Mrs. Farwell was growing wider and wider eyed. Then suddenly Lewis knew

what he should have guessed: Clare had never really believed that Petra

was antagonistic to her. She had thought her indifference and reticence

merely temperamental idiosyncrasies. In fact, she had in all sincerity

thought Petra what she had made Cynthia think her, a girl deficient in

sensibility. So she was only tampering with Petra’s temperament, or

rather, asking Lewis to tamper with it, for the sake of drawing

him—Doctor Lewis Pryne—into the Farwells’ “interesting” circle. Modern

morbid psychology was much in the air these days. Being psychoanalyzed

by “well-known” doctors had become a fashionable pastime. Having one’s

stepdaughter, to whom one was in every way so marvelously generous,

psychoanalyzed, and then oneself discussing the case in the wings, as it

were, with the famous psychiatrist _ad infinitum_, would be a new way to

play the game.

A strained laugh from Clare interrupted Lewis’ bitter train of thought.

“I am afraid Petra has been deceiving you, rather,” she exclaimed. “What

I _can’t_ understand is how she managed it, and in so short a time, with

you, who are so—so wise. She must have deliberately set out to engage

your sympathies the minute I left her alone with you. But why? And as

for a girl like Petra living at the Studio Club—after Green Doors—can

you imagine it, really? Don’t tell me _she_ suggested that!”

“Perhaps not,” Lewis answered. “As a matter of fact, she would be more

restricted in her freedom there than here, I suppose. But with a friend,

then—in an apartment—”

Again the laugh. “You don’t know Petra, Doctor Pryne! She hasn’t an

intimate friend to her name. I invite girls here, of course, all the

time. They come, enjoy themselves with each other and the boys, and

invite Petra to their homes in return. But as for friends, she simply

doesn’t make them. She hasn’t the gift of friendship. It’s one of my

worries about her,—one of the things I thought your analysis of her

might cure!”

“But there’s Teresa. That’s one friend, at least, Teresa—” Too late

Lewis knew himself a traitor to Petra’s confidences, and broke off,

embarrassed and sorry. But to his great relief, Clare seemed not to have

even heard. She was repeating, but almost as if for her own ears, and

very softly, “I don’t understand. Petra took you to the guest house to

show you the river view. That is all the time you two were together. And

in that short while Petra conveyed to you that she was unhappy here and

wanted to get away. Why, it’s unbelievable! How could even Petra be

quite so—so outrageous as that!”

“But mightn’t Petra think it a little outrageous of us, of you and me,

to be discussing her here now, as we are doing?” Lewis inquired

reasonably. “Why shouldn’t _she_ be wounded—and angry? I don’t see any

difference, really....”

Shock dried the tears, just gathered, from the widened eyes which were

turned on him. If Clare had taken anything for granted, as certain to

result from to-day’s anticipated contact with this supposedly brilliant

psychiatrist, it was that he would be deeply impressed by her beautiful

disinterested kindness toward this girl who had no natural claim on her

whatever. But from the very first minute, so Clare began to think now,

Doctor Pryne had missed everything of what should have been obvious to

him. He had no subtlety then! But if this were true, why was everybody

so mad about him and how could he be a successful doctor of souls! That

was what Lowell called him, and he was even talking of putting him into

his next novel,—disguised, of course. And then the miracles he worked!

You simply had to have penetration of some sort, understanding of some

sort, to do for personalities what he had done for Julia Dickerman,

Cornie and all the rest! But even without any extraordinary amount of

penetration you would expect him to see that it was both disloyal and

cheap for Petra to have confided in him as she must have done this

afternoon, the very minute they were alone together.

Suddenly Clare gave up the idea of being hurt by Petra’s astounding

disloyalty. She would be too generous, too big to think of herself in

the situation at all. But she understood now that she would have to

_say_ to this man whatever it was she wanted him to know. No use

trusting to his discerning anything! That was what Petra had done,

apparently. Said things. Simply because Petra had said things, Doctor

Pryne had believed them—and that in spite of all that he should have

seen and all that Clare had meant him to see for himself! Well,

she—Clare—would have to descend to Petra’s crude methods. She would

explain herself to this exasperating person in words and expound her

relations with Petra. But she would leave the malice to Petra. The very

contrast between her generosity and Petra’s smallness ought to speak for

itself. He simply could not be so obtuse as to miss that much—or could

he?

She refrained from touching him, although her impulse had again been to

put her fingers on his arm. Instinctively she had a minute ago come to

feel that physical contact made this particular man uncomfortable. But

the urgency of Clare’s fingers’ pressure was transferred to her voice

when she said:

“I am afraid that you have begun by misunderstanding almost everything,

Doctor Pryne. But it doesn’t matter. I mean, it doesn’t matter that you

consider Petra justified in her attitude toward me and what I am trying

to do for her, as you seem to. What does matter—all that I care about at

all—is Petra’s good. It is for her own sake I want her to become

adjusted and happy, an integrated personality. It is not for my sake.

Not even for her father’s. And if you are right and I ought to give her

up, let her go away,—why, then I hope I am unselfish enough to let her

try it. But why business school—of all things, for a daughter of Lowell

Farwell’s? It will be interesting to know.”

But she gave Lewis no chance to answer that. She hurried on:

“First you must tell me everything she said to you. I don’t mean what

she may have said about Green Doors, her home here, or me. No, I am

afraid hearing that would hurt too much. But what she wanted different.

Let us just concentrate on the positive side of things and let the

negative go.... You see, even if you won’t take her as a patient, in the

way I hoped you would take her, I still need your advice, your wisdom,

Doctor. For in those brief moments you were alone with my stepdaughter,

you seem to have come nearer to understanding her than I have in the

years of our close association. You made her articulate for once. That

in itself is something. Petra, articulate!”

She paused there, but only to draw Lewis’ glance to her face. “You see,

my husband can’t help me with Petra.” Her eyes probed in the shallows of

Lewis’ cold, sleepy gaze. “He is out of it, even if she is his own

daughter. There is almost nothing of sympathy between them. That is what

I have been working for, ever since my marriage, to help them to a more

happy relationship. I have dreamed that Lowell might come to love the

daughter of his youth as he loves our little Sophia. He adores the baby.

But that, I am afraid, is merely because she is mine, and her very

existence makes _me_ more his. That is the way it is in happy marriages,

of course. Father-love is all bound up in the father’s love for the

mother. But Lowell, you see, loved Petra’s mother (if you can call it

love)—well, differently—and that is why Petra herself—I have figured it

out—means so little to him....”

Again Clare kept her fingers from Lewis’ coat sleeve but she actually

clutched her hands on her lap to accomplish it. And she swayed toward

him, her eyes insisting on holding his cold gaze. Her whole vivid,

quicksilver face was alive with her intention to make Lewis her ally, to

win from him something at last, of what she had intended to win when she

invited him back to-night.

“Do you mind my telling you intimate things like this?” she asked

naively. “I had meant to tell them and had everything—all the

information you could need—organized, you see. Even now, when you say

that Petra doesn’t need psychoanalyzing, I still rather want to tell

you. Before you are sure you are right about the wisdom of Petra’s

leaving her father and me, giving up her life here with all its

advantages, you ought to know a little more about the child herself,

don’t you think? I see now—you have let me see—that my Petra herself, as

a person, interests you, quite aside from your psychiatry. And I am

grasping at that interest as at a straw, Doctor. I am so alone in my

concern for this child and in my dreams for her! I’m not mistaken? You

_are_ interested, aren’t you?” This time at last the lady required an

answer—waited for it.

“Yes, I am very much interested,” Lewis admitted, after a mere instant’s

hesitation. But all the same he looked toward the door. If only Petra

herself would appear there! Come in, in her frosty gown! Interrupt this

really silly performance. He did not need any one to explain Petra to

him. It was her presence he wanted. One meeting of their eyes had told

him more than all the volumes Mrs. Lowell Farwell could say with that

overtone in her voice which insisted on bending his understanding to her

own interpretations of Petra—or more subtly yet, what she meant him to

think were her interpretations. Really he could not doubt that Clare

must know, as simply as he knew, that Petra did not need either of them;

the integration of her young self was a perfected accomplishment and all

the more perfected for having the seal of her reticence upon it.

Suddenly now Lewis knew why the blue gentians, there in the Cambridge

apartment where first he saw Petra, had stayed so sharply etched on his

memory. Petra herself was like a blue gentian,—a secret, brave flower

springing from an arid soil. Lewis remembered “The Wind Boy,” a story he

had bought lately for his nephews and read through before giving them.

The little girl in that story was named Gentian, and her brother

explained it: “Father always said that one small gentian had all the sky

folded around in its soft fringes. Gentian magic. Cold and frost don’t

scare it, for it has the whole sky held close to give it company and

heart....” Well, that was true of Petra, just as it was true of the

little girl in the fairy tale. But what made it true, how Petra had

appropriated the blue sky and held its secrets as her own, where she had

lain hold of it,—that Lewis could not guess.

Clare at this moment was vastly encouraged by the light which

played—palpably—over the doctor’s lips and almost rose in his cold

sleepy eyes This was approaching the way she had imagined things would

go between them when they really got to talking intimately, and he began

to see her in the way she intended he should see her. Before she was

through with telling him about Petra to-night—the excuse for the

tête-à-tête—this light of appreciation and admiration for herself would

have become established unequivocally in the cold sleepy eyes. She had

not a moment’s doubt of it. Nothing in past experience had instilled

trepidation or the imagination of the possibility of failure into this

sex-unconscious flirt whose line (she acknowledged it to herself and was

quite simply proud of it) was spiritual _rapport_ with interesting male

personalities in the higher areas of contact. If passion developed in

the course of these spiritual contacts, it was merely a sign, on a

slightly lower plane, that all had gone well in the upper airs. It was a

sign, in fact, that Clare’s vanity, though not her senses, ultimately

demanded.

Her eyes fell from Lewis’ cold eyes to his mouth. She thought cleverly

(she was far from stupid): “It’s a face of frozen passion. Not cold. It

is all there. But frozen by asceticism.”

She was suddenly, hardly understanding why herself, extraordinarily

excited.

_Chapter Eight_

Lewis continued to see a blue gentian etched on air, all the while Clare

told him about Petra. But he heard her, well enough, in spite of the

vision he was contemplating, and outwardly he was attentive.

“Lowell was frightfully young when he married Petra’s mother. And the

attraction between them—it’s almost inevitable in early marriages like

that, I suppose—was merely physical. So, when he waked up to that, it

wasn’t nearly enough, not for a person like Lowell Farwell, anyway. But

the only reason one need even remember that early tragedy is the way it

still affects Petra. Her father got the idea, almost from the day she

was born, that she was her mother over again. She was physically like

her, in the first place. They say that Ann was a great beauty. Lowell

says she was even more beautiful than Petra. But it wasn’t the physical

resemblance that repelled Lowell most and still hurts. It was her mind

and temperament. He got the idea that Petra had a commonplace mind,

ordinary. Like her mother. And now, nineteen years after, she is still

for him an echo—a reverberation—of an old disappointment. It seems

cruel, I know. But he can’t help himself, and one can understand, don’t

you think?

“I understand, anyway. And it is appalling to think that if Petra’s

mother hadn’t happened to die, Lowell might still be bound to her. She

was puritanical or fundamentalist or something. Whatever the particular

cult was, it was stupid and narrow and forbade divorce. She thought

herself religious! Imagine calling such cruelty religion! But Providence

had mercy, if she didn’t. She didn’t believe in birth control any more

than she did in divorce, and she died when the second child was born,

when Petra was only one year old. That, if anything, gives you the

picture of how impossible Petra’s mother made things for her young,

penniless, genius-husband—having another child right away. But the new

baby was premature and fortunately lived only a little while.

“Lowell was through with marriage, he thought then, for all time. His

religious wife had seared his faith in the sweetness of it as a human

relation. But though seared, his faith was not actually destroyed. It

has never been destroyed. Lowell Farwell has been bigger than the things

life has done to him. Six or seven years later he saw Elsa Larsen in

‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Munich. Elsa Larsen’s acting was beautiful enough

to break your heart. When she stuck to Shakespeare, anyway. She was

really a great actress, even if this country never woke up to her. Did

you ever see her? I saw her first in Munich, when I was a young girl. I

spent the year I was twelve abroad with my mother. We went to the

National Theater dozens of times to see Elsa Larsen in her Shakespeare

roles. I never dreamed then that I should marry her husband one day! I

may even have seen him, without knowing or remembering, in the theater.

They were married inside of a week after they met. It was a perfectly

wild marriage, of course. The result of utter loneliness on his part,

mad infatuation on hers.

“Larsen killed herself. Yes, I know it isn’t known. And it _is_

shocking. But she did it. She ran the car into those park gates on

purpose. She meant to kill Lowell at the same time. He was begging her

to get a divorce from him or let him get it, and she simply lost her

head and drove straight into the gates. She saw that they were closed in

plenty of time to have swerved. Lowell is certain of it.

“But what I want you to see and think about, Doctor, is Petra, of

course. They put her in boarding school and she stayed there vacations

and all, the few years till the so-called accident. But when poor Marian

made Lowell think he had compromised her—yes, every one except Lowell

himself, it seems, pretty well understood that little drama Marian

staged at the Tillotsons’ house party—well, when Marian became Petra’s

second stepmother, there wasn’t enough money to keep the child on at

boarding school. Larsen spent all she earned and left nothing. They

lived huddled up in that dreary little apartment in Cambridge with only

one servant to do the work. How Marian hated it! She never lifted her

hand for Petra or gave her a thought, except to resent her being there

at all, one could see. But the thing Marian has really to blame herself

for, to my mind, is the way she left the child to the sole companionship

of whatever general-housework girl happened to be in possession of the

place at the time. I myself was so appalled at seeing what Petra’s life

was like when I met them, that even if I hadn’t fallen head over heels

in love with Lowell I should have married him, almost, to rescue his

daughter. All that was maternal in me was roused and fighting. That day

I met you there—remember?—my heart was broken for Petra....

“So now you can see why I can’t blame Petra for any seeming disloyalty

she may have displayed this afternoon in the talk you had with her. She

has never known what it was to be loved before. How should she be

counted on to return it, or even to be loyal to it? It is asking too

much—even after three years, I think. But you see why I am grateful for

your interest in her, and why I am ready, almost without questioning it,

to act on any advice you care to give—now that you know the child’s

miserable history.”

As she had been talking, Clare’s eyes had now and then been starry with

tears, and on the final words one or two actually fell. She wiped them

away, quite simply, with a handkerchief. She had no need to consider her

make-up, as she never wore any.

Lewis withdrew his thought from a blue gentian, etched on air. He untied

himself somehow and struggled up from his low place at Clare’s side. He

asked if he might smoke. Clare had not remembered to offer him a

cigarette because she herself did not smoke any more than she used

make-up; but at once she was all charming apologies for her neglect and

motioned him toward the supply near at hand. But Lewis, apologetic

himself, preferred his own variety. He got out his case, lit a Lucky,

took a deep inhalation,—and laughed.

Clare did not understand the laugh, considering all she had been saying

to him—and her tears. But she waited. She had done what she could to

make herself clear to him and it was his turn now. He must have some

reaction other than that ambiguous laugh to all that she had said—and

_looked_—during the past minutes.

He was pacing back and forth before the long divan, his hands deep in

the already sagging pockets of his tweed jacket. They did not dress for

dinner at the Allens, and Lewis was in Meadowbrook without his dress

clothes. But when after a few seconds of this rather surprising

behavior, the man whirled and stood before her, looking down at her, his

face, at last, was beginning to mirror something—she was almost

certain—of what she was. Clare thought she saw her generosity reflected

in Doctor Pryne’s face as in a mirror. And on account of that true

reflection of herself, she forgave him all the bewilderment and

uncertainty he had for just a little while caused her. It was rather

wonderful having his cold, sleepy eyes no longer cold and sleepy but

aware of her. She had known all along of course that Doctor Lewis Pryne

was a person of rare power and magnetism, but until this instant she had

missed the biting tang of actually feeling it. To her own surprise her

heart beat fast. Madly!

“Are you serious?” he was asking. “Do you really want advice from me?

For I know what I would do in your place and I would do it like a shot.

Shall I say?”

She looked back up at him. Was this hypnotism? She felt excitedly

supine—submissive—open to this man’s will....

Her eyes, grave—and she herself knew how lovely!—promised him she was

ready to do whatever he said.

“Very well.”—But how dry his voice sounded! And already he had stopped

looking at her!—“First of all, I should cut off that absurd allowance.

Two thousand a year, Petra said it was, and just for clothes! And then I

should encourage her to take the job waiting for her in my office. It’s

a good job. It can begin on Monday morning at nine o’clock. And I

wouldn’t fuss any more about trying to create sympathy between father

and daughter. It is too late. The time is past. Petra has had, I

suppose, a pretty bad deal from the beginning, but from now on she ought

to be her own environment maker. You can’t possibly go on doing it for

her. Have you ever heard the phrase: ‘Environment is hidden identity’? I

believe that that is perfectly true of any personality, given half a

chance. It’s time Petra had her chance. Marriage and a home where she

herself is the protecting force—that’s the ultimate answer. But as a

stop-gap right now, a job. That’s what I think.”

Clare had sent for Petra and they were waiting. Lewis wandered over to

the massive, built-in library table. It was shaped like a scimitar. The

last words in biography, essays, poetry and fiction of two continents

seemed to be here under his hand, most of the volumes still in their

bizarre paper jackets. In the midst of the bright jumble stood two large

heavy silver frames holding photographs. One was Clare, the other Petra.

Petra was in evening dress and her posture and expression must have been

dictated by the photographer. The eyes in particular were self-conscious

and static in their inexpressive trance. The mouth alone was sentient,

not even the stare of the photographer and the camera together having

succeeded in betraying it into insincerity. Clare’s photographed face,

on the other hand, was vibrant, with just the hint of a candid smile

dawning in eyes and lips. She was not in evening dress but had been

taken in a simple blouse with a soft turnover collar. Of the two

photographs, hers was much the more interesting and alluring. And so

Lowell Farwell must think every time he noticed the two faces in

juxtaposition here on his table.

“Just one of Clare’s little touches,” Lewis told himself, wincing. But

now he was to get Petra away, out of it. That was exhilarating. He took

Petra’s photograph into his hands. He was studying it, and Clare from

her corner of the divan was watching him curiously, when Petra finally

came in. Clare beckoned Petra to the deserted place beside her while

Lewis replaced the photograph to the exact spot on the desk from which

he had taken it, and sat down on the arm of a chair facing the divan and

the two living, breathing women contrasted there. He lighted a fresh

cigarette but did not offer Petra one, remembering her afternoon’s

embarrassment.

He began at once. “You know what you said this afternoon, Petra, about

wanting to learn stenography and becoming ultimately somebody’s private

secretary? Well, I have a job for you that will begin paying right away,

and you can practise shorthand and typewriting in your spare moments.

It’s in my office, assistant to my secretary. Miss Frazier is

overworked. Has been for some time. It has been getting more and more on

my conscience lately.” This was perfectly true. “But with another girl

in the reception office to receive the patients, answer the telephone,

and take the preliminary records, I’ll not worry. You can begin Monday

morning.”

Lewis’ voice showed nothing of the elation he was feeling. His tone, in

fact, was dry and his look constrained. But Petra, as well as he, had

herself well in hand, it seemed. Reticence had leapt to her eyes with

almost his first words—a sword on guard.

“Darling! What _is_ the matter?” Clare demanded, but without much

genuine surprise. She had never expected that Petra would be delighted

by Doctor Pryne’s offer of this job. She knew her stepdaughter’s love of

freedom and luxury too well, she thought. And when Petra learned that

her allowance was to be cut as well as her days filled with work, Clare

imagined she would not even consider Doctor Pryne’s astonishing

proposition. Why, this very month Petra had borrowed ahead on her

allowance, to pay for the frock she had worn this afternoon. She was

always borrowing ahead. She spent more on her clothes than Clare spent

on her own. Petra considered that her contribution to the world’s work

was making and keeping herself beautiful, and if she had deceived Doctor

Pryne this afternoon into thinking her serious-minded and idealistic, he

was now to be undeceived, Clare told herself almost gleefully. Watching

it happen was like watching a play, immensely entertaining. But while

Clare watched, she spoke.

“There’s nothing to be frightened of,” she told Petra. “Don’t look like

that. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, darling. It is

only a suggestion Doctor Pryne is making. Have a cigarette?” She picked

one out of a box on a table at her hand, put it into Petra’s fingers,

and finding an automatic lighter, held it for Petra.

Even in his bewilderment at the way Petra had received his offer, Lewis

could appreciate what Clare was doing in insisting on that cigarette.

Petra was a foil for herself. Physically and temperamentally, all

Clare’s effects were heightened by her contrast with her stepdaughter.

And Clare, the artist tireless in procuring her own effects, took

advantage of even so trivial a difference as smoking and not smoking.

She had not remembered to offer Lewis a cigarette, but she was

practically forcing Petra to smoke. And Petra’s docile compliance was

only one of the ways in which she was of use to her stepmother and

earned that fantastic two thousand dollars....

But Petra’s fingers holding the cigarette were shaking. The trembling

began at her elbow, resting on her knee, but it was most visible in the

fingers. She said, in a voice that gave the lie to her shaking fingers,

“It is very nice of you to offer me a job, Doctor Pryne. How much is the

salary?”

Clare had made a mistake in insisting on the cigarette! She should have

presented Petra with a spear, not an English Oval, as an emblem of the

girl’s unyielding hardihood. The cigarette, moved to exquisite

vibrations in her trembling fingers, merely robbed Petra’s overt

hardness of its authenticity. Oh, yes, Clare would do better to play up

the Diana in the girl, not a sophistication which did not exist.

“Eighteen dollars a week,” he said. “That is a small living wage, I

know, but I am afraid it is all the job is really worth. And prices are

down. Food, rooms, clothes, everything. They have tumbled. You ought to

be able to manage on eighteen a week and get quite a lot of fun out of

it, Petra.”

In saying this so lightly he remembered, of course, the millions of

unemployed throughout the country, and his heart smote him at his

careless words. But he did not waver in his purpose. Petra’s need of

employment was different from theirs, it is true, but no less real. Her

situation, as much as theirs, was desperate.... But what was she saying!

“I don’t have to worry about living on your eighteen a week, Doctor

Pryne. I never could, you know. Just my dresses cost much more than

that. Besides, Clare doesn’t charge me board!”

“Petra darling! There is nothing in this offer to make you angry! Doctor

Pryne got the idea from you yourself, this afternoon, that you wanted to

leave Green Doors and be independent. That is why he thought of this

job. He thought you were unhappy because you weren’t independent and

living a life of your own. Whatever did you say to make him think that?”

Petra hesitated. Any one looking at her that moment could actually see

her deciding among a choice of answers to her stepmother. Lewis did look

at her and see. But Clare could not wait for the fabrication, whatever

it was to be. She went on: “But Doctor Pryne has convinced me of one

thing, Petra. He has made me ashamed, not for you, for myself. Your two

thousand dollars’ allowance is absurd. With people hungry right in

Boston. When you spend it only for clothes! It ought to be one thousand,

darling. And the other thousand you can give, yourself, any way you like

to do it, to charity.”

Petra’s cigarette was burning itself away in an ashtray between herself

and Clare. Its smoke ascended in thick violet ribbons. Lewis felt that

she was thinking with lightning speed,—but unguessable thoughts. Clare

was as much in the dark as himself as to Petra’s thoughts, he supposed;

but he suspected that, unlike himself, she did not know her own

ignorance. Against those ribbons of violet smoke Petra looked like a

sibyl—enigmatical—young—divinely young.

“Do you mean that you are cutting my allowance in half? Now, like

this,—without warning?” She spoke as if Lewis were not there, as if she

and Clare were alone. Her voice was more astonished than it was angry.

“No. I wouldn’t do that, Petra. You know I wouldn’t. You can still have

the second thousand for charity, to give any way you like. I will do the

same myself. I had been thinking of it for myself as a matter of

fact—even before my talk with Doctor Pryne about you to-night. I meant

to go over my dress bills and, beginning next month, budget myself to

half as much as I am accustomed to spend. Merely giving money outright,

the way I have been doing, isn’t enough. It is actual sacrifice that

counts.”

“But I don’t want either to give or to sacrifice,” Petra protested. “If

the two thousand is mine, I shall spend it just as I have been spending

it the last three years. Is it mine, or isn’t it mine, Clare? That is

what I asked you.”

Clare’s glance just flickered in Lewis’ direction. But she did not want

him to read the gratification in it and she put her hand to her cheek

quickly, shading her eyes. She said, “Darling, unless you will look up

some charity, get interested in it, and give the second thousand there,

it can’t be yours any more. Not now—when I have been seeing things

through Doctor Pryne’s clear vision. But surely—”

Lewis wanted to stop the woman, wanted to undo all that he himself had

so crudely brought about. But he might as well have tried to push back

an oncoming steam roller as turn Clare from her honorable participation

in this dramatic scene that he himself, no other, had staged. He felt

this and held his peace, knowing all the while that he had blundered

irreparably and made things worse for Petra than they already had been,

in some mysterious way that he was not yet in a position to understand.

Petra had interrupted Clare. Her anger had now risen to the level of her

astonishment. “It’s absolutely unfair,” she cried, her young face and

her young voice ablaze with wrath. “It is a _salary_ you are cutting,

Clare Otis-Farwell! Not a mere allowance. Does Doctor Pryne know that?

And you do it casually, like this, at his mere suggestion. I earn every

penny of it.”

“What in heaven’s name do you mean?” For that instant Clare forgot Lewis

as audience. Her expression was simply dumbfounded, with for once

nothing subtle about it. “_You_ earn two thousand dollars a year! Why,

you don’t even make your own bed!”

“But I do earn it, all the same. Every dollar of it. By being around all

the while as evidence of your generosity and goodness! Everybody praises

you for it! And you hope it will make my father keep on adoring you as

he has never kept on adoring his other wives. I am a perpetual reminder

to him of how you differ from all the others. _You_ are _maternal_!

Haven’t I let you play your part? Haven’t I played mine? What have I

done to spoil the picture? Surely you’ve thought it worth a miserable

two thousand!”

Clare was on her feet, every tinge of color whipped by Petra’s cruel,

wild words from her unrouged face.

“Petra! Hush! Are you crazy?”

Petra, too, was up. And then Lewis noticed that he himself was standing!

There was nothing he could say or do, however. He felt as if his own

poisonous thoughts about Clare Farwell had been, through some fault of

his own, broadcast through Petra’s sibyllic lips. All the blame for the

whiplash words, for the cruel scorn of them and their hatred, was his.

Not Petra’s. It was he, Lewis, who had thought them and now they were

brashly vocal.

But now suddenly again Petra’s voice was her own, and the words were her

own, no sibyl’s. “Oh, Clare!” she was faltering. “I am sorry. I am

terribly sorry. I was crazy, yes.—” And then, looking at Lewis, in a

different and utterly cold tone, she asked surprisingly, “How much does

eighteen a week make it a year, Doctor Pryne? Eighteen times fifty-two,

do you know?”

He told her, not showing his consternation. She said, “Well, that almost

makes up the two thousand, then; if I live here at Green Doors and Clare

pays me one thousand for part time. Am I to go on living here, Clare? Or

isn’t that possible—after what I just said?”

Clare, who was not tall, looked tall at the moment. Consciousness of a

chance to show magnanimity swayed her bodily as well as mentally, like a

refreshing wind, where only a minute ago she had been stifling. “Of

course you may go on living here. This is your home. Of course you

haven’t meant a word you said. You were a little hysterical. It was

Doctor Pryne’s idea, about your living in Boston,—not mine. He even

suggested Teresa Kerr as a roommate! Imagine! But as long as you can

tolerate me, Petra, no matter whether you can ever learn to trust me and

love me or not, I want you _at home_. Call it half-time salary if you

like. I shall certainly give you the one thousand.”

But at mention of Teresa’s name, Petra’s anger was back, lashing this

time toward Lewis. But only for a flash. It was over, as lightning is

over; and it had struck through her glance. She answered Clare, turning

her back on Lewis, “That _is_ wonderful of you. I don’t see how you can

be so forgiving. I don’t deserve it. But I want to tell you, Clare, that

ever since I have been with you here at Green Doors, I have never once

spoken a disloyal word about you—until this afternoon, to Doctor Pryne.

And I never will again—not as long as I live here, and ever after, I

hope. Can you ever trust me again? Do you believe me, Clare?”

Lewis turned away. He walked toward one of the French windows opening

onto the terrace. But Petra’s voice followed him, made him turn again.

She was asking in a polite voice, “Is your offer still open, Doctor

Pryne? Shall I come to work on Monday?”

He came back; looked at her for a confused, almost blank moment; then

said shortly, “Of course. If you really want to.”

“Do you think I can learn? Will I really be any use to you? It isn’t

just your conscience giving me that other thousand, since it’s through

you I’ve lost it?”

“I am sure you will earn every cent of it. Miss Frazier needs an

assistant badly. I told you that.”

“Shall I take this job, Clare? Do you advise it? Do you believe what

Doctor Pryne says? For I won’t take his charity. Will I be worth

eighteen a week to him?”

Lewis himself knew that Petra meant would having a job in Boston hurt

the effect Clare desired to obtain of her relation to her stepdaughter.

And did the part-time job she would now be holding at Green Doors—that

is, evenings and holidays—make the one thousand dollars a guaranteed

matter? But what was in Clare’s mind when she answered, Lewis was beyond

guessing.

“I should try it, anyway, Petra. Of all people, you can trust Doctor

Pryne’s sincerity. Working for him will be an interesting experience, at

the very least, and at the most you will be having some responsible part

in the world’s work and the joy that that inevitably brings. I think it

is very wonderful of Doctor Pryne to take such an interest—and help us

all. He is very generous—and understanding.”

“And shall I go back to the hall now? They will be wondering where I am,

I think.”

“Yes. You must go right back, of course. Darling, your frock is

charming! You do look too lovely to-night. Tell Dick about your job. He

will be particularly interested.”

As Petra started to leave, Lewis reached for her hand. She gave it to

him as if in contract. But such a contract! “I shall be on time Monday.

Thanks again,” she said.

Their eyes were almost on a level, when they stood together like this,

Lewis was so little taller. And Petra’s reticence, a two-edged sword—and

for him now—was not merely on guard. It cut down between them, severing

all understanding.

_Chapter Nine_

“I thought we were all right. There aren’t any loose ends that I know

of....”

Lewis had come to his office half an hour ahead of his usual time on

Monday morning in order to prepare his secretary for Petra’s appearance

there, which would be due, if she kept her word, a few minutes later.

“Certainly there are no loose ends. But that is just the trouble. You

are so conscientious that you won’t let the sun go down—no, you won’t

let it rise, and that is the point—on loose ends. You sit up nights over

the work. I simply had to get you an assistant and this seemed the

opportunity. By the way, and it’s very much by the way, did you do what

I said and forget the manuscript over the week-end, or did you keep it

right by you?”

Miss Frazier did not bother to answer. It was a foolish question. How

could she have done what he wanted! His book was going to press in

another month. At least, she and the publishers intended that it should.

Naturally, she had worked on it over Saturday and Sunday, and she would

continue to do that, if only Doctor Pryne kept his end up, until the

thing was in print. But now she would not waste time in defending her

industry, with this new girl due any minute.

“Who is she?” Miss Frazier asked. “Where did you find her?”

“It’s Petra Farwell. She needed a job so badly that I offered her this

one without considering very much her qualifications.” He had to admit

it. “She has no training but I believe she can typewrite a little. She

has done some copying for her father. But whether she can spell or knows

how to make out a check, or anything of the sort, I don’t know. I

thought we’d put her in the reception office with the telephone and the

patients. She has a nice clear voice and nice manners. That will relieve

you of the part you like least. Isn’t it so?”

Petra Farwell! That was the girl, the daughter of the novelist Lowell

Farwell, about whom they had been speaking here in the office only a few

days ago. A young architect, a Mr. Richard Wilder, had made an

appointment for the sole purpose of asking Doctor Pryne to psychoanalyze

the novelist’s daughter, and he had taken fifteen minutes or more of

Doctor Pryne’s time doing it. It was with some satisfaction Miss Frazier

had already made a memorandum of the bill she was to send for that

interview and obtained the doctor’s approval of it,—twenty-five dollars.

Doctor Pryne had turned down the case, naturally, since he was not a

psychoanalyst, and really, anyway, had time for only serious work; but

Miss Frazier remembered that he had accepted an invitation to tea at the

Farwell home in the country. And this was the result!

Miss Farwell had not sounded a very attractive person. And why should

she, the daughter of Lowell Farwell and the stepdaughter of a very rich

woman, need a job so badly that Doctor Pryne had engaged her without

consulting his secretary, or assuring himself of her qualifications?

But Miss Frazier pulled herself up at this point in her reflections. She

had no business letting herself remember anything that had been said

about Miss Farwell in a professional fifteen minutes here in the

doctor’s sanctum. Her standard for herself was to approximate her

employer’s professional attitude as closely as possible—one part of the

mind for confidences given professionally, and the other, quite

separated and even uncolored by that special knowledge, for the social

contact. So at this moment she did not show by so much as a lifted

eyebrow that she had any intimate knowledge whatever of Miss Farwell’s

character.

“And I’ve promised her,” the doctor was saying, “that between times,

when there’s nothing in particular to do for you, she can study

shorthand and practice typing. Please order the best textbooks for that,

will you, Miss Frazier, this morning,—and a machine. Rent or buy the

machine, whichever is more economical. And she will have to have a table

for it in the reception office. You can get that while you are out at

lunch.—After she gets going, she might take on some of the book. As I

said, she has done copying for her father.”

The expression with which his secretary received this last remark,

however, showed Lewis his stupid mistake. “I’m just talking through my

hat,” he said quickly. “That is a hopeless idea, of course. But can you

tell me how it is that you appear to be the only known human living who

can make out my stuff, Miss Frazier?”

The girl averted her face. Her clear-cut, almost cameo profile kept its

accustomed impersonal secretarial look, but her cheek was hot. Lewis saw

the unaccustomed color and was annoyed with himself for his second

stupidity in the minute.

She said, “It’s a sixth sense I have about your writing, I guess. It

almost seems so, anyway. I am not so extraordinarily good about all

illegible handwriting. But even the first day, yours was pretty clear to

me. It surprises me myself.”

“Well, that is the best of luck for me,” Lewis murmured, and was

grateful to hear a door opening and a step out in the reception office.

“That must be Petra,” he exclaimed, and went out quickly.

He brought her in. But Miss Frazier, at the moment of Petra’s entrance,

was blind to Petra’s bodily reality. It was rather the reflection of her

on the doctor’s face that Miss Frazier saw and read as easily as she was

accustomed to read his illegible script. “It has happened at last,” the

thought sliced through her brain, clean, knifelike. And then, flowing

through and over the wound, came the tides of her will, cooling the

painful gash. “Nobody must guess that it matters.... It doesn’t

matter.... It can’t matter....”

It was will, too, that jerked her attention from the doctor’s mirroring

face, after that first second, to the girl herself. There she stood in a

cool white frock with a violet-colored felt hat slouched Greta Garbo

fashion over bright curls. She looked frightened. Why should she be

frightened?

“Miss Frazier will initiate you,” the doctor’s voice was blurred and as

far away as his face, washed over by the tides of Miss Frazier’s brave

will. “You must ask her anything you need to know as it comes up, Petra.

That is the simplest way, I suppose, to learn the ropes. And now I had

better have a look at the mail.”—It was there, already sorted for him

into piles on his desk, with Miss Frazier’s accustomed clarifying notes

attached.

Miss Frazier took Petra, first, to the dressing room which now they must

share. “This door goes into my private office,” she explained, “and this

into the reception room, which will be in your charge. I’ll clear all my

personal things out of the desk at once.”

When she had taken off her hat and powdered her face, Petra followed the

secretary to the desk which was to be, miraculously, her very own, and

they stood looking down on it together—both of them inarticulate and at

a loss. “Perhaps the best way will be for you merely to stick around and

notice how I answer the telephone to-day,” Miss Frazier decided, after a

minute of cogitation. “One of your jobs, when you have caught on, will

be to take down the names and addresses of the new patients, and file

them here in this card drawer. Do you see? Whether the doctor accepts

them as patients or not, we want the names and addresses, and the date

that they telephoned or came. That is the only recording you will do out

here. The rest I attend to, and it all goes into the files in the inner

office. The most difficult thing to learn will be which calls to pass on

to the doctor, though. I don’t myself quite see how he thinks you are

going to begin learning that....”

Meanwhile Doctor Pryne, with his door shut, stood looking down at his

desk, but not touching the letters. He intended to take Petra out to

lunch with him in a few hours and explain to her—although he could never

do that really, since he didn’t understand it himself—how he had ever

been so stupidly forgetful as to mention Teresa’s name to Clare, after

Petra’s warning him not to. Petra would forgive him. She must, of

course. And then she would finish about Teresa. Or perhaps Teresa Kerr

was living in Boston and would be in at the office this very day to see

Petra. Or perhaps Petra would take him to see Teresa. In any case,

Lewis’ interest in Teresa had increased, almost unreasonably, since

Petra had broken off telling him about her, Saturday afternoon.

Now, in another second, he must start in on the day’s work, beginning

with the top letter on the right-hand pile—the pile Miss Frazier had

marked _immediate_. And when he did start in, he must put Petra out of

his mind,—luncheon plans, interrupted confidences, and all. If he was

_not_ capable of putting Petra clean out of his mind and keeping her

there for hours at a stretch, then the situation he had got himself into

would be absurd and impossible. But he had offered her the job of his

own impulse, and the fact that she had accepted it in a totally

different spirit from what he had expected, had nothing to do with her

right to keep it. It was hers, of course, just as long as she wanted it,

although her reason for wanting it had become a mystery to him. So, he

must—in half a second—clear his consciousness of her there just a few

feet beyond his closed door—clear it clean as a whistle.

But as he prepared to make the effort, the telephone buzzed at his

elbow. Petra’s voice came to him, clear, clipped, but a trifle unsteady.

“Mrs. Joseph Duffield is calling you from New York, Doctor. Shall I put

her through?”

Lewis mentally congratulated his secretary. She had got Petra started

already. That was fine. It was Miss Frazier who had decided, of course,

that this call was one he would certainly want to take, and now she was

showing Petra how to put it through to him. But he foresaw the time,

soon, when Petra, if she really was going to save Miss Frazier and be of

use to her, must be left to discriminate for herself, and that was going

to mean many mistakes. He frowned, rather, realizing that eventuality,

as he said, “Yes, thanks. I’ll take it.”

Mrs. Duffield’s first words, however, put everything else in the world

out of Lewis’ mind. His fingers gripped the bar of the instrument and he

listened with a graying face. Yet, when his turn came to speak, his

voice was full of confidence, even buoyant. “You have the very best man.

Doctor Stephens is an authority. That gives Michael every human chance

possible. You did just the right thing. Tell Michael I am catching the

first express and will be there in a few hours. My dear, don’t cry....”

He set down the instrument with soft precision then, on the sounds of a

woman’s sobs. The next instant he was out in his reception office, his

hat jammed under one arm, thrusting his letters into the two pockets of

his coat, and looking for Miss Frazier. Petra had no existence for him

now. She had been wiped from his consciousness by the bitter news he had

just received, without need of a struggle after all. Miss Frazier got up

from the chair she had drawn close to Petra’s while she taught her the

use of the telephone switchboard, ready for his demands.

“I’m catching the New York Express. Michael Duffield’s got infantile

paralysis. He wants me. Stephens is on the case. That gives the kid

every chance. I’ll call you up to-night if there’s anything to tell.

Doctor Cotsworth will have to take the clinic to-morrow. Give him the

dope on the Pettis case pretty carefully. It’s in the file. Tell Doctor

Hagar I’ll call him long distance at four this afternoon and to stay in

for it. He’ll have to handle that Arlington business without me. Put the

private patients off by telephone. But you’ll have to send a message to

McCloud, of course. Give him an appointment for Saturday afternoon. The

others will have to wait for appointments till we know when I’ll be

back. But before you do anything get in touch with the hospital—” But he

broke off. “This is nonsense. There isn’t time. Grab your hat, bring

your book. We’ll finish in the taxi.”

He remembered the new assistant then and commanded, “Petra, get us a

taxi and tell them it’s rush. Give her the number, Miss Frazier. I’ll

get the elevator up.”

Miss Frazier followed the doctor out, not bothering about her hat, but

her shorthand pad and her fountain pen were clutched in her hand, and

she even had the presence of mind to snatch a pencil from Petra’s desk

in case the pen ran dry. Petra got the promise from the taxi company

that the car would be at the door in a minute and then went through to

the doctor’s office to see whether they actually managed it. To her

utter relief, a taxi drew up at the curb just as the doctor and Miss

Frazier came out to it. Petra was exhilarated. So far, then, she was a

success at this job. There had been no slip. She had been efficient.

Petra had worries enough—even anguish of a sort—to keep her from being

radiantly happy over having a job. Yet it was a dream come true. A year

ago, why, even this spring, she _would_ have been radiantly happy. But

then it needn’t have been a double job; she needn’t have lived at Green

Doors and done the stepdaughter act evenings and holidays. She would

have gone to stay with Teresa and they would really have lived. Such

freedom, such self-respect, and happiness as would have been hers then!

That was the way she had planned it, exhilarated by the very imagining.

And now—how different—.

But suddenly Petra forgot brilliant might-have-beens, for her telephone

was ringing! She flew. She slipped into her chair, knees under the desk,

her spine very straight and businesslike, her eyes grave and

listening.—“This is Doctor Pryne’s office.”—And whoever was at the other

end of the wire must have known from the pure and winged quality of her

voice that the person answering Doctor Pryne’s telephone was young,

beautiful, and very much on the job.

“Ordinarily you and I must not tell each other, or discuss, things that

come up in Doctor Pryne’s work,—not in terms of personalities, anyway.

But Michael, of course, is different. He isn’t a ‘case.’ It is almost as

if a child of Doctor Pryne’s had infantile paralysis. Why, it isn’t even

almost. It is just the same, really. That’s why I’ve told you about

Michael. It would be inhuman for you not to know, when Doctor Pryne

returns, whether the boy is lost or saved—how he is feeling about it.”

The two girls were talking in Miss Frazier’s private office at the end

of Petra’s first day. Petra had her Greta Garbo hat jammed down over her

bright curls, ready to drive out to Green Doors with Dick Wilder, whose

car was waiting down on Marlboro Street. She had just looked down from

Miss Frazier’s window and seen it.

“I am so grateful you did tell me,” she assured the secretary. “And I am

going to ask something. Would you call me up at Meadowbrook

to-night—reversed charges—if you hear anything from New York? It’s as if

I knew Michael himself now—from your telling.”

Two years ago, Michael’s grandmother had been brought to Doctor Pryne’s

clinic. This was what Miss Frazier had just told Petra. The old lady was

insane and had to be placed in an asylum. Trailing along with the

neighbors who had taken it upon themselves to bring the poor creature to

the clinic was the boy, Michael, aged nine, who now, without his

grandmother, was alone and would also become a charge of the State. But

Doctor Pryne had taken Michael home with him that night.

“He brought him into the office the next morning,” Miss Frazier had told

Petra. “He actually wanted to adopt the kid himself. He was a most

interesting and lovable little fellow really; but what the doctor could

have done with him if he had kept him I cannot imagine. He lives in an

apartment hotel because he does not want to bother with a housekeeper.

Adopting Michael would have meant a housekeeper, of course, and a real

home. But that wasn’t what made Doctor Pryne give up the idea in the

end. He would have created a home for that child, given up all his

freedom to do it, I am sure, if Michael hadn’t been a Catholic. That

made Doctor Pryne feel that he ought to have a Catholic upbringing. It

would be the child’s best chance, Doctor Pryne was sure, for living down

the frightful memories of his grandmother’s slowly developing insanity.

Only continuity in the child’s religious life could carry him on over

the break which had come so tragically in his family life. Little

Michael had adored his old grandmother and she had been everything to

him until her reason began to go. Then she had commenced beating him and

imagining he had done things he had never thought of doing. It was

horrible.

“Doctor Pryne kept Michael a month or more, trying to decide what to do

with him. But he was always worried, wondering what he was up to in the

hours between school and the end of work here, when they could be

together. Then Doctor Pryne remembered his friend, Mrs. Duffield. She’s

a Catholic, a widow with seven children, and a close friend of Doctor

Pryne’s. She is extraordinarily beautiful-looking and that had something

to do with the doctor’s choosing her. No, I mean it. It did! Michael was

so sensitive to beauty and he had had so little of it! Doctor Pryne

thinks he has genius. I can’t see myself that Michael’s drawings are

remarkable but the doctor says they are. Anyway, when he remembered how

beautiful she was, and that she was a Catholic, he took Michael right to

New York and persuaded Mrs. Duffield to adopt him. She did it—over

night, practically. He would be her eighth child and they are all boys,

but she was delighted all the same, after she had had him there for an

hour. Pretty lucky she has so much money and didn’t have to think about

that! Doctor Pryne goes to New York to ‘play’ with them every few

months. They all do wonderful things together,—music, riding in the

park, even sea trips. When he comes back from New York he looks almost

as if he’d had a year’s vacation. He’s devoted to the whole Duffield

family, but Michael is the apple of his eye. It’s picturesque, isn’t

it!”

Petra had thought about it, her eyes on Miss Frazier’s pale face. The

day had been hot even for June and Miss Frazier had been typing for dear

life. Petra had heard her machine going madly hour after hour, in here,

through the closed door. That might account for the pallor, but Petra

thought not.

“It _is_ picturesque,” she agreed thoughtfully. “I hope, for your sake

as well as Doctor Pryne’s and Michael’s, that—that it turns out all

right. I hadn’t been realizing—hadn’t taken in—how anxious you have been

all day. I was thinking only of myself, I guess. I thought it was I,

that I was to blame,—that you didn’t really like my being here. I am

sorry now I was so blind and—and egotistical. It was Michael all the

time that made you so silent!”

Miss Frazier had leaned back in her chair at this point and lifted her

eyes to her new assistant’s. Before she looked away from that earnest

young face, she knew that she could never resent this girl. It was no

longer a case of willing. She said to herself in surprise, “She is kind

and strangely gentle. She’s a dear!”

Petra’s thought of Miss Frazier in that meeting of their glances had

been as sure and swift as Miss Frazier’s of her. Dick Wilder, when Petra

had returned to her party, Saturday night, to have the next dance with

him, had said that Doctor Pryne’s secretary was ridiculously starchy and

self-important. He had quite frightened Petra of her.—Well, he had been

wrong. Miss Frazier was a simply grand person. Her grandness was there

in the very curve of her eyelashes and the line of her nose.

Now Miss Frazier was promising: “Yes, when the doctor calls me to-night,

I’ll call you. I have a hunch it will be good news, since they got

Doctor Stephens onto it so promptly. He’s the last word on infantile

paralysis.”

Impulsively Petra came nearer the desk. “Miss Frazier,” she said, “I

have a friend I would love you to know. And she you. May I take you to

see her some time? She is my best friend. We have been friends for

years. She has studied to be a private secretary. I think you will like

knowing each other.”

Petra in that moment had no thought of making a friend for herself of

Miss Frazier. What had she to offer this clear-cut, high-salaried,

dependable person! But Teresa had everything to give her. Teresa and

Miss Frazier must know each other. That they would be friends seemed

inevitable.

She’s kind and strangely gentle. She’s a dear....

She’s a simply grand person. Good enough to know Teresa....

Friendship is as independent of time as is Eternity. It may require

years to arrive, or it may be there, how and why unknown, as if it had

always existed, at the trembling of a leaf. Miss Frazier and Teresa were

bound to be friends, sooner or later. But to her complete astonishment,

as Petra hurried belatedly down to join Dick in his car, she realized

that she and Miss Frazier were friends already.

_Chapter Ten_

Cynthia Allen was sitting at her dressing table giving her make-up its

final touches for dinner and the evening and chatting in the direction

of her husband, who was over on the window seat skimming the

_Transcript_. The real reading would come later, after dinner, with the

radio for accompaniment. But in spite of Harry’s being directly in the

open window, and silent while Cynthia was vocal, it was she, not he, who

knew that a car had turned in at their driveway, and ran, lipstick in

hand, to kneel beside him and see who it was. For Cynthia, like most

adults, if they told the truth about it, felt that every sound of a

car’s brakes, every ring of a bell, every knock, might be a possible

harbinger of Destiny.

In the present instance, however, there was no grinding of brakes where

the Allens’ driveway met the highway, for Lewis’ glittering, long-bodied

roadster was very nearly silent in all its ways. What Cynthia had heard

was merely the spurt of gravel between her gates. “If only Lewis would

live up to his car!” she often sighed to herself. “If he would have an

important-looking office and good-looking tailored clothes!” But she

supposed that the car was a tool in his work and that was why he allowed

himself always the latest and most expensive model.

“It’s Lewis,” she told Harry, who had not so much as turned his head.

Harry’s apparent indifference did not deceive his wife, however, nor

irritate her. She imagined him every bit as sensitive as herself to the

possibilities attending the unexpected; putting off the moment of

knowing merely prolonged his agreeable suspense. “But Lewis is a

thoughtless beast,” she said aloud. “He might have called up. Nellie

will be frantic.”

Then she pushed up the screen and leaned over the sill. Her brother had

seen her and stopped under the window.

“Go right around to the kitchen,” she whispered down, her hands

funneling her lips. “Tell Nellie that I didn’t invite you or dream you

were coming, that you’re not company, and she’s not to do the least bit

of fussing for you. I wouldn’t go near her on a bet, myself, but you,

with your wide experience, may know how to handle a maddened woman.”

Before Lewis had started on, she leaned from the window again and called

down in her natural voice, “Harry says we’re delighted you’ve come.”

A minute later her eyes met her husband’s in the mirror of her dressing

table. Her own were worried and Harry was curious about it. She answered

his silent question.

“Harry! I don’t like it. I don’t like it a bit. I’m—deeply troubled.”

“My dear! You blessed idiot! I thought it was merely your idea of being

funny. What has happened to your sense of humor? If Nellie doesn’t like

it, she can lump it. What’s it to us! She isn’t such a hot cook, anyway.

Besides—”

But Cynthia was laughing. “Blessed idiot yourself!” she crowed, but went

on quickly serious again. “It isn’t Nellie; it’s Lewis I mind! See here!

This is Thursday, isn’t it? Lewis was here over the week-end and now

he’s back again. Twice in one week. Why, do you suppose?”

But Harry had no idea. Certainly it was unprecedented. And Cynthia went

on. “Well, I’ll tell you. Lewis has come to see his new stenographer.

Being with her all day in town—having Petra right there in his office

from nine to four every single day in the week—isn’t enough. He has to

come shooting twenty miles out to Green Doors to spend the evening with

her. He’s a lost soul, I tell you.”

“But this isn’t Green Doors! This is my house. He has come to see me and

the kids—perhaps even you. If he wanted to be with Petra Farwell, he

could take her out to dinner in town or to the Country Club. Just the

two of ’em. No need to go all around Robin Hood’s barn to get at her.

But even if Petra lived here and he had come to see her—what of it?

What’s the matter with Petra? Why shouldn’t Lewis be left to choose his

own girl? Why need you fasten such an expression onto a perfectly good

face over it?”

Cynthia looked deeply into her mirror, curious to see what the

expression was. She answered amiably, “Lewis must choose for himself, of

course. But I have a right to my concern, haven’t I? He isn’t seriously

in love with Petra. He couldn’t be. It’s merely her youth and beauty....

I’m sure of it.... Mere physical attraction!”

Harry got up and started for the door. He had business with the

cocktails and also he must welcome his brother-in-law. But he turned

back, for a minute. “_Mere youth and beauty? Mere physical attraction?_

You might as well say ‘mere dynamite’ and have done with it,” he said

seriously. “You and your meres! You’re an idiot.... We are happily

married. Ten years happy. Who are you to be babbling like some old maid

of ‘mere physical attraction.’ Mere lightning—and you know it! Look

here! If they are really that way about each other—well, let’s hope

they’ll be happy.”

“Harry, you can’t make me mad. I know you’re an idealist.”

“Am I? Perhaps. But I’m not a sentimentalist.”

“Do you think I am?”

“When you say ‘mere physical attraction’ you are. A woman who has been a

lover herself for ten years! It’s mawkish and insincere.”

“But you and I are intellectually congenial, Harry!”

“We weren’t when we married. We’ve developed along the same lines since,

that’s all. But it was passion that melted us up and made our mental and

spiritual amalgamation a reality. We only thought we were congenial,

those early days, because we wanted each other so desperately.”

“Even if you’re right,” Cynthia said quickly, “it mightn’t turn out with

Lewis and Petra as it has with us. I don’t see how it could. She’s so

shallow.”

“Of course nobody knows how it will turn out ever. But if they’re drawn

to each other by mere—mere—what was it you said they were drawn by? I

don’t remember—but what you meant was mere cosmic forces—I guess you’ll

have to let that attraction take its course, and remain a mere sister

who hasn’t a thing to say. Sorry, darling. But you annoy me, rather.” He

kissed her, all the same, as if that was what he had come back for.

Cynthia had guessed right. Lewis was really headed for Green Doors,

intending only to dine with the Allens en route. He told Cynthia and

Harry about his summons to New York and gave them a dramatic account of

the latest methods in the treatment of infantile paralysis, but he was

careful to wait until the children were safely out of earshot. Little

Michael Duffield was going to get well and the probability was that he

would suffer no permanent disability from his terrible experience. The

other Duffield children had been packed off to the shore in charge of

tutors and with a trained nurse to watch for symptoms. They had gone off

in two large cars and were living in an isolated cottage to meet all the

requirements of quarantine. But Mrs. Duffield herself was staying with

her adopted boy and would not join the others until he was well enough

to be taken with her, unless one of her own children developed the

disease.

“There is almost no limit to what modern science can do, with wealth to

back it up,” Cynthia commented.

But Lewis met this with silence. He had just been through a

twenty-four-hour agonizing suspense, when all that science had to give,

and all that wealth could buy, and even all that love could plead, had

waited on—a Mystery. And the Mystery, over and over, during those dread

hours, had been named by Mrs. Duffield, “God’s Will.” Lewis’ face was

strained and his eyes still heavy from watching.

The Allens were a little embarrassed by the way Lewis had taken the

business; but they were touched as well. They knew how peculiarly

devoted to this little Michael he was. Cynthia was glad, indeed, that

she herself had not known that the boy was so ill all these past days,

and Lewis with him. That would have worried her for her brother’s sake

infinitely more than this Petra business was worrying her. Petra fears,

in fact, had dwindled, in the face of all that Lewis had just told them,

into mere goblin phantoms.

But even so she remarked, “It’s funny, but do you know, I don’t believe

Clare knows you’ve been away any more than we did. Petra couldn’t have

told them. And what’s still more inexplicable, Petra has gotten home

late every evening and hardly has time to dress for dinner. Clare rather

implied that you were overworking her, keeping her such unconscionable

hours! And all the time you haven’t been there at all!”

Lewis’ eyelids just flickered but he gave no other sign. He had told

Miss Frazier by telephone this morning that he would take an afternoon

train and be at the office at the usual time to-morrow morning. But Mrs.

Duffield had persuaded him to fly instead, and that swift and luxurious

way of travel had brought him to Boston late this afternoon. He had

dropped around at the office and found Miss Frazier still there. She had

sent Petra home early, she said, because of the heat; and the other

afternoons she had let Petra catch the three-forty express for

Meadowbrook, thinking there was so little need for two of them with the

doctor away.—What was the mystery? Why need Petra be so devious, Lewis

asked himself. But he was glad he had been warned. Very glad. He might

so easily have betrayed her to-night, later, at Green Doors.

It was dark when Lewis drove up the Green Doors road and recognized

Dick’s car standing before the door. He was taken to the library, after

having sent in his name and been left waiting a minute or two in the

hall. The maid who had admitted him had seemed none too sure that any

one was at home. He realized the reason for her caution when he saw what

his visit was interrupting. Lowell Farwell was reading aloud from his

own manuscript. Clare was picturesquely erect in a corner of the divan,

working on a brilliant square of needlepoint. Dick lounged and smoked a

briar pipe beside her, looking rather romantic, young and very handsome.

The author himself sat facing them, his hands full of canary-colored

scratch paper.—Lewis was, had he known it, the sole person who would

have been allowed to interrupt the reading.

He was welcomed warmly. Clare’s inward smile indeed was as brilliant, as

warm, as that on her lips and in her eyes. So soon! She had given Doctor

Pryne two or three weeks before he would allow himself to return—and

here he was back within the week! Doctor Lewis Pryne! The inaccessible!

The unobtainable! It was more than gratifying. It was—exciting and

delightful....

“Too bad Petra isn’t at home,” she said at once. “She won’t like missing

you. But she said there was extra work to-night and she would have

supper somewhere with Miss Frazier and then get back to it. I thought

you must be there in person, cracking the slave whip, Doctor. Awfully

nice to have you here instead!”

This time, because he was prepared, Lewis did not so much as blink. “No,

it wasn’t necessary for me to stay. But I am interrupting. You shouldn’t

have been ‘at home.’”

Lowell Farwell was putting away the manuscript. “Nothing of the kind,”

he exclaimed. “I can read to Clare any time. Dick came to play with

Petra and I did the ancient mariner turn with him; so _he_ won’t mind my

stopping. It isn’t every day I get a chance to talk with a genuine

psychologist. If I hadn’t gone in for writing, Doctor Pryne, I should be

in your field. Do you, by the way, read Dostoevsky? The Russians know a

thing or two. They aren’t afraid of turning to the findings of morbid

psychology for suggestion, at least, in their studies of human

character....”

It was sometime after ten when Petra let herself softly in at the front

door. The library door had been left open after Lewis’ interruption of

the reading and she heard voices. Dick’s. Her father’s. If Lewis had

happened to speak as she crossed the hall, she would never have gone on

and in. She would have stolen away to bed and sent a maid to tell Clare

she was at home. It was too late to retreat when she saw Lewis. Her face

hardened as she came forward. So Clare had won. They had not known at

the office—she and Miss Frazier—that Doctor Pryne had even returned, and

yet here he was the first hour he was back, sitting beside her

stepmother, helping her wind up a ball of yarn. But it was stupid to be

so surprised. Hadn’t she known ever since Saturday evening that Clare

had Doctor Pryne in tow! If it were not so, he would never have betrayed

Petra’s confidences to her as he had done.

Clare entranced every one, of course,—except Petra herself. But Saturday

afternoon, when Doctor Pryne had walked with Petra across to the

guest-house piazza and sat there, listening to the bobolink, and Petra

had been moved to be herself with him, and even to talk about Teresa,

she had thought that Doctor Pryne would be the one exception to the

general rule. He would be her friend—Petra’s—not Clare’s. _He would see

through Clare._ He belonged to herself and Teresa. That meeting, long

ago in the Cambridge apartment, had made him belong. Or rather they had

been deceived—and thought so. Where had the idea come from, anyway?

Teresa had been as illusioned as Petra herself. And when he held her

chair for her at Clare’s tea table—and even more, while she sat silent

beside him, and could not make herself eat or drink because it was so

wonderful that he had come at last—Petra had _known_ that he understood

her and was close to her in some indefinable but real way. She had known

but she had known a lie. It was an illusion brought away out of

childhood; and she had been enticed from her secret fastness by it, the

fastness where she hid from Clare and all of the life here at Green

Doors.

Doctor Pryne was holding a chair for her at this minute as he had held

the chair under the elm. The same look was on his face. If she did not

watch out, she would be betrayed by it into sincerity again, into being

simply herself.

“Darling! You should have called up from the station. I’d have sent a

car for you. I suppose you came in a taxi. I didn’t hear it. I was

beginning to worry, really. Here’s Elise with punch. You’re just in

time, Elise. We are famished. Petra, you do look tired. Pass them to

Miss Farwell first, Elise. Darling, you don’t look tired, you look

_exhausted_.”

Clare was justified in the observation. Petra’s face was shadowed by

obvious weariness, and Lewis thought that her long, sun-burned fingers

held the stem of her goblet of punch with a counterfeit steadiness.

Sheer will was keeping her steady—and hard. He was certain of it.

Lewis himself did not sit down again. He said that he must go. It would

be midnight as it was when he got to his rooms, and work would be piled

sky-high to-morrow after his absence. But he did not say this. They were

not to know that he had been away and not seen his office for several

days, since Petra had not told them. And if the child was fearful that

he had already explained that he had never kept her working over hours,

he would relieve her mind at once. But how?

He said, as casually as he could, “No need to be on time to-morrow,

Petra. Mrs. Farwell thinks I’m a slave driver and it will be true unless

we call a halt. After this, your hours are to be from nine till four, as

we first agreed, and an hour out for lunch.”

Petra was quick to understand. So they _had_ told him! He knew about her

lies! But he had not given her away and was not doing so now. That was

strange. Why? And it seemed almost as if he were promising her,

indirectly, that he had no intention of giving her away at all. At the

same time, he was laying a command on her: she must not use this

particular excuse ever again to gain her private ends, whatever they

were. Oh, yes, Petra thought she understood, and humiliation drowned

what might have been gratitude.

As for Lewis, he had never known that young eyes could hold such dumb,

repressed misery as he saw in those that Petra slowly raised to his own,

when she returned his formal “good night” with one more formal. But he

had only meant to reassure her. Did she think he was taunting or

judging? It was intolerable that she should have any such idea. It was

intolerable that he should have wounded her and that he could not

explain himself to her to-night, before she slept. But could he explain

himself to her to-morrow? Could he explain himself to himself, if it

came to that? Did he know why he was not appalled by this girl’s deceit

and why he was not angry with her for having put him in an unfair

position by her lies? If he had only been self-disciplined enough,

sensible enough, to have waited until morning to see Petra! Now the

night was going to be much longer than it would have been had he never

come out here at all. And he had thought to have shortened it by coming!

Lowell Farwell accompanied Lewis out to the street door, insisting

again, as they crossed the spaces of the great hall, that he would never

know all about morbid psychology until he had made a thorough study of

the Russian novelist, Dostoevsky,—and, possibly, a few other even more

modern writers of psychological novels. For your novelist knew

intuitively what your psychologist only came at through experiment, and

he knew it first.

“Yes, read the great novelists,” Farwell advised Lewis, with an almost

passionate insistence. “Read Thomas Mann. Read Hardy. And above all read

Dostoevsky. Then you might even read some Americans. There are one—or

two—you know—”

Lewis got away quickly without admitting the fact that he knew his

Dostoevsky practically by heart. Somehow, he hoped he would never have

to hear Farwell patronizing that master or comparing his novels to his

own, even by implication. Lewis wanted not to detest Petra’s father.

_Chapter Eleven_

Miss Frazier put a list of Friday’s appointments on Petra’s desk. “This

is going to be a crowded day,” she said. “Here they are. The doctor

won’t be able to see anybody who’s not down here, unless it is something

very special, and you’ll have to decide that. Of course, they’ll all say

it is very special. You’ll have to judge in spite of what they say. If

you get puzzled, just tell them to telephone again later, or, if it’s

somebody calling, keep them until I come out and you can ask me about

it. But I think you won’t have to do either of those things. I think

you’ll be perfectly able to decide anything that comes up for yourself,

Petra.”

“But Janet!” They were Petra and Janet to each other—had been since the

second day. “You’re throwing me in and telling me to swim. Suppose I

make a mistake?”

“Well, that will be just too bad!” But Janet belied the slangy irony of

the words by a quizzical accompanying smile. “It’s the way I myself

began,” she said. “And after all, you have had several days now of

answering telephones and talking to people here, with me right beside

you. I never had any such start. Don’t worry. Just dive in. You’ll be

all right. I know it.” The doctor’s buzzer had sounded and she had to

hurry away to the inner sanctum.

Petra, who had only just arrived at the office, was a little late. Dick

Wilder had slept last night at the Allens’ and offered to drive her into

town this morning. He had, however, overslept and been late in coming

for her. But that had seemed a feeble explanation when Petra offered it

to Janet a minute ago and she hoped now that Doctor Pryne need not know

of it. Janet, she felt sure, would not mention it unless he asked. As

his door was soundproof, the chances were he did not know whether she

had come late or early. He himself had been in there since eight. But

she decided to depend only on the trains after this. They were never

late. She wanted, with all her soul, to be as scrupulous and perfect as

humanly possible in this job.

She went into the dressing room, put her hat on the shelf, powdered her

face and held her wrists for a few seconds under the cold-water faucet.

The papers had promised a day of record-breaking heat for June, and now,

only a little after nine, the thermometer in the dressing-room window,

here in the shade, registered eighty-five. Petra was not like Clare—and

Shelley—elated and toned up by heat. Hot city days frightened her a

little and filled her with an anticipation of some unknown but dreaded

eventuality. But now that she had a real and an important job, she must

be superior to this idiosyncrasy, must keep her mind clear for action

and deny the childish mood.

It was not yet time for the telephone to begin its morning bombardment

and she would have leisure for a little study. Getting her shorthand

textbook out of its drawer, she drew pencil and paper toward her and

prepared for strenuous work. Janet had been “an angel” (Petra’s

expression) and constituted herself Petra’s shorthand teacher. She said

that there was no reason whatever why Petra, at the end of a year’s work

here, shouldn’t be prepared to take dictation from anybody, typewrite

rapidly, and have a profession at her finger tips. But during this year

of learning, Petra was determined to be worth every dollar that Doctor

Pryne paid her. He was not her friend—he never could be now—and it must

be a strictly business exchange between them and an honest one.... If

you really use your brain, really concentrate, heat—even city heat—is

nothing. The human brain, and the will back of it, _cut through

discomfort like a knife_. Well, perhaps that was all that Clare meant,

when she always said that hot days exhilarated her. Overcoming the

wretchedness of stifling heat, being superior to it, was the

exhilaration. Indeed, Petra found herself exhilarated at this moment. It

was exhilarating to concentrate on these word-symbols, master them, and

be of some account in the world!

But at this moment of full content—for it was content—Petra’s telephone

surprisingly buzzed. Her voice—she heard it herself, answering—had an

elated ring. But the voice that sounded in reply was no strange voice

from the outside. It was Doctor Pryne himself, speaking to her from

behind his closed door only a few yards away. He was asking her to have

lunch with him at one-thirty at the Copley.

“I’m sorry. I’m lunching with Dick Wilder. I’m afraid I can’t.”

That is all she said and it was uttered with polite deliberateness. But

her hand, putting down the telephone, was shaking. And this surprising

phenomenon had hardly impressed itself on Petra’s attention before she

was aware of the thunderous circulation of her blood.... What had so

startled her body! Her employer’s voice, it seemed. But the invitation

and her having to refuse it had meant very little to her conscious

thinking self. Did the body have a life of its own, then,—fears and

delights, even thoughts of its own? It seemed so. But she had first

learned it on Saturday afternoon, when Doctor Pryne had lighted her

cigarette for her. As he held the match, her body had given her this

same surprise then. It had been Doctor Pryne then and it was Doctor

Pryne again now. He had more significance to her, it seemed, than she

herself knew. But her body knew.... It was instinct of some sort, she

supposed. She was remembering one astonishing experience she had had of

an animal’s instinct. It occurred the summer she had been sent to camp

where there was riding. She and a few others had lost their way on the

country roads and had been caught by the dark. Petra was riding ahead,

loving the dark and the adventure, when suddenly her horse stopped and

she felt him bristling under her. She felt his fear but stubbornly tried

to urge him on. Whatever he was afraid of, they must get away from it.

She was as frightened as the horse, but her desire was to plunge on and

out of the situation—whatever it was. But a wiser and older girl, coming

along, dismounted, walked cautiously a few yards ahead and found that a

bridge was down over a deep gorge. Petra’s horse could not have seen it.

Had the sound of the rushing water proclaimed no bridge above it to his

sensitive ears?... But what bridge was down now? Why was her blood

thundering like this and her mind at a standstill?

It passed almost as suddenly as it had come. The thundering blood sank

back to the unknown and unconscious rhythms of its usual courses. But as

this was Petra’s second experience only of the alert separate mind of

the body, she was left strangely shaken by it. It took some effort to

return her attention to the shorthand textbook, and she was glad when

the telephone finally began ringing in earnest and she could put aside

her self-imposed and solitary work.

For a while everything went smoothly. Petra really seemed to have an

instinct for discriminating between the important and unimportant and it

is certain that her magnetic young voice won instant confidence from the

unseen inquirers; they felt that she would remember their requests and

do her best in getting Doctor Pryne’s attention for them the first

minute possible. She wrote everything down in a tidy, self-conscious

hand and filed what should be filed, all the while feeling effectual and

important. If the few patients waiting their turns in the little room

looked at her more than at the magazines and books they pretended to be

reading, she was unaware of it.

The door into the outer hall was standing wide open in the interest of

all the draft possible; and so since Petra’s shoulder was turned that

way, and the latest comer wore rubber-soled sneakers, she was not aware

of him until he came around her desk and stood over her. The little

desk, as he stood before her, leaning on it, suddenly became spindly, a

mere chip, he was so large and dynamic. He was looking at Petra in

surprise that she was not Janet. So she read his expression. She

noticed, even in her first startled glance up at him, how blue the eyes

were in his bronzed face and how the black brows over them met in a

straight line across his high, straight nose. She had never seen eyes of

so intense and deep a blue, she thought. They were rather like her own,

had she realized it, for it was a strange coincidence, but the girl at

the desk and the man bending over it might have been brother and sister.

Their coloring, their physiques and their vitality were all in the same

key.

The surprise in the man’s face was perhaps more like anger than

surprise, after all. A sort of tortured anger, Petra thought. The

intense blue of his eyes burned down at her with angry questioning. But

his fine, clean-cut lips were set in a defiant line as if he meant never

to speak. The thought flashed through Petra’s mind that he might be an

insane patient of Doctor Pryne’s who had broken loose from confinement

and was seeking out the man who had consigned him to the asylum, to

shoot him. But instantly she knew it wasn’t so; the fire in the intense

blue eyes was fire of intelligence burning to an expression almost as

articulate as speech.

“Do you want to see Doctor Pryne?” she asked. “I am sorry but—”

She got no farther. He had reached a swift hand and snatching a letter

from the top of the pile the postman had only a minute ago deposited

there, turned it over and, picking up a pencil, wrote on its back, “I am

dumb. Neil McCloud. No appointment. Only want to see Pryne for a minute.

Will wait till he can work me in.”

Dumb! This vital creature, radiating power and strength! Petra held out

her hand for the pencil. But he did not give it to her. He wrote again,

the strokes of his script swift and angry, “I’m not deaf. Speak!”

“Sit down,” she said. She could not talk to him while he towered like

that. It was like standing under an avalanche of physical and mental

force. There was a chair close to her desk. He took it. She felt that he

might mind having the other patients, who had appointments, hear him

being refused one, and so she leaned toward him and explained the

situation almost in a whisper. Doctor Pryne had been out of town and as

a consequence was extraordinarily busy to-day. He couldn’t possibly see

people without appointments, even for a minute. But next week—She took

up the appointment book. The minute McCloud had written his name Petra

had placed him, for on Janet’s advice she had studied and learned the

names of the regular patients by heart during her first day here. She

fluttered the pages of her book and came to McCloud. He had an

appointment for Saturday afternoon, to-morrow. That was odd. Janet had

said that Doctor Pryne kept his weekends absolutely free for his

writing. But here it was in Janet’s hand—McCloud, four o’clock, June 28.

She hesitated over it. Ought she to suggest that Mr. McCloud wait for

Janet’s next appearance from the inner office? This was the first time

to-day that Petra had felt so uncertain of her ground. But then she

decided, “No. I’m in. I must swim. That is what both Doctor Pryne and

Janet expect of me. McCloud’ll have to wait for his appointment like

everybody else.”—She looked across at him. Blue eyes met blue eyes, his

tormented and angry, hers cool but sorry. “I’m sorry—” she began, but

again he snatched at the pencil. “OK,” he almost tore it into the

envelope. And then he added, underlining it, “Don’t tell him I called.

I’d rather you didn’t. Back Saturday.”

Halfway to the door he swung around and came back to Petra. She handed

him the pencil. He wrote—but this time in small, scrupulously clear

characters—“You’re a damned beautiful girl.” She had read it easily

upside down as he wrote but he was gone before the color flamed in her

face.

A few minutes later, when Janet came out of the inner sanctum, trailing

a patient, and went over to Petra’s desk, Petra showed her the envelope;

but she had erased McCloud’s last remark. The secretary frowned. It

worried her, for some reason or other. That was obvious. After a minute

of brooding over it, she whispered, “I’m sorry you let him go, Petra.

The doctor would have made a point of seeing Mr. McCloud. It must be

something very special he wanted, really special, I mean. But you

couldn’t know.... I think we’d better do what he asks and not say

anything about it now to the doctor. It would bother him. I’m sorry I

wasn’t here. He must have hated explaining to you about his speech. He’s

morbidly sensitive about it. It was hard enough the first time he came

and wrote it all down for me—but to have to do it all over again—”

So it was as bad as that! Janet’s expression even more than the words

she said told Petra how serious a blunder she had made in sending

McCloud away. It was so serious, in fact, that Janet wanted to protect

Doctor Pryne from knowing that it had happened at all. But as to the

man’s embarrassment, Petra was skeptical, remembering the sentence she

had read upside down!

“But look here, Petra, don’t let this one first mistake discourage you,”

Janet murmured quickly, as the doctor’s buzzer summoned her to bring in

the next patient. “Go on swimming. Don’t get self-mistrustful. It’s like

riding. After a spill you must get right up and mount again, or you’re

queered. Better luck next time.”

At lunch Dick Wilder found Petra more bafflingly uncommunicative than

usual, even, and she ate almost nothing of the very expensive and

knowing meal he had ordered for her. What use was it for him to chatter

on about Green Doors—and incidentally, of course, Clare—with some one

who murmured back mere Yeses and Noes! The only consolation that Dick

got from that luncheon hour was the overt admiration he saw in

surrounding faces for his companion. These men and women had no way of

knowing that his companion was as completely uninteresting as she was

completely beautiful. They probably thought him much to be envied,

extraordinarily lucky.

“Look here,” he said rather desperately, when he opened the door of his

car to let her out in front of her office building, “let me drive you

out to-night, Petra. It will be beastly going in the train in this

heat.”

“Clare is giving that big dinner party to-night,” Petra reminded him.

“She won’t have a minute for you. Some other night.”

But Dick persisted. He was ready to take his chances. When they got to

Green Doors he would go in with Petra for a few minutes and stay

talking. Clare might be around somewhere. They could exchange one word

at least, one look. It would be little Sophia’s bedtime. He might be

invited up to the nursery to join with little Sophia’s nurse in her role

of enchanted chorus to the nightly repeated scene—the cherub’s supper

hour. But he said nothing of his real designs to Petra. He merely

exclaimed, “What has Clare to do with it? You’re a funny girl! It’s you

I’m asking. I’ll be down here at the door at four.”

Janet’s door, the doctor’s door, the door into the public hall were all

wide open when Petra got back. Janet heard her come in and sang out from

the dressing room, “I’m just off for lunch, Petra. Won’t be gone twenty

minutes. Too hot to eat.” Then, as Petra came up behind her, she turned

from the mirror where she had been adjusting her hat and her voice

changed. “You poor child! What is the matter?”

“Nothing. What should be?” Petra put away her hat and got out her

compact. But Janet would not accept the nonchalant denial. “I know

what’s wrong. That McCloud business. But cheer up. For months after I

began this job I averaged about half a dozen mistakes a week. Nobody’s

infallible. And anyway, I’ve reconsidered it. There is no real reason

why that young man should consider himself an exception and come around

without appointments. He did the same thing last week. And Doctor Pryne

saw him and was over an hour late in leaving the office as a

consequence. To-day he would probably have gone without his lunch. It’s

really rather cheeky. To-day may make him see it. I myself wouldn’t have

dared send him off, because I know how the doctor feels, but you didn’t

know, and he only got what he deserves. So cheer up. You’re in charge

now till I return. The doctor won’t be back before half-past two,

probably.”

But Petra was not much comforted. Her confidence in her own adequacy had

been so high only so few hours ago! And ever since the McCloud incident

she had felt dashed. But how was she to know who was important, of the

people who came to the office or called on the telephone, as long as

they remained merely names to her in her appointment book and in the

bare files in her desk. Janet, of course, knew the intimate details of

all the cases. She took their “histories” down in shorthand, and even

some of the conferences later, and filed them in the big steel cases in

the inner office. If Petra, now, had known something of Mr. McCloud’s

“history,” she might have known what to do with him this morning. But

Janet, in initiating her into the work, had told her absolutely nothing

of the personalities she would so soon be dealing with. Her information

had confined itself strictly to names and ages. It was too great a

handicap!

Besides, Petra was interested on her own account in this McCloud now.

Very much so! Any one would be.... His tormented impatient look.... The

way his very black brows met in a straight line over his straight high

nose. She had never seen brows like that. It gave a look of dominance,

of strength.... His hands were the hands of a workman, stained with oil

or grease, and the fingernails were cut very short where they were not

broken. Yet strangely, those hands were as expressive and impatient as

his face.... And the upside-down sentence—well—that was a touch of mere

deviltry. His eyes had mocked, as he pushed the envelope toward her—and

was gone!

The heat in the reception office was stifling. Holding your wrists under

water really didn’t help, except for the minute you were doing it. As

for getting out the shorthand textbook in this lull between the morning

and afternoon appointments, Petra simply couldn’t. She was smothered,

dismayed by the heat. It was really a kind of drowning, this

airlessness. Janet had looked so cool and superior to it. She had said,

“It’s torrid, isn’t it!” but she hadn’t minded it really. She had

created the effect, even as she mentioned it, of brushing mere physical

discomfort from her clear, cool self as if it were a fly.

There was, however, a slight breeze coming through from Doctor Pryne’s

big windows. A paper on his desk rustled intermittently. It might blow

off. Petra decided to go in there and put a book or an inkwell, some

solid object, on it. But when she had secured the object—a package of

Luckies, as it happened—she turned away from the desk to the steel

filing case across the room and stood looking at it curiously. She could

read the letters on the faces of the boxes from where she stood.

_Chapter Twelve_

Petra was pulling out the drawer marked in small black letters Mc. She

pulled it slowly, as one might open a door onto an unknown landscape.

She herself thought of Alice. “It might be the rabbit hole and here am I

on the verge of tumbling down it.” Indeed, she felt herself a second

Alice and as if this deep drawer held a wonderland into which she was

about to escape from the stifling hot afternoon of the upper world.

Could she have known what it held for her, how different her hesitation

in going on pulling out the drawer would have been, how much faster her

heart would have beat!

She ran her fingers over the tops of the stiff white cards and came to

those marked at the upper right-hand corners, “Neil McCloud.” There were

dozens of them in McCloud’s own handwriting—the handwriting, at least,

of that one last sentence of his which she had read upside down. Petra

lifted them out, removing first the metal clip that held them together.

Leaving the Mc drawer open, she leaned against other closed drawers and

started to read.

_Neil McCloud. Age twenty-six. Irish-American. Catholic. No known

insanity in family._

It read as if it had been written in answer to questions put to him by

Doctor Pryne. Ordinarily the patient would have answered vocally, and

Janet, or Doctor Pryne, taken it all down; but in this case, since

McCloud could not speak, the answers were written by the patient

himself. It seemed that the small, scrupulous script of the upside-down

sentence was his ordinary writing when he was not furious....

Petra turned the card over and read on: “Oldest of five. Father a garage

proprietor in Springfield, Mass. I graduated from High School tenth in

class of ninety. My mother wanted me to go to college but I wouldn’t.

Went to work for my father as a stop-gap. Wanted to get with airplanes.

Father paid me a skilled mechanic’s wages because I was by that time a

skilled mechanic,—grew up with the engines, so to speak. Machinery

interested me more than books. Except aeronautics books. Read all of

those the library had and bought all I could find. I got in with the

fellow who runs the Ocean Road Airport. Spent all my spare time there.

Took flying lessons by moonlight. Bought a second-hand plane on savings

and credit and began taking people up for hire. Father against it.

Wouldn’t let me live at home unless I worked for him.... One day my kid

brother turned up at the field. He was the baby. Eleven years old. I

knew the folks had forbidden him to go up with me. All the kids were

forbidden. But he had hooked a ride out, skipped school, and said he

would tell father when he got home, and take his licking. He hated

lickings as much as anybody, but it would be worth it to fly. I agreed

with him it would. He was captain of his grade football team, a great

little kid. After my mother, I guess he meant more to me than anybody

living. Anyway, I took him up. We had a grand ride, all afternoon, over

four States. Then, making the landing in the field, the propeller broke

and we hit the ground wrong. The kid was killed. Broken neck. He died in

my arms without the sacraments. I never saw my mother again. They

wouldn’t let me into the house. Dad wouldn’t. I don’t think mother ever

knew I came. She died that fall. She had been poorly ever since Stephen

was born, the kid—that was killed.

“Came to Boston. Got job. Chauffeur for Malcolm Dayton, banker. Eloped

with his daughter. We were married by a justice of the peace but Edyth

suspected I mightn’t feel really married unless a priest blessed us. She

looked up the priest of our parish and I went to him. No, hadn’t gone to

the Funeral Mass for the kid even, and never to confession since the

smash. The priest made me ashamed but agreed to get the dispensations.

He talked to Edyth and assured himself she was old enough to know her

own mind and really wanted to be my wife. She is ten years older than

me. So I confessed and was taken back and received communion, and we

were married again in the rectory before the housekeeper and janitor.

Edyth was to take instruction. I could have lived alone outside the

Church all right, but couldn’t have rested easy with my wife outside it.

So I was glad Edyth insisted, I guess. Remembered my mother too well!

Couldn’t imagine the mother of my children not a Catholic!

“Dayton went crazy when we told him. He wrote that he would buy a

divorce for Edyth any time she asked him to, but until then to keep away

from him. We had a baby the first year. A boy. I got a job selling the

new Ajax cars. I thought we were pretty well off, but Edyth didn’t. We

had a nice apartment and a maid. My mother never had a maid. Edyth’s

friends stuck to her. They were fine. Some of them I liked a lot. But

she was never really mine. Somehow she was her father’s girl. The baby

was born at the Lying-In. The day they were coming home, I had to give a

driving lesson in Arlington, but a girl friend of Edyth’s was bringing

them and would help the nurse and the maid fix them up comfortably. But

I came home and found nobody but the nurse. Called the hospital and they

told me that Dayton had come for his daughter and grandson. Called the

house. Got Dayton himself. Sorry—can’t remember a word he said. But I

knew that Edyth and the baby were with him and weren’t coming home. And

the next day he sent a lawyer around who told me that the old man had

had me watched and that they had a clear case for a divorce. They had

one framed, all right—but no use going into that. I had not been

unfaithful. No, I told you, I can’t remember a single word he said on

the ’phone.

“No—I didn’t say a word to the nurse who had stood staring at me while I

’phoned. Found I couldn’t. But I thought it was because I was crying.

The baby and his mother not coming home, you know. Thought it was tears

in my throat. I thought so then, I mean. I walked out of the apartment,

got into the car, drove all night. At dawn I was back in Boston. I don’t

remember where I drove or anything about it.

“Yes, I stopped for gasoline once or twice during the night. I held up

my fingers to show how many gallons and didn’t say a word. But I didn’t

realize it was because I couldn’t speak until I got back to the

apartment in the morning. The nurse had slept there and was waiting for

her money. Yes, my throat closes up whenever I try to speak. It’s like

tears—or a sob. Don’t like to try any more. No, haven’t been to Mass

since the Sunday before Edyth and the boy were coming home from the

hospital. No—don’t want to see a priest. I’ve lost my faith, I think.

No, my family know nothing about me. They won’t, either.

“The Ajax people kept me on as a mechanic. It’s charity, really. They’re

as hard hit as all the rest by the depression. They really can’t afford

a mechanic who can’t talk to the people who drive in. The boss sent me

to you. I make thirty a week. Can pay you ten. Ten a week goes to the

smashed plane debt. If you don’t cure me quickly, I’ll disappear. The

boss is risking his own job, keeping me on. Yes, the boy is fine. When I

saw him at the hospital he looked like my kid brother. The kid would

have been his uncle.”

There the history proper ended and Janet’s typing began. It was a report

of the physical condition of the patient. Doctor Pryne had, apparently,

passed McCloud on to various specialists. Petra skipped all this. It was

technical and dull but as much as she took in appeared to rate McCloud’s

physical condition as excellent. All the remaining cards in the pile, a

dozen or more, written on both sides, in Doctor Pryne’s illegible hand,

might as well have been inscribed in Chinese for all Petra could read of

them. They appeared to record the experiments in treatment Doctor Pryne

had tried on the case, and would have been fascinating, Petra thought,

if only she could have read three consecutive words.

But one sentence was clear,—and underlined: “_Must find out what Malcolm

Dayton said to him on the telephone._”

As she read this, Petra heard some one breathe.... She had not noticed

the step in the reception office nor in this room, but she heard the

breath, soft as it was. She looked up from the card she was studying and

saw Janet. It was the secretary’s sharply indrawn breath that had so

startled Petra. But when she woke to the expression on her new friend’s

face, her very blood ran cold. This was not Janet, the intelligent, the

kind, the clever Janet. What had happened to her? What was the matter?

“Petra Farwell! What are you doing with those files?”

“Reading about McCloud. I wanted to learn....” But her explanation died

stillborn. Suddenly, like a thunderclap, Petra knew what a fool she had

been, what a terrible thing she had done. She knew now why Janet looked

as if she had come upon a murderer, his hands dripping blood. Petra put

her hand up to her mouth. It was dry and her tongue was dry.

Janet said “You are stark crazy—or else you are a plain fool. It isn’t

just the sneakiness of it—reading private records. It’s the cruelty.

It’s violating another person’s rights to his own secrets. Petra, how

_could you_? _Are_ you crazy?”

She must be. Petra thought so herself now. It was worse than reading

other people’s letters, reading a doctor’s records of cases. Any one who

wasn’t crazy would know that. Even young children knew better than to

open drawers in other people’s houses. She _was_ crazy, crazy, crazy!

She was ready to die!

“Why weren’t the files locked, Miss Frazier? How did this happen? How

was it possible?” Doctor Pryne had come in without either of them

noticing. His voice was hard—cold too—like ice. There was a white area

around his lips.

“You went off with the key, Doctor. You were writing up the Fountain

dope. I knew the files weren’t locked but I was leaving Miss Farwell in

charge, you see. I was gone only a few minutes. I never dreamed that she

herself would open the files. How could I?”

The secretary had nothing more to say, nothing more to look. Her face

was paper white—white with anger at Petra, at herself, at Doctor Pryne.

She went into her own little office and shut the door behind her with

something approximating a slam. In another second the racket of an angry

typewriter came in from her office by way of the doctor’s open windows.

“Better put those cards away now. Are they in their right order?”

Petra looked down from Doctor Pryne’s cold face to her hands and what

they were all unconsciously still holding. She put the cards back into

the drawer with careful quickness. “Yes, they are in their right order.”

She almost whispered it. Her throat felt thick. Perhaps she was going to

lose her speech as McCloud had lost his, or it might be tears.

“Petra! Why _did_ you?”

“I wanted to know about this Neil McCloud. I was terribly interested.”

“Why?” And then with sudden sick suspicion Lewis asked, “Do you know his

wife? Is that why you were interested?”

Petra nodded. “I do know Edyth, of course. She’s one of Clare’s friends.

And I knew her before that, in Cambridge. But I didn’t know she was like

this—cruel....”

“Petra, this is impossible. I simply can’t take it in, what you’ve

done!” He was feeling in various pockets with quick exasperated motions

as he spoke, but his eyes had not left her face. “Lord! Miss Frazier was

right. Here’s the key. That lets her out.” He added, “And us in—you and

me in deep together. We both ought to go to jail.”

Petra exclaimed, “Not you! You couldn’t know I might be—abnormally

dishonorable. But I haven’t told you really why I did it. And you asked.

I didn’t know McCloud was that McCloud—Edyth’s husband. I didn’t even

think about the names being the same. He came to the office this morning

to see you. I said he must wait till to-morrow. Janet said that was a

mistake, that you would have seen him. It came to me, while Janet was

out at lunch, that if I had known about this case, McCloud’s case—as

Janet knew about it—I wouldn’t have made the mistake. So I walked right

in here and looked him up—the way you would in a library, you know, a

Who’s Who or something. I wanted to be efficient, to understand what it

was all about. But I _was_ crazy. It was as bad as reading private

letters. I see that now. I’m not like Shelley. The heat numbs me. My

brains stand still....”

“It looks as if they did!” But then he was sorry. He needn’t have said

that. But could he believe her in what she had just said? Could he

believe that it had not been mere curiosity about the mistaken marriage

of a woman she happened to know that had brought Petra to his files?

Well, strangely, he did believe her. She had lied, he supposed, about

the book she said she had been reading that afternoon at Green Doors,

and he knew she had lied about his keeping her working here after hours.

All the same, he believed that she was telling the truth now.

“I wonder what McCloud wanted. Wish I had seen him. Didn’t he leave any

message?” He would make her forget his anger, which was so quickly

passing.

Petra told him what McCloud had written, except for the upside-down

sentence. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you he came, since he asked me

particularly not to. But I couldn’t have you think it was because I knew

Edyth. Curiosity of that sort—well, I wouldn’t have felt any temptation.

Truly, I wouldn’t.”

His eyes were studying her face. She went on, “Of course, you will fire

me. There’s no reason you shouldn’t. But since it was you who made my

stepmother cut my allowance in two, you ought to persuade her to give it

back again—if I’m not to have this job now. Will you do that?”

She stopped, waiting for him to answer. But he said nothing, merely

continued to look at her, while his expression changed. It was ice

again. With the instinct to justify herself she stammered, “I told you—I

_told you_—at the guest house—Saturday—that it was a _salary_ Clare paid

me, not an allowance. I know that she said it wasn’t so—that very

night—that you heard her. But why should you believe her more than me?

Anyway, I must have that thousand again. It is your fault I lost it.”

“But don’t you want to keep this job?” Lewis asked.

He was beginning to admit to himself, at last, that Petra Farwell was

beyond him. He simply did not understand her.

“Yes. I do want to keep it. Very much. But how can I—after this?”

“I think it would be much better to keep it and make a success of it

than—than go back to the twenty-four-hour-a-day stepdaughter job. Don’t

you?”

Petra nodded. She had a voice but she did not trust it.

“Easier, even?”

Again she nodded.

“Well, you’re a great help to Miss Frazier. She says so.”

“She won’t now.” She _sounded_ all right. You couldn’t hear a tear.

“Oh, yes, I think she will. She was angry with herself just now, more

than with you, I imagine. Just as I was—with myself, I mean. Am still,

as a matter of fact. Miss Frazier realized that she should have warned

you about the privacy of the files and I knew that it was very nearly

criminal of me to leave the files unlocked while I was out. So we’ve all

had a miserable time of it. Did you look at anything besides McCloud’s

history, by the way?”

“No.”

“All right. If you’ll only wait a little this afternoon till I’m free,

Petra, I’d like the pleasure of driving you out to Meadowbrook. I want

you to finish about Teresa. Of course, you know that.”