CHAPTER I.

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BACILLUS

OF

BEAUTY

_A Romance of To-day_

_BY_

HARRIET STARK

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

Book I: _The Broken Chrysalis:_

I. THE METAMORPHOSIS

II. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD

III. THE HORNETS' NEST

IV. THE GODDESS AND THE MOB

V. A HIGH-CLASS CONCERT

Book II: _The Birth of the Butterfly:_

I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT

II. A SUNDAY-SCHOOL LESSON

III. THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE

IV. GIRL BACHELOR AND BIOLOGIST

V. THE FINDING OF THE BACILLUS

VI. THE GREAT CHANGE

VII. THE COMING OF THE LOVER

Book III: _The Joy of the Sunshine:_

I. CHRISTMAS

II. A LOOKING OVER BY THE PACK

III. SNARLING AT THE COUNCIL ROCK

IV. IN THE INTERESTS OF MUSIC

V. A PLAGUE OF REPORTERS

VI. LOVE IS NOTHING

VII. LOVE IS ALL

VIII. A LITTLE BELATED EARL

BOOK IV: _The Bruising of the Wings:_

I. THE KISS THAT LIED

II. THE IRONY OF LIFE

III. THE SUDDENNESS OF DEATH

IV. SOME REMARKS ABOUT CATS

V. THE LOVE OF LORD STRATHAY

VI. LITTLE BROWN PARTRIDGES

VII. LETTERS AND SCIENCE

VIII. A CHAPERON ON A CATTLE TRAIN

IX. A BURST OF SUNLIGHT

X. PLIGHTED TROTH

BOOK V: _The End of the Beginning:_

I. THE DEEDS OF THE FARM

II. CADGE'S ASSIGNMENT

III. "P.P.C."

BOOK I.

THE BROKEN CHRYSALIS.

_(From the Shorthand Notes of John Burke.)_

THE BACILLUS OF BEAUTY

CHAPTER I.

THE METAMORPHOSIS.

NEW YORK, Sunday, Dec. 16.

I am going to set down as calmly and fully as I can a plain statement

of all that has happened since I came to New York.

I shall not trim details, nor soften the facts to humour my own

amazement, nor try to explain the marvel that I do not pretend to

understand.

I begin at the beginning--at the plunge into fairy tale and miracle

that I made, after living twenty-five years of baldest prose, when I

met Helen Winship here.

Why, I had dragged her to school on a sled when she was a child. I

watched her grow up. For years I saw her nearly every day at the State

University in the West that already seems so unreal, so far away, I

loved her.

Man, I knew her face better than I knew my own! Yet when I met her

here--when I saw my promised wife, who had kissed me good-by only last

June--I did not recognise her. I looked full into her great eyes and

thought she was a stranger; hesitated even when she called my name.

It's a miracle! Or a lie, or a wild dream; or I am going crazy. The

thing will not be believed. And yet it's true.

This is my calmness! If I could but think it might be a tremendous

blunder out of which I would sometime wake into verity! But there has

been no mistake; I have not been dreaming unless I am dreaming now.

As distinctly as I see the ugly street below, I remember everything

that has befallen me since my train pulled into Jersey City last

Thursday morning. I remember as one does who is served by sharpened

senses. Only once in a fellow's lifetime can he look upon New York for

the first time--and to me New York meant Helen. Everything was vividly

impressed upon my mind.

I crossed the Cortlandt Street ferry and walked up Broadway, wondering

what Helen would say if I called before breakfast. I could scarcely

wait. I stopped in front of St. Paul's Church, gaping up at a

twenty-six story building opposite; a monstrous shaft with a gouge out

of its south side as if lightning had rived off a sliver. I went over

to it and saw that I had come to Ann Street, where Barnum's museum used

to stand. The Post Office, the City Hall, the restaurant where I ate

breakfast, studying upon the wall the bible texts and signs bidding me

watch my hat and overcoat; the _Tribune_ building, just as it looks on

the almanac cover--all these made an instant, deep impression. Not in

the least like a dream.

By the statue of Horace Greeley I stood a moment irresolute. I knew

that, before I could reach her, Helen would have left her rooms for

Barnard College; breakfast had been a mistake. Then I noticed that

Nassau Street was just opposite; and, in spite of my impatience to be

at her door, I constrained myself to look up Judge Baker.

Between its Babel towers narrow Nassau Street was like a canyon. The

pavements were wet, for folks had just finished washing windows, though

it was eight o'clock in the forenoon. Bicycles zipped past and from

somewhere north a freshet of people flooded the sidewalk and roadway.

Down a steep little hill and up another--both thronged past belief--and

in a great marble maze of lawyers' offices I found the sign of Baker &

Magoun.

The boy who alone represented the firm said that I might have to wait

some minutes, and turned me loose to browse in the big, high-ceiled

outer room or library of the place where I am to work. After the dim

corridors it was a blaze of light. On all sides were massive

bookshelves; the doorways gave glimpses of other rooms, fine with rugs

and pictures and heavy desks, different enough from the plain fittings

of the country lawyers' workshops I had known. The carpet sank under my

feet as I went to the window.

I stood looking at the Jersey hills, blue and fair in the distance, and

dreaming of Helen, who was to bless and crown my good fortune, when I

heard a step at the door and a young man came in--a tall, blonde,

supple fellow not much older than I. Then the Judge appeared,

ponderous, slow of tread, immaculate of dress; the same, unless his

iron-gray locks have retreated yet farther from his wall of a brow,

that I have remembered him from boyhood.

"Burke!" he said, "I am glad to see you. Welcome to New York and to

this office, my boy!"

The grasp of his big warm hand was as good as the words and the eyes

beneath his heavy gray brows were full of kindness as, holding both my

hands in his, he drew me toward the young man who had preceded him.

With a winning smile the latter turned.

"Hynes," said the Judge, with a heartiness that made one forget his

formal manner, "you have heard me speak of Burke's father, the boyhood

companion with whom, when the finny tribes were eager, I sometimes

strayed from the strait and narrow path that led to school. Burke,

Hynes is the sportsman here--our tiger-slayer. He beards in their lairs

those Tammany ornaments of the bench whom the flippant term 'necessity

Judges,' because of their slender acquaintance with the law."

"Glad to see you, Burke," said Hynes, as dutifully we laughed together

at the time-honoured jest.

I knew from the look of him that he was a good fellow, and he had an

honest grip; though out where I come from we might call him a dude. All

New Yorkers seem to dress pretty well.

Presently Managing Clerk Crosby came, and Mr. Magoun, as lean, brusque

and mosquito-like as his partner is elephantine; and after a few words

with them I was called into the Judge's private room, where a great

lump rose in my throat when I tried, and miserably failed, to thank him

for all his great kindness.

"Consider, if it pleases you," he said, to put me quite at my ease,

"that I have proposed our arrangement, not so much on your own account

as because I loved your father and must rely upon his son. It brings

back my youth to speak his name--your name, Johnny Burke!"

Yes, I remember the words, I remember the tremour in the kind voice and

the mist of unshed tears through which he looked at me. I'm not

dreaming; sometimes I wish I were, almost.

When I left the Judge, of course I pasted right up to Union Square,

though I felt sure that Helen would be at college. No. 2 proved to be a

dingy brick building with wigs and armour and old uniforms and grimy

pictures in the windows, and above them the signs of a "dental parlour"

and a school for theatrical dancing.

It seemed an odd place in which to look for Nelly, but I pounded up the

worn stairs--dressmakers' advertisements on every riser--until I

reached the top floor, where a meal-bag of a woman whose head was tied

up in a coloured handkerchief confronted me with dustpan and broom.

"I'm the new leddy scrubwoman, and not afther knowin' th' names av th'

tinants," she said, "but av ut's a gir-rul ye're seekin', sure they's

two av thim in there, an' both out, I'm thinkin'."

I pushed a note for Nelly under the door she indicated--it bore the

cards of "Miss Helen Winship" and "Miss Kathryn Reid"--and hurried away

to look up this gem of a hall bedroom where I am writing; you could

wear it on a watch chain, but I pay $3 a week for it. The landlady

would board me for $8, but regular dinners at restaurants are only

twenty-five cents; good, too. And anybody can breakfast for fifteen.

Then I went back to Union Square, where I hung about, looking at the

statues. Once I walked as far as Tammany Hall and rushed back again to

watch Helen's door. Finally I sat down on a bench from which I could

see her windows; and there in the brief December sunlight, with the

little oasis around me green even in winter, and the roar of Dead Man's

Curve just far enough away, I suppose I spent almost the happiest

moments of my life.

I was looking at Nelly's picture, taken in cap and gown just before she

graduated last June. My Nelly! Nelly as she used to be before this

strange thing happened; eager-eyed, thin with over-study and rapid

growth. Nelly, whose bright face, swept by so many lights and shadows

of expression, sensitive to so many shifting moods, I loved and yearned

for. Nearly six months we'd been apart, but at last I had followed to

New York to claim her. As I sat smiling at the dream pictures the dear

face evoked, my brain was busy with thoughts of the new home we would

together build. I'd hoard every penny, I planned; I'd walk to save

car-fare, practice all economies--

Wasn't that a face at her window?

I reached the top landing again, three steps at a time; but the voice

that said "Come!" was not Helen's and the figure that turned from

pulling at the shades was short and rolypoly and crowned by flaming red

hair.

"Miss Winship?" said the voice, as its owner seated herself at a big

table. "Can't imagine what's, keeping her. Are you the John Burke I've

heard so much about? And--perhaps Helen has written to you of Kitty

Reid?"

Without waiting for a reply, she bent over the table, scratching with a

knife at a sheet of bold drawings of bears.

"You won't mind my keeping right on?" she queried briskly, lifting a

rosy, freckled face. "This is the animal page of the Sunday _Star_ and

Cadge is in a hurry for it, to do the obbligato."

I suppose I must have looked the puzzlement I felt, for she added

hastily:--

"The text, you know; a little cool rill of it to trickle down through

the page like a fine, thin strain of music that--that helps out the

song--tee-e-e-um; tee-e-e-um--" She lifted her arm, sawing with a long

ruler at a violin of air,--"but you don't have to listen unless you

wish--to the obbligato, you know."

"Doesn't the writer think the pictures the unobtrusive embroidery of

the violin, and the writing the magic melody one cannot choose but

hear?"

I thought that rather neat for my first day in New York, but the shrewd

blue eyes opened wide at the heresy.

"Why, no; of course Cadge knows it's the pictures that count; everybody

knows that."

A writing-table jutted into the room from a second window, backing

against Miss Reid's. On its flap lay German volumes on biology and a

little treatise in English about "Advanced Methods of Imbedding,

Sectioning and Staining." The window ledge held a vase of willow and

alder twigs, whose buds appeared to be swelling. Beside it was a glass

of water in which seeds were sprouting on a floating island of cotton

wool.

"Admiring Helen's forest?" came the voice from the desk. "I'm afraid

there's only second growth timber left; she carried away the great

redwoods and all the giants of the wilderness this morning. Are you

interested in zoology? Sometimes, since I have been living with Helen,

I have wished more than anything else to find out, What is protoplasm?

Do you happen to know?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Neither does Helen--nor any one else."

Miss Reid's merry ways are infectious. I'm glad Helen is rooming with a

nice girl.

The place was shabby enough, with cracked and broken ceiling, marred

woodwork and stained wall paper; but etchings, foreign photographs,

sketches put up with thumb tacks and bright hangings made it odd and

attractive. On a low couch piled with cushions lay Helen's mandolin and

a banjo. A plaster cast of some queer animal roosted on the mantel,

craning its neck down towards the fireplace.

"That's the Notre Dame devil," Miss Reid said, following my glance;

"the other is the Lincoln Cathedral devil." She nodded at a

wide-mouthed imp, clawing at a door-top. "Don't you just adore

gargoyles?"

"Yes; that is--very much," I stammered, wandering back to Helen's desk.

And then!

And then I heard quick steps outside. They reached the door and paused.

I looked up eagerly. "There's Helen now," said Miss Reid; "or else

Cadge."

A tall girl burst into the room, dropping an armful of books, and

sprang to Miss Reid.

"Kitty! Kitty!" she cried, in a voice of wonderful music. "Two camera

fiends! One in front of the college, the other by the elevated station;

waiting for me to pass, I do believe! And such crowds! They followed

me! Look! Look! Down in the Square!"

CHAPTER II.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD.

Both girls ran to the window. Miss Reid laughed teasingly. "I see

nobody--or all the world; it's much the same," she said; "but you have

a caller."

I rose from behind the desk with some confused, trivial thought that I

ought to have spent part of the afternoon getting my hair cut.

I had had but a glimpse of the new comer in her flight across the

floor; I knew she had scarlet lips and shining eyes; that youth and joy

and unimagined beauty had entered with her like a burst of sunlight and

flooded the room. I felt, rather than saw, that she had turned from the

window and was looking at me, curiously at first, then smiling. Her

smile had bewildered me when she opened the door; it was a soft,

flashing light that shone from her face and blessed the air. She seemed

surrounded by an aureole.

But she--how could this wonderful girl know me?--she surely was

smiling! She was coming towards me. She was putting out her hands. That

glorious voice was speaking.

"John! Is it you? I'm so glad!" it said.

Had I read about her? Had I seen her picture? Had Helen described her

in a letter? Was she Cadge? No; not altogether a stranger; somewhere

before I had seen--or dreamed--

"John," she persisted. "Why didn't you write? I thought you were coming

next week. Did you plan to surprise me?"

Miss Reid must have made a mistake, I felt; I must explain that I was

waiting for Helen. But I could not speak; I could only gape, choking

and giddy. I did not speak when the bright vision seemed to take the

hands I had not offered. I could feel the blood beat in my neck. I

could not think; and yet I knew that a real woman stood before me,

albeit unlike all the other women that ever lived in the world; and

that something surprised and perplexed her. The smile still curved her

lips; I felt myself grin in idiotic imitation.

"What is the matter?" the radiant stranger persisted. "You act as if--"

The smile grew sunnier; it rippled to a laugh that was merriment set to

music.

"John! John Burke!" she said, giving my hands a little, impatient

shake, just as Nelly used to do. "It isn't possible! Don't you--why,

you goose! Don't you know me?"

"Helen!"

Of course! I had known her from the beginning! A man couldn't be in the

same room with Nelly Winship and feel just as if she were any other

girl. But she was not Helen at all--that radiant impossibility! And yet

she was. Or she said so, and my heart agreed. But when I would have

drawn her to me, she stepped back in lovely confusion, with a fluttered

question:--

"How long have you been here, John?"

That voice! Sweet, fresh; full of exquisite cadences such as one might

hear in dreams and ever after yearn for--from the first it had baffled

me more than the beautiful face. It was not Helen's. What a blunder!

I gazed at her, still giddy. Who was she? I could not trust the

astounding recognition. She returned the look, bending towards me,

seeking as eagerly, I saw with confused wonderment, to read my thought

as I to fathom hers. Then, as some half knowledge grew to certainty,

the light of her beauty became a glory; she seemed transfigured by a

mighty joy such as no other woman could ever have felt.

An instant she stood motionless, the sunshine of her eyes still on me.

Then, drawing a long breath, she turned away, pulling the pins out of

her feathered hat with hands that trembled.

I watched the process with the strained attention one gives at crucial

moments to nothings. I laughed out of sheer inanity; every pulse in my

body was throbbing. She lifted the hat from her shining head. She put

it down. She unfastened her coat. In a minute she would turn again, and

I should once more see that face imbued with light and fire. I waited

for her voice.

"I'm sure of it!" she cried, wheeling about of a sudden, with a laugh

like caressing music, and confronting me again. "You didn't know me,

John; did you?"

"Why didn't I know you?" I gasped. "Why are you glad I don't know you?

What does it all mean, Helen?"

Instead of answering she laughed again. It was the happiest joy-song in

the world. A mirthful goddess might have trilled it--a laugh like

sunshine and flowers and chasing cloud shadows on waving grass.

"Helen Winship, stop it! Stop this masquerade!" I shouted, not knowing

what I did.

"But I--I'm afraid I can't, John."

The glorious face brimmed with mischief. In vain the Woman Perfect

struggled to subdue her mirth to penitence.

"I--I'm so glad to see you, John. Won't you--won't you sit down and let

Kitty give you some tea?"

Tea! At that moment!

Clattering little blue and white cups and saucers, Miss Reid recalled

herself to my remembrance. I had forgotten that she was in the room. I

suspect that she dared not lift her head for fear I might see the

laughter in her eyes.

"I've made it extra strong, Mr. Burke," she managed to say, "because

I'm starting for the _Star_ office to find the photo-engravers routing

the noses and toeses off all my best beastesses."

"Kitty thinks all photo-engravers the embodiment of original sin," said

the Shining One. "They clip her bears' claws."

"Well," returned Miss Reid, making a flat parcel of her drawings, "this

is the den of Beauty and the beasts, and the beasts must be worthy of

Beauty. Mr. Burke, don't you know from what county of fairyland Helen

hails? Is she the Maiden Snow-white--but no; see her blush--or the

Princess Marvel? And if she's Cinderella, can't we have a peep at the

fairy godmother? Cadge will call her nothing but 'H. the M.'--short for

'Helen the Magnificent.' And--and--oh, isn't she!"

"Kathryn!"

Before that grieved organ-tone of reproach, Kitty's eyes filled. I

could have wept at the greatness and the beauty of it, but the little

artist laughed through her tears.

"Helen Eliza, I repent," she said. "Time to be good, Mr. Burke, when

she says 'Kathryn.'"

Adjusting her hat before a glass, Kitty hummed with a voice that tried

not quaver:--

"Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Am I most beautiful of all?

"Queen, thou art not the fairest now;

Snow-white over the mountain's brow

A thousand times fairer is than thou.

"Poor Queen; poor all of us. I'm good, Helen," she repeated, whisking

out of the room.

"Such a chatterbox!" the goddess said. "But, John, am I really so much

altered? Is it true that--just at first, you know, of course--you

didn't know me?"

She bent on me the breathless look I had seen before. In her eagerness,

it was as if the halo of joy that surrounded her were quivering.

"I know you now; you are my Helen!"

Again I would have caught her in my arms; but she moved uneasily.

"Wait--I--you haven't told me," she stammered; "I--I want to talk to

you, John."

She put out a hand as if to fend me off, then let it fall. A sudden

heart sickness came upon me. It was not her words, not the movement

that chilled me, but the paling of the wonderful light of her face, the

look that crept over it, as if I had startled a nymph to flight. I was

angry with my clumsy self that I should have caused that look, and

yet--from my own Helen, not this lovely, poising creature that hardly

seemed to touch the earth--I should have had a different greeting!

I gazed at her from where I stood, then I turned to the window. The

rattle of street cars came up from below. A child was sitting on the

bench where I had sat and feasted my eyes upon the flutter of Helen's

curtains. My numb brain vaguely speculated whether that child could see

me. The sun had gone, the square was wintry.

After a long minute Helen followed me.

"John," she said, "I am so glad to see you; but I--I want to tell you.

Everything here is so new, I--I don't--"

It must all be true; I remember her exact words. They came slowly,

hesitated, stopped.

"Are you--what do you mean, Helen?"

"Let me tell you; let me think. Don't--please don't be angry."

Through the fog that enveloped me I felt her distress and smarted from

the wrong I did so beautiful a creature.

"I--I didn't expect you so soon," the music sighed pleadingly. "I--we

mustn't hurry about--what we used to talk of. New York is so

different!--Oh, but it isn't that! How shall I make you understand?"

"I understand enough," I said dully; "or rather--Great Heavens!--I

understand nothing; nothing but that--you are taking back your promise,

aren't you? Or Helen's promise; whose was it?"

I could not feel as if I were speaking to my sweetheart. The figure

before me wore her pearl-set Kappa key--the badge of her college

fraternity; it wore, too, a trim, dark blue dress--Helen's favourite

colour and mine--but there resemblance seemed to stop.

Confused as I still was by the glory I gazed on, I began painfully

comparing the Nelly I remembered and the Helen I had found. My Helen

was not quite so tall, but at twenty girls grow. She did not sway with

the yielding grace of a young white birch; but she was slim and

straight, and girlish angles round easily to curves. Though I felt a

subtle and wondrous change, I could not trace or track the miracle.

My Helen had blue-gray eyes; this Helen's eyes might, in some lights,

be blue-gray; they seemed of as many tints as the sea. They were dark,

luminous and velvet soft as they watched my struggle. A few minutes

earlier they had been of extraordinary brilliancy.

My Helen had soft brown hair, like and how unlike these fragrant locks

that lay in glinting waves with life and sparkle in every thread!

My Helen's face was expressive, piquantly irregular. The face into

which I looked lured me at moments with a haunting resemblance; but the

brow was lower and wider, the nose straighter, the mouth more subtly

modelled. It was a face Greek in its perfection, brightened by western

force and softened by some flitting touch of sensuousness and mysticism.

My Helen blushed easily, but otherwise had little colour. This Helen

had a baby's delicate skin, with rose-flushed cheeks and red, red lips.

When she spoke or smiled, she seemed to glow with an inner radiance

that had nothing to do with colour. And, oh, how beautiful! How

beautiful!

I don't know how long I gazed.

I was trying to study the girl before me as if she had been merely a

fact--a statue, a picture. But here was none of the calm certainty of

art; I was in the grip of a power, a living charm as mighty as elusive,

no more to be fixed in words than are the splendours of sunset. Yet I

saw the vital harmonies of her figure, the grace of every exquisite

curve--the firm, strong line of her white throat, the gracious poise of

her head, her sweeping lashes.

I looked down at her hands; they were of marvellous shape and tint, but

I missed a little sickle-shaped scar from the joint of the left thumb.

I knew the story of that scar. I had seen the child Nelly run to her

mother when the knife slipped while she was paring a piece of cocoanut

for the Saturday pie-baking. That scar was part of Helen; I loved it. I

felt a sudden revolt against this goddess who usurped little Nelly's

place, and said that she had changed. Why was she looking at me? What

did she want?

"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said a choked voice

that I hardly recognised as my own.

Instantly the joy light shone again from her face, bathing me in its

sunshine, and the world was fair. She started forward impulsively,

holding out her hands.

"Then it's true! Oh, it's true!" she cried. "How can I believe it?

I--Nelly Winship--am I really--"

"Ah--you are Nelly! My Nelly!"

What happened is past telling!

With that jubilant outburst, as naive as a child's, she was my own love

again, but dearer a thousand times. Would I have given her up if her

hair were blanched by pain or sorrow, her cheeks furrowed, her face

grown pale in illness? Need I look upon her coldly because she had

become radiant, compellingly lovely? Why, she was enchanting!

And she was Helen. A miracle had been worked, but Helen's self was

looking at me out of that goddess-like face as unmistakably as from an

unfamiliar dress. It was seeing her in a marvellous new garb of flesh.

"Oh, I'm so happy! I'm the happiest girl on earth; I'm--am I really

beautiful?"

The rich, low, brooding, wondering voice was not Helen's, but in every

sentence some note or inflection was as familiar as were her tricks of

manner, her impulsive gestures. Yes, she was Helen; warm-breathing,

flushed with joy of her own loveliness, her perfect womanhood--the girl

I adored, the loveliest thing alive!

I seized the hands she gave me; I drew her nearer.

"Helen," I cried, "you are indeed the most beautiful being God ever

created, and--last June you kissed me--"

"I didn't!"

"--Or I kissed you, which is the same thing--after the Commencement

reception, by the maple trees, in front of the chapter house; and----"

"And thence in an east-southeasterly direction; with all the

hereditaments and appurtenances--Oh, you funny Old Preciseness!"

"And now I'm going to----" The words were brave, but there was

something in the pose and poise of her--the wonder of her beauty, the

majesty--perhaps the slightest withdrawal, the start of surprise--that

awed me. Lamely enough the sentence ended:

"Helen, kiss me!" I begged, hoarsely.

For just a fraction of a second she hesitated. Then the merriment of

coquetry again sparkled in her smile.

"Ah, but I'm afraid--" she mocked.

Her eyes danced with mischief as she drew away from me.

"I'm afraid of a man who's going to be a great city lawyer. And

then--oh, listen!"

Hurried, ostentatiously heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. They

stopped at the door, and some one fumbled noisily at the knob. There

was a stage cough, and Kitty plunged into the room, carefully

unnoticing.

"Such an idea for--a hippopotamus comic," she panted; "a darling! Sent

drawings down--messenger--rushed back to sketch--"

Here she paused to take breath.

"--lest I forget."

Snatching off her gloves she resumed her place at the big table, and

began making wild strokes with a crayon on a great sheet of cardboard.

"I just _had_ to do it," said she apologetically over her shoulder;

"but--don't mind me."

CHAPTER III.

THE HORNETS' NEST.

It was dusk when I left Helen. My head was buzzing.

Out of her presence what I had seen was unthinkable, unbelievable. I

could do nothing but walk, walk--a man in a dream.

I rushed ahead, jostling people in silly haste; I dawdled. I carefully

set my feet across the joinings of paving blocks; I zigzagged; I turned

corners aimlessly. Once a policeman touched me as I blinked into the

roaring torches of a street-repairing gang. Once I found myself on

Brooklyn Bridge, looking down at big boats shaped like pumpkin seeds,

with lights streaking from every window. Once I woke behind a noisy

group under the coloured lights of a Bowery museum.

It rained, for horses were rubber-blanketed, and umbrellas dripped on

me as I passed. I was hungry, for I smelled the coffee a sodden woman

drank at the side of a night lunch wagon. But how could I believe

myself awake or sane?

Again and again I found my way back to the bench on Union Square, from

which I could gaze at Helen's window, now dark and forbidding. Across

an open space was a garish saloon. When the door swung open, I saw the

towels hanging from the bar. Two men reeled across the street and sat

down by me.

"Oo-oo!" one gurgled.

"Dan's goin' t' kill 'imself 'cause 'is wife's gone," blubbered the

other. "Tell 'm not ter, can't ye, matey? Tell 'im' t's 'nough fer one

t' die!"

"Oo-oo!" bellowed Dan.

I walked away in the darkness, but I felt better. Drunkenness was no

miracle: I was awake and sane, sane and awake in a homely world of

sorrow and folly and love and mystery.

I went to bed thinking of Cleopatra, "brow-bound with burning gold"; of

Fair Rosamond; Vivien, who won Merlin's secret; of Lilith and strange,

shining women--not one of them like the goddess the glory of whose

smile had dazzled me. At last I slept, late and heavily.

Next morning I was again first at the office; and by daylight in the

bustling city, things took a different complexion. I had gone to my

sweetheart tired by a long journey, and I felt sure, or tried to feel

sure, that my impressions of change in her were fantastic and

exaggerated.

Judge Baker, on his arrival, installed me in Hynes's room, behind the

library, between the corridor and one of the courts that light the

inner offices. In his own room, to the left, he detained me for some

business talk, after which he said, carefully rubbing his glasses:

"I trust that you will not find yourself altogether a stranger in the

city. My wife will wish to see you, and my sister, Miss Baker,

cherishes pleasant recollections of your mother. I believe you are

already acquainted with Mrs. Baker's young cousin, Miss Winship. You

know that, since graduation, she has come to New York for the purpose

of pursuing post-graduate studies in Barnard?"

"Yes."

I drew a breath of relief. There was nothing in the Judge's manner to

give significance to his mention of Helen. I must have deceived myself.

"A most charming young lady."

He glanced at the letters on his desk and methodically cut open an

envelope. Then he dropped the paper knife, raising his bushy brows, a

gesture that indicates his most genial humour, as he continued with

more than usual deliberateness:--

"You knew her, no doubt, as an intelligent student; you may be

surprised to learn that she has developed extraordinary--the word is

not too strong--extraordinary beauty."

"Always a lovely girl," I muttered.

"From her childhood Nelly has been a favourite with me;" the Judge

leaned back in his big chair, seeming to commit himself to an

utterance; "but her attractions were rather those of mind and heart, I

should have said, than of personal appearance. The change to which I

have alluded is more than the not uncommon budding of a plain girl into

the evanescent beauty of early womanhood; it is the most remarkable

thing that has ever come under my observation. I am getting to be an

elderly man, Burke, and I have been a respectful admirer of many, many

fair women, but I have never seen a girl like Miss Winship; she is

phenomenal."

"You--you think so?"

It was true, then!

"I have ceased to think; I am nonplussed. Witchcraft, though not in the

older sense of the word, is still no doubt exercised by young ladies,

and there are certain improvement commissions that undertake, for a

suitable consideration, the--ah--redecoration of feminine architecture,

or even the partial restoration of human antiques. But this is a

different matter."

"I saw Miss Winship yesterday."

"You will not then accuse me of overstatement?"

"She is indeed beautiful."

The restraint with which I spoke evidently puzzled him. He continued to

look at me curiously, as he said slowly:--

"From a young man I should have expected more enthusiasm. At times I

suspect that the youth of today are less susceptible than were those of

twenty-five years ago. But this affair has perhaps occupied my thoughts

more than otherwise it might, because Helen is in a measure my ward

during her stay in the East, and because of my daughters' affection--"

"Judge, I had supposed you aware of an engagement between Helen and

myself."

"Ah, that accounts for much. To you, no doubt, she is little altered.

Your eyes have seen the budding of that beauty which but now becomes

visible to those less partial. I believe Mrs. Baker did hint at

something between you, but it had escaped my mind."

The Judge's bright eyes that contradict so pleasantly the heavy cast of

his features began to twinkle. Little lines of geniality formed at

their corners and rayed out over his cheeks. He beamed kindliness, as

he continued:--

"Accept my congratulations. A most excellent family. Mrs. Winship is

Mrs. Baker's cousin. Ah, time flies; time flies! It seems but yesterday

that my little girls were running about with Nelly, pigtailed, during

their visits in the West."

"Does Mrs. Baker also think Nelly--changed?"

"Only on Tuesday my wife returned from nursing an ailing relative. She

has not seen Helen in some time. I believe we are to have her with us

at Christmas. We must have you also. But I cannot altogether admit that

the change is a matter of my opinion. It has been commented upon by my

daughters in terms of utmost emphasis."

"She is the most beautiful woman in the world!"

"There we shall not disagree. To Nelly herself the riddle of nature

that we seek to read is doubtless also a mystery, but one for whose

unraveling she is happy to wait. My daughters have a picture of her,

taken at the age, possibly, of six, which gives inartistic prominence

to 'Grandpa Winship's ears'--the left larger than the right. You know

the family peculiarity owned by the eldest child in each generation?

The loss of this inheritance may not be, to a young lady, matter for

regret; but as a mark of identification and descent, the Winship ears

might have entitled her to rank among the Revolutionary Daughters.

However, she is a poor woman who has not a club to spare."

"Judge, how long is it since this--transformation took place? You speak

of it as recent."

"Nelly comes to me," said the Judge, "with--ah--natural punctuality for

monthly remittances from her father. In November I was struck with the

fact that New York agreed with her; yet even then I did not miss the

family nose--a compromise of pug and Roman. But ten days ago, when I

saw her last, I recognised her with difficulty. For more precise

information you must ask my daughters."

"Then it was only ten days ago that you saw anything wrong--?"

"Wrong! My dear young friend, if Nelly's case obtained publicity, would

not the world, which loves beauty, be divided between a howling New

York and a wilderness?"

The Judge glanced up at me, slipping his paper knife end over end

through his fingers.

"I have spoken of myself as nonplussed," he said more seriously, "and I

am. I was never more so; but I see no occasion for anxiety. Since when

has it been thought necessary to call priest or physician because of a

young lady's growing charm? Confronted by an ugly duckling, we must

congratulate the swan."

"Judge, how much money does one need to marry on in New York?"

"All that a man has; all that he can get; often more. But--ah--is the

question imminent? Nelly is in school; you have come out of the West,

as I understand it, to attack New York. Conquer it, Sir; conquer New

York before you speak of marriage to a New York woman."

"Helen is not a New York woman."

"We naturalize them at the docks and stations."

"But you--" I repressed a movement of impatience. "Didn't you marry

young?"

"Mrs. Baker and I began our married life in one room; cooked over the

gas jet, in tin pails. And if little Nelly is the equal of other women

of her family--but that is practice versus principle, my young friend;

practice versus principle."

He turned again to his letters, and I understood that the interview was

closed.

Right after lunch I started for Barnard. Helen has written so much

about the college that as soon as I struck the Boulevard I knew the

solid brick building with its trimmings of stone fasces. I turned into

the cloistered court on One Hundred and Nineteenth Street and paused a

minute, looking up at its Ionic porticoes and high window lettered

"Millbank Hall."

Then I entered, and a page, small, meek and blue-uniformed, trotted

ahead of me through a beautiful hall, white with marble columns and

mosaics, sumptuous with golden ceiling, dazzling with light and green

with palms, to the curtained entrance of a dainty reception room.

"Stop a minute, Mercury," I said as he turned to leave; "where is Miss

Winship?"

He reappeared from an office beyond, replying:--

"Biol'gy lab'r'tory. What name?"

Instead of waiting until Nelly could be summoned, I followed the mildly

disapproving boy up a great, white stairway, past groups of girls, some

in bright silk waists and some in college gowns. Even in the farthest

corner remote from the hubbub, a musical echo blent of gay talk and

laughter filled the air; a light body of sound that the walls held and

gave out as a continuous murmur.

A second time piping, "What name, Sir?" Mercury opened the door of a

large room with many windows. At the far corner my eyes sought out

Helen in conversation with a keen-eyed, weazened little man, at sight

of whom the boy took to his heels.

Three women besides Helen were in the room, bunched at a table that ran

along two sides under the windows. They wore big checked aprons, and

one of them squinted into her microscope under a fur cap. Wide-mouthed

jars, empty or holding dirty water, stood on other tables ranged up and

down the middle of the room, and there was a litter of porcelain-lined

trays, test tubes, pipettes, glass stirring-rods and racks for

microscope slides.

Against the wall to the left were cabinets with sliding doors, showing

retorts, apparatus, bottles of drugs, jars of specimens and large,

coloured models of flowers and of the lower marine forms. Against the

right hand wall were sinks, an incubator and, beyond, a door leading

into a drug closet. There was the usual laboratory smell, in which the

penetrating fume of alcohol, the smokiness of creosote and carbolic

acid, the pungency of oil of clove and the aroma of Canada balsam

struggled for the mastery.

In her college gown Helen looked more like herself than the day before

and less so, the familiar dress accentuating every difference. Against

the flowing black her loveliness shone fair and delicate as a cameo, I

thought of the Princess Ida,

Liker to the inhabitant

Of some far planet close upon the sun

Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head,

And so much grace and power--

Lived through her to the tips of her long hands

And to her feet.

She had not noticed my entrance, but as I stepped forward, she turned,

and I was again lost in wonder at her marvellous grace. Her beauty

seemed a harmony so vitally perfect that the sight of it was a joy

approaching pain.

I had not been mistaken! She was the rarest thing in human form on this

earth. I was awed and frightened anew at her perfection.

"Why, how did you find your way out here?" she asked with girlish

directness. "I'm not quite ready to go; I must finish my sections for

Prof. Darmstetter."

The Professor--I had guessed his identity--joined us, glancing at me

inquisitively. His spare figure seemed restless as a squirrel's, but

around the pupils of his eyes appeared the faint, white rim of age.

"You are friendt of Mees Veensheep?" he asked. "Looks she not vell? New

York has agreed vit' her; not so?"

At my awkward, guarded assent, I thought that something of the same

surprise Judge Baker had voiced at my moderation flitted over the old

man's face.

"I find you kvite right; kvite right," he said, "New York has done Mees

Veensheep goot; she looks fery vell."

He whisked into the drug closet, and Helen seated herself before a

microscope next that of the fur-capped woman.

"Do you care for slides?" she said. "I'll get another microscope and

while I draw you may look at any on my rack. But be careful; most of

the things are only temporarily mounted--just in glycerine. Here is the

sweetest longitudinal section of the tentacle of an _Actinia_, and

here--look at these lovely transverse sections of the plumule of a pea;

you can see the primary groups of spiral vessels. They've taken the

carmine stain wonderfully! But my work is not advanced; I wish you

could see that of the other girls."

"I mustn't interfere with your task; I'll look about until you are

ready."

Her shining head was already bent over the microscope; her pencil was

moving, glad to respond to the touch of that lovely hand.

I picked up a book, the same little volume I had noticed the day

before, on "Imbedding, Sectioning and Staining." Near it lay a treatise

on histology. I opened to the first chapter, on "Protoplasm and the

Cell," but I couldn't fix my thoughts on _Bathybius_ or the

_Protomoeba_. I walked toward an aquarium, flanking which stood a jar

half-filled with water in which floated what seemed a big cup-shaped

flower of bright brown jelly with waving petals of white and rose

colour.

While I looked, thinking only of the curve of Helen's lips and the

dancing light in her eyes, and the glowing colour of her soft flesh,

Prof. Darmstetter's thin, high-pitched voice grated almost at my ear.

"T'at is _Actinia_--sea anemone."

"I come from the West; I have never seen the sea forms living," I

answered with an effort, fearing that he meant to show me about the

laboratory.

"It is fery goot sea anemone; fery strong, fery perfect; a goot

organism."

He bent over the jar, rubbing his hands. His parchment face crackled

with an almost tender complacency. For a full minute he seemed to gloat

over the flower-like animal.

"Very pretty," I said, carelessly.

"Fery pretty, you call it? T'e prettiness is t'e sign of t'e gootness,

t'e strengt', t'e perfection. You know t'at?"

To his challenging question, in which I saw the manner of a teacher

with his pupils, I replied:

"In your estimation goodness and beauty go together?"

"T'ey are t'e same; how not? See t'is way."

He shook his lean, reproving forefinger at a shapeless, melting mass

that lay at the bottom of a second jar, exuding an ooze of viscid

strings.

"T'at,"--he spat the word out--"is also sea anemone. It is diseased; it

is an ugly animal."

"The poor thing's dying," said Helen, coming to his side. "There ought

to have been some of the green seaweed, Ulva, in the water. Wouldn't

that have saved it?"

"Ugliness,"--Darmstetter disregarded the question--"is disease; it is

bat organism; t'e von makes t'e ot'er. T'e ugly plant or animal is

diseased, or else it is botched, inferior plant or animal. It is t'e

same vit' man and voman; t'ey are animals. T'e ugly man or voman is

veak, diseased or inferior. On t'e ot'er hand,"--I felt what was coming

by the sudden oiling of his squeak--"t'e goot man or voman, t'e goot

human organism, mus' haf beauty. Not so?" Again he rubbed his hands.

Helen glanced mischievously at me, as a half-repressed snort

interrupted his dissertation.

The woman in the fur cap, who might have been a teacher improving odd

hours, had knocked up the barrel of her microscope; she gazed through

the window at the dazzling Hudson. Next her a thin, sallow girl, whose

dark complexion contrasted almost weirdly with her yellow hair, slashed

at a cake of paraffine, her deep-set eyes emitting a spark at every

fall of the razor. The other student, a young woman with the heavy

figure of middle age, went steadily on, dropping paraffine shavings

into some fluid in a watch crystal. With a long-handled pin she fished

out minute somethings left by the dissolving substance, dropping these

upon other crystals--some holding coloured fluids--and finally upon

glass slides. She worked as if for dear life, but every quiver of her

back told that she was listening.

"You agree vit' me?"

"It seems reasonable; the subject is one that you have deeply studied."

"Ach so! T'e perfect organism must haf t'e perfect beauty. T'e vorld

has nefer seen a perfectly beautiful man or voman. Vat vould it say to

von, t'ink you? But perfection, you vill tell me, is far to seek," he

went on, without waiting for a reply. "Yet people haf learned t'at many

diseases are crimes. By-and-by, we may teach t'em t'at bat organism is

t'e vorst of crimes; beautiful organism t'e first duty. V'at do you

say?"

The fur-capped girl pushed back her chair.

"Prof. Darmstetter," she said, "will you be good enough to look at my

sections?"

"He's stirred up the hornets' nest," whispered Helen. "But come;

perhaps they will show us. Those girls are so clever; they're sure to

have something interesting."

CHAPTER IV.

THE GODDESS AND THE MOB.

As we descended the stairway and passed groups of students in front of

the bulletin boards in the hall, Helen said:--

"I am afraid you shouldn't have called for me. It isn't usual here."

"We'll introduce the custom. How could I help coming--after yesterday?

Helen--"

"Have you seen Grant's tomb?" she inquired hastily. "It's just beyond

the college buildings, hidden by them. You mustn't miss it, after

coming so far."

We had issued on the Boulevard, and a few steps brought us in view of

the stately white shrine on Claremont Heights. But I looked instead at

her brilliant face against the velvety background of black hat and

feather boa.

The sun's rays, striking across the river, played hide-and-seek in her

shimmering hair, warming it to gold and touching the rose of her cheeks

to a clear radiance. Her eyes were scintillant with changing, flashing

lights.

"Well?" she challenged at last, half daring, half afraid. "You know me

to-day?"

"You are a sun goddess. Helen, what does it mean?"

"New York agrees vit' me," Her laugh was irresistible--low and sweet, a

laugh that made the glad day brighter. "How not? It is vun fine large

city."

We laughed together to the memory of _Actinia_.

"I am a goot organism. T'e bat organisms vish to scratch me; but t'ey

are not so fery bat. In time ve may teach t'em gootness."

"If Darmstetter doesn't think you a perfect organism, he must be hard

to satisfy. He's a peculiar organism himself. Has he true loves among

sand stars or jelly fish, or does he confine his affections to sea

anemones?"

"Prof. Darmstetter is a great biologist. It's a shame he has to teach.

Don't you think such a man should be free to devote himself to original

work? He might in England, you know, if he were a fellow of a

University. But we're proud of him at Barnard; and the laboratory--oh,

it's the most fascinating place!"

We came slowly down the Boulevard, looking out at the sweep of the

Hudson, while she talked of her studies and her college mates, trying,

I thought, to keep me from other topics.

I scarcely noticed her words; her voice was in my ears, fresh and

musical. The new grace of her shining head and wondrous, swaying

figure, the beauty and spirit of her carriage, filled my consciousness.

A schooner with a deck load of wood drifted with the tide, her sails

flapping; I saw her in a blur. When I turned from the sheen of the

river, the bicyclists whizzing past left streaks of light. A man

cutting brush in a vacant lot leaned on his axe to look after us. The

sudden stopping of his "chop, chop"--he too was staring at the vision

of beauty before his eyes--brought me out of my revery.

"Nelly," I said, "your father will expect a letter from me. What shall

I say?"

"Tell him I am studying hard and like the city."

"But about us--about you and me?"

"Must we talk of that here--on the street?"

She spoke almost pleadingly, with the same soft clouding of her

loveliness that I had seen the day before?

"But I must speak," I said. "You were right yesterday, I won't ask

anything of you until I have made a start; but I must know that you

still love me; that will be enough. I can wait. I won't hurry you. That

is all, Helen. Everything shall be as you wish; but--you do love me?"

"Oh, you great tease! Why, I suppose I do; but--so much has happened, I

don't know myself now; you didn't know me when you first saw me here.

Why can't you wait and--don't you hope New York vill agree vit' you?"

She laughed with tantalizing roguery. "You _do_ love me!" I cried. "And

we shall be so happy with all our dreams come true--happy to be

together and here! If you knew how I have looked forward to coming, and

now--yesterday I thought myself insane, but I wasn't! You are the most

marvellous--"

"Am I? Oh, I'm glad! So glad!"

I was confused, overjoyed at her sudden sparkle; the soft, flashing

light of her was fire and dew. She made visible nature sympathize with

her moods. The sky smiled and was pensive with her.

"But see," she cried with another of her bewildering changes; "we're at

Columbia."

We had left the Boulevard, and were approaching the white-domed library.

"Look at the inscription," Helen said, as students carrying notebooks

began to pass us. "'KING'S COLLEGE FOUNDED UNDER GEORGE II.' Doesn't

that seem old after the State University? Ours, I mean."

Our inspection was brief. Before the open admiration of the students

Helen seemed, like a poising creature of air and sunshine, fairly to

take wing for flight.

"Tell me about yourself," she commanded, when we were beyond the

flights of terraced steps. "You are really in Judge Baker's office?

You--you _won't_ say anything more?"

"You--darling! You have almost said you love me; do you know that?

Well, I'll be considerate. I will work and I will wait and I will

believe--no, I'll be certain that some day a woman more beautiful than

the Greeks imagined when they dreamed of goddesses who loved mortal men

will come to me and, because it is true, will quite say 'I love you.'

But I may not always be patient; for you do. After all, you are Nelly!"

I was almost faint with love of her and wonder; I adored her the more

for the earnestness with which she lifted her flushed, smiling,

innocent face to say:

"But tell me about the office, _please_. You wouldn't want me to

say--would you, if I wasn't sure? Isn't the Judge the most delightful

man? So--not pompous, you know; but so good. Don't you like Judge

Baker?"

"I love you! Oh, yes, the Judge says, 'if we are confronted with an

ugly duckling we must congratulate the swan.' Were you ever an ugly

duckling? I'm sure you love me, Helen."

"Did he say that? Well, even when I last saw him why that was nearly

two weeks ago--I--oh, I was an ugly duckling!"

We laughed like children. In the sunshine of her joy-lit eyes I forgot

the miracle of it, forgot everything except that I had reached New York

and Nelly, and that the world was beautiful when she looked upon it.

We came down from Cathedral Heights; and as we boarded a train on the

elevated, eyes peered around newspapers. An old gentleman wiped his

glasses and readjusted them, his lips forming the words, "most

extraordinary," and again, "most extraordinary!" A thin,

transparent-looking woman followed the direction of his glance and

querulously touched his elbow. Two slender girls looked and whispered.

I thought at first that city folks had no manners, but presently began

to wonder that Helen escaped so easily. She had drawn down a scrap of a

veil that scarcely obscured her glow and colour and, as the train

gathered headway, our neighbours settled in their places almost as

unconcernedly as if no marvel of beauty and youth were present. Indeed,

most of them had never looked up. The two young girls continued to eye

Helen with envy; and I was conscious of an absurd feeling of resentment

that they were the only ones. I wanted to get up and cry out: "Don't

you people know that this car contains a miracle?"

Why, when Helen lifted to her knee a child that tugged at the skirts of

the stout German hausfrau in the next seat, the mother vouchsafed

hardly a glance.

"How old are you?" asked Helen.

"Sechs yahre," was the shy answer.

"Such a big girl for six!"

"So grosse! So grosse!"

The little thing measured her height by touching her forehead.

"Shump down," admonished the mother stolidly, while Helen bent over the

child, wasting upon her the most wonderful smile of the everlasting

years.

"It was long ago, wasn't it," Nelly asked, when the child had slid from

her lap, "that Uncle promised to take you into his office?"

"Yes," I said. "When Father died, the Judge told me that when I had

practised three years--long enough to admit me to the New York

bar--he'd have a place for me. It was because the three years were

nearly up, you know, that I dared last June to ask you--"

"You'd dare anything," she interrupted hastily. "Remember how, when I

was a Freshman, you raced a theologue down the church aisle one Sunday

night after service, and slammed the door from the outside? 'Miss

Winship,' you said--I had sat near the door and was already in the

entry--'may I see you home?'--"

"The theologue and the congregation didn't get out till you said yes, I

remember! They howled and hammered at the door in most unchristian

rage?"

"I _had_ to say yes; why, I had to walk with you even when we

quarrelled; it would have made talk for either of us to be seen alone."

She breathed a sigh that ended in rippling laughter.

"You'll have to say yes again."

But at that she changed the subject, and we talked about her work at

Barnard until we left the train at Fourteenth Street, where we met the

flood tide of Christmas surging into the shops and piling up against

gaily decked show windows.

Street hawkers jingled toy harnesses, shouted the prices of bright

truck for tree ornaments, and pushed through the crowd, offering holly

and mistletoe. Circles formed around men exhibiting mechanical turtles

or boxing monkeys. From a furry sledge above a shop door, Santa Claus

bowed and gesticulated, shaking the lines above his prancing reindeer.

I had never seen such a spectacle.

"What a jam!" cried Helen, her cheeks flooded with colour. "Come, let's

hurry!"

Indeed, as we threaded our way in and out among the throng, her beauty

made an instant impression.

"There she goes!"

"Where? Where? I don't see her."

"There! The tall one, with the veil--walking with that jay!"

Not only did I hear such comments; I felt them. Yet even here there

were many who did not notice; and again I sensed that odd displeasure

that people could pass without seeing my darling.

It was a relief to leave the neighbourhood of Sixth Avenue and cross to

the open space of Union Square.

The east side of the little park was quiet.

"All right?" I asked.

"All right."

Her breath came quickly as if she had been frightened.

"But see," she said a moment later, "there comes Kitty trundling her

bicycle down Madison Avenue. You'd better come in, and be on your best

behaviour; yesterday Kitty thought we were quarrelling."

"Sorry I'm wanted only to vindicate--is it your character or mine that

would stand clearing? And will you tell me----"

A little old Frenchman, with a wooden leg, who was singing the

"Marseillaise" from door to door, approached, holding out his hat.

"Merci, M'sieu', Madame," he said, carelessly pocketing a nickel; then,

as he fairly caught sight of the face that Helen of old might have

envied, he started back in amazement, slowly whispering:--

"Pardon! Mon dieu! Une Ange!"

We left him muttering and staring after us.

"I'll really have to get a thicker veil," said Helen hastily; "stuffy

thing! I like to breathe and see. At first it was--oh, delightful to be

looked at like that--or almost delightful; for if no had one noticed,

how was I to be sure that--that New York was agreeing vit' me? But now

they begin to----"

"Then New York hasn't always agreed vit' you? Aren't you going to tell

me----"

"Oh, I've been well," she interrupted, "ever since I came. But here's

Kitty. Any adventures, Goldilocks?"

"A minute ago a tandem cuffed my back wheel," said Miss Reid, coming

up. "My heart jumped into my mouth and--and I'm nibbling little

scallops out of it right now."

And then we trooped upstairs together.

CHAPTER V.

A HIGH-CLASS CONCERT.

I stayed for supper, over which Kitty's big Angora cat presided; Kitty

herself, her red curls in disorder, whimsical, shrewd, dipping from

jest to earnest, teased Helen and waited on her, wholly affectionate

and, I guessed, half afraid.

The little den was cosy by the light of an open fire--for it seemed to

be one function of the tall, pink-petticoated lamp to make much

darkness visible; and Nelly was almost like the Nelly I had known, with

her eager talk of home folks and familiar scenes.

She asked about my mother's illness and death that had held me so long

in the West, and her great eyes grew dim and soft with tears, and she

looked at me like a Goddess grieving; until, sweet as was her sympathy,

I forced myself to speak of other topics. And then we grew merry again,

talking of college mates and the days when I first knew her, when I was

a Sophomore teaching in Hannibal and she was my best scholar--only

twelve years old, but she spelled down all the big, husky boys.

"I didn't know what I was doing, did I," I said, "when your father used

to say: 'Bright gal, ain't she? I never see the beat of Helen Lizy;'

and I would tell him you ought to go to the State University?"

"Think of it!" cried Helen. "If I hadn't gone to college, I shouldn't

have come to New York, and, oh, if--but how you must have worked,

teaching and doubling college and law school! Why, you were already

through two years of law when I entered, only three years later."

"Well, it's been easy enough since, even with tutoring and

shorthanding; six lawyers to every case--"

"Wasn't tutoring Helen your main occupation?" asked Kitty Reid

audaciously. "I have somehow inferred that--"

But there was a sound of hurrying feet on the stairs, and she sprang to

the door, crying:--

"Cadge and Pros.! They said they were coming."

On the threshold appeared a lank girl with shining black hair and

quick, keen, good-humoured eyes.

"Howdy?" she asked with brisk cordiality; "angel children, hope I see

you well."

In her wake was a tall, quiet-looking young man with a reddish-brown

beard.

"Salute; salaam," he said; "all serene, Kitty? And you, Miss Winship?"

Then as the two became accustomed to the light, I saw what I had

nervously expected. There was a little start, an odd moment of

embarrassment. They gazed at Helen with quick wonder at her loveliness,

then turned away to hide their surprise.

It was as if in the few days since they had seen her--for the new

comers were Kitty's brother and the Miss Bryant of whom everyone speaks

as "Cadge"--Helen's beauty had so blossomed that at fresh sight of her

they struggled with incredulous amazement almost as a stranger might

have done.

Talking rapidly to mask embarrassment, they joined us round the fire,

Reid dropped a slouch hat and an overcoat that seemed all pockets

bulging with papers, while Miss Bryant and Kitty began a rapid fire of

talk about "copy," "cuts," "the black," "the colour" and other

mysteries.

"Wish you could have got me a proof of the animal page," said Kitty

finally; "if they hurry the etching again, before my poor dear little

bears have been half an hour on the presses, they'll fill with ink and

print gray. I'll--I'll leave money in my will to prosecute

photo-engravers."

"Oh, don't fret," said Miss Bryant. "Magazine'll look well this week.

Big Tom's the greatest Sunday editor that ever happened; and I've got

in some good stuff, too."

"Of course your obbligato'll be all right," Kitty sighed; "but--oh,

those etchers and----Yes, Big Tom'll do; I never see him fretting the

Art Department, like the editor before last, to sketch a one-column

earthquake curdling a cup of cream."

"How _could_ anybody do that?" cried Helen.

"Just what the artist said."

Miss Bryant looked slightly older than Helen; in spite of her brusque,

careless sentences, I suspected that she was a girl of some knowledge,

vast energy and strength of will. And suspicion grew to certainty that

she and Reid were lovers.

I might have read it in his tone when in the course of the evening he

asked her to sing.

"Then give me a baton," she responded, springing to her feet.

Rolling up a newspaper and seizing a bit of charcoal from the drawing

table, she beat time with both hands, launching suddenly into an air

which she rendered with dramatic expression as rare as her abandon.

"Applaud! Applaud!" she cried, clapping her own hands at the end of a

brilliant passage, her colourless, irregular face alive with

enthusiasm, her black eyes snapping. "If you don't applaud, how do you

expect me to sing? _Vos plaudite!_"

"I'll applaud when you've surely stopped," said Kitty Reid demurely;

"but before we begin an evening of grand opera, I want you to hear the

Princess. Helen, you know you promised."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Helen, colouring at the title, "I can't sing

before Cadge; but if you like, I'll play for you. See if I'm not

improving in my tremolo."

Helen did not sing in the old days, so that I was not surprised at her

refusal. Taking her mandolin, she tinkled an air that I have often

heard her play, but neither I nor any one else had ears for it, so

absorbed was the sense of sight.

Her long lashes swept her cheeks as she bent forward in the firelight,

her vivid colouring subdued by the soft, playing glow to an elusive

charm. At one moment, as the flames flickered into stronger life, her

beauty seemed to grow fuller and to have an oriental softness and

warmth; the next, the light would die away, and in the cooler, grayer,

fainter radiance, her perfect grace of classic outline made her seem a

statue--Galatea just coming to life, more beautiful than the daughters

of men, her great loveliness delicately spiritualized.

If I were a beautiful woman, I'd learn to play a mandolin.

"Sing, Helen," begged Kitty in a whisper.

In a voice that began tremulously, low and faltering, and slowly gained

courage, she sang the ballad she had been playing. It was easy to see

that she was not a musician; but, as she forgot her listeners, we

forgot everything but her.

Miss Bryant put down the compasses and scale rule she had been

restlessly fingering, and her keen eyes softened and dilated. Kitty

dropped on the floor at Helen's feet; the hush in the room was

breathless. Reid sat in the dark, still as a statue; I clenched my

hands and held silence.

The words were as simple as the air. But the voice, so clear, so sweet,

so joyous, like Helen's own loveliness--to hear it was an ecstasy. We

were listening to the rarest notes that ever had fallen on human

ears--unless the tale of the sirens be history.

As the last note died, the fire leaped, dropped and left us in dusk and

silence. Kitty buried her face against Helen's dress. My heart was

pounding until in my own ears it sounded like an anvil chorus. I don't

know whether I was very happy or very miserable. I would have died to

hear that voice again. It is the truth!

With a sudden sob and a sniffing that told of tears unashamed, Miss

Bryant found frivolous words to veil our emotion.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she quavered, "this is a high-class concert;

three dollars each for tickets, please. Helen, you don't know how to

sing, but--don't learn! Come Pros."--the big drops ran down her cheeks;

"I've got to look up a story in the morning."

"Wait a minute," said Reid, his long, delicately shaped fingers

trembling. "Let me recover on something."

Picking up Kitty's banjo, he smote the strings uncertainly and half

sang, half declaimed:--

"'With my Hya! Heeya! Heeya! Hullah! Haul!

Oh, the green that thunders aft along the deck!

Are you sick of towns and men? You must sign and sail again,

For it's Johnny Bowlegs, pack your kit and trek!'

"By Jove! Kipling's right; nothing like a banjo, is there? Now then,

Young Person, I'm with you. Good night; good night!"

While his voice was still echoing down the stairway, Miss Bryant came

running up again.

"Say, got a photograph of yourself, Helen?" she asked.

She had apparently quite recovered from her emotion, and her tone

expressed an odd mixture of business and affection.

"I believe if I showed Big Tom a picture of you," she explained, "he'd

run a story--there's your science, you know, and your music--on the

Society page, maybe."

"But I haven't any picture; at least, any that you'd want--only a few

taken months ago, for my father."

"Show me those; why won't they do?"

"Oh, they aren't good; they--they don't look like me. Besides, I really

couldn't let you print my picture, Cadge."

"All right. Good night, then; good night, Kitty."

"Perhaps I was just the least bit homesick; I'm glad you've come,"

Helen said to me at good-by.

She did not withdraw the hand I pressed. She was still under the

excitement of the music; the song had left on her face a dreamy

tenderness.

"Don't you like Cadge?" she asked, checking with shy evasiveness the

words I would have spoken. "She can do anything--sing, talk modern

Greek and Chinese--Cadge is wonderful."

"I know some one more wonderful. Helen, when did you begin to sing?"

"I don't sing; to-night was the first time I ever tried before any one

but Kitty. Did I sing well?"

"I can't believe you're real! I can't--"

"Don't! Don't!" she laughed. "Remember your promise."

And with that she ran away from the door where I stood, and I came

directly home. Home, to set down these notes; to wonder; to doubt; to

pinch myself and try to believe that I am alive.

I am alive. This that I have written is the truth! This is what I have

seen and heard since a common, puffing railroad train brought me from

the West and set me down in the land of miracles.

It is the truth; but out of that magic presence I cannot--I am as

powerless to believe as I am powerless to doubt.

God help me--it is the truth!

BOOK II.

THE BIRTH OF THE BUTTERFLY.

(_From the Autobiography of Helen Winship_.)

CHAPTER I

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT

No. 2 Union Square, December 14.

I am the most beautiful woman in the world!

I feel like a daughter of the gods. Bewildered, amazed, at times

incredulous of my good fortune--but happy, happy, happy!

There is no joy in heaven or earth like the joy of being

beautiful--incomparably beautiful! It's such a never-ending surprise

and delight that I come out of my musings with a start, a dozen times a

day, and shudder to think: "What if it were only a dream!"

Happy? I have no faith in the old wives' fables that we are most

miserable when we get what we want. It isn't true that the weak and

poor are to be envied beyond the powerful. Ask the fortunate if they

would change! I wouldn't; not for the Klondike?

I'm so happy! I want to take into my confidence the whole world of

women. I want them to know how the gift was gained that they are some

day to share. I want them to know that there are still good fairies in

the world; and how I was fated to meet one, how he waved his wand over

me and how my imperfections fled. Every woman will read the story of my

life with rapt attention because of the Secret. I shall tell that last

of all. Now it's my own.

Is it true that I have longed for beauty more passionately than most

women; or is it only that I know myself, not the others? I can remember

the time, away back, when the longing began--when I was----

Incredible! Was I ever an ugly little girl, careless of my appearance,

happiest in a torn and dirty dress; and homely, homely, homely? Oh,

miracle! The miracle!

They say all girls begin life thus heedless of beauty; but none get far

along the road before they meet the need of it. So it was with me; and

now I love to recall every pitiful detail of the beginning of the Quest

of Beauty, the funny little tragedy of childhood that changed the

current of my life--and of your lives, all you women who read.

It was one day after school, in the old life that has closed

forever--after the prairie school, dull, sordid, uninspiring, away in

the West--that a playmate, Billy Reynolds, was testing upon me his

powers of teasing. I remember the grin of pleasure in his cruelty that

wrinkled his round, red face when at last he found the dart that stung.

His words--ah, they are no dream! They were the awakening, the prelude

of to-day.

"Janey's prettier'n what you be," he said; and of a sudden I knew that

it was true, and felt that the knowledge nearly broke my heart.

But could there be any doubt of the proper reply?

"Huh!" I said, shrugging my lean shoulders. "I don't care!"

The day before it would have been true, but that day it was a lie. I

did care; the brave words blistered my throat, sudden tears burned my

eyeballs, and to hide them I turned my back upon my tormentor.

It was not that I was jealous. I cared no more for Billy than for a

dozen other playmates. It was just the fact that hurt. I was homely!

Not that the idea was new to me, either. Dear me, no! Why, from my

earliest years I had been accustomed to think of myself as plain, and

had not cared. My earliest recollection, almost, is of two women who

one day talked about me in my presence, not thinking that I would

understand.

"Ain't she humbly?" said one.

"Dretful! It's a pity. Looks means so much more to a gal."

"But she's smart."

By these words--you can see that I was young--I was exalted, not cast

down. And for five years, remembering them, I had been proud of being

"smart." But now, in the moment of revelation, the law of sex was laid

upon me, and the thought failed to bring its accustomed comfort. Smart?

Perhaps. But--homely!

With feet as light as my heart was heavy because of Billy's taunt, I

flew home and ran up to my room. I had there a tiny mirror, about

two-thirds of which had fallen from its frame. I may before that day

have taken in it brief, uncritical glimpses at my face, but they had

not led to self-analysis. Now, with beating heart and solemn

earnestness, I balanced a chair against the door--there was no

lock--and looked long and unlovingly at my reflected image.

I saw many freckles, a nose too small, ears too big, honest eyes, hair

which was an undecided brown; in short, an ordinary wind-blown little

prairie girl. Perhaps I was not so ill-looking, nor Janey so pretty, as

Billy affected to think, but no such comforting conclusion then came to

me. Sorrow fronted me in the glass.

The broken mirror gave no hint of my figure, but I know that I was lean

and angular, with long legs forever thrusting themselves below the hem

of my dress; the kind of girl for whose growth careful mothers provide

skirts with tucks that can be let out to keep pace with their

increasing stature.

Yes, I was homely! I could not dispute the evidence of the bit of

shivered glass.

My heart was swelling with grief as I slowly went down stairs, where my

mother was getting supper for the hired men. I think it must have been

early spring, for prairie schools need not expect boy pupils in seeding

time; I know that the door was open and the weather warm.

"Ma," I said as I entered the dining room, "will I ever be pretty?"

"Sakes alive! What _will_ the child think of next?"

"But will I, Ma?"

"'Han'some is as han'some does,' you know, Nelly," my mother responded,

as she set on the table two big plates piled high with slices of bread.

Then she went into the buttery and brought out a loaf of temperance

cake, a plate of doughnuts and a great dish of butter.

"Oh, come now, Ma; please tell me," I wheedled, not content with a

proverb.

"Why, Nelly, I don't know; the' ain't nobody does know. I was

well-favoured at your age, but your pa wan't much on looks. But Pa had

a sister who was reel good-lookin', an' some says you've got her eyes.

Maybe you'll take after her. But land! You can't never tell. I've seen

some of the prettiest babies grow up peaked and pindlin' an' plain as a

potato; whilst, on the other hand, reel homely children sometimes come

up an' fill out rosy-cheeked an' bright-eyed as you please. There was

my half-sister Rachel, now, eight years younger'n me. I remember well

how folks said she was the homeliest baby they ever see; an' she grew

up homely, too, just a lean critter with big eyes an' tousled hair; but

she got to be reel pretty 'fore she died. Then there's my own Cousin

Francie, she that married Tim'thy Baker an' went to New York to live.

She's a bright, nice-lookin' woman, almost han'some; an' her little

girls are, too; about your age they be. An'--"

I suppose the lonely prairie life had made Ma fond of talking, without

much regard for her audience. Often have I heard her for an hour at a

time steadily whispering away to herself. Now she had forgotten her

only auditor, a wide-eyed little girl, and was fairly launched upon

monologue, the subject answering as well as another her imperious need.

"Which of Pa's sisters, Ma?" I asked, interrupting.

"W'ich of his sisters--w'at? Wat you talkin' 'bout now?"

"Which is the good-looking one?"

"Oh, your Aunt Em'ly, o' course. Nobody ain't ever accused S'renie or

Keren-Happuch o' bein' sinfully beautiful, fur's I know."

My Aunt Em'ly was invested for me with a new interest. Perhaps some day

I might take after her and grow equally well-favoured. I did not

remember having noticed that she was beautiful, and resolved to study

her at the first opportunity.

CHAPTER II.

A SUNDAY-SCHOOL LESSON.

Going to church was a good old New England custom that in our family

had borne transplanting to the West. Sunday was almost the pleasantest

day in the week to me--not elbowing school-less Saturday from its

throne; not of course even comparing with the bliss of Friday just

after school, but easily surpassing the procession of four dull,

dreaded, droning days the ogre Monday led.

The beauty and fragrance of the summer Sabbath began in the early

morning, when I went out into the garden, before putting on my Sunday

frock, and picked a quantity of the old-fashioned flowers that grew

there. I arranged them in two flat bouquets, with tall gladiolus stalks

behind and smaller growths ranging down in front so that they might see

and be seen, peeping over each other's heads, when placed against the

wall in church.

Then after the great toilet-making of the week we were off. The drive

over the prairie in the democrat wagon behind our smartest pair of

plough horses was a pleasure that never grew tame from repetition.

Arriving at the church, I would give my bouquets to the old

stoop-shouldered sexton and watch him anxiously as he ambled down the

aisle with them. Perhaps my flowers--yes, the very flowers that I had

dashed the dew from that morning--would be placed on the pulpit itself,

not on the table below, nor yet about the gallery where sat the choir.

Then indeed I felt honoured. But wherever they might be, I could watch

them all through the services, perhaps catch their fragrance from some

favouring breeze, and feel that they were own folks from home.

Even sermon time did not seem long. After I had noted the text to

prepare for catechism at home, I was free to dream as I chose until the

rustle of relief at the close of the speaking. And the droning of bees

and buzzing of flies, or the sudden clamour of a hen somewhere near

would come floating in through the open window, and the odour of the

flowers and the twigs of the "ellum" tree tapping at the pane helped to

make the little church a haven of restfulness.

But on the Sunday following my awakening I had no care for sounds

outside, no eyes for my bouquets, though they stood at either hand of

the pulpit; I got permission to sit in Aunt Keren's pew, where I could

see Aunt Em'ly's face; and all through the sermon I studied it with

big, round eyes.

Yes, and with sorrow growing leaden in my heart.

For I was not old enough to see in her face what it had been, nor to

appreciate the fine profile that remained. Hers was not the

pink-and-white of rosy girlhood, the only beauty I could understand;

and wherein her toil-set features differed from those of the other

drudging farmers' wives or the shut-in women of the little village, I

could not see.

A lump rose in my throat; this wrinkled and aging person was the

beautiful woman I might take after!

I'm afraid I returned from church that day without the consolations of

religion.

There followed an anxious time of experimenting. Some one had told me

that lemon juice would exorcise freckles, and surreptitiously I tried

it. How my face smarted after the heroic treatment, and how red and

inflamed it looked! But then in a little while back came the freckles

again and they stayed, too, until--but how they went, I am to tell you.

I wheedled from mother the privilege of daily wearing my coral

beads--the ones my cousins Milly and Ethel Baker had sent me from New

York--and had an angry fit of crying when one day, while we children

were racing for the schoolhouse door at the end of recess, the string

broke and they were nearly all trampled upon before I could pick them

up.

Youth is buoyant. Next I begged the sheet lead linings of tea chests

from the man who kept the general store, and cut them into little

strips that I folded into hair-curlers, covering them with paper so

that the edges should not cut. I would go to sleep at night with my

short, dampened hair twisted around these contrivances, and in the

morning comb it out and admire it as it stood about my head in a bushy

mass, like the Circassian girl's at the circus.

Thus beautified, I happened one day to meet our white-headed old

pastor! How he stared!

"Stand still a minute, Nelly, child, and let's look at you," he

commanded. "Why, what have you been doing to yourself?"

The good man's accent wasn't admiring; sadly I realised the failure of

my attempt to compel beauty. When I reached home I sternly soaked the

curl out of my hair, brushed it flat and braided it into two

exceedingly tight pig-tails. Ah, me! It's easy--afterwards--to laugh at

the silent sorrows of childhood, bravely endured alone. At least, it's

easy for me, now!

I began to worry Ma about my clothes. I grew ashamed of red-and-black,

pin-checked woollen frocks, and sighed for prettier things. One of the

girls wore at a Sunday school concert a gray and blue dress with many

small ruffles, that seemed to me as elegant as a duchess could want.

The children whispered that it had cost $20, and I wondered if I should

ever again see raiment so wonderful. I knew that it was useless to ask

for such a dress for myself; I should be told that I was not old enough

for fine feathers.

It was our Sabbath day custom to pass directly from the church services

to those of Sunday school, and drive home after these. One stormy day I

was the only scholar in my class, and when we had finished the Bible

Lesson Leaflets and I was watching the long rows of bobbing heads,

flaxen and dark, in the pews full of restless, wriggling children, I

turned to the teacher with a question that I had long been meditating.

"Miss Coleman," I began desperately, "ain't there any way to get

pretty?"

"I wish there were a way and I knew it," she responded with a smile.

"But you should say 'isn't,' you know."

"Oh, but you are pretty," I cried, not with the intent of compliment,

but as merely stating a fact.

I do not now think that it was a fact. Miss Coleman's features were

irregular, her nose prominent, her forehead too high; but she had a

fair, pure complexion and fine eyes, and somehow reminded me of the

calla lilly that Ma was always fussing about in our sitting room.

And she was good and wise. I have often thought how different my life

might have been if her orbit had not briefly threaded mine. If I had

asked that question of some simpering girl a few years older than

I--the average Sunday school teacher--she would have replied, from

under the flower-burdened hat that had cost her so much thought, that

all flesh was grass and beauty vain; and I should have known that she

didn't believe it.

"For that matter," said Miss Coleman, after a little pause in which she

seemed considering her words with more than usual care, "there are ways

of growing beautiful; and, so far as she can, it is a woman's duty to

seek them; would you like to know how?"

A duty to be beautiful! Here was novel doctrine.

I gazed with eyes and mouth wide open as she continued: "For one with

good lungs and a sound body, the first law of beauty is to be healthy;

and health is not just luck. To get it and keep it seek constant

exercise in the open air. Middle-aged women lose their looks because

they stay in too constantly; when they were girls and played

out-of-doors they had roses in their cheeks. Most handsome women of

sixty are those who go among people and keep their interest in what is

going on.

"And the second law is intelligence. For thinking gives the eyes

expression. A foolish girl may be fair and rosy, yet far from

beautiful. Many of the world's famous beauties have suffered serious

blemishes; but they have all had wit or spirit to give their faces

charm. You have planted flowers?"

"I guess so; yes'm." I didn't see the connection.

"You know then that if you kept digging them to see if they had

sprouted, they never would sprout. So it is not well to think too much

about growth in beauty. Don't be impatient. It is a work of years. But

the method is certain, within limits. I should think that by exercise

for the body and study for the mind you might easily become a beautiful

woman. Another thing; don't slouch."

I sat up straight as a grenadier, my shoulders absurdly stiff.

"No, nevermind your shoulders," said Miss Coleman, smiling; "they'll

take care of themselves if you keep your head right. Practise sitting

and standing erect. And never wear a corset. If the Almighty had meant

woman to be corset-shaped, He'd have made her so."

The superintendent's bell, tinkling for the closing hymn, and the

rustle of the leaves of singing books broke in upon our talk; for the

first time I failed to welcome the interruption.

"Why, I've delivered quite a lecture upon beauty," Miss Coleman said.

"Now just a word more. Try to remember that by making yourself a good

and wise woman you will also make yourself more beautiful."

"Oh, I'll remember; I will!" I cried.

And I have done so! Every word! And if Miss Coleman could only see me

now! How could I forget?

I was silent all the way home. At the dinner table, as my father was

tucking his napkin under his chin, he said: "Well, Nelly, w'at was Mr.

Stoddard's text?"

"I--I guess it was something about the children of Israel."

"Yes, prob'ly it was something about 'em," Pa assented with a chuckle.

But Ma spoke more sharply: "I guess you won't get let to set in Aunt

Keren-Happuch's pew again right away, Helen 'Lizy." For before my

lesson I had once more been studying Aunt Em'ly's face.

I didn't mind the prohibition the least bit. I had a new idea and a new

hope. The idea was exaggerated, the hope vain.--Was vain? Ah, it has

been more than realised, as you shall hear; realised in a way that

amazes me the more, the more I think upon it. Realised as yours shall

be, some day, through me!

Realised! Great Heavens! It is a miracle!

CHAPTER III.

THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE.

Our district schoolhouse was a shadeless, unpainted box. Within,

whittled desks, staring windows and broken plastering made it a fit

prison for the boys, whose rough ways were proof of the refining

influence of their daily intercourse with the hired men. I wonder such

places are tolerated. What a contrast to Barnard's white and gold!

John Burke was our teacher the following winter. He was only seventeen

then, but already tall and well grown, in appearance quite a man. He

was a student working his way to an education, and his example was a

help to me. For I no longer hated lessons. Miss Coleman's talk had

filled me with such zeal for knowledge that I became, before the term

was over, the phenomenon of the school. Mr. Burke boarded at our house

and he would bring home shining tales of my prowess, and often I would

listen open-mouthed as we sat about the table at night and he told

stories of the State University and the students and the merry life

they led.

Every one was amazed at my industry. I played as heartily as I worked,

but I studied with a will, too, and passed a score of mates. That was

easy enough, for home study was never dreamed of by most of them, and

leisure hours in school were passed in marking "tit-tat-to" upon slates

or eating apples under the friendly shelter of the desks.

At the end of the term I received a prize--a highly coloured print of

"Washington Crossing the Delaware," which Pa and Ma used long after to

bring out and exhibit with pride. It is still somewhere in the old

house--hung up in Ma's bedroom, I think, along with the

blue-and-tinseled crown, marked "Charity" in gilt letters across the

front, which I wore in the exciting dialogue of "Faith, Hope and

Charity" at a Sunday school exhibition.

But more than any prize I valued the help and friendship of John Burke

and the consciousness that he considered me his most promising pupil.

Upborne by new ideals, I resolved to study through the vacation that

followed, and to my surprise this was not an infliction but a pleasure,

now that I was my own task-mistress.

Next term the "girl teacher"--for economy's sake we had them in summer

when there were no big boys to thrash--was astonished at my industry

and wisdom, and as I could see, a little afraid of them. At the end of

the first week I went home bursting with an idea that in secret I had

long cherished. Aunt Keren was at tea, I remember, and the talk fell

upon my work in school, giving me my opportunity.

"Who'd a thought a mischeevious little tyke like her would ha' turned

out a first-rate learner, after all?" queried Auntie, beaming upon me

good-naturedly from behind her gold-bowed spectacles. "I al'ays tol'

ye, Ezry, ye'd be proud o' her some day."

"I guess Sue Arkwright's a famous good teacher; that's one thing," said

Ma, amiably. "Sis never done near so well before; at least, not till

last term."

"I never thought Sue was anythin' remarkable," Pa broke in. "How is

that, Sis? Is she a good teacher?"

"No, she ain't," I responded, with quickened beating of the heart.

Criticism of teachers was admissible in my code of ethics, but

justification must follow; there must be proof--or reproof.

"What's that?" said Pa, looking at me curiously. "Ever ketch her in a

mistake?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Bring the book."

I ran and fetched a well-thumbed book from the sewing machine and

turned to the definitions of familiar foreign words.

"There," said I, spreading the speller flat on the table and pointing

with my finger. "French word for 'Mister.' Teacher called it

'Monshure,' just as they all do. But that's wrong. To-day I showed her

how it is. See, the book says it's pronounced 'm-o-s-s-e-r' and that

little mark means an accent on the last syllable and it's 'long e.'

'Mosseer' is right. But when I showed it to teacher, she looked at it

awhile, and then she wrinkled up her eye-brows, and whispered it once

or twice and said: 'Oh, yes; "mosser."' And she made us call it

'mosser' all the rest of the day, too," I ended triumphantly.

"Why, o' course that ain't right; 'mosser' ain't it!" volunteered one

of the hired men, who had lingered to hear the discussion. "I've heerd

that word a thousan' times; right way seems like 'M'shoo.' Shucks!

Can't get my tongue 'round it, nohow."

"Yes, I know", said Pa "you go call Frenchy."

Joe Lavigne, summoned from the barn, came, followed by all the rest,

curious to see what was wanted--a rough, kindly gang of men in blue

overalls and big, clumping boots.

"Joe," said Pa; "you say 'Mister' in French."

"Ya-a-as, M'sieu' Weensheep, so I call heem: M'sieu'; M'sieu'; M'sieu'."

Very carefully Frenchy pronounced the clipped word.

"That's all, Joe; I s'pose book French is a good deal diff'rent from

ord'nary Kanuck. 'Mosseer' is right anyhow, for the book says so.

Teacher had ought to know enough to go by the book, I sh' think."

"Tain't her fault, Pa," I said, relenting. "She never went to any good

school. I want to go somewhere where the teachers know a real lot; not

just a little bit more than me. I want to go"--I paused to gain

courage--"I want to go to the University, like--like Mr. Burke."

"The State University!" Pa repeated, in a tone of awe; "Thunder! Don't

believe we could manage that, Sis."

"W'y, yes, y'can, too, Ezry," Aunt Keren argued, "seems to me you're

forehanded enough, to do for an only child. 'Tain't 's if you was like

me 'n' Ab., with our four chunies."

"She'd have to go to an academy first to get fitten for it," said Ma.

"She couldn't go to the Univers'ty for three or four years yet."

"Of course not," I answered; "but you might write to Mr. Burke to send

me a catalogue to find out how much I'd have to know to get taken in.

Then I could study at home till I got pretty near ready, and then take

a year at the Academy."

The words flowed easily, eagerly; I had so often gone over the plan.

"Good idee," said Pa, nodding his head, relieved to find that I wasn't

seeking to leave home at once; and so it was arranged.

Isn't it wonderful? Plain and bald and homely the house, unpretending

the surroundings, simple and primitive the life, that sent forth the

world's first beautiful woman, the Woman of the Secret! I have tried to

set it all down exactly as it happened--the quaint, old-fashioned

dialect, the homely ways, the bearded, booted men. For this place, just

as it was, was the birthplace of the new glory; out of this homely

simplicity dawned the new era of beauty that is to make the whole world

glad.

A catalogue was sent for, books were bought and I set to work unaided,

though Mr. Stoddard took an interest in my studies and often helped me

out of difficulties. I chose the classical course, undeterred by

parental demonstrations of the "plum uselessness" of Latin and Greek; I

had for the choice no better reason than that it was more difficult. I

no longer went to the little red schoolhouse.

All this time I had almost forgotten Billy, to whom I owed such a debt

of gratitude for sending me upon the Quest. Once I met him on the road.

"Ain't ye never comin' to school no more?" he queried.

"No, I am never going again; I am preparing for the State University; I

shall take a classical course," I answered with hauteur, looking down

upon him as I spoke. Only that morning Ma had let out another tuck in

my gown.

"I'm aw'fly sorry," Billy murmured with a foolish, embarrassed grin.

"Guess I'll walk along of ye, if ye don't care."

My triumph found me cold. The sting of Billy's words yet rankled, and

perhaps I was not so grateful to the little wretch as he deserved. It

was about a quarter of a mile to our house; we walked the distance in

unbroken silence. Once there, Billy rallied.

"Good-by, Miss Winship," he said, holding open the gate for me. It was

the first time that any one had addressed me by that grown-up title.

"Good-by, Billy."

And that was the end of the beginning of the Quest.

In blizzard time and through the fierce heat of summer I toiled at

self-set tasks in our ugly, comfortable home. During the blessed

intervals when we could induce "girl help" to stay with us I had

scarcely any housework to do. Fairly regular exercise came to be a

habit and I worried admiring relatives into thinking me a candidate for

an early grave by taking a cold bath every morning. In the end I

managed, with a single year in a cheerless boarding house near a

village academy, where I studied greedily, devouring my books, to enter

the State University with a scholarship to my credit.

I took half the examination in Spring and read extra Virgil and Ovid

all summer. Then in August, when the long vacation was nearly over,

came the village dressmaker. Ma had promised me two new dresses, and I

would sit hemming towels or poring over Greek and Roman history while

they turned the leaves of fashion magazines and discussed materials and

trimmings.

I secretly hoped for a silk, but Mother, to whom I suppose I am even

now--now!--a little girl, vetoed that as too showy, and the dressmaker

added her plea for good, durable things. The choice fell upon a golf

suiting for school and a black cashmere for church.

I begged hard to have the cashmere touch the ground, but both women

smiled at the folly of the child who forgot the many re-bindings a long

skirt would call for. There was a comic side to my disappointment, for

I guessed that the widow Trask could not make the designs I coveted,

nor anything of which she could not buy a paper pattern.

But when I went up to the University and became entitled to join in the

cry:--

S!----U!

We're----a----few!

S!----T!----A--T--E!

U!----ni----ver--si--tee!

Wow!----Wow!----Wow!

--I found that I compared favourably enough with my mates. Dress played

little part in every day college life, and for such occasions as

socials or Friday night debating society I soon learned from upper

class girls to mitigate ugly gowns with pretty ribbons. And I

congratulated myself upon the fact that I was not by any means the

plainest girl in my class. My face was hopeless, but my hard-won fight

for an erect posture had given me a bearing that seemed almost

distinguished. And--well, even my face wasn't so bad, I thought then!

We were a jolly set; most of us poor as church mice, and caring little.

Making rather a boast of it, indeed. John Burke's roommate, Jim Reeder,

cooked his own meals--mostly oatmeal--in his room and lived on less

than a dollar a week until fairly starved. I suppose they'll call him

"old Hoss" to his dying day. Until his mother moved to town, John was

almost as ill-fed. He was just completing his law course when I was a

Freshman, and used to make brave jests at poverty, even after his

admission to the bar.

Of course I was glad to meet him again, and, though I was puzzled just

at first, to see how little older than I my former teacher was, yet

afterwards--why, I haven't answered his last--I don't know how many

letters; I simply must remember to write to him!

I think the best part of the teaching wasn't in the books. Some of the

students were queer and uncouth when they came, the boys eating with

their knives in the fashion of the farm; some of the brightest girls in

ill-fitting clothes--perfect guys they'd be thought in the city. But

there were others of quite different manner, and from them and from

professors who had seen the world, we learned a little--a very

little--of its ways. And perhaps we were not unfavourable specimens of

young republicanism, with our merry, hopeful outlook upon life, and our

future governors and senators all in the raw--yes, and our countesses

and vice-reines!

CHAPTER IV

GIRL BACHELOR AND BIOLOGIST

Merrily flew the years and almost before I realised it came graduation.

In the leafy dark of the village street, in the calm of a perfect June

night, John Burke told me that he loved me, and I plighted my troth to

him.

We laid plans as we bade each other good-by, to meet again--perhaps--in

New York in the fall; and even that little separation seemed so long.

We did not guess that the weeks would grow to months, and--oh, dear,

what will he think of me when he gets here? And what--now--shall I say

to him?

Father for the first time visited college to see me graduate. Between

his pride in my standing at the head of my class and his discomfort in

a starched collar, he was a prey to conflicting emotions all

Commencement week, and heaved a great sigh of relief when at last the

train that bore us home pulled out of the station. But as we approached

our own he again grew uneasy, and kept peering out at the car window as

if on the watch for something.

At length we descended in front of the long yellow box we called the

"deepo." And there was Joe Lavigne to meet us, not with the democrat

wagon, but with a very new and shiny top buggy.

When we reached the farmhouse, I saw proofs of a loving conspiracy. The

addition of a broad veranda and a big bay window, with the softening

effect of the young trees that had grown up all around the place, made

it look much more homelike than the bare box that had sheltered my

childhood. A new hammock swung between two of the trees.

Mother met me at the door with more emotion than I had ever before

detected upon her thin face. Then I saw that the dear people had been

at work within the house as well. Cosey corners and modern wall paper

and fittings such as I had seen at the professors' houses and had

described at home to auditors apparently slightly interested, had been

remembered and treasured up and here attempted, to make my homecoming a

festivity. The house had been transformed, and if not always in the

best of taste, love shone through the blunders.

"Oh, Father," I cried, "now I am surprised! How much wheat it must have

cost!"

"Well, I guess we can stand it," he said, grimly pleased and proud and

anxious all at once. "We wanted to make it kind o' pleasant for ye,

Sis; an'--an' homelike."

There was something so soft and tremulous in his voice that it struck

me with a great pang of contrition that I had left him for so many

years, that already I was eager to go away again--to the great city

where John was soon to be.

I turned quickly away and went from room to room admiring the changes,

but after supper, when we were all gathered about the sitting room

table, Father returned to the subject most upon his mind. He had seen

me with John during Commencement week, and must have understood matters.

"Ready t' stay hum now, I s'pose, ain't ye?" he asked with a note in

his voice of cheery assurance that perhaps he did not feel, tilting

back and forth in his old-fashioned rocking chair, as I had so often

seen him do, with closed eyes and open mouth, his face steeled against

expression. And the slow jog, jog, jog of the chair reminded me how his

silent evening vigils had worn away the rockers until they stood flat

upon the floor, making every movement a clacking complaint.

To-night--to-night, he is rocking just the same, in silence, in

loneliness. Poor, dear Pa!

"I'm glad to get home, of course," I said; "but--I wanted to speak with

you. But not to-night."

"Why, ye're through school."

"Yes, but I--I wish I could go on studying; if I may."

The words tripped over each other in my embarrassment.

The jog, jog of the chair paused suddenly, leaving for a moment only

the ticking of the clock to break the silence.

"Not goin' to put up 'ith us an' stay right alon', eh?" he asked; and

rocked twice, then stopped again, in suspense for the answer.

"Why, Father," I stammered, "of course I don't want to do anything

unless you're willing, but I had thought I'd like--I did want to go and

study in the city--I think--or somewhere."

"Dear me! Dear me!" he mused, his voice very low and even; "an' you

just through the University; 'way up to the top, too. Can't ye--seems

as if ye better stop alon' of us an' study home, same's you used to?

Mebbe--mebbe 'twon't be good for ye, studyin' so much."

"Of course I can, you dear old Dad," I cried; and horribly guilty I

felt as I looked at the kindly, weather-beaten face. "I shall do just

whatever you say. But oh, I wish I _could go to the city_! Don't you

suppose I could?"

"Chicago, mebbe?"

"I had thought of a post-graduate course in Barnard College--that's in

New York, you know."

Father knew John's plans. I blushed hotly. In the pause that followed I

knew that he was thinking of a well-thumbed map in my old school

geography; of the long, long journey to Chicago, and the thousand weary

miles that stretched beyond. Hastily I went on:--

"But I know how you have saved for me and worked for me and pinched;

and I'd be ashamed to be a burden upon you any longer; I can teach to

get money to go on with."

"No;" said Pa, sitting up straight and striking the arm of the chair

with his clenched fist a blow that gave some hint of the excitement

that moved him. "Guess a child o' mine don't need to teach an' get all

dragged out, alon' of a passel o' wild children! No, no, Helen 'Lizy;"

he added more softly, sinking back into the old attitude and once more

closing his eyes; "if the's so much more to learn, an' you want to go

ahead an' learn it, just you go an' get it done with. I'm right sorry

to have ye go so fur away; I did think--but it's nat'ral, child; it's

nat'ral. I s'pose John Burke's goin' to the city, too, and you

kinder--I s'pose young folks likes to be together."

"I--I--we have talked of it."

Talked about it! John and I had talked of nothing else for a week. I

sat very still, my eyes on the carpet.

"Guess John Burke'll have all he cares to do for one while, gittin'

started in the law office, 'thout runnin' round with Nelly," said Ma.

"Ye seem bent on spoilin' the child, Ezry. Al'ays the same way, ever

sin' she's a little girl."

Her lips were compressed, the outward symbol of a life of silent hours

and self restraint.

"There, there, Ma," said Father, jogging his chair again. "Don't ye

worry no more 'bout that. What's ourn is hern in the long run, an' she

may as well have some of it now when she wants it, an' it'll do her

some good. I s'pose Frank Baker--she that's your mother's cousin an'

married Tim'thy Baker an's gone to New York to live--I s'pose she might

look after you; but it's a long way off, New York--seems like a dretful

long way off. What ye goin' to learn, Sis, if ye should go t' the city?"

"Well, I was good in chemistry; Prof. Meade advised me--I might study

medicine; I don't know. And I want to know more about books and

pictures and the things that people talk about, out in the world,

though I can hardly call that a study, I suppose."

The words somehow disappointed me when uttered. They didn't sound

convincing. Such pursuits seemed less serious, there in the old

farm-house that spoke of so much painful toil, than when John and I had

discussed them on the sunny campus.

"I--I don't know yet, just what to do; there's all summer to plan; but

I want--somehow--to make the very most and the best of myself," I added

earnestly.

It was true, and the nearest I could come to the exact truth; that love

urged me yet more eagerly upon the Quest, and that with all my heart I

longed to become a wise and brilliant woman, for John's sake, and as a

step towards beauty, according to Miss Coleman's words.

"I don't hold with women bein' doctors," said Ma, as she energetically

knitted into the middle of her needle before looking up. "I don't know

what we're comin' to, these days."

"There, there, Ma, I don't know why women shouldn't be doctors, if they

want to. They make better nusses'n men. Mebbe--mebbe Sis'll be gettin'

married some day, an' I tell ye a little doctorin' know-how is mighty

handy in a house. A doctor an' a lawyer, now, would be a gret team,

right in the fambly, like. Well, Sis, we'll see; we'll see."

I knew that the matter was practically settled; and there was little

sleep for me, or for any one, that night in the old farm-house.

I stayed at home until September, and then one morning Father drove me

again to the little yellow station whose door opens wide upon all the

world.

"Well, good-by, Helen 'Lizy," he said.

"Good-by, Father."

For weeks I had been eager to be off, but as the train began to move

and I looked back at his patient figure--he made no more show of his

deep emotion than if the parting were for a day--a big lump rose in my

throat at leaving him and Ma--old before their time with toil and

privation and planning and striving for me.

I knew how lonely it would be in the sitting room that night without

me. Father with closed eyes jogging away in his chair, Mother bolt

upright and thin and prim, forever at her knitting or sewing; no sound

but the chair and the ticking clock upon the shelf--that night and

every night. And the early bedtime and the early morning and the long,

long day--what a contrast to this!

I pressed my face against the window, but a rush of tears blurred all

the dear, familiar landmarks--Barzillai Foote's red barn, the grain

elevator at the siding, the Hartsville road trailing off over the

prairie; I would have given worlds to be in the top buggy again, moving

homeward, instead of going swiftly out, out, alone, into the world.

Three months ago! I did not dream what miracles were in store!

And so one day I reached the New York I had dreamed about. It wasn't as

a shrine of learning that it appealed to me, altogether; but as a

wonderful place, beautiful, glittering, feverish with motion, abounding

with gayety, thronged with people, bubbling with life.

How it fascinated me!

Just at first of course I was lonely because John had not yet come, and

Mrs. Baker, mother's cousin, was away from home. But I soon made

friends with my cousins, Ethel and Milly; shy, nice girls, twins and

precisely alike, except, that Ethel is slightly lame. And at my

boarding place I made the acquaintance of an art student from

Cincinnati three or four years older than I, who proposed that we

should become girl bachelors and live in a studio.

"But I didn't know people ever lived in studios," I objected.

"Oh, you dear goose!" said Kathryn Reid--it's really her name, though

of course I call her Kitty--"Live in studios? Bless you, child,

everybody does it. And I know a beyewtiful studio that we can have

cheap, because we're such superior young persons; also because it's

ever so many stories up and no elevator. Can you cook a little? Can you

wash dishes, or not mind if they're not washed? You got the blessed

bump of disorder? You good at don't care? Then live with me and be my

love. You've no idea the money you'll save."

That's just the way Kitty talks. You can't induce her to be serious for

three minutes at a time--I suppose it's the artistic temperament. But

she's shrewd; studio life _is_ better than the kind of boarding house

we escaped from. And so jolly! Kitty has more chums than I, of course.

Her brother, Prosper K., and Caroline Bryant--"Cadge," for short--a

queer girl who does newspaper work and sings like an angel, are the

ones I see most. Though for that matter the city's full of girls from

the country, earning or partly earning their living. One will be

studying music, another art; one "boning" at medicine, another selling

stories to the newspapers and living in hope of one day writing a great

American play or novel. Such nice girls--so brave and jolly.

My new home is in a building on Union Square. And I like it--the place,

the people, the glimpse of the wintry Square, the roaring city life

under my window. I'm sure I don't want a quiet room. It's such fun,

just like playing house, to be by ourselves and independent of all the

world. I think it's an intoxicating thing, just at first, for a girl to

be really independent. Boys think nothing of it; it's what they've been

brought up to expect.

Well, I tore myself away from the dear place to get at my work. I

really mean to work hard and justify Father's sacrifices. I tried to

take singing lessons, because John is so fond of music, but there I

made a dismal failure; I had, three months ago, neither ear nor voice.

The day before the fall semester opened, I climbed the long hill to

Barnard College, fell in love with its gleaming white and gold, so

different from the State University, and arranged for a course in

biology. Then I began physical culture in a gymnasium.

I couldn't have made a queerer or a better combination. For it was in

the Barnard laboratory that I met Prof. Darmstetter; and it was my

bearing, my unending practice of the West Point setting-up drill, my

Delsarte, my "harmonic poise" and evident health that drew his

attention to me.

How well I remember the day I made his acquaintance! I had entered the

laboratory without knowing what manner of man he was, for all my

arrangements about my course had been made with clerks. So it was with

genuine surprise that I turned from an inspection of the apparatus to

answer when a squeaking voice at my elbow suddenly saluted me:--

"Mees Veenship, not so?"

The owner of the voice was a little old fellow, whose dry, weazened

face gave no hint of his years. I guessed that he was probably seventy,

though he might as easily be much younger. His skin was

parchment-coloured and cross-hatched by a thousand wrinkles and the

hair under his skull-cap was as white as snow, but he was as bright of

eye and brisk of manner as a youth of twenty.

"Yes, sir," I replied rather awkwardly; "I am Miss Winship."

"V'at for you study biology?" was his surprising query, uttered in a

tone between a squeak, a snarl, and a grunt.

"Because I wish to learn," I replied, after a moment's hesitation.

"No, mine vriendt," he snapped, "you do not vish to learn. You care

not'ing for science. You are romantic, you grope, you change, you are

unformed. In a vord, you are a voman. You haf industry--mine Gott,

yes!--and you vill learn of me because I am a man and because you haf

not'ing better to do. And by-and-by behold Prince Charming--and you

vill meet and marry and forget science. V'at for I vaste my time vit'

you? Eh? I do not know any voman who becomes a great scientist. Not so?

T'ose young vomen, t'ey vaste t'eir time and t'ey vaste mine."

I followed his gesture and saw two or three nice-looking girls in big

checked aprons amiably grinning at me. One of them by a solemn wink

conveyed the hint that such hazing of new arrivals was not unusual.

"You're paid to waste your time on me," I answered hotly. "I'm here to

work and to listen to you; my plans are my own affair, and if I never

become a great scientist, I don't see what difference that makes to

you."

The meekest looking girl gasped, wide eyed at my temerity. But Prof.

Darmstetter's shrewd little eyes twinkled with reassuring good-nature.

"Vell, vell, ve shall see," said he, wagging his head; "maybe I find

some use for you. I vatch you. Maybe I find for you some use t'at you

don't expect, eh? Ve shall see."

So he walked away, shrugging his shoulders and snapping his fingers and

muttering to himself: "Ve shall see; we shall see." And at times

throughout the session he chuckled as if he had heard of an excellent

joke.

"Good gracious!" I whispered to one of the aproned girls that had

watched the encounter--students like myself--"that's an encouraging

reception, isn't it?"

"It is," she gravely replied. "We're all jealous of you. You are

evidently destined to become Prof. Darmstetter's favourite pupil. I

know I cried half the night at the way he greeted me. We were all

watching you and you got off easy. Brought an apron? I can lend you

one, if you didn't. It's pretty mussy here."

"Thank you," I said, "but really I can't get my mind off Prof.

Darmstetter, all in a minute so. What sort of a man is he?"

"Oh, irritating sometimes, but a genius; I suppose his treatment of the

girls is a sample of his Early Teutonic ideas of civility. He likes

better to teach the Columbia boys--says their work in future years'll

do him more credit. But we get used to him and don't mind it, we who

were here last year. And he's a great scientist; has a world-wide

reputation. He almost lives in the laboratory, here and at Columbia;

has no home life or friends or relatives. And oh, it's such a

privilege," she said with a sudden change of tone, a schoolmistressly

manner, looking upon me more austerely, "to study under such a man. He

is a Master."

The Master! She little knew how true was the word! To-morrow, if his

secret and mine were known, the world would hail him as its lord. He

would be a greater man than has yet lived on the earth. Armies would

fight for his favour at the bidding of queens--to get what I have! And

to think that chance led me from two thousand miles away, straight to

him.

From the first he seemed to take an interest in my doings. He never

troubled himself to be polite, but he watched me; always he watched me.

I often saw him chuckling and rubbing his hands as if in approbation.

But of what? Not of my work, for of that he never took the slightest

notice, except when I compelled him to do so by some question.

Then, in quick-flung sentences, he would condense the results of a

lifetime of study into phrases filled with meaning, that seemed to cast

light upon principles, not facts, and make wonderfully clear the very

purpose of Nature. Then indeed he almost forgot that we were women, and

talked with kindling enthusiasm of his pet subject. I ceased to wonder

that he held such high rank in college.

Under such conditions I made rapid progress. I thoroughly enjoyed the

work, though I was not absorbed in it, like most of my companions; but

I was quick enough to keep pace with them and to make occasional shrewd

suggestions that pleased Prof. Darmstetter not half so much as some

sudden display of spirit. He did not seem to care whether I became a

student. And always he watched me, for what purpose I could not

determine.

My home life--if existence in a studio can be so called--was merry. I

was learning the ways of the world. I liked the life. I wrote to John

almost every day. The freedom of the den, the change from rote lessons

to post-graduate work was pleasant. I was happy.

Happy? I must have dreamed it.

What I thought happiness was nothing to what I now know happiness can

be.

CHAPTER V.

THE FINDING OF THE BACILLUS.

If I have dwelt so long upon the laboratory and its master, it is

because there the great blessing came that has glorified my whole

existence. This was the way of it.

One day I asked Prof. Darmstetter some question about the preparation

of a microscopic slide from a bit of a frog's lung.

"Vait!" he snapped, "I vill speak vit' you aftervards."

The girls prophesied the terrible things that were to happen, as they

lingered in the cloak room, waiting their turn on the threadbare spot

in the rug which a rich girl had bought to cover the threadbare spot in

the carpet in front of the mirror. "Now you'll catch it!" the last one

said, as she carefully put her hat straight with both hands and ran out

of the room.

When I returned to the laboratory Prof. Darmstetter motioned me to a

chair and took one opposite, from which he fixed his keen eyes upon my

face. Again he seemed weighing, judging, considering me with uncanny,

impersonal scrutiny.

"How I despise t'ose vomen!" he said at last, throwing up his hands

with an impatient gesture.

Used to his ways, I waited in silence.

"I teach t'ose vomen, yes; but I despise t'em," he added.

"If you do, you ought to be ashamed of it," I retorted hotly. "But I

don't believe you really despise them. Such a bright lot of girls--why,

some of them are bound to be heard from in science some day!"

"In science? Bah!"

"Why not? There was Mary Somerville and--and--and Caroline Herschel

and--well, I can't think of their names all in a minute, but I'm proud

to be one of the girls here anyway."

"You are not one of t'em," he cried angrily. "T'ey are life failures.

You fancy t'ey are selected examples, but t'ey are not; t'ey are t'e

rejected. T'ey stood in t'e market place and no man vanted t'em; or

else t'ey are fools as vell as failures and sent t'e men avay. You know

me. I am biologist, not true? I hate t'e vord. I am physiologist,

student of t'e nature of life--all kinds of life, t'e ocean of life of

v'ich man is but a petty incident."

"You were speaking about--"

"Ach, so! Almost t'ou has t'e scientific mind t'at reasons and

remembers. I said, I am physiologist. I study v'at Nature is, v'at she

means to do. V'en Nature--Gott, if you vant a shorter name--makes a

mistake, Gott says: 'Poor material; spoiled in shaping, wrong in t'e

vorks; all failures; t'row t'em avay. Ve haf plenty more to go on vit'.

You know. You study Nature, also, a little. You know she is law, she is

power. To t'e indifidual pitiless, she mofes vit' blind,

discompassionate majesty ofer millions of mangled organisms to t'e

greater glory of Pan, of Kosmos, of t'e Universe. She vastes life. And

how not? Her best vork lives a little v'ile and produces its kind, and

t'e vorst does not, and t'ey go down t'e dark vay toget'er and Nature

neit'er veeps nor relents Kosmos is greater t'an t'e indifidual and a

million years are short.

"T'ose young vomen--Nature meant t'em to desire beauty and dream of

lofe. Vat is lofe? It is Nature's machinery. T'ose vomen are old enough

for lofe, but t'ey haf it not. So t'ey die. T'ey do not reproduce t'eir

kind, not'ing lifing comes from t'em, to go on lifing, on and on,

better and better--or vorse, as Nature planned--vit' efery generation.

If a voman haf t'e desire of lofe and of beauty, and lofe and beauty

come not to her, t'en I pity her, because I am less vise and resolute

to vit'hold pity t'an Nature is. Efen if she haf not lofe, but only t'e

ambition of power or learning or vealt', I might pity her vit' equal

injustice, but I cannot. She vill not let me. She does not know t'at

she is a failure. She prides herself upon being so mis-made. She cannot

help t'at; neit'er can I help despising her. Such vomen are abnormal,

monstrous, in a vord, failures. Let t'em die! You, I t'ink, are not so.

You study to bide t'e time. You haf a fine carriage. You comb t'e hair,

you haf pretty ribbons, you make t'e body strong and supple, you look

in t'e glass and vish for more beauty. Not so?"

"Of course I do," I cried angrily, wondering for the moment if he had

lost his senses. It seemed as if he knew little about women for a man

who professed to make all life his study. If there were one of his

despised girls who lacked the desire of beauty and the dream of love, I

am much mistaken. But I came to see afterward that he understood them

as well as myself.

"I t'ought so," he mused, his eyes still upon my face. "And you are not

too beautiful now; t'ey could not doubt. Yes; I vatch you, I study you.

Seldom I make t'e mistake; but it is fery important. So I vatch you a

little v'ile longer yet. T'en I say to myelf: 'Here is t'e voman; yes,

she is found.'"

And he chuckled and rubbed his lean hands together as I had so often

seen him do.

The thought flashed across my mind that this extraordinary man

meditated a proposal of marriage, but I dismissed the notion as

ridiculous.

The Professor leaned forward and, fixing me with his eye, spoke in a

hoarse whisper, tense with excitement:--

"Mees Veenship, I am a biologist; you are a voman, creature of Nature,

yearning for perfection after your kind. I--I can gife it you. You can

trust me; I am ready. I can gif you your vish, t'e vish of efery normal

voman. Science--t'at is I--can make you t'e most beautiful being in t'e

vorld!"

Another Sunday school lesson! Miss Coleman and her unforgotten lecture

upon beauty flashed upon my mind. But this man was promising me more

than she had done, and his every word was measured. What was the

mystery? What had he to say to me?

"T'e most beautiful--voman--in t'e vorld," he went on in a slow,

cadenced whisper. "Do you vish it?"

His glittering eyes held mine again. No, he was not jesting at my

expense; rather he seemed waiting with anxiety for me to make some

decision upon which much depended. He was in very serious earnest.

But was ever a question more absurd? Who of women would not wish it?

But to get the wish--ah, there's a different matter! I thought he must

be crazed by over-study, and I could only sit and stare at him,

open-mouthed.

"Listen!" he went on more rapidly, as if to forestall objection. "You

are scholar, too, a little. You know how Nature vorks, how men aid her

in her business. Man puts t'e mot'er of vinegar into sweet cider and it

is vinegar. T'e fermenting germs of t'e brewery chemist go in vit'

vater and hops and malt, and t'ere is beer. T'e bacilli of bread, t'e

yeast, svarming vit millions of millions of little spores, go into t'e

housevife's dough, and it is bad bread; but t'at is not t'e fault of

t'e bacilli--mein Gott, no!--for vit' t'e bacilli t'e baker makes goot

bread. T'e bacilli of butter, of cheese--you haf studied t'em. T'e

experimenter puts t'e germs of good butter into bad cream and it

becomes goot. It ripens. It is educated, led in t'e right vay.

Tradition vaits for years to ripen vine and make it perfect. Science

finds t'e bacillus of t'e perfect vine and puts it in t'e cask of fresh

grape juice, and soon t'e vine drinkers of t'e vorld svear it is t'e

rare old vintage. T'e bacillus, inconceivably tiny, svarming vit' life,

reproducing itself a billion from one, t'at is Nature's tool. And t'e

physiologist helps Nature.

"See now," continued Prof. Darmstetter. "I haf a vonderful discofery

made. I must experiment vit' it--_experimentum in corpore vili!_

Impossible, for the subject is mankind. I must haf a voman--a voman

like you, healt'y, strong, young--all t'e conditions most favourable.

She must haf intelligence--t'at is you. She should know somet'ing of

biology, and be fery brave, so t'at she may not be frightened, but may

understand how t'e vonderful gift is to come to her; and t'at is you.

She should not be already beautiful, lest t'e change be less

convincing. Yes, you are t'e voman for t'e test. You may become more

famous in history fan Cleopatra or Ninon, and outshine t'em and all t'e

ot'er beauties t'at efer lifed. Do you vant triumphs? Here t'ey are.

Riches? You shall command t'em. Fame? Power? I haf t'em for you. You

shall be t'e first. Aftervard, v'en beauty is common as ugliness is

now--ah, I do not know. Efen t'en it vill be a blessing. But to be t'e

first is fame and all t'e ot'er t'ings I promise you. Now do you trust

me? Now do you beliefe me? Vill you make t'e experiment? I haf--let me

tell you!--I haf discofered--"

Cautiously Prof. Darmstetter looked about the room. Then he leaned

toward me again and added in a hoarse whisper:--

"I haf discofered t'e Bacillus of Beauty."

CHAPTER VI.

THE GREAT CHANGE.

The Bacillus of Beauty! Was the poor man insane? Had much study made of

him a monomaniac babbling in a dream of absurdities? Do you wonder that

I doubted?

And yet--the thought flashed through my mind that things almost as

strange have become the commonplace. I had seen the bones of my own

hand through the veiling flesh. I had listened to a voice a thousand

miles away. I had seen insects cut in two, grafted together, head of

one and tail of another, and living. I had seen many, many marvels

which science has wrought along the lines of evolution. And yet--

My dream; my desire always! If it could be!

As I stared open-mouthed at the Professor, he began once more:--

"T'e danger, t'e risk--t'ere is none. You shall see. It is as harmless

as--"

"Never mind about that!" I interrupted. "How would I look? Would it

change me totally? Would I really be the most beautiful?--"

I stopped, blushing at my own eagerness.

"Absolutely; I svear it. T'e most perfectly beautiful voman in t'e

vorld. Mein Gott, yes. How not? Never vas t'ere yet a perfectly

beautiful voman. Not von. All have defects; none fulfills t'e ideal.

You? You vill look like yourself. I do not miracles. T'e same soul vill

look out of your eyes. You vill be perfect, but of your type. T'e same

eyes, more bright; t'e same hair, more lustrous and abundant; t'e same

complexion clear and pure; t'e same voman as she might have been if t'e

race had gone on defeloping a hundred t'ousand years. Look you. Some

admire blondes; some brunettes. You are not a Svede to be white, an

Italian to be black. You are a brown American. You shall be t'e most

beautiful brown American t'at efer lifed. And you shall be first. Vit'

you as an example we shall convince t'e vorld. Ve shall accomplish in

t'ree generations t'e vork of a hundred t'ousand years of defelopment.

How vill humanity bless us if we can raise, out of t'e slums and

squalor, out of t'e crooked and blind and degraded, out of t'e

hospitals and prisons, t'e spawning dregs of humanity and make t'em

perfect! T'ey shall valk t'e eart' like gods, rejoicing in t'eir

strengt'. No more failures, no more abnormalities. Nature's vork

hastened by science, aeons of veary vaiting and slow efolution

forestalled by--by me!"

The little Professor stood erect, his eye fixed on mine, his mien

commanding. I had never looked on man so transfigured.

The thought was intoxicating me, driving me wild. I tried to think, to

struggle against the tide that was sweeping me away. He seemed to be

hypnotizing me with his grave, uncanny eye. I could not move, I could

not speak.

"You may ask," Darmstetter went on--though I had not thought of

asking--"if t'e beauty vould be hereditable; if as an acquired

characteristic, it vould pass to descendants, or, if each child vill

not haf to be treated anew. I believe no. It is true t'at acquired

traits are not hereditable. T'ere Weissmann is right, v'atefer doubters

may say. You know t'e t'eory. T'e blacksmit's muscles are not

transmitted to his son t'e clerk; but t'e black hair t'at he got from

his fat'er. Only after fery many generations of blacksmit's could a boy

be born who vould grow up as a clerk vit' blacksmit' muscles. Efolution

shapes t'e vorld, yes; but t'e process is so slow, so slow! So

education, modification, must begin afresh vit' each generation and

continue forefer. But t'is bacillus does not add ornament to t'e

outside. It is not like t'e masseuse, vit' her unguents and kneading.

It changes all t'e nature. It is like compressing a million years of

education by natural selection into von lifetime. T'at is my t'eory. I

do not know--it is not yet tried--but how ot'ervise? Ve but hasten t'e

process, as t'e chemist hastens fermentation; Nature constructs, she

does not adapt or alter or modify. Ve produce beauty by Nature's own

met'od. V'y not hereditary?"

I had made up my mind.

"I'll do it," I cried, no longer able to resist, for the fever of it

was in my blood. "You shall make your attempt on me! It can do no harm.

I do not see how it can accomplish all you claim, but if you

think--it's an experiment full of possibilities--in the interests of

science--"

"Interest of humbug!" snapped Prof. Darmstetter, his own sarcastic self

again. "You consent because you vant to be beautiful. You care not'ing

for science. I can trust you vit' my secret. You need svear no oat's

not to reveal it. You vant to be t'e only perfect voman in t'e vorld,

and so you shall be, for some time. T'at is right. T'at is your revard."

My cheeks flushed at his injustice. I do care for others. I am not

selfish--not more than everybody. And yet--at that moment I feared him

and his knowledge; I shuddered at nameless terrors.

Really, I often wonder that I ever had the courage to try. And oh, I am

so glad!

Now there is no more fear. Darmstetter is my servant, if I will it. As

for his marvellous power, I shall bless it and reverence it all my

life. I thank God for letting me know this man. It is too

wonderful--too wonderful for words!

The transformation was slow at first. The beginning--such an anxious

time. Every day I studied myself and watched and waited for the first

sign of growing grace, for the dawning glory. Sometimes I thought I

could see the change already under way, and then again the same plain

Nelly Winship looked at me from the uncomplimentary glass, and away

flew all my hopes.

It was the fading of a little scar on my thumb that first let me know

the blessed truth. Now I can scarcely see the place where it was, and

I'm sure no one else would notice it. It will never go away entirely.

Prof. Darmstetter says I am not proof against wounds and old age,

because these are a part of Nature's great plan. But it faded, faded!

And my ears! How I used to hate their prominence! But soon they

snuggled closer to my beautiful, beautiful face--and I'm in sure I

don't blame them. Every morning when I woke, my shining eyes and the

bloom of my cheeks told me I was growing perfect, just as he said I

must do. Though I'm not yet quite perfect.

I could sit at my glass and look for hours at my reflected image--if it

weren't for Kitty--and--

Why, it seems like another girl, and such a girl as never the world saw

before--not me, but Her. Sometimes times I fear Her; but oftener and

oftener, as I get used to the lovely vision, I want to hug Her right

out of the cold mirror and kiss Her and pat Her smooth cheek like a

child's, and put pretty clothes upon Her, as if she were a doll.

And then I try to realise that Her is Me, my own self, and I just

cannot believe it! I look from the reflected image to a little

photograph of the Helen Winship I once knew, and back again to the

glass, and wonder, and thank God, and shudder with awe of my own

loveliness. I luxuriate in it, I joy in it, I feel it in every fibre of

my being. I am as happy as a queen. I am a queen--or She is.

I am but slightly taller. My form is more rounded and of better mould,

but I am still slender. My face is the same face but--how can I express

it? A Venus with the--the expression of a Western schoolgirl pursuing

special studies in New York, looks at me with Her eyes. They are the

eyes of Helen Winship, but larger and fuller orbed and more lustrous,

with an appeal that makes me fall in love with myself, as I look. The

nose is longer and straighter, the cheeks fuller and fairer, the chin

daintier, the neck--ah, well, why shouldn't I be frank? I am beautiful!

And the complexion--still so strange I do not say "my

complexion"--clear, fair, rosy all in one, with the fineness and purity

of a baby's; it is the most indescribable of all the marvels that glow

in my glass. Before, I had the rather sallow, powder-excusing skin of

so many Western girls. Now it is perfect. I love to gaze by the hour at

my own beauty. I should be renamed Narcissa.

My voice, too, is glorious. I have to school myself not to start at the

sound of it when I speak. And most of all, what most impresses me when

I try to consider myself fairly--candidly--critically--is the

appearance of strength, of health, of unbounded power and deathless

youth--as if the blood of generations of athletic girls and free,

Viking men ran in my veins. I am, I believe, the only perfectly healthy

woman on earth.

Will the gods smite me for my happiness? Are they jealous? Ah, well, I

have never lived until now, and if I can stay a little while like this,

I shall be satisfied; I shall be ready to die. If only beauty does not

vanish as suddenly as it came! If it did, I should kill myself.

There are disadvantages. Such a time as I'm having with my clothes!

Money to buy new is not so plenty as I could wish, though the $75 a

month that Father sends was more than enough until the change. I'm

saving to buy a microscope--a better one than those loaned to students

at the laboratory; so I have to let out and contrive--I who so hate a

needle!

And the staring admiration that is lavished on me everywhere! I suppose

I'll get used to it; but it's a new experience. I like to be looked at,

too, much as it embarrasses me. My loveliness is like a beautiful new

dress; one is delighted to have it, but terribly shy about wearing it,

at first.

Admiration! Why, the mystified music master is ready to go down on his

knees to me, the janitor and the page boys are puzzled. I wonder--I

wonder what John will say, I almost dread to think of his seeing me so;

yet it will be the greatest test. Test! I need none!

The girls in the laboratory are divided between awe and envy, and Kitty

Reid--poor Kitty! She began by being puzzled, then grew panic stricken.

The first time she noticed--I shall always remember it--was when I came

in from the college one day, still skeptical of change, yet hoping it

might be so.

"Why, you've a new way of doing your hair--no; same old pug--but

somehow--you're looking uncommon fit to-day," she said glancing up from

her drawings.

My heart leaped for joy. It was true then! It was true! But remembering

Miss Coleman, I forced myself to reply as quietly as I could:--

"My genius must be beginning to sprout."

A little later Kitty was in constant mystification.

"How do you do it?" she would demand. "What have you got? Can't you let

me into the secret? I just think you might introduce me to the fairy

godmother."

If I were to tell any one, it would be Kitty, of course. Such a dear

little red-headed angel she would make! But it would not be fair to

Prof. Darmstetter. He is not ready yet. So I can only sham ignorance

and joke with her about milk baths and cold cream and rain water. Now

that she has reached the stage of fright, I have great fun with her.

"The age of miracles has come again," she says a hundred times a day.

"I can't believe my eyes! How is it that you are growing so beautiful?

Is it witchcraft?"

"Am I better looking?" I inquire languidly. "Well, I'm glad of it. I

had an aunt who was well-favoured when she was young; it's high time I

took after her, if I'm ever going to."

"No living aunt ever looked as you do now," Kitty will mutter, shaking

her head. "I don't know what to think. I'm half afraid of you."

To tell the truth, she's more than half afraid of me, and I delight in

mystifying her all I can.

But the strangest thing of all, the most ridiculous thing, considering

his age, the oddest thing when one remembers that he himself is its

creator--Professor Darmstetter is half in love with the beauty he has

made; he would be, if he might, the gray and withered Pygmalion of my

Galatea!

CHAPTER VII.

THE COMING OF THE LOVER.

December 15.

Really, I don't know which is the more aggravating, John Burke or

Kitty. Such a battle as I've had with them to-day!

I had quite stopped fretting over John's absence. Indeed, though of

course I wished to see him, I dreaded it; I was so happy, just as I

was, and I had so many things to think about, so many dreams to dream

and plans to make.

I liked John when he taught the little prairie school and praised me to

my wondering relatives. All through my college course I was proud of

his regard, because every one respected him; and last June I promised

to marry him.

We said then that our love wasn't just a "co-ed. flirtation," because

he was a grown man and not a student any more. But--but--but last June

I wasn't--

Why, I've but just come to possess the gift that I wouldn't exchange

for the proudest throne on earth, and I mean to make it my throne in

the great world. I haven't yet had time to think things out or realise

my fairy fortune; but John and I mustn't do anything foolish. Wise love

can wait.

He came while I was at school.

When I found him here, he actually didn't know me.

He stared as if I were a stranger whose face drew, yet puzzled him.

Then he was attracted by my beauty, then for a moment dismayed, and

then--why, he was really so much in love that I--I--he gazed at me as

if I were not quite real; with reverence. His eyes mirrored my power;

the wonder of the new Me, the glory and the radiance of me shone in

them. He worships me and--well, of course nobody could help liking that.

He was just as he has always been, but somehow, here in the city, I

couldn't help finding him bigger, stronger, more bucolic. His clothes

looked coarse. His collar was low for the mode, his gloveless hands

were red. There was something almost clerical in his schoolmasterly

garb, but his bold dark eyes and short hair aggressively brushed to a

standstill, as he used to say, looked anything but ministerial. It was

plain that he was a man of sense and spirit, one to be proud of; plain

that he was a countryman, too.

I couldn't help seeing his thick shoes any more than I could his hurt

face when I was distant and his ardour the moment I grew kind; and I

was so ashamed--thinking of his looks and picking flaws, when three

months ago I was a country girl myself--that I know--I don't know what

I should have done, if Kitty hadn't returned.

I was so relieved to see her, for John has been writing of marriage

soon and of a home, in one room if need be; and we have too much to

accomplish, with beauty and woman's wit and brain and strength, for

that. It is my duty to think for both, if he's too much in love--the

dear, absurd fellow! And yet--

As soon as he was gone, Kitty jumped up from the drawing table. She was

on pins and needles for anxiety, her eyes dancing.

"Well, when's the wedding?" she cried.

"What wedding?"

I was vexed and puzzled, and distressed, too, after sending John away

as I had done. I wanted to be alone and have a chance to think quietly.

"Oh, any old wedding; will it be here, in the den? You going to invite

us all?" asked Kitty.

"Isn't going to be any wedding."

"I'm sorry; I always did lot on weddings."

"You'll have to be the bride, then. Honest, Kitty, I don't like jokes

on such subjects. Mr. Burke and I haven't an idea of being married, not

for centuries."

Kitty went white all in a minute. She is so quick tempered.

"Oh," said she, "you're going to throw him over. I thought as much! You

were always writing to him when you first came to the city, and talking

about him, at night when we brushed our hair; but lately you haven't

spoken of him at all. You used to look happier when the postman brought

you something from him. And you had his picture--"

"The postman's?" I interrupted, but Kitty kept on as if she were wound

up:--

"--on the mantel-piece, in a white-and-gold frame with your own. You

hid 'em both when you began to grow beautiful. I suppose you think

you're too good for him. But don't go and break his heart; please

don't, Princess; there's a dear."

"Goose! I haven't the least notion of breaking his heart. I--why can't

you let me alone? I'm--I'm very fond of him--if you will insist on

talking about it."

"Oh, I can see! If you'd noticed the poor fellow's face--"

"'Poor fellow!' If you'd seen him before you came! He doesn't need your

pity. Why, it seems to have been with you a case of love at first

sight," I said mockingly. "He was rude to you, too; he never even

noticed that you were in the room, after I came."

"I don't care. I don't expect a man to notice me when he meets his

sweetheart for the first time in ever so long; and such a sweetheart!

But you--you--oh, I'm afraid of you! I'm afraid of you! What is this

mystery? What is it? Why have you grown so grand and terrible? What has

become of my chum?"

She sat down flat on the floor and burst into passionate weeping.

"Get up!" I cried.

"I won't!"

A sense of great loneliness came over me and I threw myself down beside

her.

"Oh, Kitty," I said, "why aren't you old and wise and sensible instead

of being just a silly girl like myself? Then you wouldn't sit here

howling, but you'd kiss me and cuddle me and comfort me and tell me

what to do."

"I'm afraid of you! I'm afraid of you! It's--it's no' canny."

"Kitty, Kitty! Why aren't you my fairy godmother, so that you could

show me in a magic glass what to do, instead of scolding me, when I'm

wretched enough already?"

"Wretched! You!" Her eyes fairly blazed. "I wouldn't ever--_ever_ be

wretched if I looked like you--not ever in this world!"

"Yes, you would. You'd be so puzzled about things; and bad girls would

scold you, and there wouldn't be a single soul within two thousand

miles to rely upon. And you'd be awkward and shy when folks looked at

you. And then you'd--you'd--you'd cry."

Afterwards we both wiped our eyes and made it all up; and I told her

again that I really was fond of John.

Well, folks must eat. I went out to get some chops, a half dozen

oranges and the other things for supper--we have lunch and supper, no

dinner--and though I started so blue and wretched, I simply couldn't

stay melancholy long, people stared at me and admired me so much. They

crowded after me into the little corner grocery, and the room was so

full that some one upset a tub of pickles and there they stood around

in the vinegar to look at me.

It was frightful! But it was nice too; though I was so embarrassed that

I wanted to run away. I'll get used to it; but--why, my own mother

wouldn't know me! It's no wonder Kitty is frightened.

I wish I could see Ma. But she couldn't advise me. I ought to have a

home, though, and some one older than Kitty to look after me. I must

leave the den; but where to go? Suppose I burned myself broiling chops

or beefsteak, or blistered my face with steam from the kettle! That

would be frightful, now. It's the least I can do for Prof. Darmstetter

to keep free from harm the beauty he gives me. And besides,--I never

before was afraid, but now I go scurrying through the halls and up and

down the stairs like a wild thing; the place is so public, so many

people notice me.

I wonder if I couldn't talk to Mrs. Baker. She's at home now. Or

there's the Judge's sister, Miss Marcia, the dearest old maid. I've

only seen her once or twice, but I believe she'd be good to know.

I have too many problems to stay here. I must make some settled plan,

now that my life means so much to all the women in the world. And--how

to deal with a headstrong young man who won't take "no" for an answer

or "wait" for wisdom I simply don't know. If he would only give me time

to make my own acquaintance! There are so many things to think of. A

great world is open to me. I have the key and I am going to live the

most beautiful life.

I must think and plan and learn how not to be frightened at my own face

in the mirror; I must--I simply _must_ have time.

* * * * *

Dec. 17.

I have just seen John again; he came up to Barnard, which won't do at

all. And he came home with me, and--how he loves me!

But I can manage him. Indeed, he was more reasonable to-day.

BOOK III.

THE JOY OF THE SUNSHINE.

CHAPTER I.

CHRISTMAS.

No. -- East 72d Street, Dec. 28.

Milly and I have just come from a run in the Park, and here I am this

shining white morning scribbling away in my own cosey room.

My very own room--for the most delightful thing has happened; I'm

visiting Mrs. Baker--Aunt Frank I am to call her, though she is really

Ma's cousin--and she has asked me to spend the rest of the winter here.

So I've really left the den. And I didn't deserve it. Why, when Mrs.

Baker invited me to dinner on Christmas day, I dreaded the visit. I

hadn't seen her since I came from the West, and I wondered what she'd

think of me, and what she'd write to Mother. If Pa and Ma could see me

now, would they say their little Nelly'd "filled out well-favoured?"

What _would_ they say to me?

Why, Christmas morning, when I read the home letters, I felt as if I

had betrayed my parents' confidence, as if I'd robbed them of their

child by changing into such a lovely creature. Then I laughed; they

won't mind my getting rid of freckles and a pug nose. And then I cried,

almost, and felt so lonely, for even Kitty had gone off with Pros.; and

so far away and so happy, and a good deal troubled with it all; for

John had sent me some roses and a ring, and I knew I should find him at

my Aunt's, eager to see whether I wore them.

John's such a problem. All that day I sat alone in the den, trying to

think, and trying to let down the hem of my waterproof, for it was

snowing and I have only one good dress; and every few minutes I would

slip on the ring and pull it off, watching the rainbow lights that

flashed and paled in the heart of the stone, and smiling because John

had chosen an opal; I wonder if he knows it's the gem of the beautiful

woman.

In the end I let it stay on my hand, of course, for, after all, I

suppose I am betrothed to him.

So it happened that I was almost late for dinner at the Bakers', and

quite late when I really got inside the house; for I walked past the

door two or three times before I could muster up courage to ring the

bell. When I finally ran up the steps, my umbrella was powdered white,

and snow and water were dripping off my skirts. My heart was beating

fast with dread and expectation; I was sure no one would know me.

"I--I'm too wet for the parlour," I said to the maid who came to let me

in; and after a single startled, puzzled look, she went to tell some

one of my arrival. There I stood in my shabby mackintosh, looking at a

huge, gilt-framed picture of the Judge, until a plump little robin of a

woman, in a black dress with a dash of red at the throat, came trotting

out to meet me.

That was Aunt; in spite of my fright and self-consciousness I wanted to

laugh to see her bright eyes look at me in amazement that grew almost

to panic. She didn't know me; the servant could not have caught my name.

"Did you--wish to see me?" she finally managed to say.

"I'm Helen Winship--" I faltered. I felt as if I had done something

very wrong.

"Nelly!" she cried, clutching my hands and almost lifting herself on

tiptoe, as she blinked into my eyes in the uncertain light of the outer

hall. "This isn't--can't be--not _our_ Helen Winship--oh, it's some

message from her--some--"

Her voice died away in incoherent mutterings. She drew me into a big

hall like a sitting room behind the small parlour.

"Come into the light, child, whoever you are. I want to look at you,"

she said.

An open fire was burning in the grate, and in the room were Milly and

Ethel and white-haired Miss Marcia and a tall, blonde young man.

All rose to their feet, then stopped. There was an awkward pause, the

answering thrill of tense amazement shot from mind to mind like

lightning. They stood as if frozen, gazing. The room was for a moment

so still that I could hear my own quick breathing and the hammering of

my heart. I was grateful for some far shout upon the street that

drowned the noise.

"But--you--but--I thought--" Milly began in a half-hushed, awe-struck

whisper; she never finished the sentence, but continued to gaze at me

with big, round eyes, her lips parted, her breath quick and tremulous.

I was transported with joy and fright; I almost wished I might sink

into the floor, but just then down the stair came the Judge with John

behind him, and little Joy perched on his shoulder. I think the others

were as grateful as I for the interruption.

"Put me down! Put me down!" screamed Joy as she saw me sprinkled with

sleet. "Mamma, ith that Mithith Thanta Clauth?"

At the welcome laugh that helped to break the ice she ran with a flirt

of her short skirts to hide her head against her father's knee.

"Helen!" repeated Mrs. Baker, only half recovering from her

stupefaction, "this isn't--why, it can't be you!"

"I--oh, I'm afraid I'm late," I stammered.

Miss Marcia began to unbutton my raincoat, and her kindness somewhat

relieved my embarrassment, though I don't know how I managed to respond

to the hubbub of greetings, especially when Mr. Hynes, the stranger,

was presented.

He had been looking at me more intently than he knew, with dark blue

brilliant eyes, and he flushed as he touched my hand, until I was glad

to take refuge with Joy, who hovered about, eying me as if she still

suspected some ruse on the part of Santa Claus.

"Joy, you know Cousin Nelly?" I said; and at sound of my voice, they

all looked again at each other and then at me.

"Why, I can't believe my eyes, though Bake here said you'd altered.

Altered!" twittered Aunt Frank. She turned indignantly upon the Judge,

who wisely attempted no defense. "I didn't dream--Bake, here, never can

tell a story straight. Have you--what is it? Nelly, dear, it's two

years since I've seen you; of course you've--grown!"

But no amazement could long curb her hospitable instincts. Her

incoherence vanished as she grasped at a practical consideration.

"But let Milly take you up stairs and get your things off," she said

with an air as of one who solves problems.

"Are you truly Cothin Nelly?" Joy lisped. "All wight; come thee my

twee."

Though she couldn't recognise me as the cousin of a few weeks earlier,

the child was eager to claim me as a new friend. So I escaped with her

and Milly to the nursery, where I stayed as long as I dared, letting my

cheeks cool.

"The twee ith mine and Mamma'th," said Joy; "we're the only oneth young

enough to have Christhmath twees, Papa thayth."

"Hoh, guess I'm younger'n Mamma, ain't I?" scoffed my other little

cousin who had been sent to inquire into our delay. He is perhaps a

dozen years old, is called "Boy" officially, and Timothy, Jr., in the

family records, and--like Joy--wasn't in the least afraid of me, after

five minutes' acquaintance.

Boy led me down to the others, but dinner was nearly over before I felt

at ease. I'm not used to having at my back a statuesque servant--though

this one was not too statuesque to be surprised by my appearance almost

out of decorum. And I couldn't help knowing that every one wanted to

look at me all the time, which was delicious, but embarrassing. I

blushed and gave stupid answers when addressed, and even feared that I

might show myself at fault in the etiquette of a city table. It was

strange to have forks in so many cases where I've always used spoons.

And, though of course I knew what the finger bowls were, I wasn't quite

sure how to use them.

No one was more puzzled by my appearance than Uncle Timothy himself. As

he looked at me--and this he did through most of the meal--certain long

gray hairs in his eyebrows seemed to wave up and down, as I had often

noticed with the frightened curiosity of a child, like the questioning

antennae of an insect.

"And what is the school work now?" he asked when the dessert came. "The

last time I had the very real pleasure of seeing you, it was--perhaps

animalculae?"

"The cell," I replied, relieved at the introduction of a topic that I

could talk about, "and the cell wall. Protoplasmic movements, you know,

and unicellular plants and animals. I'd been making sketches that day

of the common amoeba of standing water."

"I am not familiar with the--ah--with the amoeba; but doubtless its

habits are interesting. And when do the school days end? A young lady

looks forward with pleasure, I fancy, to release from--"

"Is the amoeba a--some horrid bug, I suppose?" interrupted Aunt Frank;

"and you--er--do things to it in that laboratory? How can you? The very

thought of such a place! It makes me shiver!"

"Oh, but you should see it, so clean and bright; the laboratory's

simply beautiful!"

"But this is your first winter in the city, and you ought to be

enjoying concerts and theatres, meeting people, seeing things."

"Oh, I only keep such hours as I elect, being a post graduate; and I've

been to several theatres," I said; "Kitty and I get seats in the top

gallery."

"The--the top gallery?"

"At matinees," I hastily explained, "and not--not lately."

And then I felt more confused than ever, for Mr. Hynes was watching me.

John was looking at me, too, with that great light in his face that had

been there ever since my arrival, when he first saw the opal gleaming

on my finger; and I--oh, how could I have hinted that I don't dare go

where so many people might look at me? But it's the truth. And though

the truth may be inconvenient, it's wonderfully sweet!

After dinner we passed into the big drawing room behind the hall. Joy

did some clumsy little dances in her short white frock--she is really

too chubby to caper nimbly--and Ethel and Milly played and sang neither

well nor ill.

I think they were more afraid of me than I had been of the servants at

dinner. They are not very pretty, with their light, wavy hair and pale

flower faces, though I'm afraid I set my standard too high now--now

that I know what is possible.

I went to the piano myself afterwards and played. Played! It was

terrible! Never would I have believed that I could make such a mess of

it. I didn't sing until they began trying carols. I didn't mean to do

so then, but I chimed in before I thought, when they sang:--

He set a star up in the sky

Full broad and bright and fair.

"That song was taken from the Ormulum," said the Judge; "a poem of the

thirteenth century--"

"Nelly! Was that you?" cried Aunt Frank, interrupting.

The music of the new, fresh, vibrant voice had thrilled them all--all

except the unconscious Judge--and there they sat, spellbound. But as

they shook off the witchery, there was all at once a babble of voices,

and before I quite knew what had happened, I was at the piano again,

singing "The King in Thule:"

There was a king in Thule

True even to the grave

To whom his mistress, dying,

A golden goblet gave.

Perhaps it wasn't very appropriate to Christmas, but Cadge had drilled

me upon it. In the middle of the first stanza I happened to glance up,

and noticed that Mr. Hynes was again looking at me with an absorbed,

indrawing gaze, colouring with amazed pleasure. It woke in me a flutter

of consternation and delight, for he has the sensitive face of a

musician; but my presence of mind was gone, and for one horrible

instant I thought I was going to break down, and just sat there,

gasping and blushing. My heart sank and my voice dwindled to a

quavering, unfamiliar whisper. I couldn't remember the words; but then

I seized hold of my courage and sang and sang and sang, better than I

had ever done before.

I didn't look up again until I had finished; then somehow I got away

from the piano, and shyly slipped into a chair near Miss Baker. Of

course there was a clamour that I should sing again, but I couldn't.

The flaming of my cheeks made me ashamed.

Perhaps some time I shall learn the city way of not seeming to care

very much about anything.

Aunt must have had it at her tongue's end all the evening to invite me

to come to her; and when she was bidding me good-night she could wait

no longer.

"You're living right on Union Square?" she said; "in the same building

with--with--"

"A milliner, a dentist, a school for theatrical dancing," I enumerated,

laughing happily. I knew that it was I myself, and not my mode of life,

that bewildered her.

"But--is it--_nice_?"

"Better than a boarding-house. Two or three other girls lodge there,

the housekeeper is obliging, and the experience--well, at least it's

enlightening."

"I wish you'd come here. Why don't you?"

"Oh, could I?" I cried with sudden frankness. "You can't think how glad

I'd be! The studio was awfully nice at first, and I've made the best of

it, but I know Ma--Mother and Father would be pleased. If it wouldn't

be too much trouble--"

And so easily it was all arranged. Of course after she had seen me,

heard me, felt the charm of me--of Her--Aunt Frank couldn't leave Her

in the studio!

I'd have been glad to avoid the journey back to Union Square with John;

for the evening, with all its perplexities, had been paradise, and I

dreaded to have him bring me back to earth with words of love. I ought

to be more than usually tender towards John now, when he has just lost

his mother; but when the Bakers' door had closed behind us, and we

stood together under the crispy starlight--for it had cleared and

turned cold during the evening--I talked feverishly of things that

neither of us cared about, and kept it up all the way home.

John scarcely seemed to listen to my chatter. He was as if under a

spell, and his dark, strong face glowed with the magic of it. As we

approached the Square, he looked down at me, and slipped my hand from

his arm into the clasp of his warm fingers. Through my glove he felt

the ring, and gave the hand a little, almost timid pressure.

"Am I doing right? Ought I to wear it?" I cried. "Won't you help me

think, just as if you didn't--didn't care? This isn't like last summer.

We are different; I am very different. You must have seen to-night,

that I am not at all the same girl. I've told you that I can't be

certain; I am dazed."

"I shall remember everything--all you told me when I came, and now," he

said. "But you are doing right--darling!"

He held my hands when we parted and looked into my eyes, and I saw that

his own were shining. His love seemed too deep for any outburst of

passion, or else he feared to alarm me; and yet he seemed so sure.

I wish--I wish--oh, I don't know what I wish; I ought not to be bound

to any one; but I suppose I love John.

CHAPTER II.

A LOOKING OVER BY THE PACK.

Jan. 2.

If women are not meant to study, Prof. Darmstetter should be pleased

with me. Instead of working up my laboratory notebooks, I have sat

until midnight, dreaming.

"Go to bed early and get your beauty sleep," says Aunt, but I push open

the window and lean upon the sash and let the cold air blow over me.

I'd like to dance a thousand miles in the moonlight; I'm so young, and

so strong, and such glorious things are coming!

To-morrow I shall have a foretaste of the future; I shall know what

other people--not John and my relatives--think of me. Ah, there's only

one thing they can think! To-morrow'll be the beginning of the world to

me.

To-morrow! To-morrow! Aunt Frank has sent out cards for an "At Home."

And it's to-morrow!

Oh, I'm glad I came here! I revel in the new home.

I like the house; it looks so big and solid. I like my cousins--quiet

little creatures. They wait upon me, anticipate my smallest wish, and

defer to my opinions as if I were a white star queen dropped from the

ether; all but Boy, and even he respects me because I can construe

Caesar.

I like my Aunt--devoted to clubs and committees, though she's forgotten

them now in her eagerness to introduce me. Ah, to-morrow! Blessed

to-morrow! And I like Aunt Marcia Baker. I wonder if, when I am older,

I too shall be serene and stately, with a face that seems to have

outlived sorrow; I can hardly believe now that I shall care to live at

all when people's eyes have ceased to follow my beauty. When for me

there are no more to-morrows.

I think I shall like Mr. Hynes; he's almost one of the family, for he

is betrothed to Milly, and I'm glad--ah, so glad I'm not she! What a

life she looks forward to--each day exactly like its fellows; a

droning, monotonous existence, keeping house, overseeing the

cooking--perhaps doing it herself; for he's only a young lawyer, just

starting in life!

But I like his face, so full of impulse and imagination. I believe he's

a man who might go far and achieve much. Why should he handicap himself

with an early marriage?

It's well enough for Milly; she doesn't understand her limitations.

Why, she's almost as eager over to-morrow as if it could mean to her

what it does to me; and that is an outlook into a life so glad, so

wonderful!

Dear, good Aunt Frank proposed the tea before my trunks were fairly

unpacked.

"Won't your Professor give you a holiday from--is it microbes you

study?" she inquired. "Sure they're not dangerous?"

"The afternoon tea bacillus is not wholly innocuous," suggested Uncle,

pinching her cheek.

It was good to see the loving look that reproved and repaid him.

"Why, Bake," she protested, "tea never hurt anybody."

"Oh, I've time enough," I said; "I have no regular days for going to

Prof. Darmstetter, and the other studies--"

It was on my tongue to add: "and the other studies don't matter," but I

checked the words.

"Well, you'll find it takes time," Aunt reminded me. "How about

clothes, now? Suppose you show me what you brought."

And in a few minutes we were all chattering at once in discussion of my

modest little wardrobe. I could feel, as each new dress was shaken from

its folds, that Aunt was more dissatisfied than she would confess.

"Everything's pretty and tasteful," she conceded at last; "but--for a

tea--if you could--"

If she had dared, she'd have offered to get me a dress herself.

"Oh, of course I'll need something new," I said hurriedly; "I meant to

ask your advice. Nothing very costly," I was reluctantly adding. But at

that moment an inspiration came to lighten the gloom.

The very thing! I'd use the money I'd saved for the microscope! I don't

need one the least bit.

So I was able to add with some philosophy:--

"I never did have a nice dress, and I'd like something pretty good this

time. Why, I haven't nearly spent all my allowance," I cried with

kindling enthusiasm, jumping up to pace the floor. "Tell me what I

ought to have--just exactly what is most suitable. I don't know much

about teas, but I'd like something--fine!"

Aunt's face glowed with excitement. I think she saw in imagination

fifty Helens dancing before he eyes in a kaleidoscopic assortment of

dresses.

"You're right. We'll get--oh, what shall we--what shall we get that'll

be good enough for you?" she cried in a flutter. "Something simple of

course, you're so young; but--I'll tell you: We'll go right to Mrs.

Edgar!"

Perhaps my own face burned, too.

"Who's she? Some one on the Avenue?"

"No; no one knows her, but--she's a marvel! It'd mean the world and all

to her to please some one sure to be noticed, like you. She's a widow;

has two children."

So to Mrs. Edgar we went. Her eyes devoured me. She is a mite of a

woman, young, white-faced, vivacious.

"For a tea?" she asked. "A--a large one?"

She spoke with forced calmness, but her hands had the artist's flutter,

the enthusiast's eagerness to be doing.

"I'll get samples," she went on; "there's not a minute to be lost;

not--one--moment! I'll work all night rather than fail her. You will

not wish"--she dismissed us abruptly--"to go with me to the shops?"

"No; Miss Winship attracts too much attention."

Alas, it's true! It has become an ordeal for me to venture into a shop.

But what a blessed thing if my beauty should bring success and ease to

this poor, struggling little widow--just by my wearing a dress she has

made! Oh, she'll not be the only one! What if Kitty sometime wins fame

by painting my picture, or Cadge by writing of me in her

"Recollections?" Why shouldn't I inspire great poems and noble deeds

and fine songs, like the famous beauties Miss Coleman told about? Yes,

even more than they; there was not one of them all like me!

Next evening when Aunt brought the samples upstairs, I was reading to

the Judge in the library, and the others were listening as if stocks

and bonds were more fascinating than romances.

"Shall we pray for a second Joshua, arresting the sun, pending

deliberation?" asked Uncle, displeased at the interruption.

"Why, Bake, there's scarcely ten days, and how we'd feel if Nelly

didn't look well!" cried Aunt Frank; and we all broke out laughing at

the bare idea of my looking ill!

"I never saw any one to whom dress mattered so little," Aunt Marcia

said, as she folded up her silk knitting. "But Mrs. Edgar insists upon

her four fittings like any Shylock haggling for his pound of flesh; it

is written in the bond."

When she had trotted away home with her prim elderly maid, like a pair

out of "Cranford," Ethel made an impressive announcement:--

"The General will pour."

"Returned hero from the Philippines?"

"Oh, dear, no. Meg Van Dam could face Mausers, but a Red Cross bazaar

was as near as she got to the war. We call her the General because--oh,

you'll find out. Meg is Mrs. Robert Van Dam."

"Oh, I think I've seen that name in the papers. Aren't they grand

people?"

"Why, yes; rather; we don't know the Van Dams; Meg's only just married.

You might have read about her mother-in-law, Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam, or

her aunt-in-law, Mrs. Henry Van Dam, or Mrs. Henry's daughters; the

family's a tribe. But Meg, why, we went to school with Meg; she's just

the General."

My dress came home to-night--white and dainty. Ah, at last I've

something to wear that's not "good" and "plain" and "durable"! But

there was an outcry, as there has been at every fitting, because I

won't wear stays. Eccentric, they call me; as if Nature and beauty were

abnormal!

When I was arrayed in it, Aunt and Ethel led me to the library for

Uncle's inspection.

"Is to-morrow the day set to exhibit to Helen other aspects of New York

than the scholastic?" he asked, looking up from his paper. "The first

appearances of a young girl in modern society are said to be comparable

with a 'Looking Over by the Pack,' as described by Mr. Kipling. May

Mrs. Baloo and Mrs. Bagheera and Mrs. Shere Khan have good hunting

to-night, and be kind to-morrow to our womanling."

"Why, Bake, you know just as well as I do there aren't any such people

coming. I believe it's just one of your jokes," sputtered Aunt. "Nelly,

dear, turn slowly round."

She had dropped on her knees beside me, busy with pins and folds, and

Joy was lisping the caution, born perhaps of experience, "Don't you

thoil it, Cothin Nelly, or Nurthey'll vip you," when Milly came into

the library; and with her was Mr. Hynes.

"Lovely! Isn't it, Ned?" cried Milly. "It's for to-morrow."

Mr. Hynes scarcely glanced at the dress, then looked away again, with

indifference that somehow hurt me.

"Very pretty," he said languidly. "Classic, isn't it? By the way,

Judge, I think you'd be interested--"

And then he began to tell Judge Baker about some horrid auction sale of

old books!

I was surprised. I couldn't account for it. To hide my

disappointment--for I do want to look my best to-morrow, and then

everybody has taken so much pains---I bent over Joy, tying and untying

the ribbons that held the rings of soft hair in front of her ears.

"Thop, Cothin Nelly; you hurt!" she screamed.

As soon as I could, I ran to take off the dress. How could Aunt so

parade me? Of course the women Mr. Hynes knows must have all their

dresses from city dressmakers.

But I believe, after all, he did notice, for I saw him colour before he

turned sharply away. To please Milly, he might at least--

He called the dress classic; it's just long, soft folds without messy

trimmings; and, oh, it's not vanity to peep at myself again and again

and to dream of to-morrow. I'm gloriously, gloriously beautiful! If

John comes to-morrow, I do hope he'll wear gloves. He has good hands,

too; well-shaped--

Why, of course; Mr. Hynes must admire me.

CHAPTER III.

SNARLING AT THE COUNCIL ROCK.

Jan. 10.

To-day has been heaven!

There was a famous lawyer among Aunt's guests and a United States

Senator and a real author, a woman who has written books; but people

brushed past them all for a word with me!

And I'm going to the Opera! I shall sit in a box. Mrs. Van Dam says

I'll make the sensation of the season! I'm going to the Opera!

When men came this morning with palms and flowers to decorate the

house, I ran off to the Park. I did almost run, really. There was a

song at my lips: "Gladdest, oh, gladdest, most beautiful in the world;

blessed, most blessed, most beautiful in the world!" and the "tap-tap"

of horses' feet on the asphalt, the "b-r-r-r-rp" of the cable cars and

the rattle of elevated trains kept time, until all the city seemed

ringing with my joy.

I know it's foolish; if I had been beautiful from my childhood; if I

could have grown up to think of it as a matter of course; if I had been

used to the awe of men and women's envy, I might think less about it,

might even fancy that I would have preferred learning or wealth--for we

all love what we have not. But now--it is so new, so marvellous!

I had plenty of things to think about when I could calm myself. Only

yesterday I'd had a long talk with Prof. Darmstetter.

"The experiment is not yet complete," he declared. He had asked me to

stay for--but that is a part of the secret which is to pass with this

record from me to all women.

"You are beautiful," he said; "mein Gott, yes! More beautiful t'an any

ot'er voman since t'e appearance of man on eart'. But perfectly

beautiful? I do not know; I t'ink not yet. Who can tell for v'at

ultimate perfection Nature destined t'e human body? But we shall see.

T'at perfection you shall reach. In a veek, a mont', t'ree mont's--I

cannot tell. Ve must vait and experiment and still vait, but success is

assured--absolute success. I shall gif it. I do not know if t'e human

type is t'e highest t'at eart' is capable of supporting, but it is t'e

highest present type, and it shall be my vork to gif it t'at for v'ich

it has hungered and t'irsted, and towards v'ich slowly it has groped

its vay; it shall be my vork to gif humanity beauty and perfection."

The light that illumined his yellow, wrinkled face made me cry out:--

"All the world will bless you! All women will be grateful as I am

grateful--"

"Ach!" he snapped with a sudden change of countenance. "I shall be von

more name and date to make harter t'e student's lessons and longer t'e

tables--t'at is gratitude! Vit' t'e vorld we haf at present no concern.

For t'is, indeed, you bless me--t'at I am not a quack to make public an

incomplete discofery, for ot'er quacks to do mischief. You are glad

t'at it is vit' you alone I concern myself. But you are not grateful;

you are happy because I say t'at you shall be yet more beautiful; t'at

is not gratitude. You might--"

At the eager shrillness of his voice I drew a step away.

"Indeed I'm grateful, whether you believe it or not!" I cried. "You

think all women so selfish! Of course I'm glad that I alone am in the

secret, but you proposed it yourself, and I rejoice as much as you do

that some day--by and by--other women will be happy as I am happy--"

"Yes--by and by! You emphasize t'at," he snapped mockingly, but then he

recovered himself and his queer new deference. "And you haf t'e right;

I vish you to rechoice in your own lofeliness. Ve haf engaged toget'er

in t'is great vork, and it is vell t'at we bot' haf our revards--I t'at

I aggomblish somet'ing for t'e benefit of my kind, and you--since vomen

cannot lofe t'eir kind, but only intifiduals--you haf t'e happy lofe

t'at is necessary to a voman."

His eyes rested on my ring.

I couldn't tell him--proud as I am of it--that John had loved me before

I ever heard of the Bacillus. But I could punish his gibes.

"Oh, by the way--I'm not coming to-morrow," I said. "My Aunt is to give

a tea."

Strange to see him struggle with his disappointment like a grieving

child! But he bravely rallied.

"T'at is goot," he said, "you shall tell me v'at people t'ink of you.

You vish to go about--to be admired; you vish to gif up science; not

so?"

"Oh, no! I couldn't be a doll, for men to look at and then tire of me.

I must study the harder--to be worthy--"

The look of his face, of the thin, straight-lipped mouth, the keen old

eyes, stopped me.

"You vill not gif up study now, at least," he sneered; "not until you

haf t'e perfect beauty. You haf need of me."

Prof. Darmstetter is so irritating! Why, he has just as much need of

me! He himself said I was the best subject he could find for the

experiment. But even if he had finished his work with the Bacillus,

he'd rather teach me, a despised woman, all the science I could master

than develop the budding talent of the brightest Columbia boy. The

sight of my beauty is a joy to him. Really, I pity the poor man. He

makes the great discovery when he's himself too old to profit by it;

the Bacillus will not work against Nature. It has brought him only a

hopeless longing--

But I shall study. He shall see! Not in the laboratory, of course; that

is hardly fitting now. I wouldn't go there again except for the lure of

promised beauty--can more loveliness be possible? But I do feel the

responsibility of beauty. The wisest and best will crowd about me, and

they must find my words worthy the lips that shape them and the voice

that utters. And I shall learn from their wisdom.

"There was Hypatia; she was both beautiful and learned," I found myself

confiding to a gray squirrel in the Park, and then I laughed and ran

home to make my last preparations.

Ethel arranged my hair to-day, though I could hardly yield her the

delight of its shining, long undulations. Then she did Milly's as

nearly like mine as possible, and Milly did hers. The girls wore white

like me, and my aunt was in black. The house was full of flowers; as if

it had plunged into seas of them, it dripped with an odourous rosy

foam. John sent a box--the extravagant boy!--and there were big

American Beauty roses, with stems as long as walking sticks from Pros.

and Cadge. Milly had flowers, too, from Mr. Hynes.

At first I wasn't a bit afraid, while acquaintances were dropping in

one by one--Mrs. Magoun, Mrs. Crosby, the wife of the managing clerk in

Uncle's office, Aunt Marcia--all allies.

Then there came a stir at the door, the magnetic thrill that foreruns a

Somebody. And there upon the threshold stood a tall, dashing girl,

superbly turned out; not handsome, but fine-looking, dark, decisive,

vital--a creature born to command.

I knew her at the first glance. She was the General!

I was for a moment surprised to see her so young and girlish, though I

might have known; for she was Milly's schoolmate. I doubt if she's two

years my senior, but in social arts and finesse--ah, the difference!

The house seemed to belong to her from the moment she entered. She

moved like a whirlwind--a well-mannered and exquisitely dressed

whirlwind, of course--with an air of abounding vigour and vitality, up

to where we stood, and there stopped short.

"How d'y'do?" she said, in the clipped New York fashion, looking at me

with the confidence of one who is never at a loss--and then--

Oh, the joy! For all her _savoir faire_, it was her turn to be

confused. For a moment she peered at me with a short-sighted squint;

then after a little hesitation, she put up her lorgnette, making an

impatient gesture, as if to say: "I can't help it; I _must_"--and

stared.

Her eyes grew big as she gazed; but at last she drew a long breath, and

put down the quizzing-glass with an effect of self-denial. When she

spoke there was little to remind me of her momentary loss of

self-command.

"Are you enjoying New York?" she demanded.

"Milly tells me you've never been in the city before; that you are

studying at Barnard."

"Yes."

I knew that I had impressed this strong, splendid woman, but I was a

little afraid of her.

Quite herself again, she began asking questions about myself, my home,

my studies; quick, probing, confusing questions, while in my cheeks the

awkward colour came and went. But it would never have occurred to me to

parry her queries. I could not help liking her, though when at last she

left me and began a progress through the rooms, I drew a breath of

relief, like one who has passed with credit a stiff examination.

At the door of the dining-room she paused again, judging through her

glass the table and its dainty decorations.

"Those flowers are rather high," she declared, and calling upon Milly

for help, she began rearranging the roses, and laying the twigs of

holly upon the cloth in bolder patterns. She seemed to take charge, to

adopt me with the house, to accept and audit and vouch for us.

Then people began coming all at once, all together, and I had to take

my place beside Mrs. Baker and Aunt Marcia in the reception room.

I can't tell anything about the next hour; it's a blur. But I wouldn't

have missed a minute. I had never before seen a reception, except at

the University where sometimes I used to serve as an usher, pouncing

upon people as they entered and leading them up to the row of

Professors and Professors' wives backed against the wall. But now I had

to stand up myself and meet people. And oh, that was different!

At first two or three women would approach, putting out their hands at

an absurd height, and start to say: "How d' you--" or "I'm so--"

And Aunt would make some excited, half-coherent remark and look at me,

anxiously but proudly, and say my name.

But they never heard her! As they really saw me, each in turn would

start, and, wide-eyed, look again. And as the awe and wonder grew in

their faces--as there came the little stop, the gasp, that told how

their reserve was for once overthrown, then, to the utmost, I tasted

the sweet of power and felt the thrill of ecstasy.

Red spots burned in Aunt's cheeks; she talked fast in her company

voice, and somehow the lace at her throat got awry. Aunt Marcia was as

calm and stately in her soft black velvet as if nothing were happening.

And really there was little to disturb one's composure. New Yorkers

aren't like our whole-souled, emotional Western folks. Not one of these

women but would have suffered torture rather than betray her surprise

beyond that first irrepressible gasp of amazement. After that one

victory of human nature, they would make talk about the weather, or the

newest book, and then get away to discuss me in undertones in the hall

or drawing room.

Quickly the sixth sense of a strange agitation went through the house.

I knew what they were all talking about, thinking about. Subtle waves

of thought seemed to catch up each new comer so that she felt, without

being told, that something extraordinary was happening. Women now

approached not unprepared; but for all their bracing against the shock,

not one could be quite nonchalant at the first sight of my superb,

compelling beauty.

My eyes flashed, my pulse rioted as I felt the vibrant excitement of

the gathering, the tiptoe eagerness to reach our neighbourhood, the

hush that fell upon the circle immediately around me, the reaction of

overgay laugh and chatter in the far corners.

Oh, it was lovely, lovely! No girl could have been quite unmoved to

feel that all those soft lights were glowing in her honour, those

masses of flowers blooming, all that warmth and perfume of elegance and

luxury wafted as incense to her nostrils. And the undercurrent of

suppressed excitement, the sensation of Her!

At times I grew impatient of conventionality. How was it possible for

these people to look so quietly, eye to eye, upon the most vitally

perfect of living beings? How could they turn from me to orange frappé

or salted almonds?

Once or twice I caught some faint echo of the talk about us.

"Where is she?" asked one voice, made by curiosity more penetrating

than its owner realised.

"Julia's seen her; she's talked and talked till I had to come."

"And she's still studying?"--Another voice--"How can she? Great beauty

and great scientist--bizarre combination!"

How that would amuse Prof. Darmstetter!

By and by I saw John towering above the others while he bobbed about

helplessly in the sea of women's heads that filled the rooms and even

rose upon the "bleachers," as he calls the stairs. There were not

really so very many people, but he didn't know how to reach us, he is

so awkward. When he had steered his course among the women and had

spoken to my Aunt, his face was radiant as he turned to me.

"I knew _you_ wouldn't fail us, Mr. Burke," Aunt said hurriedly. "Mrs.

Marshall--so glad--this is--Nelly, dear--"

Behind John was a lady waiting to meet me.

"--So glad you've come," I said to him; and the words sounded curiously

to me because in my excitement I also had spoken in my "company voice."

But I had no time to say another word to him, as I turned to greet Mrs.

Marshall.

He mumbled something, flushing, while his eyes devoured my beauty in

one dumb, worshipping look. Then he dropped quickly out of our group. I

was sorry, but he'll understand that I was flurried. He ought to learn

self-control, though; he shouldn't look at me before so many people

with all his heart in his eyes.

And I was so vexed about his clothes, too! His old, long, black coat,

such as lawyers wear in the West, would have been pretty nearly

right--something like what the other men wore--but he seemed to think

it was not good enough, and had put on a brand new business suit. Of

course there wasn't another man there so clad, but he never seemed to

notice how absurd he was.

The Viewing of the Pack didn't last long. Before my cheeks had ceased

flaming, before I had grown used to standing there to be looked at,

people seemed to go, all at once, as suddenly as they had arrived.

Just as the last ones were leaving, some instinct told me that Mr.

Hynes had come. Before I saw him, I felt his gaze upon me, a wondering,

glad look, as if I were Eve, the first and only woman.

Milly brought him to me and left us together, but at first he was

almost curt in his effort to hide his sensibility to my beauty--as if

that were a weakness!--and I was furiously shy, and felt somehow that I

must hold him at still greater distance.

"Am I never again to hear you sing?" he asked. "Sweet sounds that have

given a new definition to music are still vibrating in my memory."

I knew he was thinking of Christmas!

"I don't often sing, except for Joy," I mumbled; "I've had so few

lessons."

"Joy doesn't know her joys; but--wouldn't she share them?"

"Sometime--perhaps--"

I couldn't answer him, for hot and cold waves of shyness and pleasure

were running over me. Oh, I hope, for Milly's sake, he doesn't dislike

me. He seems to feel so intensely, to be so alive!

When he had gone, I went to the dining-room with Aunt Marcia, and found

there Ethel and the General and Peggy Van Dam, the General's cousin, a

pale girl, all eyes and teeth. Kitty was with them, and she darted

towards me, but Mrs. Van Dam was before her.

"Sit down, both of you," she commanded.

She fairly put us into chairs, and brought us cups of something--I

don't know what.

Aunt Marcia breathed a little sigh of relief.

"Helen," she said, "you haven't been standing too long?"

"It wasn't an instant! I could stand all day!"

Mrs. Van Dam smiled, and I felt _gauche_, like a schoolgirl. I am so

impulsive!

"It was all delightful!" cried Kitty; "and yet--while you were my chum,

Helen, I _did_ think you rather good-looking!"

"You find yourself mistaken?" the General inquired.

"Oh, no-o-o; not exactly; a beautiful girl, certainly; but--oh, I could

have made pincushions of some of those pudgy women, nibbling wafers,

and delivering themselves of lukewarm appreciations! 'Too tall'--'too

short'--'too dark'--'too light'; 'I like your height bettah, my deah.'

Helen, you dairymaid, powder! Plaster over that 'essentially

improbable' colour."

Mrs. Van Dam broke out laughing at Kitty's mimicry. I wish the child

wouldn't let her hair straggle in front of her ears and look so

harum-scarum.

"I doubt if we have had many harsh critics," said Miss Baker.

"Not a thing to criticise," cried Aunt Frank, entering just then and

catching the last word. "Everybody so interested in Nelly! Bake, if

you'd only come earlier, I'd have been perfectly satisfied."

They say that Uncle Timothy can never be coaxed home to one of his

wife's receptions, but he answered with great solemnity, as he loomed

up behind the little woman:--

"I am privileged to be here, even at the eleventh hour. I could not

wholly deny myself the sight of so much youth and bloom."

"Don't be hypocritical, Judge," said the General reprovingly. "You're

too big and honest to achieve graceful deceit. But before I go--I've

seats for the Opera Monday night in Mother's box. Miss Winship must

come, and--" her glance deliberated briefly--"and Milly."

Milly cried, "How delightful, Meg!" But my tongue tripped and my cheeks

flamed as I tried to say that I had never seen an opera and to thank my

new friend.

Little she heeded my lack of words. Gazing at me once again as she had

upon first seeing me, she exclaimed:--

"You great, glorious creature! They sha'n't hive you in a schoolroom;

you must come out and show yourself; why, you'll set New York in a

furore!"

I think she's splendid.

No sooner was she gone than I was summoned to the reception-room, and

Cadge rushed to meet me. She looked much smarter than Kitty, with her

black hair curled and her keen eyes shining with excitement.

"All over but the shouting?" she asked. "Meant to get here in season to

see you knock 'em in the Old Kent Road, but woman proposes, Big Tom

disposes. Shall I turn in a paragraph? Just--did you have music? What's

your dress--in the Sunday society slush, of course, not the daily;

'fraid the _Star_ won't take over a stick--. Greek a little bit?

M-m-m--not modistic exactly, but--but--."

Her abrupt sentences grew slower, paused, dropped to an awestruck

whisper, as she looked upon me. She added in her gravest manner: "Say,

you're the loveliest ever happened! The--very--limit!"

But awe and Cadge could not long live together. In a moment her mouth

took a comically benevolent quirk.

"And 'among those present'--" she asked; "who was that leaving just as

I got here?"

"Mrs. Robert Van Dam, schoolmate of my cousins. But you're not writing

me up, Cadge?"

Cadge whistled.

"Van Dam! How calmly the giddy child says it! Does your youngest cousin

make mud pies with duchesses? Say, she comes pretty near being one of

the '400.' But I'm off; a grist of copy to grind--talk of raving

beauties, you'll be the only one that won't rave!"

Of course Cadge wouldn't have talked just like that before the others,

if she had come earlier.

At bedtime Milly and Ethel ran to my room to talk things over, and my

Aunt came to shoo them off to bed, but she stayed and talked, too; and

I've no business to be writing at this shocking time of night, except,

of course I couldn't sleep and so I might as well.

"Everybody thinks you resemble your cousins," Aunt said; "and really

there _is_ a family likeness."

Poor Aunt! Ethel and Milly are washed out copies of me, in dress and

hair, if that constitutes resemblance; and they imitate even my

mannerisms.

I should think Mr. Hynes would be too critical to admire Milly.

I had a partial engagement for Monday with John; but he'll let me off,

to go to the Opera.

CHAPTER IV.

IN THE INTERESTS OF MUSIC.

Tuesday morning, Jan. 14.

I am writing before breakfast. They told me to lie quietly in bed this

morning, but I'm not tired, not excited. Nothing more happened than I

might have expected. I couldn't have supposed that in my presence

people would be stocks and stones!

But oh, it was beautiful, terrible! How can I write it? If I could only

flash last night--every glorious minute of it--upon paper!

And I might have lost it--they didn't want to let me go! There was a

full family council beforehand. John had taken quietly enough the

cancelling of our half engagement for the evening, but he had strong

objections to my going to the Opera.

"If you prefer that--" he said; "but do you think it wise to appear in

such a public place with strangers?"

"But why not?"

I was impatient at so much discussion and discretion. My mind was made

up.

"There's no reason why you shouldn't, I suppose." John drew a great

sigh. "But I shall feel easier if--I think I'll go too."

"We'll all go," cried Aunt Frank--it was so funny to have them sit

there debating in that way the problem of Her--"we'll enjoy it of all

things--the Judge and I, and especially Ethel."

And so, when the great night came, Milly and I left the others in the

midst of their preparations, and went off to dine with Mrs. Van Dam; we

were to go with her afterwards to see Mascagni's "Christofero Colombo."

It seems impossible now, but I was excited even about the dinner. I

thought it the beginning of recognition--and it was!--to be seized upon

by this splendid, masterful young General.

She lives not far from us--on Sixty-seventh Street near Fifth Avenue,

while we are on Seventy-second Street near Madison. The wall of her

house near the ground looks like that of a fortress; there are no high

steps in front, but Milly and I were shown into a hall, oak finished

and English, right on the street level; and then into a room off the

hall that was English, too--oak and red leather, with branching horns

above the mantel and on the floor a big fur rug; and, presently, into a

little brocade-lined elevator that took us to Mrs. Van Dam's

sitting-room on the third floor.

"You ought to see the whole house," Milly whispered, as we were slowly

ascending.

I had eyes just then for nothing but the General herself, who met us, a

figure that abashed me, swishing a gleaming evening dress, her neck and

hair a-glitter with jewels, more dominant and possessive and---yes,

even more interested in me than when I had first seen her.

When we went down to dinner, I did see the house; for at a word from

Milly, partly in good nature and partly in pride, Mrs. Van Dam led the

way through stately rooms that kept me alternating between confusion

and delight, until she paused in a gilded salon, with stuccoed ceiling

and softest of soft rose hangings, where I scarcely dared set foot upon

the shining floor.

Less in jest than wonder, I asked if Marie Antoinette didn't walk there

o' nights.

"It's _Diane_, isn't it, who walks here this night?" she said, linking

her arm in mine and leading me to a tall mirror. Then she changed

colour a little, took her arm away hastily and walked from the great

glass. Kind and friendly as she was, she couldn't quite like to see her

own image reflected there--beside mine!

"_Diane_ and the Queen of Sheba!" exclaimed Milly, for beside our

simple frocks the General was indeed magnificent.

Her brow cleared at this, and she laughed with satisfaction. When I

blurted out something about having once run off to a shop parlour,

before I came to Aunt, for a peep at a full-length glass, she laughed

again at the confession and called me "a buttercup, a perfect _Diane_."

At dinner we met Mr. Van Dam--a small man who doesn't talk much; and it

seemed so exciting to have wine at table, though of course I did not

taste it, or coffee.

And it was delightful to lean back in the carriage, as we drove to the

Opera House, and remember how Kitty and I used to pin up our skirts

under our ulsters and jog about in street cars. Mrs. Van Dam wore a

wonderful hooded cloak of lace and fur, and her gloves fastened all the

way to her elbows with silk loops that passed over silver balls.

I had been so impatient during dinner, because they didn't sit down

until eight o'clock, and then dawdled as if there were no Opera to

follow; but I needn't have worried, for although the performance had

begun when we arrived, there were still many vacant places in the great

house. I drew closer about my face the scarf that Ethel had lent me

until we had passed through the dazzling lobby, up the stairway and

through the corridors, and until the red curtains of the box had

parted, and I had slipped into the least conspicuous chair. Muffled as

I was, I trembled at the first glance at the great, brilliantly lighted

house, from which rose the stir of a gathering audience and a rustle of

low voices.

"Why, you're not nervous, are you?" the General asked. "I've brought

you here early on purpose; you'll be comfortably settled before anybody

notices."

And she good-naturedly pushed me into a front place. The music was all

the while going on, but no one seemed to pay much attention.

"Who'll notice me in this big building?" I asked with a shaky little

laugh.

But just at first, as I looked out over the house, I clutched the lace

that was still around my throat. It was warm after the chill air

without, and my head swam. There was mystery in the swarming figures

and the murmur. The breath of the roses that lay over the box rails,

the gleaming of bared shoulders, the flash of jewels seemed to belong

to some other world--a world where I was native, and from which I had

too long been exiled. Surely in some other life I must have had my

place among gaily-dressed ladies who smiled and nodded, bending

tiara-crowned heads above gently waving fans. I felt kinship with them;

I passionately longed to be noticed by them, and feared it even more

intensely.

Almost immediately after our arrival the curtain fell upon the first

scene. We had missed every word of it! Mrs. Van Dam left me for a few

minutes to myself, and as I became more composed, I put back my scarf

and looked about a little more boldly. The house was yet far from full,

but every moment people were coming in.

The boxes at each side of us were untenanted, but at no great distance

I saw Peggy Van Dam, seated beside a large woman--her mother, Mrs.

Henry--and chatting busily with a stout, good-natured-looking young

man. Even Peggy had not noticed our entrance and, quite reassured, I

lifted my opera glass and began studying the audience.

We were near the front of the house in the first tier on the left, and

I had in view almost the whole sweep of the great gold and crimson

horseshoe. Down in the orchestra some of the women were as gorgeous in

satins and brocades as those in the boxes, while others wore street

attire. Nearly all the men had donned evening dress, and I thought at

first--but soon saw how absurd that was--that I could pick out John by

his office suit. I could not repress a little glow of pride, as I

looked down upon those rows and rows of heads, to think that somewhere

among them, or above them, John was watching, rejoicing with me,

fearing for me where for himself he would never fear. He'd lift, if he

could, every stone from my path. Mr. Hynes, now, would carry you

forward so fast that you'd never see the stones.

I had no thought that Mr. Hynes was in the house, but, amusing myself

with the idea, I lifted my glass--dear little pearl trinket with which

the General had provided me--and looked for him, wondering how often a

poor young lawyer attends the Opera. Of course I couldn't see anybody I

knew, nor could I read my libretto, for the words danced before my

eyes; and Mrs. Van Dam, smiling at my interest, began chattering about

the people around us, speaking as if I would soon be as familiar with

the brilliant world of fashion and society as herself.

"I wonder," she said in her energetic way, "what it feels like to be at

one's first opera."

Excitement was flashing from my eyes and burning on my cheeks as I

answered:--

"It's--it's--oh, I can't tell you! But in the West," I added hastily,

"we had oratorio."

"What a buttercup you are!" she said again.

Soon the curtain rose upon the second act--or scene. Whichever it was,

that was all that I was fated to see or hear of the Opera. And for the

little while I could consider it, I must say I was disappointed. The

scenery was superb, but the voices--

"You've spoiled us, Nelly," Milly whispered.

"Colombo's not bad."

I squeezed her hand ecstatically.

I find that I don't criticise men so shrewdly; but oh, the thin, shrill

pipe of Isabella, compared with what a woman's voice may be! Yet I

admired her skill, and did not wonder that the house applauded.

The second scene was just closing, and I was lost in dreams of the fine

things that I shall do for art and music when I'm a great society

leader, when the box door opened, and there entered an elderly couple,

much alike--tall, thin, rather stately and withered. I knew that they

must be Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam, the General's mother-in-law, and her

husband. Impulsively I sprang up to allow them to come to the front

places.

And then--the catastrophe!

I was conscious at first only of an instant's confusion, of a hurried

introduction in undertones. Then I found myself again sitting, my arm

tingling to the clutch of Milly's fingers. In her pale, pretty face her

light eyes glowed with a fright that was not all painful.

The blood seemed to flow back to my heart as I realised what I had

done. The sudden stir in our box had called attention, and I had been

standing in the glare of electric lights overhead and at my feet, my

white dress outlined against the blood-red curtains.

"Take this fan," Milly whispered from behind me. "Will you have my

seat?"

Shame dyed my face. After such a heedless act I couldn't look at the

General. I knew that, in his surprise at my appearance, Mr. Marmaduke

Van Dam had fumbled noisily with his chair, and that Mrs. Marmaduke had

dropped her shoulder wrap--she was in evening dress; how can elderly

women do it?--I knew that in spite of their rigid politeness they found

it hard to keep their eyes from me. I hoped the General had been too

busy to appreciate my folly, and I drew a quivering breath of relief

that it had had no more serious consequences.

Yet I was queerly dissatisfied. The Metropolitan Opera House is a big

building, and the part of the audience to which I could have been

conspicuous was small. Yet some people must have seen; had they taken

no notice?

For some space--minutes or seconds--it seemed so.

Then a confused murmur, a shifting, restless movement, began near us in

the orchestra. A good many people down there, as well as in the boxes

at each side, had noticed me earlier. Now they began whispering to

their neighbours. Heads were turned our way; people were asking,

answering, almost pointing. I could see the knowledge of me spread from

seat to seat, from row to row, as ripples spread from a stone thrown

into still water. Opera glasses were levelled. Comment grew, swelled to

a stir of surprise. The curtain had dropped for the interval between

scenes; our box became for the moment the centre of interest, and the

lights were high. Even the orchestra was resting.

Then it was given me to see how in a great audience Panic may leap

without cause from Opportunity.

The stir grew, spread. Fascinated, I gazed down at the disturbance. I

knew that a frightened smile still curved my lips. I felt my eyes glow,

luminous and dilated. My heart almost stopped beating, gripped by

triumph and horror. Afterwards I realised that I had not availed myself

of the screen Milly offered; I hadn't lifted the fan to shield my face;

I had not stirred to hide myself.

"Bob!" whispered the General. "Quick! Don't you see?"

Robert Van Dam sprang to his feet, offering, as I thought, to exchange

places with me. Once more I started up, and chairs were moved to give

me passage.

While again I stood under the glare of the lights, and while for the

second time the movement in the box drew attention thither, somebody

below half rose to look at me. Two or three--a dozen--followed. As I

dropped into my seat at the back of the box, and cast the scarf again

about my head, twenty, thirty people were struggling out of their

chairs.

From my shelter I watched as, farther and farther away, the heads began

to turn. From places where I had not been visible I heard the murmur

swelling, the scuffle of people rising. I had disappeared from sight,

the first to rise had dropped back into their seats as if ashamed, but

others increased the uneasy tumult of low, tense sounds.

My brain worked quickly. I understood the shuddering thrill that passed

over the audience. It was as if all my life I had seen such vast

assemblies, and knew the laws that rule their souls. Even before it

came I guessed it was coming; a voice--it was a man's--crying out:--

"What is it? Is it--fire?"

And from away across the house came the answering call--not a question

this time, not hesitant, but quick and sharp:--"Fire!"

What should I do? Why was not John or Mr. Hynes there to tell me? Wild

thoughts darted through my mind. Should I stand once more? Show myself?

Should I cry: "It was I, only I! They were looking at me. There is no

fire!"

Crazy, crazy thought! For the thing was over as soon as it began.

Those who had started the confusion and who understood its cause, began

shouting:--

"Sit down! Sit down!"

From the topmost gallery a tremendous great voice came bellowing down:--

"What--_fool_--said--that?"

There was a little laugh, a hiss or two rebuked the disorder; then the

baton signalled the orchestra, and the music recommenced, smoothly and

in perfect time; the conductor had never turned his head. The curtain

went up; the incident was closed.

I drew a long, sighing breath of relief as one, then another, then all

together, as if by a single impulse, the people sat down in their

places. It had been but an instant. The painted stage, the glittering

court ladies, Isabella on her throne, the suppliant Colombo, were as if

nothing had happened.

"First-rate orchestra," muttered Robert Van Dam.

The General turned in her chair and looked at me. She did not speak,

but I could see that she was excited; it seems to me now that her eyes

were very bright, and that her strong, square-chinned face looked

curiously satisfied.

"Let's go," I gasped; "I want to go home."

Choking with sobs, though not unhappy, I felt as if I wished to run, to

fly; but, as I tottered out of the box, I could scarcely stand. Mr. Van

Dam helped me, the General and Milly following. In the corridor we were

joined by Peggy and the florid young man whom I had seen with her.

"Why--why, you're not going? You are not going?" Peggy cried. She

breathed quickly, and her teeth and eyes alike seemed to twinkle.

"Can--can't Mr. Bellmer or I--do something?"

"Nothing at all," said the General in brisk staccato, fastening my

wraps with an air of proprietorship; "nobody's in voice to-night, do

you think? Miss Winship doesn't care to stay."

Before we reached the lobby, John came from somewhere, hurrying towards

us. I was walking between Mr. Bellmer and Robert Van Dam, but with

scarcely a look at them he tucked my hand under his arm, just as he

would have done in the old days at the State University. At the door

Mr. Van Dam looked for a cab.

"I'll take her home," said John grimly.

"I'll go with you; I must see her safe with Mrs. Baker," the General

replied, understanding at once. "Mr. Bellmer, tell Mother, please, that

Bob and I have gone with Miss Winship. Or--Bob, you won't be needed;

you explain to Mother."

The two men hurried away upon their errand, though I fancied they went

reluctantly. Peggy had not come down.

All the way home John's brows were black, and he looked straight ahead

of him. As we passed under the glow of electric lamps, Milly smiled

bravely at me across the carriage, respect and awe mingling with her

sympathy. The General sat at my side erect; her eyes glittered, and she

looked oddly pleased--not like a woman who had been at the focus of a

scene, and had been dragged away from the Opera before it was over, but

like a General indeed, planning great campaigns.

As for me, I felt that I must laugh--cry. Did ever such a ridiculous

thing, such a wonderful, glorious thing, such a perfectly awful thing,

happen to any other girl that ever lived?

I was living the scene again--seeing the mass of heads, the sea of

upturned faces. Again I was gazing into the one face that had been

distinct, the eyes that had drawn mine in all that blur and confusion,

that had looked back at me, as if in answer to my voiceless call for

help, with strength and good cheer. Even in the moment of my utmost

terror, I had been sustained by that message from Ned Hynes. How did I

chance to see him just at that crisis, when I didn't know of his

presence? And why didn't he come to us afterwards, as John did?

Mrs. Baker and Ethel saw us leave the box, and were at home with Uncle

almost as soon as we.

"Are you safe, Nelly?" Aunt cried, rushing at me; then, with the

sharpness of tense nerves, she rebuked the Judge: "Ba-ake, you hissed

her!"

"Nay, my dear; in the interests of music, I frowned upon disorder." He

added, with waving of his antennae eyebrows: "It was Helen's first

opera."

We all laughed hysterically, and then Mrs. Van Dam and John went away.

Could--_could_ Mr. Hynes have gone to the Opera just because he had

heard that I would be there?

CHAPTER V.

A PLAGUE OF REPORTERS.

Saturday evening, Jan. 18.

Since Monday I have left the house but once. The Judge has given me a

microscope so that I may study at home instead of going to Barnard; and

to please him I make a pretence of cutting sections from the plants in

Aunt's conservatory; but oh, it's so dull, so dull! Or would be but for

my happy thoughts. It isn't interest in apical cell or primary meristem

that makes me fret to return to Prof. Darmstetter!

It's all on account of reporters that I am shut up like a state secret

or a crown jewel. From daylight until dark, men with pencils and

notebooks, cardboard-bearing artists and people with hand cameras have

watched the house; and it's so tiresome.

The siege had already begun when Mrs. Baker came to my room the morning

after the Opera, but I knew nothing about it. I couldn't understand why

she scolded with such vehemence upon finding me writing in this little

book instead of lying in bed; why she exclaimed so nervously over my

escape and the horrors of jumping from windows, or sliding down ropes,

or of being hurried along in fire panics until I was crushed to death.

"Why, you talk as if there had _been_ a fire," I cried, kissing her.

Millions of fires have flamed and roared and sunk and died again; but

never before has there been a Me!

The dear fussy little woman said that John had been telephoning

inquiries. I could see that she wished to keep me in my room, and

finally, at some laboured excuse for withholding the morning papers, I

understood that she and John were hiding something; she is so

transparent!

"You must be calm, Nelly, dear; you mustn't excite yourself," she

chirped anxiously.

"Unless I see the papers, I shall have a fever, a high fever," I

threatened; "I must--oh, I must see every word about last evening!"

At last the _Record_ and the _Messenger_ came upstairs already opened

to the critiques of the new opera. Mrs. Baker wished to read aloud, but

I almost snatched the papers from her; my eyes couldn't go fast enough

down the columns. But in neither sheet did I find more than a reference

to a "senseless alarm" that marred the rendition of "Christofero."

My cheeks flamed with annoyance. It was the reporters who were

senseless; they had seen men adoring the wonder of this century, and

had not flashed news of it--of me--to all the world!

Aunt couldn't understand. She thought to comfort me by saying that my

share in the disturbance would never be suspected; she unblushingly

averred that no one had seen me; she begged me to rest, to forget my

fright, not to be distressed by the newspapers.

Distressed? Not I! Events had been too startling for me to heed the

stupidity that whined over missing a few bars of a silly overture when

_I_ was in sight. Indeed I had been frightened; yet why should not the

world demand to look upon me? I thought only of hurrying to Prof.

Darmstetter that he might share my triumph. But Aunt wouldn't hear of

my leaving the house; scarcely of my coming down stairs. Fluttering

into my room she would bring me some fruit, a novel; then she would

trot away again with an air of preoccupation.

I was getting out of patience at all this mystery, when, during one of

her brief absences, Ethel tapped at my door, and a minute later Kitty

Reid dashed at me, while in the doorway appeared Cadge, scratching with

one hand in a black bag.

"Oh, Helen, Helen," cried Kitty, laughing and half crying, "_have_ you

seen Cadge's exclusive?"

"Cadge! You were there? Cadge!"

"Sure," said that strange creature, her keen eyes glancing about my

room; "you don't deserve half I've done for you--not letting me know

beforehand--."

"Or me!" Kitty broke in. "Oh, I've have given a--a tube of chrome

yellow to see you!"

"--but we've made the Row look like nineteen cents in a country where

they don't use money. See you've got the fossils." Cadge nodded towards

the papers I had been reading. "But the _Star's_ worth the whole--now

where the mischief--"

"Cadge! Show me!"

From the black bag she drew several sheets of paper, upon each of which

was pasted a cutting from a newspaper, with pencilled notes in the

margin; a handkerchief, a bunch of keys, six pointed pencils, a

pen-knife, a purse, rather lean, a photograph of two kittens.

"There," she said, relieved at sight of these, "knew I couldn't have

lost 'em. Brooklyn woman left 'em $5,000 in her will. They'll stand me

in a good little old half column. Now--where--ah, here you are!"

She unfolded a _Star_ clipping and proudly spread it upon my knee.

"There, Princess! That's the real thing!"

I caught my breath at the staring headlines.

BEAUTY OF A WOMAN THREATENS A PANIC AT THE OPERA HOUSE.

PRESENCE OF MISS HELEN WINSHIP CREATES SENSATION THAT MIGHT HAVE

RESULTED IN A PERILOUS STAMPEDE.

_Alarm of Fire During the Third Scene of "Christofero Colombo"_

GREAT AUDIENCE AT THE METROPOLITAN ENDANGERED BY FRENZY OVER REMARKABLY

LOVELY GIRL.

"Hot stuff, ain't it?" said Cadge, beaming with satisfaction. "I never

like that Opera assignment--dresses and society, second fiddle to the

music man--but I wouldn't have missed last night! Minute I saw you in

the Van Dam box I knew there'd be the biggest circus I ever--why--why,

Helen--"

The horror of it--the pitiful vulgarity! My father, the University

folks--all the world would know that I had been made notorious by

a--that I--oh, the tingling joy, the rapture--that I was the loveliest

of women!

"Cadge! Oh, Cadge!"

I threw myself into her arms.

"Why, Helen, what's this? Can't stand for the headlines? Built in the

office and I know they're rather--"

"They're _quite_" interrupted Kitty. "Of course the Princess wouldn't

expect a first page scare. But cheer up, child; there's worse to come."

The girls were soothing me and fussing over me when Aunt Frank opened

the door. At her surprised look I brushed away my tears of joy. I

understood everything now--her uneasiness, the long telephonic

conferences, my confinement to the house.

"Aunt," I managed to say, "here is Kitty come to condole with me and

congratulate me; and this is my friend, Miss Bryant of the _Star_. You

remember? She was here at the tea."

"A reporter!"

"Oh, I had to know! Don't worry. Cadge, dear, did nobody but you see

me?"

"The fossils never have anything they can't clip," said Cadge in the

tone of absorption that her work always commands. "I'm surprised myself

at the _Echo_, though it did notice that a 'Miss Winslow' fainted in

the Van Dam box. But haven't you had reporters here--regiments?

Expected to find you ordering Gatlings for the siege."

"We're bombarded!" said Aunt. "With--er--"

"Rapid fire questions," suggested Ethel.

"--but the servants have their orders. Of course," Aunt added uneasily,

"we're glad to see any friend of Nelly's."

"Oh, by the way, I'm interviewing you," Cadge announced; _Star_ wants

to follow up its beat. You haven't talked?"

"Why, no; but--do I have to be interviewed?"

Just at first the idea was a shock, I must confess.

"Do you _have_ to be interviewed? Wish all interviewees were as meek.

Why, of course, Helen, you'll want to make a statement. I 'phoned the

_Star_ photographer to meet me here, but he's failed to connect.

However, Kitty can sketch--"

"Oh, Miss Bryant!" wailed Aunt. "An interview! How frightful! Can't you

let her off?"

"Why, I don't exactly see how--though I might--" Cadge deliberated,

studying Aunt's face rather than mine, "--might wait and see the red

extras. I know how she feels, Mrs. Baker--they're always that way, at

first--and I'm anxious to spare her, but--I can't let the _Star_ be

beaten. If I were you--"

She turned to me, hesitated a moment, then burst out impulsively:--

"If I were you, I wouldn't say a word! Not--one--blessed--word! I'd

pique curiosity. There! That _is_ treason! Why, I'd give my eye teeth,

'most, for a nice signed statement. But I'll wait--that is, if you

really, honest-Injun, prefer."

"You're very kind," said Aunt Frank, with a sigh of bewildered relief.

"We'd give anything, of course--_anything_!--to avoid--"

"Mind," Cadge admonished me as she rose to go. "I'm running big risks,

letting you off; the office relied on me. If you do talk to anybody

else, or even see anybody, you'll let me know, quick? And if you don't

want to give up, look out for a little fat girl with blue eyes and a

baby stare; she'll be here sure, crying for pictures; generally gets

'em, first time, too. Snuffles and dabs her eyes and says: 'If I go

back without any photograph, I'll lose my j-o-o-o-b! Wa-a-a-h!

Wa-a-a-h! until you do anything to get rid of her. Ought to be on the

stage; tears in her voice. I wouldn't do stunts like that, if I

never--you will look out, won't you?"

Aunt is so funny, not to have guessed who wrote the _Star_ article. But

she never saw it. Her precautions had all been taken at John's

officious suggestion over the telephone. Busybody! An interview is

nothing so terrible. The world has a right to know about me; and I

don't suppose Aunt had an idea how grievously Cadge was disappointed.

No sooner had Cadge left us than Mr. Bellmer, pink and stammering in my

presence, and after him the General, called to inquire for me.

It was wonderful to see the change in the strong, self-confident girl's

manner. She beamed at my appearance, and her every word was caressing

and deferential. The night before had had a magical effect. I was no

longer "Diane," the ingenue whom she patronized as well as admired. I

was a powerful woman, a great lady.

"Did our Princess enjoy waking this morning to find herself famous?"

she asked, echoing Milly's word for me; and then, to Mrs. Baker's

horror, she, too, had a tale to tell about reporters; they had been

besetting her for information about her companion of the Opera.

"But I never see people of that sort, you know," she said, with an

accent that piqued me, though I couldn't help feeling glad that Cadge

had gone.

She showered me with messages from Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam and from

Peggy and Mrs. Henry. She had a dozen plans for my entertainment, but

Mrs. Baker opposed a flurried negative:--

"We'll run no more risks like last night's; Nelly must stay at

home--till folks get used to her."

"Then I can never go anywhere; never!" I cried in despair, yet

laughing. It's impossible sometimes not to laugh at Aunt. But Mrs. Van

Dam gave me a look that promised many things.

"You won't be left in hiding after such a début; you'll electrify

society!" she said; and when she had gone, I wore away the day

wondering what she meant, until I could send for the afternoon papers.

I laughed until I cried when they came, and cried until I laughed. The

red extras reviewed the occurrence at the Opera from Alpha to Omega,

publishing "statements" from ushers who had shown us to our box; from

people in the audience and from the cab man who drove us home. And they

supplemented their accounts with pen and ink sketches of "Miss Helen

Winship at the Opera," evolved from the fallible inner consciousness of

"hurry-up artists."

When Uncle came home, he found me reading an interview with him which

contained the momentous information that he would say nothing.

"We shall not again forget," he said with a deep sigh of relief, "that

--the face that launched a thousand ships

And burned the topless towers of Ilion

--was Helen's. But the Metropolitan still stands. An argument not used

on heart-hardened Pharaoh was a plague of press representatives."

I'm afraid he'd had a trying day.

The worst of my day was still to come.

After dinner, when I happened to be alone a minute in the library, Mr.

Hynes came in. Oddly enough I'd been thinking about him. I had

determined that the next time he called I would for once be

self-possessed; I would act as if I had not seen how oddly he conducts

himself--now gazing at me as if he would travel round the earth to

feast his eyes upon my beauty and now actually shunning Milly's cousin.

I was quite resolved to begin afresh and treat him just as cordially as

I would any other man:

But the moment he appeared away flew all my wits.

"I think Milly'll be here in a minute," I stammered, and then I

stopped, tongue-tied and blushing.

He came towards me, saying abruptly: "May I tell you what I thought

when I saw you above us--" I didn't need to ask when or where. "--I

thought: The Queen has come to her coronation."

One's own stupid self is so perverse! Of course I meant to thank him

for his silent help the night before, but I asked with a rush of

nervous confusion:--

"You--were you there?"

I could have suffered torture sooner than own that I had seen him.

"Were you there, Ned?" repeated Milly, blundering into the room. "Why,

we didn't see you."

Of all vexatious interruptions! Behind her came John and most of the

family.

"The servant of The Presence would fain know if The Presence is well,"

John said, coming quickly to my side and peering down at me with a

dark, worn look upon his face, as if he hadn't slept, and a catch in

his voice that irritated me, in spite of his playful words. I knew well

enough that his anxiety had been on my account, but it was so

unnecessary!

"The child bears up wonderfully," cried my Aunt, before I could answer;

"but to-morrow'll tell the story; to-morrow she'll feel the strain."

Then they all broke out talking at once. John drew a big chair for me

to the fire, and there was such an ado, adjusting lights and fending me

with screens.

"You _are_ well?" John asked, obstinately planting himself between me

and the others.

"Perfectly. How absurd you are!"

It was so ridiculous that I should be coddled after the triumph of my

life, as if something awful had happened to me.

I had felt annoyed all day, so far as anything can now annoy me, by

John's too solicitous guardianship, and it vexed me anew when he began

to pile up cautions against this and against that--to warn me against

going out alone upon the street, and to urge care even in my

intercourse with Cadge. He is quicker than my Aunt; he divined the

source of the _Star_ article, and he almost forbade me to cleave to

such an indiscreet friend.

"Oh, last night won't happen again," I said carelessly; "and you don't

know Cadge; she's as good as the wheat."

I wasn't listening to him. I was twisting his ring impatiently on my

finger and watching in the play of the fire a vision of the great Opera

House, the lights, the jewels, the perfumes, the white, wondering faces.

"Can't you see, Nelly," replied John, with irritation, "that this

Bryant woman's article practically accuses you of risking lives to

gratify a whim of vanity?"

"Why, John Burke, how can you say such a thing?" exclaimed Aunt Frank,

overhearing his words and as usual answering only the last half dozen.

"Risking lives! Poor Nelly!"

"I didn't say it," John patiently explained; "but other people--"

"Nobody else will talk about Nelly's vanity. Why, she hasn't a

particle. As for the papers, I won't have one in the house--"

"Except the _Evening Post_?" suggested Aunt Marcia.

"Which Cadge says isn't a newspaper," I contributed.

"--so we needn't care what they say."

I was ready to laugh at John's discomfiture, but the possible truth of

his words struck me, and I cried out:

"People won't really believe I did it on purpose, whatever the papers

say--that I went there just to be looked at! Oh, that would be

horrible! Horrible!"

"Of course not," John said with curt inconsistency to bring me comfort;

but I had a reply more sincere--a fleeting glance only, but it said:

"The Queen can do no wrong."

"Oh, I hope you are right; I hope no one thought that," I said

confusedly in answer to the glance. And then I bent over the Caesar

that Boy laid upon my lap, while Uncle asked:--

"Well, my son, is there mutiny again in the camp of our Great and Good

Friend, Divitiacus the Aeduan?"

A few minutes later John said good-night with a ludicrous expression of

pained, absent-minded patience. I didn't go to the door with him; I

scarcely looked up from Boy's ablative absolutes.

Oh I treated him shabbily. And yet--why did he use every effort that

day to keep me ignorant of my own rightful affairs, only to come at me

himself with a club, gibbering of newspapers?

Why, John's absurd! He would have liked to find me--not ill, of course,

but overcome by the Opera experience, dependent on him, ready to be

shielded, hidden, petted, comforted. He can not see me as I am--a

strong, splendid woman, ready to accept the responsibilities of my

beauty.

CHAPTER VI.

LOVE IS NOTHING!

Monday, Jan. 20.

Dear me! Beauty is a responsibility! Such troubles, such trials about

nothing! It's photographs this time!

Last Wednesday--the day after the papers published so much about me--a

strange man called in Mrs. Baker's absence and begged me to let him

take my photograph--as a service to Art. If Aunt had been at home I

wouldn't have been permitted to see him. But the man was pleasant and

gentlemanly, and so sincere in his admiration that he won the way to my

heart. I'm afraid devotion is still so new to me that it's the surest

road to my good graces. He hesitated and stammered, blinking before my

shining loveliness as if blinded, as he offered to take the pictures

for nothing, if he might exhibit them afterwards; and at last I went to

his studio, though I said that his work must be for me only, and that I

must pay for it.

I wonder at myself for yielding, for I didn't mean to have any

photographs until the experiment was quite finished--to mortify me in

future with their record of imperfection; but I'm so nearly perfect now

that, really, it's time I had something to tell me how I do look. Of

course, as fast as I can lay hands on them, I'm destroying every

likeness of the old Nelly. At the studio it was such a revelation--the

care and intelligence the man displayed, the skill of the posing--that

when I got home full of the subject and found Cadge waiting, I had to

tell her all about it.

"H'm!" she said after I had finished; "what sort of looking chap?"

When I had described him, she sat silent at least a third of a minute,

establishing for herself a new record. Then she said:--

"Princess, I'll have to take back every word I said yesterday about

letting you off from being interviewed. I agreed to wait, but it's up

to you. Every rag in town'll have some kind of feature about you next

Sunday, and you wouldn't ask me to see the _Star_ beaten? You'd better

come right now to the _Star_ photographer, or--see last night's

papers?--you'll wish you'd never been born. I tell you the situation's

out of my control."

"Well, come on then, before Aunt Frank gets back."

So we started out again. The sun and air made me so drunken with pure

joy of living that I didn't mind the scolding sure to follow--though it

certainly has proved an annoyance ever since to have Aunt's fidgetty

oversight of me redoubled, and to be shut up, as I have been, closer

than ever, like a Princess in a fairy book, just as my splendid

triumphs were beginning.

Worst of all, almost, Mrs. Baker told the tale of my misdeeds to John.

"Why, Helen," he said at once, "no photographer of standing goes about

soliciting patronage; the man who came here wants pictures of you to

sell."

"Like the great ladies' photographs in England?" I asked flippantly,

though I was really a little disturbed.

"Just what I told her!" groaned Aunt Frank. "Bake must see the man;

or--Mr. Burke, why can't you find out about him? Perhaps it's all

right," she added weakly; "from her accounts he didn't flatter Nelly

one bit; simply raved over her."

"Yes, I'll run in and converse with the art lover," John grimly agreed;

but just then in came Milly with the General, and the subject was

changed.

Indeed, though I don't know just how she managed it, from the moment

the brilliant woman of the world entered the room, poor clumsy John was

made to seem clumsier than ever, and before long, without quite knowing

why, he went away. I'm pretty sure that Mrs. Van Dam dislikes to see us

together.

John was wrong and yet not wrong about the photographer; his threatened

interposition came to nothing, for the very next morning--only

yesterday, long ago as it seems--I was enlightened as to the cheap and

silly trick that had been played upon me.

"Thee, Cothin Nelly; pwetty, pwetty!" cried Joy, running towards me and

holding up a huge poster picture from the Sunday _Echo_.

"Isn't it--why--give it to me!" I almost snatched the sheet from her

baby hands.

My portrait! I knew it in spite of crude colour and cheap paper. It was

my portrait, and it was labelled: "HELEN WINSHIP, MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

IN THE WORLD. POSED BY MISS WINSHIP ESPECIALLY FOR--"

And then--the insolence of the man!--there followed the name of the

bashful stranger whose devotion to Art had drawn him to my door! The

fellow had practised upon my credulity to obtain my likeness for

publication.

I threw down the sheet, quivering with anger. I felt that I should

never again dare look at a paper; but half an hour later I sent Boy out

to buy them all, and, locked into my room, I shook all about me a

snowstorm of bulky supplements and magazines.

Having posed for Cadge, I knew, of course, that the _Star_ would print

my picture, perhaps several of them. But at any other time I should

have been overcome to find a "special section" of four pages filled

with half-tone likenesses of me, cemented together by an essay on

"Beauty," signed by a novelist of repute, and by articles from

painters, sculptors, dressmakers and gymnasts, all from their

respective standpoints extolling my perfections. Cadge had written an

interview headed "How It Feels to be Beautiful."

But the _Echo!_ Besides the poster which Joy had shown me, it published

two pages of portraits framed in medallion miniatures of celebrated

beauties with whom it compared me, making me surpass the loveliest

women of history and legend, from Helen of Troy to the reigning music

hall performer. And, with a shock of surprise, I not only saw in the

pictures the dress I had worn and the theatrical things the deferential

artist had loaned me to pose in, but in the article appeared every word

I had said to him; and the skill with which fact, fiction, clever

conjecture and picturesque description had been stirred into the

sweetened batter that Cadge calls a "first-rate delirious yellow style"

was maddening.

This is the beginning of the stuff:--

CHAPTER I.

A PRAIRIE BUD.

So fair that, had you Beauty's picture took,

It must like her or not like Beauty look.

--ALEYN'S HENRY VII.

A Western Wild Rose!

As sweet! As perfect!

By all who have seen her, Helen Winship is pronounced the most

beautiful of women.

Last Monday night, at the Opera House, a great audience paid her such

spontaneous tribute as never before was offered human being.

At the sight of a young girl, trembling and blushing, staid citizens

were lifted to their feet by an irresistible wave of enthusiasm.

Not for anything this girl has done, though Science will hear from her;

not for her voice, though no nightingale sings so melodiously; but for

a face more glorious than that other Helen's, "Whose beauty summoned

Greece to arms and drew a thousand ships to Tenedos."

This modern Helen is a niece of Judge Timothy Baker, at whose

residence, No. -- East Seventy-second Street, she is staying.

The Judge and his family are reticent concerning their lovely guest, of

whom the _Echo_ presents the first authentic picture.

Miss Winship cannot be described.

Artists say that by their stern canons she is a perfect woman. Her

beauty is that of flawless health and a hitherto unknown physical

perfection.

She is cast in Goddess mould. The loose, flowing robe of her daily wear

is of classic grace and dignity.

Tall as the Venus of Milo, she incarnates that noble figure with a

lightness and a purity virginal and modern.

She is neither blonde nor brunette; of a type essentially American, she

has glorious eyes and for her smile a man would lose his head.

It is a fact for students of heredity and environment to consider that

Miss Winship is not a product of the cities. Jasper M. Winship, her

father, is a bonanza farmer. Mrs. Winship was in her youth the belle of

prairie dances, and still has remarkable beauty.

Born of pioneer stock, baby Helen was reared to a life of freedom;

learning what she knew of grandeur from the sky and of luxury from the

lap of Mother Earth. Child of the sunshine and sweet air, she danced

with the butterflies, as innocent as they of cramping clothing that

would distort her body, or of city conventionalities that might warp

her mind.

Year by year she grew, a brown-faced cherub, strong-limbed and supple.

Springtime after springtime her marvellous beauty budded, unnoted save

by the passing traveller, who put aside the bright, wind-blown hair to

gaze long into her fathomless eyes.

Roystering farm-hands checked their drunken songs at the little maid's

approach, but no wild thing feared her. Birds and squirrels came at her

call and fed from her hand.

And so it went. Chapters II and III described with brilliant inaccuracy

my University life and made me a piquant mixture of devotee of science

and favourite of fashion. Ah, well, it was all as accurate as Pa's name

or Mother's beauty or her love of dancing--she thinks it's as wicked as

playing cards.

Before I had read half the papers, between dread of Father and John and

the absurdity of it all, I was in a gale of tears and laughter. More

than once Milly crept to the door, or I heard in the hall the uneven

step of lame little Ethel. But I wouldn't open. I was swept by a

passion of----

Not grief, not anger, not concern, not fear of anything on earth;

but--Joy!

Joy in my beauty, about which a million men and women had that morning

read for the first time! Joy in the fame of my beauty which should last

forever! Joy in my full and rapturous life!

What did I care for the spelling of a name or the bald prose about my

college course? What concern was it of mine how my photographs had been

obtained? Trifles; trifles all! Here were the essential facts set

broadly forth, speeding to every part of the country--why, to every

part of the world! Cadge or Pros. Reid now--any one who knows how such

things are done--might note the hours as they passed, and say: "Now two

millions have seen her beauty, have read of her; now three; now five;

now ten millions."

And the story would spread! In ever widening circles, men warned by

telegraph of the new wonder would tear open the damp sheets; and pen

and pencil and printing press would hurry to reproduce those marvellous

lines--to-morrow in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Montreal; next day

in Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta; and so on to Denver, Galveston and the

Golden Gate.

The picture--_mine_;--_my picture_!--would be spread on tables in the

low cabins of pilot boats and fishing smacks; it would be nailed to the

log walls of Klondike mining huts; soldiers in the steaming trenches

around Manila would pass the torn sheets from hand to hand, and for a

moment forget their sweethearts while they read of me.

And the ships! The swiftest of them all would carry these pages to

London, Paris, Vienna, there to be multiplied a thousand fold and sent

out again in many tongues. Blue-eyed Gretchen, Giuseppina, with her

bare locks and rainbow-barred apron, slant-eyed O Mimosa San, all in

good time would dream over the fair face on the heralding page; women

shut in the zenanas of the unchanging East would gossip from housetop

to housetop of the wonderful Feringhe beauty; whipped slaves in midmost

Africa would carry my picture in their packs into regions where white

men have never trod, and dying whalers in the far North would look at

my face and forget for a little while their dooming ice floes.

The wealth of all the earth was at my command. Railroad train and ocean

grayhound, stage and pony cart, spurring horseman and naked brown

runner sweating through jungle paths under his mail bags, would bear

the news of me East and West, until they met in the antipodes and put a

girdle of my loveliness right round the world!

Never before had I realised what a great thing a newspaper is!

My heart was beating with a terrible joy. And so--prosaic detail--I

threw the papers down in a heap on the floor, combed my hair in a great

loose knot, put a rose at my belt, and went down to smile at my Aunt's

anxieties. I even went with my cousins to supper with Aunt Marcia. And

in the early evening Mr. Hynes came to walk with us home. I knew his

step, and my heart jumped with fright. What would he, so fastidious as

he was, think of that poster?

But his look leaped to mine as he entered, and I--oh, it seemed as if

there had never been such a night; never the snow, the delight of the

cold and dark and the far, wise stars! I couldn't tell what joy elf

possessed me as we walked homeward. I wanted to run like a child. Yet I

couldn't bear to reach the house.

"Why, Helen," said Ethel; "you're not wearing your veil."

"Will the reporters git me ef I don't--watch--out?" I laughed. How

could I muffle myself like a grandmother?

"We'll keep away the goblins," he said; and--it's a little thing to

write down--he walked beside me instead of Milly. We would pass through

the shadows of the trees, and then under the glare of an electric lamp,

and then again into blackness; and I felt in his quickened breath an

instant response to my mood; as if newspapers had never existed, and we

were playing at goblins.

I hope he didn't think me childish.

Of course John had come before we reached home, and of course he had

been all day fuming over the papers, as if that would do any good; but

I had drunk too deep of the intoxicating air to be disturbed by his

surprised look when Mr. Hynes and I entered the library; can't I go

without his guarding even to Aunt Marcia's?

I like the library--bookshelves, not too high, all about it, and the

glow of the open fire and the smiling faces. Sometimes I grow impatient

of Aunt's fussy kindness, and of the slavish worship of limp and

characterless Milly and Ethel; but last night I was glad to be walled

about with cousins, barricaded from the big, curious world. I could

have hugged Boy, who lay curled on the hearth, deep in the adventures

of Mowgli and the Wolf Brethren. I did hug little Joy, who climbed into

my lap, lisping, as she does every night: "Thing, Cothin Nelly."

I looked shyly at Mr. Hynes, who had stooped to pat the cat that purred

against his leg, muttering something about a "fine animal." I knew--I

begin to understand him so well--just how he felt the charm of

everything.

"Thing," Joy insisted, putting up a baby hand until it touched my cheek

and twined itself in my hair, "Thing, Cothin Nelly." And I crooned

while breathlessly all in the room listened:--

"Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the Western sea--

"He'll be a bad man, won't he, Joy," I broke off, as John came to my

corner, "if he scolds a poor girl who has had to stand on the floor all

day for the scholars to look at, and get no good mark on her deportment

card?"

"I am no longer a schoolmaster, Nelly," said John so icily that Aunt

looked up at him, surprised. "Come, Joy," she said, "Cousin Nelly can't

be troubled with a great big girl. Why, Mr. Burke, she's cried herself

ill, fairly, over those dreadful newspapers. I do so hope they'll leave

her in peace now. But of course we tell her it's all meant as a

tribute."

"Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon and blow-- Blow

him again to me, While my little Joy, while my pretty Joy sleeps."

"Thing more about your little Joy! More about me."

The sleepy child cuddled closer and, as I continued to sing, I knew

that at least one person in the room understood that a creature so

blessed as I could never cry herself ill.

"Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the

West--"

"Milly and I have tributes, too," laughed Ethel. "The _Trumpet_ says

we're just as charming girls as our wonderful cousin. And the _Record_

prints snapshots at Joy and her nursemaid. Aren't newspapers funny?"

"Some one of us should be running for office," said Uncle Timothy. "It

seems gratuitous to subject an unambitious private family to the

treatment expected by a candidate or a multi-millionaire. Yet I have

seldom had occasion to complain of the press. In its own perhaps

headlong manner, it pursues such matters as are of greatest public

importance. A household, to avoid its attentions, should be provided

with good, plain, durable countenances. The difficulty with this family

is its excess of attraction."

He patted Aunt's hand affectionately, while I sang:--

"--Under the silver moon Sleep, my little Joy, sleep, my pretty Joy,

sleep--"

"--but, Uncle, what shall I do?"

"Nothing. In a shorter time than now seems possible, another topic will

supersede you. Then, as one of our Presidents has aptly said, you will

sink into 'innocuous desuetude.'"

But of course I sha'n't!

As I rose to carry Joy to her bed, I felt from all in the room a look

that said I was like a great, glorious Madonna, and I bent lower over

the sleeping child's still face; it is good to have everybody admire me.

Oh, I do wish John were more reasonable. Not satisfied with seeing me

Saturday and yesterday, he came again to-day and asked me to marry him

at once. He's so ridiculous!

"Perhaps I'm selfish to wish to mould your brilliant life to my

plodding one," he said wistfully, as if he were reading my thoughts.

"But I don't mean to be selfish. I love you--and--you're drifting away

from me."

"What a goose you are, John!" I said, laughing impatiently. "I'm just

the same that I always was; the trouble is, I'm not a bit sentimental."

John _is_ selfish. He'd hide me somewhere outside the city, he'd bury

alive the most lovely of women. He prosed to me about a "home"; as if I

could now endure a Darby and Joan existence!

To-night his ring distracts--torments me. I pull it off and put it back

and it galls my finger, as if it rubbed a wound. I used to go to sleep

with it against my lips--I love the opal, gem of the beautiful women. I

wonder if it's really unlucky.

I suppose John's talk to-day annoyed me because I'm in such a restless

mood--waiting for the barriers to fall, for the glorious life ahead of

me to open. How could he expect me to feel as in the days when we were

boy and girl, when we dreamed foolish dreams about each other, and were

romantic, and young? I have changed since then, I have a thousand

things to think about in which he doesn't sympathize; if I answered his

words at random it was because I couldn't fix my mind upon them. I drew

a long breath when he left me--when I escaped the tender, perplexed

question of his eyes.

It's true; I'm not a bit sentimental. I used to think I was, but now I

feel sure that I could never love any one as John loves me.

But I mustn't drift away from him. I remember so many things that tie

us together, here in this strange, stormy city. What happy times we

used to have! He'll understand better by and by, and be less exacting.

But I can't marry; I must be free to enjoy the victories of my beauty;

I told him at Christmas that I can't marry for a long, long time.

CHAPTER VII.

LOVE is ALL!

Thursday, Jan. 30.

I've been trying to read, but I can't. Pale heroines in books are so

dull!

Last night came the Van Dams' dance and my triumph--and a greater

triumph still; for to-day I have a wonderful, beautiful chapter to add

to my own book, to the story of the only woman whose life is worth

while.

I see the vista of my future, and--ah, little book, my eyes are

dazzled! A rich woman would be a beggar, a clever woman a fool, an

empress would leave her throne to exchange with me. Nothing, nothing is

impossible to the most beautiful woman that ever lived, whose life is

crowned by love. Love is all; all! In a palace without Ned I'd weep

myself blind; with him a desert would be Eden. Love is all!

That blessed dance!

The General invited me ten days ago, the afternoon when--when John

Burke-- poor John!---scolded me about the photographs.

"Just a 'small and early,'" she said, broaching her errand as soon as

she had fairly driven John off the field--there was just the faintest

suggestion of relief in her tone--"Peggy's mother's giving it--Mrs.

Henry Van Dam."

She looked at Aunt with an assurance as calm as if there were no

interdict upon social experiments.

"Impossible!" gasped Aunt, glancing despairingly in the direction in

which her ally had disappeared. "Why, Nelly doesn't leave the house;

I've stopped her attendance even at Barnard."

"And quite right; but a private house isn't a big school, nor yet the

Opera. Of course you say yes, don't you, Helen?"

"Yes, yes! A dance! Oh, I'm going to a dance! Play for me, Milly; play

for me!"

Humming a bar of a waltz, I caught Aunt Frank in my arms, and whirled

her about the room until she begged for mercy.

"Oh, you dear people, I'm so happy!" I cried as I stopped, my cheeks

glowing, and, falling all about me, a flood of glistening hair; while

the General, whose creed is to wonder at nothing, gazed at me in

delighted amazement.

"You splen--did creature!" she cried.

"I--I would like to go; Aunt Frank, you will let me?" I said meekly, as

too late I realised how differently a New York girl _bien élevée_ would

have received the invitation. But, indeed, my heart jumped with rapture.

Without John, Mrs. Baker really didn't know how to refuse me.

"But--but--but--" she stammered.

"Surround her with a bodyguard, if you like," said the General. "You'll

have Judge Baker and Hynes, of course; and that--what's the name of

that shy young man who's just gone? He looks presentable."

"But--but--" protested Aunt; "Bake'd never go; and--Nelly--has--do you

suppose Mr. Burke has evening clothes?"

"Naturally," I said with nonchalance, though my quick temper was fired.

I was as sure he hadn't as I was that Mrs. Van Dam knew his name, and

that he would oppose the dance even more strongly than did Aunt; and I

wished that I could go without him. But it was useless to think of

this, with even the General suggesting a bodyguard. I resolved that he

should at least consult a decent tailor.

"Why not have detectives as guards--as if I wore a fortune in

diamonds?" I grumbled.

"Let us at least have Mr. Burke. Now, Helen, what do _you_ propose to

wear?" concluded the General.

Mrs. Van Dam took an extraordinary interest in my toilette. She even

came to see my new evening dress fitted, and put little Mrs. Edgar into

such a flutter that she prodded me with pins. I'll simply have to ask

Father to increase my allowance; cheap white silk, clouded with tulle,

was the best I could manage.

"H'm--Empire; simple and graceful," pronounced Oracle. "Square neck,

Helen, or round?"

"Why--I've never worn a low dress--not really low," I said, longing but

dubious. "Pa says--"

"Nonsense!"

"A shame!" chimed Mrs. Edgar.

And it would have been a shame to hide my neck and arms. I laughed when

they cut away their interfering linings from the white column of my

throat, and left across my shoulders only wisps of tulle. And last

night, when I came to dress, I laughed again, and kissed the entrancing

flesh, so firm and soft and gleaming faintly pink, and then I blushed

because Aunt Marcia saw me do it. I worship the miracle of my own

fairness. I could scarcely bear to put gloves on, even.

Miss Baker gathered all my shining hair into the loose knot that suits

me, and put roses at my girdle and into the misty tulle about my

shoulders. Ethel fitted on my slippers, and brought her fan and her

lace handkerchief, and when I had smiled for one last time at the

parted scarlet lips and the brilliant eyes that smiled back at me from

the mirror, and had turned reluctantly from my dressing table, I was

still joyous at remembrance of the light, the grace, the marvel of the

vision I had seen reflected, that had seemed fairly to float in the

dancing rose light of its own happiness.

Down in the hall the family were waiting, with John and Mr. Hynes; and,

as I glided into sight on the stairway, Milly behind me, the Judge

looked up at us, quoting with heavy playfulness:--

"She seizes hearts, not waiting for consent, Like sudden death that

snatches unprepared.

"How many conquests will satisfy you to-night, fair Princesses? Milly,

will two young men answer instead of one old one?" He had been exempted

from serving on my bodyguard.

"Bake! Death! How can you," sputtered Aunt. "Come, girls, the carriage

is waiting.

"Wish I could dance," whispered Ethel, reaching up to touch my

flowers--a pathetic little figure poised on her best foot.

"Oh, I wish you could! I wish you were going," I replied hastily,

bending to kiss the little creature, the better to hide my sudden

consciousness of my bared shoulders.

All in the room were looking at me as if never before had they beheld

my beauty. John's strained eyes seemed to plead with me for an

answering glance of affection, and I knew that Ned--though I wasn't

conscious of looking at him at all--was alternately white and red as I

was myself. I felt his glance so confused and passionate and withal so

impetuous that, as Aunt Marcia lifted my wrap and I went down to the

carriage, my heart beat violently, and I sank back into my corner in a

frightful, blissful maze of fear and ecstasy.

But even then I didn't know what had happened to me.

We had but a few blocks to go, and before I had recovered, a man in

livery was opening the carriage door at the mouth of a canvas tunnel

which seemed to dive under a great house that towered so far above the

street as to look almost narrow. We passed through the tunnel, another

man opened a door almost at the street level, and we advanced into a

hall extending the entire width of the house, so brilliantly lighted

and so spacious that I caught my breath at thought of our errand,

seeing that the size of the place and its splendour so far exceeded

what I had supposed.

I clutched at Aunt's hand as if to stop her in front of the huge

fireplace, where logs, crackling on tall "firedogs" of twisted iron,

gave out a yellow blaze; but then quickly such a different terror and

wonder and joy came again upon me that I lost consciousness of

everything but Ned; and the masses of ferns and palms through which we

were moving--the doll-like servants in silk stockings and knee

breeches, their scarlet coats emblazoned with the monogram of the Van

Dams--faded out of sight. Yet I never once glanced in his direction.

We had to go to the third floor for the dressing rooms; but in spite of

those minutes of grace, when a maid had removed my wraps--she started

with amazement as she did so--my cheeks were still aflame.

Mrs. Baker and Milly fussed with my dress, and Aunt became incoherent

in her efforts to soothe and encourage me; for she feared the ordeal

before us, and thought that I feared it also. And I was afraid, but not

of meeting any person in that house, save one. I quivered at the

thought that outside the door Ned was waiting, that we must go out to

him, that I might even be obliged to speak to him. And yet I longed to

see him again, to be with him--somewhere, away from them all.

Perhaps at last I was beginning to understand.

The General had been sent for, and I kept close to her and to Peggy,

when they went down with our party to the parlours on the second floor.

There, at our entrance, groups of people seemed to divide with an eager

buzz that at any other time would have been ravishing music. Last night

I didn't know that I heard it, though now I remember how splendidly

apparelled women and sombre-coated men turned their heads as we passed.

Of course word had spread that the beautiful Miss Winship was expected.

It was almost in a dream that I stood before Mrs. Henry Van Dam--a

short, heavy woman, in purple velvet, flashing with diamonds. Without a

vestige of awkwardness or timidity I answered her effusive welcome, and

the greetings of her grayish wisp of a husband, and of Mr. and Mrs.

Marmaduke Van Dam--both thin and grave; her neck cords standing out

under her diamond collar. And of little Mr. Robert Van Dam. And of Mr.

Bellmer--a pink, young, plump thing, all white waistcoat and bald head,

just as I remembered him at the Opera.

I held a reception of my own. I did it easily. After the first moments

Ned's presence excited me. I was always conscious of his nearness; I

felt that whether I talked or was silent--though I was never allowed to

be that--to whatever part of the room he went, his glowing eyes never

left me. And there came to me a thrilling confidence that he

understood. He knew that to me all these people were so much lace, so

many blotches of white complexion, so many pincushions of silk or

lustrous satin stuck through with jewels. He knew that I cared for no

one of them; for nothing; not even for my beauty, except that--thank

God!--it pleasured him.

I knew that perfect beauty had come to me last night--had come because

I loved and was loved; and because Love was not the pale shadow I had

called by its name, but a rapture that was in my heart and in my face

and in the faces 'round me and in the music that swelled from the great

ballroom!

I had no idea of time, but perhaps it wasn't long before the General

manoeuvred me from the sitting-out rooms and across the hall to join

the dancers. Mrs. Baker and John were with us; Ned was not, but I knew

that he would follow.

It was a big apartment that we entered, occupying the entire end of the

second floor towards the street, perhaps thirty feet by forty and

twenty high; for an instant I was dazzled by the gleam of white and

gold, the rise of pilasters at door and window, the shimmer of soft,

bright hangings and everywhere the cheat of mirrors. I breathed delight

at sight of the lovely ceiling all luminous--no lights showed anywhere,

yet the air was transfused by a rosy glow. The next minute I had

forgotten this in the pulse of the music and the blur of moving

figures; my favourite waltz was sounding, and the scene was one of

fairyland.

"Shall we dance?" asked John, and I came to myself in a panic. Dance

with John--there? I hadn't thought of that. Of course I must, but--why,

his step is abominable! It always was!

"As you please," I said with the best grace I could muster, glancing

nervously up at him. He looked well in his new evening clothes, but his

face was set in grim lines of endurance, and I went on with guilty

haste to forestall question or reproach:--

"I hope you waltz better than you used."

"I'm afraid I don't," said he dryly.

And he didn't. I simply couldn't dance with him. He never thought about

what he was doing or where he was going. I looked back despairingly at

the General, grimacing involuntarily as I gathered my skirts from under

his feet; and I had an odd notion that she smiled with malicious

satisfaction. Could she have reckoned upon weaning me from him by a

display of his awkwardness? I felt nettled at both of them.

"Helen," he said abruptly, as we laboured along the crowded floor, "do

you remember our last dance--at the Commencement ball?"

The night of our betrothal! What a time to remind me of it! I had just

seen Ned and Milly join the group we had left; and as they, too, began

to dance, I felt a stab of pain that made me answer angrily--we were

barely escaping collision with another couple:--

"If it's only at Commencement that you care to dance--"

He tightened his grip upon me almost roughly, then took me back to my

Aunt without a word.

I tried to reason myself out of my pettishness, to atone to John, poor

fellow! But my eyes followed Ned and Milly among the graceful, flying

figures, and my feet tapped the floor impatiently until, presently, the

music stopped and they came to us. Then Ned's parted lips said

something, and then--as the music recommenced, I was in his arms and,

almost without my own knowledge or volition, was moving around the room.

Moving, not dancing--floating in a rosy light, away and away from them

all, into endless space, my hand in his, his breath on my cheek; always

to go on, I felt; on and on, to the dim borderland between this earth

and Heaven.

Presently his eyes told me that something was happening. The dancers

had been too busily engaged to pay much heed to my first brief

adventure, but in the intermission of the music I had been noticed, and

now I saw that there was an open space about us. Here and there a

couple stood as they had risen from their seats, while others, who had

begun to dance, had come to a pause. Slender girls in clouds of gauze

and fat matrons panting in satins were gazing in our direction. In the

doorway were gathered people from the parlours.

"Are they looking at us? We must stop," I whispered.

"Looking at you, not us. But don't stop; not yet--Helen!"

"Helen!" He had called my name! My eyes must have shown with bliss and

terror. I had an almost overmastering desire to whisper his name also,

to answer the entreaty of his voice, the clasp of his fingers. But I

forced myself to remember how many eyes were watching.

"I--we must stop," I said.

"Not yet; unless--we shall dance together again?"

I scarcely heard the "yes" I breathed. I shouldn't have known what I

had said but for the sudden light in his eyes, the firmer pressure of

his arm.

My feet didn't seem to touch the floor, as he gently constrained me

when I would have ceased to dance, and kept me circling round with him

until we came opposite my seat; then he put me into it as naturally as

if I had been tired.

Tired! Our faces told--they must have told our story. But the others

were blind--blind! John had risen as if to meet us, but if he took note

at all of my flushed face, he doubtless thought me frightened.

It was exultation, not fright. I did not heed the following eyes, when,

as gliding figures began to cover the floor again, John took me back to

the parlours. I went with him submissively; I thought of nothing but

the joy of my life, the love of my lover. I shall think of nothing else

to the end of my days.

Ned went with me, confused and impulsive and ardent as John was

attentive and curiously formal. But I wasn't allowed to remain with

either of them. I didn't wish to do so. I was glad that people crowded

about me--men in black coats all alike, whose talk was as monotonous as

their broad expanses of shirt front or their cat's eye finger rings.

But I tried to listen and answer that I might hide from John my tumult.

Before long I danced again--this time with some black coat; then with

another and another and another; and, at last, once more with Ned.

We scarcely spoke, but he did not hide from me the fervour of his look,

nor I from him the wild joy of mine. There was no need of words when

all was understood, but as he put his arm around me, the tinkling music

receded until I could hardly hear it, the figures about us grew

indistinct--and in all the world there were left only he and I.

"Once there was another Helen," he said. His voice caressed my name.

"There have been many; which Helen?"

I so loved the word as he had spoken it that I must repeat it after him.

"_The_ Helen; there was never another--until you. She was terrible as

an army with banners; fair as the sea or the sunset. Men fought for

her; died for her. She had hair that meshed hearts and eyes that smote.

Sometimes I think--do you believe in soul transmigration?"

My heart beat until it choked me. Some voice far in the depths of my

soul warned me that I must check him--we must wait until I--he--Milly--

"Sometimes; who does not? But Prof. Darmstetter would say that it was

nonsense," I whispered, and waited without power to say another word.

"It is true; Helen is alive again, and all men worship her."

His eyes were so tenderly regardful that--I could not help it. Once

more I raised mine and we read each other's souls. And the music seized

us and swept us away with its rapture and its mystery.

The rest of the evening comes to me like a dream, through which I

floated in the breath of flowers and the far murmur of unheeded talk. I

saw little, heard little, yet was faintly conscious that I was the

lodestar of all glances and exulting in my triumph. It was marvellous!

I didn't dance much. People don't at New York balls. But whether I

danced or talked with tiresome men, my heart beat violently because he

would see the admiration I won--he would know that I, who was Helen, a

Queen to these others, lived only for him, was his slave.

There was supper, served at an endless number of little tables; there

was a cotillon which I danced with Mr. Bellmer. John stayed in the

parlours with Aunt, and Ned danced with Milly, but I was not jealous.

Jealous of Milly, with her thin shoulders rising out of her white

dress, her colourless eyes and her dull hair dressed like mine with

roses? Jealous, when his glance ever sought me; when, as often as we

approached in a figure, if I spoke, his eyes answered; if I turned away

my face, his grew heavy with pain?

Once in the dance I gave a hand to each of them. His burned like my

own; hers was cold.

"Tired, Milly?" I asked, and indeed I meant kindly.

"No," she said sulkily, turning to the next dancer.

I couldn't even pity her, I was so happy.

I couldn't bear to have the beautiful evening end, and yet I was glad

to go home--to be alone.

When John lifted me from the carriage, his clasp almost crushed my

hand; poor John, how he will feel the blow! I didn't wait to say

good-night to Aunt; I didn't look at Milly, but ran away to my room.

Oh, indeed, the child doesn't love him! Milly knows no more about Love

than I did two months ago. She's bloodless, cold; I do not wrong her.

Some day she will learn what Love is, as I have learned, and will thank

me for saving her from a great mistake. I hope she will!

I have saved myself from the error of my life. I'm not the same woman I

was yesterday. It makes me blush to think how I looked forward to the

adulation of the nobodies at that dance. I care for no praise but his.

Why, I'll go in rags, I'll work, slave--I'll hide myself from every eye

but his, if that will make him love me better. Or I will be Empress of

beautiful women, if that is his pleasure, and give him all an Empress's

love.

I couldn't sleep last night. I know that he could not. I know that he

has been watching, waiting, as I have, for to-day, when he must come to

me.

CHAPTER VIII.

A LITTLE BELTED EARL.

Feb. 4.

Five wasted days; and nothing more to tell, though some women mightn't

think so; nothing but--another triumph!

I've been to the Charity Ball. I've danced with a Lord--such a little

fellow to be a belted Earl! I have scored over brilliant women of

Society.

It isn't the simple country girl of a few weeks ago whom Ned loves, but

a wonderful woman--a Personage; and I am glad, glad, glad! Though no

woman could be good enough for him. I'm not; I am only beautiful

enough. And oh, so feverishly happy, except that waiting is hard, so

hard. I'm so restless that I scarcely know myself.

If I might tell him that I love him--as other Queens do! I am afraid of

his glance when he is here, because he knows. But when he's not here, I

imagine that he does not know, that he will never come again unless he

learns the truth, and I say it over and over: "I love him! I love him!"

and am glad and panic-stricken as if he had heard.

I have never had any other secret, but the Bacillus, I would sooner die

than tell that, to Ned. My love I would cry aloud, but I cannot until

he speaks, and he cannot speak until--has Milly no pride?

I thought--I thought that the very day after the dance--why, I could

have rubbed my eyes, when I went down to a late breakfast, to find Mrs.

Baker chirping with sleepy amiability, and Milly doling out complacent

gossip to Ethel. The very sky had fallen for me to gather rainbow

gold--and here we were living prose again, just as before.

I had struggled with my joy through all the short night, for I had

imagined them suffering and angry; but I do believe that on the whole

Milly had enjoyed the dance, and liked to shine even by her reflected

importance as the beautiful Miss Winship's cousin. She had been vexed

by Ned's admiration for me; and yet--and yet she didn't understand. The

stupid! Didn't see that his love is mine.

There may have been a pause as I came, dazzling them like a great rosy

light; but then my aunt stifled a yawn as she said, "Here's Nelly," and

the chatter went on as before.

But I didn't hear it. Gliding confusedly into a seat, I had opened a

note from John. "--Called West on business; start to-day," it said; and

then indeed I began to feel the tangle, the terrible tangle--my cousins

blind, John gone, when I was counting the minutes until I could see

him. Oh, I must be free! It is his right to know the truth, and--what

can Ned say while I'm affianced? I am Milly's cousin, and he John's

friend.

I hurried to escape. I longed to be by myself that I might recall Ned's

every look and word. Without reason--against reason--I felt that at any

minute Ned might come, and waves of happiness and dread and impatience

swept over me, and kept me smiling and singing and running anxiously to

my glass.

Ned loves my beauty; I pulled down my hair and reknotted it and pulled

it down again, fearful--so foolish have I grown--lest I might fail to

please him; and frowned over my dresses and rummaged bureau drawers for

ribbons, until Milly, who had tapped at my door and entered almost

without my notice, asked abruptly:--

"Who's coming?"

"No one; John--no, he's out of town."

I flushed to see her regard the litter about me with calm

deliberateness.

"Oh, you don't have to take pains for John," she said with a short

laugh. "But come; Meg's down stairs."

The General had followed Milly up; she whisked into the room, showering

me with congratulations on my success at the dance, she claimed me for

a dinner, a concert--half a dozen engagements.

"Oh, by the way," she said, checking her flood of gossip. "Who d'you

suppose is to be at the Charity Ball? Lord Strathay. You'll talk with a

real Earl, Nelly--for of course he'll ask to be introduced."

"Another dance!" groaned my aunt, who had trotted panting in the

General's wake; "I'm sure I wish I'd never said she might go; I'm as

nervous as a witch after last evening."

Poor Aunt; she looked tired. She's really becoming the great objector.

Such a day as it was! I started at every footstep; my heart gave an

absurd jump at every movement of the door hangings. Of course I knew

that Ned couldn't--that we mustn't see each other until--but Ned is

mine; it's so wonderful that he loves me. If I were Milly, I wouldn't

remain an hour--not a minute!--in such a false position.

Yet the next day passed just like that day, and the next and the next

and the next; every morning a note from John, scrawled on a railway

train, and begging for a line from me. I wrote, poor fellow; so that's

settled, and I'm very sorry for him.

I got rid of one morning by calling on Prof. Darmstetter. It was three

weeks since I had seen him, and he was testy.

"I see much in t'e newspapers about t'e beautiful Mees Veensheep, but

v'y does she neglect our experiment?" he demanded, following me across

the laboratory to my old table. "V'ere are my records, my opportunities

for observation? Has t'e beautiful Mees Veensheep no regard for

science?"

"You've always said she hadn't, and pretended to be glad of it; I won't

contradict," I returned. "But hurry up with your records; it doesn't

need science or the newspapers, does it, to tell you that the beautiful

Miss Winship cannot go about very freely?"

"Ach, no," said he humbly; for he could not look upon my face and hold

his anger. "If I haf not alreaty gifen to Mees Veensheep t'e perfect

beauty t'at I promised, I cannot conceive greater perfection. You are

satisfied vit' our vork--vit' me?"

"Yes, I'm satisfied," I said coolly.

Just as soon as I could, I left him. Oh, I ought to be grateful, more

than ever grateful now that the Bacillus has won for me the most

blessed of earth's gifts--the gift of love. But I'm not; I wish I might

never again see Prof. Darmstetter; he reminds me--he makes me feel

unreal. As for his records, the experiment is finished. We have

succeeded, and I want to enjoy our success and forget its processes.

And why not? He knows in his heart that we have no further need of each

other.

My real records now are public; the Charity Ball last night added a

brilliant chapter.

The Charity Ball! How calmly I write that! I hope it may be the last

triumph I need to win in public without Ned; but I enjoyed it. There

was no awkward John to spoil my dancing, no jealous Milly, no

over-anxious Aunt. I had Mrs. Marmaduke Van Dam for my chaperon--more

the great lady, with all her thin rigidity, than Mrs. Henry; and for

companion the General, almost as young and light-hearted as I.

And I was mistress of myself, strong and self-contained. Instead of

being confused when all eyes were bent upon me, I had a new feeling of

glad self-command. I felt the rhythm of my flawless beauty, my pure

harmonies of face and form, and found it natural that fine toilets

should be foils to my cheap white dress, and that I should be the

centre around which the great assembly revolved. I'm really getting

used to myself.

I danced constantly, danced myself tired, holding warm at my heart this

one thought: that in the morning Ned would read of my triumphs and be

proud of them, and rejoice because she about whom the whole city is

talking thinks only of him.

My partner in the march was "Hughy" Bellmer, as the General calls him;

I begin to know him well. He's harmless, with his drawl and his round

pink face that shines with admiration. Deliciously he patronized the

ball.

"Aw, Miss Winship," he said, "too large, too public. People prefer to

dawnce in their own houses."--The ball was at the

Waldorf-Astoria.--"The smaller a dawnce is, the greater it is, don't ye

see."

"But aren't any great people here?" I asked demurely. "I am just a

country mouse, and I've really counted on seeing one or two great

people, Mr. Bellmer--besides you, of course."

"The Charity Ball is--aw, y'know, Miss Winship, an institution," he

explained, fairly strutting in his complacency at my deference; "and as

an institution, not as a Society event, ye understand, it is patronized

by the most prominent ladies in the city."

"How good of them!" I cried, laughing.

He was so funny! But he was useful, too; he knew about everybody.

Some of the women I shall remember--Mrs. Sloane Schuyler, leader of the

smallest and most exclusive of Society's many sets--a handsome woman

with well-arched eyebrows; and Mrs. Fredericks, of the same group;

sallow, with great black eyes, talking with tremendous animation; and

Mrs. Terry--of the newly rich; Mr. Bellmer's aunt; dumpy, diamonded and

disagreeable-looking.

"But where are the famous beauties?" I asked eagerly. "Won't they

dance, even for charity, except in their own houses?"

Some of them were there; tall, pale, stylish girls, or women whose

darkened eyes and faces mealy with powder told of a bitter fight with

time. Why, I haven't seen a woman whom I thought beautiful since--since

I became so.

"Aw, Miss Winship, really, y'know, you have no rivals," said my partner.

I hadn't supposed him clever enough to guess what I was thinking.

"Oh, yes I have--one," I said; "isn't there somewhere here a real live

Lord?"

But just then we joined Meg, and it was she who pointed out to me "The

Earl of Strathay--the Twelfth Earl of Strathay," in a whisper of

comical respect and deference.

He wasn't very impressive--just a thin, pale young fellow with a

bulbous head, big above and small below; but I was glad to do Meg a

service; for of course she wished to meet him, and of course Lord

Strathay was presented to the beautiful Miss Winship and her chaperons.

Then I danced with him. I felt as if I were amusing a nice boy; he

hardly came to my shoulder. I asked him if he liked America.

He wasn't too much of a boy to reply:--

"Like is a feeble word to voice one's impressions of the land of lovely

women."

And then he looked at me. Oh, he did admire me immensely, and I took

quite a fancy to him in turn, though it seemed pathetic that such a

poor little fellow--I don't believe he's twenty-one--should carry the

weight of his title. I danced with his cousin, too, a Mr. Poultney; and

wherever I went Strathay's eyes followed me wistfully.

Meg danced with Strathay and amused me by her elation. She hadn't

really recovered from it to-day.

To-day! Blessed to-day! Lord Strathay's only an Earl; to-day there came

to me--Ned! Oh, this has been the gladdest, most provoking day of my

life, for I had only a moment with him.

It was Mrs. Baker's "afternoon," and we had a good many callers; the

fame of my beauty has spread. They gazed furtively at me as they talked

and sipped their tea, and it was all very stupid until--oh, I didn't

know how perturbed, how unhappy I'd been, until--I glanced up for a

word with the General, who came late, and behind her I saw--Him. He

came to me as if there were no one else in the room.

Ah, I have been unhappy! I have known that he would try to keep away

from me. Useless! Useless to fight with love! It's too strong for us.

At sight of him joy like a fire flashed through my veins.

But there were my cousins; there was Meg--she looked at him

impatiently, I fancied, as she has sometimes looked at John. Poor John,

it didn't need her surveillance to break his feeble hold upon my heart.

And there they stayed. They wouldn't go. They stayed, and talked, while

I shivered and grew hot with fear and gladness and the excitement of

his presence; they talked--of all senseless topics--about the ball.

"Why, Mr. Hynes, we've missed you," said Ethel carelessly, at sight of

him. "Oh, Meg, tell us about last night, won't you? Helen's said

nothing; almost nothing at all."

"Oh, what is there to tell?"

It made me impatient. How could I chatter nothings when Ned was by my

side, smiling down at me so confusedly?

"Most girls would find enough! You should have heard the dowagers

cluck, Ethel!" exclaimed the General, her face losing its vexed look at

the thought. "It was bad weather for their broods. You never saw such a

scurrying, pin feathers sticking every which way. The proudest hour of

Hughy Bellmer's life was when the march started, and he walked beside

Helen--same parade as always--through that wide hall between the Astor

gallery and the big ball room; committeemen and patronesses at the head

and the line tailing. You may believe the plumes drooped and the war

paint trickled. Nelly was the only girl looked at. Milly, you should

have been there? Headache? You look pale beside Helen."

"Oh, I don't hope to rival Nelly's colour; she looks like--like

somebody's '_Femme Peinte par Elle-même_.'" said Milly with a laugh

that might have been innocent. Since Ned's entrance she had grown white

and my cheeks had burned, until there was reason for her jest.

"Is Mr. Bellmer handsome--handsome enough to be Nelly's partner?"

persisted Ethel, impatient for her gossip--to her it's all there is of

gayety. "And is Lord Strathay--nice?"

"Mr. Bellmer's an overgrown cherub with a monocle," I laughed. Ned

shall not think me one of those odious, fortune-hunting girls.

"Hughy's pretty good-looking, Ethie," said Meg, amiably; "and the best

fellow in the world; but probably not of a calibre to interest a

college girl. And Lord Strathay"--the name rolled slowly from her

tongue, as if she were loth to let it go--"is a charming fellow. Just

succeeded to the title. He's travelling with his cousin, the Hon.

Stephen Allardyce Poultney. Nelly danced with him. And did she tell you

that Mrs. Sloane Schuyler begged to have her presented? Sister to a

Duchess, you know. We'll have Helen in London next. Nobody there to

compare with her. Just what Strathay said, I do assure you."

London! Men of title, and great ladies and the glitter of a court! Once

I may have dreamed of power and place and the rustle of trailing robes,

and being admired of all men and hated of all women, but now in my

annoyance I longed to cry out: "Why can't you talk sense? Why babble of

such silly things?"

To make matters worse, Uncle came just in time to hear the General's

last remark.

"I do not think our Princess would leave us," he said, "even if--

'at her feet were laid

The sceptres of the earth exposed on heaps

To choose where she would reign.'"

It was scarcely to be borne. I knew he was thinking of John, and I

caught myself looking down at my hand, praying that Ned might see that

I no longer wore the opal ring.

Then came Aunt Frank with a headache, looking ill enough, indeed; and I

was glad to jump up and serve her some tea.

"Milly has a headache, too," I said; and she looked from Milly's vexed,

cold face to mine, almost peevishly replying:--

"Nothing ever seems to ail you, child."

After all the weary waiting, Ned and I exchanged only a word. But the

word was a delight and a comfort.

More than once the Judge has suggested for me a short absence from the

city to win a respite from the newspapers; and this morning, when he

saw that the _Echo_ had smuggled an East Side girl into the ballroom

last night to tell the Bowery, in Boweryese, how the other half lives,

her descriptions of me so incensed him that he almost insisted upon

Aunt's packing for Bermuda at once. Ned must have heard of that.

"You will not go away?" he said when he took leave of me.

"You know that Uncle--"

"You will not?"

"No."

I couldn't speak steadily. The low, passionate entreaty told me that he

had come to receive that pledge, and I gave it.

Oh, now, now, I cannot be unhappy! I know that he has tried to stay

away from me, and why he has not succeeded. Love has been too mighty

for us both. Love has conquered us, and I--I shall never again be

unhappy!

BOOK IV.

THE BRUISING OF THE WINGS.

CHAPTER I.

THE KISS THAT LIED.

East Sixty-seventh Street, Feb. 25.

He said he did not love me.

It is not true. I saw love when he spoke, when he kissed my hands. He

does love me, but he guards a man's honour.

I have broken John's heart, given up my home, estranged my friends; I

have given up even Ned for love of him. But I'd have gone to the ends

of the earth in gladness, I'd have given up for him all else in

life--even my beauty; which is dearer than life.

He'll come to me yet. Milly won't forgive, won't trust. She will not

try to understand. Her only thought will be to hurt, to punish. She'll

drive him to me again; but oh, the shame of taking him so, given to me

by her severity!

I won't believe he doesn't love me.

What have I done to be so tortured? I didn't know it was cruelty not to

break the bond with John earlier; I didn't know I gave him only a

girl's passing fancy.

It was when I met Ned that my heart awoke.

I knew that he was Milly's betrothed and I had not thought of thus

repaying Aunt's kindness. Her kindness! Kind as a stone.

But it wasn't Ned's fault. He couldn't help himself. If he could have

left me alone! If he could only have gone away!

I suppose he tried to control himself, but his eyes glowed when he

looked on me; and I, thinking I knew what love was, because I was

affianced, did not see--did not know what the wild joy meant that his

look woke in my heart.

To keep faith with John and Milly, should I have shunned him? But there

was nothing to warn me; he never spoke of love; I never thought of it.

If he had spoken earlier, I might have known what to do. It might have

been the danger signal. Why could he not have kept away? Why did he not

speak a word of love until it was too late--until--ah, I was so happy!

But he does love me. There's truer speech than that of words, and his

lips--that kissed me, but said he did not love--have told two stories.

I know which to believe!

And Milly knows. She is too wise to contend with Me.

I shall never know what brought Ned to the house--three weeks ago, but

I haven't dared to write of it--I shall never know what happened before

I saw him.

I ran into the library with a song bubbling to my lips--for I was

thinking of him--and the gladness of it was in my eyes when I found him

there. He started and turned to me a face of confusion--yes, and of

worship. He fumbled with a book on the table, and glanced toward the

door as if he would have left me. I saw that, but I didn't think--there

was no time to think, but I must have felt that a crisis had come that

would decide our lives. All the fear, all the sweet shame that I had

felt before him vanished. My heart beat wildly for happiness, but I was

calm.

At last we were alone together!

I waited for him to speak. Slowly he turned as my questioning eyes had

willed. His were black with passion and grief. A look of pain

contracted his face, and he said, jerking the words out hoarsely:--

"I'm going away."

The suddenness of it almost took my breath. I had expected different

words. Indeed his eyes had shot another message; _they_ said that he

would never leave me!

Confused by lips that lied and eyes that confessed, I stammered:--

"Going--not going away? Why? Why should you go?"

I couldn't keep appeal out of my tone, and I could see him brace

himself to resist. I think I knew that, if he could, he meant to

sacrifice our love to John and Milly. I think I had seen this earlier;

but I had thought the struggle past when he came to me and begged me

not to leave the city. But perhaps, this time, I didn't understand him;

perhaps I was simply confused by his distress.

I thought he tried in vain to look away from me. Then he moved a step

nearer, slowly, as if reluctant. His face was haggard.

"Tell me why you are going."

I scarcely knew I spoke. It was as if some will independent of my own

had dictated the words. Yet I did not try to hide my heart's wish; it

was too late. He was my life, and in all but words--yes, and in words

even--I told him so. We had confessed our love. It was his right.

"Listen," I said. "If anything is--is wrong, I must know it. I--I

_must_ know it. Tell me. I must know everything. Ned, you must tell me."

A vein stood out upon his forehead, but still he gazed silently at me.

After a time he said hoarsely:--

"I'm going because for your beauty I have thrown away the love of the

woman I was to marry. For you I have lost her, and yet--I loved Milly.

My God, I love her!"

Once he had begun, the words came with fierce swiftness. He seemed to

mean them to sting, to cut, to stab. It was hard not to cry out with

the pain of hearing them. All that I understood was that he meant to

wrench himself from me with a force that should make the breach

impassable. This I felt, though still his eyes gave the lie to his

words; his eyes that said I was dear as life to him.

"Don't think I blame you for the inevitable," he went on. "You do not

know, and I pray God you may never understand, how contemptible I have

been. And don't think me a fool; I'm not crying for the moon, nor

dreaming that a glorious creature like you--ah, you're as far above me

as the stars above the sea--to you I have been only--"

"Don't speak like that!" I cried. White-faced, I stared at him,

tremblingly, pleadingly. There was a cloud in my brain that seemed to

be coming down; it threatened to smother me--but I held fast to my

courage. It was life itself for which I was fighting.

"You have--you are--"

The truth was at my lips, but he interrupted:--

"I know you have reason to hate me, for I have done you wrong. Because

of my folly, your place here is not what it was; and you love Burke,

whom I have wronged, as I love Milly, whom I have estranged. I must

keep away from you. You can see that. For the sake of all, I must keep

away from you."

The cloud was choking me, but I put forth my strength.

"You have done nothing wrong; I do not--"

Words failed me. I hadn't the temerity to speak John's name. And

Ned--could he not see?--only stood there saying:--

"Why I've wrecked Milly's life and mine and turned your friends against

you, only God knows, who made men what they are; only God knows--I

don't. Can you forgive me?"

Didn't he love me? His despair was beating conviction into me. He was

pale, his lip quivered. Why was he humbled and ashamed? I was palsied

with doubt, and the golden moments were fleeting, were fleeting. I must

act! But I felt as if I were dead and could not, though that strangling

cloud still hurt me.

"There is nothing to forgive," I faltered at last. "Or--you must

forgive me. Perhaps I should understand, but--oh, I'm not wise. Indeed

I have not meant to--to--Shall I speak to Milly for you? But that would

only make matters worse. They may take me--to Bermuda--anywhere; or--I

will leave this house; she'll forget if I go away."

At the last words my tremulous voice broke almost into a scream. Must I

go away--go away that he may make Milly happy?

"You will stay here," he said, his lips quivering more and more. "Why

should I drive you from home? I have lost Milly. She understands no

more than you, and I hope she never may! You need not fear that I shall

trouble you. I shall not see you again. You are maddening--no, not

that--but I am mad. Mad!"

He turned abruptly to go, came back as hastily, caught my hand and

pressed hot kisses on it. His burning eyes looked passionately into

mine. He was indeed like one insane.

Then with a great groan of contrition he put his hands before his face

and rushed blindly from the room.

"Ned! Ned!" I cried out, but it was too late; he didn't hear me.

I don't know how I reached my chamber. I fell in a heap on the floor,

shivering, laughing, sobbing, moaning for death.

Going away! I was going away from Ned! My beauty had meshed him; I

almost hated it. I saw his haggard face, I heard again his voice,

solicitous for Milly's grief. I know now that pain cannot kill, or I

should have died.

Going away! He did not love me. He cared nothing for my hurt, only for

Milly's. He loved that little white piece of putty that hadn't life

enough to love any man!

I heard rain against the windows and felt a sudden fierce longing to go

out and fight the storm. Could not a strong woman compel love? No other

woman since the world began had been so fit for love, had yearned for

it so hungrily.

Going away! Yet I felt his kisses upon my hand. Are men so different?

What is a man, that he should love and not love?

How cold the old Nelly was! Since coming to the city, I had never let

John kiss me; yet I thought I loved him. I thought love was a brook to

make little tinkling music, and it had become a mighty ocean sweeping

over me, sweeping over me!

But I must act at once, I thought; I must go away. I must find my aunt,

must tell her--what? Where could I go? Not back to Kitty; she had left

the den. Not to Miss Baker, who would share Aunt's wrath. Where could

one such as I find refuge? A woman whom all women must hate for her

loveliness?

"Ned! Ned! I am alone!" I cried in my agony of soul. "You must--you

will!--come back to me, come back to me."

I bathed my eyes and hurried from the house to forget the thought, but

it followed everywhere. The rain had not stopped, but it suited me to

be drenched, to hold my face to the whiplash of the water snapped by

the wind. I went to Meg Van Dam, who had long urged me to pay her a

visit. This time I was ready to consent, for she at least was glad to

have me; and before I left her I had agreed to go to her.

It was dinner time when I reached home, glad that it was to be home to

me no longer; the house made me shudder as a dungeon might. It was so

changed since morning, seen now with different eyes. The dining room

was so heavily respectable, with its fussily formal arrangements--like

Uncle, for it's big; like Aunt, for it's crotchety.

I suppose there must have been a scene with Ned. Aunt Frank was

depressed, fitfully talkative. Milly scarcely spoke, but in the

curtness with which she turned her sullen head when poor Ethel asked

some question, I wasn't slow in finding a meaning.

Joy begged in vain for her nightly lullaby. I couldn't respond to her

"Thing, Cothin Nelly!" I'd never before noticed how like she is to her

sisters. With her snubby nose and her yellow braids, she'll grow into

just another white-faced doll as Milly.

Miss Baker talked persistently about Bermuda; as if my exile had ever

been a possibility! In all my blind whirlwind of pain, I was glad that

this was the last night I should have to writhe under the click of her

knitting needles, and sit opposite her large, solemn features.

"A change will do you good, Frances," she purred. "By either the

_Orinoco_ or the _Trinidad_ you'll have only a two days' voyage. Helen

will be in her element among the coral, and Milly must come home with a

coat of tan."

Milly bent lower over her magazine; in an hour she hadn't turned a

page. Her thin hands, like claws, that held the book, disgusted me,

fascinated me! They were the hands that Ned had kissed, as he had mine;

clasped and pressed, as he had--how could he!

I called Aunt to me at bedtime, and told her I'd trespassed upon her

kindness too long, and that Mrs. Van Dam was pressing.

"But we can't let you go," she said, even while the wonder whether she

might not shone through her face. "You and Meg have become friends, I

know, but Bake and I feel responsible to your mother."

Of course we understood each other, but neither cared to speak the

truth. She had no pity, in her feeling for her own child, for the hurt

I might conceal. And I don't want her pity!

At least I shall no longer have to tear my heart out, meeting Ned in

her house.

The parting was easier than might have been expected, for we all rose

to the occasion. Uncle had been drilled over night, and his perplexity

and Aunt's preparations for leaving home amused me. The trip to Bermuda

had been proposed for my sake, Aunt had only half desired it; but now

she forgot her fears of winter storms, seasickness and shipwreck, and

clutched at the excuse to whisk Milly out of reach of Ned Hynes and out

of sight of me.

Her tone was dulcet sweet.

"We can't blame you for preferring New York, when the Van Dams are so

lovely to you," she said complacently. "But Ethel is delicate.

Bermuda'll do her a world of good; though of course it's not

fashionable.'"

"I'm sure you'll have a lovely trip," I said. "You must let me help you

pack."

She was turning the house topsy-turvy in her zeal to sail by the next

boat, the very next day. She succeeded; and when she left the house I

left it, too; to come here; to the General; to a house that would two

months ago have seemed a palace such as I could never dream of living

in. It would suit me better to be independent, to be sometimes alone,

to feel that I shouldn't have a shrewd woman's eyes so much upon me.

But for the present--it is my refuge!

At Christmas I should have broken down and sobbed when I saw the last

of the Bakers, instead of dropping honeyed sentences and undulating out

of the room--like--like--. He called me once the Goddess glowing in her

walk. I have changed this winter, mentally as well as physically.