During the war with Spain, Colton Lee came into the service as a
volunteer. For a young man, he always had taken life almost too
seriously, and when, after the campaign in Cuba, he elected to make
soldiering his profession, the seriousness with which he attacked his
new work surprised no one. Finding they had lost him forever, his
former intimates were bored, but his colonel was enthusiastic, and the
men of his troop not only loved, but respected him.
From the start he determined in his new life women should have no
part--a determination that puzzled no one so much as the women, for to
Lee no woman, old or young, had found cause to be unfriendly. But he
had read that the army is a jealous mistress who brooks no rival, that
"red lips tarnish the scabbard steel," that "he travels the fastest who
travels alone."
So, when white hands beckoned and pretty eyes signalled, he did not
look. For five years, until just before he sailed for his three years
of duty in the Philippines, he succeeded not only in not looking, but
in building up for himself such a fine reputation as a woman-hater that
all women were crazy about him. Had he not been ordered to Agawamsett
that fact would not have affected him. But at the Officers' School he
had indulged in hard study rather than in hard riding, had overworked,
had brought back his Cuban fever, and was in poor shape to face the
tropics. So, for two months before the transport was to sail, they
ordered him to Cape Cod to fill his lungs with the bracing air of a New
England autumn.
He selected Agawamsett, because, when at Harvard, it was there he had
spent his summer vacations, and he knew he would find sailboats and
tennis and, through the pine woods back of the little whaling village,
many miles of untravelled roads. He promised himself that over these
he would gallop an imaginary troop in route marches, would manoeuvre it
against possible ambush, and, in combat patrols, ground scouts, and
cossack outposts, charge with it "as foragers." But he did none of
these things. For at Agawamsett he met Frances Gardner, and his
experience with her was so disastrous that, in his determination to
avoid all women, he was convinced he was right.
When later he reached Manila he vowed no other woman would ever again
find a place in his thoughts. No other woman did. Not because he had
the strength to keep his vow, but because he so continually thought of
Frances Gardner that no other woman had a chance.
Miss Gardner was a remarkable girl. Her charm appealed to all kinds of
men, and, unfortunately for Lee, several kinds of men appealed to her.
Her fortune and her relations were bound up in the person of a rich
aunt with whom she lived, and who, it was understood, some day would
leave her all the money in the world. But, in spite of her charm,
certainly in spite of the rich aunt, Lee, true to his determination,
might not have noticed the girl had not she ridden so extremely well.
It was to the captain of cavalry she first appealed. But even a
cavalry captain, whose duty in life is to instruct sixty men in the art
of taking the life of as many other men as possible, may turn his head
in the direction of a good-looking girl. And when for weeks a man
rides at the side of one through pine forests as dim and mysterious as
the aisles of a great cathedral, when he guides her across the wet
marshes when the sun is setting crimson in the pools and the wind blows
salt from the sea, when he loses them both by moonlight in wood-roads
where the hoofs of the horses sink silently into dusty pine needles, he
thinks more frequently of the girl at his side than of the faithful
troopers waiting for him in San Francisco. The girl at his side
thought frequently of him.
With the "surface indications" of a young man about to ask her to marry
him she was painfully familiar; but this time the possibility was the
reverse of painful. What she meant to do about it she did not know,
but she did know that she was strangely happy. Between living on as
the dependent of a somewhat exacting relative and becoming the full
partner of this young stranger, who with men had proved himself so
masterful, and who with her was so gentle, there seemed but little
choice. But she did not as yet wish to make the choice. She preferred
to believe she was not certain. She assured him that before his leave
of absence was over she would tell him whether she would remain on duty
with the querulous aunt, who had befriended her, or as his wife
accompany him to the Philippines.
It was not the answer he wanted; but in her happiness, which was
evident to every one, he could not help but take hope. And in the
questions she put to him of life in the tropics, of the life of the
"officers' ladies," he saw that what was in her mind was a possible
life with him, and he was content.
She became to him a wonderful, glorious person, and each day she grew
in loveliness. It had been five years of soldiering in Cuba, China,
and on the Mexican border since he had talked to a woman with interest,
and now in all she said, in all her thoughts and words and delights, he
found fresher and stronger reasons for discarding his determination to
remain wedded only to the United States Army. He did not need reasons.
He was far too much in love to see in any word or act of hers anything
that was not fine and beautiful.
In their rides they had one day stumbled upon a long-lost and
long-forgotten road through the woods, which she had claimed as their
own by right of discovery, and, no matter to what point they set forth
each day, they always returned by it. Their way through the woods
stretched for miles. It was concealed in a forest of stunted oaks and
black pines, with no sign of human habitation, save here and there a
clearing now long neglected and alive only with goldenrod. Trunks of
trees, moss-grown and crumbling beneath the touch of the ponies' hoofs,
lay in their path, and above it the branches of a younger generation
had clasped hands. At their approach squirrels raced for shelter,
woodcock and partridge shot deeper into the network of vines and
saplings, and the click of the steel as the ponies tossed their bits,
and their own whispers, alone disturbed the silence.
"It is an enchanted road," said the girl; "or maybe we are enchanted."
"Not I," cried the young man loyally. "I was never so sane, never so
sure, never so happy in knowing just what I wanted! If only you could
be as sure!"
One day she came to him in high excitement with a book of verse. "He
has written a poem," she cried, "about our own woods, about our lost
road! Listen" she commanded, and she read to him:
"'They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and
rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once
a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is
underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the
keeper sees That, where the ringdove broods, And the badgers roll at
ease, There was once a road through the woods.
"'Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night
air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate
(They fear not men in the woods Because they see so few), You will hear
the beat of a horse's feet, And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they
perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods.... But there is
no road through the woods.'"
"I don't like that at all," cried the soldierman. "It's too--too
sad--it doesn't give you any encouragement. The way it ends, I mean:
'But there is no road through the woods.' Of course there's a road!
For us there always will be. I'm going to make sure. I'm going to buy
those woods, and keep the lost road where we can always find it."
"I don't think," said the girl, "that he means a real road."
"I know what he means," cried the lover, "and he's wrong! There is a
road, and you and I have found it, and we are going to follow it for
always."
The girl shook her head, but her eyes were smiling happily.
The "season" at Agawamsett closed with the tennis tournament, and it
was generally conceded fit and proper, from every point of view, that
in mixed doubles Lee and Miss Gardner should be partners. Young
Stedman, the Boston artist, was the only one who made objection. Up in
the sail-loft that he had turned into a studio he was painting a
portrait of the lovely Miss Gardner, and he protested that the three
days' tournament would sadly interrupt his work. And Frances, who was
very much interested in the portrait, was inclined to agree.
But Lee beat down her objections. He was not at all interested in the
portrait. He disapproved of it entirely. For the sittings robbed him
of Frances during the better part of each morning, and he urged that
when he must so soon leave her, between the man who wanted her portrait
and the man who wanted her, it would be kind to give her time to the
latter.
"But I had no idea," protested Frances, "he would take so long. He told
me he'd finish it in three sittings. But he's so critical of his own
work that he goes over it again and again. He says that I am a most
difficult subject, but that I inspire him. And he says, if I will only
give him time, he believes this will be the best thing he has done."
"That's an awful thought," said the cavalry officer.
"You don't like him," reproved Miss Gardner. "He is always very polite
to you."
"He's polite to everybody," said Lee; "that's why I don't like him.
He's not a real artist. He's a courtier. God gave him a talent, and
he makes a mean use of it. Uses it to flatter people. He's like these
long-haired violinists who play anything you ask them to in the lobster
palaces."
Miss Gardner looked away from him. Her color was high and her eyes
very bright.
"I think," she said steadily, "that Mr. Stedman is a great artist, and
some day all the world will think so, too!"
Lee made no answer. Not because he disagreed with her estimate of Mr.
Stedman's genius-he made no pretense of being an art critic--but
because her vehement admiration had filled him with sudden panic. He
was not jealous. For that he was far too humble. Indeed, he thought
himself so utterly unworthy of Frances Gardner that the fact that to
him she might prefer some one else was in no way a surprise. He only
knew that if she should prefer some one else not all his troop horses
nor all his men could put Humpty Dumpty back again.
But if, in regard to Mr. Stedman, Miss Gardner had for a moment been at
odds with the man who loved her, she made up for it the day following
on the tennis court. There she was in accord with him in heart, soul,
and body, and her sharp "Well played, partner!" thrilled him like one
of his own bugle calls. For two days against visiting and local teams
they fought their way through the tournament, and the struggle with her
at his side filled Lee with a great happiness. Not that the
championship of Agawamsett counted greatly to one exiled for three
years to live among the Moros. He wanted to win because she wanted to
win. But his happiness came in doing something in common with her, in
helping her and in having her help him, in being, if only in play, if
only for three days, her "partner."
After they won they walked home together, each swinging a fat, heavy
loving-cup. On each was engraved:
"Mixed doubles, Agawamsett, 1910."
Lee held his up so that the setting sun flashed on the silver.
"I am going to keep that," he said, "as long as I live. It means you
were once my 'partner.' It's a sign that once we two worked together
for something and won." In the words the man showed such feeling that
the girl said soberly:
"Mine means that to me, too. I will never part with mine, either."
Lee turned to her and smiled, appealing wistfully.
"It seems a pity to separate them," he said. "They'd look well
together over an open fireplace."
The girl frowned unhappily. "I don't know," she protested. "I don't
know."
The next day Lee received from the War Department a telegram directing
him to "proceed without delay" to San Francisco, and there to embark
for the Philippines.
That night he put the question to her directly, but again she shook her
head unhappily; again she said: "I don't know!"
So he sailed without her, and each evening at sunset, as the great
transport heaved her way across the swell of the Pacific, he stood at
the rail and looked back. With the aid of the first officer he
calculated the difference in time between a whaling village situated at
forty-four degrees north and an army transport dropping rapidly toward
the equator, and so, each day, kept in step with the girl he loved.
"Now," he would tell himself, "she is in her cart in front of the
post-office, and while they sort the morning mail she gossips with the
fisher folks, the summer folks, the grooms, and chauffeurs. Now she is
sitting for her portrait to Stedman" (he did not dwell long on that
part of her day), "and now she is at tennis, or, as she promised,
riding alone at sunset down our lost road through the woods."
But that part of her day from which Lee hurried was that part over
which the girl herself lingered. As he turned his eyes from his canvas
to meet hers, Stedman, the charming, the deferential, the adroit, who
never allowed his painting to interrupt his talk, told her of what he
was pleased to call his dreams and ambitions, of the great and
beautiful ladies who had sat before his easel, and of the only one of
them who had given him inspiration. Especially of the only one who had
given him inspiration. With her always to uplift him, he could become
one of the world's most famous artists, and she would go down into
history as the beautiful woman who had helped him, as the wife of
Rembrandt had inspired Rembrandt, as "Mona Lisa" had made Leonardo.
Gilbert wrote: "It is not the lover who comes to woo, but the lover's
way of wooing!" His successful lover was the one who threw the girl
across his saddle and rode away with her. But one kind of woman does
not like to have her lover approach shouting: "At the gallop! Charge!"
She prefers a man not because he is masterful, but because he is not.
She likes to believe the man needs her more than she needs him, that
she, and only she, can steady him, cheer him, keep him true to the work
he is in the world to perform. It is called the "mothering" instinct.
Frances felt this mothering instinct toward the sensitive, imaginative,
charming Stedman. She believed he had but two thoughts, his art and
herself. She was content to place his art first. She could not guess
that to one so unworldly, to one so wrapped up in his art, the fortune
of a rich aunt might prove alluring.
When the transport finally picked up the landfalls of Cavite Harbor,
Lee, with the instinct of a soldier, did not exclaim: "This is where
Dewey ran the forts and sank the Spanish fleet!" On the contrary, he
was saying: "When she comes to join me, it will be here I will first
see her steamer. I will be waiting with a field-glass on the end of
that wharf. No, I will be out here in a shore-boat waving my hat. And
of all those along the rail, my heart will tell me which is she!"
Then a barefooted Filipino boy handed him an unsigned cablegram. It
read: "If I wrote a thousand words I could not make it easier for
either of us. I am to marry Arthur Stedman in December."
Lee was grateful for the fact that he was not permitted to linger in
Manila. Instead, he was at once ordered up-country, where at a
one-troop post he administered the affairs of a somewhat hectic
province, and under the guidance of the local constabulary chased
will-o'-the-wisp brigands. On a shelf in his quarters he placed the
silver loving-cup, and at night, when the village slept, he would sit
facing it, filling one pipe after another, and through the smoke
staring at the evidence to the fact that once Frances Gardner and he
had been partners.
In these post-mortems he saw nothing morbid. With his present
activities they in no way interfered, and in thinking of the days when
they had been together, in thinking of what he had lost, he found deep
content. Another man, having lost the woman he loved, would have tried
to forget her and all she meant to him. But Lee was far too honest
with himself to substitute other thoughts for those that were glorious,
that still thrilled him. The girl could take herself from him, but she
could not take his love for her from him. And for that he was
grateful. He never had considered himself worthy, and so could not
believe he had been ill used. In his thoughts of her there was no
bitterness: for that also he was grateful. And, as he knew he would
not care for any other woman in the way he cared for her, he preferred
to care in that way, even for one who was lost, than in a lesser way
for a possible she who some day might greatly care for him. So she
still remained in his thoughts, and was so constantly with him that he
led a dual existence, in which by day he directed the affairs of an
alien and hostile people and by night again lived through the wonderful
moments when she had thought she loved him, when he first had learned
to love her. At times she seemed actually at his side, and he could
not tell whether he was pretending that this were so or whether the
force of his love had projected her image half around the world.
Often, when in single file he led the men through the forest, he seemed
again to be back on Cape Cod picking his way over their own lost road
through the wood, and he heard "the beat of a horse's feet and the
swish of a skirt in the dew." And then a carbine would rattle, or a
horse would stumble and a trooper swear, and he was again in the
sweating jungle, where men, intent upon his life, crouched in ambush.
She spared him the mockery of wedding-cards; but the announcement of
the wedding came to him in a three-months-old newspaper. Hoping they
would speak of her in their letters, he kept up a somewhat one-sided
correspondence with friends of Mrs. Stedman's in Boston, where she now
lived. But for a year in none of their letters did her name appear.
When a mutual friend did write of her Lee understood the silence.
From the first, the mutual friend wrote, the life of Mrs. Stedman and
her husband was thoroughly miserable. Stedman blamed her because she
came to him penniless. The rich aunt, who had heartily disapproved of
the artist, had spoken of him so frankly that Frances had quarrelled
with her, and from her no longer would accept money. In his anger at
this Stedman showed himself to Frances as he was. And only two months
after their marriage she was further enlightened.
An irate husband made him the central figure in a scandal that filled
the friends of Frances with disgust, and that for her was an awakening
cruel and humiliating. Men no longer permitted their womenfolk to sit
to Stedman for a portrait, and the need of money grew imperative. He
the more blamed Frances for having quarrelled with her aunt, told her
it was for her money he had married her, that she had ruined his
career, and that she was to blame for his ostracism--a condition that
his own misconduct had brought upon him. Finally, after twelve months
of this, one morning he left a note saying he no longer would allow her
to be a drag upon him, and sailed for Europe.
They learned that, in Paris, he had returned to that life which before
his marriage, even in that easy-going city, had made him notorious.
"And Frances," continued Lee's correspondent, "has left Boston, and now
lives in New York. She wouldn't let any of us help her, nor even know
where she is. The last we heard of her she was in charge of the
complaint department of a millinery shop, for which work she was
receiving about the same wages I give my cook."
Lee did not stop to wonder why the same woman, who to one man was a
"drag," was to another, even though separated from her by half the
world, a joy and a blessing. Instead, he promptly wrote his lawyers to
find Mrs. Stedman, and, in such a way as to keep her ignorant of their
good offices, see that she obtained a position more congenial than her
present one, and one that would pay her as much as, without arousing
her suspicions, they found it possible to give.
Three months had passed, and this letter had not been answered, when in
Manila, where he had been ordered to make a report, he heard of her
again. One evening, when the band played on the Luneta, he met a newly
married couple who had known him in Agawamsett. They now were on a
ninety-day cruise around the world. Close friends of Frances Gardner,
they remembered him as one of her many devotees and at once spoke of
her.
"That blackguard she married," the bridegroom told him, "was killed
three months ago racing with another car from Versailles back to Paris
after a dinner at which, it seems, all present drank 'burgundy out of
the fingerbowls.' Coming down that steep hill into Saint Cloud, the
cars collided, and Stedman and a woman, whose husband thought she was
somewhere else, were killed. He couldn't even die without making a
scandal of it."
"But the worst," added the bride, "is that, in spite of the way the
little beast treated her, I believe Frances still cares for him, and
always will. That's the worst of it, isn't it?" she demanded.
In words, Lee did not answer, but in his heart he agreed that was much
the worst of it. The fact that Frances was free filled him with hope;
but that she still cared for the man she had married, and would
continue to think only of him, made him ill with despair.
He cabled his lawyers for her address. He determined that, at once, on
learning it, he would tell her that with him nothing was changed. He
had forgotten nothing, and had learned much. He had learned that his
love for her was a splendid and inspiring passion, that even without
her it had lifted him up, helped and cheered him, made the whole world
kind and beautiful. With her he could not picture a world so complete
with happiness.
Since entering the army he had never taken a leave of absence, and he
was sure, if now he asked for one, it would not be refused. He
determined, if the answer to his cable gave him the address, he would
return at once, and again offer her his love, which he now knew was
deeper, finer, and infinitely more tender than the love he first had
felt for her. But the cable balked him. "Address unknown," it read;
"believed to have gone abroad in capacity of governess. Have employed
foreign agents. Will cable their report."
Whether to wait for and be guided by the report of the detectives, or
to proceed to Europe and search for her himself, Lee did not know. He
finally determined that to seek for her with no clew to her whereabouts
would be but a waste of precious moments, while, if in their search the
agents were successful, he would be able to go directly to her.
Meanwhile, by cable, he asked for protracted leave of absence and,
while waiting for his answer, returned to his post. There, within a
week, he received his leave of absence, but in a fashion that
threatened to remove him forever from the army.
The constabulary had located the will-o'-the-wisp brigands behind a
stockade built about an extinct volcano, and Lee and his troop and a
mountain battery attempted to dislodge them. In the fight that
followed Lee covered his brows with laurel wreaths and received two
bullet wounds in his body.
For a month death stood at the side of his cot; and then, still weak
and at times delirious with fever, by slow stages he was removed to the
hospital in Manila. In one of his sane moments a cable was shown him.
It read: "Whereabouts still unknown." Lee at once rebelled against his
doctors. He must rise, he declared, and proceed to Europe. It was
upon a matter of life and death. The surgeons assured him his
remaining exactly where he was also was a matter of as great
consequence. Lee's knowledge of his own lack of strength told him they
were right.
Then, from headquarters, he was informed that, as a reward for his
services and in recognition of his approaching convalescence, he was
ordered to return to his own climate and that an easy billet had been
found for him as a recruiting officer in New York City. Believing the
woman he loved to be in Europe, this plan for his comfort only
succeeded in bringing on a relapse. But the day following there came
another cablegram. It put an abrupt end to his mutiny, and brought him
and the War Department into complete accord.
"She is in New York," it read, "acting as agent for a charitable
institution, which one not known, but hope in a few days to cable
correct address."
In all the world there was no man so happy. The next morning a
transport was sailing, and, probably because they had read the
cablegram, the surgeons agreed with Lee that a sea voyage would do him
no harm. He was carried on board, and when the propellers first
churned the water and he knew he was moving toward her, the hero of the
fight around the crater shed unmanly tears. He would see her again,
hear her voice; the same great city would shelter them. It was worth a
dozen bullets.
He reached New York in a snow-storm, a week before Christmas, and went
straight to the office of his lawyers. They received him with
embarrassment. Six weeks before, on the very day they had cabled him
that Mrs. Stedman was in New York, she had left the charitable
institution where she had been employed, and had again disappeared.
Lee sent his trunks to the Army and Navy Club, which was immediately
around the corner from the recruiting office in Sixth Avenue, and began
discharging telegrams at every one who had ever known Frances Gardner.
The net result was discouraging. In the year and a half in which he
had been absent every friend of the girl he sought had temporarily
changed his place of residence or was permanently dead.
Meanwhile his arrival by the transport was announced in the afternoon
papers. At the wharf an admiring trooper had told a fine tale of his
conduct at the battle of the crater, and reporters called at the club
to see him. He did not discourage them, as he hoped through them the
fact of his return might be made known to Frances. She might send him
a line of welcome, and he would discover her whereabouts. But, though
many others sent him hearty greetings, from her there was no word.
On the second day after his arrival one of the telegrams was answered
in person by a friend of Mrs. Stedman. He knew only that she had been
in New York, that she was very poor and in ill health, that she shunned
all of her friends, and was earning her living as the matron of some
sort of a club for working girls. He did not know the name of it.
On the third day there still was no news. On the fourth Lee decided
that the next morning he would advertise. He would say only: "Will
Mrs. Arthur Stedman communicate with Messrs. Fuller & Fuller?" Fuller &
Fuller were his lawyers. That afternoon he remained until six o'clock
at the recruiting office, and when he left it the electric street
lights were burning brightly. A heavy damp snow was falling, and the
lights and the falling flakes and the shouts of drivers and the toots
of taxicabs made for the man from the tropics a welcome homecoming.
Instead of returning at once to his club, he slackened his steps. The
shop windows of Sixth Avenue hung with Christmas garlands, and colored
lamps glowed like open fireplaces. Lee passed slowly before them, glad
that he had been able to get back at such a season. For the moment he
had forgotten the woman he sought, and was conscious only of his
surroundings. He had paused in front of the window of a pawn-shop.
Over the array of cheap jewelry, of banjos, shot-guns, and razors, his
eyes moved idly. And then they became transfixed and staring. In the
very front of the window, directly under his nose, was a tarnished
silver loving-cup. On it was engraved, "Mixed Doubles. Agawamsett,
1910." In all the world there were only two such cups, and as though
he were dodging the slash of a bolo, Lee leaped into the shop. Many
precious seconds were wasted in persuading Mrs. Cohen that he did not
believe the cup had been stolen; that he was not from the Central
Office; that he believed the lady who had pawned the cup had come by it
honestly; that he meant no harm to the lady; that he meant no harm to
Mrs. Cohen; that, much as the young lady may have needed the money Mrs.
Cohen had loaned her on the cup, he needed the address of the young
lady still more.
Mrs. Cohen retired behind a screen, and Lee was conscious that from the
other side of it the whole family of Cohens were taking his
measurements. He approved of their efforts to protect the owner of the
cup, but not from him.
He offered, if one of the younger Cohens would take him to the young
lady, to let him first ask her if she would receive Captain Lee, and
for his service he would give the young Cohen untold gold. He exhibited
the untold gold. The young Cohen choked at the sight and sprang into
the seat beside the driver of a taxicab.
"To the Working Girls' Home, on Tenth Street!" he commanded.
Through the falling snow and the flashing lights they slid, skidded,
and leaped. Inside the cab Lee shivered with excitement, with cold,
with fear that it might not be true. He could not realize she was
near. It was easier to imagine himself still in the jungle, with
months of time and sixteen thousand miles of land and water separating
them; or in the hospital, on a white-enamel cot, watching the shadow
creep across the whitewashed wall; or lying beneath an awning that did
not move, staring at a burning, brazen sea that did not move, on a
transport that, timed by the beating of his heart, stood still.
Those days were within the radius of his experience. Separation,
absence, the immutable giants of time and space, he knew. With them he
had fought and could withstand them. But to be near her, to hear her
voice, to bring his love into her actual presence, that was an attack
upon his feelings which found him without weapons. That for a very few
dollars she had traded the cup from which she had sworn never to part
did not concern him. Having parted from him, what she did with a
silver mug was of little consequence. It was of significance only in
that it meant she was poor. And that she was either an inmate or a
matron of a lodging-house for working girls also showed she was poor.
He had been told that was her condition, and that she was in ill
health, and that from all who loved her she had refused to accept help.
At the thought his jaws locked pugnaciously. There was one who loved
her, who, should she refuse his aid, was prepared to make her life
intolerable. He planned in succession at lightning speed all he might
do for her. Among other things he would make this Christmas the
happiest she or he would ever know. Not for an instant did he question
that she who had refused help from all who loved her could refuse
anything he offered. For he knew it was offered with a love that
demanded nothing in return, with a love that asked only to be allowed
to love, and to serve. To refuse help inspired by such a feeling as
his would be morbid, wicked, ridiculous, as though a flower refused to
turn its face to the sun, and shut its lips to the dew.
The cab stopped in front of a brick building adorned with many
fire-escapes. Afterward he remembered a bare, brilliantly lit hall
hung with photographs of the Acropolis, and a stout, capable woman in a
cap, who looked him over and said:
"You will find Mrs. Stedman in the writing-room."
And he remembered entering a room filled with Mission furniture and
reading-lamps under green shades. It was empty, except for a young
girl in deep black, who was seated facing him, her head bent above a
writing-desk. As he came into the circle of the lamps the girl raised
her eyes and as though lifted to her feet by what she saw, and through
no effort of her own, stood erect.
And the young man who had persuaded himself his love demanded nothing,
who asked only to worship at her gate, found his arms reaching out, and
heard his voice as though it came from a great distance, cry, "Frances!"
And the girl who had refused the help of all who loved her, like a
homing pigeon walked straight into the outstretched arms.
After five minutes, when he was almost able to believe it was true, he
said in his commanding, masterful way: "And now I'm going to take you
out of here. I'm going to buy you a ring, and a sable coat, and a
house to live in, and a dinner. Which shall we buy first?"
"First," said Frances, frowning happily, "I am afraid we must go to the
Ritz, to tell Aunt Emily. She always loved you, and it will make her
so happy."
"To the Ritz!" stammered the young man. "To Aunt Emily! I thought they
told me your aunt and-you-"
"We quarrelled, yes," said Frances, "and she has forgiven me; but she
has not forgiven herself, so she spoils me, and already I have a house
to live in, and several sable coats, and, oh! everything, everything
but the ring."
"I am so sorry!" cried Lee. "I thought you were poor. I hoped you
were poor. But you are joking!" he exclaimed delightedly. "You are
here in a working girls' home-"
"It is one of Aunt Emily's charities. She built it," said Frances. "I
come here to talk to the girls."
"But," persisted Lee triumphantly, "if you are not poor, why did you
pawn our silver loving-cup?"
The face of the girl became a lovely crimson, and tears rose to her
eyes. As though at a confessional, she lifted her hands penitently.
"Try to understand," she begged; "I wanted you to love me, not for my
money-"
"But you knew!" cried Lee.
"I had to be sure," begged the girl; "and I wanted to believe you loved
me even if I did not love you. When it was too late I knew you loved
me as no woman ever deserved to be loved; and I wanted that love. I
could not live without it. So when I read in the papers you had
returned I wouldn't let myself write you; I wouldn't let myself beg you
to come to see me. I set a test for you. I knew from the papers you
were at the Army and Navy Club, and that around the corner was the
recruiting office. I'd often seen the sergeant there, in uniform, at
the door. I knew you must pass from your club to the office many times
each day, so I thought of the loving-cup and the pawn-shop. I planted
it there. It was a trick, a test. I thought if you saw it in a
pawn-shop you would believe I no longer cared for you, and that I was
very poor. If you passed it by, then I would know you yourself had
stopped caring, but if you asked about it, if you inquired for me, then
I would know you came to me of your own wish, because you-"
Lee shook his head.
"You don't have to tell me," he said gently, "why I came. I've a cab
outside. You will get in it," he commanded, "and we will rescue our
cup. I always told you they would look well together over an open
fireplace."