Lunch finished, Mr. Ferdinand Wimple, the poet, sullenly removed his coat and sulkily carried the dishes to the kitchen sink. He swore in a melodious murmur, as a cat purrs, as he turned the hot water on to the plates, and he splashed profanely with a wet dishcloth.

“I'm going to do the dishes to-day, Ferd,” announced his wife, pleasantly enough. She was a not unpleasant-looking woman; she gave the impression that she might, indeed, be a distinctly pleasant-looking woman, if she could avoid seeming hurried. She would have been a pretty woman, in fact, if she had been able to give the time to it.

When she said that she would do the dishes herself, Mr. Wimple immediately let the dishcloth drop without another word, profane or otherwise, and began to dry his hands, preparatory to putting on his coat again. But she continued:

“I want you to do the twins' wash.”

“What?” cried Mr. Wimple, outraged. He ran one of his plump hands through his thick tawny hair and stared at his wife with latent hatred in his brown eyes... those eyes of which so many women had remarked: “Aren't Mr. Wimple's eyes wonderful; just simply wonderful! So magnetic, if you get what I mean!” Mr. Wimple's head, by many of his female admirers, was spoken of as “leonine.” His detractors—for who has them not?—dwelt rather upon the physical reminder of Mr.'Wimple, which was more suggestive of the ox.

“I said I wanted you to do the twins' wash for me,” repeated Mrs. Wimple, awed neither by the lion's visage nor the bovine torso. Mrs. Wimple's own hair was red; and in a quietly red-haired sort of way she looked as if she expected her words to be heeded.

“H——!” said the poet, in a round baritone which enriched the ear as if a harpist had plucked the lovely string of G. “H——!” But there was more music than resolution in the sound. It floated somewhat tentatively upon the air. Mr. Wimple was not in revolt. He was wondering if he had the courage to revolt.

Mrs. Wimple lifted the cover of the laundry tub, which stood beside the sink, threw in the babies' “things,” turned on the hot water, and said:

“Better shave some laundry soap and throw it in, Ferd.”

“Heavens!” declared Mr. Wimple. “To expect a man of my temperament to do that!” But still he did not say that he would not do it.

“Someone has to do it,” contributed his wife.

“I never kicked on the dishes, Nell,” said Mr. Wimple. “But this, this is too much!”

“I have been doing it for ten days, ever since the maid left. I'm feeling rotten to-day, and you can take a turn at it, Ferd. My back hurts.” Still Mrs. Wimple was not unpleasant; but she was obviously determined.

“Your back!” sang Mr. Wimple, the minstrel, and shook his mane. “Your back hurts you! My soul hurts me! How could I go direct from that—that damnable occupation—that most repulsive of domestic occupations—that bourgeois occupation—to Mrs. Watson's tea this afternoon and deliver my message?”

A shimmer of heat (perhaps from her hair) suddenly dried up whatever dew of pleasantness remained in Mrs. Wimple's manner. “They're just as much your twins as they are mine,” she began... but just then one of them cried.

A fraction of a second later the other one cried.

Mrs. Wimple hurried from the kitchen and reached the living room in time to prevent mayhem. The twins, aged one year, were painfully entangled with one another on the floor. The twin Ronald had conceived the idea that perhaps the twin Dugald's thumb was edible, and was testing five or six of his newly acquired teeth upon it. Childe Dugald had been inspired by his daemon with the notion that one of Childe Ronald's ears might be detachable, and was endeavouring to detach it. The situation was but too evidently distressing to both of them, but neither seemed capable of the mental initiative necessary to end it. Even when little Ronald opened his mouth to scream, little Dugald did not remove the thumb.

Mrs. Wimple unscrambled them, wiped their noses, gave them rattles, rubber dolls, and goats to wreak themselves upon, and returned to the kitchen thinking (for she did not lack her humorous gleams) that the situation in the living room bore a certain resemblance to the situation in the kitchen. She and Ferdinand bit and scratched figuratively, but they had not the initiative to break loose from one another.

Mr. Wimple was shaving soap into the laundry tub, but he stopped when she entered and sang at her: “And why did the maid leave?”

“You know why she left, Ferd.”

“She left,” chanted Ferdinand, poking the twins' clothing viciously with a wooden paddle, “because...” But what Mr. Wimple said, and the way he said it, falls naturally into the freer sort of verse:

“She left [sang Mr. Wimple]

Because her discontent...

Her individual discontent,

Which is a part of the current general discontent

Of all the labouring classes...

Was constantly aggravated

By your jarring personality,

Mrs. Wimple!

There is no harmony in this house,

Mrs. Wimple;

No harmony!”

Mrs. Wimple replied in sordid prose:

“She left because she was offered more money elsewhere, and we couldn't afford to meet the difference.” Something like a sob vibrated through Mr. Wimple's opulent voice as he rejoined:

“Nellie, that is a blow that I did not look for! You have stabbed me with a poisoned weapon! Yes, Nellie, I am poor! So was Edgar Poe. What the world calls poor! I shall, in all likelihood, never be rich... what the world calls rich. But I have my art! I have my ideals! I have my inner life! I have my dreams! Poor? Poor? Yes, Nell! Poor! So was Robert Burns! I am poor! I make no compromise with the mob. Nor shall I ever debase my gift for money. No! Such as I am, I shall bear the torch that has been intrusted to me till I fall fainting at the goal! I have a message. To me it is precious stuff, and I shall not alloy it with the dross called gold. Poor? Yes, Nell! And you have the heart to cast it in my teeth! You, Nellie! You, from whom I once expected sympathy and understanding. You, whom I chose from all the world, and took into my life because I fancied that you, too, saw the vision! Yes, Elinor, I dreamed that once!”

II

Mr. Wimple achieved pathos... almost tragedy. To a trivial mind, however, the effect might have been somewhat spoiled by the fact that in his fervour he gesticulated wildly with the wooden paddle in one hand and an undergarment belonging to Ronald in the other. The truly sensitive soul would have seen these things as emphasizing his pathos.

Mrs. Wimple, when Mr. Wimple became lyric in his utterance, often had the perverse impulse to answer him in a slangy vernacular which, if not actually coarse, was not, on the other hand, the dialect of the aesthete. For some months now, she had noticed, whenever Ferdinand took out his soul and petted it verbally, she had had the desire to lacerate it with uncouth parts of speech. Ordinarily she frowned on slang; but when Ferdinand's soul leaped into the arena she found slang a weapon strangely facile to her clutch.

“Coming down to brass tacks on this money thing, Ferdy,” said Mrs. Wimple, “you're not the downy peach you picture in the ads. I'll tell the world you're not! You kid yourself, Ferdy. Some of your bloom has been removed, Ferdy. Don't go so far upstage when you speak to me about the dross the world calls gold. The reason we can't afford a maid now is because you got swell-headed and kicked over that perfectly good magazine job you used to have. You thought you were going to get more limelight and more money on the lecture platform. But you've been a flivver in the big time. Your message sounds better to a flock of women in somebody's sitting room full of shaded candles and samovars, with firelight on the antique junk, than it does in Carnegie Hall. You've got the voice for the big spaces all right, but the multitude doesn't get any loaves and fishes from you. Punk sticks and nuances —the intime stuff—that's your speed, Ferdy. I don't want to put any useless dents into your bean, but that message of yours has been hinted at by other messengers. 1 stick around home here and take care of the kids, and I've never let out a yell before. And you trot around to your soul fights and tea fests and feed your message to a bunch of dolled-up dames that don't even know you have a wife. I'm not jealous... you couldn't drag me into one of those perfumed literary dives by the hair ... I got fed up with that stuff years ago. But as long as we're without a maid because you won't stick to a steady job, you'll do your share of the rough stuff around the house. I'll say you will! You used to be a good sport about that sort of thing, Ferdy, but it looks to me as if you were getting spoiled rotten. You've had a rush of soul to the mouth, Ferdy. Those talcum-powder seances of yours have gone to your head. You take those orgies of refinement too seriously. You begin to look to me like you had a streak of yellow in you, Ferdy... and if I ever see it so plain I'm sure of it, I'll leave you flat. I'll quit you, Ferdy, twins and all.”

“Quit, then!” cried Mr. Wimple.

And then the harplike voice burst into song again, an offering rich with rage:

“Woman!

So help me all the gods,

I'm through!

Twins or no twins,

Elinor Wimple,

I'm through!

By all the gods,

I'll never wash another dish,

Nor yet another set of underwear!”

And Mr. Wimple, in his heat, brought down the wooden paddle upon the pile of dishes in the sink, in front of his wife. The crash of the broken china seemed to augment his rage, rather than relieve it, and he raised the paddle for a second blow.

“Ferd!” cried his wife, and caught at the stick.

Mr. Wimple, the aesthete, grabbed her by the arm and strove to loosen her grasp upon the paddle.

“You're bruising my arm!” she cried. But she did not release the stick. Neither did Ferdinand release her wrist. Perhaps he twisted it all the harder because she struggled, and was not conscious that he was doing so... perhaps he twisted it harder quite consciously. At any rate, she suddenly swung upon him, with her free hand, and slapped him across the face with her wet dishcloth.

At that they started apart, both more than a little appalled to realize that they had been engaged in something resembling a fight.

Without another word the bird of song withdrew to smooth his ruffled plumage. He dressed himself carefully, and left the apartment without speaking to his wife again. He felt that he had not had altogether the best of the argument. There was no taste of soap in his mouth, for he had washed his lips and even brushed his teeth... and yet, psychically, as he might have said himself, he still tasted that dishcloth.

But he had not walked far before some of his complacence returned. He removed his hat and ran his fingers through his interesting hair, and began to murmur lyrically:

“By Jove!

I have a way with women!

There must be something of the Cave Man in me

Yes, something of the primeval!”

In his pocket was a little book of his own poems, bound in green and gold. As he had remarked to Mrs. Wimple, he was to deliver his message that afternoon.

III

Mrs. Watson's apartment (to which Ferdinand betook himself after idling a couple of hours at his club) was toward the top of a tall building which overlooked great fields of city. It was but three blocks distant from Ferdinand's own humbler apartment, in uptown New York, but it was large, and... well, Mr.

Wimple calculated, harbouring the sordid thought for an instant, that the rent must cost her seven or eight, thousand dollars a year.

Mrs. Watson's life was delicately scented with an attar of expense. She would not drench her rooms or her existence with wealth, any more than she would spill perfume upon her garments with a careless hand. But the sensitive' nostrils of the aesthetic Mr. Wimple quivered in reaction to the aroma. For a person who despised gold, as Mr. Wimple professed to despise it, he was strangely unrepelled. Perhaps he thought it to be his spiritual duty to purify this atmosphere with his message.

There were eighteen or twenty women there when Ferdinand arrived, and no man... except a weakeyed captive husband or two, and an epicene creature with a violin, if you want to call them men. Ferdinand, with his bovine body and his leonine head, seemed almost startlingly masculine in this assemblage, and felt so. His spirit, he had often confessed, was an instrument that vibrated best in unison with the subtle feminine soul; he felt it play upon him and woo him, with little winds that ran their fingers through his hair. These were women who had no occupation, and a number of them had money; they felt delightfully cultivated when persons such as Ferdinand talked to them about the Soul. They warmed, they expanded, half unconsciously they projected those breaths and breezes which thrilled our Ferdinand and wrought upon his mood. If a woman, idle and mature, cannot find romance anywhere else or anyhow other she will pick upon a preacher or an artist.

Mrs. Watson collected Ferdinands. Just how seriously she took them—how she regarded himself, specifically—Mr. Wimple could not be quite certain.

“She is a woman of mystery,” Mr. Wimple often murmured to himself. And he wondered a good deal about her... sometimes he wondered if she were not in love with him.

He had once written to her, a poem, which he entitled “Mystery.” She had let him see that she understood it, but she had not vouchsafed a solution of herself. It might be possible, Ferdinand thought, that she did not love him... but she sympathized with him; she appreciated him; she had even fallen into a dreamy sadness one day, at the thought of how he must suffer from the disharmony in his home. For somehow, without much having been said by one or by the other, the knowledge had passed from Ferdinand to Mrs. Watson that there was not harmony in his home. She had understood. They had looked at each other, and she had understood.

“Alethea!” he had murmured, under his breath. Alethea was her name. He was sure she had heard it; but she had neither accepted it from him, nor rejected it. And he had gone away without quite daring to say it again in a louder tone.

There was only one thing about her that sometimes jarred upon Mr. Wimple... a sudden vein of levity. Sometimes Ferdinand, in his thoughts, even accused her of irony. And he was vaguely distrustful of a sense of the humorous in women; whether it took the form of a feeling for nonsense or a talent for sarcasm, it worried him.

But she understood. She always understood... him and his message.

And this afternoon she seemed to be understanding him, to be absorbing him and his message, with an increased sensitiveness. She regarded him with a new intentness, he thought; she was taking him with an expanded spiritual capacity.

It was after the music, and what a creature overladen with “art jewelry” called “the eats,” harrowing Ferdinand with the vulgar word, that he delivered his message, sitting not far from Mrs. Watson in the carefully graduated light.

It was, upon the whole, a cheerful message, Ferdinand's. It was... succinctly... Love.

Ferdinand was not pessimistic or cynical about Love. It was all around us, he thought, if we could only see it, could only feel it, could only open our beings for its reception.

“If we could only see into the hearts! If we could only see into the homes!” said Ferdinand. If we could only see, it was Ferdinand's belief, we should see Love there, unexpected treasures of Love, waiting dormant for the arousing touch; slumbering, as Endymion slumbered, until Diana's kiss awakened him.

“Mush!” muttered one of the captive husbands to the young violinist. But the young violinist scowled; he was in accord with Ferdinand. “Mush, slush, and gush!” whispered the first captive husband to the second captive husband. But captive husband number two only nodded and grinned in an idiotic way; he was lucky enough to be quite deaf, and no matter where his wife took him he could sit and think of his Liberty Bonds, without being bothered by the lion of the hour....

The world, Ferdinand went on, was trembling on the verge of a great spiritual awakening. The Millennium was about to stoop and kiss it, as Morning kissed the mountain tops. It was coming soon. Already the first faint streaks of the new dawn were in the orient sky... for eyes that could see them. Ah, if one could only see! In more and more bosoms, the world around, Love was becoming conscious of itself, Love was beginning to understand that there was love in other bosoms, too! At this point, at least a dozen bosoms, among those bosoms present, heaved with sighs. Heart was reaching out to Heart in a new confidence, Ferdinand said. One knew what was in one's own heart; but hitherto one had often been so blind that one did not realize that the same thing was in the hearts of one's fellows. Ah, if one could only see!

Maeterlinck saw, Ferdinand said.

“Ah, Maeterlinck!” whispered the bosoms.

Yes, Maeterlinck saw, said Ferdinand. Nietzsche, said Ferdinand, had possessed a bosom full of yearning for all humanity, but he had been driven back upon himself and embittered by the world... by the German world in which he lived, said Ferdinand. So Nietzsche's strength had little sweetness in it, and Nietzsche had not lived to see the new light in the orient sky.

“Ah, Nietzsche!” moaned several sympathetic bosoms.

Bergson knew, Ferdinand opined. Several of the women present did not quite catch the connection between Bergson and Ferdinand's message, but they assumed that everyone else caught it. Bergson's was a name they knew and... and in a moment Ferdinand was on more familiar ground again. Tagore knew, said Ferdinand.

“Ah, Rabindranath Tagore!” And the bosoms fluttered as doves flutter when they coo and settle upon the eaves. Love! That was Ferdinand's message. And it appeared from the remarks with which he introduced and interspersed his own poems, that all the really brilliant men of the day were thinking in harmony with Ferdinand. He had the gift of introducing a celebrated name every now and then in such a manner that these women, who were at least familiar with the names, actually felt that they were also familiar with the work for which the names stood. And, for his part, he was repaid, this afternoon, as he had never been repaid before ... never before had he been so wrought upon and electrically vivified as to-day by these emanations of the feminine soul; never before had he felt these little winds run their fingers through his hair with such a caressing touch. Once or twice the poignancy of the sensation almost unsteadied him for an instant. And never before had Mrs. Watson regarded him with such singular intentness.

Love! That was Ferdinand's message! And, ah! if one could only see!

When the others were going, Mrs. Watson asked him to stay a while, and Ferdinand stayed. She led him to a little sitting room, high above the town, and stood by the window. And he stood beside her.

“Your message this afternoon,” she said, presently, “I enjoyed more than anything I have ever heard you say before. If we could only see! If we could only see!”

Mrs. Watson lifted her blue eyes to him... and for an instant Ferdinand felt that she was more the woman of mystery than ever. For there lurked within the eyes an equivocal ripple of light; an unsteady glint that came and went. Had it not been for her words, Ferdinand might have feared that she was about to break into one of her disconcerting ebullitions of levity. But he perceived in her, at the same time, a certain tension, an unusual strain, and was reassured... she was a little strange, perhaps, because of his near presence. She was reacting to the magnetism which was flowing out of him in great waves, and she was striving to conceal from him her psychic excitement. That would account for any strangeness in her manner, any constraint.

“If we could only see!” she repeated.

“You always see,” hazarded Ferdinand.

“I sometimes see,” said Mrs. Watson. “I have sometimes seen more than it was intended for me to see.”

What could she mean by that? Ferdinand asked himself. And for an instant he was unpleasantly conscious again of the something ambiguous in her mood. Suddenly she turned and switched on the electric light in the room, and then went and stood by the window again. Ferdinand's psychic feathers were a trifle rumpled by the action. It was growing dusk... but he would have liked to talk to her in the twilight, looking out over the roofs.

“If we could only see into the hearts ... into the homes,” she mused yet again.

“If you could see into my heart now ... Alethea...”

He left the sentence unfinished. She did not look at him. She turned her face so he could not see it.

He tried to take her hand. But she avoided that, without actually moving, without giving ground... as a boxer in the ring may escape the full effect of a blow he does not parry by shrugging it off, without retreating.

After a moment's silence she said: “Ferdinand...” and paused....

He felt sure of her, then. He drew a long breath. He wished they were not standing by that window, framed in it, with the lighted room behind them... but since she would stand there... anyhow, now was the time....

And then he heard himself pleading with her, eloquently, fervently. She was his ideal! She was... he hated the word “affinity,” because it had been cheapened and vulgarized by gross contacts... but she was his affinity. They were made for one another. It was predestined that they should meet and love. She was what he needed to complete him, to fulfill him. They would go forth together... not into the world, but away from it... they would dwell upon the heights, and... and... so forth.

Ferdinand, as he pleaded, perhaps thought nothing consciously of the fact that she must be spending money at the rate of fifty or sixty thousand dollars a year. But, nevertheless, that subconscious mind of his, of which he had so often spoken, that subliminal self, must have been considering the figures, for suddenly there flashed before his inner eye the result of a mathematical calculation... fifty thousand dollars a year is the interest on one million dollars at five per cent. Ah, that would make his dreams possible! How his service to the human race might be increased in value if all his time could be but given to carrying his message! Farewell to the sordid struggle for bread! And in the poetic depths of him there moved, unuttered, a phrase which he had spoken aloud earlier in the day: “I shall never wash another dish, nor yet another undergarment.” This secondary line of thought, however, did not interfere with the lyric passion of his speech.

“You are asking me to... to... elope with you!”

She still drooped her head, but she let him feel her nearness. He wished—how he wished!—that they were away from that window. But he would not break the spell by suggesting that they move. Perhaps he could not reestablish it.

“Elope?” Ferdinand critically considered the word.

“I want you to come away with me, Alethea, into Paradise. I want you to help me rediscover Eden! I want you! I want you!”

“But... your family?” she murmured.

He had her hand again, and this time she let him keep it. “That episode, that unfortunate and foolish episode, my marriage, is ended,” said Ferdinand, as he kissed her hand.

“Ah! Ended?” said Mrs. Watson. “You are no longer living with your wife? The marriage is dissolved?” Mrs. Watson's own marriage had been dissolved for some time; whether by death or by divorce Ferdinand had never taken the trouble to inquire.

“In the spiritual sense—and that is all that counts—dissolved,” said Ferdinand. And he could not help adding: “To-day.”

Mrs. Watson was breathing quickly... and suddenly she turned and put her head on his shoulder. And yet even as Ferdinand's mind cried “Victory!” he was aware of a strange doubt; for when he attempted to take her in his arms, she put up her hands and prevented a real embrace. He stood in perplexity. He felt that she was shaking with emotion; he heard muffled sounds... she was sobbing and weeping on his shoulder, or...

No! It could not be! Yes, the woman was laughing! Joy? Hysteria? What?

Suddenly she pushed him away from her, and faced him, controlling her laughter.

“Excuse me,” said Mrs. Watson, with the levity he had feared dancing in her eyes, “but such a silly idea occurred to me just as I was about to tell you that I would elope with you... it occurred to me that I had better tell you that all my money is tied up in a trust fund. I can never touch anything but the interest, you know.”

“Alethea,” said Ferdinand, chokingly, “such a thought at a time like this is unworthy of both of us!” And he advanced toward her again. But she stopped him.

“Just a moment, Ferdinand! I haven't told you all of my silly idea! I wondered also, you know, whether, if we ever got hard up and had to do our own work, you would break my dishes with a wooden stick and twist my arm until I howled!”

As Ferdinand slowly took in her words, he felt a sudden recession of vitality. He said nothing, but his knees felt weak, and he sat down on a chair.

“Get up!” said Mrs. Watson, with a cold little silver tinkle of a laugh. “I didn't ask you to sit down!”

Ferdinand got up.

“I don't spy on my neighbours as a rule,” continued Mrs. Watson, “but a little after noon to-day I happened to be standing by this window looking out over the town, and this pair of opera glasses happened to be on the table there and... well, take them, you oaf! You fat fool! And look at that window, down there! It's your own kitchen window!”

Ferdinand took them and looked... he was crushed and speechless, and he obeyed mechanically.

He dropped the glasses with a gasp. He had not only seen into his own kitchen window, lighted as this one was, but he had seen Nell there... and, as perverse fate would have it, some whim had inspired Nell to take her own opera glasses and look out over the city. She was standing there with them now. Had she seen him a moment before, with Mrs. Watson's head upon his shoulder?

He started out.

“Wait a moment,” said Mrs. Watson. Ferdinand stopped. He still seemed oddly without volition. It reminded him of what he had heard about certain men suffering from shell shock.

“There... I wanted to do that before you went,” said Mrs. Watson, and slapped him across the face. And Ferdinand's soul registered once more the flavour of a damp dishcloth. “It's the second time a woman has slapped you to-day,” said Mrs. Watson. “Try and finish the rest of the day without getting a third one. You can go now.”

Ferdinand went. He reached the street, and walked several blocks in silence. Neither his voice nor his assurance seemed to be inclined to return to him speedily. His voice came back first, with a little of his complacence, after fifteen or twenty minutes. And:

“Hell!” said Ferdinand, in his rich, harplike voice, running his fingers through his tawny hair. “Hell!”