CHAPTER I
THE STREET OF MASTS

"He saw you in the shop that time long ago, Grandfather, and understood that the paint had affected you?"

"Yes, it were the lead in the white paint that poisoned me," agreed David; "I'd been paintin' cattle cars pretty stiddy, which was a job most on 'em tried to skip."

"I see, and the superintendent told Mr. Hart how faithfully you'd worked and the result was that he sent you this letter with a deed for the house at the Point. It shows that he thought a great deal of you; and even if we shouldn't be able to find him," she continued with a shade of apprehension, "it seems to me this letter, old as it is, ought to help in getting you some sort of a position, just temporarily."

"But it ain't some sort of a position I'm wantin'," the other objected, "it's a railroad position; and though railroad corporations is one thing," he continued, "and car shops is another, still they do business together constant; and I guess we'll find the Big Middletown people know all about Nicholas Hart when we ask 'em."

And so these two, the one so lately emerged from childhood and the other just reËntering it, started on their quest, and from their eyes looked out the same innocence, ignorance and unquenchable hope.

"I'll feel safer about Grandfather when he's occupied," thought the girl, "but it must be light work, I'll insist upon that; and then directly I'll find something to do myself."

Since their arrival in the city a fortnight before, old David had manifested a growing irresponsibility. Deprived of his accustomed occupations and transferred to the streets of the metropolis, he had become like a ship without a rudder. So far, his driftings had been as pleasant as they were aimless, but more than once he had been lost, more than once, following the lead of his errant curiosity, had barely escaped serious accident. And there was no telling how soon the threatening dangers of the new existence might overwhelm him. Insensibly, in the midst of his delight, he looked to the young girl for guidance. She it was who had settled them in their present quarters, three small rooms at the top of an old building in lower New York, rooms selected because of their cheapness and because two windows overlooked a wharf at which foreign ships were tethered while a third window looked toward the west. She it was who had added to their meagre stock of house plenishings at push-carts and cheap shops. Indeed, she it was who had assumed entire responsibility for the undertaking.

Nora Gage, who now received a lower wage than formerly, and in consequence performed only such duties as she chose, grumbled constantly. The poor fare on which Rachel and the old man subsisted filled her with disgust, and she would have gratified her gastronomic preferences out of her savings of twenty years, had it not been that the queer foreign foods, in which the markets of the neighbourhood abounded, were not to her taste. Even old David at moments was inclined to be fractious, and Rachel, who had wilfully played the part of Fate to these two, was forced to listen as patiently as she could to their criticisms.

On the afternoon in question when she emerged from the house with her grandfather, the old man scowled; for the street was dank with mist and clamorous with the roar of the nearby "elevated."

"This ain't a nice street," he complained, "I don't like the smell on it, and with everything swallowed up in the fog so, we can't see the only thing worth seein'—the ships."

"But perhaps we can later; when we come back the fog may be gone," Rachel comforted him. However, a touch of the cold and damp seemed to threaten her own heart.

By dint of timid inquiries, at the end of two hours' weary searching, the bewildered pair found themselves in a Broadway office of the Middletown road. But the clerk to whom they made known their quest, shook his small, well-combed head at them.

"It's to Philadelphia you ought to have gone, Uncle," he said, while a smile wrinkled the flesh beneath his prominent eyes. "We know nothing about your car shops here. As for this letter, it's a bit ancient," and he handed it back.

Rachel flushed. "My grandfather wishes to obtain work in New York," she said. "We showed you the letter merely as a credential, thinking perhaps you might know Mr. Nicholas Hart—if he is still living," she added with a pang of fear.

The man glanced at the handsome girl and the boldness, the indestructible animation of sex, flashed in his pale eyes. "I'm sorry," he said in a voice which he strove to make respectful, "but I do not know him. However, I've no doubt if you go—"

"Is it Nicholas Hart you're speaking of?" interrupted an older clerk who had been an interested listener to the conversation. "Yes, he's still living, I think. Years ago he used to be one of the owners of the car shops in Philadelphia; that's right. If I'm not mistaken he's living now with his son Simon Hart who is a jeweller in some street in the Thirties. Here, I'll look him up for you. The residence is near Washington Arch," he added, returning after a moment; "I've written the address on this card."

Rachel thanked him and, ignoring the younger clerk who ran officiously to open the door for them, she passed out, followed by old David.

"Now wasn't that the slickest thing ye ever saw," he exulted, "I told ye how folks, especially the older ones, would know all about Nicholas Hart. We can walk there, can't we, Rachel?"

"We can walk part of the way," she responded with a sigh.

From childhood she had been taught to look upon Nicholas Hart as a benefactor and in her dreams it had been to him that she had seen herself appealing for advice. Now the fact that Nicholas Hart, in case they were fortunate enough to find him, would be an old man, entered her mind for the first time.

Young and serious, she walked on lost in meditation, merely keeping a restraining hand upon her grandfather, who threatened every moment to quit her side. His eyes under his white tufted eyebrows shone like sapphires and an innocent and childlike delight radiated from him. More than one jaded pedestrian turned to look after the refreshing pair who, in that crowded Broadway, suggested a hooded violet and a slightly withered buttercup blowing in the sun.

When they reached the space in front of the Herald building, old David planted himself on the walk and insisted on waiting until the two bronze figures above the clock struck the hour; but when they reached the Farragut statue he sank down on the architectural seat.

"These pavements don't give none," he said plaintively.

"We'll just rest a minute," Rachel soothed him.

With a tender movement she placed the end of her worn scarf around his neck and forced him to lean his head on her shoulder. Almost at once he fell into the light slumber which is nature's most beneficent gift to infancy and old age.

Under the rays of the February sun the mist had disappeared and in the air there was a springlike warmth. Rachel, turning her head, read the words of the inscription traced on the back of the seat; then her eyes travelled upward to the Admiral, who, by his staunch and determined air, seemed to convert the stone base into the deck of a vessel. And immediately the city ceased to terrify her and bravery rose in her in a flood.

The Hart house had once been a cheerful mansion, but its home-like aspect had long since given place to an air of cold and pathetic reserve.

The knock was answered by a smartly-dressed maid with a crafty yet heedless air. On Rachel's inquiring for Mr. Nicholas Hart, the girl eyed them with sharp suspicion.

"Mr. Hart don't ever see anyone," she said.

"He once showed my grandfather a great kindness," Rachel explained, "and I thought perhaps he might remember—"

"He don't remember much," interrupted the other; "but I suppose you can go along up," she admitted, after a further scrutiny of the pair from whom, it was clear, there was nothing to fear. "He remembers faces sometimes; you'll have to climb the stairs though," she added maliciously.

Rachel helped her grandfather up the three flights of stairs and the servant rapped on the attic door.

"Come in," piped a voice which sounded like the note of a cracked flute. And old David and Rachel entered.

The attic was wide and sunny and in the recess of a gable window stood a very little old man with a face fair and pink as a child's and with a skull cap on the back of his white head. He turned with one delicate hand resting on the barrel of a microscope. On perceiving the servant his eyes grew round with fury.

"Get out of here!" he shrilled, and, ignoring the strangers, he flew straight at the maid, skipping over the floor with remarkable briskness, his coat-tails moving like the wings of a maddened bird. The girl retreated with a laugh.

Old David presented his letter. In the presence of his host, who was as airy and, seemingly as fragile-lived as a figure traced upon a window-pane of a frosty morning, old David appeared endowed with the sturdiness of youth. "Years ago when I was a paintin' of cars," he began; but Nicholas Hart sent the letter, from which he had not removed the envelope, whirling across the floor.

"Cars," he cried, "run on wheels, but look at these wings,—" and with a finger shaking with excitement he pointed to the microscope. "Don't they beat all the wheels in creation?" he demanded.

In answer to his gesture, old David peeped timidly into the instrument; then he straightened himself and the face which he turned toward the other expressed a world of simple wonderment.

"Eh, what did I tell you?" exclaimed Nicholas exultingly. "And look here! and here!" he cried, placing one slide after another under the lens.

Finding herself forgotten, Rachel left the absorbed pair and went downstairs to wait for her grandfather. Her glimpse of Nicholas Hart had convinced her that no help could be expected from him.

"I told you he wasn't used to seeing folks," commented the maid who appeared in the hall. "He's touched here," and she indicated her head. "He thinks I mean to destroy a book he's writing about the house-fly, because once I mixed up his papers. Your grandfather's all right that way, is he?" she asked.

"Certainly he is," responded Rachel, and after a few further remarks that elicited no reply, the servant retreated. But from the dining room, where she rather obviously engaged herself with some sewing, she kept strict watch over the stranger.

Rachel, seated on a low settle, threw an indifferent glance about her. Then, almost insensibly her attitude changed. She was seized with an indefinable feeling. This house, with its purely masculine furnishings, for some reason suggested to her mind the image of a life darkened and repressed. The hall, the drawing-room, the dining room were like a succession of gloomy thoughts. Portieres, rich in texture but indeterminate in hue, outlined the doors with their dismal folds; and the drawing-room chairs and armchairs were upholstered in rep of the same shade.

In the drawing-room the mantel-piece was adorned with an ill-assorted collection of candle-sticks, match-safes, inlaid boxes; and in the centre was an elaborate clock of an elegant modern design, violently at odds with the homely daguerreotype of a woman which flanked it on one side and a vase of an ugly pattern on the other. A nude figure, atrociously modelled, supported the vase in the form of a flower and might have been kissing a hand to the patient becapped countenance in the daguerreotype; otherwise the various objects bore no closer relation one to another than the articles on the counter in a shop. On the floor, before a pier-glass, was a plate on a support of twisted wire. Household gods were present in abundance, but chilly, silent, they imparted no charm of life to the vastness of the apartment.

In the dining room, however, this effect was slightly modified. It was the room apparently where the master spent most of his time when at home; and, as if in preparation for his arrival, a discreet fire had been started in the grate. Unlike the more material accessories, the fire did all that it could to impart its own peculiar charm to the room. It leaped as high as possible; its beams were reflected in the polished case of the pianola, its rays were caught by the glass doors of the cupboard which contained the records, its gleams were imprisoned in tangled rainbows in the cut glass and silver of the sideboard. The laughing light, indeed, like an impolite guest, seemed, in the absence of the host, to occupy the table laid staidly for one, and delicately to help itself to the wine, to the fruit, to all that the board held, with rosy, caressing, immaterial fingers.

Toward this distant point of comparative cheer Rachel turned her eyes with troubled interest. To the finely organized there are in life few, if any, absolutely unheralded events. Now she hung over the problem of the personality suggested by these surroundings with a tremour of premonition—a fact which she recalled later with amazement.

Presently a latch key grated in the lock and the street door was opened with extreme caution. A gentleman entered wrapped in a long overcoat. He did not immediately perceive Rachel. Divesting himself of the coat, he blew imaginary particles of dust from its sable collar and hung it on the rack; then he removed his hat and disclosed a long head, bare on top, and trimmed with a sparse fringe of hair. This hair he proceeded to smooth into place with quick motions of his hands; he even drew his fingers through it. Then he turned round.

Her scrutiny was older than his, and the prophetic, vague apprehension had mounted, mounted. She glanced aside; he could not.

There are moments when surprise stirs a mind like a stick thrust into a pool. The ordinarily clear surface of the water reveals sodden leaves, mud, perhaps even shrinking plants; the eye usually enigmatic, unfathomable, reveals hidden weaknesses, sins, temerities. When he beheld her, a young girl, seated in his hall, in Simon Hart's hollow cheek the blood slowly mantled. He was as clean-shaven as a monk, save for the barely indicated line of a moustache above the narrow lips. His nose was handsome, though pointed; his chin was cleft. One ear was a little higher than the other.

After a perceptible pause he passed her, bowing slightly, and proceeded through the drawing-room with his soft tread. His legs were short, but his shoulders and head were imposing. He was like a building begun by a carpenter and finished by an architect.

In the dining room he approached the sideboard and poured some liquor from a decanter. He did not, however, drink the liquor, but stood holding the glass. And this vision of him was reflected in the dining room mirror, caught again in the small mirror above the hall-rack and repeated indefinitely in the bevellings. Rachel was unfamiliar with Piranesi's series of engravings in which the artist is represented climbing an everlasting staircase, or this multiplied vision of Simon Hart, continued through one room after another, until he disappeared with his glass in the border of the last mirror, might have suggested to her a similar allegory. She directed toward him a second glance, wistful, unconsciously searching, and at that moment her grandfather descended the stairs and the servant appeared to show them out. In the open Rachel straightway forgot all presentiments and the meeting wore in her memory an aspect ordinary enough.

Old David was elated. "I tell ye, I never see anything like what he's got up there," he cried. "There's butterfly wings all sparklin' with jewels, and mosquito legs—"

Rachel taking his arm, guided him toward a car. Not an allusion to the real object of the call fell from the old man's lips. All memory of their purpose had apparently escaped him on the instant of his introduction into that sphere of ideal beauties. His face shone like a child's. Looking at him Rachel smiled a little sadly. How absolutely irresponsible he was, and how she had erred when she had withdrawn him from the simple duties which had acted as an anchor for his fantastic mind. Yet was not that which he expressed the highest poetry? The essence of an abstract delight was in him and shone through him, transforming his aged frame as an elixir transforms the delicate goblet that contains it. His eyes blazed, his lips were wreathed in smiles, and suddenly he no longer seemed to her an old man entering the drear regions of second childhood, but a seer, a bard, a singing poet, chanting a chant of Beauty, which is immortal. And because she was spirit of his spirit as well as flesh of his flesh, she nestled to him; and, seated side by side, they were conveyed rapidly through the city which resounded with the unparalleled bustle and confusion that precedes the subsidence and comparative silence of the night.

When they descended from the elevated station and turned into the "Street of Masts," as old David termed the alley in which they lived, he paused, "Jest—look a there!" he said, and extended a finger.

The sun shone on the muddy pools beside the road and into the inexpressibly weary eyes of horses. It glinted on the hair of the ragged children swarming in the doorways and put an added blush on the cheeks of apples swinging by the stems at the doors of tiny fruit shops and on stands. It made the outlines of factory stacks indistinct, enveloped in a haze. The sun, shining through streaks and trails and plumes of smoke, made the city appear to be waving flags of glory—the glory of a dream.

"And the ships—let's go and see what they've brought in," whispered the old man, and, in a kind of awe, the two approached the wharf where were ranged those patient, graceful visitors from foreign ports.

Their masts towering against the sky, the ships suggested a fantastic forest, or a chimerical orchard, for the undulations of the water imparted to them a gentle motion, so that they seemed to be in the act of shedding their gracious and varied fruits on the wharf. There were skins of mountain goats from Switzerland, and elephant tusks from Egypt; there was oil golden with the sunlight of Italy and there were winecasks bursting with the purple sweetness of her vineyards. There were bales of textile fabrics from China, there were strange-leaved plants, with their roots bound tightly in canvas, from the isles of Bermuda. It seemed to Rachel that all these fruits from every land and clime were treasures poured bounteously into the lap of a mystical city; and the last vestige of that fear, so foreign to her nature and so little to be harboured there in all the coming years, vanished from her heart. Were they not, she asked herself, in the land of fulfilment, in the city of realized dreams?

CHAPTER II
EMILY SHORT—TOY-MAKER

When the bells of St. Joseph trembled into motion, Emily Short opened her eyes; when those inverted cups of bronze began to move faster, flinging their summons over the roofs, tossing it in at open windows, emptying it into narrow courts, she arose. When the parish father, still half asleep, donned his robes and straightened his stole, she put the last pin in her collar and tied on her apron. When he began to say mass, she began to hum a tune; and as the high-sounding Latin escaped through the trefoiled windows, her artless warble escaped through the attic casement, and together the two strains, the one from the heart of the Church and the other from the heart of a woman, ascended straight to the throne of the good God and who shall say they were not equally acceptable?

Outwardly Emily was no friend of the church. Its frequent services, she declared, were disturbing, and a room on the other side of the house with a view of the ships and the wharfage would have been a deal more to her mind. However, it was noticeable that whenever one of these rooms fell vacant she held her peace and abode in her attic as tightly as a limpet in its shell when danger is toward. It must be confessed that she clung to the church very much as a limpet clings to its chosen rock. For forty years she had lived close to the church, for forty years been keenly alive to its spirit of consolation. Though unencumbered with a creed, Emily was a staunch reformer and the church represented a strong ally.

On a summer morning, by merely craning her neck, she could peer down through an open window and learn who were present of her special following. If she spied the old charwoman, whose honesty was not above suspicion, or Dan, who stole grain on the wharves, she nodded her head with satisfaction. It was more than possible, she considered, even if the priest's exhortations were lost on their befuddled minds, that the pure strong notes of the organ might reach their consciences, the beautiful colours of the windows cause some expansion of their dwarfed souls. So she completed her survey like an inquiring angel, then settled to her work of the day.

Emily trimmed hats, furnishing them for a Division Street milliner, and earned a very comfortable livelihood; for she trimmed with an abandon, a daring, a freedom that no other trimmer could equal. That she might have full scope for the expression of her individuality, she was granted the privilege of working at home instead of under the eye of her employer. She was regarded as an artist, and more than once her creations had changed the prevailing styles in that section. If Emily, canny soul, had her own ideas about the beauty of her hats, she kept them to herself and it is not for me to reveal them. It was sufficient that the hats suited the heads they were intended to adorn. Humming under her breath, she curled and looped and tied and twisted with such swiftness that the room was filled with the shimmer of satin, the flutter of laces, the darting of wings, the bursting of flowers; and so unremitting was her industry that by night the wire frames, delivered to her in the morning, had been converted into veritable traps for the captivation of men's hearts.

Working away through the long hours, all the vanity that had never found expression in her own life, flew into her needle; she placed feathers at an irresistible angle, sewed buckles and bows in telling positions. When she fared along the streets, quiet and demure, carrying her great pile of boxes, who would have guessed that she was a great matchmaker? Yet such was the case. And when she met one of her creations, brave and flaunting as youth itself, accompanied by a male hat, she knew that her work was succeeding. When the hats proclaimed a maid and a lad, her spirits rose; but when they proclaimed an errant wife and her admirer, her spirits clouded.

For once they had left her hands with all their potency for good or evil, Emily had no more control over her hats than a parent over the children that have quitted the hearth. Sometimes her pangs were so sharp at what she witnessed that for days she trimmed with a sobriety, a propriety that was the despair of her employers. Indeed, she fairly sewed a sermon into the hats until a protest of loud-voiced dismay stayed her hand. Thereupon the full tide of her remorse was diverted into another channel.

All who came to her she helped, as was her custom, with money, with food, with influence; but her lectures, always forcible, now became inspired. She rated them eloquently, and such an admiration did she exhibit for virtue, and such detestation for evil, that the indigent, the drunken, the lazy, went away not only consoled but strengthened in the "inner man."

Emily's philosophy was comprehended in one word. Work for brain and hand, body and soul,—work was the world's salvation, she declared; and right staunchly, in her own life, did she demonstrate the truth of this theory. Nor did her labours cease with the hours of daylight.

The setting of the sun witnessed a change in her occupation. With the lighting of the gas all the hats that had not been delivered, went to roost, like an array of tropical birds, behind a curtain; and from a corner where it had stood neglected all day, came forth her little work-bench. Forthwith Emily began the practice of the cunning craft that was to her the highest of the arts. Between the fine ardour of the youthful Cellini, as he approached his delicate metals after an irksome day in his father's shop, and Emily's grave exaltation as she seated herself at the bench, there was not the difference of a jot. The thing that we create matters nothing, the divine desire to create is all; and whether we design a medal for a pontiff's honour or a toy for a child's delight, the object is but a little door through which the soul wings to freedom.

Emily had a dream, an ambition. Her ambition was to make toys and one day to see a whole army of them performing on the walks of the popular uptown districts where shoppers throng. To this end she twisted wires with her claw-like fingers, and, as she lacked the proper tools, her fingers were often bruised; to this end she soldered together and hammered into shape. And right fairly did her toys represent her, for, disgusted with the laziness of humanity, Emily endowed her race of tiny men and women with a perfect passion for industry. They seemed obsessed with the notion, and though the work that engaged them would still be unfinished when the spring of their life ran down, was not this the crowning fact in the history of all brave effort? So Emily continued to announce her theory even through her toys.

On a certain sultry morning she had barely settled herself near the window and carefully threaded her first needle, when she dropped the work in her lap.

"There, I haven't made the acquaintance of that child yet," she murmured. "Judging from the smell of cooking they have enough to eat. But something's amiss and I must get her to tell me what it is."

Chance favoured Emily, for that evening as she was starting forth with a load of bright-coloured bandboxes, she encountered her youthful neighbour. The girl was mounting the stairs languidly. The warm weather had sapped her vitality, already undermined by the air of the city. Emily nodded cheerily, and purposely let fall one of the boxes. Rachel turned.

"Here, I'll pick it up for you," she cried; then, after a moment, "Won't you let me help you with them? I can do it as well as not."

Together they emerged into the lighted street.

Though she looked about her with a kind of wistful wonderment, the sordidness of the scenes through which they passed, did not seem really to touch Rachel. Emily kept glancing at her and marked how her childish passionateness was mingled with a suggestive reticence. It was clear that some saddening experience had already come to her. "Poor lamb!" muttered Emily. When a man with a lurching gait passed too close to Rachel, Emily nudged him savagely with the boxes; and when they turned into Division Street, not one of the crew of strident women who solicit trade for the shops, dared to accost her young charge. Not a few of these poor creatures, recognizing Emily, ceased long enough in their chant of "Nice hats! pretty hats!" to give the popular trimmer "good-evening."

Joseph Stedenthal's "Emporium" boasted a millinery department, of which his wife had charge, and a general merchandise and furniture department over which he himself presided. Everything the push-carts furnished, he furnished a little cheaper—at least a penny cheaper; and this stock, as proclaimed by his advertisement, was "displayed to invite the refined mind."

Joseph Stedenthal, staunchly backed by his wife and daughter, expressed a profound scorn for the push-carts and for all who bought and sold therefrom, and never in the bosom of his family was it hinted that he himself, in a not too remote past, had prospered finely as the owner of a cart. Now he had a dignified air of superiority, and only women who did not go bare-headed, came to his shop, women who made some pretence to style. His was the "exclusive" shop of the street.

Mrs. Stedenthal was in her husband's part of the shop when Emily and Rachel entered the "millinery section." Emily seated herself on a high stool and motioned Rachel to do the same. Joseph Stedenthal's voice came to them from a distance. He was thundering with wrath.

"Shame upon you, talking mit the salesmen! Go you up-stairs, I tell you!"

A young girl with flaming cheeks flashed by the door and ascended the stairs.

"I ain't talking to him. I just asked him how much he sold it for," she screamed back.

"You were talking mit the salesmen! All times you talk mit them. And that I will not—I shall not have!"

His tirade was interrupted by the teasing voice of a woman.

"There, there, Joseph, give me one little kiss! You know how much you lofe me."

There was an explosion of wrath and a woman, rolling in flesh, shaking with laughter, entered the millinery shop. She nodded to Emily, still smiling; but in spite of the merriment that convulsed her, she examined the hats attentively and counted the money very carefully into the other's hand. One of the hats she declined to pay for until the trimming was changed.

"All times you make 'em too dark, Miss Short,—too dark, like a hearse," she remonstrated affably; "put a little more red on it."

When Rachel, following Emily, once more gained the street, her tender face was clouded.

Men, women, children; hats, socks, coats; candles, worn-out books; dirt, dirt, dirt! Men, men, men, bearded, unkempt, bedraggled, saddened, stupid, hungry! Under each coat, each gown was a living heart, struggling to keep its life. In every eye was a demand; in too few hands were the coppers to buy—not the pears, the grapes, the oranges that grow in Hester Street as in an orchard—but the great black loaves of bread, round, twisted, covered with a strange kind of seed. Coppers were lacking to buy milk for the starving, anemic baby, dirty-faced, struggling over the floor of the tenement; lacking for the shoes,—thirty pennies enough—for the shoes of little Johnnie that he might go to school: pennies lacking for the whiskey and the beer,—pennies that must be cheated for, thieved for, murdered for,—the all-necessary pennies for the drink.

Separated from the life about her, Rachel was yet united to it, she was a part of it, and she drew her breath sharply. But should she be less brave than these others? Emily, who divined what was passing within her, came to a decision.

"You've been a great help with the boxes, Miss Beckett," she said cheerfully when they reached the house and mounted the stairs; "now you come along in for a cup of tea."

To the lonely girl the little toy-maker's room wore a grateful air of comfort. Emily placed her in a rocking-chair where she could see the windows of the church; then she bustled about preparing the tea. She had just handed a cup to Rachel when there came a rap on the door; before Emily could open it a pretty light-haired girl stood on the threshold. She was dressed in a starched waist and a plaid skirt and the eyes under her smart hat showed red rims.

"It's all over," she cried, ignoring Rachel's presence. "I've got to leave my position, Miss Short. It's all along of Tom. The president called me into his office to-day and said right out, either I could stop letting his son come to see me, or I could leave. He gave me my choice. And you better believe I wasn't long choosing. I told him I'd see whom I pleased, and if Mr. Colby liked to come and call on me perfectly proper, like any other gentleman, I shouldn't stop him. So I got notice."

The girl blazed with defiance, but, in spite of her bravado, she was once more on the brink of tears. Her bosom rose and sank tumultuously, her full red lips gathered into a pout, her little hands, dimpled like an infant's, rested on her hips. She was a child too soon imprisoned in the rich envelope of womanhood. On every lineament of her pretty, pathetic, excited face potential weakness was stamped.

Emily scrutinized her for a moment in silence. Still without expressing an opinion, she replaced the kettle on the gas stove; then she looked at the new-comer gravely:

"Miss Beckett, this is Miss Holden. Have you anything else to turn to, Betty?" she asked.

The other shook her head. "I haven't, but I'm going to an agency to-morrow. I thought I'd just stop in and tell you. No, thanks, I won't wait for tea. Tom's coming this very evening," she added with an audacious smile.

When she had gone, Emily poured Rachel another cup of tea; then taking a chair directly in front of her, she looked at her shrewdly:

"Have you got any work?"

Rachel raised an anxious face. She had been seeking work for many months.

"Can you do anything special?" Emily demanded.

Rachel was dubious. "Unless it was to trim hats," she ventured.

But Emily shook her head. "There's no chance in that line," she said decidedly. "Did you ever paint any?"

"No, but I could do it. I've seen it done—that is, little things, like roses and lighthouses."

Emily gave the other's hand two or three approving taps. "To-morrow I'll bring you the materials from a place I know."

The next day she appeared with a supply of silk and paints and patterns. Rachel's work was to paint garlands of roses on candle-shades, but as she lacked even a rudimentary knowledge of colour and drawing, for a time the work went ill. Even Emily, when she compared Rachel's copy with the pattern, was less optimistic.

"It's a knack, though, they say," she encouraged her; "and one can learn to do most anything if one goes about it firmly enough."

A week later, Emily, in a state of repressed excitement, summoned Rachel to her room to see a mechanical toy she had devised. Rowing his tiny boat over the waters of a tub was a wee figure dressed in sailor costume.

In Emily's cheeks was a spot of crimson and in her eyes, which ordinarily resembled little dark berries, was a peculiar brightness.

As she looked at Emily the colour even left Rachel's face with the strength of her longing. When she returned to the garlands, the roses blossomed under her fingers. "So much for work!" she thought, and there arose in her a new and virile sensation of pride and joy.

CHAPTER III
SIMON HART TO THE RESCUE

As the summer advanced she refused to accept the dealer's verdict that the demand for all sorts of hand-painted trifles languished in the summer; painting was her one means of support, and with magnificent courage, if with small practical sense, she continued to paint. But when she carried her work to the dealer, though he admired it, he refused to buy it, and she came home again and again as empty of pocket as when she had started out.

She said nothing to Emily Short about her difficulties. Barring a glimpse which she caught of her now and then she seldom saw the little toy-maker, for during the hot weather Emily was unusually busy.

Emily was a famous nurse, and during the season when sickness was rampant among the children of the slums, she put aside her toys and hats and fought bravely for the little lives. She scrubbed faces and cleaned floors and administered doses of medicine, and more than once Rachel had met her at the edge of evening, bringing home an infant in her arms. To see her depositing it where the breeze came in through the open window, cooing to it, directing its wandering attention to the sights and sounds of the church, was enough to bring tears to the eyes. Fate, so prone to interfere with the plans of nature, wins at best but a superficial victory when she attempts to extinguish the motherhood in certain women. Deny them offspring she may, but dam up the love in their hearts, she cannot. Fate makes spinsters, but God makes mothers. And what is a mother but a being that looks with tenderness on all that is weak, with delight on all that is young? To such a being, an infant is ever a bud of promise to which she longs to be the sun. In the most radiant and satisfying sense, Emily Short was a mother, and not a waif in the quarter but knew it. Those who could walk, flocked after her on their little bare feet, clinging to the folds of her dress with their grimy fingers; and those who were too small to walk, looked at her with fixed, unwinking eyes, apparently beholding nothing, while in reality still seeing the something beyond this nothing, their state being one of celestial preoccupation rather than one of dormant thought.

Rachel, aware of the burden Emily carried, hesitated to add to its weight. If truth be told, as long as old David did not lack for food,—and so far he had not gone hungry—as long as the rent was paid for a week ahead, a subject more tyrannical than poverty engrossed her thoughts. In some women the love that has once stirred them, never becomes extinct; it is a flame that never completely dies, a fire of which some sparks always linger among the dead ashes. At a breath from that far-off source of all existence, a breath that quickens alike grain and fruit and human hearts, this spark leaps to renewed life in the sensitive, wounded and restless soul.

With the disingenuousness of a woman in love, with the timidity of a little mouse, Rachel had established herself under the eaves of an obscure garret in lower New York. For a time, following the change, her heart had beat more tranquilly, for now the same sky covered her that covered that egoistic remarkable being who had once played so important a role in her life.

But gradually the sombreness of a storm was created within her; though when she thought of the inventor she experienced little of the chagrin of a woman whom a lover has deserted. Rather, what she felt was a surprised resentment of soul. Emil St. Ives was ordained to understand her, and behold he had forsaken her! With eyes as clear as a child's, though shadowed by indefinable emotions, she often watched from the window the pigeons circling on pointed wings over the house-tops, and they seemed to her like a flurry of white letters tossed by a derisive hand through the sky.

"Why had he never written her?"

At the thought her melancholy was crossed by anger; but at other moments she remembered that it was she herself who had sent him away. Oh, if he had only looked at her with his mind as well as his eyes! But, enlivened continually by the astonished happy perception of the inventor's mastery of the expedients he employs in his tests, joyful with the joy of a creator, Emil had never really seen her. His love for his mother carried him backward into the past, his love for his work carried him forward into the future, until it actually seemed to her he had no present, no to-day.

And she reflected that under one of those million roofs he was working on some foolish instrument for which the world, as yet, did not recognize its own need. The world, therefore, in all probability, was leaving him alone, to live if he could, to starve if he must. Meanwhile, the sound of his drilling, his hammering, above all, his loud-voiced singing, was doubtless causing a commotion among the stars where the important is recorded before it is heralded on this commonplace earth.

Although she did not wish to remember the inventor, the thought of him constantly returned and gradually she began to extract a kind of pleasure from this involuntary analysis which she carried on for hours together. Then roused by some sound from the street, with the languor which results from power held in abeyance, she would resume work on the shades.

One heavy morning toward the end of August, Rachel made the unpleasant discovery that there was scarcely money enough in the house to cover the needs of the day. To increase her dismay her grandfather, leaning his head on his hand, refused his breakfast. Even the newspaper with its sensational headlines failed to arouse him. She brought him a glass of water, but with a weak gesture he motioned her away. Thoroughly frightened, Rachel flung her arm about him and coaxed him to return to his bed. Old David grew first red, then white, but gradually the natural look returned to his face and he fell into a sound sleep.

Instructing Nora Gage to keep a close watch over him, Rachel started for the shop where she had formerly disposed of her wares. She was intoxicated with her own resolution. Though it was the third time within a fortnight that she had made her appearance there, she spread the shades on the counter with confident movements; then she looked up.

The clerk with his delicate salesmen's hand swept them toward her. "I have told you that we have no call for these things," he said and impatiently turned on his heel.

For some moments she seemed not to comprehend these words; presently his voice, bland and seductive, reached her from another part of the shop. Then she gathered up the shades, returned them to her handbag, and walked slowly to the door. She made a movement to open it, but at that instant she heard a step behind her.

When he lifted his hat, she recognized Simon Hart. He was looking at her attentively with his weary, enigmatic eyes.

The salesman had followed him in a little rush.

"Perhaps you'd better leave the shades after all, Miss Beckett," he began, "this gentleman—"

"I will give the young lady the order," the other said. And he held the door open for Rachel.

Once in the street, she looked at her companion in surprise. She thought she detected in his face covert satisfaction.

"I beg your pardon, but you called to see my father several weeks ago—Miss Beckett? Thank you. The maid wasn't certain of the name. Well, Miss Beckett," he continued in an embarrassed voice, enunciating his words with distinctness, "it happens that I have just been requested by a relative to get her some candle shades," and in a few words he explained the commission, even producing from his pocket a sample of the silk from which the shades were to be made. It was essential that they should be finished in three days.

"And when you deliver them to Miss Burgdorf," he said, scribbling an address on a card which he took from his pocket, "you might speak to her in a general way of your work, if you care to do so. For my part," he concluded, "I'm very glad to know of someone who does this kind of thing."

Before he left Rachel, he inquired where she and her grandfather were living and the odd look of gratification deepened on his face.

"I needn't have told him, I suppose," she thought regretfully as she walked home; "he may come there."

CHAPTER IV
THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

A pompous-looking butler escorted Rachel through a vestibule, and pointed her to a seat in the dining room. It was evident from his manner that she should have applied at the basement entrance.

A group of workmen were busy setting up an immense table. They kept pushing the sections together and drawing them apart. The polished surfaces of the wood filled the room with reflected light. A maid who stood by looked appealingly at the butler.

"It isn't the table that was ordered," she moaned. She glanced at a clock which seemed, with its fluted columns and Gothic spires, a sardonic spirit in that rich and disordered room. Its monotonous tick-tock, tick-lock, scattered confusion, bewilderment, madness.

"Eleven!" she cried in tones of deepest tragedy, "and not a flower!"

Other servants entered bearing silver and glass. A footman came in with a great palm, and bending, with shoulders on the strain, placed it directly in the path of a hurrying maid. Some one dropped a goblet; that showered into a million minute particles like shining tears. Every movable object was shifted countless times and remained, according to its nature, glittering, wavering, quivering for some instants thereafter. A bronze Narcissus exhibited his grace at an unusual angle. In such a time of rearrangement who has not observed how art objects gain in beauty?

"Miss Burgdorf will see you now. Please step this way."

Rachel followed the servant up the staircase. The woman lifted long strings of motley-hued beads strung in such a manner as to form a semi-transparent curtain, passed through a sitting room and tapped on a door. Julia Burgdorf was seated before her dressing-table in a robe of flowing silk. She was having her face manipulated by a slim masseuse in a long apron. The faces of the two women, as they rolled their eyes inquiringly toward the door, were exceedingly feminine. Woman is ever most natural when engaged in making herself artificial.

Julia Burgdorf extended her hand with an imperious gesture. "Let me see the shades," she cried.

She was a powerful, dark-skinned, handsome woman, with her mind in her eyes. Forty years of life had polished and embellished her until now she resembled a jewel of many facets. Her throat suggested a singing bird's, her shoulders were beautifully curved, her hands and arms perfect. She scarcely glanced at Rachel but examined the shades intently. Then once more she yielded her face to the masseuse.

"Thank goodness, child!" she sighed, "they're lovely! and I'd just given you up. All these lights will be very hot, but they'll look like a forest of tropical blossoms; that's what I wanted. Here, give me that purse."

She counted out thirty dollars in bills, and handed them to Rachel and then rang for the butler.

"Has the sherbet come?—Bring this young lady some. Here, sit down," she added, "you look tired."

Rachel seated herself on a brocaded divan, still holding in her fingers a shade which had been slightly crushed and which she had repaired. She held the shade like a flower, and her face above it was severe and pale.

"Heavens, child! someone ought to catch your pose just as you sit now. She doesn't need any of your cream, does she, Henley?"

The masseuse looked at Rachel and her face quaked into an hundred little wrinkles. These played round her eyes like forked lightning, then instantly and miraculously disappeared, leaving the skin like an infant's.

"It wouldn't do her any harm, Miss Burgdorf," she said, bridling. "Our cream is such a preservative. Sister and I think ladies can't begin too early."

Her voice and manner suggested lotions; and this persistent artificial youthfulness, superadded to the tiny creature's evident acumen, was not without charm. In her long apron, tied behind with strings like a pinafore, she would have passed very well for a child had it not been for the lightning.

Julia Burgdorf rose and stretched her arms above her head, then let them drop heavily while she stood for an instant in a listening attitude. Though no word was brought to her of the perturbed state of affairs below stairs, there was knowledge of it in the very air.

"The butler has broken the last cup," she declared with conviction, "and the cook has gone off in a rage. I can see everything. Oh, what a fool I was to leave the cool country and bother with that club of cackling women at this season of the year! But charity before comfort. Leave your address, please. My cousin, Mr. Hart," she went on, with a droll screwing of the lips "wrote me about you. I may be able to get you more orders." And with these words she passed on to her bath.

Now that the work which had engaged her for three days and a night was finished, Rachel felt disinclined to move. She lingered over the sherbet the butler had brought her and watched the masseuse putting away the little delicate instruments of coquetry. All at once it seemed to her that through the cool silence she heard the malicious ticking of the great clock in the dining-room, and she recognized the timepiece as a remorseless tyrant dominating not only the servants, but the beautiful mistress of the house. Though instinctively conscious of Julia Burgdorf's fear of age, Rachel was too young to experience any real sympathy for her. Instead, what she did feel was a keen sense of her own triumphant youth. A miniature of a young man stood on a dressing-table. "He looks like Emil," she thought; and, to quiet her agitation she fixed her attention on the masseuse, who, with a little silver pencil, was marking the date on an illuminated calendar. Rachel stared at this calendar, and the blood slowly left her cheek.

Nothing so conclusively proves the existence of an intelligent, if somewhat perverse Fate, acting in the affairs of human beings, as these potent stirrings of the memory, which she causes by the simplest means. Does a woman require a bit of information? Incidentally Fate enlightens her at the most opportune moment. Rachel attempted to avert her eyes from the bit of cardboard, but the two names which were almost lost in the design of the border and which certainly would have escaped the casual glance of another, in a moment had evoked all the sweet and irritating scenes of her past:

"Benjamin Just & Richard Lawless, Art Lithographers, Lafayette Street."

Symbolizing all the events of her meagre romance, these names, with all the accompanying address of which she had hitherto been ignorant, had the effect of maturing in Rachel all that is most imperious in human love. How little is required to move a woman's heart. The longing to see Emil took possession of Rachel like a fever.

The one o'clock whistle sounded a last melancholy note, and she inspected eagerly every figure that entered the factory. Why had she assumed that Emil was still employed there? As the stream of men grew less and presently ceased, the curve of her mouth became scornful. "How idiotic!" she whispered. She was turning away when a young girl emerged from a side door over which appeared the word "Office." She came out impetuously. The fact that she was weeping arrested Rachel's attention. Her slight frame shook with sobs. She took a few steps, then paused to extract a handkerchief from a bag she wore at her belt. She pulled out the handkerchief and a letter fell from the reticule, but in the excess of her grief she went on without perceiving her loss.

Rachel crossed the street and as she picked up the letter, she involuntarily noticed its superscription. Written carelessly on the blue envelope was the name "Mrs. E. A. St. Ives." She faltered—staring at it. She stood still and something seemed to strike her in the breast. Yet she was conscious that surprise had no part in her feeling. After a few seconds, she forced herself to walk on. At the next corner she overtook the girl.

"Is this yours?" she asked. And her voice sounded strange in her ears.

The girl wheeled, showing a face disfigured with tears. "Oh, yes," she said, "it's mine! Did I drop it?"

Rachel continued to look at her without stirring. She passed her hand once or twice across her forehead. "You are Mrs. Emil St. Ives?"

"Why yes, I'm Mrs. St. Ives." The other was now gazing at her with curiosity.

So this was the girl who had helped Emil in the past, who helped him now,—the girl he preferred to her. Disdainful, she swept round. As she moved, she lifted her shoulders as if she would rid herself of something, but the action spoke forlornness.

"Why do you ask?" questioned the other, pursuing.

Rachel paused. "Nothing made me ask," she said, "only the name was familiar."

She was walking on when the girl caught her arm.

"Perhaps you know my husband?" she persisted. "Do you?"

Once more Rachel stood still. "Yes I know him—slightly."

"I knew you did," and a note of incipient jealousy sounded in the other's voice. "When did you know him?" she asked, and she fixed sharp eyes on Rachel's face.

"It was last summer in Maine," Rachel answered. "I took him out a few times in a boat to make some experiments. When I saw the name I recognized it." Her indifference, the sudden cold and remote expression of her eye, which was like a thrust of the arm, deceived her questioner.

"Oh, I see," she said, meekly. "Was it the depth indicator! Oh I know it was," and at the mention of this instrument, she returned to her original grievance. "It's that depth indicator that's been at the bottom of all our troubles," she explained; "if it hadn't been for that, Alexander would have finished the lithographing press and then everything would have come out different. But now Father—Oh, I can talk to you, can't I?" she interpolated. "I must talk to someone. I've been treated so—you don't know!" and she began to sob again in a helpless, childish fashion, with the unrestrained grief of a nature, hysterical, feverish.

But one thought burned in Rachel: Emil's marriage. Her pain, however, was not new; she felt that she had lived through it before, for it is a characteristic of suffering that it never comes as a novel experience and herein it differs from joy. The disconnected explanations of her companion, mingled with the repeated request to be allowed to confide in her, gradually roused Rachel. Her eyes travelled over Annie. She noticed the once tasteful dress, which was now badly worn, the little pear-shaped face with its peaked nose and babyish eyes.

She was about to reply haughtily, then, moved by Annie's beseeching look, altered her intention.

"Yes, you can tell me if you want to," she answered softly and dully.

Involuntarily the two girls turned their steps in the direction of a square, a triangular breathing place in this densely populated section. They seated themselves on one of the benches and Annie poured out her story. But her words scarcely penetrated Rachel's brain. She stared at some clothing drying on a fire-escape, and it struck her that the antics of the clothing fastened to a line were no more grotesque and absurd than the antics of human creatures fastened to life. Inwardly she rocked on the wide sea of misery.

The dramatic features of her situation were not lost on Emil's wife. As she described her life in her parent's home, contrasting it with her present mode of existence, it was clear that Annie viewed herself in a romantic light. Never the less her misery was real, and more than once she had recourse to her small damp handkerchief.

"When once we were married I felt sure Father would forgive us," she concluded, "but he says I shall never, never come home until I leave Alexander. Father's terrible when he's angry. All the same, this isn't the first time I've been to him," she explained. "At first he wouldn't see me, and when he did, he wouldn't listen to a word. He said Alexander was utterly irresponsible and the lithographing press and the rest of it had been as good as made over on an entirely different principle. But finally when I teased and teased he said if Alexander wanted to accept the position of expert examiner with the firm, they'd take him back at a salary. Not a very big salary, but still something regular. And I was so pleased," she added, "I felt there was a chance for him if he worked hard and didn't make trouble; I thought he'd soon rise to something better. But what do you think? Alexander refused! He roared like a madman when I told him. He said he wanted to do independent work, and never again would he sell his brain, his soul, his very life-blood to my father. And I went to the factory this afternoon to tell Father, and though I toned down Alexander's words and explained just how he felt as tactfully as I could, Father not only refused to make him another offer, but he threw open the door and pointed for me to go." And at the memory of the indignity, she covered her face with her hands. "Oh, whatever is going to become of us?" she wailed.

Rachel said nothing, and this continued silence quieted the other. Presently with an air of finality she lifted her head.

Opening her bag she returned the handkerchief to its depths.

"But I promised to stand by Alexander and I'm going to," she said in a low voice. "Somehow, he makes you feel that you want to stand by him."

Still Rachel said nothing.

"I must go now," Annie cried, tipping her face back, "see, it's going to storm, and I'm so afraid of lightning."

And indeed black, threatening clouds were coming up rapidly.

"I'd ask you to come and see us," she added as they fled from the square, "only the place is so horrid. You see, Alexander not only works there, but we live there, too," she continued, while they stood waiting for a car with the wind whipping their dresses about them. "Alexander has a workshop, that's all he cares for, and I have a room about three feet square; and then he has a horrid deaf and dumb creature who helps him. Oh, if I'd known he was going to have him live with us!" and her voice broke. "You've been so good to let me go on in this way," she cried, as the car stopped. "I'll tell my husband I met you. What name shall I say?"

But Rachel did not answer. She merely nodded as the other, in a tremour of fright, stepped on the car.

"You'll get caught in the rain!" Annie called after her.

Rachel smiled grimly.

The rain descended at first thin and fine as if poured through a sieve; then it increased in volume till the gutters ran yellow torrents, till the sordid brick buildings looked like drenched, warty frogs of a giant growth, till the slender trees in the squares fairly bent to the ground. But Rachel was caught in the vortex of a storm even wilder.

It was two hours later when she slowly climbed the steps of the tenement house. Emily Short's voice reached her from an upper landing:

"There, don't you go looking him up again, will you, Betty? There ain't a man in the world worth running after."

Rachel halted and a fierce denunciatory light flamed in her eyes. Then she pulled herself together.

When she opened the door of the outer room Simon Hart rose to greet her. He felt that he had taken her by surprise and, in embarrassment, smoothed his hair.

"It's going to clear," he said and glanced toward the window which let into the tiny room the slowly increasing light.

Rachel swept a look in the same direction. "Yes," she repeated, "it's—clearing."

In the sky, visible beyond the clutter of wet roofs, appeared a strange arrangement of gold bars, and above the bars huddled the thunder clouds like a herd of newly-tamed animals.

CHAPTER V
SHOWING THAT SACRIFICES ARE NOT ALWAYS APPRECIATED

To cast a glance backward,—it was with a mixture of surprise, chagrin and growing indignation, that Emil St. Ives took his way from the Maine coast to tumultuous, brain-inspiring New York. In the hotel at Old Harbour he lingered over his packing, confident until the last moment, that some word would arrive from Rachel. She surely would not allow him to go without seeking to effect a reconciliation. No word came and, once seated in the train, he stared out at the landscape with sullen fierceness. But there, in scraggy rocks, stumps of trees, water, meadows, salt marshes, wind with a tang in it, gold beams poured from rifted clouds, mist, storm, rolling fog—there was Rachel, the girl herself. She was dancing, scudding on ahead of the train, wrapped in a veil. Now he saw the gleam of her eyes; now her serious mouth! now the curve of a wrist; now a fleeing ankle! Remaining behind, she yet went with him! Deuce take it, he felt her breath on his face!

He was conscious of an immense weight of sadness in his breast, but it lessened neither his pique nor his astonishment. Full of mastership, his ideas of womankind were based chiefly on the devotion accorded him by his mother, by Annie Lawless, and, until then, by Rachel herself. Such whole-souled devotion he accepted as his rightful due. Therefore Rachel's downright and uncompromising attitude astounded him. Her anger, when she learned that another young lady was interested in his affairs, was justified, he admitted. He had not been open with her. What he could not overlook, however, was her allusion to his mother's disappointment if his plans with the lithographers failed to materialize. If she had cared for him, she would have spared him that barbed thrust which even in memory caused his nerves to tingle. If she had cared for him she would have prevented his going. But she had allowed him to go without a hope of ever seeing him again.

He began to laugh bitterly; presently lifting his long frame out of the car seat, he went for a drink of water. He stood with the cup in his hand, forgetting to drink. He could not endure that a woman should scorn and repudiate him. The quarrel with Rachel shook him all the more violently, as, with his habits of mind, he was unaccustomed to such tempests. He returned to his seat and fixed his eyes once more on the flying landscape.

She had shone upon him like sunlight, and passion had awakened—passion and interest and something besides. She had stormed at him like a tempest and finally had mystified him with a fog, best proof of all that hers was the womanhood for his manhood. But did he understand? The pebble rolling down a hill has as much comprehension of the force that summons it—indeed it has more, for the pebble obeys the force and Emil St. Ives did not obey. Instead he set himself squarely about and took his way back to New York with a smouldering eye; but a fierce, surprised bird whose pinions had been clipped might have worn just such a look, and he kept ruffling the feathers of his vanity, for the wings of his egotism drooped.

Presently he produced paper and pencil, but still boiling, it was sometime before he could control his thoughts. Finally, he began to sketch roughly a plan for an instrument; the next day his humiliation had so far abated as to permit of his working steadily on the scheme; and when he reached New York his complacency was practically restored. On alighting from the train he found awaiting him a little eager, flushing, paling being in the shape of a woman.

When Emil saw Annie Lawless peering at him from the midst of the crowd on the platform, a certain new sensation, strong, sweet, but somehow malign, sprang to life within him. At least Annie was not indifferent to him. His chagrin disappeared and a desperate hardihood took its place. It is soothing, as most people will agree, when a golden apple has been denied us, to have offered for our acceptance a little rosy plum. Is it amazing then, that Emil stood ready hand and mouth for the plum, all the more as he reckoned its flavour, on the whole, rather pleasant? With his worn suit-case in one hand and his precious depth-indicator in the other, he swung down the platform, and Annie, followed by the ungainly figure of Ding Dong, advanced to meet him. Then Emil set down the suit-case and the depth-indicator and received Annie's timid anxious glance in his own dark orbs. In it plunged, that little maiden look, and the earth for Annie rocked, though for Emil it merely oscillated very slightly,—no more than when one has taken a sip of wine, piquant and a little heady.

Ding Dong gathered up the traps and fell submissively behind the young couple, and Annie pressed against Emil and clung to him. What more natural than that, finding himself unencumbered, he should bend down and encircle her little figure with his arm? A rosy plum, a sip of wine, a little bit of a woman with no wits at all and her heart in her face, such was Annie.

As for that puzzling mid-region between mind and heart, which was the region affected in Emil, one might as well attempt to mark out paths in a wilderness as to set up guideposts there. Every thought is tinged with feeling, every feeling is sullied with thought, and the ways are hopelessly mixed. But it is a region which stands in no need of description, for in the range of emotional experience, few people ken anything beyond this vast temperate zone. And yet they declare, at the last, that they have lived! Pathetic misapprehension! Nothing is more uncommon, more unspeakably rare, than a life actually lived. Only a person who is at once an intrepid explorer and an inexhaustible artist, appreciating ever the value of extremes and of contrasts, in short a genius on every side, is capable of life.

Though Emil had a measure of this capacity, he was hopelessly adrift in a maze of stupidity; for men, save at exceptional moments, are such a very small part of themselves. So he encircled Annie with his arm and, bringing his face close to hers, kissed her. And Annie did not utter a reproach. She forgot the words that would have formed it. She forgot every word in her vocabulary, except one little word that all but escaped from the hot panting region of her heart.

But she had formed a plan which she remembered. Dragging Emil into the waiting room, she indicated two chairs in a quiet corner. When they were seated, she put one little gloved hand for a moment over his and pressed it down hard in order to hold his attention, though this manoeuvre was not in the least necessary, for she was far from unpleasing to look upon. The colour kept chasing the white on her cheek, for she was frightened by what she had to say and at a loss how to say it; the sweet peas, pinned in a bunch on the breast of her jacket, threatened to fly away like a bevy of butterflies with her tumultuous breathing, and a fascinating little pulse fluttered in her neck just above the lace of her collar, and Emil, watching it, knew that it indicated the wild movements of her heart.

What wonder that he almost recovered his wonted spirits in the air of adoration that breathed from these two humble people? For Ding Dong, with his ears like huge excrescences and his legs that seemed to bend under the weight of his squat body so that he resembled nothing so much as a grotesque from a cathedral niche,—Ding Dong hung on his look with exactly as much attention as Annie. Despite the feeling of sadness that lurked far down in the depths of his being, Emil perceived afresh that it was a very good sort of world and that New York was a marvellous city. And his egotism began to spread its wings and his eyes to flash good humouredly. Being now well beyond the larva stage, admiration was necessary to him,—it was an air without which he was unable to exist.

"But how did you know that I would come on this train?" he asked gently; and, clasping his hands about his knees, he stared at Annie with a peculiar concentrated interest.

She looked up at him with a faint suggestion of reproach. "I didn't know; though I was prepared to wait until you did come," she said. "The fact is, Alexander," she continued, "what Father has done is shameful. It isn't right, and as he's my father, it's only just—well, I hope you won't take it wrong—but I have a little money which was left me by an aunt to do with just as I choose. I've got it all here, see, in this bag," and she opened the drawstrings. "It isn't much, only a thousand dollars, but I thought perhaps—perhaps you would take it until you could invent something."

To save his life Emil could not prevent the joy that flashed in his eyes. To be free to invent, even for a brief space! It was an unexpected glimpse straight into Paradise. He peeped in—just one peep; then greatly to his credit, considering how little of an ordinary man he was and how much of a genius,—who resembles a bird of heaven in his freedom from a sense of obligations,—he shut the door on the Paradise forcibly.

He bent forward and took both of Annie's hands in his. Slowly, very slowly, he shook his head.

"Oh, please!" she supplicated, and her face puckered. As she looked straight into his eyes with her own, he saw them suffuse with tears. The sight of these tears perturbed him so that he was no longer master of himself.

"But see here, I can't!" he said, and the blood darkened his cheek, "I can't take money from you; you're mad!"

"Oh, if that's the way you consider me—just like a stranger!" And Annie turned sharply aside and buried her face in a scrap of a handkerchief from which ascended an odour of subtle feminine appeal.

In their excitement both had risen and Emil spread his massive bulk to screen her distress from the few people who were seated in the waiting-room. Never had he been driven into such a net by his own emotions.

"See here," he cried, bending over her and breathing the words into her ear, "I consider you my only friend"; and his ardour was augmented by his remembrance of Rachel.

This was devotion, this!

"Friend?" she repeated, lifting her head and gazing at him through her tears. "I'm more than that. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you, and I thought—I thought—"

For an instant Emil saw her judicially. "So that's it?" he reflected, but the next instant the male in him was completely glamoured.

For the last time some positive seduction in Annie overcame him. Love will polish even a plain woman to something approaching brilliancy, and Annie was by no means plain. Her hair gave out a delicate odour; the pupils of her eyes, usually small, spilled their black over the blue of the irises; her little mouth emitted a whole troop of sighs; the stuff of her waist crackled, as if, though it fitted her body, it compressed her heart. In truth, that which was the heart in her, the soul in her, was striving mightily to come to him, and being a man he did not refuse it.

"Do—do you mean that you would marry me?" he hazarded unsteadily, "without prospects—nothing? You can see for yourself, everything I put my hand to turns out wrong," he added argumentatively.

She nodded. A look of ecstasy overspread her face.

What he experienced chiefly was a profound astonishment.

He moved back a step in order to study her. That she felt in this way toward him was no news, but that she was ready to take the decisive step now, when his whole outlook was altered.... In his gaze there grew a peculiar gentleness and simplicity.

"Yes, but what about your father, what will he say?" he inquired, dallying dreamily with the consideration.

"Father, oh, he'll bluster at first, but he'll forgive us. I know him. Besides, hasn't he stolen your invention?"

"So it's only fair I should steal his daughter; is that it?" This question, like the other, was an idle playing with the subject, as though, for the moment, his will went in leash to hers.

Annie lifted her face with a laugh which stirred him strangely. Her eyes rested questioningly upon him and he was conscious of an ambiguous emotion of pleasure and confusion. He had a desire to say tender words to her, to touch her hair; none the less he sighed heavily.

And Annie all at once took his attitude for granted. Timid, yet with that potency of appeal which belongs often to the weakest women, she clasped his hand, glancing up at him in such a way that he felt all resistance expiring within him.

"That poor fellow over there," she went on happily after a moment, during which she pressed his fingers once or twice, "every time I'd go to the factory, he'd make the strangest signs, and at first I couldn't understand what he wanted. But after a little, I made out that he was asking about you. And when Father got in that new man to work on your machine, Ding Dong, as they call him, just went wild and raged. He tried to stand guard over the machine and he locked the door of your shop. But finally they got in and he acted so, they had to get rid of him."

Emil, who had been admiring the vivacity of her face, caught only the last words of this speech.

"Ding Dong you say! Yes, a fine fellow," he agreed with a sparkling smile.

"Well, between us we've got everything planned," Annie continued. "We've found a little apartment—"

He started.

"Where you can work and invent," she added in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

"Invent," he murmured, for she sidled and slunk closer to him so that with difficulty he resisted an impulse to seize her to his breast.

Explain it who can: in one short hour all the judgments of this man were reversed. Though he was influenced by selfish motives, he did not recognize them. Annie was his friend, the one most necessary to him and to whom he was necessary. It was really downright amazing how much she cared for him, and seeing her through a mist of gratitude which he mistook for love, he compared her to the cold Rachel to the latter's disadvantage. In love consciously with neither the one nor the other of these two women and only obscurely aware that his feeling for Rachel was capable of assuming the character of a dominating passion, he was really concerned in but one object, his work. He therefore yielded himself readily to gratified vanity, egotism, enthralled senses, those potent agents for the smothering of the masculine will.

They were on their way to the office of the Mayor when abruptly Emil ordered the driver of the cab to halt, while he questioned Annie anxiously. Did she think it wise—what they were doing? Had she sufficiently considered?

For answer she put her hands on his shoulders and drew his head to her breast so vehemently that he had difficulty in breathing.

After that he spoke no more until their destination was reached, but stared out intently at the people, who passed in carriages and on foot, with a smile in which there was an uneasy melancholy.

A week later any scales he might have had over his eyes had vanished. Memories of Rachel obtruded themselves and he turned from them with stifled sighs. He was ill at ease and his conscience troubled him. He was penitent before Annie and redoubled his caresses. But she was not essential to him, and as time went on he buried himself in his work.

In the choice of the apartment the young girl betrayed the fundamental practicality of her nature. The rooms were inexpensive and at the same time attractive and homelike; but at the end of a month, Emil discovered a sky-lighted loft in the lower part of the city into which he wished to move. The place would be a more convenient one for his work. Thither Ding Dong, in the capacity of assistant to the inventor, accompanied the pair. With him he brought the monkey Lulu.

Largely because of his affection for her, though partly because of his hatred of his former employers on whom he thought absurdly to revenge himself, Ding Dong had stolen the little creature from the factory. He made her a cage, which she seldom occupied, her favourite station being the sill of the window where Emil had his work-bench. There she crouched among the tools with her little, worried, half-human face turned to the inventor, and now and then she reached out a black hand and laid it questioningly on his sleeve. Seeing his pet thus safely cared for, Ding Dong was free to spend himself in the service of his new master. He ran errands, bustled about in a flurry of often useless activity, and even fitted up the tiny room set apart for Annie. At first the young wife agreed to everything.

Crushed by a stormy interview with her father in which he had forbidden her to cross his threshold, in the early days of her marriage Annie accepted the privations of her new mode of life without a word. She thought to endear herself to her husband. But Emil, far from sympathizing with her position, was honestly unconscious of it. Carried away by the interest of his work, he forgot her. When made aware of her, bitterness filled his soul. He felt himself guilty toward her. Never the less, her tears, her letters to her mother, which he was forced to read and approve, her constant efforts on his behalf with her father, above all, her insistence that he go back and accept the situation of expert examiner, which was finally grudgingly offered him,—all this irked him in the extreme.

"Go back there—after the way he's treated me?" he cried,—"you ask it?"

"I thought—I thought—" murmured Annie, "we are very miserable."

"Well?" His significant tone seemed to imply, "Who's to blame?"

He now perceived clearly that she hampered him, that he could have got on very much better without her.

"You are not interested in my work," he cried, blaming her; "a woman is always like that. No detachment with them is possible. I ought to have understood this."

Then Annie broke down, and contrition overcame him. He took her in his arms where she cuddled like a little kitten.

"I'm no one for you," he whispered, while a fierce sigh rent him.

But convinced that he suffered by the arrangement more than she did, he cherished a grudge against her because she interfered with him. Fearing to disquiet his mother, he allowed several months to pass before he wrote to her of his marriage. Viewing it coldly, he felt much cause for shame in the situation.

Quarrels were constant, and as the sight of Annie disquieted him, he shut himself off from her more and more. He worked, slept and ate in his shop, and Annie inhabited her lonely little room, weeping and staring out over the house-tops in acute disgust. As Emil had said, devotion to an abstract ideal was impossible to her and she was jealous now of his work as of a rival, so that they had no topic about which they could talk when together. Everything furnished a subject for dispute, even Ding Dong and his pet. Ding Dong disgusted her by his outlandish appearance, and the monkey, she declared, made her nervous.

The day following her meeting with Rachel, Annie spoke of the encounter.

"I met someone you know yesterday," she said; "a girl from Maine."

Wrinkling up his brow, Emil paused in his work.

Something in his expression excited and angered his wife.

"Well," she cried sharply, "do you remember her? What's her name?"

But Emil, despite his desire to know more, resumed his work without answering, and the eyes he cast down held the look of a child that dimly perceives in its suffering the result of its own act.

CHAPTER VI
DESPAIR AND DESOLATION

As she stood in the attic room with its sloping roof and dormer windows, her little dark head almost touched the ceiling. Old David surveyed her with pride; then cast a glance at Simon Hart. The driving rain had modelled the stuff of her dress to her arms and shoulders in winding folds. As she lifted her hands to remove her hat, from which drooped the straight lines of a veil, she resembled a Tanagra figurine. But there was no antique serenity in her expression.

Convinced that she was disconcerted by his presence, Simon Hart began to explain that he had brought her another order for candle shades. Then, as her lack of sophistication grew upon him, he ended by inviting her and her grandfather to dine with him.

But Rachel looked at him with vague, unseeing eyes, until David nudged her elbow.

"We'll like to go very much, won't we, Rachel?" he said in a voice which quavered with delight.

Then she understood and forced a smile to her lips.

"But don't ye forgit to say something to Miss Short, will ye?" the old man reminded her. "You see," he added, turning to the visitor, "Miss Short expected to go somewhere with us to-night for a little celebration, because of that order—the first one you got, Rachel—and it's most kind of you, too, to take such an interest."

The other waved these last words aside. "Now about this celebration," he said, "what do you say to asking Miss Short to go with us?"

Again Rachel forced herself to express pleasure.

When Simon Hart went out to call a carriage, she entered the inner room.

After ridding herself of her wet dress, she sat down before the cracked looking-glass and began arranging her hair. But almost immediately she folded her arms on the bureau, bowed her head upon them and fell to weeping. In the depths of her soul she felt that nothing could alter her despair. Henceforth the knowledge of Emil's marriage would lodge there like a rock heaved into the midst of a stream, and the current of her life would eddy around it. The approach of Nora Gage caused her to lift her face and continue coiling her hair.

Simon Hart was not a worldly man. He confined himself closely to the supervision of his business—the manufacture and sale of jewellery. At night he returned to his austere house in Washington Square. Of a painfully reticent disposition, he made few friends, his fastidious and slightly ironical manner effectually cutting him off from companionship.

The only beings who played any sustained part in his life were the gaunt mysterious female who served his meals and arranged his drawing-room as she chose, his old father who moved optical instruments over the floor of the attic; and, at the shop, Victor Mudge, who designed special settings for gems. For Victor Mudge, Simon entertained a particular regard, though he felt sensitively that the goldsmith disapproved of him. The truth was, these two friendless men,—the one living in his well-nigh empty house, the other in his hall bedroom,—criticized each the other's lonely condition.

The diversion created in the jeweller's life by the persons just named was no more than the gnawing of a bevy of mice in an otherwise quiet cellar. Painfully aware of this, he attempted to enrich his existence by extending the scope of his intellectual pursuits. He took up the study of social economics and pursued it diligently. In the same way, during the season, he forced himself to attend the opera with conscientious regularity, although he had no real musical taste and much that he saw and heard was in reality distasteful to him. He felt a constant need to check in himself a tendency to indulge feelings that were deeper than those apparently experienced by other men.

Only once had a person penetrated his reserve. Several years before he had made the acquaintance of a scholarly lady who brought to his shop for suitable setting an Egyptian scarab. In the course of filling this simple order Simon had called upon her several times. Subsequent developments, however, had revealed the fact that the scholarly lady had a husband, and the acquaintance had languished; though for some time after the incident he had kept her photograph on his pianola where he had been in the habit of studying it while he had pedalled evenly. This photograph had fallen behind a stationary bookcase, and at present the one brightness in his life was the gleam of the gold and the jewels in his shop.

Now he stood helpless at the corner of the street. Trusting to her unique charm to atone for any discrepancy in her dress, he would have risked Rachel's appearance in one of the more fashionable restaurants. But the others? He shook his head.

More keenly sensitive to observation than a man of wider social experience, he shrank from the attention the group would be likely to attract. Presently he came to a decision. He would take his guests to a restaurant in the vicinity of his house, where he made a practice of dining when the weather was particularly oppressive.

As they quitted the tenement rooms, Nora Gage padded softly out on the landing in her heelless slippers. Her enormous bust undulated more than usual and her hands at her waist disappeared beneath overhanging folds of fat. "Well, I hope you'll have something good to eat," she remarked meaningly. Rachel, her head high, ignored these words; but old David nodded with smiles and gestures toward his pocket.

Like a child he expressed his delight openly. His white locks moved in the air, fine as cobwebs, and his face was wreathed in continual smiles which prolonged the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and deepened the lines about his mouth to quivering crescents of laughter defining the rosy hillocks of his cheeks. With a shaking finger he pointed out the sights in the streets to Emily, who nodded decorously the plumes of her elaborately-trimmed hat. The hat was destined for one of Mrs. Stedenthal's customers, but Emily had borrowed it for the evening. The very novelty of the situation diverted Rachel; she became aware of a dual consciousness—a self that suffered and a self that was vaguely amused.

In the restaurant the waiter uncorked a bottle of champagne and Simon begged the young girl to taste it. She lifted it to her lips, then played with the glass.

Simon watched the slim thumb and finger that encircled the fragile stem of crystal. With unostentatious movements he repeatedly filled his own glass. Occasionally he ventured to lift a glance to Rachel's face.

She wore a skirt of dark silk, and a little flowered scarf over a waist of sheer muslin. The brim of her drooping hat, whenever she leaned forward, cast its shadow over her shoulders and her scarcely-indicated breast. When she straightened up, however, it was as if a cloud lifted and revealed the glow of her cheeks, the line of her lips, the depths of her eyes where some gloomy thought constantly hovered; for, strive as she would, summoning to her aid all her furious pride, she could not conceal the misery and despair that were consuming her heart. From her round wrists her sleeves fell back in ample folds and the pale yellow of her scarf repeated the colour of the champagne.

As the dinner progressed Simon refrained more and more from looking at her. He did not ask himself what was troubling this young girl, he did not wish to know; perhaps he shrank from anything so absolutely youthful as her despair. On the other hand, the costume she wore, in that it was probably of her own fashioning, filled him with a kind of tenderness. Many trifling peculiarities of people, scarcely noticeable movements, awakened in him this feeling. It was a kind of pitifulness in his nature, though he had rarely been moved to the same degree by so slight a detail.

Life takes on to most men, who by middle age have attained any measure of success, the character of a long meal of many courses. But to Simon Hart it seemed like the meal which the traveller takes in a gloomy way station. Now Rachel appealed to him like the unexpected nuts of a dessert, the unlooked for "riddle in ribbons," for he was keen enough to suspect the riddle hidden in this little smooth-skinned girl.

The thoughts engendered in Emily Short, as she quietly observed the pair, were as foreign to her mind as the food was to her palate. In the pauses between the courses she wove a shining romance about Rachel and her companion and finally installed them in a castle similar in architecture to that which decorated the china of the service. Old David, remembering Nora, occupied the moments while the waiter's back was turned, in secreting various tidbits in the pocket of his coat. So slyly did he do this that no one observed his manoeuvres, and he tucked away crackers, olives and finally a portion of ice-cream which was served in a little box.

Meanwhile the waiters, bearing steaming viands, hurried to and fro. They lifted silver dish covers, which reflected the light, and revealed the red claws of lobsters surrounded by green garnishings, and fowls steaming in gravy. Leaning between the shoulders of the diners, they poured out water and wine; and every moment, as they skilfully avoided trampling the dresses of the ladies, which flowed in rippling folds around their chairs, or cleared with heavy platters balanced on their hands the black shoulders of the men,—they cried, "Your pardon, madam!—In just a moment, sir!" and nothing could equal their dexterity or the softness of their cat-like tread. Through the restaurant swelled the penetrating, complicated music of the orchestra. At one moment a shower of gay notes seemed to be falling, falling everywhere, and the people broke in upon it with the loud clapping of hands. At another moment waves of melody, unnoticed, mounted insidiously like a tide and finally bore with them, like spume and tangled seaweed, something of the emotion from each overcharged heart.

Turning her head aside, Rachel felt on her cheek the cool freshness of the night which entered over some plants in a window-box. For moments together as she listened, it seemed to her that her misery was expressed poignantly by the music. Then as the motif altered, insensibly her mood changed. She thought of AndrÉ from whom she had received a letter the week before. Captain Daniels, whose animosity toward the lad increased with the years, in a fit of drunken temper had broken AndrÉ's fiddle. She resolved, as soon as she could, to send him another. Then Zarah Patch sent word that Buttercup, the cow he had purchased from David, mistaking the moaning of the fog bell for the crying of her calf, had floundered into the bay and been drowned. "Poor Buttercup!" she thought; then—"Poor AndrÉ!" And, across the miles of space that separated them, she seemed to hear again the breathless words in which the boy had told her of his love.

The orchestra was now executing a fantasy composed entirely of runs with the repetition of one bass note, and suddenly, without warning, her agony was once more upon her. Once more, distraught, breathless, she held that horrible envelope in her hand;—she read its superscription. The men in the orchestra, puffing at their horns, fingering their flutes, drawing their fiddle bows, were executing that final wild movement, not on their instruments, but on her heart.

She looked up and encountered Simon Hart's eyes. Instantly averting his gaze, he proposed that they leave the restaurant; when they were outside, he suggested that they walk through the square which perfumed the air with the odour of its great trees. But no sooner had they entered the square, than old David evinced a distaste for locomotion.

"I don't feel jest like myself somehow," he confided in a whisper to Emily Short. "Let's jest sit down here a minute." And the little toy-maker, who had her own reasons for wishing to leave the couple to themselves, readily complied.

Simon and Rachel walked on. At last, they also seated themselves on one of the benches. It was after ten o'clock and the square was deserted. The moon, in its first quarter, caused Washington arch to throw a black shadow athwart the path; and now and again the swaying branches of the trees brought out traceries of leaves on Rachel's white shoulders and on her sleeves. With his arms folded across his knees so that his head was on a level with hers, Simon began telling her about a recently published history of jewels that partly covered the field of a work he had long been engaged upon. As he spoke she noticed that since dinner his eyes had lost something of then weary look and that his nervousness had abated. He spoke with the masculine deliberation which women ordinarily find so irritating, but which, owing to the state of her nerves, calmed Rachel.

"However, my book," he explained, "deals almost exclusively with the legends connected with jewels. My aim is first and foremost, to restore to them their lost poetical significance. Plato, for instance, and the Egyptians, for that matter, believed that they were veritable beings produced by a sort of fermentation which was the result of a vivifying spirit descending from the stars. Look up there," he exclaimed, pointing to the sky, "then look at this, and tell me if it doesn't resemble star-gold condensed into a transparent mass;" and from his finger he drew a ring and placed it in her palm.

She was more and more comforted. As he enlarged on the theme, which was evidently a favourite one with him, she watched the gyrations of the fountain. Outlined to her vision, she beheld a life which seemed to her infinitely more tranquil than her own.

On their return to the Street of Masts, Emily assisted old David up the stairs and Rachel remained in the doorway waiting for Simon Hart to finish an interminable sentence. Weighty, carefully worded, laborious, his peroration, for the most part, fell on deaf ears. Never the less she was conscious of an involuntary attraction to him. When at last he extended his hand, she felt that he was stirred by some emotion he wished to conceal.

"Now that we have celebrated our newly-formed friendship," he said with an attempt at gallantry, "I shall expect you to call upon me should any matter come up in which I can serve you. Will you promise?"

The kindness was unexpected, her state forlorn. Her lips worked sensitively. "Yes," she said.

He lifted her hand to his lips; at once something penetrating and tender enveloped them.

At that moment the voice of Emily Short reached them from the upper landing. "Miss Beckett—Rachel!" she called, "come—come right up here! Your grandfather—something's wrong!"

In the room under the roof the flaring gas showed old David half sitting, half lying upon the couch.

Rachel darted to him. "Grandfather—what is it?" she shrieked; and winding her arms about him, she tried to centre his wild and wandering glances on herself.

But moaning incessantly, incoherently, he pushed her away with one hand while clutching her tightly with the other. Constantly his eyes questioned her—only to reject all help that she or any other could give him.

To her tortured sense it seemed an eternity before those half-human cries of his were silenced. In reality scarcely ten minutes elapsed before Simon Hart returned with a doctor.

Without hesitation the physician pronounced old David's attack a paralytic shock affecting both the lower limbs, though the disease, he said, might shift at anytime.

When they removed the old man's clothing, from the pocket of his coat rolled a few nuts and a little box of half-melted ice-cream.

CHAPTER VII
STOP—LOOK—LISTEN

Old David was going to die. The sunshine knew it and danced over him caressingly, touching his hands, his face, his hair each day, as if for the last time. It spilled pretty pools of gold on the floor and painted the walls with golden patches. And the plants at the window ledge knew it, two primroses and a pot of yellow jonquils, and for that reason they bloomed constantly, perfuming the air with a delicate freshness.

Old David was going to die, but because those who watched him practised an art of cheerful concealment, it was a very happy time for him, quite the happiest time he had known since boyhood.

Propped up in bed, he watched all that went on about him, and he looked at the flowers in the window. He knew who had sent the flowers and, when he appeared, Simon Hart had to bear the scrutiny of a pair of old eyes that surveyed him unwaveringly from the pillow. When Rachel brought the visitor around to the bedside, a look of sly satisfaction radiated from the old man's features. Interest and an eager zest for life still flourished in him; though Death held him hand and foot he was too true a poet to heed the approach of so material a guest. The last days of his life were enveloped in ineffable peace. Wrapped about in comforts, he had no knowledge of the tragedy of Rachel's existence, but rested in the serene belief that Heaven itself provided him with doctors, medicines, luxuries. His poor darkened brain worked with incredible slowness, and it was touching to behold him enjoying a dainty meal that Rachel had contrived to provide for him. Smiling and fresh, with a napkin tucked under his chin, he would point out such food on the tray as appealed to his fancy; then she would lift it to his lips, feeding him as one feeds a bird. And often the poor child's face was far paler than his and her hands trembled with hunger.

Only her absorbing, desperate love for him sustained her. For this grandfather, who in the enthusiasm of his heart was so like a little child, Rachel willingly would have laid down her life. No sacrifice was beyond her; and as the old man's soul was enveloped in that atmosphere of rare and delicate perceptions that heralds the final liberation, her soul, through its love, was permitted entrance into the same region of mysterious joys; so that up to the last moment they bore each other company.

Sometimes, troubled by the thickness of his speech, old David looked at his young companion with piteous eyes; but the condition was the result of weakness, she assured him; later the words would come. To amuse him she searched the papers for humorous anecdotes and even invented funny little stories of her own. Then how they laughed together! The room reËchoed with such merry peals it seemed Death took the hint and kept at a distance. Indeed, the old man entering that world of which we know nothing, and the young girl surrounded by the evils of this, by their very innocence and helplessness held at bay all the menacing powers of darkness, and under that attic roof, in the midst of a sordid city, they lived a life more profound and universal than its thousands of passionate men and women thronging the streets below.

When Simon Hart called, as he did every evening, it seemed to him that all the needs of the sick man were met. He sent flowers and fruit for old David, but a sense of delicacy kept him from offering Rachel financial assistance. Though he had disliked particularly asking a favour of his cousin, Julia Burgdorf, through her influence he was able to obtain for the young girl piece-work in an establishment that made a specialty of hand-painted trifles. This appealed to him as the most considerate way of helping her. Little did he realize that nursing left Rachel scant opportunity for the painting which required concentration. But by forcing herself to do without rest and almost without food, by employing every spare moment in doing all sorts of simple, ill-paid work that could be carried on at home, such as the directing of circulars and envelopes, mending and sewing for the neighbours, the impossible thing was accomplished. In quarters, half-dollars, dollars, the necessary money was swept together to cover the needs of the sick man. It was one of those prodigious, superhuman struggles constantly attempted by love. But of this struggle, though he came daily to the apartment, Simon Hart realized little. With the instinctive dread that characterizes persons of supersensitive nature, he had trained himself not to see to the bottom of things, not to investigate hearts too deeply. While watching Rachel with melancholy, ambiguous eyes, he was practically blind to the difficulty of her situation.

His sense of loneliness, always painful, was aggravated now, and in her presence he was tormented by an inexpressible need of intimate companionship. He could not bear to have her leave the room; he was jealous of the doctor and Emily Short, since they took something of her from him. And how little he received!—a word when he came and when he left and now and then a smile. When Rachel cast on him a smile from swiftly-parted tremulous lips, a smile that vanished ere it had scarce taken form, Simon's restlessness increased and his desire for affection became a feverish demand. Fortunate for her that it was himself rather than another who saw her placed as she was. And reflecting that many a man of the ravening-wolf type, in his place would have sought to take advantage of her poverty, of her unprotected state, he grew hot with anger. But she stood small chance of meeting such a one, and after all Emily Short was a defence. Then the idea of marrying the girl presented itself, looming mirage-like on the horizon of his mind, and he felt that he was becoming ridiculous. He saw himself with the eyes of that world in which Julia Burgdorf and his business associates were the chief figures. The victim of a little unknown waif—not merely her victim, her slave. In order to break the spell he forbade himself to go to see her, and, that he might keep to the resolution, he started without warning on a trip to Bermuda.

At first Nora Gage, influenced by shrewd calculations, acted in an unexpected fashion. During the fortnight that old David lay between life and death, Nora each day doled out a little money to Rachel. But later, as the invalid began to improve, she stole into his room a hundred times a day and noted the gathering life in his face with eyes as watchful as a snake's. Sometimes she even extended a hand and tested his pulse. Devotion to comfort was the ruling motive of Nora's life, and, foreseeing a future wherein comfort was threatened, fear seized upon her very vitals; and an agitation spread outward through the whole bulk of her flesh. Nor was her situation undeserving of sympathy. In vain Emily Short promised to reimburse her for all expenditures on old David's account when the fall trade in hats should open; Nora was sceptical of the security, as she was sceptical, finally, of Simon Hart's intentions.

"He don't mean a thing, I'm sure of it," she muttered. "The idea of thinking he'd marry her! I've been a fool." And Nora sighed heavily as the alluring vision of the permanent home she had intended to demand in Simon Hart's house, in return for the assistance she had rendered old David, vanished in thin air.

Her generosity came abruptly to an end. The doctor might order new medicines and old David, with the innocent egotism of the sick, demand the comforts to which he had become accustomed, Nora was unmoved. Gloating, she waited for Rachel to make an appeal. But the other, aware of the nature with which she had to deal, was silent.

"Proud—proud to the end! Well, let her starve," Nora soliloquized, and took herself to the public parks,—anywhere to escape the atmosphere of gloom and terror that for her pervaded the apartment.

Simon Hart's continued absence awoke in Rachel a troubled amazement, the more, as her grandfather constantly asked for him and she had to invent excuses for his non-appearance; but she had little time for reflection as the household in the Street of Masts was now put to sad shifts. Poor folk are ever separated from want by the meagrest of protections. They are like soldiers cowering behind a crumbling embankment. Time, bringing the ever recurrent needs, is their indefatigable enemy, and when these needs are multiplied, as in sickness, with small chance for patching the wall, they can ill withstand the siege. Finally there came an evening when Emily Short, with a look of shame on her open countenance, repaired to a certain shop around the corner, and thereafter no day passed when old David lacked for any comfort, as no day passed when some article was not missing from the bare little rooms.

"Let me go just this once," Rachel besought one evening early in February, confronting the toy-maker, who was preparing to go out. "If you wait to go around there—you know where I mean—you'll be late at Madame Stedenthal's. You know she said eight o'clock; and you wouldn't want to miss getting that order."

"But I don't like to have you," Emily protested.

Rachel motioned toward the room: "Run along. Grandfather's asleep; I'll slip out and be back before he 'wakes." ...

She quitted the shop, pressing a hand to her burning cheeks. Then, thrilled by the consciousness of the silver in her pocket, she hurried forward. She had gone only a few steps when someone touched her arm. She turned and saw Simon Hart.

Manifestly he had been following her: on his face was stamped a look of commiseration and embarrassment.

At once her old imperious pride was alive. Shrinking fiercely from the observation and sympathy of this man, she spoke curtly:

"I'm very glad to have met you. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll say good-night; Grandfather is alone."

She swung round so that he could no longer see her deeply wounded face; he saw only her hat and part of her veil and her long shabby cloak.

"Miss Beckett—Rachel!" he exclaimed, in a note of despairing appeal. "May I not go up to see your grandfather? I have been away—I have just returned. I did not wait; I was so anxious," he concluded. And he looked anxious.

She paused. After all, her grandfather would be pleased to see him. Already her short-lived resentment that he had witnessed her humiliation was merged in bodily languor.

They mounted the stairs and as he saw how she clung to the railing with her hand, Simon Hart was seized afresh with surprise and horror. The pencilings of fatigue under her eyes accentuated her pallor and this morbid diminution in her beauty, lent her a poignant charm. She laid a hand on the door.

Amazed at the change in the dismantled room, which was no less than the change in her, he stood rooted to the threshold. Then he dropped his head in his hands.

Rachel, who suffered a faint return of embarrassment, refrained from looking at him.

"There," she said nervously, laying aside her wraps, "now I'll go and see if Grandfather's awake."

He was beside her: "Rachel, why—why didn't you let me know?"

"Let you know what?" and she stood back against the wall, striving to repell him with her eyes.

"That you were in want—in need. You could have written—" he floundered helplessly; then swept on almost in tears—"Didn't you know that I would help you gladly—thankfully? Oh where were my eyes! And you have been struggling!—Oh God, forgive me." He drew her bended wrist against his breast, and the shudders of his frame went to hers.

She tried to withdraw the hand. "I don't understand."

"So thin—" he continued, perusing her face, "so thin; almost starved. And no one to help you—not anyone. And I left you; I didn't even write—"

He did not finish the sentence. He was on his knees, kissing the hem of her dress.

She stared at him in a trance of amazement and at that moment a voice sounded from the room across the passage.

"Rachel, be that ye? Why don't ye come in here?"

Simon Hart rose to his feet. "Let me help you, Rachel."

She moved her lips, though no sound passed them. He threw his hands on her shoulders and his eyes into the depths of hers. "I ask nothing that you cannot give," he said with mournful softness. "I know that you do not—love me—but later, if you became my wife—"

She shook her head, trying to twist free.

"If you were my future wife," he amended, "I could give your grandfather every care."

He had struck the right note.

Perceiving it, desperately he followed up his advantage. Later he would feel shame, but not now with her frightened breath on his face and her lips so close. His gentleness was transformed into boldness. Love wrought madness in him who had never before known its mystery or its power.—"He should lack for nothing."

At that moment her grandfather's voice, high-pitched, querulous, sounded from the other room.

"I hear ye, Rachel—both of ye; why don't ye come in here?"

Slowly her frozen look gave place to one of tense questioning. "He shall lack for nothing? you promise it?"

Simon Hart bowed his head: "I promise."

"Very well, then;" and all the life and youth dropped from her voice.

"Shall I go in to him?" he asked, stunned by his victory.

She nodded.

He moved to the door. Then retracing his steps, he passed his arms about her and pressed her to him. "You shall never regret this, Rachel. Oh, how I love you!" he muttered, with his lips on her head.

Pushing the hair back from her temples as if its weight annoyed her, in the silent room she paced restlessly. Presently she paused and looked her problem in the face. She was alone, powerless, penniless. But for herself she was not afraid!—and she folded her arms on her breast,—but for him who was dying?

Her arms fell.

The doctor had said that he might linger months, even years. And oh the relief, the unspeakable happiness, of being able to give him every luxury! She smiled; then sickened. The very blood in her veins repudiated the sacrifice. It was long since she had thought of Emil St. Ives as she had been accustomed to think of him during the blissful time at Pemoquod Point. Now the memory of him suddenly beat all over her weakened frame. She belonged to her love as the wood belongs to the flame. Wringing her hands together, she cast herself on the couch. And over and over her in a flood waves of pain, of joy, of despair, of triumph, of agony, of gladness, of self-immolation, of selfishness rolled and rolled.

Out of her ordeal she emerged, brought to a sense of the immediate present by hearing her name called. She stood up. But even through her misery she was conscious of the amazing strength of her grandfather's voice.

She ran to him.

A magnetic current of happiness had penetrated his paralyzed frame, for when she leaned over him, he addressed her with a tongue no longer trammelled.

"I told ye he'd come back," he exulted. "I heared ye when ye both come in and I knew it was him. Now ain't ye got anything to tell me, Rachel?" And he smiled up at her slyly.

"I don't know what you mean, Grandfather," she said.

"I mean—What have ye two been talkin' about in t'other room?" he broke off. "I know it was about somethin' important; and he don't deny it," with a gesture toward Simon.

Simon Hart stood with one hand resting on the table. Rachel avoided his glance.

"He said perhaps you'd tell me," urged the old man. "Now, what is it?"

She was silent.

"What is it?" he repeated. "Did he ask you to marry him?" and he plucked at her hand.

"Yes, he did."

"I knew it—I knew it," he cried excitedly. "And you said you would, didn't you, Rachel?" he asked, peering at her anxiously. "Somehow I should like to feel as if it was settled," he added wistfully.

Then she understood. In spite of his cheerfulness, old David knew quite well that he was going to die; and so great was his love for her, it had triumphed over the barriers imposed by his disease. With his poor clouded faculties he was trying to make provision for her.

Unable to stand, she rested her forehead on the pillow. He touched her hair and suddenly her heart expanded. All her thought was for him now. The danger that had threatened him was averted. They could not take him away from her, they could not carry him away and place him in a spotless, terrible ward, on a little bed, to die among strangers. Instead, she would be able to care for him until the end came. It was enough. What more could she ask? And tightening her grip on his sleeve, she wept the tears which the constant, torturing thought of weeks, the unwearying, ceaseless attempts to earn money, had not wrung from her. In an ecstasy of tenderness, she received the old man back from the verge of a lonely, unattended death.

Simon Hart had dropped into a chair. His elbow was among the medicine vials; his hand over his face. Old David looked doubtfully from one to the other; after an instant, exerting himself, he caught at Simon's free hand and placed Rachel's in it. "There!" he sighed, and while they watched him, he settled back on the pillows, his lids drooping. Exhausted, he fell asleep, his parted lips giving to his face the aloof expression of death.

It was as if he had been waiting the consummation of this one hope, for after that he sank rapidly. During the anguished days that followed, Rachel never permitted herself to question the step she had taken. She expected to fulfil her promise, meanwhile she preferred not to calculate the price of her sacrifice. She thought only of her grandfather, and if she had been told to die in order to save him, she would have been dead.

Simon Hart had lost standing in his own eyes. He tried to view the situation complacently, to find in it cause for self-justification. Then came the conviction that he must release her. For the present, however, let the engagement stand. It quieted the old man's fears and left Rachel free to receive at his hands the assistance she otherwise would have hesitated to accept.

Upon his advice a trained nurse was secured and lodgings in the neighbourhood were found for Nora Gage. As the last hours of old David's existence approached, Simon began to nourish timid hopes, for Rachel appeared to regain confidence in him. In spite of the part he had played, she relied on him, and drew comfort from his eyes in which she detected so much sympathy.

The physician had made his last visit; her grandfather would scarcely last until dawn. His eyes, partly concealed by their flaccid lids, held that look which is not to be misunderstood; his head on its strained and swollen neck lay twisted to the side on the pillow; the fingers of one hand, already cold, plucked constantly at the coverlid with that melancholy, mechanical movement of the dying, as if his spirit, longing to be free, would fain rid itself of all encumbrances. The left side, instead of the right, was now stricken.

A few minutes before sunrise, there came a change. He had lain so quiet for many hours that they thought he slept, but suddenly Rachel perceived that his eyes were wide open and that he was listening intently to the wind whistling in the space between the houses. Its rushing passage produced a last flicker in the fantastic mind.

"The cars! We're whirlin'—" His mouth opened in astonishment. "Stop, look, listen!" he muttered faintly, turning his eyes to hers. Then the air ceased to undulate, grew quiet, above his still and amazed face.

The first golden beams of the sun peeped in at the windows as old David's soul, in the majesty of its innocence, passed from earth.

CHAPTER VIII
A WOMAN'S CAPRICE—A FATHER'S REPENTANCE—A
LOVER'S SELF-CONQUEST—A GIRL'S PITY

When Simon Hart agreed to his cousin's plan, and Rachel, despite her protests, was conveyed from the hospital to Julia Burgdorf's house, he did not experience the unpleasantness he had anticipated. The personality of his cousin was not agreeable to him. He had never liked her; partly, because he was jealous of a social prestige which he himself had never been able to attain; partly, because he disapproved of her dropping her family name, for Julia, when a child, had adopted the cognomen of a distant relative from whom she had inherited a fortune. But the fundamental reason for his disapprobation lay deeper, concealed in the current of their common blood.

Though diametrically opposed to Julia in character, Simon was able to comprehend in her traits which he especially disliked. They were like two compounds containing different proportions of the same ingredient. In Simon the strain of their common ancestry had been fused with a widely alien current. From his mother, a pale-featured, down-looking woman, much given to keeping her own counsel, he had inherited his air of secrecy, his pallor, as well as his capacity for profound and delicate feeling. But in Julia the original current of the Hart blood retained all its primitive strength; plainly, she was one whose forefathers had loved "wine and women and wild boars," and in every trait she was more closely related to old Nicholas than was Simon. Though Nicholas now quaveringly sought the beauties of a butterfly's wing, time was when he had pursued woman's glances with the same ardour; in fact, he had been in his day a cup of lusty life. It was the very irony of fate that this legacy of the Hart spirit had passed his own son and descended in all its troubled richness on his sister's child. The only difference between uncle and niece was that which is accounted for by sex. Julia, being no fool, accepted the restraints that hamper the existence of a conventional woman. Like Nicholas she had slight sympathy with Simon. The antagonism of the cousins was mutual. In speaking of Julia, Simon habitually employed an ironical tone; while Julia treated Simon with condescension, and, behind his back, with ridicule. But now one subject united them.

Immediately after the death of old David, Rachel, exhausted and ill-nurtured, was conveyed to a private hospital, a victim of typhoid fever. For a time the outcome of the struggle appeared dubious, but three weeks after the fever declared itself, she rallied. Then it was that Simon went to Julia with the general points of her story and a hesitating request.

The girl was absolutely alone, without relatives or friends. Would Julia visit her? The picture was a pathetic one, and marvelling at Simon's newly developed powers of eloquence, she consented. At sight of the invalid, her curiosity, already lively, increased to a point that assured decisive action. Moreover, she conceived for the young girl, with her forlorn face, one of those superficial attachments with which such women sometimes seek to fill their empty lives.

As soon as Rachel was convalescent Julia insisted, nay, commanded, that she be transferred to her own house. A visit of a few days in novel and comfortable surroundings, she argued, would tend to hasten her recovery. The fact was, Julia desired further opportunity to study the girl who had made a conquest of her cousin. Simon's ill-concealed interest in her afforded Julia delicious amusement. She had never deemed him capable of falling in love. When he announced that he hoped sometime to marry Miss Beckett, Julia's amazement was complete. Hoped! She gasped, then shrugged. What did he mean by taking that tone, a man of his position? It was mock humility—hypocrisy more disgusting than any of which she had dreamed him capable. But she soon discovered that his lack of assurance was justified.

At first she doubted. The "young person" (for it was thus Julia in thought designated Rachel) but cherished deep-laid plans, holding Simon the more securely by appearing not to desire to hold him. It was clever acting, and notwithstanding that she felt bound to oppose the ridiculous match, Julia could but admire the fair schemer who used her weakness and illness as additional bait for hooking such a fine fish. Then this theory exploded and she saw the situation in its piquancy:

Rachel was actually indifferent to the entire question of the marriage.

Having made the astonishing discovery, Julia renounced her worldliness for the time. Had the circumstances been other than just what they were, had the stranger been as eager for the marriage as Simon himself, Julia assuredly would have employed every means to frustrate their plans, and would have taken a malicious pleasure in her own manoeuvring because of rooted antipathy to Simon. As matters stood, however, she resolved to do the ignorant and unambitious young thing a service in spite of herself. Instead of a few days, Julia begged to keep the invalid indefinitely, and it was owing to her entreaties, rather than to Simon's arguments, that Rachel finally consented to remain a fortnight.

Then Julia applied herself, with the utmost discretion, to furthering the romance. She attempted to prick the girl to interest by discreetly praising Simon. He was very much looked up to by members of the Jewellers' Association of which he was the president; as a business man, as a member of society at large, he was irreproachable: and she made these statements without a curl of the lip. Rachel listened in silence. Then Julia employed other tactics. She waxed spiteful in her remarks about her cousin; she even laughed at his peculiarities. An oyster was not more secretive, and save for his trick of running his fingers through his hair in moments of agitation or excitement, one would never dream that he knew an emotion. At that, the other raised resentful eyes. She saw nothing ridiculous about Mr. Hart; on the contrary, his manner was unusually dignified. In justice to him she avowed the fact, then would say no more.

As yet Rachel was too weak to consider her situation. Grief had excluded every other emotion; even memory of Emil had flagged. Ill at ease and oppressed by the luxury around her, she strove to conceal every sign of her desperate sorrow and it was only at night that she relaxed command over herself. Then, convulsed with sobs, she lay in the darkness and, stretching out her hands, whispered, "Grandfather, are you there?" Her despair was the deeper because of the fantastic conceit that old David's simple soul was kept away by the richness of her surroundings. Had she remained in the poor rooms of the tenement, his spirit could have found her readily, descending out of that patch of pure sky visible through the dormer windows, even as the souls of saints and angels descend out of the blue in old pictures.

These woful imaginings, incident to physical weakness, for a time oppressed her; but later, as her strength came, she turned from them. She began to look at life with apprehensive eyes, though she still said little.

Simon felt that she was reading him and agonized under her gaze. Vainly he tried to speak the word that honour, pity, decency demanded. Could he have beheld her existing without masculine companionship, he would have released her, but the possibility of an unknown rival in the shrouded future, a rival whose love she would return, sealed his lips. Out of her presence the tension of the situation was relieved. When no longer confronted by her helpless and mutely accusing youth, it was a simple matter for him to convince himself that the step he had contemplated was unnecessary. Girls as young as she were material easily moulded; if she did not love him now, she would later. Meanwhile the situation was ambiguous, and for that reason, if for no other, an early marriage was advisable.

Despite these arguments, he began to show the effect of mental torture. The man was passing through fire. At last even Julia was moved by his look. As Rachel was the cause of the unnatural, strained situation, she proposed that something be done to rouse her spirits.

"Give her a taste of pleasure," Julia advised, "She's a little frozen ghost now, but I've yet to see the girl whose gloom won't yield to amusement and excitement."

With an eagerness almost pathetic, Simon agreed to this proposal. But just what could they do?

The answer came promptly: "Dress her properly and carry her off to some gay resort for the early spring. I will take her in charge, if you say so?"

But before they had developed a plan, the problem was unexpectedly solved. Emily Short was the curative agent.

It was a cold morning in March, and Emily, barring the interruption of the doctor's visit, had been with Rachel for an hour when Simon arrived. As he entered his cousin's hall he met the physician who was just getting into his great-coat. Simon paused to consult him.

"These women are certainly astonishing creatures," the physician remarked, settling his muffler. "The more experience I have in the medical profession, the more I feel that, owing to their nervous vitality, their recuperative power is prodigious. Miss Beckett has just had some news, I gather," he explained, "and it's done more for her than any amount of tonics. I imagine she knows very clearly what she wants to do, and my advice is, don't oppose her. Good morning, Mr. Hart." And the doctor passed out through the door which was opened for him by the obsequious butler.

Simon felt a sense of gnawing irritation.

"Now does that mean that he advises allowing her to return to that unsanitary tenement, if that chances to be her wish," he asked himself, "or has Julia set something on foot without consulting me?"

It was not without a struggle that Simon had brought himself to trust his cousin; and now, in spite of her continued kindness and avowed interest in his plans, he constantly dreaded her interference.

It being the usual hour for his visit, he did not have himself announced, but proceeded directly to Julia's sitting room where Rachel usually spent the morning. As he went toward the door, the thick carpet deadened his footsteps and he heard Rachel speaking in a voice wrought to a high pitch:

"I never imagined things happened this way outside of novels. But is Father alive? What do you say?"

"I should hardly say that he is," replied Emily. "If he were merely sending the money to you by this person, who is so afraid of telling his name, he'd have been apt to write and explain things."

"Yes, of course. But I must do what I can to find this John Smith. Oh, I shall get well now! And isn't it providential, all this money, and from my own Father? I can pay my debts now." The tone was jubilant.

Simon Hart, with a sensation of fear and guilt, did not wait to hear more. Pushing aside the strings of beads, the rattling of which jarred intolerably on his nerves, he entered the coquettish apartment. As he approached Rachel, avoiding collision with the divers chairs, screens, tables with which the place was littered, his face revealed little of what he was feeling.

On perceiving him, she half rose. Her breath grew short—or did he imagine it?—her eyes narrowed, then filled once more with the irradiating light of happiness. As their hands met he observed that her cheeks were glowing. Only her extreme slenderness and her cropped head told the story of recent illness.

"Oh, such news!" she cried, striving to repress her excitement. "Here, sit down," indicating a chair beside her own, "and Emily, you tell him." And as the little toy-maker took up the tale, Rachel looked into his face. But hardly had Emily opened her lips than she was silenced.

"No, no, I'll tell him myself. What do you think! I've heard from my Father! He has never seen me, I have never seen him, but suddenly he sends some money." Here Rachel's eyes shot a question—or again, did he imagine it?

"But you haven't exactly heard from him," Emily Short interrupted; "you don't know anything positively."

At these words, to Simon's relief, Rachel turned from him. "But I tell you I do know something positively, and that's enough," with a gesture of pride, "if I never hear anything more. He sent this money to my mother. Do you suppose that explains nothing to me?"

All at once she was the incarnation of tenderness and defiance. She had retained from childhood a picture of her father limned in the quaint language of old David. Now she in turn presented the portrait to these strangers. In the light of that mystical tribunal, buttressed so strongly by love and imagination, Thomas Beckett stood forth a figure vastly human, passionate and compelling; and she defied them to judge him otherwise.

But all at once she ceased twisting the tassels which adorned her girdle and dropped her chin in the cup of her hand.

"Sometimes I feel that it was all owing to the sea," she continued; "had we lived further inland I believe Father wouldn't have left us. For the land is stationary, even the trees are tied to it by the foot; while the sea—every drop is free. It can dash and gnaw its way through the hardest substances. But man is not like the sea. He may hurl himself upon life, yes—" The sentence concluded in a sigh.

At the beginning of this agitated speech Simon had gazed at her with anxious curiosity; then he grew jealous of this father who drew her thoughts so far afield from all he knew or sympathized with. He began to congratulate her.

She did not heed him.

"So you can see how it came about, can't you?" and she looked first at him and then at Emily. "Restless, dissatisfied, tormented, that's what Father was. He asked something of life which life didn't give him, and when the new ship he had helped to build was finished, he simply sailed away in her."

This defence was painful to Simon, and Rachel all at once felt his attitude.

"See," she said in an altered voice, "all this gold; seven hundred dollars of it," and she indicated a box on the table. "It came from a place in Massachusetts. Read this," thrusting into his hand a card on which were printed the words:

"To Mrs. Lavina Beckett from her husband Thomas Beckett."

"And there was no letter of explanation? Do you mean to say that you have no clue as to who forwarded the money?" Simon asked the question because it seemed to be demanded of him. In reality he was not curious.

"Yes, we have a clue, but there was no letter except one which AndrÉ Garins, my old school friend, said was written to the postmaster at Old Harbour by a man signing himself John Smith. This man asked if my mother was still living there, but the postmaster is new to the place, and doesn't know much about the people at the Point anyway; so he wrote back that Mother was dead and that AndrÉ Garins at Pemoquod could probably give him information about the daughter, that is, about me."

"Yes; and just as soon as he gets this letter, that John Smith, or whatever his rightful name is, sends his box of gold post-haste to your friend, and directs on the outside that it be forwarded to you. I tell Rachel that the man, whoever he may be, isn't anxious to have her get in touch with him," added Emily, addressing herself to Simon. "It's my opinion he's keeping back part of the money her father gave him, and I think it's foolish for her to go and get all keyed up."

Simon was saved the necessity of answering.

"But why, if he's dishonest, did he send any money at all? But that's not the point," Rachel went on; "I shan't rest until I've been to that town in Massachusetts to see what I can learn about Father. Why do you both try to discourage me? Oh, you don't understand!" And suddenly the tears were streaming. She was too weak to combat them further.

Simon could not endure the sight of suffering; even the constant and to a degree superficial tragedies of the lower animals and insects tortured him; for that reason he never went near his father's room where flies, still living, impaled on pins, seemed appealing to him for the help he dared not give. Now his face twitched.

"But I assure you I do understand," he protested, "and I will either go myself and make the necessary investigation, or I will accompany you when you are sufficiently strong."

At these words she pressed his fingers warmly, though she shook her head: "No, I should prefer—I should rather go alone."

"Rachel!" he cried, and looked his pain.

"Or I will take Emily."

She rose and pausing beside the table turned over a gold piece; then she passed to a window where she stood.

"Grandfather always said that we should hear from Father sometime," she exulted, "and I've a feeling that he knows now" and she glanced round at them with a bright, almost crafty expression.

Simon drummed fingers on a knee. What effect would this wind-fall have on their relationship? That she intended to free herself from her financial obligation he gathered from the words he had chanced to overhear. But as their interests would soon be identical, why did she not ignore so small a matter? unless— He threw an examining, wretched look toward her and took her decision from the independent bearing of her pretty shoulders.

At this point his reflections were interrupted. Julia had just returned from an early round of the most fashionable shops. She came in, briskly ungloving her hands; then stood still. Rachel sprang toward her. The girl flushed, talked with her hands, laughed. At last she had no unenthusiastic listener. Unaccustomed to the sight of gold, Emily Short, ever since the opening of the box, had been fairly awed. To think that she had left it under the bed the night before, and that morning had conveyed it openly through the streets! Happiness at Rachel's good fortune surged high, none the less her impulse was to temper the other's excitement. Julia was wiser. She smothered Rachel in an embrace. Pushing up her veil she kissed her on both cheeks and even shed a few tears over her. At that moment, despite his dejection, Simon warmed to something like affection for his cousin.

After much argument Rachel was allowed to follow her own course. Accompanied by Emily Short she departed for the mill town from which John Smith had written. She spent a week in a vain search, then giving the matter into the hands of a local detective, she returned to New York.

Simon met the two women at the station. The greetings over, he possessed himself of Rachel's bag and led the way to a cab. She touched his arm.

"Not to Miss Burgdorf's—to Emily's, please."

Each paled. Her eyes as ever read right in.

When she was seated in the cab, she leaned forward: "And you will come this evening?"

He bowed, stiff as a ramrod, strained about the lips.

During the days of Rachel's absence his soul had been a field of conflict. He had written her letters only to destroy them. Why be so certain of her attitude? Women were inexplicable; he might be mistaken. He postponed the decision. Now he must release her; now when the issue was forced, when there was no semblance of generosity in the act. And he despaired of making her believe what he strove to make himself believe, as a last stay to self-respect, that the circumstance of her illness had alone delayed the step. The make-shift engagement had rested on her dire need of money, on his ability to supply it. Why blink the fact?

When the cab containing Rachel and her companion rolled away, he walked toward Fifth Avenue, without realizing what he was doing, stunned as if he had received a blow. For an hour he walked in a sort of stupour. Then he entered a cafe. As the blood circulated sluggishly in his veins, he had fallen into the habit of drinking moderate but constantly repeated quantities of liquor; the stimulant was no more manifest through the pallor of his countenance than wine that is poured into an opaque vessel, but it seemed to quicken his faculties. Summoning an attendant, he gave an order. He remained in the cafe until evening.

When he entered Emily Short's room, Rachel stood near the table well in the light of the lamp. She greeted him with a touch of constraint. More than usual her eyes kept a watch on him. Her whole countenance announced subtly and triumphantly that she had it in her power to redeem her debt: then, perhaps he would release her! This thought seemed to flash even from her hands.

He looked swiftly at her hands. She was fingering a small packet of which his misery divined the nature. She had wrapped it in tissue paper. This girlish device to render the thing she planned to do less distressful, struck a blow at his heart.

"One word—listen to me!" he cried, keeping an agonized gaze on the packet, "I no longer wish—I realize that to unite your life with mine—I know the very thought is painful—"

Lifting his eyes, he saw an expression like a darting of light.

Conscious that he was not speaking as he had intended to speak, he drew his fingers through his hair. "You are free," he stammered, "it was never my intention to hold you to your promise. But it is impossible that you should comprehend my struggle—"

He broke off, striving for his usual calm, and this effort to place a mask over his anguish produced on her much the same effect as the concealing piece of paper had produced on him.

Caught in a tide of emotion, she extended a hand: "But I can—I do understand. Haven't you shown your feeling for me constantly? You have been kind—kind!"

He shook his head. "No, no," he muttered, "not kind; helpless. I tried more than once to release you; I beg you to believe this. But I loved you too much." His face expressed acute suffering; his lower lip trembling so that he could scarcely pronounce the words.

"Can you forgive me?"

No concealment now. A naked, humble, imploring, despairing soul looked from his eyes.

It was not in her to resist such an appeal. Her heart flamed with pity, pity that annihilated all selfish exultation. "There is nothing to forgive."

"But you do forgive me?" he insisted.

"I thank you—I thank you from the bottom of my soul."

Again he shook his head disowning his right to gratitude. His eyes once more watched what she held.

All at once, reading his look, the discrepancy between the nature of her indebtedness and the sordid return she had planned, struck her. She laid the packet on the table.

He looked up, questioningly.

So repugnant did the action she had contemplated now appear to her that she hung her head.

"I no longer wish to give it to you," she said in a stifled voice. "Grandfather's happiness, my own life—can money pay for such things?"

He took her by the hand.

It was some moments before he could regain command of himself. Then he said:

"I am always your friend, Rachel."

She nodded.

For some moments longer they stood, their hands joined. Presently he touched her forehead with his lips. "Good-bye."

She stood as he had left her, her bosom rising and falling softly and heavily, her eyes betraying all that was passing within her. Never did countenance more plainly announce a struggle. By this final act, he had erased from the scroll any charge against him of dishonour and selfishness. Her instinctive trust of him, persisting in the face of his weakness, was vindicated. The flame of her liking leapt higher. Open-lipped, open-eyed, open-eared, she listened to his retreating steps.

Momentarily the consciousness of her debt to him increased. She was allowing him to go—this man who had aided her in the blackest hour of her life; who loved her, who offered her all a man can offer a woman. She placed him high, herself low. She saw him noble, herself craven. To receive so much and to give nothing! It was contrary to her nature. But one return she could make! Above waves of confusion the thought flashed and flashed.

Was she capable of the sacrifice? Deeply she sounded her heart. Her life was empty, irretrievably, permanently empty and desolate, she told herself with the sureness of the tragic young. To what better use put its fruitless days? The idea assumed the brightness of a star above troubled deeps. She sprang to the door, calling.

He did not answer, though his step was still faintly distinguishable in the hall.

Bending over the well of the staircase, she repeated her call.

The footsteps halted: then from the darkness below she heard him ascending.

CHAPTER IX
RACHEL—SIMON

Her heroism was of the youthful, purblind, impetuous order. She had reasoned falsely and acted generously. But she was not one to sink wittingly to a lower level. Later, when she suspected the truth, she did not admit it to her own heart—least of all to her own heart. She was very glad of what she had done.

But she delayed the marriage; there were preparations to make. For no reason that anyone could fathom, she insisted on remaining in the Street of Masts. One concession she made: at Simon's urgent request she consented to retain Nora Gage. The two occupied the old rooms across the hallway from Emily Short.

The money received from her father was sufficient to supply Rachel's needs and even permitted the preparation of a simple wardrobe. Under Emily's supervision she planned and cut out and sewed feverishly for days together. Then abruptly she would abandon her needle. She bought books and endeavoured to teach herself French. She was never idle.

"You are overdoing," Simon remonstrated. "You will make yourself ill with these things."

She shook her head. Activity was good for her.

With the success of his suit, Simon had recovered poise. His manner was dignified and somewhat stiff. He spoke slowly and in a well-modulated voice. To the world he was as he had been formerly; but Rachel read deeper.

She knew that he desired to be gallant, even witty. And this effort to be all that she wished him to be touched her profoundly. Constantly he was bringing gifts. Offering them to her, he would watch her face to see if he had selected wisely. She perfectly understood this desire to offer something that would afford pleasure. Had she not experienced the same impulse? though she had not been able to gratify it. When she met Emil St. Ives in the cemetery at Old Harbour—how long ago it seemed now—instead of gifts she had been able to give him only an earnest, unswerving attention. This listening on the part of a girl to his long, often technical explanations, had he valued it, as she valued Simon's presents? But these reflections were checked by a prompt warning from within. Danger lay that way. Memory would prove a scourge if indulged and she did not want to feel.

Notwithstanding the approaching realization of what he had desired so long, Simon Hart still had moments when he suffered. The Street of Masts had always been an obnoxious quarter in his eyes, though for a short period, the fact that Rachel dwelt in it had somewhat modified its objectionable features. But that was before their engagement. Now the entire section stirred in him a positive repugnance. That she, his future wife, should elect to remain in a sordid setting when she might have been surrounded by every luxury, filled him with a dull sense of anger and chagrin. But he was unequal to the task of remonstrating. Whenever he thought of speaking strongly to her on the matter, timidity overcame him. Knowing what her feeling was for him, he shrank from the appearance of urging any claim. Julia Burgdorf by her attitude increased his discomfort.

Ever since Rachel's refusal to return to her house when she had expected her, Julia, with the childish pique of a woman accustomed to having every whim gratified, had washed her hands of her. Whenever she saw Simon she bantered him on the subject of his prolonged engagement.

"Is the happy day fixed yet?" she would cry, with eye and shoulder play. "No? Is it possible! The headstrong young person hesitates to renounce her freedom? Even the prospect of escaping life in an attic does not influence her? Extraordinary!"

Whenever he went to see Rachel, Simon was beset by the dread that he might meet one of his business acquaintances. What if by chance it became known that he intended to marry a young woman who lived on the lower East side? Things like that easily leaked out. Finally his sensitiveness increased to the point where he shrank even from the frank gaze of the children in the street, a gaze which singled him out because of his clothes, his gait, his strangeness to their world. More than all else he feared the curiosity of members of his own household. The maid who had admitted Rachel and her grandfather when they called at the house had left his service. When Rachel came there as his bride nothing of her history would be known to the servants. None the less he felt that Theresa Walker, his housekeeper, eyed him shrewdly. Not only this, he was convinced that she had communicated her suspicions to Peter, the coachman. Otherwise, why should Peter, who was old and stupid, wear such a significant look because he, Simon, failed to use the horses, as formerly, for a short time every evening?

However, though he suffered for the reasons just related, he was, on the whole, very tranquil. Nor was his engagement his only cause for satisfaction. He was about to bring out his book on gems. It was a voluminous work, weighty, carefully prepared, extensively illustrated. He awaited its appearance with eagerness. When the first copy arrived from the publisher he took it the same evening to Rachel.

She had had a trying day. Her modest preparations could not be indefinitely prolonged. Even Emily Short, who had been a most exacting and untiring assistant, acknowledged that three days would see the completion of the wardrobe. Rachel listened and acquiesced. Emotion, out of the depths of her, still sent up momentary, lurid flashes, but Reason smothered the flashes with impetuous arguments. Finally Reason hurled Honour and Duty, a combined extinguisher, on the flame. Though triumphant in her virtuous decision to give Simon the information he had awaited so patiently, she was in an exasperated mood when he arrived. Her mood demanded a tangible grievance and he found her with anger-crimsoned cheeks inspecting a dress.

"I ought never to have trusted it to that ignorant seamstress," she cried. "I ought to have given it to that woman whose address your cousin sent me. It's my own fault that it's ruined."

"But what's wrong with it?" he asked, taking a fold of the material between a thumb and finger.

She frowned. "Everything's wrong. It doesn't fit for one thing; and it's too long for another. But it doesn't matter. Let us talk no more about it." And seating herself beside the lamp, she took up a bit of hemstitching. She drew the needle through the dainty material, still, however, exhibiting strong signs of annoyance. Everything excited her now.

"Emily and I have accomplished a tremendous amount this week," she said by way of preface to her important announcement. "We're getting ahead finely."

"Ah, that's good," he said. "But remember not to overshoot the mark, Rachel; there'd be no wisdom in that. And now to prove that I've not been idle while you've been slaving with your pretty fingers, I have brought this. You know I told you that before long I hoped to be able to complete the work."

She did not at once comprehend to what he referred, but she saw that he wished to tell her something flattering to himself, and by means of questions she led him on.

With a smile, he drew the book from its wrappings.

Her needle-work slipped to the floor and she received the volume in both hands. "Oh, Simon!"

"Do you like it?"

"How handsome it is! And how fine these coloured plates are! Oh what it must mean to you to see this work at last in definite shape." For she suddenly appreciated all the joy that lay for him, the author, between those stiff new pages. The last vestige of her ill nature vanished and she looked up at him eagerly.

"And the indications are that it is going to be well received," he told her, with an air of satisfaction. "I've seen some of the advance notices. They could scarcely be more complimentary."

Like most women Rachel adored in a man power to achieve distinction. She counted it an additional proof of strength. She had been drawn to Emil partly because of his genius which had compelled her to look up. But thus far, though she appreciated his essential worth, she had not been successful in encouraging her imagination to dwell on Simon and invest him with uncommon attributes. A little shiver of excitement ran through her.

The consciousness of shining had called forth a look on Simon's face.

"The Courier says it's a work which is bound to attract attention, relating as it does all the old legends connected with gems, besides giving solid facts of their history."

She had no reason for thinking the book was not what he believed it to be, a work of merit, possibly of unique value. She nodded, so anxious to see him burnished, that she saw him burnished.

"Even the reviewer of the Messenger, usually cynical, speaks well of it."

"I am very, very glad." Her voice thrilled with gratification.

"I knew you would be," he returned feelingly. "This copy is for you."

She put out her hand.

He grasped it, folding it against his cheek. "You know how you can best thank me, don't you?" he said. He was not a lover to be inconsiderately treated by any woman. At the moment he was singularly handsome.

With her free hand she turned the pages of the book. An involuntary sigh lifted her breast.

"Can't you tell me to-night, Rachel?" he urged. "I've waited so long to know?"

She had let her head drop lower. In reality she was impatient that she still had to struggle with herself. At his last words she lifted her face. "I was going to tell you to-night," she said. "Will two weeks from Wednesday do?"

CHAPTER X
THE BIRD IN THE BOX

It was mid-winter, season of the early-lighted lamp. The mortal part of old David had lain in the grave for a twelvemonth. It was as if Heaven itself sought to do honour to his innocence. Contributing flake after flake of snow with the aid of that great artisan the wind, it had built up a gleaming monument to his memory.

But in the city the office of the angels was performed with greater difficulty. Patiently they flung a mantle of snow over the island. They spread it smoothly in the streets, festooned it over the arches of the bridges, tucked it cunningly away in the bell towers of the churches. They mounted to the tops of the tallest buildings, laying delicate ridges at the window ledges; stooped to the dingiest basement doorways, carpeting them with white. Constantly the mantle was displaced, shovelled aside, melted away; and the city, despite her glitter of lights, was revealed. About every chimney-pot appeared a circle of dampness, along every roof edge hung a row of tears; from end to end of the city was the sound of dull dripping. Manhattan, like a woman of pleasure, wept her sins, and the angels, the angels tried in vain to render her seemly in the eyes of the good God.

The clock on the Grand Central tower was hard on five when the train bearing Simon Hart and his bride drew in at the station. They were returning from their prolonged wedding journey. Rachel adjusted her veil. Though her lips were steady, her eyes were full of tears. Within the hour they had whirled past the cemetery where her grandfather was buried.

Simon assisted her from the train; then, with his heavy and dignified gait, he led the way through the waiting-room.

"I wired my man to meet us. Ah, there he is!" he exclaimed, as they reached the drifted pavement, and he expanded his chest with complacency.

Peter with difficulty brought the horses to the curb and Simon, after Rachel had taken her place in the carriage, climbed in himself. Then he thrust his head through the door and ordered the man to drive home, but Rachel plucked his sleeve.

"No, no," she coaxed, "tell him to drive to the shop first."

Simon, though he altered the direction, when he settled himself at her side, looked at her with a slightly mocking expression.

"I want to get that fiddle from Mr. Mudge," she explained. "In his last letter he said he'd found one and I want Nora to take it to AndrÉ when she goes. She's starting for Old Harbour at once and will call for the fiddle as soon as I let her know we're here. Then, too," with a side glance, "I'm anxious, if you must know, to learn from Mr. Mudge how that heat-measurer turned out."

"That is, you wish to learn whether he has heard anything from your enterprising inventor?"

"Well yes," she admitted; and they both laughed.

A few days before their marriage, Simon had chanced to remark that an instrument for measuring heat in the furnace in which metals were melted would be an important acquisition to the manufacturing jeweller. Thereupon Rachel had begged him to submit the problem to Emil St. Ives. To please her he had carried out her wish. Bearing a note from her to the inventor (a note in which she incidentally announced her matrimonial plans) Simon had sought out Emil whom he located readily through the lithographing firm of Just and Lawless. Emil without hesitation had promised the instrument within a week. Now three months had elapsed without a word from him and at any mention of the subject, Simon was wont to adopt a tone of raillery.

"Better give up your expectations along that line, my dear," he advised now; "that instrument will never materialize; St. Ives, judging by his look, is no more to be depended upon than the wild man from Borneo. Besides, if we stop at the shop, we'll miss the overture of the opera, and in Faust the overture is a consideration. Can't you restrain your eagerness until morning?"

But Rachel was not to be swayed: "Tell the man to drive faster."

Since her marriage her restlessness had disappeared; she was calmer, happier, and whenever she looked at her husband, whenever she surprised in his eyes an expression of doubt and longing, affection rose in her heart. The fact that he did not seek to interfere with her strange friendships filled her with gratitude.

The carriage stopped before the jewellery establishment and the door was opened to them by a boy in uniform. In the shop the electric bulbs were shedding a soft radiance on the glass cases filled with gems. Rachel had been there several times, but this was her first visit since her marriage. Now she experienced a thrill of pleasure as she gazed about her with the curiosity that animates a woman in such a place. The quiet and subdued elegance of the accessories charmed her, and she cast a glance at her husband. The star sapphires, the black opals, the diamonds, arranged on squares of black velvet, lent him something of their own lustre.

A clerk took the news of their arrival to Victor Mudge and a moment later they were ushered into the workshop in the rear of the elaborate showrooms. Here were machines for drilling holes through pearls, a sink for washing the finished jewellery, a little forge where gold was melted in crucibles. All the workmen had gone home except Victor who often remained until late. Now he hobbled forward with a string of seed pearls and a needle in his hands.

One of Victor's legs was shorter than the other by reason of a fall, and as he walked he swayed like a little dry tree creaking in a breeze; one felt he had no leaves. He was secretly well-pleased by his employer's marriage, but it was a peculiarity of his seldom to address him and to observe toward him a critical manner. Now, after greeting the couple, he looked at Rachel exclusively.

The old goldsmith, besides being something of a musician was an excellent judge of a violin, and at Simon's request he had obtained for Rachel the instrument she wished to give AndrÉ.

"It's not just what I wanted," he explained, "but neither is it bad." And thereupon he drew the bow across the violin.

"Oh, how well you play!" she murmured, and then fell silent. She regretted that she had withheld from AndrÉ news of her marriage; she should have told him at once. Now she planned to send him the violin as a sign of her unalterable affection. When Victor handed the instrument to Simon she aroused herself.

"And how is the pyrometer coming on, Mr. Mudge?" she demanded with animation. "Have you heard anything yet from Mr. St. Ives?"

Victor shrugging his shoulders, once more took into his fingers the string of seed pearls and the needle. "He was in here about a week ago and left a drawing; and yesterday I received a letter from him saying he'd be in this evening to test something at the furnace. I'm waiting his pleasure now."

Rachel suddenly laughed.

When she and Simon left the shop, when they were once more in the carriage, she leaned to him impulsively and pressed her lips to his cheek.

That evening she heard her first opera. In order to justify Simon's pride in her and also to gratify her own innate sense of coquetry, she had arrayed herself to great advantage. Whence came this knowledge of the requirements of her new position, whence the pretty dignity of her bearing? Perhaps from her Canadian great-grandfather and his English wife; or this manner of hers may have been a free gift of the gods.

Excited by the strains of music that ascended from the orchestra, she deepened and increased in beauty and in the immediate neighbourhood of her husband's box became the centre of attention. But of this she was only imperfectly aware. If, by chance, she did intercept an admiring glance, she took it as a tribute to her dress of white satin, cunningly embroidered in a design of gold flowers, to her coiffure, her fan, her bouquet, to everything and anything but her own youthful countenance to which the force of her emotions was adding an indefinable attraction. She made a charming picture; her eyes half hidden by their lashes; her face, her shoulders, even her round arms and her hands radiant with a childlike happiness like sunshine.

Julia Burgdorf, who sat beside her, turning her head, looked at the girl with a half-curious, half-wistful smile in her magnificent eyes; while a man who was leaning on the back of her chair, an architect with a pointed beard and ridiculously small hands and feet, watched Rachel far more than he watched the stage. Simon Hart alone of those near her, seemed unaware of her triumph. Holding his opera glass in his gloved hands, he stared straight ahead of him with his weary, unreadable gaze; and whenever his young wife addressed a word to him, he leaned toward her sidewise without turning his head.

On the stage Farrar, as Marguerite, had just appeared at the window of her cottage after her farewell to Faust. Then as the light faded rapidly over the canvas trees, the spinning-wheel, the garden seat,—Faust in doublet and cloak, with a long feather in his cap, approached the casement, and there followed the poetic and sensuous fever of the inimitable duet, in which two voices, a man's and a woman's, sigh together those phrases of adoration, rapture supplication, of surprise, terror, yielding. When finally Marguerite's blond head sank on Faust's shoulder, the breath of their kiss seemed to pass over the entire house.

Rachel's hand, incased in its long glove, closed nervously on the edge of the box. She wore a look of troubled amazement; presently she began plucking at the flowers of her bouquet. After the "garden" scene, however, ashamed of her emotion and desiring to escape it, she ceased following closely what went on upon the stage and gave herself up to inspecting the audience.

The sight of the jewels on the heads and breasts of some ladies near her, chained her shy glances. She remembered Victor Mudge and the scene before the glowing forge. It was his cunning workmanship and the workmanship of others like him that made such marvels possible. And she rejoiced in the thought that her husband had an intimate knowledge of such treasures and had even written a book about them.

A sense of that which is artificial in life was diffused everywhere, and by and by, in that atmosphere of unreality she grew calmer. But when at the conclusion of the performance, she found herself emerging from the crowded auditorium, a part of a variegated stream of jewelled heads, bare shoulders and black coats, she was conscious once more that the irresistible mystery of the music had kindled in her nerves a poetic fever. Suddenly she experienced a fresh impulse of affection for Simon. "I owe all this to him," she thought; and from under the hood of her opera cloak she glanced at his pale profile as he guided her through the richly-dressed crowd.

In the foyer she discovered that she had dropped a little gold pin from her hair and Simon retraced his steps to search for it. They had parted some moments before from Julia Burgdorf and her companion. Now Rachel strove to remain where Simon had left her inside the great doors, but the surge of the crowd rendered this impossible. Jostled and carried forward by the moving throng, she presently found herself outside where the confusion was even greater.

From the sky the snow still drifted imperturbably. It glistened on the shining backs of the horses, on the black tops of the carriages, on the oilskin coats of the drivers, as, with a flourish of whips, they brought their carriages opposite the brilliantly-lighted entrance and received their precious loads.

Constantly the mellow stillness of the snowy night was disturbed by the ringing voices of the porters as they cried out the numbers of the carriages: "Two hundred and thirty-three!" "Three hundred and forty-eight!" (The voices were urgent, brutal, quarrelsome.) "Four hundred and forty-five!" All at once Rachel was startled by the call: "Mr. Hart's carriage!" And simultaneously a tall figure approached her. Lifting a cap from his rough locks the man looked closely into her face.

There was snow in his beard, on his hair, on his shoulders. He was smiling in a questioning fashion, and in his eyes, beneath their overhanging brows, was an inconceivable life and vitality.

A look of joy flashed into Rachel's face and she extended a hand which he took in both his. For a space, overwhelmed as two children, they could do nothing but look each at the other.

Then the harsh cry of a porter broke the spell. "Here, drive on, you," he cried angrily to the Harts' coachman.

But Emil St. Ives raised his voice. "Wait a moment!" he called out; then to Rachel,—"I'll keep a lookout for Mr. Hart;" and offering her his arm he conducted her to the carriage.

When she had taken her place in it, the coachman left the line of waiting vehicles and drove a few paces down the street. Emil followed. As he approached, Rachel succeeded in letting down the glass of the carriage door. She leaned with both arms on the ledge. Her cheeks showed a heightened colour, and her lips, parting in smiles, displayed her little teeth.

"I never expected—" she began unsteadily, "I didn't know that you cared for the opera."

Emil looked at her boldly and joyously, though at the same time with a hint of submission in his eyes. He had waited for her to speak, and at her words he drew a deep breath.

"The opera?" he repeated a little hoarsely. Then he shrugged his shoulders. "That old fellow in your—your husband's establishment, Mr. Mudge, told me that you were to be here to-night, and when I found after testing the heat-measuring device that it worked all right, I thought I'd just stroll round here."

"Then you have been successful?"

He smiled with a touch of the egotism she remembered. "You must see it to judge. You will come and see it?" he demanded quickly.

She looked at him for some time without replying; she could not keep the delight out of her eyes. Suddenly she plucked her gaze away. "There's my husband; he doesn't see us. Signal to him, please," she cried.

When Simon Hart saw Emil St. Ives standing in the snow beside his wife's carriage, he approached, looking straight at Rachel. At Emil he scarcely glanced, though when the inventor opened the carriage door for him, he thanked him with a slight inclination of the head. When he was seated, Rachel put a hand on his arm.

"Simon, you know Mr. St. Ives, I believe?" she said. Her voice was unusually soft and she had gone a little pale. "He has come to tell us that the heat-measurer—the pyrometer, I should say," she corrected herself, "works perfectly."

"Ah it works, does it?" Simon repeated, and he looked coldly at Emil St. Ives. "I'm delighted to hear it," he added after a moment. "But I'll see you to-morrow at the factory and will talk over the matter then."

Rachel leaned in front of her husband impulsively. "I'll come too," she said, "for I'm going to claim half the credit of the invention. And then," she went on, "I want to hear all about your other work—everything. You know I met your wife one day. Please remember me to her," she called as the horses started.

"Well I found your pin," Simon said to her, and he handed her the tiny jewelled ornament.

"I'm glad of that;" then, while she replaced it in her hair, "why didn't you show more interest in that heat-measuring instrument?" she asked, looking at him from under her raised arms.

"Why his coming to notify us of the fact that he has succeeded with the device—if you'll excuse my saying so," with an ironical smile, "struck me as lacking in dignity, as a childish action, in fact."

"Of course it was childish," she cried, "but he's an inventor. And just think how hard he's worked to please you," she continued. "He's been weeks and weeks and rejected ever so many attempts; and when he told you—you were so lukewarm. 'I'll see you at the factory to-morrow'—that's what you said to him, just as if he were a little boy to be pushed aside. It wasn't kind of you," she finished.

A shadow passed over Simon Hart's face. "I think you exaggerate," he began, speaking in the slow distinct manner that was habitual with him. "However," he continued, "I'll endeavour to make up for my lukewarmness to-morrow." He tried to pronounce the word in a jesting tone, but his whole aspect was serious. In a moment he leaned forward and taking one of her reluctant hands, breathing heavily, he held it against his lips.

The principal gift which he had intended for Rachel, he had ordered from Geneva, and it had arrived during their absence on the wedding journey. Now immediately on reaching the house, without giving her time to lay aside her wraps and stopping only to remove his own fur coat, he conducted her through the sombre hallway to the more lugubrious drawing-room.

"There, my dear," he said, pointing to a small object on the table, "that is for you." For he was anxious to bestow the gift as a peace-offering.

Rachel approached the table, which was constructed of solid mahogany in a heavy ugly pattern, and took the leather case in her hands.

"Open it, my love," he urged.

She sank down in a chair and opened the case.

It contained a Swiss watch set in the front of a small onyx box ornamented with garlands of wrought gold. Anything frailer, daintier, more coquettish than this little time-piece, fit property for a princess it would be difficult to imagine. It was a triumph of frivolity, a little bit of elegance in inlaid work and jewels. For wind the charming plaything and immediately, from beneath a gold shell on the cover, up sprang a tiny, buoyant bird, with ruby eyes and mother-of-pearl bill. Turning this way and that with flutterings of its variegated plumage, it trilled forth a song,—silver, clear, crystalline.

Grasping Simon's hand, Rachel dropped her head on his arm. And for some reason she clung to him vehemently and he felt that her whole body was trembling.

Congratulating himself that their reconciliation was complete, he caressed her hair. "It's a Swiss novelty," he explained when she looked up.

He had been leaning over the back of her chair, now he straightened his shoulders and took the morocco case in his hands.

"I used to know this Gellaine of Geneva," he marked. "He is one of the cleverest watchmakers in the world. And now, my dear," he added, "if you'll excuse me, I'll go and prepare myself a toddy; those boxes are such draughty places."

As he moved to the door Rachel followed him with a glance which seemed to beseech him not to leave her. Then, when the door had closed on him, as if she would rid herself of some importunate thought, she examined the little timepiece. The bird had disappeared from view beneath the golden shell. Turning the key twice she replaced the box on the table, and leaning on her elbows, stared at it. But her sight was turned inward.

The unexpected meeting with Emil had plunged her once more into chaos. One glance of his eyes and the curtains of her mind rolled upward. One intense, burning pressure of his hand laid to hers, and she knew life again in its fulness.

Like a lost thing, from out a prison-house, her soul reviewed its past. Across the deep, tragic abyss that yawned between Then and Now, she saw Emil as in the old blissful time at Pemoquod Point. In the effulgence of his courage, his ardour, his genius, he had been the sun and the light of her world. Her heart had called him "Master." And she had matched him for bravery as steel matches steel that has been tempered by the same heat in the forming.

"Together!" her heart had sung, pointing its flight to the farthest star of bliss.

And now.

She leaned forward, her head sunk between her outspread fingers, her gaze riveted on Simon's gift. Intently she watched the wee songster and listened to its tinkling song.

"The—bird—in—the—box!" She said the words slowly. Then repeated them; "The bird in the box!"

She lifted clenched hands to her throat.

Suddenly, as if crushed by something she had tried to evade, she put her head down on her arms.

Outside the snow continued to fall. It fell steadily, monotonously, as if seeking to cover with a white mantle something it were better to hide.