CHAPTER I

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THE PERFUME OF EROS

By Mr Saltus

IMPERIAL PURPLE

THE POMPS OF SATAN

MARY MAGDALEN

A TRANSACTION IN HEARTS

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISENCHANTMENT

THE PACE THAT KILLS

THE ANATOMY OF NEGATION

PURPLE AND FINE WOMEN

MR. INCONT'S MISADVENTURE

THE TRUTH ABOUT TRISTOEM VARICK

LOVE AND LORE

THE STORY WITHOUT A NAME

EDEN

In Preparation

SCAFFOLDS AND ALTARS

The

Perfume of Eros

A FIFTH AVENUE INCIDENT

By

EDGAR SALTUS

New York

A. WESSELS COMPANY

1905

Copyrighted 1905 by

EDGAR SALTUS

Printed October, 1905

PRESS OF

BRAUNWORTH & CO.

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS

BROOKLYN, N. Y.

THE FACTS IN THE CASE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE FACTS IN THE CASE

CHAPTER PAGE

I. A MAN OF FASHION 9

II. THE POCKET VENUS 19

III. THE EX-FIRST LADY 32

IV. ENCHANTMENT 44

V. MARIE CHANGES HER NAME 52

VI. THE YELLOW FAY 63

VII. SWEET-AND-TWENTY 71

VIII. TWO IN A TURRET 80

IX. FANNY CHANGES HER CLOTHES 89

X. A VICTIM 101

THE GENERAL SESSIONS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. DISENCHANTMENT 111

II. THE MOTE IN THE EYE 121

III. THE GATES OF LIFE 133

IV. THE RETURN OF THE YELLOW FAY 144

V. EXIT FANNY 156

VI. WHAT THE PAPERS SAID 166

VII. HELD WITHOUT BAIL 177

VIII. THE DEFENDANT TO THE BAR 191

IX. THE TWELFTH JUROR 202

X. THE VERDICT 219

THE PERFUME OF EROS

CHAPTER I

A MAN OF FASHION

"Royal," said the man's mother that evening, "are you still thinking

of Fanny Price?"

It was in Gramercy Park. As you may or may not know, Gramercy Park is

the least noisy spot in the metropolitan Bedlam. Without being

unreasonably aristocratic it is sedate and what agents call exclusive.

The park itself is essentially that. Its design is rather English. The

use is restricted to adjoining residents. About it is a fence of high

iron. Within are trees, paths, grasses, benches, great vases and a

fountain. But none of the usual loungers, none of the leprous men,

rancid women, and epileptic children that swarm in other New York

squares. Yet these squares are open to all. To enter this park you

must have a key. By day it is a playground. Nurse-maids come there

with little boys and girls, the subdued, undemonstrative, beautifully

dressed children of the rich. At night it is empty as a vacant bier.

In a house that fronted the north side Royal Loftus lived with his

mother, a proud, arrogant woman socially known to all, but who

socially knew but few. Behind her, in the shade of the family tree,

was her dead lord, Royal's father and, more impressively still, the

latter's relatives, the entire Loftus contingent, a set of people

super-respectable, supernally rich. She too was rich. She wore a wig,

walked with a staff, spoke with a Mayfair intonation in a high-pitched

voice, and, in the amplitudes of widowhood and wealth, entertained

frequently but cared only for her son.

On this evening the two were seated together in a drawing-room that

faced the park. The walls, after a fashion of long ago, were frescoed.

The ceiling too was frescoed. The furniture belonged also to an

earlier day. The modern note in the room was the absence of

chandeliers and the appearance of Royal Loftus, who, in a Paris shirt

and London clothes, was contemplating his painted nails.

At his feet was an Ardebil rug which originally had cost a small

fortune and now was worth a big one. In allusion to it a girl to whom

he had handed out the usual "You don't care for me," had retorted,

"Not care for you! Why, Royal, I worship the rug you tread on."

That girl was Fanny Price.

"No," he answered in reply to his mother's question. The answer was

strangely truthful. Fanny Price had tantalized him greatly.

Semi-continuously he had thought of her for a long time. But not

matrimonially. To him matrimony meant always one woman more and

usually one man less. He had no wish to dwindle. When he was fifty he

might, perhaps, to make a finish, marry some girl who wanted to begin.

But that unselfishness was remote. He was quite young; what is worse,

he was abominably good-looking. Fancy Aramis in a Piccadilly coat.

That was the way he looked. His features were chiseled. On his lip was

a mustache so slight that it might have been made with a crayon. His

hair was black. His eyes were blue. Where they were not blue they were

white, very white. They were wonderful eyes. With them he had done a

great deal of execution.

At the time they rather haunted a young woman who moved in another

sphere and whose acquaintance he had made quite adventurously. The

name of this young woman was Marie Durand. It was of the latter, not

of Fanny Price, that he was thinking.

"No," he repeated. "But was it for Annandale that you asked her for

tonight?"

"How perfectly absurd of you, Royal. Have you forgotten that he is in

love with Sylvia? I asked her partly for you, partly for Orr."

"Is he coming too! Good Lord! it is going to be ghastly."

But at the side of the room a portiere was being drawn and a servant

announced:

"Miss Waldron."

With the charming manner of the thoroughbred New York girl a young

woman entered. She was tall, willowy, with a face such as those one

used to see in keepsakes--delightful things which now, like so many

other delightful things, are seen no more.

As she approached Mrs. Loftus, who had risen to greet her, she made a

little courtesy.

"Sylvia, this is so dear of you. And is your mother very well?"

Again the portiere was drawn. A voice announced:

"Miss Price."

Then there appeared a girl adorably constructed--constructed, too, to

be adored. She was slight and very fair. Her mouth resembled the red

pulp of some flower of flesh. Her eyes were pools of purple, her hair

a turban of gold.

Cannibalistically Loftus looked the delicious apparition up and down.

He could have eaten it.

"Mr. Annandale," the voice announced.

A man, big and blond, with a cavalry mustache and an amiable, aimless

air, strolled in.

"Mr. Melanchthon Orr."

On the heels of Annandale came a cousin of Miss Waldron, a lawyer by

trade, a man with a bulldog face that was positively attractive.

There were more how-do-you-do's, the usual platitudes, interrupted by

the opening of doors at the further end of the room, where a butler, a

squad of lackeys behind him, disclosed himself in silent announcement

of dinner.

After the general move which then ensued and hosts and guests were

seated at table, Orr created an immediate diversion by calling to

Fanny Price and telling her that shortly she was to marry.

"Yes," he continued, "and my cousin Sylvia is to marry also, though

not so soon; but either Annandale or Royal will never marry at all."

Bombarded by sudden questions Orr gazed calmly about.

"How do I know? Miranda told me. Miranda the spook. She charged five

dollars for the information. If you like to make it up to me, I shall

not mind in the least. On the contrary. You see, Mrs. Loftus," Orr

added, turning to his hostess, "I happened, when I went to her, to

have your very kind invitation for this evening in my pocket, and, as

she wanted something to psychometrize, I gave her that. She held it to

her forehead and said, 'I see you in the house of an elegant

lady'--that is you, Mrs. Loftus; yes, there is no doubt about it--'and

there are present two young ladies, one fair, one dark, and two

gentlemen; one of the gentlemen will never marry, but the dark young

lady will marry in two years and the fair young lady in one. Five

dollars. Thank you. Next.'"

"Did she say nothing about me except that I am an 'elegant lady'?"

Mrs. Loftus, with a pained laugh and a high voice, inquired.

"Did she say whom I am to marry?" Fanny Price asked, smiling, as she

spoke, at Royal.

"But, Melanchthon, surely you do not believe in these things?" said

Sylvia gravely.

"Of course he does not," Loftus exclaimed. "He does not believe in

anything. Do you, Orr?"

"I believe in a great many things," the lawyer replied. "I have

precisely three hundred and sixty-five beliefs--one for every day in

the year."

"When the twenty-ninth of February comes around how do you manage

then?" said Fanny.

"Yes," said Annandale, "and how about April first?"

Orr raised a finger. "Jest if you will. But beliefs are a great

comfort, or would be among people like you who have none except in

fashion, and there is the oddity of it, for belief in this sort of

thing is very fashionable now, particularly in London. Yes, indeed,

Lady Cloden--you remember her, she was Clara Hastings--well, she went

to a spook in Tottenham Court Road, and the spook told her that she

would have twins. Immediately she had herself insured. In London, you

know, you can be insured against anything. The twins appeared and she

got L5,000. Belief in this sort of thing is therefore not merely

fashionable but convenient."

In the ripple of laughter which followed the logic, Orr turned to Mrs.

Loftus, Annandale to Miss Waldron, Loftus to Fanny Price.

"You take very kindly to snubbing, don't you?" said the latter.

"I?"

"Oh, pooh! The other day I saw Mr. Royal Loftus trying to scrape

acquaintance with a young person in the street. I never laughed more

in my life. She would not look at you. Is that sort of thing amusing?

Why don't you take a girl of your size?"

Loftus looked into Fanny's eyes. "If you want to know, because you are

all so deuced prim."

"Ah!" and Fanny made a tantalizing little face, showing, as she did

so, the point of her tongue. "Now tell me, what makes you think so?"

Across the table Annandale was talking to Sylvia Waldron. His manner

was rather earnest, but his utterance had become a trifle thick.

"Oh, Arthur," the girl at last interrupted him. "Don't drink any more.

You have had five glasses of champagne already."

Heroically Annandale put his glass down. "Since you wish it, I won't.

But it does not hurt me. I can stand anything."

"I am afraid it may grow on you."

Annandale laughed. "Grow on me," he repeated. "I like that. Why, I am

cultivating it."

Miss Waldron laughed too. "Yes, but you know you must not. I won't let

you." Then at once, with that tact which was part of her, she changed

the subject. "Doesn't Fanny look well tonight?"

"Very. She is the prettiest girl in New York. But you are the best

and the dearest. What is more, you are an angel."

"To you I want to try to be."

"Only," resumed Annandale with a spark of the wit which is born of

champagne, "don't try to be a saint--it is a step backward."

"Yes, Mrs. Loftus," Orr was saying, "Miranda is fat, very fat. All

mediums are. The fatter they are the more confidence you may have."

Then there was more small talk. Courses succeeded each other. Sweets

came and went. Presently Mrs. Loftus looked circuitously about and

slowly arose. When she and the girls had gone and the men were

reseated Loftus turned to Orr.

"Did the spook say anything else?"

Orr was selecting a cigar from a cabinet on wheels which a servant

trundled about. He chose and lighted one before he replied. Then he

looked at Loftus.

"Yes, she told me that she saw--" Orr paused. The cigar had gone out.

He lighted it again. "She told me that she saw death hereabouts."

Loftus was also lighting a cigar. "Then I too am a spook," he replied.

"I foretold that you would say something ghastly."

"But, my dear fellow," Orr rejoined, "truth is always that. People

fancy that it is made of lace and pearls like a girl on her wedding

day. It is not that at all. It is just what you call it. It is

ghastly. Read history. Any reliable work is but a succession of

groans. The more reliable it is the more groans there will be."

Annandale, who had been helping himself to brandy, interrupted.

"Talking of reading things, I saw somewhere that after some dinner or

other, when the women had gone, a chap began on a rather--well, don't

you know, a sort of barnyard story and the host, who could not quite

stomach it, said: 'Suppose we continue the conversation in the

drawing-room?' So, Royal, what do you say? If Orr is going to shock

us, suppose we do."

Loftus with a painted finger-tip flipped the ashes from his cigar.

"I fear that I have lost the ability to be shocked, but not the

ability to be bored."

Yet presently, after another cigar and conscious perhaps that Fanny

Price, though often exasperating, never bored, he returned with his

guests to the drawing-room.

CHAPTER II

THE POCKET VENUS

"How do you like my hat?" said Fanny to Sylvia. Since the dinner a

week had gone. The two girls were in Irving Place.

Irving Place is south of Gramercy Park. To the west are the multiple

atrocities of Union Square, to the east are the nameless shames of

Third avenue. Between the two Irving Place lies, a survival of the

peace of old New York. At the lower end are the encroaching menaces of

trade, but at the upper end, from which you enter Gramercy Park, there

is a quiet, pervasive and almost provincial. It was here that Sylvia

Waldron lived.

People take a house for six months or an apartment for a year and call

it a home. That is a base use for a sacred word. A home is a place in

which you are born, in which your people die and your progeny emerge.

A home predicates the present, but particularly the past and with it

the future. Any other variety of residence may be agreeable or the

reverse, but it is not a home.

In Irving Place there are homes. Among them was the house in which

Sylvia Waldron lived. It had been in her family for sixty years. In

London a tenure such as that is common. In New York it is phenomenal.

To Sylvia the phenomenon was a matter of course. What amazed her were

the migrations of others. Of Fanny, for instance. Each autumn Sylvia

would say to her, "Where are you to be?" And Fanny, who at the time

might be lodged in a hotel, or camping with a relative, or visiting at

Tuxedo, or stopping in Westchester, never could tell. But by December

the girl and her mother would find quarters somewhere and there remain

until that acrobat, summer, turned handsprings into town and

frightened them off.

Summer had not yet come. But May had and, with it, an eager glitter,

skies of silk, all the caresses and surrenders of spring.

The season was becoming to Fanny. She fitted in it. She was a young

Venus in Paris clothes--Aphrodite a maiden, touched up by Doucet. In

her manner was a charm quite incandescent. In her voice were

intonations that conveyed the sensation of a kiss. Her eyes were very

loquacious. She could, when she chose, flood them with languors. She

could, too, charge them with rebuke. You never knew, though, just what

she would do. But you always did know what Sylvia would not.

Sylvia suggested the immateriality that the painters of long ago gave

to certain figures which they wished to represent as floating from the

canvas into space. You felt that her mind was clean as wholesome

fruit, that her speech could no more weary than could a star, that her

heart, like her house, was a home. She detained, but Fanny allured.

In spite of which or perhaps precisely because of their sheer

dissimilarity the two girls were friends. But association weaves

mysterious ties. It unites people who otherwise would come to blows.

Fanny and Sylvia had been brought up together. The mesh woven in

younger days was about them still, and on this particular noon in May

they made a picture which, while contrasting, was charmful.

"You really like my hat?"

The hat was gray. The girl's dress was gray. The skirt was of the

variety known as trotabout. The whole thing was severely plain, yet

astonishingly smart. Sylvia was also in street dress. The latter was

black.

They were in the parlor. For in New York there are still parlors. And

why not? A parlor--or parloir--is a talking-place. Yet in this

instance not a gay place. It was spacious, sombre, severe.

"And now," said Fanny, after the hat had been properly praised, "tell

me when it is to be?"

"When is what to be?"

"You and Arthur?"

"Next autumn."

"I shall send a fish knife," said Fanny, savorously. "A fish knife

always looks so big and costs so little. Though if I could I would

give you a diamond crown."

"Give me your promise to be bridesmaid, and you will have given me

what I want from you most."

"But what am I to wear? And oh, Sylvia, how am I to get it? I don't

dare any more to so much as look in on Annette, or Juliette, or

Marguerite. There are streets into which I can no longer go. I told

Loftus that, and he said--so sympathetically too--'Ah, is it memories

that prevent you?' 'Rubbish,' I told him, 'it's bills.'"

"Fanny! How could you? He might have offered to pay them."

"If he had only offered to owe them!" Fanny laughed as she spoke and

patted her perfect skirt.

"But he has other fish to fry. Do you know the other day I saw him--"

But what Fanny had seen was never told, or at least not then.

Annandale was invading the parlor.

"Conquering hero!" cried Fanny. "I am here congratulating Sylvia."

"I congratulate myself that you are. I have a motor at the door, and I

propose to take you both to Sherry's, afterward, if you like, to the

races. There you may congratulate me."

"What is this about Sherry's?" Again the parlor was invaded. This time

by Sylvia's mother. She had bright cheeks, bright eyes, bright hair.

In her voice was indulgence, in her manner ease. She gave a hand to

Fanny, the other to Annandale.

"In my day," she resumed, "girls did not go lunching without someone

to look after them."

"They certainly did not go to Sherry's," said Annandale. "There was no

Sherry's to go to. But why won't you come with us?"

"Thank you, Arthur. It is not because Fanny or Sylvia needs looking

after. But when I was their age anything of the sort would have been

thought so common. Yet then, what was common at that time seems to

have been accepted since. Now, there is a chance to call me

old-fashioned."

"I can do better than that," said Annandale, "I can call you grande

dame."

"Yes," Fanny threw in, "and that, don't you think, is so superior to

being merely--ahem--demned grand."

"Why, Fanny!" And Mrs. Waldron, at once amused at the jest and

startled at the expression, shook her finger at her.

But Annandale hastened to her rescue. "Fanny is quite right, Mrs.

Waldron. You meet women nowadays whose grandfathers, if they had any,

were paving the streets while your own were governing the country and

who, just because they happen to be beastly rich, put on airs that

would be comical in an empress. Now, won't you change your mind and

come with us? At Sherry's there are always some choice selections on

view."

"You are not very tempting, Arthur. But if the girls think otherwise,

take them. And don't forget. You dine with us tonight."

Thereat, presently, after a scurry through sunshine and streets,

Sherry's was reached.

There Annandale wanted to order a chateaubriand. The girls rebelled.

A maitre d'hotel suggested melons and a supreme with a bombe to

follow.

Annandale turned to him severely. "Ferdinand, I object to your telling

me what you want me to eat."

"Let me order," said Sylvia. "Fanny, what would you like?"

"Cucumbers, asparagus, strawberries."

"Chicken?"

Fanny nodded.

"Yes," said Annandale to the chastened waiter, "order that and some

moselle, and I want a Scotch and soda. There's Orr," he interrupted

himself to announce. "I wonder what he is doing uptown? And there's

Loftus."

At the mention of Orr, Fanny, who had been eying an adjacent gown,

evinced no interest. But at the mention of Loftus she glanced about

the room.

It was large, high-ceiled, peopled with actresses and men-about-town,

smart women and stupid boys, young girls and old beaux. From a balcony

there dripped the twang of mandolins. In the air was the savor of

pineapple, the smell of orris, the odor of food and flowers.

On entering Sylvia had stopped to say a word at one table, Fanny had

loitered at another. Then in their trip to a table already reserved,

a trip conducted by the maitre d'hotel whom Annandale had rebuked,

murmurs trailed after them, the echo of their names, observations

profoundly analytical. "That's Fanny Price, the great beauty." "That's

Miss Waldron, who is engaged to Arthur Annandale." "That is Annandale

there"--the usual subtleties of the small people of a big city. Now,

at the entrance, Orr and Loftus appeared.

"Shall I ask them to join us?" Annandale asked.

"Yes, do," said Fanny. "I like Mr. Orr so much."

But Loftus, who, with his hands in his pockets, a monocle in his eye,

had been looking about with an air of great contempt for everybody,

already with Orr was approaching. On reaching the table very little

urging was required to induce them to sit, and, when seated they were,

Loftus was next to Fanny.

"What are you doing uptown at this hour?" Annandale asked Orr, who had

got between Loftus and Sylvia. "I thought you lawyers were all so

infernally busy."

"Everybody ought to be," Orr replied. "Although an anarchist who had

managed to get himself locked up, and whom I succeeded in getting out,

confided to me that only imbeciles work. By way of exchange I had to

confide to him that it is only imbeciles that do not."

"Now that," said Annandale, who had never done a stroke of work in his

life, "is what I call a very dangerous theory."

"A theory that is not dangerous," Orr retorted, "can hardly be called

a theory at all."

With superior tact Sylvia intervened. "But what is anarchy,

Melanchthon? Socialism I know about, but anarchy--?"

"To put it vulgarly, I drink and you pay."

"But suppose I am an anarchist?"

"Then Sherry pays."

"But supposing he is an anarchist?"

"Then there is a row. And there will be one. The country is drifting

that way. It will, I think, be bloody, but I think, too, it will be

brief. Anarchists, you know, maintain that of all prejudices capital

and matrimony are the stupidest. What they demand is the free

circulation of money and women. As a nation, we are great at

entertaining, but we will never entertain that."

"Why, then, did you not let the beggar rot where he was?" Annandale

swiftly and severely inquired.

"Oh, you know, if I had not got him out someone else would have, and I

thought it better that the circulation of money should proceed

directly from his pocket to mine."

"You haven't any stupid prejudices yourself, that's clear," said

Annandale, helping himself as he spoke to more Scotch. "Sylvia," he

continued, "if I am ever up for murder I will retain Melanchthon Orr."

Orr laughed. "That retainer will never reach me. You would not hurt a

fly."

"Wouldn't I?" And Annandale assumed an expression of great ferocity.

"You don't know me. I can imagine circumstances in which I could wade

in gore. By the way, I have ordered a revolver."

"What!"

"Yes, a burglar got in my place the night before last and woke me up.

If he comes back and wakes me up again I'll blow his head off."

Sylvia looked at him much as she might at a boastful child. "Yes, yes,

Arthur, but please don't take so much of that whisky."

"I think I will have a drop of it, if I may," said Loftus, who

meanwhile had been talking to Fanny. In a moment he turned to her

anew.

"Where are you going this summer?"

"To Narragansett. It is cool and cheap. Why don't you come?"

"It is such a beastly hole."

"Well, perhaps. But do you think you would think so if I were there?"

"That would rather depend on how you treated me."

"You mean, don't you, that it would rather depend on how I let you

treat me?" Fanny, as she spoke, looked Loftus in the eyes and made a

face at him.

That face, Loftus, after a momentary interlude with knife and fork,

tried to mimic. "If a chap gave you the chance you would drive him to

the devil."

On Fanny's lips a smile bubbled. She shook her pretty head. "No, not

half so far. Not even so far as the other end of Fifth avenue, where I

saw you trying to scrape acquaintance with that girl. Apropos. You

might tell me. How are matters progressing? Has the castle

capitulated?"

"I haven't an idea what you are talking about."

"That's right. Assume a virtue though you have it not. It's a good

plan."

"It does not appear to be yours."

"Appearances may be deceptive."

"And even may not be."

Sylvia interrupted them. "What are you two quarreling about?"

"Mr. Loftus does not like my hat. Don't you like it, Mr. Orr?"

"I like everything about you, everything, from the crown of your head

to the soles of your feet."

"There!" exclaimed Fanny. "That is the way I like to have a man talk."

"It is dreadfully difficult," Loftus threw in.

"You seem to find it so," Fanny threw back.

Sylvia raised a finger. "Mr. Loftus, if you do not stop quarreling

with Fanny I will make you come and sit by me."

"If I am to look upon that as a punishment, Miss Waldron," Loftus with

negligent gallantry replied, "what would you have me regard as a

reward?"

"Arthur! Arthur!" Fanny cried. "Did you hear that? This man is making

up to Sylvia."

But Annandale did not seem in the least alarmed. He was looking about

for Ferdinand. "Here," he began, when at last the waiter appeared.

"You neglect us shamefully. We want some more moselle and more

Scotch."

"None for me," said Loftus rising. "I have an appointment."

"Appointment," Fanny announced, "is very good English for

_rendezvous_."

"And _taisez-vous, mademoiselle_, is very good French for I wish it

were with yourself."

"I have not a doubt of it."

"Fanny!" Sylvia objected. "You are impossible."

"Yes," Fanny indolently replied. "Yet then, to be impossible and seem

the reverse is the proper caper for a debutante. Heigho! I wish girls

smoked here. I would give a little of my small change for a cigarette.

Are you really off, Royal. Well, my love to the lady."

CHAPTER III

THE EX-FIRST LADY

Loftus, letting himself into a hansom, sailed away. At Morris Park

that afternoon there were to be races, and up the maelstrom of Fifth

avenue came scudding motors, fleeting traps.

As the hansom descended the current Loftus nodded to this acquaintance

and to that, occasionally raising his hat as women smiled and bowed.

Occasionally, too, he contemplated what he could of himself in the

little mirror at the side of the cab. He looked triumphant and

treacherous.

Fanny, he reflected, was ideal. But exacting, ambitious even. She had

a perfect mania for matrimony. There was another girl that he had in

mind whom he fancied more reasonable. This other was Marie Durand.

In just what way he had met her was never quite clear. Fanny, who had

witnessed the preliminary skirmish, always believed that he had

picked her up. Afterward, at the time of the trial, it was so

reported. The report was false in addition to being vulgar. Marie

Durand was not of that sort. There was nothing fast or flirtatious

about her. But she was a human being. She had eyes. She had a heart.

By nature she was sensitive. Moreover, she was but nineteen. Being

human, sensitive, and not very old, having eyes to see and a heart

that throbbed, she was impressionable and, to her misfortune, Loftus

impressed her.

Loftus was rather used to impressing people. He saw the girl on Fifth

avenue, followed her home, learned her name--or thought he did--and

sent her flowers every day until he saw her again, when he presumed to

accost her. At that impertinence Marie tilted her nose and trotted on,

distant, disdainful, demure.

But not indifferent. Not oblivious either. Often she had seen him.

Occasionally on a high drag behind a piebald four-in-hand. In crowded

Fifth avenue, drags, with or without piebalds, are infrequent. This

drag Marie had seen not merely tooling along the street but pictured

in the press. With, of course, full accounts of the driver. As a

consequence she knew who he was, knew that he was one of the rich

young men of New York and that he moved and had his being in the upper

circles.

Marie's own sphere of life was obscure. She lived with her father in

Gay street. Her father, a tailor by trade, was a naturalized

Frenchman, a gaunt Gaul, who had a sallow face, walked with a stoop,

complained of his heart and adored his daughter. To him she was a

pearl, a _perle_, rather. For though he had been long in New York and

spoke English well, he had never quite acquired the accent.

Marie spoke English without any accent whatever. She also spoke

French, sang in it, too, sang in Italian and, with a view to the lyric

stage, or, more exactly, with the hope of studying for it abroad, was,

at the time when this drama begins, taking lessons in what is termed

the _bel canto_.

But her aspirations, in so far as they concerned Europe, her father

was unable to gratify. He could not let her go alone and he could not

afford to throw up what he called his beesness. Here, then, was this

girl, pretty as a picture, with a lovely contralto voice, with

aspirations entirely worldly, with wings, you might say, cooped in Gay

street, spiritually and mentally starved there.

Gay street lies back of Jefferson Market. In shape a crescent, it

curves briefly in a lost and dismal way through a region which,

though but a block or two from Fifth avenue, is almost squalid. At one

end of its short curve is a saloon, at the other an apothecary.

It was from this apothecary that Loftus learned Marie's name--or

thought he did. For inadvertently the man got things mixed as his

drugs and supplied Loftus with the name of a young woman who lived in

a house next to the one in which Loftus had seen the girl enter.

What is more interesting is the fact that, though, while he was

following her there, she had looked neither to the right nor to the

left, or anywhere save straight ahead, she had been fully aware that

he was behind her. How? We cannot tell. It is one of the mysteries of

femininity. But once safely in, boldly she peeked out. Loftus was

crossing the street. Presently he entered the shop. For what, it did

not take Marie more than a minute to conjecture.

Later in the day a motor van appeared in that street. On it was the

name of a Broadway florist. Since the memory of man never before had

such a thing happened. From the van a groom had hopped and, if you

please, with roses. That, too, was phenomenal. Yet thereafter every

day for a week there was the motor, the groom and flowers at a dollar

and a half apiece. The recipient of these attentions was Miss Rebecca

Cohen, the daughter of Mr. Abraham Cohen, who also, like Marie's

father, was a tailor.

Marie saw the van, divined the mistake, and, being as full of fun as a

kitten, greatly enjoyed the continued humor of it. For still into that

sordid street the flowers poured. Every day, to the unhallowed

surprise of Mr. Cohen and to the equal bewilderment of his offspring,

a box of radiant roses was handed out.

In that surprise and bewilderment the neighborhood joined. Scandalized

at the scandal Cohen questioned the groom, questioned the chauffeur.

He might have saved himself the trouble. Then he inquired at the

florist's. But there no one could be found who knew anything at all

about anything whatever. Already he had questioned Rebecca. It seemed

to him that in spite of her protests she must be engaged in some

fathomless intrigue. But Rebecca, whose commercial instinct was

beautifully developed, not only protested but appeased. She told her

father that the roses were worth money. Furthermore, that which is

worth money can be sold. Thereupon sold they were. But quite as

inexplicably as the van had appeared so did its visits cease. When

that happened Mr. Cohen felt and declared that he was robbed. He had

come to regard the roses as assets.

Marie meanwhile, whom the humor of the situation had amused, ended by

worrying over it. She was a good girl, as such conscientious, and it

troubled her, at first only a little and then very much, to think that

Loftus must believe that she was knowingly accepting his flowers.

Moreover, her father had commented upon them; in commenting he had

wondered. Marie began to fear that Loftus might discover the mistake

and turn in and inundate her. She did not know quite what to do. She

thought of writing to him, very distantly, in the third person, or

else anonymously. But the letter did not seem to get itself framed.

Then, from thinking of that, she fell to thinking of him.

To see him she had only to close her eyes. Once he visited her in

dream. He came accompanied by butterflies that fluttered about her and

changed into kisses on her lips. Again she fancied him much sought

after by ladies and became hotly and unaccountably vexed at the idea.

It would be so lovely to really know him, she always decided. But she

did not see at all how that ever could come about.

Yet, of course, it did come about. It came about, moreover, in a

fashion as sordid as the street she lived in.

That street, though sordid, is relatively silent. It is beyond, in

Sixth avenue, that you get a sample of real New York noise. The

slam-bang of the trains overhead, the grinding grunt of the surface

cars, the demon draymen, the clanging motors, the ceaseless crowds,

collaborate in an uproar beside which a bombardment is restful. But

though the entire thoroughfare is appalling, Jefferson Market, behind

which Gay street squats, is infernal.

Loftus loathed it. Until he pursued the girl into its horrors never

before had he been there. Nor, save for her, would he have returned.

But return he did. For recompense he beheld her. She was strolling

along, a roll of music under her arm, in the direction of Fifth

avenue.

It was there he attempted to accost her. Without deigning to seem even

aware that he had presumed to do so, she passed on and, in passing,

turned into Washington Square, where, ascending the steps of a house,

she vanished. It was then three by the clock of a beautiful day in

April.

Loftus was as well able as another to put two and two together. He

knew that young girls do not stroll about with a music roll under

their arm for the fun of it. A music roll predicates lessons, and

there where lessons are must also be a teacher.

From that teacher he was unaware of any good and valid reason why he

should not himself take lessons. But fate is not unrelenting. Of such

toil he was spared. He spared himself too any further toil that day.

He felt that he had done enough. He had quarried the girl again,

stalked her to what was obviously a boarding-house. He turned on his

heel.

The next day he was back at that house, inquiring at the door. As a

result he was shown into a shabby back parlor where he made the

acquaintance of Mme. Machin, a tired old Frenchwoman, who, with rouge

on her yellow cheeks, powder on her pointed nose, confided to him that

she had been prima donna, though whether _assoluta_ or _dissoluta_ she

omitted to state.

But her antecedents, her possibilities as well, Loftus divined at a

glance and, while he was at it, divining too, that, personally, she

was no better, and, financially, no better off than the law allows,

asked point-blank about the Miss Cohen who had come there at three the

day before. Learning then from the ex-first lady that the girl's name

was not Cohen but Durand, he damned the apothecary and offered a

hundred dollars to be introduced. Poverty is not a crime. But it is

rumored to be an incentive. The crime which Loftus proposed to Mme.

Machin is one which the code does not specify and the law cannot

reach. Knowing which, the woman may have been guilty of it before and,

the opportunity occurring, was guilty again--salving her conscience,

if she had a conscience, with the convenient, "Mon Dieu, il faut

vivre!"

Anyway, at the offer she did not so much as blink. She smiled very

receptively and declared that she would be charmed.

When, therefore, two days later Marie re-entered that shabby back

parlor she found Loftus there. Generally the girl and the ex-first

lady got to work at once, sometimes with the brindisi from "Lucrezia

Borgia," sometimes with arias from "Aida." Save themselves no one was

ever present.

Now at the unexpected spectacle of the man the cream of the girl's

delicate skin suffused. It was as though there were claret in it.

She had not an idea what to do and, before she could decide,

ceremoniously, with due regard for the pomps of etiquette, Loftus

had been introduced.

If abrupt, the introduction was at least conventional, and Marie, who

had not the remotest suspicion that it was all bought and paid for and

who, if consciously startled, subconsciously was pleased, attributing

the whole thing to accident and, flushing still, smiled and sat down.

"I think," said Loftus, "that I have had the pleasure of seeing you

before."

At this inanity Marie looked first at him, then at the carpet. She

did not know at all what he was saying. But in his voice was a

deference, in his manner a sorcery and in his bearing and appearance

something that went to her head. It was all very novel and delightful,

and she flushed again.

"Yes," Loftus resumed, "and when I did see you I committed a very

grave offense. Can you forgive me?"

For countenance sake the girl turned to Mme. Machin. But the ex-first

lady, pretexting a pretext, had gone.

"Can you?" Loftus requested. "Can you forgive?"

Forgive indeed! Had she not so forgiven that she had almost wished a

renewal of that grave offense? She did not answer. It was her face

that spoke for her. But the silence Loftus affected to misconstrue.

"Couldn't you try?"

"Yes." The monosyllable fell from her softly, almost inaudibly. Yet

for his purpose it sufficed.

"Thank you. I hoped that you would. But will you let me tell you now

how I came to behave as I did?"

To this, timorously, with the slightest movement of her pretty head,

the girl assented.

"Because I could not help myself. Because at the first sight of you I

knew that I loved you. Because I felt that I could never love anyone

else."

Marie started. She was crimson. Starting, she half got from her seat.

Loftus caught at her hand. She disengaged it. But he caught at it

again.

"I love you," he continued, burning her with his words, with the

contact of his fingers, that had intertwisted with hers. "Look at me,

I love your eyes. Speak to me, I love your voice."

But the door opened. Preceded by a precautionary roulade, the ex-first

lady reappeared.

"Allons!" she remarked to the ceiling. "Et maintenant, mademoiselle,

au travail."

Loftus stood up, took Marie's hand again, held it a second, nodded at

the woman. In a moment he had gone.

"Au revoir," the ex-first lady called after him. She turned to the

girl. "A gallant monsieur. And good to look at." Then seating herself

at the piano she attacked the brindisi from "Lucrezia." "Ah! the

segreto!" she interrupted herself to exclaim, "il segreto per esser

felice--the secret of happiness! Mais! There is but one! C'est

l'amour! And with a gallant monsieur like that! And rich! C'est le

reve! N'est ce pas, mon enfant?"

"Je vous en prie, madame," said Marie severely, or rather as severely

as she could, for she was trembling with emotion, saturated with the

love that had been thrown at her head, drenched with it, frightened

too at the apperception of the secret which the aria that her teacher

was strumming revealed.

CHAPTER IV

ENCHANTMENT

Sailing in the hansom down Fifth avenue, Loftus thought of that first

interview with the girl, of the den in which it had occurred and of

his subsequent visits there. Since the introduction he had seen her

three times, seen, too, of course, that she was not up to Fanny, but

he had seen also that she was less ambitious, more tractable in every

way. Besides, one is not loved every afternoon. To him that was the

main point, and of that point he was now tolerably sure.

Suddenly the hansom tacked, veered and landed him at the ex-first

lady's door.

"Bonjour, mon beau seigneur," the woman began when, presently, he

reached her lair. "The little one will not delay."

"And then?"

"Be tranquil. I have other cats to whip."

Mme. Machin was hatted and gloved. Loftus stuck his hand in his

pocket. Mme. Machin was too genteel to notice. From the pocket he drew

a roll of yellow bills. Mme. Machin affected entire unconcern. The

bills he put in her paw. Mme. Machin was so entirely unconscious of

the liberty that she turned to the mantel, picked up a bag of bead,

opened it, took from it a little puff with which she dusted her nose.

Then the puff went back into the bag. With it went the bills.

"I run," she announced. She moved to the door. There, looking at

Loftus over her shoulder, she stopped. "You come again?"

For reply Loftus made a gesture.

"Yes," said the woman. "Naturally. It depends. But let me know. It is

more commodious. Pas de scandale, eh?"

To this Loftus made no reply whatever. But his expression was

translatable into "what do you take me for?"

"Allez!" the ex-first lady resumed. "I have confidence."

She opened the door and through it vanished. Loftus removed his

gloves, seated himself at the piano, ran his fingers over the keys,

struck a note which suggested another and attacked the waltz from

"Faust." The appropriateness of it appealed to him. As he played he

hummed. Then, passing upward with the score, he reached the "Salve

Dimora," Faust's salute to Marguerite's home. But in the den where he

sat the aria did not fit. He went back again to the waltz. Then,

precisely as on the stage Marguerite appears, Marie entered.

Loftus jumped up, went to her, took her hand. It was trembling. He led

her to a sofa, seating himself at her side, her hand still in his.

He looked at her. She had the prettiness and timidity of a kitten, a

kitten's grace as well. Like a kitten, she could not have been vulgar

or awkward had she tried. But association and environment had wrapped

about her one of the invisible yet obvious mantles that differentiate

class from class. Loftus was quite aware of that. He was, though,

equally aware that love is a famous costumer. There are few mantles

that it cannot remove and remake. That the girl loved him he knew. The

tremor of her hand assured him more surely than words.

None the less he asked her. It seemed to him only civil. But she did

not answer. The dinginess of the den oppressed him. It occurred to him

that it might be oppressing her. Again he inquired. Only the tremor of

the hand replied.

"Tell me," he repeated.

The girl disengaged her hand. She looked down and away.

"Won't you?" he insisted.

"I ought not to," she said at last.

"But why?"

With her parasol the girl poked at the carpet. "Because it is not

right. It is not right that I should." But at once, with a little

convulsive intake of the breath, she added, "Yet I do."

Then it seemed to her that the room was turning around, that the walls

had receded, that there was but blankness. His lips were on hers. In

their contact everything ceased to be save the consciousness of

something so poignant, so new, that to still the pain of the joy of it

she struggled to be free.

Kissing her again Loftus let her go. Dizzily she got from the sofa.

The parasol had fallen. Her hat was awry. To straighten it she moved

to a mirror. Her face was scarlet. Instantly fear possessed her, fear

not of him but of herself. With uncertain fingers she tried to adjust

the hat.

"I must go."

But Loftus came to her. Bending a bit he whispered in her ear: "Don't

go--don't go ever."

Do what she might she could not manage with her hat. In the glass it

was no longer that which she saw, nor her face, but an abyss, suddenly

precipitate, that had opened there.

"No, don't go," Loftus was saying. "I love you and you love me."

It was, though, not love that was emotionalizing her then. It was

fear. A fear of that abyss and of the lower depths beneath.

"Don't go," Loftus reiterated. "Don't, that is, if you do love me; and

if you do, tell me, will you be my wife?"

At this, before her, in abrupt enchantment, the abyss disappeared.

Where its depths had been were parterres of gems, slopes of asphodel,

the gleam and brilliance of the gates of paradise.

"Your wife!" The wonder of it was in her voice and marveling eyes.

"Come." Taking her hand, Loftus led her to their former seat.

"But----"

"But what?"

"How can I be your wife? I am nobody."

"You are perfect. There is only one thing I fear--" Loftus hesitated.

Nervously the girl looked at him.

"Only one," he continued. "I am not and never shall be half good

enough for you."

"Oh!"

"Never half enough."

"Oh! How can you say that? It is not true. Could I care for you if it

were?"

"And you do?"

"Don't you know it?"

"Then don't go, don't go from me ever."

"But----"

"Yes, I know. You are thinking of your father, of whom you have told

me; perhaps, too, of my mother, of whom I told you. When she knows you

and learns to love you, as she will, we can be married before all the

world. We could now were I not dependent on her. Yet then, am I not

dependent too on you? Come with me, and afterward----"

"I cannot," the girl cried; "it would kill my father."

"You have but to wire him that you have gone to be married, and it

will be the truth."

"I cannot," the girl repeated. "Oh, what are you asking me to do?"

"I am asking you to be my wife. What is the ceremony to you? What are

a few words mumbled by a hired priest? Love, love alone, is marriage."

"No, no. To you perhaps. But not to me."

"And the ceremony shall follow as soon as we can manage. Can you not

trust me for that?"

"But----"

"Will you not trust me? If you are to put your whole life into my

keeping you should at least begin by doing that."

The girl looked at the man and then away, at vistas he could not see,

the winding slopes of asphodel, the sudden and precipitate abyss. Yet

he spoke so fair, she told herself. Surely it was to the slopes he

meant to take her, not to that blackening pit.

"Yet if you won't," Loftus continued, "it is best for both that we

should part."

"For--for always?"

"Yes."

Just why he omitted to explain. But then there are explanations that

explain nothing. Yet to her, for a moment, the threat was like a flash

in darkness. For a moment she thought that she could not let him go.

About her swarmed her dreams. Through them his kisses pierced. For a

moment only. The flash had passed. She was in darkness again. Before

her was the precipitate abyss. Shudderingly she drew from it.

But Loftus was very resolute. "If you will you have my promise."

For answer she looked at him, looked into his eyes, peered into them,

deep down, striving to see what was there, trying to mirror her soul

in his own.

"Before God and man I swear you shall be my wife."

At that, suddenly within her, fear melted away. If she had not seen

his soul she had heard it. Where fear had been was faith. Dumb with

the enchantment of a dream come true, she half arose. But his arms

went about her and in them she lay like seaweed in the tide.

CHAPTER V

MARIE CHANGES HER NAME

Gay Street knew Marie no more. Twenty-second street made her

acquaintance. There, in the Arundel, an apartment house which is just

around the corner from Gramercy Park, Loftus secured quarters for her.

These quarters, convenient for him, to her were temporary. She

regarded them as a tent on the road to the slopes. Even in that light

they were attractive. Though small, they were fastidiously furnished

and formed what agents call a "bijou." Loftus, who had whims which the

girl thought poetic, preferred "aviary." He preferred, too, that she

should change her name. Durand seemed to him extremely plebeian.

Mentally he cast about. Leroy suggested itself. It had in it an echo

of France and also of old New York. As such it appealed to him and,

therefore, to her. There and then Marie became known as Miss Leroy

and, incidentally, very busy.

Every day Annette, Juliette and Marguerite had frocks for her to try

on. There were hats to go with those frocks. There was lingerie to be

selected, stuffs immaterial as moonbeams, cambrics that could be drawn

through a ring. In addition, there was Signor Tambourini, who was to

teach her how to handle her voice, and Baron Mesnilmontant, who was to

teach her to handle a horse. When she so desired she had but to

telephone and in five minutes there was a victoria at the door. For

her sitting-room the florist who had so disturbed Mr. Cohen fetched

flowers every other day.

In the flowers there were thorns, of course. Marie worried about many

things, yet mainly because Mrs. Loftus had not yet "seen and learned

to love her." Against that, though, there were difficulties. At first

Mrs. Loftus had a dreadful cold. Then she had gone out of town to

recuperate. This was very unfortunate, but like the quarters, only

temporary. Loftus assured her of that. What he said was gospel.

The position in which the girl was placed worried her nevertheless.

She knew it was wrong. But always she consoled herself with the belief

that shortly it would be righted. On that belief she would have staked

her soul. Had he not sworn it? Precisely how she would have acted had

she realized that he had lied like a thief one may surmise and never

know. The misery of life is the necessity of becoming accustomed to

certain things. There are natures that adapt themselves more readily

than others. There are also natures that cannot adapt themselves at

all. Had Marie realized the truth it may be that she would have beaten

her head against the walls. Yet it may also be that in the end

adaptability would have come. But not happiness. Happiness consists,

if it consists in anything, in being on good terms with oneself. Had

Marie known the truth never could she have been that. In the

circumstances it was considerate of Loftus to withhold it from her.

But Loftus was a very considerate person. He hated tears, and scenes

he frankly abominated.

Loftus, though considerate, was vain. It was regrettable to him that

he could not parade Marie about. But social New York is severe. Among

its members it refuses to countenance any open disregard for what's

what. Though what occurs behind its back it is too high-bred to

notice.

Loftus, unable to parade Marie about, paraded her in. To the aviary he

brought men, some of whom having otherwise nothing to do with this

drama need not delay its recital, but, among others, he brought

Annandale and Orr.

Annandale, who could not keep a thing from Sylvia, told her about it.

The story so shocked her that she first made a point of his not going

there again and then debated whether she ought to recognize Loftus any

more. In the process she confided the story to Fanny Price, who got

suddenly red--a phenomenon rare with her and which annoyed her very

much, so much that she bit her lip, desisting only through fear of

making it bleed. What is the use of spoiling one's looks?

Marie, meanwhile, rather liked Annandale. She also rather liked Orr.

One evening both were bidden to the aviary. At the bidding Annandale

had hesitated. He did not wish to offend Sylvia. But reflecting that

she need never know, that, anyway, it was none of her business and,

besides, what the deuce! he was not tied to her apron strings, was he?

he concluded to go.

To that conclusion he was assisted by a cocktail. At the time he was

in Madison Square, where on a ground floor he occupied a set of

chambers, a suite of long, large rooms, sumptuously but soberly

furnished with things massive and plain. Here he lived in much luxury

and entire peace, save recently when he had lost a retainer and found

a burglar. The memory of that intrusion recurring, he touched a bell.

A man appeared, smug and solemn, a new valet that he had got in to

replace an old family servant whom an accident had eliminated.

"Harris, I forgot to ask. Did you get the revolver I told you to buy?"

"Yes, sir. A 32 calibre. It is in the pantry, sir."

"Put it in the drawer of my dressing-table."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"And Harris, make me another cocktail." As the man was leaving

Annandale called after him, "Make two."

It was these that assisted Annandale to his decision. A man of means,

without immediate relatives, without ponderable cares, under their

influence he felt rather free to do as he saw fit. The bidding to the

aviary, telephoned for him to Harris, was for that evening. Yet that

evening he was also expected in Irving Place. But Marie's invitation

was for dinner, whereas he was not due at Sylvia's until later on.

It was not necessary, he told himself, to be in two places at once. He

could dovetail one with another. Then presently, having dressed, he

issued forth. But he had omitted to look at the evening papers. He was

interested in certain stocks, and to learn what they were doing he

stopped in at a neighboring club. There encountering men who asked him

to drink, he accepted--though how much he was on the morrow unable to

recall. Yet at the time the effect of the stuff, while insidious, was

not apparent. When ultimately he reached the aviary he was feeling

merely fit, a feeling which the dinner increased.

The dinner, perfect in itself, was perfectly served. The appointments

were superior and the table a delight. Loftus when he did things did

them well. Marie, in a creation of Paquin, imported by Annette, was a

pleasure to behold. She had Orr at her right, Annandale at her left.

Between them and Loftus were half a dozen other men. All were decorous

and beautifully behaved. Except for the absence of feminine guests and

one thing else, there was nothing to denote that they were not at the

house of some smart young married woman. There was not a word uttered

that could not have been bawled through a ballroom. There was not a

suggestion not eminently discreet. In this respect only did the dinner

differ from any other at which you might assist in the upper circles

of New York life.

During the preliminary courses stocks were the sole topic. There was a

boom on in the Street. Everybody was making money, including Marie,

for whom Loftus had bought a few hundred A. O. T.

Orr alone had sold. "You are all mad," he declared. "The whole city

is crazy. The country is on a debauch. Bulls cannot live forever. The

corridas of the Street are just like those of Spain. It is the climax

that differs. There the ring is swept by a supe, here it is struck by

a crisis. That crisis may come next week, next month, next year. But

it will come. It can no more desert the heavens of political economy

than the stars can deviate from their course. It is not here yet, the

bull is very lively, he is tossing everything sky high, but just when

he is at his best and fiercest, just when you are shouting yourselves

hoarse, the great espada, whose name is Time, with one swift thrust

will transfix him. That is the fate of bulls."

"We are to be transfixed, are we?" said Annandale.

Marie looked over at Loftus. "Had I not better sell?"

Orr turned to her. "No; hold on and lose. A loss, particularly a fist

loss, is always a good investment. Besides, if you will permit me to

say, you should have no heed of such things. No, Miss Leroy. You

should content yourself with continuing to be. A woman who does only

that acquires a charm almost supernatural. This was the occupation of

the young goddesses of old Greece. How delightful they were! The rose

was their model. They had learned the secret of its witchery. They

charmed and did nothing. To charm is never easy, but to do nothing is

the most difficult of all things, as it is, too, the most

intellectual. Yes," Orr added after a moment, "it is also a thing

which the rest of us sadly neglect."

"Oh, I say," Loftus threw in. "It is not so long ago that I heard you

maintaining that only imbeciles were idle, that everybody should have

something to do. You are rather contradictory, don't you think?"

"No, not a bit; and for the reason that then I was speaking of the

generality of people, and now of the exceptional few. The idleness of

the imbecile is always imbecilic, but the dreams of a poet have spells

that enthrall. Try to fancy a busy poet. You cannot. It is an anomaly

at which the imagination balks. By the same token you cannot fancy a

useful Venus. You cannot fancy Psyche occupied with anything but love.

Love is--or rather, should be--woman's sole occupation. The perfume of

Eros should be about them all."

"The perfume of Eros!" muttered Annandale, to whom the phrase

appealed. "The perfume of Eros!" he repeated and helped himself to

wine. "I say, Orr, what the dickens is that?"

"Only the motor force of the universe."

"What?"

"Yes, indeed. It is the sublimate of love. And love is the source of

human activity. It has no other. Without it civilization would

retrograde and society return to the woods. Love is the basis of

tragedy, the woof of romance, the incentive of commerce, of crime too,

of heroism as well."

"My!" said Marie, whom the brief deluge of words amazed. "My!"

"I must get that off," Annandale muttered. In the _sotto voce_ of

thought he added, "to Sylvia." Obviously, he had had his fill. He

stood up, making an excuse, imperceptibility lurching as he did so.

It was after ten. Long since coffee had been served. Orr, too, got up.

He thanked his hostess. The other men imitated him. Loftus and Marie

were alone.

Loftus went to a window. Then he turned. "Put on your hat, little

girl, and we will go out; though, after all, I do not see that you

need bother with a hat, unless you prefer."

"I will do as you wish, dear."

Presently they were in Lexington avenue, a moment more, in Gramercy

Park. Loftus, after fumbling for his key, opened one of the little

gates. Within was silence. Occasionally, from the pavement without

came the sound of footsteps.

Loftus and Marie seated themselves on a bench near the gate through

which they had entered. Loftus was smoking. A boy passed; stopped, and

sticking his nose through the railings, called: "Hi, mister, will you

give me a light?"

Loftus made no answer. The boy called again. "Will you? And a cigar

with it?"

Then he laughed and passed on. The silence increased. In the air was a

fragrance, the clinging odor of the honeysuckle, the clean smell of

fresh turf. Beyond, the great dim houses that front the park gave the

place and the hour an accent of their own.

"I like it here," said Marie, "it is so elegant."

"Never let me hear you use that word again. It is provincial, suburban

and, worse, it is shopgirl."

"Yes, dear."

"This evening I saw you eat an ice with a spoon. Never do that. Use a

fork."

"Yes, dear."

Appeased by this docility, Loftus condescended to agree in turn with

her. He, too, liked the park. At night, when the weather was decent,

always he sat there a bit quite by himself. He had done so for years.

He told her this, adding confidentially, "It is a habit."

To Marie the habit seemed most poetic. She said so, explaining that

she was very fond of poetry.

Loftus looked up at the stars. "The only real poetry is there. By the

way, do you believe in God?"

Marie, uncertain of her lover's creeds, hesitatingly glanced at him.

"Yes--in a way. But I won't, if you object."

This self-abnegation pleased Loftus. He twisted his mustache and

smiled. "But no, you little goose, I don't object in the least. On the

contrary. It is right and proper that you should."

Gratified at this encouraging indulgence the girl's hand stole into

his. Then for awhile they sat and talked about nothing whatever,

which, of all subjects, is, perhaps, the least disagreeable. Wearying

at last even of that, they got up to go.

At the gate Marie drew back. A man was passing, swaying uncertainly,

arguing with himself.

"Why! it is Mr. Annandale," the girl in a frightened whisper murmured.

"I wonder where he got all that liquor?" Loftus queried. "Not at

Sylvia Waldron's, I'll wager."

"Sylvia Waldron! What a sweet name," said Marie. "Who is she?"

"The girl he is engaged to."

"Is she pretty?"

"Oh, tall and dark, don't you know. Not at all my style."

But now night had swallowed Annandale. Loftus and Marie passed on.

CHAPTER VI

THE YELLOW FAY

At noon the next day Annandale was not awake nor was he asleep.

Through spaces in which memories met, entangled and sank, he was

groping in search of himself. In these spaces there were things, some

formless, others half-formed, that got between consciousness and

interfered with the search.

These things pulled at him, tripped him, shoved him down to the

memories that were sinking below. The spaces themselves were very

dark. But, in the deeper depths, where memories swooned, the darkness

was punctuated by slender flames the size of pins. They burned him.

Up and away he tried to rise. When he nearly succeeded, the things

above, the things half-formed and formless that were waiting there,

pushed him back. Again he tried. But the darkness was thick, the

depths were thunderous, the things above pounded on his head, the thin

flames lapped at him.

A force took and lifted him high, very high, and suddenly dropped him.

In the abrupt descent he clutched at the things, but he was whirled

through them to receding plains and up again, higher, still higher.

There a ray filtered, in the light of which a memory staggered. He saw

himself drinking in the rooms of that girl of Loftus. From there he

passed into blankness at the end of which stood Sylvia, her face white

and drawn. The vision vanished. Then it seemed to him that he was

drinking with a fat man who had prominent teeth which he took from his

mouth and changed into dice. But where? In hell, perhaps. Annandale

was uncertain. He knew merely that he had been beastly drunk and that

his head was simply splitting.

It continued to split. Hours later, sedatives and his servant aiding,

the splitting ceased. But the blanks did not fill and though behind

them he could not look, yet the subconscious self that registers and

retains everything we do and hear and say prompted him dumbly that

behind the blanks there lurked the dismal and, perhaps, the dire.

This foreboding he attributed to his nerves. As a matter of fact they

were rather shaky. But inaction was intolerable. He tried to write a

note to Sylvia, but his hand was insufficiently steady. Failing in

that he told Harris to get some flowers, take them to Miss Waldron,

and say that he would call that evening. When later the man returned

he brought no answer to the message.

"Was Miss Waldron out?" Annandale asked.

"I could not say, sir. I gave the flowers to the maid, and said as how

you would call this evening, sir. The maid came back and said Miss

Waldron would not be at 'ome."

At this Annandale flushed. It is true he was flushed already. But the

affront was a little more than he could stand. Was he not engaged to

her? What did she mean? Yet, then, too, what had he done? He wished to

the devil he could tell. Try, though, as he might, he could not recall

a thing except a vision of the girl's face, white, drawn and angered.

The rest was not blurred, it was blank. It was extremely unfortunate,

and Annandale decided that he was both unhappy and misused.

These meditations Harris interrupted.

"Mr. Orr, sir."

Annandale, who had been far away, looked up. Then he nodded.

A moment and Orr entered, eying Annandale curiously as he came.

"What a deuce of a chap you are," he began.

"Who? I? Why? Why do you say that?"

Orr looked about the room, contemplated a wide lounge of black

leather, selected a straight-backed chair instead and seated himself,

his hat and stick in his hand.

"You know well enough," he answered. "But there," he added at a

protest from Annandale, "I don't propose to scold you. My visit is

purely official. Sylvia has asked me to inform you that the engagement

is at an end."

Had any little dog which Annandale did not possess run out from

nowhere and bit him fiercely on the leg, he could not have started

more. He stared at Orr, who stared at him.

"But! It is impossible! What have I done?"

"It would be more to the point," Orr cheerfully replied, "to ask what

you have not done. Though just what you did do Sylvia omitted to

state. She said she could not."

"Could not tell you?"

"Could not or would not."

"Then I can't," said Annandale helplessly. "I went there last evening,

I remember that. I remember, too, that she was angry. But why I do

not know. Though, to be candid, she had cause to be. I was drunk."

"You seemed all right at the Arundel," Orr objected.

"At all events, drunk or sober, I cannot recall a thing. I have tried.

I have tried hard. It has gone."

"Does it happen to you often?"

"What?"

"To forget like that?"

Annandale shook his head. He stood up and stalked about. Orr eyed him.

He saw he was not shamming.

"You know, Annandale," he said at last, "you could not get many to

accept that. But I can and do. I have seen cases of the kind before.

Will you permit me to advise you?"

"Advise me? I wish to God you would."

"Littre, who was the wisest and ugliest of men, stated that

Hippocrates recommended everybody to get tight once a month, asserting

that it was hygienic, good for the system, that it relaxed the nerves.

Littre must have known what he was talking about. He put Hippocrates

in French, into ten volumes at that! But what is good for everybody is

bad for you. Don't drink, Annandale. It will get you into mischief."

"As if it had not? Look at the box I am in. But could you not get

Sylvia to reconsider the matter? If she will, I pledge my word never

to touch another drop. Of course, I apologize for everything I did. I

am only too anxious to. You must understand that I am profoundly

humiliated at the idea that I could have done anything she did not

like. Certainly I did not intend to. Won't you say that to her?"

"Oh, I appreciate your position," said Orr. "To me the essence of

crime is the intent. But, then, you see, I am a man. Now girls are

different, and my cousin is very different even from most girls. Her

views are very strict. Even otherwise, to any decent girl, a man in

his cups is not agreeable. But then, you know, it is not merely a

question of that. It is a question of matrimony. Matrimony generally

means children. It is on them that the sins of the father are visited.

There is the rub. Sylvia, I have not a doubt, will in the end forgive

you, but were she to marry you and her children have your sins visited

on them, never would she forgive herself. That I am sure you can

realize. Anyway, for the moment argument with her would be futile.

Besides, she has gone from town."

"Gone?"

"Yes, she left for Newport today. If I were you I would not attempt

to follow. But I will write. I will tell her what you say, and I will

tell you her reply."

Orr stood up. As he did so Annandale sat down. He cared for Sylvia

Waldron, absolutely, uniquely. He felt, too, that she had cared for

him. But while Orr had been speaking he told himself that her caring

had ceased. Had any affection remained she could not have gone. It was

his fault, though. He had shocked it out of existence. At the thought

of that he felt unutterably miserable. What he felt he looked.

Orr saw his dejection. "Annandale," he said, "I hardly suppose that it

will console you now to have me tell you that nothing earthly is of

any consequence, but, if you let the idea permeate you, ultimately

perhaps it may. By the way, that is a new man you have, isn't it?"

In the wreckage amid which Annandale was floundering the question was

like a rope; he caught at it and swam up.

"Who? Harris? Yes, the other poor devil I had was run over and died in

an ambulance."

Orr tapped at his foot with his stick. "I may be in error," he said,

"but I think I have seen him before."

"Then it must have been in London. He has been here only a short time.

He tells me he used to be with Catty."

Catty was a relative of Annandale, a New York girl who had married the

Duke of Kincardine.

"Possibly," said Orr. "Well," he added, reverting to the episode that

had brought him there, "I am sorry for all this. I know you are. I

will write to Sylvia and tell her so."

"Please do."

Annandale stood up and accompanied him to the door. When he turned

life seemed blank as the blanks of the night.

CHAPTER VII

SWEET-AND-TWENTY

What Sylvia replied to Orr's communication, whether indeed she replied

at all, Annandale was not informed. He himself wrote to her. The

letter was long; it was also abject. But he got no answer. He wrote

again. The result was the same.

Then both at her and at himself he rebelled. He had supped on

humiliations. He had no appetite for more. With some bravery, yet

without bravado, he tore a leaf from his life and on it wrote Finis.

The epitaph was figurative, but he thought it final. He thought that

he could dictate to Fate. It is a mistake that many make.

Presently it surprised him to find how laborious is the task of

putting people out of your life. If you have cared for them they will

come back. In the pages of a book, in the pauses of speech, suddenly

you behold them. In sleep they will not let you be. When you awake,

there they are. However detestable their behavior may have been, in

dream they visit and caress you. It takes time and vigilance; it takes

more, it takes other faces to disperse them.

In spite of the Finis, Sylvia Waldron declined to be dismissed. She

haunted Annandale. To memories of her he could not always show the

door. Sometimes they were masked. Occasionally they reproached him.

Again they seemed to say that did he but find out how, all might yet

be well between them. But usually they came and stood gazing at him in

love and grief eternal.

Then he would start. But what could he do? Besides, there was the

Finis.

June meanwhile had come and gone. Summer with a frenzy quasi-maniacal

had battened on the town. It is said that the hottest place in the

world is a port on the Persian Gulf. But it is wrong to believe

everything we hear. When New York decides to be hot, the temperature

of the Persian port must be agreeable by comparison.

One fetid noon Annandale fled. When he stopped it was at Narragansett.

Before August comes and with it the mob, Narragansett is charming.

There is a mile of empty hotels, a stretch of sand fine as face

powder, a heaving, heavenly desert of blue and an atmosphere charged

with ozone and desire.

In August the hotels are packed. The stretch of sand is a stage. Every

day a ballet is given there. The coryphees are the prettiest girls in

the world--girls from Baltimore, girls from Philadelphia, girls from

everywhere, girls with the Occident in their eyes and lips that say

"Drink me."

At high noon, from the greenroom of the bath-houses, Sweet-and-twenty

floats down, clasps the sea to the hum of harps, breasts the waves to

the laugh of brass and re-emerges to the sound of trumpets.

After the dip, other diversions. Primarily flirtations on the lawns;

later, polo at the Country Club; at night, dancing in the ballrooms,

more flirtations on the galleries of the Casino, supper on the terrace

below.

The terrace resembles, or, more exactly, on this particular summer did

resemble, a roof garden on the ground floor. From a kiosk a band of

Hungarians distributed selections of popular rot, sometimes their own

delirious czardas. There, circled by variegated lights, fanned by the

violins, girls and men sat beneath the high, wide, flowerful umbrellas

of Japan.

Sometimes some of them, wearying of that, wandered into silences and

shadows and lingered there, occupied with the crops, with strikes and

other subjects of national interest which young people always discuss

when holding hands in the dark.

To Newport, which squats disdainfully over the way, this is all too

free and easy. To Annandale, it was distressing. Everywhere there was

love, yet none for him. He had come to the Pier, as Narragansett is

locally termed, because of Newport's propinquity. If Sylvia so much as

signaled he could join her at once.

As yet no signaling was apparent. In its place was an influx of a

reflection of fashion. The influx made Annandale swear. He hated to be

seen stalking moodily about. He hated still more to have the rupture

of his engagement discussed. The ballet on the beach irritated him. He

told himself that he had come to the wrong shop. One day he thought of

joining friends in Canada. The next he thought of joining friends who

had gone abroad. The day after he thought that still he might be

signaled.

In these uncertainties he loitered, annoyed but sober. Since the visit

from Orr he had not touched a drop. Then, it so fell about that one

evening he looked in at a dance at the Casino. Madness was in the air.

The savors of the sea, the tonic of the dip, the stare of the harvest

moon, go to the head, stir the heart, excite the pulse in a manner

really Boccaccian.

Madness is contagious. It seemed particularly catching that night. The

hall was filled, the gallery flushed. On a stage, at the end of the

ballroom, musicians were tossing out in trailing rhythm the sorcery of

"Il Bacio," the invitation of the "Cent Vierges," the muffled riot of

"El Capitan."

To these incentives couples turned. Beneath the gallery where

Annandale stood there was a vision of white arms, bare necks, slender

waists circled by the blackness of men's sleeves. Three hundred girls

and men were waltzing together, interchanging partners, clasping

hands, gazing into each other's eyes.

Behind Annandale a group had gathered. They were talking, yet of what

he did not heed. But, presently, into the conversation filtered the

freshness of another voice.

"I quite believe, you know," the voice was saying, "that a girl who

stops here this summer will stop at nothing next."

At the jest Annandale turned. There, pretty as a peach but rather more

amusing, stood Fanny Price.

"Hamlet!" she exclaimed.

Annandale resembled the Dane as little as he did the devil. He was

fully aware of that. But he was equally aware that he must seem blue.

He straightened himself and smiled. Then at once it occurred to him

that Fanny might be a signal bearer.

"How do you do?" he said. "Don't you want to come and sit on the

terrace? When did you get here?"

"Just now. I am over from Newport. They told me there that I ought to

come in disguise. They call it slumming."

"Yes," Annandale inanely and eagerly replied. Of the little speech he

had caught but one word--Newport.

"Now, if I go with you, will you give me something pink, something

with raspberries in it?"

Fanny, as she spoke, disengaged herself from the people with whom she

had come.

"You saw Sylvia, didn't you?" he asked, when at last through coils of

girls and men they reached the terrace below.

Fanny nodded. "Suppose we sit here," she said, indicating a table from

which grew a big parasol.

"Did she say anything?"

Fanny sat down. Annandale seated himself by her. "You know? Don't

you----?"

"Oh, yes," Fanny interrupted. "But then----"

"Then what?"

"Nothing. Only it is so much better so, don't you think?"

"Better!" Annandale fiercely repeated.

"Why, yes. You and Sylvia were totally unsuited for each other. She is

the best and dearest girl in the world. But--here is the waiter. Will

you tell him to fetch me a lemon squash?"

Annandale gave the order.

"With raspberries in it," Fanny called at the waiter's retreating

back. "Aren't you going to take anything?"

In deep gloom Annandale shook his head.

Fanny laughed. "Drink delights you not; no, nor woman either."

"You see----"

"Yes, yes, yes. Of course I see. But why cannot you? Why can't you see

that you and Sylvia stood as much chance of hitting it off as though

you both spoke a different language? A break was bound to come."

But now the man appeared with the squash. Fanny looked at it. "Only

two raspberries," she cried. "And such little ones."

"Bring a dish of them," said Annandale. "I suppose," he resumed as the

waiter again retreated, "I suppose she will find somebody with whom

she can hit it off."

"Yes, of course. There is me and there are other girls. But the men

will be few. They will be elderly, I think, and I think, too, tame

enough to eat out of her hand."

"You think, then, that I am out of the running?"

Fanny did not answer. She was drinking the squash. When she put it

down she put with it the subject. It bored her.

"Are you going to be here long?" she asked. Until a moment before

Annandale had been wavering. But now his mind was made up. Or he

thought it was.

"No. I am off tomorrow."

"Where to?"

"The North Woods, perhaps. I am not sure."

"If you are not sure, you cannot be in any very tearing haste. Why not

stop a day or two longer and take me about?"

Annandale looked at her. In the look was surprise; inquiry, too.

"Yes. Why not?"

Annandale's look deepened into a stare.

"Now, don't be stupid," said Fanny, to whom such stares were familiar.

"I am not trying to get up a flirtation with you. But I must have

someone to talk to."

"I like to hear you talk."

"Yes; men always like nonsense."

"Only from a pretty girl, though."

"Do you know," said Fanny, rising from beneath the big parasol, "the

waiter didn't bring the raspberries. No matter now, though. I must go

and find mother. This is no place for her to be out alone."

CHAPTER VIII

TWO IN A TURRET

From a back gallery of the Casino a narrow stair leads to a tower. Up

that stair Annandale one afternoon invited Fanny Price.

A fortnight had gone, two weeks of dressing and undressing, of

dinners, dances and dips; a succession of mellow mornings; long, green

afternoons, dusks stabbed by sudden stars and nights lit by a moon

that painted the ocean, penetrated the shadows, checkered the

underbrush with silver spots.

But now, though the mornings were as mellow and the afternoons as

green, though in the air the same madness subsisted and the nights

were as languid as before, verandas were emptying, there were wide

spaces where once were thick crowds. The end of the season had come.

In the procession of these things Annandale had put the North Woods

from him; he had put, too, the thought of journeying abroad. With

them he had put also any hope that Sylvia would signal him back.

For awhile the hope had persisted, as the light of a candle persists.

Then it had dwindled, flickered and sunk. That is the way with hope.

Though sometimes it is snuffed. You are in darkness. But through that

darkness occasionally another light will be upheld. It may not,

perhaps, be intended for you, but it may enable you to see.

Aided by another light, Annandale had begun to discern his way. He

should, of course, have remained in darkness. To darkness, were this

fiction, he would be condemned. But this is not fiction. The drama

with which these pages deal is documented from life. It was Fanny who

held the light.

During the month that had gone he had been almost constantly at her

side. The fact that one light may be replaced by another had not at

first occurred to him. Presently the ease with which such substitution

can be effected had mystified him very much. He was not prepared for

anything of the kind. He had arranged to be a gloomy, disappointed

man. He kept telling himself that if Sylvia had stuck to him he would

have been true to her his whole life through. But she had not stuck to

him, and the withdrawal of herself had left existence so empty that,

unknown even to him, Nature had been filling the vacuum which she

abhors.

In this, Nature had been greatly aided. Fanny Price was a remarkably

fetching young girl. To a man out of court and consequently out of

sorts the companionship of a pocket Venus is tonifying in the extreme.

It is not merely that, it is recuperative. It banishes the blues. It

establishes a new court, and with it a new code of its own.

The censorious allege that this is all wrong. It may be that they are

right. But Nature is not censorious. Nature is not even ethical. She

has no standards of right, no canons of wrong. What she does have is

her way. A saint may defy her. Annandale was not that by a long shot.

He was simply a human being, one that had been punished, and, as he

thought, unjustly punished, for that which might have been condoned.

Injustice humiliates. Saints may welcome humiliation, but human beings

resent it.

Over the emptiness which Sylvia had created there brooded therefore

two things. One was darkness, the other pique. In the light which

Fanny upheld it seemed to Annandale that they might be dispersed. This

idea, which he regarded as his very own, and consequently as highly

original, was not his in the least. It was Nature prompting him to

fill the vacuum which she so dislikes.

Instigated by her, Annandale invited Fanny up a stair and into a

tower, a place remote, aloof, furnished with seats for just two.

Fanny had not been there before. She had heard, though, of its

aloofness; it was regarded as a dangerous spot. But Fanny was a brave

girl. Besides, Annandale was at his worst, and even at his best was

not very alarming.

The ascent effected, Fanny peeped from a casement. "Why," she

exclaimed, "you can see everywhere!" She looked about. "But no one can

see you."

Assured of that, she produced a little gold box. On the back were her

initials in jewels. She opened it, took a cigarette and lit it. "Will

you have one?" she asked.

"This is a deuced nice case," said Annandale.

Fanny puffed and smiled.

"A present, I suppose."

"Yes. But you must not ask from whom."

Annandale looked out at the landscape, then in at the girl. "There is

something else I want to ask."

So grave was his tone that Fanny deployed for action.

"Will you marry me?"

Though Fanny had deployed, the shot bowled her over. Into one of the

chairs she dropped. Already Annandale had captured the other.

"Will you?"

But Fanny was recovering. With an air of vexation in which there was

amusement, she puffed at her cigarette and then at him.

"Now, honestly, have I ever given you the slightest encouragement to

ask me that?" She hesitated a moment, puffed again and added: "We have

been friends, I think; let us remain so."

Annandale, who was in loose white flannels, contemplated his tight

white shoes. Then his eyes sought hers. "Are you interested in

Loftus?"

"That is none of your business," Fanny proudly and promptly replied.

As she spoke she got from her seat, approached the casement, gazed out

and away.

"I do not believe you are," Annandale announced to her slender waist.

"But if I am wrong, it is hardly disloyalty to him to say that he is

not good enough for you."

Beneath the tower was a tennis court. Fanny made a face at it. But the

face must have been insufficient. Looking over her shoulder at

Annandale, she showed her teeth.

"Do you fancy a girl cares for a man because he is or is not good

enough? When a girl cares she cares because she cannot help herself."

"I know that is the way with a man, or at least with me. I cannot help

caring for you."

"Nor could you help caring for Sylvia."

"She is so different."

"Yes," said Fanny dreamily, "and so are you." Though to whom she

referred she did not say, nor did Annandale ask. She gave him no

chance. "Next month you will not be able to help caring for some other

girl."

"Not if you would take me."

"But, you see, I don't care for you."

"But couldn't you?" Annandale persisted. "Couldn't you if you tried?

Of course, in saying that Loftus is not good enough for you I don't

mean that I am. But if you could try I would."

At this program Fanny laughed. "We should be a pair of Christian

Endeavorers, shouldn't we?"

To the levity of that Annandale found no immediate reply. Yet

presently, with an irrelevance more obvious than real, he threw out:

"He has gone abroad, you know."

"Who? Loftus?"

"Yes, for a year, I believe."

Fanny turned to the tennis court again. It was, though, not that which

she saw, but a hope that was slipping away, sinking away, sinking down

into death dishonored. For a moment she was very still. A movement of

Annandale's aroused her.

"Come," she said. "It is hot here. Let us go."

Gathering a fold of her skirt, Fanny descended the stair. Annandale

filed after. On a balcony below a lady with faded hair and gimlet eyes

pounced at her.

"I have been hunting for you everywhere," the lady exclaimed. "Aren't

you going to dress?" Then she nodded to Annandale.

Annandale touched his cap. "How do you do, Mrs. Price?"

He would have lingered, but Fanny dismissed him.

"Good-bye," she said. "I may see you this evening."

As he ambled off Mrs. Price returned to the charge. "Where have you

been?"

Fanny patted a yawn. "Listening to sweet nothings."

"From him? Why, he hasn't anything, has he? What did you do?"

Fanny patted another yawn or else another sigh. "I fell on his neck

and sobbed for joy."

"Nonsense. Has he anything, tell me?"

"Not enough to entertain on. Twenty-five thousand a year, I think."

"The impertinence of it!" said the lady.

Had her daughter been an heiress a duke would hardly have satisfied

her. As things were, or more exactly, since the girl began to grow in

beauty she had dreamed for her but one dream--a brilliant match. To

Mrs. Price there could be no brilliance if the party of the second

part had a dollar less than ten million.

"You might have had Loftus," she declared at last. "Where is he, do

you know?"

"Abroad, I hear."

"With that creature?"

Mrs. Price in common with many others had heard of Marie Leroy. But

though others in hearing had not heeded, Mrs. Price took it as a

personal affront.

"Then it is your fault," she snarled. "You could have had him if you

had wanted. Don't tell me. He was in love with you. I could see it."

Fanny was looking at the ocean. A white sail was fainting in the

distance. Like it, a hope she had had was fading away. She watched it

go. It had been very fair, very dear, more dear and fair than any she

had known. But it was going. It was out of reach and now out of

sight. She could not beckon to it.

"What are you staring at?" Mrs. Price asked.

"A sail out there," the girl answered.

Then presently mother and daughter passed into an adjoining corridor

where they had rooms.

CHAPTER IX

FANNY CHANGES HER CLOTHES

Fanny did not appear that evening. In search of her Annandale prowled

vainly around. But on the morrow he ran into her on the beach.

It was still as fine as powder. To have found elbow room there a few

days previous you would have had to go out to sea. Now, in and on it

children were making hillocks and holes. Near them a few groups of

older people loitered. But the coryphees that had danced there were

migrating. Already the Rockingham, a big hotel which faced the beach,

had closed. Sweet-and-twenty was packing her trunk.

The morning itself was of the quality which Lowell has catalogued as

from the Gulf adrift. In the air was a caress. Fanny, in a frock the

color of pale pastel pink, a wide hat in which that color was

repeated, her eyes blue as the sea and bluer, added to its charm.

As Annandale approached she smiled and gave him a finger. But at once

the smile fell from her. With the finger which he had released she

pointed at the big hotel. Annandale turned. Other people were turning.

Some were running. A child that had been at play in the sand jumped

and clapped his hands. About one side of the hotel a sheet of flame

was climbing, crackling in and out. A cry of "Fire!" caught up and

renewed, mounted in the crystalline air.

"Damn!" said Annandale. "If that goes----"

Fanny said nothing. Her eyes widened. Through the windows that front

the beach more flames were leaping. From the side the first flames

passed to shops over the way, passed back with fresh ones created and

joined the others beyond. Above was smoke. Higher yet the tender blue

of the sky. But below was a whirlwind of ochre, scarlet and gamboge, a

fierce yet compact tornado of oscillant hues, shot with green and

shuttled with black. Then suddenly, with a roar, the tornado doubled,

the roof had fallen. The child that had jumped and clapped his hands,

feebly now was beginning to cry.

"It is glorious," said Fanny.

"I am afraid--" Annandale muttered.

Fanny glanced at him. Yet at once she understood. On the other side of

the hotel, across the road, the Casino stood. Her mother, of course,

would be safe. But her clothes! At thought of them her hand went to

her throat.

"Do you think the Casino will catch?" she gasped.

Annandale nodded.

"Oh," she continued, "I shan't have a stitch, not one."

"Yes, you shall," Annandale heroically retorted. "I will see to them.

But I must run. Find your mother if you can and take her to the Inn."

The Inn, a hotel half a mile away, was where Annandale lodged. At once

he was off. Shortly, by a detour, he got to the other side of the

fire. As he swung about he saw that the Casino's ballroom had caught.

But that part of the place was of wood. The other end, where Fanny

lodged, was of wood also, but it was also partly of stone. To this

part as yet the flames had not reached.

As Annandale ran he told himself that he would have time to get in and

get out, but he told himself too that it was a ridiculous job. Fanny's

clothes a stroke of his pen could replace. But now the crowd impeded

him. Lines had formed. Buckets were being passed. There were throngs

of natives and resorters. Through them he pushed.

At the further entrance to the Casino, above which he knew the Prices

lodged, a fat policeman stood, blocking the way. Annandale shoved him

aside, sprang up the stairs, reached the room, fumbled with the door.

It was locked.

Annandale swore deeply, tried the door with his shoulder, kicked at it

till it cracked, kicked again, throwing himself against it with all

his weight, then, not the door, but the fastenings of the lock broke

and he went sprawling in. Through the open window he could see the

flames, he could hear them, he could hear too the cries of the crowd.

But he had no time to waste. He tore around the room.

In one corner was a deep closet, full of clothes. He took them and

threw them in armfuls on the bed. In another corner was a bureau, the

drawers packed with scented lingerie. These on the bed he emptied

also. What else did women wear? he wondered. Oh, yes, he remembered;

hats certainly and probably shoes. Around the room he tore again. But

already the bed was mountainous. He turned it all over on the floor,

gathered up as much as the coverlid would hold and made a hasty bundle

of it. Beneath was a blanket; he filled that, made a bundle of it

also, repeated the operation with a sheet. Into another sheet he threw

hats which meanwhile had loomed in boxes on a shelf, and dragging a

curtain down filled that with shoes which also he had found, changed

his mind and stuffed them into a pillow case, tossing in after them

articles from a dressing-table, brushes and combs, odds and ends,

helter skelter.

But in dragging the curtain from the window he had noticed a

writing-desk. After he had finished with the pillow case he returned

to it. Like the door it was locked. He kicked at it, kicked it open,

discovered in it loose money and trinkets, stuck them in his pockets,

grabbed at the bundles and dashed from the room just as with a roar

the flames leaped in.

In the corridor he tripped, but he was up again with the tightly tied

bundles and down the stair before the flames and the smoke of them

could catch him. Once on the road without he turned to look, but the

flames pirouetting in increasing size made it too hot to linger. Down

the road he went, not overweighted but impeded by the awkward bundles,

and staggered first into an engulfing, shouting crowd, then into a

convenient hack, in which he reached the Inn, minus his cap and

perspiring profusely.

The Prices as yet had not turned up. Annandale secured rooms for them,

had the bundles taken there, went to his own quarters, re-emerged

shortly fresh as paint, hungry as a wolf.

It was high noon. From beyond drifted the sound of cries, the smell

of smoke, the commotion of flight. The Rockingham had gone, the

adjacent shops and bath houses with it; the Casino had fallen.

Hurrying to the railway station beyond came people with handbags,

wagons with trunks. From the air the caress had passed. There was

panic in it.

But presently the flames showed less voluminous. After devouring all

that they conveniently could they were subsiding. It was apparent that

the worst was over. Then at last Fanny and her mother drove up.

From the veranda where he stood Annandale ran down to meet them. "I

have your things," he cried. "I have rooms for you also."

"Hobson is not in it with you," said Fanny, when the tale of the

bundles had been told. "I could kiss you. I would if mamma were not

here."

For that, ordinarily, Fanny would have been promptly sat upon. But

here was the exceptional. Mrs. Price recognized it or appeared to.

Instead of rebuking the girl and snubbing the man, Mrs. Price

condescended to tell Annandale that he was "too good."

This was very nice. Annandale felt over-rewarded. Then, shortly, the

midday meal ensuing, he conducted mother and daughter to the

restaurant, sat with them at table, ordered Ruinart cup and assumed

family airs. Later, in a motor, he took Fanny to view the ruins,

hummed her over the country and later still procured for her a lemon

squash with plenty of raspberries in it, which she consumed on the

porch, to the sound of the waves, by the light of the stars.

Meanwhile she had changed her pastel frock for another, which, if a

bit rumpled in transit, became her wonderfully well.

Annandale commented on it. "By the way," he suddenly interrupted

himself to remark, "I have more of your things. I stuffed them in my

pocket and forgot them entirely. I will go and fetch them now."

"Don't bother. Tomorrow will do. What are they, do you remember?"

"Money and jewelry. Rings and pins, I think. I am sure there were

pins. One of them stuck in me."

"Any clothes?"

"Clothes!" Annandale echoed in surprise. "Why, no, are any missing?"

"My mother's. They were in the room next to mine."

"The Lord forgive me, I never thought of it."

"It does not really matter. Only we will have to go to town tomorrow.

Mamma has not a stitch."

"The devil!" muttered Annandale in fierce self-reprobation. "Hang my

stupidity. I am a fool."

"You are nothing of the kind. If it were not for you I would not have

a stitch either."

"That is all very well. But I have bungled matters dreadfully. I don't

know what your mother can think of me. I do know, though, that I wish

she would let me replace the things which she has lost through my

fault."

In the sky a star was falling, swiftly, silently, like a drop of water

on a window-pane. Fanny watched it. She had been lolling back in a

chair. But at Annandale's suggestion she sat up. "That is absurd," she

announced.

"Well, then, it would be only nice and fair of you to put me in a

position where, without offense, I could do so."

But Fanny was rising. "It is late," she announced. "I must go."

Annandale caught at her. "Say 'Yes,'" he implored. "Or at least don't

say 'No.' Say something."

"Something, then. There, let me be."

At that Annandale, who still held her, held her yet tighter. "You are

the dearest girl in all the world."

Fanny gave him a little shove. "Don't do that, anyone might see you."

"Yes, and see too that you belong to me."

"I am not so sure."

"You shan't go then till you are." Annandale, as he spoke, planted

himself uncircuitously before her.

"Oh," said Fanny, in a little sugary, demure voice, "if you are going

to use brute force----"

"I am."

"Then I give in."

"For keeps?"

"Don't, there's my mother."

In the doorway beyond, Mrs. Price had loomed. Fanny joined her.

Annandale followed, denouncing himself to the lady for the oversight

that noon. Yet, whether because of that oversight of his or because of

some foresight of her own, so grim was Mrs. Price that Annandale,

concluding that it would be more cheerful elsewhere, turned tail,

ambled out to the road and across it to the sea wall, where he sat and

kicked his heels and told himself that he was engaged.

In the telling he lost himself in impossibilities and wondered how it

would fare with him and how with Sylvia could the past be mended and

the old plans mature. For though Fanny allured, Sylvia enchained.

Fanny was delicious. But he fancied that other men had found her so.

He fancied that her heart had been an inn, and he knew that Sylvia's

was a home. Yet from that he was barred. To those that lack homes

hotels are convenient.

Across the way meanwhile Mrs. Price was very busy. In looming on the

veranda it had seemed to her that her daughter and that man were

occupied with certain ceremonies. Regarding them she attacked the girl

at once.

"You have not taken him?" she began by way of reconnaissance.

That afternoon Fanny had visited ruins. There were others more

personal that she was viewing then, the ruins of fair things not dead

but destroyed.

"Answer me," Mrs. Price commanded.

The girl started. But she had been far away--in that lovely land where

dreams come true and then, it may be, turn into nightmares. Through

the dreams hand in hand with Loftus she had been strolling. Now she

must put them all away.

"Answer me," Mrs. Price repeated.

"I am afraid so."

Into a misty and deserted parlor of the Inn Mrs. Price pulled the girl

and there let fire.

"Afraid! You ought to be! What will your father say?"

The father here projected was a gentleman who resided abroad and who

seldom opened his mouth except to put something in it.

"And Fred!"

Fred was Fanny's brother, a young chap whose opinions were of no value

to anyone, himself included.

"And everybody!"

Everybody was the upper current of social life.

"And Sylvia!"

The earlier shots had not inflicted any visible damage, but this must

have told.

"I shall have to write to her," Fanny with unusual meekness replied.

"Yes, do. Do by all means. Tell her you have taken her leavings. And

why? Merciful heavens, why? If you were as staid and stiff as she I

could understand. But a girl like you, with your tastes, your

extravagances, a girl with a national reputation for beauty, to go and

accept twenty-five thousand a year is--is--sinful, that's what it is.

Your own father has that, and on it we are out at elbows. It is just

about enough for you to dress on. Oh, Fanny, Fanny!"

Hysterically the old lady waved her hands. "Oh, Fanny, I have so

prayed that you would make a brilliant match. I have scrimped and

saved that you might, and you go and take a blond beast of a pauper.

It is too cruel!"

Fanny winced. It was cruel. But the cruelty was not hers. It was

Fate's. She too had hoped for the very marriage her mother had so

ardently desired. But Loftus had not cared. Occupied elsewhere he had

sailed away. As well then Annandale as another.

"You see, you know," she said in a wretched effort at smoothing things

over, "he is quite a hero."

But this was too much. Mrs. Price shook her head like a battle horse

and fairly neighed.

"Because he saved your clothes? If it had been your life and you had

said 'Thank you' it would have been ample. But your clothes! Not mine;

the beast had not sense enough for that, but yours! I do hope you will

give that as an excuse to Sylvia!"

CHAPTER X

A VICTIM

Sylvia had gone from Newport. She was then at Lenox. It was there the

previous autumn that her interest in Annandale had begun. The interest

had so deepened that she gave him her heart. Never before had she

given that to anyone. Annandale had taken it and then, one night, he

had so bruised it that she thought it broken. He had written that he

had not meant to. His letter had been full of regrets, of

protestations, of bad grammar. Such things may palliate, but they do

not cure. Only time can do that.

Time is a strange emollient. In its mysterious potency it softens

without our knowledge. Suddenly a whisper, a breeze that passes, shows

that it has done its work. With Sylvia time was having its will.

Furtively she had found herself wondering, as Annandale had wondered,

how it should fare with her, and how with him, could the past be

effaced and the old days renewed. But those days were gone, she

decided. Though into that decision a doubt would creep, not indeed

concerning the departure, but concerning her attitude and the justice

of it.

Annandale had sinned. He had sinned wantonly, grievously. From an

atmosphere of vice--an atmosphere from which, under pain of her

displeasure, she had distinctly warned him--he had staggered to her,

its pollution about him, reeking with drink, talking abundantly about

nothing imaginable, and at her just remonstrance had become instantly

irritable, refusing almost to leave the house.

So had his condition and the spectacle of it shocked her that, for

awhile, memory of him and of it was repellent. In her own eyes she

felt degraded. That men drank, she knew. But in her sphere of life

they drank either moderately or else in haunts invisible to her. And

it was precisely from such a haunt he had come, a shameless haunt, one

that sullied her even to know of.

Yes, he had sinned, wantonly, grievously, almost unforgivably. Almost,

she reflected, but perhaps not quite. In his letter of protest and

regret he had told her that he remembered nothing, nothing whatever,

absolutely nothing at all, save one vague, brief vision of herself.

The rest, the beginning, the end, the inter-spaces were, he assured

her, blank. At first she had thought that sheer nonsense. But, later,

the earnest way in which it was put impressed her. Then on the heels

of that communication there had followed one from Orr, indorsing what

Annandale said, declaring that it was all quite possible, adding that,

in certain temperaments, memory when influenced by toxics will play

tricks stranger than the average mind can comfortably credit.

These letters she had not answered. Logically she could not admit the

validity of the statements which they contained. But the heart has

logic which logic does not know. Then, too, is there not that within

us that prompts us to believe less what we should than what we wish?

Sylvia's reason, guided by her inexperience, refused at first to

accept the idea that any sane man could act as Annandale had and

afterward be oblivious of it. That remorse there should be was only

natural, but that there should be no memory of anything whatever

seemed to her absurd.

But there was her cousin's assurance to the contrary. Then

imperceptibly, little by little, that assurance, filtering through the

saddened girl, took possession of her, insisting on recognition,

telling her that, though her lover had erred, yet, in erring, he was

more to be pitied than condemned. Dominated by drink, which, Orr

added, he had promised to renounce, he had gone to that haunt and,

contaminated there, knew not what he did. But she, instead of

realizing that, she who was to have been his in sickness and health,

for better, for worse, she, in her pride, had dismissed him.

He had erred, Sylvia told herself, deeply, grievously, but so, too,

had she. She had condemned when she should have condoned; she had

spurned him when it was her solicitude that he needed.

At the sure cognition of that, it was as though from her eyes a

bandage had fallen. Then at once in her tender conscience she beheld

herself, detestable in pride, a girl without a heart, one of whom he,

no doubt, was well rid of.

It was during the process of this awakening that the conflagration at

Narragansett Pier occurred. Sylvia read of it. She read, too, of

certain prowesses which the dismissed had displayed.

The account, very inexact as such accounts always are, was also highly

colored, spun out for space purposes for much more than the space was

worth. Had you not known better you would have taken it for granted

that the heroism of Annandale was on a par with that of Leonidas at

Thermopylae and even of Roosevelt at San Juan. It quite stirred you.

It stirred Sylvia. The paper fell from her. But the past returned. At

once it seemed to her that it might be mended and the old days

renewed. The hero of whom the paper told she knew now that she had

wholly loved, and she knew, too, that wholly she still loved him.

Time had done its work ridiculously, inopportunely, yet effectively at

last. But the gates of life are double. On one stands written "Too

Soon." On the other "Too Late." It is unfortunate to get wedged

between them. Of that fact Sylvia became rapidly aware. On the morrow

she began a letter to Annandale. Before it was finished there came one

from Fanny, announcing that she was to be Annandale's wife.

In certain crises of the emotions there is a certain sense of

unreality. Even as Sylvia read what Fanny said she could not grasp it.

When presently she did, she could not believe it. But there it was.

Then immediately she experienced the agony which comes when we battle

in dream with the intangible and the dread, when we know it is dream

and yet feel it is death.

"It is all my fault," she cried. She found but that. At the moment she

was in that condition which precedes the great commotion of tears,

when the strangulation of agony is subsiding and contracted nerves

distend. But the tears did not come. The pain was infinite. There was

a weight which she felt not without but within, a weight so heavy that

she thought she could not bear it. It racked her. Only her mind was

active. "It is my fault," she repeated. Then she added, "And my

cross."

From a crisis such as this, in a nature such as hers, the soul issues

as from an orgy. It has supped on sorrow. It is fed. It ceases to look

back. It looks forward, marveling indeed that it should look at all,

yet looking. Life's burdens are more bearable than the despairful

think. Until the eyes are closed and the heart no longer beats, in

some way, somehow, they can be carried.

Sylvia took up her cross. It was leaden. But in the effort she was

aided. Pride helped her. The assistance of pride may be poor, yet is

it not better than none? To Sylvia it was useful. It enabled her to

answer Fanny's letter.

"You have my congratulations, Fanny dear," she wrote, "all of them, my

best and warmest, and so has Arthur too. Please say so to him and tell

him that, in marrying by dearest friend, he and I must be dear friends

also."

Then the tears did come, swiftly, like the ripple of the rain. On the

table where she sat she put her head down and sobbed, paroxysmally, as

sobs a child.

THE GENERAL SESSIONS

CHAPTER I

DISENCHANTMENT

"_Il segreto_----"

Marie's voice rang out, clear and fluid, scattering notes through the

room, filling it with them, charging the air with melody, then, like a

chorus entering a crypt, it sank in diminishing accords and, sinking,

died slowly away.

The _segreto_ indeed! The secret of happiness was remoter now than

when, under the teaching of the ex-first lady, she had first attacked

the score. But her voice had improved. It was fuller, more resonant

and ample.

Marie, too, had improved. In face and figure beauty had developed. Her

manner was securer, her eyes more grave, her smile less frequent. The

bud had blossomed.

In the process a year had gone. From high Norman downs she had watched

the summer pass. Autumn had met her in the Elysian Fields. There the

wolfish winter had approached. At the first bite there had been a

flight to Havre, the return to New York. Now it was spring again.

Through the open windows of the Arundel came the city's hum and with

it the subtleties and enticements of May.

A year had gone. But there are years that count double. There are

others so vast that in them you may have evolved a world, seen it glow

and subside. The solitudes of space appal. The solitudes of the heart

may be as endless as they. In those where Marie loitered a world had

had its birth and subsidence, a world with gem-like hopes for stars, a

world lighted by a sun so eager that its rays had made her blind.

There had been aspirations, gorgeous and tangental as comets are.

There had been the colorless ether of which dreams are made. For

cosmic matter there was love. A year had gone. In it, these wonders

had formed and fled.

Marie got from the piano. It had no secret to tell. But there was

another which the year had revealed, a secret which, at first opaque

and obscure, little by little had taken shape and changed from an

impossibility into a monstrous fact. Marie had begun by disavowing it.

She had disowned it, would have none of it. But disavowals cease. In

certain conditions we get used to monsters. The soul makes itself at

home with what it must. The monster to which Marie was accustoming

herself was the knowledge that her lover had lied.

In departing with him from the den of the ex-first lady it was not

merely with faith and trust, but with absolute certainty that

marriage, if delayed, was only postponed; that a week, a month at the

furthest, would see her his wife.

On the way she had stopped and wired to Gay street, telling her father

not to worry, that she had gone to be married, that she would write to

him soon.

Whether he had worried she could only surmise. But soon she had

written, inclosing a photograph of Loftus, one which she had colored,

an excellent likeness that displayed his chiseled features, wonderful

eyes and thin, black mustache with a perfection of precision that was

lifelike. Above it she wrote: "Marie's Husband." It would please her

father, she was sure, and in the letter she told him prettily, in a

little, cajoling way which he loved, that while, for the moment, he

must not know where she was, yet shortly she was planning to come and

surprise him--to surprise him more than he could ever imagine, and

show him that he could be very, very proud of her, but prouder still,

much, much prouder of the man she had married.

The plan, delightful to her, first the illness of her lover's mother,

then the lady's absence from town, prevented her from at once

effecting. Then, greatly to her uneasiness, she found that the plan

must be yet further delayed. Mrs. Loftus had gone to her manor on the

Hudson, where, her son declared, he could not take Marie "like that."

Financially it was stupid to rush things. Gradually his mother must be

prepared. Moreover, as preparation could be decently managed only in

town, to which she would not now return until autumn, it would be a

good idea to run over to Europe.

So spoke Royal Loftus. It was all false as an obituary. Financially he

was entirely independent of his mother, who, at the time, was not at

her manor, but just around the corner and never better in her life.

But Marie, wholly infatuated, quite willing to believe that the moon

was made of green cheese if only he took the trouble to so inform her,

accepted it all for gospel.

The delay, of course, was a deep disappointment. She felt it, and felt

it acutely. But in Europe she supposed that people would not know, and

would not care a rap if they did, Loftus hastened to assure her.

To his project, therefore, she yielded. Presently she was glad that

she had. The journey itself was a joy. At the Arundel he had come and

gone. Often she had been lonely. Often she had sat through hours that

limped themselves away, waiting for him, waiting fruitlessly. But

during the journey and after it, on the high Norman downs, always she

had him with her. Therein was the joy.

The places, new to her and fragrant, to which he took her interested

her very much, but very much, too, as accessories might. It was from

him that their real charm emanated. He also enjoyed himself, but less

rapturously, in a fashion more detached. He found time to busy himself

with the news of the world, with menus, with wines--occupations which

to her were extraordinary. Marie did not know what she ate; as for the

world, it was sublimated in him, a fact which she confided to him--of

which, if she had not, he would have been perfectly aware and which he

accepted at first as but a proper tribute to himself, but which ended

by boring him distinctly. An excess of anything disagrees with the

best.

The first symptoms of indigestion declared themselves in Paris. They

had there a large suite in a big hotel. So large was the suite that

frequently Marie could not find Loftus in it. He was off, returning

when he saw fit, refusing to be questioned, yawning at reproaches,

but otherwise perfectly civil, agreeing with her that it was not nice

to be left alone, yet leaving her alone whenever he felt like it.

On the Norman downs the fresh fragrance of life had put a higher color

on her cheeks, marking them with the flush of happiness and health.

But in this game of hide and nowhere to seek her face became pallid as

the curious white sky which in autumn stretches itself over Paris.

Then stealthily, like a wolf, winter approached. The cheerlessness of

it Loftus hated, as all New Yorkers do. To Marie, however, it was

welcome. It meant a return to the Arundel, where she felt that the

marriage so long delayed could not be further postponed.

The illusion was pleasant but not permanent. On re-emerging in the

noise and sunshine of New York Loftus ceased to bother himself with

the invention of excuses. He told Marie that his mother would not

listen to anything of the kind, a statement which, while frank, was

not exact. Mrs. Loftus had never heard of it, or for that matter, of

the girl, and Loftus saw no reason whatever why she should. Yet if not

frank, he was patient. Marie, on the other hand, took it all very

hard. Humiliation possessed her. By day it confronted her, spectrally.

At night it came to her, sat by her side, plucked at her sleeve, awoke

her. It was a thing she could not get away from, could not forget;

what is worse, she could not understand. It tortured her, and

concerning it she tormented him constantly, displaying a persistence

that was annoying and pathetic--the persistence of a child. It was as

such that he treated it with yawning indifference, quite as though it

were but a whim which, other things intervening, she would forget.

Other things did intervene. Among them was an adventure in Central

Park. One afternoon a brougham in which she was driving crossed a

victoria where sat a remarkably pretty woman with Loftus at her side.

Marie's eyes filled. Had he struck her he would have hurt her far

less. When next she saw him she told him so. The idea amused him. He

was not a ruffian, only a cad. Like the whim, he waved the little

tragedy away.

"That was Mrs. Annandale," he announced unabashedly, "a very old

friend of mine. I have known her all my life."

"Mrs. Annandale!" Marie exclaimed. "Not the wife of the Mr. Annandale

whom you brought here last year?"

Loftus stared at her. He did not understand. Yet then, neither did

she.

"Why," she continued, "you told me he was to marry a dark young lady."

"Yes," said Loftus, fumbling as he spoke for a cigarette. "But I told

you also not to use that expression. Say girl or young woman. If you

want to be fantastic, say young gentlewoman, but never young lady. You

are right, though. Annandale was to have married a Miss Waldron, but

she threw him over and he married somebody else."

To Marie all this was inexplicable. She did not understand how a man

thrown over by one girl could so speedily marry another. She did not

understand, either, what Loftus could be doing with her. To her mind

driving presupposed an intimacy which acquaintance might explain but

did not excuse. The matter perplexed her, and not unnaturally. It is

only through our own heart that it is possible to attempt to read the

heart of another. In her heart Marie knew that nothing earthly could

induce her to appear as intimate with a man as Loftus had with that

woman. Yet, though she knew that, she knew also that many of her

views, like many of her expressions, were not in tune with the tone of

the set in which Loftus moved.

None the less a fact remained. To her other men did not exist. To him

other women existed. However she tried to console herself with

difference in breeding, that fact, remaining, pricked. It pricked

perhaps the harder because of this particular woman's looks. The woman

herself was hateful. How, she wondered, could Loftus drive about with

her when, with herself, he would barely be seen.

And why wouldn't he? In those days Marie's whys were many. But at the

end of every one of them the answer which she always found was that it

was all because she was not his wife. Yet there always another why

recurred. Why was she not what he had sworn she should be?

The possible disinheritance which hitherto he had imaginatively

displayed had no terrors of any kind for her. On bread and kisses she

would have lived with him joyfully in a slum. To luxury she was

unused. That with which she was surrounded she would not have missed

in the least. On the contrary, it had grown odious to her; it

suggested a form of compensation the very thought of which was

sickening. It was not for this that she had left Gay street, but for

him and an honest name.

In the prolonged absence of the latter there were times when her soul

seemed to slink into the obscurities of her being and swoon there for

shame. There were times when she could not look at herself in the

glass. Quite as often she had found it difficult to look at her

servants.

After the episode in Central Park the increasing sense of degradation

affected her so deeply that with a weary idea of preserving such

self-respect as she might, summoning those servants she dismissed

them--securing, meanwhile, from an agency a woman able to do what

little was essential, a negress named Blanche who talked Irish.

When Loftus discovered what she had done he was for having the

servants immediately back. He liked to have the girl entertain for

him. He liked to have his friends come to the aviary and hear the bird

sing. But Marie, with an air of determination that was new to him,

refused.

"They do not respect me," she said. "I don't blame them for that. Nor

can you. When we are married it will be different.

"When we are," she added with slow scorn.