CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE IN WASHINGTON SQUARE

A rainy night was followed by a rainy morning. Between the looped curtains of the alcove window the ground of the square could be seen soggy and wet. The marble of Washington Arch showed dark streaks of moisture. Rachel leaned an arm on the dining room mantel. The housekeeper had been complaining of a litter of kittens in the basement which she could get no one to destroy.

"Bring them in here, Theresa," Rachel ordered peremptorily; then with a sigh she cast herself in a chair.

The woman disappeared but presently returned bearing in her hands a basket containing three white and grey kittens. The mother cat, a handsome sleek animal with a plume-like tail and round golden eyes, followed at her heels, alternately mewing anxiously and purring contentedly.

"I didn't know that you were fond of cats, ma'am," murmured the housekeeper in an ingratiating tone. "I suppose they are all well enough for those who likes 'em."

Before proceeding to study the kittens, Rachel drew a small flask from the pocket of her morning-gown. "If there isn't any more whiskey in the house, Theresa, send out before breakfast and get some at the nearest drugstore. Then refill this and take it up to Mr. Hart," she added without looking at the other.

The housekeeper, a tall angular woman—whose flat bust and prominent shoulder-blades suggested the awful idea that her head was put on the wrong way—paused on the threshold. The bosom of her gown bristled with needles and bits of embroidery cotton clung to her black silk apron. In spite of her unattractive person there was something smart and pretentious about Theresa. She carried her head, covered with its glossy hair, as if it were decorated with an aigrette.

"Shall I take up his breakfast at the same time?" she asked, and lifted eyes of innocence.

"Mr. Hart will come downstairs for breakfast," Rachel answered shortly; then, sinking on the rug, she began fondling the kittens.

She lifted them out of the basket one at a time, and holding them at a distance, looked at their faces, which, three-cornered and mottled light and dark, suggested pansies; at their paws, soft as velvet and harmless as yet; at their short frisky tails and little red mouths which they opened wide as they mewed straight at her. During this pretty play the mother cat sat by the fender and washed her face. But presently, at an especially distressed mew, she crossed the room and laid a remonstrative paw on Rachel's arm. But the girl held the kitten still higher so that the cat was obliged to rear herself on her hind feet in order to reach it. At that instant Simon Hart entered the room.

"Isn't that rather cruel of you?" he asked, stooping to pat the cat that arched its back under his hand.

"Let her reach it then," Rachel answered.

After several trials, the mother cat succeeded in taking the kitten by the nape of its limp neck, and then hopped nimbly with it into the basket. Rachel looked at her gravely as she began rather roughly to lick the kittens with her little scarlet tongue, covered with tiny cones.

Simon extended his hand, but Rachel made no move to rise. Instead, turning her head which she rested on her palm, she looked at him and across her face flitted a variety of emotions. He would have assisted her to her feet, but she would have none of him. Then another glance and her mood changed completely. Self-contained and enigmatic as he was on ordinary occasions, he showed now an embarrassment that struck to her heart. She put up her hands, and with a sudden violence of emotion, he lifted her in his arms.

A moment later, she had forced him to release her, and, pale and thoughtful, she left the room.

"We'll have breakfast in a moment," she said, reappearing. "I gave Theresa your flask; she is sending out," she added in a lower voice.

Already Simon had assumed his usual equivocal and aloof manner. At these words, he lowered his eyes.

"That was kind of you," he said, "I required merely a drop and I found what I needed. My cold," he continued, "is no worse; on the contrary, I shall go to the shop to-day."

Since the night of the opera, three weeks before, Simon had been confined to the house by his dread enemy, the influenza. During this illness he had consumed a great quantity of liquor. If he went without it for any number of hours, he showed the effect. That morning Rachel had been moved by his pale and wretched look.

During the meal he read to her part of a paper he expected to deliver before the Jewellers' Association. But she crumbled her bread, her thoughts wandering. As he was preparing to leave the house, she lingered about in his vicinity.

"Do you know," she ventured, following him to the door, "I'm not half satisfied with what you did about Mr. St. Ives?" and she gave him a direct, almost accusing glance.

"But I sent him a check, certainly liberal in the circumstances, since he is free to go on and manufacture—" Simon began, and he wrinkled his brow.

Rachel shrugged her shoulders in impatience. "You sent him a check; yes, you even advised him to go on and manufacture that instrument. But he isn't capable of making a practical move. Now if you'd shown any real interest—" She stayed her words, silenced by contrition.

After Simon had gone, she established herself with a bit of sewing in the dining room. It was the only room that did not weigh on her spirits. But she had discovered at once that this house, lonely, silent, forbidding, suited Simon as it was; therefore she had confined herself merely to refitting and converting into a sitting room an unused chamber on the second floor; and to making more comfortable the quarters of old Nicholas Hart. There her efforts had ended. An entire remodelling of the mansion would have been necessary to disperse the atmosphere of depression that, tangible as dampness, emanated from its walls.

It had sheltered in its time, apparently, a goodly number of soft-moving, mirthless people. Its inner doors of dark polished wood, never emitted a squeak; and the occasional sounds that penetrated the plaster of its ceilings, suggested a company of rats that went about their business in hushed, apologetic groups, instead of in scampering hordes. The house had never become reconciled to Simon's pianola, and when he seated himself before the instrument, as he did with conscientious regularity every day after dinner, Rachel often fancied that the house lifted shoulders of aversion.

And the legitimate inmates, she decided, were in keeping with the house. Simon and his housekeeper, Theresa Walker, could have desired nothing different in the way of a dwelling. As for old Nicholas and herself, not to mention the various maids who succeeded one another rapidly (for Theresa was difficult to suit in the matter of assistants) they were merely interlopers.

The housekeeper inspired Rachel with a kind of horror. She had somehow gleaned the knowledge that this woman, with her crafty smile but undeniable capacity for work, when well launched in middle life, had seized upon the idea of marrying her cousin, a certain Jeremiah Foggs, when the cousin's wife, a forlorn, feckless, half-witted creature, should die. As the wife was little more than a troublesome charge on Jeremiah's hands and he feared leaving her to herself in their village home, he always brought her with him on the occasions of his visits to Theresa. During the premature courting of the hard-grained pair, the poor daft thing sat by the cheek of the chimney with frightened eyes and a shaking chin. Rachel had a theory that with kind treatment, her wits might have returned. But no kindness was ever shown her; on the contrary, Jeremiah and Theresa waited impatiently for the creeping disease to make way with her. Meanwhile Theresa employed the time of waiting to good advantage.

Packed away in a chest in her room was a great quantity of hemstitched linen, doilies, spreads, embroidered curtains and what not. Indeed, it was a question whether Theresa's means of attraction did not repose solely in her needle; for these products of her skill, which she displayed on every visit of Jeremiah, certainly had a killing effect upon the fellow, with his bullet head. And Theresa, destitute of every feminine grace, gave herself airs on her handiwork as if it had been beauty of person and feature. They were a right curious pair; each with the same air of eager avidity, as if tormented by a keen desire to gain something, each with the same oily and ingratiating manner. Rachel detested Theresa even more than she had detested Nora Gage, and only consented to retain her because Simon seemed to desire it. In truth, Theresa worked in this house as smoothly and briskly as a shuttle in a well-oiled machine.

For a time Rachel pursued her work, but presently her interest flagged and she dressed herself for the street. She was of two minds. Instead of going out immediately she ascended to the top story to take a peep at Nicholas. At her suggestion the old man's workroom was now on the third floor and it was no longer necessary for him to descend a flight of steps to his chamber. Also, his meals were all served to him in his workroom. Without comprehending the cause of his greater comfort, the old fellow cherished a whimsical and flighty affection for Rachel; while Simon was humbly grateful to her for this interest in his erratic parent. Now the only time Nicholas was obliged to attempt the stairs was when he went for an airing. On certain days of the week, if the weather were fine, a man nurse appeared and conveyed him to the street and remained with him in the Square. From these excursions Nicholas never returned without some token for Rachel. Now it was a cornucopia of popcorn which he had bought from a vender; later, as the spring advanced and grass began to show along the paths, it was a cluster of leaves and buds; not infrequently it happened that he treasured up and presented to her particularly handsome specimens of insects mounted on pins.

If truth were told, little and lithe and still spry, this old reprobate, with his eagerness regarding the habits of the house-fly, his raptures and his rages, came nearer than any other person in the house to being keyed to the same pitch as Rachel herself. If rumour could be trusted, a number of discreditable experiences had made up Nicholas's life. He had gamed and drunk, driven fast horses, followed fast women. He had conducted one thriving business after another, and among them, the car shops that had employed old David. He had made fortunes with ease and lost them with equal facility. Now, in his last years, he was penniless and Simon was engaged in patiently paying the debts Nicholas had contracted; but for this, be it understood, he received scorn rather than gratitude.

As a result of his evil ways Nicholas, in the early years of his marriage, had broken his wife's heart. Her patience had annoyed him, and, had she shown more spirit, her fate might have been a happier one. As it was, she had slipped out of life, mown down with grief as grass is mown with the scythe. And Nicholas had made scant pretence of regretting her, just as he made scant pretence of approving his son. Simon had early betrayed a lack of zest for life—a trait his father could ill tolerate. Therefore, with taunts and gibes, he had made Simon's life miserable through boyhood and early manhood. At first, it may be, he thought by this method to kindle some spirit in the lad, but failing to strike a spark—for Simon remained through all pale and silent, a human riddle to the father,—Nicholas had continued his jeers for sheer malicious joy in the practice. Even now his wit kindled at the thought of Simon, and sure of an appreciative listener, he would make clever satirical remarks about him to his niece, Julia Burgdorf, whenever she put in an appearance. And Julia would match these sallies. To this joking Rachel, in a storm of anger, had endeavoured to put a stop. Now when the pair exchanged their witticisms, it was out of her hearing.

Though this old man bore not the slightest resemblance to old David, his age and animation endeared him to Rachel. Then he had once helped her grandfather, a thing she never forgot.

Now his voice, which leaped constantly to a childish treble, reached her before she gained the stair's head. A stuttering of the words of his ditty, decided her to postpone her call. Owing to his excitable heart and his years, liquor was forbidden the old man. Resolving to take the housemaid sharply to task for giving Nicholas whiskey, Rachel descended the stairs. Through delicacy she never spoke to Simon of his own or his father's failing. When moved to disapproval of her husband, as she had been that morning, her only reproach was a look. A childhood passed among fishermen had taught her tolerance for this particular weakness.

When Simon returned at lunch time, she was nowhere about and he was forced to sit down to the table without her. But she entered before he had finished the first course, and taking her place opposite him, began slowly unfastening her jacket. Wishing to please her, he launched into a description of St. Ives's pyrometer.

"We melt up different alloys to get the different colour effects," he concluded, "and the colour and intensity of the light bear certain definite relations—"

Rachel opened her eyes: "Then it's a success, is it?"

Simon avoided her gaze. "Why yes, certainly. In fact," he added, "it's a very ingenious device. A trifling thing, you understand; but it is an instrument for which there is a definite need, and for that reason I should judge he might possibly be able to do something with it."

Rachel nodded. "I see. Now Simon, I'll tell you what I've done; I've just been out and sent notes by messenger to Mr. St. Ives and his wife, and to Emily Short, asking them to come this afternoon and stay to dinner. Tell me, did I do right?"

Without visible effect Simon had tried to shape her to more conventional standards. Rachel exhibited as much independence as before their marriage. Now he replied a little wearily:

"Why of course, though I should have considered that the case scarcely required anything as complimentary, in a social sense, as an invitation to dinner."

"And why not?" she flashed back hotly. "Though when it comes to that, I don't wish to compliment Emil St. Ives; I wish to help him. Heaven knows, he's egotistic enough. But you don't realize," she pursued in a softer tone, "how helpless he is. He needs someone to advise him, or he'll spend himself in a thousand useless ways; someone to take an intelligent interest in him."

"He has a wife, hasn't he?"

"I said intelligent interest."

"But I assure you, my love," he began, "that I'm by no means the proper person—"

However, before he left the house he had promised to return earlier than was his custom in order to further his wife's plan.

In the course of the afternoon Rachel received a note from Emily Short explaining that she could not be present at the dinner. The note concluded: "You may remember Betty Holden. I think you were with me one evening when she came in. Poor child! Fortunately her baby never drew breath. She's to be taken this afternoon to Bellevue and I've promised to go with her. I shan't get away early for she's in a great taking and no wonder. The landlady at the place where she boarded threatened to put her into the street. Poor soft defenceless things, besieged both from within and without, there's small chance for the Betty Holdens." This news at any other time would have stirred Rachel, but now she had no time for reflection.

Emil and his wife arrived promptly at five o'clock. Enlivened by hope, Annie was looking especially pretty. She had arrayed herself in a gown she had so far held in reserve, and had donned her rings which glistened like dew on her thin fingers. But Rachel gave small heed to Annie. She had counted on turning her over to Emily, telling herself that the toy-maker's companionship would benefit the lackadaisical girl. But now this plan was frustrated. Conducting her guests into the chamber which she had converted into a sitting room, Rachel established Annie in a corner and furnished her with several books of engraving. And thereafter, with undisguised eagerness, she gave her own attention to Emil.

She had weathered a tempest.

In youth the blood flows warm, and the unexpected meeting with her former friend when she was off guard, when she was excited by her first opera, had produced a storm. But the storm had passed, the last gleam of lightning and rumble of thunder had ceased and the air was clearer than before. So she was convinced. She denounced herself as an inflammable creature, and turned with renewed allegiance to her husband, dwelling desperately on her gratitude and esteem. Finally, sure of herself and luxuriating in a sense of renewed activity, she fancied she could serve Emil as simply as she would serve another friend. Nor did she see in the attempt Love in one of its multitudinous disguises.

The room, which was long and shadowy, overlooked the Square. She led the way to a divan under a window and motioned Emil to a place at her side.

"Now," she said, "I want to know just where you stand with your work? Tell me what you have done—what you intend doing—all," with an expansive gesture.

He followed it closely; then glued his eyes to her fingers. For some reason he was displeased at this abrupt buckling to a subject that ordinarily would have received his ready endorsement.

"But are there not other things to talk about—first?" he suggested.

"Not of so much importance."

"No?"

"No."

The gentle rebuke only incited his dominating nature: "But I should like to ask— For one thing, you know you treated me shamefully, Rachel, when I left Pemoquod." He dropped his head to a level with hers. Into his voice had crept the old dangerous and caressing tone.

Amazed at the double temerity of the use of her name and the allusion to the Past, she returned his look, flushing uncontrollably.

"Why did you do that?" he pursued, enjoying her embarrassment.

"I—I do not recall it," she said and flamed yet more to the lie. "And hereafter, please remember I am Mrs. Hart."

She had a grip on the reins and he must heed the sharp tug, though he still chafed under the restraint like a restive horse. "And now we'll speak of another matter—your work;" she continued.

"It's two years since we've seen each other," he remonstrated sulkily.

"It's nearer three," she might have answered, but checked the words. Instead, severely: "You ought to have something to show for that length of time."

"I have something."

"So I supposed. Now tell me."

And gradually with those arts known to woman, she subdued the quondam lover and roused the genius. Yielding to the flattery of her attitude, which was one of keen interest in his work, he was soon discoursing enthusiastically on the subject she had prescribed. A fish in the water or a bird in the air could not have been more at home than was he in her presence.

Thus they talked till twilight fell and the maid came in to light the gas: and they were still deeply absorbed when Simon appeared.

He stood for a space, his face a blur of white in the doorway; then he came forward into the circle of light.

Instantly three heads were raised, Rachel's and Emil's abstractedly, Annie's with a distinct expression of relief. She had soon wearied of the books of engravings with which Rachel had thoughtfully supplied her, and the volumes were piled on the floor beside her chair; all save one, which she still held listlessly in her lap. She was pleased at the interest Mrs. Hart exhibited in her husband's work, for a word which she caught now and then, had convinced her of the topic of their conversation, and her jealousy had not been aroused. But she was weary and she now stood up with a pretty air of welcome for Simon.

He shook hands with her cordially. Then crossing the room, he shook hands with the inventor.

But Emil scarcely waited to answer his few studied words of greeting; instead, he settled himself immediately at Rachel's side, and rumpling his heavy mane with his fingers, he stared dreamily. "The next thing I completed was the electrometer," he said, and Simon noticed that Rachel wrote the word "electrometer" on a tablet she held on her knees.

He returned to Annie and until dinner was announced, he talked to her in his low even tones.

Dinner brought the party into no closer harmony. Rachel, with a carnation blazing in her hair and her dark intelligent eyes speaking more swiftly than her lips, still talked to Emil; and Simon, concealing every trace of annoyance if he felt any, devoted himself to Annie. After the meal, he even proposed playing to her on the pianola, and Rachel, knowing that he was very fond of performing on the instrument, allowed him to go through two pieces in his usual faithful uninspired manner. Then she approached him.

"Come Simon," she said, laying hold of his hands. "You know why I asked them here," she added in an urgent whisper as he made no move to rise. "He is the inventor of all these instruments," and she displayed a list. "But he hasn't the remotest idea what steps to take in order to get the right people interested. Now can't you give him letters to different men, Simon? Come—you can think up some plan if you try!"

Simon Hart had not the slightest interest in Alexander Emil St. Ives; moreover, in general, he was ignorant of the matters upon which the other required advice. However, he yielded; subsequently he was influenced to the point of going several times to visit the inventor; later, he organized The St. Ives and Hart Company of which he himself was the president. All this he did because of the imperious, and at the same time, pleading look in a pair of dark clear eyes.

By the end of the year the house in Washington Square had undergone a change. This change had nothing to do with the renewing of bricks or mortar, or the altering of any outward feature; materially the residence remained the same. Never the less, it was now connected with a certain loft in John Street by a subtle, tenuous web. In this web, love,—unacknowledged, innocent, strong as death, thrown out from a woman's heart and returning ever to it,—was the solitary thread.

CHAPTER II
CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF A GENIUS

As might have been foreseen, even after the formation of The St. Ives and Hart Company, the world continued in ignorance of Emil St. Ives. A few devices composed of shining brass, crystal, and wood occupied a modest amount of space in one of Simon Hart's shop windows, and occasionally men of science, attracted by their ingenuity, made inquiries about them; oftener than not, they returned to watch them in operation, again and yet again. But the great public took no interest and never made inquiries; the great public was interested in improved stove-handles and door-locks and the rescue of discarded tin cans, and gave not a thought to Emil St. Ives's little instruments.

But in heaven, or more properly speaking, the world of complete objectivity which lies close about this and which only gifted minds prematurely penetrate, there was excitement after excitement, all produced by the childlike monster, Emil St. Ives. He had to his credit an instrument for recording colours in the atmosphere, another little instrument for recording the vibrations of the air occasioned by sound, and numerous temporarily useless devices which were calculated to delight those who came after him, but which were entirely unappreciated and unapprehended by the age in which he lived. None the less, his happiness was extreme.

The John Street loft, to which he and Annie had removed on the first hint of improvement in his fortunes, was spacious; and here, under a sky-light which glistened beneath the sun in pleasant weather and was befogged by rain and snow when the weather was inclement, he lived and worked. He ate irregularly and slept little. When he slept, in order not to waste time he was in the habit of entrusting the problem upon which he was engaged to his subconscious mind. Then after a sleep of a few hours' duration, he would wake, and on first opening his large, speculative eyes, would oftener than not see in mid-air the completed instrument working perfectly.

The loft, which chanced to be singularly habitable, was divided by partitions into four rooms. In order to be removed as far as possible from the sound of the pounding and drilling, Annie had taken up her abode in the rear room, which, besides the bay in the ceiling, had a large window looking upon a court. Below, in that scrap of earth, a maple tree had taken root and flourished to such a degree that its topmost branches came opposite the window. In the branches of the tree, a robin had built its nest. But Annie paid little attention to the tree or the robin. Though she wept less than in the past, she complained more; her lips drooped and her tongue had acquired sharpness. When with her hands resting on her slight hips, she remonstrated with Emil, her scolding sounded exactly like the chatter of an enraged bird; indeed, she looked more than ever like a bird. Though she occasionally might have managed to buy herself something new, Annie no longer troubled herself about her clothes. What was the use, she argued, since Alexander persisted in living in an attic; and in any case, was it not wiser to save every penny toward the rent, since he was so erratic in his methods of work, and insisted on making impractical things for which he used up all his salary? So Annie, a greater part of the time, lay on a sofa and sulked. In her inactivity, she was a contrast to Emil.

The corner of the loft in which the inventor spent most of his time was furnished, in addition to a workbench, with a cot upon which he slept, a disreputable-looking chair in which he rested when he was not pacing the floor, second-hand bookcases in which he kept his inventions and his library, a basket for the monkey, and a three-legged stool upon which Ding Dong could perch himself when so minded.

But Ding Dong, day or night, seldom had time to rest; and where he slept was a question; sometimes, without doubt, on a square of carpet outside his master's door. Willing, devoted, pathetic in his resemblance to a dumb brute, Ding Dong was an extra pair of hands and feet for Emil. He could scrub and sweep and make coffee, he could lift heavy machines in his sinewy arms, he could pack boxes and run errands; but he could not drill or hammer or saw with any accuracy. Though the field of his usefulness was limited, he was invaluable to the inventor.

The atmosphere of unparalleled devotion which this humble creature threw around him was agreeable to Emil; and the same could be said of Annie's love. Whenever he observed it, his wife's faithful affection, contributing to his egotism, helped him to work the harder. And so again with Rachel Hart's intelligent and unwavering interest in his progress; her interest so stirred in him the creative impulse that he sped ahead like a fiery steed under the plaudits of the arena. On the whole, Emil received much from the people surrounding him; and yet, in the last analysis, their devotion was not essential to the "un-named, seeing, acting, produced being" that constituted his genius.

When at work, in the depths of his eye lurked the consciousness of a world; but in his mouth and chin was something less perfect and more human; they looked as if they had been slighted by the sculptor who fashioned him. For the rest, an almost supernatural serenity marked his manner, despite the often convulsive manifestations of his energy. It was as if a god drove the chariot of his forces. If allowed to emerge gently from this state, he was unfailingly good natured; but if broken in upon abruptly, "care, genius, and hell" distorted and illuminated his face. Pausing on the threshold of that narrow gateway between the world of thought and the world of materiality, Emil St. Ives was a demon. Annie, bent upon some trifling business of her own, had one day ventured so to interrupt him; the offence had never been repeated.

As has been hinted, conscience played no part in him. For Annie, for Ding Dong, even for his employers, when the mood for work was upon him, Emil showed not the slightest consideration. Nor was Rachel, in this respect, an exception. Whatever his attitude was toward her—and he bore himself in her presence at moments with a strange humility, at other times with an ill-concealed turbulent admiration that threatened to break all bounds—her influence at this period had well defined limits. His mother alone had uninterrupted power over him. At a word from her, even though he were on the eve of inspiration, he would drop everything to fulfil her slightest whim.

Small wonder then that the mother adored him,—that she saw in him a gifted creature not to be approached by the common run of humanity. It had come to be Emil's custom to visit his mother at least once in a fortnight, and, from the moment that they met, those thin hands of hers had power in their caresses to transform him. Under their gentle touch, the fire of his mind dwindled, the warmth of his heart grew; the genius of a world was submerged in the son of a mother. And on Mrs. St. Ives their companionship had an opposite effect. Questioning him about his work, her brain in his presence acquiring something of the agility of youth, she lit herself at the flame that was in her son.

Naturally the neglected Annie was jealous of this love. She never missed an opportunity to pick a quarrel with her husband on the subject of his devotion to his mother, but it was seldom she could provoke a retort. Emil bore her reproaches indifferently. One morning in May matters reached a decisive point.

At midnight Emil was off, bound for the village that drew him like a magnet, and some hours later Annie sat over breakfast. She sat in one of the interior rooms, which was fitted up with a gas-stove and a few household necessities. Being left by herself frightened Annie. The janitress of the building, a good motherly soul, had orders to look out for her in Emil's absence; but the woman had gone about her duties some time earlier. Now, except for Ding Dong and the little chattering monkey, Annie was alone. Ding Dong, who had taken upon himself the duties of cook in this establishment, tried to tempt her with choice bits of food and Lulu made constant timid advances toward her friendship; Annie would look at neither of them. She saw in them a summing-up of the unusual, wretched and ridiculous situation.

Now tears rolled down her face. Why had she left home? Why had she married Alexander? This was the constant refrain that beat in her brain. All things considered, the imperturbable inventor could scarcely have chosen a more unlucky moment to appear. The door opened and there he stood.

Smiling, he entered the room, and at the account he gave of his movements, Annie's eyes gleamed with anger and the muscles of one cheek twitched.

"Well," he explained, tossing aside his hat, "Mother was all right. I saw her through the window, and then I managed to get the next train back. You see, it was raining when I got in this morning," he went on, "and had I let Mother know I was there, she'd have been out to meet me, if she got her death for it. So I took only a look at her. There she was with the tiresome brats tumbling all over her, enough to wear her out, but she looked as cheerful as could be. Only six o'clock, and the whole lot of them waiting for breakfast! By Jove, but Edgar's family get up betimes! it's part of his confounded thrift. Breakfast and lunch at one sitting is more to my mind," and Emil approached the table to pour himself a cup of coffee.

But Annie was quicker. Seizing the coffee-pot, she held it behind her at imminent risk of spilling the contents.

"No, you shan't have it," she cried. "I'm sick of your performances, and I'll not put up with them. You say you went to your brother's? If you did, why didn't you go in openly? Edgar's not a wolf, I suppose. From all you tell me, he lives decently in a house, which is more than we do; and they have nice things. He's a wealthy man and your meeting might have led to something—instead of that, you take an expensive trip, just for the sake of peeping through a window at your mother, when you saw her only a few days ago. And then you come back here, thinking only of her, always of her—and you expect to go on eating and drinking—"

Emil viewed his wife in troubled astonishment:

"And why shouldn't I eat and drink?"

"At my expense;" she finished; "for you owe everything to me. If it hadn't been for me, you wouldn't have even what you've got. And now when I've nothing more to give—" Dashing the coffee-pot on the table and huddling her hands over her face, Annie escaped from the room.

For a few minutes Emil remained without stirring. The look of amazement in his peculiar eyes was succeeded by a slight darkening of his whole face. But he was never actually reached by Annie's flashes of anger. They seemed to him like little storms taking place at a great distance. Now with a shrug of the shoulders he began tranquilly to eat his breakfast.

He could not remain insensible to his brother's continued antipathy; therefore, that he might not be reminded of it, he never put himself in the way of seeing Edgar. What would have been the use? Between the now flourishing merchant and himself, there was even less in common than formerly. They would not have found a word to say to each other. And his mother, who had at first sought feverishly to bring about a reconciliation between them, now did all she could to prevent their meeting. Had not Edgar told her that he would never receive him, Emil? Had he not warned her that if she tried to foist Emil's presence upon him, he would insult him to his face?

At times Emil was tempted to urge his mother to leave his brother's house and cast in her lot with his own, but remembering his uncomfortable quarters and the openly hostile Annie, he was driven to silence. The one thing that consoled him was the thought that at least his mother was comfortably housed where she was; at least she was happy in her grandchildren. So the pair, kept apart by poverty, continued to meet like lovers. Anything prettier than the eagerness with which the little old woman went to a rendezvous with her favourite son, it would be impossible to imagine. In vain, actuated by a wish to torment her, Edgar's wife and even the children, put obstacles in the way of the meetings. Now it was a jacket to be mended which was brought to Mrs. St. Ives at the exact moment of her setting forth; it was a sheet to be hemmed, or a stocking to be darned. With every faculty alert, she always circumvented her annoyers, never failing to meet Emil at the appointed spot. This slyness, which is a part of love, brought back her youth.

Had the conditions of her own life been other than just what they were, Annie might have found in Mrs. St. Ives a staunch friend. Now she hated her mother-in-law.

For a time after her angry outburst, she lay face downward upon the bed. But presently, having wept herself into a repentant mood, she was all for running to Emil and putting up her tear-stained face for a kiss. In fancy she pictured him still sitting discomfited; and, trembling with a desire to make peace, she slipped into the passageway. But Emil had quitted the scene of the breakfast, and a glance at the table revealed the fact that he had eaten his fill. Annie passed on to his workroom and, at what she saw through the door, rage, bitter and stifling, once more filled her breast.

Annie had never said a word to Rachel of Emil's constant shortcomings in relation to his company; "But I'll tell her now, I will tell her!" she whispered. She was convinced that Rachel's belief in Emil could not be shaken; therefore she would gratify her desire to expose his faults without further result than putting him to shame. So she argued. But as usual, where her husband was concerned, she reasoned wildly. As sensibly expect a bird of the air to drop its eyes in acknowledgement of a fault, as expect the inventor to show embarrassment for what he had done amiss or failed to do at all.

As it chanced Rachel put in an appearance that afternoon and Annie flew to her. She caught the other by the hand and drew her into her own room. Then she subsided on the sofa and burst into tears.

"What is it, Annie?" Rachel asked. She had never been greatly drawn to Annie, perhaps for some reason she would have died rather than admit.

Annie was nettled.

"Nothing's the matter. Did you bring any message from Mr. Hart?" she asked, drying her eyes with an assumption of dignity.

"Yes; the telephone at the shop is out of order, and I told him I'd come round and deliver this note. See here, Annie," Rachel interrupted herself, "tell me what's bothering you."

"Oh—it's just Alexander!" returned Annie, and without more persuasion unburdened herself. "You see what my life is here?" she wailed. "And we might live so differently if Alexander wished—if he cared—if he even did the things he ought to do in connection with the Company; if he wasn't a fool, in short. Now take that radiometer," she went on, "you know as well as I do that it's considered wonderful. Well, only yesterday, your husband sent someone from Columbia University to inspect it; the college thought of getting one. Emil was out, so I showed the gentleman the old model, for the new one isn't done, and I was just thinking what we'd make on the sale, when in comes Alexander. 'Oh, that's trash!' he cries. 'That ought to go in the junk heap! Don't take that; I have something else on hand that will put that in the shade completely.' So," she finished in a tone between tragedy and disgust, "the sale was ruined. And if that kind of thing has happened once, it's happened dozens of times."

"But the college will get the instrument eventually?" Rachel asked; and, as she looked at Annie, in spite of her sympathy, she was conscious of an inclination to laugh.

"Possibly, but we'll likely as not be dead, for Alexander goes on perfecting a thing and perfecting it and the people can wait an eternity and he doesn't care. Sometimes," she concluded, "I'm tempted to give it all up."

As she reviewed the situation, Rachel also for the moment was forced into depression. Similar complaints reached her from every side. Scarcely a day passed when Simon was not moved to anger by some shortcoming on the part of the inventor. Now it was his failure to be on hand at a critical moment to sign necessary papers; again it was his mysterious disappearance from the city. In fact, his unbusiness-like methods placed the struggling company in many an embarrassing situation. More than once Simon had threatened to withdraw from the enterprise and it was only her own persuasions that restrained him. His faith in the inventor, never of the strongest, was clearly on the wane.

"And you mustn't think it's just one thing," resumed Annie, putting renewed pathos in her voice, "it's a whole succession of things. Take that Washington matter. You never heard the rights of that, I'll be bound. And I'm going to tell you. You remember, don't you, that time a month or two ago when the Government showed such interest in that colour wave device, and the Company were so encouraged? Well, your husband thought it would be a good plan for them to send Alexander to Washington instead of anyone else because Alexander could explain the thing eloquently. And he did explain it—to the wrong official. He went there, as I found out afterward from a letter, and demonstrated it to the wrong man. Then he returned home, blandly satisfied with himself, and of course nothing came of the matter on which the Company had built such hopes. But I never said a word to explain it; I was so ashamed."

Looking at Annie's little woe-begone visage, Rachel burst out laughing.

The other, however, stared at her angrily.

"I don't see anything to laugh at. Alexander is enough to try the patience of a saint; and I guess if you were married to him, you'd know it."

Rachel's mirth vanished and the colour flew over her face.

After an uncomfortable pause, she took Annie's hand.

"You look too much on the dark side, try to be patient awhile longer. Things may straighten themselves." She pressed Annie's fingers. "Now tell me, shall I slip this note under his door, or shall I hand it to him. It's important."

"Oh, you needn't slip it under the door, you can just go right in and put it where he'll see it; the door will be open fast enough. A lot of good that special lock does," Annie finished in a burst of scorn. "Mr. Mudge thought we'd better have it put on to protect Alexander from dishonest people who come in and get him talking and then steal his ideas. But do you suppose he leaves the door closed? Not a bit of it. Why only yesterday he had the lock tied back with a string while he poured all he knew into the ear of a man from that screw company across the street. A word of flattery and he forgets everything."

"Don't—don't tell me any more, please;" and as Rachel turned away smiles rippled over her face. Why could not Annie, Simon, Victor Mudge, everyone, see that the inventor lived in another world and hence was not amenable to the laws of this. Nodding to Annie, who refused to be won from her dejected mood, Rachel traversed the passageway, and paused at the door of Emil's eyrie.

As Annie had pictured, the patent lock was out of commission and the door stood wide open. Placing her note on the corner of a desk where he could not fail to see it, Rachel lingered on the threshold. Had he observed her, she could not have remained, but he kept steadily forward with his work.

It was a rich pleasure to note every detail of the room—the sagging couch, the shabby coat hanging against the wall, the table laden with dust, bottles and tobacco boxes, the long bench, on the lower shelf of which was ranged, with astonishing order, a multitude of tools. She drew a contented sigh.

The sun poured through the skylight and twinkled on the brass-work of his darling inventions, enthroned behind the glass of an old bookcase. Even while he slept, they peered out at him, these children of his active brain. And in every corner some mechanism was revealed, some cunning, complicated thing of joints and prisms.

Rachel completed her inventory, then her brows suddenly rose and her eyes with involuntary devotion fixed themselves upon Emil. It was as if she had saved him until the last for a closer inspection, like a little girl who reserves her chief treasure for a leisurely examination.

Seated on a high stool, before a bench, he was at work, from his head covered with its thick mane, the eyes burning beneath like coals, down to his big feet, planted against a convenient shelf. These feet hinted at a force in him that urged him to make a rift in the wall of the Unknown.

She remained for a long time motionless. Then with a smile, unfathomable in its freshness, its terror, its confusion, she turned away.

There, rises a mountain peak—in silence, clouds, eternal snows! The sun beats on the snow and the sparkling snow responds to the light. There is the laboratory of genius!

From the mountain roll downward, sometimes small streamlets, sometimes mighty rivers. These streamlets and rivers nourish the valley below and even the cities out on the plain, these rivers nourish the world.

Yet the trees and shrubs at the base of the mountain suffer, for sometimes instead of refreshing streamlets, avalanches of snow come down. At such times the bushes and trees cling together; with their twisted branches and denuded roots, they whisper and moan execrations on the mountain.

Close to the summit—in order to observe what is taking place there—its foot in the snow and its head in the clouds, pushes that imperturbable and daring little flower, the edelweiss.

Rachel climbed close to heaven in order to have sight of her love.

CHAPTER III
THE CONFESSION

One June morning in the second year of the existence of The St. Ives and Hart Company, Emil entered his wife's room.

In order to be in range of the draught from the window, Annie had pulled forward a couch. Clothed in a shabby wrapper, open at the neck, she was curled up languidly with her head on a cushion. Emil gazed at her while something like compunction blazed up in his eyes. He amazed her by sitting down by her side and drawing her to his breast. Holding her two tiny hands in one of his own, he caressed her hair and even drew a pitying finger over the prominent cords of her poor little throat. Then he strained her to him, sighing as if from a full heart.

Annie burst into tears at this unexpected tenderness. Twisting herself around, she rested her cheek against his.

"You—you leave me to myself all the time, Alexander," she sobbed, "and I've no one at all but you."

"Yes, yes, I know," he responded mournfully.

"And you don't talk to me about your work as you do to Mrs. Hart; and I could understand as well as she if you would take the trouble to explain to me."

"Well, don't cry, little kitten," he said, "I've come to explain something to you now and I hope it will please you."

"How please me?" she asked.

"Well, I have an idea at last which I think will strike your fancy. I mean it's practical," he explained, "—has commercial possibilities."

"Are you sure?" she demanded doubtfully: "you aren't a very good judge, you know."

"Never the less, I can't help knowing that anything in the line of a novel improvement of a musical instrument like the organ,—in fact, an innovation,—in these days is almost certain to succeed."

"Oh, Alexander, tell me! Tell me what you have in mind!" and raising her head from his shoulder she laid hold of his hand.

"What an excitable little creature it is," he said tenderly. "Well, it's a scheme for increasing the capacity for emotional expression in an organ. I shall manage to combine the vibrations of strings with those of pipes by incorporating in the organ a complete piano action. Do you understand?"

She nodded.

He laughed. "A pile you do! I shall combine them in such a way, that by a separate keyboard the strings can be used for piano accompaniment, and also can be coupled with the organ keys so that when they are depressed, the corresponding dampers in the piano are lifted from the strings to admit of their free sympathetic vibration."

"Oh!" said Annie, on a long breath. "And you think it might mean a big thing?"

"In a commercial sense, yes; in fact I think it's about certain to be popular. But in order to carry out the scheme I shall have to have every chance for experimenting, you know," and he looked pleadingly into her face.

"Of course;" she agreed, "but this place suits you, Alexander—you always said that it did?"

"Yes, the place is all right," he answered, hesitating, "but I need an instrument, you see. So I—I've bought one," he added softly.

"Not a pipe organ, Alexander?"

He nodded. "A second-hand one, very small, naturally, only two manuals. But even so, I shall have to pull out one of the partitions before it can be set up."

"How much did it cost?" she cried, and her eyes and her mouth assumed the appearance in her countenance of three little round holes of horror.

"Well, by paying cash for it to the church committee who put it up at auction," he said in a low voice, "I got it for eight hundred dollars."

At these words Annie crossed to the further side of the room and dropping into a chair, leaned her forehead against the wall.

Alexander looked at her with miserable eyes. Her action was a thousand times more disquieting than the volley of reproaches he had expected.

"They've come now, I think," he said after a pause. "They're going to hoist part of it up from the outside, and I hear them on the roof. Don't feel that way about it," he implored. "The scheme really is a good one, Annie, and I'll make a success of it, I promise you. I'll get the eight hundred dollars back and any amount besides."

But Annie continued motionless and he approached her chair. "I suppose it does seem like a lot for us to put into it," he continued with unwonted tenderness, "but it was a tempting bargain and as I couldn't develop my scheme without it— See here," he interrupted himself, "haven't you told me often enough that I ought to invent something that would prove to be a success; that I ought to do it to justify the Company's belief in me, and especially Mrs. Hart's belief?"

Then Annie turned on him. She even rose from her chair, the back of which she grasped with a shaking hand. "And it's to justify her belief in you, is it? that you spent all that we'd managed to save? Very thoughtful, I am sure. Her interest indeed! I wish you'd never seen her. I hate her, I do, I hate her!"

"Annie!" he exclaimed, for her little visage was twisted out of all semblance to itself.

"I do, I hate her!" she repeated. "As for buying that organ because you needed it, don't you suppose I know you've always hung around organ lofts and even followed hurdy-gurdies on the street? You bought the organ because you wanted it. Alexander, you—you leave me!" she finished hysterically.

Abashed, Emil stared at her; then relieved at this outburst, which was what he had looked for, he went to superintend the installing of his luckless possession. Since concluding the purchase of the organ the wisdom of the step had appeared dubious to his unpractical mind. Now, had it been possible for him to transfer the burden of ownership, he would gladly have transferred it. But the organ, to another, would have been an undesirable acquisition. It was wheezy of tone and sadly out of order, but this very condition was what had recommended it to him, and he looked forward with exultant joy to restoring it to a sense of perfection.

As no retreat was possible, between ruefulness and pride he lifted the blue and gold pipes from the long coffin-shaped box in which they had been packed. Other parts of the organ, being less liable to damage, were hoisted through the window.

When Annie emerged half an hour later, dressed for the street, the passageway and the two workrooms presented a scene of indescribable confusion. Had she glanced in at the door of the larger room, she might have seen the uncouth monster minus the ornamental front it usually turned to an audience. But she looked neither to the right nor the left. Despite the warmth of the day she had a veil tied over her face. The only signs of her distress were the damp blotches in the material over the regions of mouth and eyes. She had decided to carry her story straight to Simon Hart.

When Annie reached the house in Washington Square, Rachel was mounting the steps. Simon had only just returned for luncheon and Rachel conducted the visitor to his study, a cool dark room on the second floor, and then stood by to listen to what the other had to say.

And Annie poured forth her tale. Perched on the extreme edge of a huge armchair, she was too carried away by her trouble to heed the presence of Rachel, and as she finished, Simon, with a look of annoyance, was about to express his sympathy when his wife laid her hand forcibly on his arm.

"And why shouldn't he buy an organ?" she demanded, turning on Annie, and it was evident from the light in her eyes that she was angry. "You are insane to look at the matter as you do. Of course he had to have the organ," she declared. "May not an inventor be allowed the necessary materials for his work? And if the thing should prove a success, as he thinks it may, and as I can see that it may, even from Annie's hazy description, why then you two will be glad enough that he got the organ." And she glanced from one to the other triumphantly.

"But, my dear," her husband interposed, "you heard what Mrs. St. Ives said; the whole point is that they are not in a position to afford it."

"But the Company is," Rachel answered and looked him directly in the eyes. The next instant she was a prey to shame, bitter and scorching.

With a glance of icy disapproval, he turned away from her, and she hurriedly crossed to a window and began nervously to remove the rings from her fingers.

Not a day passed but she thus surprised herself. For the same emotion, ever new, ever unlooked for, ever commencing afresh, constantly tempted her into enthusiastic championship of Emil's cause. Far from wishing to disguise the feeling, however, now that she herself realized the force of it, Rachel had often desired to speak of it to Simon; and only the fact that he definitely and obstinately avoided the subject kept her silent.

As a result of Annie's visit, the complexion of affairs in John Street took a more favourable colour, while those in Washington Square assumed a more tragic hue. Annie, despite her bitter words about Rachel, was not actively jealous of her. Now she was comforted by Simon's sympathy, which she felt; for between these two unhappy souls there was a bond of shy understanding. Also, Rachel's ill-considered words produced a certain lightness in Annie and she concluded that they would not be allowed to suffer because of Emil's extravagance.

Upon Rachel, the result of the interview was otherwise. Seldom had she experienced a more desperate mood than that which assailed her after Annie had quitted the house.

More than once she went to Simon's study determined to speak her mind, but the door remained steadfastly closed against her.

As it was Saturday, Simon did not return to the shop in the afternoon, nor did he emerge from the study at dinner time, and Theresa, with a sly rolling of the eye in her mistress's direction, prepared a tray for him. Simon always expressed his anger by an increase of coldness and silence and by shutting himself up in this way. "He's in there," Rachel reflected, "thinking and drinking." And she preferred the liquor, the effect of which she had often noted, to his thoughts, the effect of which she could not calculate. Until a late hour she heard him walking backward and forward with irregular steps over the echoing floor, and it was after midnight when his door opened and he descended the stairs. This was an old-fashioned house with a cellar and there the wine was kept. It was to the cellar she knew he had gone. Determined to seize the opportunity of speaking to him, she threw a wrapper over her nightdress and hurried after him through the darkened house. He had turned on the light in the hanging electric bulb, and when she came upon him he was standing before a table on which was placed a case of wine. In all probability he had been drinking brandy and was finishing with claret. To her surprise, as if actuated by mere thirsty impatience, she saw him strike off the neck of a bottle. This action in a man of his fastidious habits was big with meaning. He lifted the bottle to his lips, his head flung back. He did not see her until she touched his arm.

"Simon," she cried, "this can't go on!"

Thinking she referred to the liquor, he set down the bottle and regarded her with an abashed and amazed look. His long face, without its usual mask, was fairly pitiful. Later he would not be able to forgive her for surprising him in this way. But she was bent solely on making her confession.

"Simon," she cried, laying hold of the sleeve of his coat, "I was wrong in what I said this afternoon. I own I was wrong; and I ask you to forgive me. But there should be no secrets between us and I have no wish to disguise anything. Simon"—and her eyes, usually serious and a little sulky, flew to his face and clung there brilliant with appeal—"you must know that my feeling for Mr. St. Ives existed before I ever knew you; it is a part of myself. I can't explain it; but it does you no wrong. And never could do you any wrong."

During this explanation Simon had grown paler than was his wont. Pushing aside her hands and standing off from her, he had begun by drawing his fingers nervously through his fringe of hair; but as she proceeded, he became absolutely motionless and his face assumed the lines of a tragic mask.

"I would not have things different even if I could," she went on; "I am content with you and you know it. But oh,"—and she threw, out both hands in a gesture exceedingly simple and genuine,—"please do not misconstrue what you cannot, perhaps, understand!"

But at this point he interrupted her with a violent movement that threw the bottle of wine to the stone floor where the contents spilled in a red flood. "Once and for all," he cried, articulating the words with difficulty, "I want you to know that I will not listen to your analysis. I may deplore your interest in—in St. Ives—I do deplore it, but I do not wish to hear anything of it."

He had put a special accent on the word interest and Rachel once more closely examined his face. Was it possible that he purposely misconstrued the situation and chose to close his eyes to what he believed—or had he understood her? "For it is possible for a woman, as well as a man," she told herself vehemently, "to love two, and to love each differently." Gallant, courageous little heart! Thus did she disguise the truth even from herself.

The wine pouring from the bottle had splashed the bedroom slippers of light felt which she had slipped over her bare feet. Now with a movement, wholly womanly, she bent and tried to remove the spots by rubbing them with her hand, while the loosened mass of her hair, dropping forward, half enveloped her like a veil.

Simon's eyes gleamed, but he instantly averted his gaze.

"What do you mean by coming down here?" he said harshly. "It is too damp for you. Go upstairs."

Rachel lifted herself and made a trembling movement toward him. He tried to ignore her; then seizing her arm, from which the loose sleeve fell back, he pressed his lips to it once and pushed her from him. "Go upstairs;" he repeated in a voice which she scarcely recognized, and as he turned away she saw that tears were forcing themselves from beneath his tightly-closed lids and running down his convulsed face.

His repulse of her had been so violent that the hand which she flung out to save herself was cut against the rough masonry of the wall. In silence she looked at the wound, and an infinite tenderness and pity replaced the stern and mournful expression on her face. Without a word she mounted the stairs.

CHAPTER IV
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO STOP LOVING

For six weeks she kept steadfastly away from the place in John Street. When by herself, she would often clasp her hands very tightly and raise them above her head while sounds between sighs and sobs escaped from her breast. But from Simon she carefully concealed every sign of her misery. She strove to exhibit more interest in all that interested him.

Julia Burgdorf dropped in one evening and finding them together at the pianola, pronounced them a model couple. Julia had come to offer them her country house on Long Island during her own absence in Europe that summer.

"Gray Arches is a lonely, remote, romantic spot,—in fact, just the place for a pair of lovers like you two," she declared looking from one to the other with sarcastic amusement.

The place, which consisted of a large house, gardener's cottage, and stables, had fallen but recently into her hands, she went on to explain, and she had learned through her agent that it was somewhat out of repair as it had not been occupied for three years.

"You can understand, Simon, that I don't want to bother about putting it in shape this year," she concluded, "and as Mr. Gunther assures me that the house can be occupied as it stands, I shall count it a favour if you and Rachel will go and live in it as it is."

But Simon had no wish to be under obligation to Julia, and the matter was settled by his agreeing to rent the place, an arrangement that nettled her. When she rose to go her cheeks were flushed.

Rachel accompanied her to the hall and, as she was leaving, Julia turned and laid her hands on the other's shoulders.

"You are a model couple, aren't you?" she insisted, with an enigmatical smile in her handsome, dark, heavy-lidded eyes.

This smile, which gave her face a resemblance to Simon's, caused the young wife to colour deeply.

Rachel's confession produced no change in Simon's attitude toward her. He remained as attentive and considerate, and yet as restrained in his manner as before, with the difference that he now made a point of keeping her informed of Emil's progress. The new organ attachment promised so well that the Company were hopeful and the inventor was supplied with every facility for proceeding with his work. By vibrating the strings of a piano by means of electrical induction, rather than by striking them with hammers, a strange and ethereal result was obtained, and these tones combined with those of a pipe organ produced an effect absolutely novel in musical expression.

As Rachel listened to Simon's attempted description of the complicated contrivance, she was obliged to bend her head over whatever work she held, to conceal the joyous expression of her face. Until Emil should justify the interest shown in him, she could not help feeling responsible, not alone to her husband but to all the other members of the Company which had been incorporated without sufficient capital.

"St. Ives is even growing businesslike in his treatment of us," Simon remarked one morning in a voice from which he carefully excluded all trace of personal feeling. "He telephoned very early to say that he is called out of town by the illness of his mother. If he finds that her condition is serious, he may be gone some days. So I think, my dear," he concluded, "you had better go round and see Mrs. St. Ives. It must be lonely for her there, and you might take her to drive."

An hour later Rachel showed herself in John Street. Walking along the passage she glanced into Emil's workroom where the organ now occupied half the available space. It was deserted except for Lulu. Crouched on the window ledge, she was pensively cherishing a maple leaf someone had given her. She had removed the substance of the leaf from between the veins, now only its framework remained, and this she held closely to her breast. At Rachel's step she looked over her shoulder and an inscrutable sadness appeared in her little eyes.

Rachel tapped at Annie's door, which was thrown open to her with startling suddenness. Annie was all ready for the street and a suit-case stood on the floor. The room exhibited the utmost confusion.

"Where are you going?" Rachel cried.

"To my father's. He's written me several times saying that I may come home if I'll leave Alexander; and I'm going to leave him and I'm never coming back either." A sob caught Annie's breath as she strove to button her glove.

Rachel took the wrist and fastened the glove. "But you're not going to leave him now when he's in such trouble about his mother, are you?"

"Yes I am. I offered to go with him this morning when he got word of her illness, but he wouldn't let me. He said I'd always been hateful about her and I shouldn't trouble her now she was dying. He insulted me;" and stooping, Annie picked up the suit-case. "Please let me pass," she said with dismal dignity. "You don't know what you're talking about when you advise me to stay with him. I'm no use to him, he shows that every day; and why shouldn't I live comfortable? Besides," she added, and she glanced about her apprehensively, "I'm afraid here."

Hastening down the passageway, she entered Emil's workroom and pointed through the skylight:

"They've been spying down here with a telescope ever since Alexander left early this morning to see what he's working on."

The neighbouring office building was very tall and in one of the upper windows the round eye of a telescope was to be seen.

"They manufacture organs themselves," Annie explained, "and first one and then another of them has been hanging around here for a long time. Now it's a fair-haired man with a pock-marked face and sometimes it's a little black Jew. They always have some excuse; but I've warned Alexander."

"Why don't you cover up things?" Rachel interrupted her, and divesting the couch of its Bagdad covering, she threw it over the metal plate, strings and sounding-board of the piano which stood on the floor.

Annie cast a glance over her shoulder. "You'd better cover up those wires that pass through the wall," she said, "they're connected with the battery and that's what they're crazy to find out about."

Rachel adjusted the covering; then she ran after Annie, who had gained the outer door. She caught her by the shoulders and twitched her about. "But why didn't you do it yourself?" she cried. "What do you mean by not doing it, you—you little coward? Your husband's a genius; but that's all you care!"

Annie with difficulty rid herself of the other's grasp and backed off. "I don't care if he's a genius a thousand times over," she cried hysterically, "I guess he isn't the only one to be thought of! Oh, he had no right to leave me this way with the janitress and everyone gone!" Sobs rose in her throat.

Turning to the door, she ran out upon the landing; but Rachel's voice, keyed to a pitch of indignation, pursued her.

"You would leave this place all alone, would you? You are not even going to close the windows but leave everything open?"

Annie made a helpless gesture as she descended the stairs. "It won't be alone; Ding Dong will be along in a few minutes and he'll attend to everything."

Rachel remained staring after her for a moment; then, her eyes blazing with disdain, she closed the door. Pride kept her from bolting it. Returning to the workroom she sat down beside the bench and occasionally she glanced up at the telescope. Though she told herself that Annie had imagined the whole situation, she was relieved to find that the watcher had forsaken his post. As for the quarrel, it must have been of a more serious nature than usual. However, Annie would not remain away for any length of time.

This was the noon hour and owing to a slight diminution in the roar of the city the ticking of a clock could be heard through the room. For a time Rachel's face wore the scornful look it had worn in Annie's presence, but gradually this expression gave place to undisguised enthusiasm. Taking the tools one by one into her hands, she examined them, wondering about their use. A radiometer on which Emil was engaged in making improvements, stood at her elbow; drawing this to her with both hands, she began patting it after the fashion of a mother caressing the head of a child. Finally she rested her hot cheek against the polished surface and closed her eyes. Lulu, who had been observing her intently from the loftiest pipe of the organ, crept to a position at her shoulder. There, crouched amid a clutter of tools and instruments, she continued to cherish the maple leaf. Had an observer been present, the two might have suggested to his mind a group by Albrecht DÜrer; for the sentimental look in the face of the little animal was a droll reflection of the devotion in the face of the woman. Presently a tear stole down Rachel's cheek. She had just lifted her hand to brush it away when she heard a step in the passage. Thinking Ding Dong had come, she turned to the door; but a large light-haired man with a pock-marked face stood before her.

Both started. The stranger instantly recovered himself.

"Good afternoon, madam," he said, removing his hat with a flourish; "can you tell me if Mr. St. Ives is in?"

Rachel stood up; one of her hands rested on the piano sounding-board. "No, he is not."

"Mrs. St. Ives, then?"

She made no reply.

The man stared at her uneasily. "That is unfortunate," he said after a moment, as if she had replied to his question. "However, it doesn't matter," with a smile, showing two rows of strong yellow teeth; "I'm an expert mechanic and Mr. St. Ives asked me to step round and take a look at a model he's at work on. It's a piano attachment, and there's some ticklish point about which he wanted my advice. If you'll excuse me," he added blandly, "that is the model just behind you, I think. I'll examine it and make my report to him."

He advanced but Rachel did not alter her position. The colour had fled her cheek, but in her dark eyes a spark had kindled and this grew steadily larger. Until he was within a foot of her, she looked fixedly at the dirty tie that encircled his throat; then as his hand moved to twitch the drapery from the sounding-board, she suddenly lifted a glance in which there was a menacing fury.

His arm dropped and a tremour passed over him similar to the quivering that agitates the hide of an animal unexpectedly checked in a spring. For a perceptible space, while the clock ticked monotonously through the quiet room, measuring off the silence, he stood with his chin thrust forward. Then an ugly expression crossed his face and the veins swelled in his forehead.

"I don't want to touch a lady, of course," he said in an under voice, "but I came to examine that model and I'm going to examine it. As for you," and it was as if an oath spilled with the words, "you stand out of the way. Won't eh?" he exclaimed.

He shot out a hand.

But at that moment he was seized from behind by a pair of powerful arms. Fairly growling with rage, Ding Dong dragged the intruder to his knees and the two rolled on the floor. The confusion caused by the scuffle was terrific. Lulu, scudding to the top of the organ, uttered shriek after shriek as she grasped frantically at her breast with both hands. Skirting the heaving forms, Rachel fled down to the street.

But one idea stood out in her mind. As it chanced, an officer was lounging near the doorway and she plucked his sleeve. "Go—go up there!" she cried, "St. Ives's workroom—a thief has just entered!"

Before she had finished the officer was mounting the stairs.

Her first impulse was to get into her carriage, which, with Peter on the box, was waiting beside the curb. Then reflecting that Ding Dong could not speak a word to the officer, she returned to the scene of the conflict.

Attracted by the sight of the officer, men and boys, scenting excitement, flocked up the stairs from the other floors. When Rachel gained the door of the workroom the intruder was clearing the blood from his face, and the officer, who evidently had accepted a bribe, was swinging his club and ordering the onlookers to depart. Still perched on the organ, the monkey, to the delight of the spectators, continued to chatter with fright. Rachel looked at the officer.

"Arrest that man. Why do you not arrest him?"

The officer ceased smiling. "On what charge, madam? He says he came here to do some work; well, that's all right!"

"He came here to steal the idea of an invention."

"An idea? I've searched him without finding anything of the kind."

At this fine piece of wit, the spectators, most of them beardless boys, snickered.

"However, madam," the officer continued, "I'm willing to haul them both to the station if you say the word, and I take it you're willing to press the charge, that is, appear against him?"

"No,—I shall not do that," she said, pausing between her words, for the light in which Simon would view the matter came to her. "Is there no other way?"

"None that I ever heard of. If you want a man put in jail,—well, you have to appear and tell why you want it."

She was in her carriage. Sinking into the corner, she ordered the man to drive home. "And Peter, perhaps you'd better hurry," she added after a moment. With that small portion of her brain which was not seething with anger and which persisted in considering that insignificant feature of the affair, it seemed to her that the man who had overtaken her and wished to question her, was in all likelihood a reporter.

And when she reached home, in spite of her gloomy fury at the frustration of her act of vengeance, the small apprehension persisted. The newspaper man, when he learned of her identity from the bystanders, would of course appear to interview her; and however justifiable her action might be, she knew that Simon would not forgive her if any publicity were given the affair. To avert trouble, she decided to take the afternoon train to Julia Burgdorf's country house on Long Island. She had been there twice with Simon and a telegram to the woman in charge would be sufficient. Going to the telephone, she called up the shop; but Simon was absent, and she urged Victor Mudge to have a watchman sent to John Street. Then leaving a note for her husband, she started at once.

It was late in the afternoon when she arrived at Gray Arches and the sun was nearing the horizon. After dinner, which was set out for her in a glass-enclosed corner of one of the arched porches that gave the house its name, she went to the beach.

The ocean spread out before her with its salt, fresh scent; its vivifying breath blowing upon the beach, piled up little hillocks of sand. Sitting on the sand, propped up on both arms, Rachel steadfastly regarded the ocean and her mind returned to Emil. The next day, being Sunday, Simon would, no doubt, follow her. Perhaps he would have received further news of Emil's mother. If she died, how would Emil bear it? As he had no philosophy, a great grief might wreck him. And what could he hold to? Not Annie,—Annie was a broken reed;—not herself,—Simon would not permit it.

Love was the powerful, mysterious, secret influence at work everywhere. Undermining, building up, overthrowing, replacing,—it was like a mighty sea penned in each fragile human breast. Locking her hands about her knees, Rachel watched the waves. And the waves approached, grew mighty, curled over, disappeared; approached, grew mighty, curled over, disappeared.

It was about midnight when she rose.

"No, no, it isn't necessary, and I cannot. I cannot!" she repeated, lifting her face to the stars which seemed to rain down upon her a beneficent and vital influence.

She was awakened early the following morning by a tap at her door: "Madam, Mr. Hart is here. As soon as it is convenient, he would like to see you."

Rachel hastily dressed herself. She believed she thoroughly knew her husband, but she was amazed at the expression of his face when she ran down the stairs. He was standing in the little glass-enclosed end of the porch, where breakfast was laid, and through the small panes she saw the flowers nodding brightly. He was looking toward the ocean without seeing it, his brows contracted, his clean-shaven jaw and cleft chin twitching slightly. In his hand he held a newspaper.

She approached. Another woman might have tried the effect of a warm greeting, for it was a question whether, even in his present state, he would have been able to resist her. But Rachel scorned to make the attempt.

"What is it, Simon?" she asked quietly.

For answer, still with averted eyes, he handed her the paper.

It was folded in such a manner as to exhibit an article surrounded by a blue line. The article was a short amusing account of the incident of the day before, and in it the frightened monkey and all the odd paraphernalia of the inventor's workshop played an important part. Barring the headline "Jeweller's Wife hastens to protect Invention of Young Genius," there was nothing even remotely offensive in it.

"Well?" she remarked, after running her eye over the article; then she returned the paper.

For answer he twisted it into a ball and flung it from him. "I will ask you to remember hereafter," he said, speaking so rapidly that he stammered, "the dignity of the name you bear. I do not relish having it exploited in this way."

"But what else could I do, Simon? Should I have sat there calmly and allowed that man to steal Emil's idea?"

"Emil!" he repeated, flushing with indignation. "Is the protection of that—that device of more importance to you than the protection of my dignity? You considered St. Ives, I grant that: that was to be expected. But you did not consider me."

"I considered you all—-Emil, the Company, you, everyone; and what I did was absolutely right, absolutely! I insist upon it."

"For a lady your action was an unbecoming one," he declared icily.

She gazed upon him with flashing eyes from under contorted brows.

"You say this; you believe it? Very well then, misconstrue what I did if you choose, torture me, doubt me!" she began fiercely. But suddenly her thoughts of the evening before returned to her. Something oppressive filled her breast and rose in her throat.

"But I do not doubt you," he said, checked by the intensity of anguish her features exhibited. He even put out his hand.

But seizing her head in both hands, she pushed by him and rushed upstairs.

Her door was not opened until the next morning; then Rachel, all wild and staring, threw it wide. A low fever had set in. Emily Short arrived with her fund of common sense and her knitting work (she was knitting comforters for her special charges among the children)—and stationed herself at the bedside.

What surprised them all was Rachel's prostration which continued long after the fever had left her. Turning her face to the wall, she seldom spoke. When her husband entered the room, she looked at him sometimes entreatingly, sometimes pityingly; one day, drawing his head down on her breast, she wept over him. Then she put him gently from her, and for a long time after, lay like one dead.

Often in the night, when Emily Short, thinking that at last she slept, bent over her, she discovered her lying rigid and still, with her face bathed in tears. One night in the third week of her illness, when Emily came to the bedside, Rachel looked up at her.

"How is it possible—" she whispered.

Emily bent lower, "How is what possible, dear?"

In the silence of the room the words were breathed rather than spoken, "—to stop loving?"

Emily gave a little start, she scratched her head with her crochet needle; then the work slipped to the floor and she hid her worn face.

Rachel, folding her arms on her breast, stared with the dumb intensity of despair at the circle of light which flickered on the ceiling.

CHAPTER V
LOVE BY THE SEA

The road to Gray Arches runs for part of the way past smart summer cottages, but soon the spaces between the cottages grow longer, until the road, ambling on through that bright seaside country, suggests a string from which many beads are missing. In fact for quite five miles the road resembles a little empty, dust-coloured ribbon almost hidden in the lush marsh grass. But suddenly Gray Arches appears, the pendant of the ornament of which the railroad station is the clasp. However, the pendant is no match for the clasp; for the station fairly shines with paint whereas Gray Arches is as dull as a piece of old silver; the windows of the station gleam like imitation diamonds, whereas those of Gray Arches are the turbid green of clouded emeralds. None the less, the pendant is a handsome thing of princely value—a real mansion, though an ancient one in a sad state of neglect.

Under a sky littered with huge cumulus clouds fleecy as cotton, the house, in its wide lawn, seemed asleep. But something besides the sea out there, running up in little rippling waves to kiss the curve of the sandy beach, for all the world like children clambering a mother's knees,—something besides the sea was astir. With his pale and somewhat stealthy look Simon appeared in the glass door. Then he stepped out on the gravel path, and with his dignified and careful tread, he began pacing up and down. Up and down beneath the luxuriant, low-hanging boughs of the evergreen trees that still wore their mantle of dew, he walked. Despite his deliberate movements, a half-concealed eagerness showed itself in his eyes as he glanced from time to time at an upper window shaded by a striped awning. Presently he paused and stooping, picked up a shell. Holding it delicately between his thumb and forefinger, Simon studied it as he would have studied a jewel. But the next moment he tossed it aside. One watching him would scarcely have judged that a singular happiness pervaded his meditations on this particular morning, for his thoughts were written in cipher on his long pale face. He had some news for Rachel and was anticipating her pleasure in it.

Simon's jealousy of St. Ives was now at an end, or so he believed. He had never felt that Rachel really cared for Emil, and now he told himself with a sigh of thankfulness, that his hatred of the inventor no longer existed. During Rachel's illness, for which he looked upon himself as in a measure responsible, the agony of contrition he had experienced had obliterated the other torture. St. Ives he had never liked, nor did he like him now; but when he learned that the building in which Emil's workshops were located was to be extensively altered during the summer, and that these repairs would make it an inconvenient, if not an impossible place in which to carry on important work, he had acted at once.

In his present state of mind it had been a simple, even a gratifying thing for him to arrange to have Emil and all that pertained to the organ attachment, transferred temporarily to the gardener's cottage on this country estate. This action, defining his own position as nothing else could, had brought with it an immeasurable sense of relief. Morbidly constituted as he was, his own position in the matter was of paramount importance to Simon, and so engrossed was he in this supposed release from jealousy that Emil and Annie figured as scarcely more than the necessary factors for carrying out a course of conduct he had outlined. That his mood was overstrained; that it was one of those misleading, reactionary impulses to which sensitive peaceful natures are particularly prone, he never suspected. For the sake of maintaining his present lofty attitude, Simon was capable of blinding himself for a time to anything that might again threaten his repose.

By taking down a partition in the gardener's cottage, the organ had been installed, and Emil and Annie were living there now in great comfort. Filled with reproaches and recriminations, the visit which Annie had paid to her parents had been a mistake, but this the young girl did not acknowledge; nor did she confess that, despite her unhappiness with her husband, she was not able to live without him. When Mrs. St. Ives had recovered from the illness which had attacked her, Annie had rejoined Emil very simply; now in these new conditions she was even growing fresh and pretty. Simon, who had not been unmindful of the young wife when he decided to make the arrangement, could not help seeing that Annie was happier; and, for that matter, that Emil was happier, too. The inventor whistled shrilly over his work, and whenever he heard him, Simon was conscious of the expansive feeling that accompanies a generous action.

Presently there was the grating of a wheeled chair passing over gravel. The chair had been left by a former occupant of the house and Emily had found it, covered with dust, in one of the chambers. Rachel's face was as wan as the face of a martyr in a mediÆval picture, though her cheeks caught a tinge from the pink "cloud" wrapped around her head. Her eyes under their slender brows, held the old vivid passionate look, and her mouth resembled a little bit of pale crumpled velvet in which gleamed, all at once, the fascinating white of her teeth.

Simon approached; then, with a glance at Emily, he kissed his wife's little, white, blue-veined hand which dropped so supplely from its wrist.

"Take me down the path," she commanded. "Oh, how heavenly this air is!—and the sea! Do you know, Simon, illness gives one a new pair of eyes?"

Emily Short looked after the couple uneasily. She had said what she could to Simon to prevent his carrying out his absurd scheme relative to St. Ives; she had objected as strongly as she dared on various pretexts. But Simon, bent on making clear to Rachel how completely he renounced his former attitude toward the inventor, had turned a deaf ear. Now Emily imagined that he was announcing the step he had taken, for from where she stood, she saw Rachel lift her head with a swift, frightened air. Then it slowly sank as though a weight had forced it to her breast.

Standing in the keen sunlight, a little, lean, homely figure with a worn face, Emily sighed. She herself had never known love, yet she sighed and knotted her fingers tightly together beneath her apron.

It was evident that Rachel did not wish to go in the direction of the gardener's cottage, for they turned into another path. Half an hour later when she knew Simon had left his wife in order to catch his train for the city, Emily went in search of the invalid. She found her drawn up in the shelter of a small, half-ruinous summer-house overrun with vines which stood at one corner of the grounds. As Emily approached, she saw Rachel crane forward, with her hands gripping the arms of the wheeled chair. A wonderful unrestrained tenderness beamed in her face.

Passing not twenty feet away and visible through the intricacies of the wall of leaves was Emil St. Ives. The stuff of his shirt rippled in the breeze and the material clung to his muscular shoulders; his hair was in a tousle, his lips, surrounded by their curling beard, emitted a gay shrillness of sound; he was whistling as a bird sings. Abruptly Rachel dropped back in the chair. Without looking at Emily, she signified a desire to return to the house.

Emily pushed the chair into the sunlight and the little group crept up the path; while, all unconscious, Emil went leaping down the sands to bathe in the sea.

During her illness, Rachel had been besieged by feverish thoughts. Not a phase of the situation but she had gone over innumerable times. Finally her resolution was taken: she would see Emil no more. The decision was an arduous one and she raged to make it. Love for one man, overmastering love, as Nature wills it, was in conflict with unswerving loyalty to another; and this latter feeling likewise had its roots in the very foundation of her character, so that her woman's heart had been for a season a disputed field, and the conflict had protracted her illness.

But when she rose at last, pitiful tender, heroic,—all woman in that she dreamed she had immolated the feeling that threatened the peace of her husband—lo, the situation awaiting her put her plans to confusion. Her husband's unexpected move had made her course a difficult if not an impossible one.

For more than three weeks by employing every stratagem, she succeeded in avoiding the inventor, and when the housemaid brought word, as she did on several occasions, that both Emil and Annie had come over to call on her, she pleaded weariness and refused to see them. But as her strength returned, this excuse failed, and she spent many hours with Emily, who had been persuaded to remain and carry on her trade of toy-making in an unused room of the house. Had Simon permitted it, Rachel would have returned to the city, but both her husband and the doctor opposed the move on the ground of her recent illness.

It was a state of things which could not endure.

One morning Emil came upon Rachel sitting on the sand. Worn out by her efforts to avoid him, beyond turning her face obstinately in the other direction, she made no attempt to escape.

As he advanced he examined her with his laughing eyes. "So I've found you at last!" he cried joyously.

After a moment, because there was nothing else to do, she turned her face to his.

"But you're not much of an invalid, are you?" he cried an surprise, and seated himself not far off. "You look," he said, indicating the sea, "as strong as those waves."

Hot blushes were uncommon with her, but now the unreasoning colour mounted full tide beneath her tanned skin. "Yes," she assented coldly, "I'm quite myself now;" and she began taking the sand into her hands and letting it trickle between her fingers.

"Well, why haven't you been over to see my new workroom?" he demanded in a different tone, as he followed these movements. "You don't take much interest in your neighbours, it strikes me."

She steadily regarded the sea. "So far I haven't done anything," she said in a low voice, and then added, as if the words were forced from her, "I shall go back to the city when the doctor will allow it."

"What would be the sense of that?" he demanded in amazement. "Why it's fine here! Just the place for you. Is it possible you don't like it?"

Rachel's lip curled slightly. "Where's Annie?" she asked after a moment's pause.

Emil turned his head. "Why she's somewhere about; she came down on the beach a little while ago."

"Won't you find her? I should like to see her."

Nonplussed, he lifted himself from the sand. After staring about, he struck off in search of his wife. But when Annie appeared by his side, wrinkling up her face in the sunlight and holding out her hand, Rachel had little to say. Immediately afterward she left them.

A few days later as she was crossing the lawn, Rachel met Emil and he accosted her. This time there was umbrage in his tone.

"I say," he cried, and he placed himself directly in her path, "why don't you ever come over and let me show you that organ attachment? I can play for you now, in a sort of way; in fact I'm quite a musician."

Again she avoided his look and attempted to put him off. "I have promised to drive over to the station this afternoon and meet Mr. Hart," she said, "but I will come—sometime."

"But when?" he demanded, scowling at her, and his countenance was no longer good natured but fierce and aggressive. "You used to show some interest in my work, but now you withdraw it all of a sudden—just like a woman. And I tell you, I can't finish the thing without it," he concluded angrily. "I can't go on alone—you've accustomed me to something else."

A shiver ran through her like that which takes a young bird that feels the air for the first time beneath its tentatively fluttering wings. Her impulse was to sail away in the atmosphere of love his crude unconscious confession breathed about her. She dared not raise her eyes because of the involuntary joy that filled them.

"I'll come over this evening with Simon," she said, softly. And everything about himself and about herself she loved passionately.

Life, by all of us, is felt vaguely to be a tapestry of which we see the under side. But now in a flash Rachel saw the pattern that Fate was weaving imperturbably; a pattern premeditated from the beginning; and well she knew that nothing she could do or he could do, could stay that weaving hand. Though no word of love was ever spoken, the design in all its beauty was complete, for words and acts are human lumber, unessential to the accomplishment of the spiritual miracle; present, they follow the design inaccurately; absent, the design is seen the clearer because of no gross accompaniment. And Rachel wondered if Emil saw at last what she saw; if he did not now, he would see,—he would! And neither was any more responsible for the fact that filled the world with new meaning than he was responsible for the fact of life. From these meditations she roused herself, emerging as from an enchanted mist.

"I'll come over this evening with Simon," she repeated, and Emil, who had been staring at her, drew himself up and reluctantly accepted the promise.

When he moved away from her, his face wore an expression of astonishment.

As Ding Dong had gone to the city on an errand for Emil and did not return on the usual train in the evening, there was no one at the cottage to pump the organ, for Simon evidently considered it beneath his dignity to perform so menial a service. He sat in a rocking-chair near a window, and from time to time with a meditative eye, he scanned the walls of the room which were decorated with mottoes and lithographs in colours. He was estimating the probable cost of replacing the partition when Emil should have finished with the cottage.

The inventor, restless and keenly disappointed, went again and again to the outer door, where he remained straining his eyes through the salty darkness, though there was no chance now that Ding Dong would appear until morning. Rachel sat by a little table turning over the leaves of a current magazine with her long fingers; she was impatient with her husband and whenever Emil entered the room, she looked at him, and her face between the loopings of her hair, had a faint, remote, mysterious smile.

Annie issued from the kitchen and going up to Emil leaned against his shoulder, and he nonchalantly encircled her little figure. Instantly, Rachel grew hot all over with a violent jealousy such as she had never before experienced.

All the way home while she walked by Simon's side and felt beneath her elbow his thin fingers supporting her, her hands beneath her cloak were pressed against her heart. Oh, the intensity of her love and the paleness of his! She had a picture of Life irrevocably linked to Death. With the vision came such a sense of desolation that, turning her face aside, she sobbed under her breath.

The miracle was rapidly accomplishing; she was passing out of herself,—out of her scruples, her pity, her fears.

She was wandering on the sands and knew not where she went, save that the need for movement was imperative. She had left Gray Arches far behind. What matter that from the dun-coloured clouds a slant of rain descended, straight and fine as the locks a princess engaged in combing her hair? Secretly, noiselessly, the rain touched the sands, save at intervals when a land breeze seized it; then these liquid tresses were torn and tangled into drifting masses as by the hand of a rude lover who violently seizes the locks of his mistress. And the rain hissed as it met the sands and ran away in little curling, twisting rivulets like serpents.

Enjoying the caress of the moisture on her face, Rachel walked on. The vigour of her childhood was in her limbs, the spirit of it in her heart, and she remembered her old turbulent longing for freedom. But love was the supreme liberator. And in an ecstasy, she drew herself together and her craving for this supposed liberation of the spirit was so intense and penetrating, that she wavered uncertainly as if about to fall.

At that instant, a voice, muffled by the falling of the rain and the soft plash of the waves on the beach, reached her. It came to her out of the distance; but the space that separated her from him who called was so great and the curtain of rain that divided them, at the moment, so dense, that she could not see him. Yet that voice in which no words were distinguishable, quickened and reanimated her. For an instant with her arms curved fearfully above her head, she looked back.

A spot on that barren coast was growing larger, it was moving toward her; and all at once the breeze brought her the message above the wash of the waves.

"W-a-i-t! W-a-i-t!"

Emil was hallooing, he was calling to her with his hand to his lips. Suddenly he broke into a run, and the impulse of flight was communicated to her.

With bated breath she sped before him, and she was conscious that he took up the chase after a momentary pause of amazement.

Across those sands pitted by rain, once more the old race was run, the exciting elemental pursuit of woman by man. And as if in joy the waves lapped the beach with a sound of applause, and the rain, as if delighted at this return of happy antique life, now baffled and pelted and blinded the pair, and now, in a lull, revealed them each to the other.

Rachel's hair, escaping its bonds, streamed behind her; her skirts impeded her movements; yet wildly, excitedly, across that expanse of sand, she ran. And the blood beat exultantly in her veins and she felt that the goal toward which she was making was that fugitive band of colour that persisted, despite the drifting mist, at the end of the beach. Through this uncertain band of colour, the sky, elsewhere dull and scattered with clouds, appeared to be smiling with huge, mobile, kindly lips. Ah, if she could but bathe in the light of that understanding smile which the sky cast over the beach! A piece of driftwood brought her precipitately to a halt, but instantly she was up and away like a sea-bird.

He who followed with long strides was gaining on her, plainly he was gaining on her. With her skirts and her shorter stature, she was no match for him. Finally, with both hands clasped beneath her bosom, she sank to her knees. Her sight swam, she gasped for breath. They had traversed in this way a distance of a quarter of a mile. The only object in sight was an old fishing-boat, drawn up on the sands. On this boat her glance rested. The next moment she saw Emil. As he ran, something emanated from him.

Instantly she was up; and straight and slim and fleet, she darted across his path and was into the old fishing boat. There was but one oar, and, as she pushed off, a burst of fresh laughter gurgled in her throat and illuminated her face. The tide, in tantalizing fashion, carried her beyond his reach and she saw him stop. Then his eyes, imperative and gleaming, like two fierce lights, sought hers. After that look he waded into the water; then swam.

Two or three strokes and he was beside the skiff. When he grasped its edge with his dripping fingers, that shone out white and strong in the steadily increasing light, Rachel laid hold of his clothing.

Their heads were on a level—they exchanged a look.

Wild, flashing, dominating, it leapt from his face, all pale and streaming with water, to hers; and all the secret of her woman's heart mounted to her eyes; they were no longer mysterious, but frank as daylight, revealing.

The sun which, like a curious watcher, had cleared the cloud-bank, beat upon the sea in joyous fashion, and the waves beat upon the sand; and all along the beach and in the air and in the waters under the boat, there was a murmur as if Nature, the great mother, sighed in the fulness of her content.

CHAPTER VI
THE INSISTENT PAST

As in death there takes place a loosening, a lifting, a withdrawing of the spiritual part, so, too, in love. The soul, made daring through love, seeks to support a separate existence; but the attempt is pitiful, doomed to frustration; for clamorous and insistent, the ordinary conditions of life make themselves felt. The descent in Rachel's case to the normal state, wherein duties and scruples play their part, was realized at the moment Emil climbed into the boat.

Before starting for the beach she had put on her head a travelling cap that belonged to Simon. It had been almost made way with by the wind; but, still held by its long pin, it had slipped to her shoulders with the mass of her hair. Now, with the oscillation of the skiff caused by Emil's movements as he drew himself from the water, the cap dropped to the seat beside her, and thence was carried by a puff of wind to the floor of the boat. Not a garment of Simon's but closely resembled him; this cap of hunter's green with a tiny stripe of red in the flannel, was instinct with his personality. As it lay before her, Rachel shuddered and the expression that filled her eyes kept Emil from any indiscretion into which the situation might otherwise have betrayed him. Before the mute appeal of her look he was powerless.

She crouched in the end of the boat and with a motion of the hand indicated that he was to put back to the land. Before obeying, he wrung the water from the sleeves of his coat. He was trembling and as she perceived the power of his love, perceived the amazing and terrifying force leaping out upon her from under his scowling brows,—a sudden pity took her; and she dared not look upon him because of that tenderness which is more disarming to a woman than her fear.

"Well, that was a race!" he remarked unsteadily. "Are you tired?"

"Not very—a little."

"I'll row you home."

"With one oar?"

"There's another on the beach that you didn't see."

"I didn't take the time to look."

As the boat had drifted with the tide, the return to the shore was accomplished with difficulty. When he was once more seated opposite her, rowing with even strokes, he noticed that she shivered and a gentleness softened his face.

"You are very cold, aren't you?"

"The air has changed."

"Here, take my coat; it's soaking, but your dress is soaking too."

"It's—very heavy. I don't see how you ever swam in it; it's weighted down,—" and from the pockets she drew forth first a coil of wire, then a wrench, then several drills.

He watched her and delight shone in his face.

"I could have swum the Atlantic in armour to reach you. Do you know, you look like a mermaid with your hair hanging down that way." He was laughing now and the old lazy fondness sounded in his voice. Leaning toward her he rested on the oars. "Rachel, why did you run away from me like that?" he asked, smiling confidentially, and suddenly one of his hands went out to hers.

She drew back and for a moment enveloped herself in taciturnity, but all at once, as if compelled, she brought a defiant glance around to meet his.

"Why because you started to run—and I ran, too."

"Well, it's useless; you can never elude me again. Do you know," he continued, "it seems to me that this crazy race has been going on ever since the first time I saw you in the mist? Do you remember the day? You were perched on a rock, I recollect, and the cow—you were leading a cow—pushed up behind you in such a way that her horns curved up about your feet for all the world like a little crescent moon. I swear it had that look. Lord, but you made a picture! Do you remember the day?"

"Yes, I remember the time, but I didn't know I looked like that."

She opened her eyes very wide and her lips parted with the movement of an expanding flower. Vanity kindled in her face as light kindles in a jewel. There is in a woman's inner nature a sensitive something that constitutes the very essence of her charm, that informs her physical features with vivacity, with seduction. The craving to have this secret attribute recognized, causes her to discover in every compliment a spiritual significance; causes her to wrap herself in its fancied meaning, as in a shawl; causes her to live in it, breathe it in—in short to discover in it an atmosphere of inspiration in which she manages to exist for the briefest fraction of time. Indeed, the longing for the caress of words addressed to her very soul, is as natural to an imaginative and ardent woman, as the longing for the caress of light is to a flower. And with Rachel, as with many another young girl of New England traditions, the craving had never been gratified. Now Emil's praise of her was so alluring that she was trapped into listening; had he paused for a word, involuntarily she would have supplied it.

But he required no urging to finish his speech which dropped from his lips with all the precipitancy of fruit from an overladen branch.

"You were just like a figure from some church altar," he told her fervently. "Your dress was blue, and the fog rolled about you in clouds. All the same, you know, your expression wasn't exactly saintly; it was too—"

"Too what?" she whispered.

"Well, just what it is now," and with that he looked at her until she was obliged to avert her eyes.

"I mean that your face is very innocent," he explained, "and at the same time, it is all alive with—well, with a sort of curiosity. But to-day you were Diana of the Chase with your skirts all ruffling around your feet and blowing to the side in folds. However I'm not up in mythology; all I know is, my own, you'll never succeed in fencing yourself off from me again. But don't look at me like that!" And with an indefinable glance at her as she sat, suddenly converted to sternness, he took up the oars.

She observed complete silence, and for some moments all that was heard about them was the ripple of the water as it met the sides of the boat. The waves like a lover approached the boat, touching it lightly, tentatively and timidly caressing it with eager lips. But occasionally waves larger than the rest seized the skiff and upbore it as in the powerful embrace of arms, dipped and sank with it; while a sound of multiplied kisses ran over the surface of the glancing ocean, which was tremulous as a breast heaving with love. And the influence of that universal caress mounted to the air, which was like a stinging breath crossed with tears of spray; even reached the low-stooping western heavens where sailed largely great cloud masses, like huge embarrassed lovers, that never the less, with a sudden darting of colour along their edges, strange and fiery smiles, approached—melted softly and completely into one.

The sea was a theatre and the play enacted on that broad expanse, in the swiftly falling twilight, for the bewilderment of that pair of human mites,—the play was Love. For Nature, the great scene shifter, who causes the mists to rise above swamps that she may bring about the love and mating of midges, is the artist incomparable when she sets out to glamour and bend to her will the least significant of these struggling, valiant creatures called men, these creatures that dare, with a law opposed to hers, to defy her.

Rachel had crept to the extreme end of the skiff and when the water rose to the edge it often dashed across her knees. Her head was flung back, but for all that, she saw nothing. She was holding her emotions well in leash and the effort drew from her now and then a sigh. Where the fingers of one hand met the back of the other, for she had them tight clasped, there were white marks on the flesh. She sat before him with the impassive countenance of an image, though internally she was consumed with flames.

Time passed imperceptibly, but all at once she pointed to the shore.

"Emil," she said, in a muffled voice, "there's Gray Arches among the trees. The lamps are lighted. Make haste."

He had been doubling on his course, and, unnoticed by her, even striking out to sea, with the object of delaying the moment of landing. Now the dusk, which had descended insidiously, was close about them.

At her words, he headed the boat for the shore. But after an instant he leaned forward. "Before I take you in, I want you to tell me when I'm to see you again."

She drew herself up: "I don't know when you'll see me—never, I think." She spoke in a throbbing, suppressed way, exactly as if she were forcing back from the edge of her lips and to the depths of her heart, some secret. "There is the pier; don't you see it?"

The young man nodded. "Yes, I see it all right. Rachel, I'm going to Barbieri Brothers to-morrow to see how that marble-cutting device of mine works. Come there in the afternoon and see the machine with me, won't you?"

She shook her head.

"Very well then," and he began paddling out to sea.

"You think you'll frighten me or annoy me," she cried, moved to scorn, "but you won't succeed. I can swim as well as you."

He laughed and the boat, quivering in a bewildered sort of way, once more approached the land, noisily cleaving the water.

"Rachel, you'll come and see that machine, won't you? I'll never ask you again. But it's an interesting thing, really it is, and they're cutting the figures for the Century Library with it. Can't you understand that I'd like to have you see my work? It isn't much that I ask, and you can get the five o'clock train out here if you like. Promise me you'll come."

Through the gloom on the pier she saw a lonely figure intent on the antics of the boat. She looked at Emil and the impulse of her tenderness carried her beyond the barrier imposed by her will. In one instant she had passed beyond the outworks of her usual self. When she answered him in low, vibrant tones, it was a message, if he had but understood, from the very depths of her heart:

"Yes, I'll come—you've no business to ask me, and I've no business to promise; I'll come, but there must be no more of this; it's ended." These words were at once an appeal and a command.

But Emil, ignoring the nervous shrinking that came over her, caught her hand under cover of the gloom and held it to his cheek—his lips. Then cleverly, easily, he brought the boat to the pier.

The next instant Rachel was confronted by her husband. Giving Emil his coat, she stepped from the boat, refusing assistance. As she swayed on gaining the pier, Simon took hold of her arm; then passed his hand over her shoulders.

"Why you're wet—you're wet through," he exclaimed, and as he turned to Emil she noticed that he spoke in a manner unusually cordial and spontaneous. "So you were caught in the rain? If you'll just step to the house, St. Ives, I'll give you something to ward off a chill; a nip of whiskey wouldn't come amiss."

But Emil, muttering something about returning the fisherman's boat, disappeared in the twilight and Rachel, stumbling like one who walks in a dream, accompanied Simon to the house.

"The rain won't harm you, my love," he was saying as they gained the porch, "if you change your clothing at once. It's remaining in damp garments that's the imprudent thing."

As they crossed the threshold Rachel caught his hand. "Simon, I—I want to speak to you." And half dragging, half pushing him, she urged him into the front room.

This room was large and shadowy, with a row of French windows commanding a view of the sea. The shades were drawn and the light from a small fire on the hearth sparkled on a glass dome beneath which were placed specimens of sea moss and shells. The dome stood at one end of a long table and a candelabrum hung with glass prisms at the other end; above one candle hung a red spark,—the wick needed snuffing. The room was damp. As she spoke Rachel, passing her arm behind her, clasped the glass knob of the door.

"Simon—I don't want to stay here any longer."

He confronted her in surprise: "Not stay here any longer? Why, Rachel, you astonish me; I thought you loved the sea."

"So I do—but this coast—it oppresses me. Simon, I want to go back to the city at once, do you understand,—at once; can't we move to-morrow?"

"But you're irrational, my dear. In fact the doctor whom I saw only yesterday, counselled just the opposite course. He said to me, speaking of you, 'the sea air is what she needs; she grew up in such a climate. You keep her on the shore until late fall!"

For a moment Rachel dropped her head against the panels of the door and closed her eyes; then raising her head, she looked intently at her husband:

"Simon, you asked Mr. St. Ives to come here; you asked him without consulting me and now—I want to go away."

For an instant he studied her, then he crossed to her side and took her hand.

"My dear Rachel," he said, "I thought perhaps you understood without anything being said. Rachel, believe me, I have not the feeling now about your friendship with St. Ives that I once had. That feeling of jealousy,—for it was jealousy—I do not deny it—was degrading to us both, but particularly it was insulting to you. And during your illness it left me; thank Heaven, it left me," he repeated. "And now be generous—don't take from me the happiness I feel. You think I objected to your being out with him, but when I saw you in the boat, I was conscious only of a serene friendship for St. Ives."

A flash of firelight illumined his face and she saw to her surprise that his usually enigmatic eyes held a look that completely transformed him. The explanation she had intended to make died on her lips. With a bewildered gesture she turned as if to leave the room; and at that moment they were interrupted. There was a knock, and the caretaker questioningly opened the door.

"If you please, Mrs. Hart," she began, "there's a strange young man down in the kitchen who is asking to see you."

"A young man?"

"Yes, a lad. My husband thinks he ain't just right, he's so sort of wild looking; but the boy says he's from your old home and nothing for it but he must see you."

"Why it's AndrÉ!" Rachel cried in amazement, and, before the woman had finished speaking, she darted from the room.

Simon's voice pursued her: "Your clothing, change it first, I beg of you."

Rachel had vanished.

The next moment she was standing before AndrÉ. Catching him by the arms, she shook him; then pressed her head to his shoulder. "Oh, AndrÉ," she whispered, "Is it you—is it really?" And passing her arms about him, she clung to him.

The young fellow suffered the embrace and his hands hung motionless at his sides, though in his great eyes a spark kindled as he looked down at her.

"Tell me," she asked breathlessly, "how did you ever manage to find me—and what brings you, AndrÉ dear? Explain—tell me everything, but not here," catching sight of the caretaker who had reËntered the kitchen. "Come to the front room where there is a fire.—Simon, this is AndrÉ," she cried as they encountered her husband on his way through the hall. And taking the young fellow's hand, she placed it in Simon's.

"Yes, I'm going now," she added. "I'm dying of curiosity, but I'll change my dress first. And do you make AndrÉ comfortable. I'll be back in a minute," she cried.

Rachel's welcome of her childhood's friend was all the more eager because she looked to him to save her from the difficulties of her situation and from herself. While she dressed, she thought only of AndrÉ and as she drew on a pair of dry shoes and tightened the crossed lacings with excited jerks, she said his name over and over like a child bubbling with joy.

"Now for the news?" she cried, entering the front room; and seating herself beside AndrÉ, she took his hand. "Something special brought you, I know it. Now tell me."

The story at any other time would have held her spellbound, but in her present mood she had difficulty in grasping it. Constantly her thoughts wandered, now to Emil, now to AndrÉ. She drew such profound comfort from the touch of AndrÉ's strong young fingers.

The facts as he related them were as follows: A man in the last stage of consumption and calling himself, "John Smith" had made his appearance in Old Harbour a few days before. Desiring news of Lavina Beckett's daughter, he had asked to be directed to AndrÉ. When he learned from AndrÉ that Rachel was living in New York city, he had burst into tears. He had declared he must see her before he died. He had persuaded AndrÉ to accompany him to the city as he feared to travel farther alone. But before leaving Old Harbour he had deposited a sum of money in the bank and had written a long letter which he addressed to Rachel. On the journey he had read and reread this epistle. He was very weak and when they reached their destination, collapsed in the great bustling station. After much parley over the telephone, a station attendant had arranged for his reception at a hospital. Thither he had been taken. The physician who attended him assured him he would be much stronger after a few hours' rest, and on hearing this, John Smith had begged AndrÉ to find Rachel and bring her to the hospital the following day. "Afternoon's always my best time, bring her then," he had implored.

"I understand; it's poor Father's friend," Rachel whispered dreamily, when AndrÉ concluded; "he didn't send all the money Father gave him that time, and now he wants to give me the rest. That's the whole sad story. But AndrÉ, I can't seem to think about it," she murmured after a moment. "I'll go to the hospital without fail, but now let's talk about you. Do you know, I think you managed splendidly to ferret me out in this way. You went to the house, first, of course, and Theresa told you where I was."

While AndrÉ's voice ran on detailing the news: how his mother and he now performed every duty about the lighthouse as the Captain was in his cups most of the time (Oh, but the Captain, he was a clever one at concealing the state of things!) how Nora Gage had gone into the shop with Katherine Fry, how Zarah Patch had increased the size of his vegetable garden, and Lottie Loveburg had taken up with Jim Wright after all—Rachel scarcely listened to him. A danger confronted her, and, try as she would, she could think of nothing but the decisive interview of the morrow,—that battle that must be waged in spite of her own deadly weakness and overwhelming love.

She asked herself a question. Why at this time, rather than any other, were the facts relating to her father's life to be revealed to her? And, as she sat by AndrÉ's side, she was conscious of a mysterious influence, like a warning, reaching her from the insistent past.

CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH JOHN SMITH UNBURDENS HIS CONSCIENCE

Rachel's mouth was now perfectly formed to express her emotions, as it had not been in early youth. There had come a little added fulness in the curves of the upper lip, a little added sensitiveness in the line of the lower. With its well-defined corners, melting, when she smiled, into a pair of will-o'-the-wisp dimples, this mouth of hers was worthy to form the lure for many an exciting escapade on the part of her lovers. In her intelligent, sometimes perfervid, often gloomy face, it suggested a series of grace-notes introduced wilfully into a bit of serious music. It destroyed the general harmony of her face and increased its fascination. On the morning following the primitive race across the sands, the grace-notes dominated the more serious expression of her personality.

In the depths of her there was plenty of sadness, but the joy which is inseparable from any confession of love, even the love which battles against insurmountable barriers, glowed through her and informed every fibre of her with sparkling animation. She laughed frequently for no apparent cause.

The wide lawns about Gray Arches still glistened with dew and birds sang in the branches of the trees. The notes mingled with the plash of the waves on the distant beach, and with that infinite murmur of sounds that came out of the sunshine, out of the grass, out of the shimmering distances of that smiling country, checkered in light open fields and in dark variegated woods. All around, everywhere, was vivid palpitating life.

Rachel with a huge pair of shears that flashed in the sun, was snipping dead roses from a bush of the late-blooming variety. Brown and withered, they fell on the gravel path—mere ghosts of flowers; and, at every onslaught, all the green leaves of the bush shook and all its fresh blossoms trembled and poured forth an intoxicating perfume as if to thank her for the service. Beside her, seated on the grass, AndrÉ was making the flowers they had gathered into a bouquet. He held in his brown hands nasturtiums, gladioli and dahlias. Occasionally, unable to resist an unusually perfect one, Rachel flung him still another rose.

"There," she said, "that's enough; if I cut any more, I shan't be able to carry them, and the hospital nurse may not let John Smith have them anyway."

A thorn had scratched her wrist, and she lifted the hand to her lips.

AndrÉ regarded her with a vigorous gaze. "Do you know," he said at last, "you look like a rose yourself."

She threw him the shadow of a glance from between half-closed lids. In her morning dress of delicate pink muslin, beneath a shade hat with a flapping brim, she did look like a rose; and a wide collar, turned up over her throat to protect it from the sun, heightened the illusion. Against its colour her cheeks had taken a richer tinge and her eyes, between their curling lashes, were unusually deep and liquid. She was amazingly beautiful with a superadded beauty, with that fleeting and ethereal grace, which, independent of features or contours, touches any woman when she realizes that she is loved where she herself loves. Now, as if anxious to divert AndrÉ's too curious gaze, she began speaking rapidly and almost at random. The air and the sunlight appeared to intoxicate her.

"Have you ever noticed, AndrÉ," she cried, "the boastfulness of Nature when she has anything worth displaying? She is for all the world like a woman who takes particular pride in showing off her children, like that Mrs. Polestacker we both knew who was always calling attention to her Katie's teeth and curls. Take that rose bush," she continued, "it fairly swaggers with pride now that it is covered so finely with roses, but once the flowering season is over, and see how meekly it will obliterate itself; it will retire into the background like an old maid at a dance. For who notices the larkspur when its time is past, or the raspberry bush when it is no longer hung with its little crimson lamps? It is the energy that a growing, living thing puts forth that it would flaunt before us, saying, 'See here, I produced these flowers—these berries!' and it is that energy which attracts us—the immense energy of being." And throwing back her head, her neck on the strain, her arms falling at her sides, with the shears in one hand, she gazed into the deep blue of the sky which, bending down over the earth, was like an inverted sea.

Unconsciously, as in the old days, she spoke her thoughts aloud to AndrÉ. He did not reply; if truth were told, he was in the dark as to her meaning, but that only increased the enchantment.

AndrÉ was Rachel's senior by six years, but owing to his mind in which the impressions were deep but few, he still looked a youth, almost a child. His beauty, agile, simple, unsettled, with admirable disposition of colouring, was that of a child. High on the cheek bones, under the eyes, the blood came and went with his emotions, and his arched lips under his tiny moustache stood a little open, which gave him an innocent expression. He was difficult to resist, just as a child is difficult to resist. Rachel's feeling for him was almost maternal; but for all that, her comprehension of him failed at one point.

When he had first received word of her marriage, AndrÉ had cast himself on the ground, and the earth had seemed to respond with deep tremours to his grief. He had told himself that he would never see her again. As for her husband, he felt that it would be impossible for him to ever meet Simon Hart without yielding to the desire to fly straight at his throat. Yet, he had met him and experienced no emotion of the sort. Something told him that Rachel was not in love with her husband. Still there was that in her eyes which bewildered him. Now with his hands clasped behind his head and his back against a tree, he regarded her with a devotion, a tenderness, a desperation of which none but a pure and youthful soul is capable, and the old agony began to stir again in the depths of his breast.

Ceasing from her ecstatic contemplation of the sky, Rachel looked over at the gardener's cottage. As she did so, all her outlines went to deeper softness. AndrÉ, sensitively, felt the thrill through her of some ineffable emotion.

"What are you thinking about, Rachel?" he demanded.

She started and the colour mounted.

"Thinking?"

"Yes; just now, when you turned and looked over yonder?"

"Oh! ... I was thinking of Mr. St. Ives's improvement of the organ. It's really extraordinary what he has accomplished, AndrÉ; and by such simple means. You must see it. He's carrying on his work over there in the gardener's cottage. And I was comparing his invention and his natural pride in it, to the rose bush and its roses, I suppose."

"St. Ives?" AndrÉ was sitting upright and rigid. "Is he—is he the one who came to Pemoquod that time?"

"Yes. My husband formed a company to represent his inventions. I always felt Mr. St. Ives had great promise," she went on as frankly as she could, "and I persuaded Simon to get up a company. Now he's glad he did."

AndrÉ was wretched. "And he's here?

"Yes; for a few weeks. Mr. Hart was anxious that the work shouldn't be delayed, so he came here while the shop is being altered."

AndrÉ said no more. And Rachel exerted herself to dispel his gloom. So contagious was the vitality of her mood that he apparently forgot the incident.

Presently, bidding him gather up the withered roses that littered the path, and taking into her own hands the bunch of fresh blossoms, she led the way to the house and AndrÉ followed. His old dream, in all its simplicity, once more possessed his heart.

When Rachel arrived at the hospital, John Smith was expecting her. In a clean shirt with his grey hair neatly brushed and his gaunt frame arranged under a spotless sheet, he was eagerly awaiting her. The floor nurse warned her that the interview must be a brief one; the patient could not live more than a day or two.

John Smith's story was substantially what Rachel had surmised it would be, and as he told it with frequent interruptions when the cough racked him, she had difficulty in fixing her thoughts upon him. The vital moment of her own life called her, and try as she would, she could give but a divided attention.

"The fact is, I ain't done just the straight thing by you," he rambled on, "and I'm glad you're as well fixed as you are. It ain't quite the same as if I'd found you in want. However, I've suffered for putting this time off; I've been hectored in ways you wouldn't dream of. Needn't tell me the dead don't take their revenge if you pass over their wishes! I don't mean that they come back or anything of that sort," he interrupted himself, in response to a questioning glance, "but they stick in your mind somehow—you can't forgit how they looked when they told you to do such and such a thing, and you don't do it. But I'll say this much for myself, I meant as much as could be to give you that money when I reached America seventeen years ago, a month or two after your father's death; but I had a hard run of luck, and I used some of it, and then I used more, until it was about all gone. And it was only when I got this cough about three years and a half ago, that I began to think a good bit about Thomas Beckett. Funny too, so long after his death; but I'd see him when I was droppin' off to sleep, and he'd look at me so! But your father didn't do the straight thing either," he broke off with sudden resentment, "for he left your mother, as far as I could gather, to shift for herself.

"As I was saying, perhaps it was my low state of health, but he gave me no rest; seemed as if he was tryin' to say that you needed that money. And finally the thought come to me that perhaps I ought to give your mother at least part of what was owin' her; so I wrote to Old Harbour and you know the rest. You see," he concluded, "when I learned that your mother had been dead more'n twenty years, I was afraid to make myself known. I was fearful some relative or friend'd get after me on your part. So I sent seven hundred dollars along, it was all I'd saved, to that friend of yours whose name the postmaster gave me, and then I left. I went away from the town in Massachusetts where I'd been workin' and I found a job as foreman in a mill in another town. And I thought everything'd be all right then; but do you know, I still dreamed of your father, and the upshot was, that I went to a priest and made a clean breast of the story; and as he told me to do, I worked hard and paid it all up. Yes, I've paid it all up," he finished, "for the balance, the eight hundred dollars that was comin' to you, I deposited in your name in the bank at Old Harbour;" and fumbling in the pocket of his shirt, he handed her a sealed envelope. "There's the deposit slip, and the whole story written out ready to be mailed to you in case I didn't manage to see you," he explained.

His face had grown brighter, had regained a faint expression of health, as the load that had long oppressed his conscience was lifted.

Rachel left the invalid holding admiringly in his bony fingers her bunch of flowers. She reached the door of the ward; then, with a sudden eagerness, she retraced her steps.

"Was my Father a happy man?" she asked, "or did he seem to regret all along what he had done in leaving my Mother?" She waited his answer with bated breath.

But relief was manifest all over John Smith. Had he not triumphantly passed through the ordeal of his confession? At her question his eyes glistened; he laughed a weak, irresponsible laugh.

"No, I don't think he worried much about it till he come to die. It was far-away questions that touched your father more; he was always reading and sometimes he'd argue and git angry. But barring those times, he was pretty jolly as far as I can recollect. It was only when he seen the last port just ahead, that same as me, he seemed to think things over. But, I've done the right thing, and I'm going to git well," he proclaimed.

The same nurse she had seen on coming, met her in the corridor. Rachel directed her to have John Smith moved to a private room with special attendant; then she left the hospital.

For some reason she was relieved that her father had not regretted his course sooner, that he had remained, almost to the last, a true vagabond. As to her one-time hot defence of him on the score of his loyalty to her mother, the point had lost significance.

All that was mettlesome in her character was aroused. Having promised Emil to go to the marble works, she was going there, in the face of fancied influences from the past; in the face, too, of the vigorous warning of her own conscience. The coming interview was absolutely necessary that she might, once and for all, make clear to him her position. In this juggling with conscience most women are adept. Rachel played the game so well as to be almost self-deceived. However, as the moment of the meeting drew near, she grew faint and a tide of irrepressible joy mingled with and almost dominated her misery. When she quitted the hospital she was pale with determination, like a soldier before battle, but her eyes, overflowing with light, were the eyes of a woman in love. Her mind was too full of its own matter to allow her to care about anything else. Does not the surge of passion in one's own breast drown the echo of death and despair from another's heart?

She stopped at one of the large shops where delicacies were for sale, and ordered a basket of fruits and jellies sent to John Smith; then, hailing a cab, she drove to the marble works, which lay in the direction of the Bronx on the outskirts of the city.

CHAPTER VIII
THE PLACE OF THE STATUES

"Is Mr. St. Ives here?"

The question fell into the silence of an office where Barbieri, the proprietor, was writing at a desk.

"Mr. St. Ives? I will send for him. Julian,"—to a boy, who in the doorway was burying his naked feet in the fine white marble dust like snow,—"Mr. St. Ives,—a lady."

"I have come to see the new machine."

"Ah, the new machine? It is very wonderful; it not only points the marble, but cuts it, following the model; and no man touches it. Never anything like it in this country; in France, yes, there is something of the sort, but not perfect like this one."

"As wonderful as that?"

"Si, si,—yes, madam, wonderful."

"And will you show me how it works? I want to see it in operation."

"In operation? Ah, I regret, but to-day, madam, to-day is Saturday; there is no power, no electricity, you understand, no men."

"Then why did he have me come?" she murmured, and caught her lip between her teeth, a trick with her when angry or perplexed.

"Why did you have me come?" she said, addressing the inventor, who with impetuous strides was advancing to meet her.

He paused in his tracks: "I had forgotten that they closed down."

She scanned him with a swift glance.

"Forgive me," he said in an undertone, "really, I had forgotten, Rachel, if I ever knew it. But you must see the place now you are here.—Mr. Barbieri," he added, "I am going to show Mrs. Hart over the works," and he led the way across a narrow court to an adjoining structure.

The marble shop covered an extensive area, and the white light that fell through its glass roof inundated its farthest corner. In this bath of light, in this silence, unbroken by a single sound; in the midst of casts, dust, artistic litter of all sorts, were the statues. Some scarcely blocked from the rough stone, they rose on all sides. They overtopped the miniature plaster models, like giants overtopping pygmies; they elbowed the grotesque machines that are used for enlarging purposes; they crowded the walls; they occupied every foot of space not reserved for the workmen; some even, with their Titan tread, had passed through the lofty doorway and stood among barrels and rubbish in the garish sunlight of the yard. On every side monoliths of stone were being cut into human shape. There was a torso with the girth of a Colossus; over yonder a hand chiseled from a boulder; beyond that, a monumental figure frowning like a tortured Atlas. All in sections—painful, writhing, some of the statues lacked a head, others an arm or a foot, and others had their limbs still entangled in uncut blocks of stone.

It was like a workshop of surgeons of stone men; like a manufactory of the gods where were created marble monsters that suffered with the age and immobility of stone, in which petty human qualities of Fortitude, Justice, Fidelity were being stamped. Hewn out of the womb of the earth, the marble was tortured here to wear man's face, his form; finally it would be set up under the sun to testify with the might of marble limbs to the ideals that govern his heart.

As she viewed the stone population, no one could have told what was passing in Rachel's stormy little breast, for if there was a spark in her eyes that seemed to indicate subterranean depths of passion, the rest of her features were astonishingly passive. Her gloves hampered her, and with nervous gestures she began taking them off. Tense and silent and acutely vital, she stood beside Emil, an expression of all that is baffling and mysterious in woman.

Conscious of a dryness in his throat, he kept his eyes to the statues.

"They are said to be the largest figures ever cut," he murmured. "They are for the pediment of the new Century Library."

"How still they are!"

"Yes, and one rather expects them to speak and move." Suddenly swinging round, he looked her in the eyes. "Oh, my own!" he cried. With uncertain steps he moved toward her.

And swift and strong between them, Fate drew her thread of love; in that electric net of hers, she caught their souls and drew them close together. She took the pair of them, as a fowler takes a bird.

His savage heart dominated by emotion, Emil trembled with a desire to fall at her feet. But she would not own her capture.

"Stop, Emil!" she cried in a suppressed voice; "stop right where you are! I'll not listen to your words! I came here to tell you—"

He looked upon her intently: "You came because you had to come!"

The speech thrilled with the inspiration of conquest.

"Oh, my love," he cried, "haven't the years we've been separated been dreary enough? Haven't they been empty enough for us both?—For you, on your side, you love me; I know it!"

Instead of answering she drew herself up. But he ignored these signs of rebellion.

"It was a misty day when I first saw you," he pursued, "and yesterday also it was misty and wet, and all at once I understood that I had been carrying the thought of you in my heart from the start. Rachel, you are my heart!" he cried, borne on by the lyric power of his own utterance. "And as I raced after you across that beach, I knew to a certainty it was no one-sided thing. Rachel, that kiss, your kiss—it was not a childish impulse; and I dare to tell you so. We took possession of each other, love, at the first glance! Can you deny it? Do you deny it?" compressing her hands. "No, no, you cannot!" he concluded; "and that being true, it is beyond our own power or the power of any creature, to part us now! Oh, sweet!" and his tone changed quickly as he saw that she shook from head to foot, "look around you,—isn't the world beautiful? haven't we a right to happiness?"

Dropping on his knees, he carried her hand to his throbbing breast.

"Happiness?" she repeated, "no, no, not happiness! but peace perhaps, and that comes—it comes—"

He looked up into her face—up at the quivering bend of her lips, up until his eyes found hers, drowned in tears and almost covered by their fluttering lids—and into his glance flashed a subjugating power, an irresistible force.

She attempted to follow the line of her argument, a moment before so clear, but the word "renunciation" died away in a sigh.

She helplessly returned his look.

And the gigantic statues increased her bewilderment; for the one thought that seemed to leap behind the statues' staring eyes, between their huge and rigid lips, in the hollow of their stony breasts, was the naturalness of loving wildly.

Emil dropped his lips on her wrist.

Releasing the hand, she sought to repulse him, but instead, she clutched his hair with a tenderness almost convulsive.

"Oh, you are killing me!" she moaned.

Drawing himself up, he tried to take her in his arms; but with sudden violence, she forced his head downward.

"Oh, you torture me!" she panted.

He grasped her hands;—and once more, before her drowning sight, wavered the statues. In a delirious flash she realized the similarity of their fate. Like them, she was destined to stand forth under an open sky, testifying to a command contrary to nature, but which had been laid upon her kind from time immemorial.

She pushed Emil from her, and pressing her hands to her breast, fled head down from the place.

Instantly he was upon his feet:

"You are not going?" ......

Among the statues, quiet, watchful, the words trembled and died away; then in sympathy the statues seemed to shudder at that cry of agony and surprise.

CHAPTER IX
THE ENERGY OF BEING

Cabs were an infrequent phenomenon in that quarter and a crowd of small boys,—eager, dirty, volatile, with thin bare little legs and miserable little elbows, were gathered around the knock-kneed horse that dejectedly hung its head. They were feeding the animal with dusty grass plucked from between the cobblestones of the pavement. But at Rachel's approach they fell away as if pushed away. The driver in his tall hat bent to receive her order. She gave it without looking at him.

Mad, uncalculating love, too long repressed, struggled in her with a vague sense of shame. But at first the sense of shame was shadowy indeed. Carried out of every perception but the throbbing one of her loss of self in Emil, for a time she heard only his words "my own." "Yes, yours, yours always," the blood proclaimed, and the soul's contradiction sounded small and faint. Then, as the voice of conscience grew stronger, she turned her head from side to side in agony. Chaste and fiercely proud, she told herself she was a humiliated woman. But not his the blame. All that had happened she had invited. By her expression she seemed to be saying, "I will not think."

None the less she did think. She went over the scene from which she had just issued, not once, but countless times, and at each repetition she extracted from it the keenest misery, the most poignant bliss. All the mystery and domination of her passion were written on her face and at intervals sighs escaped her, mingled with breathless, half-articulated words:

"Oh,—he loves me—he loves me—and if it weren't for a certain thing we could be happy."

She paused, again borne out of herself by an animating memory. Once more Emil stood before her with his glance, laughing, kindling, melting. Once more he spoke. As she listened to all the mad, foolish, electrifying things that fell from his lips, life seemed to break forth in her in its plentitude. His words were to her panting heart what rain is to the parched earth. She experienced a feeling at once violent and divine.

And she had repulsed him.

The memory left her almost sobbing. She moved her hands; she lifted her face with its tremulous mouth breathing a caress. For uncounted instants she remained suspended in abysses of tenderness. Then she braced herself with resolution.

"No, no," she said aloud. "It's settled."

The dead, expressionless words voiced finality. Thus the will brought the heart temporarily into subjection.

After innumerable involuntary returns to the scene of the marble works she forced herself to give attention to her surroundings. Feverishly she stared about her with breath suspended and lips a little open like a child after a violent fit of weeping.

As the cab rolled forward, with bare tracts, isolated houses and clumps of trees revealing themselves on either side, to her superalert mind, the city appeared a million-eyed, million-footed monster. Excitedly she nourished the grotesque fancy, seeking in it escape from deeper realization. With its great legs of brick and stone, with its numberless eyes of glass, turbid and bleary, its voluminous, impure breath of smoke, its voice of inconceivable uproar, the city was encroaching on the innocent country. It was devouring it field by field; it was swallowing down the sweet cottages which disappeared from the landscape with miraculous swiftness; swallowing the brooks, the woods, glutting itself and growing big at the expense of the fresh country that never could be restored in all its natural beauty. "Yes, yes, God made the country but man makes the city," she whispered.

As the cab rolled on over more crowded pavements, her consciousness of the scene through which she had just passed was dulled briefly, as pain is dulled in a patient suffering with delirium.

"Ah, how useless is all this bustle and confusion!" she thought irritably. "Surely man could live more simply. But he is dedicated to vanity, he must make a splurge. What was that I said to AndrÉ this morning? Oh yes—about the energy of being. Man must make a show, if not for his Creator's satisfaction at least for his own. The Creator!" she murmured bitterly, "He knows nothing of us! We pine constantly for a liberty fuller than any we have ever known, and that accounts for all our unwearying expenditure of force. Poor pygmies! Persisting deep in the soul of man, is a vague, undefined sense, 'I am the heritor of the infinite.' And so he works," she continued, "he produces marvels and he thinks his immediate achievement embraces his entire object. But it isn't so. And he opens his heart to passions; but his object is the same. For back of the least labour into which he throws himself, back of the most depraved emotion in which he loses himself, is a vast, mysterious, subconscious searching; and that," she declared, "accounts for everything."

She was soaring now above herself, above the terror of her problem. She was viewing the situation as the universal situation and her thoughts were transfigured, rendered impersonal by the clearness of her perception. She saw life no longer with the eyes of an inexperienced and impassioned woman, but with the eyes of one made wise through extremity of anguish.

"It accounts for all the good that we do and for all the evil that we do," she resumed. "Each chooses a road of escape, perhaps many roads, and follows them madly. But," she concluded, "we never find that larger freedom. We are tormented by the feeling of its imminence, but it retreats ever beyond us. And finally we come face to face with the eternal, basic fact of existence: I am a prisoner. That's what we discover. We learn the truth. I learned it that night after the opera. I am the bird in the box!"

For an instant she held her head erect, then shrank, a pained and huddled form, against the cushions of the cab.

"Yes, I have my dream like the others," she whimpered. "But it isn't a dream. Love is a mode of escape. It is. It is. And it's my road. But do I follow it?"

The answer was a forlorn shake of the head.

"Emil, my Father, Simon, Emily Short, that girl Betty Holden, even Nora Gage; all—all wiser than I. They follow their instincts, creditable or discreditable, they follow them and they glean at least some satisfaction. While I—"

The full tide of her misery, that which she had tried to evade, inundated her.

"Fool, why am I like that?" she muttered, "for some scruple, which God, if he knows, probably laughs at me for respecting. As Emil said, wasn't it God made us capable of love?"

The tears had not come before. Now she checked them with her handkerchief, but constantly they fell, constantly she gave long deep sighs, heartrending, mournful. Presently a flaming, defiant thought stood out against the background of her misery. There was relief in action, even in the action that is called sin.

"Madam would like to have me get her ferry ticket?"

The greasy red face of the driver was peering down upon her; the cab had come to a standstill. She had entirely forgotten why she was there and it was only by an effort that she understood what he was asking.

Once on the ferry boat, she leaned her elbows on the railing and, as she listened to the talk of the water, she grew calmer. For it was strange, wise talk with a laugh under it. The little choppy waves seemed to be telling her that life was short and sweet. Grey and blue and dun colour, pink and rose red, the waves shouted and sang together. And above the roofs of the receding city, wrapped in the mists of evening and the ascending vapour of traffic, the dull and yet flaming disk of the sun hung suspended.

A passenger disturbed her and she shifted her position. Important little tugs towing huge rafts, and the arms of derricks being convoyed over the water, like helpless giants, came into view; and for a time the ferry boat passed into the sheltering shadow of a great bridge. Emerging from one confused and sparkling distance and disappearing into another, the bridge appeared like a tangible bow of promise between the two cities. The sight of the cable cars and the tiny moving mites that, like insects, slowly crawled over it, comforted her like a friendly omen.

But when they gained the other shore and she entered the station, the locomotives, emitting great volumes of smoke, recalled to her mind her grandfather's fanciful description; and she remembered with a pang how she used to behold the world in an innocent and beautiful fashion. But now she saw deeper, now she understood all.

The rest of the trip she ceased to think. She had entered that land known to every unhappy lover, that land in which the misery, longing and fierce passion that consume his heart, constitute the one reality in a universe otherwise cold and dead.

CHAPTER X
IN THE GARDEN

The sight of Annie, arrayed in a freshly-ironed white dress and sitting in the carriage behind Peter, gave Rachel a disagreeable shock.

"Mr. Hart thought very likely you'd come on the Express, and he sent me along for the drive," and Annie moved her starched flounces that Rachel might sit beside her. "Was it hot in the city?"

"Yes, very."

"And did you go to the marble works to see the new machine? Alexander said that he had asked you."

"Yes, I went there; but it was Saturday and they had closed down."

"Oh—then nothing came of your visit?"

Rachel shivered.

"All the same," the other continued, "it's very remarkable, that machine; and the best of it is, though I don't suppose you'll think so, Alexander is entitled to all he makes on it and he's going to make a good deal. You see, it's this way," she explained, "Mr. Watson, Mr. Hart—none of the Company, in fact, took a bit of stock in that marble-cutting scheme when Alexander outlined it for them. They said: 'There's nothing in it; you go ahead with the organ attachment, don't let anything come before that; and work out the marble-cutting machine on the side and you're welcome to all you make on it.' And Alexander worked out the whole thing and even made the big model on three Sundays and the Fourth of July, which came on Monday. Those four days were sufficient, and it's proved a triumph—really a great triumph. But I suppose he's told you. He said he was going to; and I thought it would be all right, for I knew you'd be on Alexander's side and would see that what he's done is perfectly fair."

Rachel nodded. "Perfectly fair," she murmured.

She had been asking herself while they had been driving along, what Annie's mode of escape was. Now she knew. "It's the accumulation of things," she told herself. "Annie thinks if Emil can earn enough money so that they can have things, she'll be more than she is now."

"If they pay him as much as they promised to, those Italians up there," Annie continued, "I don't see why we shouldn't have a little cottage in the fall on the outskirts of the city somewhere, and Alexander could go in to his work."

"Didn't I say so?" Rachel thought; and she was delighted at her own astuteness.

The carriage lamps were lighted and by the aid of these and the shining of the full moon, she could see her companion distinctly even to the tiny freckles that covered the bridge of her nose. Freckles and all, however, Annie was looking undeniably pretty in a fresh and innocent, if somewhat meaningless, way. Annie's emotions were those of a child, Rachel told herself, trying to lighten her burden of self-reproach and shame.

They arrived at the gate of Gray Arches which was cut through an evergreen hedge and guarded by two large ornamental lamps, that, being rusty and out of order, were never lighted. The carriage rolled over the sand of the avenue, past some large bushes of rhododendron and arrived before the steps of the glass-enclosed porch. Simon hastened out of the house and helped them to alight.

"So you caught the Express all right?" he cried; then added, in an undertone as he took Rachel's arm, "I sent her to meet you, because I knew she'd enjoy the drive. St. Ives is in the city to-day and I asked her to dine with us."

A few moments later Rachel stood at the window of her room.

Below in the garden Annie was standing beside Simon. He had picked up a pebble from the path. "Do you know," she heard him say in the tone he always assumed when communicating information, "I've noticed that a great many of these pebbles are of the amethyst variety."

"It's curious," she thought, approaching the washstand, "what Simon sees in Annie. He can't do enough for her, apparently. She's over here all the time now."

She began drawing off her rings, but the wedding ring resisted and she was obliged to hold the finger under a faucet. Her face assumed a moody, desperate expression. The world had shrunk to the round of her wedding ring.

She plunged her face into the cold water. What should she put on? Emil had called her beautiful. Was it true that she was beautiful? She put on a light dress trimmed with insertions of real lace, a dress much too elaborate for the occasion, and went downstairs.

In the dining room the party was awaiting her, and Simon had lit the wax candles in the large candelabra in honour of Annie's presence. In the shifting radiance which is a peculiarity of candle light, Rachel's beauty shone forth triumphantly. Annie in her freshly-starched frock, with her smooth blond little head and her unimaginative glance, looked like a daisy of the kind that grows by the thousand in the fields, beside some rare flower that had opened its petals to their extreme limit. There was no mystery in Annie; but Rachel was all mystery, all passion, all fire. Something unusual escaped from the glances she lifted, and from those she half-concealed. Shadows teased the corners of her mouth and sank into the slight hollow at the base of her throat. Light bathed her brow. Something that was at once the "joy of her soul" and the grief of her soul trembled from between her parted lips.

AndrÉ could not take his eyes from her; and, as he looked, an immeasurable anguish mingled with his delight.

"I must catch the train in the morning, Rachel," Simon remarked as they rose from the table, "a note from Theresa says Father is ailing. Nothing serious, I infer, but I shall spend the day in town to-morrow, lunch with him, and then I shall know all I wish. Watch a man when he's taking his food and you can judge fairly of his condition."

Rachel cast a scornful glance at her husband. Everything he said to-night annoyed her. But his next words made her ashamed.

"I wish I could bring Father out here," he added, "but the doctor is against it and perhaps he's right."

She turned impulsively with some idea of making amends for her thoughts. But when Simon, as they were leaving the dining room, inclined his head toward hers, she sprang aside, giving him a strange look in the face.

Of course she must tell him everything; but not to-night—to-night, she thought, he seemed particularly contented. He had gone now to get his hat. The clouds on the previous day had not emptied themselves. Now they once more drove through the heavens, though the moon, at present, shone victoriously. As Annie feared for her starched dress, Simon was going to take her home at once.

When the door had closed upon them, Rachel went into the front room. AndrÉ was sitting before one of the long windows, the casement of which lay back against the wall. In one of the upper panes of glass, swimming through a bank of wild clouds, the moon was reflected. It was as if the moon were in the room. The heat had increased; lightning played along the sky, and in the garden, the shrubbery, half shrouded in a silvery mist, was motionless.

"Play something for me, AndrÉ," Rachel said; and going to the window, she stood with her hands clasped behind her neck. How get through this evening—how get through her entire life?

"I thought out a piece after you left Pemoquod. I will play that for you." And passing to the mantel, AndrÉ took down his fiddle. "I call it your piece," he added softly.

But Rachel, her eyes on the gleaming garden, did not hear him.

Presently, a mournful and plaintive air, like the voice of a child giving way to grief, began to float through the room. It was instinctive playing, devoid of skill in the technical sense; none the less the sound of the strings was wistful, heart-rending. And suddenly the song gained in force and rang out powerfully; the crude, passionate, beseeching melody flowed from under the nervous, swift-moving bow, and such tenderness and devotion mingled with its flowing, such piercingly-sweet supplication, that Rachel, laying her face on her arm, supported herself against the casement.

And AndrÉ, his dark head bent, his cheek pressed to the violin, conscious that she was there before him in her rich dress, played like one in an ecstasy. His body swayed, tears stood on his pale cheeks, but his eyes were closed.

At last, unable to endure the constantly recurring love motif, which was sweeter than the moon, more fathomless than the white moon drowned in space, Rachel fled through the long window. With a fierce movement she lifted her arms above her head; then, as if broken, rested her face against a tree. Rising from the ground beneath her feet, floating between the branches of the mist-hung trees, thrilling through all the spaces of the still and waiting garden, ran the fire of that exquisite melody, sounded those strains of pure and youthful love.

Presently a flowering shrub moved slightly. Some branches that overhung a path stirred; then everything was motionless.

She raised her head, her whole frame quivering like a tightly drawn bow.

Out of the shadows, running rather than walking, Emil was advancing.

With one movement she sprang to him and, uttering a low cry, he caught her.

Each on the lips of the other, their souls were drowned in oblivion; for if he kissed her, she as openly kissed him; and if her cheeks were drenched with tears, they certainly were not all of her own shedding. Tempestuous, tragic emotion overflowed the hearts of both. In the delicious anguish of their embrace, the memory of life with its pitiful conventions dropped from them. Loyalty was an empty word, pity a name.

Their clinging arms its walls, their shining eyes its stars, they stood apart in a universe new-made.

And from the old, old sky the moon that watches over this paltry world of man with his misery and his bliss,—the moon looked down on them. Changing her position on her cloudbank, like a head lolling lazily on a pillow, the moon bestowed on the pair of bewildered children the same glance of remote indulgence she recently had bestowed on the lovers in the Garden of Eden. She threw her brightness over their clasping arms and eloquent faces, and with her radiance mischievously deepened the glamour of that supreme moment in their infinitesimal lives. Then sinking amid the down of her pillow, she temporarily disappeared.

"Rachel, what did you mean by leaving me the way you did this afternoon?" Emil whispered, pausing long enough between his kisses to hold back her head, while he looked down into her eyes with his own which were fierce and wet; "Didn't you know it would be useless?"

His words roused her from the spell that had enwrapped her. Freeing herself with violence, she turned on him. The crimson had dropped from her cheek like the colours from a mast head.

"Emil, leave me!"

His eyes glowed with a peculiar brilliance:

"Leave you, my own? I'll never leave you! and you'll never leave me again; that couldn't happen more than once!"

And as she looked at him, she understood that he could conceive of nothing strong enough to deter him from following the dictates of his pagan and powerful nature.

"Go away, Emil," she said dully, "if you have any love for me—any pity even." Her brows drew together with hopeless obstinacy. She turned.

With one stride he was beside her and had caught her hand. "Listen to me, love," he cried, and a curious mingling of command, entreaty and supplication trembled in the words, "to-morrow is Sunday, there is a train in the afternoon at six; I'll wait for you in that little grove near the station. Do you understand?"

"No;" and she stared back at him, all in a blaze.

"Oh, yes you do," he said gently; "I mean that we'll go off somewhere—far, far away. We'll have a cottage on a beach, something like this one here; and we'll have a boat. And there'll be nothing to come between us any more. All that is past. We'll forget it, as if it had never been, and we'll live for each other. And perhaps, later, if you are willing," he pursued, carried away by his visions, "we'll have Mother join us; for you'll take to Mother, Rachel, and she'll take to you. Then, how I will work! I'll astonish you; I'll astonish the world. I'll make you a proud and happy woman, but it will all be owing to you."

"But Simon—Annie—what of them?" she broke in upon him hastily, for she feared this last argument more than she feared death.

"Well, what of them?" he interrogated, purposely misinterpreting her. "To be sure, Annie scarcely lets me out of her sight these days," he added thoughtfully. "She understands about as much as a humming-bird how such a chap as I has to do his work, and she's eternally standing at my elbow and egging me on. It will be a little difficult to slip away. However, I'll tell her that I'm obliged to see those fellows in the Bronx,—which is quite true," he finished with a brightening smile. "And then another thing that will make my getting away easy, Annie takes a nap now every afternoon, so it can be readily arranged. We'll simply walk away from this, Rachel—we'll leave it all."

She heard in these words the declaration of one who refuses to be fettered by life; who, instead of being hampered by its conventions, rises superior to them. The simplicity of the point of view transfixed her.

Ordinarily Emil would have been swift to note and follow up the advantage he had gained; but, as he looked upon Rachel, the quality of her resistance struck him for the first time; thereupon that primitive something which in him took the place of conscience stirred ever so slightly. For a brief instant he saw the line of conduct he was tracing so blithely for the pair of them, in a novel and uncomfortable light. A burning emotion rose from the depths of his soul, and in its wake it carried new and troubling questions. He waved his arms vehemently as if to drive this brood of questions from him. But the new emotion persisted, and seemed to fill his breast.

"I don't pretend to know much about any question of right or wrong," he murmured, all at once humble; "but it seems to me, love such as ours is beyond all that. As for Annie," he went on, his confidence in himself restored, "she won't be sorry to be rid of me when she gets over the first surprise. Her parents are forever urging her to come home, and you remember she did leave me a while ago. Ours was a daft marriage if there ever was one," he continued, "for two unliker people were never yoked together. And the life she'll lead with her parents will suit Annie far better. Poor kitten," he commented with unwonted softness, "she was never made for hardships, and we'll be doing her no wrong. The thing I'm striving after means less than nothing to Annie, and there's where you are different, Rachel. You'll be patient till I do succeed; but I'll not keep you waiting long, sweet, for your presence will brace me so that I can't fail. Then take your husband," he pursued, with a steady glance under her lids, "is he a fit mate for you? Ask yourself? No, no, my own, my darling, we are the fit mates!"

Strongly, in spite of her swift denying, even with sobs, he drew her to his breast.

And through the garden, AndrÉ's song of love struck on their ears. It wrapped them round like the voice of their own passion. It increased perceptibly in volume as though the player were drawing near. Then, its strains which leapt on a sudden to those of triumph, ceased:—there came a crash.

Rachel struggled to escape, and she did escape. She retraced the few steps of the path, she entered the house through the long window. Something flashed past her and disappeared in the shrubbery. On the sill she stumbled over a dark object which gave out a faint discordant sound. It was AndrÉ's violin with its strings still vibrating.

CHAPTER XI
FLAMES

Some hours later Rachel sat at a window of her room with her forehead resting on her hands. The clouds by this time covered the face of the moon; and the darkness was enlivened by patches and scars of lightning, as though the heavens were being laid open with a fiery whip. Rain fell. A fine spray of moisture penetrated the ragged awning. Rachel never stirred.

A dull lethargy had descended on her. She no longer thought of Emil or of her husband. She had but one sensation—the inevitable had happened. The fury of the storm brought her a sense of relief. At moments she felt herself being carried forward by a dark irresistible current. None the less her determination, like an anchor, held. She never faltered in her resolution to leave Gray Arches; she even heard herself explaining the matter to Simon and she saw his face. His fingers trembled through his hair, his jaw fell, all the blood receded from his cheek. "But why disturb him?" she thought; "why should he be made to suffer?" No, plainly, she must invent some pretext for leaving, then go at once. She must not see Emil again.

Without realizing it, Rachel dropped at last into a troubled sleep, from which she was aroused by a rap on the door.

"Oh, has he gone?" she cried, starting to her feet, and she pushed back the hair from her face. "Has Simon gone?"

The very possibility that her husband already had started for the city, in view of her resolution, seemed to her a tragedy.

Emily, after a short, sharp inspection of her, laid a pile of freshly-ironed linen on a chair.

"Yes," she answered, "he knocked at your door, but you gave no sign and he didn't like to disturb you. Peter was slow harnessing and Mr. Hart was afraid he wouldn't make the train, but he must have made it or he'd be back by now. It is after eight o'clock."

Rachel sank into her chair with huddled knees. She looked as if she never intended to move again.

Emily took her wrist. "Wouldn't you like your coffee here?"

Rachel looked up at her stupidly.

Emily repeated the question; she even broke into scolding as she brought a loose gown to the other and insisted on her removing her dress. But once outside the door, Emily extended both hands as if appealing to a protective Providence. "A nice state of things!" she muttered, with an expression of mingled pain, indignation and perfect comprehension.

But when she appeared with the breakfast tray a few moments later she was as stern of aspect as before. After shaking out a table-cloth, she placed the tray on a little stand at Rachel's elbow.

But Rachel turned away. With her head propped on her two hands, she stared in front of her; and nothing Emily could say served to draw her from this state.

That morning the little toy-maker could not work as usual. A tiny parachute was very nearly ruined by an ill-directed movement of the shears; and a piece of green satin for the aeronaut's coat was utterly spoiled by tears, which she scorned to notice, falling upon it. She was so upset that more than once the utensils of her craft rolled on the floor while her hands dropped to her knees. To herself Emily fiercely denied any attraction in Emil and she praised staunchly every one of Simon Hart's qualities.

About one o'clock Rachel, after refusing luncheon, left the house for a walk; and Emily, having satisfied herself that the other went to the beach, lay down on her bed. "Let her tire herself out; it is the best thing she can do," Emily murmured, and dropped asleep, with a tear standing in a furrow under one eye.

The caretaker, who served in the capacity of cook, in company with her husband and the other servants, was spending the day with friends and would not return until late; even Peter, the coachman, was away for the afternoon. Meanwhile, in this house far removed from the city, the stillness which is peculiar to the Sabbath, deepened.

Rachel walked the beach. She sat down, but immediately rose again. Not only her own life, but all the life about her seemed suspended.

Emil was on his way to the station now; in her mind she could see him swinging along the road: so robust and naÏve was his egotism, he would never question for a moment that she would come. At the thought of his disappointment, she began sobbing with her handkerchief to her lips. All sorts of dark thoughts rose indistinctly from the depths of her soul. Simon, save for one failing, was hopelessly free of faults; he was almost perfect. Scarcely aware of what was passing in her mind, she began picturing what would happen in case of his death. But there was Annie. However, Annie could obtain a divorce; she could return, as Emil had said, to her parents. Rachel arranged every detail of the situation; but these scarcely articulate plans, these involuntary dreams, were accompanied by a physical sensation of shame—revulsion.

She shook herself free of the sorry brood and looked about her. Had she been there an hour, two hours, five minutes? She did not know. Presently a vesper bell from a distant village sounded intermittently above the plashing of the waves. With her hand pressed to her heart, she listened. Then she sped to the house.

In the hallway the old-fashioned clock marked a quarter past five. Three quarters of an hour more! There was still time to meet Emil! And she pictured him waiting for her in the grove near the station, impatiently scanning the road. Reaching her room, she flung herself into a chair and clung to its arms to prevent herself from answering the summons. Dumb, breathless, distraught, with her head hanging on her breast, she listened to the measured ticking of the clock which reached her from the hall. She could still restrain her body, but she could not control her mind.

"To-day decides my fate; either I go with Emil now, or I remain with Simon forever. To-day decides my fate."

She seemed to have a fondness for the phrase for she said it over and over.

"If I remain with Simon, all will go on as before; but if I go with Emil—"

She closed her eyes. The walls of the room dropped away and she saw a landscape. Sedge grass bordered the road to the station. In it she sank repeatedly and its brown waves washed over her head. But ever before her was Emil. Infinitely multiplied, he smiled at her from the leaves, the grass, the dust. The faces resolved themselves into one face. He drew near; she was penetrated by his presence. All the love in her, all the joy of which she was capable, was revealed. She clasped her hands about his neck, she laid her face on his breast, and the past with its futile struggles, its anguish, like a bad dream, receded from her.

Then she recognized the sunlight striking through the white shades of the room. It was tracing the usual pattern on the floor and glistening indolently on the brass knobs of the dressing-table.

With a cry she started to her feet. Maddened, she began to heap some articles into a dressing-bag. She was turning from her bureau to the bag when John Smith's letter, which she had not yet read, caught her eye. It was propped against the frame of the mirror. She put out a hand.

With his closely-written pages which she passed over, there was a little yellow note directed to her mother in a feeble scrawl. Leaning against the embrasure of the window, Rachel unfolded the note almost against her will. But the more she endeavoured to fix her attention upon it, the more confused she became.

"My dear Lavina: I ought not to have left you—"

She stared at the words, which trailed off into an illegible run of characters; and the note with its message for another heart, stilled now these twenty years, slipped from her fingers.

Outside the sunlight danced on the multitudinous leaves and shimmered on the gravel path. Except for the sound of the sea all was silence. A passing breeze fluttered the paper at her feet and the room was filled with the subtle exhalation of that old regret.

She was on her knees. She still saw Emil, heard his voice; and as if grasping something, she opened her arms and carried them back against her heart while her whole frame trembled.

Then the miracle held her spell-bound:

She had been saved from the irretrievable step; she had been plucked back from the rock's edge.

Slowly, slowly the dry heart-flames subsided. As mists rose from the ground in summer after the heat and fever of the day, so something pure as childhood, sweet as the aspirations of early youth, rose from the depths of her soul. All the treachery, all the longing of purely selfish love was annihilated. It was one of those crises when the heart sets wide its doors; when the emotion that was personal becomes universal.

The shrubbery was alive with insects, murmuring gently; and amid the foliage of the trees, the birds were preparing to go to roost. They had reached those wistful days in late summer, which by the sea fade away in evenings of gold and rose, which fade away into the sea itself. A little wind set all the leaves astir. As she looked toward the sea, a wonderful serenity seemed to fall upon her from that radiant sunset sky, seemed to light on her like a benediction from the dying day.

She turned her eyes in the direction of the gardener's cottage. Owing to a row of large trees and an intervening wall, barely more than its red pointed roof was visible. Buried in greenery, bathed in the calm light, it had, at this distance, an ethereal, unreal aspect, like a cottage seen in a picture. About it nothing stirred. But, as she looked, a trail of smoke appeared above a rear gable. This doubled angrily upon itself, then spread out in the still air like a fan. It became in an instant an all-enveloping sable mass crossed by licking tongues of red. In the midst of the sweet country, the cottage in utter silence was being destroyed, its burning but emphasizing the surrounding peace.

Rachel's feet scarcely touched the stairs. She was out of doors and crossing the lawn without realizing her own movements. As she ran, she cried for help. But she recollected that all the servants were away. AndrÉ had not been seen since the evening before; and, except for Emily Short asleep in a distant wing, the place was deserted. She had gone but a few steps when a cry of horror burst from her. Annie! Where was Annie? When not engaged in hanging about Emil while he worked, she was in the habit of visiting at the big house. But that day Rachel had not seen her. Then she recollected Emil's words about his wife's habit of taking a nap in the afternoon.

"Annie!—wake up!—Fire!"

Rachel's cries were confused. She was breathless, almost falling; but despite this excitement, the wonderful sense of peace that had come to her remained in her heart like a dove in its nest.

She stumbled once as she crossed the lawn, and once her dress caught on a branch. She wrenched it free. Beyond the wall the longer, coarser grass impeded her steps and the rays of the setting sun, glancing across the grass, seemed coming to meet her.

"Fire! Annie, fire!" she called.

She was near enough to the cottage now to make out that its windows and doors were closed. She sprang up the path and the hot breath of flames struck into her face. She tried the door, it was locked; and she divined what had happened. Annie had feared to go to sleep with the cottage open; when Emil had started for the station, she had locked herself in.

In a frenzy, Rachel beat upon the door with her flattened palms. The vine over her head was fluttering in a keen breeze and all its leaves were curling. She wrenched open the nearest blind and the slat already smoking, scorched her hands. This house of old and seasoned timbers was burning like paper. She climbed over the sill.

Face down, with the skirt of her dress drawn over her head and across her mouth, she groped her way to the chamber. She felt along the bed; it was empty. Then out into the living room where the organ stood, with lurid flashes playing over its keys, she stumbled. And there, lying across the threshold, was something that yielded to her touch yet resisted it. Gathering Annie in her arms, folding her in a spread which she tore from a table, Rachel groped her way back to the window. The walls of the cottage seemed drawing together like the fingers of a hand about to close; but she scarcely felt the intense heat, was scarcely aware of the suffocating smoke, because of that emotion which was more than joy as it was more than peace.

As she half-dragged, half-carried her insensible burden to the window, she felt the joy of that Freedom of which she had ever dreamed.

Annie's head fell back lifeless, and her arms hung inert; but a slight shiver ran through her body, when, with a supreme effort, Rachel lifted her to the sill. For an instant she balanced her burden there; then, not knowing what she did, blinded by the smoke, the flames that all at once darted out upon her from every direction, she thrust the body through the window.

She had a sense that it was received—that someone, in a frantic dear and well-known voice, called her name. She tried to follow, to struggle into the sweet air, where beyond the smoke and the flames, she knew the leaves were still dancing. But something heavy, inflexible, struck her head.

She fell back into the darkness.

Some minutes before the flames made their appearance above the surrounding trees, a sombre scene took place on a slight rise of ground at the rear of the cottage.

As Ding Dong, carrying a pail of milk he had secured at a neighbouring farm, sauntered unsuspecting toward his master's dwelling, he felt himself seized from behind by the waist and shoulders; his arms grasped, bent, wrenched, his feet thrust from under him. Dumfounded, he sprawled on the ground with fingers of steel at his throat. Athwart a reddish haze he saw the livid countenance and bloodshot eyes of the young man who had made his appearance at Gray Arches a day or two before.

With writhings and twistings, Ding Dong tried to wrap his assailant in sinewy arms, to close with him, to crush him in a mighty embrace; the other fought with the strength of desperation.

Finally, pinning Ding Dong to the earth, AndrÉ flung a look toward the cottage. The flames were now mounting above the trees. A savage joy distorted his face.

He laughed.

At the same instant Ding Dong, hurled him aside. Seeing the flames, the fellow started for the cottage with AndrÉ after him, but he had gone but a short distance, when he halted and lifted his arm.

A mournful procession was slowly crossing the open field in the light of the waning day and AndrÉ, rigid, his head advanced, caught the flutter of a familiar dress, saw a deathlike face.

The locked doors and windows had deceived him. Believing the cottage deserted, he had sought to destroy the organ which, in his blindness, he thought recommended the inventor to Rachel's favour; and he had destroyed instead the object of his own devotion—his own love.

The flames leaping into the sky revealed all the impotence of that act of jealousy and revenge.

CHAPTER XII
LOVE CONFRONTS DESPAIR

"No, we might disturb her, and she appears to be resting quietly. In her case it's a little natural exhaustion. As for Mrs. Hart—the spine, I'm afraid. She rescued this one, I understand. Well, she paid the price. As for the young man, he couldn't have been in the water above half an hour. Yes, a tragedy."

The steps, which had merely paused at the door, passed on.

Annie sat up in the bed.

It was true then; that strangled awakening, that battle with the smoke, Rachel's voice faintly heard. In her dream—or what she had been striving to believe a dream—Rachel had saved her; and the dream was truth.

The impatient, not quite friendly Rachel throwing her own life away to save hers! Annie's stunned mind failed to grasp the novel vision. A lamp stood on a chair. Judging by the amount of oil remaining in the glass receptacle, the lamp had been burning there for many hours. Annie stared at the light; then, a little ball of misery and bewilderment, she wept against the pillows.

Presently the instinct awoke in her to find the one who was her natural comforter.

Slipping from the bed, she stood up on her feet. At first she swayed dizzily. Then she managed to dress herself and quitted the room.

She reached the lighted passage. The entire east wing of the house, she discovered, was brightly illuminated. She steadied herself against the wall and peered in the direction whence came a muffled sobbing. Outside Rachel's door Simon Hart stood with his face in his hands.

"Oh be careful!" he implored as she approached.

He had heard somewhere that in cases of injury to the spine the least jar to the patient was sometimes fatal. He looked at Annie without recognizing her and the tears which he made no effort to conceal, streamed down his face from his eyes which were filled with blank, inconceivable despair.

At that moment the door of the chamber opened; a physician emerged. Simon caught him by the arms.

"Is there no change, Doctor?"

"Not yet. There—there, my poor fellow, have courage."

"But I may go in for a moment? I don't ask to remain."

"Yes, if you will be calm."

"Oh, I will be calm, quite calm. You can trust me for that. But wait—this trembling—" And with his massive shoulders bent forward, Simon stole into the room.

"What, you?" And the physician caught Annie's elbow.

She looked at him.

He released her.

Between the muslin curtains, the night entered in its freshness. Every breeze bore tree odours, vine odours, flower odours. In the subdued light the bed gleamed an island of bluish white.

They had placed Rachel on a flat mattress, not venturing even to braid her hair. Instead, those rich and heavy locks that of late had breathed so poignantly a youthful beauty and pride, were spread over the linen where they framed the poor pallid cheeks. As she lay on her back, the lines of her mouth appeared slightly accentuated. Her arms were laid straight to her sides. Never did Death more completely express detachment. At the bed's foot stood Emily Short, her apron to her lips. A nurse in a starched cap noiselessly altered the position of a screen.

The thrilling brave act was apparent. Annie stood a figure abashed and small and unworthy.

Simon was unable to restrain his sobs. The physician laid a hand on his shoulder and he obeyed as unquestioningly as a child. Bending over Rachel he kissed her forehead; then followed the doctor out of the chamber. Annie kept at their heels.

The physician began to consult Simon about some matter and, unobserved, Annie passed them. She descended the stairs. Under the door of the front room there appeared a streak of light. She rapped: there was no answer; someone was in there who could not answer.

Filled with a confused memory, conjured terrors, she hastened down the hall. Very carefully and with great difficulty she opened the heavy front door and stepped out on the porch. In the light that streamed from that east wing, she saw Emil. He was standing with his shoulders against a tree. Her impulse was to run to him; she checked it.

Beneath his disordered mane his face was wild and haggard, and his eyes, raised to a certain window, were filled with an agony no tears had come to relieve. Occasionally his chest lifted with a sigh.

Seized by the selfish anguish of love, Annie thrust out her chin.

He did not belong to her, he belonged to Rachel! She had always suspected.

The next instant, however, the memory of what was flashed before her and like a flame for which there is no fuel, jealousy died in her breast. And what remained? A disconcerted self that wept under its own examining eyes.

"I never could have done what Rachel did," she thought forlornly; "I never could. And Emil knew she was different from me, he knew she was strong; and he loved her. I don't blame him," with a low catch of the breath,—"No, I don't blame him. How could he help it?"

Hour after hour, sick and weak, she clung to a pillar of the porch conscious only of an intensified confusion, a profound loneliness. Gradually, as she listened to those long deep sighs, she ceased to think of herself and longed to console Emil. But henceforth he must hate her as the cause of Rachel's death. The realization sent her into deeper shadow.

So they stood within a few yards of each other and only when dawn began to show faintly over the water, did Annie enter the house.

She saw no one from that east wing but the doctor, who took her wrist, feeling the pulse.

"Not the thing yet," he said, "though a decided improvement over yesterday. But you must show a better face than this."

She asked after Rachel.

He pretended to consult his watch.

She stepped in front of him, "Is there any chance for her, Doctor?"

He met her eyes then gravely. "There is about one chance in a hundred of her recovery; but go and get something to eat. You will find the servants about. I am going to the city now; I shall be back again on the noon train."

Annie went to the kitchen; she found the cook who gave her steaming coffee. She did not drink the coffee, but carried it through the house and out into the garden. She understood that Emil, fearing to betray his grief, had moved away at the doctor's approach. She went to the tree by which he had been standing and placed the coffee on the grass.

A few moments later he returned. He did not notice the cup until he had upset it; then he stared at the stupidly rolling china, and immediately struck off toward the beach.

Obscurely afraid of bringing shame on her who was dying, he shunned everyone. He remained on the beach, alternately watching the house from a distance, and pacing up and down.

At noon Annie ventured in the direction he had taken. He was no longer in sight. She went only a short way, then placed a basket of food where it could not escape his eye. Her preoccupation with her husband kept her from dwelling on more tragic matters.

The next day, when she was taking his dinner to the shore, Emil spied her. She set down the basket hastily and started to run. But he beckoned to her and then called.

She went to him, lifting up a suppliant face.

His eyes as she drew near, held the look of an animal that consciously awaits slaughter:

"How is she?"

As she did not answer at once, not knowing how to say what she must say, he caught her shoulder in a grip that spoke the madness of torture. "For God's sake, tell me!" he almost shouted.

"There is one chance in a hundred, Alexander," she said; "but there is one chance."

His head went up and his hand dropped.

Presently, with a convulsive breath:

"I've been a coward. I've dodged the doctor—couldn't ask him." His hands clenched. "Does she suffer?" he asked, and swung a look on her.

"No, she does not suffer," Annie answered. "She lies there very still as though she were asleep; and her husband stands outside the door and will not let anyone move in that part of the house. And in the front room, that strange young man who came the other day is lying dead. It seems he was sort of unbalanced, and it was he who set the fire; Ding Dong knows he did, for he tried to keep Ding Dong from giving the alarm. And then he drowned himself."

But her husband was interested in no one but Rachel. Haggard and unkempt, he stared at the water.

"I don't know anything about a God," he said slowly, "about a Creator, but if He—if she lives," he amended, "I'll take my oath to give her up as she plead with me to. I'll never trouble her again though it tears my heart out. I ask only that she shall live."

"There is one chance, Alexander," Annie said bravely.

He looked around at her; then took her hand.

They sat down side by side and stared at the waves.

CHAPTER XIII
THE ESCAPE

Annie waved one hand aloft. When she spied her husband on the beach, she waved the other hand. Her movement suggested flying.

"Conscious!" she cried, "she's conscious; she's going to get well!"

Emil gazed at her as at an apparition. His knees bent, he dropped in a heap on the sand.

Annie stooped to him: "It's life—life—life, Alexander!" she panted; "not death—life!"

His arms went about his head.

Annie knelt and put an arm around his heaving shoulders. She flung back her hair, lifting her face. "Life, life, life!" she whispered.

And it was life.

Early on the morning of the third day following the catastrophe, the doctor spoke cautiously of an improvement in the patient; there was unquestionably a favourable change. But it was only when Rachel followed the first vague opening of her eyes with a stirring of her hands, that he spoke heartily of recovery. No injury to the spine, that was clear. Merely a brain concussion, as he had hoped. But any excitement coming to her now—the doctor closed his medicine case with a snap.

There was the difficulty. How to keep his wife in a state of perfect tranquillity, this was Simon's problem. Hour after hour his vigilance did duty in her chamber; but when they came, those questions of hers, so weak he had to lean to catch them, yet charged with eagerness, he knew not how to stem the tide.

Her first word was of Annie. To Simon this question, after the long stillness, was like a star trembling out of complete black night. He could have wept on hearing her.

"Is Annie safe?" she murmured, and followed the inquiry with a beseeching glance; "is she well?"

Mindful of his task, he lifted an admonishing finger, while answering her strongly in the affirmative.

"Annie," he said, "is safe and sound; she's as right as possible."

She smiled up at him, a picture of peace and thankfulness. But a few moments later anxiety spoke in a soft contraction of her brow: "Emil—is he well?"

"Yes, he's well; we're all well, and all of us in high spirits because of you, dear. But you must obey the doctor."

Once more Rachel exhibited a face of repose; but almost immediately her eyes flew wide.

"All?" she echoed, "you said all?"

Simon repeated his words stoutly.

"AndrÉ too?"

He bent his head with a stifled "yes."

At something in his voice, she managed to lift herself, and as she looked at him a colourless and piteous smile came upon her lips.

"Not AndrÉ," she said.

"Why do you say that?" and, settling her on the pillows, he affected to laugh at the fancy, but her changed aspect alarmed him.

"Because of your face, because I did not see AndrÉ after—" Her features seemed hidden beneath a veil of dumb suffering. Then her whole countenance shut on a thought; an immense concentration chained her. Directly she felt for his hand.

"AndrÉ is still here?" she asked.

"Yes."

"May I see him?"

Simon's look wavered and his eyes sank under hers. His attempt to deceive was manifest, plain as the Writing on the Wall.

"Oh not now," he said, striving for an air that should restore her confidence, "you can't see anyone now, you know."

But her suspicions were past allaying, though she swerved swiftly to another question.

"The fire," she demanded. "Do they know what caused the fire?"

"Oh, some carelessness, doubtless. Mrs. St. Ives may have dropped a match."

Once more Rachel half lifted herself. She shook her head, scanning him fixedly.

"Annie was asleep—the cottage locked. Simon, is it known who set that fire?"

He gasped, unable to believe the astonishing thing: she was actually taking the facts from his mind. He opened his lips, but she needed no answer.

"Oh," she whispered, on a long breath, "I understand. And now—now where is he?" and her fingers closed on his convulsively. "Now?" Her voice rose.

Helplessly Simon met her look and his jaw hung.

"He is dead," she said, and relaxed her hold.

Seeing that she had guessed all through the marvellous second-sight of love, Simon told her the story briefly, striving, however, to lessen its sadness by relating it in a voice soothing as the ripple of a stream.

"And directions came to-day from the mother," he concluded, "so St. Ives can start with the—the boy, to-morrow morning early. There's a milk train passes through here at five; it will be flagged. In that way St. Ives will make good connections. As for Mrs. St. Ives—" Simon might have been telling her any news, save that he hastened his speech a little as he struck into this new subject—"she goes along too. She will stop in the city, however, for the John Street place is all ready for occupancy and it seemed wisest— My darling Rachel! my own reasonable brave girl!" he cried. "You know you always said the lad was not quite right mentally and he certainly had that air; the servants all remarked it."

From her closed eyes, over her white cheeks, her tears rolled steadily. "Poor, poor AndrÉ," she whispered.

She knew—she guessed all. She remembered praising the organ attachment to AndrÉ. And later he had witnessed that mad meeting between her and Emil in the garden. As she imagined the boy, lost, wandering, inflamed with jealousy; remorse intolerable and overwhelming filled her. She had driven him to the desperate act.

Never the less Simon's gravest apprehensions were relieved. Almost with the first glimmer of returning consciousness she had divined the truth and it had not wrecked her, for after that first rain of tears, the strange and lofty look of peace returned to her face. AndrÉ had been unhappy; now he was no longer so. His need of her guidance had been imperative; now that need no longer existed. Dear heart, dear, simple, clinging soul! And the comforting comparison struck her of a little lost child with its hand safely locked at last in the hand of the All-Father.

She spoke no more until evening; then, as if pursuing a subject that had just been mentioned:

"And Emil will go with him? He will see AndrÉ's mother?"

"Yes, dearest."

"And he will tell her the truth? For you must explain to Emil, Simon, that he need not hide the truth from Lizzie. Any fiction about AndrÉ she'd see through: she's his mother. And Emil is to say that I will write and that soon I will come."

"Yes, he will tell her."

"And before they start, Emil and Annie,—they will come here?"

She was so bent on seeing them it seemed unwise to oppose her.

When Simon leaned over her bed in the morning, he knew from her expression that she was alert to the muffled commotion below stairs—to those sharp hammerings, those stealthy treads, those silences—throbbingly alert, although there was no diminution in the radiance of her eyes.

"They have come, dearest," he said, and left the room.

Emil and Annie came forward. Never before at any time had they seen Rachel as she appeared to them now. The courage of her strong young face was mingled with a look of unutterable sweetness. She reached a hand to each.

Instantly Annie was on her knees and Rachel had her head in the curve of a feeble arm. She pressed Annie's head to her breast with fingers tremulous with blessing as a mother's. They said nothing—no words were needed.

Rising, Annie stole to a distant window.

Rachel had kept her hold on Emil. Now once more she looked at him with a smile that expressed more love than she had ever shown him before. Such complete, such utter tenderness, he had never dreamed eyes could hold. And yet in those soft depths so earthly-sweet, he saw renunciation shining through devotion.

He blanched.

In a voice in which there was a tremour she could not control, Rachel spoke of his work and of herself as watching his progress with eagerness.

"For I long, I long more than you can realize to have you make the best possible use of your life. I have set my hopes on you, such high hopes, Emil; and you will not disappoint me."

Finally, panting a little but with electrical energy, with exquisite passionateness, she spoke of the open vision of love. "It is," she said, letting her eyes dwell wistfully in his, "the forgetting of ourselves and—and the abandonment of our self-seeking. This is the soul's way out. And it is the only way out," she insisted.

At first he did not understand, but gradually as he listened, helpless in his grief, her words opened out before him like a pathway that led somewhere into peace.

He looked down at her, his eyes flaming as if all his life had centralized and focused within them. Then he bent and laid his forehead on her arm.

What with weak souls requires time, even long years, powerful natures achieve at once. In the silence Emil's oath was fulfilled.

Summoning Annie, Rachel kissed her; and the other, with timid impulsiveness, slipped a little hand in that of her husband. So they left Rachel. But at the door they turned. She was still gazing after them with a mute, almost mystic concentration. Meeting their look, however, she suddenly smiled and in her eyes was the splendour of some newly-discovered truth.

Something she had long wished for had been gained. She felt a sense of supreme restfulness and this sense deepened and increased even as she lent an ear to the sound of the wheels on the gravel, those wheels that were carrying from her, through the stillness of the morning world, the two who had loved her wildly and whom she had loved.

When Simon returned, he found her leaning on her elbow. The nurse had carried out the night-lamp and the chamber was filled with a wan half-light.

"The box, Simon, will you hand it to me?"

He did not know at first to what she referred; his brow flew up in wrinkles: then he brought the little Swiss clock from its place on her dressing-table.

"Now wind it," she said.

He wound the pretty plaything, and placed it on her raised knees.

Lying back on her pillows, her hands folded across her breast, Rachel listened to the tiny bird, and as she listened, a little, tender, understanding smile touched her lips.

When the golden shell had closed over the performer she looked up at her husband:

"Its song is the song of freedom, isn't it?"

But for Simon these words had no meaning. He had not slept for several nights, and as he replaced the box in its former position, he stumbled. He took a chair beside the bed and his head sank. Lower and lower it sank until it rested on the pillow beside hers. She laid her hand on it.

And ever the day waxed stronger. Now as the mist began to lift, the wild birds awoke in the garden. Here and there from a tree sounded a tentative chirp. The air moved in currents of keener freshness. Everything breathed of the dawn. Rachel turned her eyes to the sea and on her face was the light of her inner vision.

Thus Love solves all the problems that torture the soul of man; through beauty and through silence, it speaks to the heart of a Freedom beyond all its earthly dreams.

THE END