“And you,--you never married, did you?” I inquired, somewhat

irrelevantly.

His semi-humorous gesture seemed to deny that such a luxury was for

him. The conversation dragged a little; I began to feel the curiosity he

invariably inspired. What was his life? What were his beliefs? And I was

possessed by a certain militancy, a desire to “smoke him out.” I did

not stop to reflect that mine was in reality a defensive rather than an

aggressive attitude.

“Do you live down here, in this part of the city?” I asked.

No, he boarded in Fowler Street. I knew it as in a district given over

to the small houses of working-men.

“I suppose you are still a socialist.”

“I suppose I am,” he admitted, and added, “at any rate, that is as near

as you can get to it.”

“Isn't it fairly definite?”

“Fairly, if my notions are taken in general as the antithesis of what

you fellows believe.”

“The abolition of property, for instance.”

“The abolition of too much property.”

“What do you mean by 'too much'?”

“When it ceases to be real to a man, when it represents more than his

need, when it drives him and he becomes a slave to it.”

Involuntarily I thought of my new house,--not a soothing reflection.

“But who is going to decree how much property, a man should have?”

“Nobody--everybody. That will gradually tend to work itself out as we

become more sensible and better educated, and understand more clearly

what is good for us.”

I retorted with the stock, common-sense phrase.

“If we had a division to-morrow, within a few years or so the most

efficient would contrive to get the bulk of it back in their hands.”

“That's so,” he admitted. “But we're not going to have a division

to-morrow.”

“Thank God!” I exclaimed.

He regarded me.

“The 'efficient' will have to die or be educated first. That will take

time.”

“Educated!”

“Paret, have you ever read any serious books on what you call

socialism?” he asked.

I threw out an impatient negative. I was going on to protest that I was

not ignorant of the doctrine.

“Oh, what you call socialism is merely what you believe to be the more

or less crude and utopian propaganda of an obscure political party.

That isn't socialism. Nor is the anomalistic attempt that the Christian

Socialists make to unite modern socialistic philosophy with Christian

orthodoxy, socialism.”

“What is socialism, then?” I demanded, somewhat defiantly.

“Let's call it education, science,” he said smilingly, “economics and

government based on human needs and a rational view of religion. It

has been taught in German universities, and it will be taught in ours

whenever we shall succeed in inducing your friends, by one means or

another, not to continue endowing them. Socialism, in the proper sense,

is merely the application of modern science to government.”

I was puzzled and angry. What he said made sense somehow, but it sounded

to me like so much gibberish.

“But Germany is a monarchy,” I objected.

“It is a modern, scientific system with monarchy as its superstructure.

It is anomalous, but frank. The monarchy is there for all men to see,

and some day it will be done away with. We are supposedly a democracy,

and our superstructure is plutocratic. Our people feel the burden, but

they have not yet discovered what the burden is.”

“And when they do?” I asked, a little defiantly.

“When they do,” replied Krebs, “they will set about making the

plutocrats happy. Now plutocrats are discontented, and never satisfied;

the more they get, the more they want, the more they are troubled by

what other people have.”

I smiled in spite of myself.

“Your interest in--in plutocrats is charitable, then?”

“Why, yes,” he said, “my interest in all kinds of people is charitable.

However improbable it may seem, I have no reason to dislike or envy

people who have more than they know what to do with.” And the worst of

it was he looked it. He managed somehow simply by sitting there with his

strange eyes fixed upon me--in spite of his ridiculous philosophy--to

belittle my ambitions, to make of small worth my achievements, to bring

home to me the fact that in spite of these I was neither contented nor

happy though he kept his humour and his poise, he implied an experience

that was far deeper, more tragic and more significant than mine. I was

goaded into making an injudicious remark.

“Well, your campaign against Ennerly and Jackson fell through, didn't

it?” Ennerly and Jackson were the city officials who had been tried.

“It wasn't a campaign against them,” he answered. “And considering the

subordinate part I took in it, it could scarcely be called mine.”

“Greenhalge turned to you to get the evidence.”

“Well, I got it,” he said.

“What became of it?”

“You ought to know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say, Paret,” he answered slowly. “You ought to know, if

anyone knows.”

I considered this a moment, more soberly. I thought I might have counted

on my fingers the number of men cognizant of my connection with the

case. I decided that he was guessing.

“I think you should explain that,” I told him.

“The time may come, when you'll have to explain it.”

“Is that a threat?” I demanded.

“A threat?” he repeated. “Not at all.”

“But you are accusing me--”

“Of what?” he interrupted suddenly.

He had made it necessary for me to define the nature of his charges.

“Of having had some connection with the affair in question.”

“Whatever else I may be, I'm not a fool,” he said quietly. “Neither the

district attorney's office, nor young Arbuthnot had brains enough to

get them out of that scrape. Jason didn't have influence enough with

the judiciary, and, as I happen to know, there was a good deal of money

spent.”

“You may be called upon to prove it,” I retorted, rather hotly.

“So I may.”

His tone, far from being defiant, had in it a note of sadness. I looked

at him. What were his potentialities? Was it not just possible that I

should have to revise my idea of him, acknowledge that he might become

more formidable than I had thought?

There was an awkward silence.

“You mustn't imagine, Paret, that I have any personal animus against

you, or against any of the men with whom you're associated,” he went on,

after a moment. “I'm sorry you're on that side, that's all,--I told

you so once before. I'm not calling you names, I'm not talking about

morality and immorality. Immorality, when you come down to it, is often

just the opposition to progress that comes from blindness. I don't

make the mistake of blaming a few individuals for the evils of modern

industrial society, and on the other hand you mustn't blame individuals

for the discomforts of what you call the reform movement, for that

movement is merely a symptom--a symptom of a disease due to a change

in the structure of society. We'll never have any happiness or real

prosperity until we cure that disease. I was inclined to blame you once,

at the capital that time, because it seemed to me that a man with all

the advantages you have had and a mind like yours didn't have much

excuse. But I've thought about it since; I realize now that I've had a

good many more 'advantages' than you, and to tell you the truth, I don't

see how you could have come out anywhere else than where you are,--all

your surroundings and training were against it. That doesn't mean that

you won't grasp the situation some day--I have an idea you will. It's

just an idea. The man who ought to be condemned isn't the man that

doesn't understand what's going on, but the man who comes to understand

and persists in opposing it.” He rose and looked down at me with the

queer, disturbing smile I remembered. “I get off at this corner,” he

added, rather diffidently. “I hope you'll forgive me for being personal.

I didn't mean to be, but you rather forced it on me.”

“Oh, that's all right,” I replied. The car stopped, and he hurried

off. I watched his tall figure as it disappeared among the crowd on the

sidewalk....

I returned to my office in one of those moods that are the more

disagreeable because conflicting. To-day in particular I had been

aroused by what Tom used to call Krebs's “crust,” and as I sat at my

desk warm waves of resentment went through me at the very notion of his

telling me that my view was limited and that therefore my professional

conduct was to be forgiven! It was he, the fanatic, who saw things in

the larger scale! an assumption the more exasperating because at the

moment he made it he almost convinced me that he did, and I was unable

to achieve for him the measure of contempt I desired, for the incident,

the measure of ridicule it deserved. My real animus was due to the fact

that he had managed to shake my self-confidence, to take the flavour out

of my achievements,--a flavour that was in the course of an hour to

be completely restored by one of those interesting coincidences

occasionally occurring in life. A young member of my staff entered with

a telegram; I tore it open, and sat staring at it a moment before I

realized that it brought to me the greatest honour of my career.

The Banker-Personality in New York had summoned me for consultation.

To be recognized by him conferred indeed an ennoblement, the Star and

Garter, so to speak, of the only great realm in America, that of high

finance; and the yellow piece of paper I held in my hand instantly

re-magnetized me, renewed my energy, and I hurried home to pack my

bag in order to catch the seven o'clock train. I announced the news to

Maude.

“I imagine it's because he knows I have made something of a study of the

coal roads situation,” I added.

“I'm glad, Hugh,” she said. “I suppose it's a great compliment.”

Never had her inadequacy to appreciate my career been more apparent! I

looked at her curiously, to realize once more with peculiar sharpness

how far we were apart; but now the resolutions I had made--and never

carried out--on that first Christmas in the new home were lacking.

Indeed, it was the futility of such resolutions that struck me at this

moment. If her manner had been merely one of indifference, it would in

a way have been easier to bear; she was simply incapable of grasping the

significance of the event, the meaning to me of the years of unceasing,

ambitious effort it crowned.

“Yes, it is something of a recognition,” I replied. “Is there anything

I can get for you in New York? I don't know how long I shall have

to stay--I'll telegraph you when I'm getting back.” I kissed her and

hurried out to the automobile. As I drove off I saw her still standing

in the doorway looking after me.... In the station I had a few minutes

to telephone Nancy.

“If you don't see me for a few days it's because I've gone to New York,”

I informed her.

“Something important, I'm sure.”

“How did you guess?” I demanded, and heard her laugh.

“Come back soon and tell me about it,” she said, and I walked,

exhilarated, to the train.... As I sped through the night, staring out

of the window into the darkness, I reflected on the man I was going to

see. But at that time, although he represented to me the quintessence

of achievement and power, I did not by any means grasp the many sided

significance of the phenomenon he presented, though I was keenly

aware of his influence, and that men spoke of him with bated breath.

Presidents came and went, kings and emperors had responsibilities and

were subject daily to annoyances, but this man was a law unto himself.

He did exactly what he chose, and compelled other men to do it. Wherever

commerce reigned,--and where did it not?--he was king and head of its

Holy Empire, Pope and Emperor at once. For he had his code of ethics,

his religion, and those who rebelled, who failed to conform, he

excommunicated; a code something like the map of Europe,--apparently

inconsistent in places. What I did not then comprehend was that he was

the American Principle personified, the supreme individual assertion of

the conviction that government should remain modestly in the background

while the efficient acquired the supremacy that was theirs by natural

right; nor had I grasped at that time the crowning achievement of a

unity that fused Christianity with those acquisitive dispositions said

to be inherent in humanity. In him the Lion and the Lamb, the Eagle and

the Dove dwelt together in amity and power.

New York, always a congenial place to gentlemen of vitality and means

and influential connections, had never appeared to me more sparkling,

more inspiring. Winter had relented, spring had not as yet begun. And

as I sat in a corner of the dining-room of my hotel looking out on the

sunlit avenue I was conscious of partaking of the vigour and confidence

of the well-dressed, clear-eyed people who walked or drove past my

window with the air of a conquering race. What else was there in the

world more worth having than this conquering sense? Religion might offer

charms to the weak. Yet here religion itself became sensible, and wore

the garb of prosperity. The stonework of the tall church on the corner

was all lace; and the very saints in their niches, who had known

martyrdom and poverty, seemed to have renounced these as foolish, and

to look down complacently on the procession of wealth and power..

Across the street, behind a sheet of glass, was a carrosserie where were

displayed the shining yellow and black panels of a closed automobile,

the cost of which would have built a farm-house and stocked a barn.

At eleven o'clock, the appointed hour, I was in Wall Street. Sending in

my name, I was speedily ushered into a room containing a table, around

which were several men; but my eyes were drawn at once to the figure of

the great banker who sat, massive and preponderant, at one end, smoking

a cigar, and listening in silence to the conversation I had interrupted.

He rose courteously and gave me his hand, and a glance that is

unforgettable.

“It is good of you to come, Mr. Paret,” he said simply, as though

his summons had not been a command. “Perhaps you know some of these

gentlemen.”

One of them was our United States Senator, Theodore Watling. He, as

it turned out, had been summoned from Washington. Of course I saw him

frequently, having from time to time to go to Washington on various

errands connected with legislation. Though spruce and debonnair as ever,

in the black morning coat he invariably wore, he appeared older than he

had on the day when I had entered his office. He greeted me warmly, as

always.

“Hugh, I'm glad to see you here,” he said, with a slight emphasis on the

last word. My legal career was reaching its logical climax, the climax

he had foreseen. And he added, to the banker, that he had brought me up.

“Then he was trained in a good school,” remarked that personage,

affably.

Mr. Barbour, the president of our Railroad, was present, and nodded to

me kindly; also a president of a smaller road. In addition, there were

two New York attorneys of great prominence, whom I had met. The banker's

own special lieutenant of the law, Mr. Clement T. Grolier, for whom I

looked, was absent; but it was forthwith explained that he was offering,

that morning, a resolution of some importance in the Convention of his

Church, but that he would be present after lunch.

“I have asked you to come here, Mr. Paret,” said the banker, “not only

because I know something personally of your legal ability, but because

I have been told by Mr. Scherer and Mr. Barbour that you happen to have

considerable knowledge of the situation we are discussing, as well as

some experience with cases involving that statute somewhat hazy to lay

minds, the Sherman anti-trust law.”

A smile went around the table. Mr. Watling winked at me; I nodded, but

said nothing. The banker was not a man to listen to superfluous words.

The keynote of his character was despatch....

The subject of the conference, like many questions bitterly debated and

fought over in their time, has in the year I write these words come to

be of merely academic interest. Indeed, the very situation we discussed

that day has been cited in some of our modern text-books as a classic

consequence of that archaic school of economics to which the name of

Manchester is attached. Some half dozen or so of the railroads running

through the anthracite coal region had pooled their interests,--an

extremely profitable proceeding. The public paid. We deemed it quite

logical that the public should pay--having been created largely for

that purpose; and very naturally we resented the fact that the meddling

Person who had got into the White House without asking anybody's

leave,--who apparently did not believe in the infallibility of our legal

Bible, the Constitution,--should maintain that the anthracite roads

had formed a combination in restraint of trade, should lay down

the preposterous doctrine--so subversive of the Rights of Man--that

railroads should not own coal mines. Congress had passed a law to meet

this contention, suit had been brought, and in the lower court the

government had won.

As the day wore on our numbers increased, we were joined by other

lawyers of renown, not the least of whom was Mr. Grolier himself, fresh

from his triumph over religious heresy in his Church Convention. The

note of the conference became tinged with exasperation, and certain

gentlemen seized the opportunity to relieve their pent-up feelings on

the subject of the President and his slavish advisers,--some of whom,

before they came under the spell of his sorcery, had once been sound

lawyers and sensible men. With the exception of the great Banker

himself, who made few comments, Theodore Watling was accorded the most

deference; as one of the leaders of that indomitable group of senators

who had dared to stand up against popular clamour, his opinions were

of great value, and his tactical advice was listened to with respect. I

felt more pride than ever in my former chief, who had lost none of his

charm. While in no way minimizing the seriousness of the situation, his

wisdom was tempered, as always, with humour; he managed, as it were,

to neutralize the acid injected into the atmosphere by other gentlemen

present; he alone seemed to bear no animus against the Author of our

troubles; suave and calm, good natured, he sometimes brought the company

into roars of laughter and even succeeded in bringing occasional

smiles to the face of the man who had summoned us--when relating some

characteristic story of the queer genius whom the fates (undoubtedly as

a practical joke) had made the chief magistrate of the United States of

America. All geniuses have weaknesses; Mr. Wading had made a study of

the President's, and more than once had lured him into an impasse.

The case had been appealed to the Supreme Court, and Mr. Wading, with

remarkable conciseness and penetration, reviewed the characteristics of

each and every member of that tribunal, all of whom he knew intimately.

They were, of course, not subject to “advice,” as were some of the

gentlemen who sat on our state courts; no sane and self-respecting

American would presume to “approach” them. Nevertheless they were human,

and it were wise to take account, in the conduct of the case, of the

probable bias of each individual.

The President, overstepping his constitutional, Newtonian limits, might

propose laws, Congress might acquiesce in them, but the Supreme Court,

after listening to lawyers like Grolier (and he bowed to the attorney),

made them: made them, he might have added, without responsibility to any

man in our unique Republic that scorned kings and apotheosized lawyers.

A Martian with a sense of humour witnessing a stormy session of Congress

would have giggled at the thought of a few tranquil gentlemen in another

room of the Capitol waiting to decide what the people's representatives

meant--or whether they meant anything....

For the first time since I had known Theodore Watling, however, I saw

him in the shadow of another individual; a man who, like a powerful

magnet, continually drew our glances. When we spoke, we almost

invariably addressed him, his rare words fell like bolts upon the

consciousness. There was no apparent rift in that personality.

When, about five o'clock, the conference was ended and we were

dismissed, United States Senator, railroad presidents, field-marshals of

the law, the great banker fell into an eager conversation with Grolier

over the Canon on Divorce, the subject of warm debate in the convention

that day. Grolier, it appeared, had led his party against the

theological liberals. He believed that law was static, but none knew

better its plasticity; that it was infallible, but none so well as he

could find a text on either side. His reputation was not of the popular,

newspaper sort, but was known to connoisseurs, editors, financiers,

statesmen and judges,--to those, in short, whose business it is to make

themselves familiar with the instruments of power. He was the banker's

chief legal adviser, the banker's rapier of tempered steel, sheathed

from the vulgar view save when it flashed forth on a swift errand.

“I'm glad to be associated with you in this case, Mr. Paret,” Mr.

Grolier said modestly, as we emerged into the maelstrom of Wall Street.

“If you can make it convenient to call at my office in the morning,

we'll go over it a little. And I'll see you in a day or two in

Washington, Watling. Keep your eye on the bull,” he added, with a

twinkle, “and don't let him break any more china than you can help. I

don't know where we'd be if it weren't for you fellows.”

By “you fellows,” he meant Mr. Watling's distinguished associates in the

Senate....

Mr. Watling and I dined together at a New York club. It was not a dinner

of herbs. There was something exceedingly comfortable about that club,

where the art of catering to those who had earned the right to be

catered to came as near perfection as human things attain. From the

great, heavily curtained dining-room the noises of the city had been

carefully excluded; the dust of the Avenue, the squalour and smells of

the brown stone fronts and laddered tenements of those gloomy districts

lying a pistol-shot east and west. We had a vintage champagne, and

afterwards a cigar of the club's special importation.

“Well,” said Mr. Watling, “mow that you're a member of the royal

council, what do you think of the King?”

“I've been thinking a great deal about him,” I said, and indeed it was

true. He had made, perhaps, his greatest impression when I had shaken

his hand in parting. The manner in which he had looked at me then had

puzzled me; it was as though he were seeking to divine something in

me that had escaped him. “Why doesn't the government take him over?” I

exclaimed.

Mr. Watling smiled.

“You mean, instead of his mines and railroads and other properties?”

“Yes. But that's your idea. Don't you remember you said something of

the kind the night of the election, years ago? It occurred to me to-day,

when I was looking at him.”

“Yes,” he agreed thoughtfully, “if some American genius could find a way

to legalize that power and utilize the men who created it the worst

of our problems would be solved. A man with his ability has a right to

power, and none would respond more quickly or more splendidly to a call

of the government than he. All this fight is waste, Hugh, damned

waste of the nation's energy.” Mr. Watling seldom swore. “Look at the

President! There's a man of remarkable ability, too. And those two

oughtn't to be fighting each other. The President's right, in a way.

Yes, he is, though I've got to oppose him.”

I smiled at this from Theodore Watling, though I admired him the more

for it. And suddenly, oddly, I happened to remember what Krebs had said,

that our troubles were not due to individuals, but to a disease that had

developed in industrial society. If the day should come when such men as

the President and the great banker would be working together, was it

not possible, too, that the idea of Mr. Watling and the vision of Krebs

might coincide? I was struck by a certain seeming similarity in their

views; but Mr. Watling interrupted this train of thought by continuing

to express his own.

“Well,--they're running right into a gale when they might be sailing

with it,” he said.

“You think we'll have more trouble?” I asked.

“More and more,” he replied. “It'll be worse before it's better I'm

afraid.” At this moment a club servant announced his cab, and he rose.

“Well, good-bye, my son,” he said. “I'll hope to see you in Washington

soon. And remember there's no one thinks any more of you than I do.”

I escorted him to the door, and it was with a real pang I saw him wave

to me from his cab as he drove away. My affection for him was never more

alive than in this hour when, for the first time in my experience, he

had given real evidence of an inner anxiety and lack of confidence in

the future.

XXI.

In spite of that unwonted note of pessimism from Mr. Watling, I went

home in a day or two flushed with my new honours, and it was

impossible not to be conscious of the fact that my aura of prestige was

increased--tremendously increased--by the recognition I had received. A

certain subtle deference in the attitude of the small minority who

owed allegiance to the personage by whom I had been summoned was more

satisfying than if I had been acclaimed at the station by thousands

of my fellow-citizens who knew nothing of my journey and of its

significance, even though it might have a concern for them. To men like

Berringer, Grierson and Tallant and our lesser great lights the banker

was a semi-mythical figure, and many times on the day of my return I was

stopped on the street to satisfy the curiosity of my friends as to

my impressions. Had he, for instance, let fall any opinions,

prognostications on the political and financial situation? Dickinson

and Scherer were the only other men in the city who had the honour of a

personal acquaintance with him, and Scherer was away, abroad, gathering

furniture and pictures for the house in New York Nancy had predicted,

and which he had already begun to build! With Dickinson I lunched in

private, in order to give him a detailed account of the conference. By

five o'clock I was ringing the door-bell of Nancy's new mansion on Grant

Avenue. It was several blocks below my own.

“Well, how does it feel to be sent for by the great sultan?” she

asked, as I stood before her fire. “Of course, I have always known that

ultimately he couldn't get along without you.”

“Even if he has been a little late in realizing it,” I retorted.

“Sit down and tell me all about him,” she commanded.

“I met him once, when Ham had the yacht at Bar Harbor.”

“And how did he strike you?”

“As somewhat wrapped up in himself,” said Nancy.

We laughed together.

“Oh, I fell a victim,” she went on. “I might have sailed off with him,

if he had asked me.”

“I'm surprised he didn't ask you.”

“I suspect that it was not quite convenient,” she said. “Women are

secondary considerations to sultans, we're all very well when they

haven't anything more serious to occupy them. Of course that's why they

fascinate us. What did he want with you, Hugh?”

“He was evidently afraid that the government would win the coal roads

suit unless I was retained.”

“More laurels!” she sighed. “I suppose I ought to be proud to know you.”

“That's exactly what I've been trying to impress on you all these

years,” I declared. “I've laid the laurels at your feet, in vain.”

She sat with her head back on the cushions, surveying me.

“Your dress is very becoming,” I said irrelevantly.

“I hoped it would meet your approval,” she mocked.

“I've been trying to identify the shade. It's elusive--like you.”

“Don't be banal.... What is the colour?”

“Poinsetta!”

“Pretty nearly,” she agreed, critically.

I took the soft crepe between my fingers.

“Poet!” she smiled. “No, it isn't quite poinsetta. It's nearer the

red-orange of a tree I remember one autumn, in the White Mountains,

with the setting sun on it. But that wasn't what we were talking about.

Laurels! Your laurels.”

“My laurels,” I repeated. “Such as they are, I fling them into your

lap.”

“Do you think they increase your value to me, Hugh?”

“I don't know,” I said thickly.

She shook her head.

“No, it's you I like--not the laurels.”

“But if you care for me--?” I began.

She lifted up her hands and folded them behind the knot of her hair.

“It's extraordinary how little you have changed since we were children,

Hugh. You are still sixteen years old, that's why I like you. If you got

to be the sultan of sultans yourself, I shouldn't like you any better,

or any worse.”

“And yet you have just declared that power appeals to you!”

“Power--yes. But a woman--a woman like me--wants to be first, or

nothing.”

“You are first,” I asserted. “You always have been, if you had only

realized it.”

She gazed up at me dreamily.

“If you had only realized it! If you had only realized that all I wanted

of you was to be yourself. It wasn't what you achieved. I didn't want

you to be like Ralph or the others.”

“Myself? What are you trying to say?”

“Yourself. Yes, that is what I like about you. If you hadn't been in

such a hurry--if you hadn't misjudged me so. It was the power in you,

the craving, the ideal in you that I cared for--not the fruits of it.

The fruits would have come naturally. But you forced them, Hugh, for

quicker results.”

“What kind of fruits?” I asked.

“Ah,” she exclaimed, “how can I tell what they might have been! You have

striven and striven, you have done extraordinary things, but have they

made you any happier? have you got what you want?”

I stooped down and seized her wrists from behind her head.

“I want you, Nancy,” I said. “I have always wanted you. You're more

wonderful to-day than you have ever been. I could find myself--with

you.”

She closed her eyes. A dreamy smile was on her face, and she lay

unresisting, very still. In that tremendous moment, for which it seemed

I had waited a lifetime, I could have taken her in my arms--and yet I

did not. I could not tell why: perhaps it was because she seemed to have

passed beyond me--far beyond--in realization. And she was so still!

“We have missed the way, Hugh,” she whispered, at last.

“But we can find it again, if we seek it together,” I urged.

“Ah, if I only could!” she said. “I could have once. But now I'm

afraid--afraid of getting lost.” Slowly she straightened up, her hands

falling into her lap. I seized them again, I was on my knees in front

of her, before the fire, and she, intent, looking down at me, into me,

through me it seemed--at something beyond which yet was me.

“Hugh,” she asked, “what do you believe? Anything?”

“What do I believe?”

“Yes. I don't mean any cant, cut-and-dried morality. The world is

getting beyond that. But have you, in your secret soul, any religion

at all? Do you ever think about it? I'm not speaking about

anything orthodox, but some religion--even a tiny speck of it, a

germ--harmonizing with life, with that power we feel in us we seek to

express and continually violate.”

“Nancy!” I exclaimed.

“Answer me--answer me truthfully,” she said....

I was silent, my thoughts whirling like dust atoms in a storm.

“You have always taken things--taken what you wanted. But they haven't

satisfied you, convinced you that that is all of life.”

“Do you mean--that we should renounce?” I faltered.

“I don't know what I mean. I am asking, Hugh, asking. Haven't you any

clew? Isn't there any voice in you, anywhere, deep down, that can tell

me? give me a hint? just a little one?”

I was wracked. My passion had not left me, it seemed to be heightened,

and I pressed her hands against her knees. It was incredible that my

hands should be there, in hers, feeling her. Her beauty seemed as fresh,

as un-wasted as the day, long since, when I despaired of her. And yet

and yet against the tumult and beating of this passion striving to throb

down thought, thought strove. Though I saw her as a woman, my senses and

my spirit commingled and swooned together.

“This is life,” I murmured, scarcely knowing what I said.

“Oh, my dear!” she cried, and her voice pierced me with pain, “are we to

be lost, overpowered, engulfed, swept down its stream, to come up below

drifting--wreckage? Where, then, would be your power? I'm not speaking

of myself. Isn't life more than that? Isn't it in us, too,--in you?

Think, Hugh. Is there no god, anywhere, but this force we feel,

restlessly creating only to destroy? You must answer--you must find

out.”

I cannot describe the pleading passion in her voice, as though hell and

heaven were wrestling in it. The woman I saw, tortured yet uplifted, did

not seem to be Nancy, yet it was the woman I loved more than life itself

and always had loved.

“I can't think,” I answered desperately, “I can only feel--and I

can't express what I feel. It's mixed, it's dim, and yet bright and

shining--it's you.”

“No, it's you,” she said vehemently. “You must interpret it.” Her voice

sank: “Could it be God?” she asked.

“God!” I exclaimed sharply.

Her hands fell away from mine.... The silence was broken only by the

crackling of the wood fire as a log turned over and fell. Never before,

in all our intercourse that I could remember, had she spoken to me about

religion.... With that apparent snap in continuity incomprehensible to

the masculine mind-her feminine mood had changed. Elements I had never

suspected, in Nancy, awe, even a hint of despair, entered into it,

and when my hand found hers again, the very quality of its convulsive

pressure seemed to have changed. I knew then that it was her soul I

loved most; I had been swept all unwittingly to its very altar.

“I believe it is God,” I said. But she continued to gaze at me, her lips

parted, her eyes questioning.

“Why is it,” she demanded, “that after all these centuries of certainty

we should have to start out to find him again? Why is it when something

happens like--like this, that we should suddenly be torn with doubts

about him, when we have lived the best part of our lives without so much

as thinking of him?”

“Why should you have qualms?” I said. “Isn't this enough? and doesn't it

promise--all?”

“I don't know. They're not qualms--in the old sense.” She smiled down

at me a little tearfully. “Hugh, do you remember when we used to go to

Sunday-school at Dr. Pound's church, and Mrs. Ewan taught us? I really

believed something then--that Moses brought down the ten commandments of

God from the mountain, all written out definitely for ever and ever. And

I used to think of marriage” (I felt a sharp twinge), “of marriage as

something sacred and inviolable,--something ordained by God himself. It

ought to be so--oughtn't it? That is the ideal.”

“Yes--but aren't you confusing--?” I began.

“I am confusing and confused. I shouldn't be--I shouldn't care if there

weren't something in you, in me, in our--friendship, something I can't

explain, something that shines still through the fog and the smoke in

which we have lived our lives--something which, I think, we saw clearer

as children. We have lost it in our hasty groping. Oh, Hugh, I couldn't

bear to think that we should never find it! that it doesn't really

exist! Because I seem to feel it. But can we find it this way, my dear?”

Her hand tightened on mine.

“But if the force drawing us together, that has always drawn us

together, is God?” I objected.

“I asked you,” she said. “The time must come when you must answer, Hugh.

It may be too late, but you must answer.”

“I believe in taking life in my own hands,” I said.

“It ought to be life,” said Nancy. “It--it might have been life.... It

is only when a moment, a moment like this comes that the quality of what

we have lived seems so tarnished, that the atmosphere which we ourselves

have helped to make is so sordid. When I think of the intrigues, and

divorces, the self-indulgences,--when I think of my own marriage--” her

voice caught. “How are we going to better it, Hugh, this way? Am I to

get that part of you I love, and are you to get what you crave in me?

Can we just seize happiness? Will it not elude us just as much as though

we believed firmly in the ten commandments?”

“No,” I declared obstinately.

She shook her head.

“What I'm afraid of is that the world isn't made that way--for you--for

me. We're permitted to seize those other things because they're just

baubles, we've both found out how worthless they are. And the worst

of it is they've made me a coward, Hugh. It isn't that I couldn't do

without them, I've come to depend on them in another way. It's because

they give me a certain protection,--do you see? they've come to stand in

the place of the real convictions we've lost. And--well, we've taken the

baubles, can we reach out our hands and take--this? Won't we be punished

for it, frightfully punished?”

“I don't care if we are,” I said, and surprised myself.

“But I care. It's weak, it's cowardly, but it's so. And yet I want to

face the situation--I'm trying to get you to face it, to realize how

terrible it is.”

“I only know that I want you above everything else in the world--I'll

take care of you--”

I seized her arms, I drew her down to me.

“Don't!” she cried. “Oh, don't!” and struggled to her feet and stood

before me panting. “You must go away now--please, Hugh. I can't bear any

more--I want to think.”

I released her. She sank into the chair and hid her face in her

hands....

As may be imagined, the incident I have just related threw my life

into a tangle that would have floored a less persistent optimist and

romanticist than myself, yet I became fairly accustomed to treading what

the old moralists called the devious paths of sin. In my passion I

had not hesitated to lay down the doctrine that the courageous and

the strong took what they wanted,--a doctrine of which I had been a

consistent disciple in the professional and business realm. A logical

buccaneer, superman, “master of life” would promptly have extended this

doctrine to the realm of sex. Nancy was the mate for me, and Nancy and

I, our development, was all that mattered, especially my development.

Let every man and woman look out for his or her development, and in the

end the majority of people would be happy. This was going Adam Smith one

better. When it came to putting that theory into practice, however,

one needed convictions: Nancy had been right when she had implied that

convictions were precisely what we lacked; what our world in general

lacked. We had desires, yes convictions, no. What we wanted we got not

by defying the world, but by conforming to it: we were ready to defy

only when our desires overcame the resistance of our synapses, and even

then not until we should have exhausted every legal and conventional

means.

A superman with a wife and family he had acquired before a great passion

has made him a superman is in rather a predicament, especially if he

be one who has achieved such superhumanity as he possesses not by

challenging laws and conventions, but by getting around them. My wife

and family loved me; and paradoxically I still had affection for them,

or thought I had. But the superman creed is, “be yourself, realize

yourself, no matter how cruel you may have to be in order to do so.” One

trouble with me was that remnants of the Christian element of pity still

clung to me. I would be cruel if I had to, but I hoped I shouldn't have

to: something would turn up, something in the nature of an intervening

miracle that would make it easy for me. Perhaps Maude would take the

initiative and relieve me.... Nancy had appealed for a justifying

doctrine, and it was just what I didn't have and couldn't evolve. In the

meanwhile it was quite in character that I should accommodate myself to

a situation that might well be called anomalous.

This “accommodation” was not unaccompanied by fever. My longing to

realize my love for Nancy kept me in a constant state of tension--of

“nerves”; for our relationship had merely gone one step farther, we

had reached a point where we acknowledged that we loved each other, and

paradoxically halted there; Nancy clung to her demand for new sanctions

with a tenacity that amazed and puzzled and often irritated me. And yet,

when I look back upon it all, I can see that some of the difficulty

lay with me: if she had her weakness--which she acknowledged--I had

mine--and kept it to myself. It was part of my romantic nature not to

want to break her down. Perhaps I loved the ideal better than the woman

herself, though that scarcely seems possible.

We saw each other constantly. And though we had instinctively begun to

be careful, I imagine there was some talk among our acquaintances. It is

to be noted that the gossip never became riotous, for we had always

been friends, and Nancy had a saving reputation for coldness. It seemed

incredible that Maude had not discovered my secret, but if she knew

of it, she gave no sign of her knowledge. Often, as I looked at her, I

wished she would. I can think of no more expressive sentence in regard

to her than the trite one that she pursued the even tenor of her way;

and I found the very perfection of her wifehood exasperating. Our

relationship would, I thought, have been more endurable if we had

quarrelled. And yet we had grown as far apart, in that big house, as

though we had been separated by a continent; I lived in my apartments,

she in hers; she consulted me about dinner parties and invitations; for,

since we had moved to Grant Avenue, we entertained and went out more

than before. It seemed as though she were making every effort consistent

with her integrity and self-respect to please me. Outwardly she

conformed to the mould; but I had long been aware that inwardly a person

had developed. It had not been a spontaneous development, but one in

resistance to pressure; and was probably all the stronger for that

reason. At times her will revealed itself in astonishing and unexpected

flashes, as when once she announced that she was going to change

Matthew's school.

“He's old enough to go to boarding-school,” I said. “I'll look up a

place for him.”

“I don't wish him to go to boarding-school yet, Hugh,” she said quietly.

“But that's just what he needs,” I objected. “He ought to have the

rubbing-up against other boys that boarding-school will give him.

Matthew is timid, he should have learned to take care of himself. And he

will make friendships that will help him in a larger school.”

“I don't intend to send him,” Maude said.

“But if I think it wise?”

“You ought to have begun to consider such things many years ago. You

have always been too--busy to think of the children. You have left them

to me. I am doing the best I can with them.”

“But a man should have something to say about boys. He understands

them.”

“You should have thought of that before.”

“They haven't been old enough.”

“If you had taken your share of responsibility for them, I would listen

to you.”

“Maude!” I exclaimed reproachfully.

“No, Hugh,” she went on, “you have been too busy making money. You have

left them to me. It is my task to see that the money they are to inherit

doesn't ruin them.”

“You talk as though it were a great fortune,” I said.

But I did not press the matter. I had a presentiment that to press it

might lead to unpleasant results.

It was this sense of not being free, of having gained everything but

freedom that was at times galling in the extreme: this sense of living

with a woman for whom I had long ceased to care, a woman with a baffling

will concealed beneath an unruffled and serene exterior. At moments I

looked at her across the table; she did not seem to have aged much: her

complexion was as fresh, apparently, as the day when I had first walked

with her in the garden at Elkington; her hair the same wonderful colour;

perhaps she had grown a little stouter. There could be no doubt about

the fact that her chin was firmer, that certain lines had come into her

face indicative of what is called character. Beneath her pliability she

was now all firmness; the pliability had become a mockery. It cannot

be said that I went so far as to hate her for this,--when it was in my

mind,--but my feelings were of a strong antipathy. And then again there

were rare moments when I was inexplicably drawn to her, not by love and

passion; I melted a little in pity, perhaps, when my eyes were opened

and I saw the tragedy, yet I am not referring now to such feelings as

these. I am speaking of the times when I beheld her as the blameless

companion of the years, the mother of my children, the woman I was used

to and should--by all canons I had known--have loved....

And there were the children. Days and weeks passed when I scarcely

saw them, and then some little incident would happen to give me an

unexpected wrench and plunge me into unhappiness. One evening I came

home from a long talk with Nancy that had left us both wrought up, and

I had entered the library before I heard voices. Maude was seated under

the lamp at the end of the big room reading from “Don Quixote”; Matthew

and Biddy were at her feet, and Moreton, less attentive, at a little

distance was taking apart a mechanical toy. I would have tiptoed out,

but Biddy caught sight of me.

“It's father!” she cried, getting up and flying to me.

“Oh, father, do come and listen! The story's so exciting, isn't it,

Matthew?”

I looked down into the boy's eyes shining with an expression that

suddenly pierced my heart with a poignant memory of myself. Matthew was

far away among the mountains and castles of Spain.

“Matthew,” demanded his sister, “why did he want to go fighting with all

those people?”

“Because he was dotty,” supplied Moreton, who had an interesting habit

of picking up slang.

“It wasn't at all,” cried Matthew, indignantly, interrupting Maude's

rebuke of his brother.

“What was it, then?” Moreton demanded.

“You wouldn't understand if I told you,” Matthew was retorting, when

Maude put her hand on his lips.

“I think that's enough for to-night,” she said, as she closed the book.

“There are lessons to do--and father wants to read his newspaper in

quiet.”

This brought a protest from Biddy.

“Just a little more, mother! Can't we go into the schoolroom? We shan't

disturb father there.”

“I'll read to them--a few minutes,” I said.

As I took the volume from her and sat down Maude shot at me a swift look

of surprise. Even Matthew glanced at me curiously; and in his glance I

had, as it were, a sudden revelation of the boy's perplexity concerning

me. He was twelve, rather tall for his age, and the delicate modelling

of his face resembled my father's. He had begun to think.. What did he

think of me?

Biddy clapped her hands, and began to dance across the carpet.

“Father's going to read to us, father's going to read to us,” she cried,

finally clambering up on my knee and snuggling against me.

“Where is the place?” I asked.

But Maude had left the room. She had gone swiftly and silently.

“I'll find it,” said Moreton.

I began to read, but I scarcely knew what I was reading, my fingers

tightening over Biddy's little knee....

Presently Miss Allsop, the governess, came in. She had been sent by

Maude. There was wistfulness in Biddy's voice as I kissed her good

night.

“Father, if you would only read oftener!” she said, “I like it when you

read--better than anyone else.”....

Maude and I were alone that night. As we sat in the library after our

somewhat formal, perfunctory dinner, I ventured to ask her why she had

gone away when I had offered to read.

“I couldn't bear it, Hugh,” she answered.

“Why?” I asked, intending to justify myself.

She got up abruptly, and left me. I did not follow her. In my heart I

understood why....

Some years had passed since Ralph's prophecy had come true, and Perry

and the remaining Blackwoods had been “relieved” of the Boyne

Street line. The process need not be gone into in detail, being the

time-honoured one employed in the Ribblevale affair of “running down”

the line, or perhaps it would be better to say “showing it up.” It

had not justified its survival in our efficient days, it had held

out--thanks to Perry--with absurd and anachronous persistence against

the inevitable consolidation. Mr. Tallant's newspaper had published

many complaints of the age and scarcity of the cars, etc.; and alarmed

holders of securities, in whose vaults they had lain since time

immemorial, began to sell.... I saw little of Perry in those days, as I

have explained, but one day I met him in the Hambleton Building, and he

was white.

“Your friends are doing thus, Hugh,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Undermining the reputation of a company as sound as any in this city,

a company that's not overcapitalized, either. And we're giving better

service right now than any of your consolidated lines.”...

He was in no frame of mind to argue with; the conversation was

distinctly unpleasant. I don't remember what I said something to the

effect that he was excited, that his language was extravagant. But after

he had walked off and left me I told Dickinson that he ought to be given

a chance, and one of our younger financiers, Murphree, went to Perry and

pointed out that he had nothing to gain by obstruction; if he were only

reasonable, he might come into the new corporation on the same terms

with the others.

All that Murphree got for his pains was to be ordered out of the office

by Perry, who declared that he was being bribed to desert the other

stockholders.

“He utterly failed to see the point of view,” Murphree reported in some

astonishment to Dickinson.

“What else did he say?” Mr. Dickinson asked.

Murphree hesitated.

“Well--what?” the banker insisted.

“He wasn't quite himself,” said Murphree, who was a comparative newcomer

in the city and had a respect for the Blackwood name. “He said that that

was the custom of thieves: when they were discovered, they offered to

divide. He swore that he would get justice in the courts.”

Mr. Dickinson smiled....

Thus Perry, through his obstinacy and inability to adapt himself to new

conditions, had gradually lost both caste and money. He resigned from

the Boyne Club. I was rather sorry for him. Tom naturally took the

matter to heart, but he never spoke of it; I found that I was seeing

less of him, though we continued to dine there at intervals, and he

still came to my house to see the children. Maude continued to see

Lucia. For me, the situation would have been more awkward had I been

less occupied, had my relationship with Maude been a closer one. Neither

did she mention Perry in those days. The income that remained to him

being sufficient for him and his family to live on comfortably, he began

to devote most of his time to various societies of a semipublic nature

until--in the spring of which I write his activities suddenly became

concentrated in the organization of a “Citizens Union,” whose avowed

object was to make a campaign against “graft” and political corruption

the following autumn. This announcement and the call for a mass-meeting

in Kingdon Hall was received by the newspapers with a good-natured

ridicule, and in influential quarters it was generally hinted that this

was Mr. Blackwood's method of “getting square” for having been deprived

of the Boyne Street line. It was quite characteristic of Ralph Hambleton

that he should go, out of curiosity, to the gathering at Kingdon Hall,

and drop into my office the next morning.

“Well, Hughie, they're after you,” he said with a grin.

“After me? Why not include yourself?”

He sat down and stretched his long legs and his long arms, and smiled as

he gaped.

“Oh, they'll never get me,” he said. And I knew, as I gazed at him, that

they never would.

“What sort of things did they say?” I asked.

“Haven't you read the Pilot and the Mail and State?”

“I just glanced over them. Did they call names?”

“Call names! I should say they did. They got drunk on it, worked

themselves up like dervishes. They didn't cuss you personally,--that'll

come later, of course. Judd Jason got the heaviest shot, but they

said he couldn't exist a minute if it wasn't for the 'respectable'

crowd--capitalists, financiers, millionaires and their legal tools. Fact

is, they spoke a good deal of truth, first and last, in a fool kind of

way.”

“Truth!” I exclaimed irritatedly.

Ralph laughed. He was evidently enjoying himself.

“Is any of it news to you, Hughie, old boy?”

“It's an outrage.”

“I think it's funny,” said Ralph. “We haven't had such a circus for

years. Never had. Of course I shouldn't like to see you go behind the

bars,--not that. But you fellows can't expect to go on forever skimming

off the cream without having somebody squeal sometime. You ought to be

reasonable.”

“You've skimmed as much cream as anybody else.”

“You've skimmed the cream, Hughie,--you and Dickinson and Scherer and

Grierson and the rest,--I've only filled my jug. Well, these fellows

are going to have a regular roof-raising campaign, take the lid off of

everything, dump out the red-light district some of our friends are so

fond of.”

“Dump it where?” I asked curiously.

“Oh,” answered Ralph, “they didn't say. Out into the country, anywhere.”

“But that's damned foolishness,” I declared.

“Didn't say it wasn't,” Ralph admitted. “They talked a lot of that, too,

incidentally. They're going to close the saloons and dance halls and

make this city sadder than heaven. When they get through, it'll all be

over but the inquest.”

“What did Perry do?” I asked.

“Well, he opened the meeting,--made a nice, precise, gentlemanly speech.

Greenhalge and a few young highbrows and a reformed crook named Harrod

did most of the hair-raising. They're going to nominate Greenhalge for

mayor; and he told 'em something about that little matter of the school

board, and said he would talk more later on. If one of the ablest

lawyers in the city hadn't been hired by the respectable crowd and a lot

of other queer work done, the treasurer and purchasing agent would be

doing time. They seemed to be interested, all right.”

I turned over some papers on my desk, just to show Ralph that he hadn't

succeeded in disturbing me.

“Who was in the audience? anyone you ever heard of?” I asked.

“Sure thing. Your cousin Robert Breck; and that son-in-law of

his--what's his name? And some other representatives of our oldest

families,--Alec Pound. He's a reformer now, you know. They put him on

the resolutions committee. Sam Ogilvy was there, he'd be classed as

respectably conservative. And one of the Ewanses. I could name a few

others, if you pressed me. That brother of Fowndes who looks like an

up-state minister. A lot of women--Miller Gorse's sister, Mrs. Datchet,

who never approved of Miller. Quite a genteel gathering, I give you my

word, and all astonished and mad as hell when the speaking was over.

Mrs. Datchet said she had been living in a den of iniquity and vice, and

didn't know it.”

“It must have been amusing,” I said.

“It was,” said Ralph. “It'll be more amusing later on. Oh, yes, there

was another fellow who spoke I forgot to mention--that queer Dick who

was in your class, Krebs, got the school board evidence, looked as if

he'd come in by freight. He wasn't as popular as the rest, but he's got

more sense than all of them put together.”

“Why wasn't he popular?”

“Well, he didn't crack up the American people,--said they deserved all

they got, that they'd have to learn to think straight and be straight

before they could expect a square deal. The truth was, they secretly

envied these rich men who were exploiting their city, and just as long

as they envied them they hadn't any right to complain of them. He was

going into this campaign to tell the truth, but to tell all sides of

it, and if they wanted reform, they'd have to reform themselves first. I

admired his nerve, I must say.”

“He always had that,” I remarked. “How did they take it?”

“Well, they didn't like it much, but I think most of them had a respect

for him. I know I did. He has a whole lot of assurance, an air of

knowing what he's talking about, and apparently he doesn't give a

continental whether he's popular or not. Besides, Greenhalge had cracked

him up to the skies for the work he'd done for the school board.”

“You talk as if he'd converted you,” I said.

Ralph laughed as he rose and stretched himself.

“Oh, I'm only the intelligent spectator, you ought to know that by this

time, Hughie. But I thought it might interest you, since you'll have to

go on the stump and refute it all. That'll be a nice job. So long.”

And he departed. Of course I knew that he had been baiting me, his scent

for the weaknesses of his friends being absolutely fiendish. I was angry

because he had succeeded,--because he knew he had succeeded. All the

morning uneasiness possessed me, and I found it difficult to concentrate

on the affairs I had in hand. I felt premonitions, which I tried in vain

to suppress, that the tide of the philosophy of power and might

were starting to ebb: I scented vague calamities ahead, calamities I

associated with Krebs; and when I went out to the Club for lunch

this sense of uneasiness, instead of being dissipated, was increased.

Dickinson was there, and Scherer, who had just got back from Europe; the

talk fell on the Citizens Union, which Scherer belittled with an air of

consequence and pompousness that struck me disagreeably, and with an

eye newly critical I detected in him a certain disintegration,

deterioration. Having dismissed the reformers, he began to tell of his

experiences abroad, referring in one way or another to the people of

consequence who had entertained him.

“Hugh,” said Leonard Dickinson to me as we walked to the bank together,

“Scherer will never be any good any more. Too much prosperity. And he's

begun to have his nails manicured.”

After I had left the bank president an uncanny fancy struck me that in

Adolf Scherer I had before me a concrete example of the effect of my

philosophy on the individual....

Nothing seemed to go right that spring, and yet nothing was absolutely

wrong. At times I became irritated, bewildered, out of tune, and unable

to understand why. The weather itself was uneasy, tepid, with long

spells of hot wind and dust. I no longer seemed to find refuge in my

work. I was unhappy at home. After walking for many years in confidence

and security along what appeared to be a certain path, I had suddenly

come out into a vague country in which it was becoming more and more

difficult to recognize landmarks. I did not like to confess this; and

yet I heard within me occasional whispers. Could it be that I, Hugh

Paret, who had always been so positive, had made a mess of my life?

There were moments when the pattern of it appeared to have fallen apart,

resolved itself into pieces that refused to fit into each other.

Of course my relationship with Nancy had something to do with this....

One evening late in the spring, after dinner, Maude came into the

library.

“Are you busy, Hugh?” she asked.

I put down my newspapers.

“Because,” she went on, as she took a chair near the table where I was

writing, “I wanted to tell you that I have decided to go to Europe, and

take the children.”

“To Europe!” I exclaimed. The significance of the announcement failed at

once to register in my brain, but I was aware of a shock.

“Yes.”

“When?” I asked.

“Right away. The end of this month.”

“For the summer?”

“I haven't decided how long I shall stay.”

I stared at her in bewilderment. In contrast to the agitation I felt

rising within me, she was extraordinarily calm, unbelievably so.

“But where do you intend to go in Europe?”

“I shall go to London for a month or so, and after that to some quiet

place in France, probably at the sea, where the children can learn

French and German. After that, I have no plans.”

“But--you talk as if you might stay indefinitely.”

“I haven't decided,” she repeated.

“But why--why are you doing this?”

I would have recalled the words as soon as I had spoken them. There

was the slightest unsteadiness in her voice as she replied:--“Is it

necessary to go into that, Hugh? Wouldn't it be useless as well as a

little painful? Surely, going to Europe without one's husband is not an

unusual thing in these days. Let it just be understood that I want to

go, that the children have arrived at an age when it will do them good.”

I got up and began to walk up and down the room, while she watched me

with a silent calm which was incomprehensible. In vain I summoned my

faculties to meet it.

I had not thought her capable of such initiative.

“I can't see why you want to leave me,” I said at last, though with

a full sense of the inadequacy of the remark, and a suspicion of its

hypocrisy.

“That isn't quite true,” she answered. “In the first place, you don't

need me. I am not of the slightest use in your life, I haven't been a

factor in it for years. You ought never to have married me,--it was all

a terrible mistake. I began to realize that after we had been married

a few months--even when we were on our wedding trip. But I was too

inexperienced--perhaps too weak to acknowledge it to myself. In the last

few years I have come to see it plainly. I should have been a fool if I

hadn't. I am not your wife in any real sense of the word, I cannot hold

you, I cannot even interest you. It's a situation that no woman with

self-respect can endure.”

“Aren't those rather modern sentiments, for you, Maude?” I said.

She flushed a little, but otherwise retained her remarkable composure.

“I don't care whether they are 'modern' or not, I only know that my

position has become impossible.”

I walked to the other end of the room, and stood facing the carefully

drawn curtains of the windows; fantastically, they seemed to represent

the impasse to which my mind had come. Did she intend, ultimately, to

get a divorce? I dared not ask her. The word rang horribly in my ears,

though unpronounced; and I knew then that I lacked her courage, and the

knowledge was part of my agony.

I turned.

“Don't you think you've overdrawn things, Maude exaggerated them? No

marriages are perfect. You've let your mind dwell until it has become

inflamed on matters which really don't amount to much.”

“I was never saner, Hugh,” she replied instantly. And indeed I was

forced to confess that she looked it. That new Maude I had seen emerging

of late years seemed now to have found herself; she was no longer the

woman I had married,--yielding, willing to overlook, anxious to please,

living in me.

“I don't influence you, or help you in any way. I never have.”

“Oh, that's not true,” I protested.

But she cut me short, going on inexorably:--“I am merely your

housekeeper, and rather a poor one at that, from your point of view. You

ignore me. I am not blaming you for it--you are made that way. It's

true that you have always supported me in luxury,--that might have been

enough for another woman. It isn't enough for me--I, too, have a life to

live, a soul to be responsible for. It's not for my sake so much as for

the children's that I don't want it to be crushed.”

“Crushed!” I repeated.

“Yes. You are stifling it. I say again that I'm not blaming you, Hugh.

You are made differently from me. All you care for, really, is your

career. You may think that you care, at times, for--other things, but it

isn't so.”

I took, involuntarily, a deep breath. Would she mention Nancy? Was it in

reality Nancy who had brought about this crisis? And did Maude suspect

the closeness of that relationship?

Suddenly I found myself begging her not to go; the more astonishing

since, if at any time during the past winter this solution had presented

itself to me as a possibility, I should eagerly have welcomed it! But

should I ever have had the courage to propose a separation? I even

wished to delude myself now into believing that what she suggested was

in reality not a separation. I preferred to think of it as a trip.... A

vision of freedom thrilled me, and yet I was wracked and torn. I had an

idea that she was suffering, that the ordeal was a terrible one for

her; and at that moment there crowded into my mind, melting me, incident

after incident of our past.

“It seems to me that we have got along pretty well together, Maude. I

have been negligent--I'll admit it. But I'll try to do better in the

future. And--if you'll wait a month or so, I'll go to Europe with you,

and we'll have a good time.”

She looked at me sadly,--pityingly, I thought.

“No, Hugh, I've thought it all out. You really don't want me. You only

say this because you are sorry for me, because you dislike to have your

feelings wrung. You needn't be sorry for me, I shall be much happier

away from you.”

“Think it over, Maude,” I pleaded. “I shall miss you and the children. I

haven't paid much attention to them, either, but I am fond of them, and

depend upon them, too.”

She shook her head.

“It's no use, Hugh. I tell you I've thought it all out. You don't care

for the children, you were never meant to have any.”

“Aren't you rather severe in your judgments?”

“I don't think so,” she answered. “I'm willing to admit my faults, that

I am a failure so far as you are concerned. Your ideas of life and mine

are far apart.”

“I suppose,” I exclaimed bitterly, “that you are referring to my

professional practices.”

A note of weariness crept into her voice. I might have known that she

was near the end of her strength.

“No, I don't think it's that,” she said dispassionately. “I prefer to

put it down, that part of it, to a fundamental difference of ideas. I

do not feel qualified to sit in judgment on that part of your life,

although I'll admit that many of the things you have done, in common

with the men with whom you are associated, have seemed to me unjust and

inconsiderate of the rights and feelings of others. You have alienated

some of your best friends. If I were to arraign you at all, it would be

on the score of heartlessness. But I suppose it isn't your fault, that

you haven't any heart.”

“That's unfair,” I put in.

“I don't wish to be unfair,” she replied. “Only, since you ask me, I

have to tell you that that is the way it seems to me. I don't want

to introduce the question of right and wrong into this, Hugh, I'm not

capable of unravelling it; I can't put myself into your life, and see

things from your point of view, weigh your problems and difficulties. In

the first place, you won't let me. I think I understand you, partly--but

only partly. You have kept yourself shut up. But why discuss it? I have

made up my mind.”

The legal aspect of the matter occurred to me. What right had she to

leave me? I might refuse to support her. Yet even as these thoughts came

I rejected them; I knew that it was not in me to press this point. And

she could always take refuge with her father; without the children, of

course. But the very notion sickened me. I could not bear to think of

Maude deprived of the children. I had seated myself again at the table.

I put my hand to my forehead.

“Don't make it hard, Hugh,” I heard her say, gently. “Believe me, it

is best. I know. There won't be any talk about it,--right away, at any

rate. People will think it natural that I should wish to go abroad for

the summer. And later--well, the point of view about such affairs has

changed. They are better understood.”

She had risen. She was pale, still outwardly composed,--but I had a

strange, hideous feeling that she was weeping inwardly.

“Aren't you coming back--ever?” I cried.

She did not answer at once.

“I don't know,” she said, “I don't know,” and left the room abruptly....

I wanted to follow her, but something withheld me. I got up and walked

around the room in a state of mind that was near to agony, taking one

of the neglected books out of the shelves, glancing at its meaningless

print, and replacing it; I stirred the fire, opened the curtains and

gazed out into the street and closed them again. I looked around me,

a sudden intensity of hatred seized me for this big, silent, luxurious

house; I recalled Maude's presentiment about it. Then, thinking I might

still dissuade her, I went slowly up the padded stairway--to find her

door locked; and a sense of the finality of her decision came over me. I

knew then that I could not alter it even were I to go all the lengths of

abjectness. Nor could I, I knew, have brought myself to have feigned a

love I did not feel.

What was it I felt? I could not define it. Amazement, for one thing,

that Maude with her traditional, Christian view of marriage should have

come to such a decision. I went to my room, undressed mechanically and

got into bed....

She gave no sign at the breakfast table of having made the decision of

the greatest moment in our lives; she conversed as usual, asked about

the news, reproved the children for being noisy; and when the children

had left the table there were no tears, reminiscences, recriminations.

In spite of the slight antagonism and envy of which I was

conscious,--that she was thus superbly in command of the situation,

that she had developed her pinions and was thus splendidly able to use

them,--my admiration for her had never been greater. I made an effort

to achieve the frame of mind she suggested: since she took it so calmly,

why should I be tortured by the tragedy of it? Perhaps she had ceased to

love me, after all! Perhaps she felt nothing but relief. At any rate,

I was grateful to her, and I found a certain consolation, a sop to my

pride in the reflection that the initiative must have been hers to take.

I could not have deserted her.

“When do you think of leaving?” I asked.

“Two weeks from Saturday on the Olympic, if that is convenient for you.”

Her manner seemed one of friendly solicitude. “You will remain in the

house this summer, as usual, I suppose?”

“Yes,” I said.

It was a sunny, warm morning, and I went downtown in the motor almost

blithely. It was the best solution after all, and I had been a fool to

oppose it.... At the office, there was much business awaiting me;

yet once in a while, during the day, when the tension relaxed, the

recollection of what had happened flowed back into my consciousness.

Maude was going!

I had telephoned Nancy, making an appointment for the afternoon.

Sometimes--not too frequently--we were in the habit of going out into

the country in one of her motors, a sort of landaulet, I believe, in

which we were separated from the chauffeur by a glass screen. She was

waiting for me when I arrived, at four; and as soon as we had shot clear

of the city, “Maude is going away,” I told her.

“Going away?” she repeated, struck more by the tone of my voice than by

what I had said.

“She announced last night that she was going abroad indefinitely.”

I had been more than anxious to see how Nancy would take the news. A

flush gradually deepened in her cheeks.

“You mean that she is going to leave you?”

“It looks that way. In fact, she as much as said so.”

“Why?” said Nancy.

“Well, she explained it pretty thoroughly. Apparently, it isn't a sudden

decision,” I replied, trying to choose my words, to speak composedly as

I repeated the gist of our conversation. Nancy, with her face averted,

listened in silence--a silence that continued some time after I had

ceased to speak.

“She didn't--she didn't mention--?” the sentence remained unfinished.

“No,” I said quickly, “she didn't. She must know, of course, but I'm

sure that didn't enter into it.”

Nancy's eyes as they returned to me were wet, and in them was an

expression I had never seen before,--of pain, reproach, of questioning.

It frightened me.

“Oh, Hugh, how little you know!” she cried.

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“That is what has brought her to this decision--you and I.”

“You mean that--that Maude loves me? That she is jealous?” I don't know

how I managed to say it.

“No woman likes to think that she is a failure,” murmured Nancy.

“Well, but she isn't really,” I insisted. “She could have made another

man happy--a better man. It was all one of those terrible mistakes our

modern life seems to emphasize so.”

“She is a woman,” Nancy said, with what seemed a touch of vehemence.

“It's useless to expect you to understand.... Do you remember what I

said to you about her? How I appealed to you when you married to try to

appreciate her?”

“It wasn't that I didn't appreciate her,” I interrupted, surprised that

Nancy should have recalled this, “she isn't the woman for me, we aren't

made for each other. It was my mistake, my fault, I admit, but I don't

agree with you at all, that we had anything to do with her decision. It

is just the--the culmination of a long period of incompatibility. She

has come to realize that she has only one life to live, and she seems

happier, more composed, more herself than she has ever been since our

marriage. Of course I don't mean to say it isn't painful for her....

But I am sure she isn't well, that it isn't because of our seeing one

another,” I concluded haltingly.

“She is finer than either of us, Hugh,--far finer.”

I did not relish this statement.

“She's fine, I admit. But I can't see how under the circumstances any of

us could have acted differently.” And Nancy not replying, I continued:

“She has made up her mind to go,--I suppose I could prevent it by taking

extreme measures,--but what good would it do? Isn't it, after all,

the most sensible, the only way out of a situation that has become

impossible? Times have changed, Nancy, and you yourself have been the

first to admit it. Marriage is no longer what it was, and people

are coming to look upon it more sensibly. In order to perpetuate the

institution, as it was, segregation, insulation, was the only course.

Men segregated their wives, women their husbands,--the only logical

method of procedure, but it limited the individual. Our mothers and

fathers thought it scandalous if husband or wife paid visits alone. It

wasn't done. But our modern life has changed all that. A marriage, to be

a marriage, should be proof against disturbing influences, should leave

the individuals free; the binding element should be love, not the force

of an imposed authority. You seemed to agree to all this.”

“Yes, I know,” she admitted. “But I cannot think that happiness will

ever grow out of unhappiness.”

“But Maude will not be unhappy,” I insisted. “She will be happier, far

happier, now that she has taken the step.”

“Oh, I wish I thought so,” Nancy exclaimed. “Hugh, you always believe

what you want to believe. And the children. How can you bear to part

with them?”

I was torn, I had a miserable sense of inadequacy.

“I shall miss them,” I said. “I have never really appreciated them. I

admit I don't deserve to have them, and I am willing to give them up for

you, for Maude...”

We had made one of our favourite drives among the hills on the far side

of the Ashuela, and at six were back at Nancy's house. I did not go

in, but walked slowly homeward up Grant Avenue. It had been a trying

afternoon. I had not expected, indeed, that Nancy would have rejoiced,

but her attitude, her silences, betraying, as they did, compunctions,

seemed to threaten our future happiness.

XXII.

One evening two or three days later I returned from the office to gaze

up at my house, to realize suddenly that it would be impossible for me

to live there, in those great, empty rooms, alone; and I told Maude that

I would go to the Club--during her absence. I preferred to keep up

the fiction that her trip would only be temporary. She forbore from

contradicting me, devoting herself efficiently to the task of closing

the house, making it seem, somehow, a rite,--the final rite in her

capacity as housewife. The drawing-room was shrouded, and the library;

the books wrapped neatly in paper; a smell of camphor pervaded the

place; the cheerful schoolroom was dismantled; trunks and travelling

bags appeared. The solemn butler packed my clothes, and I arranged for

a room at the Club in the wing that recently had been added for the

accommodation of bachelors and deserted husbands. One of the ironies of

those days was that the children began to suggest again possibilities of

happiness I had missed--especially Matthew. With all his gentleness, the

boy seemed to have a precocious understanding of the verities, and the

capacity for suffering which as a child I had possessed. But he had more

self-control. Though he looked forward to the prospect of new scenes and

experiences with the anticipation natural to his temperament, I thought

he betrayed at moments a certain intuition as to what was going on.

“When are you coming over, father?” he asked once. “How soon will your

business let you?”

He had been brought up in the belief that my business was a tyrant.

“Oh, soon, Matthew,--sometime soon,” I said.

I had a feeling that he understood me, not intellectually, but

emotionally. What a companion he might have been!... Moreton and Biddy

moved me less. They were more robust, more normal, less introspective

and imaginative; Europe meant nothing to them, but they were frankly

delighted and excited at the prospect of going on the ocean, asking

dozens of questions about the great ship, impatient to embark.....

“I shan't need all that, Hugh,” Maude said, when I handed her a letter

of credit. “I--I intend to live quite simply, and my chief expenses

will be the children's education. I am going to give them the best, of

course.”

“Of course,” I replied. “But I want you to live over there as you have

been accustomed to live here. It's not exactly generosity on my part,--I

have enough, and more than enough.”

She took the letter.

“Another thing--I'd rather you didn't go to New York with us, Hugh. I

know you are busy--”

“Of course I'm going,” I started to protest.

“No,” she went on, firmly. “I'd rather you didn't. The hotel people will

put me on the steamer very comfortably,--and there are other reasons

why I do not wish it.” I did not insist.... On the afternoon of her

departure, when I came uptown, I found her pinning some roses on her

jacket.

“Perry and Lucia sent them,” she informed me. She maintained the

friendly, impersonal manner to the very end; but my soul, as we drove

to the train, was full of un-probed wounds. I had had roses put in

her compartments in the car; Tom and Susan Peters were there with more

roses, and little presents for the children. Their cheerfulness seemed

forced, and I wondered whether they suspected that Maude's absence would

be prolonged.

“Write us often, and tell us all about it, dear,” said Susan, as she

sat beside Maude and held her hand; Tom had Biddy on his knee. Maude was

pale, but smiling and composed.

“I hope to get a little villa in France, near the sea,” she said. “I'll

send you a photograph of it, Susan.”

“And Chickabiddy, when she comes back, will be rattling off French like

a native,” exclaimed Tom, giving her a hug.

“I hate French,” said Biddy, and she looked at him solemnly. “I wish you

were coming along, Uncle Tom.”

Bells resounded through the great station. The porter warned us off. I

kissed the children one by one, scarcely realizing what I was doing. I

kissed Maude. She received my embrace passively.

“Good-bye, Hugh,” she said.

I alighted, and stood on the platform as the train pulled out. The

children crowded to the windows, but Maude did not appear.... I found

myself walking with Tom and Susan past hurrying travellers and porters

to the Decatur Street entrance, where my automobile stood waiting.

“I'll take you home, Susan,” I said.

“We're ever so much obliged, Hugh,” she answered, “but the street-cars

go almost to ferry's door. We're dining there.”

Her eyes were filled with tears, and she seemed taller, more ungainly

than ever--older. A sudden impression of her greatness of heart was

borne home to me, and I grasped the value of such rugged friendship as

hers--as Tom's.

“We shouldn't know how to behave in an automobile,” he said, as though

to soften her refusal. And I stood watching their receding figures as

they walked out into the street and hailed the huge electric car that

came to a stop beyond them. Above its windows was painted “The Ashuela

Traction Company,” a label reminiscent of my professional activities.

Then I heard the chauffeur ask:--“Where do you wish to go, sir?”

“To the Club,” I said.

My room was ready, my personal belongings, my clothes had been laid out,

my photographs were on the dressing-table. I took up, mechanically, the

evening newspaper, but I could not read it; I thought of Maude, of the

children, memories flowed in upon me,--a flood not to be dammed....

Presently the club valet knocked at my door. He had a dinner card.

“Will you be dining here, sir?” he inquired.

I went downstairs. Fred Grierson was the only man in the dining-room.

“Hello, Hugh,” he said, “come and sit down. I hear your wife's gone

abroad.”

“Yes,” I answered, “she thought she'd try it instead of the South Shore

this summer.”

Perhaps I imagined that he looked at me queerly. I had made a great deal

of money out of my association with Grierson, I had valued very highly

being an important member of the group to which he belonged; but

to-night, as I watched him eating and drinking greedily, I hated him

even as I hated myself. And after dinner, when he started talking with a

ridicule that was a thinly disguised bitterness about the Citizens Union

and their preparations for a campaign I left him and went to bed.

Before a week had passed my painful emotions had largely subsided, and

with my accustomed resiliency I had regained the feeling of self-respect

so essential to my happiness. I was free. My only anxiety was for Nancy,

who had gone to New York the day after my last talk with her; and it was

only by telephoning to her house that I discovered when she was expected

to return.... I found her sitting beside one of the open French windows

of her salon, gazing across at the wooded hills beyond the Ashuela. She

was serious, a little pale; more exquisite, more desirable than ever;

but her manner implied the pressure of control, and her voice was not

quite steady as she greeted me.

“You've been away a long time,” I said.

“The dressmakers,” she answered. Her colour rose a little. “I thought

they'd never get through.”

“But why didn't you drop me a line, let me know when you were coming?”

I asked, taking a chair beside her, and laying my hand on hers. She drew

it gently away.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

“I've been thinking it all over--what we're doing. It doesn't seem

right, it seems terribly wrong.”

“But I thought we'd gone over all that,” I replied, as patiently as I

could. “You're putting it on an old-fashioned, moral basis.”

“But there must be same basis,” she urged. “There are responsibilities,

obligations--there must be!--that we can't get away from. I can't help

feeling that we ought to stand by our mistakes, and by our bargains;

we made a choice--it's cheating, somehow, and if we take this--what we

want--we shall be punished for it.”

“But I'm willing to be punished, to suffer, as I told you. If you loved

me--”