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The Hungry Heart: A Novel

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Title: The Hungry Heart: A Novel

Creator: David Graham Phillips


        
Release date: April 13, 2015 [eBook #48699]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48699

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUNGRY HEART: A NOVEL ***




Produced by Al Haines.





                        *David Graham Phillips*


                                _*The*_*
                             HUNGRY HEART*

                              _*A NOVEL*_



                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                                  1909




                          Copyright, 1909, by
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY



                      _Published September, 1909_




                           *THE HUNGRY HEART*



                                  *I*


Courtship and honeymoon of Richard Vaughan and Courtney Benedict are
told accurately enough by a thousand chroniclers of love's fairy tales
and dreams.  Where such romances end in a rosily vague "And they lived
happily ever after," there this history begins.  Richard and Courtney
have returned from Arcady to reality, to central Indiana and the Vaughan
homestead, across the narrow width of Wenona the lake from Wenona the
town.

The homecoming was late in a June evening, with a perfumed coolness
descending upon the young lovers from the grand old trees, round the
Vaughan house like his bodyguard round a king.  Next morning toward
eight Courtney, still half asleep, reached out hazily.  Her hand met
only the rumpled linen on Richard's side of the huge fourposter. She
started up, brushed back the heavy wave of auburn hair fallen over her
brow, gazed down at his pillow.  The dent of his head, but not he.  Her
eyes searched the dimness. The big room contained only a few large
pieces of old mahogany; at a glance she saw into every corner.  Alone in
the room.  Her eyes, large and anxious now, regarded the half-open door
of the dressing room to the rear.

"Dick!" she called hopefully.

No answer.

"Dick!" she repeated, a note of doubt in her voice.

Silence.

"Dick!" she repeated reproachfully.  It was the first morning she had
awakened without the sense of his nearness that had become so dear, so
necessary.  It was the first morning in this house strange to her--in
this now life they were to make beautiful and happy together.  She gave
a forlorn sigh like a disappointed child, drew up her knees, rested her
elbows upon them, and her small head upon her hands.  Sitting there in
the midst of that bed big enough for half a dozen as small as she, she
suggested a butterfly poised motionless with folded wings.  A moment and
she lifted her drooped head.  How considerate of him not to wake her
when the three days and nights on train had been so wearing!

Swift and light as a butterfly she sprang from the bed, flung open the
shutters of the lake-front windows.  In poured summer like gay cavalcade
through breach in gloomy walls--summer in full panoply of perfume and
soft air and sparkling sunshine.  She almost laughed aloud for joy at
this timely rescue.  She gazed away across the lake to the town where
she was born and bred!  "Home!" she cried.  "And so happy--so utterly
happy!"  Her expression, her whole manner, her quick movements gave the
impression of the impulsive self-unconsciousness of a child.

It was a radiant figure, small and perfect like a sun sprite, that
issued from the room three quarters of an hour later to flit along the
polished oak hall, to descend a stairway glistening like hall above and
wider and loftier hall below.  With hair piled high on her small head,
with tail of matinee over her arm and tall heels clicking merrily on the
steps, she whistled as she went.  Some people--women--criticised that
laughter-loving mouth of hers as too wide for so small a face.  It
certainly did not suggest a button-hole.  But no one could have found
fault with the shape of the mouth or with the coloring, whether of the
lips or within, or with her teeth, pearl white and seeming the whiter
for the rose bronze of her skin--the shade that seems to be of the
essence of youth, health, and summer.  Her nose was rather large, but
slender and well shaped.  It was the nose of mobility, of sensitiveness,
of intelligence, not at all of repose.  And there were her eyes, of a
strange soft emerald, with long dark lashes; the brows long also and
only slightly curved, and slender yet distinct.  These eyes were her
greatest beauty--greater even than her skin.  It would have been
difficult to say whether in them or in her mouth lay her greatest charm,
for charm is not always beauty, and beauty often wholly lacks charm.

But woman feels that figure determines the woman--"the woman" meaning,
of course, efficiency as a man catcher.  It was upon Courtney's flawless
figure that the sour glance of old Nanny, the head servant, rested--old
Nanny, whose puritanism aggravated for her by suppression all the damned
charms of "the flesh."  Nanny had reigned supreme in that house ever
since Dick Vaughan was left alone; so from the first news of the
engagement she had been hating Courtney, whom she regarded as her
supplanter.  As Courtney entered the dining room, stiff and dim and
chilly, like all the rooms in that house, old Nanny was superintending
fat, subdued Mazie at work at the breakfast table.  It occupied the
exact center of the room, formal as for a state banquet.

"Good morning," cried Courtney in her charming manner of bright
friendliness.  "Good morning, Mazie.  Am I late?  Where's Richard?"  Her
voice was deeper than one would have expected, but low and musical.

Mazie smiled a welcome, then cast a frightened glance of apology at
Nanny, who did not smile.  "Mr. Richard's down to the Smoke House," said
she.

The Smoke House was the laboratory Dick's grandfather, Achilles Vaughan,
had built for him on the site of the smoke house of the pioneer Vaughan,
settler there when Wenona was a trading post in New France.  "Of
course!" said Courtney.  "I might have known.  He wanted to go last
night, but I wouldn't let him."

Nanny scowled at this innocent, laughing "I wouldn't let him."  She
turned on Mazie, who was gazing open-mouthed at Courtney's simple, fresh
finery.  "What'r ye gawkin' here fur, with your mouth hangin' like a
chicken with the gaps?" she demanded in a fierce aside.  Mazie lumbered
through the door into the kitchen.  "As I was saying," continued Nanny
to her new mistress, "he's put in most nigh all his time down to that
there smoke house day and night--ever since his aunt, Miss Eudosia,
died. Yes, an' before that, while Colonel 'Kill, his grandfather, was
still alive.  He's got sleeping rooms and everything in the upstairs.
He often don't come here even to meals for weeks.  Mazie or Jimmie carry
'em to him."

Courtney nodded.  "A regular hermit.  It was the merest chance that we
happened to meet."

"You was the first young woman he'd laid an eye on in a long time."

Nanny's tone was colorless.  Only a very stupid woman puts both barb and
poison on a shaft when either is enough. Courtney, who understood and
felt remorseful about the old woman's jealous anger, answered with
good-humored gentleness: "I guess that _was_ why I got him.  But he'll
not be a hermit any more."

"He's begun already," said Nanny.

"We mustn't allow it," replied Courtney, not quite so good-humoredly.
The old woman's steady bearing down was having its effect.

"There's no goin' agin nature.  The Vaughan men ain't ever bothered much
about women.  They don't let foolishness detain 'em long.  And this
one's his gran'paw over agin.  When he gits at his work, he's like a dog
after a rabbit."

"It seems a little chilly and damp in here," said Courtney.  "Do help me
open the windows.  I love sun and air."

"Miss Eudosia--" began Nanny, and checked herself with a considerable
shortening of the distance between chin and end of nose.

Courtney understood what that beginning meant.  But she ignored.  "And,"
she went on, busying herself with curtains and fastenings, "we'll move
the table in front of this big window.  I like breakfast near the window
in summer, near the fire in winter."

Nanny lowered upon the small straight young figure, so bright and
graceful.  "Miss Eudosia--" she began fiercely. Again she checked
herself, but it was to say with bitterness, "But then she's dead--and
forgot."

"No, indeed!" protested Courtney.  "You'd have thought she'd gone only a
few months ago instead of four years if you'd heard Richard talking
about her yesterday. And I'm sure she'd have done what I'm suggesting if
she'd happened to think of it."  Then with a look that might have
softened any but a woman resolved to hate another woman: "Do try to
humor me in little things, Nanny.  I'll be very meek about things that
do matter.  I've had no experience in keeping house.  You'll teach me,
won't you?"

Nanny stood inflexible, her wrinkled hands folded tightly at the waist
line of her black alpaca.  She could not help Courtney displace that
table from its ancient site. It was as if this frivolous, whistling,
useless chit of an ornamental wife were violating the sacred Eudosia's
coffin--the graves of all the Vaughans--for traditions are graves, and
Nanny, like all who live by tradition, lived among graves.  After a time
Courtney, more nervous under those angry eyes than she showed, got the
table at the open window.  The room was livable now, and after she had
rearranged the dishes the table looked invitingly human.  But her
buoyant young enthusiasm had oozed away.  With wistful gaze out over
prim lawns and flower beds, stiff and staid as Sunday, she said: "I
guess I'll bring Richard to breakfast."

"He et before he went."

"Oh!"  Courtney's tone showed that she was hurt. But she instantly
brightened.  "I'll get him to come and sit with me while I have
breakfast."

A covert sneering smile in the depths of Nanny's eyes made her flush
angrily.  "If I was you I wouldn't interrupt him," said the old woman.
"He don't allow it."

"How absurd!" cried Courtney.  But straightway she was amazed and
shocked at herself--on this her first morning in the new and beautiful
life, to be drawn nearer a vulgar squabble than in all her nineteen
years--and with an old woman toward whom it would be cowardice not to be
forbearing.  "I'm cross because I'm hungry," she said contritely.
"While breakfast's coming I'll run down for him."

"He's set in his ways," said Nanny.

"He'll not mind me--this once."  And she took up her train and went by
the long French window to the broad veranda with its big fluted pillars.
At the end steps she paused.  Yes, it was summer in the Vaughan grounds
as elsewhere.  But that prodigal wanton had there been caught, had had
her tresses sleeked and bound, her luxuriant figure corseted and clad in
the most repellant classical severity.  Courtney, of the eyes keen for
color and form and fitness of things, felt rebuked and subdued once
more.  She glanced farther round, saw Nanny's parchment face and
sinister gaze watching and hating her. There is a limit beyond which
youth refuses to be suppressed and compressed, and defiantly expands in
more than its natural gay audacity.  This climax of Nanny,
representative of Vaughans not so rigid in death as they had been in
life, was just the necessary little-too-much.  With a laugh and a toss
of the head, she swung her skirts very high indeed above her pretty
ankles and ran like a young antelope across the lawn, and into and along
the path leading away toward the eastern part of the grounds. Through a
carefully artificial thicket of lilacs, elders, and snowballs she sped,
then through a small wood with not a spray of underbrush anywhere.  She
came out in a clearing at the water's edge.  Before her, one of its
walls rising sheer from the retaining wall of the lake, stood the
laboratory.

She paused astonished.  She had expected a temporary sort of structure.
Before her rose a fitting temple for the mysteries of the "black art."
It was a long two-story building of stone and brick, not visible from
the lake proper because it stood upon the bank of a deep, narrow inlet.
The weather had stained its walls into the semblance of age wherever
they showed through the heavy mantle of bitter-sweet that overspread
even the roof.  Around the place hung an air of aloofness and seclusion,
of mystery, that appealed to her young instinct for the romantic.  The
brick path divided into two.  One went to what was obviously the
entrance to the second-story bachelor suite; the other turned to the
left, rounded the corner of the house, ended at the massive iron door of
the laboratory proper.

This door was wide open.  Courtney stood upon the threshold like a
bright bird peering from the sunshine into the entrance to a cave.  The
air that came out was heavy with the odors of chemicals, but not sharp
or especially unpleasant.  Besides, in high school and college she had
done a good deal at chemistry, enough to be seized of its fascination.
She stood gazing into a big high-ceilinged room, filled with a
bewildering variety of unusual articles--gigantic bottles, cylinders,
vials, jars of glass, of stone, of metal; huge retorts with coils of
pipe, lead and rubber; lamps and balances and mortars; tiers on tiers of
crowded shelves of glass and porcelain and iron; drying ovens,
distilling apparatus, condensers and generators, crushers and
pulverizers, cupels and cupel trays, calorimeters and crucibles and
microscopes; floor all but filled with batteries and engines and
machines of gold and platinum, of aluminum and copper, of brass and
steel and glass and nickel.  A thousand articles, in the orderly
confusion that indicates constant use.

She was more and more amazed as she stared and reflected.  "He works
with all these things!" thought she, depressed for no clear reason.  "I
had no idea--no idea!"

She ventured a step farther.  In a twinkling her expression of wonder
and vague pain vanished before a love light that seemed to stream not
from her face only, but from her whole body, with those rare eyes of
hers as radiating centers.  She was seeing Richard--near a window, so
standing that his long high-bred face was in profile to her.  He was
tall, well above six feet; his careless flannels revealed the strong,
slender, narrow form of the pioneers and their pure-blooded descendants.
His fairish hair was thick and wavy--"Thank Heaven, not curly!" thought
Courtney.

She did not interrupt.  She preferred to watch him, to let her glance
caress him, all unconscious of her presence.  In one hand he was
balancing a huge bottle; the other held a long test tube.  He was slowly
dropping the bottle's contents of quiet colorless liquid into the test
tube, which was half full of a liquid, also quiet and colorless. Each
drop as it touched the surface of the liquid dissolved into black steam.
It was this steam that gave off the pungent odor.  As she watched, there
came a slow tightening at her throat, at her heart.

"I never saw him look like this," thought she.  No, it wasn't his
serious intentness; one of the things she had first noted about him, and
best loved, was the seriousness of his deep-set dark gray eyes--the look
of the man who "amounts to something," and would prove it before he got
through.  No, it was the _kind_ of seriousness.  She felt she was seeing
a Richard Vaughan she did not know at all. "But, then," she reflected,
"there's a side of me he doesn't know about either."  This, however, did
not satisfy her. The man she was now seeing disquietingly suggested that
the Richard Vaughan she had been knowing and loving and had been loved
by was not the real man at all, but only one of his moods.  "I thought
he just amused himself with chemistry.  Instead--  Nanny is about
right."  A pang shot through her; she would have recognized it as
jealousy, had she stopped to think.  But at nineteen one does not stop
to think.  "I do believe he cares almost as much for this as he does for
me."

He lowered the bottle to the table.  As he straightened up, he caught
sight of her.  His expression changed; but the change was not nearly
enough either in degree or in kind to satisfy her.  "Hello!" cried he
carelessly.  "Good morning."

She got ready to be kissed.  But, instead of coming toward her, he half
turned away, to hold the test tube up between his eyes and the light.
"Um--mm," he grumbled, shaking it again and again, and each time looking
disappointedly at the unchanged liquid.

Like all American girls of the classes that shelter their women, she had
been brought up to accept as genuine the pretense of superhuman respect
and deference the American man--usually in all honesty--affects toward
woman--until he marries her, or for whatever reason becomes tired and
truthful.  She had been confirmed in these ideas of man as woman's
incessant courtier, almost servant, by receiving for the last five
lively years the admiration, exaggerated and ardent, which physical
charm, so long as it is potent, exacts from the male.  No more than
other women of her age--or than older women--or than the men had she
penetrated the deceptive surface of things and discovered beneath
"chivalry's" smug meaningless professions the reality, the forbearance
of "strength" with "weakness," the graciousness of superior for
inferior. Thus, such treatment as this of Dick's would have been
humiliating from a casual man, on a casual occasion.  From her husband,
her lover, the man she had just been garlanding with all the fairest
flowers of her ardent young heart--from him, and on this "first"
morning, this unconcern, which Nanny's talk enabled her to understand,
was worse than stab into feminine vanity; it was stab straight into her
inmost self, the seat of her life.

She dared not admit the wound--not to her own secret thought.  Bravely
she struggled until her voice and manner were under control.  "I've come
to take you to breakfast," said she.  It seemed to her that her tone was
gratifying evidence of triumph of strength of character over "silly
supersensitiveness--as if Dick could mean to hurt _me_!"

"Breakfast," repeated he.  His gaze was discontentedly upon the bottle
whose contents had acted disappointingly. "Breakfast--  Oh, yes--  Don't
wait on me.  I had coffee before I came down here.  I'll be along in a
few minutes."  He took up the bottle again, resumed the cautious
pouring.

The tears sprang to her eyes; her lip quivered.  But sweet
reasonableness conquered again, and she perched on a high stool near the
door.  She gazed round, tried to interest herself in the certainly
extraordinary exhibits on floor and tables and shelves.  She recalled
the uses of the instruments she recognized, tried to guess the uses of
those that were new to her.  But her mind refused to wander from the one
object that really interested her in that room. Perhaps ten minutes
passed, she watching him, he watching the unchanged liquid in the test
tube.

She had been born in her father's and mother's prime. She had been
taught to use her brain.  Thus, underneath the romantic and idealizing
upper strata of her character there was the bedrock of good common
sense, to resist and to survive any and all shocks.  As she sat watching
her engrossed husband her love, her fairness, and her good sense pleaded
for him, or, rather, protested against her sensitiveness.  What a dear
he was!  And how natural that he should be absorbed in these
experiments, after having been away so long.  What right had she to
demand that his mood should be the same as hers?  What a silly child she
had shown herself, expecting him to continue to act as if love making
were the whole of life.  If he were to be, and to do exactly as she
wished, would she not soon grow sick of him, as of the other men, who
had thought to win her by inviting her to walk on them?  Her eyes were
sweet and tender when Dick, happening to glance seeingly in her
direction, saw her ensconced, chin on hand, elbow on knee.  "Hello,"
said he half absently.  "Good morning."

There was no room for doubt; he had completely forgotten her.  As her
skin was not white, but of delicate pale yet rosy bronze, it did not
readily betray change of emotion. But such a shock had he given her
sensitive young heart, in just the mood of love and longing to be most
easily bruised, that even his abstraction was penetrated.  He set the
bottle down.  "Didn't I speak to you--" he began, and then remembered.
"I beg your pardon," he said, contrite and amused.

Pride always hides a real wound.  She smiled.  "I'm waiting to take you
to breakfast," she said.

He looked uncertainly at the bottle and the tube.

A wave of remorse for her thoughts swept over her. "Also," she went on,
and she was radiant again, "I'm waiting to be kissed."

He laughed, gazed lovingly at her.  "What a beauty she is, this
morning," he cried.  "Like the flowers--the roses--the finest rose that
every grew--in a dream of roses."

Her eyes at once showed that his negligence was forgotten.  Their lips
met in a lingering kiss.  He drew away, threw back his head, gazed at
her.  "Was there ever woman so lovely and fresh and pure?" he said.
With impulsive daring she overcame her virginal shyness, flung her arms
round his neck, and kissed him.  "I love you," she murmured, blushing.
"When I woke up and found you gone--it was dreadfully lonely."  She had
dropped into the somewhat babyish manner natural to any affectionate
nature in certain moods and circumstances.  It seemed especially natural
to her, on account of her size and her exuberant gayety; and she had
been assuming it with him in all its charming variations from the
beginning of their engagement because it was the manner that pleased him
best.  "Next time, you'll wake me and take me along--won't you?"

He patted her.  "Bless the baby!  A lot of work I'd do."

"I'm going to help you.  I can soon learn."

He shook his head in smiling negative.  "You're going to be the dearest,
sweetest wife a man ever had," said he. "And always your womanly self."

"But," she persisted with an effort, "I can help.  I'm sure I can."
There was no trace of the "baby" in her expression now; on the contrary,
her face and her voice were those of an extremely intelligent young
woman, serious without the dreary, posed solemnity that passes current
for seriousness, but is mere humorless asininity.  "I really know
something about chemistry," she went on.  "I liked it, and took the
courses both at high school and at college. Last winter I won a prize
for original work."  His smile made her color.  "I don't say that," she
hastened to explain, "because I think I'm a wonderful chemist, but just
to prove to you that I do know a little something--enough to be able to
help in a humble sort of way."

His expression was still that of grown people when laughing at the
antics of children, and concealing amusement behind a thin pretense of
grave admiration.  "Yes, I've no doubt you're clever at it," said he.
"But a refined woman oughtn't to try to do the man sort of thing."

"But, dear, I'm not so superfine as you seem to think--and not
altogether foolish."  She glanced round the laboratory.  "You don't know
how at home I feel here.  What a wonderful, beautiful equipment you
have!  Everything of the best--and so well taken care of!  Dick, I want
to be your--wife.  As I watched you I realized I've got to fit myself
for it.  That is--of course, I always knew I'd have to do that--but now
I know just what I must do."

"What a serious child it is!" he cried, pinching her cheek.  It was
delightful, this baby playing at "grown-up."

She laughed because she loved him and loved laughter; but she persisted.
"Being wife to a man means a great deal more than looking pretty and
making love."

"That's very dear and sweet," said he, in the same petting, patronizing
way.  "I'm content with you as you are. I don't want anything more."
And he set about putting things away and locking up.

Quiet on her high stool, she struggled against a feeling of resentment,
of depression.  Her instinct was, as always, to hide her hurt; but it
seemed to her that if she did, it would not get well, would get worse.
"Dick," she began at last.

"Yes?" said he absently.  "Come along, dear."  And he lifted her down
with a kiss.

She went out, waited for him while he locked the door. "Dick," she began
again, as they walked along the path, "I don't want to be shut out of
any part of your life, least of all out of the realest part.  I want to
be truly your wife."

No answer.  She glanced up at him; obviously his thoughts were far away.

She slipped her arms through his.  "Tell me what you're thinking about,
dear."

"About that test I was making."

"What was it?"

"Oh, nothing.  Is the house satisfactory?  How do you like old Nanny?"
As she did not answer, he looked down at her.  "Why, what's the matter
with my little sweetheart?  Such a discontented expression!"

"Nothing--nothing at all," replied she, forcing a smile and steadying
her quivering lip.

"I'm afraid those two days on the train----"

"Yes," she interrupted eagerly.  "And I guess I'm hungry, too.  _That's_
very upsetting."

With a little forcing she kept up the semblance of good spirits through
breakfast and until he was off to the laboratory again.  Then she gave
way to her mood--for it could be only a mood.  With old Nanny as guide,
she went through the house, through all its spacious solidly and stiffly
furnished rooms.  At every step Nanny had something to say of Miss
Eudosia--how good Miss Eudosia had been, how Miss Eudosia kept
everything as her mother had it before her, how particular Miss Eudosia
had been. And when it wasn't Miss Eudosia it was Colonel 'Kill--that
splendid-looking, terrible-looking old Achilles Vaughan; as a child she
had decided that the awful god the family worshiped must look like
Achilles Vaughan.  Nanny talked on and on; Courtney's spirits went down
and down. In one respect the house should have appealed to her--in its
perfect order.  For she had inherited from her mother a passion for
order--an instinct that would have a neatly kept ribbon box almost as
soon as she could talk, and had prompted her, long before she could talk
distinctly, to cry if they tried to put on her a dress the least bit
mussed or a stocking with a hole in it.  But there is the order that is
of life, and there is the order that is of death.  This Vaughan order
seemed to her to be of death.  She felt surrounded, hemmed in, menaced
by a throng of the Vaughan women of past generations--those women of the
old-fashioned kind, thoughtless, mindless, cool, and correct and
inane--the kind of women the Vaughan men liked--the kind Richard
liked--"No--no.  He does _not_ like that kind!"

Assisted by Nanny and Mazie, she unpacked the trunks into drawers and
closets.  When the last box was empty, Jimmie took them down to the
cellar.  She was established--was at home.  She and Dick were to have
the same bedroom; he would use the big spare bedroom directly across the
hall and its bath for dressing.  It was all most convenient, most
comfortable.  But she could not get interested, could not banish the
feeling that she would soon be flitting, that she was stranger, intruder
here.  And the last sweet days of the honeymoon kept recurring in
pictured glimpses of their happiness of various kinds, all centering
about love.  How tender he had been, how absorbed in their romance--that
wonderful romance which began ideally in a chance meeting and love at
first sight.  And now, just as she was getting over her deep-down
shyness with him, was feeling the beginnings of the courage to be wholly
her natural self, to show him her inmost thoughts, o release the
tenderness, the demonstrativeness that had been pent up in her all her
life--just as the climax of happiness was at hand--here was this shadow,
this relegating her to the chill isolation and self-suppression and
self-concealment of a pedestaled Vaughan wife.  "He acts as if a woman
were not like a man--as if I had no sense because I'm not tall, and
don't go about in a frown and spectacles."  And it depressed her still
further to recall that his attitude had been the same throughout
courtship and honeymoon--treating her as a baby, a pet, something to
protect and shield, something of which nothing but lover's small talk
was expected.  She had liked it then; it seemed to fit in with the
holiday spirit.  "I gave him a false impression.  It's my fault."  To
pretend to be infantile for purposes of a holiday of love-making is one
thing; to have one's pretense taken as an actual and permanent
reality--that was vastly different, and wearisome, and humiliating, and
not to be permitted.  "But," she reflected, "it's altogether my fault.
And the thing for me to do is not to talk about it to him, but just
quietly to go to work and make myself his wife--fit myself for it."  A
wonderful man she thought him; and it thrilled her, this high and loving
ambition to be worthy of him, and not mere pendant and parasite as so
many wives were content to be.

They were to go the scant half mile across the lake in the motor boat at
noon and lunch at her old home.  She was ready a few minutes before
time, and started toward the Smoke House.  Halfway she stopped and
turned back. No, she could not interrupt him there again.  His manner,
unconscious, more impressive than any deliberate look or word, made her
feel that the Smoke House was set in an enchanted wood which she could
not penetrate until She smiled tenderly.

At half past twelve he came on the run.  "Why didn't you telephone?"
exclaimed he.  "We'll be scandalously late.  I'm so sorry.  When I get
to work down there I forget everything.  I even forgot I was married."

She busied herself with the buttons of her glove, and the brim of her
hat hid her face.  And such a few hours ago he and she were all in all
to each other!

"Do you forgive me?"

She thought she was forgiving him; the hurt would soon pass.  So she
gave him a look that passed muster with his unobservant eyes.  "Don't
worry.  We'll soon be there."

They got under way, he at the motor, she watching his back.  On impulse
she moved nearer.  "Dick," she said.  "Don't turn round.  I want to say
something to you that's very hard to say....  I feel I ought to warn
you.  At college the girls called it one of my worst traits. When anyone
I care for hurts me, I don't say anything--I even hide it.  And they
don't realize--and keep on hurting--until--  Oh, I've lost several
friends that way. For--the time comes--  I don't let on, and it gets to
be too late--and I don't care any more."

"You mean about my keeping you waiting?"

"No--not that--not that alone.  Not any one thing. Not anything at all
yet--but a kind of a shadow. Just--you've made me feel as if I weren't
to be part of you--of your life.  No, I don't say it right.  I've felt
as if I were to be part of you, but that you weren't to be part of me."

He began to laugh, believing that the proper way to dispel a mood so
unreal.  But glancing at her he saw she was shrinking and literally
quivering with pain.  His face sobered.  He reminded himself that women
could not be dealt with on a basis of reason and sense, since they had
those qualities only in rudimentary form.  As his hands were occupied,
he was puzzled how to treat this his first experience with feminine
sweet unreasonableness in her. All he could do toward pacifying was to
say soothingly, as to a sensitive child: "I understand, sweetheart.  I
must be very--very careful."

"Not at all!" she cried, ready to weep with vexation at her complete
failure to make him understand.  "I'm not a silly, sensitive thing,
always trailing my feelings for some one to step on."

"No, dearest--of course not," said he in the same tone as before.  "If
there weren't so many sail boats about, I'd show you how penitent I am."

"But I don't want you to be penitent."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want you to--I want us to be comrades."

"What a child it is!  You girls are brought up to play all the time.
But you can't expect a man to be like that. Of course we'll play
together.  I'd not have wanted to marry you if I hadn't needed you."

"But what am _I_ to do when you can't play?" she asked.  "And I'm afraid
you won't play very often. That is, I know you won't--and I'm glad you
won't--for I'd not care as I do if you were that kind.  I didn't realize
until this morning.  But I do realize now, and--Dick, you don't think of
me as just to play with?"

Facing her earnestness, he would not have dared confess the truth.  "No,
indeed!" said he.  "Your head's full of notions to-day.  You're not at
all like your sweet loving self."

She felt instantly altogether in the wrong.  "It's the strangeness, I
guess," she said penitently.

"That's it, exactly.  But in a few days you'll be all right--and as
happy as a bird on a bough."

As they were about to land she mustered all her courage, and with
heightened color said: "You'll let me come down and try to help, won't
you?  I'll promise not to be in the way--not for a minute.  And if I am,
I'll never come again.  I can at least wash out test tubes and bring you
things you need."

"Oh, if you really want to come," began he, with good-humored tolerance.

"Thank you--thank you," she interrupted, eager and radiant.

"Not right away," he hastened to add.  "Just at present I'm clearing
things up."

"I understand.  You'll tell me when the time comes."

"Yes, I'll tell you."




                                  *II*


In late July, after he had not appeared either at dinner or at supper
for four days, she said to him, "You're becoming a stranger."

The idea of reproaching him was not in her mind. She had been most
respectful of what she compelled herself to regard as his rights, had
been most careful not to intrude or interrupt or in any way annoy.  The
remark was simply an embarrassed attempt to open conversation--not an
easy matter with a man so absorbed and silent as he had become.  But he
was feeling rather guilty; also, he had not recovered from the failure
of an elaborate experiment from which he had expected great things in
advancing him toward his ultimate goal--the discovery of a cheap,
universal substitute for all known fuels.  "You know, my dear," said he,
"in the sort of work I'm trying to do a man can't control his hours."

"I know," she hastened to apologize, feeling offense in his tone, and
instantly accusing herself of lack of tact. "I'm too anxious for you to
succeed to want you ever to think I'm expecting you.  I've been busy
myself--and a lot of people have been calling."

This, though bravely said, somehow did not lessen his sense of guilt.
"You're not lonely, are you?" he asked gently.  And he gave her a
searching, self-reproachful look.

"No, indeed!" laughed she.  "I'm not one of the kind that get hysterical
if they're left alone for a few minutes."  Her tone and expression were
calculated to reassure, and they did reassure.

"Really, you ought to have married a fellow who was fond of society and
had time for it.  I know how you love dancing and all that."  This, with
arms about her and an expression which suggested how dreary life would
have been if she had married that more suitable other fellow.

"I used to like those things," said she.  "But I found they were all
simply makeshifts, to pass the time until you came."

"We _are_ happy--aren't we?"

"And just think!" she cried.  "How happy we'll be when our real life
begins."

"Yes," said he vaguely.

He looked confused and puzzled, but she was too intent upon her dream to
note it.  "When do you think you'll get time to teach me the ropes?"
asked she.

After a little groping he understood.  He had forgotten all about that
fantastic plan of hers to potter at the laboratory.  And she had been
serious--had been waiting for him to ask her down!  A glance at her face
warned him that she was far too much in earnest to be laughed at. "Oh, I
don't know exactly when," said he.  "Probably not for some time.  Don't
bother about it."

"Of course, I'll not bother you about it," replied she. "But naturally I
can't help thinking.  It won't be long?"

He detested liars and lies.  Yet, looking on her as a sort of child--and
it's no harm to humor a child--he said, "I hope not."

He blushed as he said it, though his conscience was assuring him there
was absolutely nothing wrong in this kind of playful deception with
woman the whimsical, the irrational.  "Certainly not," thought he.
"She'll soon forget all about it.  I don't see how she happened to
remember so long as this."  Still, it was not pleasant to tell even the
whitest of white lies, facing eyes so earnest and so trusting as were
hers just then.  He changed the subject--inquired who had been calling.
She did not return to it.  She was content; his long hours and his
complete absorption were proof of his eagerness to hasten the day when
they should be together.  "Of course," thought she, "he likes what he's
doing--likes it for itself.  But _the_ reason is 'us.'"  And some day
soon he would surprise her--and they would begin to lead the life of
true lovers--the life she had dreamed and planned as a girl--the life
she had begun to realize during courtship and honeymoon--the life of
which, even in these days of aloneness and waiting, she had occasional
foretastes when overpowering impulse for a "lighter hour" brought him
back to her for a little while.

She had been puzzled when in those hours he sometimes called her
"temptress."  The word was tenderly spoken, but she felt an accent of
what was somehow suggestion of reproach--and of rebuke.  Now she thought
she understood.  He meant she stimulated in him the same deep longings
that incessantly possessed her; and when those longings were stimulated,
it was hard for him to keep his mind on the work he was hastening with
all his energy--the work that must be done before their happiness could
begin.  "I must be careful not to tempt him," thought she.

From this she went on to feel she understood another matter that had
puzzled her, had at times disquieted her. She had noticed that his moods
of caressing tenderness, of longing for the outward evidences of love
seemed to be satisfied, and to cease just when her own delight in them
was swelling to its fullness.  Why should what roused her quiet him?
This had been the puzzle; now she felt she had solved it: He had greater
self-control than she; he would not let his feelings master him, when
they would certainly interfere with the work that must be done to clear
their way of the last obstacles to perfect happiness; so he withdrew
into himself and fought down the longings for more and ever more love
that were no doubt as strong in him as in her.

Thus she, in her faith and her inexperience, reasoned it all out to her
satisfaction and to his glory.  She had not the faintest notion of the
abysmal difference between her idea of love and his.  With her the
caresses had their chief value as symbols--as the only means by which
the love within could convey news of its existence.  With Dick, the
caresses were not symbols at all, not means to an end, but the end in
themselves.  Of love such as she dreamed and expected he knew nothing;
for it he felt no more need than the usual busy, ambitious man.  His
work, his struggle to wrest from nature close-guarded secrets, filled
his mind and his heart.

He soon assumed she had forgotten her fantastic whim, and forgot it
himself.  She often wished he would talk to her about his work, would
not be quite so discouraging when she timidly tried to talk with him
about it.  And in spite of herself she could not but be uneasy at times
over his growing silence, his habitual absentmindedness.  But she
accepted it all, as loving inexperience will accept anything and
everything--until the shock of disillusion comes. So stupefying is
habit, there were times when her dream became vague, when she drifted
along, leading, as if it were to be permanent, the ordinary life of the
modern married woman whose husband is a busy man.  She was learning a
great deal about that life from her young married friends of the
neighborhood and of Wenona.  Many of them--in fact, most of them--were
husbanded much like herself.  But they were restless, unhappy, and for
the best of reasons--because they had no aim, no future.  She pitied
them profoundly, felt more and more grateful for her own happier lot.
For she--Dick's wife--had a future, bright and beautiful.  Surely it
could not be much longer before he would have the way clear for the life
in common, the life together!

She fell to talking, in a less light vein than she usually permitted
herself with him, about these friends of hers to him one evening as they
walked up and down the veranda after supper.  She described with some
humor, but an underlying seriousness, their lives--their amusing, but
also pitiful, efforts to kill time--their steady decline toward inanity.
"I don't see what they married for," said she.  "They really care
nothing about their husbands--or their husbands about them.  The men
seem to be contented. But the women aren't, though they pretend to
be--_pretend_ to their _husbands_!  Isn't it all sad and horrible?"

"Indeed it is," he replied.  He had been only half listening, but had
caught the drift of what she was saying. "It's hard to believe decent
women can be like that."

"And the men--they're worse," said she; "for they're satisfied."

"Why shouldn't they be?" said Dick.  "They don't know what kind of wives
they've got."

"I--I don't think you quite understood me."

"Oh, yes; you said the wives were dissatisfied.  They've got good homes
and contented husbands.  What right have they to be dissatisfied?  What
more do they want?"

"What we've got," said she tenderly.  "Love."

"But they've got love.  Didn't you say their husbands were contented?
When a man's contented it means that he loves his wife.  And a good
woman always loves her husband."

She laughed.  He often amused her with his funny old-style notions about
women.  "You can't understand people who live and feel as they do,
dear," said she.  "Of course, you and I seem to be living much like them
just now.  But you know we'd never be contented if we had to go on and
on this way."

With not a recollection of the "whim," he stopped short in astonishment.
"What way?" he asked.  "Aren't we happy?"

She smiled radiantly up at him in the clear, gentle evening light.  "But
not so happy as we shall be, when you get things straightened out and
take me into partnership."

"Partnership?" he demanded blankly.  "What do you mean?"

"I call it partnership.  I suppose you'd call it working for you.  I
suppose I shall be pretty poor at first. But I'll surprise you before
I've been down there many weeks.  I've been brushing up my chemistry, as
well as I could, with only books."

It came to him what she was talking about--and it overwhelmed him with
confusion.  "Yes--certainly. I--I supposed you'd forgotten."

She gazed at him in dismay.  "Forgotten!"  Then she brightened.  "Oh,
you're teasing me."

He began to be irritated.  "You mustn't fret me about that," he said.

"I didn't even mean to speak of it," she protested, her supersensitive
dread of intrusion alert.  "I know you're doing the best you can.  But I
couldn't help dreaming of the time when I'll have you back again....
Now, don't look so distressed!  Meanwhile, we'll have what we can. And
that's something--isn't it?"

What queer, irrational creatures women were!  To persist in a foolish,
fanciful notion such as this!  Why couldn't she play at keeping house
and enjoy herself as it was intended women should?  A woman's trying to
do anything serious, a woman's thinking--it was like a parrot's
talking--an imitation, and not a good one.  But the "whim" and his
"harmless deception" became the same sort of irritation in his
conscience that a grain of dust is on the eyeball.  He was forced to
debate whether he should not make a slight concession.  After all, where
would be the harm in letting her come to the laboratory?  She'd soon get
enough.  Yes, that would be the wise course.  Humor a woman or a child
in an innocent folly, and you effect a cure.  Yes--if she brought the
matter up again, and no other way out suggested, he would let her come.
It amused him to think of her, delicate as a flower, made for the
hothouse, for protection and guidance and the most careful sheltering,
trying to adapt herself to serious work calling for thought and
concentration.  "But she'd be a nuisance after a day or so.  A man's
sense of humor--even his love--soon wears thin when his work's
interfered with."  Still, she'd be glad enough to quit, probably after a
single morning of the kind of thing he'd give her to discourage her.
"Really, all a woman wants is the feeling she's having her own way."

This decision laid the ghost.  As she said no more, the whole thing
passed to the dark recesses of his memory. One evening in late
September, when he was taking a walk alone on the veranda, she came out
and joined him. After a few silent turns she said, "Let's sit on the
steps."  She made him sit a step lower than she, which brought their
eyes upon a level.  The moon was shining full upon them.  The expression
of her face, as she looked intently at him, was such that he
instinctively said, "What is it, dear?" and reached for her hand.

He had given the subject of children--the possibilities,
probabilities--about as little thought as a young married man well
could.  There are some women who instantly and always suggest to men the
idea motherhood; there are others, and Courtney was of them, in
connection with whom the idea baby seems remote, even incongruous.  But
as she continued to look steadily at him, without speaking, his mind
began to grope about, and somehow soon laid hold of this idea.  His
expression must have told her that he understood, for she nodded slowly.

"Do you mean--" he began in an awe-stricken voice, but did not finish.

"Yes.  I've suspected for some time.  To-day the doctor told me it was
so."

Her hand nestled more closely into his, and he held it more tightly.  A
great awe filled him.  It seemed very still and vast, this moonlight
night.  He gazed out over the lake.  He could not speak.  She continued
to look at him. Presently she began in a low, quiet voice, full of the
melody of those soft, deep notes that were so strange and thrilling,
coming from such slim, delicate smallness of body and of face: "I can't
remember the time when I wasn't longing for a baby.  When I was still a
baby myself I used to ask the most embarrassing questions--and they
couldn't stop me--  When could I have a baby?  How soon?  How many?  And
when I finally learned that I mustn't talk about it, I only thought the
more.  I never rested till I found out all about it.  I came very near
marrying the first man that asked me because----"

He was looking at her with strong disapproval.

She smiled tenderly.  "I know you hate for me to be frank and natural,"
she said with the gentlest raillery. "But, please, let me--just this
once.  I must tell you exactly what's in my head--my foolish, feminine
head, as your grandfather would have said."

"Go on, dear.  But you couldn't convince me you weren't always innocent
and pure minded."

"You--a chemist--a scientist, talking about knowledge being wicked!  But
I'll not discuss those things with you. I never have and I never shall."
She drew closer to him, put one arm round his neck.  "Now do listen,
dear," she went on.  "Then--you came into my life.  It's very queer--I
don't understand why--at least not clearly--but from the moment I loved
you I never thought of baby again--except to think I didn't want one."

"My dear!" he exclaimed.  He drew away to look at her.  "Courtney!
That's very unnatural.  You're quite mistaken."

As she did not know men, it seemed to her a unique and profoundly
mysterious case, this of him so broad-minded, scandalously broadminded
most Wenona people thought, yet in the one direction a puritan of
puritans. With a wisdom deeper than she realized she said smilingly:
"Dear--_dear_ Dick!  I guess the reason you men think women irrational
is because you're irrational on the subject of women yourselves.  To a
crazy person the whole world seems crazy."

He did not respond to her pleasantry.  She sighed, drew his arm round
her, went on: "Well--anyhow, it's true.  And, do you know, I think that
whenever a woman really loves a man, cares for just him, she doesn't
want a baby."

"You're quite mistaken," he assured her gravely. "It's natural for a
woman to want children.  _You_ want them."

"Do _you_?"

"I?  I've never given it much thought."

"I did hope you'd say no," said she, half in jest. "Now honestly,
doesn't it seem reasonable that when two people love each other they
shouldn't want any--any intruder?"

He looked at her with more than a trace of severity in his expression.
"Where did you get these unnatural ideas?  I don't like you to say such
things even in joke. They're most unwomanly."

She felt rebuked and showed it, but persisted, "You must admit it'll
interfere."

"Interfere with what?"

"With the life we've been looking forward to--with my helping you."

"Oh--yes--" he stammered.  Again that exasperating ghost!  What
possessed her to persist in such nonsense?

"You know it would interfere--would put off our happiness for a year or
two.  A year or two!  Oh, Dick!"

When she had the child, thought he, the ghost would be laid forever.
"Well--we'll do the best we can," he said.  His tone and manner of
regret were as sincere as ever mother used in assuring her child of the
reality of Santa Claus.  And Courtney believed and was reconciled.

"I do want the baby," she now admitted.  "But I want you--love--more,
oh, so much more.  I'm glad your life work is something I naturally care
about.  Still, I suppose, when a woman loves a man, she cares about
whatever he is and does, and fits herself to be part of it."

He smiled with patronizing tenderness, as he often did, always evidently
quite sure she'd not understand.  If we could but realize it, how our
mismeasurements of others would enable us to study as in a mirror our
own limitations! "Wait till you have the baby," said he.

"Do you think that with me love for a baby could ever take the place of
need for love--grown-up love? You're always making me feel as if you
didn't know me at all, Dick."

He laughed and kissed her.  "You don't know yourself. Wait till you have
a baby, and you'll be content to be just a woman."

"But I'm content to be that now."

"Well--let's not argue."




                                 *III*


Except courtship and honeymoon never had she been so happy as in the
last two months before the baby came. "Every-one is spoiling me," she
said, dazzled by the revelations of thoughtfulness and affection.  Her
friends, her acquaintances, showered attentions upon her.  Even her
mother, austere and cold, unbent.  Her father, the shy, the silent,
betrayed where she had got her silent, shy, intense longing for love.
The two sour old-maid sisters were all tenderness and chaste excitement.
As for Dick, he actually neglected his career.  Again and again he would
stop in the midst of an experiment to dash up to the house and inquire
what he could do for her--this when there was a private telephone at his
elbow.

She was intelligent about diet and exercise; so she suffered hardly at
all.  As for the baby, he came into the world positively shrieking with
health.  Finally, she had none of the petty vanity that leads many a
first-time mother into fancying and acting as if maternity were a unique
achievement, original with herself.  Thus the agitation quickly died
away, and life resumed its former course, except that she had a baby to
take care of.  At first it was great fun.  Dick helped her, forgot his
chemistry, seemed in the way to become a father of unprecedented
devotion. But this did not last long.  He loved playthings and played
with them; but the call of his career was the strong force in his life,
and he went back to the laboratory.  She might have given the baby over
to a nurse, as all the other women were doing.  But it seemed to her
that, as she was responsible for the coming of this frisky helplessness,
she could not do less than guard him until he was able to look out for
himself.  "When he can talk and tell me exactly how's he treated when
I'm not around," said she, "why, perhaps I'll trust him to a nurse--if
he needs one.  But until then I'll be nurse myself."

Many and many a time in the next eighteen months she wished she had not
committed herself openly and positively.  She loved her baby as much as
any mother could--and a good-humored lovable baby he was, fat and
handsome, and showing signs of being well bred while still a speechless
animal.  But, except in romances and make-believe life, the deepest love
wearies of sacrifices, though it gladly makes them.  This baby--Benedict
they named him, but he changed it to Winchie as soon as he could--this
baby made a slave of her.  She understood why so many women retrograde
after the birth of the first child.  The temptation to go to seed is
powerful enough in the most favorable circumstances, once a woman has
caught a husband and secured a living for life.  A baby, she soon saw,
made that temptation tenfold stronger.  She wondered what it was in her
that compelled her to fight unyieldingly against being demoralized.

Dick was deep in a series of experiments that forbade him a thought for
anything else.  He did occasionally spend a few moments in mechanical
dalliance with his two playthings; but that interrupted his thoughts
little if at all. By the slow, unnoted day-to-day action that plays the
only really important part in human intimacies of all kinds, she had
grown too shy and strange with him to ask his help or even to think of
expecting it.  She did not judge him--at least, not consciously.  She
assumed he was doing the best he could, the best anyone could, the best
possible. To have complained, even in thought, would have seemed to her
as futile as railing against any fundamental of life--against being
unable to fly instead of walk.  She made occupation for herself, as will
presently appear.  But, after all, it was Winchie who saved her.  But
for him she, with no taste for "chasing about," would have withdrawn
within herself, would have become silent, cold, ever more and more like
her mother, with barren cynicism in place of Mrs. Benedict's equally
barren religiosity.  Winchie's spirits of overflowing health, his
newcomer's delight in life were infectious and stimulating.  In keeping
him in perfect health--outdoors, winter and summer, and always active,
she made her own health so perfect that the cheerful and hopeful side of
things was rarely so much as obscured.

One evening after supper Richard, moved by the intermittent impulse to
amuse himself, sought her in her sitting room, where she was reading.
She always sat there in the evenings because she could hear Winchie if
he became restless.  He never did, but that fact no more freed her to go
off duty than the absence of burglars the policeman.  Dick gave her the
kind of kiss that was always his signal for a "lighter hour."  She
merely glanced up, gave him the smile that is a matrimonial convention
like "my dear," and went on with her book.  Theretofore, whenever he had
shown the least desire to take an hour off from that career of his, she
had instantly responded.  She assumed this readiness meant love; in
fact, love had no part in it. She responded for two reasons, both
unsuspected by her: because she did not know him well enough to have
moods with him and to show them, and because refusal would have been
admission of the truth of indifference to him which she had not yet
discovered.  That evening, for the first time, she did not respond.  It
was unconscious on her part, unnoted by him; yet it was the most
significant event in their married life since the wedding ceremony two
years and a half before.

He stood behind her and began gliding his fingers over the soft down at
the nape of her neck.  It has become second nature to women to repress
their active emotions, no matter how strong, and to wait upon the
man--an evidence of inferior status that is crudely but sufficiently
disguised as "womanly delicacy and reserve."  In response to the signal
of those caressing fingers Courtney mechanically put up her hand and
patted his.  Her gesture was genuinely affectionate--but there had been
a time when it would not have been mechanical.  She did not lift her
eyes from the page.

"Is that a good love story?" asked he.  "As good as ours?"

A tender little smile of half absent appreciation played round her lips.
But--her glance remained upon her reading. "It isn't a novel," replied
she.  "It's a treatise."

"A treatise?" mocked he.  "Gracious me!  What a wise fairy it is!  Put
it away, and let's go on the balcony. There'll not be many more sit-out
nights."

He moved to pick her up in his arms.  But she smilingly pushed him away.
"I want to finish this chapter," said she.

"All right.  I'll go out and smoke.  Don't be long."

And he sauntered through the window door.  After perhaps a quarter of an
hour she joined him in the hammock.  Matrimony is a curious fabric of
set phrases, set thoughts, and set actions.  It was their habit, in such
circumstances, for her to snuggle up to him and for him to put his arm
round her.  The habit was on this occasion observed.  It was her habit
to assume that she was happy--and she now so assumed.  He began the
conversation. "I've been watching you as I sat here," said he lazily.
"What are all those books on the table?  They look
serious--businesslike."

"Let's not talk about anything serious.  You always laugh at me or get
absent-minded."

"But you seemed so absorbed.  What was it?"

"Oh, I've been doing a little reading and thinking and studying for the
past year.  You see, when a woman takes care of a baby, she's got to
look out or she'll become one herself."

"But you are a baby."  And there followed the usual caresses.

"Not a real baby," said she.  "We both act like children at times--very
little children.  But we'd not care for each other as we do if either of
us were really infantile.  It takes a grown person to play baby
attractively."

"Baby," he insisted fondly.  He was smiling with the masculinely
patronizing tolerance to which she had grown so used that she never
noted it.  He appreciated that she was clever--with the woman sort of
cleverness--bright, witty, sometimes saying remarkably keen things.
But, being a man, he knew that man mind and woman mind are entirely
different--never so different as when woman mind seems to be like man
mind--just as purely instinctive actions of animals seem to display
profound reasoning power. "And what was the baby wrinkling its brow
over, in there? The care and feeding of infants?"

"Dear me, no," replied she with perfect good humor. "I went into that
before Winchie came.  You think it's all a joke--my reading and
studying.  But the real joke is your thinking so.  You must remember I
can't afford to let myself go, as you do."

He had been chiefly absorbed in caresses and caressing thoughts.  At
this last remark he laughed.  "Now, what does that mean?" he inquired.

"You've given up everything for chemistry.  Haven't you noticed that we
can hardly talk to each other--that you can hardly talk to anybody?"

"I never did have much talent for small talk."

"But I didn't mean small talk.  You care only for chemistry, know only
chemistry.  You never did know or care much about literature or art or
music or any of the worth-while things except just your own specialty.
And you can afford to be that way.  It's your career, and also you're
not a woman and a mother."

He had stopped caressing her.  "I confess I don't understand," said he
stiffly.

"A man can afford to be narrow--not to know life or the world.  But a
mother--if she's the right sort--has to try to know everything.  She's
got to bring up children--and how can she hope to teach and train
successfully if she doesn't know?"

"I don't agree with you," said he, a certain curtness in his voice.  "A
woman must be pure, innocent, womanly--as you are.  Nature didn't make
her to be learned or wise--to think.  She has her instincts to keep her
straight, and a father or a husband----"

"Dick--Dick!" she cried, patting him on the cheek. "What an old fogey it
is!  You talk like--like an ordinary man.  How bored you'd be if you had
that kind of wife--one who couldn't be comrade and companion, and didn't
want to be--one who was merely a mistress."

Vaughan was sitting bolt upright now.  "Those books in there--
Courtney, you're not reading impure, upsetting books?"

She laughed delightedly.

"What are those books?" he insisted.

"They're--now, Dickey dear, please don't be shocked--they're on
landscape gardening and interior decoration."  She looked up at him
mischievously in the starlight.  "Are they womanly enough to suit you?"

"Yes, indeed," said he heartily.  "But I might have known you'd not read
anything a good woman oughtn't.  I love you as you are--and I'd hate to
see you changed, my spotless little angel."

She submitted to his caresses.  And presently, in that brain which he
would have thought it absurd to look into except for the very lightest
kind of amusement, there formed the first really disloyal thought she
had ever permitted to be born.  The thought was: "Dick certainly does
take himself terribly seriously.  If it weren't Dick, I'd say he was
getting to be a prig."  She was instantly shocked at herself, as one
always is at the first impulse to doubt the idol one has set up for
blind worship.  She felt there was but one way to prevent the recurrence
of such perilous blasphemy. After a brief silence she said in a
constrained voice: "Dick, I was not a stupid, incurious fool as a girl,
and I went to college, and I'm a wife and a mother.  If by innocence you
mean ignorance, I'm anything but innocent."

She saw that he was highly amused.

"Women," she went on earnestly, "always tell each other that before men
it's wise to pretend to be ignorant and too refined to know life, and to
be shocked at everything. They say it pleases men.  But I'm sure you're
not that sort of man.  Anyhow, I can't be a hypocrite."

"That's right, dear," said he, nodding approvingly, the amused smile
lingering.  "Go on with your interior decoration and landscape
gardening.  You can't learn too much about them."  He was leaning back
again, secure, comfortable, happy, enjoying the sensation of caressing
her.

She gave it up, as she always did when she found herself being ruffled
by that strange antiquated prejudice of his.  It would yield in time.
Besides, what did it really matter?--since they loved each other, and
would be happy once their real life got under way.  "I'd have taken up
chemistry," she continued, "but one can't go far alone in that, with
only books.  And you wouldn't help me.  I'm afraid you'll find me very
rusty when I come down to the laboratory next spring."

His lips were open to inquire what she meant, when he was unpleasantly
spared the necessity.  Out of a dark recess of memory sprang the
ghost--the "whim."  He was astounded, irritated, alarmed.  He had
supposed he had heard the last of that silly notion about helping him;
she hadn't spoken of it in nearly two years.  Now--here it was again!

"Dick," she was saying, her hand clasping his, "I've appreciated your
not speaking of it, or even talking about what you were doing.  If you
had, the delay'd have been much harder to bear.  For, as long as Winchie
needs me, I simply can't come."

"I understand, dear," said he, much relieved.

"It's a dreadfully long delay, isn't it?" she went on, dreamily gazing
up into the great quiet sky.  "The more I see of married people, and the
more I think about married life, the clearer I see that two must have a
common interest, a common career, or they drift apart, and usually the
woman sinks down and down into a gadabout or a fat frump or a
professional minder of other people's business--a gossip or a charity
worker."

If she had been looking, even in that faint light she could have seen
his expression of gathering displeasure.

"Or else," she went on, "she seeks love elsewhere. Isn't it strange,
Dick, how in unhappy marriages the so-called good women are the bad
ones, and the so-called bad ones good?  I mean, when a weak woman finds
herself married wrong she accepts it and gently rots, and people say
she's a good soul, when she's really degrading herself and rotting
everybody round her.  While a strong woman--one that's worth
while--refuses to be crushed, and people call her bad.  But then I've
begun to think life's like one of those exhibitions where some cut-up
slips round and changes the labels so that everything's named wrong."

She was talking along lightly, talking what seemed to her the plainest
common sense, and was all unconscious that she had brought him and
herself where both were almost peering into the abyss between them.  He
was sitting up, was getting ready to deliver himself.  Her next remark
checked him.  "Thank Heaven, Dick, you and I are going to have the
interest that makes two lives one--makes it impossible to grow apart.
It seems to me I can't wait for Winchie to release me so that I may come
and work with you.  Aren't you glad I really, naturally, like chemistry,
and already know something about it?"

He winced, and instead of speaking, put his cigar between his opened
lips.

She leaned her head affectionately against his arm.  "I feel close to
you to-night--feel that we're in perfect sympathy.  Sometimes--I--I
don't feel quite that way.  Of course I know it's all right, but I
get--afraid.  It's such a long, long delay--and your work absorbs
you--and we almost never talk as we're talking to-night.  There have
been times when---I've almost--been afraid _we_ were drifting apart."

"What nonsense!" he cried sharply.  "How could that be?  Do you suppose
I don't know you're a good woman?  You talk foolishly at times--things
you've picked up from loose people.  But you are a lady and a good
woman."

She saw he was for some unknown reason irritated. She swiftly changed
the subject.  "Anyhow, dearest, we shan't be in danger much longer.
We're nearly to the end of the life we've been leading ever since we got
back from our wedding trip.  Just think--ever since then!  How time has
gone!"

He stirred uncomfortably, ventured: "We've been happy, and, even if
things were to go on just as they are, we'd continue to be happy."

"Of course, you've had your work and I've had Winchie, and once in a
while we have each other.  But most of the happiness has been in looking
forward, hasn't it?"

She assumed that his silence was assent.

"But don't think, dear," she said, "that I've been content just to wait.
As soon as I saw it was going to be a long time before I could come to
the laboratory----"

He rose abruptly, under the pretense of lighting a fresh cigar.

"--I made another occupation for myself.  It'll be next spring at the
earliest before I can come to you.  And even then I'll be able to spend
only part of the day. Winchie'll have to be looked after when he's not
at the kindergarten.  Now that he's talking and understanding, it's more
necessary than ever to watch over him.  I've had to watch only his body.
Now it's both his body and his mind; for, if any harm came to either,
it'd be our fault, wouldn't it?"

"There's no doubt of that," said Dick with strong emphasis, as he seated
himself in a chair opposite her.  He thought this remark of hers opened
the way out of his perplexity.  "I don't see how you can come to the
laboratory at all."

"Oh, yes.  It's not so bad as that.  If it were, I don't know what I'd
do.  It'd be choice between losing you and neglecting him."

"Trash!" exclaimed Dick impatiently.  There seemed something essentially
immoral in her whole attitude, an odor of immorality exuding from
everything she said.  It exasperated him that he could not locate it and
use it as the text for the lecture he felt she greatly needed.  "Your
good sense must tell you there's not the slightest danger of your losing
me."

She laughed with raillery.  "Oh, I know you're far too busy with your
chemistry to wander.  But that isn't what I meant.  You understand."
Her eyes shone upon him. "Sometimes--when we're holding each other tight
and your lips are on mine--I can scarcely keep from crying. It seems to
me we're like two held apart and trying to be one--and trying in vain.
It's as if we touched only at the surface, and our bodies were keeping
us from each other. But all that will soon end now, and we'll be really
one. Closer and closer, day by day----"

She sat on his lap, and he clasped her in his arms.  He felt ashamed
somehow, and in awe of this emotion that was beyond him.  "How wonderful
a pure woman is!" he thought.

After a pause she sat up, went back to the hammock, seated herself,
leaning toward him.  "But I started to tell you my plans."

"What plans?" he asked, in high good humor with her again and
overflowing with "lighter-hour" tenderness. "Tell me quick and we'll go
in.  It's getting late."  He moved to seat himself beside her.

"No," she said, laughingly.  "Sit where you are.  I want you to listen.
It isn't often I can get you to listen. As I said, I've got to have
something worth while to fill in as I look after Winchie when he's not
at kindergarten. I've been getting ready for a year, and it has given me
occupation when he was sleeping or playing, for I taught him to amuse
himself and not to look to me for everything. That was good for him and
saved me.  Well, I studied gardening and interior decoration."

"What a fuss you do make," said he, amused.  "Why not just settle down
and be a plain woman?"

"Shame on you!  Tempting me to go to pieces."

"You'll not improve on the good old-fashioned woman, my dear."

"You deserve to be married to one of them."

"I am," declared he.  "Your whims don't deceive me. I know you.  Let's
go in, dear."

She shook her head in smiling reproach.  "Then you don't care to hear my
plans?"

"Oh, yes.  What are they?"

"I've got everything ready to make those changes we discussed on our
honeymoon."

"Really!" exclaimed he, seeing that enthusiasm was expected, though he
hadn't the remotest idea what she was talking about.

"Of course, I'm going slowly at first, as I want to be sure, and mustn't
be extravagant.  I've been very careful. I've made drawings and even
water colors, for I thought I ought to see how things would look."

He was puzzled and alarmed.  "I don't believe I know which scheme you
mean," he said.  "We discussed so many things on that trip."

"I mean, to change the house and grounds," explained she with bright
enthusiasm.  "They'll not be ugly and stiff and cold looking much
longer."

He started up.  "Courtney, what are you talking about?" he demanded.

"Why, Dick!  Don't you remember?  I told you some of my ideas on gardens
and interiors, and you said----"

"I don't know what careless, unthinking remark I may have dropped,"
interrupted he angrily.  "I certainly never intended to let you tear
things up and make a mess."  He walked up and down.  "What possesses you
anyhow?" he cried.  "Why can't you behave yourself like a woman?  I
never heard of such nonsense!  I want you to stop meddling in things
that are beyond you.  I want you to do your duty as a wife and a mother.
I want you to stop annoying me.  I didn't marry a blue-stocking, an
unsexed thinking woman.  I married a sweet, loving wife."

She sat on the edge of the hammock, perfectly still.  It was as if he
had struck her unconscious so suddenly that she had not yet fallen over.

"What devil keeps nagging at you?" he demanded, pausing in his angry
stride to face her.  "It must be some woman's having a bad influence on
you.  I'll not have it. I'll not have my home upset and my wife spoiled.
Who is it, Courtney?"

She was silent.

"Answer me!"

"It's myself," replied she in a quiet, dumb way.

"It's not yourself.  _You_ are womanly."

"I've got to have something to do--something worth while--or I can't
live."

"Attend to your house and your baby, like all true women."

"It isn't enough," replied she in the same monotonous, stupefied way.
"It isn't enough for me, any more than it'd be for you."

"Nonsense," said he, with the man's feeling that he had thereby answered
her.

She said dazedly: "You didn't mean it.  No, you didn't mean it."

"Mean what?"

"All my plans--my year's work--and such a beautiful house and place I'll
make."  She started up, clasped her hands round his arm.  "O Dick--don't
be narrow--and so distrustful of me.  I know I can do it.  Let me show
you my plans--my sketches----"

He took her hands, and said with gentle, firm earnestness, for he was
ashamed of having lost his temper with a woman: "Courtney, I cannot have
it.  I will not let you disturb the place my grandfather gave his best
thought to."

"But you don't like it, dear," she pleaded.

"I respect my grandfather's memory."

"But on our wedding trip you said----"

"Now, don't argue with me!"

"It's because you think I couldn't do it?"

"I know you couldn't--if you must have the truth."

"Let me show you my sketches and paintings," she pleaded, in a queer
kind of quiet hysteria.  "Let me explain my plans.  I'm sure you'll----"

"Now, Courtney!  I've told you my decision.  I want to hear no more
about it."

She looked up into his face searchingly.  He was like the portrait of
his unbending grandfather that made the library uncomfortable.  Her arms
fell to her sides.  She went to the balcony rail, gazed out into the
black masses of foliage.  Taken completely by surprise, she could not at
once realize any part, much less all, of what those words of his
involved; but she felt in her heart the chill of a great fear--the fear
of what she would think, of what she would know, when she did realize.

His voice interrupted.  "While you're on the unpleasant subject of these
notions of yours," he said, with an attempt at lightness in his
embarrassed tone, "we might as well finish it--get it out of the way
forever.  I want you to stop thinking about the laboratory."

She turned, swift as a swallow.

"I admit I've been at fault--encouraging you to imagine I'd consent.
But I thought you'd forget about it. Apparently you haven't."

A long silence.

"I repeat, I'm sorry I misled you.  It seemed to me a trifling
deception."

She did not speak, did not move.

"When you think it over, you'll see that I'm right--that we're much
happier as we are."

After a long silence, which somehow alarmed him, though he told himself
such a feeling was absurd, she crossed the balcony to the window.  As
she paused there, not looking toward him, the profile of those sweet,
irregular features of hers stood out clearly.  That expression, though
it was quiet, increased his absurd alarm.  "It's getting late," she
said, and her tone was gentle, apologetic. "I think I'll go in."

"Are you angry, Courtney?"

"No," she replied.  "I don't think so."

"Why are you silent?"

"I don't know," she said slowly.  "I seem to have stopped inside."

He went and put his arms round her.  She was passive as a doll.  "Why,
you're quite cold, child!"

"I must go in.  Good night."

"I'll join you in a few minutes."

She shivered.  "No," she said.  "Good night."

He was somewhat disconcerted.  Then he reflected that she could hardly
be expected to give up her whims without a little struggling.  "It shows
how sweet and good she is," thought he, "that she took it so quietly."
And he went to bed in the room across the hall--the room he had been
occupying most of the time since three months before Winchie came.  As
he fell asleep he felt that he had laid "the ghost" and had settled all
his domestic affairs upon the proper basis.  He slept, but she lay awake
the whole night, watching, tearless, beside her dead.




                                  *IV*


Next morning, after her usual breakfast alone, she took Winchie and went
across in the motor boat to her father's. If she had been led blindfold
into that house she would have known, from the instant of the opening of
the door, that she was at home.  Every home has its individual odor.
Hers had a clean, comfortable perfume suggestive of lavender.  She
inhaled it deeply now as she paused a moment in the front hall--inhaled
it with a sudden sense of peace, of sorrow shut out securely.  She left
the baby in the sitting room with her sister Lal, and sought out her
mother in the pleasant old-fashioned back parlor with its outlook on the
hollyhocks and sunflowers of the kitchen garden. Mrs. Benedict, a model
of judicial sternness, as her husband was of judicial gentleness, sat
reading a pious book by the open window.  She glanced up as her daughter
entered, and prepared her cold-looking cheek for the conventional
salute.  But Courtney was in no mood for conventions. She seated herself
on the roll of the horsehair sofa. "Mother," she said, "I want to talk
to you about Richard."

The tone was a forewarning--an ominous forewarning because it was calm.
Mrs. Benedict, for all her resolute unworldliness, had been unable to
live sixty-seven years without there having been forced upon her an
amount of wisdom sufficient to store to bursting the mind of any woman
half her age.  She closed the heavy-looking book in her lap, leaving her
glasses to mark the place.  "I don't think I need tell a daughter of
mine that she cannot discuss her husband with anyone."

Courtney flushed.  "That's just it," replied she.  "He is no longer my
husband."

She was astonished at her mother's composure.  An announcement about the
weather could not have been less excitedly received.  She did not
realize how plainly she was showing, in her changed countenance, in
stern eyes and resolute chin, the evidences a mother could hardly fail
to read--evidences of a mood a sensible mother would not aggravate by
agitation.  "I cannot live with him," she went on.  "I've brought
Winchie and come home."

Her words startled herself.  In this imperturbable, severely sensible
presence they sounded hysterical, theatrical, though she had thought out
the idea they conveyed with what she felt sure was the utmost
deliberation.  Her mother's gray-green eyes looked at her--simply
looked.

"I know you don't believe in divorce, mother.  But he and I have never
been really married.  He's entirely different from the man I loved.  And
he--  What he feels for me isn't love at all.  He doesn't know me--and
doesn't want to know me."

"Has he sent you away?"

"Oh, no.  _He's_ satisfied."

Mrs. Benedict folded her ladylike hands upon the pious book, said coldly
and calmly: "Then you will go back to him."

"Never.  I refuse to live with a man who classes me with the lower
animals.  I----"

Her mother's stern, calm voice interrupted.  "Don't say things you will
have to take back.  You will return because there is no place else for
you."

"Mother!  Do you refuse to take me and Winchie? Oh, you don't
understand.  You--who believe in religion--you couldn't let me----"

"Your father," interrupted her mother in the same cold, placid way, "is
not to be made judge again.  We shall have to give up this house and
retire to the farm.  We have nothing but the farm.  It will take every
cent we can rake and scrape to pay the insurance premiums.  The
insurance premiums must be paid.  The insurance is for your sisters.
They have no husbands."  And with these few bald statements she stopped,
for she knew that under her daughter's youthful idealism there was the
solid rock of common sense, that behind her impetuosity there was her
father's own instinct for justice.

"The farm," said Courtney, stunned.  "The farm."  Twenty miles back in
the wilderness--a living death--burial alive.  "Oh, mother!"  And the
girl flung herself down beside the old woman and clasped her round the
waist.  "You shan't go there!  I'll go back to Richard and we'll see
that you and father and Lal and Ann stay on here."

Her mother was as rigid as the old-fashioned straight-back chair in
which she sat.  The blood burned brightly in the center of each of her
white cheeks, but her voice was distinctly softer as she said: "You will
go back.  But we accept nothing from anybody."

Courtney hung her head.  "Of course not," she said, hurried and
confused.  "I spoke on impulse."

"You'd better sit in a chair," said Mrs. Benedict.  "You are rumpling
your dress."

But Courtney was not hurt.  She had an instinct why her mother wished
her to sit at a distance.  "Very well, mother," said she meekly, and
obeyed.

After a pause Mrs. Benedict spoke: "I was not surprised when you told
me.  I suppose there is not one woman in ten thousand who doesn't at
least once in the first five years of her married life resolve to leave
her husband."

"But it's different with me.  I must have something--and I have
nothing."

"You have your home and Winchie."

"That house--those prim, dressed-up looking grounds--they've always
oppressed me.  And I hate them--now that--"  She checked herself.  How
futile to relate and to rail.  "As for Winchie, he's not enough."

"There will be others presently."

Courtney gave her mother a horrified look.

"You will do your duty as a wife, and the children will be your reward."

Courtney could not discuss this; discussion would be both useless and
painful.  "There may be some women who could be content with looking
after a house and the wants of children," said she.  "But I'm not one of
them, and I never saw or heard of a worth-while woman who was. How am I
to spend the time?  I'm like you--I don't care for running about doing
inane things.  I can't just read and read, with no purpose, no sympathy.
It seems to me I could do almost anything with love--almost nothing
without it....  Brought up and educated like a man, and then condemned
to the old-fashioned life for women--a life no man would endure!"

Her mother was looking out through the window, a strange expression
about her stern mouth--the expression of one who, old and in a far, cold
land, thinks of home and youth when the sun warmed the blood and the
heart.

"What shall I do if I go back?" repeated Courtney. "But why ask that?
I've simply got to go back.  As you say, there's no place else for me."
A flush of shame overspread her cheeks.  "Oh, it's so degrading!"

"You forget Winchie," said her mother, and her tone was gentle.

"No, I thought of that excuse.  But I was ashamed to speak it.  It
seemed like hypocrisy.  Of course, I've got to go back for his sake.
But if I hadn't him I'd go back just the same.  Mother, you ought to
have had me educated more or else less.  If I knew less I could be
content with the sort of life women used to think was the summit of
earthly bliss.  If I knew more I could make my own life. I could be
independent.  I begin to understand why women are restless nowadays.
We're neither the one thing nor the other."

Up to a certain point Mrs. Benedict could understand her daughter, could
sympathize.  She could even have supplemented Courtney's forebodings as
to the future with drearier actualities of experience.  But beyond that
point the two women were hopelessly apart.  "You are warring with God,"
she rebuked.  "He has ordained woman's position."  And to her mind that
settled everything.

"It isn't God," replied Courtney.  "It's just ignorance."

"It is God," declared her mother, in the fanatic tone that told Courtney
her mind was closed.

The mother and daughter belonged to two different generations--the two
that are perhaps further apart than any two in all human history.
Courtney saw how far apart she and her mother were, thought she
understood why her mother could sympathize with her restlessness in
woman's ancient bondage, but could only say "sacrilege" when the younger
and better educated woman went on from vague restlessness to open
revolt.

"God has seen fit to make the lot of woman hard," said the mother.

"If that is God," cried the daughter, "then the less said about Him the
better."

"Courtney, your sinful heart will bring you to grief."

"Is it a sin to think?"

"I sometimes believe it is--for a woman," replied the mother, with the
kind of bitter irony into which the most reverent devotee is sometimes
goaded by the whimsical cruelties of his deity.

Courtney had long since learned to be unargumentative before her
mother's somber and savage religion, so logical yet so inhuman.  She had
dimly felt that if she ever investigated religion, the misery of the
world would compel her to choose between believing in her mother's devil
god and believing nothing.  So she left religion aside in her scheme of
life, like so many of the men and women of her generation.

"I ought to have had more education or less," she repeated.  "I ought to
have had more, for it wouldn't have been fair to give me less than the
rest of the girls have."

She fancied it was her formal education of the college that had made her
think and feel as she did.  In fact, that had little, perhaps nothing,
to do with it; for colleges, except the as yet few scientific
schools--stupefy or stunt more minds than they stimulate.  She was
simply a child of her own generation, and the forces that were stirring
her to restlessness were part of its universal atmosphere--the
atmosphere all who live in it must breathe, the "spirit of the time"
that makes the very yokel with his eyes upon the clod see things in it
his yokel father never saw.

She knew her mother would gladly help her, but she realized she might as
hopefully appeal to Winchie.  All her mother could say would be: "Yes,
it is sad.  But the only thing to do is to return and pretend to be the
old-fashioned wife, and perhaps custom will make the harness cease to
gall."  Well, perhaps her mother was right; perhaps there was no
solution, no self-respecting hopeful solution.  Certainly she could not
support herself, except in some menial and meager way that would more
surely kill all that was aspiring in her than would submission to the
lot which universal custom made abject only in theory.  She could not
support herself--and there was Winchie, too. Winchie had his
rights--rights to the advantages his father's position and fortune gave.
Dick had made it clear that he did not and would not have the kind of
love, the kind of relationship, she believed in.  She must go on his
terms or not at all.

She ended the long silence, during which her mother sat motionless in an
attitude of patient waiting for the inevitable.  "I will go," she said.
"And I will try to be to him the kind of wife he wants."

Mrs. Benedict looked at her daughter; there were tears of pride in her
eyes.  "That is right," she said, and they talked of it no more.

But on the way back in the motor boat, and for the rest of that day, and
for a good part of many a day and many a night thereafter, Courtney
Vaughan's mind was stormily busy.  It teemed with the thoughts that in
this age of the break-up of the old-fashioned institution of the family
force themselves early or late upon every woman endowed with the
intelligence to have, or to dream of, self-respect.


Thenceforth Dick Vaughan, if he had thought about it at all, would have
congratulated himself on his wise and thorough adjustment of his
threatened domestic affairs.  But he gave no more thought to it than
does the next human being.  We do not annoy ourselves with what is going
on in the heads of those around us.  We look only at results.  And
usually this plan works well; for, no matter what the average human
being may have in mind, the habit of a routine of action ultimately
determines his or her real self.  Once in a while, however,
circumstances interfere, encourage the latent revolt against action's
routine apparently so placidly pursued.  But this is rare.

The weeks, the months went by; and Courtney seemed, and thought herself,
a typical "settled" wife and mother. That is, as "settled" as an
intelligent, energetic, and young woman, restless in mind and body,
could be.  She did not attempt to come to a definite verbal
understanding with him.  What would be the use?  There was nothing to
change except herself.  There was nothing to explain. She understood
him.  He did not understand her, did not wish to, could not on account
of his prejudices, however carefully she might explain.  "No," thought
she, "the only thing is for me to accept my position as woman and adapt
myself to it, since I haven't the right, or the courage, or the whatever
it is I lack, to do as I'd like."  The only outward difference in their
relations was that she rarely talked with him, and when he was about,
fell into his habit of abstraction.

That winter he became extremely irregular about coming to dinner, and as
the days lengthened with the spring he often worked on through supper
time also.  In late May or early June he began to note that when he did
come up to the house for supper, his wife was sometimes there and
sometimes not.  Gradually her absence made an impression on him, and her
always answering his inquiry with, "I was over at the club."  As that
meant the Outing Club, established and supported and frequented by the
young people of Wenona and its suburbs, he was entirely satisfied.
This, until about midsummer.  One evening, when she returned in the dusk
from supper at the club, she found him seated on the bench at the
landing stage, smoking moodily.  He was scantily civil to Shirley
Drummond, who had brought her in the club launch.  When Shirley was well
on the way back to the north shore, Courtney, who had seated herself
beside her husband, spoke of the heat and unwound the chiffon scarf
about her bare neck and shoulders.  Dick glanced round.  In some moods
he would not have seen at all.  In other moods those slender shoulders,
that graceful throat, and the small head with its lightly borne masses
of auburn hair would have appealed to his pride and joy of possession.
But things had gone wrong at "the shop," and he was in the mood that
could readily either turn him to her for the consolation of a "lighter
hour" or set him off in a rage.  He frowned upon the exposed shoulders.

"Where did you get that dress?" he demanded.

She heard simply the question.  Her thoughts were on the events of the
evening at the club.  "Had it made here," said she, unconscious of his
mood.  "It's something like one I saw in a fashion picture from Paris.
Like it?"

To her amazement he replied angrily: "I do not.  I've never seen a dress
I disapproved of so thoroughly.  Don't wear it again, and please be
careful how you adopt a fashion you get that way.  French fashions are
set by a class of women I couldn't speak to you about.  Respectable
women have to alter them greatly."

"Why, what's the matter with the dress?" exclaimed she.  "Everyone
admired it at the club."

"It isn't decent," replied he.  "I know you are so innocent that you
don't think of those things.  But it's my duty to protect you.  I won't
have men commenting on my wife's person."

"But, Dick," protested she, "this isn't a low-cut dress. It's higher
than those I usually wear.  It has bands across the shoulders and a real
back----"

"Then change all your dresses.  You must not make yourself conspicuous."

"Conspicuous!  The other women wear much lower-cut dresses than I do."

"I know about such things," said he peremptorily. "I don't believe in
low-neck dresses anyhow.  What business has a good woman flaunting her
charms--rousing in other men thoughts she ought to rouse in her husband
only?"

"Don't you think it's all a matter of custom?" she said persuasively.
She was not convinced, or even shaken.  But she admired the shrewdness
of his argument.  The reason she had never grown to dislike him was that
even in his prejudices he was always plausible, and not in his narrowest
narrowness was he ever petty.  "Now really, Dick, if that were carried
out logically, a woman'd have to cover her face and not speak, for often
it's a woman's voice that charms a man"--with a little laugh--"and once
in a long while what she says."

"I would carry it out logically," replied he promptly, "if I had my way.
That reminds me.  You're away from home very often these days, I notice.
You're over at the club a great deal."

"The weather's been so fine, everybody goes."

"I've no objection to your going occasionally.  But after all the place
for a good woman is at home."

She thought so too, as a general principle; home undoubtedly was the
place for a good woman, or any sort of woman, or for a man; that was to
her mind the meaning of home--the most attractive, the most magnetic
spot on earth.  However, the Vaughan place was not "home."  She could
not discuss this with him, so she simply answered, "But I get
bored--here alone--and with nothing to do.  And nobody'll come at this
time of year, with something on at the club every day and evening."

"You don't even stay home to meals."

"Neither do you."

"But I haven't Winchie to look after."

"He plays with the other children at the kindergarten. And Miss
Brockholst can keep a child amused as I couldn't. When I stay out to
supper I see that Nanny or Lizzie brings him home and puts him to bed.
And I'm not out to supper often."

"I don't like it," said Dick imperiously.

"You ought to come with me," rejoined she.  "But you never will."

"I've no time for foolishness.  And I'm sure you haven't either."

"What ought I to do with myself?"

"What other good women do.  Our mothers didn't hang about clubs."

"No.  But these aren't pioneer times.  Things are entirely different
nowadays.  That was why--"  She did not finish.  She did not wish to
remind him how he had refused to let her either share his life or make a
life of her own.  She refrained because the subject might be unpleasant
to him.  It was no longer unpleasant to her; she now had not the least
desire to share his life, was in a way content to drift aimlessly along
with the rest of the aimless women.

"Yes, many of the women are different nowadays," said he.  "The more
reason for my wife's conducting herself as a woman should."

She flushed with sudden anger.  "Why can't you accept a woman as a human
being?" exclaimed she.  "Oh, you men--tempting--compelling--us to be
hypocrites--and making our natural impulses rot into vices because they
have to be hid away in the dark."

"We will not quarrel," said he, in the calm superior tone he always took
when their talk touched on the two sexes.  "I simply say I will not
tolerate my wife's being a club lounger."

To have answered would have been to say what must precipitate a furious
and futile quarrel.  She kept silent, with less effort than many women
would have to make in the circumstances.  She had had the conventional
feminine training in self-suppression, that so often gives women the
seeming of duplicity and only too often imperceptibly leads them into
forming the habit of duplicity.  She had also had special training in
self-concealment through having been brought up austerely.  She kept
silent, and made up her mind to obey.  She had heard much talk among the
women at the club about the "rights of a wife"; but it had not convinced
her.  She could not see that she, or any other of the women married as
was she, contributed to the family anything that entitled her to oppose
the husband's will as to how it should be conducted.  And she would have
scorned to get by cajolery what she could not have got honestly.  She
was thus the good wife, not through fear of him, for she was not a
coward and he was not the sort of small tyrant that makes the women and
the children tremble; nor was it because she was faithful to her
marriage vows, for she never thought of them.  Her submissiveness was
entirely due to the agreement she had tacitly signed the day she went
back to him, after the talk with her mother.  In return for shelter and
support she would be, so far as she could, the kind of wife he wanted.


She kept away from the club, stayed at home; and soon the telephone bell
was ringing, and pleading voices were giving the flattering proof that
in her abrupt divorce from the social life of the town the sense of loss
was by no means altogether on her side.  And presently over came Sarah
Carpenter escorted by her big handsome brother, Shirley Drummond, "as a
committee of two," so Sarah put it, "to investigate and report on your
cruel and inhuman treatment of us."  It was dull, frightfully dull, at
the club house, she went on to explain.  They did nothing but sit round
and try to guess why Courtney Vaughan had dropped them.  "And have you
forgotten the flower show you were planning? and the play you were going
to organize? and the Venetian fete?"

"Oh, that was just talk," replied Courtney.  "It's far too hot.  I'm
resting, and looking after my boy.  I'll be over some afternoon soon."

Sarah pleaded and coaxed.  Shirley took no part, but sat on the veranda
rail, his long legs swinging, his eyes on the interior of the straw hat
he was turning round and round between his hands.  When Sarah realized
that there was unalterable resolution under Courtney's light and gay
laughing off of her entreaties, she bade Shirley wait there for her and
went to call on Molly Donaldson.  Courtney looked admiringly after
Sarah's long willowy figure and striking costume--sunshade and hat,
dress and stockings and ties, all of various cool, harmonious shades of
red.

"Your sister always was pretty," said Courtney.  "But since she's
married it seems to me she gets prettier all the time."

"Marriage does bring out those women that don't go to pieces," said he.
"I guess it's because they get the courage to be more like themselves.
Girls are such hypocrites--always posing.  You were the only one I ever
liked.  You weren't a hypocrite.  Where you didn't dare be yourself you
simply kept quiet."

"I like your impudence--attacking women for being what you men compel."

"Maybe so," said he absently.  "But I didn't come over here in the hot
sun to talk generalities.  Look here, Courtney, there's something I've
got to say to you."  His good-humored commonplace face was even redder
than the heat and his bulk--for he wasn't a thin man--warranted.  His
voice was low and confused, yet suggested a man talking against a mob
and determined to be heard.  "I've got to tell you that I care for
you--and have ever since we used to walk from high school
together--whenever some other fellow didn't slip in ahead of me."

Courtney, puzzled, rapidly reviewed her conduct toward Shirley the past
two months--since he came home from Harvard Law School.  She recalled
nothing that could have given him encouragement to this speech.  "I
should hope you did like me," she said carelessly.  "Of course, we're
good friends, as always."  She rose.  "Let's go over to Donaldson's."
Her tone and manner contained the subtle warning to desist that reaches
through the thickest skin into the dullest brain.

"You know what I mean," said Shirley doggedly. "Now listen to me while I
make a proposition.  You're a sensible, up-to-date woman, and this is
the twentieth century, not the dark ages.  I'm not as clever as some,
but neither am I as much the muttonhead as maybe you think.  Anyhow, I
appreciate you."

"Drop it," said Courtney.

"I want you to get a divorce and marry me."

He spoke as tranquilly as if they were at a dance and he were asking her
for the next two-step.  She stared. "Well, I never did!" she exclaimed.

"I see you're surprised," said he.  "I've thought about it so much that
I've got used to it."

"This is something new--a woman getting proposals after she's married,
just as if she wasn't."  She was laughing.

"Why not?" retorted he, unruffled.  "Nobody looks on marriage as the
finish any more.  I don't think you love me--not for a minute.  You've
got better brains than I have--a lot better, for I'll admit I'm pretty
slow.  But you've tried brains and you see they don't amount to much
when it comes down to solid living.  You don't love me now.  But,
Courtney, if you'll marry me, I'll guarantee to treat you and the
youngster so that you'll simply _have_ to love me."

She was slowly recovering from her utter amazement, when he spoke those
last words in his simple, honest way with his love in his voice, in his
eyes--love that makes bright the dullest face, quickens into bloom the
barrenest fancy, puts sweet music in the most tedious voice.  Her words
of rebuke dropped back unsaid, her throat choked up and tears welled
into her eyes.  While she was still trying to control this sudden
treachery of her hungry heart, he went on: "I was away to college when I
heard you were engaged.  I cut exams, and everything and rustled out
here.  But I saw you were dead in love.  It nearly knocked me out.  Then
it occurred to me that marrying's only a trial go and that in a few
years I might get you and you'd be all the better for the experience."

What he said did not shock her.  But she was shocked that she was not
shocked.  Still, it isn't easy to meet a wholly new form of attack; and
less easy is it to be stiff and stern with a person one has known always
and liked always--a person one knows to be through and through sincere
and profoundly respectful.  "Shirley," said she, "you mean well and you
are slow--so, you don't realize that what you've said is perfectly
outrageous."

"Why?" demanded he.  "Is it an insult to a woman to tell her you love
her?  Is it a crime to let her know that, if she isn't suited, there's
some one waiting to try to help her get suited?  Where's the outrage?"

"I don't know just where," admitted she.  "But I feel that it is an
outrage--that you've taken advantage of our friendship."

"On the contrary, I've shown I _am_ your friend; ready to stand by you.
I haven't laid a finger on you, and, so help me God, Courtney, I
couldn't try.  I'm that old fogey, at least.  And I haven't tried to
wheedle or win you--have I?  I just made a plain statement that if you
want me, I'm waiting--and eager.  I've seen how things are with you----"

"You've seen nothing of the kind!"  Her pride and her loyalty were in
arms now.

He looked at her with eyes that were as honest as an open sky.  "You
don't love your husband, nor he you," he said.  "If you did, you'd not
see as little of each other as you do."

"Shirley, it's cowardly to say those things," she began angrily.

"Oh, I'd say 'em to him, if it wasn't that I'm afraid you'd have to
suffer for it.  You needn't get mad.  I've been so damn miserable this
past week, not seeing you, that I don't care what happens to me.  I know
why you don't come over any more.  He's shut you up here.  I saw it in
his face that night."

"It was about time he stopped me, I see," said she quickly.  "Evidently
he understood better than I did.  But you mustn't go away thinking I'm
obeying a jailer.  Do you suppose I'd stay here at the request of a man
unless I cared for him?"

"Certainly," replied he.  "A right sort woman'll put up with most
anything to avoid a row.  You needn't try to fool me, Courtney.  I
know--everyone knows--the truth."

"The truth!" cried Courtney.  "How dare you sit there insulting me!"

"Now, Courtney!" begged he.

"Go join your sister and take her back without coming here."

She felt she ought to leave him; but her hungry heart would not let her
go.  She lingered, looking at him angrily, watching the utter love in
his countenance--and enjoying it.  He slowly dropped from the veranda
rail and faced her.  His look was that same mingling of gentle and
fierce qualities that makes a bulldog's face fascinating.  "If I've said
anything I shouldn't, I beg your pardon," said he.  "But I stick to my
proposition.  You can take it or leave it--now, or next year--or
whenever you like.  It's you or nobody for me."  He put out his hand.

She clasped her hands behind her.  But she had to lower her head that he
might not see--"and misunderstand"--her swimming eyes, her trembling
lip.

"Please shake hands," he begged.

She shook her head.

"That hurts," said he shakily, and she turned hastily away.  "But," he
added, "I'm used to hurts."

He lingered, embarrassed.  At length, with a huge sigh, he descended
from the veranda and plodded across the lawn toward the hedge.  She
darted upstairs and shut herself in her room and cried, lying on the bed
face down.  She felt guilty; would not the right sort of woman have been
able to meet such talk from a man, even a Shirley Drummond, with
effective fiery resentment?  But she knew it was not her guilt that she
was weeping for.  No, her tears were flowing from the wounds in her
heart--the wounds she had thought healed.  She had not the faintest
feeling in the least akin to love for Shirley Drummond.  She never could
love him.  She had always avoided him as far as her instinct against
hurting people's feelings permitted.  His grotesque proposal, in itself,
appealed only to her sense of humor.  But at the mere sound of loving
words, words of considerate tenderness, how her whole being vibrated!
It terrified her, this heart of hers suddenly and fiercely insurgent.


The next evening after supper she interrupted Dick in the library.
"Richard," she said gravely, "I want you to come upstairs with me a few
minutes."

"Certainly," said he.  "Directly."  And he worked on--and would have
continued to work until bedtime had she not insisted.

"No.  Right away, please."

He glanced up.  Her eyes prevented him from returning to his
calculations.  "All right," said he.

Her sitting room was changed into a painting and drawing exhibition.  On
the walls, on tables, on sofas and chairs, and leaning against the
baseboard were pictures and plans of interiors and of gardens, many in
colors, more in black and white, most of all in ground-plan drawings.

"What's this?" said he.

"You were right about my going to the club too much," replied she.  "I
shall stay at home more.  But I _must_ have something to occupy me.
These are my plans for making over the house and grounds.  Please don't
try to stop me. I am going to explain it all to you, and I ask you to be
considerate and polite enough to listen."

Her manner was compelling; the exhibit was interesting. And he looked
and listened as she talked, rapidly, intensely, yet clearly and calmly,
describing the whole scheme in minutest detail, not forgetting expense
which she demonstrated would be small.  He asked several
questions--enough to show that he was giving his attention. When she
finished she was trembling all over.  He continued to inspect the water
colors that showed how things would look when the changes had been made.
After a while he smiled and nodded at her.  "Very clever," he said.
"Really, I had no idea you could do anything like this."

Her mouth and throat were dry; her eyes gleamed. She was giving out the
force that flows from a soul in desperate earnest--the force that sweeps
away any opposition not already aggressive, before it has a chance to
gather. "I may try it?" she asked.

"That's another matter," reflected he aloud.  "I ought to say no, for
I'm sure you'll be disappointed and your mistakes'll have to be covered
up."  Now that he was reminded of it he was ashamed of the curt
ill-humored way he had issued his orders about her going to the club.
"But you can only learn by trying.  So, I've no objections to your
making a start."  He laid his hands on her shoulders.  "A little at a
time--remember!" he cautioned.  "A _very_ little."

With that unconsciousness of her being intelligent enough to see his
thoughts in his expression--an unconsciousness to which she had long
since got used, but never hardened--he was showing that he wished to
refuse her, but that, being taken by surprise, he in his kindness of
heart could not frame a pretext.  His manner took from her all desire or
ability to thank him.  "I'll be careful," said she.

The smile in his eyes was like a parent's at a precocious child.  He
kissed her, patted her cheek, went back to his work.  He had read the
anthropologies, all written by men.  Anthropology being out of his line,
he accepted as exact science the prejudice and baseless assertion and
misleading "statistics" there set down as "laws."  Nature had made man
active, woman passive; thus, action in woman was contrary to nature, was
inevitably abortive and whimsical, was never, except by rare accident,
valuable.  "She's clever," thought he, by way of finis to the subject.
"But she'll soon tire of this thing and drop it.  Well, I suppose a few
more years'll wash away the smatter she got at college, and this
restlessness of hers will yield to nature, and she'll be content and
happy in her womanhood.  A few more children would have an excellent
effect.  She's suffering from the storing up of the energy that ought to
have outlet in childbearing.  As grandfather often said, it's a dreadful
mistake, educating women beyond their sphere. But it hasn't done the
dear child any permanent harm. She's far too womanly."




                                  *V*


By the time Winchie was four years old--and in looks and health, in
truthfulness and self-reliance a credit to her--she had about completed
the transformation of house and grounds.  The Vaughan place was no
longer an example of those distressing attempts to divorce beauty from
its supreme quality, use, that are the delight of the unfortunates whose
esthetic faculty has been paralyzed by the mediaeval monastic education
still blighting the modern world.  It was, throughout, beauty applied to
use, use achieved in beauty.  She had no theory in doing this; she
followed the leadings of a courageous and unspoiled taste which was
thoroughly practical, as practical as that of the artists of the age of
Pericles, a taste which abhorred the bizarre and the blatant.  The
results would not have pleased Colonel Achilles; they would not have
stirred the enthusiasm of anyone who has been enslaved by false
education to admire only what has been approved by tradition.  But charm
no one could have denied.  Winter and summer the house, livable and
restful in every corner, bloomed within--for over no other part of
nature is man's dominion so complete as over the plant kingdom.  From
early spring through the last warm days of autumn the grounds were
delightful to behold; it was as if summer were living there freely and
at ease, with no restraint upon her except keeping her clear of the
restraint of her own profuse and careless litter.  In winter the lawns
and clumps and hedges were by no means dead or filled only with
evergreen's mortuary suggestions; there are many plants that bloom with
bright berries and leaves in the midst of snow and ice, and Courtney
knew about them. Winter indoors seemed a millennium in which winter and
summer lived amicably together.  There were snows and icy storms
without, huge open fires within; the windows were gay with blossoming
plants, and from a conservatory she built and stocked at surprisingly
small cost there came cut flowers for vases and bowls as well as plants
that replaced those which had done service and needed rest. Courtney was
one of those for whom things grow; her own vivid life seemed to radiate
throughout her surroundings and infect all things with the passion to
live vividly.  With the flowers, as with Winchie, she was patient,
intelligent, understanding--never expecting too much, always encouraging
to the least disposition to develop.

All this wonder of transformation was not wrought in a day, nor by
dreaming.  It came as the result of tireless and incessant labor of
brain and hand.  She had dreamed her dream; she was determined that it
should be realized. Failure did not daunt her; it taught her.  Nor was
she halted by her sense, rather than experience, of a latent reluctance
in Richard about giving her money he wanted for the laboratory; for, as
his work there expanded, its expenses grew rapidly heavier.  She did not
ask him for the money; she did not let him know she needed it; she got
along without it.  In such work as she was doing it takes a vast deal of
thought, of planning and contriving, to take the place of money.  She
did that necessary thinking.  When she could get a little money, she
spent it to amazing advantage; when she could not, she went on without
it.  Some of her most satisfying results came through the work made
necessary by lack of money.  Very powerful, too, was the influence of
this upon her character--in developing self-reliance and self-respect
which come only through successful independent action.

Now, after nearly three years of days of toil that was also play, since
she loved it, she saw, but a short distance ahead, a time when she would
have little to do beyond taking care that Jimmie and Bill kept the
grounds up, and that Nanny and Mazie and Lizzie did their work properly
in the house.  There would be minor changes, new features; but the task
as a task was almost done.  And, in spite of Nanny's opposition, she had
put the household on a systematic basis, so that with a little daily
attention every part of the routine went smoothly, each servant doing
his or her share of the work in the same way always and at the same
time.  She was about to have many hours each day liberated--and this, in
a quiet place, where time refuses to take wings, but insists upon being
definitely employed every moment of it.

What should she do next?  She had grown through her work.  She had
educated her originality and her instinctive good taste, had educated
them so intelligently that originality had not lost its courage nor good
taste its breadth. It had not "settled" her to make a home, as it
"settles" a human or lower animal that acts largely from instinct and
example and that conceives a home to be chiefly a place to eat and
sleep.  On the contrary, it had unsettled her the more.  Her character
had not changed.  Character never does change; it simply develops,
responding to its environment like any other growing thing.  Her
character had developed.

What next?  What should she do to occupy hand and brain, now grown far
more skillful?  What should she do with heart?  It was now grown far
bolder in its dreams and longings; and from time to time it was giving
ever more imperious notice that not much longer would it be content with
solicitude about a child and makeshift interest in interior decoration
and landscape gardening, but would demand its right to the fullness of
experience.  She temporized with these ominous threatenings.  She hoped
there would be more children--for children would compel her.  From
Richard, the absorbed, the well pleased with his "settled, womanly
wife," she expected nothing--and wished nothing.  The routine of
matrimony had become as unconscious as breathing or winking.  Her sense
of moral obligation to him was also automatic; she felt its restraint
not definitely as the wife of a certain Richard Vaughan, but generally
as a woman of the married estate. She knew little about him beyond what
he thought of her, of marriage--and that knowledge killed all further
interest in him.  He knew nothing whatever about her beyond the
surface--her physical charm, enhanced by good taste in dress.  The
comfort of his home and its order, the surprising success of her
"tinkerings" with house and grounds made small impression upon him.  The
changes had come about gradually; and he was absorbed at the Smoke
House.  Before the next change was made he had got used to the one
preceding, and had come to regard it as something that had always
existed.  And she was not one of those who see to it that they get full
credit by preceding, accompanying, and following every act with blast of
trumpets.  She did things because she liked to do them, just as she
learned because she liked to know.  She worked without friction or
bluster.  Also, having dismissed him from her inner, her real life, as
he had dismissed her from his, it never occurred to her to talk to him
about herself--and her work was herself.

What next?  She often asked the question as she paused to look about her
and saw so short a distance ahead the end of her task.  But she was not
troubled because she could not answer the question.  She waited with a
certain confident tranquillity until an answer should be imperative.
Meanwhile--  One look at her was enough to convince that her lot had
been better than the lot of the gay, discontented young married women of
Wenona society who pitied her because of her solitude.  They did not
realize that not only were they unhappy, but also were without the
capacity to enjoy happiness if it should offer, had lost the capacity as
utterly as a deaf man the capacity to enjoy music.  One may abuse
intellect or heart with impunity no more than body.  Transgression and
punishment are simply cause and effect.  There were times when Courtney
wished she could be gayer; but at least she was never bored, never did
the things that do not amuse in the doing, and have an aftermath of
disgust.  She had an intense, ever intenser desire to live life to its
uttermost limits of interest and joy; but that did not seem to her to
mean changing her clothes many times a day, rushing from house to house,
from party to party, gossiping, eating indigestible sauces and desserts,
and playing bridge. She knew what she did not want.  She did not know
what she wanted--did not dare inquire.  She feared life was a good deal
of a cheat--not altogether a cheat, not by any means--but still a raiser
of longings it had no way to satisfy, of expectations it had no way to
fulfill.

She fancied herself little changed since her marriage. And she was
hardly changed at all physically.  But in mind she was a woman full
grown--a rarity indeed in our civilization which tends to make
odalisques and parasites out of the women it does not crush under toil.
She was ready for a strong part in life, should opportunity offer.
Meanwhile, she was living her placid routine with the originality and
interest with which intelligence can invest the humblest, the most usual
acts.

She wrote in her commonplace book this sentence:

"Love is a tune we whistle in the dark of our aloneness to keep up our
courage."


In Winchie's fourth year, in the spring, Judge Benedict had an illness
so severe that Courtney went to the farm, taking Winchie with her to
stay until the crisis passed.  It was nearly three weeks before decision
for life was rendered and she could return home.

She had been gone during what ought to have been her busiest season.
She rather expected to find the place in some confusion.  Instead, so
far advanced toward completion were her plans, and so thoroughly had she
trained Jimmie and his son Bill and the house servants, everything was
well under way.  All her instructions, both those given before she left
and those written to Jimmie from her father's--had been carried out
exactly.  They had worked as hard as if she had been there, had done it
because they loved her--for only love can arouse and inspire the
sluggish energies of those who serve.  The lawns were trim and freshly
green, the walks were covered with new tan-bark; and its red brown
harmonized with the colors of lawn and trees as its odor harmonized with
the odors from the grass and the foliage, from the brilliant flowers in
great beds at either side of the house.  All the windows were gay with
boxes of blooming plants.  Railings of verandas and balconies were
draped with mats of budding creepers. The gardens--the beds in the lawns
and along the verandas--the edges of walks and drives--the thickets and
trellises--all were blossoming and odorous.  Lovely contrasts of light
and shade, delicious perfumes, birds flashing to and fro, singing in the
trees and bushes--the Vaughan place illustrated what Pope meant when he
called landscape gardening nature plus a soul.  The soul that had given
form to nature's color and perfume was Courtney's.

As the carriage drove down the deeply shaded main drive from highway to
drive-front porch, she gazed round with a creator's pride and joy and
love.  She had two children--Winchie and this lovely place.  All the
servants gathered to welcome her--all except old Nanny, who had never
forgiven and who resented the changes as sacrilege.  They watched
eagerly for signs of approval.  Her expression, as she looked at what
they had done, then at them, the unsteady voice in which she said
"Beautiful--beautiful" went straight to their hearts.  Within the house,
everywhere open wide to June's enchantment, there was evidence of the
same creative impulse--order without stiffness, art without any trace of
art's labor.

Winchie would go straightway to look at his rabbits; she went upstairs
alone to bathe and change after the dusty journey, telling Lizzie to
bring him as soon as he had satisfied himself that his rabbits were all
right.  The door of the bedroom immediately across the hall from hers
stood open, and with the thorough housekeeper's instinct she glanced in.
It was the room Dick usually occupied. Instead of Dick's belongings she
saw, spread about, toilet articles and clothing strange to her.  She
entered.  On the bureau she instantly noted a pair of tasteful silver
and ebony brushes; the monogram was "B.G."  She opened a drawer;
neckties, more attractive than any she had ever seen, filled two
compartments to overflowing with their patterned silks and linens.  In
the third compartment several dozen line handkerchiefs; the monogram on
them was again "B.G."

She opened the nearest closet.  On forms hung perhaps a dozen coats; she
recognized the cut and materials as foreign.  Beneath was a long row of
boots, shoes, pumps, slippers, all of the kind a woman of taste at once
knows and appreciates.  As she was closing the door there swung out from
the hook high up a suit of beautiful striped linen pajamas monogramed in
gray and faintly perfumed with lavendar.  She went on into the adjoining
front room--the room Dick had used as a study.  Obviously, he no longer
used it.  The books of fiction and poetry--the big silver cigarette
box--the gaudily trimmed silk dressing gown flung carelessly on a
chair--none of these belonged to him or suggested his studious and
rather Spartan temperament.

In the hall she saw Lizzie just come with Winchie. "Who's in these
rooms?" asked she.

"Mr. Gallatin," replied Lizzie.  "Mr. Vaughan put him in here and moved
down to the suite at the Smoke House."

Lizzie's tone indicated that she was assuming Courtney knew all about
Mr. Gallatin.  That tone put her on guard. "When did he come?" asked
she, feeling her way.

"Two weeks ago yesterday.  He's very nice.  He's as particular as you
about his things, but it's a pleasure to look after them."

Had Richard forgotten to tell her he expected this Mr. Gallatin?  Or had
she, fallen long since into his absent-minded habit, failed to hear as
he told her?  Was it a chance visit from some college or scientific
acquaintance? The character of the stranger's installation--the quantity
of clothing--did not speak for a brief chance visit.  The quality of the
clothing, the taste, the care, the worldly interest and knowledge it
suggested, were all against the idea of "B.G.'s" being a devotee of
science.  At least, if there were such scientists, this was the first
she had known of it.  After she had changed for the evening, and had
given Winchie his supper and sent him to bed, she went into the
stranger's quarters again.  These personal belongings of his attracted
her; they so clearly revealed taste and refinement, a refinement unusual
in a man; they so strongly hinted a personality more in sympathy with
her own passionate joy in life than with Richard's intellectual
abstractions.  In the early days of their married life Richard had been
rather particular about himself; but he had got more and more
indifferent, no longer shaved every day, was at times distinctly
slovenly.  "B.G. is a bachelor," thought she.  "Married men--except
those that are at heart bachelors--soon lose this sort of gloss."
Usually she had not the faintest interest in anything concerning
Richard.  But this man interested her.

She was in the sitting room downstairs, playing and singing in an
undertone when Richard came.  "Hello," said he.  And he kissed the cheek
she turned to a reachable angle.  His manner was as casual as hers.  It
was their habitual manner, and long had been.  The difference between
his habit and hers was that his yielded from time to time to the
intermittent gusts of desire, while hers remained always tranquilly
cool.  "Your father's quite all right again?" was his careless first
question.

"I hope so.  I think so."

He was not merely looking at her now, he was seeing her.  His eyes
lighted up and into his voice came the wooing note.  "Glad you've not
dropped into my sloppy ways," said he.  He was admiring her pale-green
chiffon dress that left the slender column of her throat bare and her
forearms, but almost concealed her shoulders.  "Gallatin won't think
we're altogether barbarians here.  He dresses for supper.  He's at it
now."

His eyes showed that he was not thinking at all of Gallatin, but of
her--thoughts which did not leave her entirely indifferent, but gave her
an unwonted sense of vague distaste, after her long absence and complete
freedom. As he moved toward her she said: "There's time for you to
dress.  And you need a shave badly.  Is he from the East?"

"From Philadelphia by way of Pittsburg.  He's been doing a little
chemistry in his amateurish way in the mills there.  I'd not have him
about if I didn't need his money."

Dick was coming on toward her again.  "The bell will ring in ten
minutes," she reminded him.  Perhaps through perverseness, the impulse
to evade was a little stronger.

But he came, put his arms round her, kissed her again, this time with
undivided attention.  She lost the impulse to evade, submitted, smiled
amicably, and, to extricate herself, rose.  The lines of her dress
brought out the perfection of her small, slim figure; its color
harmonized with her deep-sea eyes and with the delicate bronze of her
skin. "What a beauty you are!" he exclaimed.  "No wonder I'm so proud of
you."

Usually she was indifferent, without being conscious of it; this evening
of her return from freedom to married life she felt her indifference.
She said coldly, "If you're going to dress----"

"A shave'll be enough," protested Dick.  "Your finery'll more than make
up for my absence of it.  Bachelors like Gallatin have to sleek
themselves up.  They've still got their brides to win."

"You'll be late."

"I want you to be extra civil to Gallatin.  He's likely to get bored in
this quiet place after a few months.  He's rather gay, I imagine.  At
least he used to be.  And I don't want him to pull out."

"After a few months," repeated Courtney, interested. "Why, how long is
he to stay?"

"A year or so--perhaps longer."

"Here in the house!"

"I can't put him down at the laboratory, so near my secrets.  I'm not
going to let him in on everything.  That's part of our bargain.  We're
partners, you understand."

"Here in the house!" exclaimed Courtney again.  The very idea of an
outsider as spectator at what was going on there made her acutely
conscious of it, all in an instant.

"Oh, you'll like him--at least, you must for my sake. He doesn't amount
to much, but he's agreeable--well mannered--good family--entertaining in
a light way."

"There goes the bell."

Dick rushed away to shave.  He had been gone but a few moments when
Courtney was roused from her agitated reverie by the sense of some one
in the room.  Near the threshold stood the newcomer, who was to be a
factor in her intimate life, a spectator of it, whether she willed or
no, for "a year or so--perhaps longer."  He was a blond young man, fair
and smooth of skin, his hair almost golden. He certainly was not
handsome; only his coloring and a pair of frank gray eyes saved him from
downright homeliness. As their eyes met, his heavy, conventional face
was suddenly transformed by as charming a smile as she had ever seen.
He was of about the medium height, his figure neither powerful nor weak.
He wore a dinner suit of dark gray, fashionably draped upon him, pumps,
gray socks that matched his gray silk tie, a plaited French shirt, an
unusually tall, perfectly fitting collar.  If he had not been so well
and so tastefully dressed, he would have attracted no attention
anywhere--unless he had smiled.  That smile meant a frank nature, a kind
and generous heart--rarities to make their possessor distinguished in
whatever company.

Courtney, with woman's swift grasp of surface details, noted all this
and more while she was advancing with extended hand and saying, "Mr.
Gallatin, is it not?"

He was obviously confused and embarrassed.  Her natural,
self-unconscious manner encouraged him candidly to explain.  "I feel
very shy," said he, speaking with a strong Eastern accent, "and very
guilty.  Shy because, before I came, I had somehow got the impression
Vaughan was not married--and that we were to keep bachelor hall.  I was
astonished to find he had a wife."  His eyes added without impertinence
that he was amazed and dazzled now that he saw the wife.  "I feel
guilty," he went on, "because I seem to be thrusting myself in upon you.
But Vaughan assured me I'd not be intruding."

"You needn't trouble yourself about that," said she. She liked his
accent; it was pleasant as a novelty, and rather amusing.  She liked his
manners.  They were of the best type of conventional manners, the type
affected by fashionable people everywhere, the type that is excelled
only by the kind of manners of which it is an artful and insincere
imitation--the simple manners of those rare self-unconscious people who
have the courage--or, rather, the lack of fear--to be natural and
spontaneous.  "We'll not wait for Richard," she said, as the supper bell
rang.  "He's got a great deal to do before he can come."

She had just finished the sentence when he entered, exactly as he was
when he went out.  "I forgot I'd taken all my razors down to the
laboratory," he explained.

During supper he and Gallatin talked chemistry; that is, he talked and
Gallatin listened--listened and ate. Courtney noted--with increased
liking for him--that he had a vigorous appetite and that he liked the
things they had to eat.  But her thoughts soon wandered away to her
gardening, to retouching her plans for bringing the grounds a little
nearer her ideal than they had been the summer before.  When the men
lighted cigars, she went to the veranda to stroll up and down in the
moonlight.  She forgot everything unpleasant in the delight of being
home again.  As she looked about her, her heart was singing the
nightingale's song.  She was startled--and her heart's song was
stopped--by the newcomer's voice.  "Vaughan's gone to the library," said
Gallatin.  "Do you mind if I walk with you?"

She did mind very much indeed.  She had somehow lost interest in him as
soon as he ceased to be the mystery B.G.  She liked him well enough,
admired his manners, his really delicate tact in what must have been for
him an extremely difficult position.  But she had got the impression
that Dick was right in estimating him as a "don't-amount-to-much."  And
just now he was distinctly a kill-joy.  However, she acquiesced
courteously, though with no unnecessary cordiality.  She felt that now
was the time to get him in the habit of respecting her privacy; she
could establish a barrier now, where an attempt to establish it later on
would offend him.  At best, the barrier would be a poor enough
makeshift; he would be bound to see, to make her feel uncomfortable
about things she had been able to keep unconscious of or indifferent to.
Still, she was far too generous to blame him.

"Do you have much spare time?" she asked, her manner more cordial than
if she had not been wishing him out of the house.

"A great deal.  Vaughan realizes I'm only an amateur."

"I'll take you over to the club and introduce you. You'll find some very
agreeable people."

"Thank you.  It has been rather dull these two weeks--especially of
evenings."

"I don't see how you had the courage to come."

"I had to," said he, in the curt way in which a young man gives himself
the pleasure of hinting a secret he cannot with good taste give himself
the pleasure of telling.

She glanced across the lake at the twinkling lamps of the town.  "The
women over there will fill every minute you give them," said she.  "You
see, most of our men are busy all day and tired in the evening.  You'll
be a lion."

"That sounds attractive.  I'm amazed at the West.  I had no idea
civilization was so advanced."

The implied condescension in this amused her.  But she merely said: "Oh,
I guess the same sort of people are much alike the world over."

The conversation languished through a to her tiresome discussion of
differences of accent, dress, manners, and such trifles until he
happened to say: "This place of yours here was a revelation to me.  I've
been talking to Vaughan about it--admiring it.  He tells me his
grandfather's responsible for it.  He must have been an extraordinary
man."

"He was," said Courtney, in a queer voice.  She glanced out over her
creation and the blood burned in her cheeks.

"He'd certainly be proud of the way you keep it up."

Her sense of humor had come to the rescue; besides, vanity was not a
dominating emotion with her who had too much else to think about to have
much time for thought of self.  "I'm fond of gardening," was her placid
noncommittal reply to his compliment.

"Yes, Vaughan's grandfather must have been a wonder," Gallatin went on
reflectively.  He had paused, was leaning on the rail, looking out over
the lawns and gardens.  "I don't mind confessing to you--if you'll not
tell your husband--that I'm a chemist only by profession, with landscape
gardening as my real passion."

Courtney glanced at him with interested eyes.

"I know a little something about it," he continued. "I learned long ago
in a general way that a personality is always revealed in any work, and
I at once looked for the personality in this place.  That old man must
have been an artist....  I can't reconcile these grounds with the
portrait of him in the library."

Courtney was smiling to herself.  A thrill of pride and pleasure was
running through her.  She began to like Basil Gallatin, to feel that he
was by no means commonplace, but a man of breadth and artistic instinct,
something at least of the man of the big world, not merely the man of
the little world of well-cut manners and clothes.

"That portrait is of a stern, narrow man--strong but conventional," he
went on, confirming her more sympathetic judgment of him.  "This
place--the house as well as the grounds--shows a very different
individuality.  It's feminine and sensuous and poetical.  Yes, it's
distinctly feminine--and delightfully disdainful of the conventional--of
everything and anything 'cut and dried.'  I don't mean the details--the
things you're probably responsible for--and they're very charming.  But
I mean the whole conception--so free, so daring, and so lovely.  Yet
Vaughan tells me that the old gentleman made the plans himself and
superintended their carrying out.  It's very curious.  Don't you think
so?"

"I hadn't thought about it."

"You're not interested?"

"Why do you say so?"

"Your tone.  I suppose a man is tedious when he gets on his hobby.  I
noticed you were bored when we were talking chemistry at supper."

"I wasn't bored.  I simply wasn't listening."

"You don't like chemistry?"

"I did.  But my enthusiasm cooled as I got interested in other things."

Again the conversation languished.  She suspected that his opinion of
her was rapidly declining.  But some instinct withheld her from making
any effort whatever to rehabilitate herself.  Finally he said: "Well, I
guess I've disturbed you long enough.  I'll go to my room and read."

"I'm going up myself after I've had a little talk with Nanny about the
house."

As soon as he disappeared, she dismissed him from mind with a few
pleasant and friendly thoughts--"he may not have any great amount of
brains or force, but he certainly has good taste.  He will be a distinct
addition."  When she ascended to her sitting room, perhaps an hour
later, she halted on the threshold, coloring with anger.  Dick was
seated at her center table reading a newspaper; Gallatin was inspecting
the books in one of her cases.  Dick saw her and said: "Come in.  Don't
mind us."

Courtney, struggling against her anger at this climax to the impudent
intrusion upon her privacy, remained upon the threshold.

Dick's eyes had dropped to his paper.  "Gallatin," he went on, "was
complaining that the books in the library were too old and solemn.  So I
brought him here.  I knew you'd laid in a stock of the frivolous kinds
that grandfather wouldn't have tolerated.  Finding what you want, old
man?"

When Dick's speaking warned him that Courtney had come, Gallatin had
startled guiltily and had hastily put away the book he was examining.
But he didn't turn round until Richard directly addressed him.  His face
was red and his eyes were down.  "I feel sleepy," said he awkwardly.
"I'll look again some other time if Mrs. Vaughan will let me."

"Certainly," said Courtney, cold as a flower blooming in the heart of a
block of ice.

The case into which Gallatin had been delving was filled with works on
landscape gardening and interior decoration--modern works.  As he almost
stumbled from the room he cast a further glance round at the
walls--walls covered with the original plans, sketches, and paintings
Courtney had made for her revolution in house and grounds--very
modern-looking drawings all, and unmistakably feminine. She knew that
the newcomer had her secret--all of it--not merely the secret of her
authorship, but also, through it, the secret of this loveless married
life in which the husband had not the remotest idea who his wife was or
what she had done.  In passing her on his way out, Gallatin visibly
shrank and grew as white as he had been red.  She went to the window to
compose herself, for her blood was boiling in the greatest rage of her
life.

Richard went to close the door after Gallatin, then turned on her.  "My
dear," said he in his "grandfather" tone, which sometimes amused and
sometimes angered her, "you are so cold by nature that you don't realize
it, but you were almost insulting to Gallatin."

"I hope so!" cried she, facing him.  "How dared you bring him in here
without my permission?  There are not many women who would have accepted
quietly your bringing him to this house to live without a word to me. I
wish you to understand you cannot thrust him upon my privacy.  I don't
allow anyone in this room without my consent.  It must not occur again."

"Now--now--my dear," said Dick soothingly.  "All that is very
unreasonable.  Of course, I have the right to do as I please in my own
house, and you're too good and too sensible a wife to dispute it."

"I do dispute it!" she cried, her bosom heaving. "This room is--_me_!"

"What a tempest in a teapot!  Child, what has made you take such a
sudden dislike to him--and so violent?  He isn't worth it--an amiable,
well-meaning, commonplace chap.  Really, you mustn't act this way.  I've
told you I need him, and you must be polite to him."

"The impertinent, prying----"

"I brought him here, Courtney," he interrupted, magisterially.  "And I
repeat, I had the right to do so."

Like most people of sweet and even temperament, she lost all control of
herself in this unprecedented rage, where those in the habit of raging
learn a sort of etiquette of bad temper.  "You had not the right!" she
declared, her eyes blazing into his.  "And if you ever do such a thing
again, I'll make it impossible for him to remain here.  Do you
understand?"

"I do not quarrel," said Richard with gentle superiority, "especially
not with women--with my wife."

"And why not?  You call it chivalry.  I call it contempt.  And I detest
it.  If you could appreciate how absurd you are, with your antiquated
notions of superior and inferior sex, of rights and duties, and all such
nonsense!"

Richard was in full armor of masculine patience against feminine folly.
"You are beside yourself, my dear.  I'll leave you until you are calm
and courteous."  And he added, as if he were meting out severe but just
punishment, "I shall occupy the spare room."

Courtney gave a strange laugh.  He turned away, went into her bedroom.
Presently he reappeared exclaiming: "Why, where are my pajamas?  I told
Lizzie to put them in there."

Courtney's smile was of the same quality of strangeness as her laugh of
the moment before.  "They are in the spare room," said she.  "I put them
there before I came in here."

He looked puzzled, vaguely discomfited.  "Oh--very well."  He glanced
inquiringly at her, decided against the trivial question he had been
about to ask.  "Good night."  He was again puzzled when what he heard
about the location of the pajamas was recalled and made vivid by the
sight of them on the turned-down bed in the spare room. But for an
instant only.  He dismissed the trifle and went to bed and to sleep.
Husbands do not bother their heads about the petty feminine
eccentricities of wives.  The mystery of these transposed pajamas was
too petty to detain a masculine mind.




                                  *VI*


She did not go down to breakfast next morning until Richard and his
guest would surely be gone.  Her anger against the guest had evaporated
because it was clearly unjust.  Her anger against Richard was subsiding
because it was clearly futile--and also because she hadn't it in her to
foster harsh feeling.  But there remained a dislike and dread of
Gallatin because he had her secret.  She could not think with composure
of facing him, intolerably her partner in a secret she was ashamed of,
was hiding from her husband, was trying to hide from herself.  She would
be unable to look at him, to remember his existence even, without at the
same time having it thrust at her that her married life was a sham, a
hypocrisy.

Half an hour before dinner Richard came to her in the big greenhouse she
had built back of the library.  As the day was warm, all its doors and
sashes were open.  Richard sent Jimmie's son Bill away and said with
agitated abruptness: "Courtney, Gallatin seems determined to take rooms
over at the hotel."

"I'm glad of that," replied she.  "It's much better."  She had not
paused in her delicate task of extricating plants from their winter bed
and arranging them in a basket for taking into the garden.

"But it's the first step toward going away.  He'll never put up with the
hotel's discomforts."  Her indifference, her inattention made him
impatient.  "My dear, you don't understand.  I need him.  I've branched
out on the strength of the capital he's supplying and has promised to
supply.  If he leaves, I'll be in a hole.  We'll have to cut down in
every direction, for I simply can't abandon my new plans."

"I don't like him," said Courtney.  She had abruptly stopped work, was
leaning against the frame facing him. "I want him out of the house."

Dick took the tone of gentle, forbearing remonstrance. "It's too late to
change him to the Smoke House.  He feels your dislike--is eager to get
away.  If there were any ground for dislike, I'd say nothing.  As it is,
I--  I don't like to assert authority, but your frivolous whimsicality
makes it necessary.  I want you at once to convince him that you wish
him to stay."

"But I don't."  Her voice showed that those brief words were all she
could trust to it.

"You do, since I wish it."

"Why should I consider what you wish?  When have you considered what I
wish?"

"When have I been inconsiderate of what was for your good?"

She was silent--silenced, he thought.  His handsome face and his voice
were gentle; but underneath there was sternness in both as he said:
"You'll not oppose me in this. It'd be a very severe strain upon my love
for you, if I found you so contemptuous of my interests.  I'm sure
you'll not risk that strain."

She saw into what an impossible position her anger had hurried her.
Usually women, through playing upon the husband's passions and
weaknesses generally, get enough control over him to be able to
maintain--with only an occasional slight lapse--the pleasant fiction
that they are of full human rank.  They take care to avoid such crises
as was this.  Courtney, by long keeping away from the bars of her cage,
had been lured into believing her pretense that they were not there.
She now found herself bleeding and exhausted against them.  "Very well,"
said she, after a moment's silence.  It had taken her quick mind only a
moment to see the alternatives--submission or a clash in which she could
not but be defeated.  "I'll try to get him to stay."  Her voice was low
and broken, but not from anger.  Deeper than the sense of Richard's
tyranny burned the humiliating sense of her servitude. In fact, her own
plight so mortified her that she had no emotional capacity for raging
against him as the author of it.  She felt, as always in these sex
conflicts, that the fault was not his, but fate's; he was simply playing
his part as man, she her part as woman.

"That's a good girl," cried her approving husband, kissing her brow.  It
did not occur to him, the deep-down reason of sordidness that enabled
him to compel; but she could think of nothing else.  "Be sweet to him,"
Dick went on, in an amiable, petting tone.  "And you may rest assured,
dear, I'll get rid of him as soon as I can.  I don't like intruders into
our happiness any more than you do."

Her cheeks flushed, and she turned again to the frame, to resume her
digging.  Her whole body to her finger tips was in a tremor.

Through dinner she was silent and cold; Gallatin hardly lifted his gaze
from his plate.  Whenever Richard could catch her eye, he frowned and
glanced significantly at Gallatin.  But her eyes met his hints with a
vacant look that made him twitch in his chair with nervousness and
exasperation.  As soon as Gallatin in politeness could, he excused
himself and left the family of three alone.

Richard, unmindful of Winchie, burst out, "What's the meaning of this?

"You must let me humble myself in my own way," said Courtney coldly.
"Come, Winchie."  And the two went out on the lawn.

As Gallatin a few minutes later issued from the front door with Richard,
she called: "Oh, Mr. Gallatin, I want to speak to you a moment."

He halted.  The color flared into his face.  Richard said, "I'll go on.
You needn't hurry," and strode along the path into the eastern
shrubbery.  Gallatin hesitatingly crossed the grass.  Winchie, who had
on first sight taken an instinctive dislike to him, held a fold of
Courtney's walking skirt and glowered like a small but very fierce
storm.

"Go to the veranda, Winchie," said his mother.

The boy released his hold and reluctantly obeyed. Gallatin stood before
her like a prisoner arraigned for sentence.  "Richard tells me you're
talking of moving to the hotel over in town," said she.

"Yes, I'm going to-morrow."

"Because you feel I want you out of the house?"

"I think a man in my position couldn't help being an intruder."

"I want you to stay."

His fair skin paled.  "I thank you," said he, "but I must go."

"I want you to stay.  I ask you to stay."

"That's very kind.  I appreciate it.  But I really must go."

"I did wish you to go.  But now I sincerely wish you to stay."

Their eyes met.  She was as pale as her bronze complexion permitted.
She went on, her deep, clear voice steady, "If you go, you'll put me in
a very painful position."

Gallatin looked at her, flushed, looked hastily away. In a voice of
intense embarrassment he said: "I've another reason for wishing to go.
It's even stronger than the knowledge that you're--very
naturally--displeased at my being forced upon you."

"Oh," said Courtney, baffled.  Then, "Please tell Richard what it is."

"I cannot."  His gaze was on the ground now.

Somehow Courtney was liking him better.  As he glanced up, her eyes met
his.  "Be frank with me," she urged winningly.  "Is it because you
dislike it here?"

"No."  His gaze was wandering again.  "No, indeed."

"I'm glad of that," said she.  "Do you believe me when I say I wish you
to stay?"

He lowered his eyes, remained silent.

"If I were free to choose, I would wish you to go," she went on,
speaking with the utmost deliberation.  "I am not free.  So, I wish you
to stay because it will be most unpleasant for me if you persist in
going.  I venture to ask you, if it is not too great a sacrifice, to
stay on--at least, for the present.  But if you still say you must go, I
shall not misjudge."

"I'll stay," was his prompt response.  "Gladly."  And his tone and eyes
were sincere.

"Thank you," said she simply.

He looked at her with an appeal that was very engaging. "I know you'll
hate me for having created this situation."

"I thought I did a few minutes ago," replied she. "Now, I feel I don't.
I feel I'd like to be friends with you--"  Her small, sweet face lit up
with a faint smile--"since we can't be enemies."

"You mean that?" he asked with an eagerness that sounded only the more
eager for his effort to restrain it.

"Indeed, I do," replied she.  "Will you help me with the gardening--when
you have time?"

"There's nothing I'd like so well."

"Then--it's all settled?"

"Quite."

They smiled gravely; they shook hands; they laughed. "And a little while
ago I was thinking I never could forgive you!" exclaimed she gayly.
"Now I'm wondering what on earth there was to forgive."  And she felt
and looked very well acquainted with him.  It was part of her
upright-downright nature either to like thoroughly or to be so
indifferent that she was little short of oblivious.

Before her generous friendliness the laughter died out of his face.
"I'll try to be worthy of your friendship and your trust," said he
gravely.

"That sounds mysterious--somehow."

"Does it? ... When may I help you?"

"Whenever you can get off.  Soon?"

"To-morrow, I think."

"That's good."

"I'll join Vaughan."  He hesitated, blushed.  "He knows you were to ask
me to stay?"

"Yes.  But not how," was her calm answer.

"I understand."  Their eyes met.  He colored; but her expression, sweet
and grave, did not change.  As he went Winchie, seated morosely afar off
on the veranda steps, scowled at his back.

That evening Richard said: "Well, I think he's going to stay.  How did
you manage it?"

"I've asked him to help me with the gardening.  He's fond of it."

"A good idea," approved Richard.  "I'll back you up."

She gazed silently out over the unruffled lake, so peaceful, so
suggestive of peace unchanging, endless--the lazy, graceful
sails--beyond, the town among its trees, lights coming out as the dusk
gathered.


But their friendship, thus auspiciously begun, did not prosper.
Gallatin almost pointedly avoided her.  He helped her only when Richard,
disturbed from time to time by his unrelaxed reserve, urged him to take
a day or an afternoon off "and amuse yourself with the flowers, since
you like that sort of thing."  If it had not been that occasionally in
talking or working at the gardening he seemed to forget his solemn and
formal pose and showed unmistakable enthusiasm, she would have thought
his profession of interest a pretense.  She had a peculiar horror of
gloom--doubtless born of the austerity of her bringing up.  There was in
her circumstances only too much to discourage her natural brightness,
and she had within herself a struggle as incessant as that against weeds
and destructive insects in her gardens.  She had no desire to make this
struggle harder; so she saw as little of him as she in courtesy
could--the only course open to her, since she did not know him well
enough to try to help him.

"What's the matter with Gallatin?" Richard asked her one day.  "He says
he likes it here and is going to stay, yet he acts as if he were
revolving something different. He used to be full of fun and life.  Now
he's enough to give anyone the blues."

"He _is_ rather heavy," admitted Courtney.

"I wonder if it's the booze," said Richard reflectively.

"The booze?"

"He always drank a lot more than was good for him. And there in
Pittsburg he got to lapping it up like the get-rich-quick crowd he
traveled in.  That was why he wanted to come here--to break off and take
a fresh start.  I suppose he's gloomy because he's fighting his taste
for rum."

"Probably," said Courtney.

Drink was a vice she could not comprehend--and we always are
unsympathetic toward the vices we do not comprehend.  She associated
drinking and stupidity; the Wenona men who drank to excess were the dull
ones, like Shirley Drummond.  When Richard thus disclosed to her what
Gallatin had meant by his mysterious hint as to his reason for coming to
Wenona, she lost the interest in him started by his fine frank way of
meeting her advances and his appreciation of her work.  She recalled his
other mysterious hint--about there being a hidden reason for his wishing
to go.  "No doubt," thought she, "he meant he's finding it hard to keep
straight here, where it's so quiet. I wish now that he'd gone--though,
when a man can give way to such a dull, dirty habit as drunkenness, he'd
find excuse anywhere."


As the mail came in the middle of the morning and the middle of the
afternoon, she saw it first.  Thus, she noted that about once a week
there was for him a foreign letter so heavy that it carried several
stamps.  These letters were from the same person, the same woman.  And
as the writing was large, rapid, and affectedly angular, she more than
suspected that the woman was young.  Somewhat tardily these facts,
obvious though their leading was, wove together in her mind, incurious
about other people's affairs; she knew that there was traveling abroad a
young woman who taking the trouble to write their guest regularly and at
great length.  But when she happened to recall that he had a young
married sister, she assumed the letters were from her.

One day he casually said that his sister had taken a house at Bar Harbor
for the summer.  The moment he said this, she for some unknown reason,
or for no reason at all, jumped to the conclusion that his depressed
state was due to the lady of the letters--to her being so far
away--perhaps to some difficulty in their love--the objection of her
parents to his drinking habit.

All was now clear to her.  And thenceforth she looked at him with deep
sympathy.  He was not handsome; his mouth, for example, was so heavy
that it flatly gave the lie to his idealist, poetic eyes.  His nose was
not good, was too small for a man's face.  Somewhere there lurked a
suggestion of weakness, and this was not lessened by his attention to
dress--though she liked his clothes and his way of wearing them.  He was
far from her ideal of a man.  But the longer one knew him, the better
one thought of him, chiefly because the more confidence one had in his
essential generosity and kindness.  And she felt that he had capacity
for tenderness of a very manly sort, and for appreciation of love and of
all the beautiful things; just the kind of nature fate seemed to delight
in making the sport of its maliciousness.

One night, in the pensive mood to which she sometimes yielded for an
hour, she was at the piano softly playing; and singing that saddest of
sad love's songs:

    "Alas for lovers!  Pair by pair
      The wind has swept them all away--
    The young, the yare; the fresh, the fair--
      Where are the snows of yesterday?"


Through the window she saw him leaning against a pillar of the veranda.
His profile was outlined clear against the luminous dusk.  Its
expression made her voice die altogether in a sob.  She forgot her own
sense of fleeting wasting youth, of supreme joy forever denied, of love
never to be hers.  This sorrow before her in those profiled
features--they were strong features now--was no vague dream, but a
living reality.  She longed to go to him and try to console him; and at
the same time, no matter how well she had known him, she could not have
gone--for in that unsuspected strength of his there was the hopelessness
that is beyond consolation.  From that time he was the foremost figure
in her thoughts; and her fancy put its own color into everything he said
and did.  If he had begun to drink she would have been only the more
sympathetic; for, she could comprehend how unhappy love might drive its
victim to any excess--were not her own longings, for three years now
latent except for an occasional outburst, once more throbbing and aching
day and night?


It was part of her routine to make a careful tour every day to see that
everything was up to the mark.  One day, in their guest's sitting room,
she happened to see half fallen from the stationery rack a letter from
his foreign correspondent.  It was apparently unopened.  The shock of
this made her take a second look before she realized how she was
intruding upon his sacred privacy.  But she had seen; the letter was
indeed unopened.  And she knew that the last come of these letters had
been at least three days in his possession.

Her heart ached for him; she felt she understood.  His love affair had
been going more and more badly--his increasing silence and sadness made
that certain.  And this letter must contain some news he dared not
read--some words that meant the burial of his dead hope.  She went
downstairs with a heavy heart, and out into the sunshine--out to the
rose garden in the western part of the grounds. She had been dreaming
all along that this romance of which she was unsuspected, deeply moved
spectator would surely "come out all right."  Life did not always mock
the story books.  Love was not always sad, not always mere deceptive
echo of one's own heart call--echo that flitted mockingly on as one
pursued.  No; this love that meant so much to him would prove real.
Such had been her dream. Now--  The flowers, their perfume, the gay
birds, the sunbeams--all the sights and sounds she loved seemed tricks
of a black enchanter.  She remembered the day they buried her little
brother.  There had been just such radiant glory as this.  She
remembered the day she had seen that her own dream of love was dead.
There had been just such sunshine and music and perfume.  How could
anyone with a human heart even for a moment laugh, jest?  To be light
was to make oneself party to this cruel levity of bird and flower and
sunbeam.  Laugh, when loved ones were dying somewhere--and the living
were bending over dead faces with cracking hearts?  Jest, when the winds
of time and change were blowing love and lovers all away?


She caught her breath in a kind of terror when, on her return to the
house, Lizzie told her that Mr. Gallatin had dashed in, had packed a
bag, and had rushed off to Chicago.  "He has business there," Richard
explained at dinner.  "And I've asked him to buy some stuff for the
laboratory."  She was uneasy, at times unhappy, throughout the following
week, as she thought of him trying to rid himself of his too heavy
burden.  Probably he was dissipating--she hoped he was, if it would give
him relief. She began to debate whether she ought not to tell Richard
what she had accidentally discovered, and suggest that he go to Chicago
to help his friend, who might have fallen ill or worse.  At dinner and
at supper, even at breakfast, where she had seen him only occasionally,
she positively missed Gallatin.  Until he came, the time spent at table
had been the stupidest part of each day--Richard and she in silence or
abstraction, or exchanging disconnected commonplaces about the weather,
the food, their friends.  While Gallatin was far from lively, still he
and she had talked--usually about gardening and plants, the difficulties
and mysteries of inducing things to grow, the comparative merits of
various species for flowering and for hardiness--not exciting
conversation, but interesting, a relief to a monotony the dreariness of
which she did not appreciate until he came--and went.


On the eighth day, as they were at supper, he appeared unexpectedly on
the threshold.  There was no forcing in the cordiality of her smile.  At
first glance, she suspected that he was in much better spirits.  And
this impression was soon confirmed.  Certainly good news--the best--must
have reached him in Chicago.  Otherwise he could not sit there eating
heartily, laughing, making amusing remarks, telling funny incidents of
the trip.  Courtney tried to continue to feel delighted that he had
found surcease from sorrow.  But her spirits went steadily down.  She
felt horribly alone.  She had been company for him in his
unhappiness--though he did not know it.  Now, she quite unreasonably
felt as if he had deserted her.  She was ashamed of this, so ungenerous,
so selfish, but she could not help it.

After supper Richard left them alone; they went out on the veranda--out
where the full beauty of that place, now at summer's climax, could be
seen in the soft sunset light.  She stood watching a belated bird, a
tall white sail--listening to the faint sounds of the town that came
tinkling across the water.  But she was thinking of the man beside her.
"You've been enjoying yourself in Chicago," said she.

"No," was his unexpected answer.  "I've been impatient to get back."  He
glanced round at trees and lawns, gardens and shrubbery, with delighted
eyes.  "I had to go away, to appreciate how well off I was."  He went to
the edge of the veranda to get a broader sweep.  He seemed to be noting,
reveling in, every detail.  He drew a deep breath, returned to the big
lounge chair, and lit a cigarette. "Yes," continued he.  "Yes--I didn't
dream it, or imagine it.  It's all true.  It's all here."  Without
looking at her: "And you happen to be wearing the same dress you had on
the evening I came.  Now, don't tell me you made it--as you've made
those gardens and these rooms."

"I superintend," said Courtney, thinking him a pleasant and agreeable,
if deplorably shallow person.  "I'm not one of those dreadful original
women who get up their own awful costumes, and think they're individual
because they're different."

"If you lived in Paris, you'd set the styles," declared he.  "And you're
equally good at gardening and decorating houses."

"That's laid on with the trowel," laughed she.  "But I like it."  She
returned to the subject that fitted her thoughts.  "You're much livelier
than when you went away; I'm sure you've had good news."

"No--nothing.  I simply took myself in hand."  He reflected in silence,
then lifted his head and looked at her with a boyish simplicity and
candor.  "You see," he proceeded to explain, "I've had something on my
mind ever since I came--that is, almost ever since--something that was
my own affair entirely.  And I let it prey on me--made myself a nuisance
and a bore, I've no doubt."

There was a gleam of mischievous humor in her eyes as she nodded assent
and said: "You were solemner than I thought a human being could be."

"Precisely.  Well, that's over.  As I said before, I didn't realize how
well off I was, how much I had to be thankful for, as the pious people
say.  I do realize it. And I'm going to behave myself."

Courtney felt she ought to be scandalized by this vanishing of the last
solemn tatters of the tragic romance she had woven about him; for it was
clear as the lake that he had gotten over his bereavement in that one
brief week, had gotten over it entirely.  But somehow she was not
scandalized; was, on the contrary, taking quite cheerfully this
confirmation of his fickleness, of his incapacity for deep emotion.
After all, wasn't that the best way to be? Wasn't he perhaps philosopher
rather than shallow changeling? Wasn't he simply exemplifying the truth
that fire burns out, that the dead are forgotten, that life leans always
at the bow of the ship, never at the stern?  She, eager to escape from
her own shadows and thorns, slipped easily into his mood.  "I should say
you did have a lot to be thankful for!" answered she.  "And you'll soon
forget her."  She colored at her slip.  "I assume it was a love affair,"
she hastened to add.  "We women always do."

"Yes, it was."

"You'll get over it."

"I do not wish to get over it."  He was not smiling back at her.  She
felt his thoughts traveling over land and sea, into Europe, whence came
those letters--there were two of them waiting on his desk upstairs.  "I
do not wish to get over it," he repeated.  "I've learned--"  His voice,
full of earnest young seriousness, sounded as if he were thinking aloud
rather than talking to her--"I've learned there's a love deeper than the
love that demands--a love that appreciates where it dares not aspire--a
love that asks nothing but just silently to love."

There was a long silence, broken by the snapping of the match, as he lit
a cigarette.  She startled, rose, and leaned against a pillar.  With
eyes half veiled by her long lashes she watched the gardens wane
dreamily in the evening light.  She inhaled the odors of rose, of lilac,
of jasmine, of honeysuckle--perfumes so sweet that they were sad.  How
cruelly she had misjudged him!  She felt a kind of reverence for him
now, him with this nobility of soul so unconscious, so lofty.  Here was
a man worth a woman's while.  "Why couldn't I have had such a love as he
is giving?" she thought.  "Oh, if she had learned what I've learned!"

"Come into the sitting room, Gallatin," called Richard from that
direction.

Gallatin went, and for a few minutes Courtney heard, in intervals
between her thoughts, snatches of the talk between the two men about the
shopping Gallatin had done for the laboratory--talk about a new crusher,
about a promising bomb calorimeter.  After a while came in Vaughan's
voice, "Courtney, what do you think of that?"

She stood in the window with an inquiring glance.

"I've been telling Gallatin you're going to introduce him round among
the Wenona girls.  And he says he has no use for women."

"I!" exclaimed Basil.  "On the contrary, I think women--a woman--the
most important element in a man's life."

Richard laughed.  "Why, the man's in love!" cried he.

Courtney saw Gallatin wince as his wound was struck by this careless,
jovial hand.

"Only a lover," proceeded Dick, "would exaggerate woman in that frenzied
fashion.  To live isn't to love.  It's to do--to achieve."

"I don't agree with you," said Gallatin.  "Love's the center--the
mainspring--the purpose--the meaning."

"You ought to have been a woman."

"Why not?" retorted Gallatin.  Courtney saw that Dick had irritated him.
"In one respect I envy women. A woman _knows_ whether or not a man loves
her.  A man can only hope and believe."  And he glanced swiftly at her.

He looked confused, frightened, as her expression showed that she, the
married woman, the lovelessly married woman, understood.  She turned
away abruptly, two bright red spots burning in her cheeks.

"Well," said the unobserving Richard to Gallatin, "I confess I don't
grasp your meaning.  But it doesn't matter.  A good woman loves her
husband, and he knows it. The rest's of no consequence.  We must get him
a wife, Courtney.  He'd make an ideal husband, don't you think?"

"A good wife does not think," said Courtney.

Richard was amused.  "But if she did?" he persisted.

"Then she'd probably think it fortunate for husbands that wives aren't
independent."

Vaughan again looked puzzled.  "That sounds as irrelevant as what
Gallatin said a minute ago.  Now will you tell us, what has it to do
with what we were talking about?"

"I don't know," replied she.  And she did not.  She was astonished
before this apparition of a thought she had not been conscious of having
definitely in mind since that conversation with her mother long ago; and
here it was popping up as if it were her constant companion.  "It just
came into my head," she went smilingly on.  "You know we women are
irresponsible, irrational beings, and so we don't think straight or talk
connectedly."

She said good night, went up to her apartment.  She was wishing now that
Gallatin had not told her about this love of his for the woman across
the seas.  It had made her discontented--unhappy.  It had compelled her
to think what a patchwork of makeshifts her own life was.  "Yet I ought
to be contented.  Haven't I Winchie?  And I can't even complain of poor
health or discomfort of any kind. I don't deserve my good fortune.
Other women would envy me."  No, they would not.  She saw in remembered
faces of women friends the same discontent she was hiding in her heart.
A woman--a woman grown--craved more than material comfort could give,
more than work or play, however interesting, more than motherhood could
give--craved that grown-up, equal love without which life was like a
wonderful watch with a broken mainspring.  She thought of Basil Gallatin
again.  At least she was more fortunate than he.  Suppose she, like him,
loved and it were not returned.  Then indeed would her heart ache.

When she saw him alone next day, she said shyly and with color high: "It
seems to me you can't have told her--told her as you told me.  Won't you
go to her--not write, but go--and try again?  Believe me, Mr. Gallatin,
women appreciate love--at least, any woman who could inspire the love
you give her.  And if she knew, she'd love you--she couldn't help it."

She feared she had intruded.  But when he at last spoke, his tone was
not the tone of one who is offended. "Thank you, thank you," he
stammered.  "But--  I assure you it's hopeless.  She is not for me."

"Oh!"  Courtney shrank.  "She cares for some one else.  I--I'm so sorry
I spoke.  I----"

"No--no," he said; "it was friendly.  It was--like you."

This began their real friendship.  And she needed friendship just then.
What he had told her put her in a mood where all her occupations were in
vain, and all the wisdom she had gathered from books and from thinking
about things as they are, and all the patiently, slowly acquired
stoicism of the matrimonial routine.  Her heart was clamoring as it had
not since those first months of her discovery that love was delusion and
that she must learn to live without it.  She wished Gallatin had not
told her; she wished he had never come.  And at the same time she felt
that through the sadness he had brought there had come into her life a
pleasure she would not wish to give up--the sympathy between him and
her, based on their knowledge each of the other's secret.  She felt very
proud of his confidence, of his friendship.  Also, there was the
fascination that always issues from a great emotion, even though it be
seen but in mimic on the stage.  This great emotion of his was a vivid
actuality.  It made a smile upon his features heroism; it made a look of
sadness tragedy.

He helped her in the gardens often now.  Richard, making some secret
experiments, did not want him at the laboratory.  Sometimes he and she
worked together at changing color schemes or improving mass effects or
vistas.  Again each worked alone, perhaps at some surprise for the
other.  It was after a morning of hard labor in opposite ends of the
grounds that she said when they met at the house: "Richard's not coming
up, so Nanny has to take him his dinner.  And Lizzie's away and Mazie
not well.  I'll wait on you."

"Let's have a picnic," suggested he, "out under that big elm."

And with Winchie helping they carried everything to the rustic table and
proceeded to have one of those happy-go-lucky meals that make the blue
devils put their tails between their legs and fly away on their forks.
Winchie, let eat what he pleased, forgot his dislike of Gallatin--at
least so far that he only frowned occasionally as Gallatin and Courtney
talked the most hopeless nonsense with the keenest pleasure.  When
Basil's face was animated it was never homely; when he smiled it was
always handsome. For the first time since he came he lost all
constraint, and the sparkle of girlhood came back to her.  They stayed
out there nearly three hours, and it seemed no time at all. Nanny, sour
and scowling at the impropriety of such conduct in a married woman--one
married into the ancient and rigid house of Vaughan--took away the
dishes and linen. But the hint so plain in her dour looks went unnoted.
It was a shower that broke up the party, sent them scurrying to the
house, he carrying furious and protesting Winchie.  She punished Winchie
for his rudeness by sending him up to his bedroom to sit alone and think
down his temper.

"You oughtn't to have done that," said Basil, when the boy, defiant even
in obedience, disappeared.

"It's the only way to make him remember.  And I can't whip him.  I'm too
selfish, even if I didn't know it was equally degrading to him."

"He can't help not liking me," persisted Basil. "We're not to blame for
our likes and dislikes."

"No.  But we are to blame for giving way to them."  She was arranging
freshly cut flowers in vases and jars in the sitting room.

"Yes, for giving way to them," said Basil thoughtfully, after a long
time.

"To what?" asked Courtney, who had forgotten.

"Our feelings."

"Oh, I remember."

"You're right about that."  Basil was speaking with an effort.  "For
example, if a man were to--to fall in love with a married woman, he'd be
a--miserable cur if he told her.  Those last few words came explosively.

"Gracious!"  Courtney beamed mischievously at him from behind a gorgeous
spread of half blown roses.  "You are fierce!  Well, that's settled.  If
he heard you, he'd never dare tell her."

She saw his face, and it flashed over her that it was a married woman he
loved.  Yes, of course!  Why had she not guessed it at once!  And he was
saying these harsh things to make it impossible for himself to yield to
the impulse.  The smile left her eyes.  He was at the window with his
back to her.  She looked tender sympathy.  "Poor boy!" she thought.
"And I saw to-day how happy he could be, and how happy he could make a
woman.... Perhaps she does love him.  What a sorrow that would be! And
utterly hopeless!"

He turned abruptly.  "Will you be my friend?"

She came straight up to him, put out her hand.  "Indeed I will," she
said.

He took her hand, pressed it.  Then he drew back with his hands behind
him.  "You are a good woman," he said. "Good through and through.  I
want you to help me fight a battle I'm having just now.  I thought I'd
won it.  I haven't.  But I will!"

"I understand, I think.  It is hard.  But you are strong and honorable.
You--  The woman--  She is already--" She paused, looked at him
inquiringly.

"Yes--God help me!" he cried, turning away.

His cry could not have reached a more responsive heart. After a pause
she said: "If she doesn't love you, it'd be useless to tell her."

"Worse!  It would mean I was a cur."

"And if she does love you, it'd be wicked to tell her--to add to her
unhappiness."

"If you were in my place--  Suppose I could be with her--could go and
live near her----"

"Oh, no; you oughtn't to do that!  You ought to spare yourself and her
that."

"But suppose," he urged eagerly, "suppose she didn't care for me--never
would--and I could keep my secret----"

"But you couldn't!  And she might grow to care."

He sat in a big chair by the window, stared moodily at the floor.  "It
seems to me I _can't_ do that!" he said at last.  "I don't love her as
men usually love.  She means infinitely more to me than that.  And,
loving her as I do, I'm in no danger of telling her.  And it would make
me almost happy so much of the time, and a better man--yes, a better
man--to be near her.  What you say I ought to do--it's like turning a
man out into the desert without food or drink--to wander--on and on----"

"I know, I know," she interrupted, her small, sweet face all tenderness
and distress.  "Oh, I'm not competent to advise.  You mustn't ask
anyone.  You must do what you think is right."

"Right!" he echoed forlornly.

She who had eaten of the husks that went by the name of right hadn't the
heart to urge them on him.  She returned to the table, to the arranging
of the flowers.  Without looking up he went on: "I haven't told you
quite all. There's another thing.  I--I'm engaged."

"Engaged!"

"Don't look at me that way.  I can feel it, though I'm not seeing.  You
can't think less of me than I think of myself.  But let me tell you.
The girl's a distant cousin of mine.  And her grandfather, who was crazy
about families, left her a fortune on condition that she married me. He
left an equal sum to me on condition that I marry her. But there's this
difference: What he left her is all she'd have--every cent.  I've got
enough without his legacy to me."

"And you--  Oh, it's dreadful, isn't it?"

"We're not in love--not in the least.  But I've given her my promise,
and she'd be penniless if I broke it.  She's nineteen.  We've got till
she's twenty-one.  She's abroad now."

"The letters I've seen in the mail--they're from her?"

"From her," replied he.  "How can I marry when I love another woman?"

"I see," said Courtney.  She was sitting now, her hands full of roses
and listless in her lap.  "Then you've no more right to love this woman
than she has to love you....  Oh, I don't know what to say!"

"Don't think I'm trying to shift part of my burden to you.  I'm not.
But I felt if I could talk it out loud with some one who was sympathetic
I'd see the way better. And I do."  The expression of his eyes thrilled
her; it was so manly, so honest, so resolved.

"What have you decided--if you don't mind telling me?"

"To go to Starky---that's my cousin--her real name's Estelle, but she
detests it--I'll go to her and we'll marry."

"No--no!" cried Courtney.  "Whatever's right, that isn't.  Oh, you don't
know.  She has a right to love. You're cheating her--cheating her!"

"But I can never give her that."

"You may----"

"Never!"

Courtney shook her head slowly, lifted the roses, buried her face in
them, inhaled their perfume deeply.  "Then--you mustn't marry her," she
said.

"You don't know her.  She cares for money--the things money buys--more
than for anything else in the world. It's the way we bring 'em up in the
East.

"Believe me," cried Courtney, solemn in her earnestness, "that's not
true.  There isn't any woman anywhere who doesn't put love first.  Go to
your cousin--yes.  But go and try to love her."

His eyes suddenly blazed upon her.  "Love her after--" he began
impetuously.  He reddened, his head sank.  "After the woman I--"  He
muttered confusedly, "I can't talk about it," and hastily left the room
by the door-window nearest him.

She sighed sympathetically, rose, moved slowly toward the vase she had
only half finished.  Midway she halted. That look of his had just
penetrated to her.  "Oh!" she gasped.  And she wheeled round and stared
with blanching cheeks, as if he were still standing there before her
with his secret betrayed in his eyes.  "Oh!" she repeated under her
breath.  How her mistaken romancings about his sadness had misled her
woman's instinct!  For now, like steel filings round a magnet, a swarm
of happenings since he came ranged round that telltale look of
his--where they belonged.




                                 *VII*


Basil was last in to supper, came with his nervousness plain in his
features.  His uneasy glance at her met a smile of ingenuous
friendliness that could not but reassure. Richard was there,
absent-minded as usual, and unconscious of them both.  They were
unconscious of him also, Basil no less so than she, for he had long
since acquired the habit of the household.  No one spoke until Richard,
having finished, lighted a cigarette and fell to explaining to Basil an
experiment he had made that day.  He was full of it, illustrated his
points with diagrams drawn on the yellow pad which was never far from
his hand.  Courtney, relieved of the necessity of trying to look natural
before Basil, was able to turn her thoughts again to the subject that
had been occupying her steadily from the moment she discovered his
secret.

If Gallatin could have seen into her mind, he would have been as nearly
scandalized as it is possible for an infatuated, unsatisfied lover to
be.  For even where a man feels he himself has the right to revolt
against exasperating musts and must nots of conventional morality, he is
unusual indeed if he honestly approves any such revolt, however timid,
in a woman.  Man is the author and guardian of that morality; in the
division of labor he has imposed upon woman the duty of being its
exemplar.  Thus, though human, she must pretend not to be; she must
stifle if possible, conceal at any cost, her human fondness for the free
and the frank.  For Courtney there was double attraction in this love of
Basil's--because it was love for her and because she was lonely--how
lonely she had never realised until now.  There is the loneliness of
physical solitude, the loneliness for company--and a great unhappiness
it is, especially to those who approach the lower animals in lack of
resources within themselves.  Courtney had never suffered from this; she
had never cared for "just people."  Then there is the loneliness of soul
solitude, the loneliness for comradeship--and who suffers from this
suffers torment. It may lull, but it will surely rage again, and it will
never cease until it is satisfied or the heart itself ceases to beat.
This was the loneliness of Courtney Vaughan.  "If he," thought she,
"were bad, and I, too--no, perhaps not exactly bad, but--well,
different--less--less conscientious--how happy we might be!  That is, of
course, if I cared for him--or could make myself believe I did--which is
impossible."  She lingered over this impossible supposition as over a
sweet, fantastic dream.  She dropped it and turned away, only to return
to it.  And thinking of it filled her with the same tender sadness she
got from love stories and love songs.  "I would not if I could, I could
not if I would, but--"  Love!  Into the silence of that void in her life
had come a sound.  It was the right word, but not the right voice.
Still, there was joy in the right word. And she would not have been
human had she bent other than kindly eyes and kindly thoughts upon the
man who pronounced that word of words.  Long since--from her first
notion that he was hiding a romantic secret--his real self had begun to
receive from her imagination the transfiguring veil of illusion.  The
discovery that she herself was the secret certainly did not make the
veil thinner.  A strong imagination flings out this beautiful,
trouble-making drapery always; not quite so eagerly if there has been
sad warning experience, but none the less inevitably.  It would be many
a day, if ever, before Courtney could again see Basil Gallatin as he was
in reality.

As she sat there, silent, all but oblivious of her immediate
surroundings, she was awakened by hearing him say, in reply to something
from Richard: "But I'm afraid I'll have to--to change my plans--and--go
away."  It was said hesitatingly, with much effort.

"Go away!" cried Richard.  Courtney could not have spoken.

"I'm afraid so."

"Not for good?"

"Probably--in fact, almost certainly."

"Why, man, you can't do that!" protested Dick.  "You can't leave me in
the lurch."

"Oh, I want to keep my interest.  It's simply that I can't stay on,
myself."

"But I need you now as much as I need the capital. Why, it'd upset
everything for a year--perhaps longer. I couldn't easily find a
competent man I could trust."

Basil repeated in a final, dogged way, "It's impossible for me to stay."

"Is there anything unsatisfactory in----"

"No--no indeed.  My own affairs entirely, I assure you."

As he had finished supper, Vaughan took him out on the veranda, where
Courtney heard them--or, rather, heard Dick--arguing and protesting.
Presently she drifted into the sitting room, sat at the piano, let her
fingers wander soundlessly over the keys.  What should she do?  What was
best for him--for her--"and there's Richard, too, who needs him."  Why
should he go?  How would it help matters?  True, she had declared that
to be the right course; but then she was merely theorizing, merely
talking the conventional thing.  This was no theory, but actuality,
calling for good common sense.  It was not the first time she had found
the facts of life making mockery of the most convincing theories about
it.  Presently she felt that Basil was in the window farthest from her,
was watching her--probably with the same loving, despairing expression
she had often seen without a suspicion that it was for her.

"Where's Richard?" inquired she, not looking in his direction.

"In the library."

"You've upset him dreadfully."

"I'm sorry.  But things will soon adjust themselves."  He advanced a
step, was visible now in the half darkness, looked pallidly handsome in
his becoming dinner suit.  "A few weeks at most," he went on, somewhat
huskily, "and I'll be the vaguest sort of a memory here."

She was glad her back was toward him and that the twilight had darkened
into dusk.  Of course, he did not really love her.  It was simply
another case of a man's being isolated with a woman and his head getting
full of sentimental fancies.  Still--  While his love was not real, and
therefore its pain largely imaginary, the pain no doubt seemed real, and
the love, too.  So she was sad for him--very sad.  As soon as she felt
sure of her voice, she said: "Won't you please light the big lamp for
me?  I wore a negligee this evening because I wanted to sew. I'm making
a suit for Winchie--like one I saw in a French magazine."

He lit the lamp beside the table where she worked in the evenings when
she did not go to her own room.  "Anything else?" he asked.

"Only sit and talk to me."

"I couldn't talk this evening."

"Then sit and smoke."

She began her work, he smoking in the deep shadow near the window.  She
could hardly see him; he could see every wave and ripple in her lovely
hair, every shift of the sweeping dark lashes, every change in that
sweet, small face, in the wide wistful mouth.  Even better than playing
on the piano, sewing brings out the charm of delicate, skillful fingers.
She did not need to look at him to feel his gaze, its longing, its
hopelessness.  And never before had she thought of him in such a
partial, personal way--the way a woman must feel toward the man she
knows loves her, even though she only likes him.

She had made up her mind what to do, how to deal practically with this
situation.  But she had to struggle with her timidity before she could
set about the audacious experiment she had planned and resolved.  She
had long had the frankness of thought that is inseparable from
intelligence.  The courage to speak her thoughts was as yet in the bud.
"Do you mind my speaking again of what you were saying this afternoon?"
said she as she sewed industriously.

"No," said he.

"I've been thinking about it.  At first I was startled--very much
startled.  But I soon began to look at it sensibly. I want you to stay.
Richard wants you to stay.  There's no reason why you shouldn't stay and
conquer your delusion."

"It's no delusion."

"Real love is always mutual.  So yours must be delusion."  She was
pointing a thread for the eye of the needle.  "You've led a very--very
man sort of life, haven't you?"

He shifted uncomfortably, then confessed: "You know the standards for
men are different from those for women."

She smiled, threaded the needle.  "Yes, I know.  I don't understand, but
I know.  You needn't explain. I don't want to understand.  It doesn't
interest me. As I was about to say--"  Her courage failed her, and she
sewed a while in silence.  At last she dared.  It was with no sign of
inward disturbance, but the contrary, that she went on: "You've been
shut in here too long.  Go to your old haunts for a few days.  You'll
come back cured."

She had practiced saying it, this advice which she believed wise and
necessary in the circumstances.  She said it in calm, matter-of-fact
fashion; and it was the less difficult for her to do so because, in
thought at least, she had long since emancipated herself from what she
regarded as the hypocrisies of modesty, and had taught herself to look
at all things rationally and humanly.  She knew her frankness would not
please him; so she was not surprised when after a pause he said roughly,
"I don't like to hear you say that sort of thing."

She laughed pleasantly, put quite at ease by his impertinence.  "And I
don't in the least care whether you approve of me or not.  You men seem
to think you've got a sort of general roving commission to superintend
the propriety of women."

"I beg your pardon."

"Certainly.  Give me that pair of scissors--on the stand in the corner."

He rose, issued from the deep shadow.  She could now see into what
confusion her words had thrown him.  The hand that held out the scissors
was trembling.  He moved to go upon the veranda.  "Please," said she.
"I'm not nearly done.  Won't you sit down?"

He seated himself.

"You see," she went on lightly, busy with her hem again, "I know your
awful secret."

"You've no right to laugh at me," muttered he.

"I'm not laughing at you....  I'm only looking at it in a friendly,
practical way....  I want to help you.... Why are you going away?"

She sewed on, feeling his emotion gather behind his self-control.  The
stillness was unbroken.  A light breeze, cool and scented, came
fluttering in at the open windows to play with the soft brilliant hair
that grew so beautifully round her temples.  In a low voice, so low that
she scarcely heard, his answer at last came: "Because I love you.  I
love you and I am not a cur."

Her needle missed its way into the cloth, pierced her finger.  She put
the wounded finger in her mouth.  When she looked toward him she was
smiling.  "Still you've not answered my question.  Because you think you
care for me--that's no reason why you should go.'

"I can't control myself.  I--"  He made a gesture of helplessness.  "I
can't think of you as--as married.  You seem like a girl to me--free.  I
keep forgetting."

"It doesn't seem to occur to you that I might be trusted to remember."

"I know," said he humbly.

She held the garment at arms' length, eyeing the hem critically.  "No,
you don't.  You're like all the men.  You fancy weak woman can always be
overborne by man, big and strong and superior."

"You wrong me."

"Why else should you talk of going away?"

"Because it's torment to me to be near you--to----"

She stopped sewing, looked at him with anger in her deep green eyes.
"Then your feeling is just what I thought."

"It is not!  It is love!"

Again she sewed a long time in silence.  It was very calm there, in that
quiet room with its flowers and tasteful, gracefully arranged furniture,
and the single lamp like a jewel shedding all its radiances upon her
small industrious figure.  "Then tell me," she said in her sweet, gentle
way, without looking up or pausing, "what do you want that you cannot
have?  You can see me as much as you like.  You can talk as freely as
you like.  You can count on sympathy, on friendship.  And, if you want
to, you can keep right on loving me in that exalted way you profess.
Nobody's going to hinder you."

She sewed on in silence, he motionless watching her, perplexity in his
honest, rather boyish face.  After a while her voice broke the silence.
"Love!"  She laughed with raillery that did not sting.  "My dear friend,
don't you see I was right?  Go away for a few days and----"

"For God's sake, don't suggest that again."

"Then don't say it's love that makes you want to leave and upset
everything."  She put the needles, thread, and thimble into her workbox,
rolled up the little suit, rose. "It's always the same story," she said,
sad rather than bitter.  "A woman means only one thing to a man.  Yes, I
think you had best go."

"You're too severe," he cried.  "It's true there's such a thing as
passion without love.  And I'll admit that I, like all men have felt it
often--have lied to myself as well as to the woman--and have called it
love.  But it's also true there's no love without some passion--at
least, _you_ couldn't hope to inspire it.  And though in your innocence
you may think so, you'd not want to have less than all love has to
give--if you loved."

Her eyes, large and softly brilliant, were burning into the darkness
beyond the open window.  "I'm not innocent," she said.  "And I try not
to be a hypocrite.  If I loved, I'd want all."

There was a long silence, she at the window gazing out into the
gathering night.  Then he said: "You were right. It was not love that
made me feel like flight.  I can conquer that feeling.  Will you let me
stay?"

She turned slowly.  In the look she fixed on him there was doubt,
hesitation.  "You've made me a little uneasy--a little afraid."

In his eagerness he sprang up.  "Don't!" he cried. "Don't send me away.
I'll never speak of love again. You've taught me my lesson."

"I do want you to stay," said she.  "It'd seem very lonely here with you
gone.  For I've come to depend on you as a friend.  It hurts to find you
seeking your own selfish pleasure under the pretense of a feeling for
me."

He winced--not because he felt scandalized by her candor, but because he
felt convicted by it.  "How well you understand men!" he exclaimed.
"Better than they understand themselves."

"In that one way I do," was her reply, an arresting hardness in the deep
voice that was usually altogether sweet.  These last few days she was
understanding a great many things about the relations of men and
women--or, perhaps, was letting herself realize that she understood
them.

He lowered his eyes, that he might not read her thoughts, that she might
not read the same thoughts in his own mind.  "You often make me think of
the lake out there," said he.  "There's the surface one sees at a
glance.  Then there's a little distance below the surface, that one sees
when he looks intently straight down.  And then there's fathoms on
fathoms where all sorts of strange things--strange thoughts and
feelings--lie hid. Sometimes--for an instant--one of them shows or
almost shows at the surface."

"When one lives alone a great deal, one gets the habit of living within
oneself--don't you think?"

"I suppose that's it--partly.  A brook couldn't hide very much--and most
people are like brooks or ponds. The ones that seem to have depth seem
so simply because the water's muddy."

She looked admiringly at him; and her admiration of his originality and
insight did not lessen when he added, "At least, so a friend of mine
used to say."  He returned to _the_ subject.  "Then--I may stay?"

Her face brightened.  In her eyes as they looked at a smile slowly
dawned.  Quickly all her features were responding, especially that wide,
expressive fascinating mouth.  "I hope you will.  But--no more
dreariness!"

"I hate gloom as much as you do."  He glanced round the room--at the
harmonies of woodwork and walls and furnishing, with here and there
bright flowers always in the restraint of those of gentle hue.  "As much
as you do," repeated he.  "And that's saying a great deal.  How _do_ you
manage it!--house and garden, always gay yet never gaudy--and such
variety!  Is there no end to your variety?"

"Oh, one's a new person every day, isn't one?--and different."

"_You_ certainly are.  But no one else I ever saw."  He colored
furiously at his finding himself, without intending it, upon the
forbidden ground.  She had turned away, and was leaving the room--the
safest course, since it enabled her to hide her pleasure in the
compliment that peculiarly appealed to her, and also seemed to give him
a sufficient yet not harsh rebuke.

Her aversion to restraint was perhaps stronger than is the average
woman's--certainly had more courage.  She had been too thoroughly
trained in the conventionalities not to have the familiar timidity as to
action, so strong in all conventionally bred people, so dominant over
women. But the "unhand-me" spirit of her time was finding outlet in
thought and feeling.  Reflecting much in her aloneness, she had reached
many audacious conclusions about life and the true meaning of its comedy
drama--that meaning so different from what we pretend, from what usually
passes as truth in history, philosophy, and literature, based as they
are upon man's cheap hankering for idealistic strut. The audacities of
thought that occasionally showed at her surface in speech or commentary
of smiling eyes and lips were conventional in comparison with whole
schools of deep-swimming ideas and fancies that kept hours of aloneness
from being hours of loneliness.  Physically, her passion for freedom
showed itself in her dislike of tight or stuffy garments.  She could
pass her hand round her waist inside her closest-fitting corset.  Her
liking for few clothes and for as little yoke and sleeves as custom
allowed came not from the thought for the other sex that often explains
this taste, but from aversion to restraint.

As usual, the first thing she did that night, when she was alone in her
rooms, was to rid herself of all her clothing and put on the thinnest of
thin white nightgowns, almost sleeveless, and cut out at the neck.  She
thrust her feet into bedroom slippers, braided her long hair with its
strands of red almost brown, with its strands of brown almost gold.  She
turned out the light, threw open all the long shutters screening her
windows, to let her bedroom fill with warm, perfumed freshness from lake
and gardens. She stepped out on the balcony to take the breathing
exercises that kept her body straight, her chest high, her bosom firm as
a girl's, and her form slim and supple. The fireflies were floating and
darting in the creepers and the near-hanging boughs.  The slight
agitations of the air stole among the folds of her gown and over her
neck and arms like charmed fingers.  There was no moon; but she did not
miss it in the dim splendor of the thronging stars.

"Aren't you about ready to come in?"

She startled, suppressed a scream.  She turned. Richard was standing in
the window.  Her blood which had rushed to her heart surged out again
and into her brain in an angry wave.  She hated to be taken by surprise.
It was on the tip of her tongue to cry furiously, "I detest being spied
upon."  But she had resolved soon after Winchie was born never to speak
angrily to him, never to let him hear her speak angrily.  The habit
restrained her now, as it had scores of times.  Instead, she said: "Why,
how did you get in?  I'm sure I locked my door."

"So you did," replied Dick in the cheerful unconscious way that so
irritated her in certain moods.  Not always could she bear with
composure his masculine assumption that whatever pleased him must
delight his wife.  "So you did," said he.  "And it's still locked.  But
there was the window from the front balcony into your sitting room--and
the door from your sitting room to this room.  You se

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