The mosquito-net portiÈre swayed softly in the night wind. Emanuel Bayard sat in his study and looked about the poor place, gasping, like a man who has received or given a mortal hurt. The marred face of the great Christ looked through the coarse, white gauze; it seemed to scrutinize him sternly; he bowed his head before the gaze of the picture.

The gradual descent from a spiritual height to a practical level is, at best, a strain under which the godliest nature quivers; but Bayard experienced the shock of a plunge. From the elation of the past hour to the consternation of the present moment was a long leap.

He closed his eyes to see the blood-red sunset unfurling its flag over the broad beach; he opened them to see Mrs. Granite’s kerosene lamp smoking on the study-table of grained pine wood. The retina of his soul suffered an adjustment as abrupt and as severe. But an hour ago, a thousand people had hung swaying upon the breath that went forth from between his lips; their upturned faces offered him that most exquisite of flatteries—the reverence of a great audience for an orator who has mastered them. We should remember that—the religious orator stands, both in privilege and in peril, apart from his kind. He may suffer at once the subtlest of human dangers, and the deepest of human joys. Bayard trembled yet with the exaltation of that solemn hour.

Midway between earth and heaven, commissioner between man and his Maker, he had stood transcendent, well-nigh translated. He had floated in the adoration of his people; he had been to them one of the sons of God; he had held their bare souls in his hand.

While his head whirled with the suffocation of the incense, he had stumbled. He had made the misstep which to a lofty soul may give more anguish than guilt to the low. He had fallen from the heights of his own faith in himself, sheer over, and below the ideal which those upon whose worshiping love he lived trustfully cherished of him.

An hour ago, he was a man of God. Now he called himself less than a man among men.

Bound by every claim of spiritual and of human honor to preserve the strong silence by which a man protects a woman from himself, and himself from her, he had weakly, to his high view it seemed he had ignobly, broken it. He had declared love to a woman whom he could not ask to be his wife. To crown the pity of it and the shame, he had turned on his heel, and left her—so!

“I have done a thing for which I would have thrashed a man who had done as much by a sister of mine!” said this young apostle between his teeth. It did not occur to him that he might be liable to overestimate the situation. Religious exaltation exposes a sensitive nature to mental and spiritual excess as dangerous in its way as physical dissipation. Bayard stood in that great desert known only to fine souls, where the noblest side of a man seems to take up arms against him; and where the very consecrated weapons by which he has battled his way to purity, unselfishness, and peace turn themselves like sentient foes and smite him. He seemed to stand unarmed and defenceless before forces of evil whose master he had been so long, that he looked upon their defiant faces with more astonishment than fear.

“This is an insurrection of slaves,” he thought. He looked blindly about his dreary room.

“Down!” he said, as if he had been speaking to dogs.

And now—what? It seemed to his quivering sensibility a proof that he had fallen to a far depth, that the first, bare instinct of his anguish was not to say, “What is my duty in this thing?” but, “How shall I bear it?”

With that automatism of Christian habit which time and trouble may teach the coldest scoffer to respect, Bayard’s hand groped for his Bible. We have seen this touching movement in the sick, the aged, the bereaved, and in the utterly alone; and who of us has been so poor in spirit as to do it irreverence? In so young a man this desolate instinct had a deep significance.

Bayard’s Bible opened at the New Testament, whose worn pages moved apart, at a touch, like lips that would answer him.

As he took the book something fell from it to the floor. He stooped, holding his finger between the open leaves, and picked the object up. It was a flower—a pressed flower—the saxifrage that he had gathered from the hem of her dress on the sand of the beach, that April day.

The Bible fell from his knee. He snatched the dead flower to his lips, and kissed it passionately.

“There was another, too,” he hungrily said. “There was a pansy. She left it on the sofa pillow in this room. The pansy! the pansy!”

He took up the Bible, and searched feverishly. But he could not find the pansy; the truth being that Jane Granite had seen it on the study-table, and had dusted it away.

He laid the Bible down upon the table, and seized the saxifrage. He kissed it again and again; he devoured it over and over; he held it in the palm of his hand, and softly laid his cheek upon it....

Behind the white gauze, the Christ on the wall looked down. Suddenly Bayard raised his haggard face. The eyes of the picture and the eyes of the man met.

“Anything but this—everything but this—Thou knowest.” Aloud, Bayard uttered the words as if he expected to be heard.

“Only this—the love of man for woman—how canst Thou understand?”

Bayard arose to his full height; he lifted his hands till they touched the low, cracked ceiling; it seemed to him as if he lifted them into illimitable heaven; as if he bore on them the greatest mystery and the mightiest woe of all the race. His lips moved; only inarticulate whispers came from them.

Then his hands fell, and his face fell into them.

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Bayard went to her like a man, and at once. At an hour of the morning so early that he felt obliged to apologize for his intrusion, his sleepless face appeared at the door of her father’s cottage.

He had no more idea, even yet, what he should say to her than the Saint Michael over his study-table. He felt in himself a kind of pictorial helplessness; as if he represented something which he was incapable of expressing. His head swam. He leaned back on the bamboo chair in the parlor. Through the soft stirring of the lace curtains he watched a fleet start out, and tack across the harbor. He interested himself in the greenish-white sails of an old schooner with a new suit on. He found it impossible to think coherently of the interview which awaited him.

A hand fell on the latch of the door. He turned—ah!

“Good-morning, Professor,” said Bayard, rising manfully. His pale face, if possible, turned a shade whiter. It seemed to him the fitting sequel to his weakness that he should be called to account by the girl’s father. “I have deserved it,” he thought.

“Ah, Bayard, this is too bad!” said the Professor of Theology, cordially holding out his hand. “You have just missed my daughter. I am sure she will regret it. She took the twenty minutes past seven train.”

“Took the train?” panted Bayard.

“She has gone to join some friends of ours—the Rollinses, at Campo Bello. She did not intend to leave for some days; but the mood took her, and off she started. I think, indeed, she went without her breakfast. Helen is whimsical at times. Do be seated! We will do our poor best to take my daughter’s place,” pursued the Professor, smiling indulgently; “and I’m especially glad of this opportunity, Bayard, to tell you how much I was impressed by your discourse last night. I don’t mind saying so at all.”

“Thank you, Professor,” said Bayard faintly.

“It was not theology, you know,” observed the Professor, still smiling; “you can’t expect me to admit that it was sound, Bayard. But I must say, sir, I do say, that I defy any council in New England to say it was not Christianity!”

“Thank you, Professor,” repeated Bayard, more faintly than before. He found it impossible to talk about theology, or even Christianity. The Professor felt rather hurt that the young man took his leave so soon.

He had thought of inviting him into the clam study, and reading some extracts from the essay on the State of the Unforgiven after Death.

Bayard went back to his own rooms, and wrote to her; if he could have done so, he would have followed her to Campo Bello by the next boat. The pitiable fact was, that he could not raise the money for the trip. It occurred to him to force the occasion and borrow it—of his treasurer, of George Fenton, of his uncle; but he dismissed these fantasies as madness, and swiftly wrote:—

He dispatched this note by the first mail to Campo Bello, and waited in such patience as he could command for such answer as she chose to make him. He waited a miserable time. At the end of that week came a letter in her strong, clear hand. He shut himself into his rooms, turned the key, and read:—

This composed and womanly reply did not serve to quell the agitation in which Bayard had awaited it. He read and re-read, studied and scrutinized the few self-contained words with a sense of helplessness which equaled his misery. His position seemed to him intolerable. Something undignified about it cut the proud fellow to the quick. He had thought himself prepared for any natural phase in the lot which he had elected. In the old language which the devotees of ages have instinctively used, and which to each solitary heart seems a figure of speech as new as its own anguish, Bayard had believed himself able to “bear his cross.” He had now to learn that, in the curious, complex interplay of human life, a man may not be able even to wear his burden alone, and drop decently under it when the time comes. Suppose, as the cross-bearer crawls along in blood and dust, that the arm of the coarse wood strikes and bruises the delicate flesh of a woman’s shoulder?

Suppose—oh, suppose the unsupposable, the maddening!

Suppose she might have been led, taught by his great love to love him? What then?

Because a man had a duty to God, had he none to a woman?

After a night of sleepless misery, he wrote again:—

And Helen answered:—

It was a chilly September evening. The early dark of the coming autumn leaned from a clouded sky. The goldenrod and asters on the side of the avenue looked dim under the glimmer of the hotel lights; and the scarlet petals of the geraniums in the flower-beds were falling. In the harbor the anchored fleets flung out their headlights above a tossing sea. There was no rowing. The floats were deserted.

The guests, few now, and elect, of the sort that know and love the September Windover, clustered around the fireplace in the big parlor of the Mainsail. On the piazza of the Flying Jib the trunks stood strapped for the late evening porter and the early morning train. Bayard heard Helen’s voice in the rooms overhead, while he sat, with whirling brain, making such adieus as he could master to Professor and Mrs. Carruth. He thought that the Professor looked at him with unwonted keenness; he might have called it sternness, if he had given himself time to reflect upon it. Reflect he did not, would not. He asked distinctly for Miss Helen. Her mother went to call her, and did not return. Professor Carruth lingered a few moments, and excused himself. The proofs of the article on the Unforgiven had come by the evening mail; he had six galleys to correct that night. He shook hands with Bayard somewhat abstractedly, and went over to the clam study, swinging a lantern on his thin arm to light the meadow path.

“It is too cold for Father over there, to-night,” said Helen immediately, when she and Bayard were left alone. “I don’t think he ought to go. The Unforgiven are always up to some mischief. I would accept the doctrine of eternal punishment to get rid of them. I’m glad they’ve got as far along towards it as proof-sheets.”

“Am I keeping your father out of this warm room?” asked Bayard with his quick perception. He glanced at the open fire on the hearth. “That won’t do!” he said decidedly, rising.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that!” cried Helen, flushing.

“It is true, all the same, whether you meant it or not,” returned Bayard. “I shall stay but a few moments. Would you mind putting on something warm, and walking with me—for a little? We can go over to the clam study and get him.”

“Very well,” said Helen somewhat distantly.

She wore a summer traveling-dress of purple serge, fastened at the throat with a gold pansy. A long, thick cape with a hood lay upon the sofa.

“Mother’s waterproof will do,” she said. She wrapped it quickly around her, and they started out. Something in the utter absence of vanity which led a girl at such a moment to wear the most unbecoming thing that she could put hands on, roused a keen throb of admiration in Bayard. Then he remembered, with a pang, the anomaly of the situation. Why should she wish to make herself beautiful to him? What had he done—great heavens! what could he do, to deserve or to justify the innocent coquetries of a beloved and loving woman?

Helen pulled the hood of the cloak far over her head. And yet, what a look she had! The severity and simplicity of her appearance added to the gravity of her face a charm which he had never seen before. How womanly, how strong, how rich and ripe a being! He drew her hand through his arm authoritatively. She did not resent this trifling act of mastery. His fingers trembled; his arm shook as she leaned upon it. They struck out upon the meadow path in the dark, and, for a moment, neither spoke. Then he said:—

“I have something to say to you. I shall wait till we have sent the Professor back.”

“That will be better,” said Helen, not without embarrassment. They came to the clam study, and he waited outside while she said:—

“Come, Papa! Put the Unforgiven in your pocket, and go back to the fire! Mr. Bayard and I are going to walk.”

The Professor meekly obeyed, and Helen locked the door of the fish-house, and put the key in her pocket.

“I shall give it to Mr. Salt to-night,” she said. “We start at 7.20. Pepper is going to take us over.”

These trivial words staggered Bayard’s self-control.

“You always leave—so—early!” he stammered.

“Does that make it any worse?” she asked, trying to smile. It was not a very successful smile, and Bayard saw it. They were approaching the electric arc that lighted the entrance to the beach. The cold, light lay white on her face. Its expression startled him.

“Everything makes it worse!” he groaned. “It is as bad as it can be!”

“I can see how it might have been worse,” said Helen.

“That’s more than I can do. What do you mean?”

“I would rather not tell you,” replied Helen with gentle dignity.

“Tell me what you mean!”

He turned about and lifted her averted face; he touched her with the tip of one trembling finger under the chin.

“I prefer not to tell you, Mr. Bayard.”

She did not flush, nor blush. Her eyes met his steadily. Something in them sent the mad color racing across his face.

“Forgive me! I have no right to insist—I forgot—I have none to anything. I have no right to hear—to see—anything. God have mercy upon me!”

He put out his shaking hand, and gently covered with it her uplifted eyes; veiling from his own gaze the most sacred sight on earth. It was a beautiful act, and so delicately done that Helen felt as if a spirit had touched her.

But when she came to herself, and gave him her eyes again, with their accustomed, calm, feminine disguise, she saw no spirit, but the passionate face of a man who loved her and despaired of her as she had seen no man love or despair before.

“I cannot even ask for the chance to try,” he cried. “I am as much shut out as a beggar in the street. I ought to be as dumb before you as the thousand-years’ dead! And yet, God help me—I am a live man and I love you. I have no right to seek a right—I wrong you and myself by every word I say, by every moment I spend in your presence. Good-by!” he said with cruel abruptness, holding out his hand.

Helen did not take it. She turned her back to the great arc, and looked out to sea. Her figure, in its hooded cloak, stood strongly against the cold, white light. The tide rose upon the deserted beach insistently. The breakers roared on the distant shore.

“You must see—you must understand,” he groaned. “I am a poor man—poorer than you ever took the trouble to think. A heretic, unpopular, out of the world, an obscure, struggling fellow, slighted, forgotten—no friends but a handful of fishermen and drunkards—and living on—what do you suppose my salary is?”

“It never occurred to me to suppose,” said Helen, lifting her head proudly.

“Five hundred dollars a year; to be collected if possible, to be dispensed with if necessary.”

He jerked the words out bitterly. His fancy, with terrible distinctness, took forbidden photographs by flashlight. He saw this daughter of conventional Cesarea, this child of ease and indulgence, living at Mrs. Granite’s, boarding on prunes and green tea. He saw her trying to shake down the coal fire on a January day, while he was out making parish calls; sitting in the bony rocking-chair with the turkey-red cushion, beside the screen where the paper Cupid forever tasted uneaten fruit. He saw the severe Saint Michael looking down from the wall on that young, warm woman-creature. He saw her sweep across the old, darned carpet in her purple robes, with gold at her throat and wrists. He saw her lift her soft arms. He saw—Now he put his hands before his own eyes.

“Oh, do not suffer so!” said Helen, in a faltering voice. “Do not, do not mind it—so much! It—it breaks my heart!”

These timid, womanly words recalled Bayard to himself.

“Before I break your heart,” he cried, “I ought to be sawn asunder!

“... Let us talk of this a little,” he said in a changed tone. “Just a word. You must see—you must understand my position. What another man would say, in my place, I cannot say—to any woman. What I would die for the right to ask, I may not ask.”

“I understand,” said Helen almost inaudibly.

She still stood with her back to the light, and her face to the sea.

“I love you! I love you!” he repeated. “It is because I love you—Oh, do you see? Can you see?”

Helen made no reply. Was it possible that she dared not trust herself, at that moment, to articulate? Her silence seemed to the tortured man more cruel than the bitterest word which ever fell from the lip of a proud and injured woman.

Now again the camera of his whirling brain took instantaneous negatives. He saw himself doing what other men had done before him: abandoning a doubtful experiment of the conscience to win a woman’s love. He saw himself chopping the treadmill of his unpopular, unsuccessful work to chips; a few strong blows would do it; the discouraged people would merge themselves in the respectable churches; the ripples that he had raised in the fishing-town would close over, and his submerged work would sink to the bottom and leave no sign. A few reformed drunkards would go on a spree; a few fishermen would feel neglected for awhile: the scarlet and white fires of the Church of the Love of Christ would go out on Angel Alley. In a year Windover would be what Windover was. The eye of the great Christ would gaze no more upon him through the veil of coarse gauze; while he—free—a new man—with life before him, like other men, and the right to love—like any other man—

“That,” he said solemnly, as if he had spoken aloud, “is impossible. There could be only that one way. I cannot take it.”

“No,” she said, lifting her head, as if he had explained it all to her; “no. You could never do that. I would not have you do that for—for all that could happen—for—” she faltered.

“Great God!” thought Bayard, “and I cannot even ask her how much she cares—if she could ever learn or try to love me.”

He felt suddenly a strange weakness. He leaned against a boulder for support, coughing painfully. It seemed to him as if he were inwardly bleeding to death.

“Oh!” cried Helen, turning about swiftly and showing her own white face. “You are not well—you suffer. This will not—must not—I cannot bear it!” she said bravely, but with a quivering lip. “Give me your arm, Mr. Bayard, and let us get home.”

He obeyed her in silence. He felt, in truth, too spent to speak. They got back to the door of the cottage, and Helen led him in. Her father was not in the parlor, and her mother had gone to bed. The fire had fallen to embers. Helen motioned him to an easy-chair, and knelt, coaxing the blaze, and throwing on pine wood to start it. She looked so womanly, so gentle, so home-like, and love-like, on her knees in the firelight there, caring for the comfort of the exhausted man, that the sight was more than he could bear. He covered his eyes.

“The fire flares so, coming in from the dark,” he said.

She stepped softly about, and brought him wine and crackers, but he shook his head.

“My little tea-urn is packed,” she said, smiling, trying to look as if nothing had happened. “I would have made you such a cup of tea as you never tasted!”

“Spare me!” he pleaded. “Don’t you suppose I know that?”

He rose manfully, as soon as he could. She stood in the firelight, looking up. A quiver passed over her delicate chin. He held out his hand. She put her strong, warm clasp within it.

“I told you that I trusted you,” she said distinctly. “Believe me, and go in peace.”

“I don’t know another woman in the world who would!” cried Bayard.

“Then let me be that only one,” she answered. “I am proud to be.”

He could not reply. They stood with clasped hands. Their eyes did not embrace, but comradeship entered them.

“You will let me write?” he pleaded, at last.

“Yes.”

“And see you—sometimes.”

“Yes.”

“And trust me—in spite of all?”

“I have said it.”

“My blessing isn’t worth much,” he said brokenly, “but for what it is—Oh, my Love, God go with you!”

“And stay with you!” she whispered.

He laid her hand gently down, and turned away. She heard him shut the door, and walk feebly, coughing, up the avenue. He looked back, once. He saw her standing between the lace curtains with her arms upraised, and her hand above her eyes, steadily looking out into the dark.

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