"Of course you can," replied she tactfully. "But why not take a rest first? Then there's old Burroughs—on the war path. Wouldn't it be wise to wait till he calms down?"

"If Burroughs or any other man is necessary to me," rejoined Fred, "the sooner I find it out the better. I ought to know just where I—I myself—stand."

"No one is necessary to you but yourself," said Ursula, proudly and sincerely. "But, Fred—Are you yourself just now?"

"No, I'm not," admitted he. "But the way to become so again isn't by waiting but by working." An expression of sheer wretchedness came into his listless, heavy eyes. "Urse, I've got to conquer my weakness now, or go under."

She was eager to hold on to the secure forty thousand a year—for his sake no less than for her own. She argued with him with all the adroitness of a mind as good in its way as his own. But she could not shake his resolution. And she in prudence, desisted when he said bitterly: "I see you've lost confidence in me. Well, I don't blame you. . . . So have I." Then after a moment, violently rather than strongly: "But I've got to get it back. If I don't I'm only putting off the smash—a complete smash."

"I don't see quite how it's to be arranged," said she, red and hesitating. For, she feared he would think her altogether selfish in her anxiety. He certainly would have been justified in so thinking; he knew how rarely generosity survived in the woman who leads the soft and idle life.

"How long can we keep on as we're living now—if there's nothing, or little, coming in?"

"I don't know," confessed she. She was as poor at finance as he, and had certainly not been improved by his habit of giving her whatever she happened to think was necessary. "I can't say. Perhaps a few months—I don't know—Not long, I'm afraid."

"Six months?"

"Oh, no. You see—the fact is—I've been rather careless about the bills. You're so generous, Fred—and one is so busy in New York. I guess we owe a good deal—here and there and yonder. And—the last few days some of the tradespeople have been pressing for payment."

"You see!" exclaimed he. "The report is going round that I'm ruined and done for. I've simply got to make good. If you can't keep up a front, shut up the house and go abroad. You can stay till I've got my foot back on its neck."

She believed in him, at bottom. She could not conceive how appearances and her forebodings could be true. Such strength as his could not be overwhelmed thus suddenly. And by so slight a thing!—by an unsatisfied passion for a woman, and an insignificant woman, at that. For, like all women, like all the world for that matter, she measured a passion by the woman who was the object of it, instead of by the man who fabricated it. "Yes—I'll go abroad," said she, hopefully.

"Quietly arrange for a long stay," he advised. "I hope it won't be long. But I never plan on hope."

Thus, with his sister and Fitzhugh out of the way and the heaviest of his burdens of expense greatly lightened, he set about rehabitating himself. He took an office, waited for clients. And clients came—excellent clients. Came and precipitately left him.

There were two reasons for it. The first—the one most often heard—was the story going round that he had been, and probably still was, out of his mind. No deadlier or crueler weapon can be used against a man than that same charge as to his sanity. It has been known to destroy, or seriously maim, brilliant and able men with no trace of any of the untrustworthy kinds of insanity. Where the man's own conduct gives color to the report, the attack is usually mortal. And Norman had acted the crazy man. The second reason was the hostility of Burroughs, reinforced by all the hatreds and jealousies Norman's not too respectful way of dealing with his fellow men had been creating through fifteen years.

The worst moment in the life of a man who has always proudly regarded himself as above any need whatever from his fellow men is when he discovers all in a flash, that the timid animal he spurned as it fawned has him upon his back, has its teeth and claws at his helpless throat.

For four months he stood out against the isolation, the suspicion as to his sanity, the patronizing pity of men who but a little while before had felt honored when he spoke to them. For four months he gave battle to unseen and silent foes compassing him on every side. He had no spirit for the fight; his love of Dorothy Hallowell and his complete rout there had taken the spirit out of him—and with it had gone that confidence in himself and in his luck which had won him so many critical battles. Then—He had been keeping up a large suite of offices, a staff of clerks and stenographers and all the paraphernalia of the great and successful lawyer. He had been spreading out the little business he got in a not unsuccessful effort to make it appear big and growing. He now gave up these offices and the costly pride, pomp and circumstance—left with several thousand dollars owing. He took two small rooms in a building tenanted by beginners and cheap shysters. He continued to live at his club, where even the servants were subtly insolent to him; he could see the time approaching when he might have to let himself be dropped for failing to pay dues and bills.

He stared at his ruin in stupid and dazed amazement. Usually, to hear or to read about such a catastrophe as this is to get a vague, rather impressive notion of something picturesque and romantic. Ruined, like all the big fateful words, has a dignified sound. But the historians and novelists and poets and other keepers of human records have a pleasant, but not very honest way, of omitting practically all the essentials from their records and substituting glittering imaginings that delight the reader—and wofully mislead him as to the truth about life. What wonder that we learn slowly—and improve slowly. How wofully we have been, and are, misled by all upon whom we have relied as teachers.

Already one of these charming tales of majestic downfall was in process of manufacture, with Frederick Norman as the central figure. It was only awaiting his suicide or some other mode of complete submergence for its final glose of glamor. In this manufacture, the truth, as usual, had been almost omitted; such truth as was retained for this artistic version of a human happening was so perverted that it was falser than the simon pure fictions with which it was interwoven. Just as the literal truth about his success was far from being altogether to his credit, so the literal truth as to his fall gave him little of the vesture of the hero, and that little ill fitting, to cover his naked humanness. Let him who has risen to material success altogether by methods approved by the idealists, let him who has fallen from on high with graceful majesty, without hysterical clutchings and desperate attempts at self-salvation in disregard of the safety of others—let either of these superhuman beings come forward with the first stone for Norman.

Those at some distance from the falling man could afford to be romantic and piteous over his fate. Those in his dangerous neighborhood were too busy getting out of the way. "Man falling—stand from under!" was the cry—how familiar it is!—and acquaintances and friends fled in mad skedaddle. He would surely be asking favors—would be trying to borrow money. It is no peculiarity of rats to desert a sinking ship; it is simply an inevitable precaution in a social system modeled as yet upon nature's cruel law of the survival of the fittest. A falling man is first of all a warning to all other men high enough up to be able to fall—a warning to them to take care lest they fall also where footing is so insecure and precipices and steeps beset every path.

Norman, falling, falling, gazed round him and up and down, in dazed wonder. He had seen many others fall. He had seen just where and just why they missed their footing. And he had been confident that with him no such misstep was possible. He could not believe; a little while, and luck would turn, and up he would go again—higher than before. Many a lawyer—to look no farther than his own profession—had through recklessness or pride or inadvertence got the big men down on him. But after a time they had relented or had found an exact use for him; and fall had been succeeded by rise. Was there a single instance where a man of good brain had been permanently downed? No, not one. Stay—Some of these unfortunates had failed to reappear on the heights of success. Yes, thinking of the matter, he recalled several such. Had he been altogether right in assuming, in his days of confidence and success, that they stayed down because they belonged down? Perhaps he had judged them harshly? Yes, he was sure he had judged them harshly. There was such a thing as breaking a proud spirit—and he found within himself apparent proof that precisely this calamity had befallen him.

There came a time—and it came soon—when he had about exhausted his desperate ingenuity at cornering acquaintances and former friends and "sticking them up" for loans of five hundred, a hundred, fifty, twenty-five—Because these vulgar and repulsive facts are not found in the usual records of the men who have dropped and come up again, do not imagine that only the hopeless and never-reappearing failures pass through such experiences. On the contrary, they are part of the common human lot, and few indeed are the men who have not had them—and worse—if they could but be brought to tell the truth. Destiny rarely permits any one of us to go from cradle to grave without doing many a thing shameful and universally condemned. How could it be otherwise under our social system? When Norman was about at the end of all his resources Tetlow called on him—Tetlow, now a partner in the Lockyer firm.

He came with an air of stealth. "I don't want anyone to know I'm doing this," said he frankly. "If it got out, I'd be damaged and you'd not profit."

Rarely does anyone, however unworthy—and Fred Norman was far from unworthy, as we humans go—rarely does anyone find himself absolutely without a friend. There is a saying that no man ever sunk so low, ever became so vile and squalid in soul and body, but that if he were dying, and the fact were noised throughout the world, some woman somewhere would come—perhaps from a sense of duty, perhaps from love, perhaps for the sake of a moment of happiness long past but never equaled, and so never forgotten—but from whatever motive, she would come. In the same manner, anyone in dire straits can be sure of some friend. There were several others whom Norman had been expecting—men he had saved by his legal ingenuity at turning points in their careers. None of these was so imprudent as uselessly to involve himself. It was Tetlow who came—Tetlow, with whom his accounts were more than balanced, with the balance against him. Tetlow, whom he did not expect.

Norman did not welcome him effusively. He said at once: "How is—she?"

Tetlow shifted uneasily. "I don't know. She's not with us. I gave her a place there—to get her away from Culver. But she didn't stay long. No doubt she's doing well."

"I thought you cared about her," said Norman, who in estimating Tetlow's passion had measured it by his own, had neglected to consider that the desires of most men soon grow short of breath and weary of leg.

"Yes—so I did care for her," said Tetlow, in the voice of a man who has been ill but is now well. "But that's all over. Women aren't worth bothering about much. They're largely vanity. The way they soon take a man for granted if he's at all kind to them discourages any but the poorest sort of fool. At least that's my opinion."

"Then you don't come from her?" said Norman with complete loss of interest in his caller.

"No. I've come—Fred, I hear you're in difficulties."

Norman's now deep-set eyes gleamed humorously in his haggard and failed-looking face. "In difficulties? Not at all. I'm under them—drowned forty fathoms deep."

"Then you'll not resent my coming straight to the point and asking if I can help you?"

"That's a rash offer, Tetlow. I never suspected rashness was one of your qualities."

"I don't mean to offer you a loan or anything of that sort," pursued Tetlow. "There's only one thing that can help a man in your position. He must either be saved outright or left to drown. I've come with something that may save you."

There was so much of the incongruous in a situation where he was listening to an offer of salvation from such a man as Billy Tetlow that Norman smiled.

"Well, what is it?" he said.

"There's a chance that within six months or so—perhaps sooner—Burroughs and Galloway may end their truce and declare war on each other. If so, Galloway will win. Anyhow, the Galloway connection would be better than the Burroughs connection."

Norman looked at Tetlow shrewdly. "How do you know this?" he asked.

Tetlow's eyes shifted. "Can't tell you. But I know."

"Galloway hates me."

Tetlow nodded. "You were the one who forced him into a position where he had to make peace with Burroughs. But Galloway's a big man, big enough to admire ability wherever he sees it. He has admired you ever since."

"And has given his business to another firm."

"But if the break comes he'll need you. And he's the sort of man who doesn't hesitate to take what he needs."

"Too remote," said Norman, and his despondent gesture showed how quickly hope had lighted up. "Besides, Billy, I've lost my nerve. I'm no good."

"But you've gotten over that—that attack of insanity."

Norman shook his head.

"I can't understand it," ejaculated Tetlow.

"Of course you can't," said Norman. "But—there it is."

"You haven't seen her lately?"

"Not since that day ... Billy, she hasn't—" Norman stopped, and Tetlow saw that his hands were trembling with agitation, and marveled.

"Oh, no," replied Tetlow. "So far as I know, she's still respectable. But—why don't you go to see her? I think you'd be cured."

"Why do you say that?" demanded Norman, the veins in his forehead bulging with the fury he was ready to release.

"For no especial reason—on my honor, Fred," replied Tetlow. "Simply because time works wonders in all sorts of ways, including infatuations. Also—well, the fact is, it didn't seem to me that young lady improved on acquaintance. Maybe I got tired, or piqued—I don't know. If she hadn't been a silly little fool, would she have refused you? I know it sounds well—in a novel or a play—for a poor girl to refuse a good offer, just from sentiment. But, all the same, only a fool girl does it—in life—eh? But go to see her. You'll understand what I mean, I think. I want you to brace up. That may help."

"What's she doing?"

"I don't know. I'll send you her address. I can get it. About Galloway—If that break comes, I propose that we get his business—you and I. I want you for a partner. I always did. I think I know how to get work out of you. I understand you better, than anyone else. That's why I'm here."

"It's useless," said Norman.

"I'm willing to take the risk. Now, here's what I propose. I'll stake you to the extent of a thousand dollars a month for the next six months, you to keep on as you are and not to tie yourself up to any other lawyer, or to any client likely to hamper us if we get the Galloway business."

"I've been borrowing right and left——"

"I know about that," interrupted Tetlow. "I'm not interested. If you'll agree to my proposal, I'll take my chances."

"You are throwing away six thousand dollars."

"I owe you a position where I make five times that much."

Norman shrugged his shoulders. "Very well. Can I have five hundred at once?"

"I'll send you a check to-day. I'll send two checks a month—the first and the fifteenth."

"I am drinking a great deal."

"You always did."

"Not until recently. I never knew what drinking meant until these last few months."

"Well, do as you like with the money. Drink it all, if you please. I'm making no conditions beyond the two I stated."

"You will send me that address?"

"In the letter with the check."

"Will she see me, do you think?"

"I haven't an idea," replied Tetlow.

"What's the mystery?" asked Norman. "Why do you speak of her so indifferently?"

"It's the way I feel." Then, in answer to the unspoken suspicion once more appearing in Norman's eyes, he added: "She's a very nice, sweet girl, Norman—so far as I know or believe. Beyond that—Go to see her."

It had been many a week since Norman had heard a friendly voice. The very sound of the human voice had become hateful to him, because he was constantly detecting the note of nervousness, the scarcely concealed fear of being entangled in his misfortunes. As Tetlow rose to go, Norman tried to detain him. The sound of an unconstrained voice, the sight of a believing face that did not express one or more of the shadings of contempt between pity and aversion—the sight and sound of this friend Tetlow was acting upon him like one of those secret, unexpected, powerful tonics which nature at times suddenly injects into a dying man to confound the doctors and cheat death.

"Tetlow," said he, "I'm down—probably down for good. But if I ever get up again, I'll not make one mistake—the one that cost me this fall. Do you know what that mistake was?"

"I suppose you mean Miss Hallowell?"

"No," said Norman, to his surprise. "I mean my lack of money, of capital, of a large and secure income. I used to imagine that brains were the best, the only sure asset. I was guilty of the stupidity of overvaluing my own possessions."

"Brains are a mighty good asset, Fred."

"Yes—and necessary. But a man of action must have under his brains another asset—must have it, Billy. The one secure asset is a big capital. Money rules this world. Some men have been lucky enough to rise and stay risen, without money. But not a man of all the men who have been knocked out could have been dislodged if he had been armed and armored with money. My prodigality was my fatal mistake. I shan't make it again—if I get the chance. You don't know, Tetlow, how hard it is to get money when you are tumbling and must have it. I never dreamed what a factor it is in calamities of every sort. It's the factor."

"I don't like to hear you talk that way, Norman," said Tetlow earnestly. "I've always most admired in you the fact that you weren't mercenary."

"And I never shall be," said Norman, with the patient smile of a swift, keen mind at one that is slow and hard to make understand. "It isn't my nature. But, if I'm resurrected, I'll seem to be mercenary until I get a full suit of the only armor that's invulnerable in this world. Why, I built my fort like a fool. It was impregnable except for one thing—one obvious thing. It hadn't a supply of water. If I build again it'll be round a spring—an income big enough for my needs and beyond anybody's power to cut off."

Tetlow showed that he was much cheered by Norman's revived interest in life. But he went away uneasy; for the last thing Norman said to him was:

"Don't forget that address!"



XV

But it chanced that Norman met her in the street about an hour after Tetlow's call.

He was on the way to lunch at the Lawyer's Club—one of those apparent luxuries that are the dire and pitiful necessities of men in New York fighting to maintain the semblance and the reputation of prosperity. It must not be imagined by those who are here let into Norman's inmost secrets that his appearance betrayed the depth to which he had fallen. At least to the casual eye he seemed the same rich and powerful personage. An expert might have got at a good part of the truth from his somber eyes and haggard face, from the subtle transformation of the former look of serene pride into the bravado of pretense. And as, in a general way, the facts of his fall were known far and wide, all his acquaintances understood that his seeming of undiminished success was simply the familiar "bluff." Its advantage to him with them lay in its raising a doubt as to just what degree of disaster it hid—no small advantage. Nor was this "bluff" altogether for the benefit of the outside world. It made his fall less hideously intolerable to himself. In the bottom of his heart he knew that when drink and no money should finally force him to release his relaxing hold upon his fashionable clubs, upon luxurious attire and habits, he would suddenly and with accelerated speed drop into the abyss—We have all caught glimpses of that abyss—frayed fine linen cheaply laundered, a tie of one time smartness showing signs of too long wear, a suit from the best kind of tailor with shiny spot glistening here, patch peeping there, a queer unkemptness about the hair and skin—these the beginnings of a road that leads straight and short to the barrel-house, the park bench, and the police station. Because, when a man strikes into that stretch of the road to perdition, he ceases to be one of our friends, passes from view entirely, we have the habit of saying that such things rarely if ever happen. But we know better. Many's the man now high who has had the sort of drop Norman was taking. We remember when he was making a bluff such as Norman was making in those days; but we think now that we were mistaken in having suspected it of being bluff.

Norman, dressed with more than ordinary care—how sensitive a man becomes about those things when there is neither rustle nor jingle in his pockets, and his smallest check would be returned with the big black stamp "No Funds"—Norman, groomed to the last button, was in Broadway near Rector Street. Ahead of him he saw the figure of a girl—a trim, attractive figure, slim and charmingly long of line. A second glance, and he recognized her. What was the change that had prevented his recognizing her at once? He had not seen that particular lightish-blue dress before—nor the coquettish harmonizing hat. But that was not the reason. No, it was the coquetry in her toilet—the effort of the girl to draw attention to her charms by such small devices as are within the reach of extremely modest means. He did not like this change. It offended his taste; it alarmed his jealousy.

He quickened his step, and when almost at her side spoke her name—"Miss Hallowell."

She stopped, turned. As soon as she recognized him there came into her quiet, lovely face a delightful smile. He could not conceal his amazement. She was glad to see him! Instantly, following the invariable habit of an experienced analytical mind, he wondered for what unflattering reason this young woman who did not like him was no longer showing it, was seeming more than a little pleased to see him. "Why, how d'ye do, Mr. Norman?" said she. And her friendliness and assurance of manner jarred upon him. There was not a suggestion of forwardness; but he, used to her old-time extreme reserve, felt precisely as if she were bold and gaudy, after the fashion of so many of the working girls who were popular with the men.

This unfavorable impression disappeared—or, rather, retired to the background—even as it became definite. And once more he was seeing the charms of physical loveliness, of physical—and moral, and mental—mystery that had a weird power over him. As they shook hands, a quiver shot through him as at the shock of a terrific stimulant; and he stood there longing to take her in his arms, to feel the delicate yet perfect and vividly vital life of that fascinating form—longing to kiss that sensitive, slightly pouted rosy mouth, to try to make those clear eyes grow soft and dreamy——

She was saying: "I've been wondering what had become of you."

"I saw Tetlow," he said. "He promised to send me your address."

At Tetlow's name she frowned slightly; then a gleam of ridicule flitted into her eyes. "Oh, that silly, squeamish old maid! How sick I got of him!"

Norman winced, and his jealousy stirred. "Why?" he asked.

"Always warning me against everybody. Always giving me advice. It was too tiresome. And at last he began to criticize me—the way I dressed—the way I talked—said I was getting too free in my manner. The impudence of him!"

Norman tried to smile.

"He'd have liked me to stay a silly little mouse forever."

"So you've been—blossoming out?" said Norman.

"In a quiet way," replied she, with a smile of self-content, so lovely as a smile that no one would have minded its frank egotism. "There isn't much chance for fun—unless a girl goes too far. But at the same time I don't intend life to be Sunday when it isn't work. I got very cross with him—Mr. Tetlow, I mean. And I took another position. It didn't pay quite so well—only fifteen a week. But I couldn't stand being watched—and guyed by all the other girls and boys for it."

"Where are you working?"

"With an old lawyer named Branscombe. It's awful slow, as I'm the only one, and he's old and does everything in an old-fashioned way. But the hours are easy, and I don't have to get down till nine—which is nice when you've been out at a dance the night before."

Norman kept his eyes down to hide from her the legion of devils of jealousy. "You have changed," he said.

"I'm growing up," replied she with a charming toss of her small head—what beautiful effects the sunlight made in among those wavy strands and strays!

"And you're as lovely as ever—lovelier," he said—and his eyes were the eyes of the slave she had spurned.

She did not spurn him now—and it inflamed his jealousy that she did not. She said: "Oh, what's the good of looks? The town's full of pretty girls. And so many of them have money—which I haven't. To make a hit in New York a girl's got to have both looks and dress. But I must be going. I've an engagement to lunch—" She gave a proud little smile—"at the Astor House. It's nice upstairs there."

"With Bob Culver?"

She laughed. "I haven't seen him since I left his office. You know, Mr. Tetlow took me with him—back to your old firm. I didn't like Mr. Culver. I don't care for those black men. They are bad-tempered and two-faced. Anyhow, I'd not have anything to do with a man who wanted to slip round with me as if he were ashamed of me."

She was looking at Norman pleasantly enough. He wasn't sure that the hit was for him as well as for Culver, but he flushed deeply. "Will you lunch with me at the Astor House at one to-morrow?"

"I've got an engagement," said she. "And I must be going. I'm awfully late." He had an instinct that her engagement on both days was with the same man. "I'm glad to have seen you——"

"Won't you let me call on you?" he said imploringly, but with the suggestion that he had no hope of being permitted to come.

"Certainly," responded she with friendly promptness. She opened the shopping bag swinging on her arm. "Here is one of my cards."

"When? This evening?"

Her laugh showed the beautiful deep pink and dazzling white behind her lips. "No—I'm going to a party."

"Let me take you."

She shook her head. "You wouldn't like it. Only young people."

"But I'm not so old."

She looked at him critically. "No—you're not. It always puzzled me. You aren't old—you look like a boy lots of the time. But you always seem old to me."

"I'll try to do better. To-night?"

"Not to-night," laughed she. "Let's see—to-morrow's Sunday. Come to-morrow—about half past two."

"Thank you," he said so gratefully that he cursed himself for his folly as he heard his voice—the idiotic folly of so plainly betraying his feelings. No wonder she despised him! Beginning again—and beginning; wrong.

"Good-by." Her eyes, her smile flashed and he was alone, watching her slender grace glide through the throngs of lower Broadway.

At his office again at three, he found a note from Tetlow inclosing another of Dorothy's cards and also the promised check. Into his face came the look that always comes into the faces of the prisoners of despair when the bolts slide back and the heavy door swings and hope stands on the threshold instead of the familiar grim figure of the jailer. "This looks like the turn of the road," he muttered. Yes, a turn it certainly was—but was it the turn? "I'll know more as to that," said he with a glance at the clock, "about this time to-morrow."

* * * * *

It was a boarding house on the west side. And when the slovenly, smelly maid said, "Go right up to her room," he knew it was—probably respectable, but not rigidly respectable. However, working girls must receive, and they cannot afford parlors and chaperons. Still—It was no place for a lovely young girl, full of charm and of love of life—and not brought up in the class where the women are trained from babyhood to protect themselves.

He ascended two flights, knocked at the door to the rear. "Come!" called a voice, and he entered. It was a small neat room, arranged comfortably and with some taste. He recognized at first glance many little things from her room in the Jersey City house—things he had provided for her. On the chimney piece was a large photograph of her father—Norman's eyes hastily shifted from that. The bed was folded away into a couch—for space and for respectability. At first he did not see her. But when he advanced a step farther, she was disclosed in the doorway of a deep closet that contained a stationary washstand.

He had never seen her when she was not fully dressed. He was now seeing her in a kind of wrapper—of pale blue, clean but not fresh. It was open at the throat; its sleeves fell away from her arms. And, to cap the climax of his agitation, her hair, her wonderful hair, was flowing loosely about her face and shoulders.

"What's the matter with you?" she cried laughingly. Her eyes sparkled and danced; the waves of her hair, each hair standing out as if it were alive, sparkled and danced. It was a smile never to be forgotten. "Why are you so embarrassed?"

He was embarrassed. He was thrilled. He was enraged—enraged because, if she would thus receive him whom she did not like, she would certainly thus receive any man.

"I don't mind you," she went on, mockingly. "I'd have to be careful if it was one of the boys."

"Do you receive the—boys—here?" demanded he glumly, his voice arrogant with the possessive rights a man feels when he cares for a woman, whether she cares for him or not.

"Why not?" scoffed she. "Where else would I see them? I don't make street corner dates, thank you. You're as bad as fat, foolish Mr. Tetlow."

"I beg your pardon," said he humbly.

She straightway relented, saying: "Of course I'd not let one of the boys come up when I was dressed like this. But I didn't mind you." He winced at this amiable, unconscious reminder of her always exasperating and tantalizing and humiliating indifference to him—"And as I'm going to a grand dance to-night I simply had to wash my hair. Does that satisfy you, Mr. Primmey?"

He hid the torment of his reopened wound and seated himself at the center table. She returned to a chair in the window where the full force of the afternoon sun would concentrate upon her hair. And he gazed spell bound. He had always known that her hair was fine. He had never dreamed it was like this. It was thick, it was fine and soft. In color, as the sunbeams streamed upon it, it was all the shades of gold and all the other beautiful shades between brown and red. It fell about her face, about her neck, about her shoulders in a gorgeous veil. And her pure white skin—It was an even more wonderful white below the line of her collar—where he had never seen it before. Such exquisitely modeled ears—such a delicate nose—and the curve of her cheeks—and the glory of her eyes! He clinched his teeth and his hands, sat dumb with his gaze down.

"How do you like my room?" she chattered on. "It's not so bad—really quite comfortable—though I'm afraid I'll be cold when the weather changes. But it's the best I can do. As it is, I don't see how I'm going to make ends meet. I pay twelve of my fifteen for this room and two meals. The rest goes for lunch and car fare. As soon as I have to get clothes—" She broke off, laughing.

"Well," he said, "what then?"

"I'm sure I don't know," replied she carelessly. "Perhaps old Mr. Branscombe'll give me a raise. Still, eighteen or twenty is the most I could hope for—and that wouldn't mean enough for clothes."

She shook her head vigorously and her hair stood out yet more vividly and the sunbeams seemed to go mad with joy as they danced over and under and through it. He had ventured to glance up; again he hastily looked down.

"You spoiled me," she went on. "Those few months over there in Jersey City. It made such a change in me, though I didn't realize it at the time. You see, I hadn't known since I was a tiny little girl what it was to live really decently, and so I was able to get along quite contentedly. I didn't know any better." She made a wry face. "How I loathe the canned and cold storage stuff I have to eat nowadays. And how I do miss the beautiful room I had in that big house over there! and how I miss Molly and Pat—and the garden—and doing as I pleased—and the clothes I had: I thought I was being careful and not spoiling myself. You may not believe it, but I was really conscientious about spending money." She laughed in a queer, absent way. "I had such a funny idea of what I had a right to do and what I hadn't. And I didn't spend so very much on out-and-out luxury. But—enough to spoil me for this life."

As Norman listened, as he noted—in her appearance, manner, way of talking—the many meaning signs of the girl hesitating at the fork of the roads—he felt within him the twinges of fear, of jealousy—and through fear and jealousy, the twinges of conscience. She was telling the truth. He had undermined her ability to live in purity the life to which her earning power assigned her. . . . Why had she been so friendly to him? Why had she received him in this informal, almost if not quite inviting fashion?

"So you think I've changed?" she was saying. "Well—I have. Gracious, what a little fool I was!"

His eyes lifted with an agonized question in them.

She flushed, glanced away, glanced at him again with the old, sweet expression of childlike innocence which had so often made him wonder whether it was merely a mannerism, or was a trick, or was indeed a beam from a pure soul. "I'm foolish still—in certain ways," she said significantly.

"And you always intend to be?" suggested he with a forced smile.

"Oh—yes," replied she—positively enough, yet it somehow had not the full force of her simple short statements in the former days.

He believed her. Perhaps because he wished to believe, must believe, would have been driven quite mad by disbelief. Still, he believed. As yet she was good. But it would not last much longer. With him—or with some other. If with him, then certainly afterward with another—with others. No matter how jealously he might guard her, she would go that road, if once she entered it. If he would have her for his very own he must strengthen her, not weaken her, must keep her "foolish still—in certain ways."

He said: "There's nothing in the other sort of life."

"That's what they say," replied she, with ominous irritation. "Still—some girls—lots of girls seem to get on mighty well without being so terribly particular."

"You ought to see them after a few years."

"I'm only twenty-one," laughed she. "I've got lots of time before I'm old. . . . You haven't—married?"

"No," said he.

"I thought I'd have heard, if you had." She laughed queerly—again shook out her hair, and it shimmered round her face and over her head and out from her shoulders like flames. "You've got a kind of a—Mr. Tetlow way of talking. It doesn't remind me of you as you were in Jersey City."

She said nothing, she suggested nothing that had the least impropriety in it, or faintest hint of impropriety. It was nothing positive, nothing aggressive, but a certain vague negative something that gave him the impression of innocence still innocent but looking or trying to look tolerantly where it should not. And he felt dizzy and sick, stricken with shame and remorse and jealous fear. Yes—she was sliding slowly, gently, unconsciously down to the depth in which he had been lying, sick and shuddering—no, to deeper depths—to the depths where there is no light, no trace of a return path. And he had started her down. He had done it when he, in his pride and selfishness, had ignored what the success of his project would mean for her. But he knew now; in bitterness and shame and degradation he had learned. "I was infamous!" he said to himself.

She began to talk in a low, embarrassed voice:

"Sometimes I think of getting married. There's a young man—a young lawyer—he makes twenty-five a week, but it'll be years and years before he has a good living. A man doesn't get on fast in New York unless he has pull."

Norman, roused from his remorse, blazed inside. "You are in love with him?"

She laughed, and he could not tell whether it was to tease him or to evade.

"You'd not care about him long," said Norman, "unless there were more money coming in than he'd be likely to get soon. Love without money doesn't go—at least, not in New York."

"Do you suppose I don't know that?" said she with the irritation of one faced by a hateful fact. "Still—I don't see what to do."

Norman, biting his lip and fuming and observing her with jealous eyes, said in the best voice he could command, "How long have you been in love with him?"

"Did I say I was in love?" mocked she.

"You didn't say you weren't. Who is he?"

"If you'll stay on about half an hour or so, you'll see him. No—you can't. I've got to get dressed before I let him up. He has very strict ideas—where I'm concerned."

"Then why did you let me come up?" Norman said, with a penetrating glance.

She lowered her gaze and a faint flush stole into her cheeks. Was it confession of the purpose he suspected? Or, was it merely embarrassment?

"I heard of a case once," continued Norman, his gaze significantly direct, "the case of a girl who was in love with a poor young fellow. She wanted money—luxury. Also, she wanted the poor young fellow."

The color flamed into the girl's face, then left it pale. Her white fingers fluttered with nervous grace into her masses of hair and back to her lap again, to rest there in timid quiet.

"She knew another man," pursued Norman, "one who was able to give her what she wanted in the way of comfort. So, she decided to make an arrangement with the man, and keep it hidden from her lover—and in that way get along pleasantly until her lover was in better circumstances ."

Her gaze was upon her hands, listless in her lap. He felt that he had spoken her unspoken, probably unformed thoughts. Yes, unformed. Men and women, especially women, habitually pursued these unacknowledged and—even unformed purposes, in their conflicts of the desire to get what they wanted and their desire to appear well to themselves.

"What would you think of an arrangement like that?" asked he, determined to draw her secret heart into the open where he could see, where she could see.

She lifted frank, guileless eyes to his. "I suppose the girl was trying to do the best she could."

"What do you think of a girl who'd do that?"

"I don't judge anybody—any more. I've found out that this world isn't at all as I thought—as I was taught."

"Would you do it?"

She smiled faintly. "No," she replied uncertainly. Then she restored his wavering belief in her essential honesty and truthfulness by adding: "That is to say, I don't think I would."

She busied herself with her hair, feeling it to see whether it was not yet dry, spreading it out. He looked at her unseeingly. At last she said: "You must go. I've got to get dressed."

"Yes—I must be going," said he absently, rising and reaching for his hat on the center table.

She stood up, put out her hand. "I'm glad you came."

"Thank you," said he, still in the same abstraction. He shook hands with her, moved hesitatingly toward the door. With his hand on the knob he turned and glanced keenly at her. He surprised in her face a look of mystery—of seriousness, of sadness—was there anxiety in it, also? And then he saw a certain elusive reminder of her father—and it brought to him with curious force the memory of how she had been brought up, of what must be hers by inheritance and by training—she, the daughter of a great and simple and noble man——

"You'll come again?" she said, and there was the note in her voice that made his nerves grow tense and vibrate.

But he seemed not to have heard her question. Still at the unopened door, he folded his arms upon his chest and said, speaking rapidly yet with the deliberation of one who has thought out his words in advance:

"I don't know what kind of girl you are. I never have known. I've never wanted to know. If you told me you were—what is called good, I'd doubt it. If you told me you weren't, I'd want to kill you and myself. They say there's a fatal woman for every man and a fatal man for every woman. I always laughed at the idea—until you. I don't know what to make of myself."

She suddenly laid her finger on her lips. It irritated him, to discover that, as he talked, speaking the things that came from the very depths of his soul, she had been giving him only part of her attention, had been listening for a step on the stairs. He was hearing the ascending step now. He frowned. "Can't you send him away?" he asked.

"I must," said she in a low tone. "It wouldn't do for him to know you were here. He has strict ideas—and is terribly jealous."

A few seconds of silence, then a knock on the other side of the door.

"Who's there?" she called.

"I'm a little early," came in an agreeable, young man's voice. "Aren't you ready?"

"Not nearly," replied she, in a laughing, innocent voice. "You'll have to go away for half an hour."

"I'll wait out here on the steps."

Her eyes were sparkling. A delicate color had mounted to her skin. Norman, watching her jealously, clinched his strong jaws. She said: "No—you must go clear away. I don't want to feel that I'm being hurried. Don't come back until a quarter past four."

"All right. I'm crazy to see you." This in the voice of a lover. She smiled radiantly at Norman, as if she thought he would share in her happiness at these evidences of her being well loved. The unseen young man said: "Exactly a quarter past. What time does your clock say it is now?"

"A quarter to," replied she.

"That's what my watch says. So there'll be no mistake. For half an hour—good-by!"

"Half an hour!" she called.

She and Norman stood in silence until the footsteps died away. Then she said crossly to Norman: "You ought to have gone before. I don't like to do these things."

"You do them well," said he, with a savage gleam.

She was prompt and sure with his punishment. She said, simply and sweetly: "I'd do anything to keep his good opinion of me."

Norman felt and looked cowed. "You don't know how it makes me suffer to see you fond of another man," he cried.

She seemed not in the least interested, went to the mirror of the bureau and began to inspect her hair with a view to doing it up. "You can go in five minutes," said she. "By that time he'll be well out of the way. Anyhow, if he saw you leaving the house he'd not know but what you had been to see some one else. He knows you by reputation but not by sight."

Norman went to her, took her by the shoulders gently but strongly. "Look at me," he said.

She looked at him with an expression, or perhaps absence of expression, that was simple listening.

"If you meant awhile ago some such thing as I hinted—I will have nothing to do with it. You must marry me—or it's nothing at all."

Her gaze did not wander, but before his wondering eyes she seemed to fade, fade toward colorlessness insignificance. The light died from her eyes, the flush of health from her white skin, the freshness from her lips, the sparkle and vitality from her hair. A slow, gradual transformation, which he watched with a frightened tightening at the heart.

She said slowly: "You—want—me—to—marry—you?"

"I've always wanted it, though I didn't realize," replied he. "How else could I be sure of you? Besides—" He flushed, added hurriedly, almost in an undertone—"I owe it to you."

She seated herself deliberately.

After he had waited in vain for her to speak, he went on: "If you married me, I know you'd play square. I could trust you absolutely. I don't know—can't find out much about you—but at least I know that."

"But I don't love you," said she.

"You needn't remind me of it," rejoined he curtly.

"I don't think so—so poorly of you as I used to," she went on. "I understand a lot of things better than I did. But I don't love you, and I feel that I never could."

"I'll risk that," said Norman. Through his clinched teeth, "I've got to risk it."

"I'd be marrying you because I don't feel able to—to make my own way."

"That's the reason most girls have for marrying," said he. "Love comes afterward—if it comes. And it's the more likely to come for the girl not having faked the man and herself beforehand."

She glanced at the clock. He frowned. She started up. "You must go," she said.

"What is your answer?"

"Oh, I couldn't decide so quickly. I must think."

"You mean you must see your young man again—see whether there isn't some way of working it out with him."

"That, too," replied she simply. "But—it's nearly four o'clock——"

"I'll come back at seven for my answer."

"No, I'll write you to-night."

"I must know at once. This suspense has got to end. It unfits me for everything."

"I'll—I'll decide—to-night," she said, with a queer catch in her voice. "You'll get the letter in the morning mail."

"Very well." And he gave her his club address.

She opened the door in her impatience to be rid of him. He went with a hasty "Good-by" which she echoed as she closed the door.

When he left the house he saw standing on the curb before it a tall, good-looking young man—with a frank amiable face. He hesitated, glowering at the young man's profile. Then he went his way, suffocating with jealous anger, depressed, despondent, fit for nothing but to drink and to brood in fatuous futility.



XVI

Until very recently indeed psychology was not an ology at all but an indefinite something or other "up in the air," the sport of the winds and fogs of transcendental tommy rot. Now, however, science has drawn it down, has fitted it in its proper place as a branch of physiology. And we are beginning to have a clearer understanding of the thoughts and the thought-producing actions of ourselves and our fellow beings. Soon it will be no longer possible for the historian and the novelist, the dramatist, the poet, the painter or sculptor to present in all seriousness as instances of sane human conduct, the aberrations resulting from various forms of disease ranging from indigestion in its mild, temper-breeding forms to acute homicidal or suicidal mania. In that day of greater enlightenment a large body of now much esteemed art will become ridiculous. Practically all the literature of strenuous passion will go by the board or will be relegated to the medical library where it belongs; and it, and the annals of violence found in the daily newspapers of our remote time will be cited as documentary proof of the low economic and hygienic conditions prevailing in that almost barbarous period. For certain it is that the human animal when healthy and well fed is invariably peaceable and kindly and tolerant—up to the limits of selfishness, and even encroaching upon those limits.

Of writing rubbish about love and passion there is no end—and will be no end until the venerable traditional nonsense about those interesting emotions shares the fate that should overtake all the cobwebs of ignorance thickly clogging the windows and walls of the human mind. Of all the fiddle-faddle concerning passion probably none is more shudderingly admired than the notion that one possessed of an overwhelming desire for another longs to destroy that other. It is true there is a form of murderous mania that involves practically all the emotions, including of course the passions—which are as readily subject to derangement as any other part of the human organism. But passion in itself—even when it is so powerful that it dominates the whole life, as in the case of Frederick Norman—passion in itself is not a form of mental derangement in the medical sense. And it does not produce acute selfishness, paranoiac egotism, but a generous and beautiful kind of unselfishness. Not from the first moment of Fred Norman's possession did he wish to injure or in any way to make unhappy the girl he loved. He longed to be happy with her, to have her happy with and through him. He represented his plotting to himself as a plan to make her happier than she ever had been; as for ultimate consequences, he refused to consider them. The most hardened rake, when passion possesses him, wishes all happiness to the woman of his pursuit. Indifference, coldness—the natural hard-heartedness of the normal man—returns only when the inspiration and elevation of passion disappear in satiety. The man or the woman who continues to inspire passion continues to inspire tenderness and considerateness.

So when Norman left Dorothy that Sunday afternoon, he, being a normal if sore beset human being, was soon in the throes of an agonized remorse. There may have been some hypocrisy in it, some struggling to cover up the baser elements in his infatuation for her. What human emotion of upward tendency has not at least a little of the varnish of hypocrisy on certain less presentable spots in it? But in the main it was a creditable, a manly remorse, and not altogether the writhings of jealousy and jealous fear of losing her.

He saw clearly that she was telling the truth, and telling it too gently, when she said he was responsible for her having standards of living which she could not unaided hope to attain. It is a dreadful thing to interfere in the destiny of a fellow being. We do it all the time; we do it lightly. Nevertheless, it is a dreadful thing—not one that ought not to be done, but one that ought to be done only under imperative compulsion, and then with every precaution. He had interfered in Dorothy Hallowell's destiny. He had lifted her out of the dim obscure niche where she was ensconced in comparative contentment. He had lifted her up where she had seen and felt the pleasures of a life of luxury.

"But for me," he said to himself, "she would now be marrying this poor young lawyer, or some chap of the same sort, and would be looking forward to a life of happiness in a little flat or suburban cottage."

If she should refuse his offer—what then? Clearly he ought to do his best to help her to happiness with the other man. He smiled cynically at the moral height to which his logic thus pointed the way. Nevertheless, he did not turn away but surveyed it—and there formed in his mind an impulse to make an effort to attempt that height, if Fate should rule against him with her. "If I were a really decent man," thought he, "I'd sit down now and write her that I would not marry her but would give her young man a friendly hand in the law if she wished to marry him." But he knew that such utter generosity was far beyond him. "Only a hero could do it," said he; he added with what a sentimentalist might have called a return of his normal cynicism, "only a hero who really in the bottom of his heart didn't especially want the girl." And a candid person of experience might possibly admit that there was more truth than cynicism in his look askance at the grand army of martyrs of renunciation, most of whom have simply given up something they didn't really want.

"If she accepts me, I'll make it impossible for her not to be happy," he said to himself, in all the fine unselfishness of passion—not divine unselfishness but human—not the kind we read about and pretend to have—and get a savage attack of bruised vanity if we are accused of not having it—no, but just the kind we have and show in our daily lives—the unselfishness of longing to make happy those whom it would make us happier to see happy. "She may think she cares for this young clerk—" so ran his thoughts—"but she doesn't know her own mind. When she is mine, I'll take her in hand as a gardener does a delicate rare flower—and, by Heaven, how I shall make her blossom and bloom!"

It would hardly be possible for a human being to pass a stormier night than was that night of his. Alternations between hope and despair—fantastic pictures of future with and without her, wild pleadings with her—those delirious transports to which our imaginations give way if we happen to be blessed and cursed with imaginations—in the security of the darkness and aloneness of night and bed. And through it all he was tormented body and soul by her loveliness—her hair, her skin, her eyes, the shy, slender graces of her form—He tossed about until his bed was so wildly disheveled that he had to rise and remake it.

When day came and the first mail, there was her letter on the salver of the boy entering the room. He reached for it with eager, trembling arm, drew back. "Put it on the table," he said.

The boy left. He was alone. Leaning upon his elbow in the bed he stared at the letter with hollow, terrified eyes. It contained his destiny. If she accepted, he would go up, for his soul sickness would be cured. If she refused, he would cease to struggle. He rose, took from a locked drawer a bottle of rye whisky. He poured a tall glass—the kind called a bar glass—half full, drank it straight down without a pause or a quiver. The shock brought him up standing. He looked and acted like his former self as he went to the table, took the letter, opened it, and read:

"I am willing to marry you, if you really want me. I am so tired of struggling, and I don't see anything but dark ahead.—D. H."

Norman struggled over to the bed, threw himself down, flat upon his back, arms and legs extended wide and whole body relaxed. He felt the blood whirl up into his brain like the great red and black tongues of flame and smoke in a conflagration, and then he slept soundly until nearly one o'clock.

To an outsider there would have been a world of homely commonplace pathos in that little letter of the girl's if read aright, that is to say, if read with what was between the lines supplied. It is impossible to live in cities any length of time and with any sort of eyes without learning the bitter unromantic truths about poverty—city poverty. In quiet, desolate places one may be poor, very poor, without much conscious suffering. There are no teasing contrasts, no torturing temptations. But in a city, if one knows anything at all of the possibilities of civilized life, of the joys and comforts of good food, clothing, and shelter, of theater and concert and excursion, of entertaining and being entertained, poverty becomes a hell. In the country, in the quiet towns, the innocent people wonder at the greediness of the more comfortable kinds of city people, at their love of money, their incessant dwelling upon it, their reverence for those who have it, their panic-like flight from those who have it not. They wonder how folk, apparently human, can be so inhuman. Let them be careful how they judge. If you discover any human being anywhere acting as you think a human being should not, investigate all the circumstances, look thoroughly into all the causes of his or her conduct, before you condemn him or her as inhuman, unworthy of your kinship and your sympathy.

In her brief letter the girl showed that, young though she was and not widely experienced in life, she yet had seen the horrors of city poverty, how it poisons and kills all the fine emotions. She had seen many a loving young couple start out confidently, with a few hundred dollars of debt for furniture—had seen the love fade and wither, shrivel, die—had seen appear peevishness and hatred and unfaithfulness and all the huge, foul weeds that choke the flowers of married life. She knew what her lover's salary would buy—and what it would not buy—for two. She could imagine their fate if there should be three or more. She showed frankly her selfishness of renunciation. But there could be read between the lines—concealed instead of vaunted—perhaps unsuspected—her unselfishness of renunciation for the sake of her lover and for the sake of the child or the children that might be. In our love of moral sham and glitter, we overlook the real beauties of human morality; we even are so dim or vulgar sighted that we do not see them when they are shown to us.

As Norman awakened, he reached for the telephone, said to the boy in charge of the club exchange: "Look in the book, find the number of a lawyer named Branscombe, and connect me with his office." After some confusion and delay he got the right office, but Dorothy was out at lunch. He left a message that she was to call him up at the club as soon as she came in. He was shaving when the bell rang.

He was at the receiver in a bound. "Is it you?" he said.

"Yes," came in her quiet, small voice.

"Will you resign down there to-day? Will you marry me this afternoon?"

A brief silence, then—"Yes."

Thus it came about that they met at the City Hall license bureau, got their license, and half an hour later were married at the house of a minister in East Thirty-third Street, within a block of the Subway station. He was feverish, gay, looked years younger than his thirty-seven. She was quiet, dim, passive, neither grave nor gay, but going through her part without hesitation, with much the same patient, plodding expression she habitually bore as she sat working at her machine—as if she did not quite understand, but was doing her best and hoped to get through not so badly.

"I've had nothing to eat," said he as they came out of the parsonage.

"Nor I," said she.

"We'll go to Delmonico's," said he, and hailed a passing taxi.

On the way, he sitting in one corner explained to her, shrunk into the other corner: "I can confess now that I married you under false pretenses. I am not prosperous, as I used to be. To be brief and plain, I'm down and out, professionally."

She did not move. Apparently she did not change expression. Yet he, speaking half banteringly, felt some frightful catastrophe within her. "You are—poor?" she said in her usual quiet way.

"We are poor," corrected he. "I have at present only a thousand dollars a month—a little more, but not enough to talk about."

She did not move or change expression. Yet he felt that her heart, her blood were going on again.

"Are you—angry?" he asked.

"A thousand dollars a month seems an awful lot of money to me," she said.

"It's nothing—nothing to what we'll soon have. Trust me." And back into his eyes flashed their former look. "I've been sick. I'm well again. I shall get what I want. If you want anything, you've only to ask for it. I'll get it. I know how. . . . I don't prey, myself—I've no fancy for the brutal sports. But I teach lions how to prey, and I make them pay for the lessons." He laughed with an effervescing of young vitality and self-confidence that made him look handsome and powerful. "In the future they'll have to pay still higher prices."

She was looking at him with weary, wondering, pathetic eyes that gazed from the pallor of her dead-white face mysteriously.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

"I was listening," replied she.

"Doesn't it make you happy—what you are going to have?"

"No," replied she. "But it makes me content."

With eyes suddenly suffused, he took her hand—so gently. "Dorothy," he said, "you will try to love me?"

"I'll try," said she. "You'll be kind to me?"

"I couldn't be anything else," he cried. And in a gust of passion he caught her to his breast and kissed her triumphantly. "I love you—and you're mine—mine!"

She released herself with the faint insistent push that seemed weak, but always accomplished its purpose. Her lip was trembling. "You said you'd be kind," she murmured.

He gazed at her with a baffled expression. "Oh—I understand," he said. "And I shall be kind. But I must teach you to love me."

Her trembling lip steadied. "You must be careful or you may teach me to hate you," said she.

He studied her in a puzzled way, laughed. "What a mystery you are!" he cried with raillery. "Are you child or are you woman? No matter. We shall be happy."

The taxicab was swinging to the curb. In the restaurant he ordered an enormous meal. And he ate enormously, and drank in due proportion. She ate and drank a good deal herself—a good deal for her. And the results were soon apparent in a return of the spirits that are normal to twenty-one years, regardless of what may be lurking in the heart, in a dark corner, to come forth and torment when there is nothing to distract the attention.

"We shall have to live quietly for a while," said he. "Of course you must have clothes-at once. I'll take you shopping to-morrow." He laughed grimly. "Just at present we can get only what we pay cash for. Still, you won't need much. Later on I'll take you over to Paris. Does that attract you?"

Her eyes shone. "How soon?" she asked.

"I can tell you in a week or ten days." He became abstracted for a moment. "I can't understand how I let them get me down so easily—that is, I can't understand it now. I suppose it's just the difference between being weak with illness and strong with health." His eyes concentrated on her. "Is it really you?" he cried gaily. "And are you really mine? No wonder I feel strong! It was always that way with me. I never could leave a thing until I had conquered it."

She gave him a sweet smile. "I'm not worth all the trouble you seem to have taken about me," said she.

He laughed; for he knew the intense vanity so pleasantly hidden beneath her shy and modest exterior. "On the contrary," said he good-humoredly, "you in your heart think yourself worth any amount of trouble. It's a habit we men have got you women into. And you—One of the many things that fascinate me in you is your supreme self-control. If the king were to come down from his throne and fall at your feet, you'd take it as a matter of course."

She gazed away dreamily. And he understood that her indifference to matters of rank and wealth and power was not wholly vanity but was, in part at least, due to a feeling that love was the only essential. Nor did he wonder how she was reconciling this belief of high and pure sentiment with what she was doing in marrying him. He knew that human beings are not consistent, cannot be so in a universe that compels them to face directly opposite conditions often in the same moment. But just as all lines are parallel in infinity, so all actions are profoundly consistent when referred to the infinitely broad standard of the necessity that every living thing shall look primarily to its own well being. Disobedience to this fundamental carries with it inevitable punishment of disintegration and death; and those catastrophes are serious matters when one has but the single chance at life, that will be repeated never again in all the eternities.

After their late lunch or early dinner, they drove to her lodgings. He went up with her and helped her to pack—not a long process, as she had few belongings. He noted that the stockings and underclothes she took from the bureau drawers were in anything but good condition, that the half dozen dresses she took from the closet and folded on the couch were about done for. Presently she said, cheerfully and with no trace of false shame:

"You see, I'm pretty nearly in rags."

"Oh, that's soon arranged," replied he. "Why bother to take these things? Why not give them to the maid?"

She debated with herself. "I think you're right," she decided. "Yes, I'll give them to Jennie."

"The underclothes, too," he urged. "And the hats."

It ended in her having left barely enough loosely to fill the bottom of a small trunk with two trays.

They drove to the Knickerbocker Hotel, and he took a small suite, one of the smallest and least luxurious in the house, for with all his desire to make her feel the contrast of her change of circumstances sharply, he could not forget how limited his income was, and how unwise it would be to have to move in a few days to humbler quarters. He hoped that the rooms, englamoured by the hotel's general air of costly luxury, would sufficiently impress her. And while she gave no strong indication but accepted everything in her wonted quiet, passive manner, he was shrewd enough to see that she was content. "To-morrow," he said to himself, "after she has done some shopping, the last regret will leave her, and her memory of that clerk will begin to fade fast. I'll give her too much else to think about."

* * * * *

The following morning, when they faced each other at breakfast in their sitting room, he glanced at her from time to time in wonder and terror. She looked not merely insignificant, but positively homely. Her skin had a sickly pallor; her hair seemed to be of many different and disagreeable shades of uninteresting dead yellow. Her eyes suggested faded blue china dishes, with colorless lashes and reddened edges of the lids. Her lips had lost their rosy freshness, her teeth their sparkling whiteness.

His heavy heart seemed to be resting nauseously upon the pit of his stomach. Was his infatuation sheer delusion, with no basis of charm in her at all? Was she, indeed, nothing but this unattractive, faded little commonplaceness?—a poor specimen of an inferior order of working girl? What an awakening! And she was his wife!—was his companion for the yet more brilliant career he had resolved and was planning! He must introduce her everywhere, must see the not to be concealed amazement in the faces of his acquaintances, must feel the cruel covert laughter and jeering at his weak folly! Was there ever in history or romance a parallel to such fatuity as his? Why, people would be right in thinking him a sham, a mere bluffer at the high and strong qualities he was reputed to have.

Had Norman been, in fact, the man of ice and iron the compulsions of a career under the social system made him seem, the homely girl opposite him that morning would speedily have had something to think about other than her unhappiness of the woman who has given her person to one man and her heart to another. Instead, the few words he addressed to her were all gentleness and forbearance. Stronger than his chagrin was his pity for her—the poor, unconscious victim of his mad hallucination. If she thought about the matter at all, she assumed that he was still the slave of her charms—for, the florid enthusiasm of man's passion inevitably deludes the woman into fancying it objective instead of wholly subjective; and, only the rare very wise woman, after much experience, learns to be suspicious of the validity of her own charms and to concentrate upon keeping up the man's delusions.

At last he rose and kissed her on the brow and let his hand rest gently on her shoulder—what a difference between those caresses and the caresses that had made her beg him to be "kind" to her! Said he:

"Do you mind if I leave you alone for a while? I ought to go to the club and have the rest of my things packed and sent. I'll not be gone long—about an hour."

"Very well," said she lifelessly.

"I'll telephone my office that I'll not be down to-day."

With an effort she said, "There's no reason for doing that. I don't want to interfere with your business."

"I'm neglecting nothing. And that shopping must be done."

She made no reply, but went to the window, and from the height looked down and out upon the mighty spread of the city. He observed her a moment with a dazed pitying expression, took his hat and departed.

It was nearly two hours before he got together sufficient courage to return. He had been hoping—had been saying to himself with vigorous effort at confidence—that he had simply seen one more of the many transformations, each of which seemed to present her as a wholly different personality. When he should see her again, she would have wiped out the personality that had shocked and saddened him, would appear as some new variety of enchantress, perhaps even more potent over his senses than ever before. But a glance as he entered demolished that hope. She was no different than when he left. Evidently she had been crying, and spasms of that sort always accentuate every unloveliness. He did not try to nerve himself to kiss her, but said:

"It'll not take you long to get ready?"

She moved to rise from her languid rest upon the sofa. She sank back. "Perhaps we'd better not go to-day," suggested she.

"Don't you feel well?" he asked, and his tone was more sympathetic than it would have been had his sympathy been genuine.

"Not very," replied she, with a faint deprecating smile. "And not very—not very——"

"Not very what?" he said, in a tone of encouragement.

"Not very happy," she confessed. "I'm afraid I've made a—a dreadful mistake."



He looked at her in silence. She could have said nothing that would have caused a livelier response within himself. His cynicism noted the fact that while he had mercifully concealed his discontent, she was thinking only of herself. But he did not blame her. It was only the familiar habit of the sex, bred of man's assiduous cultivation of its egotism. He said: "Oh, you'll feel differently about it later. Let's get some fresh air and see what the shops have to offer."

A pause, then she, timidly: "Would you mind very much if I—if I didn't—go on?"

"You mean, if you left me?"

She nodded without looking at him. He could not understand himself, but as he sat observing her, so young, so inexperienced and so undesirable, a pity of which he would not have dreamed his nature capable welled up in him, choking his throat with sobs he could scarcely restrain and filling his eyes with tears he had secretly to wipe away. And he felt himself seized of a sense of responsibility for her as strong in its solemn, still way as any of the paroxysms of his passion had been.

He said: "My dear—you mustn't decide anything so important to you in a hurry."

A tremor passed over her, and he thought she was going to dissolve in hysterics. But she exhibited once more that marvelous and mysterious self-control, whose secret had interested and baffled him. She said in her dim, quiet way:

"It seems to me I just can't stay on."

"You can always go, you know. Why not try it a few days?"

He could feel the trend of her thoughts, and in the way things often amuse us without in the least moving us to wish to laugh, he was amused by noting that she was trying to bring herself to stay on, out of consideration for his feelings! He said with a kind of paternal tenderness:

"Whenever you want to go, I am willing to arrange things for you—so that you needn't worry about money. But I feel that, as I am older than you, I ought to do all I can to keep you from making a mistake you might soon regret."

She studied him dubiously. He saw that she—naturally enough—did not believe in his disinterestedness, that she hadn't a suspicion of his change, or, rather collapse, of feeling. She said:

"If you ask it, I'll stay a while. But you must promise to—to be kind to me."

There was only gentleness in his smile. But what a depth of satirical self-mockery and amusement at her innocent young egotism it concealed! "You'll never have reason to speak of that again, my dear," said he.

"I—can—trust you?" she said.

"Absolutely," replied he. "I'll have another room opened into this suite. Would you like that?"

"If you—if you don't mind."

He stood up with sudden boyish buoyance. "Now—let's go shopping. Let's amuse ourselves."

She rose with alacrity. She eyed him uncertainly, then flung her arms round his neck and kissed him.

"You are so good to me!" she cried. "And I'm not a bit nice."

He did not try to detain her, but sent her to finish dressing, with an encouraging pat on the shoulder and a cheerful, "Don't worry about yourself—or me."



XVII

About half an hour later the door into the bedroom opened and she appeared on the threshold of the sitting room, ready for the street. He stared at her in the dazed amazement of a man faced by the impossible, and uncertain whether it is sight or reason that is tricking him. She had gone into the bedroom not only homely but commonplace, not only commonplace but common, a dingy washed-out blonde girl whom it would be a humiliation to present as his wife. She was standing there, in the majesty of such proud pale beauty as poets delight to ascribe to a sorrowful princess. Her wonderful skin was clear and translucent, giving her an ethereal look. Her hair reminded him again of what marvels he had seen in the sunlight of Sunday afternoon. And looking at her form and the small head so gracefully capping it, he could think only of the simile that had always come to him in his moments of ecstasy—the lily on its tall stem.

And once more, like a torrent, the old infatuation sprang from its dried sources and came rushing and overwhelming through vein and nerve. "Am I mad now?—was I mad a few moments ago?—is it she or is it my own disordered senses?"

She was drawing on her gloves, was unconscious of his confusion. He controlled himself and said: "You have a most disconcerting way of changing your appearance."

She glanced down at her costume. "No, it's the same dress. I've only the one, you know."

He longed to take her in his arms, but could not trust himself. And this wonder-girl, his very own, was talking of leaving him! And he—not an hour before—he, apparently in his right senses had been tolerating such preposterous talk! Give her up? Never! He must see to it that the subject did not find excuse for intruding again. "I have frightened her—have disgusted her. I must restrain myself. I must be patient—and teach her slowly—and win her gradually."

They spent an interesting and even exciting afternoon, driving from shop to shop and selecting the first beginnings of her wardrobe. He had only about three hundred dollars. Some of the things they ordered were ready for delivery, and so had to be paid for at once. When they returned to the hotel he had but fifty dollars left—and had contracted debts that made it necessary for him to raise at least a thousand dollars within a week. He saw that his freedom with sums of money which terrified her filled her with awe and admiration—and that he was already more successful than he had expected to be, in increasing her hesitation about leaving him. Among the things they had bought were a simple black chiffon dress and a big plumed black hat to match. These needed no alterations and were delivered soon after they returned. Some silk stockings came also and a pair of slippers bought for the dinner toilet.

"You can dress to-night," said he, "and I'll take you to Sherry's, and to the theater afterwards."

She was delighted. At last she was going to look like the women of whom she had been dreaming these last few months. She set about dressing herself, he waiting in the sitting room in a state of acute nervousness. What would be the effect of such a toilet? Would she look like a lady—or like—what she had suggested that morning? She was so changeable, had such a wide range of variability that he dared not hope. When she finally appeared, he was ready to fall down and worship. He was about to take her where his world would see her, where every inch of her would be subjected to the cruelest, most hostile criticism. One glance at her, and he knew a triumph awaited him. No man and no woman would wonder that he had lost his head over such beauty as hers. Hat and dress seemed just what had been needed to bring out the full glory of her charms.

"You are incredibly beautiful," he said in an awed tone. "I am proud of you."

A little color came into her cheeks. She looked at herself in the mirror with her quiet intense secret, yet not covert vanity. He laughed in boyish pleasure. "This is only the small beginning," said he. "Wait a few months."

At dinner and in a box at the theater afterwards, he had the most exquisite pleasure of his life. She had been seen by many of his former friends, and he was certain they knew who she was. He felt that he would have no difficulty in putting her in the place his wife should occupy. A woman with such beauty as hers was a sensation, one fashionable society would not deny itself. She had good manners, an admirable manner. With a little coaching she would be as much at home in grandeur as were those who had always had it.

The last fear of losing her left him. On the way back to the hotel he, in a delirium of pride and passion, crushed her in his arms and caressed her with the frenzy that had always terrified her. She resisted only faintly, was almost passive. "She is mine!" he said to himself, exultantly. "She is really mine!"

* * * * *

When he awoke in the morning she was still asleep—looked like a tired lovely child. Several times, while he was dressing, he went in to feast his eyes upon her beauty. How could he possibly have thought her homely, in whatever moment of less beauty or charm she might have had? The crowning charm of infinite variety! She had a delightfully sweet disposition. He was not sure how much or how little intelligence she had—probably more than most women. But what did that matter? It would be impossible ever to grow weary or to be anything but infatuated lover when she had such changeful beauty.

He kissed her lightly on her thick braids, as he was about to go. He left a note explaining that he did not wish to disturb her and that it was necessary for him to be at the office earlier. And that morning in all New York no man left his home for the day's struggle for dollars with a freer or happier heart, or readier to play the game boldly, skillfully, with success.

Certainly he needed all his courage and all his skill.

To most of the people who live in New York and elsewhere throughout the country—or the world, for that matter—an income of a thousand dollars a month seems extremely comfortable, to say the least of it. The average American family of five has to scrape along on about half that sum a year. But among the comfortable classes in New York—and perhaps in one or two other cities—a thousand dollars a month is literally genteel poverty. To people accustomed to what is called luxury nowadays—people with the habit of the private carriage, the private automobile, and several servants—to such people a thousand dollars a month is an absurd little sum. It would not pay for the food alone. It would not buy for a man and his wife, with no children, clothing enough to enable them to make a decent appearance.

Norman, living alone and living very quietly indeed, might have got along for a while on that sum, if he had taken much thought about expenditures, had persisted in such severe economies as using street cars instead of taxicabs and drinking whisky at dinner instead of his customary quart of six-dollar champagne. Norman, the married man, could not escape disaster for a single month on an income so pitiful.

Probably on the morning on which he set out for downtown in search of money enough to enable him to live decently, not less than ten thousand men on Manhattan Island left comfortable or luxurious homes faced with precisely the same problem. And each and every one of them knew that on that day or some day soon they must find the money demanded imperiously by their own and their families' tastes and necessities or be ruined—flung out, trampled upon, derided as failures, hated by the "loved ones" they had caused to be humiliated. And every man of that legion had a fine, an unusually fine brain—resourceful, incessant, teeming with schemes for wresting from those who had dollars the dollars they dared not go home without. And those ten thousand quickest and most energetic brains, by their mode of thought and action, determined the thought and action of the entire country—gave the mercenary and unscrupulous cast to the whole social system. Themselves the victims of conditions, they were the bellwethers to millions of victims compelled to follow their leadership.

Norman, by the roundabout mode of communication he and Tetlow had established, summoned his friend and backer to his office. "Tetlow," he began straight off, "I've got to have more money."

"How much?" said Tetlow.

"More than you can afford to advance me."

"How much?" repeated Tetlow.

"Three thousand a month right away—at the least."

"That's a big sum," said Tetlow.

"Yes, for a man used to dealing in small figures. But in reality it's a moderate income."

"Few large families spend more."

"Few large or small families in my part of New York pinch along on so little."

"What has happened to you?" said Tetlow, dropping into a chair and folding his fat hands on his stomach.

"Why?" asked Norman.

"It's in your voice—in your face—in your cool demand for a big income."

"Let's start right, old man," said Norman. "Don't call thirty-six thousand a year big or you'll think it big. And if you think it big, you will stay little."

Tetlow nodded. "I'm ready to grow," said he. "Now what's happened to you?"

"I've got married," replied Norman.

"I thought so. To Miss—Hallowell?"

"To Miss Hallowell. So my way's clear, and I'm going to resume the march."

"Yes?"

"I've two plans. Either will serve. The first is yours—the one you partly revealed to me the other day."

"Partly?" said Tetlow.

"Partly," repeated Norman, laughing. "I know you, Billy, and that means I know you're absolutely incapable of plotting as big a scheme as you suggested to me. It came either from Galloway or from some one of his clique."

"I said all I'm at liberty to say, Fred."

"I don't wish you to break your promise. All I want to know is, can I get the three thousand a month and assurance of its lasting and leading to something bigger?"

"What is your other scheme?" said Tetlow, and it was plain to the shrewder young lawyer that the less shrewd young lawyer wished to gain time.

"Simple and sure," replied Norman. "We will buy ten shares of Universal Fuel Company through a dummy and bring suit to dissolve it. I looked into the matter for Burroughs once when he was after the Fosdick-Langdon group. Universal Fuel wouldn't dare defend the action I could bring. We could get what we pleased for our ten shares to let up on the suit. The moment their lawyers saw the papers I'd draw, they'd advise it."

Tetlow shook his large, impressively molded head. "Shady," said he. "Shady."

Norman smiled with good-natured patience. "You sound like Burroughs or Galloway when they are denouncing a man for trying to get rich by the same methods they pursued. My dear Bill, don't be one of those lawyers who will do the queer work for a client but not for themselves. There's no sense, no morality, no intelligent hypocrisy even, in that. We didn't create the commercial morality of the present day. For God's sake, let's not be of the poor fools who practice it but get none of its benefits."

Tetlow shifted uneasily. "I don't like to hear that sort of thing," said he, apologetic and nervous.

"Is it true?"

"Yes. But—damn it, I don't like to hear it."

"That is to say, you're willing to pay the price of remaining small and obscure just for the pleasure of indulging in a wretched hypocrisy of a self-deception. Bill, come out of the small class. Whether you go in with me or not, come out of the class of understrappers. What's the difference between the big men and their little followers? Why, the big men see. They don't deceive themselves with the cant they pour out for the benefit of the ignorant mob."

Tetlow was listening like a pupil to a teacher. That was always his attitude toward Norman.

"The big men," continued Norman, "know that canting is necessary—that one must always profess high and disinterested motives, and so on, and so on. But they don't let their hypocritical talk influence their actions. How is it with the little fellows? Why, they believe the flapdoodle the leaders talk. They go into the enterprise, do all the small dirty work, lie and cheat and steal, and hand over the proceeds to the big fellows, for the sake of a pat on the back and a noisy 'Honest fellow! Here are a few crumbs for you.' And crumbs are all that a weak, silly, hypocritical fool deserves. Can you deny it?"

"No doubt you're right, Fred," conceded Tetlow. "But I'm afraid I haven't the nerve."

"Come in behind me. I've got nerve for two—now!"

At that triumphant "now" Tetlow looked curiously at his friend. "Yes, it has changed you—changed you back to what you were. I don't understand."

"It isn't necessary that you understand," rejoined Norman."

"Do you think you could really carry through that scheme you've just outlined?"

"I see it fascinates you."

"I've no objection to rising to the class of big men," said Tetlow. "But aren't you letting your confidence in yourself deceive you?"

"Did I ever let it deceive me?"

"No," confessed Tetlow. "I've often watched you, and thought you'd fall through it, or stumble at least. But you never did."

"And shall I tell you why? Because I use my self-confidence and my hopefulness and all my optimistic qualities only to create an atmosphere of success. But when it comes to planning a move of any kind, when I assemble my lieutenants round the council board in my brain, I never permit a single cheerful one to speak, or even to enter. It's a serious, gloomy circle of faces, Bill."

Tetlow nodded reminiscently. "Yes, you always were like that, Fred."

"And the one who does the most talking at my council is the gloomiest of all. He's Lieutenant Flawpicker. He can't see any hope for anything. He sees all the possibilities of failure. He sees all the chances against success. And what's the result? Why, when the council rises it has taken out of the plan every chance of mishap that my intelligence could foresee and it has provided not one but several safe lines of orderly retreat in case success proves impossible."

Tetlow gazed at Norman in worshipful admiration. "What a brain! What a mind!" he ejaculated. "And to think that you could be upset by a woman!"

Norman leaned back in his chair smiling broadly. "Not by a woman," he corrected. "By a girl—an inexperienced girl of twenty."

"It seems incredible."

"A grain of dust, dropped into a watch movement in just the right place—you know what happens."

Tetlow nodded. Then, with a sharp, anxious look, "But it's all over?"

Norman hesitated. "I believe so," he said.

Tetlow rose and rubbed his thighs. He had been sitting long in the same position, and he was now stout enough to suffer from fat man's cramp. "Well," said he, "we needn't bother about that Universal Fuel scheme at present. I can guarantee you the three thousand dollars, and the other things."

Norman shook his head. "Not enough," he said.

"You want more money?"

"No. But I will not work, or rather, wait, in the dark. Tell your principals that I must be let in."

Tetlow hesitated, walking about the office. Finally he said, "Look here, Fred—you think I deceived you the other day—posed as your friend when in reality I was simply acting as agent for people who wanted you."

Norman gave Tetlow a look that made him redden with pleasure. "No, I don't, old man," said he. "I know you recommended me—and that they were shy of me because of the way I've been acting—and that you stood sponsor for me. Isn't that right?"

"Something like that," admitted Tetlow. "But they were eager to get you. It was only a question of trusting you. I was able to do you a good turn there."

"And I'll make a rich man, and a famous one, of you," said Norman.

"Yes. I believe you will," cried Tetlow, tears in his prominent studious eyes. "I'll see those people in a day or two, and let you know. Do you need money right away? Of course you do." And down he sat and drew a check for fifteen hundred dollars.

Norman laughed as he glanced to see if it was correctly drawn. "I'd not have dared return to my bride with empty pockets. That's what it means to live in New York."

Tetlow grinned. "A sentimental town, isn't it? Especially the women."

"Oh, I don't blame them," said Norman. "They need the money, and the only way they've got of making it is out of sentiment. And you must admit they give a bully good quality, if the payment is all right."

Tetlow shrugged his shoulders. "I'm glad I don't need them," said he. "It gives me the creeps to see them gliding about with their beautiful dresses and their sweet, soft faces."

He and Norman lunched together in an out-of-the way restaurant. After a busy and a happy afternoon, Norman returned early to the hotel. He had cashed his check. He was in funds. He would give her another and more thrilling taste of the joy that was to be hers through him—and soon she would be giving even as she got—for he would teach her not to fear love, not to shrink from it, but to rejoice in it and to let it permeate and complete all her charms.

He ascended to the apartment and knocked. There was no answer. He searched in vain for a chambermaid to let him in. He descended to the office. "Oh, Mr. Norman," said one of the clerks. "Your wife left this note for you."

Norman took it. "She went out?"

"About three o'clock—with a young gentleman who called on her. They came back a while ago and she left the note."

"Thank you," said Norman. He took his key, went up to the apartment. Not until he had closed and locked the door did he open the note. He read:

"Last night you broke your promise. So I am going away. Don't look for me. It won't be any use. When I decide what to do I'll send you word."

He was standing at the table. He tossed the note on the marble, threw open the bedroom door. The black chiffon dress, the big plumed hat, and all the other articles they had bought were spread upon the bed, arranged with the obvious intention that he should see at a glance she had taken nothing away with her.

"Hell!" he said aloud. "Why didn't I let her go yesterday morning?"



XVIII

A few days later, Tetlow, having business with Norman, tried to reach him by telephone. After several failures he went to the hotel, and in the bar learned enough to enable him to guess that Norman was of on a mad carouse. He had no difficulty in finding the trail or in following it; the difficulty lay in catching up, for Norman was going fast. Not until late at night—that is, early in the morning—of the sixth day from the beginning of his search did he get his man.

He was prepared to find a wreck, haggard, wildly nervous and disreputably disheveled; for, so far as he could ascertain Norman had not been to bed, but had gone on and on from one crowd of revelers to another, in a city where it is easy to find companions in dissipation at any hour of the twenty-four. Tetlow was even calculating upon having to put off their business many weeks while the crazy man was pulling through delirium tremens or some other form of brain fever.

An astonishing sight met his eyes in the Third Avenue oyster house before which the touring car Norman had been using was drawn up. At a long table, eating oysters as fast as the opener could work, sat Norman and his friend Gaskill, a fellow member of the Federal Club, and about a score of broken and battered tramps. The supper or breakfast was going forward in admirable order. Gaskill, whom Norman had picked up a few hours before, showed signs of having done some drinking. But not Norman. It is true his clothing might have looked fresher; but hardly the man himself.

"Just in time!" he cried out genially, at sight of Tetlow. "Sit down with us. Waiter, a chair next to mine. Gentlemen, Mr. Tetlow. Mr. Tetlow, gentlemen. What'll you have, old man?"

Tetlow declined champagne, accepted half a dozen of the huge oysters. "I've been after you for nearly a week," said he to Norman.

"Pity you weren't with me," said Norman. "I've been getting acquainted with large numbers of my fellow citizens."

"From the Bowery to Yonkers."

"Exactly. Don't fall asleep, Gaskill."

But Gaskill was snoring with his head on the back of his chair and his throat presented as if for the as of the executioner. "He's all in," said Tetlow.

"That's the way it goes," complained Norman. "I can't find anyone to keep me company."

Tetlow laughed. "You look as if you had just started out," said he. "Tell me—where have you slept?"