CHAPTER I

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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS

THE HEART OF RACHAEL

VOLUME VI

TO MY TERESA

BOOK I

THE HEART OF RACHAEL

CHAPTER I

The day had opened so brightly, in such a welcome wave of April

sunshine, that by mid-afternoon there were two hundred players

scattered over the links of the Long Island Country Club at Belvedere

Bay; the men in thick plaid stockings and loose striped sweaters, the

women's scarlet coats and white skirts making splashes of vivid color

against the fresh green of grass and the thick powdering of dandelions.

It was Saturday, and a half-holiday; it was that one day of all the

year when the seasons change places, when winter is visibly worsted,

and summer, with warmth and relaxation, bathing and tennis and motor

trips in the moonlight, becomes again a reality.

There was a real warmth in the sunshine to-day, there was a fragrance

of lilac and early roses in the idle breezes. "Hot!" shouted the

players exultantly, as they passed each other in the green valleys and

over the sunny mounds. "You bet it's hot!" agreed stout and glowing

gentlemen, wiping wet foreheads before reaching for a particular club,

and panting as they gazed about at the unbroken turf, melting a few

miles away into the new green of maple and elm trees, and topped, where

the slope rose, by the white columns and brick walls of the clubhouse.

Motor cars swept incessantly back and forth on the smooth roadway; a

few riders, their horses wheeling and dancing, went down the bridle

path, and there was a sprinkling of young men and women and some

shouting and clapping on the tennis-courts. But golf was the order of

the day. At the first tee at least two scores of impatient players

waited their turn to drive off, and at the last green a group of twenty

or thirty men and women, mostly women, were interestedly watching the

putting.

Mrs. Archibald Buckney, a large, generously made woman of perhaps

fifty, who stood a little apart from the group, with two young women

and a mild-looking blond young man, suddenly interrupted a general

discussion of scores and play with a personality.

"Is Clarence Breckenridge playing to-day, I wonder? Anybody seen him?"

"Must be," said the more definite of the two rather indefinite girls,

with an assumption of bright interest. Leila Buckney, a few weeks ago,

had announced her engagement to the mild-looking blond young man,

Parker Hoyt, and she was just now attempting to hold him by a charm she

suspected she did not possess for him, and at the same time to give her

mother and sister the impression that Parker was so deeply in her toils

that she need make no further effort to enslave him.

She had really nothing in common with Parker; their conversation was

composed entirely of personalities about their various friends, and

Leila felt it a great burden, and dreaded the hours she must perforce

spend alone with her future husband. It would be much better when they

were married, of course, but they could not even begin to talk wedding

plans yet, because Parker lived in nervous terror of his aunt's

disapproval, and Mrs. Watts Frothingham was just now in Europe, and had

not yet seen fit to answer her nephew's dignified notification of his

new plans, or the dutiful and gracious note with which Miss Leila had

accompanied it.

The truth, though Leila did not know it, was that Mrs. Frothingham had

a pretty social secretary named Margaret Clay, a strange, attractive

little person, eighteen years old, whose mother had been the old lady's

companion for many years. And to Magsie, as they all called her, young

Mr. Hoyt had paid some decided attention not many months before. Mrs.

Frothingham had seen fit to disapprove these advances then, but she was

an extraordinarily erratic and cross-grained old lady, and her silence

now had forced her nephew uncomfortably to suspect that she might have

changed her mind.

"Darn it!" said the engaging youth to himself "It's none of her

business, anyway, what I do!" But it made him acutely uneasy none the

less. He was the possessor of a good income, as he stood there, this

mild little blond; it came to him steadily and regularly, with no

effort at all on his part, but, with his aunt's million--it must be at

least that--he felt that he would have been much happier. There it was,

safe in the family, and she was seventy-six, and without a direct heir.

It would be too bad to miss it now!

He thought of it a great deal, was thinking of it this moment, in fact,

and Leila suspected that he was. But Mrs. Buckney, aside from a

half-formed wish that young persons were more demonstrative in these

days, and that the wedding might be soon, had not a care in the world,

and, after a moment's unresponsive silence, returned blithely to her

query about Clarence Breckenridge.

"I haven't seen him," responded one of her daughters presently. "Funny,

too! Last year he didn't miss a day."

"Of course he'll get the cup as usual, this year," Mrs. Buckney said

brightly. "But I don't suppose young people with their heads full of

wedding plans will care much about the golf!" she added courageously.

To this Miss Leila answered only with a weary shrug.

"Been drinking lately," Mr. Hoyt volunteered.

"You say he has?" Mrs. Buckney took him up promptly. "Is that so? I

knew he did all the time, of course, but I hadn't heard lately. Well--!

Pretty hard on Mrs. Breckenridge, isn't it?"

"Pretty hard on his daughter," Miss Leila drawled. "He has all kinds of

money, hasn't he, Park?"

"Scads," said Mr. Hoyt succinctly. Conversation languished. Miss Leila

presently said decidedly that unless her mother stood still, the sun,

which was indeed sinking low in the western sky, got in everyone's

eyes. Miss Edith said that she was dying for tea; Mr. Hoyt's watch was

consulted. Four o'clock; it was a little too early for tea.

At about five o'clock the sunlight was softened by a steadily rising

bank of fog, which drifted in from the east; a mist almost like a light

rain beat upon the faces of the last golfers. There were no riders on

the bridle path now, and the long line of motor cars parked by the

clubhouse doors began to move and shift and lessen. People with dinner

engagements melted mysteriously away, lights bloomed suddenly in the

dining-room, shades were drawn and awnings furled.

But in the club's great central apartment--which was reception-room,

lounging-room, and tea-room, and which, opened to the immense porches,

was used for dances in summer, and closed and holly-trimmed, was the

scene of many a winter dance as well--a dozen good friends and

neighbors lingered for tea. The women, sunk in deep chairs about the

blazing logs in the immense fireplace, gossiped in low tones together,

punctuating their talk with an occasional burst of soft laughter. The

men watched teacups, adding an occasional comment to the talk, but

listening in silence for the most part, their amused eyes on the

women's interested faces.

Here was a representative group, ranging in age from old Peter Pomeroy,

who had been one of the club's founders twelve years ago, and at sixty

was one of its prominent members to-day, to lovely Vivian Sartoris, a

demure, baby-faced little blonde of eighteen, who might be confidently

expected to make a brilliant match in a year or two. Peter, slim, hard,

gray-haired and leaden-skinned, well-groomed and irreproachably

dressed, was discussing a cotillion with Mrs. Sartoris, a stout, florid

little woman who was only twice her daughter's age. Mrs. Sartoris

really did look young to be the mother of a popular debutante; she rode

and played golf and tennis as briskly as ever; it was her pose to bring

up the subject of age at all times, and to threaten Vivian with

terrible penalties if she dared marry before her mother was forty at

least.

Old Peter Pomeroy, who had a shrewd and disillusioned gray eye,

thought, as everyone else thought, that Mrs. Sartoris was an

empty-headed little fool, but he rarely talked to a woman who was

anything else, and no woman ever thought him anything but markedly

courteous and gallant. He was old now, rich, unmarried, quite alone in

the world. For forty years he had kept all the women of his

acquaintance speculating as to his plans; marriageable women

especially--perhaps fifty of them--had been able in all maidenliness to

indicate to him that they might easily be persuaded to share the

Pomeroy name and fortune. But Peter went on kissing their hands, and

thrilling them with an intimate casual word now and then, and did no

more.

Perhaps he smiled about it sometimes, in the privacy of his own

apartments--apartments which were variously located in a great city

hotel, an Adirondacks camp, a luxurious club, his own yacht, and the

beautiful home he had built for himself within a mile of the spot where

he was now having his tea. Sometimes it seemed amusing to him that so

many traps were laid for him. He could appraise women quickly, and now

and then he teased a woman of his acquaintance with a delightfully

worded description of his ideal of a wife. If the woman thereafter

carelessly indicated the possession of the desired qualities in

herself, Peter saw that, too, but she never knew it, and never saw him

laughing at her. She went on for a month or two dressing brilliantly

for his carefully chaperoned little dinners, listening absorbed to his

dissertations upon Japanese prints or draperies from Peshawar, until

Peter grew tired and drew off, when she must put a brave face upon it

and do her share to show that she realized that the little game was

over.

He had not been entirely without feminine companionship, however,

during the half-century of his life as a man. Everybody knew

something--and suspected a great deal more--of various friendships of

his. Even the girls knew that Peter Pomeroy was not over-cautious in

the management of his affairs, but they did not like him the less, nor

did their mothers find him less eligible, in a matrimonial sense.

Sometimes he met the older women's hints quite seriously, with brief

allusions to some "little girl" who was always as sweet and deserving

and virtuous as his own fatherly interference in her affairs was

disinterested and kind. "I did what I could for her--risking what might

or might not be said," Mr. Pomeroy might add, with a hero's modest

smile and shrug. And if nobody ever believed him, at least nobody ever

challenged him.

Vivian Sartoris, girlishly perched on the great square leather fender

that framed the fireplace, was merely a modern, a very modern, little

girl, demurely dressed in the smartest of white taffeta ruffles, with

her small feet in white silk stockings and shoes, a daring little

black-and-white hat mashed down upon her soft, loose hair, and, slung

about her shoulders, a woolly coat of clearest lemon yellow. Vivian

gave the impression of a soft little watchful cat, unfriendly, alert,

selfish. Her manner was studiedly rowdyish, her speech marred by slang;

she loved only a few persons in the world besides herself. One of these

few persons, however, was Clarence Breckenridge's daughter, Carol,

affectionately known to all these persons as "Billy," and it was in

Miss Breckenridge's defence that Vivian was speaking now. A general yet

desultory discussion of the three Breckenridges had been going on for

some moments. And some particular criticism of the man of the family

had pierced Miss Sartoris' habitual attitude of bored silence.

"That's all true about him," she said, idly spreading a sturdy little

hand to the blaze. "I have no use for Clarence Breckenridge, and I

think Mrs. Breckenridge is absolutely the most cold-blooded woman I

ever met! She always makes me feel as if she were waiting to see me

make a fool of myself, so that she could smile that smooth superior

smile at me. But Carol's different--she's square, she is; she's just

top-hole--if you know what I mean--she's the finest ever," finished

Miss Sartoris, with a carefully calculated boyishness, "and what I mean

to say is, she's never had a fair deal!"

There was a little murmur of assent and admiration at this, and only

one voice disputed it.

"You're not called upon to defend Billy Breckenridge, Vivian," said

Elinor Vanderwall, in her cool, amused voice. "Nobody's blaming Billy,

and Rachael Breckenridge can stand on her own feet. But what we're

saying is that Clarence, in spite of what they do to protect him, will

get himself dropped by decent people if he goes on as he IS going on!

He was tennis champion four or five years ago; he played against an

Englishman named Waters, who was about half his age; it was the most

remarkable thing I ever saw--"

"Wonderful match!" said Peter Pomeroy, as she paused.

"Wonderful--I should say so!" Miss Vanderwall sighed admiringly at the

memory. "Do you remember that one set went to nineteen--twenty-one?

Each man won on his own service--'most remarkable match I ever saw! But

Clarence Breckenridge couldn't hold a racket now, and his game of

bridge is getting to be absolutely rotten. Crime, I call it!"

Vivian Sartoris offered no further remark. Indeed she had drifted into

a low-toned conversation with a young man on the fender. Elinor

Vanderwall was neither pretty nor rich, and she was unmarried at

thirty-four, her social importance being further lessened by the fact

that she had five sisters, all unmarried, too, except Anna, the oldest,

whose son was in college. Anna was Mrs. Prince; her wedding was only a

long-ago memory now. Georgiana, who came next, was a calm, plain woman

of thirty-seven, interested in church work and organized charities.

Alice was musical and delicate. Elinor was worldly, decisive, the

social favorite among the sisters. Jeanette was boyish and brisk, a

splendid sportswoman, and Phyllis, at twenty-six, was still babyish and

appealing, tiny in build, and full of feminine charms.

All five were good dancers, good tennis and golf players, good

horsewomen, and good managers. All five dressed well, talked well, and

played excellent bridge. The fact of their not marrying was an eternal

mystery to their friends, to their wiry, nervous little father, and

their large, fat, serene mother; perhaps to themselves as well. They

met life, as they saw it, with great cleverness, making it a rule to do

little entertaining at home, where the preponderance of women was most

notable, and refusing to accept invitations except singly. The

Vanderwall girls were rarely seen together; each had her pose and kept

to it, each helped the others to maintain theirs in turn. Alice's

music, Georgiana's altruistic duties, these were matters of sacred

family tradition, and if outsiders sometimes speculated as to the

sisters' sincerity, at least no Vanderwall ever betrayed another. And

despite their obvious handicaps, the five girls were regarded as social

authorities, and their names were prominently displayed in newspaper

accounts of all smart affairs. While making a fine art of feminine

friendships, they yet diffused a general impression of being involved

in endless affairs of the heart. They were much in demand to fill in

bridge tables, to serve on club directorates, to amuse week-end

parties, to be present at house weddings, and to remain with the family

for the first blank day or two after the bride and groom were gone.

"Queer fellow, Breckenridge," said George Pomeroy, old Peter's nephew,

a red-faced, florid, simple man of forty.

"Well, he never should have married as he did, it's all in a mess," a

woman's voice said lazily. "Rachael's extraordinary of course--there's

no one quite like her. But she wasn't the woman for him. Clarence

wanted the little, clinging, adoring kind, who would put cracked ice on

his forehead, and wish those bad saloonkeepers would stop drugging her

dear big boy. Rachael looks right through him; she doesn't fight, she

doesn't care enough to fight. She's just supremely bored by his

weakness and stupidity. He isn't big enough for her, either in goodness

or badness. I never knew what she married him for, and I don't believe

anyone else ever did!"

"I did, for one," said Miss Vanderwall, flicking the ashes from her

cigarette with a well-groomed fingertip. "Clarence Breckenridge never

was in love but once in his life--no, I don't mean with Paula. I mean

with Billy." And as a general nodding of heads confirmed this theory,

the speaker went on decidedly: "Since that child was born she's been

all the world to him. When he and Paula were divorced--she was the

offender--he fretted himself sick for fear he'd done that precious

five-year-old an injury. She didn't get on with her grandmother, she

drove governesses insane, for two or three years there was simply no

end of trouble. Finally he took her abroad, for the excellent reason

that she wanted to go. In Paris they ran into Rachael Fairfax and her

mother--let's see, that was seven years ago. Rachael was only about

twenty-one or two then. But she'd been out since she was sixteen. She

had the bel air, she was beautiful--not as pretty as she is now,

perhaps--and of course her father was dead, and Rachael was absolutely

on the make. She took both Clarence and Billy in hand. I understand the

child was wearing jewelry and staying up until all hours every night.

Rachael mothered her, and of course the child came to admire her. The

funny thing is that Rachael and Billy hit it off very well to this day.

"She and Clarence were married quietly, and came home. And I don't

think it was weeks, it was DAYS--and not many days--later, that Rachael

realized what a fool she'd been. Clarence had eyes for no one but the

girl, and of course she was a fascinating little creature, and she's

more fascinating every year."

"She's not as attractive as Rachael at that," said Peter Pomeroy.

"I know, my dear Peter," Miss Vanderwall assented quickly. "But Billy's

impulsive, and affectionate, at least, and Rachael is neither. Anyway,

Billy's at the age now when she can't think of anything but herself.

Her frocks, her parties, her friends--that's all Clarence cares about!"

"Selfish ass!" said a man's voice in the firelight.

"I KNOW Clarence takes Carol and her friends off on week-end trips,"

some woman said, "and leaves Rachael at home. If Rachael wants the car,

she has to ask them their plans. If she accepts a dinner invitation,

why, Clarence may drop out the last moment because Carol's going to

dine alone at home and wants her Daddy."

"Rachael's terribly decent about it," said the deep voice of old Mrs.

Torrence, who was chaperoning a grandson, glad of any excuse to be at

the club. "Upon my word I wouldn't be! She will breakfast upstairs many

a morning because Clarence likes Carol to pour his coffee. And when

that feller comes home tipsy--"

"Five nights a week!" supplemented Peter Pomeroy.

"Five nights a week," the old lady agreed, nodding, "she makes him

comfortable, quiets the house, and telephones around generally that

Clarence has come home with a splitting headache, and they can't

come--to dinner, or cards, or whatever it may be. But of course I don't

claim that she loves him, nor pretends to. I can imagine the scornful

look with which she goes about it."

"Well, why does she stand it?" said Mrs. Barker Emory, a handsome but

somewhat hard-faced woman, with a manner curiously compounded of

eagerness and uncertainty.

"Y'know, that's what I've been wondering," an Englishman added

interestedly.

"Why, what else would she do?" Miss Vanderwall asked briskly.

"Rachael's a perfectly adorable and brilliant and delightful creature,"

summarized Peter Pomeroy, "but she's not got a penny nor a relative in

the world that I've ever heard of! She's got no grounds for divorcing

Clarence, and if she simply wanted to get out, why, now that she's

brought Billy up, introduced her generally, whipped the girl into some

sort of shape and got her the right sort of friends, I suppose she

might get out and welcome!"

"No, Billy honestly likes her," objected Vivian Sartoris.

"She doesn't care for her enough to see that there's fair play," Elinor

Vanderwall said quickly.

"Why doesn't she take a leaf from Paula's book," somebody suggested,

"and marry again? She could go out West and get a divorce on any

grounds she might choose to name."

"Well, Rachael's a cold woman, and a hard woman--in a way," Miss

Vanderwall said musingly, after a pause, when the troubles of the

Breckenridges kept the group silent for a moment. "But she's a good

sport. She gets a home, and clothes, and the club, and a car and all

the rest out of it, and she knows Billy and Clarence do need her, in a

way, to run things, and to keep up the social end. More than that,

Clarence can't keep up this pace long--he's going to pieces fast--and

Billy may marry any day--"

"I understand Joe Pickering's a little bit touched in that quarter,"

said Mrs. Torrence.

"Yes--well, Clarence will never stand for THAT," somebody said.

Little Miss Sartoris neglected the Torrence grandson long enough to say

decidedly:

"She wouldn't LOOK at Joe Pickering! Joe drinks, and Billy's had enough

of that with her father. Besides, he has no money of his own! He's

impossible!"

"Where's the mother all this time?" asked the Englishman. "I mean to

say, she's living, isn't she, and all that?"

"Very much alive," Miss Vanderwall said. "Married to an Italian

count--Countess Luca d' Asafo. His people have cut him off; they're

Catholics. She has two little girls; there's an uncle who's obliged to

leave property to a son, and it serves Paula quite right, I think.

Where they live, or what on, I haven't the remotest idea. I saw her in

a car on Fifth Avenue, not so long ago, with two heavy little

black-haired girls; she looked sixty."

"Her sister, you know, was thick with my niece, Barbara Olliphant,"

said Peter Pomeroy. "And funny thing!--when Barbara was married..."

It was a long story, and fortunately moved away from the previous

topic; so that when it was presently interrupted by the arrival of two

women, everybody in the group had cause to feel gratitude for a

merciful deliverance.

The two women were Rachael and Carol Breckenridge, who came in a little

breathless, the throbbing engine of their motor car still sounding

faintly from the direction of the club doorway. Carol, a slender,

black-eyed, dusky-skinned girl of seventeen, took her place beside Miss

Sartoris on the fender, granting a brief unsmiling nod to one or two

friends, and eying the group between the loose locks of her smoky,

cropped black hair with the inscrutable, almost brooding, expression

that was her favorite affectation. Her lithe, loosely built little body

was as flat as a boy's, she clasped her crossed knees with slender,

satin-smooth little brown hands, exposing by her attitude a frill of

embroidered petticoat, a transparent stretch of ash-gray silk stocking,

and smart ash-gray buckskin slippers with silver buckles.

She was an effective little figure in the mingled twilight and

firelight, but it was toward her beautiful stepmother that everybody

looked as Rachael Breckenridge seated herself on the arm of old Mrs.

Torrence's chair and sent a careless greeting about the circle.

"Hello, everybody!" she said, in a voice of extraordinary richness and

sweetness, "Peter, Dolly, Vivian--HELLO, Elinor! How do you do, Mrs.

Emory?" There was an aside when the newcomer said imperatively to a

club attendant, "We'll have some light here, please!" Then she resumed

easily: "I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Emory, I interrupted you--"

"I only said that you were a little late for tea," said Mrs. Emory,

sweetly, wishing with a sort of futile rage that she could learn to say

almost nothing when this other woman, with her insulting bright air of

making one feel inferior, was about. The Emorys had lived in Belvedere

Hills for two years, coming from Denver with much money and irrefutable

credentials. They had been members of the club perhaps half that time,

members in good standing. But Mrs. Emory would have paid a large sum to

have Rachael Breckenridge call her "Belle," and Rachael Breckenridge

knew it.

The lights, duly poured in a soft flood from all sides of the room,

revealed in Mrs. Breckenridge one of those beauties that an older

generation of diarists and letter writers frankly spelled with a

capital letter as distinguishing her charms from those of a thousand of

lesser degree. When such beauty is unaccompanied by intellect it is a

royal dower, and its possessor may serenely command half a century of

unquestioning adoration from the sons of men, and all the good things

of life as well.

But when there is a soul behind the matchless eyes, and a keen wit

animates the lovely mouth, and when the indication of the white

forehead is not belied, it is a nice question whether great beauty be a

gift of benign or malicious fairies. Not a woman in this room or in any

room she entered could look at Rachael Breckenridge without a pang; her

supremacy was beyond all argument or dispute. And yet there was neither

complacency nor content in the lovely face; it wore its usual

expression of arrogant amusement at a somewhat tiresome world.

Both in the instant impression it made, and under closest analysis,

Rachael Breckenridge's beauty stood all tests. Her colorless skin was

as pure as ivory, her dark-blue eyes, surrounded by that faint sooty

color that only Irish eyes know, were set far apart and evenly arched

by perfect brows. Her white forehead was low and broad, the lustreless

black hair was swept back from it with almost startling simplicity, the

line of her mouth was long, her lips a living red. Her figure, as she

sat balancing carelessly on a chair-arm, showed the exquisite curves of

a woman slow to develop, who is approaching the height of her beauty,

and from the tip of her white shoe to the poppies on her soft straw hat

there was that distinction in her clothing that betrayed her to be one

of the few who may be always individual yet always in the fashion. She

was a woman, quick, dynamic, impatient, who vitalized the very

atmosphere in which she moved, challenging life by endless tests and

measures, scornful of admiration, and ambitious, even in this

recognized ambition of finding herself beautiful, prominent, and a rich

man's wife, for something further and greater, she knew not what. She

was an important figure in this world of hers; her word was authority,

her decree law. Never was censure so quick as hers, never criticism so

biting, or satire so witty. No human emotion was too sacred to form a

target for her glancing arrows, nor was any affection deep enough to

arouse in her anything but doubt and scorn.

"I don't want any tea, thank you, Peter," she said now, in the

astonishingly rich voice that seemed to fill the words with new

meaning. "And I won't allow the Infant to have any--no, Billy, you

shall not. You've got a complexion, child; respect it. Besides, you've

just had some. Besides, we're here for only two seconds--it's six

o'clock. We're looking for Clarence--we seek a husband fond, a parent

dear--"

"Clarence hasn't showed up here at all to-day," said Peter Pomeroy,

stretching back comfortably in his chair, appreciative eyes upon

Clarence's wife. "Shame, too, for we had some good golf. Course is in

splendid condition. George beat me three up and two to play, but I

don't bear any malice. Here I am signing for his highball."

"Well, then, we'll go on home," Mrs. Breckenridge said, without,

however, changing her relaxed position. "Clarence is probably there;

we've been playing cards at the Parmalees', or at least I have. Billy

and Katrina were playing tennis with Kent and--who's the red-headed

child you were enslaving this afternoon, Bill?"

"Porter Pinckard," Miss Breckenridge answered, indifferently, before

entering into a confidential exchange of brevities with Miss Sartoris.

"I'll call him out, and run him through the liver," said Peter Pomeroy,

"the miserable catiff! I'll brook no rivals, Billy."

Billy merely smiled lazily at this; her eyes were far more eloquent

than her tongue, as she was well aware.

"Let her alone, Fascination Fledgerby!" said Mrs. Breckenridge briskly.

"Why can't we take you home with us, Elinor? We go your way."

"You may," said Miss Vanderwall, rising. "You're dining at the Chases',

aren't you, Billy? So am I. But I was going to change here. Where are

you dining, Rachael?"

"Change at my house," Mrs. Breckenridge suggested, or rather commanded.

"I'm dining in my room, I think. I'm all in." But the clear and candid

eyes deceived no one. Clarence was misbehaving again, everybody

decided, and poor Rachael could not bespeak five minutes of her own

time until this particular period of intemperance was over. Miss

Vanderwall, settling herself in the beautiful Breckenridge car five

minutes later, faced the situation boldly.

"Where's Clarence, Rachael?"

"I haven't the remotest idea, my dear woman," said Mrs. Breckenridge

frankly, yet with a warning glance at the back of her stepdaughter's

head. Billy was at the wheel. "He didn't dine at home last night--"

"But we knew where he was," Billy said quickly, half turning.

"We knew where he was," agreed the older woman. "Watch where you're

going, Bill! He told Alfred that he was dining in town, with a friend,

talking business."

"I thought it was the night of Berry Stokes' dinner," suggested Miss

Vanderwall.

"He wasn't there--I asked him not to go," said Billy.

"Oh--" Miss Vanderwall began and then abruptly stopped. "Oh!" said she

mildly, in polite acquiescence.

They were sweeping through the April roadsides so swiftly that it was

only a moment later when Rachael, reaching for the door, remarked

cheerfully, "Here we are!"

The car had entered a white stone gateway, and was approaching a

certain charming country mansion, one that was not conspicuous among a

thousand others strewn over the neighboring hills and valleys, but a

beautiful home nevertheless. Vines climbed the brick chimneys, and

budding hydrangeas, in pots, topped the white balustrades of the porch.

A hundred little details of perfect furnishing would have been taken

for granted by the casual onlooker, yet without its lawns, its awnings,

its window boxes and snowy curtaining, its glimpse of screened veranda

and wicker chairs, its trim assembly of garage, stable, and servants'

cottages, its porte-cochere, sleeping porches, and tennis court, it

would have seemed incomplete and uncomfortable to its owners.

Rachael Breckenridge neither liked it nor disliked it. It had been her

home for the seven years of her married life, except for the month or

two she spent every winter in a New York hotel. She had never had any

great happiness in it, to be sure, but then her life had been

singularly lacking in moments of real happiness, and she had valued

other elements, and desired other elements more. She had not expected

to be happy in this house, she had expected to be rich and envied, and

secure, and she was all of these things. That they were not worth

attaining, no one knew better than Rachael now.

The house was of course a great care to her, the more so because Billy

was in it so little, and was so frankly eager for the time when she

should leave it and go to a house of her own, and because Clarence was

absolutely indifferent to it in his better moods, and pleased with

nothing when he was in the grip of his besetting sin. The Breckenridges

did little formal entertaining, but the man of the house liked to bring

men down from town for week-end visits, and Billy brought her young

friends in and out with youthful indifference to domestic regulations,

so that on Rachael, as housekeeper, there fell no light burden.

She carried it gracefully, knitting her handsome brows as the seasons

brought about their endless problems, discussing bulbs with old Rafael

in the garden when the snow melted, discussing paper and paint in the

first glory of May, superintending the making of iced drinks on the hot

summer afternoons, and in October filling her woodroom duly with the

great logs that would blaze neglected in the drawing-room fireplace all

winter long. The house was not large, as such houses go; too much room

was wasted by a very modern architect in linen closets and coat

closets, bathrooms and hall space, dressing-rooms, passages, and nooks

and corners generally. Yet Rachael's guest-rooms were models in their

way, and when she gave a luncheon the women who came were always ready

to exclaim in despairing admiration over the beauty of the gardens, the

flower-filled, airy rooms, the table appointments, and the hostess

herself.

But when they said that she was "wonderful"--and it was the inevitable

word for Rachael Breckenridge-the general meaning went deeper than

this. She was wonderful in her pride, the dignity and the silence of

her attitude toward her husband; she had been a wonderful mother to

Clarence's daughter; not a loving mother, perhaps--she was not loving

to anyone--but a miracle of determination and clearness of vision.

Who else, her friends wondered, could have cleared the social horizon

for Paula Breckenridge's daughter so effectively? With what brisk

resoluteness the new mother had cut short the aimless European

wanderings, cropped the child's artificially curled hair, given away

the unsuitable silk stockings and the ridiculous frocks and hats.

Billy, shorn and bewildered, had been brought home; had entered Miss

Proctor's select school, entered Miss Roger's select dancing class,

entered Professor Darling's expensive riding classes. Billy, in

dark-blue Peter Thompsons, in black stockings and laced boots, had been

dropped in among other little girls in Peter Thompsons and laced boots,

little girls with the approved names of Whittaker and Bowditch, Moran

and Merridew and Parmalee.

Billy had never doubted her stepmother's judgment; like all of the new

Mrs. Breckenridge's friends, she was deeply, dumbly impressed with that

lady's amazing efficiency. She had been a spoiled and discontented

little rowdy. She became an entirely self-satisfied little gentlewoman.

Clarence, jealously watching her progress, knew that Rachael was doing

for his daughter far more than he could ever do himself.

But Rachael, if she had expected reward, reaped none. Her husband was a

supremely selfish man, and his daughter inherited his sublime ability

to protect his own pleasure at any cost. Carol admired her step-mother,

but she was an indolent and luxury-loving little soul, and even as

early as her twelfth or fourteenth year she had been deeply flattered

by the evidences of her own power over her father. Into her youthful

training no reverence for parents--real or adopted--had been infused;

she called her father "Clancy," as some of his intimate friends called

him, and he delighted to take her orders and bow to her pretty tyranny.

Before she was sixteen he began to take her about with him: to dances,

to the theatre, and for long trips in his car. He entered eagerly into

her young friendships, frantic to prove himself as young at heart as

she. He paid her the extravagant compliments of a lover, and gave her

her grandmother's beautiful jewelry, as well as every trinket that

caught her eye.

And Billy accepted his attentions with a finished coquetry that was far

from childlike, a flush on her satin cheek, a dimple puckering the

corner of her mouth, and silky lashes lowered over her satisfied eyes.

She was inevitably precocious in many ways, but she was young enough

still to fancy herself one of the irresistible beauties and belles of

the world, and to flaunt a perfectly conscious arrogance in the eyes of

all other women.

All this was bewildering and painful to Rachael. She had never loved

her husband--love entered into none of her relationships--her marriage

had been only a step in the steady progress of her life toward the

position she desired in the world. But she had liked him. She had liked

his child, and she had come into the new arrangement kindly and

gallantly determined to make the venture at least as profitable to them

both as it was to her.

To be ignored, to be deliberately set aside, to be insulted by a

selfishness so calculating and so deliberate as to make her own

attitude seem all warmth and generosity by comparison, genuinely

astonished her. At first, indeed, a sort of magnificent impatience had

prevented her from feeling any stronger emotion than astonishment. It

was too ridiculous, said the bride to herself tolerantly; it could not

go on, of course, this preposterous consideration of a child of ten,

this belittling consideration of her own place in the scheme as less

Clarence's wife than Billy's mother. It must adjust itself with every

week that they three lived together, the child slipping back to her own

life, the husband and wife sharing theirs. When Clarence's first fears

for his daughter's comfort under the new rule were set at rest, when

his confidence in the wisdom and efficiency of his wife was fully

established, then a normal relationship must ensue. "Surely Clarence

wouldn't ask a woman to marry him just to give Billy a home and social

backing?" Rachael asked herself, in those first puzzled days in Paris.

That was seven years ago. She knew exactly that for truth now. Long ago

she had learned that whatever impulse had moved Clarence Breckenridge

to ask her to marry him was quickly displaced by his vision of Billy's

need as being greater than his own.

It had been an unpalatable revelation, for Rachael was a woman proud as

well as beautiful. But presently she had accepted the situation as it

stood, somehow fighting her way, as the years went by, to fresh

acceptances: the acceptance of Billy's ripening charms, the acceptance

of Clarence's more and more frequent times of inebriated

irresponsibility. Silently she made her mental adjustments, moving

through her gay and empty life in an unsuspected bitterness of

solitude, won to protest and rebellion only when the cold surface she

presented to the world was threatened from within or without.

It was distinctly threatened now, she realized with a little sick twist

of apprehension at heart, when her casual inquiry to a maid upon

entering was answered by a discreet, "Yes, Mrs. Breckenridge, Mr.

Breckenridge came home half an hour ago. Alfred is with him."

This was unexpected. Rachael did not glance either at her guest or her

stepdaughter, but she disposed of them both in a breath.

"Someone wants you on the telephone, Billy," she repeated after the

maid's information. "Take it in the library. Run right up to my room,

Elinor, and I'll be there in two minutes. I'll send some one in with

towels and brushes; you've time for a tub. Take these things, Helda,

and give them to Annie, and tell her to lookout for Miss Vanderwall."

The square entrance hall was sweet with flowers in the early spring

evening, Oriental rugs were spread on the dull mirror of the floor,

opened doors gave glimpses of airy colonial interiors, English chintzes

crowded with gay colored fruits and flowers, brick fireplaces framed in

classic white and showing a brave gleam of brass firedogs in the soft

lamplight. Not a book on the long tables, not an etching on the dull

rich paper of the walls, struck a false note. It was all exquisitely in

tone.

But Rachael Breckenridge, at best, saw less its positive perfections

than the tiniest opening through which an imperfection might push its

way, and in such an hour as this she saw it not at all. Her mouth a

trifle firm in its outline, her face a little pale, she went quickly up

the wide white stairway and along the open balcony above. There were

several doors on this balcony, which was indeed the upper hall. Mrs.

Breckenridge opened one of them without knocking, and closed it

noiselessly behind her.

The room into which she admitted herself presented exactly the picture

she had expected. The curtains, again of richly colored cretonne, were

drawn, a softly toned lamp on the reading table, and another beside the

bed, cast circles of pleasant light on the comfortable wicker chairs,

the cream-colored woodwork, and the scattered books and magazines.

Several photographs of Carol, beautifully framed, were on bookcase and

dresser, and a fine oil painting of the child at fourteen looked down

from the mantel. On the bed, a mahogany four-poster, with carved

pineapples finishing the posts, the frilled cretonne cover had been

flung back; Mr. Breckenridge had retired; his blond head was sunk in

the pillows; he clutched the blankets about him with his arms, his face

was not visible.

A quiet manservant, who was by turns butler, chauffeur, and valet, was

stepping softly about the room. Rachael interrogated him in a low tone:

"Asleep, Alfred?"

"Oh, no, ma'am!" the man said quickly. "He's been feeling ill. He says

he has a chill."

"When did he get home?" the wife asked.

"About half an hour ago, Mrs. Breckenridge. Mr. Butler telephoned me.

Some of the gentlemen were going on--to one of the beach hotels for

dinner, I believe, but Mr. Breckenridge felt himself too unwell to join

them, so I went for him with the little car, and Mr. Joe Butler and Mr.

Parks came home with him, Mrs. Breckenridge."

"Do you know if he went to bed last night at all?"

"No, ma'am, he said he did not. All the gentlemen looked as if

they--looked as if they might have--" Alfred hesitated delicately. "It

was Mr. Berry Stokes' bachelor dinner," he presently added.

At this moment there was a convulsion in the bed, and the red face of

Clarence Breckenridge revealed itself. The eyes were bloodstained, the

usually pale skin flushed and oily, the fair, thin hair tumbled across

a high and well-developed forehead. Rachael knew every movement of the

red and swollen lips, every tone of the querulous voice.

"Does Alfred have to stay up here doing a chambermaid's work?" demanded

the man of the house fretfully. "My God! Can you or can't you

manage--between your teas and card parties--to get someone else to put

this room in order?" He ended in a long moan, and dropped his head

again into the pillows.

"Do you know what he wants?" Rachael asked the man in a quick whisper.

"Go down and get it, then!"

"I'm co-o-old!" said the man in the bed, going into a sudden and

violent chill. "I've caught my death, I think. Joe made a punch--some

sort of an eggnog--eggs were bad, I think. I'm poisoned. The stuff was

rotten!" He sank mumbling back into the pillows.

Rachael, who had been hanging his coat carefully in the big closet

adjoining his room, came to the bedside and laid her cool fingers on

his burning forehead. If irrepressible distaste was visible in her

face, it was only a faint reflection of the burning resentment in her

heart.

"You've got a fever, Clarence," she announced quietly. The answer was

only a furious and incoherent burst of denunciation; the patient was in

utter physical discomfort, and could not choose his terms. Rachael--not

for the first nor the hundredth time--felt within her an impulse to

leave him here, leave him to outwear his miseries without her help. But

this she could not do without throwing the house into an uproar.

Clarence at these times had no consideration for public opinion, had no

dignity, no self-control. Much better satisfy him, as she had done so

many times before, and keep a brave face to the world.

So she placed a hot-water bag against his cold feet, went to her own

room adjoining to borrow a fluffy satin comforter with which to augment

his own bed covering, laid an icy towel upon his throbbing forehead,

and when Alfred presently appeared with a decanter of whisky, Rachael

watched her husband eagerly gulp down a glass of it without uttering

one word of the bitter protest that rose to her lips.

She was not a prude, with the sublime inconsistency of most women whose

lives are made the darker for drink; she did not identify herself with

any movement toward prohibition, or refuse the cocktails, the claret,

and the wine that were customarily served at her own and at other

people's dinner-tables. But she hated coarseness in any form, she hated

contact with the sodden, self-pitying, ugly animal that Clarence

Breckenridge became under the influence of drink.

To-night, when he presently fell asleep, somewhat more comfortable in

body, and soothed in spirit by the promise of a visit from the doctor,

Rachael went into her own room and sinking into a deep chair sat

staring stupidly at the floor. She did not think of the husband she had

just left, nor of the formal dinner party being given, only half a mile

away, to a great English novelist--a dinner to which the Breckenridges

had of course been asked and upon which Rachael had weeks ago set her

heart. She was tired, and her thoughts floated lazily about nothing at

all, or into some opaque region of their own knowing, where the ills of

the body might not follow.

Presently Miss Vanderwall, clothed in a trailing robe of soft Arabian

cotton, came briskly out of the bathroom, her short dark hair hanging

in a mane about her rosy face.

"Why so pensive, Rachael?" she asked cheerfully, pressing a button that

lighted the circle of globes about the dressing-table mirror, and

seating herself before it. But under her loose locks she sent a keen

and concerned look at her hostess' thoughtful face.

"Tired," Rachael answered briefly, not changing her attitude, but with

a fleeting shadow of a smile.

"How's Clancy?"

"Asleep. He's wretched, poor fellow! Berry Stokes' bachelor dinner, you

know. That crowd is bad for him."

"I KNEW it must have been an orgy!" Miss Vanderwall declared

vivaciously. "That was a silly slip of mine in the car. Billy doesn't

know he went, I suppose?"

"No, he promised her he wouldn't. But everyone was at the dinner. Some

of them came home early, I believe. But it was all kept quiet, because

Aline Pearsall is such a little shrinking violet, I suppose," Mrs.

Breckenridge said. "The Pearsalls are to think it was just an impromptu

affair. Billy and Aline of course have no idea what a party it was. But

Clarence says that poor Berry was worse than he, and a few of them are

still keeping it up. It's a shame, of course--"

Her uninterested voice dropped into silence.

"Men are queer," Miss Vanderwall said profoundly, busy with

ivory-backed brushes, powders, and pastes.

"The mystery to me--about men," mused Mrs. Breckenridge, her absent

eyes upon the buckled slipper she held in her hand, "is not that they

are as helpless as babies the moment anything goes wrong with their

poor little heads or their poor little tummies, but that they work so

hard, in spite of that, to increase the general discomfort of living.

Women have a great deal of misery to bear, they are brave or cowardly

about it as the case may be, but at least they endure and renounce and

diet and keep early hours--or whatever's to be done--they TRY to lessen

the sum of physical misery. But men go cheerily on--they smoke too

much, and eat too much, and drink too much, and they bring the

resulting misery sweetly and confidently to some woman to bear for

them. It's hopeless!"

"H'm!" was Miss Vanderwall's thoughtful comment. Presently she added

dubiously: "Did you ever think that another child might make a big

difference to Clarence, Rachael? That he might come to care for a son

as he does for Billy, don't you know--"

"Oh, I wasn't speaking of Clarence," Mrs. Breckenridge said coldly. And

Elinor, recognizing a false step, winced inwardly.

"No, I didn't suppose you were!" she assented hastily.

"If there's one thing I AM thankful for," Rachael presently said

moodily, "it's that I haven't a child. I'm rather fond of kiddies--nice

kiddies, myself; and Clarence likes children, too. But things are quite

bad enough now without that complication!" She brushed the loosened

hair from her face restlessly, and sighed. "Sometimes, when I see the

other girls," said she, "I think I'd make a rather good mother!

However"--and getting suddenly to her feet, she flung up her head as if

to be rid of the subject--"however, my dear, we shall never know! Don't

mind me to-night, Elinor, I'm in a horrible mood, it will take nothing

at all to set me off in what Bill used to call a regilyer tant'um!"

"Tantrum nothing," said Elinor, in eager sympathy, feeling with the

greatest relief that she was reinstated in Rachael's good graces after

her stupid blunder. "I don't see how you stand it at all!"

"It isn't the drinking and headaches and general stupidity in

themselves, you know," Rachael said, reverting to her original

argument, "but it's the atrocious UNNECESSITY of it! I don't mind

Clarence's doing as other men do, I certainly don't mind his caring so

much for his daughter"--her fine brows drew together--"but where do _I_

come in?" she demanded with a quizzical smile. "What's MY life? I ask

only decency and civility, and I don't get it. The very servants in

this house pity me--they see it all. When Clarence isn't himself, he

needs me; when he is, he is all for Billy. I must apologize for

breaking engagements; people don't ask us out any more, and no wonder!

I have to coax money out of him for bills; Billy has her own

check-book. I have to keep quiet when I'm boiling all over. I have to

defend myself when I know I'm bitterly, cruelly wronged!"

Neither woman had any scruples about the subject under discussion, but

even to Elinor Rachael had never spoken so freely before, and the

guest, desperately attempting to remember every word for the

delectation of her family and friends later on, felt herself at once

honored and thrilled.

"Rachael--but why do you stand it?"

Mrs. Breckenridge threw her a look full of all conscious forbearance.

"Well, what would YOU do?"

"Well. I'd"--Miss Vanderwall arrested the hand with which she was

carefully spreading her lips with red paste, to fling it, with a large

gesture, into the air--"I'd--why don't you GET OUT? Simply drop it

all?" she asked.

"For several reasons," the other woman returned promptly with a sort of

hard, bright pride. "One very excellent one is that I haven't one

penny. But I tell you, Elinor, if I knew how to put my hand on about a

thousand dollars a year--there are little towns in France, I have

friends in London--well"--and with a sudden straightening of her whole

body Rachael Breckenridge visibly rallied herself--"well, what's the

use of talking?" she said. But, as she rose abruptly, Elinor saw the

glint of tears on her lashes, and said to herself with a sort of

pleased terror that things between Clarence and Rachael must be getting

serious indeed.

She admired Mrs. Breckenridge deeply; more than that, the younger

woman's friendship and patronage were valuable assets to Miss

Vanderwall. But the social circle of Belvedere Hills was a small

circle, and Elinor had spent every one of her thirty-five summers, or a

part of every one, in just this limited group. There was little malice

in her pleasure at getting this glimpse behind the scenes in Rachael's

life; she would repeat her friend's confidence, later, with the calm of

a person doing the accepted and expected thing, with the complacence of

one who proves her right to other revelations from her listeners in

turn. It was by such proof judiciously displayed that Elinor held her

place in the front ranks of her own select little group of gossips and

intimates. She wished the Breckenridges no harm, but if there were dark

elements in their lives, Elinor enjoyed being the person to witness

them. Thoughtfully adding a bloom to her cheeks with her friend's

exquisite powder, Miss Vanderwall reflected sagely that, when one came

to think of it, it must really be rather rotten to be married to

Clarence Breckenridge.

Rachael presently came back, with the signs of her recent emotion

entirely effaced, and her wonderful skin glowing faintly from a bath.

Superbly independent of cosmetics, independent even of her mirror, she

massed the thick short lengths of dark hair on the top of her head,

thrust a jewelled pin through the coil, and began to hook herself into

a lacy black evening gown that was loose and comfortable. Before this

was finished her stepdaughter rapped on the door, and being invited,

came in with the full self-consciousness of seventeen.

"All hooked up straight?" asked Rachael. "That gown looks rather well."

"Do you good women realize what time it is?" Miss Breckenridge asked,

by way of reply.

"Has she got it a shade too short?" speculated Rachael, thoughtful eyes

on the girl's dress.

"Well--I was wondering!" Carol said eagerly, flinging down her wrap, to

turn and twist before a door that was a solid panel of mirror. "What do

you think--we'll dance."

"Oh, not a bit," Rachael presently decided. "They're all up to the

knees this year, anyway. Car come round?"

"Long ago," said Billy, and Elinor, reaching for her own wrap, declared

herself ready. "I wish you were going, Rachael," the girl added as she

turned to follow their guest from the room.

"Come back here a moment, Bill," Mrs. Breckenridge said casually,

seating herself at the dressing-table without a glance at her

stepdaughter. For a moment Miss Breckenridge stood irresolute in the

doorway, then she reluctantly came in.

"You're just seventeen, Billy," said the older woman indifferently.

"When you're eighteen, next March, I suppose you may do as you please.

But until then--either see a little less of Joe Pickering, or else come

right out in the open about it, and tell your father you want to see

him here. This silly business of telephoning and writing and meeting

him, here, there, and everywhere, has got to stop."

Billy stared steadily at her stepmother, her breath coming quick and

high, her cheeks red.

"Who said I met him--places?" she said, in a seventeen-year-old-girl's

idea of a tragic tone. Mrs. Breckenridge's answer to this was a shrug,

a smile, and a motherly request not to be a fool.

There was silence for a moment. Then Billy said recklessly:

"I like him. And you can't make me deny it!"

"Like him if you want to," said Mrs. Breckenridge, "although what you

can see in a man twice your age--with his particular history--However,

it's your affair. But you'll have to tell your father."

Billy shut her lips mutinously, her cheeks still scarlet.

"I don't see why!" she burst forth proudly, at last.

To this Mrs. Breckenridge offered no argument. Carefully filing a

polished fingertip she said quietly:

"I didn't suppose you would."

"And I think that if you tell him YOU interfere in a matter that

doesn't in the LEAST concern you," Billy pursued hotly, uncomfortably

eager to strike an answering spark, and reduce the conversation to a

state where mutual concessions might be in order. "You have no BUSINESS

to!"

Her stepmother was silent. She put on a ring, regarded it thoughtfully

on her spread fingers, and took it off again.

"In the first place," Billy said sullenly, "you'll tell him a lot of

things that aren't so!"

Silence. Outside the motor horn sounded impatiently. Billy suddenly

came close to her stepmother, her dark, mobile little face quite

transformed by anger.

"You can tell him what you please," she said in a cold fury, "but I'll

know WHY you did it--it's because you're jealous, and you want everyone

in the world to be in love with YOU! You hate me because my father

loves me, and you would do anything in the world to make trouble

between us! I've known it ever since I was a little girl, even if I

never have said it before! I--" She choked, and tears of youthful rage

came into her eyes.

"Don't be preposterous, Bill. You've said it before, every time you've

been angry, in the last five years," the older woman said coolly. "This

only means that you will feel that you have to wake me up, when you

come in to-night, to say that you are sorry."

"I will not!" said the girl at white heat.

"Well, I hope you won't," Rachael Breckenridge said amiably, "for if

there is one thing I loathe more than another, it is being waked up for

theatricals in the middle of the night. Good-bye. Be sure to thank Mrs.

Bowditch for chaperoning you."

"Are you going to speak to Clancy?" the girl demanded imperiously.

"Run along, Billy," Rachael said, with a faint show of impatience.

"Nobody could speak to your father about anything to-night, as you

ought to know."

For a moment Billy stood still, breathing hard and with tightly closed

lips, her angry eyes on her step-mother. Then her breast rose on a

childish, dry sob, she dropped her eyes, and moved a shining

slipper-toe upon the rug with the immortal motion of embarrassed youth.

"You--you used to like Joe, Rachael," she said, after a moment, in a

low tone.

"I don't dislike him now," Rachael said composedly.

"He's awfully kind--and--and good, and Lucy never understood him, or

tried to understand him!" said Billy in a burst. The other woman smiled.

"If Joe Pickering told you any sentimental nonsense like that, kindly

don't retail it to me," she said amusedly.

In a second Billy was roused to utter fury. Her cheeks blazed, her

breath came short and deep. "I hate you!" she said passionately, and

ran from the room.

Mrs. Breckenridge sat still for a few moments, but there was no emotion

but utter weariness visible in her face. After a while she said, "Oh,

Lord!" in a tone compounded of amusement and disgust, and rising, she

took a new book from the table, and went slowly downstairs.

In the lower hall Alfred met her, his fat young face duly mysterious

and important in expression.

"Mr. Breckenridge got a telephone message from Doctor Jordan, Mrs.

Breckenridge; the doctor's been called into town to a patient, so he

can't see Mr. Breckenridge to-night."

"Oh! Well, he'll probably be here in the morning," Rachael said

carelessly.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Breckenridge, but Mr. Breckenridge seemed to be a good

deal worried about himself, and he had me call Doctor Gregory," the man

pursued respectfully.

"Doctor GREGORY!" echoed his mistress, with a laugh like a wail.

"Alfred, what were you THINKING of! Why didn't you call me?"

"He wouldn't have me call you," Alfred said unhappily. "He spoke to the

doctor himself. We got the housekeeper first, and she said Doctor

Gregory was dressing. 'Tell him it's a matter of life and death,' says

Mr. Breckenridge. Then we got him. 'I'm dining out,' he says, 'but I'll

be there this evening.'"

"Oh, dear, dear, dear!" Mrs. Breckenridge said half to herself in

serio-comic desperation. "Gregory--called in for a--for a--for this! If

I could get hold of him! He didn't say where he was dining?"

"No, Mrs. Breckenridge," the man answered, with a great air of

efficiency.

"Well, Alfred, I wish sometimes you knew a little more--or a little

less!" Rachael said dispassionately. "Light a fire in the library, will

you? I'll have my dinner there. Tell Ellie to send me up something

broiled--nothing messy--and some strong coffee."

CHAPTER II

The coffee was strong. Mrs. Breckenridge found it soothing to rasped

nerves and tired body, and after the dinner things had been cleared

away she sat on beside the library fire, under the soft arc of light

from the library lamp, sipping the stimulating fluid, and staring at

the snapping and flashing logs.

A sense of merely physical well-being crept through her body, and for a

little time even her active brain was quieter; she forgot the man now

heavily sleeping upstairs, the pretty little tyrant who had rushed off

to dinner at the Chases', and the many perplexing elements in her own

immediate problem. She saw only the quiet changes in the fire as yellow

flame turned to blue--sank, rose, and sank again.

The house was still. Kitchenward, to be sure, there was a great deal of

cheerful laughter and chatter, as Ellie, sitting heavily ensconced in

the largest rocker, embroidered a centrepiece for her sister's

birthday, Annie read fortunes in the teacups, Alfred imitated the

supercilious manner of a lady who had called that afternoon upon Mrs.

Breckenridge, and Helda, a milk-blond Dane with pink-rimmed eyes,

laughed with infantile indiscrimination at everything, blushing an

agonized scarlet whenever Alfred's admiring eye met her own.

But the kitchen was not within hearing distance of the quiet room where

Rachael sat alone, and as the soft spring night wore on no sound came

to disturb her revery. It was not the first solitary evening she had

had of late, for Clarence had been more than usually reckless, and was

developing in his wife, although she did not realize it herself, a

habit of introspection quite foreign to her real nature.

She had never been a thoughtful woman, her days for many years had run

brilliantly on the surface of life, she knew not whence the current was

flowing, nor why, nor where it led her; she did not naturally analyze,

nor dispute events. Only a few years ago she would have said that to an

extraordinary degree fortune had been kind to her. She had been born

with an adventurous spirit, she had played her game well and boldly,

and, according to all the standards of her type, she had won. But

sitting before this quiet fire, perhaps it occurred to her to wonder

how it happened that there were no more hazards, no more cards left to

play. She was caught in a net of circumstances too tight for her

unravelling. Truly it might be cut, but when she stood in the loose

wreckage of it--how should she use her freedom? If it was a cage, at

least it was a comfortable cage; at least it was better than the

howling darkness of the unfamiliar desert beyond.

And yet she raged, and her hurt spirit flung itself again and again at

the bars. Young and beautiful and clever, how had life tricked her into

this deadlock, where had been the fault, and whose?

For some undefined reason Rachael rarely thought of the past. She did

not care to bring its certainties, its panorama of blinded eyes and

closed doors before her mental vision. But to-night she found herself

walking again in those old avenues; her thoughts went back to the

memories of her girlhood.

Girlhood? Her eyes smiled, but with the smile a little twinge of

bitterness drew down her mouth. What a discontented, eager, restless

girlhood it had been, after all. A girlhood eternally analyzing,

comparing, resenting, envying. How she had secretly despised the other

girls, typical of their class, the laughing, flirting, dress-possessed

girls of a small California town. How she had despised her aunts, all

comfortably married and prosperous, her aunts' husbands, her stodgy,

noisy cousins! And, for that matter, there had never been much

reverence in her regard for her mother, although Rachael loved that

complaining little woman in her cool way.

But for her father, the tall, clever, unhappy girl had a genuine

admiration. She did not love him, no one who knew Gerald Fairfax well

could possibly have sustained a deep affection for him, but she

believed him to be almost as remarkably educated and naturally gifted

as he believed himself to be. Her uncles were simply country merchants,

her mother's fat, cheerful father dealt in furniture, and,

incidentally, coffins, but her father was an Englishman, and naturally

held himself above the ordinary folk of Los Lobos.

Nobody knew much about him, when he first made his appearance in Los

Lobos, this silky-haired, round-faced, supercilious stranger, in his

smart, shabby Norfolk coat, which was perhaps one reason why every girl

in the village was at once willing to marry him, no questions asked.

His speech was almost a different tongue from theirs; he was

thirty-five, he had dogs and a man-servant, instead of the usual

equipment of mother, sisters, and "hired girl," and he seemed eternally

bored and ungracious. This was enough for the Los Lobos girls, and for

most of their mothers, too.

The newcomer bought a small ranch, three miles out of town, and lounged

about it in a highly edifying condition of elegant idleness. He rode a

good horse, drank a great deal, and strode out of the post-office once

a week scattering monogrammed envelopes carelessly behind him. He had

not been long in town before people began to say that his elder brother

was a lord; a duke, Mrs. Chess Baxter, the postmistress said, because

to her question regarding the rumor he had answered carelessly:

"Something of that sort."

Thirty years ago there were a great many detached Englishmen in

California, fourth and fifth sons, remittance men, family scapegraces

who had been banished to the farthest frontier by relatives who

regarded California as beyond the reach of gossip, and almost beyond

the reach of letters. Checks, small but regular, arrived quarterly for

these gentry, who had only to drink, sleep, play cards, and demoralize

the girls of the country. Here and there among them, to be sure, were

pink-skinned boys as fresh and sweet as the apple-blossoms under which

they rode their horses, but for the most part the emigrants were

dissipated, disenchanted, clinging loyally to the traditions of the

older country that had discarded them, and scorning the fragrant and

inexhaustible richness of the new land that had made them welcome. They

were, as a class, silent, only voluble on the subject of the despised

country of their adoption, and absolutely non-committal as to their own

histories. But far from questioning their credentials, the women and

girls everywhere accepted them eagerly, caught something of an English

accent and something of an English arrogance.

So Clara Mumford, a rose of a girl, cream-skinned, blue-eyed, and

innocent with the terrible innocence of the village girlhood that feels

itself so wise--Clara, who knew, because her two older sisters were

married, where babies come from, and knew, because of Alta Porter's

experience, that girls--nice girls, who went with one through the high

school--can yield to temptation and be ruined--Clara only felt, in

shyly announcing her engagement to Gerald Fairfax, that Fate had been

too kind.

That this glittering stranger twice her age--why, he was even a little

bald--a man who had travelled, who knew people of title, knew books,

and manners, and languages--that he should marry an undertaker's

daughter in Los Lobos! It was unbelievable. Clara's only misgiving

during her short engagement was that he would disappear like a dream.

She agreed with everything he said; even carrying her new allegiance to

the point of laughing a little at her own people: the layer cakes her

mother made for the Sunday noonday dinner; the red-handed, freckled

swain who called on her younger sister in the crisp, moonlighted winter

evenings; and the fact that her father shaved in the kitchen.

A few weeks slipped by, and Clara duly confided her youth and her

innocence and her roses to her English husband, a little ashamed of the

wedding presents her friends sent her, even a little doubtful of her

parents' handsome gift of a bird's-eye maple bedroom set and a parlor

set in upholstered cherry.

On her side she accepted everything unquestionably: the shabby little

ranch house that smelled of wood smoke, and tobacco smoke, and dogs;

the easy scorn of her old friends on her husband's part that so soon

alienated her from them; the drink that she quickly learned to regard

with uneasiness and distrust. It was not that Jerry ever got really

intoxicated, but he got ugly, excitable, irritable, even though quite

in control of his actions and his senses.

Clara was a good cook, although not as expert as her fond mother's

little substitutions and innocent manipulations during their engagement

had led Gerald to believe. But she loved to please him, and when

flushed and triumphant she put down some especially tempting dish

before him, and felt his arm about her, tears of actual joy would stand

in her bright eyes. They had some happy days, some happy hours, in the

first newness of being together.

Gerald's man, Thomas, was an early cause of annoyance to Clara. She

would not have objected to cooking for a farm "hand"; that was a matter

of course with all good farmers' wives. But Thomas was more British, in

all that makes the British objectionable, than his master, and Thomas

was quite decidedly addicted to drink. He never thought of wiping a

dish, or bringing Clara in a bucket of water from the well. He ate what

she set out upon the kitchen table for him, three times a day, chatting

pleasantly enough of the farm, the horses, chickens, and vegetable

garden, if Clara was in an amiable mood, but if, busy at the sink, or

clearing the dining-room table, she was inwardly fuming with resentment

at his very existence, Thomas could be silent, too, and would presently

saunter away, stuffing his pipe, without even the common courtesy of

piling his dishes together for her washing. Thomas held long

conversations with his master as they idled about the place; Clara

would hear their laughter. The manservant slept in a small shed

detached from the main house, and there were times when he did not

appear in the morning. At such times Gerald with a pot of strong coffee

likewise disappeared into the cabin.

"Pore old rotter!" the husband would say generously. "He's a decentish

sort, don't you know? I meanter say, poor old Thomas did me an awfully

good turn once--and that!"

Clara inferred from various hints that Gerald had once been in the

English army, and had met Thomas, and befriended him, or been

befriended by him, at that period of his existence. But, greatly to the

little bride's disappointment, Gerald never spoke of his old home or

his connections there. Clara had to draw what comfort she could from

his intimation that all his relatives were unbelievably eminent and

distinguished, the least of them superior in brain and achievement to

any American who ever drew the breath of life.

And presently she forgot Thomas, forgot the petty annoyance of cooking

and summer heat and dogs and physical discomfort, in the overwhelming

prayer that the coming child, about whose advent Gerald, at first

annoyed, had later been so generously good-natured, might prove a boy.

Gerald, living uncomplainingly in this dreadful little country town,

enduring Western conditions with such dignity, and loving his little

wife despite her undertaker father, would be seriously disgusted, she

knew, if she gave him a daughter.

"A--a girl?" Clara stammered, her wet eyes on the doctor's face, her

panting little figure lost in the big outline of her mother's

spare-room bed. She managed a brave smile, but there was a bitter lump

in her throat.

A girl!

And she had been so brave, so sweet with Jerry, who had not enjoyed the

three or four days of waiting at her mother's house; so strong in her

agonies, as became the healthy, normal little country girl she was!

Fate owed her a son, she had done her share, she had not flinched. And

now--a girl! Fresh tears of disappointment came to take the place of

tears of pain in her eyes. She remembered that Jerry had said, a few

days before, "It'll be a boy, of course--all the old women about seem

to have settled that--and I believe I'll cable Cousin Harold."

"Ma says it'll be a boy," Clara had submitted hopefully, longing to

hear more of "Cousin Harold," to whom Gerald alluded at long intervals.

"Of course it will--good old girl!" Jerry had agreed. And that was only

Thursday night, and this was in the late dawn of cold, wintry Saturday

morning.

Her mother bent over her and kissed her wet forehead. Mrs. Mumford's

big kind face was radiant; she had already four small grandsons; this

was the first grand-daughter. More than that, the nurse was not here

yet; she had been supreme through the ordeal; she had managed one more

birth extremely well, and she rejoiced in the making of a nation.

"Such a nice baby, darling!" she whispered, "with her dear little head

all covered with black hair! Neta's dressing her."

"Where's Gerald?" the young mother asked weakly.

"Right here! I'll let him in for a moment!" There was a satisfaction in

Mrs. Mumford's voice; everything was proceeding absolutely by schedule.

"And just as anxious to see you as you are to see him!" she added

happily. These occasions were always the same, and always far more

enjoyable to this practised parent than any pageant, any opera, any

social distinction could have been. To comfortably, soothingly lead the

trembling novice through the long experience, to whisk about the house

capably and briskly busy with the familiar paraphernalia, to cry in

sympathy with another's tears, to stand white-lipped, impotent,

anguished through a few dreadful moments, and then to laugh, and

rejoice, and reassure, before the happy hours of resting, and feeding,

and cuddling began--this was the greatest satisfaction in her life.

Clara, afraid in this first moment to face his disappointment, felt in

another the most delicious reassurance and comfort she had known in

months. Jerry, taking the chair by the bedside, was so dear about it!

The long night had much impressed the new-made father. They had had

coffee at about two o'clock--Clara remembered wondering how they could

sit enjoying it, instead of dashing the hideous cups to the floor, and

rushing out of the horrible enclosure of walls and curtains--and as he

bent over her she knew he had had something stronger since--but he was

so dear!

"Well, we've had a night of it, eh?" he said kindly. "Funny how much

one takes the little beggars for grawnted until it's one's own that

kicks up the row? You've not seen her--she's a nice little beggar. You

might get some sleep, I should think. I'm going to hang around until

some sort of a family jamboree is over, at one o'clock--your mother

insists that we have dinner--and then I'll go out to the rawnch. But

I'll be in in the morning!"

"Girl!" said Clara, apologetically, whimsically, deprecatingly, her

weak fingers clinging tightly to his.

"Ah, well, one carn't help that!" he answered philosophically. "We'll

have a row of jolly little chaps yet!"

But there was never another child. Clara, having cast her fortunes in

with her lord, was faithful to him through every breath she drew. But

before Rachael's first crying, feverish little summer was over there

had been some definite changes at the ranch. Thomas was gone, and

Clara, pale and exhausted with the heat, engaged Ella, a young woman

servant of her mother's selecting, to bake and wash and carry in

stove-wood. Clara managed them all, Gerald, the baby, and the maid.

Perhaps at first she was just a little astonished to find her husband

as easily managed as Ella and far more easily managed than Rachael.

Gerald Fairfax was surprised, too, lazily conceding his altered little

wife her new and energetic way with a mental reservation that when she

was strong and well again and the child less a care, things would be as

they were. But Clara, once in power, never weakened for a moment again.

Rachael grew up, a solitary and unfriendly, yet a tactful and

diplomatic, little person on the ranch. She early developed a great

admiration for her father, and a consequent regard for herself as

superior to her associates. She ruled her mother absolutely from her

fourth year, and remained her grandmother's great favorite among a

constantly increasing flock of grandchildren. Some innate pride and

scorn and dignity in the child won her her own way through school and

school days; her young cousins were bewildered themselves by the

respect and fealty they yielded her despite the contempt in which they

held her affectations.

Clara had never been a religious woman and, married to an utter

unbeliever, she had little enough to give a child of her own. But

Clara's mother was a church woman, and her father a deeply religious

man. It was his mother, "old lady Mumford"--Rachael's

great-grandmother--who taught the child her catechism whenever she

could get hold of that restless and lawless little girl.

Rachael had great fear and respect for her great-grandmother, and

everything that was fine and good in the child instinctively responded

to the atmosphere of her little home. It was an unpretentious home,

even for Los Lobos: only a whitewashed California cabin with a dooryard

full of wall flowers and geraniums, and pungent marigolds, and

marguerites that were budding, blossoming, and gone to rusty decay on

one and the same bush. The narrow paths were outlined with white stone

ale-bottles, turned upside down and driven into the soft ground, and

under the rustling tent of a lilac bush there were three or four clay

pots filled with dry earth. There was a railed porch on the east side

of the house, with vines climbing on strings about it, and here the old

woman, clean with the wonderful, cool-fingered cleanness of frail yet

energetic seventy-five, would sit reading in the afternoon shade that

fell from the great shoulders of the blue mountains.

Inside were three rooms; there was no bathroom, no light but the

kerosene lamps the old hands tended daily, no warmth but the small

kitchen stove. All the furniture was old and shabby and cheap, and the

antimacassars and pictures and teacups old Mrs. Mumford prized so

dearly were of no value except for association's sake. Rachael's

great-grandmother lived upon tea and toast and fruit sauce; sometimes

she picked a dish of peas in her own garden and sometimes made herself

a rice pudding, but if her children brought her in a chicken or a bowl

of soup she always gave it away to some poorer neighbor who was ill, or

who was "nursing that great strapping baby."

She read the Bible to Rachael and exhorted the half-believing,

half-ashamed child to lay its lessons to heart.

"Your life will be full of change and of pleasure, there will be many

temptations and much responsibility," said the sweet, stern, thin old

voice. "Arm yourself against the wickedness of the world!"

Rachael, pulling the old collie's silky ears, thought nothing of the

wickedness of the world but much of possible change and pleasure. She

hoped her aged relative was right; certainly one would suppose Granny

to be right in anything she said.

The time would have swiftly come when the child's changing heart would

have found no room for this association, but before Rachael was twelve

Granny was gone, the little house, with its few poor treasures shut

inside it, was closed and empty. And only a year or two later a far

more important change came into the girl's life. She had always

disliked Los Lobos, had schemed and brooded and fretted incessantly

through her childhood. It was with astonished delight that she heard

that her parents, who had never, in a financial sense, drawn a free

breath since their marriage, who had worried and contrived, who had

tried indifference and bravado and strictest economy by turns, had sold

their ranch for almost two thousand dollars more than its accumulated

mortgages, and were going to England.

It was a glorious adventure for Rachael, even though she was too shrewd

not to suspect the extreme hazard of the move. She talked in Los Lobos

of her father's "people," hinted that "the family, you know, thinks

we'd better be there," but she knew in her heart that a few months

might find them all beggars.

Her father bought her a loose, big, soft blue coat in San Francisco,

and a dashing little soft hat for the steamer. Rachael never forgot

these garments throughout her entire life. It mattered not how

countrified the gown under the coat, how plain the shoes on her slender

feet. Their beauty, their becomingness, their comfort, actually colored

her days. For twenty dollars she was transformed; she knew herself to

be pretty and picturesque. "That charming little girl with the dark

braids, going to England," she heard some man on the steamer say. The

ranch, the chickens, weeds, and preserving, the dusty roads and shabby

stores of Los Lobos were gone; she was no longer a gawky child; she was

a young lady in a loose, soft, rough blue coat, with a black quill in

her soft blue hat.

England received her wandering son coolly, but Rachael never knew it.

Her radiant dream--or was it an awakening?--went on. Her mother, a

neat, faded, querulous little woman, whose one great service was in

sparing her husband any of the jars of life, was keyed to frantic

anxiety lest Jerry be unappreciated, now that he had come back. Clara

met the few men to whom her husband introduced her in London with

feverish eagerness; afraid--after fifteen years--to say one word that

might suggest her own concern in Jerry's future, quivering to

cross-examine him, when they were alone, as to what had been said, and

implied, and suggested.

Nothing definite followed. They lived for a month or two at a

delightful roomy boarding-house in London, where the modest meals Clara

ordered appeared as if by magic, and where Miss Fairfax never sullied

her pretty hands with dishwashing. Then they went to visit "Aunt Elsie"

in a suburban villa for several weeks, a visit Rachael never thought of

afterward without a memory of stuffy, neat, warm rooms, and a gushing

of canaries' voices. Then they went down to Sussex, in the delicious

fullness of spring, to live with several other persons in a dark

country house, where "Cousin Harold" died, and there was much odorous

crepe and a funeral. Cousin Harold evidently left something to Gerald.

Rachael knew money was not an immediate problem. Hot weather came, and

they went to the seaside with an efficient relative called Ethel, and

Ethel's five children. Later, back in London, Gerald said, in his

daughter's hearing, that he had made "rather a good thing of that

little game of Bobbie's. Enough to tide us over--what? Especially if

the Dickies ask us down for a bit," he had added. The Dickies did ask

them down for a bit. They went other places. Gerald made a little money

on the races, made "a good thing" of this, and "turned a bit over on

that." Weeks made months and months years, and still they drifted

cheerfully about, Gerald happier than he had ever been in exile, Clara

fearful, admiring, ill at ease, Rachael in a girl's paradise.

She grew beautiful, with a fine and distinguished beauty definite in

its appeal; before she was seven-teen she had her little reputation for

it; she moved easily into a circle higher than even her father had ever

known. She was witty, young, lovely, and in this happier atmosphere her

natural gayety and generosity might well develop. She went about

continually, and every year the circle of her friends was widened by

more distinguished names.

At seventeen Mrs. Gouveneur Pomeroy of New York brought the young

beauty back with her own daughter, Persis, for a winter in the great

American city, and when Persis died Rachael indeed became almost as

dear to the stricken parents. When she went back to London they gave

her not only gifts but money, and for two years she returned to them

for long visits. So America had a chance to admire the ravishing Miss

Fairfax, too, and Rachael had many conquests and one or two serious

affairs. The girls had their first dances at the Belvedere Club;

Rachael met them all, who were later to be her neighbors: the Morans

and Parmalees, the Vanderwalls and the Torrences, and the Chases. She

met Clarence Breckenridge and his wife, and the exquisitely dressed

little girl who was Billy to-day.

And through all her adventures she looked calmly, confidently, and with

conscious enjoyment for a husband. She flirted a little, and danced and

swam and drove and played golf and tennis a great deal, but she never

lost sight for an instant of the serious business of life. Money she

must have--it was almost as essential to her as air--and money she

could only secure through a marriage.

The young Englishman who was her first choice, in her twentieth year,

had every qualification in the world. When he died, two or three months

before the wedding-day, Rachael's mother was fond of saying in an aside

to close friends that the girl's heart was broken. Rachael, lovely in

her black, went down to stay with Stephen's mother, and for several

weeks was that elderly lady's greatest comfort in life. Silent and

serious, her manner the perfection of quiet grief, only Rachael herself

knew how little the memory of Stephen interfered with her long reveries

as she took his collies about in the soft autumn fogs. Only Rachael

knew how the sight of Trecastle Hall, the horses, the servants, and the

park filled her heart with despair. She might have been Lady Trecastle!

All this might so easily have been her own!

She had loved Stephen, of course, she told herself; loving, with

Rachael, simply meant a willingness to accept and to give. But love was

of course a luxury; she was after the necessities of life. Well, she

had played and lost, but she could play again. So she went to the

Pomeroys' for the winter, and in the spring was brought back to London

by her father's sudden death.

Gerald Fairfax's life insurance gave his widow a far more secured

income than he had ever given his wife. It was microscopic, to be sure,

but Clara Fairfax was a practised economist. The ladies settled in

Paris, and Rachael was seriously considering a French marriage when, by

the merest chance, in the street one day, a small homesick girl

clutched at her thin black skirt, and sent her an imploring smile.

Rachael, looking graciously down from under the shade of her frilly

black parasol, recognized the little Breckenridge girl, obviously

afflicted with a cold and lonesomeness and strangeness. Enslaving the

French nurse with three perfectly pronounced sentences, Rachael went

home with the clinging Carol, put her to bed, cheered her empty little

interior with soup, soothed her off to sleep, and was ready to meet her

crazed and terrified father with a long lecture on the care of young

children, when, after an unavoidable afternoon of business, he came

back to his hotel.

The rest followed. Rachael liked Clarence, finding it agreeable that he

knew how to dress, how to order a dinner, tip servants, and take care

of a woman in a crowd. His family was one of the oldest in America, and

he was rich. She was sorry that Billy's mother was living, but then one

couldn't have everything, and, after all, she was married again, which

seemed to mitigate the annoyance. Rachael said to herself that this was

a wiser marriage than the proposed one with poor Stephen: Stephen had

been a wild, romantic boy, full of fresh passion and dazed with

exultant dreams; Clarence was a man, longing less for moonshine and

roses and the presence of his beloved one than for a gracious,

distinguished woman who would take her place before the world as

mistress of his home and guardian of his child.

She had sometimes doubted her power to make Stephen happy--Stephen, who

talked with all a boy's heavenly shyness of long days tramping the

woods and long nights over the fire, of little sons and daughters

romping in the Trecastle gardens; but she entered into her marriage

with Clarence Breckenridge with entire self-confidence. She had been

struggling more or less definitely all her life toward just such a

position as this; it was a comparatively easy matter to fill it, now

that she had got it.

Carol she considered a decided asset. The child adored her, and her

services to Carol were so much good added to the beauty, charm, and

wisdom that she brought into the bargain. That Clarence could ask more

in the way of beauty, wisdom, and charm was not conceivable; Rachael

knew her own value too well to have any doubts on that score.

And had her husband been a strong man, her dignified and ripened

loveliness must inevitably have won him. She stood ready to be won. She

held to her bond in all generosity. What heart and soul and body could

do for him was his to claim. She did not love him, but she did not need

love's glamour to show her what her exact value to him might be; what

was her natural return for all her marriage gave her.

But quick-witted and cold-blooded as she was, she could not see that

Clarence was actually a little afraid of her. He had been too rich all

his life to count his money as an argument in his favor, and although

he was not clever he knew Rachael did not love him, and hardly supposed

that she ever could.

He felt with paternal blindness that she had married him partly for the

child's sake, and returned to the companionship of his daughter with a

real sense of relief.

Rachael, in turn, was puzzled. Carol was undeniably a pretty child,

with all a spoiled child's confident charm, but in all good-natured

generosity Rachael could not see in her the subtle and irresistible

fascinations that her father so eagerly exploited. Surely no girl of

ten, however gifted, could be reasonably supposed to eclipse completely

the woman Rachael knew herself to be; surely no parental infatuation

could extend itself to the point of a remarriage with the bettering of

a small child's position alone the object.

Philosophy came promptly to the aid of the new-made wife. Billy was a

child, and Clarence a greater child. The situation was annoying, was

belittling to her own pride, but she would meet it with dignity

nevertheless. After all, the visible benefits of the marriage were

still hers: the new car, the new furs, the new and wonderful sense of

financial ease, of social certainty.

She schooled herself to listen with an indulgent smile to her husband's

fond rhapsodies about his daughter. She agreed amiably that Billy would

be a great beauty, a heart-breaker, that "the little monkey had all the

other women crazy with jealousy now, by Jove!" She selected the little

gowns and hats in which the radiant Billy went off for long days alone

with "Daddy," and she presently graciously consented to share the

little girl's luxurious room because Billy sometimes awakened nervously

at night. Rachael had been accustomed to difficulties in dealing with

the persons nearest her; she met them resolutely. Sometimes a baffling

sense of failure smote the surface of her life, like a cold wind that

turns to white metal the smooth waters of a lake, but she held her head

proudly above it, and even Clarence and his daughter never guessed what

she endured. What did it matter? Rachael asked herself wearily. She had

not asked for love. She had resolutely exchanged what she had to give

for what she had determined to get; Clarence had made no blind

protestations, had expected no golden romance. He admired her; she knew

he thought it was splendid of her to manage the engagement and marriage

with so little fuss; perhaps his jaded pulses fluttered a little when

Rachael, exquisite in her bridal newness, stooped at the railway

station to give the drooping Billy a good-bye kiss, and promise that in

three days they would be back to rescue her from the hated governess;

but paramount above all other emotions, she suspected, was the

tremendous satisfaction of having gained just the right woman to

straighten out his tangled domestic affairs, just the mother, as the

years went by, to do the correct thing for Billy.

Of some of these things the woman who sat idly before the library fire

was thinking, as the quiet evening wore on, and the purring of the

flames and the ticking of the little mantel clock accented rather than

disturbed the stillness. She was unhappy with a cold, dry wretchedness

that was deeper than any pang of passion or of hate. The people she

met, the books she read, the gowns she planned so carefully, and the

social events that were her life, all--all--were dust and ashes.

Clarence was less a disappointment and a shame to her than an

annoyance; he neglected her, he humiliated her, true, but this meant

infinitely less than that he bored her so mercilessly. Billy, with her

youthful complacencies and arts, bored her; the sympathy of a few close

friends bored her as much as the admiration and envy of the many who

were not close. Cards, golf, dinners, and dances bored her. Rachael

thought tonight of a woman she had known closely, a beautiful woman,

too, and a rich and gifted woman, who, not many months ago, had quietly

ended it all, had been found by horrified maids in her gray-and-silver

boudoir lovelier than ever, in fixed and peaceful beauty, with the soft

folds of her lacy gown spreading like the petals of a great flower

about her and the little gleam of an empty bottle in her still, ringed

hand...

A voice broke the library stillness. Rachael roused herself.

"What is it, Helda?" she asked. "Doctor Gregory? Ask him to come in.

And ask Alfred--is Alfred still downstairs?--ask him to go up and see

if Mr. Breckenridge is awake.

"This is very decent of you, Greg," she said, a moment later, as the

doctor came into the room. "It doesn't seem right to interfere with

your dinner for the same old stupid thing!"

"Great pleasure to do anything for you, Rachael," the newcomer said

promptly and smilingly with the almost perfunctory courtesy that was a

part of Warren Gregory's stock in trade. "You don't call on me often! I

wish you did!"

She said to herself, as they both sat down before the fire, that it was

probably true. Doctor Gregory was notoriously glad of an opportunity to

serve his friends. He had not at all regretted the necessity of leaving

his dinner partner at the salad for a professional call. He was quite

ready to enjoy the Breckenridge sitting-room, the fire, the lamplight,

the company of a beautiful woman. Rachael and he knew each other well,

almost intimately; they had been friends for many years. She had often

been his guest at the opera, had often chaperoned his dinner-parties at

the club, for Warren Gregory's only woman relative was his old mother,

who was neither of an age nor a type to take any part in his social

life.

He was forty, handsome, dignified, with touches of gray in his

close-clipped hair, but no other sign of years in his face or his big,

well-built figure. He had clever, fine eyes behind black-rimmed

glasses, a surgeon's clever hands, a pleasant voice. He lived with his

mother in a fine old house on Washington Square, in New York City, and

worked as tirelessly as if he were a penniless be ginner at his

profession instead of a rich man, a rich woman's heir, and already

recognized as a genius in his own line.

All women liked him, and he liked them all. He sent them books, marked

essays in magazines for their individual consideration, took them to

concerts, remembered their birthdays. But his only close friends were

men, the men with whom he played tennis and golf, or with whom he was

associated in his work.

With all his cleverness and all his charm, Warren Gregory was not a

romantic figure in the eyes of most women. He had inherited from his

old Irish mother a certain mildness, and a lenience, where they were

concerned. He neither judged them nor idolized them. They belonged only

to his leisure hours. His real life was in his club, in his books, and

in the hospital world where there were children's tiny bones to set. He

was conscious, as a man born in a different circle always is conscious,

that he had, by a series of pleasant chances, been pushed straight into

the inner heart of the social group whose doors are so resolutely

closed to many men and women, and he liked it. His grand father had had

blood but no money, his mother money but no social claim. He inherited,

with the O'Connell millions, the Gregory name, and for perhaps ten

years he had enjoyed an unchallenged popularity. He had inherited also,

without knowing it, a definitely different standard from that held by

all the men and women about him. In his simple, unobtrusive way he held

aloof from much that they said and did. Greg, said the woman, was a

regular Puritan about gossip, about drinking, about gambling.

They never suspected the truth: that he was shy. Sure of his touch as a

surgeon, pleasantly definite about books and pictures, spontaneous and

daring in the tennis court or on the links, under his friendly manner

with women was the embarrassment of a young boy.

Before his tenth year his rigidly conscientious mother had instilled

into the wondering little-boy mind certain mysterious yet positive

moral laws. Purity and self-control were in the air he breathed while

at her side, and although a few years later school and college had

claimed him, the effect of those early lessons was definite upon his

character. Diffidence and a sort of fear had protected him, far more

effectually than any other means might have done, from the common vices

of his age, and in those days a certain good-natured scorn from all his

associates made him feel even more than his natural shyness, and marked

him rather apart from other young men.

Keenly aware of this, it had been a tremendous surprise to the young

physician, returning from post-graduate work in Germany a few years

later, to find that what had once been considered a sort of laughable

weakness in him was called strength of character now; that what had

been a clumsy boy's inarticulateness was more charitably construed into

the silence of a clever man who will not waste his words; and that

mothers whose sons he had once envied for their worldly wisdom were

turning to him for advice as to the extrication of these same sons from

all sorts of difficulties.

Being no fool, he accepted the changed attitude with great readiness,

devoting himself to his work and his mother, and pleasantly conscious

that he was a success. He let women alone, except where music and art,

golf and the club theatricals were the topic of interest, and,

consequently, had come to his fortieth year with some little awe and

diffidence still left for them in his secret heart. Rachael had told

him, not long ago, that she believed he took no interest in women older

than fourteen and younger than fifty, and there was some truth in the

charge. But he was conscious to-night of taking a distinct interest in

her as he sat down beside her fire.

He had never seen her so beautiful, he thought. She had dressed so

hastily, so carelessly, that an utter simplicity enhanced the natural

charm. Her dark hair was simply massed, her gown was devoid of

ornament, her hands bare, except for her wedding-ring. On her earnest,

exquisite face the occasion had stamped a certain soberness, she was

neither hostess nor guest to-night; just a heartsick wife under the

shadow of anger and shame.

"Well, what is it to-night?" Warren Gregory asked kindly.

"Oh, the same old thing, Greg. The Berry Stokes' dinner, you know!"

"Shame!" the doctor said warmly, touched by her obvious depression.

"I'll go up. I can give him some pills. But you know, he can't keep

this up forever, Rachael. He's killing himself!"

In her sensitive mood the mildly reproachful tone was too much.

Rachael's breast rose, her eyes brightened angrily.

"Perhaps you'll tell me what more I can do, Greg!"

He looked at her in surprise; the shell of Mrs. Breckenridge's cool

reserve was not often pierced.

"My dear girl--" he stammered. "Why, Rachael--!"

For battling with a moment of emotion she had flung her beautiful head

back against the brilliant cretonne of the chair, her eyes closed, her

hands grasping the chair-arms. A tear slipped from under her lids.

"I didn't for one second mean--" he began again uncomfortably.

Suddenly she straightened herself in her chair, and opened her eyes

widely. He saw her lovely breast, under its filmy black chiffon, rise

stormily. Her voice was rich with protest.

"No, you didn't mean anything, Greg, nobody means anything! Nobody is

anything but sorry for me: you, Billy, Elinor, the woman who expected

us at dinner to-night, the servants at the club!" she said hotly.

"Nobody blames me, and yet every one wonders how it happens! Nobody

thinks it anything but a little amusing, a little shocking. I am to

write the notes, and make the excuses, and be shamed--and

shamed--shamed--"

Her voice broke. She rose to her feet, and rested an elbow on the

mantel, and stared moodily at the fire. There was a silence.

"Rachael, I'm sorry!" Gregory said presently, impulsively.

Instantly her April smile rewarded him.

"I know you are, Greg!" she answered gratefully. "And I know," she

added, in a low tone, "that you are one of the persons who will

understand--when I end it all!"

"End it all!" he echoed sharply.

"Not suicide," she reassured him smilingly. She flung herself back in

her chair again, holding her white hand, with its ring, between her

face and the fire. "No," she said thoughtfully, "I mean divorce."

There eyes met; both were pale, serious.

"Divorce!" he echoed, after a pause. "I never thought of it--for you!"

"I haven't thought of it myself, much," Rachael admitted, with a

troubled smile.

As a matter of fact she had thought of it, since the early days of her

marriage, but never as an actual possibility. She had preferred bondage

and social position to freedom and the uncomfortable status of the

divorced woman. She realized now that she might think of it in a

slightly different way. She had been a penniless nobody seven years

ago; she was a personage now. The mere fact that he was a Breckenridge

would win some sympathy for Clarence, but she would have her faction,

too.

More than that, she would never be younger, never handsomer, never

better able to take the plunge, and face the consequences.

"I'm twenty-eight, Greg," she said reasonably, "I'm not stupid, I'm not

plain--don't interrupt me! Is this to be my fate? I'm capable of

loving--of living--I don't want to be bored--bored--bored for the rest

of my life!"

Warren Gregory, stunned and surprised, eyed her sympathetically.

"Belvedere Bay bore you?" he asked, smiling a little uneasily.

"No--it's not that. I don't want more dinners and dances and jewels and

gowns!" Rachael answered musingly. She stared sombrely at the fire, and

there was a moment's silence.

Suddenly her mood changed. She smiled, and locking her hands together,

as she leaned far forward in her chair, she looked straight into his

eyes.

"Greg," she said, "do you know what I'd like to be? I'd like to be far

away from cities and people, a fisherman's wife on an ocean shore, with

a baby coming every year, and just the delicious sea to watch! I could

be a good wife, Greg, if anybody really--loved me!"

Laughing as she looked at him, she did not disguise the fact that tears

misted her lashes. Warren Gregory felt himself stirred as he had not

been before in his life.

"Well," he said, with an unsteady laugh, "you could be anything! With

you for his wife, what couldn't a man do!"

Hardly conscious of what he did or said, he got to his feet, and she

stood, too, smiling up at him. Both were breathing hard.

"To think," he said, with a sort of repressed violence, "that you, of

all women, should be Clarence Breckenridge's wife!"

"Not long!" she answered, in a whisper.

"You mean that you are really going to leave him, Rachael?"

"I mean that I must, Greg, if I am not to go mad!"

"And where will you go?" she asked.

"Oh--to Vera, to Elinor." She paused, frowning. "Or away by myself,"

she decided suddenly. "Away from them all!"

"Rachael," he said quickly, "will you come to my mother?"

Rachael smiled. "To your mother!"

He read her incredulity in her voice.

"But she loves you," he said eagerly. "And she'd be--we'd both be so

proud to show people--to prove--that we knew where the right lay!"

"My dear Don Quixote," she answered affectionately, "I love you for

asking me! But I will be better alone. I must think, and plan. I've

made a mess of my life so far, Greg; I must take the next step

carefully!"

He was clinging to her hands as she stood, in all her grave beauty,

before him.

"If I hadn't been such a bat, Rachael, all those eleven years ago!" he

said, daringly, breathlessly.

"Have we known each other so long, Greg?"

"Ever since that first visit of yours with little Persis Pomeroy! And I

remember you so well, Rachael. I remember that Bobby Governeur was

enslaved!"

"Dear old Bobby! But I don't remember you, Greg!"

"Because I was thirty then, my dear, and you were seventeen! I was just

home from four years' work in Germany; I was afraid of girls your age!"

"Afraid--of ME?" The three words were like a caress, like holding her

in his arms.

"I'm afraid so!" he said, not quite steadily. "I'm afraid I've always

liked you too well. I--I CARE--that you're unhappy, that you're

unkindly treated. I--I--wish I could do something, Rachael."

"You DO do something," she said, deeply stirred in her turn. "I'm--you

don't know how fond I am of you, Greg!"

For answer she felt his arms about her, and for a throbbing minute they

stood so; Rachael braced lightly, her beautiful breast rising and

falling, her breath coming quickly. Her magnificent eyes, wide-open,

like a frightened child's, were fixed steadily upon him. He caught the

fragrance of her hair, of her fresh skin; he felt the softness and

firmness of her slender arms.

"Rachael!" he said, in a sharp whisper. "Don't--don't say that--if you

don't--mean it!"

"Greg!" she answered, in the same tone. "Don't--frighten me!"

Instantly she was free, and he was standing by the fire with folded

arms, looking at her.

"You have missed love, and I have missed it," Warren Gregory said

presently. "We'll be patient, Rachael. I'll wait; we'll both wait--"

"Greg!" she could only answer still in that stricken whisper, still

pale. She stood just as he had left her.

A silence fell between them. The physician took out a cigarette from

his gold case with trembling ringers.

"I'm a little giddy, Rachael," he said after a moment. "I--on my honor

I don't know what's happened to me! You're the most wonderful woman in

the world--I've always thought that--but it never occurred to me--the

possibility--"

He paused, confused, unable to find the right words.

"You've been facing this all alone," he continued presently. "Poor

Rachael! You've been splendid--wonderfully brave! You have me beside

you now; I'll help you if I may. Some day we may find a way out! Well,"

he finished abruptly, "suppose I go up and see Clarence?"

For answer she rose, and without speaking again went ahead of him up

the stairway and left him at the door of her husband's room. He did not

see her again that night.

Half an hour later he came down, dismissed his car, and walked home

under the spring stars. In his veins, like a fire, still ran the

excited, glorious consciousness of his madness. In his ears still

echoed the wonderful golden voice; he could hear her very words, and he

took certain phrases from his memory, and gloated over them as another

man might have gloated over strings of pearls: "I'd like to be far away

from cities and people, a fisherman's wife on an ocean shore with a

baby coming every year and just the delicious sea to watch!"

"Greg--don't frighten me!"

Exquisite, desirable, enchanting--every inch of her--her voice, her

eyes, her slender hand with its gold circle. What a woman! What a wife!

What radiant youth and beauty and charm--and all trampled in the mire

by Clarence Breckenridge, of all insensate brutes! How could laughter

and courage and beauty survive it?

He was going to the club, a mile away from the Breckenridge house, but

long before the visions born that evening were exhausted, he saw the

familiar lights, and the awninged porches, and heard the faint echoes

of the orchestra. They were dancing.

Warren Gregory turned away again, and plunged into the darkness of the

roadside afresh. "My dear Don Quixote!" With what a look of motherly

amusement and tenderness she had said it. What a woman! He had never

kissed her. He had never even thought of kissing Clarence

Breckenridge's wife.

He thought of his mother, tried to forget her with a philosophical

shrug, and found that the slender, black-clad, quiet-voiced vision was

not to be so easily dismissed. It was said of old Madam Gregory that

she had never been heard to raise her voice in the course of her sixty

honored years. Of the four sons she had borne, three were dead, and the

husband she had loved so faithfully lay beside them. She was slightly

crippled, her outings confined to a slow drive every day. She was

solitary in a retinue of servants. But that modulated voice and those

cool, temperate eyes were still a power. His mother's displeasure was a

very real thing to Warren Gregory, and the thought of adding another

sorrow to the weight on those thin shoulders was not an easy one for

him to entertain.

It would be a sorrow. Mrs. Gregory was a rigid Catholic, her life's one

prayer nowadays was that her beloved son might become one, too. Her

marriage at seventeen to a non-Catholic had been undertaken in the firm

conviction that faith like hers must win the conversion of her beloved

James, the best, the most honorable of men. When her oldest son was

born, and given his father's name, she saw, in her husband's

willingness to further plans for the baptism, definite cause for hope.

Another son was born, there was another christening; it was the

father's own hand that gave the third baby lay-baptism only a few

moments before the tiny life slipped back into the eternity from which

it had so lately come.

A year or two later a fourth son was born. Presently the dignified Mrs.

Gregory was taking a trio of small, sleek-headed boys to Sunday-school,

watching every phase in the development of their awakening souls with

terror and with hope. What fears she suffered in spirit during those

years no one but herself knew. Outwardly, the hospitable, gracious life

of the great house went on; the Gregorys were prominent in charities,

they opened their mountain camp for the summer, they travelled abroad,

they had an audience with the Pope. Time went on, and the

twelve-year-old George was taken from them, breaking the father's

heart, said the watching world. But there was a strange calm in the

mother's eyes as they rested on the dead child's serene face: Heaven

had her free offering, now she must have her reward.

A few months later James Gregory became a convert to her religion.

Charles, the second son, had never wavered from his mother's faith, and

rejoiced with her in this great event. But the first-born, Warren, as

all but his mother called him, to avoid confusion with his father, was

a junior in college when these changes took place, and when he came

home for the long vacation his mother knew what her cross must be for

the years to come. He listened to her with the appalling silence of the

nineteen-year-old male, he kissed her, he returned gruff, embarrassed

answers to her searching questions of his soul, and he escaped from her

with visibly expanding lungs and averted eyes. She knew that she had

lost him.

Men called him a good man, and she assented with dry lips and heavy

eyelids. Charles died, leaving a young widow and an infant son, the

father shortly followed, and Warren came home from his interne year,

and was a good son to her in her dark hour. When they began to say of

him that he would be great, she smiled sadly. "My father was a doctor,"

she said once to an old friend, "and James inherits it!" But at a

memory of her own father, erect and rosy among his girls and boys in

the family pew, she burst into tears. "I would rather have him with his

father, with George and Charles, and with my angel Francis, than have

him the greatest man that ever lived!" she said.

But if she had not made him a good Catholic she had made him a good

man, and it was a fair and honorable record that Warren Gregory could

offer to the woman he loved. Love--it had come to him at last. His

thoughts went back to Rachael. It seemed to him that he had always

known how deeply, how recklessly he loved her.

He had a thrilling memory of her as Persis Pomeroy's guest, years ago,

an awkward, delightful seventeen-year-old, with her hair in two thick

braids, looped up at the neck, and tied with a flaring black bow. He

remembered watching her, hearing for the first time the delicious voice

with its English accent: "Well, I should say it was indeed!"

"Well, I should say it was indeed!" Across more than ten years he

recalled the careless, crisp little answer to some comment from Persis,

his first precious memory of Rachael. The girls, he remembered, were

supposedly too young for a certain dance that was imminent, they were

opposing their youthful petulance--baffled roses and sunshine--to Mrs.

Pomeroy's big, placid negatives. Gregory could still see the matron's

comfortably shaking head, see Persis attacking again and again like a

frantic butterfly, and see "the little English girl," perched on the

porch rail, looking from mother to daughter smilingly, with her blue,

serious eyes.

Why had he never thought of her again until Clarence Breckenridge

brought her back with him, a bride, six years later? Or, rather, having

thought of her, as he undoubtedly had, why had he not found the time to

cross the water and go to see her? Nothing might have come of it, true.

But she might have yielded to him as readily as to Clarence

Breckenridge!

"I love her!" he said to himself, and it seemed wonderful, sad, and

sweet, joyous and terrible to admit it. "I love her. But she doesn't

love me or anyone, poor Rachael! She's forgotten me already!"

CHAPTER III

As a matter of fact, Rachael thought about him very often during the

course of the next two or three days, and after he had left her that

night she could think of nothing else. To the admiration of men she was

cheerfully accustomed; perhaps it would be safe to say that not in the

course of the past ten years had she ever found herself alone in a

man's company without evoking a more or less definite declaration of

his admiration for her. But to-night's affair was a little distinctive

for several reasons. Warren Gregory was a most exceptional man, for one

thing; he was reputedly a coldblooded man, for another; and for a

third, he had been extraordinarily in earnest. There had been no

hesitation, he had committed himself wholeheartedly. She was conscious

of a pleasurable thrill. However gracious, however gallant Warren was,

there had been no social pretence in his attitude to-night.

And for a few moments she let her imagination play pleasantly with the

situation. It was at least a new thought, and life had run in a groove

for a long, long time. Granted the preliminaries safely managed, it

would be a great triumph for the woman whom Clarence Breckenridge had

ignored to come back into this group as Warren Gregory's wife.

Rachael got into bed, flinging two or three books down beside her

pillow and lighting the shaded lamp that stood at the bedside. She

found herself unable to read.

"Wouldn't Florence and Gardner buzz!" she thought with a smile. "And if

they buzzed at the divorce, what WOULDN'T they say if I really did

remarry? But the worst of it is"--and Rachael reaching for The Way of

All Flesh sighed wearily--"the worst of it is that one never DOES carry

out plans, or _I_ never do, any more. I used to feel equal to any

situation, now I don't--getting old, perhaps. I wonder"--she stared

dreamily at the soft shadows in the big room--"I wonder if things are

as queer to most people as they are to me? I don't get much joy out of

life, as it is, and yet I don't DARE cut loose and go away. No maid, no

club, living at some cheap hotel--no, I couldn't do that! I wish there

was someone who could advise me--some disinterested person, someone

who--well, who loved me, and who knew that I've always tried to be

decent, always tried to play the game. All I want is to be reasonably

well treated; to have a good time and be among pleasant people--"

Her thoughts wandered about among the various friends whose judgment

might serve at this crisis to clear her own thoughts and simplify the

road before her. Strangely enough, Warren Gregory's own mother was the

first of whom she thought; that pure and austere and uncompromising

heart would certainly find the way. Whether Rachael had the courage to

follow it was another question. She loved old Mrs. Gregory; they were

good friends. But Rachael dismissed her with a little shudder, as from

the spatter of icy water against her bared breast. The bishop? Rachael

and Clarence duly kept a pew in one of the city's fashionable churches;

it was the Breckenridge family pew, rented by the family for a hundred

years. But they never sat in it, although Rachael felt vaguely

sometimes that for reasons undefined they should, and Clarence was apt

in moments of sentiment to reproach his wife with the statement that

his grandmother had been a faithful church woman, and his mother had

always attended church on pleasant mornings in winter.

But the bishop called on Rachael once a year, and Rachael liked him,

and mingled an air of pretty penitence for past negligences with a

gracious promise of better conduct in future. His Grace was a fine,

breezy, broadminded man, polished in manner, sympathetic, and tolerant.

He had not risen to his present eminence by too harsh a rebuke of the

sinner.

His handsome young assistant, Father Graves, as he liked to be called,

was far more radical. But a great deal was forgiven this attractive

boyish celibate by the women of the Episcopal parish. They enjoyed his

scoldings, gave him their confidences, and asked his advice, though

they never followed it. His slender, black-clad figure, with the Roman

collar, was admired by many bright eyes at receptions and church

bazaars.

Still, Rachael could not somehow consider herself as seriously asking

either of these two clergymen for advice. She could see the bishop,

fitting finely groomed fingers together, pursing his lips for a

judicial reply.

"My dear Mrs. Breckenridge, that Clarence is now passing through a most

unfortunate, most lamentable, period in his life is, alas, perfectly

true. His mother--a lovely woman--was one of my wife's dearest friends,

one of my own. His first marriage was much against her wishes, poor

dear lady, and--as my wife was saying the other day--had she lived to

see him happily married again, and her grandchild in such good hands,

it could not but have been a great joy to her. Yes. ... Now, you and I

know Clarence--know his good points, and know his faults. That's one of

the sad things about us poor human beings, we get to know each other so

well! And isn't it equally true that we're not patient enough with each

other?--oh, yes, I know we try. But do we try HARD enough? Isn't there

generally some fault on both sides, quick words, angry, hasty actions,

argument and blame, when we say things we don't mean and that we are

sure to regret, eh? We all get tired of the stupid round of daily duty,

and of the people we are nearest to--that's a sad thing, too. We'd all

like a change, like to see if we couldn't do something else better! And

so comes the break, and the cloud on a fine old name, and all because

we aren't better soldiers--we don't want to march in line! Bless me,

don't I know the feeling myself? Why, that good little wife of mine

could tell you some tales of discouragement and disenchantment that

would make you open your eyes! But she braces me up, she puts heart

into me--and the first thing I know I'm marching again!"

And having comfortably shifted the entire trend of the conversation

from his parishioner to himself and found nothing insurmountable in his

own problem, the good bishop would chuckle mischievously at finding his

eminent self quite human after all, and would suggest their going in to

find Mrs. Bishop, and having a cup of tea. These women, always restless

and dissatisfied, were a part of his work; he prided himself upon the

swiftness and tact with which he disposed of them.

Rachael's mouth twisted wryly at the thought of him. No, she could not

bare her soul to the bishop.

Nor could she approach Father Graves with any real hope of a helping

word. To seek him out in his study--that esthetically bare and yet

beautiful room, with its tobacco-brown hangings and monastic furnishing

in black oak--would be to invite mischief. To sit there, with her

eloquent eyes fixed upon his, her haunting voice wrapping itself about

his senses, would be a genuine cruelty toward a harmless,

well-intentioned youth whose heroism in abjuring the world, the flesh,

and the devil had not yet been great enough to combat his superb and

dignified egotism. At best, he would be won by Rachael's revelation of

her soul to a long and frankly indiscreet talk of his own; at worst, he

would construe her confidences in an entirely personal sense, and feel

that she came not at all to the priest and all to the man.

Dismissing him from her councils, Rachael thought of Florence Haviland,

the good and kind-hearted and capable matron who was Clarence's sister

and only near relative. She and Florence had always been good friends,

had often discussed Clarence of late. What sort of advice would

Florence's forty-five years be apt to give to Rachael's twenty-eight?

"Don't be so absurd, Rachael, half the men in our set drink as much as

Clarence does. Don't jump from the frying-pan into the fire. Remember

Elsie Rowland and Marian Cowles when you talk so lightly of divorce!"

That would be Florence's probable attitude. Still, it was a bracing

attitude, heartily positive, like everything Florence did and said. And

Florence was above everything else a church member, a prominent

Christian in her self-sacrificing wifehood and motherhood, her social

and charitable and civic work. She might be unflattering, but she would

be right. Rachael's last conscious thought, as she went off to sleep,

was that she would take the earliest possible moment to extract a

verdict from Florence.

She went into her husband's room at ten o'clock the next morning to

find Billy radiantly presiding over a loaded breakfast tray, and the

invalid, pale and pasty, and with no particular interest in food

evinced by the twitching muscles of his face, nevertheless neatly

brushed and shaved, propped up in pillows, and making a visible effort

to appear convalescent.

"How are you this morning?" Rachael asked perfunctorily, with her quick

glance moving from the books on the table to the wood fire burning

lazily behind brass firedogs. Everything was in perfect order, Helda's

touch visible everywhere.

"Fine," Clarence answered, also perfunctorily. His coffee was

untouched, and the cigarette in his long holder had gone out, but Billy

was disposing of eggs, toast, bacon, and cream with youthful zest.

Clarence's hot, sick gaze rested almost with hostility upon his wife's

cool beauty; in a gray linen gown, with a transparent white ruffle

turned back from her white throat, she looked as fresh as the fresh

spring morning.

"Headache?" said the nicely modulated, indifferent voice.

To this solicitude Clarence made no answer. A dark, ugly look came into

his face, and he turned his eyes sullenly and wearily away.

"How was the Chase dinner, Bill?" pursued the cheerful visitor,

unabashed.

"Same old thing," Carol answered briefly.

"You're not up to the Perrys' lunch to-day, are you, Clancy?"

"Oh, my God, no!" burst from the sufferer.

"Well, I'll telephone them. If Florence comes in this morning I'm going

to say you're asleep, so keep quiet up here. Do you want to see Greg

again?"

"No, I don't!" said Clarence, with unexpected vigor. "Steer him off if

you can. Preaching at me last night as if he'd never touched anything

stronger than malted milk!"

"I don't imagine I'll have much trouble steering him off," Rachael said

coldly. "His Sundays are pretty well occupied without--sick calls!"

There was a delicate and scornful emphasis on the word "sick" that

brought the blood to Clarence Breckenridge's face. Billy flushed, too,

and an angry light flamed into her eyes.

"That's not fair, Rachael!" the girl said hotly, "and you know it's

not!"

The glances of the three crossed. Billy was breathing hard; Clarence,

shakily holding a fresh match to his cold cigarette, sent a lowering

look from daughter to wife. Rachael shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, I'll have my breakfast," she said, and turning she went from the

room and downstairs to the sunshiny breakfast porch. There were flowers

on the little round table, a bright glitter was struck from silver and

glass, an icy grapefruit, brimming with juice, stood at her place. The

little room was all windows, and to-day the cretonne curtains had been

pushed back to show the garden brave in new spring green, the exquisite

freshness of elm and locust trees that bordered it, and far away the

slopes of the golf green, with the scarlet and white dots that were

early players moving over it. Sunshine flooded the world, great plumes

of white and purple lilac rustled in their tents of green leaves, a bee

blundered from the blossoming wistaria vine into the room, and

blundered out again. Far off Rachael heard a cock breaking the Sabbath

stillness with a prolonged crow, and as the clock in the dining-room

chimed one silver note for the half-hour, the bells of the church in

the little village of Belvedere Bay began to ring.

Of the comfort, the beauty, and the harmony of all this, however,

Rachael saw and felt nothing. Her brief interview with her husband had

left a bitter taste in her mouth. She felt neither courage nor appetite

for the new day. Annie carried away the blue bowl of porridge

untouched, reporting to Ellie: "She don't want no eggs, nor sausage,

nor waffles--nothing more!"

Ellie, the cook, who boarded a four-year-old daughter with the gardener

and his wife, at the gate-lodge, was deep in the robust charms of this

young person, and not sorry to be uninterrupted.

"Thank goodness she don't," she said. "Do you want a little waffle all

for yourself, Lovey? Do you want to pour the batter into Ma's iron

yourself? Pin a napkin round her, Annie! An' then you can eat it out on

the steps, darlin', because it just seems to be a shame to spend a

minute indoors when God sends us a mornin' like this!"

"It must have been grand, walking to church this morning, all right,"

said Alfred, who was busy with golf sticks and emery on the vine-shaded

porch.

"It was!" said Ellie and Annie together, and Annie added: "Rose from

Bowditch's was there, and she says she can't get away but about once a

month. She always has to wait on the children's breakfast at eight, and

then down comes the others at half-past nine, or later, the way she

never has a moment until it's too late for High! I told her she had a

right to look for another place!"

"There's worse places than this," Ellie said, watching her small

daughter begin on her waffle. A general nodding of heads in a contented

silence indicated that there was some happiness in the Breckenridge

household even though it was below stairs.

Rachael's sombre revery was presently interrupted by the smooth

crushing of wheels on the pebbled drive and the announcement of Mrs.

Haviland, who followed her name promptly into the breakfast-room. A

fine, large, beautifully gowned woman, with a prayer book in her

white-gloved hand, and a veil holding her close, handsome spring hat in

place, she glanced at the coffee and hot bread with superiority only

possible to a person whose own breakfast is several hours past.

"Rachael, you lazy woman!" said Florence Haviland lightly, breathing

deep, as a heavy woman in tight corsets must perforce breathe on a warm

spring morning. "Do you realize that it's almost eleven o'clock?"

"Perfectly!" Mrs. Breckenridge said. "I slept until nine, and felt

quite proud of myself to think that I had got through so much of the

day!"

Mrs. Haviland gave her a sharp look in answer, not quite disapproving,

yet far from pleased.

"I started the girlies off to eight o'clock service," she said capably.

"Fraulien went with them, and that leaves the maids free to go when

they please." This was one of Mrs. Haviland's favorite illusions.

"Gardner begged off this morning, he's been so good about going lately

that I couldn't very well refuse, so I started early and have just

dropped him at the club."

"Was Gardner at the Berry Stokes bachelor dinner on Friday night?"

asked Rachael. Mrs. Haviland was all comprehension at once.

"No, he couldn't. Mr. Payne of the London branch was here you know, and

Gardner's been terribly tied. He left yesterday, thank goodness.

Clarence went of course? Oh, dear, dear, dear!"

The last three words came on a gentle sigh. Clarence's sister

compressed her lips and shook her handsome head.

"Is he very bad?" she asked reluctantly.

"Pretty much as usual," Rachael answered philosophically. "I had Greg

in." And suddenly, unexpectedly, she felt a quick happy flutter at her

heart, and a roseate mist drifted before her eyes.

"It's disgraceful!" Mrs. Haviland said, eying Rachael hopefully for a

wifely denial. As this was not forthcoming, she went on briskly:

"However, my dear, Clarence isn't the only one! They say Fred Bowditch

is actually"--her voice sank to a discreet undertone as she added the

word--"violent; and poor Lucy Pickering needed a rest cure the moment

she got her divorce, she was in such a nervous state. I'm not defending

Clarence--"

"What are you doing, then?" Rachael asked, with her cool smile.

"Well, I--" Mrs. Haviland, who had been drifting comfortably along on a

tide of words, stopped, a little at a loss. "I hope I don't have to

defend your own husband to you, Rachael," she said reproachfully.

"I'm getting pretty tired of it," said Rachael moodily.

Mrs. Haviland watched the downcast beautiful face opposite her with a

sense of growing alarm.

"My dear," she said impressively, "of course it's hard for you; we all

know that. But just at this time, Rachael, it would be absolutely FATAL

to have any open break with Clarence--"

Rachael flung up her head impatiently, then dropped her face in her

hands.

"I don't want any open break," she muttered.

"You do? Oh, you DON'T?" Mrs. Haviland questioned anxiously. "No, of

course you don't. He's not himself now, for several reasons. For

one--and that's what I specially came to speak to you about--for one

thing, he's terribly worried about Carol. Carol," repeated Mrs.

Haviland significantly, "and Joe Pickering."

Rachael raised sombre eyes, but did not speak.

"Is Carol here?" her aunt asked delicately.

"Dressing," Rachael answered briefly.

"Do you realize," Mrs. Haviland said, "that everyone is beginning to

talk?"

"Perfectly," Rachael admitted. "But what do you expect me to do?"

"SOMETHING must be done," said the other woman firmly.

"By whom?" Rachael countered lightly.

"Well--by Clarence, I suppose," Mrs. Haviland suggested discontentedly.

"Clarence!" Rachael's tone was but a scornful breath. Her glance toward

the ceiling evoked more clearly than any words a vision of Clarence's

condition at the moment.

"Well, I suppose he can't do anything just now, anyway," his sister

conceded ruefully. "Can't you--couldn't you talk to her, Rachael?"

"Talk to her?" Mrs. Breckenridge smiled at some memory. "My dear

Florence, you don't suppose I haven't talked to her!"

"Well, I suppose of course you have," Mrs. Haviland said hastily. "But

my dear, it's dreadful! People are beginning to ask questions; a

reporter--we don't know who he was--telephoned Gardner. Of course

Gardner hung up--"

"I can say no more than I have said," Rachael observed thoughtfully.

"What authority have I? Clarence could influence her, I think, but she

lies simply and flatly to Clarence."

Mrs. Haviland winced at the ugly word.

"Joe drinks," Rachael went on, "but he doesn't drink as much as her

adored Daddy does. Joe is thirty-nine and Billy is seventeen--well,

that's not his fault. Joe is divorced--well, but Carol's mother is

living, and Clarence's second wife isn't exactly ostracised by society!

A clergyman of your own church married Clarence and me--" The little

scornful twist of the beautiful mouth stung a church woman conscious of

personal integrity, and Mrs. Haviland said:

"A great many of them won't! The church is going to take a stand in the

matter. The bishops are considering a canon. ..."

Mrs. Breckenridge shrugged her shoulders indifferently. Theology did

not interest her.

"And as Billy is too young and too blind to see that Joe isn't a

gentleman," she continued, "or to realize that Lucy got her divorce

against his will, to believe that her money might well influence a

gentleman of Joe's luxurious tastes and dislike for office work--why, I

suppose they will be married!"

"Never!" said Florence Haviland, with some heat, "DON'T!"

"Unless Clarence shoots him," submitted Rachael. A look of intense

anxiety clouded Mrs. Haviland's eyes.

"I believe he would," she said, in a wretched whisper, with a cautious

glance about.

"He might," his wife said seriously. "If ever it comes to that, we

shall simply have to keep them apart. You see Billy--the clever little

devil--"

"Oh, Rachael, DON'T use such words!" said the church woman. "Father

Graves was saying only the other day that one's speech should be 'yea,

yea' and--"

"I daresay!" Mrs. Breckenridge's smile was indulgent. It had been many

years since Florence had succeeded in ruffling her. "Billy, then," she

resumed, "keeps her father happy in the thought that he is all the

world to her, and that her occasional chats with Joe are of an entirely

uplifting and impersonal character."

"Impersonal! Uplifting!" Mrs. Haviland repeated indignantly. "There

wasn't very much uplift about them the other night. Gardner and I

stopped in to see if we couldn't take you to the Hoyts', but you'd

gone. Carol had on that flame-colored dress of hers, her hair was

fluffed all over her ears in that silly way the girls do now; Joe

couldn't take his eyes off her. The only light they had in the

drawing-room was the yellow lamp and the fire; it was the coziest thing

I ever saw!"

"Vivvy Sartoris was here!" Rachael said quickly.

"Don't you believe it, my dear!" Mrs. Haviland returned triumphantly.

"Carol was very demure, 'Tante' this and 'Tante' that, but I knew right

away that something was amiss! 'Oh,' I said right out flatly, 'are you

alone here, Carol?' and she answered very prettily: 'Vivian was to be

here, but she hasn't come yet!' This was after half-past seven."

"I understood Vivian WAS here," said Rachael, flushing darkly. "Let me

see--the next morning--where was I? Oh, yes, it was your luncheon, and

Billy had gone out for some tennis when I came downstairs. I supposed

of course--but I didn't ask. I DID ask Helda what time she had let the

gentleman out and she said before eleven--not much after half-past ten,

in fact."

"You see, we mustn't go on suppositions and halftruths any more," said

Mrs. Haviland in delicate reproach. "When we have that wonderful and

delicate thing, a girl's soul, to deal with, we must be SURE."

"I suppose I'd better tell Clarence that--about Wednesday night,"

Rachael said, downing with some effort an impulse to ask Florence not

to be so smug.

"Well, I think you had," the other agreed, with visible relief.

"As for me," Mrs. Breckenridge said, nettled by her sister-in-law's

attitude, and mischievously interested in the effect of her

thunderbolt, "I'm just desperately tired of it. I can't see that I'm

doing Clarence, or Billy, or myself, any good! I'd like to resign, and

let somebody else try for a while!"

Steel leaped into Mrs. Haviland's light-blue eyes. She felt the shock

in every fibre of body and soul, but she flung herself gallantly into

the charge. Her large form straightened, her expression achieved a

certain remoteness.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked sharply.

"The usual thing, I suppose," Rachael answered indifferently.

The older woman, watching her closely, essayed a brief, dry laugh.

"Don't talk absurdities," she said boldly. But Rachael saw the

uneasiness under the assured manner, and smiled to herself.

"It's not absurd at all," she protested, still with her smiling,

half-negligent air; "I've put it off years longer than most women

would; now I'm getting rather tired."

"It's a great mistake to talk that way, whether you mean it or not,"

Mrs. Haviland said, after an uncomfortable moment, during which her

face flushed, and her breath began to come rather fast. "But you're

joking, of course; you're too sensible to take any step that would only

plunge you into fresh difficulties. Clarence is very trying, I know--we

all know that--but let's try to face the situation sensibly, and not

fly off the handle like this! Why, Rachael dear, I can hardly believe

it's your cool-headed, reasonable self talking," she went on more

quietly. "Don't--don't even think about it! In the first place, you

couldn't get it!"

"Oh, yes, I could. Clarence wouldn't contest it," Rachael said. "He'd

agree to anything to be rid of me. If not--if he wouldn't agree to my

filing suit under the New York law, I could establish my residence in

California or Nevada, and bring suit there. ..."

Mrs. Haviland gasped.

"Give up your home and your car and your maids for some small hotel?"

she questioned, with her favorite air of neatly placing her fingertip

upon the weak spot in her opponent's armor. "No clubs, no dinners, none

of your old friends--have you thought of that?"

"You may imagine that I've thought of it from a good many angles,

Florence," Rachael said coldly, finding that what had been a mere

drifting idea was beginning to take rather definite form in her mind.

It was delightful to see the usually complacent and domineering

Florence so agitated and at a loss.

"I never dreamed--" Mrs. Haviland mused dazedly. "How long, in Heaven's

name, have you been thinking about it?"

"Oh, quite some time," said Rachael.

"Well, it's awful!" the other woman said. "It'll make the most

awful--and as if poor Clarence hadn't been all through it all once! I

declare it makes me sick! But I can't believe you're serious. Rachael,

think--think what it means!"

"It's a very serious thing," the other assented placidly. "But Clarence

has no one but himself to blame."

"Only Clarence won't BE blamed, my dear; men never are!" Mrs. Haviland

suggested unkindly. Rachael reddened.

"_I_ don't care what they say or whom they blame!" she answered proudly.

"Ah, well, my dear, we aren't any of us really indifferent to

criticism," the older woman said, watching closely the effect of her

words. "People are censorious--it's too bad, it's a pity--but there you

are. 'There must have been something we didn't understand,' they say,

'there must be another man!'"

Rachael raised her head a little, and managed a smile.

"That's what they say," Mrs. Haviland went on, mildly triumphant. "And

no matter how brave or how independent a woman is, she doesn't like

THAT." There came to the speaker suddenly, under her smooth flow of

words, a sickening shock of realization: it was of Rachael and Clarence

she was speaking, her nearest relatives; it was one of the bulwarks of

her world that was threatened! Without her knowledge her tone became

less sure and more sincere. "For God's sake, think what you are doing,

dear," she said pleadingly; "think of Carol and of us all! Don't drag

us all through the papers again! I know what Clarence is, poor wretched

boy; he's always had too much money, he's always had his own way. I

know what you put up with week in and week out--"

Mrs. Haviland's usual attitude of assured superiority never impressed

her sister-in-law. Her pompous magnificence was a source of unmitigated

amusement to Rachael. But now the older woman's emotion had carried her

on to genuine and honest expression in spite of herself, and listening,

Rachael found herself curiously stirred. She looked down, conscious of

a sudden melting in her heart, a thickening in her throat.

"I've always been so fond of you, Rachael," Florence went on. "I've

always stood your friend--you know that--"

"I know," Rachael said huskily, her lashes dropped.

"Long before I knew how much you would be liked, Rachael, and what a

fuss people were going to make over you, I made you welcome," continued

Florence simply, with tears in her eyes. "I thanked God that Clarence

had married a good woman, and that Carol would have a refined and a--I

may say a Christian home. Isn't that true?"

"I know," Rachael said again with an effort, as she paused.

"Then think it over," besought the other woman eagerly. "Think that

Carol will marry, and that Clarence--" Her ardent tone dropped

suddenly. There was a moment's pause. Then she added dryly, "How do,

dear?"

"How do, Tante Firenze!" said Carol, who had come abruptly into the

room. "How are the girls? Say, listen! Is Isabelle going to the

Bowditches'?"

"I don't even know that Charlotte is going," Mrs. Haviland said, with

an auntly smile of baffling sweetness that yet contained a subtle

reproof. "Uncle Gardner and I haven't made up our minds. Isabelle in

any case would only go to look on, so she is not so much interested,

but poor Charlotte is simply on tenterhooks to know whether it's to be

yes or no. Girls' first parties"--her indulgent smile included

Rachael--"dear me, how important they seem!"

"I should think you'd have to answer Mrs. Bowditch," said Carol in

plain disgust at this maternal vacillation.

"Mrs. Bowditch is fortunately an old enough friend, dear, to waive the

usual formalities," her aunt answered sweetly.

"But, my gracious--Charlotte's two months older than I am, and she

won't know any of the men!" Carol protested.

"Don't speak in that precocious way, Bill," Rachael said sharply. "You

went to your first dances last winter!"

Carol gave her stepmother a look conspicuously devoid of affection, and

turned to adjust her smart little hat with the aid of a narrow mirror

hanging between the glass dining-room doors.

"You couldn't drop me at the club, on your way to church, Tante?" she

presently inquired. And to Rachael she added, with youthful impatience,

"I told Dad where I was going!"

Mrs. Haviland rose somewhat heavily.

"Glad to. Any chance of you coming to lunch, Rachael? What are your

plans?"

"Thank you, no, woman dear! I may go over to Gertrude's for tea."

The little group broke up. Mrs. Haviland and her niece went out to the

waiting motor car purring on the pebbled drive. Rachael idly watched

them out of sight, sighed at the thought of wasting so beautiful a day

indoors, and went slowly upstairs. Her husband, comfortably propped in

pillows, looked better.

"Clarence," said she, depositing several pounds of morning papers upon

the foot of his bed, "who's Billy lunching with at the club?"

Clarence picked up the uppermost paper, fixed his eyes attentively upon

it, and puffed upon his cigarette for reply.

"Do you know?" Rachael asked vigorously.

No answer. Mr. Breckenridge, his eyes still intent upon what he was

reading, held his cigarette at arm's length over the brass bowl on the

table beside the bed, and dislodged a quarter-inch of ash with his

little finger.

Rachael, briskly setting his cluttered table to rights, gave him an

angry glance that, so far as any effect upon him was concerned, was

thrown away.

"Don't be so rude, Clarence," she said, in annoyance. "Billy said you

agreed to her going to the club for golf. Who's she with?"

At last Mr. Breckenridge raised sodden and redshot eyes to his wife's

face, moistening his dark and swollen lips carefully with his tongue

before he spoke. He was a fat-faced man, who, despite evidences of

dissipation, did not look his more than forty years. There was no gray

in his thin, silky hair, and there still lingered an air of youth and

innocence in his round face. This morning he was in a bad temper

because his whole body was still upset from the Friday night dinner and

drinking party, and in his soul he knew that he had cut rather a poor

figure before Billy, and that the little minx had taken instant

advantage of the situation.

"I just want to say this, Rachael," Clarence said, with an icy dignity

only slightly impaired by the lingering influences of drink. "I'm

Billy's father, and I understand her, and she understands me. That's

all that's necessary; do you get me?" He put his cigarette holder back

in his mouth, gripped it firmly between his teeth, and turned again to

his paper. "If some of you damned jealous women who are always running

around trying to make trouble would let her ALONE" he went on sulkily,

"I'd be obliged to you--that's all!"

Rachael settled her ruffles in a big wing-chair with the innocent

expression of a casual caller. She took a book from the reading table,

and fluttered a few pages indifferently.

"Listen, Clancy," said she placatingly. "Florence was just here, and

she says--and I agree--that there is no question that Joe Pickering is

devoted to Bill. Now, I don't say that Billy is equally devoted--"

"Ha! Better not!" said Clarence at white heat, one eye watchful over

the top of the paper.

"But I DO say," pursued Rachael steadily, "that she is with him a good

deal more than she will admit. Yesterday, for instance, when she was

playing tennis with the Parmalees and the Pinckard boy, Kent came up to

the house to get some ginger ale. I happened to be dummy, and I went

out on the terrace. Joe's horse was down near the courts, and Joe and

Billy were sitting there on one of the benches--where the others were I

don't know. When Kent went down with the ginger ale, Joe got on his

horse and went off. Of course it was only for a few minutes, but Billy

didn't say anything about it--"

Her voice, with a tentative question in it, rested in air. Clarence

turned a page with some rustling of paper.

"Then Florence says," Rachael went on after a moment, "that when she

and Gardner stopped here Wednesday night Joe was here, and Vivvie

Sartoris wasn't here. Now, of course, I don't KNOW, for I didn't ask

Alfred---"

"There you go," said the sick man witheringly. "That's right--ask the

maids, and get all the servants talking; all come down on the heels of

a poor little girl like a pack of yapping wolves! I suppose if she was

plain and unattractive--I should think you'd be ashamed," he went on,

changing his high and querulous key to one of almost priestly authority

and reproof, "Upon my word, it's beneath your dignity. My little girl

comes to me, and she explains the whole matter. Pickering admires

her--she can't help that--and she has an influence over him. She tells

me he hasn't touched a thing but beer for six weeks, just because she

asked him to give up heavy drinking. He told her the other day that if

he had met her a few years ago, Lucy never would have left him. She's

wakened the boy up, he's a different fellow--"

"All that may be true," Rachael said quickly, the color that his

preposterous rebuke had summoned to her cheeks still flushing them,

"still, you don't want Billy to marry Joe Pickering! You know that sort

of pity, and that business of reforming a man--" She paused, but

Clarence did not speak. "Not that Billy herself realizes it, I

daresay," Rachael added presently, watching the reader's absorbed face

for an answering look.

Silence.

"Clarence!" she began imperatively.

Clarence withdrew his attention from the paper with an obvious effort,

and spoke in a laboriously polite tone.

"I don't care to discuss it, Rachael."

"But--" Rachael stopped short on the word. Silence reigned in the big,

bright room except for the occasional rustle of Clarence's newspaper.

His wife sat idle, her eyes roving indifferently from the gayly papered

walls to the gayly flowered hangings, the great bowl of daffodils on

the bookcase, the portrait of Carol that, youthful and self-conscious,

looked down from the mantel. On the desk a later photograph of Carol,

in a silver frame, was duly flanked by one of Rachael, the girl in the

gown she had worn for her first big dance, the woman looking out from

under the narrow brim of a snug winter hat, great furs framing her

beautiful face, and her slender figure wrapped in furs. Here also was a

picture of Florence Haviland, her handsome face self-satisfied, her

trio of homely, distinguished-looking girls about her, and a small

picture of Gardner, and two of Clarence's dead mother: one, as they all

remembered her, a prim-looking woman with gray hair and magnificent

lace on her unfashionable gown, the other, taken thirty years before,

showing her as cheerful and youthful, a cascade of ringlets falling

over her shoulder, the arm that coquettishly supported her head resting

upon an upholstered pedestal, a voluminous striped silk gown sweeping

away from her in rich folds. There was even a picture of Clarence and

Florence when they were respectively eight and twelve, Clarence in a

buttoned serge kilt and plaid stockings, his fat, gentle little face

framed in damp careful curls, Florence also with plaid stockings and a

scalloped frock. Clarence sat in a swing; Florence, just behind him,

leaned on an open gate, her legs crossed carelessly as she rested on

her elbows. And there was a picture of their father, a simple-faced man

in an ample beard, taken at that period when photographs were highly

glazed, and raised in bas relief. Least conspicuous of all was a

snapshot framed in a circle of battered blue-enamel daisies, the

picture of a baby girl laughing against a background of dandelions and

meadow grass. And Rachael knew that this was Clarence's greatest

treasure, that it went wherever he went, and that it was worn shabby

and tarnished from his hands and his lips.

Sometimes she looked at it and wondered. What a bright-faced, gay

little thing Billy had been! Who had set her down in that field, and

quieted the rioting eyes and curls and dimples, and anchored the

restless little feet, while Baby watched Dad and the black box with the

birdie in it? Paula? Once, idly interested in those old days before she

had known him, she had asked about the picture. But Clarence, glad to

talk of it, had not mentioned his wife.

"It was before my father died; we were up in the old Maine place," he

had said. "Gosh, Bill was cute that day! We went on a drive--no motor

cars then--and took our lunch, and after lunch the kid comes and

settles herself in my arms--for a nap, if you please! 'Say,

look-a-here,' I said, 'what do you think I am--a Pullman?' I wanted a

smoke, by George! She wasn't two, you know. Her fat little legs were

bare, we'd put her into socks, and her face was flushed, and she just

looked up at me through her hair and said, 'Hing!' Well, it was

good-bye smoke for me! I sang all right, and she cuddled down as

pleased as a kitten, and off she went!"

To-day Rachael's eyes wandered from the picture to Clarence's face. She

tried to study it dispassionately, but, still shaken by their recent

conversation, and sitting there, as she knew she was sitting there,

merely to prove that it had had no effect upon her, she felt this to be

a little difficult.

What sort of a little boy had he been? A fat little boy, of course. She

disliked fat little boys. A spoiled little boy, never crossed in any

way. His mother made him go to Sunday-school, and dancing school, and

to Miss Nesmith's private academy, where he was coaxed and praised and

indulged even more than at home. And old Fanny, who was still with

Florence, superintended his baths and took care of his clothes, and ran

her finger over the bristles of his toothbrush every morning, to see if

he had told her the truth. He rarely did; they used to laugh about

those old deceptions. Clarence used to laugh as violently as the old

woman when she accused him of occasional kicking and biting.

Other boys came in to play with him. Was it because of his magic

lantern and his velocipede, his unending supply of cream puffs and

licorice sticks, or because they liked him? Rachael knew only a detail

here and there: that he had danced a fancy dance with Anna Vanderwall

when he was a fat sixteen, at a Kermess, and that he had given a stag

dinner to twenty youths of his own age a few days before he went off to

college, and that they had drunk a hundred and fifty dollars' worth of

champagne. She knew that his allowance at college was three hundred

dollars a month, and that he never stayed within it, and it was old

Fanny's boast that every stitch the boy ever wore from the day he was

born came from London or Paris. His underwear was as dainty as a

bride's; he had his first dress suit at fifteen; at college he had his

suite of three big rooms furnished like showrooms, his monogrammed

cigarettes, his boat, and his horse.

The thought of all these things used to distress his mother when she

was old and much alone. She attempted to belittle the luxury of

Clarence's boyhood. She told Rachael that he was treated just as the

other boys were. Her conscience was never quite easy about his

upbringing.

"You can't hold a boy too tight, you know, or else he'll break away

altogether," old lady Breckenridge would say to Rachael, sitting before

a coal fire in the gloomy magnificence of her old-fashioned drawingroom

and pressing the white fingers of one hand against the agonized joints

of the other. "I was often severe with Clarence, and he was a good boy

until he got with other boys; he was always loving to me. He never

should have married Paula Verlaine," she would add fretfully. "A good

woman would have overlooked his faults and made a fine man of him, but

she was always an empty-headed little thing! Ah, well"--and the poor

old woman would sigh as she drew her fluffy shawl about her

shoulders--"I cannot blame myself, that's my great consolation now,

Rachael, when I think of facing my Master and rendering an account. I

have been heavily afflicted, but I am not the first God-fearing woman

who has been visited with sorrow through her children!"

Clarence had visited his mother often in the weeks that preceded her

death, but she did not take much heed of his somewhat embarrassed

presence, nor, to Rachael's surprise, did her last hours contain any of

those heroic joys that are supposedly the reward of long suffering and

virtue. An unexpressed terror seemed to linger in her sickroom, indeed

to pervade the whole house; the invalid lay staring drearily at the

heavy furnishings of her immense dark room, a nurse slipped in and out;

the bloody light of the westering sun, falling through stairway windows

of colored glass, blazed in the great hallway all through the chilly

October afternoons. Callers came and went, there were subdued voices

and soft footsteps; flowers came, their wet fragrance breaking from

oiled paper and soaked cardboard boxes, the cards that were wired to

them resisting all attempts at detachment. Clergymen came, and Rachael

imitated their manner afterward, to the general delight.

On the day before she died Mrs. Breckenridge caught her son's plump

cool hand in her own hot one, and made him promise to stop drinking,

and to go to church, and to have Carol confirmed. Clarence promised

everything.

But he did not keep his promises. Rachael had not thought he would;

perhaps the old lady herself had not thought he would. He was sobered

at the funeral, but not sober. Six weeks later all the bills against

the estate were in. Florence had some of the family jewels and the

family silver, Rachael had some, some was put away for Billy; the

furniture was sold, the house rented for a men's club, and a

nondescript man, calling upon young Mrs. Breckenridge, notified her

that the stone had been set in place as ordered. They never saw it;

they paid a small sum annually for keeping the plot in order, and the

episode of Ada Martin Langhorne Breckenridge's life was over.

Clarence drank so heavily after that, and squandered his magnificent

heritage so recklessly, that people began to say that he would soon

follow his mother. But that was four years ago, and Rachael looking

dispassionately at him, where he lay dozing in his pillows, had to

admit that he had shown no change in the past four--or eight, or

twelve--years. Like many a better woman, and many a better wife, she

wondered if she would outlive him, vaguely saw herself, correct and

remote, in her new black.

Involuntarily she sighed. How free she would be! She wished Clarence no

ill, but the fact remained that, loose as was the bond between them, it

galled and checked them both at every step. Their conversations were

embittered by a thousand personalities, they instinctively knew how to

hurt each other; a look from Clarence could crush his poised and

accomplished wife into a mere sullen shrew, and she knew that it took

less than a look from her--it took the mere existence of her youth and

health and freshness--to infuriate him sometimes. At best, their

relationship consciously avoided hostility. Rachael was silent, fuming;

Clarence fumed and was silent; they sank to light monosyllables; they

parted as quickly as possible. Would Clarence like to dine with this

friend or that? Rachael didn't think he would, but might as well ask

him. No, thank you! he wouldn't be found dead in that bunch. Did

Rachael want to go with the Smiths and the Joneses to dine at the

Highway, and dance afterward? Oh, horrors! no, thank you!

It was only when she spoke of Billy that Rachael was sure of his

interest and attention, and of late she perforce had for Billy only

criticism and disapproval. Rachael read the girl's vain and shallow and

pleasure-loving little heart far more truly than her father could, and

she was conscious of a genuine fear lest Billy bring sorrow to them

all. Society was indulgent, yes, but an insolent and undeveloped little

girl like Billy could not snap her fingers at the law without suffering

the full penalty. Rachael would suffer, too. Florence and her girls

would suffer, and Clarence--well, Clarence would not bear it. "What an

awful mix-up it is!" Rachael thought wearily. "And what a sickening,

tiresome place this world is!"

And then suddenly the thought of Warren Gregory came back, and the new

curious sensation of warmth tugged at her heart.

CHAPTER IV

Mrs. Gardner Haviland, whirling home in her big car, after church, was

hardly more pleased with life than was her beautiful sister-in-law,

although she was not quite as conscious of dissatisfaction as was

Rachael. Her position as a successful mother, wife, housekeeper, and

member of society was theoretically so perfect that she derived from

it, necessarily, an enormous amount of theoretical satisfaction. She

could find no fault with herself or her environment; she was pleasantly

ready with advice or with an opinion or with a verdict in every

contingency that might arise in human affairs, as a Christian woman of

unimpeachable moral standing. She knew her value in a hectic and

reckless world. She did not approve of women smoking, or of suffrage,

but she played a brilliant game of bridge, and did not object to an

infinitesimal stake. She belonged to clubs and to their directorates,

yet it was her boast that she knew every thought in her children's

hearts, and the personal lives and hopes and ambitions of her maids

were as an open book to her.

Still, she had her moments of weakness, and on this warm day of the

spring she felt vaguely disappointed with life. Rachael's hints of

divorce had filled her with a real apprehension; she felt a good aunt's

concern at Billy's reckless course, and a good sister's disapproval of

Clarence and his besetting sin.

But it was not these considerations that darkened her full handsome

face as she went up the steps of her big, widespread country mansion;

it was some vaguer, more subtle discontent. She had not dressed herself

for the sudden warmth of the day, and her heavy flowered hat and trim

veil had given her a headache. The blazing sunlight on white steps and

blooming flowers blinded her, and when she stepped into the dark, cool

hall she could hardly see.

The three girls were there, well-bred, homely girls, in their simple

linens: Charlotte, a rather severe type, eyeglassed at eighteen, her

thick, light-brown hair plainly brushed off her face and knotted on her

neck, was obviously the opposite of everything Billy was;

conscientious, intellectual, and conscious of her own righteousness,

she could not compete with her cousin in Billy's field; she very

sensibly made the best of her own field. Isabelle was a stout, clumsy

girl of sixteen, with a metal bar across her large white teeth, red

hair, and a creamy skin. Little Florence was only nine, a thin,

freckled, sensitive child, with a shy, unsmiling passion for dogs and

horses, and little in common with the rest of the world.

Their mother had expected sons in every case, and still felt a little

baffled by the fact of her children's sex. Charlotte proving a girl,

she had said gallantly that she must have a little brother "to play

with Charlotte." Isabelle, duly arriving, probably played with

Charlotte much more amiably than a brother would have done, and Mrs.

Haviland blandly accepted her existence, but in her heart she was far

from feeling satisfied. She was, of course, an absolutely competent

mother to girls, but she felt that she would have been a more capable

and wonderful mother to boys.

More than six years after Isabelle's birth Florence Haviland began to

talk smilingly of "my boy." "Gardner worships the girls," she said,

with wifely indulgence, "but I know he wants a son--and the girlies

need a brother!" A resigned shrug ended the sentence with: "So I'm in

for the whole thing again!"

It was said that Mrs. Haviland greeted the news that the third child

was a daughter with a mechanically bright smile, as one puzzled beyond

all words by perverse event, and that her spoken comment was the single

mild ejaculation: "Extraordinary!"

Now the two older Haviland girls, following their mother into her

bedroom, seated themselves there while she changed her dress. Florence

junior, in passionate argument with the butler over the death of one of

the drawing-room goldfish, remained downstairs. Mrs. Haviland, casting

the hot, high-collared silk upon the bed, took a new embroidered pongee

from a box, and busied herself with its unfamiliar hooks and straps.

Charlotte and Isabelle were never quite spontaneous in their

conversations with their mother, their attitude in talking with her

being one of alert and cautious self-consciousness; they did not

breathe quite naturally, and they laughed constantly. Yet they both

loved this big, firm, omnipotent being, and believed in her utterly and

completely.

"We met Doctor Gregory and Charlie near the club this morning, M'ma,"

volunteered Isabelle.

"And they asked about Mrs. Bowditch's dance," Charlotte added with a

little innocent craft. "But I said that M'ma had been unable to decide.

Of course I said that we would LIKE to go, and that you knew that, and

would allow it if you possibly could."

"That was quite right, dear," Mrs. Haviland said to her oldest

daughter, calmly ignoring the implied question, and to Isabelle she

added kindly: "M'ma doesn't quite like to hear you calling a young man

you hardly know by his first name, Isabelle. Of course, there's no harm

in it, but it cheapens a girl just a LITTLE. While Charlotte might do

it because she is older, and has seen Charlie Gregory at some of the

little informal affairs last winter, you are younger, and haven't

really seen much of him since he went to college. Don't let M'ma hear

you do that again."

Isabelle turned a lively scarlet, and even Charlotte colored and was

silent. The younger girl's shamed eyes met her mother's, and she nodded

in quick embarrassment. But this tacit consent did not satisfy Mrs.

Haviland.

"You understand M'ma, don't you, dear?" she asked. Isabelle murmured

something indistinguishable.

"Yes, M'ma!" said that lady herself, encouragingly and briskly.

Isabelle duly echoed a husky "Yes, M'ma!"

"Did you give my message to Miss Roper, Charlotte?" pursued the matron.

"She wasn't at church, M'ma," said Charlotte, taken unawares and

instinctively uneasy. "Mrs. Roper said she had a heavy cold; she said

she'd been sleeping on the sleeping porch."

"So M'ma's message was forgotten?" the mother asked pleasantly.

Charlotte perceived herself to be in an extremely dangerous position.

Long ago both girls had lost, under this close surveillance and skilful

system of cross-examination, their original regard for truth as truth.

That they usually said what was true was because policy and

self-protection suggested it. Charlotte had time now for a flying

survey of the situation and its possibilities before she answered,

somewhat uncertainly:

"I asked Mrs. Roper to deliver it, M'ma. Wasn't that--" Her voice

faltered nervously. "Was it something you would have rather telephoned

about?"

"Would rather have telephoned about?" Mrs. Haviland corrected

automatically. "Well, M'ma would rather FEEL that when she sends a

message it is given to JUST the person to whom she sent it, in JUST the

way she sent it. However, in this case no harm was done. Don't hook

your heel over the rung of your chair, dear! Ring the bell, Isabelle, I

want Alice."

"I'll hook you, M'ma!" volunteered Charlotte.

"Thank you, dear, but I want to speak to Alice. And now you girls might

run along. I'll be down directly."

A moment later she submitted herself patiently to the maid's hands.

Florence was a conscientious woman, and she felt that she owed Alice as

well as herself this little office. Charlotte might have hooked her

gown for her; indeed, she might with a small effort have done it

herself, but it was Alice's duty, and nothing could be worse for Alice,

or any servant, than to have her duties erratically assumed by others

on one day and left to her on the next. This was the quickest way to

spoil servants, and Florence never spoiled her servants.

"They have a pleasant day for their picnic," she observed now, kindly.

Alice was on her knees, her face puckered as she busied herself with

the hooks of a girdle, but she smiled gratefully. Her two brothers had

borrowed their employer's coal barge to-day, and with a score of

cherished associates, several hundred sandwiches, sardines,

camp-chairs, and bottles of root beer, with a smaller number of

chaperoning mothers and concertinas, and the inevitable baby or two,

were making a day of it on the river. Alice had timidly asked, a few

days before, for a holiday to-day, that she might join them, but Mrs.

Haviland had pointed out to her reasonably that she, Alice, had been at

home, unexpectedly, because of her mother's illness, not only the

previous Sunday, but the Saturday, too, and had got half-a-day's leave

of absence for her cousin's wedding only the week before that. Alice

was only eighteen, and her little spurt of bravery had been entirely

exhausted long before her mistress's pleasant voice had stopped.

Nothing more was said of the excursion until to-day.

"I guess they'll be eating their lunch, now, at Old Dock Point," said

Alice, rising from her knees.

"Well, I hope they'll be careful; one hears of so many accidents among

foolish young people there!" Mrs. Haviland answered, going downstairs

to join her daughters in the hall, and, surrounded by them, proceeding

to her own lunch.

For a while she was thoughtfully silent, and the conversation was

maintained between the older girls and their governess. Charlotte and

Isabelle chatted both German and French charmingly. Little Florence

presently began to talk of her goldfish, meanwhile cutting a channel

across her timbale through which the gravy ran in a stream.

Usually their mother listened to them with a quiet smile; they were

well-educated girls, and any mother's heart must have been proud of

them. But to-day she felt herself singularly dissatisfied with them.

She said to herself that she hated Sundays, of all the days of the

week. Other days had their duties: music, studies, riding, tennis, or

walks, but on Sundays the girls were a dead weight upon her. Somehow,

they were not in the current of good times that the other girls and

boys of their ages were having. If she suggested brightly that they go

over to the Parmalees' or the Morans' and see if the young people were

playing tennis, she knew that Charlotte would delicately negative the

idea: "They've got their sets all made up, M'ma, and one hates to,

unless they specially ask one, don't you know?" They might go, of

course, and greet their friends decorously, and watch the game

smilingly for a while. Then they would come home with Fraulein, not

forgetting to say good-bye to their hostess. But, although Charlotte

played a better game than many of the other girls, and Isabelle played

a good game, too, there were always gay little creatures in dashing

costumes who monopolized the courts and the young men, and made the

Haviland girls feel hopelessly heavy and dull. They would come home and

tell their mother that Vivian Sartoris let two of the boys jump her

over the net, and that Cousin Carol wore Kent Parmalee's panama all

afternoon, and called out to him, right across the court, "Come on down

to the boathouse, Kent, and let's have a smoke!"

"Poor Vivian--poor Billy!" Mrs. Haviland would say. "Men don't really

admire girls who allow them such familiarities, although the silly

girls may think they do! But when it comes to marrying, it is the

sweet, womanly girls to whom the men turn!"

She did not believe this herself, nor did the girls believe it, but, if

they discussed it when they were alone together, before Mamma, they

were always decorously impressed.

"Any plans for the afternoon, girlies?" she asked now, when the forced

strawberries were on the table, and little Florence was trying to eat

the nuts out of her cake, and at the same time carefully avoid the cake

itself and the frosting.

"What's Carol doing, M'ma?"

"When M'ma asks you a question, Isabelle, do not answer with another

question, dear. I dropped Carol at the club, but I think Aunt Rachael

means to pick her up there later, and go on to Mrs. Whittaker's for

tea."

"We met Mrs. Whittaker in the Exchange yesterday, M'ma, and she very

sweetly said that you were to--that is, that she hoped you would bring

us in for a little while this afternoon. Didn't she, Isabelle?"

"I don't want to go!" Isabelle grumbled. But her mother ignored her.

"That was very sweet of Aunt Gertrude. I think I will go over to the

club and see what Papa is planning and how his game is going, and then

I could pick you girls up here."

"I'm going over to play with Georgie and Robbie Royce!" shrilled

Florence. "They're mean to me, but I don't care! I hit George in the

stomach---"

Mrs. Haviland looked as pained as if the reported blow had fallen upon

her own person, but she was strangely indulgent to her youngest born,

and now did no more than signal to the nurse, old Fanny, who stood

grinning behind the child's chair, that Miss Florence might be excused.

Florence was accordingly borne off, and the girls drifted idly

upstairs, Isabelle confiding to her sister as she dutifully brushed her

teeth that she wished "something" would happen! Alice muttered to

Sally, another maid, over her strong hot tea, that you might as well be

dead as never do a thing in God's world you wanted to do, but the rest

of the large staff enjoyed a hearty meal, and when Percival brought the

car around at three o'clock, Mrs. Haviland, magnificent in a change of

costume, spent the entire trip to the club in the resentful reflection

that the man had obviously had coffee and cream and mutton for his

lunch--disgusting of him to come straight to his car and his mistress

still redolent of his meal, but what could one do? In Mrs. Haviland's

upper rear hall was a framed and typewritten list of rules for the

maids, conspicuous upon which were those for daily baths and regular

use of toothbrushes. But Percival never had seen this list, and he was

a wonderful driver and a special favorite with her husband. She decided

that there was nothing to be done, unless of course the thing recurred,

although the moment's talk with Percival haunted and distressed her all

day.

She duly returned to the house for her daughters a little after four

o'clock, and in amicable conversation they went together to the tea, a

crowded, informal affair, in another large house full of rugs and

flowers, rooms dark and rich with expensive tapestries and mahogany,

rooms bright and gay with white enamel and chintz and wicker furniture.

Everybody was here. Jeanette and Phyllis, as well as Elinor Vanderwall,

Peter Pomeroy and George, the Buckneys and Parker Hoyt, the Emorys, the

Chases, Mrs. Sartoris and old Mrs. Torrence and Jack, all jumbled a

greeting to the Havilands. Of Carol they presently caught a glimpse

standing on a sheltered little porch with Joe Pickering's sleek head

beside her. They were apparently not talking, just staring quietly down

at the green terraces of the garden. Rachael was pouring tea, her face

radiant under a narrowbrimmed, close hat loaded with cherries, her gown

of narrow green and white stripes the target for every pair of female

eyes in the room.

Charlotte Haviland, in her mother's wake, chanced to encounter Kenneth

Moran, a red-faced, well-dressed and blushing youth of her own age. Her

complacent mother was witness to the blameless conversation between

them.

"How do you do, Kenneth? I didn't know you were here!"

"Oh, how do you do, Charlotte? How do you do, Isabelle? I didn't know

you were here!"

Isabelle grinned silently in horrible embarrassment but Charlotte said,

quick-wittedly:

"How is your mother, Kenneth, and Dorothy?"

"She's well--they're well, thank you. They're here somewhere--at least

Mother is. I think Dorothy's still over at the Clays', playing tennis!"

He laughed violently at this admission, and Charlotte laughed, too.

"It's lovely weather for tennis," she said encouragingly. "We--"

"You--" Mr. Moran began. "I beg your pardon!"

"No, I interrupted you!"

"No, that was my fault. I was only going to say that we ought to have a

game some morning. Going to have your courts in order this year?"

"Yes, indeed," Charlotte said, with what was great vivacity for her.

"Papa has had them all rolled; some men came down from town--we had it

all sodded, you know, last year."

"Is that right?" asked Mr. Moran, as one deeply impressed. "We must go

to it--what?"

"We must!" Charlotte said happily. "Any morning, Kenneth!"

"Sure, I'll telephone!" agreed the youth enthusiastically. "I'm trying

to find Kent Parmalee; his aunt wants him!" he added mumblingly, as he

began to vaguely shoulder his way through the crowd again.

"You'd better take a microscope!" said Charlotte wittily. And Mr.

Moran's burst of laughter and his "That's right, too!" came back to

them as he went away.

"Dear fellow!" Mrs. Haviland said warmly.

"Isn't he nice!" Charlotte said, fluttered and glowing. She hoped in

her heart that she would meet him again, but although the Havilands

stayed until nearly six o'clock they did not do so; perhaps because

shortly after this conversation Kenneth Moran met Miss Vivian Sartoris,

and they took a plateful of rich, crushy little cakes and went and sat

under the stairs, where they took alternate bites of each other's mocha

and chocolate confections, and where Vivian told Kenneth all about a

complicated and thrilling love affair between herself and one of the

popular actors of the day. This narrative reflected more credit upon

the young woman's imagination than upon her charms had the listener but

suspected it, but Kenneth was not a brilliant boy, and they had a

lovely time over their confidences.

Charlotte's romantic encounter with the gentleman, however, made her

happy for several hours, and colored her cheeks rosily.

"You're getting pretty, Carlotta!" said her Aunt Rachael, observing

this. "Don't drink tea, that's a good child! You can stuff on cakes and

chocolate of course, Isabelle," she added, "but Charlotte's complexion

ought to be her FIRST THOUGHT for the next five years!"

"I don't really want any," asserted Charlotte, feeling wonderfully

grown-up and superior to the claims of a nursery appetite. "But can't I

help you, Aunt Rachael?"

"No, my dear, you can't! I'm through the worst of it, and being bored

slowly but firmly to death! Gertrude, I'm just saying that your party

bores me."

"So sorry about you, Rachael!" said the slim, laceclad hostess calmly.

"Here's Judy Moran! Nearly six, Judy, and we dine at seven on Sundays.

But never mind, eat and drink your fill, my child."

"Billy's flirtin' her head off out there!" wheezed stout Mrs. Moran,

dropping into a chair. "Joe and Kent and young Gregory and half a dozen

others are out there with her."

Mrs. Breckenridge, who had begun to frown, relaxed in her chair.

"Ah, well, there's safety in numbers!" she said, reassured. "You take

cream, Judy, and two lumps? Give Mrs. Moran some of those little damp,

brown sandwiches, Isabelle. A minute ago she had some of the most

heavenly hot toast here, but she's taken it away again! I wish I could

get some tea myself, but I've tried three times and I can't!"

She busied herself resignedly with tongs and teapot, and as Mrs. Moran

bit into her first sandwiches, and the Haviland girls moved away at a

word from their mother, Rachael raised her eyes and met Warren

Gregory's look.

He was standing, ten feet away, in a doorway, his eyelids half dropped

over amused eyes, his hands sunk in his coat pockets. Rachael knew that

he had been there for some moments, and her heart struggled and

fluttered like a bird in a snare, and with a thrill as girlish as

Charlotte's own she felt the color rise in her cheeks.

"Come have some tea, Greg," she said, indicating the empty chair beside

her.

"Thank you, dear," he answered, his head close to hers for a moment as

he sat down. The little word set Rachael's heart to hammering again.

She glanced quickly to see if Mrs. Moran had overheard, but that lady

had at last caught sight of the maid with the hot toast, and her ample

back was turned toward the teatable.

Indeed, in the noisy, disordered room, which was beginning to be

deserted by straggling groups of guests, they were quite unobserved. To

both it was a delicious moment, this little domestic interlude of tea

and talk in the curved window of the dining-room, lighted by the last

light of a spring day, and sweet with the scent of wilting spring

flowers.

"You make my heart behave in a manner not to be described in words!"

said Rachael, her fingers touching his as she handed him his tea.

"It must be mine you feel," suggested Warren Gregory; "you haven't

one--by all accounts!"

"I thought I hadn't, Greg, but, upon my word---" She puckered her lips

and raised her eyebrows whimsically, and gave her head a little shake.

Doctor Gregory gave her a shrewdly appraising look, sighed, and stirred

his tea.

"If ever you discover yourself to be the possessor of such an organ,

Rachael," said he dispassionately, "you won't joke about it over a

tea-table! You'll wake up, my friend; we'll see something besides

laughter in those eyes of yours, and hear something besides cool reason

in your voice! I may not be the man to do it, but some man will, some

day, and--when John Gilpin rides--"

The eyes to which he referred had been fixed in serene confidence upon

his as he began to speak. But a second later Rachael dropped them, and

they rested upon her own slender hand, lying idle upon the teatable,

with its plain gold ring guarded by a dozen blazing stones. Had he

really stirred her, Warren Gregory wondered, as he watched the

thoughtful face under the bright, cherry-loaded hat.

"You know how often there is neither cool reason nor any cause for

laughter in my life, Greg," she said, after a moment. "As for love--I

don't think I know what love is! I am an absolutely calculating woman,

and my first, last, and only view of anything is just how much it

affects me and my comfort."

"I don't believe it!" said the doctor.

"It's true. And why shouldn't it be?" Rachael gave him a grave smile.

"No one," said she seriously, "ever--ever--EVER suggested to me that

there was anything amiss in that point of view! Why is there?"

"I don't understand you," said the doctor simply.

"One doesn't often talk this way, I suppose," she said slowly. "But

there is a funny streak of--what shall I call it?--conscience, or soul,

or whatever you like, in me. Whether I get it from my mother's Irish

father or my father's clergyman grandfather, I don't know, but I'm

eternally defending myself. I have long sessions with myself, when I'm

judge and jury, and invariably I find 'Not Guilty!'"

"Not guilty of what?" the man asked, stirring his untasted cup.

"Not guilty of anything!" she answered, with a child's puzzled laugh.

"I stick to my bond, I dress and talk and eat and go about--" Her voice

dropped; she stared absently at the table.

"But--" the doctor prompted.

"But--that's just it--but I'm so UNHAPPY all the time!" Rachael

confessed. "We all seem like a lot of puppets, to me--like Bander-log!

What are we all going round and round in circles for, and who gets any

fun out of it? What's YOUR answer, Greg--what makes the wheels go

round?"

"'Tis love--'tis love--that makes--etcetera, etcetera," supplied the

doctor, his tone less flippant than his words.

"Oh--love!" Rachael's voice was full of delicate scorn. "I've seen a

great deal of all sorts and kinds of love," she went on, "and I must

say that I consider love a very much overrated article! You're laughing

at me, you bold gossoon, but I mean it. Clarence loved Paula madly,

kidnapped her from a boarding-school and all that, but I don't know how

much THEIR seven years together helped the world go round. He never

loved me, never once said he did, but I've made him a better wife than

she did. He loves Bill, now, and it's the worst thing in the world for

her!"

"THERE'S some love for you," said Doctor Gregory, glancing across the

room to the figures of Miss Leila Buckney and Mr. Parker Hoyt, who were

laughing over a cabinet full of ivories.

"I wonder just what would happen there if Parker lost his money

to-morrow--if Aunt Frothy died and left it all to Magsie Clay?" Rachael

suggested, smiling.

The doctor answered only with a shrug.

"More than that," pursued Rachael, "suppose that Parker woke up

to-morrow morning and found his engagement was all a dream, found that

he really hadn't asked Leila to marry him, and that he was as free as

air. Do you suppose that the minute he'd had his breakfast he would go

straight over to Leila's house and make his dream a heavenly reality?

Or would he decide that there was no hurry about it, and that he might

as well rather keep away from the Buckney house until he'd made up his

mind?"

"I suppose he might convince himself that an hour or two's delay

wouldn't matter!" said the doctor, laughing.

"If you talk to me of clothes, or of jewelry, or of what one ought to

send a bride, and what to say in a letter of condolence, I know where I

am," said Rachael, "but love, I freely confess, is something else

again!"

"I suppose my mother has known great love," said the man, after a

pause. "She spends her days in that quiet old house dreaming about my

father, and my brothers, looking at their pictures, and reading their

letters--"

"But, Greg, she's so unhappy!" Rachael objected briskly. "And

love--surely the contention is that love ought to make one happy?"

"Well, I think her memories DO make her happy, in a way. Although my

mother is really too conscientious a woman to be happy, she worries

about events that are dead issues these twenty years. She wonders if my

brother George might have been saved if she had noticed his cough

before she did; there was a child who died at birth, and then there are

all the memories of my father's death--the time he wanted ice water and

the doctors forbade it, and he looked at her reproachfully. Poor

Mother!"

"You're a joy to her anyway, Greg," Rachael said, as he paused.

"Charley is," he conceded thoughtfully, "and in a way I know I am! But

not in every way, of course," Warren Gregory smiled a little ruefully.

"So the case for love is far from proved," Rachael summarized

cheerfully. "There's no such thing!"

"On the contrary, there isn't anything else, REALLY, in the world,"

smiled the man. "I've seen it shining here and there; we get away from

it here, somewhat, I'll admit"--his glance and gesture indicated the

other occupants of the room--"and, like you, I don't quite know where

we miss it, and what it's all about, but there have been cases in our

wards, for instance: girls whose husbands have been brought in all

smashed up--"

"Girls who saw themselves worried about rent and bread and butter!"

suggested Rachael in delicate irony.

"No, I don't think so. And mothers--mothers hanging over sick

children--"

The women nodded quickly.

"Yes, I know, Greg. There's something very appealing about a sick

kiddie. Bill was ill once, just after we were married, such a little

thing she looked, with her hair all cut! And that DID--now that I

remember it--it really did bring Clarence and me tremendously close.

We'd sit and wait for news, and slip out for little meals, and I'd make

him coffee late at night. I remember thinking then that I never wanted

a child, to make me suffer as we suffered then!"

"Mother love, then, we concede," Doctor Gregory said, smiling.

"Well, yes, I suppose so. Some mothers. I don't believe a mother like

Florence ever was really made to suffer through loving. However, there

IS mother love!"

"And married love."

"No, there I don't agree. While the novelty lasts, while the passion

lasts--not more than a year or two. Then there's just civility--opening

the city house, opening the country house, entertaining, going about,

liking some things about each other, loathing others, keeping off the

dangerous places until the crash comes, or, perhaps, for some lucky

ones, doesn't come!"

"What a mushy little sentimentalist you are, Rachael!" Gregory said

with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "You're too dear and sweet to talk

that way! It's too bad--it's too bad to have you feel so! I wish that I

could carry you away from all these people here--just for a while! I'd

like to prescribe that sea beach you spoke about last night! Wouldn't

we love our desert island! Would you help me build a thatched hut, and

a mud oven, and string shells in your hair, and swim way out in the

green breakers with me?"

"And what makes you think that there would be some saving element in

our relationship?" Rachael asked in a low voice. "What makes you think

that our love would survive the--the dry-rot of life? People would send

us silver and rugs, and there would be a lot of engraving, and barrels

of champagne, and newspaper men trying to cross-examine the maids, and

caterers all over the place, but a few years later, wouldn't it be the

same old story? You talk of a desert island, and swimming, and seaweed,

Greg! But my ideas of a desert island isn't Palm Beach with commercial

photographers snapping at whoever sits down in the sand! Look about us,

Greg--who's happy? Who isn't watching the future for just this or just

that to happen before she can really feel content? Young girls all want

to be older and more experienced, older girls want to be young; this

one is waiting for the new house to be ready, that one--like

Florence--is worrying a little for fear the girls won't quite make a

hit! Clarence worries about Billy, I worry about Clarence--"

"I worry about you!" said Doctor Gregory as she paused.

"Of course you do, bless your heart!" Rachael laughed. "So here we are,

the rich and fashionable and fortunate people of the world, having a

cloudless good time!"

"You know, it's a shame to eat this way--ruin our dinners!" said Mrs.

Moran, suddenly entering the conversation. "Stop flirting with Greg,

Rachael, and give me some more tea. One lump, and only about half a

cup, dear. Tell me a good way to get thin, Greg! Agnes Chase says her

doctor has a diet--you eat all you want, and you get thin. Agnes says

Lou has a friend who has taken off forty-eight pounds. Do you believe

it, Greg? I'm too fat, you know--"

"You carry it well, Judy," said Rachael, still a little shaken by the

abruptly closed conversation, as the doctor, with a conscious thrill,

perceived.

"Thank you, my dear, that's what they all say. But I'd just as soon

somebody else should carry it for awhile!"

"Listen, Rachael," said their hostess, coming up suddenly, and speaking

quickly and lightly, "Clarence is here. Where in the name of everything

sensible is Billy?"

"Clarence!" said Rachael, uncomfortable premonition clutching at her

heart.

"Yes; you come and talk to him, Rachael," Mrs. Whittaker said, in the

same quick undertone. "He's all right, of course, but he's just a

little fussy--"

"Oh, if he wouldn't DO these things!" Rachael said apprehensively as

she rose. "I left him all comfortable--Joe Butler was coming in to see

him! It does EXASPERATE me so! However!"

"Of course it does, but we all know Clarence!" Mrs. Whittaker said

soothingly. "He seems to have got it into his head that Billy--You go

talk to him, Rachael, and I'll send her in."

"Billy's doing no harm! What did he say?" Rachael asked impatiently.

"Oh, nothing definite, of course. But as soon as I said that Billy was

here--he'd asked if she was--he said, 'Then I suppose Mr. Pickering is

here, too!'"

"He's the one person in the world afraid of talk about Billy, yet if he

starts it, he can blame no one but himself!" Rachael said, as she

turned toward the adjoining room. An unexpected ordeal like this always

annoyed her. She was equal to it, of course; she could smooth

Clarence's ruffled feelings, keep a serene front to the world, and get

her family safely home before the storm; she had done it many times

before. But it was so unnecessary! It was so unnecessary to exhibit the

Breckenridge weaknesses before the observant Emorys, before that

unconscionable old gossip Peter Pomeroy, and to the cool, pitying gaze

of all her world!

She found Clarence the centre of a small group in the long

drawing-room. He and Frank Whittaker were drinking cocktails; the

others--Jeanette Vanderwall, Vera Villalonga, a flushed, excitable

woman older than Rachael, and Jimmy and Estelle Hoyt--had refused the

drink, but were adding much noise and laughter to the newcomer's

welcome.

"Hello, Clarence" Rachael said, appraising the situation rapidly as she

came up. "I would have waited for you if I had thought you would come!"

"I just--just thought I would--look in," Clarence said slowly but

steadily. "Didn't want to miss anything. You all seem to be

having--having a pretty good time!"

"It's been a lovely tea," Rachael assured him enthusiastically. "But

I'm just going. Billy's out here on the porch with a bunch of

youngsters; I was just going after her. Don't let Frank give you any

more of that stuff, Clancy. Stop it, Frank! It always gives him a

splitting headache!"

The tone was irreproachably casual and cheerful, but Clarence scowled

at his wife significantly. His dignity, as he answered, was tremendous.

"I can judge pretty well of what hurts me and what doesn't, thank you,

Rachael," he said coldly, with a look ominous with warning.

"That's just what you can't, dear," Mrs. Whittaker, who had joined the

group, said pleasantly. "Take that stuff away, Frank, and don't be so

silly! If Frank," she added to the group, "hadn't been at it all

afternoon himself he wouldn't be such an idiot."

"Greg says he'll take us home, Clarence," Rachael said, in a

matter-of-fact tone. "It's a shame to carry you off when you've just

got here, but I'm going."

"Where's Billy?" Clarence asked stubbornly.

"Right here!" his wife answered reassuringly. And to her great relief

Billy substantiated the statement by coming up to them, a little

uneasy, as her stepmother was, over her father's appearance, yet

confident that there was no real cause for a scene. To get him home as

fast as possible, and let the trouble, whatever it might be, break

there, was the thought in both their minds.

"Had enough tea, Monkey?" said Rachael pleasantly, aware of her

husband's sulphurous gaze, but carefully ignoring it. "Then say day-day

to Aunt Gertrude!"

"If Greg takes you home, send Alfred back with the runabout for me,"

Billy suggested.

"So that you can stay a little longer, eh?" said Clarence, in so ugly a

tone and with so leering a look for his daughter that Rachael's heart

for a moment failed her. "That's a very nice little plan, my dear, but,

as it happens, I came over in the runabout! I'm a fool, you know," said

Clarence sullenly. "I can be hoodwinked and deceived and made a fool

of--oh, sure! But there's a limit! There's a limit," he said in stupid

anger to his wife. "And if I say that I don't like certain friendships

for my daughter, it means that _I_ DON'T LIKE CERTAIN FRIENDSHIPS FOR

MY DAUGHTER, do you get me? That's clear enough, isn't it, Gertrude?"

"It's perfectly clear that you're acting like an idiot, Clancy," Mrs.

Whittaker said briskly. "Nobody's trying to hoodwink you; it isn't

being done this year! You've got an awful katzenjammer from the Stokes'

dinner, and all you men ought to be horsewhipped for letting yourselves

in for such a party. Now if you and Rachael want to go home in the

runabout, I'll send Billy straight after you with Kenneth or Kent--"

"I'll take Billy home," Clarence said heavily.

By this time Rachael was so exquisitely conscious of watching eyes and

listening ears, so agonized over the realization that the fuss Clarence

Breckenridge made at the Whittakers' over Joe Pickering would be handed

down, a precious tradition, over every tea and dinner table for weeks

to come, so miserably aware that a dozen persons, at least, among the

audience were finding in this scene welcome confirmation of all the

odds and ends of gossip that were floating about concerning Billy, that

she would have consented blindly to any arrangement that might

terminate the episode.

It was not the first time that Clarence had made himself ridiculous and

his family conspicuous when not quite himself. At almost every tea

party and at every dance and dinner at least one of the guests

similarly distinguished himself. Rachael knew that there would be no

blame in her friends' minds, but she hated their laughter.

"Do that, then," she agreed quickly. "Greg, will bring me!"

"By George," said Clarence darkly to his hostess, "I'd be a long time

doing that to you, Gertrude! If you had a daughter--"

"My dear Clarence, your daughter is old enough to know her own mind!"

Mrs. Whittaker said impatiently.

"And you're only making me conspicuous for something that's ENTIRELY in

your own brain!" blazed Billy. As usual, her influence over her father

was instantaneous.

"Because I love you, you know that," he said meekly. "I--I may be TOO

careful, Billy. But--"

"Nonsense!" said Billy in a nervous undertone close to tears. "If you

loved me you'd have some consideration for me!"

"When I say a thing, don't you say it's nonsense," Clarence said with

heavy fatherly dignity. "I'll tell you why--because I won't stand for

it!"

"Oh, aren't they hopeless!" Mrs. Whittaker asked with an indulgent

laugh and a glance for Rachael.

"Well, I won't be taken home like a bad child!" flamed Billy.

"I'd like to bump both your silly heads together," Rachael exclaimed,

steering them toward the porch. "Yes, you bring the car around, Kent,"

she added to one of the onlookers in an urgent aside. "Come on, Bill?

get in. Get in, Clarence! Don't be an utter fool--"

In another moment it was settled. Billy, looking fretty and sulky,

said: "Good-bye, Aunt Gertrude! I'm sorry for this, but it's not my

fault!" Frank Whittaker almost bodily lifted his somewhat befuddled

guest into the car, the door of the runabout went home with a bang.

Billy snatched the wheel, and Clarence, with an attempt at a martyred

expression, sank back in his seat. The car rocked out of sight, and was

gone.

Rachael, in silent dignity, turned about on the wide brick steps to

reenter the house. Where there had been a dozen interested faces a

moment ago there was no one now except Gertrude Whittaker, whose

expression betrayed her as tactfully divided between unconcern and

sympathy, and Frank Whittaker, who was looking thoughtfully at the

cloudless spring sky as one anticipating a change of weather.

Rachael caught Mrs. Whittaker's eye and shrugged her shoulders wearily.

She began slowly to mount the steps.

"It was nothing at all!" said the hostess cheerfully, adding

immediately, "You poor thing!"

"All in the day's work!" Rachael said, on a long sigh. And turning to

the man who stood silently in the doorway she asked, with all the

confidence of a weary child, "Will you take me home, Greg?"

Her glance and the doctor's met. In the last soft, brilliant light of

the afternoon long shadows fell from the great trees nearby. Rachael's

green and white gown was dappled with blots of golden light, her

troubled, glowing eyes were of an almost unearthly beauty, and her

slender figure, against the background of colonial white paint and red

brick, had all the tremulous, reedy grace of a young girl's figure. In

the long look the two exchanged there was some new element born of this

wonderful hour of spring, and of the woman's need, and the man's

nearness. Both knew it, although Rachael did not speak again, and, also

in silence, the doctor nodded, and went past her down the steps for his

car.

"Too bad!" Mrs. Whittaker said, coming back from a brief disappearance

beyond the doorway. "But such things will happen! It's too bad,

Rachael, but what can one do? Are you going to be warm enough? Sure?

Don't give it another thought, dear, nobody noticed it, anyway. And

listen--any chance of a game tonight? I could send over for you.

Marian's with me, you know, and we could get Peter or Greg for a

fourth."

"No chance at all," Rachael said bitterly. She had always loved to play

bridge with Greg; under the circumstances it would be a delicious

experience. She layed brilliantly, and Greg, when he was matched by

partner and opponents, became absorbed in the game with absolutely

fanatic fervor. Rachael had a vision of her own white hand spreading

out the cards, of the nod and glance that said clearly: "Great bidding,

Rachael; we're as safe as a church!"

Clarence did not play bridge, he did not care for music, for books, for

pictures. He played poker, and sometimes tennis, and often golf; a

selfish, solitary game of golf, in which he cared only for his own play

and his own score, and paid no attention to anyone else.

Gregory's great car came round the drive. "Good-bye, Gertrude," said

Rachael with an unsmiling nod of farewell, and Mrs. Whittaker thought,

as Elinor Vanderwall had thought the night before, that she had never

seen Rachael look so serious before, and that things in the

Breckenridge family must be coming rapidly to a crisis.

Doctor Gregory, as the lovely Mrs. Breckenridge packed her striped

green and white ruffles trimly beside him, turned upon her a quick and

affectionate smile. It asked no confidence, it expressed no sympathy,

it was simply the satisfied glance of a man pleased with the moment and

with the company in which he found himself. To Rachael, overwrought,

nervous, and ashamed, no mood could have been more delicately tuned.

She sank back against the deep upholstery luxuriously, and drew a long

breath, inhaling the delicious air of early summer twilight. What a

sweet, clean, solid sort of friend Greg was, thought Rachael, noticing

the clever, well-groomed hands on the wheel, the kindly earnestness of

the handsome, sun-browned face, the little wrinkle between the dark

eyes that meant that Doctor Gregory was thinking.

"Straight home?" said he, giving her a smiling glance.

"If you please, Greg," Rachael answered, a sudden vision of the

probable state of affairs at home causing her to end the words with a

quick sigh.

Silence. They were running smoothly along the lovely country roads that

were bowered so generously in fresh green that great feathery boughs of

maple and locust brushed against the car. The birds were still now, and

the sunlight gone, although all the world was still flooded with a soft

golden light. The first dew had fallen, bringing forth from the dust a

sweet and pungent odor.

"Thinking about what I said to you last night?" asked the doctor

suddenly.

"I am afraid I am--a little," Rachael answered, meeting his quick side

glance with another as fleet.

"And what do you think about it?" he asked. For answer Rachael only

sighed wearily, and for a while they went on in silence. But when they

had almost reached the Breckenridge gateway Doctor Gregory spoke again.

"Do you often have a scene like that one just now to get through?"

The color rushed into Rachael's face at his friendly, not too

sympathetic, tone. She was still shaken from the encounter with

Clarence, and still thrilling to the memory of her talk with Warren

Gregory last night, and it was with some new quality of hesitation,

almost of bewilderment, that she said:

"That--that wasn't anything unusual, Greg."

Doctor Gregory stopped the car at the foot of her own steps, the noise

of the engine suddenly ceased, and they faced each other, their heads

close together.

"But since last night," Rachael added, smiling after a moment's

thought, "I know I have a friend. I believe now, when the crash comes,

and the whole world begins to talk, that one person will not misjudge

me, and one person will not misunderstand."

"Only that?" he asked. She raised her glorious eyes quickly, trying to

smile, and it brought his heart to a quick stop to see that they were

brimming with tears.

"Only that?" she echoed. "My dear Greg, after seven such years as I

have had as Clarence's wife, that is not a small thing!"

Their hands were together now, and he felt hers cling suddenly as she

said:

"Don't--don't let me drag you into this, Greg!"

"This is what I want you to believe," Warren Gregory told her, "that

you are not his wife, you are nothing to him any more. And some day,

some day, you're going to be happy again!"

A wonderful color flooded her face; she gave him a look

half-frightened, half-won. Then with an almost inaudible "Good-night,"

she was gone.

Warren Gregory stood watching the slender figure mount the steps. She

did not turn to nod him a fare-well, but vanished like a shadow into

the soft shadows of the doorway. Yet he was enough a lover to find

consolation in that. Rachael Breckenridge was not flirting now, forces

far greater than any she had ever known were threatening the shallow

waters of her life, and she might well be troubled and afraid.

"She is not his wife any more," Warren Gregory said, half aloud, as he

turned back to his car. "From now on she belongs to me! She SHALL be

mine!"

CHAPTER V

From that day on a bright undercurrent made bearable the trying

monotony of her life. Rachael did not at once recognize the rapid

change that began to take place in her own feelings, but she did

realize that Warren Gregory's attitude had altered everything in her

world. He was flirting, of course, he was only half in earnest; but it

was such delicious flirting, it was a half-earnestness so wonderfully

satisfying and sweet.

She did not see him every day, sometimes she did not see him for two or

three days, but no twenty-four hours went by without a message from

him. A day or two after the troubled Sunday on which he had driven her

home she stood silent a moment, in the lower hall, one hand resting on

the little box of damp, delicious Freesia lilies, the fingers of the

other twisting his card. The little message scribbled on the card meant

nothing to other eyes, just the two words "Good morning!" but in some

subtle way they signified to her a morning in a wider sense, a dawning

of love and joy and peace in her life. The next day they met--and how

wonderful these casual meetings among a hundred gay, unseeing folk, had

suddenly become!--and on the following day he came to tea with her, a

little hour whose dramatic and emotional beauty was enhanced rather

than spoiled for them both when Clarence and Billy and some friends

came in to end it.

On Thursday the doctor's man delivered into Mrs. Breckenridge's hand a

package which proved to be a little book on Browning of which he had

spoken to her. On the fly leaf was written in the donor's small, fine

handwriting, "R. from G. The way WAS Caponsacchi." Rachael put the book

on her bedside table, and wore June colors all day for the giver's

sake. Greg, she thought with a fluttering heart, was certainly taking

things with rather a high hand. Could it be possible, could it be

POSSIBLE, that he cared for a woman at last, and was she, Rachael

Breckenridge, a neglected wife, a penniless dependent upon an unloving

husband, that woman?

Half-forgotten emotions of girlhood began to stir within her; she

flushed, smiled, sighed at her own thoughts, she dreamed, and came

bewildered out of her dreams, like a child. What Clarence did, what

Carol did, mattered no longer; she, Rachael, again had the centre of

the stage.

Weeks flew by. The question of summer plans arose: the Villalongas

wanted all the Breckenridges in their Canadian camp for as much as

possible of July and August. Clarence regarded the project with the

embittered eye of utter boredom, Billy was far from enthusiastic,

Rachael made no comment. She stood, like a diver, ready for the

chilling plunge from which she might never rise, yet, after which,

there was one glorious chance: she might find herself swimming strongly

to freedom. The sunny, safe meadows and the warm, blue sky were there

in sight, there was only that dark and menacing stretch of waters to

breast, that black, smothering descent to endure.

Now was the time. The pretence that was her married life must end, she

must be free. In her thought she went no farther. Rachael outwardly was

no better than the other women of her world; inwardly there was in her

nature an instinctive niceness, a hatred for what was coarse or base.

For years the bond between her and Clarence Breckenridge had been only

an empty word. But it was there, none the less, and before she could

put any new plan into definite form, even in her own heart, it must be

broken.

Many of the women she knew would not have been so fine. For more than

one of them no tie was sacred, and no principle as strong as their own

desire for pleasure. But she was different, as all the world should

see. No carefully chaperoned girl could be more carefully guarded than

Rachael would be guarded by herself until that time--the thought of it

put her senses to utter rout--until such time as she might put her hand

boldly in Gregory's, and take her place honorably by his side.

The taste of freedom already began to intoxicate her even while she

still went about Clarence's house, bore his moods in silence, and

imparted to Billy that half-scornful, half-humorous advice that alone

seemed to penetrate the younger woman's shell of utter perversity. Mrs.

Breckenridge, as usual followed by admiring and envious and curious

eyes, walked in a world of her own, entirely oblivious of the persons

and events about her, wrapped in a breathless dream too exquisitely

bright to be real.

It was a dream still so simple and vague that she was not conscious of

wishing for Warren Gregory's presence, or of being much happier when

they were together than when she was deliciously alone with her

thoughts of him.

About a month after the Whittaker tea Rachael found herself seated in

the tile-floored tea-room at the country club with Florence. There had

been others in the group, theoretically for tea, but these were

scattered now, and among the various bottles and glasses on the table

there was no sign of a teacup.

"So glad to see you alone a moment, Rachael--one never does," said

Florence. "Tell me, do you go to the Villalongas'?"

"Clarence and Billy will, I suppose," the other woman said with an

enigmatic smile.

"But not you?"

"Perhaps; I don't know, Florence." Rachael's serene eyes roved the

summer landscape contentedly. Mrs. Haviland looked a little puzzled.

"Things are better, aren't they, dear?" she asked delicately.

"Things?"

"Between you and Clarence, I mean."

"Oh! Yes, perhaps they are. Changed, perhaps."

"How do you mean changed?" Florence was instantly in arms.

"Well, it couldn't go on that way forever, Florence," Rachael said

pleasantly.

Rendered profoundly uneasy by her tone, the other woman was silent for

a moment.

"Perhaps it is just as well to make different plans for the summer,"

she said presently. "We all get on each other's nerves sometimes, and

change or separation does us a world of good."

"Doctor Gregory! Doctor Gregory! At the telephone!" chanted a club

attendant, passing through the tea-room.

"On the tennis courts," Mrs. Breckenridge said, without turning her

head. "You had better make it a message: explain that he's playing!"

"I didn't see him go down," remarked Florence, diverted.

"His car came in about half an hour ago; he and Joe Butler went down to

the courts without coming into the club at all," Rachael said.

"I wonder what he's doing this summer?" mused the older lady.

"I believe he's going to take his mother abroad with him," said the

well-informed Rachael. "She'll visit some friends in England and

Ireland, and then join him. He's to do the Alps with someone, and meet

her in Rome."

"She tell you?" asked Mrs. Haviland, interested.

"He did," the other said briefly.

"I didn't know she had any friends," was Florence's next comment. "I

don't see her visiting, somehow!"

"Oh, my dear. Old Catholic families with chapels in their houses, and

nuns, and Mother Superiors!" Rachael's tone was light, but as she spoke

a cold premonition seized her heart. She fell silent.

A moment later Charlotte, who had been hovering uncertainly in the

doorway of the room, came out to join her mother with a brightly

spontaneous air.

"Oh, here you are, M'ma!" said Charlotte. "Are you ready to go?"

"Been having a nice time, dear?" her mother asked fondly.

"Very," Charlotte said. "I've been looking over old magazines in the

library--SO interesting!"

This literary enthusiasm struck no answering spark from the matron.

"In the library!" said Florence quickly. "Why, I thought you were with

Charley!"

"Oh, no, M'ma," answered Charlotte, with her little air that was not

quite prim and not quite mincing, and that yet suggested both. "Charley

left me just after you did; he had an engagement with Straker." She

reached for a macaroon, and ate it with a brightly disengaged air, her

eyes, behind their not unbecoming glasses, studying the golf links with

absorbed interest.

"Anyone else in the library?" Florence asked in a dissatisfied tone.

"No. I had it all to myself!" the girl answered pleasantly.

"Why didn't you go down to the courts, dear? I think Papa is playing!"

"I didn't think of it, M'ma," said Charlotte lucidly.

"What a dreadful age it is," mused Rachael. "I wonder which phase is

hardest to deal with: Billy or poor little Carlotta?" Aloud, from the

fulness of her own happiness, she said: "Suppose you walk down to the

courts with me, Infant, and we will see what's going on?"

"If M'ma doesn't object," said the dutiful daughter.

"No, go along," Florence said with vague discontent. "I've got to do

some telephoning, anyway."

Charlotte, being eighteen, could think of nothing but herself, and

Rachael, wrapped in her own romance, was amused, as they walked along,

to see how different her display of youthful egotism was from Billy's,

and yet how typical of all adolescence.

"Isn't it a wonderful afternoon, Aunt Rachael?" Charlotte said, as one

in duty bound to be entertaining. "I do think they've picked out such a

charming site for the club!" And then, as Rachael did not answer, being

indeed content to drink in the last of the long summer day in silence,

Charlotte went on, with an air blended of comprehension and amusement:

"Poor M'ma, she would so like me to be a little, fluffy, empty-headed

butterfly of a girl, and I know I disappoint her! It isn't that I don't

like boys," pursued Charlotte, the smooth and even stream of her words

beginning to remind Rachael of Florence, "or that they don't like me;

they're always coming to me with their confidences and asking my

advice, but it's just that I can't take them seriously. If a boy wants

to kiss me, why, I say to him in perfect good faith, 'Why shouldn't you

kiss me, John? When I'm fond of a person I always like to kiss him, and

I'm sure I'm fond of you!'" Charlotte stopped for a short laugh full of

relish. "Of course that takes the wind out of their sails completely,"

she went on, "and we have a good laugh over it, and are all the better

friends! That is," said Charlotte, thoroughly enjoying herself, "I

treat my men friends exactly as I do my girl friends. Do you think

that's so extraordinary, Aunt Rachael? Because I can't do anything

different, you know--really I can't!"

"Just be natural--that's the best way," said Rachael from the depths of

an icy boredom.

"Of course, some day I shall marry," the girl added in brisk decision,

"because I love a home, and I love children, and I think I would be a

good mother to children. But meanwhile, my books and my friends mean a

thousand times more to me than all these stupid boys! Why is it other

girls are so crazy about boys, Aunt Rachael?" asked Charlotte, brightly

sensible. "Of course I like them, and all that, but I can't see the

sense of all these notes and telephones and flirtations. I told Vivvie

Sartoris that I was afraid I knew all these boys too well; of course

Jack and Kent and Charley are just like brothers! It all"--Charlotte

smiled, signed, shook her disillusioned young head--"it all seems so

awfully SILLY to me!" she said, and before Rachael could speak she had

caught breath again and added laughingly: "Of course I know Billy

doesn't agree with me, and Billy has plenty of admiration of a sort,

and I suppose that satisfies her! But, in short," finished Charlotte,

giving Rachael's arm a squeeze as they came out upon the tennis courts,

"in short, you have an exacting little niece, Auntie dear, and I'm

afraid the man who is going to make her happy must be out of the

ordinary!"

Rachael sighed a long deep sigh, but no other answer was demanded, for

the knot of onlookers welcomed them eagerly to the benches beside the

courts, and even the players--Gardner Haviland, Louis Chase, a fat

young man in an irreproachable tennis costume; Warren Gregory and Joe

Butler found time for a shouted "Hello!"

"How do you do, Kent?" said Charlotte to a young man who was sprawling

on the sloping grass between the benches and the court. The young man

blinked, sat up, and snatched off his hat.

"Oh, how do you do, Charlotte? I didn't know you were here," he said

enthusiastically. "Some game--what?"

"It SEEMS to be," said Charlotte with smiling, deep significance. Both

young persons laughed heartily at this spirited exchange. A silence

fell. Then Mr. Parmalee turned back to watch the players, and

Charlotte, who had seated herself, leaned back in her seat and gave a

devoted attention to the game.

Gregory came to Rachael the instant the game was over; she had known,

since the first triumphant instant when his eyes fell upon her, that he

would. She had seen the color rush under his brown skin, and, alone

among all the onlookers, had known why Greg put three balls into the

net, and why he laughed so inexplicably as he did so. And Rachael

thought, for the first time, how sweet it would be to be his wife, to

sit here lovely in lavender stripes and loose white coat: Warren

Gregory's wife.

"You mustn't do that," he said, sitting down on the bench beside her,

and wiping his hot face.

"Mustn't do what?" she asked.

"Mustn't turn up suddenly when I don't expect you. It makes me dizzy.

Look here--what are you doing? I'm going up to the pool. I've got to

get back into town to-night. When can I see you?"

"Why"--Rachael rose slowly, and slowly unfurled her parasol--"why,

suppose we walk up together?"

They strolled away from the courts deliberately, openly. Several

persons remembered weeks later that they went slowly, stopped now and

then. No one thought much of it at the time, for only a week later

Doctor Gregory took his mother to England, and during that week it was

ascertained that he and Mrs. Breckenridge saw each other only once, and

then were in the presence of his mother and of Carol Breckenridge and

young Charles Gregory as well. There was no tiniest peg for gossip to

hang scandal upon, for where old Mrs. James Gregory was, decorum of an

absolutely puritanic order prevailed.

Yet that stroll across the grass of the golf links was a milestone in

Rachael Breckenridge's life, and every word that passed between Gregory

and herself was graven upon her heart for all time. The aspect of

laughter, of flirtation, was utterly absent to-day. His tone was crisp

and serious, he spoke almost before they were out of the hearing of the

group on the courts.

"I've been wanting to talk to you, Rachael; in fact"--he laughed

briefly--"in fact, I am talking to you all day long, these days," he

said, "arguing and consulting and advising and planning. But before we

can talk, there's Clarence. What about Clarence?"

Something in the gravity of his expression as their eyes met impressed

Rachael as she had rarely been impressed in her life before. He was in

deadly earnest, he had planned his campaign, and he must take the first

step by clearing the way. How sure he was, how wonderfully, quietly

certain of his course.

"We are facing a miserable situation, but it's a commonplace one, after

all," said Warren Gregory, as she did not speak. "I--you can see the

position I'm in. I have to ask you to be free before I can move. I

can't go to Breckenridge's wife---"

The color burned in both their faces as they looked at each other.

"It IS a miserable position, Greg," Rachael said, after a moment's

silence. "And although, as you say, it's commonplace enough, somehow I

never thought before just what this sort of thing involves! However,

the future must take care of itself. For the present there's only this.

I'm going to leave Clarence."

Warren Gregory drew a long breath.

"He won't fight it?"

"I don't think he will." Rachael frowned. "I think he'll be willing to

furnish--the evidence. Especially if he has no reason to suspect that I

have any other plans," she added thoughtfully.

"Then he mustn't suspect," the doctor said instantly.

"Nor anyone," she finished, with a look of alarm.

"Nor anyone, of course," he repeated.

"I don't know that I HAVE any other plans," Rachael said sadly. "I

won't think beyond that one thing. Our marriage has been an utter and

absolute failure, we are both wretched. It must end. I hate the fuss,

of course--"

He was watching her closely, too keenly tuned to her mood to disquiet

her with any hint of the lover's attitude now.

"And just how will you go about it?" he asked.

"I shall slip off to some quiet place, I think. I'll tell him before he

goes away. My attorneys will handle the matter for me--it's a sickening

business!" Rachael's beautiful face expressed distaste.

"It's done every day," Warren Gregory said.

"Of course divorce is not a new idea to me" Rachael presently pursued.

"But it is only in the last two or three days--for a week,

perhaps--that it has seemed to have that inevitable quality--that

the-sooner-over-the-better sort of urgency. I wonder why I didn't do it

years ago. I shall"--she laughed sadly--"I shall hate myself as a

divorced woman," she said. "It's a survival of some old instinct, I

suppose, but it doesn't seem RIGHT."

"It's done all the time," was the doctor's simple defence. "And oh, my

dear," he added, "you will know--and I will know--we can't keep

knowing--"

She stopped short, her lovely face serious in the shade of her parasol,

her dark-blue eyes burning with a sort of noble shame.

"Greg!" she said quickly and breathlessly. "Please---Let's not--let's

not say it. Let me feel, all this summer, that it wasn't said. Let me

feel that while I was living under one man's roof, and spending his

money, that I didn't even THINK of another man. It's done all the time,

you say, that's true. But I HATE it. Whether I leave Clarence, and make

my own life under new conditions, and never remarry, or whether, in a

year or two--but I won't think of that!" And to his surprise and

concern, as she stopped short on the grassy path, the eyes that Rachael

turned toward him were brimming with tears. "You s-see what a baby I am

becoming, Greg," she said unsteadily. "It's all your doing, I'm afraid!

I haven't cried for years--loneliness and injustice and unhappiness

don't make me cry! But just lately I've known what it was to dream

of--of joy, Greg. And if that joy is ever really coming to us, I want

to be worthy of it. I want to start RIGHT this time. I want to spend

the summer quietly somewhere, thinking and reading. I'm going to give

up cards and even cocktails. You smile, Greg, but I truly am! Just for

this time, I mean. And it's come to me, just lately, that I wouldn't

leave Clarence if he really needed me, or if it would make him unhappy.

I'm going to be different--everything SEEMS different already--"

"Don't you know why?" he said with his grave smile, as she paused. It

was enchanting to him to see the color flood her face, to see her shy

eyes suddenly averted. She did not answer, and they walked slowly

toward the clubhouse steps.

"There's only one thing more to say," Warren Gregory said, arresting

her for one more moment. "It's this: as soon as you're free, I'm coming

for you. You may not have made up your mind by that time, Rachael. My

mind will never change."

Shaken beyond all control by his tone, Rachael did not even raise her

eyes. Her flush died away, leaving her face pale. He saw her breast

rise on a quick breath.

"Will you write me?" he asked, after a moment.

"Oh, yes, Greg!" she answered quickly, in a voice hardly above a

whisper. "When do you go?"

"On Wednesday--a week from to-day, in fact. And that reminds me, Billy

says you are coming into town early next week?"

"Monday, probably." Rachael was coming back to the normal. "She needs

things for camp, and I've got a little shopping to do."

"Then could you lunch with Mother? Little Charley'll be there: no one

else. Bring Billy. Mother'd love it. You're a great favorite there, you

know."

"I may not always be a favorite there," Rachael said with a rueful

smile.

"Don't worry about Mother," Warren Gregory said with a confidence that

in this moment of excitement and exhilaration he almost felt was

justified. "Mother's a dear!"

That was all their conversation. When they entered the clubhouse Doctor

Gregory turned toward the swimming pool and Rachael was instantly drawn

into a game of bridge. She played like a woman in a dream, was joined

by Billy, went home in a dream, and presently found herself and her

husband fellow guests at a dreamlike dinner-party.

Why not?--why not?--why not? The question drummed in head and heart day

and night. Why not end bondage, and taste freedom? Why not end

unhappiness, and try joy? She had done her best to make her first

marriage a success, and she had failed. Why not, with all kindness,

with all generous good wishes, end the long experiment? Who, in all her

wide range of acquaintances, would think the less of her for the

obviously sensible step? The world recognized divorce as an

indispensable institution: one marriage in every twelve was dissolved.

And remarriage, a brilliant second marriage, was universally approved.

Even such a stern old judge as Warren's mother counted among her

acquaintances the divorced and remarried. To reappear, triumphant,

beloved, beautiful, before one's old world--

But no--of this Rachael would not permit herself to think. Time alone

could tell what her next step must be. The only consideration now must

be that, even if Warren Gregory had never existed, even if there were

no other man than Clarence Breckenridge in the world, she must take the

step. Better poverty, and work, and obscurity, if need be, with

freedom, than all Clarence could offer her in this absurd and empty

bondage.

Once firmly decided, she began to chafe against the delays that made an

immediate announcement of her intentions unwise. If a thing was to be

done, as well do it quickly, thought Rachael, as she listened patiently

to the vacillating decisions of Carol and her father in regard to the

Villalonga camping plan. At one time Clarence completely abandoned the

idea, throwing the watchful and silent Rachael into utter

consternation. Carol was alternately bored by the plan and wearily

interested in it. Their characteristic absorption in their own comfort

was a great advantage to Rachael at this particular juncture; she had

been included in Mrs. Villalonga's invitation as a matter of course,

but such was the life of the big, luxurious establishment known as the

"camp" that all three of the Breckenridges, and three more of them had

there been so many, might easily have spent six weeks therein without

crossing each other's paths more than once or twice a week. It never

occurred to either Carol or her father to question Rachael closely as

to her pleasure in the matter. They took it for granted that she would

be there if no pleasanter invitation interfered exactly as they

themselves would.

An enormous income enabled the sprightly Mrs. Villalonga to conduct her

midsummer residence in the Canadian forests upon a scale that may only

be compared to a hotel. She usually asked about one hundred friends to

visit her for an indefinite time, and of this number perhaps half

availed themselves of the privilege, drifting in upon her at any time,

remaining only while the spirit moved, and departing unceremoniously,

perhaps, if the hostess chanced to be away at the moment, with no

farewells at all, when any pleasanter prospect offered.

Mrs. Villalonga was a large, coarse-voiced woman, with a heart of gold,

and the facial characteristics that in certain unfortunate persons

suggest nothing so much as a horse. She sent a troop of servants up to

the woods every year, following them in a week or two with her first

detachment of guests. She paid her chef six thousand dollars a year,

and would have paid more for a better chef, if there had been one. She

expected three formal meals every day, including in their scope every

delicacy that could be procured at any city hotel, and also an

indefinite number of lesser meals, to be served in tennis pavilion, or

after cards at night, or whenever a guest arrived.

By the time she reached the camp everything must be complete for

another summer, awnings flapping gently outside the striped canvas

"tents" that were really roomy cabins provided with shower baths and

wide piazzas. The great cement-walled swimming pool must be cleaned,

the courts rolled, the cars all in order, the boats and bath-houses in

readiness. A miniature grocery and drug store must be established in

the building especially designed for this use; the little laundry

concealed far up in the woods must be operating briskly.

Then, from the middle of June to the first of September, the camp was

in full swing. There were dances and campfires and theatricals and

fancy-dress affairs innumerable. Ice and champagne and California

peaches and avocados from Hawaii poured from the housekeeping

department in an unending stream; there were new toothbrushes and new

pajamas for the unexpected guest, there were new bathing suits in boxes

for the girls who had driven over from Taramac House and who wanted a

swim, there were new packs of cards and new boxes of cigars, and there

were maids--maids--maids to run for these things when they were wanted,

and carry them away when their brief use was over.

Then it would be September, and everything would end as suddenly as it

began. The Villalongas would go to Europe, or to Newport, Vera loudly,

joyously, insistently urging everyone to visit them there if it were

the latter. In November they would be in their town house with new

paintings and new rugs to show their guests: a portrait of Vera, a rug

stolen from a Sultan's palace.

Everybody said that Vera Villalonga did this sort of thing extremely

well; indeed she had no rival in her own particular field. The weekly

society journals depended upon her to supply them with spectacular

pictures of a Chinese ball every November and a Micareme dance every

spring; they sent photographers all the way up to her camp that their

readers might not miss a yearly glimpse of the way Mrs. Villalonga

entertained.

But Rachael, who had spent a portion of six summers with the

Villalongas, found herself, in her newly analytical mood, wondering

just who got any particular pleasure out of it all. Vera herself,

perhaps. Certainly her husband, who would spend all his time playing

poker and tennis, would have been as happy elsewhere. Her two sons,

tall, dark young men, in connection with whose characters the world in

general contented itself merely with the word "wild," would be there

only for a week or two at most. Billy would wait for Joe Pickering's

letters, Clarence would drink, and watch Billy. Little Mina Villalonga,

who had a minor nervous ailment, would wander about after Billy. The

Parmalees would come up for a visit, and the Morans would come. Jack

Torrence, spoiled out of all reason, would promise a week and come for

two days; Porter Pinckard would compromise upon a mere hour or two,

charging into the camp in his racing car, introducing hilarious

friends, accepting a sandwich and a bottle of beer, and then tearing

off again. Straker Thomas, silent, mysterious, ill, would drift about

for a week or two; Peter Pomeroy would go up late in July, and be

adored by everyone, and take charge of the theatricals.

"The maids probably get any amount of fun out of it," mused Rachael.

Vera was notably generous to her servants: a certain pool was reserved

for them, and their numbers formed a most congenial society every

summer. "I don't believe I'll go to Vera's this year," Mrs.

Breckenridge said aloud to her husband and stepdaughter.

"I'm not crazy about it," Billy agreed fretfully.

"Might as well," was the man's enthusiastic contribution.

"Oh, I'm GOING!" Billy said discontentedly. "But I don't see why you

and Rachael have to go."

"Don't you?" her father said significantly.

"Joe Pickering's going to be in Texas this whole summer, if that's what

you mean!" flamed Billy.

"I'm glad to hear it," Clarence commented.

"Anyway, you might depend upon Vera to take absolute good care of

Bill," Rachael said soothingly. "It's time you both got away to some

cooler place, if you are going to fight so about nothing! Why do you do

it? Billy can't marry anyone for eleven months, and if she wants to

marry the man in the moon then you can't stop her. So there you are!"

"And I'm capable of running my own affairs," finished Billy with a look

far from filial.

"You only waste your breath arguing with Clarence when he's got one of

his headaches," Rachael said to her stepdaughter an hour or two later

when they were spinning smoothly into the city for the planned

shopping. "Of course he'll go to Vera's, and of course you'll go, too!

Just don't tease him when he's all upset."

"Well, what does he drink and smoke so much, and get this way for?"

Billy demanded sullenly.

"What does anybody do it for?" Rachael countered. And a second later

her singing heart was with Gregory again. He did not do it!

She entered into Billy's purchasing perplexities with great sympathy; a

successful hat was found, several deliciously extravagant and fragile

dresses for camping.

"You're awfully decent about all this, Rachael." Billy said once; "it

must be a sweet life we lead you sometimes!"

Something in the girl's young glance touched Rachael strangely. They

were in the car again now, going toward Mrs. Gregory's handsome,

old-fashioned house on Washington Square. Rachael was inspired to seize

the propitious second.

"Listen, Bill," she said, and paused. Billy eyed her curiously. Obtuse

as she was, a certain change in Rachael had not entirely escaped the

younger woman.

"Well?" she asked, on guard.

"Well--" Rachael faltered. Motherly advice was not much in her line.

"It's just this, Bill," she resumed slowly, "when you think of

marriage, don't think of just a few weeks or a few months; think of all

the time. Think of other things than just--that sort of--love.

Children, you know, and--and books, don't you know? Things that count.

Be--I don't say be guided entirely by what your father and lots of

other persons think, but be influenced by it! Realize that we have no

motive but--but affection, in advising you to be sure."

The stumbling, uncertain words were unlike Mrs. Breckenridge's usual

certain flow of reasoning. But in spite of this, or because of it,

Billy was somewhat impressed.

"I had an aunt in California," Rachael continued, "who cried, and got

whipped and locked up, and all the rest of it, and she carried her

point. But she was unhappy. ..."

"You mean because Joe is divorced?" Billy asked in a somewhat troubled

voice.

The scarlet rushed to Rachael's face.

"N--not entirely," she answered in some confusion.

"That is, you don't think divorced people ought to remarry, even if the

divorce is fair enough?" Billy pursued, determined to be clear.

"Well, I suppose every case is different, Bill."

"That's what you've always SAID!" Billy accused her vivaciously. "You

said, time and time again, that if people can't live together in peace

they OUGHT to separate, but that it was another thing if they married

again!"

"Did I?" Rachael asked weakly, adding a moment later, with obvious

relief in her tone: "Here we are! It's only this, Bill," she finished,

as they mounted the brownstone steps, "be sure. You can do anything, I

suppose. Only be sure!"

Mrs. Gregory would be down in a few minutes, old Dennison said. Rachael

murmured something amiable, and the two went into the dark, handsome

parlors; the house was full of parlors; on both sides of the hall

stately, crowded rooms could be glimpsed through open doors.

"Isn't it fierce?" Billy said with a helpless shrug. Rachael smiled and

shook her head slowly in puzzled consent. "Don't you suppose they ever

AIR it?" pursued the younger woman in a low tone. The air had a

peculiarly close, dry smell.

"It wouldn't seem so," Rachael said, looking at the life-size statues

of Moorish and Neopolitan girls, the mantel clock representing a Dutch

windmill, the mantel itself, of black marble, gilded and columned, with

a mirror in a carved walnut frame stretching ten feet above it, the

beaded fire screen, the voluminous window curtains of tasselled rep,

and the ornate walnut table across whose marble top a strip of lace had

been laid. Everything was ugly and expensive and almost everything was

old-fashioned, all the level surfaces of tables, mantel, and piano top

were filled with small articles, bits of ivory carving from China,

leather boxes, majolica jars, photographs in heavy frames, enormous

illustrated books, candlesticks, and odd teacups and trays.

Smiling down--how Rachael knew that smile, half-quizzical and

half-tender--from a corner of the room was a beautiful oil portrait of

Warren Gregory, the one really fine thing in the room. By some chance

the painter had caught on his face the very look with which he might,

in the flesh, have studied this dreadful room. Rachael felt a thrill go

to her heels as she looked back at the canvas, and far down in the

deeps of her being the thought stirred that some day her hand might be

the one to change all this--to make the woodwork colonial white, and

the paper rich with color, to have the black marble changed to creamy

tiles, and the rep curtains torn away. Then how charming the place

would be when visitors came in from the hot street!

"A million apologies--all my fault!" said Doctor Gregory in the

doorway. His mother, in rustling black silk, was on his arm. She had

given up her cane to-day to use the living support, and no lover could

have wished to appear more charming in his lady's eyes than did Warren

Gregory appear to Rachael as he lowered the frail old figure to a chair

and neglected his guests while he made his mother comfortable.

"He would have you think, now, that I was the cause of the delay," said

the old lady in a sweet voice that betrayed curiously the weakness of

the flesh and the strength of the spirit. "But I assure you my beauty

is no longer a matter of great importance to me!"

"So it was Greg who was curling his hair?" Rachael asked, with one

swift and eloquent glance for him before she drew a much-fringed

hassock to his mother's knee and seated herself there with the

confidence of a captivating child. "I always thought he was rather

vain! But let's not talk about him, we only make him worse. Tell me

about yourself?"

Mrs. Gregory was a rather spirited old lady, and liked to fancy, with

the pathetic complacency of the passing generation, that her sense of

humor quite kept up with the times. Rachael knew her well, and knew all

her stories, but this only made her the pleasanter companion. She

quickly carried the conversation into the past, and was content to be a

listener; indeed, with a hostess far removed in type from herself it

was the only safe role to play. The conversation was full of pitfalls

for this charming and dutiful worldling, and Rachael was too clever to

risk a fall.

She was afraid of the crippled little gentlewoman in the big chair, and

Warren Gregory was afraid, too. Some mysterious element in her regard

for them made luncheon an ordeal for them both, although Billy's

healthy young eyes saw only an old woman, impotent and alone; the maids

were respectful and pitying, and young Charles Gregory, who joined them

at luncheon, Was obviously unimpressed by his grandmother's power, but

was smitten red and inarticulate at the first glimpse of Billy.

This youth, after silently disposing of several courses, finally asked

in a husky voice for Miss Charlotte Haviland, and relapsed into silence

again. Billy flirted youthfully with her host, Rachael devoted herself

to the old lady.

She had always been happy here, a marked favorite with old Mrs. Gregory

to whom her audacious nonsense had always seemed a great delight

before. But to-day she was conscious of a change, she could not control

the conversation with her usual sure touch, she floundered and

contradicted herself like a schoolgirl. One of her brilliant stories

fell rather flat because its humor was largely supplied by an

intoxicated man--"of course it was dreadful, but then it was funny,

too!" Rachael finished lamely. Another flashing account won from the

old hostess the single words "On Sunday?"

"Well, yes. It was on Sunday. I am afraid we are absolute pagans; we

don't always remember to go to church, by any means!" Rachael began to

feel that a cloud of midges were buzzing about her face. Every topic

led her deeper into the quicksand. There was a definite touch of

resentment under the gracious manner in which she presently said her

good-bye, and they were no sooner in the motor car than she exclaimed

to Billy:

"Didn't Mrs. Gregory seem horribly cross to you to-day? She made me

feel as if I'd broken all the Commandments and was dancing on the

pieces!"

"What do you know about Charles asking for Charlotte?" was Billy's only

answer. "Isn't he just the sort of mutt who would ask for Charlotte!"

"Isn't she quite lovely?" said Mrs. Gregory from over the fleecy yarn

she was knitting, when the guests had gone.

"Carol?" the doctor countered.

"Yes, Carol, too. But I was thinking of Mrs. Breckenridge. Do you see

her very often, James?"

"Quite a bit. Do you mind my smoking?"

"I often wonder," pursued the old lady innocently, "what such a sweet,

gay, lovely girl could see in a fellow like poor Clarence Breckenridge!"

"Great marvel she doesn't throw him over!" Warren said casually.

"It distresses me to hear you talk so recklessly, my son," Mrs. Gregory

said after a brief pause,

"Lord, Mother," her son presently observed impatiently, "is it

reasonable to expect that because a girl like that makes a mistake when

she is twenty or twenty-one, that she shall pay for it for the rest of

her life?"

"Unfortunately, we are not left in any doubt about it," the old lady

said dryly. And as Warren was silent she went on with quavering vigor:

"It is not for us to judge her husband's infirmities. She is his wife."

"Oh, well, there's no use arguing it," the man said pleasantly after a

sulphurous interval. "Fortunately for her, most people don't feel as

you do."

"You surely don't think that _I_ originated this theory?" his mother

asked quietly after a silence, during which her long needles moved a

little more swiftly than was natural.

"I don't think anything about it. I KNOW that you're much, much

narrower about such things than your religion or any religion gives you

any right to be," Warren asserted hotly. "It is nothing to me, but I

hate this smug parcelling out of other people's affairs," he went on.

"Mrs. Breckenridge is a very wonderful and a most unfortunate woman;

her husband isn't fit to lace her shoes--"

"All that may be true," his mother interrupted with some agitation.

"All that may be true, you say! And yet if Rachael left him, and tried

to find happiness somewhere else--"

"The law is not of MY making, James," the old lady intervened mildly,

noting his use of the discussed woman's name with a pang.

"But it IS of your making--you people who sit around and say what's

respectable and what's not respectable! Who are you to judge?"

"I try not to judge," Mrs. Gregory said so simply that the man's anger

cooled in spite of himself. "And perhaps I am foolish, James, all

mothers are. But you are the last of my four sons, and I am a widow in

my old age, and I tremble for you. When a woman with beauty as great as

that confides in you, my child, when she turns to you, your soul is in

danger, and your mother sees it. I cannot--I cannot be silent--"

Rachael herself, an hour ago, had not used her youth and beauty with

more definite design than was this other woman using her age and

infirmity now. Warren Gregory was almost as readily affected.

"My dear Mother," he said sensibly and charmingly, "don't think for one

instant that I do not appreciate your devotion to me. What has suddenly

put into your head this concern about Mrs. Breckenridge, I can't

imagine. I know that if she were ever in any trouble or need you would

be the first to defend her. She is in a peculiarly difficult position,

and in a professional way I am somewhat in her confidence, that's all!"

"I should think she could do something with Clarence," the old lady

said, somewhat mollified. "Interest him in something new; lead him away

from bad influences."

"Clarence is rather a hopeless problem," Warren Gregory said. The talk

drifted away to other persons and affairs, but when they presently

parted, with great amiability on both sides, Warren Gregory knew that

his mother's suspicions had in some mysterious way been aroused, and

old Mrs. Gregory, sitting alone in the heat of the afternoon, writhed

in the grip of a definite apprehension. Absurd--absurd--to interpret

that married woman's brightly innocent glances into a declaration of

love, absurd to find passion concealed in Warren's cheerfully

hospitable manner. But she could not shake off the terrified conviction

that it was so.

"Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Moulton of England have rented for the season

the house of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge, at Belvedere Bay,"

stated the social columns authoritatively. "Mr. Breckenridge and Miss

Carol Breckenridge will leave at once for the summer camp of Mrs. Booth

Villalonga, at Elks Leap, where Mrs. Breckenridge will join them after

spending a few weeks with friends."

Rachael saw the notice on the morning of the last day that she and

Clarence were together. In the afternoon Billy and Clarence were to

leave for the north, and Rachael was to go to Florence for a day or

two. She had been unusually indefinite about her plans for the summer,

but in the general confusion of all plans this had not been noticed.

She had superintended the packing and assorting and storing of silver

and linen, as a matter of course, and it was easy to see that certain

things indisputably her own went into certain crates. Nobody questioned

her authority, and Clarence and Billy paid no attention whatever to the

stupid proceeding of getting the house in order for tenants.

On this last morning she sat at the breakfast table studying these two

who had been her companions for seven years, and who suspected so

little that this companionship was not to last for another seven years,

for an indefinite time. Billy was in a bad temper because her father

was not taking Alfred and the car with them to the camp, as he had done

for the two previous years. Clarence, sullen as always under Billy's

disapproval, was pretending to read his paper. He had a severe headache

this morning, his face looked flushed and swollen. He was dreading the

twenty-four hours in a hot train, even though the Bowditches, going up

in their own car to their own camp, had offered the Breckenridges its

comparative comfort and coolness for the entire trip.

"Makes me so sick," grumbled Billy, who looked extremely pretty in a

Chinese coat of blue and purple embroideries; "every time I want to

move I'll have to ask Aunt Vera if I may have a car! No fun at all!"

"Loads of horses and cars up there, my dear," Rachael said pacifically.

She was quivering from head to foot with nervous excitement; the next

few hours were all-important to her. And, under the pressure of her own

great emotions, Billy seemed only rather pitiful and young to-day, and

even Clarence less a conscious tyrant, and more a blundering boy, than

he had seemed. She bore them no ill will after these seven hard years;

indeed a great peace and kindliness pervaded her spirit and softened

her manner toward them both. Her marriage had been a great

disappointment, composed of a thousand small disappointments, but she

was surprised to find that some intangible and elementary emotion was

about to make this parting strangely hard.

"Yes, but it's not the same thing," Billy raged. Rachael began a

low-voiced reassurance to which the younger woman listened reluctantly,

scowling over her omelette, and interposing an occasional protest.

"Oh, yap--yap--yap! My God, I do get tired of hearing you two go on and

on and on!" Clarence presently burst out angrily. "If you don't want to

go, Billy, say so. I'm sick of the whole thing, anyway!"

"You know very well I never wanted to go," Billy answered. And because,

being now committed to the Villalonga visit, she perversely dreaded it,

she pursued aggrievedly, "I'd EVER so much rather have gone to

California, Dad!"

How sure the youngster was of her power, Rachael thought, watching him

instantly soften under his daughter's skilful touch.

"For five cents," he said eagerly, "I'd wire Vera, and you and I'd beat

it to Santa Barbara! What do you say?"

"And if Rachael promised to be awfully good, she could come, too!"

Billy laughed. But the girl's gay patronage was never again to be

extended to Rachael Breckenridge.

"You couldn't disappoint Vera now," she protested.

"Oh, Lord! make some objections!" Clarence growled.

"My dear boy, it's nothing to me, whatever you do," Rachael said

quickly. "But Vera Villalonga is a very important friend for Bill.

There's no sense in antagonizing her--"

"No, I suppose there isn't," Billy said slowly. "But I wish she'd not

ask us every summer. I suppose we shall be doing this for the rest of

our lives!"

She trailed slowly from the room, and Clarence took one or two fretful

glances at his paper.

"Gosh, how you do love to spoil things!" he said bitterly to his wife

in a sudden burst.

Rachael did not answer. She rose after a few moments, and carried her

letters into the adjoining room. When Clarence presently passed the

door she called him in.

"Now or never--now or never!" said Rachael's fast-beating heart. She

was pale and breathing quickly as he came in. But Clarence, sick and

headachy, did not notice these signs of strong emotion.

"Clarence, I need some money," Rachael said simply.

"What for?" he asked unencouragingly.

The color came into his wife's face. She did not ask often for money,

although he was rich, and she had been his wife for seven years. It was

a continual humiliation to Rachael that she must ask him at all for the

little actual money she spent, and tell him what she did with it when

she got it. Clarence might lose more money at poker in a single night

than Rachael touched in a month; it had come to him without effort, and

of the two, she was the one who made a real effort to hold the home

together. Yet she was a pensioner on his bounty, obliged to wait for

the propitious mood and moment. Under her hand at this moment was Mary

Moulton's check for one thousand dollars, more than she had ever had at

one time in her life. She could not touch it, but Clarence would turn

it into bills, and stuff them carelessly into his pocket, to be

scattered in the next week or two wherever his idle fancy saw fit.

"Why, for living, and travelling expenses," she answered, with what

dignity she could muster.

"Thought you had some money," he grumbled in evident distaste.

"Come in here a moment," Rachael said in a voice that rather to his

surprise he obeyed. "Sit down there," she went on, and Clarence,

staring at her a little stupidly, duly seated himself. His wife twisted

about in her desk chair so that she could rest an arm upon the back of

it, and faced him seriously across that arm.

"Clarence," said she, conscious of a certain dryness in her mouth, and

a sick quivering and weakness through-out her whole body, "I want to

end this."

"What?" asked Clarence, puzzled and dull, as she paused.

"I want to be free," Rachael said, stumbling awkwardly over the phrase

that sounded so artificial and dramatic. They looked at each other,

Clarence's bewildered look slowly changing to one of comprehension

under his wife's significant expression. There was a silence.

"Well?" Clarence said, ending it with an indifferent shrug.

"Our marriage has been a farce for years--almost from the beginning,"

Rachael asserted eagerly. "You know it, and I know it--everyone does.

You're not happy, and I'm wretched. I'm sick of excuses, and

pretending, and prevaricating. There isn't a thing in the world we feel

alike about; our life has become an absolute sham. It isn't as if I

could have any real influence over you--you go your way, and do as you

please, and I take the consequences. I realize now that every word I

say jars on you. Why, sometimes when you come into a room and find me

there I can tell by the expression on your face that you're angry just

at that! I've too much self-respect, I've too much pride, to go on this

way. You know how I hate divorce--no woman in the world hates it

more--but tell me, honestly, what do we gain by keeping up a life like

this? I used to be happy and confident and full of energy a few years

ago; now I'm bored all the time. What's the use, what's the use--that's

the way I feel about everything--"

"You're not any more tired of it than I am!" Clarence interrupted

sullenly.

"Then why keep it up?" she asked urgently. "You've Billy, and your

clubs, and your car, to fill your time. There'll be a fuss, of course,

and I hate that, but we'll both be away. We've given it a fair trial,

but we simply aren't meant for each other. Good heavens! it isn't as if

we were the first man and woman who--"

"Don't talk as if I were opposing you," Clarence said with a weary

frown.

Rachael, snubbed, instantly fell silent.

"I've got my side in all this dissatisfied business, too," the man

presently said with unsteady dignity. "You never cared a damn for me,

or what became of me! I've had you ding-donging your troubles at me day

and night; it never occurs to you what I'm up against." He looked at

his watch. "You want some money?" he asked.

"If you please," Rachael answered, scarlet-cheeked.

"Well, I can write a check--" he began.

"Here's this check of Mary Moulton's for July," Rachael said, nervously

adding: "She wants to pay month by month, because I think she hopes

you'll rent after August. I believe she'd keep the place indefinitely,

on account of being near her mother, and for the boys."

Clarence took the check, and, hardly glancing at it, scrawled his

slovenly "C. L. Breckenridge" across the back with a gold-mounted

fountain pen. Rachael, whose face was burning, received it back from

his hand with a husky "Thank you. You'll have to furnish the grounds, I

presume--there will be a referee--nothing need get out beyond the fact

that I am the complainant. You--won't contest? You--won't oppose

anything?" She hated herself for the question, but it had to be asked.

"Nope," the man said impatiently.

"And"--Rachael hesitated--"and you won't say anything, Clarence," she

suggested, "because the papers will get hold of it fast enough!"

"You can't tell me anything about that," he said sullenly. Then there

came a silence. Rachael, looking at him, wished that she could hate him

a little more, wished that his neglects and faults had made a little

deeper impression. For a minute or two neither spoke. Then Clarence got

up and left the room, and Rachael sat still, the little slip held

lightly between her fingers. The color ebbed slowly from her face, her

heart resumed its normal beat, moments went by, the little clock on her

desk ticked on and on. It was all over; she was free. She felt

strangely shaken and cold, and desolately lonely.

He loved her as little as she loved him. They had never needed each

other, yet there was in this severance of the bond between them a

strange and unexpected pain. It was as if Rachael's heart yearned over

the wasted years, the love and happiness that might have been. Not even

the thought of Warren Gregory seemed warm or real to-day; a great void

surrounded her spirit; she felt a chilled weariness with the world,

with all men--she was sick of life.

On the following day she gave Florence a hint of the situation. It was

only fair to warn the important, bustling matron a trifle in advance of

the rest of the world. Rachael had had a long night's sleep; she

already began to feel deliciously young and free. She was to spend a

few nights at the Havilands', and the next week supposedly go to the

Princes' at Bar Harbor; really she planned to disappear for a time from

her world. She must go up to town for a consultation with her lawyer,

and then, when the storm broke, she would slip away to little Quaker

Bridge, the tiny village far down on Long Island upon which, quite by

chance, she had stumbled two years before. No one would recognize her

there, no one of her old world could find her, and there for a month or

two she could walk and bathe and dream in wonderful solitude.

Then--then Greg would be home again.

"I want to tell you something, Florence," Rachael said to her

sister-in-law when she was stretched upon the wide couch in Florence's

room, watching with the placidity of a good baby that lady's process of

dressing for an afternoon of bridge, or rather the operations with cold

cream, rubber face brush, hair tonic, eyebrow stick, powder, rouge, and

lip paste that preceded the process of dressing. Mrs. Haviland, even

with this assistance, would never be beautiful; in justice it must be

admitted that she never thought herself beautiful. But she thought

rouge and powder and paste improved her appearance, and if through

fatigue or haste she was ever led to omit any or all of these

embellishments, she presented herself to the eyes of her family and

friends with a genuine sensation of guilt. Perhaps three hours out of

all her days were spent in some such occupation; between bathing,

manicuring, hair-dressing, and intervals with her dressmaker and her

corset woman it is improbable that the subject of her appearance was

long out of the lady's mind. Yet she was not vain, nor was she

particularly well satisfied with herself when it was done. That about

one-fifth of her waking time--something more than two months out of the

year--was spent in an unprofitable effort to make herself, not

beautiful nor attractive, but something only a little nearer than was

natural to a vague standard of beauty and attractiveness, never

occurred, and never would occur, to Florence Haviland.

"What is it?" she asked now sharply, pausing with one eyebrow

beautifully pencilled and the other less definite than ever by contrast.

"I don't suppose it will surprise you to hear that Clarence and I have

decided to try a change," Rachael said slowly.

"How do you mean a change?" the other woman said, instantly alert and

suspicious.

"The usual thing," Rachael smiled.

"What madness has got hold of that boy now?" his sister exclaimed

aghast.

"It's not entirely Clarence," Rachael explained with a touch of pride.

"Well, then, YOU'RE mad!" the older woman said shortly.

"Not necessarily, my dear," Rachael answered, resolutely serene.

"Go talk to someone who's been through it," Florence warned her. "You

don't know what it is! It's bad enough for him, but it's simple suicide

for you!"

"Well, I wanted you to hear it from me," Rachael submitted mildly.

"Do you mean to say you've decided, seriously, to do it?"

"Very seriously, I assure you!"

"How do you propose to do it?" Florence asked after a pause, during

which she stared with growing discomfort at her sister-in-law.

"The way other people do it," Rachael said with assumed lightness.

"Clarence agrees. There will be evidence."

Mrs. Haviland flushed.

"You think that's fair to Clarence?" she asked presently.

"I think that in any question of fairness between Clarence and me the

balance is decidedly in my favor!" Rachael said crisply. "Personally, I

shall have nothing to do with it, and Clarence very little. Charlie

Sturgis will represent me. I suppose Coates and Crandall will take care

of Clarence--I don't know. That's all there is to it!"

Her placid gaze roved about the ceiling. Mrs. Haviland gazed at her in

silence.

"Rachael," she said desperately, "will you TALK to someone--will you

talk to Gardner?"

"Why should I?" Rachael sat up on the couch, the loosened mass of her

beautiful hair falling about her shoulders. "What has Gardner or anyone

else to do with it? It's Clarence's business, and my business, and it

concerns nobody else!" she said warmly. "You look on from the outside.

I've borne it for seven years! I'm young, I'm only twenty-eight, and

what is my life? Keeping house for a man who insults me, and ignores

me, who puts me second to his daughter, and has put me second since our

wedding day--making excuses for him to his friends, giving up what I

want to do, never knowing from day to day what his mood will be, never

having one cent of money to call my own! I tell you there are days and

days when I'm too sick at heart to read, too sick at heart to think!

Last summer, for instance, when we were down at Easthampton with the

Parmalees, when everyone was so wild over bathing, and tennis, and

dancing, Clarence wasn't sober ONE MOMENT of the time, not one! One

night, when we were dancing--but I won't go into it!"

"I know," Florence said hastily, rather frightened at this magnificent

fury. "I know, dear, it's too bad--it's dreadful--it's a great shame.

But men are like that! Now Gardner--"

"All men aren't like that! Gardner does that sort of thing now and

then, I know," Rachael rushed on, "but Gardner is always sorry. Gardner

takes his place as a man of dignity in the world. I am nothing to

Clarence; I have never been to him one-tenth of what Billy is! I have

borne it, and borne it, and now I just can't--bear it--any longer!"

And Rachael, to her own surprise and disgust, burst into bitter crying,

and, stammering some incoherency about an aching head, she went to her

own room and flung herself across the bed. The suppressed excitement of

the last few days found relief in a long fit of sobbing; Florence did

not dare go near her. The older woman tried to persuade herself that

the resentment and bitterness of this unusual mood would be washed

away, and that Rachael, after a nap and a bath, would feel more like

herself, but nevertheless she went off to her game in a rather worried

frame of mind, and gave but an imperfect attention to the question of

hearts or lilies.

Rachael, heartily ashamed of what she would have termed her

schoolgirlish display of emotion, came slowly to herself, dozed over a

magazine, plunged into a cold bath, and at four o'clock dressed herself

exquisitely for Mrs. Whittaker's informal dinner. Glowing like a rose

in her artfully simple gown of pink and white checks, she went

downstairs.

Florence had come in late, bearing a beautiful bit of pottery, the

first prize, and was again in the throes of dressing, but Gardner was

downstairs restlessly wandering about the dimly lighted rooms and

halls. He was fond of Rachael, and as they walked up and down the lawn

together he tried, in a blunt and clumsy way, to show her his sympathy.

"Floss tells me you're about at the end of your rope--what?" said

Gardner. "Clarence is the limit, of course, but don't be too much in a

hurry, old girl. We'd be--we'd be awfully sorry to have you come to a

smash, don't you know--now!"

Thus Gardner. Rachael gave him a glimmering smile in the early dusk.

"Not much fun for me, Gardner," she said gravely.

"Sure it's not," Gardner answered, clearing his throat tremendously.

Neither spoke again until Florence came down, but later, in all

honesty, he told his wife that he had pitched into Rachael no end, and

she had agreed to go slow.

Florence, however, was not satisfied with so brief a campaign. She and

Rachael did not speak of the topic again until the last afternoon of

Rachael's stay. Then the visitor, coming innocently downstairs at tea

time, was a little confused to see that besides Mrs. Bowditch and her

oldest daughter, and old Mrs. Torrence, the Bishop and Mrs. Thomas were

calling. Instantly she suspected a trap.

"Rachael, dear," Florence said sweetly, when the greetings were over,

"will you take the bishop down to look at the sundial? I've been

boasting about it."

"You sound like a play, Florence," her sister-in-law said with a little

nervous laugh. "'Exit Rachael and Bishop, L.' Surely you've seen the

sundial, Bishop?"

"I had such a brief glimpse of it on the day of the tea," Bishop Thomas

said pleasantly, "that I feel as if I must have another look at that

inscription!" Smiling and benign, rather impressive in his clerical

black, the clergyman got to his feet, and turned an inviting smile to

Rachael.

"Shall I take you down, Bishop?" Charlotte asked, her eagerness to be

socially useful fading into sick apprehension at her mother's look.

"No, I'll go!" Rachael ended the little scene by catching up her wide

hat. "Come on, Bishop," she said courageously, adding, as soon as they

were out of hearing, "and if you're going to be dreadful, begin this

moment!"

"And why, pray, should I be dreadful?" the bishop asked, smiling

reproachfully. "Am I usually so dreadful? I don't believe it would be

possible, among these lovely roses"--he drew in a great breath of the

sweet afternoon air--"and with such a wonderful sunset telling us to

lift up our hearts." And sauntering contentedly along, the bishop gave

her an encouraging smile, but as Rachael continued to walk beside him

without raising her eyes, presently he added, whimsically: "Would it be

dreadful, Mrs. Breckenridge, if one saw a heedless little child--oh, a

sweet and dear, but a heedless little child--going too near the

cliffs--would it be dreadful to say: 'Look out, little child! There's a

terrible fall there, and the water's cold and dark. Be careful!'" The

bishop sat down on the carved stone bench that had been set in the

circle of shrubs that surrounded the sundial, and Rachael sat down, too.

"Well, what about the child?" he persisted, when there had been a

silence.

Rachael raised sombre eyes, her breast rose on a long sigh.

"I am not a child," she said slowly.

"Aren't we all children?" asked the bishop, mildly triumphant.

Rachael, sitting there in Florence's garden, looking down at the white

roofs of the village and the smooth sheet of blue that was Belvedere

Bay, felt a burning resentment enter her heart. How calm and smug and

sure of themselves they were, these bishops and Florences and old lady

Gregorys! How easy for them to advise and admonish, to bottle her up

with their little laws and platitudes, these good people married to

other good people, and wrapped in the warmth of mutual approval and

admiration! The bishop was talking--

"Children, yes, the best and wisest of us is no more than that," he was

saying dreamily, "and we must bear and forbear with each other. Not

easy? Of course it's not easy! But no cross no crown, you know. I have

known Clarence a great many years--"

"I am sorry to hurt Florence--God knows I'm sorry for the whole thing!"

Rachael said, "but you must admit that I am the best judge of this

matter. I've borne it long enough. My mind is made up. You and I have

always been good friends, Bishop Thomas"--she laid a beautiful hand

impulsively on his arm--"and you know that what you say has weight with

me. But believe me, I'm not jumping hastily into this: it's come after

long, serious thought. Clarence wants to be free as well--"

"Clarence does?" the clergyman asked, with a disapproving shake of his

head.

"He has said so," Rachael answered briefly.

"And what will your life be after this, my child?"

To this she responded merely with a shrug. Perhaps the bishop suspected

that such a calm confidence in the future indicated more or less

definite plans, for he gave her a shrewd and searching look, but there

was nothing to be said. The lovely lady continued to stare at the soft

turf with unsmiling eyes, and the clergyman could only watch her in

puzzled silence.

"After all," Rachael said presently, giving him a rueful glance, "what

are the statistics? One marriage in twelve fails--fails openly, I

mean--for of course there are hundreds that don't get that far. Sixty

thousand last year!"

"If those ARE the statistics," said the bishop warmly, "it is a

disgrace to a Christian country!"

"But you don't call this a Christian country?" Rachael said perversely.

"It is SUPPOSEDLY so," the clergyman asserted.

"Supposedly Christian," she mused, "and yet one marriage out of every

twelve ends in divorce, and you Christians--well, you don't CUT us! We

may not keep holy the Sabbath day, we may not honor our fathers and

mothers, we may envy our neighbor's goods, yes, and his wife, if we

like, but still--you don't refuse to come to our houses!"

"I don't know you in this mood," said Bishop Thomas coldly.

"Call it Neroism, or Commonsensism, or Modernism, or anything you

like," Rachael said with sudden fire, "but while you go on calling what

you profess Christianity, Bishop, you simply subscribe to an untruth.

You know what our lives are, myself and Florence and Gardner and

Clarence; is there a Commandment we don't break all day long and every

day? Do we give our coats away, do we possess neither silver nor gold

in our purses, do we love our neighbors? Why don't you denounce us? Why

don't you shun the women in your parish who won't have children as

murderers? Why don't you brand some of the men who come to your

church--men whose business methods you know, and I know, and all the

world knows--as thieves!"

"And what would my branding them as murderers and thieves avail?" asked

the bishop, actually a little pale now, and rising to face her as she

rose. "Are we to judge our fellowmen?"

"I'm not," Rachael said, suddenly weary, "but I should think you might.

It would be at least refreshing to have you, or someone, demonstrate

what Christianity is. It would be good for our souls. Instead," she

added bitterly, "instead, you select one little thing here, and one

little thing there, and putter, and tinker, and temporize, and gloss

over, and build big churches, with mortgages and taxes and insurance to

pay, in the name of Christianity! If I were little Annie Smith, down in

the village here, I could get a divorce for twenty-five dollars, and

you would never hear of it. But Clarence Breckenridge is a millionaire,

and the Breckenridges have gone to your church for a hundred years, and

so it's a scandal that must be averted if possible!"

"The church frowns on divorce," said the bishop sternly. "At the very

present moment the House of Bishops, to which I have the distinguished

honor to belong, is considering taking a decided stand in the matter.

Divorce is a sin--a sin against one of God's institutions. But when I

find a lady in this mood," he continued, with a sort of magnificent

forbearance, "I never attempt to combat her views, no matter how

extraordinarily jumbled and--and childish they are. As a clergyman, and

as an old friend, I am grieved when I see a hasty and an undisciplined

nature about to do that which will wreck its own happiness, but I can

only give a friendly warning, and pass on. I do not propose to defend

the institution to which I have dedicated my life before you or before

anyone. Shall we go back to the house?"

"Perhaps we had better," Rachael agreed. And as they went slowly along

the wide brick walk she added in a softened tone: "I do appreciate your

affectionate interest in--in us, Bishop. But--but it does exasperate

me, when so many strange things are done in the name of Christianity,

to have--well, Florence for instance--calmly decreeing that just these

other certain things shall NOT be done!"

"Then, because we can't all be perfect, it would be better not to try

to be good at all?" the bishop asked, restored to equanimity by what he

chose to consider an unqualified apology, and resuming his favorite

attitude of benignant adviser.

Rachael sighed wearily in the depth of her soul. She knew that kindly

admonitory tone, that complacent misconception of her meaning. She said

to herself that in a moment he would begin to ask himself questions,

and answer them himself.

"We are not perfect ourselves," said the clergyman benevolently, "yet

we expect perfection in others. Before we will even change our own

lives we like to look around and see what other people are doing.

Perfectly natural? Of course it's perfectly natural, but at the same

time it's one of the things we must fight. I shall have to tell you a

little story of our Rose, as I sometimes tell some of my boys at the

College of Divinity," continued the good man. Rose, an exemplary

unmarried woman of thirty, was the bishop's daughter. "Rose," resumed

her father, "wanted to study the violin when she was about twelve, and

her peculiar old pater decided that first she must learn to cook. Her

mother quite agreed with me, and the young lady was accordingly taken

out to the kitchen and introduced to some pots and pans. I also got her

some book, I've forgotten its name--her mother would remember;

'Complete Manual of Cookery'--something of that sort. A day or two

later I asked her mother how the cooking went. 'Oh,' she said, 'Rose

has been reading that book, and she knows more than all the rest of

us!'"

Rachael laughed generously. They had reached the house again now, and

Florence, glancing eagerly toward them, was charmed to see both

smiling. She felt that the bishop must have influenced Rachael, and

indeed the clergyman himself was sure that her mood was softer, and

found opportunity before he departed to say to his hostess in a low

tone that he fancied that they would hear no more of the whole

miserable business.

"Oh, Bishop, how wonderful of you!" said Florence thankfully.

CHAPTER VI

Two weeks later the news of the Breckenridge divorce burst like a bomb

in the social sky. Immediately pictures of the lovely wife, of

Clarence, of the town house and the country house began to flood the

evening papers, and even the morning journals found room for a column

or two of the affair on inside pages. Clarence was tracked to his

mountain retreat, and as much as possible was made of his refusal to be

interviewed. Mrs. Breckenridge was nowhere to be found.

The cold wind of publicity could not indeed reach her in the quiet

lanes and along the sandy shore of Quaker Bridge. Rachael, known to

everyone but her kind old landlady as "Mrs. Prescott," could even

glance interestedly at the papers now and then. Her identity, in three

long and peaceful months, was not even so much as suspected. She did

not mind the plain country table, the inconvenient old farmhouse; she

loved her new solitude. Unquestioned, she dreamed through the idle

days, reading, thinking, sleeping like a child. She spent long hours on

the seashore watching the lazy, punctual flow and tumble of the waves

that were never hurried, never delayed; her eyes followed the flashing

wings of the gulls, the even, steady upward beat of strong pinions, the

downward drifting through blue air that was of all motion the most

perfect.

And sometimes in those hours it seemed to Rachael that she was no more

in the great scheme of things than one of these myriad gulls, than one

of the grains of sand through which she ran her white, unringed

fingers. Clarence was a dream, Belvedere Bay was a dream; it was all a

hazy, dim memory now: the cards and the cocktails, the dancing and

tennis, the powder and lip-red in hot rooms and about glittering dinner

tables. What a hurry and bustle and rush it all was--for nothing. The

only actualities were the white sand and the cool green water, and the

summer sun beating down warmly upon her bare head.

She awakened every morning in a large, bright, bare room whose three

big windows looked into rustling maple boughs. The steady rushing of

surf could be heard just beyond the maples. Sometimes a soft fog

wrapped the trees and the lawn in its pale folds, and the bell down at

the lighthouse ding-donged through the whole warm, silent morning, but

more often there was sunshine, and Rachael took her book to the beach,

got into her stiff, dry bathing suit, in a small, hot bathhouse

furnished only by a plank bench and a few rusty nails, and plunged into

the delicious breakers she loved so well. Busy babies, digging on the

beach, befriended her, and she grew to love their sudden tears and more

sudden laughter, their stammered confidences, and the touch of their

warm, sandy little hands. She became an adept at pinning up their tiny

bagging undergarments, and at disentangling hat elastics from the soft

hair at the back of moist little necks. If a mother occasionally showed

signs of friendliness, Rachael accepted the overture pleasantly, but

managed to wander next day to some other part of the beach, and so

evade the definite beginning of a friendship.

The warm sunshine, flavored by the salty sea, soaked into her very

bones. Everything about Quaker Bridge was bare, and worn, and clean;

nothing was crowded, or hurried, or false. Barren dunes, and white,

bleaching sand, colorless little houses facing the elm-lined main

street, colorless planks outlining the road to the water; the

monotonous austerity, the pure severity of the little ocean village was

full of satisfying charm for her. If she climbed a sandy rise beyond

Mrs. Dimmick's cottage, and faced the north, she could see the white

roadway, winding down to Clark's Bar, where the ocean fretted year

after year to free the waters of the bay only twelve feet away. Beyond

on the slope, was the village known as Clark's Hills, a smother of

great trees with a weather-whipped spire and an occasional bit of roof

or fence in evidence, to show the habitation of man.

In other directions, facing east or west or south, there was nothing

but the sand, and the coarse straggling bushes that rooted in the sand,

and the clear blue dome of the sky. Rachael, whose life had been too

crowded, gloried in the honey-scented emptiness of the sand hills, the

measureless, heaving surface of the ocean, the dizzying breadth and

space in which, an infinitesimal speck, she moved.

She had sensibly taken her landlady, old Mrs. Dimmick, into her

confidence, and pleased to be part of the little intrigue, and perhaps

pleased as well to rent her two best rooms to this charming stranger,

the old lady protected the secret gallantly. It was all much more

simple than Rachael had feared it would be. Nobody questioned her,

nobody indeed paid attention to her; she wandered about in a blissful

isolation as good for her tired soul as was the primitive life she led

for her tired body.

Yet every one of the idle days left its mark upon her spirit; gradually

a great many things that had seemed worth while in the old life showed

their true and petty and sordid natures now; gradually the purifying

waters of solitude washed her soul clean. She began to plan for the

future--a future so different from the crowded and hurried past!

Warren Gregory's letters came regularly, postmarked London, Paris,

Rome. They were utterly and wholly satisfying to Rachael, and they went

far to make these days the happiest in her life. Her heart would throb

like a girl's when she saw, on the little drop-leaf table in the

hallway, the big square envelope addressed in the doctor's fine hand;

sometimes--again like a girl--she carried it down to the beach before

breaking the seal, thrilled with a thousand hopes, unready to put them

to the test. Yesterday's letter had said: "My dearest,"--had said: "Do

you realize that I will see you in five weeks?" Could to-day's be half

as sweet?

She was never disappointed. The strong tide of his devotion for her

rose steadily through letter after letter; in August the glowing

letters of July seemed cold by contrast, in September every envelope

brought her a flaming brand to add to the fires that were beginning to

blaze within her. In late September there was an interval; and Rachael

told herself that now he was on the ocean--now he was on the ocean--

By this time the digging babies were gone, the beach was almost

deserted. Little office clerks, men and women, coming down for the two

weeks of rest that break the fifty of work, still arrived on the late

train Saturday, and went away on the last train two weeks from the

following Sunday, but there were no more dances at the one big hotel,

and some of the smaller hotels were closed. The tall, plain, attractive

woman--with the three children and the baby, who drove over from

Clark's Hills every day, and, who, for all her graying hair and

sun-bleached linens, seemed to be of Rachael's own world--still brought

her shrieking and splashing trio to the beach, but she had confided to

Mrs. Dimmick, who had known her for many summers, that even her long

holiday was drawing to a close. Mrs. Dimmick brought extra blankets

down from the attic, and began to talk of seeing her daughter in

California. Rachael, drinking in the glory of the dying summer, found

each day more exquisite than the last, and gratified her old hostess by

expressing her desire to spend all the rest of her life in Quaker

Bridge.

She had, indeed, come to like the villagers thoroughly; not the summer

population, for the guests at all summer hotels are alike

uninteresting, but for the quiet life that went on year in and year out

in the little side streets: the women who washed clothes and swept

porches, who gardened with tow-headed babies tumbling around them, who

went on Sundays to the little bald-faced church at ten o'clock. Rachael

got into talk with them, trying to realize what it must be to walk a

hot mile for the small transaction of selling a dozen eggs for thirty

cents, to spend a long morning carefully darning an old, clean

Nottingham lace curtain that could be replaced for three dollars. She

read their lives as if they had been an absorbing book laid open for

her eyes. The coming of the Holladay baby, the decline and death of old

Mrs. Bird, the narrow escape of Sammy Tew from drowning, and the

thorough old-fashioned thrashing that Mary Trimble gave her oldest son

for taking a little boy like Sammy out beyond the "heads,"--all these

things sank deep into the consciousness of the new Rachael. She liked

the whitewashed cottages with their blazing geraniums and climbing

honeysuckle, and the back-door yards, with chickens fluffing in the

dust, and old men, seated on upturned old boats, smoking and whittling

as they watched the babies "while Lou gets her work caught up".

October came in on a storm, the most terrifying storm Rachael had ever

seen. Late in the afternoon of September's last golden day a wind began

to rise among the dunes, and Rachael, who, wrapped in a white wooly

coat and deep in a book, had been lying for an hour or two on the

beach, was suddenly roused by a shower of sand, and sat up to look at

the sky. Clouds, low and gray, were moving rapidly overhead, and

although the tide was only making, and high water would not be due for

another hour, the waves, emerald green, swift, and capped with white,

were already touching the landmost water-mark.

Quickly getting to her feet, she started briskly for home, following

the broken line of kelp and weeds, grasses, driftwood, and cocoanut

shells that fringed the tide-mark, and rather fascinated by the sudden

ominous change in sea and sky. In the little village there was great

clapping of shutters and straining of clotheslines, distracted,

bareheaded women ran about their dooryards, doors banged, everywhere

was rush and flutter.

"D'clare if don't think th' folks at Clark's Hills going to be shut of

completely," said Mrs. Dimmick, bustling about with housewifely

activity, and evidently, like all the village and like Rachael herself,

a little exhilarated by the oncoming siege.

"What will they do?" Rachael demanded, unhooking a writhing hammock

from the porch as the old woman briskly dragged the big cane rockers

indoors.

"Oh, ther' wunt no hurt come t'um," Mrs. Dimmick said. "But--come an

awful mean tide, Clark's Bar is under water. They'll jest have to wait

until she goes down, that's all."

"Shell I bring up some candles from suller; we ain't got much

karosene!" Florrie, the one maid, demanded excitedly. Chess, the hired

man, who was Florrie's "steady," began to bring wood in by the armful,

and fling it down by the airtight stove that had been set up only a few

days before.

The wind began to howl about the roof; trees in the dooryard rocked and

arched. Darkness fell at four o'clock, and the deafening roar of the

ocean seemed an actual menace as the night came down. Chess and

Florrie, after supper, frankly joined the family group in the

sitting-room, a group composed only of Rachael and Mrs. Dimmick and two

rather terrified young stenographers from the city.

These two did not go to bed, but Rachael went upstairs as usual at ten

o'clock, and drifted to sleep in a world of creaking, banging, and

roaring. A confusion and excited voices below stairs brought her down

again rather pale, in her long wrapper, at three. The Barwicks, mother,

father, and three babies, had left their beach cottage in the night and

the storm to seek safer shelter and the welcome sound of other voices

than their own.

After that there was little sleep for anyone. Still in the roaring

darkness the clocks presently announced morning, and a neighbor's boy,

breathless, dripping in tarpaulins, was blown against the door, and

burst in to say with youthful relish that the porches of the Holcomb

house were under water, and the boardwalk washed away, and folks said

that the road was all gone betwixt here and the lighthouse. Rain was

still falling in sheets, and the wind was still high. Rachael braved

it, late in the afternoon, to go out and see with her own eyes that the

surf was foaming and frothing over the deserted bandstand at the end of

the main street, and got back to the shelter of the house wet and

gasping, and with the first little twist of personal fear at her heart.

Suppose that limitless raging green wall down there rose another

ten--another twenty--feet, swept deep and roaring and resistless over

little Quaker Bridge, plunged them all for a few struggling, hopeless

moments into its emerald depths, and then washed the little loosely

drifting bodies that had been men and women far out to sea again?

What could one do? No trains came into Quaker Bridge to-day; it was

understood that there were washouts all along the line. Rachael sat in

the dark, stuffy little sitting-room with the placid Barwick baby

drowsing in her lap, and at last her face reflected the nervous

uneasiness of the other women. Every time an especially heavy rush of

rain or wind struck the unsubstantial little house, Mrs. Barwick said,

"Oh, my!" in patient, hopeless terror, and the two young women looked

at each other with a quick hissing breath of fear.

The night was long with horror. There were other refugees in Mrs.

Dimmick's house now; there were in all fifteen people sitting around

her little stove listening to the wind and the ocean. The old lady

herself was the most cheerful of the group, although Rachael and one or

two of the others managed an appearance at least of calm.

"Declare," said the hostess, more than once, "dunt see what we's all

thinkin' of not to git over to Clark's Hills 'fore the bar was under

water! They've got sixty-foot elevation there!"

"I'd just as soon try to get there now," said Miss Stokes of New York

eagerly.

"There's waves eight feet high washin' over that bar," Ernest Barwick

said, and something in the simple words made little Miss Stokes look

sick for a moment.

"What's our elevation?" Rachael asked.

"'Bout--" Mr. Barwick paused. "But you can't tell nothing by that," he

contented himself with remarking after a moment's thought.

"But I never heard--I never HEARD of the sea coming right over a whole

village!" Rachael hated herself for the fear that dragged the words

out, and the white lips that spoke them.

"Neither did I!" said half a dozen voices. There was silence while the

old clock on the mantel wheezed out a lugubrious eight strokes. "LORD,

how it rains!" muttered Emily Barwick.

Nine o'clock--ten o'clock. The young women, the old woman, the maid and

man who would be married some day if they lived, the husband and wife

who had been lovers like them only a few years ago, and who now had

these three little lives to guard, all sat wrapped in their own

thoughts. Rachael sat staring at the stove's red eye, thinking,

thinking, thinking. She thought of Warren Gregory; his steamer must be

in now, he must be with his mother in the old house, and planning to

see her any day. To-morrow--if there was a to-morrow--might bring his

telegram. What would his life be if he might never see her again? She

could not even leave him a note, or a word; on this eve of their

meeting, were they to be parted forever? Should she never tell him how

dearly--how dearly--she loved him? Tears came to her eyes, her heart

was wrung with exquisite sorrow.

She thought of Billy--poor little Billy--who had never had a mother,

who needed a mother so sadly, and of her own mother, dead now, and of

the old blue coat of thirteen years ago, and the rough blue hat. She

thought of her great-grandmother in the little whitewashed California

cottage under the shadow of the blue mountains, with the lilacs and

marigolds in the yard. And colored by her new great love, and by the

solemn fears of this endless night, Rachael found a tenderness in her

heart for all those shadowy figures that had played a part in her life.

At midnight there came a thundering crash on the ocean side of the

house.

"Oh, God, IT'S THE SEA!" screamed Emily Barwick. They all rushed to the

door and flung it open, and in a second were out in the wild blackness

of the night. Still the roaring and howling and shrieking of the

elements, still the infuriated booming of the surf, but--thank God--no

new sound. There was no break in the flying darkness above them; the

street was a running sheet of water in the dark.

Yet strangely they all went back into the house vaguely quieted.

Rachael presently said that no matter what was going to happen, she was

too cold and tired to stay up any longer, and went upstairs to bed.

Miss Stokes and Miss McKim settled themselves in their chairs; Emily

Barwick went to sleep with her head against her husband's thin young

shoulder. Somebody suggested coffee, and there was a general move

toward the kitchen.

Rachael, a little bewildered, woke in heavenly sunlight in exactly the

position she had taken when she crept into bed the night before. For a

few minutes she lay staring at the bright old homely room, and at the

clock ticking briskly toward nine.

"Dear Lord, what a thing sunshine is?" she said then slowly. No need to

ask of the storm with this celestial reassurance flooding the room. But

after a few moments she got up and went to the window. The trees,

battered and torn, were ruffling such leaves as were left them

gallantly in the wind, the paths still ran yellow water, the roadway

was a muddy waste, eaves were still gurgling, and everywhere was the

drip and splash of water. But the sky was clear and blue, and the air

as soft as milk.

As eager as a child Rachael dressed and ran downstairs, and was out in

the new world. The fresh wind whipped a glorious color into her face;

the whole of sea and sky and earth seemed to be singing.

Trees were down, fences were down, autumn gardens were all a wreck; and

the ocean, when she came to the shore, was still rolling wild and high.

But it was blue now, and the pure sky above it was blue, and there was

utter protection and peace in the sunny air. Landmarks all along the

shore were washed away, and beyond the first line of dunes were pools

left by the great tide, scummy and sinking fast into the sand, to leave

only a fringe of bubbles behind. Minor wreckages of all sorts lay

scattered all along the beach: poles and ropes, boxes and barrels.

Rachael walked on and on, breathing deep, swept out of herself by the

fresh glory of the singing morning. Presently she would go back, and

there would be Warren's letter, or his telegram, or perhaps himself,

and then their golden days would begin--their happy time! But even

Warren to-day could not intrude upon her mood of utter gratitude and

joy in just living--just being young and alive in a world that could

hold such a sea and such a sky.

A full mile from the village, along the ocean shore, a stream came down

from under a cliff, a stream, as Rachael and investigating children had

often proved to their own satisfaction, that rose in a small but

eminently satisfactory cave. The storm had washed several great smooth

logs of driftwood into the cave, and beyond them to-day there was such

a gurgling and churning going on that Rachael, eager not to miss any

effect of the storm, stepped cautiously inside.

The augmented little river was three times its usual size, and was

further made unmanageable by the impeding logs swept in by the high

tide. Straw and weeds and rubbish of every description choked its

course, and little foaming currents and backwaters almost filled the

cave with their bubbling and swirling.

Rachael, with a few casual pushes of a sturdy little shoe, accomplished

such surprising results in freeing and directing the stream that she

fell upon it in sudden serious earnest, grasping a long pole the better

to push obstructing matters aside, and growing rosy and breathless over

her self-imposed and senseless undertaking.

She had just loosened a whole tangle of wreckage, and had straightened

herself up with a long, triumphant "Ah-h!" of relief, as the current

rushed it away, when a shadow fell over the mouth of the cave. Looking

about in quick, instinctive fear, she saw Warren Gregory smiling at her.

For only one second she hesitated, all girlhood's radiant shyness in

her face. Then she was in his arms, and clinging to him, and for a few

minutes they did not speak, eyes and lips together in the wild rapture

of meeting.

"Oh, Greg--Greg--Greg!" Rachael laughed and cried and sang the words

together. "When did you come, and how did you get here? Tell me--tell

me all about it!" But before he could begin to answer her their eager

joy carried them both far away from all the conversational landmarks,

and again they had breath only for monosyllables, instinct only to

cling to each other.

"My girl, my own girl!" Warren Gregory said. "Oh, how I've missed

you--and you're more beautiful than ever--did you know it? More

beautiful even than I remembered you to be, and that was beautiful

enough!"

"Oh, hush!" she said, laughing, her fingers over the mouth that praised

her, his arm still holding her tight.

"I'll never hush again, my darling! Never, never in all the years we

spend together! I am going to tell you a hundred times a day that you

are the most beautiful, and the dearest--Oh, Rachael, Rachael, shall I

tell you something? It's October! Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, I suppose I do!" She laughed, and colored exquisitely, drawing

herself back the length of their linked arms.

"Do you know what you're going to BE in about thirty-six hours?"

"Now--you embarrass me! Was--was anything settled?"

"Shall you like being Mrs. Gregory?"

"Greg--" Tears came to her eyes. "You don't know how much!" she said in

a whisper.

They sat down on a great log, washed silver white with long years of

riding unguided through the seas, and all the wonderful world of blue

sky and white sand might have been made for them. Rachael's hand lay in

her lover's, her glorious eyes rarely left his face. Browned by his

summer of travel, she found him better than ever to look upon; hungry

after these waiting months, every tone of his voice held for her a

separate delight.

"Did you ever dream of happiness like this, Rachael?"

"Never--never in my wildest flights. Not even in the past few months!"

"What--didn't trust me?"

"No, not that. But I've been rebuilding, body and soul. I didn't think

of the future or the past. It was all present."

"With me," he said, "it was all future. I've been counting the days.

I've not done that since I was at school! Rachael, do you remember our

talk the night after the Berry Stokes' dinner?"

"Do I remember it?"

"Ah, my dear, if anyone had said that night that in six months we would

be sitting here, and that you would have promised yourself to me! You

don't know what my wife is going to mean to me, my dearest. I can't

believe it yet!"

"It is going to mean everything in life to me," she said seriously. "I

mean to be the best wife a man ever had. If loving counts--"

"Do you mean that?" he said eagerly. "Say it--do you mean that you love

me?"

"Love you?" She stood up, pressing both hands over her heart as if

there were real pain there. For a few paces she walked away from him,

and, as he followed her, she turned upon him the extraordinary beauty

of her face transfigured with strong emotion.

"Greg," she said quietly, "I didn't know there was such love! I've

heard it called fire and pain and restlessness, but this thing is ME!

It is burning in me like flame, it is consuming me. To be with

you"--she caught his wrist with one hand, and with her free hand

pointed out across the smiling ocean--"to be with you and KNOW you were

mine, I could walk straight out into that water, and end it all, and be

glad--glad--glad of the chance! I loved you yesterday, but what is this

to-day, when you have kissed me, and held me in your arms!" Her voice

broke on something like a sob, but her eyes were smiling. "All my life

I've been asleep," said Rachael. "I'm awake now--I'm awake now! I begin

to realize how helpless one is--to realize what I should have done if

you hadn't come--"

"My darling," Gregory said, his arms about her "what else--feeling as

we feel--could I have done?"

Held in his embrace, she rested her hands upon his shoulders, and

looked wistfully into his eyes.

"It is as WE feel, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, it isn't only me?

You--you love me?"

Looking down at her dropped, velvety lashes, feeling the warm strong

beat of her heart against his, holding close as he did all her glowing

and fragrant beauty, Warren Gregory felt it the most exquisite moment

of his life. Her youth, her history, her wonderful poise and sureness

so intoxicatingly linked with all a girl's unexpected shyness and

adorable uncertainties, all these combined to enthrall the man who had

admired her for many years and loved her for more than one.

"Love you?" he asked, claiming again the lips she yielded with such a

delicious widening of her eyes and quickening of breath.

"You see, Warren," she said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give myself

to you with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly have. I don't

want to coquette and delay. I want to be your wife, and to learn your

faults, and have you learn mine, and settle down into harness--one

year, five years--ten years married! Oh, you don't know how I LONG to

be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit being nearly forty.

Forty--doesn't it sound SETTLED, and sedate--and that's what I want.

I--I shall love getting gray, and feeling that you and I don't care so

much about going places, don't you know? We'll like better just being

home together, won't we? We're older than most people now, aren't we?"

He laughed aloud at the bright face so enchantingly young in its

restored beauty. He had expected to find her charming, but in this new

phase of girlishness, of happiness, she was a thousand times more

charming than he had dreamed. It was hard to believe that this eager

girl in a striped blue and yellow and purple skirt, and rough white

crash hat, was the bored, the remote, the much-feared Mrs. Clarence

Breckenridge. Something free and sweet and virginal had come back to

her, or been born in her. She was like no phase of the many phases in

which he had known her; she was a Rachael who had never known the

sordid, the disillusioning side of life. Even her seriousness had the

confident, eager quality of youth, and her gayety was as pure as a

child's. She had cast off the old sophistication, the old recklessness

of speech; she was not even interested in the old associates. The world

for her was all in him and their love for each other, and she walked

back to Quaker Bridge, at his side, too wholly swept away from all

self-consciousness to know or to care that they were at once the target

for all eyes.

A wonderful day followed, many wonderful days. Doctor Gregory's great

touring car and his livened man were at Mrs. Dimmick's door when they

got back, an incongruous note in little Quaker Bridge, still gasping

from the great storm.

"Your car?" Rachael said. "You drove down?"

"Yesterday. I put up at Valentine's--George Valentine's, you know, at

Clark's Hills."

"Oh, that's my nice lady--gray haired, and with three children?"

Rachael said eagerly. "Do you know her?"

"Know her? Valentine is my closest associate. They meet us in town

to-morrow: he's to be best man. You'll have to have them to dinner once

a month for the rest of your life!"

The picture brought her happy color, the shy look he loved.

"I'm glad, Greg. I like her immensely!"

They were at the car; she must flush again at the chauffeur's greeting,

finding a certain grave significance, a certain acceptance, in his

manner.

"Wife and baby well, Martin?"

"Very well, thank you, Mrs. Breckenridge."

"Still in Belvedere Hills?"

"Well, just at present, yes, Madam."

"You see, I am looking for suitable quarters for all hands," Doctor

Gregory said, his laugh drowning hers, his eyes feasting on her

delicious confusion. She was aware that feminine eyes from the house

were watching her. Presently she had kissed Mrs. Dimmick good-bye.

Warren had put his man in the tonneau; he would take the wheel himself

for the three hours' run into town.

"Good-bye, my dear!" said the old lady, adding with an innocent vacuity

of manner quite characteristic of Quaker Bridge. "Let me know when the

weddin's goin' to be!"

"I'll let you know right now," said Doctor Gregory, who, gloved and

coated, was bustling about the car, deep in the mysterious rites

incidental to starting. "It's going to be to-morrow!"

"Good grief!" exclaimed Mrs. Dimmick delightedly. "Well," she added,

"folks down here think you've got an awfully pretty bride!"

"I'm glad she's up to the standard down here," Warren Gregory observed.

"Nobody seems to think much of her looks up in the city!"

Rachael laughed and leaned from her place beside the driver to kiss the

old lady again and to wave a general good-bye to Florrie and Chess and

the group on the porch. As smoothly as if she were launched in air the

great car sprang into motion; the storm-blown cottages, the battered

dooryards, the great shabby trees over the little post office all swept

by. They passed the turning that led to Clark's Bar, and a weather-worn

sign-post that read "Quaker Bridge, 1 mile." It was not a dream, it was

all wonderfully true: this was Greg beside her, and they were going to

be married!

Rachael settled back against the deep, soft cushions in utter content.

To be flying through the soft Indian summer sunshine, alone with Greg,

to actually touch his big shoulder with her own, to command his

interest, his laughter, his tenderness, at will--after these lonely

months it was a memorable and an enchanting experience. Their talk

drifted about uncontrolled, as talk after long silence must: now it was

a waiter on the ocean liner of whom Gregory spoke, or perhaps the story

of a small child's rescue from the waves, from Rachael. They spoke of

the roads, splendidly hard and clean after the rain, and of the

villages through which they rushed.

But over their late luncheon, in a roadside inn, the talk fell into

deeper grooves, their letters, their loneliness, and their new plans,

and when the car at last reached the traffic of the big bridge, and

Rachael caught her first glimpse of the city under its thousand smoking

chimneys, there had entered into their relationship a new sacred

element, something infinitely tender and almost sad, a dependence upon

each other, a oneness in which Rachael could get a foretaste of the

exquisite communion so soon to be.

They were spinning up the avenue, through a city humming with the first

reviving breath of winter. They were at the great hotel, and Rachael

was laughing in Elinor Vanderwall's embrace. The linen shop, the

milliner, a dinner absurdly happy, and one of the new plays--a sunshiny

morning when she and Elinor breakfasted in their rooms, and opened box

after box of gowns and hats--the hours fled by like a dream.

"Nervous, Rachael?" asked Miss Vanderwall of the vision that looked out

from Rachael's mirror.

"Not a bit!" the wife-to-be answered, feeling as she said it that her

hands, busy with long gloves, were shaking, and her knees almost

unready to support her.

"It must be wonderful to marry a man like Greg," said the bridesmaid

thoughtfully. "He simply IS everything and HAS everything--"

"Ah, Elinor, it's wonderful to marry the man you love!" Rachael turned

from the mirror, her blue eyes misted with tears under the brim of her

wedding hat.

"YOU!" Elinor smiled. "That I should live to see it! You--in love!"

"And unashamed, and proud of it!" Rachael said with a tremulous laugh.

"Are you all ready? Shall we go down?" She turned at the door and put

one arm about her friend. "Kiss me, Elinor, and wish me joy," said she.

"I don't have to!" asserted Miss Vanderwall, with a hearty kiss

nevertheless, "for it will be your own fault entirely if there's ever

the littlest, teeniest cloud in the sky!"

END OF BOOK I

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

Yet, even then, as Rachael Gregory admitted to herself months later,

there had been a cloud in the sky--a cloud so tiny and so vague that

for many days she had been able to banish it in the flooding sunshine

all about her whenever it crossed her vision.

But it was there, and after a while other tiny clouds came to bear it

company, and to make a formidable shadow that all her philosophy could

not drive away. Philosophy is not the bride's natural right; the

honeymoon is a time of unreason; a crumpled rose-leaf in those first

uncertain weeks may loom larger than all the far more serious storms of

the years to come.

Rachael, loving at last, was overwhelmed, intoxicated, carried beyond

all sanity by the passion that possessed her.

When Warren Gregory came to find her at Quaker Bridge on that

unforgettable morning after the storm, a chance allusion to Mrs.

Valentine, the charming unknown lady with the gray hair, had distracted

Rachael's thoughts from the point at issue. But later on, during the

long drive, she had remembered it again.

"But Greg, dear, did you tell me that you and Doctor Valentine drove

down yesterday in all that frightful storm?"

"No, no, of course not, my child; we came down late the night

before--why, yesterday we couldn't get as far as the gate! Mrs.

Valentine's brother was there, and we played thirty-two rubbers of

bridge! Sweet situation, you two miles away, and me held up after three

months of waiting!"

She said to herself, with a little pain at her heart, that she didn't

understand it. It was all right, of course, whatever Greg did was all

right, but she did not understand it. To be so near, to have that

hideous war of wind and water raging over the world, and not to come

somehow--to swim or row or ride to her, to bring her delicious

companionship and reassurance out of the storm! Why, had she known that

Greg was so near no elements that ever raged could have held her--

But of course, she was reminding herself presently, Greg had never been

to Quaker Bridge, he had no reason to suppose her in actual danger;

indeed, perhaps the danger had always been more imagined than real. If

his hosts had been merely bored by the weather, merely driven to cards,

how should he be alarmed?

"Did the Valentines know what a tide we were having in Quaker Bridge?"

she asked, after a while.

"Never dreamed it; didn't know we'd been cut off until it was all

over!" That was reassuring, at least. "And, you see, I couldn't say

much about our plans. Alice Valentine's all wool, of course, but she's

anything but a yard wide! She wouldn't have understood--not that it

matters, but it was easier not! She was sweet to you at the wedding,

and she'll ask us to dinner, and you two will get along splendidly. But

she's not as--big as George."

"You mean, she doesn't like the--divorce part of it?"

"Or words to that effect," the doctor answered comfortably. "Of course,

she'd never have said a word. But they are sort of simple and

old-fashioned. George understands--that's all I care about. Do you see?"

"I see," she answered slowly. But when he spoke again the sunshine came

back to her heart; he had planned this, he had planned that, he had

wired Elinor, the power boat was ready. She was a woman, after all, and

young, and the bright hours of shopping, of being admired and envied,

and, above all, of being so newly loved and protected, were opening

before her. What woman in the world had more than she, what woman

indeed, she asked herself, as he turned toward her his keen, smiling

look of solicitude and devotion, had one-tenth as much?

Later on, in that same day, there was another tiny shadow. Rachael,

however, had foreseen this moment, and met it bravely.

"How's your mother, Greg?" she asked suddenly.

"Fine," he answered, and with a swift smile for her he added, "and

furious!"

"No--is she really furious?" Rachael asked, paling.

"Now, my dearest heart," Warren Gregory said with an air of authority

that she found strangely thrilling and sweet, "from this moment on make

up your mind that what my good mother does and says is absolutely

unimportant to you and me! She has lived her life, she is old, and

sick, and unreasonable, and whatever we did wouldn't please her, and

whatever anyone does, doesn't satisfy her anyway! In forty years--in

less than that, as far as I'm concerned--you and I'll be just as bad.

My mother acted like a martyr on the steamer; she was about as gay with

her old friends in London as you or I'd be at a funeral; she had an air

of lofty endurance and forbearance all the way, and, as I said to

Margaret Clay in Paris, the only time I really thought she was enjoying

herself was when she had to be hustled into a hospital, and for a day

or two there we really thought she was going to have pneumonia!"

Rachael's delightful laugh rang out spontaneously from utter relief of

heart.

"Oh, Greg, you're delicious! Tell me about old Lady Frothingham, is she

difficult, too? And how's pretty Magsie Clay?"

"Now, if we're married to-morrow," the doctor Went on, too much

absorbed in his topic to be lightly distracted. "But do you hear me,

Ma'am? How does it sound?"

"It sounds delicious! Go on!"

"If we're married to-morrow, I say--it could be to-day just as well,

but I suppose you girls have to buy clothes, and have your hands

manicured, and so on--"

"You know we do, to say nothing of lying awake all night talking about

our beaux!"

"Well"--he conceded it somewhat reluctantly--"then, to-morrow, some

time before I go with Valentine to call for you, I'll go down to see my

mother. She'll kiss me, and sigh, and feel martyred. In a month or two

she'll call on me at the office. 'Why don't you and your wife come to

see me, James?' 'Would you like us to, Mother? We fancied you were

angry at us.' 'I am sorry, my son, of course, but I have never been

angry. Will you come to-morrow night?' And when we go, my dear, you'd

never dream that there was anything amiss, I assure you!"

"I'll make her love me!" said Rachael, smiling tenderly.

"Perhaps some day you'll have a very powerful argument," he said with a

significant glance that brought the quick blood to her face. "Mother

couldn't resist that!"

She did not answer. It was a part of this new freshness and purity of

aspect that she could not answer.

"You asked about Margaret Clay," the doctor remembered presently. "She

was the same old sixpence, only growing up now; she owns to

nineteen--isn't she more than that? She always did romance and yarn so

much about herself that you can't believe anything."

"She's about twenty-one, perhaps no more than twenty," Rachael said,

after some thought. "Did they say anything about Parker and Leila?"

"No, but the old lady can't do much harm there. She'll not last another

six months. She may leave Margaret a slice, but it won't be much of a

slice, for Parker could fight if it was. Leila's pretty safe. We'll

have to go to that wedding, by the way!"

"Oh, Greg, the fun of going places together!" She was her happiest self

again. His mother and Alice Valentine and everything else but their

great joy was forgotten as they lingered over their luncheon and

planned for their wedding day.

If they could only have been alone together, always, thought the

new-made wife, when two perfect weeks on the powerful motor boat were

over, and all the society editors were busily announcing that Doctor

and Mrs. James Warren Gregory were furnishing their luxurious apartment

in the Rotterdam, where they would spend the winter. They were so happy

together; there was never enough time to talk and to be silent, never

enough of their little luncheons all by themselves, their theatre

trips, their afternoon drives through the sweet, clear early winter

sunshine on the Park.

Always in the later years Rachael could feel the joy of these days

again when she caught the scent of fresh violets. Never a day passed

that Warren did not send her or bring her a fragrant boxful. They

quivered on the breast of her gown, and on her dressing-table they made

her bedroom sweet. Now and then when she and Warren were to be alone

she braided her dark hair and wound it about her head, tucking a few

violets against the rich plaits, conscious that the classic simplicity

of the arrangement enhanced her beauty, and was pleased in his pleasure.

It suited her whim to carry out the little affectation in her soaps and

toilet waters; he could not pick up her handkerchief or hold her wrap

for her without freeing the delicate faint odor of her favorite flower.

When they met downtown for dinner there was always the little ceremony

of finding the florist, and all the operas this winter were mingled for

Rachael with the most exquisite fragrance in the world.

These days were perfect. It was only when the outside world entered

their paradise that anything less than perfect happiness entered, too.

Rachael's old friends--Judy Moran, Elinor, and the Villalongas--said,

and said with truth, that she had changed. She had not tried to change,

but it was hard for her to get the old point of view now, to laugh at

the old jokes, to listen to the old gossip. She had been cold and

wretched only a year before, but she had had the confident

self-sufficiency of a gypsy who walks bareheaded and irresponsible

through a world whose treasure will never come her way. Now Rachael,

tremulous and afraid, was the guardian of the great treasure, she knew

now what love meant, and she could no longer face even the thought of a

life without love.

Tirelessly, and with increasing satisfaction, she studied her husband's

character, finding, like all new wives, that almost all her

preconceived ideas of him had been wrong. Like all the world, she had

always fancied Greg something of an autocrat, positive almost to

stubbornness in his views.

Now it was amusing to discover that he was really a rather mild person,

except where his work was concerned, rarely taking the initiative in

either praising or blaming anybody or anything, deeply influenced by

the views of other persons, and content to be rather a listener and

onlooker than an active participant in what did not immediately concern

him. Rachael found this, for some subtle reasons of her own, highly

pleasing. It made her less afraid of her husband's criticism, and

spared her many of those tremors common to the first months of married

life. Also, it gave her an occasional chance to influence him, even to

protect him from his own indifference to this issue or that.

She laughed at him, accusing him of being an impostor. Why, everyone

thought Dr. Warren Gregory, with his big scowl and his firm-set jaw,

was an absolute Tartar, she exulted, when as a matter of fact he was

only a little boy afraid of his wife! He hated, she learned, to be

uncertain as to just the degree of dressing expected of him on

different occasions, he hated to enter hotels by the wrong doors, to

hear her dispraise an opera generally approved, or find good in a book

branded by the critics as worthless. With all his pride in her beauty,

he could not bear to have her conspicuous; if her laughter or her

unusual voice attracted any attention in a public place, she could see

that it made him uncomfortable. These things Rachael might have

considered flaws in another man. In Warren they were only deliciously

amusing, and his reliance upon her, where she had expected only

absolute self-possession from him, seemed to make him more her own.

Rachael, daughter of wandering adventurers, had a thousand times more

assurance than he. In her secret heart she had no regard for any social

law; society was a tool to be used, not a weight under which one

struggled helplessly. She dictated where he followed precedent; she

laughed where he was filled with apprehension. Seriously, she set her

wits and her love to the task of accustoming him to joy, and day by day

he flung off the old, half-defined reluctances that still bound him,

and entered more fully into the delights of the care-free, radiant

hours that lay before them.

His wife saw the change in him, and rejoiced. But what she did not see,

as the months went on, was the no less marked change in herself. As

Warren's nature expanded, and as he began to reach quite naturally for

the various pleasures all about him, Rachael's soul experienced an

alteration almost directly opposed.

She became thoughtful, almost reserved, she began to show a certain

respect for convention--not for the social conventions at which she had

always laughed, and still laughed, but for the fundamental laws of

truth, simplicity, and cleanness, upon which the ideal of civilization,

at least, is based. She noticed that she was beginning to like "good"

persons, even homely, dowdy, good persons, like Alice and George

Valentine. She lost her old appetite for scandal, for ugly stories, for

reckless speech.

Warren, freed once and for all from his old prejudice, found nothing

troublesome now in the thought that she had been another man's wife; it

was a common situation, it was generally approved. As in other things,

he had had stupidly conventional ideas about it once--that was all. But

Rachael winced at the sound of the word "divorce," not because of her

own divorce, but at the thought that some other man and woman had

promised in their first love what later they could not fulfil, and

hated each other now where they had loved each other once, at the

thought that perhaps--perhaps one of them loved the other still!

"Divorce is--monstrous," she said soberly to her husband in one of

their hours of perfect confidence.

"How can we say it, of all persons, my darling? Don't be hidebound!"

"No," she smiled reluctantly, "I suppose we can't. But--but I never

feel like a divorced woman, Warren, I feel like a different woman, but

not as if that term fitted me. It sounds so--coarse. Don't you think it

does?"

"No, I never thought of it quite that way. Everyone makes mistakes," he

answered cheerfully.

"Don't you care--that it's true of me?" she asked.

"Are you trying to make me jealous, you gypsy!" he laughed. But there

was no answering laughter in her face.

"Yes, perhaps I am," she admitted, as if she were a little surprised

that it was so. And in her next slowly worded sentence she discovered

for herself another truth. "I mind it, Warren!" she said. "I wish, with

all my heart, that it wasn't so!"

"That isn't very consistent, sweet. Your life made you what you were,

the one woman in the world I could ever have loved. Why quarrel with

the process?"

"I wish you cared!" she said wistfully.

"Cared?"

"Yes--suffered over it--objected. Then I could keep proving to you that

I never in my life loved anyone, man, woman, or child, until now!"

"But I believe that, my darling!"

She smiled at his wide, innocent look, a mother's amused yet hopeless

smile, and as they rose from their late luncheon he put his arm about

her and tipped her beautiful face up toward his own.

"Don't you realize, my darling, that just as you are, you are perfect

to me--not nearly perfect, or ninety-nine per cent. perfect, but

pressed down and running over, a thousand per cent., a million per

cent.?" he asked.

Her dark beauty glowed; she was more lovely than ever in her exquisite

content.

"Oh, Warren, if you'd only say that to me over and over!" she begged.

"Dear Heaven, hear the woman! What else DO I do?"

"Oh, I don't mean now. I mean always, all through our lives. It's ALL I

want to hear!"

"Do you realize that you are an absolute--little--tyrant?" he asked,

laughing. Radiantly she laughed back.

"I only realize one thing in these days," she answered; "I only live

for one thing!"

It was true. The world for her now was all in her husband, his smile

was her light, and she lived almost perpetually in the sunshine. When

they were parted--and they were never long parted--the memory of this

glance or that tone, this eager phrase or that sudden laugh, was enough

to keep her happy. When they met again, whether she came to meet him in

his own hallway, or rose, lovely in her furs, and walked toward him in

some restaurant or hotel, joy lent her a new and almost fearful beauty.

To dress for him, to make him laugh, to hold his interest, this was all

that interested her, and for the world outside of their own house she

cared not at all. They had their own vocabulary, their own phrases for

moments of mirth or tenderness; among her gowns he had his favorites.

among the many expressions of his sensitive face there were some that

it was her whimsical pleasure always to commend. Their conversation, as

is the way with lovers, was all of themselves, and all of praise.

Long before they were ready for the world it began to make its demands.

Rachael loved her own home--they had chosen a large duplex apartment on

Riverside Drive--loved the memorable little meals they had before the

fire, the lazy, enchanting hours of reading or of music in the big

studio that united the two large floors, the scent of her husband's

cigar, the rustle of her own gown, the snow slipping and lisping

against the window, and it was with great reluctance that she

surrendered even one evening. But there was hospitable Vera Villalonga

and her dreadful New Year's dance, and there were the Bowditch dinner

and the Hoyt dinner and the Parmalee's dance for Katrina. Unwillingly

the beautiful Mrs. Gregory yielded to the swift current, and presently

they were caught in the rush of the season, and could not have

withdrawn themselves except for serious cause.

Rachael smiled a little wryly one morning over Mrs. George Valentine's

cordially worded invitation to an informal dinner, but she accepted it

as a matter of course, and wore her most beautiful gown. She

deliberately set out to capture her hostess' friendship, and simple,

sweet Mrs. Valentine could not long resist her guest's beauty and

charm--such a young, fresh creature as she was, not a bit one's idea of

an adventuress, so genuinely interested in the children, so obviously

devoted to Warren.

Rachael, on her side, contemplated the Valentines with deep interest.

She found them a rather puzzling study, unlike any married couple that

she had ever chanced to know. Alice was one of those good, homely,

unfashionable women who seem utterly devoid of the instinct for

dressing properly. Her masses of dull brown hair she wore strained from

her high forehead and wound round her head in a fashion hopelessly

obsolete. Her evening gown, of handsome gray silk, was ruined by those

little fussy touches of lace and ruffling that brand a garment

instantly as "homemade."

George was one of the plainest of men, shy, awkward, insignificant

looking, with a long-featured, pleasant face, and red hair. Warren had

told his wife at various times that George was "a prince," and

physically, at least, Rachael found him disappointing, especially

beside her own handsome husband. She knew he was clever, with a large

practice besides his work as head surgeon at one of the big hospitals,

but Warren had added to this the information that George was a poor

business man, and ill qualified to protect his own interests.

Yet, in his own home--a handsome and yet shabby brownstone house in the

West Fifties--he appeared to better advantage. There was a brightness

in his plain face when he looked at his wife, and an adoring response

in her glance that after twelve years of married life seemed admirable

to Rachael. "Alice" was a word continually on his lips; what Alice said

and thought and did was evidently perfection. Before the Gregorys had

been ten minutes in the house on their first visit he had gone

downstairs to inspect the furnace, wound and set a stopped clock,

answered the telephone twice, and fondly carried upstairs a refractory

four-year-old girl, who came boldly down in her nightgown, with

reproaches and requests. On his return from this trip he brought down

the one-year-old baby, another girl, delicious in the placid hour

between supper and bed, and he and his wife and Warren Gregory

exchanged admiring glances as the beautiful Mrs. Gregory took the child

delightedly in her arms, contrasting her own dark and glowing

loveliness with the tiny Katharine's gold and roses.

It was a quiet evening, but Rachael liked it. She liked their simple,

affectionate talk, their reminiscences, the serenity of the large,

plainly furnished rooms, the glowing of coal fires in the old-fashioned

steel-barred grates. She liked Alice Valentine's placidity, the

sureness of herself that marked this woman as more highly civilized

than so many of the other women Rachael knew. There was none of Judy's

and Gertrude's and Vera's excitability and restlessness here. Alice was

concerned neither with her own appearance nor her own wants; she was

free to comment with amusement or wonder or admiration upon larger

affairs. Rachael wondered, as beautiful women have wondered since time

began, what held this man so tightly to this mild, plain woman, and by

what special gift of the gods Alice Valentine might know herself secure

beyond all question in a world of beauty and charm and youth.

"Well, what d'you think of her, Alice?" Doctor Gregory had asked

proudly when his wife was on his arm and leave-taking was in order.

"Think you're lucky, Greg," Mrs. Valentine answered earnestly. "You've

got a dear, good, lovely wife!"

"And you are going to let me come and make friends with the boy and the

girls some afternoon?" Rachael asked.

"If you WILL," their mother said, and she and Rachael kissed each

other. Gregory chuckled, in high feather, all the way home.

"You're a wonder, Ladybird! I have NEVER seen you sweeter nor prettier

than you were to-night!"

Rachael leaned back in the car with a long, contented sigh.

"One can see that she was all ready to hate me, Greg; a woman who had

been married, and who snapped up her favorite bachelor--"

He laughed triumphantly. "She doesn't hate you now!"

"No, and I'll see to it that she never does. She's my sort of woman,

and the children are absolute loves! I like that sort of old-fashioned

prejudice--honestly I do--that honor-thy-father-and-thy-mother-and-keep

holy-the-sabbath-day sort of person. Don't you, Greg?"

"We--ll, I don't like narrowness, sweet."

"No." Rachael pondered in the dark. "Yet if you're not narrow you seem

to be--really the only word for it is--loose," she submitted. "Somehow

lately, a great many persons--the girls I know--do seem to be a little

bit that way."

"You don't find THEM judging you!" her husband said. Rachael answered

only by a rather faint negative; she would not elucidate further. This

was one of the things she could never tell Warren, a thing indeed that

she would hardly admit to her own soul.

But she said to herself that she knew now the worst evil of divorce.

She knew that it coarsened whomever it touched, that it irresistibly

degraded, that it lowered all the human standard of goodness and

endurance, and self-sacrifice. However justified, it was an evil;

however properly consummated, it soiled the little group it affected.

The disinclination of a good woman like Alice Valentine to enter into a

close friendship with a younger and richer and more beautiful woman

whose history was the history of Rachael Gregory was no mere prejudice.

It was the feeling of a restrained and disciplined nature for an

unchecked and ill-regulated one; it was the feeling of a woman who, at

any cost, had kept her solemn marriage vow toward a woman who had

broken her word.

Rachael was beginning to find it more comprehensible, even more

acceptable, than the attitude of her own old world. Fresh from the Eden

that was her life with Warren, she had turned back to the friends whose

viewpoint had been hers a few months ago.

Were they changed, or was she? Both were changed, she decided. She had

been a cold queen among them once, flattered by their praise and

laughter, reckless in speech, and almost as reckless in action. But now

her only kingdom was in Warren Gregory's heart. She had no largesse for

these outsiders; she could not answer them with her old quick wit now;

indeed she hardly heard them. And on their side, where once there had

been that certain deference due to the woman who, however wretched and

neglected, was still Clarence Breckenridge's wife, now she noticed,

with quick shame, a familiarity, a carelessness, that indicated plainly

exactly the fine claim to delicacy that she had forfeited. Her position

in every way was better now than it had been then. But in some subtle

personal sense she had lost caste. A story was ventured when she

chanced to be alone with Frank Whittaker and George Pomeroy that her

presence would have forbidden in the old days, and Allen Parmalee gave

her a sensation of absolute sickness by merrily introducing her to his

sister from Kentucky with the words: "Don't stare at her so hard, Bess!

Of course you remember her: she was Mrs. Breckenridge last year, but

now she's making a much better record as Mrs. Gregory!"

The women were even more frank; Clarence's name was often mentioned in

her presence; she was quite simply congratulated and envied.

"My dear," said Mrs. Cowles, at a women's luncheon, "you were

extraordinarily clever, of course, but don't forget that you were

extremely lucky, too. Clarence making no fuss, taking all the trouble

to provide the evidence, and Greg being only too anxious to step into

his shoes, made it easy for you!"

"I'm no prude," Rachael smiled, over a raging heart. "But I couldn't

see this coming, nobody did. All I could do was to break free before my

self-respect was absolutely gone!"

"Go tell that to the White Wings, darling," laughed Mrs. Villalonga,

lazily blowing smoke into rings and spirals.

"Seriously, Vera, I mean it!"

"Seriously, Rachael, do you mean to tell me that you hadn't the

SLIGHTEST idea--" Mrs. Villalonga roused herself, to smilingly study

the other woman's face as she asked the question. "Not a word--not a

HINT?"

"Ah, well--" Rachael's face was flaming. She would have put her hand in

the fire to be able to say "No." The others laughed cheerfully.

"Nobody misunderstands you, dear: you were in a rotten fix and you got

out of it nicely," said fat Mrs. Moran, and Mrs. Villalonga added

consolingly: "Why, my heavens, Rachael, I'd leave Booth to-morrow for

anyone half as handsome as Warren Gregory!"

In March the Gregorys sent out cards for their first really large

entertainment, a Mardi-Gras ball. Rachael and Warren spent many happy

hours planning it: the studio was to be cleared, two other big rooms

turned into one for the supper, music for dancing, musical numbers for

the entertainment; it would be perfect in every detail, one of the

notable affairs of the winter. Rachael hailed it as the end of the

season. They were to make a flying trip to the Bermudas in April, and

after that Rachael happily planned a month or two in the almost

deserted city before Warren would be free to get away to the mountains

or the boat. It was with a delightful sense of freedom that she

realized that her first winter in her new role was nearly over. Next

winter her divorce and remarriage would be an old story, there would be

other gossip more fascinating and more new, she would be taken quite

for granted. Again, she might more easily evade the social demand next

winter without exposing herself to the charge of being fickle or

changed. This year her brave and dignified facing of the world had been

a part of the price she paid for her new happiness. Now it was paid.

And for another reason, half-defined, Rachael was glad to see the

months go by. She had been Warren Gregory's wife for nearly six months

now, and the rapture of being together was still as great for them both

as it had been in the first radiant days of their marriage. For

herself, indeed, she knew that the joy was constantly deepening, and

even the wild hunger and passion of her heart could find no flaw in his

devotion. Her surrender to him was with a glorious and unashamed

completeness, the tones of her extraordinary voice deepened when she

spoke to him, and in her eyes all who looked might read the story of

insatiable and yet satisfied love.