III.

On descending the stairs, Bayne found the fire newly alight in the hall,

burning with that spare, clear brilliancy that the recent removal of

ashes imparts to a wood fire. All the world was still beclouded with

mists, and the windows and doors looked forth on a blank white

nullity--as inexpressive, as enigmatical, as the unwritten page of the

unformulated future itself. The present seemed eliminated; he stood as it

were in the atmosphere of other days. But whither had blown the incense

of that happy time? The lights on the shrine had dwindled to extinction!

What had befallen his strong young hopes, his faith, his inspiration,

that they had exhaled and left the air vapid and listless? He was

conscious that he was no more the man who used to await her coming,

expectant, his eyes on the door. He had now scarcely a pulse in common

with that ardent young identity he remembered as himself--his convictions

of the nobler endowments of human nature; his candid unreserve with his

fellows; his aspirations toward a fair and worthy future; his docile,

sweet, almost humble content with such share of the good things of this

life as had been vouchsafed him; his strength, as "with the strength of

ten," to labor night and day with the impetus of his sanctified impulses;

but, above all, his love, that had consecrated his life, his love for

this woman who he believed--poor young fool!--loved him. How could five

years work such change? World-worn he was and a-weary, casuistic,

cautious, successful in a sort as the logical result of the exercise of

sound commercial principles and more than fair abilities, but caring less

and less for success since its possession had only the inherent values of

gain and was hallowed by no sweet and holy expectation of bestowal. He

could have wept for the metamorphosis! Whatever he might yet become, he

could never be again this self. This bright, full-pulsed identity was

dead--dead for all time! Icarus-like, he had fallen midway in a flight

that under other conditions might have been long and strong and

sustained, and he bemoaned his broken wings.

So much depression of spirit was in his attitude, even listless despair,

as he stood in the vacant apartment, looking down at the silver bowl on

the table, filled with white roses and galax leaves, freshly gathered; so

much of the thought in his mind was expressed in his face, distinct and

definite in the firelight, despite the clouds at the dim window, that

Lillian Royston, descending the stair unperceived, read in its lineaments

an illuminated text of the past.

"Oh, Julian, Julian, I was cruel to you--I was cruel to you!" she cried

out impulsively in a poignant voice.

He started violently at the sound, coming back indeed through the years.

He looked up at her, seeing as in a dream her slim figure clad in a gray

cloth gown, on the landing of the stair. Her face was soft and young and

wistful; her aspect had conquered the years; she was again the girl he

knew of old, whom he had fancied he had loved, crying out in the

constraining impetus of a genuine emotion, "I was cruel to you! I was

cruel to you!"

The next moment he was all himself of to-day--cool, confident, serene,

with that suggestion of dash and vigor that characterized his movements.

"Why, don't mention it, I beg," he said with a quiet laugh and his

smooth, incidental society manner, as if it were indeed a matter of

trifling consequence. Then, "I am sure neither of us has anything to

regret." The last sentence he thought a bit enigmatical, and he said to

Briscoe afterward that, although strictly applicable, he did not quite

know what he had meant by it. For the door had opened suddenly, and his

host had inopportunely entered at the instant. Although Briscoe had

affected to notice nothing, he heard the final sentence, and he was

disposed to berate Bayne when the awkward breakfast was concluded and the

party had scattered.

"You were mighty sarcastic, sure," he observed to Bayne over their cigars

in the veranda, for with all the world submerged in the invisibilities of

the mists the day's hunt was necessarily called off.

"Why, I was rattled," Bayne declared. "I did not expect to hear her

upbraid herself."

"She is _so_ sensitive," said Briscoe compassionately. He had heard

from his wife the interpretation that she had placed on Bayne's sudden

visit to this secluded spot, and though he well knew its falsity, he

could but sympathize with her hope. "Lillian is very sensitive."

"I think it is up to me to be sensitive on that subject; but her

sensitiveness at this late day is what gave _me_ the cold shivers."

Briscoe eyed him sternly, the expression incongruous with the habitual

aspect of his broad, jovial, florid face. Their features were visible to

each other, though now and then the fog would shift between the rustic

chairs in which they sat. Julian Bayne laughed. How easily even now did

this woman convert every casual acquaintance into an eager partisan!

"If she is growing sensitive for her cruelties to me, I am apprehensive

that it may be in her mind to make amends. I should keep away from

her--discretion being the better part of valor."

Briscoe drew back with an air of averse distaste. He spoke guardedly,

however, remembering that he was in his own house and fearful of going

too far; yet he could not let this pass. "You surprise me, Julian. I

never imagined _you_ could say anything so--so--caddish."

"Why don't you say 'currish' and be done with it?" Julian's eyes flashed

fire. His face had flushed deeply red. Every muscle was tense, alert.

Then he checked himself hastily. He turned his cigar in his hand and

looked intently at it as he reflected that this woman had already done

harm enough in his life. He would not allow her to inflict the further

and irreparable injury of coming between him and the friend he loved as a

brother. He slipped quietly into his former easy attitude before he

resumed, smiling: "Currish, indeed it may be, but that is exactly the

kind of old dog Tray I am."

"You will please take notice that _I_ have said nothing of the sort,"

Briscoe stiffly rejoined. "But I think and I do say that it is a

preposterous instance of coxcombry to subject such a woman as Mrs.

Royston--because of a generous moment of self-reproach for a cruel and

selfish deed--to the imputation of inviting advances from a man who coyly

plans evasion and flight--and she scarcely two years a widow."

"Time cuts no ice in the matter," Bayne forced himself to continue the

discussion. "She has certainly shown the manes of Archibald Royston the

conventional respect."

"She made an awful mistake, we all know that! And although I realized

that it was on account of that rubbishy little quarrel you and she got up

at the last moment, I felt for her, because to people generally her

choice was subject to the imputation of being wholly one of interest.

They were so dissimilar in taste, so uncongenial; and I really think

_he_ did not love her!"

"_He_ had no other motive, at all events."

"Oh, of course he had a certain preference for her; and it was the sort

of triumph that such a man would relish--to carry her off from you at the

last moment. I always recognized _his_ influence in the sensational

elements of that dénouement. He liked her after a fashion--to preside in

a princess-like style in his big house, to illustrate to advantage his

florid expenditure of money, to sparkle with wit and diamonds at the head

of his table--a fine surface for decoration she has! But Royston couldn't

love--couldn't really care for anything but himself--a man of that

temperament."

Bayne rose; he had reached the limit of his endurance; he could maintain

his tutored indifference, but he would not seek to analyze the event anew

or to adjust himself to the differentiations of sentiment that Briscoe

seemed disposed to expect him to canvass.

The encroachments of the surging seas of mist had reduced the limits of

the world to the interior of the bungalow, and the myriad interests and

peoples of civilization to the little household circle. The day in the

pervasive constraint that hampered their relations wore slowly away.

Under the circumstances, even the resources of bridge were scarcely to be

essayed. Bayne lounged for hours with a book in a swing on the veranda.

Briscoe, his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his head, his

cigar cocked between his teeth--house-bound, he smoked a prodigious

number of them for sheer occupation--strolled aimlessly in and out, now

in the stables, now listening and commenting as Gladys at the piano

played the music of his choice. Lillian had a score of letters to write.

Her mind, however, scarcely followed her pen as she sat in the little

library that opened from the big, cheery hall. Her thoughts were with all

that had betided in the past and what might have been. She canvassed

anew, as often heretofore, her strange infatuation, like a veritable

aberration, so soon she had ceased to love her husband, to make the

signal and significant discovery that he was naught to love. She had

always had a sort of enthusiasm for the truth in the abstract--not so

much as a moral endowment, but a supreme fixity, the one immutable value,

superior to vicissitudes. She could not weep for a lie; she could only

wonder how it should ever have masqueraded as the holy verities.

She would not rehearse her husband's faults, and the great disaster of

the revelation of his true character that made the few short years she

had passed with him stretch out in retrospect like a long and miserable

life. It was over now, and her friends could not disguise their

estimation of the end as a blessed release. But peace had not come with

it. She was not impervious to remorse, regret, humiliation, for her

course. The sight of Bayne, the sound of his voice, had poignantly

revived the past, and if she had suffered woeful straits from wanton

cruelty, she could not deny to herself that she had been consciously,

carelessly, and causelessly cruel. In withdrawing herself to the library

she had thwarted certain feints of Mrs. Briscoe's designed to throw them

together in her hope of their reconciliation. Lillian had become very

definitely aware that this result was far alien to any expectation on

Bayne's part, and her cheeks burned with humiliation that she should for

one moment, with flattered vanity and a strange thrill about her heart,

have inclined to Mrs. Briscoe's fantastic conviction as to the motive of

his journey hither. Indeed, within his view she could now scarcely

maintain her poise and the incidental unconscious mien that the

conventions of the situation demanded. She welcomed the movement in the

folds of the curtaining mist that betokened a prospect of lifting and

liberating the house-bound coterie. Presently, as she wrote, she heard

the stir of the wind in the far reaches of the valley. The dense white

veil that swung from the zenith became suddenly pervaded with vague

shivers; then tenuous, gauzy pennants were detached, floating away in

great lengths; the sun struck through from a dazzling focus in a broad,

rayonnant, fibrous emblazonment of valley and range, and as she rose and

went to the window to note the weather signs she could not resist the

lure of escape. She had struggled all day with an eager desire to be out

of the house, removed from the constantly recurring chances of meeting

Bayne, quit of the sight of him. She instantly caught up her broad gray

hat with its flaunting red and gray ostrich plumes and called out to Mrs.

Briscoe a suggestion that they should repair to the vacant hotel for a

tramp on its piazzas, for it was the habit of the two ladies in rainy or

misty weather to utilize these long, sheltered stretches for exercise,

and many an hour they walked, on dreary days, in these deserted

precincts.

"I'll overtake you," was Mrs. Briscoe's rejoinder, and until then Lillian

had not noticed the employ of her hostess. The gardener was engaged in

the removal of the more delicate ornamental growths about the

porte-cochère and parterre to the shelter of the flower-pit, for bright

chill weather and killing frosts would ensue on the dispersal of the

mists. Mrs. Briscoe herself was intent on withdrawing certain hardier

potted plants merely from the verge of the veranda to a wire-stand well

under the roof. Briscoe was at the gun-rack in the hall, restoring to its

place the favorite rifle he had intended to use to-day. He could not

refrain from testing its perfect mechanism, and at the first sharp crack

of the hammer, liberated by a tentative pull on the trigger, little

Archie sprang up from his play on the hearth-rug, where he was harnessing

a toy horse to Mrs. Briscoe's work-basket by long shreds of her zephyr,

and ran clamoring for permission to hold the gun.

Mrs. Briscoe saw him through the open door and instantly protested: "Come

away, Archie!" Then to her husband, "You men are always killing somebody

with an unloaded gun. Come away, Archie!"

"Nonsense, Gladys!" Briscoe remonstrated. "Let the child see the rifle.

There is not a shell in the whole rack."

She noticed her husband not at all. "Come away, Archie," she besought the

little man, staring spellbound with his big blue eyes. He had scant care

for the authority of "Gad-ish," as Gladys loved for him lispingly to call

her. Only when she began to plead that she had no one to help her with

her flowers, to carry the pots for her, did he wrench himself from the

contemplation of the flashing steel mechanism that had for him such

wonderful fascination and lend his flaccid baby muscles to the fiction of

help. He began zealously to toil to and fro, carrying the smallest pots

wherever she bade him. Her own interest in the occupation was enhanced by

the colloquy that ensued whenever she passed her small guest. "Hello,

Archie!" she would call for the sake of hearing the saucy, jocose

response: "Oh, oo Gad-ish!" as the juvenile convoy fared along with his

small cargo.

Lillian felt that she could not wait. Gladys might come at her leisure.

She burst impulsively out of the door, throwing on her hat as she went,

albeit wincing that she must needs pass Bayne at close quarters as he

still lounged in the veranda swing. He looked up at the sound of the

swift step and the sudden stir, and for one instant their eyes met--an

inscrutable look, fraught with an undivined meaning. For their lives,

neither could have translated its deep intendment. She said no word, and

he merely lifted his hat ceremoniously and once more bent his eyes on his

book.

She was like a thing long imprisoned, liberated by some happy chance. Her

feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground as she sped along down the

ravine, then across the rustic bridge that spanned the chasm through

which rushed the tumultuous mountain stream foaming among the boulders

deep in its depths, and breaking ever and anon into crystal cascades. On

the opposite side she soon struck into the mountain road that had been

graded and tamed and improved by the hotel management into the aspect of

a sophisticated driveway, as it swept up to the great flight of steps at

the main entrance of the big white building.