Katharine was conscious that during the time she had spent in the studio she had been taken out of herself. She had listened to what the others had said, she had been interested in Griggs, she had speculated upon the probable origin of his apparent friendship with Crowdie; in a word, she had temporarily lulled the tempest which had threatened to overwhelm her altogether in the earlier part of the morning. She was not much given to analyzing herself and her feelings, but as she descended the stairs, followed by Crowdie and Griggs, she was inclined to doubt whether she were awake, or dreaming. She told herself that it was all true; that she had been married to John Ralston on the previous morning in the quiet, remote church, that she had seen John for one moment in the afternoon, at her own door, that he had failed her in the evening, and that she knew only too certainly how he had disgraced himself in the eyes of decent people during the remainder of the day. It was all true, and yet there was something misty about it all, as though it were a dream. She did not feel angry or hurt any more. It only seemed to her that John, and everything connected with him, had all at once passed out of her life, beyond the possibility of recall. And she did not wish to recall it, for she had reached something like peace, very unexpectedly.

It was, of course, only temporary. Physically speaking, it might be explained as the reaction from violent emotions, which had left her nerves weary and deadened. And speaking not merely of the material side, it is true that the life of love has moments of suspended animation, during which it is hard to believe that love was ever alive at all—times when love has a past and a future, but no present.

If she had met John at that moment, on the stairs, she would very probably have put out her hand quite naturally, and would have greeted him with a smile, before the reality of all that had happened could come back to her. Many of us have dreamed that those dearest to us have done us some cruel and bitter wrong, struck us, insulted us, trampled on our life-long devotion to them; and in the morning, awaking, we have met them, and smiled, and loved them just the same. For it was only a dream. And there are those who have known the reality; who, after much time, have very suddenly found out that they have been betrayed and wickedly deceived, and used ill, by their most dear—and who, in the first moment, have met them, and smiled, and loved them just the same. For it was only a dream, they thought indeed. And then comes the waking, which is as though one fell asleep upon his beloved’s bosom and awoke among thorns, and having a crown of thorns about his brows—very hard to bear without crying aloud.

Katharine pressed the polished banister of the staircase with her hand, and with the other she found the point of the little gold pin she wore at her throat and made it prick her a little. It was a foolish idea and a childish thought. She knew that she was not really dreaming, and yet, as though she might have been, she wanted a physical sensation to assure her that she was awake. Griggs was close behind her. Crowdie had stopped a moment to pull the cord of a curtain which covered the skylight of the staircase.

“I wonder where real things end, and dreams begin!” said Katharine, half turning her head, and then immediately looking before her again.

“At every minute of every hour,” answered Griggs, as quickly as though the thought had been in his own mind.

From higher up came Crowdie’s golden voice, singing very softly to himself. He had heard the question and the answer.

“‘La vie est un songe,’” he sang, and then, breaking off suddenly, laughed a little and began to descend.

At the first note, Katharine stood still and turned her face upwards. Griggs stopped, too, and looked down at her. Even after Crowdie had laughed Katharine did not move.

“I wish you’d go on, Mr. Crowdie!” she cried, speaking so that he could hear her.

“Griggs is anxious for the Blue Points,” he answered, coming down. “Besides, he hates music, and makes no secret of the fact.”

“Is it true? Do you really hate music?” asked Katharine, turning and beginning to descend again.

“Quite true,” answered Griggs, quietly. “I detest it. Crowdie’s a nuisance with his perpetual yapping.”

Crowdie laughed good naturedly, and Katharine said nothing. As they reached the lower landing she turned and paused an instant, so that Griggs came beside her.

“Did you always hate music?” she asked, looking up into his weather-beaten face with some curiosity.

“Hm!” Griggs uttered a doubtful sound. “It’s a long time since I heard any that pleased me, at all events.”

“There are certain subjects, Miss Lauderdale, upon which Griggs is unapproachable, because he won’t say anything. And there are others upon which it is dangerous to approach him, because he is likely to say too much. Hester! Where are you?”

He disappeared into the little room at the front of the house in search of his wife, and Katharine stood alone with Griggs in the entry. Again she looked at him with curiosity.

“You’re a very good-humoured person, Mr. Griggs,” she said, with a smile.

“You mean about Crowdie? Oh, I can stand a lot of his chaff—and he has to stand mine, too.”

“That was a very interesting answer you gave to my question about dreams,” said Katharine, leaning against the pillar of the banister.

“Was it? Let me see—what did I say?” He seemed to be absent-minded again.

“Come to luncheon!” cried Crowdie, reappearing with Hester at that moment. “You can talk metaphysics over the oysters.”

“Metaphysics!” exclaimed Griggs, with a smile.

“Oh, I know,” answered Crowdie. “I can’t tell the difference between metaphysics and psychics, and geography and Totem. It is all precisely the same to me—and it is to Griggs, if he’d only acknowledge it. Come along, Miss Lauderdale—to oysters and culture!”

Hester laughed at Crowdie’s good spirits, and Griggs smiled. He had large, sharp teeth, and Katharine thought of the wolf and the rabbit again. It was strange that they should be on such good terms.

They sat down to luncheon. The dining-room, like every other part of the small house, had been beautified as much as its position and dimensions would allow. It had originally been small, but an extension of glass had been built out into the yard, which Hester had turned into a fernery. There were a great number of plants of many varieties, some of which had been obtained with great difficulty from immense distances. Hester had been told that it would be impossible to make them grow in an inhabited room, but she had succeeded, and the result was something altogether out of the common.

She admitted that, besides the attention she bestowed upon the plants herself, they occupied the whole time of a specially trained gardener. They were her only hobby, and where they were concerned, time and money had no value for her. The dining-room itself was simple, but exquisite in its way. There were a few pieces of wonderfully chiselled silver on the sideboard, and the glasses on the table were Venetian and Bohemian, and very old. The linen was as fine as fine writing paper, the porcelain was plain white SÈvres. There was nothing superfluous, but there were all the little, unobtrusive, almost priceless details which are the highest expression “of intimate luxury—in which the eye alone receives rest, while the other senses are flattered to the utmost. Colour and the precious metals are terribly cheap things nowadays compared with what appeals to touch and taste. There are times when certain dainties, like terrapin, for instance, are certainly worth much more than their weight in silver, if not quite their weight in gold. But as for that, to say that a man is worth his weight in gold has ceased to mean very much. Some ingenious persons have lately calculated that the average man’s weight in gold would be worth about forty thousand dollars, and that a few minutes’ worth of the income of some men living would pay for a life-sized golden calf. The further development of luxury will be an interesting thing to watch during the next century. A poor woman in New York recently returned a roast turkey to a charitable lady who had sent it to her, with the remark that she was accustomed to eat roast beef at Christmas, though she ‘did not mind turkey on Thanksgiving Day.’

Katharine wondered how far such a man as Griggs, who said that he hated music, could appreciate the excessive refinement of a luxury which could be felt rather than seen. It was all familiar to Katharine, and there were little things at the Crowdies which she longed to have at home. Griggs ate his oysters in silence. Fletcher came to his elbow with a decanter.

“Vin de Grave, sir?” enquired the old butler in a low voice.

“No wine, thank you,” said Griggs.

“There’s Sauterne, isn’t there, Walter?” asked Hester. “Perhaps Mr. Griggs—”

“Griggs is a cold water man, like me,” answered Crowdie. “His secret vice is to drink a bucket of it, when nobody is looking.”

Fletcher looked disappointed, and replaced the decanter on the sideboard.

“It’s uncommon to see two men who drink nothing,” observed Hester. “But I remember that Mr. Griggs never did.”

“Never—since you knew me, Mrs. Crowdie. I did when I was younger.”

“Did you? What made you give it up?”

Katharine felt a strange pain in her heart, as they began to talk of the subject. The reality was suddenly coming back out of dreamland.

“I lost my taste for it,” answered Griggs, indifferently.

“About the same time as when you began to hate music, wasn’t it?” asked Crowdie, gravely.

“Yes, I daresay.”

The elder man spoke quietly enough, and there was not a shade of interest in his voice as he answered the question. But Katharine, who was watching him unconsciously, saw a momentary change pass over his face. He glanced at Crowdie with an expression that was almost savage. The dark, weary eyes gleamed fiercely for an instant, the great veins swelled at the lean temples, the lips parted and just showed the big, sharp teeth. Then it was all over again and the kindly look came back. Crowdie was not smiling, and the tone in which he had asked the question showed plainly enough that it was not meant as a jest. Indeed, the painter himself seemed unusually serious. But he had not been looking at Griggs, nor had Hester seen the sudden flash of what was very like half-suppressed anger. Katharine wondered more and more, and the little incident diverted her thoughts again from the suggestion which had given her pain.

“Lots of men drink water altogether, nowadays,” observed Crowdie. “It’s a mistake, of course, but it’s much more agreeable.”

“A mistake!” exclaimed Katharine, very much astonished.

“Oh, yes—it’s an awful mistake,” echoed Griggs, in the most natural way possible.

“I’m not so sure,” said Hester Crowdie, in a tone of voice which showed plainly that the idea was not new to her.

“I don’t understand,” said Katharine, unable to recover from her surprise. “I always thought that—” she checked herself and looked across at the ferns, for her heart was hurting her again.

She suddenly realized, also, that considering what had happened on the previous night, it was very tactless of Crowdie not to change the subject. But he seemed not at all inclined to drop it yet.

“Yes,” he said. “In the first place, total abstinence shortens life. Statistics show that moderate consumers of alcoholic drinks live considerably longer than drunkards and total abstainers.”

“Of course,” assented Griggs. “A certain amount of wine makes a man lazy for a time, and that rests his nerves. We who drink water accomplish more in a given time, but we don’t live so long. We wear ourselves out. If we were not the strongest generation there has been for centuries, we should all be in our graves by this time.”

“Do you think we are a very strong generation?” asked Crowdie, who looked as weak as a girl.

“Yes, I do,” answered Griggs. “Look at yourself and at me. You’re not an athlete, and an average street boy of fifteen or sixteen might kill you in a fight. That has nothing to do with it. The amount of actual hard work, in your profession, which you’ve done—ever since you were a mere lad—is amazing, and you’re none the worse for it, either. You go on, just as though you had begun yesterday. Heaving weights and rowing races is no test of what a man’s strength will bear in everyday life. You don’t need big muscles and strong joints. But you need good nerves and enormous endurance. I consider you a very strong man—in most ways that are of any use.”

“That’s true,” said Mrs. Crowdie. “It’s what I’ve always been trying to put into words.”

“All the same,” continued Griggs, “one reason why you do more than other people is that you drink water. If we are strong, it’s because the last generation and the one before it lived too well. The next generation will be ruined by the advance of science.”

“The advance of science!” exclaimed Katharine. “But, Mr. Griggs—what extraordinary ideas you have!”

“Have I? It’s very simple, and it’s absolutely true. We’ve had the survival of the fittest, and now we’re to have the survival of the weakest, because medical science is learning how to keep all the weaklings alive. If they were puppies, they’d all be drowned, for fear of spoiling the breed. That’s rather a brutal way of putting it, but it’s true. As for the question of drink, the races that produce the most effect on the world are those that consume the most meat and the most alcohol. I don’t suppose any one will try to deny that. Of course, the consequences of drinking last for many generations after alcohol has gone out of use. It’s pretty certain that before Mohammed’s time the national vice of the Arabs was drunkenness. So long as the effects lasted—for a good many generations—they swept everything before them. The most terrible nation is the one that has alcohol in its veins but not in its head. But when the effects wore out, the Arabs retired from the field before nations that drank—and drank hard. They had no chance.”

“What a horrible view to take!” Katharine was really shocked by the man’s cool statements, and most of all by the appearance of indisputable truth which he undoubtedly gave to them.

“And as for saying that drink is the principal cause of crime,” he continued, quietly finishing a piece of shad on his plate, “it’s the most arrant nonsense that ever was invented. The Hindus are total abstainers and always have been, so far as we know. The vast majority of them take no stimulant whatever, no tea, no coffee. They smoke a little. There are, I believe, about two hundred millions of them alive now, and their capacity for most kinds of wickedness is quite as great as ours. Any Indian official will tell you that. It’s pure nonsense to lay all the blame on whiskey. There would be just as many crimes committed without it, and it would be much harder to detect them, because the criminals would keep their heads better under difficulties. Crime is in human nature, like virtue—like most things, if you know how to find them.”

“That’s perfectly true,” said Crowdie. “I believe every word of it. And I know that if I drank a certain amount of wine I should have a better chance of long life, but I don’t like the taste of it—couldn’t bear it when I was a boy. I like to see men get mellow and good-natured over a bottle of claret, too. All the same, there’s nothing so positively disgusting as a man who has had too much.”

Hester looked at him quickly, warning him to drop the subject. But Griggs knew nothing of the circumstances, and went on discussing the matter from his original point of view.

“There’s a beast somewhere, in every human being,” he said, thoughtfully. “If you grant the fact that it is a beast, it’s no worse to look at than other beasts. But it’s quite proper to call a drunkard a beast, because almost all animals will drink anything alcoholic which hasn’t a bad taste, until they’re blind drunk. It’s a natural instinct. Did you ever see a goat drink rum, or a Western pony drink a pint of whiskey? All animals like it. I’ve tried it on lots of them. It’s an old sailors’ trick.”

“I think it’s horrid!” exclaimed Hester. “Altogether, it’s a most unpleasant subject. Can’t we talk of something else?”

“Griggs can talk about anything except botany, my dear,” said Crowdie. “Don’t ask him about ferns, unless you want an exhibition of ignorance which will startle you.”

Katharine sat still in silence, though it would have been easy for her at that moment to turn the conversation into a new channel, by asking Griggs the first question which chanced to present itself. But she could not have spoken just then. She could not eat, either, though she made a pretence of using her fork. The reality had come back out of dreamland altogether this time, and would not be banished again. The long discussion about the subject which of all others was most painful to her, and the cynical indifference with which the two men had discussed it, had goaded her memory back through all the details of the last twenty-four hours. She was scarcely conscious that Hester had interfered, as she became more and more absorbed by her own suffering.

“Shall we talk of roses and green fields and angels’ loves?” asked Griggs. “How many portraits have you painted since last summer, Crowdie?”

“By way of reminding me of roses you stick the thorns into me—four, I think—and two I’m doing now, besides Miss Lauderdale’s. There’s been a depression down town. That accounts for the small number. Portrait painters suffer first. In hard times people don’t want them.”

“Yes,” answered Griggs, thoughtfully. “Portrait painters and hatters. Did you know that, Crowdie? When money is tight in Wall Street, people don’t bet hats, and the hatters say it makes a great difference.”

“That’s queer. And you—how many books have you written?”

“Since last summer? Only one—a boshy little thing of sixty thousand.”

“Sixty thousand what?” asked Hester. “Dollars?”

“Dollars!” Griggs laughed. “No—only words. Sixty thousand words. That’s the way we count what we do. No—it’s a tiresome little thing. I had an idea,—or thought I had,—and just when I got to the end of it I found it was trash. That’s generally the way with me, unless I have a stroke of luck. Haven’t you got an idea for me, Mrs. Crowdie? I’m getting old and people won’t give me any, as they used to.”

“I wish I had! What do you want? A love story?”

“Of course. But what I want is a character. There are no new plots, nor incidents, nor things of that sort, you know. Everything that’s ever happened has happened so often. But there are new characters. The end of the century, the sharp end of the century, is digging them up out of the sands of life—as you might dig up clams with a pointed stick.”

“That’s bathos!” laughed Crowdie. “The sands of life—and clams!”

“I wish you’d stick to your daubs, Crowdie, and leave my English alone!” said Griggs. “It sells just as well as your portraits. No—what I mean is that just when fate is twisting the tail of the century—”

“Really, my dear fellow—that’s a little too bad, you know! To compare the century to a refractory cow!”

“Crowdie,” said Griggs, gravely, “in a former state I was a wolf, and you were a rabbit, and I gobbled you up. If you go on interrupting me, I’ll do it again and destroy your Totem.”

Katharine started suddenly and stared at Griggs. It seemed so strange that he should have used the very words—wolf and rabbit—which had been in her mind more than once during the morning.

“What is it, Miss Lauderdale?” he asked, in some surprise. “You look startled.”

“Oh—nothing!” Katharine hastened to say. “I happened to have thought of wolves and rabbits, and it seemed odd that you should mention them.”

“Write to the Psychical Research people,” suggested Crowdie. “It’s a distinct case of thought-transference.”

“I daresay it is,” said Griggs, indifferently. “Everything is transferable—why shouldn’t thoughts be?”

“Everything?” repeated Crowdie. “Even the affections?”

“Oh, yes—even the affections—but punched, like a railway ticket,” answered Griggs, promptly. Everybody laughed a little, except Griggs himself.

“Of course the affections are transferable,” he continued, meditatively. “The affections are the hat—the object is only the peg on which it’s hung. One peg is almost as good as another—if it’s within reach; but the best place for the hat is on the man’s own head. Nothing shields a man like devoting all his affections to himself.”

“That’s perfectly outrageous!” exclaimed Hester Crowdie. “You make one think that you don’t believe in anything! Oh, it’s too bad—really it is!”

“I believe in ever so many things, my dear lady,” answered Griggs, looking at her with a singularly gentle expression on his weather-beaten face. “I believe in lots of good things—more than Crowdie does, as he knows. I believe in roses, and green fields, and love, as much as you do. Only—the things one believes in are not always good for one—it depends—love’s path may lie among roses or among thorns; yet the path always has two ends—the one end is life, if the love is true.”

“And the other?” asked Katharine, meeting his far-away glance.

“The other is death,” he answered, almost solemnly.

A momentary silence followed the words. Even Crowdie made no remark, while both Hester and Katharine watched the elder man’s face, as women do when a man who has known the world well speaks seriously of love.

“But then,” added Griggs himself, more lightly, and as though to destroy the impression he had made, “most people never go to either end of the path. They enter at one side, look up and down it, cross it, and go out at the other. Something frightens them, or they don’t like the colour of the roses, or they’re afraid of the thorns—in nine cases out of ten, something drives them out of it.”

“How can one be driven out of love?” asked Katharine, gravely.

“I put the thing generally, and adorned it with nice similes and things—and now you want me to explain all the details!” protested Griggs, with a little rough laugh. “How can one be driven out of love? In many ways, I fancy. By a real or imaginary fault of the other person in the path, I suppose, as much as by anything. It won’t do to stand at trifles when one loves. There’s a meaning in the words of the marriage service—‘for better, for worse.’”

“I know there is,” said Katharine, growing pale, and choking herself with the words in the determination to be brave.

“Of course there is. People don’t know much about one another when they get married. At least, not as a rule. They’ve met on the stage like actors in a play—and then, suddenly, they meet in private life, and are quite different people. Very probably the woman is jealous and extravagant, and has a temper, and has been playing the ingenuous young girl’s parts on the stage. And the man, who has been doing the self-sacrificing hero, who proposes to go without butter in order to support his starving mother-in-law, turns out to be a gambler—or drinks, or otherwise plays the fool. Of course that’s all very distressing to the bride or the bridegroom, as the case may be. But it can’t be helped. They’ve taken one another ‘for better, for worse,’ and it’s turned out to be for worse. They can go to Sioux City and get a divorce, but then that’s troublesome and scandalous, and one thing and another. So they just put up with it. Besides, they may love each other so much that the defects don’t drive them out of it. Then the bad one drags down the good one—or, in rare cases, the good one raises the bad one. Oh, yes—I’m not a cynic—that happens, too, from time to time.”

Crowdie looked at his wife with his soft, languishing glance, and if Katharine had been watching him, she might have seen on his red lips the smile she especially detested. But she was looking down and pressing her hands together under the table. Hester Crowdie’s eyes were fixed on her face, for she was very pale and was evidently suffering. Griggs also looked at her, and saw that something unusual was happening.

“Mrs. Crowdie,” he said, vigorously changing the subject, as a man can who has been leading the conversation, “if it isn’t a very rude question, may I ask where you get the extraordinary ham you always have whenever I lunch with you? I’ve been all over the world, and I’ve never eaten anything like it. I’m not sure whether it’s the ham itself, or some secret in the cooking.”

Mrs. Crowdie glanced at Katharine’s face once more, and then looked at him. Crowdie also turned towards him, and Katharine slowly unclasped her hands beneath the table, as though the bitterness of death were passed.

“Oh—the ham?” repeated Mrs. Crowdie. “They’re Yorkshire hams, aren’t they, Walter? You always order them.”

“No, my dear,” answered Crowdie. “They’re American. We’ve not had any English ones for two or three years. Fletcher gets them. He’s a better judge than the cook. Griggs is quite right—there’s a trick about boiling them—something to do with changing the water a certain number of times before you put in the wine. Are you going to set up housekeeping, Griggs? I should think that oatmeal and water and dried herrings would be your sort of fare, from what I remember.”

“Something of that kind,” answered Griggs. “Anything’s good enough that will support life.”

The luncheon came to an end without any further incident, and the conversation ran on in the very smallest of small talk. Then Griggs, who was a very busy man, lighted a cigarette and took his departure. As he shook hands with Katharine, and bowed in his rather foreign way, he looked at her once more, as though she interested him very much.

“I hope I shall see you again,” said Katharine, quietly.

“I hope so, indeed,” answered Griggs. “You’re very kind to say so.”

When he was gone the other three remained together in the little front room, which has been so often mentioned.

“Will you sit for me a little longer, Miss Lauderdale?” asked Crowdie.

“Oh, don’t work any more just yet, Walter!” cried Hester, with sudden anxiety.

“Why? What’s the matter?” enquired Crowdie in some surprise.

“You know what Mr. Griggs was just saying at luncheon. You work so hard! You’ll overdo it some day. It’s perfectly true, you know. You never give yourself any rest!”

“Except during about one-half of the year, my dear, when you and I do absolutely nothing together in the most beautiful places in the world—in the most perfect climates, and without one solitary little shadow of a care for anything on earth but our two selves.”

“Yes—I know. But you work all the harder the rest of the time. Besides, we haven’t been abroad this year, and you say we can’t get away for at least two months. Do give yourself time to breathe—just after luncheon, too. I’m sure it’s not good for him, is it Katharine?” she asked, appealing to her friend.

“Of course not!” answered Katharine. “And besides, I must run home. My dear, just fancy! I forgot to ask you to send word to say that I wasn’t coming, and they won’t know where I am. But we lunch later than you do—if I go directly, I shall find them still at table.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Hester. “You don’t want to go really? Do you? You know, I could send word still—it wouldn’t be too late.” She glanced at her husband, who shook his head, and smiled—he was standing behind Katharine. “Well—if you must, then,” continued Hester, “I won’t keep you. But come back soon. It seems to me that I never see you now—and I have lots of things to tell you.”

Katharine shook hands with Crowdie, whose soft, white fingers felt cold in hers. Hester went out with her into the entry, and helped her to put on her thick coat.

“Take courage, dear!” said Mrs. Crowdie in a low voice, as she kissed her. “It will come right in the end.”

Katharine looked fixedly at her for a few seconds, buttoning her coat.

“It’s not courage that I need,” she said slowly, at last. “I think I have enough—good-bye—Hester, darling—good-bye!”

She put her arms round her friend and kissed her three times, and then turned quickly and let herself out, leaving Hester standing in the entry, wondering at the solemn way in which she had taken leave of her.