shall presently worship you, an earthly divinity. Tails, a barren wreath
and the denomination of a money value, meaning I take my fortunes away,
and you,” pointing in turn to the sleeper and the jewels, “put up with
yours as you can.”
She seemed to shiver as he pointed. “No,” she said, “I couldn't do that.
A woman never likes to spin a coin seriously.”
“Will you go, then?”
The sleeper grunted and turned over. She turned pale, put her hand to
her throat, said hurriedly, “Wait here,” and left the room, lifting and
drawing her skirt aside as she passed the sleeper.
She opened the door at last and came again, wrapped in a fur mantle,
carrying a travelling case, and stood looking down at the sleeper as if
with some struggle of the soul, some reluctant surrender.
They went out, shutting the door behind them.
The snow was falling still on Tenth Street, out of the crowding
night. He held her hand on his arm close to him. She glided beside him
noiselessly.
The express office was at the corner, a little dingy, gas-lit room.
“Carriage? Get it in a minute,” said the sleepy clerk. “It's just round
the corner.”
They stood together by a window, half opaque with dust. Her face was
turned away, and he watched the slant of her white cheek.
“You will have so much to tell me,” he whispered at last.
“I am really very grateful. You helped me to resolve.”
“Your carriage, sir.”
The electric light sputtered over them standing on the curb.
“But,” she said, smiling up at him, “I have nothing to tell you. There
is nothing more. It ends here. Forgive me. It is my plot and it wouldn't
work out your way. There are too many conflicting lines of wisdom in
your way. My life lately has been what you would call, perhaps, a study
in realism, and you want me to be, perhaps, a symbolic romance. I am
sure you would express it very cleverly. But I think one lives by
taking resolutions rather than by spinning coins, which promise either
a throned woman, or a wreath and the denomination of a money value. One
turns up so much that is none of these things. Men don't treat women
that way. I married to be rich, and was very wretched, and perhaps your
fame, when it comes, will be as sad to you. Perhaps the trouble lies in
what you called 'the third disposal.' But I did not like being a study
in realism. I should not mind being something symbolic, if I might prove
my gratitude”--she took her hand from his arm, put one foot on the step
and laughed, a pleasant little ripple of sound--“by becoming literary
material.” The door shut to, and the carriage moved away into the storm
with a muffled roll of wheels.
Noel stared after it blankly, and then looked around him. It was half
a block now to Mrs. Tibbett. He walked on mechanically, and mounted the
steps by habit. The outer door was not locked. A touch of compunction
had visited Mrs. Tibbett.
He crept into his bed, and lay noting the growing warmth and sense of
sleep, and wondering whether that arched doorway was the third of the
three or the second. Strictly speaking he seemed to have gone in at the
middle one and come out at the third, or was it not the first rather
than the middle entrance that he had sheltered in? The three arched
entrances capered and contorted before him in the dark, piled themselves
into the portal of a Moorish palace, twisted themselves in a kind of
mystical trinity and seal of Solomon, floated apart and became thin,
filmy, crescent moons over a frozen sea. He sat up in bed and smote the
coverlet.
“I don't know her name! She never told me!” He clutched his hair, and
then released it cautiously. “It's Musidora! I forgot that sonnet!”
'Twas Musidora, whom the mystic nine
Gave to my soul to be forever mine,
And, as through shadows manifold of Dis,
Showed in her eyes, through dusky distances
And clouds, the moving lights about their shrine;
Now ever on my soul her touch shall be
As on the cheek are touches of the snow,
Incessant, cool, and gone; so guiding me
From sorrow's house and triple portico.
And prone recumbrance of brute tyranny,
In a strict path shall teach my feet to go.
The clock in the invisible steeple struck three.