STEPHANIE.

*CHAPTER XVI*

He sailed in April. When he sailed, he knew he would not come back for

many years, if ever. His business here was done, the dream of Europe

ended. The cycle of Cathay awaited him in all its acrid crudity.

Yes, the golden web was rent, torn across, destroyed. The shock to his

American mind left nothing of the lotus eater in him. He was returning

where he belonged.

Married! Steve married! To Oswald Grismer, who, save as a schoolboy

and later in college, was a doubtful and unknown quantity to him.

He had never known Grismer well. Since their schoolboy differences,

they had been good enough friends when thrown together, which had been

infrequently. He had no particular liking for Grismer, no dislike.

Grismer had been a clever, adroit, amusing man in college, generally

popular, yet with no intimacies, no close friends.

As for Steve, he never dreamed that Stephanie would do such a thing. It

was so damnably silly, so utterly unthinkable a thing to do.

And in his angry perplexity and growing resentment, Cleland's conscience

hurt as steadily as a toothache. He ought to have been home long ago.

He should have gone back at the end of his two years. His father had

trusted him to look out for Steve, and, in spite of her rather bumptious

letters proclaiming her independence, he should have gone back and kept

an eye on her, whether or not she liked it.

In his astonishment and unhappiness, he did not know what to write her

when the cablegram came hurtling into his calm and delightfully ordered

life and blew up the whole fabric.

Sometimes, to himself, he called her a "little fool"; sometimes "poor

little Steve." But always he unfeignedly cursed Grismer and bitterly

blamed himself.

The affair made him sick at heart and miserable, and ruined any pleasure

remaining in his life and work.

He did not cable her; he wrote many letters and tore all of them to

bits. It was beyond him to accept the _fait accompli_, beyond him to

write even politely, let alone with any pretense of cordiality.

His resentment grew steadily, increased by self-reproach. What kind of

man had Oswald Grismer grown into? What kind of insolence was this--his

marrying Steve----

"Damn his yellow soul, I'll wring his neck!" muttered Cleland, pacing

the deck of the Cunarder in the chilly April sunshine.

But the immense astonishment of it still possessed him. He couldn't

imagine Steve married. _Why_ had she married? What earthly reason was

there? It was incredible, absurd.

Still in his mind lingered the image of the girl Stephanie whom he

remembered as he last had seen her.

Once or twice, too, thinking of that time, and conjuring up all he could

picture of her, he remembered the delicate ardour of her parting

embrace, the fragrant warmth of her mouth, and her arms around his neck.

It angered him oddly to remember it--to think of her as the wife of

Oswald Grismer. The idea seemed unendurable; it threw him into a rage

against this man who had so suddenly taken Stephanie Quest out of his

life.

"Damn him! Damn him!" he muttered, staring out over the wind-whipped

sea. "I'd like to twist his neck! There's something queer about this.

I'll take her away from him if I can. I'll do everything I can to take

her away from him. I want her back. I'll get her back if it's

possible. How can she care for Grismer?"

He had nobody, now, to return to; no home, for the house was closed; no

welcome to expect.

He had not written her that he was coming; he had no desire to see her

at the steamer with Grismer. With a youthful heart full of indefinable

bitterness and self-contempt that his own indifference and selfishness

had brought Steve and himself to such a pass, he paced the decks day

after day, making no acquaintances, keeping to himself.

And one night the great light on Montauk Point stared at him across

leagues of unseen water. He was in touch again with his own half of the

earth, nearing the edges of the great, raw, sprawling Continent where no

delicate haze of tradition softened sordid facts; where there reigned no

calm and ordered philosophy of life; where everything was in extremes;

where everything was etched sharply against aggressive backgrounds;

where there were no misty middle distances, no tranquil spaces; only the

roaring silences of deserts to mitigate the yelling dissonance of life.

He saw the sun on the gilded tips of snowy towers piled up like Alpine

cliffs; the vast webs of bridges stretching athwart a leaden flood;

forests of masts and huge painted funnels; acres of piers and docks;

myriads of craft crossing and recrossing the silvery flood flowing

between great cities.

On the red castle to the southwest a flag flew, sun-dyed, vivid, lovely

as a flower.

His eyes filled; he choked.

"Thank God," he thought, "I'm where I belong at last!"

And so Cleland came home.

*CHAPTER XVII*

It was late afternoon before Cleland got his luggage unpacked and

himself settled in the Hotel Rochambeau, where he had been driven from

the steamer and had taken rooms.

The French cuisine, the French proprietor and personnel, the French cafe

in front, all helped to make his home-coming a little less lonely and

strange. Sunlight fell on the quaint yellow brick facade and

old-fashioned wrought iron railings, and made his musty rooms and

tarnished furniture and hangings almost cheerful.

He had not telephoned to Stephanie. He had nothing to say to her over

the wire. From the moment he crossed the gang-plank the growing

resentment had turned to a curious, impotent sort of anger which excited

him and stifled any other emotion.

She had not known that he was coming back. He had made no response to

her cablegram. She could not dream that he had landed; that he was

within a stone's throw of her lodgings.

The whole thing, too, seemed unreal to him--to find himself here in New

York again amid its clamour, its dinginess, its sham architecture and

crass ugliness!--back again in New York--and everything in his life so

utterly changed!--no home--the 80th Street house still closed and wired

and the old servants gone or dead; and the city empty of interest and

lonely as a wilderness to him since his father's death--and now Steve

gone! nothing, now, to hold him here--for the ties of friends and clubs

had loosened during his years abroad, and his mind and spirit had become

formed in other moulds.

Yet here he knew he must do his work if ever he was to do any. Here was

the place for the native-born--here his workshop where he must use and

fashion all that he had witnessed and learned of life during the golden

hours through which he sauntered under the lovely skies of an older

civilization.

Here was the place and now was the time for self-expression, for

creative work, for the artistic interpretation of the life and manners

of his own people.

If he was to do anything, be anybody, attain distinction, count among

writers of his era, he knew that his effort lay here--here where he was

born and lived his youth to manhood--here where the tension of feverish

living never relaxed, where a young, high-mettled, high-strung nation

was clamouring and fretting and quarrelling and forging ahead, now

floundering aside after some will-o'-the-wisp, now scaling stupendous

moral heights, noisy, half-educated, half-civilized, suspicious,

flippant, bragging, sentimental, yet iron-hearted, generous and brave.

Here, on the nation's eastern edge, where the shattering dissonance of

the iron city never ceased by day; where its vast, metallic vibration

left the night eternally unquiet and the very sky quivering with the

blows of sound under the stars' incessant sparkle--here, after all, was

where he belonged. Here he must have his say. Here lay his destiny.

And, for the sake of all this which was his, and for no other reason,

was attainment and distinction worth his effort.

All this good and evil, all this abominable turmoil and futile discord,

all this relentless, untiring struggle deep in the dusty, twilight

canons and steel towers with their thin skins of stone--all the passions

of these people, and their motives and their headlong strivings and

their creeds and sentiments, false or true or misguided--these things

were his to interpret, to understand, to employ.

For these people, and for their cities, for their ambitions, desires,

aspirations--for the vast nation of which they formed their local

fragment--only a native-born could be their interpreter, their eulogist,

their defender, their apologist, and their prophet. And for their

credit alone was there any reason for his life's endeavour.

No cultured, suave product of generations of Europe's cultivation could

handle these people and these themes convincingly and with the subtle

comprehension of authority. Rod and laurel, scalpel and palm should be

touched only by the hand of the native-born.

His pretty Countess had said to him once:

"Only what you have seen, what you have lived and seen others live; only

what you detect from the clear-minded, cool, emotionless analysis of

your own people, is worth the telling. Only this carries conviction.

And, when told with all the cunning simplicity and skill of an artist,

it carries with it that authority which leaves an impression indelible!

Go back to your own people--if you really have anything to write worth

reading."

Thinking of these things, he locked his door on rooms now more or less

in order, and went out into the street.

It was too warm for an overcoat. A primrose sunset light filled the

street; the almost forgotten specific odour of New York invaded his

memory again--an odour entirely different from that of any other city.

For every city in the world has its own odour--not always a perfume.

Now, again, his heart was beating hard and fast at thought of seeing

Stephanie, and the same indefinable anger possessed him--not directed

entirely against anyone, but inclusive of himself, and her, and Grismer,

and his own helplessness and isolation.

The street she lived in was quiet. There seemed to be a number of

studios along the block. In a few minutes he saw the number he was

looking for.

Four brick dwelling houses had been made over into one with studios on

every floor--a rather pretty Colonial effect with green shutters, white

doorway, and iron fence painted white.

In the quaint vestibule with its classic fanlight and delicate

side-lights, he found her name on a letter box and pushed the electric

button. The street door swung open noiselessly.

On the ground floor, facing him on the right, he saw a door on which was

a copper plate bearing the names, "Miss Davis; Miss Quest." The door

opened as he touched the knocker; a young girl in stained sculptor's

smock stood there regarding him inquiringly, a cigarette between her

pretty, clay-stained fingers.

"Miss----" he checked himself, reddening--"Mrs. Grismer, I mean?" he

asked.

The girl laughed. She was brown-eyed, pink-cheeked, compactly and

beautifully moulded, and her poise and movement betrayed the elasticity

of superb health.

"She's out just now. Will you come in and wait?"

He went in, aware of clay studies on revolving stands, academic studies

in unframed canvases, charcoal drawings from the nude, thumb-tacked to

the wall--the usual mess of dusty draperies, decrepit and nondescript

furniture, soiled rugs and cherished objects of art. A cloying smell of

plasticine pervaded the place. A large yellow cat, dozing on a sofa,

opened one golden eye a little way, then closed it indifferently.

The girl who had admitted him indicated a chair and stepped before a

revolving table on which was the roughly-modelled sketch of a horse and

rider.

She picked up a lump of waxy material, and, kneading it in one hand,

glanced absently at the sketch, then looked over her shoulder at Cleland

with a friendly, enquiring air:

"Miss Quest went out to see about her costume. I suppose she'll be back

shortly."

"What costume?" he asked.

"Oh, didn't you know? It's for the Caricaturists' Ball in aid of the

Artists' Fund. It's the Ball of the Gods--the great event of the season

and the last. Evidently you don't live in New York."

"I haven't, recently."

"I see. Will you have a cigarette?" She pointed at a box on a tea

tray; he thanked her and lighted one. As he continued to remain

standing, she asked him again to be seated, and he complied.

She continued to pinch off little lumps of waxy, pliable composition and

stick them on the horse. Still fussing with the sketch, he saw a smile

curve her cheek in profile; and presently she said without turning:

"Why did you speak of Stephanie Quest as Mrs. Grismer? _We_ don't, you

know."

"Why not? Isn't she?"

The girl looked at him over her shoulder; she was startlingly pretty,

fresh and smooth-skinned as a child.

"Who _are_ you?" she asked, with that same little hint of friendly

curiosity in her brown eyes;--"I'm Helen Davis, Stephanie's chum. You

seem to know a good deal about her."

"I'm James Cleland," he said quietly, "--her brother."

At that the girl's brown eyes flew wide open:

"Good Heavens!" she said; "did Steve expect you? She never said a word

to me! I thought you were a fixture in Europe!"

He sat biting the end of his cigarette, not looking at her:

"She didn't expect me," he said, flinging the half-burned cigarette into

the silver slop-dish of the tea service. "I didn't notify her that I was

coming."

Helen Davis dropped one elbow on the modelling table, rested her rounded

chin in her palm, and bent her eyes on Cleland. Smoke from the

cigarette between her fingers mounted in a straight, thin band to the

ceiling.

"So you are Steve's Jim," she mused aloud. "I recognize you now, from

your photographs, only you're older and thinner--and you wear a

moustache.... You've been away a long while, haven't you?"

"Too long," he said, casting a sombre look at her.

"Oh, do you feel that way? How odd it will seem to you to see Steve

again. She's such a darling! Quite wonderful, Mr. Cleland. The

artists' colony in New York raves over her."

"Does it?" he said drily.

"Everybody does. She's so amusing, so clever, so full of talent and

animation--like a beautiful and mischievous thoroughbred on tip-toes

with vitality and the sheer joy of living. She never is in low spirits

or depressed. That's what fascinates everybody--her gaiety and energy

and high spirits. I knew her in college and she wasn't quite that way

then. Perhaps because she hated college. But she could be a perfect

little devil if she wanted to. She can be that still."

Cleland nodded almost absently; his preoccupied gaze travelled over the

disordered studio and concentrated scowlingly on the yellow cat. He

kept twisting the head of his walking stick between his hands and

staring at the animal in silence while Helen Davis watched him.

Presently, and without any excuse, she walked slowly away and vanished

into some inner room. When she returned, she had discarded her working

smock, and her smooth hands were slightly rosy from a recent toilet.

"I'm going to give you some tea," she said, striking a match and

lighting the lamp under the kettle at his elbow.

"Thanks, no," he said with an effort.

"Yes, you shall have some," she insisted, smiling in her gay little

friendly way. "Come, Mr. Cleland, you are man of the world enough to

waive formality. I'm going to sit here and make tea and talk to you.

Look at me! Wouldn't you like to be friends with me? Most men would."

He looked up, and his slightly drawn features relaxed.

"Yes," he said with a smile, "of course I would."

"That's very human of you," she laughed. "Shall we talk about Steve?

What _did_ you think of that cablegram? Did you ever hear of such a

crazy thing?"

He flushed with anger but said nothing. The girl looked at him intently

over the steaming kettle, then went on measuring out tea.

"Shall I tell you about it, or would you rather that Steve told you?"

she asked carelessly, busy with her preparations.

"She is actually married to--Grismer--then?"

"Well--I suppose so. You know him, of course."

"Yes."

"He _is_ fascinating--in that unusual way of his--poor fellow. Women

like him better than men do. One meets him everywhere in artistic

circles; but do you know, Mr. Cleland, I've always seemed to be

conscious of a curious sort of latent hostility to Oswald Grismer, even

among people he frequents--among men, particularly. However, he has no

intimates."

"If they are actually married," he said with an effort, "why does

Stephanie live here with you?"

"Oh, that was the ridiculous understanding. I myself don't know why she

married him. The whole affair was a crazy, feather-brained

performance----" She poured his tea and offered him a sugar biscuit,

which he declined.

"You see," she continued, curling up into the depths of her rickety

velvet arm-chair and taking her cup and a heap of sugar biscuits into

her lap, "Oswald Grismer has been Steve's shadow--at her heels

always--and I know well enough that Stephanie was not insensible to the

curious fascination of the man. You know how devotion impresses a

girl--and he _is_ clever and good looking.

"And that was all very well, and I don't think it would have amounted to

anything serious as long as Oswald was the amusing, good-looking, lazy

and rich amateur of sculpture, with plenty of leisure to saunter through

life and be charmingly attentive, and play with his profession when the

whim suited him."

She sipped her tea and looked at Cleland meditatively.

"Did you know he'd lost all his money?"

"No," said Cleland.

"Oh, yes. He lost it a year ago. He has scarcely anything, I believe.

He had a beautiful studio and apartment, wonderful treasures of antique

furniture; he had about everything a rich young man fancies. It all

went."

"What was the matter?"

"Nobody knows. He took a horrid little stable studio in Bleecker

Street, and he lives there. And _that's_ why Steve did that crazy,

impulsive thing, I suppose."

"You mean she was sorry for him?"

"I _think_ it must have been that--and the general fascination he had

for her--and his persistency and devotion. Really, I don't know,

myself, how she came to do it. She did it on one of her ill-considered,

generous, headlong impulses. Ask her. All she ever told me was that

she had married Oswald and didn't know how it was going to turn out, but

had decided to keep her own name for the present and continue to live

with me."

"Do they see each other--much?" he asked.

"Oh, they encounter each other here and there as usual. He drops in

here every day."

"Does she go--there?"

"I don't know," said the girl gravely.

He had set aside his tea, untasted. She, still curled up in her

arm-chair, ate and drank with a delightfully healthy appetite.

"Would you prefer a highball?" she enquired. "I could fix you one."

"No, thank you." He rose and began to walk nervously about the studio.

Her perplexed, brown eyes followed him. It was clear that she could not

make him out.

Natural chagrin at a clandestine marriage might account for his manner.

Probably it was that, because Stephanie could not have meant anything

more personal and serious to him, or he could not have remained away so

long.

He stopped abruptly in his aimless promenade and turned to Helen:

"Am I in the way?" he asked.

"My dear Mr. Cleland," she said, "we are a perfectly informal community.

If you were in the way I'd say so. Also, I have a bed-room where I can

retire when Steve comes in. Or you and she can go into her room to talk

things over." She lighted another cigarette, rose, strolled over to the

wax horse, with a friendly smile at him.

"I was just making a sketch," she said. "I've a jolly commission--two

bronze horses for the Hispano-Moresque Museum. The Cid is on one,

Saladin on the other. I was just fussing with an idea when you rang."

He came and stood beside her, looking at the sketch.

"I've a fine, glass-roofed courtyard in the rear of the studio for my

animal models--horses and dogs and any beast I require," she explained.

"This sort of thing comes first, of course. I think I'll get Oswald to

pose for the Cid."

She stood contemplating her sketch, the cigarette balanced between her

fingers; then, of a sudden, she turned swiftly around to confront him.

"Mr. Cleland, it _is_ a dreadful and foolish and irrational thing that

Steve has done, and I know you are justly angry. But--she is a darling

in spite of being a feather-head sometimes. You _will_ forgive her,

won't you?"

"Of course. After all, it is her business."

Helen sighed:

"You _are_ angry. But please don't lose interest in her. She's so

loyal to you. She adores you, Mr. Cleland----"

A key rattled in the lock; the door swung open; into the dusky studio

stepped a slender figure, charmingly buoyant and graceful in the fading

light.

"Helen, they're to send our costumes in an hour. They are the most

fascinating things----"

Stephanie's voice ceased abruptly. There was a silence.

"Who is--_that_?" she asked unsteadily.

Helen turned and went quietly away toward her bed-room. Stephanie stood

as though frozen, then reached forward and pressed the electric button

with a gloved finger that trembled.

"Jim!" she whispered.

She stole forward, nearer, close to him, still incredulous, her grey

eyes wide with excitement; then, with a little sobbing cry she threw

both arms around his neck.

She had laughed and cried there in his arms; her lovely head and

disordered hair witnessed the passionate ardour of her welcome to this

man who now sat beside her in her bed-room, her hands clasped in his,

and all her young soul's adoration in her splendid eyes.

"Oh," she whispered again and again, "--Oh, to have you back, Jim. That

is too heavenly to believe. You dear, dear boy--so good looking--and a

little older and graver----" She nestled close to him, laying her cheek

against his.

She murmured:

"It seems too delicious to endure. You do love me, don't you, Jim? We

haven't anybody else in the world except each other, you know. Isn't it

good--good to have each other again! It's been like a dream, your

absence. You gradually became unreal--a dear, beloved memory. Somehow,

I didn't think you'd ever come back. Are you happy to be with me?"

"Happier than you know, Steve----" His voice trembled oddly and he drew

her into his arms: "Good God," he said under his breath, "--I must have

been mad to leave you to your own devices so long! I ought to be shot!"

"What do you mean, Jim?"

"You know. Oh, Steve, Steve, I can't understand--I simply can not

understand."

After a silence she lifted her head and rested her lips softly against

his cheek.

"Do you mean--my marrying Oswald?" she asked.

"Yes. Why did you do such a thing?"

She bent her head, considering the question for a while in silence.

Then she said calmly:

"There's one reason why I did it that I can't tell you. I promised him

not to. Another reason was that he was very much in love with me. I

don't know exactly what it is that I feel for him--but he does fascinate

me. He always did, somehow. Even as a boy----"

"You didn't know him as a boy!"

"No. But I saw him once. And I realize now that I was even then

vaguely conscious of an odd interest in him. And that time at

Cambridge, too. He had that same, indefinable attraction for me----"

"You _are_ in love with him then!"

"I don't know. Jim, I don't think it is love. I don't think I know

what love really is. So, knowing this, but being grateful to him, and

deeply sorry----"

"Why?"

"I can't tell you why. Perhaps I'll tell you sometime. But I was very

grateful and sorry and--and more or less moved--fascinated. It's funny;

there are things I don't like about Oswald, and still I can't keep away

from him.... Well, so everything seemed to combine to make me try

it----"

"Try what?"

"Marrying him."

"What do you mean by 'trying it?'"

"Why, it's a trial marriage----"

"Good God!" he said. "What do you mean?"

"I mean it's a trial marriage," she repeated coolly.

"You mean there was no--no ceremony?" he stammered.

"There wasn't any ceremony. We don't believe in it. We just said to

each other that we'd marry----"

"You mean you've--you've _lived_ with that man on such terms of

understanding?" he demanded, white with rage.

"I don't live with him. I live here with Helen," she said, perplexed.

"All I would consent to was a trial marriage to see how it went for a

year or two----"

"Do you mean that what you've done is legal?"

"Oh, yes, it's legal," she said seriously. "I've found that out."

"And--you know wh-what I mean," he said, stammering in his anger; "Was

that sufficient for you? Do you want me to speak plainer, Steve? I

mean, have you--lived with him?"

She understood and dropped her reddening cheek on his shoulder.

"_Have_ you?" he repeated harshly.

"No.... I thought you understood. It is only a trial marriage; I've

tried to explain that--make it clear----"

"What loose-minded, unconventional Bohemians call a 'trial marriage,'"

he said, with brutal directness, "is an agreement between a pair of

fools to live as man and wife for a while with an understanding that a

formal ceremony shall ultimately confirm the irregularity if they find

themselves suited to each other. Is that what you've done?"

"No."

He drew a deep, trembling breath of relief, took her in his arms and

held her close.

"My little Steve," he whispered, "--my own little Steve! What sort of

trap is this he's led you into?"

"No trap. I _wanted_ to try it."

"You _wished_ it?"

"I was quite willing to try. After a year or two, I'll know whether I

shall ever care to live with him."

"After a year or two!"

"Yes. That was the understanding. And then, if I didn't wish to live

with him, we can be very quietly divorced. It _was_ a crazy thing to

do. But there wasn't any real risk. Besides----" She hesitated.

"Go on," he said.

"No, I can't. If I don't fall in love with him, I certainly shall never

live with him. So," she added calmly, "there'll be no children to

complicate the parting. You see I had some sense, Jim."

She lifted her head from his shoulder and smiled at him:

"It was just an escapade of sorts," she explained, more cheerfully. "It

really doesn't mean anything yet, and I fly around and have a wonderful

time, and maybe I'll take up sculpture with Helen, and maybe I'll try

the stage. Anyway----" she pressed closer to him with a happy sigh,

"I've got _you_ back, haven't I? So what do we care whether I'm his

wife or not?"

He said, holding her closely embraced:

"Suppose some other man should fall in love with you, Steve?"

"Oh!" she laughed. "Plenty do. Or say they do. I'm nice to them, and

they get along very well.... Your moustache is becoming to you, Jim."

She touched it curiously, with one tentative finger.

"But suppose _you_ should return another man's love some day?"

"I haven't ever!" she said, laughing back into his eyes.

"No, but suppose you did? And found yourself tied legally by a fool

agreement to Oswald Grismer?"

"Oh. I never considered that."

"Consider it, now!"

"It isn't likely to happen----"

"Consider it, all the same."

"Well--but I've never been in love. But if it happened--well--that

_would_ be a jolly mess, wouldn't it?"

"I should think so! What would you do about it?"

"There wouldn't be anything to do except to wait until my two years of

trial marriage was up," she said thoughtfully.

"You could divorce him before that."

"Oh, no. I promised to give him two years."

"To sit saddled with this ridiculous burden for two years?"

"Yes, I promised."

"Oh, Steve! Steve! What a muddle you have made of things! What good

does it do you or him to have this chain between you? You've lost your

liberty. You're a legal wife without being one. You've put shackles on

yourself for God knows what whim or caprice."

"But, Jim," she said, bewildered, "I _expect_ to be his wife,

ultimately."

"What?"

"Of course. I wasn't absolutely sure that I could fall in love with

him, that was all. I have very little doubt that I shall. I like to be

with him: I am never bored when he is with me; our tastes are similar;

our beliefs are unconventional. We suit each other admirably. It

wasn't such a rash thing to do. You see, it is perfectly safe every

way."

For a long while he sat beside her in silence. She had slipped out of

his arms and now sat with one hand lying across his, watching the

enigmatic expressions which flitted over his rather sombre and flushed

features.

Finally he looked up:

"Steve?"

"Yes?"

"Suppose _I_ fell in love with--you?"

"Oh, Jim!" She began to laugh, then the mirth faded in her grey eyes,

and her lips grew quiet and rather grave.

"_You?_" she said, half to herself.

"Do you remember some letters I once wrote you?"

"Yes."

"You wrote asking if I meant them to be love letters."

"Yes. You answered very vaguely. I think I frightened you," she said,

laughing.

"They _were_ love letters," he said. "I didn't happen to know it; that

is all. I _was_ in love with you then. I didn't realize it; you did not

believe it. But now I know it was so."

"How _could_ you have been in love with me?" she inquired, astonished.

"You asked me that in your letters. I thought it over and I didn't see

how I could be, either. I wasn't much more than a boy. Boys drift with

the prevailing tide. The tide set away from home and from you.... Yet,

I was in love with you once, Steve."

She bent her head and looked down gravely at her slender hand, which lay

across his.

"That was very dear of you," she murmured.

After a silence:

"And--you?" he asked.

"Do you mean, was I ever in love with you?"

"Yes."

"I--don't--know. I loved your letters. There didn't seem to be any

room in my heart for more affection than it held for you. I adored you.

I do now. Perhaps, if you had come back----"

"I wish I had!"

"Do you?" She lifted her eyes to him curiously. "You know, Jim, I must

be honest with you. I never did love anybody.... But, if you had come

home--and if you had told me that you cared for me--that way----"

"Yes."

"Well, I was just a girl. You had my affections. I could have been

taught very easily, I think--to care--differently----"

"And--now?"

"What?"

"Is it too late to teach you, Steve?"

"Why, yes. Isn't it?"

"Why?"

"I'm married."

"It's a flimsy, miserable business!" he began angrily, but she flushed

and checked him with a hand against his lips.

"Besides--I do care for Oswald--very deeply," she said. "Don't say

painful things to me.... Don't be sulky, Jim, dear. This is

disconcerting me dreadfully. We mustn't make anything tragic out of

it--anything unhappy. I'm so contented to have you back that I can't

think of anything else.... Don't let's bother about love or anything

else! What you and I feel for each other is more wonderful than love.

Isn't it? Oh, Jim, I _do_ adore you. We'll be with each other now a

lot, won't we? You'll take a studio in this district, and I'll fly in

at all hours to see you, and you'll come in to see me and we'll do

things together--everything--theatres, dances, pictures, everything!

And you will like Oswald, won't you? He's really so nice, poor boy!"

"All right," he muttered.

They rose; he took both her hands into his and looked intently into her

grey eyes:

"I won't spoil life for you," he said. "I'll be near you, now. The old

intimacy must be strengthened. I've failed wretchedly in my

responsibilities; I'll try to make up for my selfishness----"

"Oh, Jim! I don't think that way----"

"You are too generous. You are too loyal. You are quite the most

charming woman I ever knew, Steve--the sweetest, the most adorable.

I've been a fool--blind and stupid."

"You mustn't say such ridiculous things! But it is dear of you to find

me attractive! It really thrills me, Jim. I'm about the happiest girl

in New York, I think! Tell me, do you like Helen?"

"Yes, she's nice. Where are you dining, Steve? Could you----"

"Oh, dear! Helen and I are dining out! It's a party. We all go to the

ball. But, Jim--do get a costume of some sort and come to the

Caricaturists' Ball! Will you? Helen and I are going. It's the Ball of

the Gods--the last costume ball of the season, and it is sure to be

amusing. Will you come?"

He didn't seem to think he could, but she insisted so eagerly and

promised to have an invitation at his hotel for him by nine o'clock,

that he laughed and said he'd go.

"Everybody artistic will be there," she explained, delighted. "You'll

meet a lot of men you know. And the pageant will be wonderful. I shall

be in it. So will Helen. Then, after the pageant, we'll find each

other--you and I!----" She sighed: "I am too happy, Jim. I don't want

to arouse the anger of the gods."

She linked her arm in his and entered the studio.

"Helen!" she called. "Jim is coming to the dance! Isn't it delightful?"

"It is, indeed," said Helen, opening her door a little and looking

through the crack. "You'd better tell him what you're wearing, because

he will never know you."

"Oh, yes, indeed! Helen and I are going as a pair of Burmese

idols--just gold all over--you know----?"

She took the stiff attitude of the wonderful Burmese idol, and threw

back her slender hands--"This sort of thing, Jim? Tiny gold bells on

our ankles and that wonderful golden filigree head dress."

She was in wonderful spirits; she caught his arm and hand and persuaded

him into a two-step, humming the air. "You dance nicely, Jim. You can

have me whenever you like----"

Helen called through the door:

"You're quite mad, Steve! You've scarcely time to dress."

"Oh, I must run!" she cried, turned to Cleland, audaciously, offered her

lips, almost defiantly.

"We're quite safe, Jim, if we can do _this_ so innocently." She

laughed. "You adorable boy! Oh, Jim, you're mine now, and I'll never

let you go away again!"

As he went out, he met Grismer, face to face. The blood leaped hotly in

his cheeks; Grismer's golden eyes opened in astonishment:

"Cleland! By all the gods!" he said, offering his hand.

Cleland took it, looked into Grismer's handsome face:

"How are you, Grismer?" he said pleasantly. And passed on out of the

front door.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

Cleland dined by himself in the lively, crowded cafe of the Hotel

Rochambeau--a sombre, taciturn young man, still upset by his encounter

with Grismer, still brooding impotent resentment against what Stephanie

had done. Yet, in spite of this the thrill of seeing her again

persisted, filling him with subdued excitement.

He realized that the pretty, engaging college girl he had left three

years ago had developed into an amazingly lovely being with a delicately

vigorous and decisive beauty of her own, quite unexpected by him. But

there was absolutely no shyness, no awkwardness, no self-consciousness

in her undisguised affection for him; the years had neither altered nor

subdued her innocent acceptance of their relationship, nor made her less

frank, less confident, or less certain of it and of the happy security

it meant for both.

In spite of her twenty-one years, her education, her hospital

experience, Stephanie, in this regard, was a little girl still. For her

the glamour of the school-boy had never departed from Cleland with the

advent of his manhood. He was still, to her, the wonderful and

desirable playmate, the miraculous new brother, the exalted youth of her

girlhood; the beloved and ideal of their long separation--all she had on

earth that represented a substitute for kin and family ties and home.

That her loyal heart was still the tender, impulsive, youthful heart of

a girl was plain enough to him. The frankness of her ardour, her

instant happy surrender, her clinging to him in a passion of gratitude

and delight, all told him her story. But it made what she had done with

Grismer the more maddening and inexplicable; and at every thought of it

a gust of jealousy swept him.

He ate his dinner scarcely conscious of the jolly tumult around him, and

presently went upstairs to his rooms to rummage in one of his trunks for

a costume;--souvenir of some ancient Latin Quarter revelry--Closerie des

Lilas or Quat'z Arts, perhaps.

Under his door had been thrust an envelope containing a card bearing his

invitation, and Stephanie had written on it: "It will all be spoiled if

you are not there. Don't forget that you'll have to dress as a god of

sorts. All other costumes are barred."

What he had would do excellently. His costume of a blessed companion of

Mahomet in white, green and silver, with its jeweled scimitar, its

close-fitted body dress, gorget, and light silver head-piece,

represented acceptably the ideal garb of the Lion of God militant.

Toward eleven o'clock, regarding himself rather gloomily in the mirror,

the reflected image of an exceedingly good-looking Fourth Caliph, with

the faint line of a mustache darkening his short upper lip and the green

gems of a true believer glittering on casque and girdle and hilt,

cheered the young man considerably.

"If I'm not a god," he thought, "I'm henchman to one." And he twisted

the pale green turban around his helmet and sent for a taxicab.

The streets around the Garden were jammed. Mounted and foot-police

laboured to keep back the curious crowds and to direct the crush of

arriving vehicles laden with fantastic figures in silks and jewels.

Arcades, portico, and the broad lobby leading to the amphitheatre were

thronged with animated merrymakers in brilliant costumes; and Cleland

received his cab-call number from the uniformed starter and joined the

glittering stream which carried him resistlessly with it through the

gates and presently landed him somewhere in a seat, set amid a solidly

packed tier of gaily-costumed people.

An immense sound of chatter and laughter filled the vast place, scarcely

subdued by the magic of a huge massed orchestra.

The Garden had been set to represent Mount Olympus; white pigeons were

flying everywhere amid flowers and foliage; the backdrop was painted

like a blue horizon full of rosy clouds, and the two entrances were

divided by a marble-edged pool in which white swans sailed unconcerned

and big scarlet gold-fish swam in the limpid water among floating

blossoms.

But he had little time to gaze about through the lilac-haze of tobacco

smoke hanging like an AEgean mist across the dancing floor, for already

boy trumpeters, in white tunics and crowned with roses, were sounding

the flourish and were dragging back the iris-hued hangings at either

entrance.

The opening pageant had begun.

From the right entrance came the Greek gods and heroes--Zeus aloft in a

chariot, shaking his brazen thunder bolts; Athene in helmet and tunic,

clutching a stuffed owl; Astarte very obvious, long-legged and pretty;

Mars with drawn sword and fiery copper armour; Hermes wearing wings on

temples and ankles and skilfully juggling the caduceus, Aphrodite most

casually garbed in gauze, perfectly fashioned by her Maker and rather

too visible in lovely detail.

Eros, very feminine too, lacked sartorial protection except for a pair

of wings and a merciful sash from which hung quiver and bow. In fact,

it was becoming startlingly apparent that the artists responsible for

the Ball of All the Gods scorned to conceal or mitigate the classical

and accepted legends concerning them and their costumes--or lack of

costumes.

Fauns, dryads, nymphs, satyrs, naiads, bacchantes poured out from the

right entrance, eddying in snowy whirlpools around the chariots of the

Grecian gods; and the influence of the Russian ballet was visible in

every lithely leaping figure.

Contemporaneously, from the left entrance, emerged the old Norse gods:

Odin, shaggy and fully armed; Loki, all a-glitter with dancing flames;

Baldin the Beautiful, smirking; Fenris the Wolf; Frija, blond and

fiercely beautiful--the entire Norse galaxy surrounded by skin-clad

warriors and their blond, half-naked mates.

The two processions, moving in parallel lines along the north and south

tiers of boxes, were overlapping and passing each other now, led in a

winding march by trumpeters; and all the while, from either entrance new

bevies of gods and immortals were emerging--the deities of Ancient Egypt

moving stiffly in their splendid panoply; the gods of the ancient

Western World led by the Holder of Heaven and Hiawatha, and followed by

the Eight Thunders plumed in white escorting the Lake Serpent--a young

girl, lithe and sinuous as a snake and glittering from head to foot,

with the serpent spot on her forehead.

Ancient China, in bewildering silks, entered like a moving garden of

flowers; then India came in gemmed magnificence led by the divine son of

Suddhodana.

He bore the bow of black steel with gold tendrils--the Bow of Sinhahanu.

He was dressed as the Prince Siddhartha, in the garb of a warrior of

Oudh. Bow and sabre betrayed the period--the epoch of his trial against

all comers to win the Sakya girl Yasodhara.

As he passed, Cleland, leaning forward, scanned the splendid and

militant figure intently; and recognized Oswald Grismer under the

glimmering dress of the young Buddha militant.

To left and right of the youthful god advanced two girls, all in

relieved stiff gold from the soles of their up-turned sandals to the

fantastic pagoda peak of their head-dresses.

They wore golden Burmese masks; their bodies to the girdles were covered

with open-work golden filigree; from the fantastic pagoda-like

shoulder-pieces gold gauze swept away like the folded golden wings of

dragon-flies; golden bangles and bells tinkled on wrist and ankle.

With slim hands uplifted like the gilded idols they represented, the

open eye painted in the middle of each palm became visible. Around them

swirled a dazzling throng of Nautch girls.

Suddenly they flung up their arms: the stiff gold masks and

body-encasements cracked like gilded mummy cases and fell down clashing

around their naked feet, and from the cold, glittering chrysalids

stepped out two warm, living, enchantingly youthful figures, lithe and

supple, saluting the Prince Siddhartha with bare arms crossed above

their breasts.

To one, representing his mother, Maya, he turned, laying the emblems of

temporal power at her feet. And, in her, Cleland recognized Helen

Davis.

But his eyes were for the other--the Sakya girl Yasodhara in gold sari

and chuddah, her body clasped with a belt of emeralds and a girdle of

the same gems tied below her breasts.

The young Lord Buddha laid the living Rose of the World in her hands.

She bent her head and drew it through her breast-girdle. Then,

silk-soft, exquisite, the Sakya maid lifted her satin-lidded eyes,

sweeping the massed audience above as though seeking some one. And

Cleland saw that her eyes were lilac-grey; and that the girl was

Stephanie.

Suddenly the massed orchestras burst into an anachronistic two-step.

The illusion was shattered; the ball was on! Assistants ran up and

gathered together the glittering debris and pushed chariot, papier mache

elephant and camel and palanquin through the two entrances; god seized

goddess, heroes nabbed nymphs; all Olympus and the outlying suburban

heavens began to foot it madly to the magic summons of George Cohan.

Under the blaze of lights the throng on the dancing floor swirled into

glittering whirlpools and ripples, brilliant as sunset on a restless

sea. The gaily costumed audience, too, was rising everywhere and

leaving seats and stalls and boxes to join the dancing multitudes below.

Before he descended, Cleland saw Grismer and Stephanie dancing together,

the girl looking up over her shoulder as though still searching the

tiers of seats above for somebody expected.

Before he reached the floor he began to meet old friends and

acquaintances, more or less recognizable under strange head-dresses and

in stranger raiment.

He ran into Badger Spink, as a fawn in the spotted skin of a pard, his

thick hair on end and two little horns projecting.

"Hello," he said briefly; "you back? Glad to see you--excuse me, but

I'm chasing a little devil of a dryad----"

He caught sight of her as he spoke; the girl shrieked and fled and after

her galloped the fawn, intent on capture.

Clarence Verne, colourless of skin in his sombrely magnificent Egyptian

dress, extended an Egyptian hand to him--the hand he remembered so well,

with its deep, pictographic cleft between forefinger and thumb.

"When did _you_ come back, Cleland?" he inquired in that listless,

drugged voice of his. "To-day? Hope we'll see something of you now....

Do you know that Nautch girl--the one in orange and silver? She's

Claudia Gwynn, the actress. She hasn't got much on, has she? Can the

Ball des Quat'z beat this for an unconcerned revelation of form divine?"

"I don't think it can," said Cleland, looking at a bacchante whose

raiment seemed to be voluminous enough. The only trouble was that it

was also transparent.

"Nobody cares any more," remarked Verne in his drowsy voice. "The

restless sex has had its way. It always has been mad to shed its

clothes in public. First it danced barefooted, then it capered

barelegged. Loie, Isadora and Ruth St. Denis between 'em started the

fashion; Bakst went 'em one better; then society tore off its

shoulder-straps and shortened its petticoats; and the Australian

swimming Venus stripped for the screen. It's all right; I don't care.

Only it's a bore to have one's imagination become atrophied from

disuse.... If I can find a girl thoroughly covered I'd be interested."

He sauntered away to search, and Cleland edged around the shore of the

dancing floor, where the flotsam from the glittering maelstrom in the

centre had been cast up.

Threading his way amid god and goddess, nymph and hero, he met and

recognized Philip Grayson, one of his youthful masters at school--a

tall, handsome figure in Greek armour.

"This is nice, Cleland," he said cordially. "Didn't know you were back.

Quite a number of your old school fellows here!"

"Who?"

"Oswald Grismer----"

"I saw him."

"Did you run across Harry Belter?"

"No," exclaimed Cleland, "is he here?"

"Very much so. Harry is always in the thick of things artistic. How

goes literature with you?"

"I came back to start things," said Cleland. "How does it pan out with

you?"

"Well," said Grayson, "I write things that are taken by what people call

the 'better class' magazines. It doesn't seem to advance me much."

"Cheer up. Try a human magazine and become a best seller," said

Cleland, laughing.

And he continued his search for Stephanie.

There was a crush on the floor--too many dancing in the beginning--and

all he could do was to prowl along the side lines. In a lower-tier box

he noticed a fat youth, easily recognizable as Bacchus. His wreath of

wax grapes he wore rakishly over one eye; he sat at a table with several

thirsty dryads and bestowed impartial caresses and champagne.

Occasionally he burst into throaty song in praise of the grape.

"Harry Belter!" cried Cleland.

"Hey! Who?" demanded Bacchus, leaning over the edge of the box, his

glass suspended. "No! It isn't Jim Cleland! I won't believe it! It's

only a yearned-for vision come to plague and torment me in my old

age----!" He got up, leaned over and seized Cleland by his silken

sabre-belt:

"Jim! It _is_ you! To my arms, old scout----!" embracing him

vociferously. "Welcome, dear argonaut! Ladies! Prepare to blush and

tremble with pleasurable emotion!" he cried, turning to his attendant

dryads. "This is my alter ego, James Cleland--my beloved comrade in

villainy--my incomparable breaker of feminine hearts! You all shall

adore him. You shall dote upon him. Ready! Attention! Dote!"

"I'm doting like mad," said a bright-eyed dryad, looking down invitingly

at the handsome young fellow. "Only if he's a Turk I simply won't stand

for a harem!"

"In the Prophet's Paradise," said Cleland, laughing, "there's no

marriage or giving in marriage. Will you take a chance, pretty dryad?

All the girls are on an equal footing in the Paradise of Mahomet, and we

Caliphs just saunter from houri to houri and tell each that she's the

only one!"

"Saunter this way, please," cried another youthful dryad, adjusting the

wreath of water-lilies so that she could more effectively use her big

dark eyes on him.

Belter whispered:

"They're from the new show--'Can You Beat It!'--just opened to record

business. Better pick one while the picking's good. Come on up!"

But Cleland merely lingered to pay his compliments a few moments longer,

then, declining to enter the box and join Belter in vocal praise of the

grape, and eluding that gentleman's fond clutch, he dodged and slipped

away to continue his quest of the silken, slender Sakya girl somewhere

engulfed amid all this glitter, surging, beating noisily around him.

Frequently, as he made his devious way forward, men and women of the

more fashionable and philistine world recognized and greeted him; he was

constantly stopping to speak to acquaintances of what used to be the

saner sets, renew half-forgotten friendships, exchange lively

compliments and gay civilities.

But he failed to detect any vast and radical difference between the

world and the three-quarter world. The area in square inches of bare

skin displayed by a young matron of his own sort matched the satin

nakedness of some animated ornament from the Follies.

As he stood surveying the gorgeous throng he seemed to be subtlely aware

of a tension, an occult strain keying to the breaking point each eager,

laughing woman he looked at. The scented atmosphere was heavy with it;

the rushing outpour of the violins was charged with it; it was something

more than temporary excitement, more than the reckless gaiety of the

moment; it was something that had become part of these women--a vast,

deep-bitten restlessness possessing them soul and body.

The aspiring quest for the hitherto unattainable, the headlong hunt for

happiness, these were human and definite and to be comprehended: but

this immense, aimless, objectless restlessness, mental or spiritual,

whichever it might be, seemed totally different.

It was like a blind, crab-like, purposeless, sidling migration in mass

of the prehistoric female race--before it had created the male for its

convenience--wandering out into and over-running the primeval wastes of

the world, swarming, crawling at random--not conscious of what it

desired, not knowing what it might be seeking, aware only of the

imperative urge within it which set it in universal motion. Only to

weary, after a few million years of subdivision and self-fertilization,

and casually extemporize the sterner sex. And settle again into

primeval lethargy and the somnolent inertia of automatic reproduction.

Watching the golden human butterflies whirling around him swept into

eddies by thunderous gusts of music, he thought, involuntarily of those

filmy winged creatures that dance madly in millions and millions over

northern rivers and are swept in sparkling clouds amid the rainbow spray

of cataracts out into the evening splendour of annihilation.

He met a pretty woman he knew--had thought that he had known once--and

reddened slightly at the audacity of her Grecian raiment. Her

husband--a Harvard man he had known--was with her, in eye-glasses and a

Grecian helmet--Ajax the Greater, he explained.

They lingered to exchange a word; she beat time to the music with

sandalled foot, a feverish brilliancy in eyes and cheeks.

"The whole world," said Cleland, "seems strung too tightly. I noticed

it abroad, too. There's a tension that's bound to break; the skies of

the whole earth are full of lightning. Something is going to blow up."

"Hope it won't be the stock market," said the man. "I don't get you,

Cleland--you always were literary."

"He means war," said his wife, restlessly fanning her flushed cheeks.

"Or suffrage. Which _do_ you mean, Mr. Cleland?"

"You've got all you want--practically--haven't you?" he asked.

"Practically. It's a matter of a year or so--the vote."

"What will you do next?" he inquired, smiling.

"Heaven knows, but we've simply got to keep doing something," she said.

"What a ghastly bore to attain everything! If you men really love us,

for goodness' sake keep on tyrannizing over us and giving us something

to fight for!"

She laughed and blew him a kiss as her husband encircled her Grecian

waist and steered her out into the fox-trotting throng, her flimsy

draperies fluttering like the wind-blown tunic of a Tanagra dancing

figure.

The stamp and jingling din of Nautch girls rang in his ears as he turned

away and looked out over the shifting crowd.

Everywhere he recognized people he had met or heard about, men eminent

or notorious in their vocations, actors, painters, writers, architects,

musicians--men of science, lawyers, promoters, officers of industry

commissioned and non-commissioned, the gayer element of the stage were

radiantly in evidence, usually in the dancing embrace of Broad and Wall

Streets; artistic masculine worth and youth pranced proudly with

femininity of social attainment; the beautiful unplaced were there in

daring deshabille, captivating solid domestic character which had come

there wifeless and receptive.

Suddenly he saw Stephanie. She was leaning back against the side of the

arena, besieged by a ring of men. Gales of laughter swept her brilliant

entourage of gods and demons, fauns and heroes, all crowding about to

pay their eager court. And Stephanie, laughing back at them from the

centre of the three-fold circle, her arms crossed behind her, stood

leaning against the side of the amphitheatre under a steady rain of rose

petals dropped on her by some young fellows in the box above her.

Through this rosy rain, through the three-fold ring of glittering gods,

she caught sight of Cleland--met his gaze with a soft, quick cry of

delight.

Out through the circle of chagrined Olympians she sprang on sandalled

feet, not noticing these protesting suitors; and with both lovely,

rounded arms outstretched, her jewelled hands fell into Cleland's,

clasping them tightly in an ecstacy of possession.

"I couldn't find you," she explained breathlessly. "I was so dreadfully

afraid you hadn't come! Isn't it all magnificent! Isn't it wonderful!

Did you see the pageant? Did you ever see anything as splendid? Slip

your arm around me; we can walk better together in this crush----"

passing her own bare arm confidently over his shoulder and falling into

step with him.

"I saw you in the pageant," he said, encircling with his arm the silken

body-vestment of her slender waist.

"Did you? Did you see Helen and me come out of our golden chrysalids?

Was it pretty?"

"Charming and unexpected. You are quite the most beautiful thing on the

floor to-night."

"Really, Jim, do you think so? You darling boy, to say it! I'm having

a wonderful time. How handsome you are in your dress of a young

oriental warrior!"

"I'm the fourth Caliph, Ali," he explained. "I had this costume made in

Paris."

"It's bewitching, Jim. You _are_ good looking!--you adorable brother of

mine. Do you like my paste emeralds? You don't think I'm too scantily

clad, do you?"

"That seems to be the general fashion----"

"Oh, Jim! There are lots of others _much_ more undressed. Besides, one

simply has to be historical and accurate or one is taken for an

ignoramus. If I'm to to impersonate the Sakya girl, Yassodhara, before

she became Lord Buddha's wife, I must wear what she probably wore.

Don't you see?"

"Perfectly," he said, laughing. "But you of the artistic and

unconventional guilds ought to leave the audacious costumes to your

models. But, of course, that's too much to ask of you."

"Indeed it is!" she said gaily. "If some of us think we're rather

nicely made why shouldn't we dare a little artistically--in the name of

beauty and of art? ... Oh, Jim!--it's the tango they're beginning.

_Will_ you!--with _me_?"

They danced the exquisitely graceful measure together, her little

golden-sandalled feet flashing noiselessly through the intricate steps,

lingering, swaying, gliding faultlessly in unison with his as though

part of his own body.

The fascinating rhythm of the Argentine music throbbed through the

perfumed air; a bright, whispering wilderness of silk and jewels swayed

rustling all around them; bare arms and shoulders, brilliant lips and

eyes floated through their line of dreary vision; figures like phantoms

passed in an endless rosy chain through the lustrous haze of motion.

They danced together whatever came; Stephanie, like a child fearful of

being abandoned, kept one slim jewelled hand fast hold of his sleeve or

girdle when they were not dancing. To one and all who came to argue or

present fancied prior claims she turned a deaf ear and laughing lips,

listening to no pleading, no claims.

She threatened Harry Belter with the flat of her palm, warning him

indignantly when he attempted a two-step, by violence; she closed her

ears to Badger Spink, who danced with rage in his goat-skins; she waved

away Verne in all his Egyptian splendour; she let her grey eyes rest in

an insolent stare at two of Belter's dryads who encircled Cleland's

waist with avowed intent to make him their prisoner and dedicate him to

vocal praise of the vine.

Then there was a faint clash and flash of iridescence, and the Prince

Siddhartha confronted her, golden-eyed, golden-skinned, golden-haired,

magnificent in his golden vestments.

"Oswald!" she cried. "Oh, I am glad. Jim! You and Oswald will be

friends, won't you? You're such dears--you simply must like each

other!"

They shook hands, looking with curious intentness at each other.

"I've always liked you, Cleland," said Grismer gracefully. "I don't

think you ever cared for me very much, but I wish you might."

"I have found you--agreeable, Grismer. We were friendly at school and

college together----"

"I hope our friendliness may continue."

"I--hope so."

Grismer smiled:

"Drop in whenever you care to, Cleland, and talk things over. We've a

lot to say to each other, I think."

"Thanks." ... He looked hard at Grismer. "All right; I'll do it."

Grismer nodded:

"I've a kennel of sorts in Bleecker Street. But you might be interested

in one or two things I'm working on. You see," he added with careless

good humour, "I'm obliged to work, now."

Cleland said in a low voice:

"I'm sorry things went wrong with you."

"Oh, they didn't. It was quite all right, Cleland. I really don't mind.

Will you really drop in some day soon?"

"Yes."

Dancing began again. Grismer stepped back with the easy, graceful

courtesy that became him, conceding Stephanie to Cleland as a matter of

course; and the latter, who had been ready to claim her, found himself

disarmed in advance.

"Is it Grismer's dance, Steve?" he asked.

"I promised him. But, Jim, I'm afraid to let you go----"

They all laughed, and she added:

"When a girl gets a man back after three long years, is it astonishing

that she keeps tight hold of him?"

"You'd better dance with her, Cleland," said Grismer, smiling.

But Cleland could not accept a gift from this man, and he surrendered

her with sufficient grace.

"Jim!" she said frankly. "You're not going after that dryad, are you?

She's exceedingly common and quite shamelessly under-dressed. Shall I

introduce you to a nice girl--or do you know a sufficient number?"

"You know," he said, laughing, "that I ought to play my part of Fourth

Caliph and go and capture a pretty widow----"

"What!"

"Certainly," he said tranquilly; "didn't Ali take prisoner Ayesha, the

youthful widow of Mohammed? I'll look about while you're dancing----"

"I don't wish you to!" she exclaimed, half vexed, half laughing.

"Oswald, does he mean it?"

"He looks as though he does," replied Grismer, amused. "There's a

Goddess of Night over there, Cleland--very pretty and very unconcealed

under a cloud of spangled stars----"

"Oswald! I don't wish him to! Jim! Listen to me, please----!" for he

had already started toward the little brunette Goddess of Night. "We

have box seven! Please remember. I shall wait for you!"

"Right!" he nodded, now intently bent on displeasing her; a little

excited, too, by her solicitude, yet sullenly understanding that it

sprang from no deeper emotion than her youthful heart had yet betrayed

for him. No woman ever let a man go willingly, whether kin or

lover--whether she had use for him or not.

Stephanie, managing to keep him in view among the dancers, saw the

little Goddess of Night, with her impudent up-tilted nose, floating amid

her scandalously diaphanous draperies in his arms through a dreamy

tango, farther and farther away from her.

Things went wrong with her, too; she dropped her emerald girdle and

several of the paste stones rolled away; the silk of her body-vest

ripped, revealing the snowy skin, and she had to knot her gold sari

higher. Then the jewelled thong of her left sandal snapped and she lost

it for a moment.

"The devil!" she said, slipping her bare foot into it and half skating

toward the nearest lower-tier box.

"There he is over there," remarked Grismer, indicating a regulation

Mephistopheles, wearing a blood-red jerkin laced with a wealth of

superfluous points. "Wait; I'll borrow a lace of him."

The devil was polite and had no objection to being despoiled; and

Grismer came back with a chamois thong and mended her sandal for her

while she sat in their box and watched the tumult surging below.

He chatted gaily with her for a while, leaning there on the box's edge

beside her, but Stephanie had become smilingly inattentive and

preoccupied, and he watched her in silence, now, curiously, a little

perplexed by her preoccupation. For it was most unusual for her to

betray inattention when with him. It was not like her. He could not

remember her ever being visibly uninterested in him--ever displaying

preoccupation or indifference when in his company.

However, the excitement of seeing her brother again so unexpectedly

accounted for it no doubt.

The excitement and pleasure of seeing her--_brother_! ... A slight

consciousness of the fact that there was no actual kinship between this

girl and Cleland passed through his mind without disturbing his

tranquillity. He merely happened to think of it.... He happened to

recollect it; that was all.

"Stephanie?"

"Yes."

"Shall we sit out this dance? Your sandal string will hold."

"I don't know," she said. "Who is that dancing with Helen? Over there

to the left----"

"I see her. I don't know--oh, yes--it's Phil Grayson."

"Is it? I wonder where Jim went with that woman! ... I'm horribly

thirsty, Oswald."

"Shall we have some supper?"

"Where is it? Oh, down there! What a stuffy place! It's too awful.

Couldn't you get something here?"

He managed to bribe one perspiring and distracted waiter, and after a

long while he brought a tray towering with salads, ices and bottles.

Helen and Philip Grayson came back and the former immediately revealed a

healthy appetite.

"Don't you want anything to eat, Steve?" she inquired. "This shrimp

salad isn't bad."

"I'm not hungry."

"You seem to be thirsty," remarked Helen, looking at the girl's flushed

face and her half-filled wine glass. "Where is Jim?"

"Dancing."

"With whom?"

"Some girl of sorts whom he picked up," said Stephanie; and the pink

flush in her face deepened angrily.

"Was she worth it?" inquired Helen, frankly amused.

Stephanie's cheeks cooled; she replied carelessly:

"She had button eyes and a snub nose and her attire was transparent--if

that interests you." She rested her elbow on the edge of the box,

supporting her chin on her cupped palm.

They were dancing again. Grayson came and took out Helen; a number of

men arrived clamouring for Stephanie. She finally went out with Verne,

but not liking the way he held her left him planted and returned to the

box where a number of hilarious young men had gathered.

Harry Belter said:

"What's the trouble, Steve? I never saw you glum before in all my

life!"

"I'm not glum," she said with a forced little laugh, "I'm thirsty,

Senior Bacchus! Isn't that enough to sadden any girl?"

Later Helen, returning from the floor, paused beside Stephanie to bend

over her and whisper:

"Harry Belter is behaving like a fool. Don't take anything more,

Steve."

The girl lifted her flushed face and laughed:

"I feel like flinging discretion into the 'fire of spring,'" she said.

"That's where most of these people's clothing has disappeared, I fancy."

Excitement burned in her pink cheeks and wide grey eyes, and she stood

up in the box looking about her, poised lightly as some slim winged

thine on the verge of taking flight.

Grismer rose too and whispered to her, but she made a slight, impatient

movement with her shoulders.

"Won't you dance this with me?" he repeated, touching her arm.

"No," she said under her breath. "You annoy me, Oswald."

"What!"

"Please don't be quite so devoted.... I'm restless."

She turned and started to leave the box. The others were leaving too,

for dancing had begun again. But at the steps she parted with the jolly

little company, they descending to the floor, she turning to mount the

steps alone.

"Where on earth are you going, Steve?" called back Helen, halting on the

steps below.

"I want to see the floor from the top gallery!" replied Stephanie,

without turning her head; and she ran lightly upward, her bells and

bangles jingling.

Half way up she turned her head. She had not been followed, but she saw

Grismer below looking up, watching her flight. And she made no sign of

recognition, no gay gesture of amity and adieu; she turned her back and

sped upward through the clamour and hazy brilliancy, turned into the

first corridor, and vanished like a firefly in a misty thicket.

*CHAPTER XIX*

At three in the morning the Ball of the Gods was in full and terrific

blast and still gathering momentum. A vast musical uproar filled the

Garden; the myriad lights glittered like jewels through a fog; the

dancing floor was a bewildering, turbulent whirlpool of colour.

Few if any of the dancers had reached the point of satiation; a number,

however, had attained the state of saturation.

As far as Cleland could see the only difference between this and a more

miscellaneous assemblage seemed to be that the majority of people here

knew how to ignore unpleasant lapses in others and how to efface

themselves if surprised into accidental indiscretion.

With Lady Button-eyes on his arm he had threaded his way into the

supper-room, where the gods, demi-gods and heroes were banqueting most

riotously.

It was becoming very rapidly a dubiously mixed affair; Bacchus, with his

noisy crew, invaded the supper-room and pronounced Cleland's snub-nosed,

button-eyed goddess "tray chick," and there arose immediately a terrific

tumult around her--gods and satyrs doing battle for her; but she

persisted in her capricious fancy for Cleland. He, however, remained in

two minds; one was to abandon Button-eyes, retire and find Stephanie

again, in spite of the ever-smoldering resentment he felt for Grismer;

the other was to teach himself without loss of time to keep away from

her; school himself to do without her; preoccupy himself casually and

recklessly with anything that might aid in obliterating his desire for

her companionship--with this snub-nosed one, for example.

The desire to see Stephanie remained, nevertheless, sometimes fiercely

importunate, sometimes sullenly persistent--seemingly out of all

proportion to any sentiment he had ever admittedly entertained for

her--out of proportion, also, to his sulky resentment at the folly she

had committed with Oswald Grismer.

For, after all, if she ultimately married Grismer in the orthodox way

her eccentric pre-nuptial behaviour was nothing more serious than

eccentric. And if she didn't, then it meant annulment or divorce; and

he realised that nobody outside of the provinces paid any attention to

such episodes nowadays. And nobody cared what clod-hoppers thought

about anything.

His button-eyed goddess had a pretty good soprano voice and she was

using it now, persuaded into a duet by Belter. Cleland looked at her

sideways without enthusiasm, undecided, irritated and gloomy. She was

Broadway vulgarity personified.

Badger Spink dropped onto a chair on the other side of him:

"Who's your transparent lady friend?" he inquired lazily. "She looks

like a gutter-angel. Who is the depraved little beast?"

"I don't know--some actress, I believe--Sonia something-or-other. Do

you want her?"

"Thanks. What does she represent? A Kewpie behind a pane of glass?"

"She's a goddess of sorts, I believe. This is getting rather raw, isn't

it, Spink?"

Spink yawned and gazed leisurely about him, the satyr's horn emerging

from his thick, wavy pompadour hair, accentuating his clever, saturnine

features. His expression was slightly Satanic always.

"Yes," he said, "it's turning out rather rough. What do you think of

this sort of thing in New York, Cleland? We're drifting toward Babylon.

That's the trend since the dance craze swept this moral nation off its

moral feet into a million tango joints."

"There's something the matter with us, that's sure," said Cleland.

"This sort of thing doesn't belong in the new world."

"It's up to our over-rated American women," sneered Spink. "Only a few

years ago we were slobbering over them, worshipping them, painting

pictures of 'em--pictures influenced by the French naturalistic

school--a lot of cow-faced American females suckling their young.

Everybody was yelling for the simple life, summoning the nation back to

nature, demanding that babies be produced in every family by the dozen,

extolling procreation and lauding the American woman. That's the sort of

female we celebrated and pretended to want. Now, look what we've

got!--a nation of dancing dolls! A herd of restless, brainless,

aggressive, impudent women proclaiming defiance and snapping their

fingers at us!

"I tell you there burns here in the Garden to-night something more than

the irresponsible gaiety of a lot of artists and Philistine

pleasure-seekers. The world is on the verge of something terrifying;

the restlessness of a universal fever is in its veins. Our entire human

social structure is throbbing with it; every symptom is ominous of

social collapse and a complete disintegration of the old order of

civilization!"

"What's your other name, Spink?--Jeremiah?" asked Cleland, laughing.

"No. I'm merely on my favourite topic. Listen to me, my young friend;

all England faces strikes and political anarchy in Ireland and India;

the restless sex is demanding its rights in London and menacing the

Empire. France, betrayed by one of the restless ones, strangling in the

clutch of scandal, is standing bewildered by the roar of the

proletariat; Russia seethes internally, watching the restless Empress

and her accursed priest out of millions of snaky, Asiatic eyes; Portugal

has just fallen crashing into fragments around a terrified Queen; China

splits open from end to end and vomits forth its dynasty on the tomb of

the dead Dowager; Austria watches for the death of an old, old

widower--an Imperial mummy long since dead in mind and spirit. Germany,

who uses the lesser sex for breeding only, stares stolidly out of

pig-like eyes at the Imperial litter of degenerates and defectives

dropped with stolid regularity to keep the sty-supply of Hohenzollerns

unimpaired. Only radicals like myself feel the cataclysmic waves deep

under the earth, symptomatic, ominous of profound and vital

readjustments already under way.

"And here in our once great Republic of the West, the fever of universal

unrest is becoming apparent in this nation-wide movement for suffrage.

State after state becomes a battle-ground and surrenders; accepted

standards are shattered, the old social order and balance between the

sexes--all the established formalism and belief of a man-constructed

status--totters as door and gate and avenue and byway are insanely flung

open to the mindless invasion of the restless sex! Don't stop me,

Cleland; I am magnificent to-night. Listen! I tell you that political

equality, equal opportunity, absolute personal liberty are practically

in sight for women! What more is left? Conscious of the itching urge

of its constitutional inclination to fuss and fidget, the restless sex,

fundamentally gallinaceous, continues to wander on into bournes beyond

its ken, hen-like, errant, pensively picking at the transcendentally

unattainable, but always in motion--motion as mechanical and meaningless

as the negative essence of cosmic inertia! ... Now, I'm through with

you, Cleland. Thanks for listening. I don't think I want your goddess,

after all. She looks too much like a tip-up snipe!"

And he took himself off, yawning.

The rushing din of the orchestra far below came up softened to

Stephanie's ears, where she stood at the rail of the topmost gallery and

looked down into the glimmering depths of the Ball of all the Gods.

Her jewelled fingers rested on the rail, her slender body pressed

against it; she stood with bent head, gazing down into the vortex,

pensive, sombrely preoccupied with an indefinable anger that possessed

her.

The corridor behind her was full of shadowy figures scurrying to

hazardous rendezvous. She was vaguely aware of encounters and pursuits;

stifled laughter, sudden gusts of whispering, hurried adieux, hasty

footfalls and the ghostly rustle of silks in flight.

She turned restlessly and went up into the corridor. A dryad was

performing flip-flaps there and a gale of laughter and applause arose

from her comrades watching her in a semi-circle.

The Olympians, too, all seemed to have gathered there for a

frolic--Zeus, Hermes, the long-legged Astarte, the amazingly realistic

Aphrodite, and Eros, more realistic still--all clasping hands and

dancing a ring-around-a-rosy while Bacchus and Ariadne in the centre

performed a breakdown which drew frantic shouts of approval from the

whirling ring.

Then, in this hilarious circle, Stephanie caught sight of the snub-nose

and transparent raiment of the button-eyed Goddess of Night, and next

her, hand clasping hand, she recognized Cleland as another link in the

rapidly rotating ring.

Aphrodite and Eros, hand locked in hand, were singing the song they had

made so popular in "The Prince of Argolis" early in the winter:

"Mrs. Aphrodite

Gave her pretty sonny

Lots of golden curls

But little golden money,

Dressed him in a nightie!--

(Listen to me, girls!)

Love of golden curls

Leads the world astray!

(Listen to me, honey!)

Love of golden money

Acts the selfsame way!"

Breathless with laughter the Grecian gods galloped round and round in a

dizzy circle, flushed faces flashed past Stephanie, flying draperies and

loosened hair fluttered and streamed and glimmered in confused sequence

before her angry eyes.

Suddenly the mad dance broke up and flew into fragments, scattering its

reeling, panting devotees into prancing couples in every direction.

And straight into this wild confusion stepped Stephanie, her pretty eyes

brilliant with wrath, her face a trifle pale.

"Jim!"

He let go of Lady Button-eyes in astonishment and turned around.

Stephanie said very coolly:

"If you're going to raise the devil, raise him with me, please!"

Lady Button-eyes was not pleased and she showed it by stamping, which

alone had sufficiently fixed her level if she had not also placed both

hands on her hips and laughed scornfully when Cleland took leave of her

and walked over to Stephanie.

"Where are the others?" he inquired, rather red at being discovered with

such a crew. "You're not alone, are you, Steve?"

"Not now," she said sweetly; and passed her left arm through his and

clasped her right hand over it. "Now," she said with an excited little

laugh, "I am ready to raise the devil with you. Take me wherever you

like, Jim."

The insulted gods gazed upon her with astonishment as she lifted her

small head and sent an indifferent glance like an arrow at random among

them. Then, not further noticing them, and absolutely indifferent to

the button-eyed one, she strolled leisurely out of Olympus with her

slightly disconcerted captive and disappeared from their view along the

southern corridor. But once out of their range of vision her hot wrath

returned.

"It was abominable," she said in a low, tense voice, "--your going off

that way, when I told you the whole evening would be spoiled for me

without you! I am hurt and angry, Jim."

But his smouldering wrath also flickered into flame now.

"You had Grismer, didn't you!" he said. "What do you care whether I am

with you or not?"

"What do you mean? Yes, of course I had him. What has that to do with

_you_?"

He replied with light insolence:

"Nothing. I'm not your husband."

His words fell like a blow: she caught her breath with the hurt of them;

then:

"Is that why you have avoided me?" she demanded in a tone of such

concentrated passion that the unexpected flare-up startled him. It

surprised her, too: for, all at once, in her heart something contracted

agonizingly, and a surge of furious resentment flooded her, almost

strangling speech.

"Why are you indifferent? Why are--are you unkind?" she stammered.

"I've just found you again after all these years, haven't I? What do

other people matter to us? Why should Oswald interfere between you and

me? You and I haven't had each other for years! I--I can't stand

it--to have you unkind--indifferent--to have you leave me this way when

I want you--so desperately----"

"I didn't leave you," he retorted sullenly. "You went away with--the

man you married----"

"Don't speak of him that way!" she interrupted hotly. "Nobody speaks of

that affair at all!"

"Why not? You _did_ marry him, didn't you?"

"What of it!" she flamed back. "What has that to do with you and me!

_Why_ do you refer to it? It's my personal affair, anyway!"

He turned toward her, exasperated:

"If you think," he said, "that your behaviour with Grismer means nothing

to me, you'd better undeceive yourself! ... Or I'll do it for you in a

way you can't mistake!"

"Undeceive me?" she repeated uneasily. "How do you mean?"

"By making a fight for you myself," he said, "by doing my best to get

you back!"

"I don't know what you mean, Jim," she repeated, her grey eyes intent on

his flushed face.... "Do you believe you have been insulted by what I

did? Is that what you mean?"

He did not answer. They walked on, slowly pacing the deserted corridor.

Her head was lowered now; her lips a trifle tremulous.

"I--didn't suppose you'd take--what I did--_that_ way," she said

unsteadily. "I--respect and love you.... I supposed I was at

liberty--to dispose of--myself. I didn't imagine you cared--very

much----"

Suddenly he freed his arm from her clasped fingers and passed it around

her waist; and she caught her breath and placed her hand tightly over

his to hold it there.

"You adorable boy," she whispered, "am I forgiven? And you _do_ care for

me, don't you, Jim?"

"Care for you!" he repeated in a low, menacing voice. "I care for

nobody else in the world, Steve!"

She laughed happily, yielding confidently to his embrace, responding

swiftly and adorably and with a frank unreserve that told a more

innocent story than his close caress and boyish heart on fire confirmed.

And, for the moment, she let him have his way, gaily enduring and

humorously content with a reconciliation somewhat exaggerated and

over-demonstrative on his part.

But presently his lips on her flushed face, on her hair, on her throat,

disconcerted her, and her own lips parted in dismayed and laughing

protest at an ardour entirely new to her.

He merely kissed her fragrant mouth into silence, looking steadily into

her grey eyes now widening with perplexed and troubled inquiry.

"I love you," he said. "I want you back. Now, do you understand,

Steve? I love you! I love you!"

Confused, crushed hotly in his embrace, she stared blankly at him for

one dizzy instant; then, in silence, she twisted her supple body

backward and aside, and with both nervous hands broke loose the circle

of his arms.

They were both rather white now; her breath came and went irregularly,

checked in her throat with a little sob at intervals. She leaned back

against the wall, one jewelled hand against her breast, looking aside

and away from where he stood.

"I _told_ you," he said, unsteadily.

She remained silent, keeping her gaze resolutely averted.

"You understand now, don't you?" he asked.

She nodded.

Then he caught her in his arms again, and she threw back her lovely

head, looking at him with frightened eyes, defending her lips with a

bare, jewelled arm across them.

He laughed breathlessly and kissed the partly clenched fingers.

"Don't," she whispered, her grey eyes brilliant with fear.

"Do you understand that I am in love with you, Steve?"

"Let me go, Jim----"

"_Do_ you?"

"_Don't_ kiss me--that way----"

"Do you believe me?"

"I don't want to!----" Suddenly she turned terribly white in his arms,

swayed a moment against him. He released her, steadied her; she passed

one arm through his, leaning heavily on him.

"Are you faint, Steve?" he whispered.

"A--little. It's nothing. The air here is stifling.... I'm tired." ...

She dropped her head against his shoulder. Her lids were half closed as

they descended the steps, he guiding her.

It seemed to her an interminable descent. She felt as though she were

falling through space into a glittering, roaring abyss. In their box

sat Helen and Grayson, gossiping gaily together and waiting for another

dance to begin. Cleland warned Stephanie in a whisper, and she lifted

her head and straightened up with an effort.

She said mechanically:

"I'm going home; I'm very tired."

Helen and Grayson rose and the former came toward her inquiringly.

Stephanie smiled:

"Jim will take me back," she said. "Don't let me disturb your pleasure.

And tell Oswald I was very sleepy.... And not to come to the studio for

a day or two. Good night, dear."

She made a humorously tired little gesture of farewell to Grayson also,

and, taking Cleland's arm again, sauntered with him toward the lobby.

"Get your overcoat and my wraps," she said in a colourless, even voice.

"I have a car outside. Here's the call-check. I'll wait over there for

you."

Her car, a toy limousine, was ultimately found. Cleland redeemed his

overcoat and her wrap. When he came back for her she smiled at him,

suffered him to swathe her in the white silk cloak, and, laying her

dainty hand lightly on his sleeve, went out with him into the lamp-lit

grey of dawn.

"You are feeling better," he said as they seated themselves in the

limousine and the little car rolled away southward.

"Yes. It was the stifling atmosphere there, I suppose."

"It was horribly close," he assented.

They remained silent for a while. Then, abruptly:

"Have I made you angry, Steve?" he asked.

She looked up and laughed:

"You adorable boy," she said.

"You don't mind if I'm in love with you?" he asked.

"I haven't any mind. I can't seem to think.... But I don't think you'd

better kiss me until I collect my senses again.... Please don't, Jim."

They became silent again until the car drew up before her door. She had

two keys in her cloak pocket; she paused to give the chauffeur an order,

turning to ask Cleland whether he didn't want the car to take him to the

Hotel Rochambeau.

"Thanks; it's only a step. I had rather walk."

So the car drove away; Cleland opened the front door for her, then her

own studio door. She felt around the corner in the darkness and

switched on the electric bulb in a standing lamp.

"Good night, Steve," he said, taking her hand in both of his.

"Good night.... Unless you care to talk to me for a little while."

"It's four o'clock in the morning."

"I can't sleep--I know that."

He said in a low voice:

"Besides, I am very much in love with you. I think I had better go

back."

"Oh.... Do you think so?"

"Don't you?"

"I told you that I haven't recovered enough sense to think."

She crossed the threshold and walked into the studio, dropping her cloak

across a chair; and presently halted before the empty fireplace, gazing

into its smoke-blackened depths.

For a few moments she stood there in a brown study--a glittering,

exquisite figure in the subdued light which fell in tiny points of fire

on gem and ring, bracelet and girdle, and tipped the gilded sandals on

her little naked feet with sparks of living flame.

Then she turned her charming young head and looked across at him where

he stood on the threshold.

"What do you think?" she said. "Ought you to go?"

"I ought to. But I don't think I shall."

"No, don't go," she said with a little laugh. "After all, if we're not

to remain brother and sister any longer, there's a most fascinating

novelty in your being here."

He came in and closed the door. She made room for him on the sofa and

he flung his coat across her cloak and seated himself.

"Now," she said, dropping one silken knee over the other and clasping

her hands around it, "how much can we care for each other without being

silly? You know I have a dreadful intuition that I'd better not kiss

you any more. Not that I don't adore you as much as I always did----"

She turned squarely around and looked at him out of her lovely eyes:

"You took me by surprise. I didn't understand. Then, suddenly I lost my

senses and became panicky. I was scared stiff, Jim--you kissed me so

many times----"

He reddened and looked down. Under his eyes her bare foot hung in its

golden sandal--an exquisite, snowy little foot, quite perfectly

fashioned to match her hands' soft symmetry.

"If you loved me," he said, "you would not care how many times I kissed

you."

"But you kept on--and you kissed my eyes and throat----"

"You wouldn't care what I did if you loved me."

"But they were unusual places to be kissed. I was scared. Did you

think me ridiculous? It was rather startling, you know. It was such a

complete novelty."

She admitted it so naively that he laughed in spite of his chagrin.

"Steve," he said, "I don't know what to do about it. I'm falling more

deeply in love with you every moment; and you are merely kind and sweet

and friendly about it----"

"I'm _intensely_ interested!" she said.

"Interested," he repeated; "yes, that describes it."

"A girl couldn't help being interested when a man she had always adored

as a brother suddenly takes her into his arms and kisses her in unusual

places," she said, "--and does it a great number of times----"

"Probably you kept count," he said with boyish sarcasm.

She laughed outright:

"I wish I had. It was a perfectly shameless performance. If you ever

do it again I shall keep count--out loud!"

"Is that all you'll do?"

"What else is there to do?" she inquired, smiling a trifle uneasily.

"You might find it in your heart to respond."

"How can my heart hold any more of you than it does and always has?" she

asked with pretty impatience.

"_Can't_ you love me?"

"I don't know how to any more than I do."

"But you did not find it agreeable when I kissed you."

"I--don't know what I felt.... We always kissed." She began to laugh.

"I enjoyed _that_; but I don't think you did, always. You sometimes

looked rather bored, Jim."

"I'm getting well paid back," he said.

This seemed to afford her infinite delight; there was malice in her grey

eyes now, and a hint of pretty mockery in her laughter.

"To think," she said, "that James Cleland should ever become sentimental

with poor little Stephanie Quest! What an unbending! What

condescension! What a come-down! Oh, Jim, if I've really got you at

last I'm going to raise the very devil with you!"

"You're doing it."

"Am I? I hope I am! I mean to torment you! Why, when I think of the

long, long years of childish adoration and awe--of the days when I

tagged after you, grateful to be noticed, thankful when you found time

for me----" She clapped her hands together delightedly, enchanted with

his glum and reddening face. For what she said was the truth; he knew

it, though she did not realize how true it had been--and meant merely to

exaggerate.

"Also," she said, "you leave me quite alone for three whole years when

you could have come back at the end of two!"

His face darkened and he bit his lip.

"You're quite right," he said in a quiet voice. "A girl couldn't very

well fall in love with that sort of man."

There was a silence. She had been enjoying her revenge, but she had not

expected him to take it so seriously.

He sat there with lowered head, considering, gnawing at his under-lip in

silence. She had not intended to hurt him. She was inexperienced

enough with him to be worried. His features seemed older, leaner, full

of unfamiliar shadows--disturbingly aloof and stern.

She hesitated--the swift, confused memory of an hour before checking her

for an instant, then she leaned toward him, quite certain of what would

happen--silent and curious as he drew her into his arms.

She was very silent, too, listening to his impetuous, broken

avowal--suffering his close embrace, his lips on her eyes and mouth and

throat once more. The enormous novelty of it preoccupied her; the

intense interest in his state of mind. Her curiosity held her

spellbound, too, and unresponsive but fascinated.

She lay very quietly in his arms, her lovely head resting on his

shoulder, sometimes with eyes closed, sometimes watching him, meeting

his eyes with a faint smile.

Contact with him no longer frightened her. Her mind was clear, busy

with this enormous novelty, searching for the reason of it, striving to

understand his passion which she shyly recognized with an odd feeling of

pride and tenderness, but to which there was nothing in her that

responded--nothing more than tender loyalty and the old love she had

always given him.

The grey tranquillity of her eyes, virginal and clear--the pulseless

quiet of the girl chilled him.

"You don't love me, Steve, do you?"

"Not--as you--wish me to."

"Can't you?"

"I don't know."

"Is there any chance?"

She looked out across the studio, considering, and her grey eyes grew

vague and remote.

"I don't know, Jim.... I think that something has been left out of

me.... Whatever it is. I don't know how to love--fall in love--as you

wish me to. I don't know how to go about it. Perhaps it's because I've

never thought about it. It's never occupied my mind."

"Then," he burst out, "how in God's name did you ever come to marry!"

She looked up at him gravely:

"That is very different," she said.

"Then you _are_ in love with him!"

"I told you that he fascinates me."

"Is it _love_?" he asked violently.

"I don't know."

"You _must_ know! You've got a mind!"

"It doesn't explain what I feel for him. I can't put it into words."

He drew her roughly to him, bent over her, looked into her eyes, and

kissed her lips again and again.

"Can't you love me, Steve? _Can't_ you?" he stammered.

"I--want to. I wish I did--the way you want me to."

"Will you try?"

"I don't know how to try."

"Do your lips on mine mean nothing to you?"

"Yes.... You are so dear.... I am wonderfully contented--and not

afraid."

After a moment she released herself, laughed, and sat up, adjusting her

hair with one hand and resting against his shoulder.

"A fine scandal if Helen should come in," she remarked. "It's odd to

think of myself as married. And that's another thing, Jim. It never

occurred to me until now, but I've no business to give myself up to you

as I have to-night." She leaned forward on one elbow, musing for a

while, then, lifting her head with a troubled smile: "But what is a girl

to do when her brother suddenly turns into her lover? Must she forbid

him to kiss her? And refrain from kissing him?----" She flung one arm

around his neck impulsively. "I _won't_ forbid you! I would have to if

I were in love with you in the same way. But I'm not and I don't care

what you do. And whatever you do, I adore anyway."

A key rattled in the lock; she sprang to her feet and went toward the

door. Helen came in, and she saw Grayson and Grismer standing in the

hallway.

"Come in everybody!" she cried. "Shall we all have breakfast before we

part? Don't you think it would be delightful, Phil? Don't you, Oswald?

And you know we could take up the rugs and dance while the coffee is

boiling. Wait! I'll turn on the music-box!----"

Helen and Grayson deliberately began a tango; Grismer came over to where

Cleland was standing:

"They're still dancing in the Garden," he said pleasantly. "Did you and

Stephanie get enough of it?"

*CHAPTER XX*

Cleland, being young, required sleep, and it was not until noon that he

awoke.

Cool-headed retrospection during tubbing and dressing increased his

astonishment at the manner in which he had spent his first day in New

York after the years of absence. For into that one day had been crowded

a whole gamut of experience and of sensations that seemed incredible

when he thought them over.

Every emotion that a young man could experience seemed to have been

called into play during that bewildering day and night--curiosity,

resentment, apprehension, anger, jealousy, love, passion. And their

swift and unexpected sequence had confused him, wrought him up to a

pitch of excitement which set every nerve on edge.

He could not comprehend what had happened, what he had experienced and

said and done as he stood at his window looking out into the sunshine of

the quiet street; and yet, just around the corner the girl who was the

cause and reason of it all lay still asleep, in all probability.

Breakfast was served in his room and he ate it with a perfectly healthy

appetite. Then he lighted a cigarette and walked to the window again to

stare silently put across the sunny street and marshall his thoughts

into some semblance of order.

The aromatic smoke from his cigarette curled against the window pane and

he gazed absently through it at the vague phantom of a girl's face which

memory evoked unbidden.

What had happened? Was it really love? Was it anger, wounded

amour-propre, jealousy? Was it resentment and disgust at the silly,

meaningless thing that one whom he had considered as his own kinswoman

had done in his absence? Was it a determination to tear her loose that

had started the thing--an unreasoning, impulsive attempt at vengeance,

born of hurt pride that incited him to get her back? For the bond

between her and Grismer seemed to him intolerable, hateful--a thing he

would not endure if he could shatter it.

Why? Was it because he himself had fallen in love with a girl whom,

heretofore, he had regarded with the tranquil, tolerant affection of a

brother? Was it love? Was there any other name for the impulse which

had suddenly overmastered him when he caught this girl in his arms,

confused, frightened, stunned her with hot, incoherent declarations?

Had he even really meant what he had said--not in the swift hurricane of

passion which had enveloped him like a flame when he held her waist

enlaced and the sweetness of her face and throat and hair blinded him to

everything else--but in the cold after-light of retrospection did he now

mean what he had said last night?

Or had it all been due to the place and the hour--the relaxing of

convention in the shattering din of music and laughter--the whirlwind of

gaiety and excitement--the girl's beauty--the sudden thrill of his

contact with her? Was that what had accounted for what he had done and

said?--brute impulse loosed by passion born out of nothing more noble

than the moment's mental intoxication--nothing more real than ephemeral

emotion, excitement, sheer physical sensation?

It was not like him. He realized that. Hitherto his brain had been in

control of his emotions. His was a clear mind, normally. Impulse

seldom tripped him.

He had never been in love--never even tried to persuade himself that he

had been, even when he had, in his boyish loneliness in Paris, built for

himself a bewitching ideal out of a very familiar Stephanie and had

addressed to this ideal several reams of romantic nonsense. That had

been merely the safety valve working in the very full and lonely heart

of a boy.

Even in the gay, ephemeral, irresponsible affairs that occurred from

time to time during his career abroad--even when in the full tide of

romantic adoration for his mundane Countess, and fairly wallowing in

flattered gratitude for her daintily amused condescension, did he ever

deceive himself into believing he was in love.

And now, in the lurid light of the exaggerated, bewildering, disquieting

events of the preceding day and night, he was trying to think clearly

and honestly--trying to reconcile his deeds and words with what he had

known of himself--trying to find out what really was the matter with

him.

He did not know. He knew that Stephanie had exasperated

him--exasperated him to reckless passion--exasperated him even more by

not responding to that passion. He had declared his love for her; he

had attempted to drive the declaration into her comprehension by the

very violence of reiteration. The tranquil, happy loyalty, which always

had been his, was all he evoked in her for all the impulsive vows he

made, for all his reckless emotion loosened with the touch of her

lips--so hotly ungoverned when her grey eyes looked into his, honestly

perplexed, sweetly searching to comprehend the source of these fierce

flames which merely warmed her with their breath.

"It's a curious thing," he thought, "that a man, part of whose

profession is to write about love and analyze it, doesn't know whether

he's in love or not."

It was quite true. He didn't know. Accepted symptoms were lacking. He

had not awakened thrilled with happiness at the memory of the night

before. He awoke dazed and doubtful that all these things had happened,

worried, searching in his mind for some reason for his behaviour.

And, except that a man had taken her out of his keeping, and that

resentment and jealousy had incited him to recover her, and, further, in

the excitement of the attempt, that he had suddenly found himself

involved in deeper, fiercer emotions than he had bargained for, he could

come to no conclusion concerning his actual feeling for Stephanie.

He spent the day hunting for a studio-apartment.

About five o'clock he called her on the telephone; and heard her voice

presently:

"Have you quite recovered, Jim? I feel splendid!"

"Recovered? I was all right this morning when I woke up."

"I mean your senses?"

"Oh. Did you think I lost them last night, Steve?"

"Didn't you?"

Her voice was very sweet but there was in it a hint of hidden laughter.

"No," he said shortly.

"Oh. Then you really were in your right senses last night?" she

inquired.

"Certainly. Were you?"

"Well, for a little while I seemed to have lost the power of thinking.

But after that I was intensely, consciously, deeply interested and

profoundly curious." He could hear her laughing.

"Curious about what?" he demanded.

"About your state of mind, Jim. The situation was such a novelty, too.

I was trying to comprehend it--trying to consider what a girl should do

in such a curious emergency."

"Emergency?" he repeated.

"Certainly. Do you fancy I'm accustomed to such novelties as you

introduced me to last night?"

"What do you think about them now?"

"I'm slightly ashamed of us both. We _were_ rather silly, you know----"

"_You_ were not," he interrupted drily.

"Is that a tribute or a reproach?" came her gay voice over the wire. "I

don't quite know how to take it!"

"Reassure yourself, Steve. You were most circumspect and

emotionless----"

"Jim! That is brutal and untrue! I was not circumspect!"

"You were the other, then."

"What a perfectly cruel and outrageous slander! You've made me unhappy,

now. And all day I've been so absolutely happy in thinking of what

happened."

"Is that true?" he asked in an altered voice.

"Of course it's true!"

"You just said you were ashamed----"

"I was, very, very slightly; but I've been too happy to be very much

ashamed!"

"You darling!----"

"Oh! The gentleman bestows praise! Such a kind gentleman to perceive

merit and confer his distinguished approval. Any girl ought to

endeavour to earn further marks of consideration and applause from so

gracious a gentleman----"

"Steve, you tormenting little wretch, can't you be serious with me?"

"I am," she said, laughing. "Tell me what you've been doing to-day?"

"Hunting for lodgings. What have you been doing?"

"Watching Helen make a study of a horse out in the covered court. Then

we had tea. Then Oswald dropped in and played the piano divinely, as he

always does. Then Helen and I started to dress for dinner. Then you

called. Where did you look for lodgings?"

"Oh, I went to about all the studio buildings----"

"Aren't you going to open the house?"

"No. It's too lonely."

"Yes," she said, "it would be too lonely. You and I couldn't very well

live there together unless we had an older woman."

"No."

"So it's better not to open it until"--she laughed gaily--"you marry

some nice girl. Then it will be safe enough for me to call on the

Cleland family, I fancy. Won't it, Jim?"

"Quite," he replied drily. "But when I marry that nice girl, you won't

have far to go when you call on the Cleland family."

"Oh, how kind! You mean to board me, Jim?"

"You know what I _do_ mean," he said.

"I wonder! Is it really a declaration of serious and respectable

intentions? But you're quite safe. And I'm afraid you know it. Tell

me, did you find an apartment to suit you?"

"No."

"Why not come here? There's a studio and apartment which will be free

May first. Oh, Jim, please take it! If you say so I'll telephone the

agent _now_! Shall I? It would be too heavenly if we were under the

same roof again!"

"Do you _want_ me, Steve? After--and in spite of everything?"

"_Want_ you?" He heard her happy, scornful laughter. Then: "We're

dining out, Jim; but come to-morrow. I'll telephone now that you'll

take the studio. May I, Jim dear?"

"Yes," he said. "And I'll come to you to-morrow."

"You angel boy! I _wish_ I weren't going out to-night. Thank you, Jim,

dear, for making me happy again."

"_Are_ you?"

"Indescribably. I don't think you know what your kindness to me means.

It makes a different person of me. It fills and thrills and inspires

me. Why, Jim, it actually is health and life to me. And when you are

unkind--it seems to paralyze me--check something in my mind. I can't

explain----"

"Steve!"

"Yes?"

"Could I come in for a moment now?"

"I'm dressing. Oh, Jim, I'm sorry, but I'm late as it is. You know I

want you, don't you?"

"All right; to-morrow, then," he said in happy voice.

He had been sitting in his room for an hour, thinking--letting his mind

wander unchecked.

If he were not really in love with Stephanie, how could a mere

conversation over the wire with her give him such pleasure?

The day, drawing to its close without his seeing her, had seemed

colourless and commonplace; but the sound of her gay voice over the wire

had changed that--had made the day complete.

"I believe I _am_ in love," he said aloud. He rose and paced the room

in the dusk, questioning, considering his own uncertainty.

For the "novelty"--as Stephanie called it--of last night's fever had not

been a novelty to her alone. Never before had he been so deeply moved,

so swept off his feet, so regardless of a self-control habitual to him.

Perhaps anger and jealousy had started it. But these ignoble emotions

could not seem to account for the happiness that hearing her voice had

just given him.

Even the voice of a beloved sister doesn't stir a young man to such

earnest and profound reflection as that in which he was now immersed,

indifferent even to the dinner hour, which had long been over.

"I believe," he said aloud to himself, "that I'm falling very seriously

in love with Steve.... And if I am, it's a rather desperate outlook....

She _seems_ to be in love with Grismer--damn him! ... I don't know how

to face such a thing.... She's married him and she doesn't live with

him.... She admits frankly that he fascinates her.... There _are_

women who never love.... I seem to want her, anyway.... I _think_ I

do.... It's a mess! ... Why in God's name did she do such a thing if

she wasn't in love with him--or if she didn't expect to be? Is she in

love with him? She isn't with _me_.... I'm certainly drifting into

love with Steve.... Can I stop myself? ... I ought to be able to....

Hadn't I better?"

He stood still, thinking, the street lamps' rays outside illuminating

his room with a dull radiance.

Presently he switched on the light, seated himself at the desk, and

wrote: