added, with immense

conviction.

Still no answer.

"The best thing you can do is to pack up and go," he went on.

At this she did find her voice, ghost of a one that it was.

"Is that what you really want me to do, Cyril?"

"It's what you ought to do," he returned, with a sternly paternal air.

"It's for you to decide."

His mumbling reply turned into a groan.

"I lost nearly four hundred dollars last night," he said, after a deadly

pause. "Then I had to get into a scrap with Jake Steinberger, and

Willie Latimer, and George Wright, and there was a hell of a shindy till

somebody turned in a police-alarm, and I only dodged arrest by the skin

of my teeth--not but what I'll be summonsed to-day, sure as sure. On

top of that my engagement is gone, for I lammed Jake half to death, and

I guess he had rather break up the tour all-standing than keep me in the

bill another night. And--and--"

"You thought you'd make a clean sweep of everything, once you were at

it, and alienate me, too?"

"Yes, like a damned goat," he repeated dully.

"Well, you have succeeded," she said in the same low, even tone, "I dare

say you'll be sorry some day at having broken your toys. There isn't

anything more to be said, is there, except good-by?"

She was about to rise when Adair flung himself out of the bed, and

kneeling before her, pulled off her little slippers and began kissing

her naked feet. His repentance was so sudden, so abject that it was

almost as though he had gone crazy. It was indeed an hysterical

revulsion, and his frame shook, and his hands clenched themselves on her

flesh as he abased himself before her. He begged incoherently for

forgiveness, for mercy; he would kill himself if she were to leave him;

he loved her; he could die for her; the disgrace and despair of it all

had driven him mad. At first she resisted, struggling to free herself,

and too deeply affronted for any atoning words to touch her; but her

powerlessness in his grasp, the warmth of his quick, tumultuous breath

against her, even the physical pain he was unconsciously inflicting--all

at last took her womanhood by storm, and she drew up his head, and

allowed him to sob his heart out in her lap.

How little did either of them know, she sitting on the bed in her

night-dress, he nestling close against her in an agony of shame and

contrition, that a battle of the soul had been fought and won; that the

finer nature had triumphed over the coarser; that an insensible but a

most real step had been taken upward. Phyllis extorted no promises;

Adair made no vows; rather they clung to each other like little children

who had safely passed the edge of a precipice, and in security beyond

were trembling at what they had risked.

The woman, always the more practical partner, was the first to descend

from the clouds to mundane considerations.

"And what's the poor little damned goat going to do?" she asked, the

quoted profanity on her pretty lips as piquant and tender as a lullaby;

and accompanying it with a smile so arch that Adair's face, too, could

not but light with it.

"Face the music and then get out," returned the D. G.

"Out where, dearest?"

Adair grew overcast.

"Mortimer Clark's on the road somewhere," he said reflectively, "and I'm

sure he'd make room for me if he had to fire a whole company. Then

there's Nan O'Farrell in the _Diamond Diadem_ and Leo Foster in the

_Slaves of Circumstance_. They are all on the cheap, and would jump at

the chance of getting me at their prices. As soon as I get round to it,

I'll telegraph."

Phyllis hesitated, but at last the words came.

"On the cheap," she repeated. "Why don't you aim higher, Cyril? Why

don't you try the real people--those who are worth while, especially

now, when you're going to break away from Steinberger?"

His only reply was a shake of the head.

"You know you're too good for this sort of thing," she went on. "It

isn't flattery to tell you that--you see it yourself every night--I saw

it, and that's why I-- Oh, Cyril, let's try to get where you belong."

"You don't understand," he said moodily. "You don't understand a bit. I

had all that once, and I kicked it over. The stage is an awfully small

place--for anybody that amounts to anything, you know--though as big as

an ocean for the others. There isn't anybody of importance--manager or

star--who doesn't _hate_ me." He perceived the doubt in her glance, and

continued swiftly: "Oh, it's no conspiracy, or jealousy, or anything of

that kind--a tip-top man can override all that if there's money in him

for the box-office--but I've set them all against me. There isn't one I

haven't punched or insulted somehow. I hold the record for being the

best-detested man on Broadway. Why, Alfred Fielman once--that was six

years ago, when I was by way of being a metropolitan favorite, and all

that, ha, ha--he had me on a forty weeks' contract, and at the end of

three he gave me a check for the rest and told me he had no more use for

my services. Thirty-seven weeks' full salary--think of it--and the

door!"

"But isn't it different now?" asked Phyllis, enfolding him with a pair

of the whitest, softest, shapeliest arms in the world, and pressing her

cheek against his face. "You've got good since then, and are now mama's

little man!"

"Look at last night," protested mama's little man dismally. "Drinking,

fighting, gambling, and my job out of the window! That's been me right

along--two weeks' notice, and for God's sake, never come back!"

"Just a damned goat," rippled Phyllis, her teeth shining like pearls,

and her cheeks dimpling mischievously.

"A silly ass," ejaculated Adair with much self-contempt.

"Now, I want to tell you my idea," cried Phyllis. "We're going to pack

up, poor booful disgraced genius--and wife (as they add on hotel

registers); and we're going to count our poor little pennies, and take a

tourist sleeper to New York, and get a little flat of the sort they rent

to dormice in reduced circumstances, and live on air and kisses and

hope--while poor Booful will go round telling everybody he's a reformed

character, and looking for an engagement. And if the top all hates him,

and if the middle is all full, why Booful will begin at the bottom,

while Mrs. Booful will wash, and cook, and darn his socks--oh, no,

listen,--yes, and darn his socks, and pet him when he is discouraged and

cross, and keep everything scrupulously clean (in books if you're

awfully poor, you're always scrupulously clean, haven't you noticed it)?

Yes, scrupulously clean, and oh, so economical of every nickel till

everybody begins to see that Booful isn't a damned goat, but a man of

splendid talent, and up, up, up he'll go like a balloon, till there

won't be a garbage-can without his name on it, or a bill-board without

somebody "presenting" him in letters six feet high, and fame and money

will pour in like a Niagara, and, and--Cyril, why shouldn't we?"

His look of indulgence and amusement had gradually changed to downright

eagerness.

"If you can stand it, I can," he said.

"Oh, Cyril, I'm not afraid--let's do it!"

"We'll be starvation poor."

"But in a home of our own--no more of these horrid hotels, no more

traveling, and something big to live and hope for."

"Those dormice flats are awfully squeezy--and dark."

"So's a robin's nest, for that matter."

"And those pretty hands--it would be wicked to spoil them."

"Oh, I won't spoil them--besides, what would be the good of them if they

couldn't work for the man I love."

"Scrubbing floors, and cleaning kettles and polishing the stove?"

"You can help a little."

"And suppose, instead of being easy, it's very hard? It takes courage

to start again. You'll have to be brave enough for two, for I've none

of that kind of grit or perseverance. Do you think you can bolster up a

great big fellow like me, who'll come home like a baby and cry?"

"We'll bolster up each other."

"I--I wish I was more worthy of you, Phyllis."

"Stop kissing my toes--it tickles--and oh, Cyril, don't bite them!"

"I'm ashamed--you are so sweet and good and clever and brave--and the

whole of me isn't worth that little pink one, and I don't think I've

ever loved you so much as I do this minute, or _respected_ you more. If

you were married to a street-car conductor I believe you'd make him

president of the United States--and if your husband mayn't bite you, who

can?"

"You darling!"

"And I swear by that one that I love you better than anything in the

world; and by that one I'll be true to you all my life; and by that one

I'll cut my tongue out before I'll ever say an unkind word to you again;

and by that one I'm going to do everything you say, just as though you

were an angel from Heaven, which you are if ever there was one; and by

that fat little big toe that I'm going to try to copy the tenderest,

gentlest, most exquisite nature that God ever breathed into a human

being; and by the whole chubby little white satin foot--"

"Do sit up--it's important."

"I thought it was all settled. We'll start for New York as soon as I am

fired--officially."

"Cyril?"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"I'm so infatuated with you that perhaps I don't see things as they are.

It is not a dream, is it, that you really could get on in New York--I

mean if you lived down all the ill will against you there? I try to

detach myself, and criticize you dispassionately--but you always seem to

me so tremendously good."

"I am good--in my own kind of work."

"You've no dread of failure?"

"In handing out the goods--? Not a particle, Phyllis. Why should I?

Haven't I done it?"

"In your New York days?"

"Why, Phyllis, this isn't brag. I've got notices to show for it,

corking notices. What you have seen me do is not my best. No one could

do that with the support I get, and I have to carry the whole outfit

single handed. A company ought to be a string orchestra--and they give

me a brass band!"

"Have you got the notices?--I'd love to see them!"

"They're at the bottom of the trunk somewhere--three books of them."

"Do get them out, and let me read some."

After long rummaging the books were produced. Phyllis, who in the

interval had put on a peignoir, and begun to comb her hair, seized on

one of them enthusiastically. It was an unwieldy, shabby old volume,

and so heavy it was hard to hold. The exertion, and perhaps the

excitement had caused Adair's head to throb again, and he was glad to

stretch his length on the bed while Phyllis, drawing up a rocking chair,

seated herself as close as she could beside him.

The actor had not exaggerated his past successes. For three seasons he

had been a notable figure on Broadway, and if his reputation had been

more one of promise than achievement it was in dazzling contrast to what

he had since become. He had himself almost forgotten the stir he had

made--not the deafening curtain calls, the brimming box-offices, the

deferential managers,--none could forget that--but the soberer, yet more

valuable evidence of the critics. It was electrifying to listen to them

again; to see across the mean, intervening years that other self of his

lording it so high; to realize, with mingled bitterness, wonder and hope

that he was still the same man, with the same if not richer powers, and

a new-born resolution to regain what he had so lightly valued and so

unconcernedly thrown away.

Phyllis, pink with excitement, and tripping occasionally over the longer

words, read notice after notice with indefatigable zest, constantly

substituting Booful and other endearing epithets for the more formal

name in print, while her husband lay back, listening delightedly, and

contributing exclamations, "By George, and it was William Winter who

said that!"--"Say, that's Huneker, isn't it?" "A column in _The World_

isn't handed out to everybody, not by a long sight."

BOOFUL OPENS AT WALLACK'S

THE HONOR OF THE REGIMENT PLEASES, BUT

NEEDS CUTTING.

THE STAR SCORES AS MOODY HERO, AND EXCELS

HIMSELF IN MAGNIFICENT PORTRAYAL OF

EBHARDT.

"Those who went last night to see _Booful_ were not disappointed,

however they may have disagreed about the play itself. For that

brilliant young _darling_ it was hardly less than a personal triumph,

and from the rise of the curtain--"

It was a very inconsiderate moment for a heavy rap at the door.

"Come in," cried Adair.

In the shadow stood a bulky figure--a blue figure--a figure with

something shining on its swelling chest. Phyllis looked and quailed as

the bravest of us do at the sight of the Law, intruding its hob-nailed

boot into what is metaphorically termed our castle. In this case the

castle was so small, and the Law so large and red and impressive that

the former seemed but a trifling refuge against oppression. In the

accents of a green and troubled island the new-comer asked: "Are you

Misther Adair--Misther Surul Adair?"

"That's me, all right," said the actor.

"You're summonsed for assault and battery, and here's the payper, and

it's before Judge Dunn ye're to come at two o'clock."

"Where do I go, officer?"

"The city hall, police court number one."

"Two o'clock, you say? Very good. Tell Judge Dunn I have much pleasure

in accepting his kind invitation."

The functionary unbent genially.

"Tay will be served on the lawn," he said, "and the Marine Band will be

in attendance, and some of our younger set will be there--in blue."

It seemed incredible to poor, trembling Phyllis that Adair could burst

out laughing. But he did, and that with every indication of

undiminished spirits.

"All right, officer, I'll be there."

"Good morning, sorr."

"Good morning, officer."

The tears were streaming down Phyllis' face as she ran to Adair, and

threw her arms around his neck; but he caressed and comforted her, and

gradually got her to smile again.

"I feel better," he said. "Be a dear, and make me some fresh

coffee.--Oh, Phyllis, isn't it jolly!"

"Jolly? Oh, how can you--"

"Oh, I mean about going back to New York! A fellow who's hit them once

can hit them again, and by George, with you to help me, I just know I'm

bound to land!"

"But this awful police court!"

"Don't worry about that--they've never hanged a Free Mason yet.--Easy

with the cream, sweetheart.--Where was it we left off? Oh, yes, here it

is: 'Adair opens at Wallack's. Those who went last night to see Cyril

Adair--'"

[Illustration: _From the Leamington Courier of November 28th, 190--_

AMUSING SCENE IN JUDGE DUNN'S COURT]

_From the Leamington Courier of November 28th, 190--._

*AMUSING SCENE IN JUDGE DUNN'S COURT*

Yesterday the proceedings in Judge Dunn's court were enlivened by the

presence of Cyril Adair the actor, who, on the complaint of Jacob

Steinberger, his manager, and Messrs. Willard Latimer and George

Augustus Wright, brother players, was haled before the bar of justice

for assault and battery. The three complainants showed unmistakable

traces of a fistic encounter, and there was a subdued ripple of

merriment at their bandaged appearance. The encounter was the outcome of

a midnight game of poker, and there was a direct conflict of evidence as

to who began the fray.

Judge Dunn finally summed up against the defendant, and in default of a

fine, ordered him to find personal security to be of good behavior for

three months. Much amusement was then caused by Mrs. Adair unexpectedly

stepping forward, and pleading most charmingly with the judge to permit

her to assume the obligation. The court was unable to resist so

attractive a bit of femininity, and though remarking it was somewhat

irregular, consented, amid general laughter, to grant her request.

The judge made up for it, however, by giving the defendant a stiff

little lecture before dismissing the case, expressing his surprise that

the husband of so young and pretty a wife should care to pass the early

morning hours at poker and fisticuffs. Adair accepted the rebuke with

great good nature and prompted by his wife thanked his honor for his

forbearance, adding to the general hilarity by repeating aloud some of

the advice that was being whispered in his ear. Apologies followed

outside, and the whole party returned to their hotel in the same hack.

All's well that ends well!

*CHAPTER XX*

Adair waited until Christmas before severing his connection with

Steinberger. The holidays were bad for theatrical business, and the

prospect of a temporarily reduced salary and several extra matinees

seemed to make this period an auspicious one for departure. With two

hundred and eighty dollars, their trunks, the clothes they stood in, and

hearts beating high with eagerness and hope, the pair took the train for

the City of Success.

Even on their way to it their respective positions began to change. The

actor, for all his broad shoulders and big voice and commanding

presence, betrayed from the first a helplessness and dependence that

both pleased and surprised his little wife. He anxiously deferred to her

in everything; fell in readily with every suggestion; listened with

profound respect to her plans. He knew New York inside out; poverty was

no stranger to him, nor the makeshifts and struggles of the poor; yet in

the crisis of their fortunes it was the girl that took the lead--the

girl who had never suffered a single privation in her life, who had been

reared in luxury, to whom money and ease were as the air she breathed.