"Not many of us suffer from too much happiness," muttered Benis.

"Or too much health," echoed the doctor. "I'd like to tell McClintock that if people would expect more health, they'd get more. The ordinary person expects ill-ness. They have a 'disease complex'—that's in your line, Benis. But just supposing they could change the idea—Eh? Supposing everybody began to look for health—just take it, you know, as a God-intended right? I'd lose half my living in a fortnight."

"John Rogers!" Aunt Caroline's voice fell with the effect of sizzling hailstones upon the fire of John's enthusiasm. "If you must talk heresy, there are other places beside my garden to do it in."

"I was merely saying—"

"I heard what you were saying. And although it takes a great deal to surprise me, I am surprised. Such doctrines I consider most dangerous, highly so. If you are thinking of setting up as a faith healer, the sooner we know it the better. Desire, my dear, you might see Olive about tea. Tell her not to forget the lemon. I do not know what I have done to deserve a maid called Olive," she sighed, "but the only alternative was Gladys. And Gladys I could not endure. As for illness, I am surprised at you, John Rogers. I was not in church owing to a severe headache, but I know the sermon. It is one of Mr. McClintock's very best. If you had not gone to sleep in the middle of the first point you would have heard the mystery of pain beautifully explained. A wonderful preacher. If he wouldn't click his teeth."

The professor shuddered.

"Benis acts so foolishly about it," went on Aunt Caroline. "He insists that the clicking makes him ill. But why should it? At the same time, if one of the Elders were to suggest, tactfully, to Mr. McClintock that he have the upper set tightened it might be well. It would at least" (with grimness) "do away with the trivial excuses of some people for not attending Divine service."

Her graceless nephew was understood to murmur something about "too hot to fight."

"As for Mr. McClintock's ideas," pursued Aunt Caroline, "they are quite beautiful. The first time he gave the deathbed description which comprises part of this morning's discourse he had us all in tears. I mean all of us who were sufficiently awake to realize the fact that it was a deathbed. His description of the last agony has clearly lost nothing in poignancy, for Desire came home quite pale. I wonder if you have noticed, Benis, that Desire is looking somewhat less robust? Doctor, now that she is not here—"

"Now that she is not here, we will not discuss her," said Spence firmly.

"Indeed! And may I ask why you wish to stop me, Benis? I am speaking to a qualified medical man, am I not? But there," with resignation, "I never can expect to understand the present generation. So lax on one hand, so squeamish on the other. Surely it is perfectly proper that I, her Aunt—oh, very well, Benis, if you are determined to be silly."

"Now with regard to the Rev. McClintock," put in the doctor hastily. "Do you really think that he is sufficiently in touch with modern views to—to—oh, dash it! what was I saying?"

"You were interrupting me when I was telling Benis—"

"Oh yes. I remember. We were talking about new ideas. And you suggested heresy. But you must remember that, in my profession, new ideas are not called heresy—except when they are very new. What would you think of me if I doctored exactly as my father did before me?"

"When you are half as capable as your father, young man, I may discuss that with you."

"One for you!'' said Benis gleefully.

"Well, leaving me out then, and speaking generally, why should a physician search continually for fresh wisdom, while a minister—"

"Beware, young man!" Aunt Caroline raised an affrighted hand. "Beware how you compare your case with that of a minister of the Gospel. That further wisdom is needed in the practice of medicine, anyone who has ever employed a doctor is well aware. But where is he who dare add one jot to Divine revelation?"

"No one is speaking of adding anything. But surely, in the matter of interpretation, an open mind is a first essential?"

"In the matter of interpretation," said Aunt Caroline grandly, "we have our ordained ministers. How do you feel," she added shrewdly, "toward quacks and healers who, without study or training, call themselves doctors? Do you say, 'Let us display an open mind'?"

"Time!" said Benis, who enjoyed his relative hugely—when she was disciplining someone else. "Here comes Desire with the tea."

"What I really came out to say, Benis," resumed Aunt Caroline, "is that I have just had a long distance call—Desire, my dear, cream or lemon?—a long distance call from Toronto where, I fear, such things are allowed on Sunday—Doctor, you like lemon, I think?—a call in fact from Mary Davis. You remember her, Benis? Such a sweet girl. She is feeling a little tired and would like to run down here for a rest. Desire, my dear, have you any plans with which this would interfere? I said that I would consult you and let her know. You are very careless with your plate, Benis. That Spode can never be replaced."

Fortunately her anxiety for the family heirloom absorbed Aunt Caroline's whole attention. If she noticed her nephew's look of anguished guilt and his friend's politely raised brows she ascribed it to his carelessness in balancing china. Desire's downcast eyes and stiffened manner she did not notice at all.

"Well, my dear, what do you say? Shall we invite Mary?"

"It depends on Benis, of course," said Desire quietly.

"Benis? What has Benis to do with it? Not but that he enjoyed having her here last time well enough. It is the privilege of the mistress of the house to choose her guests. I hope you will not be slack in claiming your privileges. They are much harder to obtain than one's rights. My dear sister was careless. She allowed Benis's father to do just as he pleased. Be warned in time."

"Do you wish Miss Davis to visit us, Benis?" Desire's hands were busy with her teacup. Her eyes were still lowered.

"I have no wishes whatever in the matter," said the professor with what might be considered admirable detachment.

"Tell Miss Davis we shall be delighted, Aunt," said Desire.



CHAPTER XXIV

Time, in quiet neighborhoods, like water in a pool, slips in and out leaving the pool but little changed. Only when one is waiting for something dreaded or desired do the days drag or hasten. Miss Davis was to arrive upon the Friday following her telephone invitation. That left Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Desire found them very long.

Nothing more had been said of the personality of the expected visitor. Desire did not ask, because she felt sure that, when she had seen, she would know without asking. At present there was little enough to go upon. The guest's name was Mary. Her hair was yellow. She had visited in Bainbridge before. She and Benis had been friends. Beyond this there was nothing save the professor's carelessness with the family Spode—an annoying device for diverting attention in moments of embarrassment.

Against this circumstantial evidence there was the common-sense argument that the real Mary of the professor's romance would hardly be likely, under the circumstances, to propose herself as his aunt's guest.

Desire was inclined to take the common-sense view. Especially as just about this time she came upon the track of another Mary, also with yellow hair, who presented possibilities. The most suspicious thing about this second Mary was that neither the professor nor his friend Dr. Rogers had been able to tell Desire her first name. Now in Bainbridge everyone knows the first name of everyone else. One does not use it, necessarily, but one knows it. So that when Desire, having one day noticed a gleam of particularly golden hair, asked innocently to "whom it might belong" and was met by a plain surname prefixed merely by "Miss," she became instantly curious. From other sources she learned that the golden-haired Miss Watkins had been employed as a nurse in Dr. Rogers' office for several months and that her Christian name was Mary Sophia.

This also, you will see, was not much to build upon. But Desire felt that she must neglect nothing. The menace of the unseen, unknown Mary was beginning seriously to disturb her peace of mind. She determined to see the doctor's pretty nurse at the earliest opportunity.

The comradeship between herself and Rogers had prospered amazingly. She had liked the young doctor at first sight; had discerned in him something charmingly boylike and appealing. And Desire had never had boy friends. The utter frankness of her friendship was undisturbed by overmuch knowledge of her own attractions, and the possibility of less contentment on his side did not occur to her. Feeling herself so much older, in reality, than he, she assumed with delicious naivete, the role of confidant and general adviser. What time she could spare from Benis and the great Book she bestowed most generously upon his friend.

During the four dragging days of waiting the appearance of Miss Davis, she had found the distraction of Dr. John's company particularly helpful. And then, after all, Miss Davis did not arrive. Instead, there came a note regretting a very bad cold and postponing the visit until its indefinite recovery. The news came at the breakfast table.

"How long," asked Desire thoughtfully, "does a bad cold usually last?"

"Not long—if it's just a cold," answered Benis with some gloom. "But," more hopefully, "if it is tonsillitis it lasts weeks and if pneumonia sets in you have to stay indoors for months."

Aunt Caroline looked over her spectacles.

"You sound," she said, "as if you wish it were pneumonia."

But in this she was, perhaps, severe. Her nephew was really not capable of wishing pneumonia for anyone, not even a possible Nemesis by the name of Mary. He merely felt that if such a complication should supervene he would bear the news with fortitude. For, speaking colloquially, the professor was finding himself very much "in the air." Desire's mind upon the subject of this guest in particular and of Marys in general, had become clouded to his psychological gaze. He had thought at first that his young secretary was jealous with that harmless sex jealousy which may almost as well be described as "pique." But, of late, he had not felt so sure about it. He did not, in fact, feel quite so sure about any-thing.

Desire was changing. He had expected her to change, but the rapidity of it was somewhat breath-taking. In appearance she had become noticeably younger. The firm line of her lips had taken on softer curves; the warm white of her skin was bloomy like a healthy child's; shadow after shadow had lifted from her deep grey eyes. But it was in her manner that the most significant difference lay. Spence sometimes wondered if he had dreamed the silent Desire of the mountain cottage. That Desire had stood coldly alone; had listened and weighed and gone her own way with the hard confidence of too early maturity. This Desire listened and weighed still, but her confidence was often now replaced by questioning. In this new and more normal world, her unserved, unsatisfied youth was breaking through.

But, if she were younger, she was certainly not more simple. If the grey eyes were less shadowed, they were no less inscrutable. If the lips were softer, their serenity was as baffling as their sternness had been. If she seemed more plastic she was not less illusive. Nimble as were his mental processes, the professor was discomfited to find that hers were still more nimble.

Meanwhile the Book was getting on. No excursions into the land of youth were allowed to interfere with Desire's idea of her secretarial duties. If anyone shirked, it was the author; if anyone wanted holidays it was he. If he were lazy, Desire found ways of making progress without him; if he grumbled, she laughed.

The day set apart for the arrival of Miss Davis had been voted a holiday and the professor hoped that her non-appearance would not interfere with so pleasant an arrangement. But Desire's ideas were quite otherwise. Sharply on time she descended to the library with her note-book ready. The professor felt injured.

"Must we really?" he said. "Yes. I see we must. But mind! I know why you are doing it. I thought of your reason in the night when I was unable to sleep from overwork. You are hurrying to get through so that we may leave this sleepy town. Insatiable window-gazer! You wish to look in bigger windows."

"Do I?" Desire turned limpid eyes upon him and tapped her note-book. "Then the sooner we get on with this chapter on 'The Significance of the Totem' the better. But, if you can excuse me this afternoon, Dr. John has just 'phoned to ask me if I can call on the eldest Miss Martin. He says that her state of mind is her greatest trouble. And it does not react to medicine."

The professor looked still more injured.

"We can't begin the totem chapter unless we are going to go on with it," he objected. "I don't see why John doesn't get a secretary of his own."

"He has a nurse," said Desire smoothly.

"Er—oh yes, of course. Well, perhaps we had better begin—but why does he want you to call on Miss Martin?"

Desire looked self-conscious, a rare thing for her. "Well, you see, I have an idea about Miss Martin. It may be entirely wrong but John thinks it worth trying. You knew that her fiance was killed just before the armistice, didn't you? John says she seemed stunned at the time but kept on, the way most women did. She helped him fight the 'flu' all that winter without taking it her-self. But she was one of the first to come down with it when it returned this Spring. She got through the worst—and there she stays. John says that if she doesn't begin to pick up soon there won't be enough of her left to bother about."

"And your idea?"

"You might laugh," said Desire with sudden shyness.

The professor promised not to laugh.

"My idea is this. To find out the real reason for her not getting better and treat that."

"Very simple."

"Yes, because John already knows the real cause. He says she doesn't get well because she doesn't want to. In the old days people would say her heart was broken. And it seems such a pity, because, if what everyone says is true, she would have been frightfully unhappy if she had married him. (Desire became slightly incoherent here.) They weren't suited at all. He was a musician, a derelict who hadn't a thought in the world for anything but his violin. Aunt Caroline says the engagement was a mystery to everyone. She says that probably Miss Martin just offered to take him in hand and look after him (she used to be very capable) and he hadn't backbone enough to say she couldn't. They say that the only time anyone ever saw a gleam in his face was the day he went away to the war. Then he was killed. And now she won't get well because she can't forget him."

"And that is what you call a 'pity'?"

"Well, not exactly that." She hesitated. "If he had cared for her as she thought he did, it wouldn't seem such a waste. But he didn't. Everybody knew it—except herself."

"Everybody may have been wrong."

"Yes. But that is just the point. They weren't. He died as he had lived without a thought for anything but music. I happened to hear a rather wonderful story about his dying. Sergeant Timms, who drives the baker's cart, was in the next cot to his, in the hospital. And my idea is that if he could just tell her the story—just let her see that he went away without a thought—she might get things in proportion again and let herself get well."

"I see. Well, my dear, it is your idea. Is John going to drive you out?"

"No. He wanted to. But I'll have to find the Sergeant and take him with me."

"In the baker's cart?"

"What a good idea! I would never have thought of that. And I've always wanted to ride in a baker's cart. They smell so crusty."

So it was really the professor's fault that Bainbridge was scandalized by the sight of young Mrs. Spence jogging comfortably along through the outskirts in a bread cart driven by the one-time Sergeant Edward Timms.

"And him so silly with havin' her," said Mrs. Beatty (who first noticed them), "that he didn't know a French roll from a currant bun."

Indeed we may as well admit that the gallant Sergeant confused more things that day than rolls and buns. The latter part of his orderly bread route was strewn thickly with indignant customers. For the Sergeant was a thoroughgoing fellow quite incapable of a divided interest.

"You can tell me the details of the story as we go along," Desire said, "so that I shan't be interrupting your work at all."

The dazzled Sergeant agreed and immediately delivered two whites instead of one brown and forgot the tickets.

"Well, you see," he said, "it was this way. We went over there together, him and me. And we hadn't known each other, so to speak, not intimate. You didn't know him yourself at all, did you?"

Desire shook her head.

"He was a queer one. Willin' as could be to do what he was told, but forgettin' what it was, regular. Just naturally no good, like, except with the fiddle. I will say, that with that there instrument he was a Paderwooski—yes, mam! By the time our outfit got into them trenches the boys was just clean dippy about him. They kind of took turns dry-nursin' him and remindin' him of the things he'd got to do, and doin' them for him when they could put it over. I'll tell you this—it's my private suspicion that more than one chap went west tryin' to keep the bullets offen him! Not that they were crazy about him exactly, but that fiddle of his had got them goin'. 'Twasn't only the fiddle he played on, either. Anything would do. That there chap could play you into any kind of dashed mood he liked and out of it again. Put more pep into you with a penny whistle than Sousy's band or a bottle of rum. Ring you out like a dishrag, he could, and hang you out to dry. Gee! He could do anything—just anything!"

(It was here that the bun episode occurred.)

"Well,—he got buried. Parapet blown in. And when they got him out he was—hurt some." (The Sergeant remembered that one must not shock the ladies.)

"That was all I would have known about it," he went on, "only we happen to turn up in hospital together. I wakes up one mornin' and finds him in the next cot. He was supposed to be recoverin' but was somehow botchin' the job.

"'Where's the fiddle?' I says to him one day when I was feelin' social. And then, all of a minute, I guessed why he wasn't patchin' up like what was his duty. You see, that b-blessed parapet hadn't had any more sense than to go and spoil his right arm for him—the one he fiddled with, see?"

(Here the Sergeant delivered one brick loaf instead of two sandwich ditto.)

"Well, they kept sayin' there weren't any reason he shouldn't mend up. But he didn't. And one night—" the Sergeant pulled up the cart so quickly that Desire almost fell out of it. "You won't believe this part," he said in a kind of shamefaced way.

"Try me."

"Well then, one night he called to me in a kind of clear whisper. 'Bob!' he says, 'I've got my fiddle!'

"'Sure you have, old cock,' says I.

"'And my arm's as good as ever,' says he.

"'Sure it is! Better,' says I.

"'Listen!' says he.

"And I listened and—but you won't believe this part—"

"I will."

"Well, I heared him playin'! Not loud—not very near but so clear not one of the littlest, tinkly notes was lost. I never heard playin' like that—no, mam! And the ward was still. I never heard the ward still, like that. I think I went to sleep listenin'. I don't know."

The Sergeant broke off here long enough to deliver several orders—all wrong. Desire waited quietly and presently he finished with a jerk.

"When I woke up in the mornin', I was feelin' fine—fine. The first thing I did was to look over to the next cot. But there was a screen around it.... I ain't told the story to his folks because he hasn't got any," he added after a pause. "And I kind of thought it mightn't comfort his fiancy any—it not bein' personal, so to speak."

Desire frankly wiped her eyes. (It was fortunate that no one saw her do this.)

"It's a beautiful story," she said.

"Well, if you think I ought to tell, I will. But if his fiancy says, 'Was there any message?' hadn't I best put in a little one—somethin' comforting?"

"Oh—no."

"All right. Couldn't I just say that at the end he called out 'Amelia!'?"

"Oh, Mr. Timms!"

"Not quite playin' the game, eh? Well, then I won't. But it does seem kind of skimp like.... There's the doctor waitin' at the gate."



CHAPTER XXV

It seemed to Desire, waiting in the garden, that the Sergeant was taking an unnecessarily long time in telling his story. She had thought it best that he should be left alone to tell it, so the doctor had gone on to visit another patient, promising to call for her as he came back.

Desire waited. And, as she waited, she thought. And, as she thought, she questioned. What had Benis meant when he had said, in that whimsical way of his, "Well, my dear, it is your idea"? If he had not approved of it, why hadn't he said so? It had seemed such a sensible idea. An idea of which anyone might approve.... Why also had Sergeant Timms been so reluctant to approach Miss Martin with the bare (and, Desire thought, beautiful) truth? Because he feared it would rob her of an illusion? But illusions are surely something which people are better without?—aren't they?

The Sergeant came at last, twirling his cap and looking hot.

"Well?" asked Desire nervously.

"She'd like you to go in, Mrs. Spence, if you can spare the time. She took it quite quiet. 'Thank you, Sergeant,' says she. And never a question."

The two looked at each other and Desire saw her own doubt plainly reflected upon the honest gaze of Robert Timms.

"I'll go in," she said. "The doctor will take me home."

In the invalid's room there was only quietness. Miss Martin sat in her chair by the window; her plain, thin face had not sought to turn from the searching light. Desire felt her heart begin to beat with the beginnings of an understanding as new as it was revealing.

"Don't be sorry," Miss Martin's reassurance was instant. "I am glad to know.... I always did know, anyway ... and it did not make any difference ... If you can understand."

Desire nodded. "He must have been very wonderful," she said. In that new and nameless understanding she forgot that only that morning she had referred to the dead musician as a "derelict" and "no good for anything."

"Yes," said the invalid musing. "Not quite like the rest of us. And I see now that he never would have been. I used to think—but the difference was too deep. It was fundamental.... I feel ... as if he knew it ... and just wandered on."

"But you?" Desire ventured this almost timidly. The quietness seemed to intensify in the room. Then the invalid's voice, serene, distant.

"I? ... There is no hurry.... He has his fiddle, you see...." Miss Martin smiled and the smile held no bitterness. So might a mother have smiled over a thoughtless child who turns away from a love he is too young to value.

Desire was silent.

"I did not know love was like that," she said after a long pause. "But perhaps I do not know anything about love at all."

The older woman looked at her with quiet scrutiny.

"You will," she said.

After that they talked of other things until the doctor came to take Desire home.

"Queer thing," he said as he threw in the clutch, "I believe she looks a little better already. That was an excellent idea of yours."

"It was anything but an excellent idea." Desire's tone was taut with emotional reaction. "Fortunately, it did no harm. But I don't know what you were thinking of to allow it."

"Allow it?" In surprised injury.

Desire did not take up the challenge. She was looking, he thought, unusually excited. There was faint color on her cheek. Her hands, generally so quiet, clasped and unclasped her handbag with an irritating click. Being a wise man, Rogers waited until the clicking had subsided. Then, "What's the matter?" he asked mildly.

"John," said Desire, "do you know anything about love?"

"I see you do," she added as the car leapt forward, narrowly missing a surprised cow. "So perhaps you will laugh at my new wisdom. I learned something to-day."

The car was giving trouble. For a few moments its eccentricities required its driver's undivided attention. Even when it was running smoothly again, he appeared preoccupied. But Desire was seldom in a hurry. She waited until he was quite ready.

"You learned something—about love?" asked John gruffly.

"Yes. Have you a sore throat? Your voice sounds all dusty. I used to think," she went on dreamily, "that love was something that came from outside. That it depended on things. But it doesn't depend on anything and it's not outside at all."

"And you found this out, today?"

"Yes. I saw it, in Miss Martin. It was quite plain. What idiots we were to pity her!"

"Did we pity her?"

The question was mechanical. John was not thinking of Miss Martin. He was thinking of the faint rose upon Desire's half-turned cheek. Desire blushing!

"Of course we did. And we had no right. And there is no need."

"Don't let's do it, then," said John. Out of the corner of his eye he saw, with a quickening of his pulse, how stirred she was. And his wonder mounted. That Desire, of the cool, grey eyes and unwarmed smile, should speak of love at all was sufficiently amazing, but that she should speak of it with tinted cheek was a miracle.

Yet this, he quickly remembered, was something which he had himself foreseen. He had never really accepted Spence's theory that early disillusion had seriously poisoned the lifesprings natural to her age. Her awakening had been certain. He had warned Spence that she would wake! He felt all the exultation of a prophet who sees his prophecy fulfilled. But common sense urged caution. To frighten her now might be fatal. He tried to bring his mind back to Miss Martin.

"At least," he said, "our intentions were admirable. We were trying to help her."

"We were being very impertinent," affirmed Desire. "Benis told me so this morning."

"Benis told you?" in surprise.

"Well, he didn't exactly tell me. But I am sure he wanted to."

This was too subtle for the doctor. There were times when he frankly admitted his inability to bridge Desire's conversational chasms. He was often puzzled by the things she did not say.

"What was Benis thinking of," he said irritably, "to let you come out in that bread cart?"

Desire laughed. "I hope he was thinking of the Significance of the Totem. But I'm almost sure he wasn't."

"Does he ever think of anything but that blessed book of his?"

"I'm afraid he does—occasionally."

"You mean," with sharpened interest, "that he isn't quite as keen on it as he used to be?"

"I mean that he doesn't like me to work too hard."

"Oh, I see. Perhaps he does not wish you to work too hard for me, either?"

Desire folded her hands upon her bag and looked primly into space.

"He is a very considerate employer," she remarked mildly. "Take care—you nearly hit that hen!"

"Oh, d—bother the hen!"

"And he never swears," added Desire with gentle dignity.

They drove for a mile or so without remark and then, Desire, who had something to say, reopened the conversation without rancour.

"Don't be cross," she said. "As a matter of fact Benis does swear sometimes. He is nervous, you know. I sometimes wonder if it is all due to shell shock, or whether it is a result of his—er—other experience."

For the second time that day the car skidded. And for the second time, its unfortunate driver was called upon to give it his whole attention. Desire waited.

"I mean his former love affair," said she when conversation was again possible.

"His—I don't know," said John weakly.

Desire looked sceptical.

"Don't fancy I want to question you," she said with haughtiness. "But I don't see how you can help knowing. You are his doctor. And his friend, too. He must have told you. Didn't he?"

"He mentioned something—er—that is to say—"

"Oh, don't hesitate! Don't fancy that I mind. I don't, of course. And I am not curious. Although any-one might be curious. I won't ask you questions. I am only mildly interested. It is entirely for his own good that I should like to know if she is quite as wonderful as he thinks. Is she, John?"

"I—I don't know," stammered the wretched John.

Desire nodded patiently.

"You mean you don't know how wonderful he thought her? But did you think her very wonderful, John?"

"No, I didn't"

"You thought her plain?"

"No, I—I didn't think of her at all."

"You mean that you found her insignificant?"

The doctor made a sound which Desire was pleased to interpret as assent.

"I'm not surprised," said she earnestly. "Because, from the description Benis gave, I felt sure he was exaggerating. Not that it makes any difference, because, if he thought she was like that, what she really was like didn't matter. That," with plaintive triumph, "is one of the things I learned today."

The doctor said nothing. It was the only thing which he felt it safe to say.



CHAPTER XXVI

The professor was smoking under the maples by the front steps when the car drove up. He looked very cool, very comfortable and very sure of himself—entirely too sure of himself, in John's opinion. John, who at the moment, felt neither cool nor comfortable, and anything but sure, observed him with envy and pity. Envy for so obvious a content, pity for an ignorance which made content possible.

Spence, on his part, seemed unaware of a certain tenseness in the attitude of both Desire and John, a symptom which might have suggested many things to a reflective mind.

"You look frightfully 'het up,' Bones," he said. "And your collar is wilting. Better pause in your mad career and have some tea."

"Thanks, can't. Office hours—see you later," jerked the doctor rapidly as he turned his car.

"What have you been doing to John to bring on an attack of 'office hours' at this time of day?" asked Spence as he and Desire crossed the lawn together. "Wasn't the great idea a success?"

"John thinks it was."

It was so unlike Desire to give someone else's opinion when asked for her own that the professor said "um."

"I suppose," she added stiffly, "it is a question of values."

"Something for something—and a doubt as to whether one pays too dear for the whistle? Well, don't worry about it. If you could not help, you probably could not hurt, either.... I had a letter from Li Ho this afternoon."

"A letter!" Desire's swift step halted. Her eyes, wide and startled, questioned him. "A letter from Li Ho? But Li Ho can't write—in English."

"Can't he? Wait until you've read it. But I shan't let you read it, if you look like that."

"Like what? Frightened? But I am frightened. I can't help it. I know it's foolish. But the more I forget—the worse it is when I remember."

"You must get over that. Sit here while I fetch the letter. Aunt is out. I'll tell Olive to bring tea."

Desire sat where he placed her. It was very pleasant there with the green slope of the lawn and the cool shadow of trees. But her widely opened eyes saw nothing of its homely peace. They saw, instead, a curving stretch of moonlit beach and a trail which wound upwards into thick darkness. Ever since she had broken away, that vision had haunted her, now near and menacing, now dimmer and farther off, but always there like a spectre of the past.

"It hasn't let me go—it is there always—waiting," thought Desire. And in the still warmth of the garden she shivered.

The sense of Self, which is our proudest possession, receives some curious shocks at times. Before the mystery of its own strange changing the personality stands appalled. The world swings round in chaos before the startled question, "Who am I—where is that other Self that once was I?"

Only a few months separated Desire from her old life in the mountain cottage and already the mental and spiritual separation seemed infinite. But was it? Was there any real separation at all? That ghost of herself, which she had left behind on the moonlit beach, was it not still as much herself as ever it had been? Behind the shrouding veil of the present might not the old life still live, and the old Self wander, fixed and changeless? It was a fantastic idea of Desire's that the girl she had been was still where she had left her, working about the log-walled rooms, or wandering alone by the shining water. This Self knew no other life, would never know it—had no lot or part in the new life of the new Desire. Yet in its background she was always there, a figure of fate, waiting. Through the pleasant, busy days Desire forgot her—almost. But never was she quite free from the pull of that unsevered bond.

Until today there had been no actual word from the discarded past. Dr. Farr had not replied to Desire's brief announcement of her marriage. She had not expected that he would. And for the rest, Spence had arranged with Li Ho for news of anything which might concern the old man's welfare.

"Here is the letter," said Benis, breaking in upon her musing. "You will see that, if the clear expression of thought constitutes good English, Li Ho's English is excellent."

He handed her a single sheet of blue note paper, beautiful with a narrow purple border and the very last word in "chaste and distinctive" stationery.

"Honorable Spence and Respected Sir"—wrote Li Ho—"I address husband as is propriety but include to Missy wishes of much happiness. Honorable Boss and father is as per accustomed but no different. Admirable Sami child also of strong appetite when last observed. Departure of Missy is well to remain so. Moon-devil not say when, but arrive spontaneous. This insignificant advise from worthless personage Li Ho."

Desire handed back the letter with a hand that was not quite steady. The professor frowned. He had hoped that she was beginning to forget. But, with one so unused to self-revelation as Desire, it had been difficult to tell. He had thought it unwise to question and he had never pressed any comparison between her life as it was and as it had been. Better, he thought, to let all the old memories die. They were, he fancied, not very tellable memories, being compounded not so much of word and deed as of those more subtle things without voice or being which are no less terribly, evilly, real and whose mark remains longest upon the soul. Even complete understanding would not help him to rub out these markings. Only that slow over-growing of life, which we call forgetfulness, could do that. She was so young, there was still an infinite impulse of growth within her and in the new growth old scars might pass away.

Desire noticing the new seriousness of his face was conscious of a pang of guilt. It seems such crass ingratitude to doubt for one instant the stability of the happiness he had given her. Had he not done more than it had seemed possible for anyone to do? From the first she had overflowed with silent gratitude to him. There was wonder yet in the apparent ease with which he had sauntered into the prison of her life and, with a laugh and jest, set her free. He had shown her, for the first time in her life, the blessedness of receiving. Those whose nature it is to give greatly are not ungenerous to the giving of others. It is a small and selfish mind which fears to take, and Desire was neither small nor selfish. She had hidden the thanks she could not speak deep in her heart, letting them lie there, a core of sweetness, sweeter for its silence.

Who shall say when in this secret core a wonderful something began to quicken and to grow? So fine were its beginnings that Desire herself knew them only as new bloom and color, 'violets sweeter, the blue sky bluer'—the old eternal miracle of a new-made earth.

She had called this new thing friendship and had been content. Only today, when she had for an instant glimpsed life through the eyes of Agnes Martin, had there seemed possible a greater word. In that quiet room another name had whispered around her heart like the first breath of a rising wind. She had not dared to listen. Yet, without listening, she heard. And now, through Li Ho's letter, that other Self who would have none of love, stretched out a phantom hand and beckoned.

The professor took the letter from her gravely, retaining, for an instant the unsteady hand that gave it.

"Aren't you able to get away from it yet?" he asked kindly.

"No. Perhaps I never shall. When the memory comes back I feel—sick. It is even worse in retrospect. When it was my daily life, I lived it. But now it seems impossible. Am I getting more cowardly, do you think?"

Spence smiled. "I hope you are," he told her. "When you lived under a daily strain you were probably keyed to a sort of harmony with it. Now you are getting more normal. Life is a thing of infinite adjustment."

"You think I could get 'adjusted' again if I had to?"

"You won't have to. Why discuss it?"

"Because it puzzles me. Why do I mind things more now than I did? I used to feel quite casual about father's oddities. They never seemed to exactly matter. But now," naively, "I would so much like to have a father like other people."

"That is more normal, too."

"I suppose," she went on, as if following her own thoughts, "what Li Ho calls the moon-devil is really a disease. Have you ever told Dr. John about father, Benis? What did he say?" The professor fidgeted. "Oh, nothing much. He couldn't, you know, without more data. But he thinks his periodical spells may be a kind of masked epilepsy. There are some symptoms which look like it. The way the attacks come on, with restlessness and that peculiar steely look in the eye, the unreasoning anger and especially the—er—general indications." The professor came to a stammering end, suddenly remembering that she did not know that last and worst of the moon-devil symptoms.

"It is hereditary, of course," said Desire calmly.

The professor jumped.

"My dear girl! What an idea."

"An idea which I could not very well escape. All these things tend to transmit themselves, do they not? Only not necessarily so. I seem to have escaped."

"Yes," shortly. "Surely you have never supposed—"

"No. I haven't. That's the odd part of it. I have never been the least bit afraid. Perhaps it's because I have never felt that I have anything at all in common with father. Or it may be because I have never faced facts. I don't know. Even now, when I am facing facts, they do not seem really to touch me. I never pretended to understand father. He seemed like two or three people, all strangers. Sometimes he was just a rather sly old man full of schemes for getting money without working for it, and very clever and astute. Sometimes he seemed a student and a scholar—this was his best mood. It was during this phase that he wrote his scientific articles and taught me all that I know. His own knowledge seemed to be an orderly confusion o>f all kinds of things. And he could be intensely interesting when he chose. In those moods he treated me with a certain courtesy which may have been a remnant of an earlier manner. But it never lasted long."

"And the other mood—the third one?"

"Oh, that Well, that was the bad mood. If it is a disease he was not responsible. So' we won't talk of it." Desire's lips tightened. "He usually went away in the hills when the restlessness came on. And I fancy Li Ho—watched."

"Good old Li Ho!"

Desire nodded. "I think now that perhaps I did not quite appreciate Li Ho. I should like to know—but what is the use? We shall never know more than we do."

"Not about Li Ho'. He is the eternal Sphinx wrapped in an everlasting yesterday. I suppose he did not have even a beginning?"

Desire smiled. "No. He was always there. He is one of my first memories. A kind of family familiar. Sometimes I think that if he had not been away the night my mother died she might have been alive still."

Spence hesitated. "You have never told me about your mother's death, you know," he reminded her gently.

"Haven't I?" Desire was plainly surprised. "Why—I thought you knew. That is a queer thing about you," she went on musingly, "I am always thinking that you know things which you don't. Perhaps it's because you guess so much without being told. My mother died suddenly—of shock. Her heart was never strong and the fright of waking to find a thief in her room proved fatal. It happened one night when Li Ho was away. We lived in Vancouver at the time and Li Ho often disappeared into Chinatown. He had all the Oriental passion for fan-tan. That night there was a police raid on his favorite gambling place and Li Ho was held till morning. It was always he who locked the doors and attended to everything at night. Perhaps it was known that he was away. But just what happened was never settled, for my father was found unconscious on the floor of the passage outside my mother's door. He couldn't remember anything clearly. The fact that there had been several previous burglaries in town and that there were valuables missing offered the only explanation."

The professor was silent so long that Desire added: "I'm sorry. I should have told you before."

"What difference would it have made?" He roused himself. "Tell me the rest of it. Did Li Ho think that your mother had been frightened by a—thief?"

"I suppose so," in surprise. "Li Ho blamed himself terribly. He said it was his fault. If they hadn't known he was in the cells all night they might have suspected him. He acted so queerly. But of course what he meant was that if he had been at home the thief would not have broken in."

"There were evidences of his having broken in?"

"There was a window open."

"And were any of the stolen things recovered."

"Not that I ever heard of. And yet, I think perhaps some of them were. I remember—" Desire paused and a painful flush crept into her cheek.

"Yes?" prompted Spence gently.

"One of the lost things was an old-fashioned watch belonging to mother. I used to listen to it ticking. And once, years after, I saw it. Father had given it to—a friend of his. So, you see, he must have got it back."

"I see." The professor was aware of a pricking along his spine. He looked at the unconscious face of the girl and ventured another question.

"Was your father injured at all?"

"His head was hurt. They did not know whether the thief had struck him or whether it was the fall. He had fallen just at the foot of the stairs. We lived in a bungalow, then, and as I was asleep in my little room under the eaves, it was thought that he had been trying to reach me—what is the matter?"

The professor had been unable to control an involuntary shudder.

"Nothing," he said. "Just nerves."

Desire's smile was wistful. "It isn't a pretty story," she said. "None of the stories I can tell are pretty. That's why I am different from other people. But I am trying. Perhaps I shall get to be more like them presently."

The professor banished his dark thoughts with an effort. "God forbid!" he said cheerfully. "And here comes tea!"



CHAPTER XXVII

One wonders what would happen to our admirable muddle of a world, if even a minority of its inhabitants were suddenly to embrace consistency. It would, presumably, be a world still, but so changed that its best friends would not know it. It is because every-body, everywhere and at all times, acts as they could not logically be expected to act, that our dear familiar chaos of you-never-can-tell continues to entertain us.

Had Desire possessed consistency, this quality so jewel-like in its rarity, she would have realized that, having voluntarily stepped aside from woman's natural destiny, she should also have ceased to trouble herself with those feminine doubts and hopes which are peculiar to it. She would have known that the position of secretary to a professional man does not logically include heart-burnings and questionings concerning that gentleman's love affairs, past or present. She would have refused to consider Mary. She would have been quite happy in the position she had deliberately made for herself.

Much as we would like to present Desire in this thoroughly sensible light, we fear that her action on the morning following her visit to the invalid Miss Martin would not bear us out in so doing. For on that morning, with all facts of the situation freshly in her mind, she went down-town to Dr. Rogers' office for no other purpose than to see and talk to Dr. Rogers' yellow-haired nurse.

"When I see her and hear her," said Desire to her-self, "I shall know. And it will be so comfortable to know." Never a word, mind you, about the inconsistency of being uncomfortable through not knowing.

No attempt at reminding herself that knowledge was none of her business. No arguing out of the matter at all. Merely the following of a blind impulse to find Mary if Mary were to be found.

This impulse, which was wholly foreign to her natural habit of mind, she justified to herself under the guise of "natural curiosity." All she had to do was to make the call seem sufficiently casual and to time her arrival at the doctor's office at an hour when he could not possibly be in it. As a newcomer, such a mistake would seem quite plausible and could be passed over easily with "How stupid of me! I should have known." After that the nurse would probably invite her to wait. And, even if she did not, the mere exchange of question and answer would probably be sufficiently revealing.

This small program proceeded exactly as planned and Desire, in her most becoming frock, learned of the absence of Dr. Rogers with exactly the right degree of impatience and regret.

"Please come in," said Dr. Rogers' nurse in somewhat drawling accents. "Doctor may be back any minute." Being a nurse she always predicted the doctor's arrival no matter how certain she might be that he would not arrive.

Desire hesitated, glanced quite naturally at her watch and decided to wait. "If you are sure the doctor won't be long—?" The nurse was sure that he wouldn't be long.

Here her interest in the caller seemed to cease and she became very much occupied with a business-like addressing of envelopes at a desk in the corner.

Desire looked around the cool and pleasant room. It was not like her idea of a doctor's office, save perhaps for a faint clean smell of drugs. There were comfortable chairs, flowers in a window-box, a table with a book or two and some magazines. Through a half-open door, an inner office showed—all very different from the picture her memory showed her of the musty, cumbered room in which her father had received his dwindling patients. As a child she had hated that room, hated the hideous charts of "people with their skins off," the ponderous books with their horrific and highly colored plates, the "patients' chair" with its clinging odor of plush and ether, the untidy desk, the dust on everything!

But she had not come to Dr. Rogers' office to indulge in memory. She had come to see the lady who was so busily addressing envelopes and, after a decent interval of polite abstraction, she devoted herself cautiously to this purpose.

Nurse Watkins, before Desire's entrance, had not been addressing envelopes. She had been reading. Her book lay open upon the window-sill and Desire, having good eyes, could read its title upside down. It was not a title which she knew, nor, if titles tell anything, did it belong to a book which invited knowing. Desire felt almost certain that it was not a book which Mary would care to read. Still, one never could tell. The professor had said nothing whatever about Mary's literary taste.

Desire's eyes strayed, vaguely, from the book to its owner. Only Miss Watkins' profile was visible but it was a profile well worth attention. People who cannot choose their literature are often quite successful with their caps. Miss Watkins' cap was just right. And her hair was certainly yellow. Desire frowned.

Miss Watkins, looking up, caught the frown.

"Doctor really can't be long now," she drawled sympathetically. Desire felt that the sympathy, like the assurance, was professional—an afterglow, perhaps of sympathy which had existed once, before life had overdrawn its account. She felt, also, that Miss Watkins' nose was decidedly good. It was straight, with the nicest little blunt point; and her eyes were blue—not misty blue, like the hills, but a passable blue for all that. Her expression was cold and eminently superior. ("Frightfully nursey" was what Desire called it to herself.) Her voice was thin. (Desire was glad of that.)

"Doctor must have been kept somewhere," said the nurse pursuing her formula. "Won't you sit near the window? There's a breeze."

"Thank you." Desire moved to the window. "You must find it very peaceful here—after nursing overseas."

Nurse Watkins tapped her full upper lip with her pen. "Yes," she said. "It's very dull." Desire smiled. Her spirits had been rising ever since her entrance and she was now quite cheerful. Pretty as Miss Mary Watkins undoubtedly was, there was a some-thing—could it be possible that she chewed gum? No, of course she could not chew gum. And yet there was an impression of gum somewhere—an insinuating certainty that she might chew gum on a dark night when no one was looking. Desire heaved a little sigh of satisfaction and, leaning out, appeared to occupy herself with the passers-by.

"Aren't Bainbridge streets wonderful?" she said.

Nurse Watkins' mouth took on a discontented droop. "The streets are all right," she said, "only they don't go anywhere."

Desire laughed. "Are you as bored as that?" she asked.

"Worse. I wouldn't stay here a minute if it weren't—I mean, if I hadn't been advised to rest up a bit."

Desire looked at her watch, and rose. Now that her curiosity had been amply satisfied, she began to realize that curiosity is an undignified thing. And also that she had not been the only person present to give way to it.

The somewhat drawling tones of Miss Watkins' voice were not at all in keeping with the activity of her wide-awake blue eyes. A sense of this nurse's speculation as to her presence there flicked Desire with little whips of irritation. It is one thing to observe and quite another to render oneself observable. She felt the blood flow hotly to her cheek. Why had she come? How could she have so far forgotten her natural reserve, her instinctive dislike of intrusion? Desire saw plainly that she had allowed a regrettable sentiment to trick her into a ridiculous situation. Satisfied curiosity is usually ashamed of itself.

And how absurd to have fancied for a moment that this blond prettiness could be Mary!

"I am afraid I cannot wait longer," she murmured with polite regret.

"If there is any message—"

"None, I think. Thank you so much."

With the departure of her caller, Miss Watkins' manner underwent a remarkable change. Professional coolness deserted her. She stamped her foot and, from the safe concealment of the window curtain, she watched Desire's unhurried progress down the street with eyes in which the blue grew clouded and opaque. They brightened again as she noticed Professor Spence passing on the opposite side of the street, and became quite snappy with interest as she saw him pause as if to call to his wife, then, after a swift and hesitating glance at the door from which she had emerged, pass on without attracting her attention.

As a bit of pure pantomime, these expressions of feeling on Miss Watkins' part might be misleading with-out the added comment of a letter which she wrote that night.

"I'm going to cut it, Flossy old girl," wrote Miss Watkins. "If you know of anything near you that would suit me, pass it on. I think I'm about due to get out of here. You know why I've stayed so long. At first, I thought if we were together enough he might get to care. People say I'm not bad for the eyes. And I don't use peroxide. Well, I've made myself useful—he'll miss me anyway!

"It's kind of hard to give up. But I don't believe it's a bit of use. I've noticed a difference in him ever since he came back from that western trip. He doesn't seem to see me anymore. And there's something else, a look in his eyes and a line along his mouth that were never there before. I knew something had happened. And now I know what it was. Another girl, of course.

"And this girl is married!

"You might think this would make things hopeful for me. But it doesn't. Doctor's just the kind that would go on loving her if she had a thousand husbands. So here's where I hook it. No use wasting myself, honey. Maybe I'll get over it. They say everyone does.

"Funny thing—she's just the kind I'd think he'd go dippy over, dark and still, with a lovely, wide mouth and skin like lilies. She is young, younger than I am. But, believe me, she isn't a kid. Those eyes of hers have seen things. They're the kind of eyes that I'd go wild over if I were a man. So I'm not blaming Doctor. He can't help it.

"She came into the office today, just like an ordinary patient. But I knew right off that she'd come for some-thing. Don't know yet what she came for. She doesn't give herself away, that one! Didn't seem to look around, didn't ask questions and only stayed a few minutes. Do you suppose she could have come to see me? Because, if she did—Well, that shows where her interest is.

"Another odd thing—as she went out, I saw her husband. (I'll tell you, in strict confidence, that her husband is Professor Spence. They are well known people here. He used to be a sort of recluse. A queer chap. Deep as a judge.) Well, I saw him pass, on the opposite side of the road. He saw her and was just going to call, when it seemed to strike him where she had come from. I couldn't see very well across the road, but he looked as if someone had hit him. And he went on without saying a word. Now that looked queer to me.

"Don't write and say that I'm only guessing at things. I may be mistaken, of course, but I know I'm not. And I'm not a Pharisee (or whoever it was that threw stones). If she cares for Doctor, I suppose she can't help it. Some people think her husband handsome but I don't. He's too thin and he has the oddest little smile. It slips out and slips in like a mouse. When Dr. John smiles, he smiles all over.

"Well, I'll wait a week or so to make sure. Although I'm sure now. If I ever see Doctor look at her, I'll know. You see, I know how he'd look if he looked that way. I've kept hoping—but I guess I'd better take my ticket, Yours,

"MARY."

This letter satisfactorily explains the loss, some weeks later, of Dr. Rogers' capable nurse—a matter which he, himself, could never understand.



CHAPTER XXVIII

Desire was smiling as she left Dr. Rogers' office. It was a smile compounded of derision and relief—a shamefaced smile which admitted an opinion of herself very far from flattering.

So occupied was she with her mental reactions that she had no attention to spare for the opposite side of the street and therefore missed the slightly peculiar action of her husband-by-courtesy. Professor Spence, when he had first caught sight of his wife had automatically paused, as if to call or cross over. It had become their friendly habit to inform each other of their daily plans and a cheery "whither away?" had risen naturally to the professor's lips. It rose to them, but did not leave them, for, in the intervening instant, he had grasped the fact of Desire's smiling abstraction and had sought its explanation in the place from which she had come. Desire calling at old Bones' office at this hour of the morning? Before he had recovered from the surprise of it, she had passed.

Time, which seems so mighty, is sometimes quite negligible. The most amazing mental illuminations may occupy only the fraction of a second. A light flashes and is gone—but meanwhile one has seen.

The professor's pause was hardly noticeable. He walked on at once. But years could not have instructed him more thoroughly than that one second. He had received a revelation. Like all revelations, he received it in its entirety and realized it piecemeal. His thoughts stumbled over each other in confusion.... Desire at John's office at this unusual hour? ... Desire in her prettiest frock and smiling ... smiling, and so lost in her own thoughts that she saw no one ... Desire ... John? ... What the devil!

Spence had a finicky dislike of strong language. He thought it savored of weakness, yet he found himself swearing heartily as he hurried on—meaningless swears which by their very childishness brought him back to common sense. His step slowed, he forced himself to be reasonable. He took a brief against his own unwarranted disturbance of mind and reduced it to argument. There was nothing at all strange, he pointed out, in Desire having called at old Bones' office at this, or any other, time of day (but what under heaven did she do it for?). She might easily have forgotten to tell the doctor some-thing. (What in thunder would she have to tell him?) She might have dropped in, in passing (at that hour of the morning?) merely to ask him over for some tennis (was the dashed telephone out of order?). Or she might have felt a trifle seedy (pshaw! her health was perfect—idiot!). Anyway she had a perfect right to see Dr. Rogers at any time and for any reason she might choose. (Yes, she had—that was the devil of it!)

At this point of his argument the professor was nearly-run down by a delivery boy on a bicycle and saved himself only by a sharp collision with a telegraph pole. This served to clear his brain somewhat. His confusion of thought dropped away. He began to look his revelation in the face—

"Desire—John?"

It was certainly possible! Why had he never seen it before? ... He had been warned. John himself had warned him—Old John who had been so palpably "hit" when he had first seen Desire at Friendly Bay. But he, Benis Spence, had laughed. Honestly laughed. No possibility of this possibility had troubled him. He simply had not seen it. And now—he saw. The thing italicised itself on his brain.

Granted that Desire might love, there was no reason on earth why she should not love John.

The conclusion seemed childishly simple and yet he had never seriously considered it. Why? Relentlessly he forced himself to answer why. It was because he had believed that when Desire woke to love, if she should so wake, she would wake to love for him! He tore this admission out of a shrinking heart and laughed at it. It was funny, quite funny in its ridiculous conceit.... But it hadn't been conceit, it had been assurance. Impossible to account for, and absurd as it seemed now, it was some-thing higher than vanity which had hidden in his heart that happy sense of kinship with Desire which had made John's warning seem an emptiness of words.

It was gone now, that wonderful sense of "belonging," swept away in the swift rush of startled doubt. Searching as it might, his mind could not find anywhere the faintest foothold for a belief that Desire, free to choose, should turn to him and not to another.

"I had better go and sleep this off somewhere," murmured the professor with a wry smile. "Mustn't let it get ahead of me. Mustn't make any more mistakes. This needs thinking out—steady now!"

He tried to forget his own problem in thinking of hers. It couldn't be very pleasant for her—this. And yet she had been smiling as she came out of John's office. Perhaps she did not know yet? On second thoughts, he felt sure that she did not know. He recognized the essentials of Desire. She was loyalty itself. And had he not reason to know from his own present experience that the beginnings of love can be very blind.

John, too—but with John it was different. John had given his warning. If the warning were to be justified he could not blame John. He could not blame anyone save his own too confident self. Why, oh why, had he been so sure? Had he not known that love is the most unaccountable of all the passions? How had he dared to build security on that subtle thing within himself which, without cause or reason, had claimed as his the unstirred heart of the girl he had married.

Spence returned home with lagging step. The old distaste for familiar things, which he thought had gone with the coming of Desire, was heavy upon him. The gate of his pleasant home shut behind him like a prison gate. In short, Benis Spence paid for a moment's enlightenment with a bad day and a night that was no better.

By the morning he had won through. One must carry on. And the advantage of a quiet manner is that no one notices when it grows more quiet.

Desire was already in the library when he entered it. She looked very crisp and cool. It struck Spence for the first time that she was dressing her part—the neat, dark skirt and laundered blouse, blackbowed at the neck in a perfect orgy of simplicity, were eminently secretarial. How beautifully young she was!

Desire looked up from her note-book with business-like promptitude.

"I think," she said, "that we are quite ready to go on with the thirteenth chapter."

"But I think," said Benis, "that it would be much nicer to go fishing."

"Why?"

"Well, it's Friday, for one thing. Do you really think it safe to begin the thirteenth chapter on a Friday?"

His secretary's smile was dutiful, but her lips were firm. "We didn't do a thing-yesterday," she reminded him. "I couldn't find you anywhere and no one knew where you were."

"I was—just around," vaguely.

"Not around here," Desire was uncompromising. "Benis, I think we should really be more businesslike. We should have talked this thirteenth chapter over yesterday. I see you have a note here for some opening paragraphs on The Apprehension of Color in Primitive Minds—"

A cascade of goblin laughter from Yorick interrupted her.

"Yorick is amused," said Benis. "He knows all about the apprehension of color in primitive minds. He advises us to go fishing."

Desire watched him stroke the bird's bent head with a puzzled frown.

"I wish you wouldn't joke about—this," she said slowly. "You don't want that habit of mind to affect your serious work."

Spence looked up surprised.

"The whole character of the book is changing," went on Desire resolutely. "It will all have to be revised and brought into harmony. I'm sure you've felt it yourself. In a book like this the treatment must be the same throughout. I've heard you say that a hundred times. It doesn't matter what the treatment is, the necessary thing is that it be consistent. Isn't that right?"

"Certainly."

"Well—yours isn't!"

Spence forgot the parrot (who immediately pecked his finger). He almost forgot that he had suffered an awakening and had passed a bad night. Desire interested him in the present moment as she always did. She was—what was she? "Satisfying" was perhaps the best word for it. Just to be with her seemed to round out life.

"Prove it!" said he with some heat.

For half an hour he listened while she proved it with great energy and a thorough knowledge of her facts. He listened because he liked to listen and not because she was telling him anything new. He knew just where his "treatment" of his material had changed, and he knew, as Desire did not, what had changed it. For the change was not really in the treatment at all, but in himself.

This book had been his earliest ambition. It had been the sole companion of his thoughts for years. It had been the little idol which must be served. Without a word of it being written, it had grown with his growth. His notes for it comprised all that he had filched from life. He had not hurried. He was leisurely by nature. Then had come the war, lifting him out of all the things he knew. And, after the war, its great weariness. Not until he had met Desire and found, in her fresh interest, something of his own lost enthusiasm, had he been able to work again. Then, in a glow of recovered energy, the book had been begun. And all had gone well until the book's inspirer had begun to usurp the place of the book itself. (Spence smiled as he realized that Desire was painstakingly tracing the course of her self-caused destruction.) How could he think of the book when he wanted only to think of her? Insensibly, his gathered facts had begun to lose their prime importance, his deductions had lost their sense of weight, all that he had done seemed strangely insignificant—it was like looking at something through the wrong end of a telescope. The great book was a star which grew steadily smaller.

The proportion was wrong. He knew that. But at present he could do nothing to readjust it. Two interests cannot occupy the same space at the same time. The book interest had simply succumbed to an interest older and more potent.

"In this chapter, the Sixth," Desire was saying, "you seem to lose some of the serious purpose which is a prominent note in the opening chapters. You begin to treat things casually. You almost allow yourself to be humorous. Now is this supposed to be a humorous book, or is it not?"

"Oh—not. Distinctly not."

"Well then, don't you see? If you had treated the thing in that semi-humorous manner all through and continued in that vein you would produce a certain definite type of book. The critics would probably say—"

"I know, spare me!"

"They would say," sternly, "that 'Professor Spence has a light touch.' That 'he has treated his subject in a popular manner.'" (The professor groaned.) "But that isn't a patch upon what they will say if you mix up your styles as you are doing at present."

"But—well, what do you advise?"

Desire sucked her pencil. (He had given up trying to cure her of this poisonous habit.)

"I've thought about that. If you were not so—so temperamental, I would say go back and begin again. But that is risky. It will be better to go on, I think, trying to recapture the more serious style, until the whole book it at least in some form. Then you will know exactly where you are and what is necessary to harmonize the whole. You can then rewrite the 'off' chapters, bringing them into line. This is a recognized literary method, I believe."

"Is it? Good heavens!"

"I read it in a book."

"Then it must be literary. All right. I'm agreeable. But at present—"

"At present," firmly, "the main thing is to go on."

"This morning?"

"Certainly."

"But I don't want to go on this morning. That is the flaw in your literary method. It makes me go on whether I want to or not. Now the really top-notchers never do that. They are as full of stoppages as a freight train. Fact. They only create when the spirit moves them."

"Aren't you thinking of Quakers?" suggested Desire sweetly. "Besides you are not creating. You are compiling—a very different thing."

"But what is the use of compiling an off chapter when I know it is going to be an off one?"

Desire threw down her pencil.

"Oh, Benis," she said. "I don't like this. Don't let us play with words. Surely you are not getting tired—you can't be."

Her eyes, urgent and truth-compelling, forced an answer.

"I don't quite know," he said. "But I am certainly off work at present. There may be all kinds of reasons. You will have to be patient, Desire."

"Then," in a low voice, "it isn't only indolence?"

He was moved to candor. "It isn't indolence at all. I have always been a fairly good worker, and will be again. But the driving force has shifted. I have not been doing good work and I know it. The more I know it the worse the work will become.... It doesn't matter, really, child," he added gently, seeing that she had turned away. "The world can wait for the bit of knowledge I can give it."

Desire, whose face was invisible, took a moment to answer this. When she did her voice was carefully with-out expression.

"Then this ends my usefulness. You will not need me any more."

The professor, who had been nursing his knee on the corner of the desk, straightened up so suddenly that he heard his spine click.

"What's this?" he said. (Good heavens—the girl was as full of surprises as a grab-bag!)

"It was for the book you needed me, was it not? That was my share of our partnership."

("Now you've done it!" shouted an exultant voice in the professor's brain. "Oh, you are an ass!")

"Shut up!" said Spence irritably. "I wasn't talking to you," he explained apologetically. "It's just a horrid little devil I converse with sometimes. What I meant was—" He did not seem to know what he meant and looked rather helplessly out of the window. "Oh, I say," he said presently, "you are not going to—to act like that, are you? Agitation's so frightfully bad for me. Ask old Bones."

"You are not agitated," said Desire coldly. "Please be serious."

"I am. Deuced serious. And agitated too. You ought to think twice before you startle me like that—just when everything was going along so nicely."

"I am only reminding you of your own agreement," stubbornly. "I want to be of use."

"Very selfish of you. Can't you think of someone else once in a while?"

"Selfish? Because I want to help?"

"Certainly. I wonder you don't see it! Think of the mornings I've put in on this dashed book just because you wanted to help. I have to be polite, haven't I?—up to a point. But when you begin to blame me for doing poorly what I do not want to do at all I begin to see that my self-sacrifice is not appreciated."

"You are talking nonsense."

"Perhaps I am. But it was you who started it. When you said I did not need you, you said a very nonsensical thing. And a very unkind thing, too. A man does not like to talk of—his need. But, now that we have come to just this point, let us have it out. Surely our partnership was not quite as narrow as you suggest? The book is a detail. It is L. part of life which will fit in somewhere—an important part in its right place—but it isn't the whole pattern." He smiled whimsically. "Do not think of me as just an animated book, my dear—if you can help it. And remember, no matter how we choose to interpret our marriage, you are my wife. And my very good comrade. The one thing which could ever change my need of you is your greater need of—of someone else."

The last words were casual enough but the look which accompanied them was keen, and a sense of relief rose gratefully in the professor as no sign of disturbance appeared upon the thoughtful face of his hearer.

"Is Benis here, my dear?" asked Aunt Caroline opening the door. "Oh yes, I see that he is. Benis, you are wanted on the 'phone. If you would take my advice, which you never do, you would have an extension placed in this room. Then you could always just answer and save Olive a great deal of bother. Not that I think maids ought to mind being bothered. They never did in my time. But it would be quite simple for you, when you are writing here, to attend to the 'phone. Perhaps if the butcher heard a man's voice occasionally he might be more respectful. I do not expect much of tradespeople, as you know, but if the butcher—"

"Is it the butcher who wishes to speak to me, Aunt?"

"Good gracious, no. It's long distance. Why don't you hurry? ... Men have no idea of the value of time," she added as the professor vanished. "My dear you must not let Benis overwork you. He doesn't intend to be unkind, but men never think."



CHAPTER XXIX

Desire turned back to her papers as the door closed. But her manner was no longer brisk and business-like. There was a small, hot lump in her throat.

"It isn't fair," she thought passionately. "It's all very well to talk, but it does make a difference—it does. If I'm not his secretary what am I?" A hot blush crimsoned her white skin and she stamped her foot. "I'm not his wife. I'm not! I'm not!" she said defiantly.

There was no one to contradict her. Even Yorick was silent. And, as contradiction is really necessary to belligerency, some of the fire died out of her stormy eyes. But it flared again as thought flung thought upon the embers.

"Wife!" How dared he use the word? And in that tone! A word that meant nothing to him. Nothing, save a cold, calm statement of claim.... Not that she wanted it to mean anything else. Had she not, herself, arranged a most satisfactory basis of coolness and calmness? (Reason insisted upon reminding her of this.) And a strict recognition of this basis was precisely what she wanted, of course. Only she wanted it as a secretary and not as a—not as anything else.

"What's in a word?" asked Reason mildly. "Words mean only what you mean by them. Wife or secretary, if they mean the same—"

Desire flung her note-books viciously into a drawer and banged it shut.

Why did things insist upon changing anyway? She had been content—well, almost. She had not asked for more than she had. Why, then, should a cross-grained fate insist upon her getting less? Since yesterday she had not troubled even about Mary. Her self-ridicule at the absurdity of her mistake regarding Dr. Rogers' pretty nurse had had a salutary effect. And now—just when everything promised so well (self-pity began to cool the hot lump in her throat). And just when she had made up her mind that, however small her portion of her husband's thought might be, it would be enough—well, almost enough—

A screech from Yorick made her start nervously.

"Cats!" said Yorick. "Oh the devil—cats!"

Desire laughed and firmly dislodged Aunt Caroline's big Maltese cat from its place of vantage on the window-sill. The laughter dissolved the last of the troublesome lump and she began to feel better. After all, the book-weariness of which Benis had spoken would probably be a passing phase. If she allowed herself to go on creating mountains out of molehills she would soon have a whole range upon her hands.

And he had said he needed her!

Mechanically, she began to straighten the desk, restoring the professor's notes to their proper places. She was feeling almost sanguine again when her hand fell upon the photograph.

We say "the" photograph because, of all photographs in the world, this one was the one most fatal to Desire's new content. She picked it up casually. Photographs have no proper place amongst notes of research. Desire, frowning her secretarial frown, lifted the intruder to remove it and, lifting, naturally looked at it. Having looked, she continued looking.

It was an arresting photograph. Desire had not seen it before. That in itself was surprising, since one of Aunt Caroline's hardest-to-bear social graces was the showing of photographs. She had quantities of them—tons, Desire sometimes thought. They lived in boxes in different parts of the house, and were produced upon most unlikely occasions. One was never quite safe from them. Even the spare room had its own box, appropriately covered with chintz to match the curtains.

This photograph, Desire saw at once, would not fit into Aunt Caroline's boxes. It was too big. And it was very modern. Most of Aunt Caroline's collection dated from the "background" period of photographic art. But this one was all person. And a very charming person too.

Photographs are often deceiving. But one can usually catch them at it. Desire perceived at once that this photograph's nose had been artistically rounded and that its flawlessness of line and texture owed something to retoucher's lead. But looking through and behind all this, there was enough—oh, more than enough!

With instant disfavor, Desire noted the perfect arrangement of the hair, the delicate slope of the shoulder, the lifted chin, the tip of a hidden ear, the slightly mocking, but very alluring, glance of long, fawn-like eyes.

"Another molehill," thought Desire. And, virtuously disregarding the instinct leaping in her heart, she turned the fascinating thing face downwards. Probably fate laughed then. For written large and in very black ink across the back was the admirably restrained autograph, "Benis, from Mary" ...

Well, she knew now!

A very different person, this, from the blond Miss Watkins with her hard blue eyes and too, too dewy lips! Here was a woman of character and charm. A woman fully armed with all the witchery of sex. A woman any man might love—even Benis.

Desire did not struggle against her certainty. Her acceptance of it was as sudden as it was complete. Huddling back in her chair, with the tell-tale photo in her hands, she felt cold. Certainty is a chill thing. We all seek certainty but, when we get it, we shiver. The proper place for certainty is just ahead, that we may warm our blood in the pursuit of it. Certainty stands at the end of things and human nature shrinks from endings.

Only that morning, Desire had qualified the good of her present state by the "if" of "if I only knew." And, now that she did know, the only unqualified thing was her sense of desolation. The most disturbing of her speculations had been as nothing to this relentless knowledge. Not until she had found certainty did she realize how she had clung to hope.

She did not know that she was crying until a tear splashed hot upon her hand. She did not hear the door open as Benis reentered the room, but she sprang to her feet, alert and defensive, at the sound of his voice.

"Crying?" said Benis.

It was hardly a question. He had, in fact, seen the tear. But there was nothing in his manner to indicate more than ordinary concern.

"Certainly not," said Desire.

"My mistake. But what is it you are hiding so carefully behind you? Mayn't I see?"

Desire thought quickly. Her denial of tears had been, she knew, quite useless. Besides, she had heard that note of dry patience in the professor's voice before. It came when he wanted something and intended to get it. And he wanted now to know the cause of her tears. Well, he would never know it—never. It was the one impossible thing. Desire's pride flamed in her, a white fire which would consume her utterly—if he knew.

"It is a personal matter," she said. (This was merely to gain time.)

"It is personal to me also."

"I do not wish to show it to you."

"No. But—do not force me to insist."

These two wasted but few words upon each other. It was not necessary. Desire took a quick step backward. And, as she did so, the desired inspiration came. Directly behind her stood the table on which lay Aunt Caroline's box of photographs. If she could, without turning, substitute one of them for the tell-tale picture in her hand—

"You will hardly insist, I think." Her eyes were on him, cool and wary. She took another step backward. He did not follow her. There was a faint smile on his lips but his face, she noticed with perturbation, had gone very pale. His eyes were shining and chill, like water under grey skies.

"Please," he said, holding out his hand.

Desire let her glance go past him. "The door!" she murmured. He turned to close it. It gave her only a moment. But a moment was all she needed.

"Surely we are making a fuss over nothing." With difficulty she kept a too obvious relief out of her voice. He must not find her opposition weakened.

"Perhaps. But—let me decide, Desire."

"Shan't!" said Desire, like a naughty child.

Fire leapt from the chill grey of his eyes.

"Very well, then—"

He took it so quickly that Desire gasped. Then she laughed. She had never had anything taken from her by force since her childhood and it was an astonishing experience. Also, she had not dreamed that Benis was so strong. It hadn't been at all difficult. And this in spite of the fact that she had clung to the substituted photo-graph with convincing stubbornness.

"Well—now you've got it, I hope you like it," she said a little breathlessly. Her eyes were sparkling. She did not know what photo she had picked up when she dropped the real one. 'Probably it was a picture of Aunt Caroline herself or of some dear and departed Spence. Benis would have some difficulty in tracing the cause of the tears he had surprised. Fortunately he could always see a joke on himself. It would be funny ...

But it did not seem to be funny. Benis was not laughing. He had gone quite grey.

"What is it, Benis?" in a startled tone. "You see it was just a mistake? I was crying because—because I was sorry you were not going on with the book. I just happened to have a photograph—" The look in his eyes stopped her.

"Please don't," he said.

She took the card he held out to her, glanced at it, and choked back a spasm of hysterical laughter. For it wasn't a picture of Aunt Caroline, or even of a departed Spence—it was a picture of Dr. John Rogers!

"Gracious!" said Desire. There seemed to be nothing else to say. "Well," she ventured after a perplexed pause, "you can see that I couldn't be crying over John, can't you?"

"I can see—no need why you should;" said Benis slowly. "I'm afraid I have been very blind."

The girl's complete bewilderment at this was plain to anyone of unbiased judgment. But Spence's judgment was not at present unbiased. He went on painfully.

"I owe you an apology for my very primitive method of obtaining your confidence. But it is better that I should know—"

"Know what? You don't know. I don't know myself. I did not even know whose the photograph was until—" She hesitated at the look of hurt wonder in his eyes. "You think I am lying?" she finished angrily.

"I think you are making things unnecessarily difficult. There is no need for you to explain—anything."

Desire was furious. And helpless. She remembered now that when he had entered the room he had certainly seen her bending over a photograph. No wonder her statement that she did not know whose photograph it was seemed uniquely absurd. There was only one adequate explanation. And that explanation she wouldn't and couldn't make.

"Very well then," she said loftily. "I shall not explain."

He did not look at her. He had not looked at her since handing her back John's picture. But he had himself well in hand now. Desire wondered if she had imagined that greyish pallor, that sudden look of a man struck down. What possible reason had there been for such an effect anyway? Desire could see none.

"I came to tell you," he said in his ordinary voice, "that the long distance call came from Miss Davis. If it is convenient for you and Aunt, she plans to come along on the evening train. Her cold is quite better."

"The evening train, tonight?"

"Yes." He smiled. "She is a sudden person. Gone today and here tomorrow. But you will like her. And you will adore her clothes."

"Are they the very latest?"

"Later than that. Mary always buys yesterday what most women buy tomorrow."

"Oh," said Desire. "And what does this futurist lady look like?"

Benis considered. "I can't think of anything that she looks like," he concluded. "She doesn't go in for resemblances. Futurists don't, you know!"

"Isn't it odd?" said Desire in what she hoped was a casual voice. "So many of your friends seem to be named Mary."

"I've noticed that myself—lately."

"There are—"

"'Mary Seaton and Mary Beaton and Mary Carmichael and me,'" quoted Benis gravely.

Desire permitted herself to smile and turning, still smiling, faced Aunt Caroline; who, for her part, was in anything but a smiling humor.

"I'm glad you take it good-naturedly, Desire," said Aunt Caroline acidly. "But people who arrive at a moment's warning always annoy me. I do not require much, but a few days' notice at the least—have you seen a photograph anywhere about?"

Desire bit her lips. "Whose photograph was it, Aunt?"

"Why, Mary Davis' photograph, of course. The one she gave to Benis when she was last here. I hope you do not mind my taking it from your room, Benis? My intention was to have it framed. People do like to see themselves framed. I thought it might be a delicate little attention. But if she is coming tonight, it is too late now. Still, we might put it in place of Cousin Amelia Spence on the drawing-room mantel. What do you think, my dear?"