They were married in the morning at St. George's in Stuyvesant Square.

Gay little flurries of snow, like wind-blown petals from an apple bough, were turning golden in the warm outbreak of brilliant sunshine; and there was blue sky overhead and shining wet pavements under foot as Jacqueline and Desboro came out of the shadows of the old-time church into the fresh splendour of the early morning.

The solemn beauty of the service still possessed and enthralled them. Except for a low word or two, they were inclined to silence.

But the mating sparrows were not; everywhere the little things, brown wings a-quiver, chattered and chirped in the throes of courtship; now and then, from some high faÇade rang out the clear, sweet whistle of a starling; and along the warm, wet streets ragged children were selling violets and narcissus, and yellow tulips tinted as delicately as the pale spring sunshine.

A ragged little girl came to stare at Jacqueline, the last unsold bunch of wilted violets lying on her tray; and Jacqueline laid the cluster over the prayer-book which she was carrying, while Desboro slipped a golden coin into the child's soiled hand.

Down the street his chauffeur was cranking the car; and while they waited for it to draw up along the curb, Jacqueline separated a few violets from the faintly fragrant cluster and placed them between the leaves of her prayer-book.

After a few moments he said, under his breath:

"Do you realise that we are married, Jacqueline?"

"No. Do you?"

"I'm trying to comprehend it, but I can't seem to. How soft the breeze blows! It is already spring in Stuyvesant Square."

"The Square is lovely! They will be setting out hyacinths soon, I think." She shivered. "It's strange," she said, "but I feel rather cold. Am I horridly pale, Jim?"

"You are a trifle colourless—but even prettier than I ever saw you," he whispered, turning up the collar of her fur coat around her throat. "You haven't taken cold, have you?"

"No; it is—natural—I suppose. Miracles frighten one at first."

Their eyes met; she tried to smile. After a moment he said nervously:

"I sent out the announcements. The evening papers will have them."

"I want to see them, Jim."

"You shall. I have ordered all this evening's and to-morrow morning's papers. They will be sent to Silverwood."

The car rolled up along the curb and stopped.

"Can't I take you to your office?" he whispered.

"No, dear."

She laid one slim hand on his arm and stood for a moment looking at him.

"How pale you are!" he said again, under his breath.

"Brides are apt to be. It's only a swift and confused dream to me yet—all that has happened to us to-day; and even this sunshine seems unreal—like the first day of spring in paradise!"

She bent her proud little head and stood in silence as though unseen hands still hovered above her, and unseen lips were still pronouncing her his wife. Then, lifting her eyes, winningly and divinely beautiful, she looked again on this man whom the world was to call her husband.

"Will you be ready at five?" he whispered.

"Yes."

They lingered a moment longer; he said:

"I don't know how I am going to endure life without you until five o'clock."

She said seriously: "I can't bear to leave you, Jim. But you know you have almost as many things to do as I have."

"As though a man could attend to things on his wedding day!"

"This girl has to. I don't know how I am ever going to go through the last odds and ends of business—but it's got to be managed somehow. Do you really think we had better go up to Silverwood in the car? Won't this snow make the roads bad? It may not have melted in the country."

"Oh, it's all right! And I'll have you to myself in the car——"

"Suppose we are ditched?" She shivered again, then forced a little laugh. "Do you know, it doesn't seem possible to me that I am going to be your wife to-morrow, too, and the next day, and the next, and always, year after year. Somehow, it seems as though our dream were already ending—that I shall not see you at five o'clock—that it is all unreal——"

The smile faded, and into her blue eyes came something resembling fear—gone instantly—but the hint of it had been there, whatever it was; and the ghost of it still lingered in her white, flower-like face.

She whispered, forcing the smile again: "Happiness sometimes frightens; and it is making me a little afraid, I think. Come for me at five, Jim, and try to make me comprehend that nothing in the world can ever harm us. Tell your man where to take me—but only to the corner of my street, please."

He opened the limousine door; she stepped in, and he wrapped the robe around her. A cloud over the sun had turned the world grey for a moment. Again she seemed to feel the sudden chill in the air, and tried to shake it off.

"Look at Mr. Cairns and Cynthia," she whispered, leaning forward from her seat and looking toward the church.

He turned. Cairns and Miss Lessler had emerged from the portico and were lingering there in earnest consultation, quite oblivious of them.

"Do you like her, Jim?" she asked.

He smiled.

"I didn't notice her very much—or Jack either. A man isn't likely to notice anybody at such a time—except the girl he is marrying——"

"Look at her now. Don't you think her expression is very sweet?"

"It's all right. Dear, do you suppose I can fix my attention on——"

"You absurd boy! Are you really as much in love with me as that? Please be nice to her. Would you mind going back and speaking to her when I drive away?"

"All right," he said.

Their glances lingered for a moment more; then he drew a quick, sharp breath, closed the limousine door, and spoke briefly to the chauffeur.

As long as the car remained in sight across the square, he watched it; then, when it had disappeared, he turned toward the church. But Cairns and Cynthia were already far down the street, walking side by side, very leisurely, apparently absorbed in conversation. They must have seen him. Perhaps they had something more interesting to say to each other than to him.

He followed them irresolutely for a few steps, then, as the idea persisted that they might not desire his company, he turned and started west across the sunny, wet pavement.

It was quite true that Cairns and Cynthia had seen him; also it was a fact that neither had particularly wanted him to join them at that exact moment.

Meeting at St. George's for the first time in two years, and although prepared for the encounter, these two, who had once known each other so well, experienced a slight shock when they met. The momentary contact of her outstretched hand and his hand left them both very silent; even the formal commonplaces had failed them after the first swift, curious glance had been exchanged.

Cairns noticed that she had grown taller and slenderer. And though there seemed to be no more of maturity to her than to the young girl he had once known, her poise and self-control were now in marked contrast to the impulsive and slightly nervous Cynthia he had found so amusing in callower days.

Once or twice during the ceremony he had ventured to glance sideways at her. In the golden half-light of the altar there seemed to be an unfamiliar dignity and sweetness about the girl that became her. And in the delicate oval of her face he thought he discerned those finer, nobler contours made by endurance, by self-denial, and by sorrow.

Later, when he saw her kiss Jacqueline, something in the sweet sincerity of the salute suddenly set a hidden chord vibrating within him; and, to his surprise, he found speech difficult for a moment, checked by emotions for which there seemed no reason.

And at last Jacqueline and Desboro went away, and Cynthia slowly turned to him, offering her hand in adieu.

"Mr. Cairns," she said quietly, "this is the last place on earth that you and I ever thought to meet. Perhaps it is to be our last meeting place. So—I will say good-bye——"

"May I not walk home with you? Or, if you prefer to drive, my car is here——" he began.

"Thank you; it's only to the theatre—if you care to walk with me——"

"Are you rehearsing?"

"There is a rehearsal called for eleven."

"Shall we drive or walk, Cynthia?"

"I prefer to walk. Please don't feel that you ought to go back with me."

He said, reddening: "I do not remember that my sense of duty toward you has ever been persistent enough to embarrass either of us."

"Of course not. Why should you ever have felt that you owed any duty to me?"

"I did not say that I ever felt it."

"Of course not. You owed me none."

"That is a different matter. Obligations once sat very lightly on my shoulders."

"You owe me none," she repeated smilingly, as they emerged from the church into the warm March sunshine.

He was saying: "But isn't friendship an obligation, Cynthia?"

She laughed: "Friendship is merely an imaginary creation, and exists only until the imagination wearies. That is not original," she added. "It is in the new Barrie comedy we are rehearsing."

She turned her pretty head and glanced down the street where Jacqueline and Desboro still stood beside the car. Cairn's car was also waiting, and its owner made a signal to the chauffeur that he did not need him.

Looking at Jacqueline, Cynthia said:

"Long ago I knew that she was fitted for a marriage such as this—or a better one," she added in a lower voice.

"A better one?" he repeated, surprised.

"Yes," she nodded calmly. "Can you not imagine a more desirable marriage for a girl?"

"Don't you like Desboro?" he demanded.

"I like him—considering the fact that I scarcely know him. He has very handsome and very reckless eyes, but a good mouth. To look at him for the first time a woman would be inclined to like him—but he might hesitate to trust him. I had hoped Jacqueline might marry a professional man—considerably older than Mr. Desboro. That is all I meant."

He said, looking at her smilingly but curiously: "Have you any idea, Cynthia, how entirely you have changed in two years?"

She shook her head: "I haven't changed."

"Indeed you have——"

"Only superficially. What I was born I shall always be. Years teach endurance and self-control—if they teach anything. All one can learn is how to control and direct what one already is."

"The years have taught you a lot," he murmured, astonished.

"I have been to school to many masters, Mr. Cairns; I have studied under Sorrow; graduated under Poverty and Loneliness; and I am now taking a finishing course with Experience. Truly enough, I should have learned something, as you say, by this time. Besides, you, also, once were kind enough to be interested in my education. Why should I not have learned something?"

He winced and bit his lip, watching Desboro and Jacqueline below. And, after a moment:

"Shall we walk?" she suggested, smilingly.

He fell into step beside her. Half way down the block she glanced back. Desboro was already crossing the square; the limousine had disappeared.

"I wonder sometimes," she remarked, "what has become of all those amusing people we once knew so well—Marianne Valdez, Jessie Dain, Reggie Ledyard, Van Alstyne. Do you ever see them any more?"

"Yes."

"And are they quite as gay and crazy as ever?"

"They're a bit wild—sometimes."

"Do they ever speak of me? I—wonder," she mused, aloud.

"Yes. They know, of course, what a clever girl you have turned into. It isn't usual, you know, to graduate from a girlie show into the legit. And I was talking to Schindler the other evening; and he had to admit that he had seen nothing extraordinary in you when you were with his noisy shows. It's funny, isn't it?"

"Slightly."

"Besides, you were such a wild little thing—don't you remember what crazy things we used to do, you and I——"

"Did I? Yes, I remember. In those days a good dinner acted on me like champagne. You see I was very often hungry, and when I wasn't starved it went to my head."

"You need not have wanted for anything!" he said sharply.

"Oh, no! But I preferred the pangs of hunger to the pangs of conscience," she retorted gaily.

"I didn't mean that. There was no string to what I offered you, and you know it! And you know it now!"

"Certainly I do," she said calmly. "You mean to be very kind, Jack."

"Then why the devil didn't——"

"Why didn't I accept food and warmth and raiment and lodging from a generous and harebrained young man? I'll tell you now, if you wish. It was because my conscience forbade me to accept all and offer nothing in return."

"Nonsense! I didn't ask——"

"I know you didn't. But I couldn't give, so I wouldn't take. Besides, we were together too much. I knew it. I think even you began to realise it, too. The situation was impossible. So I went on the road."

"You never answered any of those letters of mine."

"Mentally I answered every one."

"A lot of good that did me!"

"It did us both a lot of good. I meant to write to you some day—when my life had become busy enough to make it difficult for me to find time to write."

He looked up at her sharply, and she laughed and swung her muff.

"I suppose," he said, "now that the town talks about you a little, you will have no time to waste on mere Johnnies."

"Well, I don't know. When a mere Johnnie is also a Jack, it makes a difference—doesn't it? Do you think that you would care to see me again?"

"Of course I do."

"The tickets," she said demurely, "are three dollars—two weeks in advance——"

"I know that by experience."

"Oh! Then you have seen 'The Better Way'?"

"Certainly."

"Do you like—the show?"

"You are the best of it. Yes, I like it."

"It's my first chance. Did you know that? If poor little Graham hadn't been so ill, I'd never have had a look in. They wouldn't give me anything—except in a way I couldn't accept it. I tell you, Jack, I was desperate. There seemed to be absolutely no chance unless I—paid."

"Why didn't you write me and let me——"

"You know why."

"It would have been reward enough to see you make good—and put it all over that bald-headed, dog-faced——"

"My employer, please remember," she said, pretending to reprove him. "And, Jack, he's amusingly decent to me now. Men are really beginning to be kind. Walbaum's people have written to me, and O'Rourke sent for me, and I'm just beginning to make professional enemies, too, which is the surest sign that I'm almost out of the ranks. If I could only study! Now is the time! I know it; I feel it keenly—I realise how much I lack in education! You see I only went to high-school. It's a mercy that my English isn't hopeless——"

"It's good! It's better than I ever supposed it would be——"

"I know. I used to be careless. But what can you expect? After I left home you know the sort of girls I was thrown among. Fortunately, father was educated—if he was nothing else. My degeneracy wasn't permanent. Also, I had been thrown with Jacqueline, and with you——"

"Fine educational model I am!"

"And," she continued, not heeding him, "when I met you, and men like you, I was determined that whatever else happened to me my English should not degenerate. Jacqueline helped me so much. I tried to study, too, when I was not on the road with the show. But if only I could study now—study seriously for a year or two!"

"What do you wish to study, Cynthia?" he asked carelessly.

"English! Also French and German and Italian. I would like to study what girls in college study. Then I'd like to learn stage dancing thoroughly. And, of course, I'm simply crazy to take a course in dramatic art——"

"But you already know a lot! Every paper spoke well of you——"

"Oh, Jack! Does that mean anything—when I know that I don't know anything!"

"Rot! Can you beat professional experience as an educator?"

"I'm not quite ready for it——"

"Very well. If you feel that way, will you be a good sort, Cynthia, and let me——"

"No!"

"I ask you merely to let me take a flyer!"

"No, Jack."

"Why can't I take a flyer? Why can't I have the pleasure of speculating on a perfectly sure thing? It's a million to nothing that you'll make good. For the love of Mike, Cynthia, borrow the needful and——"

"From you?"

"Naturally."

"No, Jack!"

"Why not? Why cut off your nose to spite your face? What difference does it make where you get it as long as it's a decent deal? You can't afford to take two or three years off to complete your education——"

"Begin it, you mean."

"I mean finish it! You can't afford to; but if you'll borrow the money you'll make good in exactly one-tenth of the time you'd otherwise take to arrive——"

"Jack, I won't discuss it with you. I know you are generous and kind——"

"I'm not! I'm anything but! For heaven's sake let a man indulge his vanity, Cynthia. Imagine my pride when you are famous! Picture my bursting vanity as I sit in front and tell everybody near me that the credit is all mine; that if it were not for me you would be nowhere!"

"It's so like you," she said sweetly. "You always were an inordinate boaster, so I am not going to encourage you."

"Can't you let me make you a business loan at exorbitant interest without expiring of mortification?"

They had reached the theatre; a few loafers sunning themselves by the stage entrance leered at them.

"Hush, Jack! I can't discuss it with you. But you know how grateful I am, don't you?"

"No, I don't——" he said sulkily.

"You are cross now, but you'll see it as I do half an hour hence."

"No, I won't!" he insisted.

She laughed: "You haven't changed, at all events, have you? It takes me back years to see that rather becoming scowl gather over the bridge of your ornamental nose. But it is very nice to know that you haven't entirely forgotten me; that we are still friends."

"Where are you living, Cynthia?"

She told him, adding: "Do you really mean to come?"

"Watch me!" he said, almost savagely, took off his hat, shook her hand until her fingers ached, and marched off still scowling.

The stage loafers shifted quids and looked after him with sneers.

"Trun out!" observed one.

"All off!" nodded another.

The third merely spat and slowly closed his disillusioned and leisure-weary eyes.

Cairns' energetic pace soon brought him to the Olympian Club, where he was accustomed to lunch, it being convenient to his office, which was on Forty-sixth Street.

Desboro, who, at Jacqueline's request, had gone back to business, appeared presently and joined Cairns at a small table.

"Anything doing at the office?" inquired the latter. "I suppose you were too nervous and upset to notice the market though."

"Well, ask yourself how much you'd feel like business after marrying the most glorious and wonderful——"

"Ring off! I concede everything. It is going to make some splash in the papers. Yes? Lord! I wish you could have had a ripping big wedding though! Wouldn't she have looked the part? Oh, no!"

"It couldn't be helped," said Desboro in a low, chagrined voice. "I'd have given the head off my shoulders to have had the sort of a wedding to which she was entitled. But—I couldn't."

Cairns nodded, not, however, understanding; and as Desboro offered no explanation, he remained unenlightened.

"Rather odd," he remarked, "that she didn't wish to have Aunt Hannah with her at the fatal moment. They're such desperate chums these days."

"She did want her. I wouldn't have her."

"Is that so?"

"It is. I'll tell you why some day. In fact, I don't mind telling you now. Aunt Hannah has it in for me. She's a devil sometimes. You know it and I do. She has it in for me just now. She's wrong; she's made a mistake; but I couldn't tell her anything. You can't tell that sort of a woman anything, once she's made up her mind. And the fact is, Jack, she's already made up her mind that I was not to marry Jacqueline. And I was afraid of her. And that's why I married Jacqueline this way."

Cairns stared.

"So now," added Desboro, "you know how it happened."

"Quite so. Rotten of her, wasn't it?"

"She didn't mean it that way. She got a fool idea into her head, that's all. Only I was afraid she'd tell it to Jacqueline."

"I see."

"That's what scared me. I didn't know what she might tell Jacqueline. She threatened to tell her—things. And it would have involved a perfectly innocent woman and myself—put me in a corner where I couldn't decently explain the real facts to Jacqueline. Now, thank God, it's too late for Aunt Hannah to make mischief."

Cairns nodded, thinking of Mrs. Clydesdale. And whatever he personally was inclined to believe, he knew that gossip was not dealing very leniently with that young wife and the man who sat on the other side of the table, nervously pulling to pieces his unlighted cigarette.

But it needed no rumour, no hearsay evidence, no lifted eyebrows, no shrugs, no dubious smiles, no half-hearted defence of Elena Clydesdale, to thoroughly convince Mrs. Hammerton of Desboro's utter unfitness as a husband for the motherless girl she had begun to love with a devotion so fierce that at present it could brook no rival at all of either sex.

For Mrs. Hammerton had never before loved. She had once supposed that she loved her late husband, but soon came to regard him as a poor sort of thing. She had been extremely fond of Desboro, too, in her own way, but in the vivid fire of this new devotion to Jacqueline, any tenderness she ever might have cherished for that young man was already consumed and sacrificed to a cinder in the fiercer flame.

Into her loneliness, into her childless solitude, into the hardness, cynicism, and barren emptiness of her latter years, a young girl had stepped from nowhere, and she had suddenly filled her whole life with the swift enchantment of love.

A word or two, a smile, the magic of two arms upon her bony shoulders, the shy touch of youthful lips—these were the very simple ingredients which apparently had transmuted the brass and tinsel and moral squalor of Aunt Hannah's life into charming reality.

From sudden tenderness to grim love, to jealous, watchful, passionate adoration—these were the steps Mrs. Hammerton had taken in the brief interval of time that had elapsed since she had first seen Jacqueline.

Into the clear, truthful eyes she had looked, and had seen within only an honest mind and a clean young soul. Wisdom, too, only lacking in experience, she divined there; and less of wisdom than of intelligence; and less of that than of courage. And it all was so clear, so perfectly apparent to the cold and experienced scrutiny of the woman of the world, that, for a while, she could not entirely believe what she understood at the first glance.

When she was convinced, she surrendered. And never before in all her unbelieving, ironical, and material career had she experienced such a thrill of overwhelming delight as when, that evening at Silverwood, Jacqueline had drawn her head down and had touched her dry forehead with warm, young lips.

Everything about the girl fascinated her—her independence and courage; her adorable bashfulness in matters where experience had made others callous—in such little things, for example, as the response to an invitation, the meeting with fashionable strangers—but it was only the nice, friendly, and thoroughbred shyness of inexperience, not the awkwardness of under-breeding or of that meaner vanity called self-consciousness.

Poor herself, predatory, clever, hard as nails, her beady eyes ever alert for the main chance, she felt for the first time in her life the real bitterness of comparative poverty—which is the inability to give where one loves.

She had no illusions; she knew that what she had to offer the girl would soon pall; that Jacqueline would choose her own friends among the sane and simple and sincere, irrespective of social and worldly considerations; that no glitter, no sham, no tinsel could permanently hold her attention; no lesser ambition seduce her; no folly ever awake her laughter more than once. What the girl saw she would understand; and, in future, she would choose for herself what she cared to see and know of a new world now gradually opening before her.

But in the meantime Jacqueline must see before she could learn, and before she could make up her mind what to discard and what to retain.

So Mrs. Hammerton had planned that Jacqueline should be very busy during March and April; and her patience was sorely tried when she found that, for a week or two, the girl could give her only a very few minutes every other day.

At first it was a grim consolation to her that Jacqueline still remained too busy to see anybody, because that meant that Desboro, too, would be obliged to keep his distance.

For at first Mrs. Hammerton did not believe that the girl could be seriously interested in Desboro; in fact, she had an idea that, so far, all the sentiment was on Desboro's side. And both Jacqueline's reticence and her calm cordiality in speaking of Desboro were at first mistaken by Aunt Hannah for the symptoms of a friendship not sentimentally significant.

But the old lady's doubts soon became aroused; she began to watch Jacqueline askance—began to test her, using all her sly cleverness and skill. Slowly her uncertainty, uneasiness, and suspicion changed to anger and alarm.

If she had been more than angry and suspicious—if she had been positive, she would not have hesitated an instant. For on one matter she was coldly determined; the girl should not marry Desboro, or any such man as Desboro. It made no difference to her whether Desboro might be really in love with her. He was not fit for her; he was a man of weak character, idle, useless, without purpose or ability, who would never amount to anything or be anything except what he already was—an agreeable, graceful, amusing, acceptable item in the sort of society which he decorated.

She knew and despised that breed of youth; New York was full of them, and they were even less endurable to her than the similar species extant in England and on the Continent; for the New York sort were destitute of the traditions which had created the real kind—and there was no excuse for them, not even the sanction of custom. They were merely imitation of a more genuine degeneracy. And she held them in contempt.

She told Jacqueline this, as she was saying good-night on Saturday, and was alarmed and silenced by the girl's deep flush of colour; and she went home in her scrubby brougham, scared and furious by turns, and determined to settle Desboro's business for him without further hesitation.

Sunday Jacqueline could not see her; and the suspicion that the girl might be with Desboro almost drove the old lady crazy. Monday, too, Jacqueline told her over the telephone would be a very busy day; and Aunt Hannah acquiesced grimly, determined to waste no further time at the telephone and take no more chances, but go straight to Jacqueline and take her into her arms and tell her what a mother would tell her about Desboro, and how, at that very hour perhaps, he was with Mrs. Clydesdale; and what the world suspected, and what she herself knew of an intrigue that had been shamelessly carried into the very house which had sheltered Jacqueline within a day or two.

So on Monday morning Mrs. Hammerton went to see Jacqueline; and, learning that the girl had gone out early, marched home again, sat down at her desk, and wrote her a letter.

When she had finished she honestly believed that she had also finished Desboro; and, grimly persuaded that she had done a mother's duty by the motherless, she summoned a messenger and sent off the letter to a girl, who, at that very moment, had returned to her desk, a wife.

The rapid reaction from the thrilling experience of the morning had made Jacqueline nervous and unfit for business, even before she arrived at her office. But she entered the office resolutely and seated herself at her desk, summoning all her reserve of self-control to aid her in concentrating her mind on the business in hand.

First she read her morning's mail and dictated her answers to a red-headed stenographer. Next she received Lionel Sissly, disposed of his ladylike business with her; sent for Mr. Mirk, went over with him his report of the shop sales, revised and approved the list of prices to be ticketed on new acquisitions, re-read the sheaf of dictated letters laid before her by the red-headed stenographer, signed them, and sent down for the first client on the appointment-list.

The first on the list was a Mr. Hyman Dobky; and his three months' note had gone to protest, and Mr. Dobky wept.

She was not very severe with him, because he was a Lexington Avenue dealer just beginning in a small way, and she believed him to be honest at heart. He retired comforted, swabbing his eyes with his cuff.

Then came a furtive pair, Orrin Munger, the "Cubist" poet, and his loud-voiced, swaggering confrÈre, Adalbert Waudle, author of "Black Roses" and other phenomena which, some people whispered, resembled blackmail.

It had been with greatest reluctance, and only because it was a matter concerning a client, that she had consented to receive the dubious pair. She had not forgotten her experience with the "Cubist," and his suggestion for an informal Italian trip, and had never again desired or expected to see him.

He now offered her an abnormally flat and damp hand; and hers went behind her back and remained there clasped together, as she stood inspecting Mr. Munger with level eyes that harboured lightning.

She said quietly: "My client, Mr. Clydesdale, recently requested my opinion concerning certain jades, crystals and Chinese porcelains purchased by him from you and from Mr. Waudle. I have, so far, examined some twenty specimens. Every specimen examined by me is a forgery."

Mr. Waudle, taken completely by surprise, gaped at her like a fat and expiring fish; the poet turned a dull and muddy red, and said not a word.

"So," added Jacqueline coldly, "at Mr. Clydesdale's request I have asked you to come here and explain the situation to me."

Waudle, writer of "Pithy Points" for the infamous Tattler, recovered his wits first.

[Pg 345]
[Pg 346]
[Pg 347]

"Miss Nevers," he said menacingly, "do you mean to insinuate that I am a swindler?"

"Are you, Mr. Waudle?"

"That's actionable. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly. Please explain the forgeries."

The poet, who had sunk down upon a chair, now arose and began to make elaborate gestures preliminary to a fluency of speech which had never yet deserted him in any crisis where a lady was involved.

"My dear child——" he began.

"What!" cut in Jacqueline crisply.

"My—my dear and—and honored, but very youthful and inexperienced young lady," he stammered, a trifle out of countenance under the fierce glimmer in her eyes, "do you, for one moment, suppose that such a writer as Mr. Waudle would imperil his social and literary reputation for the sake of a few wretched dollars!"

"Fifteen thousand," commented Jacqueline quietly.

"Exactly. Fifteen thousand contemptible dollars—inartistically designed," he added, betraying a tendency to wander from the main point; and was generously proceeding to instruct her in the art of coin design when she brought him back to the point with a shock.

"You, also, are involved in this questionable transaction," she said coldly. "Can you explain these forgeries?"

"F-forgeries!" he repeated, forcibly injecting indignation into the exclamation; but his eyes grew very round, as though frightened, and a spinal limpness appeared which threatened the stability of his knees.

But the poet's fluency had not yet deserted him; he opened both arms in a gesture suggesting absolute confidence in a suspicious and inartistic world.

"I am quite guiltless of deception," he said, using a slight tremolo. "Permit me to protest against your inexperienced judgment in the matter of these ancient and precious specimens of Chinese art; I protest!" he exclaimed earnestly. "I protest in the name of that symbol of mystery and beauty—that occult lunar something, my dear young lady, which we both worship, and which the world calls the moon——"

"I beg your pardon——" she interrupted; but the poet was launched and she could not check him.

"I protest," he continued shrilly, "in the name of Art! In the name of all that is worth while, all that matters, all that counts, all that is meaningful, sacred, precious beyond price——"

"Mr. Munger!"

"I protest in the name of——"

"Mr. Munger!"

"Eh!" he said, coming to and rolling his round, washed-out eyes toward her.

"Be kind enough to listen," she said curtly. "I am compelled to interrupt you because to-day I am a very busy person. So I am going to be as brief with you as possible. This, then, is the situation as I understand it. A month or so ago you and your friend, Mr. Waudle, notified Mr. Clydesdale that you had just returned from Pekin with a very unusual collection of ancient Chinese art, purchased by you, as you stated, from a certain Chinese prince."

The faint note of scorn in her voice did not escape the poet, who turned redder and muddier and made a picturesque gesture of world-wide appeal; but no words came from either manufacturer of literary phrases; Waudle only closed his cod-like mouth, and the eyes set in his fat face became small and cunning like something in the farthest corner of a trap.

Jacqueline continued gravely: "At your solicitation, I understand, and depending upon your representations, my client, Mr. Clydesdale, purchased from you this collection——"

"We offered no guarantees with it," interrupted Waudle thickly. "Besides, his wife advised him to buy the collection. I am an old and valued friend of Mrs. Clydesdale. She would never dream of demanding a guarantee from me! Ask her if——"

"What is a guarantee?" inquired Jacqueline. "I'm quite certain that you don't know, Mr. Waudle. And did you and Mr. Munger regard your statement concerning the Chinese prince as poetic license? Or as diverting fiction? Or what? You were not writing romance, you know. You were engaged in business. So I must ask you again who is this prince?"

"There was a prince," retorted Waudle sullenly. "Can you prove there wasn't?"

"There are several princes in China. And now I am obliged to ask you to state distinctly exactly how many of these porcelains, jades and crystals which you sold to Mr. Clydesdale were actually purchased by you from this particular Chinese prince?"

"Most of them," said Waudle, defiantly. "Prove the contrary if you can!"

"Not all of them, then—as you assured Mr. Clydesdale?"

"I didn't say all."

"I am afraid you did, Mr. Waudle. I am afraid you even wrote it—over your own signature."

"Very well," said Waudle, with a large and careless sweep of his hand, "if any doubt remains in Mr. Clydesdale's mind, I am fully prepared to take back whatever specimens may not actually have come from the prince——"

"There were some, then, which did not?"

"One or two, I believe."

"And who is this Chinese prince, Mr. Waudle?" she repeated, not smiling. "What is his name?"

Munger answered; he knew exactly what answer to make, and how to deliver it with flowing gestures. He had practised it long enough:

"When I was travelling with His Excellency T'ang-K'ai-Sun by rail from Szechuan to Pekin to visit Prince——"

"The railroad is not built," interrupted the girl drily. "You could not have travelled that way."

Both men regarded her as though paralysed by her effrontery.

"Continue, please," she nodded.

The poet swallowed nothing very fast and hard, and waved his damp hand at her:

"Tuan-Fang, Viceroy of Wuchang——"

"He happens to be Viceroy of Nanking," observed the girl.

Waudle, frightened, lost his temper and turned on her, exasperated:

"Be careful! Your insinuations involve our honour and are actionable! Do you realise what you are saying?"

"Perfectly."

"I fear not. Do you imagine you are competent to speak with authority about China and its people and its complex and mysterious art when you have never been in the country?"

"I have seen a little of China, Mr. Waudle. But I do not pretend to speak with undue authority about it."

"You say you've been in China?" His tone of disbelief was loud and bullying.

"I was in China with my father when I was a girl of sixteen."

"Oh! Perhaps you speak Chinese!" he sneered.

She looked at him gravely, not answering.

He laughed: "Now, Miss Nevers, you have intimated that we are liars and swindlers. Let's see how much you know for an expert! You pretend to be an authority on things Chinese. You will then understand me when I say: 'Jen chih ch'u, Hsing pen shan——'"

"I do understand you, Mr. Waudle," she cut in contemptuously. "You are repeating the 'three-word-classic,' which every school-child in China knows, and it merely means 'Men when born are naturally good.' I think I may qualify in Chinese as far as San Tzu Ching and his nursery rhymes. And I think we have had enough of this dodging——"

The author flushed hotly.

"Do you speak Wenli?" he demanded, completely flustered.

"Do you?" she retorted impatiently.

"I do," he asserted boldly.

"Indeed!"

"I may even say that I speak very fluently the—the literary language of China—or Wenli, as it is commonly called."

"That is odd," she said, "because the literary language of China, commonly called Wenli, is not and never has been spoken. It is only a written language, Mr. Waudle."

The Cubist had now gone quite to pieces. From his colourless mop of bushy hair to the fringe on his ankle-high trousers, he presented a study in deep dejection. Only his round, pale, parrot-like eyes remained on duty, staring unwinkingly at her.

"Were you ever actually in China?" she asked, looking around at him.

The terrified poet feebly pointed to the author of "Black Roses."

"Oh!" she said. "Were you in China, Mr. Waudle, or only in Japan?"

But Mr. Waudle found nothing further to say.

"Because," she said, "in Japan sometimes one is deceived into buying alleged Chinese jades and crystals and porcelains. I am afraid that you were deceived. I hope you were honestly deceived. What you have sold to Mr. Clydesdale as jade is not jade. And the porcelains are not what you represented them to be."

"That's where you make a mistake!" shouted Waudle loudly. "I've had the inscription on every vase translated, and I can prove it! How much of an expert are you? Hey?"

"If you were an expert," she explained wearily, "you would understand that inscriptions on Chinese porcelains are not trustworthy. Even hundreds of years ago forgeries were perpetrated by the Chinese who desired to have their works of art mistaken for still more ancient masterpieces; and so the ancient and modern makers of porcelains inscribed them accordingly. Only when an antique porcelain itself conforms to the inscription it bears do we venture to accept that inscription. Never otherwise."

Waudle, hypnotised, stood blinking at her, bereft of speech, almost of reason.

The poet piped feebly: "It was not our fault! We were brutally deceived in Japan. And, oh! The bitter deception to me! The cruelty of the awakening!" He got up out of his chair; words and gestures were once again at his command; tears streaked his pasty cheeks.

"Miss Nevers! My dear and honoured young lady! You know—you among all women must realise how precious to me is the moon! Sacred, worshipped, adored—desired far more than the desire for gold—yea, than much fine gold! Sweeter, also, than honey in the honeycomb!" he sobbed. "And it was a pair of moon vases, black as midnight, pearl-orbed, lacquered, mystic, wonderful, that lured me——"

"A damned Japanese in Tokio worked them off on us!" broke out the author of "Black Roses," hoarsely. "That was the beginning. What are you going to do about it? You've got us all right, Miss Nevers. The Jap did us. We did the next man. If you want to send us up, I suppose you can! I don't care. I can't keep soul and body together by selling what I write. I tell you I've starved half my life—and when I hear about the stuff that sells—all these damned best sellers—all this cheap fiction that people buy—while they neglect me—it breaks my heart——"

He turned sharply and passed his hand over his face. It was not an attitude; for a fraction of a second it was the real thing. Yet, even while the astonished poet was peeping sideways at his guilty companion, a verse suggested itself to him; and, quite unconsciously, he began to fumble in his pockets for a pencil, while the tears still glistened on his cheeks.

"Mr. Waudle," said Jacqueline, "I am really sorry for you. Because this is a very serious affair."

There was a silence; then she reseated herself at her desk.

"My client, Mr. Clydesdale, is not vindictive. He has no desire to humiliate you publicly. But he is justly indignant. And I know he will insist that you return to him what money he paid you for your collection."

Waudle started dramatically, forgetting his genuine emotion of the moment before.

"Does this rich man mean to ruin me!" he demanded, making his resonant voice tremble.

"On the contrary," she explained gently, "all he wants is the money he paid you."

As that was the only sort of ruin which Mr. Waudle had been fearing, he pressed his clenched fists into his eyes. He had never before possessed so much money. The mere idea of relinquishing it infuriated him; and he turned savagely on Jacqueline, hesitated, saw it was useless. For there remained nothing further to say to such a she-devil of an expert. He had always detested women anyway; whenever he had any money they had gotten it in one way or another. The seven thousand, his share, would have gone the same way. Now it was going back into a fat, rich man's capacious pockets—unless Mrs. Clydesdale might be persuaded to intervene. She could say that she wanted the collection. Why not? She had aided him before in emergencies—unwillingly, it is true—but what of that? No doubt she'd do it again—if he scared her sufficiently.

Jacqueline waited a moment longer; then rose from her desk in signal that the interview was at an end.

Waudle slouched out first, his oblong, evil head hanging in a picturesque attitude of noble sorrow. The Cubist shambled after him, wrapped in abstraction, his round, pale, bird-like eyes partly sheathed under bluish eyelids that seemed ancient and wrinkled.

He was already quite oblivious to his own moral degradation; his mind was completely obsessed by the dramatic spectacle which the despair of his friend had afforded him, and by the idea for a poem with which the episode had inspired him.

He was still absently fishing for a pencil and bit of paper when his companion jogged his elbow:

"If we fight this business, and if that damn girl sets Clydesdale after us, we'll have to get out. But I don't think it will come to that."

"Can you stop her, Adalbert—and retain the money?"

"By God! I'm beginning to think I can. I believe I'll drop in to see Mrs. Clydesdale about it now. She is a very faithful friend of mine," he added gently. "And sometimes a woman will rush in to help a fellow where angels fear to tread."

The poet looked at him, then looked away, frightened.

"Be careful," he said, nervously.

"Don't worry. I know women. And I have an idea."

The poet of the Cubists shrugged; then, with a vague gesture:

"My mistress, the moon," he said, dreamily, "is more to me than any idea on earth or in Heaven."

"Very fine," sneered Waudle, "but why don't you make her keep you in pin money?"

"Adalbert," retorted the poet, "if you wish to prostitute your art, do so. Anybody can make a mistress of his art and then live off her. But the inviolable moon——"

"Oh, hell!" snapped the author of "Black Roses."

And they wandered on into the busy avenue, side by side, Waudle savagely biting his heavy under-lip, both fists rammed deep into his overcoat pockets; the Cubist wandering along beside him, a little derby hat crowning the bunch of frizzled hair on his head, his soiled drab trousers, ankle high, flapping in the wind.

Jacqueline glanced at them as they passed the window at the end of the corridor, and turned hastily away, remembering the old, unhappy days after her father's death, and how once from a window she had seen the poet as she saw him now, frizzled, soiled, drab, disappearing into murky perspective.

She turned wearily to her desk again. A sense of depression had been impending—but she knew it was only the reaction from excitement and fought it nervously.

They brought luncheon to her desk, but she sent away the tray untouched. People came by appointment and departed, only to give place to others, all equally persistent and wholly absorbed in their own affairs; and she listened patiently, forcing her tired mind to sympathise and comprehend. And, in time, everybody went away satisfied or otherwise, but in no doubt concerning the answer she had given, favourable or unfavourable to their desires. For that was her way in the business of life.

At last, once more looking over her appointment list, she found that only Clydesdale remained; and almost at the same moment, and greatly to her surprise, Mrs. Clydesdale was announced.

"Is Mr. Clydesdale with her?" she asked the clerk, who had also handed her a letter with the visiting card of Mrs. Clydesdale.

"The lady is alone," he said.

Jacqueline glanced at the card again. Then, thoughtfully:

"Please say to Mrs. Clydesdale that I will receive her," she said; laid the card on the desk and picked up the letter.

It was a very thick letter and had arrived by messenger.

The address on the envelope was in Mrs. Hammerton's familiar and vigorous back-stroke writing, and she had marked it "Private! Personal! Important!" As almost every letter from her to Jacqueline bore similar emphatic warnings, the girl smiled to herself and leisurely split the envelope with a paper knife.

She was still intent on the letter, and was still seated at her desk when Mrs. Clydesdale entered. And Jacqueline slowly looked up, dazed and deathly white, as the woman about whom she had at that moment been reading came forward to greet her. Then, with a supreme effort, she rose from her chair, managing to find the ghost of a voice to welcome Elena, who seemed unusually vivacious, and voluble to the verge of excitement.

"My dear!" she exclaimed. "What a perfectly charming office! It's really too sweet for words, Miss Nevers! It's enough to drive us all into trade! Are you very much surprised to see me here?"

"A—little."

"It's odd—the coincidence that brought me," said Elena gaily, "—and just a trifle embarrassing to me. And as it is rather a confidential matter——" She drew her chair closer to the desk. "May I speak to you in fullest candour and—and implicit confidence, Miss Nevers?"

"Yes."

"Then—there is a friend of mine in very serious trouble—a man I knew slightly before I was married. Since then I—have come to know him—better. And I am here now to ask you to help him."

"Yes."

"Shall I tell you his name at once?"

"If you wish."

"Then—his name is Adalbert Waudle."

Jacqueline looked up at her in weary surprise.

Elena laughed feverishly: "Adalbert is only a boy—a bad one, perhaps, but—you know that genius is queer—always unbalanced. He came to see me at noon to-day. It's a horrid mess, isn't it—what he did to my husband? I know all about it; and I know that Cary is wild, and that it was an outrageous thing for Adalbert to do. But——"

Her voice trembled a little and she forced a laugh to conceal it: "Adalbert is an old friend, Miss Nevers. I knew him as a boy. But even so, Cary couldn't understand if I pleaded for him. My husband means to send him to jail if he does not return the money. And—and I am sorry for Mrs. Waudle. Besides, I like the porcelains. And I want you to persuade Cary to keep them."

Through the whirling chaos of her thoughts, Jacqueline still strove to understand what this excited woman was saying; made a desperate effort to fix her attention on the words and not on the flushed and restless young wife who was uttering them.

"Will you persuade Cary to keep the collection, Miss Nevers?"

"That is for you to do, Mrs. Clydesdale."

"I tried. I called him up at his office and asked him to keep the jades and porcelains because I liked them. But he was very obstinate. What you have told him about—about being swindled has made him furious. That is why I came here. Something must be done."

"I don't think I understand you."

"There is nothing to understand. I want to keep the collection. I ask you to convince my husband——"

"How?"

"I d—don't know," stammered Elena, crimson again. "You ought to know how to—to do it."

"If Mr. Waudle returns your husband's money, no further action will be taken."

"He can not," said Elena, in a low voice.

"Why?"

"He has spent it."

"Did he tell you that?"

"Yes."

"Then I am afraid that Mr. Clydesdale will have him arrested."

There was an ominous silence. Jacqueline forced her eyes away from the terrible fascination of Elena's ghastly face, and said:

"I am sorry. But I can do nothing for you, Mrs. Clydesdale. The decision rests with your husband."

"You must help me!"

"I cannot."

"You must!" repeated Elena.

"How?"

"I—I don't care how you do it! But you must prevent my husband from prosecuting Mr. Waudle! It—it has got to be done—somehow."

"What do you mean?"

Elena's face was burning and her lips quivered:

"It has got to be done! I can't tell you why."

"Can you not tell your husband?"

"No."

Jacqueline was quivering, too, clinging desperately to her self-control under the menace of an impending horror which had already partly stunned her.

"Are you—afraid of this man?" she asked, with stiffening lips.

Elena bowed her head in desperation.

"What is it? Blackmail?"

"Yes. He once learned something. I have paid him—not to—to write it for the—the Tattler. And to-day he came to me straight from your office and made me understand that I would have to stop my husband from—taking any action—even to recover the money——"

Jacqueline sat nervously clenching and unclenching her hands over the letter which lay under them on the blotter.

"What scandal is it you fear, Mrs. Clydesdale?" she asked, in an icy voice.

Elena coloured furiously: "Is it necessary for me to incriminate myself before you help me? I thought you more generous!"

"I can not help you. There is no way to do so."

"Yes, there is!"

"How?"

"By—by telling my husband that the—the jades are not forgeries!"

Jacqueline's ashy cheeks blazed into colour.

"Mrs. Clydesdale," she said, "I would not do it to save myself—not even to save the dearest friend I have! And do you think I will lie to spare you?"

In the excitement and terror of what now was instantly impending, the girl had risen, clutching Mrs. Hammerton's letter in her hand.

"You need not tell me why you—you are afraid," she stammered, her lovely lips already distorted with fear and horror, "because I—I know! Do you understand? I know what you are—what you have done—what you are doing!"

She fumbled in the pages of Mrs. Hammerton's letter, found an enclosure, and held it out to Elena with shaking fingers.

It was Elena's note to her husband, written on the night she left him, brought by her husband to Silverwood, left on the library table, used as a bookmark by Desboro, discovered and kept by its finder, Mrs. Hammerton, for future emergencies.

Elena re-read it now with sickened senses, and knew that in the eyes of this young girl she was utterly and irretrievably damned.

"Did you write that?" whispered Jacqueline, with lips scarcely under control.

"I—you do not understand——"

"Did you know that when I was a guest under Mr. Desboro's roof everything that he and you said in the library was overheard? Do you know that you have been watched—not by me—but even long before I knew you—watched even at the opera——"

Elena drew a quick, terrified breath; then the surging shame mantled her from brow to throat.

"That was Mrs. Hammerton!" she murmured. "I warned Jim—but he trusted her."

Jacqueline turned cold all over.

"He is your—lover," she said mechanically.

Elena looked at her, hesitated, came a step nearer, still staring. Her visage and her bearing altered subtly. For a moment they gazed at each other. Then Elena said, in a soft, but deadly, voice:

"Suppose he is my lover! Does that concern you?" And, as the girl made no stir or sound: "However, if you think it does, you will scarcely care to know either of us any longer. I am quite satisfied. Do what you please about the man who has blackmailed me. I don't care now. I was frightened for a moment—but I don't care any longer. Because the end of all this nightmare is in sight; and I think Mr. Desboro and I are beginning to awake at last."

Until a few minutes before five Jacqueline remained seated at her desk, motionless, her head buried in her arms. Then she got to her feet somehow, and to her room, where, scarcely conscious of what she was doing, she bathed her face and arranged her hair, and strove to pinch and rub a little colour into her ghastly cheeks.