CHAPTER I
RE-ENTER A WAYFARING GOSSIP

The last of Miss Beauchamp's receptions for the season drew to a vivacious close. Sunday would witness the running of the Grand Prix. Then the world would begin to scatter, leaving Paris to the inquiring foreigner, the staggering sunshine, some few millions of the governing classes—new style—the smells, the sparrows, and the dust.

As a woman consciously looking threescore and ten in the face Anastasia felt very tired. Her throat was husky and her back ached. But, as a hostess, she felt elate, gratified, even touched. For everybody had come. Had worn their smartest new summer clothes. Had been animated, complimentary, appreciative. Had drunk China tea or iced coffee; eaten strawberries and cream, sweetmeats, ices, and wonderful little cakes, and declared "Mademoiselle Beauchamp's ravishing 'five-o'clock'" to be entirely different from and superior to any other "five-o'clock" of the whole of their united and separate experience.

Art and letters were, of course, fully represented; but politics and diplomacy made a fair show as well. Anastasia greeted three members of the Chamber, two of the Senate, a Cabinet Minister, and a contingent from the personnel of both the English and the Italian embassies. The coveted red ribbon was conspicuous by its presence. And all these delightful people had the good sense to arrive in relays; so that the rooms—the furniture of them disposed against the walls—had never throughout the afternoon been too crowded for circulation, had never been too hot.

Delicious Nanny Legrenzi, of the OpÉra Comique, sang—and looked—like an impudent angel. Ludovico MÜller played like a whirlwind, a zephyr, a lost soul, a quite rampantly saved soul—what you will! And every one talked. Heavenly powers, how they had talked!—their voices rising from a gentle adagio, through a tripping capriccioso, to the magnificently sustained fortissimo so welcome, so indescribably satisfying, to the ear of the practised hostess. Yes, all had gone well, excellently well, and now they were in act of departing.

Anastasia, weary, but genial and amused, on capital terms with her fellow-creatures and with herself, stood in the embrasure of one of the windows in the second room of the suite. Behind her red and pink rambler roses and ferns, in pots, formed a living screen against the glass, pleasantly tempering the light. Ludovico MÜller had just made his bow and exit, leaving the music-room empty; while in the first and largest room Madame St. Leger, who helped her to receive to-day, bade farewell to the guests as they passed on into the cool, lofty hall.

"I have entertained him the best I know, Miss Beauchamp," Lewis Byewater said. "But he did not appear keen to converse on general topics. Seemed to need to specialize. Wanted to have me tell him just who every one present was."

"His talent always lay in the direction of biographical research—modern biography, well understood. And so, like a dear, kind young man, you told him who everybody was?"

"Within the limits of my own acquaintance, I did so. But, you see, in this crowd quite a number of persons were unknown to me," Byewater—a clean, fair, ingenuous and slightly unfinished-looking youth, with a candid, shining forehead, carefully tooled and gilded teeth, a meager allowance of hair, a permanent pince-nez, and a pronounced transatlantic accent—explained conscientiously. "I did my best, and when I got through with my facts I started out to invent. I believe I thickened up the ranks of the French aristocracy to a perfectly scandalous extent. But the Colonel appeared thirsty on titles."

"A form of thirst entirely unknown to your side of the Atlantic!" Anastasia retorted. "Never mind. If you have done violence to the purity of your republican principles by a promiscuous ennobling of my guests you have sinned in the cause of friendship, my dear Byewater, and I am infinitely obliged to you. But where is Colonel Haig now?"

"In the outer parlor, I believe, watching Madame St. Leger wish the rear-guard good-day. He proposes to remain to the bitter end of this reception, Miss Beauchamp. He confided as much to me. He is sensible of having the time of his life re Parisian society people, so he proposes to stick. But you must be pretty well through with any wish for entertaining by this," the kindly fellow went on—"so you just tell me truly if you would prefer to have me go off right now, or have me wait awhile till the Colonel shows signs of getting more satiated and take him along too? I intended proposing to dine him somewhere, anyway, to-night."

"You are the very nicest of all nice young men, and unquestionably I shall meet you in heaven," Anastasia asserted, heartily. "And as I shall arrive there so long before you, you may count on my saying all manner of handsome things to St. Peter about you. Oh yes, stay, my dear boy, and carry the title-thirsty Colonel away with you. By all manner of means, stay."

Byewater flushed up to the top of his shining forehead. He looked at her shyly out of his clear, guileless eyes.

"I do not feel to worry any wearing amount over the Apostle, Miss Beauchamp," he said, slowly. "I believe it is more Mr. Adrian Savage at the present who stands to break up my rest. If you could say some favorable things about me to him, I own it would be a let up. He accepted my articles upon the Eighteenth-Century Stage; but I do not seem any forwarder with getting them positively published. I suppose he is holding them over for the dead season. Well, I presume there is appropriateness in that; for, seeing the time it has lain in his office, the manuscript must be very fairly moth-eaten by this."

"Oh, trust me!" Anastasia cried, genially. "I'll jog his memory directly I see him—which I shall do as soon as he returns from England. Never fear, I'll hustle him to some purpose if you'll stay now and deliver me from this military genealogical incubus. Look—how precious a contrast!—here they come."

Madame St. Leger entered the room, talking, smiling, while Rentoul Haig, short, but valiantly making the most of his inches, his chest well forward, neat as a new pin, his countenance rosy, furiously pleased and furiously busy, with something between a marching and a dancing step, paraded proudly beside her.

La belle Gabrielle had discarded black garments, and blossomed delicately into oyster-gray chiffon and a silk netted tunic to match, finished with self-colored silk embroideries and deep, sweeping knotted fringe. The crown of her wide-brimmed gray hat was massed with soft, drooping ostrich plumes of the same reposeful tint, which lifted a little, waving slightly as she advanced. A scarlet tinge showed in the round of her charming cheeks. Mischief looked out of her eyes and tipped the corners of her smiling mouth. She was, indeed, much diverted by the small and pompous British warrior strutting at her side. He offered example of a type hitherto unknown to her. She relished him greatly. She also relished the afternoon's experiences. They were exhilarating. She felt deliciously mistress of herself and deliciously light-hearted. It is comparatively easy to despise the world when you are out of it. But now, the seclusion of her mourning being over, returning to the world, she could not but admit it a vastly pleasant place. This afternoon it had broadly smiled upon her; and she found herself smiling back without any mental reservation in respect of ideas and causes. At seven and twenty, though you may hesitate to circumscribe your personal liberty by marriage with one man, the homage of many men—if respectfully offered—is by no manner of means a thing to be sneezed at. Gabrielle St. Leger did not sneeze at it. On the contrary she gathered admiring looks, nicely turned compliments, emulous attentions, veiled ardors of manner and of speech, into a bouquet, so to speak, to tuck gaily into her waistband. The sense of her own beauty, and of the power conferred by that beauty, was joyful to her. Under the stimulus of success her tongue waxed merry, so that she came off with flying colors from more than one battle of wit. And, for some reason, all this went to make her think with unusual kindliness of her absent lover. In this vivacious, mundane atmosphere, Adrian Savage would be so eminently at home and in place! His presence, moreover, would give just that touch of romance, that touch of sentiment, to the sparkling present which—and there Gabrielle thought it safest to stop.

"Ah! it has been so very, very agreeable, your party, most dear friend," she said in her pretty careful English, taking her hostess's hand in both hers. "I find myself quite sorrowful that it should be at an end. I could say 'and please how soon may we begin all over again' like my little Bette when she too is happy."

"Dear child, dear child," Anastasia returned affectionately, almost wistfully, for nostalgia of youth is great in those who, though bravely acquiescent, are no longer young.

Gray hair happened to be the fashion in Paris this season. About a week previously Miss Beauchamp had mysteriously closed her door to all comers. To-day she emerged gray-headed. This transformation at once perplexed and pleased her many friends. If it admitted her age, and by lessening the eccentricity of her appearance made her less conspicuous, it gave her an added dignity, strangely softening and refining the expression of her large-featured, slightly masculine face. Just now, in a highly ornate black lace and white silk gown, and suite of ruby ornaments set in diamonds—whereby hung a tale not unknown to a certain hidden garden—Anastasia Beauchamp, in the younger woman's opinion, showed not only as an impressive but as a noble figure.

"Ah yes, and you should know, Colonel 'Aig," the latter continued, the aspirate going under badly in her eagerness, "since you have not for so long a time seen her, that it is always thus with Mademoiselle Beauchamp at her parties. She produces a mutual sympathy between her guests so that, while in her presence, they adore one another. It is her secret. She makes all of us at our happiest, at our best. We laugh, but we are also gentle-hearted. We desire to do good."

"That is so," Byewater put in nasally. "I indorse your sentiments, Madame St. Leger. When I came over I believed I should find I had left the finest specimens of modern woman behind in America. But I was mistaken. Miss Beauchamp is positively great."

"And—and me, Mr. Byewater?" Gabrielle asked with a naughty mouth.

"Oh! well, you—Madame St. Leger," the poor youth faltered, turning away modestly, his countenance flaming very bright red.

"I require no assurances regarding our hostess's brilliant social gifts," Rentoul Haig declared, mouthing his words so as to make himself intelligible to this foreign, or semi-foreign, audience. "My memory carries me back to—"

"The year one, my dear Colonel, the year one," Anastasia interrupted—"the old days at Beauchamp Sulgrave. Great changes there, alas, since my poor brother's death. Between Death Duties and Land Taxes, my cousin can't afford to keep the place up, or thinks he can't, which amounts to much the same thing. He is trying to sell a lot of the farms at Beauchamp St. Anne's hear.

"England is being ruined by those iniquitous Land Taxes, I give you my word, Miss Beauchamp, simply ruined. Take Beauchamp Sulgrave, for instance. Perfect example of an English country-house, amply large enough yet not too large for comfort, and really lovely grounds. Just the type of place that always has appealed to me. I remember every stick and stone of it. I give you my word, I find it difficult to speak with moderation of these Radical nobodies, whose thieving propensities endanger the preservation of such places on the old hospitable and stately basis. I remember my regiment was in camp at Beauchamp St. Anne's—I am afraid it was in the seventies—and your party from Sulgrave used kindly to drive over to tea, regimental sports, and impromptu gymkhanas. Charming summer! How it all comes back to me, Miss Beauchamp!"

He cleared his throat, pursing up his lips and nodding his head quite sentimentally.

"Really, I cannot say what a resuscitation of pleasant memories it gave me, when our mutual friend Savage mentioned your name one day at my cousin, the Smyrthwaites' house, at Stourmouth, this winter. Directly my doctor ordered me to Aix-les-Bains.—A touch of gout, nothing more serious. My health is, and always has been, excellent, I am thankful to say.—I determined to remain a few days in Paris on my way out, in the hope of renewing our acquaintance. Savage told me—"

Gabrielle had dropped her friend's hand.

"Ah! these climbing roses, are they not ravishing?" she exclaimed, advancing her nose to the pink clusters daintily. "See then, M. Byewater, if you please, can you tell me the name of them? I think I will buy some to decorate my own drawing-room. The colors would sympathize—'armonize—is it that, yes?—so prettily with my carpet.—You recall the tone of my carpet?—And of my curtains. Though whether it is worth while, since I so soon leave Paris!"

"Is that so, Madame St. Leger?" Byewater asked rather blankly.

"Savage is a delightful fellow, a really delightful fellow," Rentoul Haig asserted largely.

"For the summer, oh yes," la belle Gabrielle almost gabbled. "I take my mother and my little girl to the—how do you say?—to the sea-bathings. On the Norman coast I have rented a chalet. The climate is invigorating. It will benefit my mother, whose health causes me anxieties. And my little girl will enjoy the society of some little friends, whose parents rent for this season a neighboring villa."

"Ah! precisely that is what I want to talk to you about. Come and sit down, Colonel Haig."

Anastasia raised her voice slightly.

"Here—yes—on the settee. And now about Adrian Savage. I confess I begin to look upon this executorship as an imposition. It is not quite fair on him, poor dear fellow. It occupies time and thought which would be expended much more profitably elsewhere. He is as good as gold about it all, but I know he feels it a most inconvenient tie. It interferes with his literary work, which is serious, and with his social life here—with his friendships."

"Yes, I do not usually go to the coast. I accompany my mother to her native province—to Savoy"—Madame St. Leger's voice had also risen. "To ChambÉry, where we have relations. You are not acquainted with ChambÉry, M. Byewater? Ah! but you make a mistake. You should be. It is quite the old France, very original, quite of the past ages. I love it; but this year—"

"In my opinion it is quite time Savage was set free." Anastasia's tone waxed increasingly emphatic. "You must forgive my saying the Smyrthwaite ladies are very exacting, Colonel Haig. They appear to trade upon his chivalry and forbearance to a remarkable extent. Doesn't it occur to them that a young man, in his position, has affairs of his own in plenty to attend to?"

"This year the sea-bathing will certainly be more efficacious. No doubt the mountain air in Savoy is also invigorating; but the changes of climate are so rapid, so injurious—"

"Perhaps there are other attractions, of a not strictly business character. One cannot help hearing rumors, you know. And recently I have been a good deal at the Miss Smyrthwaites' myself. As a connection of their mother's, in their rather unprotected condition, I have felt it incumbent upon me to keep my eye on matters."

Rentoul Haig settled himself comfortably upon the settee beside his hostess, inclining sideways, a little toward her. He spoke low, confidentially, as one communicating state secrets, his nose inquisitive, his mouth puckered, his whole dapper person irradiated by a positive rapture of gossip. He simmered, he bubbled, he only just managed not to boil over, in his luxury of enjoyment. Anastasia listened, now fanning herself, now punctuating his discourse with incredulous ejaculations and gestures descriptive of the liveliest dissent.

"Incredible! my dear Colonel," she cried. "You must be misinformed. Savage is regarded as a most desirable parti here in Paris. He can marry whom he pleases. Impossible! I know better."

"Then do you tell me it is unhappily quite true that M. RenÉ Dax is ill, M. Byewater?" Gabrielle St. Leger inquired in unnecessarily loud, clear accents.

"Well, I would hesitate to make you feel too badly about him, Madame St. Leger," the conscientious youth returned cautiously. "I cannot speak from first-hand knowledge, since I would not presume to give myself out as among M. Dax's intimates. He has been a made man this long time, while I am only now starting out on schemes for arriving at fame myself way off in the far by and by."

"Never in life!" Anastasia cried, in response to further confidential bubblings. "You misread our friend Savage altogether if you suppose his heart could be influenced by the lady's wealth. He is the least mercenary person I know. The modern fortune-hunting madness has not touched him, I am delighted to say. Then, he is really quite comfortably off already. He has every reasonable prospect of being rich eventually. He is very shrewd in money matters; and he has friends whom, I can undertake to say, will not forget him when the final disposition of their worldly goods is in question. He is a man of sensibility, of deep feeling, capable of a profound and lasting attachment."

She paused, glancing at la belle Gabrielle.

"I would not like to have you think I underrate Mr. Dax's talent." This from Byewater. "I recognize he is just as clever as anything. But I am from a country where the standards are different, and much of Mr. Dax's art is way over the curve of the world where my sympathy fails to follow. This being so, I have never made any special effort to get into direct personal contact—"

"You may take it from me, my dear Colonel, that profound and lasting attachment is already in existence."

"But I was lunching with Lenty B. Stacpole, our leading black-and-white artist, yesterday. Maybe you are not acquainted with his work, Madame St. Leger? Most of the time he puts it right on the American market, and does not show here. And, Lenty told me Mr. Dax is so badly broken up with neurasthenia that if he does not quit work and exercise more, and cultivate normal habits generally, he risks soon being just as sick a man as any but a coroner's jury can have use for."

"It is a matter of fact, I may almost say of common knowledge"—fatigue and huskiness notwithstanding, Anastasia's voice rang out in a veritable war-cry. "All his friends are aware that for years he has been devoted—honorably and honestly devoted—to a most lovely woman, here, in Paris."

She paused, again looking the bubbling little warrior hard in the eye.

"Here," she repeated.

"But that pains me so much"—Gabrielle also spoke for the benefit of all and any hearers. "Without doubt I did know that M. RenÉ Dax was ailing; but that he was so very ill—no—no."

Miss Beauchamp laid her fan lightly upon Colonel Haig's coat-cuff, silently drawing his attention to the somewhat unfinished American youth and the perfectly finished young Frenchwoman, standing together in the embrasure of the window backed by the trellis of red and pink rambler roses. Again she looked him hard in the eye.

"Now does it occur to you why any other affair of the heart, in Mr. Savage's case, is preposterous and unthinkable?" she inquired. He swallowed, nodded: "Upon my word—indeed! Most interesting."

"And most convincing?"

"My dear lady, is it necessary to ask that question, in face of such remarkable charm and beauty? Enviable fellow! Upon my word, is it convincing?"

But here la belle Gabrielle, conscious alike of their scrutiny and the purport of their partly heard conversation, advanced from the window. The ostrich plumes upon her hat lifted and waved as she moved. The scarlet tinge in her cheeks had deepened, and her eyes were at once troubled and daring.

Rentoul Haig got upon his feet in a twinkling.

"Enviable fellow!" he repeated feelingly. Then added, "I—I am at liberty to mention this very interesting piece of information, Miss Beauchamp?"

"Cry it aloud from the housetops if you will. I vouch for the truth of it," Anastasia replied, rising also. "All her friends wish him success. I say advisedly friends. In such a case, as you can readily imagine, there are others"—she turned to Madame St. Leger. "Why, ma toute belle, is anything wrong? You appear a little disturbed, disquieted."

"M. Byewater has just communicated a very unhappy news to me," she replied.

"Heartless young man! As punishment let us send him packing instantly."

Anastasia smiled at the perplexed youth in the kindest and most encouraging fashion.

"I am ever so mortified to have caused Madame St. Leger to feel badly," he said.

"Oh! She will get over it. In time she will forgive you. Leave her to me! I will reason with her. You must be going, too, Colonel Haig?" Anastasia held out her hand, cheerfully enforcing farewell. "Ah! well, it has been very nice, very nice indeed, to see you and talk over old times and so on. Don't fail to look me up whenever you pass through Paris. I give you a standing invitation. You're sure to find me. I am as much a fixture as the Bois or the river."

As the two men passed from the outer room into the hall Anastasia sank down on the settee again.

"Just Heaven!" she said, "but I expire with fatigue, simply expire."

Gabrielle looked at her mutinously. Then, sitting down beside her, she kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"You are malicious," she said; "you are very obstinate. Perhaps I too am obstinate. You will not succeed in driving me into—into marriage."

"Never a bit! I trust your own heart, dearest child, to do the driving."

"Ah! my heart—have I any left? Save where my mother and Bette are concerned, I sometimes wonder!"

"You don't give your heart the chance to speak. You are afraid of it, because you know beforehand what it would say, what it is already saying."

Madame St. Leger rose, shaking her head, big hat, waving plumes and all, with captivating petulance.

"How can I tell, how can I tell?" she exclaimed. "Is not marriage for me ancient history? Did I not read it all years ago, when I was still but an infant?"

"That is exactly the reason why you should read it again, now that you are no longer an infant—conceivably."

"But I do not care to read again that which I have already read. I have learned all the lessons that particular ancient history has to teach." Her tone and expression were not without a point of bitterness. "I want to go forward, to learn a new science, rather than to repeat discredited fables."

Anastasia sighed, raising her shoulders, smiling keenly and sadly.

"Ah! you are still a baby," she said; "very much a baby, stretching out soft, eager fingers toward any and every untried thing which sparkles, or jiggets, or rattles. Poor enough stuff, my dear, for the most part, when you do contrive to grasp it! Not new at all, either, save for the high-sounding modern names with which it is labeled—only old clothes made over to ape new fashions! Believe me, the love of a clever and handsome young man is a thousand times more satisfying, more entertaining, than any such sartorial reconstructions from the world-old rag-bag of social experiment. Ah! vastly more entertaining," she added, placing her fan against her lips, and looking at the younger woman over the top of it with meaning.

"M. Byewater informs me that M. RenÉ Dax is really, really ill," Gabrielle remarked rather hastily, her eyes turned upon the roses.

"Umph—and pray what, my dear, has that precious piece of information to do with it?"

"He may perhaps even die."

"I, for one, should survive his loss with conspicuous resignation and fortitude."

"But for the past week he has written to me almost daily."

"An impertinence which makes me the more resigned to his speedy demise."

"Yes—piteous, eloquent little letters, telling me how he suffers. And I have not answered."

"I take that for granted, ma toute belle."

"I did not reply because—I am sorry now—I did not quite believe him. His eloquence was affecting. But it was also misleading. I thought it improbable any person would write so very well if he were so very ill. I lament my suspicions. I have added to his sufferings. He implores me, in each letter, since it is impossible he should at present visit me, that I should go, if only for a few moments, to see him."

"Out of all question—a monstrous and infamous proposal!"

"So I myself thought at first. But if it is true that he may die? Listen, dear friend, tell me—"

With a rapid, sweeping movement Gabrielle again sat down beside her friend. Again kissed her lightly on the cheek, manoeuvering the wide-brimmed hat skilfully, so as to avoid scrapings and collisions.

"Listen," she repeated coaxingly—"for really I find myself in a dilemma. I cannot consult my mother. She is timid and diffident before questions such as these, of what is and is not socially permissible. Her charity, dear, sainted being, is limitless. It conflicts with her natural timidity. Between the two she becomes incapable of exercising clear judgment. She does not comprehend modern life."

"Few of us do," Anastasia commented.

"And her health is, alas, still far from being re-established. I desire to spare her all physical as well as all moral exertion. Therefore I cannot propose that she should accompany me to visit M. RenÉ Dax. That would render my position comparatively simple; but the excitement and fatigue of such a proceeding are practically prohibitive for her."

"Am I then to understand," Anastasia inquired somewhat grimly, "that you kindly propose I should play duenna, and call on that singularly objectionable young man in company with you?"

"Ah! if it only could be arranged! But I fear he might not improbably refuse to receive you."

"Execrable taste on his part, of course. Yet I thank him, for it disposes of the matter, since you cannot go alone."

"But if he should be dying? Ah, forgive me," she cried, with charming penitence. "I weary, I even annoy you, most dear Anastasia, most cherished, most valued friend. It is unconscionable to do so after you have given me the enjoyment of so charming, so inspiriting, an afternoon. You should rest. I will ask nothing more of you. I will go."

"But not to call on M. RenÉ Dax—" she caught la belle Gabrielle's two hands in hers. "My darling child, you must surely perceive the impropriety, the scandal, of such a dÉmarche on your part—at your age, with your attractions, well known as you are—and, putting prejudice aside, with his reputation, whether deserved or not, for libertinism, for grossness of ideas, for reckless indiscretion—"

Madame St. Leger had risen. The elder woman still held her hands imprisoned. She stood looking down, the brim of her hat forming a gray halo about her abundant burnished hair, and pale, grave, heart-shaped face.

"I perceive all that," she answered quietly. "I have thought carefully of it. I did so while I yet was doubtful of the actuality of his illness. But now that I am no longer doubtful, that I am assured he is practising no deceit upon me, I ask myself whether I—who embrace the nobler and larger conceptions of the office of woman—am not thereby committed to disregard such conventions. Whether it is not of the essence of the reforms, the ideals for which we work that we should, each one of us, have the courage, when occasion arises, to defy tradition. Only to talk, is silly. To make a protest of action gives the true measure of our faith, our sincerity. The making of such a protest against current usages cannot be agreeable. I do not make it light-heartedly, with any satisfaction in my own audacity. To gratify myself, to obtain amusement or frivolous pleasure, I would never risk outraging the accepted code of conduct, the accepted proprieties. But for the sake of one who suffers, of one to whom—without vanity—I believe my friendship to have been helpful—for the sake of one whose attitude toward me has been irreproachable, and who, though so gifted, is in many ways so greatly to be pitied—"

She bent her head and kissed her hostess.

"Farewell," she said gently. "I shall not in any case go to-day. It is now too late. But, beyond that, I make no promises for fear I may perjure myself. Yes, I have been so happy, so happy this afternoon. For this, most dear friend, all my thanks."

Regardless of aching back and aching throat, Anastasia Beauchamp went to the telephone. First she told the operator, at the exchange, to ring up the number of Adrian's bachelor flat in the rue de l'UniversitÉ. From thence no response was obtainable. Nothing daunted, Anastasia requested to be put into communication with the office in the rue Druot. Here with polite alacrity the good Konski's amiable voice answered her.

"Alas, no! To the desolation of his colleagues M. Savage had not yet returned. But in a few days he would without doubt do so. The conduct of the Review compelled it. Without him, the machine refused any longer to work. His presence became imperative. Madame would write? Precisely. Her letter should receive his," the good Konski's, "most eager attention. Let Madame repose entire confidence in his assiduity, resting assured that not an instant's delay should occur in the delivery of her distinguished communication."

CHAPTER II
IN THE TRACK OF THE BRAIN-STORM

"At last you have arrived. Through an interminable progression of hours I have waited, the days and nights mixing themselves into one abominable salad of expectation, disappointment, rage against those whom I pictured as interfering to detain you; and, as dressing and sauce to the whole infernal compound, a yearning for the assuaging repose of your presence which gnawed, like the undying worm, at my entrails."

This address, although delivered in the young man's accustomed unemotional manner, with studied, carefully modulated utterance, was hardly calculated to allay the embarrassment or disquietude aroused by the uncompromising stare of the concierge, and very evident, though more deferential, curiosity of Giovanni, the bright-eyed, velvet-spoken Italian man-servant who admitted her.

Nor were other sources of discomfort lacking. Madame St. Leger, like all persons of temperament, in whom mind and body, the soul and senses, are constantly and actively interpenetrative, instinctively responded to the spiritual influences which reside in places and even in material objects. Now, coming directly into it from the glitter and movement, the thousand and one very articulate activities of the sun-bathed city, the vivid foliage of whose many trees tossed in the crisp freshness of the summer wind, RenÉ Dax's studio struck her as the strangest and, perhaps, most repellant human habitation she had ever yet set foot in. Struck her, too, as belonging to a section of that exclusively man's world, in which woman's part is at once fugitive and not a little suspect.

The black hangings and furniture stared at, the bare immaculately white walls bluffed, her. Only a mournful travesty of the splendid daylight, reigning out of doors, filtered down through the gathered black-stuff blinds drawn across the great, sloping skylights, and contended languidly against the harsh clarity of a couple of electric lights—with flat smoked-glass shades to them—hanging, spider-like, at the end of long black cords from the beam supporting the central span of the arched ceiling. Notwithstanding the height of the room and its largeness of area, the atmosphere was stagnant, listless, and dead. This constituted Madame St. Leger's initial impression. This, and a singular persuasion—returning upon her stealthily, persistently, though she strove honestly to cast it out—that the studio, although apparently so bare and empty, was, in point of fact, crowded by forms and conceptions the reverse of wholesome or ennobling, which pushed upon and jostled her, while, by their number and grossness, they further exhausted the already lifeless air.

The sense of suffocation, thus produced, so oppressed her that her heart beat nervously and her pulse fluttered. Though unwilling to discard the modest shelter it afforded and gain closer acquaintance with the details of her surroundings, Gabrielle untwisted the flowing gray veil which she wore over her hat and around her throat, and threw it back from her face. Then, for a while, all else was forgotten in the thought of, the sight of, RenÉ Dax. And, although that thought and seeing was in itself painful, it tended to restore both her outward serenity and her inward assurance and strength.

"Ah! my poor friend," she said, soothingly, "had I understood how suffering you were, how greatly in need of sympathy, I would have put aside obstacles and come to you sooner; though—though you will still remember, it is no small concession that I should come at all."

"Only by concessions is life rendered supportable," he answered. "I too have made concessions. If you defy conventional decorum for my sake, I, on the other hand, have sacrificed to it for your sake very royally. I have destroyed the labor of months, have obliterated priceless records to safeguard your delicacy, to insure you immunity—should you at last visit me—from all offense."

And la belle Gabrielle, listening, was moved and touched. But she asked no explanation—shrank from it, indeed, divining the sacrifice in question bore vital relation to that unseen yet jostling, unwholesome and ignoble crowd. She therefore rallied the mothering, ministering spirit within her, resolving to let speech, action and feeling be inspired and controlled by this, and this alone.

For one thing was indisputable—namely, that RenÉ Dax, caricaturist and poet, was, as the cleanly young American yesterday told her, just as sick a man as any man need be. His puny person had wasted. He looked all head—all brain, rather, since his tired little face seemed to also have dwindled and to occupy the most restricted space permissible in proportion to the whole. The full, black linen painting-blouse, which he wore in place of a coat, produced, along with his lowness of stature, a queerly youthful and even childish effect. To stand on ceremony with this small, sad human being, still more to go in fear of it, to regard it as possibly dangerous, its poor little neighborhood as in any degree compromising, was to Gabrielle St. Leger altogether absurd and unworthy. Let the overpunctilious or overworldly say what they pleased, she congratulated herself. She was glad to have disregarded opposition, glad to have come. Where custom and humanity conflict—so she told herself—let it be custom which goes to the wall.

Therewith she drew herself up proudly, and, carrying her charming head high, looked bravely around the strange and somewhat sinister place. Noted the wide divans on either side the fireplace and the diminutive scarlet cane chair set on the hearth-rug; the five-fold red lacquer screen; the trophy of arms—swords, rapiers, simitars, daggers, and other such uncomfortably cutting, ripping, and stabbing tools—upon the chimney-breast above the mantelpiece. Noted, not without a shudder of disgust, the glass tank and its slimy swimming and crawling population; the tables loaded with books, materials and implements of the draftsman's craft; the model's platform; the array of portfolios, canvases, drawing-boards—surely the place had been very scrupulously swept and garnished against her coming! It was minutely, even rigidly, clean and neat. This pleased her as a pretty tribute of respect. Finally, her eyes sought the nearly life-size red-chalk drawing set on an easel in the center of the studio immediately beneath the electric light.

RenÉ Dax stood beside her. She tall, noticeably elegant in her short-waisted, long-coated, pale-gray, braided walking-dress. He reserved and weary in bearing, but very watchful and very intent.

"You observe my drawing?" he inquired softly. "I have been waiting for that—waiting for you to grasp the fact that there is nothing new, nothing extraordinary in your being here with me—you, and Mademoiselle Bette. For months now you are my companions all day and all night—yes, then very sensibly also. Look, I lie there upon the divan. I fold the red screen back—it is loot from the Imperial Palace at Peking, that screen. Grotesquely sanguinary scenes figure upon it. But I forget them and the entertainment they afford me.—I fold the screen back, I turn upon my side among the cushions and I look at you. I look until, on those nights when my will is active and yours in abeyance, or perhaps a little weak, you step off the paper and cross the room, there—between the platform and the long table—always carrying Mademoiselle Bette on your arm; and, coming close, you bend down over me. You never speak, neither do you touch me. But I cease to suffer. The tension of my nerves is relaxed. The hideous pain at the base of my skull, where the brain and spinal-cord form their junction, no longer tortures me. I am inexpressibly soothed. I become calm. I sleep."

Gabrielle St. Leger had grown very serious. For this small, sad human being to whom she proposed to minister and to mother had disconcertingly original and even consternating ways with it. Should she resent the said ways, soundly snubbing him? Or, making allowance for his ill-health and acknowledged eccentricity, parley with and humor him? To steer a wise course was difficult.

"I willingly believe your intention in making this drawing was not disloyal," she said, quietly. "Yet I cannot but be displeased. Before making it you should have asked my approval and obtained my consent."

"Which you would have refused?—No, I knew better than that. But dismiss the idea of disloyalty. Rise above paltry considerations of expediency and etiquette. You can do so if you choose. Accept the position in its gravity, in its permanent consequences both to me and to yourself. In making this drawing I thought not merely of the ease and relief I might obtain through it. I thought of you also. For I perceived the perversion which threatened you. I decided to intervene, to rescue you. I decided to co-operate with destiny, to interest myself in the evolution of your highest good. So now it amounts to no less than this—that your future and mine are inextricably conjoined, intermingled, incapable of separation henceforth."

"Gently, gently, my poor friend," Gabrielle said.

"Are you not then sorry for me?" he asked quickly, with very disarming and child-like pathos. "Is it a fraud, a heartless experiment, coming to-day to see me thus? Have you no real desire to console or bring me hope?"

"From my heart I pity and commiserate you," Gabrielle said.

"Then where is your logic, where is your reason? For I—I—RenÉ Dax—I, and my recovery, my welfare, constitute your highest good. I am your destiny. Your being here to-day regardless of etiquette, your stepping off the paper there upon the easel, crossing the room and bending over me at night, carrying the little maiden child, the flower of innocence, in your arms, these are at least a tacit admission of the truth of that."

A point of fear came into Madame St. Leger's eyes. Outward serenity, inward assurance, were not easy of maintenance. The more so, that again she was very sensible of the unseen crowd of ignoble forms and conceptions peopling the room, tainting and exhausting the air of it, pressing upon and—as she felt—deriding her.

"You speak foolishly and extravagantly," she said, steadying her voice with effort. "I pardon that because I know that you are suffering and not altogether master of yourself. But I do not enjoy this conversation. I beg you to talk more becomingly, or I shall be unable to remain. I shall feel compelled to leave you."

For an instant RenÉ Dax looked up at her with a positively diabolic expression of resentment. Then his face was distorted by a sudden spasm.

"It is only too true that I suffer," he cried bitterly. "My head aches—there at the base of my brain. It is like the grinding of iron knuckles. I become distracted. Very probably I speak extravagantly. My sensations are extravagant, and my talk matches them. But do not leave me. I will not offend you. I will be altogether good, altogether mild and amiable. Only remain. Place yourself here in this chair. Your presence comforts and pacifies me—but only if you are in sympathy with me. Let your sympathy flow out then. Do not restrain it. Let it surround and support me, buoying me up, so that I float upon the surface of it as upon some divine river of peace. Ah, Madame, pity me. I am so tired of pain."

Reluctantly, out of her charity and against her better, her mundane judgment, Gabrielle St. Leger yielded. She sat down in the large, black brocade-covered chair indicated. Her back was toward the drawing upon the easel. She was glad not to see it, glad that the electric light no longer glared in her eyes. She clasped her hands lightly in her lap, trying to subdue all inward agitation, to maintain a perfectly sane and normal outlook, thereby infusing something of her own health and sweetness as a disinfectant into this morbid atmosphere.

The young man sat down, too, upon the edge of the divan just opposite to her. He set his elbows upon his knees, his big head projected forward, his eyes closed, his chin resting in the hollow of his hard, clever little hands. For a time there was silence, save for the dripping of the fountain in the glass tank, and the ticking of a clock. Presently, very softly, he began to speak.

"My art is killing me—killing me—and only you and Mademoiselle Bette can save me," he said. "And I am worth saving; for, not only am I the most accomplished draftsman of the century, but my knowledge of the human animal is unsurpassed. Moreover, that I should die is so inconceivably purposeless. Death is such a stupidity, such an outrage on intelligence and common-sense."

Gabrielle remained passive. To reason with him would, she felt, be useless as yet. She would wait her opportunity.

"Yes, my art is killing me," he went on. "It asks too much. More than once I have tried to sever myself from it; but it is the stronger. It refuses amputation. Long ago, when, as a child—unhappy, devoured by fancies, by curiosity about myself, about other children, about everything which I saw—I found that I possessed this talent, I was both shy and enchanted. It gave me power. Everything that I looked at belonged to me. I could reproduce it in beauty or the reverse. I could cover with ridicule those who annoyed me. By means of my talent I could torment. I played with it as naughty little boys play together, ingenious in provocation, in malice, in dirty monkey tricks. Then as I grew older I enjoyed my talent languorously. I spent long days of dreams, long nights of love with it. That was a period when my heart was still soft. I believed. The trivial vices of the little boy were left behind. The full-blooded vices of manhood were untried as yet. Later ambition took me. I would study. I would know. I would train my eye and my hand to perfect mastery in observation and in execution. My own mechanical skill, my power of memorizing, of visualizing, intoxicated me. I reviewed the work of famous draftsmen. I recognized that I was on the highroad to surpass it, both in effrontery of conception and perfection of technique. I refused my art nothing, shrank from nothing. I had loved my art as a companion in childish mischief; then as a youth loves his first mistress. Now I loved it as a man loves his career, loves that which raises him above his contemporaries. I stood above others, alone. I was filled with an immense scorn of them. I unveiled their deceit, their hypocrisy, their ignorance, their vileness, the degradation of their minds and habits. I whipped them till the blood came. No one could escape. I jeered. I laughed. I made them laugh too. Between the cuts of the lash, even while the blood flowed, they laughed. How could they help doing so? My wit was irresistible. They cursed me, yet shouted to me to lay on to them again."

For a minute or more silence, save for the dripping fountain, the ticking clock, and a bubbling, sucking sound as one of the black-and-orange blotched newts dived from the rockwork down to the sandy, pebbly floor of the glass tank. Madame St. Leger leaned back in her chair. She pressed her handkerchief against her lips. She felt as one who witnesses some terrible drama upon the stage which holds the attention captive. She could not have gone away and left RenÉ Dax until the scene was concluded, even if she would.

"That was the period of my apotheosis, when I appeared to myself as a god,—last year, the year before last, even this winter," he said, presently, "before the pain came and while still I myself was greater than my art. But now, now, to-day, I do not laugh any more, nor can I make others laugh. My art is greater than I. It has grown unruly, arrogant. I am unequal to its demands. It asks of me what I am no longer able to give. It hounds me along. It storms at me—'Go further yet, imagine the unimaginable, pass all known limits. You are too squeamish, too fastidious, too modest, too nice. There yet remain sanctities to be defiled, shames to be depicted, agonies to be stewed in the vitriol juice of sarcasm. Go forward. You are lazy. Exert yourself. Discover fresh subjects. Invent new profanities. Turn the spit on which you have impaled humanity faster and faster. Draw better—you grow lethargic, indolent—draw better and better yet.'—But I cannot, I cannot," RenÉ Dax said, the corners of his mouth drooping like those of a tired baby. "We have changed places, my art and I. It is greater than me. It masters me instead of my mastering it. Like some huge brazen Moloch, with burning, brazen arms it presses me against its burning, brazen breast, scorching me to a cinder. It has squeezed me dry—dry—I am no longer able to collect my ideas, to memorize that which I see. My imagination is sterile. My hand refuses to obey my brain. My line, my beloved, my unexampled line, wavers, is broken, uncertain, loses itself. I scrabble unmeaning nonsense upon the paper."

He unbuttoned the wristband of his blouse and stripped up the sleeve of it.

"See," he went on, "how my muscles have deteriorated. My arm resembles some withered, sapless twig. Soon I shall not possess sufficient strength to hold a pencil or a bit of charcoal. Yes, yes, I know what you would say. Others have already said it. Travel, try change of scene, rest, consult doctors. But pah! Butchers, carrion-feeders, what can they tell me which I do not know already? For—for—"

He rose, came nearer to Gabrielle St. Leger, pointing to the inner corner of the great room in a line with the door.

"There," he said, with a singular sly gleefulness, "there—you see, Madame, behind the port folio-wagon? Yes?—It has its lair there, its retreat in which it conceals itself. It always says one thing, and it always tells the truth. It has once been a man; now it has no skin. You can observe all the muscles and sinews in action, which is extremely instructive. But naturally it is red—red all over. And it is highly varnished, otherwise, of course, it would feel the cold too much. It places its red hands on the edges of the portfolios—thus—and it vaults into the room. It is astonishingly agile. I think it may formerly have been, by profession, an acrobat, it runs so very swiftly. Its contortions are infinite. It avoids the pieces of furniture with extraordinary dexterity. Sometimes it leaps over them. The rapidity of its movements excites me. The pain—here at the base of my skull—always increases when I see it. I cannot restrain myself. I pursue it with frenzy. I hurl books, pictures, firewood, anything I can lay hands upon, at it—even my precious daggers and javelins from off the wall. But it sustains no injury. They—these objects which I throw—pass clean through it; yet they leave no aperture, no mark. My servant afterward finds them scattered upon the ground quite clean and free from moisture. And, as it runs, it screams to me, over its red shoulder, in a rasping voice like the cutting of stone with a saw, 'You are going mad, RenÉ Dax. You are going mad—mad.'"

Madame St. Leger raised both hands in mute horror, pity, protest. Her lips trembled. The tears ran down her cheeks. The young man watched her for some seconds, the strangest expression of triumph upon his solemn little face. Then, with a great sigh, he backed away and sat down on the divan once more.

"Ah! Ah!" he said, quite calmly and gently. "It is so adorable to see you weep! Better even than that you should step down off the easel, as you sometimes do at night, and, crossing the room, bend over me and give me sleep. Still the red man speaks truth, Madame, accurate, unassailable truth. It comes just to this. Very soon now the final act of this infernal comedy will be reached. I shall be mad—unless—"

CHAPTER III
IN WHICH THE STORM BREAKS

"Unless—unless—what?"

Gabrielle St. Leger asked the question not because she wished to ask it, but because outward things forced her.

All disease is actually infecting, if not actively infectious, since contact with it disturbs the emotional and functional equilibrium, maintenance of which constitutes perfect health. Such disturbance is most readily and injuriously produced in persons of fine sensibility. Just now Madame St. Leger's faculties and feelings alike were in disarray. RenÉ Dax, his genius and the neurosis from which he suffered, his strange dwelling-place, all that which had happened in and—morally—adhered to it, combined to put compulsion upon her. In a sense, she knew the world. She was not inexperienced. But the amenities of a polished and highly civilized society, whose principal business it is to veil and mitigate the asperities of fact, had stood between her and direct acquaintance with the fundamental brutalities of life. Now she consciously met the shock of those brutalities, and met it single-handed. This exclusively man's world, the gates of which she had forced with wilful self-confidence, produced in her humiliation and helplessness, a sense of having projected herself into regions where accustomed laws are inoperative and direction-posts—for guidance of wandering feminine footsteps—agitatingly non-existent. Under this stress of circumstance her initiative deserted her. The vein of irony—running like a steel ribbon through her mentality—became suddenly and queerly worked out. She could not detach herself from the immediate position, stand aside, review it as a whole, and deal with it. That which made for individuality had gone under. Only her womanhood as womanhood—a womanhood sheltered, petted, moving ever in a gracefully artificial atmosphere—was left. She had come, intending to console, to minister, sagely to advise. It looked quite anxiously much as though, tyrannized by rude, unfamiliar forces, she would remain to yield and to obey. Thus, taking up the tag-end of RenÉ Dax's speech, she asked, unwillingly, almost fearfully:

"Unless—unless what?"

"Unless you consent to save me, Madame," he replied, with insinuating gravity and sweetness. "Unless you consecrate yourself to the work of my recovery, you and the delicious Mademoiselle Bette."

"But, my poor friend," she reasoned, "how is it possible for me to do that?"

"In a way very obvious and simple, wholly consonant to the most exalted aspirations of your nature," he returned. "I have planned it all out. No serious difficulties present themselves. Good will, Madame, on your part, some forethought on mine, and all is satisfactorily arranged. As to Mademoiselle Bette, she will find herself in a veritable paradise. You know her affection for me? And, putting aside my own gifts as a comrade, I have most pleasing little animals for her to play with. You have seen those in the aquarium? There is also Aristides. To my anguish I struck him last night with a hearth-brush during my pursuit of the red man, and Giovanni has charge of him in hospital to-day. The affair was purely accidental. I am convinced that he bears me no malice, poor cherished little cabbage; yet it cuts me to the quick to see his empty chair. But to return to your coming, Madame. For it is thus that you will save me—by coming here to remain permanently, by devoting yourself to me unremittingly, exclusively—by coming here—here to live."

The color rushed into Madame St. Leger's face and neck. Then ebbed, leaving her white to the lips, deathly white as against the black brocade of the chair-back. Here was a direction-post, at last, with information written upon it of—as it seemed to her—the very plainest and ugliest sort; the road which it signalized leading to well-known and wholly undesirable places, though trodden, only too frequently, by wandering feminine feet! For the moment she doubted his good faith; doubted whether he was not playing some infamous trick upon her; doubted whether his illness was not, after all, a treacherous fabrication. Her mouth and throat went dry as a lime-kiln. She could barely articulate.

"Monsieur," she said sternly, "I fear it is already too late to save you. In making such a proposition you show only too convincingly that you are already mad."

But the young man's expression lost nothing of its triumph or his manner of its sweetness.

"Madame, that is a very cruel speech," he said.

"You deserve it should be cruel," she answered.

"Indeed," RenÉ replied, looking calmly at her. "Indeed, I do not. You rush too hastily to injurious conclusions. It is an error to do so. You cause yourself unnecessary annoyance. You, also, cause me a waste of tissue, which, in my existing condition of health, I can ill afford. It is irrevocably decided that you come here to live. Evidently it has to be. I make no disloyal proposition to you. As I have told you, I earnestly consider your good. It is to rescue you from threatening perversions of office and of instinct, from declension to a lower emotional level, that I invite you, require you, to make your home with me. For I crave your presence not as other men crave for association with so beautiful a person—that is, sensually, for gratification of the beast within them—but spiritually, as an object of faith, an object of worship, as a healing and purifying aura, a divine emanation efficacious to the exorcism of that devouring devil, my art. Mistress—wife—pah!—Madame, my art has been all that to me, and more than that—not to mention those more active amatory excursions, common to generous youth, in which I do not deny participation. But my art has never been to me that thing so far more sacred, more human—a mother."

RenÉ Dax leaned toward her, both arms wide extended, his somber eyes glowing as though a red lamp shone behind them, his features contracted by spasms of pain.

"This," he pursued, "is what I ask, what in the depths and heights, in the utmost sincerity of my being, I need and must have.—The Madonna of the Future, the perfect woman, whose experience as woman is at once passionless and complete, human yet spiritual—the ever-lasting mother. A mother, moreover, such as in the entire course of the uncounted ages no man has ever yet possessed; still young, young as himself, unsoiled, untired, still in the spring-time of her charm, yet mysterious, in a sense awful, so that she is hedged about with inviolable reverence and respect, the intimate wonders of whose beauty never fully disclose themselves, but continue adorably unknown and remote. This is what I need; and this you only can give. It is your unique and commanding destiny. You must, rallying your fortitude and virtue, rise to it."

He stood up, his head thrown back, his arms still extended, as he indicated the extent and appointments of the studio with large, sweeping gestures.

"See," he cried, in increasing excitement, "here is the temple prepared for your worship! I had decorated the walls of it with obscenities which have caused rapture to the most emancipated intellects in Paris. To spare you offense, when I decided that you should come to me, I sent for plasterers, for whitewashes, who, even while they worked, rocked with laughter at the masterpieces of humor they were in process of destroying. The more intelligent of them mutinied, declaring it vandalism to obliterate such expressions of genius. I seized a brush. I myself worked, hailing invectives upon them. I never rested till my purpose was achieved. Then, when the temple was cleansed, I wrote to you."

He sank down, squatting on the carpet, a queer black lump amid the surrounding blackness, his shoulders resting against the front of the divan, his hands clasped behind and supporting his pale, unwieldy head.

"Ah, ah!" he cried plaintively; "the pain, the pain—again it pierces me! It becomes extravagant. Surely, Madame, I need not explain to you any further? You witness my sufferings. Terminate them. It is in your power to do so. You cannot refuse a request so wholly reasonable and natural! You consent to remain with me?—There need be no delay. Giovanni, my servant, is a good fellow, trustworthy and intelligent. He will take a motor-cab and proceed immediately to the Quai Malaquais. After informing Madame, your mother, that you remain here permanently, he will return accompanied by Mademoiselle Bette. Within the course of half an hour the thing is done; it becomes an accomplished fact. Your welfare is assured; and I, Madame, I am rescued from the bottomless pit, from a hell of unspeakable disgust.—The pain ceases. The brazen Moloch no longer presses me to his burning breast. I am recreated. My childhood is given back to me—but a childhood of such peace, such innocent gaiety as no child ever yet experienced. I sleep in exquisite content. I wake, not merely to find and pray for help from your image reflected there upon paper, but to find you yourself my guest and my savior, you here moving to and fro among my possessions, breathing, speaking, smiling, making day and night alike fragrant by your presence, distilling the healing virtue of a deified maternity, of an enshrined and consecrated life."

As he finished speaking the young man rose to his feet. He came near to Gabrielle, and stood looking down at her, solemn, imploring, yet with a strange, flickering impishness in his manner and his face. He clasped his hard little hands, turning the palms of them outward, alternately bowing over her and rising on tiptoe, holding himself stiffly erect.

"Can you hesitate, Madame?" softly and sweetly he asked. "No—assuredly—it is inconceivable that you should hesitate!"

Gabrielle had stripped off her gloves, thrown back the fronts of her coat. Her bosom rose and fell with an abrupt irregular motion under the lace and chiffon of her blouse. More than ever was the air dead, the atmosphere suffocating. More than ever did those depraved forms and conceptions, defying expulsion by plaster and whitewash, crowd in upon and oppress her. Supernatural, moral, and physical terror, joining hands, created a very evil magic circle around her, isolating her, cutting her off from all familiar, amusing, pleasant, tender and gracious every-day matters dear to her social and domestic sense. She no longer entertained any doubt about the young man's mental condition. Shut away with him here, alone, behind closed doors, beneath black-muffled skylights, with only clay-cold fish and reptiles as witnesses, the situation began to appear alarming in the extreme. How to effect her escape? How to temporize until rescue should in some form come to her? Her circumstances were so incredible, so nightmarish in their improbability, their merciless reality, their insane logic, that her brain reeled under the strain. Wordlessly but passionately she prayed for strength, guidance, help.

"It is inconceivable, Madame, that you still hesitate," RenÉ repeated, insinuatingly.

Making a supreme effort, Gabrielle rose from her chair. She felt braver, more mistress of herself standing up. With an assumption of ease and indifference she buttoned her coat and began drawing on her long gloves.

"You are right," she replied, but without looking at him. "I no longer hesitate. You have made your meaning clear. You have also said many affecting and poetic things to me. But, as you will be the first to admit, there are certain filial obligations I am bound to discharge, and to discharge personally. My beloved mother has been my companion and my constant care for so long, that it is imperative I should go with Giovanni; and, in a few words, tell her myself of the decision we have arrived at. To commit the communication of such news to a servant, however excellent, who is also a stranger, would be both cruel and impertinent. You, who reverence motherhood so deeply, will sympathize with this mother from whom you propose to take away those dearest to her."

The sobs rose in Gabrielle's throat. But she swallowed them courageously. If she once gave way, once lost her head—well—

"Moreover," she continued, "unless I myself go, unless I myself claim her, my mother will, and rightly, refuse to part with my little Bette."

A pause followed, during which the young man appeared immersed in thought. During that pause a faint sound of footsteps seemed to reach Gabrielle's fear-quickened hearing; but whether from the common stairway, the flat underneath, or here, nearer at hand, she could not determine. She prayed with all the fervor of her spirit, while deftly, daintily smoothing out the wrinkles in the wrists of her long gloves.

"You appreciate the force of that which I say regarding my mother and my little Bette?" she asked, glancing at him.

"I do—most incontestably, I do."

The answer came so spontaneously and in so perfectly natural a tone that Gabrielle's glance steadied upon the speaker in swift inquiry and hope. Had the cloud lifted, leaving his mind clear, permitting an interval of lucidity, of reason and normal thought?

"Ah, my poor friend, then all is well?" she cried, a great thankfulness irradiating her face.

"Perhaps, yes," he returned, in the same quiet and natural manner. "Personally I should have preferred the other plan. To relinquish it disappoints me. All promised so well. But I put it aside, for toward Madame, your mother, I am, believe me, incapable of an unsympathetic or discourteous act."

Gabrielle continued her little preparations for departure. She began to arrange her veil. Raising both hands, she drew the edge of it forward over the crown of her hat. Later, reaction would set in. Safe in her own home, she would break down, paying in physical and mental exhaustion the price of this very terrible act of charity. But just now she felt strong and elate in her thankfulness for answered prayer and prospect of release. Never had family affection, the love of friends, all the wholesome sentiments of human intercourse, appeared to her so delightful or so good. Delicate color tinged her cheeks. Kindness and pity softened her golden-brown eyes. Standing there, with upraised hands and gently smiling lips, her beauty was very noble, full of soul as well as of victorious health and youth.

For some seconds RenÉ Dax gazed at her, as though fascinated, studying every detail of her appearance. Then, once more, a flickering impishness crossed his sad little face. He went down on one knee, laid hold of the hem of her dress, and, bowing his great head to the ground, kissed and again kissed it.

"Accept my worship, my homage, oh! Madonna—Madonna of the Future!" he said.

He sprang upright, clasping his little hands again, the palms turned outward.

"Yes," he went on reflectively, "honestly, I prefer the other plan. Yet this one, as I increasingly perceive, possesses merits. Let us dwell upon them. They will console us. For, after all, what I am about to carry out is, also, a masterpiece—daring, voluptuous, merciless, at once lovely and hideous—and conclusive. Yes, amazingly conclusive. Unmitigated—just that. It will set the public imagination on fire. All Paris will seethe with it. All Paris which can gain admittance will rush, fight, trample, to obtain a look at it. It will represent the most scathing of my revenges upon the unfathomable stupidity of mankind. But it will do more than that. It will constitute my supreme revenge upon my art. Thus I sterilize the brazen Moloch, rendering him voiceless, eyeless, handless, denying him all means of self-expression. In myself dying, I make him worse than dead—though he still exists. Art, being eternal, necessarily still exists. Yet what an existence! I, who have so long parted company with laughter, could almost laugh! Yes, veritably I draw his teeth. By depriving him of my assistance as interpreter, by depriving him of the vehicle of my unrivaled technique, I annihilate his power. Blind, deaf, maimed, impotent, yes—yes—is it not beyond all words magnificent? Let us hasten, Madame, to accomplish this."

RenÉ had delivered himself of his harangue with growing indications of excitement, his voice rising finally to a scream. Throughout the nerve-shattering jar and rush of it, Madame St. Leger, in deepening terror, listened for any sound of delivering footsteps—listened and prayed. Now his manner changed, became cool, matter-of-fact, rather horribly busy and business-like.

"See, Madame," he said, "the divan on the left will certainly be the most suitable. You will place yourself at the farther end of it. There are plenty of cushions.—When Giovanni has filled the large bronze bowl—you see which I mean—there upon the ebony pedestal?"

He pointed with one hand. With the other he laid hold of Madame St. Leger's wrist, the hard, short fingers closing down like the teeth of a steel trap. To struggle was useless. Might God in his mercy hear and send help!

"When Giovanni, I repeat, has filled the bowl with warm water—warm, not too hot—and set it upon the center of the divan—thus—I will instruct him to draw the screen across, concealing us. You understand, we shall place ourselves on either side of the bowl, plunging our arms as far as the elbow into it. The warmth of the water at once soothes the nerves and accelerates the flow of blood.—Ah, do not draw back from me!" he pleaded. "Do not render my task more difficult. Obey your highest instincts. Be perfect in grace and in beneficence to the close. The pain racks my head. Do not by opposition or reluctance oblige me to concentrate my brain upon further explanation or thought.—Consider only that from which I save you. The degradation of marriage, of the embraces of a lover—of Adrian, my old schoolfellow—the impious assumption of the beast!—of Adrian Savage.—From the shame of old age, too—from the anguish of tears shed beside the bedside of, possibly, your child, your little Bette—of, certainly, Madame, your mother! And, as against all these tragedies, to what does the other amount? I give you my word it will not hurt. You will barely be sensible of that which is occurring.—The merest scratch.—In my student days I obtained bodies from the hospitals. With minute and faithful accuracy I dissected them out. I know precisely where to cut, what portion of the arteries and sinews to sever.—And we shall sit here alone—alone—you and I, behind the red screen, while our veins empty themselves of their red liquor, and slowly, serenely life ebbs, our vision growing dim and yet more—

"Help!" Gabrielle called aloud. "Help!"

For truly the sound of voices and of footsteps came at last. The studio door was thrown open. A man entered. Who he was she did not know; but, with a strength born of despair and of hope, she wrenched herself free from RenÉ Dax's grasp, ran across the big room, flung her arms round the man's neck, her beautiful head crushing down upon his breast, while her breath rushed out in great strangled, panting cries: "Ah!" And again, "Ah! Ah!"

CHAPTER IV
ON THE HEIGHTS

Adrian stood on the edge of the pavement beside his well-appointed, blue-black automobile, the door of which the chauffeur held open. The hinged top of the limousine was folded back, and the sunshine, slanting down over the roofs of the high, white houses on the right, brought the pale, gray-clad figure of its occupant into charming relief as against the oatmeal-colored upholstering of the inside of the car in tones at once blending and standing finely apart. An itinerant flower-seller, bareheaded, short-skirted, trimly shod, her flat, wicker tray heaped up with vivid blossoms, held out a graceful bunch of crimson and yellow roses, with the smiling suggestion that—"Monsieur should assuredly present them to Madame, who could not fail to revel in their ravishing odor." Monsieur, however, showed himself unflatteringly ignorant of her presence, while Martin, the chauffeur, dissembling his natural inclination toward every member of the sex, motioned her away with, so to speak, a front of adamant.

Adrian put one foot on the step of the car, and there paused, hesitating. At last, with a point of eagerness piercing his constraint, he said:

"Instead of going directly to the Quai Malaquais, will you permit me to take you for a short, a quiet drive, Madame? The air may refresh you."

"I shall be grateful," Gabrielle replied, briefly and hoarsely.

Adrian delivered himself of rapid, emphatic directions to his chauffeur, swung into the car, and placed himself beside her, arranging the thin dust-rug carefully over the skirt of her dress. Then, his nostrils quivering slightly, his face noticeably drawn and set, he leaned back in his corner of the luxurious vehicle. Martin slipped in behind the steering-wheel; and with a preliminary snarl and rattling vibration, gaining silence and smoothness as it made the pace, the car headed up the glittering perspective of the wide, tree-bordered street.

Somewhere in the back of his consciousness, when he had bought this car a few weeks prior to his last visit to Stourmouth, there floated entrancing visions of circumstances such as the present. At that time his affair of the heart promised lamentably ill, and realization of such visions appeared both highly improbable and most wearifully distant. Now a wholly unexpected turn of events had converted them into actual fact. Through the delight of the brilliant summer afternoon, the caressing wind, and clear, brave sunlight he bore Gabrielle St. Leger away whither he would. Verily he had his desire, but leanness withal in his soul. For, God in heaven! what a question squatted there upon the biscuit-colored seat, interposing its hateful presence between them, poisoning his mind with an anguish of suspense and doubt!

He was still, even physically, under the dominion of the almost incredible scene in which he had recently taken part. He had carried rather than led Madame St. Leger down the five flights of stairs from RenÉ Dax's flat, and had just only not required the help of the chauffeur to lift her into the waiting car. His heart still thumped, sledge-hammer fashion, against his ribs. Every muscle was strained and taut. Not his eyes only, but the whole temper and spirit of him, were still hot with desire of vengeance. That loud, hardly human cry of Gabrielle's as, lost to all dignity, lost almost to all modesty, she flung herself upon him still rang in his ears. The primitive savagery of it coming from the lips of so fastidious, elusive, quick-witted a creature, from those of so artistic a product of our complicated modern civilization, at once horrified and filled him with vicarious shame. In that wild moment of impact the dormant violence of the young man's passion had been aroused. Yet a gross and cynical query was scrawled across his remembrance of it all. For what could, in point of fact, have happened previous to his arrival to produce so amazing a result?

And to Adrian not the least cruel part of this business was the duty, so clearly laid upon him, of rigid self-restraint, of maintaining, for her protection, as sparing and shielding her, his ordinary air of courteous, unaccentuated and friendly intercourse. Good breeding and fine feeling alike condemned him to behave just as usual, not assuming by so much as a hair's breadth that closer intimacy which the events of the last half-hour might very reasonably justify. Unless she herself chose to speak, this whole astounding episode must remain as though it never had been and was not.—And here his lover's and artist's imagination crimped him, projecting torments of unsatisfied conjecture extending throughout the unending cycles of eternity. Yet in uncomplaining endurance of such torment, as he perceived, must the perfection of his attitude toward her declare itself, must the perfection of his loyalty come in.

Meanwhile as the car hummed along the upward-trending avenues toward the southern heights, leaving the more fashionable and populous districts of the city behind, the air grew lighter and the breeze more lively. Adrian, still sitting tight in his corner, trusted himself to look at his companion. Through the fluttering gray veil, as through some tenuous, drifting mist, he saw her proud, delicate profile. Saw also that though she remained apparently passive and strove to hold all outward signs of emotion in check, the tears ran slowly down her cheek, while the rounded corner of her usually enigmatic, smiling mouth trembled nervously and drooped.

Presently, as he still watched, she slipped the chain of her gold and gray vanity-bag off her wrist and essayed to open it. But her fingers fumbled ineffectually with the gilt snap. The beautiful, capable hands he so fondly loved shook, having suddenly grown weak. Tears came into Adrian's eyes also. To him the helplessness of those dear hands stood for so very much. Silently he took the little bag, opened and held it, while she pulled out a lace-bordered handkerchief, and, pushing it beneath the fluttering veil, wiped her wet eyes and wet cheeks. He kept the bag open, waiting for her to put the handkerchief back. But, without speaking, Gabrielle shook her head slightly, in token that further drying operations might not improbably shortly be required. Adrian obediently snapped to the gold catch; yet, since he really shut up such a very big slice of his own heart within it, was it not, after all, but natural and legitimate that he should retain possession of the little bag?

This trifle of service rendered and accepted bore fruit, bringing the two into a more normal relation and lessening the tension of their mutual constraint. After a while Gabrielle spoke, but low and hoarsely, her throat still strained by those hardly human cries. Adrian found himself obliged to draw nearer to her if he would catch her words amid the clatter of the street and humming of the engines of the car.

"There is that, I feel, I should without delay make you know," she said, speaking in English; for it comes easier, sometimes, to clothe the telling of ugly and difficult things with the circumscriptions of a foreign language.

"Yes?" Adrian put in, as she paused.

"You should know that he is insane. Possibly my visiting him contributed to precipitate the crisis. I do not know. But he is now no longer responsible. Therefore truly I commiserate rather than feel anger toward him."

Again the handkerchief went up under the fluttering veil. Again, when it was withdrawn, Adrian saw, as through thin, drifting mist, the proud, delicate profile.

"I should make you know," she went on, resolutely, "it was my life—yes, my life—but my honor, no—never—which was in jeopardy."

"Thank God! thank God for that!" the young man almost groaned, bowing himself together, while his grasp tightened upon the pretty little gold and gray bag almost mercilessly.

He sat upright, took a deep breath, staring with unseeing eyes at the bright, variegated prospect of shops, houses, trees, traffic, people scampering past on either side the rushing car. Only now did he begin to gauge the vital character of his recent misery, and the tremendous force of the love which in so happily constituted and circumstanced a man as himself could render such a misery possible. Until to-day, until, indeed, this thrice-blessed minute when he learned from her own lips that no shame sullied her, he had never really gauged the depth of his love for Gabrielle St. Leger, or quite realized how all the many ambitions, interests, satisfactions of his very agreeable existence were as so much dust, froth, garbage, burnt-out cinder in comparison to that love. He had told Anastasia Beauchamp, in the course of a certain memorable conversation, he would devote his life to that love. But, he now discovered, it was quite unnecessary that he should take active steps toward the production or maintenance of it, since his life was already almost alarmingly devoted, leaving room, in truth, as he now perceived, for nothing outside that same love. And thereupon—the balance essaying to right itself, as in sane, healthy natures it instinctively must and will—poor Joanna Smyrthwaite's face, and its expression of semi-idiot ecstasy, as he had seen it only two nights ago at the Tower House on the gallery in the checkered moonlight, arose before him. Adrian was conscious of pulling himself together sharply.—Love—if you will—and with all the strength, all the vigor of his nature. But to dote? Devil take the notion—no thank you! Never, if he knew it, would he dote.

Wherefore, it followed that his wits were very thoroughly, if very tenderly, about him when next Gabrielle St. Leger spoke.

"I see now," she said, "the method by which he proposed we—he and myself—should die amounted to an absurdity, since it involved the concurrence of his servant."

Covered by the noise of the car, Adrian permitted himself the relief of cursing a little quietly under his breath.

"But at the time I could not reason. I found myself too confused and terrified by the extraordinary and horrible things he told me—things in themselves demented, extravagant, yet as he told them so apparently sensible. His poor, disordered brain was so fertile in expedients that from moment to moment I could not foresee what fresh unnatural demand he might make on me, what new scheme he might not devise for my destruction."

"Alone with a maniac no degree of fear can be excessive," Adrian asserted, warmly.

For he perceived her pride was touched, so that her self-esteem called for support and encouragement. To his hearing her words conveyed a rather pathetic hint of apology, both to herself and to him, for that moment of wild self-abandonment.

"It doesn't require much imagination," he went on, "to understand the danger you ran was appalling—in every way appalling—simply that. And, good heavens! why didn't I know?" he broke out, slapping his two hands down on his knees in sudden fury. "Why didn't my instinct warn me, thick-headed fool that I am? Why didn't I get to that hateful carrion-bird's roost of a studio an hour, half an hour earlier? Pardon me, dear Madame," he added, moderating his transports, "if I shock you by my violence. But when I consider what you must have endured, when I picture what might have happened, I confess I am almost beside myself with rage and distress."

La belle Gabrielle had turned her head. She looked straight at him. The timid ghost of her mysterious, finely malicious smile visited her lips. Yet seen through the mist of her fluttering veil her eyes were singularly soft and lovely, wistful—so, at least, it seemed to Adrian—with the dawning of a sentiment other than that of bare friendship. Whereupon the young man's heart began to thump against his ribs again, while the engines of the car broke into a most marvelous sweet singing.

"I am not sure," she commenced, speaking with engaging hesitation, "whether, perhaps, since I am, thanks to le bon Dieu, here in safety and about to return unhurt to my child and my mother, it is not well I should have had this trial. For you did come in time—yes, mercifully in time. I doubt if I could have endured much longer. There were other things," she went on, hurriedly, "besides those which I consciously heard or saw which combined to disgust and terrify me. You, too, believe, do you not, that thoughts may acquire a separate existence—thoughts, purposes, imaginations—and that they may inhabit particular places? I cannot explain, but by such things I believe myself to be surrounded. I felt they might break through whatever restraining medium withheld them, and become visible. A little longer and my reason, too, might have given way—" She paused. "But you came—you came—"

"Yes, I came," Adrian repeated quietly.

"And, that being so—I being mercifully spared the worst, being unhurt, I mean—"

"Yes, precisely—unhurt," he repeated with praiseworthy docility.

"This experience may be of value. It may help to make me revise some mistaken ideas"—she turned away, and, though her head was held high, tears, as Adrian noted, were again somewhat in evidence—"some perhaps foolishly self-willed and—how shall I say?—conceited opinions."

In the last few minutes the car had traversed one of those unkempt and, in a sense, nomadic districts common to the fringe of all great cities. Spaces of waste land, littered with nondescript rubbish and materials for new buildings in course of noisy construction, alternated with rows of low-class houses, off the walls of which the plaster cracked and scaled; with long lines of hoardings displaying liberal assortment of flaming posters; wine-shops at once shabby and showy, crude reds, greens, and yellows adorning their wooden balconies and striped, flapping awnings; gaudy-fronted dancing-booths and shooting-galleries tailing away at the back into neglected weed-grown gardens. All these, with a sparse population, male and female, very much to match; while here and there some solitary shuttered dwelling standing back from the wide avenue in an inclosed plot of ground betrayed a countenance suggestive of disquieting adventures.

As Madame St. Leger finished making her, to Adrian, very touching confession, the automobile, quitting these doubtful purlieus—which, however, thanks to a charm of early summer foliage and generous breadth of sunshine, took on an air of jovial devil-may-care vagabondage, inspiriting rather than objectionable—headed eastward, along the boulevard skirting the grass-grown slopes and mounds of the dismantled fortifications, and drew up opposite the entrance to the Parc de Montsouris. Here, Adrian proposed they should alight and stroll in the tree-shaded alleys, as a relief from the dust and noise of the streets.

But once on her feet, Gabrielle discovered how very tired she still was, weak-kneed and tremulous to the point of gladly accepting the support of her companion's arm. This renewed contact, though of a comparatively perfunctory and unofficial character, proved by no means displeasing to Adrian. In truth it gave him such a lively sense of happiness, that to his dying day he will cherish a romantic affection for those remote and unfashionable pleasure-grounds upon the southern heights. Happiness is really the simplest of God's creatures—easily gratified, large in charity, hospitable to all the minor poetry of life. Whence it came about that this critical, traveled, shrewd, and smart young gentleman had never, surely, beheld trees so green, flower-borders so radiant, walks so smooth and well-swept, statues so noble, cascades so musical, lakes so limpid and so truthfully mirroring the limpid heavens above. Even the rococo and slightly ridiculous reproduction of the Palace of the Bey of Tunis, now used as an observatory, which crowns the highest ground, its domes, cupolas, somberly painted mural surfaces, peacock-blue encaustic tiles, and rows of horseshoe-headed Moorish arches—looking in its modern Western surroundings about as congruous as a camel in a cabbage-patch—presented itself to his happy eyes with all the allurements of some genii-and-gem-built palace from out the immortal pages of the Arabian Nights. Gabrielle St. Leger's hand rested upon his arm, her feet kept step with his feet. The folds of her dainty gown swept lightly against him as he walked. Past and future fell out of the reckoning. Nothing obtained save the beatified present, while his heart and his senses were, at once, sharply hungry and exquisitely at peace.

The grounds were practically deserted. Only a few employees from the observatory, blue-habited gardeners, a batch of Cook's tourists—English and American—weary with sight-seeing, and some respectable French fathers of families, imparting, al fresco, instruction in local natural science, topography and art, to their progeny, were at hand to greet the passing couple with starings, sympathetic, self-consicous, or envious, as the case might be. Among the first ranked the French fathers of families, who paused in frank admiration and interest.

"For was not the lady arrestingly elegant?—Sapristi! if ever a young man had luck! Yet, after all, why not? For he, too, repaid observation. Truly a handsome fellow, and of a type of male beauty eminently Gallic—refined yet virile; perfectly distinguished, moreover, in manner and in dress. She appeared languid. Well, what more easily comprehensible, since—a marriage of inclination, without doubt—"

Whereupon, in the intervals of anxiously retrieving some strayed all too adventurous Mimi or Toto, the fond parental being beheld, in prophetic vision, Adrian the Magnificent also shepherding a delicious little human flock.

"How did you know, or was it by chance that you came?" Gabrielle presently inquired.

And, in reply, Adrian explained that, the affairs of the Smyrthwaite inheritance being completed sooner than he anticipated, he had advanced his return—Ah! shade, accusing shade, of Joanna! But with la belle Gabrielle's hand resting confidingly upon his arm, he could hardly be expected to turn aside to appease that unhappy phantom.

"Unfortunately I missed the connection in London, and failed to catch the midday Channel boat. Consequently I only reached Paris early this morning. I had passed two practically sleepless nights"—again accusing shade of Joanna, sound of footsteps, and dragging of draperies upon the corridor outside his bedroom door!—"To my shame," he continued, "I made up for my broken rest to-day. It was already past three o'clock when I went to my office. I had omitted to warn my people there of my return. Picture then, chÈre Madame, my emotion when my secretary handed me a letter from our friend Miss Beauchamp!"

"So it was Anastasia," Madame St. Leger murmured; but whether resentfully or gratefully her hearer failed to determine.

"I flung myself into the automobile—and—enfin—you know the rest."

"Yes," she agreed, "I know the rest."

And, thereupon, she gave a little cry of astonishment.

For, turning the eastern side of the would-be Moorish palace and passing on to the terrace in front of it, the whole of Paris was disclosed to view outspread below along the valley of the Seine. In intermingling, finely gradated tones, blond and silver, the immense panorama presented itself; squares, gardens, monuments, world-famous streets and world-famous buildings seen in the splendid clarity of the sun-penetrated atmosphere, purple-stained here and there by the shadows of detached high-sailing clouds. Upon the opposite height, crowning Montmartre, the Church of the SacrÉ Coeur rose ivory-white, its dome and clock-tower seeming strangely adjacent to the vast blue arch of the summer sky; while, in the extreme distance both to right and left, beyond the precincts of the laughing city, a gray, angular grimness of outlying forts struck the vibrant and masculine note of the peril of war.

For quite a sensible period of time Gabrielle St. Leger gazed at the scene in silence. Then she took her hand from Adrian's arm and moved a step away. But he could not quarrel with this, since she put up her veil and looked frankly yet wistfully at him, a great sweetness in her charming face. "Ah!" she said, stretching out her hand with a gesture of welcome to the noble view, "this is a thing to do one good, to renew one's courage, one's sanity and hope. I am grateful to you. It was both wise and kind of you to bring me here and show me this. By so doing you have washed my mind of dark and sinister impressions. You have made me once more in love with the goodness of God, in love with life. But come," she added, quickly, almost shyly, "I must ask you to take me home to the Quai Malaquais. I can meet my mother and child now without betraying emotion—without letting them suspect the grave and terrible trial through which I have passed."

And upon this speech Adrian Savage, being an astute and politic lover, offered no comment. He had gained so much to-day that he could afford to be patient, making no attempt to press his point. Restraining his natural impetuosity, he rested in the happiness of the present and spoke no word of love. Only his eyes, perhaps, gave him away just a little; and, undoubtedly, on the return journey in the merrily singing car he permitted himself to sit a little closer to la belle Gabrielle than on the journey out.

At the foot of the shining, waxed, wooden staircase within the doorway at the corner of the courtyard, where, backed by her bodyguard of spindly planes and poplars, the lichen-stained nymph still poured the contents of her tilted pitcher into the shell-shaped basin below, Adrian left Madame St. Leger.

"No, I will not come farther, chÈre Madame et amie," he said, his air at once gallant and tender, standing before her, hat in hand. "It will perhaps be easier, in face of the pious fraud you propose to practise upon Madame, your mother, that you should meet her alone."

He backed away. It was safer. Farewells are treacherous. All had been perfect so far. He would give himself no chance of occasion for regret.

"Mount the stairs slowly, though, dear Madame," he called after her, moved by sudden anxiety. "Remember your recent fatigue—they are steep."

Then, the beloved gray gown and floating gray veil having passed upward out of sight, he turned and went.

"And now for that poor, unhappy little devil of a Tadpole," he said.

CHAPTER V
DE PROFUNDIS

"Just now he is quieter. I have a hope that he sleeps. But, per Bacco, Monsieur, what a month, what a six weeks since I had the honor of speaking with you last! My poor master all the while going from bad to worse, becoming more exacting, more eccentric in his habits, showing tendencies toward cruelty quite foreign to his nature. And to-day, what a scene after you left! I had been on the alert all the afternoon, since he displayed signs of febrile excitement. I remained here, in the passage, not far from the door, prepared, notwithstanding his violent prohibition, to enter the studio should any sound of a disturbing character reach me. But his voice appeared calm. I trusted the visit of the Signora—ah, Dio mio! what charm, what divine grace!—was producing a beneficial effect, soothing and pacifying my poor master. Upon my honor, I declare to you it was only at the actual moment of my admitting you those heartrending cries for help arose. Then, afterward, pouring forth words which made even my ears tingle, hardened old reprobate—the saints forgive me!—though I am, he rushed upon the drawing of the Signora, which has been a glorious adornment of our studio for so long, tore it from the easel and reduced it to a thousand fragments, which—since I have not yet dared to remove them—Monsieur will still find scattered upon the carpet. This work of destruction had the effect of appeasing his fury. He flung himself among the pillows of the divan, and has remained there ever since in a silence which justifies the hope that he sleeps."

The spare, bright-eyed, velvet-spoken Giovanni folded his hands as in prayer.

"Monsieur will take command, he will intervene to help us? Otherwise a catastrophe may ensue, and the unrivaled genius of my poor master may be lost to the world."

As Adrian crossed the dusky studio in the now fading light RenÉ Dax moved among the cushions and raised himself on his elbow.

"Mon vieux, is that you?" he asked feebly. "They told me—they—it does not matter who—some one told me you had come back. I am glad, for I need attention. I apprehend some lesion of the brain. My memory plays me false. This causes inconveniences. Something here, at the base of my skull, seems to have given way, to have snapped. I think it would be well that I should leave Paris for a time, and take a cure of some description. It is not pretty"—he looked up at Adrian with a child-like candor wholly disarming—"no, very certainly it is a far from pretty request, but I shall be indebted to you if you will make it your business to discover a private hospital for the insane—a civilized one, mind you—where I can be accommodated with a comfortable suite of rooms. I have money enough. My illustrations to the Contes Drolatiques will pay for this agreeable little jaunt. But civilized, I repeat, where no objection will be made to receiving well-conducted domestic animals, since I shall require to take both Giovanni with me and Aristides the Just."

Adrian sat down upon the divan. His speech was somewhat thick and broken as he answered.

"Yes, mon petit. Rest content that I will do my very best to find you such a place as you want."

"And you will come often to visit me?"

"Indeed, I will come very constantly to visit you," Adrian said.

RenÉ Dax raised himself higher and looked long and searchingly at his friend from head to foot. The red lamp began to glow behind his somber eyes again.

"You do not possess one-tenth of my talent," he declared; "but you possess ten times my physique. Therefore you will obtain. You will prosper. You will lie soft. From the most fastidious to the vilest all women are the same. The Moslems are right. Women have neither soul nor intellect, only bodies, bodies, bodies. All they want in a man is physique."

His tone changed to a wheedling one. He crawled over the soft, black silk cushions and put his arm coaxingly about Adrian's neck.

"See, mon vieux, see, be amiable! Do not loiter. Come at once. Let us search together diligently every corner, every nook. To recover it would fill me with rapture; and there is still time before the school-bell rings for class. Come. Help me to find my lost laughter," he said.

And at that moment, with a startling emotion of hope and of relief, Adrian observed, for the first time, that the infamous drawings upon the walls had been painted out, leaving the whole, from floor to ceiling, white.