"Well, the information's dear, but we're getting plenty of it! There's

an advance guard, evidently, set hereabouts!--Alieni! And capital A's!

It's their traitor's badge they've stolen to threaten him. If we only

knew who Alieni is? And where he is! And what they think he has to do

with us!"

Herrick told them where he had seen the pistol before. To no one did

this, at that time, bring any light. Kane's mind was busy with the

fortunes of the police-boat. "The Camorra easily swarms thick enough to

overpower that!" He paused, surveying their fortress. If they had needed

anything to tell them they were doomed they might have found it in the

colloquial, dry calm of Kane's voice as he said, "We should, perhaps,

have sent Miss Hope upstairs."

"Oh, I beseech you--anything but a trap. Let me stay where I can run!"

"The more as they may try to smoke us out!"

Silence grew up in their midst.

The great front doors were barred and chained; through the house five

men were on watch; the door into the hall was barricaded with the gilt

piano, whence still the Cupids smiled, stacked above and below with the

little table and the chairs; down the room's long front the five great

windows, three more crossing at the farther end, were dark with the

latched shutters of which the second on the front was the suspected. So

frail were the defenses! So short a time from the first blow must the

slats give and the glass crash in!

"I think you'd best take the end, Mr. Kane; me and Mr. Herrick the front

windows--Lord, who's this?"

The black figure with gleaming shirt-front was seated in a little gilt

chair in the wall's darkest angle; with outstretched legs and tilted

head it confronted them from very glassy eyes. But it was only the dead

body of Ten Euyck, who must have reared up thus with his last breath and

joined their council.

"Well," cried the sheriff, gaily, "you make another--if they think so!"

Seizing the chair he trundled it across the room; on the floor he found

Ten Euyck's gun and propped it into the passive fingers. "There! If this

blind falls down, you'll be better 'n the piano--they'll waste a lot of

attention on you! Now, if they only make noise enough, down by the

river--Oh, you mustn't let him make you whimper, miss!"

Herrick was mainly aware of a terrible impatience. The surprise and

confusion of their peril made its expectation a raging fever, as if only

a horrible scarecrow in a mirror waited to be smashed. Despite the whole

week's frenzied pulse, despite the happenings of the last four hours,

Herrick could not believe in what lay before and all about them. These

were men he knew, with whom he had put through other adventures; the

girl beside him had never seemed so much a girl as in this failure of

her hardihood--he saw her for the first time with loosened hair that

touched her face with a childish softness, made for cherishing--it

tightened something in his heart as though to crack it, but it was

absurd to suppose that in half an hour, in ten or twenty minutes, they

would be there on the floor, unconscious of each other, ended, wiped

out! Christina lifted her arms in a gesture instinctive with all

womankind and gathering up this tumble of hair her dear, quick fingers

twined and thrust till it was heaped into its place--why, of course not!

This strange night camp amid broken furniture, the spreading pool of

oil, the jewels lying mixed with the supper's wreckage, Christina silent

again and holding his hand tight, the two wounded, haggard men, all

these his mind admitted, all these were conceivable. But what was soon

to come was not conceivable! Yet--hark! Was that--No, only some creak of

the old house! What sound would be the last before the deluge? How long

must they wait? Already the air seemed thick and hard to breathe, the

twilight of the room hung on them like a solid weight and the one candle

Christina had lighted made scarce a twinkle of sane, human comfort in

the vast yellowish gloom.--

"If you please, miss, put out that light!"

"Oh!"

"We can't afford to advertise!"

The light was gone.

In the pitch-black airlessness Herrick could feel Christina kneeling

against him, quiet but for the broken breathing that told him she was

still afraid of the dark. As he put his left arm round her shoulders she

pressed her cold cheek to his hand.

"It's funny, isn't it? We never even had time to get an

engagement-ring!--Here they come!"

A sound as of excited animals plunged through the groves about the

house; with tramplings and scufflings a great herd seemed to surge out

upon the vacant drive. As it confronted the empty automobile, the

tranquil terraces and the blank front of the locked house it paused,

uncertainly; then a high, prolonged whistle sounded, shorter whistles

responded from every stretch and nook of woodland and there fell again,

to the stupefaction of those within, a perfect silence.

This continued unbroken, baffling, interminable, inscrutable, and solid

as the walls of a cell. Christina in her endeavor for control gave a

slight, nervous cough, no more than a rough catch of the breath, such

as Herrick had heard her give many a time when their taxi skimmed too

close to a trolley in the safe, crowded, far-off streets. And with this

familiar little sound apprehension awoke in him, full-armed. The

merciful veil was torn from his imagination, his soul gaped to the

knowledge of death and of direr things that precede death. On the

instant all he had ever known of struggle changed; chivalry,

civilization, restraint, vanished like things that never were; if, at

that moment, the bodies of a hundred other women as sweet, as

defenseless, as tender as his love's had stood in her way he could have

set his heel upon them all to save her. Then, close at hand, as if from

somewhere within the wall, came the imperative, prolonged tingle of a

telephone!

They turned, dumbfounded, shaken with incredulous, mad hope. But whence

came it? Where was it? Christina stirred and slid to her feet; her dress

went whispering across the room; the men, not daring to leave their

posts, knew she must be feeling along the rear wall and still through

the darkness the telephone rang. Then she gave a low cry--a narrow door

in the glass paneling had slipped sideways so that she stretched her

hands into a kind of pantry; the instrument's shrill call was now

directly in her ears--"It's Nicola!"

The three questioning whispers sprang at her at once.

"He wants to speak to Mr. Ten Euyck."

Blankness answered. The ringing became more impatient.

"Take the message."

But no message was to be had. Nicola's party was at the boathouse, in

great trouble, in danger--never mind what! He wanted to speak to Mr. Ten

Euyck. "He says, 'Get him to pass me his word to shelter us or what will

you give--what will you give for news of Nancy Cornish?'"

"Tell him I, Kane, 'll buy his news."

Christina dropped back against the wall. "When he has spoken to Mr. Ten

Euyck."

Perhaps, in the helpless pause, the glassy face taking aim behind the

shutter smiled to itself in the dark. Before they had time to try if the

wire connected only with the boathouse, a single shot sprang from across

the drive.

There was a sharp crack and splintering, a hot puff on Christina's

cheek, and the shattered telephone hung crazily on the wall. The

besieging force had misinterpreted what seemed the reinforcement of the

world and used its best marksman. Having done so it was content and

reassumed its patient crouching. "Rifles!" cried the sheriff. "And yet

they don't attack!"

Kane peered through the broken slat and with a very grim expression drew

back for the others. "Look under the trees, there. Is it just dark? Or

is it dark with men?"

"Looks like Birnam Wood!" said Herrick.

It was that blackest hour before the morning when darkness takes on

weight and bulk so that the eye must carve a way through. But the

blazing dazzle of the entrance porch broke and distorted the besieging

dark, exaggerating, multiplying the forces that it held. Beyond the

brightness of the steps the stone and then the grassy terraces fell

indistinct and shallow to the lawns, beyond which, perhaps a hundred

feet away, the drive was rather known than discerned; twenty feet or so

farther still the wood lay shapeless and invisible but filled by the

monstrous darkness as close as with a great tide. There the most

straining eye could see nothing whatever; now and again the night came

alive with snapping twigs, every grove would wake and rustle; then not a

leaf would stir. But through all the intermediate borderland shadows

seemed to loom, to creep, dissolve and disappear; then to their more

accustomed eyes these shadows began to take on form--they were the

shadows of softly moving men, individuals and small groups, unknown

persons on unknown errands which carried them here and there but closer

and closer about the house. "Queer the boys upstairs don't spot them!"

One group passed so close to the end windows that Kane fired at it and

produced a commotion which he followed by another shot. There was no

response, but from all directions the fringe of figures drew nearer, a

crouching, irregular line behind its faggot-like shields of broken

boughs. The defenders spent their shots recklessly, now, for the same

thought was in all their minds; it seemed to take form from its own

apprehension when, as the invaders drew back their wounded, those within

became aware of something across the tree-tops, down toward the river; a

ruddier dusk, a glow that was not morning, far against the sky.

Close at their backs Christina's voice murmured with an icy softness,

"The boathouse! It's afire!" Her tone told Herrick that the telephone

had stolen all her weakness, she was strung like a bow; side by side

with his her glance strained out and forward as the knots of men

continued to advance with velvet stealth. The fire of the defenders

ceased. Automatically, for they had nothing left to fire with. "What's

become of my fellows?" Sheriff Buckley wondered. The first foam of the

tide began to lap the terraces. Christina looked beyond it toward the

flames that flared on the horizon. And from that way Herrick, too, heard

a new sound, the thudding of a horse galloping clumsily on soft turf.

The shadows blotted themselves to the ground. The hoofbeats began to run

amuck as though the horse had lost its rider. Hither and yon round the

corners of the house shapeless movements hurried, there came the step of

a heavy runner and the cursing of a deep voice in some Italian patois.

The long, single whistle darted out again and once more there fell that

motionless waiting of the profoundly brooding night. It was Christina

who first said, "Some one else is in this room!"

As they listened they, too, could hear the sound of crawling. Something

was creeping into the room. It was coming through the pantry door which

Christina had left open and it advanced with a dragging sound as a

wounded beast drags on its stomach. Kane, dropping on it, found his

hands in a man's hair. The man sank under him with a deathly groan and

now it was Kane who called for a candle. "Nicola!" Christina breathed.

He was making horrible motions with his mouth; Christina found some

unspilled wine and thrust the edge of the glass between his lips. "Tell

me! Nancy--?"

Kane held up his hand. Beyond, in the pantry, a step sounded--backing

from Nicola's trail. Herrick and the sheriff dragged in between them a

tall Sicilian whose triangular knife was still wet. The embroidered

table-cloth with which they bound him to the piano strained under his

renewed efforts to attack the dying man whom Christina still entreated,

"Is she with my sister? Is she?"

A hoarse sob raged through Nicola and gasped past his last grin of pride

and hate. "You fool of hers! Fool of us all! _Your_ sister? _My_ sister,

mine! You think _you_ ever have a sister like that?"

The girl stood above him, tranced and wide-eyed, with distended

nostrils; as she turned to Herrick a face which release and knowledge

were even then palely lighting the figure of a man darted into the

gallery where Herrick had lain; a slim, soft man whose pretty little

face was all flecked and sweated with the insane hate and courage which

come of insane fear. The Sicilian greeted what he took for reinforcement

with a cry of triumph and encouragement; but it was not Nicola, it was

Herrick at whom this tremulous assassin, yelling "Spy! Spy! Will you

show me again to the Camorra?" extended his revolver. At the same

moment, Nicola, turning on his side and aiming upward, shot him dead.

The slim, soft figure doubled over the rail and the refined, pretty,

convulsed face swung there with open mouth. At this Nicola spat the wine

which he had sucked as he lay: "Thus my sister salutes thee!" Then his

head knocked back upon the floor and he lay still.

The tall Sicilian, who had watched the action without fully

understanding the quick English words, now strained forward, peering

with a kind of gratified thirst into Christina's face. He said to her in

Italian that was almost a whisper, "You are very fair!"

"Do you think that is news to me?" asked the girl, with a kind of fury.

"But my fairness has done all it can! What's to do, now?"

"You are fair. But you are the devil. You brought police to the river,

who will return with more. You have plunged this night in the blood of

your brothers. There was one who was like a little sister. Where is

she?"

Christina started; half in appeal, half in defense against the omen of

his tones, she stretched out her hands. The Sicilian lowered his mouth

to the bosom of his shirt and brought forth in his teeth a little hoop

of silver which he shook before Christina's eyes. "Where is she now? Of

her tokens _she has lost the third_!" It was Nancy's bracelet that he

dropped at Christina's feet.

"Devil of fine fairness," he said, "I shall pick it up again, when you

are lying low! When not one shot is left for our hurt we there, without,

will come quietly in! Then shall I bear this to my chief. I took it from

the hand of Beppo, who lay bleeding in the grass. Were Chigi and Pepe

caught in the fire? They reached her late, for they had rowed their boat

back, to escape those policemen on the river. Only when Alieni jumped

and swam they must follow him and tramp to the house for boats along the

shore. But they reached her! I was against it always--she was not of our

nation. Ah, she was pretty! Had you not let her know too much she need

not have been put to sleep!"

Christina made no outcry. If his attack on herself bewildered her, her

imagination caught the significance of the Camorrist phrase. "Where,"

asked she slowly, "does she sleep?"

"In the dead ashes of the house of boats." His malignant sneer took in

the stricken, threatened group, as well as his own bondage. And turning

once more to Christina he smilingly informed her, "I seek in the house

for boats Nicola Pascoe. I hear him talking as at a telephone. They have

brought a lamp and in the window I see a pretty girl, young and not so

tall, with a face very sweet but sick and the hair falls curling and

red. She has in her hands a tiny bottle filled with a dark liquid. She

throws it from the window where it fills the air with laudanum smell.

And at that up runs to her Nicola--and she, away! They must have knocked

over the lamp, for next the house for boats is blazing high. And, as the

smoke comes in the window, there she runs again--just as I see the

woman's figure and in the fiery smoke one light of her red hair at that

out from the bushes a bullet springs. She clasps her hands over her

breast with a small cry and down she sinks. And Alieni flies out of the

bushes with Beppo and Chigi and Pepe at his back and he races into the

flaming house. It is after that down plunges Nicola, down and past us,

running here to this place, and I follow him, sure that past him I shall

come, too, upon his sister. Before we reach here, through the dark,

comes a horse with two men on its back--one is yelling 'I have killed

her! I have killed her!' and he passes. The other falls off. It is

Beppo, who dies at my feet, giving me the bracelet. He had it from

Pepe, the Parmesan, whom he saw meet with Alieni in the doorway of the

house for boats. By this time all, everywhere, is fighting and the house

for boats blows up in a puff and falls in upon itself in crumbling

fire."

Christina had never taken her eyes from his face and in those eyes alone

there now seemed any life to hold her body upright. "It's not true!"

said she, gently and at length. "Life's not so silly!" But she stretched

out a blind hand to Herrick and leaned on him a little.

"Ah!" mocked the Sicilian, "it made a beautiful grave! You will not have

so fine! But yours gapes for you now as well as for your lover, and for

your husband, who caused all the death! Do not pity the girl who died.

Exult not over Giuseppe Gumama. Read, instead, the writing in your

golden pistol--of Alieni--and the Signora Alieni--" He stopped with a

gratified gasp. The handle of the door into the hall had been softly

turned from the outside.

No one moved. In a strange voice the sheriff called to know if this were

one of his men. There was no answer. "Where are they? Why don't they--"

Gumama the Sicilian laughed aloud. "The long cellar-way, where by night

we carried out to the river our broken press--It has let us in--so

quietly--Many went upstairs--"

Herrick translated. With one impulse the three men turned toward the

slide in the paneling. It was closed. But their intent listening made

sure of more than one soft touch, straying in search of the mechanism.

Of crowding whispers they could not be so sure. Herrick reached for

Nicola's gun. But it had only one charge and then, indeed, though

without turning her head, Christina closed her hand on his and took it

from him. "That's mine, you know!" No man gainsaid her and she put it in

her breast. Undisguised, unhurried footsteps sounded overhead. An alien

presence pervaded all that house. Caged in their shelter, they drew

together, close under the balcony. Christina suffered herself to be

drawn with them, but she was considering aloud the Sicilian's words.

"My golden pistol!" Christina looked from the little femininely jeweled

dummy to the script, "'Filippi Alieni and all his house'--And all his

house! 'The death of traitors'--My husband, you say? The Signora

Alieni--A. A. A. Alieni, of course! But--Allegra?--Allegra?--Alieni?"

"Signora Alieni!" Gumama smilingly repeated.

The girl gave him one glance, sprang past him and flung herself against

the shuttered windows. "Whom do you mean by traitors?" she called. "For

whom do you take us? Answer! Answer!"

At the sound of her voice a deep-bayed, many-throated yell roared out

derision and victory. As the men dragged Christina back a coarse laugh

mocked loudly from across the road. "Signora Alieni, we rejoice at the

last to salute you!" And the whole woodland took up his phrase in

chorus, "Buona sera, Signora Alieni!"

Then, uncontrollably, at length the darkness volleyed, the earth was

rived with sound and fire, the flashes of it scorching their skin while

glass, plaster, woodwork, split and spattered round them as through the

windows the hail beat.

CHAPTER VI

THE DARKEST HOUR: "OF WOUNDS AND SORE DEFEAT I MADE MY BATTLE STAY!"

Christina's stream of Italian left Herrick so far behind that he could

only watch the incredulity of Gumama's face turn to doubt and then to

reflection. The word "American" was often repeated, and then came

Gumama's slower answer, puzzling out the question--But was not the

Signora Alieni herself much American? Did not she to-night meet here in

this house her brother Nicola? And was she not to run away at sunrise

with--and he pointed to Herrick--an American? And how well was it not

known that the Signora Alieni was bella, bella donna?--"Bella--bella!"

with mounting fervor he violently repeated.

"But you, yourself? You never saw her?"

"The Signora Alieni goes always veiled."

"Are there none--out there--who know her?"

"Old friends ten years ago in Naples. And the laborers of Nicola."

"When they come, they will know at once she is not here," said

Christina, with an odd, proud calm. "Ah, please, let me see what they

are about!" And she persistently advanced to a window and peered between

the slats of a blind.

Blackness was lifting from the earth. That clear gray light, clearer and

grimmer than ever they had seen it, of the slowly rising dawn had begun

to fill the open spaces. Under the trees it was still a dusk of living

shadows, and, from within the house, the half-muffled, surrounding

pressure strained closer still against the walls. Christina faced

round, uttered a piercing shriek and pointed toward the panel. To this,

the men who watched her turned. And on the instant, the shutters

clicking as she flung them open, the girl flashed through and ran

straight into the dawn on the white terrace. "You who know Allegra

Alieni, am I she? Am I she?"

A wail of amazement and denial greeted her. The men within, the men

without, came to a standstill.--"If you ever loved me," said Christina

to Herrick, "keep back from me, now!" He replied only by swinging

forward Gumama, who thereupon stood in the sight of his friends with the

mute argument of a revolver at his head. Not a voice replied. But not a

shot was fired.

In the pause produced by the concerned and puzzled hesitation of the

besiegers, Christina gathered up her voice. She was used to send it far,

to hush and rouse with it, to pierce and move at will, and neither

misery nor fatigue seemed now to have weakened its flexible and winning

melody. "Sirs," cried the girl, "I ask you the one thing. Are you not

here as the executioners of the great Camorra? Do you, then, wish to

disobey?"

She had centered upon herself a bewildered stare.

"And do you not disobey if you blunder? Do you wish to bring all the new

world about your ears for the wrong thing? Believe me, we four, we are

strong persons in that world--we do not fall unavenged! If we are to die

here, now, and the great society of the Camorra is to wreck itself upon

our death, let it not be in a mistake!--Ah, you see! Believe me! We are

not false brethren of yours, we are Americans, every one! But in a way

you and I are brethren, for I, like you, have seen my heart's good faith

betrayed--and by the same hand!"

A startled murmur rose.

"I, too, was brought to come here by the ruin of my life through

Allegra Alieni! Of her husband I never knew. Only hold back the force

that masses at our door and here is a plan. We are here four--three men

and a woman. Send us four men--mask them, if you will--and let them look

at us close and well; they will see that we cannot be those whom you

seek. But we have with us the body of Nicola whom this one here, calling

himself Giuseppe Gumama, slew, and who was brother to the Alienis. Let

your men take this Nicola from our house, for we, no more than you, have

any use for traitors!"

These words produced an extraordinary effect. A murmur of admiration, of

fellowship, exclamations, argument, a sort of congratulation traversed

the green spaces through the still strengthening dawn. Christina, as

always, had found her audience.

"Oh, sirs," cried the girl, in a softer cadence, advancing to the very

edge of the terrace, and still eagerly baring her face to the pale

light, "you seek our lives and I am so weary I am almost glad to die.

But die or live, oh, now, for the dear love of God, let me go down to

the river! Let me see who is still alive there! Send whom you will with

me, but let me go!" And Christina stretched out her arms to the men of

the Camorra as to the brothers of her soul and for the moment they were

all more than her brothers in their inflammable hearts.

But even a little noise could still distract them. And this time it was

the noise of the unhinged shutter as it slid, bumping, for a second and

then fell with a crash upon the terrace. In the half-light Ten Euyck's

hand, holding a pistol, was visible at the window and above it the white

leer of his face. Voices cried, "A fourth man! A man of whom she did not

tell!"

A prisoner from the yellow farmhouse called out in an insufferable,

fawning yelp, "I know him! He used to visit the signora! He is the

confidant of the signora and of her brother!"

A roar rose and drowned out Christina's voice. "That man--how comes he

there! The friends of Allegra Alieni are her friends!"

The crowd did not advance for the ring of Herrick's gun was still

pressed against Mr. Gumama's beautiful brow. But some shrill voice rose,

a-quiver with exhorting hate. "The hour is come! For what have we

waited? Till they had not a shot left! They have none now! If they had

they would have shot Gumama when he came in! They do not shoot him,

now--they have nothing to shoot! Give the signal! They hid the friend of

Allegra Alieni behind the window--how shall they tell us her friends are

not their friends? How shall they tell us they can injure our Gumama?

Close in! Close in!"

The tide of the Camorra washed forward, and surged up the first terrace.

But it came to a halt.

"How?" Christina had cried. And then, extending the revolver that

carried the last shot, she had fired straight into the dead face of Ten

Euyck.

The jar shattered that perilous equilibrium. The corpse fell in upon

itself, its weapon dropping with a clank, the tongue suddenly protruding

beneath the shattered cheekbones and the head goggling on the breast.

The note of one still unaffrighted bird came through the perfect

stillness.

The invading army shivered, shocked and applausive; then,

apprehensively, it glanced at Gumama. It drew together in consulting

knots. Some men, coming from round the house, joined the counsel and

created a sensation. A puzzled but now rather friendly voice shouted,

"Some one lies! Alieni was seen to enter where you are!"

They all looked at Christina. But the wire had snapped at last. She

stood with a scared vagueness on her white face, the pistol swinging

loose in her hand and her eyes fixed on the hunched clutter of what had

been Ten Euyck. Herrick made out to translate the message and Kane said,

"Ask 'em if they'll send up that investigating committee?"

Christina's shot had made, however, too great an impression. If they had

ammunition to spare, they were no hosts for the Camorra. Would the

Americans come out, each one, upon the second terrace?--bringing, also,

the dead and wounded, till Gumama shall tell us there are no more?

"When the devil drives--! Say we'll begin with the dead!"

They began with Ten Euyck. Sheriff Buckley took the head, Kane the feet;

the long, bony figure sagged between them and the tails of its

dress-coat flopped as if pointing jocularly toward the ground. As they

bore this burden down the terraces and laid it on the smooth greenness

of the lawn, amid the ever brightening daylight and the ever growing

chirp and twitter of the slowly calming birds, various disheveled

figures began to hurry into view along the drive from the river. These

arrivals had all the air of refugees and continued to excite, in

counsel, an increasing perturbation. Yet the truce remained unbroken. So

long as Kane and Buckley, exposed, defenseless, to the first marksman,

carried forth Nicola no word nor movement was given in enmity. But the

delay in reaching the figure in the gallery produced great restiveness.

Taunts and outcries of nervous impatience gave way, when the two men

appeared with their slighter burden, to a chorus of half-derisive

welcome. The Camorra had begun to be in a hurry.

Its nervousness communicated itself to the men who bore this third body

down the great stone steps and laid it at Ten Euyck's right hand. A

thick sweat stood out upon them when a sharp storm of curses, geysers

and downpours of venom broke suddenly from heavens and earth. But the

tempest was not for them. The face of their last burden had become

visible to the advance guard stationed among the foremost trees and this

now leaned violently forth, tossing like branches with the shriek,

"Alieni! Traditore! Alieni!"

Upon that the shadow of the woodland broke at last. A dozen men, their

hats screened low to shield their faces, detached themselves from the

mass which crouched greedily after them and, racing out upon the lawn,

threw themselves prostrate on the soft, supine thing that lay there.

Behind them the tide became ungovernable; rose, swelled forward; covered

the road, the lowest terrace; raving, shrieking, leaping and falling;

biting the grass upon which it rolled in frenzy. There were perhaps two

minutes of pandemonium. Then a whistle sounded. Then another. The tide

rolled back; the groves of oak and pine and maple swallowed it into

their shadow; and of that orgy of living hate no trace remained in the

full clearness of the fresh morning but the trampled, mangled body of

Filippi Alieni, pierced with fifty-eight wounds and still bearing

between the shoulder blades a triangular knife. The will of the Camorra

was satisfied.

A chorus of whistles sounded from the wood. Then arose a single voice,

demanding Gumama. His captors realized that the war was over; the

prisoner was released. Despite the hurrying bird-calls of his mates he

paused, thoughtfully knitting his Saracen brows, for a look at

Christina.

The girl was standing perfectly still, with her eyes intent upon Ten

Euyck's empty chair, as if she had not observed his removal; her gaze

was fixed, but her lower lip strained and quivered. As Gumama paused the

pistol slid from her hand; the noise of its dropping at her feet

attracted her eyes; she shivered violently; broke into trembling mirth

and sank, till her soft cheek and the convulsive throbbing of her young

body lay pressed upon the stone. Herrick and Gumama both sprang to her.

Herrick lifted her head upon his knee, but she lay limp and shook from

head to foot with sobbing laughter.

Gumama shrugged and stood back. "Is it," he asked, "the silver

bracelet?" Then they all saw that the bracelet snatched from Nancy was

on Christina's wrist.

Herrick nodded; his soul was sick with that horror. There was no

triumph, now, in victory.

"Tell her," said the tall Sicilian, "when she avenges her friend to

think of me. I will come. Always. She is the pearl of everything. All

would not see it. But I have the piercing eye. I see."

He ran off swiftly; and the sort of uproarious twitter which welcomed

him under the trees ended in a final message. "Farewell, Americans. You

do us the courtesy of our beloved Gumama! We do you our courtesy--Flee!

Whoever you are, the policemen are upon you! They are coming from the

gate, they are coming from the river! In ten minutes they will be here!

Americans, farewell!"

It was the last word of the Camorra in their lives. The undergrowth of

the wood seemed to grow scantier; it was the backward fading of the

shadows, it was the passing of a great, black bulk; the disappearance of

innumerable unknown persons whom they had never even seen, of whose

existence they had never even known, out of their path. Nothing remained

but the signaling whistles of the Camorra, gathering its children in its

retreat. The thing was over. The last consequence of the Ingham murder,

of the birth of the Hopes' first child twenty-eight years ago in Naples,

was over and done. And the three men regarded each other with a strange

feeling of vacancy.

But in the mouths of Kane and the sheriff the morning air was good and

life ran sweet in their veins. Even to Herrick, with the exhausted girl

laughing and shuddering in his arms, there seemed to rise a kind of

future hope when forgetfulness should deal tenderly with her. Soon she

must begin to weep and the other side of weeping a kind of consolation

lies. "Why, her own youth and life must heal her!" Kane said. "It's

hard, it's bitter hard! But there's her feeling for you, her future, her

work--Don't look at her as if she were dying! Time, my boy, she needs

time, that's all!--As for Nancy Cornish, she fell with one shot. And

since she was so much in love with that poor fellow, believe me, she's

better off!"

Herrick looked up in alarm, lest Christina should hear bad news. But she

was lost in the hot surge of tears that had come to her at last and lay

only quieter and quieter in his hold. Till at length, since there was a

time coming when she must know if Fate had played her doubly false, he

fetched a coat to put under her head and drew Kane aside. "You meant

just now--?"

"I meant what I've had on my mind through all this night, as something

with which I didn't know how to face Miss Hope. I meant that this chap

Denny was never a very lucky fellow--"

"_Was?_"

"But that never was anything unluckier than his consenting to leave the

Tombs."

"Because they followed and brought him back?"

"They followed. But they didn't bring him back!--I forgot you wouldn't

know. The Italians somehow palmed off on Ten Euyck's men another Italian

made up with the things in which they took Denny from the Tombs. It's

easy enough to understand now why Ten Euyck, with discreet mercy, called

this substitute simply a mistake and let him go." He paused, studying

the driveway with clouded eyes. "The Italians must have got clear away

with Denny, but why did they take so much pains? Were they really going

to hand over to Allegra a man whom they certainly considered in some

way their enemy, when already they must have begun to turn against her?

What were they going to do with him? What _did_ they try to do with him

when he was first imprisoned in the Tombs? Don't groan, my boy! It's the

one way out. It's the most merciful thing for that poor girl, there;

it's the most merciful thing for Denny himself. Hope for it! If his

captors didn't get away, if he's been retaken with them, then marry

Christina Hope as fast as may be and get her out of this country for

awhile. You understand?" Herrick looked up. "I intend, with all my

strength, to keep my bargain. I'll go to the Governor to-morrow. But he

let me know, as I was starting here, that it would be useless."

"After his promise?"

"Since that promise Denny broke jail. There are minds to which such a

move is always the unpardonable sin! Against it the mere justifying

provocation in any story Allegra Alieni may tell could make no appeal.

Besides, it's told by a woman who was in love with him, and who, by this

time, is either dead or run away. So must be every witness to it. Even

as evidence against the blackmailers, if there are any left, Miss Hope

can't force the state to sell her his life for this, now. Well, some

day, perhaps, you can make her see that whatever happens, police or

Camorra, he managed to get his way, poor chap! If she weren't fooled by

life's being hope she would see, well enough, that he was the last man

to thank her for a light sentence. He was keen against jail, you

remember?"

They were both silent. Yes, Herrick remembered. "The best friend

Christina ever had" she would surely some day see could not have

lingered in the black durance that he loathed.--Rest, rest, perturbed

spirit!

It was the hour for resolution, for new birth. Herrick felt a strength

of pity in his breast whose tide should lift Christina from the

whirlpools of which the lessening eddies still plucked at her sick soul.

Poor girl, poor, brave, spoiled, wilful, imperious, generous heart! To

have fought so hard and to be checked thus at the end! To have

outwatched, outstalked, outrun the hounds for this! "Thus far shalt thou

go...." Hers had been a heroic presumption, but it had been presumption

all the same. You cannot outface consequences nor outdare natural

tragedy; no, not even you, Christina Hope! After all, could she have

expected to clear out from a morass like this without a loss? Ah, for

her defeat he suffered, but for her safety he thanked God! Rest, time,

the irrevocable--these in the end would place the past under her feet.

Was it because she read the tender vowing of his thought that she had a

little ceased to weep?

For she lifted her exhausted face, where the wild, wet eyes still seemed

to listen, just as Herrick remembered their continual guard six weeks

ago. She was listening to those chorusing signals, still whistled from

far stations nearer road and river and returned in such imitation of

bird voices that bird after bird replied. They were growing

fainter--they were retreating on every hand--all but one, which seemed

to advance and to give forth a more familiar note. And suddenly

Christina answered it.

Herrick caught her closer, in a new terror of delirium. The girl rose to

her knees and put him back. "But we've wandered many a weary foot--"

From among the fleeing whistles of the wood one had certainly warned or

questioned in articulate notes with which hers joined in a familiar

bar--"Since auld lang syne, my dear--" Through the colorless day a

strong yellow light had begun to flood the earth; the clouds were carved

out sharp in it, the woods stood black; the light had a blush of happy

fire and the air sparkled. In that cool radiance, in that bright hour,

out from among the very waves of the Camorra's receding sea, a single

figure stepped from the border of the wood and came straight up the

terraces.

Not so tall as Mr. Gumama but still vaguely Sicilian in cut, the

messenger or fugitive or whatever he might be advanced under the gaze of

those who grew terribly pale and could not speak; Christina peering

forward, shaking from head to foot, her clenched hands hanging at her

side and her lips caught between the knocking of her teeth. The echoing,

ominous whistles, the noises of rescue approaching from two sides, the

hails of the police, the sound of wheels, tires, horses' hoofs and

running feet did not deter the single figure which, mounting with a kind

of steady stumble, like one far spent, blind, now, to the danger of

sudden bullets, indifferent to arrest or punishment or anything in

heaven or earth but his own ends, gained at length the foot of the stone

steps and lifted his face. At the same instant the risen sun glinted on

the swinging gold of sailors' earrings, on the bracelet slipped out

below a ragged cuff, on the red cord of a scapular and on the scarf in

the Sicilian colors that had helped to play their part in the Duel by

Wine in the loft above the garage. The wearer was damp from the river

and stained with earth, yet smelling of singed cloth and grimed with

smoke; torn, wounded, blackened, haggard, with bright, steady eyes. It

was Will Denny. He carried the unconscious but still breathing figure of

Nancy Cornish in his arms.

* * * * *

The first thing she woke to was Allegra's letter and Kane's question,

"Do you know what this document contains? Can you witness its truth?"

And then answered Nancy Cornish, "Of course I can! I saw her come out in

Christina's cloak. They kept me waiting in the motor outside while she

shot Mr. Ingham."

CHAPTER VII

THE SHADOW'S FACE: BEING ALSO THE FULL STORY OF THE SHADOW'S FLIGHT

The whole of Allegra's document was never made public. Before it was

read even by those concerned they heard from Nancy how, when she had run

from the window of the boathouse, it was Allegra who had reappeared

there, she whose red hair Gumama had glimpsed through the smoke and she

whom Alieni had found courage to shoot. Afterwards they got from Denny

the story of his venture: how he had guessed that, on leaving the Tombs,

he would, in his own person, be kept a prisoner by his Italian hosts

till he was got out of the country; and how he had therefore persuaded

Filippi Alieni to change places with him--Filippi to be carried to

Allegra and he to receive at the meeting of the Camorra a message that

would take him to Nicola, to the hiding of the Arm of Justice and to

Nancy Cornish. What must forever sicken Denny to think of was that hour

in the boathouse when Nancy might have yielded and taken the laudanum

that Mrs. Pascoe had finally secured, before he could get to her.

Nancy's eyes were upon him, regarding him fixedly and strangely. With

the vividness of his remembrance he broke off to question her. "How, at

such a time, among such dangers, did you dare to throw it away?"

"Why, I had to! No matter what! I had to live till the last minute. The

letter was gone. I was your life. I was the only one who knew!"

He dropped his face into her lap with a strange laugh. By and by, they

turned to the story of Allegra.

That great donkey of a Ten Euyck wishes me to write this. He says it is

for his protection, but I know well enough what it is for. It is a net

to catch a peacock--to whom he is welcome. He will never bray about

me--this is two-edged; it would avenge me. It is a pity none will ever

read it, for it is a good story and I should like every one to know

about me. Then, too, sometimes, I almost think that when I am far away

and sheltered with my friends, I will send word of it to high places for

_his_ sake. For I shall be always in torment if they kill him. That is,

if by then there shall be no Nancy Cornish. To send him, free, to the

arms of another woman--no, that would be a little too much!

I am a remarkable girl. It has taken to crush me the same as to crush

Napoleon--bad luck. My bad luck began when I was born, with the two

colors of my eyes. Thus a mark was put upon me, keeping me always in

holes and corners unless I would be known, and making most men, who love

me by nature, growing in time to weary of my face. If it had not been

for the blue eye and the brown, my mother would never have noticed,

among the children in the park, the American baby with the fair down

upon its head who, when she came to look at it, was made with a shaped

face like mine, and who also had a brown eye and a blue. She would never

have made friends with the nurse and learned how the child was named

Allegra Hope, and how the rich Americans had been married but four

months before it was born, and were to wait in Italy till it could be

brought home a year younger than it was. This the nurse had picked up,

not being supposed to speak much English. And then came the telegram to

come home, somebody was dying. And at the same time the nurse was sick,

and there was no one with whom to leave the child. And then the nurse

brings forth her friend who has always showed so fond of the child, and

there is rejoicing because she is American, and the English doctor says

she is healthy and the child is left with her. It is treated well; it

grows; it grows more and more like me, who am but one year the older, so

that all laugh to see us, and I am more like that other mother than my

own, showing in what class it would have been just I should be born. And

the old creature in America does not die, but hangs and hangs, and money

is always sent for the baby, and by and by when it is three years old it

catches the fever and it dies. And the English doctor is to write to the

parents, but he does not write--he does an injury to one of the great

clan of the Camorra and he writes no more. And I grow every day more

beautiful, more strong, more strange to have sprung out of the mud, and

the money keeps coming and coming; but that the dead one was fair in the

head, and I am red like the sun, there is no great difference from what

she might have been, and that she is dead and buried and the money spent

and spent on me, is never told. But they there in America, thinking to

be gone but a month at most, never said there was a daughter, so they

know not how, now, one is to be produced.

So that when I am seven years old, comes the Hope man; he looks upon the

child with the blue eye and the brown, and sighs his great breath on my

hair, and takes me to the English school. But I come every summer to my

own people, so that I have all that is best of both kinds, and grow to

be so beautiful and have such fascination, that when there comes

sometimes a Hope father or Hope mother to take me on a trip and be sorry

for me, I laugh at their backs! The mother I do not like, and she does

not like me. She is a fool, and she has, too, another child. It is a

girl and it is said to be pretty; but the picture she carries with her

resembles a pale, shapeless child with dull hair,--not like mine that

burns men's hearts like fire! Moreover this child has things that I

should have, more money, more fuss, she is more shown. I am proud to be

what I am; my mother, who is scarcely more than a common servant, had

the great luck to marry into the Camorra, and my brother Nicola at

eighteen takes the oath, so I am not come alone from dull peasants and

these cackling Yankees, but from free men, born to judge, born to

strike, born to live wild and to satisfy their blood. But all the same,

as to this brat, Christina, I am the elder sister and I should have all,

_all_! I make up my mind to be even with her and to spoil what things

she has. I hear how she is strange, and is a lonely child, and plays she

has a sister to talk to, a little girl who lives in the looking-glass;

and how it is a game of hers that when she is in a gown of pink the

sister is in blue, and when they buy her a doll there is another for the

sister, and a place set at the dolls' teas, and Christina talks for the

two. Then I know she is a fool, like her mother.

When I am fifteen, and of the right age for passion and to break men's

hearts, my bad luck comes and breaks my own. It could not leave me with

the poor to be like the poor, it raised me up so that my nose sniffed at

sight of them, and then it brought me together with Alonzo Pasquale, the

son of a millionaire. He was mad for me, and well he might be, and I

liked him so well, being young and fanciful, that I gave him

encouragement. I ran away from school with him and we would have been

happy forever, he having so much to give me, but that he grew weary of

my blue eye and my brown. He told me so, for he was a dog and a devil,

and I took little Filippi Alieni, and married him! It was wise. It was

as well to be married, and he was a gentleman, with money. All was done

as a wise girl should do, and yet see how my luck pursued me!

His people cast him off, on my account, their own daughters being ugly;

and Nicola, who has been the best of brothers to me, Nicola got him

into the Camorra, where his gentlemanly manners would make him able to

get, first, confidence, and then money, from the best.

Yet when I had been but three months married and was not yet sixteen, he

gets himself caught. And in prison he tells, he betrays his comrades, so

that he is released, and for this Nicola does not kill him. No, he keeps

the secret of that disgrace, and ships us to America, where I am to

introduce my husband to the Hopes. All so well planned, and yet such

luck!

One of those to whom he had confessed loses his place, and then, by

blackmail, that he will give my husband's treachery to the Camorra, he

gets from him all the money that he now has. So that I have to lose him

quickly; to take the little, ah, so little! there is left, and slip

away! I do not wish a Camorra knife in my back!

I am afraid to go to the Hopes, for there he will follow me, and he is a

snivelling, watering thing to make a fuss and spoil all. So I ask for

work to teach Italian, and I live for a little while as if I were quite

commonplace. And so I meet with the great Jim.

Hail and farewell, my poor Jim! You were only twenty-three and you cared

too much! You did so many things for me, you thought such things about

me, and were of such a considerate politeness and care, it made me

laugh! But you were a beautiful lover, and I would have loved you, if I

could! I would have been glad to marry you, as you made me so weary

begging of me. I was very happy with you; you gave more to me and I

think you loved me better than any one. But you were very silly to

believe me, and silly to leave me when you found me out! That little

whimpering puppy came; and, since you left me, and he had a good hint

from Nicola how to get money from an Italian family here, what was I to

do? We did very well, for a while, besides the money the Hopes sent

me--I told them I came here to escape impertinence and was teaching

Italian--and then they lost their money and I wrote to them no more.

But Mrs. Hope, because of her sick conscience, was always trying, in sly

ways, to find where I was. And it seems when her brat was come to

fourteen years old it chanced upon my last letter and learned all.

Heavens, what a row it raised! And how I was written to and written to;

and some letters being forwarded me that they had tried sending me to

Italy, were all about how she cried for me, and pitied and loved me and

rejoiced, and said, again and again: "Oh, mother, I have a sister! I

have a sister!" "Bene!" I thought, "she sounds like a tiresome little

minx; but at least it is a thing to know!"

So that by and by--when Filippi is clumsy again and goes to jail for

four years, and they dare to put me there for two--when I come out I go

to my sentimental miss, who is now more than sixteen and makes already a

little money. Not a dollar has she made since but I have had the half of

it. She has no frugality; she is all luxuries and caprices and always in

debt; and for a while it seemed as if really she would be scarcely of

any use at all. But it is strange how pale she is, and yet attracts and

shoots onward! Since then I have found a letter about those two years

when I was silent. She wrote it to Will Denny, who thought she did too

much for me. Like this:

"As I grew up and understood, and saw what little girls can come to

in a world like this, I thought here was I and where was she?--My

elder sister, born in wedlock, born of my father and my mother,

grown up among peasants, among hardships, and if she had come to

harm, lost, thrown away, forsaken and denied--for what? For any

fault of hers? For a convention, a cowardice, done in obedience to

the chatter of fools and in order to stand well with those that

have no hearts! What can I think of my poor mother but that her

weakness forsook and denied her child to please the world? What can

I think of any shame or sorrow that touches Allegra but that this

is what the world and her own family have made of her? Oh, Will, it

came to be my madness to find her and to ask her forgiveness for

being in her place. All that I am and have and ever shall be I

stole from her, and only give her back again to repay what can

never in this world be repaid!"

You see, she was a crazy girl from the beginning. As soon as ever I see

her I know the thing to tell her is that I have been in prison for

stealing--I do not tell her I am innocent; I tell her I was starving! It

was funny to see her--I was like a saint to her! I think of all I can

that is piteous and wild and of a great pride, broken, like a sick

eagle! I tell her about Ingham, but all wrong and round the other way,

and how he cannot marry me because I am without money or place, and

leaves me, when I am eighteen, without a dollar and without a name. And

how when that had come to a young girl I could not write. All, all

because society had kept me from my place in life and, having turned me

out, had locked me into jail because I could not starve.

Eh me, you should have seen her! She used herself like a maid to me, and

a mother and a little lover, all in one. And I might have done very well

with her, and the world would have been all for me to walk,--or this

little running colt, she would have known the reason!--but for my bad

luck. Nicola who would do better in this country with education wishes

me to work with him. And how can I guess the growing brat will grow so

far and high? So I am glad enough to make a little butter to my bread.

Try living once, three women, the Hope woman and Christina and me, off

the salary of a girl younger than eighteen and you will see. But who

would think that all the while this monkey girl was looking in the glass

of my grace, to steal and steal and steal from me? And would steal once

too often, for the moving-picture show, and gets herself into a corner!

That was, indeed, the justice of the gods.

All this time I have made Christina keep me secret. I have still the

brown and the blue eye, to be noticed everywhere, and I do not want

Filippi on my hands, nor yet Jim Ingham. And for all she begs me to know

this Denny, whom she persists to tell about me, I think he has a look

that is not simple--the look of a man who has been about, and may guess

too much--and so I will not--I am too sensitive and proud, and cannot

face a person in the world except my little sister, whom I love so much

and who is all I have! Except, I want the poor, devoted, kind, good folk

who brought me up! So when she is eighteen she begins to buy for me this

farm and here she welcomes my mother and Nicola. Nicola has found out

friends of ours and kinsfolk who have long run, among people of our

nation in New York, a business called the Arm of Justice, and we work

for that; I having the best ideas, but, alas, ever doomed to hide. And

on the farm we live in innocence and peace, and conduct our business

excellently, out of the way of those from whom we make a little money,

and here comes at last the sick puppy, Filippi, not to be kept off, who

can but sit quiet and lick his paws in the background, that Christina

shall not know of him.

And then, it is the first year of Ten Euyck being coroner, and a man who

has been paying us, unfortunately, dies, and Ten Euyck, nosing, nosing,

he comes upon our trail. And he sees how we have had nothing to do with

the death, only the man had no more to pay and so he killed himself. And

Ten Euyck sends for me, and tells me he is sorry for me and he will not

inform against me. He tells me of a young girl he knows in the highest

of society, for whom a friend of his had so great a fancy he was ready

to marry her, and I knew he was that friend. And the girl dare not but

lead him on, but all the time she prefers some one else and is in

trouble; and he tells me all he has found out and he says, "I would not

tell this to you, if I did not think you grateful to me and too discreet

to use it otherwise than as I wish, when you know liberty is in my

hand!" So I know what I am to do, and the girl goes mad. And he pays me

by and by, but not enough. But what can I do?

We are going mad, too, for money, for our bad luck is always there! That

man who made Filippi pay has found us out, and exacts of us more and

more. We are in terror of the law from Ten Euyck, who has let none see

him but me, and not one strand to hold him by, and of the Camorra from

this brute. We work hard, we run great danger, and we remain poor, so

that if we lose Christina we have nothing but what we must make and pay

away--and Christina engages herself to Ingham! Was it not enough to

break the heart! What use is it to work, to struggle, to be beautiful,

and to have nothing? And here is this silly girl, not worth my little

finger, who has all!

Three times more I work for Ten Euyck, and that man Kane gets after us.

It is all the fault of Ten Euyck, who has made us conspicuous, and he

knows Kane thinks there is something strange, and he loses his nerve. He

comes always to the farm like a caller, when I have sent all away but

me, for he will put nothing in writing, and he drives his own machine.

And one day he is raging against Ingham and Christina, and what he would

give to know against them, any more than Ingham's dissipation, and I

think "Maybe I can make something out of this!"

By and by I rejoice to hear that there is trouble with Jim Ingham. He is

not the boy I found him. He has let himself go wild so long he cannot

tame himself, all at once, and then he is exacting, like a fiend, and

jealous and suspicious, not believing in himself, nor anything, nor

anybody; and I laugh to myself, if she should know why! For were there

nothing else at all, it would annoy me that chit should marry him! But I

am pleased, and in that moment I let her bring out to me her Will Denny

and her Nancy Cornish. And so I spoil my life and break my heart, and do

not know myself with love.

I have come to be twenty-eight years old and nothing has counted. Then I

meet him, and nothing else can count. I say to myself that I will have

him, and I know it is not possible but I shall get him. But still he is

all eyes and ears for a rag of a girl, who is so sick with love she

knows not even how to charm. She knows nothing at all but to love him;

and to love him nicely--so that she would not make him unhappy, even to

hold him forever! It makes me ill to look at her, and still I cannot get

him to look at me. But I can make him seem to look at me. I can make him

ever with me, and amused by me, and of a manner a little sweet and

tender to me--the poor sister of Christina, whom he can see to be dying

on her feet for love of him. And the little rag of a girl sees how

beautiful I am and full of life and far above her every way and fit for

him, and knows no better than to grow pale and to keep out of the way,

and to be silent and cold with him. And he begins to be hurt and not to

follow her so hard, and then she finds me crying, crying. And at first I

will not tell, but then I say how I must go away, because I love him. By

and by I say that I would not have to go but I am afraid if I stay I

will steal him from her. And at last, very reluctant, I show her a

letter--for Nicola, who has done something in that line, too, was ever a

good brother to me and taught and helped me well, so that it was in

Will's hand. It said how he would never forsake Nancy, who loved him,

for she could not live without him, but I was brave and strong and he

must be so, too. It said how we were each other's mates, he and I, but

met too late, and his heart would be mine forever, but he could never

forsake nor pain his poor Nancy. Crack, she broke her engagement, the

little fool! Who never had scarcely been able to understand how he

should love her, as no more could I--and she shuts herself away from

him, and will not answer and will tell him nothing! Only, she's changed

her mind. And he says to Christina, "I am too old for her, and not so

gay!" And I see him tear up the photographs she has sent back, and sneer

at them, and say how God knows she could never have taken him for a

beauty! And oh, I am so kind to him! I am so gentle and so sad, and I

get new clothes and dress my hair, and always he can see me die of love.

And so there comes a day when he asks me if I would be afraid to take

the pieces of our lives and see what we could make of them together.--Ah

me! and to think it all had to be kept secret because I was still so

proud and sad! For bethink you, there was Filippi!

I think at last what a fool I am not to have divorced Filippi long ago!

Here I am, betrothed to marry and it is all to do yet! Long ago, had I

not been so soft-hearted, or had I thought of it, I might have been rid

of fearing the spy who threatens him with the Camorra, in being rid of

him. I wonder how much Filippi will take to set me free, and he makes a

horrible fuss and will take nothing at all! But his spy is begun all

fresh, killing him by inches with demands for five thousand dollars. And

he asks also five thousand, now, not to report Nicola who has remained

silent and a friend to us! It is all like a mad spider's web which but

entangles more and more. And I think I will get that ten thousand from

Ingham because I do not publish the story I have told Christina. Or else

from Ten Euyck, because I do.

I send the Arm of Justice letter to Ingham's office that it may be

forwarded to Europe. And then I hear from Christina that she cares for

him no longer and has written him, and already he is coming back to

argue with her. Oh, my luck, my bad luck! If he has lost her already, he

will fight my lies! He will get my letter, too; he will connect that

with her broken promise, he will ask her if she knows a girl with a

brown eye and a blue, and what may he not guess and put into her head

about my business? I am in despair, I have a fit of crazy rage, and I

think, too, I will get ahead of him, so she will not listen to him. I

say to her, "That man who ruined my life years ago, that was James

Ingham!" I say to her, "I could not let it go on, dear sister. But don't

let him know where I am." He comes straight to her, before he has my

letter, and all she says to him is, "You have never known all these

years that I had a sister." And then she tells him her sister's name,

and he goes away.

But Nicola ever hopes that perhaps he will pay and at four o'clock

watches his window for my ribbon. Then he sees go in Nancy Cornish, and

he thinks that very queer and comes to tell me, who am round the corner

in the car. We watch and see her come out, and turn east, and we follow

her, and I see her going into the Park; a thing to drive me wild, for I

know well she used to meet Will Denny in the Park. She came much, much

too soon this time, but did not care. Till she saw me.

If she had not come so soon, if she had kept her mouth shut, how

different all would be to-day! No! Out she came with it--Filippi has

told her! He has told her we are married! She has telephoned to my

betrothed, she is to tell him here! Filippi has done worse. He has said

to her, "This I would not tell to every one. But if she should seek to

injure you and get him back, say to her--What do you know of the Arm of

Justice? She will let you alone, then!" With those words did she not

seal her own fate? He must have got drunk on talk, Filippi,--not being

used to be listened to--for he tells her that Nicola and I wrote that

letter from Will I gave her to read. He gives this girl the address of

my cousin, and says if Will comes there, directly, he will show him the

papers of our marriage. Thus do these two little jealous, peeping fools

spoil everything!

In the meanwhile Ingham has got my letter, and has guessed I wrote it.

And he calls up this girl, whom he knows to be Christina's dearest

friend, and asks her, does she know Christina's sister? He tells her

that though all is broken between Christina and him, there are things

Christina must not believe, and perhaps there is something she must

know. He asks when he can see this Cornish girl, and she tells him after

rehearsal, but before five. She is very much excited, and she says how

always in her own room girls run out and in and so she will come to

him--She, mind you, the baby-girl! And there she tells him her tale and

he tells her his, my letter for the money and all, and she gives him the

address of my cousin, and there he has gone to find Filippi,--for she is

not so crazy Will shall go!--while she is telling me what she thinks of

me, softly, in a low voice, in the Park. I think how Will Denny is

coming, and I make a little sign. And Nicola hits her once, and picks

her up limp; I following with her hat, like a sister, in case we meet a

policeman. And we lift her in the automobile and put up the hood, going

fast as we dare. At my cousin's they have denied to know of Filippi. For

Filippi, out of the window, saw it was not Will, but Ingham. And we take

her in there. She comes to, before long, and all we can do with her is

to take her out of town. Only I must leave her at my cousin's now, for I

am to dine with Will before his rehearsal.

It seems to me that any person of a pitiful heart, who also admires

courage and address, must be sorry for me, now. Here am I, born for

love and to command and charm, tied to Filippi and to lowly life; having

planned so wisely and dared so well, now with this rag of a girl on my

hands, not knowing what to do with her; with the Camorra itself, all

unconscious, closing ever in and in, by its offer to absorb our Arm of

Justice; with the spite of Ingham on my heels and tattlers and spies on

all sides, just when I need all my wit to win my love. For he has not

had time to learn to love me as he would love me before long. He is

very, very sweet to me, but he does not care. Just when he first turned

to me there was one flash. I hope and I pray to all the saints, I plan

and watch and make myself fair and think of all that can please him; I

spend my days and nights to feed the fire; but it burns out. He is kind,

he thinks he is to marry me, he is fond of me, because I am sad and so

is he. But he is sick for that Cornish girl who is not worth one hair of

my head, and I have no time to wait till his love grows. I think how I

am to defend myself with him if Ingham talks; and when I get to the

restaurant where we have a private room--I am so shy and so sensitive,

lest people laugh at my queer eyes!--there I find he has met Christina

on the street and carried her along to ask her does she know why Nancy

did not come in the Park.

Well, I tell him. I tell him Ingham's name, as I have told it to

Christina. And he does not like Ingham, whom he has seen fascinate

Christina against her will, and whom he has heard of as a brute to

women. And always Ingham has wished Christina to be less friends with

him, and has done many little things in hate of him. So that he is all

ready to believe what I say; how his Nancy was afraid to face him this

long while, and meant to try this afternoon and failed; and how it is

Ingham who has given her money to go away. I think it will make him hate

her. I think it will make him not listen to Ingham. I do not know it

will make him perfectly cold and perfectly still, not speaking a

word--not even when Christina, for the first time in her whole life, is

angry with me and tells me I deceive myself, I misunderstood Nancy, he

does not speak.

He talks nicely about other things at dinner, but he does not go toward

the theater afterwards. And when Christina asks him why not, he says he

forgot something which he has at home. And she says to him, "You cannot

go to Ingham now, you have a dress-rehearsal." And he says, "I have not

forgotten that." So she takes me with her to Nancy's boarding-house, and

there they who are busy and notice no better, say she has gone out to

dinner, before the theater, with a Miss Grayce. And Christina goes home

to see if she can get word to Ingham to keep out of Will's way and I go

back to my cousin's table d'hote.

Now we have never said to Christina that we have a car. She cannot

afford us one, however she tries, and we do not want her to know we have

ever a dollar but from her. We sell a little from the farm, and she

knows we send this in to market by a man with a truck, and she is

willing to spend so much on her own fancies that she even arranges with

him to bring her my flowers. But for us she buys a little wagon with two

seats and a plug of a horse. She needs not to know everything and watch

all our movements. So mostly we keep the car at the other place; and

half the time I am there myself. If she comes visiting to the farm I can

take the Cornish girl out there.

But I must first see Ingham and beg him to be merciful to me. And,

indeed, he has loved me so much, I think he cannot resist to be a little

kind. And I leave Nancy in the car with Nicola and the boys and with her

mouth stopped, across the street from Ingham's house under the windows

of that Herrick. So, without thought of fear, I enter. Afterward, when I

read about the elevator boy, I remember I have on a favorite of

Christina's dresses. For, naturally, of hers, I take what I choose.

Well, there is nothing to be done with Ingham--he is mean, mean

through. He will give me up to the police. He has heard before of the

Arm of Justice; he says that he will break it. And then I tell him he

would better clear out, for I know Christina thinks that Will will kill

him. And it is then Will rings and when he, grinning, welcomes Will in,

he sees, and any one may see, that Will has his revolver in his hand.

But when Will finds me there he is stricken dumb. And Ingham laughs and

says, "You wonder what this injured lady is doing here? Ask Nancy

Cornish!"

And Will cries out at him, not so very loud, but as a sword goes through

the air, "Ask Nancy Cornish!" and then, very low, "Do not imagine but

that I shall ask Nancy Cornish! And you shall tell me where she is!"

Then Ingham says, "Well, if you didn't wish her to have done with you,

my dear fellow, why did you throw her over for this married lady?"

Will never gets any further than to stand by that panel of wall, between

the portieres and the door. He looks to me and not to Ingham, and it is

the one time in my life when I can think of nothing to say. I talk on

and on, but I say nothing. It is the fault of that Ingham who continues

to laugh, and to play like an angel who is a devil, too.

I tell him that Filippi married me when I was an ignorant child, with

poor people, for the sake of the Hopes' money; how he brought me to this

country and deserted me and came back after I had thought I was free,

and had made friends with Ingham because I was destitute and alone. And

he does not speak. But he does not believe me. I fall down on my knees

and tell him, before Ingham's face, how I love him, and only him; how

there never was any other man who had my heart! How when I saw him I

knew he was my life, and I was born anew in knowing him. I tell him how

I fear to let him know I am married. But how I am trying all the time to

get free, and how I would have been free before I married him; how not

for years have I been a wife to Filippi who hangs upon us and will not

work and does not care for me! And I take his hand and cover it with

kisses and with tears, and I implore him not to leave me, I shall die if

he leaves me! And I ask him if he himself has never in his life done

wrong! And I swear if I lied to him it was for love for him! He knows

that is true; he cannot look at me, and not know! And I throw myself

down, before his feet.

He lifts me up by one shoulder, and he looks at me long and long; still

kind but very cold and still, and what he says is, "Then was it a lie

you told me about her--and this man?" He has not one thought of me, at

all.

It throws me into a great rage. I spring up and round the table, and

Jim, who has not ceased to play, laughs loud, and gives one crash of

chords. It is his triumph and I could kill him for it. I am all one fire

of hate that tosses in the wind, and I lift my arm and Herrick sees my

shadow on the blind. But quick I put my hand over my mouth, petrified.

For at that moment there is a soft, quick knocking on the door and

Christina's voice saying, "Let me in, both of you! Let me in!"

By good luck, she has come while I am silent. And I leap forward and

catch my hat up off the table and fly behind the curtains. For I know I

have lost Will. And if I lose her, too, I have nothing. And Ingham

breaks into the march from "Faust," triumphing, and just then I see

through the curtain crack on the little chair at Will's side his pistol

that he has dropped. And I hear Ingham say, now all in fury, "Shall I

let her come in? Shall I tell at last what you are, through and

through?--" And the door opens. She had her key, Christina, that she had

forgot to give him back. And she calls out, sharp, to Will. But she

turns to Ingham and says, "I implore you, leave me with him a moment!"

And he swirls round to see where I have run. I snatch up Will's pistol

and fire past him from behind the curtain into Ingham's heart. Will

reaches back to catch my hand and shakes the pistol out of it. It has

not taken one breath and his first thought is for Christina, yes, and

for me, and he snaps off the light. There she stands in the doorway; the

light in the hall on Ingham fallen back dead. And when she turns her

eyes again, there is still no one there but Will. Will stoops for the

pistol that still smokes and drops it loose in his pocket.

[Illustration: "Shall I let her come in? Shall I tell at last what you

are, through and through?--"]

You are to remember it is what she has come there to prevent. And before

she has time scarcely to breathe, he forces her back across the

threshold. Up he swoops her in his arms for he is strong like wire, and

light and swift as a hound is, and flies with her for the back stairs. I

wait, for if she sees me I do not know, any more than he does, which way

she will turn. She has stood by him, and perhaps she would have stood by

me; but not if she had known the truth. And at the back stairway he asks

her, "Can we trust the Deutches?" And she replies, "For me, yes. But I

will not trust your life with any one." And then, poor fellow, he must

have seen what she thought, and made up his mind to let her think it. I

was her sister; and he had gone into that room the man who was to marry

me. He could still feel my kisses and my arms about him; and he never

dreamed that Ingham was to denounce me for a criminal--he thought I

fired not from mingled frenzies, but from only the desperate love of

him. Besides, it was only accident he had not fired himself. He would

not have given me up if he had died.

For me, almost in a moment, it is too late to run. I stumble on

Christina's cloak and scarf, that she has had on her arm and dropped in

the dark. I am terribly afraid! I am in panic to think they are all

coming, and I bolt the door! I wish only to hide and yet I know I cannot

hide! I am wild! I try the closet. It is locked. I run behind the

portieres, knocking over the little chair in the dark. I have no plan,

nothing but fear! Till, with the feeling of the curtains close about me,

I remember how I once slipped out of the rooms of a man I had been to

see on business, for the Arm of Justice. He had called the people out of

the front room into the other, the room where I was, and as they all got

in, I had slipped out. How to get them in here? Then I drag in Ingham's

body. I stand close in my cloak colored like the curtains, and once I

hear Deutch's voice I remember that it is Christina's cloak. He makes it

all easy. To come out while those men were working, there at the closet,

is terrible, but there are the trolley-car and my automobile making good

noises. I have pinned my hat under the cloak, and my slippers I put in

its inside pocket. It is when the police have cleared the halls. I have

scarcely got to the back-stairs when the people begin peeping out again.

I have in my hand Christina's key. I turn to the door of the apartment

nearest the back stairs, to pretend I am unlocking it. And the knob

turns in my hand. The decorators have left it open and I walk in and

slip the catch. There I wait till all the hunt is done. But I wish to be

rid of the little pistol, shaped for the impunitura of the Camorra,

which, in early days, Filippi had made for me and on which once, before

Nicola forbade me, I had tried to scratch "Camorrist." Were I taken with

that, I should have every foe on my heels! I wish that I might slip it

into the coat-pocket of that great boy with the figure of gods--he who

led the chase and deafened me with his hammering. Then I remember him

telling the police where he lives. It makes me laugh; there are scraps

of wall-paper about. On one of these I write a message and in this I

wrap my impunitura. Then, long after, when all my cackling geese have

cackled into bed again, I go up to the roof and across into the next

house. There is an opening of some feet between the two apartment

houses, and it may be that Will jumped it, but I think not. I think he

must have gone up to the front, where the cornices join, and crept and

balanced along the little ledge behind them, as I do. And I walk boldly

down those stairs where all is still, and choose a moment when the

night-boy takes some one up in the elevator, and then I cross the

office, and Nicola is still waiting with the car. I stuff the impunitura

in the letter-box and I am away, away!--But the little rag of a girl,

she knows when I went in and when I came out!

So now you see how hard my problem is, my problem that is double: what

to do with her, and how to save my love! Three weeks and more go by, and

for him I am beginning to breathe. And he tells Christina nothing,

nothing at all. Only he asks her did she meet me as she came up, for I

have only just run out as he and Ingham quarrel. And she says no, Deutch

brought her up in the freight-elevator. Thus she is not surprised to

hear about my shadow on the blind; she thinks I came there like her to

get Jim away. But she fears I will be implicated and my poor story told.

This she thinks of a great deal, and keeps me very quiet in the country.

While she, if you please, is no sooner saved from Ingham but she takes

up that boy with the figure of gods, who saw my shadow. The fool did not

feel such a kindness for that which moved with splendid grace! Nor did

he keep my pistol. But perhaps he wants her money. I tell Nicola and the

boys he is the spy who drains us of ours, and who is carrying news to

her from little Stanley of my letters. They will rid her of him! And no

one knows who fired that shot but Will and me, no one. And Mother

Pascoe-Ansello watches all the time what we do with Nancy Cornish. I am

very good to Nancy Cornish. In case she should, by any chance, get away

and tell Will and Christina. For there are some things they would not

forgive. I am frightened, now, and I would let her go, if I could.

And, then, Ten Euyck will not pay me! He is furious I have shot Ingham,

which he finds out at the inquest, and yet he must give me his

protection. And he says what I said in the Ingham letter was a lie, and

he will not pay for lies; they are wrong in all ways, for they never

work. And money I must have, or that spy of Filippi's will settle us. We

have just been received by the Camorra and all must be careful. Then I

think Christina can some way get it. But not to know it is for me. So at

last I threaten the little Nancy, and she is glad to write as I say. And

she cut off the lock of her hair at my own dressing-table with my own

scissors, when mine was all down my back to show her that I had more

than she.

And when we do not have the answer that we hope for, she begins to fret

terribly. She is always listening and watching; she is so helpless and I

am lonely and perhaps I talk too much! Then, oh, my God, he is arrested!

I cannot keep it to myself, I run screaming through the house! I think I

shall die, and I think almost that that rag of a girl will kill me! She

recognized his voice up there cry, "Ask Nancy Cornish!" and she has not

said one word so that I think she thinks he did it. But when they catch

him and she jumps at me that it was I, she can see it in my face. And

she makes a terrible scene--begs me and prays me to denounce myself, to

save him. And then I know that she must die.

But I have a mind to Mother Pascoe-Ansello, and I make a bargain with

this girl. I ask her what she will promise, and she says _anything_. And

I ask her if I write a full confession to the District-Attorney and mail

it when things go hard with Will, will that content her? Oh, very fine!

So I tell her it is what I would do, who would die for him to-morrow,

but that it would give him to her arms. And she says she will go away,

she will never see him. I reply, "He will find you, he will make you."

And she says to me eager, with open mouth, "What can I do?" I answer,

"You are not very well. You grow every day more feverish. Nothing shall

ever happen to you under my roof. But if it should, how it would solve

all." She says, "Will you let me keep the letter myself and mail it

myself?" and I say, "Yes." So then she says, "You gave me laudanum so I

could sleep. When I have mailed that letter, give me some more." Oh, I

feel such a relief! If she is found, even, with laudanum it is suicide.

"Will you ask for it every night, aloud, before them all, and after you

have mailed the letter will you take--enough? Will you swear?" "Oh," she

says, "upon his freedom, I do swear."

* * * * *

So! Thus far has she read. And now she falls ill. And any hour, now, may

Ten Euyck come for this. And I must warn him I will not have him drop

another word before Nicola, as though Will would drag us all in by

telling I was there with him. Nicola's hand might reach into his prison.

When Nancy wakes, she has still this envelope--stuffed with blanks. But

if I cannot fool her, Nicola has planned a better way. A fine way! For,

after that, she will be silent--she, who thought to be bride to the man

I choose.--Oh, my love, you love her. If you, too, must die, it is for

that you die, my darling! For no little rag of a girl can frustrate the

will of

ALLEGRA ANSELLO ALIENI.

CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH CHRISTINA HOPE DOES POSITIVELY REAPPEAR

"Oh, then, I'll marry Sally! For she is the darling of my heart--"

"But _is_ she?" queried Christina, swinging round from the piano, "Is

she?" And she looked wistfully at Herrick as he took her outstretched

hand. "Oh, if she's a very troublesome person, tell me at least she

brought the author luck! Was it any wonder, eh, that the pulse of your

life changed when you saw a shadow on the blind? Since at that very

moment my hand was on the door? Oh, I can perhaps rouse luck with the

best 'when I come knocking!'"

It was Sunday evening, a month from that September Twentieth when, to a

public that perhaps had never given quite such a welcome, Christina Hope

had positively reappeared. This occasion was of a very homely gathering,

an hour when Christina had simply confessed to the need of seeing all

the people of one episode "alive together." She had spent the month in

watching Nancy grow strong, here, in her house, and to-morrow was the

day of Nancy's wedding. "Once I have packed off my daughter," Christina

had been saying, "I shall marry myself out of hand--quite simply, by

just stepping round the corner--to the patientest fellow living. The

public and I meet often enough--it shall not stick its head in at my

marriage!"

But Herrick's sister was to arrive to-morrow and this seemed to have

made Christina restive. "You know very well that you are marrying an

actress. But there has been too much glare--to her you must be marrying,

as some play says, 'The Queen of the Gipsies!' Ah, but Bryce--it's easy

enough to be fond of me, now! After all, I behaved admirably, like a

good girl. I was as grand as Evadne and as energetic as Sal! I had a

very hard time and, really, I was quite a heroine. But my hard times are

done and God send I may never be a heroine again! Well, what price the

Queen of the Gipsies, dear, as a nice young lady? And through what rent

in my admirable behavior will next--to try your patience--the real

Christina Hope too positively reappear? I wonder!" Thus she spoke, a

little sadly. And, then, at the ringing of the door-bell called out for

her mother and Mrs. Deutch. "For heaven forbid," added Christina, "that

ever I should be seen without a chaperone!"

It was the simplest of supper-parties, at a table that jumbled Joe

Patrick with the District-Attorney; but the great kindness of good-will

still showed, inevitably, against a somber background. Before that

company there continued to rise in vivid silences, sharp as though edged

with acid, a wild space of death and hiding, of prison and darkness,

when suddenly Christina's perverse lip twitched with a small, soft

laugh. "And to think that, all the time, we were just as respectable as

we could be!"

"I don't know how respectable you can be," said Denny. "I think I could

do better."

"_I_ think it's a pretty good thing for you," said Wheeler, "that she is

as she is. You appear to have what I don't mind calling--in a lean,

black party of no particular stature--an almost inexplicable charm for

the ladies!"

"In that case," said Christina, "you can see what a waste it is for him

to play villains. Give him to me for the hero of Bryce's play, when I

star next year."

"Thank you for waiting a year. You must have arranged your production

with Ten Euyck so quickly that it makes a manager's hair raise!"

"As fast as I could learn my lines!" Christina cried. "But sometimes he

did throw me out. Ah, if I could only have spoken his speeches too!"

"Many stars in your profession have made that complaint! But I forgive

you everything, Christina, since you notified me for an advance sale!"

"She broke her word to me," said Kane, "to do that! I was so anxious not

a breath should get out--it might have ruined everything. I caught her

second message--to you, Herrick--and stopped it."

Herrick asked, "Will it always be the first which goes to Wheeler?"

She responded with surprised earnestness, "Why, but, dearest, that was

_business_!"

He laughed; and there was no bitterness in his laugh. He was glad of her

quick, earnest interest. A month and three days had softened the tragic

brooding of Christina's face and drawn them all far from pain and fear,

deep waters and dark night. But this first attempt to mention that time

with any ease showed him how they all still winced at scars; even this

ripple of mirth, glowing and vibrating like the air of all that house

with love and joy, had glowed and vibrated too sharply. He wanted some

happening that should clear the air, and he did not know what. Work was

the safest thing he knew. And even his work, now they had begun, was a

good thing to talk of.

"How about that realistic tone?" Wheeler was asking. "Our experience

doesn't leave much of Herrick's idea about the commonplaceness of

crime--"

"Oh, yes, it does!" Christina interrupted. "They were commonplace

enough, to themselves. It was only where we rushed in that it turned

into melodrama. That's the way with amateurs! They have to," she flung

at Denny, "be more like Dago organ-grinders than any Dago organ-grinder

ever was!"

"I thank you," returned that unabashed young man. "It was quite

realistic enough for me. If all my foreign traitors had done as well by

me as this one!" His eyes sought Nancy's. For an instant neither of them

could speak. But the girl could not resist putting out her hand. And no

one minded when he took it. "But I thanked the gods," he could then say

with a laugh, "for my Italian accent! I knew two or three phrases from

the Garibaldi play--and then I knew the sound and some of the sense

from--Chris's farm. But I could have wished, none the less, to be better

equipped."

"Rotten to have to make out so much funk!" contributed Stanley. "So's to

seem like that scared-to-death fellow."

"On the whole, that was the best thing I did. It came quite easy!"

"But the choice?" inquired Mrs. Deutch. "How did you make that choice,

dear sir, amidst the goblets?"

"Only luck--I just chanced it. Gold, silver, and lead--can't you guess?"

He looked at Christina, and Christina blushed. Deutch glanced up

twinkling.

"Ah, tante," said the girl, "you will never understand--you have not the

artistic temperament! 'What find I here? Fair Portia's counterfeit!'

That was it, Will? Ah, my dear, and to think you've never played the

scene!"

Her pensiveness turned sterner. She looked at him with reproving eyes.

"You took it out of a part!" she said. "Heaven help us, of what are we

made? That shot I fired--that last shot--I took that out of a part, too!

'A Princess Imprisoned,' the end of the third act. And you with your

'Merchant of Venice' and your casket scene! It's true what they say of

us--we're stuffed with sawdust!"

"We'd be fools not to use it, then," Denny comfortably retorted. "Though

you might certainly have chosen a better play."

"No, you don't understand me. It's too bad, it's wrong--all wrong! It

cheapens life. It dulls the value of what we feel. To think of written

things at such a moment and throw oneself on them--it's like an

insincerity of the heart. It's like acting a lie. And with all my

faults, that one fault I never had," Christina said. "I was never a

liar!" And she turned on them the ineffable starry candor of her wide,

cool eyes.

A smile traversed the board. Christina looked puzzled.

"Never mind, old girl," Wheeler came to her assistance. "Some lies are

made in heaven. How about your pretending, at the inquest, not to know

who Nancy was?"

"Ah, that card of Nancy's! There, surely, was a dreadful moment! It was

a shock. I didn't know what to say. Why, it was like seeing that

horrible story fastened round her neck--it was like seeing Will pointed

out! Oh, and I'd tried to keep away even the thought of them!"

"I don't wonder that knocked you out all right. But, Miss Christina,"

pondered Deutch, "before that--a thing starts the trouble for you at

that inquest always gives me a puzzle. Miss Christina, why did you

holler when you saw the scarf? That wasn't a surprise, anyhow. You knew

he had it!"

"Yes," said Christina, "but it was _such_ a thrilling point! I'd worked

so much further up into an accused murderess than I'd ever gone before,

and I did so long to know how it would feel--"

An aghast laugh silenced her. It rang about the room, it swept with gay

and topsy-turvy cleansing through every heart and blew the cobwebs far

away. The air was cleared for good and all. No more shudders skulked in

emotional underbrush. Christina Hope had quite too positively

reappeared.

"Christina, you she-devil!" Denny cried. But he bent his black head with

the words and kissed her hand. There were tears that were like worship

in the teasing, jeering smile that lit his eyes.

Christina caught his hand and stood up, flushing. Her eyes traveled

round the table and came back to Herrick's face. He had never seen her

thus bathed in rosy color before she sobered again to that meek gravity,

like a good child's.

"Very well, then, very well--there I am! Well, take me as I am! I

will--myself! I will say, let's get down to it, then: the dearest or

most terrible experience I ever had is none too terrible or too dear for

Bryce's play! Is yours, Will? Is your own, Bryce? Ah, and then, we

zealous ones, when we want to know the hardest, hardest, passive part,

the loneliest suffering, the simplest courage, the deepest depths, we

needn't experiment, we can humbly inquire--we can ask Nancy Cornish!"

THE END