"You ought not to be here, you know," Helena Richie said, in a low voice.

Elizabeth was silent.

"They are all very much frightened about you at home."

"I am sorry they are frightened."

"Your coming might be misunderstood," David's mother said; her voice was very harsh; the gentle loveliness of her face had changed to an incredible harshness. "I shall say I was here with you, of course; but you are insane, Elizabeth! you are insane to be here!"

"Mother," David said, quietly, "you mustn't find fault with Elizabeth." He had come back, and even as he spoke retreating wheels were heard. They were alone, these three; there was no world to any of them outside that fire-lit room, encompassed by night, the ocean, and the storm. "Elizabeth did exactly right to come down here to—to consult me," David said; "but we won't talk about it now; it's too late, and you are too tired."

Then turning to Elizabeth, he took her hand. "Won't you go up-stairs now? You are as tired as Materna! But she must have something to eat before she goes to bed." Still holding her hand, he opened the door for her. "You know the spare room? I'm afraid it's rather in disorder, but you will find some blankets and things in the closet."

Elizabeth hesitated; then obeyed him.

David was entirely self-possessed by this time; in that moment while he stood in the rain, counting out the money from his mother's purse for the driver, and telling the man of a short cut across the dunes, the emotion of a moment before cooled into grim alertness to meet the emergency: there must be no scene. To avoid the possibility of such a thing, he must get Elizabeth out of the room at once. As he slipped the bolt on the front door and hurried back to the living room, he said a single short word between his teeth. But he was not angry; he was only irritated—as one might be irritated at a good child whose ignorant innocence led it into meddling with matters beyond its comprehension. And he was not apprehensive; his mother's coming could not alter anything; it was merely an embarrassment and distress. What on earth should he do with her the next morning! "I'll have to lie to her," he thought, in consternation. David had never lied to his mother, and even in this self-absorbed moment he shrank from doing so. He was keenly disturbed, but as the door closed upon Elizabeth he spoke quietly enough: "You are very tired, Materna; don't let's get to discussing things tonight. I'll bring you something to eat, and then you must go up to your room."

"There is nothing to discuss, David," she said; "of course Elizabeth ought not to have come down here to you. But I am here. To-morrow she will go home with me."

She had taken off her bonnet, and with one unsteady hand she brushed back the tendrils of her soft hair that the rain had tightened into curls all about her temples; the glow in her cheeks from the cold air was beginning to die out, and he saw, suddenly, the suffering in her eyes. But for the first time in his life David Richie was indifferent to pain in his mother's face; that calm declaration that Elizabeth would go home with her, brushed the habit of tenderness aside and stung him into argument—which a moment later he regretted. "You say she'll 'go home.' Do you mean that you will take her back to Blair Maitland?"

"I hope she will go to her husband."

"Why?" He was standing before her, his shoulder against the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets; his attitude was careless, but his face was alert and hard; she no longer seemed a meddlesome good child; she was his mother, interfering in what was not her business. "Why?" he repeated.

"Because he is her husband," Helena Richie said.

"You know how he became her husband; he took advantage of an insane moment. The marriage has ended."

"Marriage can't end, David. Living together may end; but Blair is not unkind to Elizabeth; he is not unfaithful; he is not unloving—"

"No, my God! he is not. My poor Elizabeth!"

His mother, looking at the suddenly convulsed face before her, knew that it was useless to pretend that this was only a matter of preserving appearances by her presence. "David," she said, "what do you mean by that?"

"I mean that she has done with that thief." As he spoke it flashed into his mind that perhaps it was best to have things out with her now; then in the morning he would arrange it, somehow, so that she and Elizabeth should not meet;—for Elizabeth must not hear talk like this. Not that he was afraid of its effect; certainly this soft, sweet mother of his could not do what he had declared neither Blair Maitland, nor death, nor God himself could accomplish! But her words would make Elizabeth uncomfortable; so he had better tell her now, and get it over. In the midst of his own discomfort, he realized that this would spare him the necessity of a lie the next morning; and he was conscious of relief at that. "Mother," he said, gently, "I was going to write to you about it, but perhaps I had better tell you now…. She is coming to me."

"Coming to you!"

He sat down beside her, and took her hand in his; the terror in her face made him wince. For a moment he wished he had not undertaken to tell her; a letter would have been better. On paper, he could have reasoned it out calmly; now, her quivering face distressed him so that he hardly knew what he said.

"Materna, I am awfully sorry to pain you! I do wish you would realize that things have to be this way."

"What way?"

"She and I have to be together," he said, simply. "She belongs to me. When I keep her from going back to Blair I merely keep my own. Mother, can't you understand? there is something higher than man's law, which ties a woman to a man she hates; there is God's law, which gives her to the man she loves! Oh, I am sorry you came to-night! To-morrow I would have written to you. You don't know how distressed I am to pain you, but—poor mother!"

She had sunk back in her chair with a blanched face. She said, faintly, "David!"

"Don't let's talk about it, Materna," he said, pitifully. He could not bear to look at her; it seemed as if she had grown suddenly old; she was broken, haggard, with appalled eyes and trembling lips. "You don't understand," David said, greatly distressed.

Helena Richie put her hands over her face. "Don't I?" she said. There was a long pause; he took her hand and stroked it gently; but in spite of tenderness for her he was thinking of that other hand, young and thrilling to his own, which he had held an hour before; his lips stung at the memory of it; he almost forgot his mother, cowering in her chair. Suddenly she spoke:

"Well, David, what do you propose to do? After you have seduced another man's wife and branded Elizabeth with a—a dreadful name—"

His pity broke like a bubble; he struck the arm of his chair with a clenched hand. "You must not use such words to me! I will not listen to words that soil your lips and my ears! Will you leave this room or shall I?"

"Answer my question first: what do you mean to do after you have taken
Elizabeth?"

"I shall marry her, of course. He will divorce her, and we shall be married." He was trembling with indignation: "I will not submit to this questioning," he said. He got up and opened the door. "Will you leave me, please?" he said, frigidly.

But she did not rise. She was bending forward, her hands gripped between her knees. Then, slowly, she raised her bowed head and there was authority in her face. "Wait. You must listen. You owe it to me to listen."

He hesitated. "I owe it to myself not to listen to such words as you used a moment ago." He was standing before her, his arms folded across his breast; there was no son's hand put out now to touch hers.

"I won't repeat them," she said, "although I don't know any others that can be used when a man takes another man's wife, or when a married woman goes away with a man who is not her husband."

"You drag me into an abominable position in making me even defend myself. But I will defend myself. I will explain to you that, as things are, Elizabeth cannot get a divorce from Blair Maitland. But if she leaves him for me, he will divorce her; and we can marry."

"Perhaps he will not divorce her."

"You mean out of revenge? I doubt if even he could be such a brute as that."

"There have been such brutes."

"Very well; then we will do without his divorce! We will do without the respectability that you think so much of."

"Nobody can do without it very long," she said, mildly. "But we won't argue about respectability; and I won't even ask you whether you will marry her, if she gets her divorce."

His indignation paused in sheer amazement. "No," he said. "I should hardly think that even you would venture to ask me such a question!"

"I will only ask you, my son, if you have thought how you would smirch her name by such a process of getting possession of her?"

"Oh," he said, despairingly, "what is the use of talking about it? I can't make you understand!"

"Have you considered that you will ruin Elizabeth?" she insisted.

"You may call happiness 'ruin,' if you want to, mother. We don't—she and I."

"I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I told you it wouldn't be happiness?"

Her question was too absurd to answer. Besides, he was determined not to argue with her; argument would only prolong this futile and distressing interview. So, holding in the leash of respect for her, contempt for her opinions, he listened with strained and silent patience to what she had to say of duty and endurance. It all belonged, he thought, to her generation and to her austere goodness; but from his point of view it was childish. When at last he spoke, in answer to an insistent question as to whether Elizabeth realized how society would regard her course, his voice as well as his words showed his entire indifference to her whole argument. "Yes," he said; "I have pointed out to Elizabeth the fact that though our course will be in accordance with a Law that is infinitely higher than the laws that you think so much of, there will be, as you say, people to throw mud at her."

"A 'higher law,'" she said, slowly. "I have heard of the 'higher law,'
David."

"That Elizabeth will obey it for me, that she is willing to expose herself to the contempt of little minds, makes me adore her! And I am willing, I love her enough, to accept her sacrifice—"

"Though you did not love her enough to accept the trifling matter of her money?" his mother broke in.

Sarcasm from her was so totally unexpected that for a moment he did not realize that his armor had been pierced. "God knows I believe it is for her happiness," he said; then, suddenly, his face began to burn, and in an instant he was deeply angry.

"David," she said, "you seem very sure of God; you speak His name very often. Have you really considered Him in your plan?"

He smothered an impatient exclamation; "Mother, that sort of talk means nothing to me; and apparently my reason for my course means nothing to you. I can't make you understand—"

"I don't need you to make me understand," she interrupted him; "and your reason is older than you are; I guess it is as old as human nature: You want to be happy. That is your reason, David; nothing else."

"Well, it satisfies us," he said, coldly; "I wish you wouldn't insist upon discussing it, mother, you are tired, and—"

"Yes, I am tired," she said, with a gasp. "David, if you will promise me not to speak to Elizabeth of this until you and I can talk it over quietly—"

"Elizabeth and I are going away together, to-morrow."

"You shall not do it!" she cried.

His eyes narrowed. "I must remind you," he said, "that I am not a boy. I will do what seems to me right,—right?" he interrupted himself, "why is it you can't see that it is right? Can't you realize that Elizabeth is mine? It is amazing to me that you can't see that Nature gives her to me, by a Law that is greater than any human law that was ever made!"

"The animals know that law," she said. He would not hear her: "That unspeakable scoundrel stole her; he stole her just as much as if he had drugged her and kidnapped her. Yes; I take my own!"

His voice rang through the house; Elizabeth, in her room, shivering with excitement, wondering what they were saying, those two—heard the jar of furious sound, and crept, trembling, halfway down-stairs.

"I take my own," he repeated, "and I will make her happy; she belongs in my arms, if, my God! we die the next day!"

"Oh," said Helena Richie, suddenly sobbing, "what am I to do? what am I to do?" As she spoke Elizabeth entered. David's start of dismay, his quick protest, "Go back, dear; don't, don't get into this!" was dominated by his mother's cry of relief; she rose from her chair and ran to Elizabeth, holding out entreating hands. "You will not let him be so mad, Elizabeth? You will not let him be so bad?"

"Mother, for Heaven's sake, stop!" David implored her; "this is awful!"

"He is not bad," Elizabeth said, in a low voice, passing those outstretched hands without a look. All her old antagonism to an untempted nature seemed to leap into her face. "I heard you talking, and I came down. I could not let you reproach David."

"Haven't I the right to reproach him?—to save him from dishonoring himself as well as you?"

"You must not use that word!" Elizabeth cried out, trembling all over.
"David is not dishonorable."

"Not dishonorable! Do you say there is nothing dishonorable in taking the wife of another man?"

"Elizabeth," David said, quietly, putting his arm around her, "my mother is very excited. We are not going to talk any more to-night. Do go up-stairs, dear." His one thought was to get her out of the room; it had been dreadful enough to struggle with his mother alone—power and passion and youth, against terror and weakness. But to struggle in Elizabeth's presence would be shocking. Not, he assured himself, that he had the slightest misgiving as to the effect upon her of the arguments to which he had been obliged to listen, but. . .

"Do leave us, dearest," he said, in a low voice; the misgiving which he denied had driven the color out of his face.

His mother raised her hand with abrupt command: "No, Elizabeth must hear what I have to say." She heard it unmoved; the entreaty not to wound her uncle's love, and hurt Nannie's pride, and betray old Miss White's trust, did not touch her. All she said was, "I am sorry; but I can't help it. David wants me."

Then Helena Richie turned again to her son. "How do you mean to support your mistress, David? Of course the scandal will end your career."

Instantly Elizabeth quivered; the apprehension in her eyes made his words stumble: "There—there are other things than my profession. I am not afraid that I cannot support my wife."

But that flicker of alarm in Elizabeth's eyes had caught Helena Richie's attention. "Why, Elizabeth," she said, in an astonished voice. "You love him!" Then she added, simply: "Forgive me." Her words were without meaning to the other two, but they brought a burst of hope into her entreaty: "Then you won't ruin him! I know you won't ruin my boy—if you love him."

Elizabeth flinched: "David! I told you—that is what I—"

He caught her hand and pressed it to his mouth. "Darling, she doesn't understand."

"I do understand!" his mother said. She paused for a breathless moment, and stood gripping the table, looking with dilating eyes and these two, who, loving each other, were yet preparing to murder Love. "I thank God," she said, and the elation in her face was almost joy; "I thank God, Elizabeth, that I understand the disgrace such wickedness will bring! No honest man will trust him; no decent woman will respect you! And listen, Elizabeth: even you will not really trust him; and he will never entirely respect you!"

Elizabeth slowly drew her hand from David's—and instantly he knew that she was frightened. What! Was he to lose her again? He shook with rage. When under that panic storm of words, that menace of distrust and disgrace, Elizabeth, in an agony of uncertainty, hid her face in her hands, David could have killed the robber who was trying to tear her from him. He burst into denunciation of the littleness which could regard their course in any other way than he did himself. He had no pity because his assailant was his mother. He gave no quarter because she was a woman; she was an enemy! an enemy who had stolen in out of the night to rob him of his lately won treasure. "Don't listen to her," he ended, hoarsely; "she doesn't know what she is talking about!"

"But, David, that was what I said. I said it would be bad for you; she says it will ruin you—"

"It is a lie!" he said.

It was nearly three o'clock. They were all at the breaking-point of anger and terror.

"Elizabeth," Helena Richie implored, "if you love him, are you willing to destroy him? You could not bear to have me, his mother, speak of his dishonor; how about letting the world speak of it—if you love him?"

"David," Elizabeth said again, her shaking hands on his arm; "you hear what she says? Perhaps she is right. Oh, I think she is right! What shall I do?"

The entreaty was the entreaty of a child, a frightened, bewildered child. Helena Richie caught her breath; for a single strange moment she forgot her agony of fear for her son; the woman in her was stronger than the mother in her; some obscure impulse ranged her with this girl, as if against a common enemy. "My dear, my dear!" she said, "he shall not have you. I will save you."

But Elizabeth was not listening. "David, if I should injure you"—

"You will ruin him," his mother repeated.

David gave her a deadly look. "You will kill me, Elizabeth, unless you come to me," he said, roughly. "Do you want to rob me again?—You've done it once," he reminded her; love made him brutal.

There was a moment of silence. The eyes of the mother and son crossed like swords. Elizabeth, standing between them, shivered; then slowly she turned to David, and held out her hands, her open palms falling at her sides with a gesture of complete and pitiful surrender. "Very well, David. I won't do it again. I won't hurt you again. I will do whatever you tell me."

David caught her in his arms. His mother trembled with despair; the absolute immovability of these two was awful!

"Elizabeth, he is selfish and wicked! David, have you no manhood? Shame on you!" Contempt seemed her last resource; it did not touch him. "Wait two days," she implored him; "one day, even—"

"I told you we are going to-morrow," he said. He was urging Elizabeth gently from the room, but at his mother's voice she paused.

"Suppose," Helena Richie was saying—"suppose that Blair does not give you a divorce?"

Elizabeth looked into David's eyes silently.

"And," his mother said, "when David gets tired of you—what then?"

"Mother!"

"Men do tire of such women, Elizabeth. What then?"

"I am not afraid of that," the girl said.

The room was very still. The two looking into each other's eyes needed no words; the battling mother had apparently reached the end of effort. Yet it was not the end. As she stood there a slow illumination grew in her face—the knowledge, tragic and triumphant, that if Love would save others, itself it cannot save! . . . "I'm not afraid that he will tire of me," Elizabeth had said; and David's mother, looking at him with ineffable compassion, said, very gently:

"I was not afraid of that, once, myself."

That was all. She was standing up, clinging to the table; her face gray, her chin shaking. They neither of them grasped the sense of her words; then suddenly David caught his breath:

"What did you say?"

"I said—" She stopped. "Oh, my poor David, I wouldn't tell you if I could help it; if only there was any other way! But there isn't. I have tried, oh, I have tried every other way." She put her hands over her face for an instant, then looked at him. "David, I said that I was not afraid, once, myself, that my lover would tire of me." There was absolute silence in the room. "But he did, Elizabeth. He did. He did."

Then David said, "I don't understand."

"Yes, you do; you understand that a man once talked to me just as you are talking to Elizabeth; he said he would marry me when I got my divorce. I think he meant it—just as you mean it, now. At any rate, I believed him. Just as Elizabeth believes you."

David Richie stepped back violently; his whole face shuddered. "You?" he said, "my mother? No!—no!—no!"

And his mother, gathering up her strength, cringing like some faithful dog struck across the face, pointed at him with one shaking hand.

"Elizabeth, did you see how he looked at me? Some day your son will look that way at you."