IX

The personnel of the Hosacks' house party had changed.

Mrs. Noel d'Oyly had led her little husband away to Newport to stay

with Mrs. Henry Vanderdyke, where were Beatrix and Pelham Franklin,

with a bouncing baby boy, the apple of Mr. Vanderdyke's eye. Enid

Ouchterlony had left for Gloucester, Massachusetts, where her aunt,

Mrs. Horace Pallant, entertained in an almost royal fashion and was

eager to set her match-making arts to work on behalf of her only

unmarried niece. Enid had gone to the very edge of well-bred lengths to

land Courtney Millet, but Scots ancestry and an incurable habit of

talking sensibly and rather well had handicapped her efforts. She had

confided to Primrose with a sudden burst of uncharacteristic incaution

that she seemed doomed to become an old man's darling. Her last words

to the sympathetic Primrose were, "Oh, Prim, Prim, pray that you may

never become intellectual. It will kill all your chances." Miss Hosack

was, however, perfectly safe.

Milwood, fired by a speech at the Harvard Club by Major General Leonard

Wood, had scratched all his pleasant engagements for the summer, and

was at Plattsburg learning for the first time, at the camp which will

some day occupy an inspiring chapter in the history of the United

States, the full meaning of the words "duty" and "discipline." Their

places had been taken by Major and Mrs. Barnet Thatcher and dog, Regina

Waterhouse and Vincent Barclay, a young English officer invalided out

of the Royal Flying Corps after bringing down eight German machines. A

cork leg provided him with constant amusement. He had a good deal of

property in Canada and was making his way to Toronto by easy stages. A

cheery fellow, cut off from all his cherished sports but free from even

the suggestion of grousing. Of his own individual stunts, as he called

them, he gave no details and made no mention of the fact that he

carried the D.S.O. and the Croix de Guerre in his bag. He had met the

Hosacks at the American Embassy in London in 1913. He was rather sweet

on Primrose.

The fact that Joan was still there was easily accounted for. She liked

the place, and her other invitations were not interesting. Hosack

didn't want her to go either, but of course that had nothing to do with

it, and so far as Mrs. Hosack was concerned, let the bedroom be

occupied by some one of her set and she was happy enough. Indeed, it

saved her the brain fag of inviting some one else, "always difficult

with so many large houses to fill and so few people to go round, my

dear."

Harry Oldershaw was such a nice boy that he did just as he liked. If it

suited him he could keep his room until the end of the season. The case

of Gilbert Palgrave was entirely different. A privileged, spoiled

person, who made no effort to be generally agreeable and play up, he

was rather by way of falling into the same somewhat difficult category

as a minor member of the British Royalty. His presence was an honor

although his absence would have been a relief. He chose to prolong his

visit indefinitely and there was an end of it.

Every day at Easthampton had, however, been a nightmare to Palgrave.

Refusing to take him seriously, Joan had played with him as a cat plays

with a mouse. Kind to him one minute she had snubbed him the next. The

very instant that he had congratulated himself on making headway his

hopes had been scattered to the four winds by some scathing remarks and

her disappearance for hours with Harry Oldershaw. She had taken a

mischievous delight in leading him on with winning smiles and charming

and appealing ways only to burst out laughing at his blazing

protestations of love and leave him inarticulate with anger and wounded

vanity. "If you want me to love you, make me," she had said. "I shall

fight against it tooth and nail, but I give you leave to do your best."

He had done his best. With a totally uncharacteristic humbleness,

forgetting the whole record of his former easy conquests, and with this

young slim thing so painfully in his blood that there were times when

he had the greatest difficulty to retain his self-control, he had

concentrated upon the challenge that she had flung at him and set

himself to teach her how to love with all the thirsty eagerness of a

man searching for water. People who had watched him in his too wealthy

adolescence and afterwards buying his way through life and achieving

triumphs on the strength of his, handsome face and unique position

would have stared in incredulous amazement at the sight of this

love-sick man in his intense pursuit of a girl who was able to twist

him around her little finger and make him follow her about as if he

were a green and callow youth. Palgrave, the lady-killer; Palgrave, the

egoist; Palgrave, the superlative person, who, with nonchalant

impertinence, had picked and chosen. Was it possible?

Everything is possible when a man is whirled off his feet by the Great

Emotion. History reeks with the stories of men whose natures were

changed, whose careers were blasted, whose honor and loyalty and common

sense were sacrificed, whose pride and sense of the fitness of things

were utterly and absolutely forgotten under the stress of the sex storm

that hits us all and renders us fools or heroes, breaking or making as

luck will have it and, in either case, bringing us to the common level

of primevality for the love of a woman. Nature, however refined and

cultivated the man, or rarified his atmosphere, sees to this. Herself

feminine, she has no consideration for persons. To her a man is merely

a man, a creature with the same heart and the same senses, working to

the same end from the same beginning. Let him struggle and cry

"Excelsior!" and fix his eyes upon the heights, let him devote himself

to prayer or go grimly on his way with averted eyes, let him become

cynic or misogynist, what's it matter? Sooner or later she lays hands

upon him and claims him as her child. Man, woman and love. It is the

oldest and the newest story in the world, and in spite of the sneers of

thin-blooded intellectuals who think that it is clever to speak of love

as the particular pastime of the Bolsheviki and the literary parasites

who regard themselves as critics and dismiss love as "mere sex stuff,"

it is the everlasting Story of Everyman.

Young and new and careless, obsessed only with the one idea of having a

good time,--never mind who paid for it,--Joan knew nothing of the

danger of trifling with the feelings of a high-strung man who had never

been denied, a man over-civilized to the point of moral decay. If she

had paused in her determined pursuit of amusement and distraction to

analyze her true state of mind she might have discovered an angry

desire to pay Fate out for the way in which he had made things go with

Martin by falling really and truly in love with Gilbert. As it was, she

recognized his attraction and in the few serious moments that forced

themselves upon her when she was alone she realized that he could give

her everything that would make life easy and pleasant. She liked his

calm sophistication, she was impressed, being young, by his utter

disregard of laws and conventions, and she was flattered at the

unmistakable proofs of his passionate devotion. But she would have been

surprised to find beneath her careless way of treating herself and

everybody round her an unsuspected root of loyalty towards Alice and

Martin that put up a hedge between herself and Gilbert. There was also

something in the fine basic qualities of her undeveloped character that

unconsciously made her resent this spoiled man's assumption of the fact

that, married or not, she must sooner or later fall in with his wishes.

She was in no mood for self-analysis, however, because that meant the

renewal of the pain and deep disappointment as to Martin which was her

one object to hide and to forget. So she kept Gilbert in tow, and

supplied her days with the excitement for which she craved by leading

him on and laughing him off. It is true that once or twice she had

caught in his eyes a look of madness that caused her immediately to

call the nice boy to her support and make a mental note of the fact

that it would be wise never to trust herself quite alone with him, but

with a shrug of the shoulders she continued alternately to tease and

charm, according to her mood.

She did both these things once again when she came up from the sea to

finish the remainder of the morning in the sun. Seeing Gilbert pacing

the veranda like a bear with a sore ear, she told Harry Oldershaw to

leave her to her sun bath and signalled to Gilbert to come down to the

edge of the beach. The others were still in the sea. He joined her with

a sort of reluctance, with a look of gall and ire in his eyes that was

becoming characteristic. There was all about him the air of a man who

had been sleeping badly. His face was white and drawn, and his fingers

were never still. He twisted a signet ring round and round at one

moment and worried at a button on his coat the next. His nerves seemed

to be outside his skin. He stood in front of Joan antagonistically and

ran his eyes over her slim young form in its wet bathing suit with

grudging admiration. He was too desperately in love to be able to apply

to himself any of the small sense of humor that was his in normal times

and hide his feelings behind it. He was very far from being the Gilbert

Palgrave of the early spring,--the cool, satirical, complete man of the

world.

"Well?" he asked.

Joan pretended to be surprised. "Well what, Gilbert dear? I wanted to

have a nice little talk before lunch, that's all, and so I ventured to

disturb you."

"Ventured to disturb me! You're brighter than usual this morning."

"Ah I? Is that possible? How sweet of you to say so. Do sit down and

look a little less like an avenging angel. The sand's quite warm and

dry."

He kicked a little shower of it into the air. "I don't want to sit

down," he said. "You bore me. I'm fed up with this place and sick to

tears of you."

"Sick to tears of me? Why, what in the world have I done?"

"Every conceivable and ingenious thing that I might have expected of

you. Loyalty was entirely left out of your character, it appears. Young

Oldershaw and the doddering Hosack measure up to your standard. I can't

compete."

Joan allowed almost a minute to go by in silence. She felt at the very

tip-top of health, having ridden for some hours and gone hot into the

sea. To be mischievous was natural enough. This man took himself so

seriously, too. She would have been made of different stuff or have

acquired a greater knowledge of Palgrave's curious temperament to have

been able to resist the temptation to tantalize.

"Aren't you, by any chance, a little on the rude side this morning,

Gilbert?"

"If you call the truth rude," he said, "yes."

"I do. Very. The rudest thing I know."

He looked down at her. She was leaning against the narrow wooden back

of a beach chair. Her hands were clasped round her white knees. She

wore little thin black shoes and no stockings. A tight rubber bathing

cap which came low down on her forehead gave her a most attractively

boyish look. She might have been a young French Pierrot in a picture by

Sem or Van Beers. He almost hated her at that moment, sitting there in

all the triumph of youth, untouched by his ardor, unaffected by his

passion.

"You needn't worry," he said. "You won't get any more of it from me. So

that you may continue to amuse yourself undisturbed I withdraw from the

baby hunt. I'm off this afternoon."

He had cried "Wolf!" so many times that Joan didn't believe him.

"I daresay a change of air will do you good," she said. "Where are you

going?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "What's it matter? Probably to that cottage

of mine to play hermit and scourge myself for having allowed you to

mortify me and hold me up to the ridicule of your fulsome court of

admirers."

"Yes, that cottage of yours. You've forgotten your promise to drive me

over to see it, haven't you?"

Palgrave wheeled round. This was too much of a good thing. "Be careful,

or my rudeness will become more truthful than even you will be able to

swallow. Twice last week you arranged for me to take you over and both

times you turned me down and went off with young Oldershaw."

"What IS happening to my memory?" asked Joan.

"It must be the sea air."

He turned on his heel and walked away.

In an instant she was up and after him, with her hand on his arm.

"I'm awfully sorry, Gilbert," she said. "Do forgive me."

"I'd forgive you if you were sorry, but you're not."

"Yes, I am."

He drew his arm away. "No. You're not really anything; in fact you're

not real. You're only a sort of mermaid, half fish, half girl. Nothing

comes of knowing you. It's a waste of time. You're not for men. You're

for lanky youths with whom you can talk nonsense, and laugh at silly

jokes. You belong to the type known in England as the flapper--that

weird, paradoxical thing with the appearance of flagrant innocence and

the mind of an errand boy. Your unholy form of enjoyment is to put men

into false positions and play baby when they lay hands on you. Your

hourly delight is to stir passion and then run into a nursery and slam

the door. You dangle your sex in the eyes of men and as soon as you've

got them crazy, claim chastity and make them ashamed. One of these days

you'll drive a man into the sort of mad passion that will make him give

you a sound thrashing or seduce you. I don't want to be that man.

Oldershaw is too young for you to hurt and Hosack too old, and

apparently Martin Gray has chucked you and found some human real

person. As for me, I've had enough. Good morning."

And once more, having delivered himself coldly and clearly of this

brutally frank indictment he went up the steps to the veranda and into

the house.

There was not even the tail of a smile on Joan's face as she watched

him go.

Lunch was not quite the usual pleasant, happy-go-lucky affair that day.

The gallant little Major, recently married to the fluffy-minded Mrs.

Edgar Lee Reeves and her peevish little dog, sat on the right of the

overwhelmingly complacent Cornucopia. With the hope of rendering

himself more youthful for this belated adventure with the babbling

widow he had been treated by a hair specialist. The result was, as

usual, farcically pathetic. His nice white hair which had given him a

charming benignity and cleanness had been turned into a dead and musty

black which made him look unearthly and unreal. His smart and carefully

cherished moustache which once had laid upon his upper lip like cotton

wool had been treated with the same ink-colored mixture. His clothes,

once so perfectly suitable, were now those built for a man of Harry

Oldershaw's youthful lines and gave him the appearance of one who had

forced himself into a suit made for his son. It was of a very blue

flannel with white lines,--always a trying combination. His tie and

socks were en suite and his gouty feet were martyrized to this scheme

of camouflage by being pressed into a pair of tight brown and white

shoes. Having been deprived of his swim for fear that his youthfulness

might come off in the water and with the rather cruel badinage of his

old friend Hosack still rankling in his soul, the poor little old

gentleman was not in the best of tempers. Also he had spent most of the

morning exercising Pinkie-Winkie while his wife had been writing

letters, and his nerves were distinctly jaded. The pampered animal

which had taken almost as solemn a part of his marriage vows as the

bride herself had insisted upon making a series of strategic attacks

against Mrs. Hosack's large, yellow-eyed, resentful Persian Tom, and

his endeavors to read the morning paper and rescue Pinkie from certain

wreckage had made life a bitter and a restless business. He was unable

to prevent himself from casting his mind back to those good bachelor

days of the previous summer when he had taken his swim with the young

people, enjoyed his sunbath at the feet of slim and beautiful girls,

and looked forward to a stiff cocktail in his bathhouse like a natural

and irresponsible old buck.

Gilbert Palgrave faced him, an almost silent man who, to Cornucopia's

great and continually voiced distress, allowed her handsomely paid

cook's efforts to go by contemptuously untouched. It rendered her own

enthusiastic appetite all the more conspicuous.

For two reasons Hosack was far from happy. One was because Mrs. Barnet

Thatcher was seated on his right pelting him with brightness and the

other because Joan, on his left, looked clean through his head whenever

he tried to engage her in sentimental sotto voce.

Gaiety was left to Prim and the wounded Englishman and to young

Oldershaw and the towering Regina who continually threw back her head

to emit howls of laughter at Barclay's drolleries while she displayed

the large red cavern of her mouth and all her wonderful teeth. After

every one of these exhausting paroxysms she said, with her

characteristic exuberance of sociability, "Isn't he the best thing?"

"Don't you think he's the most fascinating creature?" to any one whose

eye she caught,--a nice, big, beautiful, insincere girl who had been

taught at her fashionable school that in order to succeed in Society

and help things along she must rave about everything in extravagant

language and make as much noise as her lungs would permit.

Joan's unusual lack of spirits was noticed by every one and especially,

with grim satisfaction, by Gilbert Palgrave. With a return of optimism

he told himself that his rudeness expressed so pungently had had its

effect. He congratulated himself upon having, at last, been able to

show Joan the sort of foolish figure that she cut in his sight and even

went so far as to persuade himself that, after all, she must do

something more than like him to be so silent and depressed.

His deductions were, however, as hopelessly wrong as usual. His drastic

criticism had been like water on a duck's back. It inspired amusement

and nothing else. It was his remark that Martin Gray had chucked her

and found some human real person that had stuck, and this, with the

efficiency of a surgeon's knife, had cut her sham complacence and

opened up the old wound from which she had tried so hard to persuade

herself that she had recovered. Martin-Martin-what was he doing? Where

was he, and where was that girl with the white face and the red lips

and the hair that came out of a bottle?

The old overwhelming desire to see Martin again had been unconsciously

set blazing by this tactless and provoked man. It was so passionate and

irresistible that she could hardly remain at the table until the

replete Cornucopia rose, rattling with beads. And when, after what

seemed to be an interminable time, this happened and the party

adjourned to the shaded veranda to smoke and catch the faint breeze

from the sea, she instantly beckoned to Harry and made for the

drawing-room.

In this furniture be-clogged room all the windows were open, but the

blazing sun of the morning had left it hot and stuffy. A hideous

squatting Chinese goddess, whose tongue, by a mechanical appliance,

lolled from side to side, appeared to be panting for breath, and the

cut flowers in numerous pompous vases hung their limp heads. It was a

gorgeously hot day.

Young Oldershaw bounded in, the picture of unrealized health. His tan

was almost black, and his teeth and the whites of, his eyes positively

gleamed. He might have been a Cuban.

"Didn't I hear you tell Prim last night that you'd had a letter from

your cousin?"

"Old Howard? Yes." He was sorry that she had.

"Is Martin with him?" It was an inspiration, an uncanny piece of

feminine intuition.

Young Oldershaw was honest. "He's staying with Gray," he said

reluctantly.

"Where?"

"At Devon."

"Devon? Isn't that the place we drove to the other day--with a little

club and a sort of pier and sailboats gliding about?"

"Yes. They've got one."

Ah, that was why she had had a queer feeling of Martinism while she had

sat there having tea, watching the white sails against the sky. On one

of those boats bending gracefully to the wind Martin must have been.

"Where are they living?"

"In a cottage that belongs to a pal of Gray's, so far as I could

gather."

In a cottage, together! Then the girl whom she had called "Fairy,"--the

girl who was human and real, according to Gilbert, couldn't be, surely

couldn't be, with them.

"Will you drive me over?" she asked.

"When?"

"Now."

"Why, of course, Joan, if I--must," he said. It somehow seemed to him

to be wrong and incredible that she had a husband,--this girl, so free

and young and at the very beginning of things, like himself, and whom

he had grown into the habit of regarding as his special--hardly

property, but certainly companion and playmate.

"If you're not keen about it, Harry, I'll ask Mr. Hosack or a

chauffeur. Pray don't let me take you an inch out of your way."

In an instant he was off his stilts and on his marrow bones. "Please

don't look like that and say those things. You've only got to tell me

what you want and I'll get it. You know that."

"Thank you, Harry, the sooner the better, then," she said, with a smile

that lit up her face like a sunbeam. She must see Martin, she must, she

must! The old longing had come back. It was like a pain. And being with

Howard Oldershaw in that cottage he was alone, and being alone he had

got back into his armor. SHE had a clean slate.

"Hurry, hurry," she said.

And when Harry hurried, as he did then, though with a curious

misgiving, there were immediate results. Before Joan had chosen a hat,

and for once it was difficult to make a choice, she heard his whistle

and from the window of her bedroom saw him seated, hatless and sunburnt

to the roots of his fair hair, in his low-lying two-seater.

It was, at his pace, a short run eastward over sandy roads, lined with

stunted oaks and thick undergrowth of poison ivy, scrub and ferns;

characteristic Long Island country with here a group of small untidy

shacks and there a farm and outhouses with stone walls and scrap heaps,

clothes drying on a line, chickens on the ceaseless hunt and a line of

geese prowling aimlessly, easily set acackle,--a primitive

end-of-everywhere sort of country just there, with sometimes a mile of

half burned trees, whether done for a purpose or by accident it would

be difficult to say. At any rate, no one seemed to care. It all had the

look of No Man's Land,--unreclaimed and unreclaimable.

For a little while nothing was said. Out of a clear sky the sun beat

down upon the car and the brown sand of the narrow road. Many times the

boy shot sidelong glances at the silent girl beside him, burning to ask

questions about this husband who was never mentioned and who appeared

to him to be something of a myth and a mystery. He didn't love Joan,

because it had been mutually agreed that he shouldn't. But he held her

in the sort of devoted affection which, when it exists between a boy

and a girl, is very good and rare and even beautiful and puts them

close to the angels.

Presently, catching one of these deeply concerned glances, she put her

little shoulder against his shoulder in a sisterly way. "Go on, then,

Harry," she said. "Ask me about it. I know you want to know."

And he did. Somehow he felt that he ought to know, that he had the

right. After all he had stopped himself from loving her at her urgent

request, and their friendship was the best thing that he had ever

known. And he began with, "When did you do it?"

"Away back in history," she said, "or so it seems. It's really only a

few months."

"A few months! But you can hardly have been with him any time."

"I have never really been with him," she said. She wanted him to know

everything. Now that the wound was open again and Martin in possession

of her once more, she felt that she must talk about it all to some one,

and who could be better than Harry, who was so like a brother?

The boy couldn't believe that she meant what she implied but would have

bitten off his tongue rather than put a direct question. "Is he such a

rotter?" he asked instead.

"He's not a rotter. He's just Martin--generous, sensitive, dead

straight and as reliable as a liner. You and he were made in twin

molds."

He flushed with pleasure--but it was like meeting a new Joan, a

serious, laughterless Joan, with an odd little quiver in her voice and

tears behind her eyes. He felt a new sense of responsibility by being

confided in. Older, too. It was queer--this sudden switch from

thoughtless gaiety to something which was like illness in a house and

which made Joan almost unrecognizable.

He began again. "But then--" and stopped.

"I'm the rotter," she said. "It's because of me that he's in Devon and

I'm at Easthampton, that he's sailing with your cousin, and I'm playing

the fool with Gilbert. I was a kid, Harry, and thought I might go on

being a kid for a bit, and everything has gone wrong and all the blame

is mine."

"You're only a kid now," said Harry, trying to find excuses for her. He

resented her taking all the blame.

She shook her head. "No, I'm not. I'm only pretending to be. I came to

Easthampton to pretend to be. All the time you've known me I've been

pretending,--pretending to pretend. I ceased to be a kid before the

spring was over,--when I came face to face with something I had driven

Martin to do and it broke me. I've been bluffing since then,--bluffing

myself that I didn't care and that it wasn't my fault. I might have

kept it up a bit longer,--even to the end of the summer, but Gilbert

said something this morning that took the lynch pin out of the sham and

brought it all about my ears."

And there was another short silence,--if it could be called silence

with the whirring of the engine and the boy driving with the throttle

out.

"You care for him, then?" he asked finally, looking at her.

She nodded and the tears came.

It was a great shock to him, somehow; he couldn't quite say why. This

girl had, as she had said, played the fool with Gilbert,--led the man

on and teased him into desperation. He loathed the supercilious fellow

and didn't give a hang how much he suffered. Anyway, he was married and

ought to have known better. But what hit was the fact that all the

while she had loved this Martin of hers,--she, by whom he dated things,

who had given him a new point of view about girls and who was his own

very best pal. That was not up to her form and somehow hurt.

And she saw that it did and was deeply sorry and ashamed. Was she to

have a bad effect on every man she met? "I won't make excuses, Harry,"

she said. "They're so hopeless. But I want you to know that I sprang

into marriage before I'd given a thought to what it all meant, and I

took it as a lark, a chapter in my adventure, something that I could

easily stop and look at after I'd seen and done everything and was a

little breathless. I thought that Martin had gone into it in the same

spirit and that for the joke of the thing we were just going to play at

keeping house, as we might have played at being Indians away in the

woods. It was the easiest way out of a hole I was in and made it

possible for me not to creep back to my grandmother and take a whipping

like a dog. Do you understand?"

The boy nodded. He had seen her do things and heard her say things on

the spur of the moment that were almost as unbelievable.

His sympathy and quick perception were like water to her. And it was

indescribably good to be believed without incredulous side-looks and

suspicions, half-smiles such as Hosack would have given,--and some of

the others who had lost their fineness in the world.

"And when Martin,--who was to me then just what you are, Harry

dear,--came up to my room in his own particular natural way, I thought

it was hard luck to be taken so literally and not be left alone to find

my wings for a little. I had just escaped from a long term of

subjection, and I wanted to have the joy of being free--quite

absolutely free. Still not thinking, I sent him away and like a brick

he went, and I didn't suppose it really mattered to him, any more than

it did to me, and honestly if it had mattered it wouldn't have made any

difference because I had promised myself to hit it up and work off the

marks of my shackles and I was full of the 'Who Cares?' feeling. And

then Gilbert Palgrave came along and helped to turn my head. Oh, what a

perfect little fool I was, what a precocious, shallow, selfish little

fool. And while I was having what I imagined was a good time and seeing

life, Martin was wandering about alone, suffering from two things that

aren't good for boys,--injustice and ingratitude. And then of course I

woke up and saw things straight and knew his value, and when I went to

get him and begin all over again he wasn't mine. I'd lost him."

The boy's eyebrows contracted sharply. "What a beastly shame," he said,

"I mean for both of you." He included Martin because he liked him now,

reading between the lines. He must be an awfully decent chap who had

had a pretty bad time.

"Yes," said Joan, "it is, for both of us." And she was grateful to him

for such complete understanding,--grateful for Martin, too. They might

have been brothers, these boys. "But for you, Easthampton would have

been impossible," she added. "I don't mean the house or the place or

the sea, which is glorious. I mean from what I have forced myself to

do. I came down labelled 'Who Cares?' caring all the time, and just to

share my hurt with some one I've made Gilbert care too. He's in an ugly

mood. I feel that he'll make me pay some day--in full. But I'm not

afraid to be alone now and drop my bluff because I believe Martin is

waiting for me and is back in armor again with your cousin. And I

believe the old look will come into his eyes when he sees me, and he'll

hear me ask him to forgive and we'll go back and play at keeping house

in earnest. Harry, I believe that. Little as I deserve it I'm going to

have another chance given to me,--every mile we go I feel that! After

all, I'm awfully young and I've kept my slate clean and I ought to be

given another chance, oughtn't I?"

Harry nodded and presently brought the car to a stop under the shadow

of the little clubhouse. Half a dozen other cars were parked there, and

a colored chauffeur was sitting on the steps of the back entrance, fast

asleep with his chin on his chest. The small but vigorous orchestra was

playing a fox-trot on the far veranda, and the sound of shuffling feet

resembled that of a man cleaning something with sandpaper. There was an

army of flies on the screen door of the kitchen and on several

galvanized iron bins stuffed with ginger-ale bottles and orange peel.

"We'll leave the car here," said Harry, "and go and have a look for the

cottage. It'll be easy to find. There aren't many of 'em, if I remember

right."

Joan took his arm. She had begun to tremble. "Let's go this way first,"

she said, going the right way by instinct.

"If they're in," said Harry, "and I should guess they are.--there's no

wind,--I'll draw old Howard off for an hour or so."

"Yes, please do, Harry."

And they went up the sandy incline, over the thick undergrowth, and the

sun blazed down on the shining water, and half a dozen canvas-covered

catboats near the little pier. Several people were sitting on it in

bathing clothes, and some one was teaching a little girl to swim. The

echo of her gurgling laughter and little cries came to them clearly.

The sound of music and shuffling feet grew fainter and fainter.

Gardiner's Island lay up against the horizon like a long inflated sand

bag. There were crickets everywhere. Three or four large butterflies

gamboled in the shimmering air.

Away out, heading homewards, Martin's yawl, with Irene lying full

stretch on the roof of the cabin, and Howard whistling for a wind,

crept through the water, inch by inch.

With the tiller under one arm and a pipe in his mouth, long empty, sat

Martin, thinking about Joan. Hearing voices, Tootles looked up from a

book that she was trying to read. She had been lying in the hammock on

the stoop of Martin's cottage for an hour, waiting for Martin. It had

taken her a long time to do her hair and immense pains to satisfy

herself that she looked nice,--for Martin. Her plan was cut and dried

in her mind, and she had been killing time with all the impatience and

throbbing of nerves of one who had brought herself up to a crisis which

meant either success and joy, or failure and a drab world. She couldn't

bear to go through another day without bringing about a decision. She

felt that she had to jog Fate's elbow, whatever was to be the insult.

She had discovered from a casual remark of Howard's that Martin, those

hot nights, had taken to sleeping on the boat. Her plan, deliberately

conceived as a follow-up to what had happened out under the stars the

night before, was to swim out to it and wait for him in the cabin. She

knew, no one so well, that it was in the nature of a forlorn hope, but

she was desperate. She loved him intransitively, to the utter

extinction of the little light of modesty which her hand-to-mouth

existence had left burning. She wanted love or death, and she was going

to put up this last fight for love with all the unscrupulousness of a

lovesick woman.

She saw two people coming towards the cottage, a tall, fair, sun-tanned

youth, hatless and frank-eyed like Martin, and--

She got up. A cold hand seemed suddenly to have been placed on her

heart. Joan,--it was Joan, the girl who, once before, at Martin's

house, had sent the earth spinning from under her feet and put Martin

suddenly behind barbed wire. What hideous trick was this of Fate's? Why

was this moment the one chosen for the appearance of this girl,--his

wife? This moment,--her moment?

Fight? With tooth and nail, with all the cunning and ingenuity of a

member of the female species to protect what she regarded as her own.

She and her plan against the world,--that was what it was. Thank God,

Martin was not in sight. She had a free hand.

She had not been seen. A thick honeysuckle growing up the pillar had

hidden her. She slipped into the house quickly, her heart beating in

her throat. "I'll try this," said Harry. "Wait here." He left Joan

within a few feet of the stoop, went up the two steps, and not finding

a bell, knocked on the screen door. In less than an instant he saw the

girl with bobbed hair come forward. "I'm sorry to trouble you," he

said, with a little bow, "I thought Mr. Gray might live here," and

turned to go. Obviously it was the wrong house.

Very clearly and distinctly Tootles spoke. "Mr. Gray does live here.

I'm Mrs. Gray. Will you leave a message?"

Harry wheeled round. He felt that the bullet which had gone through his

back had lodged in Joan's heart. He opened his mouth to speak but no

word came. And Tootles spoke again, even more clearly and distinctly.

She intended that her voice should travel.

"My husband won't be back for several days," she said, "but I shall be

very glad to tell him that you called if you will leave your name."

"It--it doesn't matter," said Harry, stammering. After an irresolute,

unhappy pause, he turned to go--

He went straight to Joan. She was standing with her eyes shut and both

hands on her heart, as white as a white rose. She looked like a young

slim tree that had been struck by lightning.

"Joan," he said, "Joan," and touched her arm. There was no answer.

"Joan," he said, "Joany."

And with a little sob she tottered forward.

He caught her, blazing with anger that she had been so hurt,

inarticulate with indignation and a huge sympathy, and with the one

strong desire to get her away from that place, picked her up in his

arms,--a dead delicious weight,--and carried her down the incline of

sand and undergrowth to his car, put her in ever so gently, got in

himself, backed the machine out, turned it and drove away.

And Tootles, breathing hard and shaking, stood on the edge of the

stoop, and with tears streaming down her face, watched the car become a

speck and disappear.