On November the 1st Mary received their joint bank book. The figures appalled her. She had drawn nothing except for the household bills, but Stefan had apparently been drawing cash, in sums of fifty or twenty-five dollars, every few days for weeks past. Save for his meals and a little new clothing she did not know on what he could have spent it; but as they had made nothing since the sale of his drawings in the spring, their once stout balance had dwindled alarmingly. One check, even while she felt its extravagance, touched her to sympathy. It was drawn to Henrik Jensen for two hundred dollars. Stefan must have been helping Adolph's brother to his feet again; perhaps that was where more of the money had gone.

Stefan came home that afternoon, and Mary very unwillingly tackled the subject. He looked surprised.

“I'd no idea I'd been drawing so much! Why didn't you tell me sooner?” he exclaimed. “Yes, I've given poor old Henrik a bit from time to time; I thought I'd mentioned it to you.”

“You did in the summer, now I come to think of it, but I thought you meant a few dollars, ten or twenty.”

“Much good that would have done him. The poor old chap was stranded. He's all right now, has a new business. I've been meaning to tell you about it. He supplies furniture on order to go with Felicity's gowns—backgrounds for personalities, and all that stuff. I put it up to her to help find him a job, and she thought of this right off.” He grinned appreciatively. “Smart, eh? We both gave him a hand to start it.”

“You might have told me, I should have been so interested,” said Mary, trying not to sound hurt.

“I meant to, but it's only just been arranged, and I've had no chance to talk to you for ages.”

“Not my doing, Stefan,” she said softly.

“Oh, yes, the baby and all that.” He waved his arm vaguely, and began to fidget. She steered away from the rocks.

“Anyhow, I'm glad you've helped him,” she said sincerely.

“I knew you would be. Look here, Mary, can we go on at the present rate—barring Jensen—till I finish the Nixie? I don't want Constantine to have the Demeter alone, it isn't good enough.”

“I think it is as good as the Nixie,” she said, on a sudden impulse. He swung round, staring at her almost insolently.

“My dear girl, what do you know about it?” His voice was cold.

The blood rushed to her heart. He had never spoken to her in that tone before. As always, her hurt silenced her.

He prowled for a minute, then repeated his question about their expenses.

“I don't want to have to think in cents again unless I must,” he added.

Mary considered, remembering the now almost finished manuscript in her desk.

“Yes, I think we can manage, dear.”

“That's a blessing; then we won't talk about it any more,” he exclaimed, pinching her ear in token of satisfaction.

The next day Mary sent her manuscript to be typed. In a week it had gone to Farraday at his office, complete all but three chapters, of which she enclosed an outline. With it she sent a purely formal note, asking, in the event of the book being accepted, what terms the Company could offer her, and whether she could be paid partly in advance. She put the request tentatively, knowing nothing of the method of paying for serials. In another week she had a typewritten reply from Farraday, saying that the serial had been most favorably reported, that the Company would buy it for fifteen hundred dollars, with a guarantee to begin serialization within the year, on receipt of the final chapters, that they enclosed a contract, and were hers faithfully, etc. With this was a personal note from her friend, congratulating her, and explaining that his estimate of her book had been more than borne out by his readers.

“I don't want you to think others less appreciative than I,” was his tactful way of intimating that her work had been accepted on its merits alone.

The letters took Mary's breath away. She had no idea that her work could fetch such a price. This stroke of fortune completely lifted her financial anxieties, but her spirits did not rise correspondingly. Six months ago she would have been girlishly triumphant at such a success, but now she felt at most a dull satisfaction. She hastened, however, to write the final chapters, and deposited the check when it came in her own bank, drawing the next month's housekeeping money half from that and half from Stefan's rapidly dwindling account. That she was able to do this gave her a feeling of relief, no more.

Mary had now nursed her baby for over four months, and began to feel a nervous lassitude which she attributed—quite wrongly—to this fact. As Elliston still gained weight steadily, however, she gave her own condition no thought. But the last leaves had fallen from the trees, sea and woods looked friendless, and the evenings were long and lonely. The neighbors had nearly all gone back to the city. Farraday only came down at week-ends, Jamie was busy with his lessons, and Constance still lingered in Vermont. As for Stefan, he came home late and left early; often he did not come at all. She began to question seriously if she had been right to remain in the cottage. Her heart told her no, but her pride said yes, and her pride was strong; also, it was backed by reason. Her steady brain, which was capable of quite impersonal thinking, told her that Stefan would be actively discontented just now in company with his family, and that this discontent would eat into his remaining love for her.

But her heart repudiated this mental cautioning, crying out to her to go to him, to pour out her love and need, to capture him safely in her arms. More than once she nerved herself for such an effort, only to become incapable of the least expression at his approach. Emotionally inarticulate even in happiness, Mary was quite dumb in grief. Her conversation became trite, her sore heart drew a mantle of the commonplace over its wound; Stefan found her more than ever “English.”

So lonely was she at this time that she would have asked little Miss Mason to stay with her, but for the lack of a spare bedroom. Of all her friends, only Mrs. Farraday remained at hand. Mary spent many hours at the old lady's house, and rejoiced each time the pony chaise brought her to the Byrdsnest. Mrs. Farraday loved to drive up in the morning and watch the small Elliston in his bath, comparing his feats with her memories of her own baby. She liked, too, to call at the cottage for mother and child, and take them for long rambling drives behind her ruminant pony.

But the little Quakeress usually had her house full of guests—quaint, elderly folk from Delaware or from the Quaker regions of Pennsylvania—and could not give more than occasional time to these excursions. She had become devoted to Mary, whom she secretly regarded as her ideal of the woman her James should marry. That her son had not yet met such a woman was, after the loss of her husband, the little lady's greatest grief.

In the midst of this dead period of graying days, Constance Elliot burst one morning—a God from the Machine—tearing down the lane in her diminutive car with the great figure of Gunther, like some Norse divinity, beside her. She fell out of her auto, and into an explanation, in one breath, embracing Mary warmly between sentences.

“You lovely creature, here I am at last! Theodore hadn't been up for a week, so I came down, to find Mr. Gunther thundering like Odin because I had promised to help him arrange sittings with you, and had forgotten it. I had to bring him at once. He says his group is all done but the two heads, and he must have yours and the baby's. But he'll tell you all about it. Where is he? Elliston, I mean. I've brought him some short frocks. Where are they, Mr. Gunther? If he's put them in his pockets, he'll never find them—they are feet long—the pockets, I mean. Bless you, Mary Byrd, how good it is to see you! Come into the house, every one, and let me rest.”

Mary was bubbling with laughter.

“Constance, you human dynamo, we'll go in by all means, and hold our breaths listening to your 'resting'!”

“Don't sass your elders, naughty girl. Oh, my heavens, I've been five months in New England, and have behaved like a perfect gentlewoman all the time! Now I'm due for an attack of New Yorkitis!” Constance rushed into the sitting room, pulled off her hat and patted her hair into shape, ran to the kitchen door to say hello to Lily, and was back in her chair by the time the others had found theirs. Her quick glance traveled from one to the other.

“Now I shall listen,” she said. “Mary, tell your news. Mr. Gunther, explain your ideas.”

Mary laughed again. “Visitors first,” she nodded to the Norwegian who, as always, was staring at her with a perfectly civil fixity.

He placed a great hand on either knee and prepared to state his case. With his red-gold beard and piercing eyes, he was, Mary thought, quite the handsomest, and, after Stefan, the most attractive man she had ever seen.

“Mrs. Byrd,” he began, “I am doing, among other things, a large group called 'Pioneers' for the Frisco exhibition. It is finished in the clay—as Mrs. Elliot said—all but two heads, and is already roughly blocked in marble. I want your head, with your son's—I must have them. Six sittings will be enough. If you cannot, as I imagine, come to the city, I will bring my clay here, and we will work in your husband's studio. These figures, of whom the man is modeled from myself, do not represent pioneers in the ordinary sense. They embody my idea of those who will lead the race to future greatness. That is why I feel it essential to have you as a model.”

He spoke quite simply, without a trace of flattery, as if he were merely putting into words a self-evident truth. A compliment of such staggering dimensions, however, left Mary abashed.

“You may wonder,” he went on, seeing her silent, “why I so regard you. It is not merely your beauty, Mrs. Byrd, of which as an artist I can speak without offense, it is because to my mind you combine strong mentality and morale with simplicity of temperament. You are an Apollonian, rather than a Dionysian. Of such, in my judgment, will the super-race be made.” Gunther folded his arms and leaned back.

He was sufficiently distinguished to be able to carry off a pronouncement which in a lesser man would have been an impertinence, and he knew it.

Constance threw up her hands. “There, Mary, your niche is carved. I don't quite know what Mr. Gunther means, but he sounds right.”

Mary found her voice. “Mr. Gunther honors me very much, and, although of course I do not deserve his praise, I shall certainly not refuse his request.”

Gunther bowed gravely from the hips in the Continental manner, without rising.

“When may I come,” he asked; “to-morrow? Good! I will bring the clay out by auto.”

“You lucky woman,” exclaimed Constance. “To think of being immortalized by two great artists in one year!”

“Her type is very rare,” said Gunther in explanation. “When does one see the classic face with expression added? Almost always, it is dull.”

“Now, Mary, produce the infant!” Constance did not intend the whole morning to be devoted to the Olympian discourse of the sculptor.

The baby was brought down, and the rest of the visit pivoted about him. Mary glowed at the praises he received; she looked immeasurably brighter, Constance thought, than when they arrived.

On the way home Gunther unbosomed himself of a final pronouncement. “She does not look too happy, but her beauty is richer and its meaning deeper than before. She is what the mothers of men should be. I am sorry,” he concluded simply, “that I did not meet her more than a year ago.”

Constance almost gasped. What an advantage, she thought, great physical gifts bring. Even without this man's distinction in his art, it was obvious that he had some right to assume his ability to mate with whomever he might choose.

Early the next morning the sculptor drove up to the barn, his tonneau loaded with impedimenta. Mary was ready for him, and watched with interest while he lifted out first a great wooden box of clay, then a small model throne, then two turntables, and finally, two tin buckets. These baffled her, till, having installed the clay-box, which she doubted if an ordinary man could lift, he made for the garden pump and watered his clay with the contents of the buckets.

He set up his three-legged turntables, each of which bore an angle-iron supporting a twisted length of lead pipe, stood a bucket of water beneath one, and explained that in a few minutes he would be ready to begin. Donning a linen blouse, he attacked the mass of damp clay powerfully, throwing great pieces onto the skeleton lead-pipe, which he explained had been bent to the exact angle of the head in his group.

“The woman's figure I modeled from ideal proportions, Mrs. Byrd, and this head will be set upon its shoulders. My statue will then be a living thing instead of a mere symbol.”

When Mary was posed she became absorbed in watching Gunther's work grow. He modeled with extraordinary speed, yet his movements had none of the lightning swoops and darts of Stefan's method. Each motion of his powerful hands might have been preordained; they seemed to move with a deliberate and effortless precision, so that she would hardly have realized their speed had the head and face not leaped under them into being. He was a silent worker, yet she felt companioned; the man's presence seemed to fill the little building.

“After to-day I shall ask you to hold the child, for as long as it will not disturb him. I shall then have the expression on your face which I desire, and I will work at a study of the boy's head at those moments when he is awake.”

Mary sincerely enjoyed her sittings, which came as a welcome change in her even days. Gunther usually stayed to lunch, Constance joining them on one occasion, and Mrs. Farraday on another. Both these came to watch the work, Gunther, unlike Stefan, being oblivious of an audience; and once McEwan came, his sturdy form appearing insignificant beside the giant Norseman. Wallace hung about smoking a pipe for half an hour or more. He was at his most Scotch, appeared well pleased, and ejaculated “Aye, aye,” several times, nodding a ponderous head.

“Wallace, what are you so solemnly aye-ayeing about? Why so mysterious?” enquired Mary.

“I'm haeing a few thochts,” responded the Scot, his expression divided between an irritating smile and a kindly twinkle.

“Well, don't be annoying, and stay to lunch,” said Mary, dispensing even justice to both expressions.

Stefan, returning home one afternoon half way through the sittings, expressed a mild interest in the news of them, and, going out to the barn, unwrapped the wet cloths from the head.

“He's an artist,” said he; “this has power and beauty. Never sit to a second-rater, Mary, you've had the best now.” And he covered the head again with a craftsman's thoroughness.

Mary was sorry when the sittings came to an end. On the last day the sculptor brought two men with him, who made the return journey in the tonneau, each guarding a carefully swathed bust against the inequalities of the road. Gunther bowed low over her hand with a word of thanks at parting, and she watched his car out of sight regretfully.