The rest is a blur. Clear and definite as is every moment from my first meeting with Bernoline to the last faint flutter of her white hand, the rest of the day is confused. There are hours which are lost, during which I do not know what I did or where I wandered. The great city roared about me. I walked interminable miles along dark, echoing side streets and into sudden flaming thoroughfares, where rapid crowds descended upon me like gusts of wind. I can remember the tap-tap of my cane along some stony solitude, and again standing at Times Square, in a wilderness of lights, roared at, amid the clanging and the honking of traffic; crowded, jostled, buffeted in the polygot stream,—a stranger in the land of his fathers.

Those crowds—those hostile, unintelligible crowds, so triumphantly successful—shall I ever forget them! I had known the monastic multitudes of Paris, slow-moving, reticent, respectful of the black-garbed mourners, compassionate and grim, hiding neither their sorrows nor their sympathy. I had known them and felt at home in them. But this other thing; this strident influx of strange tongues, this pagan riot, this shrill pursuit of pleasure, when all the world was hushed and apprehensive! What did they understand? What could they be made to understand? I stood, bewildered—I who had come for my American heritage—more alone, more distant than when in the long days of convalescence the dread feeling of homesickness gripped my heart.

If this were America, it was the America that Peter Magnus saw, polygot, cosmopolitan, international, an America that might be roaring on to some greater world-significance, but an America that had left me behind.

My room was on the eighteenth floor of a great hotel flung above the electric city. Below me swam the theatric night, the fluid effulgence of Broadway, the piping thrum of automobiles, the revelry ascending from flaring restaurants, carried upward into hanging gardens floating on the night,—nervous, shifting sheets of electric transparencies, fantastic, ingenious, unescapable, a million splendors to exalt a corset or a soap! What a vast, illuminated billboard! Everything oppressed me, the staggering scale of things, the importance of unimportant things, this capture of the night by the materialism of the day. I watched it, as one stands before the unleashed torrents of the sea and sky, overwhelmed with my own shrunk significance.

In the morning my first movement was to my window. The city of the night was fled. Below me lay a shanty civilization. The fairy splendor, the figment of the night had dissolved with the dawn. Broadway was but a huddled group of puny shanties, with skeleton trickeries exposed in the pitiless light of the day; ugly, visible, naked,—an adventuress stealing home at dawn, rouged, powdered and wan, and the pretentious jewels of the night showing themselves to be paste. The whole was stale as a ballroom when the laughter is fled. The crowded stars were empty sockets; the flaming palaces, scaffolding.

Homesickness? Yes, even in Picardy, even in the wet weariness of the trenches, in the gray rain that soaked into my soul, I had never felt such utter loneliness as here, in the nausea of the revealing dawn.

I came out of the city and set my face sternly to the task of readjustment. I would not be true to my determination to set down without disguise or sentimentalization the history of my shifting moods, actions and reactions, emotions and resolves, if I didn’t write this down. No sooner had I entered the train, pulled my cap over my eyes and sunk back in my corner, than I fell into a mood of extreme weakness. As the instinct to live is stronger in the body, no matter what the will to die, so I believe that in the thinking man the will to continue as a free agent is an instinct deeper than our perceptions. Everything in me rebelled at the sudden subjection which a blind destiny had forced upon me. Something in me cried out imperiously:

“Forget! You must forget!”

And this is the hideous thing: the words of the other woman, the words of Letty, were the ones that sounded in my ears:

“Life is a succession of doors to be closed and never reopened.”

To close the door and never to return! If it were possible!

I said to myself, incredulously, that it was not possible that in ten days I had come to a final and irrevocable love; that the romance and the glamor were for much, that the dramatic quality of the lone woman venturing into the wilderness of men, the mystery which enveloped her, had caught my sympathy. I did not attempt, it is true, to deceive myself into the belief that I did not love her, but I tried to convince myself that I could and must forget her.

Yet, even as rebelling against the cruelty of such destiny, I argued thus, I found myself comparing the women about me, the women there in the car, the women in the crowds of New York, the women of the past I had known, to the Bernoline I loved,—and wondering where again in the empty world I would meet with another such. Suddenly, ahead of me in the far end of the car, a silhouette, the turn of the neck, a carriage of the head, reminded me so vividly of her that I sat bolt upright, staring, and so acute was the sense of her presence that though I knew it to be the wildest trick of fancy, I could not rest until I had risen and reassured myself. I returned and sank back heavily in my corner, no longer with strength or will to struggle against my fate.

The visible things receded, the unreal present dissolved. I abandoned myself to the unforgettable past. I lived again the hours since our meeting. I saw her, I heard her, I talked with her. I was back on the high forward deck, with the cliffs of New York growing into the night. I argued against her decision; I pleaded for us both. I said the things I should have said, as I reconstructed the inexorable past, until, struck by my own absurdity, I regained some measure of self-control.

After all, what remains? What can remain of this, the purest and deepest seeking of my life? I have dreamed a beautiful dream! The rest is a waking to the pain of reality.

Yet is it possible, I wonder, that for this ten days’ dreaming the years of my life must pay the reckoning?

At South Norwalk I descended and took the train for Littledale. Hardly had I turned up the platform before I was among friends, welcomed with incredulous shouts: Burke, the conductor, and Lannigan, of the express, smothering me with rapturous greetings. I rode back in the baggage car, the center of an admiring group. The old oil lamps still flickered overhead, undisturbed in their appointed task of gathering in the cobwebs, and for a while I forgot my loneliness in the warm pleasure of being back among my own kind. Heaven be thanked, nothing had changed! The baggage car still dates from 1870, wheezing and bumping over the narrow-gauge road as the old familiar figures gather about the stove in the solemnity of country-store conclave.

I had not thought to have such a thrill, yet a lump was in my throat when at the station old man Carpenter came hobbling up and a group of youngsters set up a cheer. It was no longer New York: it was my America, and I belonged to it.

I refused a trap and set out on foot, after cautioning them against telephoning my arrival. Hardly five years were gone, yet every detail of the green and white village was so definite in my memory that I noted with an intolerant resentment the new porch at Hamill’s and the glass front which had arrived at Sherwood’s corner grocery. All my boyhood was about me as I hurried on under the vaulted elms: Parson Miller’s home, where Ben and I had strung a tick-tack; the green picket fence where the fox terrier came fearfully out when we rattled our sticks; the side street where I had fought M’Ginnis; the hideous soldiers’ monument, where the snowball fights raged; the stone bridge to which I used to steal after supper to meet Jenny. The past lay at my side,—tranquil, unchanging, and undisturbed by the currents that whirled and struggled three thousand miles away, and in that moment I, too, felt a leaping joy in my heart to be in this America which had stood still in the breathless rush of things.

The lights were in the windows of the great hall as I turned the postern and came up the deep well of the evergreens, towards the low, rambling, red house that sat at the feet of the three drooping elms. I came slowly across the white hoar frost which coated the lawn, and the stiff gravel crackled as I stood under the porte-cochÈre, undecided, fearful of what I should find, steeling myself against the shock of disillusionment, and in my heart the cold repugnance of that one dreaded confrontation,—Letty, at the side of Ben. Yet, despite doubt and shrinking, I think that in my heart the deepest sentiment was a weak gladness to leave all the world behind and come back, as a tired boy comes back, into that sheltered warmth which is called home.

As I debated, with a sudden scurry and barking defiance, the dogs came tumbling over each other,—and the next moment old Dan was in my arms, while the two younger dogs, accepting me on faith, set up a furious chatter. Then, a rush of feet across the hall, the door flung open, and something soft and fluttering leaped to my neck;—home was a reality and Molly was crying my name! It was no longer the laughing tomboy of the bobbed hair and short skirts, but a woman whose eyes were on a level with mine. I took her by the shoulders and held her from me fiercely, and then caught her to me once more with a great thankfulness, for the eyes were straight and clear and the heart was the heart of my little sister.

My mother ran out, and it gave me a great thrill to see her face, for we had always stood in awe of her,—of her austerity, her brilliance and her measured mentality. To us she had always been one on whose public services we children should never intrude. I think she must have pictured me as stricken or mutilated, for I shall never forget the first incredulous look on her face as she saw me, and then—the burst of tears. In all my life, in stress and disaster, I never remember to have seen her show such emotion.

“Be careful, with the Governor,” Molly whispered. “Don’t seem surprised. He’s in there.”

He was in the dusky library, sunk in a great leather chair, a drop-light at his side, and I noticed at once how thin and loose was the hand that lay on the magazine.

“Hello, Governor,” I said. “Dropped in to see you.”

He put out his hand and felt of me. He was gray, and the red blood had run from his face and left feeble veins under the drawn skin. The watery eyes came unsteadily up to mine and passed on to the faces of my mother and Molly, in a silent, terrifying interrogation. I guessed what was in his mind, even before he said,—

“Then, it’s closer than I thought.”

The mater stood it without flinching, but Molly swayed and went suddenly out of the room.

“Not much, Governor,” I said, in bluff cheerfulness. “We’re a tough lot. They tried hard to get me, but they couldn’t. Don’t get any such nonsense in your head. I came home because the doctors insisted upon my being fattened up before they’d let me back. Two months’ furlough.”

His fingers had closed over my wrist and, still holding it, he motioned me to be seated.

“Glad you’re here, Davy.”

“And lots to tell you, Governor. I’ve good news for you.”

“Alan?”

Now, the Governor had never been as quick as that, and I ascribe it to the uncanny prescience which comes to the very sick.

“Yes—Alan.” I drew out the cross from my pocket and laid it before him.

“Governor, you don’t need to be ashamed of Alan. He sent that to you, and told me to tell you how he’d won it.”

He looked up quickly at the mater, and his lip trembled so that we hurriedly changed the subject. I left him presently, with a promise to return, and went out into the hall, where Molly’s hand slid into mine.

“Aunt Janie?”

“Upstairs.”

“You expected me?”

“Mr. Brinsmade telephoned.”

“Who’s here?” I said suddenly. “Ben?”

“No. They’re coming at the end of the week.”

This news took a sudden dread from my heart. For that night, the night of my home-coming, I would not have to face that!

The very old change little. Aunt Janie was the same fairy godmother that I remember as a mischievous youngster: tall, thin, a little stooped, soft-voiced, gentle, living in a more measured age, aloof from the momentum of the present. Strange, silent, devoted soul: she had come into the home, asking of life only the opportunity of serving others! She had brought us up, run the house, planted the trees which had grown to stature and let the rest of the world pass her by, faithful to the one and only love of her life, the memory of the Captain of the —th Massachusetts who had died at Antietam. His sword hangs above the fireplace and his portrait is in the locket at her throat. Each night, after the rest of the house has retired, she descends and closes the doors, examines the windows, ushers the dogs into the back hall, and extinguishes the lights. Nothing has ever been able to dissuade her from this last responsibility. We argued with her, we implored her, and, finally, we came to accept with a feeling of restful gratitude the sound of her slippered step up the stairs, ushering in the night.

I am always to her about twelve years old and, I think, her favorite.

“I have prayed for you every night, Davy,” she said, when I put my arm around her. “You’ve come back.”

Possibly she had been dreaming by the fire of the other, who had not returned. I sat there, trying to answer her questions and finding it difficult. It is not easy to talk about the war. The point of view is so different. All that I have lived has been so inevitable, so part of the instincts of the man who fights, that I find it hard to comprehend the curiosity of those who look on it from the outside. To me still it is this other life that is incomprehensible and chaotic, and profoundly disturbing. When men must fight, it is better to forget.—With all the home memories thronging about me, sitting there with Aunt Janie’s hand in mine, I was thinking but one thing.

“In two months I shall return to it—the grim gamble—where those who stake their lives must lose in the end inevitably,—as all gamblers do.”

The next night Molly and I drove over to the Brinsmades’. Anne had been insistently in my thoughts all day. All my revolt from the dead weight of emptiness in life was instinctively towards her. Yet I can hardly explain to myself now the strangeness of my conduct, once in her presence, nor the motive that prompted me deliberately to wound her, as though I were seeking once for all to reject her from my life. Was it some savage instinct of honesty towards her, or a strange unhuman bitterness that entered my soul,—a resentment for the thing offered against the thing denied? I do not know. I cannot yet see clearly.

Yet I do know that I came there eagerly, with a great need of the affection of my old playmate. For what Bernoline had waked in me, the discovery of the harmonious companionship of a true woman, had left me with a new feeling of dependence. Perhaps, also, in the years of absence, I had idealized my very human little friend.

I do not know if such contradictory impulses are true to others or only to me. I imagine that few persons would understand me. Yet it is true that in the desolate loneliness against which I was struggling, I longed to find in some one, some one known and kind, some measure of that deep womanhood of the Bernoline who had gone.

When we arrived the dance was in full swing. I stood staring, unable to adjust myself to the carnival note. For months I had not looked on such a scene. For months I had forgotten the existence of this world, where color fired the imagination and music awoke disturbing needs of pleasure. Anne hurried forward, we shook hands, and—a sudden shyness came between us. Others crowded up, an old friend or two, chance acquaintances; an indiscriminate, curious crowd that, to my annoyance, insisted on treating me as a hero. I resented it all. The men offended me. I forgot I had once been like them. How unrelated to actualities they were, these men, mostly of my generation, of the generation of wasted opportunities, well-set-up, pleasing, clean-cut, but so untested, so devoid of the stamp of leadership. What could they know of the realities that were gathering on the horizon? The sobered France of Bernoline lay outside. Light and shadow, I thought. Half the world dancing, while the other half staggers through the night!

Then I thought of the leaping call to duty which, in the coming day, would startle them in the midst of their playtime. And, knowing what I know, the irony of it all stood out. How little they could divine the future or what the immutable, slow-moving course of little things could mean to each.

“My generation is the tragic generation,” De Saint Omer had often said to me. Would this, too, be our tragic generation,—a generation brought up only to play, to enjoy life gluttonously, to pursue pleasure riotously—abruptly halted in the full of the revelry and summoned to face the recurring test of the ages?

I dare say the mood was morbid and my own mental condition was accountable for much in it. Yet there was cause for irritation. My ears were filled with the chatter of silliness. I was paraded for the curiosity of empty-headed girls, outrageously dÉcolletÉ and bejeweled. Had I been afraid? Wouldn’t I please tell them about the atrocities? Had I really killed a man? What did it feel like? What sort of uniform did I wear? Was it attractive?

One disappointed young lady exclaimed:

“Oh, dear! Then you’re not an aviator. I’m just crazy to have one of those dinky little caps!”

Molly, who divined my irritation, saved the situation by drawing me away into the library, where I shook hands with Mr. Brinsmade, and presently, ashamed of my too evident ill-humor, I returned to the ballroom.

I was a little hurt, too, that Anne had not made more of my coming. I remembered her diffidence, her quick yielding to others who pressed around her, and I asked myself moodily the reason for this attitude. Was it the memory of old days, of certain things half expressed in her letters? Had her father spoken to her as he had to me? Did she expect that I would assume any rights over her? This last thought increased my irritation. I stood at the door of the conservatory, watching her as she danced.

It was not the Anne that I remembered. There was a finished charm about all she did, a grace of conscious assurance, a sure sense of her own value, that for some reason offended me. She was no longer an impulsive girl, but a brilliant and confident woman. From the tumult of her golden hair to the decolletÉ of her black jet gown, that revealed too boldly the lithe and graceful lines of her body; in the ready smile of attention, to the eyes which had the fevered sense of pleasure, she was one of them,—of a vapid, inconsequential society which, that night, offended every instinct in me.

“And the worst is, she feeds upon it,” I said to myself gloomily.

When the dance ended, she came directly to me, smiling and confident. I was quite at a loss to account for the sudden antagonism which came over me.

“I’ve saved this dance: it’s yours, Davy. If you’ll ask me?”

“I’ve forgotten how,” I said shortly, and with very bad grace. “Besides, after all this while, we might have something to say to each other.”

Now, this was not only ill-humored, but unjustified. She looked at me quickly and then, with a glance down the conservatory: “There’s a corner. Let’s sit it out, then?”

A little remorseful, I gave her my arm, saying:

“First I want to thank you for your letters. They meant a lot.”

She did not answer, suddenly serious, wondering, perhaps, at my mood. When we had come to our corner she turned and faced me.

“You have changed, Davy.”

“And I don’t think I should have known you.” She looked at me so quickly that I added, “You see—I am dazzled.”

“You do not approve?”

The truth is that I did not quite approve, and her question threw me off my guard. She must have read in my eyes, for such a hurt look came to the corners of her lips that I repeated hastily:

“My dear Anne, I am dazzled. Just think; I have come out of a gray world, and I am still blinking with astonishment. I can’t quite get used to it. You women are different from the women over there—more feminine, perhaps—but you represent something I had forgotten. Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m an old bear who comes to you, grumbling, out of the wet and the mud.”

“I see,” she said, and then, “but I do pay attention to what you say, so please be frank, as you always were, Davy.”

“I don’t think you would understand,” I began and then, struck by the absurdity of it, I broke into a laugh. “After all, it isn’t the slightest business of mine.”

“Am I any different from the rest?”

I looked into the dancing crowd.

“No, of course not.”

“Well—then?”

“Anne, you will not understand in the least; you probably will be offended, but, since you ask, I will tell you.”

But there I stopped.

“So, you’re not going to tell me?”

“No. Besides, it is a question of a point of view.”

“I wonder what you really think of me, Davy?” she said, puzzled. “Is it such a very bad opinion?”

“It is not your fault. It is the whole system,” I blurted out, led on by my growing irritation; the feeling, perhaps, of the quality of girlhood that should be there and was now gone; the eyes that had seen too much, the ears that had heard too much, the woman who knew too well her worth in the eyes of men. Perhaps it was because I needed to see her differently that I felt so strongly. “It’s you who are defrauded. There are bigger things in our women than just the pursuit of pleasure. However,” I broke off, with a sudden laugh, “I am just as absurd to be talking to you like this!”

“I wanted to go over there and nurse,” she said, looking down. “Heavens, don’t you think I’m tired of this sort of life!”

“I wonder just how sincere that is,” I said, watching her with amusement. “Service, or—adventure?”

She sat up, suddenly frowning.

“You will go back?”

“Of course.”

Suddenly a recollection smote me.

“My dear Anne, don’t mind me to-night. I dare say I’m unjust, but I’m living in another world, and this shocks me—the incomprehension of it all! Are these really men and women, and do they think war is a vaudeville show? Yes, I am out of temper; but if you’d heard the questions I’ve been asked! I beg your pardon. You were very good to write me all the time: it meant a lot, too.”

She looked up, so happily, that I began to reproach myself for my boorishness.

“What is it you don’t like in me?”

“I should like to see you—you and Molly—in the blue and white of the Red Cross, with big square hob-nailed boots, splashing around in the mud and rain, with smirches on your dainty noses!”

I had hurt her, despite my assumed levity, and I knew it. Some one came up to claim a dance, and she rose quickly, both of us glad of the interruption. The rest of the evening I spent with Mr. Brinsmade, discussing politics. Now that I write it, I am sorry that I acted as I did. Yet I am at a loss to know why.

I have seen Letty. I had steeled myself against the meeting, with a cold, panicky dread. Yet, when the actual test came, I was amazed at my self-possession. The inevitable thing is, after all, the easiest thing to do. It was so, I remember, with my first test in battle, the question of courage, which had so tortured my imagination, clarified itself with the first command. I answered it, as others did, because, I think, there was no choice.

So, the moment that the crisis arose, I knew it would have to be gone through,—that I would have to meet her eyes and his without a false movement. It had to be done, and I did it, as calmly and as naturally as though I had lied all my life. And yet, there was one awful moment for me,—and for her, too.

They had motored over for luncheon and I knew that they would arrive about one o’clock. I debated and made a dozen decisions, changing them immediately. I would wait until all the company was assembled and meet them in the confusion of the crowd. I even contemplated a morning canter, timing my ride so as to meet them on my return, and obtain some clue of the exact situation in the advantage of the hasty informality. For I felt a cold dread of the test. What had she told him? Was I to act as a chance acquaintance, or as an old friend? If I pretended ignorance, my attitude might rouse his suspicions immediately. Yet if I called her by her first name and showed the knowledge of an intimate, I might precipitate a dangerous situation. I must take my cue from her, holding myself alertly on my guard.

At the last moment, at the sound of their entering the driveway, I did the thing I had not even considered. I went out on the porch and stood forth openly to greet them, curiously calm and ready for any turn, now that it was a question of danger. Yet I loathed the dissimulation I could not escape. The next instants seemed leaden. The car drove up. I looked at Ben, steadily, controlling my glance. Fortunately, he was nearest to me.

“Hello, there, old fellow!”

“Hello, Ben,” I said, in my heart a great thankfulness.

“Bon jour, Monsieur, my brother-in-law; you have not forgotten me?”

I looked. I had to look. Letty’s shadowy eyes—calm, even a trifle amused—were on me, and no more trace of emotion than was in her voice.

“The idea! But I did not expect to meet you again like this,” I heard myself saying, with all the banality of an accomplished society fop. Had there been a look of fear or distress in her eyes I might have faltered, but the self-possession roused my anger and that carried me through. I took the gloved hand (thank heaven it was gloved) and forced some sort of a smile to my face. Fortunately the others ran out, and the first test was over.

Luncheon ended, after coffee in the conservatory, Ben said:

“Davy, let’s take a tramp around the duck pond. There are some things I want to talk over with you.”

I rose and I know that my heart leaped. I saw Letty’s little fingers work slowly up the arms of her chair and her shoulders stiffen. That was all; but I, who knew Letty, knew what terror was beneath.

We bundled up and went out over the hard ground, and, as we turned the conservatory, I saw that Letty had taken up a position by the window. I did not dare look at her, for my own heart within me stood still, while I waited his first words. Everything required me to make some reference to his wife, and yet I could not do it. My tongue refused to move.

“The mater does not like my marriage, Davy,” he said finally, after he had waited for me to begin the conversation. “Oh, it’s nothing open; she’s too loyal for that, you know; but of course, their worlds are absolutely different. Still, I feel it, and I know that Letty feels it.”

“Yes, I suppose that would be so,” I said, forced to answer.

Again, he seemed to wait for something I should say and when I remained silent, he dropped into a silence, too. Presently, he began to whistle to himself, and so we came to the duck pond. The cabin we had built as children still stood, sagging and covered with moss.

“I can’t get Rossie out of my mind,” I said suddenly. “Remember the day he stepped into the hornet’s nest and had to dive into the pond?”

We stood on the rustic bridge, leaning over the rail, the white, solemn ducks waddling below us.

“Davy, will you answer me a direct question?”

I felt the moment approaching.

“Fire away.”

“Did you ever write back anything against Letty to the family?”

“What!”

He repeated the question, while for me the tension relaxed. Still, this might be only a preliminary.

“Ben, I have never written a word home mentioning your wife one way or the other.”

“You knew her well in Paris, didn’t you?”

“We were in the same crowd, yes.”

“Weren’t you a little bit in love with her at one time?”

“Frankly, yes; we all were.”

I had given my answers readily, for each question I had foreseen.

“Do you know, Davy,” he said, looking me in the face, “that I am beginning to think that you, too, do not approve.”

“That’s a hard question to answer, but since you’ve put it,—here goes. There’s been something closer between us, Ben, than other brothers. I think I would make any sacrifice for you and your happiness. I’m not thinking of Letty; I’m thinking of you. I know her world and I know yours. Her world is a world that takes everything lightly and is not bruised by disillusionments. You are different. If you should be unhappy, it would break you.”

“You don’t know her as I know her,” he broke in.

“No—of course not.” For a moment the hideous irony of it escaped me. Had it been any other man, I would have been willing to convince myself that Letty, like a thousand other women of her class, was capable, once her love awakened, of absolute loyalty and devotion. But did she really love him, beyond a caprice of the emotions? That was what I did not know.

“Ben, you know that I am always loyal, no matter what happens. If it were a question of your good, old fellow, I would give my right arm.”

I held out my hand, and waited. If he could not bring himself to take it—but he did—though after some hesitation! The first test, thank God, was over. He could not have suspected and done that!

What had we said to each other? What could I have said differently? I was caught in the iron grip of circumstance, and every word was dictated to me. I knew my brother, and I was afraid,—coldly, mortally afraid. Such men are capable of murder.

Then I told him of Bernoline. Some instinct warned me to do so, and the way his face cleared and the old affection returned confirmed my suspicions. Beneath all he had said (or not said) was something brooding. Only, in that case, the situation was more than ever fraught with danger.

We went back over the old days, when we four were the Littledale boys,—Big Dale, Little Dale, Tiny Dale, and Rossie, who was no Dale at all. With the clearing vista of years, I saw my brother as he was, and I was astonished to find in my new estimate a sense of personal superiority. He felt it, too, for once or twice he said something which showed me that he had a feeling of having stood still.

I told him of having seen Alan.

“I never liked him,” he said, without compromise, “and there’s no use pretending; but I’m glad he made good.” He turned to me, laying his hand on my arm for the first time. “Davy, there’s not been much luck in the family, has there? We’re out of existence—shot to pieces. And the other time doesn’t seem so very far ago,—the time when we romped and played like good, wholesome puppies. Rossie gone—Alan drifting about the world—you crawling back by the skin of your teeth—I suppose there’s no use arguing with you about your going back?”

“None.”

“Well, if we don’t wake up and get into it, I’m going, myself,” he blurted out. “The mater, of course, is all for pacifism, but as for the Governor, I believe he’s just hanging on until we declare war.”

“I believe so, too.”

“Must seem strange to you, here.”

“Yes—strange.”

We each wished the interview over, I felt. With all our attempts at restoring the old intimacy, there was a constraint on us we couldn’t shake off.

The first thing I saw, as we went back, was Letty’s face at the window of the conservatory. It was only a look, for she rose immediately and shifted her seat, but that look I shall never efface from my memory. She was no coward. Indeed, I have never known any woman with more of the reckless, devil-may-care attitude towards danger, but that vital hour, when she sat there and wondered, must have tried her soul.

When we entered she was consummately at ease. She did not appear to notice our coming, but once I caught her glancing furtively in the mirror, watching Ben.

I went on upstairs and there, in the old playroom, the tension I had been under snapped and my nerves went bad and, as I was doubled up, shivering and shaking, Molly found me. It must have frightened her out of her wits, to come upon me without warning, for by the time the spell was over, she was in my arms, weeping her heart out.

“Oh, Davy, you aren’t going back, like that!”

“Nonsense! It’s almost over—only, once in a while—when something excites me.”

“You’ve been talking to Ben,” she said, straightening up. “Davy, I don’t like her! And, what’s more, Ben isn’t happy!”

What could I say? I couldn’t look into my dear little sister’s clean eyes and counsel her to accept Letty with an open heart.

I went back presently and joined the company. I knew that in public I must pay my brother’s wife some attention. To avoid her would be confession. She had quite recovered by this time and was her own malicious self again.

“Do you know, David, that you have neglected me shamefully?” she said aloud. “You were more gallant in Paris.”

I made some lame excuse. I do not remember what I muttered and, avoiding any intimacy, turned the conversation to common acquaintances. I cannot remember a more hideously disagreeable hour in all my life. Not that there was left any flicker of the old infatuation. The image of Bernoline had cleansed the old fever. I looked at Letty and, looking at her, wondered that I could meet her eyes without a tremor. She felt this, I know, and did not like the sensation for, despite the danger of the situation, her voice at times took on the old caressing tone and her eyes sparkled with the desire to entice. Our conversation was necessarily banal in the presence of others. It was not until they started to go that I found myself alone with her on the porch.

“I hope to God you did it because you love him,” I said, without premeditation.

“And if there was any other reason, Davy?” she said softly.

“He is quite capable of killing you. I give you a solemn warning.”

Her fur slipped to the ground and, as I recovered it, she said aloud:

“Thank you, my brother-in-law—and you will be sociable, and run over?”

Ben had come up as we were speaking, but her quick ear had detected his approach.

The interview has left me quite in the dark. Why had she done it? Is she in love with Ben? Is there any change in the inner woman? Can she be held wholly and loyally by a man with whom she cannot trifle, before whom she is genuinely afraid? Was it the dramatic revenge that tempted her? Or was it just the instinct of social self-preservation, the fetich of that great god, Respectability, which dominates all such women? For, protest as they may, no matter how they rage against conventionalities, flout them openly or secretly, in the heart of each lawless woman, whether her situation be sheltered or ruthlessly exposed, is the slumbering veneration of the thing called respectability. Once passed the thirties, it becomes an obsession. Perhaps, after all, it was the safe haven of respectability that Letty sought, at the end of a few adventurous years. Perhaps, it was a combination of all these motives. But, of one thing I am certain,—Letty is afraid of her husband.

December

My first Sunday has come and gone. All day I have been looking at myself and at my home with a new revelation of values. Strangely enough, I never before perceived its significance. France and another civilization have suddenly thrown it into a clearer relief, and all the while the words of Bernoline return to my memory. What a contrast!

At eleven o’clock we departed to Sunday worship: Ben and my mother to the Unitarian Church; Aunt Janie to the Congregational, with father; and Molly and myself to a Presbyterian service, accompanied by the servants. No scene is more typical of what we are: a group of individualists bound together by mutual tolerance. Are we a home, I wonder, or simply a shelter over a group of lodgers for this night or for many nights? Of course, it is not fair to take us as typical of America. Yet we are typical of one thing,—a developed type of traditional New England. This morning, as I sat in the old pew, with Molly by my side, I thought with a little tightening of my heart that even in the coming days of suspense when I go back to the front my family will not be even united in its sorrow.

The whole contrast between our two civilizations, French and American, is here,—in the family. Thinking on this to-night, I understand Bernoline better. The sense of duty that dominates her life and makes sacrifice so easily possible is the sense of family solidarity. Love of the mother, respect for the authority of the father, companionship with the children,—it is a France in miniature, and that greater love of country is but a tradition of family pride.

I do not think we have this strongly disciplined sense of duty nor this unquestioning acceptance of sacrifice. How often children are but accidents and sometimes strangers under the same roof. In my own case, what is my father to me? Do I know him as well as I know the boy I roomed with at school, I wonder? There is hardly an opinion we share or an outlook on life which we could understand together. He has never really discussed anything with me, as though instinctively he divined I would take an opposite view.

I don’t say what should be. Yet to-night, perhaps because the sense of loss of a dear and necessary presence accents my own loneliness, I can visualize another type of home—the home of Bernoline—and wonder.... After all, there is something that touches the heart strings in the thought of the generations succeeding each other, standing for the same ideal of conduct, the same loyalty to a conception of state and faith, passing down the same standard from father and son and guarding it in reverence! Governments change as I change my hat; waves of paganism, materialism and doubt come and pass; but so long as the family faith is untouched, France will be found equal to its past. Order, stability, discipline,—the sunken cornerstone of the national consciousness are all in this conception, and I think to understand this is to understand why there was no miracle in France’s answer in the month of August, 1914.

Yet, I have no doubt now of America’s answer when the call is clear: only we will respond from different motives. If the sense of duty is not developed here by old traditions, there is a man’s pride in doing what free men should do. It will be a great voluntary impulse, something that has come down to us from our strong, free, battling ancestors of Jutland, of those who sang of heroic deaths and defied the tempest and the perils of the forest, who never bowed to king or conqueror,—the fierce dissenting strain of Saxon manhood. I am not afraid of this heritage when stirred by the test of war;—but in peace?

What is the basic impulse, then, that moves through our Anglo-Saxon civilization? It is the relation between man and woman, and this conception of love as heroic is of the origins of our race. Christianity did not exalt women with us. In the days of the Berserkers and the sea-rovers, man and woman clove together in single partnership and kept their faith. So, to-day, the children in the house are but waiting the touch of destiny, free agents, held by no family tradition, impatient for life to open to them. Under all the sentimentalism of our literature and art there is this abiding instinct, the need of love that shall come as a directing purpose. Each child, in the imagination of boy or girl, holds it as his right to give his heart where it pleases him, no matter what the wrench or what the sacrifice, as the beginning and the meaning of life. In this instinct to determine our own existence as children in our father’s house, we remain fierce and rebellious, as our Saxon heroes who served, but feared neither their gods nor their masters. We do not inherit our homes: we create them.

My little sister, who hangs on my arm and comes to me with her confidences, knows deep in her heart that this is not her home. To-morrow she will look in the eyes of some stranger and, despite all our entreaties, pleadings, warnings, put her hand in his and follow him into the outer world. No wonder that we have colonized the earth, when each of us has in him the soul of the pioneer! And now that I have written this, I think I understand why I cannot do what would be so easy for a Latin to do. Marriage to us is not a formula, but a need of our hidden spiritual self, the meaning of our existence. No, I can never turn to Anne with a divided memory, not even in the instinct of self-preservation!

Everything separates me from Bernoline. In our basic conceptions of life, she in her clear outlook of faith, and I in my driven questionings; she in her unquestioned acceptance of duty; I in my rebellion against aught which means the immolation of self on the altar of convention. We are as distant as though she stood at the threshold of a hundred years and I at the close. A civilization and an age intervene between us. Yet why, knowing this, despite instinct and will, have we been powerless to turn away? Is it, I wonder, because the thing is so utterly hopeless, forbidden, destructive, that the instinct of Eden draws us irresistibly to our destiny?

Yesterday I read in Maeterlinck’s “Life of The Bee” that strange and terrible chapter of the Nuptial Flight, which in its fearful mystery of love and death reveals to us the mysterious origin in nature’s purpose of our human seeking. How little we foresee in the first quickening ecstasy of our beings the destiny of tragedy towards which we move! How little, in that one clear, untroubled afternoon, when all the beating frenzy in me grew still and peaceful with the knowledge that I was loved, did I divine that the rapture which held me was but the prelude to life denied and the ache of happiness remembered. Mystery of good and evil! How often this thought returns across the vista of my life!

The thing I cannot struggle against is silence,—this blank wall of silence that I cannot seize and yet which fastens about me and shuts out all hope. If I could but see her, talk to her, write to her! But between that and nothingness is my promise. Yesterday, in my loneliness and rebellion, I wrote her,—a wild, incoherent letter, imploring her to release me of a promise beyond my strength to keep. I sealed it and addressed it, refusing to listen to anything but the fever and the revolt that burned through every fiber of my being. I rushed out of the house and down to the village, with only one thought,—to end the suspense, to be done with my conscience by an irrevocable act. And then I came back, slowly, with lagging steps, beaten, the letter destroyed. Why? Because, in all the checkered path of my life, there is one memory inviolate. No matter what I have done, and bitterly regretted; no matter what I may come to in some middle-aged sophistry,—I once have reached an ideal of myself. This ideal that she, Bernoline, created of me can never be lowered. Whatever in its tyranny this memory demands of me, I shall in the end obey.

I remember an incident in my boyhood. A little Airedale called Frazzles had become so wild that a conference of the powers had decided on sending her away to a veterinary. The sentence was duly carried out, and Frazzles was deported in the last days of autumn, while we children howled our grief in the nursery. The next we heard of her, she had escaped and taken to the woods some twenty miles away, where she was living like a wild animal. The winter passed and then the spring, and one day Frazzles came, scratching at the door, weary, savage, and caked with mud. The door opened, she flew to her old post under the blue sofa by the fireplace. Six months had passed,—outcast from home and humanity, yet, at the hour when the tea-cakes were brought in, she crept out of her hiding; place and lay at the feet of Aunt Janie, just as though it were yesterday.

At times I feel strangely akin to that little bedraggled outcast. I have fallen back so easily into the familiar routine that all the other life seems incredible. Have I ever really lived in the wet and slime of the trenches, pillowed on a foul blanket; and is it possible that in a few short weeks the moving finger of fate will return and touch me over again? It is so far off, so obscure, fainter than a dying echo; only the memory of Bernoline is vivid and acute with the power to pain.

Against this memory I struggle day and night. There are times when I combat it fiercely in the instinct of self-preservation, when I try to reach down into my heart and tear out the thing that aches. At others, I yield to a fool’s paradise and delude myself with impossible solutions that deceive me but for an hour.

Yesterday, in my desperation, I went over to the Brinsmades’. I went, deliberately, to see Anne. Why, I do not know. For Anne, I think, loves me, and, despite all my reason, all my will to escape from my destiny, I do not, I cannot love her as she deserves to be loved. Perhaps, if I had not met Bernoline—

I went, hesitating and undecided. I came away convinced. Whatever comes, I care this much for my boy-hood’s companion; I shall never come to her with a memory between us.

It was a morning when Bernoline’s presence had been so acutely near me that there was no escape from the blank impossibility of the future. Did I go to seek some strange, healing comfort in the knowledge of another’s suffering,—even as I suffered without possibility of hope? The instinct of love is, I suppose, so fiercely primitive in us that under its tyranny we are subjected to some moral atavism. All the primitive passions that have swayed us from the dawn of time are suddenly let loose and, with the leaping impulse towards possession, comes the instinct to hate violently or to desire fiercely the joy that comes from the feeling of being able to cause pain, to turn against another all that we suffer from the one we love. Girl or courtesan, I have seen women pour out treasures of sacrifice to one man and at the same time show themselves savagely, incomprehensibly pitiless to an unwelcome lover.

Not that all this was in my thought. Far from it. I went, brooding and restless, without impulse but to escape from myself. I drove over after luncheon, after telephoning my coming.

She came down immediately and at my first look I felt a guilty feeling, yet one of some compensating happiness.

“There’s a house party, but I got rid of them,” she said, giving me both her hands. “Do you know, Davy, you have waited a long, long time to come.”

“I have wanted to, many times.”

“Really, and honestly?” she said, looking me in the eyes.

“Of course.”

My heart smote me as I met her glance. One word from me had brought back the comrade of other days. From her hair to the stout walking boots, all artifice had been so evidently offered up on the altar of my criticism that I could not help saying:

“Now I remember an old friend.”

She laughed at this and her eyes sparkled, but there was a retort on her tongue.

“It’s quite hopeless to try and please you,—and I who fondly believed I was going to make such an impression on you with my grand manner!”

“Now, Miss Flattery, you don’t take me in like that. There were others present, and—you didn’t know I was coming.”

“Father told me,” she said abruptly. “Let’s get out of this hothouse atmosphere. How about a ramble into the glen? There’s not enough snow to bother us. Shall we?”

“Agreed.”

Well bundled up, we struck out over the frozen swamps for the solitudes of the hills, and as we went a curious diffidence fell between us.

“David, it’s you who are the stranger,” she said suddenly. “You are changed, much changed.”

“In what way?”

“Your eyes are terribly critical of things you don’t like. You—you rather intimidate me. Please be a little kind in your judgments.”

“I am not aware—”

“Yes, you have changed. Before, I often wondered how you would turn out—you might have gone so many ways. You have been tested and you have found yourself. Only, Davy, in finding yourself, I think you have forgotten a little the way you have gone and are apt to be without much indulgence towards others.”

Now, the directness of this analysis and its point quite startled me.

“Do you think I am like that?” I said, wondering.

She nodded decisively, twice.

“And dreadfully direct. You can’t conceal what you feel.”

A memory returned, and, also, a possible explanation.

“What I said that first night hurt you?”

“Terribly.”

“You attach too much importance to a chance remark.”

“Don’t.”

I stopped short in my lumbering explanation.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she said, looking at me with a little frown above her eyes. “Davy, in the old days there was nothing but absolute honesty between us—no nonsense. I have known many men since you went; naturally, some who attracted me,—one or two, very much—”

“Naturally,” I said, but, to my surprise, with a certain instinctive resentment.

“But no one else to whom I could talk, frankly and openly, as I always did with you. Don’t change that, because”—she hesitated—“because, Davy, you can help me to see clearer in many ways, and—and I shall always be to you the one person to whom you can tell anything. Davy, memories, the real memories, I think, are the things to hold on to in this world.”

Her words went through me like a knife, so near were they to my own fate. It was all that I could do to fight back the telltale moodiness I felt rising in my face, for I knew her eyes were on me.

“I really need to talk to you, Davy,” she said, when I did not answer, and there was such a plaintive note in her voice that, to cover my unease, I held out my hand and said with an appearance of bluffness:

“All right: the old alliance is renewed.”

“Absolute honesty?”

“So help me.”

“Then—you were disappointed when you saw me again?”

“Yes.”

“You thought I had become superficial, vacillating?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I am,” she said, to my surprise. “I didn’t know it. You gave me a shock, but you made me realize it. You still think so?”

“My dear Anne,” I said carefully. “How can you be otherwise? Everything is against you. What in life is real to you, except pleasure? You’ve been shown nothing else in life—granted it isn’t your fault. You have been cheated out of something bigger. Other women will never notice it; thank heaven, you do. Now, to explain what I felt on coming back out of the other world. Before, I don’t suppose it ever would have occurred to me. I took the American man’s point of view—from the best of motives, I grant you—our attitude of chivalry towards you. But, over there, something else has come to us, a bigger conception of you, an ideal of service. That is the difference in point of view.”

“But what am I to do?” she said, shrinking under the directness of the opinion she had invited.

“Heavens, you’re making me talk like a confounded, self-righteous prig,” I exclaimed, with a sudden realization, “and God knows I’m far from that.”

“No, no! Say what you mean. You, you do not quite trust my sincerity, do you?”

“Not quite.”

“Why?”

“Because, well, because I think you are inclined to dramatize your moods,” I said lightly. “I think you are colored by the wish to please whomever you happen to be with. We all are. But I wonder if to-night, when the guests, the dreadful guests who bore you so, return, you will find time so heavy on your hands?”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t laugh at me!” she cried, flaring up with more show of feeling than I had seen.

“Forgive me. I won’t do that again,” I said contritely. “Do you really care what I think?”

“You know I do.”

Her answer left me awkwardly floundering, until suddenly she burst out:

“All you say is true: I do change, I do drift; what I feel is true one moment will be different the next. But, Davy, I realize it! Do you think I want to go on this way? I do what I do because I am restless, just—just to do something. You think I am superficial: I am, horribly so. You think I crave pleasure—excitement: I do. You think I like to play with emotions: I do. All that’s true, and I know it.”

“I wonder if you know what harm you do?” I said, not quite convinced.

“What do you mean?”

“Anne, I sometimes think good women do more harm in this world than bad. They, poor devils, do so little harm: they are so obvious. A moment’s madness, and we throw ourselves violently back from them. To leave them is to forget them. But you—you others—the pain you inflict is given unconsciously.”

“It doesn’t last,” she said.

“How do you know? Tell me one thing, Anne, because it has always interested me. You didn’t need to tell me there had been many men in your life: have you ever felt any responsibility toward them? I mean this: have you ever stopped to question your right to attract them, to awaken their love, even when you knew there was no interest on your part?”

“Why, no, of course not.”

“Probably not; such things are unconscious—an instinct. And of a dozen men who come to love you, eight or ten forget quickly. But some don’t, do they?”

“No, that’s true.”

“That’s what I mean by the harm good women do, unconsciously. You would not give pain willingly, I am sure, and yet I doubt if even you realize the sorrow that has come from you. You may say it’s all in the game. It is: but I go back to what I said—that often a girl like yourself, like Molly, with everything to charm and attract, leaves wounds behind that it takes years to heal. That’s the strange thing about it; a friendship that is precious in the life of both, inevitably, by some hidden spark of impulse, a sudden need of the soul, is transformed into love on the part of one. Then, what happens? Not only is the friendship taken out of the lives of both, but to one that first joy of human contact becomes emptiness and bitterness. It is not only of you I am thinking, but of my own sister. When I saw Molly again, so radiant, so lovely in her unconscious youth, so eager for life to begin, I could not help thinking that wherever she went, so lightly and so joyfully, she would leave behind her many bruises and aches. Then, a few real men will come to love her profoundly, and without hope, and know the daily, hourly slavery to a hopeless longing.”

“It is of yourself you are talking now, Davy?”

I stopped, thunderstruck. In my earnestness I had quite forgotten how much my own personal feelings must have given warmth to my statement.

“Of course, I did not expect that in all this time you wouldn’t have fallen in love,” she said. She stood, looking down. “It’s a queer world.” The next moment she had started up the ravine, swinging from rock to rock, with a challenge to me to follow. I hurried after her, vexed at my own indiscreet revelations and seriously alarmed at her reckless flight.

“Be careful. You’ll slip and turn your ankle. Anne, you’re crazy!”

“Nonsense, never slip!”

She darted up, heedless of my cautions, and when finally I reached the top, quite out of breath, she was watching me with a malicious smile from her seat in the little observatory.

“Come up here and take a peep at the view. A fine soldier, to be out-distanced by a woman!”

“That’s hardly fair,” I said, laughing and relieved to pass from the dangerous seriousness of a moment ago. “Give me a few more weeks.”

Instantly she was contrite.

“How thoughtless of me. Forgive me!”

“Very little to forgive. By George, that’s fine.” The valley lay below us, blanketed with a sheen of snow that in great spaces lifted occasionally for a glimpse of green; black-blue shadows in the far hills, and faint, transparent reds in the bared branches against the sky; the whole tremulously still, a winter cameo cut in frozen silences.

“Do you want to go back?” she said at last.

“I shall answer you as I answered your father; honestly, no.”

“But then, why? Surely, after what you’ve been through, in your condition, and it would be so easy to arrange—”

“Exactly; but you, as my friend—would you want me to stay?”

She did not answer.

“Would you?”

“It is not your war.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“It is the point,” she said, in sudden rebellion. “No, I don’t want you to go back. It’s absurd, unnecessary, quixotic!”

Poor Anne. She little knew what harm she had done by that one little outburst. I remembered Bernoline, and, when next I looked at Anne, I saw only a child.

“And when we get into it? What then, young lady?” I said, laughing. “Are you going to arrange everything to suit yourself?”

“Davy, if you knew how you hurt me when you take that tone,” she said, shrinking back. “I am not a child.”

“Then, Anne, you must face life as it comes to you. We can’t make it as we want it, but our kind, of all the world, should never dodge a responsibility.”

“I always show you my worst side,” she said, shaking her head, and presently, leading the way down the ravine again, but this time more deliberately, she began to chatter lightly of old memories without an approach to intimacy, until the moment came for my departure.

“David, have you still such a bad opinion of me?” she said, seeking the answer in my eyes.

“I never have had.”

“Funny: I am not at all myself with you. It’s because I’m so used to looking up to you, I suppose.”

“Because I am such an old bear, you mean.”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean. I’m very much of a woman now—more than you can ever imagine—and quite capable of determining my life for myself. And I know what I want. And, David—don’t make one mistake.”

“What?”

“I’m not in love with you.”

Before I could recover myself, she had skipped up the steps. And so ended this strange interview. Not being myself in love with her, I could estimate more deliberately the value of her last words, and yet, knowing in my own experience all the wound to her pride that the fear of my divining her true motives would bring, I think her last defiance brought me into closer sympathy with my old playmate.

When I reached home, Ben and Letty were there,—come for the Christmas holidays.

“David!”

As I was hurrying through the hall, she called me to her, where she was warming herself by the fireplace.

“You here?” I said, feigning surprise.

“B’rrr! You are cordial as an open door. They said you were at the Brinsmades’.”

“Yes.”

“Monsieur fait des conquÊtes?”

I shrugged my shoulders and disdained a reply, which always irritated her.

“So you are in love—again, David?” she said, with her provoking smile.

“Does this amuse you?”

“You forget that I remember the signs.”

At this I stared at her in such futile anger that she laughed to herself, well content.

“But I quite approve! An excellent match for you!”

Then she deliberately dropped her muff, and as I stooped to pick it up, she leaned over and pinched my ear.

“Have you forgotten that, mon ami?”

The muff was scented with the perfume I knew. I came up angry and baffled.

“My dear Davy, if you are not going to pay me some attention, you may as well go right to your brother and tell all. The situation is evident.”

I left her in a vindictive, smoldering rage,—in one of those moods of violence into which she had thrown me a hundred times, out of her malicious pleasure. Does she love me or hate me? Which is the explanation? As for myself, the anger she awakened frightened me, for before I was confident of my utter indifference. Is it possible that by some baneful trick of habit there can remain a vestige of the old tyranny over my senses? It is unthinkable! If only I could go to Ben! But no, that is impossible! And for a week, while we three are under the same roof, this hideous comedy must go on!

As I go back over my interview with Anne, I am somewhat puzzled. Why was I so brutally direct? I should like to feel that it was an honest effort to repel her: yet I wonder if I am as honest as all that and if underneath is not the intuitive knowledge that just such an attitude is what would draw her closer to me? How difficult it is to know our real motives!

This morning, in my mail, a note.

David:

Don’t take what I say too literally. Of course, I would never do anything to keep you from going back,—don’t think I am that weak, sentimental type of woman. But I might rebel at your going,—and that is very different, so long as you keep it to yourself,—which I didn’t. If you don’t think me quite hopeless, come in to-night for dinner.

Anne

I went, if for nothing but to escape from the situation here. Mr. Brinsmade was there, and we had a long talk on our prospects of getting into the war, which he feels is certain. Anne sat by, listening, but studiously avoided any opportunity for a tÊte-À-tÊte.

I am less sure of my attitude towards her. Last night, with the mental eagerness which Brinsmade always wakes in me, there, by the great fireplace, watching her camped by her father’s knee—young, ardent, desirable—a doubt came into my mind, I again saw my life as it might be and, frankly, I was tempted. Fortunately, Mr. Brinsmade had the tact not to broach the subject again. After all, decisions are futile now. In a few short weeks I shall be returning to France and there, perhaps, will be the decision to all my perplexities. To-night, when I suddenly stop at that realization, I am inclined to break out into laughter. The irony of my plaguing myself with questions now!

And yet it is torture: this memory of a few days’ utter happiness, of one afternoon’s clear belief in the future! I try to escape from it, but there is no escape, least of all in the direction of Anne. That is not fair to her or what might come. I sit long hours in Aunt Janie’s parlor, pulling at my pipe before the fire and staring into the coals. Of all the family she understands me best, and I talk or remain silent, according to my mood. Yet when I look at her, and realize the shadow of a life to which she has been dedicated—everything denied, repressed, throttled—I spring up in revolt and go tramping over the countryside;—that life is beyond my strength!

Christmas and the holidays have passed and certain incidents stand out vividly. My own personal perplexities have somehow receded into the healing background. Our sorrows destroy us or themselves, some one has said. There is a protecting instinct, perhaps, in the soul as well as in the body. The healing fluids of the eye isolate the intruding cinder, the membranes of the body wrap around the splinter which penetrates the flesh; so, insensibly, memory drops its curtains over our grief, until the pain is lessened, and in fainter perception, we can bear to look upon it. To the first poignant wrench of my longing for Bernoline has come a sort of healing incredulity. Is it a mood or an achieved attitude? Have I definitely risen to a new philosophy of acceptance, or will the old malaria of loneliness and emptiness return when I am most sure of equanimity? These are things I do not know.

I know only this: that of late I have been able to get out of myself, to return to an objective point of view towards life: that the old desire to play my part is new again; that I am not aloof but vibrantly a part of my day and my nation, thrilled with the sudden rising anger at temporizing that is sweeping the country,—a great, mounting, climactic storm of wrath. The hour is coming, I know, when America will show to the world and to itself the majesty of its indignant pride.

Christmas night has always been open cheer with us and, with me home, the house was crowded with friends from the countryside and the village. They came in sleighs and cutters, with jingling bells, wrapped in voluminous scarfs, stamping in the great hallway, eager for the good cheer of a gathering which took them back to the rollicking days of Merrie England. Threescore, at least, and for every man, woman and child some present on the old tree. For we at Littledale have a custom that I don’t remember seeing elsewhere.

In the back of the house, between the two wings, is a stone-flagged court, and in the midst of it a splendid cedar. It was Rossie’s idea as a child to convert it into the Christmas symbol. So, promptly at ten, being well-fed from the buffet of roast pig, fatted ducks, great crisp turkeys, mountainous dishes of vegetables, pies and cakes to stagger the imaginations of the youngest eyes, every one bustles into coats and wraps and crowds out into the court. There, the green tree is ablaze with lanterns and tinsel wreaths, with a magnificent Santa Claus to distribute the presents, with appropriate hits at the idiosyncrasies of each recipient. The fiddles strike up from the dining room. We join hands and go circling round the tree, singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” until every one is exhausted from laughter and panting for breath, while the dogs go barking, in and out, frantic with the spirit of good cheer.

This year, on account of my father’s health, we were in some doubt. But the Governor, like the fine old trump that he is, insisted that nothing be changed and watched the celebration from an upper window. The rest of the night was given up to square dances with old man Carpenter calling out the figures from the midst of the village fiddles. I wondered, watching the Governor, if he would see another such Christmas, or, for that matter, how many would dance so light-heartedly again. The accent of the evening was absolute democracy,—every one privileged to dance with every one else,—without introductions, and much scrambling under the mistletoe.

Jenny, my first flame, was there,—a buxom matron, with three ravenous youngsters. And once the hazards of a quadrille brought us all together, Jenny, Ben, Letty, Anne, and myself. In one figure, Ben and I being opposite each other, Letty was at my side and Jenny at his. I looked up at him and wondered if he remembered the day, twelve years ago, when he saved me from utterly throwing away my life. And the irony of it all,—that I should have been away and powerless, when I should have stood in his stead. Letty’s behavior throughout the evening was outrageous, and Ben’s face grew blacker and blacker. She flirted openly with several young friends of Molly’s and deliberately with me, whenever she could bring it before the notice of Anne. Of course, knowing her of old, I realized that we were but the pretexts; that her real object was to torture Ben himself. And this alarmed me, for I saw already the progression towards tragedy.

“Letty, let me warn you again,” I said to her, as we were dancing. She had come to me herself, out of pure malice, and to refuse would have been an open affront.

“Go on, Davy mio,” she said, under her breath.

“When Ben’s hands close about your little throat—they won’t let go,” I said savagely, “and I don’t know that they ought to.”

“David, I am bored—so bored!”

“I am not joking.”

“Anything for excitement,” she said, with her slow smile. “La petite Anne is Éprise. Be quite attentive, Davy. You’ll land her. Now you are angry, but it seems so natural to have you angry at me!”

“Since when have you danced in public?” I said, unwilling to show her my disgust and my rage. “And why now?”

“It isn’t fair to the man, do you think?” she said softly.

I stopped abruptly. What devil had made her say this I don’t know: but she was right. I have danced with hundreds of women, and never been conscious of what I held in my arms,—until that dance with Letty.

“Thank you; I must see to something,” I said, leaving her abruptly, and making a pretext of examining the tree, I went out into the cold air, past the lanterned courtyard, and down the crunching way to the old wooden bridge by the duck pond.

What a hideous situation, and how my whole being revolted at the part I was forced to play! It is at such moments that the old instinct of superstition that lies dormant in each of us comes insistently back. I know that in my old worldly wisdom I have scoffed at Sunday-school morality and have seen as many sinners succeed as fail. Yet at such moments when fate overtakes me I go back to my childhood terror of pulpit thunderings and feel the avenging justice of the Old Testament at my back. It is no use repeating to myself that other men have done much worse than I have done and, the memory dropping away from them, become pillars of respectability. I feel the ominous pursuit of consequences and hear the bitter cry of conscience,—“The wages of sin is death.” Perhaps there are moments so personal in our lives that all morality returns into one individual experience, and right and wrong are momentarily but our superstitious estimate of cause and effect as it suddenly grips us.

Even as, in the bitter nausea of enforced hypocrisy, I stood there in the darkness, a prey to my remorse, I heard a step and knew that my brother was seeking me out.

“Is that you, Ben?”

“I saw you leave.”

Then he had been watching us. The tone of his voice warned me. Again, I should have to lie.

“Couldn’t stand it; had to break away.”

“Why?”

It was black as pitch—thank heaven for that—but I felt as though through the obscurity his hot eyes were watching the tortured agitation on my face.

“It’s not in my mood,” I said rapidly. “Should think you’d understand. My God—with the Governor there—the thought of going back in a few weeks—of all that is coming to us—this dancing and merry-making before—”

“David, are you lying to me?”

His hand closed over my wrist, and the phrase died on my lips.

“Ben!”

“For God’s sake, tell me the truth! What was there between you and Letty?”

What would I not have given to have bared my conscience to him; but it was not my life alone that was at stake. There was the good name of the family. For a moment, I felt lost in a sickly weakness, and hideous possibilities seemed to strike at me out of the darkness. Then I recovered myself. I began to act. I acted as I had never done before in my life. I caught him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Ben, don’t be a damn fool!”

“Is that your answer?”

“Answer? How can I answer a crazy man? Do you think if there had been, I should ever have come back here? Do you?” In my emotion my hands cut into his shoulders and, driven on by the force of circumstances, I said fiercely, “No, I don’t approve of your marriage. You are not happy. I knew you wouldn’t be. Women like Letty never become real wives. Not that she will do anything she oughtn’t to do—she is too cold-blooded—she loves her little self more than she can ever love anybody else—but the breath of her life is flattery and adoration. God knows, I never wanted to tell you this—but you’ve forced it out of me.”

“You’re telling me nothing new.”

“In heaven’s name, why did you do it, Ben?”

He started back at some thought suggested by this outburst of mine.

“You know something about her, then—over there in Paris?”

I caught myself. Every word, I felt, was dangerous, and anything I might say a trap.

“Ben, do you realize we are discussing your wife?” I said slowly. “Do you realize how impossible this conversation is?”

“Damn it! You’re beating around the bush. You’re my brother, and I have a right to know.”

“Letty is no different from the women of her set, here or over there; no better, no worse. You have chosen to take one of them for your wife. If you ask me has there ever been any public scandal attached to her name, I can say at once, no—absolutely not.”

“You’re telling me the truth?”

“I am.”

“Thank God, at least for that!”

“As for the rest, I repeat, I don’t believe Letty has any heart to give to you or to any one else. That may be cold comfort, but I believe it.”

“If only I believed it!”

“You can. She is a child playing with toys. She must have her toys, to play with and to break. Just at present, because she sees she can torture you, she is amusing herself, just as a child would with a woolly lamb—twisting its legs. Whether she flirts with me or with a dozen men, she’s not thinking of us; it’s you.”

“Don’t—”

“Ben, there’s only one thing to do: grin and bear it, or—”

“Well?”

“Separate and divorce,” I said, and no sooner had I said it than hope flared up in me,—the one hope of ending a ghastly situation.

“It’s not so simple.”

“Do you care—still?”

He stood at my side without an answer.

“Ben, remember one thing.”

“The family—oh, yes—I hope to God I can remember it,” he broke out. “Davy, sometimes I see so red that—that—”

“Stop talking like a fool,” I said angrily. “You’ve chosen to do what you’ve done. You didn’t marry to make a home or with the hope of having children, did you? You married Letty, as half the men we know marry—just in a blind instinct for possession. Now, whatever happens, however you work it out, you’re not going to do anything to disgrace the family. Keep that in mind, Ben.”

“I wish to God I could go back with you and get into it.”

“Why not?”

“If I don’t—I don’t know what’ll happen,” he said, very low. “Davy, it’s all very well for you to stand here and say what you say. You’ve got a cold head. Do you think a man in my position is normal? Do you think that he knows what he is doing half the time? I tell you, Davy, I’m afraid—afraid.”

My mind was made up on that instant.

“Ben, you know I’d do anything in the world for you, don’t you? Will you trust me to make the decision for you?”

“Yes,” he said, after a moment.

“You are coming back with me.” I hesitated, and then added: “For I’m afraid, too.”

So, it is agreed that we go off to France together, though nothing is to be said of it for the present. That is three weeks ahead; much can happen before then. Will he hold to his determination? Will he find the strength to wrench himself free of the slavery of the senses,—for that is all there is to it? I don’t know. I can only wait, fearful of the issue. I can only hope and pray.

Letty, I knew, would have noticed our absence and be watching for our return, and though I didn’t see her when we came into the hall, I was certain that somewhere in the crowd her sharp, unquiet eyes were on us. Late in the evening she came to me as I had expected.

“Eh bien, Davy mio, you are amusing yourself?”

“And you?”

“I am curious,” she said, looking at me intently.

I raised my hand to my throat significantly and the look in my eyes must have frightened her, for she attempted no more persiflage but moved away, rather still and serious for the rest of the evening. Perhaps, at the bottom of her feline soul, there is a touch of genuine fear and—a desire to live.

I thought the evening would never end. Anne reproached me for my gloominess and went off early, hurt, I know, at my seeming indifference. I do not love her, I am sure of that; and yet I cannot bear to see a certain wounded look in her eyes!

To-day, a strange conversation with Molly,—strange, for all at once I seemed to know the human being with whom I had lived all these years. Until now, I had thought of her only as a lovely child, something soft and gentle, a laugh that was good to hear, a smiling face, content, as you enjoy a graceful animal, a bit of sunshine and the fragrance of the violet beds. Now, to my astonishment, I perceive a woman; a directness of vision; a delicate perception of standards and a firmness of purpose.

She came in late from a skating party over at the Brinsmades’, where I had purposely not gone, and, at the first glance of her telltale countenance, I knew that something had happened. In the hall she caught my hand.

“Come upstairs with me, Davy, just a minute.”

“Up it is, young lady.”

Much intrigued and a little apprehensive, I followed her into the blue sitting room and closed the door. The next moment she was in my arms, weeping out her heart on my shoulder.

“Oh, Davy, Davy, I had to come to some one!”

“But, good heavens, what’s wrong?” I was thinking of Letty and wondering.

“I am so miserably unhappy!”

“Then talk it out with me. It’ll do you good.”

“Oh, Davy, some one wants to marry me!”

I started to burst out laughing at this and suddenly checked myself. I held her from me, her shoulders in my hands, and said, with a swift jealousy:

“You child! What right have you to be thinking of such things!”

“What things, Davy?”

“Falling in love, and marriage.”

“But I’m not in love—and that’s just the awful part of it! It’s of him I’m thinking. It’s so terrible to think that a man has fallen in love with you, that he cares as much as all that—when you know you can’t—you never will. I—I feel as though I had committed a crime!”

I took her into my arms again and I think I never loved her, my little sister, as I did at that moment. If this were American womanhood, I felt a sudden thrill of pride!

“Perhaps, it is not so serious—”

“It is, it is,” she protested, hiding her face against my shoulder. “If you had seen his face! I was so sorry for him, Davy. It’s terrible that he should come to care like that! Oh, don’t laugh at me—there’s no one else to go to but you—and do try to understand!”

“I couldn’t laugh at you, bless your honest little heart, and I think I understand,” I said, wondering a little if she knew her true feelings. “Is this the first time any man has proposed—”

“Yes, and I saw it coming, and I dreaded it so, and when I couldn’t prevent it I was so frightened. He was so terribly in earnest, and his face went so white. I—I couldn’t say a thing,—I just burst into tears and ran away. Oh, David, I feel so guilty. I can’t bear that any one should be so unhappy as that—just over me!”

“This is what life means, little sister,” I said, drawing her down beside me on the old chintz sofa. “These are the things no one can protect us from. And now, tell me, are you quite sure of your own feelings?”

She raised her eyes, her eyes clear as Bernoline’s, to me and in that moment I felt the spiritual kinship of true womanhood that lies underneath all social divisions.

“It will be a long time before I shall fall in love. I am only a girl now, Davy. I want to be a woman first, to have read and thought much. For I want to be fit to be at the head of my home and for the lives that may come to me.”

“Do you really feel that way, Molly dear?”

“Can any one feel differently about such things?”

I bent over her hand and caught it to my lips.

“That is the only right way—the natural way to think.”

“Oh, David, I do want to talk to you so much! You see, I never can, with mother: you know how it is. There’s only you, Davy. I don’t love Ted. I’m sure I never will love him, but it seems so terrible that I should lose the other—the real friendship—and yet I suppose that’s not possible—”

“Not quite fair to him.”

“No, and Ted is the only one to think about, isn’t he?”

“Ted?”

“Ted Seaver.”

“Oh, yes, the tall one, with dark hair,” I said, seeing confusedly one of the many who had passed through the house. “Why, he’s only a boy. What right had he—”

“That’s just it; but, of course, he’s not such a boy: he’s twenty-three, and he couldn’t help saying what he did. And I did respect him for the way he did it. Only—only such things are way off—”

“I should hope so.”

“It would have to be some one—some one very much of a man—whom I could look up to—some one much stronger than I am—who has been really tested and come through.” Again she looked at me and, suddenly laying her hand over mine, said: “Some one like you, Davy.”

The look of clear faith as her face lit up somehow searched into my heart and left me humble and regretful. I looked down at her white hand against my dark one, and Jessica’s words came into my mind,

“So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”

“I’m glad you came to me, Molly,” I said, “and I value your confidence very deeply. Suppose we snuggle up before the fire and talk lots of things out!”

“Oh, if you only would!”

I touched a match to the tinder, wheeled her into position and sat down beside her. She leaned forward, her hands clasped over her knees, her look sunk in the climbing flame.

“It’s such a pity!”

“What, Molly?”

“It is such a sad thing to think, David, that it can’t just remain a friendship. I am thinking of the friend I have lost. There are many girls who are terribly excited about men—falling in love with them. I’m not that way. I only wish—because in the end it’s you who lose—isn’t it?”

“How long have you known him?”

“Ted? Almost a year.”

She looked, and saw the lingering question in my eye.

“Oh, David, you don’t understand me at all!”

“Yes, yes, I do, but sometimes—”

“If I cared for him, do you think I’d tell any one—even you?”

This brought me up sharp. I laughed, quite amazed, and not at all sure that I liked it.

“That’s a rather queer way of putting it.”

“Don’t tease me, David. You understand.”

“I suppose that means, young lady,” I said, thinking of something I had been impelled to write a few days ago, “that when the time comes, you’ll go whisking out of this house on the arm of some stranger, without even saying ‘by your leave’.”

“If you mean shall I decide for myself—of course, David!”

“And even a big brother’s advice—”

“No, David; not even you. How can any one else know? And then, think of the responsibility of deciding such a thing! If I really cared, I should believe in him, no matter what any one would tell me.”

“Molly,” I said, a bit surprised though to find myself playing the part of Wisdom, “I am not much worried about you. You will make no mistake. There’s an honest, direct way you have of facing life that I think I can trust. Only, I want you to value yourself very high, and I’m afraid sometimes that just because you are so straightforward and unselfish you may not realize what you are worth.”

“That’s very dear of you,” she said pensively. “Of course, I won’t pretend to you that I don’t—well, that I don’t sometimes look ahead and wonder. Of course, I do. And I have a very high ideal.”

“It is so easy to make mistakes. It’s when you want to love, my dear little sister, that it is easy to believe you do love. Such awful mistakes can be made.”

“Now you are thinking of Ben,” she said irrelevantly.

“No, no, I was thinking of myself,” I said hastily, for Letty was a subject I could not discuss with her. “Do you know, if I hadn’t been prevented—I would—well, I don’t want to say I would have—I might have thrown away my whole life on a mad suicidal marriage?”

“I know,” she said, nodding her head.

“You know? What do you mean?” I said, startled.

“Don’t be angry, David. I guessed. It was Jenny Barnett, wasn’t it?”

I laughed, to cover my confusion and my amazement,—a not very successful laugh.

“Yes, it was Jenny; and that’s why I say be very sure, just at first.”

“But, David, I am not like you. You have always been so impulsive, so intense.”

“I impulsive?” I cried, forgetting how the conversation had switched. And I was genuinely amazed, for frankly, it had never occurred to me to look at myself as such. Though I am not sure but what she is right, but how she learned to see me so clearly is beyond me.

“Yes, you are! I never know what you’re going to do; whereas I—I am really quite sensible and matter-of-fact. Why haven’t you married, David? You ought to.”

“I thought, young lady, we were here to discuss your affairs,” I said warily.

“Please, David, let me talk to you,” she said, raising her eyes to mine. “I love you very much, more than any one else in the world. And we ought to be very close to each other, real confidants.”

“Now, what’s coming?” I thought to myself, but, putting on a brave front, I answered, “Fire away, then.”

“I feel you are unhappy. I feel it so strongly.”

“I am neither happy nor unhappy,” I said, being on my guard. “All I am thinking about now is going back and doing my duty, because it is quite immaterial, so long as the war lasts, what I plan to do.”

“I am thinking of Anne.”

“Now, we have it! Young lady, there is such a thing as imagining you see too much.”

“Don’t you think, David,” she said, not paying the slightest attention to me, “that it would be kinder, more honest, if you told her—”

“Told her what?”

“That you love some one else.”

I jumped at this, in great wrath.

“Extraordinary! Child, where did you imagine—”

“Don’t be angry, David. You needn’t tell me if you don’t want to—but I know. I’ve seen it in your face too often, these days. Only, I think it’s hard on Anne.”

I decided on another course.

“My dear Molly, Anne isn’t in the slightest doubt as to my feelings towards her. I wish I did love her, sometimes. I don’t. And if I did, I shouldn’t tell her so—just as I was going off to war.”

“Why not?”

“Because a man has no right to take a woman’s heart when it may mean an empty life for the rest of her existence.”

“But why, David? If you men are willing to give your lives, why should we women not have our part of sorrow?”

“Each as he feels: that’s my point of view,” I said. Yet, as I look at it now, I wonder why I said it, for no such compunction had arrested my impulse toward Bernoline. “However, that’s all academic and don’t get it into your romantic little head that I’m not telling you the truth about Anne. Furthermore, she understands.”

She shook her head.

“I’m inclined to shake you!” I said, vexed.

The next moment her arms closed about me.

“David, I can’t bear to see you unhappy; that’s all.”

As I look back on this conversation, I am the more amazed. Where did she get such uncanny insight into my thoughts? What had not her child’s eyes divined?—if they had ever been the eyes of a child! I suppose my irritation arose from the fact that she had come too close to my own misgivings. No, I am not quite sure that I have been honest with Anne, even when I assured myself that I was. Before I leave I shall see Anne again. To-night, I know what I shall say: but I am not sure what it will be at the time.

New York

I am here with Ben at the hotel and at noon, day after to-morrow, we sail for France. To me, as to him, it is an escape from a hideous situation. All day I have tramped the streets, seeking in the crowds a glimpse of Bernoline. Twice I came to the steps of St. Rosa’s Convent,—tempted. If I had any doubt as to the lasting wound that is in my heart, I know now. To be in this city, where she walks hidden in the wilderness of human beings, where at every turn I look for her! There is nothing here for me—nothing! I want to get back to the other life—to be from morning to night a pawn in the fingers of fate—to have every decision made for me—to surrender my initiative—to accept what can’t be changed—to perform without question.

But to go back. The leave-taking was hard, the shadow was over it all. If I come back—and who knows?—one place will be empty. But first, Anne.

For days I had not seen her. Each consciously avoided the other. Yet a good deal of what Molly had said haunted me: I could not depart without some explanation. We left Sunday. Friday afternoon I called her up on the telephone, and asked if I might come over,—a strange conversation, full of long pauses and hesitations, where I could not see her face and could only wonder.

“I am going Sunday—you know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“And I really would like to see you before then.”

“But, David, I’m leaving in an hour.”

Curiously enough, this upset me more than I would have thought.

“Leaving? Where?” I asked stupidly.

There was a long silence.

“Anne!”

“Yes?”

“And to-morrow?”

“But I am leaving in an hour for a week end.”

“Oh, then I shan’t see you. I’m sorry.”

“You should have let me know before.”

“Yes, yes, of course. My fault. Well, I suppose it can’t be helped.”

No answer.

“When do you leave?”

“In an hour.”

“Then I’m afraid it’s good-by over the telephone.”

“You haven’t been very friendly, you know.”

“I know.”

Another silence.

“Will you write to me once in a while?”

“Do you want me to, David?”

“Please.”

“Very well—once in a while.”

Now this was not the turn I had wished to give to my parting, but some sudden feeling of the blankness of her eyes caused me to relent.

“So, it’s good-by, Anne, and—I’m sorry it’s to be like this.”

“It is not my fault.”

“No.”

“Then—good-by, and good luck—Davy.”

The last was almost inaudible. I put up the receiver and went to my room and puttered around nervously with my packing, not at all quiet in my mind and frankly missing something out of my day.

In the middle of the afternoon, all at once, I determined to fling on my things and go out for a tramp, to calm my irritation. I had hardly passed the postern when who should come whirling up the road in her cutter, bells jangling, snow clouds flying, but Anne, with her cheeks aflame.

“Jump in.”

I clambered to the seat by her side and we were off so precipitately that I caught at her arm to save myself a tumble. Away we went, skipping over the crinkling snow, the sharp wind whipping at our cheeks, long minutes without a word, until Littledale and the outskirts were left behind in a whirling maze. At Muncie’s Woods she drew in suddenly and under the green canopy of the evergreens we slowed to a walk.

“There was no house party,” she said, staring ahead.

“Of course not.”

“How did you know?”

“I knew.”

“What a spiteful, irrational, idiotic person you must think me.”

“No—very human.”

She shook her head, and I thought her lip trembled a little.

“It’s always so, and I can’t help it. I’m always doing the wrong thing with you.”

I did not answer this, for I was afraid to.

“It’s been a miserably unsatisfactory time,” she said, flicking the horses suddenly with her whip, so that they pranced about for quite a moment before she could control them. “I had looked forward so much to your coming, to going back to the old days, Davy. They were the best—and instead, we have only been fencing with each other. We never say what we mean. And I—I show you my very worst self—my worst! Everything I say to you, you misunderstand.”

“There you are wrong.”

“You do, you do! You are always ascribing to me motives that aren’t there, and so, David, there are two things I can’t bear from you, ridicule, and—pity!”

“Good heavens, nothing is further from my mind.”

“That’s not true,” she said obstinately. “David, why can’t we say the things we think to each other? Is there any reason?”

“It is sometimes rather hard, Anne, isn’t it?”

“There you go! But if we don’t—don’t you see that we lose all that was so wonderful, so rare, so genuine that we once had. And this is what is happening.” Still she had not looked at me. Her mood changed and she drew the lash of her whip over the steaming flank of a horse. When she spoke it was gravely and with determination, the voice of a woman. “David, I do not think any harm can come from being absolutely honest, and sometimes, for not being so, a whole destiny may be changed. David, whatever you think I am—I am not in love with you—”

“But I never—”

“I am not in love with you, but I can imagine—some day—if I did—if I was—well, marrying you.”

The next moment the whip had struck across the glistening back and we shot out into a gallop.

“Stop!” I cried out, but she only shook her head, bending lower to hide her face that was aflame with confusion.

“Stop!”

I caught the reins from her and brought our perilous rocking flight to a halt. Then I turned to her. Poor child, I knew what the suspense of that moment meant to her! I could almost feel her heart stand still; even then, thank heaven, I did not abuse the situation—at least, I think not—and heaven knows how easy it would have been!

“Anne, dear little friend, I think more of you at this minute than I ever have, for saying that.”

“Oh, Davy, I shall want to kill myself to-night for—”

“No, don’t say that. Now, I am going to be just as honest with you.”

I saw her hand steal up to her throat and hurried on to end the suspense.

“I feel just as you do. I am not in love with you, and yet I can imagine, just as you said, that if some day I married you a great happiness would come into my life. Would to God I could say more!”

She turned for the first time as I began to speak and her eyes went to mine. I had a strange premonition there in the green light of the forest, in the stillness of the carpeted woods, the stillness that was in her listening face, that beyond the inscrutable future, through what twisted tormented ways I know not, in some final calm, just for the strange incongruous daring of that moment, Anne and I would end as husband and wife. Premonition or illusion,—I write it down as I felt it.

“Will you really believe me?” she said, and her glance went down, “when I say that I should never, never have said even this if—if it were not that you are going back, and everything else seems so little beside that. Will you understand that I can be like this, that without being in love I can look into the future and see what may come? David, it’s—it’s so hard to say—”

“I don’t think so. Say just what you feel, and then I shall be just as honest.”

“You have always been different in my life, David. Other men have just been shells. You I’ve known, and you’ve known me. It isn’t that, oh, since we are talking this way, it’s this: I know my weaknesses, Davy—oh, so well—and I know what I’ll become if I marry a certain type of man. It’s what you bring out in me, the thing I want to be when I’m with you. Of course, it sounds terribly—I’m ashamed to say it. No, don’t look at me; but David, I can say this—when you come back—some day, when it’s all over—I shan’t have changed.”

“Shan’t have what?”

“Changed,” she said, in a whisper.

I felt my eyes blurred. What wouldn’t I have given to have been able at that moment, in perfect honesty, to have taken her into my arms for her sake—and for mine!

“Anne,” I said, “let me tell you this,—for you will want to know this when you look back to-night: never regret what you have done. We have come closer together this afternoon than ever before, and you have done it.”

“Do you mean it, Davy?” she said, looking up, her eyes shining so that it was hard to resist them.

“I do. From now on I shall always know the strength of a woman—a very real woman—that is in you. You have left a memory that I shall hold in great reverence. Between us now there will be always absolute honesty; and that is something to build on. Hold what we have, dear friend, and let us both have some faith in the future.”

“Thank you, David,” she said, with a touch of wistfulness. Then, “And now, tell me—”

“Are you sure you want to hear? It will hurt you.”

“I only know that you are unhappy. And, David, I think that is the reason, the real reason I have come to you.”

It was hard to begin, for I, too, shrunk from the pain I knew I would give her. Presently, she said, looking up at my clouded face:

“There was some one else—”

I nodded.

“Of course, I knew there was.”

“There is.”

“Oh.”

“But it is quite hopeless,” I added hastily.

“Quite hopeless?” she said, looking at me, and so strange are the ways of the heart, that, I believe, that was the only thought she seized upon.

“I only knew her for ten days. I shall never see her again. I have promised.”

“It hurts?”

“Yes.”

“I am sorry.” She laid her hand on my arm and looked away. “Is—is it because she’s married, David?”

Strange to say, the suggestion came to me like a flash of lightning in the darkness of my perplexity. Never once had such an explanation occurred to me. I thought it over and wondered.

“You needn’t answer.”

“I do not think so,” I said, without thinking how strange this must sound. “I don’t know—I hardly know anything about her. We are entirely apart in everything,—race, tradition, faith.”

“And if it were not hopeless, David?”

“Don’t ask me.”

We drove on in silence, each to his own thoughts. In the end it was Anne who spoke.

“Just one question: is—is she there—in France?”

“No. She is here. That I said is true. She is gone utterly out of my life. It was her decision. Why? I don’t even know. It was all very beautiful and very tragic. It is over—all except the forgetting.” I drew a long breath and turned to her. “That is going to be a hard fight, but it must be done. I wonder if I should have told you this.”

“Oh, yes, yes! You should have told me.”

“Of course. Anne—I want you to know this, too. With what we have been to each other—we are now—I should never ask anything of you unless I did love you with my whole heart. That is your right. This is a strange conversation, but I think you know me well enough to believe that!”

“Of course, David.”

She looked at me, and her eyes suddenly were filled with tears.

“I wish I could feel that you needed me a little.”

“Good God! But have I the right!”

Then, she did a thing I shall never forget,—that only comes to the intuition of the woman who loves. She drew off her glove and laid her bare hand in mine. And so, speaking little, we returned.

Is it possible, I wonder, that with one’s heart filled with the ache and anguish of a love that is denied any hope, the soul in its defensive instinct can look ahead and know what some future date may bring? For, to-day, I can say this with perfect honesty: I need to keep Anne in my life.

The last moments in the old home were harder than I had thought. Aunt Janie was the bravest of them all, not excepting the mater, but then, Aunt Janie, bless her heart, is of the heroic line. Molly has come on to see us off, though I begged her not to. The hardest was saying good-by to the Governor. During the weeks of my return he had seemed to pick up famously, until we had almost begun to hope. But, at the last, all the light went out of his face. And when I leaned down suddenly and kissed him, his fingers clung to my hand until I had gently to release them. I had left this till the last minute and hurried out into the hall, where Molly put her arms around me and took me to the sleigh. For one thing I am profoundly thankful: he remembered Alan, and I carry to him the old daguerreotype of the Governor as a young man.

At the station every one in the village waited. The Littledale Band played “The Marseillaise” and other patriotic airs, amid great waving of handkerchiefs and cheering. You would have thought I was a candidate for Governor. But I was too affected to do anything but wave back.

What Ben has said to Letty I do not know. He seldom speaks, but a certain grimness settles over him as he paces up and down. I’m afraid that it has cost him more than he thought to tear himself away from her. To-night everything seems confused and out of joint,—Anne, Bernoline, the Governor, Ben, Letty; myself most of all. Again, the close of another chapter—the wrench of old associations—new hazards, and what beyond?

If only I could see her once more!

New York

I have seen her, by some miracle of coincident, or by a destiny which never seems to leave me. It is midnight, and I have been sitting here, my head in my hands, my brain galloping, going over and over every word, every look. I have seen her, talked to her, held her in my arms! What is the trick destiny has played on me? What is my mood to-night? Exaltation, or the sense of having bound myself irrevocably to tragedy? At one moment the wildest hopes surge up in me: I live in fantastic daydreams with a belief in some miraculous, healing Providence. At the next I am dropped into bottomless despair, and I see no end but unfulfilled longing and the emptiness of denial. And so, what I have longed for, to see her once again, has come, and I don’t know which is the stronger,—the joy of hoping or the pain of certainty.

All day long I had sought her, aimlessly, without a plan, weary of spirit, without a hope, but with a prayer on my lips, as even men of no faith pray in a last hope, when all other means have failed them. Towards evening the thought came to me to seek her in the calm of vaulted spaces, and I went into the Cathedral, and, from there, into the Church of the Dominican Fathers. Then the inspiration came to me that if she were anywhere it would be in the little French Church of the Franciscans. No sooner had this idea come to me than a strange sense of certainty possessed me. I went there, absolutely convinced that I would find her.

Yet, at my entrance, as I stood with incredulous, blinded eyes, peering into the hollow obscurity, my heart sank. And then I saw her!

How I knew that the kneeling figure by the little altar of the Virgin was Bernoline, I do not know, but I knew. My heart seemed to stop. I leaned against a pillar and waited. The great vaulted supports rose up and closed above me somewhere in the night. Far off I heard a slipping step. Through the church a dozen tiny lights burned silently. At her altar the Mother of Sorrows looked down out of the shadow of the ages. She was on her knees, the mellow points of the votive candles lighting her uplifted face in a glow of serene radiance. So I saw her again, as I had imagined her a hundred times, when I knew she returned to me in her prayers.

There are pictures which remain in memory’s galleries. This will never fade.

Something of my presence she must have felt, for all at once her hand was arrested in mid-air, and she turned and met my look. Instantly I came forward and knelt at her side. I saw her lips open and over her face the wonder of a living miracle. I know now that my name was on her lips at that very moment, and that in her simple faith she saw the answer. Her great dark eyes met mine. I saw her breast rise. Her pale slender hand went to her throat, and in that first unwavering look I knew at last how I was loved.

“Bernoline, it is God’s will.”

“It is you. I prayed that I might see you once again.”

She laid her hand on mine, bidding me wait, and went off into the stony vastness. Presently I heard the step I knew from all others returning. A pervading sense of happiness such as I had never known filled my whole being at the knowledge that she was drawing near, that she whom I loved was coming back to me. When I raised my eyes she was at my side, tenderness and pride in her face, and in her hand a thin white taper. She knelt again.

“Mother, I thank thee,” she said.

She rose and, lighting the wick at the wavering crown of tiered tapers, placed it so that it dominated all the rest.

“Your light, mon ami,—above the crowd, always; strong, proud and true.”

Then kneeling, she made the sign of the cross, and as a smile of thankfulness touched her lips, I knew that she prayed for me.

I forgot all the complex world of realities: actions and reactions of our mortal nature; doubts, questionings, logic and tradition. There, in the silence and the shadows, purity at my side, mystery above me, my spirit took wings with the faith that was hers. I do not think that I uttered a prayer, yet it was a prayer, for at that moment I believed as a child believes.

When she touched my arm I rose and followed her. At the end of the aisle, a mutual impulse made us turn. The candle, my candle, shone out bravely above the rest.

“You will remember?”

“Always.”

When we emerged into the strange, jarring world, the healing dusk was stealing over the hard outlines. For a moment we walked silently, our hearts too full, unable to speak to each other.

“To-morrow I sail for France.”

“To-morrow?” she cried, with a little catch in her voice.

“You will walk a little way with me? A last time?”

“How could I help it, mon ami?”

She looked at me and smiled her sad little smile, and I saw in her eyes the weariness of the struggling against the call of her heart. A great hope came to me.

“I thought you would wait for America,” she said, and now her eyes no longer avoided mine but seemed never to leave my face.

“I’m going back to the Legion and, of course, the moment we go in, and that can’t be long, I shall be transferred.”

“You are well?”

“Entirely.”

What did it matter what we said? I think neither of us really knew. I saw only the light that shone in her eyes, and in the joy of being together neither the past nor the future nor the things about us existed. I took her arm and slowed my pace to the meditative step I knew so well, and together, heads bowed and still too happily oppressed by all we had to say to each other, we went silently towards the Park, each content with the knowledge of the other’s presence. It was the hour when the city, like another Cinderella, steps out of the drab and homespun of the day into the beaded fairy raiment of the twilight; when through the hard and hazy battlements something soft and gentle tempers the air; when the clamor of strident sounds lingers faintly in the drowsy distance and polyglot ugliness masks itself behind half-shadows and fleeting forms.

“Ah, Davy, I did want to see you again,” she said, without subterfuge, in the honesty of her nature, as only her nature could be honest. “I wanted to see you strong—yourself. I wanted to know that I had not brought you weakness and sorrow. Mon ami, tell me that it is so.”

We had wandered into the Park, through obscure winding paths, the argus-eyed city receding against the darkling sky, the lake at our feet, and only an occasional passer-by hurrying on his way. At the bridge we stopped, leaning over, shoulder to shoulder, each of us under the spell of the silence which visited us, and afraid of the test that words would bring.

“I cannot tell you anything that is not true,—even for your sake,” I said at last.

“No, David.”

“But first, you. How has it gone with you? It has been hard, Bernoline?”

“No, no.”

“That is the truth?”

“Yes, mon ami. It has not been hard. I have found great kindness. I am companion in the family of a true gentlewoman.”

“Bernoline, I cannot bear to think of you—”

“Hush; it is so little when you think of what has come to other women.”

“Bernoline, you do not know how I have fought to keep my promise. I’ve gone by St. Rosa’s Convent a dozen times, and twice I wrote you letters,—only to tear them up.”

“But you won out, mon ami. I knew you would.”

“Yes, but there is no happiness in it.”

“Must I always hurt you, Davy?” she said sadly, “I who only long to protect you? Dear friend, all I have done—believe me, though you cannot understand it—has been done for you.”

“Yes, Bernoline.”

I felt that the moment had come when the happiness of my whole life was there in my hands to fight for. We were no longer man and woman, but two atoms in the wavering sea of multitudes,—atoms gravitating towards each other, cleaving together despite opposition and circumstance, despite all the forces of society that laboriously and fruitlessly lay their inhibitions against the great sweeping instincts of race.

“Night and day, David, I have had you in my prayers. I have prayed that our meeting—our knowing each other—would leave no wound in you. Ah, mon ami, if I do this strange thing, to be here alone with you, it is because I must know that I am not to carry that remorse through all my life.” She stopped, as though dreading what she might be led to say, and then, staring down at the stars that swam in the dark waters below us, she added slowly: “I shall never be sure—never—until I know that you are in your own home, married and happy.”

Then I broke out.

“Bernoline, are you quite honest with yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that is not the true reason. Bernoline, if you are here, to-night, alone at my side, it is because you cannot help it—because you love me. Oh, why hide from ourselves what is?”

“No, no! Don’t say that!”

“Bernoline, Bernoline, why deny it?” I cried, bending over her. “You don’t deceive me; you don’t deceive yourself! What stands between us? What can stand? What do we care? What else counts but this thing we feel, here, now, at this very moment! We know. You know, as I know. Happiness, Bernoline? Do you think in the whole world there is any happiness for me away from you—from the longing for you, day and night! Bernoline, I tell you, you have never been an hour away from me. I have had you before my eyes; I have talked with you; lived over a thousand times each moment spent with you. Bernoline, turn to me, look at me, tell me—”

Do I know what I said, there in the deep pool of the night! It is not words, but accents, that we hear at such times. I don’t know that she heard me any more than I can remember the torrent of pleading that surged to my lips, but I know that she, too, felt the snapping of cords, the longing of my arms to reach out and draw her up to me, the wild triumphant force beating down all our little struggling, closing about us and confounding us in one impulse, one desire, for, all at once, she swayed from me and began to tremble, crying: “Don’t touch me, David. I can’t stand it—don’t!”

“But why, in heaven’s name, why?” Her voice stirred all my compassion, but the thought that I was fighting for my happiness, her happiness, was stronger. I came closer. “Bernoline, what is it? Pride? Is that all? Do you think I care who you are, what you are, what was your family, or anything else? You are you. And now, listen to me, Bernoline. To-morrow, I go back. Marry me to-night; be my wife. Let me take that with me in my heart!”

“If I could, if I only could!” she burst out suddenly.

“You can, you will,” I said, with a sudden sense of triumphant victory, pitiless, as in love we are driven to show no mercy. “Bernoline, whatever it is, I have the right to share it. Yes, the right. Nothing else matters but you in my life. Do you understand? You are life!”

She turned to me, struggling against herself, her hands clasped, and again the terror in her eyes.

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“But why, why?”

Suddenly, like a flash, I remembered the first instinctive question of Anne’s. My heart contracted so sharply that for a moment I could not voice the terrible doubt.

“Bernoline—is there—any one else—who has a right?”

She stood, staring at me. Twice her lips moved, parted, trembled, and refused to utter the answer. Her hands gripped the coping, and I saw her arms stiffen.

“Bernoline, you are—married!” I said, in a whisper. “Is it that?”

Still she did not answer.

“Bernoline, for God’s sake, say it is not that.”

“Yes, yes—it is—that!”

I should not have known her voice.

“Good God! Why didn’t you tell me before?”

I was stunned; yet it seemed as though I had always known—that it could have been nothing else. The world went black before me.

“He is alive?” I said, at last.

“Yes.”

“You must go back to him, some day?”

“Never.”

“Ah, Bernoline, why—why didn’t you tell me?”

She waited a moment.

“It is not my secret alone. It is terrible that I cannot tell you any more than that. Yes, yes, I have done wrong: I have been weak. But don’t you reproach me, David; that would break my heart!”

“Oh, no, I don’t reproach you!” I blurted out. “I don’t know your reasons. I know if you’ve done what you’ve done, there is a reason, and—it will always be right. Never, dear, could I have any other feeling towards you but of reverence for the loveliest and purest thing I have known.”

“You can still think so, David?” she cried with a little sob.

“Always. Nothing that you or I can do will ever change that—and nothing that has gone before.”

She looked up at me so swiftly, with her sad, sweet smile, that before I knew it she was in my arms, trembling against my heart, her head buried against my shoulder. I knew nothing more, what I did or said, only this: that we were united—that this soft, gentle body in my arms was the woman who, whatever intervened, loved me now and irrevocably.

“Ah, mon bien aimÉ—ayez de la force pour moi—je n’en peux plus—non—non—je n’en peux plus!”

But even as she cried to me to be strong for her, she clung to me, her arms strained about me, and her body collapsed in my grip.

“Bernoline, look into my eyes, dear!”

She raised her head, her eyes met mine, all struggling at an end. Another moment, and our impending lips would have closed in the first kiss. Yet, by some inexplicable miracle, it was I who was the stronger. For what I saw in her dear eyes was so innocent and so full of trust that I could not tarnish the ideal. My arms loosed and slowly I put her from me.

She caught her breath, and her hands went to my shoulders.

“Yes, you are as I knew you were,” she said proudly. “Never shall I forget, David mon ami, mon ami adorÉ.”

“Thank God!” I said, drawing a deep breath.

“And now, believe me, a last time—if I could—if I only had the right to say what you want to hear, how gladly my heart would go to you! But David, I can say this: in all my life, I have never for one instant loved any other man—and I never will. That is a promise.”

“Bernoline, I have done everything as you wished, more than I would have believed I could do. This I ask: during those months of loneliness and trial, write to me, and let me write to you!”

“Is that wise, I wonder?” she said, yet already wishing to be convinced.

“You cannot leave me utterly. I am not strong enough for that! Anything else—but not that!”

“Nor I.” Her eyes filled with tears and then, at last, through the tears, the smile came bravely forth. “Until the end of the war, then. And now—” She stopped, looked at me, and shook her head slowly.

“So soon?”

“It is best not to try ourselves beyond our strength,” she said. “But—we will not go too fast.”

I do not remember much what she said. For I was silent, once the great test passed, all at once weak and rebellious. She spoke to me, recalling our first meeting, speaking of the home she had found. My head was turning. All the complications, all the tragic incidents of our meeting and parting, the fatality that lay between us; all was nothing to the knowledge of the love that had looked at me out of the great dark eyes. My instincts revolted. I could not believe, I would not believe that this was the end. Somewhere, somehow, the future would be ours, if we had to wait—for twenty years!

We came to the end and, as I stood, all choked up, she took my hand and laid it against her heart—a moment.

“Mon ami, you will be there, always.”

The light in her eyes is still before me as I write and the dear face, transformed with all the pure happiness of a child.

“And now—” she began reluctantly.

“No—no! Not that word!” I blurted out.

“As you wish,” she said gravely. “Courage, and God keep you, my dear.”

She went up the steps slowly, looking back, and her eyes for a moment lingered, smiling down on me, before she could find courage to end a look that might be the last. The door closed and shut her out from me.

And from these moments, sanctified in my memory, by the perverse turns of my fate, that seems to entangle all the skeins of my life, the good and the evil, I came back to meet—Letty.

She was in the salon that separated our rooms when I entered, and from the look on Ben’s face I saw that his soul was being torn to its foundations. At my entrance they stopped, in a sudden telltale silence.

“You here, Letty?” I said, stupidly enough. God knows that no more unwelcome figure could have come before me at that moment.

She nodded curtly, but did not speak. She looked quite worn despite her artifice, and in her cold face the eyes burned forth as they did only when she was roused to some fury of obstinate determination. The conversation had been at a high tension, as I could see by Ben’s ugly frown. I went into my bedroom and closed the door and, overcome by the moral nausea of this malignant intrusion across the clean memory of the evening’s exaltation, I sank on the bed and, taking my head in my hands, cursed her from the bitterness of my heart as I have never cursed another human being.

Not that she had come to see me. I knew too well the only genuine impulse of which in her tired experience she was capable. It was only the prey which was escaping her that could rouse the female in her. I did not know how far Ben had gone in his revolt,—though I suspected that he had given an ultimatum. But I knew this, that Letty would never let him go without a struggle. What to do? My lips were sealed: the slightest false move might precipitate a tragedy. An hour passed, while I listened to the falling and rise of their contending voices, when, suddenly, the door opened and banged, and Ben came into the room.

“For God’s sake, David, get her away!”

I sprang up, half expecting Letty to rush in—but she did not—and after a moment I went over to my brother and laid my hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“Ben, do you mean that?”

“Get her away—quick!”

“That’s a big responsibility to take,” I said slowly. “Your mind’s made up?”

He dug his fingers into his arms and, in the breath that went through him, I felt a sudden vacillation.

“Ben,” I said, sternly. “Stick to your guns. Care for you? All she cares is to know she can make you suffer. Sit down.”

I went on tiptoe to the door and flung it open. As I had known, she was there, listening. But it is dangerous to try such a woman as Letty too far, and the blind rage I saw in her face at this exposure so frightened me that, closing the door behind me, I clapped my hand over her mouth and picked her up bodily.

“The scene is over, and out you go,” I said, savagely. She did not struggle but suddenly became quiet and inert and, with the devilish instinct that was in her to wound me, her arms closed softly about my neck. I wrenched myself free, loathing the hated perfume of her body, and set her down in the hall.

“So, you have told him?” she said quickly, keen for the pretense at dramatics.

“If I had, you wouldn’t be alive now,” I said, and closed and locked the door and, for further security, slipped the key into my pocket.

It is four o’clock in the morning now, as I finish these lines. I can hear Ben in the next room, walking up and down.

At Sea

We sailed at noon. Molly and Anne were on the deck to see us off,—Letty, to plant a final sting. Anne came in after breakfast with her father and with Molly we went down to the boat. I do not know when I have been so sorry for any one as for Anne. What fatality ever impelled her to come into my life at just that moment? She came in so happily that immediately my heart fell, for I saw that our last interview in Littledale had left the way to the future open to her. Yet she had not been ten minutes with me before her woman’s intuitions had warned her. I saw the light manner change to a sudden meditation and always when I turned my head her eyes were on me in anxious interrogation. Poor child—I would have spared her the pain, but it was not to be. The moment we were left alone together on the dark and pungent wharf, she turned to me and said:

“David, you have seen her?”

“Yes.”

I took her arm and led her a little apart, to a nook where we were hidden from the crowd.

“Anne, for God’s sake, put me out of your life,” I said, taking her hand. “There is only misery and unhappiness if you don’t. This is honest, because I must be honest with you.”

“I can’t put you out of my life,” she said, shaking her head, “and if you are unhappy—all the more reason for me to stay in yours.”

“Anne, it is not fair to you, to what your life may be.”

“Let me be the judge of that, David,” she said soberly, her hand on my arm. “Have I the right to know this? Is it—the other—still quite hopeless?”

“Quite,” I said gloomily.

“David, my heart goes out to you. If I could only help. No, no—Wait a moment, I can’t go back yet.”

“All right now?”

“All right, David.”

And when we went back, there was Letty, her arm through Molly’s, as pretty and as enticing as could be, coquetting with Mr. Brinsmade. From her face one would never have had the slightest suspicion that there was the least flaw in the serene content of her day. I held myself on my guard, fearing her purpose, but at the last she caught me as, of course, she had intended. The whistle blew and with it the time to say good-by. Molly, little trump, held up with forced gayety and so did Anne, though I saw such suffering in her eyes that it was all I could do not to take her impulsively in my arms: for, no matter what I had protested for her sake, to know that she cared was a great consolation.

When it came Letty’s turn, quite as the most natural thing in the world (as, of course, to the others it was), she flung her arms about me and kissed me; there—before Ben. Then she went off, protesting it was bad luck to see a ship out of port, thoroughly pleased with having planted a last dart. And Ben and I, with that kiss between us, went up the gangway.

“I hope to God I never lay eyes on her again!” he said, with an oath.

If only that may be true!

We went to the promenade deck and stood over the stern, gazing back at the shores that began to recede. The waters rushed in between the wharf and us. I saw Molly and Anne in the crowd and raised my hat, swinging it slowly back and forth. And as I looked into that fading throng, my heart leaped a little at the thought that perhaps she, Bernoline, might be standing there, come down for a last look—a quite irrational thought—yet I did feel her there, in that human mass, unrecognizable, now nothing more than a spotted shadow against the pier. Then the pier ran back into the oblivion of the city and the city faded into the sky.

I do not remember since boyhood to have felt the utter empty loneliness of life as at that moment. But a few months before I had been self-sufficient, a curious traveler, emerging from one experience, eager for others, satisfied and interested with the contact of my kind. Now, for what had come into my life in one short week, for an hour in the twilight, for a look given and taken, a voice remembered, I felt at once rudely lifted out of the companionship of men, doomed to carry with me a solitude from which there could be no escape.

In this weakness of the spirit I even rebelled against the call which took me back; the inexorable call of duty and honor which, after all, is only our yielding to what others may think of us: at least, in this moment of rebellion, this is what I feel! For, now that life has grown so precious to me, even though I but cling to ashes of hope, I wonder how in the coming days of battle I shall stand the test? Yet now that I write with a clearer discipline, a new feeling of reverence comes to me as I think on the men of France who fought beside me, with memories and hopes in their hearts. What others have done, I can do. All our vaunted courage is sometimes no more than that.

New York was but a haze in the distance as I stood by my brother’s side, with the dread feeling of the irrevocable in life closing down on me, wondering when—where—and how, again?

As we stood there, a cabin boy hailed us: “Mr. Littledale? Special delivery for you, sir.”

We both turned hastily.

“Which Mr. Littledale?”

“David Littledale, sir.”

“That’s right. It’s for me.”

I took the letter and at the first glance, though I had never seen her handwriting, I knew it was from Bernoline.

“David?”

Ben’s hand closed over my wrist, and I looked up to see his eyes ablaze with jealousy and suspicion.

“David, show me that letter!”

I held it before him, and he gave it one wild look and turned away.

“Ben, old fellow, get hold of yourself!”

“I feel like jumping over and swimming for it,” he said miserably.

“To-morrow you’ll be thanking God from the bottom of your heart,” I said, linking my arm under his. “Do you remember once when you came between me and making a fool of myself, and how we fought and rolled on the ground? Well, my turn, now. It’s a queer world, and we’ve both got to grin and bear things. But it isn’t a question of love, Ben. It’s just been slavery, weak, unnatural, humiliating slavery. Better now than later!”

“Right! Sorry I made such an ass of myself. It’s over, and, David, that’s the last I’ll ever see of her.”

But I am not so sure of that.

The letter was crumpled in my hand. To have given courage to Ben gave me a sort of courage, which I sadly needed. I did not at once open and read it. I was afraid. I was afraid of a hundred nameless imagined fears, but most of all of the sure reaction I knew must come in her woman’s heart, once the irresistible spell of our coming together had been broken. I went below, into the saloon, and laid her letter before me on the desk. Then, with a sudden inspiration, I found a sheet of paper and wrote:

Sailing down the Harbor

Bernoline, dear:

Your letter is here, before my eyes: and I am still afraid to open it. I shall not read it until I have written this. For I feel already what you will say. Bernoline, no matter what the obstacle which stands between us, it can alter nothing. While you live and I live, we are powerless to change what fate has laid upon us. As for me, just to know your love is to me so great a thing that if I had to choose again with open eyes, I would choose all I have suffered and all that may come to me, all the heart-burnings and all the daily, hourly longing, the cruelty of separation,—all just to have seen your eyes at parting. Be to each other what is right that we should be,—the rest is beyond our knowledge. I have strength for everything but one thing,—not to hear from you again.

David.

Then I took up her letter, and read:

Midnight

Mon seul ami:

I have prayed on my knees for hours to see my way clear. For I no longer know myself. I, who thought myself so strong, have had so little strength. All that I have determined not to do, I have done. And yet, when you were at my side I could not do otherwise. When you are near me all my courage leaves me and I do not know what I do or say. And it is I who am so much older than you in experience and suffering who ought to protect you. But you,—is it not your whole life I am wrecking? Would it not be better to have you hate me than to do what I am doing? Is it not a great crime I am committing? For David, my dear David,—it cannot be. There is no hope for us, now, or ever. What shall I do? To-night, my heart is torn—I cannot think. I have given my promise, and yet—Oh, David, I want to do what is best for you, and what seems cruel now may be the kindest later. I cannot decide. What shall I do? Have courage for us both. Be strong for me.

B.

I read this through once, with heavy heart,—then many times. To give her up was beyond my strength, though something within me admitted the truth of what she wrote. I took up my letter again, and added this postscript:

P. S.—I have read your letter, and I would not change a word of this. You leave the decision to me. I make it, and I take on my shoulders all that may come. I cannot do otherwise. I need your strength. I shall always need it. The fate that has sent us to each other is more mysterious than our little reason can fathom. Yet in it there must be some purpose. We can never harm each other. One thing is life; the other, worse than death. Write to me, dear little friend. Give me only what it is right for you to give me. I shall ask no more.

David.

I put the letter into the bag myself and watched the pilot go over the side of the ship. Then, I went down to my cabin and got out my poilu’s uniform. Another milestone passed.

---