It is not so hard to endure suffering as to resist ease. The passion for martyrdom sweeps everything before it, as long as it is challenged by no stronger force. Emanuel Bayard had lived for a year upon the elixir of a spiritual exaltation such as has carried men to a glowing death, or through a tortured life without a throb of weakness. He had yet to adjust his nature to the antidote of common human comfort.

Like most of the subtler experiences of life, this came so naturally that, at first, he scarcely knew it by sight or name.

It was not a noteworthy matter to show the courtesies of civilized life to the family of his old Professor. Bayard reminded himself of this as he walked down the Point.

It was quite a week before he found leisure to attend to this simple, social obligation. His duties in Angel Alley had been many and laborious; it did not occur to him to shorten a service or an entertainment; to omit a visit to the wharves when the crews came in, or to put by the emergency of a drunkard’s wife to a more convenient season because he had in view that which had grown so rare to the young man, now—the experience of a personal luxury. Like a much older and more ascetic man than he was, he counted the beads on his rosary of labors conscientiously through. Then he hurried to her.

Now, to women of leisure nothing is so incomprehensible as the preoccupation of a seriously busy man. Bayard had not counted upon this feminine fact: indeed, he lived in a world where feminine whim was an element as much outside his calculation as the spring fashions of the planet Uranus. He was quite at a loss when Miss Carruth received him distantly.

The Flying Jib was, as to its exterior, an ugly little cottage run out on the neck of the jutting reef that formed the chief attraction of the Mainsail Hotel. The interior of the Flying Jib varied from a dreary lodge to a summer home, according to the nature of the occupants. It seemed to Bayard that season absurdly charming. He had lived so long out of his natural world, that the photographs and rugs, the draperies, the flowers, the embroidery, the work-baskets, the bric-a-brac, the mere presence of taste and of ladies, appeared to him at first essential luxury. He looked about him with a sigh of delight, while Mrs. Carruth went to call her daughter, who had gone over to the fish-house study with the Professor, and who could be seen idling along home over the meadow, a stately figure in a pale, yellow summer dress, with a shade hat, and pansies on it.

As we say, that young lady at first received Bayard coolly. She sauntered into the little parlor with her hands full of sweet-briar, nodded to him politely, and excused herself at once to arrange her flowers. This took her some time. Mrs. Carruth entertained him placidly. Helen’s eyes saw but did not seem to see the slightest motion of his nervous hand, each tone of expression that ran over his sensitive face. He had looked so eager and happy when she came; almost boyishly thirsting for that little pleasure! She had that terrible inability to understand the facts of his life or feeling which is responsible for most of the friction between two half-attracted or half-separating human beings. But when she saw the light die from his eyes, when she saw that hurt look which she knew quite well, settle about the lower part of his face, Helen was ashamed of herself. Mrs. Carruth was mildly introducing the subject of mosquito bars; theirs, she said, were all on the second story; the supply didn’t go round, and the Professor objected to them; so the hornets—

“Mother,” said Helen, “I wonder if Mr. Bayard wouldn’t like to have us show him the clam study?”

“Your father said he should be at work on the ‘State of the Unforgiven after Death,’” replied Mrs. Carruth. “I don’t know that we ought to disturb him; do you think we ought, Helen?”

“He was whittling a piece of mahogany for the head of a cane when I left him,” said Helen irreverently; “he stole it out of the cabin of that old wreck in the inner harbor. Do you think a Professor of Theology could be forgiven after death for sneak-thieving, Mr. Bayard?”

She abandoned the idea of visiting the clam study, however, and seated herself with frank graciousness by their visitor. Mrs. Carruth having strolled away presently to keep some elderly tryst among the piazza ladies of the hotel, the young people were left alone.

They sat for a moment in sudden, rather awkward silence. Helen looked like a tall June lily, in her summer gown; she had taken her hat off; her hair was a little tumbled and curly; the wind blew in strong from the sea, tossing the lace curtains of the Flying Jib like sails on a toy boat. The scent of the sweet-briar was delicately defined in the room. Bayard looked at her without any attempt to speak. She answered his silent question by saying, abruptly:—

“You know you’ll have to forgive me, whether you want to, or not.”

“Forgive you?”

“Why, for being vexed. I was a little, at first. But I needn’t have been such a schoolgirl as to show it.”

“If you would be so kind as to tell me what I can possibly have done to—deserve your displeasure—” began Bayard helplessly.

“If a man doesn’t understand without being told, I’ve noticed he can’t understand when he is told.... Why didn’t you wait till next fall before you came to see us, Mr. Bayard?”

“Oh!” said Bayard. His happy look came back to his tired face, as if a magic lantern had shifted a beautiful slide. “Is that it?”

He laughed delightedly. “Why, I suppose I must have seemed rude—neglectful, at any rate. But I’ve noticed that if a woman doesn’t understand without being told, she makes up for it by her readiness of comprehension when she is told.”

“What a nice, red coal!” smiled Helen. “The top of my head feels quite warm. Dear me! Isn’t there a spot burned bald?”

She felt anxiously of her pretty hair.

“Come over and see my work,” said Bayard, “and you’ll never ask me again why I didn’t do anything I—would so much rather do.”

“I never asked you before!” flashed Helen.

“You did me an honor that I shall remember,” said Bayard gravely.

“Oh, please don’t! Pray forget it as soon as you can,” cried Helen, with red cheeks.

“You can’t know, you see you can’t know, how a man situated as I am prizes the signs of the simplest human friendship that is sincere and womanly.”

So said Bayard quietly. Helen drew a little quick breath. She seemed reconciled now, to herself, and to him. They began to talk at once, quite fast and freely. Afterwards he tried to remember what it had all been about, but he found it not easy; the evening passed on wings; he felt the atmosphere of this little pleasure with a delight impossible to be understood by a man who had not known and graced society and left it. Now and then he spoke of his work, but Helen did not exhibit a marked interest in the subject.

Bayard drew the modest inference that he had obtruded his own affairs with the obtuseness common to missionaries and other zealots; he roused himself to disused conversation, and to the forgotten topics of the world. It did not occur to him that this was precisely what she intended. The young lady drew him out, and drew him on. They chatted about Cesarea and Beacon Street, about Art, Clubs, Magazine literature, and the Symphony Concerts, like the ordinary social human being.

“You see I have been out of it so long!” pleaded Bayard.

“Not yet a year,” corrected Helen.

“It seems to me twenty,” he mused.

“You don’t go to see your uncle, yet?”

“I met him once or twice down town. I have not been home, yet. But that would make no difference. I have no leisure for—all these little things.”

He said the words with such an utter absence of affectation that it was impossible either to smile or to take offence at them. Helen regarded him gravely.

“There were two or three superb concerts this winter. I thought of you. I wished you had come in”—

“Did you take that trouble?” he asked eagerly.

“I don’t think I ever heard Schubert played better in my life,” she went on, without noticing the interruption. “Schoeffelowski does do The Serenade divinely.”

“I used to care for that more than for any other music in the world, I think,” he answered slowly.

“I play poorly,” said Helen, “and I sing worse, and the piano is rented of a Windover schoolgirl. But I have got some of his renderings by heart—if you would care for it.”

“It is plain,” replied Bayard, flushing, “that I no longer move in good society. It did not even occur to me to ask you. I should enjoy it—it would rest me more than anything I can think of. Not that that matters, of course—but I should be more grateful than it is possible for you to understand.”

Helen went to the piano without ado, and began to sing the great serenade. She played with feeling, and had a sweet, not a strong voice; it had the usual amateur culture, no more, but it had a quality not so usual. She sang with a certain sumptuous delicacy (if the words may be conjoined) by which Bayard found himself unexpectedly moved. He sat with his hand over his eyes, and she sang quite through.

Her voice sank, and ceased. What tenderness! What strength! What vigor and hope and joy, and—forbid the thought!—what power of loving, the woman had!

“Some lucky fellow will know, some day,” thought the devotee. Aloud, he said nothing at all. Helen’s hands lay on the keys; she, too, sat silent. It was beginning to grow dark in the cottage parlor. The long, lace curtain blew straight in, and towards her; as it dropped, it fell about her head and shoulders, and caught there; it hung like a veil; in the dim light it looked like—

She started to her feet and tossed it away.

“Oh!” he breathed, “why not let it stay? Just for a minute! It did nobody any harm.”

“I am not so sure of that,” thought Helen. But what she said, was,—

“I will light the candles.”

He sprang to help her; the sleeve of her muslin dress fell away from her arm as she lifted the little flicker of the match to the tall brass candlestick on the mantel. He took the match from her, and touched the candle. In the dusk they looked at each other with a kind of fear. Bayard was very pale.

Helen had her rich, warm look. She appeared taller than usual, and seemed to stand more steadily on her feet than other women.

“Do you want me to thank you?” asked Bayard in a low voice.

“No,” said Helen.

“I must go,” he said abruptly.

“Mother will be back,” observed Helen, not at her ease. “And Father will be getting on with the Unforgiven, and come home any minute.”

“Very well,” replied Bayard, seating himself.

“Not that I would keep you!” suggested Helen suddenly.

He smiled a little sadly, and this time unexpectedly rose again.

“I don’t expect you to understand, of course. But I really ought to go. And I am going.”

“Very well,” said Helen stiffly, in her turn.

“I have a—something to write, you see,” explained Bayard.

“You don’t call it a sermon any more, do you? Heresy writes a ‘something.’ How delicious! Do go and write it, by all means. I hope the Unforgiven will appreciate it.”

“You are not a dull woman,” observed Bayard uncomfortably. “You don’t for an instant suppose I want to go?”

Helen raised her thick, white eyelids slowly; a narrow, guarded light shone underneath them. She only answered that she supposed nothing about it.

“If I stay,” suggested Bayard, with a wavering look, “will you sing The Serenade to me—all over again?”

“Not one bar of it!” replied Helen promptly.

“You are the wiser of us two,” said Bayard after a pause.

The tide was coming in, and gained upon the reef just outside the cottage windows, with a soft, inexorable sound.

“I am not a free man,” he added.

“Return to your chains and your cell,” suggested Helen. “It is—as you say—the better way.”

“I said nothing of the kind! Pardon me.”

“Didn’t you? It does not signify. It doesn’t often signify what people say—do you think?”

“Are you coming to see my people—the work? You said you would, you know. Shall I call and take you, some day?”

“Do you think it matters—to the drunkards?”

“Oh, well,” said Bayard, looking disappointed, “never mind.”

“But I do mind,” returned Helen, in her full, boylike voice. “I want to come. And I’m coming. I had rather come, though, than be taken. I’ll turn up some day in the anxious seat when you don’t expect me. I’ll wear a veil, and an old poke bonnet—yes, and a blanket shawl—and confess. I defy you to find me out!”

“Miss Carruth,” said the young preacher with imperiousness, “my work is not a parlor charade.”

Helen looked at him. Defiance and deference battled in her brown eyes; for that instant, possibly, she could have hated or loved him with equal ease; she felt his spiritual superiority to herself as something midway between an antagonism and an attraction, but exasperating whichever way she looked at it. She struggled with herself, but made no reply.

“If I am honored with your presence,” continued Bayard, still with some decision of manner, “I shall count upon your sympathy.... God knows I need it!” he added in a different tone.

“And you shall have it,” said Helen softly.

It was too dark to see the melting of her face; but he knew it was there. They stood on the piazza of the cottage in the strong, salt wind. Her muslin dress blew back. The dim light of the candle within scarcely defined her figure. They seemed to stand like creatures of the dusk, uncertain of each other or of themselves. He held out his hand; she placed her own within it cordially. How warm and womanly, how strong and fine a touch she had! He bade her good-night, and hurried away.

That “something” which is to supersede the sermon was not written that night. Bayard found himself unable to work. He sat doggedly at his desk for an hour, then gave it up, put out his light, and seized his hat again. He went down to the beach and skirted the shore, taking the spray in his face. His brain was on fire; not with intellectual labor. His heart throbbed; not with anxiety for the fishing population. He reached a reef whence he could see the Mainsail Hotel, and there sat down to collect himself. The cottage was lighted now; the parlor windows glimmered softly; the long, lace curtains were blowing in and out. Shadows of figures passed and repassed. The Professor had settled the state of the Unforgiven, and had come back from the clam study; he paced to and fro across the parlor of the Flying Jib; a graceful figure clung to his theologic arm, and kept step with him as he strode.

Presently she came to the low window, and pushed back the lace curtain, which had blown in, half across the little parlor. She lifted her arms, and shut the window.

The waves beat the feet of the cliff monotonously; like the bars of a rude, large music which no man had been able to read. Bayard listened to them with his head thrown back on the hard rock, and his hat over his eyes. Even the gaze of the stars seemed intrusive, curious, one might say impertinent, to him. He desired the shell of the mollusk that burrowed in the cleft of the cliff.

The tide was rising steadily. The harbor wore its full look; it seemed about to overflow, like a surcharged heart. The waves rose on; they took definite rhythm. All the oldest, sweetest meanings of music—the maddest and the tenderest cries of human longing—were in the strain:—

“Komm beglÜcke mich?
BeglÜcke mich!”

Those mighty lovers, the sea and the shore, urged and answered, resisted and yielded, protested and pleaded, retreated and met, loved and clasped, and slept. When the tide came to the full, the wind went down.

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