So far as Stainton was privileged to know, the end of this first act in their comedy came about in much the manner designed by him. He moved quietly, as he moved in all the details of his life; he had the gift of precision, and when he arrived at what Sarcey called the scÈne À faire, though he was perhaps more in love, as that term is generally understood, than most lovers, he arrived not at all breathless, and found nothing to complain of in what awaited him.

Mrs. Newberry had ostentatiously deserted him and Muriel in the white-and-gold Newberry drawing-room splendid with spindle-legged mahogany and appropriately uncomfortable. It was evening, an evening that Stainton had taken care should be unoccupied by any disturbing theatre party or other frivolous forerunner to a declaration.

That Ethel and her husband had tacitly agreed to this arrangement, Stainton did not notice as significant. Mrs. Newberry, after the spasm of chaperonage that followed his first unwatched motor drive with Muriel, had tactfully begun to withdraw from the rÔle of duenna, and the suitor had consoled himself in the ocular demonstration of the proverb that two are company and three none. Hitherto he had enjoyed his privilege like the temperate man that he was, which is to say that he enjoyed it without abusing it. He belonged by birth to that class of society which, though strong enough in the so-called natural affections, seems to think it indecent to display emotion in public, and he was unwilling, for both his own sake and that of the girl he loved, to hurry an affair that might lose much by speed and gain much by circumspection. Now, however, the time came to test the virtues of his plan of campaign, and Stainton was glad that the combination of the time and the place and the loved one was not marred by any extraneous interference.

The wooer was at his best. The clothes that are designed for those short hours of the twenty-four when one is at rest without being asleep, became him; they gave full value to his erect figure, his shapely hips, and his robust shoulders; and, since he was about to win or lose that which he now most prized in life, and since he had always felt sure that the only courage he lacked was physical, his strong face looked far younger than its years and his iron-grey eyes shone not with fear, but with excitement.

While he leaned against a corner of the white mantelpiece above the glowing fireplace, so much as it was possible for his upright figure to lean, he was thinking that Muriel, opposite him, was more beautiful than he had ever yet seen her—thinking, but without terror, how dreadful it would be should he lose her and how wonderful should he win. Young enough for her in that kindly light he almost looked and was sure he was; worthy of her, though he felt more worthy than most, he was certain that no man could be. He saw her as he had seen her that first night at the opera, but more desirable.

Seated in the farther corner of a long, low couch drawn close to the chimney-place and at right-angles to it, three or four rose-red pillows piled behind the suggestion of bare shoulders only just escaping from her gown of grey ninon draped over delicate pink, Muriel's slim body fronted the dancing fire and warmed in the light that played from the flames. Her blue-black hair waved about her white temples and the narrow lines of her brows; her lips, the lower slightly indrawn, were like young red roses after the last shower of Spring.

He felt again, as he had felt when he saw her in the Newberrys' box, that she was lovely not only with the hesitant possibilities of girlhood at pause before the door of maturity, but because she gleamed with the gleam of an approaching summer night scented and starred. He noted how the yellow rays from a high candelabrum standing near the couch cast what might be an aureole about her head and set it in relief against the distant, drawn curtains, the curtains of ivory plush, which shut the heaven of this drawing-room from the earth of everywhere else. In his every early adventure among the dreams of love, this lonely man of the desert, reacting on his environment, had been less annoyed by the demands of a body that clamoured in vain than by the dictates of a soul that insisted upon the perfection of beauty among beautiful surroundings beautifully encountered. Now he was to put into action forces that would either realise or break those dreams, and, knowing that, he imprinted on his memory this picture of her and always after remembered it: her white hands clasped about the great bunch of violets he had brought to her, the glory of her wayward hair, the curve of her throat, her dark eyes with their curving lashes, her parted lips.

She had again been asking him of his life in the mining-camps of Alaska and the West and about his solitary journeys prospecting for the gold that it had often seemed was never to be found, and Stainton, wishing not to capitalise his achievements and unable to understand why a girl should interest herself in what was simply a business history, had again evaded her.

"But you must have suffered a good deal," she said.

"Oh, yes," he said; "that is part of the price of Life."

"You did it all," she asked, "to win a fortune?"

"No," he answered, his glance as steady upon hers as it had been that night at the opera. "I did it all to win Life. That has always been what I wanted; that has always been what I never had: Life. I wanted—I scarcely know how to say it: the full, sharp, clean joys of being. You understand?"

"I think I understand," she said.

"I wanted them. I saw that no man could have them in these days, living as we live, unless he was economically independent and morally straight. I made up my mind to win economic independence and to keep morally straight at any sacrifice."

She drew her fingers a little tighter about the tinfoil wrapping of the violets. Over the purple tops of the flowers, as she raised them toward her face, her intent, innocent face returned his steady scrutiny.

"And you've won?" she asked.

He wished to cross to her, to come to the couch and lean over its back, and, with his lips close to her cheek, whisper his answer. But he would not do that; he had decided that to do that at this point would be to bring about for his benefit an unfair propinquity. Instead, he moved only a step from the mantelpiece and stood upright, his arms folded.

Only a step, but to the girl he seemed somehow to draw much closer. The atmosphere of the room was somehow strained to tension. She saw that his eyes, although they did not waver, softened, and, to fill a pause of which she began to be afraid, she heard herself repeating:

"And you've won?"

"That," said Stainton, "is for you to say—Muriel."

It was the first time he had called her by her given name. Her eyes fell. She lowered the violets and, looking only at them, raised a hand to finger them. The hand shook.

"For me?" she asked.

If there is one thing in which men are more alike than another, it is the manner of their asking women to marry them. Generally it adds to many pretences the cruelty of suspense. Stainton was not unusual.

"I have won my fight—yes," he said. "I have got the means. Can I gain the end? It's you who must tell me that."

She saw now.

"How can I help?" she faltered.

"I wanted Life," he repeated, and wished that he could see her face. "Life means more than money. Money will protect it, secure it; but Life means Love. Long ago I knew your mother."

Very simply, but directly, he told her how he had loved that other Muriel. His morbid fears he did not describe, but his first romance he sketched with a gentleness that, while she, her heart steadied, looked up at his reposed strength and remembered all the stories that she had heard of his adventurous career, brought a quick mist of tears to her eyes.

"Do you remember," he asked, when his story was finished, "how rudely I looked at you when I first saw you in the Metropolitan Opera House?"

"It wasn't rude," she said.

"You must have thought it so then."

"I—I didn't know what to think—exactly."

"Well, now you know. It was an astonishing resemblance that made me stare at you."

Her nether lip trembled.

"I didn't know my mother," she said.

"No," said Stainton, "but you are very like her." He waited a moment and then, as her eyes were lowered, went on: "That was a boyish love of mine for her. It was really not love at all—only the rough sketch for what might have been, but never was, a finished picture. But I went away, when your mother repulsed me, with the likeness of her in my heart. I wanted love; I worked to be fit to win love and to keep it once I had won it. Then I came back and saw in that box at the opera the living original of the dream-woman that had all those years been with me."

He came another step nearer.

"I arranged to meet you," he said, "and I knew at last I was really in love. I want to be to you what your mother would not let me be to her. It is you whom I love, not a memory. I love you. I was young then and didn't know. Now I am still young—I have kept myself young—but I know." He bent forward and paused. Then, "Muriel," he said.

The girl drew back. She put her hand before her eyes. The violets rolled to the floor.

"I—I can't tell," she stammered. "I didn't expect—I never thought——"

Even this Stainton had foreseen.

"Then don't hurry now," he said. He drew a chair beside her and quietly took her free hand. "Take your time. Take a week, two weeks, a month, if you choose."

"But it's so new; it's all so new," said Muriel. "I never suspected——Oh, I know girls are always supposed to guess; but really, really, I never, never——"

There was genuine pain in her voice.

"I don't know what is expected of most girls," said Stainton; "but of you I shall never expect anything but the truth."

She looked up at him with eyes perplexed.

"Yes—yes, that is just what I want to be: honest. And—don't you see?—that is just why—I am so uncertain—that is just why I can't, right away, tell you——"

He pressed her hand and rose. He did not like to hurt her.

"I ask only that you will think it over," he said. "Will you think it over, Muriel?"

She bowed her head.

"Yes," said she.

"And I may come back in——"

"Yes."

"In two weeks?"

"In two weeks." Her voice was low and shaken. "Oh, you don't mind if I ask you to go now?" she pleaded.

"I understand," said Stainton. "I'll be back two weeks from this evening. Good-night."

"Good-night, Mr. Stainton," said Muriel.

She waited for him to go. She waited until she heard the street door close behind him. Then she hurried in retreat toward her own room.

But Mrs. Newberry was lying in ambush on the landing when the girl came upstairs—Mrs. Newberry, broad in white satin, with diamonds at her neck and in her hair.

"Well?" asked the aunt.

"Oh!" cried Muriel. She started. "Aunt Ethel!"

"Well?"

"You frightened me," Muriel explained. "I didn't see you until you spoke."

"Well?" persisted Mrs. Newberry.

"Nothing. That's all," said Muriel. "Nothing—only that——"

Ethel became diplomatic:

"Mr. Stainton didn't stay very long?"

"Not very long, Aunty."

Ethel heard something ominous in her niece's tone.

"You didn't—you don't mean to say you sent him away?"

"No, Aunty. Good-night."

"It's early. You're going to bed so early?"

"Yes, I think I'll go to bed. I'm—I'm tired."

"But it's early," repeated Mrs. Newberry, who was accustomed to order her life according to hours and not to reason.

"Is it?" said Muriel.

"It's scarcely ten. The library clock just struck."

"I think it struck some time ago."

"Did it?"

"I think I shall go to bed, Aunty."

Mrs. Newberry sought to bar the way, but she could not succeed in that when she could think of no pretext for detaining the girl, so Muriel brushed past her and went to her own room.

Ethel returned to the library—so called because it contained a few hundred unread books, the newspapers, and all the current magazines. She said to herself that she wanted to think it over, "it" being the opportunity that she had so ceremoniously afforded Stainton and Muriel, together with Muriel's sudden desire for privacy.

Nevertheless, think it over as she would, she made nothing of it. When Preston returned from one of his clubs, several hours later, she was no nearer to a solution than she had at first been, and she told him so.

"I don't understand it," said Ethel. "I don't understand it at all."

Preston enjoyed his clubs so much that he rarely returned from them in his pleasantest mood.

"Then," he asked, "don't you think it might possibly be just as well for you to let it alone?"

This occurred on a Thursday. As the week progressed and passed and James Stainton did not reappear, Mrs. Newberry found it increasingly difficult to follow the advice that her husband had pointedly suggested. She assailed Muriel several times to no purpose. She wrote to Stainton, asking him to come to dinner, but he replied that he was too desperately engaged in some business that she surmised was vaguely connected with a French syndicate and his mine. Then, Muriel's silence unbroken, she made one or two tentative advances, merely inviting the confidence that she had theretofore demanded as her consanguineous right; but her niece's manner of meeting these advances merely served to simplify the task of wifely obedience.

When light was at last cast on the puzzle, it was Muriel's free will that vouchsafed it. On the Wednesday that fell thirteen days after Stainton's mysteriously terminated call, Muriel entered Ethel's boudoir—it was a pink boudoir—where Mrs. Newberry was attempting, at eleven o'clock in the morning, to dress in time for a two o'clock luncheon.

"Can you spare Marie?" asked Muriel. Marie was Mrs. Newberry's maid, just then fluttering about her mistress, who, her dressing advanced only beyond the ordeal of corsets, was seated, in a grandiose kimono, before mirrors.

"In two hours and a half perhaps I can," said Ethel. "Why?"

"Because I want to talk with you."

This was odd. It was so odd that Mrs. Newberry should have scented its import; only, it is difficult to scent the import of anything when one has supped late the night before, when the first "rat" has not been nested upon one's head, and when one has but an eighth part of a day in which to make ready for a luncheon.

"Really, Muriel," complained Ethel. "You do choose the most remarkable moments for conversation. It's only eleven o'clock! What on earth can you want to talk about at such an hour?"

Muriel quietly seated herself by the window.

"About Mr. Stainton," she said.

Mrs. Newberry started so violently that a shower of gilt hairpins clattered upon the dressing-table and floor.

"You may go, Marie," she gasped. She waited until the maid had shut the door. Then she turned her gaze full upon her niece. "What is it?" she cried.

"He wants to marry me."

Mrs. Newberry floundered to her feet and rushed upon Muriel. Her flowing sleeves flew back to her sturdy shoulders. She flung plump arms around Muriel's neck.

"My dear girl!" said she. She kissed the dear girl on both passive cheeks. Then she inquired: "You've had a letter?"

"No," said Muriel. "He asked me."

"But, my dear, he hasn't been here for nearly two weeks. It was—let me see—yes, it will be two weeks to-morrow evening."

"That was when he asked me, Aunty."

Mrs. Newberry's embrace relaxed. She looked hurt.

"And you never told me! I think that implies a lack of confidence—a lack of affection, Muriel."

"I don't know. I wanted to think it over first."

"Think it over! What was there to debate, I should like to know?"

"A good deal, it seemed to me; and anyhow, Aunty, I think this is the sort of thing a girl has to decide for herself—if she can."

"Where ever did you get such notions? A girl never can decide it for herself."

Muriel's answering smile was rueful.

"I couldn't, at any rate," she said, "and so, even if I'm late about it, I've come to you."

Mrs. Newberry was reassured. After all, the thing had happened; Muriel's future—so we fatuous moderns reason—was at last secured. According to the custom of her time and class, Ethel had always taken it for granted that a poor girl married to a rich man is as safe as a good girl gone to Heaven—and more certainly comfortable. She became radiant. It was necessary only that they make such decent speed as would prevent any other young woman from interfering.

"Well," she said, "I'm glad you have come, because, since long engagements aren't fashionable any more, your uncle and I must naturally have all the warning possible—for your uncle will, of course, provide the wedding. I think it had better be next month—yes, next month and at St. Bartholomew's."

Muriel's cheek paled. She turned again to the window and looked out.

"I don't think you quite understand," she said. "I'm not sure——"

"Now, don't be silly," interrupted Mrs. Newberry. "I won't hear any foolish talk about a home wedding or a quiet wedding. It isn't the proper thing for a wedding to be quiet; it isn't natural; besides, you have been living here in your uncle's house, and you owe something to his position."

"That's not it." Muriel's back was still turned; her eyes were fixed on the cold rain that was falling.

"Well," asked Mrs. Newberry, in complete bewilderment, "then what is it?"

"I am not sure that I love Mr. Stainton."

The plump Mrs. Newberry again rose. Her face was a pretty blank.

"Love?" she repeated, as if she had heard that word somewhere before but could not for the life of her recall where. "Love, did you say?"

"Yes," replied Muriel; "I don't know whether I love him."

"What next?" asked Ethel. "Love? You don't know whether you love him! The idea! You're too young to know anything about it, my child. Of course you love him. You're just too young to know it, that's all."

Muriel displayed a wistful face.

"I'm eighteen."

"A mere baby."

"Then I should think I was too young to marry."

"Do you think so?"

"No, only——"

Mrs. Newberry waxed wise.

"As a matter of fact, Muriel, haven't you," she enquired, "often thought of marrying even when you were younger than you are now?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Well, then!" Mrs. Newberry in the past few weeks had acquired a few of her husband's mannerisms, together with some of his convictions.

But this convincing argument did not settle matters. Muriel again faced the window; she seemed to draw inspiration for her incomprehensible stubbornness from the prospect of dripping Madison Avenue.

"It's not so easy——" she began.

"Isn't he kind?" demanded Mrs. Newberry.

"Yes, he's kind."

"You certainly think him good-looking, child. In fact, I should call him handsome."

"I think he is almost handsome, Aunty."

"Of course he is. I have heard lots of women simply rave about him. And he is in love with you? You can't deny that?"

"Did you know it, Aunty?"

"How could anyone help knowing it? He shows it all the time. He can't keep his eyes off you."

"Then, why didn't you tell me?"

"Because——Why, it was so evident that we took it for granted you knew."

"We?"

"Your uncle and I, yes."

"Oh! There doesn't seem to be any doubt in his mind that he's in love with me."

"Exactly, Muriel; and he is rich—quite rich. Why, there are hundreds of girls in New York who would give their eyes to catch him. Hundreds of them."

"But he is——" Muriel hesitated.

"Yes?"

"He's not young, Aunty."

"What has that to do with it?"

"I don't know, but I should think it might have a good deal to do with it. Don't people say that the young love the young?"

"And marry them, you mean? Really, my dear, you have such romantic notions! In that case, what's to become of the old?"

"They're supposed to have married before they became old, I should think. Now, I am only eighteen. I don't know—I'm only speculating about it, and I like Mr. Stainton very much—but when you think of a man of his age marrying——"

Again Mrs. Newberry interrupted. She had her position to maintain: her position as Preston Newberry's wife.

"Muriel," she said, "I can guess what is in your mind, but I cannot guess how it got there. You shock me."

"But, Aunty——"

"That is enough. There are some things that a young girl should not discuss."

Muriel put her hands to her burning cheeks.

"Oh, you don't understand!" she cried. "You don't understand at all. I don't know what you mean! But he's fifty." She almost sobbed. "I don't care what Uncle Preston says. I know he is fifty!"

It was a trying moment for Mrs. Newberry, but she met it bravely. She considered Muriel. Then, in the glass, she considered her own image.

"Look at me," commanded Mrs. Newberry.

Her eyes still suffused with unshed tears, Muriel obeyed.

"I," said her aunt—"do I look old?"

She did not look young, but Muriel loved her, and those whom a child loves seldom grow old.

"No," said Muriel, loyally.

"Well," confessed Ethel, "I am fifty." She was fifty-two. It was a sacrifice, nobly offered, upon the altar of family affection. She saw nothing in the future for her niece if Stainton could not be made to suffice. "But," she added, "you must never tell anyone. All I want to explain to you is that fifty is nothing—absolutely nothing at all."

It is, however, the common fate of sacrifices made for family affection to go unrecognised by the family. Muriel, honest within the limits of her limited training, clear-sighted, was unconvinced.

"Anyhow," she decided, "the question isn't whether he is old or young, I suppose. I guess the only question is: Do I love him? I thought all last night perhaps you could answer that, but of course I was wrong. I see that now. I dare say no person can ever really answer such a question but the person that asks it. I was right in the first place: I have to find out for myself—and yet I don't seem able to find out for myself, either."