That night was Mrs. Grenfell's ball, and many times in later years has

the scene come back to Honora. It was not a large ball, by no means on

the scale of Mr. Chamberlin's, for instance. The great room reminded one

of the gallery of a royal French chateau, with its dished ceiling, in the

oval of which the colours of a pastoral fresco glowed in the ruby lights

of the heavy chandeliers; its grey panelling, hidden here and there by

tapestries, and its series of deep, arched windows that gave glimpses of

a lantern-hung terrace. Out there, beyond a marble balustrade, the lights

of fishing schooners tossed on a blue-black ocean. The same ocean on

which she had looked that morning, and which she heard now, in the

intervals of talk and laughter, crashing against the cliffs,--although

the wind had gone down. Like a woman stirred to the depths of her being,

its bosom was heaving still at the memory of the passion of the morning.

This night after the storm was capriciously mild, the velvet gown of

heaven sewn with stars. The music had ceased, and supper was being served

at little tables on the terrace. The conversation was desultory.

"Who is that with Reggie Farwell?" Ethel Wing asked.

"It's the Farrenden girl," replied Mr. Cuthbert, whose business it was to

know everybody. "Chicago wheat. She looks like Ceres, doesn't she? Quite

becoming to Reggie's dark beauty. She was sixteen, they tell me, when the

old gentleman emerged from the pit, and they packed her off to a convent

by the next steamer. Reggie may have the blissful experience of living in

one of his own houses if he marries her."

The fourth at the table was Ned Carrington, who had been first secretary

at an Embassy, and he had many stories to tell of ambassadors who spoke

commercial American and asked royalties after their wives. Some one had

said about him that he was the only edition of the Almanach de Gotha that

included the United States. He somewhat resembled a golden seal emerging

from a cold bath, and from time to time screwed an eyeglass into his eye

and made a careful survey of Mrs. Grenfell's guests.

"By George!" he exclaimed. "Isn't that Hugh Chiltern?"

Honora started, and followed the direction of Mr. Carrington's glance. At

sight of him, a vivid memory of the man's personality possessed her.

"Yes," Cuthbert was saying, "that's Chiltern sure enough. He came in on

Dicky Farnham's yacht this morning from New York."

"This morning!" said Ethel Wing. "Surely not! No yacht could have come in

this morning."

"Nobody but Chiltern would have brought one in, you mean," he corrected

her. "He sailed her. They say Dicky was half dead with fright, and wanted

to put in anywhere. Chiltern sent him below and kept right on. He has a

devil in him, I believe. By the way, that's Dicky Farnham's ex-wife he's

talking to--Adele. She keeps her good looks, doesn't she? What's happened

to Rindge?"

"Left him on the other side, I hear," said Carrington. "Perhaps she'll

take Chiltern next. She looked as though she were ready to. And they say

it's easier every time."

"C'est le second mari qui coute," paraphrased Cuthbert, tossing his cigar

over the balustrade. The strains of a waltz floated out of the windows,

the groups at the tables broke up, and the cotillon began.

As Honora danced, Chiltern remained in the back of her mind, or rather an

indefinite impression was there which in flashes she connected with him.

She wondered, at times, what had become of him, and once or twice she

caught herself scanning the bewildering, shifting sheen of gowns and

jewels for his face. At last she saw him by the windows, holding a favour

in his hand, coming in her direction. She looked away, towards the red

uniforms of the Hungarian band on the raised platform at the end of the

room. He was standing beside her.

"Do you remember me, Mrs. Spence?" he asked.

She glanced up at him and smiled. He was not a person one would be likely

to forget, but she did not say so.

"I met you at Mrs. Granger's," was what she said.

He handed her the favour. She placed it amongst the collection at the

back of her chair and rose, and they danced. Was it dancing? The music

throbbed; nay, the musicians seemed suddenly to have been carried out of

themselves, and played as they had not played before. Her veins were

filled with pulsing fire as she was swung, guided, carried out of herself

by the extraordinary virility of the man who held her. She had tasted

mastery.

"Thank you," she faltered, as they came around the second time to her

seat.

He released her.

"I stayed to dance with you," he said. "I had to await my opportunity."

"It was kind of you to remember me," she replied, as she went off with

Mr. Carrington.

A moment later she saw him bidding good night to his hostess. His face,

she thought, had not lost that strange look of determination that she

recalled. And yet--how account for his recklessness?

"Rum chap, Chiltern," remarked Carrington. "He might be almost anything,

if he only knew it."

In the morning, when she awoke, her eye fell on the cotillon favours

scattered over the lounge. One amongst them stood out--a silver-mounted

pin-cushion. Honora arose, picked it up contemplatively, stared at it

awhile, and smiled. Then she turned to her window, breathing in the

perfumes, gazing out through the horse-chestnut leaves at the green,

shadow-dappled lawn below.

On her breakfast tray, amidst some invitations, was a letter from her.

uncle. This she opened first.

"Dear Honora," he wrote, "amongst your father's papers, which have

been in my possession since his death, was a certificate for three

hundred shares in a land company. He bought them for very little,

and I had always thought them worthless. It turns out that these

holdings are in a part of the state of Texas that is now being

developed; on the advice of Mr. Isham and others I have accepted an

offer of thirty dollars a share, and I enclose a draft on New York

for nine thousand dollars. I need not dwell upon the pleasure it is

for me to send you this legacy from your father. And I shall only

add the counsel of an old uncle, to invest this money by your

husband's advice in some safe securities." . . .

Honora put down the letter, and sat staring at the cheque in her hand.

Nine thousand dollars--and her own! Her first impulse was to send it back

to her uncle. But that would be, she knew, to hurt his feelings--he had

taken such a pride in handing her this inheritance. She read the letter

again, and resolved that she would not ask Howard to invest the money.

This, at least, should be her very own, and she made up her mind to take

it to a bank in Thames Street that morning.

While she was still under the influence of the excitement aroused by the

unexpected legacy, Mrs. Shorter came in, a lady with whom Honora's

intimacy had been of steady growth. The tie between them might perhaps

have been described as intellectual, for Elsie Shorter professed only to

like people who were "worth while." She lent Honora French plays,

discussed them with her, and likewise a wider range of literature,

including certain brightly bound books on evolution and sociology.

In the eighteenth century, Mrs. Shorter would have had a title and a

salon in the Faubourg: in the twentieth, she was the wife of a most

fashionable and successful real estate agent in New York, and was aware

of no incongruity. Bourgeoise was the last thing that could be said of

her; she was as ready as a George Sand to discuss the whole range of

human emotions; which she did many times a week with certain gentlemen of

intellectual bent who had the habit of calling on her. She had never, to

the knowledge of her acquaintances, been shocked. But while she believed

that a great love carried, mysteriously concealed in its flame, its own

pardon, she had through some fifteen years of married life remained

faithful to Jerry Shorter: who was not, to say the least, a Lochinvar or

a Roland. Although she had had nervous prostration and was thirty-four,

she was undeniably pretty. She was of the suggestive, and not the

strong-minded type, and the secret of her strength with the other sex was

that she was in the habit of submitting her opinions for their approval.

"My dear," she said to Honora, "you may thank heaven that you are still

young enough to look beautiful in negligee. How far have you got? Have

you guessed of which woman Vivarce was the lover? And isn't it the most

exciting play you've ever read? Ned Carrington saw it in Paris, and

declares it frightened him into being good for a whole week!"

"Oh, Elsie," exclaimed Honora, apologetically, "I haven't read a word of

it."

Mrs. Shorter glanced at the pile of favours.

"How was the dance?" she asked. "I was too tired to go. Hugh Chiltern

offered to take me."

"I saw Mr. Chiltern there. I met him last winter at the Graingers'."

"He's staying with us," said Mrs. Shorter; "you know he's a sort of

cousin of Jerry's, and devoted to him. He turned up yesterday morning on

Dicky Farnham's yacht, in the midst of all that storm. It appears that

Dicky met him in New York, and Hugh said he was coming up here, and Dicky

offered to sail him up. When the storm broke they were just outside, and

all on board lost their heads, and Hugh took charge and sailed in. Dicky

told me that himself."

"Then it wasn't--recklessness," said Honora, involuntarily. But Mrs.

Shorter did not appear to be surprised by the remark.

"That's what everybody thinks, of course," she answered. "They say that

he had a chance to run in somewhere, and browbeat Dicky into keeping on

for Newport at the risk of their lives. They do Hugh an injustice. He

might have done that some years ago, but he's changed."

Curiosity got the better of Honora.

"Changed?" she repeated.

"Of course you didn't know him in the old days, Honora," said Mrs.

Shorter. "You wouldn't recognize him now. I've seen a good deal of men,

but he is the most interesting and astounding transformation I've ever

known."

"How?" asked Honora. She was sitting before the glass, with her hand

raised to her hair.

Mrs. Shorter appeared puzzled.

"That's what interests me," she said. "My dear, don't you think life

tremendously interesting? I do. I wish I could write a novel. Between

ourselves, I've tried. I had Mr. Dewing send it to a publisher, who said

it was clever, but had no plot. If I only could get a plot!"

Honora laughed.

"How would I The Transformation of Mr. Chiltern' do, Elsie?"

"If I only knew what's happened to him, and how he's going to end!"

sighed Mrs. Shorter.

"You were saying," said Honora, for her friend seemed to have relapsed

into a contemplation of this problem, "you were saying that he had

changed."

"He goes away for seven years, and he suddenly turns up filled with

ambition and a purpose in life, something he had never dreamed of. He's

been at Grenoble, where the Chiltern estate is, making improvements and

preparing to settle down there. And he's actually getting ready to write

a life of his father, the General--that's the most surprising thing! They

never met but to strike fire while the General was alive. It appears that

Jerry and Cecil Grainger and one or two other people have some of the old

gentleman's letters, and that's the reason why Hugh's come to Newport.

And the strangest thing about it, my dear," added Mrs. Shorter,

inconsequently, "is that I don't think it's a love affair."

Honora laughed again. It was the first time she had ever heard Mrs.

Shorter attribute unusual human phenomena to any other source. "He wrote

Jerry that he was coming back to live on the estate,--from England. And

he wasn't there a week. I can't think where he's seen any women--that

is," Mrs. Shorter corrected herself hastily, "of his own class. He's been

in the jungle--India, Africa, Cores. That was after Sally Harrington

broke the engagement. And I'm positive he's not still in love with Sally.

She lunched with me yesterday, and I watched him. Oh, I should have known

it. But Sally hasn't got over it. It wasn't a grand passion with Hugh. I

don't believe he's ever had such a thing. Not that he isn't capable of

it--on the contrary, he's one of the few men I can think of who is."

At this point in the conversation Honora thought that her curiosity had

gone far enough.

CHAPTER IV

THE VIKING

She was returning on foot from the bank in Thames Street, where she had

deposited her legacy, when she met him who had been the subject of her

conversation with Mrs. Shorter. And the encounter seemed--and was--the

most natural thing in the world. She did not stop to ask herself why it

was so fitting that the Viking should be a part of Vineland: why his

coming should have given it the one and final needful touch. For that

designation of Reginald Farwell's had come back to her. Despite the fact

that Hugh Chiltern had with such apparent resolution set his face towards

literature and the tillage of the land, it was as the Viking still that

her imagination pictured him. By these tokens we may perceive that this

faculty of our heroine's has been at work, and her canvas already

sketched in.

Whether by design or accident he was at the leafy entrance of her lane

she was not to know. She spied him standing there; and in her leisurely

approach a strange conceit of reincarnation possessed her, and she smiled

at the contrast thus summoned up. Despite the jingling harnesses of

Bellevue Avenue and the background of Mr. Chamberlin's palace wall;

despite the straw hat and white trousers and blue double-breasted serge

coat in which he was conventionally arrayed, he was the sea fighter

still--of all the ages. M. Vipsanius Agrippa, who had won an empire for

Augustus, had just such a head.

Their greeting, too, was conventional enough, and he turned and walked

with her up the lane, and halted before the lilacs. "You have Mrs.

Forsythe's house," he said. "How well I remember it! My mother used to

bring me here years ago."

"Won't you come in?" asked Honora, gently.

He seemed to have forgotten her as they mounted in silence to the porch,

and she watched him with curious feelings as he gazed about him, and

peered through the windows into the drawing-room.

"It's just as it was," he said. "Even the furniture. I'm glad you haven't

moved it. They used to sit over there in the corner, and have tea on the

ebony table. And it was always dark-just as it is now. I can see them.

They wore dresses with wide skirts and flounces, and queer low collars

and bonnets. And they talked in subdued voices--unlike so many women in

these days."

She was a little surprised, and moved, by the genuine feeling with which

he spoke.

"I was most fortunate to get the house," she answered. "And I have grown

to love it. Sometimes it seems as though I had always lived here."

"Then you don't envy that," he said, flinging his hand towards an opening

in the shrubbery which revealed a glimpse of one of the pilasters of the

palace across the way. The instinct of tradition which had been the cause

of Mrs. Forsythe's departure was in him, too. He, likewise, seemed to

belong to the little house as he took one of the wicker chairs.

"Not," said Honora, "when I can have this."

She was dressed in white, her background of lilac leaves. Seated on the

railing, with the tip of one toe resting on the porch, she smiled down at

him from under the shadows of her wide hat.

"I didn't think you would," he declared. "This place seems to suit you,

as I imagined you. I have thought of you often since we first met last

winter."

"Yes," she replied hastily, "I am very happy here. Mrs. Shorter tells me

you are staying with then."

"When I saw you again last night," he continued, ignoring her attempt to

divert the stream from his channel, I had a vivid impression as of having

just left you. Have you ever felt that way about people?"

"Yes," she admitted, and poked the toe of her boot with her parasol.

"And then I find you in this house, which has so many associations for

me. Harmoniously here," he added, "if you know what I mean. Not a

newcomer, but some one who must always have been logically expected."

She glanced at him quickly, with parted lips. It was she who had done

most of the talking at Mrs. Grainger's dinner; and the imaginative

quality of mind he was now revealing was unlooked for. She was surprised

not to find it out of character. It is a little difficult to know what

she expected of him, since she did not know herself the methods, perhaps;

of the Viking in Longfellow's poem. She was aware, at least, that she had

attracted him, and she was beginning to realize it was not a thing that

could be done lightly. This gave her a little flutter of fear.

"Are you going to be long in Newport?" she asked.

"I am leaving on Friday," he replied. "It seems strange to be here again

after so many years. I find I've got out of touch with it. And I haven't

a boat, although Farnham's been kind enough to offer me his."

"I can't imagine you, somehow, without a boat," she said, and added

hastily: "Mrs. Shorter was speaking of you this morning, and said that

you were always on the water when you were here. Newport must have been

quite different then."

He accepted the topic, and during the remainder of his visit she

succeeded in keeping the conversation in the middle ground, although she

had a sense of the ultimate futility of the effort; a sense of pressure

being exerted, no matter what she said. She presently discovered,

however, that the taste for literature attributed to him which had seemed

so incongruous--existed. He spoke with a new fire when she led him that

way, albeit she suspected that some of the fuel was derived from the

revelation that she shared his liking for books. As the extent of his

reading became gradually disclosed, however, her feeling of inadequacy

grew, and she resolved in the future to make better use of her odd

moments. On her table, in two green volumes, was the life of a

Massachusetts statesman that Mrs. Shorter had lent her. She picked it up

after Chiltern had gone. He had praised it.

He left behind him a blurred portrait on her mind, as that of two men

superimposed. And only that morning he had had such a distinct impression

of one. It was from a consideration of this strange phenomenon, with her

book lying open in her lap, that her maid aroused her to go to Mrs.

Pryor's. This was Tuesday.

Some of the modern inventions we deem most marvellous have been fitted

for ages to man and woman. Woman, particularly, possesses for instance a

kind of submarine bell; and, if she listens, she can at times hear it

tinkling faintly. And the following morning, Wednesday, Honora heard hers

when she received an invitation to lunch at Mrs. Shorter's. After a

struggle, she refused, but Mrs. Shorter called her up over the telephone,

and she yielded.

"I've got Alfred Dewing for myself," said Elsie Shorter, as she greeted

Honora in the hall. "He writes those very clever things--you've read

them. And Hugh for you," she added significantly.

The Shorter cottage, though commodious, was simplicity itself. From the

vine-covered pergola where they lunched they beheld the distant sea like

a lavender haze across the flats. And Honora wondered whether there were

not an element of truth in what Mr. Dewing said of their hostess--that

she thought nothing immoral except novels with happy endings. Chiltern

did not talk much: he looked at Honora.

"Hugh has got so serious," said Elsie Shorter, "that sometimes I'm

actually afraid of him. You ought to have done something to be as serious

as that, Hugh."

"Done something!"

"Written the 'Origin of Species,' or founded a new political party, or

executed a coup d'etat. Half the time I'm under the delusion that I'm

entertaining a celebrity under my roof, and I wake up and it's only

Hugh."

"It's because he looks as though he might do any of those things,"

suggested Mr. Deming. "Perhaps he may."

"Oh," said Elsie Shorter, "the men who do them are usually little wobbly

specimens."

Honora was silent, watching Chiltern. At times the completeness of her

understanding of him gave her an uncanny sensation; and again she failed

to comprehend him at all. She felt his anger go to a white heat, but the

others seemed blissfully unaware of the fact. The arrival of coffee made

a diversion.

"You and Hugh may have the pergola, Honora. I'll take Mr. Deming into the

garden."

"I really ought to go in a few minutes, Elsie," said Honora.

"What nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Shorter. "If it's bridge at the

Playfairs', I'll telephone and get you out of it."

"No--"

"Then I don't see where you can be going," declared Mrs. Shorter, and

departed with her cavalier.

"Why are you so anxious to get away?" asked Chiltern, abruptly.

Honora coloured.

"Oh--did I seem so? Elsie has such a mania for pairing people

off-sometimes it's quite embarrassing."

"She was a little rash in assuming that you'd rather talk to me," he

said, smiling.

"You were not consulted, either."

"I was consulted before lunch," he replied.

"You mean--?"

"I mean that I wanted you," he said. She had known it, of course. The

submarine bell had told her. And he could have found no woman in Newport

who would have brought more enthusiasm to his aid than Elsie Shorter.

"And you usually--get what you want," she retorted with a spark of

rebellion.

"Yes," he admitted. "Only hitherto I haven't wanted very desirable

things."

She laughed, but her curiosity got the better of her.

"Hitherto," she said, "you have just taken what you desired."

From the smouldering fires in his eyes darted an arrowpoint of flame.

"What kind of a man are you?" she asked, throwing the impersonal to the

winds. "Somebody called you a Viking once."

"Who?" he demanded.

"It doesn't matter. I'm beginning to think the name singularly

appropriate. It wouldn't be the first time one landed in Newport,

according to legend," she added.

"I haven't read the poem since childhood," said Chiltern, looking at her

fixedly, "but he became--domesticated, if I remember rightly."

"Yes," she admitted, "the impossible happened to him, as it usually does

in books. And then, circumstances helped. There were no other women."

"When the lady died," said Chiltern, "he fell upon his spear."

"The final argument for my theory," declared Honora.

"On the contrary," he maintained, smiling, "it proves there is always one

woman for every man--if he cars find her. If this man had lived in modern

times, he would probably have changed from a Captain Kidd into a useful

citizen of the kind you once said you admired."

"Is a woman necessary," she asked, "for the transformation?"

He looked at her so intently that she blushed to the hair clustering at

her temples. She had not meant that her badinage should go so deep.

"It was not a woman," he said slowly, "that brought me back to America."

"Oh," she exclaimed, suffused, "I hope you won't think that curiosity"

--and got no farther.

He was silent a moment, and when she ventured to glance up at him one of

those enigmatical changes had taken place. He was looking at her gravely,

though intently, and the Viking had disappeared.

"I wanted you to know," he answered. "You must have heard more or less

about me. People talk. Naturally these things haven't been repeated to

me, but I dare say many of them are true. I haven't been a saint, and I

don't pretend to be now. I've never taken the trouble to deceive any one.

And I've never cared, I'm sorry to say, what was said. But I'd like you

to believe that when I agreed with with the sentiments you expressed the

first time I saw you, I was sincere. And I am still sincere."

"Indeed, I do believe it!" cried Honora.

His face lighted.

"You seemed different from the other women I had known--of my generation,

at least," he went on steadily. "None of them could have spoken as you

did. I had just landed that morning, and I should have gone direct to

Grenoble, but there was some necessary business to be attended to in New

York. I didn't want to go to Bessie's dinner, but she insisted. She was

short of a man. I went. I sat next to you, and you interpreted my mind.

It seemed too extraordinary not to have had a significance."

Honora did not reply. She felt instinctively that he was a man who was

not wont ordinarily to talk about his affairs. Beneath his speech was an

undercurrent--or undertow, perhaps--carrying her swiftly, easily,

helpless into the deep waters of intimacy. For the moment she let herself

go without a struggle. Her silence was of a breathless quality which he

must have felt.

"And I am going to tell you why I came home," he said. "I have spoken of

it to nobody, but I wish you to know that it had nothing to do with any

ordinary complication these people may invent. Nor was there anything

supernatural about it: what happened to me, I suppose, is as old a story

as civilization itself. I'd been knocking about the world for a good many

years, and I'd had time to think. One day I found myself in the interior

of China with a few coolies and a man who I suspect was a ticket-of-leave

Englishman. I can see the place now the yellow fog, the sand piled up

against the wall like yellow snow. Desolation was a mild name for it. I

think I began with a consideration of the Englishman who was asleep in

the shadow of a tower. There was something inconceivably hopeless in his

face in that ochre light. Then the place where I was born and brought up

came to me with a startling completeness, and I began to go over my own

life, step by step. To make a long story short, I perceived that what my

father had tried to teach me, in his own way, had some reason in it. He

was a good deal of a man. I made up my mind I'd come home and start in

where I belonged. But I didn't do so right away--I finished the trip

first, and lent the Englishman a thousand pounds to buy into a firm in

Shanghai. I suppose," he added, "that is what is called suggestion. In my

case it was merely the cumulative result of many reflections in waste

places."

"And since then?"

"Since then I have been at Grenoble, making repairs and trying to learn

something about agriculture. I've never been as happy in my life."

"And you're going back on Friday," she said.

He glanced at her quickly. He had detected the note in her speech: though

lightly uttered, it was unmistakably a command. She tried to soften its

effect in her next sentence.

"I can't express how much I appreciate your telling me this," she said.

"I'll confess to you I wished to think that something of that kind had

happened. I wished to believe that--that you had made this determination

alone. When I met you that night there was something about you I couldn't

account for. I haven't been able to account for it until now."

She paused, confused, fearful that she had gone too far. A moment later

she was sure of it. A look came into his eyes that frightened her.

"You've thought of me?" he said.

"You must know," she replied, "that you have an unusual personality--a

striking one. I can go so far as to say that I remembered you when you

reappeared at Mrs. Grenfell's--" she hesitated.

He rose, and walked to the far end of the tiled pavement of the pergola,

and stood for a moment looking out over the sea. Then he turned to her.

"I either like a person or I don't," he said. "And I tell you frankly I

have never met a woman whom I cared for as I do you. I hope you're not

going to insist upon a probationary period of months before you decide

whether you can reciprocate."

Here indeed was a speech in his other character, and she seemed to see,

in a flash, his whole life in it. There was a touch of boyishness that

appealed, a touch of insistent masterfulness that alarmed. She recalled

that Mrs. Shorter had said of him that he had never had to besiege a

fortress--the white flag had always appeared too quickly. Of course there

was the mystery of Mrs. Maitland--still to be cleared up. It was plain,

at least, that resistance merely made him unmanageable. She smiled.

"It seems to me," she said, "that in two days we have become

astonishingly intimate."

"Why shouldn't we?" he demanded.

But she was not to be led into casuistry.

"I've been reading the biography you recommended," she said.

He continued to look at her a moment, and laughed as he sat down beside

her. Later he walked home with her. A dinner and bridge followed, and it

was after midnight when she returned. As her maid unfastened her gown she

perceived that her pincushion had been replaced by the one she had

received at the ball.

"Did you put that there, Mathilde?" she asked.

Mathilde had. She had seen it on madame's bureau, and thought madame

wished it there. She would replace the old one at once.

"No," said Honora, "you may leave it, now."

"Bien, madame," said the maid, and glanced at her mistress, who appeared

to have fallen into a revery.

It had seemed strange to her to hear people talking about him at the

dinner that night, and once or twice her soul had sprung to arms to

champion him, only to remember that her knowledge was special. She alone

of all of them understood, and she found herself exulting in the

superiority. The amazed comment when the heir to the Chiltern fortune had

returned to the soil of his ancestors had been revived on his arrival in

Newport. Ned Carrington, amid much laughter, had quoted the lines about

Prince Hal:

"To mock the expectations of the world,

To frustrate prophecies."

Honora disliked Mr. Carrington.

Perhaps the events of Thursday, would better be left in the confusion in

which they remained in Honora's mind. She was awakened by penetrating,

persistent, and mournful notes which for some time she could not

identify, although they sounded oddly familiar; and it was not until she

felt the dampness of the coverlet and looked at the white square of her

open windows that she realized there was a fog. And it had not lifted

when Chiltern came in the afternoon. They discussed literature--but the

book had fallen to the floor. 'Absit omen'! If printing had then been

invented, undoubtedly there would have been a book instead of an apple in

the third chapter of Genesis. He confided to her his plan of collecting

his father's letters and of writing the General's life. Honora, too,

would enjoy writing a book. Perhaps the thought of the pleasure of

collaboration occurred to them both at once; it was Chiltern who wished

that he might have her help in the difficult places; she had, he felt,

the literary instinct. It was not the Viking who was talking now. And

then, at last, he had risen reluctantly to leave. The afternoon had

flown. She held out her hand with a frank smile.

"Good-by," she said. "Good-by, and good luck."

"But I may not go," he replied.

She stood dismayed.

"I thought you told me you were going on Friday--to-morrow."

"I merely set that as a probable date. I have changed my mind. There is

no immediate necessity. Do you wish me to go?" he demanded.

She had turned away, and was straightening the books on the table.

"Why should I?" she said.

"You wouldn't object to my remaining a few days more?" He had reached the

doorway.

"What have I to do with your staying?" she asked.

"Everything," he answered--and was gone.

She stood still. The feeling that possessed her now was rebellion, and

akin to hate.

Her conduct, therefore, becomes all the more incomprehensible when we

find her accepting, the next afternoon, his invitation to sail on Mr.

Farnham's yacht, the 'Folly'. It is true that the gods will not exonerate

Mrs. Shorter. That lady, who had been bribed with Alfred Dewing, used her

persuasive powers; she might be likened to a skilful artisan who blew

wonderful rainbow fabrics out of glass without breaking it; she blew the

tender passion into a thousand shapes, and admired every one. Her

criminal culpability consisted in forgetting the fact that it could not

be trusted with children.

Nature seems to delight in contrasts. As though to atone for the fog she

sent a dazzling day out of the northwest, and the summer world was

stained in new colours. The yachts were whiter, the water bluer, the

grass greener; the stern grey rocks themselves flushed with purple. The

wharves were gay, and dark clustering foliage hid an enchanted city as

the Folly glided between dancing buoys. Honora, with a frightened glance

upward at the great sail, caught her breath. And she felt rather than saw

the man beside her guiding her seaward.

A discreet expanse of striped yellow deck separated them from the wicker

chairs where Mrs. Shorter and Mr. Dewing were already established. She

glanced at the profile of the Viking, and allowed her mind to dwell for

an instant upon the sensations of that other woman who had been snatched

up and carried across the ocean. Which was the quality in him that

attracted her? his lawlessness, or his intellect and ambition? Never, she

knew, had he appealed to her more than at this moment, when he stood, a

stern figure at the wheel, and vouchsafed her nothing but commonplaces.

This, surely, was his element.

Presently, however, the yacht slid out from the infolding land into an

open sea that stretched before them to a silver-lined horizon. And he

turned to her with a disconcerting directness, as though taking for

granted a subtle understanding between them.

"How well you sail," she said, hurriedly.

"I ought to be able to do that, at least," he declared.

"I saw you when you came in the other day, although I didn't know who it

was until afterwards. I was standing on the rocks near the Fort, and my

heart was in my mouth."

He answered that the Dolly was a good sea boat.

"So you decided to forgive me," he said.

"For what?"

"For staying in Newport."

Before accepting the invitation she had formulated a policy, cheerfully

confident in her ability to carry it out. For his decision not to leave

Newport had had an opposite effect upon her than that she had

anticipated; it had oddly relieved the pressure. It had given her a

chance to rally her forces; to smile, indeed, at an onslaught that had so

disturbed her; to examine the matter in a more rational light. It had

been a cause for self-congratulation that she had scarcely thought of him

the night before. And to-day, in her blue veil and blue serge gown, she

had boarded the 'Folly' with her wits about her. She forgot that it was

he who, so to speak, had the choice of ground and weapons.

"I have forgiven you. Why shouldn't I, when you have so royally atoned."

But he obstinately refused to fence. There was nothing apologetic in this

man, no indirectness in his method of attack. Parry adroitly as she

might, he beat down her guard. As the afternoon wore on there were

silences, when Honora, by staring over the waters, tried to collect her

thoughts. But the sea was his ally, and she turned her face appealingly

toward the receding land. Fascination and fear struggled within her as

she had listened to his onslaughts, and she was conscious of being moved

by what he was, not by what he said. Vainly she glanced at the two

representatives of an ironically satisfied convention, only to realize

that they were absorbed in a milder but no less entrancing aspect of the

same topic, and would not thank her for an interruption.

"Do you wish me to go away?" he asked at last abruptly, almost rudely.

"Surely," she said, "your work, your future isn't in Newport."

"You haven't answered my question."

"It's because I have no right to answer it," she replied. "Although we

have known each other so short a time, I am your friend. You must realize

that. I am not conventional. I have lived long enough to understand that

the people one likes best are not necessarily those one has known

longest. You interest me--I admit it frankly--I speak to you sincerely. I

am even concerned that you shall find happiness, and I feel that you have

the power to make something of yourself. What more can I say? It seems to

me a little strange," she added, "that under the circumstances I should

say so much. I can give no higher proof of my friendship."

He did not reply, but gave a sharp order to the crew. The sheet was

shortened, and the Folly obediently headed westward against the swell,

flinging rainbows from her bows as she ran. Mrs. Shorter and Dewing

returned at this moment from the cabin, where they had been on a tour of

inspection.

"Where are you taking us, Hugh?" said Mrs. Shorter. "Nowhere in

particular," he replied.

"Please don't forget that I am having people to dinner to-night. That's

all I ask. What have you done to him, Honora, to put him in such a

humour?"

Honora laughed.

"I hadn't noticed anything peculiar about him," she answered.

"This boat reminds me of Adele," said Mrs. Shorter. "She loved it. I can

see how she could get a divorce from Dicky--but the 'Folly'! She told me

yesterday that the sight of it made her homesick, and Eustace Rindge

won't leave Paris."

It suddenly occurred to Honora, as she glanced around the yacht, that

Mrs. Rindge rather haunted her.

"So that is your answer," said Chiltern, when they were alone again.

"What other can I give you?"

"Is it because you are married?" he demanded.

She grew crimson.

"Isn't that an unnecessary question?"

"No," he declared. "It concerns me vitally to understand you. You were

good enough to wish that I should find happiness. I have found the

possibility of it--in you."

"Oh," she cried, "don't say such things!"

"Have you found happiness?" he asked.

She turned her face from him towards their shining wake. But he had seen

that her eyes were filled with sudden tears.

"Forgive me," he pleaded; "I did not mean to be brutal. I said that

because I felt as I have never in my life felt before. As I did not know

I could feel. I can't account for it, but I ask you to believe me."

"I can account for it," she answered presently, with a strange

gentleness. "It is because you met me at a critical time.

Such-coincidences often occur in life. I happened to be a woman; and, I

confess it, a woman who was interested. I could not have been interested

if you had been less real, less sincere. But I saw that you were going

through a crisis; that you might, with your powers, build up your life

into a splendid and useful thing. And, womanlike, my instinct was to help

you. I should not have allowed you to go on, but--but it all happened so

quickly that I was bewildered. I--I do not understand it myself."

He listened hungrily, and yet at times with evident impatience.

"No," he said, "I cannot believe that it was an accident. It was you--"

She stopped him with an imploring gesture.

"Please," she said, "please let us go in."

Without an instant's hesitation he brought the sloop about and headed her

for the light-ship on Brenton's reef, and they sailed in silence. Awhile

she watched the sapphire waters break to dazzling whiteness under the

westerning sun. Then, in an ecstasy she did not seek to question, she

closed her eyes to feel more keenly the swift motion of their flight. Why

not? The sea, the winds of heaven, had aided others since the dawn of

history. Legend was eternally true. On these very shores happiness had

awaited those who had dared to face primeval things.

She looked again, this time towards an unpeopled shore. No sentinel

guarded the uncharted reefs, and the very skies were smiling, after the

storm, at the scudding fates.

It was not until they were landlocked once more, and the Folly was

reluctantly beating back through the Narrows, that he spoke again.

"So you wish me to go away?"

"I cannot see any use in your staying," she replied, "after what you have

said. I--cannot see," she added in a low voice, "that for you to remain

would be to promote the happiness of--either of us. You should have gone

to-day."

"You care!" he exclaimed.

"It is because I do not wish to care that I tell you to go--"

"And you refuse happiness?"

"It could be happiness for neither of us," said Honora. "The situation

would be impossible. You are not a man who would be satisfied with

moderation. You would insist upon having all. And you do not know what

you are asking."

"I know that I want you," he said, "and that my life is won or lost with

or without you."

You have no right to say such a thing."

"We have each of us but one life to live."

"And one life to ruin," she answered. "See, you are running on the

rocks!"

He swung the boat around.

"Others have rebuilt upon ruins," he declared.

She smiled at him.

"But you are taking my ruins for granted," she said. "You would make them

first."

He relapsed into silence again. The Folly needed watching. Once he turned

and spoke her name, and she did not rebuke him.

"Women have a clearer vision of the future than men," she began

presently, "and I know you better than you know yourself. What--what you

desire would not mend your life, but break it utterly. I am speaking

plainly. As I have told you, you interest me; so far that is the extent

of my feelings. I do not know whether they would go any farther, but on

your account as well as my own I will not take the risk. We have come to

an impasse. I am sorry. I wish we might have been friends, but what you

have said makes it impossible. There is only one thing to do, and that is

for you to go away."

He eased off his sheet, rounded the fort, and set a course for the

moorings. The sun hung red above the silhouetted roofs of Conanicut, and

a quaint tower in the shape of a minaret stood forth to cap the illusions

of a day.

The wind was falling, the harbour quieting for the night, and across the

waters, to the tones of a trumpet, the red bars of the battleship's flag

fluttered to the deck. The Folly, making a wide circle, shot into the

breeze, and ended by gliding gently up to the buoy.

CHAPTER V

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

It was Saturday morning, but Honora had forgotten the fact. Not until she

was on the bottom step did the odour of cigarettes reach her and turn her

faint; and she clutched suddenly at the banisters. Thus she stood for a

while, motionless, and then went quietly into the drawing-room. The

French windows looking out on the porch were, as usual, open.

It was an odd sensation thus to be regarding one's husband objectively.

For the first time he appeared to her definitely as a stranger; as much a

stranger as the man who came once a week to wind Mrs. Forsythe's clocks.

Nay, more. There was a sense of intrusion in this visit, of invasion of a

life with which he had nothing to do. She examined him ruthlessly, very

much as one might examine a burglar taken unawares. There was the

inevitable shirt with the wide pink stripes, of the abolishment or even

of the effective toning down of which she had long since despaired. On

the contrary, like his complexion, they evinced a continual tendency

towards a more aggressive colour. There was also the jewelled ring, now

conspicuously held aloft on a fat little finger. The stripes appeared

that morning as the banner of a hated suzerain, the ring as the emblem of

his overlordship. He did not belong in that house; everything in it cried

out for his removal; and yet it was, in the eyes of the law at least,

his. By grace of that fact she was here, enjoying it. At that instant, as

though in evidence of this, he laid down a burning cigarette on a

mahogany stand he had had brought out to him. Honora seized an ash tray,

hurried to the porch, and picked up the cigarette in the tips of her

fingers.

"Howard, I wish you would be more careful of Mrs. Forsythe's furniture,"

she exclaimed.

"Hello, Honora," he said, without looking up. "I see by the Newport paper

that old Maitland is back from Europe. Things are skyrocketing in Wall

Street." He glanced at the ash tray, which she had pushed towards him.

"What's the difference about the table? If the old lady makes a row, I'll

pay for it."

"Some things are priceless," she replied; "you do not seem to realize

that."

"Not this rubbish," said Howard. "Judging by the fuss she made over the

inventory, you'd think it might be worth something."

"She has trusted us with it," said Honora. Her voice shook.

He stared at her.

"I never saw you look like that," he declared.

"It's because you never look at me closely," she answered.

He laughed, and resumed his reading. She stood awhile by the railing.

Across the way, beyond the wall, she heard Mr. Chamberlin's shrill voice

berating a gardener.

"Howard," she asked presently, "why do you come to Newport at all?"

"Why do I come to Newport?" he repeated. "I don't understand you."

"Why do you come up here every week?"

"Well," he said, "it isn't a bad trip on the boat, and I get a change

from New York; and see men I shouldn't probably see otherwise." He paused

and looked at her again, doubtfully. "Why do you ask such a question?"

"I wished to be sure," said Honora.

"Sure of what?"

"That the-arrangement suited you perfectly. You do not feel--the lack of

anything, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You wouldn't care to stay in Newport all the time?"

"Not if I know myself," he replied. "I leave that part of it to you."

"What part of it?" she demanded.

"You ought to know. You do it pretty well," he laughed. "By the way,

Honora, I've got to have a conference with Mr. Wing to-day, and I may not

be home to lunch."

"We're dining there to-night," she told him, in a listless voice.

Upon Ethel Wing had descended the dominating characteristics of the elder

James, who, whatever the power he might wield in Wall Street, was little

more than a visitor in Newport. It was Ethel's house, from the hour she

had swept the Reel and Carter plans (which her father had brought home)

from the table and sent for Mr. Farwell. The forehanded Reginald arrived

with a sketch, and the result, as every one knows, is one of the chief

monuments to his reputation. So exquisitely proportioned is its simple,

two-storied marble front as seen through the trees left standing on the

old estate, that tourists, having beheld the Chamberlin and other

mansions, are apt to think this niggardly for a palace. Two infolding

wings, stretching towards the water, enclose a court, and through the

slender white pillars of the peristyle one beholds in fancy the summer

seas of Greece.

Looking out on the court, and sustaining this classic illusion, is a

marble-paved dining room, with hangings of Pompeiian red, and frescoes of

nymphs and satyrs and piping shepherds, framed between fluted pilasters,

dimly discernible in the soft lights.

In the midst of these surroundings, at the head of his table, sat the

great financier whose story but faintly concerns this chronicle; the man

who, every day that he had spent down town in New York in the past thirty

years, had eaten the same meal in the same little restaurant under the

street. This he told Honora, on his left, as though it were not history.

He preferred apple pie to the greatest of artistic triumphs of his

daughter's chef, and had it; a glorified apple pie, with frills and

furbelows, and whipped cream which he angrily swept to one side with

contempt.

"That isn't apple pie," he said. "I'd like to take that Frenchman to the

little New England hilltown where I went to school and show him what

apple pie is."

Such were the autobiographical snatches--by no means so crude as they

sound that reached her intelligence from time to time. Mr. Wing was too

subtle to be crude; and he had married a Playfair, a family noted for

good living. Honora did not know that he was fond of talking of that

apple pie and the New England school at public banquets; nor did Mr. Wing

suspect that the young woman whom he was apparently addressing, and who

seemed to be hanging on his words, was not present.

It was not until she had put her napkin on the table that she awoke with

a start and gazed into his face and saw written there still another

history than the one he had been telling her. The face was hidden,

indeed, by the red beard. What she read was in the little eyes that swept

her with a look of possession: possession in a large sense, let it be

emphasized, that an exact justice be done Mr. James Wing,--she was one of

the many chattels over which his ownership extended; bought and paid for

with her husband. A hot resentment ran through her at the thought.

Mr. Cuthbert, who was many kinds of a barometer, sought her out later in

the courtyard.

"Your husband's feeling tiptop, isn't he?" said he.

"He's been locked up with old Wing all day. Something's in the wind, and

I'd give a good deal to know what it is."

"I'm afraid I can't inform you," replied Honora.

Mr. Cuthbert apologized.

"Oh, I didn't mean to ask you far a tip," he declared, quite confused. "I

didn't suppose you knew. The old man is getting ready to make another

killing, that's all. You don't mind my telling you you look stunning

tonight, do you?"

Honora smiled.

"No, I don't mind," she said.

Mr. Cuthbert appeared to be ransacking the corners of his brain for

words.

"I was watching you to-night at the table while Mr. Wing was talking to

you. I don't believe you heard a thing he said."

"Such astuteness," she answered, smiling at him, "astounds me."

He laughed nervously.

"You're different than you've ever been since I've known you," he went

on, undismayed. "I hope you won't think I'm making love to you. Not that

I shouldn't like to, but I've got sense enough to see it's no use."

Her reply was unexpected.

"What makes you think that?" she asked curiously.

"Oh, I'm not a fool," said Mr. Cuthbert. "But if I were a poet, or that

fellow Dewing, I might be able to tell you what your eyes were like

to-night."

"I'm glad you're not," said Honora.

As they were going in, she turned for a lingering look at the sea. A

strong young moon rode serenely in the sky and struck a path of light

across the restless waters. Along this shimmering way the eyes of her

companion followed hers.

"I can tell you what that colour is, at least. Do you remember the blue,

transparent substance that used to be on favours at children's parties?"

he asked. "There were caps inside of them, and crackers."

"I believe you are a poet, after all," she said.

A shadow fell across the flags. Honora did not move.

"Hello, Chiltern," said Cuthbert. "I thought you were playing bridge..."

"You haven't looked at me once to-night," he said, when Cuthbert had gone

in.

She was silent.

"Are you angry?"

"Yes, a little," she answered. "Do you blame me?"

The vibration of his voice in the moonlit court awoke an answering chord

in her; and a note of supplication from him touched her strangely. Logic

in his presence was a little difficult--there can be no doubt of that.

"I must go in," she said unsteadily, "my carriage is waiting."

But he stood in front of her.

"I should have thought you would have gone," she said.

"I wanted to see you again."

"And now?"

"I can't leave while you feel this way," he pleaded. "I can't abandon

what I have of you--what you will let me take. If I told you I would be

reasonable--"

"I don't believe in miracles," she said, recovering a little; "at least

in modern ones. The question is, could you become reasonable?"

"As a last resort," he replied, with a flash of humour and a touch of

hope. "If you would--commute my sentence."

She passed him, and picking up her skirts, paused in the window.

"I will give you one more chance," she said.

This was the conversation that, by repeating itself, filled the interval

of her drive home. So oblivious was she to Howard's presence, that he

called her twice from her corner of the carriage after the vehicle had

stopped; and he halted her by seizing her arm as she was about to go up

the stairs. She followed him mechanically into the drawing-room.

He closed the door behind them, and the other door into the darkened

dining room. He even took a precautionary glance out of the window of the

porch. And these movements, which ordinarily might have aroused her

curiosity, if not her alarm, she watched with a profound indifference. He

took a stand before the Japanese screen in front of the fireplace, thrust

his hands in his pockets, cleared his throat, and surveyed her from her

white shoulders to the gold-embroidered tips of her slippers.

"I'm leaving for the West in the morning, Honora. If you've made any

arrangements for me on Sunday, you'll have to cancel them. I may be gone

two weeks, I may be gone a month. I don't know."

"Yes," she said.

"I'm going to tell you something those fellows in the smoking room

to-night did their best to screw out of me. If you say anything about it,

all's up between me and Wing. The fact that he picked me out to engineer

the thing, and that he's going to let me in if I push it through, is a

pretty good sign that he thinks something of my business ability, eh?"

"You'd better not tell me, Howard," she said.

"You're too clever to let it out," he assured her; and added with a

chuckle: "If it goes through, order what you like. Rent a house on

Bellevue Avenue--any thing in reason."

"What is it?" she asked, with a sudden premonition that the thing had a

vital significance for her.

"It's the greatest scheme extant," he answered with elation. "I won't go

into details--you wouldn't understand'em. Mr. Wing and some others have

tried the thing before, nearer home, and it worked like a charm. Street

railways. We buy up the little lines for nothing, and get an interest in

the big ones, and sell the little lines for fifty times what they cost

us, and guarantee big dividends for the big lines."

"It sounds to me," said Honora, slowly, "as though some one would get

cheated."

"Some one get cheated!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Every one gets cheated,

as you call it, if they haven't enough sense to know what their

property's worth, and how to use it to the best advantage. It's a case,"

he announced, "of the survival of the fittest. Which reminds me that if

I'm going to be fit to-morrow I'd better go to bed. Mr. Wing's to take me

to New York on his yacht, and you've got to have your wits about you when

you talk to the old man."

A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill

Volume 6.

CHAPTER VI

CLIO, OR THALIA?

According to the ordinary and inaccurate method of measuring time, a

fortnight may have gone by since the event last narrated, and Honora had

tasted at last the joys of authorship. Her name was not to appear, to be

sure, on the cover of the Life and Letters of General Angus Chiltern; nor

indeed, so far, had she written so much as a chapter or a page of a work

intended to inspire young and old with the virtues of citizenship. At

present the biography was in the crucial constructive stage. Should the

letters be put in one volume, and the life in another? or should the

letters be inserted in the text of the life? or could not there be a

third and judicious mixture of both of these methods? Honora's counsel on

this and other problems was, it seems, invaluable. Her own table was

fairly littered with biographies more or less famous which had been

fetched from the library, and the method of each considered.

Even as Mr. Garrick would never have been taken for an actor in his coach

and four, so our heroine did not in the least resemble George Eliot, for

instance, as she sat before her mirror at high noon with Monsieur Cadron

and her maid Mathilde in worshipful attendance. Some of the ladies,

indeed, who have left us those chatty memoirs of the days before the

guillotine, she might have been likened to. Monsieur Cadron was an

artist, and his branch of art was hair-dressing. It was by his own wish

he was here to-day, since he had conceived a new coiffure especially

adapted, he declared, to the type of Madame Spence. Behold him declaring

ecstatically that seldom in his experience had he had such hairs to work

with.

"Avec une telle chevelure, l'on peut tout faire, madame. Etre simple,

c'est le comble de l'art. Ca vous donne," he added, with clasped hands

and a step backward, "ca vous donne tout a fait l'air d'une dame de

Nattier."

Madame took the hand-glass, and did not deny that she was eblouissante.

If madame, suggested Monsieur Cadron, had but a little dress a la Marie

Antoinette? Madame had, cried madame's maid, running to fetch one with

little pink flowers and green leaves on an ecru ground. Could any

coiffure or any gown be more appropriate for an entertainment at which

Clio was to preside?

It is obviously impossible that a masterpiece should be executed under

the rules laid down by convention. It would never be finished. Mr.

Chiltern was coming to lunch, and it was not the first time. On her

appearance in the doorway he halted abruptly in his pacing of the

drawing-room, and stared at her.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting," she said.

"It was worth it," he said. And they entered the dining room. A subdued,

golden-green light came in through the tall glass doors that opened out

on the little garden which had been Mrs. Forsythe's pride. The scent of

roses was in the air, and a mass of them filled a silver bowl in the

middle of the table. On the dark walls were Mrs. Forsythe's precious

prints, and above the mantel a portrait of a thin, aristocratic gentleman

who resembled the poet Tennyson. In the noonday shadows of a recess was a

dark mahogany sideboard loaded with softly gleaming silver--Honora's.

Chiltern sat down facing her. He looked at Honora over the roses,--and

she looked at him. A sense of unreality that was, paradoxically, stronger

than reality itself came over her, a sense of fitness, of harmony. And

for the moment an imagination, ever straining at its leash, was allowed

to soar. It was Chiltern who broke the silence.

"What a wonderful bowl!" he said.

"It has been in my father's family a great many years. He was very fond

of it," she answered, and with a sudden, impulsive movement she reached

over and set the bowl aside.

"That's better," he declared, "much as I admire the bowl, and the roses."

She coloured faintly, and smiled. The feast of reason that we are

impatiently awaiting is deferred. It were best to attempt to record the

intangible things; the golden-green light, the perfumes, and the faint

musical laughter which we can hear if we listen. Thalia's laughter,

surely, not Clio's. Thalia, enamoured with such a theme, has taken the

stage herself--and as Vesta, goddess of hearths. It was Vesta whom they

felt to be presiding. They lingered, therefore, over the coffee, and

Chiltern lighted a cigar. He did not smoke cigarettes.

"I've lived long enough," he said, "to know that I have never lived at

all. There is only one thing in life worth having."

"What is it?" asked Honora.

"This," he answered, with a gesture; "when it is permanent."

She smiled.

"And how is one to know whether it would be--permanent?"

"Through experience and failure," he answered quickly, "we learn to

distinguish the reality when it comes. It is unmistakable."

"Suppose it comes too late?" she said, forgetting the ancient verse

inscribed in her youthful diary: "Those who walk on ice will slide

against their wills."

"To admit that is to be a coward," he declared.

"Such a philosophy may be fitting for a man," she replied, "but for a

woman--"

"We are no longer in the dark ages," he interrupted. "Every one, man or

woman, has the right to happiness. There is no reason why we should

suffer all our lives for a mistake."

"A mistake!" she echoed.

"Certainly," he said. "It is all a matter of luck, or fate, or whatever

you choose to call it. Do you suppose, if I could have found fifteen

years ago the woman to have made me happy, I should have spent so much

time in seeking distraction?"

"Perhaps you could not have been capable of appreciating her--fifteen

years ago," suggested Honora. And, lest he might misconstrue her remark,

she avoided his eyes.

"Perhaps," he admitted. "But suppose I have found her now, when I know

the value of things."

"Suppose you should find her now--within a reasonable time. What would

you do?"

"Marry her," he exclaimed promptly. "Marry her and take her to Grenoble,

and live the life my father lived before me."

She did not reply, but rose, and he followed her to the shaded corner of

the porch where they usually sat. The bundle of yellow-stained envelopes

he had brought were lying on the table, and Honora picked them up

mechanically.

"I have been thinking," she said as she removed the elastics, "that it is

a mistake to begin a biography by the enumeration of one's ancestors.

Readers become frightfully bored before they get through the first

chapter."

"I'm beginning to believe," he laughed, "that you will have to write this

one alone. All the ideas I have got so far have been yours. Why shouldn't

you write it, and I arrange the material, and talk about it! That appears

to be all I'm good for."

If she allowed her mind to dwell on the vista he thus presented, she did

not betray herself.

"Another thing," she said, "it should be written like fiction."

"Like fiction?"

"Fact should be written like fiction, and fiction like fact. It's

difficult to express what I mean. But this life of your father deserves

to be widely known, and it should be entertainingly done, like Lockhart,

or Parton's works--"

An envelope fell to the floor, spilling its contents. Among them were

several photographs.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "how beautiful! What place is this?"

"I hadn't gone over these letters," he answered. "I only got them

yesterday from Cecil Grainger. These are some pictures of Grenoble which

must leave been taken shortly before my father died."

She gazed in silence at the old house half hidden by great maples and

beeches, their weighted branches sweeping the ground. The building was of

wood, painted white, and through an archway of verdure one saw the

generous doorway with its circular steps, with its fan-light above, and

its windows at the side. Other quaint windows, some of them of triple

width, suggested an interior of mystery and interest.

"My great-great-grandfather, Alexander Chiltern, built it," he said, "on

land granted to him before the Revolution. Of course the house has been

added to since then, but the simplicity of the original has always been

kept. My father put on the conservatory, for instance," and Chiltern

pointed to a portion at the end of one of the long low wings. "He got the

idea from the orangery of a Georgian house in England, and an English

architect designed it."

Honora took up the other photographs. One of them, over which she

lingered, was of a charming, old-fashioned garden spattered with

sunlight, and shut out from the world by a high brick wall. Behind the

wall, again, were the dense masses of the trees, and at the end of a path

between nodding foxgloves and Canterbury bells, in a curved recess, a

stone seat.

She turned her face. His was at her shoulder.

"How could you ever have left it?" she asked reproachfully.

She voiced his own regrets, which the crowding memories had awakened.

"I don't know," he answered, not without emotion. "I have often asked

myself that question." He crossed over to the railing of the porch, swung

about, and looked at her. Her eyes were still on the picture. "I can

imagine you in that garden," he said.

Did the garden cast the spell by which she saw herself on the seat? or

was it Chiltern's voice? She would indeed love and cherish it. And was it

true that she belonged there, securely infolded within those peaceful

walls? How marvellously well was Thalia playing her comedy! Which was the

real, and which the false? What of true value, what of peace and security

was contained in her present existence? She had missed the meaning of

things, and suddenly it was held up before her, in a garden.

A later hour found them in Honora's runabout wandering northward along

quiet country roads on the eastern side of the island. Chiltern, who was

driving, seemed to take no thought of their direction, until at last,

with an exclamation, he stopped the horse; and Honora beheld an abandoned

mansion of a bygone age sheltered by ancient trees, with wide lands

beside it sloping to the water.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Beaulieu," he replied. "It was built in the seventeenth century, I

believe, and must have been a fascinating place in colonial days." He

drove in between the fences and tied the horse, and came around by the

side of the runabout. "Won't you get out and look at it?"

She hesitated, and their eyes met as he held out his hand, but she

avoided it and leaped quickly to the ground neither spoke as they walked

around the deserted house and gazed at the quaint facade, broken by a

crumbling, shaded balcony let in above the entrance door. No sound broke

the stillness of the summer's day--a pregnant stillness. The air was

heavy with perfumes, and the leaves formed a tracery against the

marvellous blue of the sky. Mystery brooded in the place. Here, in this

remote paradise now in ruins, people had dwelt and loved. Thought ended

there; and feeling, which is unformed thought, began. Again she glanced

at him, and again their eyes met, and hers faltered. They turned, as with

one consent, down the path toward the distant water. Paradise overgrown!

Could it be reconstructed, redeemed?

In former days the ground they trod had been a pleasance the width of the

house, bordered, doubtless, by the forest. Trees grew out of the flower

beds now, and underbrush choked the paths. The box itself, that once

primly lined the alleys, was gnarled and shapeless. Labyrinth had

replaced order, nature had reaped her vengeance. At length, in the

deepening shade, they came, at what had been the edge of the old terrace,

to the daintiest of summer-houses, crumbling too, the shutters off their

hinges, the floor-boards loose. Past and gone were the idyls of which it

had been the stage.

They turned to the left, through tangled box that wound hither and

thither, until they stopped at a stone wall bordering a tree-arched lane.

At the bottom of the lane was a glimpse of blue water.

Honora sat down on the wall with her back to a great trunk. Chiltern,

with a hand on the stones, leaped over lightly, and stood for some

moments in the lane, his feet a little apart and firmly planted, his

hands behind his back.

What had Thalia been about to allow the message of that morning to creep

into her comedy? a message announcing the coming of an intruder not in

the play, in the person of a husband bearing gifts. What right had he, in

the eternal essence of things, to return? He was out of all time and

place. Such had been her feeling when she had first read the hastily

written letter, but even when she had burned it it had risen again from

the ashes. Anything but that! In trying not to think of it, she had

picked up the newspaper, learned of a railroad accident,--and shuddered.

Anything but his return! Her marriage was a sin,--there could be no

sacrament in it. She would flee first, and abandon all rather than submit

to it.

Chiltern's step aroused her now. He came back to the wall where she was

sitting, and faced her.

"You are sad," he said.

She shook her head at him, slowly, and tried to smile.

"What has happened?" he demanded rudely. "I can't bear to see you sad."

"I am going away," she said. The decision had suddenly come to her. Why

had she not seen before that it was inevitable?

He seized her wrist as it lay on the wall, and she winced from the sudden

pain of his grip.

"Honora, I love you," he said, "I must have you--I will have you. I will

make you happy. I promise it on my soul. I can't, I won't live without

you."

She did not listen to his words--she could not have repeated them

afterwards. The very tone of his voice was changed by passion; creation

spoke through him, and she heard and thrilled and swayed and soared,

forgetting heaven and earth and hell as he seized her in his arms and

covered her face with kisses. Thus Eric the Red might have wooed. And by

what grace she spoke the word that delivered her she never knew. As

suddenly as he had seized her he released her, and she stood before him

with flaming cheeks and painful breath.

"I love you," he said, "I love you. I have searched the world for you and

found you, and by all the laws of God you are mine."

And love was written in her eyes. He had but to read it there, though her

lips might deny it. This was the man of all men she would have chosen,

and she was his by right of conquest. Yet she held up her hand with a

gesture of entreaty.

"No, Hugh--it cannot be," she said.

"Cannot!" he cried. "I will take you. You love me."

"I am married."

"Married! Do you mean that you would let that man stand between you and

happiness?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, in a frightened voice.

"Just what I say," he cried, with incredible vehemence. "Leave him

--divorce him. You cannot live with him. He isn't worthy to touch your

hand."

The idea planted itself with the force of a barbed arrow from a

strong-bow. Struggle as she might, she could not henceforth extract it.

"Oh!" she cried.

He took her arm, gently, and forced her to sit down on the wall. Such was

the completeness of his mastery that she did not resist. He sat down

beside her.

"Listen, Honora," he said, and tried to speak calmly, though his voice

was still vibrant; "let us look the situation in the face. As I told you

once, the days of useless martyrdom are past. The world is more

enlightened today, and recognizes an individual right to happiness."

"To happiness," she repeated after him, like a child. He forgot his words

as he looked into her eyes: they were lighted as with all the candles of

heaven in his honour.

"Listen," he said hoarsely, and his fingers tightened on her arm.

The current running through her from him made her his instrument. Did he

say the sky was black, she would have exclaimed at the discovery.

"Yes--I am listening."

"Honora!"

"Hugh," she answered, and blinded him. He was possessed by the tragic

fear that she was acting a dream; presently she would awake--and shatter

the universe. His dominance was too complete.

"I love you--I respect you. You are making it very hard for me. Please

try to understand what I am saying," he cried almost fiercely. "This

thing, this miracle, has happened in spite of us. Henceforth you belong

to me--do you hear?"

Once more the candles flared up.

"We cannot drift. We must decide now upon some definite action. Our lives

are our own, to make as we choose. You said you were going away. And you

meant--alone?"

The eyes were wide, now, with fright.

"Oh, I must--I must," she said. "Don't--don't talk about it." And she put

forth a hand over his.

"I will talk about it," he declared, trembling. "I have thought it all

out," and this time it was her fingers that tightened. "You are going

away. And presently--when you are free--I will come to you."

For a moment the current stopped.

"No, no!" she cried, almost in terror. The first fatalist must have been

a woman, and the vision of rent prison bars drove her mad. "No, we could

never be happy."

"We can--we will be happy," he said, with a conviction that was unshaken.

"Do you hear me? I will not debase what I have to say by resorting to

comparisons. But--others I know have been happy are happy, though their

happiness cannot be spoken of with ours. Listen. You will go away--for a

little while--and afterwards we shall be together for all time. Nothing

shall separate us: We never have known life, either of us, until now. I,

missing you, have run after the false gods. And you--I say it with

truth-needed me. We will go to live at Grenoble, as my father and mother

lived. We will take up their duties there. And if it seems possible, I

will go into public life. When I return, I shall find you--waiting for

me--in the garden."

So real had the mirage become, that Honora did not answer. The desert and

its journey fell away. Could such a thing, after all, be possible? Did

fate deal twice to those whom she had made novices? The mirage, indeed,

suddenly became reality--a mirage only because she had proclaimed it

such. She had beheld in it, as he spoke, a Grenoble which was paradise

regained. And why should paradise regained be a paradox? Why paradise

regained? Paradise gained. She had never known it, until he had flung

wide the gates. She had sought for it, and never found it until now, and

her senses doubted it. It was a paradise of love, to be sure; but one,

too, of duty. Duty made it real. Work was there, and fulfilment of the

purpose of life itself. And if his days hitherto had been useless, hers

had in truth been barren.

It was only of late, after a life-long groping, that she had discovered

their barrenness. The right to happiness! Could she begin anew, and found

it upon a rock? And was he the rock?

The question startled her, and she drew away from him first her hand, and

then she turned her body, staring at him with widened eyes. He did not

resist the movement; nor could he, being male, divine what was passing

within her, though he watched her anxiously. She had no thought of the

first days,--but afterwards. For at such times it is the woman who scans

the veil of the future. How long would that beacon burn which flamed now

in such prodigal waste? Would not the very springs of it dry up? She

looked at him, and she saw the Viking. But the Viking had fled from the

world, and they--they would be going into it. Could love prevail against

its dangers and pitfalls and--duties? Love was the word that rang out, as

one calling through the garden, and her thoughts ran molten. Let love

overflow--she gloried in the waste! And let the lean years come,--she

defied them to-day.

"Oh, Hugh!" she faltered.

"My dearest!" he cried, and would have seized her in his arms again but

for a look of supplication. That he had in him this innate and

unsuspected chivalry filled her with an exquisite sweetness.

"You will--protect me?" she asked.

"With my life and with my honour," he answered. "Honora, there will be no

happiness like ours."

"I wish I knew," she sighed: and then, her look returning from the veil,

rested on him with a tenderness that was inexpressible. "I--I don't care,

Hugh. I trust you."

The sun was setting. Slowly they went back together through the paths of

the tangled garden, which had doubtless seen many dramas, and the courses

changed of many lives: overgrown and outworn now, yet love was loth to

leave it. Honora paused on the lawn before the house, and looked back at

him over her shoulder.

"How happy we could have been here, in those days," she sighed.

"We will be happier there," he said.

Honora loved. Many times in her life had she believed herself to have had

this sensation, and yet had known nothing of these aches and ecstasies!

Her mortal body, unattended, went out to dinner that evening. Never, it

is said, was her success more pronounced. The charm of Randolph

Leffingwell, which had fascinated the nobility of three kingdoms, had

descended on her, and hostesses had discovered that she possessed the

magic touch necessary to make a dinner complete. Her quality, as we know,

was not wit: it was something as old as the world, as new as modern

psychology. It was, in short, the power to stimulate. She infused a sense

of well-being; and ordinary people, in her presence, surprised themselves

by saying clever things.

Lord Ayllington, a lean, hard-riding gentleman, who was supposed to be on

the verge of contracting an alliance with the eldest of the Grenfell

girls, regretted that Mrs. Spence was neither unmarried nor an heiress.

"You know," he said to Cecil Grainger, who happened to be gracing his

wife's dinner-party, "she's the sort of woman for whom a man might

consent to live in Venice."

"And she's the sort of woman," replied, "a man couldn't get to go to

Venice."

Lord Ayllington's sigh was a proof of an intimate knowledge of the world.

"I suppose not," he said. "It's always so. And there are few American

women who would throw everything overboard for a grand passion."

"You ought to see her on the beach," Mr. Grainger suggested.

"I intend to," said Ayllington. "By the way, not a few of your American

women get divorced, and keep their cake and eat it, too. It's a bit

difficult, here at Newport, for a stranger, you know."

"I'm willing to bet," declared Mr. Grainger, "that it doesn't pay. When

you're divorced and married again you've got to keep up appearances--the

first time you don't. Some of these people are working pretty hard."

Whereupon, for the Englishman's enlightenment, he recounted a little

gossip.

This, of course, was in the smoking room. In the drawing-room, Mrs.

Grainger's cousin did not escape, and the biography was the subject of

laughter.

"You see something of him, I hear," remarked Mrs. Playfair, a lady the

deficiency of whose neck was supplied by jewels, and whose conversation

sounded like liquid coming out of an inverted bottle. "Is he really

serious about the biography?"

"You'll have to ask Mr. Grainger," replied Honora.

"Hugh ought to marry," Mrs. Grenfell observed.

"Why did he come back?" inquired another who had just returned from a

prolonged residence abroad. "Was there a woman in the case?"

"Put it in the plural, and you'll be nearer right," laughed Mrs.

Grenfell, and added to Honora, "You'd best take care, my dear, he's

dangerous."

Honora seemed to be looking down on them from a great height, and to

Reginald Farwell alone is due the discovery of this altitude; his

reputation for astuteness, after that evening, was secure. He had sat

next her, and had merely put two and two together--an operation that is

probably at the root of most prophecies. More than once that summer Mr.

Farwell had taken sketches down Honora's lane, for she was on what was

known as his list of advisers: a sheepfold of ewes, some one had called

it, and he was always piqued when one of them went astray. In addition to

this, intuition told him that he had taken the name of a deity in

vain--and that deity was Chiltern. These reflections resulted in another

after-dinner conversation to which we are not supposed to listen.

He found Jerry Shorter in a receptive mood, and drew him into Cecil

Grainger's study, where this latter gentleman, when awake, carried on his

lifework of keeping a record of prize winners.

"I believe there is something between Mrs. Spence and Hugh Chiltern,

after all, Jerry," he said.

"By jinks, you don't say so!" exclaimed Mr. Shorter, who had a profound

respect for his friend's diagnoses in these matters. "She was dazzling

to-night, and her eyes were like stars. I passed her in the hall just

now, and I might as well have been in Halifax."

"She fairly withered me when I made a little fun of Chiltern," declared

Farwell.

"I tell you what it is, Reggie," remarked Mr. Shorter, with more

frankness than tact, "you could talk architecture with 'em from now to

Christmas, and nothing'd happen, but it would take an iceberg to write a

book with Hugh and see him alone six days out of seven. Chiltern knocks

women into a cocked hat. I've seen 'em stark raving crazy. Why, there was

that Mrs. Slicer six or seven years ago--you remember--that Cecil

Grainger had such a deuce of a time with. And there was Mrs. Dutton--I

was a committee to see her, when the old General was alive,--to say

nothing about a good many women you and I know."

Mr. Farwell nodded.

"I'm confoundedly sorry if it's so," Mr. Shorter continued, with

sincerity. "She has a brilliant future ahead of her. She's got good blood

in her, she's stunning to look at, and she's made her own way in spite of

that Billycock of a husband who talks like the original Rothschild. By

the bye, Wing is using him for a good thing. He's sent him out West to

pull that street railway chestnut out of the fire. I'm not particularly

squeamish, Reggie, though I try to play the game straight myself--the way

my father played it. But by the lord Harry, I can't see the difference

between Dick Turpin and Wing and Trixy Brent. It's hold and deliver with

those fellows. But if the police get anybody, their get Spence."

"The police never get anybody," said Farwell, pessimistically; for the

change of topic bored him.

"No, I suppose they don't," answered Mr. Shorter, cheerfully finishing

his chartreuse, and fixing his eye on one of the coloured lithographs of

lean horses on Cecil Grainger's wall. "I'd talk to Hugh, if I wasn't as

much afraid of him as of Jim Jeffries. I don't want to see him ruin her

career."

"Why should an affair with him ruin it?" asked Farwell, unexpectedly.

"There was Constance Witherspoon. I understand that went pretty far."

"My dear boy," said Mr. Shorter, "it's the women. Bessie Grainger here,

for instance--she'd go right up in the air. And the women had--well, a

childhood-interest in Constance. Self-preservation is the first law--of

women."

"They say Hugh has changed--that he wants to settle down," said Farwell.

"If you'd ever gone to church, Reggie," said Mr. Shorter, "you'd know

something about the limitations of the leopard."

CHAPTER VII

"LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS"

That night was Honora's soul played upon by the unknown musician of the

sleepless hours. Now a mad, ecstatic chorus dinned in her ears and set

her blood coursing; and again despair seized her with a dirge. Periods of

semiconsciousness only came to her, and from one of these she was

suddenly startled into wakefulness by her own words. "I have the right to

make of my life what I can." But when she beheld the road of terrors that

stretched between her and the shining places, it seemed as though she

would never have the courage to fare forth along its way. To look back

was to survey a prospect even more dreadful.

The incidents of her life ranged by in procession. Not in natural

sequence, but a group here and a group there. And it was given her, for

the first time, to see many things clearly. But now she loved. God alone

knew what she felt for this man, and when she thought of him the very

perils of her path were dwarfed. On returning home that night she had

given her maid her cloak, and had stood for a long time immobile,--gazing

at her image in the pierglass.

"Madame est belle comme l'Imperatrice d'Autriche!" said the maid at

length.

"Am I really beautiful, Mathilde?"

Mathilde raised her eyes and hands to heaven in a gesture that admitted

no doubt. Mathilde, moreover, could read a certain kind of history if the

print were large enough.

Honora looked in the glass again. Yes, she was beautiful. He had found

her so, he had told her so. And here was the testimony of her own eyes.

The bloom on the nectarines that came every morning from Mr. Chamberlin's

greenhouse could not compare with the colour of her cheeks; her hair was

like the dusk; her eyes like the blue pools among the rocks, and touched

now by the sun; her neck and arms of the whiteness of sea-foam. It was

meet that she should be thus for him and for the love he brought her.

She turned suddenly to the maid.

"Do you love me, Mathilde?" she asked.

Mathilde was not surprised. She was, on the contrary, profoundly touched.

"How can madame ask?" she cried impulsively, and seized Honora's hand.

How was it possible to be near madame, and not love her?

"And would you go--anywhere with me?"

The scene came back to her in the night watches. For the little maid had

wept and vowed eternal fidelity.

It was not--until the first faint herald of the morning that Honora could

bring herself to pronounce the fateful thing that stood between her and

happiness, that threatened to mar the perfection of a heaven-born love

--Divorce! And thus, having named it resolutely several times, the demon

of salvation began gradually to assume a kindly aspect that at times

became almost benign. In fact, this one was not a demon at all, but a

liberator: the demon, she perceived, stalked behind him, and his name was

Notoriety. It was he who would flay her for coquetting with the

liberator.

What if she were flayed? Once married to Chiltern, once embarked upon

that life of usefulness, once firmly established on ground of her own

tilling, and she was immune. And this led her to a consideration of those

she knew who had been flayed. They were not few, and a surfeit of

publicity is a sufficient reason for not enumerating them here. And

during this process of exorcism Notoriety became a bogey, too: he had

been powerless to hurt them. It must be true what Chiltern had said that

the world was changing. The tragic and the ridiculous here joining hands,

she remembered that Reggie Farwell had told her that he had recently made

a trip to western New York to inspect a house he had built for a

"remarried" couple who were not wholly unknown. The dove-cote, he had

called it. The man, in his former marriage, had been renowned all up and

down tidewater as a rake and a brute, and now it was an exception when he

did not have at least one baby on his knee. And he knew, according to Mr.

Farwell, more about infant diet than the whole staff of a maternity

hospital.

At length, as she stared into the darkness, dissolution came upon it. The

sills of her windows outlined themselves, and a blurred foliage was

sketched into the frame. With a problem but half solved the day had

surprised her. She marvelled to see that it grew apace, and presently

arose to look out upon a stillness like that of eternity: in the grey

light the very leaves seemed to be holding their breath in expectancy of

the thing that was to come. Presently the drooping roses raised their

heads, from pearl to silver grew the light, and comparison ended. The

reds were aflame, the greens resplendent, the lawn sewn with the diamonds

of the dew.

A little travelling table was beside the window, and Honora took her pen

and wrote.

"My dearest, above all created things I love you. Morning has come,

and it seems to me that I have travelled far since last I saw you.

I have come to a new place, which is neither hell nor heaven, and in

the mystery of it you--you alone are real. It is to your strength

that I cling, and I know that you will not fail me.

"Since I saw you, Hugh, I have been through the Valley of the

Shadow. I have thought of many things. One truth alone is clear--

that I love you transcendently.. You have touched and awakened me

into life. I walk in a world unknown.

"There is the glory of martyrdom in this message I send you now.

You must not come to me again until I send for you. I cannot, I

will not trust myself or you. I will keep this love which has come

to me undefiled. It has brought with it to me a new spirit, a

spirit with a scorn for things base and mean. Though it were my

last chance in life, I would not see you if you came. If I thought

you would not understand what I feel, I could not love you as I do.

"I will write to you again, when I see my way more clearly. I told

you in the garden before you spoke that I was going away. Do not

seek to know my plans. For the sake of the years to come, obey me.

"HONORA."

She reread the letter, and sealed it. A new and different exaltation had

come to her--begotten, perhaps, in the act of writing. A new courage

filled her, and now she contemplated the ordeal with a tranquillity that

surprised her. The disorder and chaos of the night were passed, and she

welcomed the coming day, and those that were to follow it. As though the

fates were inclined to humour her impatience, there was a telegram on her

breakfast tray, dated at New York, and informing her that her husband

would be in Newport about the middle of the afternoon. His western trip

was finished a day earlier than he expected. Honora rang her bell.

"Mathilde, I am going away."

"Oui, madame."

"And I should like you to go with me."

"Oui, madame."

"It is only fair that you should understand, Mathilde. I am going away

alone. I am not--coming back."

The maid's eyes filled with sudden tears.

"Oh, madame," she cried, in a burst of loyalty, "if madame will permit me

to stay with her!"

Honora was troubled, but her strange calmness did not forsake her. The

morning was spent in packing, which was a simple matter. She took only

such things as she needed, and left her dinner-gowns hanging in the

closets. A few precious books of her own she chose, but the jewellery her

husband had given her was put in boxes and laid upon the dressing-table.

In one of these boxes was her wedding ring. When luncheon was over, an

astonished and perturbed butler packed the Leffingwell silver and sent it

off to storage.

There had been but one interruption in Honora's labours. A note had

arrived--from him--a note and a box. He would obey her! She had known he

would understand, and respect her the more. What would their love have

been, without that respect? She shuddered to think. And he sent her this

ring, as a token of that love, as undying as the fire in its stones.

Would she wear it, that in her absence she might think of him? Honora

kissed it and slipped it on her finger, where it sparkled. The letter was

beneath her gown, though she knew it by heart. Chiltern had gone at last:

he could not, he said, remain in Newport and not see her.

At midday she made but the pretence of a meal. It was not until

afterwards, in wandering through the lower rooms of this house, become so

dear to her, that agitation seized her, and a desire to weep. What was

she leaving so precipitately? and whither going? The world indeed was

wide, and these rooms had been her home. The day had grown blue-grey, and

in the dining room the gentle face seemed to look down upon her

compassionately from the portrait. The scent of the roses overpowered

her. As she listened, no sound brake the quiet of the place.

Would Howard never come? The train was in--had been in ten minutes. Hark,

the sound of wheels! Her heart beating wildly, she ran to the windows of

the drawing-room and peered through the lilacs. Yes, there he was,

ascending the steps.

"Mrs. Spence is out, I suppose," she heard him say to the butler, who

followed with his bag.

"No, sir, she's is the drawing-room."

The sight of him, with his air of satisfaction and importance, proved an

unexpected tonic to her strength. It was as though he had brought into

the room, marshalled behind him, all the horrors of her marriage, and she

marvelled and shuddered anew at the thought of the years of that

sufferance.

"Well, I'm back," he said, "and we've made a great killing, as I wrote

you. They were easier than I expected."

He came forward for the usual perfunctory kiss, but she recoiled, and it

was then that his eye seemed to grasp the significance of her travelling

suit and veil, and he glanced at her face.

"What's up? Where are you going?" he demanded. "Has anything happened?"

"Everything," she said, and it was then, suddenly, that she felt the

store of her resolution begin to ebb, and she trembled. "Howard, I am

going away."

He stopped short, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his checked

trousers.

"Going away," he repeated. "Where?"

"I don't know," said Honora; "I'm going away."

As though to cap the climax of tragedy, he smiled as he produced his

cigarette case. And she was swept, as it were, by a scarlet flame that

deprived her for the moment of speech.

"Well," he said complacently, "there's no accounting for women. A case of

nerves--eh, Honora? Been hitting the pace a little too hard, I guess." He

lighted a match, blissfully unaware of the quality of her look. "All of

us have to get toned up once in a while. I need it myself. I've had to

drink a case of Scotch whiskey out West to get this deal through. Now

what's the name of that new boat with everything on her from a cafe to a

Stock Exchange? A German name."

"I don't know," said Honora. She had answered automatically.

To the imminent peril of one of the frailest of Mrs. Forsythe's chairs,

he sat down on it, placed his hands on his knees, flung back his head,

and blew the smoke towards the ceiling. Still she stared at him, as in a

state of semi-hypnosis.

"Instead of going off to one of those thousand-dollar-a-minute doctors,

let me prescribe for you," he said. "I've handled some nervous men in my

time, and I guess nervous women aren't much different. You've had these

little attacks before, and they blow over--don't they? Wing owes me a

vacation. If I do say it myself, there are not five men in New York who

would have pulled off this deal for him. Now the proposition I was going

to make to you is this: that we get cosey in a cabin de luxe on that

German boat, hire an automobile on the other side, and do up Europe. It's

a sort of a handicap never to have been over there."

"Oh, you're making it very hard for me, Howard," she cried. "I might have

known that you couldn't understand, that you never could understand--why

I am going away. I've lived with you all this time, and you do not know

me any better than you know--the scrub-woman. I'm going away from

you--forever."

In spite of herself, she ended with an uncontrollable sob.

"Forever!" he repeated, but he continued to smoke and to look at her

without any evidences of emotion, very much as though he had received an

ultimatum in a business transaction. And then there crept into his

expression something of a complacent pity that braced her to continue.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because--because I don't love you. Because you don't love me. You don't

know what love is--you never will."

"But we're married," he said. "We get along all right."

"Oh, can't you see that that makes it all the worse!" she cried. "I can

stand it no longer. I can't live with you--I won't live with you. I'm of

no use to you--you're sufficient unto yourself. It was all a frightful

mistake. I brought nothing into your life, and I take nothing out of it.

We are strangers--we have always been so. I am not even your housekeeper.

Your whole interest in life is in your business, and you come home to

read the newspapers and to sleep! Home! The very word is a mockery. If

you had to choose between me and your business you wouldn't hesitate an

instant. And I--I have been starved. It isn't your fault, perhaps, that

you don't understand that a woman needs something more than dinner-gowns

and jewels and--and trips abroad. Her only possible compensation for

living with a man is love. Love--and you haven't the faintest conception

of it. It isn't your fault, perhaps. It's my fault for marrying you. I

didn't know any better."

She paused with her breast heaving. He rose and walked over to the

fireplace and flicked his ashes into it before he spoke. His calmness

maddened her.

"Why didn't you say something about this before?" he asked.

"Because I didn't know it--I didn't realize it--until now."

"When you married me," he went on, "you had an idea that you were going

to live in a house on Fifth Avenue with a ballroom, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Honora. "I do not say I am not to blame. I was a fool. My

standards were false. In spite of the fact that my aunt and uncle are the

most unworldly people that ever lived--perhaps because of it--I knew

nothing of the values of life. I have but one thing to say in my defence.

I thought I loved you, and that you could give me--what every woman

needs."

"You were never satisfied from the first," he retorted. "You wanted money

and position--a mania with American women. I've made a success that few

men of my age can duplicate. And even now you are not satisfied when I

come back to tell you that I have money enough to snap my fingers at half

these people you know."

"How," asked Honora, "how did you make it?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

She turned away from him with a gesture of weariness.

"No, you wouldn't understand that, either, Howard."

It was not until then that he showed feeling.

"Somebody has been talking to you about this deal. I'm not surprised. A

lot of these people are angry because we didn't let them in. What have

they been saying?" he demanded.

Her eyes flashed.

"Nobody has spoken to me on the subject," she said. "I only know what I

have read, and what you have told me. In the first place, you deceived

the stockholders of these railways into believing their property was

worthless, and in the second place, you intend to sell it to the public

for much more than it is worth."

At first he stared at her in surprise. Then he laughed.

"By George, you'd make something of a financier yourself, Honora," he

exclaimed. And seeing that she did not answer, continued: "Well, you've

got it about right, only it's easier said than done. It takes brains.

That's what business is--a survival of the fittest. If you don't do the

other man, he'll do you." He opened the cigarette case once more. "And

now," he said, "let me give you a little piece of advice. It's a good

motto for a woman not to meddle with what doesn't concern her. It isn't

her business to make the money, but to spend it; and she can usually do

that to the queen's taste."

"A high ideal?" she exclaimed.

"You ought to have some notion of where that ideal came from," he

retorted. "You were all for getting rich, in order to compete with these

people. Now you've got what you want--"

"And I am going to throw it away. That is like a woman, isn't it?"

He glanced at her, and then at his watch.

"See here, Honora, I ought to go over to Mr. Wing's. I wired him I'd be

there at four-thirty."

"Don't let me keep you," she replied.

"By gad, you are pale!" he said. "What's got into the women these days?

They never used to have these confounded nerves. Well, if you are bent on

it, I suppose there's no use trying to stop you. Go off somewhere and

take a rest, and when you come back you'll see things differently."

She held out her hand.

"Good-by, Howard," she said. "I wanted you to know that I didn't--bear

you any ill-will--that I blame myself as much as you. More, if anything.

I hope you will be happy--I know you will. But I must ask you to believe

me when I say that I shan't come back. I--I am leaving all the valuable

things you gave me. You will find them on my dressing-table. And I wanted

to tell you that my uncle sent me a little legacy from my father-an

unexpected one--that makes me independent."

He did not take her hand, but was staring at her now, incredulously.

"You mean you are actually going?" he exclaimed.

"Yes."

"But--what shall I say to Mr. Wing? What will he think?"

Despite the ache in her heart, she smiled.

"Does it make any difference what Mr. Wing thinks?" she asked gently.

"Need he know? Isn't this a matter which concerns us alone? I shall go

off, and after a certain time people will understand that I am not coming

back."

"But--have you considered that it may interfere with my prospects?" he

asked.

"Why should it? You are invaluable to Mr. Wing. He can't afford to

dispense with your services just because you will be divorced. That would

be ridiculous. Some of his own associates are divorced."

"Divorced!" he cried, and she saw that he had grown pasty white. "On what

grounds? Have you been--"

He did not finish.

"No," she said, "you need fear no scandal. There will be nothing in any

way harmful to your--prospects."

"What can I do?" he said, though more to himself than to her. Her quick

ear detected in his voice a note of relief. And yet, he struck in her,

standing helplessly smoking in the middle of the floor, chords of pity.

"You can do nothing, Howard," she said. "If you lived with me from now to

the millennium you couldn't make me love you, nor could you love me--the

way I must be loved. Try to realize it. The wrench is what you dread.

After it is over you will be much more contented, much happier, than you

have been with me. Believe me."

His next remark astonished her.

"What's the use of being so damned precipitate?" he demanded.

"Precipitate!"

"Because I can stand it no longer. I should go mad," she answered.

He took a turn up and down the room, stopped suddenly, and stared at her

with eyes that had grown smaller. Suspicion is slow to seize the

complacent. Was it possible that he had been supplanted?

Honora, with an instinct of what was coming, held up her head. Had he

been angry, had he been a man, how much humiliation he would have spared

her!

"So you're in love!" he said. "I might have known that something was at

the bottom of this."

She took account of and quivered at the many meanings behind his speech

--meanings which he was too cowardly to voice in words.

"Yes," she answered, "I am in love--in love as I never hoped to be--as I

did not think it possible to be. My love is such that I would go through

hell fire for the sake of it. I do not expect you to believe me when I

tell you that such is not the reason why I am leaving you. If you had

loved me with the least spark of passion, if I thought I were in the

least bit needful to you as a woman and as a soul, as a helper and a

confidante, instead of a mere puppet to advertise your prosperity, this

would not--could not--have happened. I love a man who would give up the

world for me to-morrow. I have but one life to live, and I am going to

find happiness if I can."

She paused, afire with an eloquence that had come unsought. But her

husband only stared at her. She was transformed beyond his recognition.

Surely he had not married this woman! And, if the truth be told, down in

his secret soul whispered a small, congratulatory voice. Although he did

not yet fully realize it, he was glad he had not.

Honora, with an involuntary movement, pressed her handkerchief to her

eyes.

"Good-by, Howard," she said. "I--I did not expect you to understand. If I

had stayed, I should have made you miserably unhappy."

He took her hand in a dazed manner, as though he knew not in the least

what he was doing. He muttered something and found speech impossible. He

gulped once, uncomfortably. The English language had ceased to be a

medium. Great is the force of habit! In the emergency he reached for his

cigarette case.

Honora had given orders that the carriage was to wait at the door. The

servants might suspect, but that was all. Her maid had been discreet. She

drew down her veil as she descended the steps, and told the coachman to

drive to the station.

It was raining. Leaning forward from under the hood as the horses

started, she took her last look at the lilacs.

CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH THE LAW BETRAYS A HEART

It was still raining when she got into a carriage at Boston and drove

under the elevated tracks, through the narrow, slippery business streets,

to the hotel. From the windows of her room, as the night fell, she looked

out across the dripping foliage of the Common. Below her, and robbed from

that sacred ground, were the little granite buildings that housed the

entrances to the subway, and for a long time she stood watching the

people crowding into these. Most of them had homes to go to! In the

gathering gloom the arc-lights shone, casting yellow streaks on the

glistening pavement; wagons and carriages plunged into the maelstrom at

the corner; pedestrians dodged and slipped; lightnings flashed from

overhead wires, and clanging trolley cars pushed their greater bulk

through the mass. And presently the higher toned and more ominous bell of

an ambulance sounded on its way to the scene of an accident.

It was Mathilde who ordered her dinner and pressed her to eat. But she

had no heart for food. In her bright sitting-room, with the shades

tightly drawn, an inexpressible loneliness assailed her. A large

engraving of a picture of a sentimental school hung on the wall: she

could not bear to look at it, and yet her eyes, from time to time, were

fatally drawn thither. It was of a young girl taking leave of her lover,

in early Christian times, before entering the arena. It haunted Honora,

and wrought upon her imagination to such a pitch that she went into her

bedroom to write.

For a long time nothing more was written of the letter than "Dear Uncle

Tom and Aunt Mary": what to say to them?

"I do not know what you will think of me. I do not know, to-night,

what to think of myself. I have left Howard. It is not because he

was cruel to me, or untrue. He does not love me, nor I him. I

cannot expect you, who have known the happiness of marriage, to

realize the tortures of it without love. My pain in telling you

this now is all the greater because I realize your belief as to the

sacredness of the tie--and it is not your fault that you did not

instil that belief into me. I have had to live and to think and to

suffer for myself. I do not attempt to account for my action, and I

hesitate to lay the blame upon the modern conditions and atmosphere

in which I lived; for I feel that, above all things, I must be

honest with myself.

"My marriage with Howard was a frightful mistake, and I have grown

slowly to realize it, until life with him became insupportable.

Since he does not love me, since his one interest is his business,

my departure makes no great difference to him.

"Dear Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom, I realize that I owe you much

--everything that I am. I do not expect you to understand or to

condone what I have done. I only beg that you will continue to

--love your niece,

"HONORA."

She tried to review this letter. Incoherent though it were and

incomplete, in her present state of mind she was able to add but a few

words as a postscript. "I will write you my plans in a day or two, when I

see my way more clearly. I would fly to you--but I cannot. I am going to

get a divorce."

She sat for a time picturing the scene in the sitting-room when they

should read it, and a longing which was almost irresistible seized her to

go back to that shelter. One force alone held her in misery where she

was,--her love for Chiltern; it drew her on to suffer the horrors of

exile and publicity. When she suffered most, his image rose before her,

and she kissed the ring on her hand. Where was he now, on this rainy

night? On the seas?

At the thought she heard again the fog-horns and the sirens.

Her sleep was fitful. Many times she went over again her talk with

Howard, and she surprised herself by wondering what he had thought and

felt since her departure. And ever and anon she was startled out of

chimerical dreams by the clamour of bells-the trolley cars on their

ceaseless round passing below. At last came the slumber of exhaustion.

It was nine o'clock when she awoke and faced the distasteful task she had

set herself for the day. In her predicament she descended to the office,

where the face of one of the clerks attracted her, and she waited until

he was unoccupied.

"I should like you to tell me--the name of some reputable lawyer," she

said.

"Certainly, Mrs. Spence," he replied, and Honora was startled at the

sound of her name. She might have realized that he would know her. "I

suppose a young lawyer would do--if the matter is not very important."

"Oh, no!" she cried, blushing to her temples. "A young lawyer would do

very well."

The clerk reflected. He glanced at Honora again; and later in the day she

divined what had been going on in his mind.

"Well," he said, "there are a great many. I happen to think of Mr.

Wentworth, because he was in the hotel this morning. He is in the Tremont

Building."

She thanked him hurriedly, and was driven to the Tremont Building,

through the soggy street that faced the still dripping trees of the

Common. Mounting in the elevator, she read on the glass door amongst the

names of the four members of the firm that of Alden Wentworth, and

suddenly found herself face to face with the young man, in his private

office. He was well groomed and deeply tanned, and he rose to meet her

with a smile that revealed a line of perfect white teeth.

"How do you do, Mrs. Spence?" he said. "I did not think, when I met you

at Mrs. Grenfell's, that I should see you so soon in Boston. Won't you

sit down?"

Honora sat down. There seemed nothing else to do. She remembered him

perfectly now, and she realized that the nimble-witted clerk had meant to

send her to a gentleman.

"I thought," she faltered, "I thought I was coming to a--a stranger. They

gave me your address at the hotel--when I asked for a lawyer."

"Perhaps," suggested Mr. Wentworth, delicately, "perhaps you would prefer

to go to some one else. I can give you any number of addresses, if you

like."

She looked up at him gratefully. He seemed very human and understanding,

--very honourable. He belonged to her generation, after all, and she

feared an older man.

"If you will be kind enough to listen to me, I think I will stay here. It

is only a matter of--of knowledge of the law." She looked at him again,

and the pathos of her smile went straight to his heart. For Mr. Wentworth

possessed that organ, although he did not wear it on his sleeve.

He crossed the room, closed the door, and sat down beside her.

"Anything I can do," he said.

She glanced at him once more, helplessly.

"I do not know how to tell you," she began. "It all seems so dreadful."

She paused, but he had the lawyer's gift of silence--of sympathetic

silence. "I want to get a divorce from my husband."

If Mr. Wentworth was surprised, he concealed it admirably. His attitude

of sympathy did not change, but he managed to ask her, in a business-like

tone which she welcomed:--"On what grounds?"

"I was going to ask you that question," said Honora.

This time Mr. Wentworth was surprised--genuinely so, and he showed it.

"But, my dear Mrs. Spence," he protested, "you must remember that--that I

know nothing of the case."

"What are the grounds one can get divorced on?" she asked.

He coloured a little under his tan.

"They are different in different states," he replied. "I think--perhaps

--the best way would be to read you the Massachusetts statutes."

"No--wait a moment," she said. "It's very simple, after all, what I have

to tell you. I don't love my husband, and he doesn't love me, and it has

become torture to live together. I have left him with his knowledge and

consent, and he understands that I will get a divorce."

Mr. Wentworth appeared to be pondering--perhaps not wholly on the legal

aspects of the case thus naively presented. Whatever may have been his

private comments, they were hidden. He pronounced tentatively, and a

little absently, the word "desertion."

"If the case could possibly be construed as desertion on your husband's

part, you could probably get a divorce in three years in Massachusetts."

"Three years!" cried Honora, appalled. "I could never wait three years!"

She did not remark the young lawyer's smile, which revealed a greater

knowledge of the world than one would have suspected. He said nothing,

however.

"Three years!" she repeated. "Why, it can't be, Mr. Wentworth. There are

the Waterfords--she was Mrs. Boutwell, you remember. And--and Mrs.

Rindge--it was scarcely a year before--"

He had the grace to nod gravely, and to pretend not to notice the

confusion in which she halted. Lawyers, even young ones with white teeth

and clear eyes, are apt to be a little cynical. He had doubtless seen

from the beginning that there was a man in the background. It was not his

business to comment or to preach.

"Some of the western states grant divorces on--on much easier terms," he

said politely. "If you care to wait, I will go into our library and look

up the laws of those states."

"I wish you would," answered Honora. "I don't think I could bear to spend

three years in such--in such an anomalous condition. And at any rate I

should much rather go West, out of sight, and have it all as quickly over

with as possible."

He bowed, and departed on his quest. And Honora waited, at moments

growing hot at the recollection of her conversation with him. Why--she

asked herself should the law make it so difficult, and subject her to

such humiliation in a course which she felt to be right and natural and

noble? Finally, her thoughts becoming too painful, she got up and looked

out of the window. And far below her, through the mist, she beheld the

burying-ground of Boston's illustrious dead which her cabman had pointed

out to her as he passed. She did not hear the door open as Mr. Wentworth

returned, and she started at the sound of his voice.

"I take it for granted that you are really serious in this matter, Mrs.

Spence," he said.

"Oh!" she exclaimed.

"And that you have thoroughly reflected," he continued imperturbably.

Evidently, in spite of the cold impartiality of the law, a New England

conscience had assailed him in the library. "I cannot take er--the

responsibility of advising you as to a course of action. You have asked

me the laws of certain western states as to divorce I will read them."