CHAPTER I.
Adjustments.

The next two years passed very quickly for Mauney, with few perceptible changes. The war was over. Merlton, one day, had gone crazy with armistice celebration, only to settle down on the next to its usual life. The university was crowded now with returned soldiers. It was a familiar scene to behold the great square dotted with limping students still in uniform. The sight of them brought sharp emotions to Mauney—mingled sympathy for their sufferings and regret that he had been denied a share in their adventures in France. He knew that he, himself, had been peculiarly untouched by the war. Nevertheless, the stupendous event had made an impression upon him, the more severe by reason of his own non-participation in it. A sensitive depth in his nature was perpetually harrowed by thought of it. Having, by this time, followed the records of history from their dim beginnings up to the present, he was confronted, as was every one, by an impassable barrier, which refused to yield to any philosophic explanation. Perhaps he was too near the catastrophe, in time, to gain the needed perspective. But the facts were constantly before him. Something had slipped in the great, good purpose of God. In the substrata of life a tremendous fault had occurred, bearing its outward upheavals of death, suffering and disorder.

Three years at college had made a great difference in Mauney Bard. He had passed through the academic terms, like the unnoticed steps of a great staircase, without noticing that he was, in a sense, always climbing. He was climbing nearer to something—something perceived to be intangible, but worthy.

From his humble beginnings on Lantern Marsh farm, where his perspective was hedged by blind walls of pettiness on every side, he had emerged into a grateful breadth of vision, where, at his very feet, lay the treasures of accumulated knowledge and whence, too, the horizon was attractive with mystery.

He had become a man, at length, with a man’s viewpoint and a mature sense of a personal participation in the affairs of the world. Three years of history had brought him to a point of view which included himself. Every student cannot be so favored by the unseen mechanism which moulds personality. Many, including the brilliant Miss Lorna Freeman, failed nothing in gaining an accurate knowledge of history. She seemed in eagerness for learning to be like the dry, cracked earth, eager for the rain that never quite fills it; but with all her great capacity for information she lacked the quality that had made Mauney older and more serious. The war did not make any appreciable difference in Lorna. It was a phenomenon, similar to, if vaster than, other wars, which would, in due course, afford her fascinating study. But to Mauney it had already loomed up as a vital obstacle to his philosophy of optimism, for all things culminated in it. All good that had ever been, met in it a blasting contradiction. All hope of a satisfactory society met in it a destructive rebuff; all the quivering aspirations of his own developing mind found in it a dark abyss, frightful enough to quench them.

So it was that Mauney, at the end of his third year, lost immediate interest in his academic work and grappled with a problem of reality.

He grew serious and questioning. His auburn hair, which had darkened until its color was scarcely present, was parted carelessly above a face somewhat paled by thought, a face whose blue eyes were intense with sharp mental strife, and whose lips had changed from their boyish happiness to the determined line of serious manhood.

His problems had thus changed a good deal from the time when they concerned merely his personal liberty, for they now concerned rather the liberty of the human race. He had gradually emerged from selfish considerations. He had lost touch with his family. Old bonds no longer held him. The new thing—the cosmic consciousness—which he owed to the university training, took possession of his mind. Wonderful gift of the college! That a man, through its agency, should unconsciously loose himself from all that relates to personal passion and tune his being to the pitch of the general passion of mankind!

From Maxwell Lee, constantly bent over his laboratory desks, constantly delving into the secrets of disease, constantly at work, heroically striving against handicaps of poverty and ill-health, he absorbed a great truth of conduct, for he gradually came to understand that it was the vast desire for human betterment that inspired this frail, but active, research student. Max loomed bigger than ever in his esteem. Three or four years had ripened their friendship, tested it in many ways, and proven it to be solid. Neither of them cared to leave 73 Franklin Street, partly because Mrs. Manton and Fred Stalton and the others had become strange fixtures in their lives, but mainly because they meant more to each other than either quite realized.

And Freda MacDowell had joined the ranks. Shortly after dropping out of her arts course she had met Gertrude and adopted 73 Franklin as her boarding house. She had now served two years as secretary in the Department of History, and was no more favorably impressed by education than on the evening of her conversation with Mauney at Professor de Freville’s. Frequently she had a good deal to say on the subject, although Mauney always tried to avoid her. She had the big front room opposite Max’s on the first floor, and there was a tasteful alcove with a desk and chairs in the hallway, where Max and she always sat to talk.

Apparently she had at last found her ideal boarding house. Her taste, cultivated by a half-dozen seasons in Merlton, and moulded by a gradual elimination of features objectionable or stereotyped, had become as whimsical as a middle-aged Parisian’s taste in diet. Two years as an undergraduate of the university had sufficed to draw the ban upon women’s residences and the mild espionage of fellow students. Her third year in arts had taught her conclusively that living with a maternal aunt was laying oneself needlessly open to constant misinterpretation. There were things she wanted to do—such as show herself friendly with Max Lee. There were other things which she did—such as allow Nutbrown Hennigar to call upon her. Evidently, Mrs. Manton’s house furnished what she wanted—freedom, comfort, protection from idle scandal. At any rate Mauney drew as much from her usual conversations.

But he was too busy to be greatly concerned with Freda; and, moreover, he had long since decided that she belonged to Lee. Max occasionally denied this, and characterized their relationship as merely a good friendship, but Mauney heard between his words.

Moreover there was Lorna Freeman, whom he had watched develop into an attractive womanhood. They were still together daily. He still took dinner at the professor’s occasionally and followed dinner with long discussions in the smoky study upstairs. He liked the Freemans. He liked Lorna. He liked Merlton and his university life.

But at the end of three years, with only one more year to study, he began to take synoptic views of the general situation and to cast into the immediate future for a career.

During his fourth year the problem of a life-work forced itself upon him.

He told Professor Freeman his troubles as they smoked together. The historian seemed to appreciate the confidence.

“Well, Mauney,” he said seriously, “The logical thing for you to do is to find out what you are best fitted for, and take up that work. You will be graduating next spring. The world is before you. No one but yourself can decide the question.”

Hours when Mauney might have been cogitating on the subject, were usually spent in delightful loneliness in his room, writing down his thoughts on history in his ledger, which had now grown to be a considerable volume of literature. He took it out of its long privacy one evening to show to Lorna. He read her snatches of things he had written, consciously opening the somewhat sacred recesses of his being to her. When he asked her for an opinion she had little to say.

“Oh, it’s pretty stuff!” she admitted coolly—“a sort of effervescence from a student’s mind!”

She was right. He mentally applauded her judgment. Surely, after all, it was nothing else. All the nights he had spent on it! All the impassioned moments he had worked to express his personal ideas of history! Nothing but a sort of effervescence! Surely, she was right. Cold, frank, truthful Lorna! How his admiration was wrung from him by her bald statement! He had wanted her to like it tremendously and praise it and acclaim it as worthy writing. But now he felt like thanking her for categorizing it with accurate appraisal. How accurate she was! “Effervescence!” When he returned home he threw the ledger down on his desk.

“Damn this effervescence!” he cursed with ruffled feelings. “Damn my student’s mind! If this isn’t real then I’m not real.”

Of course, the situation in the class, with only two of them, always the same two, was provocative of a strain between them. He never felt that they had discovered the very thing that she had recommended in the stilted language of her first year—a modus vivendi.

She consistently defeated him at the examinations, although he was quite indifferent to the fact. He noticed a peculiar jealousy in her that came to the surface at odd moments, when their respective intelligences were compared by the challenge of academic demands. He knew that, often enough, he could have answered a tutor’s question first, but that he refrained in order to give her the advantage of priority.

She had become a beautiful woman, a blonde goddess of severely classical line and color. When he looked at her he favored her intelligence, and continued to accord her priority. But he felt that she was overshadowing and hindering him, and that a modus vivendi could be discovered only by some spiritual change in their relationship.

One solution seemed to be a personal declaration of independence. She deserved, no doubt, to be regarded as an academic rival, and thus treated; for, if ever an opportunity came for her to defeat him by a clever word or argument she never held back. If now, he were to retaliate, forgetting her sex, and try earnestly to beat her at her own game of wit, he would be truer to himself, and would create a more natural relationship in the class.

But, on the other hand, a different solution cropped up. If, by any means, he could spiritually overshadow her, break down her being into dependence upon his own; if, in short, he could but touch her affections, he would thus create harmony in the class, as well as accomplish a desirable feat. He knew well enough that he had ached to touch her hidden heart. He had sat, for nearly four years, looking at her, admiring her body as well as her mind, but had never been able once to tell her in words, or in any other way, just how he felt about her.

This problem added itself to the several others that confronted him. He accused himself over and over of continued weakness. He must do something about Lorna Freeman. That was the great certitude before him. She could not be ignored. It was incumbent upon him either to dislike her or love her. Which would it be? She was like a bulky obstacle in his path, that could not be moved. His progress depended on shoving her aside or else winning her. Naturally he embraced the second method, as a trial.

He hired a car one autumn evening and took her driving out past Riverton into the country. The air was crisp and the west aglow with luminous green.

“You seem frightfully serious, Mauney,” she remarked.

“So I am,” he admitted. “I’ve never been more serious in my life.”

She glanced from under her black hat and smiled a little impatiently.

“When one goes for a motor-drive one doesn’t usually like to be so oppressively serious, does one? Have I the right to enquire as to what is making you so much absorbed in your thoughts?”

He nodded as he turned toward her.

“Yes,” he said forcibly. “You’ve got a peach of a right to ask. I’m serious about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I’ve tried for four years to get something said, and you’ve always been so preoccupied with an overweening interest in the surrounding world, that I’ve never managed to say anything. Even now I haven’t got five cents’ worth of assurance. I don’t altogether blame myself, either. I’m not an especially timid or fearful creature. I usually say what I want to say and let the devil take the consequences. And that, Lorna, is what I’m going to do right now.”

She was surprised. Her blue eyes widened. Her perfect, if severe, lips opened to reply, but he was leaning toward her, ready to interrupt.

“Why have I always been so meekly worshipful?” he demanded. “Why have I always let you have your way? Is it just because you are a woman? If so—if you are a woman—why don’t you sometimes treat me as if you were?”

Her face was a picture of utter astonishment.

“Mauney Bard!” she exclaimed. “Why don’t you ask me one question at a time? You seem dreadfully upset about something, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he admitted, as he leaned closer to her. “I am. I’m upset over you.”

She was strikingly good-looking at the moment. Her customary classical paleness was gone. A warmth of color, provoked by some sudden emotion, had usurped its place. She was surprised by his words and her eyes frankly looked her confusion.

“Lorna,” he said, putting his arm about her shoulders. “I had to bring you here, away from everything. I—”

“Don’t!” she implored, drawing quickly back. “I—I can’t!”

Then she made a queer, gurgling sound in her throat, tried to speak, and ended by weeping with her face held between her hands.

As the car sped on Mauney sat regarding her in absolute mystification.

“Why on earth does the girl weep?” he meditated. “What have I done to her? Is my proffer of love an insult?”

It was a hoax of a drive. It became unbearable. After a long silence he ventured to change the subject entirely, and found her presently quite agreeable to talk about other matters. He was glad when he at last put her down at her home and said good-night. Then, returning to the car, he drove to the Medical Building, where the windows of Lee’s laboratory were brilliantly lighted. After paying the driver he stood for a few moments on the walk trying to collect his self-control. He wanted to see Max, but knew that unless he paused he would stamp into the laboratory like a madman. He owed Lee some deference on account of the latter’s important work. It was ten minutes before he opened the great front door of the building and ascended the iron staircase to the first floor. He rapped on the laboratory door.

“Who’s there?” came Lee’s voice, in an unnatural tone.

“Mauney.”

“All right.”

In a moment Max unlocked the door and stepped back. He had a bottle of whiskey in his hand with a corkscrew stuck into the cork. Without noticing Mauney’s surprised expression, he turned to walk to a table where he continued his occupation of trying to draw the cork. His lean body was clothed in his long, white, laboratory gown, and his black hair hung in confusion over his pale face. He evidently forgot that something in the present scene was bound to be dramatically new to Mauney. Without explanation he drawled, in his gentle voice:

“This whiskey, Mauney, is neither Olympian nectar nor fixed bayonets. I’ve frequently sipped better spirits, and I’ve occasionally tasted worse. Like you and me, my son, it was made before the war. Fortunately it lacks the throaty sting of recent distillation, but, on the other hand, it can hardly be said to possess the superb smoothness, the velvety, liqueur-like softness of real old spirits, such as I, and such as you, no doubt, have, at sundry times and in divers places, imbibed. I use the word ‘imbibed’ advisedly, and with nice selection from the swarm of verbs meaning to drink, such as sip, taste, sample, swallow, tipple, to say nothing of swig, and to leave out of consideration entirely such inelegant terms as snort, or even gargle.”

Mauney was leaning against the desk watching him curiously and smiling at his mood. He wondered especially why Max was drinking.

“Do you want any help?” he asked, seeing that Lee still struggled with the cork.

“No, I scorn your assistance,” he laughed. “There we are! Pop! It had a nice pop, hadn’t it? And here’s your glass. I suppose you’re drinking?”

“Why, Max, old fellow! I’ll drink with you, yes. I’m in a good mood for murder or anything, to-night.”

Lee held up a beaker full of whiskey.

“Murder—eh? If that’s how you feel put that glass back on the desk. Don’t touch it. You’re not in a fit mood for drinking, my son. In order to drink one should be bathed in delightful reminiscences; one should feel at peace with the spacious present and most hopeful for the future.”

“And yet,” Mauney said, looking into his friend’s dark eyes, “I don’t seem to think you’re in that delightful mood either. What’s wrong?”

Lee laughed rather unrestrainedly. After quaffing off the beaker of liquor he filled the receptacle with water from a tap, drank it, smacked his lips, and then, putting down the beaker on the desk, lit a cigarette.

“I’m not really drunk, Mauney,” he replied more soberly. “I’m taking this stuff for stimulation. My health is not the best, unfortunately. Keep it dark; but I was up to pay a visit to Dr. Adamson this afternoon. Well, he went over my chest, and I guess I know why they turned me down for the army. I’ve got T.B. all right, so he thinks. Don’t be alarmed—”

“But you shouldn’t be working,” interrupted Mauney, in great astonishment over the news.

“So Adamson tried to tell me. But it’s the fibrotic type—just a sort of shrivelling of one lung. Not a bit contagious, you know. Of course it weakens me, sure enough. And I do think it’s a damned great misfortune, my son. Here I have my work pretty near in hand”—he made a gesture toward the apparatus that littered the desks—“and another year’s work would probably give me the secret I’m after. I’m on the track, Mauney; I’m on the track.”

“Good.”

A tremendous pity for Lee possessed him, a pity that one man could never express to another. He thought of the quiet, gradual process of disease that had gone on in Max’s body, steadily sapping his strength. Why should fate have ordained this brilliant student to bear a disease that might have been visited more reasonably upon one who could never mean so much to the cause of science?

“Now, what I intend doing is to work on until I finish this bit of research work,” Max informed him. “If I discover the cause of pernicious anÆmia I’ll be fairly happy, as you can imagine. If I don’t—well, I’ll have another whack at it after I rest up and get back in shape. I’m going to work right now. There’s a chair and some cigarettes, Mauney. Sit down and stay a while anyway.” He turned presently from his laboratory apparatus. “But you didn’t explain your murderous mood. What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing worth talking about,” Mauney replied, simply.

Whether it was worth talking about or not, the next few days seemed to prove that it was worth thinking about. He found himself in the same unsatisfactory relation to Lorna as ever. He called one evening and asked her if she would like to stroll with him on their back lawn.

“Oh yes,” she consented, “although it does sound childish, doesn’t it?”

It was far from childish to Mauney. He looked down upon her pale, exquisite face, as they sat on a bench in the faded twilight and knew that something had to be done about her. He was determined not to let another day pass without settling once and for all the relationship that was to exist between them. Here beside him on the bench was the one woman who had managed to cast a constant spell of attraction over him. For three years she had occupied a good deal of his thoughts. During this time he had become tolerably well acquainted with himself and longed now to become acquainted with the woman who had always held him so coolly at arm’s length. He was particularly curious to know what explanation existed for her conduct a few nights previously in the motor car. Why had she resisted his embrace?

“Lorna,” he said, at length, “I want to ask you a question. It may not mean much to you, but it means a lot to me.”

“Well, Mauney,” she said, with just a fleck of impatience in her voice. “I’ve been dreading this conversation. I know what you want to ask me and I’m not at all certain that I can explain. And yet I can’t very easily deny you the right to ask.”

“I don’t see how you could in fairness, Lorna. I merely want to know why you repelled me the other night, when I tried to kiss you. Tell me if there was any other motive than just plain lack of affection for me. Was that it?”

He was leaning toward her for her reply, and his arm which lay across the back of the seat, touched her shoulders lightly. She did not move from the caress.

“Look here, Mauney,” she said, in such a clear, unhampered tone that he almost started. “I think I can explain. I’ve always liked you a lot. You’ve always been a perfect gentleman to me. I’ve always admired your courtesy at all times. And I’ve always liked your ideas. I think I could have gone on for ever, dreaming life with you if—if—”

“If what, Lorna?”

“If you hadn’t spoiled—I mean, when you tried to take me in your arms, that was a totally unknown idea. Not so much that, perhaps, but it was beyond me entirely. I felt that it symbolized something big, yet something so vastly new and foreign to my mind that I was frightened.”

“Frightened?”

“That’s it, exactly,” she nodded. “I was frightened at having a new vista of life opened up suddenly, that way—unawares, taken off guard, if you can understand. I wasn’t ready for it. You see, my mind is, in many ways, inexperienced. I don’t know men at all. You’ve had more emotional experience than I have. I didn’t mean to be cruel. In fact, that’s why I cried, because I was afraid I had hurt your feelings.”

A street lamp on Crandall Street now blossomed into light and sent a long, glancing shaft against her face. Mauney quivered with attraction.

“Are you actually afraid of me, Lorna?” he asked.

She looked up into his eyes a moment very thoughtfully.

“No—I guess not,” she replied, with a noticeable hesitancy.

“Listen,” he said, leaning nearer her and grasping her hand. “I’ve been torn to bits over you for three years. I’ve tried to put you out of my mind, but couldn’t. What’s the use of going on the way we have been?” even as he spoke his arm pressed her shoulders close to him, while she looked up into his face, pale and apprehensive.

“Don’t you try to get away from me, either,” he said in a stern voice as she pushed with her hand against his bosom. “I won’t stand for that any longer. You’ve got to listen to me, Lorna.”

A dim passion akin to revenge possessed him. He pressed her close an instant and kissed her full upon the lips. Then she wilted, and dropped her head softly, with little sobs, against his shoulder.

“Lorna,” he said. “Will you be my wife?”

She did not reply, but remained sheltered within the circle of his arms.

“You do me a great honor,” she said at length, in a low voice. “But I will certainly have to consider this business very carefully. I’ll tell you soon.”

“How soon?”

“In about a month, I guess.”

CHAPTER II.
Mauney Finds a Friend.

While Mauney waited the month for Lorna’s matrimonial verdict, he occupied himself chiefly with study and with more writing in his ledger. Whatever might be the true character of these flashing impressions which he jotted down, they had become an essential part of existence, for they came to him with imperativeness.

The alcove in the hallway upstairs was a good place to write. He found that he could arrange his thoughts better within earshot of other people talking than within the quietness of his own room. The dull, monotonous murmur of conversation from the dining room below had the peculiar effect of keeping him psychically in touch with humanity. The frequent selections of the gramophone music, with the sound of Gertrude’s feet slipping gracefully along the floor in the rhythm of a dance, or the voice of Fred Stalton singing some popular song to the gramophone’s accompaniment, reminded him that history was concerned with all people, that it was not a subject of mere academic interest, but of life and blood, of gaiety and despair, of every emotion that warmed or cooled the hearts of people. Freda MacDowell would often pass him, seated by the hall desk, on her way to her room, nodding with a friendly smile or indulging in a short word or two of conversation.

One evening she showed considerable interest in the subject of his labors, and excused herself for asking upon what he might be so assiduously bent.

“I’m afraid I’m wasting time, Miss MacDowell,” he said, looking up from his big volume. “It’s a hobby I have. Just scribbling down my impressions.”

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s waste time or not,” she said, “as long as you like doing it. I wish you’d loosen up a little, Mr. Bard, and invite me to read your stuff. Having seen you at work so constantly here every night, you can’t blame me for having a woman’s curiosity.”

“Nothing would suit me better,” he laughed. “If I had thought you would be interested I would have invited you long ago.”

He rose and indicated a chair near his own.

“If you have time,” he said. “But perhaps you are busy.”

“Me—busy? Oh no! I’m the most leisurely person in the world. I’m just crazy to read your impressions. But what are your impressions about?”

She sat down and leaned her elbows on the edge of the desk.

“History.”

“Dear me,” she sighed, with a little chuckle. “How disappointing. I, too, have my own impressions of history, or should I say the history machine. I thought you were writing a romance with a lot of thrills in it. However, I’m anxious to see what you think of history.”

For a moment she turned through the pages of his scrap-book, reading odd paragraphs here and there.

“I’d rather talk to you about it,” she admitted, at length. “I’ll start by asking you what history is.”

“I’m not strong on definitions,” he replied, glancing at the base of the desk lamp, purposely to avoid the gaze of her deep eyes. “And I’m hopeless when subjected to a catechism.”

“Good. I knew you were. If I were to ask Nutbrown Hennigar that question—of course I know better—he’d proceed to bore me for an hour. Do you know, I hate history like sin. I wouldn’t stay at this job of mine, except I’ve got to live by the sweat of my brow. There’s Robert Freeman—just a kind of hard-boiled brains—he gives me the creeps. Alfred Tanner is bad enough. He’s pretty well submerged in the business, too, although he has preserved a sense of humor. And Hennigar. What do you think?”

“What?” asked Mauney.

“He’s writing a history of the war,” she laughed. “I read some of his manuscript. He invited me to do so.” She looked a playful reproach at Mauney, as though conscious of her self-invitation to read his writings. “And it’s just the most amusing thing ever! He’s got the whole war so definitely sized up that you don’t feel any surprise at anything that happened. You feel that the war was just as natural as taking your coffee into the drawing room after dinner. You feel that the strategic movements in the battles cost nobody a moment’s thought. The soldiers just emerge from the west salient and the east flank like so many automatic chess-pieces headed for their preordained positions. There’s no smoke or explosions or blood in his battles at all. Just 3,000 casualties, 500 prisoners, and a dent in the Allied line or the German line. He’s done it so hardheadedly that I’ve nicknamed him Napoleon.”

“But isn’t he a pretty good friend of yours, Miss MacDowell?”

“Oh, wonderfully good,” she smiled sarcastically. “He thrives on destructive criticism, and he really receives nothing else from me. The more I criticize him the more he thinks of me. I’ve never given him a single word of encouragement, never, and yet he keeps right on my trail. There used to be a saying that the best man is the one that’s hardest for a woman to get. Hennigar can’t qualify—he’s the hardest to get rid of.”

“Funny,” said Mauney. “I half knew that was the case.”

“Well, I must go and dress,” she said, rising. “He’s taking me to a dance to-night and I don’t want to keep him waiting over an hour. His car has been at the door for twenty minutes already. By the way, I wish you would put your manuscript in on my desk. I’ll be home some time to-night and would like to look over it.”

At breakfast next morning he asked her what she thought of his writings.

“My judgment isn’t worth a Chinese nickel,” she replied. “But I read it all and I think it’s a whizz and when I enjoy anything like that it must be unusual anyhow. I think it’s just like you, and I thought of a dandy scheme just before I lopped off to sleep. Would you like to know what it is?”

“You bet,” said Mauney eagerly.

“Well I’ll tell you. I think you ought to whip it into shape, call it ‘The Teaching of History’ or some such title, and have it published. It’s a direct slam on the conventional methods of teaching history. It would start a mild sensation and sell like life-preservers at a shipwreck.”

“I hadn’t thought of publishing it,” Mauney admitted.

“Give me credit for the idea,” she laughed. “I’ve had an awful lot of experience with manuscripts, especially historical ones. Now, I’m game to take all that dope of yours down in shorthand from dictation and type it, if you approve of the idea.”

Mauney’s eyes burned with enthusiasm.

“It’s a go!” he said, “Do you really mean it?”

“Try me, fair sir,” she yawned.

“Of course I will insist on paying you for your services, Miss MacDowell.”

“Naturally,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d work for nothing, did you?”

It was decided to wait until the Christmas holidays before commencing work on the manuscript. Mauney had an invitation to spend Christmas in Lockwood, at Jean Byrne’s, but this could be easily declined. He knew that Jean was anxious to have him come to Lockwood after his own graduation, to teach in the High School. Her letter mentioned the fact that the present master in history was leaving in the spring, thus creating a vacancy. But to teach in Lockwood held no attraction for Mauney, and as for spending Christmas at her home—it would not be as enjoyable as getting to work on his manuscript.

Lorna’s verdict was not given. Mauney saw her every day and found that, having once propounded the question that vexed his soul and having once broken down the barrier of reserve between them, their relationship was much more workable. She treated him now, at last, like a woman, with more of the woman’s art in her general address.

But Mauney’s nature was severely independent. While he waited to learn her decision, he remained more strictly a friend than ever. He wanted her to decide the big question without the slightest influence from him. He was strangely content with his own attitude. He possessed enough masculine irrationality to feel boundlessly satisfied with what he had done, and failed to observe with what stolid apathy he was awaiting the result. One thing he knew—that he had taken up a definite attitude toward his old classmate, that had at least settled the unrest.

What particular arguments Lorna might be employing in the delicate mental process of arriving at a decision he was far from knowing, but he was tolerably certain that she had taken her family into her confidence, for the Professor and Mrs. Freeman both exhibited a new and fresher interest in him on the occasions he visited their home. Behind Freeman’s cold, grey eyes lurked a stealthy light of objective analysis that rendered Mauney uncomfortable. Nothing was said for a time, until one Sunday evening after dinner the professor referred again to his choice of a career.

“It’s very hard, Mauney, to make up one’s mind what to do,” he said quietly, with his customary smile. “You have, of course, before you the question of an academic career. It takes considerable courage to adopt such a life-work. There are many dangers of scholarship, such as the tendency to stereotypy and the temptations to mental error. Then again, the scholar’s work is unspectacular.” Freeman raised his long index finger for emphasis. “You do not need to mind that. The popular idea of the scholar is the musty individual with high-powered spectacles, his nose one inch from a book at all times except when he’s eating. But the truth is that the scholar is the real hero of society.”

“I quite agree, Professor,” Mauney admitted.

“Why! this world of ours is ruled not by government, but by ideas,” said Freeman enthusiastically. “The university casts the legislature into shadow. The scholar toils as no laborer ever knew how to toil, through painful growth of mind, comparing, judging, until he gains a new conception of reality. From the difficult records and phenomena of life he bears forth his new ideas.”

The eminent historian sat eagerly forward in his chair.

“Then the new idea spreads,” he said, with a soft gesture of his hand. “It spreads like the mustard seed. Like the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand it soon overspreads the whole sky to give rain to a parched earth. It is your scholar, Mauney, working in his intangible medium of thought, who builds up society from barbarism to civilization.”

Mauney nodded.

“It’s a wonderful life,” he said. “I’ve often thought of taking up teaching.”

“Well, in that case, you must decide what kind of teaching. Now as head of our department, I am constantly on the lookout for young men. We will have need for a new appointee on the staff this coming autumn. I am in the position of offering you a lectureship, if you choose to consider it.”

“That’s much more than I ever expected,” Mauney replied eagerly. “I’m sure I didn’t even dream of any such wonderful opportunity. I scarcely know how to thank you. But I’m very much afraid of my own inability to fill such a post.”

“We try to train you for your responsibilities,” Freeman declared, evidently pleased with Mauney’s attitude. “Perhaps you will need a few weeks to consider my proposal.”

“No sir, I really don’t need a minute,” he asserted, “If I’m in order I would like to accept it immediately.”

“Good,” smiled Freeman, rising and extending his hand. He gave Mauney’s hand a warm pressure. “Your enthusiasm augurs well and, as I naturally have most to say about departmental appointments, I am now really welcoming you to the staff. Of course, the information must be regarded as strictly confidential until your name is published in the fall lists. Even Lorna must not know. Continue your academic work faithfully. There will be sufficient time during the summer to prepare you for your duties.”

Mauney’s elation over this incident carried him along in secret happiness for the remaining weeks of the term. With a definite purpose in view he took up his historical work with renewed enthusiasm. Once again, as in his first days in Merlton, the lamp of knowledge shone brightly and he lived in great happiness within the zone of its cool, clear rays.

The Christmas vacation came, with the customary lull in college life, and he faced Freda MacDowell one morning, ready for the keeping of their private contract. They discussed their plan of attack, after breakfast, seated together on the dining-room sofa. They decided to utilize the alcove in the upper hallway, and asked Gertrude’s permission.

“Naturally,” she consented, pausing in her occupation of transferring the breakfast dishes to the kitchen. “As long as you are not contemplating seditious literature.”

“It is going to be pretty seditious, isn’t it, Mr. Bard?” laughed Freda.

“In that case,” purred Mrs. Manton, “I think the occasion demands a better setting. You may have the parlor, if you like. There’s a table you can rest your typewriter on, and a comfortable couch upon which Mauney can extend his thoughtful form while he dictates his words of wisdom.”

“Don’t rub it in, Gertrude,” he pleaded.

“Well, do you want the parlor, or not?”

“You bet we do,” he agreed. “But you may grow tired of the noise.”

“Oh, that’s just fine,” declared Freda enthusiastically. “If Sadie Grote wants to use the piano she can wait till we get through. Music is only music. But this book is going to be an event, mind you, Gertrude.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t, my dear.”

“You’d better not, either.”

“Little did I think,” said Mrs. Manton in her low voice, putting down her dishes on the table, and facing the two with gentle cynicism, “that my humble abode would be the scene of authorship. Take my unbounded approval as granted.”

“Shut up!” said Mauney.

“It’s only what might be expected,” remarked Fred Stalton, who was commencing his own Christmas holidays. He was lounging, as of old, in his shirt sleeves, enjoying the first respite for months. “You know, Gert, it’s a wonderful little home. It has seen some queer stunts pulled off. You remember we once harbored a man named Jolvin here. He evidently drew a lucky card when he signed on our staff as boarder. That bird drew a half million touch. There’s luck in seventy-three. Take my word for it. I’m not jolted to find that a book is going to be written here either. I’ll buy one of the first copies. And there’s another stunt going to be pulled off in a couple of weeks, too.”

“You don’t tell me,” purred Mrs. Manton. “What is it, pray?”

“Sadie Grote is going to get married!”

“Well, for heaven’s sake,” quoth the landlady, dropping into a chair and pulling her kimona about her. “When did Sadie decide to join the ranks of the tormented?”

“A day or two ago. Ain’t she stepping some?”

“You bet she is, Freddie. She’s a sly little fox. She never told me a word. I’m surprised that Sadie would tell you first.”

“Well you see, Gert, she owed me that little courtesy, as I’m the guy that asked her to get married.”

“Fred Stalton!” exclaimed Mrs. Manton.

“Hurrah!” exclaimed Freda. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks, Miss MacDowell. I’ll give you an invite to the wedding ceremony. We’re going to pull it off about New Year’s in swell style. Down at Belmont Tabernacle. Got the preacher engaged and everything. You’ve all got to come. Cheer up, Gert, I know what’s troubling you. We’re not going to keep house. We’re going to live right on at seventy-three. There’s luck in the number.”

“Well, Freddie, I’m surprised at you,” she admitted. “To think of a shrewd chap like yourself getting married.”

“Isn’t marriage a good thing, Gertrude?” he laughed.

“Yes. A good thing to be through with! May the ashes of my deceased husband lie perfectly peaceful as I talk! But this astonishes me considerably.”

Mrs. Manton carried her dishes out to the kitchen and returned for a second load, in her customary suave manner, as if, in sooth, nothing however astonishing, could break in upon the even tenor of her life.

“Wonders and more wonders,” she said. “It won’t be long until my little family are all gone. Think of me, widowed at thirty-five, with my children getting married like this. What am I to do, Miss MacDowell?”

“Why, there’s just one solution under the sun, Gertrude,” said Freda, seriously.

“What’s that, pray?”

“You’ll have to get married again. You’ll have to select another husband. Of course I never heard anything about your first one, but perhaps if you try again the picking will be better.”

“My first husband was really a prince of a chap,” she said calmly. “I don’t keep any photos because I hate to be reminded of what a fine fellow he was. But if you had seen him you would have fallen for him at once. No, Miss MacDowell, my quarrel was certainly not with George Manton in particular, but rather with the fact of marriage in general.”

“I see,” laughed Freda. “I suppose you didn’t like to be tied down.”

“Precisely the case, my dear. My nature was, and is, one of those unfortunate ones that doesn’t see sermons in stones, or poems in running brooks, or eternal happiness within the confines of a brick residence. I have never, even yet, reached the slippers-and-fireplace stage, and have never wearied of variety. I have never shed a tear of remorse that, at thirty-five, I am not putting my children to bed, and I was brought up to love commotion and a life of shifting change. I’m really a gypsy, you know, I love horses and I love to be going. My dear husband was a successful business man with a germ of the pater familias about him. He never quite got me, unfortunately. I worshipped the ground he walked on, but I never considered that my affection for him should change my home into a nunnery, nor that I should acknowledge my affection by living a hermetically-sealed life. Marriage! You really mustn’t mention it to me. I’m afraid I rebelled against its restrictions once and for all.”

“Gertrude is rather deep,” Mauney said to Freda, later, as they started putting the parlor in order for their task.

“Yes, she is,” Freda admitted. “She has as many brains as three average women, as much pep as twenty, and less caution than any I ever met. She really is a gypsy, I believe. I’d like to know her whole life.—Don’t you think I had better use this table?”

“Sure. Put the typewriter there. We can have more light on the scene, too.”

Mauney raised the front curtains to let in the dull, white glare of the snow-covered street.

“Now I’m going to lounge on the sofa with this scrap-album on my knees, if you’ll pardon my informality, and let you have my ideas in straight-from-the-shoulder sentences.”

“That’s the correct way,” she laughed, seating herself beside the round centre table and adjusting the ribbons of her typewriter. “If you don’t go too fast I can catch it directly on the machine. What are you going to call the book?”

“Thoughts on the Teaching of History.”

“Fine. What about an introduction?”

“Better have one, eh?”

“Yes. I would suggest a breezy opening of some sort for the purpose of getting under way.”

Mauney reclined on the sofa and smoked a cigarette. Presently he dictated, between periods of noise from the busy typewriter:

“Solomon was right. There is no end to making books. Why should any modern writer, with surfeit of literary heritage from past ages, seek to augment their number? Everything worth saying has been said already. Every vagary of thought, every wisp of emotion, every particle of knowledge has been crystallized in books. It is impossible for any contemporary to insinuate his thought, however perspicacious, further than human thought has been already insinuated. It is impossible for a modern writer to wiggle his pen in any form of gyration different from the gyrations of the multitudinous pens, crow-quills and styluses that have wiggled throughout the centuries. Repetition, imitation, plagiarism! Everything we write down has been written under, as in a palimpsest, whether or not we perceive the dim characters, all but erased through time. A book is no longer ‘the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up,’ but rather a craven member of a jingling throng who limp in tedious masquerade past the grand-stand of a plethoric and indolent public.

“Books, books! Acres of books, as if a poor, solitary author could possibly maintain his inspiration in the midst of such overpowering evidence of ultimate futility!

“The public have been bored with much writing on the subject of history, and recently much new history has been made. We hold no assurance, nor do we give any, that this rambling communication on the Teaching of History will do more than limp past the grand-stand already mentioned. What will be herein set forth is a description of the author’s sentiments rather than a didactic scheme, written from the standpoint of a student of history rather than from the full knowledge of a scholar.”

“I think,” said Freda, as she pounded out the last words of the preface, “that you’re too modest. But never mind, you’re writing the book, not me. You don’t seem to realize that what the public want is hot air, not a gentleman’s modest viewpoint.”

Mauney laughed, and sat up on the sofa, watching her fingers fly over the keys.

“I appreciate the value of hot air, thoroughly, Miss MacDowell, but I really want to be sincere in this business. Do you know—it’s great fun writing a book—with you.”

“I thank you,” she said, dropping her hands in her lap with a sigh. “Now, have you got your first chapter ready to commence?”

“Yes, call it, ‘The Beginner’s Preconceptions of History.’ Are you ready?”

“Ever at thy service!”

With a glance at her roguish face he settled down again upon the comfortable sofa and dictated once more from the fullness of his heart. They worked hard until, at noon, Maxwell Lee opened the parlor door, sticking in his head and glancing from one to the other.

“Hello!” he said, in a surprised tone. “You two look busy.”

“Indeed we are, Max,” said Freda, stopping her work. “Mauney—I mean Mr. Bard—is pouring forth his theories of history, reconstructed, and I, as you see, am his amanuensis.”

“Great stuff!” drawled Max, entering the room, and standing beside the sofa he continued: “You old bear, I’m glad you’re blossoming out into letters, and I’m glad you’ve got such an excellent amanuensis.”

Mauney glanced from his face to Freda’s with a peculiar feeling that he had been caught trespassing, ever so little, upon Lee’s property, but consoled himself with the knowledge that his relation to Miss MacDowell was frankly a commercial one, or at most, but friendly.

“How are things, Max?” he asked.

“So, so. I’m going home for a week’s rest. I just found out to-day that the sight of that laboratory was beginning to bore me to tears.” He paused to remove his overcoat. “Am I butting in?”

He turned toward Freda, as he asked the question.

“I suppose you are, Max. But who has a better license?”

“Hear, hear!” said Mauney. “Sit down, you prune, and have a smoke. I’ve just about drained myself of language, anyway, and I can smell beefsteak frying.”

“And while you two are smoking,” said Freda, rising, “I’m going out to give Gertrude a hand with the dinner.”

When she had gone Mauney smoked in silence for an awkward moment.

“How’s the work, Max?”

“Coming along fine. I really think I’ve struck something big.”

“Gee, that’s good. More power to you. Feeling all-right?”

“Oh yes!” he answered. “Fairly good, I could stand a little more pep, though. After I get rested up for a week or so I’ll be right on the job again.”

Mauney rose and walked slowly toward the front window and stood looking out on the snow-covered street. For once he failed to understand his own feelings. There was a hot spot in his bosom, burning larger and larger. It had something to do with Freda MacDowell he was sure, because he could see her face before him with its bewitching comfort. It had something to do with Max, too. He longed for words, but they were tied securely within the remotest recesses of his being. He turned and walked slowly back. Lee was sitting idly smoking, with his lanky legs carelessly crossed. He noticed that Max’s face was now flushed.

“It’s a devilish cold day, Max,” he said awkwardly.

“Um-h’m. I think it’s going to snow,” Lee responded, rising and starting slowly for the door. It was dinner-time. In getting out the door they made mutual offers of priority to each other. As they walked toward the dining room Mauney reflected that they had never done this before, and that never before, during their long acquaintance had the weather been a topic of conversation.

CHAPTER III.
The Great Happiness.

The groundwork of Mauney’s book on history was completed, with Freda’s careful assistance, during the Christmas holidays, and finished in final form by the end of March, when the manuscript was submitted to Locke & Son, Publishers. Mauney was willing to allow Freda to choose the publisher, having learned to repose mysterious confidence in her judgment of such practical matters. He possessed none too sanguine an opinion of the book’s fate, suffering from an author’s customary self-depreciation, and was, therefore, greatly and pleasantly surprised a month later, to receive a letter from Locke & Son stating that they had accepted it for publication and would shortly carry it to press. When he expressed his surprise Freda seemed not at all excited by the news, as evidently she had not shared his diffidence.

“Mauney,” she exclaimed, with a hopeless shake of her head, “you are the most mournful prophet. In the first place, what you said in it is just contrary enough to the accepted view of history to stir certain folks up a little. But I have withheld from you the real story until now. Do you know why Locke accepted it?”

“No,” he answered. “That’s what’s puzzling me.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” she laughed. “I knew that the publisher would submit that manuscript to somebody in the History Department for an opinion. They picked on our friend Nutbrown Hennigar. Well, maybe you can imagine what he would have to say about it. He dictated his letter to me. Of all the letters I have ever seen it took the red ticket for pure, unadulterated blasphemy. He told Locke that your manuscript was, to begin with, merely the asinine vaporings of an unsophisticated stripling from away back. He said that your attitude towards history reminded him of a starving laborer suddenly confronted with a seven-course dinner. He considers your arguments subversive, crudely iconoclastic, tinctured by a raw individualistic attitude, blurred by an emotionalism approaching sentimentality, that your position could never be subscribed to by any serious student of history, and that the firm of Locke & Son would be extremely ill-advised in publishing so puerile a production.”

“The dirty cur!” interrupted Mauney. “All he has to do is live on his father’s reputation and crowd down the under-dog. I’d love to poison that small, squeaking excuse for a man!”

“Oh, don’t think of it!” mocked Freda, with a subtle smile. “Don’t poison anybody that can help you. Love your enemies, for they’re useful. If he had contented himself to praise faintly, Locke would never have printed it. It was Nutbrown’s loud damns that excited their curiosity. They thought that anything so subversive and revolutionary and so tinctured by crude feeling would sell pretty well, and I think so, too, Mauney. You did me good when you lambasted these fossilized specimens of the teaching profession who think History is merely an opportunity for displaying academic methods. You are indeed a very raw youth,” she added with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, “but you said a mouthful, for until university students are shown that history is human they will never take a proper interest in the subject.”

“I believe that,” said Mauney.

Freda sat up sharply. “Just you wait,” she said, tapping the desk with her knuckles. “It’s going to be a great old splash and Nutbrown will be suddenly seized with an acute pain in his higher criticism.”

“Say, do you know I’ve a secret to tell you,” said Mauney, after a moment’s reflection. “I’m not really supposed to tell anybody, but I’m going to tell you. What do you think has happened?”

“Well, perhaps I have an idea,” she said with a particularly blasÉ yawn. “But I might be wrong, so maybe you’d better tell me.”

“I’m going to lecture in history next fall. What do you think about that?”

“My dear man, I’ve known that for two months.”

“Well, aren’t you glad?” he asked, puzzled by her apathetic expression.

Her eyes narrowed as if she were weighing the elements of the case.

“I can’t say that I am,” she replied. “You weren’t cut out for a professor. Please pardon my abruptness, but that’s just it. I’m sure you’re happy over it, and I have no intention of prophesying. My knowledge of university life has been gained by keeping my eyes open, and I know the crowd. You won’t agree with them. You’ re too vital, if I may be allowed to use the expression.”

“I feel like thanking you for that, Miss MacDowell.”

“You don’t need to. They aren’t such a bad lot. My first attitude was one of intolerance, but now I pity them. There they are, up to the ears in thankless routine, frozen by the currents of pure mentality, no heart left, lopsided, fossilized, hopeless. I wish I were running the university.”

There was such frank zeal in her wish that Mauney inquired as to what changes she would make if she had her way.

“Well,” she said. “In the first place I’m so sorry for the president that I could shed tears of real brine. They put him up in the clouds with a gold halo round his head and forget that he eats meat and potatoes and frequently perspires. He’s so busy addressing meetings, signing documents, preaching sermons and being necessarily nice to everybody in general that he has practically nothing to do with the university. He might as well have an office down town and be done with it. They expect him to be as perfect as the god they have made of him, and if he ever makes a mistake the big howl starts. I’d like to go into his office some day and kiss him right on the forehead and say: ‘Cheer up, old chap, you’re a winner!’”

“That ought to help a little,” laughed Mauney. “What else would you do for the university?”

“Why, I’d cut a great big window to let some sunshine into the history department. And I’d fire Nutbrown Hennigar and give him a job as aide-de-camp to some fat society woman up in the North End. He’s an example of the vapid young man who gains preferment solely through family influence. Then I’d take Uncle Alfred Tanner aside and explain to him that he can never gain the personal development to which his noble heart entitles him so long as he submits to the curbing influence of his brother-in-law’s clever dictatorship. Then I’d walk into Freeman’s office and, for purposes of smoothness, agree with him at the outset that nothing is good for anything, that all human effort is futile, that there naturally is no God, and then inquire naively, having got this settled, what he wanted to do next? I’d like to see that man get loosened up, just for once. I’ve often sat at my desk and just simply suffered to foxtrot with him all over the history department. When Freeman dies they ought to put a book in his hand instead of a lily.”

Mauney was reminded of Freda’s tirade against Freeman a few nights later when he accepted an invitation to dine at the historian’s quiet home. Of late he had unconsciously shunned the family, for reasons none too clear even to his own understanding. At heart he dimly realized that Lorna herself was the reason. He justly accused himself of having treated her with a species of neglect which must have been decidedly puzzling to her. Her matrimonial decision might have been arrived at long ago, for all he knew. Although it was his place, as the lover he had depicted himself, to inquire, he had nevertheless procrastinated. There was a great deal of apathy in his nature. He noticed that, so long as he did not see her or talk with her, he found no element of his being that regarded her as necessary. When, however, he was presented with Lorna in person, as upon this evening, the old attractions sprang to life once more, as if her presence were the essential cause.

He arrived early and talked with her on the rear lawn while they awaited dinner, which was being prepared by Mrs. Freeman herself. The high stone wall at the back of the lawn abutted directly on the western portion of the university grounds, so close to the history department that a small door had been cut in the wall to facilitate the professor’s short cuts to and from work.

They talked of many impersonal matters. It struck Mauney as almost absurd that this young woman had been asked to marry him. The impersonal attitude into which he had gradually drifted seemed to suit Lorna well enough, and as he talked with her he began at last to understand her real nature. Though pure and blameless, she was so narrowed by the lack of certain emotions as to be, from a romantic standpoint, negative. He saw it better now than ever before. The words that are a woman’s words and never a man’s, the whimsical details of deportment and address that belong peculiarly to women, the glances, the accents, the delicate tricks of wit, the sallies of playfulness—these were not in Lorna. He knew she liked him, but her presence was neither warm nor comforting. Her college training had bestowed, or perhaps merely emphasized, this negative quality of mind which Mauney at length recognized and disliked. Lorna knew that men loved women; knew it to be an accepted and doubtlessly beautiful arrangement, and one worthy of emulation, but she did not realize that this love of a man was no mere arrangement of pretty presentations, but a vital, all-absorbing, tremulous thing from beginning to end. Most women lived by the power of it: Lorna labelled it, pigeonholed it, and missed it.

He was tolerably sure that she did not hold it against him, that he had not again referred to matters of love. He could more easily imagine her appreciating his silence. Like her father and mother, her true character became evident only after long acquaintance.

He had imagined the professor and his wife to be passably happy together until impressed by Mrs. Freeman’s constant, mysterious sadness. Whether or not they began life together in perfect personal harmony was uncertain. But regarding their present relationship Mauney entertained no doubt. They had drifted so far apart that scarcely any common ground remained. Mrs. Freeman, shocked by her husband’s growing agnosticism, had clung for refuge more tightly than ever to dogmatic tenets of religion which at all times she had held to tightly enough. The farther Freeman drifted from simple religion the more desperately did she hold on, until their home life was rendered a frequent scene of controversial unpleasantness.

At one time, not many years since, they had both attended church and found sufficient spiritual satisfaction in the service. But the increasing adventures of his mental life had gradually wooed Freeman away. Something of an authority on ritual, he fell to investigating the subject afresh, to be rewarded by the discovery of a few errors. These had reference to recondite matters of priestly vestment and entailed hair-splitting differences of no importance. It became a hobby. The investigation led him on into comparative theology and biblical criticism, the upshot being a declaration of a position of religious agnosticism. At first he became a cheerful pragmatist, then an adroit sceptic, whereupon Mrs. Freeman’s childlike faith, harshly fortifying itself, grew slowly militant and became eventually not so much childlike as childish.

Even an outsider felt the friction just beneath the surface. Mauney, unprepared to believe how completely man and wife could be separated by matters of faith, nevertheless saw the patent duality of the Freeman home—the professor, ruling his upstairs study and using the place as a boarding house, while Mrs. Freeman roamed the rest of the house in spacious tragedy of manner. The one common ground between them was Lorna, who, as might be expected, had problems of tact and opinion to solve. When guests were in the house she frequently came between her parents in the role of shock absorber, displaying considerable ingenuity. On one occasion, Mauney having broached a religious argument at the dinner-table, Lorna purposely upset a tumbler of water. This meant a quick jump-up for every one and was a complete tactical success since, with the deluged cover tented up on serviette rings, other topics suggested themselves.

On this particular spring evening, relationships seemed happier. They sat down at the table in good spirits. Freeman was apparently satisfied with his mental progress during the day just finished, for he was lightsome of manner, disposed to talk in a good-natured way and looked from Mauney to Lorna with an expression almost of tenderness. Mauney had never been made to feel quite so much at home. The fading light of evening looked in through the large back-windows of the cozy dining-room like a soft caress upon a scene of family compactness, where the four, seated at the cardinal points of the circular table, enjoyed their food by the rich, yellow light of a centrally-placed, silver candelabra. Lorna, gowned in a simple white frock, flickered pleasantly opposite Mauney. The professor’s face stared at the candles while his wife bowed her head to say grace. Mrs. Freeman referred to the younger members of the family as “You children.” It was all very snug and private and natural.

“Just think,” she said in her soft, slow inflection. “Another two weeks and you will both be finished with your college courses. How the time does go! You leave college halls to enter God’s great world.”

“Now, Mother,” said Lorna, good-naturedly, “it’s not quite so serious as all that, I hope.”

“We are taught to believe it’s a pretty serious affair, Lorna,” she responded. “The Scriptures tell us—”

“And the Scriptures are quite right,” smiled Freeman bitterly. “It is certainly a serious, tragic affair. Personally, I can’t conceive of anything half so tragic as life.”

“In what way, Dad?”

“Why, any way you wish to look at it,” he answered quietly, as he served the dinner. “I think life is the most stupendous tragedy imaginable, from the very bottom of the scale to the top. The battle is to the strong,” he said impressively. “It’s the strong who defeat the weak and survive.”

“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Freeman, “that Mr. Darwin will have quite an account to give in the day of reckoning.”

Mauney was not accustomed to such conversation during his meals and felt embarrassed by the evident estrangement of the two viewpoints expressed.

“And when, my dear, is the day of reckoning?” enquired the professor gently.

“If you had been at church last Sunday, Robert,” she said in a childish, teasing way, “you would have heard about it from our pastor.”

“He has no more information on the subject than I have,” affirmed Freeman. “Why should I go to listen to a man who could not possibly express any ideas or argument with which my mind has not already grappled? If there were any such thing as a day of reckoning—which there definitely is not—Darwin would be able to present as good a front as most of us. He merely emphasized a few biological laws which have precisely the same application to the genus homo as to the rest. If I could see one solitary reason for thinking that there is a God who cares one iota for us and our fates I might be convinced. But I know one fact for sure—that the strong win and the weak lose. There’s no argument about it, people. It’s a fact.”

“But don’t you think, Dad,” said Lorna politely, “that the weak may win by being wiser than the strong?”

“Oh, yes, but if a man’s wise he’s strong, not weak. Man is stronger than the elephant and the lion for that very reason. He’s wiser than they. His brains have made civilization safe from the inroads of the wild animals. He has subjugated all other species to his own control.”

“And having done so, Professor,” asked Mauney, “what remains? What is the future of man?”

“Endless labor,” he immediately replied. “All he can do is to study his past mistakes, profit by them, and attempt, ever and anon, to improve his social state. New moralities will crop up from time to time, for moral standards are evolutionary and are merely suited to existing states. Man’s fate is solely to move through shifting phases, through various new codes of ethics and to dream of a happiness which is always out of sight.”

Mauney refrained from continuing the argument, for he noticed that Mrs. Freeman was flushed as she ate her dinner in preoccupied silence. They tried to change the subject, but the meal ended in awkward stiffness. Mauney continued to think of that happiness, which was always out of sight and that struggle which was always won by the strong. The thoughts really disturbed him, for he was thinking indefinitely of Maxwell Lee. Could it be possible that Freeman was right?

The historian finished his meal in silence. Mauney, with queer biological insight, imagined the man to be secretly glorying over the victory suggested by the meat on his plate. It had once been alive. Man was subjecting it to the service of his pilgrimage of being.

A subtle chill had entered by the window from the outside world, rendering this compact family group no longer intimate friends. They were now selfish animals, eating other animals, by the light of burning tallow. And it seemed fitting that the light was so dim and flickering—all was mystery, cold, impenetrable, and the great happiness was out of sight.

The two men smoked anon in the familiar study upstairs. Mauney conversed with his professor in a mood of semi-detachment, unable to pull from his eyes a screen that was changing the apparent world to new interpretations. Even the study was permeated with the chill atmosphere that existed only in the imagination. Little currents of cool air played upon his spine like horrid fears. The volumes that filled Freeman’s capacious shelves stood like dangerous enemies against whom he felt he must be on guard. In the chair before him sat and smoked a puny man whom Merlton and a continent acclaimed as great. But the screen was drawing across him too—a dangerous menace grew mysteriously out of the perennial smile that played upon his lips. He would smile life out, this dangerous man who had conquered existence, and reduced existence to its bare biological structure. While Mauney sat beside him the historian’s words affected him more deeply than they had ever done before. The hot spot burned in Mauney’s breast, as it had burned at Christmas with Maxwell Lee. He suffered from its heat; he struggled inwardly, knowing that even seated in a quiet upstairs study, his own fate, hinging on the direction of his tempted thoughts, was in danger of change.

At last it was ended. It was time for him to leave the scholar with his books. He rose from his chair and went downstairs, glad to be away from him. He carried confusion of mind with him to the drawing room where Lorna sat at the piano, playing. He was puzzled. He did not interrupt her, but stood near the instrument watching her. He wanted to leave the house, for the burning, the unexplained, but painful burning continued in his breast, and he coveted solitude.

“Did you like that?” she said, as she finished, and her blue eyes turned to his. In them she saw no conscious response. “You’re moody to-night, aren’t you Mauney?” she asked indifferently.

“Oh, play some more, Lorna,” he said, trying to smile. “Please do.”

He sank thoughtfully into a chair as she continued, but he heard not a note of her music. A sadness such as had never possessed him had settled upon his being. It was as if he had already gone to the professor and said:

“I am leaving. I am going far away. I appreciate all your kindness. But I’ve got to go.”

It was as if he had already gone to Mrs. Freeman and said: “Good-bye. You have been decent to me, but something takes me away for ever from your sad home.”

And it was exactly as if he had interrupted the girl at the piano to say:

“Lorna, it was all a sad mistake. Forgive me, I’ve been inconsiderate. I thought I loved you, but now I know that it was the challenge of your mind that attracted me. I am going. Think of me as a foolish boy who did not understand himself.”

In the keen stress of his present mood he had mentally said these things as he sat near her. Some challenge of this home had awakened him to a confused realization of the vital quality of life. What was it? He could not understand. But he knew that he had a great account to settle with things. His deepest convictions had been touched at their source. He wanted to be up in arms to protect them.

The most absurd thing that he could possibly bring himself to imagine was the fact that he had asked this woman at the piano to become his wife. Still more absurd was his present obligation of chivalry to enquire now as to her final decision. With a sense of playing with sacred things, he wound up his courage and spoke to her, when she finished her music.

“Lorna, please come and sit near me,” he said, automatically rising. “I want to say something to you.”

She turned slowly on the piano stool and hesitated, while she looked in a surprised way from his face to the chair and then at his face again. She had never seen the commanding features before. His blue eyes were severely direct, his brow puckered with seriousness, his mouth determined. He was not to be denied, as she could divine from his manner.

He turned the chair for her to sit down and then when she was seated he quickly resumed his own chair.

“Matters have hung fire long enough between us, Lorna,” he said. “I want to know what you have decided to do about me?”

“Mauney!” she replied, in a tone of anger, that brought a flush to her face. “I thought you had forgotten all about that.... And I have been so humiliated!”

“Naturally you would be,” he admitted. “I apologize for what seemed my indifference. You have had a long time to consider what I asked you, and I am here to enquire as to your decision.”

“Why on earth be so wretchedly business-like about it?” she blurted angrily. “One would imagine you were trying to sell me a house?”

“Again, Lorna, you must pardon me,” he said slowly, and paused, while he shifted in his chair. “I really did not mean to give that impression.”

“You’ve hardly come near me since that night when you—when you kissed me!” She was beside herself with anger, although she spoke in almost a whisper. “Do you think I am the kind of girl you can kiss when you please, and then, after acting coldly for several months resume operations once more at your own whimsical choice? Do you imagine that I relish such treatment?”

“No doubt you don’t, Lorna,” he said. “But do you, on the other hand, realize that you are a girl whom I find it very hard to know how to treat? When I asked you to marry me you replied quite calmly that you would have to consider the business very cautiously. Well, then, I’ve given you time to be about as cautious as you wish. What have you decided to do?”

“I haven’t decided to do anything, Mauney,” she replied in a tone of complete exasperation. “How do I know whether I want to marry you or not? I think it’s totally absurd. I scarcely know you. I know nothing about your family—you’ve never mentioned them.”

“Why should I? The girl I marry isn’t going to marry my family—am I to take your answer as ‘No’?”

“I’m afraid you are,” she replied tensely. “How could you possibly expect any other answer?”

“Well,” he said, hotly, “there are several reasons why I might expect another kind of answer.”

“Oh, please don’t!” she half gasped, raising her hand as if his mood greatly disturbed her.

“I’m going to tell you one or two of those reasons, Lorna. I don’t think I have an exaggerated opinion of myself by any means, but, at the same time, I believe my family were just as good as yours and—”

“Oh, Mauney, don’t, please!” she implored, rising, and burying her face in her hands. While he paused he was surprised to observe her shoulders twitching. In a moment she wept.

“I can’t stand this,” she said, sobbing. “I’ve never quarrelled with anyone before.”

Mauney walked to the piano and leaned thoughtfully against it.

“I’ll say no more, Lorna,” he said at length. “I’m really sorry to have upset you this way and ask your pardon most humbly.”

“All right, Mauney,” she said, gradually gaining control of herself. “You are pardoned, but please don’t ever mention marriage to me again. Will you promise?”

“I promise that,” he said simply.

“You know we are both so young,” she continued. “We were childish to mention it. Don’t you think so?”

“I do indeed.”

She came close to him and did a very unexpected thing. She put one hand on each of his shoulders and looked up seriously into his eyes.

“I don’t know anything about men,” she said with all the simplicity of a child. “I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings. I wouldn’t want to do that. I’ve always liked you. Why can’t we be friends?”

“That will suit me, perfectly,” he said. “As a matter of fact, Lorna, that’s all we can be.”

“I know it,” she replied, turning away. “Let’s not be foolish again. Dad told me something to-day and I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to mention it—your appointment on the history staff.” Her voice had resumed its customary tone. “You’re awfully lucky, Mauney. Dad has unbounded faith in your ability. I just thought I’d mention it. Aren’t you terribly happy about it?”

“I can’t tell,” he said slowly. “I’m not in a mood to lie just now. I’m not happy just now. I’m most unreasonably sad.”

CHAPTER IV.
Mauney and Freda Have a Talk.

Mauney could not sleep that night when he had returned to his room. For two hours he tossed restlessly on his bed when, finding sleep utterly impossible, he got up, put on his slippers and dressing gown to descend to the dining room, where the hostess and Stalton and two strangers, one a man the other a woman, were seated at cards around the table. Mrs. Manton looked up at the sound of his slippered step.

“Well, look what God has sent us,” she softly exclaimed. “If you have any money you’d better get into the game, Mauney.”

She introduced the strangers.

“Mr. Wright and Miss Wanly have dropped in for a few hands. Nobody seems to be winning,” she went on. “Maybe you are the man with the rats. What do you say?”

“Why, I say ‘yes’ of course,” Mauney quickly responded. “I don’t know how to play, but I’m sure I could learn it in five minutes. Will you show me how?”

He drew up a chair while she quickly explained the principles of the game.

“All right,” he said, picking up his first hand. “I’m on. I’ve got it cold. Give me one card, please.”

“Whew!” exclaimed Stalton, “That sounds interesting. Give me one, Gert.”

“Well here’s where I drop out,” she soon proclaimed as the betting continued. “Go on, Mauney, raise him.”

“I will, indeed,” he replied: “I’ll raise you a dollar, Freddie.”

“A dollar, eh?” soliloquized Stalton, glancing sharply at Mauney’s face. “I’ll see you and bump her up two more.”

Both the others put down their hands and settled forward in their seats to watch the game.

“Good,” said Mauney. “I’ll see you and raise you two. What do you say to that?”

“Ho! ho! The boy is right there!” said Stalton, placing a chip on the table. “I’ll just call you, Mauney. What have you got?”

Mauney placed his cards on the table.

“For heaven’s sake,” exclaimed Mrs. Manton, examining them. “A royal flush! Rather nice, too, Freddie!”

She brushed the pile of money toward the winner and gathering up the cards handed them to Mauney to deal.

“No,” he said, getting up from the table. “I’m not going to play any longer.”

“What’s the matter?” she enquired, curiously.

“You tell me. I’m all out of gear. I’ve been trying vainly to sleep for two hours. Go on with the game. Here, Gertrude, you take this pot and play with it. I don’t want it. I’ll lounge over here for a while.”

He lay down on the sofa and lit a cigarette.

“Maybe you’ve been working too hard, Mauney,” she said, going over to his side and touching his brow with her soft, jewelled hand. “You’re hot.”

She turned for a moment to excuse herself temporarily from the game and sat on the edge of the sofa.

“You’ll be all right, boy,” she said in her deep tone. “I guess you’re tired out after your long term of work. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I’m afraid not, Gertrude. It’s just a cranky mood I’m in.”

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

“No thanks. I’m not having any. I’m just fidgety and disagreeable.”

“I never saw you like this before. I’m afraid you’ve been taking life too seriously. I know you don’t mind me talking. Excuse me a minute. I’m just going upstairs to see if your room’s properly aired and made up.”

“It’s fine, Gertrude,” he said. “Don’t bother. The room’s got nothing to do with it.”

However, she was not to be dissuaded.

In a few moments she returned with a folded newspaper in her hand.

“Did you see the literary supplement of the Globe, Mauney?” she asked. “Well, here’s a half column that ought to cheer you up a little. Read it.”

Taking the proffered journal he read the portion indicated under the Book Review section:

The critical article closed with an optimistic forecast of the book’s popularity, “especially in non-technical circles.”

Mauney had been so engrossed in reading that he did not notice until he finished that Freda MacDowell was standing beside the sofa.

“Hello, there,” he said, quickly casting the journal aside. “I didn’t see you.”

“What do you think about the review?” she asked eagerly.

“Well,” he replied, crossing his legs and lighting his cigarette which had gone out. “If you’ll sit down a minute I’ll tell you.”

She accepted his invitation and leaned towards him.

“Isn’t it just the dandiest review you ever saw?” she asked. “I’ve been up in my room just glorying over it.”

“It’s good,” he admitted. “I appreciate the reviewer’s decency and I feel like calling you my sister in adventure. You’ve stuck to me like an Indian, Miss MacDowell. You seemed to—believe in it.”

“How could I help it?” she replied. “You managed to express a number of things that had always lain dormant in my own mind. I wanted to say them. But you said them for me.”

For a moment or two they sat in silence, half listening to the progress of the game at the table which was now being played with renewed enthusiasm.

“Gertrude told me you got a royal flush,” she said at length. “What’s that?”

“All kings and queens,” he answered, carelessly, then asked: “Did Gertrude wake you up?”

“No. I wasn’t asleep.”

“She must be a mind-reader.”

“Why so?”

“Because, to be frank, I was wishing I could have a little chat with you, but I was afraid you’d gone to bed long ago.”

“And I was just simply aching to see you,” she answered. “I brought home the literary supplement about eleven o’clock and wanted to show it to you, but she said you had gone to bed. Just how I was going to wait till morning I didn’t know.”

Another silence fell upon them during which they both watched the intent faces at the table. Mauney was stealing occasional sidelong glimpses of Freda’s beautiful profile, and wondering what might be occupying her thoughts. To-night he had more difficulty than ever before in repressing the strong attraction she unconsciously inspired.

“If I had known you’d be here,” he said. “I’d have worn—not this dressing gown.”

She shook her head and laughed.

“That doesn’t make any difference,” she said. “I’m enjoying you in your robes. That’s one reason I like this place. You don’t even have to dress up your thoughts, here.”

He was reflecting upon how little personal he had ever been with her. Together they had spent many hours working on the manuscript, in strict detachment, with minds focused on the work in hand. Many times he had felt the urge to break through the delicate shell of reserve, but had refrained, partly because he had wanted to preserve his concentration for literary effort, but mostly because the figure of Max Lee was constantly in the background. He knew that his chum loved Freda MacDowell. He had always taken her reciprocation of Lee’s affection for granted until recently, when he began looking for signs of it.

“But I’m afraid,” she said, “that our dear old boarding-house is soon going to become a thing of the past. Everybody seems to be leaving.”

Mauney turned in surprise.

“I haven’t heard a word about it,” he said.

“You knew that Max wasn’t so well, didn’t you?”

“He looks poorly, but he has never said a word about health to me, lately.”

“He’s really pretty well all in, I guess. He’s leaving in a day or so for Rookland Sanatorium—”

“What! Throwing up his work?”

She nodded.

“The doctor insists on his going at once. It’s too bad. Max is such a bright boy. But there’s only one thing for him to do.”

“You know, Miss MacDowell,” Mauney said in a low tone, “Max has never been the same to me since that day when he came home and found you and me starting the book. I’ve always felt that he was jealous. But we’ve never mentioned your name.”

“It was very foolish of him to feel that way,” she replied, with an independent toss of her dark head. “Surely he had no reason or right to be jealous. Max and I have just been friends, nothing more. And even if we had been in love, I would have still had the same interest in your book. Some people weary me. But as I was saying, Max will be leaving. And Freddie and Sadie are going to start housekeeping up in the North End. She’s raving about their bungalow and says this boarding house is no place to raise a family.”

Mauney laughed.

“It looks as though Gertrude would be left pretty lonely,” he remarked.

“Oh, no,” corrected Freda, lowering her voice to a whisper, “I haven’t told you all yet. This is naturally confidential. But Gertrude and I have become great pals. She seems to like to tell me things. The big joke is that she really isn’t a widow.”

Mauney’s eyes opened in tremendous surprise.

“Where is her husband?”

“He’s been living in hotels in Europe,” she said, with evident enjoyment of Mauney’s astonishment. “He left her because she insisted on keeping up a friendship with another man. Just separated—no divorce. Well, I think seven years of running a boarding-house has more or less broken Gertrude’s proud spirit. Manton has been writing her for the past year, trying to resume married relations with her, and she has finally given in. She expects him home in a couple of weeks and I imagine that will be the end of seventy-three. She cried up in my room the other night, real Magdalen tears, and I believe she has learned her lesson.”

“I hope she’ll be happy,” Mauney said. “It’s plainly another case of false rebellion. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.”

“I know just what you mean,” Freda replied. “There’s some sort of uppishness about her. She wasn’t strong enough to endure the bonds of marriage life—”

“That’s it—so she rebelled,” interjected Mauney. “But her rebellion was merely the hysterical reaction of an inadequate personality to its environment. Sooner or later with such people there comes some sort of circumstance that proves the falseness of their rebellion. They wilt.”

“But on the other hand,” continued Freda, with an aspect of some inspiration in her eyes, “there are others who are true rebels. Some of us were made to be perpetually out of gear with things. Our rebellion is genuine. We never turn back. We can’t, that’s all. I wish you could understand me—”

“I do,” he said eagerly, smiling into her eyes. “I understand completely. I can’t help feeling that we are in the same boat. I’ve never yet found any kind of life which completely satisfied me. Take this book of mine. The fun was all in writing it, Freda.”

She blushed at the sound of her first name. It had slipped past Mauney’s lips, but he saw no reason to apologize.

“Nothing suits me,” he continued. “The first part of my life I lived on a farm. Nothing would suit me, but an education. Now I’ve got it—and—well, it does not satisfy.”

He felt great comfort in Freda’s presence, greater, more mysterious comfort, than he had ever known before. Most women existed in an unreal atmosphere outside his own immediate consciousness. Most women were elusive phantasies of pure appearance, without content or meaning. But it had so happened that Freda’s dark eyes were able to pierce the zone of unreality and stab consciously into his being, even during the first hour of their acquaintance. It had so happened that the seeds of that first encounter found exceedingly fertile soil. His effort to exclude her from his mind had been just as futile as he considered it successful. He was indeed master of his conscious thoughts, but in the reservoirs of his being, this unusual girl had been living an unmolested life, free to come and go, to commune with him in mysterious, unheard conversations, to mingle her nature with his in hours when his subconscious self had fled with her beyond the limits of recognized experience. It was because this knowledge of her had been entirely buried that he now wondered at the comfort of her actual presence.

They talked on and on, forgetting the others in the room, and forgetting also the late hour. Together they described their common feelings of rebellion against university education. It was not ordained that either of them should realize, just then, how vast a principle underlay their sentiments. Neither of them was to play the role of interpreter to the other, to explain that rebellion was the necessary element of progress, that no man or woman ever changed through the successive metamorphoses of being who did not rebel against existing states. They were far from understanding it all. Mauney, burning with the pent-up indignation of the present hour, and Freda MacDowell, beautiful and vivid with the flush of full-hearted reciprocation. The hours sped. At last the game of poker broke up. At last the true rebels said good-night to each other and retired to sleepless beds.

CHAPTER V.
In Which Mauney Calls on the Professor.

Youth is liable to misconstrue the world and its heterogeneous motives. Being inordinately eager to fulfil its own pressing missions, it is prone to belittle the halting advice of more sedate age, and to battle against every influence seemingly hostile. Youth, with its mental astigmatisms, is certain to misjudge situations until it gains the corrective lenses of experience. It is bound to clothe with over-zealous colors all that touches its fate, and to defend itself heroically against encroachment.

Mauney was no exception.

He rose next morning in vast determination to assert the rights of his own personality, feeling that he had been spoon-fed long enough, that the hour had arrived when, not only should he think for himself, but throw out his formative impressions upon a moulding society.

No one will quarrel with him for this, since, even if his impressions were mistaken, a matter for opinion, naturally, his mood upon this spring morning, the twentieth of May, to be exact—was evidently the mood of progress. His pain was the pain of growth. It was the pain of birth. And birth is the moment of discontinuous growth.

“All my ideas are due for a great heart-searching, a great sifting, a great consolidation. From now no gloom can be injected into the atmosphere without my consent. Nothing is true because some one so states. Truth is what I personally feel, and I feel that, in spite of the disheartening narrowness of logic, in spite of the misanthropic outlook of fossilized intelligence, in spite of all that a university has raised up to alarm my mind, there does exist a cheerful future for my kind, and a great happiness that, far away as it may be, is not quite out of sight.”

At ten o’clock Mrs. Manton came to his room to inform him that Freda had telephoned from the university to the effect that he was wanted by Professor Freeman in the history department. He went directly, knowing that now with the term ended and the business of the year settled the department was picking up the threads of its autumn work. He was to be initiated into his new duties as a lecturer in history. It was for this professorial interview that he had been patiently waiting. He went quickly, with light steps, down Franklin Street, with eager steps through the great university square where, as he reflected, he had stood five years ago, a raw, country boy, overcome by the aspect of the seat of learning. Much had taken place. Patiently he had sat beneath the illumination of the immortal lamp of knowledge, charmed by its radiations, lulled into a mood of mental delectation. How often during these years he had crossed these cinder paths, going eagerly to his history classes, in the fanciful delusion that God had created a tremendously interesting world for no other purpose than that students might glory in their investigations thereof. It had been a necessary part of life perhaps, but it was all passed now. “What an innocent dream!” he pondered. “How unrecking of the dire forces of good and ill that rule the world, how delightfully blind to actual existence, how elysian, how stupidly brilliant, how sagely detached!”

But here before him was life. Here was his Alma Mater—the great stone house, that like a mother took her children to her breast. Within this mysterious edifice, what quiet whispers of the restful mother did they hear and cherish! To-day they came in, children with plastic minds. To-morrow they went out, citizens of the world, living men and women who must change the world. Ah, this was life! He almost paused as he entered the Gothic portal, with fear of his new responsibilities, with reverence for his high calling, with fear of life.

The rotunda was dusky with filtered light from the stained-glass window above the landing of the dignified walnut staircase, and duskier with its high, dark-panelled walls. No one was there—the customary spring desertion. But, in imagination, there were innumerable hushed whispers, thick in the atmosphere, like an overflow from the dead years of lecturing, which, even now, came back to life once more.

He passed down the dark corridor, lighted by old-fashioned, carbon lamps, with its dull-green mosaic floor, its huge walnut doors closed upon empty lecture rooms. From the open transoms came the imaginary whispers again. He shivered with thoughts of their poignant symbolism. At the end of the long hall, where he turned toward the wing, stood a marble bust of Homer, with heavy, sightless eyes. Above him hung a cracked oil painting of some particularly emaciated celebrity, who had the appearance of peeking timidly above the rim of his high, white collar, to see who, in this quiet, deserted hour, might be disturbing the century-old solitude with his echoing footsteps.

Up the few, worn, stone steps he climbed to the office door of the department of history. Inside he found only Freda, seated as usual, behind her flat-topped-desk. He glanced about to make sure they were alone. Two mullioned windows on either side let in the dull daylight. There were chairs, and shelves of documents, and the broom of a janitor whose labors had been interrupted. A door on the inner wall stood ajar, but there was no sound.

He came quickly toward her and covered her right hand with his own as it lay upon the desk.

“It’s good to see you, to-day, Freda,” he said. “I—”

“S-sh!” she said softly, putting her finger against her lips and nodding her head towards the door behind her.

“Professor Freeman has sent for you, Mr. Bard,” she said aloud, in a most formal tone, the meanwhile returning the ardent pressure of his hand, and acquiring a sudden complexion. “If you will be seated, please, I will see if he is ready for you.”

“Oh, I say, Miss MacDowell,” came a voice from the inner room, “Dr. Freeman has gone over to his house. I imagine he’ll be back soon.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hennigar,” she said politely, but with a grimace toward the crack in the door.

“Not at all,” he replied, in his English accent, in his unforgettable voice of harsh, bubbling overtones. “I say, Miss MacDowell, did you see anything of those dashed first year exam. books?”

“They’re all here,” she replied indifferently. “Any time you want them.”

Nutbrown Hennigar opened the door and gave Mauney a quick, direct stare from his intensely black eyes. He had never lectured to Mauney and had forgotten meeting him at the de Freville dinner.

“May I introduce Mr. Bard—Mr. Hennigar,” said Freda politely.

Hennigar advanced suddenly, in his characteristic abrupt and shuffling way.

“How d’juh do!” he said briefly, taking Mauney’s hand, and then dropping it as if it were hot. “Mr. Bard? Why, of course, how stupid of me!” he said, pushing his bone-rimmed, nose spectacles further down toward the point of his nose, and pulling at a black ribbon that tethered them around the base of his collar. “I understand you are joining our staff.”

“Yes,” smiled Mauney. “I have been given the opportunity and naturally consider it a good one.”

“Oh, rather!” coughed Hennigar, with emphasis, as he took a blue, silk handkerchief from its concealed position in his coat sleeve. “It’s really awfully good. By the way, I have the honor to be conversing with an author, if I’m not mistaken. I have read your book, Mr. Bard.”

“You did me an honor, Mr. Hennigar.”

“Oh no, not that,” he said. “It was really awfully well done. Accept my congratulations. Well, I hope you like it here, and all that. It’s not a bad place, you know. I needn’t express how glad we are to have you with us. That goes without saying, of course.”

He swung his left arm up in front of his face and glanced at his wrist watch.

“And now,” he said, backing slowly toward the door, “I have an engagement with a beastly dentist and know you’ll excuse me.”

With a very full, but evanescent exposure of his very white teeth he nodded his head and disappeared, slamming the door.

“The miserable little dog,” whispered Freda, her face flushed. “Just cur enough to fawn. He hates you, Mauney, like sin. He asked me this morning if I had read your book. I told him I had and that I considered it a young masterpiece. He didn’t like me to say that. He’s one of the poorest sports in Merlton. I’d just love to push my finger right into his eyes.”

“Freda!”

“You’re shocked! Well, I’ll bet you’ll feel the same way after you’ve been here a year or so. Sit down and rest your bones. Professor Freeman will be along soon.”

Before he could accept her invitation a heavy, energetic step was heard outside the office. The door opened and Dr. Alfred K. Tanner’s familiar form bustled in. He was, as usual, entirely occupied with his busy thoughts and proceeded straight to Freda’s desk without noticing Mauney.

“Miss MacDowell,” he said, in a low, intense tone, leaning over the desk and pointing his plump forefinger toward the window as if he was about to refer to the dust that adhered to the panes of glass. “Have you had time to make out that list yet?”

“Which list, Dr. Tanner?”

“The pass marks in ancient history. The pass marks, I mentioned yesterday. The pass marks, Miss MacDowell.”

“No, not yet.”

“I see—not yet,” he repeated, straightening up and pressing his little finger nail between his lips. For a moment he seemed on the verge of decision. Then, bending forward again he pointed toward the window.

“Listen, Miss MacDowell,” he said in a very loud tone. “Delay it. Delay it. I may not want them, you see? I may not want them. No. I may amalgamate the pass marks in one lump, Miss MacDowell.”

Then he lowered his voice again.

“You can keep them here, can’t you?”

“Yes, Dr. Tanner.”

“Bully! You keep them here, Miss MacDowell, I may amalgamate them.”

As he turned to leave the office, he noticed Mauney. “Hello, there, Mauney Bard,” he said, pausing. “How are you?”

“Fine, Professor, thank you,” he smiled.

“Did you beat Lorna on the spring exams?”

“No, sir, she defeated me as usual.”

Tanner laughed whole-heartedly.

“Oh—ha! She defeated you as usual. Of course, she did. Very clever girl, Lorna. Of course, she defeated you.”

His expression changed.

“Oh yes!” he reminded himself, “I want to see you, Mauney Bard. Have you got say five minutes to spare?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Bully! Come with me.”

He led Mauney to his office upstairs. Indicating a chair for Mauney he sat down behind his own desk and leaned forward.

“Now, look,” he said, “I want you to understand that I’m in a most friendly mood. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Mauney, intensely curious.

“Good! I’m really in a most friendly mood. The professor has already told me that you have joined the staff. I would congratulate you on joining the staff except that I consider it unnecessary. I am glad you have come to us. You are, now, more or less, one of us. I don’t congratulate you, but I welcome you. You are one of us, more or less.”

He sat back in his chair and preserved a short silence.

“Now this isn’t any too pleasant a mission,” he declared, shaking his head, as if Mauney had said it was pleasant. “I—I feel that, as a senior member of the staff I should take you under my wing, more or less. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now here’s what I’m coming to,” he continued. “You must regard what I say as confidential, unusually confidential. Yes, I know you will. I don’t need to ask. Very confidential. It would seem that Professor Freeman is considerably offended with you.”

“Me!” exclaimed Mauney. “Are you sure, sir?”

“Yes—I’m sure—I’m very uncomfortably sure, Mr. Bard. Now, possess yourself in quietness and I shall try to make it clear to you—as it is clear to me—why the professor should be so offended. I, of course, would not bother telling you, unless, as you may haply surmise, I am moderately interested in your welfare in our department. I imagine he will send for you in a few days.”

“He sent for me this morning!” Mauney interjected.

“Indeed—and did he? Well, I’m not astonished. I was talking with him this morning and I may say that considering everything, such, for example, as your pleasant relationship to the family, if I may refer to that, in passing, and considering, too, that your record has been a good one, I say I was taken somewhat by surprise at his attitude. It has reference, of course, to your book on the teaching of history.”

“My book—why!” stammered Mauney, quite pale. “You mean he objects to what I said in it?”

“More or less, Mr. Bard. He feels that, as a member of the staff, you were ill-advised in publishing a book which criticizes the methods of the staff.”

“But I wrote it and published it before I became a member of the staff,” Mauney objected.

“No doubt about that,” Tanner agreed. “I reminded the professor of that. The fact, in itself, excuses you. But no fact, as it would seem, can excuse the result. Now, I am most friendly, Mr. Bard, and am merely trying to give you the situation. I am not stating any personal convictions. In one sense, my position denies me the right to do so. In such an instance, I really think that criticism is helpful, from whatever source it may come. I really think that the university, while doubtlessly far from perfect, has, at least, attained a degree of dignity where it does not need to fear, but should welcome criticism. I have read your book and I am quite frank in saying that it has many splendid points. But here’s the great difficulty. We have been trying to run the university under grave disadvantages. Public sentiment is not always as helpful and kindly as we might wish. Hence, we deprecate criticism which is open and militant. However, from your standpoint, Mr. Bard, the problem is to face the professor, with as good a grace as you can command, and, now that you know the situation, I think you will be better prepared.”

Mauney sat staring at the mullioned windows with the unpleasant feeling of a criminal being prepared by a minister for the death sentence. This room was the death-cell, Freeman’s office was to be the death-chamber. He had committed a heinous offence. He could not put off the superimposed sense of guilt that breathed to him from Tanner’s manner and from the ominous quietness of the room. He told Tanner that he appreciated his confidential talk and that he was now “quite prepared” for the interview with the professor, while Tanner seemed to be struck by a defiant note in his reply.

A few minutes later Mauney knocked on the professor’s door, having learned from Freda that he had returned.

“Come,” said the well-known and pleasant voice.

Mauney found him seated in a Morris chair with a book on his knee, a pipe in his hand—picture of unruffled serenity. It was the first time Mauney had been in the dignified official precincts of the departmental head, but he could have described the room, so characteristic was it of the occupant. A simple desk bereft of all paraphernalia save a ruler, a blotter and an ash-tray. A wall with two cases of monotonously colored volumes, and between the cases, an empty grate. It was severely simple, just like Freeman, whose smile to-day was as hospitable as ever, as kindly as ever, as cruel as ever.

“Well, Mauney!” he said, as if no atmosphere of displeasure were being contemplated. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you, Professor.”

He accepted the only other chair in the room and avoided Freeman’s keen, grey eyes. He noticed that the historian’s long dextrous hand was playing with the ornaments of his chair-arm and that his eyes, whenever he glanced at them, seemed full of racing plans.

“I sent for you, Mauney, for two reasons,” he said, gently, so gently that Mauney, for a moment, thought Tanner had made a mistake. “In the first place I wanted to mention your book, which I have here in my hand and which I am reading with interest. Are you in a hurry?”

“I have nothing to do, Professor,” said Mauney, more at ease by reason of Freeman’s polite deference.

“You say here, somewhere—oh yes, here’s the place,” continued Freeman, fondling the pages and quoting a passage. “‘History must cease to be a subject for the five-finger exercises of defunct mentalities, and become rather the earnest objective of men who are in tune with the issues of current society. It must cease to be the property of an elite academic dispensing agency, and become the property of those, who, valuing form less than substance, will not so much dispense it as interpret it. It must be rescued from fossilization, as every branch of learning requires, at times, to be rescued.’”

Freeman closed the book gently and laid it on the arm of his chair.

“Do you really believe what you have written, Mauney?” he asked.

“I really do, Professor,” the young man replied, determinedly.

“Then we can better discuss it, knowing that you are sincere. In the first place, why do you feel as you do?”

“Because, since the first day I came to college, I have been confronted by this cut-and-dried, academic spirit which, to me at least, acts like poison.”

“You mean that, here in our department, there is a spirit, on the part of the tutors, which is disagreeable to you?”

“Yes, sir. But, of course, I made no reference to any university in particular.”

“I know. But, nevertheless, you gained the impression here?”

“Yes.”

“That is extremely unfortunate,” said Freeman, in a tone of real sincerity. “Of course, as you must realize, your book, in places, assumes an attitude of frank rebellion, and, whether or not you would have written it had you known you were coming on the staff, the appearance is nevertheless equally as ridiculous. You see what I’m driving at?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, I don’t want you to be jeered at by the public. I want you to preserve your dignity as much as you can. I dare say your book will not actually have much practical effect on teaching, since it was written rather as a semi-philosophical treatise. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“But at the same time, Mauney, having written it, you will see how illogical your appearance on a history staff becomes.”

Enmeshed in Freeman’s subtle argument, with its pretence of deferential consideration, Mauney burned with sudden indignation.

“There’s just one solution,” he said rising, and now facing the professor frankly. “I’ve put my foot in it. I’ve criticized the university. I’ve committed the unpardonable sin and must abide by the consequences. I reiterate, without any bluff, sir, that I have suffered from the dampening influence which kills youthful enthusiasm. I’ve dared to believe in what I might term a bright human future. I’ve dared to contradict and defy the cold, pessimistic viewpoint to which I have been exposed. Many a boy comes to college full of ardent belief in the fundamental goodness of things, but few are strong enough to wade through the marsh of brilliant tutoring which believes in nothing. I have been strong enough to wade through, Professor, and I am strong enough now to offer you, most respectfully, my resignation from your staff.”

Mauney started toward the door.

“A moment, please,” said Freeman, turning in his chair. “I think your resignation is the most logical thing you could give me, because, otherwise, your own position—”

“Please, Professor,” he interrupted, “don’t let us befog the situation. You wanted my resignation. You have it, sir. And let me assure you that I hold no personal spite. On the contrary I appreciate to the very limit your many kindnesses to me. There is nothing personal, Dr. Freeman, in all this. It’s principle, and I regret that even a principle should separate us. Was there anything further, sir?”

“No,” said Freeman softly, with a gentle smile on his lips. “I think that’s all.”

CHAPTER VI.
The Fool.

At noon, Mauney was too upset to eat dinner. He wanted to talk to Freda and went upstairs to wait in the alcove, until she should come up. While he sat stolidly in one of the chairs behind the little desk, he occupied himself with turning through the pages of a book whose title or contents he did not so much as notice, and in gazing through the window at the street, busy with noontide pedestrians. He had come straight home from his meeting with Freeman, sad and angry and totally impatient. He knew that only one sedative existed, that only one friend remained to hear his story of personal woe. He would wait for her.

And while he waited he tried to think, in the distracted mood of the moment, what he would do. He had been building upon a foundation, now suddenly gone. There was nothing—nothing.

Maxwell Lee came out of his room and paused at the sight of him.

“Hello, Mauney,” he said, a little more affably than had been his recent wont.

“Hello, Max.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Lee.

“I’m worried a little. I’ve got into the habit lately. Sit down and have a smoke. What the devil’s come over you, Max?”

“Why, nothing, you poor fish,” said Lee, taking the other chair. “What’s come over you?”

“Nothing much. Only I’m just in a mood to get this settled.”

“Get what settled?”

“Well, confound it, Max, don’t profess such ignorance. You know we haven’t been on our old terms for months and months. I’m going away soon—somewhere, and I don’t see why we should not part good friends.”

“There’s no reason in the world, Mauney.”

Neither of them thought of smoking, however.

“Yes there is, Max. Let’s be frank.”

“All right. Let’s.”

“I hate to talk this way to you, Max. I know you’re not well.”

Lee’s eyes narrowed as his glance shifted from the window to Mauney’s face, but he said nothing.

“I could never talk this way,” Mauney continued, “except that I could talk to anybody, just now. We used to be pretty good pals, but that’s apparently over. We both know why, but neither of us will admit it. There’s a woman behind it. No need to mention names. You told me you loved her.”

“Well, what about it?” asked Lee.

“Just this—that I love her, too.”

“I knew that,” he said simply, playing a tattoo on the top of the desk. “I knew that long ago. It’s no secret and, well, I suppose she knows you love her, eh?”

“Not yet. But she’s going to be told. I hate doing anything underhanded.” Mauney paused to look searchingly at the thin, wistful face of his friend. “What are you going to do about it?” he asked.

“Why, nothing at all. What did you think I would do—try to murder you?”

Lee rose slowly and put his foot on the chair to tie his shoe-string. Mauney saw his thin, white hands, thinner and whiter than a month ago, tremble as he fumbled the knot.

“Why, no,” he said, straightening himself up. “I’m not going to do anything about it. I’m the loser, that’s all. I’m not morbid about it. It’s a losing game all along the line with me. But I have no fear—none whatever. That’s what I can’t understand.”

Mauney knew that Lee was thinking of death. There was death written on his pale face, whose cheeks had become more concave than before. His eyes burned with a fire too bright for normal fuel to have kindled. And Mauney’s bosom burned with pity that he could not have mentioned for worlds, for he felt that he must treat Lee as if he were strong. He would have given anything to be delivered from the necessity.

“Well, Max, old fellow,” he made himself say. “I’m glad I told you this. I feel better now.”

For an instant the old whimsical smile played on Lee’s lips.

“That’s all right,” he said. “That’s all right, Mauney, my son, I—I guess I’ll have to be going along.”

When Lee had descended the stairs, Mauney buried his face in his hands. It hurt. He knew that life was wringing the last drop of courage from Lee’s heart. From the window he saw him walking slowly up the street—Lee, the frail body, the heroic mind.

“Am I going to win?” he asked himself. “How it will hurt to win! Is victory always to the strong?”

Presently, Freda came up the stairs, and walked quickly along the hall.

“Oh, here you are!” she exclaimed, stopping. “Did you get through with Freeman?”

“I did indeed,” he replied seriously. “I’m through with the history department.”

“What!”

“Don’t ask me to explain now. I resigned, and I’m glad I did. Please don’t hurry away. I want to talk with you.”

He pulled the chair out for her.

“You must excuse my abruptness, Freda,” he continued. “But I’ve got to talk with you.”

“What is wrong?” she enquired seriously.

“Just everything. I’m all up in arms against the universe, I think.”

Life looked dark. He had thrown over, in his rebellion, the helpfulness of Freeman’s friendship. Vaguely he knew that the solution of his troubles lay in getting down to work, some sort of helpful work. But this was not the only ray of light that began to penetrate.

He had no idea how he should broach the subject that was torturing him. He loved her dark eyes and her lips that tenderly tried to understand his mood. She had been in his deep heart for months. He was at a loss to know how to begin. He glanced at the window as if the bald light of the dull May noon were an intruder. He listened to laughter from downstairs as if it conspired to hinder him.

“Freda,” he said, pressing her hand as it lay on the desk. “I love you. I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a long time.”

Her serious face did not disappoint him. It quivered into exquisite understanding that brought fine rims of moisture to her eyes. Mauney could not continue, for the memory of Lee was making him sad.

“I’m going away somewhere, Freda,” he said presently. “I don’t know where, but I’m through with Merlton. I’ve got to find my niche. I’ve got to go away from you, too. Please, try to understand how hard it is to go.”

Her eyes softened.

“I think I understand,” she answered, quietly.

“Perhaps,” he said, with a far-away look in his eyes, “perhaps I’m a fool. You can’t know how I feel about you. But Lee—he loves you and needs you—and I can’t help caring. Why am I such a fool?”

Freda gently released her hand from Mauney’s, and, rising, walked slowly down the hall towards her room. On entering it, she closed the door and sank down upon her knees beside a big chair and deliberately rested her face upon her arms. She was not weeping or praying. Seldom did she do either. Her intense mind was engaged with Mauney Bard. He did not know that he was being pierced with arrows of shrewd analysis, that he was being tried in the fires of a woman’s relentless gauging. Nor did he see her serene face presently lifted to the warm sunlight that flooded from her window. Her features wore a new restfulness, for she had found the beautiful answer to her thoughts. Delicately the balances of her justice had tipped, to find Mauney not a fool.

CHAPTER VII.
The Last Days at Franklin Street.

Freda MacDowell was one of the most remarked women who had attended the University of Merlton in recent years. First as a student, then as a departmental secretary, she had left behind her a definite impression on the unchanging portion of the college—the faculty. Occasionally a student does this, but never by academic prowess. The brilliant scholar passes through his four years with lustre of a kind, but is soon swallowed up in the oblivion of the graduate status. The remembered student betrays, even in those budding years, a definite mould of mind, illustrates a definite viewpoint and adheres to the peculiar details of conduct that mark a distinct personality.

Freda possessed some unaccountable leverage on life that bestowed this distinction. She was just a little mysterious. No one knew why she had come upon the college world, from the very start, as a rebel, fortified capably against the acknowledged virtues of a university. Books were proclaimed a burden, lectures and classes were boring. Girl associates freely disagreed with her and disliked her. But on attempting to engage her in altercation they discovered a handful of unanswerable arguments. Freda’s tenets were never flippant. On the surface they sometimes appeared even affected yet were found to be based on carefully-digested opinion.

She never ventured on speculative problems. She followed her own injunction: “Open your eyes and look at life.” In so doing she ran the risk of the realist. Life, too closely inspected, often seems monstrous.

Beneath Freda’s animation and apparent flippancy, reposed a silent and very solemn tribunal before which everything of importance had to be arraigned. Themes of elemental justice, of human motives, and of the obscured relation of cause and effect—these she dwelt upon. Few people knew what a sage she was, in secret. Few were permitted to see past her bright face.

At Merlton, no university student, caring so little for the customary rewards of education, had received as much interest from the teachers. Most of the professors had a tender spot in their hearts for her. This may have depended, in no little measure, upon her personal beauty, for decades of mental acquisition do not alter a man’s response, and a good-looking woman maintains her authority even in the sedate courts of learning. Then, too, a realist who has smashed her way through the brambles wins a sharp simplicity that is bound to attract all enemies of delusion. Professor Freeman pendulated between admiration of her mental courage and curiosity about her flippancy. FranÇois de Freville gloried in his “Oiseau,” without stint. Alfred K. Tanner loved her, but the great-hearted gentleman loved nearly everybody, so that it was never noticeable. Nutbrown Hennigar had started with the emotionless, but level-headed idea that Freda was sufficiently ornamental to grace his distinguished presence on most social occasions and had arrived at a point where he believed that she should be a permanent ornament in his home. All these people composed the fringe of her existence. She took none of them seriously, but derived a paltry pleasure from the flattery to her vanity.

A little nearer was Maxwell Lee—so much like her in many ways, a good chum, clever, sincere and respected. But he did not awake any amorous response in Freda.

Thus she had continued to play with life, superficially gay, but actually discontented. The only man who had ever believed in her was Mauney Bard. He saw beneath the surface. This, at least, was how she felt on the day following his ardent declarations.

Another college term was finished. Spring and the vacation were at hand. But she knew no eagerness, as in other years, to be off to her home in Lockwood. The morning was occupied in arranging her secretarial desk for the summer’s absence and the afternoon in quiet day-dreams in her room on Franklin Street.

Her opened window, beside which she lounged in her big Morris chair, let in a heterogeneous clatter of carts and horses’ hoofs, the constant, shrill voices of romping children and the distant melodies of an organ-grinder from a neighboring block, the brisk movements of the Rigoletto, and the long, rolling chords of the Aloha. It was a very satisfactory occupation to sit passively by her window. Beyond and beneath the noise and the music there was a sweet silence of new happiness within her. And her eyes were not seeing the familiar objects of the room, but feasting upon the fresh, open face of Mauney Bard. Out of the air, his clear blue eyes looked into hers. She heard his voice laughing. She saw his eyes, boyish and eager, light with their happy laughter.

After a time she glanced toward her wardrobe and rose impulsively to dress for dinner. While she was finishing the ceremony of donning a new evening dress of rose silk the door opened quietly to admit Gertrude who, after a glance at her bowed smilingly.

“Ah-ha!” she said, very softly, “Doing it a la grande, are you?”

“Gertrude,” said Freda, “see if you can get this fastened, will you?”

“I shall be pleased, my dear,” responded the landlady, coming close, “to help you with so charming a frock. Why a dome-fastener should be placed in such an inaccessible position puzzles me considerably. Don’t you want your hair waved a little?”

“Have you really got time to do it up for me?” Freda eagerly asked.

“Sit down, my dear,” purred Mrs. Manton as she placed a towel over Freda’s shoulders and began extracting hairpins. “What a respectable wad you really have. One could do wonders with half of it. Shall I give you that Paris touch I used once before?”

Freda nodded, “Uh, huh! Won’t it be grand?”

“Doubtless,” said Mrs. Manton. “But in the words of Shakespeare, What’s the big idea? Going out for dinner?”

“No.”

“Expecting Mr. Nutbrown Hennigar?”

“No.”

“Pure vanity, I suppose, then.”

“You haven’t guessed yet, Gertrude.”

“You’re a poor person to risk guesses about,” admitted Mrs. Manton, “So you may have the fun of telling me.”

“Well, then,” said Freda, “I’m in love.”

“In love, my dear!” exclaimed the landlady, “With what?”

“A man, Gertrude.”

“Never!” Mrs. Manton shook her head slowly as she stepped in front of Freda to inspect the results of her handicraft. “Do tell me what it’s like,” she implored.

“Well,” said Freda, “you admire the man’s style from the first—his voice, his looks. His boots are polished. His fingernails are clean, and not polished. His tie is carefully knotted, his trousers well in press. You like him, but you’re not in love yet.”

“I should say, not yet,” Gertrude agreed, half cynically.

“Then, whenever you talk with him he has a faculty of understanding you. You don’t have to repeat or explain, Gertrude. You’ve always wanted to talk with people who get you. Isn’t that right?”

“It’s as sure as mud.”

“And then,” continued Freda enthusiastically. “It works the other way, too. You find it easy to understand him. His broadcasting machine is in the same wave-length as your radio-receiver. But even then you’re not in love.”

“Are you quite sure?” enquired Mrs. Manton, teasingly.

“Yes. Listen, Gertrude, to me!” Freda said, as she rose to look down into the sombre face before her. “There are all kinds of attractions and fascinations and mesmerisms that pass for love. But when you have known your man for a long time and feel you can hang on him, trust him, let him steer you, and just want to be right with him all the time—isn’t that love?”

“It sounds suspiciously like it,” smiled Mrs. Manton.

“But you’re not taking me seriously,” Freda objected.

“What do you want me to do—weep? Oh, girl, I could deliver one of the finest speeches on this subject that ever was heard.” Mrs. Manton spoke with decided emphasis, and pointed toward Freda admonishingly. “Remember, my dear, that no man lives that can understand a woman’s nature. They can’t vibrate with us. Good or bad, they don’t need us. Mind you, they think they do. But when the curtain is lifted on the mystery, their fine frenzy dies. What do we do then? We wash dishes three times a day, and listen to a voice in the kitchen fire to find out when they will return to the glorious delirium of their first affections. Then we grow restless. We are off up toward the sky. Then we whizz plumb down like an aeroplane in a nose-dive. We don’t know why we do the things we do. We are in ignorance as to why our love makes us hurt them. In short we are women. They are only men. And a satisfied woman is the rarest work of God!”

During the evening Gertrude gathered her little flock together in the dining room and provided music, dancing and refreshments, as a function in honor of Maxwell Lee’s departure. Not a word was said about his condition. It was all as if nothing had happened. Freda was informed quietly by Mrs. Manton that Mauney was going to Rookland with Max on the morrow and was providing money for his better care while in the sanatorium. He had at first refused his kindly offer, but had finally been persuaded, after three hours’ argument, to accept it. The party broke up early and Freda, after assisting her landlady to wash the dishes, joined Mauney in the drawing room.

It was a rarely happy hour. Freda, accustomed to orthodox methods of love-making, was genuinely refreshed by Mauney’s restraint. Her presence brought a happiness that he could not disguise. It shone in his face. Most men would have told her, of course, that she was looking very beautiful to-night. His omission of the compliment she readily explained by reason of his essentially undemonstrative disposition. Freda, always dramatic by nature, expressed her own feelings by gathering herself neatly upon a cushion at his feet. Mauney sat leaning forward, his arms on his knees, looking down into her face. He scarcely appreciated the real surrender typified by that lowly cushion. But he knew and she knew that a delicious, quivering kind of peace was in the room with them. They talked of many matters for a time.

“If I had you,” he said, seriously, at length, “everything would be perfect. I wouldn’t care what happened—”

Her head turned thoughtfully away for a moment, but he soon lifted her face with a finger under her chin.

“Try to get me, won’t you?” he implored. “Try to put yourself in my position. Lee has been the whitest chap to me that ever was. Behind my back as well as to my face. If he had only ever done me one little, mean trick—but he hasn’t. Can you see what a damned predicament I’m in?”

“Yes,” she replied quickly, with an understanding smile that revealed a white gleam between her lips. “I can see it, plain as the paper on that ceiling.”

Mauney whistled softly a snatch of an indefinite tune and made some pretence of keeping time with his heel, while he stared unhappily at the carpet.

“It’s not very nice to be me,” he said.

“It’s your predicament, boy,” she said, “I’m sure you’re able to settle it somehow or other.”

Later, when Freda had gone to her room, she was glad that her lover had a hard problem to solve. She was glad that her lover was capable of such an unusual fidelity; for her innate casuistry had been busy on the situation and had shown her that such a man would make a faithful husband.