Cornelia's lips curled with contempt. She could not escape the

reflection that she had showed much more courage when _she_ had been in

London with Percival Houghton.

I must add that free love, at any rate in my case, has proved a failure,

a dead failure. I do not say that trial experiments in loving and

living together should not be made, but I do say that the time is not

ripe for them. At present, the two scores I have against free love are:

First, that it simply won't work; and second, that the only thing about

it that is _free_ is the undesired advertising one gets.

This conclusion has not been reached in what Mrs. Grey calls the cool,

disinterested spirit of the dispassionate investigator. All the same,

it is my conclusion.

Of course, it is an abominable thing that a unique, intensely individual

experience like love should have to be made the subject of public

inquiry and official registration before it can claim to be legitimate.

In a more highly civilized nation, such a state of affairs would be

unthinkable. But amongst us! Well, when you think of our housing,

transport, and domestic arrangements, when you remember how primitive

and rigid these still are, can you expect more fluid and elastic

relations between the sexes to be welcomed or even understood?

"Huh," exclaimed Cornelia, half aloud, "she got all that from Robert."

Please don't picture me as sitting down and wringing my hands. What's

done is done and can't be undone. I've made an experiment in love. And

if the result hasn't been what I expected, I have, like the experimental

chemist, made discoveries I never dreamed of, discoveries about myself,

about other men and women, and about human institutions. I can truly

say that I haven't spent four more unhappy weeks in my life, nor--mark

this--four weeks that have done me more good.

I call them unhappy weeks. But suppose I had _married_ Claude!

Well, I dare say you've been thinking to yourself: "She is capable of

anything; now she will try to sell out to smug respectability and settle

down as Claude's duly wedded and articled wife." I admit this would be

the logical sequel to my new conclusions about love and marriage. But

though I'm still fond of Claude, a great streak of doubt has crossed my

dreams of a happy future with him.

Shall I tell you the truth, Cornelia? Claude and I would make a very

poor team. I have in mind, not his fits of bad temper, which are very

annoying, nor his attacks of jealousy, which are monstrous. I have in

mind his outlook on affairs and his active interests, which are in every

respect different from mine. Claude is in love with the pomps and

trappings of life; and I am not. He goes in passionately for elegance,

luxury, all the externals which men admire in society or public

institutions; and I do not. He wishes to study and master the ritual of

social intercourse in all its forms (even in its Kips Bay form); and I

will not. He is fond of the gay boulevards, the fashionable

restaurants, the crowded promenades; I am fond of quiet places and a

chair to myself in a corner of a park. Our divergence of tastes is

almost absolute. We don't like the same theatres, concerts, pictures;

we don't even like the same games.

The only game we ever enjoyed together was the great game of love.

"What," you will exclaim, "you mean to contend that this game, which you

played with such abandon, so thrilled and absorbed and united you both

as to smother the thousand differences between you?" Precisely. That is

what I contend, for that is what happened. It is weird, disconcerting,

inexplicable, yet it is true.

Equally true is the fact that Claude lacks the talent for companionship.

With women, at all events. He has no use for a woman except as a

plaything or a wife. And he does not want his wife to be a companion or

a partner in his work. He wants her to be an ambassador

plenipotentiary, representing him in polite society, and also a species

of superior twentieth-century domestic scientist taking full charge of

his creature comforts at home. I don't see myself in either role. Do

you? Can you picture me as a sort of mother, nurse, housemaid, valet,

cook and errand girl rolled into one?

All of which means that I'm not quite ready yet to handcuff myself with

Prince Charming's household keys. "Hoity-toity," say you, "isn't this a

bit like piling the evidence sky-high to prove that the grapes aren't

sour?" Perhaps it is, but I think not. It is true that Claude hasn't

asked me to marry him yet. It is true that whenever he is out of sorts

with me he tells me that my reputation is damaged beyond repair and that

I need not look to him to patch it up. It is true that when I smile at

this he invariably insists with explosive fury that he will never, never

ask me to marry him. He repeatedly insists that he will not. Still, I

believe that he will. My problem is not what will become of me if

Claude _doesn't_ marry me, but what will become of me if he does.

As for my damaged reputation, I'm really not worrying about that. Say I

have _sullied_ my character. In one respect, a spot on a character is

like a spot on a fine satin dress: hard work will wash all spots away.

But it stands to reason that things can't go on like this much longer.

The little Sorbonne _pension_ in which we are staying (as Monsieur and

Madame) has its good points. And there are evenings when Claude, a

little tired of all the famous and imposing Parisians he has met,

expresses a longing to be quite alone with me again, and transforms

himself once more into the Claude he was before we lived together. Then

we walk along the Seine or drive on the wondrous roads towards

Fontainebleau or Versailles. And these evenings are very delightful.

But they cannot be repeated forever. Any day I may take the step that I

ought to have taken some time ago.

Write to me, Cornelia dear. Tell me all the news about the tenements.

I suppose the Outlaws are as tame and bourgeois as ever. Does dear old

Harry keep you fit and sylph-like with his rising exercises? And how is

Lydia Dyson shaping? I see she has another serial in the _Black Baboon_

(I found a copy in Brentano's here)--she must have coined bushels of

money by it. I wish I could work as copiously on _my_ diet as she does

on hers of cigarettes and Haig and Haig. Charlotte Beecher, I fear,

will be "through with me" as the cinema heroes say. Has she exhibited

again or married Robert yet? Tell Robert I shall write to him as soon

as I've done something he'll approve of.

Need I give further hints of my insatiable hunger for news? Don't let

me continue to be cut by the postman. Write and write soon to

Your affectionate friend,

Janet.

*III*

"Janet's a little fool," was Cornelia's laconic comment as she folded up

the letter.

Under Kelly's persuasive service, she attacked breakfast. Between

mouthfuls she epitomized the contents of the letter, a proceeding that

she punctuated with caustic exclamations. At the end, Harry Kelly

expressed much sympathy with Janet's predicament.

"She has made her bed; she'll have to lie in it," said Cornelia.

This was a far cry from the line Cornelia used to take when she told

Janet that "marriage is either a vulgar sex deal or a legalized

debauch;" or when she declared in lyrical accents that "a free union is

the golden key to the garden of spiritual love." Her sentiments on this

subject had undergone dilution since Harry Kelly with his athletic

build, fair prospects, and standing offer of marriage had become a

fixture in Number Fifteen.

But then Cornelia had never really had the courage of her radical

opinions. Beneath her advocacy of new forms of sex relationships there

lurked a strong affection for the old forms. Essentially, her instincts

fitted her for the orderly virtuous days of bustles and bust pads, not

for these latter days in which established conventions were being

summarily overhauled. For her, the time was decidedly out of joint.

It had been so since her affair with Percival Houghton, the artist who

had "stolen her soul." This affair had been an accident of conduct and

circumstances, and not, as she always declared, a logical outcome of her

character and convictions. And it was as a result of this accidental

episode that she was now an irritable, spiteful, new-fangled woman

instead of the old-fashioned wife and mother (of seven children) that

she should have been.

Some dim perception of all this stirred in the head of Harry Kelly the

ex-Harlem Gorilla. Kelly's mentality fell far short of his bodily

development. Still, he was no fool, and he rightly guessed that

Cornelia was unfair to her former protegee. He did not approve of

Janet's flight with Claude. But he had seen too much of life in the

Lorillard tenements to be easily scandalized. Moreover, his fondness

for Janet disposed him to put the blame, if any, on her lover. Like

many amiable persons, he reserved his moral censure exclusively for

people he did not know or did not like.

"The poor kid's down on her luck," he ventured gingerly. "It's not up to

us to hurry the post-mortem."

"Down on her luck! With a man like Claude at her side?" cried Cornelia,

the words curving by slow ascent to an unmusical top note.

"Claude's a grand looking man, that's true. But I've known many a grand

looking man who was no better than a four-flusher when you had to share

your bunk with him."

"Poor Hercules, what do you know about it? If Claude was a rotter, she

should have left him. In all decency, she should have left him the

moment she saw that her passion was merely physical. What has she done?

Nothing. They are still together on the most intimate terms."

Kelly put his arm soothingly round her waist. It was a privilege she

had allowed him in the dull days of late--though not often and always

grudgingly.

"I don't suppose she's going to have a child," she went on, in a bitter

tone, "yet that would be her one solid happiness. She's too selfish, I

fear. Look how idiotically fate deals out the cards. _She_ could have

a child, but she doesn't want one, while I want one so much, but--"

It was a generous hiatus, and her voice softened as she approached it.

She was forever telling men that she wanted a child of her own; they

were usually embarrassed or piqued by the information; and whatever the

effect she enjoyed it.

For once, Kelly was not nonplussed. He drew his arm tighter.

"Listen, sweetheart," he said, sentimentally, "what's to prevent it? I

want kiddies, too."

"Do you indeed," said Cornelia, with a dangerous light in her eyes. "I

said I wanted a child. The difficulty is that I don't want the father

for it."

"Why not, if we're married?" he proceeded with unexampled obstinacy.

"I'd rather follow Janet than go on being tormented like this," he

concluded, drawing the long bow at a venture.

She withdrew from him and rose, her cheeks parading an angry red.

Ordinarily, a look was enough to make him quail, but, lo and behold, he

was marching with unprecedented independence to the door. And how could

Cornelia know that his body went hot and cold by turns for fear that she

would let him walk out?

She could not afford to lose him, so she called him back.

"Here, goose!" she cried, coming swiftly down from her high horse.

"Here's Janet's letter. You'd better read it through before you quarrel

with me about it."

He took it happily and obediently, she getting little pleasure from such

an easy victory.

While he read it, she reflected once more that she could not afford to

lose him. She set small store by his doglike devotion and, though he

had recently obtained an excellent position as physical trainer in a

fashionable men's club, she considered him vastly beneath her. That he

was physically a veritable Borghese Warrior was wholly offset by the

fact that he was socially little better than a superior handicraftsman.

In her eyes, that is to say, he had his points, but they were not the

points of a polished gentleman.

Yet he was the one friend left to her in Kips Bay, the one friend whose

constancy to her was undeviating and unimpaired.

Cornelia's decline from glory had proceeded rapidly since the departure

of Janet. The renaissance of flat Number Fifteen as the social and

artistic center of the Lorillard tenements had been shortlived. That

renaissance (which Cornelia tried to believe was of her own making) had

really begun with Janet's advent. While it lasted, the Outlaws and

their cohorts had paraded back, with all flags flying, and had restored

the flat to the pinnacle of importance which it had occupied when

Cornelia, in the full flush of the Percival Houghton notoriety, had

first settled down in Kips Bay. For a brief space Cornelia, glittering

like the morning star, had been "the first lady of the model tenements,"

and had tasted again what she called life, splendor, joy.

But Janet had gone, and Claude had gone with her. As a direct

consequence of Janet's flight, Robert had more and more often invented

excuses for absenting himself from the Lorillard flats. Charlotte

Beecher's visits ceased as soon as Robert's did, and Denman Page's as

soon as Charlotte Beecher's. In its turn, the loss of Claude deflected

a whole galaxy of feminine stars, including Lydia Dyson at the top of

the scale and Mazie Ross at the bottom. And so on, ad infinitum.

Thus, almost in a week, the brilliance of Number Fifteen had been

extinguished. Forever, or so Cornelia feared. True, her queenly state

had ended in a burst of radiance, as a sky-rocket ends in a dazzling

shower of gold. But this was cold comfort at best. Cornelia knew that,

without some novel attraction, there was no hope whatever of recapturing

the fickle homage of the model tenementers. And no such attraction was

in sight. For once, no other adventurous young lady was ready or eager

to step into Janet's shoes as Janet had stepped into those of Mazie

Ross. Cornelia's stock had fallen to its nadir.

She felt deserted. In a mood of bitter, unreasoning resentment, she

gave Janet full credit for dimming the splendor of Number Fifteen, the

splendor she had never given her any credit for enkindling.

She was very angry with Janet on another score. This adventurous young

lady, after a gorgeously romantic time abroad with Claude Fontaine, had

apparently come a cropper, as her tirade against free love sufficiently

betrayed. Reading between the lines, Cornelia fancied that she detected

a veiled reproach. It was as if she were being held responsible for

pointing out the step that had landed the writer in disaster. Cornelia

repudiated this responsibility and was intensely irritated by the

reproach.

What, hadn't she and Janet threshed out the whole question of sex in the

most open and aboveboard fashion? And hadn't she drawn a sharp line

between free love as she sincerely advocated it for the sake of a

woman's rights, and free love as it was practiced among the Outlaws and

in Greenwich Village for the sake of a woman's pleasure or gain? She

had told Janet (and told it with some feeling) that many young women

nowadays regarded free love as simply a very convenient antidote against

man's growing disinclination for matrimony. It was a new bait for the

old trap, and a very successful bait, too, as numberless marriages

growing out of free unions attested. In Greenwich Village marriageable

girls used this bait by instinct; in Kips Bay they used it with cool

professional dexterity, as a surgeon uses a knife.

For Janet to insinuate that she had been taken in, was a trifle strong.

If she had been duped at all, she was self-duped. And was this likely?

The curve of contempt in Cornelia's lips indicated her belief to the

contrary. There was such a thing as carrying a pose of artless

inexperience too far. And what did Janet mean by all this talk of

casting Claude off? Casting Claude off, indeed! What was she really up

to?

Harry Kelly, having finished the letter, now handed it back.

"Janet's getting a bit flighty," he remarked with true male cynicism.

"Seems to me Claude has got somebody else on a string."

Cornelia gave a scornful laugh.

"Don't be an idiot, Hercules," she said. "More likely, Janet has got

somebody else on a string."

Kelly held his peace. Like King Lear's daughter, he adored and was

silent: his love was mightier than his tongue.

*CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE*

*I*

By the time Cornelia's answer reached Paris, Claude had taken Janet to

Brussels. The immediate cause of this move was a stringency in Claude's

funds. A brief and somewhat acrid correspondence between father and son

had followed hard on the latter's international adventure. After much

shilly-shallying on Claude's part, Mr. Fontaine had laid down the terms

on which alone he proposed to continue polite relations.

Mr. Fontaine proceeded on the theory that in some cases the most

effective sort of moral force is material force. He did not demand that

Claude abandon Janet, although this was the goal of his desire. He

simply made it emphatic that until his son _did_ leave Janet, the old

days of independence coupled with generous financial supplies were over.

Meanwhile, he made a point of thwarting Claude at every turn. Claude

longed for leisure and also for a fairly free hand with the Fontaine

Company's bankers in Europe; Mr. Fontaine offered him definite work at a

far from princely salary. Claude wanted to travel (as heretofore) in

the role of a commanding member of the firm; Mr. Fontaine allowed him no

choice but a paltry assistancy to one of Fontaine's European agents.

Claude vastly preferred the conspicuous agency in Paris, if an agency he

had to be reduced to; Mr. Fontaine detailed him peremptorily to the

humble agency in Brussels. And so on.

Clearly, Mr. Fontaine believed that a series of pin pricks, tirelessly

administered here and there, would serve his purpose much better than a

dagger inserted under the fifth rib.

Claude, having some means of his own, planned a summary rejection of his

father's terms. But his available funds were pitifully inadequate to

his tastes and habits. It was in vain that Janet threw herself sturdily

into the task of retrenchment. She lacked experience; and as for

Claude, he was born to the purple and had inherited the aristocratic

idea that economy consists in making lesser people do the saving. He

could not refrain from living on a handsome scale or from entertaining

his Parisian friends at costly parties. The day of atonement drew

swiftly nearer.

And came in due course. All his pecuniary sins were visited upon him at

one and the same inopportune moment (when ordering a dinner at the Ritz

in honor of the Prince de Cluny). At that moment he experienced the

novel sensation of finding himself suddenly without a single penny of

credit. Had the ground been abruptly withdrawn from his feet, the shock

could not have been greater.

There was nothing for it but an immediate acceptance of the terms on

which his father had proposed a truce. The Brussels agency was in charge

of a hard-headed Walloon between whom and Claude little love was lost.

The pin pricks were warranted to do their work to a nicety.

Thus it was that in no very amiable frame of mind Claude set foot in the

Belgian capital and reported to the Fontaine agent there. Janet shared

his contracted fortunes, accompanying him from Paris in spite of a

series of quarrels which had chequered the weeks preceding their

departure.

She accused herself of weakness for remaining with Claude. But she felt

she could hardly leave him when he was so completely down on his luck.

True, their quarrels furnished her with a pretext, but not with a worthy

one. They were all in the nature of petty bickerings, trumpery matters

seemingly unrelated to the real issue.

But she began to suspect that the real issue between herself and Claude

would never be brought into the open.

*II*

Their hotel was in the aristocratic _Quartier Leopold_. Scarcely a year

had elapsed since the armistice was proclaimed, yet the _Boulevard

Anspach_ and other central highways were again the glittering rendezvous

of international idlers indefatigably bent on expunging the last

unpleasant memories of Armageddon. This expunging process appeared to

involve the consumption of much bad food and the production of much loud

noise.

Early in the morning of his seventh day in Brussels, Claude was awakened

by the penetrating backfire of a motor car in the street. Having

already been aroused by disturbances twice, he sprang from one of the

twin beds in the room and closed each window with a furious bang.

Janet, in the other bed, changed from her right side to her left, but

was too deep in sleep to wake up.

"Damnation!" he called out, first towards the street and then, as this

bore no fruit, in the direction of the occupied bed.

Getting no response he stalked to the sleeper's side.

"How can a man get any rest," he shouted angrily, "with pandemonium in

the streets and every window in the place wide open?"

The world in general showed no interest in this conundrum propounded by

a very good-looking young man in pajamas. And Janet, after stirring

uneasily for a moment, returned to a motionless slumber. The street

noises had kept her, as well as Claude, awake until the small hours of

the morning. Once asleep, however, she slept soundly and could defy

Bedlam.

Seeing no prospect of petting or sympathy from this quarter, Claude

nursed his anger to leviathan size. He paced the room like a madman,

distributing a liberal supply of imprecations on everything and

everybody as fast as the images raced into his thoughts. This

proceeding relieved him of a part of his fury. The rest he sublimated

in the act of tidying up the room.

He went at this task with breakneck speed. His method was to set chairs

and tables in and out of place with vicious thumps; then to pile books,

newspapers, brushes, combs, wearing apparel and the like into roughly

classified heaps. He took special pains to pick up Janet's scattered

articles of underwear and to fling each one on top of the last with the

force of an invective.

Under this steady percussion and repercussion, Janet finally woke up.

"What's the matter?" she murmured drowsily, pushing the rebellious dark

curls from her face.

Claude bombarded her with reproaches.

"The matter! The matter is that you have the nerves of a rhinoceros. I

can't sleep with the windows open, while you could sleep with them shut.

But it means nothing to you that I haven't slept a wink for seven nights

running, just because you insist upon keeping the windows open."

(Janet's hands gestured: "Oh dear, another tempest in a teapot!") She

sat up in bed and, with her feet tucked under her and her hands folded

over her knees, braced herself for the storm.

"I thought we agreed to compromise by changing off," she said mildly.

"The windows have only been kept open every other night."

"Compromise! Compromise!" He sprang from his chair with a violent

laugh. "How can oil and water compromise?"

"I'm sure I don't know. I'm not a chemist. They don't mix, but they

may get along very amicably together side by side, for all I can tell.

What difference does it make, anyway? The real trouble is that you've

been made nervous and irritable by your father's letters. If you'd only

let us talk the whole matter over sensibly and in good humor--"

"My father's letters have nothing to do with the case," he cut in

savagely. "The trouble is with your idiotic superstition that the

sooty, dusty air from the street is more important than peace and

quiet."

"What is the use of saying the same thing over and over," said Janet,

with a touch of asperity in her clear, soft tones. "You are in a

perfectly childish temper, Claude. If I were your wife I'd have to put

up with it. As I don't have to, I won't."

"My wife! If you were my wife, you wouldn't dare to be so selfish, or

to ignore my rights so shamelessly."

"Luckily, I'm _not_ your wife."

"No, thank Heaven. It's also lucky that you're so well satisfied with

your limitations and your sorry future. Like all the Barrs of Brooklyn,

you may well glory in your irresponsibility. It's all you have."

"Oh, I have my freedom. I glory in that, too. If I were married to

you, I dare say I should have to cringe and even ask your forgiveness.

As it is, before this day is over, you will probably ask mine."

"Don't flatter yourself! I'm going for good. That'll spike your

prophecy."

He began to dress posthaste in order to put time and space between his

threat and its retraction.

Janet watched him through the long dark lashes of her half-closed gray

eyes. He was spoilt, tyrannical, contemptible. Yet his energetic

masculine beauty and the seductive ring of his voice still had power

over her.

"Don't imagine I can't see through your game," he flung out, recklessly

scattering the heaps he had so painfully assembled, in a frenzied search

for a necktie. "Your fine pretense of not wanting to marry me is a

clever way of getting me to do it. Exceedingly, overwhelmingly clever!

But it hasn't fooled me. Not a bit! There are some things I don't

swallow."

"Thank goodness. Perhaps you won't swallow me then, though you seem on

the point of doing so."

She lay down again. Her averted face permitted only her dark curly head

to show.

"I might have married you," he shouted, brandishing the recovered

necktie at the bed. "I might, if you hadn't shown yourself in your true

colors. Thank God, I found you out in time."

"Yet you don't seem a bit pleased."

"You little serpent! Is there no escaping your sting?"

"A minute ago I was a rhinoceros, now I am a serpent. A pretty swift

evolution, isn't it? Of course, the 'Descent of Woman' _would_ beat the

'Descent of Man' all hollow."

And she turned her back upon him contemptuously. Stung by her disdain,

he moderated his temper somewhat and said:

"It is the trick of women to put men subtly in the wrong. You fight, but

you never fight in the open. You send us into a devil of a temper, and

slyly perpetuate the quarrel until you can make capital out of our

degraded condition. Patient Griseldas, martyred angels, persecuted

saints! If only you'd drop the pose of injured innocence!"

This impassioned speech was really a bid for a truce. But Janet, her

heart hardened, lay quite still, the back of her head expressing

defiance.

The silence maddened him more than a flood of reproaches, and he

continued dressing _fortissimo_. Finally, he reached for his hat,

sending her, at the same time, a parting shot.

"Keep it up," he said, "and you'll be a past mistress in the art of

demoralizing a man."

He went out with a spectacular exhibition of bad manners.

Poor Claude! He did not feel entirely guiltless. But he was absolutely

certain that the fault lay vastly more on her side than on his. In the

breviary of love, he had pledged his soul to an eternity of devotion,

but not his temper to a five minutes' trial.

*III*

The door had scarcely been closed before Janet turned out of bed and

began to put on her stockings. She got no further than the first one

before she heard returning footsteps. Quick as a flash she resumed her

former position in bed, so that when the door opened, her face was

buried in the pillows and the back of her head was one obstinate,

unconciliatory curve.

Claude had come back on the pretext of getting his walking stick, really

in the hope of finding Janet penitent or at least willing to placate

him. When he saw that all the advances would have to come from his

side, he turned sharply on his heels and marched out, in his anger

forgetting his cane.

Janet now waited until she was sure that he had gone in good earnest.

Then she finished dressing, reflecting the while that for the third time

within a week she was left quite alone. It was the discord that

troubled her, not the solitude. Solitude had no terrors for her,

although it had a drawback of a practical sort.

Namely, in the matter of the language. She was almost totally ignorant

of French, her opportunities in Paris for acquiring the vernacular

having been extremely few. She knew that Claude expected his absence to

make a virtual prisoner of her. In fact, with this punishment in view,

he had stayed away until late at night on the two occasions of their

recent quarreling. And she did not doubt that he meant to punish her in

the same manner again.

She went downstairs to breakfast full of pity for herself and of

indignation against Claude.

Breakfast changed her mood completely. It occurred to her that Claude

might feel the discord between them as keenly as she did, though he

might not be as conscious of the reasons. This led her to feel sorry

for him and to wonder whether she might not have been more conciliatory.

Her nature was so essentially sound that she was inclined to look on

Claude's outbursts of rage as symptoms of a mental disorder. She told

herself that her equable temper gave her an immense advantage over him,

an advantage she ought not to exploit too far.

It was Robert who had first made her conscious of the worth of her

well-poised temperament, not to mention other good qualities which had

seemed as inevitably her own as her two arms and two legs. Lately,

since realizing what a surprisingly large number of people were

ill-humored and bad tempered, she had begun to prize her even-mindedness

for the rare gift it was.

Her self-esteem improving, her spirits followed suit. It was too fine a

day to spend indoors. And, Claude or no Claude, she made up her mind to

gratify a desire to wander through the fashionable shopping district.

She bethought herself of a pocket English-French dictionary, and a

little "Colloquial French in Ten Lessons," which she had picked up at

Brentano's in Paris. Thus equipped, she sallied out on an adventurous

journey in the direction of the Hotel de Ville.

Her course from the _Quartier Leopold_ to the _Boulevard Anspach_ was

intentionally zigzag. Walking leisurely and observing critically she

was able to confirm or correct impressions of the capital gathered while

riding with Claude in taxis or motor buses.

It struck her that Brussels was cleaner, wholesomer and more competently

managed than either New York or Paris. Had the _Bruxellois_ taken a leaf

out of the book of Prussian efficiency or were they a more competently

executive people?

Brussels was, of course, much smaller than Paris, less ostentatiously

"grand" or "cosmopolitan." Janet did not agree with the orthodox

tourist opinion that the Belgian capital was merely a pocket edition of

the Gallic. Brussels was lively without being chaotic, and picturesque

without being dirty. Paris, on the other hand, was in some respects a

very American city. Its Rue Royales, Champs Elysees, Faubourg St.

Germains and other show sections were perhaps more numerous and

certainly more beautiful than the corresponding show sections in New

York. But apart from these picked quarters, Paris and New York had the

same tawdry glitter, the same rag-bag dishevelment, the same noisy,

neurotic people, the same morbid chase after pleasure.

These results of modern civilization seemed by no means entirely missing

from Brussels, but they existed in a smaller degree, even in proportion

to the city's size. Life on the streets of Brussels still had an

appearance of being orderly, sane. You could walk along the main

thoroughfares without the sensation that you were steering your way

through scurrying, erratic, homicidal pedestrians. In a crowd in New

York or Paris you might well become a prey to the fear that Darwin was

right, after all, and that the evolution of man was guided chiefly by

the principle of chance, Nature being a sort of brute Junker force which

imposed _Kultur_ on the survivors.

With these reflections, Janet sailed along, and though remembrance of

the quarrel with Claude gave her an occasional sinking feeling, this was

but the ground swell after the storm.

*IV*

At the Grands Magasins de la Bourse, Janet experienced little difficulty

in making several minor purchases. Not because she had memorized a

score of colloquial questions and answers from her little book, "French

Guaranteed in Ten Lessons." For the questions and answers which she had

conned so trippingly from the text were amazingly inapplicable to her

needs. In the realm of trade or barter the phrases she needed always

called for a subtly different twist from the high-flown phrases in the

text-book. The book model advised her to say: "_Sir_ (_or Madam_),

_have the kindness to direct me to the street by which one may proceed

to the Rue Royale_." She actually wanted to say: "_What's a good

short-cut to the Rue Royale?_" But as to this racier version the

text-book was mute.

These difficulties proved no insuperable barrier to Janet. A glance, an

eloquent gesture, and a copious use of the phrase _comme ca_, bridged

the worst gaps in the course of communication. _Comme ca_ alone, used

at the end of the index finger, so to speak, worked wonders.

Single-handed, it was mightier than a whole battalion of text-book

phrases. Yet Janet flattered herself that she could, at a pinch, have

dispensed even with this omnipotent demonstrative. To be sure, she was

far swifter at divining other people's wishes than at getting her own

wishes divined. Still, though she had a genius for the first process,

she had at least a talent for the second.

"It would be strange," she thought, "if a New Yorker could not talk

inarticulately in more languages than one."

The shop assistants met her attempts to communicate with them fully

halfway. Their friendliness and courtesy in difficult situations

astonished her. So did their efforts to comply with her precise wishes.

It was all very different from the American shop men and girls that she

was accustomed to. A New York salesman, who slept in a hall room in the

Bronx and lunched at Child's, on a ham sandwich and tea or on griddle

cakes and skimmed milk, was professionally guiltless of every effort

save one, and that was an effort to convey to each customer a sense of

the latter's abysmal insignificance; also an intimation of his supreme

good luck in being waited on by the most distinguished clerk in the

metropolis.

Standing at a counter in New York, one might be excused for supposing

that the salesman accepted the purchaser's custom only as a grudging

favor to the purchaser. Standing at a similar spot in Brussels, one

might hope that the favor would be allowed to be the other way.

Perhaps the Brussels salesmen did not really feel favored. In view of

the final disposition of the profits, they probably merely pretended to

feel so. If this was the case, their pretense carried conviction, by

virtue of the artistry of their politeness. Were there not, then, as

many fictions in the life of New York as in the life of Brussels? Yes,

but they were neither convincing fictions nor polite ones.

Artistry and politeness, Janet concluded, though they might be minor

virtues, were not the minor virtues of an industrial republic.

Her last errand in the Grand Magasins was to buy Claude several pair of

socks. The redoubtable _comme ca_, in a choice variety of modulations,

did yeoman service in facilitating the selection of the correct color,

quality, size.

She was sure Claude did not deserve the pains she was taking over him,

particularly in view of his conduct that morning. But Janet's

indignation had failed to blot from her mind a picture of the night

before at bedtime, when Claude had pathetically drawn attention to the

spectacle of both his great toes protruding rudely from the tips of his

socks. This picture of Claude walking about Brussels with protruding

toes offended her sense of the fitness of things. And, as she did not

believe that the fitness of things should be tempered with revenge, she

made the necessary purchases without pluming herself on her magnanimity.

Parcels in hand, she came close to a section set apart by a low railing.

A somewhat depressed looking woman in front of the railing was talking

humbly to a magnificent young man behind it. From a sign which read

_Bureau d'Emploi_, Janet guessed that this was the section in which

applications for employment were received.

If only she knew the language well enough to apply for a position

herself, what a lot of problems this would solve!

The magnificent young man, who was patently the absolute monarch of the

section, looked disapprovingly at the somewhat slatternly applicant who

was abasing herself before him. With an air as superb as his sartorial

equipment, he concluded the interview. So Cophetua might have concluded

an interview with an unavailable beggar maid.

The dismissed applicant was the picture of dejection as she walked past

Janet, who pitied her from her soul.

Suddenly Cophetua saw Janet.

Was she a lady or was she a beggar maid? He reasoned that ladies rarely

burden their arms with a load of parcels, nor were they in the habit of

making lingering stops in front of a _Bureau d'Emploi_. On the other

hand, the object of his speculation was young, supple, well dressed; her

gray eyes glancing his way thrilled him as no salesgirl beggar-maid had

ever thrilled him before.

Decidedly, if she _was_ a beggar maid, she was a most uncommon one.

Cophetua saw that she was still looking at him, not artfully, and yet

not disinterestedly either. The problem was disconcerting and

insoluble; the call of the blood was peremptory and imperious.

He resolved to chance it.

Unbending as much as so magnificent a young man could unbend, he called

out to Janet in a most inviting tone.

Alas, she couldn't understand a single word. All she could catch was

the note of interrogation.

"_Je ne comprends pas francais_--I'm sorry, but I don't understand," she

informed him in polyglot. She wondered whether he could possibly be

offering her employment, although she doubted this, for his glances were

far from businesslike.

Again Cophetua spoke, more slowly. Yet on the same suave, interrogative

note. He eyed her with immense favor. She understood his looks; and, as

it was clearly not a case for the use of her pet _comme ca_, she lost

all desire to understand his words.

Flushing and not quite knowing what to make of it all, she prepared to

walk away, discretion seeming to be the better part of valor.

"Can I be of assistance?" said a gentleman who had suddenly stopped on

his way past her.

She saw a short, robust, handsome man with an auburn beard and somewhat

darker hair faintly tinged with gray. He took off his hat and bowed.

"I can speak a little English," he said, fluently enough, though to

Janet's ears the accent sounded rather German.

Then he and Cophetua rapidly exchanged a few sentences in French. From

the latter's frigid manner, nothing was plainer than that he regarded

the stranger's mediation with extreme distaste.

"He merely wishes to know whether you are seeking a position," said

Janet's self-appointed interpreter.

"How could I be? I don't know a word of the language, as you can see,"

she said, with one of her fascinating gestures.

This reply was duly conveyed to the chief of the employment bureau who,

with a thousand daggers in his parting smile, withdrew majestically into

his shell.

"It is impossible to know the reason for a mistake so deplorable," said

he of the auburn beard, apologizing for Cophetua.

He lifted his hat again, and made as if to go. But he did not go.

"Oh, I don't mind a bit," said Janet, laughing unaffectedly. "If only I

knew French, I should like nothing better than to take some position or

other."

For a second, they looked into each other's eyes with mutual approval.

Then he said boldly:

"In that case--would you like to be--what do the English call it--tutor

to my little girl?"

From Cophetua, looming in the background, came mesmeric waves of

hostility. Sensing this, they walked away together. He gave her a card

inscribed with the name of Anton St. Hilaire. He told her he was an

Alsatian, a widower with one child of about fourteen years. His wife

had died during his absence on service at the front. His daughter

having sickened, he had been to Italy with her. Now he meant to make a

long stay in Brussels in order to be near a famous specialist for

children. Later he and Henriette would travel.

Henriette had a nurse who for many reasons was unsatisfactory. His wish

had long been to place the child in charge of a cultivated woman who

should be a friend to her rather than a mere attendant, and who should

inspire him with entire confidence. After a few not very searching

questions, he professed to have entire confidence in Janet. He waved

aside as immaterial the objection in respect of Janet's ignorance of

French. She would pick up French as quickly as Henriette picked up

English. Henriette had already had some English instruction; and Janet,

for her part, had no doubt of her ability to manage the child as far as

the linguistic difficulty went. Had she not proved up to the hilt her

genius for making foreigners understand her when such was her desire?

"I could get along with a Choctaw," she said to herself, exultantly.

They talked as they proceeded along the Boulevard Anspach. The long and

the short of it was that Janet agreed to consider the offer. She

promised to pay a visit next day to M. St. Hilaire's apartments in order

to meet Henriette. She would then make up her mind whether to take the

position or not.

Upon this understanding the Alsatian left her.

Janet, all agog with her adventure, gave up shopping for the day.

The encounter appeared to her to be a godsend.

She liked M. St. Hilaire. If she also liked his daughter, if she and

Henriette took to each other enough to make the proffered place

attractive, she would be in a position to part company with Claude

immediately.

As she had a strong conviction (backed by plenty of experience) that she

could get along with any halfway tolerable human being, she considered

the step as good as taken.

True, she anticipated a bad quarter of an hour in having it out with

Claude. But what a jolly thing it was to be in possession of a powerful

weapon like economic independence. It was the last argument against

tyrants, in this case against Claude and the special set of

circumstances that made her absolutely dependent upon him.

She wished she could be candid with Claude and tell him all about the

Alsatian. But this was impossible. Claude's capacity for candor was

like some people's capacity for alcohol. A little of it went to his

head and made him quarrelsome.

She was not like that! She could stand being told any amount of truth

(or so she flattered herself). This was why so many people made her

their confidante. Having an illusion stripped away might give acute

pain, but it never outraged her. Witness her disenchantment with the

theory of free love. But Claude, in common with most people, was like

the famous prisoner who had spent years in a dungeon and who, when

released, was quite overpowered by the fresh air. An unusual supply of

truth all but killed the average man.

In this matter, the only one she had ever met like herself was Robert

Lloyd. How she had underestimated Robert! Worse, how she had

underestimated the strength of her attachment to him! Her partnership

with Claude, a partnership of infatuation, had been a weak thing. A

breath had made it, and a breath had blown it away. But her partnership

with Robert, a partnership of work and mutual interests, had been a bond

of adamant. Time could not wither it nor custom stale its precious

memory.

She had a passionate longing to write Robert and pour out her heart to

him as in the old days of the firm of Barr & Lloyd.

But no. This would never do. In questions of sex, Robert was as

fanatic as any average American business man. The scene on the East

River pier came back to her vividly. There he had stood like a

reincarnation of Cato the Elder (Cornelia's nicknames certainly did hit

the bull's-eye at times!) lecturing her and saying:

"I sha'n't have anything to do with free love or with a woman who has

had a free lover."

The remembrance caused a wave of bitter feeling to surge through her.

By this time she had reached the Place Rogier. There she took a bus to

the office of the American Express Company in order to inquire for mail.

The one letter handed to her had been forwarded from Paris. The

superscription was in Cornelia's handwriting, and Janet tore open the

envelope without delay.

*CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO*

*I*

As was her custom, Cornelia had written in a decidedly lyrical vein,

sounding in turn the strings of pathos, misgiving and melancholy

sympathy. Without formal salutation the letter began:

My heart is torn for you, Araminta dearest, as I follow the story of

your wanderings. It is a story that reopens old wounds, for in your

sufferings I again experience my own. With what a different poignancy!

Different as Claude Fontaine and Percival Houghton are different. I

know that Claude possesses the supreme fascination that leads so many

women to throw themselves recklessly into his arms. He turns their

heads; but at least he does not rob them of their souls. This, Percival

Houghton did. Thank your kind stars, my dear, that Claude is not as

Percival, that he has not the latter's dominating will or piratical

psychic personality. Your soul can still be called your own.

How I pray that your trials may turn out for the best! Araminta, every

woman is fated to learn at the hands of some man how unscrupulous all

men are in matters of sex. But is it not strange that men should outflag

us at what is called our own game, and that women should let themselves

be deceived by the fact that they are always credited with the victory?

This indeed is man's greatest cleverness. He snatches the spoils even

whilst loudly protesting that we have him completely at our mercy. Yes,

men are our masters in the game of love, the game that is said to be

_our_ profession and _their_ pastime. My dear, the amateur who gaily

calls the tune has a much better time of it than the professional who is

compelled to do the fiddling--unless the fiddler plays wholly and solely

for love or is clever enough to exact a price insuring freedom after the

dance is over. But this is an elementary principle which I need hardly

point out to _you_, Araminta.

You say you do not mean to marry Claude, although you believe it lies

within your power to do so. At the same time, you speak in harsh

disparagement of free unions. To be candid, this mystifies me. I hope,

however, that I'm wrong in detecting, beneath your criticism, a subtle

reproach. If I'm right, you've done me a grievous injustice.

Didn't I consistently urge that free love is for daring and devoted

spirits only? And what wonders have not the bold and brave done for our

sex in the last thirty years! Look how the market value of men has

fallen and how the market value of women has risen, if I may use the

crude language of Mazie Ross. No longer do women live, as did our

grandmothers, for the sole purpose of "charming" men or of sipping the

nectar of their "homage."

Pray observe, dear child, that I never decried marriage in the case of

the few women who are strong enough to command the legal tyrant instead

of submitting to him, and who thus are in a position to straighten out

the irrational knot from the inside. As for the common rule of females,

if they _will_ go on flocking to the altar in droves, if they _will_ be

infatuated with marriage after we have opened their eyes to man--why,

let them rush in where angels fear to tread. And let them take the

consequences, too. Small blame to the nuptial fire if it scorches the

likes of _them_. Is the flame guilty because the moths dash in?

But now for the news, although there is precious little.

First, Lydia Dyson has produced a new novel--and a new baby. You know

she lets this happen (I mean the baby) every once in so often because

she says it is the only way to keep her complexion perfect. (It really

is a perfect olive, in spite of the quantities of gold-tipped cigarettes

she smokes.) The baby, like its predecessors, has been given out for

adoption to a childless couple in good circumstances, Lydia contending

(_a la_ Rousseau) that an artist makes a very unsatisfactory parent.

Lydia's other achievement, her novel, "The Mother Soul," has been

running serially in the _Good Householder_. It's netting her the usual

mint of money, ten thousand dollars down, to say nothing of copious

extras in the shape of book and dramatic royalties.

There's Lydia for you, flourishing like the green bay tree! Not like

your poor Cornelia, who'd be happy enough to take the child and let the

royalties go.

Robert is rarely here nowadays. Charlotte Beecher, therefore, doesn't

show up often, and so, what with you and Claude in Europe, I'd be

monarch of all I surveyed, if Hercules didn't take pity on me and come

in to drive the blue devils away. He spoils me almost as much as you

did. A dear, dutiful boy he is, as fond of work as a camel. I feel

conscience-stricken when I think how lightly I accept his devotion.

Ought I to make him happy? Ah, well-a-day! I'm sometimes tempted--ah,

_how_ I'm tempted!

But a poor soulless thing like me mustn't think of such things.

Harry's prospects have improved wonderfully of late. You know his heart

was never in professional wrestling. He deliberately gave up a promising

career _on the mat_, as they call it, where he acquired that odious

nickname of the "Harlem Gorilla." Poor Hercules is about as much like a

gorilla as I am like an elephant. Refusing engagements to appear in

public contests brought him down on his luck for a time. That's how he

happened to land in the model tenements. He never was even the least

bit of a radical. Among the Outlaws, our gorilla is quite a lamb.

Well, this repulsive part of his career is over for good. He is now the

physical director of the Bankers' Club. (What think you of my prophetic

nickname for Hercules? The bankers have their monster clubhouse on Fifth

Avenue, almost next door to the Pillars of Hercules, as the Gotham and

St. Regis hotels are called.) It's a good position. And an even better

one is in sight. The Life Prolongation Institute (I say, Araminta, what

a name!) has lately approached him in regard to a post at one of its

European branches.

Wouldn't it be odd, if we all met some fine morning in Trafalgar Square

or the Champs Elysees?

As for Robert, he has become as mad as a March hare. His Guild League

seems to have dropped through a hole in the ground. (I predicted that,

too!) He says the Guildsman propaganda was too radical for the

old-style Laborites and too conservative for the Bolsheviks. But I

can't pretend to follow these distinctions.

At all events, he was very much at loose ends for a while. One or two

excellent openings in the newspaper line he calmly turned down with the

remark that a successful journalist would have to be as corrupt as

Falstaff and Hutchins Burley rolled into one. He is really quite

incorrigible. He never seems to be content until he has got himself

thoroughly on the wrong side of everybody who might be of service to

him.

There are any number of instances of this trait. His personal quarrel

with Hutchins Burley was quite unnecessarily lengthened into a business

feud. He never made the most of his friendship with Claude (think what

a chance it was for a man in his circumstances to be intimate with a man

in Claude's!). He got himself in the black books of the whole newspaper

world because of his agitation for the Guildsmen. And he is always

flinging off violently from his friends. To this day, he rebuffs

Hercules and me whenever we try to help him.

But finally, on account of his mother and sister out West, he had to put

his pride in his pocket. It was too late! Did Cato ever tell you that

he had an uncle with bushels of money in California? Well, it seems

there _is_ such a relative, and Robert applied to him for temporary

help. The uncle, a chip of Robert's block--for he evidently has little

use for affection, family or otherwise--preserved a discreet silence.

After cross-questioning our friend, I found out why. He had

painstakingly sent the old gentleman (who made a fortune in real estate

speculation) his own pamphlet on land profiteering! As I said before,

Robert is incorrigible.

What does he do next but hit on the brilliant scheme of going to work as

a clerk in an insurance company, downtown. Denman Page's insurance

company, as it happens. Fancy our fastidious Cato with his quick ways

and ideal enthusiasms sitting from nine till five at a poky desk in Wall

Street. And is this fearful sacrifice made for the sake of turning over

an honest penny (thirty dollars a week, to be exact)? Never believe it.

Robert's little game is to help organize the mercantile employees into a

radical labor union. Can you beat it?

He says that the clerk is the most abject boot-licker and willing slave

of the ruling robber bankers to be found in the whole industrial system

(I won't vouch for the accuracy of this description). He (the clerk,

that is) needs redemption. But although plenty of rich people go

a-slumming amongst the very poor and downtrodden, nobody is

self-sacrificing enough to go on a mission of mercy amongst the

benighted and degraded "clerkical" classes.--And so he raves on.

In retaliation, the big bankers and insurance chiefs have also formed a

society to resist the inroads of Robert's infant union. Denman Page,

Charlotte's indefatigable wooer, is one of the most aggressive leaders

in the employers' society and is doing his utmost to persecute Robert

and make his life as miserable as possible. Robert, loathing business,

hangs on downtown, purely out of regard for his union.

He is simply throwing his natural talents away. All so unnecessarily,

too. At any moment, he could marry Charlotte Beecher for the asking,

and develop his executive ability--become a great public administrator

or something like that. Charlotte isn't noted for her beauty; but she

is young, she has several millions in her own right, and she is no mere

society trifler either. She works almost as hard at her sculpture as if

she had to earn her own living. Lots of men are after her, naturally

enough. They say Denman Page would give his eyeteeth to add Charlotte's

fortune to his bank account. But she seems to want Robert. Rumor has

it that she has even proposed to him several times. To Cato! And leave

it to him to fish up some silly scruple about not selling his

independence to a rich wife!

Still, I saw him in Charlotte's studio in the Mews lately. He was quite

lover-like (in his Catonic way). I hear he goes there pretty often. So

perhaps there's hope.

What a picture I could draw of how your departure with Lothario set the

Lorillard tenements by the ears! The headlines, the excitement among

the Outlaws, Kips Bay in a buzz, buzz, buzz--but you can imagine it much

better for yourself. Cato alone took it with stoical calm. Araminta,

he astonished me! Hardly a syllable would he say about it. A stern

sort of "make your bed and lie in it" expression was all we could get

out of him. And he shut off questions with the remark that it was

entirely _your_ affair.

Yes, we all thought Big Hutch held the key to the leakage into the

papers. He hates Claude with an undying hatred for some reason unknown

to me, and he has an immortal tomahawk out for you because you so openly

showed the disgust he filled you with. "Hell hath no fury like a

Hutchins scorned."

The old villain was lately appointed a member of a newspaper mission to

travel _de luxe_ to Russia. Trust Hutchins to keep himself in clover.

Mazie Ross, as bad, as pretty, and as syrupy as ever, is to be his

traveling companion (all on the quiet, of course--the purpose of the

mission being to report on the stability and morality of the Bolshevik

regime). And they say that ethics is a humorless science!

Keep me informed, dear child, of your plans and movements. What shall I

send to Lothario? Rosemary and rue, or poniards and poison? My fondest

hopes and wishes--from my heart--wing their way to you.

Ever your devoted,

Cornelia.

Janet finished reading with a sigh. The letter changed none of her

opinions or plans. It merely determined her all the more strongly to

suppress her desire to write to Robert.

*II*

On returning to her room at the hotel she got rather a start, for Claude

was there. Usually when he went away in anger, he returned late at

night, and it was now only late in the afternoon. A glance showed her

that he was in gay spirits and that he had communicated this mood to the

apartment by filling it with the color and fragrance of flowers. It was

a part of his peace offering.

Hardly had she entered, when he rushed forward, relieved her of her

parcels and kissed her ardently.

"Darling," he exclaimed, "what a bad-tempered beast I've been! Can you

forgive me once more?"

She fought desperately against the spell of his romantic personality.

"Why not?" she said, withdrawing from his caresses.

"You are an angel, dearest," he said, seizing her hands.

"Then I shall be an angel on the wing, Claude."

"Janet! Say anything but that. Prescribe any punishment you please.

But do let's begin again, with a clean slate."

"You can't get the slate clean when the scratches are too deep, Claude.

To forgive and act as though nothing had changed is hard; to forgive and

act as though everything had changed is harder still. We must both be

sensible and do the second, the harder thing."

"What do you mean?" said Claude, in alarm.

"I mean that we'll be much happier apart."

"Don't say that again, Janet dearest. You are taking my conduct of the

last two weeks too seriously. It isn't fair. I've frequently behaved

abominably. I don't try to excuse it. I admit it. But remember the

constant worry I've had to put up with at this cursed Brussels office.

That boor of a Walloon in charge has undoubtedly had orders from my

father to be a thorn in my side. And he's doing his level best to

please. Not a day passes but what he gives me a hundred lancet

scratches ending in a good stiletto stab."

Worry had not made Claude less handsome. The ring and tang of his voice

thrilled Janet almost as much as of old. His patrician manner and

flashing blue eyes were almost as irresistible. Yet Janet put away his

arm and said:

"Claude, I know you've had a very trying time. It's altogether on my

account, isn't it? All the more reason for me to go away."

"But what on earth do you want to leave me for?"

"For a thousand reasons."

"You might deign to mention _one_."

"Well, when you frown, you want me to be sad; when you laugh, you want

me to be gay. You never think that I may have moods of my own, moods

that won't dance to your piping. You never think of any one but

yourself."

"Oh, don't I? I've had you on my mind all day. I've thought of nothing

else. And it's not the first day that I've spent in a torment of worry

about your attitude towards me."

A great wave of self-pity swept through him and quite carried him off

his feet. By precedent, it should have carried Janet off her feet, too.

She stood her ground in silence.

"For Heaven's sake, don't be obstinate," he said, his confidence

beginning to desert him. "It isn't late yet," he added, in a more

pleading tone. "We can still have an awfully good time this evening.

Do be nice--"

"Nice!"

She stood up and looked at him. He mistook the mocking expression in

her smiling gray eyes, and did not notice the faintly contracting brows

above her long-lashed eyelids.

"Yes, nice and reasonable," he went on, pursuing what he thought an

advantage.

"Reasonable!" The faint contraction was now a forbidding bar. "I'm

trying hard to be reasonable, Claude."

After a pause, she smiled again. "You pull me one way, reason pulls me

another," she said, with characteristic candor. "Now see if my plan

doesn't follow reason. You left this morning, for a short while; I'm

leaving tomorrow, for good and all. You left me in anger; I should like

to leave you good friends. It isn't as easy as it sounds. Will you

help me?"

He flung himself angrily into an armchair.

"You must be mad to think you can shift for yourself in a strange

country."

"Mad or not, that is exactly what I think," she said, coldly. "And I

shall begin to pack my things now."

She actually drew out a bag and suited the action to the words. Claude

looked on, speechless. After a while he went over and, roughly taking

hold of one of her arms, continued his remonstrance.

"You can't even _read_ the language, let alone speak it. And you haven't

a penny of your own. Or do you expect to earn money on the streets?"

"Not until I've exhausted the _regular_ channels," she said, maddeningly

calm.

Inwardly she was boiling. She looked at him steadily until he released

her arm. Then she added:

"I feel perfectly capable of looking out for myself, even in a strange

country. Here are some socks I bought for you at a counter where no

English was spoken."

"The devil take the socks!" he said, hurling the package to the other

end of the room.

She sat down on a tuffet beside her case.

"You know quite well that I had a little money of my own, which I

brought with me," she said. "That will do me to begin on."

"To begin on!" he raged, pacing the floor violently. "What do you mean

by _begin on_? Is this another secret? As for your money, I know

nothing about that either. I'm continually being slapped in the face

with something or other that you've kept in the dark. But what's a

little deceit among lovers?"

"I've never deceived you," she said, growing bitter as she went on. "In

any case, deceiving you would be a trifle compared with the crime of

deceiving myself."

"Deceiving yourself?"

"Yes. Do you suppose I could ever have lived with you, without first

thoroughly deceiving myself?"

Claude's anger cooled at this bitter question. Janet was now worked up,

and anything was better than the killing indifference she had so far

maintained. He closed her valise and sat down on it, at her side.

"Janet," he pleaded, "you were never like this before. So unyielding, so

cold. And I had planned that we'd make a gala night of it. Look at

these lovely flowers. Don't you understand their symbolism? I'm going

to do the right thing. I mean to marry you now, here in Brussels, at

once!"

"You've offered to do that before."

"Yes, but I really mean it this time."

"And I really meant it Claude, every time I refused. You see, I always

assumed that your offers were made in good faith."

"You are making a fool of me."

"No one can do that but yourself."

He got up abruptly and stood there nonplused, while she calmly went on

packing. He hated her for it. She was rude, inflexible, callous. Her

motives were unfathomable. She was never twice the same. Yet at this

moment he believed he wanted her more passionately than he had ever

wanted her before. He burst into suspicion.

"What's the real reason, Janet? Some one has written to you--Robert, I

dare say?"

He took her silence for an affirmation.

"I thought so. Now I understand your change of attitude. He's been

preaching at you. It's his specialty. His views, curse them, are like

a drought. They dry up all one's spontaneity and natural affection.

Long ago, in the tenements, I noticed his sinister effect on you.

Whenever you went out with him, you came back with your heart hardened

against me."

She laughed and said:

"What nonsense! You're quite wrong. Robert hasn't wasted any of his

valuable sermons on me. He hasn't sent me so much as a scrap of paper."

"Then what has changed you, all of a sudden? Is it my father you're

afraid of? That would be too absurd. He'll come around. He has got to

come around. He can't help himself. I know too much about the

business, its secrets and its weaknesses. So don't worry on that

score."

"Claude, it's all very fine. But I don't see myself as your wife. I'd

never do. You need a woman to manage you like a mother and to flatter

you like a squaw. But--these jobs not being in my line--I'd criticize

you like an equal. And you know you simply can't stand criticism."

Was she really rejecting his offer of marriage? Claude was appalled at

the apathy of the feminine intellect in the face of a miracle. Didn't

she know what his offer meant? (He tried to convey it to her--not in the

exact words, but in euphemisms.) It meant a change of estate from

mistress to wife. The wife of Claude Fontaine! The wife of a merchant

prince of Paris, London, New York, etc. (the only sort of prince that

counted in the twentieth century; no mere paper prince or petty Venetian

dogeling, but a prince whose rank had an international validity and

whose means could challenge the heart to name its wildest desire). It

was not conceivable that she knew what she was about. Still, he had to

face the possibility.

And this desertion on top of all he had endured in consequence of

leaving America with her!

"Isn't there a shred of gratitude in you?" he cried out, aghast at her

unyielding front.

"I'm not ungrateful, Claude," she said, gravely. "Living with you has

been a liberal education. I've learned the truth about marriage without

binding myself for life; I've also learned the difference between

affection and infatuation without breaking either your heart or mine.

Can I ever repay this? If every girl could have some experience in

living with a man or two before she made a permanent choice, I believe

marriage would be far more popular."

"Confound your opinions," he shouted, in an agony of rage.

With a wild movement, he seized both her arms and furiously lifted her

to her feet.

"Look here. Do you think you can calmly turn your back on me after what

I've put up with, after all I've suffered on your account? Exactly why

do you want to go away at the very moment that I'm marooned in this

infernal town? You've got to tell me straight! Is it sheer insanity,

or a craze for romantic adventure?"

With cheeks glowing and lips quivering, she said:

"I'm leaving you because we have nothing in common except our physical

attraction. And that is mostly physical repulsion now, as you see."

"Haven't you one spark of love for me left?"

"Claude, with all your faults I love you still," she replied, smiling,

as she rallied her self-command.

He relapsed into his seat, utterly overwhelmed.

Deeply moved, she went over to his side, and looked at him with a pang

of remorse. He edged away from her with a passionate sense of injury.

"Remember," he warned her, "if you leave me, that will end everything.

Society may ostracize you, or toss you back into the gutter. Don't ask

me to lift a finger."

The friendly words froze on her lips. She quietly resumed packing.

He sprang up, beside himself, his whole person vibrating with his fury.

"If you're going, you needn't wait until tomorrow!" he said, drawing in

his breath. "You can go now, for all I care."

He walked to the window, his teeth clenched and his body set.

While she hastily assembled the rest of her most necessary things, he

was saying to himself:

"This damned idea of independence! She thinks she can frighten me. She

thinks I won't let her go. I'll call the bluff, and she'll come back

flying."

All this on a horrible quicksand of doubt.

But she saw only his hostile back and heard only the echo of his savage

tones.

How like her mother he was!

Without a word, she picked up her bag and went out.

*CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE*

*I*

A sedan drove up to M. St. Hilaire's house in the _Quartier Leopold_.

The young lady who got out was met at the door by a girl of fourteen who

enfolded her in affectionate embraces.

"Oh, what a slow poke!" cried the girl reproachfully. "You were gone for

ever and ever, Jeanette!"

"Two hours and ten minutes, Henrietta," said Janet looking at her wrist

watch, "is pretty short measure for eternity. I'm glad you're not my

butcher or baker."

Henriette grimaced. They went upstairs together, the girl's arm tightly

clasping her companion's waist.

Henriette St. Hilaire was a lovely girl, lithe and slender. Her fair

hair was bobbed and her eyes were the soft blue eyes of the North.

She complained again of the dull time she had had.

"Serve you right for having a headache when I left," said Janet.

"According to Herbert Spencer, if I went out for a drive by myself every

time you had one, your headaches would soon disappear."

"Mine has gone already. Show me all you bought, Janski. May I open the

parcels?"

"Yes, one by one."

For Henriette was recklessly attacking strings and wrappers, to the

great peril of the contents.

Among the parcels undid was one containing a book.

She read out the title: "Tom, Dick and Harry."

"What's this?"

"That's a book of light reading for a young lady well advanced in the

English language."

Henriette had taken to English as a duck takes to water. After a year of

continuous practice, she spoke it well; and read or wrote it passably.

"Oh, it isn't a girl's book, is it?" she said, dubiously, and scanning

the title again in the light of Janet's words.

"No, it's a boy's book. Boys' books are the only ones I know about

because they were the only ones I used to read. They were much jollier

than the girls' books."

"Did your mother let you read boys' books? My mother wouldn't."

"Nor mine either. But I read them on the sly. That's what made them so

enticing, I suppose."

"I can't imagine that you ever did anything on the sly, Janski," said

the child, who still took idioms somewhat too literally.

"Oh, can't you? Then I'm not half such a fool as I look."

Henriette laid the book down and went over to make a demonstration of

tenderness by way of intimating that she believed Janet to be the best

and cleverest person in the whole world.

Janet skillfully cut this demonstration short. She believed that a

child's affections, like its disaffections, should be kept well within

bounds.

"Your enthusiasm for 'Tom, Dick and Harry,'" she said, in her musical

voice, "leaves much to be desired. Let me tell you that it is not a

book for study, but a book for light reading. If you really mean to

make English your 'adopted tongue,' as you sometimes tell me, you must

get used to light reading. The English-speaking nations read very

little else."

Henriette gave her a look full of adoration.

"Oh, I don't need light reading while I have you. To be with you is

like--it's as exciting as watching the loop-the-loop!"

"Look here, Miss, do you imply that I'm a sort of three-ringed circus or

professional jumping-jack?"

"No. I don't mean anything horrid and jumpy like that. I mean you are

never like other people. That's why it's such fun to try and guess what

you will do or say next. And I hardly ever guess right."

"I see. I'm more like a Christmas stocking, full of surprises."

"There, you see what funny things you say! It's far more absorbing than

a hundred books of light reading."

"Henriette, you are becoming highly skilled at flattery. It's a very

useful accomplishment. If my absence brings out virtues like this, I

think I shall make a point of deserting you for two hours every morning.

You will become a paragon, and I shall be famous for my absent

teaching."

"Oh, no, no, most dearest Jeanette. If need be, I'll say the most awful

things about you. I'll do anything to keep you."

She gave a great sigh.

"You don't know how I worry about losing you. It's terrible! Why

weren't you my sister or my aunt? Then I'd be sure of keeping you

always!"

"Don't be too sure of that, darling. If we were close relations,

everybody would expect us to be fond of each other. And this

expectation would probably destroy most of the fondness, unless our

attraction for each other happened to be overwhelming."

"Oh, it is overwhelming, isn't it? It must be, Jeanette. Why, I

wouldn't mind even if you were my mother!"

"That's what I call crushing proof."

"Yes. And it's taking chances, too. I don't really want another

mother, you know. Mothers are only truly nice to their sons. Now do

you see how much I love you?"

"I do, you little philosopher. And I conclude, from so much undeserved

affection, that, as a teacher, I have probably been far too easy-going.

In future, I shall have to be much more severe."

"Oh, that has nothing to do with it," said Henriette, laughing. "It

isn't the way you treat me. It's--well, I don't know what. Perhaps

it's the deep, deep mystery about you. Papa has noticed it, too."

"Has he, indeed?"

"Yes. And speaking of mysteries, I forgot to tell you that some one

called to see you while you were out. A gentleman--"

"A gentleman! Who could it be?"

"Well, he was a great big mountain of a man. Ugly, oh, like the ogre in

a fairy tale. I didn't like him a bit."

"Oh, you saw him?"

"Yes. I peeked over the banisters. What a monster! Papa wasn't home.

Berthe let him in because he said he was an old friend of yours. Here's

his card."

Janet read the name of Hutchins Burley, and needed all her self-control

not to show her dismay.

"Did he leave a message?"

Henriette prattled on, unaware of Janet's emotion.

"He asked Berthe to tell you that he would call again about five o'clock

tomorrow afternoon. He said he especially wanted to see you. If you

couldn't be in, he would be sure to see papa."

"Five o'clock, did he say?"

"Yes. Just when my riding lesson comes. I suppose we shall have to

give up our ride," she added mournfully.

"Let's wait and see, dear."

*II*

Had Burley chanced upon her in the street and followed her home, or had

he seen her in one of the shops or at one of the English tea rooms in

Brussels? Janet did not pursue this fruitless inquiry. The question

was how to meet the fact, the perilous fact. For she could hardly doubt

that Hutchins Burley's visit boded her no good.

She passed the events of the last nine months in quick review. M. St.

Hilaire had engaged her without references. True to his agreement,

moreover, he had given her a free hand with Henriette's education and

had been well pleased when a growing attachment between Janet and his

daughter relieved him almost entirely of routine parental cares.

As the virtual guardian of Henriette, Janet had had little to complain

of and much to be thankful for. Her pupil and her pupil's father had

treated her from the first as one of themselves, so that she enjoyed all

the advantages of membership in a family of wealth and refinement.

These advantages were not to be scoffed at. M. St. Hilaire was not only

a man of cultivated tastes; he possessed the means (derived from

extensive realty holdings in Alsace and Switzerland) which permitted him

to indulge his tastes on a very liberal scale.

All in all, Janet thanked her lucky stars, especially as the pose of

chivalry, which M. St. Hilaire had contributed to their first meeting,

had worn very well. True, at the outset, he had made a few advances

ranging from the demonstrative to the amorous. But she had set these

experiments down to the incorrigible habit of continental gallantry. He

had not gone beyond them, had accepted her gentle rebuffs with a very

good grace, and had not thenceforth encroached upon her intimacy further

than she wished.

Of late, she had not been able to close her eyes to the fact that her

employer was engaged in a mental debate as to whether or no he should

propose marriage to her. She regretted this fact and dreaded its

sequel. For reasons that seemed good and sufficient to her instincts if

not to her intellect, she had no desire to marry M. St. Hilaire. Her

present berth was very comfortable and altogether to her liking. It gave

her the rest she needed after the strain of her adventure with Claude;

it also gave her an opportunity to reflect on the past and get her

bearings in the present, before she took another leap.

It was in the light of these relations with M. St. Hilaire and with

Henriette that she wondered what she ought to do.

As regards Hutchins Burley, she was sure that he meant to play the heavy

villain. Why not? Nature had cut him out for the part, patterning him

magnificently upon the "heavies" that trod on the blood-and-thunder

stage. After all, one had to give this stage its due. If the literary

drama could create characters which nature copied (and sometimes

improved on), so could melodrama. And certainly, in Hutchins Burley,

melodrama had prompted nature to make her masterpiece.

Janet had rather settled it, then, that Hutchins would have the audacity

to approach her with a repugnant offer (the same old offer), hoping that

her recent experience might have left her less squeamish than in the

days of the model tenements when she had repeatedly repulsed him with

scorn. On being repulsed anew, he would proceed to inform M. St.

Hilaire of her affair with Claude Fontaine in the expectation that the

news would bring about her discharge. For it was unlikely that a father

would wish his child to continue in the care of a young woman who had

"gone wrong."

The mischief done, Hutchins would live in hopes of snatching from her

weakness the gratification he had vainly striven to beg, borrow or steal

from her strength.

Should she now, like a movie heroine, try to head Hutchins off,

temporize with his expected offer, pay him blackmail, or what not? She

laughed heartily at this idea, its execution was so foreign to her

nature.

What would Robert advise her to do? At this point she repeated an act

that had lately been a favorite part of her daydreams. She called up

Robert, as Saul called up the Witch of Endor, and had a long, sensible

talk with him one of those long, sensible talks so frequent in the days

of Barr & Lloyd in the Lorillard tenements.

Robert advised her to obey her common sense unless her instinct kicked

over the traces, in which case let her feel no compunction about obeying

her instinct. She had better have as little direct dealing with

Hutchins Burley as possible. You could no more put off a scoundrel than

you could buy up a gentleman. The basest as well as the best of men

were incorruptible. If Hutchins had it in mind to do something nasty,

he would do it, no matter what course she took.

Of course, she might throw herself on M. St. Hilaire's mercy. But then,

though M. St. Hilaire was a decent sort of man, was he not, like most

cultivated men, a classicist? That is, were not his reactions towards

matters of sex thoroughly traditional? If so, the only attitude of

Janet's that he would comprehend would be that of a penitent Magdalene

with uplifted hands and tearful eyes. Was she prepared to assume this

role?

"Decidedly not," was Janet's hot reply to Robert's shade. "I may have

been rash or worldly-unwise, but I won't admit that I was wicked. If I

am asked to pay up for my folly, I shall not try to evade payment. But

if I am asked to pay up for my wickedness (which I do not acknowledge),

I shall fight payment to the last ditch.

"No doubt, M. St. Hilaire will think me wicked, but do you?"

"There are three kinds of people," solemnly responded Robert's astral

spirit. "And they correspond roughly to three kinds of existence we

recognize: animal, vegetable and mineral. The mineral people are the

dead people. Not more dead than the so-called minerals. But, like

rocks and stones, they are incarnations of law and custom petrified.

Then there are the vegetable people, the people who fold their hands and

piously accept such crumbs of life as are showered upon them from the

lap of High Heaven. Lastly there are the animal people, the people who

go out to find life instead of waiting for life to find them. If you

intend to remain in the last-named class, you must cheerfully assume the

risks of adventure."

"Dear me," ejaculated Janet, "if his very shade isn't lecturing me for

old times' sake!"

It was a little humiliating to be so dependent on Robert, even in the

spirit. She wouldn't have minded it so much if his terrestrial self

hadn't, with desolating coldness, washed his hands of her fate.

Still, take it all in all, he had done what all sagacious ghostly

advisers should do, he had told her to do exactly what she wanted to do.

Consequently, Henriette's riding lesson should not be interfered with

tomorrow. When Hutchins Burley came at five o'clock, he would find her

out. Tableau of a raging ogre! His fury would know no bounds, and he

would surely embellish Janet's life history so that M. St. Hilaire

should put the worst interpretation on everything. Well, let him do his

vilest. Come what may, time and the hour would run through the roughest

day.

Losing Henriette!--Ah, that would be a bitter pill to swallow. Still,

it wasn't the first bitter pill and it wouldn't be the last.

In every other way, she felt ready for a change.

*III*

"Can I see you for a few minutes?" said M. St. Hilaire to Janet,

intercepting her outside his study, a little after six o'clock next day.

She and Henriette were on their way upstairs to take off their riding

clothes and to dress for dinner.

"If you two are going to chatterbox, I shall take a little nap," said

Henriette, climbing drowsily up another flight of stairs to her room.

"Don't be too long, _mon pere_," she added, stopping half-way and

looking down over the banisters. "I'm even more hungry than sleepy.

Jeanette, please wake me when you come up."

Janet, from within the study, promised to do so.

Neither her voice nor her manner betrayed her apprehensiveness. Her

sailor hat was set rather jauntily on her head. Her light-brown riding

coat and breeches made a most becoming costume, one that showed the

undulating grace of her movements to excellent advantage.

M. St. Hilaire followed her into the study and closed the door a shade

too circumspectly.

His glances and the vibrant tones of his voice puzzled her considerably.

She could guess the substance of what he meant to convey but not the

form in which he meant to convey it.

"That man--" he began in a hesitant manner.

"Mr. Burley, the man I said was coming today?"

"He came. You didn't tell me what he was coming for."

"I knew he'd do it so much better."

"He treated me to a long, long story about you."

"Yes, I rather thought he would."

"Oh, so you knew that, too?"

"I had no cause to suspect him of amiable intentions," she said,

swinging her sailor hat by the elastic band. "I suppose he told you

that I lived with Claude Fontaine?"

"Yes, but of course, I--"

"Oh, it's quite true."

M. St. Hilaire, nonplused by her candor, stroked his auburn beard and

feasted on the sight of her as she sat in an armchair not far away. The

indefinable suggestion of a devil-may-care mood enhanced her vital charm

until it stirred, thrilled, intoxicated him.

"Perhaps--at one time--you have loved this Burley?" he asked, nursing

the suspicion.

"A beast like that? Never!"

He moved his chair very closely to hers.

"Just Monsieur Fontaine?"

"You don't expect me to go into details?" she said, coloring deeply.

"No, no, my dear. But--what has been, can be. Is it not so?"

"I don't know what you mean."

He didn't quite know himself. Being in no condition to reason clearly,

he had leaped rashly to the conclusion that she had wished him to learn

of her love affair as an indirect way of encouraging him.

Janet could not know his thoughts precisely, but she had an inkling.

She wondered that she could have been so blind as not to have seen that

his studied chivalry towards women covered a strongly sensual nature.

Even then, she was not insensible to the fact that Anton St. Hilaire was

a pleasing man to look upon. His bright blue eyes and clear, ruddy

complexion testified to a sound physique. Perhaps he was a trifle too

robust. But there was a feminine comeliness about him which was a foil

to his surging virility. In many women, the first quality calmed the

piquant fears which the second quality excited.

"Burley naturally told all sorts of lies about you," he added, for want

of a better line to take.

"I expected he would."

"And of course I sent him about his business."

"I rather expected that, too," she said, smiling in spite of a growing

sense of alarm.

For he had abruptly approached her and advanced as fast as she

involuntarily withdrew. She retreated around the desk towards the

closed door, on one side of which stood a wide leather couch. Against

this she stumbled slightly, and he caught up with her.

"Janet," he said, in a low voice, thick with excitement, "the way he

dared to talk about you, you--so sweet, so clean, so adorable. I could

have strangled the brute."

"I wish you had."

"You must let me protect you--"

They were at cross-purposes. She thought she could still reach the door

and make a dignified escape. He felt her withdrawal as an added

incitement. He had so long dispensed with the anticipating, insinuating

maneuvers in the technique of love-making that he had lost the knack of

using them. Moreover, his muscular strength, a sanguine temperament,

and past successes in sexual experiments had primed him with the belief

that direct action was the shortest way with all women.

"You must let me protect you--"

With the words still on his lips, he took her violently in his arms.

The touch of his hand against her body filled her with an enormous,

sexless anger. Making an almost superhuman effort, she struck back his

head and succeeded in wrenching herself from his grasp.

He stumbled, but instantly picked himself up. As he tried to back her

away from the door, she again raised her hand.

"I can protect myself," she said, with a passionate repugnance that

chilled him to the soul.

"Don't go like that," he cried, springing forward and clutching at her

arm.

She dragged it away, rang for the maid, and rapidly turned the door

knob.

"Berthe," she called down the hall, in clear ringing tones, "please open

the storeroom. I want to get at my trunk."

Then she turned and looked at him, cold, distinguished, unapproachable.

M. St. Hilaire plumped into the nearest seat.

"I meant no harm," he muttered, numb, and crestfallen as a dried pear.

*CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR*

*I*

Ten days later. A large sitting room in exclusive lodgings near

Picadilly, London. Two men in an animated conversation. The decidedly

younger one, breezy and Times Squarish, and yet politely deferential to

the experience of his senior; the latter, a tall, wiry man immaculately

dressed in a suit of neutral coloring.

The young man was saying:

"Yes, Mr. Pryor, he's slowly warming to me. Slowly. I tell you, sir, a

Japanese naval attache can give points to an icicle. Still, I think

he's biting!"

"Did you tell him that the U.S. Army of Occupation had sent machine guns

to the number of three thousand two hundred and fifty to the Ukraine?"

"No. I followed your instructions to the dot. I merely said I was in a

position to tell him the number."

"Well?"

"He replied, with a sour smile, that he was in the same position as

regards me. I ventured to question the correctness of his information.

He volunteered the figure."

"And the figure he gave?"

"Was three thousand two hundred and fifty."

Mark Pryor's rather long neck collapsed telescopically down his high,

straight collar.

"And you think he's biting!" he said, turning his roving gray eyes

quizzically on his companion. "Take care, Smilo, my boy, or he'll have

_you_ 'biting' before you know it. And that will be a case of the biter

bit."

"Have your little joke at the expense of the service, Mr. Pryor," said

young Smilo, with an air of tactfully conveying a rebuke. "But is a

mere Jap likely to come it over a real American like you or me? I

_don't_ think."

"Let's waive discussion on a point so personal. In temperament and

disposition we are exact opposites. That's why we get on so well

together, and why I'm going to take you into my confidence."

"Mr. Pryor, you mustn't think--"

"I know it, my boy, I know it. I must never think, and I ought never to

take you into my confidence, either. Both acts are first-class

infractions of the rules of the military secret service. I admit it

shouldn't be done. It might result in important discoveries. It might

even lead to the disentangling of one of the mysteries we're working on.

Think of it! There'd be only one thousand two hundred and fifty-six

mysteries left."

Young Smilo laughed good naturedly (to cheer the old boy up!).

"None the less," continued Pryor, gravely, "I shall now violate another

inviolable rule. I shall give you four pieces of information. The

first: Running across Hutchins Burley in Paris twelve days ago, I told

him the number of machine guns sent by us to the Ukraine."

"So that was the dodge. I see! You told him the exact number?"

"Hardly. I told him three thousand two hundred and fifty. I thought

that number would do as well as any. Much better than the real number

for a variety of reasons which I won't stop to detail. Suffice it, the

number agrees with the number which you, in your capacity of informer to

the Japanese Secret Service, offered to reveal to the attache, and which

he already knew."

"By George! With all the other dope you've got in the Burley case, you

must be pretty nearly ready to close in on the man?"

"So _I_ thought. But Headquarters didn't. You see, I had followed

Burley along a devious route to Brussels. By the way, he nearly slipped

through my fingers there. I muffed him, so to speak. But I picked him

up again before he left Belgium and dogged him to Coblenz."

"Coblenz? In the thick of the American occupation?"

"Precisely. And bang under the noses of the American army, Mr. Hutchins

walked into a tobacconist's shop and sent a letter to the Japanese

embassy. At this tremendously exciting moment, Headquarters, in all the

majesty of its omniscience, shunted me off to London and ordered me to

take you in tow and mark time."

"We marked time all right," chuckled Smilo. "You might say we

hall-marked it, what little we had. Linking Burley up with the Japs on

the one hand and with the smuggled Fontaine diamonds on the other,

wasn't such a bad week's work, even though we haven't got the goods on

him yet."

"That's all very well, my boy. But what do I get today? Here is your

second piece of information. I get word to quit the Japanese case."

"What for?"

"For a post of honor in the business of trailing certain dangerous

American radicals who are temporarily in London. How do you like that?"

"I don't like it, Mr. Pryor. And I don't blame _you_ for not liking it.

It looks like a raw deal. But are you sure it hasn't some remote

connection with Burley?"

"No, I'm not sure. The devil has many irons in the fire. So has

Hutchins Burley. Most energetic gentlemen whether of the diabolic or

the celestial brand can gobble up an astonishing number of miscellaneous

jobs. For all I know, Hutchins may be the new Head Bolshevik Bomb

Thrower; or he may be the old chief _Agent Provocateur_; or he may be

merely somebody with a friend in Washington whose word can make

Headquarters quail. It's a conundrum. A pretty, picture-puzzle,

play-box conundrum, if you like. Still, a conundrum. And I'm heartily

sick of conundrums. I'm done with them. I joined the Secret Service to

become a detective, not a musical comedy magician."

"You don't mean to say you are going to resign?"

"I do. You have guessed my third item of news. As fast as a steamer

can carry me, I mean to proceed to Washington, there to give my

resignation and sundry pieces of my mind to the Chief in person."

"But keeping its agents in the dark is an old, cherished method of the

Service, isn't it? Mr. Pryor, I feel sure you have another reason."

"I have. Item four: I'm being followed."

"Followed--I don't understand."

"I began to suspect something the moment I came to London. Well, I put

my suspicions to the test yesterday. Before going out I folded a pair of

trousers in a very particular way and left them on a chair. When I came

back they had been refolded in a slightly different way."

"Did you question your landlady?"

"Yes. Naturally she denied that any stranger had entered, but her

confusion was obvious. I quickly suggested that my tailor might have

called, and she as quickly agreed that this was so. When, an hour

later, I interviewed the tailor and he confirmed me in my belief that he

had not been near the house, the inference was clear. I was being

watched. And, mark you, Smilo, I have reason to believe that the

watcher is one of our own colleagues."

"Lord, no!"

"Judging from the awkward way the pockets were crumpled in the act of

refolding the trousers, I have further reason to believe that the

watcher is a woman."

"Impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible in this best of impossible worlds."

"It's a low-down shame, Mr. Pryor. But, after all, it can't hurt you.

'Sticks and stones may break my bones, etc.' You know the saying."

"My dear boy, being a detective you can't begin to realize that the

knowledge that you are being carefully watched gives you a very jumpy

feeling--especially when you know you're guilty."

"In heaven's name, guilty of what?"

"Of doing a good job in your own line; in my case, tracking down

criminals."

"Surely you don't mean to imply that Headquarters would permit

influences--"

"I imply nothing. I give you the benefit of the facts. But if you think

it's a pleasure to surmise that your every movement has an unseen

spectator--you don't know who, but you fear it's a young and beautiful

woman--"

The sudden ring-a-ling of the telephone bell cut across the room.

Mark Pryor took up the instrument.

"Yes," he said. "It's Mr. Pryor speaking. A young woman? Indeed!

Well, I'll see her up here."

He hung up the receiver.

"A young and beautiful woman," he repeated with a singularly straight

face.

Young Smilo, whose way of life was still in the green, the callow leaf,

was divided between admiration and bewilderment. In half a minute or so

there was a knock at the door.

The young woman who came in was Janet Barr.

*II*

Smilo's parting look was one of stupefaction at the reception the

visitor got, Pryor's enthusiasm being a startling abandonment of his

neutral, self-contained manner.

Left to themselves, Janet informed Pryor of the troubles that had

brought her to see him. The chief of these was Hutchins Burley.

Would Mr. Pryor advise her how to deal with him if he turned up again,

as seemed highly probable?

There were other difficulties. She had nearly exhausted her funds. She

didn't wish to return to the United States. Not at the moment, anyhow.

Yet she couldn't get a position without a character.

This last she had learned recently, after several bitter experiences.

Europeans seemed firmly persuaded that a character existed not in

yourself but in the minds of other people, or rather in their

handwriting. In the United States a good presence was worth a thousand

good characters and your own opinion of yourself, expressed with

imaginative brilliance, went much further than other people's opinion of

you, expressed with dullness. In Europe, the reverse was true.

Would he make out a good character for her, and have it on tap within

easy reach in case she referred employers to him?

She was sure that any testimonial coming from him--yes, from him--

"Oh, I know you're a mystery," she said, in answer to his deprecatory

gesture. "But not an ordinary mystery. A mystery linked to the pink of

propriety is a sublime mystery. Like Mrs. Grundy's husband, whom you

remind me of. No one has ever identified that mysterious man. Yet

who'd have the courage to turn down a character made out by Mr. Grundy?"

She told him of her break with Claude, of her situation as the companion

of Henriette, and of her experience with M. St. Hilaire as a result of

Burley's interference.

"I left Brussels the very next day."

"For Coblenz?"

"Via Coblenz, for Munich, to see you, if possible. It was a Munich

address you gave me, on board the 'Baronia'."

"I left Munich some time ago."

"So I learned. You see, I followed you here. But how do you know I

went to Coblenz?"

"On the seventh of October?"

"On the seventh of October. How _did_ you know it?"

"I didn't know it. The information just drifted my way."

"You are a detective then, Sherlock Holmes and M. Gaboriau rolled into

one."

"Janet, disabuse yourself of that idea. If I _were_ a detective I'd be

a very sorry one. Let me prove it to you. In the course of my duties

(whatever they are), I had occasion to look up Mr. Burley. I located

him in Brussels on the sixth of October. I had scarcely found him

before he slipped through my fingers."

"Slipped through your fingers?"

"Yes. Slipped through my fingers. You see, I'm trying to live up to

the detective role to oblige you. Well, I got on to Mr. Burley's

movements again on the seventh of October, just in time to follow him to

Coblenz. _Why Coblenz?_ I asked myself again and again. By the way,

did you ever hear of a real, live detective asking _himself_ a

question?"

"No. But what is the answer?"

"_You_ are the answer, of course. And I've only just discovered the

fact. Fancy Sherlock Holmes following Hutchins Burley all the way from

Brussels to Coblenz and from Coblenz to London and not discovering a

quintessential answer, until the answer had crossed the Channel and

stationed itself under his very nose."

"Do you mean to tell me that that odious Hutchins Burley is also in

London at this very minute?"

"Don't be alarmed; I give you my word he sha'n't molest you again. I

was about to res--I was about to transfer my valuable services to

another sphere. What you have told me determines me to hang on a little

longer, for the sole satisfaction of bringing Hutchins Burley to book."

"Oh, you mustn't injure your prospects on my account."

"No fear. There's pleasure in checkmating a fellow like Burley, and

profit, too. You know, Janet, the real old-fashioned heavy-weight

villains are deplorably scarce. Goodness, routine goodness, is so easy

nowadays, it is so much in fashion, it is so thoroughly rammed down our

throats by compulsory education, that very few people are inclined to be

wicked and fewer still are energetic enough to carry out the

inclination. Mr. Hutchins Burley is a rare beast. He does not identify

his wickedness with our goodness. Not he. He believes in himself from

top to bottom. Unlike the usual criminal of today, he doesn't suffer

from the cowardice of his convictions."

They discussed Janet's plans. Ways and means, and how to get her off

the rocks, were the first considerations.

"Do you know what?" said Pryor, reflectively; "your old friend Cornelia

Covert could give you a lift."

"Oh, no; I can't go back to America--not yet, anyhow," said Janet

resolutely.

"But she isn't in America. She's in Paris. You didn't know it? Then

I've a big piece of news for you. She's married!"

"Cornelia married!"

"Yes. Benedick, the married man, isn't in it with Diana, the married

woman."

"It's Harry Kelly, of course. Give me a moment to catch my breath.

Mrs. Harry Kelly!"

"Not a bit of it."

"What do you mean?"

"You've heard of Paulette crepe, haven't you?"

"The crepe that's all the rage this year. Mr. Pryor, when I see a

Paulette crepe blouse in a London shop, the cells of my

great-great-grandmother rise enviously within me and turn the clock back

to Noah."

"The curse of Eve," said Mr. Pryor, in his driest vein. "Well, everybody

knows that Paulette crepe is named after Madame Paulette, one of the

first dressmakers of Paris. Not everybody knows that Madame Paulette's

real name is--"

"Cornelia!"

"Precisely."

Prior briefly narrated the curious story of Cornelia's migration to

Paris, her marriage to Harry Kelly, her transformation into a

fashionable dressmaker. Through a convergence of happy events, in which

Pryor had had a hand, Cornelia had been able to enter the old and famous

house of Paulette, then noticeably on the decline. Her artistic gifts

and Kelly's industry had rejuvenated the management and revived the

glories of the Paulette tradition. In a little less than a year Cornelia

and Kelly had bought out the aged proprietors of the firm.

"No wonder I didn't hear from her," said Janet. "All my letters came

back unopened. I began to think she had turned her back on me."

"Marriage has not changed her as much as that," said Pryor, smiling.

"But I warn you that it has changed her a good deal."

"For the better or for the worse?"

"For the better _and_ for the worse. But wait and judge for yourself."

"Perhaps Cornelia will think me in the way, now that she has a husband

to look after."

"Cornelia lose sleep over Harry? No, dear girl; don't worry on that

score. And don't forget that she'll be glad to do me a favor as well as

you. More than one tony customer has come to her shop at my instance.

When I tell you that I brought Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, the mother of the

Duchess of Keswick, to her, you'll admit that I'm a crack barker."

"Mr. Pryor, you are my _deus ex machina_. I believe you are every one

else's, too. It must be a hobby with you to help people out of

difficulties."

"Quite the contrary. It's a hobby with me to get people into

difficulties. The worst of it is, I rarely succeed. I rarely get

anybody into difficulties except myself."

"Is that true?"

"Well, it's as true of me as it is of certain other people. Sensitive

people. People like you, or Charlotte Beecher, or Robert Lloyd."

"Oh, Robert never gets himself into difficulties," said Janet, with a

trace of bitterness. "He's too efficient, too perfect."

"You do him an injustice, I'm sure. Lloyd merely puts up an

exceptionally good front. He stands the strain of existence with skill

and courage. So do you, for that matter."

"Thanks. But I really haven't had much to stand."

"It seems ample to me."

"Not half what I expected. When I went away with Claude I thought the

universe would be arrayed against me. I dare say that in the margin of

my thoughts there was a dim picture of Janet flinging a glove in the

face of a decadent, despotic world."

They both smiled.

"What happened?"

Janet went on, sub-ironically: "A geyser of slander and mockery that

spurted up from the newspapers. Nothing else. Nothing diabolic on the

world's side. Nothing heroic on mine."

"That's the rule in these cases, Janet. The Flatbush suburb idea that

all the world loves a lover is about as true as the Greenwich Village or

Kips Bay idea that all the world hates a free union."

"You think both ideas are fictions?"

"Not entirely. Modern society has its own way of giving a pat of

approval to a regular marriage and a kick of disapproval to a free

union. Apart from these casual demonstrations it doesn't get

tremendously excited over what its men and women do as males and

females, so long as they pay their rent regularly, refrain from

incurring bad debts with tradesmen, and bow the knee (at least in

public) to the seventh commandment."

"Yes, I soon found that out. Nobody cared a pin whether I was married

or not, or whether I was more to be pitied than scorned, provided I wore

the proper clothes and told the proper lies."

"Nobody?"

"Nobody, except Hutchins Burley."

"Ah, there's sure to be a Nemesis!"

"Yes. But why Hutchins Burley? What am I to Burley, or Burley to me?

Why should that horrible wretch be commissioned to persecute me? Why

was he destined to snap the bond of comradeship between Henriette and

me? He isn't exactly one's notion of a social censor, is he?"

"A scavenger isn't a popular notion of a sweet and clean man. Yet he

serves a public purpose."

"What an extraordinary analogy!"

"Not at all. You see, Janet, we moderns are too squeamish or too lazy

to do our necessary dirty work ourselves, dirty work like punishment,

for instance. The result is that when some one rashly assails the

majesty of one of our institutions, we punish him by proxy. We kill by

the hand of the public executioner. We get revenge by the hand of the

judge. We dispense poetic justice by the hand of a Hutchins Burley."

"Well, Hutchins Burley as society's Nemesis is a brand new idea to me.

I shall need time to let it sink in. But what have I done to deserve so

mighty a thing as poetic justice? I haven't even stolen another woman's

husband. Haven't I been my own worst enemy, as Laura Jean Libby used to

say? Isn't that vice its own reward?"

"Janet, your question is fair. But your voice and your eyes are not.

Now I come to think of it, there may after all be a teeny weeny bit to

say--no, not on Hutchins Burley's side--but on Monsieur Anton St.

Hilaire's side."

"Mr. Pryor!"

"I don't mean a twentieth part of what I say. But let me say it. You

are strong enough to take it straight. To begin with, the enigma of

Hutchins Burley: answer me this. Didn't you of your own free will settle

down amongst the Outlaws?"

"Yes."

"Well, you can't touch pitch without a little of it sticking to your

fingers. But let us consider what you are to do next. It's a safer

topic. We've talked unguardedly enough, considering that there's a

dictagraph in the room, put there by no friends of mine."

"A dictagraph! Then you're not a great detective," said Janet,

seriously disappointed. Hopefully, she added: "If you are not Sherlock

Holmes, perhaps you are Raffles?"