“She must tell her daughter,” the Rector repeated with rising

vehemence. “Such a shocking situation must be avoided; avoided at all

costs.”

“Yes,” she repeated. She was on the threshold now; automatically she

held out her hand.

“Unless,” the Rector continued uncertainly, his eyes upon her, “she is

absolutely convinced that less harm will come to all concerned if she

has the courage to keep silence--always.” There was a pause. “As far

as I can see into the blackness of it,” he went on, gaining firmness,

“the whole problem turns on that. I may be mistaken; perhaps I am. But

when a man has looked for thirty or forty years into pretty nearly

every phase of human suffering and error, as men of my cloth have to

do, he comes to see that there must be adjustments ... adjustments in

the balance of evil. Compromises, politicians would call them. Well,

I’m not afraid of the word.” He stood leaning against the jamb of the

door; her hand was on the doorknob, and she listened with lowered head.

“The thing in the world I’m most afraid of is sterile pain,” he said

after a moment. “I should never want any one to be the cause of that.”

She lifted her eyes with an effort, and saw in his face the same look

of understanding she had caught there for a moment while she talked

with him at the Drovers’ after dinner.

“Sterile pain--” she murmured. She had crossed the threshold now; she

felt that he was holding out his hand. His face once more wore the

expression of worldly benevolence that was as much the badge of his

profession as his dress. After all, she perceived, he was glad that she

had said nothing more definite, glad that their talk was safely over.

Yet she had caught that other look.

“If your friend were here; if there were anything I could do for her,

or say to her--anything to help--”

“Oh, she’s not here; she won’t be here,” Kate repeated.

“In that case--” Again she caught the relief in his voice.

“But I will tell her--tell her what you’ve said.” She was aware that

they were shaking hands, and that he was averting his apprehensive eyes

from hers. “For God’s sake,” the eyes seemed to entreat her, “let’s

get through with this before you betray yourself--if there’s anything

further to betray.”

At the front door he bowed her out, repeating cordially: “And about a

date for Anne’s wedding as soon as you and she are absolutely decided,

remember I’m completely at your service.”

The door closed, and she found herself in the street.

XXIV.

She turned away from the Rectory and walked aimlessly up Madison

Avenue. It was a warm summer-coloured October day. At Fifty-ninth

Street she turned into the Park and wandered on over the yellowing

leaf-drifts of the ramble. In just such a state of blind bewilderment

she had followed those paths on the day when she had first caught sight

of Chris Fenno and Lilla Gates in the twilight ahead of her. That

was less than a year ago, and she looked back with amazement at the

effect which that chance encounter had had on her. She seemed hardly

to be suffering more now than she had suffered then. It had seemed

unbearable, impossible, at the moment, that Chris Fenno should enter,

even so episodically, so remotely, into her new life; and here he was,

ensconced in its very centre, in complete possession of it.

She tried to think the situation out; but, as always, her trembling

thoughts recoiled, just as she had seen Dr. Arklow’s recoil.

Every one to whom she had tried to communicate her secret without

betraying it had had the same instantaneous revulsion. “Not that--don’t

tell me that!” their averted eyes, their shrinking voices seemed to

say. It was too horrible for any ears.

How then was she to obey Dr. Arklow’s bidding and impart the secret

to Anne? He had said it as positively as if he were handing down a

commandment from Sinai: “The daughter must be told.”

How easy to lay down abstract rules for other people’s guidance: “The

daughter” was just an imaginary person--a convenient conversational

pawn. But Kate Clephane’s daughter--her own Anne! She closed her eyes

and tried to face the look in Anne’s as the truth dawned on her.

“You--_you_, mother? The mother I’ve come to adore--the mother I can’t

live without, even with all my other happiness? _You?_”

Yes--perhaps that would be the worst of it, the way Anne would look at

her and say “_You?_” For, once the girl knew the truth, her healthy

youth might so revolt from Chris’s baseness, Chris’s duplicity, that

the shock of the discovery would be its own cure. But when the blow

had fallen, when Anne’s life had crashed about her, and the ruins been

cleared away--what then of her mother? Why, her mother would be buried

under those ruins; her life would be over; but a hideous indestructible

image of her would remain, overshadowing, darkening the daughter’s

future.

“This man you are going to marry has--”

No; Kate Clephane could go no farther than that. Such confessions were

not to be made; were not for a daughter’s ears. She began the phrase to

herself again and again, but could not end it....

And, after all, she suddenly thought, Dr. Arklow himself, having given

the injunction, had at once qualified, had virtually withdrawn it.

In declaring that such an abomination must at all costs be prevented

he had spoken with the firmness of a priest; but almost at once the

man had intervened, and had suggested to the hypothetical mother the

alternative of not speaking at all, if only she could be sure of

never betraying herself in the future, of sacrificing everything to

the supreme object of avoiding what he called sterile pain. Those

tentative, half-apologetic words now effaced the others in Kate’s

mind. Though spoken with the accent of authority--and almost under his

breath--she knew they represented what he really felt. But where should

she find the courage to conform to them?

She had left the Park, aimlessly, unseeingly, and was walking eastward

through a half-built street in the upper Nineties. The thought of

returning home--re-entering that house where the white dress still lay

on the bed--was unbearable. She walked on and on.... Suddenly she came

upon an ugly sandstone church-front with a cross above the doorway. The

leathern swing-doors were flapping back and forth, women passing in and

out. Kate Clephane pushed open one of the doors and looked in. The day

was fading, and in the dusky interior lights fluttered like butterflies

about the paper flowers of the altar. There was no service, but praying

figures were scattered here and there. Against the brown-washed walls

of the aisles she observed a row of confessionals of varnished wood,

like cigar-boxes set on end; before one or two, women were expectantly

kneeling. Mrs. Clephane wondered what they had to tell.

Leaning against one of the piers of the nave she evoked all those

imaginary confessions, and thought how trivial, how childish they would

seem, compared to what she carried in her breast.... What a help it

must be to turn to somebody who could tell one firmly, positively what

to do--to be able to lay down one’s moral torture like a heavy load

at the end of the day! Dr. Arklow had none of the authority which the

habit of the confessional must give. He could only vaguely sympathize

and deplore, and try to shuffle the horror out of sight as soon as he

caught an unwilling glimpse of it. But these men whose office it was to

bind and to unbind--who spoke as the mere impersonal mouth-pieces of a

mighty Arbitrator, letting neither moral repugnance nor false delicacy

interfere with the sacred task of alleviation and purification--how

different must they be! Her eyes filled at the thought of laying her

burden in such hands.

And why not? Why not entrust her anonymous secret to one of those

anonymous ears? In talking to Dr. Arklow she had felt that both he and

she were paralyzed by the personal relation, and all the embarrassments

and complications arising from it. When she spoke of her friend in

distress, and he replied with the same evasive formula, both were

conscious of the evasion, and hampered by it. And so it had been from

the first--there was not an ear into which she dared pour her agony.

What if, now, at once, she were to join those unknown penitents? It was

possible, she knew--she had but a step to take....

She did not take it. Her unrest drove her forth again into the

darkening street, drove her homeward with uncertain steps, in the mood

of forlorn expectancy of those who, having failed to exert their will,

wait helplessly on the unforeseen. After all, how could one tell? Chris

must, in his own degree, be suffering as she was suffering. Why not

stick to her old plan of waiting, holding on, enduring everything, in

the hope of wearing him out? She reached the door of her house, set her

teeth, and went in. Overhead, she remembered with a shudder, the white

dress waited, with all that it implied....

The drawing-room was empty, and she went up to her own room. There,

as usual, the fire shone invitingly, fresh flowers opened in the

lamplight. All was warmth, peace, intimacy. As she sat down by the

fireside she seemed to see Fred Landers’s heavy figure in the opposite

armchair, his sturdy square-toed boots turned to the hearth. She

remembered how, one day, as he sat there, she had said to herself that

it might be pleasant to see him there always. Now, in the extremity

of her loneliness, the thought returned. Since then he had confessed

his own hope to her--shyly, obliquely, apologetically; but under his

stammering words she had recognized the echo of a long desire. She knew

he had always loved her; had not Anne betrayed that it was her guardian

who had persuaded her to recall her unknown mother? Kate Clephane owed

him everything, then--all her happiness and all her sorrow! He knew

everything of her life--or nearly everything. To whom else could she

turn with the peculiar sense of security which that certitude gave?

She felt sorry that she had received his tentative advance so coldly,

so inarticulately. After all, he might yet be her refuge--her escape.

She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine what life would be--years

and years of it--at Fred Landers’s side. To feel the nearness of that

rugged patient kindness; would it not lighten her misery, make the

thoughts and images that were torturing her less palpable, less acute,

less real?

She sat there for a long time, brooding. Now and then a step passing

her door, or a burst of voices on the landing, told her that Anne was

probably receiving some of her friends in her own rooms at the other

end of the passage. The wedding presents were already arriving; Anne,

with a childish pleasure that was unlike her usual aloofness from

material things, had set them out on a long table in her sitting-room.

The mother pictured the eager group inspecting and admiring, the talk

of future plans, the discussion of all the details of the wedding.

The date for it would soon be fixed; ostensibly, her own visit to

Dr. Arklow had been made for the purpose. But at the last moment her

courage had failed her, and she had said vaguely, in leaving, that she

would let him know.

As she sat there, she saw her daughter’s pale illuminated face as

though it were before her. Anne’s happiness shone through her, making

her opaque and guarded features luminous and transparent; and the

mother could measure, from her own experience, the amount of heat

and force that fed that incandescence. She herself had always had a

terrible way of being happy--and that way was Anne’s.

She simply could not bear to picture to herself the change, in Anne’s

face, from ecstasy to anguish. She had seen that change once, and the

sight had burned itself into her eye-balls. To destroy Anne’s happiness

seemed an act of murderous cruelty. What did it matter--as the chances

of life went--of what elements such happiness was made? Had she, Kate

Clephane, ever shrunk from her own bliss because of the hidden risks

it contained? She had played high, staked everything--and lost. Could

she blame her daughter for choosing to take the same risks? No; there

was, in all great happiness, or the illusion momentarily passing for

it, a quality so beatific, so supernatural, that no pain with which it

might have to be paid could, at the time, seem too dear; could hardly,

perhaps, ever seem so, to headlong hearts like hers and Anne’s.

Her own heart had begun to tremble and dilate with her new resolve;

the resolve to accept the idea of Anne’s marriage, to cease her inward

struggle against it, and try to be in reality what she was already

pretending to be: the acquiescent, approving mother.... After all, why

not? Legally, technically, there was nothing wrong, nothing socially

punishable, in the case. And what was there on the higher, the more

private grounds where she pretended to take her stand and deliver

her judgment? Chris Fenno was a young man--she was old enough to be,

if not his mother, at least his mother-in-law. What had she ever

hoped or expected to be to him but a passing incident, a pleasant

memory? From the first, she had pitched their relation in that key;

had insisted on the difference in their ages, on her own sense of the

necessary transiency of the tie, on the fact that she would not have

it otherwise. Anything rather than to be the old woman clutching at an

impossible prolongation of bliss--anything rather than be remembered

as a burden instead of being regretted as a delight! How often had

she told him that she wanted to remain with him like the memory of a

flowering branch brushed by at night? “You won’t quite know if it was

lilac or laburnum, or both--you’ll only know it was something vanishing

and sweet.” Vanishing and sweet--that was what she had meant to be! And

she had kept to her resolution till the blow fell--

Well, and was he so much to blame for its falling? She herself had been

the witness of his resistance, of his loyal efforts to escape. The

vehemence of Anne’s passion had thwarted him, had baffled them both;

if he loved her as passionately as she loved him, was he not justified

in accepting the happiness forced upon him? And how refuse it without

destroying the girl’s life?

“If any one is to be destroyed, oh God, don’t let it be Anne!” the

mother cried. She seemed at last to have reached a clearer height, a

more breathable air. Renunciation--renunciation. If she could attain to

that, what real obstacle was there to her daughter’s happiness?

“I would sell my soul for her--why not my memories?” she reflected.

The sound of steps and voices outside had ceased. From the landing had

come a “Goodbye, dearest!” in Nollie Tresselton’s voice; no doubt she

had been the last visitor to leave, and Anne was now alone; perhaps

alone with her betrothed. Well; to that thought also Kate Clephane

must accustom herself; by and bye they would be always alone, those

two, in the sense of being nearer to each other than either of them was

to any one else. The mother could bear that too. Not to lose Anne--at

all costs to keep her hold on the girl’s confidence and tenderness:

that was all that really mattered. She would go to Anne now. She

herself would ask the girl to fix the date for the wedding.

She got up and walked along the deep-piled carpet of the corridor. The

door of Anne’s sitting-room was ajar, but no sound came from within.

Every one was gone, then; even Chris Fenno. With a breath of relief the

mother pushed the door open. The room was empty. One of the tall vases

was full of branching chrysanthemums and autumn berries. In a corner

stood a tea-table with scattered cups and plates. The Airedale drowsed

by the hearth. As she stood there, Kate Clephane saw the little Anne

who used to sit by that same fire trying to coax the red birds through

the fender. The vision melted the last spot of resistance in her heart.

The door of Anne’s bedroom was also ajar, but no sound came from there

either. Perhaps the girl had gone out with her last visitors, escaping

for a starlit rush up the Riverside Drive before dinner. These sudden

sallies at queer hours were a way the young people had.

The mother listened a moment longer, then laid her hand on the bedroom

door. Before her, directly in the line of her vision, was Anne’s narrow

bed. On it the wedding-dress still lay, in a dazzle of whiteness; and

between Mrs. Clephane and the bed, looking also at the dress, stood

Anne and Chris Fenno. They had not heard her cross the sitting-room

or push open the bedroom door; they did not hear her now. All their

faculties were absorbed in each other. The young man’s arms were around

the girl, her cheek was against his. One of his hands reached about

her shoulder and, making a cup for her chin, pressed her face closer.

They were looking at the dress; but the curves of their lips, hardly

detached, were like those of a fruit that has burst apart of its own

ripeness.

Kate Clephane stood behind them like a ghost. It made her feel like

a ghost to be so invisible and inaudible. Then a furious flame of

life rushed through her; in every cell of her body she felt that same

embrace, felt the very texture of her lover’s cheek against her own,

burned with the heat of his palm as it clasped Anne’s chin to press her

closer.

“Oh, not that--not that--not that!” Mrs. Clephane imagined she had

shrieked it out at them, and pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle

the cry; then she became aware that it was only a dumb whisper within

her. For a time which seemed without end she continued to stand there,

invisible, inaudible, and they remained in each other’s embrace,

motionless, speechless. Then she turned and went. They did not hear

her.

A dark fermentation boiled up into her brain; every thought and feeling

was clogged with thick entangling memories.... Jealous? Was she jealous

of her daughter? Was she physically jealous? Was that the real secret

of her repugnance, her instinctive revulsion? Was that why she had felt

from the first as if some incestuous horror hung between them?

She did not know--it was impossible to analyze her anguish. She knew

only that she must fly from it, fly as far as she could from the

setting of these last indelible impressions. How had she ever imagined

that she could keep her place at Anne’s side--that she could either

outstay Chris, or continue to live under the same roof with them? Both

projects seemed to her, now, equally nebulous and impossible. She

must put the world between them--the whole width of the world was not

enough. The very grave, she thought, would be hardly black enough to

blot out that scene.

She found herself, she hardly knew how, at the foot of the stairs,

in the front hall. Her precipitate descent recalled the early winter

morning when, as hastily, almost as unconsciously, she had descended

those same stairs, flying from her husband’s house. Nothing was changed

in the hall: her eyes, once again morbidly receptive of details, noted

on the door the same patent locks with which her fingers had then

struggled. Now, as then, a man’s hat and stick lay on the hall table;

on that other day they had been John Clephane’s, now they were Chris

Fenno’s. That was the only difference.

She stood there, looking about her, wondering why she did not push

back the bolts and rush out into the night, hatless and cloakless as

she was. What else was there to do but to go straight to the river, or

to some tram line with its mortal headlights bearing straight down on

one? One didn’t have to have a hat and cloak to go out in search of

annihilation....

As she stood there the door-bell rang, and she heard the step of a

servant coming to open the door. She shrank back into the drawing-room,

and in another moment Enid Drover had rustled in, her pink cheeks

varnished with the cold, her furs full of the autumn freshness. Her

little eyes were sharp with excitement.

“My dear Kate! I’ve rushed in with such good news: I shall be late for

dinner, Hendrik will be furious. But never mind; I had to tell you.

The house next door really _is_ for sale! Isn’t it too perfect? The

agent thinks it could be got for a fairly reasonable price. But Hendrik

says it may be snapped up at any minute, and Anne ought to decide at

once. Then you could stay on comfortably here, and you and she and

Chris would always be together, just as she wants you to be.... No;

don’t send for her; I can’t wait. And besides, I want you to have the

pleasure of telling her.” On the doorstep Mrs. Drover turned to call

back: “Remember, Hendrik says she must decide.” Her limousine engulfed

her.

XXV.

Mrs. Clephane excused herself from coming down to dinner; Aline was to

say that she was very tired, and begged that no one should disturb her.

The next morning, she knew, Chris was returning to Baltimore. Perhaps

in his absence she would be able to breathe more freely, see more

clearly.

Anne, as usual, respected her mother’s wishes; she neither came up

nor sent to enquire. But the next morning, in the old way, fresh

and shining, she appeared with Mrs. Clephane’s breakfast-tray. She

wanted to be reassured as to her mother’s health, and Kate, under her

solicitous eye, poured out a cup of tea and forced down a bit of toast.

“You look tired, mother. It’s only that?”

“Only that, dear.”

“You didn’t tell me that Aunt Enid had been in last night about the

house next door--” Anne spoke the least little reproachfully.

“I’m sorry. I had such a headache that when she left I went straight to

my room. Did she telephone you?”

“Uncle Hendrik did. Isn’t it the greatest luck? It will be such fun

arranging it all.” The girl paused and looked at her mother. “And this

will make you decide, darling, won’t it?”

“Decide?”

“To stay on here. To keep this house for yourself. It will be almost

like our all being together.”

“Yes--almost.”

“You will stay, won’t you?”

“Stay here? I can’t--I can’t!” The words escaped before Mrs. Clephane

could repress them. Her heart began to rush about in her like a caged

animal.

Anne’s brows darkened and drew together. “But I don’t understand. You

told Chris you would--”

“Did I? Perhaps I did. But I must sometimes be allowed to change my

mind,” Mrs. Clephane murmured, forcing a thin smile.

“To change your mind about being with us? You don’t want to, then,

after all?”

Mrs. Clephane pushed the tray away and propped herself on her elbow.

“No, I don’t want to.”

“How you say it, mother! As if I were a stranger. I don’t

understand....” The girl’s lip was beginning to tremble. “I thought ...

Chris and I both thought....”

“I’m sorry. But I must really decide as I think best. When you are

married you won’t need me.”

“And shan’t you need me, mother? Not a little?” Anne hesitated, and

then ventured, timidly: “You’re so alone--so awfully alone.”

“I’ve always been that. It can’t be otherwise. You’ve chosen ... you’ve

chosen to be married....”

Anne stood up and looked down on her with searching imperious eyes. “Is

it my being married--or my being married to Chris?”

“Ah--don’t let us talk of that again!”

The girl continued to scrutinize her strangely. “Once for all--you

won’t tell me?”

Mrs. Clephane did not speak.

“Then I shall ask him--I shall ask him in your presence,” Anne

exclaimed in a shaking voice.

At the sound of that break in her voice the dread of seeing her suffer

once more superseded every other feeling in the mother’s breast. She

leaned against the pillows, speechless for a moment; then she held out

her hand, seeking Anne’s.

“There’s nothing to ask, dear; nothing to tell.”

“You don’t hate him, mother? You really don’t?”

Slowly Kate Clephane articulated: “I don’t--hate him.”

“But why won’t you see him with me, then? Why won’t you talk it all out

with us once for all? Mother, what _is_ it? I must know.”

Mrs. Clephane, under her daughter’s relentless eyes, felt the blood

rising from her throat to her pale lips and drawn cheeks, and to the

forehead in which her pulses must be visibly beating. She lay there,

bathed in a self-accusing crimson, and it seemed to her that those

clear young eyes were like steel blades plunging into the deepest folds

of her conscience.

“You don’t hate him? But then you’re in love with him--you’re in love

with him, and I’ve known it all along!” The girl shrilled it out

suddenly, and hid her face in her hands.

Kate Clephane lay without speaking. In the first shock of the outcry

all her defences had crashed together about her head, and it had

been almost a relief to feel them going, to feel that pretences and

disguises were at an end. Then Anne’s hands dropped to her side, and

the mother, meeting her gaze, lost the sense of her own plight in

the sight of that other woe. All at once she felt herself strong and

resolute; all the old forces of dissimulation were pouring back through

her veins. The accusing red faded from her face, and she lay there and

quietly met the question in Anne’s eyes.

“_Anne!_” she simply said, with a little shrug.

“Oh, mother--mother! I think I must be going mad!” Anne was on her

knees at the bedside, her face buried in the coverlet. It was easier to

speak to her while her eyes were hidden, and Kate laid a hand on her

hair.

“Not mad, dear; but decidedly over-strung.” She heard the note of

magnanimity in her own voice.

“But can you forgive me--ever?”

“Nonsense, dear; can I do anything else?”

“But then--if you _do_ forgive me, really--why must you go away? Why

won’t you promise to stay with us?”

Kate Clephane lay against her pillows and meditated. Her hand was still

in Anne’s hair; she held the girl’s head gently against the coverlet,

still not wishing her own face to be too closely scrutinized. At length

she spoke.

“I didn’t mean to tell you just yet; and you must tell no one.” She

paused, and rallied her failing courage. “I can’t promise to stay with

you, dear, because I may be going to get married too.” The first words

were the most difficult to say; after that she heard her voice going

on steadily. “Fred Landers has asked me to marry him; and I think

I shall accept.... No; don’t hug me too hard, child; my head still

aches--There; now you understand, don’t you? And you won’t scold me any

more? But remember, it’s a secret from every one. It’s not to be spoken

of till after you’re married.... Now go.”

After Anne had left her, subdued but jubilant, she lay there and

remembered, with a twinge of humiliation, that the night before she had

hurried downstairs in a mad rush to death. Anything--anything to escape

from the coil of horror closing in on her!... And it had sufficed to

her to meet Enid Drover in the hall, with that silly chatter about the

house next door, to check the impulse, drive her back into the life

she was flying from.... She reflected with self-derision that all her

suicidal impulses seemed to end in the same way; by landing her in

the arms of some man she didn’t care for. Then she remembered Anne’s

illuminated face, and lay listening to the renewed life of the house,

the bustle of happy preparations going on all about her.

“Poor Fred! Well--if it’s what he wants--” she thought. What she

herself wanted, all she now wanted, was never again to see that

dreadful question in Anne’s eyes. And she had found no other way of

evading it.

XXVI.

Now that a day for the wedding was fixed, the preparations went on more

rapidly. Soon there was only a fortnight left; then only ten days; then

a week.

Chris Fenno’s parents were to have come to New York to make the

acquaintance of their son’s betrothed; but though a date had several

times been appointed for their visit, Mrs. Fenno, whose health was not

good, had never been well enough to come, and finally it was arranged

that Anne should go to Baltimore to see them. She was to stay with the

Maclews, who immediately seized the opportunity to organize a series of

festivities in celebration of the event.

Lilla invited Mrs. Clephane to come with her daughter; but Kate

declined, on the plea that she herself was not well. People were

beginning to notice how tired and thin she looked. Her glass showed

streaks of gray in her redundant hair, and about her lips and eyes

the little lines she had so long kept at bay. Everybody in the family

agreed that it would be a good thing for her to have a few days’ rest

before the wedding.

With regard to her own future she had sworn Anne to unconditional

secrecy. She explained that she did not intend to give Fred Landers

a definite answer till after the wedding, and Anne, who had all the

Clephane reticence, understood her wish to keep the matter quiet, and

even in her guardian’s presence was careful not to betray that she

knew of his hopes. She only made him feel that he was more than ever

welcome, and touched him by showing an added cordiality at a moment

when most girls are deaf and blind to all human concerns but their own.

“It’s so like Anne to find time to remember an old derelict just when

she might be excused for forgetting that any of us exist.” He said it

with a gentle complacency as he sat in Mrs. Clephane’s sitting-room

one evening during Anne’s absence. “She’s like you--very like you,” he

added, looking at Kate Clephane with shy beseeching eyes.

She smiled back at him, wondering if she would ever have the courage to

tell him that she meant to marry him. He was thinking of that too, she

knew. Why not tell him now, at once? She had only to lean forward and

lay her hand on his. No words would be necessary. And surely she would

feel less alone.... But she remained silent; it was easier to think of

speaking than to speak.

It was he who questioned: “And afterward--have you decided what you’re

going to do?”

She continued to smile. “There’ll be time to decide afterward.”

“Anne tells me you’ve definitely refused to remain in this house.”

“This house hasn’t many pleasant associations for me.”

He coloured as if she had caught him in a failure of tact. “I

understand that. But with the young people here ... or next door ...

she hoped you’d feel less lonely.”

Again she perceived that he was trying to remind her of a possible

alternative, and again she let the allusion drop, answering merely:

“I’m used to being lonely. It’s not as bad as people think.”

“You’ve known worse, you mean?” He seldom risked anything as direct

as that. “And it would be worse for you, being with Anne after she’s

married? You still hate the idea as much as ever?”

She rose impatiently and went to lean against the mantelpiece. “Fred,

what’s the use? I shall never hate it less. But that’s all over--I’ve

accepted it.”

“Yes, and made Anne so happy.”

“Oh, love is what is making Anne happy!” She hardly knew how she

brought the word from her lips.

“Well--loving Fenno hasn’t made her cease to love you.”

“Anne is perfect. But suppose we talk of something else. At my age I

find this bridal atmosphere a little suffocating. I shall go abroad

again, probably--I don’t know.”

She turned and looked at herself in the glass above the mantel, seeing

the gray streaks and the accusing crows’-feet. And as she stood there,

she remembered how once, when she was standing in the same way before

a mirror, Chris had come up behind her, and they had laughed at seeing

their reflections kiss. How young she had been then--how young! Now,

as she looked at herself, she saw behind her the reflection of Fred

Landers’s comfortable bulk, sunk in an armchair in after-dinner repose,

his shirt-front bulging a little, the lamplight varnishing the top of

his head through the thinning hair. A middle-aged couple--perfectly

suited to each other in age and appearance. She turned back and sat

down beside him.

“Shall we try a Patience?” she said.

He accepted with a wistful alacrity which seemed to say it was the

most he hoped for, and they drew up a table and sat down opposite each

other, calmly disposing the little cards in elaborate patterns.

They had been playing for about half an hour when she rumpled up the

cards abruptly, and sweeping them together into a passionate heap cried

out: “I want it to be a gay wedding--the gayest wedding that ever was!

I’m determined it shall be a gay wedding.”

She dropped her face into her hands, and sat there propping her elbows

on the card-table, and laughing out between her intercrossed fingers:

“A really gay wedding, you know....”

XXVII.

Only three days more now; for just three days more she and Anne would

live under one roof.

And then?

The interrogation was not Anne’s. The news of Mrs. Clephane’s intended

marriage had completely restored the girl’s serenity. Chris Fenno,

detained in Baltimore by his mother’s sudden and somewhat alarming

illness, had not yet reappeared; it seemed likely now that he would

arrive in New York only the day before the wedding. Anne was to have

her mother to herself to the last; and with every art of tenderness

and dependence she tried to show her appreciation of these final

days, sweet with the sweetness of dear things ending, yet without

pain because they were not to precede a real separation. Her only

anxiety--the alarm about Mrs. Fenno--had been allayed by a reassuring

telegram, and she moved within that rainbow bubble that once or twice

in life contrives to pass itself off as the real horizon.

The sight of her, Kate Clephane reasoned, ought to have been

justification enough. Anything was worth doing or sacrificing to keep

the bubble unbroken. And the last three days would pass--the Day

itself would pass. The world, after it was over, would go on in the

same old way. What was all the flurry about?

Mrs. Drover did not find it easy to maintain so detached an attitude.

She, for one, could not conceive how her sister-in-law could remain so

calm at such a moment.

“Of course Nellie’s wonderfully capable; she and Lilla have taken

almost all the worry on their shoulders, haven’t they? I never could

have struggled alone with that immense list of invitations. But still I

don’t think you ought to assume that _everything’s_ settled. After all,

there are only three days left! And no one seems to have even begun to

think who’s going to take you up the aisle....”

“Up the aisle?” Mrs. Clephane echoed blankly.

“Well, yes, my dear. There _is_ an aisle at St. Stephen’s,” Enid Drover

chirped with one of her rare attempts at irony. “And of course Hendrik

must take up the bride, and you must be there, ready to receive her and

give her away....”

“Give her away?”

“Hadn’t you thought of that either?” Mrs. Drover’s little laugh had a

tinge of condescension. Though all the family had conspired to make

Mrs. Clephane forget that she had lived for nearly twenty years outside

the social pale, the fact remained; she _had_. And it was on just such

occasions as this that she betrayed it, somewhat embarrassingly to her

sister-in-law. Not even to know that, when a bride’s father was dead,

it was her mother who gave her away!

“You didn’t expect Hendrik to do it?” Mrs. Drover rippled on, half

compassionate, half contemptuous. It was hard to understand how some

people contrived to remain in ignorance of the most elementary rules of

behaviour!

“Hendrik--well, why shouldn’t he?” Kate Clephane said.

Anne was passing through the room, a pile of belated presents in her

arms.

“Do you hear, my dear? Your uncle Hendrik will be very much flattered.”

Mrs. Drover’s little eyes grew sharp with the vision of Hendrik’s broad

back and glossy collar playing the leading part in the ceremony. “The

bride was given away by her uncle, Mr. Hendrik Drover, of--” It really

would read very well.

“Flattered about what?” Anne paused to question.

“Your mother seems to think it’s your uncle who ought to give you away.”

“Not you, mother?” Kate Clephane caught the instant drop in the girl’s

voice. Underneath her radiant security, what suspicion, what dread,

still lingered?

“I’m so stupid, dear; I hadn’t realized it was the custom.”

“Don’t you want it to be?”

“I want what you want.” Their thin-edged smiles seemed to cross like

blades.

“I want it to be you, mother.”

“Then of course, dear--”

Mrs. Drover heaved a faintly disappointed sigh. Hendrik would certainly

have looked the part better. “Well, _that’s_ settled,” she said, in the

tone of one who strikes one more item off an invisible list. “And now

the question is, who’s to take your mother up the aisle?”

Anne and her mother were still exchanging smiles. “Why, Uncle Fred of

course, isn’t he?” Anne cried.

“That’s the point. If your mother’s cousin comes from Meridia--”

Mrs. Clephane brushed aside the possible cousin from Meridia. “Fred

shall take me up,” she declared; and Anne’s smile lost its nervous edge.

“Now, is there anything else left to settle?” the girl gaily challenged

her aunt; and Mrs. Drover groaned back: “Anything else? But it seems as

if we’d only just begun. If it weren’t for Nollie and Lilla I shouldn’t

feel sure of _anybody’s_ being at the church when the time comes....”

* * * * *

The time had almost come: the sun had risen on the day before the

wedding. It rose, mounted up in a serene heaven, bent its golden arch

over an untroubled indifferent world, and stooped westward in splendid

unawareness. The day, so full of outward bustle, of bell-ringing,

telephone calls, rushings back and forth of friends, satellites and

servants, had drooped to its close in the unnatural emptiness of such

conclusions. Everything was done; every question was settled; every

last order given; and Anne, with a kiss for her mother, had gone off

with Nollie and Joe Tresselton for one of the crepuscular motor-dashes

that clear the cobwebs from modern brains.

Anne had resolutely refused to have either bridesmaids or the

conventional family dinner of the bridal eve. She wanted to strip the

occasion of all its meaningless formalities, and Chris Fenno was of the

same mind. He was to spend the evening alone with his parents at their

hotel, and Anne had invited no one but Fred Landers to dine. She had

warned her mother that she might be a little late in getting home, and

had asked her, in view of Mr. Landers’s excessive punctuality, to be

downstairs in time to receive and pacify him.

Mrs. Clephane had seen through the simple manœuvre, and had not

resented it. After all, it would be the best opportunity to tell

Fred Landers what she had decided to tell him. As she sat by the

drawing-room fire listening for the door-bell she felt a curious sense

of aloofness, almost of pacification. It might be only the quiet of

exhaustion; she half-suspected it was, but she was too exhausted to

feel sure. Yet one thing was clear to her; she had suffered less

savagely since she had known that Dr. Arklow had guessed what she was

suffering. The problem had been almost too difficult for him; but it

was enough that he had perceived its difficulty, had seen that it was

too deeply rooted in living fibres to be torn out without mortal hurt.

“Sterile pain ... I should never want any one to be the cause of

sterile pain....” That phrase of his helped her even now; her mind

clung fast to it as she sat waiting for Landers’s ring.

It came punctually, even sooner than the hour, as Anne had foreseen;

and in another moment he was advancing across the room in his slow

bulky way, with excuses for his early arrival.

“But I did it on purpose. I was sure Anne would be late--”

“Anne! She isn’t even in--”

“I knew it! They’re all a pack of vagabonds. And I hoped you’d be

punctual,” he continued, letting himself down into an armchair as if he

were lowering a bale of goods over the side of a ship. “After all, you

and I belong to the punctual generation.”

She winced a little at being so definitely relegated to the rank where

she belonged. Yes: he and she were nearly of an age. She remembered,

in her newly-married precocity, thinking of him as a shy shambling

boy, years younger than herself. Now he had the deliberate movements

of the elderly, and though he shot, fished, played golf, and kept up

the activities common to his age, his mind, in maturing, had grown

heavier, and seemed to have communicated its prudent motions to his

body. She shut her eyes for a second from the vision. Her own body

still seemed so supple, free and imponderable. If it had not been for

her looking-glass she would never have known she was more than twenty.

She glanced up at the clock; a quarter to eight. Very likely Anne would

not be back for another half hour. How would the evening ever drag

itself to an end?

They exchanged a few words about the wedding, but the topic was

intolerable to Mrs. Clephane. She had managed to face the situation as

a whole: to consider its details was still beyond her. Yet if she left

that subject, just beyond it lay the question her companion was waiting

to ask; and that alternative was intolerable too. She got up from her

seat, moved aimlessly across the room, straightened a flower in a vase,

put out a superfluous wall-light.

“That’s enough illumination--at our age,” she said, coming back to her

seat.

“Oh--_you_!” He threw all his unspoken worship into the word. “With

that hair of yours....”

“My hair--my hair!” Her hands went up to the rich mass as if she would

have liked to tear it from her head. At that moment she hated it, as

she did everything else that mocked her with the barren illusion of

youth.

Fred Landers had coloured to the edge of his own thin hair; no doubt

he was afraid of her resenting even this expression of admiration.

His embarrassment irritated yet touched her, and raising her eyes she

looked into his.

“I never knew till the other day that it’s to you I owe the fact of

being here,” she said.

He was evidently unprepared for this, and did not know whether to be

distressed or gratified. His faint blush turned to crimson.

“To me?”

“Oh, well--I’m not sorry it should be,” she rejoined, her voice

softening.

“But it’s all nonsense. Anne was determined to get you back.”

“Yes; because you told her she must. She owned up frankly. She said

she wasn’t sure, at first, how the plan would work; but you were. You

backed me for all you were worth.”

“Oh, if you mean that; of course I backed you. You see, she didn’t know

you; and I did.”

She continued to look at him thoughtfully, almost tenderly. “Very few

people have taken the trouble to care what became of me. And you hadn’t

seen me for nearly twenty years.”

“No; but I remembered; and I knew you’d had a rotten bad start.”

“Lots of women have that, and nobody bothers. But you did; you

remembered and you brought me here.”

She turned again, restlessly, and went and stood by the chimney-piece,

resting her chin on her hand.

Landers smiled up at her, half deprecatingly. “If I did, don’t be too

hard on me.”

“Why should I be? I’ve had over a year. As happiness goes, that’s a

lifetime.”

“Don’t speak as if yours were over.”

“Oh, it’s been good enough to be worth while!”

He sat silent for a while, meditatively considering his honest

boot-tips. At length he spoke again, in a tone of sudden authority,

such as came into his voice when business matters were being discussed.

“You mustn’t come back alone to this empty house.”

She looked slowly about her. “No; I never want to see this house again.”

“Where shall you go, then?”

“After tomorrow? There’s a steamer sailing for the Mediterranean the

next day. I think I shall just go down and get on board.”

“Alone?”

She shed a sudden smile on him. “Will you come with me?”

At the question he sprang up out of his armchair with the headlong

haste of a young man. The movement upset a little table at his elbow;

but he let the table lie.

“By God, yes!” he shouted, reaching out to her with both hands.

She shrank back a little, not from reluctance but from a sense of

paralyzing inadequacy. “It’s I who am old now,” she thought with a

shiver.

“What--you really would come with me? The day after tomorrow?” she said.

“I’d come with you today, if there was enough of it left to get us

anywhere.” He stood looking at her, waiting for her to speak; then, as

she remained silent, he slowly drew back a step or two. “Kate--this

isn’t one of your jokes?”

As she returned his look she was aware that her sight of him was

becoming faintly blurred. “Perhaps it was, when I began. It isn’t now.”

She put her hands in his.

XXVIII.

In the stillness of the sleeping house she sat up with a start, plucked

out of a tormented sleep.

“But it can’t be--it can’t be--it can’t be!”

She jumped out of bed, turned on the light, and stared about her. What

secret warning had waked her with that cry on her lips? She could

not recall having dreamed: she had only tossed and fought with some

impalpable oppression. And now, as she stood there, in that hideously

familiar room, the silence went on echoing with her cry. All the

excuses, accommodations, mitigations, mufflings, disguisings, had

dropped away from the bare fact that her lover was going to marry her

daughter, and that nothing she could do would prevent it.

A few hours ago she had still counted on the blessed interval of time,

the lulling possibilities of delay. She had kissed Anne goodnight

very quietly, she remembered. Then it was eleven o’clock of the night

before; now it was the morning of the day. A pitch-black winter

morning: there would be no daylight for another three hours. No

daylight--but the Day was here!

She glanced at the clock. Half-past four. The longing seized her to go

and look at Anne for the last time; but the next moment she felt that

hardly a sight in the world would be less bearable.

She turned back into her room, wrapped herself in her dressing-gown,

and went and sat in the window.

What did Fifth Avenue look like nowadays at half-past four o’clock of a

winter morning? Much as it had when she had kept the same vigil nearly

twenty years earlier, on the morning of her flight with Hylton Davies.

That night too she had not slept, and for the same reason: the thought

of Anne. On that other day she had deserted her daughter for the first

time--and now it seemed as though she were deserting her again. One

betrayal of trust had led inexorably to the other.

Fifth Avenue was much more brilliantly lit than on that other far-off

morning. Long streamers of radiance floated on the glittering asphalt

like tropical sea-weeds on a leaden sea. But overhead the canopy of

darkness was as dense, except for the tall lights hanging it here and

there with a planetary glory.

The street itself was empty. In old times one would have heard the

desolate nocturnal sound of a lame hoof-beat as a market-gardener’s

cart went by: they always brought out in the small hours the horses

that were too bad to be seen by day. But all that was changed. The

last lame horse had probably long since gone to the knacker’s yard, and

no link of sound was left between the Niagara-roar of the day and the

hush before dawn.

On that other morning a hansom-cab had been waiting around the corner

for young Mrs. Clephane. It had all been very well arranged--Hylton

Davies had a gift for arranging. His yacht was a marvel of luxury:

food, service, appointments. He was the kind of man who would lean

across the table to say confidentially: “I particularly recommend

that sauce.” He had the soul of a club steward. It was curious to be

thinking of him now....

She remembered that, as she jumped into the hansom on that fateful

morning, she had thought to herself: “Now I shall never again hear my

mother-in-law say: ‘I do think, my dear, you make a mistake not to

humour John’s prejudices a little more’.” She had fixed her mind with

intensity on the things she most detested in the life she was leaving;

it struck her now that she had thought hardly at all of the life she

was going to. Above all, that day, she had crammed into her head every

possible thought that might crowd out the image of little Anne: John

Clephane’s bad temper, his pettiness about money, his obstinacy, his

obtuseness, the detested sound of his latch-key when he came home,

flown with self-importance, from his club. “Thank God,” she remembered

thinking, “there can’t possibly be a latch-key on a yacht!”

Now she suddenly reminded herself that before long she would have to

get used to the click of another key. Dear Fred Landers! That click

would symbolize all the securities and placidities: all the thick

layers of affection enfolding her from loneliness, from regret, from

remorse. It comforted her already to know that, after tomorrow, there

would always be some one between herself and her thoughts. In that mild

warmth she would bask like one of those late bunches of grapes that

have just time, before they drop, to turn from sourness to insipidity.

Now again she was at the old game of packing into her mind every

thought that might crowd out the thought of Anne; but her mind was like

a vast echoing vault, and the thoughts she had to put into it would not

have filled the palm of her hand.

Where would she and Landers live? A few months of travel, no doubt;

and then--New York. Could she picture him anywhere else? Would it be

materially possible for him to give up his profession--renounce “the

office”? Her mind refused to see him in any other setting. And yet--and

yet.... But no; it was useless to linger on that. Nothing, nothing that

she could invent would crowd out the thought of Anne.

She sat in the window, and watched the sky turn from black to gray,

and then to the blank absence of colour before daylight....

* * * * *

In the motor, on the way to St. Stephen’s, the silence had become

oppressive, and Kate suddenly laid her hand on her daughter’s.

“My darling, I wish you all the happiness there ever was in the

world--happiness beyond all imagining.”

“Oh, mother, take care! Not too much! You frighten me....” Through the

white mist of tulle Kate caught the girl’s constrained smile. She had

been too vehement, then? She had over-emphasized? Doubtless she would

never get exactly the right note. She heard herself murmuring vaguely:

“But there can’t be too much, can there?” and Anne’s answer: “Oh, I

don’t know....” and mercifully that brought them to the verge of the

crimson carpet and the awning.

In the vestibule of the church they were received into a flutter of

family. No bridesmaids; but Fred Landers and Hendrik Drover, stationed

there as participants in the bridal procession, amid a cluster of

Drovers and Tresseltons who had lingered for a glimpse of the bride

before making their way to the front pews. A pervading lustre of pearls

and tall hats; a cloud of expensive furs, a gradual vague impression

of something having possibly gone wrong, and no one wishing to be the

first to suggest it. Finally Joe Tresselton approached to say in Mrs.

Clephane’s ear: “He’s not here yet--”

Anne had caught the whisper. Her mother saw her lips whiten as they

framed a laugh. “Chris late? How like him! Or is it that we’re too

indecently punctual--?”

Oh, the tidal rush in the mother’s breast! The _Not here! Not here! Not

here!_ shouted down at her from every shaft and curve of the vaulting,

rained down on her from the accomplice heavens! And she had called the

sky indifferent! But of course he was not here--he would not be here.

She had always known that she would wear him out in the end. Her case

was so much stronger than his. In a flash all her torturing doubts fell

away from her.

All about her, wrist-watches were being furtively consulted. Anne stood

between the groups, a pillar of snow.

“Anne always _is_ indecently punctual,” Nollie Tresselton laughed;

Uncle Hendrik mumbled something ponderous about traffic obstruction.

Once or twice the sexton’s black gown fluttered enquiringly out of

an aisle door and back; the bridal group began to be aware of the

pressure, behind them, of late arrivals checked in the doorway till the

procession should have passed into the church.

Kate Clephane caught Fred Landers’s eyes anxiously fixed on her; she

suspected her own of shooting out rays of triumph, and bent down

hurriedly to straighten a fold of Anne’s train. _Not here! Not here!

Not here!_ the sky shouted down at her. And none of them--except

perhaps Anne--knew why.... Anne--yes; Anne’s suffering would be

terrible. But she was young--she was young; and some day she would know

what she had been saved from....

The central doors were suddenly flung open; the Mendelssohn march

rolled out. Mrs. Clephane started up from her stooping posture to

signal to Fred Landers that the doors must be shut.... The music

stopped ... since the bridegroom was not coming.

But the folds of Anne’s train were already slipping through her

mother’s fingers, Anne was in motion on Uncle Hendrik’s stalwart

arm. The rest of the family had drifted up to their front pews: Fred

Landers, a little flushed, stood before Mrs. Clephane, his arm bent

to receive her hand. The bride, softly smiling, drew aside to let her

mother pass into the church before her. At the far end of the nave, on

the chancel-steps, two figures had appeared against a background of

lawn sleeves and lilies.

Blindly Kate Clephane moved forward, keeping step with Landers’s slow

stride. At the chancel-steps he left her, taking his seat with Mrs.

Drover. The mother stood alone and waited for her daughter.

XXIX.

The Drovers had wanted Mrs. Clephane to return to Long Island with them

that afternoon; Nollie Tresselton had added her prayer; Anne herself

had urged her mother to accept.

“How can I drive away thinking of you here all alone?” the girl had

said; and Kate had managed to smile back: “You won’t be thinking of me

at all!” and had added that she wanted to rest, and have time to gather

up her things before sailing.

It had been settled, in the last days before the wedding, that she

was to go abroad for the winter: to Italy, perhaps, or the south of

France. The young couple, after a brief dash to Florida, were off for

India, by Marseilles and Suez; it seemed only reasonable that Mrs.

Clephane should not care to remain in New York. And Anne knew--though

no one else did--that when her mother went abroad she would not go

alone. Nothing was to be said ... not a word to any one; though by this

time--an hour after bride and groom had driven away to the Palm Beach

express--Chris Fenno was no doubt in the secret.

Anne had left without anxiety; she understood her mother’s wish to keep

her plans to herself, and respected it. And in a few days now the

family would be reassembling at St. Stephen’s for another, even quieter

wedding.

* * * * *

Aline came downstairs to the long drawing-room, where Mrs. Clephane was

sitting alone in a litter of fallen rose-petals, grains of rice and

ends of wedding-cake ribbon. Beyond, in the dining-room, the servants

were moving away the small tables, and carrying off the silver in

green-lined baskets.

The house-keeper had come in to give the butler the address of the

hospital to which Mrs. Fenno wished the flowers to be sent, and

a footman was already removing the baskets and bouquets from the

drawing-room.

“Madame will be much more comfortable upstairs than in all this

untidiness; and Mr. Landers has telephoned to ask if he may see Madame

in about half an hour.”

Aline, of course, knew everything; news reached her by every pore, as

it circulates through an Eastern bazaar. Erect in the handsome dress

that Mrs. Clephane had given her for the wedding, she smiled drily but

approvingly upon her mistress. It was understood that Mr. Landers was

_un bon parti_; and the servants’ hall knew him to be generous. So did

Aline, whose gown was fastened by the diamond arrow he had offered her

that morning.

“There’s a nice fire in Madame’s sitting-room,” she added persuasively.

Kate Clephane sat motionless, without looking up. She heard what the

maid was saying, and could have repeated her exact words; but they

conveyed no meaning.

“Madame must come up,” Aline again insisted.

The humiliation of being treated like a sick person at length roused

Mrs. Clephane, and she got to her feet and followed the maid. On the

way upstairs she said to her: “Presently I will tell you what I shall

need on the steamer.” Then she turned into the sitting-room, and Aline

softly closed the door on her.

The fire was burning briskly; Anne’s last bunch of violets stood on

the low table near the lounge. Outside the windows the winter light

was waning. Kate Clephane, sitting down on the lounge, remembered

that the room had worn that same look of soothing intimacy on the day

when Anne had first led her into it, little more than a year ago; and

she remembered that, then, also, Fred Landers had joined her there,

hurriedly summoned to reassure her loneliness. It was curious, in what

neatly recurring patterns events often worked themselves out.

The door opened and he came in. He still wore his wedding clothes, and

the dark morning coat and the pearl in his tie suited him, gave him a

certain air of self-confidence and importance. He looked like a man

who would smooth one’s way, manage all the tiresome details of life

admirably, without fuss or bluster. The small point of consciousness

left alive in Kate Clephane registered the fact, and was dimly

comforted by it. Steamer chairs, for instance, and the right table in

a ventilated corner of the dining-saloon--one wouldn’t have to bother

about anything....

“I wish we could have got off tomorrow,” he said, sitting down beside

her, and looking at her with a smile. “I would have, you know, if you’d

thought it feasible. Why shouldn’t we have been married in Liverpool?”

“Or on board! Don’t they provide a registry office on these modern

boats?” she jested with pale lips.

“But next week--next week I shall carry you off,” he continued with

authority.

“Yes; next week.” She tried to add a word of sympathy, of affection;

the word he was waiting for. But she could only turn her wan smile on

him.

“My dear, you’re dead-beat; don’t you want me to go?”

She shook her head.

“No? You’d rather I stayed--you really would?” His face lit up. “You

needn’t pretend with me, Kate, you know.”

“Needn’t I? Are you sure? All my life I seem never to have done

anything but pretend,” she suddenly exclaimed.

“Well, you needn’t now; I’m sure.” He sealed it with his quiet smile,

leaning toward her a little, but without moving his chair nearer. There

was something infinitely reassuring in the way he took things for

granted, without undue emphasis or enthusiasm.

“Lie down now; let me pull that shawl up. A cigarette--may I? I suppose

there’ll be tea presently? We needn’t talk about plans till tomorrow.”

She tried to smile back. “But what else is there to talk about?” Her

eyes rested on his face, and she read in it his effort to remain the

unobtrusive and undemanding friend. The sight gave her a little twinge

of compunction. “I mean, there’s nothing to say about me. Let’s talk

about you,” she suggested.

The blood mounted to his temples, congesting his cheek-bones and the

elderly fold above his stiff collar. He made a movement as if to rise,

and then settled back resolutely into his chair. “About me? There’s

nothing to say about me either--except in relation to you. And there

there’s too much! Don’t get me going. Better take me for granted.”

“I do; that’s my comfort.” She was beginning to smile on him less

painfully. “All your goodness to me--”

But now he stood up, his pink deepening to purple.

“Oh, not that, please! It rather hurts; even at my age. And I assure

you I can be trusted to remind myself of it at proper intervals.”

She raised herself on her elbow, looking up at him in surprise.

“I’ve hurt you? I didn’t mean to.”

“Well--goodness, you know! A man doesn’t care to be eternally reminded

of his goodness; not even if it’s supposed to be all he has to

offer--in exchange for everything.”

“Oh--_everything_!” She gave a little shrug. “If ever a woman came to a

man empty-handed....”

With a slight break in his voice he said: “You come with yourself.”

The answer, and his tone, woke in her a painful sense of his intense

participation in their talk and her own remoteness from it. The

phrase “come with yourself” shed a lightning-flash of irony on their

reciprocal attitude. What self had she left to come with? She knew

he was waiting for an answer; she felt the cruelty of letting his

exclamation drop as if unheard; but what more had she to say to

him--unless she should say everything?

The thought shot through her for the first time. Had she really meant

to marry him without his knowing? Perhaps she had; she was not sure;

she felt she would never again be very sure of her own intentions. But

now, through all the confusion and exhaustion of her mind, one fact had

become abruptly clear: that she would have to tell him. Whether she

married him or not seemed a small matter in comparison. First she must

look into those honest eyes with eyes as honest.

“Myself?” she said, echoing his last word. “What do you know of that

self, I wonder?”

He continued to stand before her in the same absorbed and brooding

attitude. “All I need to know is how unhappy you’ve been.”

She leaned on her arm, still looking up at him. “Yes; I’ve been

unhappy; horribly unhappy. Beyond anything you can imagine. Beyond

anything you’ve ever guessed.”

This did not seem to surprise him. He continued to return her gaze with

the same tranquil eyes. “But I rather think I _have_ guessed,” he said.

Something in his voice seemed to tell her that after all she had not

been alone in her struggle; it was as if he had turned a key in the

most secret ward of her heart. Oh, if he had really guessed--if she

were to be suddenly lifted beyond that miserable moment of avowal into

a quiet heaven of understanding and compassion!

“You have guessed--you’ve understood?”

Yes; his face was still unperturbed, his eyes were indulgent. The

tears rushed to her own; she wanted to sit down and cry her heart out.

Instead, she got to her feet and went to him with outstretched hands.

She must thank him; she would find the words now; she would be able to

tell him what that perfect trust was to her, or at least what it would

be when the present was far enough away for anything on earth to help

her.

“Oh, Fred--you knew all the while? You saw I tried to the utmost, you

saw I couldn’t do anything to stop it?”

He had her hands in his, and was holding them against his breast. “Stop

it--the marriage? Is that what’s troubling you?” He was speaking now as

if to a frightened disconsolate child. “Of course you couldn’t stop it.

I know how you must have loathed it; all you must have suffered. But

Anne’s happiness had to come first.”

He did understand, then; did pity her! She let herself lie in his

hold. The relief of avowal was too exquisite, now that all peril of

explanation was over and she could just yield herself up to his pity.

But though he held her she no longer saw him; all her attention was

centred on her own torturing problem. She thought of him only as of

some one kinder and more understanding than any one else, and her heart

overflowed.

“But wasn’t it just cowardice on my part? Wasn’t it wicked of me not to

dare to tell her?”

“Of course it wasn’t wicked. What good would it have done? It’s hard

that she made the choice she did; but a girl with a will like Anne’s

has to take her chance. I always felt you’d end by seeing it. And you

will, when you’re less tired and overwrought. Only trust me to look

after you,” he said.

Her tears rose and began to run down. She would have liked to go on

listening without having to attend to what he said. But again she felt

that he was waiting for her to speak, and she tried to smile back at

him. “I do trust you ... you do help me. You can’t tell the agony of

the secret....” She hardly knew what she was saying.

“It needn’t be a secret now. Doesn’t that help?”

“Your knowing, and not loathing me? Oh, _that_--.” She gave a faint

laugh. “You’re the only one of them all who’s not afraid of me.”

“Afraid of you?”

“Of what I might let out--if they hadn’t always stopped me. That’s my

torture now; that I let them stop me. It always will be. I shall go

over it and over it; I shall never be sure I oughtn’t to have told

them.”

“Told _what_?”

“Why--what you know.”

She looked up at him, surprised, and saw that a faint veil had fallen

over the light in his eyes. His face had grown pale and she felt that

he was holding her hands without knowing that he held them.

“I know you’ve been most unhappy ... most cruelly treated....” He

straightened his shoulders and looked at her. “That there’ve been

things in the past that you regret ... must regret....” He paused, as

if waiting for her to speak; then, with a visible effort, went on: “In

all those lonely years--when you were so friendless--I’ve naturally

supposed you were not always ... alone....”

She freed herself gently and moved away from him.

“Is that all?”

She was conscious in him of a slowly dawning surprise. “All--what else

is there?”

“What else? The shame ... the misery ... the truth....”

For a moment he seemed hardly to take in the words she was flinging at

him. He looked like a man who has not yet felt the pain of the wound he

has received.

“I certainly don’t know--of any shame,” he answered slowly.

“Then you don’t know anything. You don’t know any more than the

others.” She had almost laughed out as she said it.

He seemed to be struggling with an inconceivable idea: an idea

for which there were no terms in his vocabulary. His lips moved

once or twice before he became articulate. “You mean: some sort of

complicity--some sort of secret--between you and--and Anne’s husband?”

She made a faint gesture of assent.

“Something--” he still wavered over it--“something you ought to have

told Anne before ... before she....” Abruptly he broke off, took a few

steps away from her, and came back. “Not you--not you and that man?”

She was silent.

The silence continued. He stood without moving, turned away from her.

She had dropped down on the foot of the lounge, and sat gazing at the

pattern of the carpet. He put his hands over his eyes. Presently,

hearing him move, she looked up. He had uncovered his eyes and was

staring about the room as if he had never seen it before, and could not

remember what had brought him there. His face had shrunk and yellowed;

he seemed years older.

As she looked at him, she marvelled at her folly in imagining even for

a moment that he had read any farther into her secret than the others.

She remembered his first visit after her return; remembered how she

had plied him with uncomfortable questions, and detected in his kindly

eyes the terror of the man who, all his life, has tried to buy off fate

by optimistic evasions. Fate had caught up with him now--Kate Clephane

would have given the world if it had not been through her agency.

Sterile pain--it appeared that she was to inflict it after all, and on

the one being who really loved her, who would really have helped her

had he known how!

He moved nearer, and stood in front of her, forcing a thin smile.

“You’ll think me as obtuse as the rest of them,” he said.

She could not find anything to answer. Her tears had stopped, and she

sat dry-eyed, counting the circles in the carpet. When she had reached

the fifteenth she heard him speaking again in the same stiff concise

tone. “I--I was unprepared, I confess.”

“Yes. I ought to have known--” She stood up, and continued in a low

colourless voice, as if the words were being dictated to her: “I meant

to tell you; I really did; at least I suppose I did. But I’ve lived so

long with the idea of the thing that I wasn’t surprised when you said

you knew--knew everything. I thought you meant that you’d guessed.

There were times when I thought everybody must have guessed--”

“Oh, God forbid!” he ejaculated.

She smiled faintly. “I don’t know that it much matters. Except that I

want to keep it from Anne--that I must keep it from her now. I daresay

it was wicked of me not to stop the marriage at any cost; but when I

tried to, and saw her agony, I couldn’t. The only way would have been

to tell her outright; and I couldn’t do that--I couldn’t! Coming back

to her was like dying and going to heaven. It _was_ heaven to me here

till he came. Then I tried.... I tried.... But how can I ever make

you understand? For nearly twenty years no one had thought much of

me--I hadn’t thought much of myself. I’d never really forgiven myself

for leaving Anne. And then, when she sent for me, and I came, and we

were so happy together, and she seemed so fond of me, I thought ... I

thought perhaps after all it hadn’t made any difference. But as soon

as the struggle began I saw I hadn’t any power--any hold over her. She

told me so herself: she said I was a stranger to her. She said I’d

given up any claim on her, any right to influence her, when I went away

and left her years ago. And so she wouldn’t listen to me. That was my

punishment: that I couldn’t stop her.”

“Oh, Anne--Anne can look out for herself. What do I care for Anne?” he

exclaimed harshly. “But you--you--you--and that man!” He dropped down

into his armchair and hid his eyes again.

She waited a minute or two; then she ventured: “Don’t mind so much.”

He made no answer. At length he lifted his head, but without looking

directly at her.

“It was--long ago?”

“Yes. Six years--eight years. I don’t know....” She heard herself

pushing the date back farther and farther, but she could not help it.

“At a time when you were desperately lonely and unhappy?”

“Oh--not much more than usual.” She added, after a moment: “I don’t

claim any extenuating circumstances.”

“The cad--the blackguard! I--”

She interrupted him. “Not that either--quite. When he first met

Anne he didn’t know; didn’t know she was even related to me. When he

found out he went away; he went away twice. She made him come back.

She reproached me for separating them. Nothing could have stopped her

except my telling her. And I couldn’t tell her when I saw how she

cared.”

“No--” There was a slight break in the harshness of his voice.

Again she was silent, not through the wish to avoid speaking, but from

sheer inability to find anything more to say.

Suddenly he lifted his miserable eyes, and looked at her for a second.

“You’ve been through hell,” he said.

“Yes. I’m there still.” She stopped, and then, drawn by the pity in

his tone, once more felt herself slipping down the inevitable slope of

confession. “It’s not only _that_ hell--there’s another. I want to tell

you everything now. It was not only for fear of Anne’s suffering that

I couldn’t speak; it was because I couldn’t bear the thought of what

she would think of me if I did. It was so sweet being her mother--I

couldn’t bear to give it up. And the triumph of your all thinking she’d

done right to bring me back--I couldn’t give that up either, because

I knew how much it counted in her feeling for me. Somehow, it turned

me once more into the person I was meant to be--or thought I was meant

to be. That’s all. I’m glad I’ve told you.... Only you mustn’t let it

hurt you; not for long....”

After she had ended he continued to sit without moving; she had the

impression that he had not heard what she had said. His attention,

his receptive capacity, were still engrossed by the stark fact of her

confession: her image and Chris Fenno’s were slowly burning themselves

into his shrinking vision. To assist at the process was like peeping

into a torture-chamber, and for the moment she lost the sense of her

own misery in the helpless contemplation of his. Sterile pain, if ever

there was--

At last she crossed over to where he sat, and laid a touch on his

shoulder.

“Fred--you mustn’t let this hurt you. It has done me good to tell you

... it has helped. Your being so sorry has helped. And now it’s all

over ... it’s ended....”

He did not change his attitude or even look up again. She still doubted

if he heard her. After a minute or two she withdrew her hand and moved

away. The strain had been too great; she had imposed on him more than

he could bear. She saw that clearly now: she said to herself that their

talk was over, that they were already leagues apart. Her sentimental

experience had shown her how often two people still in the act of

exchanging tender or violent words are in reality at the opposite ends

of the earth, and she reflected, ironically, how much success in human

affairs depends on the power to detect such displacements. She herself

had no such successes to her credit; hers was at best the doubtful gift

of discerning, perhaps more quickly than most people, why she failed.

But to all such shades of suffering her friend was impervious: he was

taking his ordeal in bulk.

She sat down and waited. Curiously enough, she was less unhappy than

for a long time past. His pain and his pity were perhaps what she had

most needed from him: the centre of her wretchedness seemed the point

at which they were meant to meet. If only she could have put it in

words simple enough to reach him--but to thank him for what he was

suffering would have seemed like mockery; and she could only wait and

say to herself that perhaps before long he would go.

After a while he lifted his head and slowly got to his feet. For a

moment he seemed to waver; then he crossed the space between them, and

stood before her. She rose too, and held out her hand; but he did not

appear to notice the gesture, though his eyes were now intensely fixed

on her.

“The time will come,” he said, “when all this will seem very far off

from both of us. That’s all I want to think of now.”

She looked up, not understanding. Then she began to tremble in all her

body; her very lips trembled, and the lids of her dazzled eyes. He

was still looking at her, and she saw the dawn of the old kindness in

his. He seemed to have come out on the other side of a great darkness.

But all she found to say was the denial of what she was feeling. “Oh,

no--no--no--”; and she put him from her.

“No?”

“It’s enough; enough; what you’ve just said is enough.” She stammered

it out incoherently. “Don’t you see that I can’t bear any more?”

He stood rooted there in his mild obstinate kindness. “There’s got to

be a great deal more, though.”

“Not now--not now!” She caught his hand, and just laid it to her cheek.

Then she drew back, with a sense of resolution, of finality, that must

have shown itself in her face and air. “Now you’re to go; you’re to

leave me. I’m dreadfully tired.” She said it almost like a child who

asks to be taken up and carried. It seemed to her that for the first

time in her life she had been picked up out of the dust and weariness,

and set down in a quiet place where no harm could come.

He was still looking at her, uncertainly, pleadingly. “Tomorrow, then?

Tomorrow morning?”

She hesitated. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

“And now you’ll rest?”

“Now I’ll rest.”

With that--their hands just clasping--she guided him gently to the

door, and stood waiting till she heard his step go down the stair. Then

she turned back into the room and opened the door of her bedroom.

The maid was there, preparing a becoming tea-gown. She had no doubt

conjectured that Mr. Landers would be coming back for dinner.

“Aline! Tomorrow’s steamer--it’s not too late to call up the office?”

The maid stood staring, incredulous, the shimmering dress on her arm.

“The steamer--not tomorrow’s steamer?”

“The steamer on which I had taken passages,” Mrs. Clephane explained,

hurriedly reaching for the telephone book.

Aline’s look seemed to say that this was beyond all reasonable

explanation.

“But those passages--Madame ordered me to give them up. Madame said we

were not to sail till next week.”

“Never mind. At this season there’s no crowd. You must call up at once

and get them back.”

“Madame is not really thinking of sailing tomorrow? The boat leaves at

six in the morning.”

Mrs. Clephane almost laughed in her face. “I’m not thinking of doing

it; I’m going to do it. Ah, here’s the number--” She unhooked the

receiver.

XXX.

Kate Clephane was wakened by the slant of Riviera sun across her bed.

The hotel was different; it was several rungs higher on the ladder

than the Minorque et l’Univers, as its name--the Petit Palais--plainly

indicated. The bedroom, too, was bigger, more modern, more freshly

painted; and the corner window of the tiny adjoining _salon_ actually

clipped a wedge of sea in its narrow frame.

So much was changed for the better in Mrs. Clephane’s condition; in

other respects, she had the feeling of having simply turned back a

chapter, and begun again at the top of the same dull page.

Her maid, Aline, was obviously of the same opinion; in spite of the

more commodious room, and the sitting-room with its costly inset of

sea, Mrs. Clephane had not recovered her lost prestige in Aline’s

estimation. “What was the good of all the fuss if it was to end in

_this_?” Aline’s look seemed to say, every morning when she brought

in the breakfast-tray. Even the fact that letters now lay on it more

frequently, and that telegrams were no longer considered epoch-making,

did not compensate for the general collapse of Aline’s plans and

ambitions. When one had had a good roof over one’s head, and a good

motor at one’s door, what was the sense of bolting away from them at

a moment’s notice and coming back to second-rate hotels and rattling

taxis, with all the loss of consequence implied? Aline remained icily

silent when her mistress, after a few weeks at the Petit Palais,

mentioned that she had written to enquire about prices at Dinard for

the summer.

Kate Clephane, on the whole, took the change more philosophically. To

begin with, it had been her own choice to fly as she had; and that

in itself was a help--at times; and then--well, yes,--already, after

the first weeks, she had begun to be aware that she was slipping back

without too much discomfort into the old groove.

The first month after her arrival wouldn’t yet bear thinking about;

but it was well behind her now, and habit was working its usual

miracle. She had been touched by the welcome her old friends and

acquaintances had given her, and exquisitely relieved--after the first

plunge--to find herself again among people who asked no questions

about her absence, betrayed no curiosity about it, and probably felt

none. They were all very much occupied with each other’s doings when

they were together, but the group was so continually breaking up and

reshaping itself, with the addition of new elements, and the departing

scattered in so many different directions, and toward destinations

so unguessable, that once out of sight they seemed to have no more

substance or permanence than figures twitching by on a film.

This sense of unsubstantiality had eased Kate Clephane’s taut

nerves, and helped her to sink back almost unaware into her old way

of life. Enough was known of her own existence in the interval--a

shadowy glimpse of New York opulence, an Opera box, a massive and

important family, a beautiful daughter married to a War Hero--to add

considerably to her standing in the group; but her Riviera friends

were all pleasantly incurious as to details. In most of their lives

there were episodes to be bridged over by verbal acrobatics, and they

were all accustomed to taking each other’s fibs at their face-value.

Of Mrs. Clephane they did not even ask any: she came back handsomer,

better dressed--yes, my dear, actually _sables_!--and she offered them

cock-tails and Mah-Jongg in her own sitting-room (with a view of the

sea thrown in). They were glad of so useful a recruit, and the distance

between her social state and theirs was not wide enough to awaken

acrimony or envy.

“Aline!”

The maid’s door was just across the passage now; she appeared almost at

once, bearing a breakfast-tray on which were several letters.

“Violets!” she announced with a smile; Aline’s severity had of late

been tempered by an occasional smile. But Mrs. Clephane did not turn

her head; her colour did not change. These violets were not from the

little lame boy whose bouquet had flushed her with mysterious hopes on

the day when her daughter’s cable had called her home; the boy she had

set up for life (it had been her first thought after landing) because

of that happy coincidence. Today’s violets embodied neither hope nor

mystery. She knew from whom they came, and what stage in what game

they represented; and lifting them from the tray after a brief sniff,

she poured out her chocolate with a steady hand. Aline, perceptibly

rebuffed, but not defeated, put the flowers into a glass on her

mistress’s dressing-table. “There,” the gesture said, “she can’t help

seeing them.”

Mrs. Clephane leaned back against her pink-lined pillows, and sipped

her chocolate with deliberation. She had not yet opened the letters,

or done more than briefly muster their superscriptions. None from her

daughter: Anne, at the moment, was half-way across the Red Sea, on her

way to India, and there would be no news of her for several weeks to

come. None of the letters was interesting enough to be worth a glance.

Mrs. Clephane went over them once or twice, as if looking for one that

was missing; then she pushed them aside and took up the local newspaper.

She had got back into her old habit of lingering on every little daily

act, making the most of it, spreading it out over as many minutes as

possible, in the effort to cram her hours so full that there should

be no time for introspection or remembrance; and she read the paper

carefully, from the grandiloquent leading article on the wonders of the

approaching Carnival to the column in which the doings of the local and

foreign society were glowingly recorded.

“The flower of the American colony and the most distinguished French

and foreign notabilities of the Riviera will meet this afternoon at

the brilliant reception which Mrs. Parley Plush has organized at her

magnificent Villa Mimosa in honour of the Bishop of the American

Episcopal churches in Europe.”

Ah--to be sure; it was today! Kate Clephane laid down the newspaper

with a smile. She was recalling Mrs. Minity’s wrath when it had been

announced that the reception for the new Bishop was to be given by Mrs.

Parley Plush--Mrs. Plush, of all people! Mrs. Minity was not an active

member of the Reverend Mr. Merriman’s parochial committees; her bodily

inertia, and the haunting fear of what might happen if her coachman

tried to turn the horses in the narrow street in which the Rectory

stood, debarred her from such participation; but she was nevertheless

a pillar of the church, by reason of a small but regular donation to

its fund and a large and equally regular commentary on its affairs.

Mr. Merriman gave her opinions almost the importance she thought they

deserved; and a dozen times in the season Mrs. Merriman was expected

to bear the brunt of her criticisms, and persuade her not to give up

her pew and stop her subscription. “That woman,” Mrs. Minity would cry,

“whom I have taken regularly for a drive once a fortnight all winter,

and supplied with brandy-peaches when I had to go without myself!”

Mrs. Minity, on the occasion of the last drive, had not failed to tell

Mrs. Merriman what she thought of the idea--put forward, of course, by

Mrs. Plush herself--of that lady’s being chosen to entertain the new

Bishop on his first tour of his diocese. The scandal was bad enough:

did Mrs. Merriman want Mrs. Minity to tell her what the woman had

been, what her reputation was? No; Mrs. Merriman would rather not.

She probably knew well enough herself, if she had chosen to admit it

... but for Mrs. Minity the real bitterness of the situation lay in

the fact that she herself could not eclipse Mrs. Plush by giving the

reception because she lived in a small flat instead of a large--a

vulgarly large--villa.

“No; don’t try to explain it away, my dear”; (this to Kate Clephane,

the day after Mrs. Merriman had been taken on the latest of her

penitential drives); “don’t try to put me off with that Rectory

humbug. Everybody at home knows that Mrs. Parley Plush came from

Anaconda, Georgia, and everybody in Anaconda knows _what_ she came

from. And now, because she has a big showy villa (at least, so

they tell me--for naturally I’ve never set foot in it, and never

shall); now that she’s been white-washed by those poor simple-minded

Merrimans, who have lived in this place for twenty years as if it

were a Quaker colony, the woman dares to put herself forward as the

proper person--Mrs. Parley Plush _proper_!--to welcome our new Bishop

in the name of the American Colony! Well,” said Mrs. Minity in the

voice of Cassandra, “if the Bishop knew a quarter of what I do about

her--and what I daresay it is my duty, as a member of this diocese, to

tell him.... But there: what am I to do, my dear, with a doctor who

_absolutely forbids_ all agitating discussions, and warns me that if

anybody should say anything disagreeable to me I might be snuffed out

on the spot?”

Kate Clephane had smiled; these little rivalries were beginning to

amuse her again. And the amusement of seeing Mrs. Minity appear (as

of course she would) at Mrs. Plush’s that afternoon made it seem

almost worth while to go there. Mrs. Clephane reached out for her

engagement-book, scrutinized the day’s page, and found--with another

smile, this one at herself--that she had already noted down: “Plush”.

Yes; it was true; she knew it herself: she still had to go on cramming

things into her days, things good, bad or indifferent, it hardly

mattered which as long as they were crammed tight enough to leave no

chinks for backward glances. Her old training in the art of taking

things easily--all the narcotic tricks of evasion and ignoring--had

come gradually to her help in the struggle to remake her life. Of

course she would go to Mrs. Plush’s ... just as surely as Mrs. Minity

would.

* * * * *

The day was glorious; exactly the kind of day, all the ladies said,

on which one would want the dear Bishop to have his first sight of

his new diocese. The whole strength of the Anglo-American colony was

assembled on Mrs. Plush’s flowery terraces, among the beds of cineraria

and cyclamen, and the giant blue china frogs which, as Mrs. Plush

said, made the garden look “more natural”. Mrs. Plush herself sailed

majestically from group to group, keeping one eye on the loggia through

which the Bishop and Mr. Merriman were to arrive.

“Ah, dear Lord Charles--this is kind! You’ll find _all_ your friends

here. Yes, Mrs. Clephane is over there at the other end of the

terrace,” Mrs. Plush beamed, waving a tall disenchanted-looking man in

the direction of a palm-tree emerging from a cushion of pansies.

Mrs. Clephane, from under the palm, had seen the manœuvre, and smiled

at that also. She knew she was Lord Charles’s pretext for coming to

the reception, but she knew, also, that he was glad to have a pretext,

because if he hadn’t come he wouldn’t have known any more than she did

what to do with the afternoon. There was nothing, she sometimes felt,

that she didn’t know about Lord Charles, though they had met only three

months ago. He was so exactly what medical men call “a typical case,”

and she had had such unlimited time and opportunity for the study of

his particular type. The only difference was that he was a gentleman--a

gentleman still; while the others, most of them, never had been, or

else had long since abdicated that with the rest.

As he moved over the sunlit gravel in her direction she asked herself

for the hundredth time what she meant to do about it. Marry him? God

forbid! Even if she had been sure--and in her heart of hearts she

wasn’t--that he intended to give her the chance. Fall in love with him?

That too she shrugged away. Let him make love to her? Well a little ...

perhaps ... when one was too lonely ... and because he was the only man

at all “possible” in their set.... But what she most wanted of him was

simply to fill certain empty hours; to know that when she came home

at five he would be waiting there, half the days of the week, by her

tea-table; that when she dined out, people would be sure to invite him

and put him next to her; that when there was no bridge or Mah-Jongg

going he would always be ready for a tour of the antiquity shops, and

so sharp at picking up bargains for the little flat she had in view.

That was all she wanted of him; perhaps all he wanted of her. But the

possibility of his wanting more (at which the violets seemed to hint)

produced an uncertainty not wholly disagreeable, especially when he and

she met in company, and she guessed the other women’s envy. “One has

to have something to help one out--” It was the old argument of the

drug-takers: well, call Lord Charles her drug! Why not, when she was so

visibly his?

She settled herself in a garden-chair and watched his approach. It

was a skilful bit of manœuvring: she knew he intended to “eliminate

the bores” and join her only when there was no danger of their being

disturbed. She could imagine how, in old days, he would have stalked

contemptuously through such a company, without a glance to right or

left. But not now. He had reached a phase in his decline when it became

prudent to pause and admire the view at Mrs. Plush’s side, exchange

affabilities with the Consul’s wife, nod familiarly to Mr. Paly, and

even suffer himself to be boisterously hailed by Mrs. Horace Betterly,

who came clinking down the loggia steps to shout out a reminder that

they counted on him for dinner that evening. It was the fate of those

who had to stuff their days full, and could no longer be particular

about the quality of the stuffing. Kate could almost see the time when

Lord Charles, very lean and wizened, would be collecting china frogs

for Mrs. Plush.

He was half-way across the terrace when a sudden expanding and

agitating of Mrs. Plush’s plumes seemed to forerun the approach of the

Bishop. An impressive black figure appeared under the central arch of

the loggia. Mrs. Plush surged forward, every fold of her draperies

swelling: but the new arrival was not the Bishop--it was only Mrs.

Minity who, clothed in black cashmere and majesty, paused and looked

about her.

Mrs. Plush, checked in her forward plunge, stood an instant rigid,

almost tilted backward; her right hand sketched the gesture of two

barely extended fingers; then her just resentment of Mrs. Minity’s

strictures was swept away in the triumph of having her there at last,

and Mrs. Plush swept on full sail, welcoming her unexpected guest as

obsequiously as if Mrs. Minity had been the Bishop.

Kate Clephane looked on with lazy amusement. She could enjoy the

humours of her little world now that her mind was more at leisure.

She hoped the scene between Mrs. Plush and Mrs. Minity would prolong

itself, and was getting up to move within ear-shot when the Bishop,

supported by Mr. and Mrs. Merriman, at length appeared.

Mrs. Clephane stopped short half-way across the terrace. She had never

dreamed of this--never once thought it possible. Yet now she remembered

that Dr. Arklow had been spoken of at the Drovers’ as one of the

candidates for this new diocese; and there he stood, on the steps just

above her, benignant and impressive as when she had last seen him, at

St. Stephen’s, placing Anne’s hand in Chris Fenno’s....

Mrs. Clephane’s first impulse was to turn and lose herself in the

crowd. The sight of that figure brought with it too many banished

scenes and obliterated memories. Back they all rushed on her, fiercely

importunate; she felt their cruel fingers at her throat. For a moment

she stood irresolute, detached in the middle of the terrace; then,

just as she was turning, she heard Mrs. Plush’s trumpet-call: “Mrs.

Clephane? Yes, of course; there she is! Dear Mrs. Clephane, the Bishop

has spied you out already!”

He seemed to reach her in a stride, so completely did his approach span

distances and wipe out time. She saw herself sitting again in a deep

leather armchair, under the photogravure of Salisbury Cathedral, while

he paced the worn rug before the hearth, and his preacher’s voice broke

on the words: “Sterile pain....”

“Shall we walk a little way? The garden seems very beautiful,” the

Bishop suggested.

They stood by a white balustrade under mimosa boughs, and exchanged

futilities about the blueness of the sea and the heat of the sun. “A

New York February ... brr....” “Yes, don’t you envy us? Day after day

of this.... Oh, of course a puff of _mistral_ now and then ... but then

that’s healthy ... and the flowers!”

He laid his large hand deliberately on hers. “My dear--when are you

coming home to New York?” She felt her face just brushed by the

understanding look she had caught twice before in his eyes.

“To New York? Never.”

He waited as if to weigh the answer, and then turned his eyes on the

Mediterranean.

“Never is a long word. There is some one there who would be very happy

if you did.”

She answered precipitately: “It would never have been what he

imagines....”

“Isn’t he the best judge of that? He thinks you ought to have given him

the chance.”

She dropped her voice to say: “I wonder he can ask me to think of ever

living in New York again.”

“He doesn’t ask it of you; I’m charged to say so. He understands

fully.... He would be prepared to begin his life again anywhere.... It

lies with you....”

There was a silence. At length she mastered her voice enough to say:

“Yes; I know. I’m very grateful. It’s a comfort to me....”

“No more?”

She waited again, and then, lifting her eyes, caught once more the

understanding look in his.

“I don’t know how to tell you--how to explain. It seems to me ... my

refusing ...” she lowered her voice still more ... “the one thing that

keeps me from being too hopeless, too unhappy.”

She saw the first tinge of perplexity in his gaze. “The fact of

refusing?”

“The fact of refusing.”

Ah, it was useless; he would never understand! How could she have

imagined that he would?

“But is this really your last word; the very last?” he questioned

mildly.

“Oh, it has to be--it has to be. It’s what I live by,” she almost

sobbed.

No; he would never understand. His face had once more become blank and

benedictory. He pressed her hand, said: “My dear child, I must see you

again--we must talk of this!” and passed on, urbane and unperceiving.

Her eyes filled; for a moment her loneliness came down on her like

a pall. It was always so whenever she tried to explain, not only to

others but even to herself. Yet deep down in her, deeper far than her

poor understanding could reach, there was something that said “No”

whenever that particular temptation stirred in her. Something that told

her that, as Fred Lander’s pity had been the most precious thing he

had to give her, so her refusal to accept it, her precipitate flight

from it, was the most precious thing she could give him in return. He

had overcome his strongest feelings, his most deep-rooted repugnance;

he had held out his hand to her, in the extremity of her need, across

the whole width of his traditions and his convictions; and she had

blessed him for it, and stood fast on her own side. And this afternoon,

when she returned home and found his weekly letter--as she was sure she

would, since it had not come with that morning’s post--she would bless

him again, bless him both for writing the letter, and for giving her

the strength to hold out against its pleadings.

Perhaps no one else would ever understand; assuredly he would never

understand himself. But there it was. Nothing on earth would ever again

help her--help to blot out the old horrors and the new loneliness--as

much as the fact of being able to take her stand on that resolve, of

being able to say to herself, whenever she began to drift toward new

uncertainties and fresh concessions, that once at least she had stood

fast, shutting away in a little space of peace and light the best thing

that had ever happened to her.

THE END

FOUR PERIOD STORIES OF OLD NEW YORK

A distinct and extremely pleasing innovation is this collection of four

new stories by America’s foremost woman fiction writer. Each tells a

separate story, but the four cover successive periods in the life of

old New York. The society of New York’s earlier days lives again in

these four books by

_EDITH WHARTON_

=FALSE DAWN= _The ’Forties_

The son of an old New York family comes under artistic influences from

abroad and acquires tastes and opinions which the New York of the

’Forties can neither understand nor tolerate.

=THE OLD MAID= _The ’Fifties_

Beneath the outwardly respectable fabric of old New York runs this

powerfully appealing and dramatic story of two sisters and the daughter

of one of these women.

=THE SPARK= _The ’Sixties_

A study in influences. The central character is strangely out of tune

with his surroundings. As is finally disclosed, this is because he had

come under the influence of a great man, a herald of a later time.

=NEW YEAR’S DAY= _The ’Seventies_

The poignant story of Lizzie Hazeldean, ostracized from her social

sphere because the New York of the ’Seventies could not comprehend the

sacrifice she had made for her husband.

_Each $1.25. The four, in ornamental period gift box, $5.00_

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

New York London

EDITH WHARTON’S THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Awarded the $1,000 Pulitzer Prize by Columbia University in June, 1921,

as “the American novel published during the year which best presented

the wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of

American manners and manhood.”

“The best piece of fiction of the present season.”--_The Outlook._

“Edith Wharton is a writer who brings glory on the name of America, and

this is her best book. A consummate work of art. It is one of the best

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literature.”--William Lyon Phelps in the _New York Times Book Review_.

“A fine novel, beautifully written, ‘big’ in the best sense. A credit

to American literature.”--Henry Seidel Canby in the _New York Evening

Post_.

“Of this American generation Edith Wharton is unquestionably the

novelist foremost in intellectual distinction.”--_The Philadelphia

North American._

“A work of surpassing art.”--_The Philadelphia Public Ledger._

“Edith Wharton has proved herself again a superb novelist.”--_The

Chicago Tribune._

“‘The Age of Innocence’ is by all odds the great novel of the

year.”--_The Christian World._

“Mrs. Wharton has written a brilliant novel. Her picture of a place and

period is extraordinarily fascinating.”--Heywood Broun in the _New York

Tribune_.

“Mrs. Wharton has added another victory to her varied triumphs in the

field of fiction.”--_The Atlantic Monthly._

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

New York London

BOOKS BY EDITH WHARTON

=THE AGE OF INNOCENCE=

Awarded the $1000 Pulitzer Prize by Columbia University as the

outstanding American novel of 1921. “One of the best novels of the

twentieth century.”--William Lyon Phelps.

=SUMMER=

“The Story of a New England community and of a girl’s life there. Mrs.

Wharton has analyzed and vivified for us, with that sure artist’s touch

that we know so well, a bit of life.”--New York Times.

=THE REEF=

“Mrs. Wharton has produced one of her most adroit and scintillant

dissections of the human relation. She has made of Anna Leath an

extraordinary study of awakening impulses in a woman.”--McClure’s

Magazine.

=THE MARNE=

“Within its pages is concentrated much if not the whole of the meaning

of the Marne both to France and America. Mrs. Wharton has never written

a broader, keener criticism of life than this.”--New York Times.

* * * * *

=FRENCH WAYS AND THEIR MEANING=

An extraordinarily keen study of the French people, for which the

salient qualities of the Gallic spirit form a basis--taste, reverence,

continuity, intellectual honesty.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

LONDON NEW YORK

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized or underlined text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

In this edition, on page 118, a line was repeated and another line was

omitted. The text has been corrected using the 1925 Grosset & Dunlap

edition as a reference.