The season had opened in a whirl of social absorption for Paula, once more established in their city house for the winter. She had never known her husband so interested in these functions nor so solicitous that her entertainments should be characterized by a species of magnificence that would once have dazzled and delighted her, but that now seemed only to illustrate his wealth and predominance. He was critical and fretful because of small, very small, deficiencies, as—some flower being unattainable that one less costly should be used in decoration, or a shade of an electrolier being broken that another, dissimilar to the rest in design, should be temporarily substituted. Her own toilets were submitted to his scrutiny and preference, and when she revolted, saying that she knew far more of such matters than he did, he lapsed into surly dissatisfaction. Once he spoke of a costume of delicate, chaste elegance as “common”—“nothing on it.” Then he added significantly, “You ought to have married a poor man, Paula, if that is your taste.”

She held the gown up when she was disrobing afterward and examined its points. She saw that the effect could have been duplicated in simple materials costing a trifle; thus beautifully and gracefully could she have gowned herself if she had married a poor man as once she had thought to do.

Of her own initiative she could not have given the series of dinners of which the lavish richness astonished, as was intended, the guests, and of which, strangely enough, she was tired before they began. More than once, as she took up her position beside her husband in the glittering drawing-room, hearing the approach of the first of the guests, he said to her in a low voice, the tone like a pinch: “Don’t seem so dull, Paula—you have gone off awfully in your looks lately, and that gown is no good. For Heaven’s sake be more animated, and not so much like a rag doll.” It was poor preparation to meet the coterie of men and women keyed to a high pitch of effort toward charm and brilliancy, as doing honor to the occasion, their hosts, and themselves. A large ball was also among the functions he planned, to be given in compliment to Hildegarde Dean, whose beauty he affected to admire extravagantly. He had remembered his wife’s obvious jealousy of her attractions when Randal Ducie had seemed interested and delighted, and it did not soothe his unquiet spirit to note that now she had no grudging, but joined ardently in making the festivity a great success and an elaborate tribute to the reigning belle and beauty. She was required to invite the wives of certain men whom he desired to compliment,—yet who were not of his list of dinner guests,—to luncheons, and teas, and afternoon receptions, till she was tired out with the meaningless routine and sick at heart. Yet this was what she had craved—all her dream come true, pressed down and running over. Why had it no longer an interest for her? Was it sheer satiety, or was it that naught is of value when love has flown. And it had gone—even such poor semblance as had worn its name had vanished. She could not delude herself, though she might make shift to masquerade in such wise that he should not know. She hoped for this, for she had begun to fear him. He was so arrogant, so self-sufficient, so dominant, so coercive. She feared his frown, his surly slumbrous eyes, his hasty outbursts of gusty temper.

One evening in this arid existence, this feast of dead-sea fruit, there was on hand no social duty—the pretty phrase for the empty frivolity—and she was glad of it. It was a gala night at the opera, for a star of distinction was to sing in a Wagnerian rÔle, and the Floyd-Rosneys would occupy their box, according to their habit when aught worth while was billed. She was dressed for the occasion and awaiting him in the library, but he had not yet come in. She was more placid than her wont of late, for she realized that it would rest her nerves to be still and listen, a respite, however brief, from the tiresome round; and she had just come from the nursery where the baby was being put to bed—very playful, and freakish, and comical. She had been laughing with him, and at him, and the glow of this simple happiness was still warm in her heart when the door opened and her husband entered. He was not yet dressed for the evening, and, as she looked her surprise, he responded directly:

“No,—we are not going.”

He often changed his plans thus, regardless of her preferences, and she had grown so plastic to his will that she was able to readjust her evening or her day without regard to her previous expectations.

The spacious room might have seemed the ideal expression of a home of culture and affluence. The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling, unbroken save where a painting of value and distinction was inserted, special favorites of their owner, and placed here where his eyes might constantly rest upon them, rather than consigned to the gallery of his art treasures. The furniture was all of a fashion illustrating the extremity of luxury,—such soft cushions, such elastic springs, such deep pile into which the feet sunk treading the Oriental rugs. Not a sound from the street nor from any portion of the house could penetrate this choice seclusion, and over the fireplace, where the hickory logs flared genially, the legend “Fair Quiet, have I found thee here?” was especially accented by a finely sculptured statue of Silence, her finger on her lip, which stood on its pedestal at a little distance from the deep bay of a window.

The beautiful woman, in the blended radiance of the electric light and the home-like blaze, seemed as one of the favored of the earth. She had dressed with great care, and her gown of lavender gauze over satin of the same shade, with a string of fine pearls about her throat and another in her fair hair, could scarcely have incurred his unfavorable criticism. Her gloves of the same tint lay ready on the table and an evening cloak of white brocaded satin hung over a chair. Great pains and some time such a toilette cost; but she had learned never to count trouble if peace might ensue.

She was prepared to be left in ignorance of his reason for a change of plans, but he seemed, this evening, disposed to explain. He came and stood opposite to her, one hand lifted on the shelf of the massive mantel-piece, while he held his hat with the other. He was still in his overcoat, its collar and lining of fur bringing out in strong relief the admirable points of his handsome face, its red and white tints, the brilliancy of his full lordly eyes, the fine shade of his chestnut hair. He was notably splendid this evening, vitally alert, powerful of aspect, yet graceful, all the traits of his manly beauty finished with such minutely delicate detail. She noticed the embellishment of his aspect, as if the evident quickening of his interest in some matter had enhanced it, and she remembered a day—long ago, it seemed, foolish and transient when she had had a proud possessory sentiment toward this fair outer semblance of the identity within, so little known to her then, so overwhelming all other attributes of his personality.

She did not ask a question—she was too well trained by experience. He would tell her if he would; if not, it was futile to speculate as to his intentions.

“Well, the Oriental tour is un fait accompli,” he said, smiling. “You sail within the week.”

She started in surprise. She had definitely been denied this desire, which she had once harbored, on the score of all others most seemingly untenable—expense. But it was her husband’s habit to make everything inordinately costly. He would not appear in public except en prince, nor travel abroad save with a most elaborate and extensive itinerary and a suite of attendants.

“This week—why—I don’t know——” she hesitated. “I suppose—I can get ready.”

“Oh, you will scarcely need any preparation,” he said cavalierly. “Any old things will answer.”

This was so out of character with his wonted solicitude in small matters that she was surprised and vaguely agitated. She saw a quiver in the tip of her dainty lavender slipper, extended on a hassock before her in the relaxed attitude she had occupied, and she withdrew it that the disquietude of her nerves might not be noticed. She raised herself to an upright posture in her chair before she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

“I wasn’t alluding to dress. What I am wearing here will answer, of course—but I was thinking of the arrangements for the nurse. Will we take his old colored nurse, or do you suppose she would not be equal to the requirements of the trip? Had Elise better go in her place?”

“Oh, that cuts no ice. For the baby won’t go at all,” he replied, as simply as if this were an obvious conclusion.

She sat petrified for one moment. Then she found her voice—loud and strong and definite.

“The baby won’t go!” she exclaimed. “Then I won’t go—not one foot! What do you take me for?”

“For a sensible woman,” he retorted.

He looked angry, as always, when opposed, but not surprised. He had evidently anticipated her objection, and he controlled himself with care unusual to his ungoverned temper. “Who wants to go dragging a child three years old all around Europe and the Holy Land! You won’t be gone more than a year!”

“A year! Why, Edward—are you crazy? To think I would leave the baby for a year! No—nor a month! No—nor a day! He has scarcely been out of my sight for two hours together since he was born.”

“How many women leave their children to take a trip abroad,” he argued, and she began to feel vaguely that he would much prefer that she should agree peaceably—he was even willing to exert such self-control as was necessary to persuade her.

“Never—never would I,” she declared, “and he would be miserable without me.”

“Not with me here,” her husband urged. “He is pleased to regard me with considerable favor.” And he bent upon her his rare, intimate, confidential smile.

For, unknown to him, she had been at great pains to build up a sort of idolatry of his father in the breast of the little boy, such as children usually feel without prompting. He was taught to disregard Floyd-Rosney’s averse, selfish inattention, to rejoice and bask in the sun of his favor, to run to greet him with pretty little graces, to admire him extravagantly as the finest man in all the world, to regulate his infantile conduct by the paternal prepossessions, being stealthily rewarded by his mother whenever his wiles attained the meed of praise.

Paula looked dazed, bewildered.

“You know, dearest, I am held here by the pressure of that villainous lawsuit, and as it will absorb all my leisure I thought that now is your chance for your Oriental tour—for I really don’t care to go again, and you may never have another opportunity.”

He paused, somewhat at a loss. She was leaning forward, gazing at him searchingly.

“What can possess you to imagine for one moment that I would go without the boy! What is the Orient to me—or my silly fad for Eastern travel! I wish my tongue had been withered before I ever spoke the word!”

“Why, you talk as if I were proposing something amazing—abnormally brutal. Don’t other women leave their children?”

“But with their mothers, or some one who stands in that tender, solicitous relation,—and I have no mother!” Her words ended in a wail.

“But he will be with me—and surely I care for him as much as you do,” he argued, vehemently.

“But why can’t I take him with me,” she sought to adjust the difficulty, “even though the pleasure of the trip is lost if you don’t go?”

“Because—because,” he hesitated. “Because I cannot bear the separation from him,” he declared bluntly. “I am afraid something—I don’t know what—might happen to him. I know I am a fool. I couldn’t bear it.”

His folly went to her heart in his behalf as nothing else could have done. This evidence of his love for the child, his son and hers, atoned for a thousand slights and tyrannies which she forgave on the spot. Her brow cleared, her face relaxed, her cheek flushed.

“Aha!” she cried jubilantly, “you know how it feels, too!” She gleefully shook her fan at him. “We will let the trip to the Orient drop, now and forever. I can’t go without little Edward, and you”—she gave him a radiant, rallying smile—“can’t spare him, so we will just stay at home and see as much of each other as the old lawsuit will let you. And what I want to know,” she added, with a touch of indignation, “is, why do those lawyers of yours allow the matter to harass you? It is their business to take the care of it off your shoulders.”

He stood silent throughout this speech, changing expressions flitting across his face, but it hardened upon the allusion to the lawsuit and his vacillation solidified into resolve.

“Come, Paula, this talk is idle; the matter is arranged. The Hardingtons start for New York to-morrow, and sail as soon as they strike the town. Mrs. Hardington says she will be enchanted to have you of her party, and I have telegraphed and received an answer engaging your stateroom on the ship. Your section in the Pullman is also reserved,—couldn’t get the stateroom on the train—already taken, hang it.”

She had risen to her feet and was gazing at him with a sort of averse amazement, once more pale and agitated, and with a strange difficulty of articulation. “Why, Edward, what do you mean? Why should you want to get me out of the country? There’s something behind all this, evidently.” She noted that he winced by so slight a token as the flicker of an eyelash. “You know that I would not consent to go without my child for any earthly consideration.”

“I know no such thing, as I have told you,” he retorted hotly. “The arrangements are all made. Your passage is taken. I have ready your letter of credit. I do think you are the most ungrateful wretch alive,” he exclaimed, his eyes aglow with anger. “A beautiful and costly trip, that you have longed for, planned out for you in every detail, and you——” he broke off with a gesture of repudiation.

“I wouldn’t be separated from my child for one night for all the jauntings about the globe that could be devised,” she declared.

Floyd-Rosney suddenly lost all self-control. “Well, you certainly will be separated from him for one night—for many nights,—for he is gone!”

“Gone?” She sprang forward with a shriek and started toward the door. Then with a desperate effort to compose herself she paused even in the attitude of flight. “For God’s sake, Edward, where has he gone? What do you mean?”

“He has been sent to the place where I propose to have him cared for in your absence. Knowing that your time is short I tried to smooth the way.”

“But where?—where?”

“Where you shall not know,—you shall not follow. You may as well make up your mind to take the trip.”

She seemed taller, to tower, as she drew herself up in her wrath, standing on the threshold in the ghastly incongruity of her festival evening gown and her tragic face. “Oh, you brute!” she shrilled at him. “You fiend!”

Then she turned and fled through the great square hall and up the massive staircase to the nursery that she had quitted so lately, that had been so full of cheer and cosy comfort and infantile laughter and caresses.

The room was empty now. The fire was low in the grate, seen through the bars of the high fender that kept the little fellow from danger of contact with the flames. The dull, spiritless, red glow of the embers enabled her to discern the switch to turn on the electric light, and instantly the apartment sprang into keen visibility. The bed was vacant, the coverlets disarranged where the child had been taken thence, doubtless after he had fallen asleep. The drawers of the bureau, the doors of the wardrobe stood ajar, the receptacles ransacked of all his little garments, his hats and shoes. Evidently a trunk had been packed in view of a prolonged absence while she had sat downstairs in the library, all unconscious of the machinations in progress against her in her own home. She was numb with the realization of the tremendous import of the situation. She could not understand the motive—she only perceived the fact. It was her husband’s scheme to get her out of the country, and he had fancied that he could force her to go without her child. She took no account of her grief, her fears, the surging anguish of separation. She was saying to herself as she turned into her own room adjoining that she must be strong in this crisis for the child’s sake, as well as her own. She must discern clearly, and reason accurately, and act promptly and without vacillation. If she should remain here she might be seized and on some pretext coerced into leaving the country on that lovely trip which he had planned for her. She burst into a sudden bitter laugh, and the sound startled her into silence again. When had her husband ever planned aught for her save to serve some purpose of his own? She would not go—she would not, she said over and over to herself. Her determination, her instinct were to ascertain where the child had been hidden, and if possible to capture him; if not to be near, on the chance of seeing him sometimes, to watch over him, to guard him from danger. In her self-pity at this poor hope the tears welled up and she shook with sobs. But on this momentary collapse ensued renewed strength. It might be, she thought, she could appeal to the law. She knew that her husband’s was the superior claim to the child, but in view of his tender years, his delicate health in certain respects, might not a court grant his custody to his mother? At all events his restoration to her care was henceforward her one object, and if she allowed herself to be forced out of the country, to serve this unknown, unimagined whim of her cruel husband’s, she might never see the child again.

A knock at the door startled her nerves like a clap of thunder. A maid had come to say that dinner had been served—indeed the butler had announced it an hour ago—and should it still wait?

“Have it taken down,” Paula said with stiff lips. “Mr. Floyd-Rosney will not dine at home.”

For Paula had heard the street door bang as she fled up the stairs, and she knew that he was not in the house. The girl gazed at her with a sharp point of curiosity in her little black eyes as she obsequiously withdrew. Despite the humility of the manner of her domestics Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had not the ascendency in her household due a chatelaine so magnificently placed. It was his wealth—she was an appendage. It was his will that ruled, not hers. As the servants loved to remark to each other, “She has got no more say-so here than me,” and the insecurity of her authority and the veneer of her position affected unfavorably the estimation in which she was held. The girl perceived readily enough that a clash had supervened between the couple and sagely opined that the master would have the best of it. Below stairs they ascribed to it the strange removal of the child at this hour of the night and the change in their employer’s plans for the evening. Their unrestrained voices came up through doors carelessly left ajar, along with the clatter of the dishes of the superfluous dinner, and Paula, with some unoccupied faculty, albeit all seemed burdened to the point of breaking with her heavy thoughts, realized that this breach of domestic etiquette could never have chanced had the master of the house been within its walls.

As she hastily divested herself of her dainty evening attire, with trembling fingers her spirits fell, her courage waned. No one would heed her, she said to herself. What value would a court attach to her representations as against the word and the will of a man of her husband’s wealth and prominence? And how could she expect aught of aid from any quarter? She had literally no individual position in the world. She had no influence on her husband, no real hold on his heart. She could command not one moment’s attention, save as his wife. Bereft of his favor and countenance she would be more of a nullity than a woman, poor but independent, working for a weekly wage. Truly Floyd-Rosney could ship her out of the country as if she were a mare or a cow. Decorum would forbid open resistance, for indeed if she clamored and protested she could be sent with a trained nurse as the victim of hysteria or monomania. She must get away. Her liberty was threatened. Her will had long been annulled, but now she was to be bodily bound and in effect carried whither she would not. Her liberty, her free agency were at stake—not her life. Never, she thought, would he do a deed that would react upon himself. She must be gone—and swiftly.

Perhaps Paula never realized the extent of her subjection until when dressed in her dark coat suit with hat and gloves, her suitcase packed with a few indispensable articles, she stood at her dressing table and opened her gold mesh-bag with a sudden clutch at her heart to ascertain what money she might have. Her white face, so scornful of herself, looked back from the mirror, duplicating her bitter smile. She had not five dollars in the world. Floyd-Rosney never gave money to his wife in the raw, so to speak. All her extravagant appointments came as it were from his hand. She could buy as she would on his accounts; she could subscribe liberally to charities and public enterprises which he countenanced, and he made her signature as good as his, but she could never have undertaken the slightest plan of her own initiative. She had no command of money. She could not go—she could not get away from under his hand. She was as definitely a prisoner as if she were behind the bars. Still looking scornfully, pityingly, distressfully at her pallid image in the mirror, a strange thought occurred to her. She wondered if she were Ran Ducie’s wife could she have been as poor as this. But she must go—and quickly. For one wild moment she contemplated borrowing from the servants the sum she needed. As she revolted at the degradation she realized its futility. Their place in his favor was more secure than hers—her necessity attested the tenuity of her position. They would not lend money to her in order to thwart him. She looked at the strings of pearls, the gold mesh-bag, and remembered the pawnbroker. Once more she shivered back from her own thought. They were not hers, for her own. They were for her to wear, to illustrate his taste, his liberality to his wife, his wealth. She knew little of law, of life. This might be an actual theft. But she must go—and go at once.

With her suitcase in her hand she stole down the stairs and softly let herself out of the massive front door, closing it noiselessly behind her, never for a moment looking up at the broad, tall faÇade of the building that had been her home. She crossed the street almost immediately, lest she encounter her husband returning with his plans more definitely concluded and with a more complete readiness to execute them.

The night was not cold, but bland and fresh, and she felt the vague stir of the breeze like a caress on her cheek. The stars—they were strangers to her now, so long it had been since she had paused to look upon them—showed in a dark, moonless heaven high above the deep canyon of the street. She walked rapidly, despite the weight of the suitcase, but so long had it been since she had traversed the thoroughfares on foot that she had forgotten the turnings—now the affair of the chauffeur—and once she was obliged to retrace her way for a block. She deprecated the loss of time and the drain upon her strength, but she was still alert and active when she paused in the ladies’ entrance of a hotel and stood waiting and looking about with her card in her hand. Oh, how strange for her, accustomed to be so considered, so attended, so heralded! She did not for the moment regret the coercion her splendors were wont to exert. She only wondered how best to secure her object, if she could not win the attention of the supercilious and reluctant functionaries dully regarding her in the distance.

The lobby of the ladies’ entrance opened upon the larger space of the office of the hotel, and here in a delicate haze of cigar smoke a number of men were standing in groups about the tessellated marble floor, or seated in the big armchairs placed at the base of the tall pillars. As fixing her eyes on the clerk behind the desk she placed her suitcase on the floor and started forward, he jangled a sharp summons on a hand bell, and a bell-boy detached himself from the coterie that had been nonchalantly regarding her, and loungingly advanced.

“Will you take that card to Mr. Randal Ducie?” she said, controlling her voice with difficulty.

“Ain’t hyar,” airily returned the darkey. He was about to turn away from this plainly dressed woman, who had no claim on any eagerness of service when his eyes chanced to fall on a token of quality above her seeming station. He suddenly noted the jeweled card case as she returned the card to it, and the gold mesh bag, and he vouchsafed pleasantly:

“I noticed myse’f the announcement in the evenin’ paper, but it is his brudder stoppin’ hyar.”

That moment her eyes fell upon Adrian Ducie standing in one of the groups of men smoking in the office. Her impulse was like that of a drowning creature clutching at a straw. Without an instant of hesitation, without even a vague intention of appropriately employing the intermediary services of the limp bell-boy, with a wild, hysteric fear that a moment’s waiting would lose her the opportunity, she dashed into the midst of the office, and, speechless, and pallid, and trembling, she seized Adrian by the arm.