Secretly she longed to sneak out of the place before they returned.

It caused her such a thumping at the heart to go through with even

this ordeal, trifling as it was. But how could she face Erard, if

she confessed to a consciousness of all the implications? Yet when

she heard Mr. Mills’s honest voice,--“Well, Marthy, seven thousand

dollars is a good deal to pay for that red and yellow haystack,”--and

Mrs. Mills’s doubtful tones, “But Mr. Erard considers it a paying

investment,”--then Miss Mills’s higher notes: “Oh, pa, you mustn’t

look at it that way; Monet is making a great stir now; Mrs. Stevans

has three of his. We must have at least _one_, and some Pissarros, and

a lovely red Renoir,”--Mrs. Wilbur fled into a little side cabinet,

pressing herself closely into the recess made by the portières. She

could see the women dart questioning glances about the empty room,

as if expecting to find their victim again. Presently they crossed

the gallery and disappeared, Erard following them and caressing each

temperament with the suitable argument. After all, she might as well

have fled before as to sneak into a corner this way. Erard would think

she had given in, and might drive off with the Mills.

When she had given them time enough to get away she walked towards the

entrance and met Erard, who was evidently returning for her. He had

divined her ruse, and that was worse than all.

“I thought you knew the Mills?” he remarked coolly, as they turned into

the crowded boulevards. Mrs. Wilbur hated him violently for one moment.

If there were only one phrase which would express contempt, disgust,

despair--everything!

“I have met them,” she forced herself to answer indifferently.

“Simple people; quite a comedy,” Erard observed. “Shall we walk up the

Champs Elysées? This sunset will be splendid from the arch.”

She walked on in silence at his side for some minutes. The little

Paris world was out to enjoy the good moments of November sunlight,

gaily forgetful of all the shivering it had endured since the last

public appearance of the sun. At the great _brasseries_ along the

boulevards men and women were seated before their untasted _bock_ or

_café_, luxuriating in the popular street theatre that could be had

for a few sous. Some men with silk hats pushed back on their heads

were scribbling letters or journalistic copy, in the casual fashion

of Parisian life. There were other little groups of twos, a man and

a woman, one of the two generally talking earnestly, while the other

listened dumbly. In a way Mrs. Wilbur felt that she and Simeon Erard

ought to be seated at such a table, bound together as they were by

some kind of a tie. Perhaps the time would come when she should be

besieging him over a _bock_ on the boulevard, in low, concentrated

words.

“Why did you omit to tell me who was to be at the dealer’s?” she said

at last, her resentment having cooled.

“It didn’t occur to me,” Erard replied with assurance, “and if it

had, I shouldn’t have considered it a matter of enough importance to

mention. It was an affair of business for me, an affair of interest and

instruction for you. Not a social matter, it seems to me.”

He gave no more attention to her ruffled feelings, and began to

talk about what was being done at the studios; the movements in

impressionism since her last visit in Paris; the last two salons and

the Glasgow school; a new dealer in Dutch and Belgian pictures. He

talked well, too glibly in fact, as if he had got into the habit of

talking and writing for publication. His conversation, however, was

well calculated to soothe any irritability that might be left. She was

so eagerly interested in the new ventures in art, that she could not

harbour personal pique, especially against the man who roused her mind.

They came out on the Place de la Concorde, which was brilliant in

the last light from the west. To Mrs. Wilbur this spot was always

an inspiriting sight. As they turned into the broad avenue, where

the rush of carriages, the labouring omnibuses slowly toiling up the

slippery ascent, filled the vast roadway with life, the human side

of Paris burst upon her. It was also a stupendous human machine like

Chicago, but somehow vital and vitalizing. It was not grotesque. Once

again she was in the current she desired for herself, a current of

thoughts, emotions, and theories where the world’s ideal imagery was

the essential interest.

Yet something was different in her at the end of this day from the

beginning. She was not so sure of herself, so clearly removed from the

entangling passions of humanity. She should have been capable of a more

lasting resentment. Erard was training her in toleration too fast, and

she shrunk from the logical conclusions of the course she had somehow

committed herself to. He was not quite master yet. This suspicion of

coming degradation, of gradual lapse from her haughty self, troubled

her momentarily, and rendered her silent and depressed.

Erard wisely left Mrs. Wilbur to herself for the rest of the week.

They had arranged to make the Orleans excursion on the following

Sunday. On that expedition a series of petty accidents delayed them

until by the time they reached the chateau the sun was already behind

the forest-trees. The chateau was full of interesting bric-à-brac,

which detained them until the fading light necessitated an immediate

examination of the drawings they had come to see. The three yellow

sheets were laid reverently upon a green-baize table by the custodian,

who hovered near, suspicious of Erard’s irreverent familiarity with the

sacred bits of paper.

Erard looked at them hastily, then squatting his elbows on the table,

examined each one with a glass, line by line, and lastly, holding the

drawing to the light noted the signature. “Impudent forgeries,” he

muttered at last. Mrs. Wilbur glanced at the faded drawings blankly.

“They are called Leonardo, and some one has copied his signature pretty

accurately. I didn’t believe they could be authentic, but I supposed

they were of the school at least. See here,” he said, instructing his

companion, “you can tell by the fingers--they are roughly finished

or rather entirely unfinished. The next time you are in the Louvre,

look at his drawings, and see how exquisitely each finger is done.

That is enough to show they aren’t authentic. But if you want more

confirmation, look at the ears--”

Mrs. Wilbur studied the drawings attentively, at a loss to see the deep

significance of Erard’s rapid remarks. At last Erard threw down the

sheets carelessly, and handing the custodian his fee, sauntered towards

the entrance. When they reached the gardens he observed casually,

“There’s a gate here somewhere, worth seeing, Moorish they call it.”

By the time they had found the bit of Moorish building encased in the

Gothic, it was twilight, and as they proceeded to their carriage, Mrs.

Wilbur bethought herself of the distance they were from Paris.

“Is there an express train?” she asked, hastening her steps.

Erard looked at his watch. “The _rapide_ at midnight,” he replied. “I

had no idea we should take so long in the chateau!”

“Is there no other train?”

Erard shook his head. “And we can’t take the _rapide_. It’s beastly

getting into Paris at four A.M. There’s a good hotel at this end of the

town, and to-morrow we can take an early train and see Chârtres on our

way home.”

He spoke unconcernedly, as if on the whole fate had arranged well

for them. Mrs. Wilbur still walked on hastily, annoyed at her own

carelessness, and perplexed. As they reached the entrance, she said,

coldly,--“I think I had best take the _rapide_. We can go to the

hotel and dine, and then I can wait at the station. Perhaps they will

telegraph for a compartment for me.”

Erard looked at her quizzically. “As you like, but--we shall have a

good many expeditions to make sooner or later, and you can’t often

manage to return the same day--”

She made no reply, suspecting that whatever she might say would seem

foolish and prudish to Erard. It distressed her that she should be

caught again so quickly in these petty matters of personal propriety.

Yet to insist upon making a disagreeable night for herself by taking

the _rapide_ seemed also foolish, as if she made too much altogether of

convention. And if she did not yield now to Erard’s mode of life, he

would force her to it in his own good time. The only alternative would

be to break with him entirely; she could not make that sacrifice.

The midnight journey grew more distasteful to her than ever, once in

the old hotel, with the kindly hostess bustling in and out, arranging

a fire, and making preparations for a comfortable dinner. As they came

to the fruit and nuts after a rich, _bourgeois_ meal, she made up her

mind to accept the position and get the fun of it.

“Yon can find another hotel easily, I don’t doubt,” Mrs. Wilbur

remarked tentatively. “For I think I shall have madame warm a chamber

for me--”

Erard shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Very well, as you wish.”

“As long as I remain Mrs. Wilbur,” she blushed quickly, “I think I

can’t be _quite_ another ‘good fellow.’ I have some obligations to do

the silly things other people do.”

They had no further talk about the matter. Erard had practically won

his point; she knew it, and after he had left her before the dying

wood-fire, she sat rather despondent in the gloom of the deserted

salon. She did not wish to make loneliness and isolation for herself in

her efforts to be free, and she was not prepared to discard altogether

the observances of conventional society.

To be sure, Erard was not like other men, she comforted herself with

reflecting. One could have an entirely neutral, passionless intercourse

with him. He was solely concerned with ideas and impressions, and

considered persons about as much as the traveller does the furnishing

of his lodging. They were either suitable for his convenience or

not, and his interest did not extend beyond the limited use he put

them to. When she betook herself to the dusty, unused room with its

spacious curtained four-poster and creaking board-floor, her mind

still occupied itself with Erard. Was she satisfied to have him so

neutral? If he had been an impulsive, passionate man,--if he had

taken his inspiration from the suffering she had undergone at the

picture-dealer’s and had demanded--well, more than discipleship, he

might have had it. She was not mere intellect, far from it!

She lay awake in the still room pondering that wilful fancy. If he had

forgotten nothing, extenuated nothing, counselled nothing; if he had

plead for the greatest love that she was capable of giving, he might

have been--her heart fluttered at the wild idea--master for a long day.

Some little solvent would touch the story of their lives, and transmute

the relationship. For there are times when it is better to carry a

place by storm than by slow siege. How foolish! He was Erard, and it

was absurd to consider him sentimentally.

When Erard called for Mrs. Wilbur the next morning, he found her in the

_patronne’s cabinet_, chatting vivaciously. The morning was superb,

inviting them to a prowl in the city. After déjeuner they took the

train for Chârtres. One thing suggested another, these beautiful days

of the second autumn, and it was late Wednesday night before Erard left

Mrs. Wilbur at her hotel on the Quai. When she entered her salon she

found Molly Parker sitting forlornly before the grate.

“Where have you been, Adela? I got in last night,” Molly exclaimed

reproachfully.

“I have been--out of the city,” Mrs. Wilbur replied evasively.

“Not with Erard and alone!” Molly’s mobile face showed quick alarm.

“Yes,” her friend replied stonily, “with Mr. Erard and alone.”

They sat looking at one another, afraid to strike the new note. The

next day Mrs. Wilbur and her friend left for the villa on Bello

Sguardo.

CHAPTER IV

“We are prominent members of the Art Endeavour Circle,” Miss Parker

wrote Thornton Jennings, after a month in the Villa Rosadina.

“I may say that we have a salon for the young Genius. Erard has

surrounded us with a lot of little Erards. There is Salters. He is a

distinguished-looking young American with an easy income and leanings

towards art. He copies Erard, picks up his ideas from the one source

of pure criticism--at least Erard says so,--and then dilutes them.

Even if Mr. Salters is a little ‘short’ of ideas, he is very nice and

entertaining.

“To pass over a shabby artist who has quarrelled with his wife and

can’t sell his pictures, and the Gorgon (she’s Vivian Vavasour and is

as sour as her articles are sweetly wordy), we come to Mary Eleanor

Bradley, the last enrolment. She is a young woman, rather portly, with

a puffy face and flaxen hair, who speaks very intensely and slowly

and talks all the time. She comes from a good family in Philadelphia

and has been in some college or other. She made up her mind that the

only way to see Europe was to come over alone and ‘be Bohemian.’ But

she hasn’t found it much fun so far; she is trying desperately to hook

on to our procession. Erard says nay. Her great feat was a tour in

Lombardy with Erard, _sans_ chaperone, for six days. Mr. Erard says

she asked him, and he couldn’t refuse a lady. Then, horrid man! he

smiles and says no man needs a chaperone with Miss Bradley except for

self-protection. _She_ says it was quite romantic, and ‘you couldn’t do

it with a man--well, who was in good society.’ She talks a lot about

it; the excursion makes her reputation in the Art Endeavour Circle.

“This Miss Bradley isn’t half so bad as she sounds. I believe she is

nice enough when she is kept under restraint. She treats me as an

amiable simpleton, and we get on splendidly. If she escapes soon enough

from the Circle she will probably settle down and marry some nice

little man who won’t let her cross the street alone after five in the

evening.

“Besides these parasites who drink tea and take up our time in this

dear Florence, Erard brings us better material sometimes--young French

poets and journalists, a Jew critic on a London paper--cosmopolitan

celebrities just budding. I have almost forgotten little Mr. Anthon,

Adela’s younger brother. He came on from Paris last week. He doesn’t

approve of Adela and thinks I should lecture her.

“He doesn’t know that I am tolerated only on my good behaviour and

non-interference. Erard is master now. We came here to be awfully free

and do as we liked, but we have to work hard at drawing and reading and

taking notes for the master. You ought to see your regal Mrs. Wilbur

getting up at eight every morning in order to finish her tasks and have

some time for the galleries. Erard has a most useful assistant, all

for nothing. For, you know, it isn’t painting now,--that is cheap,

but it’s ideas about painting--‘prehensile values,’ the ‘folly of

humanism,’ the ‘receptivity of the sensorium,’ and the ‘psychology of

colour.’ We are engaged in dissecting art and in stewing the remains

up into little dishes. One big dish the cooks are busy over now, and

they are planning to go to Rome to put in the flavouring. I must be

good, or I shan’t be invited. For they go off ‘for business’ quite by

themselves, and aren’t bothered by conventionalities. They got ’way

beyond what people say or think,--long ago.

“Sometimes it is dreary enough, this talk; it sounds like so much

gibberish. Last Sunday they invited me to go to Prato with them, out

of pure kindness. Erard got started on ‘the critic’s function,’ and

we listened. He said that well-informed people all thought alike on

art, and the real judges (those who had cultivated their sensoriums

and had good sensoriums) always agreed about any object of art. Then

when we came out atop of a hill before a lovely valley with a road

winding through it, he began to experiment on us. He asked us _where_

we _felt_ the road. I said in my eyes, but Mrs. Wilbur gave the correct

answer,--in the muscles of the forearm; then, as it mounted the hills

beyond, in the muscles of the legs. They tightened up sympathetically

when you looked hard enough. ‘Now,’ Mr. Erard said, ‘that’s the way

the artist makes you feel when you see the road he paints.’ Some one

told me that the psychology business Erard picked up from Prudler,

the young psychologist at Bonn, whom he met in Switzerland two years

ago, just as the measuring toes and ears, and all that, was taken from

an old Italian. I don’t know; they all seem much bothered about the

original source of ideas. Erard accuses the Gorgon of living on _him_,

intellectually, and others say they both live on Symonds.

“Heigho! it’s a queer world, this,--but it is dreadfully like Chicago

in some respects. I wonder where it will all end. This lovely Florence,

how sweet it would be without the Art Endeavourers! My pals are old

Luisa, our protecting house-saint, and the _contadina_ who helps her,

little Pinetta.”

Molly Parker’s jocular account of her friend’s doings was not

exaggerated. Mrs. Wilbur had found the work suggested for her by Erard

ready at hand and more and more engrossing. Whither it led she did not

trouble herself about, any more than she speculated on the probable

outcome of her present manner of life. Erard himself had come down to

Italy when the winter was well on, and though he flitted up and down

the peninsula on one errand or another, his centre of operations was

Florence. There he had established himself, in a suite of rooms on the

Piazza San Spirito, where the sun lay for long hours,--as usual, in the

one completely suitable environment. Even Molly Parker could not find

fault with his taking up his abode just there within a ten minutes’

rapid walk to the Villa Rosadina, nor with his frequent visits, which

never seemed aimless. Yet she felt that his grasp on their actions grew

firmer as the weeks passed: “we think Erard and feel Erard!”

A slight diversion was created by Walter Anthon’s arrival. His

“serious news” to the effect that “_he_ intends to apply for a

divorce,” was received indifferently by his haughty sister. Young

Walter had hoped to arrange diplomatically a “modus vivendi”; indeed

the family had deputed him to bring his sister back to St. Louis. Mrs.

Wilbur laughed at his solemnity. She even went so far as to say that

it pleased her to know “Mr. Wilbur wishes a divorce. That means he has

recovered from his blow, consoled himself. It has come so quickly that

I doubt if he would be willing to make any other arrangements.” She had

in mind the ample Mrs. Stevans. “If he has consoled himself he will get

rid of me sooner or later. And it will be easier for him to get rid of

me if I remain away. I can do that for him at least.” Nor would she be

moved about her property. “I gave that to him long ago. I certainly

hope he won’t give it up. He is right-minded and might have foolish

scruples, but I shall do what I can to have him keep it.”

“The shocking scandal of it!” young Anthon moaned to Molly Parker.

“Running off this way with Erard.”

“And with me, you forget. I hold the social smelling-salts.”

“Does she mean to marry him?”

“Perhaps Erard doesn’t believe in marriage. This arrangement saves him

from any matrimonial monotony.”

“Can’t you take a stand, and bring her to her senses?”

“I am no good at evangelizing,” Miss Parker replied forlornly. “Adela

must have a woman around to say commonplace things to when she’s on a

strain. That’s all the good I am. She hasn’t had enough of the Erard

dose yet. We’ll have to wait. There she goes now with the little Brown

Rat.” They could see from the terrace where they were talking a cab

rolling down the serpentine curves of the hill.

“Off to get a new sensation. Remember all your nagging is just fuel for

the fire. She doesn’t, well, care for you, and anything you don’t want

her to do must seem particularly nice.”

So the diplomat returned unsuccessful to his London rooms and advised

the family to get what they could out of Wilbur without stirring Adela

up.

Yet her brother’s news had affected her. Erard noted that she was

_difficile_ that afternoon. They had driven over to Santa Croce to

examine a bit of sculpture in one of the chapels. The chill of the

church or her own meditations depressed Mrs. Wilbur. Then Erard’s cold

little epigrams about art were irritating. The precious intoxication

of that first long look on beauty had faded rapidly. Erard had taught

her to be ashamed of such savage satisfaction; but groping after the

masculine play of intellect was painful. Yet her career was marked out

for her: she was to be “a discriminator of fine pleasures.” Moments

of regret, however, and of disappointment as to-day, intervened, when

even the most pitiful creative effort seemed greater than profound

discernment. Erard scoffingly said that when she had these moods she

was trying to see “the beyond.”

She left the church abruptly, preferring the placid sunny square where

little children were playing, to the damp church and the high function

of criticism. She could not send her companion away; so the two

strolled aimlessly through the stone passages, echoing faintly with

half-frozen life, out to the bright river bank. Even the brilliant

sunshine of the February sky gave no comforting warmth. Erard said

the sun appeared for the effect only. The Arno, too, flowed muddy and

sullen, sweeping debris down from old mountain villages. The elements

of royal splendour, to which she had once responded tremulously, lay

before her eye, but she was not stirred. She thought.

Later, when they were drinking their tea in the villa, Mrs. Wilbur let

fall the thoughts simmering in her mind. Erard was doctoring one of her

architectural sketches, while she watched his skilful hand.

“A lot of your things seemed to me so promising,” she mused.

“‘Promising’--disgusting word,” Erard snapped. “Youth, a few years

between puberty and manhood, is filled with deceptive lights, which are

taken often for true fires. The period of physical eruption past, the

lights fade from the mental horizon; the ambitious, imaginative youth,

if he has anything in him, becomes a scholar or a dilettante.”

Mrs. Wilbur moved uncomfortably. What her woman’s soul hated to feel

was that Erard’s specifically original and creative powers had never

been great and were fated to decline steadily, growing each year more

colourless. It was a slow, inevitable process which he was powerless to

arrest.

“It’s childish to think there is any spiritual mystery in the toy,”

Erard continued. “The world, too, has grown from puberty to a staid

maturity where it cares first for a fact. In hours of relaxation, it

sighs for the dream of its unsettled years; but give it a poet and it

laughs at his boyishness--until he is dead.”

“That is hateful,” she flung these words into the crackling fire which

lighted the lofty room sombrely.

“Only because you invest the artist with a romantic halo,” Erard

insisted. “I have found my work absorbing and fruitful. I have been

successful in it, and am encouraged to prosecute my ideas and publish

the results. It makes little difference by what wicket-gate we approach

the field: the problems are the same. And the greatest note of our day

is _creative criticism_,” he rose authoritatively at these words,--a

phrase which was frequently on his lips. “Your artist should be busy

over his technique. So far as intellect goes, he is often a dumb beast.

_We_ deal with ideas. We extract the ideas, press out the sensations

peculiar to his art, and we are officiating priests between him and the

mob.”

Mrs. Wilbur remained silent, unappeased, and opening the piano she

struck a few chords, drawing out a kind of sad, tinkling music.

Ah! there was a difference between great criticism and even puny art.

If not in the usefulness of the work, in the man behind the imagined

work, and the soul to whom he spoke! There _was_ a halo about the

creator of new notes of loveliness. She had been fired by the picture

of a man struggling with adversity for the chance to announce himself,

thrusting himself with Napoleonic egotism towards his great work that

should justify him and his disciples before the world. But--little

textbooks on art, essays, reviews, even this book which was to make

a sensation from Berlin to Chicago--that was hardly a justification.

Others did as much without all this stress and strain. And even if not

done, the world went on quite wise enough without a little more talk

about European culture.

“It _is_ greater to create than to comprehend,” she spoke out, above

the tinkle of the old piano, urged by some reproach in her soul. “We

are all blind, blind in this weary world, and we are groping for the

gods who deny themselves to us. It is _great_ to see beyond, to know

the gods even faintly, and to appease the hunger of others. More than

that it is _man’s_ great act, the revealing of himself before the

Master, his prayer to God who has made him with appetites and passions,

and has made him with the longing to see and the power to dream. That

has--” She paused, shrinking from completing her thought--“brought me

here and made me low.”

She closed the piano, and walked rapidly up and down the room.

Suddenly she lit a candle and motioned Erard to follow her into an

adjoining lumber-room. He looked about disgustedly at the dusty room,

the neglected canvases. In one corner stood an easel, and on it,

unframed, his picture of Adela Anthon, which with coarse irony Wilbur

had recently sent to her bankers. They looked at the face, Mrs. Wilbur

holding the candle above their heads.

“I couldn’t do that now,” Erard admitted, squinting at the picture

critically.

“No!” Mrs. Wilbur assented decisively. “And _that_,” she spoke

fiercely, “the power behind that picture mastered me, deluded me--it is

sad--defeat--”

A flare of wind blew out the light.

“You are wrong,” Erard checked her calmly, “and foolish. The power is

still mine, and--”

He moved as if to touch her. She walked absently past him into the

firelight, and placing the candle unlit on the table, sank into a chair.

“Yes, I suppose so,” she answered listlessly, burying her gaze again in

the fire.

Erard watched her savouringly, exactly conscious of her beauty and her

power. She was to be _his_ in due and proper season. To-night she had

stirred his sluggish senses, much as a superb actress might impose

herself, at one remove.

CHAPTER V

Mrs. Wilbur’s disappointment rarely expressed itself in words. She

worked with seeming interest at the tasks Erard suggested, and at odd

times furbished her Latin or read Italian. The grey silver olives

about the villa turned to a delicate green; the drab earth yielded to

flowers. Each week the sun lay longer on the terrace above the city

walls, until at last in early April a blast of heat declared the winter

had passed. From time to time Mrs. Wilbur had accompanied Erard in

his flittings, and the last of April Molly Parker joined them on an

expedition towards Rome, which she described as “a triumphal procession

in the cause of art and freedom.”

Erard was apparently testing his power by carrying Mrs. Wilbur away in

the face of society. He had finally hoodwinked the virtues through the

person of this high-minded and beautiful woman. She should read to him

when he was weary, write notes and examine records, make bibliographies

and provide the drawings he had decided to use. She should talk and

stir him up when he was dull, and above all she should admire him, bear

incense, and fear his sharp tongue. That she was tall and impressive

and interesting in person was all to his liking. It was pleasant to

touch silk, to feel a softness and high-bred delicacy always about one.

Even the rapid, low speech which was characteristic of her, was suited

to his needs. She never touched a nerve disagreeably, except when at

rare intervals she lashed out wildly, and then she was like a play.

Storm was also good to experience, if he could always still the waters.

John Wilbur had evidently followed his wife’s actions pretty closely.

Mrs. Stevans, who was travelling in Europe, had kept him informed,

casually, and Erard had let her assume whenever they met all that

her imagination could picture. In the meantime Wilbur had begun to

prosecute his action for divorce vigorously. Mrs. Anthon had lived in

the desolate house all these months, to maintain appearances, which

deceived no one. Now her son-in-law informed her bluntly that she had

best leave at once; he did not care any longer for her sympathy and

“wanted his ruined home to himself.”

Mrs. Wilbur in the course of her wanderings from place to place

received the echoes of this final eruption which she had caused. The

thought of it disturbed her more than she allowed herself to believe,

even here in the midst of earnest regular work which was supposed to

satisfy her mind. It would all be over soon, she said to herself, the

divorce once granted, but she began to realize that she could not

dispose of her unimportant self without making wounds not easily healed.

Mrs. Anthon added her irritant to her daughter’s feelings in the shape

of a tempestuous letter. She wrote on black-edged paper with some

idea of symbolism in her mind. (To her intimate friends she had often

said: “My daughter is dead to me.”) This time her wail was complex.

“You have done what I always said you would do, Adela. You remember I

said to Sebastian--‘Ada will disgrace us all some day, I know it, and

with that low fellow you have picked up.’ Now your husband is getting

a divorce, which he oughtn’t to do _yet_, and the house is just so

beautiful and new and grand,--just made for you to look fine in. I

have kept it the best I could, though those English men-servants are

real insolent. I had rather have three or four good, clean-looking

girls in caps and black gowns as the Remsens do. I suppose you are

beyond a mother’s tears and supplications, seeing as you have broken

the sacredest laws of man and God. And you christened and took into

the church. John would stick to the Episcopal church and have you

all baptized when you were babies, though I wanted to go to the

Presbyterian church, which you remember was just at the foot of the

hill from us. I had a real kind letter from Mrs. King Hamilton about

our trouble. She says the scandals in New York are awful, we don’t know

how bad people _can_ be, when they haven’t anything to do but be bad,

and she can’t see any more than the rest of us why you didn’t have the

taste for a more elevated man. Times are changing, I wrote her, not

only in New York, but everywhere: it comes from educating the girls. I

managed to live with your father twenty-five years.... John has been

as nice as he always was, but silent and away most of the time. I took

your best blue lamb’s-wool blankets, those your sister Elsa gave you,

you remember. And I’ll give them back to her if you think best. They’ll

be just what she wants, for your brother John has moved into a new

house.”

At this point Mrs. Wilbur dropped the letter impatiently, then laughed,

and would have liked to cry. She had returned to her villa from Rome,

the day before, and was sitting in the great salon, gazing out over the

blue Val d’Arno, and in the intervals of her reverie reading a few of

the letters she had found waiting for her. What would Molly say to the

news of the divorce? and Erard? The latter was coming soon to take her

for their usual afternoon walk. She tossed the letters on her desk and

rang for tea. She wouldn’t tell him about the divorce: he would find it

out, as he learned most facts about her, by some swift, hidden means of

intelligence.

Presently Erard entered the room briskly. Pouring his own tea, he went

over by the window to drink it and eyed the landscape between the sips.

He certainly had heard nothing about the divorce in his letters, for if

he had, he would have watched her more keenly to read the effect in her

face. She half suspected that he was waiting for the divorce to--she

hardly knew what--to make his appropriation of her more legal. Hitherto

he had behaved toward her very circumspectly, evidently not anxious to

commit himself. And she had tried him in certain moods, tempting him to

forget his caution.

“We will go out by Fiesole,” he remarked at last, putting down his cup.

“There is a lovely bit back of the village that will explain to you

Leonardo’s landscape.”

For once Mrs. Wilbur was not inclined to continue this uninterrupted

course in aesthetics. Her own situation perplexed her and rendered her

irritable.

“Yes, but I am tired of running about,” she answered peevishly.

He looked at her for the first time since entering the room.

“Oh! you shouldn’t faint so soon. We must go again to Rome before it

gets unbearably hot.”

“And I must follow like a good child.” She rose and stood by his side.

“You _are_ domineering, like most men. How long must I carry burdens?”

She turned her heated face to him and looked as if she would say,

“Why don’t you--show that you are a man? Consider _me_ for a moment

as a woman. Wouldn’t you like to love me? Do you think you could have

me, the rejected Mrs. Wilbur? Try! It will give you an unexpected

sensation. Come, you are pedantic, you play the schoolmaster overmuch.”

“No one could call you a child,” he smiled, sitting down below her on

the window-sill.

“No, I am better than a child; I can help you make books, and when I am

good-natured I amuse you and flatter you. You like flattery so much!”

Her eyes challenged him again. She was imperiously anxious to put him

beside himself--and--to spurn him, perhaps.

“You have given me the keenest flattery; you have obeyed me.”

“And if I disobey, and recant?”

“Oh, you won’t do that,” he answered tranquilly. “You are too

intelligent to do anything so silly.”

“Suppose I return to my husband and ask him to forgive me?”

Erard shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t be stupid and melodramatic. You ought to know by this time

whether you like Wilbur well enough to live with him.”

“Or prefer Erard,” she retorted sarcastically. He looked at her,

measuring her, enjoying her passion. “I have been such a good disciple,

dear master,” she continued tempestuously. “I have studied your gospel

letter by letter.”

“There are some chapters yet unperused,” Erard smiled back, mockingly.

“In good time may your pupil go so far--”

“All in good time.”

He baffled her, and after each period of stormy indulgence he left her

lower in her own esteem. Whenever she gave herself free rein, she had

a sickening sense of the futility of abandonment. She lost each time a

little power.

“Now you had better let me show you some landscape, or will you pack

your trunk for--Chicago?” He played with her mood tranquilly.

“I would like to--strike you!” In a moment she gave a little low laugh

of scorn. “No, you really aren’t worth tragic displays, Mr. Simeon

Erard! Did you ever dream that there are some sensations beyond you?”

“For example?” he walked slowly towards her.

“For example,” she looked down at him. She was now thoroughly reckless

and maddened with a cold passion. Her arms, half opened, pressed

convulsively together, slowly, involuntarily. Erard blanched, trembled,

half moved, and then paused. She swept by him, frightened and aghast.

For the first time in her life she was conscious of feebleness: she was

not sure of herself.

CHAPTER VI

At that moment the door of the salon opened, and Jennings came forward

into the firelight, with his fearlessly erect carriage, as if it were

a fine thing to stride through the storms of the world. As Mrs. Wilbur

shook hands with him she felt that his face might have been taken from

some renaissance bust, so filled it was with the pure fire of life.

Jennings pulled awkwardly at his shrunken travelling coat of pepper and

salt, and then perceiving Erard, extended a hand with a frank “How are

you?” Mrs. Wilbur ordered candles and fresh tea, curiously pleased with

his unexpected appearance, and relieved from the tension of unmotived

feeling.

“I met Salters on the street,” Jennings explained. “He told me where to

find you. I just escaped from him a few minutes ago. He told me about

something he was at work upon. Has he been writing?”

“He has laboured over my cast-off ideas for five years,” Erard replied.

“Well,” the newcomer said kindly, “he’ll write a book some day, I

suppose.”

“God knows. It takes only pen, paper, and patience to make a book.”

Mrs. Wilbur remembered the epigram: Erard had used it about Salters

four years before.

“You fellows are slanging yourselves in the good old style,” Jennings

laughed, as if amused at the gibes of manikins. “And Vivian Vavasour,

is she still a prophet with a terrific vocabulary?”

“She has devoured a folio a week for ten years, and put out a lot of

drivel each six months. Having exhausted art and letters she is trying

her hand on religion now and coquetting with her soul.”

“You are a precious lot!” Jennings laughed again hilariously.

“We attract recruits. Here is a noteworthy example, he implied, whom I

am disciplining.”

“Yes,” Jennings admitted, taking a cigarette from the tea-tray, and

lighting it judiciously. “So I see. When I was over here last, the

neophyte was an ingenuous youth, who was delving into his _ego_. He

changed his opinions with the seasons. What became of him?”

“You mean Hiram Ernst. He recanted, having exhausted Europe, and is

married now to a woman in Buffalo. He is practising law. He writes me

bumptious letters every now and then.”

“And there was a southern poet, a flabby, fat youth of Plutonic

dreariness, who lived on Turkish coffee and cigarettes. He wrote

ditties to the infernal gods and emitted hints of mysterious vices.”

“He shut himself up in a villa at Amalfi with a volume of Petrarch, and

has not been heard from since.”

“There were the women, too,” Jennings continued, reminiscentially.

“Edith Sevan, a golden-haired little Puritan with a temperament. She

used to play pretty well when she wasn’t overcome with emotion.”

“Married,” Erard replied, “and lost.”

“The Honourable Miss Vantine was stunning,--the cigarette-smoking,

whiskey-and-soda one. She looked like a poppy and swore like

a mule-driver. The last time I heard of her she had forsaken

cigarettes for cigars and had punched an impertinent cabby. She

was--well--_tough_.”

“Oh, she went off with a German painter and forgot to get married until

it was too late. My dear fellow, you are really archaic. We have new

constellations now: the lesser luminaries have winked and gone out.”

“It’s all the same,” Jennings protested, throwing away his cigarette

half-smoked. “I suppose the flies are a little thicker as our idle

classes increase. We need a war,--or a pestilence.”

Mrs. Wilbur winced at this banter about the “aspirants.” The

dilettanti, the exclamatory women like herself, came and went. Erard

was strong enough to stay, fattened by the incense of the troop. At

this pause in the conversation Molly Parker entered, and dropping her

wraps with a little exclamation of delight, she sped to meet Jennings.

“_You_ and _here_!” She looked into his face. “Oh! this is so nice.

It’s the best thing this winter, isn’t it, Adela?” Mrs. Wilbur laughed,

and Erard echoed her merriment disagreeably.

“But you aren’t half glad enough to see us,” she looked at the visitor

reproachfully.

“Of course I am.” Jennings was pulling at his suit confusedly. “Didn’t

I come round this way to get to London?”

“Well, I don’t care anyway,” Miss Parker beamed, “I am awfully glad you

are here. I’ll tell Luisa to make a _festa_ for dinner.”

Jennings was vague about his plans, when the women plied him with

questions at dinner. He was on his way somewhere he admitted,--about to

make a change. “They got tired of me in Chicago, and I was rather tired

of them.” He was also vague about seeing these friends again, for he

said bluntly that he didn’t care to meet Americans at present.

“Nasty remark that,” Molly reflected lugubriously after his departure.

“It would be nice to see him often,” Mrs. Wilbur admitted. “I wonder

why he is so attractive. He can be very _gauche_. It must be because he

makes such little account of _himself_. The world is all; life is all,

no matter where he works or whom he meets. That firm hand will be put

to the plough, and those frank eyes will consider seriously.”

“That is very nicely said,” observed Miss Parker slyly, “especially

coming from one of your profession.”

Mrs. Wilbur took up a volume hastily and began her reading.

“But I think we shall see him again,” her companion continued, a slight

smile creeping over the corners of her mouth.

“Why didn’t you stay in Chicago and bring it about, Molly?” Mrs. Wilbur

laid aside her book.

“Because I wanted to be with you.”

“And Thornton Jennings believes in sacrifice.”

“Adela!”

“It will make it all the more romantic to have him follow you to your

missionary field and see you caring for the heathen.”

Molly Parker’s eyes filled with tears. “I couldn’t be happy, and know

that you were over here alone with this set.”

Mrs. Wilbur was already ashamed of her ill-temper. Presently she

reflected aloud, “So you ran the chances of losing him to--”

“You _can’t_ lose any one you love, who loves you. But it may take a

dreadful time to have everything come right.” She sighed. “Adela,” she

said with sudden daring. “Did you ever know that Erard had relatives? A

father and brother; the brother has just died, Mr. Jennings told me--we

knew them.”

Mrs. Wilbur listened quietly until her friend stopped, afraid to

continue.

“No! I don’t know anything about Mr. Erard’s family. But when he wants

to tell me, he will, and until then they do not interest me.”

* * * * *

Jennings seemed in no great haste to leave Florence. He would disappear

for a few days, and when he turned up at the Villa Rosadina he had

“merely been off for exercise.” But large slices of the lingering sunny

days he spent with the two American women. Mrs. Wilbur was conscious

that he was watching and studying her. He seemed as much interested in

her as in Molly. Indeed they had rather most of the desultory talk on

their rambles. Now and then Molly Parker interrupted them in a heated

_tête-à-tête_.

“Another soulful talk, darn ’em,” she would mutter. “Anyhow Adela has

an awful heavy chin, and when she gets excited it is positively ugly.”

She had vague fears that Adela was capable of corrupting even Jennings:

you never knew how foolish a man could be. So when at one of these

ruffled moments Mrs. Wilbur called affectionately,--“Come here, Molly,

and kiss me.” Miss Parker shook her head jauntily. “I don’t like being

kissed.” And fishing out a stray cigarette, she lit it mischievously.

“Molly!” Mrs. Wilbur exclaimed.

“Vivian Vavasour does it: that’s why she is so dried up and sallow.

Mr. Erard taught me. Every one smokes in the Circle.” She turned to

Jennings. “Adela is squeamish. Then she dislikes new habits.”

Jennings laughed appreciatively.

“By the way, Adela, I am going to write Walter to come on next Easter

and take me to Rome for the Carnival. That’s the custom in the Circle,”

she explained to Jennings. “We take men instead of maids when we

travel. It’s lots nicer; you have some one to lug the bags and to run

errands. Besides, it shocks people and makes you talked about.”

Mrs. Wilbur looked at her scornfully, while Jennings seemed to receive

infinite amusement from the situation.

“And you must swear and say nasty things about your family and friends.

I met an English girl at Vivian’s the other day, who said she was

dining with some people in London, and the daughter of the house

remarked at the table before her father and mother,--‘Barr’--that’s the

girl’s name--‘Barr, you must come next week when papa and mamma are in

the country. We can have some talk then and not such a stupid time.’”

Jennings went away in a gale of laughter, and Miss Parker subsided into

silence. Mrs. Wilbur was more hurt by her outbreak than she cared to

admit. She realized, moreover, that some recognition was due her friend

for her constant devotion. She remarked at last, magnanimously,--

“I think we must go north before long. I will ask Thornton Jennings to

join us later, and I am sure you will be glad to see Walter.”

“Thank you,” Miss Parker replied with sweet coolness. “Please don’t

urge them--you know I think it’s the men’s business to do the urging.”

“I have fallen pretty low, _n’est ce pas_, Molly?”

“I didn’t say so.”

“But I _have_; I couldn’t go much lower, it seems to me at times.”

“Have you made yourself happy?” Molly inquired serenely.

Mrs. Wilbur did not care to answer. Molly’s incipient jealousy hardly

deserved attention. Her fears were groundless, for Jennings was merely

watching the play out, and assisting the action in obtrusive ways. He

had told Mrs. Wilbur that his cousin Mrs. Stevans had been in Florence

earlier in the winter and that she and Erard were quite chummy.

“Erard’s buying her a carload of stuff.” She inferred that Mrs. Stevans

was the present deity who made Erard’s course easy, and that Erard was

even better informed about her own affairs than she herself. Yet Erard

had never alluded to what he had learned from Mrs. Stevans.

One day, moreover, Jennings related the incident of Peter Erard and the

old man on Halsted Street. “Peter was a stubborn beast,” he explained.

“He refused to be comforted. Yet he took his private’s place in the

line, like a man. And Peter had to join the dumb.”

“You are fond of the dumb,” Mrs. Wilbur said wistfully, neglecting to

follow out the implications of the Erard tale.

“They are not picturesque, but--” And after a silence he told her of

his own dilemma. He had received an offer of the headship of a southern

training school for negroes. He was trying now to settle the question

of accepting it. Mrs. Wilbur refrained from commenting. She would like

to say, “Go,” but that word might sound strangely in her mouth.

In spite of all this influence which Jennings brought, the old life of

work with Erard went on. She had no excuse for breaking with him, even

though the hot June days sapped her strength, and his demands grew

burdensome. And she was afraid of him as well as curious to know what

humiliation he had in store for her. What new corners in his nature had

she to explore before the end came? Somehow it was in the air that this

thing was to be fought out between them to an end. Each recognized the

struggle and hesitated.

The Tuscan summer crept on apace over the hills. The leafy woods in

the Cascine glowed in the sun; down the river a thin line of stately,

flower-like trees threw pictures of an afternoon in the pools of the

Arno. The nights on Bello Sguardo were like jewelled velvet. She

waited, apathetically, for some sign, some impulse of readjustment.

CHAPTER VII

Late in June Mrs. Wilbur and Erard went again to Rome with several

other members of the Circle. There a gradual languor stupefied her

will. The year with its multiform passions had scorched her, and

she found herself feeble before the fierce heat, the parched season

of Italy. Over her drawing her arm would relax, and she would gaze

vacantly at the object before her, wondering where the beauty in it

lay. Beauty, which she had worshipped so passionately had escaped her,

was fleeing further every dead day, and behind the smile of creation

which had roused her pulses, she was now feeling the dull, earthy

matter. How could Erard find sensations in this pulverizing atmosphere!

Dust, dust,--the pictures and frescos were crumbling in dust, and the

hard white marble had died long ago: it was crumbling now, and the

fragments were disintegrating. Behind her in the forum there was a

mound of dead dust, and she and Erard were handling mould of a later

date. It would all crumble some day, and lie baking in the hard sun,

silent for centuries while the world trod it out for vulgar uses.

Yet she did not complain. She was ashamed to whimper now. The morning

came when she could not drag herself out into the glare, and she lay

numb in the stuffy room of the little Albergo Nero where Erard had

placed the party. One day something like a miracle occurred--a new

infusion of will. Jennings appeared, and saying merely, “Come! you are

worn out,” brought her back to Florence like a sick child. There had

been a scene with Erard, who scoffed at her indisposition, and scolded

her for leaving him in the lurch. Jennings had repeated his compelling

“Come.” The two men had exchanged a few innuendoes, Erard betraying his

gutter-blood, and Jennings preserving his ironical good-humour. She had

not made a sign, until Jennings remarked softly,--“So Freedom has come

to this! In the last resort you must act.”

The household on Bello Sguardo had received her as a prodigal,--Luisa

with loud exclamations of joy, Pina with roses, and Molly with a kiss.

Yet she knew that the end was not yet. Erard would not let her slip so

simply, and in a way that humiliating retreat from Rome had left her

more powerless than ever. While she waited Walter Anthon came with real

news: the divorce had been granted in chambers. Or, in Walter’s solemn

words,--

“Your husband has taken the measure which society allows him. You are

no longer Mrs. John Wilbur.”

His sister turned her weary eyes on him.

“The mail would have sufficed to tell me. Have you come all the way

from London to preach me a sermon?”

He had not been so simple. He had a plan as usual.

“You are free now. I suppose that will please you, even if your husband

that was, has made off with your money and is about to marry again.”

The three ideas in this pungent little speech sank into her mind one

after the other. She was free. How she had agonized over that! And how

little it meant to be free, now that the courts had declared it to

society! The creases in her mind could not be ironed out by any judge’s

decree. When she realized the next step, she remarked hastily, “He has

taken only what I gave him.”

“Are you willing to give him your father’s money to enjoy with another

woman?”

She had had a vague idea that in giving up her original fortune to

her husband she was atoning in part for breaking the contract of

partnership. It seemed, however, that he had sought and obtained his

own satisfaction, and that her sacrifice was useless.

“He will do what is right,” she protested.

“Do you think this Mrs. Stevans will let him give up what he has got

his hands on?”

At the mention of this name her mind swept swiftly back to Chicago,

to the night of the reception when the new house was opened. She had

introduced Mrs. Stevans to Erard, and Erard had had a good deal to

do with her ever since. Singular freak of fate that Erard should be

connected with the two women in whom this man of business had sought

happiness! Perhaps something would come out later, between _these_ two,

and a second scandal follow. She played with her morbid fancy.

“Now, _ma chère sœur_,” Anthon resumed, attempting the difficult

passage with a light touch, “you have had your fling in the world like

the best of us, and have shown your heels rather freely. Don’t you

think it’s time to take in sail and make some port?” He could not hit

upon quite the right figure. “In other words, consolidate the present

position which you have chosen to create.” No phrase seemed delicate

enough for the business. But his sister helped him out.

“You mean you would like to have me induce Mr. Erard to marry me?”

Her brother nodded. She laughed a long, low, relishing laugh. “So this

is the decision of the family. I am to marry the villainous Erard at

last!” She laughed again shrilly.

“Yes,” Anthon pursued, discomfited. “That’s the only thing to do

now for all parties, for Erard’s sake as well as your own. He is a

very clever fellow, and I have no doubt in time we can get him some

respectable place. He will make his niche in the world. I am told that

he is very strong in his line. But you probably know that as well as I.

“Of course,” he continued, as Mrs. Wilbur seemed occupied with her own

thoughts, “you would have to observe the _convenances_ for a time, live

over here very quietly and not appear publicly in America or London.”

“And suppose I have no wish to marry Mr. Simeon Erard?” his sister

asked at length.

“Not marry him!” Anthon gasped. “Good Lord, Adela, what do you mean?

You haven’t any objection to marriage in itself,--and when it’s to save

your reputation.”

Mrs. Wilbur reddened at the concluding phrase. “You didn’t think that

it would require any urging to make a woman who is compromised accept

the honourable position of wife?”

“Don’t speak so shockingly, pray.”

“But you are wrong, dear Walter,” she gave a sarcastic laugh. “There is

really no illegal relation between us--pray don’t squirm at _words_.

There was a time when the outcome might have been different. But now

that you have planned it all nicely, I am sorry that I cannot please

you. Marriage with Mr. Erard at present does not really seem to me so

possible.”

This attitude mystified the young man; he caught on the words “at

present.”

“Oh, take your own time, Adela. Satisfy your own prejudices. But don’t

let this opportunity escape,--of squaring yourself with the world.”

He sat back in his chair, satisfied that he had put his case well and

had the logic of events on his side. He would teach this irrepressible

sister that he knew what he was about, after all. Mrs. Wilbur opened

her lips to retort; then lay back in her chair. At last she turned

towards him as if her mind had come back to an errand-boy who was

waiting for his message.

“Walter, you are young enough to learn a lesson and profit by it, if

you care to. Don’t meddle. Especially in what are courteously called

affairs of the heart. Good people think they are courageous when they

say unpleasant things, and try to run the universe their way. It is a

blunder, and mere vanity on their part. You have bustled about over me

ever since I came from America, and you haven’t the excuse for your

impertinence of any great affection. You are a vain young man, and you

are weak. You are pretty to look at, and you have good manners--when

you are properly subdued. No! listen, for this is the last time you

are likely to hear what is good for you. I am willing to believe that

you are clever, though a list of brilliant acquaintances and a post

in London journalism are really not great heights to reach. You are

a little man, Walter, an amiable little man, and that is why the big

world tolerates you. But you mustn’t become didactic! Now run in and

ask Pina to bring tea out on the terrace and to call Miss Parker and

Mr. Jennings, if they’re at home.”

A good deal of the romance of his mission was reft from Walter Anthon

by this incisive lecture. So far his diplomacy and tact had ended in

his being corrected like a small boy, and sent into the house to order

tea. He went, however, without further words, resolving to bring up his

plan at another time, when his beautiful sister was more amenable to

reason.

The sight of Miss Parker comforted him. She was so _séduisante_,

he confided to her, in a summer dress, pouring tea under the lemon

blossoms, while she inquired tenderly after all his little interests.

She had the feminine art his grand sister so brutally lacked, of

keeping in mind all your personal affairs. It was adroitly flattering

to mention his article in the April _Book-Grower_, and to discuss the

_éclatant_ cynicism with which he had flourished into his peroration.

Finally, perceiving that Mrs. Wilbur was preoccupied, she had suggested

taking him for a walk in the cool of the evening. There was a view

behind the hill into a side valley that was especially fine in this

light. Then she had some errands for the household; he could exercise

his Italian. It was all so daintily, so coquettishly managed, Anthon

thought with complacency. No London girl could rub you just the right

way like that. It was delicious to feel yourself falling into such

toils. But she would have to make them strong! If folly were to be his

lot, it must be a long-drawn-out, sweet folly.

After they had left, Mrs. Wilbur lay quite still in her large wicker

chair, watching the pale silver plain at her feet shimmer in the

blinding flood of light from the western hills. The sea of heat

seething in myriad lanes above the trees hypnotized her flickering

will. Why had she rejected her brother’s plan for her salvation?

CHAPTER VIII

She lay there motionless on the terrace into the still twilight. The

little mountain villages across the heated valley robed themselves in

blue mist. Beneath the wall the road up the hill from the Porta Fredano

cut the olive trees with its snaky coils. The silence was like the

emptiness of worlds.

Suddenly she rose, impulsively striking out for an escape. Erard

would come in a few days, hours, minutes. He might be in Florence

now. She must do something before she met him, find some resolution.

Unconsciously she began to follow the road, hastening along its curves

in an impetuous desire to flee. Gradually she became conscious that she

was seeking for Jennings. She might find him below in the city, and he

_must_ save her,--he would know how. So she ran on feverishly, dragging

her weak limbs over the great paving-stones, which were heated like an

oven. Some instinct led her to the Ponte Vecchio, where she happened on

Jennings, sauntering idly with the throng that had come out to breathe

in the evening air. Then she had nothing to say, but stood panting, her

white face flushing to the dark hair.

“What has happened?” he asked her gently, and taking her arm he led

her out of the sharp bustle on the bridge into a side street and then

to the entrance of the Boboli gardens. The great cypresses threw an

inviting shade, towards which they walked. Jennings waited for her

explanation.

“It has come, at last,” she stammered awkwardly. “I am free now.”

Jennings did not seem to understand her full meaning.

“But you have been ‘free’ for nearly a year. Have you at last found

peace in that potent word?”

“No,” she replied impatiently. “I did not mean that. Walter brought me

the news that--since the fifteenth--I have not been Mrs. Wilbur. I am

legally free--to make a mess of it.”

“Well?” He implied that this news was not unexpected, or of sufficient

importance to explain her tremor.

“It is dreadful,” she murmured incoherently. “What am I to do?”

“It hasn’t succeeded, has it?” His blunt words were spoken softly.

“There isn’t any real difference between these people, Erard’s Art

Endeavour Circle and Protestants in general, and the good people of

Chicago. They aren’t a great deal more interesting, Salters and Vivian

and the southern poet and the Jew critic and the chorus of aspirants,

than the Chicago lot with their simpler ambitions and manners and

cruder expression. On the whole they aren’t so good; they are nearer

dead: the others have a race to run, and these have only their graves

to dig. And if I were going merely to rot,” his voice trembled, “I

should rather rot with the Philistines and be a good human animal

than--”

“Well, there are others,” she protested. “You mention only the small

fry, like me.”

Jennings looked at her abstractedly. He was answering his own heart

rather than considering her.

“They are all much alike, these sighers after art and beauty. A poor

lot, take them as a whole, who decide to eat honey all their lives!

I have seen more of them than anything else in Europe,--dilettantes,

connoisseurs, little artists, lazy scholars. Chiefly Americans, who,

finding America too incomplete, come here and accomplish nothing.

In every centre in Europe you can find two or three of them in the

various stages of decay. The environment they run after atrophies their

faculties; the very habits of life which are best for these people hurt

_them_; they sink into laziness. Erard is the leader of the tribe,--the

grand high-priest of the mysteries of the higher senses!”

He ended his declamation with a laugh. His cold contempt shut her heart

and drove her back to defence.

“But he has made it worth while; you are not fair to him. He has

lived in the only way _he_ could and reach his ends. And he has done

something; he knows.”

“Perhaps,” Jennings agreed dubiously, thinking his own thoughts

aloud with brutal disregard for her inferences. “What a bloodless,

toady existence, sucking in the joys of his paradise! And for what?

A few books to be replaced by a new set in another generation, a few

epigrams, and a little quivering of his ‘sensorium.’ Better a day in an

Indiana town, than a year of _that_!”

Mrs. Wilbur turned her face away. Even he was so pitiless! She had

come to him in her distress for comfort, and instead of soothing her,

of leading her out of her tangle, he heaped up this stern indictment

against all her past ideals.

“You didn’t know Peter Erard.” He began to tell that story again. “You

see, there was the mother. She died, saving her pennies to give Simeon

a new suit when he was tutoring Mr. Anthon’s daughter. Then there were

the father and Peter. The father was too old to work, and Peter kept

him comfortable and I believe sent Erard money, first by a job in

Jersey City, then by one in Chicago. Over a year ago Peter met with an

accident and lost his job--Miss Parker knows these facts--and, finally

a little while ago, died. When he was ill, Erard, Simeon, that is to

say, was in Chicago, giving lectures and visiting. Peter saw him once.

And the old man might die in the poor-house now, if it weren’t for Miss

Parker.”

Mrs. Wilbur listened with compressed lips. She had been fighting off

this disagreeable tale for a long time.

“That Peter Erard--_he_ was a man!” Jennings continued, his face

lighting up. “_He_ had it in him to do something, and he knew it, and

he never talked slush. He took his place in the ranks, like a man. And

now he is dumb, as he was in life!”

“Perhaps the other one showed his genius by defying all these

claims and making his way in spite of them,” Mrs. Wilbur stammered,

remembering the Napoleonic glory of Simeon’s first confessions to her.

Jennings looked at her pityingly.

“Do you think so? now that you know the story in all its sordid

detail? And can you still think that the result is worth while? Is

it any better than the grab, and the coarse perception about traction

stocks, and the rest of the unpleasant side of Chicago which annoys our

nostrils? Merely because you work in pictures or books, and not in pork

and dry-goods. Ah, Peter was the man, and he was a private!”

“You aren’t fair to Simeon--to me,” she retorted hotly.

“You make nothing of that hunger for something beautiful, that love--I

had it, you can believe me. Some people have it and die unless--”

“Did you get what you wanted?” Jennings exclaimed, pacing back and

forth across the strip of gravel.

“No!” she exclaimed in something like a sob. “The joy faded so fast!

And the more I grow to know, the less I am filled with the old rapture.

I have striven so to possess joy, and gone so low in my own sight. It

is bitter, bitter--”

“Europe tempts us Americans,” her companion interrupted excusingly. “It

holds so many treasures, and the life of the spirit is organized here.

I came near giving in, once, those days in Oxford where everything

seemed spread for enjoyment. I rather longed to help myself to dainties

until I was full. But--”

“But what?”

“It’s against nature, a sin against nature. Life is not fulfilled, we

are not quieted, in that way. To accept the world as it comes to our

hands, to shape it painfully without regard for self,--that brings the

soul to peace.”

He had made his decision, and evidently he had found some solace. She

could not take the same road easily; she had gone the other way. She

looked up into his face longingly, pleadingly, as if she were wildly

hoping that he would take her with him, that he would not leave her in

her wanderings.

“I am going back to the niggers,” Jennings continued after a pause

in a lighter tone. “Won’t that please Mrs. Stevans! I think my

friends expected me to become another kind of Erard.” He laughed

good-humouredly. “And likely enough they are right, to thrash about for

the sweets and what you call freedom. But it seems to me ridiculous and

undignified.”

With these careless words he seemed to close the topic which had

agitated her so profoundly. She felt that she ought to have enough

pride and self-reliance to accept her difficulties silently, but a

certain feminine dependence on leadership--strange to herself--left her

feeble before this crisis. She appealed to him audaciously, clinging to

his strength. “And I--what shall I do?”

“Is it all over--the joy and the venture?”

“I seem to have died, instead of gaining freedom.”

“That word! How it deceives us! You have chased a shadow.”

“You mean?”

“There is no freedom and every one is free. It is all a matter of

feeling. And that feeling you cannot command.”

“Like love.” She glanced up at him, her face thrilling with a strange

idea.

“Yes, like love,” he repeated in a low voice. “It takes us unawares

when we have given up the search.”

“Then I have never loved.” Her mind revolved in a new orbit “When I

married I was seeking, seeking. When I studied, when I tried to act,

I was always seeking. And the more I have struggled the farther I

have gone--away, astray. Even the first false light that shone those

September days when the pictures spoke, went, and I am left alone with

my little knowledge, and nothing else, nothing. It is like love,” she

repeated at last.

“Yes. It is a state of feeling, of the spirit, not a condition of

person.”

“I was as free in Chicago as I am here?”

He nodded.

“And my money has not bought it, nor my body won it.”

“Nor your mind,” Jennings added softly. “Nor your will. Not any of

these things.”

“It could come over there in the prairie-town.”

“Or with the niggers,” suggested Jennings with a slight smile.

The new conception gained hold on her, while she sat staring out above

the palaces of the city into the evening gloom. At last she uttered

in a low moan,--“After all, to be bound, bound with no one to cut the

cords; to be bound in spirit and flesh--no escape possible. It is

ghastly!”

“You said once that you wished to burn, to feel. You remember that last

night at Lake Forest?”

“And you replied--‘to dust and ashes,’” she added fiercely. “Is that

all for _me_?”

She rose from the bench with a sweep, a touch of defiance that brought

back her old impressive self. She seemed to say, “You mock me.

Impossible that I, who am beautiful and keen in mind, that I who have

striven, am to become mere ashes.” And the movement which challenged

him, saying, “I am a woman,” said also, “I can love. Teach me, you new

master, and you will find me humble. Take me, and make me over to fit

_your_ freedom.” But he made no sign of acceptance, merely looked back

at her dark head with its flaming eyes, admiringly, with homage and

with pity,--but with nothing more. He knew her to the bottom of her

heart and he was compassionate, but he would not save her, could not

save her.

“So you are going to take the commonplace,” she said at last,

irritably, closing her eyes and turning her face away.

“Yes, the very commonplace.”

“And nothing tempts you?” She shot a glance which searched him,

knocking to find a hollow sound in his protestations.

“No.”

She walked away to the farthest shade of the cypresses, thinking with a

pang: “He will marry Molly. I am--dust and ashes.” Then she was haughty

with herself for having craved relief through him. It was foolish for

her to believe that she might yet be taught to accept and to feel again

as children feel. What could _he_ do for her? What had she to do with

love? She had never known the word until to-night.

In an instant she was at his side again. “You think me an impossible

creature to be shunned?”

“No. I was not thinking of _you_ in particular,” he answered gravely.

And she felt doubly ashamed, as they descended the terraces of the

garden, silently, mournfully.

CHAPTER IX

That evening Molly remarked to her friend abruptly, “Walter thinks he

wishes to marry me.”

“Well?” Mrs. Wilbur asked with quick curiosity.

“I’ll tell you all about it. He feels badly now, but, if it doesn’t get

out he will be all right in a few weeks. He asked me to do it--marry

him--at least for your sake. But I told him I couldn’t do it, even for

you.”

“He means so very well, Molly!” Mrs. Wilbur exclaimed with some

compassion.

“Yes, too well by me! He’s been trying not to do this thing ever since

I have known you. He almost slipped twice, no, three times. This

afternoon he didn’t want to do it one bit, and even at the end he made

me feel that it was a condescension on his part.”

“Oh, Molly!”

“He began by thanking me profusely for all I had done for you. Told

me the family were very appreciative of my efforts to save you from

yourself, and to preserve the decencies of social life.”

Mrs. Wilbur winced.

“He said a great crisis was coming in your life now, and we two, Mr.

Anthon and I, could help you so much in case--”

“The little hypocrite! Was that all?”

“Yes, about you then. I think the next event was that he tried to kiss

me before he had really said anything--well, definite. He first took my

hand, then insinuated his arm about my waist--we were in a dark corner

under a wall--”

“Molly!”

“Well, we know him _so_ well! and I wanted to see what it is like

to have love made in that way. I felt like,--as if I were a maid, a

servant. It was quite horrid! It might have been Pina. When he reached

a certain point, just beyond the proper pressure for a waltz--I, I

laughed.”

She laughed again at the memory.

“Then I lectured him soundly. I began ’way back with the

beginning,--his running around after people, his toadying, his literary

ambitions, his self-importance. I talked to him about his treatment of

you in Paris; he merely wanted to get rid of you decently. After that

we discussed love. I used some of Erard’s psychology. He was after

sensations merely, I told him--wanted to know how it would feel to kiss

me. He would be awfully lugubrious afterwards, if I had snapped him

up, and he had come to his senses to-morrow to find himself engaged to

a poor girl twenty-five years old with no social pulls. I described

to him how such a man ‘falls in love,’ and how he makes a grumbling,

fault-finding husband. Oh! I taught him a lot!”

She laughed again. Mrs. Wilbur wished to laugh also, but restrained

herself.

“I ended by giving him some good advice about himself. In the first

place he must get some kind of principles, just for convenience. Now he

doesn’t care about anything but the looks of things. And do you know

what he said--he was very angry by this time! ‘Why, Miss Parker, you

have a singular misconception of me. How could I have all the friends

who surround me and how could I make so many influential connections

in London, if I were the sort of man you describe?’ Actually, he said

that. Your brother, Adela, is quite hopeless.”

“Was that all?”

“Yes, he was very, very angry, so mad he forgot to be hurt. It was

the kindest way to send him off. He will go back to London to-morrow,

pretty well cured of an infatuation, which, he assured me, had extended

over five years.”

Mrs. Wilbur laughed this time without scruple. But after a time she

said earnestly, “You might have done so much for him, Molly!”

Molly looked at her, with a trace of contempt in her smiling mouth.

“Do you think that’s the right place for missionary endeavour, Adela?”

An instant later she nestled up to her friend. “Forgive me, dear. I am

horrid and heartless.”

The two shed a few tears. “We women never escape our affections,” Mrs.

Wilbur remarked ruefully, thinking of the afternoon. “Men get along so

much more easily.”

“I don’t want to escape!” Molly replied promptly, and then blushed.

Walter Anthon departed the next morning at an early hour, leaving

behind him, in a fluent, spiteful little note, his last words to his

sister. He now made the final washing of his hands in her case, and

having pointed out the path of true wisdom and decency, he left her to

profit by the lesson. Mrs. Wilbur tossed Molly the note. “See what a

rupture you have made, Molly, between brother and sister!”

“The little beast! He wants you to marry Erard! I didn’t think he was

as bad as that, or I should have added a fifthly to my sermon.”

“Perhaps he is right,” Mrs. Wilbur asserted drearily.

She wondered where Erard was these days. He had not written her from

Rome, thus attempting to discipline her for her revolt by neglect. She

did not know that he had returned to Florence, that he was quietly

biding his time, nor that Walter Anthon had seen him before he had come

to her on his last diplomatic errand. Indeed, that errand had been but

a part of Walter’s scheme, the plan of which had already been worked

out in the rooms on the Piazza San Spirito. The two men had come to an

understanding, during an hour of vague fencing: young Anthon was to

strike first, and then after a decent interval Erard was to conclude

the matter.

In the meantime letters from the outside world penetrated Mrs. Wilbur’s

silence, like little voices talking over her divorce. Strangely, the

most moving one was from Mrs. Anthon. “That loud Mrs. Stevans has the

house your father’s money helped to build. They are to be married in

London, the papers say, and when they get back in the fall they expect

to do the house all over and put in all the pictures and rubbish she’s

collected. Her photograph was in the _Sunday Thunderer_ last week--as

big and coarse looking as ever.... I feel old now, Ada, and it seems as

though, after all I have done for my children, I weren’t wanted in the

world. Your brother John’s wife doesn’t like me, and now you are gone,

there’s no place to go to except a hotel, and that doesn’t seem quite

respectable. But it won’t be for long....”

As she read this letter, something like remorse came over Mrs. Wilbur

for her harsh and unsympathetic treatment of her mother. Since the talk

in the Boboli gardens with Jennings several illuminating ideas had

altered her conception of life. It could not be denied that this mother

was silly and vulgar. But to be foolish, to be common, was not the most

hideous crime for pitiable human beings to commit, she had begun to

realize. And what had she gained by her struggle for escape? She was

drifting now, uncertainly. Drifting, her life must be, if she continued

her effort; drifting on into a _declassé milieu_, where she would amuse

herself with the gossip and fritter of art, where her sole object would

be to enjoy and pass away the years. She had learned well what that

kind of European life was like.

Thus a week, two weeks passed. Jennings was to leave for America in

another fortnight. Erard was yet to be heard from, and she was sure

that the day was not far off when he would show his hand. At times the

idea of the tie that bound her to him exhaled a strange kind of corrupt

fascination. How he had dominated her! What was there inside of him?

She felt a reckless curiosity to explore the dark, private places of

his soul, to touch his clammy self more closely, and to know the worst.

At last Erard appeared late one evening. Molly and Jennings had gone

out in search of a cool breeze. As Mrs. Wilbur lay in the moonlight on

the terrace, she heard a soft step on the road below the wall. It crept

on around the corner, and the sound disappeared. She knew it was Erard.

Soon she heard his quiet, positive, yet catlike tread on the terrace.

She could feel his movement behind her; he was gaining, coming closer

at last, and she lay passive, wondering what the outcome would be.

“You are quite alone?” Erard greeted her questioningly.

“Yes,” she murmured, without betraying either interest or surprise in

his presence. She took it for granted that he had just returned from

Rome.

“Such a heavenly night!” Erard dropped his glasses and leaned against

the parapet as if he had plenty of time for contemplation. He had

accepted the idea of marriage with its possible inconveniences, yet he

did not propose to be untactful, to place himself in the open by asking

her to become Mrs. Erard. He would first bid her love him, as though

he knew of no possible union for them. That was a finer stroke, and if

Anthon had had sense enough not to chatter about their talk, all would

go as he planned.

She was a fit possession to have, he reflected, as he watched her white

face. She was striving, unsatisfied, keen-minded, and beautiful, with

a reserve of feminine power, which even his insinuating wits couldn’t

penetrate. She was John Anthon’s daughter, and had a hundred and fifty

thousand from him, and a fool of a brother. She was Sebastian Anthon’s

niece, and had two hundred thousand from him. Sebastian Anthon was the

kind old fool who had supplied him with money to live on, as you’d give

a boy pocket money; and then had turned him off to starve because he

didn’t make enough of a sensation. She had been John Wilbur’s wife, and

had deserted that pompous _bourgeois_ at his suggestion because the

successful Wilbur was too much of a stupid. He, Simeon Erard, held her

in his hand as his ripe spoil.

“It is one great peace here,” he resumed. “I feel content, too. So much

that I have striven for all these years since you first began your help

to me has come about. I have been asked recently to contribute a series

of articles to the new _International Review_. There is talk, I hear,

of making me one of the sub-editors. That would necessitate our living

in Paris part of each winter. The publishers have begun to print our

book. I have the proofs of the first volume with me. We can run them

over together this summer.”

He paused, surprised that she seemed so languid. “Doesn’t that interest

you any more?” he asked suspiciously.

“Of course.” Mrs. Wilbur roused herself. “I am glad to know that your

efforts are meeting with their reward. You are getting some of the

prizes in your game.” A sudden whim made her add meaningly, “Now you

can afford to look outside; you can do something for your father.

Peter, you know, is gone. He died without getting the prizes.”

She could hear the gravel crunch under his feet as he turned swiftly

from his idle stand by the parapet, but he answered tranquilly.

“What have they to do with the matter? Have I ever mentioned them to

you? I will take care of them--him, in my own good time. You do not

understand, Adela.”

“Oh, no! you never mentioned them to me. It occurred to me that in this

new life of success, you might have time and means--to take Peter’s

place.”

He did not reply. Her remarks seemed to make little impression on him.

Instead, he drew near her, deliberately, watching her steadfastly.

“What I wish is that this new life shall bring me _you_.” He pronounced

the words with slow emphasis. She remained numb, vaguely repeating his

words to herself. He continued slowly: “We are made for each other.”

Wilbur had said _that_. “You have the strong mind, and you know what

living means.” Too well, alas! and he had taught her many a lesson. “We

have lived this year as one person. You know my thoughts; I know yours.”

He paused after every phrase. Then as he had planned, he attempted

passion. It was the right place for passion, and this silent, white

woman with her sombre face, who for once refused to meet him, moved him

to a sort of self-conscious passion. He trembled slightly, and coming

a step nearer, he bent over her chair and looked into her face intently.

“You are mine, you are mine, my lady Adela!” He touched her arms

deftly, attempting to arouse her. “Adela! We have lived for one

another. My great woman!” He seemed to her nearer, yet nothing moved

her. She even looked at him calmly. His passion was clammy. She must

have more of it, however; it was like a triumph, a revenge over

herself, to have him thus. “We shall make our world one long splendid

day--”

His arms were about her now, and she felt the pressure of him person

to person, and the kiss from his lips. Then she awoke; her breath came

wildly. Suddenly she knew that he was aware that she was free to be his

wife. Her brother had been in Rome. This was all prepared. It was the

final play in the game to reduce her _first_, and make terms, _his_

terms, later.

“No! no!” She pushed him back coldly.

“You are mine--you have said it with your eyes, once, twice, and now I

take my own.”

“Yes! I have been yours in despair, in reckless thought, but--but that

has passed. It is impossible!”

He looked at her nonplussed. She felt compelled to explain. “You have

broken me in, made yourself my master. You made me think content with

the little commonplace of life was silly. You scoffed at all the

pitiful efforts of the others. And I obeyed you--I broke their laws,

thinking to find peace in beauty and enjoyment--”

“Well? What do you want?”

“Want!” she repeated contemptuously. “Everything! Yon lowered me step

by step, making me follow you, work for you, testing me; and if you had

been enough of a man to have had pity, to have loved, _then_.... But,

what is the use of words--I don’t love you,--understand. I feared you,

but I don’t love you. And I see you now quite clearly without glamour.

I--I hate the kind of man you have made yourself. I _hate_ you,” she

repeated deliberately as he stepped back.

“No, I am wrong, I despise you, as I would--I can go on working for

you, admiring your clever wits, and helping you perhaps,--but I despise

you so heartily that you will never feel it--” she stopped exhausted.

“Did I advise you to follow this way of life?” Erard asked, attempting

to regain his usual imperturbability.

“Oh, no! You would do nothing so rash.”

“Have I given you nothing?”

“Why, yes, yourself. And, I suppose, I should be content with that. You

have got out of life what you wanted, including your poor triumph over

me. But if you ever come to have the highest fame you dream of, that

will make no difference to me. You have trodden out every human feeling

in your body. You have succeeded, but your success is rotten, rotten.”

Her voice sounded harshly in the soft air. A gentle breeze stirred the

trees overhead and shook out the perfumes of the flowers. She struggled

again with her incoherence.

“It has taken me a good while to understand. It has taken a thousand

little things to teach me about you. But I have learned! Now let me

tell you that your analysis is not always right. It would have been

better _not_ to wait--until the legal side had been straightened

out, and we could marry and my fortune could be--attached. Perhaps,

perhaps,--” She rose and followed him to the parapet. “Once perhaps you

could have had me, to suck out my life and throw me away. Perhaps I

would have followed you,--slave I already was,--your mistress and your

adorer. But you--waited--until it was quite regular. And, meanwhile,

you have made me see!”

“I don’t follow your ravings closely, but I gather that if I had let

you--”

“Take care! Mind your manners!” she exclaimed more calmly, with a touch

of her old haughtiness. “You can’t understand, and I shall not try to

explain. It is a question of casuistry in a woman’s heart that isn’t in

your field.”

“And can you explain where I have offended you?”

“Oh! I am of no importance, and it would take me a long time to make

you see. But I will tell you a few things. You have pushed your way,

you have taken what you want from the world, lived off it! You have

abandoned your own people, you have sneered at your own land. And, what

is worse than all, you have failed--to add one beautiful thing to this

sore old world! You cannot, you cannot! I did not know why--now I do.

There is no blood in your body, Mr. Simeon Erard,--no human, sinning,

rich blood. Ah! you know too much, and your knowledge is--worthless.”

Erard made no attempt to stem this impetuous passion. Women were powder

mines, or brutes, if they had any spirit in them. This one had served

him a panther’s trick.

“You have taught me to climb the same desolate hill where you have

perched yourself. I have my freedom--I am alone now--but it would be

better for me to be dead,” she concluded passionately.

“Do you regret that your husband has made it quite impossible for you

to play the prodigal wife?”

Mrs. Wilbur gave him the look that is a blow.

“You are so low that we need not discuss my divorce. Indeed, we need

not alter our way of life, so long as it interests me. When you cease

to amuse my wits, I shall give you notice. Until then I shall be glad

to continue my assistance. And I think it will be easier for both of

us, now that we understand each other.”

“It might be better for your reputation, since you are divorced, to--”

“Thank you! You are tender of my reputation rather late. Remember that

you have taught me to live above such philistine considerations. And I

have explained sufficiently why I do not care to be Mrs. Simeon Erard.”

“We can hardly continue our former relationship under the

circumstances.”

Mrs. Wilbur laughed lightly. “Don’t be so foolish as to try the heroic.

Be the very wise man you have made me believe you are, and continue as

if nothing had happened but a temporary aberration from reason on your

part. Or, rather, a miscalculation that we can forget soon. And I may

take myself away from your fold some day.”

Erard folded his arms and looked at her sneeringly.

“You have never shown me quite so much of this theatrical side.”

“No? We women have it about us somewhere, and certain topics are

likely to call it out. There is convention--you and I agree _that_ is

senseless and boring. There is intelligence--you and I value that quite

highly enough. And there is life and honour and love: on such matters

you are not fitted to talk, and I grow theatrical. If you will ring

that bell in the arbour, Pina will bring you some wine and cigarettes.

There are the voices of Mr. Jennings and Molly. We have had just time

enough for our little understanding, Mr. Simeon Erard.”

She nodded to him pleasantly, and walked into the villa with a light

step.

CHAPTER X

The night was so still and hot that no one proposed to try for sleep

in close chambers. They sat in the garden watching the little villages

go out into darkness, snuffed out like candles over the plain and

hills. Only Fiesole, solitary on its lonely pinnacle, sent one stream

of steady light across the valley. The gloomy palaces below them were

utterly quiet, as if empty and desolate. The stars in the heavens shone

distantly in the immense blackness. At last the men strolled down to

the gate, smoking and talking.

“I am so very, very happy!” Molly Parker whispered, crouching down by

her friend’s chair.

“I was thinking that I am so very sad,” Mrs. Wilbur replied dreamily.

“But I was wrong. I have sloughed off a delusion, and I am alive again.

I have broken with myself. But what has happened to Molly? Is she at

last in love?”

For an answer the younger woman put her arms about Mrs. Wilbur and

rested her head upon her shoulder.

“So it is all right, Molly, at last!”

“Yes, I knew it must be, though I was afraid and sad when I came away

from Chicago.”

“And you are sure?” Mrs. Wilbur asked, as if doubtful whether human

hearts were to be trusted.

“There is nothing to tell you, nothing. But you are _so sure_! A word,

a look, and then, O Adela! there is such peace!”

Mrs. Wilbur stroked her face silently. The heart of a child had lived

on into maturity in this woman, at least.

“And you don’t mind the poverty and the small future?”

“Adela!”

“And you think it will always be enough for him to put his arm there

where mine is?”

“I don’t think.”

“Yes, that is better, dear. You have all that I have striven for. It

has come to you unconsciously and naturally, like sleep when you are

tired, or food when you are hungry.”

“Poor Adela!”

“Oh, no. I am content. I have found out, after all my blundering, what

kind of a world it is. A big place! One must not shiver in it. The

really foolish people are those who struggle, like me, for what is only

an idea.”

They continued to hold one another silently. At last Molly Parker spoke

mischievously. “Perhaps there won’t be niggers always!”

Mrs. Wilbur laughed. “You will be anxious to leave me, to go back to

America soon?”

“Yes, but no, not leave you--”

“_Yes_,” Mrs. Wilbur repeated with a sad smile. “Perhaps I shall go

with you, after all. They have my blood, the self-same inheritance

with me. In them and with them must I make my life, if it is to be

anything.”

Molly kissed her again tearfully.

“There are some whom I have made to suffer,” Mrs. Wilbur mused, “and

especially my mother. I must learn how to live.”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the

public domain.