“No; it was built before I found her the second time. It was my

escape from _Boabdil_.... But I thought of her coming, many

times afterward--just as I thought of you coming back to stare at the

rafters----”

Fallows looked down intently at him for a moment, and said:

“John, you’ve got about all your equipment now. You can’t stand much

more tearing down. My road is not for you. You were given balance

against that. Don’t venture into what is alien ground for you. You will

get back your health. Even the wound will heal. Then will come to you

those gracious ideals of singleness, plainness of house and fare, of

purity and solitude and the integration of the greater dimension of

force.... You are through looking--you must listen now. The blessedness

you told me of this last summer was but a breath of what you will

get....

“You are a natural monk. If you were in a monastery, the laws

restraining you would be gross and material, compared with those bonds

which nature has put upon you. The cowl, the cell, and the solitude

are but symbols again of the inner monasticism a few rare souls have

known. You need no exterior bonds, vows, nor threatenings--no walls,

no brandishing threats of damnation. But, if you should betray the

invisible restraints that have held you for so many years, the sin

would be far deadlier than breaking any vows made to a church or to an

order. Vows are for half-men, John; vows are but the crutches of an

unfinished integrity.”

11

ON the morning of the Third, at ten, her call came to him.

Shortly after twelve he was across the river and far uptown in

the hallway of an apartment-house. Even as he spoke her name, his

was called from the head of the stairs. He always remembered the

intonation.... A fire was burning in the grate. The ’cello was there.

She left the hall-door of the room open, but they heard voices, and it

was draughty.... She went to close it and returned to Morning, who was

still standing.

“What is the matter? You are not well,” she said.... It was hard for

him to realize that this was only the third time he had seen her. He

was trying to adjust her in the other meetings with this--the angel who

had come helping to the Armory; the concert Betty Berry, her nature

flung wide to expression, bringing her gift with love to her people.

The Armory was one; but the Betty Berry of the concert-night was many:

she who had come forth from the stage to his arms (and that was the

kiss of all time); the listening Betty Berry in the dimness of the

Pullman car; holding fast to his hand as a child might, while they

watched the dawn of morning together; the Betty Berry who had led him

to her berth on the ship--that kiss and this....

The room had disordered him at the first moment. It was so particularly

a New York apartment room. But the ’cello helped it; the grate-fire

was good, and after she had shut the door--there was something eternal

about the sweetness of that--it was quite the place for them to be.

He was animate with emotions--and yet they were defined, sharp, of

their own natures, no soft overflow of sentiment, each with a fineness

of its own, like breaths of forest and sea and meadow lands. These

were great things which came to him; but they were not passions.... He

saw her with fear, too. Simply being here, had the impressiveness of a

miracle. It was less that he did not deserve to be with her, than that

the world he knew was hardly the place for such blessedness. He was

listening to her, in gladness and humility:

“... I asked myself again and again after you were gone, ‘Is it a

dream?’ ... I moved about the decks waiting for the night, as one in a

deep dream.... You were gone so quickly after that voice. Oh, I was all

right. I was full of you. It would have seemed sacrilege to ask for you

again.... Yet I seemed to expect you with every knock or step or bell.

They asked me to play on shipboard, and I could hardly believe you were

not among those who listened.... That first night at sea, the moon was

under a hazy mass. I don’t know why I speak of it, but I remember how I

stood watching it--perhaps hours--and out of it all I only realized at

last that my hands were so small for the things I wanted to do for you,

and for everybody.”

That was the quality of her--as if between every sentence, hours of

exterior influences had intervened.... He began to realize that Betty

Berry never explained. All that afternoon, in different ways, his

comprehension augmented on how fine a thing this is. She was glad

always to abide by what she said or did. Even on that night, when she

came from her playing to the wings where he stood, came to his arms,

while the people praised her--she never made light of that acceptance.

Many would have diminished it, by saying that they were not accountable

in the excitement and enthusiasm of a sympathetic audience. It was

so to-day when the door was closed. It seemed to Morning as if human

adults should be as fine as this--above all guile and fear.

He was in a risen world that afternoon. Often he wished he could make

the world see her as he did. But that was the literary habit, and a

tribute to her. Certainly it was not for the writing. He was clay

beside her, but happy to be clay.... She did not know it, he thought,

but she was free.

That was his thought of the day. Betty Berry was free. The door of the

cage was open for her. She did not have to stay, but she did stay for

love of the weaker-winged.

“Will all our meetings be so different and lovely?” she asked in the

early dusk. “Please tell me about yourself very long ago--the little

boy, before he went away.”

It was queer for her to ask that. He had expected her to inquire at

once about the three months since their parting in Baltimore. He had

determined to tell if she asked, but it was hard even to think of his

descents, with her sitting by the fire so near. Such things seemed

to have nothing to do with him now--especially when he was with her.

They were like old and vile garments cast off; and without relation to

him, unless he went back and put them on again. Little matters like

Charley and his sister had a relation, for they were without taint.

His thoughts to-day were thoughts of doing well for men, as in fine

moments with Duke Fallows--of going out _with her_ into the world

to help--of writing and giving, of laughing and lifting.... It was

surprising how he remembered the very long ago days--the silent, solid,

steadily-resisting little chap. Many things came back, and with a

clearness that he had not known for years. The very palms of her hands

were upturned in her listening; it seemed as if the valves of her heart

must be open.

“I can see him--the dear little boy----”

He laughed at her tenderness.... They went out late to dinner; and by

the time he had walked back to the house it was necessary for him to

leave, if he caught the last car to Hackensack. Duke Fallows would be

expecting him at the cabin....

It came to him suddenly, and with a new force, on the ferry, that he

had once wished she were pretty. He suffered for it again. He could

never recall her face exactly. She came to him in countless ways--with

poise for his restlessness, with faith and stamina that made all his

former endurings common--but never in fixed feature. It was the same

with her sayings. He remembered the spirit and the lustre of them, but

never the words.... She was a saint moving unobserved about the world,

playing--adrift on the world, and so pure.

He realized also that he had spoken of Betty Berry for the last

time to Duke Fallows. There was no doubt in his mind now that

Fallows had replaced his old weakness with what might be called, in

kindness--fanaticism.... The thought was unspeakable that Betty Berry

could spoil his work in the world--he, John Morning, a living hatch of

scars from his errors ... and so arrogant and imperious he had been in

evil-doing! This trend made him think of her first words to-day: “You

are not well.” It was true that he had been astonished often of late by

a series of physical disturbances, so much so that he had begun to ask

himself, in his detached fashion, what would come next. He could not

accept Fallows’ promise that he would get altogether right in health

again. He was certainly not so good as he had been. These things made

him ashamed.

Now that he was away from her, the sense obtained that he had not been

square in withholding the facts of the wastrel period. It didn’t seem

quite the same now, as when she was sitting opposite. He would have to

tell her some time, and of that certain mental treachery to her, and of

the wound, too.... He saw the light of the hill cabin. A touch of the

old irritation of Liaoyang had recurred of late. Morning could master

it better now. Still so many things that Fallows had said in Asia had

come true. Climbing up the hill, he laughed uneasily at the idea of

his being temperamentally a monk.... He had not strayed much among

women; he had been too busy. Now he had met his own. He would go to

her to-morrow. His love for her was the one right thing in the world.

Fallows nor the world could alter that....

The resistance which these thoughts had built in his mind was all

smoothed away by the spontaneous affection of the greeting. They sat

down together before the fire, but neither spoke of the woman who had

come between.

12

ON the way to Betty Berry the second day, Morning could not

quite hold the altitude of yesterday. There was much of the boy left

in the manner of his love for her. The woman that the world saw, and

which he saw with physical eyes, was only one of her mysteries. The

important thing was that he saw her really, and as she was not seen by

another.... They had been together an hour when this was said:

“There comes a time--a certain day--when a little girl realizes what

beauty is, and something of what it means in the world. That day came

to me and it was hard. I fought it out all at once. I was not exactly

sure what I wanted, but I knew that beauty could never help me in any

way. I learned to play better when I realized this fully. I have said

to myself a million times, ‘Expect nothing. No one will love you.

You must do without that,’ I believed it firmly.... So you see when

I went back to the Armory that next morning I had something to fall

back upon.... I would not have thought about it except you made me

forget--that afternoon. Why, I forget it now when you come; but when

you go, I force myself to remember----”

“Why do you do that?”

She was looking into the fire. The day was stormy, and they were glad

to be kept in.

“Why do you do that?” he repeated.

“Because I can’t feel quite at rest about our being together always. It

seems too wonderful. You must understand--it’s only because it is so

dear a thing----”

She had spoken hastily, seeing the fear and rebellion in his eyes.

“Betty Berry.... We’re not afraid of being poor. Why not go out and get

married to-day--now?”

Her hand went out to him.

“That wouldn’t be fine in us,” she said intensely. “I would feel that

we couldn’t be trusted--if we did anything like that.... Oh, that

would never keep us together--_that_ is not the great thing. And

to-day--what a gray day and bleak. We shall know if that day comes.

It will be one such as the butterfly chooses for her emerging. It

must not be planned. Such a day comes of itself.... Why, it would be

like seizing something precious from another’s hand--before it is

offered----”

“And you think you are not beautiful?” he said.

“Yes.”

He tried to tell her how she seemed to him when they were apart--how

differently and perfectly the phases of her came.

“It makes me silent,” he went on. “I try to tell just where it is. And

sometimes when I am away--I wonder what is so changed and cleansed and

buoyant in my heart--and then I know it is you--sustaining.”

“It doesn’t seem to belong to me--what you say,” she answered. “I don’t

dare to think of it as mine.... Please don’t think of me as above other

women. I am not apart nor above. I am just Betty Berry, who comes and

goes and plays--dull in so many ways--as yet, a little afraid to be

happy. When you tempt me as now to be happy--it seems I must go and

find someone very miserable and do something perfect for him.... But,

it is true, I fear nothing so much as that you should believe me more

than I am.”

A little afterward she was saying in her queer, unjointed way, as if

she spoke only here and there a sentence from the thoughts running

swiftly through her mind:

“... And once, (it was only a few weeks after the Armory, and I was

playing eastward) I heard your name mentioned among some musicians.

They had been talking about your war, and they had seen the great

story.... I couldn’t tell them that I know you?... It was known you

were in New York, and one of the musicians spoke of an early Broadway

engagement--of starting for New York that very night. It was the most

common thing to say--but I went to my room and cried. Going to New

York--where you were. Can you understand--that it didn’t seem right

for him, just to take a train like that? And I had to go eastward

so slowly. For a while after that, traveling out there, I couldn’t

hold you so clearly; but as we neared New York--whether I wished it

or not--I began to feel you again, to expect you at every turning.

Sometimes as I played--it was uncanny, the sense that came to me, that

you were in the audience, and that we were working together.... And

then you came.”

Her picture changed now. Morning grew restless. It was almost as if

there were a suggestion from Duke Fallows in her sentences:

“I thought of you always as alone.... You have gone so many ways alone.

Perhaps the thought came from your work. I never could read the places

where you suffered so--but I mean from the tone and theme of it. You

were down among the terrors and miseries--but always alone.... You

will go back to them--alone, but carrying calmness and cheer. You will

be different.... It’s hard for me to say, but if we should clutch at

something for ourselves--greedily because we want something now--and

you should not be able to do your work so well because of me--I

think--I think I should never cease to suffer.”

A dozen things to say had risen with hostility in his mind to check

this faltering expression, the purport of which he knew so well in its

every aspect. He hated the thought of others seeing his future and

not considering him. He hated the fear that came to him. There had

been fruits to all that Fallows had said before. He had plucked them

afterward. And now Betty Berry was one with Fallows in this hideous and

solitary conception of him. And there she sat, lovely and actual--the

very essence of all the good that he might do. He was so tired of what

she meant; and it was all so huge and unbreakable, that he grew calm

before he spoke, from the very inexorability of it.

“There is no place for me to go--that you could not go with me. Every

one seems to see great service for me, but I see it with you. Surely we

could go together to people who suffer.... I have been much alone, but

I spent most of the time serving myself. I have slaved for myself. If

Duke Fallows had left me alone, I should have been greedy and ambitious

and common. I see you now identified with all the good of the future.

You came bringing the good with you to the Armory that day, but I was

so clouded with hatred and self-serving, that I really didn’t know it

until afterward.... All the dreams of being real and fine, of doing

good in work, and with hands and thoughts, of sometime really being

a good man who knows no happiness but service for others--that means

you--you! You must come with me. We will be good together. We will

serve together. Everybody will be better for us. We will do it because

we love so much--and can’t help it----”

“Oh, don’t say any more--please--please! It is too much for me. Go

away--won’t you?”

She had risen and clung to him, her face imploring.

“Do you really want me to go away?” he said.

“Yes--I have prayed for one to come saying such things--of two going

forth to help--prayed without faith.... I cannot bear another word to

be said to-day.... I want to sit here and live with it----”

He was bewildered. He bent to kiss her brow--but refrained.... Her face

shone; her eyes were filled with tears.... He was in the street trying

to recall what he had said.

13

HE did not cross the river, but wandered about the city....

She had starved her heart always, put away the idea of a lover, and

sought to carry out her dreams of service alone. Then he had come. In

the midst of mental tossing and disorder to-day, he had stumbled upon

an expression of her highest idea of earth-life: for man and woman to

serve together--God loving the world through their everyday lives....

And she had been unable to bear him longer near her. It was the same

with her heart, as with one who has starved the body, and must begin

with morsels.

He was in the hotel writing-room--filling pages to her. He did not mean

to send the pages. It was to pass the time until evening. He lacked

even the beginnings of strength to stay away from her until to-morrow.

He would have telephoned, but she had not given him the number, or the

name of the woman who kept the house. The writing held his thoughts

from the momentarily recurring impulse to go back. The city was just a

vibration. Moments of the writing brought her magically near. In spite

of her prayer for him not to, his whole nature idealized her now. His

mind was swept again and again with gusts of her attraction. Thoughts

of hers came to him almost stinging with reality ... and to see her

again--to see her again. Once in the intensity of his outpouring, he

halted as if she had called--as if she had called to him to come up to

her out of the hollows and the vagueness of light.

It was nightfall. He gave way suddenly--to that double-crossing of

temptation which forces upon the tempted one the conviction that what

he desires is the right thing.... He would be a fool not to go. She

would expect him.... He arose and set out for her house.

But as he neared the corner something within felt itself betrayed.

“And so I cannot be content with her happiness,” he thought. “I cannot

be content with the little mysteries that make her the _one_ Betty

Berry. I am not brave enough to be happy alone--as she is. I must have

the woman....”

He was hot with the shame of it. He saw her bountifulness; her capacity

to wait. Clearly he saw that all these complications and conflicts of

his own mind were not indications of a large nature, but the failures

of one unfinished. She did not torture herself with thoughts; she

obeyed a heart unerringly true and real. She shone as never before;

fearless, yet with splendid zeal for giving; free to the sky, yet eager

to linger low and tenderly where her heart was in harmony; a stranger

to all, save one or two in the world, pitilessly hungry to be known,

and yet asking so little.... Compared with her, he saw himself as a

littered house, wind blowing through broken windows.

... That night, sitting with Duke Fallows before the fire, brooding

on his own furious desires, he thought of the other John Morning who

had brooded over the story of Liaoyang in so many rooms with the

same companion. All that former brooding had only forced the world

to a show-down. He knew, forever, how pitifully little the world can

give.... A cabin on the hill and a name that meant a call in the next

war....

The face of the other cooled and stilled him. Duke was troubled; Duke,

who wasn’t afraid of kings or armies or anything that the world might

do; who didn’t seem even afraid now of the old Eve violence, whoever

she was--was afraid to speak of Betty Berry to his best friend....

Morning wondered at this. Had Duke given up--or was he afraid of mixing

things more if he expressed himself? The fire-lit face was tense.

One after another of the man’s splendid moments and performances ran

through Morning’s mind--the enveloping compassion--in Tokyo, Liaoyang,

in the grain, in the ploughed lands--the Lowenkampf friend, the friend

of the peasant house, the friend of men in Metal Workers’ Hall, his

own friend in a score of places and ways--the man’s consummate art in

friendliness....

“Duke, there’s a lot to think about in just plain living, isn’t there?”

The other started. “Hello,” he said. “I didn’t think you were in my

world.”

* * * * *

Betty Berry was waiting at the stairs the next morning.

“Did you get my letter?” she whispered, when the door had swung to.

“No.... Mailed last night?”

“Yes.”

“I left the cabin two hours before the mail. It’s rural delivery, you

know. Jethro reaches my box late in the forenoon----”

“I wrote it about dark, but didn’t mail it until later. I thought you

would come----”

He told her how he had written, how he had come to her house, and

turned away. They were very happy.

“To think that you came so far. I couldn’t sit still, I was so

expectant at that very time.... But it was good for us----”

“I understood after a while.”

“Of course, you understood.... I was--oh, so happy yesterday. Yet,

aren’t we strange? Before it was night, I wanted you to come back....

I didn’t go out last night. I couldn’t practice. To-night, there are

some friends whom I must see----”

Morning, in a troubled way, reckoned the hours until evening.... She

was here and there about the room. The place already reflected her. She

had never been so blithe before.... It was an hour afterward that he

picked up a little tuning-fork from the dresser, and twanged it with

his nail. She started and turned to him, her thumb pressed against her

lips--her whole attitude that of a frightened child.

“I wonder if I could tell you?” she said hesitatingly. “It would

make many things clear. You told me about little boy--you. It was my

father’s----”

He waited without speaking.

“... He used to lead the singing in a city church,” she said. “Always

he carried the tuning-fork. He would twang it upon a cup or a piece

of wood, and put it to his ear--taking the tone. He had a soft tenor

voice. There was never another just like it, and always he was

humming.... I remember his lips moving through the long sermons, as he

conned the hymn-book, one song after another, tapping his fork upon

a signet ring. How I remember the tiny twanging, the light hum of an

insect that came from him, from song to song, his finger keeping time,

his lips pursed over the words.

“He never heard the preacher. There was no organ allowed, but he led

the hymns. He loved it. He held the time and tone for the people--but

never sang a hymn twice the same, bringing in the strangest variations,

but always true, his face flaming with pleasure.

“For years and years we lived alone. As a little girl, I was lifted to

the stool to play his accompaniments. As a young woman, I supported

him, giving music lessons. The neighbors thought him an invalid.... All

his viciousness was secret from the world, but common property between

us from my babyhood. I pitied him and covered him, fed him when he

might have fed himself, waited upon him when he might have helped me.

He would hold my mind with little devilish things and thoughts--as

natural to him as the tuning-fork.... He would despoil the little stock

of food while I was away, and nail the windows down. My whole life, I

marveled at the ingenuity of his lies. He was so little and helpless. I

never expected to be treated as a decent creature, from those who had

heard his tales. They looked askance at me.

“For years, he told me that he was dying, and I sat with him in the

nights, or played or read aloud. If any one came, he lay white and

peaceful, with a look of martyrdom.... And then at the last, I fell

asleep beside him. It was late, but the lamp was burning. I felt him

touch me before morning--the little old white thing, his lips pursed.

The tuning-fork dropped with a twang to the floor. I could not believe

I was free--but cried and cried. At the funeral, when the church people

spoke of ‘our pain-racked and martyred brother’----”

She did not finish.

Morning left her side. “I never thought of a little girl that way,” he

said, standing apart. “Why, you have given me the spirit of her, Betty.

It is what you have passed through that has made you perfect.... And I

was fighting for myself, and for silly things all the time----”

But he had not expressed what was really in his mind--of the beauty and

tenderness of unknown women everywhere, in whose hearts the sufferings

of others find arable ground. Surely, these women are the grace of the

world. His mother must have been weathered by such perfect refinements,

otherwise he would not have been able to appreciate it in Betty Berry.

It was all too dreamy to put into words yet, but he felt it very

important in his life--this that had come to him from Betty’s story,

and from Betty standing there--woman’s power, her bounty, her mystic

valor, all from the unconscious high behavior of a child.

She had given him something that the _Ploughman_ gave Duke

Fallows. He wanted to make the child live in the world’s thoughts, as

Duke was making the _Ploughman_ live.

It was these things--common, beautiful, passed-by things, that revealed

to Morning, as he began to be ready--the white flood of spirit that

drives the world, that is pressing always against hearts that are pure.

He went nearer to her.

“Everything I think is love for you, Betty,” he said.

The air was light about her, and delicate as from woodlands.

14

THE horse and phaeton--both very old--of the rural-carrier could

be seen from the hill-cabin. Duke Fallows walked down to the fence

to say “Hello” to Jethro whom he admired. He returned bearing very

thoughtfully a letter addressed to John Morning. It was from across the

river; the name, street, and number of the sender were written upon the

envelope.... Fallows sat down before the fire again, staring at the

letter. He thought of the woman who had written this, (just the few

little things that Morning had said) and then he thought of the gaunt

peasant woman in Russia, the mate of the _Ploughman_, and of the

mother of the _Ploughman_. He thought of the little boy, Jan--the

one little boy of the six, that had his heart, and whom he longed for.

He thought of this little boy on one hand--and the world on the other.

Then he thought of Morning again, and of the woman.

He loved the world; he loved the little boy. Sometimes it seemed to

him when he was very happy--that he loved the world and the little boy

with almost the same compassion--the weakness, fineness, and innocence

of the races of men seeming almost like the child’s.

He thought of John Morning differently. He had loved him at first,

because he was down and fighting grimly. He thought of him of late as

an instrument, upon which might be played a message of mercy and power

to all who suffered--to the world and to the little boy alike.

And now Fallows was afraid for the instrument. Many things had maimed

it, but this is the way of men; and these maimings had left their

revelations from the depths. Such may measure into the equipment of

a big man, destined to meet the many face to face. Fallows saw this

instrument in danger of being taken over by a woman--to be played upon

by colorful and earthly seductions. No man could grant more readily

than he, that such interpretations are good for most men; that the

highest harmony of the average man is the expression of love for his

one woman and his children. But to John Morning, Fallows believed such

felicity would close for life the great work which he had visioned from

the beginning.

He did not want lyrical singing from John Morning, he wanted prophetic

thunderings.

He wanted this maimed young man to rise up from the dregs and tell his

story and the large meaning of it. He wanted him to burn with a white

light before the world. He wanted the Koupangtse courage to drive into

the hearts of men; a pure reformative spirit to leap forth from the

capaciousness where ambition had been; he wanted John Morning to ignite

alone. He believed the cabin in which he now sat was built blindly from

the boy’s standpoint, but intelligently from the spirit of the boy,

to become the place of ignition. He believed this of Morning’s to be

a celibate spirit that could be finally maimed only by a woman. He

believed that Morning was perfecting a marvelous instrument, one that

would alter all society for the better, if he gave his heart to the

world.

Fallows even asked himself if he did not have his own desperate

pursuits among women in too close consideration.... It would be easy

to withdraw. So often he had faltered before the harder way, and found

afterward that the easy one was evil.... He left it this way: If he

could gain audience with Betty Berry alone this evening he would speak;

if Morning were with her, he would find an excuse for joining them and

quickly depart. Last night Morning had returned to the cabin early;

the night before by the last car. It was less than an even chance....

Fallows crossed the river, thinking, if the woman were common it

would be easy. The way it turned out left no doubt as to what he must

do. Approaching the number, on the street named on the corner of the

envelope, he passed John Morning, head down in contemplation. He was

admitted to the house. Betty Berry appeared, led him to a small upper

parlor, and excused herself for a moment.

Fallows sat back and closed his eyes. He was suffering. All his fancied

hostility was gone. He saw a woman very real, and to him magical; he

saw that this was bloody business.... She came back, the full terror of

him in her eyes. She did not need to be so sensitive to know that he

had not come as a cup-bearer.... He was saying to himself, “I will not

struggle with her....”

“Have I time to tell my story?”

“I was going out.... John Morning just went away because I was to meet

old friends. But, if this is so very important, of course----”

“It is about him.”

“I think you must tell your story.”

Fallows talked of Morning’s work, of what he had first seen from

Luzon, and of the man he found in Tokyo. He spoke of the days and

nights in Liaoyang, as he had watched Morning at his work.

“He’s at his best at the type-writer. When the work is really coming

right for him, he seems to be used by a larger, finer force than he

shows at other times.... It is good to talk to you, Miss Berry. You are

a real listener. You seem to know what I am to say next----”

“Go on,” she said.

“When a man with a developed power of expression stops writing what

the world is saying, and learns to listen to that larger, finer force

within him--indeed, when he has a natural genius for such listening,

and cultivates a better receptivity, always a finer and more sensitive

surface for its messages--such a man becomes in time the medium between

man and the energy that drives the world----”

“Yes----”

“Some call this energy that drives the world the Holy Spirit, and

some call it the Absolute. I call it love of God. A few powerful men

of every race are prepared to express it. These individuals come up

like the others through the dark, often through viler darkness. They

suffer as others cannot dream of suffering. They are put in terrible

places--each of which leaves its impress upon the instrument--the

mind. You have read part of John Morning’s story. Perhaps he has told

you other parts. His mind is furrowed and transcribed with terrible

miseries.

“Until recently his capacity was stretched by the furious passion of

ambition. It seemed in Asia as if he couldn’t die, unexpressed; as if

the world couldn’t kill him. You saw him at the Armory just after he

had passed through thirty days hard enough to slay six men. Ambition

held him up--and hate and all the powers of the ego.

“This is what I want to tell you: ‘When the love of God fills that

furious capacity which ambition has made ready; when the love of God

floods over the broadened surfaces of his mind, furrowed and sensitized

by suffering, filling the matrix which the dreadful experiences have

marked so deeply--John Morning will be a wonderful instrument of

interpretation between God and his race.’

“I can make my story very short for you, Miss Berry. Your listening

makes it clearer than ever to me. I see what men mean when they say

they can write to women. Yes, I see it.... John Morning has made ready

his cup. It will be filled with the water of life--to be carried to

men. But John Morning must feel first the torture of the thirst of men.

“Every misery he has known has brought him nearer to this realization;

days here among the dregs of the city; days of hideous light and

shadow; days on the China Sea, sitting with coolies crowded so they

could not move; days afield, and the perils; days alone in his little

cabin on the hill; sickness, failures, hatreds from men, the answering

hatred of his fleshly heart--all these have knit him with men and

brought him understanding.

“He has been down among men. Suffering has graven his mind with

the mysteries of the fallen. You must have understanding to have

compassion. In John Morning, the love of God will pass through human

deeps to men. Deep calls to deep. He will meet the lowest face to face.

He will bring to the deepest down man the only authority such a man can

recognize--that of having been there in the body. And the thrill of

rising will be told. Those who listen and read will know that he has

been there, and see that he is risen. He will tell how the water of

life came to him--and flooded over him, and healed his miseries and his

pains. The splendid shining authority of it will rise from his face and

from his book.

“And men won’t be the same after reading and listening; (nor women who

receive more quickly and passionately)--women won’t be the same. Women

will see that those who suffer most are the real elect of this world.

It’s wonderful to make women listen, Miss Berry, for their children

bring back the story.

“It isn’t that John Morning must turn to love God. I don’t mean that.

He must love men. He must receive the love of God--and give it to

men. To be able to listen and to receive with a trained instrument of

expression, and then to turn the message to the service of men--that’s

a World-Man’s work. John Morning will do it--if he loves humanity

enough. He’s the only living man I know who has a chance. He will

achieve almost perfect instrumentation. He will express what men need

most to know in terms of art and action. The love of God must have man

to manifest it, and that’s John Morning’s work--if he loves humanity

enough to make her his bride.”

Fallows was conscious now of really seeing her. She had not risen, but

seemed nearer--as if the chair, in which she slowly rocked, had crept

nearer as he talked. Her palms resting upon her knees were turned

upward toward him:

“And you think John Morning is nearly ready for that crown of

Compassion?”

“Yes----”

“You think he will receive the Compassion--and give it to men in terms

of art and action?”

“Yes----”

“You think if he loves me--if he turns his love to me, as he is

doing--he cannot receive that greater love which he must give men?”

“Yes----”

“And you think it would be a good woman’s part to turn him from her?”

“Yes----”

“And you came to tell me this?”

“Yes.”

“I think it is true----”

“Oh, listen--listen----” he cried, rising and bending over her--“a good

woman’s part--it would be that! It would be something more--something

greater than even he could ever do.... What a vision you have given me!”

She stood before him, her face half-turned to the window. Yet she

seemed everywhere in the room--her presence filling it. He could not

speak again. He turned to go. Her words reached him as he neared the

door.

“Oh, if I only had my little baby--to take away!”

15

FALLOWS stood forward on the ferry that night and considered

the whole New York episode. He had done his work. He had told the

_Ploughman_ story five times. It was just the sowing. He might

possibly come back for the harvest.... He had another story to tell

now. Could he ever tell it without breaking?... He had tortured his

brain to make things clear for Morning and for men. He realized that

a man who implants a complete concept in another intelligence and

prevents it from withering until roots are formed and fruitage is

assured, performs a miracle, no less; because, if the soil were ready,

the concept would come of itself. He had driven his brain by every

torment to make words perform this miracle on a large scale.

And this little listening creature he had just left--she had taken

his idea, finished it for him, and involved it in action. To her it

was the Cross. She had carried it to Golgotha, and sunk upon it with

outstretched palms.... There was an excellence about Betty Berry that

amazed him, in that it was in the world.... He had not called such

women to him, because such women were not the answer to his desires.

He realized with shame that a man only knows the women who answer in

part the desires of his life. Those who had come to him were fitted

to the plane of sensation upon which he had lived so many years. He

had condemned all women because, in the weariness of the flesh, he had

suddenly risen to perceive the falsity of his affinities of the flesh.

“What boys we are!” he whispered, “in war and women and work--what

boys!”

Betty Berry had taught him a lesson, quite as enormous to his nature as

the _Ploughman’s_. A man who thinks of women only in sensuousness

encounters but half-women. He had learned it late, but well, that

a man in this world may rise to heights far above his fellows in

understanding, but that groups of women are waiting on all the higher

slopes of consciousness for their sons and brothers and lovers to come

up. They pass their time weaving laurel-leaves for the brows of delayed

valiants....

Duke thought of the men he had seen afield, the gravity with which

these men did their great fighting business, the world talking about

them. Then he thought of the little visionary in her room accepting her

tragedy....

Even now, in the hush and back-swing of the pendulum, it seemed very

true what he had said. She had seen it. It is dangerous business to

venture to change the current of other lives; no one knew it better

than Fallows. But he considered Morning. Morning, as it were, had been

left on his door-step. Morning would be alone now--alone to listen and

receive his powers.... Fallows looked up from the black water to the

far-apart pickets of the wintry night. He was going home.

* * * * *

The cabin was lit. Fallows climbed the hill wearily. There was a

certain sharpness as of treachery from his night’s work, but to that

larger region of mind, open to selfishness and the passion to serve

men, peace had come. He was going home, first to San Francisco--then to

the Bosks and the little boy.

Morning arose quickly at the sound of the step on the hard ground, and

opened the door wide. He had been reading her letter, which Fallows had

left upon the table. The letter had been like an added hour with her.

It was full of shy joy, full of their perfect accord, remote from the

world--its road and stone-piles and evasions.... Fallows saw that he

looked white and wasted. The red of the firelight did not mislead his

eye. Its glow was not Morning’s and did not blend with the pallor.

“I’m going on to-morrow, John,” he said.

“’Frisco?”

“Yes--and then----”

“You’ll come back here?”

“No, I’ll keep on into the west to _my_ cabin----”

“It would be nearer this way. I planned to see you after ’Frisco.”

“I’ll come back,” Fallows’ thought repeated, “for the harvest.”

“And so you are going to make the big circle again?”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t finished this first one, until you reach Noyes and your

desk in the _Western States_.”

“The next journey won’t take so long.”

“You’ve been the good angel to me again, Duke. It’s quite a wonder, how

you turn up in disaster of mine.... I wonder if I shall ever come to

you--but you won’t get down. You wouldn’t even stay ill.”

“You won’t get down again, John, at least, in none of the ways you know

about----”

Both men seemed spent beyond words.... Morning saw in the other’s

departure the last bit of resistance lifted from his heart’s quest.

Betty Berry had come between them. Morning’s conviction had never

faltered on the point that Fallows was structurally weak on this one

matter.... And so he was going. All that was illustrious in their

friendship returned. They needed few words, but sat late before turning

in. The cabin cooled and freshened. Each had the thought, before

finally falling asleep, that they were at sea again.... And in the

morning the thing that lived from their parting was this, from Duke

Fallows:

“Whatever you do, John--don’t forget your own--the deepest down man. He

is yours--go after him--get him!”

* * * * *

... She was at the top of the stairs when he called the next morning;

and he was only half-way up when he saw that she had on her hat and

coat and gloves. The day was bitter like the others. He had thought of

her fire, and the quiet of her presence. He meant to tell her all about

Duke Fallows and the going. It was his thought--that she might find in

this (not through words, but through his sense of release from Duke’s

antagonism) a certain quickening toward their actual life together. He

wanted to talk of bringing her to the cabin--at least, for her to come

for a day.

“You will go with me to get the tickets and things. I must start west

at once.”

It was quite dark in the upper hallway. Morning reached out and turned

her by the elbow, back toward the door of her room. There in the light,

he looked into her face. She was calm, her eyes bright. Whatever the

night had brought--if weakness it was mastered, if exaltation it was

controlled. But she was holding very hard. There was a tightness about

her mouth that terrified him. It was not as it had been with them; he

was not one with her.

“You mean that you are going away--for some time?”

“Yes.... Oh, you must not mind. We are road people. We have been

wonderfully happy. You must not look so tragic----”

It wasn’t like her at all. “We are not road people,” he thought....

“You must not look so tragic,”--that was just like a thing road people

might say.

He sat down. The weakness of his limbs held his mind. It seemed to him,

if he could forget his body, words might come. At first the thought

of her going away was intolerable, but that had dwindled. It was the

change in her--the something that had happened--the flippancy of her

words.... He looked up suddenly. It seemed as if her arms had been

stretched toward him, her face ineffably tender. So quickly it had

happened that he could not be sure. He wanted this very thing so much

that his mind might have formed the illusion. He let it pass. He did

not want her to say it was not so.

Words of her letter came back to him. Neither the letter nor yesterday

had anything to do with this day.... “You are drawing closer all the

time. I have been so happy to-day that I had to write. You must know

that I sent you away because I could not bear more happiness....”

Where was it? What had happened? He was fevered. Something was

destroying him.... Betty Berry did not suffer for herself--it was with

pity for him. The mother in her was tortured. It was her own life--this

love of his for her--the only child she would ever have. She had loved

its awakenings, its diffidences, the faltering steps of its expression.

The man was not hers, but his love for her was her very own.... She had

not thought of its death, when Fallows talked the night before. She had

thought of _her_ giving up for his sake, but not of the anguish

and the slaying of his love for her. And this was taking place now.

“You will let me write to you?” he said, still thinking of the letter.

“Oh, yes.”

“And you will write to me?”

She remembered now what she had written.... The fullness of her heart

had gone into that. She could not write like that again. Yet he was

asking for her letters, as a child might ask for a drink.... She could

not refuse. It wasn’t in nature to see his face, and refuse.... Surely

if she remained apart it was all any one could ask.

“Yes, I will write sometimes.”

He stood in the center of the room, his head bowed slightly, his eyes

upon the wall. He was ill, bewildered, his mind turning here and there

only to find fresh distress.... Suddenly he remembered that he had not

told her of his drinking.... That must be it. Some one else had told

her, and she was hurt and broken.

“I meant always to tell you,” he said. “Only it really did not seem

to signify by the time you came back. And when I was with you--oh, I

seemed very far from that. I don’t understand it now----”

She did not know what he meant; did not care, could not ask. It was

something he clutched--in the disintegration.... He looked less

death-like in his thinking of it.

“It doesn’t greatly matter,” she said. “I have to go west.... Won’t you

come with me to get the tickets?”

“I can’t go out into the street yet. If there is anything more I have

done--won’t you let me know?”

Suddenly he realized her side, that he was detaining her; that it

wasn’t easy for her to speak. It was not his way to impose his will

upon anyone; his natural shyness now arose, and he fingered his hat.

“Dear John Morning--you haven’t done anything. You have made me happy.

I must go away to my work--and you, to yours.... It is hard for me,

but I see it as the way. I have promised to write----”

The words came forth like birds escaping--thin, evasive, vain words.

That which she had seen so clearly the night before, (and which she

seemed utterly to have lost the meaning of) was a lock upon every real

utterance now. She had not counted upon this tragedy of her mother

instinct--this slaying of the perfect thing in him, which she had loved

to life.

He arose, and sat down; he swallowed, started to speak, but could not.

He was like a boy--this man who had seen so much, just a bewildered

boy, his suffering too deep for words--the sweetest part of him to

her, dying before her eyes. And the dream of their service together,

their hand-in-hand going out to the world, their poverty and purity and

compassion together--these were lost jewels.... It was all madness,

the world--all madness and devilishness. Beauty and virtue and loving

kindness were gone, the world turned insane.... The thought came to

tell _him_ she was insane; a better lie still, that she was not

a pure woman. She started to speak, but his eyes came up to her....

She tried it again, but his eyes came up to her. He fingered his hat

boyishly. The mother in her breast could not.

* * * * *

Their dreadful night. The winter darkness was coming on swiftly. Her

train was leaving.

“But you said you were not going to work for the present. You have been

working so hard all winter----”

He had said it all before.

“Yes--but there is much for me to do--days of study and practice--and

thinking. You will understand.... Everything will come clear and you

will understand. You see, to-day--this isn’t a day for words with

us.... One must have one’s own secret place. You must say of me, ‘She

suddenly remembered something--and had to go away.’...”

“‘She suddenly remembered something and had to hurry away,’” he

repeated, trying to smile. “But she will write to me. I will

work--work--and when you let me, I will come to you----”

“Yes----”

He had to leave.... He kissed her again. There was something like death

about it.

“If we _were_ only dead,” she said, “and were going away

together----”

* * * * *

... A man stepped up to him, regarded him intently. Morning realized

that he must get alone. He had been shaking his head wearily,

and unseeingly--standing in the main corridor of the station in

Jersey--shaking his head.... It was full night outside. He forgot that

he did not have to recross the river--and was on the ferry back to New

York before he remembered....

He gained the hill to his cabin long afterward. That reminded him that

Duke Fallows had gone, too--and that very morning.

It seemed farther back in his life than Liaoyang.

16

BETTY BERRY’S journey was ten hours west by the limited

trains--straight to the heart of her one tried friend, Helen Quiston, a

city music teacher. Her first thought, and the one buoy, was that she

would be able to tell everything.... She could not make Helen Quiston

feel the pressure that his Guardian Spirit (she always thought of Duke

Fallows so) invoked in that half-hour of his call, but with a day or a

night she could make her friend know what had happened, and something

of the extent of force which had led to her sacrifice. Helen would tell

her if she were mad. All through that night she prayed that her friend

would call her mad--would force her to see that the thing she had done

was viciously insane.

She was engulfed. For the first time, her spirit failed to right itself

in any way. She was more dependent upon Helen Quiston than she had

conceived possible, since the little girl had fought out the different

cruel presentations of the days, during the early life with her father.

Throughout the night _en route_ she thought of the letter she had

promised to write to John Morning. The day with him had brought the

letter from a vague promise to an immediate duty upon her reaching

the studio.... She was to write first, and at once. Already she was

making trials in her mind, but none would do. He would penetrate

every affectation. The wonder and dreadfulness of it--was that she

must not tell the truth, for he would be upon her, furiously human,

disavowing all separateness from the race, as one with a message must

be; disavowing the last vestige of the dream of compassion which his

Guardian Spirit had pictured.... She knew his love for her. She had

seen it suffer. Would Helen Quiston show her that she must bring it

back--that the Guardian Spirit was evil? There was a fixture about it,

a whispering of the negative deep within.

She could not write of the memories. Not the least linger of perfume

from that night at the theatre must touch her communication. Yet it

was the arch of all. As she knew her soul and his, they had been as

pure as children that night--even before a word was spoken. It had been

so natural--such a rest and joy.... She had learned well to put love

away, before he came. From the few who approached, she had laughed

and withdrawn. The world had daubed them. In her heart toward other

men, she was as a consecrated nun. And this was like her Lord who had

come.... She had made her way in the world among men. She knew them,

worked among them, pitied them. Her father had been as weak, as evil,

as passionate, as pitiable. In the beginning she had learned the world

through him--all its bitter, brutal lessons. As she knew the ’cello and

its literature, she knew the world and the cheap artifices it would

call arts.... She had even put away judgments; she had covered her

eyes; accustomed her ears to patterings; made her essential happiness

of little things; she had labored truly, and lived on, wondering why.

And he had come at last with understanding. She had seen in Morning

potentially all that a woman loves, and cannot be. He had made her mind

and heart fruitful and flourishing again. Then his Guardian Spirit had

appeared and spoken. As of old there had been talk of a serpent. As of

old the serpent was of woman.

* * * * *

Helen Quiston was just leaving for a forenoon’s work away from the

studio. She sat down for a moment holding the other in her arms; then

she made tea and toast, and hastened off to return as quickly as

possible.... For a long time Betty Berry stood by the piano. The day

was gray and cold, but the studio was softly shining. All the woods

of it were dark, approximately the black of the grand piano; floors

and walls and picture frames were dark, but the openings were broad,

and naked trees stirred outside the back windows.... She did not look

the illness that was upon her. She was a veteran in suffering.... She

forgot to breathe, until the need of air suddenly caught and shook

her throat. It was often so when the hidden beauty of certain music

unfolded to her for the first time.

She went to the rear windows, gradually realizing that it would soon

be spring-time. There was a swift, tangible hurt in this that brought

tears. There had been no tears for the inner desolation.... “Poor dear

John Morning,” she whispered.

The reproduction of a wonderful painting of the meeting of Beatrice and

Dante held her eye for a long time.... The blight was upon her as she

tried a last time to write. It spread over her hand and the table, the

room, the day. There was a hurt for him in everything she wanted to

say. She was hot and ill--her back, her brain, her eyes, from trying.

She could not hurt him any more. He had done nothing but give her

healing and visions. His Guardian had done nothing but tell the truth,

which she had seen at the time. This agony of hers had existed. It was

like everything else in the world.

She wrote at last of their service in the world. They needed, she

said, the strong air of solitude to think out the perfect way. It was

very hard for her, who had fared so long on dreams and denials and

loneliness. He must remember that. “Great things come to those who

love at a distance,” she wrote bravely. Tears started when she saw

the sentence standing so dauntlessly upon the page of her torture....

It would make them kinder, make their ideals live--and how young they

were!... She said that she was afraid to be so happy as he had made her

in certain moments. Often she found herself staring at the picture of

Beatrice and Dante.

The thought that broke in upon this brave writing was that she was

denied the thrill of great doing, as it had come to her while Fallows

had spoken.... It would have lived on, had she gone that night, without

seeing Morning again. Moreover, her way was different from that which

she had pictured, as his Guardian talked. She did not see then that her

action made a kind of lie of all her giving up to that hour; and that

there could be no united sacrifice. It was pure, voiceless sacrifice

for her--and blind murdering for him....

From the choke of this, her mind would turn to the song of triumph her

spirit had sung as his Guardian told the story.... She had seemed to

live in a vast eternal life, as she listened; and this which she was

asked to do--was just to attend a temporary flesh sickness. She had the

strange blessedness that comes with the conviction that immortality is

here and now, as those few men and women of the world have known in

their highest moments.

She could get back nothing of that exaltation. It would never come

again. The spirit it had played upon was broken.... She had been

rushing away on her thoughts. It was afternoon, the letter unfinished,

the ’cello staring at her from the corner. It had stood by her in

all her sorrows of the years, but was empty as a fugue now--endless

variations upon the one theme of misery.... Happiness does not come

back to the little things--after one has once known the breath of

life.... She closed the narrow way of the letter, which she had filled

with words--no past nor future, only the darkness that had come in to

mingle with the dark hangings of the room of her friend.... She kissed

the pages and sent them back the way she had come in the night.

* * * * *

The qualities that had brought her the friend, Helen Quiston, and which

had made the friendship so real, were the qualities of Betty Berry.

She had come to the last woman to be told of her madness, or to find

admonition toward breaking down the thing she had begun.... They had

talked for hours that night.

“I know it is lovely, dear Betty. Why, you look lovelier this instant

than I ever dreamed you could be. Loving a man seems to do that to

a woman--but the privilege of the greater thing! Oh, you _are_

privileged. That’s the way of the great love. I should like sometime

to know that Guardian. How did mere man grasp the beauty and mystery of

service like that?... Stay with me. I will serve you, hands and feet.

It is enough for me to touch the garment’s hem.... You are already

gone from us, dearest. You have loved a man. You do love a man. He is

worthy. You have not found him wanting. What matters getting him--when

you have found your faith? Think of us--think of the gray sisterhood

you once belonged to--nuns of the world--who go about their work

helping, and who say softly to each other as they pass, ‘No, I have not

been able to find him yet.’”

17

MORNING awoke in the gray of the winter morning. The place was

cold and impure. He had fallen asleep without the accustomed blasts of

hill-sweeping wind from window to window. He had not started the fire

the night before; had merely dropped upon his cot, dazed with suffering

and not knowing his weariness. He was reminded of places he had

awakened in other times when he could not remember how he got to bed.

Beyond the chairs and table lay the open fire-place, the ashes hooded

in white.

The blackness of yesterday returned, but with a hot resentment against

himself that he had not known before. He had followed Betty Berry about

for hours, and had not penetrated the hollow darkness with a single

ray of intelligence. This dreadful business was his, yet he had been

stricken; had scarcely found his speech. There was no doubt of Betty

Berry now, though a dozen evasions of hers during the day returned.

She was doing something hard, but something she thought best to do.

The real truth, however, was rightly his property.... To-day she would

write. To-morrow her letter would come. If it did not contain some

reality upon which he might stand through the present desolation, he

would go to her.... Yes, he would go to her.

His side was hurting. He was used to that; it had no new relation now.

Everything was flat and wretched. Distaste for himself and this nest

in which he had lain, was but another of the miserable adjuncts of the

morning. He stood forth shivering from the cot; struck a match and held

it to some waste paper. Kindling was ready in the fire-place, but the

paper flared out and fell to ashes, as he watched his left hand. He

went to the window and examined his hand closer. The nails were broken

and dry; there were whitish spots on the joints. He had seen something

of this before, but his physical reactions had been so various and

peculiar, in the past six weeks, that he had refused to be disturbed.

Just now his mind was clamoring with memories. He had the sense that

as soon as an opening was forced in his mind, a torrent would rush in.

He felt his heart striking hard and with rapidity. The floor heaved

windily, or was it the lightness of his limbs? He went about the things

to do with strange zeal, as if to keep his brain from a contemplation

so hideous that it could not be borne.

He lit another paper, placed kindling upon it, poked the charred stubs

of wood free from the thick covering of white, and brought fresh fuel.

Then, as the fire kindled, he opened the door and windows, and swept

and swept.... But it encroached upon him.... The open wound was no

longer a mystery.... His dream of the river and the boat that was not

allowed to land; his dream of the cliff, and looking down into the life

of earth through the tree-tops ... the ferry-man of the Hun ... and now

yesterday with its two relations to the old cause.

His whole nature was prepared for the revelation; yet it seemed to

require years in coming. Like the loss of the manuscript in the Liao

ravine, it was done before he knew.

“Of course, they had to rush away, when they found out,” he mumbled.

“Of course, they couldn’t stay. Of course, they couldn’t be the ones to

tell me.”

It might have been anywhere in China; the ferryman on the Hun ...

during the deck-passage.... It did not greatly matter. Some contact of

the Orient had started the slow virus on its long course in his veins.

He knew that it required from three to five years to reach the stage of

revealing itself as now. He saw it as the source of his various recent

indispositions, and realized that he could not remain in his cabin

indefinitely. It would be well for a while. Neither Duke Fallows nor

Betty Berry would tell. He could keep his secret, and then--to die in

some island quarantine? None of that. This was his life. He was master

of it. He should die when he pleased, and where.

... Yes, she had her gloves on, when he came. She had not removed them

all day, not even at the very last.... How strange and frightened she

had been--how pitiful and hard for her! She could not have told him.

She had loved him--and had suddenly learned.... She had seen that he

did not know.... It must have come to her in the night--after the last

day of happiness. Perhaps the processes of its coming to her were like

his. He was sorry for Betty Berry.

And he could not see her again; he could not see her again. He passed

the rest of the day with this repetition.... His life was over. That’s

what it amounted to. Of course, he would not let them segregate him.

His cabin would do for a while, until the secret threatened to reveal

itself, and then he would finish the business.... The two great issues

leaned on each other: The discovery of his mortal taint took the stress

from the tragedy of yesterday; and that he could not see Betty Berry

again kept madness away from the abominable death.... The worst of it

all was that the love-mating was ended. This brought him to the end of

the first day, when he began to think of the Play.

The literary instinct, of almost equal disorder with dramatic instinct,

and which he had come to despise during the past year, returned with

the easy conformity of an undesirable acquaintance--that reportorial

sentence-making faculty, strong as death, and as uncentering to

the soul of man. Morning saw himself searching libraries for data

on leprosy, being caught by officials--the subject of nation-wide

newspaper articles and magazine specials, the pathos of his case

variously appearing--Liaoyang recalled--his own story--Reever Kennard

relating afresh the story of the stealing of _Mio Amigo_. What

a back-wash from days of commonness! The ego and the public eye--two

Dromios--equal in monkey-mindedness and rapacity.

Morning was too shattered to cope with this ancient dissipation at

first.

After the warring and onrushing of different faculties, a sort of

coma fell upon the evil part, and the ways of the woman came back to

him. He sat by his fire that night, the wound in his side forgotten,

the essence of Asia’s foulness in his veins, forgotten--and meditated

upon the sweetness of Betty Berry. He approached her image with a good

humility. He saw her with something of the child upon her--as if he

had suddenly become full of years. “How beautiful she was!” he would

whisper; and then he would smile sadly at the poor blind boy he had

been, not to see her beautiful at first.... To think, only three days

before, she had sent him away, because she could not endure, except

alone, the visitation of happiness that came to her. People of such

inner strength must have their secret times and places, for their

strength comes to them alone. To think that he had not understood this

at once.... He had been eloquent and did not know it.

“Hell,” he said, “that’s the only way one can say the right thing--when

he doesn’t plan it.”

* * * * *

... If his illness had been any common thing she would not have been

frightened away. He was sure of this. It took Asia’s horror--to

frighten her away. He saw her now, how she must have fought with it.

He shuddered for her suffering on that day.... That day--why it was

only the day before yesterday.... He never realized before how the

illusion, Time, is only measurable by man’s feeling.... He was a little

surprised at Duke Fallows. He himself wouldn’t have been driven off,

if Duke had suddenly uncovered a leprous condition. He had been driven

off by Duke’s ideas, but no fear of contagion could do it. Yet Duke

was the bravest man he had ever known--in such deep and astonishing

ways courageous. Yet he had been brought up soft. He wasn’t naturally

a man-mingler. It had been too much for him. It was a staggerer--this.

Fallows was a Prince anyway. Every man to his own fear.... This was the

second morning.

Old Jethro, the rural delivery carrier, drove by that morning

without stopping. She could not have mailed her letter until last

night--another day to wait for it. Morning tried to put away the

misery. Women never think of mail-closing times. They put a letter in

the box and consider it delivered.... He puzzled on, regarding the

action of Duke Fallows, in the light of what he would have done. No

understanding came.

All thoughts returned in the course of the hours, his mind milling over

and over again the different phases, but each day had its especial

theme. The first was that he would not see Betty Berry again; that

Duke Fallows had been frightened away, the second; and on the third

morning, before dawn, he began to reckon with physical death, as if

this day’s topic had been assigned to him.

Sister Death--she had been in the shadows before. Occasionally he had

shivered afterward, when he thought of some close brush with her. She

was all right, only he had thought of her as an alien before. It really

wasn’t so--a blood sister now.... He recalled scenes in the walled

cities of China.... She had certainly put over a tough one on him....

It would be in this room. He wouldn’t wait until his appearance was

a revelation.... He would do the play. Something that he could take,

would free him from the present inertia, so he could work for a while,

a few hours a day. When the play was done--the Sister would come at

his bidding.... He had always thought of her as feminine. A line from

somewhere seemed to seize upon her very image--this time not sister,

but----

_Dark mother, always gliding near, with soft feet----_

He faced her out on that third morning. Physically there was but a

tremor about the coming. Not the suffering, but a certain touch and

shake of the heart, heaved him a little--the tough little pump stopped,

its fine incentive and its life business broken.... But that was only

the rattle of the door-knob of death.

It was all right. He wasn’t afraid. The devil, Ambition, was pretty

well strangled. There must be something that lasts, in his late-found

sense of the utter unimportance of anything the world can give--the

world which appreciates only the boyish part of a real man’s work. So

he would take out with him a reality of the emptiness of the voice

of the crowd. Then the unclean desire for drink was finished--none

of that would cling to him; moreover, no fighting passion to live on

would hold him down to the body of things.... But he would pass the

door with the love of Betty Berry--strong, young, imperious, almost

untried.... Would that come back with him? Does a matter of such

dimension die? Does one come back at all?...

Probably in this room....

Then he thought of the play that must be done in this room; and

curiously with it, identifying itself with the play and the re-forming

part of it, was the favorite word of Duke Fallows’--_Compassion_.

What a title for the play! Duke’s word and Duke’s idea.... All this

brought him to the thought of Service, as he had pictured it for Betty

Berry--a life together doing things for men--loving each other so much

that there were volumes to spare for the world--down among men--to the

deepest down man.

His throat tightened suddenly. He arose. A sob came from him.... His

control broke all at once.... How a little run of thoughts could tear

down a man’s will! It wasn’t fear at all--but the same depiction

running in his mind that had so affected Betty Berry when she begged to

be alone....

“The deepest down man--the deepest down man.... It is I, Duke!...

Surely you must have meant me all the time!”

* * * * *

But it passed quickly, properly whipped and put away with other

matters--all but a certain relating together of the strange trinity,

Death, Service, and Betty Berry--which he did not venture to play

with, for fear of relapse.... He had been eating nothing. He must go

to Hackensack. The little glass showed him a haggard and unshaven John

Morning, but there was nothing of the uncleanness about the face in

reflection.... He heard the “giddap” of Jethro far on the road. The old

rig was coming.... It stopped at his box. He hurried down the hill.

18

TWO letters; one from Duke Fallows. Morning opened this on

the way up the slope. He was afraid of the other. He wanted to be in

the cabin with the door shut--when that other was opened.... Fallows

was joyous and tender--just a few lines written on the way west:

“... I won’t be long in ’Frisco. I know that already. The _Western

States_ does very well without me.... Soon on the long road to Asia

and Russia. I must look up Lowenkampf again before going home. He was

good to us, wasn’t he, John?... And you, this old heart thrills for

you. You are coming on. I don’t know anything more you need. I say you

are coming on. You’ll do the Play and the Book.... John, you ought to

write the book of the world’s heart.... And then you will get so full

of the passion to serve men that writing won’t be enough. You will have

to go down among them again--and labor and lift among men. Things have

formed about you for this.... We are friends.... I am coming back for

the harvest.”

The sun had come out. Morning was standing in the doorway as he

finished. The lemon-colored light fell upon the paper.... It wasn’t

like Duke to write in this vein--after running away. He repeated aloud

a sentence to this effect. Then he went in, shut the door, and, almost

suffocating from the tension, read the letter of Betty Berry.

It was just such a letter as would have sent him to her, before his

realization of the illness.... He saw her torture to be kind, and yet

not to lift his hopes. It was different from Fallows’, in that it

fitted exactly to what he now knew about himself. And he had to believe

from the pages that she loved him. There was an eternal equality to

that.... The air seemed full of service. Two letters from his finest

human relations, each stirring him to service. He did not see this

just now with the touch of bitterness that might have flavored it all

another time.... What was there about him that made them think of him

so? If they only knew how meager and tainted so much of his thinking

was. Some men can never make the world see how little they are.

He wrote to Betty Berry. Calm came to him, and much the best moments

that he had known in the three days. He was apt to be a bit lyrical

as a letter-lover--he whose words were so faltering face to face with

the woman. Thoughts of the play came to his writing. He was really in

touch with himself again. He would never lose that. He would work every

day. When a man’s work comes well--he can face anything.... The play

was begun the fourth day, and, on the fifth, another letter from Betty

Berry. This was almost all about his work. She had seized upon this

subject, and her letters lifted his inspiration. She could share his

work. There was real union in that....

He was forgetting his devil for an hour at a time. There were moments

of actual peace and well-being. He did not suffer more than the pain he

had been accustomed to so long. And then, a real spring day breathed

over the hill.

That morning, without any heat of producing, and without any elation

from a fresh letter from the woman, he found that in his mind to say

aloud:

“I’m ready for what comes.”

By a really dramatic coincidence, within ten minutes after this

fruitage of fine spirit, John Morning found an old unopened envelope

from Nevin, the little doctor of the _Sickles_. He had recalled

some data on Liaoyang while inspecting the morning--something that

might prove valuable for the play, in the old wallet he had carried

afield. Looking for this in the moulded leather, he found the letter

Nevin had left in the Armory, before departing--just a little before

Betty Berry came that day.... Nevin had not come back. But Noyes and

Field had come.

Morning remembered that Nevin had spoken that morning of finding

something for the wound that would not heal.... The remedy was Chinese.

The Doctor knew of its existence, but had procured the name with great

difficulty in the Chinese quarter.... Morning was to fast ten days

while taking the treatment.

* * * * *

He went about it with a laugh. The message had renewed his deep

affection for Nevin. It had come forth from the hidden place where

Nevin now toiled, (secretly trying, doubtless, to cover every

appearance of his humanity).... He remembered how Nevin had studied

the wound that refused to heal. The last thing had been his report on

that. When there was nothing more to be offered but felicities--he had

vanished.

Morning did not leap into any expectancy that he was to be healed,

but thoughts of Nevin gave him another desire after the play and the

book--to trace the great-hearted little man before the end. Nevin would

be found somewhere out among the excessive desolations. If it may be

understood, the idea of mortal sickness remained in Morning’s mind at

this time, mainly as a barrier between him and Betty Berry.

Nevin’s drug was procured in New York. Hackensack failed utterly in

this.... On the third day, Morning suffered keenly for the need of

food. A paragraph from Betty Berry on the subject of the fasting at

this time completely astonished him; indeed, shook the basic conviction

as to the meaning of her departure:

“... I have often thought you did not seem so well after I returned

from Europe, as you were when we parted. But the ten days will do for

you, something that makes whatever might happen in the body seem so

little and unavailing.... Don’t you see, you are doing what every

one, destined to be a world-teacher, has done?... What amazes me

continually, is that you seem to be brought, one by one, to these

things by exterior processes, rather than through any will of your

own.... The Hebrew prophets were all called upon to do this in order to

listen better. Recall, too, the coming forth from the Wilderness of the

Baptist, and the forty days in the wilderness of the Master Himself.

Why, it is part of the formula! You will do more than improve the

physical health; you will hear your message more clearly.... I sit and

think--in the very hush of expectancy for you.”

As the evidences came, so they vanished. She could not have fled

from him in the fear of leprosy and written in this way; nor could

Duke Fallows, who was first of all unafraid of fleshly things. The

conviction of his taint, and of its incurableness, daily weakened.

Before the ten days passed, the last vestige of the horror was cleaned

away. Illusion--and yet the mental battle through which he had passed,

and which, through three terrible days, had shaken him body and soul,

was just as real in the graving of its experience upon the fabric of

his being as was the journey to Koupangtse, done hand and foot and

horse. He perceived that man, farther advanced in the complications of

self-consciousness, covers ground in three days and masters a lesson

that would require a life to learn in the dimness and leisure of simple

consciousness.

There was no way of missing this added fact: He, John Morning, was not

designed to lean. He had been whipped and spurred through another dark

hollow in the valley of the shadow, to show him again, and finally,

that he was not intended for leaning upon others, yet must have an

instant appreciation of the suffering of others. He had been forced to

fight his own way to a certain poise, through what was to him, at the

time, actual abandonment in distress, by the woman and the friend he

loved. Moreover, he had accepted death; resignation to death in its

most horrible form had been driven into his soul--an important life

lesson, which whole races of men have died to learn.

He was seeing very clearly.... He bathed continually both in water and

sunlight, lying in the open doorway as the Spring took root on his hill

and below. Often he mused away the hours, with Betty Berry’s letters

in his hand--too weak almost to stir at last, but filled with ease and

well-being, such as he had never known. Water from the Spring was all

he needed, and the activity of mind was pure and unerring, as if he

were lifted above the enveloping mists of the senses, through which he

had formerly regarded life.

Everything now was large and clear. Life was like a coast of splendid

altitude, from which he viewed the mighty distances of gilded and

cloud-shadowed sea, birds sailing vast-pinioned and pure, the breakers

sounding a part of the majestic harmony of granite and sea and sky; the

sun God-like, and the stars vast and pure like the birds.

When he actually looked with his eyes, it was as if he had come back,

a man, to some haunt of childhood. The little hill was just as lovely,

a human delight in the unbudded elms, a soft and childish familiarity

in the new greens of the sun-slope grass. The yellow primrose was

first to come, for yellow answers the thinnest, farthest sunlight. The

little cabin was like a cocoon. He was but half-out. Soon the stronger

sunlight would set him free--then to the wings.... One afternoon he

stared across to the haze of the great city. His eyes smarted with the

thought of the Charleys and the sisters, of the _Boabdils_ and the

slums.... Then, at last, he thought of Betty Berry waiting and thinking

of him ... “in the very hush of expectancy.” The world was very dear

and wonderful, and his love for her was in it all.

* * * * *

It was the ninth day that the bandage slipped from him, as clean as

when he put it on the day before, and when he opened the door of the

cabin he heard the first robin.... There was a sweeping finality in

the way it had come from Nevin, and the quality of the man lived in

Morning’s appreciation. His friends were always gone before he knew how

fine they were.

He was slow to realize that the days of earth-life were plentiful for

him, in the usual course. A man is never the same after he has accepted

death.... And it had all come in order.... He could look into her eyes

and say, “Betty Berry, whatever you want, is right for me, but I think

it would be best for you to tell me everything. We are strong--and if

we are not to be one together, we should talk it over and understand

perfectly.”...

How strange he had missed this straight way. There had been so much

illusion before. His body was utterly weak, but his mind saw more

clearly and powerfully than ever.

The Play was conceived as a whole that ninth day. The sun came warmly

in, while he wrote at length of the work, as he finally saw it.... On

the tenth day he drank a little milk and slept in his chair by the

doorway.... There was one difficult run that the robin went over a

hundred and fifty times, at least.

19

BETTY BERRY watched the progress of the fasting with a mothering

intensity. She saw that which had been lyrical and impassioned

give way to the workman, the deeper-seeing artist. He was not

less human; his humanity was broadened. From one of his pages,

she read how he had looked across at the higher lights of New York

one clear March night. His mind had been suddenly startled by a swift

picture of the fighting fool he had been, and of the millions there,

beating themselves and each other to death for vain things.... She

saw his Play come on in the days that followed the fasting. There

was freshness in his voice. She did not know that he had accepted

death, but she saw that he was beginning to accept her will in their

separation.

And this is what she had tried to bring about, but her heart was

breaking. Dully she wondered if her whole life were not breaking. The

something implacable which she had always felt in being a woman, held

her like a matrix of iron now. Her life story had been a classic of

suffering, yet she had never suffered before.

A letter from him, (frequently twice a day, they came) and it was

her instant impulse to answer, almost as if he had spoken. And when

she wrote--all the woman’s life of her had to be cut from it--cut

again and again--until was left only what another might say.... She

was forced to learn the terrible process of elimination which only

the greater artists realize, and which they learn only through years

of travail--that selection of the naked absolute, according to their

vision, all the senses chiseled away. His work, his health, especially

the clear-seeing that came from purifying of the body, the detachment

of his thoughts from physical emotions--of these, which were clear to

her as the impulses of instinct--she allowed herself to write. But

the woman’s heart of flesh, which had fasted so long for love, so

often found its way to her pages, and forced them to be done again....

Certain of his paragraphs dismayed her, as:

“Does it astonish you,” he asked, almost joyously, “when I say there is

something about Betty Berry beyond question--such a luxurious sense

of truth?... I feel your silences and your listenings between every

sentence. It is not what you say, though in words you seem to know what

I am to-day, and what I shall be to-morrow--but all about the words,

are _you_--those perfect hesitations, the things which I seemed

to know at first, but could not express. They were much too fine for a

medium of expression which knew only wars, horses, and the reporting of

words and deeds of men.... Why, the best thing in my heart is its trust

for you, Betty Berry. Looking back upon our hours together, I can see

now that all the misunderstandings were mine and all the truth yours.

When it seems to me that we should be together, and the memories come

piling back--those perfect hours--I say, because of this trust, ‘Though

it is not as I would have it, her way is better. And I know I shall

come to see it, because she cannot be wrong.’”

So she could not hide her heart from him, even though she put down what

seemed to her unworthiness and evasion, and decided through actual

brain-process what was best to say. A new conduct of life was not

carrying Betty Berry up into the coolness beyond the senses. Fasting

would never bring that to her. Fasting of the body was so simple

compared to the fasting of the heart which had been her whole life. Nor

could she ever rise long from the sense of the serpent in woman which

she had realized from the words of his Guardian--not a serpent to the

usual man, but to the man who was destined to love the many instead of

one.... She loved him as a woman loves--the boy, the lover, the man of

him--the kisses, the whispers, the arms of strength, the rapture of

nearness....

He must have been close to the spirit of that night at the theatre,

when this was written:

“The letter to-day, with the plaintive note in it, has brought you

even closer. I never think of you as one who can be tried seriously;

always as one finished, with infinite patience, and no regard at all

for the encompassing common. Of course, I know differently, know that

you must suffer, you who are so keenly and exquisitely animate--but you

have an un-American poise.... You played amazingly. I loved that at

once. There was a gleam about it. Betty Berry’s gleaming. I faced you

from the wings that night. I wanted to come up behind you. You were all

music.... But I love even better the instrument of emotions you have

become. That must be what music is for--to sensitize one’s life, to

make it more and more responsive....”

Then in a different vein:

“... The long forenoons, wherein we grow.... Yes, I knew you were a

tree-lover; that the sound of running water was dear to you ... and

the things you dream of ... work and play and forest scents and the

wind in the branches.... Sometimes it seems to me--is it a saying of

lovers?--that we should be boy and girl together.... Why, I’ve only

just now learned to be a boy. There was so much of crudity and desire

and anguish-to-do-greatly-at-any-cost--until just a little ago. But

I’ve never had a boyhood that could have known you. I wasn’t ready for

such loveliness in the beginning.... I’ve wanted terribly to go to you,

but that is put away for the time.”

These lines wrung her heart. “Oh, no,” she cried, “you have not learned

how to become a boy. There was never a time you were not ready--until

now! You are becoming a man--and the little girl--oh, she is a little

girl in her heart....”

Everything his Guardian had promised was coming to be. He was changing

into a man. That would take him from her at the last--even letters,

this torrent of his thoughts of life and work. She saw the first

process of it--as the Play grasped him finally--the old tragedy of a

man turning from a woman to his work....

She built the play from the flying sparks.... He was thronged with

illusions of production. How badly he had done it before, he said, and

how perfect had proved the necessity to wait, and to do it a second

time.... Even the most unimaginative audience must build the great

battle picture from the headquarters scene; then the trampled arena of

the Ploughman, deep in the hollow of that valley, and his coming forth

through the millet....

“... It’s so simple,” he wrote in fierce haste. “You see, I remember

how hard it was for me to grasp that first night, when Fallows brought

in the story to the Russian headquarters.... I have remembered that. I

have made it _so that I could see it then_. And I was woven in and

fibred over with coarseness, from months of life in Liaoyang and from

the day’s hideous brutality. I have measured my slowness and written

to quicken such slowness as that. The mystery is, it is not spoiled by

such clearness. It is better--it never lets you alone. It won’t let you

lie to yourself. You can’t be the same after reading it.... And it goes

after the deepest down man.... Every line is involved in action.

“The third act--sometime we’ll see it together--how the main character

leaves the field and goes out in search of the Ploughman’s hut, across

Asia and Europe; how he reaches there--the old father and mother, the

six children, the one little boy, who has the particular answer for

the man’s lonely love--the mother of the six, common, silent, angular,

her skirt hanging square, as Duke put it--but she is big enough for

every one to get into her heart. You will see the fear of her man’s

death, which the stranger’s presence brings to her, though he leaves it

to Russia to inform the family. You will see the beautiful mystery of

compassion that he brings, too. That’s the whole shine of the piece.

And it came from the ministry of pain.

... “I’m not praising _my_ Play--it isn’t. It’s Duke’s almost

every word of it--every thought, the work of Duke’s disciple. I

have merely felt it all and made it clear--clear. You see it all.

Many thousands must see, and see what the name means. It’s the most

wonderful word in the world to me, _Compassion_.”

Then came the break for a day, and the flash that his work on the Play

was finished. “The cabin will be harder for me now. The new work is

only a dream so far--and this goes to Markheim to-day.... It is very

queer that I should go back to Markheim, but somehow I want to pick up

that failure. There are other reasons.... I shall tell him that he can

have five days. I’m just getting ready to go across the River.... My

health was almost never better. I’m not tired. The work has seemed to

replenish me, as your letters do. But that last letter--yesterday’s--it

seems to come from behind a screen, where other voices were--the loved

tones troubled and crowded out by others. It left me restless and more

than ever longing to see you. It is as if there were centuries all

unintelligible, to be made clear only by being with you. The world and

the other voices drown yours----”

She felt the instinct of centuries to hold out her arms to him--arms

of the woman, after man’s task in the world--home at evening with the

prize of the hunt and battle. The world for the day, the woman for the

night--that is man’s way. She seemed to know it now from past eternity.

And for woman--day and night the man of her thoughts.... She was afraid

of her every written word now. Her heart answered every thrill of his;

the murmuring and wrestling resistance of his against the miles, was

hers ten-fold.... The days of the fasting had not been like this, nor

the two weeks that followed in which he had completed the play....

April had come. She was ill. Her music was neglected altogether. Her

friend, Helen Quiston, never faltered in her conception of the beauty

and the mystery of the separation. With all her will, Helen sustained

her against the relinquishing of the lofty ideal of sacrifice, and

tried to distract her impassioned turning to the east.... She would

hold to the death; Betty Berry knew this.

“It’s harder now that the play is done,” Betty repeated. “He can’t be

driven instantly to work again. I can’t lie to him. He doesn’t fight

me--he thinks I’m right--that’s the unspeakable part of it. There is

nothing for me to write about except his work....”

And Helen Quiston found her, a half-hour afterward, staring out of

the window, exactly as she had left--her hands in her lap exactly the

same.... Betty Berry was thinking unutterable things, having to do with

adorable meetings in the theatre-wings--of wonderful night journeys,

all night talking--of waiting in a little room, and at the head of the

stairs. There was an invariable coming back to the first kiss in the

wings of the theatre.

“We were real--we were true to each other that night--true as little

children. We needed no words,” this was her secret story.... “Oh, I

waited so long for him ... and we could have gone out together and

served in a little way. But they would not let us alone.”

He had been across to New York.... The second morning after the play

was finished, she received a letter with a rather indescribable ending.

He told her of fears and strangeness, of intolerable longing for

something to happen that would bring them together.... The rest is here:

“I’m a bit excited by the thought that just came to me. And another,

but I won’t tell you yet, for fear.... I don’t quite understand myself.

I seem afraid. I think I would ask more of myself than I would of

another man just now. There seem all about me invisible restraints.

Something deep within recognizes the greatness and finality of your

meaning to me.... It is true, you do not leave the strength to me.

Did you ever--? No, I won’t ask that.... This letter isn’t kind to

you--unsettling, strange, full of an intensity to see and be with

you....”

Moments afterwards, as she was standing at the piano--the letter

trailing from her hand--the telephone in the inner room startled her

like a human cry.

20

IT was Morning. She did not remember his words nor her answers--only

that she had told him he might come up-town to her. He had dropped

the receiver then, as if it burned him.

So, it was a matter of minutes. Nothing was ready. Least of all, was

she ready. She could hardly stand. She had forgotten at first, and it

had required courage, of late, to look in the mirror. She would have

given up, before what she saw now, but a robin was singing in the

foliage by the rear windows. She went out to open the studio door into

the hall, then retired to the inner room again.... “He can heal you,

and bring back the music,” her heart whispered, but her mind cowered

before herself, and this mate of herself, Helen Quiston, and before his

Guardian.... She heard his step on the stair ... called to him to wait

in the studio. He was pacing to and fro.

Morning felt the light resistance in her arms. His kiss fell upon her

cheek. He held her at arm’s length, looking into her face.

She laughed, repeating that she was not ill.... She was always thinner

in summer, she said. In her withholding, there was destructiveness for

the zeal he had brought; and that which she set herself resolutely to

impart--the sense of their separateness--found its lodgment in his

nature. It would always be there now, she thought; it would augment,

like ice about a spring in early winter, until the frost sealed the

running altogether. The lover was stayed, though his mind would not yet

believe.

“Is it really possible,” he said, sitting before her restlessly, “that

I am here in your house, and that I can stay, and talk with you, and

see you and hear you play? I have thought about it so much that it’s

hard to realize.”

“It is quite what a lover would say,” she thought.... She had to watch

her words. Her heart went out to him, but her mind remembered the work

to do.... Self-consciousness, and a weighing of words--how horrible

between _them_!

“And what made you come? I had just read your letter, when the

telephone rang----”

“I shouldn’t have sent that letter,” he answered. “I must have sent it

because of the things I thought, and didn’t write.... The night before,

I had come home to the cabin--after Markheim and the city. It was

dreadful--with the work gone. Yesterday was too much for me--the Spring

day--alone--not ready to begin again--you here.... I got to thinking

about you so fast--and the shame of it, for us to be apart--that I

couldn’t endure it.... I thought of going to you in a month--in a

week; and then when the letter was mailed, I thought of it being with

you this morning.... A thousand things poured into my mind. It seemed

finally as if everything was wrong between us; as if I had already

remained too long from you. It was like fighting devils.... And then I

tried to beat the letter to you, but it got here by an earlier train

this morning.”

He was like a child to her, telling about something that had frightened

him.

Their silences were strained. His eyes had a sleepless look. Betty

saw it working upon him--the repulsion that had gone from her. She

wished she might go to his arms and die. It suddenly came over her--the

uselessness of it all--the uselessness of being a woman, of waiting, of

final comprehension--all for this rending.... Yet she saw what would

happen if she followed her heart. He would take her. There would be a

radiant season, for the lover within him was not less because his work

was for other men. But there was also within him (his Guardian had

made her believe it) her rival, a solitary stranger come to the world

for service, who would not delay long to show him how he had betrayed

his real work, how he had caged his greater self, his splendid pinions

useless.... Morning would hear the world calling for work he could not

do.

“_There seem all about me invisible restraints._”

This from the letter of the morning--alone remained with her. It

expressed it all. The sentence uprose in her mind. It was more dominant

to her than if a father had forbade his coming, or even if by his

coming another was violated.

All the forbiddings that Society can bring against desire are but

symbols compared to the invisible restraints of a full man’s nature.

Men who are held by symbols, ruled by exterior voices and fears, are

not finished enough to be a law unto themselves.... It wasn’t the

terror of these thoughts, but tenderness in answer to his hurried

tumble of explanation regarding his coming, that had filled Betty’s

eyes. He caught the sparkle of a tear in profile, and came to her.

“It’s like creating--visibly, without hands, but with thoughts--creating

a masterpiece--to see the tears come like that----”

He drew a chair to the bench where she sat, her back to the piano.

Helen Quiston was away, as usual, for the forenoon.

“It is creating--another world,” she answered steadily.

He stared at her. She saw again that sleepless look.

“You’ve been a whole month on a lofty ridge--just think of it--fasting

and pure expression of self--spiritual self-revelation----”

It seemed to him there was a suggestion in what she said for the new

book.

“And now you are down in the meadows again,” she finished.

“The earth-sweet meadows--with you.”

He could not know what the words meant to her; that there was no

quarter in them for her. She did not belong to his ascents.

“Somehow I always think of you as belonging best to the evenings, the

hushed earth, the sweetness of the rest-time. You make me remember what

to do, and how to do it well. Why, just now you made me see clearly for

a second what I must do next. You make me love people better--when I am

close to you.”

She was not to be carried away by these givings which would have made

many a woman content.

“Remember, I have had your letters every day. You are very dear to me

up there. You have been down in the meadows--and in the caverns--much.

You are not ready to return--even for the evenings. You stand now for

austere purity--for plain, ancient, mother’s knee ideals. You must not

delude yourself. A man must be apart in order to see. You did not begin

really to live--until you drew apart.”

He felt her stripping his heart. His face lifted in agony, and his

eyes caught the picture on the wall of the meeting of Beatrice and

Dante. The Florentine woman seemed not to touch the earth; the poet was

awed, mystic in the fusion of their united powers. It was fateful that

Morning saw the picture at this instant.

“Look,” he said, “what the world has from the meeting of that man and

woman--an immortal poem!”

“But Beatrice passed on----”

“She became identified with his greater power, Betty. She was one with

it----”

“By passing on!”

He arose and lifted her to her feet, and his arms did not relinquish

her.

“And you mean that you would pass on?... You must not. You must not. We

would both be broken and bewildered. I love you. I have come to you.

I want to be near--and work with you. I know you all, and shall love

you always. I have come to you, and I must stay--or you must come with

me----”

Her resistance was broken for the moment. An icy burden fell from her.

She clung to him, and tears helped her.

* * * * *

They were together again in the studio that afternoon. Betty Berry was

making tea, her strength renewed. Helen Quiston had come and gone.

Morning had been away for an hour.

“Strange man,” she said, “let us reason together.... You are working

now for men. That is right, but when you are full of power, when you

come really into the finished man you are to be, and all these hard

years have healed beyond the last ache--you will work for women. Does

it sound strange from me, that the inspiration of the world to-day is

with the women? Why, it seems to me that men are caught in the very

science of cruelty. And then, the women of to-day represent the men of

the future. When one of the preparers of the way brings his gospel to

women, he kindles the inspiration of the next generation. But this fire

can only come from the solitary heights--never from the earth-sweet

meadows----”

He shook his head.

“The men who have done the most beautiful verses and stories about

children--have had no children of their own. A man cannot be the father

of his country and the father of a house. The man who must do the

greatest work for women must hunger for the _vision_ of Woman, and

not be yoked with one.... It is so clear. It is always so.”

“All that you say makes me love you more, Betty----”

“Don’t, dear. Don’t make it harder for me.... It is not I that thrills

you. It is my speaking of your work that fills your heart with

gladness--the things you feel to do----”

“They are from you----”

“Don’t say that. It is not true.”

“But I never saw so clearly----”

“Then go away with the vision. Oh, John Morning, you cannot listen to

yourself--with a woman in the room!”

He lifted his shoulders, drawing her face to his. “I was going to

say, you are my wings,” he whispered. “But that is not it. You are my

fountain. I would come to you and drink----”

“But not remain----”

“I love your thoughts, Betty, your eyes and lips----”

“Because you are athirst----”

“I shall always be athirst!”

“That is not nature.”

He shuddered.

“Do men, however athirst--remain at the oases? Men of strength--would

they not long to go? Would they not remember the far cities and the

long, blinding ways of the sun?”

“But you could go with me--” he exclaimed.

“That is not nature!”

He was the weaker. “But you have gone alone to the far cities, and the

long, blinding ways of the sun----”

“Yes, alone. But with you--a time would come when I could not. We are

man and woman. There would be little children. I would stay--and you

could not leave them.... Oh, they are not for you, dear. They would

weaken your courage. You would love them. At the end of the day, you

would want them, and the mother again.... The far cities would not hear

you; the long, blinding ways of the sun would know you no more----”

“Betty,” he whispered passionately, “how wonderfully sweet that would

be!”

“Yes ... to the mother ... but _you_--I can see it in your eyes.

You would remember Nineveh, that great city....”

* * * * *

Darkness was about them.

“Betty Berry--you would rather I wouldn’t take the train to you

again--not even when it seems I cannot stay longer away?”

She did not answer.

“Betty----”

“Yes....”

She left him and crossed to the far window.

“Would you not have me come to you again--at all?”

She could not hold the sentence, and her answer. The room was terrible.

It seemed filled with presences that suffocated her--that cared nothing

for her. All day they had inspired her to speak and answer--and now

they wanted her death. She moved to the ’cello. Her hands fluttered

along the strings--old, familiar ways--but making hardly a sound.... If

she did not soon speak, he would come to her. She would fail again--the

touch of him, and she would fail.

“Betty, is there never to be--the fountain at evening?”

“You know--you know--” she cried out. Words stuck after that. She had

not a thought to drive them.

He arose.

“Don’t,” she implored. “Don’t come to me! I cannot bear it.”

... It was his final rebellion.

“I am not a preparer of the way. I have not a message. I am sick of the

thought. I am just a man--and I love you!”

At last she made her stand, and on a different position. “I could not

love you--if that were true.”

* * * * *

She heard him speak, but not the words. She heard the crackling and

whirring of flames. He did not cross the room.... She had risen, her

arms groping toward him. She felt him approach, and the flames were

farther.... She must not speak of flames.

“You will go away soon--won’t you?” she whispered, as he took her.

“Yes, to-night----”

“Yes--to-night,” she repeated.

She was lying upon the couch in the studio, and his chair was beside

her.

“No, don’t light anything--no light!... It is just an hour.... I could

not think of food until you go. But you may bring me a drink of water.

On the way to the train, you can have your supper.... I will play--play

in the dark, and think of you--as you go----”

She talked evenly, a pause between sentences. There was a tensity in

the formation of words, for the whirring and crackling distracted,

dismayed her. Her heart was breaking. This she knew. When it was

finished, he would be free.... The flames were louder and nearer, as he

left for the drink of water. She called to him to light a match, if he

wished, in the other room.... He was in her room. She knew each step,

just where. He was there. It was as if he were finally materialized

from her thoughts in the night, her dreaming and writing to him. His

hand touched her dresser. She heard the running water ... and then it

was all red and rending and breathless, until she felt the water to her

lips. Always, as he came near, the flames receded.

And out of all the chaos, the figure of the craftsman had returned

to him. The world had revealed itself to him as never before in the

passage of time. She had given him her very spirit that day, and the

strength of all her volition from the month of brooding upon the

conception of his Guardian. Literally on that day the new Book was

conceived, as many a man’s valorous work has begun to be, in a woman’s

house--her blood and spirit, its bounty.

“This is a holy place to me, this room,” he said, the agonies of

silence broken. “I can feel the white floods of spirit that drive the

world.”

She did not need to answer. She held fast to herself, lest something

betray her. Darkness was salvation. All that his Guardian had asked was

in her work. John Morning told it off, sentence by sentence. It took

her life, but he must not know. She thought she would die immediately

after he was gone--but, strangely, now the suffering was abated.... She

was helping.... Was not that the meaning of life--to give, to help, to

love?... Someone had said so.

He lifted her, carried her in his arms, talked and praised her.

“There’s something deathlessly bright about you, Betty Berry!” he

whispered. “I am going--but we are one! Don’t you feel it? You are

loving the world from my heart!”

To the door, but not to the light, she walked with him.... Up the

stairs he strode a last time to take her in his arms.

“We are one--a world-loving one--remember that!”

She did not know why, but as he kissed her--she thought of the pitcher

broken at the fountain.

It was all strange light and singing flame.... She was lost in the

hall. She laughed strangely.... She must play him on his way....

Someone helped her through the raining light--until she could feel the

strings.