What Will People Say? A Novel

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[Illustration: THEY WERE AS OBLIVIOUS OF THEIR PERIL AS TRISTAN AND ISOLDE

[See page 405]]

WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?

A NOVEL BY RUPERT HUGHES

ILLUSTRATED

[Illustration]

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXIV

COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY HARPER & BROTHERS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED APRIL, 1914

ILLUSTRATIONS

THEY WERE AS OBLIVIOUS OF THEIR PERIL AS TRISTAN AND ISOLDE _Frontispiece_

AND NOW DESIGN EMERGED, A WOMAN STOOD REVEALED _Facing p. 18_

"THERE'S THAT OTHER ME DOWN IN THE POOL, WATCHING THIS ME" _Facing p. 252_

HER OBSTINATE PLUCK BEWILDERED HIM _Facing p. 480_

WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?

CHAPTER I

Fifth Avenue at flood-tide was a boiling surf of automobiles. But at nearly every corner a policeman succeeded where King Canute had failed, and checked the sea or let it pass with a nod or a jerk of thumb.

The young army officer just home-come from the Philippines felt that he was in a sense a policeman himself, for he had spent his last few years keeping savage tribes in outward peace. When he was away or asleep the Moros rioted at will. And so the traffic-officer of this other extreme of civilization kept these motor-Moros in orderly array only so long as he kept them in sight.

One glare from under his vizor brought the millionaire's limousine to a sharp stop, or sent it shivering back into position. But once the vista ahead was free of uniforms all the clutches leaped to the high; life and limb were gaily jeopardized, and the most appalling risks run with ecstasy.

The law of New York streets and roads forbids a car to commit at any time a higher speed than thirty miles an hour; and never a man that owns one but would blush to confess it incapable of breaking that law.

As Lieutenant Forbes watched the surge of automobiles from the superior height of a motor-bus it amused him to see how little people lose of the childhood spirit of truancy and adventure. All this grown-up, sophisticated world seemed to be run like a school, with joyous deviltry whenever and wherever the teacher's back was turned, but woe to whoso was caught; every one winking at guilt till authority detected it, then every one solemnly approving the punishment.

Mr. Forbes had not seen Fifth Avenue since the pathetic old horse-coaches were changed to the terrific motor-stages. He had not seen the Avenue since it was widened--by the simple process of slicing off the sidewalks and repairing their losses at the expense of the houses. The residences on both sides of the once so stately corridor looked to him as if a giant had drawn a huge carving-knife along the walls, lopping away all the porticos, columns, stoops, and normal approaches, and leaving the inhabitants to improvise such exits as they might.

The splendid facade of the Enslee home had suffered pitifully. He remembered how the stairway had once come down from the vestibule to the street with the sweeping gesture of a hand of welcome. Now the door was knee-deep in the basement, and the scar of the sealed-up portal was not healed above.

The barbarity of the assault along the line had not apparently relieved the choke of traffic. Or else the traffic had swollen more fiercely still, as it usually does in New York at every attempt in palliation.

As far as Forbes could see north and south the roadway was glutted from curb to curb with automobiles. And their number astonished him even less than their luxury. The designers had ceased to mimic hansoms, broughams, and victorias following invisible horses ridiculously. They had begun to create motors pure and simple, built to contain and follow and glorify their own engines.

Many of the cars were gorgeously upholstered, Aladdin's divans of comfort and speed; and some of them were decorated with vases of flowers. Their surfaces were lustrous and many-colored, sleekly tremendous. They had not yet entirely outgrown the imitation of the wooden frame, and their sides looked frail and satiny, unfit for rough usage, and sure to splinter at a shock. But he knew that they were actually built of aluminum or steel, burnished and enameled.

What he did not know was that the people in them, lolling relaxed, and apparently as soft of fiber as of skin, were not the weaklings they looked. They, too, like their cars, only affected fatigue and ineptitude, for they also were built of steel, and their splendid engines were capable of velocities and distances that would leave a gnarled peasant gasping.

This was one of the many things he was to learn.

From his swaying eery he seemed to be completely lost in a current of idle wealth. The throng, except for the chauffeurs, the policemen, and a few men whose trades evidently fetched them to this lane of pleasure--the throng was almost altogether women. And to Forbes' eye, unused to city standards, almost all the women were princesses.

At first, as his glance fell on each radiant creature, his heart would cry: "There is one I could love! I never shall forget her beauty!" And before the vow of eternal memory was finished it was forgotten for the next.

By and by the show began to pall because it would not end. As peers become commonplace at a royal court, since there is nothing else there, so beauty canceled itself here by its very multitude. For the next mile only the flamboyantly gorgeous or the flamboyantly simple beauty caught his overfed eye. And then even these were lost in the blur of a kaleidoscope twirled too fast.

There was one woman, however, that he could not forget, because he could not find out what she was like. In the slow and fitful progress up the Avenue it chanced that his stage kept close in the wake of an open landaulet. The stage never fell far behind, and never quite won alongside.

A young woman was alone in the tonneau. At least, he judged that she was young, though his documents were scant. Her head was completely hidden from his view by a hat that was just exactly big enough to accomplish that work of spite.

It was a sort of inverted flower-pot of straw--one of those astonishing millinery jokes that women make triumphs of. It bore no ornament at all except a filmy white bird-of-paradise feather stuck in the center of the top and spraying out in a shape that somehow suggested an interrogation-mark.

Even a man could see that it was a beautiful plume and probably expensive. It had a sort of success of impudence, alone there, and it mocked Forbes by trailing along ahead of him, an unanswerable query.

He grew eager and more eager to see what flower-face was hidden under that overturned straw flower-pot of a hat.

Now and then, as the stage pushed forward, he would be near enough to make out the cunning architecture of the mystery's left shoulder and the curious felicity of her left arm. Seen thus detached, they fascinated him and kindled his curiosity. By and by he was swept near enough to glimpse one rounded knee crossed over the other, and one straight shin creasing a tight skirt, and a high-domed instep, and the peak of one slim shoe.

And once, when the traffic was suddenly arrested, he was close enough to be wildly tempted to bend down and snatch off that irritating hat. He would have learned at least the color of her hair, and probably she would have lifted her startled face to view like a reverted rose. He was a fearless soldier, but he was not so daring as all that. Still, he heard her voice as she gossiped to a momentary neighbor who raised his hat in a touring-car held up abeam her own.

Her voice did not especially please him; it was almost shrill, and it had the metallic glitter of the New York voice. Her words, too, were a trifle hard, and as unpoetic as possible.

"We had a rotten time," she said. "I was bored stiff. You ought to have been there."

And then she laughed a little at the malice implied. The policeman's whistle blew and the cars lurched forward. And the stage lumbered after them like a green hippopotamus. Forbes began to feel a gnawing anxiety to see what was under that paradise feather. He assumed that beauty was there, though he had learned from shocking experiences how dangerous it is to hope a woman beautiful because the back of her head is of good omen.

It became a matter of desperate necessity to overtake that will-o'-the-wisp chauffeur and observe his passenger. Great expectations seemed to be justified by the fact that nearly every policeman saluted her and smiled so pleasantly and so pleasedly that the smile lingered after she was far past.

Forbes noted, too, that the people she bowed to in other cars or on the sidewalk seemed to be important people, and yet to be proud when her hat gave a little wren-like nod in their directions.

At Fifty-first Street, in front of the affable gray Cathedral, there was a long and democratic delay while a contemptuous teamster, perched atop a huge steel girder, drove six haughty stallions across the Avenue; drove them slowly, and puffed deliberate smoke in the face of the impatient aristocracy.

Here a dismounted mounted policeman paced up and down, followed by a demure horse with kindly eyes. This officer paused to pass the time of day with the mysterious woman, and the horse put his nose into the car and accepted a caress from her little gloved hand. Again Forbes heard her voice:

"You poor old dear, I wish I had a lump of sugar."

It was to the horse that she spoke, but the officer answered:

"The sight of you, ma'am, is enough for um."

Evidently he came from where most policemen come from. The lady laughed again. She was evidently not afraid of a compliment. But the policeman was. He blushed and stammered:

"I beg your pairdon, Miss--"

He gulped the name and motioned the traffic forward. Forbes was congratulating himself that at least she was not "Mrs." Somebody, and his interest redoubled just as the young woman leaned forward to speak to her chauffeur. She had plainly seen that there was a policeless space ahead of her, for the driver put on such speed that he soon left Forbes and his stage far in the rear.

Forbes, seeing his prey escaping, made a mental note of the number of her car, "48150, N. Y. 1913."

He had read how the police traced fugitive motorists by their numerals, and he vowed to use the records for his own purposes. He must know who she was and how she looked. Meanwhile he must not forget that number--48150, N. Y. 1913--the mystic symbol on her chariot of translation.

CHAPTER II

Helpless to pursue her with more than his gaze, Forbes watched from his lofty perch how swiftly she fled northward. He could follow her car as it thridded the unpoliced traffic by that dwindling bird-of-paradise plume, that sphinxic riddle of a feathery question-mark.

He mused indulgently upon her as she vanished: "She breaks the law like all the rest when no one is there to stop her. She wheedles the police with a smile, but behind their backs she burns up the road."

Evidently there were narrow escapes from disaster. One or two pedestrians leaped like kangaroos to escape her wheels. Once or twice collisions with other cars were avoided by sharp swerves or abrupt stops.

The plume went very respectably across the Plaza, for policemen were there on fixed post; but, once beyond, the feather diminished into nothingness with the uncanny speed of a shooting-star.

She was gone. And now he wondered whither she sped, and why. To what tryst was she hastening at such dreadful pace, with such rash desire? He felt almost a jealousy, at least an envy, of the one who waited at the rendezvous.

And then he felt alarm for her. Already she might have met disaster. Her car might have crashed into some other--into a great steel-girder truck like that that crossed the Avenue. She might even now be lying all crumpled and shattered in a tangle of wreckage.

That taunting white question-feather might be dabbled with red. The face might be upturned to any man's view and every man's horror. He was almost afraid to follow farther lest his curiosity be more than sated.

His irresolution was solved for him. The stage was turning out of Fifth Avenue, to cross over to Broadway and Riverside Drive. Forbes was not done with this lane. He rose to leave the bus. It lurched and threw him from bench to bench. He negotiated with difficulty the perilous descent, clutched the hand-rail in time to save himself from pitching head first to the street, clambered down the little stairway with ludicrous awkwardness, stepped on solid asphalt with relief, and walked south.

The press gradually thickened, and before long it was dense and viscid, as if theater audiences were debouching at every corner.

The stream was still almost entirely woman: beautiful woman at the side of beautiful woman, or treading on her high heels; chains of womankind like strings of beaded pearls, hordes of women, dressed in infinite variations of the prevailing mode. They strode or dawdled, laughing, smiling, bowing, whispering, or gazing into the windows of the shops.

The panorama of windows was nearly as beautiful as the army of women. The great show-cases, dressed with all expertness, were silently proffering wares that would tempt an empress to extravagance.

A few haberdashers displayed articles of strange gorgeousness for men--shirt-patterns and scarves, bathrobes, waistcoats that rivaled Joseph's; but mainly the bazars appealed to women or to the men who buy things for women.

The windows seemed to say: "How can you carry your beloved past my riches, or go home to her without some of my delights?" "How fine she would look in my folds!" "How well my diamonds would bedeck her hair or her bosom! If you love her, get me for her!" "It is shameful of you to pretend not to see me, or to confess to poverty! Couldn't you borrow money somewhere to buy me? Couldn't you postpone the rent or some other debt awhile? Perhaps I could be bought on credit."

Show-windows and show-women were the whole cry. The women seemed to be wearing the spoils of yesterday's pillage, and yet to yearn for to-morrow's. Women gowned like manikins from one window gazed like hungry paupers at another window's manikins.

The richness of their apparel, the frankness of their allure were almost frightful. They seemed themselves to be shop-windows offering their graces for purchase or haughtily labeling themselves "sold." Young or antique, they appeared to be setting themselves forth at their best, their one business a traffic in admiration.

"Look at me! Look at me!" they seemed to challenge, one after another. "My face is old, but so is my family." "My body is fat, but so is my husband's purse!" "I am not expensively gowned, but do I not wear my clothes well?" "I am young and beautiful and superbly garbed, and I have a rich husband." "I am only a little school-girl, but I am ready to be admired, and my father buys me everything I want." "I am leading a life of sin, but is not the result worth while?" "My husband is slaving down-town to pay the bills for these togs, but are you not glad that I did not wait till he could afford to dress me like this?"

Lieutenant Forbes had been so long away from a metropolis, and had lived in such rough countries, that he perhaps mistook the motives of the women of New York, and their standards, underrated their virtues. Vice may go unkempt and shabby, and a saint may take thought of her appearance. Perhaps what he rated as boldness was only the calm of innocence; what he read as a command to admire may have been only a laudable ambition to make the best of one's gifts.

But to Forbes there was an overpowering fleshliness in the display. It reminded him of the alleged festivals of Babylon, where all the women piously offered themselves to every passer-by and rated their success with heaven by their prosperity with strangers.

It seemed to him that the women of other places than New York must have dressed as beautifully, but in an innocenter way. Here the women looked not so much feminine as female. They appeared to be thinking amorous thoughts. They deployed their bosoms with meaning; their very backs conveyed messages. Their clothes were not garments, but banners.

He had dwelt for years among half-clad barbarians, unashamed Igorrotes; but these women looked nakeder than those. The more studiously they were robed, the less they had on.

A cynicism unusual to his warm and woman-worshiping soul crept into Forbes' mind. He went along philosophizing:

"All these women are paid for by men. For everything that every one of these women wears some man has paid. Fathers, husbands, guardians, keepers, dead or alive, have earned the price of all this pomp.

"The men who pay for these things are not here: they are in their offices or shops or at their tasks somewhere, building, producing; or in their graves resting from their labors, while the spendthrift sex gads abroad squandering and flaunting what it has wheedled.

"What do the women give in return? They must pay something. What do they pay?"

CHAPTER III

He brooded like a sneering Satan for a time upon the meaning of the dress-parade, and then the glory of it overpowered him again. He felt that it would be a hideous world without its luxuries. It was well, he concluded, that men should dig for gold, dive for pearls, climb for aigrets, penetrate the snows for furs, breed worms for silk, build looms, and establish shops--all in order that the she half of the world should bedeck itself.

The scarlet woman on the beast, the pink girl with the box of chocolates, the white matron, the widow in the most costly and becoming weeds--they were all more important to the world than any other of man's institutions, because they were pretty or beautiful or in some way charming--as useless, yet as lovely as music or flowers or poetry.

He was soon so overcrowded with impressions that he could not arrange them in order. He could only respond to them. The individual traits of this woman or that, swaggering afoot or reclining in her car, smote him. Every one of them was a Lorelei singing to him from her fatal cliff, and his heart turned from the next to the next like a little rudderless boat.

Each siren rescued him from the previous, but the incessant impacts upon his senses rendered him to a glow of wholesale enthusiasm. He rejoiced to be once more in New York. He began to wish to know some of these women.

It was apparent that many of them were ready enough to extend their hospitality. Numbers of them--beautiful ones, too, and lavishly adorned--had eyes like grappling-hooks. Their glances were invitations so pressingly urged that they inspired opposition. They expressed contempt in advance for a refusal. But men easily find strength to resist such invitations and such contempt.

It was not in these tavern-like hearts that Forbes would seek shelter. He wanted to find some attractive, some decently difficult woman to make friends with, make love to. He was heart-free, and impatient for companionship.

When a man is a soldier, an officer, and young, well-made and well-bred, it is improbable that he will remain long without opportunity of adventure.

The woman of the bird-of-paradise feather was buried in Forbes' mind as deeply as if a balcony full of matinee girls had collapsed upon her. Forbes fell in love at first sight a hundred and fifty times on the Avenue. Had he met any one of that cohort again under favoring auspices he might have found in her arms the response he sought. It might have brought him tragic unrest, or the sort of home comfort that makes no history.

Perhaps he did meet some of these potential sweethearts later; but if he did, he could not remember them and he did not heed them, for he was by then involved inextricably with the one he had hunted for and lost.

When he found her he did not remember her any more than the others. She impressed him as a woman of extreme fragility, yet she was to test his strength to its utmost, his endurance, his courage, his readiness for hazard.

He had won a name among brave men for caution in approaching danger, for bravery in the midst of it, and for agility in extricating himself from ambush and trap. This most delicate lady was to teach him to be reckless, foolhardy, maladroit. She would wear him out in the pursuit of happiness and disgust him with his profession, with himself and her. Under her tutelage he would run through scenes of splendor and scale the heights of excitement. He would know beauty and pleasure and intrigue and peril. He would know everything but repose, contentment, and peace. He would love her and hate her, abhor her and adore her, be her greatest friend and enemy, and she his.

At his first meeting with her he pursued her without knowing who she was and without overtaking her. And she, not knowing she was pursued, unconsciously teased him by keeping just out of his reach and denying him the glimpse of her face.

Perhaps it would have been better for both if they had never come nearer together than in that shadowy, that foreshadowing game of hide-and-seek in the full sun among the throngs.

Perhaps it was better that they should meet and endure the furnace of emotions and superb experiences in gorgeous scenes.

But, whether for better or worse, they did meet, and their souls engaged in that grapple of mutual help and harm that we call love.

The world heard much of them, as always, and inevitably misunderstood and misjudged, ignoring what justified them, not seeing that their most flippant moments were their most important and that when they seemed most to sin they were clutching at their noblest crags of attainment.

It is such fates as theirs that make the human soul cry aloud for a God to give it understanding, to give it another chance in a better world. The longing is so fierce that it sometimes becomes belief. But while we wait for that higher court it is the province of story-tellers to play at being juster judges than the popular juries are.

Meanwhile Forbes was unsuspicious of the future, and unaware of nearly everything except heart-fag and foot-weariness.

When he returned to his hotel he was a tourist who has done too much art-gallery. Fifth Avenue had been an ambulant Louvre of young mistresses, not of old masters.

He crept into a tub of water as hot as he could endure, and simmered there, smoking the ache out of him, and imagining himself as rich as Haroun al Raschid, instead of a poor subaltern in a hard-worked little army, with only his pay and a small sum that he had saved, mainly because he had been detailed to regions where there was almost nothing fit to buy.

The price of his room at the hotel had staggered him, but he charged it off to a well-earned holiday and pretended that he was a millionaire. He rose from the steaming pool and turned an icy shower on himself with shuddering exhilaration. His blood leaped as at a bugle-call, a reveille to life.

He heard the city shouting up to his windows, and he began to fling on his clothes. And then he realized that he knew nobody among those roaring millions. He cursed his luck and flung into his bathrobe. As he knotted the rope he felt that he might as well be a cowled and cloistered monk in a desert as his friendless self in this wilderness of luxury.

Happiness was bound to elude him as easily as that woman of the white query-plume eluded him when he in his ten-cent bus pursued her in her five-thousand-dollar landaulet. All he had of her was the back of her hat and the number of her car--N. Y. 41508. Or was it N. Y. 85140, or--what the devil was the number?

He had not brought away even that!

CHAPTER IV

Nothing can be lonelier than a room in even a best hotel when one is lonesome and when one's window looks out upon crowds. Forbes had pitched his tent at the Knickerbocker, and his view was of Longacre Square.

The Times Building stood aloft, a huddled giraffe of a building. A fierce wind spiraled round it and played havoc with dignity. It was an ill-mannered bumpkin wind from out of town with a rural sense of humor. Women pressed forward into the gale, bending double and struggling with their tormented hats and writhing skirts. Some of the men seemed to find them an attractive spectacle till they felt their own hats caught up and kited to the level of the fourth and fifth windows.

A flock of newsboys, as brisk as sparrows, drove a hustling trade in recovering hats for men who were ashamed of bare heads as of a nakedness. The gamins darted among the street-cars and automobiles, risking their lives for dimes as sparrows for corn, and escaping death as miraculously.

At the western end of Forty-second Street stood a space of sunset like a scarlet canvas on exhibition. Then swift clouds erased it, and gusts of rain went across the town in volleys of shrapnel, clearing the streets of a mob. Everybody made for the nearest shelter.

The onset ended as quickly as it began. The stars were in the sky as suddenly as if some one had turned on an electric switch. On the pavements, black with wet and night, the reflected electric lights trickled. All the pavements had a look of patent leather.

Forbes sat in the dark room in an arm-chair and muffled his bathrobe about him, watching the electric signs working like solemn acrobats--the girl that skipped the rope, the baby that laughed and cried, the woman that danced on the wire, the skidless tire in the rain, the great sibyl face that winked and advised chewing-gum as a panacea, the kitten that tangled itself in thread, the siphons that filled the glasses--all the automatic electric voices shouting words of light.

Forbes wanted to be among the crowds again. He could not tolerate solitude. He resolved to go forth. It inspired him with pride to put on his evening clothes. While he dressed he sent his silk hat to be ironed by the hotel valet. It came back an ebon crown.

He set it on his head, tapped the top of it smartly, swaggered to the elevator, bowed to the matronly floor clerk as to a queen, went down to the main dining-room, and tried to look at least a duke. He was glad to be in full dress, for the other people were. The head waiter greeted him with respect and handed him the bill of fare with expectation.

He ordered more than he had appetite for, and tried not to blanch at the prices.

The flowers, the shaded candles, the tapestries, the china and the glass and silver, the impassioned violinist leading the sonorous orchestra, all gave him that sense of royalty from which money is most easily wooed. But the cordiality of the thing was fascinating. The whole city seemed to be attending a great reception. New York was giving a party.

And now, indeed, he was in New York again--in it, yet not of it; a poor relation at the wedding feast. He lingered at his solitary banquet like a boy sent away from the table and forced to eat by himself. His extrusion seemed to be a punishment for not being rich. But while his funds held out to burn he would pretend.

The room emptied rapidly as the hour for opera and theater arrived. But he lingered, not knowing where to go. He pretended to be in no hurry. He had, indeed, more leisure than he enjoyed. Still he sat smoking and protracting his coffee, and haughtily playing that he was not starving for companionship.

When almost the last couple was gone he realized that he faced an evening of dismal solitude. He realized also that a number of kind-thoughted gentlemen had erected large structures for the entertainment of lonely people and had engaged numbers of gifted persons to enact stories for their diversion.

He called for his account, paid it with a large bill, and ignored the residue with a ruinous lifting of the brows as he accepted a light for his exotic cigar.

He helped to put false ideas in the hat-boy's head with the price he paid for the brief storage of his hat and coat and stick. He sauntered to the news-stand with the gracious stateliness of a czarevitch incognito, and asked the Tyson agent:

"What's a good play to see?"

The man named over the reigning successes, and some of their titles fell strangely pat with Forbes' humor:

"Romance," "The Poor Little Rich Girl," "Oh, Oh, Delphine!" "Peg o' My Heart," "The Lady of the Slipper," "The Sunshine Girl."

"They're mostly about girls," Forbes smiled.

"They mostly always are," the agent grinned. "But there's others: 'Within the Law,' 'The Argyle Case,' 'The Five Frankfurters,' 'Years of Discretion.'"

"I reckon I'd better see 'Within the Law.' I've heard a good deal about that."

"I guess you have. It's been a sell-out for months."

"Can't I get in?"

"I'm afraid not. How many are you?"

"One."

"One? Let me see. Here's a pair ordered by a party that hasn't called for them. Could you use them both?"

"I could put my overcoat in one seat," Forbes groaned, at this added irony in his loneliness and penuriousness.

"I'd split the pair, but it's too late to sell the other one."

"I'll take both." Forbes sighed and waved a handsome five-dollar bill farewell.

The boy who twirled the squirrel-cage door told him that the theater was just down the street, and received a lavish fee for the information. Forbes was soon in the lobby, but the first act was almost finished. Rather than disturb the people already seated, he stood at the back, leaning over the rail. He thrilled instantly to the speech of the shop-girl sentenced to the penitentiary for a theft she was not guilty of, and warning the proprietor that she would amply revenge herself when she came back down the river. At the height of the outcry of militant innocence Forbes heard the susurrus of robes and turned to see a small group of later comers than himself.

At the head went something that he judged to be a woman, though all he saw was a towering head-dress, a heap of elaborately coiffed hair, a wreath of mist, an indescribably exquisite opera-cloak shimmering down to an under-cascade of satin.

This tower of fabrics went along as if it were carried on a pole, and Forbes could see no semblance of human shape or stride inside it. But he judged that it contained a personality, for it paused to listen to something another pile of fabrics said to it, and from both came a snicker--or was it only a frou-frou of garments? In any case, it angered the part of the audience adjacent. The group went down the side-aisle, up a few steps to the little space behind the box.

From where he stood Forbes could see the usher helping them lay off their wraps. They showed no anxiety to catch the remainder of the act, but stood gossiping while the frantic usher waited, not daring to reprimand them, yet dreading the noise of their incursion.

[Illustration: AND NOW DESIGN EMERGED, A WOMAN STOOD REVEALED]

Forbes watched one of the clothes-horses stripped of its encumbrances.

From somewhere in the chaos two long-gloved arms came up; they were strangely shapely; they made motions like swan's necks dipping into water-lilies. A garland of fog came away, and a head on a throat appeared, a bust set upon a heap of drapery. Then the opera-cloak slipped off into the usher's hands. And now design emerged, a woman stood revealed. The head and throat were seen to be attached to a scroll of shoulders, and a figure like a column rose from the floor--strangely columnar it was, and so slender that there was merely the slightest inslope of waist, merely the slightest entasis at the hips.

In other periods only portions of the human outline have been followed by the costume. The natural lines have been broken, perverted, and caricatured by balloon sleeves, huge farthingales, or paniers like a jennet's pack-saddles, the incredible Botocudo ideal of the bustle, corsets like hour-glasses, concentric hoops about the legs, with pantalets coquetting inanely at the ankles--the almost impossible facts of fashion.

Just then the costume was hardly more of a disguise than the gold or bronze powder smeared on by those who pose as statues at the vaudevilles. Inside their outer wraps women were rather wall-papering themselves than draping their forms. It was saner so, and decenter, too, perhaps.

And yet Forbes stared at this woman as Adam must have stared at Eve when the scales were off his eyes. Even her hair was almost all her own, and it was coiled and parted with simple grace. Her head-dress was something bizarre--not a tiara of diamonds, but a black crest with a pearl or two studding it--the iridescent breast of a lyre-bird it was, though he did not know. A cord of pearls was flung around her throat. At the peak of each shoulder her gown began, but the two elements did not conjoin till just in time above the breast, and just a little too late at the back.

The fabric clung lovingly to the loins, thighs, and calves, so closely that an inverted V must be cut between the ankles to make walking possible at all. There was a train of a fish-tail sort, a little twitching afterthought. And so this woman-shape came forth from a shapelessness as Aphrodite from the sea-foam.

Forbes was so startled that he felt all the chagrin of one who is caught staring at a woman just returned from the surf in a wet bathing-suit. He shifted his eyes from her. When he looked back she had vanished into the crimson cavern of the box.

The other women followed her, and the men them. They seated themselves just as the curtain fell.

And now Forbes felt at liberty to go to his own seat, found an usher to pilot him down the aisle. He bowed and murmured "Beg pardon" and "Thank you" to each of those who shoved back awkwardly and wonderingly to let him in. He felt like explaining to them that he had not just arrived, and that he really was not so foolish or so dilatory as he looked. He put his overcoat in his extra seat and studied his program.

A voice that should have reminded him of the landaulet, but did not, caught his ear and led his eyes to the box. He was not far from the late arrivals.

They were attracting a deal of attention from the audience, and paying it none. The loudness of their speech and their laughter would have shocked him in a crowd of farmers. Coming from people of evident wealth and familiarity with town customs, it astounded him.

He had not yet seen the face of the woman of whom he had seen so much else. She was talking to a man in the interior of the box. Her back was turned to the house.

It never occurred to Forbes that it might be the same back he had followed up the Avenue. How could he have told?

That back was clothed and cloaked, and even that famous left arm was sleeved. These shoulder-sheaths, not blades, were so astoundingly bare that he felt ashamed to look at them. Their proprietress was evidently not ashamed to submit them for public inspection. One might not approve her boldness, but one could hardly fail to approve her shoulders. When she moved or shrugged or laughed or turned to speak, their exquisite integument creased and rippled like shaken cream.

At length the footlights went up, the curtain went up. The three women aligned themselves in profile along the rail as if they were seated on unseen horses. The men were mere silhouettes in the background.

The bulk of the audience was in darkness; but the people in the boxes were illumined with a light reflected from the scenery, and it warmed them like a dawn glowing upon peaks of snow.

And now, at last, Forbes saw the face he had watched for with such impatience. It did not disappoint him. At first she gave him only the profile; but that magic light of stage-craft was upon it, and once she turned her head and cast a slow, vague look along the shadowy valley of the audience. She could not have seen him, but he saw her and found her so beautiful, so bewitchingly beautiful and desirable, that he caught his breath with a stitch of pain, an ache of admiration.

Just a moment her eyes dreamed across the gloom, and she turned back to watch the stage. It was like a parting after a tryst. Then she broke the spell with a sudden throe of laughter. The little shoplifter and blackmailer on the stage was describing her efforts to learn the ways of society, the technique of pouring tea and pretending to like it. She swore, and the audience roared. Formerly an actor could always get a laugh by saying "damn." Now it must be a woman that swears.

Jarred back to reasonableness by the shock of laughter, Forbes looked again to the box to see what manner of women this woman went with. One of them was tiny but quite perfect. She had the face of a debutante under the white hair of a matron. If her age were betrayed by her neck, the dog-collar of pearls concealed the ravage. She sat exceedingly erect and seemed to be cold and haughty till another splurge of slang from the shoplifter provoked her to a laugh that was like a child's.

The other woman laughed, too, laughed large and wide. She was beautiful, too, a Rubens ideal, drawn in liberal rotundities--cheeks, chin, throat, bust, hips. No Cubist could have painted her, for she was like a cluster of soap-bubbles. Her face was a great baby's.

The men were almost invisible, mere cut-outs in black and white.

None of them had the jaded look of boredom that Forbes supposed to be the chief characteristic of New York wealth. They were as eager and irrepressible as a box-load of children fighting over a bag of peanuts at a circus.

One of the men leaned forward and whispered something; all the women turned to hear. They forgot the play, though the situation was critical. They chattered and laughed so audibly that the audience grew restive; the people on the stage looked to be distressed.

Forbes was astonished at such bad manners from such beautiful people. He wondered how the play could go on. He had heard of actors stepping out of the picture to rebuke such disturbers of the peace. He expected such an encounter now.

Then somebody in the audience hissed. Somebody called distinctly, "Shut up!" The group turned in surprise, and received another hiss in the face. Silence and shame quieted it instanter. The women blushed like grown girls threatened with a spanking. Tremendous blushes ran all down their crimson backs.

Forbes could see that they wanted to run. A kind of pluck held them. They pretended to toss their heads with contempt, but the mob had cowed them so completely that Forbes felt sorry for them--especially for her. She was too pretty for a public humiliation.

When the curtain fell on the second act Forbes saw one of the men in the box rise and leave along the side-aisle. Forbes knew the man. His name was Ten Eyck--Murray Ten Eyck.

Forbes dreaded to repeat that voyage through the strait between knees and seat-backs; but he had seen at last a man he knew. And the man he knew knew the woman he wanted to know.

CHAPTER V

The women he passed glared hatpins at Forbes and groaned as they rose and hunched back to let him by. They clutched at the wraps he disarranged. He rumpled one elaborate hat stuck in the back of a seat, and one silk tie that had fallen out of the wire rack he kicked under the row ahead. He had an impulse to go after it; but when he realized the postures and scrambles it would involve, it was too horrible an ordeal. He pretended not to have noticed, and pressed onward.

None was so indignant as the man who had similarly climbed out for a drink the _entr'acte_ before. Forbes knew it was a drink he had gone out for the moment he passed him. Forbes was not going out for a drink, but for important information.

He apologized meekly, yet continued on his course. By the time he was in the open Ten Eyck had disappeared. He was not in the lobby, nor among the men smoking on the sidewalk or dashing across the street to one of the cafes where coffee could not be obtained. Forbes found his man at last in the smoking-room below-stairs.

He was puffing a cigarette, and met Forbes' eager glance with such blank indifference that Forbes' words of greeting stopped in his throat.

To explain his presence in the smoking-room Forbes lighted a cigar, though he knew that he could have but a few puffs of it. And it was such a good cigar! There can only be so many good cigars in the world.

The two men paced back and forth on crisscrossing paths as violently oblivious of each other as the two traditional Englishmen who were cast away on the same desert island and had never been introduced.

It was not till Murray Ten Eyck flung down his cigarette and made to leave that Forbes mustered courage enough to speak, in his Virginian voice:

"Pardon me, suh, but aren't you Mr. Mu'y Ten Eyck?"

"Yes," said Ten Eyck--simply that, and nothing more.

Forbes, nonplussed at the abrupt brevity of the answer, tried again:

"I reckon you don't remember me."

Ten Eyck showed a hint of interest. If he were a snob he blamed it on his own weaknesses.

"I seem to, but--well, I'm simply putrid at names and faces. A man pulled me out of the surf at Palm Beach last winter--I had a cramp, you know. I cut him dead two weeks later. When I knew what I had done I wished he had let me drown. So don't mind me if I don't remember you. Who are you? Did you ever save my life? Where was it we met?"

"It was in Manila. You were--"

"Oh, God bless me! You're Harvey Forbes--well, I'll be--" He reversed the prayer. "Of course it's you." He was cordial enough now as he clapped both hands on Forbes' shoulders. "But how the hell was I to know you all dolled up like this? I used to see you in uniform with cap and bronze buttons and sword and puttees. You were a lieutenant then. I dare say you're a colonel by now, what?" Forbes shook his head. "No? Well, you ought to be. You did save my life out in that Godforsaken hole. And now you're here! Well, I'll be--Let's have a drink."

"No, thank you!"

"Yes, thank you!" He hurried Forbes up the stairs, out into the street, and into a peacock-rivaling cafe. With one foot on the rail, one elbow on the bar, and one elbow crooked upward, they toasted each other in a hearty "How!" Then, with libations tossed inward, the old friendship was consecrated anew.

"Tell me," said Ten Eyck, "are you alone--or with somebody? Don't answer if it will incriminate you."

"No such luck," groaned Forbes. "I'm alone, a castaway on this deserted island."

"Well, I'm the little rescuing party. How long you here for?"

"I don't know. I was ordered to Governor's Island. I don't have to report for a week, so I thought I'd have a look at New York."

"That won't take you long. There's nothing going on, and nobody in town."

Forbes remembered the crowds he had seen, and smiled. "I saw three ve'y charming ladies in that party of yours."

"Glad you like 'em. Come and meet 'em."

"Perhaps one of them is your wife. Are you ma'ied yet?"

"Not yet. Not while I have my health and strength."

"I'm right glad to hear it. I was beginning to feel afraid that you had ma'ied that wonderful one."

Ten Eyck shook his head and laughed.

"Who? Me? Me marry Persis Cabot?"

"Is that her name? Well, why not?"

"If you only knew her you wouldn't ask why. I'm not a millionaire."

"She doesn't look mercenary."

"She's not. Money is nothing to her; she doesn't know what it means; she just tosses it away. She's like a yacht. You think it costs a lot to buy, but wait till you count the upkeep. Persis is a corker. She's a fine girl to play with. But you must promise not to marry her."

"I promise."

"Fine! Come along." As they climbed the stairs Ten Eyck was saying: "I hate an obligation like poison. Always want to pay back a mean turn or a good one. You made a devil of a hit with me, Forbesy, out in Manila there, when I was blue and sick and a million miles from home. I suppose there's nothing makes a hit with a man like calling on him when he's sick. You got your hooks on me that way, and I'm yours to boss around. I'll put you up at a lot of clubs and trot you about till you flash the S. O. S. That is, if you want that sort of thing. Maybe you want to be let alone. If you do, you can kick me out whenever I'm in the way."

Forbes denied any inclination to solitude. When they reached the head of the aisle to the box he paused. He had the Southern idea of ceremonial courtesy, and he suggested that Ten Eyck had better ask the permission of the ladies before he introduced a stranger. Forbes had the rare knack of using the word "lady" without an effect of middle class.

And he had never forgotten what Ten Eyck had said to him once: "I love the extremes of society. I can get along with the highest, and I dote on the lowest, but God, how I loathe a middle-class soul."

Ten Eyck waived Forbes' scruples, dragged him to the box, and presented him to the women and the two other men. Forbes was too much perturbed to catch a single name. Even the last name of Persis escaped both his memory and his attention.

Ten Eyck gave Forbes a glowing advertisement as a brilliant soldier and a life-saver, and offered him his own chair next to Persis.

She had answered his low bow of homage with nothing more than a wren-like nod and half a hint of a smile.

Ten Eyck threw Forbes into confusion by saying:

"You'll have to do better than that, old girl. Mr. Forbes not only rescued me from the depths, but he told me you were the most beautiful thing he ever saw on earth."

Persis smiled a little more cordially and murmured:

"That's very nice of him."

She was evidently so used to bouquets in the face that they neither offended nor excited her. But Miss--or was it Mrs?--anyway, the plump woman interposed:

"He must have been referring to me. My mirror tells me I am fatally beautiful, and God knows there's more of me than of anybody else on earth."

Forbes was in a dilemma. He had not made the comment ascribed to him, yet he could hardly deny it. Nor could he deny the plump lady's claim to the praise. He simply flushed and smiled benignly on everybody.

Fortunately, the lights sank just then, and the curtain went up with a sound like a great "Hush!" The party, having been once rebuked, fell into silence. Forbes rose to return to his own seat, but Ten Eyck, standing back of him, pressed him into his chair with powerful hands.

He stayed put. But the play no longer held him. He could think only of one thing. He was posted at the side of this creature who had fascinated him from afar and terrified him anear, and whose last name he did not yet know.

The lesson of the previous act was not long remembered by the irrepressibles. One of the men, a queer little fellow he was, whispered a comment to Persis. She laughed and answered it. The other women had to be told. They giggled. Their voices gradually rose in pitch and volume.

When the thief in the play shot the stool-pigeon with a silencered revolver a man seated below the box was overheard to say:

"I wish somebody would invent a silencer for box-parties."

Again there were almost audible stares of reproach from the audience, and quietude settled down once more like a pall. At the end of this act again Forbes rose to go, but Ten Eyck checked him again.

"What you doing after the play?"

"Nothing."

"Come turkey-trotting with us."

"Turkey-trotting!" Forbes gasped. "Do nice people--"

"We're not nice people," said Persis, "but we do."

"It's all we do do," said the lady of the embonpoint, whose first name by now he had gleaned as Winifred.

Forbes was surprised to hear himself speaking as if to old acquaintance. "When I was in San Francisco, six years or so ago, slumming parties were taking it up along the 'Barbary Coast.' And on my way East just now I read an editorial about its rage in New York, but I didn't believe it."

"It's awful," said the little man. "People have gone stark mad over it. The mayor ought to stop it."

"Oh, Willie, don't be a prude," said Persis. "You know it's healthier than playing bridge all day and all night."

"And much less expensive," said the white-haired one.

"It's sickening," Willie insisted. "It's unfit for a decent woman."

"Thanks!" said Persis, with a tone of zinc.

The little man made haste with an apology. "I don't mean you, my dear, of course; you dance it harmlessly enough; but--well, I don't like to see you at it, that's all."

"Your own mother is learning it," said Winifred.

"Oh, mother!" Willie gasped. "I gave her up long ago."

Ten Eyck intervened. Forbes remembered now that he was always intervening between extremists in the club quarrels in Manila.

"What difference does it make?" he said. "All dancing is impure to some people. The waltz and polka used to be considered bad enough to get you kicked out of the churches. The turkey-trot is only vulgar when vulgar people dance it, and they'd be vulgar anyway, anywhere. The trot has set people to jigging again. That's one good, wholesome thing. For several years you couldn't get people to dance at all. Now they're at it morning, noon, and night."

"The police ought to stop it, I tell you," Willie insisted, with a peevishness that was like a dash of vinegar. "I hate to see it."

"Then don't come along, my dear," Persis answered, with a glint of temper.

Forbes did not like that "my dear." It might mean nothing, but it might mean everything.

CHAPTER VI

When the final curtain came down like a guillotine on the play there was a general uprising, a sort of slow panic to escape from this finished place and move on to the next event--by street-car to a welsh rabbit in a kitchenette, or by motor to a restaurant of pretense.

Everybody being in haste, everybody went slowly. Forbes retrieved his hat and overcoat after a ferocious struggle. In the lazy ooze-out of the crowd he was gradually shunted to the side of Persis, and willing enough to be there, proud to be there. He walked a little more militarily than he usually did in civilian's.

He heard people whispering with a shrillness that Persis had evidently grown accustomed to, for she could not have helped hearing, yet showed no sign. And now Forbes recaptured her last name, and it was familiar to him, little as he knew of social chronicles.

"Look! That's Persis Cabot," said one. "There's the Cabot girl you read so much about," said another. "She's got a sister who's a Countess or Marquise, or something." Then Forbes learned by roundabout the last name of Willie, and learned it with alarm from two of the sharpest whisperers:

"That's Willie Enslee with her, I suppose."

"I guess so."

"Don't see why they call that big fellow Little Willie."

"Just a joke, I guess."

"They say he's worth twenty million dollars."

"He looks it."

At any other time it would have amused Forbes immensely to be called so far out of his name and to receive twenty million dollars by acclamation.

But now he could only busy himself with deductions: why did they assume that any man who was with Persis Cabot was sure to be Willie Enslee? Could it mean--what else could it mean?

He glanced around to take another look at Willie Enslee. Now that he knew him for what he was, the situation was intolerable. Marry this dream of beauty to that cartoon, that grotesque who came hardly to her shoulder!

His glance had showed him that the men and women they had passed were looking up and down Persis' back like appraising dry-goods merchants or plagiarizing dressmakers. When he turned his head forward he saw that the women in front were inspecting her with even more brazen curiosity. It astounded Forbes to see such well-dressed people behaving so peasantly. But Persis seemed as oblivious of their study as if they were painted heads on a fresco. Forbes, however, flushed when their eyes turned to him, because he felt that they were saying, "That must be Willie Enslee," and "Why do they call that big thing Little Willie?"

Meanwhile Little Willie himself was handing the attendant at the switchboard a punctured carriage check, with which to flash the number on the sign outside.

There was a long wait for their own car, while motor after motor slid up and slid away as soon as its number had been bawled and its cargo had detached itself from the waiting huddle.

After the close, warm theater Forbes flinched at the edged night wind coming from the river. With the caution of an athlete he turned up his collar and buttoned his overcoat over his chest. But Persis stood with throat and bosom naked to the wind, and to all those staring eyes, and never thought to gather about her even the flimsy aureole of chiffon that took the place of a scarf. And equally unafraid and unashamed stood Winifred and Mrs. Neff. (He had collected her name, too, during the conversation that flourished throughout the last act.)

At length the footman, who had howled out other people's numbers, held up a timid finger and murmured, awesomely, "Mr. Enslee?"

The limousine, whose door he opened, was by no means the handsomest of the line. Enslee was evidently rich enough to afford a shabby car. The three women bent their heads and entered with difficulty, their tight skirts sliding to their knees as they clambered in.

There was a great ado over the problem of room. Every man offered to walk or take a taxi. Ten Eyck made sure that Forbes should not be omitted. Ignoring his protests, he bundled him into one of the little extra seats and crawled in after him. The huge third man (still anonymous and taciturn) next inserted his bulk--a large cork in a small bottle.

Willie put his head in to ask:

"Where d'you want to go, Persis?"

"Trotting, of course," came from the crowded depths.

"But I don't think--"

"Then take me home and go to the devil."

"We'll trot," sighed Willie. He spoke to the chauffeur dolefully, then appeared at the door to wail helplessly:

"There seems to be no room for me."

"You're only the host," said Winifred. "Hop on behind."

"You can sit on my lap," said Ten Eyck.

And as that was the only vacant space, the big man lifted him up and set him there. The footman, reassured by the tip in his hand, grinned at the spectacle and laughed, as he closed the door: "Is you all in?"

Seven persons were packed where there was hardly space for five; but Forbes noted that they were as informal and good-natured as yokels on a hay-ride. All except Willie, and his distress was not because of the crowd.

The car had no more than left the theater when Mrs. Neff was groaning:

"A cigarette, somebody, quick--before I faint!"

Winifred by a mighty twisting produced a concaved golden case and snapped it open, only to gasp:

"Empty! My God, it's empty!"

Persis saved the day. "I have some. Give us a light, Willie. There's a dear."

As usual, Willie had a counter-idea.

"But, Persis, don't you think you could wait till--"

Her only answer was, "Murray, give me a light."

Ten Eyck called out, "Right-o, milydy, if Bob will hold our little hostlet half a mo." And he deposited Willie in the arms of the big man while he fumbled in his waistcoat for a book of matches and passed it back into the dark. "'Ere you are, your lydyship." He was forever talking in some dialect or other.

But Persis gave him her cigarette and pleaded: "It's so conspicuous holding a match to your face on Broadway. Light mine for me, Murray."

"It's highly unsanitary," said Ten Eyck; "but if you don't mind I don't. I fancy these cigarettes of yours would choke any self-respecting microbe to death."

Ten Eyck kindled her cigarette as delicately as he could and handed it to her. The same service he performed for the other eager women, and the three were soon puffing the close compartment so full of smoke that the men felt no need of burning tobacco of their own.

When a particularly bright glare swept into the car from the street the women made a pretense of hiding their cigarettes; but it was an ostrich-like concealment, and Forbes could see other women in other cabs similarly engaged. During his absence smoking had evidently become almost as commonplace among the women as among the men.

Forbes, cramped of leg and choked of lung, was wondering at his presence here. It was a far cry from Manila. He had never dreamed when he showed an ordinary human interest in the melancholy Ten Eyck, fallen ill there on a jaunt around the world, that his courtesy in the wilderness would be repaid with usury in the metropolis. Nor had he learned from Ten Eyck's unobtrusive manner that he was a familiar figure in the halls of the mighty. Forbes had cast an idle crust on the waters, and lo, it returned as a frosted birthday cake!

He had come to town at noon a lonely stranger, and before midnight he was literally in the lap of beauty and chumming with wealth and aristocracy in their most intimate mood.

The sidewalks outside were packed with theater crowds till they spilled over at the curbs, and the streets were filled with all sorts of vehicles till they threatened the sidewalks. Guiding a car there was like shooting a rapids full of logs in a lumber-drive, but Enslee's man was an expert charioteer.

Suddenly they whirled off Broadway, and, describing a short curve, came to a stop. A footman opened the door, but nobody moved.

Ten Eyck said: "The problem now is how do we get out. I'm so mixed up with somebody, I don't know my own legs." Like a wise man of Gotham, he jabbed his thumb into the mixture, and asked, "Are those mine?"

"No, they are not!" said Winifred.

Willie was lowered ashore first. Bob What's-his-name bulged through next, then Ten Eyck, then Forbes. Ten Eyck dropped into the gutter the three lighted cigarettes that had been hastily pressed into his hand, and turned to help the women out.

Forbes, wondering where they were, looked up and read with difficulty a great sign in vertical electric letters, "Reisenweber's."

Willie told his chauffeur to wait, and the car drew down the street to make room for a long queue of other cars. Ten Eyck led the flock into a narrow hall, and filled the small elevator with as many as could get in. He included Forbes with the three women, and remained behind with Willie and Bob.

Crowded into the same space were two young girls, very pretty till they spoke, and then so plebeian that their own beauty seemed to flee affrighted. The blonde seraph was chanting amid her chewing-gum:

"He says to me, 'If you was a lady you wouldn't 'a' drank with a party you never sor before,' and I come back at him, 'If you was a gempmum you'd 'a' came across with the price of a pint when you seen I was dyin' of thoist.'"

And the brunette answered: "You can't put no trust in them kind of Johns. Besides, he tangoes like he had two left feet."

Forbes was uneasy till Persis whispered, "Don't you just love them?" Then a door opened and they debarked into a crowded anteroom. While they waited for the car to descend and rise again with the rest of the party the women gave their wraps to a maid, and Forbes delivered his coat and hat and stick across a counter to a hat-boy.

When Ten Eyck, Willie, and Bob appeared and had checked their things the seven climbed a crowded staircase into an atmosphere riotous with chatter and dance-music of a peculiarly rowdy rhythm.

But they could only hear and feel the throb of it. They could not see the dancers, so thick a crowd was ahead of them.

A head waiter appeared, and, curt as he was with the rest of the mob, he was pitifully regretful at losing Mr. Enslee, who had failed to reserve a table and who would not wait.

It was disgusting to slink back down the stairs, regain the wraps and coats and hats, and make two elevator-loads again. Willie alone was cheerful.

"Now, maybe you'll go to the Plaza or some place and have a human supper."

"I'm going to have a trot and a tango if I have to hunt the town over," said Persis.

Willie gnashed his teeth, but had the car recalled, and asked her where she would go.

"Let's try the Beaux Arts," she said; and they huddled together once more.

"It's too bad we were thrown out of Reisenweber's," Winifred pouted. "I was dying to see Francois dance and have a dance with him."

Forbes felt well enough acquainted by now to ask: "Pardon my ignorance, but who is Francois?"

"Oh, he's a love of a French lad," said Winifred. "Everybody's mad over him. I used to see him in Paris dancing between the tables at the Cafe de Paris or the Pre-Catalan with some girl or other. Then somebody brought him over here for a musical comedy, and he's been on the crest of the wave ever since."

"They say he's getting rich dancing in theaters and restaurants and giving lessons at twenty-five per."

"Somebody was telling me he actually makes fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a week," said Mrs. Neff.

"If I had that much, would you marry me, Persis?" said Ten Eyck.

"In a minute," said Persis. "We might earn it ourselves. You dance as well as he does, and you could practise whirling me round your neck."

"Then we're engaged," said Ten Eyck.

"It's outrageous!" said Willie. "That fellow with an income equal to five per cent. on a couple of million dollars."

"What you kicking about, Willie?" said Winifred. "You get several times as much, and you never lifted hand or foot in your life."

"But Willie's father did," said Mrs. Neff. "He killed himself working."

"Willie has it much better arranged," said Bob. "Instead of Willie working for money he has the money working for him."

"It works while he sleeps," said Winifred.

Forbes was thinking gloomily in the gloom of the car. This dancer, this mountebank, Francois, was earning as much in a week as the government paid him in a year, after all his training, his campaigning, his readiness to take up his residence or lay down his life wherever he was told to.

Then he compared his income with Willie Enslee's. Enslee did not even dance for his supper, yet into his banks gold rained where pennies dribbled into Forbes' meager purse. And it was not a precarious salary such as dancers and soldiers earned by their toil; it was the mere sweat from great slumbering masses of treasure.

Forbes felt no longer an exultance at falling in with these people. He felt ashamed of himself. He was no more a part of the company he kept than a gnat on an ox or a flea caught up in the ermine of a king. The air grew oppressive. He felt like a tenement waif patronized for a moment on a whim, and likely to be tossed back to his poverty at any moment. He wanted to get out before he was put out. The very luxuries that enthralled him at first were intolerable now. The perfume of the women and their flowers lost its savor. Their graces had gone. They were all elbows and knees. He suffocated as in a black hole of Calcutta.

When a footman at the Cafe des Beaux Arts wrenched the door open and let the cool air in, it was welcome. Forbes moved to escape. But he was kept prisoner while Bob was sent as an avant courier. He returned with the bad news that he was unable even to reach a head waiter.

The car nosed round, turned with difficulty, and went to Bustanoby's. It was the same story here.

"New York's gone mad, I tell you!" Willie raved. "And nobody is as crazy as we are. To think of us going about like a gang of beggars pleading to be taken in and allowed to dance with a lot of hoodlums and muckers. Even they won't have us."

"We'll try once more," said Persis. "The Cafe de Ninive."

After a brief voyage farther along Broadway the suppliant outcasts entered a great hall imposingly decorated with winged bulls and other Assyrian symbols. The huge space of the restaurant was a desert of tables untenanted save by a few dejected waiters and a few couples evidently in need of solitude.

An elevator took the determined Persis and her cohort up to another thronged vestibule.

Persis had said to Willie in the car, "If you don't get us a table here I'll never speak to you again."

With this threat as a spur Little Willie accosted a large captain of waiters, who shrugged his shoulders and indicated the crowd inside and the crowd outside. Willie fumbled in his pockets, and his hand slyly met that of the captain, who glanced into his palm, then up to heaven in gratitude, and laid aside all scruple.

Willie triumphantly beckoned Persis, who approached the captain with the pouting appeal of a lady of the court to a relenting sovereign.

"Fritz," she said, "you've got to take care of us."

"How can I refuse Mees Cabot," said Fritz. "Do you weesh to seet and watch the artists, or to seet weeth the dancers?"

"We want to dance," said Persis.

"There is one table resairve for a very great patron. You shall have it. I shall lose me my poseetion, and he will tear down the beelding; but that is better as to turn away Mees Cabot and Meester Enslee."

He whispered to a horrified captain on the other side of a silk rope. The barrier was removed, and they were within the sacred inclosure, while the baffled remnant gnashed its teeth outside.

CHAPTER VII

The room they were in was a mass of tables compacted around a central space, where professional entertainers were displaying the latest fashions in song and dance. A pair of "Texas Tommy" dancers were finishing a wild gallopade with a climax, in which the man hurled the woman aloft as if he were playing diabolo with her, caught her on his long sticks of arms, and spun her round his neck, then let her drop head first, rescuing her from a crash by the breadth of her hair, swinging her back between his legs and across his hip. When her heels touched the floor he bent her almost double and gazed Apache murder into her eyes. Her hair fell loose on cue, and then he righted her, and they were bowing to the rapturous applause. When they retired they were panting like hunted rabbits and sweating like stevedores.

And now a somewhat haggard girl, who looked as if she had forgotten how to sleep, dashed forward in a snowbird costume and sang a sleigh-bell song. Little bells jingled about her, and the crowd kept time by tapping wine-glasses with forks or spoons. Some kept time also with their rhythmic jaws.

The girl sang in a mock childish voice in the nasal dialect of the vaudevilles, with "yee-oo" for "you," and "tree-oo" for "true," and "lahv" for "love." The words of the song were too innocent, and not important enough to detain Persis, who felt herself drawn by the distant music of a turkey-trot in the farthest room. The warring counterpoint of the two orchestras only added to the lawless excitement of the throng. The dance was just over, and the dancers were settling down to their chairs, their deserted plates and glasses. The guide led them to the only empty table, whisked off the card "Reserved," and turned them over to a waiter.

While Willie scanned the supper card Mrs. Neff lapsed into reminiscence. It was the only sign she had given thus far that she had earned her white hair by age, and not by a bleach.

"Funny how this building tells the story of the last few years," she said. "A few winters ago we thought it was amusing to go to supper at a good restaurant after the theater, have something nice to eat and drink, talk a while, and go home to bed. We thought we were very devilish, and preachers railed at the wickedness of late-supper orgies. And now the place down-stairs is deserted. Just taking late supper is like going to prayer-meeting.

"Then somebody started the cabaret. And we flocked to that. We ate the filthiest stuff and drank the rottenest wine, and didn't care so long as they had some sensational dancer or singer cavorting in the aisle. They were so close you could hear them grunt, and they looked like frights in their make-up. But we thought it was exciting, and the preachers said it was awful. But it has become so tame and stupid that it is quite respectable.

"At present we are dancing in the aisles ourselves, crowding the professional entertainers off their own floors. And now the preachers and editors are attacking this. Whatever we do is wrong, so, as my youngest boy says, 'What's the use and what's the diff?'"

"Only one thing worries me," said Winifred, as she peeled her gloves from her great arms and her tiny hands. "What will come next? Even this can't keep us interested much longer."

"The next thing," Willie snapped, "will be that we'll all go into vaudeville and do flip-flaps and the split and such things before a hired audience of reformed ballet-girls."

"I hope they play a tango next," was all Persis said. "Willie, call a waiter and ask him to ask the orchestra to play a tango."

"Wait, can't you?" he protested. "Let's get something to eat ordered first. We've got to buy champagne to hold our table; but we don't have to drink the stuff. What do you want, Persis? Winifred? Mrs. Neff, what do you want?--a little caviar to give us an appetite, what? What sort of a cocktail, eh? What sort of a cocktail, uh?"

Before an answer could be made the orchestra struck up a tune of extraordinary flippance. People began to jig in their chairs, others rose and were in the stride before they had finished the mouthfuls they were surprised with; several caught a hasty gulp of wine with the right hand while the left groped for the partner. The frenzy to dance was the strangest thing about it.

"Come on, Murray!" cried Persis. "Willie, order anything. It doesn't matter." Her voice trailed after her, for she was already backing off into the maelstrom with her arms cradled in Ten Eyck's arms.

Bob Fielding, with his usual omission of speech, swept Winifred from her chair, and she went into the stream like a ship gliding from her launching-chute. Mrs. Neff looked invitingly at Willie, but he answered the implication:

"I'll not stir till I've had food."

Forbes leaned over to explain to the marooned matron:

"I wish I could ask you to honor me; but I don't know how."

She smiled almost intolerantly and sank back with a sigh just as a huge and elderly man of capitalistic appearance skipped across the floor and bowed to her knees. She fairly bounded into his arms. The two white polls mingled their venerable locks, but their curvettings were remarkably coltish. Mrs. Neff, who had sons in college and daughters of marriageable age, was giving an amazing exhibition. She backed and filled like a yacht in stays; she bucked and ducked like a yacht in a squawl; she whirled like a dervish, slanting and swooping; her lithe little body draped itself closely about the capitalist's great curves; her little feet followed his big feet or retreated from them like two white mice pursued by two black cats.

At first Forbes was disgusted; the one epithet he could think of was "obscene." As he watched the melee he felt that he was witnessing a tribe of savages in a mating-season orgy. He had seen the Moros, the Igorrotes, the Samoans, and the Nautch girls of Chicago, and the meaning of this turmoil was the same. He knew that the dance was the invention of negroes. Its wanton barbarity was only emphasized by the fact that it was celebrated on Broadway, in the greatest city of what we are pleased to admit is the most civilized nation in the world.

He could not adjust it to his mind. In the eddies he saw women of manifest respectability, mothers and wives in the arms of their husbands, young women who were plainly what are called "nice girls," and wholesome-looking young men of deferential bearing; yet mingled with them almost inextricably, brushing against them, tripping over their feet, tangling elbows with them, were youth of precocious salacity, shop-girls of their own bodies, and repulsive veterans from the barracks of evil. And the music seemed to unite them all into one congress met with one motive: to exploit their sensual impulses over the very borders of lawlessness.

Thus Forbes, left alone with Willie Enslee, regarded the spectacle with amazement verging on horror, and thought in the terms of Jeremiah and Ezekiel denouncing Jerusalem, Moab, and Baal.

Meanwhile Willie Enslee studied the menu and gave his orders to the waiter. When the supper was commanded Enslee lifted his eyes to the dancers, shook his head hopelessly, and, reaching across the table, tapped Forbes on the arm and demanded:

"Look at 'em! Just look at 'em! Can you believe your own eyes, uh? Now I ask you, I ask you, if you can see how a white woman could hold herself so cheap as to mix with those muckers, and forget her self-respect so far?"

It was a weak voicing of Forbes' own repugnance, yet as soon as Willie spoke Forbes began to disagree with him. Willie was fatally established among those people with whom one hates to agree. As soon as one found Willie holding similar views, one's own views became suspect and distasteful--like food that is turned from in disgust because another's fork has touched it.

And there might have been a trace of jealousy in Forbes' immediate anger at Enslee's opinions. In any case, here he was, in the notorious haunts of society, seated in its very unholy of unholies, and gazing on its pernicious rites, and saying to his host:

"I must say I don't see anything wrong."

CHAPTER VIII

Harvey Forbes came of a Southern stock that inherited its manners with its silver. Both were a trifle formal, yet very gracious and graceful.

The family had lost its silver in the Civil War; but the formalities and the good manners remained as heirlooms that could be neither confiscated nor sold off.

He had known something of New York as a cadet at West Point. He had seen the streets as he paraded them on one or two great occasions; he had known a few of its prominent families; but principally Southrons.

He knew that the careful people of that day would have shuddered at the thought of dancing even a minuet in public. They surrounded admission to their festivities with every possible difficulty, and conducted themselves with rigid dignity in the general eye. Even the annual event of the Charity Ball had been countenanced only for the sake of charity, and fell into disfavor because of the promiscuity of it.

In the Philippines Forbes had seen the two-step drive out the waltz; but it had not there, as here, almost ended the vogue of dancing altogether.

And now, after a few years of immunity, people were tripping again as if the plague of the dancing sickness had broken out. The epidemic had taken a new form. Grace and romance were banished for grotesque and cynical antics. The very names of the dances were atrocious--bunny-hug, Texas Tommy, grizzly bear, turkey-trot.

It was a peculiar revolution in social history that people who for so long had refused to dance in public or at all should take up the dance and lay down their exclusiveness at the same time, and with a sort of mania; and that they should be converted to these steps by a dance that had first startled the country from the vaudeville stage, and had been greeted as a disgusting exhibition even for the cheaper theaters.

By a strange insidiousness the evil rhythms had infected the general public. The oligarchy was infatuated to the point of finding any place a fit place. The aged were hobbling about. The very children were capering and refusing the more hallowed dances.

Forbes was not ready to see how quickly such things lose their wickedness as they lose their novelty and rarity. "The devil has had those tunes long enough," said John Wesley, as he turned the ribald street ballads into hymns.

But with Forbes, as with everybody, vice lost her hideous mien when her face became familiar. Like everybody else, he first endured, then pitied, then embraced. Later he would talk as Persis did and Ten Eyck; he would proclaim the turkey-trot a harmless romp, and the tango a simple walk around. Later still he would turn from them all in disgust, not because he repented, but because they were tiresome. But for the present he was smitten with revulsion. The very quality of the company had served as a proof of the evil motive.

Even though he told Willie Enslee he saw nothing wrong, he sat gasping as at a turbulent pool of iniquity.

Motherly dowagers in ball costumes bumped and caromed from the ample forms of procuresses. Young women of high degree in the arms of the scions of great houses jostled and drifted with walkers of the better streets, chorus-girls who "saved their salary," sirens from behind the counters.

As the dance swirled round and round among the gilded pillars, the same couples reeled again and again into view and out, like passengers on a merry-go-round.

Forbes watched with the eager eyes of a fisher the reappearance of Persis. It pleased him to see in her manner, and in Ten Eyck's, an entire absence of grossness; but it hurt him surprisingly to see her in such a crew and responding to the music of songs whose words, unsung but easily remembered or imagined, were all concerned with "teasing," "squeezing," "tantalizing," "hypnotizing," "honey babe," "hold me tight," "keep on a-playin'," "don't stop till I drop," and all the amorous animality of the slums.

He found himself indignant at Ten Eyck's intimacy with the wonderful girl. They clung together as closely as they could and breathe. Now they sidled, now they trotted, now twirled madly as on a pivot. Their feet seemed to be manacled together except when they dipped a knee almost to the ground and thrust the other foot far back.

Then gradually, in spite of him, the music began to invade his own feet. He felt a yearning in his ankles. The tune took on a kind of care-free swagger, a flip boastfulness. He wanted to get up and brag, too. His feeling for Ten Eyck was not of reproof, but of envy. He longed to take his place.

When at length the music ended he felt as if he had missed an opportunity that he must not miss again. He had witnessed a display of knowledge which he must make his own.

Ten Eyck brought Persis back to the table, and the other women returned, Mrs. Neff's partner nodding his head with a breathless satisfaction as he relinquished her and rejoined his own group.

The eyes of all the women were full of sated languor. They had given their youthful spirits play, and they were enjoying a refreshed fatigue.

The waiter had meanwhile set cocktails about, and deposited two silver pails full of broken ice, from which gold-necked bottles protruded. And at each place there were slices of toast covered with the black shot of caviar.

The dancers fell on the appetizers with the appetite of harvesters. Persis thrilled Forbes with a careless:

"It's too bad you don't trot, Mr. Forbes."

"He's not too old to learn," said Ten Eyck. "It's really very simple, once you get the hang of it."

And he fell into a description of the technic.

"The main thing is to keep your feet as far from each other as you can, and as close to your partner's as you can. And you've got to hold her tight. Then just step out and trot; twirl around once in a while, and once in a while do a dip. Keep your body still and dance from your hips. And--get up here a minute and I'll show you."

Forbes was embarrassed completely when Ten Eyck made him stand up and embrace him. But the people around made no more fun of them than revivalists make of a preacher and a new convert. They were proselytes to the new fanaticism. Forbes, as awkward as an overgrown school-boy, picked up a few ideas in spite of his reluctance.

He sat down flushed with confusion, but determined to retrieve himself. In a little while the music struck up once more.

"L'ave your pick in the air, the band's begun again," said Ten Eyck. "Come on, Winifred!" Bob Fielding lifted Mrs. Neff to her feet and haled her away, and Persis was left to Forbes.

"Don't you want to try it?" she said, with an irresistible simplicity.

"I'm afraid I'd disgrace you."

"You can't do that. Come along. We'll practise it here."

She was on her feet, and he could not refuse. He rose, and she came into his arms. Before he knew it they were swaying together. He had a native sense of rhythm, and he had been a famous dancer of the old dances.

He felt extremely foolish as he sidled, dragging one foot after the other. He trod on her toes, and smote her with his knee-caps, but she only laughed.

"You're getting it! That's right. Don't be afraid!"

Her confidence and her demand gave him courage like a bugle-call. But he could not master the whirl till she said, as calmly as if she were a gymnastic instructor:

"You must lock knees with me."

Somehow and quite suddenly he got the secret of it. The music took a new meaning. With a desperate masterfulness he swept her from their back-water solitude out into the full current.

He was turkey-trotting with Persis Cabot! He wanted everybody to know it. This thought alone gave him the braggadocio necessary to success.

Perhaps he was too busy thinking of his feet, perhaps the dance really was not indecent; but certainly his thoughts of her were as chivalrous as any knight's kneeling before his queen.

And yet they were gripping one another close; they were almost one flesh; their thoughts were so harmonious that she seemed to follow even before he led. She prophesied his next impulse and coincided with it.

They moved like a single being, a four-legged--no, not a four, but a two-legged angel, for his right foot was wedded close to her left, and her left to his right.

And so they ambled with a foolish, teetering, sliding hilarity. So they spun round and round with knees clamped together. So they seesawed with thighs crossed X-wise, all intermingled and merged together. And now what had seemed odious as a spectacle was only a sane and youthful frivolity, an April response to the joy of life, the glory of motion. David dancing before the Lord could not have had a cleaner mind, though his wife, too, contemned and despised him, and for her contempt won the punishment of indignant God.

Abruptly, and all too soon, the music stopped. The dancers applauded hungrily, and the band took up the last strains again. Again Forbes caught Persis to him, and they reveled till the music repeated its final crash.

Then they stood in mutual embrace for an instant that seemed a long time to him. He ignored the other couples dispersing to their tables to resume their interrupted feasts.

He was bemused with a startled unbelief. How marvelous it was that he should be here with her! He had come to the city a stranger, forlorn with loneliness, at noonday. And at noon of night he was already embracing this wonderful one and she him, as if they were plighted lovers.

CHAPTER IX

Willie Enslee brought the dancers off their pinions and back to earth by a fretful reminder that the bouillon was chilling in the cups, and the crab-meat was scorching in the chafing-dish.

The question of drinks came up anew. Forbes was in a champagne humor; his soul seemed to be effervescent with little bubbles of joy. But Mrs. Neff wanted a Scotch highball. Winifred was taking a reduction cure in which alcohol was forbidden. Persis wanted two more cocktails. Ten Eyck was on the water-wagon in penance for a recent outbreak. Bob Fielding was one of those occasional beings who combine with total abstinence a life of the highest conviviality. Offhand, one would have said that Bob was an incessant drinker and a terrific smoker. As a matter of fact, he had never been able to endure the taste of liquor or tobacco. When he ordered mineral water, or even milk, nobody was surprised; even the waiter assumed that the big man had just sworn off once more.

Forbes experienced a sinking of the heart as each of the guests named his choice, and nobody asked for any of the waiting champagne.

Yet when Willie turned to him and said, "Mr. Forbes, you have the two bottles of _brut_ all to yourself," Forbes felt compelled to shake his head in declination. He never knew who got the champagne. He wondered if the waiter smuggled it out or juggled it on the accounts. And Willie forgot to ask Forbes what he would have instead! Willie ordered for himself that most innocent of beverages which masquerades ginger ale and a section of lemon peel under the ferocious name, the bloodthirsty and viking-like title of "a horse's neck." There was a lot of it in a very large glass, and Forbes noted how Willie's little hand looked like a child's as he clutched the beaker. And he guzzled it as a child mouths and mumbles a brim.

Forbes observed how variously people imbibed. There were curious differences. Some shot their glasses to their lips, jerked back their heads, snapped their tongues like triggers, and smote their throats as with a solid bullet. Some stuck their very snouts in their liquor like swine; others seemed hardly to know they were drinking as they flirted across the tops of their glasses.

Persis did not raise her eyes as she sipped her cocktail. She looked down, and her lips seemed to find other lips there. Forbes wondered whose.

There was some rapid stoking of food against the next dance. When it irrupted, Forbes, greatly as he longed to dance again with Persis, invited Winifred for decorum's sake. Winifred speedily killed the self-confidence he had gained from his first flight. His sense of rhythm was incommensurate with hers. When she foretold his next step, she foretold it wrong. He lost at once the power to act as leader, and when she usurped the post he was no better as follower.

As Forbes wrestled with her he caught glimpses of Persis dancing with Willie for partner. Little Willie's head barely reached her bare shoulder. He clutched her desperately as one who is doomed from babyhood not to be a dancer. Still he hopped ludicrously about, and almost made her ludicrous.

Forbes longed to exchange partners with Willie, for he felt that he and Winifred were equally ludicrous. They were making the heaviest of going. He gave up in despair and returned to the table.

When the music stopped there was another interlude of supper. People gulped hastily, as at a lunch-counter when the train is waiting. Forbes intended to sit out the next dance; but he found himself abandoned as on a desert island with Mrs. Neff.

"Come along, young man," she said.

"I'm afraid I don't know how."

"Then I'll teach you."

"But--"

"Don't be afraid of me. I've got a son as old as you, and I taught him."

Forbes had danced at times with elderly women, but not such a dance as this. It was uncanny to be holding in his arms the mother of a grown man, and to be whirling madly, dipping and toppling like wired puppets.

Mrs. Neff's spirit was still a girl's. Her body felt as young and lissome in his arms as a girl's. Her abandon and frivolity were of the seminary period. Now and then he had to glance down at the white hair of the hoyden to reassure himself. The music had the power of an incantation; it had bewitched her back to youth. It seemed to Forbes that this magic alone, which should turn old women back to girlhood for a time, could not be altogether accursed.

Perhaps the music had unsettled his reason, but in the logic of the moment he felt that there was a splendid value in the new fashion, which broke down at the same time the barriers of caste and the walls of old age.

It was the Saturnalia come back. The aristocrats mingled as equals with the commoners, and the old became young again for yet a few hours.

He had read so much about the cold, the haughty, and the bored-to-death society of New York, yet here he was, a young lieutenant from the frontier, and he was dancing a breakdown with one of the most important matrons in America. And she was cutting up like a hired girl at a barn-dance. Plainly the nation was still a republic.

When the music ended with a jolt Mrs. Neff clung dizzily to him, gave him an accolade of approval with her fan, and booked him for the next dance but one. If Forbes had had social ambitions, he would have felt that he was a made man. Yet if he had had social ambitions he would probably have betrayed and so defeated them.

Mrs. Neff having granted him a reprieve of one dance, Forbes made haste to ask Persis for the next. She smiled and gave him that wren-like nod.

His heart beat with syncopation when he rose at the first note of music. How differently she nestled and fitted into his embrace. Winifred had been more than an arm-load, and gave the impression of an armor of silk and steel and strained elastic. Mrs. Neff was too slender for him, and for all her agility there was a sense of bones and muscles. But Persis was flesh in all its magic. She was not bones nor muscles nor corsets, she was a mysterious embodiment of spirit and beauty, fluid yet shapely, unresisting yet real, gentle and terrible.

By now Forbes was familiar enough with the trickeries of the steps to leave his feet to their own devices. He was a musician who knows his instrument and his art well enough to improvise: soul and fingers in such rapport that he hardly knows whether the mood compels the fingers or the fingers suggest the mood.

And the same rapport existed with Persis. They evaded collisions with the other dancers and with the gilded columns by a sort of instinct; they sidled, whirled, dipped, pranced, or pirouetted, composed strange contours of progress as if with one mind and one body.

And now the rapture of the dance was his, and he was enabled to play upon her grace and her miraculously pliant sympathy. Her brow was just at the level of his lips, and he began to wish to press his lips there. Now and then her eyelids rose slowly and she looked up into his downward gaze. They were mysterious looks she gave him. They were to her as impersonal and vague as the rapture that fills the eyes when the west is epic with sunset, or when an orchestra pours forth a chord of unusual ecstasy, or a rose is so beautiful that it inspires a kind of heavenly sorrow.

But Forbes misunderstood. He usurped to himself the tribute she was unconsciously paying to the mere beatitude of being alive and in rhythmic motion to music.

We have built up strange subtleties of perception. The most intolerable discords are those of tones that lie just next each other; the harshest of noises rise when an instrument is only a little out of tune or a voice sings a trifle off the key.

Persis had accepted Forbes at Ten Eyck's rating as a gentleman to whom she could intrust her body to embrace and carry through the complex evolutions of a dance on a floor whose very throngs made a solitude and concealment for wantonness of thought and carriage.

So intimate a union is required when two people dance that it is easy to understand why the enemies of the dance denounce it as shameless carnality. It is hard to explain to them how potently custom and minute restraints permit an innocent dalliance with the materials of passion. One can only compare it to skating over thin ice, and say that so long as one keeps on skating a tiny crust of chill permits a joyous exercise without a hint of the depths beneath. And the ice itself gives warning when the danger is too close; its tiny crackling sound is thunder in the ears.

This was Forbes' experience. A beautiful woman of exquisite breeding gave him a certain enfranchisement of her person. He could take her in his arms, and she him in hers. She would make herself one flesh with him; he could sway her this way and that, drag her forward or backward, co-exist with her breast to breast, thigh to thigh, and knee to knee. But he must not ever so slightly take advantage of her faith in him. He must not by the most delicate pressure or quirk of muscle imply anything beyond the nice conventions and romantic pretenses of the dance. Actresses make the same distinctions with stage kisses, and endure with pride before a thousand eyes what they would count a vile insult in the shadow of the wings or at a dressing-room door.

Forbes made the old mistake. Nothing venture, nothing gain, is a risky proverb. He ventured almost unconsciously, without any baseness of motive. Or, rather, he did not so much venture as relax his chivalry. He breathed too deeply of her incense, paid her the tribute of an enamored thought, constrained her with an ardor that was infinitesimally more personal than the ardor of the dance.

Somehow she understood. Instantly she was a little frightened, a little resentful. As subtle as the pressure of his arm was the resistance of her body. The spell of the dance was dissolving, the thin ice crackling. He whispered hastily:

"Forgive me!"

She simply whispered:

"All right."

And the spirit of the temple of dance was rescued and restored. He had sung a trifle sharp, and she, like a perfect accompanist, had brought him back to the key.

But even as they whirled on and hopped and skipped in the silly frivolity of the turkey-trot he was solemnly experiencing an awe of her. And now her beauty was less victorious over him than that swift pride which could rebuke so delicately, that good-sportsmanship which could so instantly accept apology.

When the music ended he mumbled:

"Will you ever dance with me again?"

She abashed him with the true forgiveness that forgets, and spoke with all cheerfulness:

"Of course! Why not?"

The incident was closed in her heart. Its influence had just begun in his.

CHAPTER X

The turbulence of the dance increased as the respectable people were sifted out. Hysteria is a kind of fretful fatigue, and the wearier these children of joy were, the more reckless they grew.

Willie Enslee first insinuated, then declared that he had had enough. He yawned frankly and abysmally. He urged that it was high time they were all in bed. But the women begged always for yet another dance.

"Just one little 'nother," Winifred wheedled.

Ten Eyck whispered, "About this time Winifred always begins to talk baby-talk."

She was soon calling Forbes "the li'l snojer man." Whether the wine or the dance were the chief intoxicant, a tipsiness of mood prevailed everywhere. It affected individuals individually: this one was idiotically amused, that one idiotically tearful, a third wolfishly sullen, a fourth super-royally dignified, a fifth so audacious that her befuddled companions tried to restrain her.

The thin ice was breaking through in spots, and a few of the couples were floundering in black waters.

Others were merely childish in their wickedness. They tried to be vicious, and their very effort made them only naughty.

It all reminded Forbes of certain savage debauches he had witnessed. Only the savages lacked the weapons of costume. It was curious--to a philosopher it was amusingly curious--to see how much excitement it gave some of these people to expose or behold a shoulder or a shin more than one ordinarily did. The peculiar cult that has grown about the human leg, since it has been wrapped up, is surely one of the quaintest phases of human inconsistency.

But intention is the main thing, and a circus woman in trapeze costume may suggest less erotic thought than a flirt who merely gathers her opera cloak about her closely. There was no mistaking the intention of some of these dancers. It was vile, provocative, and, since it was public, it was hideous. Mobs left without rule or inspiring rulers always degenerate into excesses. The pendulum that swings too far one way is only gathering heavier and heavier impetus to the other extreme.

It happens whenever emotions are overstrained. At religious revivals and camp-meetings and crusades, no less than at revels, the aftermath is apt to be grossness. These people had danced too long. It was time to go home.

Forbes finally agreed with Willie that it was no place for decent people. He began to wish very earnestly that Persis were not there. He would rather miss the sight of her than see her watching such spectacles. He felt a deep yearning that she should be ignorant of the facets of life that were glittering here. This longing to keep another heart clean or to restore it to an earlier purity is the first blossom of real love.

The floor grew so rowdy that Forbes would no longer take Persis out upon it. He did not ask her to dance again. Even when she raised her eyebrows invitingly he pretended not to understand.

Then she spoke frankly:

"Sha'n't we have another dance? They're playing the tune that made Robert E. Lee famous."

"I'm afraid I'm too tired," he pleaded. As soon as he had spoken he felt that the pretext was insultingly inadequate addressed to a woman and coming from a soldier used to long hikes. But it was the only evasion he could imagine in his hurry. Instead of turning pale with anger, as he expected, she amazed him by her reply:

"That's very nice of you."

"Nice of me," he echoed, fatuously, "to be tired?"

"Umm-humm," she crooned.

"Why?"

"Oh, just because."

Then he understood that she had read his mind, and she became at once a sibyl of occult gifts. This ascription of extraordinary powers to ordinary people is another sign that affection is pushing common sense from his throne. Parents show it for their newborn, and what is loving but a sort of parentage by reincarnation?

Forbes thought that he wore a mask of inscrutable calm, because he was accustomed to repressing his naturally impetuous nature. He had not realized that the most eloquent form of expression is repression. It is the secret of all great actors, and enables them to publish a volume of meaning in a glance or a catch in the voice, a quirk of the lips or a twiddling of the fingers.

Forbes never dreamed that the gaucherie of his excuse showed the desperation of his mind and the strain on his feelings, and that while his lips were mumbling it his eyes were crying:

"Don't stay here any longer. You are tired. You do not belong here. I beg you to be careful of your soul and body. Both are precious. It makes a great difference to me what you see and do and are."

All this was writ so large on his whole mien that anybody might have read it. Even Winifred read it and exchanged a glance with Mrs. Neff, who read it, too. Naturally, Persis understood. The feeling surprised her in a stranger of so brief acquaintance. But she did not resent his presumption as she did Willie's equal anxiety. She rather liked Forbes for it.

Then she saw his consternation at her miraculous powers, and she liked him better yet for a strong and simple man whose chivalry was deeper than his gallantry. And when a man from another table came across to ask her to dance with him, she answered:

"Sorry, Jim, we're just off for home. Come along, Willie. Are you going to keep us here all night?"

Willie lost no time in huddling his flock away from the table. He fussed about them like a green collie pup.

They paused at the door for a backward look. Seen in review with sated eyes, it was a dismal spectacle. On the floor a few dancers were glued together in crass familiarity, making odious gestures of the whole body. At the disheveled tables disheveled couples were engaged in dalliance more or less maudlin. Many of the women were adding their cigarette-smoke to the haze settling over all like a gray miasma.

"Disgusting! Disgusting!" Willie sneered.

"Oh, the poor things!" sighed Mrs. Neff. "What other chance have they? At a small town dance they'd behave very carefully in the light, and stroll out into the moonlight between dances. Good Lord, I used to have my head hugged off after every waltz. I'd walk out to get a breath of air, and have my breath squeezed out of me. But these poor city couples--where can they spoon, except in a taxi going home, or on a park bench with a boozy tramp on the same bench and a policeman playing chaperon? Let 'em alone."

But she yawned as she defended them, and looked suddenly an old woman tired out. They all looked tired.

They slipped weary arms into the wraps they had flung off with such eagerness. In the elevator they leaned heavily against the walls, and they crept into the limousine as if into a bed.

Forbes said that he would walk to his hotel. It was just across the street. They bade him good night drearily and slammed the door.

He watched the car glide away, and realized that he was again alone. None of them had asked him to call, or mentioned a future meeting. Had he been tried and discarded?

CHAPTER XI

The sky was black, and the stars dimmed by the street-lights. Stars and street-lights seemed to be weary. The electric acrobats had knocked off work, and hung lifeless upon their frames like burned-out fireworks.

A grown-up newsboy, choosing a soft tone as if afraid to waken the sleeping town, murmured confidentially:

"Morn' paper? _Joinal_, _Woil_, _Hurl_, _Times_, _Sun_, _Tolegraf_? Paper, boss?"

Forbes bought one to enjoy the paradox of reading to-morrow's paper last night.

He entered the brightly lighted lobby of the hotel. It was deserted save by two or three scrubwomen dancing a "grizzly bear" on all fours. They looked to be grandmothers. Perhaps their granddaughters were still dancing somewhere.

Once in his room, Forbes stared from his window across the slumbrous town. The very street-lamps had the droning glimmer of night lights in a bedroom. The few who were abroad wore the appearance of prowlers or watchmen or hasteners home. New York was not so lively all night as he had been taught to believe.

While he peeled off his clothes he glanced at his newspaper. The chief head-lines were given, not to the epochal event of the first parliament in the new republic of China, nor to the newest audacity in the Amazonian insurrection in London, but to an open letter sent by the mayor of New York to the police commissioner of New York, calling upon him "to put an end to all these vulgar orgies" of the "vulgar, roistering, and often openly immodest" people who "indulge in lascivious dancing." The mayor announced that one o'clock in the morning was none too soon for reputable people to stop dancing. He instructed the commissioner to see to it that at that hour thereafter every dance-hall was empty, if he had to take the food and drinks from the very lips of the revelers and put them in the street.

Forbes was amazed. The great, the wicked city still had a Puritan conscience, a teacher to punish its naughtiness and send it to bed--and at an hour that many farmers and villagers would consider early for a dance to end. Forbes was startled to realize that he was included in the diatribe, and that those ferocious words were applied to Persis, too.

In all the things he had to wonder at this was not the least wonderful. He stepped into his pajamas and spread himself between his sheets, too weary to reach forth a hand and turn out the little lamp by his bed.

He had slept no more than half an hour when suddenly he wakened. The last cry of a bugle seemed to be ringing in his ears. He sat up and looked at his watch. It was the hour when for so many years the cock-a-doodle-doo of the hated reveille had dragged him from his blankets. Habit had aroused him, but he thanked the Lord that now he could roll over and go back to sleep.

He rolled over, but he could not sleep. Daylight was throbbing across the sky like the long roll of the drums. Street-cars were hammering their rails. The early-morning population was opening the city gates, and the advance-guards of the commercial armies were hurrying to their posts. The city, which he had seen at its dress-parade and at its night revels, was beginning its business day with that snap and precision, that superb zest and energy and efficiency that had made it what it was.

It was impossible for Forbes to lie abed where so much was going on. Fagged as he was, the air was electric, and he had everything to see.

He pried his heavy legs from the bed, and clenched his muscles in strenuous exercise while his tub filled with cold water. He came out of it renewed and exultant.

When he was dressed and in the hall he surprised the chambermaids at their sweeping. They were running vacuum cleaners like little lawn-mowers over the rugs.

In the breakfast-room he was quite alone. But the streets were alive, and the street-cars crowded with the humbler thousands.

He walked to Fifth Avenue. It was sparsely peopled now, and even its shops were still closed. The homes were sound asleep, save for an occasional tousled servant yawning at an area, or gathering morning papers from the sill.

He walked to Central Park. The foliage here was wide awake and all alert with the morning wind. He strolled through the Zoo; the animals were up and about--the bison and deer, the fumbling polar bears. The lions and tigers were already pacing their eternal sentry-posts; the hyenas and wolves were peering about for the loophole that must be found next time; the quizzical little raccoons were bustling to and fro, putting forth grotesque little hands.

Forbes crossed bridges and followed winding paths that led him leagues from city life, though the cliffs of the big hotels and apartment-houses were visible wherever he turned. On one arch he paused to watch a cavalcade of pupils from a riding-school. He was surprised to see them out so early. Other single equestrians came along the bridle-path, rising and falling from their park saddles in the park manner.

There were few women riding, and few of these rode sidewise. He was used to seeing women astride in the West; but here they did not wear divided skirts and sombreros; they wore smart derby hats, long-tailed coats, riding-trousers, and puttees.

Coming toward him he noted what he supposed to be an elderly man and his son. They were dressed almost exactly alike. As they approached, he saw that the son was a daughter. The breeze blew back the skirts of her coat, and as far as garb was concerned she was as much a man as the white-mustached cavalier alongside.

He clutched the rail hard. The girl was Persis, different, yet the same. There was a quaintly attractive boyishness about her now, an unsuspected athleticism. Her hair was gathered under her hat, her throat was clasped by a white stock. Her cutaway coat was buttoned tightly over a manly bosom, and her waist was not waspish. Her legs were strong, and gripped the horse well.

He could hardly believe that the lusciously beautiful siren he had seen with bare shoulders and bosom, and clinging skirts, the night before, was this trimly buttoned-up youth in breeches and boots. Could an orchid and a hollyhock be one and the same?

He had felt sure that at this hour, and on till noon, she would be stretched out in a stupor of slumber under a silken coverlet in a dark room.

The night had been almost ended when he had left her heavy-eyed with fatigue, yet the morning was hardly begun when he saw her here with face as bright and heart as brisk as if she had fallen asleep at sunset.

Her eyes were turned full upon him when she looked up before she passed under the bridge.

A salvo of greeting leaped into Forbes' eyes, and his hand went to his hat; but before he could lift it she had lowered her eyes. She vanished from sight beneath him, without recognition.

He hurried to the other side of the bridge, to catch her glance when she turned her head. But she did not look. She was talking to the elderly man at her side. She was singing out heartily:

"Wake up, old boy, I'll beat you to the next policeman."

The old boy put spurs to his horse, and they dwindled at a gallop.

Forbes watched her till the trees at the turn in the bridle-path quenched her from his sight. The light went out of his sky with her.

She had looked at him and not remembered him! He would have known it if she had meant to snub him. He had not even that distinction. He was merely one of the starers always gazing at her.

He had held her in his arms. But then so many men had held her in their arms when she danced. Even his daring had not impressed her memory. So many men must have pressed her too daringly. It was part of the routine of her life, to rebuff men who made advances to her.

Forbes left the bridge and left the park, humbled to nausea. His cheeks were so scarlet that the conductor on the Seventh Avenue car stared at him. He could not bear to walk back to his hotel. When he reached there he went to his room, dejected. There was nothing in the town to interest him. New York was as cold and heartless as report had made it.

He realized that he was very tired. He lay down on his bed. A mercy of sleep blotted out his woes. It seemed to be only a moment later, but it was high noon when his telephone woke him. He thought it an alarm-clock, and sat up bewildered to find himself where he was and with all his clothes on.

From the telephone, when he reached it, came the voice of Ten Eyck.

"That you, Forbesy? Did I get you out of bed? Sorry! I have an invitation for you. You made a hell of a hit with Miss Cabot last night. I know it, because Little Willie is disgusted with you. Winifred says she is thinking of marrying you herself, and Mrs. Neff says you can be her third husband, if you will. Meanwhile, they want you to have tea with us somewhere, and more dancings. Wish I could ask you to take breakfast with me at the Club, but I was booked up before I met you. Save to-morrow for me though, eh? I'll call for you this afternoon about four, eh? Right-o! 'By!"

Forbes wanted to ask a dozen questions about what Persis had said, but a click showed that Ten Eyck had hung up his receiver. Forbes clung to the wall to keep the building from falling on him.

She had not forgotten him! She had been impressed by him! It was small wonder that she had not known him this morning. Had he not thought her a young man at first? Besides, she had had only a glance of him, and he was not dressed as she had seen him first.

The main thing was that she wanted to see him again, she wanted to dance with him again. She had betrayed such a liking for him that the miserable runt of a Little Willie had been jealous.

What a splendid city New York was! How hospitable, how ready to welcome the worthy stranger to her splendid privileges!

CHAPTER XII

Forbes had planned to visit the Army and Navy Club, in which he held a membership, but now he preferred to lunch alone--yet not alone, for he was entertaining a guest.

The head waiter could not see her when Forbes presented himself at the door of the Knickerbocker cafe. And when he pulled out the little table to admit Forbes to a seat on the long wall-divan that encircles the room, the head waiter thought that only Forbes squeezed through and sat down. The procession of servitors brought one plate, one napkin, silver for one, ice and water for one, brown bread and toast for one; and the waiter heard but one portion ordered from the _hors d'oeuvres varies_, from the _plat du jour_ in the _roulante_, and from the _patisseries_.

But Forbes had a guest. She sat on the seat beside him and nibbled fascinatingly at the banquet he ordered for her.

The vivacious throng that crowds this corner room at noon paid Forbes little attention. Many would have paid him more had they understood that the ghost of Persis Cabot was nestling at his elbow, and conspiring with him to devise a still newer thing than the dancing tea or the tango luncheon--a before-breakfast one-step. In fancy he was now thridding the maze between the tables with her.

But he paid for only one luncheon. The bill, however, shocked him into a realization that he could not long afford such fodder as he had been buying for himself. He decided to get his savings deposited somewhere before they had slipped through his fingers.

On his way to New York he had asked advice on the important question of a bank, and had been recommended to an institution of fabulous strength. It did not pay interest on its deposits, but neither did it quiver when panics rocked the country and shook down other walls.

When Forbes computed the annual interest on his savings, the sum was almost negligible. But the thought of losing the principal in a bank-wreck was appalling. He chose safety for the hundred per cent. rather than a risky interest of four. Especially as he had heard that Wall Street was in the depths of the blues, and New York in a doldrums of uncertainty.

To Forbes, indeed, nearly everybody looked as if he had just got money from home and expected more, and the talk of hard times was ludicrous in view of these opulent mobs and these shop-windows like glimpses of Golconda. But perhaps this was but the last flare of a sunset before nightfall.

In any case, he was likely to have his funds tempted away from him, and he must hasten to push them into a stronghold. He found at the bank that there was a minimum below which an account was not welcome. His painful self-denials had enabled him just to clear that minimum with no more interval than a skilful hurdler leaves as he grazes the bar.

He felt poorer than ever for this reminder of his penury, and he almost slunk from the bank. Just outside he stumbled upon Ten Eyck, who greeted him with a surprised:

"Do you bank here?"

"I was just opening an account," Forbes answered.

"Pardon my not lifting my hat before," said Ten Eyck. "I didn't know your middle name was Croesus."

Forbes could only shrug his shoulders with deprecation. He had no desire to pose as a man of means, and yet he had too much pride to publish his mediocrity.

"I'll call for you at four, Mr. Rothschild," said Ten Eyck. "Got a date at Sherry's here. Good-by!"

The afternoon promised to be unconscionably long in reaching four o'clock, and Forbes set out for another saunter down the Avenue. There was a mysterious change. It might have been that the sky had turned gray, or that the best people were not yet abroad; but the women were no longer so beautiful. He kept comparing them with one that he had learned to know since yesterday afternoon's pageant had dazzled him. Already there was a kind of fidelity to her in this unconscious disparagement of the rest of womankind.

He did not explain it so easily to himself, nor did he understand why the shop-windows had become immediately so interesting. Yesterday a spadeful of diamonds dumped upon a velvet cloth was only a spadeful of diamonds to him, and it was nothing more. It stirred in him no more desire of possession than the Metropolitan Art Gallery or the Subway. He would have been glad to own either, but the lack gave him no concern.

This afternoon, however, he kept saying: "What would she think if I gave her that crown of rubies and emeralds? Does she like sapphires, I wonder? If only I had the right to take her in there and buy her a dozen of those hats? If that astounding gown were hung upon her shoulders instead of on that wax smirker, would it be worthy of her?"

He found himself standing in front of jewelers' windows, and trying to read the prices on the little tags. He had already selected one ring as an engagement ring, when he managed by much craning to make out the price. He fell back as if a fist had reached through the glass to smite him. If he could have drawn out his bank-account twice he could not have paid for it.

He gave up looking at diamonds and solaced himself by the thought that before he bankrupted the United States Army with buying her an engagement ring, he had better get her in love with him a little.

This train of thought impelled him to pause now before the windows of haberdashers. Without being at all a fop, he had a soldier's love of splendor, and he saw nothing effeminate in the bolts of rainbow clippings which men were invited to use for shirts. He looked amorously at great squares of silk meant to be knotted into neck-scarves, of which all but a narrow inch or two would be concealed. And he saw socks that were as scandalously brilliant as spun turquoises or knitted opals.

These little splashes of color were all that the sober male of the present time permits himself to display. They were all the more enviable for that. From one window a hand seemed to reach out, not to smite, but to seize him by his overworked scarf and hale him within. He departed five dollars the poorer and one piece of silk the richer, and hurried back to his room ashamed of his vanity.

On his way thither he remembered that he was still an officer in the regular establishment, and the first thing he did on his return to his room was to compose a formal report of his arrival in New York City. He sent it to the post at Governor's Island, so that in case a war broke out unexpectedly, an anxious nation might know where to find him.

The only war on the horizon, however, was the civil conflict inside his own heart. His patriotism was undergoing a severe wrench. He was expected to maintain the dignity of the government on a salary that a cabaret performer would count beneath contempt. And for this he was to give up his liberty, his independence, and his time. For this he was to teach nincompoops to raise a gun from the ground to their round shoulders, and to keep from falling over their own feet; for this he was to plow through wildernesses, give himself to volleys of bullets or mosquitoes to riddle, or worse yet, to live in the environs of a great city where beauty and wealth stirred a caldron of joy from which he must keep aloof.

But that was for next week. For a few days more he was exempt; he was a free man. And she wanted to dance with him again! She would not even wait for night to fall. She would dance with him in the daylight--with tea as an excuse!

He began feverishly to robe himself for this festival. Luckily for him and his sort, men's fashions are a republic, and Forbes' well-shaped, though last year's, black morning coat, the pin his mother gave him years ago skewering the scarf he had just bought, his waistcoat with the little white edging, his heavily ironed striped trousers, and his last night's top-hat freshly pressed, clothed him as smartly as the richest fop in town. It is different with women; but a male bookkeeper can dress nearly as well, if not so variously, as a plutocrat.

Forbes had devoted such passionate attention to the proper knotting of that square of silk, that he was hardly ready when the room telephone announced that Mr. Ten Eyck was calling for Mr. Forbes.

But his pains had been so well spent that Ten Eyck, meeting him in the lobby, lifted his hat with mock servility again, and murmured:

"Oh, you millionaire! Will you deign to have a drink with a hick like me?"

Forbes pleasantly requested him not to be a damned fool, but the flattery was irresistible.

They went to the bar-room, where, under the felicitous longitude of Maxfield Parrish's fresco of "King Cole," they fortified themselves with gin rickeys, and set forth for the short walk down Broadway and across to Bustanoby's.

They had been rejected here the night before, but Ten Eyck, at Persis' request, had engaged a table by telephone.

"It's Persis' own party," he explained; "but I have sad news for you: Little Willie isn't invited. He's being punished for being so naughty last night."

"He acted as if he owned Miss Cabot," said Forbes.

"He usually does."

"But he doesn't, does he?--doesn't own her, I mean?" Forbes demanded, with an anxiety that did not escape Ten Eyck, who answered:

"Opinions differ. He'll probably get her some day, unless her old man has a change of luck."

"Her old man?"

"Yes. Papa Cabot has always lived up to every cent he could make or inherit; but he's getting mushy and losing his grip. The draught in Wall Street is too strong for him. Persis will hold on as long as she can, but Little Willie is waiting right under the peach-tree with his basket, ready for the first high wind."

"She couldn't marry him."

"Oh, couldn't she? And why not?"

"She can't love a--a--him?"

"He is an awful pill, but he's well coated. His father left him a pile of sugar a mile high, and his mother will leave him another."

"But what has that to do with love?"

"Who said anything about love? This is the era of the modern business woman."

Forbes said nothing, but looked a rebuke that led Ten Eyck to remind him:

"Remember you promised not to marry her yourself. Of course, you may be a bloated coupon-cutter, but Willie has his cut by machinery. If you put anything less than a million in the bank to-day, you'd better not take Persis too seriously. Girls like Persis are jack-pots in a big game. In fact, if you haven't got a pair of millions for openers, don't sit in. You haven't a chance."

"I don't believe you," Forbes thought, but did not say.

They reached the restaurant, and, finding that Persis had not arrived, stood on the sidewalk waiting for her. Many people were coming up in taxicabs, or private cars, or on foot. They were all in a hurry to be dancing.

"It's a healthier sport than sitting round watching somebody else play baseball--or Ibsen," Ten Eyck observed, answering an imaginary critic; and then he exclaimed:

"Here she is!" as a landaulet with the top lowered sped down the street. The traffic rules compelled it to go beyond and come up with the curb on its right. As it passed Forbes caught a glimpse of three hats. One of them was a man's derby, one of them had a sheaf of goura, one of them was a straw flower-pot with a white feather like a question-mark stuck in it. His heart buzzed with reminiscent anxiety. He turned quickly and noted the number of the car, "48150, N. Y. 1913." The woman he had followed up the Avenue was one of those two.

The chauffeur turned sharply, stopped, backed, and brought the landaulet around with the awkwardness of an alligator. A footman opened the door to Bob Fielding, Winifred Mather, and Persis Cabot.

The answer to the query-plume was Persis. Forbes saw a kind of mystic significance in it.

Winifred, as she put out her hand to him, turned to Persis:

"You didn't tell me our li'l snojer man was coming."

"I wasn't sure we could get him," said Persis, and gave Forbes her hand, her smile, and a cordial word. "Terribly nice of you to come."

He seized her hand to wring it with ardor, but its pressure was so lax that he refrained. His eyes, however, were so fervid that she looked away. For lack of support his hopes dropped like a flying-machine that meets a "hole in the air."

CHAPTER XIII

She was talking the most indifferent nothings as they went up the stairs to the dancing-room, a largish space with an encircling gallery. As usual the dancing-floor was a clearing in a thicket of tables. It was swarming already with couples engaged in the same jig as the night before.

The costumes were duller than at night, of course. Most of the men wore business suits; the women were not decolletees, and they kept on their hats.

Only Forbes noted at once that the crowd included many very young girls and mere lads. Here, too, there was a jumbled mixture of plebeian and aristocrat and all the grades between. There were girls who seemed to have been wanton in their cradles, and girls who were aureoled with an innocence that made their wildest hilarity a mere scamper of wholesome spirits.

An eccentricity of this restaurant was a searchlight stationed in the balcony. The operator swept the floor with its rays, occasionally fastening on a pair of professional dancers, and following it through the maze, whimsically changing the colors of the light to red or green or blue. For the general public the light was kept rosy.

When Forbes arrived a certain couple whirled madly off the dancing-floor straight into the midst of Persis' guests, with the havoc of a strike in a game of tenpins.

The young man's heel ground one of the buttons of Forbes' shoe deep into his instep, and the young girl's flying hand smote him in the nose. He needed all his self-control to repress a yowl of pain and dismay. Persis must have suffered equal battery, but she quietly straightened out the dizzy girl and smiled.

"Come right in, Alice; don't stop to knock."

The girl under whose feet the floor still eddied clung to Persis and stared at her a second, then gasped:

"Oh, Miss Cabot, is it _you_? I must have nearly _killed_ you. Can you ever _ever_ for_give_ me?"

Persis patted her hand and turned her round to Forbes: "You'd better ask Mr. Forbes. You gave him a lovely black eye."

The girl acknowledged the introduction with a duck and a prayer of wild appeal:

"Oh, Mr. Forbes, _what_ a ghastly, _ghastly_ shame! Did I really hurt you? I must have simply _murdered_ you. I'm so _ashamed_. Can you ever _ever_ forgive me?"

Forbes smiled at her melodramatic agitation: "It's nothing at all, Miss--Miss--I never liked this nose, anyway. I only wish you had hit it harder, Miss--"

"Miss Neff," Persis prompted. "You met her mother last night."

Forbes vaguely remembered that somebody had said something about a beautiful mother of a more beautiful daughter; but he could not frame it into a speech, before Persis startled the girl beyond reach of a pretty phrase, by casually asking:

"Were you expecting to meet your mother here this afternoon, Alice?"

"Good Lord, I should say _not_! Why?"

"I just wondered. She is to meet us here."

"When? In heaven's _name_! When?"

"She ought to be here now."

Alice thrust backward a palsied hand and, clutching the young man she had danced with, dragged him forward. He was shaking hands with Ten Eyck, and brought him along.

"Stowe! Stowe!" Alice exclaimed, with a tragic fire that did not greatly alarm the young man; he was apparently used to little else from her.

"Yes, dear," he answered, with a lofty sweetness; and she cried:

"Oh, honey, what _do_ you sup_pose_?"

"What, dear?"

"That awful Mother of mine is expected here any _moment_!"

The young man's majesty collapsed like an overblown balloon in one pop: "Lord!"

Tableau! Ten Eyck, seeing it, muttered, gloatingly:

"Some folks gits ketched."

Alice turned eyes of reproach upon him:

"She'll _kill_ us if she finds us together. Isn't there some other way out?"

"I could go down the stairs the waiters come up," said Stowe; "but how will you get home?"

"Oh, Mother will get me home all right, never fear!" said Alice. "Run for your _life_, honey. I'll have my maid call you on the 'phone later."

The young man gave her one long sad look fairly reeking with desperate kisses and embraces. Then he vanished into the crowd.

Alice must have remarked the comments in Forbes' eyes, for she turned to him:

"You mustn't misunderstand the poor boy, Mr. Forbes. Mr. Webb is as _brave_ as a _lion_, but he runs away on my account. He knows that my mother will give me no rest if she finds it out."

"I understand perfectly," said Forbes. "There are times when the better a soldier is the faster he runs!"

"Mr. Forbes is a soldier," Persis explained.

"Oh, thank you, twice as much!" said Alice, "for appreciating the situation." Then she turned to Persis, and clenched her arm as if she were about to implore some unheard-of mercy: "And, Oh, Miss Cabot, will you do me one _terribly_ great favor? I'll remember it to my _dying_ day, if you only will."

"Of course, my dear," Persis answered, with her usual serenity. "What is it? Do you want me to tell your mother that I met you somewhere and dragged you here against your will to meet her?"

Alice's wide eyes widened to the danger-point:

"Aren't you simply _wonderful_! How on earth could you possibly have ever _ever_ guessed it?"

Persis cast a sidelong glance at Forbes; it had all the effect of a wink without being so violent.

"I'm a mind-reader," she said.

Alice caught the glance but not the irony of it, and exclaimed:

"In_deed_ she is, Mr. Forbes. She really _is_."

"I know she is," said Forbes, with a quiet conviction that was almost more noisy than the violent emphasis of Alice.

Persis gave Forbes another sidelong glance; this time with a meek wonderment in place of irony. Once more the man had shown a kind of awe of her. Unwittingly he was attacking her on her most defenseless wall; for a woman who is always hearing praise of her beauty or her vivacity, so hungers and thirsts after some recognition of her intellectual existence that she is usually quite helpless before a tribute to it.

Persis knew that there was no importance in her guess at what Alice was about to ask; but there was importance in the high rating Forbes gave it. The comfort she found in this homage was put to flight by Alice's nails nipping her arm.

"Before mother comes we must rehearse what we're to say. She thinks I went to one of those lectures on Current Topics. They're so very im_proving_ that Mother can't bear to go herself. She sends _me_ and then forgets to ask me what it was all about. So I sneaked it to-day and met Stowe."

Persis could not resist a motherly question: "Is this an ideal trysting-place, do you think?"

"Where's the harm? We couldn't go to the Park very well. Everybody's always going _by_ and looking _on_."

"Why don't you receive Mr. Webb at home?"

"Oh, _why_ don't I, indeed! Mother won't allow him within a _mile_ of the place. Didn't you know that?"

Persis shook her head and turned to Forbes: "Doesn't it sound old-fashioned, a young girl afraid of her parents?"

"Quite medieval," Forbes agreed.

"Oh, but you are quaint, Alice," Persis laughed. "I thought it only happened in books and plays, but here's Alice actually obeying a cruel order like that. I'd like to see my father try to boss me. I'd really enjoy it as a change."

Alice broke in: "Oh, fathers--they're different! My poor Daddelums was the sweetest thing on earth. I wrapped him round my little finger. But mother--umm, she gets her own way, I can tell you--at least she _thinks_ she does. I wouldn't let _any_ earthly power tear me away from my darling Stowe, but I don't dare face her down."

"I thought she always liked Mr. Webb?" Persis said.

"Oh, she did till his father's will was probated. His insurance was immense, but his debts were immenser. So poor Stowe is dumped upon the world with hardly a cent. Of course, I love him all the more; but mother has turned against him. I wouldn't mind starving with Stowe, but mother is _so_ materialistic! She wants to marry me off to that dreadful old Senator Tait."

"Dreadful?" snorted Winifred, who had listened in silence. "Old? Senator Tait is neither dreadful nor old. He is a cavalier, and in the prime of his powers."

"You can have him!" snapped Alice, with a flare of temper that she regretted instantly, and the more sincerely since she knew that Winifred had long been angling vainly and desperately for the Senator. There was a bitterer sarcasm in her retort than she meant, but Winifred knew what Alice was thinking, and canceled it by meeting it frankly:

"I wish I could have him. God knows I'd prefer him to any of these half-baked whippersnappers that--"

"Winifred!" Persis murmured, subduingly; and Miss Mather subsided like a retreating thunder-storm. "The Senator is one of the--"

"I know he is, my dear," Alice broke in, in her most soothing tone. "He's far, _far_ too splendid a man for a fool like me. But can't I admit how splendid he would be in the Senate Chamber without wanting him in my boudoir?"

"Alice!" gasped Persis. "Remember that there are young men present."

Forbes spoke very solemnly: "Pardon my asking, but do you really mean that Senator Tait is--is proposing for your hand?"

"So my awful mother says."

"It doesn't sound like the Senator Tait I used to know."

"You knew him well?" Persis asked, with a quick eagerness that did not quite conceal a note of surprise.

Forbes caught it, and answered somewhat icily: "I had that privilege. He and my father used to ride to the hounds together. In fact, they were together when my father's horse threw him and fell on him, and crushed him to death. Senator Tait brought the body home to my poor mother. He was very dear to us all."

Persis looked what sympathy she could for such remote suffering. And Forbes was something less of a stranger. Also he had moved one step closer to her degree.

He had appeared first under the auspices of Murray Ten Eyck, who guaranteed him as an officer in the army. He had demonstrated his own dignity and magnetism. And now his family was sponsored by an old-time friendship with Senator Tait, a very Warwick of American royalty.

CHAPTER XIV

Persis was not of the period or the set that thinks much of family. In fact, the whole world and its aristocracies have been shaken by too many earthquakes of late to leave walls standing high enough to keep youth from overlooking and overstepping them. Few speak of caste nowadays except novelists, editors, and the very old. What aristocracies we have are clubs or cliques gathered by a community of tastes, and recruited individually.

In any case, the Persis that was willing to go out into the byways and highways and public dancing-places would have made no bones of granting her smiles and her hospitality to anybody that entertained her, mountebank or mummer, tradesman or riding-master.

And yet it did Forbes no harm in her eyes to be established as of high lineage and important acquaintance. If only now he were rich, he would be graduated quite into the inner circle of those who were eligible to serious consideration.

Unconsciously Ten Eyck gave him this diploma also, though his motive was rather one of rebuke to Persis for her little tang of surprise.

"You needn't raise your brows, Persis, because Forbesy knows senators and things," he said. "He's a plutocrat, too. I caught him depositing a million dollars in one of our best little banks to-day."

"A million dollars!" Forbes gasped. "Is there that much money in the world?"

Forbes had no desire to obtain the reputation of money under false pretenses. Yet he could not delicately discuss his exact poverty. He could not decently announce: "I have only my small army pay and a few hundred dollars in the bank." It would imply that these people were interested in his financial status. Yet even the pretense by silence troubled him, till his problem was dismissed by an interruption:

"Is anybody at home?"

Mrs. Neff spoke into the stillness as if she had materialized from nothing. Nobody had noticed her approach, and every one was startled. To Forbes her sharp voice came as a rescue from incantation. And Mrs. Neff was in the mood of the most unromantic reality. She did not pause to be greeted or questioned, but went at her discourse with a flying start:

"I'm mad and I'm hungry as the devil--oh, pardon me! I didn't see my angel child. Alice, darling, how on earth did you get here? Murray, if you have a human heart in your buzzum get the waiter man to run for a sandwich and a--a--no, I'll be darned if I'll take tea, in spite of example to youngers, who never follow our good examples, anyway; make it a highball, Murray; Scotch, and quick!"

The waiter nodded in response to Ten Eyck's nod, and vanished with an excellent imitation of great speed.

"Give over, Win!" Mrs. Neff continued, prodding Miss Mather aside and wedging forward with the chair Ten Eyck surrendered to her. "What's in those sandwiches? Lettuce? Thanks! Don't all ask me at once where I've been! I'm the little lady what seen her dooty and done it. If my angel child had done hers she would be even now listening to a lecture on Current Topics, so that she could inform her awful mother, as she calls me, what the tariff talk is all about, and who Salonica is, and why the Vulgarians are fighting the Balkans. But, of course, being a modern child, she plays hookey and goes to _thes dansants_ while her poor old mother works."

"But mother dear, I was just--"

"Don't tell it, my child! I know what you're going to say: that Persis picked you up and dragged you here by the hair, and Persis will back you up, of course, like the dear little liar she is. But I'll save you the trouble, darlings. Where is he? Is he still here or did he learn of my approach and flit?"

"He--who?" said every one, zealously, with a stare of innocence sadly overdone.

"He--who?" Mrs. Neff mocked. "He-haw! Oh, but you're a putrid lot of actors. So he has been here. Well, I mention no names, but if a certain young person whose initials are Stowe Webb wants to meet a little old lady named Trouble, let him come out from under the table."

"Mother dear, how you do run on," Alice protested. "I don't think you really need another highball."

"Another! Listen to that. Dutiful child trying to save erring mother from a drunkard's grave! And me choking with thirst since luncheon! Do you know where I've been? Yes? Then I will tell you. I've been at a committee meeting of the Vacation Savings Fund."

The waiter brought a tiny flask, a tall glass, and a siphon, and offered to mix her a potion; but she motioned him aside and arranged it to her own taste. The band struck up, and she sipped hastily as she talked:

"That's the most insulting music I ever heard, and I'm just mad enough to dance well. If nobody has any prior claim on this young soldier man, he's mine. Mr. Forbes, would you mind supporting your grandmother around the room once or twice?"

Forbes had counted on having this dance with Persis. He had wasted one important tango while Alice poured out her woes. To squander this dance on her mother was a grievous loss. There was nothing for him to do, however, but yield.

He bowed low and smiled. "Nothing would give me more pleasure."

Mrs. Neff returned his bow with an old-fashioned courtesy, as she beamed:

"Very prettily said! Old fashioned and nice. My first husband would have answered like that. Did Murray tell you that I had offered you the job of being my third husband?"

"Mother!" Alice gasped.

Forbes was exquisitely ill at ease. It is hard to parry banter of that sort from a woman. He bowed again and answered with an ambiguous smile:

"Nothing would give me more pleasure."

"Fine! Then we may as well announce our engagement. Kind friends, permit me to introduce my next husband, Mr.--Mr.--what is your first name, darling?"

"Mother!" Alice implored.

"Oh, I'm sure his first name can't be Mother. But we're missing the dance. Come along, hero mine!"

Forbes cast a farewell look of longing at Persis, who was regarding him with an amused bewilderment.

The blare of the band was as effectual as a Gabriel's trumpet opening graves. From the tables the dead came to life and took on stilts if not wings.

Big Bob Fielding and Winifred Mather set out at once in close embrace.

"Look at 'em! Look at 'em!" Ten Eyck chortled. "They're grappled like two old-time battleships on a heavy sea." Ten Eyck was the great-great-grandson of one of the first commissioned officers in the American navy, a rival even of Paul Jones. So now his comment was nautical. "Bob and Winifred remind me of the _Bonhomme Richard_ and the _Serapis_. And Winifred is like old John Paul Jones: when everybody else is dead her motto is: 'I've just begun to fight.'"

But Alice could not smile. She folded her hands and sighed. "It's awful to be a widow when they play that tango."

Persis provided for her at once. "Murray, you take Alice out and dance with her."

Ten Eyck saluted. "Come on, Alice, we'll go in for the consolation stakes."

Alice protested: "But we can't leave you alone."

Persis beckoned to a lonesome-looking acquaintance at another table, and he came to her with wings outstretched. She locked pinions with him, and they were away.

Ten Eyck put his arms up like racks; Alice hung herself across them, and they romped away. As they performed it, the dance was as harmless as a game of tag.

As Persis was twirled past Forbes now and again, her eyes would meet his with a gaze of deep inquiry.

And he was thinking so earnestly of her that at some indefinitely later period he was almost surprised to find that Mrs. Neff was in his arms, and that they were footing it intricately through a restless maze. He realized, also, that he had not spoken to her yet. He cast about in his mind for a topic of conversation, as one whips a dark trout-pool, and brought up a question:

"That Vacation Savings Fund--may I ask what it is?"

"You may, indeed, young man," she answered, and talked glibly as she danced, occasionally imitating a strain of music with mocking sounds. "It's an attempt a lot of us old women have been making to teach the poor woiking goil what we can't learn ourselves; namely, to save up money--_la-de-de-da-de-da!_ The poor things slave like mules and they're paid like slaves--_te-dum-te-dum!_--yet most of them never think of putting a penny by for a rainy day, or what's more important--_ta-ra-rum!_--a sunny day.

"So Willie Enslee's mother, and Mrs. Clifton Ranger, and the Atterby girls, and a gang of other busybodies got ourselves together and cooked up a scheme--_la-de-de-da-de-da!_--to encourage the girls to stay home--_ta-ra-rum!_--from a few moving-picture fetes and cut down their ice-cream-soda orgies a little, and put the pennies into a fund to be used in giving each of them--_te-dum-te-dum_--a little holiday when her chance came--_te-di-do-dee!_"

"Splendid!" said Forbes. "Did it work out?"

"Rather. We started with forty girls, and now we've got--how many do you suppose?"

"A hundred and fifty."

"Eight thousand! And they've saved fifty thousand dollars!"

"That's wonderful!" Forbes exclaimed, stopping short with amazement. Instantly they were as battered and trodden by the other dancers as a planet would be that paused in its orbit.

"Come on, or we'll be murdered!" cried Mrs. Neff, and dragged him into the current again.

Forbes looked down at her with a different feeling. This typical gadabout, light-minded, cynical little old woman with the girlish ways, was after all a big-hearted toiler in the vineyard. She did not dress as a Sister of Charity, and she did not pull a long and philanthropic face, but she was industrious in good works.

He was to learn much more of this phase of New York wealth, its enormous organizations for the relief of wretchedness, and its instant response to the human cry once it makes itself heard above the noise of the cars or the music of the band.

City people have always made a pretense of concealing their sympathetic expressions under a cynical mask. It is this mask that offends so many of the praters against cruelty, irritates them to denunciations more merciless than the lack of mercy they berate, and blinds their nearsighted eyes to the village heart that beats in every city--a huge heart made up of countless village hearts.

So Mrs. Neff, having betrayed an artless Samaritanism, made haste to resume the red domino of burlesque to hide her blushes, as children caught in a pretty action fall to capering. Her motive was not lost on Forbes when she said:

"We've got to do something to get into heaven, you know. That line about the camel and the needle's eye is always with us poor rich, though the Lord knows I'm not rich. I hope you have a lot of money, or we'll starve--unless we loot the Savings Fund."

He hardly knew what to say to this, so he danced a little harder and swept her off her feet, till she was gasping for breath and pleading:

"Stop, stop! I'm afraid I'm only an old woman after all. And I didn't want you to know."

He led her to a chair, where she sank exhausted and panting hard. By the time the dance was over and the rest had returned, she was herself again.

"My new husband is the love of a tangoist," she babbled across her highball. "If that infernal committee meeting hadn't kept me so late, I could have had more. Are you all going to the Tuesday to-night?"

They all were.

"I was to have taken Alice, but I'm going to put her to bed without any supper. I'll take Mr. Forbes instead. Will you come? Nothing would give you more pleasure. That's right. Sorry I can't accept your invitation to dinner, but I'm booked. What about the opera to-night? It's 'Tristan and Isolde' with Fremstad. Senator Tait was to have taken us, but he can't go; so Alice won't care to go. He sent me his box, and I have all those empty chairs to fill. Mr. Forbes can fill one. You can, can't you?" He nodded helplessly, and she hunted him a ticket out of a handbag as ridiculously crowded as a boy's first pocket. "It begins at a quarter to eight. I can't possibly be there before nine. You go when you want to. Who else can come?"

Persis said that she was dining at Winifred's with Willie, and added: "He hates the opera, but if I can drag him along I'll come. And if I can't I'll come anyway."

Winifred accepted for Bob. "I always think I ought to have been a grand-opera singer," she sighed, "I've got the build for it."

Ten Eyck "had a dinner-job on," but promised to drop in when he could.

Having completed her quorum, and distributed her tickets, Mrs. Neff made ready to depart by attacking her highball again. The music began before she had finished it, and Forbes rose before Persis with an old-time formula.

"May I have the honor?"

As Persis stepped into his arms, Winifred cried:

"Traitress! It's my turn with the li'l snojer man."

And Mrs. Neff caught Persis' elbow to say: "Be very circumspect or I'll sue you for alienation of the alimony."

Forbes and Persis sent back mocking smiles as they side-stepped into the carousel.

She was his again in the brief mock-marriage of the dance. His very muscles welcomed her with such exultance that he must forcibly restrain them from too ardent a clasp. The whole mood of the music was triumph, overweening boastfulness, and irresistible arrogance. It was difficult to be afraid of anything in that baronial walk-around.

But Forbes was afraid of silence. It gave imagination too loose a rein. To keep himself from loving her too well, and offending her again after she had forgiven him once, he had recourse to language, the old concealer of thought.

At first he had been too new to the steps to talk freely. Words had blurted out of him as from a beginner in a riding-school. But now there was a spirit in his feet that led him who knows how?

Forbes astonished Persis and himself by his first words:

"Don't you ever sleep, Miss Cabot?"

She threw him a startled glance. "Do I look so jaded as all that?"

He was so upset that he lost step and regained it with awkwardness of foot and word. "No, no, it's be--because you look--you look as if you slept for--forever. I don't mean that exact--exactly, either."

"Then what do you mean, Mr. Forbes?"

"I mean: I left you this morning at about four o'clock in one costume, and I saw you at eight in another."

"At eight this morning? Oh yes, I was riding with my father. Were you riding, too? I didn't see you."

"Oh yes, you did. I stood on the bridge at daybreak. And you looked at me and cut me dead."

"Did I really? I must have been asleep."

"Far from it. Your eyes were as bright as--as--"

"This music is very reassuring, isn't it?"

"Yes; please blame the music if I grow too rash. But you really were wonderful. I thought you were a boy at first. And you ride so well! You were racing your father. How could you be so wide awake after so strenuous a night?"

"Oh, I had to get up. It is poor Dad's only chance nowadays. He's awfully busy in the Street, and he's so worried. And he needs the exercise. He won't take it unless I go along."

There was an interlude of tenderness in the music. He responded to it.

"That's very beautiful and self-sacrificing of you. But how can you keep up the pace?"

"I can't, much longer. I'm almost all in. The season is nearly over, though. If everything goes right, Dad and I will get out of town--to the other side, perhaps. Then I can sleep all the way across. If he can't go abroad, we'll be alone anyway, since everybody else will leave town. Then I can catch up on sleep."

"You must be made of iron," he said.

"Am I so heavy as all that?"

"Oh, no, no, you are--you are--" But he could not say anything without saying too much. She saved the day by a change of subject.

"And I stared right at you, and didn't know you?"

"Why should you? It was stupid of me to expect you to remember me. But I did, and--when you didn't, I was crushed."

"Of course you were," she crooned. "I always want to murder anybody who forgets me."

"Surely that can't happen often? How could any one forget You?"

It was perfectly sincere, yet it sounded like the bumptious praise of a yokel. She raised her eyelids and reproved him.

"That's pretty rough work for a West-Pointer. Rub it out and do it over again."

Again he lost the rhythm, and suffered agonies of confusion in recovering it. But the tango music put him on his feet again. How could he be humble to that uppish, vainglorious tune, that toreador pomposity?

Persis herself was like a pouter pigeon strutting and preening her high breast. All the dancers on the floor were proclaiming their grandeur, playing the peacock.

Forbes grew consequential, too, as he and Persis marched haughtily forward shoulder to shoulder, and outer hands clasped, then paused for a kick, whirled on their heels, and retraced their steps with the high knee-action of thoroughbreds winning a blue ribbon.

Then each hopped awhile on one foot, the other foot kicking between the partner's knees. Then they dipped to the floor. As he swept her back to her full height, the music turned sly and sarcastic. It gave an unreal color to his words.

"Will you pardon me one question?"

"Probably not. What is it?"

"Didn't you wear this same hat yesterday?"

Her head came up with a glare. "Isn't that a rather catty remark for a man to make?"

"Oh, I didn't mean it that way," he faltered. "It's a beautiful hat."

"No hat is beautiful two days in succession. It's unkind of you, though, to notice it, and rub it in."

"For heaven's sake, don't take it that way. I--I followed this hat of yours for miles and miles yesterday."

"You followed this hat?"

"Yes."

They danced, marched, countermarched, pirouetted, in a pink mist. And he told her in his courtly way, with his Southern fervor, how he had been captivated by the white plume, and the shoulder and arm, and the foot; how vainly he had tried to overtake her for at least a fleeting survey. He told her how keen his dismay was when she escaped him and fled north. He told her how he made a note of the number of her car. He did not tell her that he forgot it, and he did not dare to tell her that he was jealous of the unknown to whom she had hastened.

Persis could not but be pleased, though she tried to disguise her delight by saying:

"It must have been a shock to you when you saw what was really under this hat."

She had not meant to fish so outrageously for a compliment. She understood, too late, that her words gave him not only an excuse, but a compulsion to praise. Praise was not withheld.

"If you could only know how I--how you--how beautiful you--how--I wish you'd let me say it!"

"You've said it," she murmured. His confusion revealed an ardor too profound to be rebuked or resisted. She luxuriated in it, and rather sighed than smiled:

"I'm glad you like me."

It was a more girlish speech than she usually made. Unwittingly she crept a trifle closer to him, and breathed so deeply that he felt her bosom swell against him with a strangely gentle power. By immeasurably subtle degrees the barrier between them dissolved, or rather shifted until it surrounded them. They were no longer strangers. They were together within a magic inclosure.

He understood the new communion, and an impulse swept him to crush her against him. He fought it so hard that his arm quivered. She felt the battle in his muscles, and rejoiced in the duel of his two selves, both hers. She knew that she had a lover as well as a guardian in his heart.

She looked up to see what manner of man this was who had won so close to her soul in so brief a time. He looked down to see who she really was. Their eyes met and held, longer than ever before, met studiously and hospitably, as the eyes of two lonesome children that have become neighbors meet across a fence.

What she saw in his gaze gave a little added crimson to her cheeks. And then the music flared up with a fierce ecstasy that penetrated even their aloofness. He caught her close and spun with her in a frenzied rapture round and round. He shunted other dancers aside and did not know it. He was glared at, rebuked, and did not know it. The impetus of the whirl compelled a tighter, tighter clutch. Their hands gripped faster. He forgot everything in the mystic pursuit and surrender of the dance, the union and disunion of their bodies--her little feet companioning his, the satin and steel of her tense sinews, the tender duality of her breast against the rock of his, the flutter of her quick, warm breath on his throat, the sorcery of her half-averted eyes tempting his lips almost unbearably.

The light burned about them like a flaming rose. The other couples had paused and retreated, staring at them; but they did not heed their isolation. They swooped and careened and twirled till they were blurred like a spinning top, till they were exhausted and wavering in their flight.

At length he found that she was breathless, pale, squandered. She hung all her weight on his arm, and grew so heavy that it ached.

And now, when he looked down at her, he saw that the operator had inadvertently put upon them the green light. In Forbes' eyes it had a sickly, cadaverous glimmer as of death and dissolution. He did not know that she was about to swoon; but she was so gray and lifeless that he was frightened. In the green, clammy radiance she looked as if she had been buried and brought back to the daylight. She was horribly beautiful.

Just in time the music came to an abrupt end, and the _danse macabre_ was done. But the floor still wheeled beneath his feet, and he staggered as he held her limp and swaying body.

She shook the dizziness from her eyes, and put away his arm, but seized it again. He supported her to the table and guided her to a seat. Then he caught up a glass and put it to her wan mouth.

Ten Eyck, who had been watching them from his place, shoved a chair against Forbes relaxing knees, and set a tall glass in his hand, saying:

"Gad, old man, you need a drink!"

Forbes took a gulp of a highball and sat staring at Persis. Ten Eyck was quietly dipping his fingers into his own glass and flicking water on Persis' face. She regained her self-control wonderingly. Her lips tried pluckily to smile, though her eyes studied Forbes with a kind of terrified anger--more at herself than at him. He met them with a gaze of adoration and dread.

As his hot brow cooled, it seemed that an icy hand passed across it.

CHAPTER XV

The safety match that resists all other friction needs only the touch of its peculiar mate to break into flame. And many chemical compounds, including souls, change their behavior and expose their secret identities when they meet just the right--or the just the wrong--reagent.

Persis Cabot was the wonder of her world for being at the same time so cordial and so cold, so lightly amused, so extravagant, and yet apparently so immune to the follies of passion. She was thought to be incapable of losing either her head or her heart. Mrs. Neff called her "fireproof."

Willie Enslee was universally accepted as her fiance, simply because his wealth and his family's prestige were greater than anybody's else in her circle. This made him the logical candidate. Everybody knew that he was mad about Persis in his petty way. But nobody expected Persis to fall madly in love with Willie, or to let that failure keep her from marrying him.

And now Forbes appeared from the wilderness and strange influences began to work upon her. She began to study the man with increasing interest. She resented his effect upon her, and could not resist it. He was like a sharp knife, or a loaded revolver, or the edge of a cliff, quiet and unpursuing, yet latent with danger, terrifying and therefore fascinating.

Hitherto she had played with firearms and danced along abysses and juggled daggers in many a flirtation, but always she had kept her poise and felt no danger. Now she was just a trifle startled by a feeling of insecurity.

Many men had made ferocious love to her, had tried to set up a combustion in her heart, had threatened her with violence, with murder and with suicide; and she had laughed at them, laughed them back to the sanity she had never lost.

But this man Forbes made no campaign against her. If he pressed her too hard in the dance he apologized at once. He seemed to be at her mercy, and yet she felt that he brought with him some influence stronger than both. He was like one of Homer's warriors attended by a clouded god or goddess bent on his victory or his destruction--she could not tell which. When she caught him gazing at her devouringly he looked away, yet she found herself looking away, too, and breathing a little faster.

Scores of men had embraced her as she danced with them and some of them had muttered burning love into her ear. But they left her cold. This man said little or less, and he held her almost shyly; yet she felt a strange kindling in his touch, saw in his eye a smoldering.

In this last dance with him a panic of helplessness had confounded her. He had whirled her about till she had lost all sense of floor and ceiling. She felt herself falling and spinning down the gulfs of space in a nightmare of rapture. She would have swooned had he not seen how white and lost she was and stopped short. She had felt that other people were staring and making comments.

She was afraid to dance with him again. When she had regained her self-control she made a pretext to escape out of the lateness of the hour and the necessity of dressing for dinner and the opera.

There was an almost hysterical flippancy in her chatter. In spite of the protestations of the three men, she insisted on paying the bill. It was her own party, she said. The waiter looked sad at this, but what she left on the plate tempered his despair of her sex.

She offered to drop Forbes and Ten Eyck at their destinations, and they clambered into her car with Winifred and Bob. Forbes was all too soon deposited at his hotel, where the footman and the starter hailed Persis with affectionate homage and Forbes with a new courtesy because of her. Forbes lingered at the curb to watch her away. As the landaulet sped toward Fifth Avenue all he saw of her was the fluttering white interrogation-mark.

CHAPTER XVI

Forbes was prompt at the Opera. Though it was barely half past seven, he found the foyer already swarming with a bustling mob of women swaddled in opera-cloaks, and prosperous-looking men overcoated and mufflered. Everybody was making haste. Dinners had been gulped or skimped, and there was evident desire not to miss a note.

Forbes knew nothing of the music except a vague echo of the ridicule on which Wagner had ridden to the clouds. He was just as ignorant of the poem, and though he bought a libretto from an unpromising vocalist in the lobby, he had time only to skim the argument, and to learn with surprise that Isolde was Irish, and her royal husband, Mark, a Cornishman.

The head usher directed him up a brief flight of steps, and another attendant unlocked a door marked with the name-plate of Lindsley Tait. From the little anteroom where he hung up his hat and coat, Forbes saw as through a telescope the vast curtain and the tremendous golden arch of the proscenium; at its foot a pygmy orchestra settling into tune and making oddly pleasant discords.

When Forbes stepped to the edge of the box, he seemed to be the entire audience, another mad King of Bavaria come to witness a performance in solitude. The famous red horseshoe stretched its length a hundred yards or more on either side of him. In each of its little scallops a family of empty chairs sat facing the stage in solemn silliness. The owners were still filling chairs at dinner-tables.

But when Forbes took the next step forward he found a multitude. Above him he saw other horseshoes in tiers dense with faces peering downward. Below him a plain of Babel inhabited by the tops of heads, numberless pates in long windrows, the men's skulls close-cropped or bald, and their shoulders black; the women's elaborately coiffed, over an enormous acreage of bared shoulders and busts.

Suddenly all the white-gloved hands fluttered in coveys with the show and sound of innumerable agitated pigeons. Toscanini was picking his way through the orchestra to the desk.

From the opening phrase of the Vorspiel Forbes became a Wagnerian. Those first stifled moans of almost sullen desire so whelmed him that he wondered how Persis and Mrs. Neff and her guests should dare to be late and lose this precious expression. Before the opera had finished breaking his heart on its eternal wheel of anguish, he wondered that any one should care to submit to its intolerable beauty a second time.

Yet here were thousands thronging to its destroying blaze like fanatic moths--moths that paid a high price to be admitted to the lamp, and clamored to be consumed in its divine distress.

Forbes smiled at the universal lust for artistic and vicarious suffering that has made other people's pathos the most lucrative of all forms of entertainment.

The time was to come when he himself would pay dearly for the privilege of great pain; when his mind would strive futilely to dissuade his heart from clenching upon the thorn that made it bleed. Humanity has almost always preferred strong emotions at any cost, to peace however cheap.

The prelude was one long stream of bitter-sweet honey, and it affected Forbes as music had never affected him. He wondered how people could ever have ridiculed or resisted this man Wagner. He wished that Persis would come soon. He thought of her as "Persis"--or "Isolde"; he could not think of her as Miss Cabot to this music.

The first act was ended and the long intermission almost over before she arrived, with Enslee, followed immediately by Bob and Winifred, and last of all by the hostess, Mrs. Neff.

Everybody greeted Forbes with the casual informality of old friendship, except Willie Enslee, who nodded obliquely, and murmured:

"H' are yu, Mr. Ward."

Nobody corrected him, least of all Forbes, who was too much disgusted with Willie's existence there to feel any minor resentment. The three women fell to wrangling, altruistically, of course, over the two front seats. Mrs. Neff was trying to bully Persis and Winifred into occupying them. Winifred's demurrer was violent:

"If I sit there nobody can see the stage. You're such a little wisp I can see round you or through you."

Persis preferred almost anything to a disturbance, and her protest was a mere form.

Only the rising curtain brought the battle to a close. Persis dropped into a chair on the right. Winifred pushed Mrs. Neff into the other, and sat back of her. Willie annexed the chair behind Persis, Bob Fleming took that aft of Winifred, and motioned Forbes to the center chair. Then Mrs. Neff beckoned him to hunch forward into the narrow space between her and Persis.

All along the horseshoe people were just arriving or returning from visits among the boxes. There was much chatter. The orchestra might as well have been wasting its sweetness on a crowded restaurant.

Forbes pretended to be looking over the audience on his right, but he was looking at Persis. The music of the garden where Isolde awaited her Tristan, and the far-off rumorous hunting-horns of the King, her husband, were working a magic upon her. He could see its influence on her face.

She wore brighter raiment than at the theater; her head-dress was more imperious, and more jewelry glittered about her. When she breathed or moved the diamonds at her ears, her throat, and in her corsage flashed and dulled as if they had eyelids; the pearls had a veiled radiance.

She was a combination of beauty unadorned and most adorned. Despite her trappings of gem and fabric, even more of her was candidly presented than at the theater last night--or was it not a year ago? Surely he must have known her for more than a day.

Her bodice would have seemed to be shamelessly low, had it not been as high as almost any other there. This was one of those common yet amazing sessions where thousands of women of every age and class agree to display as much of their skins as the police will allow, and far more than their husbands and fathers approve.

But Forbes had not yet reached the stage where a man resents the publication of his charmer's charms. He was still hardly more than a fascinated student of Persis. He found her a most engrossing text.

She was so thoroughly alive--terribly alive all over! Wordsworth's phrase would have suited Forbes' understanding of her: she "felt her life in every limb." Her brows now moved sinuously, and now relaxed as Isolde sang of her longing and quenched the torch for a signal to her lover. One moment Persis' eyelids throbbed with excitement; the next they fell and tightened across her eyes. Accesses of emotion swelled her nostrils and made her lips waver together. Her throat arched and flexed and was restless; and her lovely disparted bosom filled and waned.

If she sat with clasped hands, the fingers seemed to convene and commune. She was incessantly thrusting back her hair and stroking her temples, or her forearms. Her knees were always exchanging places one above the other; her feet crossed, uncrossed, and seemed unable to settle upon precedence.

If she had been a child she would have been called fidgety, but all her motions were discreet and luxurious. She was like a lotos-eater stirring in sleep and just about to open her eyes.

The second act of the opera proved to be hardly more than a prolonged duet. The rapture of it outlasted Forbes' endurance; it did not bore him, it wore him out. He grew weary of eavesdropping on these two. He was jealous to love and be loved on his own account.

The woman next him was becoming more beautiful every moment. He felt a craving to touch her--with reverence; to link arms in comradeship, and to clench hands with her when the music stormed the peaks.

An aura seemed to transpire mistily from his pores to meet the aureole that shimmered about her.

His mood was far above any thought of flirtation, or evil desire. He was too knightly at heart to dream of adventure against her sacred isolation. But he wished and wished that he knew her better; had known her longer. Unconsciously he plagiarized the sigh of Johanna Ambrosius' poem: "_Ach, haett' ich frueher dich geseh'n!_"

But Fate can play the clown as well as the tragedian, and accomplish as much by an absurd accident as by elaborate glooms.

That afternoon, when Forbes was lured into the haberdashery, he had invested in black silk hosiery, very sheer and very dear. Later he had acquired a pair of new pumps. The shoes were not too small, but their rigid edge cut his instep like a dull knife. By the time that Isolde's husband had found her in Tristan's arms, and begun to deplore his friend's treachery at great length, the pressure upon Forbes' heart relaxed enough to let his feet attract his attention. They proclaimed their discomfort acutely.

After some hesitation he resolved to slip them out of their glistening jails a moment, under cover of the darkness.

A sense of immense relief rejoiced him when he sat with his silk-stockinged feet perched on top of instead of inside of his shoes. Though he was unaware of it, he was not the only one in that box to seize the opportunity. Heaven alone knew how much empty foot-gear was scattered along the floors of that opera-house. Persis for one had vacated her slippers long ago. She always did at every opportunity.

Eventually she tucked her little left foot back of her and bent it round the leg of her chair. By and by Forbes, in shifting his position, straightened his right knee. His foot collided with a most smooth something, and paused in a kind of surprise. Primevally our feet had as much tactile intelligence as our hands, and Forbes' almost prehensile big toe pondered that tiny promontory a second; then it hastily explored the glossy surface of Persis' sole.

Silk is a facile conductor of electricity, and Persis was not divine enough to be above ticklishness. Shudders of exquisite torment ran through her before she could snatch her foot away. And before she could check the impulse she snickered aloud.

And Forbes, suddenly understanding what he had done, snickered too, and just managed to throttle down a loud guffaw.

Mrs. Neff and Winifred turned in amazement at hearing such a sound at such a time, and the women in the next box craned their necks to inflict a punitive glare. Which made it all the worse.

Persis and Forbes were suddenly backslidden almost to infancy. They were like a pair of children attacked with a fit of giggles in church. The more they wanted to be sober, the more foolish they felt. The harder they tried to smother the laughter steaming within them, the more it threatened to explode.

Persis would have taken to flight, but one of her slippers she could not find, and she could not get the other on.

She and Forbes were still stuffing their handkerchiefs into their mouths when the act ended, as the pitifully distraught Tristan permitted the infuriated Melot to thrust him through with a sword, and fell back in Kurwenal's arms.

Mrs. Neff and her faction did not join the ovation to the singers. They were too busily demanding what Persis and Forbes had found to laugh at. But neither of them would tell. It was their secret.

Willie Enslee was acutely annoyed. He had not curiosity enough to be quick to jealousy, nor intelligence enough to suspect that Persis' and Forbes' laughter might be, must be, due to some encounter.

Still, he had ideals of his own, such as they were, and his religion was to avoid attracting attention. He had liked Persis because she was of the same faith; but now she had sinned against it, and he rebuked her. She did not flare up as usual. She laughed.

She was ashamed to have been so frivolous, ashamed to have profaned the temple of art with her childishness. And so was Forbes. But when they looked into each other's eyes now they no longer stared with timorous wonderment; they smiled together in a dear and cozy intimacy. And already they owned a secret.

CHAPTER XVII

Mrs. Neff and Winifred may have had their suspicions. They were both amiable cynics, and always put the worst possible interpretation on any happening. But whatever their theories, they could never have guessed the actual reason for the contretemps, and Persis speedily changed the subject. But her feet remembered it and tingled with reminiscent little electric storms. And when she looked at Forbes she tittered like a school-girl. So she avoided his eyes.

Willie was furious at Persis' lack of dignity, and forgot his own in complaining of it.

"Cut out the soubrette spasms, for God's sake, Persis, or let us all in on the joke. If you have any comic relief for this ghastly opera let me have it. Why did you drag me here, anyway? We might have gone to Hammerstein's. It wouldn't be so bad if Caruso were singing; but Caruso knows better than to bark himself hoarse on this Wagner fella. And that Dutch tenor has got to die yet. He'll be two hours dying, and then the lady has to follow suit. Why should we sit here all that time watching people die? Why didn't we go to Bellevue Hospital and watch an amusing operation? What would you say to making a sneak just about now and--"

"I'd say, run right along, Willie, if you want to," said Persis. "_Moi, j'y suis, j'y reste!_"

"Oh, all right, I suppose I'll have to _suis_ and _reste_, too. But don't mind if I snore."

Ten Eyck appeared now with apologies for his delay. And a number of callers knocked at the back door of the box and were admitted to an informal little reception, shared by the next-door neighbors, who gossiped across the rail with a charming friendliness. These latter were determined to find out what Persis had been laughing at. But she shook her head mysteriously.

Forbes heard great names bandied, and he judged that he was meeting important people, but there were no introductions, except in the case of a man and a woman who were treated with deference. To these Ten Eyck presented Forbes with flourish as an eminent military expert called home from the Philippines to help fortify New York against foreign attack.

Forbes denied this violently, but Ten Eyck winked.

"Diplomatic, eh?"

When they were gone Forbes asked who they were.

"Society reporters!" said Ten Eyck. And the next day Forbes read in two of the papers a varying description of the costumes of Persis, Winifred, and Mrs. Neff, and a duplicated mention of his own name with the added information that he was "the eminent military expert called home from the Philippines to help fortify New York against foreign attack."

When he read this Forbes breathed a prayer that none of his superior officers might be addicted to the social columns.

But that was to-morrow's excitement.

The third act brought him back under the Wagnerian yoke. Tristan's castle walls ran along a cliff overlooking the ocean; in a green space under a tree the wounded knight lay eternally demanding of his devoted squire if he could not yet see the ship, the ship that was to bring Isolde to nurse him back to life.

Forbes forgot all light thoughts before the infinitely pathetic wail of the shepherd's pipe and the reiterated appeal of Tristan for "_das Schiff!_ _das Schiff!_"

Like most men of to-day, Forbes never wept except at the theater, or at some other fiction. He had not wept so well since he had seen "Romeo and Juliet" played. Now again, as then, it startled him to think what a genius for love some hearts have, while others have only a talent or a taste for it. He felt a little ashamed that he had never been able to love as Romeo or Tristan loved, and yet he thanked his stars that he had been spared that fatal power.

How often we thank our stars that we have never met the very thing that waits us round the corner! Perhaps that Pharisee who stands immortally thanking the Lord that he was not as other men, found out the same afternoon how very like he was.

The thrall of the theater was so complete upon Forbes that when the sorrowful drone of the shepherd's pipe suddenly turned to joy at the sight of Isolde's ship, Forbes' heart leaped up as if he were witnessing a rescue in actual life.

The hurrying rapture of the music that described Isolde's arrival, and her haste up the cliff, sent his hopes to heaven; but when the delirious Tristan rose from his couch to his staggering feet and began to tear at the bandages about his wound, Forbes felt the stab of fear. He wanted to cry out, "Oh no! no!" He sat with lips parted in anguish, and his hand groping for support.

The left hand of Persis was reaching about in the same gesture of protest against intolerable cruelty. It met the hand of Forbes. Their fingers clutched each other in an instinct for companionship. The two souls were so intent upon the action of the scene, and so swept along by the torrential music, that they hardly knew their hands were joined.

When Tristan fell at Isolde's feet, with one poor wailing "Isolde!" and died before she could clasp him in her arms, it seemed that Forbes' heart broke. A groan escaped him; his hand clenched the hand of Persis with all its might. He heard a little gasp from her, and he thought that her heart had broken with his.

He had bitten into one of the beautiful apples of Hades, and his mouth was filled with ashes. The tears poured down his cheeks, and in his aching throat there was a lump like broken glass.

The noblest song in all music, the "love-death" of Isolde, gave the tragedy nobility; but it was the mad beauty of a grief too great for grieving over. Passion shivered in the air and seemed to come from Forbes' own soul. The harmonies kept climaxing, eternally reaching the last possible thrill, only to find that it led on to one yet higher. The melodies were crowded like the angels climbing Jacob's ladder into the clouds, where every rung seemed heaven, till it disclosed one more.

The music was a love-philter to Forbes and Persis; they could not escape it, had no thought of escape. Their hands swung in a little arc, clenched and unclenched in an utter sympathy of mind and body, in a kind of epic dance.

And then the opera was over, and Forbes began to dread the raising of the lights. He was grateful for the long ovation to the singers, since it kept the house dark till he could shake off the tears he was ashamed to dab with a handkerchief. Time was when greater soldiers than he were proud rather than ashamed of their tears, but Forbes was thankful for the gloom. He applauded and joined the cries of "Bravo!" to prolong the respite.

Mrs. Neff was sniffling as she beat her gloves together.

"Even Isolde's husband couldn't hate her--or him--for a love like that."

And Winifred, with her cheeks all blubbered, swallowed hard as she applauded.

"Why don't we have such lovers nowadays? Even I could play Isolde if I could find a Tristan."

"Permit me," said Bob Fielding. But he was referring to the opera-cloak he was holding out for her.

Willie Enslee, however, shook his head contemptuously and made no pretense of applause.

"Can you beat 'em, Mr. Lord? They're never so happy as when they're crying their make-up off. They pretend they're blue, but they've been having the time of their lives."

And Forbes hated him for saying it. Then he noted that Persis was not applauding. She was pulling off a long glove slowly and wincingly. When it was off, she looked ruefully at her left hand and nursed it in her right. She glanced to see that the others were busy with their wraps, then she held her hand out where Forbes could see it; and gave him a look of pouting reproach.

His first stare showed him only that her soft, slim fingers were almost hidden with rings. And then he saw that the flesh was all creased and bruised and marred with marks like tiny teeth. He realized that it was his fierce clench that had ground the rings and their settings into her flesh, and his heart was wrung with shame and pity.

He saw, too, that on one of the little fingers there was a thread of blood. The alert old eyes of Mrs. Neff caught the by-play of the two, and her curiosity brought her forward with a question.

"How in heaven did you hurt your finger?"

Persis answered quietly and at once:

"I caught it on the thorn of a rose. It's nothing."

Willie insisted on seeing the wound, and was frantic with excitement. He was genuinely distressed. He poured out sympathy for the pain, anxiety for the future of the wound, the necessity for sterilizing it. But it was Willie's doom to be always tactless or unwelcome, and his sympathy was an annoyance.

Forbes was compelled to silence by Persis' explanation of the accident. He must not say how sorry he was, though he had wounded her--he had wounded Persis till she bled!

CHAPTER XVIII

There was an atmosphere of mourning everywhere as the enormous audience issued from the exits. It had assisted at the obsequies of a tremendous love, and all the eyes were sad.

Forbes had seen it stated until he had come to believe it, that the Metropolitan Opera was supported by snobs who attended merely to show off their jewels, and that the true music-lovers were to be found in the gallery. It came upon him now that this is one of the many cheap missiles poor people of poor wit hurl at luckier folk, with no more discrimination than street Arabs show when they throw whatever they can find in the street at whoever passes by in better clothes.

Forbes was sure that most of these sad-eyed aristocrats, so lavish in their praise of the singers and the music and the conductor, had come with a musical purpose, and he wondered if some few, at least, of those in the gallery might not have climbed thither less for art's sake than to see in the flesh those people of whose goings and comings and dressings, weddings and partings, they read so greedily in the newspapers.

During the long wait for the carriage, a wealthy rabble stood in a draughty doorway waiting turns at the slowly disintegrating army of limousines and landaulets and touring-cars and taxicabs--even of obsolete broughams and coaches drawn by four-legged anachronisms.

Mrs. Neff claimed Forbes as her personal escort, and carried him off in her own chariot, which rolled up long before Enslee's.

Forbes regretted to leave Persis standing there, with throat open as usual to the night gale; but his consolation was that he could gossip about her.

Mrs. Neff's first word, of course, was of tobacco. The door was hardly slammed upon them before she had her cigarettes out.

"Give me a light, there's a dear boy. I've just time for a puff. And you light your cigar; I know you're dying for it. You can finish it in the cloak-room. You men have still a few advantages left. The one I envy you most is your right to smoke in public."

It was strange to Forbes to be proffering a light to a white-haired lady. His own mother had thought it almost an escapade to sit on a piazza with a man who was armed with a cigar. Years ago, when Forbes had come home from West Point, she had said to him after dinner:

"I reckon my boy is simply pe'ishing for a cigar. Of course a gentleman can't smoke in the drawing-room, and the odor never comes out of the curtains. But I don't mind it in the open air--much. We'll stroll in the garden. They say tobacco is good for the plants--bad for the insects."

And she took his arm and sauntered with him while he ruined the scent of the honeysuckle vines.

And Forbes had heard an anecdote, probably untrue, of the great Mrs. Astor; according to this legend, a man, hankering for a cigar, yet hesitating to suggest it, asked her casually: "What would you say if a man asked you for permission to smoke?" To which she answered, in her stately way: "I don't know. No man ever asked me." And neither did he.

But nowadays a man rarely ever murmurs the formula: "Do you object to smoke?" He is apter to say: "Do you carry your own, or will you try mine?"

The petite grande dame, Mrs. Neff, carried her own. The glow of it in the dark seemed to add one more ruby to her burdened fingers. And when she lost her light, she reached out for Forbes' cigar and rekindled her cigarette, smiling:

"Aren't we nice and clubby?"

Once her weed was prospering, she began to puff gossip:

"Isn't she a darling--Miss Cabot, I mean? Everybody is crazy over her, but Willie scares 'em all off. What a pity she's mixed up with the little bounder! Of course, she needs a lot of money, and her It of a father is nearly ready for the Old Ladies' Home; but what a shame that love and money go together so rarely! For the matter of that, though, I don't think Persis knows what love is--yet. Maybe she never will. Maybe she won't learn till it's too late. Murray Ten Eyck says you are rich. Why don't you marry Persis? What a pair you'd make! What children you'd have! They'd win a blue ribbon at any stock-breeder's show."

Forbes was much obliged to the dark for hiding his blushes. Besides, he felt it a little premature to be discussing the quality of his offspring. He made bold to ask a leading question.

"You say that Miss Cabot is mixed up hopelessly with Mr. Enslee. Do you mean that they are engaged?"

"They haven't announced it, of course, but it's generally agreed that they are. Still, I suppose that if some handsome devil came along with a million or two, he might coax her away."

"But they are not actually engaged?"

"I don't know. But it looks inevitable to me. If you've got a lot of money, ask her--and save her from Willie. She'd make a nice wife to a nice man, with a nice income. Go on and get her. Oh, Lord, here we are at Sherry's and I've got to throw my cigarette away. I'll have to sneak another in the women's room somehow."

They went through the revolving doors and into the corridor, where women in opera-cloaks were moving forward with something of the look of a spice caravan, some to the supper-rooms, and some toward the elevators to the various assembly-rooms, where various coteries were giving dances.

The ways of Mrs. Neff and Forbes parted at the elevator's upper door. His led to the large room where he passed his hat and coat across a table to be stowed in a compartment in one of the wicker wardrobes.

While he waited for Mrs. Neff, he sauntered to and fro, smoking and feeling a stranger among the men, who were just beginning to collect. Forbes noted the callowness of most of them, and felt himself a veteran among the shiny-haired blonds and glistening brunettes pulling on their white gloves, straightening their ties and trying, some of them, to find mustache enough to pull.

He could see the women they brought--girls and their mothers, or aunts or something.

After his experience at the restaurant dances, Forbes had begun to wonder if New York's aristocracy had been entirely converted to socialism, and had given over all attempt at exclusiveness. Here at last he found selection. People were here on invitation, and they were at home--_chez eux_.

If they went among the common herd, it was only as a kind of slumming excursion, a sortie of the great folk from the citadel into the town. It did not mean that the town was invited to repay the visit at the castle.

This was a dance at the castle. Everybody here seemed to belong. There were no shop-girls, no pavement-nymphs, or others of the self-supporting classes. These women had been provided for by wealthy parents. They had been provided with educations, and aseptic surroundings, and sterilized amusements, and pure food of choicest quality. Hence they all looked hale and thoroughbred. And they were not discontent. They came with the spirit of the dance.

Yet there was variety enough in the unity. Girls of intellectual type, girls of plain and old-maidish prospects, girls of prudish manner, wantons, athletes, flirts, and uncontrollables. There were good taste and bad in costume, simple little pink frocks and Sheban splendors, loud voices and soft, meek eyes and insolent. But they were all protected plants, not hothouse flowers, yet flowers from high-walled, well-tended gardens.

Inside the wall there was the pleasantest informality. Everybody seemed to call everybody else by the first name or by some nickname, and there were surprisingly many old-fashioned "Jims" and "Bills," "Kates" and "Sues." There was much hilarity, much slang, and the women seemed to use the music-hall phrases even more freely than the men.

In the dances there was a deal of boisterous romping. The turkey-trot, here called the one-step, was as vigorously performed as in the restaurants, and some of the highest born showed the most professional skill and recklessness.

While Forbes was waiting for Mrs. Neff, he saw Persis arrive with her entourage. She was like the rest, yet ever so different. In her there was the little more that meant so much. She had, of course, the advantage of his affection. Yet he could see that everybody else gave her a certain prestige, too. It was "Oh, there she is!" "Look, there's Persis!" "Hello, Persis, how darling of you to come!"

The fly in the ointment was Willie Enslee, preening himself at her side, taking all her compliments for his own, as if he were the proprietor of a prize-winning mare at a horse-show. Forbes hated himself for hating him, but could not help it. When Enslee left Persis and entered the men's coat-room, Forbes' eyes followed him balefully.

Ten Eyck happened to glance his way as he held out his hand for his coat check. He noted the glare in Forbes' eyes and followed their direction to Enslee. He was so amazed, that when the attendant put the check in his hand, he started as if some one had wakened him. Then he went to Forbes and took him by the elbow. And Forbes also started as if some one had wakened him. Ten Eyck smiled sadly:

"Is it as bad as that, already, old man?"

"Is what as bad as what already?" Forbes answered, half puzzled and half aware. Ten Eyck replied with a riddle.

"You can buy 'em for almost any price. It's the upkeep that costs."

"What the devil are you talking about?"

"Yachts."

"Yachts?"

"Yachts. Better do as I do, Forbesy: instead of trying to own and run one, cultivate the people who do; and then you can cruise without expense."

"What's that about yachts?" Willie Enslee asked, unexpectedly at his elbow. Ten Eyck answered, blandly:

"I was making the highly original remark that it's not the initial expense--"

"--But the up-keep that costs," Willie finished for him. "And that's no joke, either. Thinking of buying one, Mr. Forbes? Take my advice and don't! Gad, that ferryboat of mine costs me twenty-five or thirty thousand a year, and she's not in commission two months in the season."

Twenty-five thousand a year! The words clanged in Forbes' mind like a locomotive's warning bell. He would hardly earn so much in the next ten years. He would certainly take Enslee's advice and not buy a yacht. He was as ill-equipped for a contest with the Enslee Estates as David was for the bout with Goliath. David won, indeed; but he had only to kill the giant, not to support him in the manner he had been accustomed to.

What could Forbes offer a woman like Persis in place of a yacht? He could offer her only love. His love must be cruiser and automobile, town house and country house, home and travel. Isolde had married the king only to run away from his palace to the ruined castle of the wounded knight. Perhaps this Isolde would take warning and prefer the poor knight and his shabby castle in the first place.

As Forbes glanced down at Willie Enslee he could not feel that even the Enslee millions could suffice to make the fellow attractive. They certainly had not added a cubit to his stature. Persis could not conceivably mate herself for life to a peevish underling like him.

Plainly Forbes needed only to be brave and persistent and he would win her. Then Persis reappeared, and looked to be a prize worth fighting for, at any hazard of failure. There was a bevy of young women about her, bright clouds around a new moon. They were all jeweled to incandescence. On their fingers and wrists were rings and bracelets whose prices Forbes could guess from his inspection of shop-windows the day before. He could not give such gifts.

But he would not let anything chill him. He advanced to Persis with as much cordiality as if he had not seen her for years. Persis was too human to follow the usual New York and London custom of avoiding introductions. She presented Forbes to the galaxy with a statement that he was a famous soldier (which brought polite looks of respect), and a love of a tangoist (which evoked gushes of enthusiasm).

He had not caught a single name, and as the group dispersed, each girl took even her face from his memory as effectually as if it were a picture carried out of a room.

This did not distress him at the time, for the orchestra on the stage in the grand ballroom was busily at work.

"The music is calling us," said Forbes. "May I have the honor?"

"I wish you might," Persis sighed, "but Willie would be furious if I gave his dance away. And Mrs. Neff would snatch me baldheaded if I kidnapped her _preux chevalier_. I'm afraid she'll expect you to pay for your ride in her car by a little honest work, won't she?"

"I'm afraid so. Of course she will," Forbes groaned, ashamed of his oversight. "But the next one I may have?"

"The next one is yours. Don't forget."

"Forget!" He cast his eyes up in a look of horror at the possibility. He hastened to Mrs. Neff, who was just simmering to a boil. She forgot her pique with the first sidewise stride. She tried to imagine herself young, and Forbes tried to imagine her Persis.

He passed Persis in the eddies again and again, and she always had some amiable wireless greeting to flash across the space. She was difficultly following the spasmodic leadership of Willie, who puffed about her like a little snubby tug conducting a graceful yacht out to sea.

When the dance was done and the inevitable encore responded to, Forbes tried to carry on a traffic of conversation with his hostess; but he had only the faintest idea of what she said or what he himself said--if anything. His mind was lackeying Persis, who knew so many people and was having so good a time. At the first squeak of the next dance Forbes abandoned Mrs. Neff like an Ariadne on a beach of chairs, and presented himself open-armed before Persis.

She slipped into his embrace as if she were mortised there. The very concord of their bodies seemed an argument for the union of their souls. They were as appropriate to each other as the melodies of a perfect duet, such a love-duet as Tristan and Isolde's.

Once more Forbes was master of Persis; she followed wherever he led. He could whirl her, dip her, sidle her, lead or pursue her; and she obeyed his will as instantly as if he were her owner. She did belong to him. How could he ever give her up? And yet at the moment the orchestra stopped he must let her go.

The end of the dance was their divorce. He transferred her into Bob Fielding's arms for a time, while he swung Winifred with as much rapture as he would have taken from trundling a bureau around. Even Winifred's surprising lightness of foot reminded Forbes of nothing more poetic than casters.

After this ordeal a strict sense of duty forced him to dance with Mrs. Neff once more. And after her with an anonymous sprig, to whom Mrs. Neff bequeathed him. This girl was as young as Alice Neff, but loud of voice, gawky, and awkward. Some day she would grow up to herself and enter into her birthright of beauty. Now she was neither chick nor pullet, but at the raw-boned, pin-feathered stage between--just out from her mother's wings. Her knees were carried so well forward that Forbes could not avoid them. He came out of the dance with both patellas bruised.

And then, at last, he was free to tango with Persis again. In the brief space of a few dances, he had held in his clasp the young-old Mrs. Neff, the super-abundant charms of Winifred, and the large-jointed frame of a young girl. When Persis was his again the contrast was astonishing. In these forms the cycle of the rose was complete; the girl was the bud still clenched in its calyx; Winifred was the flower too far expanded; Mrs. Neff the flower of yesterday with the bloom gone from the petal and the wrinkles in its place; but Persis! Persis was the rose at its exact instant of perfection.

At the close of the dance, the hour being somewhat past midnight, supper was announced. Persis seized upon one of the small tables, and stood guard over it while she despatched Forbes to round up Mrs. Neff and Willie and Bob and Winifred, and Ten Eyck and a debutante he was rushing.

Persis saw to it quite casually that Forbes sat close to her; and that was very close, since the little clique was crowded so snugly about the table, that half of those who ate had to convey the food across the elbows and knees of the others.

Persis sat with both elbows on the table, and raised her bouillon cup with both hands. Her elbow touched that of Forbes, and she did not draw it away. For the matter of that, all the elbows were clashing in the crowded circle.

It was now that Forbes was tempted to make his first advance. How was he to marry her if he never made love to her? How show his love except by some signal? Before all those ears he could not speak his infatuation; before all those eyes he could not seize her hand and kiss it, or kneel, or push his arm around her.

Under the table he might have held hands with her, but she kept her hands above the board. Then, as she leaned close to him to speak across him to Mrs. Neff, her foot struck lightly against his. It was gone at once, but it suggested to his mind an ancient form of flirtation that has been more honored in modern observance than in modern literature. Remembering the experience at the Opera House, he was visited with a tender temptation to renew that acquaintance of feet.

He gathered his courage together, as if he were about to step off a precipice into a fog, and pursued her foot with his. He found it, but at a touch it vanished again. Realizing that she took his silly action for an accident, he determined to see the adventure through. He sent his foot prowling after hers, found it, and raising his toe, pressed hers softly.

This time her foot was not withdrawn, and he felt that his emprise was rewarded. But a moment later, when every one's attention was attracted to another table, and the rest were discussing a prematurely fashionable costume, Persis leaned close to him and murmured:

"In the first place, how dare you? In the second place, I have on white slippers. And in the third place, you are perfectly visible from all the other tables."

And then she slipped her foot away. It was as if she had unclasped his arms from about her waist, only not so hallowed a precedent.

Forbes turned pale with shame. He felt that his deed was boorish, and now it had been properly rebuked and resented. The gentleness of the reproof made it the more galling; for it was the gentleness of authority so sure of itself that it needed no clamor of assertion. Another woman might have been, or pretended to be, furious at an insult; a flirt might have rebuked him only to encourage and tease him on; a vixen might have dug her other heel into his instep and forced her release.

But Persis was sophisticated enough not to set her protest in italics. She was probably used to such suggestions. It hurt Forbes' pride to feel that he was not the first man she had rebuffed for this. He had loved her and longed to tell her his secret secretly, and had merely apprised her that he was a blundering bumpkin. She had shamed him yet spared him open disgrace. She had made him respect her intelligence and her tact.

He gnawed his lip with remorse; but his apologies were frustrated by the return of all hands to the table. Persis chattered with the rest and nibbled a marron with an apparent relish that implied forgetfulness of what was only an incident to her.

Forbes was learning what Persis was, by all these little tests, as a general studies the enemy's strength and disposition, by trying the line at all points. If he finds the pickets always alert, his respect increases the more he is baffled.

CHAPTER XIX

After the supper no time was lost in returning to the main business of the meeting. Again Willie claimed the first dance, and Forbes was deputed to Ten Eyck's debutante. The next dance, however, brought him back to Persis. He had asked for it, uneasily, and she had granted it with an amiable "Of course."

The moment they were safely lost in the vortex he began to make amends. While he was strutting his proudest through the tango, he was stammering the humblest apologies.

"Oh, don't let that worry you," she answered. "I suppose all men believe they have to do that sort of thing to entertain us. Poor fellows, you think we women expect it of you. Some of us do, I suppose; but I don't like it. And it doesn't seem quite what I had expected of you."

He got a little comfort from the thought that she had taken the trouble, at least, to form an opinion of him. But mainly he admired her for the continued good sportsmanship of her attitude. There was a kind of manliness about it, as if one gentleman should say to another:

"Pardon me, but you are trespassing on my property. It was a natural mistake, but I thought you'd like to know my boundary line."

And yet something was gone from her warmth. She danced with him, chatted, laughed. But a chill was upon her. That little bloom of tenderness that had softened her words as the down velvets the peach, had vanished. Frost had nipped the firstling of spring.

Forbes was infinitely repentant, rebuffed, but not routed. He began once more to scout along her outposts.

"That hat you wore, you remember, day before yesterday?"

"Yes."

"I told you how I followed it."

"Yes."

"My heart ran after you like a newsboy calling to you. But you didn't hear."

"I'm so sorry!"

"All of a sudden you spoke to your driver, and he put on full speed up the Avenue, as if you were in a great hurry. I had a funny idea that you might be making haste to meet some man."

"Let me see! Yes, I was. I was hurrying home to meet Willie. He is always furious when I am late."

This time the name of Enslee was like a blow in the face. It dazed Forbes with a confirmation of his worst fears. He did not realize that he thought aloud:

"I guessed right! I knew it was a man, and I was jealous."

Persis stared up at him. She smiled incredulously.

"You were jealous? But you hadn't even seen me."

"No, but I wanted to see you. I felt you in the air. And I was jealous."

His eyes were laughing into her laughing eyes. But both of them were a trifle solemn at heart. Forbes determined to learn how her affairs stood with Enslee. He could never have found the temerity to demand the information if the music had not flared with such dare-deviltry.

"Would you mind if I asked you one very personal question?" he said.

"Not if you'll look the other way when I answer it."

"Are you engaged to Willie Enslee?"

The question was so unexpected and so forthright that it almost staggered her. She flashed one look up into his earnest eyes and laughed; but it was a cold laugh.

"You are the most amazing piece of impudence I ever met."

"You haven't answered."

"What difference could it make to you?"

"All the difference in the world. It is a matter of the utmost importance to me."

"Why?"

"Because if you are not--" The music was the most inconsequential jig, and their feet were frolic, but his voice was solemn as a prayer. "If you are not, I want to--to tell you that you have--you are--that--well, my heart is at your feet."

"Watch out, then, for I can't see my feet, and my heels are sharp."

"Won't you be serious?"

"You are the frivolous one. You've only just met me; you don't know anything about me, nor I about you, yet you talk this talk."

"I've known you long enough to know that you are--"

"Oh no, you haven't. You've only seen me with my party manners on."

"But you--you--oh, I can't talk to this music. Will you sit down a moment somewhere?"

"No, indeed. I came here to dance, and I wish you would stick to your knitting."

"You haven't answered my question. Are you engaged to that man?"

"Oh, so he is 'that man' already?"

"Are you going to marry him?"

"I'm no prophet, Mr. Forbes."

The medley broke into the ribald tune of a popular song: a woman's celebration of the generosity of her keeper whom she called "Daddy," and who always brought her gifts. The refrain was a disgustingly irresistible hilarity: "Here comes my Daddy now, Pop, oh, Pop, oh Pop!" Half the dancers shouted the refrain as they whirled.

Forbes' heart selected from the sordid lyric only its rejoicing. He selected from Persis' words only the hope they negatively implied. He began to dance in a frenzy, locking knee to knee, whipping her off her feet, and clenching her sweet body so close to him that she gasped:

"I have to breathe, you know."

"Forgive me," he murmured into the curls about her ear. "But you're a wonderful thing!"

"Am I?" she laughed, but with a sort of patient indifference.

"I'm mad about you."

"Are you?"

"I wish I dared to tell you that I love you."

"I hope you won't."

"Men are always telling you that?"

"No--not always--once or twice." She was so far away, though in his arms, that her voice seemed to come to him across a long wire.

"Did you love any of them?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"There's nothing I'm surer of than that."

"Does that mean that you are not engaged to Mr. Enslee?"

She laughed again.

"Not necessarily."

CHAPTER XX

Forgiveness and garters lose their snap when they are stretched too often. Once before Forbes had apologized to Persis for an excess of enthusiasm, and her forgiveness had brought back her cordiality with perfect elasticity. The second time there had been a slight sag.

The boundary between the impertinence of a cad and the privilege of a suitor is vague and wavering. The act that is accepted as a manifestation of devotion, a pretty caress, from the accepted lover becomes a liberty from the libertine. In his ardor Forbes had overstepped the dead-line.

There was no especial reason why the pressure of foot upon foot should be a less poetic tribute than a lingering clasp of the hands. But thinking makes it so, and when Forbes put his best foot forward, Persis resented it as a familiarity, an affront. It meant in her eyes that he held her cheap and easy. It was like her to be less angry with him than with herself. She reasoned that if a man she had just met could so speedily rate her so low, there must be some appalling fault in her manner. Her self-confidence was shaken.

But just as she had set Forbes in the category of men with whom a woman must be on her guard, he spoke of being jealous of her, and his very eyes and the flush on his cheeks shouted that he meant it.

There is, perhaps, no other tribute a woman prizes so highly as jealousy. Other tokens of esteem may be silver, gilt, or plated ware, but jealousy is the hallmark of sincerity; jealousy is at least eighteen karats fine.

The moment Forbes said he had been jealous, and by his eager questions, by their very insistent impertinence, indeed, proved that he was now jealous, he became important to Persis. The fervor of his previous actions was almost justified. Even the intrusion upon her foot was a different act.

Women usually think that love excuses almost everything, and sanctifies what were else ridiculous or disgusting. They absolve the sinner who can plead, "I was in love," more easily than the self-righteous abstainer.

Besides, there was something uncanny to Persis in Forbes' statement that he had followed her up the Avenue, and had felt a jealousy of her haste; because that had been a momentous day altogether.

She had begun it by a shopping raid. She had run across a flock of new hats, curious oddities from Paris, perched like strange birds alighted in a window. They pulled down so far on one side that they blinded one eye of the wearer, and they thrust out so far to the rear and the side that they blinded the passer-by.

As she was trying one of them on, she turned her head to speak to the rhapsodical manager. She swept the face of the saleswoman till she sneezed; and when Persis turned to apologize to the saleswoman, the manager found himself inhaling exotic goura. It was fascinating. She simply must have some of these hats.

But there had been a very polite note with her last bill, a timid plea that she pay a trifle on the venerable debt. She hardly dared increase the sum instead of diminishing it. She decided to ask her father's help. The price was beyond her own private bank-account, which was usually chaotically overdrawn, and which the bank carried along with an amused patience, because her father was one of its oldest customers.

Determined to have those hats that day or die, Persis had ridden all the way to her father's office in Broad Street to ask him to buy them. She had found him in great distress. Before she could explain her errand, he had said, with a smile that was pitifully brave:

"I needn't ask what evil motive brings you down here. It was just to tell your old father how much you love him."

"Yes, of course; you know how I worship you." She sat on the arm of his chair with a smile as alluring as a mining-stock prospectus. "Also, I thought you'd like to know that I've struck the most wonderful hats ever imported. They're marked down to almost nothing, and they're really an amazing bargain--especially when you deduct the cost of an ocean voyage, for I couldn't equal them this side of Paris."

He shook his head with a helpless finality that gave her pause. This terrified her. He had refused her something! She knew that the only things that would prevent him from giving her money were absence of funds and inability to borrow them. He explained, tenderly:

"I'm in a lot of trouble, honey. I've got to shift some of my loans to other banks, and I've got to borrow a lot more somewhere. And I don't know where. I'm sorry to tell you, but you'd better know."

She soothed him with loving terror. She told him how little she really cared for the hats; she wanted them only because everybody else had them. The hat she had on would do for a while. It had been so far in advance when she bought it that it was quite good style now--not the very latest, of course, but still good enough since he was feeling poor.

He told her that she need not worry; everything would come out all right. He was just a little pinched for the moment. But he kissed her very devoutly, and sighed and told her how beautiful she was and how dear to him.

She returned to her car, and ordered the driver home. It was a long journey up the canon of Broadway, a plank road for miles, since a subway was burrowing underneath. She had ample time to figure out just what it meant to her to be poor. They had been pinched before. Her father was the fourth generation of wealth, and the inheritance of financial genius was wearing out in the family.

Cold flashes of fright ran through Persis as the car rumbled and swerved. Then she remembered that Willie Enslee was to call upon her that afternoon. He had said that he had something very important to say, and she had laughed inly, knowing just what he meant. He was so ridiculous in his love. But now she thought of him as a salvation. She resolved to be sensible and cut the silly romance out of her hopes. She could save her father, and have all the hats in the world. She must not keep Willie waiting. He might not wait. It was in this mood that Forbes had first seen her and her old hat from the bus.

At home she had found Willie. As she walked into the drawing-room he was pacing up and down rehearsing his proposal in whispers. He went into a blue funk at the sight of her, and she had the greatest difficulty in coaxing him to propose. Then she accepted him with proper surprise.

Willie had brought the ring--a wonderful composition by Rene Lalique. Fashion had changed enough to permit an engagement ring to be something besides a solitaire diamond. This poem in gold had cost him more than Forbes' salary for two years. Persis had worn it when she met Forbes that same night at the theater. She had worn it when she taught him to turkey-trot. It was the edge of that ring that had cut her finger till it bled under the fierce grip of Forbes' hand at the performance of "Tristan and Isolde."

Thoughts like this danced through Persis' mind now, while her body danced in Forbes' arms. And Forbes was talking of his jealousy!

Forbes was different from Willie in so many ways. He could be loved. She did not love him now. But he was of the type that women love. She wondered, rather helplessly, if she were going to love him. She certainly could never love Willie, and no woman wants to die without loving somebody.

She would not be indiscreet, of course, or disloyal in any important way. But--After all, she might not marry Willie. She might marry Mr. Forbes. All things were possible. Why not this? He would be a husband worth having--a soldier, a gentleman, a lover, distinguished--nobody would laugh if she went up the aisle with him.

Luckily Forbes had money. He was surely not so rich as Willie. But then Persis was not mercenary. She wanted only a reasonable amount--just enough to keep up with the procession, have a fresh hat now and then, and some gowns and a contemporary car, and a place in town and a place out of town, and enough to go abroad on every summer, and South every winter, and a few things like that. Surely Mr. Forbes must have enough money for such a simple household.

Of course, she would not marry him, and it might be dangerous to play with fire; but it would be pitiful never to go near the fire. Worse, it would be pusillanimous. Now that she had accepted Willie, it was certain that she was not to have love in her life unless she took it outside.

Not all of this Cubist chaos of meditation went on during the brief remainder of the dance. But it began there, and it was small wonder if the logic had a little rag-time in it; as for instance:

Since Persis and Willie had agreed not to announce their engagement just yet, this justified lying to a lot of people; for one surely had a right to evade a question that nobody had a right to ask. Of course, if Forbes were really in love with Persis he had a right to ask. But if she told him, then he would stop loving her; at least he would stop seeing her. She knew the man. And she didn't want him to stop seeing her. He was really very nice!

He was a box of matches. She would not strike a light. Or perhaps she might strike one; but she would let it burn only a moment, and then blow it out and not light another. Besides, she was not an official fiancee till it was announced. And Mr. Forbes danced so wonderfully--oh, Lord, it was a sad world. Yet it was very comfortable, dancing in this man's arms.

Meanwhile he was pounding at the door of her heart again:

"Are you going to ride in Central Park to-morrow--this morning?" he said.

"Yes."

"Rain or shine?"

"Yes."

"May I ride there, too?"

"It's not my park."

"That's not very encouraging."

"Isn't it? Well, haven't you been a trifle discouraging yourself?"

"I'm terribly sorry," he pleaded; and she surprised him by sighing:

"I'm rather glad."

"Glad? Why?"

"Because I had come dangerously near to feeling that you were--different."

"I am," he cried, stung by the deep significance of her light regret. "Please let me prove it. Please let me ride with you in the park?"

"I'll be with my father, you know," she answered, with a trace of relentment. "It's my only chance to visit with the poor old boy. You'd better not."

"But some day you will ride with me?"

"Maybe."

"To-morrow may I stand on the bridge and watch you go by?"

"The park is open to the public at all hours."

"Would you mind if I got a horse and rode by and said 'Good morning!'"

"Fine. Come along. I'll introduce you to my father."

"I'll be there!"

CHAPTER XXI

Persis had not misjudged Forbes. If she had told him then that she was another man's betrothed, he would have changed his whole attitude toward her. He would have flirted with her no more. He would have ceased to regard her with ambition or desire. She would have become again only another piece of jewelry in a shop-window--beautiful, but not for him; beautiful, but already bespoken. He was not of the covetous and burglarious type that always wants other people's property.

Equally, the romance would have ended before it began if Forbes had told Persis that he was not rich, as Ten Eyck had carelessly assumed.

Persis might have liked him and admired him and been great friends with him; but she would not have admitted him to the anteroom that all hearts have where those eligible to the inner soul are first admitted to wait their time.

Persis did not make a test of money any more than the rest of her set did. Many enormously wealthy strugglers were wasting coin and labor in a vain effort to bribe a smile from these really unimportant persons. Many poor artists, actors, authors, town wits, were welcomed to their boon companionship. These latter paid their way by bringing along their charm or notoriety as their contribution to the picnic. But they rarely married into the set.

In spite of all the talk of snobbery and wealth-worship, it is really very simple. People are people, and classes are merely clubs where more or less congenial neighbors coagulate, more or less haphazard. Those that cannot pay the dues drop into other clubs. Even labor-unions are run in that way.

And in classes as well as in clubs two kinds of persons are most offensive: those who try to force their way in unsolicited, and those who do not keep up their end of the expenses. The social struggler and the man who never stands treat when it comes his turn are welcome nowhere, from the slums up.

Some such thought as this came by coincidence into Forbes' mind. He realized suddenly that he was accepting a deal of hospitality and repaying none. He knew that he could do nothing to dazzle these people, but he could not endure to take their favors as charities or tips. He was wondering vaguely just what he could do when the problem was solved for him.

He was resolved not to relinquish what he had gained in Persis' esteem. He would cling to her, keep at her heels, till the chance came to prove how dear he held her.

He had dropped the question of her betrothal to Enslee, sure that it was a paradox. Now he realized that he had no further promise of meeting Persis except on horseback and with her father alongside. He put forth an antenna.

"Am I ever going to see you again?"

"I shouldn't be at all surprised," she answered, blowing neither cold nor hot.

"To-morrow?"

"Maybe."

"Where?"

"Oh, I'll probably be dancing at some tea-place or other, as usual."

"Don't you ever stop dancing?"

"Sometimes."

"Could I see you one of those times?"

"Why, yes, of course."

"When?"

"Oh, almost any time."

"Any time is no time."

"I haven't my engagement-book here. I can't remember."

He was hoping that she would ask him to call, but she failed to take the hook. He surprised himself by saying with an abrupt rashness:

"Will you take lunch with me to-morrow?"

He had a vision of a charming little hour alone with her in the solitude made by a crowd. She missed the point, and asked:

"Do you mean all of us?"

"I suppose I do. I reckon I wouldn't dare ask you alone."

"I reckon you betta hadn't," she said, mocking his accent as best she could.

"When will you-all come?"

"Oh, it would be right smart of a job to get us-all together at the same time."

He smiled at her burlesque, but persisted:

"How would you like to--to give the party and order the fodder? I'm just back from the Philippines, you know. I could get up a mess for my company, but I'm afraid I couldn't feed you people to your liking."

"Oh, nobody eats anything any more, or drinks much of anything."

"All the more reason for having what you do have right. Won't you order it for me, and tell me where to have it?"

She was tempted to seize the chance. It was a delight to her to compose a meal. It was a kind of millinery or dressmaking in its art of arrangement. She checked herself on the brink of acceptance, realizing that it would set people to talking if she conducted Forbes' entertainments for him. Even Willie, who was neither very observing nor very jealous, would raise a row at that.

"I'll tell you," she said. "Ask Mrs. Neff to be the hostess. You're under some obligations to her, and none to me."

"May I ask her to order the luncheon, too?" said Forbes, with dwindled enthusiasm.

"Oh no; you must do that!"

"I'm afraid I don't know what to have."

"It's the simplest thing in the world. Just go to the Ritz-Carlton and ask for Fernand. Tell him I'm coming, and I said for him to take good care of you--of us. And now let's see who can come."

She strolled about with him while he made his invitations. Everybody had engagements of various sorts, but they were brittle. Mrs. Neff was flattered immeasurably, and asked if she could bring Alice along. She was afraid to leave her lest she connive with Stowe Webb at some escapade. Bob Fielding could not come so far up-town from his office, and Winifred could be present only if she were permitted to be late.

"I'm not allowed to eat anything, anyway," she moaned, "except a little dried toast and some lemon-juice; and the waiters treat me like a dog. But I'll be there if you'll protect me."

Ten Eyck had planned to run down to Piping Rock, but he would not desert Forbes in his hour of peril. Willie had an important engagement with one of the executors of his father's estate, but he quickly shifted it when he found that Persis was to be present. This made seven all told, four women and three men.

"I could get more if you want," said Persis; "but seven is lucky, and more is no fun."

"Seven is just right," said Forbes, with a little premonitory chill at the thought of the probable cost.

It was finally agreed that they were to lunch late, take a little spin round town, and then turkey-trot again in the afternoon.

Forbes was amazed at himself. Now he was to play the host, and Persis was to be at his elbow! Or should he put her opposite him, as if she were his wife? What a decoration she would be at a man's home table!

The word "home" took a new timbre in his soul. Hitherto home had meant the tall, white columns and broad lawns where his mother lived. Now it began to mean almost any place--soldiers' quarters, hotel--any place where Persis would rest awhile. Even the humming-bird has a nest to go to when its wings are tired. Some day Persis must nest, too. Her wings could not beat on forever.

CHAPTER XXII

There had come to be more and more room on the floor as the crowd dispersed slowly. Many of the young owls were by daylight bank-clerks and office assistants, learning their father's trades of money. They were remembering that they must be up betimes in the morning. They had been campaigning all winter on short rations of sleep. If they made up lost slumber anywhere, it was at their desks, to which nothing but a spanking cold bath could have roused them day after day.

They were glad now when their demoiselles confessed to fatigue, too, or the mothers began to mention the hour.

Even Mrs. Neff was a trifle groggy. The poor old soul was trying hard to keep from confessing how tired and sleepy she was. She kept herself young by pretending to be young, and her motto was, "A woman is just as old as she says she is." Though, for the matter of that, if her statement of her age had been correct, her eldest son must have been born before she was; and Alice would have come along when her mother was about eight years old.

Persis was growing drowsy-eyed, too, and heavy-limbed, with an almost voluptuous longing for sleep. She drooped like a flower at sunset. She ceased to smuggle her yawns as sighs, and once or twice she forgot to lift her hand to hide them.

Forbes was so infatuated that he admired even her yawns. He wanted to whisper over her round shoulder, "How pretty you are when you are a sleepy-head!" But he had been lessoned enough for one evening.

At last, however, she gave up the effort to go on dancing forever. She inquired for Willie. He was not to be seen. Ten Eyck went exploring, and found him in retirement clutching a big highball glass with his little raccoon-like fingers, and blinking his little raccoon-like eyes. He was of a surly trend in his cups, but Ten Eyck was angelically patient as he lugged him to the coat-room. Forbes was horrified at the thought of Persis under such escort; but she seemed to ignore Willie's temper, and Forbes dared not intervene.

However, as they were all waiting on the curb in the fresh auroral air, while the starter whistled up their cars, he ventured a chance to murmur to Persis:

"I beg you to go home and sleep till noon. Please don't try to get up and ride in the morning."

"I must," she answered. "It's the one duty I do."

But the note of protecting solicitude in his voice had touched her. She turned softer eyes upon him and smiled.

"We'll dance some more to-morrow afternoon. Till then, _au revoir_."

"But I am to _revoir_ you in the park in a few hours?"

"So you say."

"Also at luncheon?"

"Oh yes, of course."

"Persis, are you never c-coming?" Willie Enslee hiccoughed.

"Yes, pet," she laughed, ironically, and nodded again to Forbes. Forbes winced at the endearment she gave Enslee, even though he felt it to be sarcastic. He winced again as Enslee took her white elbow in his white glove and made a fumbling effort to help her in. The white fleece she was vanished into his dark car like a moon slipping into clouds.

Ten Eyck boosted Willie in and clambered after him "as a chaperon."

Bob Fielding and Winifred tested the capacity of a taxicab, and Forbes stood ready to escort Mrs. Neff home in her own car; but she shook her head as she gaped:

"Nonsense! I'll not be so cruel. You've done enough for me. You go on back to your hotel and get to bed. But first wait--oh wait--have you a box of matches you can give me? Thanks! You've saved my life. Good night."

Forbes paused to say: "Does the chauffeur know you want to go home?"

"I should hope so, at this hour!"

Forbes closed the door with an apology and set out to walk to his hotel. It was only a few blocks away, but it seemed a hundred miles. And he yawned so ferociously that he feared for the buildings. He found the scrubwomen agonizing again on their knees across the lobby floor. He was too drowsy to feel sorry for them, or to remember to leave a call for six o'clock at the desk, as he had planned.

He plucked off his clothes in a stupor, and slid straight into the abyss of sleep as he shoved his dance-weary toes down into the sheets. At five the imaginary reveille woke him for a moment. He simply came up to consciousness like a diver gulping a breath, and was underneath again at once. He dreamed that he was riding in the park and, catching sight of a saddle-horse in a tantrum, galloped forward to find that Persis was the rider. She was having a desperate battle with the frothing beast and was about to be thrown off. But Forbes, outstripping two or three mounted policemen, swept alongside and caught her from her saddle to his pommel. Her father, whose own horse was plunging, was so grateful that he presented Forbes with Persis' hand. A mounted clergyman chanced to be cantering by, and he was recruited to perform the ceremony, with the mounted policemen as bridesmaid and best man. By one of those splendid coincidences in which dreams are so fertile, a thicket of trees proved to be a pipe-organ, and began to blare a popular tune of Mr. Mendelssohn's. The noise woke Forbes, and to his unspeakable disappointment he found himself in a bachelor bed at a hotel, with Times Square furnishing a roaring offertory.

Automatically he reached for his watch, wondering if he could not have a little further nap to get back into that dream without delay.

But the dial blandly informed him that it wanted a few minutes to noon. Horror shocked him wide awake.

CHAPTER XXIII

He leaped from his hateful couch, swearing at himself like an army teamster. He stumbled to the telephone and curtly demanded the exact time, hoping to prove his watch a liar. Back from space came the reply: "K'reck time is 'le'm fifty-eight."

His "Thanks!" had almost the effect of an oath. He slammed the innocent receiver on the hook and stood staring at the bare feet protruding from his indolent pajamas, where there should have been puttees and spurs and smartly flaring riding-breeches. He was doubly indignant with himself because he had counted upon that morning galopade. He rode like a centaur, though with the military and not the park seat, and he had expected his horsemanship to commend him to Persis.

He wondered what he should do. He reversed Sancho Panza and cursed the man that invented sleep. He formed a wild project to fling into his things, leap to horse, and hunt the park through. But he had not yet bespoken the horse, and he knew that Persis must have finished her ride hours ago, doffed her boyish togs, cold-showered her glowing body, and put on whatever finery her engagements required. She had probably spent the irretrievable hours at a committee meeting of some society for rescuing working-girls from work. And her father had probably earned or lost a million while Forbes lay annulled in a coma of stupidity.

How should he apologize? He could not wait till he saw her. The offense must be erased before it set. He must call her up instantly. He ransacked the dangling telephone-tome. Her father's office was mentioned, but not his residence. Yet he must have a residence, and it must have a telephone.

Forbes banged the hook and demanded "Information," and when that mysterious dame answered from her airy throne he besought her to give him at once the number.

Information answered with a lilt as if the name of Persis were one of importance:

"I think it's a private wire; I'll see."

While Forbes waited he was interrupted, incessantly cut off, restored to the wrong number, helplessly forced into other people's personal chats, and left dangling in empty space. When at length he retrieved Information, she told him:

"Jus' z'I thought, 's a priva twire."

"Of course it's a private wire!" Forbes thundered. "I don't want to have a public conversation. What's the number?"

"'S 'gainst comp'ny rules to give numbers listed as private. Sorry."

"But this is a matter of life and death."

There was an almost audible sigh, as if she had heard that before.

"Sorry, but under no soic'mstances are we p'mitted to give numbers of parties listed private."

He insisted, pleaded, threatened; but she answered with implacable politeness. "Sorry, but--"

At length he screwed his courage to the point of calling up the office of her father. Here he learned only that Mr. Cabot had left the office, and it was contrary to orders to give his house number.

After beating his head and hands vainly for a long time against those walls that New-Yorkers have to build about themselves if they are ever to know seclusion, Forbes remembered Ten Eyck and called up his house. He was not at home, and his whereabouts were unknown.

A deferential, yet stately voice with the indescribable tone of a butler or a valet advised "Mr. Forbes, ah, yes," to try various clubs; "The Racquet or the Brook, possibly," or "I believe I heard him say" (the two h's were hazy) "that he was to be at the Metropolitan at one. If you could call him then, sir, I'm quite sure you'd--Not at all! Very good, sir."

Ten Eyck could give him Persis' occult number; then he could send a note and some flowers to plead for him and appease her wrath before they met at the luncheon. When they met no time must be wasted in more apologies.

But Ten Eyck was not to be found anywhere. Forbes gave up. He telephoned for "coffee and rolls and a morning paper in a powerful hurry," and stormed into his bathroom. When he came out as sparsely dressed as most of the gentlemen are in the advertising pages of the magazines, he found his breakfast on a little half-table mysteriously apported.

While he danced into his trousers his eyes were caught by head-lines on the paper folded at his plate:

"Mayor puts Lid on _Thes Dansants_."

Forbes seized the paper, flung himself into a chair, and read with violence the dire news that the same mayor who had ordered people to quit dancing at one now ordered them not to begin dancing before dinner. He grew hot with rage, while his coffee cooled and his rolls brittled. He had found the dancing-tea a delightful institution, a joyous democracy. But, according to the scathing indictment of the mayor and the adroit wording of the reporters, the tea-dance was a home-wrecking, youth-defiling abomination, only the more dreadful because it wrought its hellish purposes in the broad daylight.

According to the newspaper account of a typical dancing-tea, it was apparent that Forbes had failed to grasp the depravity of the crowd he had been dancing with; it seemed that the women were all fat fiends pursuing immature school-girls, and the men all evil-eyed brokers whose corpulence alone was proof enough of their wickedness.

Forbes stared aghast at a wholesale condemnation that must include Mrs. Neff, Persis, Winifred, Alice, and the respectable rest. He had not yet learned that certain journalists are mere newsboys always beating out of their dreadnaught typewriters cries of "Extra! Extra! All about the turrible moider!"

Forbes was dumfounded to learn that the modern Babylon plus Nineveh, New York, could be sent to bed at one o'clock and forbidden to dance by daylight. Ordinarily nothing on earth would have mattered less to Forbes than the fate of tea-dances. But this ukase drove him further than ever from his Persis.

The curious mania for public dancing had enabled him, though come to town a stranger, to join immediately in festival relations with people to whose homes he would normally have been months in penetrating. The mayor's edict revoked this democracy, and he was once more a stranger in the city. He must meet his new-found friends formally and at long intervals, if at all. He thanked his stars that he had arranged to give the luncheon in time. He must set about ordering it at once, and he must see to it that there was no flaw in its perfection.

CHAPTER XXIV

On his way to the Ritz-Carlton, Forbes stopped at his bank to draw some money. He decided that he would better take along a hundred dollars. It would look impressive when he paid the waiter. He realized that it would drag his bank-account below the acceptable minimum. But he set his teeth and determined to do the thing right if he bankrupted the government. He would probably need most of the rest of the hundred before the week was out. He could begin to save again when he was in his uniform again.

He drew the money, strolled to the hotel, asked for Fernand, and found him at a glass screen in a superb room that ran from street to street. A multitude of red chairs populated the floor, and the medallioned white ceiling was a huge ellipse that looked as big as the earth's orbit.

Fernand was cautiously gracious till he learned that Miss Cabot had sent Forbes to him; then he became quite paternal. Forbes slipped him a ten-dollar bill, and he listened almost tenderly as Forbes explained:

"I want to give a little luncheon--nothing elaborate, but--well, something rather nice, you know."

"Perfectly, M'sieur. And how many will there be?"

Fernand spoke English glibly, with hardly more accent than a sweetish thickness.

"We are seven," said Forbes.

"Very good, sir. Will you select what you wish, or--"

He handed Forbes the card of the day. Forbes looked at the French. He could read military memoirs and strategical works in French, but he was floored by the technical food-terms. A glimpse at the prices unnerved him further; but he asked: "What would you suggest--I'm just home from Asia. I feel a little out of it."

"If Monsieur would permit me," said Fernand, with the eagerness of a benevolent conspirator, an artist with a mission, "I will arrange it and give you a pleasant surprise or two."

Forbes swallowed a small lump of embarrassment, and was careful to ask carelessly:

"About how much would it be?"

He wanted to forestall at least one surprise.

"Oh, not a great deal," Fernand smiled, with the bedside manner of a family doctor. "Miss Cabot hates heavy food. Zhoost a little cocktel, and some _caviar d'Astrakhan_ to begin; and perhaps a little broth; ah, better! she likes _puree St.-Germain_. And after, a little berd and some salade, a sweet, perhaps, or a cheese, some coffee--nothing more! Very simple is best."

This sounded so sane that Forbes began to pluck up hope. He asked:

"Does she--do they--will you give us wine of any kind?"

"Miss Cabot does not care for champagne; and Mr. Enslee--did you say he would be of the party?"

Forbes had not said it, and he flushed to think that everybody, even a head waiter, must be linking Persis' name with Enslee's. But more than ever now he must make sure not to give a shabby meal. Meanwhile he answered the question with a casual nod:

"Yes, Mr. Enslee will be here."

Fernand spoke with indulgent pity: "Mr. Enslee takes usually only a highball of the Scotch. But I think you could tempt them both with a little sherry--for the sake of the berd. I have a sherry that is delicious."

"How much delicious?" Forbes asked, trying to be flippant at his own funeral.

"Eight dollars the bottle. But very fine! They would all like it very much."

At the mention of a concrete price Forbes grew uneasy, and asked outright: "Could you tell me how much--about how much this luncheon is going to cost me?"

Forbes felt ashamed of discussing prices, though many a richer man, especially Enslee, would have fought all along the line and delivered an oration on the extortions of restaurateurs. But Fernand began to compute:

"Let me see; seven cocktels at twenty-five is one-seventy-five. Caviar would be one-twenty-five per person; for seven would be eight-seventy-five. The _puree St.-Germain_ we shall make it special--say, about five dollars. I should recommend the _poulet de grain aux cepes_; it is two-fifty per person. You do not really need any _legumes_, except the asparagus. Oh, this morning what asparagus! I saw it! Asparagus, yes?" Forbes nodded desperately. "That will be seven dollars more; but then you will not wish _salade_--no, you will not wish _salade_, though the endive is--no, we will not have endive. For the sweet would you wish special favors? No, it is too much; the Nesselrode pudding is nice. Miss Cabot adores the marrons--good! We might serve cheese, though it is too much. But we will have it ready. Then the coffee is special, and a liqueur, perhaps--yes? Miss Cabot likes the white mint. There will be some cigars for the gentlemen, of course--and the ladies will take their cigarettes with their coffee down the steps here, I presume. Now, let me see." He mumbled his addition a moment, then broke the news. "That makes--about fifty-four-seventy-five. Yes--ah no! we have not added the sherry--one bottle, perhaps two. So you see, Monsieur, it will come only to sixty--sixty-five dollars--roughly."

Forbes thought the word "roughly" appropriate. In his soul there was a sound like the last sough of water in an emptying bathtub. He added mentally the ten dollars he had given Fernand, and the ten dollars he must give the waiter. He wondered if he looked as sick as he felt; as sick as his hundred dollars would look. He had cherished a mad fancy for inviting everybody to dinner, the theater, and a tango supper. If his modest luncheon put him where it did, he wondered where such an evening would have left him. From this point of view he was escaping cheaply. Anyway, he had crossed the Rubicon. He was too poor to be able to afford to skimp. If he had been an Enslee Estate, he could have offered his guests toast and distilled water without being suspected of poverty.

And once committed to the course he had chosen, he would have beggared his family rather than stint his hospitality. He was a gentleman; a fool, perhaps, but a gentleman.

He gave Fernand the order to go ahead. Fernand was upset by the brevity of the time allotted him, but promised to do his best. Forbes cast his eye about for a good table. Fernand put up his hand:

"Miss Cabot has her favorite table. You shall have that, also her captain and her waiter."

Forbes remembered Persis' warning.

"But this luncheon is really in honor of Mrs. Neff," he said.

"Ah, in that case you will want her table. She prefers the opposite side, nearer the band."

Forbes, having a little while to kill, set out for a stroll round the block. It came to him suddenly that the precious hundred dollars he had drawn to make a good show would evaporate and leave almost nothing. He went to his bank and wrote a check for fifty dollars more. As he stood waiting at the paying-teller's grill he felt as if he were a forger taking money he had no right to. But the teller expressed no surprise. When Forbes returned to the Ritz-Carlton he found his guests already gathering in the lounge. Willie Enslee came in late and surly. He explained that his man had had the impudence to fall ill, and had left him to dress himself.

They had their cocktails, and then Forbes led his little flock up to the rich pasture. He had to beg pardon through a knot of people pleading vainly for tables in the circle. They were being turned off into the side rooms of mediocrity.

It gave Forbes a feeling of elation to be greeted with homage by name and led at once to his table. It made a brave showing with silver, glass, and napery already disposed, and a great bouquet of fresh lilacs in the center.

Fernand whispered to Forbes that he had taken the liberty of changing the bill of fare somewhat. The result was a surprise to those spoiled palates, and Forbes' guests were like children in their expressions of delight. Forbes was voted a gourmet, but he gave the credit to the hovering Fernand. He was honest enough still for that, though he had not the courage to admit how deep a gouge the luncheon made in his savings.

Still, he felt as he surveyed his triumph that wealth was a noble thing. If only he could give such artistic banquets every day! If only he could frequent such places and hold up his end among all these brilliant crowds! So many, many people had so much money. Thousands of them were banqueting here and in other restaurants, encouraging all the arts from architecture to salad-dressing. Why should he be denied the status of his tastes?

He attempted to grovel before Persis in apology for oversleeping. But she refused to take the offense seriously, and she congratulated him for having the courage and the honesty to confess the real excuse for absence. He told her that he was sure, from her alert and lustrous eye, that she too had overslept, but she vowed she had not, and he wondered again that such delicate beauty should be conjoined to such unfailing strength.

Save when it was interrupted by exclamations of applause for the choice of the dishes, or childish yum-yums for the exquisiteness of their preparation, the talk was all about the mayor's order closing the _thes dansants_.

"They call this a free country," Mrs. Neff grumbled, "and yet they tell us we may not dance with our tea!"

"A good thing, too!" said Enslee. "It was time somebody stepped in before the whole country went absolutely nutty over this dance business. A little more and they'd have had the waiters trotting in with soup."

"But what are we to do with our afternoons?" Winifred sighed.

"What did you do before?" said Willie.

"I don't know; but I'm sure it was stupid."

Ten Eyck, the consoler, came to the rescue. "Sigh no more, ladies! There'll be turkey-trotting in this old town when we're all trotted out to Woodlawn. Forbesy, were you ever in Yellowstone Park?"

"Yes."

"Did you see the Old Faithful geyser geyse?"

"Yes."

"Remember how she would lie quiet as a tub for an hour, and then blow off her head and explode a stream of water to the clouds, make an awful fuss for a few minutes, and then drop off to sleep again?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's reform in New York or any big town. There's wild excitement now; there'll be editorials and sermons and police raids and license-revoking for a few days. Then everything will quiet down, and in a week all the old dancing-stands will be running away as before."

Willie changed the subject with his usual abruptness. All this time he had been revealing an unexpected enthusiasm for the little purple forest of lilacs in the centerpiece. He kept pulling the nearest sprays to him and breathing their incense in.

"Do you know I simply adore lilacs," he smiled. "Up at my country place they must be glorious. My gardener writes me they have never been so good as this year. I wish I could see them."

Nobody paid much heed to his emotions until, a little later, he broke out suddenly:

"By Jove, I believe I'll take a run up in the country and see my lilacs and spend a night in real air."

"That's a fine idea," said Winifred; "we'll all go along."

"Oh no, you won't," said Willie. "The place isn't open yet. Nobody there but the gardener and his helpers."

This checked Winifred only for a moment, then she returned to the charge.

"All the more fun," she exclaimed. "Let's all go up and make a week-end of it."

"But there are no servants there, I tell you," Willie insisted.

"That's where the fun comes in," said Winifred, in love with her inspiration. "It would be a glorious lark. There's nothing to do here in town."

"We have to eat, you know," Willie reminded her, coldly; "and nobody to cook it."

"I'm a love of a cook," said Winifred. "And I've been through your kitchen up there. It's a model--electric dingblats and all sorts of things. I'll cook the meals if the rest of you will build the fires and make the beds and wash the dishes."

"Oh, Winifred, behave!" Willie sniffed.

But Winifred would not behave. She drummed up her scheme until she raised the others to a kind of amused interest in the venture. It would be a novelty at least.

"We can always cut and run at a moment's notice," Winifred explained, for a clincher. "A couple of hours in a car and we're back in town."

"But there are no servants there, I tell you," Willie reiterated. "You don't seriously expect us to go up there and do our own work?"

"Why not?" said Winifred. "It's time you learned to use your lazy hands before they drop off from neglect."

"No thank you!" Willie demurred. "If we've got to go, we'll take along some deck-hands. What do you say, Persis?"

"The only thing I like about it," said Persis, "is the absence of the servants. I can't remember a time when they haven't been standing round staring or listening through the doors. Oh, Lord, how good it would be to be out from under their thumbs for a few days!"

"We can't afford the scandal," said Willie. "Servants are the best chaperons there are. If we went up without them there'd be a sensation in the papers."

"You and your fear of the newspapers!" Winifred retorted. "They need never know."

"You can't go up to my place without some chaperon!" Willie snapped, with a pettish firmness. "I don't run a road-house, you know."

"If you've got to have a chaperon, maybe you'd take me," said Mrs. Neff.

"You!" Willie laughed cynically. "And who'll chaperon the chaperon? You'll make more mischief than anybody. Your affair with Mr. Lord--er, pardon me, Mr. Ward--is the talk of the town already."

Mrs. Neff's laugh was a mixture of ridicule at the possibility and yearning that it might not be impossible. Her comment was in the spirit of burlesque.

"But if I marry him afterward it will put a stop to the scandal."

"Mother, you are simply indecent!" her daughter piped up, with a kind of militant innocence.

The luxury of such a reproof was too dear to Mrs. Neff's unwithered heart to be neglected. She added her vote to those of Winifred and Persis.

Forbes dared not speak, but he was aglow with the vision of a few days with Persis in the country. As he crossed the continent he had seen the traces of spring everywhere; everywhere the mad incendiary had been kindling fires in tree and shrub and sward. From the train window he had watched the splendors unroll like a moving film. He had wished to leap from the car and wander with somebody--with a vague somebody. And now he had found her, and the golden opportunity tapped on the window.

Willie fenced with Winifred till the luncheon was finished. Then they retired to the lounge for coffee. Here women had the franchise for public smoking, and they puffed like small boys. Winifred renewed the battle for the picnic.

Ten Eyck had watched the contest with a grin. At last he spoke: "It's a pretty little war. Reluctant host trying to convince guests that they are not invited. Guests saying, 'We'll come anyway.' Better give in peacefully, Willie, or they'll take possession and lock you outside."

Then Willie gave in, but on the ground that Persis wanted it. He attempted a sheepish gallantry and a veiled romantic reference. He, too, had a touch of April in his frosty little heart. Forbes winced at the rivalry; but at any price he wanted to be with Persis where the spring was.

Willie, yielding to the role of _hote malgre lui_, announced that since they were determined to invade his respectable ancestral home, the sooner they got it over with the better. Persis and the rest were creatures of impulse, glad to have an impulse, and they agreed to the flight as quickly as a flock of birds. What engagements they had they dismissed. Their maids could send telegrams of "regret that, owing to unexpected absence from town," etc.

Willie went to call up his gardener and have the house thrown open to the air and fresh provisions ordered in.

He had just gone when a page came to Persis with the word that her father wanted to speak to her on the telephone.

She gave a start and looked afraid as she rose. Forbes watched her go, and his heart prayed that no bad news might await her. She was so beautiful as she moved, and so plucky. He knew that she was frightened, but she spoke to various people she passed with all the light-hearted graciousness imaginable. She came back speedily with a look of anxiety vainly resisted. She explained that her father was leaving for Chicago on the Twentieth Century, and wanted to tell her good-by. She would barely have time to reach the house before he left.

Forbes offered to accompany her home. She insisted that he should not leave his guests. Winifred and Mrs. Neff rose at once, claiming that they must also leave to make ready for the excursion.

Forbes bade them good-by rather awkwardly. He regretted the disorder of his exit as a host, but he would not forfeit this chance to be alone with Persis.

She was so distressed about her father that she forgot Willie's existence, and left no message for him. When he had finished his tempest in a telephone-booth, and conveyed his orders to his head gardener, he found Mrs. Neff and Winifred waiting for their cars. They explained Persis' flight and made arrangements for the hour and place of meeting for the journey.

CHAPTER XXV

When Forbes hastened after the hastening Persis and saw how distraught she was he felt the sharp cutting-edge of sympathy. It was his first sight of her in a mood of heartache, and his own heart ached akin.

When they reached the outer door they found to their amazement that it was raining hard. Within doors there had been such luxurious peace under such glowing lights that the sun was not missed and the rain was not heard. But along the street, gusts of wind swept furious, with long javelins of rain that made the awning almost useless. Women gathered their finery about them, and men clung to their hats while they waited for their cars, and then bolted for them as they came up dripping under the guidance of dripping chauffeurs.

While Persis waited for a taxicab Forbes tried to shelter her with his body. He ventured to hope that her father's absence would not distress her.

"Oh no," she answered, bravely, "not at all. He's going on business. He told me the other day he might have to leave town for a few days--on business."

Forbes hesitated over his next words.

"I hope this won't prevent you from going up to Mr. Enslee's."

"Oh no, quite the contrary," she said. "I'd be alone at home. I'll be glad of the--the diversion. Here's the taxi. It's really not necessary for you to go with me."

For answer he took her arm and ran with her to the door the footman opened. A blast of windy rain lashed them as they crept into the car. The door slammed and they were under way, running cautiously on the skiddish pavement.

At last he was alone with her. The rain made their shelter cozier, and for all its bluster it was a spring rain. With its many-hoofed clatter it was a battalion of police clearing the way for the flower procession.

Thinking of this, Forbes said:

"I'm mighty glad you're not leaving town."

"But I am."

"With your father, I mean. You're leaving town with me, instead."

She looked him in the eye with some surprise.

"It's a good thing we put the blame for that luncheon on Mrs. Neff. It tickled her to death and--do you know that Willie really thinks you're flirting with her--or aiming at Alice? He can't tell which." She laughed deliciously. It did not grieve her to fool Willie.

The cab rocked in the wind, and the rain beat upon it with the sound of waves protesting against the rush of a yacht's prow. Forbes caught a glimpse of a street sign. It warned him that they were already passing Fiftieth Street. In a few minutes they would be at her home.

"I'm not flirting with anybody," he said. "I'm adoring you."

A little frown of bewilderment troubled the smile she gave him. She felt his hand on hers and tried to draw it away, but he held it fast.

"We're not at the opera, you know," she said. "That noise isn't the music of 'Tristan and Isolde.' That's rain."

"I know it," he answered, "and I don't want you to be Isolde. If only she had married Tristan in the first place--"

"They might have been divorced in the second place."

"Don't be--don't talk that way. I'm in deadly earnest," he pleaded, but she laughed evasively.

"That was very heady sherry you gave us to-day."

He shook his head sadly, as over the flippancy of a child, and took her hand in both of his.

"It's broad daylight, Mr. Forbes, and this is Madison Avenue."

"But nobody can see us," he answered. "Look at the rain."

"What difference does that make?" she answered, tugging at her hand. But she looked, and saw how they were closed away from the world. Sheets of water splashed and spread so thickly that they covered the windows with gray curtains.

It was as if a brief tropical flood had burst upon New York.

Somehow it did make a difference that nobody could see. It always makes a difference in us that nobody can see us.

Even Forbes felt the change in Persis. Perhaps it was only that her resistance was minutely diminished, or that one of her many fears was removed, one support gone. As a soldier he had sometime felt that slackening of morale across the space between firing-lines. It is then that the military genius orders a charge and turns the enemy's momentary weakness into a panic.

So Forbes charged Persis. In his face gathered a fierce determination. His fingers tightened upon hers, no longer caressingly, but cruelly, till they hurt. He pulled her right hand across him with his right, and thrust his left arm back of her, caught her farther shoulder in the crook of it, and drew her close till their faces almost touched, till her eyes were so close to his that they were grotesquely one.

And then he paused. He lacked the elan to seize the red flag of her lips. He paused weakly to stare at her and to beseech the kiss he might have captured.

"Kiss me!" he said.

So silly a phrase for so warm a deed. She shook her head, and her fright was gone. She taunted him from her eyes as from an unconquered citadel.

"Kiss me!" he repeated, feeling poltroon and idiotic.

She did not upbraid him or feel any anger or any helplessness; she just studied him, ignoring the fact that he held her body close to him in a crushing embrace. After all, that meant nothing. Almost anybody might hold her so at a dance for all the world to see. Nothing mattered, she thought, so long as their souls did not embrace.

But therein she was wrong, for their souls were not dancing to music. He was demanding her love, her submission to his love. Their souls were debating that vital question, without speech, yet with every argument.

She enjoyed the struggle. She was striking the first of the matches. She would watch the pretty blue flame a moment before it blazed red, then she would blow it out with a little breath from the lips he demanded.

It was fascinating to see how tremendously excited he was over the privilege of touching his lips to hers. It was a quaint little act to make so much of. He was a splendid man, brave, charming, good to see, and now he was crimson and fierce-eyed and breathing hard, trembling with the struggle to keep from taking what was so close. She smiled at him triumphantly. She was about to puff out the flame with a whiff of sarcasm, when he said, with all the simplicity of truth:

"I couldn't take a kiss unless you gave it to me. I don't want to kiss you unless you want me to. May I?"

It was such a boyish plea that she could not be sophisticated in its presence. She could not answer such hunger with wit. She felt a sudden power from somewhere pressing her head forward to his lips and her heart closer to his.

She smiled tenderly with veiled eyes, and no longer held off. With a gasp of joy he understood and caught her against him. But just as their lips would have met another instinct saved her.

She had always felt a kind of sanctity about her mouth, a preciousness that must not be cheaply cast away. Among all the kisses she had given and taken there still remained this first kiss, still vestal and virgin. And that was the kiss he asked.

She turned her head swiftly, and it was her cheek that he touched. There was such a burning in the touch that the fire ran through her. Her cheeks crimsoned. She closed her eyes in a kind of sweet shame.

She was amazed to be there, huddled in his arms, with his lips preying upon her cheek. Her soul was in wild debate with itself, busy with reproaches and summons to battle against the invader. But it was like a senate without president. There was no one to give the order.

At last she opened her eyes to see again what manner of man this was that had conjured away all her pride and her wisdom and her strength. Her eyes saw that the curtain of rain was slipping from the windows. The downpour had abated. They were drawing up at her own curb.

She flung off his hands with a gasp of anger and terror. He stared at her in a daze. Then he understood.

"Forgive me!" he pleaded.

She was furious with him; but she blamed herself more, and breathed hard with rage as she straightened her hat and her hair.

An old footman was waiting at the top of the steps with an umbrella. He ran down and opened the door.

"Your father is waiting for you, miss," he said.

Forbes stepped forth into the light drizzle and helped her out.

"Good-by," he said. And again "Good-by." But she hurried up the steps. Forbes followed her with his eyes, and saw an elderly gentleman waiting for her at the door. There was a troubled look on his face. The door closed upon him as he caught Persis in his arms.

Forbes told the chauffeur to take him to his hotel, and crept back into the deserted nest of romance. The taxicab turned slowly round. As it passed the house again, Forbes saw another car stop at the curb. From it stepped Willie Enslee.

CHAPTER XXVI

All the way back to the hotel, all the while he was selecting what clothes he should take, all the while he waited for the hour of the general rendezvous to arrive Forbes was troubled by the remembrance of Willie Enslee's appearance at Persis' home.

He had apparently come in hot pursuit. On the other hand, he might have come merely to make the final arrangements for the excursion to the country. And yet Willie must be accepted as a rival. Or, rather, it was Forbes that was the rival, since Enslee's infatuation for Persis was generally known long before Forbes reached New York.

Forbes did not approve of men who went after other men's sweethearts to take them away. But Persis had told him that she had never loved any man; ergo, she had not loved Enslee--if Enslee could be called a man.

Even so, Forbes would have preferred to make love to Mr. Enslee's sweetheart somewhere else than at Mr. Enslee's home. But how was he to fight his rival except where his rival was? How rescue the imprisoned princess but by invading the ogre's castle? Physically, Enslee was hardly more than a pocket ogre, but his wealth made him a giant. It was with the Enslee Estates that Forbes must grapple. He feared that Persis might drift into their wizard power, and he wanted to save her from that life of "luxurious misery" of which he had read so much, for that life of "blissful poverty with love" of which he had read so much.

Besides, in invading Enslee's own domain he was giving Enslee every advantage. All of the splendor of Enslee's chateau, the armor of riches and the sword of gold, would defend him, while Forbes would attack only with his empty hands and the power of love. If Goliath thought that David took an unfair advantage of him, why did not Goliath lay aside his buckler and his bludgeon and use a sling, too? Pebbles were plentiful enough.

Forbes reasoned at his scruples till they faced the other way. He argued till what he would have called vicious in other men became sincerely virtuous in his own special instance. So men and empires, republics and religions have always argued when they were about to try to take something away from somebody.

As Forbes folded his togs and wished them better and braver, he paused to laugh at what Persis had told him: Willie believed that Forbes was flirting with Mrs. Neff for herself or her daughter! What a blind little ape Enslee was! Then Forbes straightened up and flushed and called himself a double-dyed cad. He flung aside the things he was folding and resolved not to go to Enslee's home at all.

He sank into a chair and pondered. If he did not go he would be left alone in New York. Only a few days remained of his little vacation. By the time Persis came back Forbes would be at his army post, a slave of discipline and the everlasting round of the same dull duties. Persis would be angry and hurt, and she would marry Enslee; she would live in that home with Enslee; she would become part of the Enslee Estates, body and soul.

Forbes' gorge rose at the visions this brought to his mind. He ripped out an oath, and flung off the withes of such false honor. He would, he must, save Persis at any cost. If Enslee were foolish enough to think that Forbes was hunting Mrs. Neff or Alice, let him take the consequences. If Enslee had not thought so, he would not have asked Forbes to come along. To take advantage of an enemy's weaknesses was the first rule of warfare. To shoot from cover was the first business of a marksman.

This was not a contest in sharp-shooting at targets under strict rules, with a medal for a prize. This was a battle in rough country for the rescue of a beautiful girl.

Forbes granted himself a plenary indulgence, and resumed packing, smiling again at Willie's idea that he was a suitor for the post of third husband to Mrs. Neff.

He did not smile so well a few hours later, when Willie, with the kindliest of motives, assigned him to Mrs. Neff's automobile.

"You two sweethearts," Enslee said, with a matchmaker's grin, "will want to ride together, of course. Persis and I will keep out of your way as much as we can."

Forbes was sportsman enough to credit Willie with a bull's-eye. He smothered his chagrin and helped Mrs. Neff into her car, while his two suit-cases were strapped in the trunk-rack with the family baggage.

The motor-caravan was made up of three machines. Winifred ran her own roadster, nursing the steering-wheel to her bosom, while her fat elbows harried Ten Eyck's cramped form. Bob Fielding had been unable to get away from the troubled waters of Wall Street, and Winifred had adopted Ten Eyck as his understudy.

Mrs. Neff took her four-passenger touring-car. Forbes decided after several appalling bumps that it had belonged to her first husband. Alice sat with the chauffeur, dreaming of Stowe Webb, no doubt. In the rear Mrs. Neff, in her most garrulous mood, talked nonsense through a veil whose flying ends kept snapping in Forbes' face. And when they were beyond Broadway her cigarette ashes kept sifting into his eyes.

He was as polite as possible, but his thoughts were trying to pierce the dust-wake of the great six-cylinder touring-car in which Willie Enslee led the way with Persis. All Forbes could see of her was the top of her motor-hood and the veil that fled back like a signal beseeching him to make haste and save her.

Broadway in the late afternoon was thick with the home-going armies, and it seemed to stretch as long and as crowded as the Milky Way. On through Yonkers to Dobbs Ferry and Tarrytown the journey took them, passing an occasional monument of our brief history, a tablet to mark where Rochambeau met Washington and brought France to our rescue, or a memorial to the cowboys that arrested Major Andre.

In Forbes' then humor no small charms of nature or legend could have caught his mind from his jealousy. Even the epic levels of the Hudson River and the Valhalla walls of the Palisades hardly impressed him. What success they had with him was mainly due to his remembrance of seeing them first from the train that brought him to New York a few days, or a few eons, ago. He was full then of ambitions to shine as a soldier in an enlarged camp. Now his treasons and stratagems were concerned with a love-campaign whose spoils was Persis Cabot.

There was a pause by agreement for dinner at a road-house--"their last civilized meal," as Ten Eyck mournfully prophesied, "before they entered the Purgatory of Winifred's cooking at Willie's boarding-house."

When the task of fretting out a dinner was finished they got under way, pushing north again.

Eventually the pilot-car, or, rather, its guiding cloud of dust, swept off to the east, turning its back on the Hudson and plunging into the heart of Westchester County, an ocean of hills like green billows, and valleys like their troughs; peaceful castles set on high places, and pleasant villages dispersed in low; the homely roominess of farms, and now and then a huddle of crowded rookeries, where Italian peasants had set up a congenial little slums along some ugly waste.

Everything took on a wistfulness in the evening air, which the sunset was tincturing like claret poured into water. Forbes was aching to be with Persis, and he hoped that she was wistful to be with him. The moon had loitered with torch half aglow in the wings of the sky until the sun was gone, and then its lamp was raised, and it entered its own scene. In the houses lights began to pink the dark with the trite but irresistible appeal of Christmas-card transparencies.

Forbes lost all sense of direction in the winding roads, and even Mrs. Neff's chatter yielded to the brow-caressing dusk. The swift progress of the car gave no suggestion of wheels, but rather of a flying keel on a smooth stream.

Finally the searchlights of Enslee's machine turned sharp at right angles. A beautiful granite bridge leaped into view as suddenly as if the great god Wotan had builded it with a word. At the farther side of the bridge stood a lodge-keeper's home, whose architecture seemed to shift the scene instantly to the France of the first Francis.

"Here we are!" Mrs. Neff cried. "And I'm half frozen. I hope the gardener has aired the rooms and put dry sheets on the beds, or I'm in for lumbago."

"Mother, you're just death to romance!" Alice protested. She had doubtless been thinking of Stowe Webb.

The car glided across the bridge, and the moon-whipped stream reveling below it, then preceded through a granite gateway with a portcullis suspended like a social guillotine. And then the sense of privacy began. The very moon seemed to become a part of the Enslee Estates.

The motors tilted backward as the hill rose; and Mrs. Neff's rheumatic car groaned and worried a spiraling road up and up through masses of anonymous shrubs pouring forth incense, through spaces of moon-swept hillside and thickets of somber velours. Then there was a glimpse of the radiant geometry of moon-washed roofs. A turn or two more, and the wheels were swishing into the graveled court of a stately mansion.

The door under the porte-cochere was open, and in its embrasure stood a leanish man and his fattish wife, hospitable as innkeepers, the warm light streaming back of them like peering children.

Enslee's voice came out of the silence:

"That you, Prout? H'are you, Martha?" And then, with characteristic originality, "Well, we got here."

To which Prout responded with equal importance:

"So you did, sir."

He and his wife had been working like mad since Enslee telephoned, trying to turn themselves into a troop of servants, whisking shrouds from table and piano and chairs, and mopping a cloth of dust from every surface. They were as respectful now as Philemon and Baucis welcoming Jupiter, and as apologetic as if the palace were their own unworthy cot.

"I've got a pack of Indians with me, Prout," said Enslee. "I didn't want 'em, but they would come, and now we've got to make the best of it. Don't let 'em trample your flower-beds. And if anybody breaks a flower-stem we'll have him or her shot at sunrise."

Martha giggled into her fat palm.

"Oh, 'e will 'ave 'is joke; 'e will so. And isn't this Miss Cabot? Of course it is."

Forbes, seated in the rear car, heard again that assumption of Persis and Enslee as a couple.

The cars rolled up to the door in turn. The women as they got out piled their wraps on Martha till she completely disappeared, except for a pair of clutching hands, and a voice from the depths.

The chauffeurs made off down the road to the distant garage, with instructions to stay there after one of them should have come back for Winifred's roadster.

The gardener, apologizing for his awkwardness in the office of a butler, led the little troop into the great living-room, where a big fire blazed, splashing walls and floors with banners of red and yellow.

Prout explained that he had been unable to start either the hot-water furnace that heated the house or the dynamo that lighted it. And, being short-handed like, and took with a stroke of sciatiky from the onseasonable cold of the backward spring, he had found time to make fires only in the master's room, his mother's room, and one other. The caretaker, who had kept a fire going all winter for the sake of the water-pipes, had let it go out at the first warm weather and gone for a visit to his wife's mother.

"That's what we get for coming up before the place has been set to rights," Willie grumbled. "I suppose you girls will have to draw lots for my room."

"Me for the nursery," said Winifred. "It's the sunniest place in the house, and--"

"You're not going to try to sleep on one of those children's beds?" Willie gasped.

"No, nor on two of them," said Winifred; "but there's a glorious window-seat a mile wide."

Willie's self-sacrifice was of the parsimonious sort that made acceptance impossible. None of the women would deprive him of his bed. Mrs. Neff was assigned to Willie's mother's room, and Alice and Persis to those on either side. Forbes and Ten Eyck were exiled to the southwest wing.

Prout and Martha could not believe that Mr. Enslee had come without the retinue of servants that ordinarily preceded his august appearance. In fact, the adventure was as unlike Enslee as it was uncongenial to him. He could not and would not see the fun of it.

Martha and Prout offered their service, but Winifred would not let them mar the perfection of her Swiss Family Robinson. She overawed Willie and drove the old couple back to their own cottage.

When they had retired with prophecies of disaster and evil the would-be gipsies felt relieved of all the encumbrances of civilization. Winifred called it a return to nature. For the time being, however, the chief emotion was one of blissful weariness. Host and guests had kept themselves keyed up all season, like instruments in a concert, and now that the tension was released they seemed to collapse upon themselves.

In front of the great fireplace was a divan almost as big as a life-boat, and cushioned into such a cloud as the gods rested on. Winifred and Mrs. Neff and Alice were lolling on it, and Murray Ten Eyck sat on the edge. Back of it was the usual living-room table with a pile or two of books and magazines.

Persis paused for a moment, looking over the books to select something to take up to her room. She pushed them about with indifference.

"Last year's novels!" she smiled. "As thrilling as last year's birds' nests."

She turned up an illustrated society weekly of a former spring. The frontispiece held her a moment, and she shook her head.

"And last year's reputations. Here's a big portrait of Mrs. Richard Lanthorpe and her two children." She read the caption aloud: "'Prominent young matron who is just opening her Newport villa. Though a devoted mother to her charming little daughters, Mrs. Lanthorpe is also well known as a skilful whip.'"

"Good Lord!" said Winifred, reaching out her hand. "Let me see the cat. A whip, eh? You could drive a coach and four through her reputation now."

Mrs. Neff took the paper from her hand. "Her husband got the kiddies. Pretty little tikes, too."

"She sold 'em for the Newport villa," said Alice, looking over her mother's shoulder. Mrs. Neff turned on her with a glare of amazement.

"Where do you children pick up such things?"

"I'm not children," said Alice, "and the papers were full of it."

"Mrs. Dicky was up here last spring for a week-end with her husband," said Willie. "And so was the other man. What's his name? Later I heard that people had been talking a lot even then, but I never suspected anything till later."

"You never would, Willie," said Mrs. Neff. She stared at the picture. "She's really very good-looking, and she wasn't a bad sort altogether. I wonder which one of us will be gone next winter?"

"You, probably," Willie snickered, and the others laughed lazily. But Mrs. Neff bristled.

"I don't see why you have to laugh. Am I too old to misbehave?"

"Far from it, darling!" said Willie. "You're just at the dangerous age. I--er--I don't mean exactly that, either."

Mrs. Neff turned a page hastily. "Here's a picture of Deborah Reeve in her coming-out gown."

"She came out so far and so fast she went right back," said Ten Eyck, and explained to Forbes: "Hesitated between her riding-master and her mother's chauffeur, and finally ran off with the first officer of her father's yacht. She was a born democrat."

"Here's a snapshot of Mrs. Tom Corliss at the Meadowbrook Steeplechase. Look, that's 'Pup' Mowat standing with her. Good Lord, he was hanging round her a year ago, and people are just beginning to notice. Haven't they been clever? A whole year under the rose and right under the public's nose."

"Tom Corliss will be finding it out before long," said Winifred.

"Oh no," said Willie, "I've discovered that the husband is always the last to find out." And he tossed his head in careless pride at the novelty of his pronouncement.

"Isn't Willie the observing little thing?" said Winifred. The others exchanged glances of contemptuous amusement while their host looked wise.

Persis strolled round to the divan, took Murray by the ear, and hoisted him from his place.

"No, thanks, Murray," she said. "I couldn't think of taking your seat." And dropped into it.

"What are we going to do for amusement to-night?" said Willie. "Who wants to play auction?"

"Hush!" said Mrs. Neff.

"Shall we have some music, then?" A general declination. "Some singing? A dance?"

They refused even that, and he grew desperate.

"Charades?"

"Shut up!" came from the crowd.

"I don't want to be entertained," said Persis. "I'm never so miserable as when I'm being entertained."

Everybody approved. Just to be let alone was a luxury.

Willie ventured a last retort: "Anybody want a drink?"

Everybody wanted a drink. Willie went to a side-wall and groped for a button, pushed it and held it, then resumed his place before the fire. After a time he pushed it again.

"Where is everybody?" he snapped. Then the truth dawned on him again. "Good Lord, we're marooned!"

Winifred chuckled at the situation. "You'll have to be your own barkeep, Willie. Go rustle us what you can find."

"But everything would be in the cellar," he answered. "If there's anything here at all, which I doubt. And the key is in town. Couldn't trust Prout with it. Fine old gardener--give his life to save a peony--but he's death on liquor. I couldn't trust him to order in drinkables--besides, I forgot."

There were groans of horror.

"'Water, water, everywhere,'" said Ten Eyck, "'and not a drop to drink.'"

"It's bad enough having no servants to wait on us," Mrs. Neff pondered, "but who's to do our thinking for us? Which'll we die of first? thirst or starvation?"

"We'll get in a supply from the village to-morrow," said Willie, handsomely.

"To-morrow never comes," said Winifred.

For lack of artificial stimulus the momentary enthusiasm lapsed again. Nobody cared even to read. The fireplace was books enough.

Forbes and Ten Eyck stood at either end of the mantel, mere supporting statuary, their heads in shadow. Willie teetered at the center of the hearth, toasting his coat-tails.

The four women occupied the divan, sketched out brilliantly against the dark like a group portrait of Sargent's. The light worked over their images as a painter works, making and illuminating shadows, touching a strand of hair or a cheek-bone with a high light, modeling with a streak of red some lifted muscle, then brushing it off again.

The poses of the women were as various as their bodies and souls. At one corner Mrs. Neff sat erect among the cushions in a sleepy stateliness. Winifred filled the other corner like another heap of cushions, hardly moving except to flick her cigarette ashes on the floor to the acute distress of Willie's neat soul. Alice drooped with arched spine in a young girl's slump, and clung to a hand of Persis', doubtless wishing it were Stowe Webb's. Persis sat cross-legged, a smoking Sultana, her chin on the back of one hand, one elbow on one knee.

From his coign of shadow Forbes watched them. Vague reverie held them all. The very shadows seemed to breathe unevenly in restless meditation. The fire-logs alone conversed aloud in mysterious whispers, with crackling epigrams.

Forbes wondered at the group, so real and so unreal. He wondered what they were thinking of, each in her castle of self, each with her yearnings backward and forward. Winifred was wishing her lover there, perhaps, and that her slim and gracile soul were not mislodged in so determinedly fat a body; Mrs. Neff was wishing, perhaps, that her gray hair and her calendar of years did not so thwart the young, romantic girl that housed in her body, and must sleep alone, perhaps, forever. Suddenly Forbes wished that he had not smiled so ruthlessly at the thought of her expecting to be courted. Her longings were pitiful, perhaps, but not ridiculous.

It was easy to guess at Alice's thoughts. She was wishing to be not so young and curbed by authority. She was years older than Juliet had been when she went to the church with Romeo and threw him the ladder and preceded him to the tomb; yet Alice's well-matured desires were smiled away and patronized as childish.

And Persis: what were the thoughts that burned within her soul and twitched at her fingers, or tugged at her eyebrows, shook her eyelids, or tightened her lips? Was she thinking of Forbes as he was thinking of her?

Suddenly her drooping bosom expanded with a great breath, her lips parted, her eyes widened, her hand rose. She was about to speak. What would she say?

She yawned. Her hand automatically came up for politeness' sake, but lingered to pat her straining lips as if in approval. Her eyes blurred and fairly writhed. All the muscles of her divine beauty were contorted. She was not so much yawning as yawned. She was enjoying it, too, and as it ended she sighed over it as over a sweetmeat. The musing goddess had been suddenly restored to humanity with a thump.

Her comfortable sigh was echoed and her yawn outdone by Winifred, who moaned:

"I'm so damned sleepy I'll turn in here if the rest of you will get off the bed."

Then Alice yawned and wriggled, and Mrs. Neff gaped with a slight restraint and staggered to her feet.

"I'm on my way. I'd be bored to death if I weren't so excited over the wonderful sleep I'm to have. I hope I don't wake up for a week."

"I hope you don't," said Willie, thrusting out his arms in an all-embracing oscitation.

There was an epidemic of yawns, and they staggered to the console table where a long row of candles waited. Ten Eyck lighted them and distributed them, and the line moved on like a drunken torchlight procession, helped and hindered one another up, and sang out faint "Good nights" as they dispersed in the upper hall.

Doors were closed, only to be flung open with wails of distress. Martha and Prout had lugged all the trunks and suit-cases and handbags to the wrong rooms.

The three men were compelled to act as porters. Willie was furious and full of "I told you so's"; but Ten Eyck impersonated the transfer-men he had met, and had a different dialect for every room.

Forbes went timidly into the exquisite apartment where Persis was ensconced. It was a shrine to him, and he averted his eyes from the carved and lace-adorned altar of her bed.

But Ten Eyck turned back to pound on the door and put in his palm, whining:

"Don't forget the poor baggage-smasher, lady."

Persis opened the door a trifle and gave him a twenty-five-cent piece. She held out another for Forbes, and he took it with a foolish rapture.

Ten Eyck bit his coin and touched his hat, with a husky murmur of:

"'Ch obliged, mum! 'Ch obliged!"

Forbes kept his for a lucky piece--the first keepsake he had had from her.

CHAPTER XXVII

If Persis and the others were rejoicing in their emancipation from formalities too familiar, Forbes was glad that he had escaped them for the reverse reason. Hospitality had been dispensed on a lavish scale at his own home in the South before his father's death, but the servants there were negroes, slaves, or descendants of slaves, and he knew just the right mixture of affection and tyranny to administer to them. But where servile white foreigners, with their curious humilities and pomposities, bowed heads and elevated eyebrows, he had not learned just how much to demand and how much to concede.

He was glad that there was no valet to unpack his things, for he was afraid that his secret wardrobe might not pass such experienced inspection. He laid out his own pajamas, brushes, and clean things against the morning.

Ten Eyck, who shared the same bathroom with Forbes, came in to borrow a match for his pipe, noted Forbes' industry, and quoted one of the few classics that he still read--Rabelais: "Panurge had it right when he said, 'I am never so well served as when I am my own valet.'"

"Is this your first experience as your own man?" said Forbes.

"I should say not!" Ten Eyck snorted, with a cloud of smoke. "I've roughed it as rough as any rough-neck going, Forbesy."

Forbes, from the experience of a campaigner, a wilderness hiker, lifted an eyebrow of patronizing incredulity. Ten Eyck retorted:

"You needn't grin. I don't mean any of this roughing _de luxe_. I had the real thing. I quarreled with the governor once. I was hitting it up pretty hard, and he gave me a call. I told him I didn't need his dirty money; I could earn my own, and I swore I'd never ask him for a cent. I lit out for the Wild and Woolly. What I took with me went fast. I couldn't get a job I'd look at; and by the time I was ready to look at any job I could get, nobody would look at me. Finally they took me on as unskilled labor in the construction camp of a railroad. I slept in cattle-cars, or on the ground, or in wooden bunks with Swedes and Finns, and Huns and coons, and other swine in the adjoining styes. I fought 'em, too, when I had to. Later I waited on the table in a cheap hashery.

"God knows where I'd have ended if my dear old dad hadn't got so homesick he put the Pinkertons on my trail. And when he found me he apologized and begged me to come back. And I very graciously accepted. I had had all the poverty I needed for a lifetime. Hereafter, Forbesy, I'm for the nap on the velvet and the plush on the peach. I tell you, Forbesy, we millionaires may have our little troubles, but we escape the worst of 'em, eh John D.?"

"I wish you'd cut out that talk about my being a millionaire," Forbes broke in, impatiently.

"Millionaire is a newspaper term," Ten Eyck explained, "for anybody who is worth more than a few thousand dollars."

"But I'm not worth anything and never shall be," Forbes confessed. "I'm not rich at all. I've nothing but a few hundred dollars and my picayune salary."

Ten Eyck took the great denial without emotion. "Then I congratulate you on being one of the poor but honest, instead of the criminal rich."

"I'm poor, but I'm not honest," Forbes said; "I'm obtaining courtesy under false pretenses."

"Rot!" said Ten Eyck. "Money couldn't buy what you're getting, and the lack of it couldn't lose what you've gained. They like you. You belong. That's all there is to it."

"I wonder."

"Of course that's all. What does anybody here care how much you've got or haven't got, so long as you're congenial and aren't proposing to marry anybody."

Forbes lifted his head with a quick, startled movement that did not escape Ten Eyck, who pretended to misunderstand.

"Of course, if you really are after Mrs. Neff or the little Neffkin, there might be a call for a show-down of bankbooks."

"I'd be just as much obliged if you people would drop that joke about my courting Mrs. Neff," Forbes grumbled. Ten Eyck was patient; his voice fell to a deep and earnest tone:

"What I say goes along the line, Forbesy. You were good to me when I was sick in Manila. Don't you go and get sick here. You told me what I mustn't eat and drink and wear out there, and I want to warn you against the dangers of this place. There's a tropics right here, too, with deadly miasmas and mosquitoes that buzz strange things and sting you full of delirious fevers. Don't fall in love too far, Forbesy. I like you mighty well and--naming no names--I like her mighty well, but don't get false notions in your head, and don't put false notions in hers."

"About my money, you mean?"

"Umm-humm."

"You think that money would make a difference to her?"

"Hah!" Ten Eyck snorted. "Would water make any difference to a fish?"

"But if she loved--"

"My boy, you can keep a mighty sweet canary in a mighty little cage, and it will sing away like mad and be very fond of you; but you can't keep a bird of paradise there--or a sea-gull--can you?"

"I reckon not," said Forbes.

"It isn't the fault of the bird of paradise, either, is it?"

Forbes shook his head and sighed: "It's the fault of the man that puts it in the cage."

"Well, maybe he means well. He may be crazy about the bird, just crazy to keep it near him, but--he can't. That's all, he can't. It'll beat itself to death or break loose."

"Unless he lets it go," said Forbes.

"That's it! You understand me, don't you, old man?"

"I get you, Steve."

"And you won't feel too hard about it, will you? There's a lot of other birds besides the big ones. There's nothing cozier than a little canary--is there?"

"I reckon not," said Forbes, dismally.

"And there's a lot of them to be had. And some of them are very pretty."

They sat and smoked a long while. Then Ten Eyck yawned, and gripped Forbes' shoulder hard and went out, pausing to look at him sadly. For his good night he dropped into a cockney quotation: "'Wot I meanter s'y, Pip, is: allus the best o' friends?'"

He ended with a querying inflection, and Forbes echoed it with a period:

"Allus the best o' friends."

He sat smoking his cigar till it was gone. Then he made ready for bed, blew out the candle, raised the curtain, and paused to stare blankly into the dark mass of a green hill or a great cloud, whichever it was, piled up against a sky sprinkled over with a powder of little stars. Among them was one planet whose name he did not know. As he watched, it moved with imperceptible stealth out of his sight behind the hill.

He gave up Persis as completely as he gave up the planet. A few days ago he did not know her name. A few days more and she would have slipped from his sky.

He was so tired, so full of the need of sleep, that despair was only another kind of night, black but blessed, without ecstasy, but void of torment.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The only dream that Forbes knew that night--or remembered, at least--was a dream of his latest garrison, and the same bugle humming like the single nagging morning fly that frets a sleeper awake. It was warily intoning its old "I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up in the morning."

He leaped from his bed, and was astonished to find himself standing in a strange room with an open window facing an unknown landscape. He screwed his fists into his eyes boyishly before he realized his whereabouts.

At night he had seen his room in vast shadows clouded about a meek candle. The window had shown him only a blur of gloom against a sky of star-dust.

Now he found himself in a sumptuously furnished chamber, whose window framed a scene of royally ordered beauty--a great lawn as level and almost as spacious as a parade-ground, and bordered with a marble balustrade that seemed to run on forever regardless of expense. Marble statues and bronzes and fountains were here and there. And up a noble hill a stairway, as beautiful as a sea-gull's wings, soared to a parked space where a little marble temple sheltered an image which he judged to be Cupid's.

Beyond the big hill reared aloft a primeval forest which the sunrise wind was shaking. The tips of the topmost trees were crimsoned, as if roses had bloomed at last on pines. The climbing sun had just reached them, its rays climbing down the hill as itself climbed the east.

Forbes crept back to bed, but only to reproach himself with sloth. He could not afford to miss a sunrise such as this would be. There would be occasions enough for sleep; but he was going to leave the Enslee Eden this very day forever. The flaming sword of gold would keep him from re-entering the Paradise he had got into as a boy crawls under a circus tent.

He flung himself from the alien linen and mahogany, and, hastening into the bathroom, stepped into the tub, drew the circular curtain around him quietly not to waken his neighbor, Ten Eyck, and turned the little wheels marked "shower" and "needle" and "cold," and received the responding rains. There was no question that they were cold.

But the reaction was a jubilee in every artery, and he dressed with eagerness for whatever the day might bring. He opened his door softly and went down the twilight of the stairway like an escaping thief. The servantless tenants had neglected to bolt and chain the outside door. He swung it back and stepped out.

He glanced with admiring awe at the dew-pebbled lawn, the colonnades, and the cloisters, but hastened to the eastern side to watch the day breaking over the sky-lines of Westchester. The scene was Alpine with the Alps removed, and the green herds of foothills left. Across a marble-walled pool stood a family of birches, and held the red sun prisoner in a web of green leaves and white boughs. The light that shot through them played upon shrubs and trees and walks arranged according to the highest canons of the landscaping art, taking nature's scenario and dramatizing it.

One imperial group of lilac-trees seemed to hold torches up for the sun to kindle. They blazed with purple flame.

Forbes thought: "Those are the lilacs Enslee loves and owns. This is Enslee's heaven. That is Enslee's sun. And she is Enslee's, too." Then, with all the bravery and optimism the dawn could lavish, he felt: "Well, she belongs here; I don't. She needs these things. I can't get 'em for her. So it's good-by, Persis, and no harm done."

He was sure that Enslee would never know of the kiss he had stolen from Enslee's property. And he was sure that Enslee would never miss a certain lilac cluster whose grace and color especially caught Forbes' fancy. He plucked it. Just as it snapped in his hand and flung a fragrant dew upon his face he heard another slight sound above. He glanced up.

The vision he saw smote him with beauty like a thunderbolt, and knocked him Saul-wise backward off the high horse of jaunty resolution into a new religion.

At an upper window, a few paces from where Forbes stood, Persis leaned out like another blessed damosel looking downward at the sun. It kindled her eyes as it kindled the lilacs, and she frowned a little against it. She did not see Forbes as her drowsy gaze swept the hills. She was not there, however, to adore the dawn. It had troubled her sleep, and she wanted to shut it out. Her hands were tugging drowsily at one of the blinds, but it was held by a catch in the wall. She must lean far out to release it.

The very homeliness of her motive and the act made her the more appealing to Forbes. A creamy nightcap of lace and bow-knots was all askew on her tousled hair, and a long loop of it slid down into her bosom as she bent far forward. She had not paused even to throw on a shawl, and her nightgown was so vaporous a drapery that it hardly mattered where it clung or lapsed.

Forbes blushed for her, but gazed entranced while she fumbled at the lock till it yielded. Then she reached out for the other shutter and stared forth into the sun, stared between her white arms, outstretched like the wings of an angel at a window in the sky.

Now Forbes knew that he loved her irretrievably. He would storm the clouds to win her. He could afford a home with a pair of shutters, and she could close them against the sun and be as snug as a cuckoo in a clock.

After all, she was no bird of paradise, no sea-gull. She was just a fascinating sleepy-head pouting at the morning for interfering with her dreams.

He was so resolved upon winning her that he counted her already his, and, with a gesture like throwing up his cap, flung the lilacs he held straight at her. They missed her, but they caught her eye, and she followed them down to where he darted to catch them for another cast.

When he looked up again the blinds were shut. He was alone in the world, his lilacs and his heart barred out and rejected. She had retreated to Enslee's stronghold and shuttered herself in.

Forbes turned away to exile in a world of gloom. He heard a little sound above, and whirled quickly. The shutters were opening again. He saw her eyes. She was frowning fiercely; but that was because of the sharp sun, for her lips were smiling and she was whispering something.

He hurried to the spot beneath her window. He saw that her hair had been stuffed back into her nightcap. She was muffled to the ears in a heavy bathrobe, so shapeless and opaque that its big sleeves hid her very hands. But she smiled through like an Eskimo angel. And she was whispering in Eskimese.

He could not understand her, and she could not hear his whisper. They were afraid to waken the house with louder talk. So he beckoned to her to come down. She shook her head. He insisted with ardent gesticulation at the beauty of the scene. She shook her head so violently that her cap fell off. She clutched at it, and her hair fell all about her. He caught the cap as it drifted down like a tired butterfly. She brushed her hair back and pleaded for the cap. He shook his head and tossed her the lilacs. She refused to take them, and put out her hands for the cap. He beckoned her again to come down, and she frowned ferociously. Then, at length, she smiled and nodded and turned away.

He waited, afraid to walk because the gravel crunched alarmingly. He could see the gardener's cottage down the hill, and he was glad that no one was stirring there; not a thread of smoke spun from the chimney.

After he had waited for a tiny eternity he heard her snap her fingers, and looked up to find her fully dressed, all kempt and shiny-faced and precise. She held out beseeching palms for her cap, but he pocketed it and commanded her to descend. She left the window with a look of angry amusement, and he knew that she was yielding to his orders.

It was his first command, and she had obeyed it.

CHAPTER XXIX

For convincing the human heart there is no argument like a parable or analogy, and there is no more worthless proof to the mind. So long as Persis could be called a bird of paradise, too rich for a canary cage, or a sea-gull, too wild, or a planet unattainable, Forbes admitted that his hopes of winning her and keeping her were foolish. He gave her up. So much for the metaphors. But when he saw her at the window in the daylight, and saw, not a sea-gull nor a planet, but just a pretty, drowsy girl with rumpled hair, he tossed aside all the arguments by parable and analogy, as candle-ends unfit for sunshine. She was only a woman, and he was all of a man, and this was America, and, by George Washington, he would have her to wife!

He would begin the day right with a wholesome morning smack. He tiptoed along the grass around to the door, and met her in the living-room. And as soon as he met her he set his arms about her. But she was almost sullen as she pushed him away.

"I won't have it!" she said, with a harshness that shocked him. "It's too early in the morning. And I don't like it. And I don't want gossip set going. And you must be doubly circumspect."

He fell back, baffled, and dropped his eyes in discontent. He saw that her little high boots were sprawling open. He smiled at the homely touch again.

"If you're so circumspect," he said, "you'd better button your shoes."

"I forgot to bring up a button-hook," she laughed, "and when I bent over with a hairpin I got so sleepy that I nearly fell back in bed."

"Permit me," he urged.

"No, thank you!"

"You can't walk with 'em falling off like that," he insisted. "A hairpin, please."

She took one from her hair, and he dropped to one knee. He could not seem to find the right position to work from. After hunching about from position to position he said:

"I reckon your feet are put on the wrong way."

"Thanks."

"For being buttoned, I mean."

"My maid buttons them every morning."

"Tell me how on earth she gets at your foot?"

"No, thanks. I'll button them myself."

"Oh no, you won't. How do the shoe clerks manage it?"

She set her foot on the rung of a chair, and he went at his task with all awkwardness. Her feet were small, yet the shoes were as tight as could be, and she winced as the buttons ground or bit. But she choked back the little cries of pain that rose to her lips.

"Get away," she said; "you're killing me."

But he would not surrender the privilege. He took her foot on his knee and wrought with all care. The hairpin was soon a twisted wreck, and he must have another, and another.

When the lowest buttons were done she checked him. "That's enough! I'd rather my shoes fell off than my hair. And that reminds me: where is my cap?"

"In my pocket next my heart."

"Give it to me, please."

"I'm going to keep it."

"By what right?"

"Conquest and possession."

"What if somebody should see you with it?"

"Nobody shall."

"Somebody always does. Nobody would believe it fell out of a window!"

"It fell straight into my heart."

She gave him up with a shrug. "Good Lord, you men! I don't suppose there's any coffee? I'm so used to having it in bed before I get up that I'm faint."

"I could make you some, if I knew where the coffee was, and the coffee-pot, and if there were any fire."

"Let's look into the kitchen."

She knew the way, and led him into a great food-studio--a place to delight a chef with its equipment and an artist with its coppers.

But the range was as cold as its white-glazed chimney. They cast about for fuel, and found that Prout had fetched kindling and coal the afternoon before.

Forbes soon had a fire snapping under one lid, and Persis hunted through cupboards and closets till she discovered a coffee-pot, evidently belonging to the servants' dining-room, and a canister half full of coffee.

"I haven't the faintest idea how much of that goes in, have you?" she said, helplessly. He nodded and made the measurements deftly.

"Where did you learn so much?" she asked, with a primeval woman's first wonder at a cave-man's first blaze and first cookery.

"A soldier ought to be able to build a fire and make a cup of coffee, oughtn't he?"

"Oh," she shrugged, "I always forget that you're a soldier. I've never seen you in uniform. You never tell me anything about yourself. I always think of you as just one of us loafers."

"It's mighty pleasant to be building a fire for you--for just us," he maundered.

"It is fine, isn't it?" she chuckled, with glistening eyes. "Rather reversing the usual, though, for idiotic woman to stand by while strong man boils the coffee--or are you baking it? I might be getting the dishes."

"I'd be willing to do this every morning--for you--for us," he ventured, his heart thumping at its own dauntlessness.

She evaded the implied proposal as she ransacked a cabinet. "I fancy it would rather lose its charm in time. As a regular thing, I like to see breakfast brought up on a tray by a nice-looking maid."

She brought out a perilous, double arm-load of cups and saucers, and a sugar-bowl.

"This is the service china, I suppose. You could drive nails with it."

He stared at her with idolatry. She was so variously beautiful; at the theater, the opera, the luncheon, here in a country kitchen--everywhere somebody else, and everybody of her beautiful. His hands went out to seize her again, but she tumbled the crockery crackingly on the table and waved a cup at him. "Stand back, or I'll brain you with this. There's no cream. I suppose even the cows aren't up yet. And I can't find any butter--or any bread--just these tinned biscuits."

They sat at the kitchen table. The coffee was not good, really; but she found it amusing, and he thought it was ambrosia--Mars and Venus at breakfast in an Olympian dining-room. He told her something of the sort, and implied once more that he longed to make the arrangement permanent.

"I wish you'd quit proposing before breakfast," she said. "I feel very material in the morning, anyway, and I'm having a bully time. I'm feeling far too sensible to listen to any nonsense about the simple life. I can enjoy a bit of rough road as well as anybody. I can turn in and work or do without, or dress in rags--anything for a picnic--for a while. But as a regular thing--ugh! To get breakfast once in somebody's else kitchen at an ungodly hour with a captivating stranger--glorious! But to get up every morning--every every morning, rain or shine, cold or hot, sleepy or sick or blue--no, thank you!"

"You think the rich are happier than the poor?"

"Of course they are. That's why everybody wants to be rich."

"But the rich aren't contented."

"Oh, contented! Nobody's contented except the blind, and hopeless invalids. Contentment is a question of being a sport. There's a lot of good losers that will grin if they have to walk home in the rain from the races, and there are a lot of what they call 'bum sports' that throw their winnings on the ground because the odds weren't longer. But don't tell me that there's any special joy in being poor. If I had to be poor, I suppose I'd put the best face I could on it. That happens to be my nature. It's the good sports making the best of poverty that cause so much talk; but all the poor and middlers that I've met have hated it and envied the rich.

"You see, the rich can buy everything the poor have, but the poor can buy hardly anything the rich have. Sometimes my father goes out in the field on his farm and tosses hay, or beds down the horses, or chops dead trees. Sometimes he likes to have just a bowl of milk and some crackers for his supper. But when he wants something else he can have it--at least, he always has been able to--up to now."

A little shiver agitated her like a flaw of wind running along a calm lake.

"It's cold and damp in here," she said. "Let's get out in the sunshine and quit talking poverty. We're neither of us poor--yet."

She rose and moved out to the kitchen porch, and, round the house, up a sweep of stairs to the main terrace.

"Look," she cried, "isn't it wonderful? Isn't it worth while? It costs thousands of dollars just to make that lawn smooth, and thousands more for the marble balustrades, and the fountains are a fortune, and the sunken garden--the poor can't have a glimpse of it! They don't know it exists. Even Mr. Enslee's cook hardly knows it's here; he doesn't permit any of the servants except the house staff to come out front. Isn't it a shame? But don't you love it? Isn't it heavenly under your feet? My eyes fly over it like birds. It's splendid to have tea out here in the summer, and wear long sweeping gowns and picture-hats, and have delicious things brought to you on the finest of china. Oh, I never was meant for a poor man's daughter. Even if I feed the chickens or pat the cattle, I like to do it as Marie Antoinette did at the Petit Trianon just for a contrast--an _hors d'oeuvre_."

Forbes thought of the bird of paradise and the sea-gull again, and he doubted the value of his cage again. They sauntered across the lawn and up the stairs. He took her arm to help her, but she shook her head.

"Please! Now, tell me all about yourself."

"There's nothing to tell."

"There must be. I've a right to hear it. Think of it, you've kissed me once, and I didn't fight. I let you. Good Lord, I nearly kissed you!" His arms rushed toward her; but she frowned. "Don't make me go back. I was saying, you've kissed me, and we've had a terrible escapade in a strange kitchen, and I hardly know your first name. So you're a soldier." He nodded. "West Point?" He nodded. "Did you ever get in a real fight?" He nodded. "Where?"

"Cuba. Philippines."

"You were in the Spanish War? Really! I didn't know you were so old."

"I wasn't so old then. I'm very ancient now."

She mused aloud: "They say a husband should be ten years older than his wife."

The implication enraptured him. It showed that she was at least toying with the thought. "Then there's no hope for me. I'm far too old for you."

"But I'm very ancient," she said. "I ought to have been married years ago."

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long. There's no need for further delay."

"Are you proposing again? The man's a regular phonograph with only one old broken record! So you've been in battles and battles. Were you afraid?"

"Afterward. I suppose it's because I'm slow and stupid: but I don't usually get scared till the trouble's over. Then I'm sick as a dog and as frightened as a girl."

"That's something like me. Only I get terribly scared of little things that don't count. A mouse or a spider or anything crawly--ugh! is that a caterpillar?"

She shrank back against him in a palsy of repugnance at about an inch of moving fuzz on a rhododendron. He held her with one hand, and with the other broke off the twig and cast the vermin into space. She put his arm away, and said:

"You are brave!"

"St. George and the dragon," he smiled.

"In those battles of yours," she resumed, "were you ever by any chance wounded or killed or anything?"

"I was never killed entirely," he answered, "but I stopped a few bits of lead."

She shuddered and caught his arm with a rush of sympathy none the less fierce for being belated.

"Wounded! You were wounded?"

He put his hand on hers where it lay on his sleeve. "Yes, you blessed thing. Does it make any difference to you?"

She drew her hand away gently. "I hate to think of--of anybody getting hurt. Did it hurt--to be wounded?"

"Afterward. I didn't notice it much at the time--except when I was shot in the mouth."

"Good Lord, how?"

"I was yelling something to my sergeant, and a bullet went right in and out here." He put his finger on his cheek.

"Great heavens! I thought it was a dimple. I rather liked it."

"Then I'm glad I got it."

She writhed with pain for his sake.

"Did it hurt--hideously?"

"Not half as much as the two pellets I got in my side. They probed for them till I made them stop, partly because I wasn't enjoying it and partly because probing kills more than cartridges."

"How did they get them out, then?"

"They didn't."

She stared at him wild-eyed.

"You don't mean to say that you're standing there with a couple of bullets in you? Why, you're positively uncanny."

"I'm sorry, if it disturbs you."

"Oh, please! You're wonderful. But aren't you afraid they'll kill you--turn green or something?"

"They're neatly surrounded by now with aseptic sacs, the surgeon tells me. I'd forgotten all about them till you reminded me."

"And they never pain you?"

"The only wound I'm suffering now is from the arrow of this sharp-shooter."

They were standing in the little temple, between them a little marble rascal with a bow and arrow. Persis put her hand to her heart. He mistook the gesture and asked, with sudden zest:

"He didn't hit you, too, did he?"

"I was thinking of you," she murmured, staring at him with wet eyes. "Wounded and bleeding, your flesh all torn, and the surgeons gouging in the wounds. Oh!"

She toppled backward and sank on a marble bench before he could help her. He stared at her in bewildered unbelief. He understood that she was nearly aswoon because he had suffered once.

"Why, God bless your wonderful sweet soul!" he gasped, and would have knelt and clasped his arms around her. But even in the swimming of her senses her prudence was on guard, and his indiscretion restored her to herself like a dash of water.

"I beg you to be careful," she said. "You are perfectly visible from the house."

"But nobody's awake. The blinds are closed."

"There are always eyes behind blinds."

"Then let them see me tell you how much I--"

"Not here!" she gasped. "Don't tell me that here."

"Why not?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Enslee built this little temple to this little Cupid to propose to me in."

"And did he?" Forbes asked, in a voice that rattled. "Did he propose to you?"

"Regularly."

CHAPTER XXX

She studied Forbes closely and laughed aloud at the almost nausea he plainly felt.

"I thought that would shock the nonsense out of you," she triumphed. "Now let's be sensible while the sun shines, and get better acquainted. Tell me more about you, and I'll tell you some awful things about me."

She sauntered on in an arch and riant humor. He resented it, and yet he followed her, hating this mood of hers, yet finding her more precious as he found her more difficult. If he had known women better he would have guessed, or "reckoned," that her very effort to make herself difficult was a proof that she was not really so difficult as she would have him believe. The one who takes such joy in being pursued is not entirely unwilling to be caught.

She quizzed him about his life, his home, his earlier loves. She demanded descriptions of every sweetheart he had cherished, from the first chub of infancy to the girl he left behind in Manila; and she said she hated them all impartially.

She told him of her life: endowed with every material comfort, yet with a vague unhappiness for something or somebody--"perhaps it was for you," she added, but spoke teasingly. She had had nurses and governesses and maids from her first day on earth. She had been to school in France, and traveled round the world; she had been presented at the courts of England and Italy, Germany and Russia; had visited at castles and chateaux. Her sister was in England. She had married a title and was unhappy; but for the matter of that, so were the wives of most of the stanch Americans she knew, rich and poor.

Persis had had flirtations of cosmopolitan variety. Her ambition was to go on skimming the cream off of life. She had given up the hope of ever loving, at least with abandonment. There was too much else in the world. She had been so thoroughly and incessantly schooled in self-control that she doubted if even her heart could forget the rules of conduct. She did not want love to make the fool of her it had made of so many of her friends, and of the people she read about in newspapers and books.

She never took much enjoyment in adventures, anyway, she said, because her imagination was always busy with the appearance of her acts. She found herself considering: "How will this look? What gossip will that start?" She hated herself for the cold, calculating instinct; but she could not rid herself of it.

"This very minute," she admitted, "my fun is half spoiled by thinking of what those people down there in the house will say if they learn that I've been up here with you? Nothing could be more harmless than a stroll before breakfast in a highly illuminated forest, but they'd talk and--well, I'd rather they wouldn't."

She led the protesting Forbes homeward again, down the long flight of steps. The most he could exact was the promise of another walk together--sometime when it could be arranged without attracting attention or detracting from the duties toward the host and his other guests.

As they started across the lawn, whose dew the risen sun had pretty well imbibed, they met the gardener. Prout was yawning, and when he took off his hat he looked sleepy enough to fall over into it.

"You folks been up all night?" he asked, with a drowsy surliness.

Persis shook her head and smiled. "It's you that have overslept."

He changed the subject abruptly. "I just been buildin' a fire for Miss Mather."

"Good Lord, is she awake?" Persis gasped.

"Well," said Prout, "as to that, she's not wot you'd exackly call awake, but she's up an' doin' in the kitchin."

While the gardener shuffled away to play valet to his flowers, Persis stood irresolute.

"I hope Winifred hasn't seen us," she said. "The kitchen and the nursery are both to the east. We'll take a chance. You go on into the kitchen and help her, and I'll telephone down from my room. _Au 'voir!_"

She opened the outer door ever so slightly and oozed through the slit as narrowly as Bernhardt used to when she had murdered Scarpia. Forbes dawdled a few moments, then went into the kitchen.

He found Winifred playing the part of cook with a vengeance. Her hair was disheveled, her sleeves rolled back, and her face smudged from her smudgy fingers. She had assumed a cook's prerogative of wrath. The moment she saw Forbes she began with a savage, "Oh, it's you! And who's been littering up my clean kitchen?"

"I took the liberty of making myself a little coffee," said Forbes.

"There are two cups."

"I made two cups," said Forbes; and she was too busy to notice the evasion.

"Then, since you've had your breakfast," she snapped, "you can help me get something for the rest. You'd better put this on."

Like another Omphale, she fastened a womanish apron on Hercules, and set him at uncongenial tasks, retrieving butter, milk, salt, and eggs.

After a time there was a buzz, and a little hopper fell in a box on the wall. Winifred went to the house telephone and called out:

"Well! H'lo, Perse, what you doing awake so early? Insomnia? No, I will not send your breakfast up on a tray! You can come down and get it. My little snojer man is helping me."

She hung up the ear-piece and turned to Forbes with her broad smile.

"A cook has no chance to entertain her gempman friends. The minute I get a policeman in here somebody rings."

She kept him wretchedly ill at ease by more of the same banter, which he hardly knew how to take. And she seized his arm with a gesture of culinary coquetry just as Persis sauntered in. Forbes was horrified to note a look of anger in Persis' eyes. He should have been flattered. She greeted Winifred, and also Forbes, with a discreet "Good morning!"

"Good get-busy!" Winifred growled.

"What can I do?" said Persis, helplessly.

"For one thing, you can rout the other loafers out of bed."

"How?"

"Use the telephone. Tell 'em the house is on fire."

While Forbes fetched and carried at Winifred's beck and call, Persis rang up the various rooms and conveyed Winifred's orders. But her gentle voice carried no conviction, and Winifred took her place at the instrument and howled in her best cook lingo:

"Get up and come down, or I'll quit you cold and lave you to starve. It's scrambled eggs and bacon the marnin', and no goods exchanged."

She went back to the range, only to be called to the telephone again. Mrs. Neff was imploring a brief respite. Water boiling over and scuttering in hot hailstones from the stove brought Winifred back with a screech. She upbraided Persis for a useless scullery maid and threatened Forbes with a skillet. She was enjoying herself tremendously. She ordered Persis to set the table in the breakfast-room, but refused Forbes permission to help her.

But he slipped away a little later, when she went to rummage the ice-room. He found Persis drifting about in a lake of golden sunshine, distributing delicate chinas and looking like a moving figurine of bisque. There was a pleasant clink of silver as she laid the knives and forks and spoons, and he thought how wonderful she would be in such a little home as he could offer her, how she would grace the quarters at an army post. She smiled on him, and her smile was sunshine. He went at her once more with that rush of desire. She put up her hand to fend him off, and he knocked a cup out of it.

They knelt together to pick up the pieces. He began:

"While I'm down here on my knees, I ask you again--" She put her hand to her lips in warning, but he seized the hand. She snatched it away and rose to her feet just as Willie Enslee came in.

Forbes, still on his knees, set busily to work picking up the scattered petals of the china. He felt guilty as a caught burglar, but the unsuspecting Willie paused on the threshold to yawn. Willie was always yawning on the threshold of discovery.

"'Morning! 'Morning!" was his almost swallowed greeting.

"We just broke one of your cups," said Persis, "while we were setting the table."

"So long as you don't break the table, I suppose I'm to be congratulated. Had a fearful time this morning without my man. Had to fill my own tub, put own buttons in, shave self--cut a map of Russia on face. Couldn't get tie tied to save life. Persis, you'll have to help your little Willie with his bib."

So Persis knotted his scarf for him while Forbes grew restive at the sight. Willie was proprietary in his tone, and he clung drowsily to Persis' arm while her hands hovered about his throat. But when the task was done he toddled through the swinging-door to see what wreck had been made of the kitchen.

"You see!" said Persis, reproachfully, putting down the silver very slowly. "You nearly got caught."

"But what of it?" Forbes broke out. "I love you. I'm not ashamed of my love or of you. I want you to be my wife."

The boyish manly sincerity of this convinced her and filled her eyes with a morning haze.

"You do? Really?" She moved on to the next place. He followed her.

"Of course I do. Will you?"

She continued slowly circling the table, with side trips to the sideboard, and he followed with a great ado of helping her. The two were making a slower job of it than either would have required alone.

"It's rather fun being proposed to while one is setting the table," Persis murmured. "We're getting terribly domestic already."

"You'd be so beautiful domesticated," Forbes urged.

"But so somebody else thinks--and we're on his grounds." And since it was characteristic of Persis to express a virtue in a sporting term, she shook her head. "We're not playing strictly according to Hoyle. It's not quite cricket."

"I know it," said Forbes. "And I--I dare you to come outside--off the place."

"All right. I will, the first chance I get."

"The first chance you get to what?" said Mrs. Neff, who appeared as suddenly as Cinderella's witch. And she looked a trifle witchy this morning without the rejuvenating spells of her maid. "I couldn't help overhearing, but my eyes aren't open. I didn't see anything."

Persis surprised Forbes and Mrs. Neff by her frankness.

"I was saying I would take a long walk with Mr. Forbes the first chance I get."

"Good work!" said Mrs. Neff, quite earnestly. "I was telling him what a love of a couple you two would make."

Persis turned on her in amazement. "You were telling Mr. Forbes that?"

"Yes, I was. When a woman gets as old as I feel of mornings, she has the right to be a matchmaker. You two go on and work out your own salvation and I'll keep Willie off the scent. If I could prevent Alice from marrying Stowe Webb, and you from marrying Willie, I'd retire on my laurels. I dote on conspiracies. That's where Alice gets her knack for plots."

This to her daughter, who sauntered in just in time to receive the facer and gasp:

"Why, mother, what do you mean?"

"Oh, I can smell a mouse even if I can't trap it right away. I know you telephone him and write him and all that. I used to when I was your age. Only, I fooled my mother and married the man I wanted to. If I'd married the one she wanted me to, I'd be one of the richest women on earth instead of a starving twice-widow with a pack of children to drive to market."

"Isn't she the most appalling mother a poor child ever had?" Alice gasped. "Sometimes I think I ought to take her over my knee and spank her."

Forbes and Persis paid little heed to the usual duel of these two women. They were thinking of the complexity of outside interference in their own program of quiet communion.

Persis' mind was full of reproof for Mrs. Neff; but she was silenced by the presence of Alice, and Ten Eyck's appearance, and the irruption of Winifred with a great tray of egg-gold and bacon-bronze.

It was an informal gathering at that breakfast-table. Important articles of toilet had been forgotten, and there were no maids or men to repair the omissions. But too great correctness would have been an anachronism at Winifred's table. Everybody had gone to bed early and tired, and had slept longer and better than usual. Doing without was a new game to these people, and they made a picnic-ground of the breakfast-room.

Even Willie tried to romp with his guests, but he lacked the genius for hilarity, and his jokes consisted principally of repeating exactly what somebody else had just said, then laughing as hard as he could.

He told Persis that he wanted to show her the farm, and the new fountain in the sunken gardens, and he told her in such a way that the others felt themselves cordially invited not to go along. But they were used to tactlessness from Willie, and they merely winked mutually.

Willie seemed to feel the winks in the air, and to realize that he had not done exactly the perfect thing, so he reverted to his favorite witticism: "You take Mrs. Neff, Mr. Forbes" (he was getting the name right at times now). "You take Mrs. Neff and go where you please. You turtle-doves will find several arbors and summer-houses and lovers' lanes scattered around the place. I'll tell the gardener and his men to keep out of the way. Come along, Persis."

Forbes watched them off with a look of jealousy that did not escape Mrs. Neff. She put a kindly hand on his arm.

"After all, he owns the place; he's the host--a poor thing, but our host. She'd rather be with you, and you'd rather be with her; but you'll have to wait. You'll probably get plenty of each other soon enough."

Winifred detailed Alice and Ten Eyck to wash the breakfast dishes. The turn of the others would come later. Persis and Mrs. Neff were to make the beds.

"Winifred was born to be a poor man's wife," said Mrs. Neff, as she led Forbes across the lawn. "She dotes on cooking and pot-walloping and mending, and she had to be born with a mint of money, and the only man that ever cared for her is Bob Fielding, who will hardly let her lift her teacup to her lips, for fear she'll overwork herself.

"Now Persis is as dainty as a cat, and as hard to boss. And she has a fatal attraction for men who can't afford to keep her. Willie's the only suitor she ever had that has more money than she could spend. And I think she likes him less than anything on earth except work."

Forbes was tempted to confess to Mrs. Neff what he had divulged to Ten Eyck, but he postponed the miserable business. It was an uncongenial company for proclaiming one's poverty.

The surroundings were as tempting as Naboth's vineyard was to David. He understood why men grew unscrupulous in the hunt for great wealth.

Mrs. Neff led Forbes about the place, which she knew well. But the beauties were only torments to him. Below the climbing marble stairway to the temple there was a broken stairway winding down the hill. It meandered like the dry bed of a stream, between brick walls, bordered with flowers, with now and then a resting-place, or some quaint niche where a little statue smiled or a fountain trilled and tinkled.

At two stages of the descent there were circular levels with ornate shelters and aristocratic plants. From the lowest shelf there was only a path dropping down the long hill to a distant wall; beyond this a ragged woods like a mob of poor shut out from a rich man's place.

"That wall is the end of the Enslee estate," said Mrs. Neff.

"There is an end to it, then?" said Forbes, more bitterly than he intended.

"There's an end to everything, my boy," Mrs. Neff brooded, with a far-off bitterness of her own--"an end to wealth and love and--everything."

"Who owns that place off there, I wonder?" said Forbes.

"Nobody in particular," said Mrs. Neff. "Some old cantankerous absentee that won't sell. Do you want to buy it to be near Mrs. Enslee? Willie has offered him all sorts of money, but he won't let go. You might have better luck."

Forbes again ignored the assumption that he was wealthy, and said:

"There are things, then, that even the Enslee money can't buy?"

"Many things," said Mrs. Neff. "Persis' love, for one, and Willie's own happiness, and a foot more of height and a certain charm, and--but aren't we stupid and cynical this beautiful morning?"

"Are we?" Forbes smiled.

"We are, and I have a right to be," said Mrs. Neff. "But you haven't. You are not white-haired, nor old, nor a woman."

"Are those the only causes for unhappiness?"

"They are three of the worst, and the most incurable."

But Forbes was too young in his own anxieties to give much importance to her ancient plaints, though she was not too old to understand his. He was glancing upward now and then to the little temple. It was visible from here, though the two figures in it were small and blurred with light.

Forbes was sure that Enslee was proposing to Persis, for he gesticulated, pointed at the landscape and the house. He was evidently commending these to Persis, laying them at her feet, begging her to become at once the chatelaine of this splendor.

Forbes wanted to abandon Mrs. Neff and fly to the rescue of Persis. He wanted to break in on that proposal, prove to her how much better he loved her than Enslee did, how much greater happiness she could have with him than with Enslee. But he made no move in that direction. It was one of those simple things that almost nobody can find the courage to do. He loitered with Mrs. Neff, hating himself for a skulker.

He could not know that he pleaded well enough at a distance. His absence wrought for him against Willie Enslee's presence. Willie was indeed commending his estate to Persis, urging her to marry him at once and settle here for the summer, except what time they might spend abroad or on the yacht, or his other palace at Newport.

But while he pleaded Persis was searching Enslee's landscape for Forbes. The view had been entrancing from the temple with Forbes at her side. Now she felt that it was not after all so satisfying. The very fact that Willie praised it brought up suspicion. She would prefer to choose another landscape, one better suited to her and Forbes, not a second-hand landscape built along some other person's lines.

It would be a joy for Forbes and her to pick out a hundred acres or more--not too far from New York; perhaps among the hunting and poloing colonies on Long Island. While they were building they could cruise.

But perhaps Forbes could not afford a yacht. She must not run him into extravagances. Well, after all, the suites _de luxe_ on some of the ocean liners were not so bad, with their own dining-saloons attached. By omitting the yacht they could have a stunning town house. Mrs. Jimmie Chives wanted to sell her place for a song, and nearly every room in it was imported bodily from some European castle or mansion. With a few changes it could be made quite a habitable shack.

And so, while Willie pleaded in his nagging way, her own imagination was attorney for Forbes. Only it was imagining a Forbes that did not exist, a fairly rich and decently leisurely Forbes. Down below, looking up to her with such eyes as lovers in hell cast on their beloveds in heaven, was the real Forbes, poor, hard-worked, with no financial prospects beyond a minute increase of wage by slow promotion. And he had only a few days more of leisure before he resumed the livery of the nation.

CHAPTER XXXI

Luncheon was breakfast again with a few additions. Winifred had lost the hang of the range, and what successes she had were ruined by her inability to corral the herd on time. The soup was salted beyond the sanction of even the most amiable palate. The chickens were guaranteed not to be resurrections from a cold-storage tomb; but they would have been the better for a little longer hanging and a little shorter cooking. The vegetables had not been salted at all, nor warmed quite through.

"The average is perfect," was Ten Eyck's verdict.

"And the salad's fine, Winifred," said Mrs. Neff, in a desperate effort to console the despondent cook, who retreated to the kitchen and cried a little more salt into the soup.

Ten Eyck rubbed his sagging waistcoat and groaned:

"This is the emptiest empty house-party I ever went to."

"It would have been a noble institution in Lent," Persis sighed.

"You would come," Willie snapped.

"Thank heaven," Alice purred, "I have a five-pound box of chocolates in my room."

Mrs. Neff glared at her. "He'd better save his money. Or has he an account at Maillard's? You can't live on candy, you know."

"It's quite as nourishing as the Congressional Record," said Alice.

"Deuce all!" cried Ten Eyck. "But family matters aside, we've got to do something about food. I've survived the fireless and foodless cooking at breakfast and luncheon, but the dinnerless dinner would finish me. Winifred can afford to bant, I can't. I'm going to give a party. We'll all dine over at the Port of Missing Men and have dinner on me; that will get us through until to-morrow at least."

This was agreed upon with enthusiasm. Winifred was tactfully proffered a vote of thanks and a vacation. There remained only the afternoon to kill. Persis thought to steal a few minutes with Forbes, and they struck out for the sunken gardens, but Willie came panting after them and constituted himself their guide.

He was like one of those pests that can rob the Pitti Palace of interest and make the Vatican an old barn. He led them through the gardens, the greenhouses, the stables, and the kennels. Here a little sea of beagles flowed and frothed round Persis' feet. They were a relic of the days before the hunting fever left Westchester for Long Island. They were mad for exercise, and so were the horses in the stables.

"We must take these poor nags out for a run," said Persis, looking at Forbes, who accepted with his eyes.

"All right, we will. To-morrow morning," said Willie; and Forbes resigned with a look.

Unable to shake off Willie, Persis pleaded the need for a little sleep and retreated to her room. Forbes wandered about, puzzled at the appalling loneliness he could feel in so beautiful a place with so many people around and only one missing.

Eventually, however, the sun, which had begun the day with such ecstasy for him, began to approach the top of the western hill, and the caravan set out for the Port of Missing Men, which proved to be a little cottage of an inn set upon the edge of a small mountain and surveying a vast panorama.

On the piazza the crowd dined well, and returned through the great park to the homeward roads, for when they reached the Enslee bridge it was like coming home. The wings of the motor had made it possible to run twenty-five miles to dinner and twenty-five miles back in almost negligible time; but the exultant speed of the journey and the multitude of sights that had fled past fatigued the mind like a long voyage, and it was once more a subdued company that gathered before the living-room fireplace.

Silence fell upon them all, and they sat once more staring into the flames, each finding there the glittering castles of desire.

Prout came in with more logs of wood and tiptoed out, shaking his head in stupefaction at this latest game of these amazing people.

At some vaguely later hour Persis rose and went into the adjoining music-room. Forbes longed to follow, but feared to move. She strummed a few inexpert chords on the piano. Then she went to the victrola and searched among the black disks. A little later she called out:

"Everything in this house is last year's. There's not a turkey-trot on the place, or a tango."

A little later she spoke again, "Here's a bit of ancient history." She cranked up the machine, set the needle to the disk, and "The Beautiful Blue Danube" came twanging forth from a scarred record that riddled the melody with curious spatterings.

The once world-victorious rhapsody had almost a dirge-like tameness now; but it brought Willie to his feet, and he began to circle the room with Persis. She drooped over his inferior shoulders like a wilted flower.

Ten Eyck scooped Alice off the floor and danced in double time. Forbes bowed to Winifred, but she waved him away with a heavy hand. Mrs. Neff beckoned him.

"I'd rather be second choice than a wallflower. That music takes me back a thousand years."

She glided with an old-time dignity. Forbes tried to keep his eyes from Persis and heed Mrs. Neff's reminiscences.

"Waltzes, waltzes!" she wailed. "How much they meant once to me. There are no dances like the old dances."

"There never were," said Forbes. "I reckon that twenty years from now old folks will be shaking their heads and telling how sweet and dignified the turkey-trot was compared with the epileptic crawl and the hydrophobia skedaddle they'll be doing then."

"I reckon so," said Mrs. Neff. "I can just remember when the polka was considered immoral."

Other waltzes were played, but Willie's appetite for them was quenched after the first. He sank into a chair by the living-room table and took up a story in an old magazine.

Persis waltzed with Forbes more often than with the others; but Willie never knew. In fact, it was not long before his head grew heavier and heavier, and finally, with his chin in his necktie, he slept.

The dancing, the copious wine, and the sudden warmth of the weather soon led to the opening of doors. From the music-room one stepped out into a kind of cloister opening on the lawn.

Eventually Persis set a two-step record whirling on the machine. Forbes asked her to dance with him. As they were passing one of the doors a little gust of summer-night air blew upon them so appealingly that Forbes swung Persis across the sill and stepped out into the cloister, where the moonlight streamed like a distant searchlight.

The music followed them, but muffled, by the pat of their feet along the tiled floor. To silence this noise Forbes danced across the margin of stone out upon the smooth, short, silent grass. Persis made no resistance, and he danced always a little deeper into the lawn, a little farther from the house. He danced her round the inky plumes of a cluster of cedars. These shut out the lights from the door. The music was quite lost here, and Persis hummed the tune herself; seemed to croon it into his very heart.

The music must have stopped in the house long before they knew it, and some one must have put on a disk in whose hard-rubber surface was embedded the voice of Sembrich singing a waltz-song of Chopin's.

This angelic melody floated on the air as if it came from nowhere and everywhere, and Forbes and Persis fell into the swift rhythm of it. They must needs dance furiously fast to keep up; but the music brought with it some of its own resistless energy.

Out here in this moon-world they seemed to be utterly aloof from the earth. They seemed to whirl like twin stars in a cosmic dance to the music of the spheres, the song the stars sing together. The Milky Way was but moonlit dew on the lawn of the sky. And they darted between the planets in a divine rhythm on a vast orbit, until at last a breathlessness of soul and body compelled Persis to end the occult rite.

The moonlight fell about her in a magic veil, and Forbes could not let her go. He caught her closer to him. But before his lips could brush her cheek, she broke his clasp and said:

"We must get back."

"Oh, please!" he implored.

"The others will wonder."

"What of it?"

"We can't afford to set them talking."

"We can't afford to waste a night like this in a stuffy room."

"There will be other moonlight nights."

"How do you know? We can't be sure."

"The moon is pretty regular in its habits."

"But we may not be alive. It may rain to-morrow. And the day after I must be getting back to my post."

"Really? Oh, that is too bad!" There was such deep regret in her words that he took courage to say:

"If we could only walk together a long, long distance! Doesn't the moon seem to--to command you to march?"

"Yes; but--but my slippers are all wet with the dew."

"You could change them."

"And what would the others say?"

"Must they know?"

"How could they help knowing?"

"If you told them all good night and went to your room and changed your slippers, and came out later, and I met you--"

It was a very elaborate conspiracy for him, and she gasped:

"Do you think I'm quite mad?"

"I know I am, or it seems that I'll go mad unless I can be with you in this wonderful light."

"It is wonderful, but--even if I were crazy enough to do as you say you would spoil it all--you wouldn't be good."

"Oh yes, I would. I promise."

"Solemnly?"

"I solemnly promise that I will not annoy you. I will not presume to--to kiss you unless you ask me to."

"That ought to be safe enough," she laughed. "Well, I'll think it over. And now we really must get back. Alice and Murray are at the door looking this way."

They returned slowly to the cloister, discussing the beauty of the night and the brilliance of the moon. Persis told on herself; confessed that she had been foolish enough to dance on the grass, and her shoes and stockings were drenched.

Willie, who was partially awake, supplied the necessary excuse for absence. He demanded that she change at once and not risk pneumonia.

"If I'm sent to my room I won't come back," said Persis, and yawned convincingly. This set up a contagion of yawns. Everybody was instantly smitten with sleepiness. There was no necessity to keep awake, and they were all easy victims of the demands of long-deferred sleep.

There was some flurry over the nightcap drinks, and a leisurely exit of all except Persis, who left immediately. When the rest went up to their rooms Forbes went to his.

He waited with frantic impatience for the light to go out in Ten Eyck's room. It was nearly midnight when Forbes felt it safe to venture out into the hall and tiptoe down the stairs. He had just arrived there when Persis stole down and met him. There was no light except a shaft of moonshine weirdly recolored by a stained-glass window. They did not venture even a whisper. He took her arm and groped with his free hand through a black tunnel to a blacker door, which opened stealthily and admitted a flood of moonlight.

Persis was dressed warmly, and she had put on high boots and a short, thick mackinaw jacket. But she shivered with the midnight chill and with a kind of ecstatic terror.

Forbes had planned his route. He would avoid the ascending stairway to the temple of Enslee's worship, and lead her to the sunken gardens, which he had longed to explore with her at his side.

They did not wade out into the mid-sea of the lawn. He remembered Persis' dictum that behind the blinds there are always eyes. Like snickering truants they skirted the balustrade, the shadowy privet hedge, the masses of juniper and bay and box, till they reached the point where the winding stairway dropped down between its high brick walls.

The shadows were doubly dense here, and Persis hung back, but Forbes laughed at her for a poltroon, and she refused to take the dare. He was so afraid that she might fall that he finally suggested:

"If you are afraid of stumbling here, I--I'm not forgetting my promise; but I just wanted to say that I--I don't mind holding on to you, if you want to ask me to."

She declined with whispered thanks. Down, down the walk drifted. At length they heard a murmur--the mysteriously musical noise of a fountain. They rounded a few more curves and came upon a niched Cupid riding a dolphin, from whose mouth an arc of water poured with a sound of chuckling laughter. The green patina that covered the bronze was uncannily beautiful in the moonlight, and the water was molten silver.

They stood and watched it like children for a long while. Then Forbes urged Persis along to the lowest of the circular levels.

There he led her to a bench and dropped down beside her. They both looked off into the huge caldron of the hills, filled with moonlight as with a mist.

The ragged woods in the distance were superb now in blue velvet. Everything was ennobled--rewritten in poetry. Everything plain and simple and ugly took on splendor and mystic significance. Every object, every group of objects, became personal and seemed to be striving to say something.

Persis and Forbes sat worshiping like Parsees of the moon, in awesome silence, till Forbes could no longer hush the clamor in his heart.

"Miss Cabot," he said, "I promised not to annoy you. Would it annoy you if I told you that--that I love you with all my heart and soul and being?"

"How could you love me?" she answered, softly, hoping to be contradicted. "You've known me only a few days."

"There are some people we live with for years and never like nor understand; others we know and love the moment our eyes meet."

"And did you love me the moment our eyes met?"

"Long before that. I loved the back of your hat and one shoulder."

"Do you tell everybody you meet the same thing? It's rather a stale question to ask a man, but you do seem rather impulsive on so short an acquaintance."

"Short acquaintance? We've seen each other more than most people see of each other in six months. I know you and I know myself, and I know that I shall never be happy unless I can be trying to make you happy."

"I am very happy just now," she murmured.

"But we can't sit here forever, and we can't even be together for more than a day or two. I want you for my own. I don't want to see you only--only on--Mr. Enslee's property."

"Which reminds me," Persis said, with a tone of dispelled romance, "that we are still on Mr. Enslee's property, and it doesn't seem fair to him."

"Then let's leave Mr. Enslee's property."

"How? In an airship?"

"See that wall down there. That is one of the boundary lines. If we were over that I could tell you some things that I've got to tell you."

"It's an awfully long way."

"Not so long as you think."

"No, no; it's easy to descend to Avernus, or whatever it was; but to get back! I'd never have the strength for that."

"It's not far. Let's walk to keep warm. You are cold, aren't you?"

"Frozen, that's all. Well, come along, I'll go part way with you."

They set out upon the little path. There were no trees to shelter them now from the moon, and its light seemed to beat upon the hillside like waves. The moon that draws the sea along in tides could not but have its influence on these two atoms, and on the blood that sped through their tiny veins. The moon filled them with the love of love.

Constantly pausing to turn back, but finding it easier to drift on down than begin the upward climb, Persis went on and on, arm in arm with Forbes. By and by they reached the boundary wall. He helped her to set one knee upon it and mount awkwardly. He clambered up and sat down at her side. Their backs were toward the Enslee demesne, their feet in the unknown.

And there, without delay, Forbes told her that she must be his wife, told her that he loved her as woman had never been loved before.

His hands fought to caress her, his lips tingled to be again at her cheek, but he kept his promise.

Yet the influence of the promise was potent on her, too. She knew that he was in an anguish of temptation, and she glowed with his struggle. The moon and the width of the world, the silent night-cry of the world in the lonely dark, and the yearning light filled her with a need of love. She regretted the promise, she wished that he would break it, and her absolution waited ready for his deed.

But his sense of honor prevailed upon his hands, though he could not keep silent about his heartache.

"Couldn't you possibly love me, Miss Cabot? Couldn't you possibly?" he pleaded; and she whispered, with a sad sweetness:

"I could--all too easily, Mr. Forbes, but I am afraid to love. I thought I never should love anybody really. And now that I know I might, it is so terrible an awakening that I--I'm afraid of it."

"Don't be afraid," he implored. "Love me. Let yourself love me."

"I'm afraid, Mr. Forbes."

"Then if you're afraid to love, it's because you don't, because you--can't."

This hurt her pride. Her heart was so swollen with this new power that it would not be denied either by herself or him.

"Yes, I could! Oh, I could! But I mustn't--I mustn't let myself love you--not now--not so soon."

"Then I must wait," he sighed, and said no more. And she sat in a silence, though there was a great noise of heartbeats in her breast and in her temples and ears.

She began to shiver with the night and with her excitement. She wanted to say that they must start back; but her tongue stumbled thickly against her chattering teeth. The world was bitter cold--so far from him. In his arms would be warmth and comfort as at a fireplace. She was lonely, unendurably lonely and wistful.

And he sat at her side in an equal ague of distance and need.

Finally he took his eyes from the moon and bent his gaze on her. He saw how her shoulders quaked.

"You're cold, you poor, sweet child--you're cold. I'm dying to take you in my arms, but I promised--I promised."

She was afraid to surrender, and afraid to defy the will of the night. The chill shook her with violence again and again till she felt the world rocking, the stone wall wavering. Then she leaned toward him and whispered:

"Kiss me!"

He could hardly believe that he heard, but he caught her to him and sought her lips with his. Immediately she was afraid again. Again she hid the preciousness of her mouth from him, writhed and struggled and twisted her face, hid it in his breast. But now he fought her with gentle ruthlessness, took her cold cheeks in his cold hands, and, holding her face up to the moonlight, kissed her eyes, and her dew-besprent hair and her cheeks, and pressed the first great kiss on her lips. They fled from him no more.

Only a moment she lingered in Elysium, and then she sighed:

"We must go back--we must! I hate to, but there's to-morrow--and the people! What wouldn't they think if they saw us?"

He knew that they would not think the beautiful and holy thoughts that filled his heart and hers, so he consented to climb back from this lowly heaven to the Upper Purgatory.

Her strength was gone, and he had little of his own; but somehow he helped her up. Again and again they paused to rest, and every time he tried to tell her that he was poor, and at each pause found her lips so sweet that he could not speak of so mean a thing as money and the meaner lack of it.

And behind her aching brows there were wild decisions made and unmade to tell him that she had no right to his love until she had released herself from her pledge to Enslee. But at each pause she, too, put off the harsh truth. It was sacrilege to intrude the name of Enslee into this divine communion.

They could not harm the perfection of that bliss by any other confessions than their love.

And this is one of the pitifulest things in this world, that people lie mutely lest they spoil a beautiful truth; they put off till to-morrow what would mar to-night; they spare some heart-pain; they pay some virtue too exclusive court, and lo, they find afterward that they have brought about only corruption and confusion and damnation.

So Persis and Forbes climbed slowly the winding stairway, and their mood was one of hallowed reverence for God and His beautiful world. They paused to wish even the little bronze Cupid well, and his dolphin and the stream of living water; the moon had deserted it now, but still it chuckled. Forbes and Persis skirted the balustrade with a guilty rapture, avoiding the almost daylight of the moon-swept lawn. They opened the door with the innocent stealth of good fairies.

They mounted the stairway with their arms about each other's bodies, and in the hall above they kissed and whispered, "Good night! Good night! Good night!" and tiptoed in opposite directions.

At their remote doors they paused to throw kisses into the black dark toward each other's invisible presences.

Forbes turned the knob of his door with fierce caution, and waited to hear Persis close hers. There was a faint thud and a little click like a final kiss. He tiptoed across his sill, and was just closing his door after him when he heard somewhere in the hall the soft thud of another door, the click of another lock. His heart leaped as if a fist had seized it suddenly. Some one else had been in the hall. In the deep black there was no telling whose door it was. But some one else had been in the hall.

CHAPTER XXXII

Lieutenant Forbes had known what it was to bivouac in the black of night in Mindanao, surrounded by wild men native to the trees and as stealthy as the dark, and armed with blow-guns, carved, painted, sometimes studded with gems, but emitting poisonous darts. He had stood then trying to peer them out in the gloom, knowing they were there and unable to descry them.

So he stood now gripping his door-knob lest it turn in his hand and betray him. He realized that he and Persis had lingered in a social ambush. They were in no peril of life, but the unknown spy might let loose upon them an envenomed dart from the silent, the sometimes jeweled blow-gun of gossip.

Forbes' eyes fought in vain against a dark that was like a black bandage. He felt sure that it was not Ten Eyck's door that had thudded so slyly shut. But he could not even guess whether it were the door of Enslee or of one of the women.

He waited and waited, hoping that a light would be made, but there was no glimmer along any sill. Even Persis was evidently undressing in the dark, or in the moonlight that must be pouring into her room.

Forbes visioned her there chilled and tired, her sleepy hands fumbling at the sepals of her clothing till she stripped them off and stood glimmering in the blue a moment before she slipped into that creamy nothing he had seen her wear at the window. And then he visioned her with chattering teeth and shivering hands immersing her lonely beauty in the sheets, snow-white, snow-cold, like a nymph returning to her brook in winter-time. He felt immensely sorry that she should be cold and alone.

He wondered if she prayed at her bedside, and thought of her as a nun in one long, white line of beauty, from her brow bent down, to the palms of her little bare feet upturned on the floor. He hoped that she would not pray too long lest she catch cold. And this seemed a kind of sacrilegious thought, like individual communion cups.

All these things he thought as he waited, gripping the door-knob and listening fiercely for a sign of the eavesdropper. And lest she should have been too cold to pray, he prayed for her, that calumny might not be the reward of her innocent love, the sweet surrender she had made of her discretion and her good repute into his keeping.

Yet he feared for her. He doubted that the secret observer would think her free of guile. He did not fear for himself. The man would be regarded at worst as a successful adventurer, but the woman despised for an easy victim or a willing accomplice.

Forbes reproached himself for bringing this blight on Persis. It was he that had dragged her protesting from the house, persuaded her to steal forth, led her into the distance, and kept her while the respectable hours slipped by.

The only atonement he could make was to proclaim as speedily as possible that their love was honest and that they carried the franchise of betrothal. To-morrow he must make sure of her. He closed his door with the utmost caution, and got out of his clothes and into his bed with all possible silence. He was exhausted with the long day of love's anxieties and triumph, and the new anxiety he had stumbled into. He had yet to tell her how far from rich he was. He had yet to persuade her to leave this golden world of hers for the parsimony he offered.

Perhaps her courage or her love would flinch from the sacrifice. Then he could not protect her from the unknown sneerer. Indeed, if the unknown listener were Enslee, Forbes would not stand as the protector of Persis at all, but as a ruthless tempter of another man's love. If it were Ten Eyck, he would have ground for reviling Forbes as one whom he regretted sponsoring, a wolf admitted into the fold in sheep's clothing. Or if it were one of the women--everybody knows what mercy females have for one another.

In the chaos of his perplexities he fell asleep, and did not waken till the whir of the telephone on his wall called him from his slumber. Winifred's voice gruffly informed him that his breakfast was waiting for him.

When, as little later as he could manage, he joined the group already at the table, he tried to read in the "Good morning" of each some telltale hint. Mrs. Neff's A.M. languor might mask a reproach. Alice's casual glance might mean aversion. Ten Eyck's reproving frown might be a comment on his tardiness or a rebuke for his bad faith. Winifred's curt manner might be merely her way of play-acting a surly cook, and it might represent disgust.

Willie Enslee smiled--smiled! Was it a crafty sneer, or was it simply his stinted hospitality? If Enslee knew that he was clandestine with Enslee's sweetheart, how could Enslee smile? He must eliminate Enslee, at least, from his suspicion.

Persis alone greeted him with heartiness; her blessed and blessing eyes were like kisses on the brow. But Persis did not know that they had been watched. She had closed her door first. How was he to tell her? how put her on her guard?

Forbes ate his breakfast in the mixed humor of a detective and a suspect. He studied the others, and they seemed to study him or to avoid him. He could not settle upon even a theory.

After the breakfast he sought an opportunity for a secret word with Persis. She was told off to the bed-making squad. She was even to do his room! He caught her at the foot of the stairs. She warned him with a gesture, and he broke the news to her without preparation:

"Last night when we were saying good night some one else was in the hall."

Her lips parted in a gasp of terror, and her eyes whitened. "How do you know?" she whispered.

"I heard her--or him."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know. I can't even guess," he mumbled.

"Do you think it could have been--All right, Mr. Forbes, I'll be careful of your razor-blades."

This last aloud for the benefit of Mrs. Neff, who came by and spoke with icy severity--was it ironical?

"Chambermaids are not allowed to flirt with customers in this hotel." She went on up; and Persis followed helplessly, leaving Forbes distraught.

Later he saw her at his windows beating his pillows. The intimate implication thrilled him, and he threw her a kiss while pretending to take his cigar from his lips, and she retreated into the embrasure to answer it with a secret waft from her own mouth.

Forbes had hoped to be invited to ride with Persis, and had put on a pair of civilian riding-breeches and his army puttees. But he was ignored in the program for the day, announced by Enslee, who decreed that he and Persis would ride over to the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, by the quietest roads they could find, while the rest were to motor across. They would all have luncheon together and return in the same way. "If that horse of mine doesn't break both of our fool necks," he added.

"What about Persis and her horse's neck?" Ten Eyck asked, speaking Forbes' own uneasy thought.

"Oh, Persis can ride anything," Willie said. "She's a born centaurette, while a horse and I are like oil and water--only oil always stays on top, and I don't."

But Forbes did not feel so sure of Persis as Willie did. He ventured to say as much when she appeared, but she laughed at him:

"Horses are not among my afraids. I've ridden since I graduated from the back of a Great Dane to a Shetland pony. I've got rubber bones; when I fall off I bounce back."

He could make no further protest, and hung about in the futile discomfort of an old woman. There was no reassurance for him in the behavior of the horses, which two stablemen brought up the hill with a difficulty that led Ten Eyck to comment:

"Are those men leading horses, Willie, or flying kites?"

There was a slight break in Willie's laugh as he said: "My horse had better behave or I'll let him find his way home alone. I wish I had a parachute."

Persis was wearing the bowler hat and the coat and breeches and boots Forbes had seen her in that morning in Central Park. He knew how well she rode in the bridle-path, but he feared for her in the motor-swept roads. He told her so, but she laughed again.

She set her foot in the stirrup, flung her leg across the saddle, and warned the groom away. While Willie got one foot in the stirrup and went hopping hither and yon in pursuit of it with the other, Persis was getting acquainted with her own mount, humoring him in his school-boy hilarity, and sharply repressing any malicious mischief.

The moment Willie was aboard the two horses whirled and charged down the winding road in a mad gallopade. And Forbes' heart galloped in his breast as he wondered if he should ever see her alive again. He had felt this same fear for her that first day on the Avenue, when her motor shot forward so wildly. He was always feeling afraid for her.

CHAPTER XXXIII

The motor passengers were in no haste to be gone, and they loitered, watching the mad riders on their breakneck descent, now hidden, now revealed again by a swerve of the road, a jut of hillside, or a group of trees.

Forbes was sure at every vanishing that they would never come into view. But they always did, and getting their horses in hand at last, finished the hill with sobriety, trotted across the granite bridge, and turned to wave good-by.

They were as small as dolls on toys where they jogged along the distant high-road. A tiny motor-cycle, whose thumping flight was faintly audible even at such a distance, whizzed round a curve and almost cut the horses' feet from under them. The animals lifted their hoofs well out of danger, but they came to earth again out of the cloud of dust, and Forbes dared to resume the business of breathing.

He saw that Enslee was a well-schooled rider who annoyed his horse a good deal, yet ruled him somehow. But Persis was perfect to the saddle, part of the horse, as fearless and as expert in her smart gear as any cowgirl of the plains.

Forbes watched her till the last curve blotted her from his sight, and yearned after her like a child left behind from a picnic. He looked at his own riding-costume ruefully, and said that he would better change. But the others would not wait for him. Mrs. Neff urged:

"They're very becoming. Keep 'em on. You've got good legs, and you make Willie look like a wishbone."

Enslee had sent his own driver and his own car to take them to the club, and with an unusual thoughtfulness had ordered the robe-rack filled with lilacs. And so they rode behind a screen of purple beauty, and breathed in a spicy air filtered through flowers.

Forbes continued his search for a clue to last night's eavesdropper in the manner of his fellow-passengers. They were all in high spirits, which might be in any one's case either ghoulish glee or innocence. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Neff's enthusiasm was owing to her knowledge that Senator Tait was at the Country Club; but she did not tell Forbes lest her daughter hear. Alice was rapturous in the knowledge that Stowe Webb had arranged before she left New York to be at the club against just such an opportunity as this; but she did not explain to Forbes lest her mother hear. Winifred was buoyant because Ten Eyck had promised her a few sets of tennis, and she saw herself already whole ounces leaner. And Ten Eyck was cheerful because the world usually amused Ten Eyck when the weather was fit. And to-day, as old Gower put it, "The weder was merie and faire ynough."

Merry and fair enough for any wight, and the scenery wonderful. After a few swift miles of country whose old walls, well-groomed meadows, and shapely forests gave a look of England, the land rose higher and higher, till the car swung out at last on a height commanding a river in the utmost contrast with England's stream. As Ten Eyck put it, "The Thames and the Hudson are as much alike as a pearl necklace and an anchor-chain." The water came down between its hills in tremendous calm, and the Palisades opposite were no longer sheer cliffs, but a congress of ponderous masses like reclining gods along a banquet board.

The homes responded, of necessity, to the scene. In place of the ballroom levels and exquisite parks along the reaches of the Thames, with its flat punts and its houseboats moored in shady niches, these lawns sloped and rolled in massive sweeps, fronting a mighty stream.

Forbes' heart could not rise to the bigness of the scene; it was too much tossed between the hope that the next turn might reveal Persis, spick and span on a glossy horse, and the fear that some of these countless whizzing, hooting motors might frighten the beast into panic and hurl her under the swarming wheels.

Ten Eyck seemed to note the anxiety that kept his eyes shuttling this way and that, for he remarked, as if quite casually:

"Small chance of meeting Persis and Willie here. They said they'd try to keep off the busiest roads, and Willie has probably got himself lost somewhere in the twists and turns of Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is just where Willie belongs, all right; he is the most headless headless horseman that ever threw a pumpkin. I'll bet he turns up late to luncheon and makes a spectacular entrance on the back of his neck."

Ten Eyck was as nearly right as a prophet is required to be.

The car reached its destination without encountering Persis or Willie. More majestic than the usual country club, that of Sleepy Hollow was approached by a stately entrance gate. The road wound between broad lawns, where children played among tropical thickets of veteran rhododendrons tall as trees, and studded with flowers as big and brilliant as Chinese lanterns. The club-house was a pile of creamy brick, tall and spacious as a hotel. The servants were in livery, some of them already in summer white, with dark collars and lapels--"to distinguish them from the members," said Ten Eyck.

Ten Eyck and Winifred offered Forbes a racquet in their tennis game, but he preferred to be alone with his loneliness. He accepted Ten Eyck's suggestion, however, that he might care to go round the links, and Ten Eyck procured him a bag of clubs and a caddy, promising him ample time for at least nine holes before Persis could arrive.

Mrs. Neff, meanwhile, had vanished with Alice. She had learned that Senator Tait was on the golf-course, and had dragged Alice forth. Mrs. Neff loathed walking, but to-day she announced a determination to reform. Alice went along with double reluctance. She lost her chance to get word to Stowe Webb, who did not know she was coming, and she feared she might find him on the links in some spot exposed to her mother's far-sweeping vision.

Forbes, left to his own devices, and feeling like a dolt for golfing in horse costume, dawdled about marveling at the luxury of the club and the splendor of the views that met the eye everywhere within or without its walls. At length he reached the golf-grounds squired by a lean little caddy, who might almost have crawled into the bag of sticks and passed for one of them.

With the usual luck of beginners and re-beginners at a game, Forbes did his best work at the start. His first drive from the first tee drew such a white arc across the sky that even the caddy was moved to an exclamation of applause, hitched his sack on his shoulder, and set off in search of the ball with vicarious pride.

The ball waited for Forbes in a position so good as to be almost suspicious. It was an ideal brassy lie; but Forbes, thinking now of his form, just missed it with surprising nicety, and sent gouts of turf flying. According to the rules, he was to replace them; and, according to custom, he affected not to see them. His score mounted rapidly while he mauled the air and the grass around the ball, and when he finally got away he had lost his temper and the respect of the caddie irretrievably.

As he worked his way up a steep ridge green and vast as the back of a tidal wave he saw at the top of the height a bunker thrusting out into the sky like the comb on the top of a Spanish woman's head. He paused for his approach, to let two women clear the way. He recognized Mrs. Neff and Alice, but they did not see him. Mrs. Neff seemed to be in a mood of displeasure. There was vexation in her very heels.

Thinking the pathway clear, Forbes mumbled "Fore," and, picking the ball up neatly in his iron, sent it over the edge of the bunker with a hurdler's economy of gap. And just as it escaped the top a head arose, followed by a pair of shoulders.

Forbes shrieked an _ex post facto_ "Fore!" but it was drowned in the snort of pain and rage from the man, whose left shoulder-blade stopped the ball.

As Forbes ran forward with abject apologies a glaring face peered over the bunker and roared out:

"Damn it, man! Where do you think you--Why, it's you! Harvey, my boy!"

"Senator Tait!" Forbes cried, darting for one corner of the bunker as Senator Tait dashed for the other. They paused, turned back, and made for the opposite ends, stopped short foolishly in the middle, and laughingly clasped hands over the ledge.

"I'll come round," said Forbes; and the Senator met him, put his arms about him, and hugged him with a fatherly roughness. After he had told Forbes how much he had grown and how fine he was, and Forbes had exclaimed how young the Senator looked, the Senator hugged him again.

"I can't believe that you are yourself. The first time I saw you was in your father's arms; you were about half an hour old, and your father said you were very handsome. I couldn't see it at the time, but you've improved. I wish he could see you now. I was with him, you know, when his horse fell with him and--"

"Yes, I know," Forbes murmured. "You were his best friend--our best friend."

"It's a shame that we've lost sight of each other. We mustn't any more. Life's too short to waste in not seeing people we love. I must say, though, I'm rather hurt at your not looking me up before. Mrs. Neff has just told me you've been in town nearly a week."

"I--I've been very busy," Forbes stammered.

"So I hear, you young scoundrel!" Tait growled, jovially. "You're at the heartbreaking, heartaching age, and no time to spend on old duffers like me when young beauties are drooping on every bough. But what's this Mrs. Neff tells me about your being rich? I hadn't heard it. I hadn't expected it, either, for your father was a better fox-hunter than a financier. What did you do--invent some new explosive--or a new gun?"

Forbes smiled bitterly and explained the foolish mistake, too foolish to correct at first, and later embarrassing.

The Senator stared at him a moment searchingly with a tender inquisition, then said:

"Unless you're golf-hungry, let's send the caddies back and have a talk."

"By all means," Forbes agreed; and even as he cast his glance about in search of his caddy he looked farther to see if Persis were not visible somewhere from this Pisgah height. He was fond of the old man, but he loved the young woman.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Forbes' caddy was standing by the ball, and came in with it, cannily claimed his pay and tip for the full course, and hurried back with the Senator's caddy to pick up other fares. They took both the golf-bags with them to put away.

Tait and Forbes strolled aside from the traffic of the golf-course and found a quiet seat in the shade.

"And now tell me," the Senator said; "but first have a cigar?"

He took out a portly wallet stuffed with brown backs, the famous cigars made expressly for him in Havana. Forbes accepted one and sniffed its bouquet.

"It's a shame to waste these in the open air," he said, and sprung a cigar-lighter he carried, holding the flame to Tait, who waived it with a sigh:

"Doctor's orders."

"Then I won't."

"Go on; I carry them for my friends. I love to see others enjoy what I can't. Well, I will smoke just one to celebrate the prodigal's return." And he took a cigar from the case as tenderly as if it were forbidden ambrosia. As Forbes made a light again, he asked:

"What's this about doctor's orders? You're the kind of picture that goes with the testimonials--after taking."

"I'm a hollow sham, my boy; bad heart, bad liver, fat and sluggish, ordered to Carlsbad, but I hate to go. May have to," he puffed. "Did you see my daughter Mildred at the club-house?"

"No, I don't think so. I don't suppose I'd know her. She was a little tike in short skirts when I saw her last."

"She's a big woman now--regular old maid--fanatic on charities--fine mind--great heart. Thinks too much about the poor and the downtrodden to be very cheerful company; but somebody ought to look after 'em, I suppose. She's one of those hotheads that are trying to make the world over. Sounds hopeless, but they do get a lot done. She thinks poverty is no more necessary than slavery was. And she says the same of the oldest profession in the world.

"Good Lord, Harvey, what that child knows! Her mother to her dying day never heard of half the things that young spinster discusses, and has never had a flirtation so far as I know. Her conversation is really what has turned my hair white. Things that used to be kept for the medical books or smoking-room conversation she tosses off glibly, earnestly, and--to me! And spends my money, too, on scientific rescue work among women who--whew! And to think her mother and I didn't dare to tell her things! Now she tells 'em to me! She knows more about the seamy side than I do. But she's wonderful, Harvey. I'm afraid of her, but I do admire and love her. Women like her make these mad tango-trotters look pretty cheap."

Forbes resented the unintended criticism on the wonderful soul the tango mania had enabled him to meet and know so well so soon. He murmured something formulaic about his eagerness to see Mildred, and then he added, with a little hint of raillery:

"You congratulated me on my wealth. Am I to congratulate you the same way for your success with little Miss Neff?"

The Senator stared at him. "My success with little Miss Neff? What do you mean? Who's little Miss Neff? Alice?"

"Yes."

"The girl that was just here with her mother?"

"Yes."

"What success should I have with her?"

Forbes was confused, and tried to back out, but Tait would know, and Forbes at last explained: "Alice says that her mother is trying to marry her off to you."

Tait's eyes popped, and his mouth gaped stupidly, then he swore with sonority, and blurted out: "Do you mean that that old harridan of a Cornelia Neff has gone mad enough to--Why, Alice is younger than Mildred! I thought of her as a little tot. I tweaked her cheek and told her how sweet she was, and never dreamed she'd grown up yet. So that's why Cornelia has been so hospitable to me. I had a kind of sneaking fear that she wanted to add me to her own regiment of husbands. But it's her daughter, eh? Well, I'll be double--Is Alice in on the game, too?"

"Oh no; Alice is crazy to marry Stowe Webb."

"Poor old Jim Webb's boy, eh?" Forbes nodded. "Well, why doesn't she?"

"He has no money."

"Oh, she's one of those."

"He hasn't even a job."

The Senator puffed like an unmufflered cut-out, and he frowned like a pirate, then he began to chuckle in the manner of a pirate ordering the plank put over the side.

"He hasn't a job, eh? Well, I'll get him one. I'll pay that old lady in her own coin. Make a fool out of me, will she? Well, we'll see what an old politician can do to countermine an old lady."

"Speaking of politics," said Forbes, "the papers are full of the possibility of your being an ambassador somewhere. Is there anything in it?"

"Well, my old friend the President has written me a few letters and whispered it in my ear, but I don't want to go. I'm too old. I like my own country and my own slippers. Foreign languages and foreign cooking and all that would play the devil with me. I don't want to go."

Forbes laughed at the spectacle of a big, rich man pouting like a reluctant child against having a sweetmeat forced on him.

"Then why are you going?" he grinned.

"How did you know I was?"

"Because you said you didn't want to. We only say, 'I don't want to' when we're just about to."

Tait looked at him in surprise. Forbes was not the type from whom one expects epigrams and generalizations. That was among his chief attractions. Tait laughed sheepishly.

"Well, I'll tell you, Harvey. There's just one reason--I'm worried about Mildred. She's getting in too deep with her crusades and causes. She's done enough. She mustn't lose her own life as a woman--a wife--a mother. I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that that's a woman's first business, as a man's first business is to build a home and keep it. Afterward all the charity and uplift they can do is legitimate and worthy. But first pay your debts, I say, before you make donations. Now I can't pry Mildred loose from her clubs and committees. No marrying young man will go near her. There's no encouragement to the pink nonsense of love in an atmosphere of tenement-house needs, tuberculosis exhibits, and the harrowing statistics of white slavery.

"I got an idea that if I went abroad as an ambassador she'd have to go along to take care of me and run the social end of the embassy. She'd have to dress up and give dinners, and go places and dance and meet cheerful people, and--well, who knows? Anyway, my last business on this earth is leaving my only child provided for, and I'm worried because--because--well, I'm too fat around the heart, and my neck is too thick, and the doctor tells me to be ready. You understand?

"My father went that way. He had to be very careful of his health, and one day, when he was about to go out in the rain, my mother told him he must wear his rubbers. He bent over to pull on an overshoe, and--he just went on over and sprawled out on the rug--dead."

He stared off into space, and seemed not to be a venerable old man any more, but a lonely orphan with the sad eyes of boyhood in the presence of death.

Forbes knew what it means for a man to think of the death of his first great man, his father; and his hand wrung the Senator's. Tait looked up, smiled sadly, and returned the pressure with his big, soft fingers.

"I wish I had a son to leave her with, Harvey; then I'd feel better, but my only boy--well, he married the wrong woman, and she drove him to the dogs, deceived him and tormented him, and--finally he had to make her divorce him. And he loved her in spite of it--he was ashamed of his love; but he couldn't kill it; she couldn't kill it; drink couldn't kill it. But the two of them killed him. Oh, Lord, Harvey, it's a cruel world, and we're so helpless! I could have done so much for my boy; but I couldn't help him in the one way he needed help. I couldn't make the woman over.

"Don't repeat his mistake, Harvey. Don't let a pretty face and a fascinating body blind you to a bad, selfish heart. Don't let yourself love the wrong woman. You can do a good deal with your heart if you hold a tight rein on it and keep it on the right road. There are fine enough women on the straight road, just as beautiful, just as passionate with the right man. If only--"

He paused, looked at Harvey, who was looking everywhere but at the Senator. He was searching the landscape for Persis, and he was as restless among his own thoughts as the young usually are when the old are commenting on the helplessness of life. The young know so much better. It is the young who have theories of the universe and who expect to carry out their hopes; it is the old scientists who are bewildered and who merely observe and accept.

But Tait did not notice Forbes' inattention. Rummaging among the confusions of his own griefs, he had come upon a bright hope. What if Forbes should be the man to win Mildred away from her avocations back to the main business of love? He was such a youth as even Mildred could hardly ignore or despise. He had little money, but Tait had more than enough for the two, and he had made many a poor man rich.

He smiled. He felt like apologizing to Mrs. Neff for stealing a hint from her. Why should not old men engage in the pleasant chess-game of match-making, too? What better task could he undertake than making this beloved son of his old comrade the husband of his own beloved daughter?

The idea was so exhilarating that it almost leaped from his heart. But he was politician enough to realize that such a plan would be frustrated in advance by premature publication. This was a benevolent conspiracy that must be kept dark.

He studied Forbes with admiring affection. His heart went out to him as to a son, or, better yet, a son-in-law. He put a hand on Forbes' shoulder to claim him just as Forbes started with a sudden elation, just as a light broke forth in his eyes.

Tait followed the line of Forbes' gaze and made out a man and a woman on horseback turning in at the gate marked "Exit Only." That was like Willie Enslee. If any gate could excite his interest as an entrance it would be one marked "Exit Only." Tait could not see who it was; he hastily got out his distance-glasses and put them on. But a glowing wall of rhododendrons and cedars concealed the riders by the time his great tortoise-shell spectacles hobgoblined his eyes.

Forbes spoke. "Sha'n't we stroll back to the club-house? I'm expected there for luncheon."

"By all means," said Tait. "And I want you to meet Mildred again."

"I'd love to," said Forbes, absently. He said nothing more, but strode on so rapidly down the steep slope that Tait had to take his arm for support and to hold him back.

"You're visiting at the Enslees', Mrs. Neff tells me," the old man panted.

"Yes."

"Excuse my fatherly familiarity, but how can you afford to gad with those wild asses?"

"I can't."

"What's her name?" Tait laughed.

"I may be able to tell you later, and I may not."

"Well, my boy, I don't know who she is, but I bet she isn't worth it--not if she trails with the Enslee pack."

"Oh, but she is beautiful--she is wonderful."

"You must be hit damned hard."

"Am."

And then, not heeding the connotation, he exclaimed, as Persis emerged from the eclipsing shrubbery:

"There's only one woman can ride like that."

Tait stared again, and now he made her out. Instantly, with the exultance one feels over a secret some one else lets slip, he cried: "Oho, my boy, that's the woman who keeps you here! Mrs. Neff hinted at it, but I wouldn't believe it till I had it from you." His gloating sank again to fatherly solicitude as he pleaded earnestly: "For God's sake, boy, don't love her! Of all women don't love Persis Cabot! She's the most heartless of them all."

Forbes was tempted to ask him how he could accept a reputation as a proof of character, but he was still calm enough to pay Tait's white hair the homage of silence. Tait, feeling the import of his silence, grew uneasy, and demanded:

"Harvey, it's not possible that you love her--actually love her?"

"Is it possible not to?"

"But you've not known her long."

"No, but I've known her well. Do you know her?"

"Yes, and I knew her mother. Once I thought I loved her mother. But I had less money--when I proposed to her than I have now--Heaven be praised!"

"Heaven be praised?"

"Yes, for she might have married me. Harvey, a certain part of the society here is like a big aquarium. The people are all fish--the men goldfish, the women catfish. Their blood is cold--Lord, how cold! Just look at their eyes! Hard eyes, hard hearts. They despise sincerity; they laugh at honest emotion."

"But Persis has soft eyes," Forbes broke in, "and a warm heart."

"Has she?" Tait sighed, feeling that the siren had already sung Forbes' wits away. "Well, maybe, in the moonlight. But she'll soon freeze. Now, if she had been born poor--"

"But, Senator, the rich can't all be bad," Forbes complained.

"The rich are no worse than anybody else as a class," said Tait. "My father and mother were rich, and they were as good and sweet and simple as any poor people that ever lived. They were like Romeo and Juliet. The Montagues and Capulets were both rich. But if young Mr. Montague had been poor we might have had a different story. Or, if you had only gone into finance."

"It's too late for me to dream of money. I'm a soldier."

"And it's too late for you to dream of Persis Cabot, not merely because she's wealthy. One class is as good as another; it's the set that counts. And she gallops with the rich runaways. Their life is one long stampede. There are rich women who toil like slaves for the poor, who lead lives of earnestness and purity, who respond to every appeal, and make organized charity possible. But there are others, rich and poor, that never think of anybody but themselves, never have real pity except for themselves, never toil or fret except for their own amusement. And those people gravitate together into colonies and cliques. Don't run with that pack, Harvey."

He was not the first man of eld that had warned youth against beauty. Nor was he the last that shall fail to be heeded. He tried another tack.

"I understand that Willie Enslee expects to marry her."

"She doesn't expect to marry him."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, I have my reasons for believing that she doesn't love him."

"Nobody ever accused her of that, but--well, does she think what Mrs. Neff thinks--that you have money?"

Forbes did not answer except with a blush. The Senator spared him any pressure on that point. He said, simply:

"Enslee has a lot of money--more than her father has. In fact, her father is in a very bad plight."

"How do you know?"

"I am about six bank directors, Harvey, and a few other things. Her father is about to be forced into involuntary bankruptcy; her father's pet railroad may go into receiver's hands to-day or to-morrow."

"Poor Persis!" Forbes groaned. "Poor Persis!"

There was such anguish in his tone that the Senator gripped his arm hard and murmured:

"Do you care so much for her?"

Forbes stopped short and stared into the old man's eyes. "A man like me loves once, and loves hard. If I lost her, my life wouldn't be worth the snap of my finger." And he added in a raucous voice, "Or the click of a trigger."

The Senator leaned heavily on him and closed his eyes in a wince of pain. He had heard his own dead son speak just that way.

When he opened his eyes he saw that Forbes was smiling glowingly.

"Look at her, Senator! She's so beautiful! I can't let Enslee have her! Look at him! He's as afraid of his horse as his horse is ashamed of him. What's he up to now? Rein him in, you fool! He'd drive a hobbyhorse into hysterics. And now he's sent Persis' horse in the air! What's the matter with him? Why doesn't he--"

But the fault was not Enslee's, nor was he so bad a rider as an expert like Forbes might think. As the event proved, even Persis could not control her mount in the face of what was happening unseen by Forbes. A chauffeur, relying on the fact that he was on the exit road, was driving a big red six at high speed along the curves. He had not seen Enslee and Persis till he was almost into them. He swung aside so sharply that he almost capsized, and ran into something sharp enough to rip open a shoe.

This was just one too many automobiles for the horses Persis and Enslee rode. They had been curbed and scolded and kept in hand all morning; but to have a dragon leap at them from the cedar-trees was too much. They went frantic, dancing erect, and threshing the air with their fore hoofs. And then the tire exploded like a cannon, and they went mad. They feared nothing but what was behind them; nothing could hurt them but their terror.

They crashed through cedars and rhododendrons, and plunged across the lawn to the clear space of the golf-links. Forbes saw the demon look in the white eyes of Persis' horse. He had seen mustangs in that humor shake off their tormentors and tear them wolfishly with their fangs.

"He's got the bit in his teeth!" he groaned. "He'll kill her! My God, he'll kill her! She can't hold him! I've got to get him somehow."

He had a fierce impulse to meet the horse, leap at him, catch him by the bridle and the nose and smother him to a standstill. But Tait had seen a policeman killed trying to stop a horse so, and he flung his arms about Forbes.

"No, you won't!" he gasped. "You can't stop him! I won't let you risk your life--not for that woman."

"Let me go! Let me go!" Forbes pleaded, unwilling to use his strength against the old man. But Tait clung to him, seized him anew as Forbes wrenched his hand loose; fell to his knees, but still held fast and was dragged along, moaning:

"My boy, I love you like a son. You sha'n't risk your life--not for her!"

Then suddenly his clutch relaxed; his fingers opened; he rolled forward on his face, his white hair fluttering in the grass.

And Forbes, hardly knowing that he was released, felt himself free, and ran with all his might to intercept the plunging monster, who came snorting his rage, flinging his huge barrel this way and that, and shaking the white saliva from his mouth.

CHAPTER XXXV

Persis met equine wrath with female rage. The fiercer the horse plunged the harder she beat him with the crop, the more bloodthirstily she stabbed his sides with her keen-spurred heels. Her hair flung looser and looser, and at length set free her hat, and then shook out its own tortoise-shell moorings and flew to the winds. She sawed at the horse's head, stabbed him with the spurs, railed at him with shrill voice, and fought him as a Valkyr might have fought her charger panic-stricken at the noise of battle.

Even the old man, who lay on the ground clutching at his heart, could not but feel a thrill at the wild beauty of the girl; her long hair flowed and writhed smokily, her face was the more commandingly beautiful for the very merciless hate that fired it; her girlish body in her boyish costume was strangely alive. Her thighs gripped the horse's sides visibly like arches of steel. All this beauty Forbes saw also, and more, for he saw with the eyes of idolatry; and yet more again, for his beloved was in mortal danger. He ran in a frenzy of fear and determination. As he and the horses met on their converging paths Persis shrieked to him: "Keep away! Keep away!"

None the less he leaped for the bridle with both hands flung out. But she would not let him endanger himself. She threw all the power of both her arms and her weight on the farther bridle, dragging the horse's head aside till he swerved out of Forbes' reach.

Forbes sprawled on the turf; but at least he had not been struck by the hoofs or knees of the horse. And then the horse came down in turn, thrown out of his stride and with his head brought round so sharply that he came down on his shoulder and almost broke his neck.

Persis went through the air like a pinwheel, and those who witnessed the affair gave up her and the horse for dead. But she clung to the bridle, and got up on all fours. For once Persis was awkward. She and Forbes met and stared like quadrupeds, and the horse rolled over on his belly and stared too.

What had almost been a tragedy was turned to a farce by coincidence. If all the corpses in the last act of Hamlet should rise and stare at one another--as they do when the curtain is down--audiences might roar as the golfers and the club servants and members roared at this spectacle.

Willie, meanwhile, had vanished over the hill like the headless horseman Ten Eyck had likened him to.

After the first automatic recovery Persis was overtaken by a wave of terror she had had no time to feel. She turned ashen about the mouth, and a queasy feeling sickened her. Her elbows gave way, and she sank to the ground.

Senator Tait came up with difficulty, forgetting that he had been, perhaps, nearer death on that green battle-field than any other of the fallen. He heard Forbes wailing, as he gathered Persis into his arms and strengthened his own weak knees:

"Persis, my darling, my angel, speak to me! Are you dead?"

Persis opened her eyes with a flash. She began to realize that she had been very conspicuous. "Of course I'm not dead. But what's worse, my hair's down. I must be a sight! And my breeches are torn. Oh, Lord, why wasn't I killed romantically? Turn your backs at once."

The two men stared all the more, but she released herself from Forbes' arms, rose to her feet with some twinges of evident pain, and put up her hair with what few hairpins remained of her store, and borrowed a pin from the Senator's lapel to mend a rip that let one exquisite knee escape to view. A caddy came running up with her hat, and she thanked him.

"Come along," she said; "I feel as if I were on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House."

The horse got clumsily to his feet, all the battle knocked out of him, and followed weakly till she handed him over to a groom.

Eager to escape the stares that met her and the sympathy and felicitations that greeted her, she walked so rapidly that the Senator dropped back. She found herself alone with Forbes, and she murmured:

"You were wonderful to try to save me as you did."

"As I didn't," he groaned. "You wouldn't let me."

"No, I don't want you ever to risk anything for me, Harvey. But I'm just as grateful--and more than that. If there weren't so many people looking on do you know what I'd say?"

"What?"

"Kiss me." The words came so unexpectedly that he forgot their subjunctive mode. He took them to be in the imperative, and came near obeying. He checked himself in time, and said:

"How soon shall I be able to call you mine before all the world?"

"Do you wish that?"

"Madly! It is my one great wish."

She breathed deeply and caressed him with a delicious smile, and murmured:

"It is mine, too."

And then Ten Eyck and Winifred and Mrs. Neff and Alice, and others of her acquaintance, crowded round, summoned by the flying rumor of the incident. At length some one exclaimed:

"But where's Willie?"

"Good Lord," Persis gasped, "I forgot all about him."

Some one else who had been on the links described Willie's disappearance over the brow of the hill. He had been still attached to the horse when last heard from. But his prospects were reported to be poor.

By the time Persis had reached the club-house and had undergone the ministrations of a maid, who was also a seamstress, Willie came limping up on the terrace, where Persis was seated with the others.

"Oh, there you are, my dear," Willie drawled. "And not a bit hurt, not a hair turned, so far as I can make out, eh? And here I've been worrying myself sick over you--simply sick."

"Well, I'll go out and break a few bones if it would make you feel any easier," Persis answered. "But what happened to you? Where's your horse?"

"Well, I'll tell you. It was like this. You see, that beast I was on went galumphing up the hill playing the deuce with putting-greens, until he came to that big bunker at the top, you know--you know the one I mean--at the top there--the big bunker?"

"Yes, I know."

"Well, he refused it."

"What did you do?"

"I took it alone."

"Where's your horse?"

"I don't know. I hope to God he breaks a leg or rips himself open on barbed wire or something."

There was a vindictive ferocity in his voice that surprised Forbes.

The luncheon, which Ten Eyck had commanded, was announced just then, and they all adjourned to the dining-room. Forbes resented Enslee's habit of "my-dear"-ing Persis, but took solace from the thought that he should soon confound his rival with the news of his own triumph.

Suddenly, in his joy at being near to Persis, he remembered that he had neglected Senator Tait, after promising to meet his daughter. He did not venture to leave his own table; but as soon as the luncheon was eaten, and while Winifred and Mrs. Neff and Persis sneaked off somewhere for their after-coffee cigarettes, he sought out Tait and found him with a tall and self-reliant girl whom he introduced as Mildred.

Forbes made the usual remarks one makes to a little girl one meets again as a grown woman. She had indeed changed from the shy and leggy little minx to this robust, ample-bosomed bachelor girl with the sorrows of the world on her shoulders and pity and courage warring in her resolute eyes.

Recalling what the Senator had said of her appalling lore, Forbes was at some loss for words. He said, at last, the obvious thing, waving his hand toward the great park and the panorama of river and headland spread out beyond:

"Wonderful, isn't it?"

But Mildred, instead of an equally commonplace answer, sighed: "I suppose it is, but I--somehow I can't take much pleasure in beautiful things like these. I keep thinking how the poor kiddies and their worn-out mothers in the tenements would love to see it--and never will. And when I think how much money it costs to build and keep up this place I can't help saying to myself: 'How many loaves of bread this would buy for hungry waifs! how many pairs of shoes! how many lives it could save!' I see this big lawn all overrun with little newsboys and factory-girls and sick men and women."

Senator Tait shrugged his shoulders and smiled at Forbes.

"Isn't she hopeless?"

"She's very splendid," Forbes said, with admiration and also a little awe. The father felt this in Forbes' manner, and it strengthened his resolution to rescue his daughter from her rescue work.

Mildred had not yet learned the exact point where nobility becomes offensive because it is too consistent and too insistent. She had not yet learned that charity, like art, must conceal itself, and that grandeur of soul unchecked by tact provokes only resentment.

But she was young and radiant with unfocused love, and she had seen too much wretchedness. The people whose miseries she relieved did not resent her, but adored her. She was tactful enough with them.

Forbes was ashamed of himself for feeling a little chilled by Mildred's irrepressible enthusiasm for sorrow. He blamed himself, not her. But when Persis returned he thanked heaven for beauty untroubled by any deeper concerns than its own loveliness, and for a heart that inspired desire for itself rather than pity for the submerged myriads.

He bade the Senator and his daughter as cordial a good-by as he could, and promised to meet the Senator as soon as possible in town. Then he forgot them both, for when Enslee's automobile swept up to the club-house door, Enslee's two horses were also brought up, and he imagined Persis riding away again on that dangerous beast with that dangerous escort.

Enslee stared at the horses in disgust. "There are those brutes of mine, and not a bit hurt, either--worse luck. I'll have 'em both sold to somebody who'll work 'em hard and beat 'em harder."

"You'll do nothing of the sort," said Persis. "If you don't want them I'll take them."

"And get your neck broken, eh?" Enslee snarled. "Oh no, you won't. Look at that beast! I'll have his throat cut for him."

There was something in his voice like the edge of a knife, and it made Forbes' blood run cold. Enslee had unsuspected streaks of viciousness. But Persis was used to this quality of his nature, and it did not alarm her. When he said, "Hop into the car, Persis; I'll send a groom over for the nags," Persis shook her head, and answered:

"I propose to show my horse who is master. He can't spill me all over the landscape and get away with it. You ride home in the car, and I'll go back as I came."

"And a pretty fool you'll make of me," Enslee wrangled. "Besides, I haven't ridden much lately; I'm saddle-sore."

"I've been riding every morning in the Park," Persis insisted. "I'll lead your horse back, unless--" She hesitated and looked at Forbes, who leaped at the cue.

"I'd be glad to ride him, if you don't object, Mr. Enslee."

Enslee stared at Forbes, saw nothing ulterior in his eyes, and yielded with a bad grace.

"Oh, all right. Go ahead. Only don't sue me for damages if you get pitched under an auto."

"I won't," Forbes laughed, elated beyond belief by the unimaginable luck of riding at Persis' stirrup for miles and miles.

And so they mounted. Persis' horse was humbled beyond struggle; but Enslee's big black had lately tossed his rider over his head. He tested the seat of his new visitor. Forbes was a West-Pointer, a cavalryman, and the horse had not made more than one pirouette before he understood that he was bestridden by one whom it was best to obey.

Willie tried at first to keep the motor back with the horses, but Persis ordered him to go about his business, and turned off the hard track to a soft road.

And now at last they were free, Forbes and Persis, cantering along a plushy road, a lovers' lane that mounted up and up till they paused at the height to give the horses breath.

Back of them the Hudson spread its august flood between mountainous walls. Before them the road dipped into the deep forest seas of Sleepy Hollow.

CHAPTER XXXVI

"Is it possible that we're actually alone?" Forbes gloated, turning in his saddle to take her in in her brisk, youthful beauty.

"I shouldn't exactly call it alone up here on the mantelpiece of the world in broad daylight," Persis smiled. "But it's nice, isn't it?"

"Wonderful, to be riding with you!"

"I'm immensely happy," she said. "Even the horses know the difference. This morning they hated each other. They wouldn't trot in rhythm or alongside, and they fought like snapping-turtles. Now look at them nuzzle and flirt. Ouch! that's my game knee you're colliding with. It would be better if I rode side-saddle. There were advantages in old-fashioned ways. You ride splendidly, don't you?"

"Do I?" he said. "As you told me the first time I met you, I'm glad you like me."

"I more than that, now."

"More than like me?"

"Umm-humm!"

"Love me?"

"Umm-humm!"

"If I could only brush away all of these houses and people and take you in my arms! If this were only a Sahara or Mojave!"

"I doubt if there's a desert where nobody is peeking. They used to tell me that God was looking when no one else was."

"Well, He would understand."

"Maybe He would see too much. But the human beings don't understand. And they're everywhere. Oh, Lord, I'm so sick of other people's eyes and ears. All my life I've had them on me--servants', nurses', maids', waiters', grooms', footmen's! Sometimes I think I'd love to live on a desert island. Couldn't you buy me a desert island somewhere--a thoroughly equipped desert island with hot and cold water and automatic cooking?"

"I'll see if there's one in the market."

"It would be a fine addition to the same old town and country house and yacht. Had you thought where you will have your--our country place?"

"Er--no, I hadn't."

"Shall you have to be at your post much? Are the office-hours very strict?"

"Pretty strict. We'd have to live on Governor's Island, you know."

"Really? In one of those little houses?" He nodded. "I saw them there once when they gave a lawn fete. I never dreamed I'd live in one of them. They aren't very commodious, are they?"

"That depends."

"Nichette--she's my maid--would make an awful row, and my chauffeur--I suppose we could keep him? He expects to marry Nichette."

"Does he?"

"If they can stop fighting long enough to get married. Does a garage go with the house we should occupy there?"

"I doubt it."

"No garage!" she exclaimed. "How should we manage? It's rather awkward getting to the Island, too, as I remember--a ferry or something. I don't suppose you could arrange to live up-town and do your army work by telephone on rainy days?"

"I'm afraid not."

His heart was thumping. She grew more exquisite as she grew more fairy-like in her visions. He could not tell her the truth--not yet--not, at least, till they had passed through the woods ahead, where there was a promise of opportunity for at least a moment's embrace, at least one hasty kiss.

They jogged on in silence awhile, she pondering like a solemn child, he longing to give her the toys she kept imagining. They drew into the thicket, shady and soft with a breeze that wandered about murmuring "Woo! woo!" and leaves that whispered "Kiss! kiss!" and a deep forest voice that mumbled "Love!"

No one was visible ahead. He turned and stared back. They were shut in by a projecting hill that seemed to close after them like a door. He leaned sidewise with arm outstretched to enfold her waist. But with a quick lift of her hand and a scratch of the spur she carried her horse aside and ahead.

"You mustn't!" she warned. "Really!"

"But no one can see us."

"So we thought in the dark hall. And there was some one there. Do you know who it was?"

"I haven't been able to find out."

"I have!" She spoke triumphantly.

"Who was it, in Heaven's name?"

"Who would be your last guess?"

"Enslee."

"Why?"

"Because he smiled; because he let me ride with you."

"That shows how much a man's reasoning power is worth. That was just who it was."

"Why do you think so?"

"I know so. He told me."

Forbes was dazed; he marveled aloud: "And yet he smiled? He let me ride with you?"

She laughed. "Willie is such an idiot! He knew it was you; but he never dreamed that the woman was me. He thought the woman was Mrs. Neff or Winifred. That's why he smiled at you."

Forbes chuckled a moment, then flushed, as Persis went on:

"He could only hear our whispers, you know, and you can't distinguish whispers. He thought it was a great joke. He laughed his head off. And I laughed too. It was delicious. It came near being serious, though. What do you suppose? He heard the door open below and thought it was a burglar. He had a revolver and a flashlight. The flash wouldn't work--thank the Lord! So he was going to shoot first and then call, 'Who's there!' That would have been nice, wouldn't it? Then he heard our--our kisses. He didn't shoot. He kept quiet, smothering his snickers. He could only judge by the closing of the door who was who. He recognized your door, and he got mine mixed. But you're not laughing."

"It doesn't seem very funny to me," Forbes admitted. "My love for you is no joke. I don't enjoy sneaking about in dark halls and having you mistaken for some other woman."

She stared at him, and her mischief turned to a deep tenderness. She rode closer and put her free hand on his bridle-hand. "How right you are! That's the way I want you to feel, the way I want you to love me." And then she laughed again. "What do you suppose Willie told me? To-night he's going to wait till you sneak out with your lady bird, and then he's going to lock the door and make you beg for admission. That'll be nice, eh?"

"That means I can't be with you to-night."

"It seems so."

"And you won't let me kiss you now?"

"But we couldn't go spooning about in the daylight, could we? Not even if we were an old married couple, could we?"

"I suppose not. But when--when are we going to be an old married couple?"

"Whenever you say," she said, with a shy down-look. "We'd have to announce our engagement, I suppose, and then it would take a long time to get my clothes made."

"Would it?"

"Yes. I haven't a thing. I'm in perfect rags. And besides, a bride ought to begin new. Isn't it thrilling to be talking of such things! Am I blushing as red as I feel?"

"You're like a rose on fire."

"I feel deliciously a ninny. Can you get away from your hateful army for a good long honeymoon, do you suppose?"

"I don't know. Where would you like to go?"

"The Riviera isn't bad. A trip around the world would be pleasant."

"Wouldn't it!" he groaned. "But I'm afraid I couldn't."

"I suppose the country would be afraid to let you get so far away, with all this talk about trouble with the Mexicans. Oh, well, it doesn't matter so long as we are together, does it?"

"Do you feel that way?" he asked, hungrily.

"Terribly. I love you--I love you hideously much. Watch out! Will you never learn that somebody's always looking?--a whole picnic this time."

They were nearing Pocantico Lake. In a thicket on its shores a wagon-load of villagers had finished its basket-lunch and scattered in a rather dreary effort at inexpensive happiness.

Among the trees the wagon waited pitifully to take them back from their dingy cheer to their dull homes. It was rendered only the more pitiful by a strip of red-white-and-blue bunting. A coat of paint would have become it better.

While the horses cropped the grass soberly a pack of substantial wives cleared away such part of the debris of the banquet as was not scattered about the ground.

As Forbes and Persis rounded the turn that disclosed the revelers a homely couple evidently in search of a less populous nook severed a highly unromantic-looking clasp. It was hard to see how either took much pleasure from the other. The man was in his shirt-sleeves, with his hat askew; the girl, shapeless and freckled, in a shapeless freckled dress. They squinted their eyes against the sun, gaped at the tailor-made couple on the varnished horses, and stumbled in the roadside gully to let them pass.

"Isn't it ghastly?" Persis whispered. "They were trying to spoon--just as we were. And we both broke up both of us. It makes love rather a silly, shabby spectacle, doesn't it?"

"I don't think so," Forbes said. "I should say that instead of their making love shabby, love covered them with a little glory."

"That's a much prettier way to put it. But shabby people--oh Lord! Look at that family, dear! If that's wedded bliss, give me chloroform."

It was a doleful exhibit on the edge of the woods: a fat, paunchy, sweaty man was taking his picnic in carrying a squally, messy baby. Alongside him a bunchy woman with stringy hair waddled in answering stupidity, hanging to her husband's suspenders.

"You can't tell which of them's going to have the next one," Persis commented, before she caught herself. "Forgive me, I didn't realize how it would sound."

Forbes laughed sheepishly. "It was what I was thinking, too."

As they rode on she shuddered. "What an odious thing to be like that! Suppose you lost your job in the army and we got very poor, and I had to take in washing, and we had a lot of children; should we be like that, do you think?--should we?"

"You could never be anything that was not beautiful!" Forbes exclaimed, partly because he believed it to be unquestionable truth and partly to quell her ferocious repugnance for anything that was ugly and tawdry.

"Perhaps that awful man told that awful woman the same thing," she groaned, "and believed it! Come on; let's run away from it." She lifted her horse to a gallop and fled so fast that Forbes, for all the authority and help he gave his horse, could not overtake her, since hers was the better mount. As he followed, lumbering and scolding his black beast, he felt that she was indeed too fleet, too elusive for him ever to capture and keep.

But at length she relented, and reined in till he came abeam. Then she urged her horse on again, and they galloped in the mad swoop of a cavalry charge with boots griding together. She forgot her wounded knee, and he forgot his doubts of her.

There were narrow escapes, unexpected swerves round loitering wagons or deliberate wayfarers. Once she rode up a shelving bank to give him room to avoid a mangy canine landlord so earnestly attempting to evict a family of tenants from his left ear that he paid no heed to the risk of his own life or hers.

"If we ride fast on levels, we can take more time later," she said; "then they won't wonder at our being so late."

She was always thinking of what other people would think. He wished that she would forget the eternal audience, the unbroken spectators, now and then. And yet it was intelligent. It was wise. Only he loved her more when she was uttering those childish plans of hers for a life in which the funds were to be taken from a fairy purse automatically replenished as fast as it was depleted.

Yet he feared both of the women she was: the cautious and forethoughtful who might in all wisdom refuse his penury, and the spoiled demander who might resent it.

They trotted now into a park-like domain with roads branching out on either side. At the edge of each of them stood a sign-board warning against trespass and signed with the resounding name of the richest man on earth.

"They say he's worth a hundred or two hundred million dollars," Persis called across to Forbes.

"That ought to be enough," said Forbes. "It's more than we shall have." And he smiled at the comparison. Persis sighed:

"If he could lend us just one million for a few years we could make good use of it."

"I might ask him," said Forbes. "I'll send a boy over for it to-night."

He said it lightly, yet there was a sardonic bitterness in his smile. He understood for the moment why the established poor become so eager to take away from men who were once poor the wealth they have somehow amassed.

It seemed to Forbes that he would never reach the limit of this man's acres. But at last he escaped from the oppression of some one else's success. They cantered through a little village, and crossed rusty railroad-tracks into another ocean of sparsely settled country. It amazed Forbes to find so much wilderness so close to so vast a metropolis. There were long stretches where the woods on either side had a look of the primeval. He felt a longing to explore some of these leafy jungles. He told her his whim, and it was hers.

By and by they came to a grass-matted road that lost itself in ferns and undergrowth. Forbes looked at Persis. Her eyes consented. He laid his bridle-hand on the left side of his horse's mane and shifted his weight a trifle. And his horse shouldered hers into the jungle. Heads bent low, the horses mounted with cautious hoofs till the ferns were brushing their saddle-girths. The prattle of a brook somewhere lured them farther, and they pressed on into a fog of leaves and crackling boughs and flowers. Birds cried warnings and shot through the branches, bearing news of the invasion. Others in sentimental oblivion did not budge, but sat still and went on sawing the air with silver phrases shrilly sweet.

Suddenly the brook was visible, rushing here and there through the woods and making noises that were rapture just to hear. And with that music of water and woods, and that multitudinous beauty about them, they gazed only into each other's eyes, inclined together, and locked arms and breasts and lips in close embrace. They clung together till the soulless horses, nibbling here and there, sundered them.

And then they slid from the saddles and, slipping the bridles to their elbows, walked on with arms about each other's bodies and eyes so mutually engaged that they stumbled like blind folk. At last she sank to the ground at the edge of the brook, and he, instead of helping her up, dropped down at her side.

He took her into his arms again and kissed her and laughed at her.

"I reckon you'll warn me now that the horses are looking."

"No," she said; "but one of them is standing on one of my coat-tails."

So he rose and led the horses to a tree a few paces off and tied them there. When he came back he found her swinging her little boots over a still pool in an alcove of the brook. Its quiet surface mirrored her feet from beneath quaintly. "We're at the antipodes already," he laughed. She put out her hand beggingly.

"It's secluded enough for a smoke. Can you give me a cigarette? I forgot mine." He had nothing but a cigar, and she ventured a puff or two of that, then gave it back and sighed, "I wish we were married and all."

"Why?"

"I'd take off my boots and dip my poor aching feet in that water."

"Why don't you?"

"In the first place, I don't know you well enough to go barefoot before you. In the second, somebody would be sure to come along."

[Illustration: "THERE'S THAT OTHER ME DOWN IN THE POOL, WATCHING THIS ME"]

"Not here," he urged.

"Well, then, there's that other Me down in the pool watching this Me, and saying, 'Don't make a fool of yourself, honey.'"

"There are two Persises, then?"

"At least a hundred. But there's one down there. Look, you can see her yourself!"

She knelt above the water-glass, and he bent over to gaze. He saw her looking up at him, and his own image looking up close to hers. They smiled and made faces like children. And when he rubbed his cheek against hers the images imitated the foolishness.

"See, they're mocking us," she said. A little breeze wrinkled the mirror, and she cried: "They're frowning! They want us to be sensible! Come along! They'll be missing us at home."

"At home?" he echoed, reprovingly.

"At Willie's, I mean," she corrected. And then she put his hands away and spoke earnestly. "It came mighty near being home to me. I have a confession to make. I ought to have made it before. I have been amazed at myself for not telling you, for taking your love when I had no right to."

He stared at her in terror, and she smiled with pride at his fear and babbled on almost incoherently.

"Don't be afraid--though I'm glad you are. But I hope you won't despise me. But I couldn't seem to help myself. You're really to blame for being so terribly overwhelming. You see, I--I--I've told you how often Willie Enslee proposed to me, and--well, one day--that very day you saw me in my old hat--the first time, you know--well, I had just had a talk with my father, and the poor old boy was all cut up about his--his money matters. He's too nice and sweet to be much of a financier, you know, and--well, I was scared to death, and I thought the world was coming to an end, and I'd better--better get aboard the ark, you know--and I hadn't met you then, you know, and Willie proposed again, and I--I accepted him."

"You promised to be his wife!" Forbes whispered, chokingly.

"Yes," she answered. "I--you see, I didn't know you. I didn't dream I should ever meet anybody who would--would thrill me--that's the only word--as you did, as you do. I didn't imagine that I should ever love as other people do--insanely, madly, dishonorably--anythingly to be with the one I loved. And I didn't dare give up Willie till I was sure I loved you, and when I was sure I loved you, I--it seemed so hateful even to mention his name. It would have been like--like this."

With her heel she pushed a rock into the water, and it thumped and splashed and curdled the little pool.

"That's the effect his name would have had on our moonlight, and I couldn't tell you then. Will you forgive me, or do you think I'm a hopeless rotter and a sneak?"

He smiled at her mixed vocabulary, and gathered her into his arms. "My love! My Persis! But you'll tell him now, won't you?"

"Oh, now, yes!" she cried, ecstatic as a comforted child. "You are glorious to forgive me so easily, and not be nasty and lecture-y. And see the pool; it's all smooth and clear again."

He looked, and held back the confession he was about to make in his turn. The mention of his poverty would be pushing another rock into the pool. And he wondered if the mirror would clear after that. He could forgive her her betrothal to Enslee because that was of the past; but the lack of money was not a matter for forgiving and forgetting; it was something to endure. It was asking love to accept poverty as a concubine or a mother-in-law.

He kept silent on that score, and they murmured their loves and kissed and laughed with contentedness purling through their hearts, and the world far away. She glanced back at the horses blissfully tearing young leaves from high branches.

"We ought to keep those horses as a souvenir of our engagement. It would be a pity to let any one else ride the dear old brutes, wouldn't it?"

"It would, indeed!" he said.

"Let's buy them from Willie. He would sell them for a song."

"That's a fine idea," Forbes answered, with a gulp. He knew how much horses like these were worth--and saddles, bridles, and stables.

"We shouldn't want to ride in a car all the time, should we?" she asked.

"No, indeed," he answered. She was at her fairy plans again, and his heart sickened.

"We mustn't let ourselves get fat. Of all things we must avoid that," she said. "We might have just a little car like Winifred's--to hold only two. I could drive down and get you and bring you home. It would save wear on our limousine--or perhaps we won't get a limousine just yet. If we didn't have a big car it would be a good excuse for not having a lot of people tagging round with us everywhere, wouldn't it? I feel an awful longing for a lot of solitude with just you and me. I suppose we'll have to put up with the United States army. But I want to shake the gang I've been running with--at least for a year or so, till you and I can get acquainted. Will you buy me a little car like Winifred's--a good one? There's no use wasting money on the cheap kind. The good little ones cost as much as the good big ones; but once they're paid for, they don't run up repair bills, and they take you where you're going instead of dying under you half-way there. Will you buy me a little car for just us? You can get a darling for about twenty-five hundred; I was asking Winifred."

He made no answer. She turned and looked at him and saw on his face the look she had seen on her father's that day--the look a man wears when he cannot buy his beloved what she pleads for. Now, as then, Persis felt ashamed rather than resentful, and she hastened to add:

"If you can't afford it, old boy, say so. You mustn't mind me. My father says I'm a terrible asker. Just say No, and I won't mind. Promise me that, dear. I want to be a good economical housewife to you; and I was only thinking that if we had a little car it would save taking the big car out, and that saves tires and gasolene and general upkeep."

He heard Enslee's words, "It's the upkeep that costs," and they mocked him again. He realized that in persuading this girl to choose him instead of Enslee, who had already chosen her, he was not only robbing her of a yacht, a palace, two or three palaces, half a dozen automobiles, servants, and servants of servants, foreign travel and foreign clothes and jewels--he was not only robbing her of such things, but he was asking her to learn a new way of life, a habit of infinite denial, eternal economy, and meager amusement.

Experience and common sense--for he had them in large measure in his ordinary life--seemed to bend down and say: "Let your sea-gull go. She'll die in your cage, or she'll break it apart."

But she was in his arms. She was leaning against him, flicking his boots with her riding-crop, and loving him, contented utterly. Romance elbowed Reason aside and said: "See how happy she is. It isn't money that makes happiness. You're sitting on the edge of a silly little brook in somebody's backwoods, and you're happy as a king and queen on a throne of gold."

Common Sense grinned: "Suppose it should rain? This is all very well for a while, but what of next winter?"

Reason and Romance wrangled in his head while she was babbling something in her elfin economy about, "So we won't have two cars yet, just one, a nice big 1913 six, with my chauffeur to run it. Father pays him fifteen hundred a year, and that's good pay. Don't you let him wheedle you out of a penny more."

Forbes' heart cried aloud within him: "My God! her very chauffeur gets nearly as much as I do!" This was the spark of resentment that gave him his start. He spoke bitterly, almost glad that she was dazed. And he put her away from him that both might be free. And he savagely kicked a rock into the smiling little pool and watched it grow turbid as he poured out his confession.

"Listen, honey; you've got a wrong idea of my situation. I'm to blame for it, I reckon. I've been meaning to speak about it, but I didn't--for just the same reason that kept you quiet about Enslee. I'm not rich, honey. I didn't tell anybody I was rich, but the idea got started from Ten Eyck's fool joke about seeing me coming out of a big bank. I told him the truth, and now I must tell you. You'll hate me, but you've got to know some time. I'm not rich, honey."

"What of it, dear?" she said, creeping toward him. "I love you for yourself. I never thought you were rich like Willie. I gave up all that gladly."

"But I'm what you would call--a pauper, I suppose. I have only my army pay."

"Isn't that enough?"

"Plenty of couples seem to be happy on it, but they're mostly the sons and daughters of army people. You've been brought up so differently. Wild extravagances for our people would be shabby makeshifts to you."

"Don't you think I'd be able to adapt myself?"

"Would you?"

"I should hope so. How much is your army pay, if you don't mind my asking?"

"As first lieutenant I get a little over two thousand."

"Two thousand a week? Why, that's not bad at all. Why did you frighten me?"

He laughed aloud, and she corrected herself.

"Oh, two thousand a month. That's about twenty-five thousand a year. It isn't much, is it? But we could skimp and scrape, and we'd have each other."

She had given him his death-blow unwittingly.

He smiled dismally, and groaned:

"Two thousand a year with forage."

She stared at him in unbelief. "Two thousand a year with forage! We couldn't eat the forage, could we? They give you a pittance like that for being an officer and a gentleman and a hero?"

"The hero business is the worst paid of all. Look at the firemen."

"But, my dear, two thousand a--why, our chef gets more than that, and our chauffeur nearly as much; and my father's secretary--everybody gets more than that."

"Not everybody. The vast majority of people get much less. But that's what I get."

She had been prepared for self-denial, but this was self-obliteration. If he had told her that he had the yellow fever she could hardly have felt sorrier for him, or more appalled at the prospect of their union. She loved him, perhaps, the more for the pity that welled up in her. She denounced the government for a miser.

"We're better paid than other armies," said Forbes. "Officers in foreign armies are supposed to have private fortunes."

"I don't wonder," she gasped. "And you haven't any?" He shook his head. "No relatives?"

"None that aren't poorer than I am."

She put out her hand and caressed his brow. "Poor boy, it's cruel, it's hateful! Willie Enslee with all that money, and you with two thousand a year! And no prospects for more?"

"Well, I hope to be promoted captain very shortly--any day now I should get my commission. That carries with it twenty-four hundred a year."

She sighed. "The little car I wanted would cost more than that. Well, let it go. Walking is healthier. It would save the chauffeur's wages, too. And my maid--I don't know what Nichette would say. But--well, let her go. Let everything go but you."

She clasped her arms round him, and he clutched her tight; but his embrace was like a farewell. She was infinitely pathetic to him. She had so much sophistication, and was so innocent of so much. She kissed him tenderly, but her mood was an elegy.

"That knocks out my wedding plans, too, doesn't it? It was the dream of all my life, the ambition of all my girlhood." And she fell to musing aloud. "Many's the night I've lain awake planning that wedding, and that divine wedding-gown all of ivory satin--with a train a mile long, and with point lace like whipped cream all over it, and the veil floating in a cloud about me. And I was to have counts and barons and things for ushers, and the belles of the season for bridesmaids--all very envious of me. And the cathedral was to be one ocean of flowers and silk ribbons, and--and I was to have at least an archbishop to marry me. And the presents! Oh, they were to have been so glorious that everybody that gave them would be bankrupted for life and hate me; and there were to be no duplicates. And the bridegroom was to be so wealthy that all the bridesmaids would loathe me for winning him. And we were to go away in a private car to a palace built brand new just for me."

He was so fascinated with watching her soul in debate with itself that he did not speak. He just held her fast and listened. She went on:

"It was a silly dream. It's not the ceremony that counts--it's the long life after. Love's the main thing, isn't it?"

He lifted her gauntleted hand to his cheek and said nothing. She was silent a long while. Then she pondered aloud again: "I wonder what sort of a poor man's wife I'll make. I'm afraid I'll be an awful failure. You know, we were poor once--yes. My father got squeezed in a corner, and nearly went bankrupt. Oh, but mother and I had to skimp and scrape! I had to turn my old gowns, give up our box at the opera, sell my saddle-horses. We couldn't go to dinners or receptions because we couldn't return them. We sat at home and received--indignant creditors. Oh, the bills, the bills--my God, the bills!

"At the end of a year father found a man who was unbusinesslike enough to put him on his feet again. It was Willie Enslee, of course. We had money once more; we could hold our heads high, snub those who snubbed us, get even with those who had patronized us, or--ugh! insulted us with their sympathy. Oh, money is a great thing, isn't it? It was like coming out of a cave again into the sunlight. I used to say I would face anything rather than poverty again.

"And think of it, Harvey, when we were at our poorest we were spending thirty or forty thousand a year. And we called it poverty. But you and I--two thousand a year--and forage!

"Why, Harvey, it would take you a year and a half of work to pay for the little car I wanted--if we did without a big car and didn't spend a cent on clothes or theaters or the opera or taxies or the seaside or Europe or entertaining people or servants' wages, and--and ate only the forage. We couldn't have a chauffeur. I couldn't have my maid. I couldn't have any friends--what should I do? I couldn't have anything! Those two horses I wanted would cost a year of your salary. My dressmaker's bills are four or five times as much, and at that I never have anything to wear. Why, Harvey, it's frightful! I never knew what money meant before. I don't see how we could ever manage it. I don't see how."

She put his arms away as if they irked her and hampered her breath. She was breathing hard. Merely to imagine a life devoid of everything she had always found about her was like a suffocation. She was understanding how a fish must feel when it is drawn from the water and flung to stifle on dry pebbles. She suffered such dismay as overwhelms a rat in the bell of an air-pump when the experimenter begins to create a vacuum.

She had seen poverty and its wreckage, and her mind was filled with pictures, not from the charming homes of moderate means, but from the slums that she had visited once and avoided thereafter as a nightmare. She had had friends who had gone into bankruptcy and slunk off into obscurity to hide its penalties. One very dear woman, whose husband lapsed from affluence to mediocrity, had written a few little notes, calmly taken an overdose of a headache powder, stretched herself out on her mortgaged chaise-longue and fallen asleep over an unusually sedative novel. Persis had received one of the notes.

Good-by, Persis dear. You know the situation, and you at least will understand. Would it be too much trouble for you to have a little talk with the undertaker man and have things as nicely managed as possible? Don't let them treat me too shabbily, will you? I couldn't rest easily even There. You understand, don't you?

Persis had understood, and, being in funds at the time, had seen all conducted with taste and even with a little splendor.

* * * * *

To every one his or her especial cowardice. Persis, so brave in so many ways, was afraid of creepy things like caterpillars and creditors and poverty. They spoiled for her everything that they touched, flower or ceremony or future.

She was silent a long while. Forbes longingly set his arms about her; but she did not respond; her hands were idly rolling her riding-crop up and down the shin of her boot, for she was thinking hard.

Forbes felt that he clung to the mere clothes of her soul. Herself was already gone from him. Yet he loved her so that he found her not unworthy nor selfish nor craven, but infinitely precious and beautiful, difficult to win and wear.

A great many shining throngs of water went down the brook, making all the conversation there was, before Persis began to flog her boots with her riding-crop. She wanted to groan, but as was her custom in torment, smiled instead; and, having something of tragic solemnity to utter, put it forth with a plucky flippancy:

"Well, old boy, I'm afraid all bets are off."

CHAPTER XXXVII

Forbes had been recruiting strength to tell her that he released her; but she anticipated him by jilting him first--and in sporting terms. He stared at her, but he could not see the tears raining down in her heart. He heard her, but was deaf to the immense regret in the little words she added:

"You're pretty poor, aren't you?"

His very forehead was drenched with red shame at such comment from her. She could see how she had hurt his pride, and she put on the solemnity he expected her to wear.

"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Harvey, I implore you! I love you all the more for being just your glorious self. You've paid me the greatest honor I ever had--or shall have. You asked me to be your wife, and you are willing to divide up your pitiful little income with me. You'd give it all to me. You'd run into debt till you smothered. But it wouldn't work out. Mother was right: 'People can do without love easier than without money.'"

"Not people with hearts like yours," he ventured at last to put in as a feeble objection.

"Oh, I'm afraid of this heart of mine," she answered. "If it had any sense it wouldn't have fallen in love with you--you of all men. I knew you weren't really terribly rich, but I didn't think you were so pitifully, cruelly poor."

The epithet reiterated stung him like a whip in the face. He protested impatiently:

"I'm not really poor. Army officers have many ways of saving expenses. I might not give you princely luxuries, Persis, but I'd make your life happy."

His resistance gave her something to fight, and her resentment at fate welcomed it.

"Me happy at an army post? With nothing but poker for you and gossip for me? No, thank you!"

She caught a twitch of anger in his brows, and she grew harsher:

"Look here! Would you give up your career for me?"

"A woman can't ask a man to give up his career," he answered; and she retorted with the spirit of her time:

"Then why should she give up hers for him?"

He looked an old-fashioned surprise. "And have you a career?"

"Of course I have. Every woman has; and nowadays a woman has got to look out for herself and her future, or she'll get left at the post."

"And what career have you?" he asked, amazed.

"Marriage. It's the average woman's main business in life, Harvey. If she fails in that she fails in everything."

"Then you think the poor have no right to marry?"

"Oh no, I'm not such a fool as that. There are people with simple tastes who can be happy on nothing a year--sweet domestic women who love to manage and cook and sweep and mend and sew. There are lots of unhappy rich women who would be thoroughly contented if they were the wives of laboring-men. But that doesn't happen to be my type. I can't help it. I grow positively sick at the sight of a needle. Even fancy stitching hurts my eyes. And I can't help that. There are lots of poor women who are making their homes hells because they have no money. They'd be angels if they didn't have to economize. Some people, rich and poor, take a sensuous delight in watching a bank account grow, and they get more thrill out of saving a penny than out of getting something more beautiful for it.

"But I'm not one of those. I'm a squanderer by nature. I hate to be denied things. I loathe counting the cost of things. I can't endure to see some one else wearing better things than I've got on. I want to throttle a woman who has a later hat than mine. Oh, I may be a bad one, Harvey, but it isn't my fault. I am what I was born to be. I've got to marry money, Harvey. I've just got to."

He cried out against her self-portrait as a libel. "Oh, Persis, don't tell me that you are mercenary--a woman with a big heart like yours."

"I'm not mercenary exactly; I loathe money as money, but I like nice things. I have to have them. I'm trying to be honest with myself and with you--in time--before it's too late. It's hard; but I didn't arrange the world, did I? I didn't choose my own soul, did I? But I've got to get along with what was given me, haven't I? I tell you I'd ruin your life, Harvey. You'd divorce me in a year."

"Don't talk like that, or you will ruin your own life! There's a big tragedy in store for you, Persis, unless you--"

She was so tortured with disillusion and with the death of her first romance that she grew very hard.

"Well, so long as it isn't the tragedy of being unable to pay my bills and of eating my own cooking I can stand it. I'd rather be unhappy than shabby. But it's growing late; we must get back."

He aided her to her feet, untied the horses, and offered her his hand for a mounting-block. But she said:

"We can walk quicker here than we can ride." Taking her bridle in her arm, she set out swiftly. She seemed once more to be running away from something--a shadow of poverty, no doubt. He felt unspeakably sorry for her. Again he was about to offer her back her heart when an abrupt light broke over her face. She paused, laughed, turned to him.

"What a fool I am! My father set my sister up in business as a British peeress and bought her her husband and settled a whacking dower on her. He can do the same for me and keep the money in this country--and get me a real husband. He could give me enough for us both to live on comfortably."

"I reckon I could hardly accept that arrangement," Forbes said, as gently as he might.

"You see!" she cried out. "You expect me to murder my pride and accept poverty, but you won't accept wealth because you must keep your pride. You couldn't object to my having the money to spend on myself, could you?"

"No, I could hardly object to that," he said.

"Well, then, if everything goes right with my father's plans we'll have love and money and all. It will be wonderful--heaven on earth! Kiss me!"

She put up her lips, and he kissed them and found them bitter-sweet. Then she strode on with a lilting joy, humming a song and putting her horse to his paces to keep up with her. Forbes remembered what Senator Tait had said of her father's impending doom, and her rapture was a heartbreak to him--a final irony.

As they issued from the green cave of the forest and walked down to the State Road to take the saddle, a motor came along. Two men were in it. The driver stopped the car in front of Persis, and the other man lifted his hat. It disclosed a shock of brindle hair and half of one eyebrow gone.

"Can you tell me if this road leads to Briarcliff?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so," Persis answered.

"Thank you, Miss Cabot," he called out, as the car whirred away.

Persis stared after him in amazement. "Now who was that? How did he know my name?"

"By your pictures in the papers," Forbes suggested.

"No," said Persis; "I've met him somewhere. Oh, I know. He's a reporter on the--some paper. Lord, I hope he didn't misconstrue our being here. I didn't like the grin on his face."

CHAPTER XXXVIII

The reporter's fleering smile and his acidulous "Thank you, Miss Cabot," convinced Persis that the man had, with the sophistication reporters learn too well, put the worst possible interpretation on her forest promenade with Forbes. This was all that it needed to turn her disappointment into dismay, her bewilderment into panic. She had lost rhythm with her life and the world.

She thrust one boot into its stirrup, swung the other across the saddle, and jerked her horse's head impatiently. Her temper threw his motor machinery out of gear, and he found himself with at least two too many feet. He bolted and sidled in a ragged syncopated gait, snorting and flinging his head angrily. She could not get him into meter with himself or her, or with the horse that Forbes brought clattering alongside.

At first she had felt infinitely sorry for Forbes and indignant only at the fate that made him poor. As she rode her fretful horse she began to feel infinitely sorry for herself and indignant at Forbes. He had permitted her to think that he had ample means. He had encouraged her to love him seriously. Her resentment was the fierce resentment people feel when those they love and idealize do not live up to the standards set for them.

Forbes had come into her life like a bull sauntering into a china shop. A moment before his entrance everything was arranged, orderly, exquisite, and formal--a little cold, perhaps, but charmingly definite. Now everything was crashing about her. She must walk warily among the fragments or she would suffer.

Persis was an orderly soul, and had not suspected that she was also a passionate one. She was more like Forbes than either of them understood. For all the deep intensity of his nature, training had made him first the soldier. In battle he was the fiery warrior; but battles were infrequent, and almost all his days had been spent in acquiring and instilling precision, exactness in the manual of arms, rectitude in the lines of drill formations, perfection in uniform and equipment, in the company books and reports--everywhere.

So Persis had acquired from infancy the rituals of household service, the proprieties and their observance, the arrangement of ceremonies, social book-keeping. And now she was discovering what a disorganizer love is, what an anarch among plans, what a smasher of china.

Before the advent of Forbes she had almost given up the expectation of love. Then out of nothing the fates evoked this man. If he had confessed even a pittance of twenty-five thousand a year, that would have meant at worst "love in a cottage"--cottage being an elastic word. Friends of hers owned cottages of palatial dimensions. But two thousand a year--with a prospect of twenty-four hundred a year! She simply could not imagine it.

She tried to mask her anger under an unusually cheerful manner. She spoke with approval of the landscape, chattered vivaciously about everything, and all the while was burning with resentment. It was small wonder that Forbes felt the blight of her wrath when the very horses knew of it. The most determined politeness can never imitate the fine flower and bouquet of genuine enthusiasm. But what could Forbes say to set things right? The one effective speech would have been a declaration of independent means, a smiling disclaimer of poverty: "I was only joking; I am really very rich."

That would have re-established the _entente_. But that was the one thing Forbes could not say. He rode on at Persis' side, a silent and dejected prisoner of circumstances, a spy captured in the enemy's camp in the enemy's uniform.

Eventually they reached the Enslee place--the mountain that was Enslee's, with the stately pleasure dome he had decreed there. The majesty of it belittled Forbes still more. The beauty of it shamed him.

They trotted across the granite bridge and urged the horses to the ascent.

The horses plodded doggedly up and up, and the beauty of every spot as they reached it wore away Persis' anger. It was difficult to feel a bitterness against anybody, even against the fates, when they permitted some aromatic shrub to throw an almost visible veil of perfume about her, and another to dandle before her eyes a smiling throng of blossoms almost audibly singing like clustered cherubim. The mere dapple of shadow and sun-splash was felicity, and the white road that curved among its lawns was voluptuously sinuous, like a tawny Cleopatra on a green divan or one of Titian's high-hipped Venuses.

The gardening was formal, the swards were shaved, the trees seemed to have been whisk-broomed, the shrubs had been curled and scented; but they were beautiful, and only wealth could have collected them or kept them at their best. And above them all loomed the house, a chateau of stately charm enthroned in beauty.

Forbes saw how good it was, and coveted it. But it was as if Naboth, the soldier, had envied David, the King, his garden. Persis also saw how good it was, and she could possess it all, become the chatelaine of this place.

She spoke her thought aloud:

"It's this sort of thing, Harvey, that I love and need--beautiful things and plenty of them."

"I understand," Forbes groaned.

"If only you could get them for us!"

"If only I could!"

A little farther she checked her horse, whose trunk was heaving like a bellows. It was in a little colonnade of trees with an arched roof of green leaves in more than Gothic confusion. Birds were everywhere, fluting, fighting, and building.

"Listen to them, Harvey," Persis murmured, with a kind of sad joy, as he reined in alongside. "It's their courtship-time, too. And the male bird is the better dressed of the two."

Forbes noted how sweet her throat was as it arched back; and the under surface of her chin, how beautiful. They were no longer his to admire, and bitterness came into his heart. His smile was close to a sneer as he said:

"The males put on their Sunday best and pour out their finest songs, and the lady bird chooses, they say, the one that wears the best clothes."

She gave him a look that was both rebuking and rebuked, and urged her horse along. But a little later her response to beauty filled her again with the contentment of repletion, and she checked her horse by the marble-walled pool, whose surface was broken and circled here and there by gleaming red fish with lacy fins and tails; they were darting and leaping in acrobatic ecstasies.

"They're making love, too, I suppose," Persis said, a trifle anxiously.

And he was still aggrieved enough to answer: "And the fish ladies also select the gentleman with the most gold."

She stared at him a moment, hurt and shamed. Then she flung back at him:

"Then you oughtn't to blame us--us other females for making the wisest choice we can. It must be a law of nature."

"It must be," he sighed, so humbly that she regretted her victory. She would have put out her hand to comfort him, but she saw above them Willie Enslee leaning across the balustrade. She lifted her horse into a jog-trot, and they rode into the court, where a chauffeur waited to take the horses to the stable.

Willie greeted them in his whiniest tone.

"Where on earth were you? We've been home for ages."

"We got off the main road," Persis said, as she climbed the steps, followed by Forbes, "and the horses were tired and--"

"I was awfully anxious. I was about to start out to look for you."

"There was no occasion to be anxious."

"Besides, your father telephoned you."

"My father! Is he back in New York?"

"No; he telephoned from Chicago. He was just leaving on the twenty-hour train. He couldn't wait till you got back."

"What did he have to say?"

"Lots." Willie looked uneasily at Forbes, as if he were in the way.

"I'll be changing for dinner," Forbes said, with uncomfortable haste.

"You'd better be cooking the dinner," Willie said. "Winifred is counting on your soldierly experience to help her out."

So Forbes went to the kitchen to salute and report for duty. As he entered the house he looked back to see Enslee leading Persis toward the marble steps to the little temple where he proposed regularly.

Forbes' heart thudded heavily in his breast. He felt helpless to protest or intervene in any way. Persis was up at auction. He had bidden her in under a misapprehension of the upset price, and she was put back for sale again.

CHAPTER XXXIX

As she mounted the steps with Willie, Persis felt something of Forbes' regret. She was a slave on the block, and the man she wanted for owner was crowded from the mart.

"What did father have to say?" she asked, in a dull tone already despairing.

"I--I--it wasn't very pleasant."

"Hand it to me."

"He said to break it to you gently."

"Well, speak up, Willie. Break it! For the Lord's sake, break it!"

"Sit down, won't you?" He led her to a bench in the temple. "I hardly know where to begin."

"Begin at the ending."

"Well, you see, your poor governor--"

"Has lost all his money?"

"Well, yes--in a way."

"It's getting to be rather a habit with the poor old boy, isn't it? Is he smashed up badly?"

"Pretty badly."

"The house in town and the country place will have to go?"

"I'm afraid so."

"The cars and the horses--my car, too?"

"Looks like it."

"Then I needn't worry about it's being a last year's model," she laughed. Willie stared at her admiringly.

"Gad, but you're a good loser."

"I try to be; an easy winner, an easy loser. I'm awfully sorry for father, though. Did you--did you tell him anything?"

"I told him we were engaged."

She shivered and mumbled, "What did he say to that?"

"He seemed immensely relieved. He said, 'God bless her.' His voice was very faint, but I think that's what he said."

"Perhaps he said, 'God help her.'"

"Maybe he did," Willie sighed. "Anyway, we're to meet him in town to-morrow."

He stared at her with hungry eyes, and his little lean fingers crept toward the exquisite hand of hers that lay supine, relaxed, with upturned fingers like the petals of an open rose. He took that flower in his hands timidly. She looked down into his famished eyes and smiled pitifully--perhaps a little for him, certainly for herself.

He overestimated the tenderness in her gaze and squeezed her fingers in his. She winced and drew her hand away.

"I'm awfully sorry I hurt you," he said.

"It was this ring again," she explained, though she had not meant to say the "again."

"My ring? Our ring?" he murmured, with such joy that her sportsmanship compelled a last effort at playing fair.

"Under the circumstances," she said, "I think I'd better return it to you--with thanks for the loan."

"I don't want it back!" he gasped. "I won't have it back."

"You didn't agree to marry a beggar."

"I want to marry you--just you," he pleaded. "The engagement stands."

"You're terribly polite, but I can't--not for charity."

"Charity--bosh!" he stormed. "I can't get along without you. You couldn't get along without a lot of money, Persis. If--if you'll let the engagement stand I'll put your father on his feet again. I'll--I'll do anything."

"How put him on his feet? I thought he was smashed?"

"He went to Chicago to raise a lot of money. He couldn't. He's coming back to face the music. It's a funeral march unless--unless--well, I could take up his obligations. I don't understand it very well myself, to say nothing of explaining it to you. But I've got a lot of money, and money is what your father's enemies want. He'll be all right if he's tided over the shallow places. So for my sake and your governor's, let me announce the engagement."

"Think what people would say. It looks so hideously mercenary on my part."

"We can prove that we were engaged before this thing threatened. Everybody will have to confess it's a true love match on both sides. Please, please, Persis! pretty please!"

She resigned herself to all the shames she foresaw, and sighed:

"All right, Willie, it will brace Dad up a bit."

"Is he the only one you think of?" Willie pouted. "Haven't you a word of--of love for me?" He wrung her hands in his little claws again, and they set her nerves on edge. She wanted to shriek her detestation of her plight; but she controlled herself enough to keep down her feelings. She could not, however, mimic love where she felt loathing--the best she could do was to mumble:

"We can't very well play a love scene up here before everybody, can we? I may feel more enthusiastic when I've had a bath and a change of costume."

She broke from him and hurried down the steps. He overtook her half-way to plead:

"Let me announce our engagement now--to the people here."

"Not now," she pleaded; "not here!" And she ran on. But he followed chuckling. He had a great dramatic idea.

CHAPTER XL

That was an extraordinary dinner. The famished aristocracy hovered about the kitchen porch like waifs, pleading for the privilege of assisting. Ten Eyck wanted to scour the cake-dish or put raisins in something. He and the rest were set to work dusting the palatial dining-hall and bringing forth the best Enslee plate. Willie stood by and warned them to be careful. He was in so triumphant a humor that he felt nearly like breaking something himself.

When at last the board was decked, the candelabra alight, fresh flowers lavished everywhere, and chairs arranged, the guests were ravenous.

"Do we dress for dinner?" said Ten Eyck. Winifred threw a boiled potato at him. It grazed Mrs. Neff, who swore splendidly and was prepared to respond with a mop when disarmed.

It was one of the necessities of the feast that the entire body of guests should be also the corps of waiters. The service would have appalled the shabbiest butler. There were woeful collisions at the deadly swinging doors; wine-glasses that had been made in Bohemia and monogrammed there were splintered. A wonderful soup-tureen of historic associations was juggled and lost. It fell on a venerable rug of every color except spilled soup. The tureen was picked up empty and badly dented.

But nothing could check the riot. There were battles around the serving-tables in the kitchen and the pantry and at the sideboard. Those who got their plates filled rushed to their places like fed dogs dispersing each with its bone.

Winifred was exhausted by her long day's work. She made no pretense of toilet, but followed her viands in and slumped into her chair with sleeves rolled up, knees apart, and the general collapsed look of cooks.

Forbes had taken off his coat for his kitchen work. Winifred would not let him put it on again.

"My butler and footmen eat with their livery on the back of their chairs," she said. "We'll make this a regular banquet in the servants' hall."

The idea pleased everybody but Willie. They had all happened into the servants' dining-rooms during the meals of those weary ministers, so now they sprawled and gobbled and chattered in the best imitation they could improvise.

"Our own people are probably eating at our own tables at home," said Mrs. Neff, "and passing scandal with every plate."

"There's the one thing missing to make this a true servant's soiree," said Ten Eyck--"a lot of down-stairs gossip. I am now Willie's man: 'Whatever do you suppose I turned up this morning whilst I was unpacking the mahster's bag after his trip to Philadelphia--a receipted bill for five-and-twenty dollars for Mr. and Mrs. William Jones, one night's lodging, so 'elp me!'"

Everybody glanced at Willie, but he giggled. "You flatter me."

Alice, with the sophistication that young women have apparently always had except in fiction, put up her hand reprovingly to Ten Eyck.

"No depravity, no depravity! Remember my young mother is present. Now I'm our second man talking to my maid: 'My Missus, for all she's so crool to her darling dorter Aluss, do you knaow the hour she come in lawst night? Nao? Four o'clock this mornin', she did! Strike me if she didn't!'"

Mrs. Neff smiled and retaliated: "Now I'm Alice's Hibernian maid: 'At that the ould shrew had nothin' on Miss Aluss. Whilst her mother was toorkey-trattin', wasn't the darlin' child after tahkin' four dollars' worth of baby-tahk over the telephone to that young bosthoon of a Stowe Webb.'"

"How on earth did you find out?" said Alice.

Mrs. Neff's answer was further revelation of the domestic secret service: "It's a nice little colleen, Aluss is, and pays me liberal for smooglin' notes in and out of the house. And then the ould woman pays me still more liberal to bring the notes to her first. It's a right careful mother she is."

Alice stared in horror, and Mrs. Neff tee-hee'd like a malicious little girl. Winifred came to Alice's rescue with a cross-fire:

"Now I'm Mrs. Neff's secretary talking to my little niece's governess."

"Help, help!" cried Mrs. Neff. "No fair, Winifred. I had to discharge the cat. If you dare, I'll give an imitation of your laundress talking to--"

"I surrender," said Winifred, hastily.

"Go on," said Ten Eyck. "As Connie Ediss sang, 'It all comes out in the wash.'"

Mrs. Neff put up her hand. "As official duenna of this family, I think we'd better change the game or put out the lights."

"That's a fine idea!" said Ten Eyck. "A game of tag in the dark."

"Not in my dark!" said Willie, sternly, with a calm incisiveness that surprised everybody and ended the project before it was begun.

Ten Eyck complained: "We came here to be rid of the spying servants, and we've been more respectable than ever."

"Crowds are almost always respectable," said Mrs. Neff, "unless they're drunk."

"Everybody is almost always respectable," said Ten Eyck. "Even the worst of us only sin for a few minutes at a time. A murder takes but a moment, and thieves are notorious loafers. This talk of a life of sin is mostly rot, I think. Sin is a spasm, not a life."

"It's the remorse and the atonement that make up the life," said Mrs. Neff.

"Good Lord, how funereal we are," said Persis, "talking about sin and spasms and remorse when the flowers are blooming and the moonlight is pounding on the windows! We ought to be--"

"Washing the dishes," said Winifred, rising. "Come on, the all of youse, clear up this mess and get into the suds. Persis and Mrs. Neff and Alice are the dish-washing squad to-night, and Willie and Murray can wipe them dry."

"We haven't had our smoke yet," protested Mrs. Neff. A respite was granted for this.

Everybody smoked but Alice.

"What's the matter with you, Alice?" said Winifred. "Sore throat?"

Alice shrugged her shoulders and answered, "Ask my awful mother."

Mrs. Neff flicked the ashes off her cigarette. "My father always used to tell my brothers that tobacco wouldn't hurt them if they didn't smoke till they were twenty-one. I think it applies to women also."

"Great heavens!" said Winifred, pretending to put away her cigarette, "I've ruined my life. No wonder I'm wasting away."

"Eighteen is the legal age for women," said Ten Eyck.

Winifred resumed her cigarette with a mock childishness. "Then I can just qualify. I was eighteen last--"

"Last century, my dear?" Mrs. Neff cooed.

"For that you can scrub the pots and pans, darling," Winifred crooned. "And I was going to let you off with the wine-glasses. Another crack like that and I'll have you stoking the range."

"I am a martyr in the cause of truth," Mrs. Neff groaned. "Come on; let's get it over with."

Winifred was a sharp taskmaster, and so bulky that none of the women dared to disobey. Nor the men either. Forbes was for helping Persis and saving her delicate hands, but Winifred would not have him in the pantry at all:

"The little snojer cooked the dinner, and he gets a furlough. If I could trust the rest of you I'd walk with him in the moonlight and let him hold my dainty white mitt in his manly clasp."

Forbes was banished, and spent his exile pacing up and down smoking and peering in at the window, where Persis, aproned and wet-armed and with a speck of soot on her nose, buried her jeweled fingers in greasy dish-water, and smoked the while her customary cigarette. She was more fascinating than ever to Forbes, whose mind kept ringing the domestic chimes.

When the kitchen and dining-room chores were done to the satisfaction of Winifred, who demanded as much of her amateur scullions as she would have demanded of her own servants, they were all exhausted. Returning to the living-room, they sprawled in those inelegant attitudes that tired laborers assume. Their minds were jaded with their muscles.

"I never understood before why my servants are so snappy at night," said Mrs. Neff. "If anybody speaks to me I'll cry."

"Pull down your skirts, at least, mother," said Alice.

"They're too far away," sighed Mrs. Neff. "And nobody's interested in my old legs."

Alice, with the fierce decency of the young, rose wearily, bent down, put her mother's ankles together, and covered them with the skirt.

"Isn't it odd," sighed Mrs. Neff, "how we pretend that old people must go along to chaperon the young? It ought to be the other way about."

Alice was too tired to get up. She sank on the floor and laid her head on her mother's knee. And Mrs. Neff put out a thin, white hand upon the girl's soft hair.

"It's a nice little girl, sometimes," she sighed.

"And it would be a nice little mother," said Alice, "if--"

"Don't say it, my child. He's not the man for you at all. I know best. I'm thinking of your happiness." Alice shrugged a skeptical comment.

Her mother went on: "Do you remember how you had all the chocolate creams you wanted--once? You couldn't look at one for a year after. Well, living on love alone is like trying to live on chocolate creams alone. And he couldn't afford even to keep you in chocolate creams."

Alice made no answer. She sat studying her own thoughts.

Forbes felt a sudden kinship with Alice's absent lover and beloved, this Stowe Webb, whose crime was lack of money. He imagined that Persis' mother had told her the same cold things that Alice was hearing now. He began to believe that many daughters must hear such financial talk against love from their mothers. He had heard so many married women scoff at love as a delusion. He wondered if, after all, it were not really man, rather than woman, who is the romantic animal.

"Men," he pondered, "write the great poems and the great romances, paint the great pictures, fight the great fights against nature and ignorance and oppression and poverty. They compose the great music, supply the demand for love songs and love stories, and build the places to love in. Then they lay their wealth and ambition and achievement at the feet of little women, and each little woman selects from those that gather at her feet the one that she thinks will dress her best and house her best and give her the best time."

He had read much in books, written chiefly by gallant gentlemen whose flattery was greater than their accuracy, that woman was a slave, a toy, a plaything, a victim of man's cruelty. Now he began to believe that in the vast bulk of instances the reverse was true. The little women set their feet on the men's necks and rode upon their shoulders, and when they were displeased pulled the men's hair, poked fingers into their eyes, or abandoned them entirely.

He felt again what he had felt when he studied Fifth Avenue and its womankind; for every woman's finery some man pays. Woman was the grasping sex, the exacting, yet extravagant sex. The eternal feminine was the eternal calculatrix.

He had wondered what these women paid for what they got from men. He believed now that he had found the answer. They paid with their bodies, their kisses, the encircling of arms, the cooing of tender words. In return for so much money they granted permission to spend yet more.

He studied Persis; how beautiful she was, how soft and gracile, how apt to endearments! Yet she held herself at a price, at a high price, and called it pride, self-protection. What was it but self-exploitation?

Yet what man ever desired an object less because it was beyond his means? Persis was certainly no less adorable to Forbes because he could not buy her. He would have to get along without her. But, having once held her in his arms while she held him in hers, he would never cease to desire her. Like the father of a spendthrift child, he rather felt ashamed of himself for being incompetent to meet her demands, than contemned her for making them.

After a while of silent meditation Mrs. Neff spoke up, briskly:

"There's only one thing that would rest me, and that's a tango. Where are those records we bought this afternoon?"

On the homeward way the motor party had passed a shop where disks were kept, and had bought up the entire visible supply of latter-day tunes to replace the dances of yesteryear. There was general agreement that it was high time to turkey-trot again.

"I'll run the machine," said Winifred. "Bob Fielding isn't here, and I'll be true to his memory for a dance or two."

"I choose to dance with Major General Forbes," said Mrs. Neff, "unless he's otherwise engaged."

"Before we dance," said Willie, "I have an announcement to make. Ladies and gentlemen, so to speak"--he cleared his throat and ran his fingers round inside his tight collar--"I am about to--er--give birth--er--to an after-dinner speech--my first and only."

"Hear! Hear!"

"Some time ago Miss Persis--er--Cabot, whom you all know, did me the--er--unspeakable honor of consenting to become Mrs. William--er--Enslee. Circumstances rendered it--er--advisable to defer--er--the publication of the glorious--er--news, so to speak. But Miss Cabot has to-night given me--er--permission to announce--"

"I have not!" Persis broke in; but Willie put up his hand.

"Order in the court--er! Anyway, now you know the worst. You behold in me the happiest man on--er--earth."

There was a round of applause, and Ten Eyck proposed "three lusty chahs and a tigress for the--er--bride and--er--groom--er."

Forbes felt as if a shell full of shrapnel had burst at his feet. Military instinct brought his heels together, and he stood as erect as Dreyfus did when they tore the buttons from his tunic and snapped his sword in two before him. He stared at the revel that broke out around Persis and Enslee. In his eyes it had something of the hideousness of savages dancing. It was a torture dance, and he was the man at the stake.

CHAPTER XLI

Forbes tried to smile, but his muscles seemed unable to support his lips. He heard much noise, yet distinguished nothing till he seemed to wake suddenly at finding Willie Enslee smirking up at him.

"You haven't congratulated me, Mr. Ward--er--Forbes."

Forbes seized Enslee's small hand and wrung it, and said in a tone more fitted to condolence:

"I do congratulate you, indeed, and Miss Cabot, I--I congratulate her."

He tried to look at her, but Willie was clinging to his hand and driveling on: "I want to thank you for--er--at least trying to save her when her horse bolted this morning. They told me you were--er--quite splendid, and I take it as a--er--personal favor."

"Don't mention it, please."

"And now let's--er--dance," said Willie. "I will dance with the blushing bride, if you don't mind. Let 'er go, Winifred."

Winifred set off the Victrola, and a blare of nasal cacophony broke from the machine imitating a steamboat whistle; then ensued a negroid music of infinite inappropriateness to Forbes' tragic mood. He saw the woman who loved him, and whom he loved, tagged and claimed by a contemptible pygmy, the accidental inheritor of wealth. He saw his beautiful Persis in the fellow's incompetent arms and her body drooping over him as if he had carried her off in a kind of burlesque rape of the Sabines. The music was not Wagnerian epopee, nor were the words something from Sophokles; it was a romping ditty about

'Way down on the lev-ee In old Alabam-y, There's daddy and mam-my, There's Ephraim and Sam-my On a moon-light night.

Forbes felt Mrs. Neff's presence in front of him. Her wiry arms clutched him and danced him away. She was chattering reproaches because he had not taken her advice and captured Persis for himself. And her unwitting irony ran on against the words that Alice and Ten Eyck were singing as they danced:

Watch them shuf-flin' along, See them shuf-flin' along. Go take your best--gal--real--pal, Go down to the lev-ee, I said to the lev-ee, And join that shuf-flin' throng. Hear that mu-sic and song. It's simply great--O mate. Waitin' on the levee, waitin' for the _Robert E. Lee_.

Forbes felt a ribaldry in the whole situation, an intolerable contumely. He watched Persis darting here and there as Willie urged her. The little whelp could not keep time to the music, and his possession of Persis was as grotesque as the presence of a gargoyle on a cathedral. But cathedrals are thick with gargoyles, and life is full of such pairings.

For the second dance Forbes demanded Persis, and she granted him the privilege with some terror; the look on his face had alarmed her.

The music now celebrated "dancing with the Devil; oh, the little Devil! dancing at the Devil's ball." There was a fiend raging in Forbes' heart, and something infernal in the frenzy with which he whipped Persis this way and that.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he groaned. "Why didn't you warn me? The last I knew was that you and I were to be married. And suddenly that man speaks up and claims you. And you don't deny it. What in God's name does it mean?"

"Not so loud, my love!"

"'My love?'" he quoted. "You can call me that?"

"You're not going to make a scene, are you?" she whispered, trembling in his arms.

"A scene!" he laughed. "Is that your greatest terror in life?"

"One of them."

"You intended to marry him, and you let me kiss you! Were you simply making a fool of me?"

("_At the Devil's ball, at the Devil's ball._")

"No, Harvey, no! I love you. It is you that were making a fool of me. I can explain, but I don't think you would understand."

("_I saw the cute Mrs. Devil, so pretty and fat._")

"When will you explain?"

"The first chance I get."

("_Dressed in a beautiful fireman's hat._")

"To-night?"

"I don't dare. Willie is going to stand guard, as he said he would. Seeing you dancing with Mrs. Neff, he was just telling me what a joke it would be to lock you out. He's going to pretend to go to bed. Then he's going to slip down-stairs, lock the front door, and wait till you and Mrs. Neff come back. Isn't it ridiculous?"

("_Dancing with the Devil; oh, the little Devil!_")

"Everything on earth is ridiculous, but nothing is so ridiculous as I am."

"Don't say that, dear."

"'Dear!'" he echoed, bitterly. "When do I see you, I say?"

("_Dancing at the Devil's Ball._")

"There's no chance."

"Then I'll make one. I'll--I'll come to your room."

"Oh, in Heaven's name, are you mad? Or do you think I am? Mrs. Neff's room adjoins mine. She could hear the softest whisper."

"Then let Willie Enslee lock us out."

She saw that he was in a frenzy. He had the bit in his teeth. He would bolt in a moment. She thought hard and swiftly. Then she said:

"There's just one way. When I was playing chambermaid to-day I wandered about and found the servant's stairway in the service wing. It leads down into the kitchen. We could get from there into the dining-room and the drawing-room. There's a great window there--well cut off from view. I don't think Willie or anybody would see us there. Listen for Willie's door, and when he has gone down into the front hall, slip out and tiptoe down the service stairs to the kitchen and wait for me there. Will you?"

It was a nauseating role to play; but he was bent upon making a last appeal to her before they returned to town on the morrow. He whispered his assent to the elaborate deceit, and made a whirlwind of the last measures of the tune, "Dancing with the devil; oh, the little Devil! dancing at the Devil's ball!"

And then he and Persis, dizzy on the swirling floor, reeled to chairs and sat gasping for breath. Mrs. Neff, passing on Willie's arm, urged Forbes to give Alice the next dance, and he obeyed, surrendering Persis to Enslee, who was so elate with triumph that only the braggart pomp of the tango could express him.

Alice was lonely and forlorn, and so much in Forbes' mood that they were unintentional parodies on each other. Forbes remembered his talk with Senator Tait, and, feeling that Alice was desperately in need of comfort, told her the whole conversation. If she resented the discussion of her affairs and her mother's plans, she kept silent; but when he told her that Senator Tait had vowed to help her defeat Mrs. Neff's match-making plot by giving Stowe Webb a position she became a maenad of joy. She italicized every other word, and declared herself insanely grateful. She declared now that she simply idolized the Senator, and had always thought him the most adorable of men in every respect except the quality of husband.

"I'm afraid he won't give Mr. Webb much of a salary to begin with," Forbes said, to moderate her fantastic hopes.

"Oh, I don't care how little it is," Alice panted, "so long as it's enough for us two to live on, if we have to live in a Harlem flat eleven stories high and no elevator!"

She made so startling a contrast with Persis that Forbes regretted thinking her shallow and hysterical. Under her volatile explosiveness was evidently a deep store of loyalty, as under Persis' reposeful manner was a shifty uncertainty, a terror of consequences. "Still waters run deep" was plainly as fallible as any other proverb, for very shallow ponds may lie very calm, and very spluttering geysers may come from far underground.

But it is one thing to approve and quite another to love. Forbes admired Alice, but he loved Persis. He approved Alice as much as he distrusted Persis. But he loved Persis.

CHAPTER XLII

There were not many more dances before Willie, in his new capacity of Benedick-to-be, declared for early closing hours, and ordered his guests off to bed, warning them that the next morning the caravan would set out on its return betimes in order that Persis might "break the news to her father as soon as he got back." So Willie phrased it, and flattered himself that it was rather considerate and tactful to put it so.

When good-nights were said, and Forbes had gone to his room, Ten Eyck came in to smoke a night-cap cigar. His words were congratulatory, but his intent was sympathetic.

"You looked a bit cut up, old boy," he said, "when Willie, with his usual tact, exploded the news of his marriage. I hope you weren't hit too hard. I warned you, you know."

"I know," said Forbes; "I promised you I wouldn't take Miss Cabot seriously. I--I admit I was surprised. That's all. And it rather shocks me to think of so--so--of her tying up with a man like Enslee. That's all."

"It's her own choice," said Ten Eyck. "And it's a good choice. She can't bankrupt the Enslee estates, and she'll earn all she squanders. Being the wife of Willie Enslee is not going to be any sinecure, believe me.

"And the sooner she's married to Enslee and beyond your reach, the better for your peace of mind and the efficiency of the U. S. A. Get back on the job, Forbesy. You're too important a man to be wasting yourself even on a siren like Persis. I believe in sirens, and I like to hear 'em sing; but they don't convince me one little minute, and I drop anchor at a safe distance from the reef. Promise me you won't let Persis haunt you. Get yourself a pretty canary and forget the siren, eh what?"

"That's the best of advice," Forbes assented.

He thought that he sounded convinced; but Ten Eyck shook his head and masked a sigh as a yawn.

"Am I as deadly as all that? And papa always told me that the man who gives the best of advice might better have saved his breath for blowing out his candle. Instead of more advice I will now do so. Good night!"

And he closed his door.

Forbes knew that Ten Eyck was right, and told himself so. He told himself that common decency, self-respect, Persis-respect, and respect for the rights of a host and a fiance forbade him to keep tryst with Persis. And having resolved that the one thing he ought not to do was to sneak down the servants' stairs, he sneaked down the servants' stairs--after he had put out his light, opened his door delicately, and waited till he heard Enslee open his door and tiptoe down to the entrance hall.

As Forbes waited in that least poetic of bowers, the kitchen, he felt like a thief. He had abundant time for pondering what a destroyer of dignity love is. But Persis came at last, and so silently and so vaguely through the moonlight that he could hardly believe her to be more than a phantom.

She gave him a hand, however, that was warm and human, and when he caught her in his arms and she yielded rather than struggle, her body was as real as rose-leaves and lilies, a delight to his embrace; and her cheek such a sweetmeat to his lips that he dismissed all scruples as follies beneath contempt.

When she had extricated herself from his clasp she took his hand and led him through the butler's pantry and its swinging door, across the moonlit dining-room, through a majestic somber portal into a cave of black gloom, which was the salon.

"Have you a match?" she whispered. "If you haven't I have."

"I have a cigar-lighter," he whispered.

He snapped the little engine, and a small, blue flame threw a sickly light that helped them to find a channel through the islands of chairs and divans and tables, to the lofty hangings masking the windows.

The wee taper gave Forbes a glimpse as well of the place he was in.

This superb chamber had not been opened to the present guests. It was still in its winter garb, the portraits in shrouds, and chairs and tables disguised in winding sheets. There was the hint of a mortuary vault about the place. The walls were of Istrian stone hung with gray tapestries of unhappy lovers. The floor was of marble devoid of rugs--they were rolled up against the walls like mummies. The mantel was a huge carved structure. In this dull light it might have been a funeral monument. Noises seemed to be repeated here with spooky comment, and to Forbes the spirit in the air was ominous.

Persis knew the room well, and remembered it as she had first seen it glowing with color, flooded with sunlight, and crowded with gorgeous people; she did not feel the oppression that weighed on Forbes.

To her it was a clandestine romance--the sort of poetic encounter she had read about in ever so many books. Her heart was beating with terror of discovery and ecstasy of adventure. When she gained the window she reached up and persuaded the hangings back on gently tinkling rings. A well of moonlight was revealed--a broad, padded seat in front of a tall mullioned window. Within the window was a smaller window, and she swung this back.

Into the dreary air of the unvisited room flowed a little brook of perfumed breeze scented with the lilacs it streamed across. It shook with all gentleness the hair about Persis' face and the soft lace around her throat. For now she was not in boyish riding-duds with collar and cravat, but in the exquisite trifle of a silken house gown she had put on for dinner.

She was so beautiful in Forbes' eyes that the very faults he had found in her seemed to enhance her. The absence of utility and reliability and other homely virtues seemed to leave her the unmarred unity of futile, fragile loveliness. But this was the fantasy of the moment only. She had no sooner spoken than she was committed to something more than a vision for the eyes.

She smiled at him, and he gathered her up into his arms once more and gave and took a blindly sweet kiss from her smiling lips.

When he released her from this constraint she sighed luxuriously:

"Well, Harvey, it seems as if all the happiness in the world had to be sneaked, doesn't it?"

Instantly he realized again the dishonesty of their communion.

"Is that your creed?" he groaned.

"It's my experience. Stolen fruit, you know--"

"I hate stolen fruit. I want to have the right to own--you."

"You do--pretty nearly."

"I want everybody to know it. I want you to be my wife. It's not too late, if you love me."

"Oh, there's no question of that, for I do love you. You are--it's funny how hard it is to find new expressions for anything you really mean, isn't it? All I can think of is the same old comic-paper line: you are the only man I ever loved. But--oh, Lord, if you only had a little more money! For I sha'n't have any, Harvey. My father can't give me any. I've just found that out. He can't get enough to save himself. I can get enough for us both if I take Willie.

"It's horrible talk, Harvey, but it's business. It's for your sake as much as mine. If I married you I'd drive you mad. I'd rather have you hate me lovingly, as you do now, than have you hate me loathingly, as you would if I became a millstone round your neck. You'd be faithful and work hard and try to love me, but I'd be simply unendurable.

"My brother--you haven't met him; he's loafing through college--he knows more about sport than he does about books. He's always talking about prize-fighters and class. He's always telling about some poor fellow getting knocked senseless because he strayed out of his class. I remember one brilliant welterweight champion who lasted only one round with a broken-down heavyweight. My brother said the welterweight got what was coming to him because he hadn't intelligence enough to stay where he belonged. I'm trying to do that. I'm horribly tempted just to fling everything to the winds and run away with you. I'm starving for your love. My heart says, 'Put love before everything else--'"

"Obey your heart!" Forbes broke in, at last. She shook her head.

"But my brain says, 'Think of the long, long future!' A woman spends so little of her married life with her husband. It's the long days that count, the days she spends with other women, with rivalries, jealousies, with economy, economy, economy. That's what I'm afraid of. Economy would play the devil with me, Harvey. Two thousand a year and forage! I'm afraid of it."

"So you will marry this rich man. And then?"

"Then I shall probably learn to hate him."

"And to love somebody else?"

"I shall never love anybody but you, Harvey. I've never told anybody else my real mind as I have you, for I am trained to conceal--always to conceal."

"But don't conceal from yourself the failure you are going to make of your life. No woman can play false to her heart and prosper. I beg you not to despise my love."

"Despise your love!" she cried. "It's myself I despise. Ah, Harvey, try to understand me."

"I can't! I can only warn you."

"Oh, don't warn me! Don't lecture me! Just love me! Let's not think of the future--it's always full of tragedy. If we married in all our love, we should meet so much unhappiness! The most loving love matches I've known have burned out--ended in divorces and open scandal, or scandal concealed like ostriches for everybody to see and laugh at. Two people fall in love and meet opposition and run away together to a preacher. Then they have nobody to oppose them, so they oppose each other. And by and by they run away from each other and don't meet till they get to a divorce court in some small town to avoid the notoriety."

"And you think that you will escape that by marrying without love?"

"Yes. Because I don't expect love. I sha'n't expect Willie to be a romantic saint, and then hate him for not living up to my specifications."

"But yourself--your body--you will give that to him?"

She closed her eyes and turned ghastly white as she whispered: "I suppose so. That's the usual price a woman pays, isn't it?"

He flung her from him as something unclean, common, cheap.

From the huddle she was in she whispered:

"I understand. I--I don't blame you."

There was a sort of burlesque saintliness about her meekness that nauseated him. He did not realize that she forgave him because his rage seemed a proof of his love. She would have forgiven him with bruised lips if he had struck her in the face.

He loathed himself for his vicious wrath, but he almost loathed her more for compelling it. Yet when she got to her feet and stood clinging to the velvet curtain, and mumbled:

"It was better that this happened before we were married, wasn't it? And now that you are cured of loving me I may go, mayn't I?"

He stared at her; his lips parted to utter words he could not find; he put out his hands, and she went back to his arms. And she cried a little, not forgetting even in her grief to sob stealthily lest some one hear. And he understood that, too, and hated her for her eternal vigilance. Even while he kissed the brackish tears from her cheeks and eyes he hated her for being so beautiful and so wise, so full of passion and so discreet.

She wept but a little while, and then she was quiet, reclining against him in silence and meditating.

And he pondered the mystery of his own behavior. A sense of duty and a sense of honor had always guided his acts hitherto. This woman acted upon him like the drug that doctors use for controlling violent patients and the criminal insane; it leaves the senses all alive but annuls the power of motion.

Here he was, convinced to the very depths of his soul that it was abominable to embrace the betrothed of another, yet he did not take his arms from about her, he did not put her away from him. Instead, he held her fast even when she made to go. And yet he blamed her.

This much at least he accomplished in the long silence: he ceased to blame Persis and accused himself, tried himself before the tribunal of his own soul, and denounced himself as guilty of treason to himself and her and the laws of the world. But he did not put her from him.

And now, having condemned himself, he followed the usual program and forgave himself. He bent down and kissed her forehead and her hair, and tightened his arms about her. She did not answer his kiss. Once more he felt, as in the sunlight by the brook, that he held only the shell of her, while her soul--that other man's soul of her--was gone voyaging.

But now it was in the cold of night, in the dark chill of a room long closed up like a grave and her body was the only warmth in the room, or in the world for him. It seemed to glow like an ember breathing rosily in ashes.

And now gradually desire grew imperious, the angry, sullen desire of Tristan seeing his Isolde given to another man to wife. He burned with resentment at the ill-treatment accorded him by the fates, who saved his love and her love for this mockery, this money-infected, money-paralyzed romance. His wrath rose in revolt against a world where such a sarcasm was possible. The laws of the world became suspect with the mercy of the world. The pangs of disprized love were so bitter that he began to claim revenge, revenge especially on her.

He clenched his arms about her with a new and different ardor--no longer the sacred fervor of a lover who protects his affianced from himself, but the outlaw that raids and desecrates.

She understood and was afraid and fought against him, but her mutinous love fought for him. And nature, and the moonlight, and the scented breeze purring at the window fought for him. All her beauty clamored to surrender. She was already lost when some last impulse of horror cried out against the irreparable profanation. Even as her arms went round him she murmured:

"Help me! Harvey, help me!"

CHAPTER XLIII

In the panic of her soul there was just honor enough awake to raise that prayer, and in the fury of his there was just honor enough left to answer it. It was the one irresistible appeal she could have made--the cry of "Help!" that never falls in vain on the ears of a man unless he has become a beast--or a god.

Mysteriously the almost stifled cry released from the dungeon of Forbes' soul all the powers of decency; they took possession of him anew. His senses and his muscles obeyed, and he was now so pure-hearted a defender of Persis' integrity that he resisted even the little moan of almost regret that escaped her tormented soul when he let her go.

The aftermath of the ordeal was an ague of reaction. The blood seemed to flow backward into her heart. She was overwhelmed with the terror one feels for a disaster narrowly escaped, and with shame for the realization that the credit was none of hers.

Forbes did not take her in his arms, but contented himself with closing out the breeze that seemed to have turned colder now, and with wrapping about her quivering shoulders the heavy velvet of the curtain.

Whatever other flaws she had, Persis was not marred by self-conceit. Even her nobler motives she tended to reinterpret from some cynical point of view. When she was calmer she spoke with that intelligence of hers that always chilled Forbes' idealizing heart.

"I can't tell you how grateful I am, Harvey, and how ashamed. I didn't know I was so--so hopelessly like other people. I didn't know I could forget myself so completely. But I've learned my lesson. I've had my scare. And I must keep away from the edge of the cliff. We mustn't meet alone this way any more, Harvey. I love you too well, and I don't want to go altogether to the bad, do I? It isn't that I'm good; I'd love to be good, but I'm afraid I wasn't meant to be. But I must be sensible. I mustn't be a fool. A woman risks too much, Harvey. It's too hideously unfair. The consequences would be nothing at all to you--and might be utter destruction to me. I told you there were a hundred Persises in me. And now I've seen one of them face to face that I never knew was there. I've got to starve her to death. We mustn't meet alone any more, must we?"

He could not say anything without saying too much. So he simply shook his head and pressed her hand, and, rising, led her from the niche of peril. With his free hand he found his cigar-lighter and snapped it; but it would not flame, and they stumbled through an archipelago of furniture, jostling together, more afraid of contact with each other than of any other danger.

They walked into the wall, but, groping, found at last the door and entered the dining-room again. The moonlight was gone, and the first tide of daybreak was seeping through the windows. There was no rose-color in this dawn. It promised to be a gray day.

They hurried to the kitchen and came back indeed to life in its most material surfaces, a chill, drab light beating upon pots and pans.

They bade each other good night and good-by there; but their embrace was appropriately matter-of-fact, galvanized ware upon cold iron. They tiptoed wearily up the service stairway and into the main corridor above.

Here, too, there was daylight like dirty pond water. Persis went stealthily to the railing of the stairway, and, glancing down, beckoned to Forbes, who moved to her side and peered where she pointed.

He saw that Willie Enslee, exhausted by his vigil, had fallen asleep on a sumptuous divan. The divan would have honored a palace, and Willie's pajamas were of silk, and his bathrobe was of brocaded silk. But after all it was Willie Enslee that was in them. And he slept with his little eyes clenched and his mouth ajar. And a cold cigarette was stuck to his lower lip.

Forbes was impelled to taunt her with a whispered: "There is your husband. Go to him!"

But when he looked at her she was so wan and pitiful that he could not be as pitiless as the wan daylight was. She was making an advance payment on her price; and she was shivering and lonely. So he kissed her icy hands and whispered to her how beautiful she was and a sorrowful "God bless you!" and sneaked back into his room, his bachelor room.

Had he paused as once before to throw her another kiss, he would have found her with her arms stretched out to him pleading for rescue from the vision she had seen and the unspoken taunt she had understood. But he did not look back, and she dared not knock at his door. The click of his lock frightened her, and she fled to her room like a ghost surprised by the morning.

CHAPTER XLIV

When Forbes shut the door upon Persis (and unwittingly shut out her little gesture of appeal to come back, be stronger than she was, and rescue her from herself in spite of herself) he looked from his room upon a world that was just the colorless color of the glass in his window.

There was a menace of rain in the sky, and the dawn was a colorless affair, neither night nor morning. The day woke like a sleeper that has not rested well.

As a mere formality Forbes took off his clothes and lay down. Life was colorless ahead of him. The woman who had fascinated him utterly had utterly disappointed him. She loved Forbes, but not his penury; she would marry Enslee's money, but not Enslee. She wanted success in life--called it her "career"!

Men, he knew, put their careers first, made everything subservient to success, asked their women to kowtow to it. Perhaps women were going to do the same thing. Perhaps they had been all these centuries hunting success and disguising the materialism of their ambition under more romantic words, aided in their deceit by the numberless gallantries of authors. Perhaps Persis was not different from millions of women, except for being frank where the others were hypocrites, more or less intentionally.

This thought softened his heart toward Persis, and he regretted it. He did not want to think softly of Persis any more. It unnerved his resolution, and uncertainty and irresolution were terrific strains on a man of action and precision. If he could renounce Persis with contempt he would be able to close that incident and resume the progress of life. But to find in every beauty of hers something of ugliness, and to find in every cruelty of hers something to respect and something to pity, was the paralysis of decision.

How could he hate her when he loved her so madly, and was so unhappy out of her sight? How was he to endure it that she should marry another man, and how was he to prevent it?

He tossed between sleeping and waking, between condemnation of Persis and acquittal, between resolutions to cut her out of his heart and his life, and resolutions to win her yet. Eventually he heard people stirring about the house, and he rose drearily.

The shower-bath gave forth a lukewarm drizzle that neither stimulated nor soothed him. Outside, rain was falling lazily in a gray air that hid the hills and gardens as if the sky, too, were a curtained shower-bath.

He began to pack his suit-cases. As he was folding one of his coats there dropped from its inside pocket a mesh of beribboned lace. It surprised him by its inappropriateness. He picked it up, and it was the nightcap that had fallen from her tousled hair as she looked from the window into that wonderful dawn of day before yesterday. What a liar that dawn had been! It was illustrious and spendthrift of promises. To-day's dawn was the fulfilment. That was romance, this was truth. The nightcap itself was but a snare, a broken snare.

He flung it angrily back to the floor and went on packing his bachelor things to take back into his bachelor future. The little cap lay huddled--as she had crouched when he flung her out of his arms. She had whispered, "I understand." It seemed also not to reproach him. But it was very beautiful. He could not leave it there for some servant to find. Especially not, as she had prophesied just such a result and he had promised to keep it secret. He picked it up. It was fragrant and pink and silken and lacy--as she was.

He rebuked himself for venting his spite on an inanimate object, a nightcap of all things! Thence he was led to reproach himself for condemning Persis. She, too, was knitted and bow-knotted together with the sole purpose of being exquisite. As well blame the nightcap for not being a helmet as blame Persis for not being a heroine.

He found himself caressing the cap and murmuring to it. He folded it tenderly and slipped it into the suit-case. Then he took it out and put it in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. It seemed to nestle there, and he felt a lurch in his heart, as if Persis had just crept back into it and curled up to sleep. He buttoned them in, Persis and the nightcap, and, closing his suit-cases, carried them down-stairs as one does in a hotel where there are no bell-boys.

He found Willie Enslee staring at him, rubbing his eyes. Willie had wakened only a moment before, had realized the hour with bewilderment, had tried the front door and found it still locked. He was just wondering where Forbes and Mrs. Neff had spent the night when Forbes walked down the stairs and said "Good morning!" but with a queer tone and an odd something in his eyes.

Willie drowsily answered "G'maw!" and stared harder, for Mrs. Neff came down the steps after Forbes. She was sneezing so violently that she had to cling to the banister-rail to keep from sneezing herself into space.

She did not see Willie; but her appearance and her sneeze confirmed his theory. He backed out through a side door and made his way through the kitchen and up the stairway there to his own room. His mind was still fumbling with the riddle of how Forbes and Mrs. Neff got in.

He wondered what he should tell Persis when she asked him what had happened during his night-watch. He had promised her great things from his practical joke. But she never asked him, and he was so greatly relieved that he never broached the subject himself.

Breakfast was served more slipshoddily than before. Even the novelty of the experience had gone. Henceforward Winifred was converted to the vital importance of servants.

Persis was the last to appear. Mrs. Neff greeted her with:

"Persis, your eyes are all red. Have you been cry-cr-cry-ing-g-gk!" She finished with an almost decapitating sneeze. It gave Persis a hint.

"I caught cold, too," she said. "The change in the weather."

The explanation sufficed to satisfy Mrs. Neff and to convince Forbes that Persis was dangerously apt at concealments.

When the breakfast was eaten the dishes were washed and dried at Winifred's direction. But when it came to what Forbes called "policing the camp," it was unanimously voted to leave that to the gardener and his wife, or to the caretaker on his return.

The three automobiles rolled up through the rain, all shipshape for the storm, with tops hooded and side-curtains buttoned down snugly.

Forbes remembered that other rain with Persis in the taxicab. How much better the opportunity here, with the world shut out from view and two hours' cruise ahead. But he was again consigned to Mrs. Neff's car, and it was Willie Enslee who had Persis and the opportunity. Forbes could not follow even the flutter of her veil. All he could see ahead was the shoulder of Mrs. Neff's chauffeur and the windshield studded and streaked with rain.

There was no landscape to divert the mind, only his imagination of the courtship Willie would be paying to his newly announced fiancee. Forbes pictured the privileges he would exact, and Persis would not deny. And he gnashed his teeth in wrath. In the cave of Mrs. Neff's car Alice had nothing to say. She was thinking too eagerly ahead. Mrs. Neff had nothing to say. She was wondering what Alice was so cheerful about.

And so the car pushed south, with no passing scenery to indicate progress, only the bumps and teeterings, the swerves and slitherings, and the nauseating belches of noise made by the horn. Eventually the wheels ceased to run upon irregular ground and glided on asphalt. This must be New York.

At Seventy-second Street they turned off Broadway and crossed Central Park. At the eastern gate Mrs. Neff's chauffeur checked his car alongside a whale-like mass, from which Willie Enslee's voice was heard shrilly calling through the rain:

"Good-by, Mrs. Neff! Good-by Alice! Good-by Mr. Wa--er--Forbes. Awfully glad you could come. See you again. Go on to Miss Cabot's house." This last to his own driver.

Mrs. Neff and Alice cried in unison: "Good-by! Had lovely time! See you soon!"

And out of space came the disembodied voice of Persis as from a grave: "Good-by, Mrs. Neff! By-by, Alice! Good-by, Mr. Forbes!"

"Good-by, P--Miss Cabot!" he called. Her voice trailed away as if it were her soul going to death, and his voice followed with an ache of despair in it. Mrs. Neff caught the pathos hovering over the cries like overtones sounding above and beyond a tone of music. She said:

"Too bad you let Willie take her away from you; it's not too late yet if you've any ambition."

Forbes smiled dully, and Alice said:

"Mother, you do say the most tactless things!"

"I had set my heart on that love-match," sighed Mrs. Neff.

"Better begin at home," said Alice, with unusual cheer.

Mrs. Neff changed the subject. "We'll get out at our house, if you don't mind, and the man can take you to your hotel."

"That's mighty kind of you," said Forbes. He helped them to alight, promised to call, and re-entered the car.

On his way to the hotel he pondered what Mrs. Neff had said. It cheered him until he realized she was still assuming that he had a respectable income. If she had known the truth she would have thought him as unfit for Persis as she thought Stowe Webb unfit for Alice. She would have approved Persis' theory that such a wedding was impossible.

It is doleful travel that takes one home from an unaccomplished errand--only Forbes was not returning even to his home. His home was as shifty as a Methodist minister's. At present it was a hotel, and after that the army post.

And now those duties which he had dreaded so to resume became in his mind a refuge. He had spent a few wild days pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp of a woman's whim through a moonlit marsh, never sure which turn it would take, sure only that it would not be where he expected it to be.

After such a maddening recreation there was a kind of heaven in the thought of living according to a rigid