The speed of the train slackened; a broad tidal river flashed into sight
below the trestle, spreading away on either hand through yellowing level
meadows. And now, above the roaring undertone of the cars, from far
ahead floated back the treble bell-notes of the locomotive; there came a
gritting vibration of brakes; slowly, more slowly the cars glided to a
creaking standstill beside a sun-scorched platform gay with the bright
flutter of sunshades and summer gowns.

"Shotover! Shotover!" rang the far cry along the cars; and an absent-
minded young man in the Pullman pocketed the uncut magazine he had been
dreaming over and, picking up gun case and valise, followed a line of
fellow-passengers to the open air, where one by one they were engulfed
and lost to view amid the gay confusion on the platform.

The absent-minded young man, however, did not seem to know exactly where
he was bound for. He stood hesitating, leisurely inspecting the flashing
ranks of vehicles--depot wagons, omnibusses, and motor cars already
eddying around a dusty gravel drive centred by the conventional railroad
flower bed and fountain.

Sunshine blazed on foliage plants arranged geometrically, on scarlet
stars composed of geraniums, on thickets of tall flame-tinted cannas.
And around this triumph of landscape gardening, phaeton, Tilbury,
Mercedes, and Toledo backed, circled, tooted; gaily gowned women, whips
aslant, horses dancing, greeted expected guests; laughing young men
climbed into dog-carts and took the reins from nimble grooms; young
girls, extravagantly veiled, made room in comfortable touring-cars for
feminine guests whose extravagant veils were yet to be unpacked; slim
young men in leather trappings, caps adorned with elaborate masks or
goggles, manipulated rakish steering-gears; preoccupied machinists were
fussing with valve and radiator or were cranking up; and, through the
jolly tumult, the melancholy bell of the locomotive sounded, and the
long train moved out through the September sunshine amid clouds of snowy
steam.

And all this time the young man, gun case in one hand, suit case in the
other, looked about him in his good-humoured, leisurely manner for
anybody or any vehicle which might be waiting for him. His amiable
inspection presently brought a bustling baggage-master within range of
vision; and he spoke to this official, mentioning his host's name.

"Lookin' for Mr. Ferrall?" repeated the baggage-master, spinning a trunk
dexterously into rank with its fellows. "Say, one of Mr. Ferrall's men
was here just now--there he is, over there uncrating that there bird-
dog!"

The young man's eyes followed the direction indicated by the grimy
thumb; a red-faced groom in familiar livery was kneeling beside a dog's
travelling crate, attempting to unlock it, while behind the bars an
excited white setter whined and thrust forth first one silky paw then
the other.

The young man watched the scene for a moment, then:

"Are you one of Mr. Ferrall's men?" he asked in his agreeable voice.

The groom looked up, then stood up:

"Yis, Sorr."

"Take these; I'm Mr. Siward--for Shotover House. I dare say you have room
for me and the dog, too."

The groom opened his mouth to speak, but Siward took the crate key from
his fingers, knelt, and tried the lock. It resisted. From the depths of
the crate a beseeching paw fell upon his cuff.

"Certainly, old fellow," he said soothingly, "I know how you feel about
it; I know you're in a hurry--and we'll have you out in a second--steady,
boy!--something's jammed, you see! Only one moment now! There you are!"

The dog attempted to bolt as the crate door opened, but the young man
caught him by the leather collar and the groom snapped on a leash.

"Beg pardon, Sorr," began the groom, carried almost off his feet by the
frantic circling of the dog--"beg pardon, Sorr, but I'll be afther seem'
if anny of Mr. Ferrall's men drove over for you--"

"Oh! Are you not one of Mr. Ferrall's men?"

"Yis, Sorr, but I hadn't anny orders to meet anny wan--"

"Haven't you anything here to drive me in?"

"Yis, Sorr--I'll look to see--"

The raw groom, much embarrassed, and keeping his feet with difficulty
against the plunging dog, turned toward the gravel drive where now only
a steam motor and a depot-wagon remained. As they looked the motor
steamed out, honking hoarsely; the depot-wagon followed, leaving the
circle at the end of the station empty of vehicles.

"Didn't Mr. Ferrall expect me?" asked Siward.

"Aw, yis, Sorr; but the gintlemen for Shotover House does ginerally
allways coom by Black Fells, Sorr--"

"Oh, Lord!" said the young man, "I remember now. I should have gone on
to Black Fells Crossing; Mr. Ferrall wrote me!" Then, amused: "I suppose
you have only a baggage-wagon here?"

"No, Sorr--a phayton"--he hesitated.

"Well? Isn't a phaeton all right?"

"Yis, Sorr--if th' yoong lady says so--beg pardon, Sorr, Miss Landis is
driving."

"Oh--h! I see. - Is Miss Landis a guest at Shotover House?"

"Yis, Sorr. An' if ye would joost ask her--the phayton do be coming now,
Sorr!"

The phaeton was coming; the horse, a showy animal, executed side-steps;
blue ribbons fluttered from the glittering head-stall; a young girl in
white was driving.

Siward advanced to the platform's edge as the phaeton drew up; the young
lady looked inquiringly at the groom, at the dog, and leisurely at him.

So he took off his hat, naming himself in that well-bred and agreeable
manner characteristic of men of his sort,--and even his smile appeared to
be part and parcel of a conventional ensemble so harmonious as to remain
inconspicuous.

"You should have gone on to Black Fells Crossing," observed Miss Landis,
coolly controlling the nervous horse. "Didn't you know it?"

He said he remembered now that such were the directions given him.

The girl glanced at him incuriously, and with more curiosity at the dog.
"Is that the Sagamore pup, Flynn?" she asked.

"It is, Miss."

"Can't you take him on the rumble with you?" And, to Siward: "There is
room for your gun and suit case."

"And for me?" he asked, smiling.

"I think so. Be careful of that Sagamore pup, Flynn. Hold him between
your knees. Are you ready, Mr. Siward?"

So he climbed in; the groom hoisted the dog to the rumble and sprang up
behind; the horse danced and misbehaved, making a spectacle of himself
and an agreeable picture of his driver; then the pretty little phaeton
swung northward out of the gravel drive and went whirling along a road
all misty with puffs of yellow dust which the afternoon sun turned to
floating golden powder.

"Did you send my telegram, Flynn?" she asked without turning her head.

"I did, Miss."

It being the most important telegram she had ever sent in all her life,
Miss Landis became preoccupied,--quite oblivious to extraneous details,
including Siward, until the horse began acting badly again. Her slightly
disdainful and perfect control of the reins interested the young man. He
might have said something civil and conventional about that, but did not
make the effort to invade a reserve which appeared to embarrass nobody.

A stacatto note from the dog, prolonged infinitely in hysterical
crescendo, demanded comment from somebody.

"What is the matter with him, Flynn?" she asked.

Siward said: "You should let him run, Miss Landis."

She nodded, smiling, inattentive, absorbed in her own affairs, still
theorising concerning her telegram. She drove on for a while, and might
have forgotten the dog entirely had he not once more lifted his voice in
melancholy.

"You say he ought to run for a mile or two? Do you think he'll bolt, Mr.
Siward?"

"Is he a new dog?"

"Yes, fresh from the kennels; supposed to be house-and wagon-broken,
steady to shot and wing--" She shrugged her pretty shoulders. "You see
how he's acting already!"

"Do you mind if I try him?" suggested Siward.

"You mean that you are going to let him run?"

"I think so."

"And if he bolts?"

"I'll take my chances."

"Yes, but please consider my chances, Mr. Siward. The dog doesn't belong
to me."

"But he ought to run--"

"But suppose he runs away? He's a horridly expensive creature--if you
care to take the risk."

"I'll take the risk," said Siward, smiling as she drew rein. "Now Flynn,
give me the leash. Quiet! Quiet, puppy! Everything is coming your way;
that's the beauty of patience; great thing, patience!" He took the
leader; the dog sprang from the rumble. "Now, my friend, look at me! No,
don't twist and squirm and scramble; look me square in the eye; so! -
Now we know each ether and we respect each other--because you are going
to be a good puppy - and obey - Down charge!"

The dog, trembling with eager comprehension, dropped like a shot, muzzle
laid flat between his paws. Siward unleashed him, looked down at him for
a second, stooped and caressed the silky head, then with a laugh swung
himself into the phaeton beside the driver, who, pretty head turned, had
been looking on intently.

"Your dog is yard-broken," he said. "Look at him."

"I see. Do you think he will follow us?"

"I think so."

The horse started, Miss Landis looking back over her shoulder at the dog
who lay motionless, crouched flat in the road.

Then Siward turned. "Come on, Sagamore!" he said gaily; and the dog
sprang forward, circled about the moving phaeton, splitting the air with
yelps of ecstasy, then tore ahead, mad with the delight of stretching
cramped muscles amid the long rank grass and shrubbery of the roadside.

The girl watched him doubtfully; when he disappeared far away up the
road she turned the blue inquiry of her eyes on Siward.

"He'll be back," said the young fellow, laughing; and presently the dog
reappeared on a tearing gallop, white flag tossing, glorious in his new
liberty, enchanted with the confidence this tall young man had reposed
in him--this adorable young man, this wonderful friend who had suddenly
appeared to release him from an undignified and abominable situation in
a crate.

"A good dog," said Siward; and the girl looked around at him, partly
because his voice was pleasant, partly because a vague memory was
beginning to stir within her, coupling something unpleasant with the
name of Siward.

She had been conscious of it when he first named himself, but, absorbed
in the overwhelming importance of her telegram, had left the analysis of
the matter for the future.

She thought again of her telegram, theorised a little, came to no
conclusion except to let the matter rest for the present, and mentally
turned to the next and far less important problem--the question of this
rather attractive young man at her side, and why the name of Siward
should be linked in her mind with anything disagreeable.

Tentatively following the elusive mental dews that might awaken
something definite concerning her hazy impression of the man beside her,
she spoke pleasantly, conventionally, touching idly any topic that might
have a bearing; and, under a self-possession so detached as to give an
impression of indifference, eyes, ears, and intelligence admitted that
he was agreeable to look at, pleasant of voice, and difficult to
reconcile with anything unpleasant.

Which gradually aroused her interest--the incongruous usually interesting
girls of her age--for he had wit enough to amuse her, sufficient
inconsequence to please her, and something listless, at times almost
absent-minded, almost inattentive, that might have piqued her had it not
inoculated her, as it always does any woman, with the nascent germ of
curiosity. Besides, there was, in the hint of his momentary
preoccupation, a certain charm.

They discussed shooting and the opening of the season; dogs and the
training of dogs; and why some go gun-shy and why some ace blinkers.
From sport and its justification, they became inconsequential; and she
was beginning to enjoy the freshness of their chance acquaintance, his
nice attitude toward things, his irrelevancy, his gaiety.

Laughter thawed her; for notwithstanding the fearless confidence she had
been taught for men of her own kind, self-possession and reserve, if not
inherent, had also been drilled into her, and she required a great deal
in a man before she paid him the tribute of one of her pretty laughs.

Apparently they were advancing rather rapidly.

"Don't you think we ought to call the dog in, Mr. Siward?"

"Yes; he's had enough!"

She drew rein; he sprang out and whistled; and the Sagamore pup, dusty
and happy came romping back. Siward motioned him to the rumble, but the
dog leaped to the front.

"I don't mind," said the girl. "Let him sit here between us. And you
might occupy yourself by pulling some of those burrs from his ears--if
you will?"

"Of course I will. Look up here, puppy! No! Don't try to lick my face,
for that is bad manners. Demonstrations are odious, as the poet says."

"It's always bad manners, isn't it?" asked Miss Landis.

"What? Being affectionate?"

"Yes, and admitting it."

"I believe it is. Do you hear that--Sagamore? But never mind; I'll break
the rules some day when we're alone."

The dog laid one paw on Siward's knee, looking him wistfully in the
eyes.

"More demonstrations," observed the girl. "Mr. Siward! You are hugging
him! This amounts to a dual conspiracy in bad manners."

"Awfully glad to admit you to the conspiracy," he said. "There's one
vacancy--if you are eligible."

"I am; I was discovered recently kissing my saddle-mare."

"That settles it! Sagamore, give the young lady the grip."

Sylvia Landis glanced at the dog, then impulsively shifting the whip to
her left hand, held out the right. And very gravely the Sagamore pup
laid one paw in her dainty white gloved palm.

"You darling!" murmured the girl, resuming her whip.

"I notice," observed Siward, "that you are perfectly qualified for
membership in our association for the promotion of bad manners. In fact
I should suggest you for the presidency--"

"I suppose you think all sorts of things because I gushed over that
dog."

"Of course I do."

"Well you need not," she rejoined, delicate nose up-tilted. "I never
kissed a baby in all my life--and never mean to. Which is probably more
than you can say."

"Yes, its more than I can say.

"That admission elects you president," she concluded. But after a
moment's silent driving she turned partly toward him with mock
seriousness: "Is it not horridly unnatural in me to feel that way about
babies? And about people, too; I simply cannot endure demonstrations. As
for dogs and horses--well, I've admitted how I behave; and, being so
shamelessly affectionate by disposition, why can't I be nice to babies?
I've a hazy but dreadful notion that there's something wrong about me,
Mr. Siward."

He scrutinised the pretty features, anxiously; "I can't see it," he
said.

"But I mean it--almost seriously. I don't want to be so aloof, but--I
don't like to touch other people. It is rather horrid of me I suppose to
be like those silky, plumy, luxurious Angora cats who never are civil to
you and who always jump out of your arms at the first opportunity."

He laughed--and there was malice in his eyes, but he did not know her
well enough to pursue the subject through so easy an opening.

It had occurred to her, too, that her simile might invite elaboration,
and she sensed the laugh in his silence, and liked him for remaining
silent where he might easily have been wittily otherwise.

This set her so much at ease, left her so confident, that they were on
terms of gayest understanding presently, she gossiping about the guests
at Shotover House, outlining the diversions planned for the two weeks
before them.

"But we shall see little of one another; you will be shooting most of
the time," she said--with the very faintest hint of challenge--too
delicate, too impersonal to savour of coquetry. But the germ of it was
there.

"Do you shoot?"

"Yes; why?"

"I am reconciled to the shooting, then."

"Oh, that is awfully civil of you. Sometimes I'd rather play Bridge."

"So should I--sometimes."

"I'll remember that, Mr. Siward; and when all the men are waiting for
you to start out after grouse perhaps I may take that moment to whisper:
ëMay I play?'"

He laughed.

"You mean that you really would stay and play double dummy when every
other living man will be off to the coverts? Double dummy--to improve my
game?"

"Certainly! I need improvement."

"Then there is something wrong with you, too, Mr. Siward."

She laughed and started to flick her whip, but at her first motion the
horse gave trouble.

"The bit doesn't fit," observed Siward.

"You are perfectly right," she returned, surprised. "I ought to have
remembered; it is shameful to drive a horse improperly bitted." And,
after a moment: "You are considerate toward animals; it is good in a
man."

"Oh, it's no merit. When animals are uncomfortable it worries me. It's
one sort of selfishness, you see."

"What nonsense," she said; and her smile was very friendly. "Why doesn't
a nice man ever admit he's nice when told so?"

It seems they had advanced that far. For she was beginning to find this
young man not only safe but promising; she had met nobody recently half
as amusing, and the outlook at Shotover House had been unpromising with
only the overgrateful Page twins to practise on--the other men
collectively and individually boring her. And suddenly, welcome as manna
from the sky, behold this highly agreeable boy to play with--until
Quarrier arrived. Her telegram had been addressed to Mr. Quarrier.

"What was it you were saying about selfishness?" she asked. "Oh, I
remember. It was nonsense."

"Certainly."

She laughed, adding: "Selfishness is so simply defined you know."

"Is it? How."

"A refusal to renounce. That covers everything," she concluded.

"Sometimes renunciation is weakness--isn't it?" he suggested.

"In what case for example?"

"Well, suppose we take love."

"Very well, you may take it if you like it."

"Suppose you loved a man!" he insisted.

"Let him beware! What then?"

"--And, suppose it would distress your family if you married him?"

"I'd give him up."

"If you loved him?"

"Love? That is the poorest excuse for selfishness, Mr. Siward."

"So you would ruin your happiness and his--"

"A girl ought to find more happiness in renouncing a selfish love than
in love itself," announced Miss Landis with that serious conviction
characteristic of her years.

"Of course," assented Siward with a touch of malice, "if you really do
find more happiness in renouncing love than in love itself, it would be
foolish not to do it--"

"Mr. Siward! You are derisive. Besides, you are not acute. A woman is
always an opportunist. When the event takes place I shall know what to
do."

"You mean when you want to marry the man you mustn't?

"Exactly. I probably shall."

"Marry him?

"Wish to!"

"I see. But you won't, of course."

She drew rein, bringing the horse to a walk at the foot of a long hill.

"We are going much too fast," said Miss Landis, smiling.

"Driving too fast for--"

"No, not driving, going--you and I."

"Oh, you mean--"

"Yes I do. We are on all sorts of terms, already."

"In the country, you know, people--"

"Yes I know all about it, and what old and valued friends one makes at a
week's end. But it has been a matter of half-hours with us, Mr. Siward."

"Let us sit very still and think it over," he suggested. And they both
laughed.

It was perhaps the reaction of her gaiety that recalled to her mind her
telegram. The telegram had been her promised answer after she had had
time to consider a suggestion made to her by a Mr. Howard Quarrier. The
last week at Shotover permitted reflection; and while her telegram was
no complete answer to the suggestion he had made, it contained material
of interest in the eight words: "I will consider your request when you
arrive.

"I wonder if you know Howard Quarrier?" she said.

After a second's hesitation he replied: "Yes--a little. Everybody does."

"You do know him?"

"Only at--the club."

"Oh, the Lenox?"

"The Lenox--and the Patroons."

Preoccupied, driving with careless, almost inattentive perfection, she
thought idly of her twenty-three years, wondering how life could have
passed so quickly leaving her already stranded on the shoals of an
engagement to marry Howard Quarrier. Then her thoughts, errant, wandered
half the world over before they returned to Siward; and when at length
they did, and meaning to be civil, she spoke again of his acquaintance
with Quarrier at the Patroons Club--the club itself being sufficient to
settle Siward's status in every community.

"I'm trying to remember what it is I have heard about you," she
continued amiably; "you are--"

An odd expression in his eyes arrested her--long enough to note their
colour and expression--and she continued, pleasantly; "--you are Stephen
Siward, are you not? You see I know your name perfectly well--" Her
straight brows contracted a trifle; she drove on, lips compressed,
following an elusive train of thought which vaguely, persistently,
coupled his name with something indefinitely unpleasant. And she could
not reconcile this with his appearance. However, the train of unlinked
ideas which she pursued began to form the semblance of a chain. Coupling
his name with Quarrier's, and with a club, aroused memory; vague
uneasiness stirred her to a glimmering comprehension. Siward? Stephen
Siward? One of the New York Siwards then;--one of that race--

Suddenly the truth flashed upon her,--the crude truth lacking definite
detail, lacking circumstance and colour and atmosphere,--merely the raw
and ugly truth.

Had he looked at her--and he did, once--he could have seen only the
unruffled and very sweet profile of a young girl. Composure was one of
the masks she had learned to wear--when she chose.

And she was thinking very hard all the while; "So this is the man? I
might have known his name. Where were my five wits? Siward!--Stephen
Siward! - He is very young, too - much too young to be so horrid. -
Yet--it wasn't so dreadful, after all; only the publicity! Dear me! I
knew we were going too fast."

"Miss Landis," he said.

"Mr. Siward?"--very gently. It was her way to be gentle when generous.

"I think," he said, "that you are beginning to remember where you may
have heard my name."

"Yes--a little--" She looked at him with the direct gaze of a child, but
the lovely eyes were troubled. His smile was not very genuine, but he
met her gaze steadily enough.

"It was rather nice of Mrs. Ferrall to ask me," he said, "after the mess
I made of things last spring."

"Grace Ferrall is a dear," she replied.

After a moment he ventured: "I suppose you saw it in the papers."

"I think so; I had completely forgotten it; your name seemed to--"

"I see." Then, listlessly: "I couldn't have ventured to remind you
that--that perhaps you might not care to be so amiable--"

"Mr. Siward," she said impulsively, "you are nice to me! Why shouldn't I
be amiable? It was--it was--I've forgotten just how dreadfully you did
behave--"

"Pretty badly."

"Very?"

"They say so."

"And what is your opinion Mr. Siward?"

"Oh, I ought to have known better." Something about him reminded her of
a bad small boy; and suddenly in spite of her better sense, in spite of
her instinctive caution, she found herself on the very verge of
laughter. What was it in the man that disarmed and invited a
confidence--scarcely justified it appeared? What was it now that moved
her to overlook what few overlook--not the fault, but its publicity? Was
it his agreeable bearing, his pleasant badinage, his amiably listless
moments of preoccupation, his youth that appealed to her--aroused her
charity, her generosity, her curiosity?

And had other people continued to accept him, too? What would Quarrier
think of his presence at Shotover? She began to realise that she was a
little afraid of Quarrier's opinions. And his opinions were always
judgments. However Grace Ferrall had thought it proper to ask him, and
that meant social absolution. As far as that went she also was perfectly
ready to absolve him if he needed it. But perhaps he didn't care!--She
looked at him, furtively. He seemed to be tranquil enough in his
abstraction. Trouble appeared to slide very easily from his broad young
shoulders. Perhaps he was already taking much for granted in her
gentleness with him. And gradually speculation became interest and
interest a young girl's innocent curiosity to learn something of a man
whose record it seemed almost impossible to reconcile with his
personality.

"I was wondering," he said looking up to encounter her clear eyes,
"whose house that is over there?"

"Beverly Plank's shooting-box; Black Fells," she replied nodding toward
the vast pile of blackish rocks against the sky, upon which sprawled a
heavy stone house infested with chimneys.

"Plank? Oh yes."

He smiled to remember the battering blows rained upon the ramparts of
society by the master of Black Fells.

But the smile faded; and, glancing at him, the girl was surprised to see
the subtle change in his face--the white worn look, then the old
listless apathy which, all at once to her, hinted of something graver
than preoccupation.

"Are we near the sea?" he asked.

"Very near. Only a moment to the top of this hill. - Now look!"

There lay the sea--the same grey-blue crawling void that had ever
fascinated and repelled him--always wrinkled, always in flat monotonous
motion, spreading away, away to the sad world's ends.

"Full of menace--always," he said, unconscious that he had spoken aloud.

"The sea!"

He spoke without turning: "The sea is a relentless thing for a man to
fight. - There are other tides more persistent than the sea, but like
it--like it in its menace."

His face seemed thinner, older; she noticed his cheek bones for the
first time. Then, meeting her eyes, youth returned with a laugh and a
touch of colour; and, without understanding exactly how, she was aware,
presently, that they had insensibly slipped back to their light badinage
and gay inconsequences--back to a footing which, strangely, seemed to be
already an old footing, familiar, pleasant, and natural to return to.

"Is that Shotover House?" he asked as they came to the crest of the last
hillock between them and the sea.

"At last, Mr. Siward," she said mockingly; "and now your troubles are
nearly ended."

"And yours, Miss Landis?"

"I don't know," she murmured to herself, thinking of the telegram with
the faintest misgiving.

For she was very young, and she had not had half enough out of life as
yet; and besides, her theories and preconceived plans for the safe and
sound ordering of her life appeared to lack weight--nay, they were
dwindling already into insignificance.

Theory had almost decided her to answer Mr. Quarrier's suggestion with a
ëYes.' However, he was coming from the Lakes in a day or two. She could
decide definitely when she had discussed the matter with him.

"I wish that I owned this dog," observed Siward, as the phaeton entered
the macadamised drive.

"I wish so, too," she said, "but he belongs to Mr. Quarrier."



IMPRUDENCE

A house of native stone built into and among weather-scarred rocks, one
massive wing butting seaward, others nosing north and south among cedars
and outcropping ledges--the whole silver-grey mass of masonry reddening
under a westering sun, every dormer, every leaded diamond pane aflame;
this was Shotover as Siward first beheld it.

Like the craggy vertebrae of a half-buried fossil splitting the sod, a
ragged line of rock rose as a barrier to inland winds; the foreland, set
here and there with tiny lawns and pockets of bright flowers, fell away
to the cliffs; and here, sheer wet black rocks fronted the eternal
battering of the Atlantic.

As the phaeton drew up under a pillared porte-cochere, one or two
servants appeared; a rather imposing specimen bowed them through the
doors into the hall where, in a wide chimney place, the embers of a
drift-wood fire glimmered like a heap of dusty jewels. Bars of sunlight
slanted on wall and rug, on stone floor and carved staircase, on the
bronze foliations of the railed gallery above, where, in the golden
gloom through a high window, sun-tipped tree tops against a sky of azure
stirred like burnished foliage in a tapestry.

"There is nobody here, of course," observed Miss Landis to Siward as
they halted in front of the fire-place; "the season opens to-day in this
county, you see." She shrugged her pretty shoulders: "And the women who
don't shoot make the first field-luncheon a function."

She turned, nodded her adieux, then, over her shoulder, casually: "If
you haven't an appointment with the Sand-Man before dinner you may find
me in the gun-room."

"I'll be there in about three minutes," he said; "and what about this
dog?"--looking down at the Sagamore pup who stood before him, wagging,
attentive, always the gentleman to the tips of his toes.

Miss Landis laughed. "Take him to your room if you like. Dogs have the
run of the house."

So he followed a servant to the floor above where a smiling and very
ornamental maid preceded him through a corridor and into that heavy wing
of the house which fronted the sea.

"Tea is served in the gun-room, sir," said the pretty maid, and
disappeared to give place to a melancholy and silent young man who
turned on the bath, laid out fresh raiment, and whispering, "Scotch or
Irish, sir?" presently effaced himself.

Before he quenched his own thirst Siward filled a bowl and set it on the
floor, and it seemed as though the dog would never finish gulping and
slobbering in the limpid icy water.

"It's the salt air, my boy," commented the young man, gravely refilling
his own glass as though accepting the excuse on his own account.

Then man and beast completed ablutions and grooming and filed out
through the wide corridor, around the gallery, and down the broad
stairway to the gun-room--an oaken vaulted place illuminated by the sun,
where mellow lights sparkled on glass-cased rows of fowling pieces and
rifles, on the polished antlers of shaggy moose heads.

Miss Landis sat curled up in a cushioned corner under the open casement
panes, offering herself a cup of tea. She looked up, nodding invitation;
he found a place beside her. A servant whispered, "Scotch or Irish,
sir," then set the crystal paraphernalia at his elbow.

He said something about the salt air, casually; the girl gazed
meditatively at space.

The sound of wheels on the gravel outside aroused her from a silence
which had become a brown study; and, to Siward, presently, she said:
"Here endeth our first rendezvous."

"Then let us arrange another immediately," he said, stirring the ice in
his glass.

The girl considered him with speculative eyes: "I shouldn't exactly know
what to do with you for the next hour if I didn't abandon you."

"Why bother to do anything with me? Why even give yourself the trouble
of deserting me? That solves the problem."

"I really don't mean that you are a problem to me, Mr. Siward," she
said, amused; "I mean that I am going to drive again."

"I see."

"No you don't see at all. There's a telegram; I'm not driving for
pleasure--"

She had not meant that either, and it annoyed her that she had expressed
herself in such terms. As a matter of fact, at the telegraphed request
of Mr. Quarrier, she was going to Black Fells Crossing to meet his train
from the Lakes and drive him back to Shotover. The drive, therefore, was
of course a drive for pleasure.

"I see," repeated Siward amiably.

"Perhaps you do," she observed, rising to her graceful height. He was on
his feet at once, so carelessly, so good-humouredly acquiescent that
without any reason at all she hesitated.

"I had meant to show you about--the cliffs--the kennels and stables; I'm
sorry," she concluded, lingering.

"I'm awfully sorry," he rejoined without meaning anything in particular.
That was the trouble, whatever he said, apparently meant so much.

With the agreeable sensation of being regretted, she leisurely gloved
herself, then walked through the gun-room and hall, Siward strolling
beside her.

The dog followed them as they turned toward the door and passed out
across the terraced veranda to the driveway where a Tandem cart was
drawn up, faultlessly appointed. Quarrier's mania was Tandem. She
thought it rather nice of her to remember this.

She inspected the ensemble without visible interest for a few moments;
the wind freshened from the sea, fluttering her veil, and she turned
toward the east to face it. In the golden splendour of declining day the
white sails of yachts crowded landward on the last leg before beating
westward into Blue Harbour; a small white cruiser, steaming south, left
a mile long stratum of rose-tinted smoke hanging parallel to the
horizon's plane; the westering sun struck sparks from her bright-work.

The magic light on land and water seemed to fascinate the girl; she had
walked a little way toward the cliffs, Siward following silently,
offering no comment on the beauty of sky and cliff. As they halted once
more the enchantment seemed to spread; a delicate haze enveloped the
sea; hints of rose colour tinted the waves; over the uplands a pale
mauve bloom grew; the sunlight turned redder, slanting on the rocks, and
every kelp-covered reef became a spongy golden mound, sprayed with
liquid flame.

They had turned their backs to the Tandem; the grooms looked after them,
standing motionless at the horses' heads.

"Mr. Siward, this is too fine to miss," she said. "I will walk as far as
the headland with you. - Please smoke if you care to."

He did care to; several matches were extinguished by the wind until she
spread her skids as a barrier; and kneeling in their shelter he got his
light.

"Tobacco smoke diluted with sea breeze is delicious," she said, as the
wind whirled the aromatic smoke of his cigarette up into her face.
"Don't move, Mr. Siward; I like it; there is to me always a faint odour
of sweet-brier in the mÈlange. Did you ever notice it?"

The breeze-blown conversation became fragmentary, veering as
capriciously as the purple wind-flaws that spread across the shoals. But
always to her question or comment she found in his response the charm of
freshness, of quick intelligence, or of a humourous and idle perversity
which stimulates without demanding.

Once, glancing back at the house where the T-cart and horses stood, she
said that she had better return; or perhaps she only thought she said
it, for he made no response that time. And a few moments later they
reached the headland, and the Atlantic lay below, flowing azure from
horizon to horizon--under a universe of depthless blue. And for a long
while neither spoke.

With her the spell endured until conscience began to stir. Then she
awoke, uneasy as always, under the shadow of restraint or pressure,
until her eyes fell on him and lingered.

A subtle change had come into his face; its leanness struck her for the
first time; that, and an utter detachment from his surroundings, a
sombre oblivion to everything--and to her.

How curiously had his face altered, how shadowy it had grown, effacing
the charm of youth, in it.

The slight amusement with which she had become conscious of her own
personal exclusion grew to an interest tinged with curiosity.

The interest continued, but when his silence became irksome to her she
said so very frankly. His absent eyes, still clouded, met hers,
unsmiling.

"I hate the sea," he said.

"You--hate it!" she repeated, too incredulous to be disappointed.

"There's no rest in it; it tires. A man who plays with it must be on his
guard every second. To spend a lifetime on it is ridiculous--a whole life
of intelligent effort, against perpetual, brutal, inanimate resistance--
one endless uninterrupted fight--a ceaseless human manoeuvre against
senseless menace; and then the counter attack of the lifeless monster,
the bellowing advance, the shock--and no battle won--nothing final,
nothing settled, no! only the same eternal nightmare of surveillance,
the same sleepless watch for stupid treachery."

"But--you don't have to fight it!" she said, astonished.

"No; but it is no secret--what it does to those who do. - Some escape;
but only by dying ashore before it gets them. That is the way some of us
reach Heaven; we die too quick for the Enemy to catch us."

He was laughing when she said: "It is not a fight with the sea; it is
the battle of Life itself you mean."

"Yes, in a way, the battle of Life."

"Oh, you are morbid then. Is there anybody ever born who has not a fight
on his hands?"

"No; only I have known men tired out, unfairly, before life had declared
war on them."

"Just what do you mean?"

"Oh, something about fair play--what our popular idol summarises as a
ësquare deal'." He laughed again, easily, his face clearing.

"Nobody worth a square deal ever laments because he hasn't had it," she
said.

"I dare say that's true, too," he admitted listlessly.

"Mr. Siward, exactly what did you mean?"

"I was thinking of men I knew; for example a man who through generations
has inherited every impulse and desire that he should not harbour--a man
with intellect enough to be aware of it, with decency enough to desire
decency. - What chance has he with the storms which have been brewing
for him even before he opened his eyes on earth? Is that a square deal?"

The troubled concentration of her face was reflected now in his own; the
wind came whipping and flicking at them from league-wide tossing wastes;
the steady thunder of the sea accented the silence.

She said: "I suppose everybody has infinite capacity for decency or
mischief. I know that I have. And I fancy that this capacity always
remains, no matter how moral one's life may be. ëWatch and pray' was not
addressed to the guilty alone, Mr. Siward."

"Oh, yes, of course. As for the balanced capacity for good and evil, how
about the inherited desire for the latter?"

"Who is free from that, too? Do you suppose anybody really desires to be
good?"

"You mean most people are so afraid not to be, that virtue becomes a
habit?"

"Perhaps. It's a plain business proposition anyway. It pays."

"Celestial insurance?" he asked, laughing.

"I don't know, Mr. Siward; do you?"

But he, turning to the sea, had become engrossed in his own thoughts
again; and again she was first curious, then impatient at the ease with
which he excluded her. She remembered, too, that the cart was waiting;
that she had scarcely time now to make the train.

She stood irresolute, inert, disinclined to bestir herself. An inborn
aptitude for drifting, which threatened to become a talent for
indecision, had always alternated in her with sudden impulsive
conclusions; and when her pride was involved, in decisions which
sometimes scarcely withstood the analysis of reason.

Physically healthy, mentally unawakened, sentimentally incredulous,
totally ignorant of any master passion, and conventionally drilled, her
beauty and sweet temper had carried her easily on the frothy crest of
her first season, over the eligible and ineligible alike, leaving her at
Lenox, a rather tired and breathless girl, in love with pleasure and the
world which treated her so well.

The death of her mother abroad had made little impression upon her--her
uncle, Major Belwether, having cared for her since her father's death
when she was ten years old. So, although the scandal of her mother's
self-exile had been in a measure condoned by a tardy marriage to the man
for whom she had left everything, her daughter had grown up ignorant of
any particular feeling for a mother she could scarcely remember.

However, she wore black and went nowhere for the second winter, during
which time she learned a great deal concerning the unconventional
proclivities of the women of her race and family, enough to impress her
so seriously that on an exaggerated impulse she had come to one of her
characteristic decisions.

That decision was to break the unsavoury record at the first justifiable
opportunity. And the opportunity came in the shape of Quarrier. As
though wedlock were actually the sanctuary which an alarmed nation
pretends it to be!

Now, approaching the threshold of a third and last season, and having
put away her almost meaningless mourning, there had stolen into her
sense of security something irksome in the promise she had made to give
Quarrier a definite answer before winter.

Perhaps it had been the lack of interest in the people at Shotover,
perhaps a mental review of her ancestors' capricious records--perhaps a
characteristic impulse that had directed a telegram to Quarrier after a
midnight confab with Grace Ferrall.

However it may have been, she had summoned him. And now he was on his
way to get his answer, the best whip, the most eagerly discussed, and
one of the wealthiest unmarried men in America.

Lingering irresolutely, considering with idle eyes the shadows
lengthening across the sun-shot moorland, the sound of Siward's even
voice aroused her from a meditation bordering on lassitude.

She answered vaguely. He spoke again; all the agreeable, gentle,
humourous charm dominant once more--releasing her from the growing
tension of her own thoughts, absolving her from the duty of immediate
decision.

"I feel curiously lazy," she said; "perhaps from our long drive." She
seated herself on the turf. "Talk to me, Mr. Siward--in that lazy way of
yours."

What he had to say proved inconsequent enough, an irrelevant suggestion
concerning the training of field-dogs for close covert work and the
reasons for not breaking such dogs on quail. Then the question of cross-
breeding came up, and he gave his opinion on the qualities of
"droppers." To which she replied, sleepily; and the conversation veered
again toward the mystery of heredity, and the hopelessness of escape
from its laws as illustrated now by the Sagamore pup, galloping nose in
the wind, having scented afar the traces of the forbidden rabbit.

"His ancestors turned ëround and ëround to flatten the long reeds and
grasses in their lairs before lying down," observed Siward. "He does it,
too, where there is nothing to flatten out. Did you ever notice how many
times a dog turns around before lying down? And there goes the carefully
schooled Sagamore, chasing rabbits! Why? Because his wild ancestors
chased rabbits. - Heredity? It's a steady, unseen, pulling, dragging
force. Like lightning, too, it shatters, sometimes, where there is
resistance."

"Do you mean, Mr. Siward, that heredity is an excuse for moral
weakness?"

"I don't know. Those inheriting nothing of evil say it is no excuse."

"It is no excuse."

"You speak with authority," he said.

"With more than you are aware of," she murmured, not meaning to say it.

She stood up impulsively, her fresh face turned to the distant house,
her rounded young figure poised in relief against the sky.

"Inherited or not, idleness, procrastination, are my besetting sins.
Can't you suggest the remedy, Mr. Siward?"

"But they are only the thieves of Time; and we kill the poor old
gentleman."

"Leagued assassins," she repeated pensively.

Her gown had caught on the cliff briers; he knelt to release it, she
looking down, noting an ugly tear in the fabric.

"Payment for my iniquities--the first instalment," she said, still
looking down over his shoulder and watching his efforts to release her.
"Thank you, Mr. Siward. I think we ought to start, don't you?"

He straightened up, smiling, awaiting her further pleasure. Her pleasure
being capricious, she seated herself again, saying: "What I meant to say
was this: evils that spring from heredity are no excuse for misconduct
in people of our sort. Environment, not heredity, counts. And it's our
business, who have every chance in the world, to make good!"

He looked down, amused at the piquant incongruity of voice and
vernacular.

"What time is it?" she asked irrelevantly.

He glanced at his watch. She turned her eyes toward the level sun,
conscious, and a little conscience-stricken that it was too late for her
to drive to Black Fells Crossing--unless she started at once.

The sun hung low over the pines; all the scrubby foreland ran molten
gold in every tufted furrow; flock after flock of twittering little
birds whirled into the briers and out again, scattering inland into
undulating flight.

The zenith turned shell pink; through clotted shoals of clouds spread
spaces of palest green like calm lakes in the sky.

It grew stiller; the wind went down with the sun.

Doubtless he had forgotten to tell her the time; she had almost
forgotten that she had asked him. With the silence of sunset a languor,
the indolence of content, crept over her; she saw him close his watch
with the absent-minded air which she already associated with him, and
she let the question go from sheer disinclination for the effort of
repetition--let the projected drive go--acquiescent, content that matters
shape themselves without any interference from her. The sense of ease,
of physical well-being invaded her with an agreeable relaxation as
though tension somewhere had slackened.

They chatted on, casually, impersonally, in rather subdued tones. The
dog returned now and then to see that all was well. All was well enough,
it appeared, for she sat beside Siward, quite content, knees clasped in
her hands, exchanging impressions of life with a man who so far had been
sympathetically considerate in demanding from her no intellectual
effort.

The conversation drifted illogically; sometimes he stirred her to
amusement, even a hushed laughter; sometimes she smilingly agreed with
his views, sometimes she let them go, uncriticised; or, intent on her
own ideas, shook her small head in amused disapproval.

The stillness over all, the deepening mellow light, the blessed
indolence of the young world--and their few years in it--Youth! That was
perhaps the key to it all, after all.

"To-morrow," she mused aloud, knees cradled in her clasped fingers,
"to-morrow they'll shoot--with great circumstance and fuss--a few native
woodcock--there's no flight yet from the north!--a few grouse, fewer
snipe, a stray duck or two. Others will drive motor cars over bad roads;
others will ride, sail, golf--anything to kill the eternal enemy."

"And you?"

"Je n'en sais rien, monsieur."

"Mais je voudrais savoir."

"Pourquoi?"

"To lay a true course by the stars"; he looked at her blue eyes and she
laughed easily under the laughing flattery.

"You must seek another compass--to-morrow," she said. Then it occurred to
her that nobody could guess her decision in regard to Quarrier; and she
partly raised her eyes, looking at him, indolent speculation under the
white lids.

She liked him already; in fact she had liked few men as well on such
brief acquaintance.

"You know the majority of the people here, or coming, don't you?" she
inquired.

"Who are they?"

She began: "The Leroy Mortimers?"

"Oh, yes."

"Lord Alderdene and Captain Voucher, and the Page twins and Marion?"

"Yes."

"Rena Bonnesdel, the Tassel girl, Agatha Caithness, Mrs. Vendenning--all
sorts, all sets." And, with an effort: "If I'm to drive, I should
like--to--to know what time it is?"

He informed her; and she, too indolent to pretend surprise, and finding
reproach easier, told him that he had no business to permit her to
forget.

His smiling serenity under the rebuke aroused in her a slight resentment
as though he had taken something for granted.

Besides, she had grown uneasy; she had wired Quarrier, saying she would
meet him and drive him over. He had replied at once, naming his train.
He was an exact man and expected method and precision in others. She
didn't exactly know how it might affect him if his reasonable demand was
unsatisfied. She did not know him very well yet, only well enough to be
aware that he was a gentleman so precisely, so judiciously constructed,
that, contemplating his equitable perfections, her awe and admiration
grew as one on whom dawns the exquisite adjustments of an almost human
machine.

And, thinking of him now, she again made up her mind to give him the
answer which he now had every reason to expect from her. This decision
appeared to lubricate her conscience; it ran more smoothly now, emitting
fewer creaks.

"You say that you know Mr. Quarrier?" she began thoughtfully.

"Not well."

"I--hope you will like him, Mr. Siward."

"I do not think he likes me, Miss Landis. He has reasons not to."

She looked up, suddenly remembering: "Oh--since that scrape? What has Mr.
Quarrier to do--" She did not finish the sentence. A troubled silence
followed; she was trying to remember the details--something she had paid
small attention to at the time--something so foreign to her, so distant
from her comprehension that it had not touched her closely enough for
her to remember exactly what this young man might have done to forfeit
the good-will of Howard Quarrier.

She looked at Siward; it was impossible that anything very bad could
come from such a man. And, pursuing her reasoning aloud: "It couldn't
have been very awful," she argued; "something foolish about an actress,
was it not? And that could not concern Mr. Quarrier."

"I thought you did know; I thought you--remembered--while you were
driving me over from the station--that I was dropped from my club."

She flushed up: "Oh!--but--what had Mr. Quarrier to do with that?"

"He is a governor of that club."

"You mean that Mr. Quarrier had you--dropped?"

"What else could he do? A man who is idiot enough to risk making his own
club notorious, must take the consequences. And they say I took that
risk. Therefore Mr. Quarrier, Major Belwether--all the governors did
their duty. I--I naturally conclude that no governor of the Patroons Club
feels very kindly toward me."

Miss Landis sat very still, her small head bent, a flush still
brightening her fair face.

She recalled a few of the details now--the scandal--something of the
story. Which particular actress it was she could not remember; but some
men who had dined too freely had made the wager, and this boy sitting
beside her had accepted it--and won it, by bringing into the sacred
precincts of the Patroons Club a foolish, shameless girl disguised in a
man's evening dress.

That was bad enough; that somebody promptly discovered it was worse; but
worst of all was the publicity, the club's name smirched, the young man
expelled from one of the two best clubs in the metropolis.

To read of such things in the columns of a daily paper had meant little
to her except to repell her; to hear it mentioned among people of her
own sort had left her incurious and indifferent. But now she saw it in a
new light, with the man who had figured in it seated beside her. Did
such men as he--such attractive, well-bred, amusing men as he--do that
sort of thing?

There he sat, hat off, the sun touching his short, thick hair which
waved a little at the temples--a boyish mould to head and shoulders, a
cleanly outlined check and chin, a thoroughbred ear set close--a good
face. What sort of a man, then, was a woman to feel at ease with? What
eye, what mouth, what manner, what bearing was a woman to trust?

"Is that the kind of man you are, Mr. Siward?" she said impulsively.

"It appears that I was; I don't know what I am--or may be."

"The pity of it!" she said, still swayed by impulse. "Why did you
do--didn't you know--realize what you were doing--bringing discredit on
your own club?"

"I was in no condition to know, Miss Landis."

The crude brutality of the expression might merely have hurt or
disgusted her had she been less intelligent. Nor, as it was, did she
fully understand why he chose to use it--unless that he meant it in self-
punishment.

"It's rather shameful!" she said hotly.

"Yes," he assented; "it's a bad beginning."

"A--beginning! Do you mean to go on?"

He did not reply; his head was partly turned from her. She sat silent
for a while. The dog had returned to lie at Siward's feet, its brown
eyes tirelessly watching the man it had chosen for its friend; and the
man, without turning his eyes, dropped one hand on the dog's head,
caressing the silky ears.

Some sentimentalist had once said that no man who cared for animals
could be wholly bad. Inexperience inclined her to believe it. Then too,
she had that inclination for overlooking offences committed against
precept, which appears to be one of those edifying human traits peculiar
to neither sex and common to both. Besides, her knowledge of such
matters was as vague as her mind was healthy and body wholesome. Men who
dined incautiously were not remarkable for their rarity; the actress
habit, being incomprehensible to her, meant nothing; and she said,
innocently: "What men like you can find attractive in a common woman I
do not understand; there are plenty of pretty women of your own sort.
The actress cult is beyond my comprehension; I only know it is generally
condoned. But it is not for such things that we drop men, Mr. Siward.
You know that, of course."

"For what do you drop men?"

"For falsehood, deception, any dishonesty."

"And you don't drop a man when you read in the papers that one of the
two best clubs in town has expelled him?"

She gave him a troubled glance; and, naively: "But you are still a
member of the other, are you not?" Then hardening: "It was common!
common!--thoroughly disgraceful and incomprehensible!"--and with every
word uttered insensibly warming in her heart toward him whom she was
chastening; "it was not even bad--it was worse than being simply bad; it
was stupid!"

He nodded, one hand slowly caressing the dog's head where it lay across
his knees.

She watched him a moment, hesitated, then smiling a little: "So now I
know the worst about you; do I not?" she concluded.

He did not answer; she waited, the smile still curving her red mouth.
Had she been too severe? She wondered. "You may help me to my feet," she
said sweetly. She was very young.

He rose at once, holding out his hands to aid her in that pleasantly
impersonal manner so suited to him; and now they stood together in the
purple dusk of the uplands--two people young enough to take one another
seriously.

"Let me tell you something," she said, facing him, white hands loosely
linked behind her. "I don't exactly understand how it has happened, but
you know as well as I do that we have formed a--an acquaintance--the sort
that under normal conditions requires a long time and several
conventional and preliminary chapters. - I should like to know what you
think of our performance."

"I think," he said laughing, "that it is charming."

"Oh, yes; men usually find the unconventional agreeable. What I want to
know is why I find it so, too?"

"Do you?" A dull colour stained his cheek-bones.

"Certainly I do. Is it because I've had a delightful chance to admonish
a sinner--and be--just a little sorry--that he had made such a silly
spectacle of himself?"

He laughed, wincing a trifle.

"Hence this agreeably righteous glow suffusing me," she concluded. "So
now that I have answered my own question, I think that we had better go.
- Don't you?"

They walked for a while, subdued, soberly picking their path through the
dusk. After a few moments she began to feel doubtful, a little uneasy,
partly from a reaction which was natural, partly because she was not at
all sure what either Quarrier or Major Belwether would think of the
terms she was already on with Siward. Suppose they objected? She had
never thwarted either of these gentlemen. Besides she already had a
temporary interest in Siward--the interest that women always cherish,
quite unconsciously, for the man whose shortcomings they have consented
to overlook.

As they crossed the headland, through the deepening dusk the acetylene
lamps on a cluster of motor cars spread a blinding light across the
scrub. The windows of Shotover House were brilliantly illuminated.

"Our shooting-party has returned," she said.

They crossed the drive through the white glare of the motor lamps;
people were passing, grooms with dogs and guns and fluffy bunches of
game-birds, several women in motor costumes, veils afloat, a man or two
in shooting-tweeds or khaki.

As they entered the hall together, she turned to him, an indefinable
smile curving her lips; then, with a little nod, friendly and sweet, she
left him standing at the open door of the gun-room.



SHOTOVER

The first person he encountered in the gun-room was Quarrier, who
favoured him with an expressionless stare, then with a bow, quite
perfunctory and non-committal. It was plain enough that he had not
expected to meet Siward at Shotover House.

Kemp Ferrall, a dark, stocky, active man of forty, was in the act of
draining a glass, when, though the bottom he caught sight of Siward. He
finished in a gulp, and advanced, one muscular hand outstretched:
"Hello, Stephen! Heard you'd arrived, tried the Scotch, and bolted with
Sylvia Landis! That's all right, too, but you should have come for the
opening day. Lots of native woodcock--eh, Blinky?" turning to Lord
Alderdene; and again to Siward: "You know all these fellows--Mortimer
yonder--" There was the slightest ring in his voice; and Leroy Mortimer,
red-necked, bulky, and heavy eyed, emptied his glass and came over,
followed by Lord Alderdene blinking madly though his shooting-goggles
and showing all his teeth like a pointer with a "tic." Captain Voucher,
a gentleman with the vivid colouring of a healthy groom on a cold day,
came up, followed by the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, who shook hands
shyly, enchanted to be on easy terms with the notorious Mr. Siward. And
last of all Tom O'Hara arrived, reeking of the saddle and clinking a
pair of trooper's spurs over the floor--relics of his bloodless Porto
Rico campaign with Squadron A.

It was patent to every man present that the Kemp Ferralls had determined
to ignore Siward's recent foolishness, which indicated that he might
reasonably expect the continued good-will of several sets, the orbits of
which intersected in the social system of his native city. Indeed, the
few qualified to snub him cared nothing about the matter, and it was not
likely that anybody else would take the initiative in being disagreeable
to a young man, the fortunes and misfortunes of whose race were part of
the history of Manhattan Island. Siwards, good or bad, were a matter of
course in New York.

So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch and
found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and
fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through
his shooting-goggles at everybody.

"These little brown snipe you call woodcock," he began; "we bagged nine
brace, d'you see? But of all the damnable bogs and covers--"

"Rotten," said Mortimer thickly; "Ferrall, you're all calf and biceps,
and it's well enough for you to go floundering into bogs--"

"Where do you expect to find native woodcock?" demanded Ferrall,
laughing.

"On the table hereafter," growled Mortimer.

"Oh, go and pot Beverly Plank's tame pheasants," retorted Ferrall
amiably; "Captain Voucher had a blank day, but he isn't kicking."

"Not I," said Voucher; "the sport is capital--if one can manage to hit
the beggars--"

"Oh, everybody misses in snap-shooting," observed Ferrall; "that is,
everybody except Stephen Siward with his unholy left barrel. Crack!
and," turning to Alderdene, "it's like taking money from you, Blinky--
which reminds me that we've time for a little Preference before
dressing."

His squinting lordship declined and took an easier position in his
chair, extending a pair of little bandy legs draped in baggy tweed
knickerbockers and heather-spats. Mortimer, industriously distending his
skin with whiskey, reached for the decanter. The aromatic perfume of the
spirits aroused Siward, and he instinctively nodded his desire to a
servant.

"This salt air keeps one thirsty," he observed to Ferrall; then
something in his host's expression arrested the glass at his lips. He
had already been using the decanter a good deal; except Mortimer, nobody
was doing that sort of thing as freely as he.

He set his glass on the table thoughtfully; a tinge of colour had crept
into his lean checks.

Ferrall, too, suddenly uncomfortable, stood up saying something about
dressing; several men arose a trifle stiffly, feeling in every joint the
result of the first day's shooting after all those idle months. Mortimer
got up with an unfeigned groan; Siward followed, leaving his glass
untouched.

One or two other men came in from the billiard-room. All greeted Siward
amiably--all excepting one who may not have seen him--an elderly, pink,
soft gentleman with white downy chop-whiskers and the profile of a
benevolent buck rabbit.

"How do you do, Major Belwether?" said Siward in a low voice without
offering his hand.

Then Major Belwether saw him, bless you! yes indeed! And though Siward
continued not to offer his hand, Major Belwether meant to have it, bless
your heart! And he fussed and fussed and beamed cordiality until he
secured it in his plump white fingers and pressed it effusively.

There was something about his soft, warm hands which had always reminded
Siward of the temperature and texture of a newly hatched bird. It had
been some time since he had shaken hands with Major Belwether; it was
apparent that the bird had not aged any.

"And now for the shooting!" said the Major with an arch smile. "Now for
the stag at bay and the winding horn--

ëWhere sleeps the moon On Mona's rill--'

Eh, Siward?

ëAnd here's to the hound With his nose upon the ground--'

Eh, my boy? That reminds me of a story--" He chuckled and chuckled, his
lambent eyes suffused with mirth; and slipping his arm through the
pivot-sleeve of Lord Alderdene's shooting-jacket, hooking the other in
Siward's reluctant elbow, and driving Mortimer ahead of him, he went
garrulously away up the stairs, his lordship's bandy little legs
trotting beside him, the soaking gaiters and shoes slopping at every
step.

Mortimer, his mottled skin now sufficiently distended, greeted the story
with a yawn from ear to ear; his lordship, blinking madly, burst into
that remarkable laugh which seemed to reveal the absence of certain
vocal cords requisite to perfect harmony; and Siward smiled in his
listless, pleasant way, and turned off down his corridor, unaware that
the Sagamore pup was following close at his heels until he heard
Quarrier's even, colourless voice: "Ferrall, would you be good enough to
send Sagamore to your kennels?"

"Oh--he's your dog! I forgot," said Siward turning around.

Quarrier looked at him, pausing a moment.

"Yes," he said coldly, "he's my dog."

For a fraction of a second the two men's eyes encountered; then Siward
glanced at the dog, and turned on his heel with the slightest shrug. And
that is all there was to the incident--an anxious, perplexed puppy lugged
off by a servant, turning, jerking, twisting, resisting, looking
piteously back as his unwilling feet slid over the polished floor.

So Siward walked on alone through the long eastern wing to his room
overlooking the sea. He sat down on the edge of his bed, glancing at the
clothing laid out for him. He felt tired and disinclined for the
exertion of undressing. The shades were up; night quicksilvered the
window-panes so that they were like a dark mirror reflecting his face.
He inspected his darkened features curiously; the blurred and sombre-
tinted visage returned the stare.

"Not a man at all--the shadow of a man," he said aloud--"with no will, no
courage--always putting off the battle, always avoiding conclusions,
always skulking. What chance is there for a man like that?"

As one who raises a glass to drink wine and unexpectedly finds water, he
shrugged his shoulders disgustedly and got up. A bath followed; he
dressed leisurely, and was pacing the room, fussing with his collar,
when Ferrall knocked and entered, finding a seat on the bed.

"Stephen," he said bluntly, "I haven't seen you since that break of
yours at the club."

"Rotten, wasn't it?" commented Siward, tying his tie.

"Perfectly. Of course it doesn't make any difference to Grace or to me,
but I fancy you've already heard from it."

"Oh, yes. All I care about is how my mother took it."

"Of course; she was cut up I suppose?"

"Yes, you know how she would look at a thing of that sort; not that any
of the nine and seventy jarring sets would care, but those few thousands
invading the edges, butting in--half or three-quarters inside--are the
people who can't afford to overlook the victim of a fashionable club's
displeasure--those, and a woman like my mother, and several other decent-
minded people who happen to count in town."

Ferrall, his legs swinging busily, thought again; then: "Who was the
girl, Stephen?"

"I don't think the papers mentioned her name," said Siward gravely.

"Oh--I beg your pardon; I thought she was some notorious
actress--everybody said so. - Who were those callow fools who put you up
to it? - Never mind if you don't care to tell. But it strikes me they
are candidates for club discipline as well as you. It was up to them to
face the governors I think--"

"No, I think not."

Ferrall, legs swinging busily, considered him.

"Too bad," he mused; "they need not have dropped you--"

"Oh, they had to. But as long as the Lenox takes no action I can live
that down."

Ferrall nodded: "I came in to say something--a message from
Grace--confound it! what was it? Oh--could you--before dinner--now--
just sit down and with that infernal facility of yours make a sketch
of a man chasing a gun-shy dog?"

"Why yes--if Mrs. Ferrall wishes--"

He walked over to the desk in his shirt-sleeves, sat down, drew a blank
sheet of paper toward him, and, dipping his pen, drew carelessly a gun-
shy setter dog rushing frantically across the stubble, and after him,
bare-headed, gun in hand, the maddest of men.

"Put a Vandyke beard on him," grinned Ferrall over his shoulder. "There!
O Lord! but you have hit it! Put a ticked saddle on the cur--there!"

"Who is this supposed to be?" began Siward, looking up. But "Wait!"
chuckled his host, seizing the still wet sketch, and made for the door.

Siward strolled into the bath-room, washed a spot or two of ink from his
fingers, returned and buttoned his waistcoat, then, completing an
unhurried toilet, went out and down the stairway to the big living-room.
There were two or three people there--Mrs. Leroy Mortimer, very fetching
with her Japanese-like colouring, black hair and eyes that slanted just
enough; Rena Bonnesdel, smooth, violet-eyed, blonde, and rather stunning
in a peculiarly innocent way; Miss Caithness, very pale and slimly
attractive; and the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, delightfully shy and
interested, and having a splendid time with any woman who could afford
the intellectual leisure.

Siward spoke pleasantly to them all. Other people drifted down--Marion
Page who looked like a school-marm and rode like a demon; Eileen
Shannon, pink and white as a thorn blossom, with the deuce to pay
lurking in her grey eyes; Kathryn Tassel and Mrs. Vendenning whom he did
not know, and finally his hostess Grace Ferrall with her piquant, almost
boyish, freckled face and sweet frank eyes and the figure of an
adolescent.

She gave Siward one pretty sun-browned hand and laid the other above
his, holding it a moment in her light clasp.

"Stephen! Stephen!" she said under her breath, "it's because I've a few
things to scold you about that I've asked you to Shotover."

"I suppose I know," he said.

"I should hope you do. I've a letter to-night from your mother."

"From my mother?"

"I want you to go over it--with me--if we can find a minute after dinner."
She released his hand, turning partly around: "Kemp, dinner's been
announced, so cut that dog story in two! Will you give me your arm Major
Belwether? Howard!"--to her cousin, Mr. Quarrier, who turned from Miss
Landis to listen--"will you please try to recollect whom you are to take
in--and do it?" And, as she passed Siward, in a low voice, mischievous
and slangy: "Sylvia Landis for yours--as she says she didn't have enough
of you on the cliffs."

The others appeared to know how to pair according to some previous
notice. Siward turned to Sylvia Landis with the pleasure of his good
fortune so plainly visible in his face, that her own brightened in
response.

"You see," she said gaily, "you cannot escape me. There is no use in
looking wildly at Agatha Caithness"--he wasn't--"or pretending you're
pleased," slipping her rounded, bare arm through the arm he offered.
"You can't guess what I've done to-night--nobody can guess except Grace
Ferrall and one other person. And if you try to look happy beside me, I
may tell you--somewhere between sherry and cognac--Oh, yes; I've done two
things: I have your dog for you!"

"Not Sagamore?" he said incredulously as he was seating her.

"Certainly Sagamore. I said to Mr. Quarrier, ëI want Sagamore,' and when
he tried to give him to me, I made him take my cheque. Now you may draw
another for me at your leisure, Mr. Siward. Tell me, are you
pleased?"--for she was looking for the troubled hesitation in his face
and she saw it dawning.

"Mr. Quarrier doesn't like me, you know--"

"But I do," she said coolly. "I told him how much pleasure it would give
me. That is sufficient--is it not?--for everybody concerned."

"He knew that you meant to--"

"No, that concerns only you and me. Are you trying to spoil my pleasure
in what I have done?"

"I can't take the dog, Miss Landis--"

"Oh," she said, vexed; "I had no idea you were vindictive--"

There was a silence; he bent forward a trifle, gravely scrutinising a
"hand-painted" name card, though it might not have astonished him to
learn that somebody's foot had held the brush. Somewhere in the vicinity
Grace Ferrall had discovered a woman who supported dozens of relatives
by painting that sort of thing for the summer residents at Vermillion
Point down the coast. So being charitable she left an order, and being
thrifty, insisted on using the cards, spite of her husband's gibes.

People were now inspecting them with more or less curiosity; Siward
found his "hand-painting" so unattractive that he had just tipped it
over to avoid seeing it, when a burst of laughter from Lord Alderdene
made everybody turn. Mrs. Vendenning was laughing; so was Rena Bonnesdel
looking over Quarrier's shoulder at a card he was holding--not one of the
"hand"-decorated, but a sheet of note-paper containing a drawing of a
man rushing after a gun-shy dog.

The extraordinary cackling laughter of his lordship obliterated other
sounds for a while; Rena Bonnesdel possessed herself of the drawing and
held it up amid a shout of laughter. And, to his excessive annoyance,
Siward saw that, unconsciously, he had caricatured Quarrier--Ferrall's
malicious request for a Vandyke beard making the caricature dreadfully
apparent.

Quarrier had at first flushed up; then he forced a smile; but his
symmetrical features were never cordial when he smiled.

"Who on earth did that?" whispered Sylvia Landis apprehensively. "Mr.
Quarrier dislikes that sort of thing--but of course he'll take it well."

"Did he ever chase his own dog?" asked Siward, biting his lip.

"Yes--so Blinky says--in the Carolinas last season. It's Blinky!--that's
his notion of humour. Did you ever hear such a laugh? No wonder Mr.
Quarrier is annoyed."

The gay uproar had partly subsided, renewed here and there as the sketch
was passed along, and finally, making the circle, returned like a bad
penny to Quarrier. He smiled again, symmetrically, as he received it,
nodding his compliments to Alderdene.

"Oh, no," cackled his lordship; "I didn't draw it, old chap!"

"Nor I! I only wish I could," added Captain Voucher.

"Nor I--nor I--who did it?" ran the chorus along the table.

"I didn't do it!" said Sylvia gravely, looking across at Quarrier. And
suddenly Quarrier's large, handsome eyes met Siward's for the briefest
fraction of a second, then were averted. But into his face there crept
an expressionless pallor that did not escape Siward--no, nor Sylvia
Landis.

Presently under cover of a rapid fire of chatter she said: "Did you draw
that?"

"Yes; I had no idea it was meant for him. You may imagine how likely I'd
be to take any liberty with a man who already dislikes me."

"But it resembles him--in a very dreadful way."

"I know it. You must take my word for what I have told you."

She looked up at him: "I do." Then: "It's a pity; Mr. Quarrier does not
consider such things humourous. He--he is very sensitive. - Oh, I wish
that fool Englishman had been in Ballyhoo!"

"But he didn't do it!"

"No, but he put you up to it--or Grace Ferrall did. I wish Grace would
let Mr. Quarrier alone; she has always been perfectly possessed to
plague him; she seems unable to take him seriously and he simply hates
it. I don't think he'd tolerate her if she were not his cousin.

"I'm awfully sorry," was all Siward said; and for a while he gloomily
busied himself with whatever was brought to him.

"Don't look that way," came a low voice beside him.

"Do I show everything as plainly as that?" he asked, curiously.

"I seem to read you--sometimes."

"It's very nice of you," he said.

"Nice?"

"To look at me--now and then."

"Oh," she cried resentfully, "don't be grateful."

"I--really am not you know," he said laughing.

"That," she rejoined slowly, "is the truth. You say conventional things
in a manner--in an agreeably personal manner that interests women. But
you are not grateful to anybody for anything; you are indifferent, and
you can't help being nice to people, so--some day--some girl will think
you are grateful, and will have a miserable time of it."

"Miserable time?"

"Waiting for you to say what never will enter your head to say."

"You mean I--I--"

"Flirt? No, I mean that you don't flirt; that you are always dreamily
occupied with your own affairs, from which listlessly congenial
occupation, when drawn, you are so unexpectedly nice that a girl
immediately desires to see how nice you can be."

"What a charming indictment you draw!" he said, amused.

"It's a grave one I assure you. I've been talking about you to Grace
Ferrall; I asked to be placed beside you at dinner; I told her I hadn't
had half enough of you on the cliff. Now what do you think of yourself
for being too nice to a susceptible girl? I think it's immoral.

They both were laughing now; several people glanced at them, smiling in
sympathy. Alderdene took that opportunity to revert to the sketch,
furnishing a specimen of his own inimitable laughter as a running
accompaniment to the story of Quarrier and his dog in North Carolina,
until he had everybody, as usual, laughing, not at the story but at him.
All of which demonstration was bitterly offensive to Quarrier. He turned
his eyes once on Miss Landis and on Siward, then dropped them.

The hostess arose; a rustle and flurry of silk and lace and the scraping
of chairs, a lingering word or laugh, and the colour vanished from the
room leaving a circle of men in black standing around the table.

Here and there a man, lighting a cigarette, bolted his coffee and cognac
and strolled out to the gun-room. Ferrall, gesticulating vigorously,
resumed his preprandial dog story to Captain Voucher; Belwether
buttonholed Alderdene and bored him with an interminably facetious tale
until that nobleman, threatened with maxillary dislocation, fairly
wrenched himself loose and came over to Siward, squinting furiously.

"Old ass!" he muttered; "his chop whiskers look like the chops of a
Southdown ram--and he's got the wits of one. Look here, Stephen, I hear
you fell into no end of a scrape in town--"

"Tu quoque, Blinky? Oh, read the newspapers and let it go at that!"

"Just as you like old chap!" returned his lordship unabashed. "All I
meant was--anything Voucher and I can do--of course--"

"You're very good. I'm not dead you know."

"ëNot dead, you know'," repeated Major Belwether coming up behind them
with his sprightly step; "that reminds me of a good one--" He sat down
and lighted a cigar, then, vainly attempting to control his countenance
as though roguishly anticipating the treat awaiting them, he began
another endless story.

Tradition had hallowed the popular notion that Major Belwether was a
wit. The sycophant of the outer world seldom even awaited his first word
before bursting into premature mirth. Besides he was very wealthy.

Siward watched him with mixed emotions; the lambent-eyed, sheepy
expression had given place to the buck rabbit; his smooth baby-pink skin
and downy white side whiskers quivered in premature sympathy with his
listener's overwhelming hilarity.

The Page boys, very callow, very much delighted, and a little in awe of
such a celebrated personage, laughed heartily. And altogether there was
sufficient attention and sufficient laughter to make a very respectable
noise. This, being the major's cue for an exit, he rose, one sleek hand
raised in sprightly protest as though to shield the invisible ladies, to
whose bournes he was bound, from an uproar too masculine and mighty for
the ears of such a sex.

"Ass!" muttered Alderdene, getting up and pattering about the room in
his big, shiny pumps. "Give me a peg--somebody!"

Mortimer swallowed his brandy, lingered, lifted the decanter,
mechanically considering its remaining contents and his own capacity;
then:

"Bridge, Captain?"

"Certainly," said Captain Voucher briskly.

"I'll go and shoo the major into the gun-room," observed
Ferrall--"unless--" looking questioningly at Siward.

"I've a date with your wife," observed that young man, strolling toward
the hall.

The Page boys, Rena Bonnesdel, and Eileen Shannon were seated at a card
table together, very much engaged with one another, the sealed pack
lying neglected on the green cloth, a vast pink box of bon-bons beside
it, not neglected.

O'Hara and Quarrier with Marion Page and Mrs. Mortimer were immersed in
the game, already stony faced and oblivious to outer sounds.

About the rooms were distributed girls en t'te-‡-t'te, girls eating bon-
bons and watching the cards--among them Sylvia Landis, hands loosely
clasped behind her, standing at Quarrier's elbow to observe and profit
by an expert performance.

As Siward strolled in she raised her dainty head for an instant, smiled
in silence, and resumed a study of her fiancÈ's game.

A moment later, when Quarrier had emerged brilliantly from the m'lÈe,
she looked up again, triumphantly, supposing Siward was lingering
somewhere waiting to join her. And she was just a trifle surprised and
disappointed to find him nowhere in sight. She had wished him to observe
the brilliancy of Mr. Quarrier's game.

But Siward, outside on the veranda, was saying at that moment to his
hostess: "I shall be very glad to read my mother's letter at any time
you choose."

"It must be later, Stephen. I'm to cut in when Kemp sends for me. He has
a lot of letters to attend to. - Tell me, what do you think of Sylvia
Landis?"

"I like her, of course," he replied pleasantly.

Grace Ferrall stood thinking a moment: "That sketch you made proved a
great success, didn't it?" And she laughed under her breath.

"Did it? I thought Mr. Quarrier seemed annoyed--"

"Really? What a muff that cousin of mine is. He's such a muff, you know,
that the very sight of his pointed beard and pompadour hair and his
complacency sets me in fidgets to stir him up."

"I don't think you'd best use me for the stick next time," said Siward.
"He's not my cousin you know."

Mrs. Ferrall shrugged her boyish shoulders: "By the way"--she said
curiously--"who was that girl?"

"What girl," he asked coolly, looking at his hostess, now the very
incarnation of delicate mockery with her pretty laughing mouth, her
boyish sunburn and freckles.

"You won't tell me I suppose?"

"I'm sorry--"

"Was she pretty, Stephen?"

"Yes," he said sulkily; "I wish you wouldn't--"

"Nonsense! Do you think I'm going to let you off without some sort of
confession? If I had time now--but I haven't. Kemp has business letters:
he'll be furious; so I've got to take his cards or we won't have any
pennies to buy gasoline for our adored and shrieking Mercedes."

She retreated backward with a gay nod of malice, turned to enter the
house, and met Sylvia Landis face to face in the hallway.

"You minx!" she whispered; "aren't you ashamed?"

"Very much, dear. What for?" And catching sight of Siward outside in the
starlight, divined perhaps something of her hostess' meaning, for she
laughed uneasily, like a child who winces under a stern eye.

"You don't suppose for a moment," she began, "that I have--"

"Yes I do. You always do."

"Not with that sort of man," she returned naÔvely; "he won't."

Mrs. Ferrall regarded her suspiciously: "You always pick out exactly the
wrong man to play with--"

They had moved back side by side into the hall, the hostess' arm linked
in the arm of the younger girl.

"The wrong man?" repeated Sylvia, instinctively freeing her arm, her
straight brows beginning to bend inward.

"I didn't mean that--exactly. You know how much I care for his mother--and
for him." The obstinate downward trend of the brows, the narrowing blue
gaze signalled mutiny to the woman who knew her so well.

"What is so wrong with Mr. Siward?" she asked.

"Nothing. There was an affair--"

"This spring in town. I know it. Is that all?"

"Yes--for the present," replied Grace Ferrall uncomfortably; then: "For
goodness' sake, Sylvia, don't cross examine me that way! I care a great
deal for that boy--"

"So do I. I've made him take my dog."

There was an abrupt pause, and presently Mrs. Ferrall began to laugh.

"I mean it--really," said Sylvia quietly; "I like him immensely."

"Dearest, you mean it generously--with your usual exaggeration. You have
heard that he has been foolish, and because he's so young, so likable,
every instinct, every impulse in you is aroused to--to be nice to him--"

"And if that were--"

"There is no harm, dear--" Mrs. Ferrall hesitated, her grey eyes
softening to a graver revery. Then looking up: "It's rather pathetic,"
she said in a low voice. "Kemp thinks he's foredoomed--like all the
Siwards. It's an hereditary failing with him,--no, it's hereditary
damnation. Siward after Siward, generation after generation you know--"
She bit her lip, thinking a moment. "His grandfather was a friend of my
grand-parents, brilliant, handsome, generous, and--doomed! His own father
was found dying in a dreadful resort in London where he had wandered
when stupefied--a Siward! Think of it! So you see what that outbreak of
Stephen's means to those whose families have been New Yorkers since New
York was. It is ominous, it is more than ominous--it means that the
master-vice has seized on one more Siward. But I shall never, never
admit it to his mother."

The younger girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder's gaze was upon her,
but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such a son.

"Such indulgence was once fashionable; moderation is the present
fashion. Perhaps he will fall into line," said Mrs. Ferrall
thoughtfully. "The main thing is to keep him among people, not to drop
him. The gregarious may be shamed, but if anything, any incident,
happens to drive him outside by himself, if he should become solitary,
there's not a chance in the world for him. - It's a pity. I know he
meant to make himself the exception to the rule--and look! Already one
carouse of his has landed him in the daily papers!"

Sylvia flushed and looked up: "Grace, may I ask you a plain question?"

"Yes, child," she answered absently.

"Has it occurred to you that what you have said about this boy touches
me very closely?"

Mrs. Ferrall's wits returned nimbly from woolgathering, and she shot a
startled, inquiring glance at the girl beside her.

"You--you mean the matter of heredity, Sylvia?"

"Yes. I think my uncle Major Belwether chose you as his august
mouthpiece for that little sermon on the dangers of heredity--the danger
of being ignorant concerning what women of my race had done--before I
came into the world they found so amusing."

"I told you several things," returned Mrs. Ferrall composedly. "Your
uncle thought it best for you to know."

"Yes. The marriage vows sat lightly upon some of my ancestors, I gather.
In fact," she added coolly, "where the women of my race loved they
usually found the way--rather unconventionally. There was, if I
understood you, enough of divorce, of general indiscretion and
irregularity to seriously complicate any family tree and coat of arms I
might care to claim--"

"Sylvia!"

The girl lifted her pretty bare shoulders. "I'm sorry, but could I help
it? Very well; all I can do is to prove a decent exception. Very well;
I'm doing it, am I not?--practically scared into the first solidly
suitable marriage offered--seizing the unfortunate Howard with both hands
for fear he'd get away and leave me alone with only a queer family
record for company! Very well! Now then, I want to ask you why
everybody, in my case, didn't go about with sanctimonious faces and
dolorous mien repeating: ëHer grand-mother eloped! Her mother ran away.
Poor child, she's doomed! doomed!'"

"Sylvia, I--"

"Yes--why didn't they? That's the way they talk about that boy out
there!" She swept a rounded arm toward the veranda.

"Yes, but he has already broken loose, while you--"

"So did I--nearly! Had it not been for you, you know well enough I might
have run away with that dreadful Englishman at Newport! For I adored him
--I did! I did! and you know it. And look at my endless escapes from
compromising myself! Can you count them?--all those indiscretions when
mere living seemed to intoxicate me that first winter--and only my uncle
and you to break me in!"

"In other words," said Mrs. Ferrall slowly, "you don't think Mr. Siward
is getting what is known as a square deal?"

"No, I don't. Major Belwether has already hinted--no, not even that--but
has somehow managed to dampen my pleasure in Mr. Siward."

Mrs. Ferrall considered the girl beside her--now very lovely and flushed
in her suppressed excitement.

"After all," she said, "you are going to marry somebody else. So why
become quite so animated about a man you may never again see?"

"I shall see him if I desire to!"

"Oh!"

"I am not taking the black veil, am I?" asked the girl hotly.

"Only the wedding veil, dear. But after all your husband ought to have
something to suggest concerning a common visiting list--"

"He may suggest--certainly. In the meantime I shall be loyal to my own
friends--and afterward, too," she murmured to herself, as her hostess
rose, calmly dropping care like a mantle from her shoulders.

"Go and be good to this poor young man then; I adore rows--and you'll
have a few on your hands I'll warrant. Let me remind you that your uncle
can make it unpleasant for you yet, and that your amiable fiancÈ has a
will of his own under his pompadour and silky beard."

"What a pity to have it clash with mine," said the girl serenely.

Mrs. Ferrall looked at her: "Mercy on us! Howard's pompadour would stick
up straight with horror if he could hear you! Don't be silly; don't for
an impulse, for a caprice, break off anything desirable on account of a
man for whom you really care nothing--whose amiable exterior and
prospective misfortune merely enlist a very natural and generous
sympathy in you."

"Do you suppose that I shall endure interference from anybody?--from my
uncle, from Howard?"

"Dear, you are making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Don't be emotional;
don't let loose impulses that you and I know about, knew about in our
school years, know all about now, and which you and I have decided must
be eliminated--"

"You mean subdued; they'll always be there."

"Very well; who cares, as long as you have them in leash?"

Looking at one another, the excited colour cooling in the younger girl's
cheeks, they laughed, one with relief, the other a little ashamed.

"Kemp will be furious; I simply must cut in!" said Mrs. Ferrall, hastily
turning toward the gun-room. Miss Landis looked after her, subdued,
vaguely repentant, the consciousness dawning upon her that she had
probably made considerable conversation about nothing.

"It's been so all day," she thought impatiently; "I've exaggerated; I've
worked up a scene about a man whose habits are not the slightest concern
of mine. Besides that I've neglected Howard shamefully!" She was walking
slowly, her thoughts outstripping her errant feet, but it seemed that
neither her thoughts nor her steps were leading her toward the neglected
gentleman within; for presently she found herself at the breezy veranda
door, looking rather fixedly at the stars.

The stars, shining impartially upon the just and the unjust, illuminated
the person of Siward, who sat alone, rather limply, one knee crossed
above the other. He looked up by chance, and, seeing her star-gazing in
the doorway, straightened out and rose to his feet.

Aware of him apparently for the first time, she stepped across the
threshold meeting his advance half-way.

"Would you care to go down to the rocks?" he asked. "The surf is
terrific."

"No--I don't think I care--"

They stood listening a moment to the stupendous roar.

"A storm somewhere at sea," he concluded.

"Is it very fine--the surf?"

"Very fine--and very relentless--" he laughed; "it is an unfriendly
creature, the sea, you know."

She had begun to move toward the cliffs, he fell into step beside her;
they spoke little, a word now and then.

The perfume of the mounting sea saturated the night with wild fragrance;
dew lay heavy on the lawns; she lifted her skirts enough to clear the
grass, heedless that her silk-shod feet were now soaking. Then at the
cliffs' edge, as she looked down into the white fury of the surf, the
stunning crash of the ocean saluted her.

For a long while they watched in silence; once she leaned a trifle too
far over the star-lit gulf and, recoiling, involuntarily steadied
herself on his arm.

"I suppose," she said, "no swimmer could endure that battering."

"Not long."

"Would there be no chance?"

"Not one."

She bent farther outward, fascinated, stirred, by the splendid frenzy of
the breakers.

"I--think--," he began quietly; then a firm hand fell over her left hand;
and, half encircled by his arm she found herself drawn back. Neither
spoke; two things she was coolly aware of, that, urged, drawn by
something subtly irresistible she had leaned too far out from the cliff,
and would have leaned farther had he not taken matters into his own
keeping without apology. Another thing; the pressure of his hand over
hers remained a sensation still--a strong, steady, masterful imprint
lacking hesitation or vacillation. She was as conscious of it as though
her hand still tightened under his--and she was conscious, too, that
nothing of his touch had offended; that there had arisen in her no
tremor of instinctive recoil. For never before had she touched or
suffered a touch from a man, even a gloved greeting, that had not in
some measure subtly repelled her, nor, for that matter, a caress from a
woman without a reaction of faint discomfort.

"Was I in any actual danger?" she asked curiously.

"I think not. But it was too much responsibility for me."

"I see. Any time I wish to break my neck I am to please do it alone in
future."

"Exactly--if you don't mind," he said smiling.

They turned, shoulder to shoulder, walking back through the drenched
herbage.

"That," she said impulsively, "is not what I said a few moments ago to a
woman."

"What did you say a few moments ago to a woman?"

"I said, Mr. Siward, that I would not leave a--a certain man to go to the
devil alone!"

"Do you know any man who is going to the devil?"

"Do you?" she asked, letting herself go swinging out upon a tide of
intimacy she had never dreamed of risking--nor had she the slightest idea
whither the current would carry her.

They had stopped on the lawn, ankle deep in wet grass, the stars
overhead sparkling magnificently, and in their ears the outcrash of the
sea.

"You mean me," he concluded.

"Do I?"

He looked up into the lovely face; her eyes were very sweet, very
clear--clear with excitement--but very friendly.

"Let us sit here on the steps a little while, will you?" she asked.

So he found a place beside her, one step lower, and she leaned forward,
elbows on knees, rounded white chin in her palms, the starlight giving
her bare arms and shoulders a marble lustre and tinting her eyes a
deeper amethyst.

And now, innocently untethered, mission and all, she laid her heart
quite bare--one chapter of it. And, like other women-errant who believe
in the influence of their sex individually and collectively, she began
wrong by telling him of her engagement--perhaps to emphasise her pure
disinterestedness in a crusade for principle only. Which naturally
dampened in him any nascent enthusiasm for being ministered to, and so
preoccupied him that he turned deaf ears to some very sweet platitudes
which might otherwise have impressed him as discoveries in philosophy.

Officially her creed was the fashionable one in town; privately she had
her own religion, lacking some details truly enough, but shaped upon
youthful notions of right and wrong. As she had not read very widely,
she supposed that she had discovered this religion for herself; she was
not aware that everybody else had passed that way--it being the first
immature moult in young people after rejecting dogma.

And the ripened fruit of all this philosophy she helpfully dispensed for
Siward's benefit as bearing directly on his case.

Had he not been immersed in the unexpected proposition of her impending
matrimony, he might have been impressed, for the spell of her beauty
counted something, and besides, he had recently formulated for himself a
code of ethics, tinctured with Omar, and slightly resembling her own
discoveries in that dog-eared science.

So it was, when she was most eloquent, most earnestly inspired--nay in
the very middle of a plea for sweetness and light and simple living,
that his reasonings found voice in the material comment:

"I never imagined you were engaged!"

"Is that what you have been thinking about?" she asked, innocently
astonished.

"Yes. Why not? I never for one instant supposed--"

"But, Mr. Siward, why should you have concerned yourself with supposing
anything? Why indulge in any speculation of that sort about me?"

"I don't know, but I didn't," he said.

"Of course you didn't; you'd known me for about three hours--there on the
cliff--"

"But--Quarrier--!"

Over his youthful face a sullen shadow had fallen--flickering, not yet
settled. He would not for anything on earth have talked freely to the
woman destined to be Quarrier's wife. He had talked too much anyway.
Something in her, something about her had loosened his tongue. He had
made a plain ass of himself--that was all,--a garrulous ass. And truly it
seemed that the girl beside him, even in the starlight, could follow and
divine what he had scarcely expressed to himself; or her instincts had
taken a shorter cut to forestall his own conclusion.

"Don't think the things you are thinking!" she said in a fierce little
voice, leaning toward him.

"What do you mean?" he asked, taken aback.

"You know! Don't! It is unfair--it is--is faithless--to me. I am your
friend; why not? Does it make any difference to you whom I marry? Cannot
two people remain in accord anyway? Their friendship concerns each other
and--nobody else!" She was letting herself go now; she was conscious of
it, conscious that impulse and emotion were the currents unloosed and
hurrying her onward. And with it all came exhilaration, a faint
intoxication, a delicate delight in daring to let go all and trust to
impulse and emotions.

"Why should you feel hurt because for a moment you let me see--gave me a
glimpse of yourself--of life's battle as you foresee it? What if there is
always a reaction from all confidences exchanged? What if that miserable
French cynic did say that never was he more alone than after confessing
to a friend? He died crazy anyhow. Is not a rare moment of confidence
worth the reaction--the subsidence into the armored shell of self? Tell
me truly, Mr. Siward, isn't it?"

Breathless, confused, exhilarated by her own rapid voice she bent her
face, brilliant with colour, and very sweet; and he looked up into it,
expectant, uncertain.

"If such a friendship as ours is to become worth anything to you--to me,
why should it trouble you that I know--and am thinking of things that
concern you? Is it because the confidence is one-sided? Is it because
you have given and I have listened and given nothing in return to
balance the account? I do give--interest, deep interest, sympathy if you
ask it; I give confidence in return--if you desire it!"

"What can a girl like you need of sympathy?" he said smiling.

"You don't know! you don't know! If heredity is a dark vista, and if you
must stare through it all your life, sword in hand, always on your
guard, do you think you are the only one?"

"Are you--one?" he said incredulously.

"Yes"--with an involuntary shudder--"not that way. It is easier for me; I
think it is--I know it is. But there are things to combat--impulses, a
recklessness, perhaps something almost ruthless. What else I do not
know, for I have never experienced violent emotions of any sort--never
even deep emotion."

"You are in love!"

"Yes, thoroughly," she added with conviction, "but not violently. I--"
she hesitated, stopped short, leaning forward, peering at him through
the dusk; and: "Mr. Siward! are you laughing?" She rose and he stood up
instantly.

There was lightning in her darkening eyes now; in his something that
glimmered and danced. She watched it, fascinated, then of a sudden the
storm broke and they were both laughing convulsively, face to face there
under the stars.

"Mr. Siward," she breathed, "I don't know what I am laughing at; do you?
Is it at you? At myself? At my poor philosophy in shreds and tatters? Is
it some infernal mirth that you seem to be able to kindle in me--for I
never knew a man like you before?"

"You don't know what you were laughing at?" he repeated. "It was
something about love--"

"No I don't know why I laughed! I--I don't wish to, Mr. Siward. I do not
desire to laugh at anything you have made me say--anything you may
infer--"

"I don't infer--"

"You do! You made me say something--about my being ignorant of deep, of
violent emotion, when I had just informed you that I am thoroughly,
thoroughly in love--"

"Did I make you say all that, Miss Landis?"

"You did. Then you laughed and made me laugh too. Then you--"

"What did I do then?" he asked, far too humbly.

"You--you infer that I am either not in love or incapable of it, or too
ignorant of it to know what I'm talking about. That, Mr. Siward, is what
you have done to me to-night."

"I--I'm sorry--"

"Are you?"

"I ought to be anyway," he said.

It was unfortunate; an utterly inexcusable laughter seemed to bewitch
them, hovering always close to his lips and hers.

"How can you laugh!" she said. "How dare you! I don't care for you
nearly as violently as I did, Mr. Siward. A friendship between us would
not be at all good for me. Things pass too swiftly--too intimately. There
is too much mockery in you--" She ceased suddenly, watching the sombre
alteration of his face; and, "Have I hurt you?" she asked penitently.

"No."

"Have I, Mr. Siward? I did not mean it." The attitude, the words,
slackening to a trailing sweetness, and then the moment's silence,
stirred him.

"I'm rather ignorant myself of violent emotion," he said. "I suspect
normal people are. You know better than I do whether love is usually a
sedative."

"Am I normal--after what I have confessed?" she asked. "Can't love be
well-bred?"

"Perfectly I should say--only perhaps you are not an expert--"

"In what?"

"In self-analysis, for example."

There was a vague meaning in the gaze they exchanged.

"As for our friendship, we'll do the best we can for it, no matter what
occurs," he added, thinking of Quarrier. And, thinking of him, glanced
up to see him within ear-shot and moving straight toward them from the
veranda above.

There was a short silence; a tentative civil word from Siward; then Miss
Landis took command of something that had a grotesque resemblance to a
situation. A few minutes later they returned slowly to the house, the
girl walking serenely between Siward and her preoccupied affianced.

"If your shoes are as wet as my skirts and slippers you had better
change, Mr. Siward," she said, pausing at the foot of the staircase.

So he took his congÈ, leaving her standing there with Quarrier, and
mounted to his room.

In the corridor he passed Ferrall, who had finished his business
correspondence and was returning to the card-room.

"Here's a letter that Grace wants you to see," he said. "Read it before
you turn in, Stephen."

"All right; but I'll be down later," replied Siward passing on, the
letter in his hand. Entering his room he kicked off his wet pumps and
found dry ones. Then moved about, whistling a gay air from some recent
vaudeville, busy with rough towels and silken foot-gear, until, reshod
and dry, he was ready to descend once more.

The encounter, the suddenly informal acquaintance with this young girl
had stirred him agreeably, leaving a slight exhilaration. Even her
engagement to Quarrier added a tinge of malice to his interest. Besides
he was young enough to feel the flattery of her concern for him--of her
rebuke, of her imprudence, her generous emotional and childish
philosophy.

Perhaps, as like recognises like, he recognised in her the instincts of
the born drifter, momentarily at anchor--the temporary inertia of the
opportunist, the latent capacity of an unformed character for all things
and anything. Add to these her few years, her beauty, and the wholesome
ignorance so confidently acknowledged, what man could remain
unconcerned, uninterested in the development of such possibilities? Not
Siward, amused by her sagacious and impulsive prudence, worldliness, and
innocence in accepting Quarrier; and touched by her profitless, frank,
and unworldly friendliness for himself.

Not that he objected to her marrying Quarrier; he rather admired her for
being able to do it, considering the general scramble for Quarrier. But
let that take care of itself; meanwhile, their sudden and capricious
intimacy had aroused him from the morbid reaction consequent upon the
cheap notoriety which he had brought upon himself. Let him sponge his
slate clean and begin again a better record, flattered by the solicitude
she had so prettily displayed.

Whistling under his breath the same gay, empty melody, he opened the top
drawer of his dresser, dropped in his mother's letter, and locking the
drawer, pocketed the key. He would have time enough to read the letter
when he went to bed; he did not just now feel exactly like skimming
through the fond, foolish sermon which he knew had been preached at him
through his mother's favourite missionary, Grace Ferrall. What was the
use of dragging in the sad old questions again--of repeating his
assurances of good behaviour, of reiterating his promises of moderation
and watchfulness, of explaining his own self-confidence? Better that the
letter await his bed time--his prayers would be the sincerer the fresher
the impression; for he was old-fashioned enough to say the prayers that
an immature philosophy proved superfluous. For, he thought, if prayer is
any use, it takes only a few minutes to be on the safe side.

So he went down-stairs leisurely, prepared to acquiesce in any
suggestion from anybody, but rather hoping to saunter across Sylvia
Landis' path before being committed.

She was standing beside the fire with Quarrier, one foot on the fender,
apparently too preoccupied to notice him; so he strolled into the gun-
room, which was blue with tobacco smoke and aromatic with the volatile
odours from decanters.

There were a few women there, and the majority of the men. Lord
Alderdene, Major Belwether, and Mortimer were at a table by themselves;
stacks of ivory chips and five cards spread in the centre of the green
explained the nature of their game; and Mortimer, raising his heavy
inflamed eyes and seeing Siward unoccupied, said wheezily: "Cut out that
ëwidow,' and give Siward his stack! Anything above two pairs for a jack
triples the ante. Come on, Siward, there's a decent chap!"

So he seated himself for a sacrifice to the blind goddess balanced upon
her winged wheel; and the cards ran high--so high that stacks dwindled or
toppled within the half-hour, and Mortimer grew redder and redder, and
Major Belwether blander and blander, and Alderdene's face wore a
continual nervous snicker, showing every white hound's tooth, and the
ice in the tall glasses clinked ceaselessly.

It was late when Quarrier "sat in," with an expressionless
acknowledgment of Siward's presence, and an emotionless raid upon his
neighbour's resources with the first hand dealt, in which he
participated without drawing a card.

And always Siward, eyes on his cards, seemed to see Quarrier before him,
his overmanicured fingers caressing his silky beard, the symmetrical
pompadour dark and thick as the winter fur on a rat, tufting his smooth
blank forehead.

It was very late when Siward first began to be aware of his increasing
deafness, the difficulty, too, that he had in making people hear, the
annoying contempt in Quarrier's woman-like eyes. He felt that he was
making a fool of himself, very noiselessly somehow--but with more racket
than he expected when he miscalculated the distance between his hand and
a decanter.

It was time for him to go--unless he chose to ask Quarrier for an
explanation of that sneer which he found distasteful. But there was too
much noise, too much laughter.

Besides he had a matter to attend to--the careful perusal of his mother's
letter to Mrs. Ferrall.

Very white, he rose. After an indeterminate interval he found himself
entering his room.

The letter was in the dresser; several things seemed to fall and break,
but he got the letter, sank down on the bed's edge and strove to
read,--set his teeth grimly, forcing his blurred eyes to a focus. But he
could make nothing of it--nor of his toilet either, nor of Ferrall, who
came in on his way to bed having noticed the electricity still in full
glare over the open transom, and who straightened out matters for the
stunned man lying face downward across the bed, his mother's letter
crushed in his nerveless hand.



THE SEASON OPENS

Breakfast at Shotover, except for the luxurious sluggards to whom trays
were sent, was served in the English fashion--any other method or
compromise being impossible.

Ferrall, reasonable in most things, detested customs exotic, and usually
had an Englishman or two about the house to tell them so, being unable
to jeer in any language except his own. Which is partly why Alderdene
and Voucher were there. And this British sideboard breakfast was a
concession wrung from him through force of sheer necessity, although the
custom had already become practically universal in American country
houses where guests were entertained.

But at the British breakfast he drew the line. No army of servants,
always in evidence, would he tolerate, either; no highly ornamented
human bric-‡-brac decorating halls and corners; no exotic pheasants
hustled into covert and out again; no fusillade at the wretched,
frightened, bewildered aliens dumped by the thousand into unfamiliar
cover and driven toward the guns by improvised beaters.

"We walk up our game or we follow a brace of good dogs in this white
man's country," he said with unnecessary emphasis whenever his bad taste
and his wife's absence gave him an opportunity to express to the casual
foreigner his personal opinions on field sport. "You'll load your own
guns and you'll use your own legs if you shoot with me; and your dogs
will do their own retrieving, too. And if anybody desires a Yankee's
opinion on shooting driven birds from rocking-chairs or potting tame
deer from grand-stands, they can have it right now!"

Usually nobody wanted his further opinion; and sometimes they got it and
sometimes not, if his wife was within earshot. Otherwise Ferrall
appeared to be a normal man, energetically devoted to his business, his
pleasures, his friends, and comfortably in love with his wife. And if
some considered his vigour in business to be lacking in mercy, that
vigour was always exercised within the law. He never transgressed the
rules of war, but his headlong energy sometimes landed him close to the
dead line. He had already breakfasted, when the earliest risers entered
the morning room to saunter about the sideboards and investigate the
simmering contents of silver-covered dishes on the warmers.

The fragrance of coffee was pleasantly perceptible; men in conventional
shooting attire roamed about the room, selected what they cared for, and
carried it to the table. Mrs. Mortimer was there consuming peaches that
matched her own complexion; Marion Page, always more congruous in field
costume and belted jacket than in anything else, and always, like her
own hunters, minutely groomed, was preparing a breakfast for her own
consumption with the leisurely precision characteristic of her whether
in the saddle, on the box, or grassing her brace of any covey that ever
flushed.

Captain Voucher and Lord Alderdene discussed prospects between bites,
attentive to the monosyllabic opinions of Miss Page. Her twin brothers,
Gordon and Willis, shyly consuming oatmeal, listened respectfully and
waited on their sister at the slightest lifting of her thinly arched
eyebrows.

Into this company sauntered Siward, apparently no worse for wear. For as
yet the Enemy had set upon him no proprietary insignia save a rather
becoming pallor and faint bluish shadows under the eyes. He strolled
about, exchanging amiable greetings, and presently selected a chilled
grape fruit as his breakfast. Opposite him Mortimer, breakfasting upon
his own dreadful bracer of an apple soaked in port, raised his heavy
inflamed eyes with a significant leer at the iced grape fruit. For he
was always ready to make room upon his own level for other men; but the
wordless grin and the bloodshot welcome were calmly ignored, for as yet
that freemasonry evoked no recognition from the pallid man opposite,
whose hands were steady as though that morning's sun had wakened him
from pleasant dreams.

"The most difficult shot in the world," Alderdene was explaining, "is an
incoming pheasant, sailing on a slant before a gale."

"A woodcock in alders doing a jack-snipe twist is worse," grunted
Mortimer, drenching another apple in port.

"Yes," said Miss Page tersely.

"Or a depraved ruffed cock-grouse in the short pines; isn't that the
limit?" asked Mortimer of Siward.

But Siward only shrugged his comment and glanced out through the leaded
casements into the brilliant September sunshine.

Outside he could see Major Belwether, pink skinned, snowy chop whiskers
brushed rabbit fashion, very voluble with Sylvia Landis, who listened
absently, head partly averted. Quarrier in tweeds and gaiters, his
morning cigar delicately balanced in his gloved fingers, strolled near
enough to be within ear-shot; and when Sylvia's inattention to Major
Belwether's observations became marked to the verge of rudeness, he came
forward and spoke. But whatever it was that he said appeared to change
her passive inattention to quiet displeasure, for, as Siward rose from
the table, he saw her turn on her heel and walk slowly toward a group of
dogs presided over by some kennel men and gamekeepers.

She was talking to the head gamekeeper when he emerged from the house,
but she saw him on the terrace and gave him a bright nod of greeting, so
close to an invitation that he descended the stone steps and crossed the
dew-wet lawn.

"I am asking Dawson to explain just exactly what a ëShotover Drive'
resembles," she said, turning to include Siward in an animated
conference with the big, scraggy, head keeper. "You know, Mr. Siward,
that it is a custom peculiar to Shotover House to open the season with
what is called a Shotover Drive?"

"I heard Alderdene talking about it," he said, smilingly inspecting the
girl's attire of khaki with its buttoned pockets, gun pads, and Cossack
cartridge loops, and the tan knee-kilts hanging heavily pleated over
gaiters and little thick-soled shoes. He had never cared very much to
see women afield, for, in a rare case where there was no affectation,
there was something else inborn that he found unpleasant--something
lacking about a woman who could take life from frightened wild things,
something shocking that a woman could look, unmoved, upon a twitching,
blood-soiled heap of feathers at her feet.

Meanwhile Dawson, dog-whip at salute, stood knee deep among his restless
setters, explaining the ceremony with which Mr. Ferrall ushered in the
opening of each shooting season:

"It's our own idee, Miss Landis," he said proudly; "onc't a season Mr.
Ferrall and his guests likes it for a mixed bag. 'Tis a sort of picnic,
Miss; the guns is in pairs, sixty yards apart in line, an' the rules is,
walk straight ahead, dogs to heel until first cover is reached; fire
straight or to quarter, never blankin' nor wipin' no eyes; and ground
game counts as feathers for the Shotover Cup."

"Oh! It's a skirmish line that walks straight ahead?" said Siward,
nodding.

"Straight ahead, Sir. No stoppin', no turnin' for hedges, fences, water
or rock. There is boats f'r deep water and fords marked and corduroy f'r
to pass the Seven Dreens. Luncheon at one, Miss--an hour's rest--then
straight on over hill, valley, rock, and river to the rondyvoo atop
Osprey Ledge. You'll see the poles and the big nests, Sir. It's there
they score for the cup, and there when the bag is counted, the traps are
ready to carry you home again." - And to Siward: "Will you draw for your
lady, Sir? It is the custom."

"Are you my ëlady'?" he asked, turning to Sylvia.

"Do you want me?"

In the smiling lustre of her eyes the tiniest spark flashed out at him--a
hint of defiance for somebody, perhaps for Major Belwether who had taken
considerable pains to enlighten her as to Siward's condition the night
before; perhaps also for Quarrier, who had naturally expected to act as
her gun-bearer in emergencies. But the gaily veiled malice of the one
had annoyed her, and the cold assumption of the other had irritated her,
and she had, scarcely knowing why, turned her shoulder to both of these
gentlemen with an indefinite idea of escaping a pressure, amounting
almost to critical importunity.

"I'm probably a poor shot?" she said, looking smilingly, straight into
Siward's eyes. "But if you'll take me--"

"I will with pleasure," he said; "Dawson, do we draw for position? Very
well then"; and he drew a slip of paper from the box offered by the head
keeper.

"Number seven!" said Sylvia, looking over his shoulder. "Come out to the
starting line, Mr. Siward. All the positions are marked with golf-discs.
What sort of ground have we ahead, Dawson?"

"Kind o' stiff, Miss," grinned the keeper. "Pity your gentleman ain't
drawed the meadows an' Sachem Hill line. Will you choose your dog, Sir?"

"You have your dog, you know," observed Sylvia demurely. And Siward,
glancing among the impatient setters, saw one white, heavily feathered
dog, straining at his leash, and wagging frantically, brown eyes fixed
on him.

The next moment Sagamore was free, devouring his master with caresses,
the girl looking on in smiling silence; and presently, side by side, the
man, the girl, and the dog were strolling off to the starting line where
already people were gathering in groups, selecting dogs, fowling-pieces,
comparing numbers, and discussing the merits of their respective lines
of advance.

Ferrall, busily energetic, and in high spirits, greeted them gaily,
pointing out the red disc bearing their number, seven, where it stood
out distinctly above the distant scrub of the foreland.

"You two are certainly up against it!" he said, grinning. "There's only
one rougher line, and you're in for thorns and water and a scramble
across the back-bone of the divide!"

"Is it any good?" asked Siward.

"Good--if you've got the legs and Sylvia doesn't play baby--"

"I?" she said indignantly. "Kemp, you annoy me. And I will bet you now,"
she added, flushing, "that your old cup is ours."

"Wait," said Siward, laughing, "we may not shoot straight."

"You will! Kemp, I'll wager whatever you dare!"

"Gloves? Stockings?--against a cigarette case?" he suggested.

"Done," she said disdainfully, moving forward along the skirmish line
with a nod and smile for the groups now disintegrating into couples, the
Page boys with Eileen Shannon and Rena Bonnesdel, Marion Page followed
by Alderdene, Mrs. Vendenning and Major Belwether and the Tassel girl
convoyed by Leroy Mortimer. Farther along the line, taking post, she saw
Quarrier and Miss Caithness, Captain Voucher with Mrs. Mortimer, and
others too distant to recognise, moving across country with glitter and
glint of sunlight on slanting gun barrels.

And now Ferrall was climbing into his saddle beside his pretty wife, who
sat her horse like a boy, the white flag lifted high in the sunshine,
watching the firing line until the last laggard was in position.

"All right, Grace!" said Ferrall briskly. Down went the white flag; the
far-ranged line started into motion straight across country, dogs at
heel.

From her saddle Mrs. Ferrall could see the advance, strung out far
afield from the dark spots moving along the Fells boundary, to the two
couples traversing the salt meadows to north. Crack! A distant report
came faintly over the uplands against the wind.

"Voucher," observed Ferrall; "probably a snipe. Hark! he's struck them
again, Grace."

Mrs. Ferrall, watching curiously, saw Siward's gun fly up as two big
dark spots floated up from the marsh and went swinging over his head.
Crack! Crack! Down sheered the black spots, tumbling earthward out of
the sky.

"Duck," said Ferrall; "a double for Stephen. Lord Harry! how that man
can shoot! Isn't it a pity that--"

He said no more; his pretty wife astride her thoroughbred sat silent,
grey eyes fixed on the distant figures of Sylvia Landis and Siward, now
shoulder deep in the reeds.

"Was it--very bad last night?" she asked in a low voice.

Ferrall shrugged. "He was not offensive; he walked steadily enough
up-stairs. When I went into his room he lay on the bed as if he'd been
struck by lightning. And yet--you see how he is this morning?"

"After a while," his wife said, "it is going to alter him some
day--dreadfully--isn't it, Kemp?"

"You mean--like Mortimer?"

"Yes--only Leroy was always a pig."

As they turned their horses toward the high-road Mrs. Ferrall said: "Do
you know why Sylvia isn't shooting with Howard?"

"No," replied her husband indifferently; "do you?"

"No." She looked out across the sunlit ocean, grave grey eyes
brightening with suppressed mischief. "But I half suspect."

"What?"

"Oh, all sorts of things, Kemp."

"What's one of ëem?" asked Ferrall, looking around at her; but his wife
only laughed.

"You don't mean she's throwing her flies at Siward--now that you've
hooked Quarrier for her! I thought she'd played him to the gaff--"

"Please don't be coarse, Kemp," said Mrs. Ferrall, sending her horse
forward. Her husband spurred to her side, and without turning her head
she continued: "Of course Sylvia won't be foolish. If they were only
safely married; but Howard is such a pill--"

"What does Sylvia expect with Howard's millions? A man?"

Grace Ferrall drew bridle. "The curious thing is, Kemp, that she liked
him."

"Likes him?"

"No, liked him. I saw how it was; she took his silences for intellectual
meditation, his gallery, his library, his smatterings for expressions of
a cultivated personality. Then she remembered how close she came to
running off with that cashiered Englishman, and that scared her into
clutching the substantial in the shape of Howard. - Still, I wish I
hadn't meddled."

"Meddled how?"

"Oh, I told her to do it. We had talks until daylight. - She may marry
him--I don't know--but if you think any live woman could he contented with
a muff like that!"

"That's immoral."

"Kemp, I'm not. She'd be mad not to marry him; but I don't know what I'd
do to a man like that, if I were his wife. And you know what a terrific
capacity for mischief there is in Sylvia. Some day she's going to love
somebody. And it isn't likely to be Howard. And, oh, Kemp! I do grow so
tired of that sort of thing. Do you suppose anybody will ever make
decency a fashion?"

"You're doing your best," said Ferrall, laughing at his wife's pretty,
boyish face turned back toward him over her shoulder; "you're presenting
your cousin and his millions to a girl who can dress the part--"

"Don't, Kemp! I don't know why I meddled! - I wish I hadn't--"

"I do. You can't let Howard alone! You're perfectly possessed to plague
him when he's with you, and now you've arranged for another woman to
keep it up for the rest of his lifetime. What does Sylvia want with a
man who possesses the instincts and intellect of a coachman? She is
asked everywhere, she has her own money. Why not let her alone? Or is it
too late?"

"You mean let her make a fool of herself with Stephen Siward? That is
where she is drifting."

"Do you think--"

"Yes, I do. She has a perfect genius for selecting the wrong man; and
she's already sorry for this one. I'm sorry for Stephen, too; but it's
safe for me to be."

"She might make something of him."

"You know perfectly well no woman ever did make anything of a doomed
man. He'd kill her--I mean it, Kemp! He would literally kill her with
grief. She isn't like Leila Mortimer; she isn't like most girls of her
sort. You men think her a rather stunning, highly tempered, unreasonable
young girl, with a reserve of sufficiently trained intelligence to marry
the best our market offers--and close her eyes;--a thoroughbred with the
caprices of one, but also with the grafted instinct for proper mating."

"Well, that's all right, isn't it?" asked Ferrall. "That's the way I
size her up. Isn't it correct?"

"Yes, in a way. She has all the expensive training of the
thoroughbred--and all the ignorance, too. She is cold-blooded because
wholesome; a trifle sceptical because so absolutely unawakened. She
never experienced a deep emotion. Impulses have intoxicated her once or
twice--as when she asked my opinion about running off with Cavendish, and
that boy and girl escapade with Rivington; nothing at all except high
mettle, the innocent daring lurking in all thoroughbreds, and a great
deal of very red blood racing through that superb young body. But,"
Ferrall reined in to listen, "but if ever a man awakens her--I don't care
who he is--you'll see a girl you never knew, a brand-new creature emerge
with the last rags and laces of conventionality dropping from her; a
woman, Kemp, heiress to every generous impulse, every emotion, every
vice, every virtue of all that brilliant race of hers."

"You seem to know," he said, amused and curious.

"I know. Major Belwether told me that he had thought of Howard as an
anchor for her. It seemed a pity--Howard with all his cold, heavy
negative inertia. - I said I'd do it. I did. And now I don't know; I
wish, almost wish I hadn't."

"What has changed your ideas?"

"I don't know. Howard is safer than Stephen Siward, already in the first
clutches of his master-vice. Would you mate what she inherits from her
mother and her mother's mother, with what is that poor boy's heritage
from the Siwards?"

"After all," observed Ferrall dryly, "we're not in the angel-breeding
business."

"We ought to be. Every decent person ought to be. If they were,
inherited vice would be as rare in this country as smallpox!"

"People don't inherit smallpox, dear."

"Never mind! You know what I mean. In our stock farms and kennels, we
weed out, destroy, exterminate hereditary weakness in everything. We pay
the greatest attention to the production of all offspring except our
own. Look at Stephen! How dared his parents bring him into the world?
Look at Sylvia! And now, suppose they marry!"

"Dearest," said Ferrall, "my head is a whirl and my wits are spinning
like five toy tops. Your theories are all right; but unless you and I
are prepared to abandon several business enterprises and take to the
lecture platform, I'm afraid people are going to be wicked enough to
marry whom they like, and the human race will he run as usual with money
the favourite, and love a case of ëalso-ran.' - By the way, how dared
you marry me, knowing the sort of demon I am?"

The gathering frown on Mrs. Ferrall's brow faded; she raised her clear
grey eyes and met her husband's gaze, gay, humourous, and with a hint of
tenderness--enough to bring the colour into her pretty face.

"You know I'm right, Kemp."

"Always, dear. And now that we have the world off our hands for a few
minutes, suppose we gallop?"

But she held her horse to a walk, riding forward, grave, thoughtful,
preoccupied with a new problem, only part of which she had told her
husband.

For that night she had been awakened in her bed to find standing beside
her a white, wide-eyed figure, shivering, limbs a-chill beneath her
clinging lace. She had taken the pallid visitor to her arms and warmed
her and soothed her and whispered to her, murmuring the thousand little
words and sounds, the breathing magic mothers use with children. And
Sylvia lay there, chilled, nerveless, silent, ignorant why her
sleeplessness had turned to restlessness, to loneliness, to an awakening
perception of what she lacked and needed and began to desire. For that
sad void, peopled at intervals through her brief years with a vague
mother-phantom, had, in the new crisis of her career, become suddenly an
empty desolation, frightening her with her own utter isolation. Fill it
now she could not, now that she needed that ghost of child-comfort, that
shadowy refuge, that sweet shape she had fashioned out of dreams to
symbolise a mother she had never known.

Driven she knew not why, she had crept from her room in search of the
still, warm, fragrant nest and the whispered reassurance and the caress
she had never before endured. Yes, now she craved it, invited it, longed
for safe arms around her, the hovering hand on her hair. Was this
Sylvia?

And Grace Ferrall, clearing her sleepy eyes, amazed, incredulous of the
cold, child-like hands upon her shoulders, caught her in her arms with a
little laugh and sob and drew her to her breast, to soothe and caress
and reassure, to make up to her all she could of what is every child's
just heritage.

And for a long while Sylvia, lying there, told her nothing--because she
did not know how--merely a word, a restless question half ashamed, barely
enough to shadow forth the something stirring her toward an awakening in
a new world, where with new eyes she might catch glimpses of those dim
and splendidly misty visions that float through sunlit silences when a
young girl dreams awake.

And at length, gravely, innocently, she spoke of her engagement, and the
worldly possibilities before her; of the man she was to marry, and her
new and unexpected sense of loneliness in his presence, now that she had
seen him again after months.

She spoke, presently, of Siward--a fugitive question or two, offered
indifferently at first, then with shy persistence and curiosity, knowing
nothing of the senseless form flung face downward across the sheets in a
room close by. And thereafter the murmured burden of the theme was
Siward, until one, heavy eyed, turned from the white dawn silvering the
windows, sighed, and fell asleep; and one lay silent, head half buried
in its tangled gold, wide awake, thinking vague thoughts that had no
ending, no beginning. And at last a rosy bar of light fell across the
wall, and the warm shadows faded from corner and curtain; and, turning
on the pillow, her face nestled in her hair, she fell asleep.


Nothing of this had Mrs. Ferrall told her husband.

For the first time in her life had Sylvia suffered the caresses most
women invite or naturally lavish; for the first time had she attempted
confidences, failing because she did not know how, but curiously
contented with the older woman's arms around her.

There was a change in Sylvia, a great change stealing in upon her as she
lay there, breathing like a child, flushed lips scarcely parted. Through
the early slanting sunlight the elder woman, leaning on one arm, looked
down at her, grey eyes very grave and tender--wise, sweet eyes that
divined with their pure clairvoyance all that might happen or might fail
to come to pass in this great change stealing over Sylvia.


Nothing of this could her husband understand had she words to convey it.
There was nothing he need understand except that his wife, meaning well,
had meddled and regretted.

And now, turning in her saddle with a pretty gesture of her shoulders:

"I meddle no more! Those who need me may come to me. Now laugh at my
tardy wisdom, Kemp!"

"It's no laughing matter," he said, "if you're going to stand back and
let this abandoned world spin itself madly to the bow-wows--"

"Don't be horrid. I repent. The mischief take Howard Quarrier!"

"Amen! Come on, Grace."

She gathered bridle. "Do you suppose Stephen Siward is going to make
trouble?"

"How can he unless she helps him? Nonsense! All's well with Siward and
Sylvia. Shall we gallop?"


All was very well with Siward and Sylvia. They had passed the rabbit-
brier country scathless, with two black mallard, a jack-snipe, and a
rabbit to the credit of their score, and were now advancing through that
dimly lit enchanted land of tall grey alders where, in the sudden
twilight of the leaves, woodcock after woodcock fluttered upward
twittering, only to stop and drop, transformed at the vicious crack of
Siward's gun to fluffy balls of feather whirling earthward from mid-air.

Sagamore came galloping back with a soft, unsoiled mass of chestnut and
brown feathers in his mouth. Siward took the dead cock, passed it back
to the keeper who followed them, patted the beautiful eager dog and
signalled him forward once more.

"You should have fired that time," he said to Sylvia--"that is, if you
care to kill anything."

"But I don't seem to be able to," she said. "It isn't a bit like
shooting at clay targets. The twittering whirr takes me by surprise--it's
all so charmingly sudden--and my heart seems to stop in one beat, and I
look and look and then--whisk! the woodcock is gone, leaving me
breathless--"

Her voice ceased; the white setter, cutting up his ground ahead, had
stopped, rigid, one leg raised, jaws quivering and locking alternately.

"Isn't that a stunning picture!" said Siward in a low voice. "What a
beauty he is--like a statue in white and blue-veined marble. You may
talk, Miss Landis; woodcock don't flush at the sound of the human voice
as grouse do."

"See his brown eyes roll back at us! He wonders why we don't do
something!" whispered the girl. "Look, Mr. Siward! Now his head is
moving--oh so gradually to the left!"

"The bird is moving on the ground," nodded Siward; "now the bird has
stopped."

"I do wish I could see a woodcock on the ground," she breathed. "Do you
think we might by any chance?"

Siward noiselessly sank to his knees and crouched, keen eyes minutely
busy among the shadowy browns and greys of wet earth and withered leaf.
And after a while, cautiously, he signalled the girl to kneel beside
him, and stretched out one arm, forefinger extended.

"Sight straight along my arm," he said," as though it were a rifle
barrel."

Her soft cheek rested against his shoulder; a stray strand of shining
hair brushing his face.

"Under that bunch of fern," he whispered; "just the colour of the dead
leaves. Do you see? - Don't you see that big woodcock squatted flat,
bill pointed straight out and resting on the leaves?"

After a long while she saw, suddenly, and an exquisite little shock
tightened her fingers on Siward's extended arm.

"Oh, the feathered miracle!" she whispered; "the wonder of its
cleverness to hide like that! You look and look and stare, seeing it all
the while and not knowing that you see it. Then in a flash it is there,
motionless, a brown-shaped shadow among shadows. - The dear little
thing! - Mr. Siward, do you think--are you going to--"

"No, I won't shoot it."

"Thank you. - Might I sit here a moment to watch it?"

She seated herself soundlessly among the dead leaves; he sank into place
beside her, laying his gun aside.

"Rather rough on the dog," he said with a grimace.

"I know. It is very good of you, Mr. Siward to do this for my pleasure.
Oh--h! Do you see! Oh, the little beauty!"

The woodcock had risen, plumage puffed out, strutting with wings bowed
and tail spread, facing the dog. The sudden pigmy defiance thrilled her.
"Brave! Brave!" she exclaimed, enraptured; but at the sound of her voice
the bird crouched like a flash, large dark liquid eyes shining, long
bill pointed straight toward them.

"He'll fly the way his bill points," said Siward. "Watch!"

He rose; she sprang lightly to her feet; there came a whirring flutter,
a twittering shower of sweet notes, soft wings beating almost in their
very faces, a distant shadow against the sky, and the woodcock was gone.

Quieting the astounded dog, gun cradled in the hollow of his left arm,
he turned to the girl beside him: "That sort of thing wins no cups," he
said.

"It wins something else, Mr. Siward,--my very warm regard for you."

"There is no choice between that and the Shotover Cup," he admitted,
considering her.

"I--do you mean it?"

"Of course I do, vigorously!"

"Then you are much nicer than I thought you. - And after all, if the
price of a cup is the life of that brave little bird, I had rather shoot
clay pigeons. Now you will scorn me I suppose. Begin!"

"My ideal woman has never been a life-taker," he said coolly. "Once,
when I was a boy, there was a girl--very lovely--my first sweetheart. I
saw her at the traps once, just after she had killed her seventh pigeon
straight, ëpulling it down' from overhead, you know--very clever--the
little thing was breathing on the grass, and it made sounds--" He
shrugged and walked on. "She killed her twenty-first bird straight; it
was a handsome cup, too."

And after a silence, "So you didn't love her any more, Mr.
Siward?"--mockingly sweet.

They laughed, and at the sound of laughter the tall-stemmed alders
echoed with the rushing roar of a cock-grouse thundering skyward. Crack!
Crack! Whirling over and over through a cloud of floating feathers, a
heavy weight struck the springy earth. There lay the big mottled bird,
splendid silky ruffs spread, dead eyes closing, a single tiny crimson
bead twinkling like a ruby on the gaping beak.

"Dead!" said Siward to the dog who had dropped to shot; "Fetch!" And,
signalling the boy behind, he relieved the dog of his burden and tossed
the dead weight of ruffled plumage toward him. Then he broke his gun,
and, as the empty shells flew rattling backward, slipped in fresh
cartridges, locked the barrels, and walked forward, the flush of
excitement still staining his sunburnt face.

"You deal death mercifully," said the girl in a low voice. "I wonder
what your ci-devant sweetheart would think of you."

"A bungler had better stick to the traps," he assented, ignoring the
badinage.

"I am wondering," she said thoughtfully, "what I think of men who kill."

He turned sharply, hesitated, shrugged. "Wild things' lives are brief at
best--fox or flying-tick, wet nests or mink, owl, hawk, weasel or man.
But the death man deals is the most merciful. Besides," he added,
laughing, "ours is not a case of sweethearts."

"My argument is purely in the abstract, Mr. Siward. I am asking you
whether the death men deal is more justifiable than a woman's gift of
death?"

"Oh, well, life-taking, the giving of life--there can be only one answer
to the mystery; and I don't know it," he replied smiling.

"I do."

"Tell me then," he said, still amused.

They had passed swale after swale of silver birches waist deep in
perfumed fern and brake; the big timber lay before them. She moved
forward, light gun swung easily across her leather-padded shoulder; and
on the wood's sunny edge she seated herself, straight young back against
a giant pine, gun balanced across her flattened knees.

"You are feeling the pace a little," he said, coming up and standing in
front of her.

"The pace? No, Mr. Siward."

"Are you a trifle--bored?" She considered him in silence, then leaned
back luxuriously, rounded arms raised, wrists crossed to pillow her
head.

"This is charmingly new to me," she said simply.

"What? Not the open?"

"No; I have camped and done the usual roughing it with only three guides
apiece and the champagne inadequately chilled. I have endured that sort
of hardship several times, Mr. Siward. - What is that furry hunch up
there in that tall thin tree?"

"A raccoon," he said presently. "Can you see the foxy head peeping so
slyly down at us? Look at Sagamore nosing the air in that droll blind
mole-like way. He knows there's something furry up aloft somewhere; and
he knows it's none of his business."

They watched the motionless ball of fur in the crotch of a slim forest
elm. Presently it uncurled, cautiously; a fluffy ringed tail unfolded;
the rounded furry back humped up, and the animal, moving slowly into the
tangent foliage of an enormous oak, vanished amid bronzing leafy depths.

In the silence the birds began to reappear. A jay screamed somewhere
deep in the yellowing woods; black-capped chickadees dropped from twig
to twig, cheeping inquiringly.

She sat listening, bright head pillowed in her arms, idly attentive to
his low running comment on beast and bird and tree, on forest stillness
and forest sounds, on life and the wild laws of life and death governing
the great out-world 'twixt sky and earth. Sunlight and shadows moving,
speech and silence, waxed and waned. A listless contentment lay warm
upon her, weighting the heavy white lids. The blue of her eyes was very
dark now--almost purple like the colour of the sea when the wind-flaws
turn the blue to violet.

"Did you ever hear of the ëLesser Children'?" she asked. "Listen then:

"ëMultitudes, multitudes, under the moon they stirred! The weaker
brothers of our earthly breed; - - All came about my head and at my feet
A thousand thousand sweet, With starry eyes not even raised to plead:
Bewildered, driven, hiding, fluttering, mute!

And I beheld and saw them one by one Pass, and become as nothing in the
night.'

"Do you know what it means?

"ëWinged mysteries of song that from the sky Once dashed long music
down--'

"Do you understand?" she asked, smiling.

"ëWho has not seen in the high gulf of light What, lower, was a bird!'"

She ceased, and, raising her eyes to his: "Do you know that plea for
mercy on the lesser children who die all day to-day because the season
opens for your pleasure, Mr. Siward?"

"Is it a woodland sermon?" he inquired, too politely.

"The poem? No; it is the case for the prosecution. The prisoner may
defend himself if he can."

"The defence rests," he said. "The prisoner moves that he be
discharged."

"Motion denied," she interrupted promptly.

Somewhere in the woodland world the crows were holding a noisy session,
and she told him that was the jury debating the degree of his guilt.

"Because you're guilty of course," she continued. "I wonder what your
sentence is to be?"

"I'll leave it to you," he suggested lazily.

"Suppose I sentenced you to slay no more?"

"Oh, I'd appeal--"

"No use; I am the tribunal of last resort."

"Then I throw myself upon the mercy of the court."

"You do well, Mr. Siward. This court is very merciful. - How much do you
care for bird murder? Very much? Is there anything you care for more?
Yes? And could this court grant it to you in compensation?"

He said, deliberately, roused by the level challenge of her gaze: "The
court is incompetent to compensate the prisoner or offer any
compromise."

"Why, Mr. Siward?"

"Because the court herself is already compromised in her future
engagements."

"But what has my--engagement to do with--"

"You offered compensation for depriving me of my shooting. There could
be only one adequate compensation."

"And that?" she asked, coolly enough.

"Your continual companionship."

"But you have it, Mr. Siward--"

"I have it for a day. The season lasts three months you know."

"And you and I are to play a continuous vaudeville for three months? Is
that your offer?"

"Partly."

"Then one day with me is not worth those many days of murder?" she asked
in pretended astonishment.

"Ask yourself why those many days would be doubly empty," he said so
seriously that the pointless game began to confuse her.

"Then"--she turned lightly from uncertain ground--"then perhaps we had
better be about that matter of the cup you prize so highly. Are you
ready, Mr. Siward? There is much to be killed yet--including time, you
know."

But the hinted sweetness of the challenge had aroused him, and he made
no motion to rise. Nor did she.

"I am not sure," he reflected, "just exactly what I should ask of you if
you insist on taking away--" he turned and looked about him through the
burnt gold foliage, "--if you took away all this out of my life."

"I shall not take it; because I have nothing in exchange to offer - you
say," she answered imprudently.

"I did not say so," he retorted.

"You did--reminding me that the court is already engaged for a continuous
performance."

"Was it necessary to remind you?" he asked with deliberate malice.

She flushed up, vexed, silent, then looked directly at him with
beautiful hostile eyes. "What do you mean, Mr. Siward? Are you taking
our harmless, idle badinage as warrant for an intimacy unwarranted?"

"Have I offended?" he asked, so impassively that a flash of resentment
brought her to her feet, angry and self-possessed.

"How far have we to go?" she asked quietly.

He rose to his feet, turned, hailing the keeper, repeating the question.
And at the answer they both started forward, the dog ranging ahead
through a dense growth of beech and chestnut, over a high brown ridge,
then down, always down along a leafy ravine to the water's edge--a forest
pond set in the gorgeous foliage of ripening maples.

"I don't see," said Sylvia impatiently, "how we are going to obey
instructions and go straight ahead. There must be a stupid boat
somewhere!"

But the game-laden keeper shook his head, pulled up his hip boots, and
pointed out a line of alder poles set in the water to mark a crossing.

"Am I expected to wade?" asked the girl anxiously.

"This here," observed the keeper, "is one of the most sportin' courses
on the estate. Last season I seen Miss Page go through it like a scared
deer--the young lady, sir, that took last season's cup"--in explanation to
Siward, who stood doubtfully at the water's edge, looking back at
Sylvia.

Raising her dismayed eyes she encountered his; there was a little laugh
between them. She stepped daintily across the stones to the water's
edge, instinctively gathering her kilts in one hand.

"Miles and I could chair you over," suggested Siward.

"Is that fair--under the rules?"

"Oh, yes, Miss; as long as you go straight," said the keeper.

So they laid aside the guns and the guide's game-sack, and formed a
chair with their hands, and, bearing the girl between them, they waded
out along the driven alder stakes, knee-deep in brown water.

Before them herons rose into heavy flapping flight, broad wings
glittering in the sun; a diver, distantly afloat among the lily pads,
settled under the water to his eyes as a submarine settles till the
conning-tower is awash.

Her arm, lightly resting around his neck, tightened a trifle as the
water rose to his thighs; then the faint pressure relaxed as they
thrashed shoreward through the shallows, ankle deep once more, and
landed among the dry reeds on the farther bank.

Miles, the keeper, went back for the guns. Siward stamped about in the
sun, shaking the drops from water-proof breeches and gaiters, only to be
half drenched again when Sagamore shook himself vigorously.

"I suppose," said Sylvia, looking sideways at Siward, "your contempt for
my sporting accomplishments has not decreased. I'm sorry; I don't like
to walk in wet shoes - even to gain your approval."

And, as the keeper came splashing across the shallows: "Miles, you may
carry my gun. I shall not need it any longer--"

The upward roar of a bevey of grouse drowned her voice; poor Sagamore,
pointing madly in the blackberry thicket all unperceived, cast a
dismayed glance aloft where the sunlit air quivered under the winnowing
rush of heavy wings. Siward flung up his gun, heading a big quartering
bird; steadily the glittering barrels swept in the arc of fire,
hesitated, wavered; then the possibility passed; the young fellow
lowered the gun, slowly, gravely; stood a moment motionless with bent
head until the rising colour in his face had faded.

And that was all, for a while. The astonished and disgusted keeper
stared into the thicket; the dog lay quivering, impatient for signal.
Sylvia's heart, which had seemed to stop with her voice, silenced in the
gusty thunder of heavy wings, began beating too fast. For the ringing
crack of a gun shot could have spoken no louder to her than the
glittering silence of the suspended barrels; nor any promise of his
voice sound as the startled stillness sounded now about her. For he had
made something a trifle more than mere amends for his rudeness. He was
overdoing everything--a little.

He stood on the thicket's edge, absently unloading the weapon, scarcely
understanding what he had done and what he had not done.

A moment later a far hail sounded across the uplands, and against the
sky figures moved distantly.

"Alderdene and Marion Page," said Siward. "I believe we lunch yonder, do
we not, Miles?"

They climbed the hill in silence, arriving after a few minutes to find
others already at luncheon--the Page boys, eager, enthusiastic,
recounting adventure by flood and field; Rena Bonnesdel tired and
frankly bored and decorated with more than her share of mud; Eileen
Shannon, very pretty, very effective, having done more execution with
her eyes than with the dainty fowling-piece beside her.

Marion Page nodded to Sylvia and Siward with a crisp, business-like
question or two, then went over to inspect their bag, nodding
approbation as Miles laid the game on the grass.

"Eight full brace," she commented. "We have five, and an odd cock-
pheasant--from Black Fells, I suppose. The people to our left have been
blazing away like Coney Island, but Rena's guide says the ferns are full
of rabbits that way, and Major Belwether can't hit fur afoot. You," she
added frankly to Siward, "ought to take the cup. The birches ahead of
you are full of woodcock. If you don't, Howard Quarrier will. He's into
a flight of jack-snipe I hear."

Siward's eyes had suddenly narrowed; then he laughed, patting Sagamore's
cheeks. "I don't believe I shall shoot very steadily this afternoon," he
said, turning toward the group at luncheon under the trees. "I wish
Quarrier well--with the cup."

"Nonsense," said Marion Page curtly; "you are the cleanest shot I ever
knew." And she raised her glass to him, frankly, and emptied it with the
precision characteristic of her: "Your cup! With all my heart!"

"I also drink to your success, Mr. Siward," said Sylvia in a low voice,
lifting her champagne glass in the sunlight. "To the Shotover Cup--if you
wish it." And as other glasses sparkled aloft amid a gay tumult of
voices wishing him success, Sylvia dropped her voice, attuning it to his
ear alone: "Success for the cup, if you wish it--or, whatever you
wish--success!" and she meant it very kindly.

His hand resting on his glass he sat, smiling silent acknowledgment to
the noisy generous toasts; he turned and looked at Sylvia when her low
voice caught his ear--looked at her very steadily, unsmiling.

Then to the others, brightening again, he said a word or two, wittily,
with a gay compliment well placed and a phrase to end it in good taste.
And, in the little gust of hand-clapping and laughter, he turned again
to Sylvia, smilingly, saying under his breath: "As though winning the
cup could compensate me now for losing it!"

She leaned involuntarily nearer: "You mean that you will not try for
it?"

"Yes."

"That is not fair--to me!"

"Why not?"

"Because--because I do not ask it of you."

"You need not, now that I know your wish."

"Mr. Siward, I--my wish--"

But she had no chance to finish; already Rena Bonnesdel was looking at
them, and there was a hint of amused surprise in Eileen Shannon's
mischievous eyes, averted instantly, with malicious ostentation.

Then Marion Page took possession of him so exclusively, so calmly, that
something in her cool certainty vaguely irritated Sylvia, who had never
liked her. Besides, the girl showed too plainly her indifference to
other people; which other people seldom find amusing.

"Stephen," called out Alderdene, anxiously counting the web loops in his
khaki vest, "what do you call fair shooting at these damnable ruffed
grouse? You needn't be civil about it, you know."

"Five shells to a bird is good shooting," answered Siward. "Don't you
think so, Miss Page?"

"You have a better score, Mr. Siward," said Marion Page with a hostile
glance at Alderdene, who had not made good.

"That was chance--and this year's birds. I've taken ten shells to an old
drummer in hard wood or short pines." He smiled to himself, adding: "A
drove of six in the open got off scot free a little while ago. Miss
Landis saw it."

That he was inclined to turn it all to banter relieved her at once. "It
was pitiable," she nodded gravely to Marion; "his nerve left him when
they made such a din in the briers."

Miss Page glanced at her indifferently.

"What I need is practice like the chasseurs of Tarascon," admitted
Siward.

"I willingly offer my hat, monsieur," said Sylvia.

Marion Page, impatient to start, had turned her tailor-made back to the
company, and was instructing his crestfallen lordship very plainly: "You
fire too quickly, Blinky; two seconds is what you must count when a
grouse flushes. You must say ëMark! Right!' or ëMark! Left! Bang!'"

"I might as well say ëBang!' for all I've done to-day," he muttered,
adjusting his shooting-goggles and snapping his eyes like fury. Then
exploding into raucous laughter he moved off southward with Marion Page,
who had exchanged a swift handshake with Siward; the twins followed,
convoying Eileen and Rena, neither maiden excitedly enthusiastic. And so
the luncheon party, lord and lady, twins and maidens, guides and dogs,
trailed away across the ridge, distant silhouettes presently against the
sky, then gone. And after a little while the far, dry, accentless report
of smokeless powder announced that the opening of the season had been
resumed and the Lesser Children were dying fast in the glory of a
perfect day.

"Are you ready, Mr. Siward?" She stood waiting for him at the edge of
the thicket; Miles resumed his game sack and her fowling-piece; the dog
came up, looking him anxiously in the eyes.

So he walked forward beside her into the dappled light of the thicket.

Within a few minutes the dog stood twice; and twice the whirring twitter
of woodcock startled her, echoed by the futile crack of his gun.

"Beg pardon, sir--"

"Yes, Miles," with a glint of humour.

"Overshot, sir,--excusin' the liberty, Mr. Siward. Both marked down forty
yard to the left if you wish to start ëem again."

"No," he said indifferently, "I had my chance at them. They're exempt."

Then Sagamore, tail wildly whipping, came smack on the trail of an old
stager of a cock-grouse--on, on over rock, log, wet gully, and dry ridge,
twisting, doubling, circling, every wile, every trick employed and met,
until the dog crawling noiselessly forward, trembled and froze, and
Siward, far to left, wheeled at the muffled and almost noiseless rise.
For an instant the slanting barrels wavered, grew motionless; but only a
stray sunbeam glinting struck a flash of cold fire from the muzzle, only
the feathery whirring whisper broke the silence of suspense. Then far
away over sunny tree tops a big grouse sailed up, rocketing into the sky
on slanted wings, breasting the height of green; dipped, glided downward
with bowed wings stiffened, and was engulfed in the misty barriers of
purpling woods.

"Vale!" said Siward aloud, "I salute you!"

He came strolling back across the crisp leaves, the dappled sunshine
playing over his face like the flicker of a smile.

"Miles," he said, "my nerve is gone. Such things happen. I'm all in.
Come over here, my friend, and look at the sun with me."

The discomfited keeper obeyed.

"Where ought that refulgent luminary to scintilate when I face Osprey
Ledge?"

"Sir?"

"The sun. How do I hold it?"

"On the p'int of your right shoulder, sir.--You ain't quittin', Mr.
Siward, sir!" anxiously; "that Shotover Cup is easy yours, sir!"
eagerly; "Wot's a miss on a old drummer, Mr. Siward? Wot's twice over-
shootin' cock, sir, when a blind dropper can see you are the cleanest,
fastest, hard-shootin' shot in the null county!"

But Siward shook his head with an absent glance at the dog, and motioned
the astonished keeper forward.

"Line the easiest trail for us," he said; "I think we are already a
trifle tired. Twigs will do in short cover; use a hatchet in the big
timber. - And go slow till we join you."

And when the unwilling and perplexed keeper had started, Siward,
unlocking his gun, drew out the smooth yellow cartridges and pocketed
them.

Sylvia looked up as the sharp metallic click of the locked breech rang
out in the silence.

"Why do you do this, Mr. Siward?"

"I don't know; really I am honest; I don't know."

"It could not he because I--"

"No, of course not," he said, too seriously to reassure her.

"Mr. Siward," in quick displeasure.

"Yes?"

"What you do for your amusements cannot concern me."

"Right as usual," he said so gaily that a reluctant smile trembled on
her lips.

"Then why have you done this? It is unreasonable--if you don't feel as I
do about killing things that are having a good time in the world."

He stood silent, absently looking at the fowling-piece cradled in his
left arm. "Shall we sit here a moment and talk it over?" he suggested
listlessly.

Her blue gaze swept him; his vague smile was indifferently bland.

"If you are determined not to shoot, we might as well start for Osprey
Ledge," she suggested; "otherwise, what reason is there for our being
here together, Mr. Siward?"

Awaiting his comment--perhaps expecting a counter-proposition--she leaned
against the tree beside which he stood. And after a while, as his
absent-minded preoccupation continued:

"Do you think the leaves are dry enough to sit on?"

He slipped off his shooting-coat and placed it at the base of the tree.
She waited for a second, uncertain how to meet an attitude which seemed
to take for granted matters which might, if discussed, give her at least
the privilege of yielding. However, to discuss a triviality meant
forcing emphasis where none was necessary. She seated herself; and, as
he continued to remain standing, she stripped off her shooting-gloves
and glanced up at him inquiringly: "Well, Mr. Siward, I am literally at
your feet."

"Which redresses the balance a little," he said, finding a place near
her.

"That is very nice of you. Can I always count on you for civil
platitudes when I stir you out of your day-dreams?"

"You can always count on stirring me without effort."

"No, I can't. Nobody can. You are never to be counted on; you are too
absent-minded. Like a veil you wrap yourself in a brown study, leaving
everybody outside to consider the pointed flattery of your withdrawal.
What happens to you when you are inside that magic veil? Do you change
into anything interesting?"

He sat there, chin propped on his linked fingers, elbows on knees; and,
though there was always the hint of a smile in his pleasant eyes, always
the indefinable charm of breeding in voice and attitude, something now
was lacking. And after a moment she concluded that it was his attention.
Certainly his wits were wool-gathering again; his eyes, edged with the
shadow of a smile, saw far beyond her, far beyond the sunlit shadows
where they sat.

In his preoccupation she had found him negatively attractive. She
glanced at him now from time to time, her eyes returning always to the
beauty of the subdued light where all about them silver-stemmed birches
clustered like slim shining pillars, crowned with their autumn canopy of
crumpled gold.

"Enchantment!" she said under her breath. "Surely an enchanted sleeper
lies here somewhere."

"You," he observed, "unawakened."

"Asleep? I?" She looked around at him. "You are the dreamer here. Your
eyes are full of dreaming even now. What is your desire?"

He leaned on one arm, watching her; she had dropped her ungloved hand,
searching among the newly fallen gold of the birch leaves drifted into
heaps. On the third finger a jewel glittered; he saw it, conscious of
its meaning--but his eyes followed the hand idly heaping up autumn gold,
a white slim hand, smoothly fascinating. Then the little, restless hand
swept near to his, almost touching it; and then instinctively he took it
in his own, curiously, lifting it a little to consider its nearer
loveliness. Perhaps it was the unexpectedness of it, perhaps it was
sheer amazement that left her hand lying idly relaxed like a white
petalled blossom in his. His bearing, too, was so blankly impersonal
that for a moment the whole thing appeared inconsequent. Then, as her
hand lay there, scarcely imprisoned, their eyes encountered,--and hers,
intensely blue now, considered him without emotion, studied him
impersonally without purpose, incuriously acquiescent, indifferently
expectant.

After a little while the consciousness of the contact disconcerted her;
she withdrew her fingers with an involuntary shiver.

"Is there no chance?" he asked.

Perplexed with her own emotion, the meaning of his low-voiced question
at first escaped her; then, like its own echo, came ringing back in her
ears, re-echoed again as he repeated it:

"Is there no chance for me, Miss Landis?"

The very revulsion of self-possession returning chilled her; then anger
came, quick and hot; then pride. She deliberated, choosing her words
coolly enough: "What chance do you mean, Mr. Siward?"

"A fighting chance. Can you give it to me?"

"A fighting chance? For what?"--very low, very dangerous.

"For you."

Then, in spite of her, her senses became unsteady; a sudden ringing
confusion seemed to deafen her, through which his voice, as if very far
away, sounded again:

"Men who are worth a fighting chance ask for it sometimes--but take it
always. I take it."

Her pallor faded under the flood of bright colour; the blue of her eyes
darkened ominously to velvet.

"Mr. Siward," she said, very distinctly and slowly, "I am
not--even--sorry--for you."

"Then my chance is desperate indeed," he retorted coolly.

"Chance! Do you imagine--" Her anger choked her.

"Are you not a little hard?" he said, paling under his tan. "I supposed
women dismissed men more gently--even such a man as I am."

For a full minute she strove to comprehend.

"Such a man as you!" she repeated vaguely; "you mean--" a crimson wave
dyed her skin to the temples and she leaned toward him in horror-
stricken contrition; "I didn't mean that, Mr. Siward! I--I never thought
of that! It had no weight, it was not in my thoughts. I meant only that
you had assumed what is unwarranted--that you--your question humiliated
me, knowing that I am engaged--knowing me so little--so--"

"Yes, I knew everything. Ask yourself why I risk everything to say this
to you? There can be only one answer."

Then after a long silence: "Have I ever--" she began tremblingly--"ever by
word or look--"

"No."

"Have I even--"

"No. I've simply discovered how I feel. That's what I was dreaming about
when you asked me. I was afraid I might do this too soon; but I meant to
do it anyway before it became too late."

"It was too late from the very moment we met, Mr. Siward." And, as he
reddened painfully again, she added quickly: "I mean that I had already
decided. Why will you take what I say so dreadfully different from the
way I intend it? Listen to me. I--I believe I am not very experienced
yet; I was a--astonished--quite stunned for a moment. Then it hurt me--and
I said that I was not sorry for you - I am sorry, now."

And, as he said nothing: "You were a little rough, a little sudden with
me, Mr. Siward. Men have asked me that question--several times; but never
so soon, so unreasonably soon--never without some preliminary of some
sort, so that I could foresee, be more or less prepared. - But you gave
me no warning. I--if you had, I would have known how to be gentle. I--I
wish to be now. I like you--enough to say this to you, enough to be
seriously sorry; if I could bring myself to really believe
this--feeling--"

Still he said nothing; he sat there listlessly studying the sun spots
glowing, waxing, waning on the carpet of dead leaves at his feet.

"As for--what you have said," she added, a little smile curving the
sensitive mouth, "it is impulsive, unconsidered, a trifle boyish, Mr.
Siward. I pay myself the compliment of your sincerity; it is rather nice
to be a girl who can awaken the romance in a man within a day or two's
acquaintance. - And that is all it is--a romantic impulse with a pretty
girl. You see I am frank; I am really glad that you find me attractive.
Tell me so, if you wish. We shall not misunderstand each other again.
Shall we?"

He raised his head, considering her, forcing the smile to meet her own.

"We shall be better friends than ever," she asserted confidently.

"Yes, better than ever."

"Because what you have done means the nicest sort of friendship, you
see. You can't escape its duties and responsibilities now, Mr. Siward. I
shall expect you to spend the greater part of your life in devotedly
doing things for me. Besides, I am now privileged to worry you with
advice. Oh, you have invested me with all sorts of powers now!"

He nodded.

She sprang to her feet, flushed, smiling, a trifle excited.

"Is it all over, and are we the very ideals of friends?" she asked.

"The very ideals."

"You are nice!" she said impulsively, holding out both gloveless hands.
He held them, she looking at him very sweetly, very confidently.

"Allons! Without malice?" she asked.

"Without malice."

"Without afterthoughts?"

"Without afterthoughts."

"And--you are content?" persuasively.

"Of course not," he said.

"Oh, but you must be."

"I must be," he repeated obediently.

"And you are! Say it!"

"But it does not make me unhappy not to be contented--"

"Say it, please; or--do you desire me to be unhappy?"

Her small, smooth hands lying between his, they stood confronting one
another in the golden light. She might easily have brought the matter to
an end; and why she did not, she knew no more than a kitten waking to
consciousness under its first caress.

"Say it," she repeated, laughing uncertainly back into his smiling eyes
of a boy.

"Say what?"

"That you are contented."

"I can't."

"Mr. Siward, it is unkind, it is shameless--"

"I know it; I am that sort."

"Then I am sorry for you. Look at that!" turning her left hand in his so
that the jewel on the third finger caught the light.

"I see it."

"And yet--"

"And yet."

"That," she observed with composure, "is sheer obstinacy. - Isn't it?"

"It is what I said it was: a hopeful discontent."

"How can it be?" impatiently now, for the long, unaccustomed contact was
unnerving her--yet she made no motion to withdraw her hands. "How can you
really care for me? Do you actually believe that--devotion--comes like
that?"

"Exactly like that."

"So suddenly? It is impossible!" with a twist of her pretty shoulders.

"How did it come--to you?" he asked between his teeth.

Then her face grew scarlet and her eyes grew dark, and her hands
contracted in his--tightened, twisted fingers entangled, until, with a
little sob, she swayed toward him and he caught her. An instant, a
minute--more, perhaps, she did not know--she half lay in his arms, her
untaught lips cold against his. Lassitude, faint consciousness, then
tiny shock on shock came the burning revulsion; and her voice came back,
too, sounding strangely to her, a colourless, monotonous voice.

He had freed her; she remembered that somebody had asked him to--perhaps
herself. That was well; she needed to breathe, to summon strength and
common-sense, find out what had been done, what reasonless madness she
had committed in the half-light of the silver-stemmed trees clustering
in shameful witness on every hand.

Suddenly the hot humiliation of it overwhelmed her, and she covered her
face with her hands, standing, almost swaying, as wave on wave of
incredulous shame seemed to sweep her from knee to brow. That phase
passed after a while; out of it she emerged, flushed, outwardly
composed, into another phase, in full self-possession once more, able to
understand what had happened without the disproportion of emotional
exaggeration. After all, she had only been kissed. Besides she was a
novice, which probably accounted, in a measure, for the unreasonable
emotion coincident with a caress to which she was unaccustomed. Without
looking up at him she found herself saying coolly enough to surprise
herself: "I never supposed I was capable of that. It appears that I am.
I haven't anything to say for myself - except that I feel fearfully
humiliated. - Don't say anything now - I do not blame you, truly I do
not. It was contemptible of me--to do it--wearing this--" she stretched out
her slender left hand, not looking at him; "it was contemptible!" - She
slowly raised her eyes, summoning all her courage to face him.

But he only saw in the pink confusion of her lovely face the dawning
challenge of a coquette saluting her adversary in gay acknowledgment of
his fleeting moment of success. And as his face fell, then hardened into
brightness, instantly she divined how he rated her, and in a flash
realized her weapons and her security, and that the control of the
situation was hers, not in the control of this irresolute young man who
stood so silently considering her. Strange that she should be ashamed of
her own innocence, willing that he believe her accomplished in such
arts, enchanted that he no longer perhaps suspected genuine emotion in
the swift, confused sweetness of her first kiss. If only all that were
truly hidden from him, if he dare not in his heart convict her of
anything save perfection in a gay, imprudent rÙle, what a weight lifted,
what relief, what hot self-contempt cooled! What vengeance, too, she
would take on him for the agony of her awakening--the dazed chagrin, the
dread of his wise, amused eyes--eyes that she feared had often looked
upon such scenes; eyes no doubt familiar with such unimportant details
as the shamed demeanour of a novice.

"Why do you take it so seriously?" she said, laughing and studying him,
certain now of herself in this new disguise.

"Do you take it lightly?" he asked, striving to smile.

"I? Ah, I must, you know. You don't expect to marry me - do you, Mr.
Siward?"

"I--" He choked up at that, grimly for a while.

Walking slowly forward together she fell into step frankly beside him,
near him--too near. "Try to be sensible," she was saying gaily; "I like
you so much--and it would be horrid to have you mope, you know. And
besides, even if I cared for you, there are reasons, you know--reasons
for any girl to marry the man I am going to marry. Does my cynicism
shock you? What am I to do?" with a shrug. "Such marriages are
reasonable, and far likelier to be agreeable than when fancy is the sole
motive--certainly far more agreeable than an ill-considered yielding to
abstract emotion with nothing concrete in view. - So, you see, I could
not marry you even if I--" her voice was inclined to tremble, but she
controlled it. Would she never learn her rÙle? "even if I loved you--"

Then her tongue stumbled and was silent; and they walked on, side by
side, through the fading splendour of the year, exchanging no further
speech.

Toward sunset their guide hailed them, standing high among the rocks, a
silhouette against the sky. And beyond him they saw the poles crowned
with the huge nests of the fish-hawks, marking the last rendezvous at
Osprey Ledge.

She turned to him as they started up the last incline, thanking him in a
sweet, natural voice for his care of her--quite innocently--until in the
questioning, unconvinced gaze that met hers she found her own eyes
softening and growing dim; and she looked away suddenly, lest he read
her ere she had dared turn the first page in the book of self--ere she
had studied, pried, probed among the pages of a new chapter whose
familiar title, so long meaningless to her, had taken on a sudden
troubling significance. And for the first time in her life she glanced
uneasily at the new page in the book of self, numbered according to her
years with the figures 23, and headed with the unconvincing chapter
title, "Love."



A WINNING LOSER

The week passed swiftly, day after day echoing with the steady fusillade
from marsh to covert, from valley to ridge. Guns flashed at dawn and
dusk along the flat tidal reaches haunted of black mallard and teal; the
smokeless powder cracked through alder swamp and tangled windfall where
the brown grouse burst away into noisy blundering flight; where the
woodcock, wilder now, shrilled skyward like feathered rockets, and the
big northern hares, not yet flecked with snowy patches of fur, loped off
into swamps to the sad undoing of several of the younger setters.

There was a pheasant drive at Black Fells to which the Ferralls' guests
were bidden by Beverly Plank--a curious scene, where ladies and gentlemen
stood on a lawn, backed by an army of loaders and gun-bearers, while
another improvised army of beaters drove some thousands of frightened,
bewildered, homeless foreign pheasants at the guns. And the miserable
aliens that escaped the guns were left to perish in the desolation of a
coming winter which they were unfitted to withstand.

So the first week of the season sped gaily, ending on Saturday with a
heavy flight of northern woodcock and an uproarious fusillade among the
silver birches.

Once Ferrall loaded two motor cars with pioneers for a day beyond his
own boundaries; and one day was spent ingloriously with the beagles; but
otherwise the Shotover estate proved more than sufficient for good bags
or target practice, as the skill of the sportsmen developed.

Lord Alderdene, good enough on snipe and cock, was driven almost frantic
by the ruffed grouse; Voucher did better for a day or two, and then lost
the knack; Marion Page attended to business in her cool and thorough
style, and her average on the gun-room books was excellent, and was also
adorned with clever pen-and-ink sketches by Siward.

Leroy Mortimer had given up shooting and established himself as a
haunter of cushions in sunny corners. Tom O'Hara had gone back to Lenox;
Mrs. Vendenning to Hot Springs. Beverly Plank, master of Black Fells,
began to pervade the house after a tentative appearance; and he and
Major Belwether pottered about the coverts, usually after luncheon--the
latter doing little damage with his fowling-piece, and nobody knew how
much with his gossiping tongue. Quarrier appeared in the field
methodically, shot with judgment, taking no chances for a brilliant
performance which might endanger his respectable average. As for the
Page boys, they kept the river ducks stirring whenever Eileen Shannon
and Rena Bonnesdel could be persuaded to share the canoes with them.
Otherwise they haunted the vicinity of those bored maidens, suffering
snubs sorrowfully, but persistently faithful. They were a great nuisance
in the evening, especially as their sister did not permit them to lose
more than ten dollars a day at cards.

Cards--that is Bridge and Preference--ruled as usual; and the latter game
being faster suited Mortimer and Ferrall, but did not aid Siward toward
recouping his Bridge losses.

Noticing this, late in the week, Major Belwether kindly suggested
Klondyke for Siward's benefit, which proved more quickly disastrous to
him than anything yet proposed; and he went back to Bridge, preferring
rather to "carry" Agatha Caithness at intervals than crumble into
bankruptcy under the sheer deadly hazard of Klondyke.

Two matters occupied him; since "cup day" he had never had another
opportunity to see Sylvia Landis alone; that was the first matter. He
had touched neither wine nor spirits nor malt since the night Ferrall
had found him prone, sprawling in a stupor on his disordered bed. That
was the second matter, and it occupied him, at times required all his
attention, particularly when the physical desire for it set in,
steadily, mercilessly, mounting inexorably like a tide. - But, like the
tide, it ebbed at last, particularly when a sleepless night had
exhausted him.

He had gone back to his shooting again after a cool review of the ethics
involved. It even amused him to think that the whimsical sermon
delivered him by a girl who had cleverness enough to marry many
millions, with Quarrier thrown in, could have so moved him to
sentimentality. He had ceded the big cup of antique silver to Quarrier,
too--a matter which troubled him little, however, as in the irritation of
the reaction he had been shooting with the brilliancy of a demon; and
the gun-room books were open to any doubting guests' inspection.

Time, therefore, was never heavy on his hands, save when the tide
threatened--when at night he stirred and awoke, conscious of its crawling
advance, aware of its steady mounting menace. Moments at table, when the
aroma of wine made him catch his breath, moments in the gun-room
redolent of spicy spirits; a maddening volatile fragrance clinging to
the card-room, too! Yes, the long days were filled with such moments for
him.

But afield the desire faded; and even during the day, indoors, he
shrugged desire aside. It was night that he dreaded--the long hours,
lying there tense, stark-eyed, sickened with desire.

As for Sylvia, she and Grace Ferrall had taken to motoring, driving away
into the interior or taking long flights north and south along the
coast. Sometimes they took Quarrier, sometimes, when Mrs. Ferrall drove,
they took in ballast in the shape of a superfluous Page boy and a girl
for him. Once Grace Ferrall asked Siward to join them; but no definite
time being set, he was scarcely surprised to find them gone when he
returned from a morning on the snipe meadows. And Sylvia, leagues away
by that time, curled up in the tonneau beside Grace Ferrall, watched the
dark pines flying past, cheeks pink, eyes like stars, while the rushing
wind drove health into her and care out of her--cleansing, purifying,
overwhelming winds flowing through and through her, till her very soul
within her seemed shining through the beauty of her eyes. Besides, she
had just confessed.


"He kissed you!" repeated Grace Ferrall incredulously.

"Yes--a number of times. He was silly enough to do it, and I let him."

"Did--did he say--"

"I don't know what he said; I was all nerves--confused--scared--a perfect
stick in fact! - I don't believe he'd care to try again."

Then Mrs. Ferrall deliberately settled down in her furs to extract from
the girl beside her every essential detail; and the girl, frank at
first, grew shy and silent--reticent enough to worry her friend into a
silence which lasted a long while for a cheerful little matron of her
sort.

Presently they spoke of other matters--matters interesting to pretty
women with much to do in the coming winter between New York, Hot
Springs, and Florida; surmises as to dinners, dances, and the newcomers
in the younger sets, and the marriages to be arranged or disarranged,
and the scandals humanity is heir to, and the attitude of the bishop
toward divorce.

And the new pavillion to be built for Saint Berold's Hospital, and the
various states of the various charities each was interested in, and the
chances of something new at the opera, and the impossibility of saving
Fifth Avenue from truck traffic, and the increasing importance of
Washington as a social centre, and the bad manners of a foreign
ambassador, and the better manners of another diplomat, and the lack of
discrimination betrayed by our ambassador to a certain great Power in
choosing people for presentation at court, and the latest unhappy
British-American marriage, and the hopelessness of the French as decent
husbands, and the recent accident to the Claymores' big yacht, and the
tendency of well-born young men toward politics, and the anything but
distinguished person of Lord Alderdene, which was, however, vastly
superior to the demeanour and person of others of his rank recently
imported, and the beauty of Miss Caithness, and the chance that Captain
Voucher had if Leila Mortimer would let him alone, and the absurdity of
the Page twins, and the furtive coarseness of Leroy Mortimer and his
general badness, and the sadness of Leila Mortimer's lot when she had
always been in love with other people,--and a little scandalous surmise
concerning Tom O'Hara, and the new house on Seventy-ninth Street
building for Mrs. Vendenning, and that charming widow's success at last
year's horse show--and whether the fashion of the function was reviving,
and whether Beverly Plank had completely broken into the social sets he
had besieged so long, or whether a few of the hunting and shooting
people merely permitted him to drive pheasants for them, and why
Katharyn Tassel made eyes at him, having sufficient money of her own to
die unwed, and--and--and then, at last, as the big motor car swung in a
circle at Wenniston Cross-Roads, and poked its brass and lacquer muzzle
toward Shotover, the talk swung back to Siward once more--having
travelled half the world over to find him.

"He is the sweetest fellow with his mother," sighed Grace; "and that
counts heavily with me. But there's trouble ahead for her--sorrow and
trouble enough for them both, if he is a true Siward."

"Heredity again!" said Sylvia impatiently. "Isn't he man enough to win
out? I'll bet you he settles down, marries, and--"

"Marries? Not he! How many girls do you suppose have believed that--were
justified in believing he meant anything by his attractive manner and
nice ways of telling you how much he liked you? He had a desperate
affair with Mrs. Mortimer--innocent enough I fancy. He's had a dozen
within three years; and in a week Rena Bonnesdel has come to making eyes
at him, and Eileen gives him no end of chances which he doesn't see. As
for Marion Page, the girl had been on the edge of loving him for years!
You laugh? But you are wrong; she is in love with him now as much as she
ever can be with anybody."

"You mean--"

"Yes I do. Hadn't you suspected it?"

And as Sylvia had suspected it she remained silent.

"If any woman in this world could keep him to the mark, she could,"
continued Mrs. Ferrall. "He's a perfect fool not to see how she cares
for him."

Sylvia said: "He is indeed."

"It would be a sensible match, if she cared to risk it, and if he would
only ask her. But he won't."

"Perhaps," ventured Sylvia, "she'll ask him. She strikes me as that
sort. I do not mean it unkindly--only Marion is so tailor-made and
cigaretteful--"

Mrs. Ferrall looked up at her.

"Did he propose to you?"

"Yes--I think so."

"Then it's the first time for him. He finds women only too willing to
play with him as a rule, and he doesn't have to be definite. I wonder
what he meant by being so definite with you?"

"I suppose he meant marriage," said Sylvia serenely; yet there was the
slightest ring in her voice; and it amused Mrs. Ferrall to try her a
little further.

"Oh, you think he really intended to commit himself?"

"Why not?" retorted Sylvia, turning red. "Do you think he found me over-
willing, as you say he finds others?"

"You were probably a new sensation for him," inferred Mrs. Ferrall
musingly. "You mustn't take him seriously, child--a man with his record.
Besides, he has the same facility with a girl that he has with
everything else he tries; his pen--you know how infernally clever he is;
and he can make good verse, and write witty jingles, and he can carry
home with him any opera and play it decently, too, with the proper
harmonies. Anything he finds amusing he is clever with--dogs, horses,
pen, brush, music, women"--that was too malicious, for Sylvia had flushed
up painfully, and Grace Ferrall dropped her gloved hand on the hand of
the girl beside her: "Child, child," she said, "he is not that sort; no
decent man ever is unless the girl is too."

Sylvia, sitting up very straight in her furs, said: "He found me
anything but difficult--if that's what you mean."

"I don't. Please don't be vexed, dear. I plague everybody when I see an
opening. There's really only one thing that worries me about it all."

"What is that?" asked Sylvia without interest.

"It's that you might be tempted to care a little for him, which, being
useless, might be unwise."

"I am - tempted."

"Not seriously!"

"I don't know." She turned in a sudden nervous impatience foreign to
her. "Howard Quarrier is too perfectly imperfect for me. I'm glad I've
said it. The things he knows about and doesn't know have been a
revelation in this last week with him. There is too much surface, too
much exterior admirably fashioned. And inside is all clock-work. I've
said it; I'm glad I have. He seemed different at Newport; he seemed nice
at Lenox. The truth is, he's a horrid disappointment--and I'm bored to
death at my brilliant prospects."

The low whizzing hum of the motor filled a silence that produced
considerable effect upon Grace Ferrall. And, after mastering her wits,
she said in a subdued voice:

"Of course it's my meddling."

"Of course it isn't. I asked your opinion, but I knew what I was going
to do. Only, I did think him personally possible--which made the
expediency, the mercenary view of it easier to contemplate."

She was becoming as frankly brutal as she knew how to be, which made the
revolt the more ominous.

"You don't think you could endure him for an hour or two a day, Sylvia?"

"It is not that," said the girl almost sullenly.

"But--"

"I'm afraid of myself--call it inherited mischief if you like! If I let a
man do to me what Mr. Siward did when I was only engaged to Howard, what
might I do--"

"You are not that sort!" said Mrs. Ferrall bluntly. "Don't be exotic,
Sylvia."

"How do you know--if I don't know? Most girls are kissed; I--well I didn't
expect to be. But I was! I tell you, Grace, I don't know what I am or
shall be. I'm unsafe; I know that much."

"It's moral and honest to realize it," said Mrs. Ferrall suavely; "and
in doing so you insure your own safety. Sylvia dear, I wish I hadn't
meddled; I'm meddling some more I suppose when I say to you, don't give
Howard his congÈ for the present. It is a horridly common thing to dwell
upon, but Howard is too materially important to be cut adrift on the
impulse of the moment."

"I know it."

"You are too clever not to. Consider the matter wisely, dispassionately,
intelligently, dear; then if by April you simply can't stand it--talk the
thing over with me again," she ended rather vaguely and wistfully; for
it had been her heart's desire to wed Sylvia's beauty and Quarrier's
fortune, and the suitability of the one for the other was apparent
enough to make even sterner moralists wobbly in their creed. Quarrier,
as a detail of modern human architecture, she supposed might fit in
somewhere, and took that for granted in laying the corner stone for her
fairy palace which Sylvia was to inhabit. And now!--oh, vexation!--the
neglected but essentially constructive detail of human architecture had
buckled, knocking the dream palace and its princess and its splendour
about her ears.

"Things never happen in real life," she observed plaintively; "only
romances have plots where things work out. But we people in real life,
we just go on and on in a badly constructed, plotless sort of way with
no villains, no interesting situations, no climaxes, no ensemble. No, we
grow old and irritable and meaner and meaner; we lose our good looks and
digestions, and we die in hopeless discord with the unity required in a
dollar and a half novel by a master of modern fiction."

"But some among us amass fortunes," suggested Sylvia, laughing.

"But we don't live happy ever after. Nobody ever had enough money in
real life."

"Some fall in love," observed Sylvia, musing.

"And they are not content, silly!"

"Why? Because nobody ever had enough love in real life," mocked Sylvia.

"You have said it, child. That is the malady of the world, and nobody
knows it until some pretty ninny like you babbles the truth. And that is
why we care for those immortals in romance, those fortunate lovers who,
in fable, are given and give enough of love; those magic shapes in verse
and tale whose hearts are satisfied when the mad author of their being
inks his last period and goes to dinner."

Sylvia laughed awhile, then, chin on wrist, sat musing there, muffled in
her furs.

"As for love, I think I should be moderate in the asking, in the giving.
A little--to flavour routine--would be sufficient for me I fancy."

"You know so much about it," observed Mrs. Ferrall ironically.

"I am permitted to speculate, am I not?"

"Certainly. Only speculate in sound investments, dear."

"How can you make a sound investment in love? Isn't it always sheerest
speculation?"

"Yes, that is why simple matrimony is usually a safer speculation than
love."

"Yes, but--love isn't matrimony."

"Match that with its complementary platitude and you have the essence of
modern fiction," observed Mrs. Ferrall. "Love is a subject talked to
death, which explains the present shortage in the market I suppose.
You're not in love and you don't miss it. Why cultivate an artificial
taste for it? If it ever comes naturally, you'll be astonished at your
capacity for it, and the constant deterioration in quantity and quality
of the visible supply. Goodness! my epigrams make me yawn--or is it age
and the ill humour of the aged when the porridge spills over on the
family cat?"

"I am the cat, I suppose," asked Sylvia, laughing.

"Yes you are--and you go tearing away, back up, fur on end, leaving me by
the fire with no porridge and only the aroma of the singeing fur to
comfort me. - Still there's one thing to comfort me."

"What?"

"Kitty-cats come back, dear."

"Oh, I suppose so. - Do you believe I could induce him to wear his hair
any way except pompadour? - and, dear, his beard is so dreadfully silky.
Isn't there anything he could take for it?"

"Only a razor I'm afraid. Those long, thick, soft, eyelashes of his are
ominous. Eyes of that sort ruin a man for my taste. He might just as
reasonably wear my hat."

"But he can't follow the fashions in eyes," laughed Sylvia. "Oh, this is
atrocious of us--it is simply horrible to sit here and say such things. I
am cold-blooded enough as it is--material enough, mean, covetous,
contemptible--"

"Dear!" said Grace Ferrall mildly, "you are not choosing a husband; you
are choosing a career. To criticise his investments might be bad taste;
to be able to extract what amusement you can out of Howard is a direct
mercy from Heaven. Otherwise you'd go mad, you know."

"Grace! Do you wish me to marry him?"

"What is the alternative, dear?"

"Why, nothing--self-respect, dowdiness, and peace."

"Is that all?"

"All I can see."

"Not Stephen Siward?"

"To marry? No. To enjoy, yes. - Grace, I have had such a good time with
him; you don't know! He is such a boy--sometimes; and I--I believe that I
am rather good for him. - Not that I'd ever again let him do that sort
of thing. - Besides, his curiosity is quenched; I am the sort he
supposed. Now he's found out he will be nice. - It's been days since
I've had a talk with him. He tried to, but I wouldn't. Besides, the
major has said nasty things about him when Howard was present; nothing
definite, only hints, smiling silences, innuendoes on the verge of
matters rather unfit; and I had nothing definite to refute. I could not
even appear to understand or notice--it was all done in such a horridly
vague way. But it only made me like him; and no doubt that actress he
took to the Patroons is better company than he finds in nine places out
of ten among his own sort."

"Oh," said Grace Ferrall slowly, "if that is the way you feel, I don't
see why you shouldn't play with Mr. Siward whenever you like."

"Nor I. I've been a perfect fool not to. - Howard hates him."

"How do you know?"

"What a question! A woman knows such things. Then, you remember that
caricature--so dreadfully like Howard? Howard has no sense of humour; he
detests such things. It was the most dreadful thing that Mr. Siward
could have done to him."

"Meddled again!" groaned Grace. "Doesn't Howard know that I did that?"

"Yes, but nothing I can say alters his conviction that the likeness was
intended. You know it was a likeness! And if Mr. Siward had not told me
that it was not intended, I should never have believed it to be an
accident."

After a prolonged silence Sylvia said, overcarelessly: "I don't quite
understand Howard. With me anger lasts but a moment, and then I'm open
to overtures for peace - I think Howard's anger lasts."

"It does," said Grace. "He was a muff as a boy--a prig with a prig's
memory under all his shallow, showy surface. I'm frank with you; I never
could take my cousin either respectfully or seriously, but I've known
him to take his own anger so seriously that years after he has visited
it upon those who had really wronged him. And he is equipped for
retaliation if he chooses. That fortune of his reaches far. - Not that I
think him capable of using such a power to satisfy a mere personal
dislike. Howard has principles, loads of them. But--the weapon is there."

"Is it true that Mr. Siward is interested in building electric roads?"
asked Sylvia curiously.

"I don't know, child. Why?"

"Nothing. I wondered."

"Why?"

"Mr. Mortimer said so."

"Then I suppose he is. I'll ask Kemp if you like. Why? Isn't it all
right to build them?"

"I suppose so. Howard is in it somehow. In fact Howard's company is
behind Mr. Siward's, I believe."

Grace Ferrall turned and looked at the girl beside her, laughing
outright.

"Oh, Howard doesn't do mysterious financial things to nice young men
because they draw impudent pictures of him running after his dog--or for
any other reason. That, dear, is one of those skilfully developed
portions of an artistic plot; and plots exist only in romance. So do
villains; and besides, my cousin isn't one. Besides that, if Howard is
in that thing, no doubt Kemp and I are too. So your nice young man is in
very safe company."

"You draw such silly inferences," said Sylvia coolly; but there was a
good deal of colour in her cheeks; and she knew it and pulled her big
motor veil across her face, fastening it under her chin. All of which
amused Grace Ferrall infinitely until the subtler significance of the
girl's mental processes struck her, sobering her own thoughts. Sylvia,
too, had grown serious in her preoccupation; and the partie-‡-deux
terminated a few minutes later in a duet of silence over the tea-cups in
the gun-room.

The weather had turned warm and misty; one of those sudden sea-coast
changes had greyed the blue in the sky, spreading a fine haze over land
and water, effacing the crisp sparkle of the sea, dulling the westering
sun.

A few moments later Sylvia, glancing over her shoulder, noticed that a
fine misty drizzle had clouded the casements. That meant that her usual
evening stroll on the cliffs with Quarrier, before dressing for dinner,
was off. And she drew a little breath of unconscious relief as Marion
Page walked in, her light woollen shooting-jacket, her hat, shoes, and
the barrels of the fowling-piece tucked under her left arm-pit, all
glimmering frostily with powdered rain drops.

She said something to Grace Ferrall about the mist promising good point-
shooting in the morning, took the order book from a servant, jotted down
her request to be called an hour before sunrise, filled in the gun-room
records with her score--the species and number bagged, and the number of
shells used--and accepting the tea offered, drew out a tiny cigarette-
case of sweet-bay wood heavily crusted with rose-gold.

"With whom were you shooting?" asked Grace, as Marion dropped one well-
shaped leg over the other and wreathed her delicately tanned features in
smoke.

"Stephen Siward and Blinky. They're at it yet, but I had some letters to
write." She glanced leisurely at Sylvia and touched the ash-tray with
the whitening end of her cigarette. "That dog you let Mr. Siward have is
a good one. I'm taking him to Jersey next week for the cock-shooting."

Sylvia returned her calm gaze blankly.

An unreasonable and disagreeable shock had passed through her.

"My North Carolina pointers are useless for close work," observed Marion
indifferently; and she leaned back, watching the blue smoke curling
upward from her cigarette.

Sylvia, distrait, but with downcast eyes on fire under the fringed lids,
was thinking of the cheque Siward had given her for Sagamore. The
transaction, for her, had been a business one on the surface only. She
had never meant to use the cheque. She had laid it away among a few
letters, relics, pleasant souvenirs of the summer. To her the affair had
been softened by a delicate hint of intimacy,--the delight he was to take
in something that had once been hers had given her a faint taste of the
pleasure of according pleasure to a man. And this is what he had done!

The drizzle had turned to fog, through which rain was now pelting the
cliffs; people were returning from the open; a motor-car came whizzing
into the drive, and out of it tumbled Rena and Eileen and the faithful
Pages, the girls irritable and ready for tea, and the boys like a pair
of eager, wagging, setter puppies, pleased with everything and
everybody, utterly oblivious to the sombre repose brooding above the
tea-table.

Their sister calmly refused them the use of her cigarettes. Eileen
presented her pretty shoulder, Rena nearly yawned at them, but, nothing
dampened, they recounted a number of incidents with reciprocal
enthusiasm to Sylvia, who was too inattentive to smile, and to Grace
Ferrall, who smiled the more sweetly through sheer inattention.

Then Alderdene came in, blinking a greeting through his foggy goggles,
sloppy, baggy, heavy shoes wheezing, lingered in the vicinity long
enough to swallow his "peg" and acquire a disdainful opinion of his
shooting from Marion, and then took himself off, leaving the room noisy
with his laugh, which resembled the rattle of a startled kingfisher.

In ones and twos the guests reported as the dusk-curtained fog closed in
on Shotover. Quarrier came, dry as a chip under his rain-coat, but his
silky beard was wet with rain, and moisture powdered his long, soft
eyelashes and white skin; and his flexible, pointed fingers, as he drew
off his gloves, seemed startling in their whiteness through the
gathering gloom.

"I suppose our evening walk is out of the question," he said, standing
by Sylvia, who had nodded a greeting and then turned her head rather
hastily to see who had entered the room. It was Siward, only a vague
shape in the gloom, but perfectly recognisable to her. At the same
moment Marion Page rose leisurely and strolled toward the billiard-room.

"Our walk?" repeated Sylvia absently--"it's raining, you know." Yet only
a day or two ago she had walked to church with Siward through the rain,
the irritated Major feeling obliged to go with them. Her eyes followed
Siward's figure, suddenly dark against the door of the lighted billiard-
room, then brilliantly illuminated, as he entered, nodded acceptance to
Mortimer's invitation, and picked up the cue just laid aside by Agatha
Caithness, who had turned to speak to Marion. Then Mortimer's bulk
loomed nearer; voices became gay and animated in the billiard-room.
Siward's handsome face was bent toward Agatha Caithness in gay
challenge; Mortimer's heavy laugh broke out; there came the rattle of
pool-balls, and the dull sound of cue-butts striking the floor; then,
crack! and the game began, with Marion Page and Siward fighting Mortimer
and Miss Caithness for something or other.

Quarrier had been speaking for some time before Sylvia became aware of
it--something about a brisk walk in the morning somewhere; and she nodded
impatiently, watching Marion's supple waist-line as she bent far over
the illuminated table for a complicated shot at the enemy.

His fiancÈe's inattention was not agreeable to Quarrier. A dozen things
had happened since his arrival which had not been agreeable to him: her
failure to meet him at the Fells Crossing, and the reason for her
failure; and her informal acquaintance with Siward, whose presence at
Shotover he had not looked for, and her sudden intimacy with the man he
had never particularly liked, and whom within six months he had come to
detest and to avoid.

These things--the outrageous liberty Siward had permitted himself in
caricaturing him, the mortifying caprice of Sylvia for Siward on the day
of the Shotover cup-drive--had left indelible impressions in a cold and
rather heavy mind, slow to waste effort in the indulgence of any vital
emotion.

In a few years indifference to Siward had changed to passive
disapproval; that, again, to an emotionless dislike; and when the
scandal at the Patroons Club occurred, for the first time in his life he
understood what it was to fear the man he disliked. For if Siward had
committed the insane imprudence which had cost him his title to
membership, he had also done something, knowingly or otherwise, which
awoke in Quarrier a cold, slow fear; and that fear was dormant, but
present, now, and it, for the time being, dictated his attitude and
bearing toward the man who might or might not be capable of using
viciously a knowledge which Quarrier believed that he must possess.

For that reason, when it was not possible to avoid Siward, his bearing
toward him was carefully civil; for that reason he dampened Major
Belwether's eagerness to tell everybody all he knew about the
shamelessly imprudent girl who had figured with Siward in the scandal,
but whose identity the press had not discovered.

Silence was always desirable to Quarrier; silence concerning all matters
was a trait inborn and congenially cultivated to a habit by him in every
affair of life--in business, in leisure, in the methodical pursuits of
such pleasures as a limited intellect permitted him, in personal and
family matters, in public questions and financial problems.

He listened always, but never invited confidences; he had no opinion to
express when invited. And he became very, very rich.

And over it all spread a thin membrane of vanity, nervous, not
intellectual, sensitiveness; for all sense of humour was absent in this
man, whose smile, when not a physical effort, was automatically and
methodically responsive to certain fixed cues. He smiled when he said
"Good morning," when declining or accepting invitations, when taking his
leave, when meeting anybody of any financial importance, and when
everybody except himself had begun to laugh in a theatre or a drawing-
room. This limit to any personal manifestation he considered a generous
one. And perhaps it was.


A sudden rain-squall, noisy against the casements, had darkened the
room; then the electric lights broke out with a mild candle-like lustre,
and Quarrier, standing beside Sylvia's chair, discovered it to be empty.

It was not until he had dressed for dinner that he saw her again, seated
on the stairs with Marion Page--a new appearance of intimacy for both
women, who heretofore had found nothing except a passing civility in
common.

Marion was discussing dog-breeding with that cool, crude, direct
insouciance so unpleasant to some men. Sylvia was attentive, curious,
and instinctively shrinking by turns, secretly dismayed at the
overplainness of terms employed in kennel lore by the girl at her side.

The conversation veered toward the Sagamore pup. Marion explained that
Siward was too busy to do any Southern shooting, which was why he was
glad to have her polish Sagamore on Jersey woodcock.

"I thought it was not good for a dog to be used by anybody except his
master," said Sylvia carelessly.

"Only second-raters suffer. Besides, I have shot enough, now, with Mr.
Siward to use his dog as he does."

"He is an agreeable shooting companion, smiled Sylvia.

"He is perfect," answered Marion coolly. "The only test for a
thoroughbred is the field. He rings true."

They exchanged carefully impersonal views on Siward's good qualities for
a moment or two; then Marion said bluntly: "Do you know anything in
particular about that Patroons Club affair?"

"No," said Sylvia, "nothing in particular."

"Neither do I; and I don't care to; I mean, that I don't care what he
did; and I wish that gossiping old Major would stop trying to hint it to
me."

"My uncle!"

"Oh! I forgot. Beg your pardon, you know, but--"

"I'm not offended," observed Sylvia, with a shrug of her pretty, bare
shoulders.

Marion laughed. "Such a gadabout! Besides, I'm no prude, but he and
Leroy Mortimer have no business to talk to unmarried women the way they
do. No matter how worldly wise we are, men have no right to suppose we
are."

"Pooh!" shrugged Sylvia. "I have no patience to study out double-
entendre, so it never shocks me. Besides--"

She was going to add that she was not at all versed in doubtful worldly
wisdom, but decided not to, as it might seem to imply disapproval of
Marion's learning. So she went on: "Besides, what have innuendoes to do
with Mr. Siward?"

"I don't know whether I care to understand them. The Major hinted that
the woman--the one who figured in it--is--rather exclusively Mr. Siward's
ëproperty.'"

"Exclusively?" repeated Sylvia curiously. "She's a public actress, isn't
she?"

"If you call the manoeuvres of a newly fledged chorus girl acting, yes,
she is. But I don't believe Mr. Siward figures in that unfashionable
rÙle. Why, there are too many women of his own sort ready for mischief."
Marion turned to Sylvia, her eyes hard with a cynicism quite lost on the
other. "That sort of thing might suit Leroy Mortimer, but it doesn't fit
Mr. Siward," she concluded, rising as their hostess appeared from above
and the butler from below.

And all through dinner an indefinitely unpleasant remembrance of the
conversation lingered with Sylvia, and she sat silent for minutes at a
time, returning to actualities with a long, curious side-glance across
at Siward, and an uncomprehending smile of assent for whatever Quarrier
or Major Belwether had been saying to her.

Cards she managed to avoid after dinner, and stood by Quarrier's chair
for half an hour, absently watching the relentless method and steady
adherence to rule which characterised his Bridge-playing, the eager,
unslaked brutality of Mortimer, the set, selfish face of his pretty
wife, the chilled intensity of Miss Caithness.

And Grace Ferrall's phrase recurred to her, "Nobody ever has enough
money!"--not even these people, whose only worry was to find investment
for the surplus they were unable to spend. Something of the meanness of
it all penetrated her. Were these the real visages of these people,
whose faces otherwise seemed so smooth and human? Was Leila Mortimer
aware of the shrillness of her voice? Did Agatha Caithness realise how
pinched her mouth and nose had grown? Did even Leroy Mortimer dream how
swollen the pouches under his eyes were; how red and puffy his hands,
shuffling a new pack; how pendulous and dreadful his red under-lip when
absorbedly making up his cards?

Instinctively she moved a step forward for a glimpse of Quarrier's face.
The face appeared to be a study in blankness. His natural visage was
emotionless and inexpressive enough, but this face, from which every
vestige of colour had fled, fascinated her with its dead whiteness; and
the hair brushed high, the long, black lashes, the silky beard, struck
her as absolutely ghastly, as though they had been glued to a face of
wax.

She turned on her heel, restless, depressed, inclined for companionship.
The Page boys had tempted Rena and Eileen to the billiard-room; Voucher,
Alderdene, and Major Belwether were huddled over a table, immersed in
Preference; Katharyn Tassel and Grace Ferrall sat together looking over
the announcements of Sylvia's engagement in a batch of New York papers
just arrived; Ferrall was writing at a desk, and Siward and Marion were
occupied in the former's sketch for an ideal shooting vehicle, to be
built on the buckboard principle, with a clever arrangement for dogs,
guns, ammunition, and provisions. Siward's profile, as it bent in the
lamplight over the paper, was very engaging. The boyish note
predominated as he talked while he drew, his eyes now smiling, now
seriously intent on the sketch which was developing so swiftly under his
facile pencil.

Marion's clean-cut blond head was close to his, her supple body twisted
in her seat, one bare arm hanging over the back of the chair. Something
in her attitude seemed to exclude intrusion; her voice, too, was hushed
in comment, though his was pitched in his naturally agreeable key.

Sylvia had taken a hesitating step toward them, but halted, turning
irresolutely; and suddenly over her crept a sensation of
isolation--something of that feeling which had roused her at midnight
from her bed and driven her to Grace Ferrall for a refuge from she knew
not what.

The rustle of her silken dinner gown was scarcely perceptible as she
turned. Siward, moving his head slightly, glanced up, then brought his
sketch to a brilliant finish.

"Don't you think something of this sort is practicable?" he asked
pleasantly, including Mrs. Ferrall and Katharyn Tassel in a general
appeal which brought them into the circle of two. Grace Ferrall leaned
forward, looking over Marion's shoulder, and Siward rose and stepped
back, with a quick glance into the hall--in time to catch a glimmer of
pale blue and lace on the stairs.

"I suppose my cigarettes are in my room as usual," he said aloud to
himself, wheeling so that he could not have time to see Marion's offer
of her little gold-encrusted case, or notice her quickly raised eyes,
bright with suspicion and vexation. For she, too, had observed Sylvia's
distant entrance, had been perfectly aware of Siward's cognizance of
Sylvia's retreat; and when Siward went on sketching she had been
content. Now she could not tell whether he had deliberately and
skillfully taken his congÈ to follow Sylvia, or whether, in his quest
for his cigarettes, chance might meddle, as usual. Even if he returned,
she could not know with certainty how much of a part hazard had played
on the landing above, where she already heard the distant sounds of
Sylvia's voice mingling with Siward's, then a light footfall or two, and
silence.


He had greeted her in his usual careless, happy fashion, just as she had
reached her chamber door; and she turned at the sound of his voice,
confused, unsmiling, a little pale.

"Is it headache, or are you too in quest of cigarettes?" he asked, as he
stopped in passing her where she stood, one slender hand on the knob of
her door.

"I don't smoke, you know," she said, looking up at him with a cool
little laugh. "It isn't headache either. I was--boring myself, Mr.
Siward."

"Is there any virtue in me as a remedy?"

"Oh, I have no doubt you have lots of virtues. - Perhaps you might do as
a temporary remedy--first aid to the injured." She laughed again,
uncertainly. "But you are on a quest for cigarettes."

"And you?"

"A rendezvous--with the Sand-Man. - Good night."

"Good night - if you must say it."

"It's polite to say something - isn't it?"

"It would be polite to say, ëWith pleasure, Mr. Siward!'"

"But you haven't invited me to do anything--not even to accept a
cigarette. Besides, you didn't expect to meet me up here?"

The trailing accent made it near enough a question for him to say, "Yes,
I did."

"How could you?"

"I saw you leave the room."

"You were sketching for Marion Page. Do you wish me to believe that you
noticed me--"

"--And followed you? Yes, I did follow you." She looked at him, then past
him toward a corner of the wide hall where a maid in cap and apron sat
pretending to be sewing. "Careful!" she motioned with smiling lips,
"servants gossip. - Good night, again."

"Won't you--"

"Oh, dear! you mustn't speak so loud," she motioned, with her fresh,
sweet lips curving on the edge of that adorable smile once more.

"Couldn't we have a moment--"

"No--"

"One minute--"

"Hush! I must open my door"--lingering. "I might come out again, if you
have anything particularly important to communicate to me."

"I have. There's a big bay-window at the end of the other corridor. Will
you come?"

But she opened her door, with a light laugh, saying "good night" again,
and closed it noiselessly behind her.

He walked on, turning into his corridor, but kept straight ahead,
passing his own door, on to the window at the end of the hall, then
north along a wide passageway which terminated in a bay-window
overlooking the roof of the indoor swimming tank.

Rain rattled heavily, against the panes and on the lighted roof of
opalescent glass below, through which he could make out the shadowy
fronds of palms.

It appeared that he had cigarettes enough, for he lighted one presently,
and, leaving his chair, curled up in the cushioned and pillowed window-
seat, gathering his knees together under his arm.

The cigarette he had lighted went out. He had bitten into it and twisted
it so roughly that it presently crumbled; and he threw the rags of it
into a metal bowl, locking his jaws in silence. For the night threatened
to be a bad one for him. A heavy fragrance from his neighbour's wine-
glass at dinner had stirred up what had for a time lain dormant; and, by
accident, something--some sweetmeat he had tasted--was saturated in
brandy.

Now, his restlessness at the prospect of a blank night had quickened to
uneasiness, with a hint of fever tinting his skin, but, as yet, the dull
ache in his body was scarcely more than a premonition.

He had his own devices for tiding him over such periods--reading,
tobacco, and the long, blind, dogged tramps he took in town. But here,
to-night, in the rain, one stood every chance of walking off the cliffs;
and he was sick of reading himself sightless over the sort of books sent
wholesale to Shotover; and he was already too ill at ease, physically,
to make smoking endurable.

Were it not for a half-defiant, half-sullen dread of the coming night,
he might have put it from his mind in spite of the slowly increasing
nervous tension and the steady dull consciousness of desire. He drew
another Sirdar from his case and sat staring at the rain-smeared night,
twisting the frail fragrant cigarette to bits between his fingers.

After a while he began to walk monotonously to and fro the length of the
corridor, like a man timing his steps to the heavy ache of body or mind.
Once he went as far as his own door, entered, and stepping to the wash-
basin, let the icy water run over hands and wrists. This sometimes
helped to stimulate and soothe him; it did now, for a while--long enough
to change the current of his thoughts to the girl he had hoped might
have the imprudence to return for a tryst, innocent enough in itself,
yet unconventional and unreasonable enough to prove attractive to them
both.

Probably she wouldn't come; she had kept her fluffy skirts clear of him
since Cup Day--which simply corroborated his vague estimate of her. Had
she done the contrary, his estimate would have been the same; for,
unconsciously but naturally, he had prejudged her. A girl who could
capture Quarrier at full noontide, and in the face of all Manhattan, was
a girl equipped for anything she dared--though she was probably too
clever to dare too much; a girl to be interested in, to amuse and be
amused by; a girl to be reckoned with. His restlessness and his fever
subdued by the icy water, he stood drying his hands, thinking, coolly,
how close he had come to being seriously in love with this young girl,
whose attitude was always a curious temptation, whose smile was a
charming provocation, whose youth and beauty were to him a perpetual
challenge. He admitted to himself, calmly, that he had never seen a
woman he cared as much for; that for the brief moment of his declaration
he had known an utterly new emotion, which inevitably must have become
the love he had so quietly declared it to be. He had never before felt
as he felt then, cared as he cared then. Anything had been possible for
him at that time--any degree of love, any devotion, any generous
renunciation. Clear-sighted, master of himself, he saw love before him,
and knew it when he saw it; recognised it, was ready for it, offered it,
emboldened by her soft hands so eloquent in his.

And in his arms he held it for an instant, he thought, spite of the
sudden inertia, spite of the according of cold lips and hands still
colder, relaxed, inert; held it until he doubted. That was all; he had
been wise to doubt such sudden miracles as that. She, consummate and
charming, had soon set him right. And, after all, she liked him; and she
had been sure enough of herself to permit the impulse of a moment to
carry her with him--a little way, a very little way--merely to the formal
symbol of a passion the germ of which she recognised in him.

Then she had become intelligent again, with a little laughter, a little
malice, a becoming tint of hesitation and confusion; all the sense, all
the arts, all the friendly sweetness of a woman thorough in training,
schooled in self-possession, clear enough to be audacious and perverse
without danger to herself, to the man, or to the main chance.

Standing there alone in his lighted room, he wondered whether, had her
trained and inbred policy been less precise, less worldly, she might
have responded to such a man as he. Perfectly conscious that he had been
capable of loving her; aware, too, that his experience had left him on
that borderland only through his cool refusal to cross it and face a
hopeless battle already lost, he leisurely and mentally took the measure
of his own state of mind, and found all well, all intact; found himself
still master of his affections, and probably clear-minded enough to
remain so under the circumstances.

To such a man as he, impulse to love, capacity to love, did not mean
instant capsizing with a flop into sentimental tempests, where swamped,
ardent and callow youth raises a hysterically selfish clamour for
reciprocity or death. His nature partly, partly his character, accounted
for this balance; and, in part, a rather wide experience with women of
various degrees counted more.

So, by instinct and experience, normally temperate, only what was
abnormal and inherited might work a mischief in this man. His
listlessness, his easy acquiescence, were but consequent upon the self-
knowledge of self-control. But mastery of the master-vice required
something different; he was sick of a sickness; and because, in this
sickness, will, mind, and body are tainted too, reason and logic lack
clarity; and, to the signals of danger his reply had always been either
overconfident or weak--and it had been always the same reply: "Not yet.
There is time." And now, this last week, it had come upon him that the
time was now; the skirmish was already on; and it had alarmed him
suddenly to find that the skirmish was already a battle, and a rough
one.


As he stood there he heard voices on the stairs. People had already
begun to retire, because late cards and point-shooting at dawn do not
agree. And a point-shooting picnic in snugly elaborate blinds was
popular with women--or was supposed to be.

He could distinguish by their voices, by their laughter and step, the
people who were mounting the stairway and lingering for gossip or
passing through the various corridors to court the sleep denied him; he
heard Mortimer's heavy tread and the soft shuffling step of Major
Belwether as they left the elevator; and the patter of his hostess's
satin slippers, and her gay "good night" on the stairs.

Little by little the tumult died away. Quarrier's measured step came,
passed; Marion Page's cool, crisp voice and walk, and the giggle and
amble of the twins, and Rena and Eileen,--the last laggards, with
Ferrall's brisk, decisive tones and stride to close the procession.

He turned and looked grimly at his bed, then, shutting off the lights,
he opened his door and went out into the deserted corridor, where the
elevator shaft was dark and only the dim night-lights burned at angles
in the passageways.

He had his rain-coat and cap with him, not being certain of what he
might be driven to; but for the present he found the bay-window
overlooking the swimming tank sufficient to begin the vigil.

Secure from intrusion, as there were no bedrooms on that corridor, he
tossed coat and cap into the window-seat, walked to and fro for a while
listening to the rain, then sat down, his well-shaped head between his
hands. And in silence he faced the Enemy.

How long he had sat there he did not know. When he raised his face, all
gray and drawn with the tension of conflict, his eyes were not very
clear, nor did the figure standing there in the dim light from the hall
mean anything for a moment.

"Mr. Siward?" in an uncertain voice, almost a whisper.

He stood up mechanically, and she saw his face.

"Are you ill? What is it?"

"Ill? No." He passed his hand over his eyes. "I fancy I was close to the
edge of sleep." Some colour came back into his face; he stood smiling
now, the significance of her presence dawning on him.

"Did you really come?" he asked. "This isn't a very lovely but
impalpable astral vision, is it?"

"It's horridly imprudent, isn't it?" she murmured, still considering the
rather drawn and pallid face of the man before her. "I came out of pure
curiosity, Mr. Siward."

She glanced about her. He moved a big bunch of hothouse roses so she
could pass, and she settled down lightly on the edge of the window-seat.
When he had piled some big downy cushions behind her back, she made a
quick gesture of invitation.

"I have only a moment," she said, as he seated himself beside her. "Part
of my curiosity is satisfied in finding you here; I didn't suppose you
so faithful."

"I can be fairly faithful. What else are you curious about?"

"You said you had something important--"

"--To tell you? So I did. That was bribery, perjury, false pretences,
robbery under arms, anything you will! I only wanted you to come."

"That is a shameful confession!" she said; but her smile was gay enough,
and she noiselessly shook out her fluffy skirts and settled herself a
trifle more deeply among the pillows.

"Of course," she observed absently, "you are dreadfully mortified at
yourself."

"Naturally," he admitted.

The patter of the rain attracted her attention; she peered out through
the blurred casements into the blackness. Then, picking up his cap and
indicating his raincoat, "Why?" she asked.

"Oh--in case you hadn't come--"

"A walk? By yourself? A night like this on the cliffs! You are not
perfectly mad, are you?"

"Not perfectly."

Her face grew serious and beautiful.

"What is the matter, Mr. Siward?"

"Things."

"Do you care to be more explicit?"

"Well," he said, with a humourous glance at her, "I haven't seen you for
ages. That's not wholesome for me, you know."

"But you see me now; and it does not seem to benefit you."

"I feel much better," he insisted, laughing; and her blue eyes grew very
lovely as the smile broke from them in uncertain response.

"So you had nothing really important to tell me, Mr. Siward?"

"Only that I wanted you."

"Oh! - I said important."

But he did not argue the question; and she leaned forward, broke a rose
from its stem, then sank back a little way among the cushions, looking
at him, idly inhaling the hothouse perfume.

"Why have you so ostentatiously avoided me, Mr. Siward?" she asked
languidly.

"Well, upon my word!" he said, with a touch of irritation.

"Oh, you are so dreadfully literal!" she shrugged, brushing her
straight, sensitive nose with the pink blossom; "I only said it to give
you a chance. - If you are going to be stupid, good night!" But she made
no movement to go. - "Yes, then; I have avoided you. And it doesn't
become you to ask why."

"Because I kissed you?"

"You hint at the true reason so chivalrously, so delicately," she said,
"that I scarcely recognise it." The cool mockery of her voice and the
warm, quick colour tinting neck and face were incongruous. He thought
with slow surprise that she was not yet letter-perfect in her rÙle of
the material triumphant over the spiritual. A trifle ashamed, too, he
sat silent, watching the silken petals fall one by one as she slowly
detached them with delicate, restless lips.

"I am sorry I came," she said reflectively. "You don't know why I came,
do you? Sheer loneliness, Mr. Siward; there is something of the child in
me still, you see. I am not yet sufficiently resourceful to take it out
in a quietly tearful obligato; I never learned how to produce tears. -
So I came to you." She had stripped the petals from the rose, and now,
tossing the crushed branch from her, she leaned forward and broke from
its stem a heavy, perfumed bud, half unfolded.

"It seems my fate to pass my life in bidding you good night," she said,
straightening up and turning to him with the careless laughter touching
mouth and eyes again. Then, resting her weight on one hand, her smooth,
white shoulder rounded beside her cheek, she looked at him out of
humourous eyes:

"What is it that women find so attractive in you? The man's experienced
insouciance? The boy's unconscious cynicism? The mystery of your self-
sufficiency? The faulty humanity in you? The youth in you already
showing traces of wear that hint of future scars? What will you be at
thirty-five? At forty? - Ah," she added softly, "what are you now? For I
don't know, and you cannot tell me if you would. - Out of these little
windows called eyes we look at one another, and study surfaces, and try
to peep into neighbours' windows. But all is dark behind the
windows--always dark, in there where they tell us souls hide."

She laid the shell-pink bud against her cheek that matched it, smiling
with wise sweetness to herself.

"What counts with you?" he asked after a moment.

"Counts? How?"

"In your affections. What prepossesses you?"

She laughed audaciously: "Your traits--some of them--all of them that you
reveal. You must be aware of that much already, considering everything--"

"Then, what is it I lack? Where do I fail?"

"But you don't lack--you don't fail! I ask nothing more of you, Mr.
Siward."

"A man from whom a woman desires nothing is already convicted of
insufficiency. - You would recognise this very quickly if I made love to
you."

"Is that the only way I am to discover your insufficiency, Mr. Siward?"

"Or my sufficiency. - Have you enough curiosity to try?"

"Oh! I thought you were to try." Then, quickly: "But I think you have
already experimented; and I did not notice your shortcomings. So there
is no use in pursuing that line of investigation any farther--is there?"

And always with her the mischief lay in the trailing upward inflection;
in the confused sweetness of her eyes, and their lovely uncertainty.

One slim white hand held the rose against her cheek; the other lay idly
on her knee, fresh and delicate as a fallen petal; and he laid both
hands over it and lifted it between them.

"Mr. Siward, I am afraid this is becoming a habit with you." The gay
mockery was not quite genuine; the curve of lips too sensitive for a
voice so lightly cynical.

He smiled, bending there, considering her hand between his; and after a
moment her muscles relaxed, and bare round arm and hand lay abandoned to
him.

"Quite flawless--perfect," he said aloud to himself.

"Do you--read hands?"

"Vaguely." He touched the smooth palm: "Long life, clear mind, and"--he
laughed--"heart supreme over reason! There is written a white lie--but a
pretty one."

"It is no lie."

He laughed again, unconvinced.

"It is the truth," she said, seriously insisting and bending sideways
above her own hand where it lay in his. "It is a miserable confession to
admit it, but I'm afraid intelligence would fight a losing battle with
heart if the conflict ever came. You see, I know, having nobody to study
except myself all these years. - There is the proof of it--that selfish,
smooth contour, where there should be generosity. Then, look at the
tendency of imagination toward mischief!" She laid her right forefinger
on the palm of the left hand which he held, and traced the developments
arising in the Mount of Hermes. "Is it not a horrid hand, Mr. Siward? I
don't know how much you know about palms, but--" She suddenly flushed,
and attempted to close her hand, doubling the thumb over. There was a
little half-hearted struggle, freeing one of his arms, which fell,
settling about her slender waist; a silence, a breathless moment, and he
had kissed her. Her lips were warm, this time.

She recovered herself, avoiding his eyes, and moved backward, shielding
her face with pretty upflung elbows out-turned. "I told you it was
becoming a habit with you!" The loud beating of her pulses marred her
voice. "Must I establish a dead-line every time I commit the folly of
being alone with you?"

"I'll draw that line," he said, taking her in his arms.

"I--I beg you will draw it quickly, Mr. Siward."

"I do; it passes through your heart and mine!"

"Is--do you mean a declaration--again? You are compromising yourself, you
know. I warn you that you are committing yourself."

"So are you. Look at me!"

In his arms, her own arms pressed against his breast, resisting, she
raised her splendid youthful eyes; and through and through her shot
pulse on pulse, until every nerve seemed aquiver.

"While I'm still sane," he said with a dry catch in his throat, "before
I tell you that I love you, look at me."

"I will, if you wish," she said with a trembling smile, "but it is
useless--"

"That is what I shall find out in time. - You must meet my eyes. That is
well; that is frank and sweet--"

"And useless--truly it is. - Please don't tell me--anything."

"You will not listen?"

"There is no chance for you--if you mean love. I--I tell you in time, you
see. - I am utterly frivolous--quite selfish and mercenary."

"I take my chance!"

"No, I give you none! Why do you interfere! A--a girl's policy costs her
something if it be worth anything; whatever it costs it is worth it to
me. - And I do not love you. In so short a time how could I?"

Then in his arms she fell a-trembling. Something blinded her eyes, and
she turned her head sharply, only to encounter his lips on hers in a
deep, clinging embrace that left her dazed, still resisting with the
fragments of breath and voice.

"Not again--I beg--you. Let me go now. It is not best. Oh! truly, truly it
is all wrong with us now." She bent her head, blinded with tears,
swaying, stunned; then, with a breathless sound, turned in his arms to
meet his lips, her hands contracting in his; and, confronting, they
paused, suspending the crisis, young faces close, and hearts afire.

"Sylvia, I love you."

For an instant their lips clung; she had rendered him his kiss. Then,
tremblingly, "It is useless - even though I loved you."

"Say it!"

"I do."

"Say it!"

"I--I cannot! - And it is no use--no use! I do not know myself--this way.
My eyes--are wet. It is not like me; there is nothing of me in this girl
you hold so closely, so confidently. - I do care for you--how can I help
it? How could any woman help it? Is not that enough?"

"Until you are a bride, yes."

"A bride? Stephen!--I cannot--"

"You cannot help it, Sylvia."

"I must! I have my way to go."

"My way lies that way."

"No! no! I cannot do it; it is not best for me--not best for you. - I do
care for you; you have taught me how to say it. But--you know what I have
done--and mean to do, and must carry through. Then, how can you love a
girl like that?"

"Dear, I know the woman I love."

"Silly, she is what her life has made her--material, passionately
selfish, unable to renounce the root of all evil. - Even if this--this
happiness were ours always--I mean, if this madness could last our
wedded life--I am not good enough, not noble enough, to forget what I
might have had, and put away. - Is it not dreadful to admit it? Do you
not know that self-contempt is part of the price? - I have no money. I
know what you have. - I asked. And it is enough for a man who remains
unmarried. - For I cannot ëmake things do'; I cannot ëcontrive'; I will
not cling to the fringe of things, or play that heartbreaking rÙle of
the shabby expatriated on the Continent. - No person in this world ever
had enough. I tell you I could find use for every flake of metal ever
mined! - You see you do not know me. From my pretty face and figure you
misjudge me. I am intelligent--not intellectual, though I might have
been, might even be yet. I am cultivated, not learned; though I care for
learning--or might, if I had time. - My rÙle in life is to mount to a
security too high for any question as to my dominance. - Can you take me
there?"

"There are other heights, Sylvia."

"Higher?"

"Yes, dear."

"The spiritual; I know. I could not breathe there, if I cared to climb.
- And I have told you what I am--all silk and lace and smooth-skinned
selfishness." She looked at him wistfully. "If you can change me, take
me." And she rose, facing him.

"I do not give you up," he said, with a savage note hardening his voice;
and it thrilled her to hear it, and every drop of blood in her body
leaped as she yielded to his arms again, heavy-lidded, trembling,
confused, under the piercing sweetness of contact.

The perfume of her mouth, her hair, the consenting fingers locked in
his, palm against palm, the lips, acquiescent, then afire at last,
responsive to his own; and her eyes opening from the dream under the
white lids--these were what he had of her till every vein in him pulsed
flame. Then her voice, broken, breathless:

"Good night. Love me while you can--and forgive me! - Good night. - Where
are we? All--all this must have stunned me, blinded me. - Is this my
door, or yours? Hush! I am half dead with fear--to be here under the
light again. - If you take me again, my knees will give way. - And I
must find my door. Oh, the ghastly imprudence of it! - Good night - good
night. I--I love you!"



MODUS VIVENDI

After the first few days of his arrival at Shotover time had threatened
to hang heavily on Mortimer's mottled hands. After the second day afield
he recognised that his shooting career was practically over; he had
become too bulky during the last year to endure the physical exertion;
his habits, too, had at length made traitors of his eyes; a half hour's
snipe-shooting in the sun, and the veins in his neck swelled ominously.
Panting, eyes inflamed, fat arms wobbly, he had scored miss after miss,
and laboured onward, sullenly persistent to the end. But it was the end.
That cup day finished him; he recognised that he was done for. And,
following the Law of Pleasure, which finishes us before we are finished
with it, he did not experience any particular sense of deprivation in
the prospect. Only the wholesome dread caging. But Mortimer, not yet
done with self-indulgence in more convenient forms, cast about him
within his new limits for occupation between those hours consecrated to
the rites of the table and the card-room.

He drove four, but found that it numbed his arms, and that the sea air
made him sleepy. Motor-cars agreed with him only when driving with a
pretty woman. Forced through ennui to fish off the rocks, he soon tired
of the sea-perch and rock-cod and the malodours of periwinkle and clam.

Then he frankly took to Major Belwether's sunny side of the gun-room,
with illustrated papers and apples and decanter. But Major Belwether,
always as careful of his digestion as of his financial secrets, blandly
dodged the pressing invitations to rum and confidence, until Mortimer
sulkily took up his headquarters in the reading-room, on the chance of
his wife's moving elsewhere. Which she did, unobtrusively carrying
Captain Voucher with her in a sudden zeal for billiard practice on rainy
mornings now too frequent along the coast.

Mortimer possessed that mysterious talent, so common among the
financially insolvent, for living lavishly on an invisible income. But,
plan as he would, he had never been able to increase that income through
confidential gossip with men like Quarrier or Belwether, or even
Ferrall. What information his pretty wife might have extracted he did
not know; her income had never visibly increased above the vanishing
point, although, like himself, she denied herself nothing. One short,
lively interview with her had been enough to drive all partnership ideas
out of his head. If he wanted to learn anything financially advantageous
to himself he must do it without her aid; and as he was perpetually in
hopes of the friendly hint that never came, he still moused about when
opportunity offered; and this also helped to kill time.

Besides, he was always studying women. Years before, Grace Ferrall had
snapped her slim fingers in his face; and here, at Shotover, the field
was limited. Mrs. Vendenning had left; Agatha Caithness was still a pale
and reticent puzzle; Rena, Katharyn, and Eileen tormented him; Marion
Page, coolly au fait, yawned in his face. There remained Sylvia, who,
knowing nothing about his species, met him half-way with the sweet and
sensitive deference due a somewhat battered and infirm gentleman of
forty-eight--until a sleek aside from Major Belwether spoiled everything,
as usual, for her, leaving her painfully conscious and perplexed between
doubt and disgust.

Meanwhile, the wealthy master of Black Fells, Beverly Plank, had found
encouragement enough at Shotover to venture on tentative informality.
There was no doubt that ultimately he must be counted on in New York;
but nobody except him was impatiently cordial for the event; and so, at
the little house party, he slipped and slid from every attempt at closer
quarters, until, rolling smoothly enough, he landed without much
discomfort somewhere between Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Mortimer. And it was not
a question as to "which would be good to him," observed Major Belwether,
with his misleading and benevolent mirth; "it was, which would be
goodest quickest!"

And Mrs. Mortimer, abandoning Captain Voucher by the same token,
displayed certain warning notices perfectly comprehensive to her
husband. And at first he was inclined to recognise defeat.

But the general insuccess which had so faithfully attended him recently
had aroused the long-dormant desire for a general review of the
situation with his wife--perhaps even the furtive hope of some conjugal
arrangement tending toward an exchange of views concerning possible
alliance.

The evening previous, to his intense disgust, host, hostess, and guests
had retired early, in view of the point-shooting at dawn. For not only
was there to be no point-shooting for him, but he had risen from the
card-table heavily hit; and besides, for the first time his apples and
port had disagreed with him.

As he had not risen until mid-day he was not sleepy. Books were an
aversion equalled only by distaste for his own company. Irritated,
bored, he had perforce sulkily entered the elevator and passed to his
room, where there was nothing on earth for him to do except to thumb
over last week's sporting periodicals and smoke himself stupid.

But it required more than that to ensnare the goddess of slumber. He
walked about the room, haunted of slow thoughts; he stood at the rain-
smeared pane, fat fingers resting on the glass. The richly flavoured
cigar grew distasteful; and if he could not smoke, what, in pity's name,
was he to do?

Involuntarily his distended eyes wandered to his wife's locked and
bolted door; then he thought of Beverly Plank, and his own failure to
fasten himself upon that anxiously over-cordial individual with his
houses and his villas and his yachts and his investments!

He stepped to the switch and extinguished the lights in his room. Under
the door, along the sill, a glimmer came from his wife's bed-chamber. He
listened; the maid was still there; so he sat down in the darkness to
wait; and by-and-by he heard the outer bedroom door close, and the
subdued rustle of the departing maid.

Then, turning on his lights, he moved ponderously and jauntily to his
wife's door and knocked discreetly.

Leila Mortimer came to the door and opened it; her hair was coiled for
the night, her pretty figure outlined under a cascade of clinging lace.

"What is the matter?" she asked quietly.

"Are you point-shooting to-morrow?"

"I wanted to chat with you."

"I'm sorry. I'm driving to Wenniston, after breakfast, with Beverly
Plank, and I need sleep."

"I want to talk to you," he repeated doggedly.

She regarded him for a moment in silence, then, with an assenting
gesture, turned away into her room; and he followed, heavily
apprehensive but resolved.

She had seated herself among a pile of cushions, one knee crossed over
the other, her slim white foot half concealed by the silken toe of her
slipper. And as he pulled a chair forward for himself, her pretty black
eyes, which slanted a little, took his measure and divined trouble.

"Leila," he said, "why can't we have--"

"A cigarette?" she interrupted, indicating her dainty case on the table.

He took one, savagely aware of defiance somewhere. She lighted her own
from a candle and settled back, studying the sequence of blue smoke-
rings jetting upward to the ceiling.

"About this man Plank," he began, louder than he had intended through
sheer self-mistrust; and his wife made a quick, disdainful sign of
caution, which subdued his voice instantly. "Why can't we take him up
--together, Leila?" he ended lamely, furious at his own uneasiness in a
matter which might concern him vitally.

"I see no necessity of your taking him up," observed his wife serenely.
"I can do what may be useful to him in town."

"So can I. There are clubs where he ought to be seen--"

"I can manage such matters much better."

"You can't manage everything," he insisted sullenly. "There are chances
of various sorts--"

"Investments?" asked Mrs. Mortimer, with bright malice.

"See here, Leila, you have your own way too much. I say little; I make
damned few observations; but I could, if I cared to. - It becomes you to
be civil at least. I want to talk over this Plank matter with you; I
want you to listen, too."

A shade of faint disgust passed over her face. "I am listening," she
said.

"Well, then, I can see several ways in which the man can be of use to
me. - I discovered him before you did, anyway. And what I want to do is
to have a frank, honourable--"

"A--what?"

"--An honourable understanding with you, I said," he repeated, reddening.

"Oh!" She snapped her cigarette into the grate. "Oh! I see. And what
then?"

"What then?"

"Yes; what then?"

"Why, you and I can arrange to stand behind him this winter in town,
can't we?"

"And then?"

"Then--damn it!--the beggar can show his gratitude, can't he?"

"How?" she asked listlessly.

"By making good. How else?" he retorted savagely. "He can't welch
because there's little to climb for beyond us; and even if he climbs, he
can't ignore us. I can do as many things for him in my way as you can in
yours. What is the use of being a pig, Leila? Anything he does for me
isn't going to cancel his obligations to you."

"I know him better than you do," she observed, bending her head and
pleating the lace on her knee. "There is Dutch blood in him."

"Not good Hollander, but common Dutch," sneered Mortimer. "And you mean
he'll squeeze a dollar till the eagle screams-don't you?"

She sat silent, pleating her lace with steady fingers.

"Well, that's all right, too," laughed Mortimer easily; "let the Audubon
Society worry over the eagle. It's a perfectly plain business
proposition; we can do for him in a couple of winters what he can't do
for himself in ten. Figure it out for yourself, Leila," he said, waving
a mottled fat hand at her.

"I--have," she said under her breath.

"Then, is it settled?

"Settled--how?"

"That we form ourselves into a benevolent society of two in behalf of
Plank?"

"I--I don't want to, Roy," she said slowly.

"Why not?"

She did not say why not, seated there nervously pleating the fragile
stuff clinging to her knee.

"Why not?" he repeated menacingly. Her unexpectedly quiescent attitude
had emboldened him to a bullying tone--something he had not lately
ventured on.

She raised her eyes to his: "I--rather like him," she said quietly.

"Then, by God! he'll pay for that!" he burst out, mask off, every
inflamed feature shockingly congested.

"Roy! You dare not--"

"I tell you I--"

"You dare not!"

The palpitating silence lengthened; slowly the blood left the swollen
veins. Heavy pendulous lip hanging, he stared at her from distended
eyes, realising that he had forgotten himself. She was right. He dared
not. And she held the whip-hand as usual.

For every suspicion he could entertain, she had evidence of a certainty
to match it; for every chance that he might have to prove anything, she
had twenty proven facts. And he knew it. Why they had, during all these
years, made any outward pretence of conjugal unity they alone knew. The
modus vivendi suited them better than divorce: that was apparent, or had
been until recently. Recently Leila Mortimer had changed--become subdued
and softened to a degree that had perplexed her husband. Her attitude
toward him lacked a little of the bitterness and contempt she usually
reserved for him in private; she had become more prudent, almost
cautious at times.

"I'll tell you one thing," he said with a sudden snarl: "You'd better be
careful there is no gossip about you and Plank."

She reddened under the insult.

"Now we'll see," he continued venomously, "how far you can go alone."

"Do you suppose," she asked calmly, "that I am afraid of a divorce
court?"

The question so frankly astonished him that he sat agape, unable to
reply. For years he had very naturally supposed her to be afraid of
it--afraid of not being qualified to obtain it. Indeed, he had taken that
for granted as the very corner-stone of their mutual toleration. Had he
been an ass to do so? A vague alarm took possession of him; for, with
that understanding, he had not been at all careful of his own behaviour,
neither had he been at any particular pains to conceal his doings from
her. His alarm increased. What had he against her, after all, except
ancient suspicions, now so confused and indefinite that memory itself
outlawed the case, if it ever really existed. What had she against him?
Facts--unless she was more stupid than any of her sex he had ever
encountered. And now, this defiance, this increasing prudence, this
subtle change in her, began to make him anxious for the permanency of
the small income she had allowed him during all these years--doled out
to him, as he believed, though her dormant fear of him.

"What are you talking about?" he said harshly.

"I believe I mentioned divorce."

"Well, cut it out! D'ye see? Cut it, I say. You'd stand as much chance
before a referee as a snowball in hell."

"There's no telling," she said coolly, "until one tries."

He glared at her, then burst into a laugh. "Rot!" he said thickly. "Talk
sense, Leila! And keep this hard-headed Dutchman for yourself, if you
feel that way about it. I don't want to butt in. I only thought--for old
times' sake--perhaps you'd--"

"Good night," she managed to say, her disgust almost strangling her.

And he went, furtively, heavy-footed, perplexed, inwardly cursing his
blunder in stirring up a sleeping lioness whom he had so long mistaken
for a dozing cat.

For hours he sat in his room, or paced the four walls, doubtful,
chagrined, furious by turns. Once he drew out a memorandum-book and
stood under a lighted sconce, studying the figures. His losses at
Shotover staggered him, but he had looked to his wife heretofore in such
emergencies.

Certainly the time had come for him to do something. But what?--if his
wife was going to strike such attitudes in the very face of decency?
Certainly a husband in these days was without honour in his own
household.

His uneasiness had produced a raging thirst. He punched an electric
button with his fleshy thumb, and prowled around, waiting. Nobody came;
he punched again, and looked at his watch. It astonished him to find the
hour was three o'clock in the morning. That discovery, however, only
appeared to increase his thirst. He opened the hall door, prepared to
descend into the depths of the house and raid a sideboard; and as he
thrust his heavy head out into the lighted corridor his eyes fell upon
two figures standing at the open door of a bedroom. One was Siward; that
was plain. Who was the girl he had kissed? One of the maids? Somebody's
wife? Who?

Every dull pulse began to hammer in Mortimer's head. In his excitement
he stepped half-way into the corridor, then skipped nimbly back, closing
his door without a sound.

"Sylvia Landis, by all that's holy!" he breathed to himself, and sat
down rather suddenly on the edge of the bed.

After a while he rose and crept to the door, opened it, glued his eyes
to the crack, in time to catch a glimpse of Siward entering his own
corridor alone.

And that night, Mortimer, lying awake in bed, busy with schemes, became
conscious of a definite idea. It took shape and matured so suddenly that
it actually shocked his moral sense. Then it scared him.

"But--but that is blackmail!" he whispered aloud. "A man can't do that
sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? - And there are
men I know--women, too--scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that
information somehow; and make it pay, too. The scoundrels!"

He squirmed down among the bedclothes with a sudden shiver; but the
night had turned warm.

"Scoundrels!" he said, with milder emphasis. "Blackmailers! Contemptible
pups!"

He fell asleep an hour later, muttering something incoherent about
scoundrels and blackmail.

And meanwhile, in the darkened house, from all round came the noise of
knocking on doors, sounds of people stirring--a low voice here and there,
lights breaking out from transoms, the thud of rubber-shod heels, the
rattle of cartridges from the echoing gun-room. For the guests at
Shotover were awaking, lest the wet sky, whitening behind the east, ring
with the whimpering wedges of wild-fowl rushing seaward over empty
blinds.


The unusual stillness of the house in the late morning sunshine was
pleasant to Miss Landis. She had risen very late, unconscious of the
stir and movement before dawn; and it was only when a maid told her, as
she came from her bath, that she remembered the projected point-
shooting, and concluded, with an odd, happy sense of relief, that she
was almost alone in the house.

A little later, glancing from her bedroom window for a fulfilment of the
promise of the sun which a glimpse of blue sky heralded, she saw Leila
Mortimer settling herself in the forward seat of a Mercedes, and Beverly
Plank climbing in beside her; and she watched Plank steer the big
machine across the wet lawn, while the machinist swung himself into the
tonneau; and away they rolled, faster, faster, rushing out into the
misty hinterland, where the long streak of distant forest already began
to brighten, edged with the first rays of watery sunshine.

So she had the big house to herself--every bit of it and with it freedom
from obligation, from comment, from demand or exaction; freedom from
restraint; liberty to roam about, to read, to dream, to idle, to
remember! Ah, that was what she needed--a quiet interval in this hurrying
youth of hers to catch her breath once more, and stand still, and look
back a day or two and remember.

So, to breakfast all alone was delicious; to stroll, unhurried, to the
sideboard and leisurely choose among the fresh cool fruits; to loiter
over cream-jug and cereal; to saunter out into the freshness of the
world and breathe it, and feel the sun warming cheek and throat, and the
little breezes from a sunlit sea stirring the bright strands of her
hair.

In the increasing brilliancy of the sunshine she stretched out her
hands, warming them daintily as she might twist them before the fire on
the hearth. And here, at the fragrant hearth of the world, she stood,
sweet and fresh as the morning itself, untroubled gaze intensely blue
with the tint of the purple sea, sensitive lips scarcely parting in the
dreaming smile that made her eyes more wonderful.

As the warmth grew on land and water, penetrating her body, a faintly
delicious glow responded in her heart,--nothing at first wistful in the
serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in the
unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively
unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her
to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers
uncurled, tightened, and fell limp as her arms fell and her superb young
figure straightened, confronting the sea.

Out over the rain-wet, odorous grass she picked her way, skirts swung
high above the delicate contour of ankle and limb, following a little
descending path she knew full of rocky angles, swept by pendant sprays
of blackberry, and then down under the jutting rock, south through
thickets of wild cherry along the crags, until, before her the way
opened downward again where a tiny crescent beach glimmered white hot in
the sun.

From his bedroom window Mortimer peeped forth, following her progress
with a leer.

As she descended, noticing the rifts of bronzing seaweed piled along the
tide mark, her foot dislodged a tiny triangle of rock, which rolled
clattering and ringing below; and as she sprang lightly to the sand, a
man, lying full length and motionless as the heaped seaweed, raised
himself on one arm, turning his sun-dazzled eyes on her.

The dull shock of surprise halted her as Siward rose to his feet, still
dazed, the sand running from his brown shooting-clothes over his tightly
strapped puttees.

"Have you the faintest idea that I supposed you were here?" she asked
briefly. Then, frank in her disappointment, she looked up at the cliffs
overhead, where her line of retreat lay.

"Why did you not go with the others?" she added, unsmiling.

"I--don't know. I will, if you wish." He had coloured slowly, the frank
disappointment in her face penetrating his surprise; and now he turned
around, instinctively, also looking for the path of retreat.

"Wait," she said, aware of her own crude attitude and confused by it;
"wait a moment, Mr. Siward. I don't mean to drive you away."

"It's self-exile," he said quietly; "quite voluntary, I assure you."

"Mr. Siward!"

And, as he looked up coolly, "Have you nothing more friendly to say to
me? Is your friendship for me so limited that my first caprice oversteps
the bounds? Must I always be in dread of wounding you when I give you
the privilege of knowing me better than anybody ever knew me--of seeing
me as I am, with all my faults, my failings, my impulses, my real self?
- I don't know why the pleasure of being alone to-day should have meant
exclusion for you, too. It was the unwelcome shock of seeing anybody--a
selfish enjoyment of myself--that surprised me into rudeness. That is
all. - Can you not understand?"

"I think so. I meant no criticism--"

"Wait, Mr. Siward!" as he moved slowly toward the path. "You force me to
say other things, which you have no right to hear. - After last
night"--the vivid tint grew in her face--"after such a night, is it
not--natural--for a girl to creep off somewhere by herself and try to
think a little?"

He had turned full on her; the answering colour crept to his forehead.

"Is that why?" he asked slowly.

"Is it not a reason?"

"It was my reason--for being here."

She bit her bright lip. This trend to the conversation was ominous, and
she had meant to do her drifting alone in still sun-dreams, fearing no
witness, no testimony, no judgment save her own self in court with
herself.

"I--I suppose you cannot go--now," she reflected innocently.

"Indeed I can, and must."

"And leave me here to dig in the sand with my heels? Merci!"

"Do you mean--"

"I certainly do, Mr. Siward. I don't want to dream, now; I don't care to
reflect. I did, but here you come blundering into my private world and
upset my calculations and change my intentions! It's a shame, especially
as you've been lying here doing what I wished to do for goodness knows
how long!"

"I'm going," he said, looking at her curiously.

"Then you are very selfish, Mr. Siward."

"We will call it that," he said with an odd laugh.

"Very well." She seated herself on the sand and calmly shook out her
skirts.

"About what time would you like to be called?" he asked smilingly.

"Thank you, I shall do no sun-dreaming."

"Please. It is good for you."

"No, it isn't good at all. And I am grateful to you for waking me," she
retorted with a sudden gay malice that subdued him. And she, delicate
nose in the air, laughingly watching him, went on with her punishment:
"You see what you've done, don't you?--saved me from an entire morning
wasted in sentimental reverie over what might have been. Now you can
appreciate it, can't you?--your wisdom in appearing in the flesh to save
a silly girl the effort of evoking you in the spirit! Ah, Mr. Siward, I
am vastly obliged to you! Pray sit here beside me in the flesh, for fear
that in your absence I might commit the folly that tempted me here."

His low running laughter accompanying her voice had stimulated her to a
gay audacity, which for the instant extinguished in her the little fear
of him she had been barely conscious of.

"Do you know," he said, "that you also aroused me from my sun-dreams?"

"Did I? And can't you resume them?"

"You save me the necessity."

"Oh, that is a second-hand compliment," she said disdainfully--"a weak
plagiarism on what I conveyed very wittily. You were probably really
asleep, and dreaming of bird-murder."

He waited for her to finish, then, amused eyes searching, he roamed
about until high on a little drifted sand dune he found a place for
himself; and while she watched him indignantly, he curled up in the
sunshine, and, dropping his head on the hot sand, calmly closed his
eyes.

"Upon--my word!" she breathed aloud.

He unclosed his eyes. "Now you may dream; you can't avoid it," he
observed lazily, and closed his eyes; and neither taunts nor jeers nor
questions, nor fragments of shells flung with intent to hit, stirred him
from his immobility.

She tired of the attempt presently, and sat silent, elbows on her
thighs, hands propping her chin. Thoughts, vague as the fitful breeze,
arose, lingered, and, like the breeze, faded, dissolved into calm,
through which, cadenced by the far beat of the ebb tide, her heart
echoed, beating the steady intervals of time.

She had not meant to dream, but as she sat there, the fine-spun golden
threads flying from the whirling loom of dreams floated about her,
settling over her, entangling her in unseen meshes, so that she stirred,
groping amid the netted brightness, drawn onward along dim paths and
through corridors of thought where, always beyond, vague splendours
seemed to beckon.

Now lost, now restless, conscious of the perils of the shining path she
followed, the rhythm of an ocean soothing her to false security, she
dreamed on awake, unconscious of the tinted sea and sky which stained
her eyes to hues ineffable. A long while afterward a small cloud floated
across the sun; and, in the sudden shadow on the world, doubt sounded
its tiny voice, and her ears listened, and the enchantment faded and
died away.

Turning, she looked across the sand at the man lying there; her eyes
considered him--how long she did not know, she did not heed--until,
stirring, he looked up; and she paled a trifle and closed her eyes,
stunned by the sudden clamour of pulse and heart.

When he rose and walked over, she looked up gravely, pouring the last
handful of white sand through her stretched fingers.

"Did you dream?" he asked lightly.

"Yes."

"Did you dream true?"

"Nothing of my dream can happen," she said. "You know that, - don't
you?"

"I know that we love - and that we dare not ignore it."

She suffered his arm about her, his eyes looking deeply into hers--a
close, sweet caress, a union of lips, and her dimmed eyes' response.

"Stephen," she faltered, "how can you make it so hard for me? How can
you force me to this shame!"

"Shame?" he repeated vaguely.

"Yes--this treachery to myself--when I cannot hope to be more to you--when
I dare not love you too much!"

"You must dare, Sylvia!"

"No, no, no! I know myself, I tell you. I cannot give up what is
offered--for you!--dearly, dearly as I do love you!" She turned and caught
his hands in hers, flushed, trembling, unstrung. "I cannot--I simply
cannot! How can you love me and listen to such wickedness? How can you
still care for such a girl as I am--worse than mercenary, because I have
a heart--or had, until you took it! Keep it; it is the only part of me
not all ignoble."

"I will keep it--in trust," he said, "until you give yourself with it."

But she only shook her head wearily, withdrawing her hands from his, and
for a time they sat silent, eyes apart.

Then--"There is another reason," she said wistfully.

He looked up at her, hesitated, and--"My habits?" he asked simply.

"Yes."

"I have them in check."

"Are you--certain?"

"I think I may be--now."

"Yet," she said timidly, "you lost one fight--since you knew me."

The dull red mantling his face wrung her heart. She turned impulsively
and laid both hands on his shoulders. "That chance I would take, with
all its uncertainty, all the dread inheritance you have come into. I
love you enough for that; and if it turned out that--that you could not
stem the tide, even with me to face it with you; and if the pity of it,
the grief of it, killed me, I would take that chance--if you loved me
through it all. - But there is something else. Hush; let me have my say
while I find the words--something else you do not understand. - Turn your
face a little; please don't look at me. This is what you do not
know--that, in three generations, every woman of my race has--gone wrong.
- Every one! and I am beginning--with such a marriage! - deliberately,
selfishly, shamelessly, perfectly conscious of the frivolous, erratic
blood in me, aware of the race record behind me.

"Once, when I knew nothing--before I--I met you--I believed such a
marriage would not only permit me mental tranquillity, but safely anchor
me in the harbour of convention, leaving me free to become what I am
fashioned to become--autocrat and arbiter in my own world. And now! and
now! I don't know--truly I don't know what I may become. Your love forces
my hand. I am displaying all the shallowness, falseness, pettiness, all
the mean, and cruel and callous character which must be truly my real
self. - Only I shall not marry you! You are not to run the risk of what
I might prove to be when I remember in bitterness all I have renounced.
If I married you I should remember, unreconciled, what you cost me.
Better for you and for me that I marry him, and let him bear with me
when I remember that he cost me you!"

She bent over, almost double, closing her eyes with small clenched
hands; and he saw the ring shimmering in the sunshine, and her hair,
heavily, densely gold, and the white nape of her neck, and the tiny
close-set ears, and the curved softness of cheek and chin; every smooth,
childlike contour and mould--rounded arms, slim, flowing lines of body
and limb--all valued at many millions by her as her own appraiser.

Suddenly, deep within him, something seemed to fail, die out--perhaps a
tiny newly lighted flame of unaccustomed purity, the dawning flicker of
aspiration to better things. Whatever it was, material, spiritual, was
gone now, and where it had glimmered for a night, the old accustomed
twilit doubt crept in--the same dull acquiescence--the same uncertainty
of self, the familiar lack of will, of incentive, the congenial tendency
to drift; and with it came weariness--perhaps reaction from the recent
skirmishes with that master-vice.

"I suppose," he said in a dull voice, "you are right."

"No, I am wrong--wrong!" she said, lifting her lovely face and heavy
eyes. "But I have chosen my path. - And you will forget."

"I hope so," he said simply.

"If you hope so, you will."

He nodded, unconvinced, watching a flock of sand-pipers whirling into
the cove like a gray snow-squall and fearlessly settling on the beach.

After a while, with a long breath: "Then it is settled," she concluded.

If she expected corroboration from him she received none; and perhaps
she was not awaiting it. She sat very still, her eyes lost in thought.

And Mortimer, peeping down at them over the thicket above, yawned
impatiently and glanced about him for the most convenient avenue of
self-effacement when the time arrived.



PERSUASION

The days of the house-party at Shotover were numbered. A fresh relay of
guests was to replace them on Monday, and so they were making the most
of the waning week on lawn and marsh, in covert and blind, or motoring
madly over the State, or riding in parties to Vermillion Light. Tennis
and lawn bowls came into fashion; even water polo and squash alternated
on days too raw for more rugged sport.

And during all these days Beverly Plank appeared with unflagging
persistence and assiduity, until his familiar, big, round head and
patient, delft-blue, Dutch eyes became a matter of course at Shotover,
indoors and out.

It was not that he was either accepted, tolerated, or endured; he was
simply there, and nobody took the trouble to question his all-pervading
presence until everybody had become too much habituated to him to think
about it at all.

The accomplished establishment of Beverly Plank was probably due as much
to his own obstinate and good-tempered persistence as to Mrs. Mortimer.
He was a Harvard graduate--there are all kinds of them--enormously
wealthy, and though he had no particular personal tastes to gratify, he
was willing and able to gratify the tastes of others. He did whatever
anybody else did, and did it well enough to be amusing; and as lack of
intellectual development never barred anybody from any section of the
fashionable world, it seemed fair to infer that he would land where he
wanted to, sooner or later.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Mortimer led him about with the confidence that was her
perquisite; and the chances were that in due time he would have house-
parties of his own at Black Fells--not the kind he had wisely denied
himself the pleasure of giving, with such neighbours as the Ferralls to
observe, but the sort he desired. However, there were many things to be
accomplished for him and by him before he could expect to use his great
yacht and his estates and his shooting boxes and the vast granite
mansion recently completed and facing Central Park just north of the new
palaces built on the edges of the outer desert where Fifth Avenue
fringes the hundreds.

Meanwhile, he had become in a measure domesticated at Shotover, and
Shotover people gradually came to ride, drive, and motor over the Fells,
which was a good beginning, though not necessarily a promise for
anything definite in the future.

Mortimer, riding a huge chestnut--he could still wedge himself into a
saddle--had now made it a regular practice to affect the jocular early-
bird squire, and drag Plank out of bed. And Plank, in no position to be
anything but flattered by such sans g'ne, laboriously and gratefully
splashed through his bath, wallowed amid the breakfast plates, and
mounted a hunter for long and apparently aimless gallops with Mortimer.

His acquaintance among people who knew Mortimer being limited, he had no
means of determining the latter's social value except through hearsay
and a toadying newspaper or two. Therefore he was not yet aware of
Mortimer's perennial need of money; and when Mortimer laughingly alluded
to his poverty, Plank accepted the proposition in a purely comparative
sense, and laughed, too, his thrifty Dutch soul untroubled by
misgivings.

Meanwhile, Mortimer had come, among other things, on information; how
much, and precisely of what nature, he was almost too much ashamed to
admit definitely, even to himself. Still, the idea that had led him into
this sudden intimacy with Plank, vague or not, persisted; and he was
always hovering on the edge of hinting at something which might elicit a
responsive hint from the flattered master of Black Fells.

There was much about Plank that was unaffected, genuine, even simple, in
one sense; he cared for people for their own sakes; and only stubborn
adherence to a dogged ambition had enabled him to dispense with the
society of many people he might easily have cultivated and liked--people
nearer his own sort; and that, perhaps, was the reason he so readily
liked Mortimer, whose coarse fibre soon wore through the polish when
rubbed against by a closer, finer fibre. And Plank liked him aside from
gratitude; and they got on famously on the basis of such mutual
recognition. Then, one day, very suddenly, Mortimer stumbled on
something valuable--a thread, a mere clew, so astonishing that for an
instant it absolutely upset all his unadmitted theories and
calculations.

It was nothing--a vague word or two--a forced laugh--and the scared silence
of this man Plank, who had blundered on the verge of a confidence to a
man he liked.

A moment of amazement, of half-incredulous suspicion, of certainty; and
Mortimer pounced playfully upon him like a tiger--a big, fat, friendly,
jocose tiger:

"Plank, is that what you're up to!"

"Up to! Why, I never thought of such a--"

"Haw! haw!" roared Mortimer. "If you could only see your face!"

And Beverly Plank, red as a beet, comfortably suffused with reassurance
under the reaction from his scare, attempted to refute the other's
conclusions: "It doesn't mean anything, Mortimer. She's just the
handsomest girl I ever saw. I know she's engaged. I only admired her a
lot."

"You're not the only man," said Mortimer blandly, still striving to
reconcile his preconceived theories with the awkward half-confession of
this great, red-fisted, hulking horseman riding at his stirrup.

"I wouldn't have her dream," stammered Plank, "that I had ever thought
of such a--"

"Why not? It would only flatter her."

"Flatter a woman who is engaged to marry another man!" gasped Plank.

"Certainly. Do you think any woman ever had enough admiration in this
world?" asked Mortimer coolly. "And as for Sylvia Landis, she'd be
tickled to death if anybody hinted that you had ever admired her."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Plank, alarmed; "You wouldn't make a joke of it!
you wouldn't be careless about such a thing! And there's Quarrier! I'm
not on joking terms with him; I'm on most formal terms."

"Quarrier!" sneered the other, flicking at his stirrup with his crop.
"He's on formal terms with everybody, including himself. He never
laughed on purpose in his life; once a month only, to keep his mouth in;
that's his limit. Do you suppose any woman would stand for him if a
better man looked sideways at her?" And, reversing his riding crop, he
deliberately poked Mr. Plank in the ribs.

"A--a better man!" muttered Plank, scarce crediting his ears.

"Certainly. A man who can make good, is good; but a man who can make
better is it with the ladies--God bless ëem!" he added, displaying a
heavy set of teeth.

Beverly Plank knew perfectly well that, in the comparison so delicately
suggested by Mortimer, his material equipment could be scarcely compared
to the immense fortune controlled by Howard Quarrier; and as he thought
it, his reflections were put into words by Mortimer, airily enough:

"Nobody stands a chance in a show-down with Quarrier. But--"

Plank gaped until the tension became unbearable.

"But--what?" he blurted out.

"Plank," said Mortimer solemnly, and his voice vibrated with feeling,
"Let me do a little thinking before I ask you a--a vital question."

But Plank had become agitated again, and he said something so bluntly
that Mortimer wheeled on him, glowering:

"Look here, Plank: you don't suppose I'm capable of repeating a
confidence, do you?--if you choose to make me understand it's a
confidence."

"It isn't a confidence; it isn't anything; I mean it is confidential, of
course. All there's in it is what I said--or rather what you took me up
on so fast," ended Plank, abashed.

"About your being in love with Syl--"

"Confound it!" roared Plank, crimson to his hair; and he set his heavy
spurs to his mount and plunged forward in a storm of dust. Mortimer
followed, silent, profoundly immersed in his own thoughts and
deductions; and as he pounded along, turning over in his mind all the
varied information he had so unexpectedly obtained in these last few
days, a dull excitement stirred him, and he urged his huge horse forward
in a thrill of rising exhilaration such as seizes on men who hunt, no
matter what they hunt--the savage, swimming sense of intoxication which
marks the man who chases the quarry not for its own value, but because
it is his nature to chase and ride down and enjoy spoils.

And all that afternoon, having taken to his room on pretence of
neuralgia, he lay sprawled on his bed, thinking, thinking. Not that he
meant harm to anybody, he told himself very frequently. He had, of
course, information which certain degraded men might use in a
contemptible way, but he, Mortimer, did not resemble such men in any
particular. All he desired was to do Plank a good turn. There was
nothing disreputable in doing a wealthy man a favour. - And God knew a
wealthy man's gratitude was necessary to him at that very
moment--gratitude substantially acknowledged. - He liked Plank--wished him
well; that was all right, too; but a man is an ass who doesn't wish
himself well also. - Two birds with one stone. - Three! for he hated
Quarrier. Four! - for he had no love for his wife. - Besides, it would
teach Leila a wholesome lesson--teach her that he still counted; serve
her right for her disgusting selfishness about Plank.

No, there was to be nothing disreputable in his proceedings; that he
would be very careful about. - Probably Major Belwether might express
his gratitude substantially if he, Mortimer, went to him frankly and
volunteered not to mention to Quarrier the scene he had witnessed
between Sylvia Landis and Stephen Siward at three o'clock in the morning
in the corridor; and if, in playful corroboration, he displayed the cap
and rain-coat and the big fan, all crushed, which objects of interest he
had discovered later in the bay-window. - Yes, probably Major Belwether
would be very grateful, because he wanted Quarrier in the family; he
needed Quarrier in his business. - But, faugh! that was close enough to
blackmail to rub off! - No! - No! He wouldn't go to Belwether and
promise any such thing! - On the contrary, he felt it his duty to inform
Quarrier! Quarrier had a right to know what sort of a girl he was
threatened with for life! - A man ought not to let another man go
blindly into such a marriage. - Men owed each other something, even if
they were not particularly close friends. - And he had always had a
respect for Quarrier, even a sort of liking for him--yes, a distinct
liking! - And, anyhow, women were devils! and it behooved men to get
together and stand for one another!

Quarrier would give her her walking papers damned quick! - And, in her
humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn't snap
up Plank in such a fix? - And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier? -
But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very
nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to
be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his
money. - And Plank would be very, very grateful--very useful, a very good
friend to have. - And Leila would learn at last that he, Mortimer, had
cut his wisdom teeth, by God!

As for Siward, he amounted to nothing; probably was one of that
contemptible sort of men who butted in and kissed a pretty girl when he
had the chance. He, Mortimer, had only disgust for such amateurs of the
social by-ways; for he himself kept to the highways, like any self-
respecting professional, even when a tour of the highways sometimes
carried him below stairs. There was no romantic shilly-shallying fol-de-
rol about him. Women learned what to expect from him in short order. En
garde, Madame!--ou Mademoiselle--tant pis!

He laughed to himself and rolled over, digging his head into the pillows
and stretching his fat hands to ease their congestion. And most of all
he amused himself with figuring out the exact degree of his wife's
astonishment and chagrin when, without consulting her, he achieved the
triumph of Quarrier's elimination and the theatrical entry of Beverly
Plank upon the stage. He laughed when he thought of Major Belwether,
too, confounded under the loss of such a nephew-in-law, humiliated,
crushed, all his misleading jocularity, all his sleek pink-and-white
suavity, all his humbugging bonhomie knocked out of him, leaving only a
rumpled, startled old gentleman, who bore an amusing resemblance to a
very much mussed-up buck-rabbit.

"Haw! haw!" roared Mortimer, rolling about in his bed and kicking the
slippers from his fat feet. Then, remembering that he was supposed to be
suffering silently in his room, he hunched up to a sitting posture and
regarded his environment with a subdued grin.

Everything seems easy when it seems funny. After all, the matter was
simple--absurdly simple. A word to Quarrier, and crack! the match was
off! Girl mad as a hornet, but staggered, has no explanation to offer;
man frozen stiff with rage, mute as an iceberg. Then, zip! Enter Beverly
Plank--the girl's rescuer at a pinch--her preserver, the saviour of her
"face," the big, highly coloured, leaden-eyed deus ex machina. Would she
take fifty cents on the dollar? Would she? to buy herself a new "face"?
And put it all over Quarrier? And live happy ever after? Would she? Oh,
not at all!

And Mortimer rolled over in another paroxysm; which wasn't good for him,
and frightened him enough to lie still awhile and think how best he
might cut down on his wine and spirits.

The main thing, after all, was to promise Plank his opportunity, but not
tell him how he was to obtain it; for Mortimer had an uneasy idea that
there was something of the Puritan deep planted under the stolid young
man's hide, and that he might make some absurd and irrelevant objection
to the perfectly proper methods employed by his newly self-constituted
guide and mentor. No; that was no concern of Plank's. All he had to do
was to be ready. As for Quarrier, anybody could forecast his action when
once convinced of Sylvia's behaviour.

He lay there pondering several methods of imparting the sad but
necessary information to Quarrier. One thing was certain: there was not
now time enough before the house-party dissolved to mould Plank into
acquiescent obedience. That must be finished in town--unless Plank
invited him to stay at the Fells after his time was up at Shotover. By
Heaven! That was the idea! And there'd be a chance for him at cards! -
Only, of course, Plank would ask Leila too. - But what did he care! He
was no longer afraid of her; he'd soon be independent of her and her
pittance. Let her go to the courts for her divorce! Let her--

He sat up rather suddenly, perplexed with a new idea which, curiously
enough, had not appealed to him before. The astonishing hint so coolly
dropped by his wife concerning her fearlessness of divorce proceedings
had only awakened him to the consciousness of his own vulnerability and
carelessness of conduct.

Now it occurred to him, for the first time, that if it were not a mere
bluff on Leila's part, this sudden coquetting with the question of
divorce might indicate an ulterior object. Was Leila considering his
elimination in view of this ulterior object? Was there an ulterior
gentleman somewhere prepared to replace him? If so, where? And who?

His wife's possible indiscretions had never interested him; he simply
didn't care--had no curiosity, as long as appearances were maintained.
And she had preserved appearances with a skill which required all the
indifferent and easy charity of their set to pretend completely deceived
everybody. Yes, he gave her credit for that; she had been clever. Nobody
outside of the social register knew the true state of affairs in the
house of Leroy Mortimer--which, after all, was all anybody cared about.

And so, immersed in the details of his dirty little drama, he pondered
over the possibility of an ulterior gentleman as he moved heavily to and
fro, dressing himself--his neuralgia being much better--and presently
descended the stairs to find everybody absent, engaged, as a servant
explained, in a game of water basket-ball in the swimming pool. So he
strolled off toward the north wing of the house, which had been built
for the squash-courts and swimming pool.

There was a good deal of an uproar in the big gymnasium as Mortimer
walked in, threading his way through the palms and orange-trees; much
splashing in the pool, cries and stifled laughter, and the quick rattle
of applause from the gallery of the squash-courts.

The Page boys and Rena and Eileen on one side were playing the last
match game against Sylvia, Marion Page, Siward, and Ferrall on the
other; the big, slippery, glistening ball was flying about through
storms of spray. Marion caught it, but her brother Gordon got it away;
then Ferrall secured it and dived toward the red goal; but Rena
Bonnesdel caught him under water; the ball bobbed up, and Sylvia flung
both arms around it with a little warning shout and hurled it back at
Siward, who shot forward like an arrow, his opponents gathering about
him in full cry, amid laughter and excited applause from the gallery,
where Grace Ferrall and Captain Voucher were wildly offering odds on the
blue, and Alderdene and Major Belwether were thriftily booking them.

Mortimer climbed the slippery, marble stairway as fast as his lack of
breath permitted, anxious for his share of the harvest if the odds were
right. He ignored his wife's smilingly ironical offer, seeing no sense
in bothering about money already inside the family; but he managed to
make several apparently desirable wagers with Katharyn Tassel and one
with Beverly Plank, who was also obstinately backing the blues, the
losing side. Sylvia played forward for the blues.

Agatha Caithness, sleeves rolled up, tall and slim and strangely pale in
her white flannels, came from the squash-court with Quarrier to watch
the finish; and Mortimer observed her sidewise, blinking, irresolute,
for he had never understood her and was always a trifle afraid of her. A
pair of icicles, she and Quarrier, with whom he had never been on
betting terms; so he made no suggestions in that direction, and
presently became absorbed in the splashing battle below. Indeed, such a
dashing of foam and showering of spray was taking place that the fronds
of the big palms hung dripping amid drenched blossoms overweighted and
prone on the wet marble edges of the pool.

Suddenly, through the confused blur of foam and spray, the big,
glistening ball shot aloft and remained.

"Blue! Blue!" exclaimed Grace Ferrall, clapping her hands; and a little
whirlwind of cries and hand clapping echoed from the gallery as the
breathless swimmers came climbing out of the pool, with scarcely wind
enough left for a word or strength for a gesture toward the laughing
crowd above.

Mortimer, disgusted, turned away, already casting about him for somebody
to play cards with--it being his temperament and his temper to throw good
money after bad. But Quarrier and Miss Caithness had already returned to
the squash-courts, the majority of the swimmers to their several
dressing-rooms, and Grace Ferrall's party, equipped for motoring, to the
lawn, where they lost little time in disappearing into the golden haze
which a sudden shift of wind had spun out of the cloudless afternoon's
sunshine.

However, he got Marion, and also, as usual, the two men who had made a
practice of taking away his money--Major Belwether and Lord Alderdene.
He hadn't particularly wanted them; he wanted somebody he could play
with, like Siward, for example, or even the two ten-dollar Pages; not
that their combined twenty would do him much good, but it would at least
permit him the pleasures of the card-table without personal loss.

But the Pages had retired to dress, and Voucher was for motoring, and he
had no use for his wife, and he was afraid of Plank's game, and Siward,
seated on the edge of the pool and sharing a pint of ginger-ale with
Sylvia Landis, shook his head at the suggestion and resumed his division
of the ginger-ale.

Plank and Leila Mortimer came down to congratulate them. Sylvia, always
instinctively and particularly nice to people of Plank's sort whom she
occasionally encountered, was so faultlessly amiable, that Plank, who
had never before permitted himself the privilege of monopolising her,
found himself doing it so easily that it kept him in a state of
persistent mental intoxication.

That slow, sweet, upward training inflection to a statement which
instantly became a confided question was an unconscious trick which had
been responsible, in Sylvia's brief life, for more mistakes than
anything else. Like others before him, Beverly Plank made the mistake
that the sweetness of voice and the friendliness of eyes were
particularly personal to him, in tribute to qualities he had foolishly
enough hitherto not suspected in himself. Now he suspected them, and
whatever of real qualities desirable had been latent in him also
appeared at once, confirming his modest suspicions. Certainly he was a
wit! Was not this perfectly charming girl's responsive and delicious
laughter proof enough? Certainly he was epigrammatic! Certainly he could
be easy, polished, amusing, sympathetic, and vastly interesting all the
while. Could he not divine it in her undivided attention, the quick,
amused flicker of recognition animating her beautiful face when he had
turned a particularly successful phrase or taken a verbal hurdle without
a cropper? And above all, her kindness to him impressed him; her natural
and friendly pleasure in being agreeable. Here he was already on an
informal footing with one of the persons of whom he had been most shy
and uncertain. If people were going to be as considerate of him as she
had proved, why--why--

His dull, Dutch-blue eyes returned to her, fascinated. The conquest of
what he desired and meant to have became merged in a vague plan which
included such a marriage as he had dreamed of.

Somebody had once told him that a man who could afford to dress for
dinner could go anywhere; meaning that, being a man, nature had fitted
his feet with the paraphernalia for climbing as high as he cared to
climb.

There was just enough truth in the statement to determine him to use his
climbing irons; and he had done so, carrying his fortune with him, which
had proved neither an impediment nor an aid so far. But now he had
concluded that neither his god-sent climbing irons, his amiability, his
obstinacy, his mild, tireless persistency, nor his money counted. It had
come to a crisis where personal worth and sterling character must carry
him through sheer merit to the inner temple--that inner temple of raw
gold whose altars are served by a sexless skeleton in cap and bells!


Siward, inclined to be amused by the duration of the trance into which
Plank had fallen, watched the progress of that bulky young man's
infatuation as he sat there on the pool's marble edge, exchanging
trivial views on trivial subjects with Mrs. Leroy Mortimer.

But her conversation, even when inconsequential, was never wearisome
except when she made it so for her husband's benefit. Features, person,
personality, and temperament were warmly exotic; her dark eyes with
their slight Japanese slant, the clear olive skin with its rose bloom,
the temptation of mouth and slender neck, were always provocative of the
audacity in men which she could so well meet with amusement or surprise,
or at times with a fascinating audacity of her own wholly charming
because of its setting.

Once, in their history, during her early married life, Siward had been
very sentimental about her; but neither he nor she had approached the
danger line closer than to make daring eyes at one another across the
frontiers of good taste. And their youthful enchantment had faded so
naturally, so pleasantly, that always there had remained to them both an
agreeable after-taste--a sort of gay understanding which almost
invariably led to mutual banter when they encountered. But now something
appeared to be lacking in their rather listless badinage--something of
the usual flavour which once had salted even a laughing silence with
significance. Siward, too, had ceased to be amused at the spectacle of
Plank's calf-like infatuation; and Leila Mortimer's bored smile had
lasted so long that her olive-pink cheeks were stiff, and she relaxed
her fixed features with a little shrug that was also something of a
shiver. Then, looking prudently around, she encountered Siward's eyes;
and during a moment's hesitation they considered one another with an
increasing curiosity that slowly became tentative intelligence. And her
eyes said very plainly and wickedly to Siward's: "Oho, my friend! So it
bores you to see Mr. Plank monopolising an engaged girl who belongs to
Howard Quarrier!"

And his eyes, wincing, denying, pretending ignorance too late, suddenly
narrowed in vexed retaliation: "Speak for yourself, my lady! You're no
more pleased than I am!"

The next moment they both regretted the pale flash of telepathy. There
had been something wounded in his eyes; and she had not meant that. No;
a new charity for the hapless had softened her wonderfully within a
fortnight's time, and a self-pity, not entirely ignoble, had subdued the
brilliancy of her dark eyes, and made her tongue more gentle in dealing
with all failings. Besides, she was not yet perfectly certain what ailed
her, never having really cared for any one man before. No, she was not
at all certain. - But in the meanwhile she was very sorry for herself,
and for all those who drained the bitter cup that might yet pass from
her shrinking lips. Who knows! "Stephen," she said under her breath, "I
didn't mean to hurt you. - Don't scowl. Listen. I have already entirely
forgotten the nature of my offense. Pax, if you please."

He refused to understand; and she understood that, too; and she gazed
critically upon Sylvia Landis as a very young mother might inspect a
rival infant with whom her matchless offspring was coquetting.

Then, without appearing to, she took Plank away from temptation; so
skilfully that nobody except Siward understood that the young man had
been incontinently removed. He, Plank, never doubting that he was a
perfectly free agent, decided that the time had arrived for triumphant
retirement. It had; but Leila Mortimer, not he, had rendered the
decision, and so cleverly that it appeared even to Plank himself that he
had dragged her off with him rather masterfully. Clearly he was becoming
a devil of a fellow!

Sylvia turned to Siward, glanced up at him, hesitated, and began to
laugh consciously:

"What do you think of my latest sentimental acquisition?"

"He'd be an ornament to a stock farm," replied Siward, out of humour.

"How brutal you can be!" she mused, smiling.

"Nonsense! He's a plain bounder, isn't he?"

"I don't know. - Is he? He struck me a trifle appealingly--even
pathetically; they usually do, that sort. - As though the trouble they
took could ever be worth the time they lose! - There are dozens of men I
know who are far less presentable than this highly coloured and robust
young human being; and yet they are part of the accomplished scheme of
things--like degenerate horses, you know--always pathetic to me; but
they're still horses, for all that. Quid rides? Species of the same
genus can cross, of course, but I had rather be a donkey than a mule. -
And if I were a donkey I'd sing and cavort with my own kind, and let
horses flourish their own heels inside the accomplished scheme of
things. - Now I have been brutal. But--I'm easily coloured by my
environment."

She sat, smiling maliciously down at the water, smoothing out the soaked
skirt of her swimming suit, and swinging her legs reflectively.

"Are you reconciled?" she asked presently.

"To what?"

"To leaving Shotover. To-day is our last day, you know. To-morrow we all
go; and next day these familiar walls will ring with other voices, my
poor friend:

"ëYon rising moon that looks for us again--How oft hereafter will she
wax and wane; How oft hereafter, rising, look for us Through this same
mansion--and for one in vain!'"

"That is I--the one, you know. You may be here again; but I--I shall not
be I if I ever come to Shotover again."

Her stockinged heels beat the devil's tattoo against the marble sides of
the pool. She reached up above her head, drawing down a flowering branch
of Japanese orange, and caressed her delicate nose with the white
blossoms, dreamily, then, mischievously: "I'm accustoming myself to this
most significant perfume," she said, looking at him askance. And she
deliberately hummed the wedding march, watching the colour rise in his
sullen face.

"If you had the courage of a sparrow you'd make life worth something for
us both," he said.

"I know it; I haven't; but I seem to possess the remainder of his
lordship's traits--inconsequence, self-centred selfishness, the instinct
for Fifth Avenue nest-building--all the feathered vices, all the
unlovely personality and futility and uselessness of my prototype. -
Only, as you observe, I lack the quality of courage."

"I don't know how much courage it requires to do what you're going to
do," he said sulkily.

"Don't you? Sometimes, when you wear a scowl like that, I think that it
may require no more courage than I am capable of. - And sometimes--I
don't know."

She crossed her knees, one slender ankle imprisoned in her hand, leaning
forward thoughtfully above the water.

"Our last day," she mused; "for we shall never be just you and I
again--never again, my friend, after we leave this rocky coast of Eden. -
I shall have hints of you in the sea-wind and the sound of the sea; in
the perfume of autumn woods, in the whisper of stirring leaves when the
white birches put on their gold crowns next year." She smiled, turning
to him, a little gravely: "When the Lesser Children return with April, I
shall not forget you, Mr. Siward, nor forget your mercy of a day on
them; nor your comradeship, nor your sweetness to me. - Nor your charity
for me, nor all that you overlook so far in me,--under the glamour of a
spell that seems to hold you still, and that still holds me. - I can
answer for my constancy so far, until one more spring and summer have
come and gone--until one more autumn comes, and while it lasts--as long as
any semblance of the setting remains which had once framed you; I can
answer for my constancy as long as that. - Afterwards, the snow!--symbol
of our separation. I am to be married a year from November first."

He looked up at her in dark surprise, for he had heard that their
wedding date had been set for the coming winter.

"A year's engagement?" he repeated, unconvinced.

"It was my wish. I think that is sufficient for everybody concerned."
Then, averting her face, which had suddenly lost a little of its colour:
"A year is little enough," she said impatiently. "I--what has happened to
us requires an interval--a decent interval for its burial. - Death is
respectable in any form. What dies between you and me can have no
resurrection under the snow. - So I bring to the burial my tribute--a
year of life, a year of constancy, my friend; symbol of an eternity I
could have given you had I been worth it." She looked up, flushed, the
forced smile stamped on lips still trembling. "Sentiment in such a woman
as I! ëA spectacle for Gods and men,' you are saying--are you not? And
perhaps sentiment with me is only an ancient instinct, a latent
ancestral quality for which I, ages later, have no use." She was
laughing easily. "No use for sentiment, as our bodies have no use for
that fashionable little cul-de-sac, you know, though wise men say it
once served its purpose, too. - Stephen Siward, what do you think of me
now?"

"I am learning," he replied simply.

"What, if you please?"

"Learning a little about what I am losing."

"You mean--me?"

"Yes."

She bent forward impulsively, balancing her body on the pool's rim with
both arms, dropping her knee until her ankles swung interlocked above
the water. "Listen," she said in a low, distinct voice: "What you lose
is no other man's gain! If I warm and expand in your presence--if I say
clever things sometimes--if I am intelligent, sympathetic, and amusing--it
is because of you. You inspire it in me. Normally I am the sort of girl
you first met at the station. I tell you that I don't know myself
now--that I have not known myself since I knew you. Qualities of
understanding, ability to appreciate, to express myself without
employing the commonplaces, subtleties of intercourse--all, maybe, were
latent in me, but sterile, until you came into my life. - And when you
go, then, lacking impulse and incentive, the new facility, the new
sensitive alertness, the unconscious self-confidence, all will smoulder
and die out in me. - I know it; I realise that it was due to you--part of
me that I should never have known, of which I should have remained
totally ignorant, had it not blossomed suddenly, stimulated by you
alone."

Slowly the clouded seriousness of her blue eyes cleared, and the smile
began to glimmer again. "That is your revenge; you recommit me to my
commonplace self; you restore me to my tinsel career, practically a
dolt. Shame on you, Stephen Siward, to treat a poor girl so! - But it's
just as well. Blunted perceptions, according to our needs, you know; and
so life is tempered for us all, else we might not endure it long. - A
pleasantly morbid suggestion for a day like this, is it not? - Shall we
take a farewell plunge, and dress? You know we say good-bye to-morrow."

"Where do you go from here?"

"To Lenox; the Claymores have asked us for a week; after that, Hot
Springs for another two weeks or so; after that, to Oyster Bay. - Mr.
Quarrier opens his house on Sedge Point," she added demurely, "but I
don't think he expects to invite you to ëThe Sedges.'"

"How long do you stay there?" asked Siward irritably.

"Until we go to town in December."

"What will you find to do all that time in Oyster Bay?" he asked more
irritably.

"What a premature question! The yacht is there. Besides, there's the
usual neighbourhood hunting, with the usual packs and inevitable set;
the usual steeple-chasing; the usual exchange of social amenities; the
usual driving and riding; the usual, my poor friend, the usual, in all
its uncompromising certainty. - And what are you to do?"

"When?"

"After you leave here?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know where you are going?"

"I'm going to town."

"And then?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, but haven't you been asked somewhere? You have, of course."

"Yes, and I have declined."

"Matters of business," she inferred. "Too bad!"

"Oh, no."

"Then," she concluded, laughing, "you don't care to tell me where you
are going."

"No," he said thoughtfully, "I don't care to tell you."

She laughed again carelessly, and, placing one hand on the tiled
pavement, sprang lightly to her feet.

"A last plunge?" she asked, as he rose at her side.

"Yes, one last plunge together. Deep! Are you ready?"

She raised her white arms above her head, finger-tips joined, poised an
instant on the brink, swaying forward; then, at his brief word, they
flashed downward together, cutting the crystalline sea-water, shooting
like great fish over the glass-tiled bed, shoulder to shoulder under the
water; and opening their eyes, they turned toward one another with a
swift outstretch of hands, an uncontrollable touch of lips, the very
shadow of contact; then cleaving upward, rising to the surface to lie
breathlessly floating, arms extended, and the sun filtering down through
the ground-glass roof above.

"We are perfectly crazy," she breathed. "I'm quite mad; I see that. On
land it's bad enough for us to misbehave; but submarine sentiment! We'll
be growing scales and tails presently. - Did you ever hear of a Southern
bird--a sort of hawk, I think--that almost never alights; that lives and
eats and sleeps its whole life away on the wing? and even its courtship,
and its honeymoon? Grace Ferrall pointed one out to me last winter, near
Palm Beach--a slender bird, part black, part snowy white, with long,
pointed, delicate wings like an enormous swallow; and all day, all
night, it floats and soars and drifts in the upper air, never resting,
never alighting except during its brief nesting season. - Think of the
exquisite bliss of drifting one's life through in mid-air--to sleep,
balanced on light wings, upborne by invisible currents flowing under the
stars--to sail dreamily through the long sunshine, to float under the
moon! - And at last, I suppose, when its time has come, down it whirls
out of the sky, stone dead! - There is something thrilling in such a
death--something magnificent. - And in the exquisitely spiritual
honeymoon, vague as the shadow of a rainbow, is the very essence and
aroma of that impalpable Paradise we women prophesy in dreams! - More
sentiment! Heigho! My brother is the weeping crocodile, and the five
winds are my wits. - Shall we dress? Even with a maid and the electric
air-blast it will take time to dry my hair and dress it."


When he came out of his dressing-room she was apparently still in the
hands of the maid. So he sauntered through the house as far as the
library, and drawing a cheque-book from one pocket, fished out a
memorandum-book from another, and began to cast up totals with a view to
learning something about the various debts contracted at Shotover.

He seemed to owe everybody. Fortune had smitten him hip and thigh; and,
a trifle concerned, he began covering a pad with figures until he knew
where he stood. Then he drew a considerable cheque to Major Belwether's
order, another to Alderdene. Others followed to other people for various
amounts; and he was very busily at work when, aware of another presence
near, he turned around in his chair. Sylvia Landis was writing at a desk
in the corner, and she looked up, nodding the little greeting that she
always reserved for him even after five minutes' separation.

"I'm writing cheques," she said. "I suppose you're writing to your
mother."

"Why do you think so?" he asked curiously.

"You write to her every day, don't you?"

"Yes," he said, "but how do you know?"

She looked at him with unblushing deliberation. "You wrote every day. -
If it was to a woman, I wanted to know. - And I told Grace Ferrall that
it worried me. And then Grace told me. Is there any other confession of
my own pettiness that I can make to you."

"Did you really care to whom I was writing?" he asked slowly.

"Care? I--it worried me. Was it not a pitifully common impulse? ëSisters
under our skin,' you know--I and the maid who dresses me. She would have
snooped; I didn't; that's the only generic difference. I wanted to know
just the same. - But--that was before--"

"Before what?"

"Before I--please don't ask me to say it. - I did, once, when you asked
me."

"Before you cared for me. Is that what you mean?"

"Yes. You are so cruelly literal when you wish to punish me. - You are
interrupting me, too. I owe that wretched Kemp Ferrall a lot of money,
and I'm trying to find out how much seven and nine are, to close
accounts with Marion Page."

Siward turned and continued his writing. And when the little sheaf of
cheques was ready he counted them, laid them aside, and, drawing a flat
packet of fresh bank-notes from his portfolio, counted out the tips
expected of him below stairs. These arranged for, he straightened up and
glanced over his shoulder at Sylvia, but she was apparently absorbed in
counting something on the ends of her fingers, so he turned smilingly to
his desk and wrote a long letter to his mother--the same tender,
affectionately boyish letter he had always written her, full of
confidences, full of humour, gaily anticipating his own return to her on
the heels of the letter.

In his first letter to her from Shotover he had spoken casually of a
Miss Landis. It seemed the name was familiar enough to his mother, who
asked about her; and he had replied in another letter or two, a trifle
emphatic in his praise of her, because from his mother's letters it was
quite evident that she knew a good deal concerning the very
unconventional affairs of Sylvia's family.

Of his swift and somewhat equivocal courtship he had had nothing to say
in his letters; in fact recently he had nothing to say about Sylvia at
all, reserving that vital confidence for the clear sympathy and
understanding which he looked forward to when he should see her, and
which, through dark days and bitter aftermaths, through struggle and
defeat by his master-vice, had never failed him yet, never faltered for
an instant.

So he brought his letter to a close with a tender and uneasy inquiry
concerning her health, which, she had intimated, was not exactly
satisfactory, and for that reason she had opened the house in town in
order to be near Dr. Grisby, their family doctor.

Sealing and directing the letter, he looked up to see Sylvia standing at
his elbow. She dropped a light hand on his shoulder for a second, barely
touching him--a fugitive caress, delicate as the smile hovering on her
lips, as the shy tenderness in her eyes.

"More letters to your sweetheart?" she asked, abandoning her hand to
him.

"One more--the last before I see her. - I wish you could see her,
Sylvia."

"I wish so, too," she answered simply, seating herself on the arm of his
chair as though it were a side-saddle.

They sat there very silent for a few moments, curiously oblivious to the
chance curiosity of any one who might enter or pass.

"Would she--care for me--do you think?" asked the girl in a low voice.

"I think so,--for your real self."

"I know. She could only feel contempt for me--as I am."

"She is old-fashioned," he said reverently.

"That means all that is best in a woman. - The old fashion of truth and
faith; the old fashion of honour, and faith in honour; the old, old
fashion of--love. - All that is best, Stephen; all that is worth the love
of a man. - Some day somebody will revive those fashions."

"Will you?"

"Dear, they would not become me," she said, the tenderness in her eyes
deepening a little; and she touched his head lightly in humourous
caress.

"What shall we do with the waning daylight?" she asked. "It is my last
day with you. I told Howard it was my last day with you, and I did not
care to be disturbed."

"You probably didn't say it that way," he commented, amused.

"I did."

"How much of that sort of thing is he prepared to stand?" asked Siward
curiously.

"How much? I don't know. I don't believe he cares. It is my uncle, Major
Belwether, who is making things unpleasant for me. I had to tell Howard,
you know."

"What!" exclaimed Siward incredulously.

"Certainly. Do you think my conduct has passed without protest?"

"You told Quarrier!" he repeated.

"Did you imagine I could do otherwise?" she asked coolly. "I have that
much decency left. Certainly I told him. Do you suppose that, after what
we did--what I admitted to you--that I could meet him as usual? Do you
think I am afraid of him?"

"I thought you were afraid of losing him," muttered Siward.

"I was, dreadfully. And the morning after you and I had been imprudent
enough to sit up until nearly daylight--and do what we did--I made him
take a long walk with me, and I told him plainly that I cared for you,
that I was too selfish and cowardly to marry you, and that if he
couldn't endure the news he was at liberty to terminate the engagement
without notice."

"What did he say?" stammered Siward.

"A number of practical things."

"You mean to say he stands it!"

"It appears so. What else is there for him to do, unless he breaks the
engagement?"

"And he--hasn't?"

"No. I was informed that he held me strictly and precisely to my
promise; that he would never release me voluntarily, though I was, of
course, at liberty to do what I chose. - My poor friend, he cares no
more for love than do I. I happen to be the one woman in New York whom
he considers absolutely suitable for him; by race, by breeding, by
virtue of appearance and presence, eminently fitted to complete the
material portion of his fortune and estate."

Her voice had hardened as she spoke; now it rang a little at the end,
and she laughed unpleasantly.

"It appears that I was a little truer to myself than you gave me credit
for--a little truer to you--a little less treacherous, less shameless,
than you must have thought me. But I have gone to my limit of decency; -
and, were I ten times more in love with you than I am, I could not put
away the position and power offered me. But I will not lie for it, nor
betray for it. - Do you remember, once you asked me for what reasons I
dropped men from my list? And I told you, because of any falsehood or
treachery, any betrayal of trust--and for no other reason. You remember?
And did you suppose that elemental standard of decency did not include
women--even such a woman as I?"

She dropped one arm on the back of his chair and rested her chin on it,
staring at space across his shoulders.

"That's how it had to be, you see, when I found that I cared for you.
There was nothing to do but to tell him. I was quite certain that it was
all off; but I found that I didn't know the man. I knew he was
sensitive, but I didn't know he was sensitive to personal ridicule only,
and to nothing else in all the world that I can discover. I--I suppose,
from my frankness to him, he has concluded that no ridicule could ever
touch him through me. I mean, he trusts me enough to marry me. - He will
be safe enough, as far as my personal conduct is concerned," she added
naively. "It seems that I am capable of love; but I am incapable of its
degradation."

Siward, leaning heavily forward over his desk, rested his head in both
hands; and she stooped from her perch on the arm of the chair, pressing
her hot cheeks against his hands--a moment only; then slipping to her
feet, she curled up in a great arm-chair by the fire, head tipped back,
blue gaze concentrated on him.

"The thing for you to do," she said, "is to ambush me some night, and
throw me into a hansom, and drive us both to the parson's. I'd hate you
for it as much as I'd love you, but I'd make you an interesting wife."

"I may do that yet," he said, lifting his head from his hands.

"You've a year to do it in," she observed. - "By the way, you're to take
me in to dinner, as you did the first night. Do you remember? I asked
Grace Ferrall then. I asked her again to-day. Heigho! It was years ago,
wasn't it, that I drove up to the station and saw a very attractive and
perplexed young man looking anxiously about for somebody to take him to
Shotover. Ahem! the notorious Mr. Siward! Dear, - I didn't mean to hurt
you! You know it, silly! Mayn't I have my little joke about your
badness--your redoubtable badness of reputation? There! You had just
better smile. - How dare you frighten me by making me think I had hurt
you! - Besides, you are probably unrepentant."

She watched him closely for a moment or two, then, "Are you
unrepentant?"

"About what?"

"About your general wickedness? About--" she hesitated--"about that girl,
for example."

"What girl?" he asked coldly.

"That reminds me that you have told me absolutely nothing about her."

"There is nothing to tell," he said, in a tone so utterly new to her in
its finality that she sat up as though listening to an unknown voice.

Tone and words so completely excluded her from the new intimacy into
which she had imperceptibly drifted that both suddenly developed a
significance from sheer contrast. Who was this girl, then, of whom he
had absolutely nothing to say? What was she to him? What could she be to
him--an actress, a woman of common antecedents?

She had sometimes idly speculated in an indefinitely innocent way as to
just what a well-born man could find to interest him in such women; what
he could have to talk about to persons of that sort, where community of
tastes and traditions must be so absolutely lacking.

Gossip, scandal of that nature, hints, silences, innuendoes, the wise
shrugs of young girls oversophisticated, the cool, hard smiles of
matrons, all had left her indifferent or bored, partly from distaste,
partly from sheer incredulity; a refusal to understand, an innate
delicacy that not only refrains from comprehension, but also denies
itself even the curiosity to inquire or the temptation of vaguest
surmise on a subject that could not exist for her.

But now, something of the uncomfortable uneasiness had come over her
which she had been conscious of when made aware of Marion Page's worldly
wisdom, and which had imperceptibly chilled her when Grace Ferrall spoke
of Siward's escapade, coupling this woman and him in the same scandal.

She took it for granted that there must be, for men, an attraction
toward women who figured publicly behind the foot-lights, though it
appeared very silly to her. In fact it all was silly and
undignified--part and parcel, no doubt, of that undergraduate foolishness
which seemed to cling to some men who had otherwise attained discretion.

But it appeared to her that Siward had taken the matter with a
seriousness entirely out of proportion in his curt closure of the
subject, and she felt a little irritated, a little humiliated, a little
hurt, and took refuge in a silence that he did not offer to break.

Early twilight had fallen in the room; the firelight grew redder.

"Sylvia," he said abruptly, reverting to the old, light tone hinting of
the laughter in his eyes which she could no longer see, "Suppose, as you
suggested, I did ambush you--say after the opera--seize you under the very
nose of your escort and make madly for a hansom?"

"I know of no other way," she said demurely.

"Would you resist, physically?"

"I would, if nobody were looking."

"Desperately?

"How do I know? Besides, it couldn't last long," she said, thinking of
his slimly powerful build as she had noticed it in his swimming costume.
Smiling, amused, she wondered how long she could resist him with her own
wholesome supple activity strengthened to the perfection of health in
saddle and afoot.

"I should advise you to chloroform me," she said defiantly. "You don't
realise my accomplishments with the punching-bag."

"So you mean to resist?"

"Yes, I do. If I were going to surrender at once, I might as well go off
to church with you now."

"Wenniston church!" he said promptly. "I'll order the Mercedes."

She laughed, lazily settling herself more snugly by the fire. "Suppose
it were our fire?" she smiled. "There would be a dog lying across that
rug, and a comfortable Angora tabby dozing by the fender, and--you,
cross-legged, at my feet, with that fascinating head of yours tipped
back against my knees."

The laughter in her voice died out, and he had risen, saying unsteadily:
"Don't! I--I can't stand that sort of thing, you know."

She had made a mistake, too; she also had suddenly become aware of her
own limits in the same direction.

"Forgive me, dear! I meant no mockery."

"I know. - After a while a man finds laughter difficult."

"I was not laughing at--anything. I was only pretending to be happy."

"Your happiness is before you," he said sullenly.

"My future, you mean. You know I am exchanging one for the other. - And
some day you will awake to the infamy of it; you will comprehend the
depravity of the monstrous trade I made. - And then--and then--"

She passed one slim hand over her face--"then you will shake yourself
free from this dream of me; then, awake, my punishment at your hands
will begin. - Dear, no man in his right senses can continue to love a
girl such as I am. All that is true and ardent and generous in you has
invested my physical attractiveness and my small intellect with a magic
that cannot last, because it is magic; and you are the magician,
enmeshed for the moment in the mists of your own enchantment. When this
fades, when you unclose your eyes in clear daylight, dear, I dread to
think what I shall appear to you--what a dreadful, shrunken, bloodless
shell, hung with lace and scented, silken cerements--a jewelled mummy-
case--a thing that never was! - Do you understand my punishment a
little, now?"

"If it were true," he said in a dull voice, "you will have forgotten,
too."

"I pray I may," she said under her breath.

And, after a long silence: "Do you think, before the year is out, that
you might be granted enough courage?" he asked.

"No. I shall not even pray for it. I want what is offered me! I desire
it so blindly that already it has become part of me. I tell you the
poison is in every vein; there is nothing else but poison in me. I am
what I tell you, to the core. It is past my own strength of will to stop
me, now. If I am stopped, another must do it. My weakness for you, being
a treachery if not confessed, I was obliged to confess, horribly
frightened as I was. He might have stopped me; he did not. - And now,
what is there on earth to halt me? Love cannot. Common decency and
courage cannot. Fear of your unhappiness and mine cannot. No, even the
certitude of your contempt, some day, is powerless to halt me now. I
could not love; I am utterly incapable of loving you enough to balance
the sacrifice. And that is final."


Grace Ferrall came into the room and found a duel of silence in progress
under the dull fire-glow tinting the ceiling.

"Another quarrel," she commented, turning on the current of the drop-
light above the desk from which Siward had risen at her entrance. "You
quarrel enough to marry. Why don't you?"

"I wish we could," said Sylvia simply.

Grace laughed. "What a little fool you are!" she said tenderly, seating
herself in Siward's chair and dropping one hand over his where it rested
on the arm. "Stephen, can't you make her--a big, strong fellow like you?
Oh, well; on your heads be it! My conscience is now clear for the first
time, and I'll never meddle again." She gave Siward's hand a perfunctory
pat and released him with a discreetly stifled yawn. "I'm disgracefully
sleepy; the wind blew like fury along the coast. Sylvia, have you had a
good time at Shotover--the time of your life?"

Sylvia raised her eyes and encountered Siward's.

"I certainly have," she said faintly.

"C'est bien, chÈrie. Can you be as civil, Stephen--conscientiously? Oh,
that is very nice of you! But there's one thing: why on earth didn't you
make eyes at Marion? Life might be one long, blissful carnival of horse
and dog for you both. Oh, dear! there, I'm meddling again! Pinch me,
Sylvia, if I ever begin to meddle again! How did you come out at Bridge,
Stephen? What--bad as that? Gracious! this is disgraceful--this gambling
the way people do! I'm shocked and I'm going up to dress. Are you
coming, Sylvia?"


The dinner was very gay. The ceremony of christening the Shotover Cup,
which Quarrier had won, proceeded with presentation speech and a speech
of acceptance faultlessly commonplace, during which Quarrier wore his
smile--which was the only humorous thing he contributed.

The cup was full. Siward eyed it, perplexed, deadly afraid, yet seeing
no avenue of escape from what must appear a public exhibition of
contempt for Quarrier if he refused to taste its contents. That meant a
bad night for him; yet he shrank more from the certain misinterpretation
of a refusal to drink from the huge loving-cup with its heavy wreath of
scented orchids, now already on its way toward him, than he feared the
waking struggle so sure to follow.

Marion received the cup, lifted it in both hands, and said distinctly,
"Good Hunting!" as she drank to Quarrier. Her brother Gordon took it,
and drank entirely too much. Then Sylvia lifted it, her white hands half
buried among the orchids: "To you!" she murmured for Siward's ear alone;
then drank gaily, mischievously, "To the best shot at Shotover!" And
Siward took the cup: "I salute victory," he said, smiling, "always, and
everywhere! To him who takes the fighting chance and wins out! To the
best man! Health!" And he drank as a gentleman drinks, with a gay bow to
Quarrier, and with death in his heart.

Later, the irony of it struck him so grimly that he laughed; and Sylvia,
beside him, looked up, dismayed to see the gray change in his face.

"What is it?" she faltered, catching his eye; "why do you--why are you so
white?"

But he only smiled, as though he had misunderstood, saying:

"The survival of the fittest; that is the only test, after all. The man
who makes good doesn't whine for justice. There's enough of it in the
world to go round, and he who misses it gets all that's due him just the
same."

Later, at cards, the aromatic odour from Alderdene's decanter roused him
to fierce desire, but he fought it down until only the deadened, tearing
ache remained to shake and loosen every nerve. And when Ferrall,
finishing his usual batch of business letters, arrived to cut in if
needed, Siward dropped his cards with a shudder, and rose so utterly
unnerved that Captain Voucher, noticing his drawn face, asked him if he
were not ill.

He was leaving on an earlier train than the others, having decided to
pass through Boston and Deptford, at which latter place he meant to
leave Sagamore for the winter in care of the manager of his mother's
farm. So he took a quiet leave of those to whom the civility might not
prove an interruption--a word to Alderdene and Voucher as he passed out,
a quick clasp for Ferrall and for Grace, a carefully and cordially
formal parting from the Page boys, which pleased them ineffably.

Eileen and Rena, who had never had half a chance at him, took it now,
delighted to discipline their faithful Pages; and he submitted in his
own engagingly agreeable way, and so skilfully that both Eileen and Rena
felt sorry that they had not earlier understood how civilly anxious he
had been to devote himself to them alone. And they looked at the Pages,
exasperated.

In the big hall he passed Marion, and stopped to take his leave.

No, he would do no hunting this season either at Carysford or with the
two trial packs at Eastwood. Possibly at Warrenton later, but probably
not; business threatened to detain him in town more or less. - Of course
he'd come to see her when she returned to town. - And it had been a
jolly party, and it was a shame to sound "lights out" so soon! Good-bye.
- Good night. And that was all.

And that was all, unless he disturbed Sylvia, seated at cards with
Quarrier and Major Belwether and Leila Mortimer--and very intent on the
dummy, very still, and a trifle pallid with the pallor of concentration.

So--that was all, then.

Ascending the stairs, a servant handed him a letter bearing the crest of
the Lenox Club. He pocketed it unopened and continued his way.

In the darkness of his own room he sat down, the devil's own clutch on
his shrinking nerves, a deathly desire tearing at his very vitals, and
every vein a tiny trail of fire run riot. He had been too long without
it, too long to endure the craving aroused by that gay draught from
Quarrier's loving-cup.

The awakened fury of his desire appalled him, and for a while that
occupied him, enabling him to endure. But fear and dismay soon passed in
the purely physical distress; he walked the floor, haggard, the sweat
starting on his face; he lay with clenched hands, stiffened out across
the bed, deafened by the riotous clamour of his pulses, conscious that
he was holding out, unconscious how long he could hold out.

Crisis after crisis swept him; sometimes he found his feet and moved
blindly about the room.

Strange periods of calm intervened; sensation seemed deadened; and he
stood as a man who listens, scarcely daring to breathe lest the enemy
awake and seize him.

He turned on the light, later, to look for his pipe, and he caught a
glimpse of himself in the mirror. It was a sick man who stared back at
him out of hollow eyes, and the physical revulsion shocked him into
something resembling self-command.

"Damn you!" he said fiercely, setting his teeth and staring back at his
reflected face, "I'll kill you yet before I've finished with you!"

Then he filled his pipe, and opening his bedroom window, sat down,
resting his arm on the sill. A splendid moon silvered the sea; through
the intense stillness he heard the surf, magnificently dissonant among
the reefs, and he listened, fascinated, loathing the tides as he feared
and loathed the inexorable tides that surged and ebbed with his accursed
desire.

Once he said to himself, weakly--for he was deadly tired--"What am I
making the fight for, anyway?" And "Who are you making the fight for?"
echoed his heavy pulses.

He had asked that question and received that answer before. After all,
it had been for his mother's sake alone. And now--and now?--his heart beat
out another answer; and before his eyes two other eyes seemed to open,
fearlessly, sweetly, divinely tender. But they were no longer his
mother's grave, gray eyes.

After the second pipe he remembered his letter. It gave him something to
do, so he opened it and tried to read it, but for a long while, in his
confused physical and mental condition, he could make no sense of it.

Little by little he began to comprehend its purport that his resignation
was regretfully requested by the governors of the Lenox Club for reasons
unassigned.

The shock of the thing came to him after a while, like a distant, dull
report long after the flash of the explosion. Well, the affair, bad
enough at first, was turning worse, that was all. How much of that sort
of discredit could a man stand and keep his balance? - And what would
his mother say?

Confused from his own physical suffering, the blow had fallen with a
deadened force on nerves already numbed; but his half-stupefied
acquiescence had suddenly become a painful recoil when he remembered
where the brunt of the disgrace would fall--where the centre of suffering
must always be, and the keenest grief concentrated. Roused, appalled,
almost totally unnerved, he stood staring at the letter, beginning to
realise what it would mean to his mother. A passion of remorse and
resentment swept him. She must be spared that! There must be some
way--some punishment for his offence that could not strike her through
him! It was wicked, it was contemptible, insane, to strike her! What
were the governors of the Lenox about--a lot of snivelling hypocrites,
pandering to the horrified snobbery at the Patroons! Who were they,
anyway, to discipline him! Scarce one in fifty among the members of the
two clubs was qualified to sit in judgment on a Siward!

But that tempest of passion and mortification passed, too, leaving him
standing there, dumb, desperate, staring at the letter crushed in his
shaking hand.

He must see somebody, some member of the Lenox, and do
something--something! Ferrall! Was that Ferrall's step on the landing?

He sprang to the door and opened it. Quarrier, passing the corridor,
turned an expressionless visage toward him, and passed on with a nod
almost imperceptible.

"Quarrier!" he called, swept by a sudden impulse.

Quarrier halted and turned.

"Could you give me a moment--here in my room? I won't detain you."

The faint trace of surprise faded from Quarrier's face; he quietly
retraced his steps, and, entering Siward's room, stood silently
confronting its pallid tenant.

"Will you sit down a moment?"

Quarrier seated himself in the arm-chair by the window, and Siward found
a chair opposite.

"Quarrier," said the younger man, turning a tensely miserable face on
his visitor, "I want to ask you something. I'll not mince matters. You
know that the Patroons have dropped me, and you know what for."

"Yes, I know."

"When I was called before the Board of Governors to explain the matter,
if I could, you were sitting on that Board."

"Yes."

"I denied the charge, but refused to explain. - You remember?"

Quarrier nodded coldly.

"And I was dropped by the club!"

A slight inclination of Quarrier's symmetrical head corroborated him.

"Now," said Siward, slowly and very distinctly, "I shall tell you
unofficially what I refused to tell the other governors officially."
And, as he began speaking, Quarrier's face flushed, then the features
became immobile, set, and inert, and his eyes grew duller and duller, as
though, under a smooth surface the soul inside of him was shrinking back
into some dark corner, silent, watchful, suspicious, and perhaps
defiant.

"Mr. Quarrier," said Siward quietly, "I did not take that girl to the
Patroons Club--and you know it."

Quarrier was all surface now; he had drawn away internally so far that
even his eyes seemed to recede until they scarcely glimmered through the
slits in his colourless mask. And Siward went on:

"I knew perfectly well what sort of women I was to meet at that fool
supper Billy Fleetwood gave; and you must have, too, for the girl you
took in was no stranger to you. - Her name is Lydia Vyse, I believe."

The slightest possible glimmer in the elder man's eyes was all the
answer he granted.

"What happened," said Siward calmly, "was this: She bet me she could so
disguise herself that I could safely take her into any club in New York.
I bet her she couldn't. I never dreamed of trying. Besides, she was
your--dinner partner," he added with a shrug.

His concentrated gaze seemed at length to pierce the expressionless
surface of the other man, who moved slightly in his chair and moistened
his thin lips under the glossy beard.

"Quarrier," said Siward earnestly, "What happened in the club lobby I
don't exactly know, because I was not in a condition to know. I admit
it; that was the trouble with me. When I left Fleetwood's rooms I left
with a half dozen men. I remember crossing Fifth Avenue with them; and
the next thing I remember distinctly was loud talking in the club lobby,
and a number of men there, and a slim young fellow in Inverness and top
hat in the centre of a crowd, whose face was the face of that girl,
Lydia Vyse. And that is absolutely all. But I couldn't do more than deny
that I took her there unless I told what I knew; and of course that was
not possible, even in self-defence. But it was for you to admit that I
was right. And you did not. You dared not! You let another man blunder
into your private affairs and fall a victim to circumstantial evidence
which you could have refuted; and it was up to you to say something! And
you did not! - And now--what are you going to do? The Lenox Club has
taken this thing up. A man can't stand too much of that sort of thing.
What am I to do? I can't defend myself by betraying my accidental
knowledge of your petty, private affairs. So I leave it to you. I ask
you what are you going to do?"

"Do you mean"--Quarrier's voice was not his own, and he brought it
harshly under command--"do you mean that you think it necessary for me to
say I knew her? What object would be attained by that? I did not take
her to the Patroons'."

"Nor did I. Ask her how she got there. Learn the truth from her, man!"

"What proof is there that I ever met her before I took her into supper
at Fleetwood's?"

"Proof! Are you mad? All I ask of you is to say to the governors what I
cannot say without using your name."

"You wish me," asked Quarrier icily, "to deny that you made that wager?
I can do that."

"You can't do it! I did make that bet."

"Oh! Then, what is it you wish me to say?"

"Tell them the truth. Tell them you know I did not take her to the club.
You need not tell them why you know it. You need not tell them how much
you know about her, whose brougham she drove home in. I can't defend
myself at your expense--intrench myself behind your dirty little romance.
What could I say? I denied taking her to the club. Then Major Belwether
confronted me with my wager. Then I shut up. And so did you, Quarrier--so
did you, seated there among the governors, between Leroy Mortimer and
Belwether. It was up to you, and you did not stir!"

"Stir!" echoed the other man, exasperated. "Of course I did not stir.
What did I know about it? Do you think I care to give a man like
Mortimer a hold on me by admitting I knew anything?--or Belwether--do you
think I care to have that man know anything about my private and
personal business? Did you expect me to say that I was in a position to
prove anything one way or another? And," he added with increasing
harshness, "how do you know what I might or might not prove? If she went
to the Patroons Club, I did not go with her; I did not see her; I don't
know whether or not you took her."

"I have already told you that I did not take her," said Siward, turning
whiter.

"You told that to the governors, too. Tell them again, if you like. I
decline to discuss this matter with you. I decline to countenance your
unwarranted intrusion into what you pretend to believe are my private
affairs. I decline to confer with Belwether or Mortimer. It's enough
that you are inclined to meddle--" His cold anger was stirring. He rose
to his full, muscular height, slow, menacing, his long, pale fingers
twisting his silky beard. "It's enough that you meddle!" he repeated.
"As for the matter in question, a dozen men, including myself, heard you
make a wager; and later I myself was a witness that the terms of that
wager had been carried out to the letter. I know absolutely nothing
except that, Mr. Siward; nor, it appears, do you, for you were drunk at
the time, and you have admitted it to me."

"I have asked you," said Siward, rising, and very grave, "I have asked
you to do the right thing. Are you going to do it?"

"Is that a threat?" inquired Quarrier, showing the edges of his well-
kept teeth. "Is this intimidation, Mr. Siward? Do I understand that you
are proposing to bespatter others with scandal unless I am frightened
into going to the governors with the flimsy excuse you attempt to offer
me? In other words, Mr. Siward, are you bent on making me pay for what
you believe you know of my private life? Is it really intimidation?"

And still Siward stared into his half-veiled, sneering eyes, speechless.

"There is only one name used for this kind of thing," added Quarrier,
taking a quick involuntary step backward to the door as the blaze of
fury broke out in Siward's eyes.

"Good God! Quarrier," whispered Siward with dry lips, "what a cur you
are! What a cur!"

And long after Quarrier had passed the door and disappeared in the
corridor, Siward stood there, frozen motionless under the icy waves of
rage that swept him.

He had never before had an enemy worth the name; he knew he had one now.
He had never before hated; he now understood something of that, too. The
purely physical craving to take this man and crush him into eternal
quiescence had given place to a more terrible mental desire to punish.
His brain surged and surged under the first flood of a mortal hatred.
That the hatred was sterile made it the more intense, and, blinded by
it, he stood there or paced the room minute after minute, hearing
nothing but the wild clamour in his brain, seeing nothing but the
smooth, expressionless face of the man whom he could not reach.

Toward midnight, seated in his chair by the window, a deathly lassitude
weighing his heart, he heard the steps of people on the stairway, the
click of the ascending elevator, gay voices calling good night, a ripple
of laughter, the silken swish of skirts in the corridor, doors opening
and closing; then silence creeping throughout the house on the receding
heels of departure--a stillness that settled like a mist through hall and
corridor, accented for a few moments by distant sounds, then absolute,
echoless silence. And for a long while he sat there listening.

The cool wind from the ocean blew his curtains far into the room, where
they bellied out, fluttering, floating, subsiding, only to rise again in
the freshening breeze. He sat watching their silken convolutions,
stupidly, for a while, then rose and closed his window, and raised the
window on the south for purposes of air.

As he turned to adjust his transom, something white thrust under the
door caught his eye, and he walked over and drew it across the sill. It
was a sealed note. He opened it, reading it as he walked back to the
drop-light burning beside his bed:

"Did you not mean to say good-bye? Because it is to be good-bye for a
long, long time--for all our lives--as long as we live--as long as the
world lasts, and longer. - Good-bye--unless you care to say it to me."

He stood studying the note for a while; presently, lighting a match, he
set fire to it and carried it blazing to the grate and flung it in,
watching the blackened ashes curl up, glow, whiten, and fall in flakes
to the hearth. Then he went out into the corridor, and traversed the
hall to the passage which led to the bay-window. There was nobody there.
The stars looked in on him, twinkling with a frosty light; beneath, the
shadowy fronds of palms traced a pale pattern on the glass roof of the
swimming pool. He waited a moment, turned, retraced his steps to his own
door and stood listening. Then, moving swiftly, he walked the length of
the corridor, and, halting at her door, knocked once.

After a moment the door swung open. He stepped forward into the room,
closing the door behind him, and confronted the tall girl standing there
silhouetted against the lamp behind her.

"You are insane to do this!" she whispered. "I let you in for fear you'd
knock again!"

"I went to the bay-window," he said.

"You went too late. I was there an hour ago. I waited. Do you know what
time it is?"

"Come to the bay-window," he said, "if you fear me here."

"Do you know it is nearly three o'clock?" she repeated. "And you leave
at six.

"Shall we say good-bye here?" he asked coolly.

"Certainly. I dare not go out. And you--do you know the chances we are
running? You must be perfectly mad to come to my room. Do you think
anybody could have seen--heard you--"

"No. Good night." He offered his hand; she laid both of hers in it. He
could scarcely distinguish her features where she stood dark against the
brilliant light behind her.

"Good-bye," he whispered, kissing her hands where they lay in his.

"Good-bye." Her fingers closed convulsively, retaining his hands. "I
hope--I think that--you--" Her head was drooping; she could not control her
voice.

"Good-bye, Sylvia," he said again.

It was quite useless, she could not speak; and when he took her in his
arms she clung to him, quivering; and he kissed the wet lashes, and the
hot, trembling lips, and the smooth little hands crushed to his breast.

"We have a year yet," she gasped. "Dear, take me by force before it
ends. I--I simply cannot endure this. I told you to take me--to tear me
from myself. Will you do it? I will love you--truly, truly! Oh, my
darling, my darling! Don't--don't give me up! Can't you do something for
us? Can't you--"

"Will you come with me now?"

"How can--"

"Will you?"

A sudden sound broke out in the night--the distant pealing of the lodge-
gate bell. Startled, she shrank back; somebody in the adjoining room had
sprung to the floor and was opening the window.

"What is it?" she motioned with whitening lips. "Quick! oh, quick,
before you are seen! Grace may come! I--I beg of you to go!"

As he stepped into the corridor he heard, below, a sound at the great
door, and the stirring of the night watchman on post. At his own door he
turned, listening to the movement and whispering. Ferrall, in dressing-
gown and slippers, stepped into the corridor; below, the chains were
rattling as the wicket swung open. There was a brief parley at the door,
sounds of retreating steps on the gravel outside, sounds of approaching
steps on the stairway.

"What's that? A telegram?" said Ferrall sharply. "Here, give it to me. -
Wait! It isn't for me. It's for Mr Siward!"

Siward, standing at his open door, swayed slightly. A thrill of pure
fear struck him through and through. He laid one hand on the door to
steady himself, and stepped forward as Ferrall came up.

"Oh! You're awake, Stephen. Here's a telegram." He extended his hand.
Siward took the yellow envelope, fumbled it, tore it open.

"Good God!" whispered Ferrall; "is it bad?"

And Siward's glazed eyes stared and stared at the scrawled and inky
message:

"YOUR MOTHER IS VERY ILL. COME AT ONCE."

The signature was the name of their family physician, Grisby.