The days of the house-party at Shotover were numbered. A fresh relay of guests was to replace them on Monday, and so they were making the most of the waning week on lawn and marsh, in covert and blind, or motoring madly over the State, or riding in parties to Vermillion Light. Tennis and lawn bowls came into fashion; even water polo and squash alternated on days too raw for more rugged sport.

And during all these days Beverly Plank appeared with unflagging persistence and assiduity, until his familiar, big, round head and patient, delft-blue, Dutch eyes became a matter of course at Shotover, indoors and out.

It was not that he was either accepted, tolerated, or endured; he was simply there, and nobody took the trouble to question his all-pervading presence until everybody had become too much habituated to him to think about it at all.

The accomplished establishment of Beverly Plank was probably due as much to his own obstinate and good-tempered persistence as to Mrs. Mortimer. He was a Harvard graduate—there are all kinds of them—enormously wealthy, and though he had no particular personal tastes to gratify, he was willing and able to gratify the tastes of others. He did whatever anybody else did, and did it well enough to be amusing; and as lack of intellectual development never barred anybody from any section of the fashionable world, it seemed fair to infer that he would land where he wanted to, sooner or later.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Mortimer led him about with the confidence that was her perquisite; and the chances were that in due time he would have house-parties of his own at Black Fells—not the kind he had wisely denied himself the pleasure of giving, with such neighbours as the Ferralls to observe, but the sort he desired. However, there were many things to be accomplished for him and by him before he could expect to use his great yacht and his estates and his shooting boxes and the vast granite mansion recently completed and facing Central Park just north of the new palaces built on the edges of the outer desert where Fifth Avenue fringes the hundreds.

Meanwhile, he had become in a measure domesticated at Shotover, and Shotover people gradually came to ride, drive, and motor over the Fells, which was a good beginning, though not necessarily a promise for anything definite in the future.

Mortimer, riding a huge chestnut—he could still wedge himself into a saddle—had now made it a regular practice to affect the jocular early-bird squire, and drag Plank out of bed. And Plank, in no position to be anything but flattered by such sans gêne, laboriously and gratefully splashed through his bath, wallowed amid the breakfast plates, and mounted a hunter for long and apparently aimless gallops with Mortimer.

His acquaintance among people who knew Mortimer being limited, he had no means of determining the latter's social value except through hearsay and a toadying newspaper or two. Therefore he was not yet aware of Mortimer's perennial need of money; and when Mortimer laughingly alluded to his poverty, Plank accepted the proposition in a purely comparative sense, and laughed, too, his thrifty Dutch soul untroubled by misgivings.

Meanwhile, Mortimer had come, among other things, on information; how much, and precisely of what nature, he was almost too much ashamed to admit definitely, even to himself. Still, the idea that had led him into this sudden intimacy with Plank, vague or not, persisted; and he was always hovering on the edge of hinting at something which might elicit a responsive hint from the flattered master of Black Fells.

There was much about Plank that was unaffected, genuine, even simple, in one sense; he cared for people for their own sakes; and only stubborn adherence to a dogged ambition had enabled him to dispense with the society of many people he might easily have cultivated and liked—people nearer his own sort; and that, perhaps, was the reason he so readily liked Mortimer, whose coarse fibre soon wore through the polish when rubbed against by a closer, finer fibre. And Plank liked him aside from gratitude; and they got on famously on the basis of such mutual recognition. Then, one day, very suddenly, Mortimer stumbled on something valuable—a thread, a mere clew, so astonishing that for an instant it absolutely upset all his unadmitted theories and calculations.

It was nothing—a vague word or two—a forced laugh—and the scared silence of this man Plank, who had blundered on the verge of a confidence to a man he liked.

A moment of amazement, of half-incredulous suspicion, of certainty; and Mortimer pounced playfully upon him like a tiger—a big, fat, friendly, jocose tiger:

“Plank, is that what you're up to!”

“Up to! Why, I never thought of such a—”

“Haw! haw!” roared Mortimer. “If you could only see your face!”

And Beverly Plank, red as a beet, comfortably suffused with reassurance under the reaction from his scare, attempted to refute the other's conclusions: “It doesn't mean anything, Mortimer. She's just the handsomest girl I ever saw. I know she's engaged. I only admired her a lot.”

“You're not the only man,” said Mortimer blandly, still striving to reconcile his preconceived theories with the awkward half-confession of this great, red-fisted, hulking horseman riding at his stirrup.

“I wouldn't have her dream,” stammered Plank, “that I had ever thought of such a—”

“Why not? It would only flatter her.”

“Flatter a woman who is engaged to marry another man!” gasped Plank.

“Certainly. Do you think any woman ever had enough admiration in this world?” asked Mortimer coolly. “And as for Sylvia Landis, she'd be tickled to death if anybody hinted that you had ever admired her.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Plank, alarmed; “You wouldn't make a joke of it! you wouldn't be careless about such a thing! And there's Quarrier! I'm not on joking terms with him; I'm on most formal terms.”

“Quarrier!” sneered the other, flicking at his stirrup with his crop. “He's on formal terms with everybody, including himself. He never laughed on purpose in his life; once a month only, to keep his mouth in; that's his limit. Do you suppose any woman would stand for him if a better man looked sideways at her?” And, reversing his riding crop, he deliberately poked Mr. Plank in the ribs.

“A—a better man!” muttered Plank, scarce crediting his ears.

“Certainly. A man who can make good, is good; but a man who can make better is it with the ladies—God bless 'em!” he added, displaying a heavy set of teeth.

Beverly Plank knew perfectly well that, in the comparison so delicately suggested by Mortimer, his material equipment could be scarcely compared to the immense fortune controlled by Howard Quarrier; and as he thought it, his reflections were put into words by Mortimer, airily enough:

“Nobody stands a chance in a show-down with Quarrier. But—”

Plank gaped until the tension became unbearable.

“But—what?” he blurted out.

“Plank,” said Mortimer solemnly, and his voice vibrated with feeling, “Let me do a little thinking before I ask you a—a vital question.”

But Plank had become agitated again, and he said something so bluntly that Mortimer wheeled on him, glowering:

“Look here, Plank: you don't suppose I'm capable of repeating a confidence, do you?—if you choose to make me understand it's a confidence.”

“It isn't a confidence; it isn't anything; I mean it is confidential, of course. All there's in it is what I said—or rather what you took me up on so fast,” ended Plank, abashed.

“About your being in love with Syl—”

“Confound it!” roared Plank, crimson to his hair; and he set his heavy spurs to his mount and plunged forward in a storm of dust. Mortimer followed, silent, profoundly immersed in his own thoughts and deductions; and as he pounded along, turning over in his mind all the varied information he had so unexpectedly obtained in these last few days, a dull excitement stirred him, and he urged his huge horse forward in a thrill of rising exhilaration such as seizes on men who hunt, no matter what they hunt—the savage, swimming sense of intoxication which marks the man who chases the quarry not for its own value, but because it is his nature to chase and ride down and enjoy spoils.

And all that afternoon, having taken to his room on pretence of neuralgia, he lay sprawled on his bed, thinking, thinking. Not that he meant harm to anybody, he told himself very frequently. He had, of course, information which certain degraded men might use in a contemptible way, but he, Mortimer, did not resemble such men in any particular. All he desired was to do Plank a good turn. There was nothing disreputable in doing a wealthy man a favour.... And God knew a wealthy man's gratitude was necessary to him at that very moment—gratitude substantially acknowledged.... He liked Plank—wished him well; that was all right, too; but a man is an ass who doesn't wish himself well also.... Two birds with one stone.... Three! for he hated Quarrier. Four!... for he had no love for his wife.... Besides, it would teach Leila a wholesome lesson—teach her that he still counted; serve her right for her disgusting selfishness about Plank.

No, there was to be nothing disreputable in his proceedings; that he would be very careful about.... Probably Major Belwether might express his gratitude substantially if he, Mortimer, went to him frankly and volunteered not to mention to Quarrier the scene he had witnessed between Sylvia Landis and Stephen Siward at three o'clock in the morning in the corridor; and if, in playful corroboration, he displayed the cap and rain-coat and the big fan, all crushed, which objects of interest he had discovered later in the bay-window.... Yes, probably Major Belwether would be very grateful, because he wanted Quarrier in the family; he needed Quarrier in his business.... But, faugh! that was close enough to blackmail to rub off!... No!... No! He wouldn't go to Belwether and promise any such thing!... On the contrary, he felt it his duty to inform Quarrier! Quarrier had a right to know what sort of a girl he was threatened with for life!... A man ought not to let another man go blindly into such a marriage.... Men owed each other something, even if they were not particularly close friends.... And he had always had a respect for Quarrier, even a sort of liking for him—yes, a distinct liking!... And, anyhow, women were devils! and it behooved men to get together and stand for one another!

Quarrier would give her her walking papers damned quick!... And, in her humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn't snap up Plank in such a fix?... And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier?... But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his money.... And Plank would be very, very grateful—very useful, a very good friend to have.... And Leila would learn at last that he, Mortimer, had cut his wisdom teeth, by God!

As for Siward, he amounted to nothing; probably was one of that contemptible sort of men who butted in and kissed a pretty girl when he had the chance. He, Mortimer, had only disgust for such amateurs of the social by-ways; for he himself kept to the highways, like any self-respecting professional, even when a tour of the highways sometimes carried him below stairs. There was no romantic shilly-shallying fol-de-rol about him. Women learned what to expect from him in short order. En garde, Madame!—ou Mademoiselle—tant pis!

He laughed to himself and rolled over, digging his head into the pillows and stretching his fat hands to ease their congestion. And most of all he amused himself with figuring out the exact degree of his wife's astonishment and chagrin when, without consulting her, he achieved the triumph of Quarrier's elimination and the theatrical entry of Beverly Plank upon the stage. He laughed when he thought of Major Belwether, too, confounded under the loss of such a nephew-in-law, humiliated, crushed, all his misleading jocularity, all his sleek pink-and-white suavity, all his humbugging bonhomie knocked out of him, leaving only a rumpled, startled old gentleman, who bore an amusing resemblance to a very much mussed-up buck-rabbit.

“Haw! haw!” roared Mortimer, rolling about in his bed and kicking the slippers from his fat feet. Then, remembering that he was supposed to be suffering silently in his room, he hunched up to a sitting posture and regarded his environment with a subdued grin.

Everything seems easy when it seems funny. After all, the matter was simple—absurdly simple. A word to Quarrier, and crack! the match was off! Girl mad as a hornet, but staggered, has no explanation to offer; man frozen stiff with rage, mute as an iceberg. Then, zip! Enter Beverly Plank—the girl's rescuer at a pinch—her preserver, the saviour of her “face,” the big, highly coloured, leaden-eyed deus ex machina. Would she take fifty cents on the dollar? Would she? to buy herself a new “face”? And put it all over Quarrier? And live happy ever after? Would she? Oh, not at all!

And Mortimer rolled over in another paroxysm; which wasn't good for him, and frightened him enough to lie still awhile and think how best he might cut down on his wine and spirits.

The main thing, after all, was to promise Plank his opportunity, but not tell him how he was to obtain it; for Mortimer had an uneasy idea that there was something of the Puritan deep planted under the stolid young man's hide, and that he might make some absurd and irrelevant objection to the perfectly proper methods employed by his newly self-constituted guide and mentor. No; that was no concern of Plank's. All he had to do was to be ready. As for Quarrier, anybody could forecast his action when once convinced of Sylvia's behaviour.

He lay there pondering several methods of imparting the sad but necessary information to Quarrier. One thing was certain: there was not now time enough before the house-party dissolved to mould Plank into acquiescent obedience. That must be finished in town—unless Plank invited him to stay at the Fells after his time was up at Shotover. By Heaven! That was the idea! And there'd be a chance for him at cards!... Only, of course, Plank would ask Leila too.... But what did he care! He was no longer afraid of her; he'd soon be independent of her and her pittance. Let her go to the courts for her divorce! Let her—

He sat up rather suddenly, perplexed with a new idea which, curiously enough, had not appealed to him before. The astonishing hint so coolly dropped by his wife concerning her fearlessness of divorce proceedings had only awakened him to the consciousness of his own vulnerability and carelessness of conduct.

Now it occurred to him, for the first time, that if it were not a mere bluff on Leila's part, this sudden coquetting with the question of divorce might indicate an ulterior object. Was Leila considering his elimination in view of this ulterior object? Was there an ulterior gentleman somewhere prepared to replace him? If so, where? And who?

His wife's possible indiscretions had never interested him; he simply didn't care—had no curiosity, as long as appearances were maintained. And she had preserved appearances with a skill which required all the indifferent and easy charity of their set to pretend completely deceived everybody. Yes, he gave her credit for that; she had been clever. Nobody outside of the social register knew the true state of affairs in the house of Leroy Mortimer—which, after all, was all anybody cared about.

And so, immersed in the details of his dirty little drama, he pondered over the possibility of an ulterior gentleman as he moved heavily to and fro, dressing himself—his neuralgia being much better—and presently descended the stairs to find everybody absent, engaged, as a servant explained, in a game of water basket-ball in the swimming pool. So he strolled off toward the north wing of the house, which had been built for the squash-courts and swimming pool.

There was a good deal of an uproar in the big gymnasium as Mortimer walked in, threading his way through the palms and orange-trees; much splashing in the pool, cries and stifled laughter, and the quick rattle of applause from the gallery of the squash-courts.

The Page boys and Rena and Eileen on one side were playing the last match game against Sylvia, Marion Page, Siward, and Ferrall on the other; the big, slippery, glistening ball was flying about through storms of spray. Marion caught it, but her brother Gordon got it away; then Ferrall secured it and dived toward the red goal; but Rena Bonnesdel caught him under water; the ball bobbed up, and Sylvia flung both arms around it with a little warning shout and hurled it back at Siward, who shot forward like an arrow, his opponents gathering about him in full cry, amid laughter and excited applause from the gallery, where Grace Ferrall and Captain Voucher were wildly offering odds on the blue, and Alderdene and Major Belwether were thriftily booking them.

Mortimer climbed the slippery, marble stairway as fast as his lack of breath permitted, anxious for his share of the harvest if the odds were right. He ignored his wife's smilingly ironical offer, seeing no sense in bothering about money already inside the family; but he managed to make several apparently desirable wagers with Katharyn Tassel and one with Beverly Plank, who was also obstinately backing the blues, the losing side. Sylvia played forward for the blues.

Agatha Caithness, sleeves rolled up, tall and slim and strangely pale in her white flannels, came from the squash-court with Quarrier to watch the finish; and Mortimer observed her sidewise, blinking, irresolute, for he had never understood her and was always a trifle afraid of her. A pair of icicles, she and Quarrier, with whom he had never been on betting terms; so he made no suggestions in that direction, and presently became absorbed in the splashing battle below. Indeed, such a dashing of foam and showering of spray was taking place that the fronds of the big palms hung dripping amid drenched blossoms overweighted and prone on the wet marble edges of the pool.

Suddenly, through the confused blur of foam and spray, the big, glistening ball shot aloft and remained.

“Blue! Blue!” exclaimed Grace Ferrall, clapping her hands; and a little whirlwind of cries and hand clapping echoed from the gallery as the breathless swimmers came climbing out of the pool, with scarcely wind enough left for a word or strength for a gesture toward the laughing crowd above.

Mortimer, disgusted, turned away, already casting about him for somebody to play cards with—it being his temperament and his temper to throw good money after bad. But Quarrier and Miss Caithness had already returned to the squash-courts, the majority of the swimmers to their several dressing-rooms, and Grace Ferrall's party, equipped for motoring, to the lawn, where they lost little time in disappearing into the golden haze which a sudden shift of wind had spun out of the cloudless afternoon's sunshine.

However, he got Marion, and also, as usual, the two men who had made a practice of taking away his money—Major Belwether and Lord Alderdene. He hadn't particularly wanted them; he wanted somebody he could play with, like Siward, for example, or even the two ten-dollar Pages; not that their combined twenty would do him much good, but it would at least permit him the pleasures of the card-table without personal loss.

But the Pages had retired to dress, and Voucher was for motoring, and he had no use for his wife, and he was afraid of Plank's game, and Siward, seated on the edge of the pool and sharing a pint of ginger-ale with Sylvia Landis, shook his head at the suggestion and resumed his division of the ginger-ale.

Plank and Leila Mortimer came down to congratulate them. Sylvia, always instinctively and particularly nice to people of Plank's sort whom she occasionally encountered, was so faultlessly amiable, that Plank, who had never before permitted himself the privilege of monopolising her, found himself doing it so easily that it kept him in a state of persistent mental intoxication.

That slow, sweet, upward training inflection to a statement which instantly became a confided question was an unconscious trick which had been responsible, in Sylvia's brief life, for more mistakes than anything else. Like others before him, Beverly Plank made the mistake that the sweetness of voice and the friendliness of eyes were particularly personal to him, in tribute to qualities he had foolishly enough hitherto not suspected in himself. Now he suspected them, and whatever of real qualities desirable had been latent in him also appeared at once, confirming his modest suspicions. Certainly he was a wit! Was not this perfectly charming girl's responsive and delicious laughter proof enough? Certainly he was epigrammatic! Certainly he could be easy, polished, amusing, sympathetic, and vastly interesting all the while. Could he not divine it in her undivided attention, the quick, amused flicker of recognition animating her beautiful face when he had turned a particularly successful phrase or taken a verbal hurdle without a cropper? And above all, her kindness to him impressed him; her natural and friendly pleasure in being agreeable. Here he was already on an informal footing with one of the persons of whom he had been most shy and uncertain. If people were going to be as considerate of him as she had proved, why—why—

His dull, Dutch-blue eyes returned to her, fascinated. The conquest of what he desired and meant to have became merged in a vague plan which included such a marriage as he had dreamed of.

Somebody had once told him that a man who could afford to dress for dinner could go anywhere; meaning that, being a man, nature had fitted his feet with the paraphernalia for climbing as high as he cared to climb.

There was just enough truth in the statement to determine him to use his climbing irons; and he had done so, carrying his fortune with him, which had proved neither an impediment nor an aid so far. But now he had concluded that neither his god-sent climbing irons, his amiability, his obstinacy, his mild, tireless persistency, nor his money counted. It had come to a crisis where personal worth and sterling character must carry him through sheer merit to the inner temple—that inner temple of raw gold whose altars are served by a sexless skeleton in cap and bells!

Siward, inclined to be amused by the duration of the trance into which Plank had fallen, watched the progress of that bulky young man's infatuation as he sat there on the pool's marble edge, exchanging trivial views on trivial subjects with Mrs. Leroy Mortimer.

But her conversation, even when inconsequential, was never wearisome except when she made it so for her husband's benefit. Features, person, personality, and temperament were warmly exotic; her dark eyes with their slight Japanese slant, the clear olive skin with its rose bloom, the temptation of mouth and slender neck, were always provocative of the audacity in men which she could so well meet with amusement or surprise, or at times with a fascinating audacity of her own wholly charming because of its setting.

Once, in their history, during her early married life, Siward had been very sentimental about her; but neither he nor she had approached the danger line closer than to make daring eyes at one another across the frontiers of good taste. And their youthful enchantment had faded so naturally, so pleasantly, that always there had remained to them both an agreeable after-taste—a sort of gay understanding which almost invariably led to mutual banter when they encountered. But now something appeared to be lacking in their rather listless badinage—something of the usual flavour which once had salted even a laughing silence with significance. Siward, too, had ceased to be amused at the spectacle of Plank's calf-like infatuation; and Leila Mortimer's bored smile had lasted so long that her olive-pink cheeks were stiff, and she relaxed her fixed features with a little shrug that was also something of a shiver. Then, looking prudently around, she encountered Siward's eyes; and during a moment's hesitation they considered one another with an increasing curiosity that slowly became tentative intelligence. And her eyes said very plainly and wickedly to Siward's: “Oho, my friend! So it bores you to see Mr. Plank monopolising an engaged girl who belongs to Howard Quarrier!”

And his eyes, wincing, denying, pretending ignorance too late, suddenly narrowed in vexed retaliation: “Speak for yourself, my lady! You're no more pleased than I am!”

The next moment they both regretted the pale flash of telepathy. There had been something wounded in his eyes; and she had not meant that. No; a new charity for the hapless had softened her wonderfully within a fortnight's time, and a self-pity, not entirely ignoble, had subdued the brilliancy of her dark eyes, and made her tongue more gentle in dealing with all failings. Besides, she was not yet perfectly certain what ailed her, never having really cared for any one man before. No, she was not at all certain.... But in the meanwhile she was very sorry for herself, and for all those who drained the bitter cup that might yet pass from her shrinking lips. Who knows! “Stephen,” she said under her breath, “I didn't mean to hurt you.... Don't scowl. Listen. I have already entirely forgotten the nature of my offense. Pax, if you please.”

He refused to understand; and she understood that, too; and she gazed critically upon Sylvia Landis as a very young mother might inspect a rival infant with whom her matchless offspring was coquetting.

Then, without appearing to, she took Plank away from temptation; so skilfully that nobody except Siward understood that the young man had been incontinently removed. He, Plank, never doubting that he was a perfectly free agent, decided that the time had arrived for triumphant retirement. It had; but Leila Mortimer, not he, had rendered the decision, and so cleverly that it appeared even to Plank himself that he had dragged her off with him rather masterfully. Clearly he was becoming a devil of a fellow!

Sylvia turned to Siward, glanced up at him, hesitated, and began to laugh consciously:

“What do you think of my latest sentimental acquisition?”

“He'd be an ornament to a stock farm,” replied Siward, out of humour.

“How brutal you can be!” she mused, smiling.

“Nonsense! He's a plain bounder, isn't he?”

“I don't know.... Is he? He struck me a trifle appealingly—even pathetically; they usually do, that sort.... As though the trouble they took could ever be worth the time they lose!... There are dozens of men I know who are far less presentable than this highly coloured and robust young human being; and yet they are part of the accomplished scheme of things—like degenerate horses, you know—always pathetic to me; but they're still horses, for all that. Quid rides? Species of the same genus can cross, of course, but I had rather be a donkey than a mule. ...And if I were a donkey I'd sing and cavort with my own kind, and let horses flourish their own heels inside the accomplished scheme of things.... Now I have been brutal. But—I'm easily coloured by my environment.”

She sat, smiling maliciously down at the water, smoothing out the soaked skirt of her swimming suit, and swinging her legs reflectively.

“Are you reconciled?” she asked presently.

“To what?”

“To leaving Shotover. To-day is our last day, you know. To-morrow we all go; and next day these familiar walls will ring with other voices, my poor friend:

“'Yon rising moon that looks for us again—How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter, rising, look for us Through this same mansion—and for one in vain!'”

“That is I—the one, you know. You may be here again; but I—I shall not be I if I ever come to Shotover again.”

Her stockinged heels beat the devil's tattoo against the marble sides of the pool. She reached up above her head, drawing down a flowering branch of Japanese orange, and caressed her delicate nose with the white blossoms, dreamily, then, mischievously: “I'm accustoming myself to this most significant perfume,” she said, looking at him askance. And she deliberately hummed the wedding march, watching the colour rise in his sullen face.

“If you had the courage of a sparrow you'd make life worth something for us both,” he said.

“I know it; I haven't; but I seem to possess the remainder of his lordship's traits—inconsequence, self-centred selfishness, the instinct for Fifth Avenue nest-building—all the feathered vices, all the unlovely personality and futility and uselessness of my prototype.... Only, as you observe, I lack the quality of courage.”

“I don't know how much courage it requires to do what you're going to do,” he said sulkily.

“Don't you? Sometimes, when you wear a scowl like that, I think that it may require no more courage than I am capable of.... And sometimes—I don't know.”

She crossed her knees, one slender ankle imprisoned in her hand, leaning forward thoughtfully above the water.

“Our last day,” she mused; “for we shall never be just you and I again—never again, my friend, after we leave this rocky coast of Eden. ...I shall have hints of you in the sea-wind and the sound of the sea; in the perfume of autumn woods, in the whisper of stirring leaves when the white birches put on their gold crowns next year.” She smiled, turning to him, a little gravely: “When the Lesser Children return with April, I shall not forget you, Mr. Siward, nor forget your mercy of a day on them; nor your comradeship, nor your sweetness to me.... Nor your charity for me, nor all that you overlook so far in me,—under the glamour of a spell that seems to hold you still, and that still holds me.... I can answer for my constancy so far, until one more spring and summer have come and gone—until one more autumn comes, and while it lasts—as long as any semblance of the setting remains which had once framed you; I can answer for my constancy as long as that.... Afterwards, the snow!—symbol of our separation. I am to be married a year from November first.”

He looked up at her in dark surprise, for he had heard that their wedding date had been set for the coming winter.

“A year's engagement?” he repeated, unconvinced.

“It was my wish. I think that is sufficient for everybody concerned.” Then, averting her face, which had suddenly lost a little of its colour: “A year is little enough,” she said impatiently. “I—what has happened to us requires an interval—a decent interval for its burial.... Death is respectable in any form. What dies between you and me can have no resurrection under the snow.... So I bring to the burial my tribute—a year of life, a year of constancy, my friend; symbol of an eternity I could have given you had I been worth it.” She looked up, flushed, the forced smile stamped on lips still trembling. “Sentiment in such a woman as I! 'A spectacle for Gods and men,' you are saying—are you not? And perhaps sentiment with me is only an ancient instinct, a latent ancestral quality for which I, ages later, have no use.” She was laughing easily. “No use for sentiment, as our bodies have no use for that fashionable little cul-de-sac, you know, though wise men say it once served its purpose, too.... Stephen Siward, what do you think of me now?”

“I am learning,” he replied simply.

“What, if you please?”

“Learning a little about what I am losing.”

“You mean—me?”

“Yes.”

She bent forward impulsively, balancing her body on the pool's rim with both arms, dropping her knee until her ankles swung interlocked above the water. “Listen,” she said in a low, distinct voice: “What you lose is no other man's gain! If I warm and expand in your presence—if I say clever things sometimes—if I am intelligent, sympathetic, and amusing—it is because of you. You inspire it in me. Normally I am the sort of girl you first met at the station. I tell you that I don't know myself now—that I have not known myself since I knew you. Qualities of understanding, ability to appreciate, to express myself without employing the commonplaces, subtleties of intercourse—all, maybe, were latent in me, but sterile, until you came into my life.... And when you go, then, lacking impulse and incentive, the new facility, the new sensitive alertness, the unconscious self-confidence, all will smoulder and die out in me.... I know it; I realise that it was due to you—part of me that I should never have known, of which I should have remained totally ignorant, had it not blossomed suddenly, stimulated by you alone.”

Slowly the clouded seriousness of her blue eyes cleared, and the smile began to glimmer again. “That is your revenge; you recommit me to my commonplace self; you restore me to my tinsel career, practically a dolt. Shame on you, Stephen Siward, to treat a poor girl so!... But it's just as well. Blunted perceptions, according to our needs, you know; and so life is tempered for us all, else we might not endure it long.... A pleasantly morbid suggestion for a day like this, is it not?... Shall we take a farewell plunge, and dress? You know we say good-bye to-morrow.”

“Where do you go from here?”

“To Lenox; the Claymores have asked us for a week; after that, Hot Springs for another two weeks or so; after that, to Oyster Bay.... Mr. Quarrier opens his house on Sedge Point,” she added demurely, “but I don't think he expects to invite you to 'The Sedges.'”

“How long do you stay there?” asked Siward irritably.

“Until we go to town in December.”

“What will you find to do all that time in Oyster Bay?” he asked more irritably.

“What a premature question! The yacht is there. Besides, there's the usual neighbourhood hunting, with the usual packs and inevitable set; the usual steeple-chasing; the usual exchange of social amenities; the usual driving and riding; the usual, my poor friend, the usual, in all its uncompromising certainty.... And what are you to do?”

“When?”

“After you leave here?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know where you are going?”

“I'm going to town.”

“And then?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh, but haven't you been asked somewhere? You have, of course.”

“Yes, and I have declined.”

“Matters of business,” she inferred. “Too bad!”

“Oh, no.”

“Then,” she concluded, laughing, “you don't care to tell me where you are going.”

“No,” he said thoughtfully, “I don't care to tell you.”

She laughed again carelessly, and, placing one hand on the tiled pavement, sprang lightly to her feet.

“A last plunge?” she asked, as he rose at her side.

“Yes, one last plunge together. Deep! Are you ready?”

She raised her white arms above her head, finger-tips joined, poised an instant on the brink, swaying forward; then, at his brief word, they flashed downward together, cutting the crystalline sea-water, shooting like great fish over the glass-tiled bed, shoulder to shoulder under the water; and opening their eyes, they turned toward one another with a swift outstretch of hands, an uncontrollable touch of lips, the very shadow of contact; then cleaving upward, rising to the surface to lie breathlessly floating, arms extended, and the sun filtering down through the ground-glass roof above.

“We are perfectly crazy,” she breathed. “I'm quite mad; I see that. On land it's bad enough for us to misbehave; but submarine sentiment! We'll be growing scales and tails presently.... Did you ever hear of a Southern bird—a sort of hawk, I think—that almost never alights; that lives and eats and sleeps its whole life away on the wing? and even its courtship, and its honeymoon? Grace Ferrall pointed one out to me last winter, near Palm Beach—a slender bird, part black, part snowy white, with long, pointed, delicate wings like an enormous swallow; and all day, all night, it floats and soars and drifts in the upper air, never resting, never alighting except during its brief nesting season.... Think of the exquisite bliss of drifting one's life through in mid-air—to sleep, balanced on light wings, upborne by invisible currents flowing under the stars—to sail dreamily through the long sunshine, to float under the moon!... And at last, I suppose, when its time has come, down it whirls out of the sky, stone dead!... There is something thrilling in such a death—something magnificent.... And in the exquisitely spiritual honeymoon, vague as the shadow of a rainbow, is the very essence and aroma of that impalpable Paradise we women prophesy in dreams!... More sentiment! Heigho! My brother is the weeping crocodile, and the five winds are my wits.... Shall we dress? Even with a maid and the electric air-blast it will take time to dry my hair and dress it.”

When he came out of his dressing-room she was apparently still in the hands of the maid. So he sauntered through the house as far as the library, and drawing a cheque-book from one pocket, fished out a memorandum-book from another, and began to cast up totals with a view to learning something about the various debts contracted at Shotover.

He seemed to owe everybody. Fortune had smitten him hip and thigh; and, a trifle concerned, he began covering a pad with figures until he knew where he stood. Then he drew a considerable cheque to Major Belwether's order, another to Alderdene. Others followed to other people for various amounts; and he was very busily at work when, aware of another presence near, he turned around in his chair. Sylvia Landis was writing at a desk in the corner, and she looked up, nodding the little greeting that she always reserved for him even after five minutes' separation.

“I'm writing cheques,” she said. “I suppose you're writing to your mother.”

“Why do you think so?” he asked curiously.

“You write to her every day, don't you?”

“Yes,” he said, “but how do you know?”

She looked at him with unblushing deliberation. “You wrote every day.... If it was to a woman, I wanted to know.... And I told Grace Ferrall that it worried me. And then Grace told me. Is there any other confession of my own pettiness that I can make to you.”

“Did you really care to whom I was writing?” he asked slowly.

“Care? I—it worried me. Was it not a pitifully common impulse? 'Sisters under our skin,' you know—I and the maid who dresses me. She would have snooped; I didn't; that's the only generic difference. I wanted to know just the same.... But—that was before—”

“Before what?”

“Before I—please don't ask me to say it.... I did, once, when you asked me.”

“Before you cared for me. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes. You are so cruelly literal when you wish to punish me.... You are interrupting me, too. I owe that wretched Kemp Ferrall a lot of money, and I'm trying to find out how much seven and nine are, to close accounts with Marion Page.”

Siward turned and continued his writing. And when the little sheaf of cheques was ready he counted them, laid them aside, and, drawing a flat packet of fresh bank-notes from his portfolio, counted out the tips expected of him below stairs. These arranged for, he straightened up and glanced over his shoulder at Sylvia, but she was apparently absorbed in counting something on the ends of her fingers, so he turned smilingly to his desk and wrote a long letter to his mother—the same tender, affectionately boyish letter he had always written her, full of confidences, full of humour, gaily anticipating his own return to her on the heels of the letter.

In his first letter to her from Shotover he had spoken casually of a Miss Landis. It seemed the name was familiar enough to his mother, who asked about her; and he had replied in another letter or two, a trifle emphatic in his praise of her, because from his mother's letters it was quite evident that she knew a good deal concerning the very unconventional affairs of Sylvia's family.

Of his swift and somewhat equivocal courtship he had had nothing to say in his letters; in fact recently he had nothing to say about Sylvia at all, reserving that vital confidence for the clear sympathy and understanding which he looked forward to when he should see her, and which, through dark days and bitter aftermaths, through struggle and defeat by his master-vice, had never failed him yet, never faltered for an instant.

So he brought his letter to a close with a tender and uneasy inquiry concerning her health, which, she had intimated, was not exactly satisfactory, and for that reason she had opened the house in town in order to be near Dr. Grisby, their family doctor.

Sealing and directing the letter, he looked up to see Sylvia standing at his elbow. She dropped a light hand on his shoulder for a second, barely touching him—a fugitive caress, delicate as the smile hovering on her lips, as the shy tenderness in her eyes.

“More letters to your sweetheart?” she asked, abandoning her hand to him.

“One more—the last before I see her.... I wish you could see her, Sylvia.”

“I wish so, too,” she answered simply, seating herself on the arm of his chair as though it were a side-saddle.

They sat there very silent for a few moments, curiously oblivious to the chance curiosity of any one who might enter or pass.

“Would she—care for me—do you think?” asked the girl in a low voice.

“I think so,—for your real self.”

“I know. She could only feel contempt for me—as I am.”

“She is old-fashioned,” he said reverently.

“That means all that is best in a woman.... The old fashion of truth and faith; the old fashion of honour, and faith in honour; the old, old fashion of—love.... All that is best, Stephen; all that is worth the love of a man.... Some day somebody will revive those fashions.”

“Will you?”

“Dear, they would not become me,” she said, the tenderness in her eyes deepening a little; and she touched his head lightly in humourous caress.

“What shall we do with the waning daylight?” she asked. “It is my last day with you. I told Howard it was my last day with you, and I did not care to be disturbed.”

“You probably didn't say it that way,” he commented, amused.

“I did.”

“How much of that sort of thing is he prepared to stand?” asked Siward curiously.

“How much? I don't know. I don't believe he cares. It is my uncle, Major Belwether, who is making things unpleasant for me. I had to tell Howard, you know.”

“What!” exclaimed Siward incredulously.

“Certainly. Do you think my conduct has passed without protest?”

“You told Quarrier!” he repeated.

“Did you imagine I could do otherwise?” she asked coolly. “I have that much decency left. Certainly I told him. Do you suppose that, after what we did—what I admitted to you—that I could meet him as usual? Do you think I am afraid of him?”

“I thought you were afraid of losing him,” muttered Siward.

“I was, dreadfully. And the morning after you and I had been imprudent enough to sit up until nearly daylight—and do what we did—I made him take a long walk with me, and I told him plainly that I cared for you, that I was too selfish and cowardly to marry you, and that if he couldn't endure the news he was at liberty to terminate the engagement without notice.”

“What did he say?” stammered Siward.

“A number of practical things.”

“You mean to say he stands it!”

“It appears so. What else is there for him to do, unless he breaks the engagement?”

“And he—hasn't?”

“No. I was informed that he held me strictly and precisely to my promise; that he would never release me voluntarily, though I was, of course, at liberty to do what I chose.... My poor friend, he cares no more for love than do I. I happen to be the one woman in New York whom he considers absolutely suitable for him; by race, by breeding, by virtue of appearance and presence, eminently fitted to complete the material portion of his fortune and estate.”

Her voice had hardened as she spoke; now it rang a little at the end, and she laughed unpleasantly.

“It appears that I was a little truer to myself than you gave me credit for—a little truer to you—a little less treacherous, less shameless, than you must have thought me. But I have gone to my limit of decency; ...and, were I ten times more in love with you than I am, I could not put away the position and power offered me. But I will not lie for it, nor betray for it.... Do you remember, once you asked me for what reasons I dropped men from my list? And I told you, because of any falsehood or treachery, any betrayal of trust—and for no other reason. You remember? And did you suppose that elemental standard of decency did not include women—even such a woman as I?”

She dropped one arm on the back of his chair and rested her chin on it, staring at space across his shoulders.

“That's how it had to be, you see, when I found that I cared for you. There was nothing to do but to tell him. I was quite certain that it was all off; but I found that I didn't know the man. I knew he was sensitive, but I didn't know he was sensitive to personal ridicule only, and to nothing else in all the world that I can discover. I—I suppose, from my frankness to him, he has concluded that no ridicule could ever touch him through me. I mean, he trusts me enough to marry me.... He will be safe enough, as far as my personal conduct is concerned,” she added naively. “It seems that I am capable of love; but I am incapable of its degradation.”

Siward, leaning heavily forward over his desk, rested his head in both hands; and she stooped from her perch on the arm of the chair, pressing her hot cheeks against his hands—a moment only; then slipping to her feet, she curled up in a great arm-chair by the fire, head tipped back, blue gaze concentrated on him.

“The thing for you to do,” she said, “is to ambush me some night, and throw me into a hansom, and drive us both to the parson's. I'd hate you for it as much as I'd love you, but I'd make you an interesting wife.”

“I may do that yet,” he said, lifting his head from his hands.

“You've a year to do it in,” she observed.... “By the way, you're to take me in to dinner, as you did the first night. Do you remember? I asked Grace Ferrall then. I asked her again to-day. Heigho! It was years ago, wasn't it, that I drove up to the station and saw a very attractive and perplexed young man looking anxiously about for somebody to take him to Shotover. Ahem! the notorious Mr. Siward! Dear,... I didn't mean to hurt you! You know it, silly! Mayn't I have my little joke about your badness—your redoubtable badness of reputation? There! You had just better smile.... How dare you frighten me by making me think I had hurt you!... Besides, you are probably unrepentant.”

She watched him closely for a moment or two, then, “Are you unrepentant?”

“About what?”

“About your general wickedness? About—” she hesitated—“about that girl, for example.”

“What girl?” he asked coldly.

“That reminds me that you have told me absolutely nothing about her.”

“There is nothing to tell,” he said, in a tone so utterly new to her in its finality that she sat up as though listening to an unknown voice.

Tone and words so completely excluded her from the new intimacy into which she had imperceptibly drifted that both suddenly developed a significance from sheer contrast. Who was this girl, then, of whom he had absolutely nothing to say? What was she to him? What could she be to him—an actress, a woman of common antecedents?

She had sometimes idly speculated in an indefinitely innocent way as to just what a well-born man could find to interest him in such women; what he could have to talk about to persons of that sort, where community of tastes and traditions must be so absolutely lacking.

Gossip, scandal of that nature, hints, silences, innuendoes, the wise shrugs of young girls oversophisticated, the cool, hard smiles of matrons, all had left her indifferent or bored, partly from distaste, partly from sheer incredulity; a refusal to understand, an innate delicacy that not only refrains from comprehension, but also denies itself even the curiosity to inquire or the temptation of vaguest surmise on a subject that could not exist for her.

But now, something of the uncomfortable uneasiness had come over her which she had been conscious of when made aware of Marion Page's worldly wisdom, and which had imperceptibly chilled her when Grace Ferrall spoke of Siward's escapade, coupling this woman and him in the same scandal.

She took it for granted that there must be, for men, an attraction toward women who figured publicly behind the foot-lights, though it appeared very silly to her. In fact it all was silly and undignified—part and parcel, no doubt, of that undergraduate foolishness which seemed to cling to some men who had otherwise attained discretion.

But it appeared to her that Siward had taken the matter with a seriousness entirely out of proportion in his curt closure of the subject, and she felt a little irritated, a little humiliated, a little hurt, and took refuge in a silence that he did not offer to break.

Early twilight had fallen in the room; the firelight grew redder.

“Sylvia,” he said abruptly, reverting to the old, light tone hinting of the laughter in his eyes which she could no longer see, “Suppose, as you suggested, I did ambush you—say after the opera—seize you under the very nose of your escort and make madly for a hansom?”

“I know of no other way,” she said demurely.

“Would you resist, physically?”

“I would, if nobody were looking.”

“Desperately?

“How do I know? Besides, it couldn't last long,” she said, thinking of his slimly powerful build as she had noticed it in his swimming costume. Smiling, amused, she wondered how long she could resist him with her own wholesome supple activity strengthened to the perfection of health in saddle and afoot.

“I should advise you to chloroform me,” she said defiantly. “You don't realise my accomplishments with the punching-bag.”

“So you mean to resist?”

“Yes, I do. If I were going to surrender at once, I might as well go off to church with you now.”

“Wenniston church!” he said promptly. “I'll order the Mercedes.”

She laughed, lazily settling herself more snugly by the fire. “Suppose it were our fire?” she smiled. “There would be a dog lying across that rug, and a comfortable Angora tabby dozing by the fender, and—you, cross-legged, at my feet, with that fascinating head of yours tipped back against my knees.”

The laughter in her voice died out, and he had risen, saying unsteadily: “Don't! I—I can't stand that sort of thing, you know.”

She had made a mistake, too; she also had suddenly become aware of her own limits in the same direction.

“Forgive me, dear! I meant no mockery.”

“I know.... After a while a man finds laughter difficult.”

“I was not laughing at—anything. I was only pretending to be happy.”

“Your happiness is before you,” he said sullenly.

“My future, you mean. You know I am exchanging one for the other.... And some day you will awake to the infamy of it; you will comprehend the depravity of the monstrous trade I made.... And then—and then—”

She passed one slim hand over her face—“then you will shake yourself free from this dream of me; then, awake, my punishment at your hands will begin.... Dear, no man in his right senses can continue to love a girl such as I am. All that is true and ardent and generous in you has invested my physical attractiveness and my small intellect with a magic that cannot last, because it is magic; and you are the magician, enmeshed for the moment in the mists of your own enchantment. When this fades, when you unclose your eyes in clear daylight, dear, I dread to think what I shall appear to you—what a dreadful, shrunken, bloodless shell, hung with lace and scented, silken cerements—a jewelled mummy-case—a thing that never was!... Do you understand my punishment a little, now?”

“If it were true,” he said in a dull voice, “you will have forgotten, too.”

“I pray I may,” she said under her breath.

And, after a long silence: “Do you think, before the year is out, that you might be granted enough courage?” he asked.

“No. I shall not even pray for it. I want what is offered me! I desire it so blindly that already it has become part of me. I tell you the poison is in every vein; there is nothing else but poison in me. I am what I tell you, to the core. It is past my own strength of will to stop me, now. If I am stopped, another must do it. My weakness for you, being a treachery if not confessed, I was obliged to confess, horribly frightened as I was. He might have stopped me; he did not.... And now, what is there on earth to halt me? Love cannot. Common decency and courage cannot. Fear of your unhappiness and mine cannot. No, even the certitude of your contempt, some day, is powerless to halt me now. I could not love; I am utterly incapable of loving you enough to balance the sacrifice. And that is final.”

Grace Ferrall came into the room and found a duel of silence in progress under the dull fire-glow tinting the ceiling.

“Another quarrel,” she commented, turning on the current of the drop-light above the desk from which Siward had risen at her entrance. “You quarrel enough to marry. Why don't you?”

“I wish we could,” said Sylvia simply.

Grace laughed. “What a little fool you are!” she said tenderly, seating herself in Siward's chair and dropping one hand over his where it rested on the arm. “Stephen, can't you make her—a big, strong fellow like you? Oh, well; on your heads be it! My conscience is now clear for the first time, and I'll never meddle again.” She gave Siward's hand a perfunctory pat and released him with a discreetly stifled yawn. “I'm disgracefully sleepy; the wind blew like fury along the coast. Sylvia, have you had a good time at Shotover—the time of your life?”

Sylvia raised her eyes and encountered Siward's.

“I certainly have,” she said faintly.

“C'est bien, chérie. Can you be as civil, Stephen—conscientiously? Oh, that is very nice of you! But there's one thing: why on earth didn't you make eyes at Marion? Life might be one long, blissful carnival of horse and dog for you both. Oh, dear! there, I'm meddling again! Pinch me, Sylvia, if I ever begin to meddle again! How did you come out at Bridge, Stephen? What—bad as that? Gracious! this is disgraceful—this gambling the way people do! I'm shocked and I'm going up to dress. Are you coming, Sylvia?”

The dinner was very gay. The ceremony of christening the Shotover Cup, which Quarrier had won, proceeded with presentation speech and a speech of acceptance faultlessly commonplace, during which Quarrier wore his smile—which was the only humorous thing he contributed.

The cup was full. Siward eyed it, perplexed, deadly afraid, yet seeing no avenue of escape from what must appear a public exhibition of contempt for Quarrier if he refused to taste its contents. That meant a bad night for him; yet he shrank more from the certain misinterpretation of a refusal to drink from the huge loving-cup with its heavy wreath of scented orchids, now already on its way toward him, than he feared the waking struggle so sure to follow.

Marion received the cup, lifted it in both hands, and said distinctly, “Good Hunting!” as she drank to Quarrier. Her brother Gordon took it, and drank entirely too much. Then Sylvia lifted it, her white hands half buried among the orchids: “To you!” she murmured for Siward's ear alone; then drank gaily, mischievously, “To the best shot at Shotover!” And Siward took the cup: “I salute victory,” he said, smiling, “always, and everywhere! To him who takes the fighting chance and wins out! To the best man! Health!” And he drank as a gentleman drinks, with a gay bow to Quarrier, and with death in his heart.

Later, the irony of it struck him so grimly that he laughed; and Sylvia, beside him, looked up, dismayed to see the gray change in his face.

“What is it?” she faltered, catching his eye; “why do you—why are you so white?”

But he only smiled, as though he had misunderstood, saying:

“The survival of the fittest; that is the only test, after all. The man who makes good doesn't whine for justice. There's enough of it in the world to go round, and he who misses it gets all that's due him just the same.”

Later, at cards, the aromatic odour from Alderdene's decanter roused him to fierce desire, but he fought it down until only the deadened, tearing ache remained to shake and loosen every nerve. And when Ferrall, finishing his usual batch of business letters, arrived to cut in if needed, Siward dropped his cards with a shudder, and rose so utterly unnerved that Captain Voucher, noticing his drawn face, asked him if he were not ill.

He was leaving on an earlier train than the others, having decided to pass through Boston and Deptford, at which latter place he meant to leave Sagamore for the winter in care of the manager of his mother's farm. So he took a quiet leave of those to whom the civility might not prove an interruption—a word to Alderdene and Voucher as he passed out, a quick clasp for Ferrall and for Grace, a carefully and cordially formal parting from the Page boys, which pleased them ineffably.

Eileen and Rena, who had never had half a chance at him, took it now, delighted to discipline their faithful Pages; and he submitted in his own engagingly agreeable way, and so skilfully that both Eileen and Rena felt sorry that they had not earlier understood how civilly anxious he had been to devote himself to them alone. And they looked at the Pages, exasperated.

In the big hall he passed Marion, and stopped to take his leave.

No, he would do no hunting this season either at Carysford or with the two trial packs at Eastwood. Possibly at Warrenton later, but probably not; business threatened to detain him in town more or less.... Of course he'd come to see her when she returned to town.... And it had been a jolly party, and it was a shame to sound “lights out” so soon! Good-bye. ...Good night. And that was all.

And that was all, unless he disturbed Sylvia, seated at cards with Quarrier and Major Belwether and Leila Mortimer—and very intent on the dummy, very still, and a trifle pallid with the pallor of concentration.

So—that was all, then.

Ascending the stairs, a servant handed him a letter bearing the crest of the Lenox Club. He pocketed it unopened and continued his way.

In the darkness of his own room he sat down, the devil's own clutch on his shrinking nerves, a deathly desire tearing at his very vitals, and every vein a tiny trail of fire run riot. He had been too long without it, too long to endure the craving aroused by that gay draught from Quarrier's loving-cup.

The awakened fury of his desire appalled him, and for a while that occupied him, enabling him to endure. But fear and dismay soon passed in the purely physical distress; he walked the floor, haggard, the sweat starting on his face; he lay with clenched hands, stiffened out across the bed, deafened by the riotous clamour of his pulses, conscious that he was holding out, unconscious how long he could hold out.

Crisis after crisis swept him; sometimes he found his feet and moved blindly about the room.

Strange periods of calm intervened; sensation seemed deadened; and he stood as a man who listens, scarcely daring to breathe lest the enemy awake and seize him.

He turned on the light, later, to look for his pipe, and he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. It was a sick man who stared back at him out of hollow eyes, and the physical revulsion shocked him into something resembling self-command.

“Damn you!” he said fiercely, setting his teeth and staring back at his reflected face, “I'll kill you yet before I've finished with you!”

Then he filled his pipe, and opening his bedroom window, sat down, resting his arm on the sill. A splendid moon silvered the sea; through the intense stillness he heard the surf, magnificently dissonant among the reefs, and he listened, fascinated, loathing the tides as he feared and loathed the inexorable tides that surged and ebbed with his accursed desire.

Once he said to himself, weakly—for he was deadly tired—“What am I making the fight for, anyway?” And “Who are you making the fight for?” echoed his heavy pulses.

He had asked that question and received that answer before. After all, it had been for his mother's sake alone. And now—and now?—his heart beat out another answer; and before his eyes two other eyes seemed to open, fearlessly, sweetly, divinely tender. But they were no longer his mother's grave, gray eyes.

After the second pipe he remembered his letter. It gave him something to do, so he opened it and tried to read it, but for a long while, in his confused physical and mental condition, he could make no sense of it.

Little by little he began to comprehend its purport that his resignation was regretfully requested by the governors of the Lenox Club for reasons unassigned.

The shock of the thing came to him after a while, like a distant, dull report long after the flash of the explosion. Well, the affair, bad enough at first, was turning worse, that was all. How much of that sort of discredit could a man stand and keep his balance?... And what would his mother say?

Confused from his own physical suffering, the blow had fallen with a deadened force on nerves already numbed; but his half-stupefied acquiescence had suddenly become a painful recoil when he remembered where the brunt of the disgrace would fall—where the centre of suffering must always be, and the keenest grief concentrated. Roused, appalled, almost totally unnerved, he stood staring at the letter, beginning to realise what it would mean to his mother. A passion of remorse and resentment swept him. She must be spared that! There must be some way—some punishment for his offence that could not strike her through him! It was wicked, it was contemptible, insane, to strike her! What were the governors of the Lenox about—a lot of snivelling hypocrites, pandering to the horrified snobbery at the Patroons! Who were they, anyway, to discipline him! Scarce one in fifty among the members of the two clubs was qualified to sit in judgment on a Siward!

But that tempest of passion and mortification passed, too, leaving him standing there, dumb, desperate, staring at the letter crushed in his shaking hand.

He must see somebody, some member of the Lenox, and do something—something! Ferrall! Was that Ferrall's step on the landing?

He sprang to the door and opened it. Quarrier, passing the corridor, turned an expressionless visage toward him, and passed on with a nod almost imperceptible.

“Quarrier!” he called, swept by a sudden impulse.

Quarrier halted and turned.

“Could you give me a moment—here in my room? I won't detain you.”

The faint trace of surprise faded from Quarrier's face; he quietly retraced his steps, and, entering Siward's room, stood silently confronting its pallid tenant.

“Will you sit down a moment?”

Quarrier seated himself in the arm-chair by the window, and Siward found a chair opposite.

“Quarrier,” said the younger man, turning a tensely miserable face on his visitor, “I want to ask you something. I'll not mince matters. You know that the Patroons have dropped me, and you know what for.”

“Yes, I know.”

“When I was called before the Board of Governors to explain the matter, if I could, you were sitting on that Board.”

“Yes.”

“I denied the charge, but refused to explain.... You remember?”

Quarrier nodded coldly.

“And I was dropped by the club!”

A slight inclination of Quarrier's symmetrical head corroborated him.

“Now,” said Siward, slowly and very distinctly, “I shall tell you unofficially what I refused to tell the other governors officially.” And, as he began speaking, Quarrier's face flushed, then the features became immobile, set, and inert, and his eyes grew duller and duller, as though, under a smooth surface the soul inside of him was shrinking back into some dark corner, silent, watchful, suspicious, and perhaps defiant.

“Mr. Quarrier,” said Siward quietly, “I did not take that girl to the Patroons Club—and you know it.”

Quarrier was all surface now; he had drawn away internally so far that even his eyes seemed to recede until they scarcely glimmered through the slits in his colourless mask. And Siward went on:

“I knew perfectly well what sort of women I was to meet at that fool supper Billy Fleetwood gave; and you must have, too, for the girl you took in was no stranger to you.... Her name is Lydia Vyse, I believe.”

The slightest possible glimmer in the elder man's eyes was all the answer he granted.

“What happened,” said Siward calmly, “was this: She bet me she could so disguise herself that I could safely take her into any club in New York. I bet her she couldn't. I never dreamed of trying. Besides, she was your—dinner partner,” he added with a shrug.

His concentrated gaze seemed at length to pierce the expressionless surface of the other man, who moved slightly in his chair and moistened his thin lips under the glossy beard.

“Quarrier,” said Siward earnestly, “What happened in the club lobby I don't exactly know, because I was not in a condition to know. I admit it; that was the trouble with me. When I left Fleetwood's rooms I left with a half dozen men. I remember crossing Fifth Avenue with them; and the next thing I remember distinctly was loud talking in the club lobby, and a number of men there, and a slim young fellow in Inverness and top hat in the centre of a crowd, whose face was the face of that girl, Lydia Vyse. And that is absolutely all. But I couldn't do more than deny that I took her there unless I told what I knew; and of course that was not possible, even in self-defence. But it was for you to admit that I was right. And you did not. You dared not! You let another man blunder into your private affairs and fall a victim to circumstantial evidence which you could have refuted; and it was up to you to say something! And you did not!... And now—what are you going to do? The Lenox Club has taken this thing up. A man can't stand too much of that sort of thing. What am I to do? I can't defend myself by betraying my accidental knowledge of your petty, private affairs. So I leave it to you. I ask you what are you going to do?”

“Do you mean”—Quarrier's voice was not his own, and he brought it harshly under command—“do you mean that you think it necessary for me to say I knew her? What object would be attained by that? I did not take her to the Patroons'.”

“Nor did I. Ask her how she got there. Learn the truth from her, man!”

“What proof is there that I ever met her before I took her into supper at Fleetwood's?”

“Proof! Are you mad? All I ask of you is to say to the governors what I cannot say without using your name.”

“You wish me,” asked Quarrier icily, “to deny that you made that wager? I can do that.”

“You can't do it! I did make that bet.”

“Oh! Then, what is it you wish me to say?”

“Tell them the truth. Tell them you know I did not take her to the club. You need not tell them why you know it. You need not tell them how much you know about her, whose brougham she drove home in. I can't defend myself at your expense—intrench myself behind your dirty little romance. What could I say? I denied taking her to the club. Then Major Belwether confronted me with my wager. Then I shut up. And so did you, Quarrier—so did you, seated there among the governors, between Leroy Mortimer and Belwether. It was up to you, and you did not stir!”

“Stir!” echoed the other man, exasperated. “Of course I did not stir. What did I know about it? Do you think I care to give a man like Mortimer a hold on me by admitting I knew anything?—or Belwether—do you think I care to have that man know anything about my private and personal business? Did you expect me to say that I was in a position to prove anything one way or another? And,” he added with increasing harshness, “how do you know what I might or might not prove? If she went to the Patroons Club, I did not go with her; I did not see her; I don't know whether or not you took her.”

“I have already told you that I did not take her,” said Siward, turning whiter.

“You told that to the governors, too. Tell them again, if you like. I decline to discuss this matter with you. I decline to countenance your unwarranted intrusion into what you pretend to believe are my private affairs. I decline to confer with Belwether or Mortimer. It's enough that you are inclined to meddle—” His cold anger was stirring. He rose to his full, muscular height, slow, menacing, his long, pale fingers twisting his silky beard. “It's enough that you meddle!” he repeated. “As for the matter in question, a dozen men, including myself, heard you make a wager; and later I myself was a witness that the terms of that wager had been carried out to the letter. I know absolutely nothing except that, Mr. Siward; nor, it appears, do you, for you were drunk at the time, and you have admitted it to me.”

“I have asked you,” said Siward, rising, and very grave, “I have asked you to do the right thing. Are you going to do it?”

“Is that a threat?” inquired Quarrier, showing the edges of his well-kept teeth. “Is this intimidation, Mr. Siward? Do I understand that you are proposing to bespatter others with scandal unless I am frightened into going to the governors with the flimsy excuse you attempt to offer me? In other words, Mr. Siward, are you bent on making me pay for what you believe you know of my private life? Is it really intimidation?”

And still Siward stared into his half-veiled, sneering eyes, speechless.

“There is only one name used for this kind of thing,” added Quarrier, taking a quick involuntary step backward to the door as the blaze of fury broke out in Siward's eyes.

“Good God! Quarrier,” whispered Siward with dry lips, “what a cur you are! What a cur!”

And long after Quarrier had passed the door and disappeared in the corridor, Siward stood there, frozen motionless under the icy waves of rage that swept him.

He had never before had an enemy worth the name; he knew he had one now. He had never before hated; he now understood something of that, too. The purely physical craving to take this man and crush him into eternal quiescence had given place to a more terrible mental desire to punish. His brain surged and surged under the first flood of a mortal hatred. That the hatred was sterile made it the more intense, and, blinded by it, he stood there or paced the room minute after minute, hearing nothing but the wild clamour in his brain, seeing nothing but the smooth, expressionless face of the man whom he could not reach.

Toward midnight, seated in his chair by the window, a deathly lassitude weighing his heart, he heard the steps of people on the stairway, the click of the ascending elevator, gay voices calling good night, a ripple of laughter, the silken swish of skirts in the corridor, doors opening and closing; then silence creeping throughout the house on the receding heels of departure—a stillness that settled like a mist through hall and corridor, accented for a few moments by distant sounds, then absolute, echoless silence. And for a long while he sat there listening.

The cool wind from the ocean blew his curtains far into the room, where they bellied out, fluttering, floating, subsiding, only to rise again in the freshening breeze. He sat watching their silken convolutions, stupidly, for a while, then rose and closed his window, and raised the window on the south for purposes of air.

As he turned to adjust his transom, something white thrust under the door caught his eye, and he walked over and drew it across the sill. It was a sealed note. He opened it, reading it as he walked back to the drop-light burning beside his bed:

“Did you not mean to say good-bye? Because it is to be good-bye for a long, long time—for all our lives—as long as we live—as long as the world lasts, and longer.... Good-bye—unless you care to say it to me.”

He stood studying the note for a while; presently, lighting a match, he set fire to it and carried it blazing to the grate and flung it in, watching the blackened ashes curl up, glow, whiten, and fall in flakes to the hearth. Then he went out into the corridor, and traversed the hall to the passage which led to the bay-window. There was nobody there. The stars looked in on him, twinkling with a frosty light; beneath, the shadowy fronds of palms traced a pale pattern on the glass roof of the swimming pool. He waited a moment, turned, retraced his steps to his own door and stood listening. Then, moving swiftly, he walked the length of the corridor, and, halting at her door, knocked once.

After a moment the door swung open. He stepped forward into the room, closing the door behind him, and confronted the tall girl standing there silhouetted against the lamp behind her.

“You are insane to do this!” she whispered. “I let you in for fear you'd knock again!”

“I went to the bay-window,” he said.

“You went too late. I was there an hour ago. I waited. Do you know what time it is?”

“Come to the bay-window,” he said, “if you fear me here.”

“Do you know it is nearly three o'clock?” she repeated. “And you leave at six.

“Shall we say good-bye here?” he asked coolly.

“Certainly. I dare not go out. And you—do you know the chances we are running? You must be perfectly mad to come to my room. Do you think anybody could have seen—heard you—”

“No. Good night.” He offered his hand; she laid both of hers in it. He could scarcely distinguish her features where she stood dark against the brilliant light behind her.

“Good-bye,” he whispered, kissing her hands where they lay in his.

“Good-bye.” Her fingers closed convulsively, retaining his hands. “I hope—I think that—you—” Her head was drooping; she could not control her voice.

“Good-bye, Sylvia,” he said again.

It was quite useless, she could not speak; and when he took her in his arms she clung to him, quivering; and he kissed the wet lashes, and the hot, trembling lips, and the smooth little hands crushed to his breast.

“We have a year yet,” she gasped. “Dear, take me by force before it ends. I—I simply cannot endure this. I told you to take me—to tear me from myself. Will you do it? I will love you—truly, truly! Oh, my darling, my darling! Don't—don't give me up! Can't you do something for us? Can't you—”

“Will you come with me now?”

“How can—”

“Will you?”

A sudden sound broke out in the night—the distant pealing of the lodge-gate bell. Startled, she shrank back; somebody in the adjoining room had sprung to the floor and was opening the window.

“What is it?” she motioned with whitening lips. “Quick! oh, quick, before you are seen! Grace may come! I—I beg of you to go!”

As he stepped into the corridor he heard, below, a sound at the great door, and the stirring of the night watchman on post. At his own door he turned, listening to the movement and whispering. Ferrall, in dressing-gown and slippers, stepped into the corridor; below, the chains were rattling as the wicket swung open. There was a brief parley at the door, sounds of retreating steps on the gravel outside, sounds of approaching steps on the stairway.

“What's that? A telegram?” said Ferrall sharply. “Here, give it to me.... Wait! It isn't for me. It's for Mr Siward!”

Siward, standing at his open door, swayed slightly. A thrill of pure fear struck him through and through. He laid one hand on the door to steady himself, and stepped forward as Ferrall came up.

“Oh! You're awake, Stephen. Here's a telegram.” He extended his hand. Siward took the yellow envelope, fumbled it, tore it open.

“Good God!” whispered Ferrall; “is it bad?”

And Siward's glazed eyes stared and stared at the scrawled and inky message:

“YOUR MOTHER IS VERY ILL. COME AT ONCE.”

The signature was the name of their family physician, Grisby.