Four years after their marriage Yetta and Isadore received a tangible token of the respect in which they were held by their Comrades. They were chosen among the delegates to the International Socialist Congress which was to meet in London. No one who is not an active worker in the Socialist party can appreciate how much this election means to the Comrades. Every three years the party has to choose half a dozen of its members as most worthy to represent them in the international councils. It is a real honor.

They were, after their four years of unremitting work on The Clarion, in need of a vacation. They had not had one since their honeymoon in the woods. But, except for the eight lazy days in the second cabin of a slow steamer, they found very little rest at the Congress. Besides the regular sessions, so much time went to getting acquainted with the European Comrades, whose names they had long revered, whose books they had read. It took a big effort to escape long enough to have a look at the Houses of Parliament and the Abbey. That was all the sight-seeing they did in London.

The next to the last day, when Yetta reached her seat in the convention hall, she found a letter on her desk. She did not at first recognize the handwriting.

"Dear Yetta.

I suppose you've quite forgotten me. But try to remember.

Can't you and Isadore come down to Oxford for a few days after the Congress? Walter noticed your name in the paper among the delegates. We are both anxious to renew the old friendships. When can we expect you?

Sincerely,

Beatrice Longman."

Yetta was glad that Isadore had been detained in the corridor. She put the letter in her pocket before he joined her. All day long this invitation was flitting back and forth from the back of her brain to the front. In every moment of half leisure she thought about it, and more and more she wanted to go. It was partly curiosity to see what sort of a life Walter had made for himself, partly a desire to exhibit her own happiness. She did not want him to think she was still broken-hearted. And it was partly a very real tenderness for these old friends who very long ago had meant so much to her. But it was not until they were alone together in their modest hotel room at night that she spoke to Isadore about it.

"Oh, I forgot. Here's a letter that came from Mrs. Longman.—You remember she used to be Mrs. Karner."

"Well," he said, when he had read it, "that's simple. We're too busy."

"But I'd like to see them again."

"You would?" he asked in surprise—and a little hurt. "All right; of course, if you want to. I've got to rush back. But there's no reason why you shouldn't stay."

"Don't be foolish, dear," she said. "You know I won't stay a minute longer than you. I wouldn't think of going alone. We could leave here after lunch Thursday and stay in Oxford for dinner and catch our boat all right. You see, dearest, it's sort of like dying never to see people who meant so much once. You don't know how much I grieve about Mabel. She was my first friend—the first real friend I ever had. It was my fault that we quarrelled. I wouldn't like to feel that it was my fault if I lost all touch with Walter and Mrs. Karner—I mean Mrs. Longman. They've asked us to come in a friendly spirit. I think we ought to go."

"Very well," he said. "Wire that we'll come. But it sounded to me like a sort of duty note—not exactly cordial."

As a matter of fact it had not been in an entirely cordial spirit that Beatrice had written.

One morning Walter, who very rarely disturbed his wife when she was writing, knocked at the door of her work-room.

"May I interrupt a minute," he asked apologetically.

"What is it?" she asked.

He came over and laid a newspaper on her table, pointing halfway down a column which was headed, "International Socialist Congress." Among the names of the delegates from the United States were those of Isadore and Yetta Braun.

"You'd like to have me invite them out here?" she asked.

"Yes, if it isn't inconvenient. I'd like to see them again."

For the next few days Beatrice's work went wrong. More often than not she found herself looking up from her paper, staring out through the window, across the lawn to the grape arbor. She would catch herself at it and turn again to her work. Finally she decided that she had best fight it out. So—forgetting to put the cap on her fountain-pen—she walked out into the garden.

There was no possible doubt of it. She was afraid of Yetta—jealous! She tried to laugh at herself, but it hurt too much. Yetta was years younger than she.

Isadore she had scarcely known, was not quite sure whether she had the name attached to the right vague memory, but she held an impression that he was an unattractive person. Yetta had probably married him in discouragement. Undoubtedly she still loved Walter. In these last four years Beatrice had been constantly discovering that he was more lovable than she had realized before. Yes; Yetta was probably still in love with him. Would she accept the invitation?

A telegraph boy turned into their gate. She had not opened a despatch with such unsteady nervousness in a long time.

"Arrive Oxford thursday afternoon four o'clock leave ten for Liverpool Yetta"

Beatrice walked slowly back to the house and into Walter's study. It was as dissimilar from her very orderly work-room as well might be. There were three large tables, but each was too small for the litter of books and charts and drawings and closely written notes it carried.

"They're coming to-morrow at four," she said, handing him the telegram.

"Good."

"I suppose we'd best have tea and then sight-see them around the colleges till dinner."

"I guess the tour is obligatory," he said with a grimace. "Has the Muse been refractory this morning? I saw you rambling round in the garden."

"Yes," her lips twisted into a wry smile. "Had to fight out a new idea. It's provoking. You get things nicely planned out, everything marching placidly to a happy ending—then something unexpected turns up, some eleventh-hour disturbance. Something you've got to take time off to think out."

"Fine," he said. "You're growing into a more realistic vision of life all the time, B. And that means constantly improving novels."

He got up and walked about the room, developing into quite a speech his ideas on the Unexpected Element in Life and how it deserved more recognition in literature. But all the time, while she was appearing to listen in rapture to his wisdom, she was telling herself bitter things about the literal-minded, uncomprehending male.

Thursday afternoon as Yetta and Isadore found their places in the train for Oxford they both had an unusual feeling of tongue-tiedness. They were quite tired and it was a relief to have sleepiness as an excuse for not talking. Yetta was not conscious of any stress between them. She believed that Isadore was as sleepy as he pretended to be. It seemed to her the most natural thing in the world to renew old friendships.

She opened her eyes now and then for a glimpse at the unfamiliar countryside. But most of the time she dreamily lived over again "the old days." She was generally too busy to think these things out leisurely—as you must if you are to think of them at all. She found it hard to recognize the picture of herself which she drew out of her memory. The few years, which had passed since her marriage, seemed to her much longer and fuller than all her life before. She, a mother of two children, found it very hard to sympathize with the jeune fille, who had been so very much in love with this man she had scarcely seen a dozen times. She was half sorry she had accepted the invitation. She was no longer the same person whom Walter and Beatrice had known. Instead of renewing an old acquaintance, her visit to Oxford would be that of a stranger. It would be embarrassing if Walter treated her like the girl he had known. But it never occurred to her that Isadore was suffering from jealous apprehension.

"Oxford's the next station," Isadore said.

It jerked her out of her revery. As they got off the train there was a kaleidoscopic moment, an impression of many people rushing hither and thither in a senseless chaos. Then suddenly the vagueness dissolved, and there were Walter and Beatrice, the blank look on their faces just melting into a smile of recognition. Everybody shook hands, the women kissed each other, and Walter and Isadore rushed off to check the bags.

Yetta's motherhood had changed her subtly. She could not have been called matronly. In fact, Beatrice, who was childless, was poignantly conscious that she looked the more like a regulation matron. The contrast hurt her.

The thing which Yetta saw was that Beatrice had come to reflect the gracious refinement of her surroundings. There was a sudden longing that life might have thrown her into an environment where she too could have given time and thought to being beautiful. It was rare indeed that she could devote ten minutes to "doing her hair." It took all the time she could spare to keep herself clean and neat. Beatrice's appearance suggested that the selecting of even her underwear was a matter of careful thought. Yetta, also, was poignantly conscious of the contrast.

When the men rejoined them, they all—still under the constraint of stock-taking—climbed into the dogcart and drove through the quaint Oxford streets to the house.

Yetta talked busily—a bit raggedly—about her two children. Walter pointed out the towers of some of the colleges. Neither Beatrice nor Isadore added much to the conversation. The tea-table was set on the lawn, but the constraint was still on them. Yetta told with slightly forced enthusiasm of the little house and lot they had taken in a Building and Loan Association on Long Island. Isadore at last rallied in reply to Walter's questions and talked about the International Congress. The thing which had impressed him most was the widespread growth of revolutionary, nonpolitical labor organizations. The growth of industrial unionism in America was closely paralleled by the Syndicaliste movement in Europe.

"I never gave you sufficient credit as a prophet, Walter," he said. "I'm an orthodox party member still, but this 'direct actionism' doesn't seem so much like heresy to me as it did. It's too universal to be all wrong."

When they got up from the table to wander about in the University, he and Walter walked ahead, still in the heat of this discussion. The women brought up the rear. Yetta found that the easiest things to talk about were the babies and Beatrice's novels. She had read and liked them very much.

They sat down together in the grounds of Christ Church, and Isadore began to tell about The Clarion. Yetta joined in the men's talk, and Beatrice felt herself decidedly out of it. She was glad when the time came to go back for dinner. But that was no better, for still the talk clung to The Clarion. It interested them so much that she could not find heart to change the subject.

The moon came up royally as they took their coffee on the terrace. Without any one suggesting it, they strolled down the lawn and along the river. Great trees stretched their branches overhead across the stream. It was a warm night, and many boats were out. Their gay lanterns glistened over the water. Here and there a song floated through the dusk. The predominant note of the scene was laughter.

But the riverside did not seem beautiful to Isadore; Beatrice had never cared less for it. Walter and Yetta were walking on ahead.

Beatrice found a sort of whimsical sympathy for her companion—realizing that he also was troubled by the turn things had taken. The unrest of each infected the other. It required all the social tact she could command to keep up the semblance of a conversation.

Yetta had taken Walter's arm, and for a while they walked in silence. But somehow the constraint suddenly fell away, and she felt in him the old friend to whom it had always been so easy to talk.

"It's strange," she said, "how very often I have taken your advice and found it good. More and more I realize what a big factor you've been in my life. A dozen times I've been on the point of writing to you. But it's so hard to put on paper the deeper sort of thanks."

Walter tried to protest.

"Oh, yes," she insisted. "I've lots of things to thank you for. It's hard to put it into words. But now that it's ancient history, now that the wounds have healed, I want to talk about it. When you told me to marry Isadore, it seemed like the cruelest words that could be spoken. You were right in smashing up my romance. But of all the lessons you ever set me, that was the hardest to learn, the bitterest. I could not take your word for it. I had to learn it for myself. But if you had not driven me to it, I would have been a romanticist still—always weaving dreams. I would never have found the wonder and beauty of life as it is.

"I guess any suffering is worth while that teaches a real lesson. I can be philosophic about those tear-stained months now. But they were dreary enough—and sometimes worse. I don't believe there was anything that Job said about the day he was born that I did not echo.

"Isadore was wonderful those days. He didn't give me any advice nor try to comfort me. He just called me up in the morning and gave me enough work for six people. I did have a little sense left. I could see that work was my only hope of pulling through. The Clarion office was the busiest place I could find—so I cut loose from the League and went down there.

"But Mabel has never forgiven me for leaving her. I've hardly seen her since."

They walked on for a moment in silence, and then she took up her story again.

"My real ignorance used to be that I thought there could be no love without romance. I thought they were the same thing. And that's the wonder of reality, it calls out something so immensely deeper than dream-love. I see Isadore's crooked shoulder as clearly as any one. I know the words he insists on mispronouncing. I know the little, uncontrolled hooks of his temper that things are always catching on. I don't for a moment think he's a god. Perhaps it is just the fact that I know him so very much better than other people do that would make me laugh at any one who said I didn't truly love him! And then the babies! Think of it, Walter. I've got two of them. My very own! You said something like this once—that flesh and blood were more wonderful than any dream. It was a hard, painful lesson to learn, but I guess it's the one I want to thank you for most."

"It's a truth," Walter replied, "which Beatrice has helped me to rediscover very often these last years. We love each other with a big E. It certainly didn't start with the romantic capital L. It's just the opposite of that proposition—of the flaming beginning that gradually peters out. It's something with us that's alive—growing every day."

Her hand on his arm gave him a friendly, understanding squeeze.

"It's so wonderful a world," she said, "it almost hurts! There's so very, very much to do. The minutes are so amazingly full. And somehow it all seems to centre around the babies. They've given Socialism a new meaning to me, have brought it all nearer, made it more intimate and personal, more closely woven into myself. Isadore and I were used to the tenements, they'd ceased to impress us—till the babies came. I'm glad my little brood can grow up in the sunlight and fresh air, with a little grass to play on. But the thought of all the millions of babies in the slums has become the very corner-stone of my thinking. It's for them. We've just got to win Socialism for the babies! I wish you could see mine. I'll send you a photograph."

Her mind switched off to more concrete problems; she talked of immediate plans and hopes. Meanwhile, Isadore kept looking at his watch, and each time he pulled it out, Beatrice asked him what time it was. At last it was necessary to turn back to catch the train.

* * * * *

Conversation lagged as the Longmans walked home from the station. Walter was wrapped up in some line of thought and Beatrice's first efforts fell flat. The silence became oppressive to her as they entered their house.

"Walter," she said, "I'd bid as high as three shillings for your thoughts."

"Keep your money. These are jewels beyond price." He tumbled himself lazily into a big leather chair. "What they tell about that paper of theirs is amazing. I'm beginning to see some reason for the hostility which the working-class has for the 'intellectuals.' If Isadore had asked my advice,—or any of the college-bred Socialists in New York,—he'd have been told that it was absolutely impossible to pull through with a daily. Well, the working-class knew what they wanted and darned if they didn't get it! It's amazing!"

"Walter, if I really believed that was what you'd been thinking about, I'd kiss you."

"I don't see why you shouldn't do both," he said, making room for her in the chair beside him. But seeing a suspicious glitter in her eyes, he sprang up. "Why, B.! You're crying! What's the matter?"

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked searchingly in his face.

"Honest? Cross your heart to die? Weren't you thinking about Yetta?"

"You little idiot," he said, with the glow which comes to a man who is being indirectly flattered. "Been jealous, have you?"

He picked her up in his arms.

"Let's go out on the porch. I'll tell you everything she said to me—and then we'll look up at the moon."

* * * * *

"Well," Yetta said, settling herself in the compartment of the train, as the lights of Oxford slipped past the windows, "I'm glad we visited them."

Isadore moved uneasily.

"It wasn't unpleasant?" he asked in Yiddish—so that the other passengers might not understand. "I don't feel as if I showed up very well in comparison to Walter."

She leaned forward so she could look him squarely in the face.

"Isadore!" she said in an aggrieved tone, "can't men ever understand women—not even the very simplest things? Three years I wasted dreaming—no; I won't say 'wasted.' I haven't any quarrel with my girlhood. Three years I dreamed about him. But it's four years now—four years—that I've lived with you. Can't you understand how immense that difference seems to a woman? There are some of my ideas, perhaps, some of my intellect that he's father of. But, Isadore, you're the father of my children."

"Yes," he said, somewhat comforted. "I think I can understand a little of that—but—well, I never wished I had money so much before. I wish I could give you the things Walter would have."

"Don't you do any mourning about that," she said brazenly, "till I begin it."

She slipped her hand into his, indifferent to the other passengers. Her conscience hurt a little on this score, for after all she had envied Beatrice's opportunity to be beautiful. They sat silent for quite a long interval.

"I'm glad we visited them," she went on. "But I'm gladder that we're started home again. I'm crazy to get back."

"Worrying about the kids?"

"Oh, yes! Of course, I worry about them all the time. Aunt Martha's as good to them as she knows how, but she's so old-fashioned. But I'm glad for another reason. I never realized before the real difference between Walter and me. It's a wonderfully beautiful life, that cottage of theirs, the books, the old colleges, and the river. You can't deny that there's a graciousness about it. But it would kill me. He's happy thinking about things. But I'd die if I wasn't doing things! Love isn't enough by itself. I'd starve. I'm hungry to get back to work. That's the Real Thing, we got, Isadore. It makes our Love worth while. Our Work."