I

There was a hooligan knock on Georgie Malwood’s bedroom door.

Saying “Aubrey” to herself without any sign either of irritation or petulance, she put down her book, gathered herself together, and slid off the bed. In a suit of boy’s pajamas she looked as young and undeveloped as when, at seventeen, she had married Clayburgh in the first week of the War. Her bobbed hair went into points over her ears like horns, and added to her juvenile appearance. She might have been a schoolgirl peeping at life through the keyhole, instead of a woman of twenty-four, older than Methuselah.

She unlocked the door. “Barge in,” she said, standing clear.

And Aubrey Malwood, with his six foot two of brawn and muscle, his yellow Viking hair, eyebrows and moustache, barged, as he always did.

“I’ve just dropped in to tell you,” he said, going straight to the looking-glass, “that Feo rang up an hour ago. She wants you to lunch with her in Dover Street.”

Perching herself on the window seat, like a pillow girl in Peter Pan, Georgie gazed uninterestedly at that portion of the Park at Knightsbridge which is between the barracks and the Hotel.

“Oh, damn,” she said, “I wish she’d leave me alone.” Young Malwood was so astonished at this sentiment that he was drawn away from self-admiration. He liked his type immensely.

“I never expected to hear you say that! What’s the notion?”

His much-married wife’s doglike worship of Feo Fallaray had, as a matter of fact, immediately eliminated him from her daily pursuits and long ago sent him after another form of amusement.

“Oh, I dunno,” said Georgie. “She’s been different lately; lost her sense of humor, and become serious and sentimental,—the very things she’s always hated in other people. You’re so fond of yourself that I don’t suppose you’ve ever noticed the shattering effect of having the teacher you imitated go back suddenly to the sloppy state you were in at the beginning of your lessons. I’ll go this time and then fall away. Feo’s over.”

Malwood went back to the glass and posed as a gladiator with an imaginary sword and shield. His magnificent height and breadth and bone made him capable of any gladiatorial effort. Only as to brain was he a case of arrested development. At twenty-eight he was still only just fit for Oxford. In any case, as things were, this desertion from her leader would leave Georgie exactly what she was,—someone who had the legal right to provide him with funds.

“Well,” he said, “it’s your funeral,” and let it go. The fact that the elaborate dressing table was covered with framed photographs of his three equally young predecessors, as well as toilet things bearing their crests and initials, left this perpetual undergraduate unmoved. He had never been in love with Georgie. He had been somewhat attracted by her tinyness and imperturbability, but what had made him ask her to be his wife was the fact that everybody was talking about her as a creator of a record,—three times a widow in five years,—and he was one of those men, who, being unable to attract attention by anything that he could do, felt the need of basking in reflected glory. He had been fatuously satisfied to follow her into a public place and see people nudge each other as she passed. It was a thousand to one that if he had not married Georgie, he would have hunted London to find a girl who had won her way into the Tatler as a high diver or a swallower of knives. Why Georgie had married him was the mystery. Having acquired the married habit, it was probable that she had accepted him before she had had time to discover that beneath his astonishing good looks and magnificent physique there was the mind of a potato. He had turned out to be an expensive hobby because when his father’s business had been ruined by the War, he possessed nothing but his pay as a second lieutenant. Peace had removed even that and left him in her little house in Knightsbridge with eight pairs of perfect riding boots, a collection of old civvies, and an absolute incapability of earning a legitimate shilling. With characteristic cold-bloodedness she had, however, immediately advertised that she would not be responsible for his debts, and made him an allowance of ten pounds a week, a fourth of her income after the depredation of income tax. An invulnerable sponge, with a contagious chuckle, a fairly good eye for tennis, and a homogeneous nature, he managed to hang on by the skin of his teeth and was perfectly happy and satisfied. But for Georgie, he must have been a farm laborer in Canada or a salesman in a motor-car shop on the strength of his appearance. Or he might have gone to Ireland in the Black and Tans.

“Well,” he said, having delivered his message, “cheerio. I’m going to Datchet for a week to stay on the Mullets’ houseboat.”

Georgie looked round at him, stirred to a slight curiosity.

“Mullet? New friends?”

“Yes. War profiteers. Rolling in the stuff. Great fun. Know everybody. Champagne and diamonds for breakfast. Haven’t got a loose fiver about you, I suppose?”

With a faint smile Georgie pointed to her cigarette case on the dressing table. And without a qualm Malwood opened it, removed his wife’s last night’s bridge winnings, murmured, “Thanks most awfully,” and barged out, whistling a tune from “The League of Notions.”

“All right, then. For the last time, lunch with Feo,” thought Georgie, moving from the window seat lazily. “She’s over.”

II

For the first time since Feo had lifted Georgie Malwood into her intimacy, in that half-careless, half-cautious way that belongs usually to the illegitimate offspring of kings, her small, unemotional friend was late for her appointment. Always before, like every other member of the gang, Georgie Malwood had reported on the early side of the prescribed moment and killed time without impatience until it had occurred to Feo to put in an appearance. That morning, which was without word from Arrowsmith, as she had predicted with the uncanny intuition that makes women suffer before as well as after they are hurt, Feo was punctual. She entered her den with the expectation of finding Georgie curled up on the sofa, halfway through a slim volume of new poems. The room was empty and there had been no message of apology, no hastily scribbled note of endearment and explanation.

During the longest forty-five minutes that she had ever spent, Feo passed from astonishment to anger and finally into the chilly realization that her uncharacteristic behavior of the last few weeks had been discussed and criticized, and that the judgment of her friends was unmistakably reflected in the new attitude of the hitherto faithful and obsequious Georgie,—always the first to catch the color of her surroundings. She, Feo, the Queen of Flippancy, the ringleader of eroticism, had had the temerity to play serious, an unforgivable crime in the estimation of the decadent set which had ignored the War and emerged triumphantly into the chaos of peace. Well, there it was. A long and successful innings was ended. She would be glad to withdraw from the field.

She waited in her favorite place with her beautiful straight back to the fireplace, both elbows on the low mantel board and one foot on the fender. Her face was as white as a candle, her large violet eyes were filled with grim amusement, and her wide, full-lipped mouth was a little twisted. She wore a frock that was the color of seaweed, cut almost up to her knees, with short sleeves, a loose belt, and a great blob of jade attached to a thin gold chain lying between her breasts. Her thick, wiry hair was out of curl and fell straight, like that of a page in the Court of Cesare Borgia. For all her modernity there was something about her that was peculiarly medieval, masculinely girlish rather than effeminately boyish. She might have been the leading member of a famous troupe of Russian ballet dancers, ready at a moment’s notice to slip out of her wrapper and spring with athletic grace high into the air.

Her first remark upon Georgie’s lazy entrance was Feoistic and disconcerting.

“So I’m over, I see,” she said, and waited ironically for its effect.

Not honest enough to say, “Yes, you are,” Georgie hedged, with some little confusion.

“What makes you think so, Feo?”

“Your infernal rudeness, my dear, which you wouldn’t have dared to indulge in a week ago. You’ve all sensed the fact that I’m sick to tears of the games I’ve led you into, and would gladly have gone in for babies if I’d had the luck to seem desirable to the right man.” She made a long arm and rang the bell. “I am ripe for repentance, you see, or perhaps it might be more accurate, though less dramatic, to say eager for a new sensation. It isn’t coming off, but you can all go and hang yourselves so far as I’m concerned. I’m out. I’m going to continue to be serious. Bring lunch in here,” she added, as a footman framed himself in the doorway, “quickly. I’m starving.”

Almost any other girl who had been the favorite of such a woman as Feo would have found in this renunciation of leadership something to cause emotion. Mere gratitude for many favors and much kindness seemed to demand that. But this young phlegmatic thing was just as unmoved as she had been on receipt of the various war office telegrams officially regretting the deaths of Lord Clayburgh, Captain Graham Macoover, and Sir Harry Pytchley. She lit the inevitable cigarette, chose the much-cushioned divan, and stretched herself at full length.

“I can do with a little groundsel too,” she said, as though the other subject had been threshed out.

And so it had, for the time being. Feo, oddly enough, had no bricks to throw. She could change her religion, it seemed, without pitching mud at the church of her recent beliefs. It was not until lunch was finished and the last trickle of resentment at Georgie’s failure to apologize had gone out of her system that she returned to the matter and began, in a way, to think aloud. It was not as indiscreet as it might have been, because Georgie Malwood was completely self-contained and had developed concentration to such a degree, her first three husbands having been given to arguing, that she could lie and follow her own train of thought as easily in a room in which a mass of women were playing bridge as in a monkey house. Her interest in Feo was dead. She was over.

And so Feo gave herself away to a little person whose ears were closed.

“I don’t know what exactly to do,” she said. “At the moment, I feel like a fish out of water. If Arrowsmith had liked me and been ready to upset the conventional ideas of his exemplary family, I’d have eloped with him, however frightfully it would have put Edmund in the cart. I don’t mind owning that Arrowsmith is the only man I’ve ever met who could have turned me into the Spartan mother and worthy haus-frau. I had dreams of living with him behind the high walls of a nice old house and making the place echo with the pattering feet of babes. It’s the culminating disappointment of several months of ’em,—the bad streak which all of us have to go through at one time or another, I suppose. However, he doesn’t like me, worse luck, and so there it is. So I think I’d better make the best of a bad job and cultivate Edmund. I think I’d better study the life of Lady Randolph Churchill and make myself useful to my husband. Politics are in a most interesting state just now, with Lloyd George on the verge of collapse at last, and the brainy dishonesty of a woman suddenly inspired with political ambition is exactly what Edmund needs to push him to the top. He has been too long without a woman’s unscrupulous influence.”

She began to pace the room with long swinging strides, eagerly, clutching at this new idea like a drowning man to a spar. Her eyes began to sparkle and the old ring came back to her voice. Here was a way to use her superabundant energy and build up a new hobby.

“I’m no longer a flapping girl with everything to discover,” she went on, “I’ve had my share of love stuff. By Jove, I’ll use my intelligence, for a change. I’ll get into the fight and develop strategy. Every one’s looking to Edmund as the one honest man in the political game, and I’ll buckle to and help him. He’s an amazing creature. I’ve always admired him, and there’s something that suits my present state of mind in making up to him for my perfectly rotten treatment all these years. If I can’t make a lover into a husband, by Jingo, I can set to work to make a husband into a lover. There’s an idea for you, Feo, my pet! There’s a mighty interesting scheme to dig your teeth into, my broad-shouldered friend!”

She sent out an excited laugh and flung up her hand as though to welcome a brain wave. Her amazing resilience stood her in good stead in this crisis of her life,—to say nothing of her courage and queer sense of humor. Her blood began to move again. Fed up with decadence, she would plump whole-heartedly for usefulness now, be normal, go to work, get into the good books of George Lytham and his party, surprise Fallaray by her sudden allegiance to his cause and to him, and gradually break down the door that she had slammed in his face.

“I’ll let my hair grow,” she continued gayly, working the vein that was to rescue her from despondency and failure with pathetic eagerness.

“I’ll chuck eccentric clothes. I’ll turn up slang and blasphemy. I’ll teach myself manners and the language of old political hens. I’ll keep brilliance within speed limits. Yes, I’ll do all that if I have to work like a coolie. And I’ll tell you what else I’ll do. I’ll bet you a thousand pounds to sixpence that before the end of the year I’ll be the wife—I said the wife, Georgie—of the next Prime Minister. Will you take it?”

She drew up short, alight and excited, her foot already on the beginning of the new road, and paused for a reply.

Georgie stretched like a young Angora cat and yawned with perfect frankness.

“I’ll take whatever I can get, Feo,” she said. “But what the devil are you talking about? I haven’t heard a blessed word.”

And Feo’s laugh must have carried into Bond Street.

III

And when Georgie had transferred herself from the many-cushioned divan to her extremely smart car, in which, with an expressionless face and a mind as calm as a cheese, she was going to drive to Hurlingham to be present at, rather than to watch, the polo, Feo went upstairs.

She felt that she must walk, and walk quickly, in an endeavor to keep up with her new line of thought, at the end of which she saw, more and more clearly, a most worth-while goal. Before she could arrive at this, she could see a vista of bunkers ahead of her to negotiate which all her gifts of intrigue would have, happily, to be exercised. To give interest and excitement to her plan of becoming Fallaray’s wife in fact, as well as by law, she required bunkers and needed difficulties. The more the merrier. She knew that, at present, Fallaray was as far away from her as though he were at the North Pole,—and as cold. She was dead certain of the fact that she had been of no more account to him, from the first few hours of their outrageous honeymoon, than a piece of furniture in one of the rooms in his house of which he never made use. That being so, she could see the constant and cunning employment of the brains that she had allowed to lie fallow through all her rudimentary rioting,—brains that she possessed in abundance, far above the average. In the use of these lay her salvation, her one chance to swing herself out of the great disappointment and its subsequent loose-endedness which had been brought about by Arrowsmith’s sudden deflection. Her passionate desire for this man was not going easily to die. She knew that. Her dreams would be filled with him for a considerable time, of course. She realized, also, looking at that uncompleted episode with blunt honesty, that, but for him, she would still be playing the fool, giving herself and her gifts to the entertainment of all the half-witted members of the gang. To the fastidious Arrowsmith and her unrequited love she owed her sudden determination to make herself useful to Fallaray and finally to become, moving Heaven and earth in the process, his wife. This was the paradoxical way in which her curious mind worked. No tears and lamentations for her. She had no use for them. On the contrary, she had courage and pride, and by setting herself the most difficult task that she could possibly have chosen, two things would result,—her sense of adventure would be gratified to the hilt and Arrowsmith shown the stuff of which she was made.

But on her way to her room, which was to be without Lola until the following morning, she stopped in the corridor, turned and went to the door of Fallaray’s den. After a moment’s hesitation she entered, feeling that she was trespassing, never before having gone into it of her own volition. She could not be caught there because Fallaray had escaped to his beloved Chilton, she remembered. Her desire was to stand there alone for a few moments, to merge herself into its atmosphere; to get from its book-lined walls and faint odor of tobacco something of the sense of the man who had unconsciously become her partner.

The vibrations of the room as they came to her were those of one which had belonged to an ascetic, long dead and held in the sort of respect by his country that is shown by the preservation of his work place. It was museum-like and tidy, even prim. The desk was in perfect order and had the cold appearance of not having been used for a century. The fireplace was clean and empty. The waste-paper basket might never have been employed. There was nothing personal to give the place warmth and life. No photographs of women or children. No old pipes. And even in the cold eyes of the bust of Dante that looked down upon her from the top of one of the bookcases there was no expression, either of surprise or resentment at her intrusion.

Most women would have been chilled, and a little frightened, there. It would have been natural for them, in Feo’s circumstances, had they possessed imagination, to have been struck with a sense of remorse. It should have been their business, if nothing else, to see that this room lived and had personality, comfort and a little color,—flowers from time to time, and at least one charming picture of a youngster on the parental desk. And Feo did feel, as she looked about in her new mood, a little shiver of shame and the red-hot needle of repentance pricking her hitherto dormant conscience.

“Poor old Edmund,” she said aloud, “what have I done to him? This place is dry, bloodless, like a mausoleum. Well, I’ll alter it all. I have a job, thank God. Something to set my teeth into. Something to direct my energy at,—if it isn’t too late.”

And as this startling afterthought struck her, she wheeled round, darted across the room to the place where a narrow slip of looking-glass hung in an old gold frame, and put herself through a searching examination.

“Mf! Still attractive in your own peculiar way,” she said finally, with relief. “The early bloom gone, of course; lines here and there, especially round the eyes. Massage and the proper amount of sleep will probably rub those away. But there’s distinction about you, Feo dear, and softness can be cultivated. You’re as hard as an oil painting now, you priceless rotter. However, hope springs eternal, and where there’s a will there’s a way.”

She laughed at herself for these nursery quotations and clenched her fists for the fray. But as she turned, fairly well satisfied with the result of her inspection, she heard steps in the corridor—Fallaray’s steps—and the blood rushed into her face. By George, she was going to be caught, after all.

IV

Fallaray? This sun-tanned, smiling man with shoulders square, chin high, and a song in his eyes, who came into the room like a southwest gale?

If he felt surprise at the unfamiliar sight of Feo in his den, he allowed nothing of it to show. He held out a cordial hand and went to her eagerly.

“I’ve come up to town to see you,” he said. “You must have got my S. O. S.”

The manner provided the second shock. But Feo returned the pressure of his hand and tried instantly to think of an answer that would be suitable to her new rÔle.

“I think I must have done so,” she said quietly, returning his smile. “Your holiday has worked wonders, Edmund.”

“A miracle, an absolute miracle!”

A nearer look proved that his word was the right one. Here was almost the young Fallaray of the tennis courts and the profile that she had set herself impishly to acquire in those old days. Good Heavens, could it be that she was too late, and that another woman had brought about this amazing change? She refused to permit the thought to take root. She told herself that she had had her share of disappointments. He had needed rest and his beloved Chilton, bathed in the most un-English sunlight, had worked its magic. It must be so. Look at this friendliness. That wasn’t consistent with the influence of another woman. And yet, as an expert in love, she recognized the unmistakable look.

“I’m only staying the night here,” he said. “I’m off to Chilton again in the morning. So there’s no time to lose. Can you give me ten minutes?”

“Of course,” she said. “And as many more as you care to ask for. I’m out of the old game.” She hurried to get that in, astonished at her uncharacteristic womanliness.

But he was one-eyed, like a boy. What at any other time would have brought an incredulous exclamation left him now incurious, without surprise. He was driving hard for his own goal. Anything that affected Feo, or any one else, except Lola, didn’t matter. Her revolutionary statement passed almost unheard. He pushed an armchair into place.

“Sit down,” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

And as she sat down it was with a sudden sense of fatalism. There was something in all this that was predetermined, inevitable. That flame had been set alight in him by love, and nothing else. She felt, sitting there, like that most feeble of all figures, Canute. What was the use in trying to persuade herself that what she dreaded to hear was not going to be said? She was too late. She had let this man go.

He walked up and down for a moment, restless and wound up, passing and repassing the white-faced woman who could have told him precisely what he was about to say.

“I want to be set free,” he said, with almost as little emotion as would have been called up by the discussion of a change of butchers. “I want you to let me arrange to be divorced. Something has happened that has altered my entire scheme of life. I want to begin all over again. I have come back this afternoon to put this to you and to ask you to help me. I think I know that many times since we’ve been married you would have asked me to do this, if I hadn’t been in politics. I’m grateful to you, as I’m sure you know, for having respected what was my career to that extent. I am going out. My resignation is in my pocket. It is to be sent to the P. M. to-night. When I go back to-morrow, it will be as a free man, so far as Westminster is concerned. I want to return to Chilton, having left instructions with your lawyers, with your permission, to proceed with the action. The evidence necessary will be provided and the case will be undefended. I shall try to have it brought forward at the earliest possible moment. May I ask you to be kind enough to meet me in this matter?”

He drew up in front of her and waited, with as little impatience as breeding would permit.

If this question had been put to her a week ago, or yesterday, she would have cried out, “Yes,” with joy and seen herself able to face a future with Arrowsmith, such as she had pictured in her dreams. It came upon her now, on top of her determination to turn over a new leaf, like a breaker, notwithstanding the fact that she had seen it coming. But she got up, pride and courage and tradition in every line of her eccentrically dressed body, and faced him.

“You may,” she replied. “And I will help you in every possible way. It’s the least that I can do.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I am deeply grateful. I knew that you would say just that.” And he bowed before turning to go to his desk. “Who are your lawyers?”

She hadn’t any lawyers, but she remembered the name of the firm in which one of the partners was the husband of a woman in the gang, and she gave it to him.

He wrote it down eagerly. “I’m afraid it will be necessary for you to see these people in the morning. Is that perfectly convenient?”

“Perfectly,” she said. “I have no engagements, as it happens.”

“Then I will write a statement of the facts,” he said, “at once. The papers can be served upon me at Chilton.”

It was easy to get out of marriage as it had been to get into it.

“Is that all?” she asked, with a touch of her old lightness.

He rose. “Yes, thank you,” he said, and went to the door to open it for her. There were youth and elasticity and happiness all about him.

But as she watched him cross the room, something flashed in front of her eyes, a vivid ball of foolish years which broke into a thousand pieces at her feet, among the jagged ends of which she could see the ruins of a great career, the broken figure of a St. Anthony, with roses pinned to the cross upon his chest.

He stopped her as she was going and held out his hand again.

“I am very grateful, Feo.”

And she smiled and returned his grasp. “The best of luck,” she said. “I hope you’ll be very happy, for a change.”

V

Having now no incentive to go either to her room or anywhere else, her new plan dying at its birth, Feo remained in the corridor, standing with her back against one of the pieces of Flemish tapestry which Simpkins had pointed out to Lola. She folded her arms, crossed one foot over the other, and dipped her chin, not frowning, not with any sort of self-pity, but with elevated eyebrows and her mouth half open, incredulous.

“Of course I’m not surprised at Edmund’s being smashed on a girl,” she told herself. “How the Dickens he’s gone on so long is beyond belief. I hope she’s a nice child,—she must be young; he’s forty; I hope he’s not been bird-limed by one of the afterwar virgins who are prowling the earth for prey. I’m very ready to make way gracefully and have a dash at something else, probably hospital work, sitting on charity boards with the dowagers who wish to goodness they had dared to be as loose as I’ve been. But—but what I want to know is, who’s shuffling the cards? Why the devil am I getting this long run of Yarboroughs? I can’t hold anything,—anything at all, except an occasional knave like Macquarie. Why this run of bad luck now? Why not last year, next year, next week? Why should Edmund deliberately choose to-day, of all days, to come back, with no warning, and put a heavy foot bang in the middle of my scheme of retribution? Is it—meant? I mean it’s too beautifully neat to be an accident. Is it the good old upper cut one always gets for playing the giddy ox, I wonder?—Mf! Interesting. Very. More to come, too, probably, seeing that I’m still on my feet. I’ve got to get it in the solar plexus and slide under the ropes, I suppose, now they’re after me. ‘Every guilty deed holds in itself the seed of retribution and undying pain.’ Well, I’m a little nervous, like some poor creature on the way to the operating table; and—and I’ll tell you what else I am, by George! I’m eaten up with curiosity to know who the girl is, and how she managed to get into the line of vision of this girl-blind man,—and I don’t quite know how I shall be able to contain myself until I satisfy this longing.—Oh, hullo, Lola. This is good. I didn’t expect you till the morning. But I don’t mind saying that I’ve never been so pleased to see anybody as you, my dear. Had a good time?”

She went to the top of the stairs and waited for Lola to come up, smiling and very friendly. She was fond of this girl. She had missed her beyond words,—not only for her services, which were so deft, so sure-fingered, but also for her smile, her admiration. Good little Lola; clever little Lola too, by George. That Carlton episode,—most amusing. And this recent business, which, she remembered, was touched with a sort of—what? Was ecstasy the word? Good fun to know what had happened. Thank the Lord there was going to be a pause between knock-outs, after all.

Dressed in her perfectly plain ready-made walking frock, her own shoes and a neat little hat that she had bought in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, Lola came upstairs quickly with her eyes on Feo’s face. She seemed hardly to be able to hold back the words that were trembling on her lips. It was obvious that she had been crying; her lids were red and swollen. But she didn’t look unhappy or miserable, as a girl might if everything had gone wrong; nor in the least self-conscious. She wore neither her expression as lady’s maid, nor that of the young widow to whom some one had given London; but of a mother whose boy was in trouble and must be got out of it, at once, please, and helped back to his place among other good boys.

“Will you come down to your room, Lady Feo?” she asked. “Mr. Lytham will be here in a few minutes and I want you to see him.”

Lytham—young Lochinvar! How priceless if he were the man for whom she had dressed this child up.

“Why, of course. But what’s the matter, Lola? You’ve been crying. You look fey.”

Lola put her hand on Feo’s arm, urgently. “Please come down,” she said. “I want to tell you something before Mr. Lytham comes.”

Well, this seemed to be her favor-granting day, as well as one of those during which Fate had recognized her as being on his book. First Edmund and then Lola,—there was not much to choose between their undisguised egotism. And the lady’s maid business,—that was all over, plainly. George Lytham,—who’d have thought it? If Lola were in trouble, she had a friend in that house.

And so, without any more questions, she went back to her futuristic den which, after her brief talk with Fallaray, seemed to belong to a very distant past. But before Lola could begin to tell her story, a footman made his appearance and said that Mr. Lytham was in the hall.

“Show him in here,” said Feo and turned to watch the door.

She wondered if she would be able to tell from his expression what was the meaning of her being brought into this,—a disinclination on his part to take the blame, or an earnest desire to do what was right under the circumstances? She never imagined the possibility of his not knowing that Lola was a lady’s maid dressed in the feathers of the jay. Unlike Peter Chalfont, who accepted without question, Lytham held things up to the light and examined their marks.

There was, however, nothing uncomfortable in his eyes. On the contrary, he looked more than ever like the captain, Feo thought, of a County Cricket Club, healthy, confident and fully alive to his enormous responsibility. He wore a suit of thin blue flannels, the M. C. C. tie under a soft low collar, and brown shoes that had become almost red from long and expert treatment. He didn’t shake hands like a German, with a stiff deference contradicted by a mackerel eye, or with the tender effusion of an actor who imagines that women have only to come under his magnetism to offer themselves in sacrifice. Bolt upright, with his head thrown back, he shook hands with an honest grip, without deference and without familiarity, like a good cricketer.

“How do you do, Lady Feo,” he said, in his most masculine voice. “It’s kind of you to see us.” Then he turned to Lola with a friendly smile. “Your telephone message caught me just as I was going to dash off for a game of tennis after a hard day, Madame de BrÉzÉ,” he added.

Oh, so this was another of the de BrÉzÉ episodes, was it, like the one with Beauty Chalfont. Curiosity came hugely to Feo’s rescue. Here, at any rate, was a break in her run of bad luck, very welcome. What on earth could be the meaning of this quaint meeting,—George Lytham, the earnest worker pledged to reconstruction, and this enigmatic child, who might have stood for Joan of Arc? If Lola had caught Lytham and brought him to Dover Street to receive substantiation, Feo was quite prepared to lie on her behalf. What a joke to palm off the daughter of a Queen’s Road jeweler on the early-Victorian mother of the worthy George!

“Well?” she said, looking from one to the other with a return of her impish delight in human experimentation.

“Mr. Lytham can explain this better than I can,” said Lola quietly.

“I’m not so sure about that, but I’ll do my best.”

He drew a chair forward and sat down. Under ordinary circumstances, where there was the normal amount of happiness, or even the mutual agreement to give and take that goes with the average marriage, his task would have been a difficult one. But in the case of Feo and his chief he felt able to deal with the matter entirely without self-consciousness, or delicacy in the choice of words.

“I needn’t worry you with any of the details of the new political situation, Lady Feo. You know them, probably, as well as I do. But what you don’t know, because the moment isn’t yet ripe for the publication of our plans, is that Mr. Fallaray has been chosen to lead the Anti-waste Party, which is concentrating its forces to rout the old gang out of politics at the next General Election, give Parliament back its lost prestige, and do away with the pernicious influence of the Press Lords. A big job, by Jove, which Fallaray alone can achieve.”

“Well?” repeated Feo, wondering what in the world this preamble had to do with the case in question.

“Well, at the end of the meeting of my party yesterday, I was sent down to Chilton Park to tell Mr. Fallaray our plans. I was stultified to be told that he had decided to chuck politics.”

“And go in for love. Yes, I know. But what has this got to do with Lola,—with Madame de BrÉzÉ?”

That was the point that beat Feo, the thing that filled her with a sort of impatient astonishment. Was this uncommunicative girl, who seemed to her to be so essentially feminine, whose mÉtier in life was obviously to purr under the touch of a masculine hand, who had been given a holiday to go on a love chase with Chalfont, presumably, somehow connected with politics? It was incredible.

“Oh, you’ve seen Fallaray.”

“Yes, my dear man, yes! He broke the news to me the moment he came in,”

“Did he ask you to give him a divorce?”

“He did, without a single stutter.”

“And you said——”

“But—my dear young Lochinvar, may I make so bold as to ask why this perfectly personal matter has to be discussed in the open, so to speak?” She made her meaning unmistakably clear. This girl was not so close a friend as he might have been led to suppose.

“What did you say to Mr. Fallaray?” asked Lola, leaning forward eagerly.

And Lytham waited with equal anxiety for an answer.

It did not come for an extraordinary moment and only then in the form of a tangent. Feo turned slowly round to the girl who was in the habit of dressing her and putting her to bed. With raised eyebrows and an air of amused amazement, she ran her eyes over every inch of her, as though trying very hard to find something to palliate the insufferable cheek that she was apparently expected to swallow.

“My good Lola,” she said finally, “what the devil has this got to do with you?”

“Madame de BrÉzÉ is the dea ex machina,” said Lytham, evenly.

It didn’t seem to him to be necessary to lead up to this announcement like a cat on hot bricks, considering that Lady Feo had openly flouted his chief from the first. She had no feelings to respect.

“What did you say?”

He repeated his remark, a little surprised at the gaping astonishment which was caused by it.

“Madame de BrÉzÉ—Lola—the woman for whom I am to be asked to step aside?—Is this a joke?”

“No,” he said. “Far from a joke.”

“Ye Gods!” said Feo. And she sat for a moment, holding her breath, with her large intelligent mouth open, her dark Italian eyes fixed on Lytham’s face, and one of her long thin capable hands suspended in mid-air. She might have been struck by lightning, or turned into salt like Lot’s inquisitive wife.

It was plain enough to Lola that her mistress was reviewing in her mind all the small points of their connection,—the engagement in the housekeeper’s room, the knowledge of her parentage, the generous presents of those clothes for her beautification, the half-jealous, half-sympathetic interest that had been shown in her love affair with Chalfont, as she had allowed Lady Feo to imagine. She had come to Dover Street, not to take this woman’s husband away, but to give him back, to beg that he should be retained by all the hollow ties of Church and law; bound, held, controlled, rendered completely unable to break away,—not for Feo’s sake, and not for his, but for his country’s. And so, having committed no theft because Fallaray was morally free, and being unashamed of her scheme which had been merely to give a lonely man the rustle of silk, she hung upon an answer to her question.

Once more Feo turned to look at Lola, leaning forward, and for a moment something flooded her eyes that was like blood, and a rush of unformed words of blasphemous anger crowded to her lips. With distended nostrils and widening fingers, she took on the appearance, briefly, of a figure, half man, half woman, stirred to its vitals with a desire to kill in punishment of treachery, suffering under the sort of humiliation that makes pride collapse like a toy balloon. And then a sense of humor came to the rescue. She sprang to her feet and burst into peal after peal of laughter so loud and irresistible and prolonged, that it brought on physical weakness and streaming tears. Finally, standing in her favorite place with her back to the fireplace, dabbing her eyes and steadying her voice, she began to talk huskily, with anger, and sarcasm, and looseness, puncturing her sometimes pedantic choice of words with one that was appropriate to a cab driver.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said, “Lola—purring little Lola, and in those clothes, too! I don’t mind confessing that I would never have believed it possible. I mean for you to have had the courage to aim so high. It’s easy to understand his end of it. The greater the ascetic, the smaller the distance to fall. Ha!—And you, you busy patriot, you earnest, self-confident young Lochinvar, if only I could make clear to you the whole ludicrous aspect of this bitter farce, this mordant slice of satire. You wouldn’t enjoy it, because you’re a hero-worshipper, with one foot in the Albert period. And in any case I can’t let you into it because my inherited instinct of sportsmanship is with me still, even in this. And so you’ll miss the point of the orgy of laughter that gave me the stitch. But I don’t mind telling you that it’s a scream, and would make a lovely chapter in the history of statesmen’s love affairs.”

That Fallaray should have turned from her to pick up this bourgeois little person, a servant in his house,—that was what rankled, in spite of her saying that she understood his end of it. Good God!

But to Lytham, who knew Lola as Madame de BrÉzÉ, and had found her to be willing to make a great sacrifice for love, the inner meaning of Feo’s outburst was lost. He told himself, as he had often done before, that Feo was an extraordinary creature, queer and erotic, and came back to the main road bluntly.

“May I ask you to be so kind as to tell me,” he said, “what answer you gave to Mr. Fallaray when he asked you to give him a divorce? A great deal depends upon that.”

“You mean because of his career and the success of your political plans?”

“Yes.”

“And why do you want to know, pray?” Feo shot the question at Lola.

“Because of Mr. Fallaray’s career,” Lola replied simply, “and the success of these political plans.”

But this was something much too large to be swallowed, much too good to be true. Regarding Lola as a deceitful minx, a most cunning little schemer, Feo took the liberty to disbelieve this statement utterly, although on the face of it Lola appeared to have thrown in her lot with Lytham. Why?—What was she up to now?—An impish desire to keep these two on tenterhooks and get a little fun out of all this—it was the only thing that she could get—suddenly seized Feo strongly. Here was a gorgeous chance for drama. Here was an epoch-making opportunity unexpectedly to force Lytham and the young vamp, as she called her, to ask Fallaray himself for an answer to this question, and watch the scene. It was probably the only opportunity to satisfy an avid curiosity to see how Fallaray would behave when faced with his “affinity,” and find out what game the girl who had been her servant was playing. This high-faluting attitude of Lola’s was all nonsense, of course. She had caught Fallaray with her extraordinary sexiness and meant to cling to him like a limpet. To become the second Mrs. Fallaray was naturally the acme of her ambition, even although she succeeded to a man who must place himself on the shelf in order to indulge in an amorous adventure. A great idea! But it would have to be carried out carefully, so that no inkling of it might escape.

“Excuse me for a moment,” said Feo, and marched out of the room with a perfectly expressionless face.

Shutting the door behind her, she caught the eye of a man servant who was on duty in the hall. He came smartly forward.

“Go up to Mr. Fallaray and say that I shall be greatly obliged if he will come to my den at once on an important matter.” And then, having taken two or three excited turns up and down the hall, she controlled her face and went back into the room.

“Saint Anthony, Young Lochinvar, the lady’s maid,” she said to herself, “and the ex-leader of the erotics. A heterogeneous company, if ever there was one.”

Once more, standing with her back to the fireplace, her elbows on the low mantel board, Feo looked down at Lola, whose eyes were very large and like those of a child who had cried herself out of tears.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“At Whitecross, with Lady Cheyne,” replied Lola.

“Oh!—The little fat woman who has the house near the gate in the wall? I see. And you came back this afternoon?”

“Yes,” said Lola.

“With my husband?”

“No,” said Lola.

“Does he know that you intended to give me the pleasure of seeing you here with our mutual friend?”

“No,” said Lola.

Was that a lie or not? The girl had been crying, that was obvious. Something had evidently gone wrong with her scheme. But why this surreptitious meeting, this bringing in of Lytham? It was easy, of course, to appreciate his anxiety. He needed an impeccable Fallaray. He was working for his party, his political campaign, and in the long run, being an earnest patriot, for his country.—She had a few questions to put to him too.

“Where did you meet Lola de BrÉzÉ, Young Lochinvar?” she asked.

“At Chilton Park,” said Lytham, who had begun to be somewhat mystified at the way in which things were going; and, if the truth were told, impatient. All he had come to know was whether he had an ally in Lady Feo or an enemy, and make his plans accordingly. He could see no reason for her to dodge the issue. His game of tennis looked hopeless. What curious creatures women were.

“When?”

There was the sound of quick steps in the hall.

“Last night.”

The door opened and Fallaray walked in.

With a gleeful smile Feo spoke through his exclamation of surprise. “Edmund, I would like you to tell your friends what my answer was to your request for a divorce.”

Hating to be caught in what was obviously an endeavor to influence his chief’s wife against a decision to unhitch himself from marriage and politics, Lytham sprang to his feet, feeling as disconcerted as he looked.

Lola made no movement except to stiffen in her chair.

Watching Fallaray closely, Feo saw first a flare of passion light up his eyes at the sight of Lola, and then an expression of resentment come into them at not being able, others being present, to catch her in his arms. An impetuous movement had taken him to the middle of the room, where he drew up short and stood irresolute and self-conscious and looking rather absurd under the gaze of Lytham and his wife.

“What is all this?” he asked, after an awkward pause, during which he began to suspect that he had been tricked by Feo and was faced by a combination of objection.

“Don’t ask me,” said Feo, waving her hand towards Lytham and Lola.

“Then I must ask you, George,” said Fallaray, making an effort to disguise his anger. He could see that he had been made the subject of discussion, as if he were some one to be coerced and who did not know his own business.

“This is not quite fair,” said Lytham. “Our intention was to see Lady Feo, get her views and cooperation, and then, to-night or to-morrow, come to you and beg you to do the sane thing in this affair. We had no hand in your being dragged into this private meeting.”

He too was angry. Feo had cheated and brought about the sort of crisis that should have been avoided. Any one who knew Fallaray’s detestation of personalities must have seen what this breaking down of his fourth wall would bring about.

“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” demanded Fallaray.

“Madame de BrÉzÉ and myself,” said Lytham.

“What! You ask me to believe that Madame de BrÉzÉ has come here with you to persuade my wife to go back on her promise to set me free? What do you take me for?” He laughed at the utter absurdity of the idea and in doing so, broke the tension and the stiltedness of the scene, as he realized that Feo had deliberately intended it to become. And then, with a certain boyishness that went oddly with his monk-like face, he went over to Lola and put his hand on her shoulder.

“All right,” he added. “Let’s have this out and come to a final understanding. It will save all further arguments. Just before you brought Lola here, having, as I can see, worked on her feelings by talking about your party and telling her that her coming into my life would ruin my career—I know your dogged enthusiasm, George—I saw my wife. I put my case to her at once and she agreed very generously to release me. A messenger will be here in ten minutes to take my statement to her lawyers and my resignation to the Prime Minister. I shall return to Chilton to-morrow to wait there, or wherever else it may suit me, until the end of the divorce proceedings. You won’t agree with me, but that is what I call doing the sane thing. Finally, all going well, as please God it may, this lady and I will get married and live happily ever after.”

He spoke lightly, even jauntily, but with an undercurrent of emotion that it was impossible for him to disguise.

And then, to Feo’s complete amazement, Lola, who had been so quiet and unobtrusive, rose and backed away from Fallaray, her face as white as the stone figures at Chilton under moonlight, her hands clasped together to give her strength, her eyes as dry as an empty well. She was bereft of tears.

“But I am not going to marry you,” she said, “because if I do everything will go badly.”

Fallaray sprang forward to take her in his arms and kiss her into love and life and acquiescence, as he had done before,—once at the gate and once again last night under the stars.

But she backed away and ranged herself with Lytham.

“I love Fallaray,” she said. “Fallaray the leader, the man who is needed, the man who has made himself necessary. If I were to marry Fallaray the deserter, there would be no such thing as happiness for me or for him.”

Fallaray’s eager hands fell suddenly to his sides. The word that had come to Lola as an inspiration, though it broke her heart to use it, hit him like a well-aimed stone. Deserter!—A man who turned and ran, who slunk away from the fight at its moment of crisis, who absconded from duty in violation of all traditions of service, thinking of no one but himself. Deserter! It was the right word, the damnable right word that rears itself up for every man to read at the crossroads of life.—And he stood looking at this girl who had brought him back to a momentary youth through a glamor that gave way to the cold light of duty. His was a pitiful figure, middle-aged, love-hungry, doomed to be sacrificed upon the altar of public service.

Lytham didn’t rejoice at the sight, having sympathy and imagination. Neither did Feo, who had just lost her own grasp upon a dream.

“Is it possible that you love me so much?” he asked.

And Lola said, “Yes, yes!”

It was on Lytham’s tongue to say, “My dear man, don’t you gather what I mean by the ‘sane thing’? There’s no need to take this in the spirit of a Knight Crusader. A little nest somewhere, discreetly guarded.”

And it was on Feo’s tongue to add, also completely modern, “Of course. Why not? Isn’t it done every day? No one need know, and if it’s ever found out, isn’t it the unwritten law to protect the reputations of public men so long as there is no irate husband to stir up our hypocritical moral sense by bringing the thing into the open?”

But neither spoke. There was something in the way in which Lola stood, brave but trembling, that kept them silent; something in Fallaray’s expression of adoration and respect that made them feel ashamed of their materialism. They were ignorant of all that had gone to the making of Lola’s apprenticeship to give that lonely man the rustle of silk, and of the fact that he had grown to love this girl not as a mistress, but as a wife.

And after a silence that held them breathless, Fallaray spoke again. “I must be worthy of you, my little Lola,” he said, “and not desert. I will go on with the glory of your love as a banner—and if I die first, I will wait for you on the other side of the Bridge.”

“I will be faithful,” she said.

He held out his arms, and she rushed into them with a great cry, pressed herself to his heart, and took her last living kiss.

“Till then,” said Fallaray finally, letting her go.

But nothing more came from Lola except a groping movement of her hands.

At the door, square of shoulder, Fallaray beckoned to Lytham and went out and up to his room.

It was Feo who wept.

VI

Leaving his cubby-hole behind the screen and taking the inevitable glass out of his eye, John Breezy waddled through the shop to the parlor to enjoy a cup of tea. It was good to see the new brightness and daintiness assumed by the whole of that little place since Lola had come back and put her touch upon everything. It was good also to break away from the mechanism of unhealthy watches for a quarter of an hour and get into contact with humanity that was cheerful and well.

“Hurray!” he said, “what should I do without my cupper tea?”

With one eye on the shop door and the other on the teapot, Mrs. Breezy presided at the chaotic table. The tea tray had cleared an opening among the heterogeneous mass of accumulation. It was the ritual of week-day afternoons, faithfully performed year in and year out,—and of late, since Lola had been helping in the shop, more frequently interrupted than ever before. Now that she had fallen into the steady habit of sitting behind the counter near the window, business had perked up noticeably and it was astonishing how many young men were discovering the need of safety-razor blades, Waterman’s fountain pens, silver cigarette cases, and the like. Was it astonishing?

“Nice weather for Lola’s afternoon off,” said Breezy, emptying his cup into his saucer, cabman’s fashion. Tea cooled the sooner like that and went down with a more succulent sound. “Hampton Court again?”

“Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Breezy, “with Ernest. Wonderful how much better he looks since Lola came back,—cleaner, more self-respecting. He had another poem in the paper yesterday. Did you read it?”

“Um. I scanned it over. Pretty good coming from behind a face like that. Somehow, I always think of a poet as a man with big eyes, a velvet coat, hair all over his face, who was born with a dictionary in his hand. Funny thing, breaking out in a lad like Ernest. Caused by the War, p’raps. It’s left a lot of queer things behind it. He’d make more money if he tried to turn out stories like Garvice wrote. I think I shall speak to him about it and get him to be practical.”

“No, don’t,” said Mrs. Breezy, “you’d upset Lola. She believes in Ernest and wants him to make a name.”

“What’s the good of a name without money? However, I won’t interfere. You—you don’t suppose that Lola’s thinking of marrying that boy some day, do you?” It was a most uncomfortable thought. His little girl must do better than that.

Mrs. Breezy was silent for a moment and her face wore a look of the most curious puzzlement.

“I don’t know what she thinks, John. To tell you the truth, dear, I don’t know anything about her, and I never did. I don’t know why she went to Dover Street or why she came back. She’s never told me and I’ve never asked her. When I catch her face sometimes, I can see in it something that makes my heart miss a beat. I can’t describe it. It may be pain, it may be joy,—I don’t know. I can’t tell. But it isn’t regret and it isn’t sorrow. It lights her up like, as though there was something burning in her heart. John, our little girl’s miles away from us, although she’s never been nearer. She dreams, I think, and walks in another world with some one. We’ve got to be very kind to her, old man. She’s—she’s a strange, strange child.”

Breezy pushed himself out of the sofa as a rather heavily laden boat is oozed out of mud. He was irritable and perhaps a little frightened.

“I don’t find her strange,” he said. “Strange! What a word! She’s a good girl, that’s what she is,—as open as a book, with nothing to hide. And she’s our girl, and she’s doing her job without grumbling, and she’s doubling the business. And what’s more, she’s cheerful and happy and loving. I’m damned if I can see anything strange about her. You certainly have a knack of saying queer things about Lola, one way ’n’ another, you have!” And he marched out of the parlor in a kind of fat huff, only to march back again immediately to put his arm round the little woman’s neck and give her an apologetic kiss. He was one of these men who loved peace at any price and erected high barriers round himself in order that he shouldn’t see anything to disturb his ease of mind. It was the same form of brain anÆmia, the same lack of moral courage from which the Liberal Government had suffered in the face of the warning of Lord Roberts. In other words, the policy of the ostrich. Knowing very well that his wife had all the brains of the partnership and never said anything for the mere sake of saying it, he was quite sure that she was right as to Lola, and he had himself almost swallowed one of the little screws that played so large a part in the interior of his watches on seeing the look that Mrs. Breezy had described on the face of his little girl as she sat perched up on a high stool waiting for the next customer, with her eyes on something very far away. And because this gave him a jar and frightened him a little, he persuaded himself that what he had seen he had not seen, because it was uncomfortable to see it. It is a form of mental dope and it suits all sorts of constitutions,—like religion.

And so, blotting out of his mind the little conversation which had taken place over the teapot, Breezy returned to his job, his fat hands working on the intricate mechanisms of his Swiss and American invalids with astonishing delicacy of touch; and all the while he whistled softly through his teeth. He was never at a loss for a tune because the flotsam and jetsam that came in and went out of Queen’s Road, Bayswater, with their tired pianos, their squeaky fiddles, and their throaty baritones provided him with all the sentimental ballads of yesterday and to-day.

It was seven o’clock when he looked up and saw Lola enter with Ernest Treadwell,—the girl with a reflection of all the flowers of Hampton Court in her eyes and the boy with love and adoration in his. It was true that all about him there was a great improvement, a more healthy appearance, a look of honest sleep and clean thinking. But he was still the same ugly duckling with obstreperous hair and unfortunate teeth and a half-precocious, half-timid manner. All the same, the fairies had touched him at his birth and endowed him with that strange thing that is called genius. He had the soul of a poet.

“Come up,” said Lola, “you’re not doing anything to-night, so you may as well stay to dinner. I’ve found something I want to read to you.”

She waved her hand to her father, smiled at her mother who was selling note-paper to a housemaid from Inverness Terrace for love letters—and so the paper was pink—and led the way upstairs to the drawing-room which had been opened up and put in daily use. Its Sabbath look and Sabbath smell, its antimacassars had disappeared. There were books about, many books; sevenpenny editions of novels that hadn’t fallen quite stillborn from the press, and one or two by Wells and Lawrence and Somerset Maugham.

“Sit down for a moment, Ernie,” she said, “and make yourself happy. I’ll be with you again in five minutes.” And he looked after her with a dog’s eyes and sat down to watch the door with a dog’s patience.

In her own room she went to her desk, unlocked a drawer and took out a page cut from The Tatler on which was reproduced a photograph of Fallaray. She had framed it and kept it hidden away under lock and key, and always when she came home from her walks, and several times a day when she could slip up and shut herself in for a moment or two, she took it out to gaze at it and press it to her breast. It was her last link, her last and everlasting link with the foolish dreams with which that room was so intimately associated,—a room no longer made up to represent that of a courtesan; a normal room now, suitable to the daughter of a watchmaker in Queen’s Road, Bayswater.

The evening sun gilded the commonplace line of the roofs opposite as she stood in the window with Fallaray’s face against her heart.

“I love you,” she said, “I love you. I shall always love you, and if I die first, I shall wait for you on the other side of the Bridge.”

She returned it to its hiding place, took off her hat, tidied her hair, picked up a little book and went back to the drawing-room.

“Listen,” she said, “this is for you.

“‘I shall see my way as birds their trackless way.

I shall arrive,—what time, what circuit first,

I ask not; but unless God send His hail

Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,

In some time, His good time, I shall arrive;

He guides me and the bird. In His good time.’”

And as the boy watched her and saw her light up as though there were something burning in her heart, he knew that those lines were as much for herself as for him.

THE END

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A story of the big mother heart that beats in the background of every girl’s life, and some dreams which came true.

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Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.

MICHAEL O’HALLORAN, Illustrated by Frances Rogers.

Michael is a quick-witted little Irish newsboy, living in Northern Indiana. He adopts a deserted little girl, a cripple. He also assumes the responsibility of leading the entire rural community upward and onward.

LADDIE. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.

This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie and the Princess, an English girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family there hangs a mystery.

THE HARVESTER. Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs.

“The Harvester,” is a man of the woods and fields, and if the book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his “Medicine Woods,” there begins a romance of the rarest idyllic quality.

FRECKLES. Illustrated.

Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with “The Angel” are full of real sentiment.

A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. Illustrated.

The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, loveable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage.

AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW. Illustrations in colors.

The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love. The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to all.

THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL. Profusely illustrated.

A love ideal of the Cardinal bird and his mate, told with delicacy and humor.

Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

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