"In this case," he said, and his voice sounded cold and firm, "what is

not known seems to be incorrectly surmised. I knew Mrs.

Gore--before--before her marriage. She is a Southerner."

Mrs. Ryder looked up.

"Yes?" she interrogated, as he paused.

"And, although I cannot vouch for her discretion, I can for her innate

purity of character."

Mrs. Ryder flushed, and spoke with a beautiful contrition in her eyes.

"I was wrong," she said, "to trust rumor. It makes me ashamed of

myself--of my lack of generosity."

The curtain rose, and Father Algarcife turned to the stage. But he did

not see it. The figures were blurred before his eyes and the glare

tortured him. Across the circle of space he knew that Mariana was

sitting, her head upraised, her cheek resting upon her hand, her face in

the shadow. He could almost see her eyes growing rich and soft like

green velvet.

Then, as the voice of the soprano rang out, he started slightly.

Beneath the song of love he heard the cry of ambition--a cry that said:

_"I would give half my life for this--to sing with Alvary."_

Whence the words came he did not know. He had no memory of them in time

or place, but they struggled in the throat of the soprano and filled the

air.

He turned and looked at her as she sat across from him, her cheek

resting in her hand against a blaze of diamonds. She looked white, he

thought, and wistful and unsatisfied. Then a fierce joy took possession

of him--a joy akin to the gloating of a savage cruelty. She had failed.

Yes, in spite of the brocade of her gown, in spite of the diamonds in

her hair, in spite of the homage in the eyes of men that followed

her--she had failed.

The blood rushed into his temples, and he felt it beating in his pulses.

He was glad--glad that she was unsatisfied--glad of the struggle and of

the failure--glad of the slow torture of famished aspirations.

And from the throat of the soprano the words rang heavy with throbs of

unfulfilment:

_"I would give half my life for this--to sing with Alvary."_

Then as he looked at her she stirred restlessly, and their eyes met. It

was a blank look, such as two strangers might have interchanged, but

suddenly he remembered the night they came together and sat in the fifth

gallery. A dozen details of that evening flickered in his memory and

reddened into life. He remembered the splendors of her eyes, the thrill

in her voice, the nervous tremor of her hands. He remembered the violets

in her bonnet, created from nothing after a chapter of Mill--and the

worn gloves with the stains inside, which benzine had not taken away. He

remembered her faintness when the opera was over, and the grocery-shop

across from The Gotham, where they had bought ale and crackers. He saw

her figure as she sat on the hearth-rug in her white gown, her hair

hanging loose about her shoulders, her eyes drowsy with sleep. He saw

her hands--bare then of jewels--as she unfastened the parcels, and heard

her laugh as he drew the cork and the ale spilled upon the crackers.

Good God! He had forgotten these things eight years ago.

Again he looked across at her and their eyes met. He turned to the stage

and listened to the faltering of love as it struggled with doubt. The

music had changed. It had deepened in color and a new note had throbbed

into it--a note of flesh that weighed upon spirit--of disbelief that

shadowed faith. The ideal was singing the old lesson of the real found

wanting--of passion tarnished by the touch of clay. The ecstasy had

fled. Love was not satisfied with itself. It craved knowledge, and the

vision beautiful was fading before the eyes of earth. It was the song of

the eternal vanquishment of love by distrust, of the eternal failure of

faith.

* * * * *

When the curtain fell Ryder came into the box. He was looking depressed,

and lines of irritation had gathered about his mouth. He pulled his fair

mustache nervously. His wife rose and looked at him with a frank smile

in her eyes.

"I have been watching Mrs. Gore," she said, "and she is very lovely.

Will you take me to her box for a moment?"

Nevins looked up with quick gratitude, and Ryder grew radiant. He smiled

on his wife in affectionate admiration.

"Of course I will," he answered, and as they left the box he added: "You

are magnificent. There is not a woman in town with your neck and arms."

She smiled faintly, unmoved by his words. She had learned long since

that he still admired though he no longer desired her--and desire was

the loadstar of his life.

Father Algarcife, looking at the box across from him, saw Mariana start

suddenly and rise with an impulsive welcome as Mrs. Ryder entered. He

could see the light on her face, and the frank pleasure of her greeting.

Then, as the two women stood together, he saw Ryder glance from one to

the other with his pleasant smile and turn to speak to Miss Ramsey. He

heard Nevins breathing behind him, and he was conscious of a strange

feeling of irritation against him. Why should he, who was at enmity with

no man, cherish that curious dislike for one who was his friend?

"Mrs. Ryder is a creature to be adored," said Nevins to Miss Darcy. "She

is Isis incarnate."

Miss Darcy responded with her flashing smile. "And Mrs. Gore's

divinity?"

Nevins gave an embarrassed laugh.

"Oh, I am not sure that she is a goddess at all," he answered. "She is

merely a woman."

CHAPTER VIII

As Mariana entered her house after the opera was over she unwound the

lace scarf from her head, letting it trail like a silvery serpent on the

floor behind her. Then she unfastened her long cloak, and threw it on a

chair in the drawing-room.

"The fire is out," she said, looking at the ashes in the grate, "and I

am cold--cold."

"Shall I start it?" asked Miss Ramsey, a little timidly, as she tugged

awkwardly at her gloves, embarrassed by their length.

Mariana laughed absently.

"Start it? Why should you?" she questioned. "There are servants--or

there ought to be--but no, I'll go up-stairs."

She went into the hall, and Miss Ramsey followed her. On the second

landing they entered a large room, the floor of which was spread with

white fur rugs, warmed by the reddish lights and shadows from an open

fire.

Mariana crossed to the fire, and, drawing off her gloves, held her hands

to the flames. There was a strained look in her eyes, as if she had not

awaked to her surroundings.

Miss Ramsey raised the wick of the lamp, yawned behind her hand, and

came to where Mariana was standing.

"Are you tired?" she asked. "The opera was very long."

Mariana started and looked at her.

"You poor little thing," she said. "It half killed you. No, don't go.

Sit down for a moment. I want to talk to you."

As she spoke she unfastened her gown, slipped it off, and threw it

across a chair. Then she put on a wrapper of white flannel, and, seating

herself on the rug before the fire, loosened her heavy hair.

"I want to talk," she repeated.

Miss Ramsey drew a chair beside her and sat down. She laid her hand on

Mariana's hair.

"Shall I braid it?" she asked.

Mariana shook her head.

"I don't want you to wait on me," she replied, half pettishly. "Janet

can do that. I want you to love me."

Miss Ramsey smiled.

"How shall I begin?" she inquired.

But Mariana was silent, staring moodily into the fire, where the ruddy

coals assumed sharp and bizarre designs. As the light flickered over her

face it brought out the changes in her eyes and the warmth of her mouth.

"Do you see that head in the fire?" she asked, suddenly. "It is the head

of the Sphinx--and before it there is a burning desert--do you see?"

Then she laid her head in Miss Ramsey's lap, and her voice sounded faint

and far off.

"I want to be told that I am good," she said; "that I have been good all

my life--that I am a saint, like that splendid creature who came to

speak to me to-night. Am I as good as she?"

"I do not know her," responded Miss Ramsey.

Mariana raised her eyes to her face.

"Am I like I used to be--at The Gotham?"

Miss Ramsey smiled.

"You are older."

"And wiser?"

"I don't think you will ever be wise, my dear."

"I am afraid not," said Mariana. "I am wedded to folly." Then she sighed

softly. "Am I better?" she asked.

"You are very good to me."

"Am I better--to look at?"

Miss Ramsey shook her head gently.

"Dress makes a good deal of difference," she returned, presently.

Mariana rose and kissed her good-night.

"Sleep well," she said. "And don't make your bed in the morning--please

don't. Yes, I am very sleepy."

But when the door had closed after Miss Ramsey she sat looking into the

grate until the crimson coals had waned to livid ashes. The room grew

cold and the shadows deepened in the folds of the curtains at the

windows, which were stirred by a faint draught. From the street below an

occasional noise rose, vague, unseizable--the roll of a wagon or the

tramp of a passer-by upon the sidewalk. In a distant room a clock struck

twice, with a soft whirring sound. From her gown, thrown across the back

of a chair, the bruised violets diffused a fading sweetness. The embers

waned one by one, and the visions in the fire grew spectral, like living

faces which the warm blood forsakes. As the last one died she rose and

went to bed.

When she awoke in the morning it was to find Miss Ramsey standing beside

her, holding her breakfast-tray.

"You were sleeping very soundly," she said. "Did you have a good night?"

"Oh yes," Mariana responded. She yawned and turned upon the pillows,

stretching her arms above her head. The lace on her sleeves fell away

from her bare elbows.

"I slept very soundly, and I am sleepy still. The mere fact of getting

up in the morning makes life a failure. Until I have had my bath I am

always a pessimist."

She sat up drowsily, running her hands through her hair. Then she turned

to her tea, which was placed on a table beside her.

"There are your violets also," remarked Miss Ramsey, pointing to a

couple of florist's boxes; and, as an afterthought, she added: "Men are

odd creatures."

Mariana laughed.

"Oh, they imagine that they are laying up treasures on earth," she

answered, stirring her tea. "And they have overlooked the fact that

moths corrupt. I shall advise them to transfer their attentions to

Heaven. Who was it that called me 'unpropitious'?"

"I don't like it," said Miss Ramsey. "I may be old-fashioned, but I

don't approve of married men living as if they had no responsibilities."

"Nor do I," agreed Mariana. "It bores one awfully."

"And it makes people say unkind things of you, my dear. It is so hard

for them to draw the distinction between imprudence and infamy."

"Yes," admitted Mariana, pushing her cup aside. "I suppose it is--and I

suppose I am imprudent."

"I wish you would try to be a little more careful."

Mariana caught her hand and pulled her down on the bed beside her.

"What a treasure you are!" she said. "Do you know you are the one woman

I absolutely believe in? You might have made a fortune by reporting

scandals about me, and you haven't done so."

The maid brought in several letters, and Mariana took them from her and

broke the seals carelessly.

"Mr. Gore is coming forward again," she remarked, tossing an open sheet

on the counterpane. "You knew he did not like that worshipful old uncle

of his leaving me his property. He says it has made me too independent.

Well, it has made me independent of him, for which Heaven be praised.

When I heard of it I repeated the Thirty-nine Articles, fifty _Hail

Mary's_, and as much of the Shorter Catechism as I could think of. I

feel _so_ thankful."

"I am sorry for that, Mariana."

"You wouldn't be if you knew him. You are too economical to squander

emotions."

"But it does seem rather hard on him," said Miss Ramsey.

Mariana laughed.

"It would have been worse on me had I stayed with him," she responded.

"And now, if Janet has my bath ready, I think I'll get up."

An hour later she came down-stairs in her hat and coat, and went for her

morning walk in the park. When she returned she ordered the carriage,

and went shopping, accompanied by Miss Ramsey.

"You are to have a heliotrope satin," Mariana declared, in a burst of

generosity, "and I am to have one that is all amber and dull gold."

As she stood in the centre of the costumer's show-room, surveying the

lustrous folds of heliotrope and amber, her eyes shone with pleasure.

Miss Ramsey protested faintly.

"My dear Mariana, I beg of you," she said, "leave me the black silk.

Colors confuse me."

But Mariana was obdurate.

"No," she replied, "I have selected it. We will go to the milliner's."

They drove to the milliner's, where they remained for a couple of

hours--Mariana finding difficulty in deciding upon a bonnet. When the

choice was made Miss Ramsey was threatened with hysteria, and they went

home.

"I quite forgot," said Mariana, as they entered the house, a small

brown-stone one on Fifty-seventh Street, which she had leased--"I quite

forgot that I was to have sat for Mr. Nevins this morning. How provoking

I am! But it is too late now, and, besides, I am looking a fright. My

dear, good Miss Ramsey, I do wish you would express yourself more about

the purchases I make."

"I did express myself," protested Miss Ramsey, looking jaded and

harassed. "I expressed myself against that heliotrope satin, but it did

no good."

"But that was absurd," responded Mariana. "I do hope luncheon is ready,"

and she went up-stairs to change her dress.

After luncheon Mrs. Ryder called, and Mariana went in to see her, a

flush of pleasure suffusing her face.

"How very kind of you!" she said, taking the proffered hand, and there

was a thrill of gratitude in her voice. They seated themselves near

together and talked of mutual acquaintances, principally men, of the

weather, and of the opera the evening before--all with the flippancy

with which society veils the primordial network of veins coursing

beneath its bloodless surface. Then, when Mrs. Ryder rose to go, she

hesitated an instant, looking down at the smaller woman.

"I should like to be your friend," she said at last. "Will you let me?"

Mariana raised her eyes.

"I need them," she answered; and then she added, impulsively: "Do you

know all that has been said of me--all?"

Mrs. Ryder drew herself up with a slow, gracious movement.

"But it is not true," she said.

"No, it is not true," repeated Mariana.

The other smiled and held out her hand.

"I want you to come to luncheon with me," she said. "I shall be alone

to-morrow. Will you come?"

"Yes," Mariana responded, "to-morrow."

And after Mrs. Ryder had gone she sat down at her desk and wrote a note.

"You must not talk to me again as you did last evening," it said. "I

have told you so before, but I may not have seemed in earnest. Now I am

in earnest, and you must not--you shall not do it. I know it has been a

great deal my fault, and I am sorry for it. Indeed, you must believe

that I did not think of its coming to this."

Then she sealed it and gave it to the servant to mail, after which she

went up-stairs and talked to Miss Ramsey until dinner.

The next day she went to Mrs. Ryder's, and they sat down to luncheon at

a small round table and talked as women talk in whom feeling is

predominant over thought, and to whom life represents a rhythmic series

of emotions rather than waves of mental evolution.

They spoke in low, almost affectionate voices, conscious of one of those

sudden outreaches of sympathy to which women are subject. When luncheon

was over they went up to the nursery, and Mariana knelt upon the floor

and romped with the child, who pulled her loosened hair, uttering shrill

shrieks of delight. At last she rose hurriedly, and Mrs. Ryder saw that

a tear trembled on her lashes.

The elder woman's heart expanded.

"You have had a child?" she asked, softly.

"Yes."

"And lost it?"

"Yes, I lost it."

Mrs. Ryder's eyes grew soft.

"I am so sorry for you," she said. The tear on Mariana's lashes fell

upon her hand.

"It was eight years ago," she said. "That is a long time, but I suppose

one never entirely forgets."

"No," answered the other, "one never forgets."

She stooped suddenly, and, lifting her child, kissed it passionately.

Several mornings after this Mariana's carriage stopped before Nevins's

studio, and Mariana got out and ascended the long flight of stairs. In

response to the fall of the brass knocker, the door was opened and

Nevins greeted her reproachfully. "Are you aware," he demanded, gravely,

"that there has been sufficient time for the appearance of a wrinkle

since your last sitting?"

"Portraits don't have wrinkles," returned Mariana, cheerfully, entering

and unfastening her coat; "nor do I."

She removed her hat and gave an impatient little fluff to her hair.

"Do I look well?" she asked.

"Were you ever otherwise to me?" rejoined Nevins, in impassioned

protest.

Mariana turned from him with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

"For the last week," she said, "I have had a horrible cold. It made my

eyes red and my nose also. That is why I stayed away."

"And plunged me into a seven days' despair--for a cold."

"Oh, but such a cold!"

She seated herself on a low chair between two large curtained easels.

Then she rose to examine the portrait.

"I suppose the touching-up makes a great deal of difference," she

remarked.

"A great deal," assented Nevins; "but don't you like it?"

She hesitated, her head first on one side, then on the other.

"Oh yes," she said, "but I should like it to be ideal, you know."

"Nonsense! You don't need to be idealized. To idealize means to wipe out

character with turpentine and put in inanity with a paint-brush." Then

he added: "Sit down just as you are, and turn your head towards the

purple curtain on that easel. A little farther--there. I must have that

expression."

He picked up his brush and worked steadily for twenty minutes. Then he

frowned.

"You have suffered twelve changes of expression within the last sixty

seconds," he said. "What are you thinking of?"

"Oh, lots of things."

"Keep to one, please."

She smiled.

"Which shall it be?"

His eyes lingered upon her in sudden brightness.

"Think of me," he responded.

"I do," returned Mariana, amiably; "but when I think of you I think of

Mr. Ardly, and when I think of Mr. Ardly I think of The Gotham, and when

I think of The Gotham I think of--Mr. Paul."

"Confound Mr. Paul!" retorted Nevins, crossly.

"Please don't," protested Mariana; and she added, "you know he

disapproves of me very much."

"The scoundrel!"

"But a great many people do that."

"The scoundrels!"

"Oh no," said Mariana, plaintively; "it is only your kindness of heart

that makes you say so."

He laid down his brush and looked at her.

"My God!--Mariana!" he exclaimed.

"Nevins," said a voice in the doorway.

He turned abruptly. Mariana, behind the curtained easel, paled suddenly.

"I knocked, my dear fellow," the voice went on, "and I thought you

answered. So you _are_ alone. I came to look at the portrait."

"I am not alone," returned Nevins, awkwardly; "but come in,

a--a--Algarcife."

Mariana rose from behind the easel and came forward. Her face was white,

but she was smiling.

"He is painting every one's portrait," she said, "and I am one of

everybody." She held out her hand. He took it limply, and it fell from

his grasp.

"I beg your pardon," he said; "I did not know."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," responded Mariana. "Please look at the

portrait. I want to--to rest."

He turned from her coldly.

"Since Mrs. Gore is so kind," he said to Nevins, "I will look at it. It

will only detain you a moment."

He crossed the room and drew aside the curtain from a large canvas, then

he fell back from the light and examined it carefully for a few seconds,

suggesting an alteration or two, and making a favorable comment.

Mariana followed him with her eyes, her hands clasped before her, her

face pallid, and the red of her lips shining like a scarlet thread.

"It--it is very like," she said, suddenly.

He bowed quietly, showing a slight surprise, as he might have done at

the remark of a stranger. Then he turned to the door.

"I am sorry to have interrupted you," he said. "Good-morning."

When the door closed upon him Mariana stood for an instant with her head

bent as if listening to his footsteps on the stairs. Then she turned to

Nevins, a smile flashing across her face.

"We must go back to the portrait," she said. "It must be finished

quickly--quickly. I am afraid of wrinkles."

CHAPTER IX

Mariana was walking under the elms that skirt the park on Fifth Avenue.

It was a mild December morning, and the sunshine fell in silvery waves

through the bare branches of trees overhead and rippled lightly across

the concrete sidewalk, while the slender shadows of the boughs assumed

the effect of irregular lines drawn by crude fingers upon a slate. Far

ahead, through the narrowing archway of naked elms, the perspective

sloped in gradual incline, blending the changing shades of blue and gray

into a vista of pale violet. On the low stone wall to her left the

creepers showed occasional splashes of scarlet berries, glowing warm and

vivid through the autumnal haze which tinted the atmosphere. December

had reverted for a single day into the majesty of dead October.

Mariana walked slowly, the furs, which she found oppressive, open at the

throat, and her muff hanging idly from her hand. There was a rapt

expression upon her face, and her eyes were sombre. She had the strained

and preoccupied air of one whose mind has winged back to long-past days,

leaving the body adrift in its relation to present events. All at once a

tiny child, rolling a toy along the sidewalk, stumbled and fell before

her feet, uttering shrieks of dismay. The incident recalled her to

herself, and, as she stooped to lift it, she smiled at the profuse

apologies of the nurse. Then she glanced about her, as if uncertain of

the number of blocks that she had walked.

Three aspens, standing together in the park, arrested her gaze, and she

looked at them with momentary intentness. Their slender bodies shone

like leprous fingers, pointing heavenward, and on the topmost point of

one a broken spray of frosted leaves shivered whitely. They recalled to

her with a shudder the little graveyard on the old plantation, where she

had spent her earliest childhood, and she was seized with a spasm of

memory. She saw the forgotten and deserted graves, with the rank

periwinkle corroding the marble slabs, and she saw the little brown

lizards that crept out to bask upon them in the summer sunshine. With

the recollection, death appeared to her hideous and loathsome, and she

walked on quickly, her eyes on the pavement. A group of street-cleaners

were seated against the stone wall, eating their mid-day meal, and she

looked at the hunks of bread and ham with a feeling of sympathy for the

consumers. Then, as she passed, her thoughts swung to the owner of the

house across the way whom she knew, and who was descending the front

steps. At Sixty-seventh Street she turned into the park, her eyes drawn

by the clump of pines darkly defined against the gray rock beyond. For

the second time her errant thoughts went back to her childhood and to

the great pine forest where the wind played lullabies through the white

heat of August days. She felt a swift desire to throw herself beneath

the little alien growth of pine, to lie on the soft grass, which was

still like emerald deepened by bluish shadows, and to let the spicy

needles fall upon her upturned face.

As she moved onward, a man crossing the park in a rapid walk approached

her. It was Father Algarcife, and in a moment their glances met.

He raised his hat, and would have passed on, but she stopped him by a

gesture.

"Won't you speak to me?" she asked, and her voice wavered like a harp

over which the player has lost control.

As she looked at him she saw that he had grown thinner since she had

last seen him, and that his eyes shone with an unnatural lustre.

"What is there for me to say?" he returned, arresting her wavering

glance.

Her lips quivered.

"I may go away," she said, "and this is the last chance. There is

something I must tell you. Will you turn and walk back with me?"

He shook his head.

"What is the use?" he asked, impatiently. "There is nothing to be said

that cannot better be left--unsaid."

"No! No!" she said. "You must not think worse of me than--than I

deserve."

He was smiling bitterly.

"What I think of you," he returned, "matters very little." Then the

smile passed, and he looked at her gravely. "I have little time," he

said. "My days are not my own." And he added, slowly: "If you wish it, I

will walk back with you for a short distance."

"Thank you," she replied, and they passed the clump of pines on their

way in the park.

For a time they were silent, he was looking ahead, and her eyes followed

their shadows as they flitted before her on the ground. The two shadows

drew nearer, almost melted into one, and fell away.

Suddenly he turned to her.

"There was something you wished to say?" he asked, as he had asked his

parishioners a hundred times; then he added: "Even though it were better

left unsaid?"

Her eyes left the shadows, and were raised to his face. She thought

suddenly that there was a line of cruelty about his mouth, and shrank

from him. Had she really seen that face illuminated by passion, or was

memory a lie? She spoke rapidly, her words tripping upon one another.

"I want you to know," she said, "how it happened--how I did it--how--"

He looked at her again, and the mocking smile flamed in his eyes.

"What does it matter how it happened," he questioned, "since it did

happen? In these days we have become impressionists in all things--even

in our experiences. Details are tiresome." Then, as she was silent, he

went on. "And these things are done with. There is nothing between

Mrs.--Gore and the Reverend Anthony Algarcife except a meeting in a

studio and a morning walk in the park. The air is spring-like."

"Don't," she said, suddenly. "You are hard."

He laughed shortly.

"Hard things survive," he answered. "They aren't easy to smash."

She looked at the shadows and then into his face.

"Have you ever forgiven me?" she asked.

He did not answer.

"I should like to feel," she went on, "that you see it was not my

fault--that I was not to blame--that you forgive me for what you

suffered."

But he looked ahead into the blue-gray distance and was silent.

"Tell me that I was not to blame," she said, again.

He turned to her.

"It was as much your fault," he said, slowly, "as it is the fault of

that feather that the wind is blowing it into the lake. What are you

that you should conquer the wind?"

She smiled sadly.

"And you have forgiven me?"

His eyes grew hard and his voice cut like steel.

"No."

"And yet you see that I was not to blame."

He smiled again.

"It is the difference," he answered, "between logic and life. What have

they in common?"

She spoke almost passionately. "Do you think that I have not suffered?"

she asked. "Do you think that you have had all--all the pain?"

He shook his head.

"I do not suffer," he replied. "My life is calm."

She paid no heed to him.

"I have been tortured," she went on; "tortured night and day with

memory--and remorse."

His voice was cold, but a sudden anger blazed in his eyes.

"There are drugs for both," he said.

She shivered.

"I have tried to buy happiness as I bought diamonds," she continued. "I

have gone from place to place in pursuit of it. I have cheated myself

with the belief that I might find it. I did not know that the lack lay

in myself--always in myself."

She was silent, and he softened suddenly. "And you have never found it?"

he asked. "Of all the things that you craved in youth there is lacking

to you now--only your ambition."

She raised her head.

"And love," she finished.

His voice grew hard again.

"We are speaking of realities," he returned, and added, bitterly: "Who

should have had love--if not you?"

They had passed the lake, and were walking through the Ramble. The dead

leaves rustled beneath their feet.

"It is not true," she said, passionately. "It is false."

"What is false?" he demanded, quietly. "That you have had opportunities

for love?"

She did not reply. Her lips were trembling, and her hand played

nervously with the ribbon on her muff.

Suddenly she looked up.

"When I left you," she said, slowly, "I went with the opera troupe

abroad. For several years I was very successful, and I believed it would

end well. I was given a leading part. Then one winter, when we were in

Paris, I was taken ill. It was pneumonia. I was very ill, and the pain

was frightful. They thought it would go to my heart. But when I grew

better the troupe went on. I was left at the hotel, ill and

alone--except for one friend--an Englishman--"

He interrupted her harshly.

"You have made a mistake," he said, and his voice was dull and lifeless.

"I have no right to know your story. You are not of my parish--nor am I

your confessor."

She flinched, but went on steadily, though her tones drooped.

"He had followed me for a long time. He loved me--or thought he did.

When I was deserted by the troupe he stayed with me. He paid my bills

and brought me back to life. I grew strong again, but--my voice was

gone."

She paused as if in pain.

"Sit down," he said.

And they sat down on a bench beneath the naked branches of an oak.

"I was penniless, alone, and very weak. He wanted me even then. At first

he did not want to marry me, but when I would not yield, he begged me to

come back with him and secure a divorce. I think he was mad with

passion."

She hesitated and glanced at him, but he was looking away.

"At last the end came. There was nothing else to do--and I wrote to

you."

He moistened his lips as if they were parched from fever.

"Did you get the letter?"

"Yes," he answered, "I got it."

"And you did not answer?"

"What was there for me to say? You were free."

For an instant her eyes blazed.

"You never loved me," she said.

He smiled slightly.

"Do you think so?" he asked.

The anger died from her eyes and she spoke softly.

"I waited for the answer," she said; "waited months, and it did not

come. Then I came back. We went out West. A divorce was very easy--and I

married him. I owed him so much."

"Yes?"

"It was a mistake. I did not satisfy him. He thought me cold. We

quarrelled, and he went to other women. He drank a great deal. I was

much to blame, but I could not help it. I hated him. Then his uncle took

my part and loved me--God bless him, he was a saint--and kind--oh, so

kind. When he died he left me the money, and his nephew and I separated.

I have not seen him since."

They were both silent. She could hear his heavy breathing, and her heart

throbbed.

"It was all a mistake," she said. "My whole life has been a mistake. But

there is no salvation for us who make mistakes."

His eyes grew dark as he looked at her.

"A mistake that one stands by may become the part of wisdom," he said.

"Could you not go back to him and begin again?" His face had grown

haggard.

Her wrath flamed out.

"If I begin again," she answered, "it must be from the beginning--to

relive my whole life."

He looked at her restless hands.

"Then you must look to the future," he said, "since there is no

present--and no past."

"There is a past," she returned, passionately.

He shook his head.

"A dead one."

Her mouth shone scarlet in the pallor of her face.

"And shall we forget our dead?" she asked.

His lips closed together with brutal force. His eyes were hot with

self-control.

Then he stooped for her muff, which had rolled to the ground, brushing

it lightly with his hand. As he gave it to her he rose to his feet.

"Shall we return?" he asked. "It has grown cloudy."

She rose also, but stood for an instant with her hand resting upon the

back of the bench. Her lips opened, but closed again, and she turned and

walked at his side in silence.

Suddenly he looked at her.

"It is late," he said, "as you doubtless know, and I have neglected a

call. May I leave you to go on alone?" Then his voice softened. "Are you

ill?" he asked--"or in pain?"

She laughed mirthlessly.

"You are too strong," she returned, "to stoop to irony."

"It was not irony," he answered, gently.

She smiled sadly, her eyes raised.

"Tell me that you will come to see me--once," she said.

He looked at her with sudden tenderness.

"Yes," he answered; "I will come. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!"

And they went different ways.

CHAPTER X

Mariana went home with throbs of elation in her heart. She was thrilled

with a strange, unreasoning joy--a sense of wonder and of mystery--that

caused her pulses to quiver and her feet to hasten.

"I shall see him again," she thought--"I shall see him again."

She forgot the years of separation, her past indifference, the barriers

between them. She forgot the coldness of his voice and his accusing

glance. Her nature had leaped suddenly into fulness, and a storm of

passion such as she had never known had seized her. The emotions of her

girlhood seemed to her stale and bloodless beside the tempest which

possessed her now. As she walked her lips trembled, and she thought, "I

shall see him again."

At dinner Miss Ramsey noticed her flushed face, and, when they went into

the drawing-room, took her hands. "You are feverish," she said, "and you

ate nothing."

Mariana laughed excitedly.

"No," she answered, "I am well--very well."

They sat down together, and she looked at Miss Ramsey with quick

tenderness.

"Am I good to you?" she asked. "Am I good to the servants?--to

everybody?"

"What is it, dear?"

"Oh, I want to begin over again--all over again! It is but fair that one

should have a second chance, is it not?"

Miss Ramsey smiled.

"Some of us never have a first," she said; and Mariana took her in her

arms and kissed her. "You shall have yours," she declared. "I will give

it to you."

When she went up-stairs a little later she took down an old square desk

from a shelf in the dressing-room and brought it to the rug before the

fire. Kneeling beside it, she turned the key and raised the narrow lid

of ink-stained mahogany. It was like unlocking the past years to sit

surrounded by these memories in tangible forms, to smell the close,

musty odor which clings about the relics of a life or a love that is

dead.

She drew them out one by one and laid them on the hearth-rug--these

faded things that seemed in some way to waft with the scent of decay

unseizable associations of long-gone joy or sorrow. The dust lay thickly

over them, as the dust of forgetfulness lay over the memories they

invoked. There was a letter from her mother written to her in her

babyhood, and the fine, faded handwriting recalled to her the drooping

figure--a slight and passionate woman, broken by poverty and

disappointments, with vivacious lips and eyes of honest Irish blue.

There was a handful of mouldered acorns, gathered by childish fingers on

the old plantation; there was the scarlet handkerchief her mammy had

worn, and the dance-card of her first ball, with a colorless silk tassel

hanging from one end. Then she pushed these things hastily aside and

looked for others, as one looks beneath the sentiments for the passions

of one's life. She found a photograph of Anthony, pasted on cheap

card-board--a face young and intolerant, with the fires of ambition in

the eyes and the lines of self-absorption about the mouth. Still looking

at the boyish face, she remembered the man that she had seen that

morning--the fires of ambition burned to ashes, the self-absorption

melted into pain.

With the photograph still in her hand, she turned back to the desk and

took out a tiny cambric shirt with hemstitched edges, upon which the

narrow lace was yellow and worn. As the little garment fell open in her

lap she remembered the day she had worked the hemstitching--a hot August

day before the child came, when she had lived like a prisoner in the

close rooms, sewing for months upon the dainty slips, and dreaming in

that subconscious existence in which women await the birth of a new

life. She remembered the day of its coming, her agony, and the first cry

of the child; then the weeks when she had lain watching the dressing and

undressing of the soft, round body, and then the moist and feeble clutch

upon her hand. She remembered the days when it did not leave her arms,

the nights when she walked it to and fro, crooning the lullaby revived

from her own infancy, and at last the hours when she sat in the

half-darkness and watched the life flicker out from the little bluish

face upon the pillow.

"Was that yesterday or eight years ago?"

Her tears fell fast upon the tiny shirt, and she folded it and laid it

away with the photograph and the other relics--laid away side by side

the relics and the recollections covered with dust.

She rose to her feet and carried the desk back to its place in the

dressing-room. In a moment she returned and stood silently before the

fire, her hand resting upon the mantel-piece, her head leaning upon her

arm. She was thinking of the two things a woman never forgets--the voice

of the man she has loved and the face of her dead child.

But when she went to bed an hour later there was a smile on her lips.

"I shall see him again," she said. "Perhaps to-morrow."

The next day she went to Nevins's studio and sat for the portrait. Her

face was aglow and she talked nervously. He noticed that she started at

a noise on the stair, and that her attention wandered from his words. He

made daring, if delicate, love to her, but she seemed oblivious of it,

and, when she rose to go, remarked that he was depressed. In return, he

observed that she was feverish, and advised consulting her physician.

"Your eyes are too bright," he said. "What is it?"

"Your reflected brilliancy, perhaps."

"By no means. The lustre is too unnatural."

"Then it is sleeplessness. I lay awake last night."

"Anything the matter? Can I help you?"

She shook her head, smiling.

"I am adjusting a few difficulties," she answered; "chiefly matrimonial,

but they belong to my cook."

He looked at her attentively.

"Don't worry," he said. "It is not becoming. The flush is all right, but

in time it will give place to discontent. You will sow perplexities to

reap--"

"Furrows," finished Mariana. Then she nodded gayly. "What a pessimist

you are!" she said. "No, I am going to use the best cosmetic--happiness."

And she lifted her skirts and descended the stairs.

That afternoon she remained in-doors, wandering aimlessly from room to

room, opening a book to turn a page or two and to throw it aside for

another.

In the evening she went out to dinner, and Ryder, who was among the

guests, remarked that he had never seen her in better form. "If there

was such a thing as eternally effervescent champagne, I'd compare you to

it," he said. "Are you never out of spirits?"

She looked at him with sparkling eyes. "Oh, sometimes," she responded;

"but as soon as I discover it, I jump in again."

"And I must believe," he returned, his gaze warming, "that your element

is one that cheers but not inebriates."

"You are very charitable. I wonder if all my friends are?"

He lowered his voice and looked into her eyes. "Say all your

worshippers," he corrected, and she turned from him to her left-hand

neighbor.

She laughed and jested as lightly as if her heart were a feather, and

went home at last to weep upon her pillow.

For the next few days she lived like one animated by an unnatural

stimulant. She talked and moved nervously, and her eyes shone with

suppressed excitement, but she had never appeared more brilliant, and

her manner was charged with an irresistible vivacity. To Miss Ramsey she

was unusually gentle and generous.

Each morning, on rising, the thought fired her, "He may come to-day";

each night the change was rung to, "He may come to-morrow"; and she

would toss feverishly until daybreak, to dress and meet her engagement,

with a laugh upon her lips. To a stranger she would have seemed to face

pain as she faced joy, with a dauntless insolence to fate. To a closer

observer there would have appeared, with the sharper gnawing at her

heart, the dash of a freer grace to her gestures, a richer light to her

eyes. It was as if she proposed to conquer destiny by the exercise of

personal charm.

At the end of the week she came down to luncheon one day with a softer

warmth in her face. When the meal was over she went up to her room and

called her maid. "I want the gray dress," she said; but when it was laid

on the bed she tossed it aside. "It is too gloomy," she complained.

"Bring me the red;" and from the red she turned to the green.

She dressed herself with passionate haste, arranging and rearranging

the coil of her hair, and altering with reckless fingers the lace at her

throat. At last she drew back from the glass, throwing a dissatisfied

glance at her reflection--at the green-clad figure and the small and

brilliant face, surmounted by its coils of shining brown. Then she added

a knot of violets to the old lace on her breast, and went down-stairs to

walk the drawing-room floor. An instinctive belief in his coming

possessed her. As she walked slowly up and down on the heavy carpet, the

long mirrors suspended here and there threw back at her fugitive

glimpses of her moving figure. In the dusk of the room beyond she saw

herself irradiated by the glimmering firelight.

The hands of the clock upon the mantel travelled slowly round the

lettered face. As she watched it she felt a sudden desire to shake them

into swiftness. She touched the clock and drew back, laughing at her

childishness. A carriage in the street caught her ears and she went to

the window, glancing through the half-closed curtains. It passed by.

Then a tall, black figure turning the corner arrested her gaze, and her

heart leaped suddenly. The figure came on and she saw that it was an

elderly clergyman with white hair and a benevolent face. She was seized

with anger against him, and her impatience caused her to press her teeth

into her trembling lip. In the street a light wind chased a cloud of

dust along the sidewalk until it danced in little eddying waves into the

gutter. An organ-grinder, passing below, looked up and lifted his hand.

She took her purse from the drawer of the desk and threw him some

change; but when the broken tune was ground out she shook her head and

motioned him away. The sound grated upon her discordant nerves.

She left the window and crossed the room again. The hands of the clock

had made a half-hour's progress in their tedious march.

A book of poems lay on the table, and she opened it idly, her mental

fever excited by the lighter words of one who had sounded the depths and

sunk beneath.

"If Midge will pine and curse its hours away,

Because Midge is not everything--for aye,

Poor Midge thus loses its one summer day,

Loses its all--and winneth what, I pray?"

She threw the book aside and turned away--back to the window where there

was dust and wind--back into the still room where the monotonous tick of

the clock maddened her quivering mood. She walked to and fro in that

silent waiting which is the part of women, and beside which the action

of battle is to be faced with a song of thanksgiving.

The trembling of her limbs frightened her, and she flung herself upon a

divan. The weakness passed, and she got up again. Another half-hour had

gone.

All at once there was a ring at the bell. For an instant she felt her

heart contract, and then a delirious dash of blood through her veins to

her temples. Her pulses fluttered like imprisoned birds.

A footstep crossed the hall, and the door of the drawing-room opened.

"Mr. Ryder!"

She wavered for an instant and went forward to meet him with an

hysterical laugh. Her eyes were like emeralds held before a blaze, and

the intense, opaline pallor of her face was warm as if tinged by a

flame.

He took her outstretched hand hungrily, his face flushing until the

purplish tint rose to his smooth, white forehead.

"Were you expecting me?" he asked. "I would sell my soul to believe that

you were--with that look in your eyes."

She shook her head impatiently.

"I was not," she answered. "I was expecting no one. It is very warm in

here--that is all."

He looked disappointed.

"Have you ever expected me?" he questioned, moodily--"or thought of me

when I was not with you?"

She smiled. "Oh yes!" she returned, lightly. "When I had a note from you

saying that you were coming."

He set his teeth.

"You are as cruel as a--a devil, or a woman," he said.

"What you call cruelty," she answered, gently, "is merely a weapon which

we sometimes thrust too far. When you talk to me in this way, you force

me to use it." And she added, flippantly, "Some day I may thrust it to

your heart."

"I wish to God you would!"

But she laughed merrily and led him to impersonal topics, talking

rapidly, with a constant play of her slim, white hands. She allowed him

no time for protestations. It was all bright, frivolous gossip of the

day, with no hint of seriousness. As she talked, there was no sign that

her ears were straining for an expected sound, or her flesh quivering

with impatience.

At last he rose to go.

"You are the only woman I know," he remarked, as he looked at her with

his easy and familiar glance, "who is never dull. How do you manage it?"

"Oh, it is not difficult," she answered. "To laugh is much easier than

to cry."

"And much more agreeable. I detest a woman who weeps."

Her brilliant laugh rang out.

"And so do I," she said.

When he had gone, and the house door had closed after him, she crossed

to the heavily hanging curtains, pushed them aside, and looked out.

Only dust and wind and gray streets and the sound of the footsteps of a

passer-by. From out the blue mist a single light burst, then another and

another. She held her head erect, a scornful smile curving her lips.

Again the bell rang, and again she quivered and started forward,

listening to the steps that crossed the hall. The door opened.

"Mr. Buisson!"

She hesitated a moment, and then went forward with the same cordial

gesture of her cold, white hand.

CHAPTER XI

Father Algarcife was working like a man spurred by an invisible lash. At

the breaking of the cold winter dawns he might be seen on his rounds in

the mission districts, which began before the early Mass, to end long

after dusk, when the calls of his richer parishioners had been treated

and dismissed. During the morning celebrations one of the younger

priests often noticed that he appeared faint from exhaustion, and

attributed it to the strain of several hours' work without nourishment.

One morning, shortly after New Year, John Ellerslie joined him and went

in with him to breakfast. It was then he noticed that Father Algarcife

ate only cold bread with his coffee, while he apologized for the

scantiness of the fare. "It is lack of appetite with me," he explained,

"not injudicious fasting;" and he turned to the maid: "Agnes, will you

see that Father Ellerslie has something more substantial?" But when

cakes and eggs were brought, he pushed them aside, and crumbled, without

eating, his stale roll.

The younger man remonstrated, his face flushing from embarrassment.

"I am concerned for your health," he said. "Will you let me speak to Dr.

Salvers?"

Father Algarcife shook his head.

"It is nothing," he answered. "But I expect to see Dr. Salvers later in

the day, and I'll mention it to him."

Later in the day he did see Salvers, and as they were parting he alluded

to the subject of his health.

"I am under a pledge to tell you," he said, lightly, "that I am

suffering from loss of appetite and prolonged sleeplessness. I don't

especially object to the absence of appetite, but there is something

unpleasant about walking the floor all night. I don't want to become a

chloral fiend. Can't you suggest a new opiate?"

"Rest," responded Salvers, shortly. "Take a holiday and cut for

Florida."

"Impossible. Too much work on hand."

Salvers regarded him intently.

"The next thing, you'll take to bed," he said, irritably, "and I'll have

all the ladies of your congregation besieging my office door." He added:

"I am going to send you a prescription immediately."

"All right. Thanks. I stop at Brentano's."

He entered the book-shop, and came out in a few moments with a package

under his arm. As he stepped to the sidewalk a lady in a rustling gown

descended from her carriage and paused as she was passing him.

"I was just going in for a copy of your sermons," she said. "I am

distributing quite a number. By the by, have you ever found out who the

_Scientific Weekly_ writer really is?"

He looked at her gravely.

"I have a suspicion," he answered, "but suspicions are unjustifiable

things at best."

He walked home rapidly, unlatched his outer door, and entered his study.

Going to his desk, he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and,

unlocking a drawer, drew out several manuscripts, which he glanced over

with a half-humorous expression. One was the manuscript of the volume of

addresses he had lately published, the other of the articles which had

appeared in the pages of the _Scientific Weekly_. They were both in his

handwriting, but one showed the impassioned strokes of a younger pen,

and belonged to the time when he had written under the veil of

anonymity, that it might not interfere with the plan of his great work.

Now the great work lay at the bottom of the last drawer, with its

half-finished sheets yellowed and sown with dust, while the lighter

articles had risen after a silence of ten years to assault his unstable

present with the convictions of his past.

He crossed to the fireplace and laid both manuscripts upon the coals.

They caught, and the leaves curled upward like tongues of flame,

illuminating the faded text with scrolls of fire. Then they smouldered

to gray spectres and floated in slender spirals up the yawning chimney.

The next day a storm set in, and pearl-gray clouds swollen with snow

drove from the northwest. The snow fell thickly through the day, as it

had fallen through the night, blown before the wind in fluttering

curtains of white, and coating the gray sidewalks, to drift in fleecy

mounds into the gutters.

In the evening, when he came in to dinner, he received an urgent message

from Mrs. Ryder, which had been sent in the morning and which he had

missed by being absent from luncheon. Her child had died suddenly during

the night from an attack of croup.

Without removing his coat, he turned and started to her at once, his

heart torn by the thought of her suffering.

As he ascended the steps the door was opened by Ryder, who came out and

grasped his hand, speaking hurriedly, with a slight huskiness in his

voice.

"She has been expecting you," he said, leading him into the hall. "Come

up to her immediately. I can do nothing with her. My God! I would have

given my right hand to have spared her this." The sincerity in his voice

rang true, and there were circles of red about his eyes.

They went up-stairs, and Ryder opened the door of the nursery, and,

motioning him inside, closed it softly after him. The room was faintly

lighted, the chill curtain of falling snow veiling the windows. On the

little bed, where he had seen it sleeping several months ago, the child

was lying, its flaxen curls massed upon the embroidered pillow; but the

flush of health on the little face had given place to a waxen pallor,

and the tiny hands that had tossed restlessly in sleep were still

beneath white rose-buds. A faint odor of medicine clung about the room,

but the disorder of dying had been succeeded by the order of death.

Mrs. Ryder, sitting near the window, her profile dark against the storm,

turned her heavy eyes upon him, and then, rising, came towards him. He

caught her extended hands and held them firmly in his own. At that

instant the past seemed predominant over the present--and the grief more

his own than another's.

"You have come at last," she said. "Help me. You must help me. I cannot

live unless you do. Give me some comfort--anything!"

His face was almost as haggard as her own.

"What would comfort you?" he asked.

She turned from him towards the little bed, and, falling on her knees

beside it, burst into passionate weeping.

"It was all I had!" she cried. "All I had! O God! How cruel!"

He laid his hand upon her shoulder, not to stay her tears, but to

suggest sympathy. Beyond her the sweet, grave face of the dead child lay

wreathed in rose-buds.

At his touch she rose and faced him.

"Tell me that I shall see him again!" she cried. "Tell me that he is not

dead--that he is somewhere--somewhere! Tell me that God is just!"

His lips were blue, and he put up his hand imploring mercy; then he

opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came.

She clung to him, sobbing.

"Pray to God for me," she said.

He staggered for a moment beneath her touch. Then he knelt with her

beside the little bed and prayed.

When he walked home through the storm an hour later he reeled like a

drunken man, and, despite the cold, his flesh was on fire.

As he entered his door the wind drove a drift of snow into the hall, and

the water dripping from his coat made shining pools on the carpet.

He went into his study and slammed the door behind him. The little dog

sleeping on the rug came to welcome him, and he patted it mechanically

with a nerveless hand. His face was strained and set, and his breath

came pantingly. In a sudden revolution the passion which he believed

buried forever had risen, reincarnated, to overwhelm him. He lived

again, more vitally because of the dead years, the death of a child who

was his and the grief of a woman who was his also. He, who had believed

himself arbiter of his fate, had awakened to find himself the slave of

passion--a passion mighty in its decay, but all victorious in its

resurrection. He shivered and looked about him. The room, the fire, the

atmosphere seemed thrilled with an emotional essence. He felt it in his

blood, and it warmed the falling snow beyond the window. Before the

consuming flame the apathy of years was lost in smoke. A memory floated

before him. He was sitting again in that silent room, driving the heavy

pen, listening to the breathing of his dying child, watching the still

droop of Mariana's profile, framed by dusk. He felt her sobbing upon his

breast, her hands clinging in pain when he lifted her from beside her

dead--and his. He heard again her cry: "Tell me that I shall see her!

Tell me that God is just!" The eternal cry of stricken motherhood.

Whatever the present or the future held, these things were locked within

the past. He might live them over or live them down, but unlive them he

could not. They had been and they would be forever.

* * * * *

The door opened and the servant came in.

"If you please, father, there is a lady to see you."

He looked up, startled.

"A lady? On such a night?"

"She came in a carriage, but she is very wet. Will you see her at once?"

"Yes, at once."

He turned to the door. It opened and closed, and Mariana came towards

him.

She came like a ghost, pale and still as he had seen her in his memory,

with a veil of snow clinging to her coat and to the feathers in her hat.

Her eyes alone were aflame.

He drew back and looked at her.

"You?" he said.

She was silent, holding out her gloved hand with an impulsive gesture.

He did not take it. He had made a sudden clutch at self-control, and he

clung to it desperately.

"Can I do anything for you?" he asked, and his voice rang hollow and

without inflection.

She still held out her hand. Flecks of snow lay on her loosened hair,

and the snow was hardly whiter than her face.

"You must speak to me," she said. "You promised to come, and I

waited--and waited."

"I was busy," he returned, in the same voice.

"We cannot be as strangers," she went on, passionately. "We must be

friends. Can you or I undo the past? Can you or I undo our love--or our

child?"

"Hush!" he said, harshly.

"I came only to hear that you forgive me," she continued, a brave smile

softening the intensity of her face. "Tell me that and I will go away."

He was silent for a moment; then he spoke.

"I forgive you."

She took a step towards the door and came back.

"And is that all?"

"That is all." Beneath the brutal pressure of his teeth a drop of blood

rose to his lips. There was a wave of scarlet before his eyes, and he

clinched his hands to keep them at his sides. A terrible force was

drawing him to her, impelling him to fall upon her as she stood

defenceless--to bear her away out of reach.

She looked at him, and a light flamed in her face.

"It is not all," she retorted, triumphantly. "You have not forgotten

me."

He looked at her dully.

"I had--until to-night."

Tears rose to her eyes and fell upon her hands, while the snow on her

hair melted and rained down until she seemed to weep from head to foot.

"I was never good enough," she said, brokenly. "I have always done

wrong, even when I most wanted to be good." Then she raised her head

proudly. "But I loved you," she added. "I never loved any one but you.

Will you believe it?"

He shook his head, smiling bitterly. As he stood there in his priestly

dress he looked like one in a mighty struggle between the calls of the

flesh and of the spirit. The last wavering fires of anger flamed within

him, and he took a step towards her.

"Do you think," he asked, slowly, forcing his words, "that I would have

left you while there remained a crust to live on? Do you think that I

would not have starved with you rather than have lived in luxury without

you? Bah! It is all over!"

"I was too young," she answered--"too young. I did not know. I have

learned since then."

His outburst had exhausted his bitterness, and a passionate tenderness

was in his eyes.

"I would to God that you had been spared the knowledge," he said.

She shook her head.

"No," she responded. "Not that--not that."

She swayed, and he caught her in his arms. For an instant he held

her--not in passion, but with a gentleness that was almost cold. Then he

released her, and she moved away.

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

He followed her into the hall and opened the door. An icy draught blew

past him.

"Wait a moment," he said. He took an umbrella from the rack, and,

raising it, held it over her until she entered the carriage.

"I hope you will not take cold," he said, as he closed the door.

Then he went back into his study and walked the floor until dawn.

CHAPTER XII

One afternoon during the third week in January, Father Algarcife went to

the studio of Claude Nevins, and found the artist smoking a moody pipe

over a brandy-and-soda. His brush and palette lay upon the floor.

"How are you?" inquired Father Algarcife, with attempted lightness; "and

what are you doing?"

Nevins looked up gloomily, blowing a wreath of gray smoke towards the

skylight.

"Enjoying life," he responded.

The other laughed.

"It doesn't look exactly like enjoyment," he returned. "From a casual

view, I should call it a condition of boredom."

He had aged ten years in the last fortnight, and his eyes had the

shifting look of a man who flees an inward fear.

Nevins regarded him unsmilingly.

"Oh, I like it," he answered, lifting his glass. "Come and join me. I

tell you I'd rather be drunk to-day than be President to-morrow."

"What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing. I haven't done a damned stroke for a week; that's all. I

am tired of painting people's portraits."

"Nonsense. Ten years ago you went on a spree because there were no

portraits to paint."

"Yes," Nevins admitted, "history repeats itself--with variations. The

truth is, Anthony, I can't work."

"Can't? Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"I am going to drink about it."

He drained his glass, laid his pipe aside, and rose, running his hand

through his hair until it stood on end.

"Don't be an idiot. You gave all that up long ago."

Nevins filled his glass and looked up at the skylight.

"'Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before

I swore--but was I sober when I swore?'"

he retorted, with a laugh. Then he lowered his voice. "Between you and

me," he said, "drinking is not what it is cracked up to be. To save my

life, I can't detect a whiff of that old delicious savor of vice. I

detect a twinge of gout instead. Coming conditions cast their claws

before."

Father Algarcife glanced about the room impatiently.

"Come," he said, "I am hurried. Let's see the portrait."

Nevins tossed a silk scarf from a canvas in the corner, and the other

regarded the work for a moment in silence.

"Yes, I like it," he said. "I like it very much indeed."

As he turned away, he stumbled against the easel containing the canvas

on which Nevins had been working, and he started and drew back, his face

paling. It was the portrait of Mariana, her profile drawn against the

purple curtain.

Nevins, following him with his eyes, spoke suddenly.

"That also is good, is it not?" he asked.

Father Algarcife stared above the portrait to the row of death-masks on

their ebony frame.

"Yes, that also is good," he repeated.

As he descended the stairs he met Ardly coming up, his eyes bright and

his handsome face aglow.

They stopped and shook hands.

"Politics agree with you, I see," said Father Algarcife. "I am glad of

it."

Ardly nodded animatedly.

"Yes, yes," he returned, "there is nothing like it, and we are going to

give you the best government the city has ever seen. There is no doubt

of that."

"All right," and he passed on. When he reached the street he turned

westward. It was the brilliant hour of a changeable afternoon, the

sunshine slanting across the sidewalks in sharp lights and shadows, and

the river wind entering the lungs like the incision of a blade. The

people he met wore their collars close about their throats, their faces

blue from the cold.

Then, even as he watched the crisp sunshine, a cloud crossed the sky,

its shade descending like a gray blotter upon the shivering city.

At first he walked rapidly, but a sudden fatigue seized him, and his

pace slackened. He remembered that he had not rested for six hours. In a

moment he saw the cross on the steeple of his church emblazoned in fire

upon the heavens where the sun had burst forth, and, crossing the

street, he pushed the swinging doors and entered softly. It was

deserted. With a sensation of relief he passed along the right side

aisle, and seated himself within the shadow of the little chapel.

Atmospheric waves of green and gold sifted through the windows and

suffused the chancel. Beyond the dusk of the nave he saw the gilded

vessels upon the altar and the high crucifix above. A crimson flame was

burning in the sanctuary lamp, a symbol of the presence of the sacrament

reserved. Above the chancel the figure of the Christ in red and purple

was illuminated by the light of the world without.

Suddenly the sound of the organ broke the stillness, and he remembered

that it was the day of the choir practising. The disturbance irritated

him. During all the years of his priesthood he had not lost his old

aversion to music. Now he felt that he loathed it--as he loathed the lie

that he was living.

He raised his eyes to the stained-glass window, where the Christ in his

purple robes smiled a changeless smile. A swift desire stung him to see

the insipid smile strengthen into a frown--to behold an overthrow of the

strained monotony. Change for the sake of change were preferable. Only

let the still red flame in the sanctuary-lamp send up one fitful blaze,

one shadow darken the gilded serenity of the altar. Would it forever

face him with that bland assumption of the permanence of creed--the

damnation of doubt? Would time never tarnish the blinding brightness of

the brazen cross? He shivered as if from cold.

Then the voices of the choir swelled out in a song of exhortation--the

passionate and profound exhortation of the "Elijah." In an instant it

filled the church, flooding nave and chancel with its anthem of

adoration:

"Lift thine eyes. O, lift thine eyes unto the mountains whence

cometh help. Thy help cometh from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and

earth. He hath said thy foot shall not be moved. Thy Keeper will

never slumber."

Over and over again rang the promise of the prophet:

"Thy Keeper will never slumber--thy Keeper will never slumber."

With the words in his ears he looked at the altar, the white

altar-cloth, and the gilded vessels. He saw laid there as a sacrament

the bonds of his service. He saw the obligations of a child to the one

who had sheltered him, of a boy to the one who had shielded him, of a

man to the one who had reached into the gutter and lifted him up. He

saw the good he had done, the sick he had healed, the filthy he had made

clean. He saw the love of his people--rich and poor--the faiths that

would be shattered by the unsealing of his lips, the work of

regeneration that would crumble to decay. Looking back, he saw the

blessings he had left upon his pathway rotting to curses where they had

fallen. Against all this he saw the lie.

"Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers

not, nor sleeps. He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor

sleeps."

But was it really a lie? He did not believe? No, but he begrudged no man

his belief. He had extinguished the last embers of intolerance in his

heart. The good that he had done in the name of a religion had endeared

that religion to the mind that rejected it.

He had taken its armor upon him, and he had borne it victoriously. He

had worn unsullied the badge of a creed emblazoned upon his breast, not

upon his heart. Was not this justification?

Then, with his eyes upon the altar and the crucifix, beneath the

changeless smile of the Christ in purple robes, he knew that it was not.

He knew that he had sinned the one sin unpardonable in his own eyes;

that he had taken the one step from which for him there was no

returning--that the sin was insincerity, and the step the one that hid

the face of truth.

"He, watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps. Shouldst thou,

walking in grief, languish, He will quicken thee--He will quicken

thee."

He rose and left the church.

* * * * *

It was several days after this that, in unfolding the morning paper, his

glance was arrested by the announcement, "The Honorable Mrs. Cecil

Gore, who has been dangerously ill of pneumonia, is reported to be

convalescent."

The paper shook in his hands, and he laid it hastily aside.

He went out and followed his customary duties, but the thought of

Mariana's illness furrowed his mind with a slow fear. It seemed to him

then that the mere fact of her existence was all he demanded from fate.

Not to see her or to touch her, but to know that she filled a corner of

space--that she had her part in the common daily life of the world.

It was Saturday, and the sermon for the next day lay upon his desk. He

had written it carefully, with a certain interest in the fact that it

would lend itself to oratorical effects--an art which still possessed a

vague attraction for him. As he folded the manuscript and placed it in

the small black case, the text caught his eye, and he repeated it with

an enjoyment of the roll of the words. Then he rose and went out.

In the afternoon, as he was coming out of the church after an interview

with the sacristan, he caught sight of Ryder's figure crossing towards

him from the opposite corner. He had always entertained a distrust of

the man, and yet the anxiety upon his ruddy and well-groomed countenance

was so real that he felt an instantaneous throb of sympathy.

Ryder, seeing him, stopped and spoke, "We have been looking for you," he

said, "but I suppose you are as much occupied as usual."

"Yes--how is Mrs. Ryder?"

"Better, I think--I hope so. She is going to Florida for February and

March. Beastly weather, isn't it? Nevins got off a good thing the other

day, by the by. Somebody asked him what he thought of the New York

climate, and he replied that New York didn't have a climate--it had

unassorted samples of weather."

They walked on, talking composedly, with the same anxiety gnawing the

hearts of both.

At the corner Ryder hailed the stage and got inside.

"Come to see Mrs. Ryder," were his parting words. "She depends on you."

Father Algarcife kept on his way to Fifty-seventh Street, where he

walked several doors west, and stopped before a house with a brown-stone

front.

As he laid his hand on the bell he paled slightly, but when the door was

opened he regained his composure.

"I wish to ask how Mrs. Gore is to-day?" he said to the maid, giving his

card.

She motioned him into the drawing-room and went up-stairs. In a few

minutes she returned to say that Mrs. Gore would receive him, if he

would walk up.

On the first landing she opened the door of a tiny sitting-room, closing

it when he had entered. He took a step forward and paused. Before the

burning grate, on a rug of white fur, Mariana was standing, and through

the slender figure, in its blue wrapper, he seemed to see the flames of

the fire beyond. She had just risen from a couch to one side, and the

pillows still showed the impress of her form. An Oriental blanket lay on

the floor, where it had fallen when she started at his entrance.

For a moment neither of them spoke. At the sight of her standing there,

her thin hands clasped before her, her beauty broken and dimmed, his

passion was softened into pity. In her hollow eyes and haggard cheeks he

saw the ravage of pain; in the lines upon brow and temples he read the

records of years.

Then a sudden tremor shook him. As she rose before him, shorn of her

beauty, her scintillant charm extinguished, her ascendency over him was

complete. Now that the brilliancy of her flesh had waned, it seemed to

him that he saw shining in her faded eyes the clearer light of her

spirit. Where another man would have beheld only a broken and defaced

wreckage, he saw the woman who had inspired him with that persistence of

passion which feeds upon the shadows as upon the lights, upon the lack

as upon the fulfilment.

Mariana came forward and held out her hand.

"It was very kind of you to come," she said.

The rings slipped loosely over her thin fingers. Her touch was very

light. He looked at her so fixedly that a pale flush rose to her face.

"You are better?" he asked, constrainedly. "Stronger?"

"Oh yes; I have been out twice--no, three times--in the sunshine."

She seated herself on the couch and motioned him to a chair, but he

shook his head and stood looking down at her.

"You must be careful," he said, in the same forced tone. "The weather is

uncertain."

"Yes. Dr. Salvers is sending me South."

"And when do you go?"

She turned her eyes away.

"He wishes me to go at once," she said, "but I do not know."

She rose suddenly, her lip quivering.

He drew back and she leaned upon the mantel, looking into the low

mirror, which reflected her haggard eyes between two gilded urns.

"I was very ill," she went on. "It has left me so weak, and I--I am

looking so badly."

"Mariana!"

She turned towards him, her face white, the lace on her breast

fluttering as if from a rising wind.

"Mariana!" he said, again.

He was gazing at her with burning eyes. His hands were clinched at his

sides, and the veins on his temples swelled like blue cords.

Then his look met hers and held it, and the desire in their eyes leaped

out and closed together, drawing them slowly to each other.

Still they were silent, he standing straight and white in the centre of

the room, she shrinking back against the mantel.

Suddenly he reached out.

"Mariana!"

"Anthony!"

She was sobbing upon his breast, his arms about her, her face hidden.

The heavy sobs shook her frame like the lashing of a storm, and she

braced herself against him to withstand the terrible weeping.

Presently she grew quiet, and he released her. Her face was suffused

with a joy that shone through her tears.

"You love me?" she asked.

"I love you."

She smiled.

"I will stay near you," she said. "I will not go South."

For a moment he was silent, and when he spoke his voice rang with

determination.

"You will go South," he said, "and I will go with you."

Her eyes shone.

"South? And you with me?"

He smiled into her upturned face.

"Do you think it could be otherwise?" he asked. "Do you think we could

be near--and not together?"

"I--I had not thought," she answered.

He held her hands, looking passionately at her fragile fingers.

"You are mine," he said--"mine as you have been no other man's. Nature

has joined us together. Who can put us asunder?" Then he held her from

him in sudden fear. "But--but can you face poverty again?" he asked.

"What will matter," she replied, "so long as we are together?"

"You will leave all this," he went on. "We will start afresh. We will

have a farm in the South. It will be bare and comfortless."

She smiled.

"There will be peach-trees," she said, "all pink in the spring-time, and

there will be the sound of cow-bells across green pastures."

"I will turn farmer," he added. "I will wring a living from the soil."

She lifted her glowing eyes.

"And we will begin over again," she said--"begin from the beginning. Oh,

my love, kiss me!"

He stooped and kissed her.

CHAPTER XIII

When Anthony descended Mariana's brown-stone steps the afterglow had

faded from the west, and far down the street the electric lights shone

coldly through frosted globes. He walked with a springing step, lifting

his head as if impatient of restraint. His future was firm. There was no

hesitancy, no possibility of retrenchment. In one breath he had pledged

himself to break the bonds that held him, and this vow there was no

undoing. He had sealed it with his passion for a woman. Already his mind

was straining towards the freedom which he faced. The years of

insincerity would fall away, and the lies which he had uttered would

shrivel before one fearless blaze of truth. Fate had settled it. He was

free, and deception was at an end. He was free!

In the effort to collect his thoughts before going to dinner he crossed

to Broadway, walking several blocks amid the Saturday-evening crowd. He

regarded the passing faces idly, as he had regarded them for twenty

years. They were the same types, the invincible survivals from a wreck

of individuals. He saw the dapper young fellow with the bloodless face,

pale with the striving to ascend a rung in the social ladder; he saw the

heavy features of the common laborer, the keen, quick glance of the

mechanic, and the paint upon the haggard cheeks of the actress who was

out of an engagement. They passed him rapidly, pallid, nervous, strung

to the point of a breaking note, supine to placid pleasures, and alert

to the eternal struggle of the race. When he had walked several blocks

he turned and went back. The noise irritated him. He winced at the

shrill voices and the insistent clanging of cable-car bells. He wanted

to be alone--to think.

In the quiet of the side-street his thoughts assumed more definite

shape. The mad thrill of impulse gave place to a rational joy. He

possessed her, this was sufficient. She was his to be held forever, come

what would. His in wealth and in poverty, in sickness and in health. His

for better or for worse--eternally his.

He set his teeth sharply at the memory of her tear-wet face. He felt the

trembling of her limbs, the burning pressure of her lips. Broken and

worn and robbed of youth--was she not trebly to be desired? Was his the

frail passion that exacts perfection? He had not loved beauty or youth;

he had loved that impalpable something which resists all ravages of

decay--which rises triumphant from death.

Yes, trebly to be desired! He remembered her as he had first seen her,

lifting her head from her outstretched arms, her eyes scintillant with

tears. He recalled the tremulous voice, the plaintive droop of the head.

Then the night when he had held her in the shadow of the fire-escape,

her loosened hair falling about him, her hands hot in his own. She had

said: "I am yours--yours utterly," and the pledge had held. She was his,

first and last. What if another man had embraced her body, from the

beginning unto the end her heart was locked in his.

All the trivial details of their old life thronged back to him; struggle

and poverty, birth and death, and the emptiness of the ensuing years

yawned, chasm-like, before his feet. He was like a man suddenly recalled

from the dead--a skeleton reclothed in flesh and reattuned to the

changes of sensations. Yes, after eight years he was alive once more.

He entered the rectory, and in a few moments went in to dinner. To his

surprise he found that he was hungry, and ate heartily. All instincts,

even that for food, had quickened with the rebirth of emotion.

He drank his claret slowly, seeing Mariana seated across from him, and

the vision showed her pale and still, as she had come to him the night

of the storm, the snow powdering her hair. Then he banished the memory

and invoked her image as he had seen her in the afternoon, wan and

hollow-eyed, but faintly coloring and tremulous with passion. She would

sit opposite him again, but not here.

He had a farm in the South, a valueless piece of land left him by a

relative of his mother. It was there that they would go to begin life

anew and to mend the faith that had been broken. He would till the land

and drive the plough and take up the common round of life again--a life

free from action as from failure, into which no changes might ring

despair.

He left the table and went into his study, seating himself before the

fire. The little dog, with that subtle perception of mental states

possessed by animals, pressed his cold nose into the palm of his

master's hand, whimpering softly, a wistful look in his warm, brown

eyes. Then he lay down, and, resting his head upon his paws, stared into

the fire--seeing in the flames his silent visions.

Anthony leaned back upon the cushions, and the face of Mariana looked at

him from the vacant chair on the hearth-rug. The reddish shadows from

the fire flitted across her features and across the slim, white hand

that was half outstretched. He saw the slippered feet upon the rug and a

filmy garment in her lap, as the work had fallen from her idle hands.

The maid came in with his coffee and he lighted his pipe. In a moment

the bell rang and Ellerslie entered, his face flushed, his hands hanging

nervously before him. He sat down in the chair, still warm from the

vision of Mariana, and Father Algarcife looked at him with a sudden

contraction of remorse. For the first time he winced before the glance

of another--of a girlish-looking boy with a tremulous voice and an

honest heart. He was looking into the fire when Ellerslie spoke.

"I want you to meet my mother," he said. "You know she is coming to town

next week. She is very anxious to know you; I have written so often

about you."

The other looked up.

"Next week--ah, yes," he responded. He was thinking that by that time he

would have passed beyond the praise or blame of Ellerslie and his

mother--he would be with Mariana.

The younger man went on, still flushing.

"She often sends you messages which I don't deliver. She has never

forgotten that illness you nursed me through five years ago."

Father Algarcife shook his head slightly, his eyes on the flames that

played among the coals.

"She must not exaggerate that," he answered.

Ellerslie opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. His shyness

had overcome him.

For a time they were silent, and then Father Algarcife looked up.

"John," he said.

"Yes?"

"If--if things should ever occur to--to shake your faith in me, you will

always remember that I tried to do my best by the parish--that I tried

to serve it as faithfully as Father Speares would have done?"

Ellerslie started.

"Of course," he answered--"of course. But why do you say this? Could

anything shake my faith in you? I would take your word against--against

the bishop's."

Father Algarcife smiled.

"And against myself?" he asked, but added, "I am grateful, John."

When Ellerslie had gone, a man from the Bowery came in to recount a

story of suffering. He had just served a year in jail, and did not want

to go back. He preferred to live straight. But it took money to do that.

His wife, who made shirts, and belonged to Father Algarcife's mission,

had sent him to the priest. As he told his story he squirmed uneasily on

the edge of Mariana's chair, twirling his shapeless hat in the hands

hanging between his knees. The dog crouched against his master's feet,

growling suspiciously.

Father Algarcife rested his head against the cushioned back, and

regarded the man absently. He believed the man's tale, and he

sympathized with his philosophy. It was preferable to live straight, but

it took money to do so. Indeed, the wisest of preachers had once

remarked that "money answereth all things." He wondered how nearly the

preacher spoke the truth, and if he would have recognized a

demonstration of his text in the man before him with the shapeless hat.

Then he asked his caller a few questions, promised to look into his case

on Monday, and dismissed him.

Next came Sister Agatha, to bring to his notice the name of a child on

East Twentieth Street, whom they wished to receive into the orphanage.

He promised to consider this also, and she rose to go, her grave lashes

falling reverently before his glance. After she had gone he pushed his

chair impatiently aside and went to his desk.

On the lid lay the completed sermon, and he realized suddenly that it

must be delivered to-morrow--that he must play his part for a while

longer. At the same instant he determined that on Monday he would deed

over his property to the church. He would face his future with clean

hands. He would start again as penniless as when he received the

vestments of religion. Save for the farm in the South and a small sum

of rental, he would have nothing. He would be free!

There was no hesitancy, and yet, mixed with the elation, there was pain.

Beyond Mariana's eyes, beyond the desire for honest speech, he saw the

girlish face of young Ellerslie, and the grave, reverential droop of

Sister Agatha's lashes. He saw, following him through all his

after-years, the reproach of the people who had believed in him and been

betrayed. He saw it, and he accepted it in silence.

Raising his head, he encountered the eyes of the ancestor of Father

Speares. For an instant he shivered from a sudden chill, and then met

them fearlessly.

CHAPTER XIV

Through the long night Mariana lay with her hands clasped upon her

breast and her eyes upon the ceiling. The electric light, sifting

through the filmy curtains at the windows, cast spectral shadows over

the pale-green surface. Sometimes the shadows, tracing the designs on

the curtains, wreathed themselves into outlines of large poplar leaves

and draped the chandeliers, and again they melted to indistinguishable

dusk, leaving a vivid band of light around the cornice.

She did not stir, but she slept little.

In the morning, when Miss Ramsey came to her bedside, there was a flush

in her face and she appeared stronger than she had done since her

illness.

"Is it clear?" she asked, excitedly. "If it is clear, I must go out. I

feel as if I were caged."

Miss Ramsey raised the shades, revealing the murky aspect of a variable

day.

"It is not quite clear," she answered. "I don't think you had better

venture out. There is a damp wind."

"Very well," responded Mariana. She rose and dressed herself hurriedly;

then she sat down with Miss Ramsey to breakfast, but she had little

appetite, and soon left the table, to wander about the house with a

nervous step.

"I can't settle myself," she said, a little pettishly.

Going up-stairs to her room presently, she threw herself into a chair

before the fire, and looked into the long mirror hanging on the opposite

wall.

She was possessed with a pulsating memory of the evening before--of

Anthony, and of the kiss he had left upon her lips. Then swift darts of

fear shot through her that it might all be unreal--that, upon leaving

her, he had yielded once more to the sway of his judgment. She did not

want judgment, she wanted love.

As she looked at her image in the long mirror, meeting her haggard face

and dilated eyes, she grew white with the foreboding of failure. What

was there left in her that a man might love? What was she--the wreck of

a woman's form--that she could immortalize a man's fugitive desire? Was

it love, after all? Was it not pity, passing itself for passion? Her

cheeks flamed and her pulses beat feverishly.

She turned from the glass and looked at her walking-gown lying upon the

bed.

"I can't wait," she said, breathlessly. "I must see him. He must tell me

with his own lips that it is true."

She dressed herself with quivering fingers, stumbling over the buttons

of her coat. Then she put on her hat and tied a dark veil over her face.

As she came down-stairs she met Miss Ramsey in the hall.

"Mariana, you are not going out!" she exclaimed.

"Only a little way," said Mariana.

"But it has clouded. It may rain."

"Not before I return. Good-bye."

She opened the hall door. Pausing for an instant upon the threshold, a

soft, damp air struck her, and overhead a ray of sunshine pierced the

clouds.

She fastened the furs at her throat and descended to the street.

At first she had no definite end in view, but when she had walked a

block the idea of seeing Anthony grew stronger, and she turned in the

direction of his house. The contact of the moist air invigorated her,

and she felt less weak than she had believed herself to be. When she

reached the rectory she hesitated a moment with her hand upon the bell,

trembling before the thought of seeing him--of hearing him speak. She

rang, and the door was opened.

"Can I see Father Algarcife?" she asked.

Agnes eyed her curiously.

"Why, he's at church!" she responded. "He's been gone about a half-hour

or so. Is it important?"

"No, no," answered Mariana, her voice recovering. "Don't say I called,

please. I'll come again."

"Perhaps you'll step in and rest a bit. You look tired. You can sit in

the study if you like."

"Oh no, I will go on. I will go to the church." She started, and then

turned back. "I believe I will come in for a few minutes," she said.

She entered the house and passed through the open door into the study. A

bright fire was burning, and the dog was lying before it. She seated

herself in the easy-chair, resting her head against the cushions. Agnes

stood on the rug and looked at her.

"You are the lady that came once in that terrible storm," she said.

"Yes, I am the one."

"Would you like a glass of water--or wine?"

Mariana looked up, in the hope of dismissing her.

"I should like some water, please," she said, and as Agnes went into the

dining-room she looked about the luxurious study with passionate eyes.

It was so different from the one at The Gotham, that comfortless square

of uncarpeted floor, with the pine book-shelves and the skull and

cross-bones above the mantel.

The desk, with its hand-carving of old mahogany, recalled to her the one

that he had used when she had first known him, with its green baize

cover splotched with ink.

The swing of the rich curtains, the warmth of the Turkish rugs, the

portraits in their massive frames, jarred her vibrant emotions. How

could he pass from this to the farm in the South--to the old, old fight

with poverty and the drama of self-denial? Would she not fail him again,

as she had failed him once before? Would she not shatter his happiness

in a second chance, as she had shattered it in the first?

The tears sprang to her eyes and scorched her lids. She rose hastily

from her chair.

When the servant returned with the glass of water she drank a few

swallows. "Thank you," she said, gently. "I will go now. Perhaps I will

come again to-morrow."

She passed to the sidewalk and turned in the direction of the church,

walking rapidly. She had not thought of his being at church. Indeed,

until entering his study she had forgotten the office he held. She had

remembered only that he loved her.

As she neared the building an impulse seized her to turn and go back--to

wait for him at the rectory. The sound of the intoning of the gospel

came to her like a lament. She felt suddenly afraid.

Then several persons brushed her in passing, and she entered the heavy

doors, which closed behind her with a dull thud.

After the grayness of the day without, the warmth and color of the

interior were as vivid as a revelation. They enveloped her like the

perfumed air of a hot-house, heavy with the breath of rare

exotics--exotics that had flowered amid the ardent glooms of mediaevalism

and the colorific visions of cloistered emotions. Entering a pew in the

side-aisle, she leaned her head against a stone pillar and closed her

eyes in sudden restfulness. That emotional, religious instinct which had

always been a part of her artistic temperament was quickened in

intensity. She felt a desire to worship--something--anything.

When she raised her lids the colors seemed to have settled into

harmonious half-tones. The altar, which had at first showed blurred

before her eyes, dawned through the rising clouds of incense. She saw

the white of the altar-cloth, and the flaming candles, shivering from a

slight draught, and above the crucifix the Christ in his purple robes,

smiling his changeless smile.

Within the chancel, through the carving of the rood-screen, she saw the

flutter of the white gowns of the choristers, and here and there the

fair locks of a child.

Then the priest came to the middle of the altar, his figure softened by

circles of incense, the sanctuary lamp burning above his head.

He sang the opening phrase of the Creed, and the choir joined in with a

full, reverberating roll of male voices, while the heads of the people

bowed.

Mariana did not leave her seat, but sat motionless, leaning against the

pillar of stone.

From the first moment that she had seen him, wearing the honors of the

creed he served, her heart had contracted with a throb of pain. This was

his life, and what was hers? What had she that could recompense him for

the sacrifice of the Eucharistic robes and the pride of the Cross?

He came slowly forward to the altar steps, his vestments defined against

the carving of the screen, his face white beneath the darkness of his

hair.

When the notices of the festivals and fasts were over, he lifted his

head almost impatiently as he pronounced the text, his rich voice

rolling sonorously through the church:

"For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of

his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? For who can tell a man

what shall be after him under the sun?"

And he spoke slowly, telling the people before him in new phrases the

eternal truth--that it is good for a man to do right, and to leave

happiness to take care of itself--the one great creed to which all

religions and all nations have bowed. He spoke the rich phrases in his

full, beautiful voice--spoke as he had spoken a hundred times to these

same people--to all, save one.

She stirred slightly. It seemed to her that a wind blew from the altar

where the candles fluttered, chilling her flesh. She shivered beneath

the still smile of the painted Christ.

The stone pillar pressed into her temple, and she closed her eyes. Her

head ached in dull, startled throbs.

As she listened, she knew that the final blow had fallen--that it is not

given one to begin over again for a single day; that of all things under

the sun, the past is the one thing irremediable.

The sermon was soon over. He returned to the altar, and the offertory

anthem filled the church. Pressed against the pillar, she raised her

hand to her ear, but the repetition was driven in dull strokes to her

brain:

"Thy Keeper will never slumber. He, watching over Israel, slumbers

not, nor sleeps."

CHAPTER XV

Several hours later Mariana was wandering along a cross-street near

Ninth Avenue. Rain was falling, descending in level sheets from the gray

sky to the stone pavement, where it lay in still pools. A fog had rolled

up over the city. She had walked unthinkingly, spurred at first by the

impulse to collect her thoughts and later by the thoughts themselves. It

was all over; this was what she saw clearly--the finality of all things.

What was she that she should think herself strong enough to contend with

a man's creed?--faith?--God? She might arouse his passion and fire his

blood, but when the passion and the fire burned out, what remained? In

the eight years since she had left him a new growth had sprung up in his

heart--a growth stronger than the growth of love.

The memory of him defined against the carving of the screen, the altar

shining beyond, his vestments gilded by the light, his white face lifted

to the cross, arose from the ground at her feet and confronted her

through the falling rain. Yes, he had gone back to his God. And it

seemed to her that she saw the same smile upon his face that she had

seen upon the face of the painted Christ, whose purple robes tinted the

daylight as it fell upon the chancel.

As she reached Ninth Avenue, an elevated train passed with its

reverberating rumble, and the reflection of its lights ran in a lurid

flame along the wet sidewalk. Clouds of smoke from the engine were blown

westward, scudding like a flock of startled swans into the river.

Straight ahead the street was lost in grayness and the lamps came slowly

out of the fog. A wagon-load of calves was driven past her on the way to

slaughter, and the piteous bleating was borne backward on the wind.

Suddenly her knees trembled, and she leaned against a railing.

A man passed and spoke to her, and she turned to retrace her steps. From

the wet sidewalk the standing water oozed up through her thin soles and

soaked her feet. A pain struck her in the side--sharp and cold, like the

blow of a knife. In sudden terror she started and looked about her.

A cab was passing; she hailed it, but it was engaged, and drove on.

She leaned against the railing of a house, and, looking up, saw the

cheerful lights in the windows. The idea of warmth invigorated her, and

she moved on to the next, then to the next. At each step her knees

trembled and she hesitated, fearing to fall and lie dead upon the cold

sidewalk. The horror of death gave her strength. Beyond the desires of

warmth and light and rest, she was unconscious of all sensation.

Then the pain in her side seized her again, and the shrinking of her

limbs caused her to pause for a longer space. The monotonous cross-town

blocks sloped upward in a black incline before her, seeming to rise

perpendicularly from before her feet to a height in the foggy

perspective. She clung to the railing and moaned softly. A woman,

passing with a bundle on her arm, stared at her, hesitated an instant,

and went on.

At Broadway the lights of the moving cars interchanged like the colors

of a kaleidoscope, swimming amid the falling rain before her eyes.

At Sixth Avenue she steadied herself with sudden resolve, beginning that

last long block with a kind of delirious joy. To stimulate her faltering

feet she glanced back over the terrible distance that she had come, and

she found that the black incline of blocks now sloped in the opposite

direction. She seemed to have descended a hillside of slate. Good God!

How had she lived? Her own door came at last, and she crawled up the

slippery steps, steadying herself against the stone balustrade. The door

was unlatched. She opened it and went inside. At the first suffusion of

warmth and rest her waning thoughts flickered into life.

Then she raised her eyes and uttered a shriek of joy.

"Anthony!"

He was standing on the threshold of the drawing-room, and, as she cried

out, he caught her in his arms.

"My beloved, what is it? What does it mean?"

But as he held her he felt the wet of her clothing, and he lifted her

and carried her to the fire.

"Mariana, what does it mean?"

He was kneeling beside her, unfastening her shoes with nervous fingers.

She opened her eyes and looked at him.

"I went out in the rain," she said. "I don't know why; I have forgotten.

I believe I thought it was all a mistake. The blocks were very long."

Then she clung to him, sobbing.

"Don't let me die!" she cried--"don't let me die!"

He raised her in his arms, and, crossing to the bell, rang it hastily.

Then he went into the hall and up-stairs. On the landing he met the

maid.

"Where is Mrs. Gore's room?" he asked, and, entering, laid her upon the

hearth-rug. "She is ill," he went on. "She must be got to bed and

warmed. Put mustard-plasters to her chest and rub her feet. I will get

the doctor."

He left the room, and Miss Ramsey came in, her eyes red and her small

hands trembling.

They took off her wet things, while she lay faint and still, a tinge of

blueness rising to her face and to her fallen eyelids.

Suddenly she spoke.

"Give me the medicine on the mantel," she said--"quick!"

It was tincture of digitalis. Miss Ramsey measured out the drops and

gave them to her. After she had swallowed them the color in her face

became more natural and her breathing less labored. Miss Ramsey was

applying a mustard-plaster to her chest, while the maid rubbed her cold,

white feet, which lay like plaster casts in the large, red hands.

Mariana looked at them wistfully. "I have done foolish things all my

life," she said, "and this is the most foolish of all."

"What, dear?" asked Miss Ramsey, but she did not answer.

When Anthony came in, followed by the doctor, she was lying propped up

among the pillows, with soft white blankets heaped over her. Her eyes

were closed and she was breathing quietly.

Salvers took her hand and bent his ear to her chest.

"She must be stimulated," he said. "You say she has already taken

digitalis--yes?"

He took Miss Ramsey's seat, still holding Mariana's hand, and turning

now and then to give directions in his smooth, well-modulated voice.

Anthony was standing at the foot of the bed, his eyes upon the blankets.

A light fall of rain beat rhythmically against the window-panes. The

fire crackled in the grate and sent up a sudden, luminous flame,

transfiguring the furniture in the room and the faces gathered in the

shadow about the bed. Mariana stirred slightly. Presently Salvers rose

and drew Miss Ramsey aside.

"It is very serious," he said. "The danger is heart failure. In another

case I should say that it was hopeless--but her constitution is

wonderful. She may pull through." Then he asked a few questions

concerning the cause of the relapse, and turned to go. "Keep her

stimulated, as I have said," he continued; "that is all that can be

done. I would stay until morning, but several of my patients are at

critical points. As soon as I have seen them I will come back." He

started, paused to repeat several directions, and left the room softly,

the sound of his footsteps lost in the heavy carpets.

Anthony took the chair beside the bed and laid his hand on the coverlet.

He thought Mariana asleep. She was lying motionless, her heavy hair

tangled in the lace on the pillow, her lashes resting like a black

shadow upon her cheeks, her lips half parted.

He remembered that she had looked like this after the birth of Isolde,

when he sat beside the bed and the child lay within the crook of her

arm.

A groan rose to his lips, but he choked it back. The hand upon the

coverlet was clinched, and the nails, pressed into the livid palm, had

become purple. Still he sat motionless, his head bent, his muscles

quivering like those of one palsied.

The flame of the fire shot up again, illuminating Mariana's face, and

then died slowly down. The rain beat softly against the window.

Miss Ramsey went noiselessly into an adjoining room and came back, a

glass in her hand. From across the hall a clock struck.

Suddenly Mariana opened her eyes, moaning in short sobs. A blue wave was

rising over her face, deepening into tones of violet beneath the shadows

of her eyes. They measured the medicine and gave it to her and she lay

quiet again. He put his arm across her.

"Anthony!" she said.

He bent his ear.

"My beloved?"

"Hold me, the bed is going down. My head is so low."

He caught her passionately, his kisses falling distractedly upon her

eyes, her lips, the lace upon her breast, and her cold hands.

"And you do love me?"

"Love you?" he answered, fiercely. "Have I ever loved anything else? O

my love! My love!"

His tears stung her face like fire.

"Don't," she said, gently; and then, "It would have been very nice, the

little farm in the South, and the peaches, and the cows in the pastures,

but," she smiled, "I am not very thrifty--the peaches would have rotted

where they fell, and the cows would never have been milked."

"Mariana!"

She lay in his arms, and they were both silent.

The clock struck again. In the street a passer-by was whistling "Oh,

Nellie's blue eyes."

She spoke drowsily: "Speak softly. You will wake the baby."

* * * * *

In the glimmer of dawn Salvers entered. A sombre mist penetrated the

curtains at the windows, and in the grate a heap of embers reddened and

waned and reddened and waned again. A light dust had settled over the

room, over the mantel, the furniture, and the blankets on the bed--a

fine gray powder, pale like the ashes of yesterday's flame.

He crossed to the bed and took Mariana from Anthony's arms. Her head

fell back and the violet shadows in her face had frozen into marble. She

was smiling faintly.

"My God!" said Salvers, in a whisper. "She has been dead--for hours."

He laid her down and turned to the man beside him, looking at him for a

moment without speaking. Then he laid his hand upon his arm and spoke to

him as if to a child. "You must go home," he said, emphasizing the

syllables. "It is over. You can do no good. You must go home."

The other shook his head. His eyes were blank, like those of a man in

whom the springs of thought have been suddenly paralyzed.

"You must go home," repeated Salvers, his hand still upon his arm. "I

will be with you in an hour. You must go."

Beneath his touch Anthony moved slowly into the hall, descending the

stairs mechanically. Salvers gave him his hat and opened the outer door.

Going to the sidewalk, he motioned to his coachman.

"Take Father Algarcife home," he said.

He slammed the door and looked after the carriage as it rolled down the

block and rounded the corner. Then he turned and re-entered the house.

* * * * *

When Father Algarcife reached the rectory, he went into his study,

locking the door after him. Then he seated himself at his desk and

rested his head in his hands. His mind had cleared from the fog, but he

did not think. He remained staring blankly before him.

The room was cold and damp, the fire had not been kindled, and the

burned-out coals lay livid upon the hearth. The easy-chair was drawn

before the fender where he had sat yesterday, and the lamp which he had

not lighted the evening before stood on the little marble-top table. An

open book, his pipe, and an untasted cup of coffee were beside it.

On the desk his yesterday's sermon lay unrolled, the text facing him in

bold black and white:

"For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?"

The dull, neutral tones of advancing dawn flooded the room. There was a

suggestion of expectancy about it, as of a world uncreate, waiting for

light and birth.

He raised his eyes, not his head, and stared over the desk at the wall

beyond. From above the mantel the portrait of Father Speares's ancestor

glared at him from its massive frame, wearing the fierce and faded

aspect of a past century. Near the window stood the sofa, with the worn

spot on the leather arm where the head of the dead man had rested. It

was all chill and leaden and devoid of color.

Presently he moved, and, opening a drawer of the desk, drew out a small

dark phial and placed it upon the unfolded leaves of the sermon. Through

the blue glass the transparent liquid gleamed like silver. His movements

were automatic. There was no haste, no precipitation, no hint of

indecision. He looked at the clock upon the mantel, watching the gradual

passage of the hands. When the minute-hand reached the hour he would

have done with it all--with all things forever.

The colorless liquid in the small blue phial lay within reach of his

grasp. It seemed to him that he saw already a man lying on that leathern

sofa--saw the protruding eyes, the relaxed limbs, the clammy sweat, and

saw nothing more that would be after him under the sun. The hands of the

clock moved on. A finger of sunlight pierced the curtains and pointed to

the ashes in the grate. Outside the noise of a crowded city went on

tumultuously. He removed the cork of the bottle, inhaling a pungent and

pervasive odor of bitter almonds.

At the same instant a voice called him, and there was a knock at his

door.

"Father!"

He replaced the stopper, still holding the phial in his hand. For a

moment the heavy silence hung oppressively, and then he answered: "What

is it?" His voice sounded lifeless, like that of one awakening from

heavy sleep or a trance.

"You are there? Come quickly. Your men at the Beasley Rolling Mills have

gone on a strike. A policeman was shot and several of the strikers

wounded. You are wanted to speak to them."

"To speak to them?"

"I have a cab. You may prevent bloodshed. Come."

Father Algarcife returned the phial to its drawer, withdrew the key from

the locker, and rose. He opened the door and faced the messenger. His

words came thickly.

"There is no time to lose," he said. "I am ready."

He seized his hat, descended the steps, and rushed into the street.

THE END

ERRATUM

On page 194, 4th line from bottom, the word "begotten" should be

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End of Project Gutenberg's Phases of an Inferior Planet, by Ellen Glasgow