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The Younger Set

by Robert W. Chambers · English · Gutenberg #14852 · 815,285 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Younger Set

Author: Robert W. Chambers


        
Release date: February 1, 2005 [eBook #14852]
                Most recently updated: December 19, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNGER SET ***




Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.







_The_ YOUNGER SET


WORKS OF ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

     THE YOUNGER SET
     THE FIGHTING CHANCE
     THE TREE OF HEAVEN
     THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS
     THE RECKONING
     IOLE
     Cardigan
     The Maid-at-Arms
     Lorraine
     Maids of Paradise
     Ashes of Empire
     The Red Republic
     The King in Yellow
     A Maker of Moons
     A King and a Few Dukes
     The Conspirators
     The Cambric Mask
     The Haunts of Men
     Outsiders
     A Young Man in a Hurry
     The Mystery of Choice
     In Search of the Unknown
     In the Quarter

       *       *       *       *       *

     FOR CHILDREN

     Garden-Land
     Forest-Land
     River-Land
     Mountain-Land
     Orchard-Land
     Outdoorland

[Illustration: "Gave into his keeping soul and body."--Page 513]




_The_

YOUNGER SET

BY

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

AUTHOR OF

"THE FIGHTING CHANCE," ETC.


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

G.C. WILMSHURST

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

NEW YORK

_Published August, 1907_




TO

MY MOTHER




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                      PAGE
   I.--HIS OWN PEOPLE           1
  II.--A DREAM ENDS            43
 III.--UNDER THE ASHES         84
  IV.--MID-LENT               119
   V.--AFTERGLOW              161
  VI.--THE UNEXPECTED         194
 VII.--ERRANDS AND LETTERS    242
VIII.--SILVERSIDE             280
  IX.--A NOVICE               324
   X.--LEX NON SCRIPTA        384
  XI.--HIS OWN WAY            420
 XII.--HER WAY                460
       ARS AMORIS             503




THE YOUNGER SET

       *       *       *       *       *


CHAPTER I

HIS OWN PEOPLE


"You never met Selwyn, did you?"

"No, sir."

"Never heard anything definite about his trouble?" insisted Gerard.

"Oh, yes, sir!" replied young Erroll, "I've heard a good deal about it.
Everybody has, you know."

"Well, I _don't_ know," retorted Austin Gerard irritably, "what
'everybody' has heard, but I suppose it's the usual garbled version made
up of distorted fact and malicious gossip. That's why I sent for you.
Sit down."

Gerald Erroll seated himself on the edge of the big, polished table in
Austin's private office, one leg swinging, an unlighted cigarette
between his lips.

Austin Gerard, his late guardian, big, florid, with that peculiar blue
eye which seems to characterise hasty temper, stood by the window,
tossing up and catching the glittering gold piece--souvenir of the
directors' meeting which he had just left.

"What has happened," he said, "is this. Captain Selwyn is back in
town--sent up his card to me, but they told him I was attending a
directors' meeting. When the meeting was over I found his card and a
message scribbled, saying he'd recently landed and was going uptown to
call on Nina. She'll keep him there, of course, until I get home, so I
shall see him this evening. Now, before you meet him, I want you to
plainly understand the truth about this unfortunate affair; and that's
why I telephoned your gimlet-eyed friend Neergard just now to let you
come around here for half an hour."

The boy nodded and, drawing a gold matchbox from his waistcoat pocket,
lighted his cigarette.

"Why the devil don't you smoke cigars?" growled Austin, more to himself
than to Gerald; then, pocketing the gold piece, seated himself heavily
in his big leather desk-chair.

"In the first place," he said, "Captain Selwyn is my
brother-in-law--which wouldn't make an atom of difference to me in my
judgment of what has happened if he had been at fault. But the facts of
the case are these." He held up an impressive forefinger and laid it
flat across the large, ruddy palm of the other hand. "First of all, he
married a cat! C-a-t, cat. Is that clear, Gerald?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good! What sort of a dance she led him out there in Manila, I've heard.
Never mind that, now. What I want you to know is how he behaved--with
what quiet dignity, steady patience, and sweet temper under constant
provocation and mortification, he conducted himself. Then that fellow
Ruthven turned up--and--Selwyn is above that sort of suspicion. Besides,
his scouts took the field within a week."

He dropped a heavy, highly coloured fist on his desk with a bang.

"After that hike, Selwyn came back, to find that Alixe had sailed with
Jack Ruthven. And what did he do; take legal measures to free himself,
as you or I or anybody with an ounce of temper in 'em would have done?
No; he didn't. That infernal Selwyn conscience began to get busy, making
him believe that if a woman kicks over the traces it must be because of
some occult shortcoming on his part. In some way or other that man
persuaded himself of his responsibility for her misbehaviour. He knew
what it meant if he didn't ask the law to aid him to get rid of her; he
knew perfectly well that his silence meant acknowledgment of
culpability; that he couldn't remain in the service under such
suspicion.

"And now, Gerald," continued Austin, striking his broad palm with
extended forefinger and leaning heavily forward, "I'll tell you what
sort of a man Philip Selwyn is. He permitted Alixe to sue him for
absolute divorce--and, to give her every chance to marry Ruthven, he
refused to defend the suit. That sort of chivalry is very picturesque,
no doubt, but it cost him his career--set him adrift at thirty-five, a
man branded as having been divorced from his wife for cause, with no
profession left him, no business, not much money--a man in the prime of
life and hope and ambition, clean in thought and deed; an upright, just,
generous, sensitive man, whose whole career has been blasted because he
was too merciful, too generous to throw the blame where it belonged. And
it belongs on the shoulders of that Mrs. Jack Ruthven--Alixe
Ruthven--whose name you may see in the columns of any paper that
truckles to the sort of society she figures in."

Austin stood up, thrust his big hands into his pockets, paced the room
for a few moments, and halted before Gerald.

"If any woman ever played me a dirty trick," he said, "I'd see that the
public made no mistake in placing the blame. I'm that sort"--he
shrugged--"Phil Selwyn isn't; that's the difference--and it may be in
his favour from an ethical and sentimental point of view. All right; let
it go at that. But all I meant you to understand is that he is every
inch a man; and when you have the honour to meet him, keep that fact in
the back of your head, among the few brains with which Providence has
equipped you."

"Thanks!" said Gerald, colouring up. He cast his cigarette into the
empty fireplace, slid off the edge of the table, and picked up his hat.
Austin eyed him without particular approval.

"You buy too many clothes," he observed. "That's a new suit, isn't it?"

"Certainly," said Gerald; "I needed it."

"Oh! if you can afford it, all right. . . . How's the nimble Mr.
Neergard?"

"Neergard is flourishing. We put through that Rose Valley deal. I tell
you what, Austin, I wish you could see your way clear to finance one or
two--"

Austin's frown cut him short.

"Oh, all right! You know your own business, of course," said the boy, a
little resentfully. "Only as Fane, Harmon & Co. have thought it worth
while--"

"I don't care what Fane, Harmon think," growled Austin, touching a
button over his desk. His stenographer entered; he nodded a curt
dismissal to Gerald, adding, as the boy reached the door:

"Your sister expects you to be on hand to-night--and so do we."

Gerald halted.

"I'd clean forgotten," he began; "I made another--a rather important
engagement--"

But Austin was not listening; in fact, he had already begun to dictate
to his demure stenographer, and Gerald stood a moment, hesitating, then
turned on his heel and went away down the resounding marble corridor.

"They never let me alone," he muttered; "they're always at me--following
me up as though I were a schoolboy. . . . Austin's the worst--never
satisfied. . . . What do I care for all these functions--sitting around
with the younger set and keeping the cradle of conversation rocking? I
won't go to that infernal baby-show!"

He entered the elevator and shot down to the great rotunda, still
scowling over his grievance. For he had made arrangements to join a
card-party at Julius Neergard's rooms that night, and he had no
intention of foregoing that pleasure just because his sister's first
grown-up dinner-party was fixed for the same date.

As for this man Selwyn, whom he had never met, he saw no reason why he
should drop business and scuttle uptown in order to welcome him. No
doubt he was a good fellow; no doubt he had behaved very decently in a
matter which, until a few moments before, he had heard little about. He
meant to be civil; he'd look up Selwyn when he had a chance, and ask him
to dine at the club. But this afternoon he couldn't do it; and, as for
the evening, he had made his arrangements, and he had no intention of
disturbing them on Austin's account.

When he reached his office he picked up the telephone and called up
Gerard's house; but neither his sister nor anybody else was there except
the children and servants, and Captain Selwyn had not yet called. So he
left no message, merely saying that he'd call up again. Which he forgot
to do.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile Captain Selwyn was sauntering along Fifth Avenue under the
leafless trees, scanning the houses of the rich and great across the
way; and these new houses of the rich and great stared back at him out
of a thousand casements as polished and expressionless as the monocles
of the mighty.

And, strolling at leisure in the pleasant winter weather, he came
presently to a street, stretching eastward in all the cold
impressiveness of very new limestone and plate-glass.

Could this be the street where his sister now lived?

As usual when perplexed he slowly raised his hand to his moustache; and
his pleasant gray eyes, still slightly blood-shot from the glare of the
tropics, narrowed as he inspected this unfamiliar house.

The house was a big elaborate limestone affair, evidently new. Winter
sunshine sparkled on lace-hung casement, on glass marquise, and the
burnished bronze foliations of grille and door.

It was flood-tide along Fifth Avenue; motor, brougham, and victoria
swept by on the glittering current; pretty women glanced out from
limousine and tonneau; young men of his own type, silk-hatted,
frock-coated, the crooks of their walking sticks tucked up under their
left arms, passed on the Park side.

But the nods of recognition, lifted hats, the mellow warnings of motor
horns, clattering hoofs, the sun flashing on carriage wheels and
polished panels, on liveries, harness, on the satin coats of horses--a
gem like a spark of fire smothered by the sables at a woman's throat,
and the bright indifference of her beauty--all this had long since lost
any meaning for him. For him the pageant passed as the west wind passes
in Samar over the glimmering valley grasses; and he saw it through
sun-dazzled eyes--all this, and the leafless trees beyond against the
sky, and the trees mirrored in a little wintry lake as brown as the
brown of the eyes which were closed to him now forever.

As he stood there, again he seemed to hear the whistle signal, clear,
distant, rippling across the wind-blown grasses where the brown
constabulary lay firing in the sunshine; but the rifle shots were the
crack of whips, and it was only a fat policeman of the traffic squad
whistling to clear the swarming jungle trails of the great metropolis.

Again Selwyn turned to the house, hesitating, unreconciled. Every
sun-lit window stared back at him.

He had not been prepared for so much limestone and marquise magnificence
where there was more renaissance than architecture and more bay-window
than both; but the number was the number of his sister's house; and, as
the street and the avenue corroborated the numbered information, he
mounted the doorstep, rang, and leisurely examined four stiff box-trees
flanking the ornate portal--meagre vegetation compared to what he had
been accustomed to for so many years.

Nobody came; once or twice he fancied he heard sounds proceeding from
inside the house. He rang again and fumbled for his card case. Somebody
was coming.

The moment that the door opened he was aware of a distant and curious
uproar--far away echoes of cheering, and the faint barking of dogs.
These seemed to cease as the man in waiting admitted him; but before he
could make an inquiry or produce a card, bedlam itself apparently broke
loose somewhere in the immediate upper landing--noise in its crudest
elemental definition--through which the mortified man at the door
strove to make himself heard: "Beg pardon, sir, it's the children broke
loose an' runnin' wild-like--"

"The _what_?"

"Only the children, sir--fox-huntin' the cat, sir--"

His voice was lost in the yelling dissonance descending crescendo from
floor to floor. Then an avalanche of children and dogs poured down the
hall-stairs in pursuit of a rumpled and bored cat, tumbling with yelps
and cheers and thuds among the thick rugs on the floor.

Here the cat turned and soundly cuffed a pair of fat beagle puppies, who
shrieked and fled, burrowing for safety into the yelling heap of
children and dogs on the floor. Above this heap legs, arms, and the
tails of dogs waved wildly for a moment, then a small boy, blond hair in
disorder, staggered to his knees, and, setting hollowed hand to cheek,
shouted: "Hi! for'rard! Harkaway for'rard! Take him, Rags! Now, Tatters!
After him, Owney! Get on, there, Schnitzel! Worry him, Stinger!
Tally-ho-o!"

At which encouraging invitation the two fat beagle pups, a waddling
dachshund, a cocker, and an Irish terrier flew at Selwyn's nicely
creased trousers; and the small boy, rising to his feet, became aware of
that astonished gentleman for the first time.

"Steady, there!" exclaimed Selwyn, bringing his walking stick to a brisk
bayonet defence; "steady, men! Prepare to receive infantry--and doggery,
too!" he added, backing away. "No quarter! Remember the Alamo!"

The man at the door had been too horrified to speak, but he found his
voice now.

"Oh, you hush up, Dawson!" said the boy; and to Selwyn he added
tentatively, "Hello!"

"Hello yourself," replied Selwyn, keeping off the circling pups with the
point of his stick. "What is this, anyway--a Walpurgis hunt?--or Eliza
and the bloodhounds?"

Several children, disentangling themselves from the heap, rose to
confront the visitor; the shocked man, Dawson, attempted to speak again,
but Selwyn's raised hand quieted him.

The small boy with the blond hair stepped forward and dragged several
dogs from the vicinity of Selwyn's shins.

"This is the Shallowbrook hunt," he explained; "I am Master of Hounds;
my sister Drina, there, is one of the whips. Part of the game is to all
fall down together and pretend we've come croppers. You see, don't you?"

"I see," nodded Selwyn; "it's a pretty stiff hunting country, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. There's wire, you know," volunteered the girl, Drina,
rubbing the bruises on her plump shins.

"Exactly," agreed Selwyn; "bad thing, wire. Your whips should warn you."

The big black cat, horribly bored by the proceedings, had settled down
on a hall seat, keeping one disdainful yellow eye on the dogs.

"All the same, we had a pretty good run," said Drina, taking the cat
into her arms and seating herself on the cushions; "didn't we, Kit-Ki?"
And, turning to Selwyn, "Kit-Ki makes a pretty good fox--only she isn't
enough afraid of us to run away very fast. Won't you sit down? Our
mother is not at home, but we are."

"Would you really like to have me stay?" asked Selwyn.

"Well," admitted Drina frankly, "of course we can't tell yet how
interesting you are because we don't know you. We are trying to be
polite--" and, in a fierce whisper, turning on the smaller of the
boys--"Winthrop! take your finger out of your mouth and stop staring at
guests! Billy, you make him behave himself."

The blond-haired M.F.H. reached for his younger brother; the infant
culprit avoided him and sullenly withdrew the sucked finger but not his
fascinated gaze.

"I want to know who he ith," he lisped in a loud aside.

"So do I," admitted a tiny maid in stickout skirts.

Drina dropped the cat, swept the curly hair from her eyes, and stood up
very straight in her kilts and bare knees.

"They don't really mean to be rude," she explained; "they're only
children." Then, detecting the glimmering smile in Selwyn's eyes, "But
perhaps you wouldn't mind telling us who you are because we all would
like to know, but we are not going to be ill-bred enough to ask."

Their direct expectant gaze slightly embarrassed him; he laughed a
little, but there was no response from them.

"Well," he said, "as a matter of fact and record, I am a sort of
relative of yours--a species of avuncular relation."

"What is that?" asked Drina coldly.

"That," said Selwyn, "means that I'm more or less of an uncle to you.
Hope you don't mind. You don't have to entertain me, you know."

"An uncle!" repeated Drina.

"Our uncle?" echoed Billy. "You are not our soldier uncle, are you? You
are not our Uncle Philip, are you?"

"It amounts to that," admitted Selwyn. "Is it all right?"

There was a dead silence, broken abruptly by Billy; "Where is your
sword, then?"

"At the hotel. Would you like to see it, Billy?"

The five children drew a step nearer, inspecting him with merciless
candour.

"Is it all right?" asked Selwyn again, smilingly uneasy under the
concentrated scrutiny. "How about it, Drina? Shall we shake hands?"

Drina spoke at last: "Ye-es," she said slowly, "I think it is all right
to shake hands." She took a step forward, stretching out her hand.

Selwyn stooped; she laid her right hand across his, hesitated, looked up
fearlessly, and then, raising herself on tiptoe, placed both arms upon
his shoulders, offering her lips.

One by one the other children came forward to greet this promising new
uncle whom the younger among them had never before seen, and whom Drina,
the oldest, had forgotten except as that fabled warrior of legendary
exploits whose name and fame had become cherished classics of their
nursery.

And now children and dogs clustered amicably around him; under foot
tails wagged, noses sniffed; playful puppy teeth tweaked at his
coat-skirts; and in front and at either hand eager flushed little faces
were upturned to his, shy hands sought his and nestled confidently into
the hollow of his palms or took firm proprietary hold of sleeve and
coat.

"I infer," observed Selwyn blandly, "that your father and mother are not
at home. Perhaps I'd better stop in later."

"But you are going to stay here, aren't you?" exclaimed Drina in dismay.
"Don't you expect to tell us stories? Don't you expect to stay here and
live with us and put on your uniform for us and show us your swords and
pistols? _Don't_ you?"

"We have waited such a very long time for you to do this," added Billy.

"If you'll come up to the nursery we'll have a drag-hunt for you,"
pleaded Drina. "Everybody is out of the house and we can make as much
noise as we please! Will you?"

"Haven't you any governesses or nurses or something?" asked Selwyn,
finding himself already on the stairway, and still being dragged upward.

"Our governess is away," said Billy triumphantly, "and our nurses can do
nothing with us."

"I don't doubt it," murmured Selwyn; "but where are they?"

"Somebody must have locked them in the schoolroom," observed Billy
carelessly. "Come on, Uncle Philip; we'll have a first-class drag-hunt
before we unlock the schoolroom and let them out."

"Anyway, they can brew tea there if they are lonely," added Drina,
ushering Selwyn into the big sunny nursery, where he stood, irresolute,
looking about him, aware that he was conniving at open mutiny. From
somewhere on the floor above persistent hammering and muffled appeals
satisfied him as to the location and indignation of the schoolroom
prisoners.

"You ought to let them out," he said. "You'll surely be punished."

"We will let them out after we've made noise enough," said Billy calmly.
"We'll probably be punished anyway, so we may as well make a noise."

"Yes," added Drina, "we are going to make all the noise we can while we
have the opportunity. Billy, is everything ready?"

And before Selwyn understood precisely what was happening, he found
himself the centre of a circle of madly racing children and dogs. Round
and round him they tore. Billy yelled for the hurdles and Josephine
knocked over some chairs and dragged them across the course of the
route; and over them leaped and scrambled children and puppies,
splitting the air with that same quality of din which had greeted him
upon his entrance to his sister's house.

When there was no more breath left in the children, and when the dogs
lay about, grinning and lolling, Drina approached him, bland and
dishevelled.

"That circus," she explained, "was for your entertainment. Now will you
please do something for ours?"

"Certainly," said Selwyn, looking about him vaguely; "shall
we--er--build blocks, or shall I read to you--er--out of that big
picture-book--"

"_Picture_-book!" repeated Billy with scorn; "that's good enough for
nurses to read. You're a soldier, you know. Soldiers have real stories
to tell."

"I see," he said meekly. "What am I to tell you about--our missionaries
in Sulu?"

"In the first place," began Drina, "you are to lie down flat on the
floor and creep about and show us how the Moros wriggle through the
grass to bolo our sentinels."

"Why, it's--it's this way," began Selwyn, leaning back in his
rocking-chair and comfortably crossing one knee over the other; "for
instance, suppose--"

"Oh, but you must _show_ us!" interrupted Billy. "Get down on the floor
please, uncle."

"I can tell it better!" protested Selwyn; "I can show you just the--"

"Please lie down and show us how they wriggle?" begged Drina.

"I don't want to get down on the floor," he said feebly; "is it
necessary?"

But they had already discovered that he could be bullied, and they had
it their own way; and presently Selwyn lay prone upon the nursery floor,
impersonating a ladrone while pleasant shivers chased themselves over
Drina, whom he was stalking.

And it was while all were passionately intent upon the pleasing and
snake-like progress of their uncle that a young girl in furs, ascending
the stairs two at a time, peeped perfunctorily into the nursery as she
passed the hallway--and halted amazed.

Selwyn, sitting up rumpled and cross-legged on the floor, after having
boloed Drina to everybody's exquisite satisfaction, looked around at the
sudden rustle of skirts to catch a glimpse of a vanishing figure--a
glimmer of ruddy hair and the white curve of a youthful face,
half-buried in a muff.

Mortified, he got to his feet, glanced out into the hallway, and began
adjusting his attire.

"No, you don't!" he said mildly, "I decline to perform again. If you
want any more wriggling you must accomplish it yourselves. Drina, has
your governess--by any unfortunate chance--er--red hair?"

"No," said the child; "and won't you _please_ crawl across the floor and
bolo me--just _once_ more?"

"Bolo me!" insisted Billy. "I haven't been mangled yet!"

"Let Billy assassinate somebody himself. And, by the way, Drina, are
there any maids or nurses or servants in this remarkable house who
occasionally wear copper-tinted hair and black fox furs?"

"No. Eileen does. Won't you please wriggle--"

"Who is Eileen?"

"Eileen? Why--don't you know who Eileen is?"

"No, I don't," began Captain Selwyn, when a delighted shout from the
children swung him toward the door again. His sister, Mrs. Gerard, stood
there in carriage gown and sables, radiant with surprise.

"Phil! _You!_ Exactly like you, Philip, to come strolling in from the
antipodes--dear fellow!" recovering from the fraternal embrace and
holding both lapels of his coat in her gloved hands. "Six years!" she
said again and again, tenderly reproachful; "Alexandrine was a baby of
six--Drina, child, do you remember my brother--do you remember your
Uncle Philip? She doesn't remember; you can't expect her to recollect;
she is only twelve, Phil--"

"I remember _one_ thing," observed Drina serenely.

Brother and sister turned toward her in pride and delight; and the child
went on: "My Aunt Alixe; I remember her. She was _so_ pretty," concluded
Drina, nodding thoughtfully in the effort to remember more; "Uncle
Philip, where is she now?"

But her uncle seemed to have lost his voice as well as his colour, and
Mrs. Gerard's gloved fingers tightened on the lapels of his coat.

"Drina--child--" she faltered; but Drina, immersed in reflection, smiled
dreamily; "So pretty," she murmured; "I remember my Aunt Alixe--"

"Drina!" repeated her mother sharply, "go and find Bridget this minute!"

Selwyn's hesitating hand sought his moustache; he lifted his eyes--the
steady gray eyes, slightly bloodshot--to his sister's distressed face.

"I never dreamed--" she began--"the child has never spoken of--of her
from that time to this! I never dreamed she could remember--"

"I don't understand what you are talking about, mother," said Drina; but
her pretty mother caught her by the shoulders, striving to speak
lightly; "Where in the world is Bridget, child? Where is Katie? And what
is all this I hear from Dawson? It can't be possible that you have been
fox-hunting all over the house again! Your nurses know perfectly well
that you are not to hunt anywhere except in your own nursery."

"I know it," said Drina, "but Kit-Ki got out and ran downstairs. We had
to follow her, you know, until she went to earth."

Selwyn quietly bent over toward Billy: "'Ware wire, my friend," he said
under his breath; "_you'd_ better cut upstairs and unlock that
schoolroom."

And while Mrs. Gerard turned her attention to the cluster of clamouring
younger children, the boy vanished only to reappear a moment later,
retreating before the vengeful exclamations of the lately imprisoned
nurses who pursued him, caps and aprons flying, bewailing aloud their
ignominious incarceration.

"Billy!" exclaimed his mother, "_did_ you do that? Bridget, Master
William is to take supper by himself in the schoolroom--and _no_
marmalade!--No, Billy, not one drop!"

"We all saw him lock the door," said Drina honestly.

"And you let him? Oh, Drina!--And Ellen! Katie! No marmalade for Miss
Drina--none for any of the children. Josie, mother feels dreadfully
because you all have been so naughty. Winthrop!--your finger! Instantly!
Clemence, baby, where on earth did you acquire all that grime on your
face and fists?" And to her brother: "Such a household, Phil! Everybody
incompetent--including me; everything topsy-turvy; and all five dogs
perfectly possessed to lie on that pink rug in the music room.--_Have_
they been there to-day, Drina?--while you were practising?"

"Yes, and there are some new spots, mother. I'm _very_ sorry."

"Take the children away!" said Mrs. Gerard. But she bent over, kissing
each culprit as the file passed out, convoyed by the amply revenged
nurses. "No marmalade, remember; and mother has a great mind _not_ to
come up at bedtime and lean over you. Mother has no desire to lean over
her babies to-night."

To "lean over" the children was always expected of this mother; the
direst punishment on the rather brief list was to omit this intimate
evening ceremony.

"M-mother," stammered the Master of Fox Hounds, "you _will_ lean over
us, won't you?"

"Mother hasn't decided--"

"Oh, muvver!" wailed Josie; and a howl of grief and dismay rose from
Winthrop, modified to a gurgle by the forbidden finger.

"You _will_, won't you?" begged Drina. "We've been pretty bad, but not
bad enough for that!"

"I--Oh, yes, I will. Stop that noise, Winthrop! Josie, I'm going to lean
over you--and you, too, Clemence, baby. Katie, take those dogs away
immediately; and remember about the marmalade."

Reassured, smiling through tears, the children trooped off, it being the
bathing hour; and Mrs. Gerard threw her fur stole over one shoulder and
linked her slender arm in her brother's.

"You see, I'm not much of a mother," she said; "if I was I'd stay here
all day and every day, week in and year out, and try to make these poor
infants happy. I have no business to leave them for one second!"

"Wouldn't they get too much of you?" suggested Selwyn.

"Thanks. I suppose that even a mother had better practise an artistic
absence occasionally. Are they not sweet? _What_ do you think of them?
You never before saw the three youngest; you saw Drina when you went
east--and Billy was a few months old--what do you think of them?
Honestly, Phil?"

"All to the good, Ninette; very ornamental. Drina--and that Josephine
kid are real beauties. I--er--take to Billy tremendously. He told me
that he'd locked up his nurses. I ought to have interfered. It was
really my fault, you see."

"And you didn't make him let them out? You are not going to be very good
morally for my young. Tell me, Phil, have you seen Austin?"

"I went to the Trust Company, but he was attending a directors' confab.
How is he? He's prosperous anyhow, I observe," with a humorous glance
around the elaborate hallway which they were traversing.

"Don't dare laugh at us!" smiled his sister. "I wish we were back in
Tenth Street. But so many children came--Billy, Josephine, Winthrop, and
Tina--and the Tenth Street house wasn't half big enough; and a dreadful
speculative builder built this house and persuaded Austin to buy it. Oh,
dear, and here we are among the rich and great; and the steel kings and
copper kings and oil kings and their heirs and dauphins. _Do_ you like
the house?"

"It's--ah--roomy," he said cheerfully.

"Oh! It isn't so bad from the outside. And we have just had it
redecorated inside. Mizner did it. Look, dear, isn't that a cunning
bedroom?" drawing him toward a partly open door. "Don't be so horridly
critical. Austin is becoming used to it now, so don't stir him up and
make fun of things. Anyway you're going to stay here."

"No, I'm at the Holland."

"Of _course_ you're to live with us. You've resigned from the service,
haven't you?"

He looked at her sharply, but did not reply.

A curious flash of telepathy passed between them; she hesitated, then:

"You once promised Austin and me that you would stay with us."

"But, Nina--"

"No, no, no! Wait," pressing an electric button; "Watson, Captain
Selwyn's luggage is to be brought here immediately from the Holland!
Immediately!" And to Selwyn: "Austin will not be at home before
half-past six. Come up with me now and see your quarters--a perfectly
charming place for you, with your own smoking-room and dressing-closet
and bath. Wait, we'll take the elevator--as long as we have one."

Smilingly protesting, yet touched by the undisguised sincerity of his
welcome, he suffered himself to be led into the elevator--a dainty white
and rose rococo affair. His sister adjusted a tiny lever; the car moved
smoothly upward and, presently stopped; and they emerged upon a wide
landing.

"Here," said Nina, throwing open a door. "Isn't this comfortable? Is
there anything you don't fancy about it? If there is, tell me frankly."

"Little sister," he said, imprisoning both her hands, "it is a
paradise--but I don't intend to come here and squat on my relatives, and
I won't!"

"Philip! You are common!"

"Oh, I know you and Austin _think_ you want me."

"Phil!"

"All right, dear. I'll--it's awfully generous of you--so I'll pay you a
visit--for a little while."

"You'll live here, that's what you'll do--though I suppose you are
dreaming and scheming to have all sorts of secret caves and queer places
to yourself--horrid, grimy, smoky bachelor quarters where you can behave
_sans-façon_."

"I've had enough of _sans-façon_" he said grimly. "After shacks and
bungalows and gun-boats and troopships, do you suppose this doesn't look
rather heavenly?"

"Dear fellow!" she said, looking tenderly at him; and then under her
breath: "What a ghastly life you have led!"

But he knew she did not refer to the military portion of his life.

He threw back his coat, dug both hands into his pockets, and began to
wander about the rooms, halting sometimes to examine nondescript
articles of ornament or bits of furniture as though politely
interested. But she knew his thoughts were steadily elsewhere.

[Illustration: "'There is no reason,' she said, 'why you should not call
this house home.'"]

Sauntering about, aware at moments that her troubled eyes were following
him, he came back, presently, to where she sat perched upon his bed.

"It all looks most inviting, Nina," he said cheerfully, seating himself
beside her. "I--well, you can scarcely be expected to understand how
this idea of a home takes hold of a man who has none."

"Yes, I do," she said.

"All this--" he paused, leisurely, to select his words--"all
this--you--the children--that jolly nursery--" he stopped again, looking
out of the window; and his sister looked at him through eyes grown
misty.

"There is no reason," she said, "why you should not call this house
home."

"N-no reason. Thank you. I will--for a few days."

"_No_ reason, dear," she insisted. "We are your own people; we are all
you have, Phil!--the children adore you already; Austin--you know what
he thinks of you; and--and I--"

"You are very kind, Ninette." He sat partly turned from her, staring at
the sunny window. Presently he slid his hand back along the bed-covers
until it touched and tightened over hers. And in silence she raised it
to her lips.

They remained so for a while, he still partly turned from her, his
perplexed and narrowing gaze fixed on the window, she pressing his
clenched hand to her lips, thoughtful and silent.

"Before Austin comes," he said at length, "let's get the thing over--and
buried--as long as it will stay buried."

"Yes, dear."

"Well, then--then--" but his throat closed tight with the effort.

"Alixe is here," she said gently; "did you know it?"

He nodded.

"You know, of course, that she's married Jack Ruthven?"

He nodded again.

"Are you on leave, Phil, or have you really resigned?"

"Resigned."

"I knew it," she sighed.

He said: "As I did not defend the suit I couldn't remain in the service.
There's too much said about us, anyway--about us who are appointed from
civil life. And then--to have _that_ happen!"

"Phil?"

"What?"

"Will you answer me one thing?"

"Yes, I guess so."

"Do you still care for--her?"

"I am sorry for her."

After a painful silence his sister said: "Could you tell me how it
began, Phil?"

"How it began? I don't know that, either. When Bannard's command took
the field I went with the scouts. Alixe remained in Manila. Ruthven was
there for Fane, Harmon & Co. That's how it began, I suppose; and it's a
rotten climate for morals; and that's how it began."

"Only that?"

"We had had differences. It's been one misunderstanding after another.
If you mean was I mixed up with another woman--no! She knew that."

"She was very young, Phil."

He nodded: "I don't blame her."

"Couldn't anything have been done?"

"If it could, neither she nor I did it--or knew how to do it, I suppose.
It went wrong from the beginning; it was founded on froth--she had been
engaged to Harmon, and she threw him over for 'Boots' Lansing. Then I
came along--Boots behaved like a thoroughbred--that is all there is to
it--inexperience, romance, trouble--a quick beginning, a quick parting,
and two more fools to give the lie to civilization, and justify the West
Pointers in their opinions of civil appointees."

"Try not to be so bitter, Phil; did you know she was going before she
left Manila?"

"I hadn't the remotest idea of the affair. I thought that we were trying
to learn something about life and about each other. . . . Then that
climax came."

He turned and stared out of the window, dropping his sister's hand. "She
couldn't stand me, she couldn't stand the life, the climate, the
inconveniences, the absence of what she was accustomed to. She was dead
tired of it all. I can understand that. And I--I didn't know what to do
about it. . . . So we drifted; and the catastrophe came very quickly.
Let me tell you something; a West Pointer, an Annapolis man, knows what
sort of life he's going into and what he is to expect when he marries.
Usually, too, he marries into the Army or Navy set; and the girl knows,
too, what kind of a married life that means.

"But I didn't. Neither did Alixe. And we went under; that's
all--fighting each other heart and soul to the end. . . . Is she happy
with Ruthven? I never knew him--and never cared to. I suppose they go
about in town among the yellow set. Do they?"

"Yes. I've met Alixe once or twice. She was perfectly composed--formal
but unembarrassed. She has shifted her milieu somewhat--it began with
the influx of Ruthven's friends from the 'yellow' section of the younger
married set--the Orchils, Fanes, Minsters, and Delmour-Carnes. Which is
all right if she'd stay there. But in town you're likely to encounter
anybody where the somebodies of one set merge into the somebodies of
another. And we're always looking over our fences, you know. . . . By
the way," she added cheerfully, "I'm dipping into the younger set myself
to-night--on Eileen's account. I brought her out Thursday and I'm giving
a dinner for her to-night."

"Who's Eileen?" he asked.

"Eileen? Why, don't you--why, of _course_, you don't know yet that I've
taken Eileen for my own. I didn't want to write you; I wanted first to
see how it would turn out; and when I saw that it was turning out
perfectly, I thought it better to wait until you could return and hear
all about it from me, because one can't write that sort of thing--"

"Nina!"

"What, dear?" she said, startled.

"Who the dickens _is_ Eileen?"

"Philip! You are precisely like Austin; you grow impatient of
preliminary details when I'm doing my very best attempting to explain
just as clearly as I can. Now I will go on and say that Eileen is Molly
Erroll's daughter, and the courts appointed Austin and me guardians for
her and for her brother Gerald."

"Oh!"

"Now is it clear to you?"

"Yes," he said, thinking of the tragedy which had left the child so
utterly alone in the world, save for her brother and a distant kinship
by marriage with the Gerards.

For a while he sat brooding, arms loosely folded, immersed once more in
his own troubles.

"It seems a shame," he said, "that a family like ours, whose name has
always spelled decency, should find themselves entangled in the very
things their race has always hated and managed to avoid. And through me,
too."

"It was not your fault, Phil."

"No, not the divorce part. Do you suppose I wouldn't have taken any kind
of medicine before resorting to that! But what's the use; for you can
try as you may to keep your name clean, and then you can fold your arms
and wait to see what a hopeless fool fate makes of you."

"But no disgrace touches you, dear," she said tremulously.

"I've been all over that, too," he said with quiet bitterness. "You are
partly right; nobody cares in this town. Even though I did not defend
the suit, nobody cares. And there's no disgrace, I suppose, if nobody
cares enough even to condone. Divorce is no longer noticed; it is a
matter of ordinary occurrence--a matter of routine in some sets. Who
cares?--except decent folk? And they only think it's a pity--and
wouldn't do it themselves. The horrified clamour comes from outside the
social registers and blue books; we know they're right, but it doesn't
affect us. What does affect us is that we _were_ the decent folk who
permitted ourselves the luxury of being sorry for others who resorted to
divorce as a remedy but wouldn't do it ourselves! . . . Now we've done
it and--"

"Phil! I will not have you feel that way."

"What way?"

"The way you feel. We are older than we were--everybody is older--the
world is, too. What we were brought up to consider impossible--"

"What we were brought up to consider impossible was what kept me up to
the mark out there, Nina." He made a gesture toward the East. "Now, I
come back here and learn that we've all outgrown those ideas--"

"Phil! I never meant that."

He said: "If Alixe found that she cared for Ruthven, I don't blame her.
Laws and statutes can't govern such matters. If she found she no longer
cared for me, I could not blame her. But two people, mismated, have only
one chance in this world--to live their tragedy through with dignity.
That is absolutely all life holds for them. Beyond that, outside of that
dead line--treachery to self and race and civilisation! That is my
conclusion after a year's experience in hell." He rose and began to pace
the floor, fingers worrying his moustache. "Law? Can a law, which I do
not accept, let me loose to risk it all again with another woman?"

She said slowly, her hands folded in her lap: "It is well you've come to
me at last. You've been turning round and round in that wheeled cage
until you think you've made enormous progress; and you haven't. Dear,
listen to me; what you honestly believe to be unselfish and high-minded
adherence to principle, is nothing but the circling reasoning of a hurt
mind--an intelligence still numbed from shock, a mental and physical
life forced by sheer courage into mechanical routine. . . . Wait a
moment; there is nobody else to say this to you; and if I did not love
you I would not interfere with this great mistake you are so honestly
making of your life, and which, perhaps, is the only comfort left you. I
say, 'perhaps,' for I do not believe that life holds nothing happier for
you than the sullen content of martyrdom."

"Nina!"

"I am right!" she said, almost fiercely; "I've been married thirteen
years and I've lost that fear of men's portentous judgments which all
girls outgrow one day. And do you think I am going to acquiesce in this
attitude of yours toward life? Do you think I can't distinguish between
a tragical mistake and a mistaken tragedy? I tell you your life is not
finished; it is not yet begun!"

He looked at her, incensed; but she sprang to the floor, her face bright
with colour, her eyes clear, determined: "I thought, when you took the
oath of military service, you swore to obey the laws of the land? And
the very first law that interferes with your preconceived
notions--crack!--you say it's not for you! Look at me--you great, big,
wise brother of mine--who knows enough to march a hundred and three men
into battle, but not enough to know where pride begins and conscience
ends. You're badly hurt; you are deeply humiliated over your
resignation; you believe that ambition for a career, for happiness, for
marriage, and for children is ended for you. You need fresh air--and I'm
going to see you have it. You need new duties, new faces, new scenes,
new problems. You shall have them. Dear, believe me, few men as young as
you--as attractive, as human, as lovable, as affectionate as you,
wilfully ruin their lives because of a hurt pride which they mistake for
conscience. You will understand that when you become convalescent. Now
kiss me and tell me you're much obliged--for I hear Austin's voice on
the stairs."

He held her at arms' length, gazing at her, half amused, half indignant;
then, unbidden, a second flash of the old telepathy passed between
them--a pale glimmer lighted his own dark heart in sympathy; and for a
moment he seemed to have a brief glimpse of the truth; and the truth was
not as he had imagined it. But it was a glimpse only--a fleeting
suspicion of his own fallibility; then it vanished into the old, dull,
aching, obstinate humiliation. For truth would not be truth if it were
so easily discovered.

"Well, we've buried it now," breathed Selwyn. "You're all right,
Nina--from your own standpoint--and I'm not going to make a stalking
nuisance of myself; no fear, little sister. Hello!"--turning
swiftly--"here's that preposterous husband of yours."

They exchanged a firm hand clasp; Austin Gerard, big, smooth shaven,
humorously inclined toward the ruddy heaviness of successful middle age;
Selwyn, lean, bronzed, erect, and direct in all the powerful symmetry
and perfect health of a man within sight of maturity.

"Hail to the chief--et cetera," said Austin, in his large, bantering
voice. "Glad to see you home, my bolo-punctured soldier boy. Welcome to
our city! I suppose you've both pockets stuffed with loot, now haven't
you?--pearls and sarongs and dattos--yes? Have you inspected the kids?
What's your opinion of the Gerard batallion? Pretty fit? Nina's
commanding, so it's up to her if we don't pass dress parade. By the
way, your enormous luggage is here--consisting of one dinky trunk and a
sword done up in chamois skin."

"Nina's good enough to want me for a few days--" began Selwyn, but his
big brother-in-law laughed scornfully:

"A few days! We've got you now!" And to his wife: "Nina, I suppose I'm
due to lean over those infernal kids before I can have a minute with
your brother. Are they in bed yet? All right, Phil; we'll be down in a
minute; there's tea and things in the library. Make Eileen give you
some."

He turned, unaffectedly taking his pretty wife's hand in his large
florid paw, and Selwyn, intensely amused, saw them making for the
nursery absorbed in conjugal confab. He lingered to watch them go their
way, until they disappeared; and he stood a moment longer alone there in
the hallway; then the humour faded from his sun-burnt face; he swung
wearily on his heel, and descended the stairway, his hand heavy on the
velvet rail.

The library was large and comfortable, full of agreeably wadded corners
and fat, helpless chairs--a big, inviting place, solidly satisfying in
dull reds and mahogany. The porcelain of tea paraphernalia caught the
glow of the fire; a reading lamp burned on a centre table, shedding
subdued lustre over ceiling, walls, books, and over the floor where lay
a few ancient rugs of Beloochistan, themselves full of mysterious,
sombre fire.

Hands clasped behind his back, he stood in the centre of the room,
considering his environment with the grave, absent air habitual to him
when brooding. And, as he stood there, a sound at the door aroused him,
and he turned to confront a young girl in hat, veil, and furs, who was
leisurely advancing toward him, stripping the gloves from a pair of very
white hands.

"How do you do, Captain Selwyn," she said. "I am Eileen Erroll and I am
commissioned to give you some tea. Nina and Austin are in the nursery
telling bedtime stories and hearing assorted prayers. The children seem
to be quite crazy about you--" She unfastened her veil, threw back stole
and coat, and, rolling up her gloves on her wrists, seated herself by
the table. "--_Quite_ crazy about you," she continued, "and you're to be
included in bedtime prayers, I believe--No sugar? Lemon?--Drina's mad
about you and threatens to give you her new maltese puppy. I
congratulate you on your popularity."

"Did you see me in the nursery on all fours?" inquired Selwyn,
recognising her bronze-red hair.

Unfeigned laughter was his answer. He laughed, too, not very heartily.

"My first glimpse of our legendary nursery warrior was certainly
astonishing," she said, looking around at him with frank malice. Then,
quickly: "But you don't mind, do you? It's all in the family, of
course."

"Of course," he agreed with good grace; "no use to pretend dignity here;
you all see through me in a few moments."

She had given him his tea. Now she sat upright in her chair, smiling,
_distraite_, her hat casting a luminous shadow across her eyes; the
fluffy furs, fallen from throat and shoulder, settled loosely around her
waist.

Glancing up from her short reverie she encountered his curious gaze.

"To-night is to be my first dinner dance, you know," she said. Faint
tints of excitement stained her white skin; the vivid scarlet contrast
of her mouth was almost startling. "On Thursday I was introduced--" she
explained, "and now I'm to have the gayest winter I ever dreamed
of. . . . And I'm going to leave you in a moment if Nina doesn't hurry
and come. Do you mind?"

"Of course I mind," he protested amiably, "but I suppose you wish to
devote several hours to dressing."

She nodded. "Such a dream of a gown! Nina's present! You'll see it. I
hope Gerald will be here to see it. He promised. You'll say you like it
if you do like it, won't you?"

"I'll say it, anyway."

"Oh, well--if you are contented to be commonplace like other men--"

"I've no ambition to be different at my age."

"Your age?" she repeated, looking up quickly. "You are as young as Nina,
aren't you? Half the men in the younger set are no younger than you--and
you know it," she concluded--"you are only trying to make me say so--and
you've succeeded. I'm not very experienced yet. Does tea bring wisdom,
Captain Selwyn?" pouring herself a cup. "I'd better arm myself
immediately." She sank back into the depths of the chair, looking gaily
at him over her lifted cup. "To my rapid education in worldly wisdom!"
She nodded, and sipped the tea almost pensively.

He certainly did seem young there in the firelight, his narrow,
thoroughbred head turned toward the fire. Youth, too, sat lightly on his
shoulders; and it was scarcely a noticeably mature hand that touched the
short sun-burnt moustache at intervals. From head to waist, from his
loosely coupled, well-made limbs to his strong, slim foot, strength
seemed to be the keynote to a physical harmony most agreeable to look
at.

The idea entered her head that he might appear to advantage on
horseback.

"We must ride together," she said, returning her teacup to the tray; "if
you don't mind riding with me? Do you? Gerald never has time, so I go
with a groom. But if you would care to go--" she laughed. "Oh, you see I
am already beginning a selfish family claim on you. I foresee that
you'll be very busy with us all persistently tugging at your
coat-sleeves; and what with being civil to me and a martyr to Drina,
you'll have very little time to yourself. And--I hope you'll like my
brother Gerald when you meet him. Now I _must_ go."

Then, rising and partly turning to collect her furs:

"It's quite exciting to have you here. We will be good friends, won't
we? . . . and I think I had better stop my chatter and go, because my
cunning little Alsatian maid is not very clever yet. . . . Good-bye."

She stretched out one of her amazingly white hands across the table,
giving him a friendly leave-taking and welcome all in one frank
handshake; and left him standing there, the fresh contact still cool in
his palm.

Nina came in presently to find him seated before the fire, one hand
shading his eyes; and, as he prepared to rise, she rested both arms on
his shoulders, forcing him into his chair again.

"So you've bewitched Eileen, too, have you?" she said tenderly. "Isn't
she the sweetest little thing?"

"She's--ah--as tall as I am," he said, blinking at the fire.

"She's only nineteen; pathetically unspoiled--a perfect dear. Men are
going to rave over her and--_not_ spoil her. Did you ever see such
hair?--that thick, ruddy, lustrous, copper tint?--and sometimes it's
like gold afire. And a skin like snow and peaches!--she's sound to the
core. I've had her exercised and groomed and hardened and trained from
the very beginning--every inch of her minutely cared for exactly like my
own babies. I've done my best," she concluded with a satisfied sigh, and
dropped into a chair beside her brother.

"Thoroughbred," commented Selwyn, "to be turned out to-night. Is she
bridle-wise and intelligent?"

"More than sufficiently. That's one trouble--she's had, at times, a
depressing, sponge-like desire for absorbing all sorts of irrelevant
things that no girl ought to concern herself with. I--to tell the
truth--if I had not rigorously drilled her--she might have become a
trifle tiresome; I don't mean precisely frumpy--but one of those earnest
young things whose intellectual conversation becomes a visitation--one
of the wants-to-know-for-the-sake-of-knowledge sort--a dreadful human
blotter! Oh, dear; show me a girl with her mind soaking up 'isms' and
I'll show you a social failure with a wisp of hair on her cheek, who
looks the dowdier the more expensively she's gowned."

"So you believe you've got that wisp of copper-tinted hair tucked up
snugly?" asked Selwyn, amused.

"I--it's still a worry to me; at intervals she's inclined to let it
slop. Thank Heaven, I've made her spine permanently straight and her
head is screwed properly to her neck. There's not a slump to her from
crown to heel--_I_ know, you know. She's had specialists to forestall
every blemish. I made up my mind to do it; I'm doing it for my own
babies. That's what a mother is for--to turn out her offspring to the
world as flawless and wholesome as when they came into it!--physically
and mentally sound--or a woman betrays her stewardship. They must be as
healthy of body and limb as they are innocent and wholesome minded. The
happiest of all creatures are drilled thoroughbreds. Show me a young
girl, unspoiled mentally and spiritually untroubled, with a superb
physique, and I'll show you a girl equipped for the happiness of this
world. And that is what Eileen is."

"I should say," observed Selwyn, "that she's equipped for the slaughter
of man."

"Yes, but _I_ am selecting the victim," replied his sister demurely.

"Oh! Have you? Already?"

"Tentatively."

"Who?"

"Sudbury Gray, I think--with Scott Innis for an understudy--perhaps the
Draymore man as alternate--I don't know; there's time."

"Plenty," he said vaguely, staring into the fire where a log had
collapsed into incandescent ashes.

She continued to talk about Eileen until she noticed that his mind was
on other matters--his preoccupied stare enlightened her. She said
nothing for a while.

But he woke up when Austin came in and settled his big body in a chair.

"Drina, the little minx, called me back on some flimsy pretext," he
said, relighting his cigar; "I forgot that time was going--and she was
wily enough to keep me talking until Miss Paisely caught me at it and
showed me out. I tell you," turning on Selwyn--"children are what make
life worth wh--" He ceased abruptly at a gentle tap from his wife's
foot, and Selwyn looked up.

Whether or not he divined the interference he said very quietly: "I'd
rather have had children than anything in the world. They're about the
best there is in life; I agree with you, Austin."

His sister, watching him askance, was relieved to see his troubled face
become serene, though she divined the effort.

"Kids are the best," he repeated, smiling at her. "Failing them, for
second choice, I've taken to the laboratory. Some day I'll invent
something and astonish you, Nina."

"We'll fit you up a corking laboratory," began Austin cordially; "there
is--"

"You're very good; perhaps you'll all be civil enough to move out of the
house if I need more room for bottles and retorts--"

"Of _course_, Phil must have his laboratory," insisted Nina. "There's
loads of unused room in this big barn--only you don't mind being at the
top of the house, do you, Phil?"

"Yes, I do; I want to be in the drawing-room--or somewhere so that you
all may enjoy the odours and get the benefit of premature explosions.
Oh, come now, Austin, if you think I'm going to plant myself here on
you--"

"Don't notice him, Austin," said Nina, "he only wishes to be implored.
And, by the same token, you'd both better let me implore you to dress!"
She rose and bent forward in the firelight to peer at the clock.
"Goodness! Do you creatures think I'm going to give Eileen half an
hour's start with her maid?--and I carrying my twelve years' handicap,
too. No, indeed! I'm decrepit but I'm going to die fighting. Austin, get
up! You're horribly slow, anyhow. Phil, Austin's man--such as he
is--will be at your disposal, and your luggage is unpacked."

"Am I really expected to grace this festival of babes?" inquired Selwyn.
"Can't you send me a tray of toast or a bowl of gruel and let me hide my
old bones in a dressing-gown somewhere?"

"Oh, come on," said Austin, smothering the yawn in his voice and casting
his cigar into the ashes. "You're about ripe for the younger set--one of
them, anyhow. If you can't stand the intellectual strain we'll side-step
the show later and play a little--what do you call it in the
army?--pontoons?"

They strolled toward the door, Nina's arms linked in theirs, her slim
fingers interlocked on her breast.

"We are certainly going to be happy--we three--in this innocent _ménage
à trois_," she said. "I don't know what more you two men could ask
for--or I, either--or the children or Eileen. Only one thing; I think it
is perfectly horrid of Gerald not to be here."

Traversing the hall she said: "It always frightens me to be perfectly
happy--and remember all the ghastly things that _could_ happen. . . .
I'm going to take a glance at the children before I dress. . . . Austin,
did you remember your tonic?"

She looked up surprised when her husband laughed.

"I've taken my tonic and nobody's kidnapped the kids," he said. She
hesitated, then picking up her skirts she ran upstairs for one more look
at her slumbering progeny.

The two men glanced at one another; their silence was the tolerant,
amused silence of the wiser sex, posing as such for each other's
benefit; but deep under the surface stirred the tremors of the same
instinctive solicitude that had sent Nina to the nursery.

"I used to think," said Gerard, "that the more kids you had the less
anxiety per kid. The contrary is true; you're more nervous over half a
dozen than you are over one, and your wife is always going to the
nursery to see that the cat hasn't got in or the place isn't afire or
spots haven't come out all over the children."

They laughed tolerantly, lingering on the sill of Selwyn's bedroom.

"Come in and smoke a cigarette," suggested the latter. "I have nothing
to do except to write some letters and dress."

But Gerard said: "There seems to be a draught through this hallway; I'll
just step upstairs to be sure that the nursery windows are not too wide
open. See you later, Phil. If there's anything you need just dingle that
bell."

And he went away upstairs, only to return in a few minutes, laughing
under his breath: "I say, Phil, don't you want to see the kids asleep?
Billy's flat on his back with a white 'Teddy bear' in either arm; and
Drina and Josephine are rolled up like two kittens in pajamas; and you
should see Winthrop's legs--"

"Certainly," said Selwyn gravely, "I'll be with you in a second."

And turning to his dresser he laid away the letters and the small
photograph which he had been examining under the drop-light, locking
them securely in the worn despatch box until he should have time to
decide whether to burn them all or only the picture. Then he slipped on
his smoking jacket.

"--Ah, about Winthrop's legs--" he repeated vaguely, "certainly; I
should be very glad to examine them, Austin."

"I don't want you to examine them," retorted Gerard resentfully, "I want
you to see them. There's nothing the matter with them, you understand."

"Exactly," nodded Selwyn, following his big brother-in-law into the
hall, where, from beside a lamp-lit sewing table a trim maid rose
smiling:

"Miss Erroll desires to know whether Captain Selwyn would care to see
her gown when she is ready to go down?"

"By all means," said Selwyn, "I should like to see that, too. Will you
let me know when Miss Erroll is ready? Thank you."

Austin said as they reached the nursery door: "Funny thing, feminine
vanity--almost pathetic, isn't it? . . . Don't make too much
noise! . . . What do you think of that pair of legs, Phil?--and he's not
yet five. . . . And I want you to speak frankly; _did_ you ever see
anything to beat that bunch of infants? Not because they're ours and we
happen to be your own people--" he checked himself and the smile faded
as he laid his big ruddy hand on Selwyn's shoulder;--"_your own people_,
Phil. Do you understand? . . . And if I have not ventured to say
anything about--what has happened--you understand that, too, don't you?
You know I'm just as loyal to you as Nina is--as it is natural and
fitting that your own people should be. Only a man finds it difficult to
convey his--his--"

"Don't say 'sympathies'!" cut in Selwyn nervously.

"I wasn't going to, confound you! I was going to say 'sentiments.' I'm
sorry I said anything. Go to the deuce!"

Selwyn did not even deign to glance around at him. "You big red-pepper
box," he muttered affectionately, "you'll wake up Drina. Look at her in
her cunning pajamas! Oh, but she is a darling, Austin. And look at that
boy with his two white bears! He's a corker! He's a wonder--honestly,
Austin. As for that Josephine kid she can have me on demand; I'll answer
to voice, whistle, or hand. . . . I say, ought we to go away and leave
Winthrop's thumb in his mouth?"

"I guess I can get it out without waking him," whispered Gerard. A
moment later he accomplished the office, leaned down and drew the
bed-covers closer to Tina's dimpled chin, then grasped Selwyn above the
elbow in sudden alarm: "If that trained terror, Miss Paisely, finds us
in here when she comes from dinner, we'll both catch it! Come on; I'll
turn off the light. Anyway, we ought to have been dressed long ago; but
you insisted on butting in here."

In the hallway below they encountered a radiant and bewildering vision
awaiting them: Eileen, in all her glory.

"Wonderful!" said Gerard, patting the vision's rounded bare arm as he
hurried past--"fine gown! fine girl!--but I've got to dress and so has
Philip--" He meant well.

"_Do_ you like it, Captain Selwyn?" asked the girl, turning to confront
him, where he had halted. "Gerald isn't coming and--I thought perhaps
you'd be interested--"

The formal, half-patronising compliment on his tongue's tip remained
there, unsaid. He stood silent, touched by the faint under-ringing
wistfulness in the laughing voice that challenged his opinion; and
something within him responded in time:

"Your gown is a beauty; such wonderful lace. Of course, anybody would
know it came straight from Paris or from some other celestial region--"

"But it didn't!" cried the girl, delighted. "It looks it, doesn't it?
But it was made by Letellier! Is there anything you don't like about it,
Captain Selwyn? _Anything_?"

"Nothing," he said solemnly; "it is as adorable as the girl inside it,
who makes it look like a Parisian importation from Paradise!"

She colored enchantingly, and with pretty, frank impulse held out both
her hands to him:

"You _are_ a dear, Captain Selwyn! It is my first real dinner gown and
I'm quite mad about it; and--somehow I wanted the family to share my
madness with me. Nina will--she gave it to me, the darling. Austin
admires it, too, of course, but he doesn't notice such things very
closely; and Gerald isn't here. . . . Thank you for letting me show it
to you before I go down."

She gave both his hands a friendly little shake and, glancing down at
her skirt in blissful consciousness of its perfection, stepped backward
into her own room.

Later, while he stood at his dresser constructing an immaculate knot in
his white tie, Nina knocked.

"Hurry, Phil! Oh, may I come in? . . . You ought to be downstairs with
us, you know. . . . And it was very sweet of you to be so nice to
Eileen. The child had tears in her eyes when I went in. Oh, just a
single diamond drop in each eye; your sympathy and interest did
it. . . . I think the child misses her father on an occasion such as
this--the beginning of life--the first step out into the world. Men do
not understand what it means to us; Gerald doesn't, I'm sure. I've been
watching her, and I know the shadow of that dreadful tragedy falls on
her more often than Austin and I are aware of. . . . Shall I fix that
tie for you, dear? . . . Certainly I can; Austin won't let a man touch
him. . . . There, Phil. . . . Wait! . . . Now if you are decently
grateful you'll tell me I look well. Do I? Really? Nonsense, I _don't_
look twenty; but--say it, Phil. Ah, that clever maid of mine knows some
secrets--never mind!--but Drina thinks I'm a beauty. . . . Come, dear;
and thank you for being kind to Eileen. One's own kin counts so much in
this world. And when a girl has none, except a useless brother, little
things like that mean a lot to her." She turned, her hand falling on his
sleeve. "_You_ are among your own people, anyhow!"

       *       *       *       *       *

His own people! The impatient tenderness of his sister's words had been
sounding in his ears all through the evening. They rang out clear and
insistent amid the gay tumult of the dinner; he heard them in the
laughing confusion of youthful voices; they stole into the delicate
undertones of the music to mock him; the rustling of silk and lace
repeated them; the high heels of satin slippers echoed them in irony.

His own people!

The scent of overheated flowers, the sudden warm breeze eddying from a
capricious fan, the mourning thrill of the violins emphasised the
emphasis of the words.

And they sounded sadder and more meaningless now to him, here in his
own room, until the monotony of their recurrent mockery began to unnerve
him.

He turned on the electricity, shrank from it, extinguished it. And for a
long time he sat there in the darkness of early morning, his unfilled
pipe clutched in his nerveless hand.




CHAPTER II

A DREAM ENDS


To pick up once more and tighten and knot together the loosened threads
which represented the unfinished record that his race had woven into the
social fabric of the metropolis was merely an automatic matter for
Selwyn.

His own people had always been among the makers of that fabric. Into
part of its vast and intricate pattern they had woven an inconspicuously
honourable record--chronicles of births and deaths and marriages, a
plain memorandum of plain living, and upright dealing with their fellow
men.

Some public service of modest nature they had performed, not seeking it,
not shirking; accomplishing it cleanly when it was intrusted to them.

His forefathers had been, as a rule, professional men--physicians and
lawyers; his grandfather died under the walls of Chapultepec Castle
while twisting a tourniquet for a cursing dragoon; an uncle remained
indefinitely at Malvern Hill; an only brother at Montauk Point having
sickened in the trenches before Santiago.

His father's services as division medical officer in Sheridan's cavalry
had been, perhaps, no more devoted, no more loyal than the services of
thousands of officers and troopers; and his reward was a pension offer,
declined. He practised until his wife died, then retired to his country
home, from which house his daughter Nina was married to Austin Gerard.

Mr. Selwyn, senior, continued to pay his taxes on his father's house in
Tenth Street, voted in that district, spent a month every year with the
Gerards, read a Republican morning newspaper, and judiciously enlarged
the family reservation in Greenwood--whither he retired, in due time,
without other ostentation than half a column in the _Evening Post_,
which paper he had, in life, avoided.

The first gun off the Florida Keys sent Selwyn's only brother from his
law office in hot haste to San Antonio--the first _étape_ on his first
and last campaign with Wood's cavalry.

That same gun interrupted Selwyn's connection with Neergard & Co.,
operators in Long Island real estate; and, a year later, the captaincy
offered him in a Western volunteer regiment operating on the Island of
Leyte, completed the rupture.

       *       *       *       *       *

And now he was back again, a chance career ended, with option of picking
up the severed threads--his inheritance at the loom--and of retying
them, warp and weft, and continuing the pattern according to the designs
of the tufted, tinted pile-yarn, knotted in by his ancestors before him.

There was nothing else to do; so he did it. Civil and certain social
obligations were mechanically reassumed; he appeared in his sister's pew
for worship, he reënrolled in his clubs as a resident member once more;
the directors of such charities as he meddled with he notified of his
return; he remitted his dues to the various museums and municipal or
private organisations which had always expected support from his
family; he subscribed to the _Sun_.

He was more conservative, however, in mending the purely social strands
so long relaxed or severed. The various registers and blue-books
recorded his residence under "dilatory domiciles"; he did not subscribe
to the opera, preferring to chance it in case harmony-hunger attacked
him; pre-Yuletide functions he dodged, considering that his sister's
days in January and attendance at other family formalities were
sufficient.

Meanwhile he was looking for two things--an apartment and a job--the
first energetically combated by his immediate family.

It was rather odd--the scarcity of jobs. Of course Austin offered him
one which Selwyn declined at once, comfortably enraging his
brother-in-law for nearly ten minutes.

"But what do I know about the investment of trust funds?" demanded
Selwyn; "you wouldn't take me if I were not your wife's brother--and
that's nepotism."

Austin's harmless fury raged for nearly ten minutes, after which he
cheered up, relighted his cigar, and resumed his discussion with Selwyn
concerning the merits of various boys' schools--the victim in
prospective being Billy.

A little later, reverting to the subject of his own enforced idleness,
Selwyn said: "I've been on the point of going to see Neergard--but
somehow I can't quite bring myself to it--slinking into his office as a
rank failure in one profession, to ask him if he has any use for me
again."

"Stuff and fancy!" growled Gerard; "it's all stuff and fancy about your
being any kind of a failure. If you want to resume with that Dutchman,
go to him and say so. If you want to invest anything in his Long Island
schemes he'll take you in fast enough. He took in Gerald and some twenty
thousand."

"Isn't he very prosperous, Austin?"

"Very--on paper. Long Island farm lands and mortgages on Hampton
hen-coops are not fragrant propositions to me. But there's always one
more way of making a living after you counted 'em all up on your
fingers. If you've any capital to offer Neergard, he won't shriek for
help."

"But isn't suburban property--"

"On the jump? Yes--both ways. Oh, I suppose that Neergard is all
right--if he wasn't I wouldn't have permitted Gerald to go into it.
Neergard sticks to his commissions and doesn't back his fancy in
certified checks. I don't know exactly how he operates; I only know that
we find nothing in that sort of thing for our own account. But Fane,
Harmon & Co. do. That's their affair, too; it's all a matter of taste, I
tell you."

Selwyn reflected: "I believe I'd go and see Neergard if I were perfectly
sure of my personal sentiments toward him. . . . He's been civil enough
to me, of course, but I have always had a curious feeling about
Neergard--that he's for ever on the edge of doing something--doubtful--"

"His business reputation is all right. He shaves the dead line like a
safety razor, but he's never yet cut through it. On principle, however,
look out for an apple-faced Dutchman with a thin nose and no lips.
Neither Jew, Yankee, nor American stands any chance in a deal with that
type of financier. Personally my feeling is this: if I've got to play
games with Julius Neergard, I'd prefer to be his partner. And so I told
Gerald. By the way--"

Austin checked himself, looked down at his cigar, turned it over and
over several times, then continued quietly:

--"By the way, I suppose Gerald is like other young men of his age and
times--immersed in his own affairs--thoughtless perhaps, perhaps a
trifle selfish in the cross-country gallop after pleasure. . . . I was
rather severe with him about his neglect of his sister. He ought to have
come here to pay his respects to you, too--"

"Oh, don't put such notions into his head--"

"Yes, I will!" insisted Austin; "however indifferent and thoughtless and
selfish he is to other people, he's got to be considerate toward his own
family. And I told him so. Have you seen him lately?"

"N-o," admitted Selwyn.

"Not since that first time when he came to do the civil by you?"

"No; but don't--"

"Yes, I will," repeated his brother-in-law; "and I'm going to have a
thorough explanation with him and learn what he's up to. He's got to be
decent to his sister; he ought to report to me occasionally; that's all
there is to it. He has entirely too much liberty with his bachelor
quarters and his junior whipper-snapper club, and his house parties and
his cruises on Neergard's boat!"

He got up, casting his cigar from him, and moved about bulkily,
muttering of matters to be regulated, and firmly, too. But Selwyn,
looking out of the window across the Park, knew perfectly well that
young Erroll, now of age, with a small portion of his handsome income
at his mercy, was past the regulating stage and beyond the authority of
Austin. There was no harm in him; he was simply a joyous,
pleasure-loving cub, chock full of energetic instincts, good and bad,
right and wrong, out of which, formed from the acts which become habits,
character matures. This was his estimate of Gerald.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning, riding in the Park with Eileen, he found a chance to
speak cordially of her brother.

"I've meant to look up Gerald," he said, as though the neglect were his
own fault, "but every time something happens to switch me on to another
track."

"I'm afraid that I do a great deal of the switching," she said; "don't
I? But you've been so nice to me and to the children that--"

Miss Erroll's horse was behaving badly, and for a few moments she became
too thoroughly occupied with her mount to finish her sentence.

The belted groom galloped up, prepared for emergencies, and he and
Selwyn sat their saddles watching a pretty battle for mastery between a
beautiful horse determined to be bad and a very determined young girl
who had decided he was going to be good.

Once or twice the excitement of solicitude sent the colour flying into
Selwyn's temples; the bridle-path was narrow and stiff with freezing
sand, and the trees were too near for such lively manoeuvres; but Miss
Erroll had made up her mind--and Selwyn already had a humorous idea that
this was no light matter. The horse found it serious enough, too, and
suddenly concluded to be good. And the pretty scene ended so abruptly
that Selwyn laughed aloud as he rejoined her:

"There was a man--'Boots' Lansing--in Bannard's command. One night on
Samar the bolo-men rushed us, and Lansing got into the six-foot major's
boots by mistake--seven-leaguers, you know--and his horse bucked him
clean out of them."

"Hence his Christian name, I suppose," said the girl; "but why such a
story, Captain Selwyn? I believe I stuck to my saddle?"

"With both hands," he said cordially, always alert to plague her. For
she was adorable when teased--especially in the beginning of their
acquaintance, before she had found out that it was a habit of his--and
her bright confusion always delighted him into further mischief.

"But I wasn't a bit worried," he continued; "you had him so firmly
around the neck. Besides, what horse or man could resist such a pleading
pair of arms around the neck?"

"What you saw," she said, flushing up, "is exactly the way I shall do
any pleading with the two animals you mention."

"Spur and curb and thrash us? Oh, my!"

"Not if you're bridle-wise, Captain Selwyn," she returned sweetly. "And
you know you always are. And sometimes"--she crossed her crop and looked
around at him reflectively--"_sometimes_, do you know, I am almost
afraid that you are so very, very good, that perhaps you are becoming
almost goody-good."

"_What_!" he exclaimed indignantly; but his only answer was her head
thrown back and a ripple of enchanting laughter.

Later she remarked: "It's just as Nina says, after all, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," he replied suspiciously; "what?"

"That Gerald isn't really very wicked, but he likes to have us think
so. It's a sign of extreme self-consciousness, isn't it," she added
innocently, "when a man is afraid that a woman thinks he is very, very
good?"

"That," he said, "is the limit. I'm going to ride by myself."

Her pleasure in Selwyn's society had gradually become such genuine
pleasure, her confidence in his kindness so unaffectedly sincere, that,
insensibly, she had fallen into something of his manner of
badinage--especially since she realised how much amusement he found in
her own smiling confusion when unexpectedly assailed. Also, to her
surprise, she found that he could be plagued very easily, though she did
not quite dare to at first, in view of his impressive years and
experience.

But once goaded to it, she was astonished to find how suddenly it seemed
to readjust their personal relations--years and experience falling from
his shoulders like a cloak which had concealed a man very nearly her own
age; years and experience adding themselves to her, and at least an inch
to her stature to redress the balance between them.

It had amused him immensely as he realised the subtle change; and it
pleased him, too, because no man of thirty-five cares to be treated _en
grandpère_ by a girl of nineteen, even if she has not yet worn the
polish from her first pair of high-heeled shoes.

"It's astonishing," he said, "how little respect infirmity and age
command in these days."

"I do respect you," she insisted, "especially your infirmity of purpose.
You said you were going to ride by yourself. But, do you know, I don't
believe you are of a particularly solitary disposition; are you?"

He laughed at first, then suddenly his face fell.

"Not from choice," he said, under his breath. Her quick ear heard, and
she turned, semi-serious, questioning him with raised eyebrows.

"Nothing; I was just muttering. I've a villainous habit of muttering
mushy nothings--"

"You _did_ say something!"

"No; only ghoulish gabble; the mere murky mouthings of a meagre mind."

"You _did_. It's rude not to repeat it when I ask you."

"I didn't mean to be rude."

"Then repeat what you said to yourself."

"Do you wish me to?" he asked, raising his eyes so gravely that the
smile faded from lip and voice when she answered: "I beg your pardon,
Captain Selwyn. I did not know you were serious."

"Oh, I'm not," he returned lightly, "I'm never serious. No man who
soliloquises can be taken seriously. Don't you know, Miss Erroll, that
the crowning absurdity of all tragedy is the soliloquy?"

Her smile became delightfully uncertain; she did not quite understand
him--though her instinct warned her that, for a second, something had
menaced their understanding.

Riding forward with him through the crisp sunshine of mid-December, the
word "tragedy" still sounding in her ears, her thoughts reverted
naturally to the only tragedy besides her own which had ever come very
near to her--his own.

Could he have meant _that_? Did people mention such things after they
had happened? Did they not rather conceal them, hide them deeper and
deeper with the aid of time and the kindly years for a burial past all
recollection?

Troubled, uncomfortably intent on evading every thought or train of
ideas evoked, she put her mount to a gallop. But thought kept pace with
her.

She was, of course, aware of the situation regarding Selwyn's domestic
affairs; she could not very well have been kept long in ignorance of the
facts; so Nina had told her carefully, leaving in the young girl's mind
only a bewildered sympathy for man and wife whom a dreadful and
incomprehensible catastrophe had overtaken; only an impression of
something new and fearsome which she had hitherto been unaware of in the
world, and which was to be added to her small but, unhappily, growing
list of sad and incredible things.

The finality of the affair, according to Nina, was what had seemed to
her the most distressing--as though those two were already dead people.
She was unable to understand it. Could no glimmer of hope remain that,
in that magic "some day" of all young minds, the evil mystery might
dissolve? Could there be no living "happily ever after" in the wake of
such a storm? She had managed to hope for that, and believe in it.

Then, in some way, the news of Alixe's marriage to Ruthven filtered
through the family silence. She had gone straight to Nina, horrified,
unbelieving. And, when the long, tender, intimate interview was over,
another unhappy truth, very gently revealed, was added to the growing
list already learned by this young girl.

Then Selwyn came. She had already learned something of the world's
customs and manners before his advent; she had learned more since his
advent; and she was learning something else, too--to understand how
happily ignorant of many matters she had been, had better be, and had
best remain. And she harboured no malsane desire to know more than was
necessary, and every innocent instinct to preserve her ignorance intact
as long as the world permitted.

As for the man riding there at her side, his problem was simple enough
as he summed it up: to face the world, however it might chance to spin,
that small, ridiculous, haphazard world rattling like a rickety roulette
ball among the numbered nights and days where he had no longer any vital
stake at hazard--no longer any chance to win or lose.

This was an unstable state of mind, particularly as he had not yet
destroyed the photograph which he kept locked in his despatch box. He
had not returned it, either; it was too late by several months to do
that, but he was still fool enough to consider the idea at
moments--sometimes after a nursery romp with the children, or after a
good-night kiss from Drina on the lamp-lit landing, or when some
commonplace episode of the domesticity around him hurt him, cutting him
to the quick with its very simplicity, as when Nina's hand fell
naturally into Austin's on their way to "lean over" the children at
bedtime, or their frank absorption in conjugal discussion to his own
exclusion as he sat brooding by the embers in the library.

"I'm like a dead man at times," he said to himself; "nothing to expect
of a man who is done for; and worst of all, I no longer expect anything
of myself."

This was sufficiently morbid, and he usually proved it by going early to
his own quarters, where dawn sometimes surprised him asleep in his
chair, white and worn, all the youth in his hollow face extinct, his
wife's picture fallen face downward on the floor.

But he always picked it up again when he awoke, and carefully dusted
it, too, even when half stupefied with sleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

Returning from their gallop, Miss Erroll had very little to say. Selwyn,
too, was silent and absent-minded. The girl glanced furtively at him
from time to time, not at all enlightened. Man, naturally, was to her an
unknown quantity. In fact she had no reason to suspect him of being
anything more intricate than the platitudinous dance or dinner partner
in black and white, or any frock-coated entity in the afternoon, or any
flannelled individual at the nets or on the links or cantering about the
veranda of club, casino, or cottage, in evident anxiety to be
considerate and agreeable.

This one, however, appeared to have individual peculiarities; he
differed from his brother Caucasians, who should all resemble one
another to any normal girl. For one thing he was subject to illogical
moods--apparently not caring whether she noticed them or not. For
another, he permitted himself the liberty of long and unreasonable
silences whenever he pleased. This she had accepted unquestioningly in
the early days when she was a little in awe of him, when the discrepancy
of their ages and experiences had not been dissipated by her first
presumptuous laughter at his expense.

Now it puzzled her, appearing as a specific trait differentiating him
from Man in the abstract.

He had another trick, too, of retiring within himself, even when smiling
at her sallies or banteringly evading her challenge to a duel of wits.
At such times he no longer looked very young; she had noticed that more
than once. He looked old, and ill-tempered.

Perhaps some sorrow--the actuality being vague in her mind; perhaps
some hidden suffering--but she learned that he had never been wounded in
battle and had never even had measles.

The sudden sullen pallor, the capricious fits of silent reserve, the
smiling aloofness, she never attributed to the real source. How could
she? The Incomprehensible Thing was a Finality accomplished according to
law. And the woman concerned was now another man's wife. Which
conclusively proved that there could be no regret arising from the
Incomprehensible Finality, and that nobody involved cared, much less
suffered. Hence _that_ was certainly not the cause of any erratic or
specific phenomena exhibited by this sample of man who differed, as she
had noticed, somewhat from the rank and file of his neutral-tinted
brothers.

"It's this particular specimen, _per se_," she concluded; "it's himself,
_sui generis_--just as I happen to have red hair. That is all."

And she rode on quite happily, content, confident of his interest and
kindness. For she had never forgotten his warm response to her when she
stood on the threshold of her first real dinner party, in her first real
dinner gown--a trivial incident, trivial words! But they had meant more
to her than any man specimen could understand--including the man who had
uttered them; and the violets, which she found later with his card, must
remain for her ever after the delicately fragrant symbol of all he had
done for her in a solitude, the completeness of which she herself was
only vaguely beginning to realise.

Thinking of this now, she thought of her brother--and the old hurt at
his absence on that night throbbed again. Forgive? Yes. But how could
she forget it?

"I wish you knew Gerald well," she said impulsively; "he is such a dear
fellow; and I think you'd be good for him--and besides," she hastened to
add, with instinctive loyalty, lest he misconstrue, "Gerald would be
good for you. We were a great deal together--at one time."

He nodded, smilingly attentive.

"Of course when he went away to school it was different," she added.
"And then he went to Yale; that was four more years, you see."

"I was a Yale man," remarked Selwyn; "did he--" but he broke off
abruptly, for he knew quite well that young Erroll could have made no
senior society without his hearing of it. And he had not heard of
it--not in the cane-brakes of Leyte where, on his sweat-soaked shirt, a
small pin of heavy gold had clung through many a hike and many a scout
and by many a camp-fire where the talk was of home and of the chances of
crews and of quarter-backs.

"What were you going to ask me, Captain Selwyn?"

"Did he row--your brother Gerald?"

"No," she said. She did not add that he had broken training; that was
her own sorrow, to be concealed even from Gerald. "No; he played polo
sometimes. He rides beautifully, Captain Selwyn, and he is so clever
when he cares to be--at the traps, for example--and--oh--anything. He
once swam--oh, dear, I forget; was it five or fifteen or fifty miles? Is
that _too_ far? Do people swim those distances?"

"Some of those distances," replied Selwyn.

"Well, then, Gerald swam some of those distances--and everybody was
amazed. . . . I do wish you knew him well."

"I mean to," he said. "I must look him up at his rooms or his club
or--perhaps--at Neergard & Co."

"_Will_ you do this?" she asked, so earnestly that he glanced up
surprised.

"Yes," he said; and after a moment: "I'll do it to-day, I think; this
afternoon."

"Have you time? You mustn't let me--"

"Time?" he repeated; "I have nothing else, except a watch to help me get
rid of it."

"I'm afraid I help you get rid of it, too. I heard Nina warning the
children to let you alone occasionally--and I suppose she meant that for
me, too. But I only take your mornings, don't I? Nina is unreasonable; I
never bother you in the afternoons or evenings; do you know I have not
dined at home for nearly a month--except when we've asked people?"

"Are you having a good time?" he asked condescendingly, but without
intention.

"Heavenly. How can you ask that?--with every day filled and a chance to
decline something every day. If you'd only go to one--just one of the
dances and teas and dinners, you'd be able to see for yourself what a
good time I am having. . . . I don't know why I should be so
delightfully lucky, but everybody asks me to dance, and every man I meet
is particularly nice, and nobody has been very horrid to me; perhaps
because I like everybody--"

She rode on beside him; they were walking their horses now; and as her
silken-coated mount paced forward through the sunshine she sat at ease,
straight as a slender Amazon in her habit, ruddy hair glistening at the
nape of her neck, the scarlet of her lips always a vivid contrast to
that wonderful unblemished skin of snow.

He thought to himself, quite impersonally: "She's a real beauty, that
youngster. No wonder they ask her to dance and nobody is horrid. Men are
likely enough to go quite mad about her as Nina predicts: probably some
of 'em have already--that chuckle-headed youth who was there Tuesday,
gulping up the tea--" And, "What was his name?" he asked aloud.

"Whose name?" she inquired, roused by his voice from smiling
retrospection.

"That chuckle head--the young man who continued to haunt you so
persistently when you poured tea for Nina on Tuesday. Of course they
_all_ haunted you," he explained politely, as she shook her head in sign
of non-comprehension; "but there was one who--ah--gulped at his cup."

"Please--you are rather dreadful, aren't you?"

"Yes. So was he; I mean the infatuated chinless gentleman whose facial
ensemble remotely resembled the features of a pleased and placid lizard
of the Reptilian period."

"Oh, George Fane! That is particularly disagreeable of you, Captain
Selwyn, because his wife has been very nice to me--Rosamund Fane--and
she spoke most cordially of you--"

"Which one was she?"

"The Dresden china one. She looks--she simply cannot look as though she
were married. It's most amusing--for people always take her for
somebody's youngest sister who will be out next winter. . . . Don't you
remember seeing her?"

"No, I don't. But there were dozens coming and going every minute whom I
didn't know. Still, I behaved well, didn't I?"

"Pretty badly--to Kathleen Lawn, whom you cornered so that she couldn't
escape until her mother made her go without any tea."

"Was _that_ the reason that old lady looked at me so queerly?"

"Probably. I did, too, but you were taking chances, not hints. . . . She
_is_ attractive, isn't she?"

"Very fetching," he said, leaning down to examine his stirrup leathers
which he had already lengthened twice. "I've got to have Cummins punch
these again," he muttered; "or am I growing queer-legged in my old age?"

As he straightened up, Miss Erroll said: "Here comes Mr. Fane now--with
a strikingly pretty girl. How beautifully they are mounted"--smilingly
returning Fane's salute--"and she--oh! so you _do_ know her, Captain
Selwyn? Who is she?"

Crop raised mechanically in dazed salute, Selwyn's light touch on the
bridle had tightened to a nervous clutch which brought his horse up
sharply.

"What is it?" she asked, drawing bridle in her turn and looking back
into his white, stupefied face.

"Pain," he said, unconscious that he spoke. At the same instant the
stunned eyes found their focus--and found her beside his stirrup,
leaning wide from her seat in sweet concern, one gloved hand resting on
the pommel of his saddle.

"Are you ill?" she asked; "shall we dismount? If you feel dizzy, please
lean against me."

"I am all right," he said coolly; and as she recovered her seat he set
his horse in motion. His face had become very red now; he looked at her,
then beyond her, with all the deliberate concentration of aloof
indifference.

Confused, conscious that something had happened which she did not
comprehend, and sensitively aware of the preoccupation which, if it did
not ignore her, accepted her presence as of no consequence, she
permitted her horse to set his own pace.

Neither self-command nor self-control was lacking now in Selwyn; he
simply was too self-absorbed to care what she thought--whether she
thought at all. And into his consciousness, throbbing heavily under the
rushing reaction from shock, crowded the crude fact that Alixe was no
longer an apparition evoked in sleeplessness, in sun-lit brooding;
in the solitude of crowded avenues and swarming streets; she
was an actual presence again in his life--she was here, bodily,
unchanged--unchanged!--for he had conceived a strange idea that she must
have changed physically, that her appearance had altered. He knew it was
a grotesquely senseless idea, but it clung to him, and he had nursed it
unconsciously.

He had, truly enough, expected to encounter her in life
again--somewhere; though what he had been preparing to see, Heaven alone
knew; but certainly not the supple, laughing girl he had known--that
smooth, slender, dark-eyed, dainty visitor who had played at marriage
with him through a troubled and unreal dream; and was gone when he
awoke--so swift the brief two years had passed, as swift in sorrow as in
happiness.

Two vision-tinted years!--ended as an hour ends with the muffled chimes
of a clock, leaving the air of an empty room vibrant. Two years!--a
swift, restless dream aglow with exotic colour, echoing with laughter
and bugle-call and the noise of the surf on Samar rocks--a dream through
which stirred the rustle of strange brocades and the whisper of breezes
blowing over the grasses of Leyte; and the light, dry report of rifles,
and the shuffle of bare feet in darkened bungalows, and the whisper of
dawn in Manila town.

Two years!--wherever they came from, wherever they had gone. And now,
out of the ghostly, shadowy memory, behold _her_ stepping into the world
again!--living, breathing, quickening with the fire of life undimmed in
her. And he had seen the bright colour spreading to her eyes, and the
dark eyes widen to his stare; he had seen the vivid blush, the forced
smile, the nod, the voiceless parting of her stiffened lips. Then she
was gone, leaving the whole world peopled with her living presence and
the very sky ringing with the words her lips had never uttered, never
would utter while sun and moon and stars endured.

Shrinking from the clamouring tumult of his thoughts he looked around,
hard-eyed and drawn of mouth, to find Miss Erroll riding a length in
advance, her gaze fixed resolutely between her horse's ears.

How much had she noticed? How much had she divined?--this straight,
white-throated young girl, with her self-possession and her rounded,
firm young figure, this child with the pure, curved cheek, the clear,
fearless eyes, untainted, ignorant, incredulous of shame, of evil.

Severe, confident, untroubled in the freshness of adolescence, she rode
on, straight before her, symbolic innocence leading the disillusioned.
And he followed, hard, dry eyes narrowing, ever narrowing and flinching
under the smiling gaze of the dark-eyed, red-mouthed ghost that sat
there on his saddle bow, facing him, almost in his very arms.

       *       *       *       *       *

Luncheon had not been served when they returned. Without lingering on
the landing as usual, they exchanged a formal word or two, then Eileen
mounted to her own quarters and Selwyn walked nervously through the
library, where he saw Nina evidently prepared for some mid-day
festivity, for she wore hat and furs, and the brougham was outside.

"Oh, Phil," she said, "Eileen probably forgot that I was going out; it's
a directors' luncheon at the exchange. Please tell Eileen that I can't
wait for her; where is she?"

"Dressing, I suppose. Nina, I--"

"One moment, dear. I promised the children that you would lunch with
them in the nursery. Do you mind? I did it to keep them quiet; I was
weak enough to compromise between a fox hunt or fudge; so I said you'd
lunch with them.. Will you?"

"Certainly. . . . And, Nina--what sort of a man is this George Fane?"

"Fane?"

"Yes--the chinless gentleman with gentle brown and protruding eyes and
the expression of a tame brontosaurus."

"Why--how do you mean, Phil? What sort of man? He's a banker. He isn't
very pretty, but he's popular."

"Oh, popular!" he nodded, as close to a sneer as he could ever get.

"He has a very popular wife, too; haven't you met Rosamund? People like
him; he's about everywhere--very useful, very devoted to pretty women;
but I'm really in a hurry, Phil. Won't you please explain to Eileen that
I couldn't wait? You and she were almost an hour late. Now I must pick
up my skirts and fly, or there'll be some indignant dowagers
downtown. . . . Good-bye, dear. . . . And _don't_ let the children eat
too fast! Make Drina take thirty-six chews to every bite; and Winthrop
is to have no bread if he has potatoes--" Her voice dwindled and died,
away through the hall; the front door clanged.

He went to his quarters, drove out Austin's man, arranged his own fresh
linen, took a sulky plunge; and, an unlighted cigarette between his
teeth, completed his dressing in sullen introspection.

When he had tied his scarf and bitten his cigarette to pieces, he paced
the room once or twice, squared his shoulders, breathed deeply, and,
unbending his eyebrows, walked off to the nursery.

"Hello, you kids!" he said, with an effort. "I've come to luncheon. Very
nice of you to want me, Drina."

"I wanted you, too!" said Billy; "I'm to sit beside you--"

"So am I," observed Drina, pushing Winthrop out of the chair and sliding
in close to Selwyn. She had the cat, Kit-Ki, in her arms. Kit-Ki,
divining nourishment, was purring loudly.

Josephine and Clemence, in pinafores and stickout skirts, sat wriggling,
with Winthrop between them; the five dogs sat in a row behind; Katie and
Bridget assumed the functions of Hibernian Hebes; and luncheon began
with a clatter of spoons.

It being also the children's dinner--supper and bed occurring from five
to six--meat figured on the card, and Kit-Ki's purring increased to an
ecstatic and wheezy squeal, and her rigid tail, as she stood up on
Drina's lap, was constantly brushing Selwyn's features.

"The cat is shedding, too," he remarked, as he dodged her caudal
appendage for the twentieth time; "it will go in with the next
spoonful, Drina, if you're not careful about opening your mouth."

"I love Kit-Ki," said Drina placidly. "I have written a poem to
her--where is it?--hand it to me, Bridget."

And, laying down her fork and crossing her bare legs under the table,
Drina took breath and read rapidly:

     "LINES TO MY CAT

     "Why
     Do I love Kit-Ki
     And run after
     Her with laughter
     And rub her fur
     So she will purr?
     Why do I know
     That Kit-Ki loves me so?
     I know it if
     Her tail stands up stiff
     And she beguiles
     Me with smiles--"

"Huh!" said Billy, "cats don't smile!"

"They do. When they look pleasant they smile," said Drina, and continued
reading from her own works:

     "Be kind in all
       You say and do
     For God made Kit-Ki
       The same as you.
            "Yours truly,
              "ALEXANDRINA GERARD.

She looked doubtfully at Selwyn. "Is it all right to sign a poem? I
believe that poets sign their works, don't they, Uncle Philip?"

"Certainly. Drina, I'll give you a dollar for that poem."

"You may have it, anyway," said Drina, generously; and, as an
after-thought: "My birthday is next Wednesday."

"What a hint!" jeered Billy, casting a morsel at the dogs.

"It isn't a hint. It had nothing to do with my poem, and I'll write you
several more, Uncle Philip," protested the child, cuddling against him,
spoon in hand, and inadvertently decorating his sleeve with cranberry
sauce.

Cat hairs and cranberry are a great deal for a man to endure, but he
gave Drina a reassuring hug and a whisper, and leaned back to remove
traces of the affectionate encounter just as Miss Erroll entered.

"Oh, Eileen! Eileen!" cried the children; "are you coming to luncheon
with us?"

As Selwyn rose, she nodded, amused.

"I am rather hurt," she said. "I went down to luncheon, but as soon as I
heard where you all were I marched straight up here to demand the reason
of my ostracism."

"We thought you had gone with mother," explained Drina, looking about
for a chair.

Selwyn brought it. "I was commissioned to say that Nina couldn't
wait--dowagers and cakes and all that, you know. Won't you sit down?
It's rather messy and the cat is the guest of honour."

"We have three guests of honour," said Drina; "you, Eileen, and Kit-Ki.
Uncle Philip, mother has forbidden me to speak of it, so I shall tell
her and be punished--but _wouldn't_ it be splendid if Aunt Alixe were
only here with us?"

Selwyn turned sharply, every atom of colour gone; and the child smiled
up at him. "_Wouldn't_ it?" she pleaded.

"Yes," he said, so quietly that something silenced the child. And
Eileen, giving ostentatious and undivided attention to the dogs, was now
enveloped by snooping, eager muzzles and frantically wagging tails.

"My lap is full of paws!" she exclaimed; "take them away, Katie! And
oh!--my gown, my gown!--Billy, stop waving your tumbler around my face!
If you spill that milk on me I shall ask your Uncle Philip to put you in
the guard-house!"

"You're going to bolo us, aren't you, Uncle Philip?" inquired Billy.
"It's my turn to be killed, you remember--"

"I have an idea," said Selwyn, "that Miss Erroll is going to play for
you to sing."

They liked that. The infant Gerards were musically inclined, and nothing
pleased them better than to lift their voices in unison. Besides, it
always distressed Kit-Ki, and they never tired laughing to see the
unhappy cat retreat before the first minor chord struck on the piano.
More than that, the dogs always protested, noses pointed heavenward. It
meant noise, which was always welcome in any form.

"Will you play, Miss Erroll?" inquired Selwyn.

Miss Erroll would play.

"Why do you always call her 'Miss Erroll'?" asked Billy. "Why don't you
say 'Eileen'?"

Selwyn laughed. "I don't know, Billy; ask her; perhaps she knows."

Eileen laughed, too, delicately embarrassed and aware of his teasing
smile. But Drina, always impressed by formality, said: "Uncle Philip
isn't Eileen's uncle. People who are not relations say _Miss and Mrs_."

"Are faver and muvver relations?" asked Josephine timidly.

"Y-es--no!--I don't know," admitted Drina; "_are_ they, Eileen?"

"Why, yes--that is--that is to say--" And turning to Selwyn: "What
dreadful questions. _Are_ they relations, Captain Selwyn? Of course they
are!"

"They were not before they were married," he said, laughing.

"If you married Eileen," began Billy, "you'd call her Eileen, I
suppose."

"Certainly," said Selwyn.

"Why don't you?"

"That is another thing you must ask her, my son."

"Well, then, Eileen--"

But Miss Erroll was already seated at the nursery piano, and his demands
were drowned in a decisive chord which brought the children clustering
around her, while their nurses ran among them untying bibs and scrubbing
faces and fingers in fresh water.

They sang like seraphs, grouped around the piano, fingers linked behind
their backs. First it was "The Vicar of Bray." Then--and the cat fled at
the first chord--"Lochleven Castle":

     "Put off, put off,
     And row with speed
     For now is the time and the hour of need."

Miss Erroll sang, too; her voice leading--a charmingly trained, but
childlike voice, of no pretensions, as fresh and unspoiled as the girl
herself.

There was an interval after "Castles in the Air"; Eileen sat, with her
marvellously white hands resting on the keys, awaiting further
suggestion.

"Sing that funny song, Uncle Philip!" pleaded Billy; "you know--the one
about:

       "She hit him with a shingle
       Which made his breeches tingle
     Because he pinched his little baby brother;
       And he ran down the lane
       With his pants full of pain.
     Oh, a boy's best friend is his mother!"

"_Billy!_" gasped Miss Erroll.

Selwyn, mortified, said severely: "That is a very dreadful song,
Billy--"

"But _you_ taught it to me--"

Eileen swung around on the piano stool, but Selwyn had seized Billy and
was promising to bolo him as soon as he wished.

And Eileen, surveying the scene from her perch, thought that Selwyn's
years seemed to depend entirely upon his occupation, for he looked very
boyish down there on his knees among the children; and she had not yet
forgotten the sunken pallor of his features in the Park--no, nor her own
question to him, still unanswered. For she had asked him who that woman
was who had been so direct in her smiling salute. And he had not yet
replied; probably never would; for she did not expect to ask him again.

Meanwhile the bolo-men were rushing the outposts to the outposts'
intense satisfaction.

"Bang-bang!" repeated Winthrop; "I hit you, Uncle Philip. You are dead,
you know!"

"Yes, but here comes another! Fire!" shouted Billy. "Save the flag!
Hurrah! Pound on the piano, Eileen, and pretend it's cannon."

Chord after chord reverberated through the big sunny room, punctuated by
all the cavalry music she had picked up from West Point and her friends
in the squadron.

     "We can't get 'em up!
      We can't get 'em up!
      We can't get 'em up
         In the morning!"

she sang, calmly watching the progress of the battle, until Selwyn
disengaged himself from the _mêlée_ and sank breathlessly into a chair.

"All over," he said, declining further combat. "Play the 'Star-spangled
Banner,' Miss Erroll."

"Boom!" crashed the chord for the sunset gun; then she played the
anthem; Selwyn rose, and the children stood up at salute.

The party was over.

Selwyn and Miss Erroll, strolling together out of the nursery and down
the stairs, fell unconsciously into the amiable exchange of badinage
again; she taunting him with his undignified behaviour, he retorting in
kind.

"Anyway that was a perfectly dreadful verse you taught Billy," she
concluded.

"Not as dreadful as the chorus," he remarked, wincing.

"You're exactly like a bad small boy, Captain Selwyn; you look like one
now--so sheepish! I've seen Gerald attempt to avoid admonition in
exactly that fashion."

"How about a jolly brisk walk?" he inquired blandly; "unless you've
something on. I suppose you have."

"Yes, I have; a tea at the Fanes, a function at the Grays. . . . Do you
know Sudbury Gray? It's his mother."

They had strolled into the living room--a big, square, sunny place, in
golden greens and browns, where a bay-window overlooked the Park.

Kneeling on the cushions of the deep window seat she flattened her
delicate nose against the glass, peering out through the lace hangings.

"Everybody and his family are driving," she said over her shoulder. "The
rich and great are cornering the fresh-air supply. It's interesting,
isn't it, merely to sit here and count coteries! There is Mrs.
Vendenning and Gladys Orchil of the Black Fells set; there is that
pretty Mrs. Delmour-Carnes; Newport! Here come some Cedarhurst
people--the Fleetwoods. It always surprises one to see them out of the
saddle. There is Evelyn Cardwell; she came out when I did; and there
comes Sandon Craig with a very old lady--there, in that old-fashioned
coach--oh, it is Mrs. Jan Van Elten, senior. What a very, very quaint
old lady! I have been presented at court," she added, with a little
laugh, "and now all the law has been fulfilled."

For a while she kneeled there, silently intent on the passing pageant
with all the unconscious curiosity of a child. Presently, without
turning: "They speak of the younger set--but what is its limit? So many,
so many people! The hunting crowd--the silly crowd--the wealthy
sets--the dreadful yellow set--then all those others made out of
metals--copper and coal and iron and--" She shrugged her youthful
shoulders, still intent on the passing show.

"Then there are the intellectuals--the artistic, the illuminated, the
musical sorts. I--I wish I knew more of them. They were my father's
friends--some of them." She looked over her shoulder to see where Selwyn
was, and whether he was listening; smiled at him, and turned, resting
one hand on the window seat. "So many kinds of people," she said, with a
shrug.

"Yes," said Selwyn lazily, "there are all kinds of kinds. You remember
that beautiful nature-poem:

     "'The sea-gull
       And the eagul
     And the dipper-dapper-duck
       And the Jew-fish
       And the blue-fish
     And the turtle in the muck;
       And the squir'l
       And the girl
     And the flippy floppy bat
       Are differ-ent
       As gent from gent.
     So let it go at that!'"

"What hideous nonsense," she laughed, in open encouragement; but he
could recall nothing more--or pretended he couldn't.

"You asked me," he said, "whether I know Sudbury Gray. I do, slightly.
What about him?" And he waited, remembering Nina's suggestion as to that
wealthy young man's eligibility.

"He's one of the nicest men I know," she replied frankly.

"Yes, but you don't know 'Boots' Lansing."

"The gentleman who was bucked out of his footwear? Is he attractive?"

"Rather. Shrieks rent the air when 'Boots' left Manila."

"Feminine shrieks?"

"Exclusively. The men were glad enough. He has three months' leave this
winter, so you'll see him soon."

She thanked him mockingly for the promise, watching him from amused
eyes. After a moment she said:

"I ought to arise and go forth with timbrels and with dances; but, do
you know, I am not inclined to revels? There has been a little--just a
very little bit too much festivity so far. . . . Not that I don't adore
dinners and gossip and dances; not that I do not love to pervade bright
and glittering places. Oh, no. Only--I--"

She looked shyly a moment at Selwyn: "I sometimes feel a curious desire
for other things. I have been feeling it all day."

"What things?"

"I--don't know--exactly; substantial things. I'd like to learn about
things. My father was the head of the American School of Archæology in
Crete. My mother was his intellectual equal, I believe--"

Her voice had fallen as she spoke. "Do you wonder that physical pleasure
palls a little at times? I inherit something besides a capacity for
dancing."

He nodded, watching her with an interest and curiosity totally new.

"When I was ten years old I was taken abroad for the winter. I saw the
excavations in Crete for the buried city which father discovered near
Præsos. We lived for a while with Professor Flanders in the Fayum
district; I saw the ruins of Kahun, built nearly three thousand years
before the coming of Christ; I myself picked up a scarab as old as the
ruins! . . . Captain Selwyn--I was only a child of ten; I could
understand very little of what I saw and heard, but I have never, never
forgotten the happiness of that winter! . . . And that is why, at times,
pleasures tire me a little; and a little discontent creeps in. It is
ungrateful and ungracious of me to say so, but I did wish so much to go
to college--to have something to care for--as mother cared for father's
work. Why, do you know that my mother accidentally discovered the
thirty-seventh sign in the Karian Signary?"

"No," said Selwyn, "I did not know that." He forbore to add that he did
not know what a Signary resembled or where Karia might be.

Miss Erroll's elbow was on her knee, her chin resting within her open
palm.

"Do you know about my parents?" she asked. "They were lost in the
_Argolis_ off Cyprus. You have heard. I think they meant that I should
go to college--as well as Gerald; I don't know. Perhaps after all it is
better for me to do what other young girls do. Besides, I enjoy it; and
my mother did, too, when she was my age, they say. She was very much
gayer than I am; my mother was a beauty and a brilliant woman. . . . But
there were other qualities. I--have her letters to father when Gerald
and I were very little; and her letters to us from London. . . . I have
missed her more, this winter, it seems to me, than even in that dreadful
time--"

She sat silent, chin in hand, delicate fingers restlessly worrying her
red lips; then, in quick impulse:

"You will not mistake me, Captain Selwyn! Nina and Austin have been
perfectly sweet to me and to Gerald."

"I am not mistaking a word you utter," he said.

"No, of course not. . . . Only there are times . . . moments . . ."

Her voice died; her clear eyes looked out into space while the silent
seconds lengthened into minutes. One slender finger had slipped between
her lips and teeth; the burnished strand of hair which Nina dreaded lay
neglected against her cheek.

"I should like to know," she began, as though to herself, "something
about everything. That being out of the question, I should like to know
everything about something. That also being out of the question, for
third choice I should like to know something about something. I am not
too ambitious, am I?"

Selwyn did not offer to answer.

"_Am_ I?" she repeated, looking directly at him.

"I thought you were asking yourself."

"But you need not reply; there is no sense in my question."

She stood up, indifferent, absent-eyed, half turning toward the window;
and, raising her hand, she carelessly brought the rebel strand of hair
under discipline.

"You _said_ you were going to look up Gerald," she observed.

"I am; now. What are you going to do?"

"I? Oh, dress, I suppose. Nina ought to be back now, and she expects me
to go out with her."

She nodded a smiling termination of their duet, and moved toward the
door. Then, on impulse, she turned, a question on her lips--left
unuttered through instinct. It had to do with the identity of the pretty
woman who had so directly saluted him in the Park--a perfectly
friendly, simple, and natural question. Yet it remained unuttered.

She turned again to the doorway; a maid stood there holding a note on a
salver.

"For Captain Selwyn, please," murmured the maid.

Miss Erroll passed out.

Selwyn took the note and broke the seal:

     "MY DEAR SELWYN: I'm in a beastly fix--an I.O.U. due to-night and
     _pas de quoi_! Obviously I don't want Neergard to know, being
     associated as I am with him in business. As for Austin, he's a
     peppery old boy, bless his heart, and I'm not very secure in his
     good graces at present. Fact is I got into a rather stiff game last
     night--and it's a matter of honour. So can you help me to tide it
     over? I'll square it on the first of the month.

     "Yours sincerely,

     "GERALD ERROLL.

     "P.S.--I've meant to look you up for ever so long, and will the
     first moment I have free."

Below this was pencilled the amount due; and Selwyn's face grew very
serious.

The letter he wrote in return ran:

     "DEAR GERALD: Check enclosed to your order. By the way, can't you
     lunch with me at the Lenox Club some day this week? Write, wire, or
     telephone when.

     "Yours,

     "SELWYN."

When he had sent the note away by the messenger he walked back to the
bay-window, hands in his pockets, a worried expression in his gray
eyes. This sort of thing must not be repeated; the boy must halt in his
tracks and face sharply the other way. Besides, his own income was
limited--much too limited to admit of many more loans of that sort.

He ought to see Gerald at once, but somehow he could not in decency
appear personally on the heels of his loan. A certain interval must
elapse between the loan and the lecture; in fact he didn't see very well
how he could admonish and instruct until the loan had been
cancelled--that is, until the first of the New Year.

Pacing the floor, disturbed, uncertain as to the course he should
pursue, he looked up presently to see Miss Erroll descending the stairs,
fresh and sweet in her radiant plumage. As she caught his eye she waved
a silvery chinchilla muff at him--a marching salute--and passed on,
calling back to him: "Don't forget Gerald!"

"No," he said, "I won't forget Gerald." He stood a moment at the window
watching the brougham below where Nina awaited Miss Erroll. Then,
abruptly, he turned back into the room and picked up the telephone
receiver, muttering: "This is no time to mince matters for the sake of
appearances." And he called up Gerald at the offices of Neergard & Co.

"Is it you, Gerald?" he asked pleasantly. "It's all right about that
matter; I've sent you a note by your messenger. But I want to talk to
you about another matter--something concerning myself--I want to ask
your advice, in a way. Can you be at the Lenox by six? . . . You have an
engagement at eight? Oh, that's all right; I won't keep you. . . . It's
understood, then; the Lenox at six. . . . Good-bye."

There was the usual early evening influx of men at the Lenox who dropped
in for a glance at the ticker, or for a cocktail or a game of billiards
or a bit of gossip before going home to dress.

Selwyn sauntered over to the basket, inspected a yard or two of tape,
then strolled toward the window, nodding to Bradley Harmon and Sandon
Craig.

As he turned his face to the window and his back to the room, Harmon
came up rather effusively, offering an unusually thin flat hand and
further hospitality, pleasantly declined by Selwyn.

"Horrible thing, a cocktail," observed Harmon, after giving his own
order and seating himself opposite Selwyn. "I don't usually do it. Here
comes the man who persuades me!--my own partner--"

Selwyn looked up to see Fane approaching; and instantly a dark flush
overspread his face.

"You know George Fane, don't you?" continued Harmon easily; "well,
that's odd; I thought, of course--Captain Selwyn, Mr. Fane. It's not
usual--but it's done."

They exchanged formalities--dry and brief on Selwyn's part, gracefully
urbane on Fane's.

"I've heard so pleasantly of you from Gerald Erroll," he said, "and of
course our people have always been on cordial terms. Neither Mrs. Fane
nor I was fortunate enough to meet you last Tuesday at the Gerards--such
a crush, you know. Are you not joining us, Captain Selwyn?" as the
servant appeared to take orders.

Selwyn declined again, glancing at Harmon--a large-framed, bony young
man with blond, closely trimmed and pointed beard, and the fair colour
of a Swede. He had the high, flat cheek-bones of one, too; and a
thicket of corn-tinted hair, which was usually damp at the ends, and
curled flat against his forehead. He seemed to be always in a slight
perspiration--he had been, anyway, every time Selwyn met him anywhere.

Sandon Craig and Billy Fleetwood came wandering up and joined them; one
or two other men, drifting by, adhered to the group.

Selwyn, involved in small talk, glanced sideways at the great clock, and
gathered himself together for departure.

Fleetwood was saying to Craig: "Certainly it was a stiff game--Bradley,
myself, Gerald Erroll, Mrs. Delmour-Carnes, and the Ruthvens."

"Were you hit?" asked Craig, interested.

"No; about even. Gerald got it good and plenty, though. The Ruthvens
were ahead as usual--"

Selwyn, apparently hearing nothing, quietly rose and stepped out of the
circle, paused to set fire to a cigarette, and then strolled off toward
the visitors' room, where Gerald was now due.

Fane stretched his neck, looking curiously after him. Then he said to
Fleetwood: "Why begin to talk about Mrs. Ruthven when our friend yonder
is about? Rotten judgment you show, Billy."

"Well, I clean forgot," said Fleetwood; "what did I say, anyway? A man
can't always remember who's divorced from who in this town."

Harmon, whose civility to Selwyn had possibly been based on his desire
for pleasant relations with Austin Gerard and the Arickaree Loan and
Trust Company, looked at Fleetwood thoroughly vexed. But nobody could
have suspected vexation in that high-boned smile which showed such very
red lips through the blond beard.

Fane, too, smiled; his prominent soft brown eyes expressed gentlest
good-humour, and he passed his hand reflectively over his unusually
small and retreating chin. Perhaps he was thinking of the meeting in the
Park that morning. It was amusing; but men do not speak of such things
at their clubs, no matter how amusing. Besides, if the story were aired
and were traced to him, Ruthven might turn ugly. There was no counting
on Ruthven.

Meanwhile Selwyn, perplexed and worried, found young Erroll just
entering the visitors' room, and greeted him with nervous cordiality.

"If you can't stay and dine with me," he said, "I won't put you down.
You know, of course, I can only ask you once in a year, so we'll stay
here and chat a bit."

"Right you are," said young Erroll, flinging off his very new and very
fashionable overcoat--a wonderfully handsome boy, with all the
attraction that a quick, warm, impulsive manner carries. "And I say,
Selwyn, it was awfully decent of you to--"

"Bosh! Friends are for that sort of thing, Gerald. Sit here--" He looked
at the young man hesitatingly; but Gerald calmly took the matter out of
his jurisdiction by nodding his order to the club attendant.

"Lord, but I'm tired," he said, sinking back into a big arm-chair; "I
was up till daylight, and then I had to be in the office by nine, and
to-night Billy Fleetwood is giving--oh, something or other. By the way,
the market isn't doing a thing to the shorts! You're not in, are you,
Selwyn?"

"No, not that way. I hope you are not, either; are you, Gerald?"

"Oh, it's all right," replied the young fellow confidently; and raising
his glass, he nodded at Selwyn with a smile.

"You were mighty nice to me, anyhow," he said, setting his glass aside
and lighting a cigar. "You see, I went to a dance, and after a while
some of us cleared out, and Jack Ruthven offered us trouble; so half a
dozen of us went there. I had the worst cards a man ever drew to a
kicker. That was all about it."

The boy was utterly unconscious that he was treading on delicate ground
as he rattled on in his warmhearted, frank, and generous way. Totally
oblivious that the very name of Ruthven must be unwelcome if not
offensive to his listener, he laughed through a description of the
affair, its thrilling episodes, and Mrs. Jack Ruthven's blind luck in
the draw.

"One moment," interrupted Selwyn, very gently; "do you mind saying
whether you banked my check and drew against it?"

"Why, no; I just endorsed it over."

"To--to whom?--if I may venture--"

"Certainly," he said, with a laugh; "to Mrs. Jack--" Then, in a flash,
for the first time the boy realised what he was saying, and stopped
aghast, scarlet to his hair.

Selwyn's face had little colour remaining in it, but he said very
kindly: "It's all right, Gerald; don't worry--"

"I'm a beast!" broke out the boy; "I beg your pardon a thousand times."

"Granted, old chap. But, Gerald, may I say one thing--or perhaps two?"

"Go ahead! Give it to me good and plenty!"

"It's only this: couldn't you and I see one another a little oftener?
Don't be afraid of me; I'm no wet blanket. I'm not so very aged,
either; I know something of the world--I understand something of men.
I'm pretty good company, Gerald. What do you say?"

"I say, _sure_!" cried the boy warmly.

"It's a go, then. And one thing more: couldn't you manage to come up to
the house a little oftener? Everybody misses you, of course; I think
your sister is a trifle sensitive--"

"I will!" said Gerald, blushing. "Somehow I've had such a lot on
hand--all day at the office, and something on every evening. I know
perfectly well I've neglected Eily--and everybody. But the first moment
I can find free--"

Selwyn nodded. "And last of all," he said, "there's something about my
own affairs that I thought you might advise me on."

Gerald, proud, enchanted, stood very straight; the older man continued
gravely:

"I've a little capital to invest--not very much. Suppose--and this, I
need not add, is in confidence between us--suppose I suggested to Mr.
Neergard--"

"Oh," cried young Erroll, delighted, "that is fine! Neergard would be
glad enough. Why, we've got that Valleydale tract in shape now, and
there are scores of schemes in the air--scores of them--important moves
which may mean--anything!" he ended, excitedly.

"Then you think it would be all right--in case Neergard likes the idea?"

Gerald was enthusiastic. After a while they shook hands, it being time
to separate. And for a long time Selwyn sat there alone in the visitors'
room, absent-eyed, facing the blazing fire of cannel coal.

How to be friends with this boy without openly playing the mentor; how
to gain his confidence without appearing to seek it; how to influence
him without alarming him! No; there was no great harm in him yet; only
the impulse of inconsiderate youth; only an enthusiastic capacity for
pleasure.

One thing was imperative--the boy must cut out his card-playing for
stakes at once; and there was a way to accomplish that by impressing
Gerald with the idea that to do anything behind Neergard's back which he
would not care to tell him about was a sort of treachery.

Who were these people, anyway, who would permit a boy of that age, and
in a responsible position, to play for such stakes? Who were they to
encourage such--?

Selwyn's tightening grasp on his chair suddenly relaxed; he sank back,
staring at the brilliant coals. He, too, had forgotten.

Now he remembered, in humiliation unspeakable, in bitterness past all
belief.

Time sped, and he sat there, motionless; and gradually the bitterness
became less perceptible as he drifted, intent on drifting, back through
the exotic sorcery of dead years--back into the sun again, where honour
was bright and life was young--where all the world awaited happy
conquest--where there was no curfew in the red evening glow; no end to
day, because the golden light had turned to silver; but where the
earliest hint of dawn was a challenge, and where every yellow star
whispered "Awake!"

And out of the magic _she_ had come into his world again!

Sooner or later he would meet her now. That was sure. When? Where? And
of what significance was it, after all?

Whom did it concern? Him? Her? And what had he to say to her, after all?
Or she to him?

Not one word.

       *       *       *       *       *

About midnight he roused himself and picked up his hat and coat.

"Do you wish a cab, please?" whispered the club servant who held his
coat; "it is snowing very hard, sir."




CHAPTER III

UNDER THE ASHES


He had neither burned nor returned the photograph to Mrs. Ruthven. The
prospect perplexed and depressed Selwyn.

He was sullenly aware that in a town where the divorced must ever be
reckoned with when dance and dinner lists are made out, there is always
some thoughtless hostess--and sometimes a mischievous one; and the
chances were that he and Mrs. Jack Ruthven would collide, either through
the forgetfulness or malice of somebody or, through sheer hazard, at
some large affair where Destiny and Fate work busily together in
criminal copartnership.

And he encountered her first at a masque and revel given by Mrs.
Delmour-Carnes where Fate contrived that he should dance in the same set
with his _ci-devant_ wife before the unmasking, and where, unaware, they
gaily exchanged salute and hand-clasp before the jolly _mêlée_ of
unmasking revealed how close together two people could come after
parting for ever and a night at the uttermost ends of the earth.

When masks at last were off there was neither necessity nor occasion for
the two surprised and rather pallid young people to renew civilities;
but later, Destiny, the saturnine partner in the business, interfered;
and some fool in the smoking room tried to introduce Selwyn to Ruthven.
The slightest mistake on their parts would have rendered the incident
ridiculous; and Ruthven made that mistake.

That was Selwyn's first encounter with the Ruthvens. A short time
afterward at the opera Gerald dragged him into a parterre to say
something amiable to one of the débutante Craig girls--and Selwyn found
himself again facing Alixe.

If there was any awkwardness it was not apparent, although they both
knew that they were in full view of the house.

A cool bow and its cooler acknowledgment, a formal word and more formal
reply; and Selwyn made his way to the corridor, hot with vexation,
unaware of where he was going, and oblivious of the distressed and
apologetic young man, who so contritely kept step with him through the
brilliantly crowded promenade.

That was the second time--not counting distant glimpses in crowded
avenues, in the Park, at Sherry's, or across the hazy glitter of
thronged theatres. But the third encounter was different.

It was all a mistake, born of the haste of a heedless and elderly
matron, celebrated for managing to do the wrong thing, but who had been
excessively nice to him that winter, and whose position in Manhattan was
not to be assailed.

"Dear Captain Selwyn," she wheezed over the telephone, "I'm short one
man; and we dine at eight and it's that now. _Could_ you help me? It's
the rich and yellow, this time, but you won't mind, will you?"

Selwyn, standing at the lower telephone in the hall, asked her to hold
the wire a moment, and glanced up at his sister who was descending the
stairs with Eileen, dinner having at that instant been announced.

"Mrs. T. West Minster--flying signals of distress," he said, carefully
covering the transmitter as he spoke; "man overboard, and will I kindly
take a turn at the wheel?"

"What a shame!" said Eileen; "you are going to spoil the first home
dinner we have had together in weeks!"

"Tell her to get some yellow pup!" growled Austin, from above.

"As though anybody could get a yellow pup when they whistle," said Nina
hopelessly.

"That's true," nodded Selwyn; "I'm the original old dog Tray. Whistle,
and I come padding up. Ever faithful, you see."

And he uncovered the transmitter and explained to Mrs. T. West Minster
his absurd delight at being whistled at. Then he sent for a cab and
sauntered into the dining-room, where he was received with undisguised
hostility.

"She's been civil to me," he said; "_jeunesse oblige_, you know. And
that's why I--"

"There'll be a lot of débutantes there! What do you want to go for, you
cradle robber!" protested Austin--"a lot of water-bibbing, olive-eating,
talcum-powdered débutantes--"

Eileen straightened up stiffly, and Selwyn's teasing smile and his
offered hand in adieu completed her indignation.

"Oh, good-bye! No, I won't shake hands. There's your cab, now. I wish
you'd take Austin, too; Nina and I are tired of dining with the
prematurely aged."

"Indeed, we are," said Mrs. Gerard; "go to your club, Austin, and give
me a chance to telephone to somebody under the anesthetic age."

Selwyn departed, laughing, but he yawned in his cab all the way to
Fifty-third Street, where he entered in the wake of the usual laggards
and, surrendering hat and coat in the cloak room, picked up the small
slim envelope bearing his name.

The card within disclosed the information that he was to take in Mrs.
Somebody-or-Other; he made his way through a great many people, found
his hostess, backed off, stood on one leg for a moment like a reflective
water-fowl, then found Mrs. Somebody-or-Other and was absently good to
her through a great deal of noise and some Spanish music, which seemed
to squirt through a thicket of palms and bespatter everybody.

"Wonderful music," observed his dinner partner, with singular
originality; "_so_ like Carmen."

"Is it?" he replied, and took her away at a nod from his hostess, whose
daughter Dorothy leaned forward from her partner's arm at the same
moment, and whispered: "I _must_ speak to you, mamma! You _can't_ put
Captain Selwyn there because--"

But her mother was deaf and smilingly sensitive about it, so she merely
guessed what reply her child expected: "It's all settled, dear; Captain
Selwyn arrived a moment ago." And she closed the file.

It was already too late, anyhow; and presently, turning to see who was
seated on his left, Selwyn found himself gazing into the calm, flushed
face of Alixe Ruthven. It was their third encounter.

They exchanged a dazed nod of recognition, a meaningless murmur, and
turned again, apparently undisturbed, to their respective dinner
partners.

A great many curious eyes, lingering on them, shifted elsewhere, in
reluctant disappointment.

As for the hostess, she had, for one instant, come as near to passing
heavenward as she could without doing it when she discovered the
situation. Then she accepted it with true humour. She could afford to.
But her daughters, Sheila and Dorothy, suffered acutely, being of this
year's output and martyrs to responsibility.

Meanwhile, Selwyn, grimly aware of an accident somewhere, and perfectly
conscious of the feelings which must by this time dominate his hostess,
was wondering how best to avoid anything that might resemble a
situation.

Instead of two or three dozen small tables, scattered among the palms of
the winter garden, their hostess had preferred to construct a great oval
board around the aquarium. The arrangement made it a little easier for
Selwyn and Mrs. Ruthven. He talked to his dinner partner until she began
to respond in monosyllables, which closed each subject that he opened
and wearied him as much as he was boring her. But Bradley Harmon, the
man on her right, evidently had better fortune; and presently Selwyn
found himself with nobody to talk to, which came as near to embarrassing
him as anything could, and which so enraged his hostess that she struck
his partner's name from her lists for ever. People were already glancing
at him askance in sly amusement or cold curiosity.

Then he did a thing which endeared him to Mrs. T. West Minster and to
her two disconsolate children.

"Mrs. Ruthven," he said, very naturally and pleasantly, "I think perhaps
we had better talk for a moment or two--if you don't mind."

She said quietly, "I don't mind," and turned with charming composure.
Every eye shifted to them, then obeyed decency or training; and the
slightest break in the gay tumult was closed up with chatter and
laughter.

"Plucky," said Sandon Craig to his fair neighbour; "but by what chance
did our unfortunate hostess do it?"

"She's usually doing it, isn't she? What occupies me," returned his
partner, "is how on earth Alixe could have thrown away that adorable man
for Jack Ruthven. Why, he is already trying to scramble into Rosamund
Fane's lap--the horrid little poodle!--always curled up on the edge of
your skirt!"

She stared at Mrs. Ruthven across the crystal reservoir brimming with
rose and ivory-tinted water-lilies.

"That girl is marked for destruction," she said slowly; "the gods have
done their work already."

But whatever Alixe had been, whatever she now was, she showed to her
little world only a pale brunette symmetry--a strange and changeless
lustre, varying as little as the moon's phases; and like that burnt-out
planet, reflecting any flame that flared until her clear, young beauty
seemed pulsating with the promise of hidden fire.

Selwyn, outwardly amiable and formal, was saying in a low voice: "My
dinner partner is quite impossible, you see; and I happen to be here as
a filler in--commanded to the presence only a few minutes ago. It's a
pardonable error; I bear no malice. But I'm sorry for you."

There was a silence; Alixe straightened her slim figure, and turned; but
young Innis, who had taken her in, had become confidential with Mrs.
Fane. As for Selwyn's partner, she probably divined his conversational
designs on her, but she merely turned her bare shoulder a trifle more
unmistakably and continued her gossip with Bradley Harmon.

Alixe broke a tiny morsel from her bread, sensible of the tension.

"I suppose," she said, as though reciting to some new acquaintance an
amusing bit of gossip--"that we are destined to this sort of thing
occasionally and had better get used to it."

"I suppose so."

"Please," she added, after a pause, "aid me a little."

"I will if I can. What am I to say?"

"Have you nothing to say?" she asked, smiling; "it need not be very
civil, you know--as long as nobody hears you."

To school his features for the deception of others, to school his voice
and manner and at the same time look smilingly into the grave of his
youth and hope called for the sort of self-command foreign to his
character. Glancing at him under her smoothly fitted mask of amiability,
she slowly grew afraid of the situation--but not of her ability to
sustain her own part.

They exchanged a few meaningless phrases, then she resolutely took young
Innis away from Rosamund Fane, leaving Selwyn to count the bubbles in
his wine-glass.

But in a few moments, whether by accident or deliberate design, Rosamund
interfered again, and Mrs. Ruthven was confronted with the choice of a
squabble for possession of young Innis, of conspicuous silence, or of
resuming once more with Selwyn. And she chose the last resort.

"You are living in town?" she asked pleasantly.

"Yes."

"Of course; I forgot. I met a man last night who said you had entered
the firm of Neergard & Co."

"I have. Who was the man?"

"You can never guess, Captain Selwyn."

"I don't want to. Who was he?"

"Please don't terminate so abruptly the few subjects we have in reserve.
We may be obliged to talk to each other for a number of minutes if
Rosamund doesn't let us alone. . . . The man was 'Boots' Lansing."

"'Boots!' Here!"

"Arrived from Manila Sunday. _Sans gêne_ as usual he introduced you as
the subject, and told me--oh, dozens of things about you. I suppose he
began inquiring for you before he crossed the troopers' gangplank; and
somebody sent him to Neergard & Co. Haven't you seen him?"

"No," he said, staring at the brilliant fish, which glided along the
crystal tank, goggling their eyes at the lights.

"You--you are living with the Gerards, I believe," she said carelessly.

"For a while."

"Oh, 'Boots' says that he is expecting to take an apartment with you
somewhere."

"What! Has 'Boots' resigned?"

"So he says. He told me that you had resigned. I did not understand
that; I imagined you were here on leave until I heard about Neergard &
Co."

"Do you suppose I could have remained in the service?" he demanded. His
voice was dry and almost accentless.

"Why not?" she returned, paling.

"You may answer that question more pleasantly than I can."

She usually avoided champagne; but she had to do something for herself
now. As for him, he took what was offered without noticing what he took,
and grew whiter and whiter; but a fixed glow gradually appeared and
remained on her cheeks; courage, impatience, a sudden anger at the
forced conditions steadied her nerves.

"Will you please prove equal to the situation?" she said under her
breath, but with a charming smile. "Do you know you are scowling? These
people here are ready to laugh; and I'd much prefer that they tear us to
rags on suspicion of our over-friendliness."

"Who is that fool woman who is monopolising your partner?"

"Rosamund Fane; she's doing it on purpose. You must try to smile now and
then."

"My face is stiff with grinning," he said, "but I'll do what I can for
you--"

"Please include yourself, too."

"Oh, I can stand their opinions," he said; "I only meet the yellow sort
occasionally; I don't herd with them."

"I do, thank you."

"How do you like them? What is your opinion of the yellow set? Here they
sit all about you--the Phoenix Mottlys, Mrs. Delmour-Carnes yonder, the
Draymores, the Orchils, the Vendenning lady, the Lawns of Westlawn--" he
paused, then deliberately--"and the 'Jack' Ruthvens. I forgot, Alixe,
that you are now perfectly equipped to carry aloft the golden hod."

"Go on," she said, drawing a deep breath, but the fixed smile never
altered.

"No," he said; "I can't talk. I thought I could, but I can't. Take that
boy away from Mrs. Fane as soon as you can."

"I can't yet. You must go on. I ask your aid to carry this thing
through. I--I am afraid of their ridicule. Could you try to help me a
little?"

"If you put it that way, of course." And, after a silence, "What am I to
say? What in God's name shall I say to you, Alixe?"

"Anything bitter--as long as you control your voice and features. Try to
smile at me when you speak, Philip."

"All right. I have no reason to be bitter, anyway," he said; "and every
reason to be otherwise."

"That is not true. You tell me that I have ruined your career in the
army. I did not know I was doing it. Can you believe me?"

And, as he made no response: "I did not dream you would have to resign.
Do you believe me?"

"There is no choice," he said coldly. "Drop the subject!"

"That is brutal. I never thought--" She forced a smile and drew her
glass toward her. The straw-tinted wine slopped over and frothed on the
white skin of her arm.

"Well," she breathed, "this ghastly dinner is nearly ended."

He nodded pleasantly.

"And--Phil?"--a bit tremulous.

"What?"

"Was it all my fault? I mean in the beginning? I've wanted to ask you
that--to know your view of it. Was it?"

"No. It was mine, most of it."

"Not all--not half! We did not know how; that is the wretched
explanation of it all."

"And we could never have learned; that's the rest of the answer. But the
fault is not there."

"I know; 'better to bear the ills we have.'"

"Yes; more respectable to bear them. Let us drop this in decency's name,
Alixe!"

After a silence, she began: "One more thing--I must know it; and I am
going to ask you--if I may. Shall I?"

He smiled cordially, and she laughed as though confiding a delightful
bit of news to him:

"Do you regard me as sufficiently important to dislike me?"

"I do not--dislike you."

"Is it stronger than dislike, Phil?"

"Y-es."

"Contempt?"

"No."

"What is it?"

"It is that--I have not yet--become--reconciled."

"To my--folly?"

"To mine."

She strove to laugh lightly, and failing, raised her glass to her lips
again.

"Now you know," he said, pitching his tones still lower. "I am glad
after all that we have had this plain understanding. I have never felt
unkindly toward you. I can't. What you did I might have prevented had I
known enough; but I cannot help it now; nor can you if you would."

"If I would," she repeated gaily--for the people opposite were staring.

"We are done for," he said, nodding carelessly to a servant to refill
his glass; "and I abide by conditions because I choose to; not," he
added contemptuously, "because a complacent law has tethered you to--to
the thing that has crawled up on your knees to have its ears rubbed."

The level insult to her husband stunned her; she sat there, upright, the
white smile stamped on her stiffened lips, fingers tightening about the
stem of her wine-glass.

He began to toss bread crumbs to the scarlet fish, laughing to himself
in an ugly way. "_I_ wish to punish you? Why, Alixe, only look at
_him_!--Look at his gold wristlets; listen to his simper, his lisp.
Little girl--oh, little girl, what have you done to yourself?--for you
have done nothing to me, child, that can match it in sheer atrocity!"

Her colour was long in returning.

"Philip," she said unsteadily, "I don't think I can stand this--"

"Yes, you can."

"I am too close to the wall. I--"

"Talk to Scott Innis. Take him away from Rosamund Fane; that will tide
you over. Or feed those fool fish; like this! Look how they rush and
flap and spatter! That's amusing, isn't it--for people with the
intellects of canaries. . . . Will you please try to say something? Mrs.
T. West is exhibiting the restless symptoms of a hen turkey at sundown
and we'll all go to roost in another minute. . . . Don't shiver that
way!"

"I c-can't control it; I will in a moment. . . . Give me a chance; talk
to me, Phil."

"Certainly. The season has been unusually gay and the opera most
stupidly brilliant; stocks continue to fluctuate; another old woman
was tossed and gored by a mad motor this morning. . . . More time,
Alixe? . . . With pleasure; Mrs. Vendenning has bought a third-rate
castle in Wales; a man was found dead with a copy of the _Tribune_ in
his pocket--the verdict being in accordance with fact; the Panama
Canal--"

But it was over at last; a flurry of sweeping skirts; ranks of black and
white in escort to the passage of the fluttering silken procession.

"Good-bye," she said; "I am not staying for the dance."

"Good-bye," he said pleasantly; "I wish you better fortune for the
future. I'm sorry I was rough."

He was not staying, either. A dull excitement possessed him, resembling
suspense--as though he were awaiting a dénouement; as though there was
yet some crisis to come.

Several men leaned forward to talk to him; he heard without heeding,
replied at hazard, lighted his cigar with the others, and leaned back,
his coffee before him--a smiling, attractive young fellow, apparently in
lazy enjoyment of the time and place and without one care in the world
he found so pleasant.

For a while his mind seemed to be absolutely blank; voices were voices
only; he saw lights, and figures moving through a void. Then reality
took shape sharply; and his pulses began again hammering out the
irregular measure of suspense, though what it was that he was awaiting,
what expecting, Heaven alone knew.

And after a while he found himself in the ballroom.

The younger set was arriving; he recognised several youthful people,
friends of Eileen Erroll; and taking his bearings among these bright,
fresh faces--amid this animated throng, constantly increased by the
arrival of others, he started to find his hostess, now lost to sight in
the breezy circle of silk and lace setting in from the stairs.

He heard names announced which meant nothing to him, which stirred no
memory; names which sounded vaguely familiar; names which caused him to
turn quickly--but seldom were the faces as familiar as the names.

He said to a girl, behind whose chair he was standing: "All the younger
brothers and sisters are coming here to confound me; I hear a Miss Innis
announced, but it turns out to be her younger sister--"

"By the way, do you know my name?" she asked.

"No," he said frankly, "do you know mine?"

"Of course, I do; I listened breathlessly when somebody presented you
wholesale at your sister's the other day. I'm Rosamund Fane. You might
as well be instructed because you're to take me in at the Orchils' next
Thursday night, I believe."

"Rosamund Fane," he repeated coolly. "I wonder how we've avoided each
other so consistently this winter? I never before had a good view of
you, though I heard you talking to young Innis at dinner. And yet," he
added, smiling, "if I had been instructed to look around and select
somebody named Rosamund, I certainly should have decided on you."

"A compliment?" she asked, raising her delicate eyebrows.

"Ask yourself," he said.

"I do; and I get snubbed."

And, smiling still, he said: "Do you know the most mischievous air that
Schubert ever worried us with?"

"'Rosamund,'" she said; "and--thank you, Captain Selwyn." She had
coloured to the hair.

"'Rosamund,'" he nodded carelessly--"the most mischievous of melodies--"
He stopped short, then coolly resumed: "That mischievous quality is
largely a matter of accident, I fancy. Schubert never meant that
'Rosamund' should interfere with anybody's business."

"And--when did you first encounter the malice in 'Rosamund,' Captain
Selwyn?" she asked with perfect self-possession.

He did not answer immediately; his smile had died out. Then: "The first
time I really understood 'Rosamund' was when I heard Rosamund during a
very delightful dinner."

She said: "If a woman keeps at a man long enough she'll extract
compliments or yawns." And looking up at a chinless young man who had
halted near her: "George, Captain Selwyn has acquired such a charmingly
Oriental fluency during his residence in the East that I thought--if you
ever desired to travel again--" She shrugged, and, glancing at Selwyn:
"Have you met my husband? Oh, of course."

They exchanged a commonplace or two, then other people separated them
without resistance on their part. And Selwyn found himself drifting,
mildly interested in the vapid exchange of civilities which cost nobody
a mental effort.

His sister, he had once thought, was certainly the most delightfully
youthful matron in New York. But now he made an exception of Mrs. Fane;
Rosamund Fane was much younger--must have been younger, for she still
had something of that volatile freshness--that vague atmosphere of
immaturity clinging to her like a perfume almost too delicate to detect.
And under that the most profound capacity for mischief he had ever known
of. Sauntering amiably amid the glittering groups continually forming
and disintegrating under the clustered lights, he finally succeeded in
reaching his hostess.

And Mrs. T. West Minster disengaged herself from the throng with
intention as he approached.

No--and he was so sorry; and it was very amiable of his hostess to want
him, but he was not remaining for the dance.

So much for the hostess, who stood there massive and gem-laden, her
kindly and painted features tinted now with genuine emotion.

"_Je m'accuse, mon fils_!--but you acted like a perfect dear," she said.
"_Mea culpa, mea culpa_; and _can_ you forgive a very much mortified old
lady who is really and truly fond of you?"

He laughed, holding her fat, ringed hands in both of his with all the
attractive deference that explained his popularity. Rising excitement
had sent the colour into his face and cleared his pleasant gray eyes;
and he looked very young and handsome, his broad shoulders bent a trifle
before the enamelled and bejewelled matron.

"Forgive you?" he repeated with a laugh of protest; "on the contrary, I
thank you. Mrs. Ruthven is one of the most charming women I know, if
that is what you mean?"

Looking after him as he made his way toward the cloak room: "The boy is
thoroughbred," she reflected cynically; "and the only amusement anybody
can get out of it will be at my expense! Rosamund is a perfect cat!"

       *       *       *       *       *

He had sent for his cab, which, no doubt, was in line somewhere, wedged
among the ranks of carriages stretching east and west along the snowy
street; and he stood on the thick crimson carpet under the awning while
it was being summoned. A few people like himself were not staying for
the dance; others who had dined by prearrangement with other hostesses,
had now begun to arrive, and the confusion grew as coach and brougham
and motor came swaying up through the falling snow to deposit their
jewelled cargoes of silks and laces under the vast awning picketed by
policemen and lined with fur-swathed grooms and spindle-legged
chauffeurs in coats of pony-skin.

The Cornelius Suydams, emerging from the house, offered Selwyn tonneau
room, but he smilingly declined, having a mind for solitude and the
Lenox Club. A phalanx of débutantes, opera bound, also left. Then the
tide set heavily the other way, and there seemed no end to the line of
arriving vehicles and guests, until he heard a name pronounced; a
policeman warned back an approaching Fiat; and Selwyn saw Mrs. Ruthven,
enveloped in white furs, step from the portal.

She saw him as he moved back, nodded, passed directly to her brougham,
and set foot on the step. Pausing here, she looked about her, right and
left, then over her shoulder straight back at Selwyn; and as she stood
in silence evidently awaiting him, it became impossible for him any
longer to misunderstand without a public affront to her.

When he started toward her she spoke to her maid, and the latter moved
aside with a word to the groom in waiting.

"My maid will dismiss your carriage," she said pleasantly when he halted
beside her. "There is one thing more which I must say to you."

Was this what he had expected hazard might bring to him?--was this the
prophecy of his hammering pulses?

"Please hurry before people come out," she added, and entered the
brougham.

"I can't do this," he muttered.

"I've sent away my maid," she said. "Nobody has noticed; those are
servants out there. Will you please come before anybody arriving or
departing does notice?"

And, as he did not move: "Are you going to make me conspicuous by this
humiliation before servants?"

He said something between his set teeth and entered the brougham.

"Do you know what you've done?" he demanded harshly.

"Yes; nothing yet. But you would have done enough to stir this borough
if you had delayed another second."

"Your maid saw--"

"My maid is _my_ maid."

He leaned back in his corner, gray eyes narrowing.

"Naturally," he said, "you are the one to be considered, not the man in
the case."

"Thank you. _Are_ you the man in the case?"

"There is no case," he said coolly.

"Then why worry about me?"

He folded his arms, sullenly at bay; yet had no premonition of what to
expect from her.

"You were very brutal to me," she said at length.

"I know it; and I did not intend to be. The words came."

"You had me at your mercy; and showed me little--a very little at first.
Afterward, none."

"The words came," he repeated; "I'm sick with self-contempt, I tell
you."

She set her white-gloved elbow on the window sill and rested her chin in
her palm.

"That--money," she said with an effort. "You set--some--aside for me."

"Half," he nodded calmly.

"Why?"

He was silent.

"_Why_? I did not ask for it? There was nothing in the--the legal
proceedings to lead you to believe that I desired it; was there?"

"No."

"Well, then," her breath came unsteadily, "what was there in _me_ to
make you think I would accept it?"

He did not reply.

"Answer me. This is the time to answer me."

"The answer is simple enough," he said in a low voice. "Together we had
made a failure of partnership. When that partnership was dissolved,
there remained the joint capital to be divided. And I divided it. Why
not?"

"That capital was yours in the beginning; not mine. What I had of my own
you never controlled; and I took it with me when I went."

"It was very little," he said.

"What of that? Did that concern you? Did you think I would have accepted
anything from you? A thousand times I have been on the point of
notifying you through attorney that the deposit now standing in my name
is at your disposal."

"Why didn't you notify me then?" he asked, reddening to the temples.

"Because--I did not wish to hurt you--by doing it that way. . . . And I
had not the courage to say it kindly over my own signature. That is why,
Captain Selwyn."

And, as he remained silent: "That is what I had to say; not
all--because--I wish to--to thank you for offering it. . . . You did not
have very much, either; and you divided what you had. So I thank
you--and I return it.". . . The tension forced her to attempt a laugh.
"So we stand once more on equal terms; unless you have anything of mine
to return--"

"I have your photograph," he said.

The silence lasted until he straightened up and, rubbing the fog from
the window glass, looked out.

"We are in the Park," he remarked, turning toward her.

"Yes; I did not know how long it might take to explain matters. You are
free of me now whenever you wish."

He picked up the telephone, hesitated: "Home?" he inquired with an
effort. And at the forgotten word they looked at one another in stricken
silence.

"Y-yes; to _your_ home first, if you will let me drop you there--"

"Thank you; that might be imprudent."

"No, I think not. You say you are living at the Gerards?"

"Yes, temporarily. But I've already taken another place."

"Where?"

"Oh, it's only a bachelor's kennel--a couple of rooms--"

"Where, please?"

"Near Lexington and Sixty-sixth. I could go there; it's only partly
furnished yet--"

"Then tell Hudson to drive there."

"Thank you, but it is not necessary--"

"Please let me; tell Hudson, or I will."

"You are very kind," he said; and gave the order.

Silence grew between them like a wall. She lay back in her corner,
swathed to the eyes in her white furs; he in his corner sat upright,
arms loosely folded, staring ahead at nothing. After a while he rubbed
the moisture from the pane again.

"Still in the Park! He must have driven us nearly to Harlem Mere. It
_is_ the Mere! See the café lights yonder. It all looks rather gay
through the snow."

"Very gay," she said, without moving. And, a moment later: "Will you
tell me something? . . . You see"--with a forced laugh--"I can't keep my
mind--from it."

"From what?" he asked.

"The--tragedy; ours."

"It has ceased to be that; hasn't it?"

"Has it? You said--you said that w-what I did to you was n-not as
terrible as what I d-did to myself."

"That is true," he admitted grimly.

"Well, then, may I ask my question?"

"Ask it, child."

"Then--are you happy?"

He did not answer.

"--Because I desire it, Philip. I want you to be. You will be, won't
you? I did not dream that I was ruining your army career when I--went
mad--"

"How did it happen, Alixe?" he asked, with a cold curiosity that chilled
her. "How did it come about?--wretched as we seemed to be
together--unhappy, incapable of understanding each other--"

"Phil! There _were_ days--"

He raised his eyes.

"You speak only of the unhappy ones," she said; "but there were
moments--"

"Yes; I know it. And so I ask you, _why_?"

"Phil, I don't know. There was that last bitter quarrel--the night you
left for Leyte after the dance. . . . I--it all grew suddenly
intolerable. _You_ seemed so horribly unreal--everything seemed unreal
in that ghastly city--you, I, our marriage of crazy impulse--the people,
the sunlight, the deathly odours, the torturing, endless creak of the
punkha. . . . It was not a question of--of love, of anger, of hate. I
tell you I was stunned--I had no emotions concerning you or
myself--after that last scene--only a stupefied, blind necessity to get
away; a groping instinct to move toward home--to make my way home and be
rid for ever of the dream that drugged me! . . . And then--and then--"

"_He_ came," said Selwyn very quietly. "Go on."

But she had nothing more to say.

"Alixe!"

She shook her head, closing her eyes.

"Little girl!--oh, little girl!" he said softly, the old familiar phrase
finding its own way to his lips--and she trembled slightly; "was there
no other way but that? Had marriage made the world such a living hell
for you that there was no other way but _that_?"

"Phil, I helped to make it a hell."

"Yes--because I was pitiably inadequate to design anything better for
us. I didn't know how. I didn't understand. I, the architect of our
future--failed."

"It was worse than that, Phil; we"--she looked blindly at him--"we had
yet to learn what love might be. We did not know. . . . If we could have
waited--only waited!--perhaps--because there _were_ moments--" She
flushed crimson.

"I could not make you love me," he repeated; "I did not know how."

"Because you yourself had not learned how. But--at times--now looking
back to it--I think--I think we were very near to it--at moments. . . .
And then that dreadful dream closed down on us again. . . . And
then--the end."

"If you could have held out," he breathed; "if I could have helped! It
was I who failed you after all!"

For a long while they sat in silence; Mrs. Ruthven's white furs now
covered her face. At last the carriage stopped.

As he sprang to the curb he became aware of another vehicle standing in
front of the house--a cab--from which Mrs. Ruthven's maid descended.

"What is she doing here?" he asked, turning in astonishment to Mrs.
Ruthven.

"Phil," she said in a low voice, "I knew you had taken this place.
Gerald told me. Forgive me--but when I saw you under the awning it came
to me in a flash what to do. And I've done it. . . . Are you sorry?"

"No. . . . Did Gerald tell you that I had taken this place?"

"Yes; I asked him."

Selwyn looked at her gravely; and she looked him very steadily in the
eyes.

"Before I go--may I say one more word?" he asked gently.

"Yes--if you please. Is it about Gerald?"

"Yes. Don't let him gamble. . . . You saw the signature on that check?"

"Yes, Phil."

"Then you understand. Don't let him do it again."

"No. And--Phil?"

"What?"

"That check is--is deposited to your credit--with the rest. I have never
dreamed of using it." Her cheeks were afire again, but with shame this
time.

"You will have to accept it, Alixe."

"I cannot."

"You must! Don't you see you will affront Gerald? He has repaid me; that
check is not mine, nor is it his."

"I can't take it," she said with a shudder. "What shall I do with it?"

"There are ways--hospitals, if you care to. . . . Good-night, child."

She stretched out her gloved arm to him; he took her hand very gently
and retained it while he spoke.

"I wish you happiness," he said; "I ask your forgiveness."

"Give me mine, then."

"Yes--if there is anything to forgive. Good-night."

"Good-night--boy," she gasped.

He turned sharply, quivering under the familiar name. Her maid, standing
in the snow, moved forward, and he motioned her to enter the brougham.

"Home," he said unsteadily; and stood there very still for a minute or
two, even after the carriage had whirled away into the storm. Then,
looking up at the house, he felt for his keys; but a sudden horror of
being alone arrested him, and he stepped back, calling out to his
cabman, who was already turning his horse's head, "Wait a moment; I
think I'll drive back to Mrs. Gerard's. . . . And take your time."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was still early--lacking a quarter of an hour to midnight--when he
arrived. Nina had retired, but Austin sat in the library, obstinately
plodding through the last chapters of a brand-new novel.

"This is a wretched excuse for sitting up," he yawned, laying the book
flat on the table, but still open. "I ought never to be trusted alone
with any book." Then he removed his reading glasses, yawned again, and
surveyed Selwyn from head to foot.

"Very pretty," he said. "Well, how are the yellow ones, Phil? Or was it
all débutante and slop-twaddle?"

"Few from the cradle, but bunches were arriving for the dance as I
left."

"Eileen went at half-past eleven."

"I didn't know she was going," said Selwyn, surprised.

"She didn't want you to. The Playful Kitten business, you know--frisks
apropos of nothing to frisk about. But we all fancied you'd stay for the
dance." He yawned mightily, and gazed at Selwyn with ruddy gravity.

"Whisk?" he inquired.

"No."

"Cigar?"--mildly urgent.

"No, thanks."

"Bed?"

"I think so. But don't wait for me, Austin. . . . Is that the evening
paper? Where is St. Paul?"

Austin passed it across the table and sat for a moment, alternately
yawning and skimming the last chapter of his novel.

"Stuff and rubbish, mush and piffle!" he muttered, closing the book and
pushing it from him across the table; "love, as usual, grossly out of
proportion to the ensemble. That theory of the earth's rotation, you
know; all these absurd books are built on it. Why do men read 'em? They
grin when they do it! Love is only the sixth sense--just one-sixth of a
man's existence. The other five-sixths of his time he's using his other
senses working for a living."

Selwyn looked up over his newspaper, then lowered and folded it.

"In these novels," continued Gerard, irritably, "five-sixths of the
pages are devoted to love; everything else is subordinated to it; it
controls all motives, it initiates all action, it drugs reason, it
prolongs the tuppenny suspense, sustains cheap situations, and produces
agonisingly profitable climaxes for the authors. . . . Does it act that
way in real life?"

"Not usually," said Selwyn.

"Nobody else thinks so, either. Why doesn't somebody tell the truth? Why
doesn't somebody tell us how a man sees a nice girl and gradually begins
to tag after her when business hours are over? A respectable man is busy
from eight or nine until five or six. In the evening he's usually at the
club, or dining out, or asleep; isn't he? Well, then, how much time
does it leave for love? Do the problem yourself in any way you wish; the
result is a fraction every time; and that fraction represents the proper
importance of the love interest in its proper ratio to a man's entire
life."

He sat up, greatly pleased with himself at having reduced sentiment to a
fixed proportion in the ingredients of life.

"If I had time," he said, "I could tell them how to write a book--" He
paused, musing, while the confident smile spread. Selwyn stared at
space.

"What does a young man know about love, anyway?" demanded his
brother-in-law.

"Nothing," replied Selwyn listlessly.

"Of course not. Look at Gerald. He sits on the stairs with a pink and
white ninny; and at the next party he does it with another. That's
wholesome and natural; and that's the way things really are. Look at
Eileen. Do you suppose she has the slightest suspicion of what love is?"

"Naturally not," said Selwyn.

"Correct. Only a fool novelist would attribute the deeper emotions to a
child like that. What does she know about anything? Love isn't a mere
emotion, either--that is all fol-de-rol and fizzle!--it's the false
basis of modern romance. Love is reason--not a nervous phenomenon. Love
is a sane passion, founded on a basic knowledge of good and evil. That's
what love is; the rest!"--he lifted the book, waved it contemptuously,
and pushed it farther away--"the rest is neuritis; the remedy a pill.
I'm going to bed; are you?"

But Selwyn had lighted a cigar, and was again unfolding his evening
paper; so his brother-in-law moved ponderously away, yawning frightfully
at every heavy stride, and the younger man settled back in his chair, a
fragrant cigar balanced between his strong, slim fingers, one leg
dropped loosely over the other. After a while the newspaper fell to the
floor.

He sat there without moving for a long time; his cigar, burning close,
had gone out. The reading-lamp spread a circle of soft light over the
floor; on the edge of it lay Kit-Ki, placid, staring at him. After a
while he noticed her. "You?" he said absently; "you hid so they couldn't
put you out."

At the sound of his voice she began to purr.

"Oh, it's all very well," he nodded; "but it's against the law.
However," he added, "I'm rather tired of rules and regulations myself.
Besides, the world outside is very cold to-night. Purr away, old lady;
I'm going to bed."

But he did not stir.

A little later, the fire having burned low, he rose, laid a pair of
heavy logs across the coals, dragged his chair to the hearth, and
settled down in it deeply. Then he lifted the cat to his knees. Kit-Ki
sang blissfully, spreading and relaxing her claws at intervals as she
gazed at the mounting blaze.

"I'm going to bed, Kit-Ki," he repeated absently, "because that's a
pretty good place for me . . . far better than sitting up here with
you--and conscience."

But he only lay back deeper in the velvet chair and lighted another
cigar.

"Kit-Ki," he said, "the words men utter count in the reckoning; but not
as heavily as the words men leave unuttered; and what a man does scores
deeply; but--alas for the scars of the deeds he has left undone."

The logs were now wrapped in flame, and their low mellow roaring
mingled to a monotone with the droning of the cat on his knees.

Long after his cigar burnt bitter, he sat with eyes fixed on the blaze.
When the flames at last began to flicker and subside, his lids
fluttered, then drooped; but he had lost all reckoning of time when he
opened them again to find Miss Erroll in furs and ball-gown kneeling on
the hearth and heaping kindling on the coals, and her pretty little
Alsatian maid beside her, laying a log across the andirons.

"Upon my word!" he murmured, confused; then rising quickly, "Is that
you, Miss Erroll? What time is it?"

"Four o'clock in the morning, Captain Selwyn," she said, straightening
up to her full height. "This room is icy; are you frozen?"

Chilled through, he stood looking about in a dazed way, incredulous of
the hour and of his own slumber.

"I was conversing with Kit-Ki a moment ago," he protested, in such a
tone of deep reproach that Eileen laughed while her maid relieved her of
furs and scarf.

"Susanne, just unhook those two that I can't manage; light the fire in
my bedroom; _et merci bien, ma petite!_"

The little maid vanished; Kit-Ki, who had been unceremoniously spilled
from Selwyn's knees, sat yawning, then rose and walked noiselessly to
the hearth.

"I don't know how I happened to do it," he muttered, still abashed by
his plight.

"We rekindled the fire for your benefit," she said; "you had better use
it before you retire." And she seated herself in the arm-chair,
stretching out her ungloved hands to the blaze--smooth, innocent hands,
so soft, so amazingly fresh and white.

He moved a step forward into the warmth, stood a moment, then reached
forward for a chair and drew it up beside hers.

"Do you mean to say you are not sleepy?" he asked.

"I? No, not in the least. I will be to-morrow, though."

"Did you have a good time?"

"Yes--rather."

"Wasn't it gay?"

"Gay? Oh, very."

Her replies were unusually short--almost preoccupied. She was generally
more communicative.

"You danced a lot, I dare say," he ventured.

"Yes--a lot," studying the floor.

"Decent partners?"

"Oh, yes."

"Who was there?"

She looked up at him. "_You_ were not there," she said, smiling.

"No; I cut it. But I did not know you were going; you said nothing about
it."

"Of course, you would have stayed if you had known, Captain Selwyn?" She
was still smiling.

"Of course," he replied.

"Would you really?"

"Why, yes."

There was something not perfectly familiar to him in the girl's bright
brevity, in her direct personal inquiry; for between them, hitherto, the
gaily impersonal had ruled except in moments of lightest badinage.

"Was it an amusing dinner?" she asked, in her turn.

"Rather." Then he looked up at her, but she had stretched her slim
silk-shod feet to the fender, and her head was bent aside, so that he
could see only the curve of the cheek and the little close-set ear
under its ruddy mass of gold.

"Who was there?" she asked, too, carelessly.

For a moment he did not speak; under his bronzed cheek the flat muscles
stirred. Had some meddling, malicious fool ventured to whisper an unfit
jest to this young girl? Had a word--or a smile and a phrase cut in
two--awakened her to a sorry wisdom at his expense? Something had
happened; and the idea stirred him to wrath--as when a child is wantonly
frightened or a dumb creature misused.

"What did you ask me?" he inquired gently.

"I asked you who was there, Captain Selwyn."

He recalled some names, and laughingly mentioned his dinner partner's
preference for Harmon. She listened absently, her chin nestling in her
palm, only the close-set, perfect ear turned toward him.

"Who led the cotillion?" he asked.

"Jack Ruthven--dancing with Rosamund Fane."

She drew her feet from the fender and crossed them, still turned away
from him; and so they remained in silence until again she shifted her
position, almost impatiently.

"You are very tired," he said.

"No; wide awake."

"Don't you think it best for you to go to bed?"

"No. But you may go."

And, as he did not stir: "I mean that you are not to sit here because I
do." And she looked around at him.

"What has gone wrong, Eileen?" he said quietly.

He had never before used her given name, and she flushed up.

"There is nothing the matter, Captain Selwyn. Why do you ask?"

"Yes, there is," he said.

"There is not, I tell you--"

"--And, if it is something you cannot understand," he continued
pleasantly, "perhaps it might be well to ask Nina to explain it to you."

"There is nothing to explain."

"--Because," he went on, very gently, "one is sometimes led by malicious
suggestion to draw false and unpleasant inferences from harmless
facts--"

"Captain Selwyn--"

"Yes, Eileen."

But she could not go on; speech and thought itself remained sealed; only
a confused consciousness of being hurt remained--somehow to be remedied
by something he might say--might deny. Yet how could it help her for him
to deny what she herself refused to believe?--refused through sheer
instinct while ignorant of its meaning.

Even if he had done what she heard Rosamund Fane say he had done, it had
remained meaningless to her save for the manner of the telling. But
now--but now! Why had they laughed--why had their attitudes and manner
and the disconnected phrases in French left her flushed and rigid among
the idle group at supper? Why had they suddenly seemed to remember her
presence--and express their abrupt consciousness of it in such furtive
signals and silence?

It was false, anyway--whatever it meant. And, anyway, it was false that
he had driven away in Mrs. Ruthven's brougham. But, oh, if he had only
stayed--if he had only remained!--this friend of hers who had been so
nice to her from the moment he came into her life--so generous, so
considerate, so lovely to her--and to Gerald!

For a moment the glow remained, then a chill doubt crept in; would he
have remained had he known she was to be there? _Where_ did he go after
the dinner? As for what they said, it was absurd. And yet--and yet--

He sat, savagely intent upon the waning fire; she turned restlessly
again, elbows close together on her knees, face framed in her hands.

"You ask me if I am tired," she said. "I am--of the froth of life."

His face changed instantly. "What?" he exclaimed, laughing.

But she, very young and seriously intent, was now wrestling with the
mighty platitudes of youth. First of all she desired to know what
meaning life held for humanity. Then she expressed a doubt as to the
necessity for human happiness; duty being her discovery as sufficient
substitute.

But he heard in her childish babble the minor murmur of an undercurrent
quickening for the first time; and he listened patiently and answered
gravely, touched by her irremediable loneliness.

For Nina must remain but a substitute at best; what was wanting must
remain wanting; and race and blood must interpret for itself the subtler
and unasked questions of an innocence slowly awaking to a wisdom which
makes us all less wise.

So when she said that she was tired of gaiety, that she would like to
study, he said that he would take up anything she chose with her. And
when she spoke vaguely of a life devoted to good works--of the wiser
charity, of being morally equipped to aid those who required material
aid, he was very serious, but ventured to suggest that she dance her
first season through as a sort of flesh-mortifying penance preliminary
to her spiritual novitiate.

"Yes," she admitted thoughtfully; "you are right. Nina would feel
dreadfully if I did not go on--or if she imagined I cared so little for
it all. But one season is enough to waste. Don't you think so?"

"Quite enough," he assured her.

"--And--why should I ever marry?" she demanded, lifting her clear, sweet
eyes to his.

"Why indeed?" he repeated with conviction. "I can see no reason."

"I am glad you understand me," she said. "I am not a marrying woman."

"Not at all," he assured her.

"No, I am not; and Nina--the darling--doesn't understand. Why, what do
you suppose!--but _would_ it be a breach of confidence to anybody if I
told you?"

"I doubt it," he said; "what is it you have to tell me?"

"Only--it's very, very silly--only several men--and one nice enough to
know better--Sudbury Gray--"

"Asked you to marry them?" he finished, nodding his head at the cat.

"Yes," she admitted, frankly astonished; "but how did you know?"

"Inferred it. Go on."

"There is nothing more," she said, without embarrassment. "I told Nina
each time; but she confused me by asking for details; and the details
were too foolish and too annoying to repeat. . . . I do not wish to
marry anybody. I think I made that very plain to--everybody."

"Right as usual," he said cheerfully; "you are too intelligent to
consider that sort of thing just now."

"You _do_ understand me, don't you?" she said gratefully. "There are so
many serious things in life to learn and to think of, and that is the
very last thing I should ever consider. . . . I am very, very glad I had
this talk with you. Now I am rested and I shall retire for a good long
sleep."

With which paradox she stood up, stifling a tiny yawn, and looked
smilingly at him, all the old sweet confidence in her eyes. Then,
suddenly mocking:

"Who suggested that you call me by my first name?" she asked.

"Some good angel or other. May I?"

"If you please; I rather like it. But I couldn't very well call you
anything except 'Captain Selwyn.'"

"On account of my age?"

"Your _age_!"--contemptuous in her confident equality.

"Oh, my wisdom, then? You probably reverence me too deeply."

"Probably not. I don't know; I couldn't do it--somehow--"

"Try it--unless you're afraid."

"I'm not afraid!"

"Yes, you are, if you don't take a dare."

"You dare me?"

"I do."

"Philip," she said, hesitating, adorable in her embarrassment. "No! No!
No! I can't do it that way in cold blood. It's got to be 'Captain
Selwyn'. . . for a while, anyway. . . . Good-night."

He took her outstretched hand, laughing; the usual little friendly shake
followed; then she turned gaily away, leaving him standing before the
whitening ashes.

He thought the fire was dead; but when he turned out the lamp an hour
later, under the ashes embers glowed in the darkness of the winter
morning.




CHAPTER IV

MID-LENT


"Mid-Lent, and the Enemy grins," remarked Selwyn as he started for
church with Nina and the children. Austin, knee-deep in a dozen Sunday
supplements, refused to stir; poor little Eileen was now convalescent
from grippe, but still unsteady on her legs; her maid had taken the
grippe, and now moaned all day: "_Mon dieu! Mon dieu! Che fais mourir!_"

Boots Lansing called to see Eileen, but she wouldn't come down, saying
her nose was too pink. Drina entertained Boots, and then Selwyn returned
and talked army talk with him until tea was served. Drina poured tea
very prettily; Nina had driven Austin to vespers. The family dined at
seven so Drina could sit up; special treat on account of Boots's
presence at table. Gerald was expected, but did not come.

The next morning, Selwyn went downtown at the usual hour and found
Gerald, pale and shaky, hanging over his desk and trying to dictate
letters to an uncomfortable stenographer.

So he dismissed the abashed girl for the moment, closed the door, and
sat down beside the young man.

"Go home, Gerald" he said with decision; "when Neergard comes in I'll
tell him you are not well. And, old fellow, don't ever come near the
office again when you're in this condition."

"I'm a perfect fool," faltered the boy, his voice trembling; "I don't
really care for that sort of thing, either; but you know how it is in
that set--"

"What set?"

"Oh, the Fanes--the Ruthv--" He stammered himself into silence.

"I see. What happened last night?"

"The usual; two tables full of it. There was a wheel, too. . . . I had
no intention--but you know yourself how it parches your throat--the
jollying and laughing and excitement. . . . I forgot all about what
you--what we talked over. . . . I'm ashamed and sorry; but I can stay
here and attend to things, of course--"

"I don't want Neergard to see you," repeated Selwyn.

"W-why," stammered the boy, "do I look as rocky as that?"

"Yes. See here, you are not afraid of me, are you?"

"No--"

"You don't think I'm one of those long-faced, blue-nosed butters-in, do
you? You have confidence in me, haven't you? You know I'm an average and
normally sinful man who has made plenty of mistakes and who understands
how others make them--you know that, don't you, old chap?"

"Y-es."

"Then you _will_ listen, won't you, Gerald?"

The boy laid his arms on the desk and hid his face in them. Then he
nodded.

For ten minutes Selwyn talked to him with all the terse and colloquial
confidence of a comradeship founded upon respect for mutual fallibility.
No instruction, no admonition, no blame, no reproach--only an
affectionately logical review of matters as they stood--and as they
threatened to stand.

The boy, fortunately, was still pliable and susceptible, still unalarmed
and frank. It seemed that he had lost money again--this time to Jack
Ruthven; and Selwyn's teeth remained sternly interlocked as, bit by bit,
the story came out. But in the telling the boy was not quite as frank as
he might have been; and Selwyn supposed he was able to stand his loss
without seeking aid.

"Anyway," said Gerald in a muffled voice, "I've learned one lesson--that
a business man can't acquire the habits and keep the infernal hours that
suit people who can take all day to sleep it off."

"Right," said Selwyn.

"Besides, my income can't stand it," added Gerald naïvely.

"Neither could mine, old fellow. And, Gerald, cut out this card
business; it's the final refuge of the feebleminded. . . . You like it?
Oh, well, if you've got to play--if you've no better resource for
leisure, and if non-participation isolates you too completely from other
idiots--play the imbecile gentleman's game; which means a game where
nobody need worry over the stakes."

"But--they'd laugh at me!"

"I know; but Boots Lansing wouldn't--and you have considerable respect
for him."

Gerald nodded; he had immediately succumbed to Lansing like everybody
else.

"And one thing more," said Selwyn; "don't play for stakes--no matter how
insignificant--where women sit in the game. Fashionable or not, it is
rotten sport--whatever the ethics may be. And, Gerald, tainted sport and
a clean record can't take the same fence together."

The boy looked up, flushed and perplexed. "Why, every woman in town--"

"Oh, no. How about your sister and mine?"

"Of course not; they are different. Only--well, you approve of Rosamund
Fane and--Gladys Orchil--don't you?"

"Gerald, men don't ask each other such questions--except as you ask,
without expecting or desiring an answer from me, and merely to be saying
something nice about two pretty women."

The reproof went home, deeply, but without a pang; and the boy sat
silent, studying the blotter between his elbows.

A little later he started for home at Selwyn's advice. But the memory of
his card losses frightened him, and he stopped on the way to see what
money Austin would advance him.

Julius Neergard came up from Long Island, arriving at the office about
noon. The weather was evidently cold on Long Island; he had the
complexion of a raw ham, but the thick, fat hand, with its bitten nails,
which he offered Selwyn as he entered his office, was unpleasantly hot,
and, on the thin nose which split the broad expanse of face, a bead or
two of sweat usually glistened, winter and summer.

"Where's Gerald?" he asked as an office-boy relieved him of his heavy
box coat and brought his mail to him.

"I advised Gerald to go home," observed Selwyn carelessly; "he is not
perfectly well."

Neergard's tiny mouse-like eyes, set close together, stole brightly in
Selwyn's direction; but they usually looked just a little past a man,
seldom at him.

"Grippe?" he asked.

"I don't think so," said Selwyn.

"Lots of grippe 'round town," observed Neergard, as though satisfied
that Gerald had it. Then he sat down and rubbed his large, membranous
ears.

"Captain Selwyn," he began, "I'm satisfied that it's a devilish good
thing."

"Are you?"

"Emphatically. I've mastered the details--virtually all of 'em. Here's
the situation in a grain of wheat!--the Siowitha Club owns a thousand or
so acres of oak scrub, pine scrub, sand and weeds, and controls four
thousand more; that is to say--the club pays the farmers' rents and
fixes their fences and awards them odd jobs and prizes for the farm
sustaining the biggest number of bevies. Also the club pays them to
maintain the millet and buckwheat patches and to act as wardens. In
return the farmers post their four thousand acres for the exclusive
benefit of the club. Is that plain?"

"Perfectly."

"Very well, then. Now the Siowitha is largely composed of very rich
men--among them Bradley Harmon, Jack Ruthven, George Fane, Sanxon
Orchil, the Hon. Delmour-Carnes--_that_ crowd--rich and stingy. That's
why they are contented with a yearly agreement with the farmers instead
of buying the four thousand acres. Why put a lot of good money out of
commission when they can draw interest on it and toss an insignificant
fraction of that interest as a sop to the farmers? Do you see? That's
your millionaire method--and it's what makes 'em in the first place."

He drew a large fancy handkerchief from his pistol-pocket and wiped the
beads from the bridge of his limber nose. But they reappeared again.

"Now," he said, "I am satisfied that, working very carefully, we can
secure options on every acre of the four thousand. There is money in it
either way and any way we work it; we get it coming and going. First of
all, if the Siowitha people find that they really cannot get on without
controlling these acres--why"--and he snickered so that his nose curved
into a thin, ruddy beak--"why, Captain, I suppose we _could_ let them
have the land. Eh? Oh, yes--if they _must_ have it!"

Selwyn frowned slightly.

"But the point is," continued Neergard, "that it borders the railroad on
the north; and where the land is not wavy it's flat as a pancake,
and"--he sank his husky voice--"it's fairly riddled with water. I paid a
thousand dollars for six tests."

"Water!" repeated Selwyn wonderingly; "why, it's dry as a desert!"

"_Underground water_!--only about forty feet on the average. Why, man, I
can hit a well flowing three thousand gallons almost anywhere. It's a
gold mine. I don't care what you do with the acreage--split it up into
lots and advertise, or club the Siowitha people into submission--it's
all the same; it's a gold mine--to be swiped and developed. Now there
remains the title searching and the damnable job of financing
it--because we've got to move cautiously, and knock softly at the doors
of the money vaults, or we'll be waking up some Wall Street relatives or
secret business associates of the yellow crowd; and if anybody bawls
for help we'll be up in the air next New Year's, and still hiking
skyward."

He stood up, gathering together the mail matter which his secretary had
already opened for his attention. "There's plenty of time yet; their
leases were renewed the first of this year, and they'll run the year
out. But it's something to think about. Will you talk to Gerald, or
shall I?"

"You," said Selwyn. "I'll think the matter over and give you my opinion.
May I speak to my brother-in-law about it?"

Neergard turned in his tracks and looked almost at him.

"Do you think there's any chance of his financing the thing?"

"I haven't the slightest idea of what he might do. Especially"--he
hesitated--"as you never have had any loans from his people--I
understand--"

"No," said Neergard; "I haven't."

"It's rather out of their usual, I believe--"

"So they say. But Long Island acreage needn't beg favours now. That's
all over, Captain Selwyn. Fane, Harmon & Co. know that; Mr. Gerard ought
to know it, too."

Selwyn looked troubled. "Shall I consult Mr. Gerard?" he repeated. "I
should like to if you have no objection."

Neergard's small, close-set eyes were focused on a spot just beyond
Selwyn's left shoulder.

"Suppose you sound him," he suggested, "in strictest--"

"Naturally," cut in Selwyn dryly; and turning to his littered desk,
opened the first letter his hand encountered. Now that his head was
turned, Neergard looked full at the back of his neck for a long minute,
then went out silently.

       *       *       *       *       *

That night Selwyn stopped at his sister's house before going to his own
rooms, and, finding Austin alone in the library, laid the matter before
him exactly as Neergard had put it.

"You see," he added, "that I'm a sort of an ass about business methods.
What I like--what I understand, is to use good judgment, go in and
boldly buy a piece of property, wait until it becomes more valuable,
either through improvements or the natural enhancement of good value,
then take a legitimate profit, and repeat the process. That, in outline,
is what I understand. But, Austin, this furtive pouncing on a thing and
clubbing other people's money out of them with it--this slyly acquiring
land that is necessary to an unsuspecting neighbour and then holding him
up--I don't like. There's always something of this sort that prevents my
cordial co-operation with Neergard--always something in the schemes
which hints of--of squeezing--of something underground--"

"Like the water which he's going to squeeze out of the wells?"

Selwyn laughed.

"Phil," said his brother-in-law, "if you think anybody can do a
profitable business except at other people's expense, you are an ass."

"Am I?" asked Selwyn, still laughing frankly.

"Certainly. The land is there, plain enough for anybody to see. It's
always been there; it's likely to remain for a few æons, I fancy.

"Now, along comes Meynheer Julius Neergard--the only man who seems to
have brains enough to see the present value of that parcel to the
Siowitha people. Everybody else had the same chance; nobody except
Neergard knew enough to take it. Why shouldn't he profit by it?"

"Yes--but if he'd be satisfied to cut it up into lots and do what is
fair--"

"Cut it up into nothing! Man alive, do you suppose the Siowitha people
would let him? They've only a few thousand acres; they've _got_ to
control that land. What good is their club without it? Do you imagine
they'd let a town grow up on three sides of their precious
game-preserve? And, besides, I'll bet you that half of their streams and
lakes take rise on other people's property--and that Neergard knows
it--the Dutch fox!"

"That sort of--of business--that kind of coercion, does not appeal to
me," said Selwyn gravely.

"Then you'd better go into something besides business in this town,"
observed Austin, turning red. "Good Lord, man, where would my Loan and
Trust Company be if we never foreclosed, never swallowed a good thing
when we see it?"

"But you don't threaten people."

Austin turned redder. "If people or corporations stand in our way and
block progress, of course we threaten. Threaten? Isn't the threat of
punishment the very basis of law and order itself? What are laws for?
And we have laws, too--laws, under the law--"

"Of the State of New Jersey," said Selwyn, laughing. "Don't flare up,
Austin; I'm probably not cut out for a business career, as you
point out--otherwise I would not have consulted you. I know
some laws--including 'The Survival of the Fittest,' and the
'Chain-of-Destruction'; and I have read the poem beginning

     "'Big bugs have little bugs to bite 'em.'

"That's all right, too; but speaking of laws, I'm always trying to
formulate one for my particular self-government; and you don't mind, do
you?"

"No," said Gerard, much amused, "I don't mind. Only when you talk
ethics--talk sense at the same time."

"I wish I knew how," he said.

They discussed Neergard's scheme for a little while longer; Austin,
shrewd and cautious, declined any personal part in the financing of the
deal, although he admitted the probability of prospective profits.

"Our investments and our loans are of a different character," he
explained, "but I have no doubt that Fane, Harmon & Co.--"

"Why, both Fane and Harmon are members of the club!" laughed Selwyn.
"You don't expect Neergard to go to them?"

A peculiar expression flickered in Gerard's heavy features; perhaps he
thought that Fane and Harmon and Jack Ruthven were not above exploiting
their own club under certain circumstances. But whatever his opinion, he
said nothing further; and, suggesting that Selwyn remain to dine, went
off to dress.

A few moments later he returned, crestfallen and conciliatory:

"I forgot, Nina and I are dining at the Orchils. Come up a moment; she
wants to speak to you."

So they took the rose-tinted rococo elevator; Austin went away to his
own quarters, and Selwyn tapped at Nina's boudoir.

"Is that you, Phil? One minute; Watson is finishing my hair. . . . Come
in, now; and kindly keep your distance, my friend. Do you suppose I want
Rosamund to know what brand of war-paint I use?"

"Rosamund," he repeated, with a good-humoured shrug; "it's likely--isn't
it?"

"Certainly it's likely. You'd never know you were telling her
anything--but she'd extract every detail in ten seconds. . . . I
understand she adores you, Phil. What have you done to her?"

"That's likely, too," he remarked, remembering his savagely polite
rebuke to that young matron after the Minster dinner.

"Well, she does; you've probably piqued her; that's the sort of man she
likes. . . . Look at my hair--how bright and wavy it is, Phil. Tell me,
_do_ I appear fairly pretty to-night?"

"You're all right, Nina; I mean it," he said. "How are the kids? How is
Eileen?"

"That's why I sent for you. Eileen is furious at being left here all
alone; she's practically well and she's to dine with Drina in the
library. Would you be good enough to dine there with them? Eileen, poor
child, is heartily sick of her imprisonment; it would be a mercy, Phil."

"Why, yes, I'll do it, of course; only I've some matters at home--"

"Home! You call those stuffy, smoky, impossible, half-furnished rooms
_home_! Phil, when are you ever going to get some pretty furniture and
art things? Eileen and I have been talking it over, and we've decided to
go there and see what you need and then order it, whether you like it or
not."

"Thanks," he said, laughing; "it's just what I've tried to avoid. I've
got things where I want them now--but I knew it was too comfortable to
last. Boots said that some woman would be sure to be good to me with an
art-nouveau rocking-chair."

"A perfect sample of man's gratitude," said Nina, exasperated; "for I've
ordered two beautiful art-nouveau rocking-chairs, one for you and one
for Mr. Lansing. Now you can go and humiliate poor little Eileen, who
took so much pleasure in planning with me for your comfort. As for your
friend Boots, he's unspeakable--with my compliments."

Selwyn stayed until he made peace with his sister, then he mounted to
the nursery to "lean over" the younger children and preside at prayers.
This being accomplished, he descended to the library, where Eileen
Erroll in a filmy, lace-clouded gown, full of turquoise tints, reclined
with her arm around Drina amid heaps of cushions, watching the waitress
prepare a table for two.

He took the fresh, cool hand she extended and sat down on the edge of
her couch.

"All O.K. again?" he inquired, retaining Eileen's hand in his.

"Thank you--quite. Are you really going to dine with us? Are you sure
you want to? Oh, I know you've given up some very gay dinner
somewhere--"

"I was going to dine with Boots when Nina rescued me. Poor Boots!--I
think I'll telephone--"

"Telephone him to come here!" begged Drina. "Would he come? Oh,
please--I'd love to have him."

"I wish you would ask him," said Eileen; "it's been so lonely and stupid
to lie in bed with a red nose and fishy eyes and pains in one's back and
limbs. Please do let us have a party."

[Illustration: "'Two pillows,' said Drina sweetly."]

So Selwyn went to the telephone, and presently returned, saying that
Boots was overwhelmed and would be present at the festivities; and
Drina, enraptured, ordered flowers to be brought from the dining-room
and a large table set for four, with particular pomp and circumstance.

Mr. Archibald Lansing arrived very promptly--a short, stocky young man
of clean and powerful build, with dark, keen eyes always alert, and
humorous lips ever on the edge of laughter under his dark moustache.

His manner with Drina was always delightful--a mixture of self-repressed
idolatry and busily naïve belief in a thorough understanding between
them to exclude Selwyn from their company.

"This Selwyn fellow here!" he exclaimed. "I warned him over the 'phone
we'd not tolerate him, Drina. I explained to him very carefully that you
and I were dining together in strictest privacy--"

"He begged so hard," said Eileen. "Will somebody place an extra pillow
for Drina?"

They seized the same pillow fiercely, confronting each other; massacre
appeared imminent.

"_Two_ pillows," said Drina sweetly; and extermination was averted. The
child laughed happily, covering one of Boots's hands with both of hers.

"So you've left the service, Mr. Lansing?" began Eileen, lying back and
looking smilingly at Boots.

"Had to, Miss Erroll. Seven millionaires ran into my quarters and chased
me out and down Broadway into the offices of the Westchester Air Line
Company. Then these seven merciless multi-millionaires in buckram bound
and gagged me, stuffed my pockets full of salary, and forced me to
typewrite a fearful and secret oath to serve them for five long, weary
years. That's a sample of how the wealthy grind the noses of the poor,
isn't it, Drina?"

The child slipped her hand from his, smiling uncertainly.

"You don't mean all that, do you?"

"Indeed I do, sweetheart."

"Are you not a soldier lieutenant any more, then?" she inquired,
horribly disappointed.

"Only a private in the workman's battalion, Drina."

"I don't care," retorted the child obstinately; "I like you just as
much."

"Have you really done it?" asked Selwyn as the first course was served.

"_I?_ No. _They?_ Yes. We'll probably lose the Philippines now," he
added gloomily; "but it's my thankless country's fault; you all had a
chance to make me dictator, you know. Miss Erroll, do you want a
second-hand sword? Of course there are great dents in it--"

"I'd rather have those celebrated boots," she replied demurely; and Mr.
Lansing groaned.

"How tall you're growing, Drina," remarked Selwyn.

"Probably the early spring weather," added Boots. "You're twelve, aren't
you?"

"Thirteen," said Drina gravely.

"Almost time to elope with me," nodded Boots.

"I'll do it now," she said--"as soon as my new gowns are made--if you'll
take me to Manila. Will you? I believe my Aunt Alixe is there--"

She caught Eileen's eye and stopped short. "I forgot," she murmured; "I
beg your pardon, Uncle Philip--"

Boots was talking very fast and laughing a great deal; Eileen's plate
claimed her undivided attention; Selwyn quietly finished his claret; the
child looked at them all.

"By the way," said Boots abruptly, "what's the matter with Gerald? He
came in before noon looking ver

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