IV

Into a brilliantly lighted, well-filled saloon on the corner of Seventh

avenue and Thirty-fourth street, strolled Joe Kaplan. He was wearing an

overcoat of English tweed; a white Angora muffler around his neck; and a

fashionable soft hat. Evening dress was suggested beneath. Accustomed to

being stared at, his expression was bland; but could not altogether

conceal the quality of electric alertness which attracted people’s eyes,

without their knowing why. Making his way to the bar, he ordered a drink

of whiskey. He looked at nobody, but was visibly holding himself in

readiness to be hailed. Like a royal prince, he had to be prepared for

encounters in the unlikeliest places. He cultivated the note of bonhomie

in public, which encouraged hails. This was sometimes inconvenient; but

Joe argued that it was better to be hailed than to be watched unknown to

yourself.

He was not hailed. Leaning his elbows on the mahogany rail, and

embracing the little whiskey glass within one hand, preparatory to

kissing it, he gazed with pleasure at his reflection in the mirror

behind the bar. A thoughtless pleasure, and cumulative; for it made him

exult the more, to see himself exulting. Likeness of a fellow with a

dandy appetite! The fine creases on either side of his mouth deepened.

He observed that the snowy muffler set off his pink skin and jetty black

hair with striking effectiveness.

Swallowing his whiskey, he went out again, and turned west in

Thirty-fourth street. This neighborhood had lately taken on a

nondescript character. The building of the Pennsylvania terminal had

brought business among the sedate old dwelling-houses, and some of them

were now let out in rooms to all comers. The landlords collected their

rents in advance, and shrugged their shoulders: the tenants looked after

themselves. Joe had considered all this before hiring a room there.

With a final glance around, to assure himself he had not been

recognized, Joe turned into one of the old houses, and mounting to a

hall room on an upper floor, let himself in. It had been a family

bedroom once; the old-fashioned wall-paper was rubbed and discolored;

the grate was full of litter; the floor smelled of dust. There was

nothing in the room now but some old clothes hanging from a row of hooks

on the back of the door, and a new kitchen chair. Without troubling to

make a light, Joe, whistling between his teeth, commenced to take off

his fine clothes replacing them with the shabby garments from the back

of the door. The chair was to enable him to change his shoes in comfort.

He spread a newspaper to protect his stockinged feet from the dusty

floor.

In due course he issued out of the house, metamorphosed. He was now

wearing a greasy mackintosh with the collar turned up around his neck,

and a shapeless cap pulled down over his eyes. He had sloughed off more

than the fine clothes; somehow he looked ten years younger, and fifteen

pounds lighter. His glance seemed to have become narrower and more

penetrating, his nose longer, his cheeks hollower, his mouth more cruel.

His gait had become a loose-limbed slouch, full of a latent spring. He

gave the effect of a young wolf at his ease, with his tongue lolling. He

padded noiselessly along the pavement at an uneven rate, like an idle

wolf; sometimes a lighted shop window drew him to stand and gaze with

vacant, brilliant eyes.

In another saloon he bought a bottle of whiskey, and carried it away

under the mackintosh. At Herald Square he hailed a taxicab, and had

himself driven down-town to the corner of Rivington street and the

Bowery. He walked east in Rivington street, his steps unconsciously

quickening, and becoming purposeful. He loitered no more. Turning into

one of the older tenement houses, the springs in his body seemed

suddenly to be released. Running up the stairs two at a time, he rapped

at a door on the first landing.

There was no answer; and with a black face, he rapped again.

From within, a woman’s voice answered coolly: “You can’t come in.”

Joe looked like a balked wolf then. “It’s me,” he muttered.

“I can’t help it. You’ll have to come back in ten minutes.”

He slunk back and forth before the door, showing his teeth, and

impotently glaring at the panels. Then he went noisily down the stairs.

Outside, he kept shifting uneasily around the low stoop with his

wolflike tread, keeping his glance fixed on the entrance with a snarl

fixed in his face; yet half afraid; for suddenly he veered off across

the roadway, with his head over his shoulder. He entered a lunch-room

opposite, and ordering a cup of coffee, brought it back to the window

where he could still watch the entrance to the tenement house. Presently

a man came out. Joe had never seen the man, but by his furtive air he

knew it was the man he was waiting for. Joe, drawing behind the window

frame, watched him, snarling, and profoundly indifferent. Leaving the

coffee, he went back across the street.

In the comfortable, clean, ugly room, with a double bed across the

front, and a gas-cooker, sink and icebox at the back, Jewel was waiting

for him, wrapped in a pink, quilted silk coat, which was beginning to

reveal its cotton stuffing. She stood motionless in the center of the

floor, dusky, solid, significantly shapeless, like a piece of sculpture

beginning to emerge from the stone.

“What the hell . . . !” began Joe angrily. “A nice thing . . . !”

“Aah!” she said, moving slightly. “You don’t own me!”

“You don’t have to have them now!” he cried.

“Sure, I don’t have to have them. But I _can_ have them, if I want.”

Joe, cursing, flung his mackintosh on the sofa. Like a wolf, he snarled

obliquely.

“If you’d let me know when you were coming . . .” she suggested.

“Aah!” he snarled. “That would spoil it. I like to come on the

impulse. . . . And you like me to.”

“Sure, I do,” she said with a slow smile. “But you can’t blame me, if

you find me engaged.”

“Damnation!” cried Joe, flinging back and forth across the room with his

soft tread. “Oh, damnation! I might as well go, now!”

Jewel shrugged. She moved portentously to the foot of the bed, where she

could look out of the second window. She knew quite well he had no

intention of going. Looking out of the window, she waited calmly for him

to work off the burden of his ill-temper.

“I don’t see why you wont let me hire you a decent place up-town,” he

cried.

“Yer on’y tahkin’,” she said. “You ought to know by this time I’ll never

take anything off you. Why, you fool, it’s on’y because you got no

strings on me that you’re still wild about coming here!”

“How about you?”

She gave him her slow creased smile over a shoulder. “Well, if I ever

git enough of you, I’ll let you give me a hundred thousand.”

“But this room!” he grumbled. “On the level . . . !”

“Suits me!” she said. “I wouldn’t change it for the Waldorf Astoria. I

fixed my bed so’s I could lie in it all day if I wanted, and look into

the street.”

“That’s why you’re so fat,” said Joe. “Gee! you’re fat!”

“Well, they tell me you can’t get too much of a good thing,” she said

good-humoredly.

Joe dropped on the sofa, all of a piece. His legs and arms jerked

restlessly. There was no guard on his sharp face, and the successive

emotions flickered there, and gave place to each other, as

inconsistently as in the face of a wild being. He looked at her savagely

and cravenly. He snarled; and his whole face became suffused with a dark

delight.

“You——!” said Joe thickly. “I’ll pay you out for this!”

Jewel turned around. Her broad face creased into wrinkles. She laughed

richly in her throat.

“You come here!” said Joe.

“You come here!” she said coolly. “You don’t own me!”

“I’ll show you!”

She awaited him massively. He did not go to her in a straight line, but

veered; and his shoulders writhed. His darting eyes could not meet her

steady, laughing ones. His eyes were perfectly irresponsible. Deep,

fixed lines of pain and bliss were etched about his grinning lips.

“By God! One of these days I’ll kill you!” he muttered, enraptured.

She laughed from her capacious breast. “You talk so big!”

* * * * *

Raising himself on his elbow, Joe felt around on the bed for the

cigarettes. “Just the same,” he said in an aggrieved voice, “I don’t see

why you’ve got to have anybody but me.”

“Yeah,” she said, “sit here twiddling my thumbs, eh? till you happen to

feel like coming round.”

“I haven’t got anybody but you.”

“So _you_ say. How do I know whether you have or not? It’s nothing to me

either way. . . . You’ve got a wife.”

“Aah! I don’t trouble her no more. It’s better that way. As long as I

did, we used to scrap. . . . She never meant anything in particular to

me. Too high-toned.”

“You got plenty other interests,” said Jewel. “Men are my amusement.

They come here, and talk about their wives. I listen, and thank my God

I’m no man’s wife. I’m a luxury to them, see? And you bet they have to

mind themselves around me.”

“Just the same . . .” grumbled Joe.

“What’s the matter with you? You never bothered about it before. Only

to-night you happened to. . . .”

“Who was he?”

“I shan’t tell you. He don’t cut no ice, anyhow.”

“Well, I admit I don’t like to have my bed warmed for me.”

“Find another bed, then. There’s no use grousing about it, and you know

it. I mean to live as I please.”

“Aah!” he grumbled, “a person would think it was nothing at all to have

Joe Kaplan in your bed.”

“Aah!” she retorted, “your money’s no good to you _there_!”

She chuckled at her own joke, and the bed shook. Joe, laughing too,

tumbled her roughly.

“Your wife must be a funny one,” she said presently.

“She’s all right!” said Joe, carelessly. “I did a damn good day’s work

when I copped her. Year by year she gets handsomer. There ain’t a woman

in New York can wear diamonds like her. She gives my house the style of

a King’s palace.”

“But never to quarrel with you?”

“She’s too proud to quarrel with me. She’d go a hundred miles out of her

way to avoid a quarrel. Suits me all right. I don’t want to be bothered

around the house. It’s the same about other men. Too proud to look at

them. It’s a cinch for me.”

“Well, pride is a cold bedfellow,” said Jewel. “I’m glad I’m not her.”

“God! your breast is so broad and firm!” murmured Joe, pillowing his

head there.

“You’re my kid,” she murmured, running her fingers through his thick

hair. “For me, you have never got any bigger.”

“On’y a kid?” demanded Joe, raising his head, and grinning close in her

face.

“Oh well, a man, too. Crazy about yourself, ain’t yeh?”

“When I come here,” he said, dropping back on the pillow, “a weight

rolls off me, sort of. I can let myself go. I been with lots of women,

but it wasn’t the same. I was always tryin’ to make them crazy about me.

With you, you old slob! I don’t think of nothing. What ud be the use?

You know me!”

Rolling over, he flung his arms around her body. “You’re so damn solid,

so damn solid!” he muttered. “Gee! it’s great. I don’t know why. You’re

so slow and hard to change. It’s funny, but whatever you say seems to

come right out of the middle of you. You’re never any different, only

more so. Like a tree, damn you! Rooted in the same spot!”

He sat up on the bed, nursing his knees. “Well, here’s me, if you know

what I mean. Look at the way I’ve worked and schemed, and gone up like a

skyrocket. It’s been a hell of a lot of fun, but it don’t seem quite

real. All sparks, like the tail of the rocket. It’s been too easy,

maybe. Men are such simps. I never had no setbacks to speak of. All I

was concerned with was keepin’ out of jail. The same with women. They

fell for me so easy, there was no zip to it. I’ve cut out women. . . .

“Here I am at the top, and I don’t find it no different. At heart I’m

the same kid that used to swipe apples offen t’ pushcarts out there.

Gee! I never found a street I liked as well as Rivington. . . . In them

days I thought it would be different to be rich. A kind of dream, like.

But everything stays just the same. Not but what I enjoy all the big

stuff at that; conferring with prominent men, and making them do what I

want; being God to thousands of little men; and living in a God-damn

palace and all. But not so much as I did. I’m used to it now. And

there’s always that feeling somehow that it ain’t quite real. I’ve got a

child, and I swear I can’t feel that he’s mine at all. . . . Funny!

. . .

“When I was a kid, once in a while I’d wake up in my bed all in a sweat.

I don’t know . . . I can’t exactly name it. A sort of where-am-I

feeling, and not a damn thing to grab hold of. God! for a minute, it

makes you fair sick at your stomach. Well . . . that’s what I mean. Up

there on the Avenue in my fancy bed—it was Louis the something or

other’s bed, or one of those guys; I swear I have the same dream every

once in a while, and wake up sweating just the same old way. So what

have I got out of it all? Me, myself, inside, I’m just the same. I’ve

got you; but I had you when I was a kid, and hadn’t nothing else. . . .

“It’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. I don’t mean to be

complaining. I’ve had a hell of a good time, and still do. I have

everything a man could have. I travel light. I don’t worry about

nothing. It’s wonderful what a lot of things I don’t worry about! They

call me heartless. Well, —— them! A pack of coyotes. They used to yelp

at me in their newspapers. Well, I bought their newspapers. I’m one of

the most powerful men in New York they say. I suppose I am. But . . .

somehow it don’t seem quite real . . . !”

He dropped down, and put his hands around her thick throat. “Only this

. . . ! By God! this is real . . . !”

“I thought you was gonna tahk all night,” murmured Jewel sleepily. “Such

foolishness . . . !”

Joe chuckled.

V

Wilfred and Frances Mary were having tea at the Plaza. One of the

children had been sick, and a temporary nurse had been had in for the

others. The sick child was better, and this was the nurse’s last day.

Hence the jaunt to town. After all, tea is not an expensive meal. They

had come early in order to secure one of the coveted tables beside the

tall East windows, and had made the meager provender last out. The great

room was now full.

Wilfred affected to despise this kind of a show; but what a

bursting-forth it provided in Fanny’s restricted life. Her shabby coat

was thrown back over the chair, revealing her in a pretty new dress she

had had no opportunity to wear before. Her hat was becoming. Blue was

Fanny’s color. A hint of pink warmed her dusky cheeks, and the tired

eyes were beaming. For himself, Wilfred had succeeded in putting the

unpaid bills out of mind. The child was better! It was a good moment; he

swam in it.

“Look at that extraordinary little fat man with the party of girls,”

said Frances Mary. “He could play the Earl of Loam in Barrie’s comedy.”

“But the Earl of Loam was a respectable husband and father,” said

Wilfred.

“I was just thinking of his legs. They must be the same thickness all

the way down like chimney pots.”

“I should say he’d do better as Silenus.”

“Is it possible that a man so old can still enjoy that sort of thing?”

she speculated, looking at the girls.

“I don’t know. He has to make believe to. With a face like that he

wouldn’t be accepted in any other part.”

“Ah! what fun it is to watch people!” she murmured.

Wilfred smiled at her with quick warmth. But the suggestion of gratitude

in his smile troubled Frances Mary. The roomful ceased to interest her.

“You are thinking,” she said, crumbling a bit of cake, “that it is the

only thing we can really share.”

Wilfred’s expanding petals were slightly frost-bitten. Why would she

insist on dragging his secret thoughts out into the light? He hid the

damage as well as he could. “Not the only thing,” he said. “And anyhow,

it’s a lot!”

She remained pensive. “We tease each other so!” she murmured.

“What of it?” he said; “do we not also. . . .”

“Oh, don’t start on compensation,” she said. “I must have my absolutes!”

“You’re a little mixed,” said Wilfred. . . . “You’re welcome to

them. . . . Look here, people with such sensitive feelers as we have are

bound to find marriage full of little wounds. I think we do pretty well,

considering. The only settled grievance I have against you is that you

worry every little difficulty like a cat with a mouse. The mice are not

important.” Thrusting his feet out, he embraced hers between them

unseen. This he knew was more potent with Frances Mary than yards of

argument. “Can you imagine us not married to each other? Or childless?”

She looked at him deeply and shook her head.

“Well, then, what the hell . . . !”

She sighed with appeasement; and her glance returned to embrace the room

at large. “What a glittering spectacle!”

“Im-hym,” said Wilfred. “Glittering’s the word. Slightly unreal. Because

they’re all on parade. How wonderful if one could see a crowd of people

really letting themselves out.”

“But where could one see such a thing?”

“I don’t know. . . . Once I saw a festa in an Italian street here.

Little side street up-town. They had arches thrown across the roadway,

decorated with colored lamps. And all the people’s faces wore a look of

escape. They were swarming in and out of their church. . . .”

“Look, Wilfred, here’s a distinguished-looking pair coming in.”

Wilfred turned around in his chair—and very quickly straightened again.

Confusion came striding into his contented mind, swinging a scythe.

“Lord!” he said in an uncertain voice, “it’s Joe Kaplan and his wife. I

hope to God they don’t see us!”

She glanced at him sharply. “They’re coming this way,” she remarked.

Wilfred looked down. “My back is toward them. They don’t know you.”

“So that is what she’s like!” murmured Fanny.

“Fortunately there is no vacant table near us,” muttered Wilfred.

As he heard steps come abreast of the table, he looked out of the

window. It was a harrowing moment. The steps ceased; recommenced;

stopped again. Then Elaine’s clear voice:

“Wilfred! I knew the back of your head!”

From across the table Wilfred could feel Frances Mary congeal. He looked

up with too much of a start, and rose. His face felt as if it were

turning red and green. He despairingly hoped that with the passage of

the years he had acquired a modicum of inscrutability. The sight of her

took his breath away. She had blossomed in splendor. Most beautifully

dressed, of course, but that was not it; the spirit of the woman shone

out of her array. Queenly. There was not a woman in the room who could

approach her. And an entirely good-humored queen! According to Wilfred’s

calculations, her eyes at least ought to have betrayed wretchedness; but

they were serenely clear. His whole scheme of things tottered; he felt

like a clown.

“Hello!” he cried with a false heartiness. “What a fortunate accident!

. . . This is my wife . . . Mrs. Kaplan.”

“How do you do?” said Elaine, putting out her hand, and looking at

Frances Mary with frank and friendly curiosity. She was likewise saying

to herself: So this is what you’re like!

Wilfred and Joe shook hands, and Joe was duly presented to Frances Mary.

Wilfred was even more astonished at Joe’s appearance. Young, slim,

clear-skinned, at the highest point in the arc of manhood’s vigor; where

were the marks of an evil nature, of evil living, that ought to have

shown before now? Standing close to him, Wilfred observed the peachy

quality of Joe’s skin, verging into a cool grey upon his miraculously

shaven chin. In seven years Joe’s face had grown in composure; the habit

of authority had given it a high look. One of the leaders of men!

Wilfred thought with twisted bitterness. Well . . . one must face it! He

felt reluctantly drawn to Joe. For the thousandth time he wished he were

not so at the mercy of physical beauty. But presently the bitterness

passed with the thrilling thought: What regions there are in man still

to explore!

“You still live in New York?” Elaine said to Wilfred. “How is it we

never see you?”

“Well, we hardly move in the same circles,” said Wilfred smiling, and

immediately sensible that he could scarcely have said a worse thing.

“This is too good a chance to be lost,” said Elaine, looking around for

a chair. “May we sit down with you for a minute?”

“By all means,” said Wilfred, signalling to a waiter. Inwardly he cursed

the situation. Frances Mary was smiling like plate glass. It will take

me hours, days perhaps, to bring her round, he thought despairingly.

No more did Joe welcome the situation. “My dear,” he said, “the Beekmans

have seen us. They are signalling.”

How strangely that “My dear!” rang through the corridors of Wilfred’s

consciousness! He thought of the seven years of intimacy between these

two. Face to face, stripped of all disguise—but _had_ they ever

revealed their souls to each other? One would never know!

Waiters had pushed up two chairs, and Elaine seated herself. She said to

Joe: “Go over and explain to them that we have unexpectedly met some old

friends. We’ll be with them in five minutes.”

Joe marched off, rubbing his upper lip.

The eyes of everybody in the vicinity were addressed to their table,

which was rather cruel on Frances Mary and Wilfred in their

undistinguished attire. Elaine, of course, was oblivious. She addressed

herself to Frances Mary.

“My husband and yours have been acquainted for many years.”

“Yes, Wilfred has spoken of it,” said Frances Mary.

In this opening, Elaine betrayed herself to be not so candid as she

appeared. She had apprehended Frances Mary’s antagonism, and the latter

had instantly perceived it. There was nothing gauche about Frances Mary,

only the glassiness of her eyes warned Wilfred of jarring voices within.

He was painfully aware of the worn lining of his wife’s coat over the

back of the chair. Joe would mark that when he came back. Why had he

ever brought her here? They did not belong to it. Wilfred’s sympathies

were all on the side of Fanny—well, his main sympathies, the outside

part of him; the sprite was for Elaine, because Fanny had intrenched

herself, whereas Elaine was skirmishing pluckily in the open.

Elaine was momentarily at a loss. It must have occurred to her to wonder

why she had insisted on sitting down. Like most impulses, it would not

bear a critical examination. Wilfred’s heart went out to her; it had

been a generous impulse. It was not often that she troubled to come out

of her shell like this. It was Fanny who played the grudging part. Well,

there Elaine was. She tried again.

“You have several children, haven’t you? Somebody told me.”

“Three,” said Frances Mary. “Two girls and a boy.”

“I envy you,” said Elaine. “I have only one little boy. So bad for a

child not to have any brothers and sisters.”

“Yes,” said Frances Mary politely. She looked down in her plate. The

question was between them, large, unspoken: Well, why don’t you give him

some?

Elaine turned to Wilfred. “How does the writing go?” she asked in her

whole-hearted way.

Wilfred, thinking of Frances Mary, shivered for the speaker. What a

false note to issue from the ringing Elaine! Once she stepped out of her

charmed circle, she was but mortal clay. It endeared her to him.

“No better nor worse than usual,” he said, smiling unhappily. What

_could_ one answer to such a question?

“I haven’t come across your name lately,” said Elaine, meaning well.

This remark made the silent Fanny savage. Wilfred made haste to answer,

lightly: “You wouldn’t. There are so many underground ways of making

one’s living by the pen.”

From his wife’s somber glance he gathered that this had not helped him

with _her_. Oh dear! Oh dear! he thought; why must everybody have so

many corns to get trodden on!

Joe returned with a bland, blank face. He did not give a hang about

them, Wilfred saw; indeed, he had probably recalled Wilfred to mind only

with difficulty. But his politeness was perfect. It was Joe who saved

the face of the situation.

“Beekman tells me there’s a report going the rounds that the

suffragettes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and that the

news was suppressed.”

Wilfred was grateful. He had to confess to himself that polite people

have their uses.

“Good Heavens!” said Frances Mary. “Do you suppose it’s true?”

Joe shrugged. “It amuses people to pass these stories round.”

“Well, I hope they did!” said Frances Mary.

Wilfred stared. Could this be his Fanny?

Joe smiled deprecatingly. “I approve of their cause, but hardly of their

methods,” he said.

“Perhaps they are the only effective methods,” said Frances Mary.

“Oh, Englishmen could not possibly give in to intimidation,” said Joe.

“We shall see,” said Frances Mary, smiling back.

Elaine had scarcely listened to this. She was bent like a child on

making friends. She said to Joe: “Mr. Pell is a writer, you remember.”

“Ah,” said Joe. “I had forgotten. . . . What is your line, Pell?”

“Fiction,” said Wilfred. It struck him that there was something

deliciously appropriate in the word. It was his little private joke. No

other eye betrayed any consciousness of it.

“I control several fiction magazines,” said Joe, with his deprecatory

air. “You must submit your stories to my editors.”

Frances Mary was on the verge of an ironic speech here, but Wilfred

managed to divert it with a warning touch of his foot under the table.

“Thanks, I will,” he said pleasantly to Joe.

“What are the children’s names?” Elaine asked of Frances Mary.

“Mary, Constance, and Stephen.”

“I like those names. Mary, I suppose, is . . .”

“Six.”

“The same age as my Sturges. . . . I wish you’d come to see me some day,

Mrs. Pell. And bring Mary. I mean it. Shall I write and set a day?”

“Oh, thanks,” said Frances Mary, with a sky-like candor; “I should like

to come ever so much; but I’m afraid it will be impossible. We live in

Rockland County, you see; and I have no nurse. My days in town are few

and far between.”

Wilfred gritted his teeth. Ah well, one had to endure these things.

Frances Mary’s spirit was admirable; but why need she have rebuffed the

generous Elaine?

“I could send a car out to get you,” suggested Elaine.

“You are too kind! I have made it a rule never to go visiting with the

children while they are small.”

Upon that Wilfred saw that Elaine gave up. “I’m so sorry!” she said,

resuming her usual unconcerned surface. Meanwhile Joe, out of

politeness, was telling Wilfred the latest news of the government’s

Philippine policy, in which Wilfred was not the least interested.

Presently Elaine arose. “We must be getting on to our friends. So glad

to have run into you. Good-bye. . . . Good-bye, Wilfred.”

She went with a frank, final smile at him, that was hard to bear. If she

had gone without looking at him, he could have built on that. Her whole

attitude had been rather devastating to a man’s vanity. He could hardly

tell himself that she had lived to regret her refusal of him. Seeing his

wife there in her two-seasons-old coat, and hearing about the three

children and no help! Then Wilfred grinned inwardly at his own expense.

Incorrigible! Still prone to strut, drawing the rags of his egotism

about him!

His eyes followed Elaine. He saw her whisper to Joe, and could read her

lips. “What a tiresome woman!” And Joe’s courteous acquiescence. . . .

Even though Elaine and Joe might be perfectly indifferent to each other,

what a beautiful picture their life made! Eighteenth century beauty.

Maybe there was a sort of peace in a loveless marriage. Was love really

worth all the wear and tear that it entailed? . . . By way of contrast,

he and Fanny returning to their jerry-built house, and their niggling

domestic cares . . . ! But no bitterness! The child was better! . . .

And anyhow, he could more fully apprehend the beauty of an elegant life

than its possessors. So was it not really his more than theirs? An

inexpensive and a comforting doctrine . . . ! One’s own life, too.

Sometimes you were able to survey it from a slight elevation. A bit of

meaning emerged from the welter. Oh yes, you gained something on the

distracting pilgrimage, though you might not realize it at the time.

Bitterness was gone. He could be thrilled by Elaine’s splendid air,

without experiencing the sting of desire. . . . He must store away this

last sight of her. How well he knew the gallant carriage of her flat

back, and the little half curls at the nape of her neck! He had

recovered her. She was glorious again! . . .

He sat down facing the cold reality of Frances Mary. He debated how best

to deal with her; and while he was considering it, heard the mild words

coming out of his own mouth: “Why do you act so? She is nothing to me!”

“Your eyes are full of her!” said Frances Mary, darkly.

Wilfred sighed, and made a feeble gesture.

“She was trying to make us feel cheap!” said Frances Mary.

“You are quite wrong,” he said quickly. “Not until the very end, and you

forced that on her.”

“You understand her of course,” she said.

Wilfred experienced a sort of collapse. Of what use this endless

struggle? No advance was possible. And how tired he was! Was it _his_

fault? Why did the onus invariably fall upon him? Oh, to be alone and at

peace, away from the pulling of all these hands, big and little! To be

at sea with men for his shipmates . . . !

“Let’s go,” said Frances Mary, bleakly. “We have just time to catch the

5:23.”

Wilfred roused himself automatically. “No hurry,” he said. “We’re not

going on the 5:23. . . . It would be too ridiculous to let this accident

spoil our day; to lie down under it! Just for that, we’re going to make

a night of it now. We’re going to walk down the avenue, looking in all

the shop windows. We’re going to Mouquin’s to dinner, and afterwards to

a play. We can send a telegram to nurse. . . .”

Frances Mary shook her head. “It would be silly to spend the money. I

shouldn’t enjoy it now. Come on. . . .”

“You’ve damned well _got_ to enjoy it!” said Wilfred. “We’re not going

home with our tails between our legs. . . .”

“The thought of those people. . . .”

“Forget them . . . ! If I can only find a play with some good laughs in

it. . . .”

She picked up her gloves. “You stay. I’d rather go home, really.”

“Well, go ahead!” said Wilfred recklessly. “And by God! I’ll get drunk!

Sometimes it’s the only rejoinder . . . !”

Frances Mary laid down her gloves.

* * * * *

They were walking down the avenue. Apropos of nothing, Frances Mary

said: “Anyway, the man was impossible! Such insolence!”

A great rush of gratitude filled Wilfred’s breast. She was coming

’round! Cheers! He cunningly hid his joy. He did not honestly think that

Joe had been insolent, but one could concede that! “I always told you

what he was.”

“The cheek of his pretending that he had never heard of you, when you’re

a regular contributor to one of his rotten magazines!”

“It’s quite on the cards that he may never read his magazines,” said

Wilfred. “Indeed, I hope it may be true that I am unknown to him. That’s

why I kicked you under the table.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Suppose this meeting irritated him,” said Wilfred. “Mind you, I don’t

think he noticed us one way or t’other; but if it was called to his

attention that he had the power to injure me, he might write to his

editor telling him to step on my stuff hereafter. That’s the worst of

power: a man can’t always resist the temptation of making it felt, even

if there’s nothing in particular to be gained.”

“Oh, Wilfred . . . !”

“He and his like are our masters,” said Wilfred serenely, “and it

behooves us to step warily in their presence.”

“How can you be so calm about it?”

“Well,” said Wilfred, grinning sideways at her, “I have, to use that

word which you despise, compensations!”

Fanny suddenly slipped her arm through his.

“Oh, Wilfred . . .” she faltered. “You’re such a dear . . . ! I’m sorry

. . . ! I believe I’m going to cry. . . . Now, I’m sure I am! I can’t

keep it back . . . !”

“That’s all right! We’ll turn down this side street. Let her fly, old

girl! . . .”