Mrs. Leroy was one of the few women in town who realized what Sanford and his friends had long ago discovered,—the possibilities of New York in summer. To her it had now become its most delightful season, a season of long days and short nights—days and nights of utter idleness, great content, and blessed peace of mind; a season when one could dine where one chose without a waiting cab and a hurried departure at the bidding of somebody else; when the eleven o’clock lecturer is silent, the afternoon tea a memory, and the epidemic of the ten-course dinner a forgotten plague.

She had grown to believe with Sanford that if one could impress the possibility of these truths upon the friends one loved, so that they, and only they, could tiptoe back into their houses, keep their blinds closed and their servants hidden, and so delude the balance of the world—those they did not love, the uncongenial, the tiresome, the bumptious, and the aggressive—into believing that they had fled; if this little trick could be played on the world every June, and for three long happy months only congenial spirits could spread themselves over space and eat their lotus in peace (and with their fingers, if they so pleased), then would each one discover that New York in summer could indeed be made the Eldorado of one’s dreams.

Her own front door on Gramercy Park was never barricaded, nor was her house dismantled. She changed its dress in May and put it into charming summer attire of matting and chintz, making it a rare and refreshing retreat; and more than half her time she spent within its walls, running down to Medford whenever the cares of that establishment required attention, or a change of mood made a change of scene desirable.

Since the visit when Captain Joe had dismissed her with his thanks from the warehouse hospital at Keyport she had gone to Medford but once.

The major had been a constant visitor, and Jack Hardy and his fiancÉe, Helen Shirley, had on more than one occasion hidden themselves, on moonlight nights, in the shadows of the big palms fringing her balcony overlooking the Park. Sanford had not seen her as often as he wished. Work on the Ledge had kept him at Keyport, and allowed him but little time in town.

With the setting of the derricks, however, he felt himself at liberty for a holiday, and he had looked forward with a feeling of almost boyish enthusiasm—which he never quite outgrew—to a few days’ leisure in town, and a morning or two with Mrs. Leroy.

When the maid brought up his card, Mrs. Leroy was at her desk in the little boudoir, with its heaps of silk cushions, its disorder of books, and bloom of mignonette and red geraniums filling the windows that looked straight into the trees of the Park. Here the sun shone in winter, and here the moonlight traced the outlines of bare branches upon her window-shades, and here in summer the coolest of cool shadows fell from tree and awning.

“Why, I expected you yesterday, Henry,” she said, holding out her hand, seating Sanford upon the divan, and drawing up a chair beside him. “What happened?”

“Nothing more serious than an elopement.”

“Not Jack and Helen Shirley?” she said, laughing.

“No; I wish it were; they would go on loving each other. This affair brings misery. It’s Caleb West’s wife. Captain Joe is half crazy about it, and poor Caleb is heartbroken. She has gone off with that young fellow she was nursing the day you came up with the major.”

“Eloped! Pretty doings, I must say. Yes, I remember her,—a trim, rather pretty little woman with short curly hair. I caught a glimpse of Caleb, too, you know, as he came in from the Ledge. He seemed years older than she. What had he done to her?”

“Nothing, so far as I know, except love her and take care of her. Poor Caleb!”

“What did he let her go for, then? I’m sorry for the old diver, but it was his fault, somewhere. The girl had as good a face as I ever looked into. She never left her husband without some cause, poor child. What else has happened at Keyport?”

“Kate, don’t talk so. She’s treated him shamefully. They have only been married two years.”

Mrs. Leroy bent her head and looked out under the awnings for a moment in a thoughtful way. “Only two years?” she said, with some bitterness. “The poor child was impatient. When she had tried it for fifteen she would have become accustomed to it. It is the same old story, I suppose. We hear it every day. He ugly and old and selfish, never thinking of what she would like and what she longed for, keeping her shut up to sing for him when she wanted now and then to sing for herself; and then she found the door of the cage open, and out she flew. Poor little soul! I pity her. She had better have borne it; it is a poor place outside for a tired foot; and she’s nothing but a child.” Then musing, patting her slipper impatiently, “What sort of a man has she gone with? I couldn’t see him that morning, she hung over him so close, and his head was so bandaged.”

“I don’t know much about him. I haven’t known him long,” Sanford answered carelessly.

“Good-looking, isn’t he, and alive, and with something human and manlike about him?” she asked, leaning forward eagerly, her hands in her lap.

“Yes, I suppose so. He could climb like a cat, anyway,” said Sanford.

“Yes, I know, Henry. I see it all. I knew it was the same old story. She wanted something fresh and young,—some one just to play with, child as she is, some one nearer her own age to love. She was lonely. Nothing for her to do but sit down and wait for him to come home. Poor child,” with a sigh, “her misery only begins now. What else have you to tell me?”

“Nothing, except that all of the derricks tumbled. I wired you about it. They are all up now, thank goodness.” He knew her interest was only perfunctory. Her mind, evidently, was still on Betty, but he went on with his story: “Everybody got soaking wet. Captain Joe was in the water for hours. But we stuck to it. Narrowest escape the men have had this summer, Kate, since the Screamer’s. It’s a great mercy nobody was hurt. I expected every minute some one would get crushed. No one but Captain Joe could have got them up that afternoon. It blew a gale for three days. When did you get here? I thought you had gone back to Medford until Sam brought me your note.”

“No, I am still here, and shall be here for a week. Now, don’t tell me you’re going back to-night?”

“No, I’m not, but I can’t say how soon; not before the masonry begins, anyhow. Jack Hardy is coming to-morrow night to my rooms. I have asked a few fellows to meet him,—Smearly and Curran, and old Bock with his 'cello, and some others. Since Jack’s engagement he’s the happiest fellow alive.”

“They all are at first, Henry,” said Mrs. Leroy, laughing, her head thrown back. The memory of Jack and Helen was still so fresh and happy a one that it instantly changed her mood.

Betty and Caleb for the moment were forgotten, while they talked of Helen’s future, of the change in Jack’s life, of his new housekeeping, and of the thousand and one things that interested them both,—the kind of talk that two such friends indulge in who have been parted for a week or more, and who, in the first ten minutes, run lightly over their individual experiences, so that both may start fresh again with nothing hidden in either life. When he rose to go, she kept him standing while she pinned in his buttonhole a sprig of mignonette picked from her window-box, and said, with the deepest interest, “I can’t get that poor child out of my mind. Don’t be too hard on her, Henry; she’s the one who will suffer most.”

When Sanford reached his rooms again he sank into a chair which Sam had drawn close to the window, and sighed with content. “Oh, these days off!” he exclaimed.

The appointments of his own apartments seemed never so satisfying and so welcome as when he had spent a week with his men, taking his share of the exposure with all the discomforts that it brought. His early life had fitted him for these changes, and a certain cosmopolitan spirit in the man, a sort of underlying stratum of Bohemianism, had made it easy for him to adapt himself to his surroundings, whatever they might be. Not that his restless spirit could long have endured any life, either rough or luxurious, that repeated itself day after day. He could idle with the idlest, but he must also work when the necessity came, and that with all his might.

Sam always made some special preparation for his home-coming. To-day the awnings were hung over window and balcony, and the most delightful of luncheons had been arranged,—cucumbers smothered in ice, soft-shell crabs, and a roll of cream cheese with a dash of Kirsch and sugar. “I know he don’t git nuffin fit for a dog to eat when he’s away. 'Fo’ God I don’t know how he stands it,” Sam was accustomed to observe to those of his friends who sometimes watched his preparations.

“Major’s done been hyar 'mos’ ebery day you been gone, sah,” he said, drawing out Sanford’s chair, when luncheon was served. “How is it, sah,—am I to mix a cocktail ebery time he comes? An’ dat box ob yo’ big cigars am putty nigh gone; ain’t no more ’n fo’r 'r five of ’em lef.” The major, Sam forgot to mention, was only partly to blame for these two shrinkages in Sanford’s stores.

“What does he come so often for, Sam?” asked Sanford, laughing.

“Dat’s mor’ 'an I know, sah, ’cept he so anxious to git you back, he says. He come twice a day to see if you’re yere. Co’se dere ain’t nuffin cooked, an’ so he don’t git nuffin to eat, but golly! he’s powerful on jewlips. I done tole him yesterday you wouldn’t be back till to-morrow night. Dat whiskey’s all gin out; he saw der empty bottle hisse’f; he ain’t been yere agin to-day,” with a chuckle.

“Always give the major whatever he wants,” said Sanford. “And Sam,” he called as that darky was disappearing in the pantry, “a few gentlemen will be here to supper to-morrow night. Remind me to make a list in the morning of what you will want.”

The list was made out, and a very toothsome and cooling list it was,—a frozen melon tapped and filled with a pint of Pommery sec, by way of beginning. All the trays and small tables with their pipes and smokables were brought out, a music-stand was opened and set up near a convenient shaded candle, and the lid of the piano was lifted and propped up rabbit-trap fashion.

Just as the moon was rising, silvering the tops of the trees in the square below, Smearly in white flannels and flaming tie arrived fresh from his studio, where he had been at work on a ceiling for some millionaire’s salon. Jack followed in correct evening dress, and Curran from his office, in a business suit. The major was arrayed in a nondescript combination of yellow nankeen and black bombazine, that would have made him an admirable model for a poster in two tints. He was still full of his experiences at the warehouse hospital after the accident to the Screamer. His little trip to Keyport as acting escort to Mrs. Leroy had not only opened his eyes to a class of workingmen of whose existence he had never dreamed, but it had also furnished him with a new and inexhaustible topic of conversation. Every visitor at his downtown office had listened to his recital by the hour. To-night, however, the major had a new audience, and a new audience always added fuel to the fire of his eloquence.

When the subject of the work at the Ledge came up, and the sympathy of everybody was expressed to Sanford over the calamity to the Screamer,—they had not seen him since the explosion,—the major broke out:—

“You ought to have gone with us, my dear Smearly.” (To have been the only eye-witness at the front, except Sanford himself, gave the major great scope.) “Giants, suh,—every man of ’em; a race, suh, that would do credit to the Vikings; bifurcated walruses, suh; amphibious titans, that can work as well in water as out of it. No wonder our dear Henry” (this term of affection was not unusual with the major) “accomplishes such wonders. I can readily understand why you never see such fellows anywhere else; they dive under water when the season closes,” he continued, laughing, and, leaning over Curran’s shoulder, helped himself to one of the cigars Sam was just bringing in.

“And the major outdid himself, that day, in nursing them,” interrupted Sanford. “You would have been surprised, Jack, to see him take hold. When I turned in for the night on a cot, he was giving one of the derrickmen a sponge bath.”

“Learned it in the army,” said Curran, with a sly look at Smearly. Both of them knew the origin of the major’s military title.

The major’s chin was upturned in the air; his head was wreathed in smoke, the match, still aflame, held aloft with outstretched hand. He always lighted his cigars in this lordly way.

“Many years ago, gentlemen,” the major replied, distending his chest, throwing away the match, and accepting the compliment in perfect good faith; “but these are things one never forgets.” The major had never seen the inside of a camp hospital in his life.

The guests now distributed themselves, each after the manner of his likes: Curran full length on a divan, the afternoon paper in his hand; Jack on the floor, his back to the wall, a cushion behind his head; Smearly in an armchair; and the major bolt upright on a camp-stool near a table which held a select collection of drinkables, presided over by a bottle of seltzer in a silver holder. Sam moved about like a restless shadow, obedient to the slightest lifting of Sanford’s eyebrow, when a glass needed filling or a pipe replenishing.

At ten o’clock, lugging in his great 'cello, Bock came,—short, round, and oily, with a red face that beamed with good humor, and fat puffy hands that wrinkled in pleats when he held his bow. Across a perpetually moist forehead was pasted a lock of black hair. He wore a threadbare coat spattered with spots, baggy black trousers, and a four-button brown holland waistcoat, never clean,—sometimes connected with a collar so much ashamed of the condition of its companion shirt-front that it barely showed its face over a black stock that was held together by a spring. A man who was kindly and loyal; who loved all his kind, spoke six languages, wrote for the EncyclopÆdia, and made a 'cello sing like an angel.

Despite his frouziness, everybody who knew Bock liked him; those who heard him play loved him. There was a pathos, a tender, sympathetic quality in his touch, that one never forgot: it always seemed as if, somehow, ready tears lingered under his bow. “With a tone like Bock’s” was the highest compliment one could pay a musician. To Sanford this man’s heart was dearer than his genius.

“Why, Bock, old man,” he called, “we didn’t expect you till eleven.”

“Yes, I know, Henri, but ze first wiolin, he take my place. Zey will not know ze difference.” One fat hand was held up deprecatingly, the fingers outspread. “Everybody fan and drink ze beer. Ah, Meester Hardy, I have hear ze news; so you will leave ze brotherhood. And I hear,” lowering his voice and laying his other fat hand affectionately on Jack’s, “zat she ees most lofely. Ah, it ees ze best zing,” his voice rising again. “When ve get old and ugly like old Bock, and so heels over head wiz all sorts of big zings to build like Mr. Sanford, or like poor Smearly paint, paint, all ze time paint, it ees too late to zink of ze settle down. Ees it not so, you man Curran over zere, wiz your newspaper over your head?” This time his voice was flung straight at the recumbent editor as a climax to his breezy salutation.

“Yes, you’re right, Bock; you’re ugly enough to crowd a dime museum, but I’ll forgive you everything if you’ll put some life into your strings. I heard your orchestra the other night, and the first and second violins ruined the overture. What the devil do you keep a lot of”—

“What ees ze matter wiz ze overture, Meester Ole Bull?” said Bock, pitching his voice in a high key, squeezing down on the divan and pinching Curran’s arm with his fat fingers.

“Everything was the matter. The brass drowned the strings, and Reynier might have had hair-oil on his bow for all the sound you heard. Then the tempo was a beat too slow.”

“Henri Sanford, do you hear zis crazy man zat does not know one zing, and lie flat on his back and talk such nonsense? Ze wiolin, Meester Musical Editor Curran, must be pianissimo,—only ze leetle, ze ve’y leetle, you hear. Ze aria is carried by ze reeds.”

“Carried by your grandmother!” said Curran, springing from the divan. “Here, Sam, put a light on the piano. Now listen, you pagan. Beethoven would get out of his grave if he could hear you murder his music. The three bars are so,”—touching the keys, “not so!” And thus the argument went on.

Out on the balcony, Smearly and Quigley, the marine painter, who had just come in, were talking about the row at the Academy over the rejection of Morley’s picture, while the major was in full swing with Hardy, Sanford, and some of the later arrivals, including old Professor Max Shutters, the biologist, who had been so impressively introduced by Curran to the distinguished Pocomokian that the professor had at once mistaken the major for a brother scientist.

“And you say, Professor Slocomb,” said the savant, his hand forming a sounding-board behind his ear, “that the terrapin, now practically extinct, was really plentiful in your day?”

“My learned suh, I have gone down to the edge of my lawn, overlooking the salt-marsh, and seen ’em crawling around like potato bugs. The niggahs couldn’t walk the shore at night without trampling on ’em. This craze of yo’r millionaire epicures for one of the commonest shell-fish we have is”—

“Amphibia,” suggested the professor, as if he had recognized a mere slip of the tongue. “I presume you are referring to the Malaclemmys palustris,—the diamond-back species.”

“You are right, suh,” said the major. “I had forgotten the classification for the moment,” with an air of being perfectly at home on the subject. “The craze for the palustris, my dear suh, is one of the unaccountable signs of the times; it is the beginning of the fall of our institutions, suh. We cannot forget the dishes of peacock tongues in the old Roman days,—a thousand peacocks at a cou’se, suh.”

The major would have continued down through Gibbon and Macaulay if Curran had not shouted out, “Keep still, every soul of you! Bock is going to give us the Serenade.”

The men crowded about the piano. Smearly stood ready to turn the leaves of the music for Curran, and Jack drew a chair closer to the 'cellist.

Bock uncovered the 'cello and held it between his knees, his fat hand resting lightly on the strings. As Curran, with his foot on the pedal of the piano, passed his hand rapidly over the keys, Bock’s head sank to the level of his shoulders, his straggling hair fell over his coat collar, his raised fingers balanced for a moment the short bow, and then Schubert’s masterpiece poured out the very fullness of its heart.

A profound hush, broken only by the music, fell on the room. The old professor leaned forward, both hands cupped behind his ears. Sanford and Jack smoked on, their eyes half closed, and even the major withheld his hand from the well-appointed tray and looked into his empty glass.

At a time when the spell was deepest and the listeners held their breath, the perfect harmony was broken by a discordant ring at the outer door. Curran turned his head angrily, and Sanford looked at Sam, who glided to the door with a catlike tread, opening it without a sound, and closing it gently behind him. The symphony continued, the music rising in interest, and the listeners forgot the threatened interruption.

Then the door opened again, and Sam, making a wide dÉtour, bent over Sanford and whispered in his ear. A woman wanted to see him in the hall. Sanford started, as if annoyed, arose from his seat, and again the knob was noiselessly turned and the door as noiselessly closed, shutting Sanford into the corridor.

“Do you wish to see me, madam?” he asked, crossing to a chair in which the woman sat wrapped in a long cloak, her face buried in her hands.

The woman turned her head towards him without raising her eyelids.

“And you don’t know me any more, Mr. Sanford?”

“Betty! You here!” said Sanford, looking in astonishment at the crouching figure before him.

“I had to come, sir. The druggist at the corner showed me the house. I was a-waitin’ outside in the street below, hopin’ to see you come in. Then I heard the music and knew you were home.” The voice shook with every word. The young dimpled face was drawn and pale, the pretty curly hair in disorder about her forehead. She had the air of one who had been hunted and had just found shelter.

“Does Lacey know you are here?” asked Sanford, a dim suspicion rising in his mind.

Betty shivered slightly, as if the name had hurt her. “No, sir. I left him two nights ago. I got away while he was asleep. All I want now is a place for to-night, and then perhaps to-morrow I can get work.”

“And you have no money?” asked Sanford.

Betty shook her head. “I had a little of my own, but it’s all gone, and I’m so tired, and—the city frightens me so—when the night comes.” The head dropped lower, the sobs choking her. After a little she went on, drying her eyes with her handkerchief, rolled tight in one hand; and resting her cheek on the bent fingers, “I didn’t know nobody but you, Mr. Sanford. I can pay it back.” The voice was scarcely audible.

Sanford stood looking down upon her bowed head. The tired eyelids were half closed, the tears glistening in the light of the overhanging lamp, the shadows of her black curls flecking her face. The cloak hung loosely about her, the curve of her pretty shoulders outlined in its folds. Then she lifted her head, and, looking Sanford in the eyes for the first time, said in a broken, halting voice, “Did you—did you—see—Caleb—Mr. Sanford?”

Sanford nodded slowly in answer. He was trying to make up his mind what he should do with a woman who had broken the heart of a man like Caleb. Through the closed door he heard the strains of Bock’s 'cello, the notes vibrating plaintively. They belonged to some other world.

“Betty,” he said, leaning over her, “how could you do it?”

The girl covered her face with her hands and shrank within her cloak. Sanford went on, his sense of Caleb’s wrongs overpowering him: “What could Lacey do for you? If you could once see Caleb’s face you would never forgive yourself. No woman has a right to leave a man who was as good to her as your husband was to you. And now what has it all come to? You’ve ruined yourself, and broken his heart.”

The girl trembled and bent her head, cowering under the pitiless words; then, in a half-dazed way, she rose from her seat, and, without looking at Sanford, said in a tired, hopeless voice, as if every word brought a pain, “I think I’ll go, Mr. Sanford.”

Sanford watched her silently as she drew her cloak about her and turned to the door. The pathos of the shrinking girlish figure overcame him. He began to wonder if there were something under it all that even Captain Joe did not know of. Then he remembered the tones of compassion in Mrs. Leroy’s voice when her heart had gone out to this girl the morning before, as she said, “Poor child, her misery only begins now; it is a poor place for a tired foot.”

For an instant he stood irresolute. “Wait,” he said. “Wait a moment.”

Betty stood still, without raising her head.

Sanford paused in deep thought, with averted eyes.

“Betty,” he murmured at last in a softened voice, “you can’t go out like this alone. I’ll take you, child, where you will be safe for the night.”