"Well, it takes a thief to catch a thief," was the enigmatic reply.

He did not tell her that the hiding place of the dictagraph had been

located and that Smilo had received instructions to tamper with the

instrument as soon as the coast was clear.

*III*

They took a bus to Janet's lodgings.

Several plans were agreed upon. Chiefly, they were both to write to

Cornelia asking her to find a position for Janet in the Paulette

establishment.

Fashionable dressmaking was not precisely the work that Janet's heart

was in. But she was prepared to take any position as a means to an end.

Her real goal was active participation in the later phases of the

women's movement. Recent happenings had revived in her the old longing

to enter the thick of the battle, to pitch into the struggle for equal

pay in every sort of occupation and for an equal title to legislative

and administrative power.

"But I shall have to get an income of my own before I can be a factor in

this struggle," she said.

"One must get an income of one's own before one can be a factor in any

struggle," said Pryor, dryly.

"Yes, I've learned that, too. Feminists say that a woman must have an

independent income in order to enter marriage with self-respect. They

could go further and say that a woman must have an independent income in

order to enter a free union with self-respect."

Pryor told her that he expected to return to the United States in a few

weeks. Should he, in case he ran across Robert Lloyd, inform him of her

altered views?

She said that Robert wouldn't thank him for any information about her.

"But you were such exceptionally good friends," expostulated Pryor.

"Your little firm of Barr & Lloyd--what a pity you couldn't pick that

thread up again, instead of joining Cornelia. If Robert weren't as poor

as a church mouse, or if you both weren't too proud to borrow a little

cash from me--"

Janet interrupted to veto all suggestions along that line. Pride had

nothing to do with the question. It was true that she and Robert had

been very good friends and excellent working partners. But Robert had

emphatically said that he had no use for a woman who had damaged her

social and businesss value by indulging in an adventure such as hers

[Transcriber's note: several words missing from source book]

"Hm!" said Pryor. "When the shoe pinches his own foot, what

astoundingly conservative exclamations even a radical fellow will make."

Janet went on to say that, although she had changed her views, she had

every reason to believe that Robert had not changed his. Thus, he had

taken no step whatever to communicate with her, despite the fact that

she had indirectly, in her first letter to Cornelia, asked him to do so.

"Besides," she added, "didn't you know that he was about to marry

Charlotte Beecher?"

"Oh, ho, so that's how the wind blows?"

Pryor, standing in front of Janet's house, gave the curb a sharp whack

with his cane.

"That marriage has no place in the scheme of your _deus ex machina_," he

said, with a quizzical frown. "We'll have to take it out on

Burley--give the devil an extra twist of the tail to relieve our

feelings."

"Yes, when you catch him. Meanwhile, what am I to do about him?"

"Forget him, forget him serenely for half a dozen weeks or so. Then

you'll hear from him again."

"Hear from him again," she said, with a shade of alarm.

"Not _from_ him in person," corrected Pryor, straightening up till he

looked like a hickory stick. "_About_ him, through me. Good news for

us, bad news for him. Until then good-bye."

*PART V*

*HEARTS AND TREASURES*

*CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE*

*I*

On a cool February morning a private office in the Maison Paulette,

Boulevard Houssman, was occupied by five persons of the feminine sex.

Four of the five, gorgeous as to clothes and cosmetics, moved busily

about in comet-like orbits that brought them periodically near the desk.

The fifth, seated at the desk itself, dominated the room. She was a

striking blonde, whose handsome dull-green dress challenged the glint of

gold alike in her pupils and her hair.

Seemingly occupied with a book of accounts, this lady was really engaged

in inventing petty tasks for the four young women dancing attendance

upon her. (_Mariette, ou est le livre bleu? Mon dieu, Gabrielle! les

ciseaux; quelqu'un a enleve mes petites ciseaux. Toinette, apportez-moi

le boite aux lettres. Tiens, Amelie! Prends ce mouchoir_, etc., etc.)

These requests for service continued in a fairly steady stream, amidst

much hurrying and scurrying, sharp cries of _tout de suite, Madame_, and

a general atmosphere of sulky obsequiousness.

In the thick of the confusion the door was opened by a young woman in a

soft suit of brown heather. She stood on the threshold for a moment

and, as she looked questioningly towards the lady in command, a slight

frown brought a bar of hazel brown over her beautiful gray eyes.

The lady at the desk, who saw everything, affected not to see the figure

on the threshold and went on languidly issuing orders.

Thereupon the newcomer, in clear, agreeable English, called out:

"Evidently you don't want me, Cornelia. Good, I'll go back upstairs.

I've stacks and stacks of work to do--"

"Araminta, wait! Of course I want you. I want you most particularly."

"You've got an army here, already. What do you want me for? If you

keep on calling me away from the manikins whenever Harry is explaining

matters, he'll never be able to train me into taking charge of them."

"My dear!" trilled Cornelia, bringing her most musical _arpeggio_ into

play. "When you've been married as long as I have, you'll understand

that no sensible woman ever interferes with her husband's work except

for a positively overwhelming reason."

"Really, the reasons here in Paris are as bad as the seasons," said

Janet with a smile. "I wish they'd calm down and not overwhelm us quite

so often."

"Ah, Janet, you well may jest. Little do you know of the heavy

responsibilities involved in managing both a business and a husband. If

I had only myself to think of the worries and risks would be as a

whisper in the wind. But I think of Hercules sharing my anxieties,

working himself thin and gray--"

While she went on in this theatrical vein, Janet was thinking to

herself: "She makes as great a virtue of being married as she formerly

made of not being married. Whatever her condition, there's a terrible

to-do about it."

Aloud she said:

"Look here, Cornelia, if you want to talk privately to me, hadn't we

better get rid of this retinue?"

Without awaiting a reply, she calmly released Marie and the other

manikins from service and sent them out of the room. This done, she

took a chair opposite the desk where Cornelia sat staring at her in

speechless indignation.

Cornelia cherished a sort of mental chromo of herself as the active

ruler of the Paulette community, a ruler at once imperious, genial, and

adored. In point of fact, her insatiable appetite for attention,

reinforced by a sharp tongue, spread an atmosphere of dread and anxiety

around her. Janet was the only person who had ever succeeded in

weakening Cornelia's illusion about herself by bringing it into

occasional juxtaposition with reality.

"You'll greatly oblige me, Janet, by not ordering my servants about

under my very nose."

"Your manikins are not your servants, Cornelia. They're your employees.

You slave-drive them outrageously. If you don't look out, you'll have a

strike on your hands before long."

"With you as the strike leader, I dare say?"

"Why not? Your inability to respect other people's time is simply

appalling. The moment some whim pops into your head, one of us is

called upon to gratify it. You quite forget that when you arbitrarily

take us from our jobs, bang goes continuity, a most important factor in

good workmanship. Mazie, who came here grovelling in the dust, is now

up in arms; the manikins are unitedly rebellious; Harry is almost a

nervous wreck. This, with business simply deluging the establishment.

I tell you, unless _you_ stop, we all will."

Cornelia quailed under these words, although she kept her face

admirably. She was in some respects like a wrongly bound volume: half

Becky Sharp and half Hedda Gabler. And it was the Hedda Gabler pages

she always turned up to Janet.

"Well, what next?" she exclaimed, on the defensive in spite of her brave

words. "I've rescued Mazie Ross out of the gutter where Hutchins Burley

flung her; I've sacrificed my own creature comforts to make those of the

manikins secure; I've given _you_ a very tidy berth and no questions

asked; and I've worked myself to skin and bones for Harry's sake. Now

you all turn on me and call me an interfering busybody, or worse.

That's human gratitude."

Janet, giving the faintest ironical shrug, merely looked at her.

Cornelia smothered a sob of rage. After a pause, she informed Janet

that Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, her most valued customer, had made an

appointment that morning to look at some frocks and gowns. This lady

had a single hobby, clothes; and she spent an appreciable fraction of

her untold millions ("she's divorced two multimillionaires, Araminta,

and driven a third into the diplomatic service!") on this hobby. She

had expressed profound dissatisfaction with Paulette's offerings on her

last visit two weeks ago. It was therefore of prime importance to

please her this time.

"I want you to be in the salon with me when she looks at the models,"

said Cornelia. "She's extremely susceptible to flattery. As the head

of the house, I can't very well lay it on too thick, can I? I have a

feeling that your presence will make the sales go smoothly."

"You'd better leave me out of it, Cornelia. I never sold a thing in my

life. Why, I couldn't sell a sandwich to a starving man."

"_I'll_ do the _selling_, my dear. I simply ask you to be on hand. The

fact is, you have a peculiar influence over people. When they get to

talking with you, they suddenly forget about _things_--the earth-earthy

things by which we are all so obsessed nowadays--they appear to forget

about things and begin to occupy themselves with thoughts and dreams.

In that condition, a man or woman will buy anything."

"Cornelia, you'll admit that I've done all sorts of odd jobs for you

without a murmur. But I really don't like to bamboozle anybody into--"

"Bamboozle! Araminta! No one who buys a Paulette frock is bamboozled.

Be quite clear about that."

She added, less belligerently, that Mrs. Jerome, though so very rich,

had no taste in clothes. Or, more bluntly, had a most execrable taste.

She went in for suffrage, feminism, woman's rights, and all that sort of

thing. (Here Janet pricked up her ears.) So you might know what to

expect. She was, in short, faddy and temperamental. Her purchases were

made or not made, as the case might be, because the seller pleased or

displeased her. The articles themselves were of quite secondary

importance.

"Forgive my curiosity, Cornelia. But you have regiments of customers.

Why are you so anxious about just this one?"

"What a question, you babe in the wood! Don't you know who Mrs. Jerome

is?"

"I know she's rich and that Mr. Pryor had something to do with her

coming here."

"That's not it, child. She's the American mother of the Duchess of

Keswick. And the Duchess-- Well, it's Madge and Mary between her and

the Queen of England. Think, Araminta, what a feather in our cap, if we

get the patronage of the Duchess of Keswick, and a Paulette frock is

worn at the Court of St. James! It's the chance of a lifetime. You

won't disappoint me, dear?"

"No. We'll make it Madge and Paulette and Mary. When is this dowager

Mrs. Jerome expected?"

"That's her carriage now, or I'm very much mistaken," said Cornelia, all

agog. "She hardly ever uses a motor. It's _so_ ordinary."

In some amazement Janet watched her old friend going out to do the

honors in the reception room. What a transformation a short year had

effected in the Cornelia of the Lorillard tenements! Bohemianism,

outlawry, and the one-piece dresses of Kips Bay seemed remoter than

Mars. Cornelia was attired in the height of fashion, her cheeks were

delicately touched up, her hair was elaborately coiffured.

Even her congenital languor had evaporated, for the moment, as the

thrills of social snobbery electrified her.

*II*

Entering the salon, Janet saw that Mrs. Jerome was a podgy little tub of

a woman, the symbol of the fortune which her father, Theodore Casey, had

made in wash-tubs. She took a chair beside the visitor, who sleepily

watched the crack Paulette manikins whilst they exhibited a variety of

frocks and Cornelia nervously courted the favor of her outspoken

customer.

Mrs. Jerome examined one of the manikins at close quarters.

"I don't think much of your dresses today," she said bluntly. "The

lines are all wrong."

"Pardon me, Mrs. Jerome," said Cornelia with dignity. "But they ought to

be at that angle. A Paulette frock is a work of art. It is designed to

produce a definite effect from a definite point of view. The lines are

like those of a Phidias statue, perfectly right at the proper distance."

"I don't care if they _do_ look like a Fiddlesticks statue. Look at that

charmeuse gown there. Can't anybody tell that girl a mile away for what

she is?"

"I fear I don't understand."

"Well, if the gown don't hide the fact that she's a manikin, it won't

hide the fact that my figure's no Fiddlesticks statue, or whatever you

call it."

This opinion, delivered in an unmistakable New York voice and accent,

made Janet laugh. Not disrespectfully. She discerned at once that Mrs.

Jerome, like Shakespeare, had far more native wit than college learning.

Her judgment was confirmed when the visitor, turning abruptly towards

her, said:

"What do you think of these Paulette dresses, young lady. I don't

expect you to say that they're pretty rotten. But do they satisfy the

eye?"

"I think, Mrs. Jerome, that if they don't _satisfy_ the eye, they'll at

least astound it."

Mrs. Jerome brightened up at once.

"Well, child," she said, "when I want to astound people, I'll do it on

less money than a Paulette gown costs. I'll walk around Columbus Circle

in my bathing suit."

"Oh, I'll bet you do it, too," said Janet, at the top of her exuberance.

"Do what?" said Mrs. Jerome, now totally oblivious of the manikins on

exhibition and of Cornelia on pins and needles.

"Wear a bathing suit around the house. I used to, regularly. In the

tenements in Kips Bay I always did the dishes in my bathing suit.

Annette Kellerman tights, a skirt to the knees, no sleeves, no

stockings. A dandy rig-out for quick action."

"Permit me to say, Janet--" began Cornelia, in frigid, authoritative

tones.

Mrs. Jerome impatiently waved her away, an indignity so astounding that

Madame Paulette could scarcely trust her eyes. Janet, fearing she had

been indiscreet, hastened to add:

"Of course, Cornelia--Madame Paulette--doesn't allow it in Paris. She

requires us to be perfectly proper here."

"She would!" said Mrs. Jerome significantly, her back still turned to

Cornelia. "But what good does it do you? Nine-tenths of the people in

Paris are perfectly proper; but they don't look it. The other tenth are

perfectly improper; but they, as often as not, don't look it either."

The manikins received another inning. A brief one, though, for Mrs.

Jerome inspected and dismissed them in quick succession.

"Well, well," she said, half aloud, "to think that you came from the

tenements."

She gave Janet a quick, sceptical glance.

"I can scarcely believe it."

"I can scarcely believe it myself," said Janet, with a perfectly

straight face.

Cornelia bit her lips and, flashing an angry look at her friend, went

out of the salon, unable to trust her feelings any longer.

"If the Duchess got wind of it," Mrs. Jerome mused on, "that would

finish Paulette's for me. She don't think a shop is a classy shop

unless the proprietor has a classy pedigree."

"Oh, our pedigree will seem classy enough to the Duchess," said Janet,

"if you don't give us away. And you can't do that, you know. I only

told you in the strictest confidence."

"Don't you go shifting your responsibilities on me, young woman. If you

want your secrets kept, you just keep them to yourself. I'm no safe

deposit vault for anyone else's hidden thoughts. For your comfort I'll

tell you this, though. I've never given my daughter food or information

that I knew she couldn't digest. I'm too old to begin doing it now."

"You're quite right, Mrs. Jerome. Things slip off my tongue that

oughtn't to. Personally, I don't care a straw. But other people--"

"Don't worry about other people, my dear," said Mrs. Jerome, who had

enjoyed the tit-for-tat immensely. "I'm not likely to desert Madame

Paulette. At least not while she keeps anyone with your healthy face

and fascinating eyes here to talk to me. Mind, I'm not gone on these

Paulette frocks. I guess the Madame knows that pretty well. But this

establishment is run by a woman, a woman from my own country. That

means a good deal to me. For although our sex is coming into its own,

the pace isn't a dizzy one. The men see to that. And so I say, this is

a time for all good women to stand by one another."

The little lady sank back in her seat and, as though exhausted by her

long speech, closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Cornelia had

returned and the parade of the manikins was resumed.

This spectacle always started Janet on a series of curious reflections.

As a result of the training in rhythmics which the girls received at the

hands of Harry Kelly, they were free from those grotesque mannerisms of

gait, posture, and demeanor which manikins cultivated and which were

accepted by the trade as superlative expressions of esthetic

correctness. Yet Harry's talent yoked to the service of fashion seemed

as wasteful a thing as an artist's genius drafted in the service of

futility. It reminded Janet of the story of the Medici prince who

compelled Michelangelo to mould a statue out of snow.

But to Mrs. Jerome the Paulette manikins were a sight to see. She made

Janet sit on the lounge beside her and coaxed her to give an opinion on

every frock subsequently shown. She purchased all those that Janet

praised and several that she made fun of.

It was one of the best day's work that the sales department of

Paulette's had ever done.

In spite of which, Madame Paulette considered it her duty to take Mrs.

Jerome to one side and apologize for Janet and her artless

indiscretions.

"She means well, Mrs. Jerome," said Cornelia, deferentially.

"She's--well, I might say, she's naive, incredibly naive in matters of

social position. It's only lack of training, I assure you."

"Is that all?"

"Yes, she's absolutely ignorant of distinctions of rank. Absolutely.

Why, she would talk to a Duchess with no more ceremony than to a

scrubwoman."

"Then I'll bring the Duchess here to be talked to. It might do her

good."

"Oh, do bring the Duchess. I shall be charmed to display for her

inspection the best that the Maison has."

"No doubt. But let me give you a tip. Don't waste your time training

that dear little Janet girl. She'll learn the deceitful ways of the

world fast enough, and no correspondence course needed either."

Janet came up to them as they reached the outer door.

"My dear," said Mrs. Jerome, putting her arm around Janet's waist,

"you've given me the best quarter of an hour I've had in Paris these two

months. It's been a treat, a royal treat."

As Cornelia beheld these two, standing there intertwined, a strange

expression formed on her face, an expression that bespoke an agonizing

doubt of the sanity of the universe.

Unheeding her, Mrs. Jerome continued to say to Janet:

"The people I meet everywhere! In Europe they pick my pockets while

they lick my boots; in America they rifle my purse with barefaced

assurance. You are the first one I've met in a very long time who has

talked to me as though I were a human being and not a walking cash box."

*III*

The conquest of Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome produced a sensation in the

Paulette establishment. It also gave an element of security to Janet's

precarious tenure of office there.

Janet knew full well that Madame Paulette had received her in the

Boulevard Haussman with nothing like the enthusiasm that Cornelia had

welcomed her in the Lorillard tenements. In the interval between these

events the two friends had burned several bridges behind them.

It was obvious that Cornelia was now glutted with hands to wait on her,

ears to pay heed to her, and tongues to flatter her. Her natural taste

for dependents being completely gratified, she felt less need than ever

for friends of an independent turn of mind like Janet.

Moreover, in a year and a half of compact adventure, Janet had matured

more rapidly than many young people do in ten years of tame drifting.

Time, which had whittled away some of her imprudence, had robbed her of

none of her daring; it had left her with her almost naive freedom of

utterance intact. Her candor was a trait to which Cornelia had formerly

been much drawn. But that was in the days of her first arrival in Kips

Bay, the days when the young girl had all but worshipped the experienced

woman. Now that blind devotion had given way to challenging criticism,

Janet's candor seemed far less attractive.

That is, far less attractive to Cornelia. As regards Paulette's in

general, Janet was a great favorite. Her official duties were chiefly

those of an assistant to Harry Kelly in the physical training of the

manikins, (a branch of their professional instruction on which Kelly

laid great stress). She bore somewhat the same relation to her chief

that the concert master of an orchestra does to the conductor. This

arrangement was Cornelia's doing. In one and the same bold stroke she

had thought to cut down the time that Kelly spent with the manikins

(this being the time in which his heart lay most); and to shift to

Janet's shoulders the odium that frequently devolves on the deputy chief

(who exercises authority without possessing power).

But Cornelia's spirit of negation, active as ever, accomplished only

one-half of its object.

Janet discharged her duties with so much vivacity and with such

invincible good-will that she was idolized by everybody in the Paulette

firm from Kelly and the manikins down to the work girls and the

magnificent porter who daily consented to guard the street door.

In short, she was the life of the house; than which, Cornelia could have

brought no stronger indictment against her of unimaginable _lese

majeste_.

The two had a long private conversation in Cornelia's office the day

after Mrs. Jerome's visit.

"Araminta, you've certainly made a hit with the old lady. Just as I

predicted. It's a fine thing for us both. Paulette's prestige will go

up and up. And it should mean a great deal to you."

"How, I wonder?"

"You can make her friendship a stepping stone."

"Easy stepping stones for little feet--so to speak?"

"You know quite well what I mean. Some day you'll go back to America--"

"Is this a hint or a prediction, or both--"

"Don't be silly, Janet. I'm thinking of your future. Your future in

your own country, naturally. Mrs. Jerome is a woman of enormous

influence. You know how it is over there. Much gold will wash all

guilt away."

"You mean my chequered past?" asked Janet, with a smile.

"Yes," said Cornelia, adding handsomely, "although your affair with

Claude Fontaine will probably be quite forgotten by that time. Nobody

will remember it."

"Robert Lloyd will!"

Cornelia was up in arms at once. She always was, when Janet mentioned

Robert's name.

"What difference does that make? You aren't going to marry _him_, I

suppose?"

"I suppose not. He's too poor, for one thing. He isn't going to ask

me, for another."

"One would imagine you wanted him to," said Cornelia, with concise

sarcasm.

"We got along splendidly as partners."

"Partners! What has that to do with marriage?"

"What has anything to do with marriage? I understood your reasons when

you believed that marriage was a prison. I confess I don't understand

your reasons now that you believe marriage to be a haven of bliss.

Mind, I don't say it is a prison, and I don't say that it _isn't_ a

haven of bliss."

Janet tried to check her sub-ironical impulses: they were irrepressible.

"I feel too much in the dark about the whole thing," she went on, "to be

as cocksure as I used to be. But if one isn't to marry a man because

one has found him to be a splendid companion in the wear and tear of

working together, why is one to marry him?"

"How you do run on, Araminta! Prisons and hells, Paradises and havens

of bliss--you jump from one extreme to the other. Who mentioned these

things? My dear, one marries a man because he calls to what is deepest

and truest in one. Because he responds to--"

"The mating instinct?"

"How can you sit there and say such vulgar things?"

"Vulgar! Well, you _are_ going it! Isn't the mating instinct as deep

and true as any of them?"

"It isn't a reason for marriage," said Cornelia, in staccato accents.

"And you know perfectly well I never said or thought it was. Quite the

reverse. I opposed marriage because the sex instinct, which is what

induces most people to marry, is a good ground for a temporary union but

not a good ground for a permanent one."

"Then there _are_ good reasons for a permanent union?"

"Yes. And they absorb the sex reason a million times over."

"It's easy for you to talk like that, Cornelia, with Harry thinking that

the sun rises in one of your eyes and sets in the other. But where

shall _I_ find a Harry to be absorbed in me a million times over like

that?"

"If you go on making nasty sarcastic replies to all my well-meant

suggestions, I shall wash my hands of you," said Cornelia, rising with

frigid haughtiness.

She added, on a superior note:

"You'd better see a little less of poor, bedraggled Mazie Ross, if it's

on _her_ level that you're being tempted to think."

*IV*

Janet hastened after her in a complete change of mood.

"Come back, Cornelia," she called out, remorsefully. "I had no right to

be sarcastic. Forgive me, and I'll eat all the humble pie you like."

Cornelia sat down again.

"This is a new tack for you to take," she said, making the most of an

advantage Janet seldom gave her.

"The fact is, Cornelia, I'm--my feelings were ploughed up today,

ploughed up from top to bottom. The postman brought me an offer of

marriage this morning."

"An offer of marriage!"

"From Monsieur St. Hilaire."

Cornelia had of course heard the facts of the whole St. Hilaire episode.

She also knew that Janet still corresponded with Henriette, and that all

the recent letters of the girl's father had been sent back unopened.

"I thought you never read his letters?"

"This one was folded up in Henriette's note. I'm sure the child wasn't

a party to the trick. Here it is. Will you read it?"

Cornelia did so.

"Well, I must say I'm surprised," she said, returning the letter. "He

writes in a very decent, manly strain. Altogether different from what I

expected. The devil doesn't seem to be nearly as black as he's

painted."

"Oh, he's not a professional satyr, if that's what you mean. I never

implied that he was."

Cornelia pondered the matter for a minute. She recalled forgotten

particulars about M. St. Hilaire, amongst others, the account of his

generous income.

"So he's in Paris with Henriette," she mused. "I notice that he says

he's coming here tomorrow to get his answer in person. What will you do

about it, dear?"

"I wish I knew. I want to see Henriette again, tremendously. But I

don't want to see her father. Do give me your advice, Cornelia. What

do you think I ought to do?"

"Well, why not give him another chance? He's made you a perfectly

straight and honorable offer this time. As I recall the whole story, he

wasn't really repugnant to you, except at that one time."

"No. But am I lightly to forget that he--that he touched me without my

consent, presuming to think that, because I had loved one man, my body

was at the free disposal of all men?"

"It was a wretched mistake to make--"

"A mistake! It was a monstrous piece of stupidity and impudence."

"Quite so, my dear. I'm not standing up for him. Still, don't let us

forget that men are not built like women."

"That's a truth that cuts both ways, isn't it?" said Janet.

She had given up being astonished at Cornelia's peculiar mixture of the

old and the new in the matter of theories about men and women. She

merely wondered to what weird angle Cornelia meant to shift her outlook

now.

"The point is," continued Cornelia serenely, "that a woman's sex emotion

is generally excited by something that takes her fancy; a man's, by

something that stirs his blood. The mind plays the bigger part in the

one case, the body in the other. That's why, in the duel of sex, the

psychological moment is so important to the woman, the physiological

moment to the man.

"These acute distinctions are quite beyond me. A man has as much gray

matter as a woman, or even more. Then why should he let his mental

processes suffer paralysis whenever a nice woman looks at him?"

"Well, that's one of the mysteries that marriage helps us to understand,

Araminta. In the life of a man there come these physiological moments,

these sex storms, different from anything in the experience of a woman.

I don't mean to say that men have more physical passion than women. But

there are occasions when their physical passion takes a more violently

concentrated form. Mazie, in her vulgar little way, isn't so far wrong

when she says: 'Scratch a fine gentleman, and you'll find a cave man.'"

"Do you mean to tell me that there are absolutely no men who feel about

love as we do?"

"I've never met one. Have you?"

Janet was thinking: "Surely Robert isn't like that!" Aloud she said

nothing. There was a dangerous glint in her friend's eyes. Cornelia

had an uncanny way of penetrating one's thoughts when Robert was the

object of them. Had she accomplished this feat of divination again? At

all events, an acrid note entered her voice as she continued:

"Is it really only Monsieur St. Hilaire that you can't make up your mind

about? If so, take my advice. Come down off your high horse and make

the most of your good fortune."

"My good fortune!"

"Let's be perfectly frank with each other, my dear. Here's a man who

wants to marry you. He's well-born, cultivated, rich. His one child is

a girl who adores you and whom you adore. The only thing against him is

that he once committed a serious breach of decorum--"

"And that I don't love him--" interpolated Janet.

Cornelia blandly ignored the interruption.

"His letter shows," she went on, "that he is willing to make the most

handsome amends, the only amends a man can make in a matter of this

sort. What more do you ask?"

"I'm not asking him for amends. I simply want to be let alone."

"Araminta, let me beg you not to deceive yourself about the changing

moral values we hear so much of nowadays. Has the price of virginity

really gone down? Judged by the conversation of radicals and Outlaws,

yes. Judged by the ticker of the matrimonial exchange, it is still

pretty high. Bear that in mind, and remember that a bird in the hand is

worth two in the bush."

"Do you mean to say," exclaimed Janet, in great astonishment, "that you,

of all people, advise me to _accept_ this offer?"

Her tone irritated Cornelia.

"Beggars can't be choosers," she began.

"They can remain beggars," replied Janet tersely.

"If that's the way you feel about it, you needn't ask my advice again.

We're wasting each other's time."

Saying which, Cornelia rose and left the office.

*CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX*

*I*

The Paulette manikins, famed throughout the world of fashion for their

grace in attitude and correctness in position and movement, owed their

prestige to a system of hygienic training conceived and carried out by

Harry Kelly himself. Yet these young ladies took their distinction so

seriously that they held it beneath them to assist their chief in

straightening out the classroom disorder when the period of instruction

was over.

"Here's a mess!" called out Mazie Ross, walking into the Paulette

gymnasium, immediately after the dismissal of a small class of manikins.

"You might think they'd been on a grand jamboree."

"Anything up?" said Harry, shortly.

"Janet asked me to help you this morning."

"What for?"

"She went out for a horseback ride with the St. Hilaires."

"This morning. Why, as it is, she goes almost every afternoon. She

went yesterday afternoon. A fine way to do business, I'll say."

Mazie sulkily began to pick up stray articles.

"You needn't pitch into me, Harry," she said. "You're not half so sorry

as I am that your gentle Janet isn't here to do this rotten job. Is it

my fault?"

"Does Cornelia know she's away?" said Kelly, fuming.

"Can a cat miaow within a mile of these precincts without Corny being on

to it?"

"Why don't they keep me posted then? I never hear of a blessed thing

that goes on in my own home until it's all over."

"Say, do you want to start a row? Then take a tip from me and land into

a certain party in the main office. If you'd knock her down and then

jump on her with both feet, you'd be doing something. What's the use of

picking on a dead bird like me?"

"Don't talk that way about Cornelia," said Harry, fumbling amongst the

papers on the desk, and trying vainly to be stern. "I've told you

before I won't have it. Where's your gratitude?"

She made a face at him behind his back.

"Gratitude!" she said. "What's the good of me wasting gratitude on

Cornelia when she reminds herself and everybody in Paulette's daily that

she picked me up out of the gutter that Hutch left me in?"

"Lock up the wardrobe and clear out, will you?" said Kelly, frigidly.

"I can do the rest myself."

"Here's your hat, what's your hurry," she muttered to herself. But she

stayed and continued to put things to rights.

Mazie had changed greatly since the palmy days of the Lorillard

tenements. She looked ill and haggard, a mere shadow of the jaunty

"Follies" girl of old. Her willowy posture had degenerated into an

undisguised slouch, her hair was frowsy, and her dress was slung

together.

But her tongue had not lost its stab.

She closed the wardrobe door with an unintentional slam that caused

Harry Kelly to jump up in his seat.

"Damn!" he said, in that mild voice of his.

It was as if Vesuvius had emitted a puff of tobacco smoke.

The metamorphosis of the "Harlem Gorilla" into the husband of Madame

Paulette was astoundingly complete. Harry Kelly's Van Dyke beard and

fashionably tailored clothes alone would have effected a radical change

in his appearance. Kelly was transformed not only physically but

psychically. His muscles were still the muscles of a Titan, but his

nerves had become the nerves of a fanciful man or a delicate woman.

Mazie, who was no student of spiritual transformations, went up to the

desk at which Kelly sat and began to tidy it. She whisked away stray

papers and envelopes that lay near his hands with much the same air that

a waiter lashes the crumbs off a table to speed the lingering guest.

He grew more and more fidgety, but she showed him no mercy.

"Janet didn't know those St. Hilaires were coming this morning," she

finally volunteered. "But you can gamble on it that Cornelia knew.

When my fine gentleman got off his prancing horse and marched into the

reception room clanking spurs and all, Corny was right there on the job

in her softest, sweetest tone. My! butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

And all the time Janet hangs in the background, saying she's too busy to

go out, and looking as stubborn as a mule. When gentle Janet gets that

stubborn expression, it means: You can move the Woolworth Building, but

you can't move me!"

"Then why in thunder did she go?"

"Because that St. Hilaire kid got busy with her. A pretty little kid, a

regular father's darling, the kind that coos away like a turtledove till

she gets everything she wants and a tidy slice of the moon extra. Well,

she draped herself pathetically around Janet--all that heartstring

stuff--and Janet, like any fool of a man, fell for the pathos."

"You can't persuade me that Janet didn't want to go," said Kelly,

gloomily.

"I won't try to, then. Just the same, she didn't. That's the weird

part of it."

"What's weird about it?"

"Why, she doesn't want to marry that millionaire and he's crazy to get

her. Gee, some people have all the luck."

"If she doesn't want him, where's the luck?" said Kelly, with the logic

of simplicity.

"Harry, don't be a nut. Here's the ABC of it. All my love affairs were

on the q.t., though I say it that shouldn't. Everything respectable and

under cover. Nobody rattled my adventures in the ears of the public,

did they? Yet, from the way everybody points the finger of scorn at me,

you'd think I produced the whole Venusburg show and ran it

single-handed. Now look at Janet. She hops off with young Claude

Fontaine right under the eyes of the moving-picture brigade. The front

pages of all the leading papers give her a full week's publicity. She

boards with Claude for a month or two, carefully omitting even the

formality of a fake wedding ring. She lives in sin! But everybody

shies at using 'them crooel woids.' And what are the wages of sin? A

couple of millionaires pining away on her doorstep and Sousa's band

a-playing at her feet. And she's no great beauty at that."

"Quit it, Mazie. What's the good of fooling yourself with the idea that

Janet hasn't had her troubles. My guess is that Claude threw her

overboard."

"Well, you can guess again, my simple Samson."

"Anyhow, they wouldn't have separated in a few weeks unless there had

been a fierce blow-out, would they? That's the kind of thing that can

hurt a whole lot, a whole lot more than shows on the surface. A

sensitive girl like Janet! By thunder, we don't know what she went

through, do we? She's not the sort that wears her feelings on her

sleeve."

"In other words: 'Gentle Janet meek and mild,'" said Mazie witheringly.

"What that girl can't get away with! I'd like to go through a few of her

sufferings, I would. I'd like to see yours truly riding horseback every

day in the Bois de Boulogne with a plutocrat by my side and a couple of

grooms toddling along in back. There's a terrible penance for you! And

to think I can't even get a second-hand man to take me to a third-rate

cabaret in Montmartre. Me, Mazie Ross, the wickedest girl in the

wickedest city in the world. Gee, life is tough!"

"You've seen enough cabarets to be sick of them--and you are sick of

them," said Kelly, with unwonted harshness.

"Yes, I suppose my cabaret days are over. But listen to me. There'll

be no more skylarking for gentle Janet as soon as Cornelia engineers her

marriage with the Alsatian."

"Janet's marriage is none of your business, and none of Cornelia's

either."

"You don't say so? Well, you just tell the Empress that yourself."

Mazie, with her hand over her mouth, flung these words at him just as

Cornelia entered the gymnasium.

*II*

With the expression of a tragedy queen Cornelia came in and handed Kelly

a telegram.

"From Robert!" she said, in a voice choked with emotion. He took it and

read:

Am leaving Geneva International Labor Conference tonight. Hope to see

you and Janet in Paris tomorrow.

Robert Lloyd.

"That's one on us!" remarked Kelly, awkwardly, and a little afraid of

the storm signals in Cornelia's eyes.

His fatuous slang irritated her enormously.

"Isn't it like Robert to turn up at the most inconvenient time

imaginable? Just as Janet is on the point of being engaged! It spoils

everything."

"How did he locate us, I wonder?" said Kelly lamely. "I thought you had

lost all track of him."

When they had taken over Paulette's, Cornelia had insisted on ruthlessly

dropping former friends in impoverished circumstances on the plea that

every connection that was not an asset was a liability. It had been a

sore point between the two at first.

"Pryor--the meddling fool--probably put him onto us," replied Cornelia.

"Now everything's sure to go to pot unless we can keep Robert from

interfering. As long as he's around, Janet will never marry Monsieur

St. Hilaire."

"She's just crazy enough to throw away the chance of a lifetime," said

Mazie, judging it expedient to chime in with Cornelia.

"I don't believe she'll marry St. Hilaire, anyway," said Kelly, with the

obstinacy of a mild nature. "She doesn't love him, to begin with. And

she isn't the sort that'll do a thing simply because other people say

that it's good for her. She's the sort of girl that shapes her own

future."

"You're as big a fool as Pryor," said Cornelia, flinging tempestuously

out of the gymnasium.

Poor Kelly was crestfallen. He walked sadly to a window, opened it, and

took several deep breaths, his infallible remedy for depression of

spirits. Mazie, relieved at Cornelia's exit, lighted a cigarette and

waited for him to finish.

"Why is she so blamed anxious to have Janet marry this St. Hilaire?" he

asked, turning slowly from the window.

"Why? Ha, ha, the poor fish asks me why?"

She punctuated the question with a hollow laugh.

"Only because Janet doesn't _want_ to marry him," she went on, perching

herself jauntily on the desk. "Why, Simple Simon, the old girl would

have nothing left to live for, if she couldn't make people do what they

_don't_ want to do. Or, at least, if she couldn't _prevent_ them from

doing what they _do_ want to do--"

The door flew open.

"So that's the way you talk about me behind my back?" cried Cornelia,

the picture of outraged majesty.

Mazie rapidly came down from her perch and slunk out of the room.

The intruder turned her guns upon her husband.

"And you encouraging the little snake. I wonder you don't summon the

whole staff in here to plot against me."

Kelly, dismayed and crushed, received the broadside with head bowed.

Cornelia expressed her passionate resentment at the universal treachery

and ingratitude. This was her reward for helping girls in the plight

that Mazie and Janet were in! She had put all the social and material

resources of Paulette's at the disposal of Janet in order that, by a

most fortunate marriage, a well-nigh irretrievable blunder might be

retrieved. She had herself strained every nerve to help the girl to

obliterate her past. And what were her thanks? The unfeeling ingrate

acted as if she hardly realized that there was a past to obliterate.

She now washed her hands of the whole business. Never again--.

And so on.

Had Harry Kelly been of an inquiring turn of mind he might have

ascertained whether or no Cornelia's fury was in part due to being

frustrated in the desire to get Janet off her conscience, and in part to

being thwarted herself in that game of thwarting others at which Mazie

had pronounced her an expert.

As it was, he listened like a Mohammedan prostrated before the muezzin.

His silent prayer was that when Cornelia's rage had spent itself, she

would not refuse to bestow upon him a little of that affection for which

he passionately and hopelessly craved.

*III*

A few hours later, Janet and Mazie were alone in the gymnasium, the

former greatly excited about the news from Robert.

"It's a pity he didn't think of looking you up a little sooner," said

Mazie who was in a mood for throwing cold water on enthusiasms that

strayed her way.

Janet was a little dashed by this reminder of Robert's indifference to

her fate.

"All the same," she said, "I shall enjoy introducing him to Paris, as he

once introduced me to Manhattan."

"What, the Eiffel Tower, The Champs Elysees, the Boul. Mich., the

American Quarter, and all the other rubberneck sights?"

"No, I'll show him the places he'll like: the office in _L'Humanite_

where Jaures worked, the central hall of the _Confederation Generate de

Travail_, and the Seine by moonlight."

"The Seine by moonlight! Now we're coming to it. Janet, you're getting

sentimental. Do you think Robert is coming particularly for you?"

"Oh, no, I hope I know him better than that."

"Then what is he coming for? To see me? I don't think. And if ever he

was stuck on Cornelia, he took the cure complete, as soon as you breezed

along."

"Nonsense, Mazie. Perhaps he has made a fortune and, in passing, means

to drop in on his poor relations."

"Robert rich?" Mazie laughed the idea to scorn. "A man who likes work

for its own sake will never have a stiver to his name."

She ventured to surmise that all his expenses were being paid by some

labor organization. That was the way with these professional radicals.

They traveled around the world on their own wits and on somebody else's

money. They never succeeded in making even a bowing acquaintance with a

check account. Never. She trusted Janet would not be such a fool as to

forget this fact. Now, M. St. Hilaire was a very different story.

"Marry a rich man, Janet, and the memory of that Claude affair will die

a natural death. Marry a poor one, and it will keep on bobbing up."

"I shouldn't care if it did."

"No, _you_ wouldn't, but your husband would."

"So my friends are at some pains to remind me," said Janet, rather

bitterly. "You and Cornelia keep on telling me so, and Robert once

expressed the same opinion."

"Well, he was right. I don't say it from spite, like Cornelia does. I

say it because I'm--because I'm damned fond of you--"

She repressed the tears in her eyes.

"You're the only one here," she went on, choking down a sob, "that

doesn't treat me as though I was an escaped inmate of Sodom and

Gomorrah, and ought to be sent back there."

Janet went to her side and comforted her. But Mazie would not be

comforted. She burst out with:

"The trouble with us girls is that we're too soft about love, as soft as

putty. What good does all this talk and fuss about the equality of

women do us? Where does it get us? Just exactly nowhere. And women

won't be worth as much as men, until they're as hard about love as men

are; and that means as hard as nails."

Divining Janet's silent comment, Mazie added defiantly that it was

because she herself hadn't been hard enough that she had come to grief

at the hands of "that swine Hutchins."

After a marked pause, Mazie reverted to the subject of M. St. Hilaire.

Had he proposed as usual during the morning's ride?

"Yes," said Janet.

"No other news?"

"He assured me that I could have everything I wanted. Even my soul

should be my own."

"I don't like that sob stuff about souls," said Mazie whimsically.

"What did you answer?"

"I told him that women would never be able to call their souls their own

until they could call their bodies their own."

"My God, Janet! You have to give the poor man _something_ for his

money."

"Exactly. And as I can't give him a fair return for it, it's clear that

I oughtn't to marry him, isn't it?"

"Fair return! Did you ever see anybody give a fair return in this sex

business? I can gamble on it you didn't. Fair return! Look here,

Janet, who started putting a price on love? Did women start it or did

men? Was it men or women that threw love on the curb to be bought and

sold with other junk? Say, did you ever see a man who'd take love for a

free gift? Let me give you a tip, dearie. If a woman don't sell her

love for all she can squeeze out of a man, and give him underweight into

the bargain, the man don't think he's getting his money's worth."

She went on to say that every relation between the sexes was a case of

the shearer and the sheep. Somebody was certain to be shorn. The man

would fleece the woman unless the woman fleeced the man.

"And here's another tip, my gentle Janet. When Cornelia sees you

prancing off to the Bois de Boulogne with Monsieur St. Hilaire, she

don't believe you're putting up with him because you dote on Henriette.

Not for a moment. Well then, there'll be a rude awakening for somebody.

If you don't fleece St. Hilaire, she'll _skin_ you. She'll have you in

her power at last."

"No, she won't. Mazie, I'd like to tell you something. But I don't want

Cornelia to know. Will you promise not to tell her?"

"Will I promise not to feed cakes to a crocodile?"

"Mrs. Jerome has offered me a job."

"Well, I'll hand it to gentle Janet. You'll be going to heaven on a

feather bed next. What's the job?"

"I don't know yet. She doesn't either. She has some scheme in mind for

helping professional women to make their way in the world. My work is

to come out of that. Just the sort of work I have most at heart. Do you

remember the plan I had when we lived in Kips Bay, the plan of creating

a new profession for women? What a magnificent castle in the air it

was! Robert helped me carry the first brick or two down to earth where

we could build on solid ground. By the way, I told Mrs. Jerome all

about Barr and Lloyd."

"Did you tell all about Barr and Fontaine, too?"

"No," said Janet, swallowing this bitter pill with some resentment.

"But I will, before I accept her offer."

"And you think it won't make any difference to her?"

"No. She's a woman with a great deal of good sense. She sizes you up

by your future, not by your past."

"Janet, you are a clip," said Mazie, with immense admiration. "Aren't

you afraid of the future? Adventures can break a girl as well as make

her. Look how they've broken me."

"Mazie, don't be a fool," said Janet, putting her arm around the sick

girl. "You're not half broken yet. You're only a bit cracked. And for

your comfort I'll tell you what Robert once said. He said nowadays

everybody was a bit cracked--especially in the head."

"Where's the comfort in that?"

"Why, it's the cracked pitcher that goes longest to the well, goose.

That's what I tell myself when I get the blues."

"Do you, too, get in a blue funk, sometimes? I don't believe it. I

always think of you as being the twin sister of the man in the fairy

tale, the man who couldn't be taught to shiver or shake. You're a

wonderful girl, Janet. Still, I'd like to see a man come along some day

and make you shiver and shake just a teeny-weeny bit. Perhaps Robert

will."

"Ah, Mazie, do you think he'll try?"

*CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN*

*I*

She was present, with the other principals of the Maison Paulette, the

night that Robert arrived. Her heart beat faster when she set eyes on

him again. He seemed perfectly collected (too perfectly collected!)

though very cordial. How was she to tell, amidst so much handshaking and

greeting that his heart was beating time with hers?

The thing she was most conscious of was that one look of his mobile

brown eyes had given a strangely different twist to her adventure with

Claude Fontaine. For the first time in her experience she felt

uncomfortably on the defensive.

She resented this novel sensation. She regarded it with hostility, as

though it were some treacherous thread that crossed her homespun

integrity. To think that Robert should be its agent! Or could she be

mistaken? No. It appeared that even the most charitable of human

beings liked to see you in sackcloth and ashes, and looking remorseful,

conscience stricken, punished. Well, she had not given Cornelia the

satisfaction of looking so, nor Harry Kelly, nor Mazie Ross, nor

anybody. And Robert should be no exception.

With defiant vigor she resolved that, as she had no cause to acknowledge

remorse, fifty Roberts should not make her acknowledge it.

There was little time that night for an interchange of news. Next

morning, the machinery of the Paulette establishment, too big to be

suspended for a mere visitor, automatically began its daily grind.

In the course of the day Janet caught fleeting glimpses of Robert,

little more. Cornelia kept him under her wing and guarded him as

carefully as though he were a crown jewel. She went so far as to

relieve Harry Kelly of the half-hour's treat he had promised himself,

the treat of showing Robert the sights of the great Maison.

Cornelia not only undertook the ceremony herself; she protracted the

ritual far beyond her husband's intentions. Cato's complete mentor, that

was what she blandly constituted herself. All that poor Hercules could

do was to leave his work once in a while, dash hastily to whatever

quarter of the building his wife had conducted Robert, slap the visitor

gently on the back, and fling a gloomy monosyllable at him by way of

showing his good will. He insisted that Robert was too thin, and

trotted out his famous formula.

"You don't breathe deep and down enough, old boy. Fill your lungs and

your belly with good fresh wind, or you'll never travel on asphalt."

Cornelia had ceased to shudder at the inelegant word. But Mazie,

happening to pop in at the moment, promptly caught it up and used the

occasion to favor the two men with a fusillade of flippant, slangy

phrases, not forgetting to add several thinly veiled impudences directed

at the mistress of the house before the latter had time to expel her.

Cornelia herself suffered so many interruptions that even she had to

postpone the confidential talk she had planned to hold with Robert

before noon. After lunch, she allowed Robert to take his first stroll

through Paris alone, reminding him to come back for an early dinner at

half past six. According to her plan, the evening was to be spent in a

general confab and merrymaking.

Unluckily, she forgot to announce this plan in so many words, but took

it for granted that no move involving Robert would be made that day

without first consulting her. Her overconfidence defeated her. In one

of the few moments when she was off guard, Janet contrived to get Robert

by himself and secured his joyful acceptance of an invitation to a

concert in the evening, for which she chanced to have two tickets.

When Cornelia heard of it, she was in turn astounded and furious.

Privately, to Harry and Mazie, she described Janet concisely as a

selfish beast. In public, she kept herself commendably in hand.

The dinner passed off without much hilarity and with no incidents other

than one or two casual allusions, on Cornelia's part, to M. St. Hilaire.

As Janet went out with Robert, Kelly, full of mournful resignation,

hoped that their purses would survive the brigandage, and their lives

the epileptic locomotion, of the Paris taxi-cab drivers. Mazie called

out:

"Janet, my gentle pet, don't let Rob land by mistake into the _Miroir de

Venus_." (This was a cafe notorious for its high jinks.)

"Why not?"

"He might reform the joint, before the joint reforms him."

*II*

They got into an Odeon bus.

On their way via the Boulevard des Italiennes to the Seine, she named a

few of the sights they passed, such as the Theatre Francais and the

Tuileries. Crossing the Pont du Carrousel, the bus jounced him against

her and, as she thrilled to the touch, she felt his magnetic response.

Yet, outwardly, a year and a half had not changed him greatly, she

thought. There was the same fire in his eyes (but wasn't there perhaps

a shade less of friendliness?). He listened as politely as ever to

routine chit-chat, and exhibited the same impetuous candor when the

conversation flung up a new idea.

"_You_ haven't changed much, either," he said, rather suddenly, as

though he had divined her reflections. "Your contours are a little

rounder, that's all, and I think your chin is much firmer."

"And my big nose?"

He pretended to appraise it judicially.

"It's a size smaller. Perhaps a size and a half."

She laughed delightedly. It was a new thing for Robert to pay attention

to such physical details.

"Well, as long as you say it's a change for the better--"

"I don't," he said, affecting a stern tone. "Not in the least. Do you

know what? I'm afraid you're fast turning yourself into one of these

popular Paul Helleu beauties, a Parisian version of the Penrhyn Stanlaws

girl."

"I wish I could. But I'm not a magician, Robert."

"Oh, there's no magic about it. Any girl can do it, if--"

"If, of course. Let's hear the gigantic _if_."

"If she has a very moderate allotment of brains and looks, and a

single-minded passion for beautifying herself."

"If this is praise, give me dispraise," she said, with a mischievous

gleam in her eyes.

His senses were assailed by the tone and timbre of her voice. In

self-protection he somewhat rudely remarked:

"The fact is I didn't come to Europe to tell you how beautiful you are."

"No, you came over on business," she said, drily. "You always do come

on business. We all assumed that. You needn't fear that we're any of

us flattering ourselves that you came specially to see him or her. You

were sent as a delegate to some labor conference or other, weren't you?"

"Not as a delegate, but as a staff correspondent of the Confederated

Press."

She learned that the Confederated Press was a new venture backed by

several radical newspapers and designed to supply its clients with the

news of the world, the straightforward news, before it was cooked or

adulterated by the old established press services. Robert's assignment

gave him an enormously valuable experience, although his position was

not a lucrative one.

"That's what brought me to Geneva," he concluded. "But I came to Paris

to see you."

Just before he left New York, he had seen Pryor, he told her. Of course

Pryor had let out one or two startling bits of news gathered from the

four quarters of the earth. About Hutchins Burley and Lydia

Dyson--things he would tell her later. Pryor had all the town talk

(Kips Bay talk) at his fingers' ends. The man was a regular human

wireless station. Did Janet recall how he always spoke of information

drifting his way? Well, it was from Pryor that he first had heard that

Cornelia and the famous Madame Paulette were one and the same person.

"You see I'd lost complete track of Cornelia after she left the model

tenements," he said. "I'm pretty sure that she wanted to sponge the

Kips Bay connection clean off the slate. Naturally, my turning up now

isn't in the least to her liking. I can feel that, in spite of her

tremendous surface cordiality. But I had to come. Finding her was

finding you."

("A pity you didn't look me up a little sooner," said Janet, to herself,

not stopping to enlighten him as to the subtle cause of Cornelia's

displeasure.)

"Look, here's the Ecole des Beaux Arts," she said aloud. "We'll be in

the Boulevard St. Germain in a minute."

*III*

Whilst he obediently turned his gaze from the sparkle of the arc lights

and the glitter of the shops and streets, his thoughts were preoccupied

by her puzzling manner. She was friendly, of course. Janet was always

that. An equable, agreeable temper was the very essence of her. But

what was this disconcerting aloofness of hers which was cleaving the air

between them! Her generous eyes and her low clear voice were sending

out vibrations that penetrated to his very soul; yet her mind was

stubbornly withholding the confidence which in the old Lorillard days

she had given him without reserve. What did the paradox of her behavior

mean? Was this a new Janet at the opposite pole to the candid,

unaffected Janet of Barr and Lloyd? He supposed that the Claude episode

might furnish the answer. Had it changed her spiritually for the worse

as it had changed her physically for the better?

Well, that episode had certainly changed him, though not precisely in

any way that he could have predicted. Changed him! For one thing it had

opened his eyes to the fact that he had been a good deal of a prig, as

his Outlaw acquaintances were so fond of intimating. He blushed to

recall his _ex cathedra_ pronouncements on the subject of free love.

With what assurance he had asserted that he did not object to free love

as a matter of prejudice but only as a point of expediency. Hypocrite!

The very reverse had been the case. When Janet ran away with Claude,

the Old Adam had risen within him and almost smothered him with

possessive emotion.

Like any common jealous man! To be sure, he had stoutly told himself

that the Claude adventure made no difference in his estimate of Janet's

worth. Absolutely none. She was, as always, a prize for any man. For

any man? Well, he himself, on the sole ground that his life's work

might suffer, would not consider himself eligible for the prize. That

was how he had put it. That was where the prig had shown the cloven

hoof.

Still, he could say this for himself. When he had met Janet face to

face again, all these piffling considerations of expediency had

instantly, along with his vulgar prejudices, gone by the board. The

moment he set eyes on her in Paris, he felt himself at one with her as

he had never felt at one with any other human being (save perhaps a

certain long-lost friend of his own sex).

The cause was not far to seek. Janet could pull the trigger that

released and expanded his faculties as no one else had ever been able to

do. In her presence, not merely his better self, but his more

adventurous self, his more aspiring self, his more poetic self, and his

more heroic self--the several Roberts that other people were too dull to

perceive, or too futile, ignorant, or base to cultivate--all these

craving selves came into their own and grew in stature. What was a

previous love affair, what were a dozen previous love affairs, in the

teeth of this miracle? Claude Fontaine! One look into the depth of

Janet's eyes, and all theories, prejudices, principles, expediencies,

and conflicting emotions went up in smoke.

Meanwhile, Janet's thoughts had been taking a very different shape.

She did not know that Robert had never seen the long letter to Cornelia

in which she had described her journey with Claude and had given her

European address. Cornelia had withheld this letter from Robert for

reasons scarcely admitted to herself; and what Cornelia did not admit to

herself she was little likely to admit to an interested friend. In fact,

in her letter to Janet and in casual conversations since their recent

reunion, Cornelia had so often allowed it to be inferred that Robert had

had access to the letter, that she ended by making this convenient

inference herself.

Not unnaturally then, Janet reasoned that Robert's failure to

communicate with her had been deliberate. What dovetailed with this

conclusion was the memory of his dictum on free love. How well she

remembered the relentless words: "I can never have anything to do with

free love or with a woman who has had a free lover. It would defeat my

purpose in life."

His purpose in life! He was the sort of man who took more joy in

finding and working _that_ out than in loving any woman. True, she no

longer concurred in Cornelia's view that Robert was a fanatic. No. He

just escaped fanaticism by the skin of his teeth. This view explained

both his long silence and his sudden reappearance. That is, she knew

quite well that he had borne her no grudge on account of the past, had

indulged in no theatrical repudiation of her friendship because of her

liaison with Claude. He had simply found it profitless to pursue a

friendship with a woman in her situation. That would be enough to

commit him to silence.

Nor did she take too seriously his assertion that he had made a special

trip to Paris to see her. Why shouldn't he pay her or Madame Paulette a

visit if the ordinary course of his business brought him almost to their

doorstep? After all, a representative of labor interests could hardly

come to Europe without visiting Paris. Paris, where a lurid,

underground drama of industrial insurrection, half smothered by gold

dust, was going on!

Was there any sensible reason why Robert shouldn't pick up the thread of

an old friendship, if it was all in the day's work? It might even be

useful to a labor man to get in touch with people who knew the ropes of

the French capital. Anyhow, Robert would be the last person in the

world to abstain from such a course if it promised to advance his

principles.

His hateful principles! The worst of it was, she was beginning to have

sympathy for his conviction that the drudgery which served a purpose you

believed in might be a real pleasure, compared with which the pleasure

that served no purpose worth believing in would be an intolerable pain.

Well, all these speculations were as nothing against the fact of the

moment. The fact of the moment was that the swaying of the bus crushed

Robert's arm against hers in an impact that was poignantly delightful.

Nor was this all. Robert, his imperious principles notwithstanding,

acted in every respect as if he liked having his arm against her; no as

if he would like to have his arm _around_ her. Robert Lloyd amorous?

She gave him a sidelong glance. Her senses provided her with abundant

evidence that her surmise was correct. But this was a world of sensory

illusions as she had learned to her cost; and she reminded herself

sharply that she had more than one decisive reason for trusting neither

to his feelings nor to her own.

*IV*

"You're not doing your duty," she said to him. "We've just passed the

church of St. Germain-des-Pres. Quick look back. Even darkness can't

subdue those imposing walls. Doesn't it look solid and impregnable?

Just like my mother and like your convictions. It's a structure that

commands your faith, though you have it not. You'll miss the silhouette

of St. Sulpice, too, if you don't look out."

"Janet, I didn't come to Paris to look at churches. I came to look at

you."

"Well, you came, you saw, and--you conquered."

"I saw more than you think," he went on, smiling at her flippancy. "As

I said before, you've changed physically. But the physical change is of

no importance."

"I knew it. Those fine compliments were all bunk."

"Not at all. You've changed physically for the better. But what is more

important is that you've changed spiritually--"

"For the worse, of course. Now we're coming to it."

"I didn't say it. I'm not at all sure."

"This may be candor, Robert. But it sounds like revenge."

"You may as well be serious, Janet. I've got volumes to pour out to

you, and pour them out I will. When I'm with you, I'm like the Ancient

Mariner. I want to tell you everything."

"Everything?"

"Well, almost everything, as they say in the comic opera. What do you

suppose was the most wonderful companionship I ever formed?"

"I can't guess."

"Barr and Lloyd. Do you know why? Because, for one thing, there was

nothing in reason that I couldn't talk to you about, with the most

unvarnished frankness. I still feel that way."

"I'm glad you do. We were very good pals, weren't we?"

"Yes, and I hope we still are. Anyhow, I want to speak of something I

heard about you from Mark Pryor."

"What was that?"

"Pryor seems to have kept in touch with Cornelia right along. You know

Pryor."

"Not a sparrow falleth but his eye doth see," she quoted.

"Exactly. He has been keeping tabs on this rich Alsatian. And, by the

way, I ought to mention that he repeated to me what you told him about

Monsieur St. Hilaire."

"That's a nice way to treat my confidence," said Janet, seriously

annoyed. "Pryor of all people. And I took him to be the only original

human clam!"

"Well, I think he was fully justified--"

"In what way, I'd like to ask?"

"Please don't make me go into that now, Janet. The thing I'm driving at

is this. Pryor heard that you were on the point of--of forming a free

alliance with this Alsatian gentleman. Chiefly to escape Cornelia and

this horrible business of clothes."

"You've been misinformed," she retorted coldly. "Not about the clothes.

I _do_ loathe them. But I've no intention of forming a free alliance

with anybody. Certainly not with Monsieur St. Hilaire. Why should I?

I don't love him. But I don't mind telling you that he has asked me to

marry him."

"Oh, then, that's what you're considering?"

"Yes," she said concisely.

And "put that in your pipe and smoke it," added a defiant glance from

her half-parted long-lashed eyes.

If he had any notion of playing the medieval knight, plunging through

fire and water for the damsel in distress, she would spoil that

chivalrous pose in a jiffy.

"Janet, I don't understand you," he said, with quite unnecessary

vehemence. "You said you wouldn't marry Claude, your reason being that

you loved him. Now you say you will marry Monsieur St. Hilaire, and

your reason is that you don't love him."

His eyes added: "You are inexplicable, exasperating, maddening--and yet

adorable: in short, you are Janet."

The bus came to a full stop, and a few minutes later they were in the

concert hall.

*V*

The concert was one of a special series given by an orchestra from

Rouen. Janet's attention had been drawn to the series by two

circumstances. One was that a third of the members of the orchestra

were women. The other was that the inclusion of women in a first-class

orchestra had plunged musical circles into a controversy which the

newspapers eagerly seized upon and played up with caricature or abuse,

satire or eulogy, according to the partisanship, but never the merits of

the case.

Robert knew nothing of this controversy until he ventured on a remark

during the first intermission.

"The tone and workmanship of the orchestra are splendid," he said. "I

don't feel qualified to judge, but it strikes me that the women are

doing every whit as well as the men."

"As well? They're doing far better. Do you see that first violin in

the front row, the third from the left? I could tell he was slacking

all through the Cesar Franck number. And there were four or five others

as bad. You couldn't say that of one of the women."

"No. Their performance is amazing, isn't it?"

"Why amazing?" asked Janet, still detecting an echo of masculine

superciliousness.

"Well, women don't generally reach the top-notch in the fine arts, do

they?"

"How can they," said Janet warmly, "when the patronizing disparagement

and merciless rivalry of men hold them back at every turn!"

"Well, they've managed to break into this crack orchestra. That doesn't

look like merciless rivalry."

"Ah, but wait till I tell you the facts, Robert. As the war went on,

managers found it impossible to deny women the privilege of playing in

high-class bands. But the men are now recovering their monopoly as fast

and as unscrupulously as possible. How? They have set up a hue and cry

against the women and have won the musical pundits to their side. I am

told that the management of this Rouen orchestra is almost certain to

yield to masculine pressure, which means that the women will be

dislodged at the end of the current series."

Did Robert appreciate the injustice of this abominable proceeding? It

was a fact that the women brought a fire, intensity and freshness to

their work which improved the tone and effectiveness of every band they

played in. They were twice as keen as the men and worked fifty times

harder. Several of the younger, more liberal musical critics both in

Paris and in London fully admitted this. Not so the old-timers who sat

in the seats of the mighty. And yet the men who were doing their

vicious best to elbow their rivals out of the way were the very men who

fluttered about town and with crocodile regret assured the public that,

no matter what _equal chances_ the weaker sex received, the final

incapacity of women to reach the top was beyond dispute.

Janet's shot went home. But the resumption of the program made it

impossible for Robert to offer a defense. He was annoyed at himself for

having spoken tactlessly on a topic which Janet might well be touchy

about. Still, he considered that her rebuke was far too severe to fit

the crime, especially in view of his genuine equalitarian feeling toward

women, a feeling that Janet ought to have been the last to deny him.

It occurred to him that, if she was capable of regarding him, of all

men, with so much detachment (not to say indifference) as to make him

the target for a sharp anti-hominist fire, she might be deeper in the M.

St. Hilaire entanglement than he or Mark Pryor had suspected.

By the time the concert was over, Janet was sorry for the way she had

pitched into her guest. Would he forgive her for letting the heat of

argument carry her away? Not that she retracted a word she had said.

Far from it. It was impossible to say too much on that score. Had he

noticed the wide publicity which the Paris newspapers had given to an

assertion appearing in one of Arnold Bennett's recent books? It was the

assertion that women are inferior to men in intellectual power and that

"no amount of education or liberty of action will sensibly alter this

fact." This gesture of finality with which men, even men of genius like

Bennett, invariably polished off the future of women and consigned them

to an eternity of subordination! When would this superficial

generalization ever stop, if avowed feminists like Robert fell to using

the language of their opponents even while avoiding their errors?

"I'm only taking the words out of your mouth, Robert," she concluded, in

her softest pacifying tones. "I'm only repeating what you've told me a

hundred times over in the past."

He smiled at this sop to his vanity, which none the less helped to

restore good feeling.

*VI*

Janet had taken him towards the river. They walked arm in arm along the

Quai Voltaire and the Quai d'Orsay, the tranquil Seine and the starry

skies almost their sole companions.

The dispute of the evening still fresh in his mind, Robert alluded to

Janet's former ambition to create a new profession for women of the

middle class. A branch of law, wasn't it? Authorship law, so to speak.

Had she given it any thought of late? What a nuisance it was that money

should have to be the root of all experiment as well as the root of all

evil. In the absence of enough capital, it was probably just as well

that she deferred another attempt to realize her dream. Still, it was a

pity. She had made such a good beginning with the firm of Barr & Lloyd,

humble though the scale of its operations had been.

"Well, Robert, are you ready to renew the partnership?" she challenged

him.

"Is this a strictly business proposal?" he replied, in a hesitating

manner.

She was chilled by his clumsiness.

"Barr & Lloyd was always a 'strictly business' affair, wasn't it?" she

said, in a cool, quiet voice.

He wanted to burst out with: "No, I never believed it was wholly that.

If you'd had my sort of partnership in mind, I'd give a very swift and a

very different answer." But the words stuck in his throat. For two

reasons. Her sudden return to the almost hostile manner that had

baffled him earlier, was one. His knowledge that the limited and

precarious means he disposed of would make an offer of marriage from him

seem ridiculous, if not insane, was the second.

Had he voiced his thoughts, they might then and there have thrashed

their differences out in half an hour. But he could not voice them.

For the first time in their friendship, neither of them was candid when

candor was the sensible course. "This comes of caring for a woman not

wisely but too well," thought Robert. He was amazed and incredulous to

find that he cared so much; he was also a little indignant with himself,

for he had vowed never to do that very thing.

"Don't be alarmed," he heard Janet saying. "I'm not going to impress

you into the cause. You have bigger fish to fry than the feminist

movement. As for me, I've had a very good offer from Mrs. R. H. L.

Jerome."

She sketched a picture of this whimsical lady, and gave a short account

of Mrs. Jerome's interest in the organized effort to rid women of their

professional disabilities. Robert learned that Mrs. Jerome had

repeatedly expressed a desire to put Janet to some use in the cause she

had at heart.

"The work would be quite in line with my old plans," added Janet.

"Then why don't you accept her offer at once?"

"I wish I knew," she said, evasively. "Perhaps I can do all I've wanted

to do, and more, if I follow the beaten track, if I buy cheap and sell

dear in the marriage market; in short, give as little of myself as I can

to the richest bidder that offers. What do you think?"

"I think a cynical step of that sort would do very well for Mazie, whose

words you appear to be repeating."

"Oh, don't underrate Mazie's cynicism. It has been hammered into a

durable, serviceable instrument by some very hard knocks. Knocks that

she got from men. Her flippant manner often obscures some very sound

remarks, like the one that there'll be no equality between the sexes

until women exploit men as shamelessly as men exploit women."

"Doesn't the modern woman do this, already?" asked Robert, with a smile.

"How often does she get the same chance? It's equality of chances that

I'm aiming for, you know."

"So am I for that matter," said Robert. "I hope we'll get your equality

of chances before long. Then we can work together for decency."

It was close upon midnight when they took a taxi back to the Boulevard

Haussman.

Not a soul was stirring in the Maison Paulette. Robert and Janet walked

through the corridor on the _rez-de-chausee_ to the rear building, the

one used for sleeping quarters. For a few minutes they stopped in the

vestibule at the foot of the staircase.

Now, as throughout the evening, their instincts swayed them one way,

their reason another. Each misunderstood the motives of the other; and,

what with this misunderstanding and the economic insecurity of their

circumstances, the scales were tipped in favor of discretion. Besides,

Janet mistrusted her impulses far more than formerly. True, Robert

mistrusted his far less. In spite of his better judgment, he was

succumbing to her ensnaring voice and eyes, was surrendering to an

intense longing to tempt her into a betrayal, an unambiguous betrayal,

of her real feelings.

But he proceeded in a manner too inadequate.

"I'm no clearer about your plans than before," he said, awkwardly. "You

haven't really taken me into your confidence."

"About Monsieur St. Hilaire?"

"Yes."

A marked pause. She did not interrupt it. Discouraged, he lamely

continued: "Still, I'm glad you've changed your point of view about men

and women. It's something to find out that marriage, like adversity,

has its uses."

"Robert, what I've found out is that marriage, like honesty, may be the

best policy. I've learned that woman cannot live by principle alone."

"I protest I never urged it."

"No. And if it's the least satisfaction to you, I'll admit that I don't

intend to repeat any of my Kips Bay experiments--free love, outlawry,

and so on--you know the sort of thing. Why should I? There are few

moments in the old Lorillard tenement life that I regret; yet there are

none that I'd live over again."

"None?"

"Not one. Wait. There is a single moment--it just occurs to me--it was

so like this one--"

"Like this one?"

"Yes, 'when my heart was a free and a fetterless thing, a wave--'"

The line was completed without words, Robert, swept away by her

enchantment, having seized heir in his arms and kissed her.

"Don't marry Monsieur St. Hilaire," he said, beseeching rather than

commanding her, "whatever you do."

She disengaged herself almost brutally, and went up the stairs. Pausing

a few steps up, she turned and, in a tone supremely dispassionate, said:

"Whatever I do! Well, whatever I do, I can't marry a poor man, can I?"

*CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT*

*I*

Hoping to have a few words alone with Harry Kelly, Robert went down to

breakfast early. But if he expected to learn anything further in regard

to Janet or M. St. Hilaire, he was disappointed. Extracting teeth would

have been easier than pumping Harry who, besides being more taciturn

than ever, had developed a vein of pessimism quite out of keeping with

his material prosperity.

Robert was actually relieved when the appearance of Mazie Ross at the

breakfast table put an end to his efforts to draw Kelly out.

"Her Ladyship was sweetly singing 'My Rosary' when I passed her bedroom

door," said Mazie, alluding to Cornelia. "Things'll be humming in the

Maison Paulette this morning, if I know the Indian sign."

Mazie was getting to be very chipper of late. Whether from the force of

association or not, the presence of Robert and Janet had given her a

chance to recover some of her old position.

Kelly appeared to agree with Mazie's inference, though he was not so

cheerful about it. He wished Mark Pryor were somewhere within reach.

That fellow was a regular clairvoyant, and could tip you off about the

most astonishing things. A tip would be handy at this time.

"Something's going to happen," added Harry, gloomily. "I feel it in my

bones."

"I'd feel it in my bones," volunteered Mazie, "if I nearly killed myself

like you do, Harry. You fairly chew up work. What's the use? Let the

Empress do some of the worrying."

"She's got enough to worry about, Mazie. She carries the whole

responsibility for the artistic work of the house, and you know it."

"You bet I do! The chief joy of my declining days is to watch her

Ladyship curl up on a cozy sofa in the office and hug the responsibility

while you do the work. When the weight is too much for her, she

staggers over to the house switchboard, rings up each department in

turn, and interferes with everybody impartially. Say, if you could

limber up her knee action a bit--"

At this point, poor Harry, after an ineffectual attempt to stare Mazie

into silence, got up and went out, unable to listen any longer.

"The goof!" said Mazie, pitying him contemptuously. "She only married

him as a sure salvation from work."

She was so manifestly unjust to Cornelia (who, however much of a shirker

she might have been in Kips Bay, was now busy enough making her talent

for line and color productive) that Robert refrained from argument.

"What's the matter with Harry?" he said, attempting to change the

subject. "He was always monosyllabic, but never as gloomy as this."

"He wants a son and heir."

"Oh!"

"Do you remember how Cornelia used to tell every man who paid us a call

in Number Fifteen that the dearest wish of her life was to hold a

che-ild to her maternal heart? Every brutal Outlaw that came along would

offer to oblige on the spot. Except Harry. He melted right into putty

when she sprang that mother gag; and then she gave the cue for the wild

wedding bells to ring out. But now she's married, it's different. The

muffler is on the maternal urge. On tight! And she's strong for the

birth control propaganda. She's so strong for it that--"

Here Cornelia entered and Mazie was put to instant flight.

*II*

Cornelia's hour with Robert had come. She lost no time in giving him to

understand that his arrival in Paris had, to put it mildly, been

inopportune. Not that it was his fault. Naturally, he couldn't very

well have foreseen the rapidly approaching crisis in Janet's life. But

there it was! M. St. Hilaire, a man of parts and of wealth, was anxious

to marry Janet, who had just begun to see that the match was greatly to

her advantage. Here was Janet's golden opportunity to redeem the past--

"To redeem the past or to redeem Monsieur St. Hilaire?"

"Don't be flippant, Cato. You know very well what I mean."

"I'm quite serious. _Redeem_ is a curious word to use in connection

with Janet. It implies atonement for sin. Did you apply this word to

your own case after your return from England to the model tenements?"

She stared at him icily. Did he intimate that Janet's affair with

Claude Fontaine was spiritually comparable to her affair with Percival

Houghton? She would show him the difference. True, she had believed in

free love ("a hundred years ahead of my time, Cato!") and Janet had

followed suit. But when she, Cornelia, had taken up the gauntlet

against the irrational knot, she had let herself be pilloried for her

convictions. Had Janet done as much? Let his own fairness be his tutor.

Not that she held Janet to blame. Oh, no. She would have Robert know

that he and his principles had been the disturbing influence in Janet's

destiny. This had been the case in Kips Bay. She feared it would again

be the case in Paris.

"I the disturbing influence? Absurd, Cornelia. When did I ever demand

that you, or Janet, or anybody else live up to my vaunted principles?"

"Cato, there's something about you, some Satanic magnetism, that gives

you a strange hold upon a woman's soul. It makes her strive to appear

before you always in her loftier, sublimer flights, to put on her

Sabbath character, so to speak."

"Why do you call this Sabbath magnetism _Satanic_?"

"Because it's unnatural to ask a woman to assume her Sabbath character

seven days a week. She's bound to come to grief."

She assured him that this Satanic faculty of his was what caused him to

pique or fascinate women, though it seldom inspired them with passion.

And, in the long run, it always threw them out of gear. As in the case

of Janet! What had his intoxicating mixture of visionary theories and

expedient compromises done for her in the Claude Fontaine affair? It had

brought her out at the pitifully small end of the horn.

"I may remind you, Robert, that _I_ was ready to ruin myself for

Percival Houghton, ready to stand, upright and reckless, facing the

world with him. _I_ didn't go slinking from one hotel to another, as

his pretended _wife_."

Cornelia's heroics would have amused Robert but for the jibe flung at

Janet. Thank heaven, Janet never declaimed about having faced a whole

world or having ruined herself for anyone. After listening to such

windy phrases, who would not be biased towards any course that seemed

right to Janet and wrong to Cornelia?

He hung on her lips with rapt absorption, hoping by this look of

intenseness to mask his thoughts.

In this hope he was deceived.

"Why on earth don't you marry Charlotte Beecher?" she cross-questioned

him abruptly.

"I don't know."

"You don't know! Do you suppose a girl with position, wealth and brains

turns up every day in the week? A girl who really _wants_ you! I'm

sure I can't imagine _why_ she does."

"Nor can I."

She repeated her question. Had he given Charlotte Beecher up merely

because she loved him so much more than he loved her?

He couldn't very well answer this question in the affirmative. So he

said:

"Charlotte is a very intellectual girl, the most intellectual girl I

know. She never met a man whom she regarded as her equal in point of

brains until she met me. The regard was mutual. She mistook her

admiration for love. I might have made the same mistake--if I hadn't

met you."

"You can't blarney me, Cato," she said, highly flattered none the less.

"It's too late in the day!"

"I mean it, Cornelia. Meeting you, made me alive to the full force of

the attraction between the sexes."

"It is the one thing needful," said Cornelia, in low siren tones. "For

without it, love is as the dry stubble."

"I, too, used to think so," replied Robert, turning a cold douche on

this sentiment. "We've all had that notion rammed down our throats

since childhood. But can we be certain that sexual attraction is the

only road to love? The poets assure us that pity is a famous short-cut.

In the case of very young people, _all_ roads seem to lead to love. For

older folk, mutual admiration may be as good a road as any. Speaking

for myself, I'm still considering a proposal to Charlotte Beecher--"

"Oh, you're still considering her? And Janet is still considering M.

St. Hilaire. For ice-cold calculation, give me a one-hundred per cent

enthusiast like you or Janet."

"Are you suggesting that Janet is so well-suited to me that I ought to

propose to her?"

She rose, with a growing sense of contempt for him. If he did anything

so insane--and he was doubtless capable of it--the results would be on

his own head. He had already made a mess of his newspaper career, he

had been too proud to cultivate the Fontaine influence, he had

gratuitously antagonized his only well-to-do relation in California,

even now he could barely make a hand-to-mouth living out of his

connection with the radical press. And he actually proposed to lengthen

this catalog of disasters! Well, he'd better remember one thing. His

friends could pull him out of a hole, but not out of a bottomless abyss.

Really, did he believe in miracles? To put it bluntly: did he suppose

that two failures added together made a success? Yes, two failures! He

was an impecunious journalist or a discredited labor propagandist--which

was it? And Janet! What had she to offer? A pirated soul (this to

remind him of Claude Fontaine) and shattered prospects.

"Really, Cornelia, these phrases belong to the screen grade of fiction,

not to the facts of the twentieth century."

Here Mazie interrupted with an urgent message from the exhibition room.

"Stay and talk to Robert," said Cornelia with frigid disdain. "He's a

great salvager of damaged reputations."

Mazie looked inquiringly Robert's way, while Cornelia swept towards the

door. In a mock-heroic tone, he explained:

"Cornelia says that Janet _went wrong_; therefore, unless M. St. Hilaire

marries her, she'll be _ruined for life_."

Mazie caught the drift of the situation at once.

"Ruined!" she cried out, in a steaming torrent of slang. "Say, people in

the States won't believe a girl is 'ruined' nowadays, even when she's

committed to the House of the Good Shepherd. Ruined! Who's to ruin

her? Why, the average American is such a hokey-pokey, near-beer,

Sunday-school man of straw, he wouldn't ruin Cleopatra if she begged him

on her bended knees! Take it from me. If Janet's people at the

cemetery end of Brooklyn heard Claude described as the Duc de la

Fontaine, they might give her the glassy eye. They might. They'll

believe cruel things about a foreigner. But she mustn't let on that

he's a gent from the U.S.A., or they'll think she's stringing them.

Think! They'll know it. Why, my brown-eyed cherub, there's only one way

a girl can go wrong in little old New York. And that's to have somebody

break into her bank account."

Of the latter part of this choicely sustained opinion, Robert was the

exclusive audience, Cornelia having already closed the door with a bang.

*III*

A little later in the morning Janet, glancing through a copy of _Le

Matin_ three days old, caught sight of a familiar name in a telegraphic

despatch from New York. The name was Fontaine. According to the brief

news report, headed _C'est fini de rire!_ (the fun is over!), Fontaine

and Company, the most noted of the Fifth Avenue dealers in precious

stones, were charged with complicity in a sensational attempt at

smuggling.

Piecing the somewhat disjointed details together, Janet gathered that

secret agents of the Department of Justice on the lookout for spies had

inadvertently found thousands of dollars' worth of diamonds concealed in

the bottom boards of what purported to be cases of Japanese books. The

cases, which had been opened by the Secret Service agents shortly after

the "Ionic" docked in Hoboken, were ostensibly consigned to a San

Francisco book dealer for whom one Hutchins Burley, a New York editor

and foreign correspondent, appeared as the representative.

Burley was held, and the newspapers featured him as the "master mind" of

a very clever band. On examination he confessed that the book dealer

was a mere dummy for Fontaine and Company, whose stock rooms were the

real destination of the diamonds. A warrant for the arrest of Mr. Rene

Fontaine, head of the firm, was at once issued. Officials of the customs

house alleged that the operations of the smugglers, whose ingenuity had

baffled detection for years, reached gigantic proportions, the

government's loss being estimated at many millions.

News so startling had to be told without delay. Janet excitedly

reported it to Harry Kelly and then descended to the exhibition room

where as a rule Cornelia held sway at this hour.

Entering the salon somewhat precipitately, she saw the young Duchess of

Keswick seated in great state and surrounded by deferential minions.

But no Cornelia visible. Janet beat a swift retreat. The Duchess

reminded her, not altogether pleasantly, of Marjorie Armstrong at the

Mineola Aerodrome. The two young ladies had the same fashionable

contours, the same self-conscious pride of position, the same

patricianism of the made-to-order rather than of the inborn type.

Hastening up a flight of stairs to Cornelia's office, Janet was brought

to a stop outside the door by the sound of voices, which she recognized

at once as those of her friend and of the Duchess's mother, Mrs. R. H.

L. Jerome.

It was easy to overhear the conversation. Mrs. Jerome announced her

departure for London the next day to inspect an apartment house

restricted exclusively to professional women who, besides being mothers,

were the sole supporters of their children. She intended to open a

similar house (as a humanitarian, not a charitable undertaking) in New

York. She had already offered Janet the post of resident business

manager. Naturally, she would like to take the young lady with her to

England at once, but she wouldn't insist on this. If the inconvenience

to the Maison Paulette was too great, Janet could follow later, as soon

as she had wound up her affairs.

Cornelia's reply was couched in a low voice so tense with emotion that

Janet could distinguish only a word or two here and there. These words

were ample. _M. St. Hilaire, woman-with-her-back-to-the-wall,

Henriette, redemption, iron-law-of-retribution_, etc., such proper names

and stagey phrases showed quite clearly that Cornelia was delivering her

customary rigmarole about the sacrifices she was making to the end that

Janet might cover up her past and glorify her future.

To Janet's ears, this rigmarole was now so stale as no longer to invite

even remonstrance. But to declaim it to a comparative outsider! And to

embroider it with all sorts of sticky innuendoes! Janet grew hot and

cold by turns. So this was how one's name was buffeted about after an

episode like hers with Claude Fontaine! If one's best friends talked

this way behind one's back, what might not less intimate associates say

or take for granted?

She had tried to steel herself against inevitable collisions with public

opinion; yet this first impact, though only an oblique one, had given

her a much nastier shock than any she had anticipated.

_M. St. Hilaire, the Chateau in Normandy, the prestige that was to cover

a multitude of past sins_--Cornelia was going it again!

Mrs. Jerome replied that these matters were none of her affair. She

needed Janet and she believed Janet needed her. Surely, the decision lay

with the young woman herself?

While Janet was still debating whether or not she should walk straight

in and interrupt, Cornelia shifted the attack, her diplomatic allusions

to Janet's love affair being replaced by blunter speech. She effected

the change with a great show of diffidence and hesitation. Her sense of

loyalty alike to her friend and to Mrs. Jerome obliged her, etc.--Claude

Fontaine, the _beau ideal_ of the Junior smart set, etc.--the

transatlantic honeymoon to which the newspaper troubadours had given a

far-flung notoriety, etc.--But doubtless Mrs. Jerome recalled these

particulars well enough?

Came the tart rejoinder:

"No, I never do read newspaper scandal! The fact is, when I'm not

gambling in Paulette frocks, I'm a very busy woman. If it wasn't for

the Duchess, the Magpie Club in Mayfair would make short work of me.

But the Duchess reads me some of the necessary tittle-tattle at

breakfast so as to keep me _au fait_. She's a great newspaper fan, is

the Duchess."

When Janet finally opened the door, walked in, and electrified the room,

Cornelia had just been sweetly remarking:

"But about the managership of this house, a house for unattached

mothers--widows and feminist women I presume?--about such projects

public curiosity is simply insatiable,' isn't it? Do you really think

that Janet is exactly the person for such a delicate position--?"

Ignoring Cornelia and her innuendo, Janet spoke directly to Mrs. Jerome.

"I'm sorry you didn't let me tell you everything last week, Mrs.

Jerome," she said, keeping herself well in hand. "You see, all this

would have been superfluous then."

"My policy, child, is never to learn more than it's good for me to know.

But perhaps I was in the wrong this time."

"I had no idea you could overhear us, Janet," said Cornelia, with as

much acerbity as if she were the injured party.

Janet scorned to reply on the level of this remark.

"I came to show you a piece of news in the Matin," was all she deigned

to say.

Pointing out the place, she handed Cornelia the newspaper.

"I'd like to speak to Mrs. Jerome alone for a few minutes," she said.

"Would you very much mind?"

"Oh, by no means," replied Cornelia, trying hard to be superior and

authoritative. "Make any arrangements you like to suit your own

interests. Never mind the Maison Paulette. Don't think that _I_ shall

stand in your light."

And as she went out, unabashed, she offered the flowery remark that she

had only done her poor best to follow the impulses of her heart, her

sole desire having been to help both Janet and Mrs. Jerome to a mutual

understanding, in the absence of which any joint project they might

embark on would be only too likely to suffer shipwreck.

*IV*

Mrs. Jerome drew Janet down to a place beside her on the leather settee.

"Now, my dear," she said, "I'd just as soon you didn't dig up ancient

history. Unless it's going to relieve your mind. But I shan't be any

the wiser for it when you've finished, trust me. Why, if you told me

that you were a new version of the Old Nick himself, one look into your

lovely gray eyes would convince me that it wasn't true."

None the less, Janet, not wishing to sail under false colors, gave a

very short resume of her life from the time she went to the Lorillard

tenements in Kips Bay to the day she left M. St. Hilaire.

Throughout this narrative, Mrs. Jerome's round little face was

sphinx-like, becoming animated only at the point of Janet's separation

from Claude.

"He left you in the lurch, then?" she had interposed, much affected.

"Oh, no, he would have kept on providing for me," said Janet, evasively,

and after a moment's hesitation.

Nobody had really believed the story that she had left Claude. Even

Robert appeared to take the reverse for granted. Perhaps, on the whole,

she had better fall into a view that people would be sure to adopt in

any case, and that she was almost beginning to adopt herself.

"But of course you didn't let him," said Mrs. Jerome.

"No."

"Good. We mustn't be under any obligation of that sort to the selfish

sex. Now don't worry about the matter any more. You're a plucky girl,

my dear. Keep your pluck, and your pluck will keep you."

Mrs. Jerome added that she hoped Claude Fontaine had not behaved any

worse than Janet had represented. She knew the young man. Who in New

York didn't? As regards possible criticism, Janet should be comforted

with the reflection that glass houses made the whole world kin, human

architecture being nowhere complete without them. Why, most of the girls

in the Younger Set had lost their heads over Claude, which was all they

had had a chance to lose. She herself, meeting him once at a costume

ball of the Junior League, had been knocked silly by his dashing airs

and Apollo curls, not to mention the best pair of calves she had ever

beheld.

"So you see, my dear, an old woman can be quite as feeble-minded as a

debutante. Nobody has ever had a monopoly of making mistakes."

Janet pointed out that the world did not take quite so liberal a view.

This being so, might she not prove a source of embarrassment to Mrs.

Jerome? As people looked at it, running away with a man was--

"Child, for every woman who runs away with a man, there's a man who runs

away with a woman."

This obvious truth had been lost sight of, and the time had come for its

emphatic reassertion. Did Janet imagine that Claude had lost any

credit? Well, let her look at the facts. Mr. Fontaine, senior, had

just got himself into a very bad mess, one that involved the Fontaine

firm in a case of diamond smuggling. The Duchess had read her the story

from the papers. And only last night _Le Temps_ had reported that Mr.

Fontaine was believed to have jumped his bail, leaving his son Claude

behind to pull the firm out of the hole. And everybody felt so sorry

for Claude! Not that he had anything to fear. He could not be held

personally accountable. Still, there were the court proceedings, which

were reckoned a terrible load for his handsome young shoulders to bear.

And so bankers and clubmen and "sealskin" artists were rushing to his

aid; matrons from upper Fifth Avenue were pulling wires; Colonel

Armstrong, the great financier, was on the job behind the scenes; and it

was freely whispered that when the storm had blown over, Claude and

Marjorie Armstrong were to be married in St. Thomas'. Here was

retribution! If you judged from the international tidal wave of

sympathy and helpfulness that was sweeping towards Claude, you might be

pardoned for thinking that he was Galahad, Parsifal, and Lohengrin

rolled into one.

"But men stand by one another," added Mrs. Jerome, pointing the moral

succinctly.

Women would have to take this lesson to heart and stand by one another

just as men did. If Janet joined the Jerome forces, she could depend on

one thing, and that was her support through thick and thin.

Janet felt inexcusably ungrateful at not accepting the managership on

the spot, and frankly said so. She made no attempt to explain her

indecision, her motives at the time being far from clear to herself.

Mrs. Jerome, blissfully unaware of the existence of Robert Lloyd as a

factor in this hesitation, took it in very good part. Janet should make

up her mind when she pleased. But surely, she wasn't again playing with

the thought of marrying M. St. Hilaire? After her emphatic assertion

that she didn't love him!

"Yet I don't dislike him, by any means," said Janet. "I was very fond

of him in Brussels, before he lost his head."