Power arrived at New York in mid-winter. He found that crowded hive humming, as usual, with life and its activities, but in a new and perplexing way. The Waldorf Hotel had become the Waldorf-Astoria, and, while doubling its name, had increased fourfold in size. Its main corridor had the bustle and crush of a busy street; but every face had an aspect of aloofness, almost of hostility. The old, intimate life of America had vanished. None paid heed to the newcomer. The spick-and-span occupants of the reception bureau evidently regarded him as Room Number So-and-so. Confused and mystified by the well-dressed throng of the hotel’s patrons, he failed to notice, at first, that it was composed of individuals, or groups, as unknown to one another as he was to the mass; that, in very truth, it was

“... no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go.”

He reached the hotel early in the evening, and was fortunate in being able to secure a suite of rooms. Soon wearying of the traffic in that world’s fair which caustic New York has nicknamed “Rubberneck Alley,” he bought a newspaper, and retired to his apartments. But the day’s record held no interest for him. He knew little of the men and women who figured therein; even less of the events which called for big type and immense headlines.

But his eye was caught by an announcement of a performance that night of Gounod’s “Faust” at the Metropolitan Opera House. He resolved to go there, never dreaming that the odds were hundreds to one against the chance of obtaining a seat; for New York had just entered the lists against the other capitals of the world, and was determined to capture the leading place in the grand-opera tourney.

He telephoned the office, “Kindly get me a stall for the Metropolitan this evening.”

And, behold! a blasÉ clerk was actually stirred out of boredom by the surprising statement received from the box-office that a stall had just been returned, and he could have it now if he closed at once. So Power never knew what a trick Fortune had played him, since there can be little doubt that the impression made by the marvelous music and extraordinarily human appeal of “Faust” insensibly prepared him for the tragic events of the coming day. Imagine a man of musical bent, who had dwelt seven years among veritable savages, renewing his acquaintance with the muses by hearing the most poignant of stage love-stories told in Gounod’s impassioned strains and interpreted by famous singers and a superb orchestra!

The exquisite tenderness of the doomed lover’s first address to Marguerite thrilled his inmost being.

“Ne permettrez-vous pas, ma belle demoiselle,
Qu’en vous offre le bras, pour faire le chemin?”

He was struck by the coincidence that the woman to whom he was pledged should be named Marguerite! Faire le chemin! Yes, they would soon be taking the long road of life together. What assured happiness seemed to breathe from each perfect note; yet what horror and despair would be the outcome of the man’s ardor and the maid’s shy diffidence! When Marguerite told Faust that she was ni demoiselle, ni belle, Power could hardly fail to recollect that his own Marguerite, not without cruel cause, was ever tortured by the fear that her disfigurement might some day turn him from her with loathing. Even the slaying of Valentine as the direct outcome of his sister’s frailty seemed, to the overwrought imagination of one member of the audience, to bear an uncanny analogy to his mother’s death. There remained one other point of contact between the story of the opera and Power’s own life; but, fortunately for him, or his surcharged emotions might not have withstood the strain, he could not recognize as yet that last and most terrible similarity.

As it was, his rapt interest in the opera attracted the attention of his neighbors in the stalls. As a girl whispered to her attendant cavalier:

“That man near us—the man with the piercing eyes and worn face—seems to regard ‘Faust’ as history rather than allegory.”

“Perhaps he sees the allegory,” was the answer, and the girl shrugged her pretty shoulders. She was young, and dwelt in a sheltered garden. To her, “Faust” was only an opera. It had nothing to do with the realities of life; which, if she were asked for a definition, consisted mainly of so ordering one’s time as to miss no important social function.

Next morning, though aware of a nervous system still in a curious state of exaltation and strain after his overnight experiences, Power yielded quickly to the stimulating effect of the keen, cold air and bright sunshine of a typical winter’s day on the North Atlantic seaboard. After breakfast he walked to his bank, and was received as one risen from the dead. Financial institutions, even the soundest and most conservative, have a special flair for clients who allow vast sums of money to accumulate, year by year, at rates of interest which suit the bank’s own purposes.

When Power had been welcomed heartily by the manager—his friend of former days, now promoted—the latter said cheerfully:

“Well, since you have actually returned from Mars, or whatever planet you may have been visiting, I suppose you want to look into your account?”

“It seems a reasonable thing to do, especially as I am thinking of marrying,” agreed Power.

The official gave some instruction to the general office, and a passbook was produced. There were, of course, hardly any entries on the debit side, and payments from mine and ranch had been made half-yearly; so one small book contained the whole of the seven years’ statement. Power, unaccustomed as yet to the methods of financial bookkeeping, turned to the latest column, and saw a row of figures. He looked perplexed, whereat the manager smiled.

“Well,” came the question, “I fancy you find yourself well able to maintain a wife?”

Power’s eyes seemed to be fascinated by the item which had first attracted them.

“Y-yes,” he said hesitatingly; “but I had a notion that I was very much better off.”

Then it was the manager’s turn to be puzzled. He rose, came round the table at which the two were seated, and adjusted his eyeglasses.

“Better off!” he exclaimed. “Why, you are a very rich man, Mr. Power. Don’t you see——” He broke into a loud laugh as he discovered the entry which this queer-mannered client was gazing at. “Man alive,” he cried, “that is the last half-year’s interest on your capital! The current rate is rather low, two and one-half per cent. Here,” and he pointed to the top of the page, “is a summary of your deposit—four million dollars, all in hard cash. If you mean to begin investing, I must ask you to go slow. Even in your own interests, that is advisable. Heavy purchases of stock tend to bull the market, and it is a little inclined to go that way at the moment. I’ll give you a list of gilt-edged securities which will, of course, nearly double your annual revenue from invested capital alone. You had better show it to some other adviser, and, when you have selected your stocks, let me begin operating. I can carry the whole thing through in a couple of months without letting Wall Street know that a big buyer is in the market.”

Power was rather stunned by the amount of his wealth, and an odd thought darted through his brain that if, in the world of today, no tempter could bribe another Doctor Faustus with the offer of renewed youth, the fiend might pour gold into his chosen victim’s pockets. Almost could he feel the mocking phantom at his shoulder; though, indeed, there was none other in the room than the courteous banker.

“Great Scott!” the latter was saying. “What a bonanza that mine of yours is! And Bison is growing quite a town. I paid it a flying visit last summer. Have you been there recently? I imagine not, since your cablegram came from Buenos Aires.”

Bison was a word to evoke shadows; but it sufficed to drive one away just then.

“Ah, Bison!” said Power, standing up. “I must go west at once. I have not even made known to MacGonigal my presence in America. He is well, I hope?”

“Fatter than ever. There is some talk of his running for governor.”

“And Jake, the man in charge of the ranch? Did you hear of him when you were in Colorado?”

“Yes, indeed. He is married.”

“Married! Jake!”

“More than that, his wife, a pretty little woman, told me she had to threaten a divorce in order to stop him from mounting the little Jakes on what he calls ‘plugs’ before the kiddies were well out of the perambulator.”

A clerk announced through a speaking-tube that someone wanted the banker. The conventional, “Ask him to wait one minute,” warned Power that this was no hour for gossip.

“I can have some money now?” he inquired.

“As much as you like.”

“May I ask—I am a child in these matters—if good diamonds are obtainable in New York, and what I ought to pay for a ring—an engagement ring?”

“Our diamonds are not cheap; but they are supposed to be the pick of the market. I think you ought to get a perfect ring for a thousand dollars. By the way, there is quite an accumulation of letters here. Leave your address, and they will be packed and sent to your rooms.”

Power wrote a check at the counter, and was given a bundle of notes. He went to a well-known jewelry establishment recommended by the bank manager, and asked to be shown some engagement rings.

“What size, sir?” inquired an attendant.

“Oh, not anything remarkable, but of the best quality.”

“I mean, sir, what size is the lady’s finger?”

Power laughed. He realized that he must come down out of the clouds, and pay heed occasionally to the minor phases of life.

“I don’t know. She has small hands, and, long, tapering fingers,” he said, smiling at his own fatuity; for the description might have been a line taken bodily out of nineteen novels among every twenty.

“It really doesn’t matter, sir,” said the shopman, eager to please a new customer. “If you choose a suitable ring, the lady can send or bring it here, and it will be adjusted to the right size without any delay or extra charge.”

“But she is in England.”

“Exactly the same conditions apply in our London branch.”

So Power bought a very beautiful ring, which happened to contain seven graduated stones in a single row. The number pleased him, and he was sure Meg would note its significance. He secured the gage thus early so that he might write and tell her about it; while its mere possession and safeguarding would supply an extra stimulus for a speedy crossing of the Atlantic.

Then he strolled up Fifth Avenue, and did not flinch from memories of the last time he had passed through that remarkable thoroughfare. He would be callous, indeed, if his thoughts did not dwell on Nancy, and go back to the sweet lawlessness of their brief companionship. Where was she now? he wondered. A fine lady, no doubt, ruffling it with matronly self-possession among the high-born friends she had won in Paris and London. And that mean-spirited wretch, her father? Dead, in all probability, or eating his heart out in semi-insanity; for Power was beginning to see, with surer, wider vision, that Willard must have known he was a murderer, since no other hand but his had sent a dear and honored woman to her grave.

Then his mind reverted to Marguerite Sinclair, and he was comforted by his knowledge of her frank, joyous, make-the-best-of-everything temperament. He had not deluded himself into the belief that he was marrying her in the flood-tide of passion which had overwhelmed Nancy and himself. Pretense was always hateful to him, and it would be rank hypocrisy to assume that the madness of that first love could ever again surge through heart and brain. Marguerite’s own action in accepting him after she had looked into the pages of his earlier life gave ample assurance that she would be content with his faith and devotion. She was no lovesick maid, but a woman of strong, clear perceptions. He was troubled with no doubt as to the future nor qualm as to the past, and he thanked Providence humbly for having allotted him such a true and honest helpmate for his remaining years.

On returning to the hotel, he found a bulky package in his room. It contained heaps of letters and other documents which had been sent to the bank or forwarded from Bison, and, of course, they were mostly seven years old, or thereabouts. Two, bearing recent postmarks, caught his eye, and he read them first.

One was from Dacre. “You see,” it ran, “I remain on the map. If this reaches you, cable me. My house is yours for as long as you care to stay.”

The other brought a smile to his lips. It was in Spanish, and signed “Bartolomeo Malaspina”:

So, then, he was remembered by a few friends. The knowledge consoled him for the heedless rush and flurry of New York.

An impulse seized him to break the seals of an envelop marked, “To be burnt, unopened, by my executors,” and take therefrom two letters which he knew it contained. The action was nothing more nor less than a trial of his new-born resolve; since the letters were Nancy’s to himself and Willard’s to his mother. He read them calmly and dispassionately. Willard’s malicious threat he dismissed quickly. It had served its vile purpose, and its victims had paid the price demanded, the mother by death, the son by suffering. But Nancy’s few disconnected sentences gripped his imagination with a new force. Had he misjudged her? he wondered. What argument had Willard used that she yielded so promptly and completely? The broken, pitiful words brought a mist before his eyes. Poor girl! Perhaps, in her woman’s way, she had endured miseries from which life among the Indians had rescued him. Then he recalled the farewell message she had given to Dacre, and the momentary belief that he might have acted precipitately died away. Should he ever meet her in the years to come? He hoped not, with all his heart. He must so contrive Meg’s life and his own that they would pass their days far from the haunts of society. The worship of the golden calf permits its votaries no escape. Thank Heaven, and he and his wife would never practise the cult!

Glancing casually through the rest of the heap, his attention was drawn to a couple of cablegrams. He opened one, and found that it was dated in the late autumn of that memorable year. It read:

One night, sleeping in the depths of a Patagonian forest, he had been aroused by the snarl of some wild animal close at hand. He had never known what beast it was that rustled away among the undergrowth; but he felt the same sense of impending evil now. Thinking the other message might be more explanatory, he tore at the envelop with nervous fingers; but the contents were an exact replica of its predecessor. Then he saw that one had been sent to Bison and the other to New York on the same day, the place of origin of each being London.

He could not doubt that “N” was “Nancy,” and he asked himself, with quick foreboding, what strong motive had inspired this urgent command. He was to forget all that had passed! What strangely variable creatures woman were, to be sure! Could she, or any woman, honestly imagine that such a request might be obeyed? Forget that struggle between love and duty; forget the delirium of that fortnight in the Adirondacks; forget the numb agony of the days following her flight? As soon might a man forget his own name!

Nerving himself to the task, he searched for some written word which should make clear the baffling enigma. Soon he came across two letters in Nancy’s handwriting, and bearing the London postmark. The dates were three months apart, and the earlier one corresponded with that on the cablegrams; so he opened it first, and read:

Power’s brain was on fire as he read; but his heart seemed to be in the clutch of an icy hand. For some minutes—he never subsequently knew how long the trance lasted—he was transported bodily to the shores of a sunlit lake, and he lived again through the frenzy of those first hours after Nancy’s disappearance. When his senses came back, and his blazing eyes could discern the written word, he read and reread those parts of the letter which breathed her secret. Then, with the listless despair of a man who realizes that the new sanctuary of hope and self-confidence which he had constructed with so much blind faith, to which he had given so many laborious years, was tumbling in ruins at his feet, he opened the second letter, which was somewhat bulky, and crackled under his touch. From the middle of the folded sheet he took a withered spray of white heather. Had it been a poisonous snake he could not have started more violently. There was no doubting either its origin or significance. He held in his shaking hands the very spray Nancy carried at her wedding, and she had sent it as a token that all was at an end between them. He was minded then and there to commit the whole pile of correspondence to destroying flames; but he was well aware that such a coward’s trick would prove of no avail. Strive as he might, he could never expel from his breast the blighting knowledge lodged there now and forever. Those shrunken and faded strands of heather were typical of his own life. Not all the alchemies of wizardry or miracles of science could restore their bright hues. They were dead, and sinking slowly into dust. No shower from Heaven could freshen them, no kindly care quicken them into vitality. They were dead, and he was dead, a mere dried-up husk of a man, a banned creature, to whom hope and faith and the bright vision of a new career were ruthlessly forbidden.

At last, thinking he might as well learn the scorching truth in its entirety, he turned to the letter.

It was undated; but the postmark was eloquent, and it began with strange abruptness:

“So, then, Derry, you have cast me off, left me to die; for I shall die within a month, or less. Well, be it so. I am content. If such is the woman’s lot, of what avail to cry aloud to Heaven that it is unjust? But, if ever you come to realize what tortures I have endured while waiting in vain for the answer that never arrived, surely you will pity me. I, once so full of the joy of life, am humbled to the dust. Your departure from Bison—for my constant friend MacGonigal has told me of your going—robbed me of my last frail refuge. Some day, perhaps, you will read these farewell words of the woman who loved you, who still loves you, who will love you to the end, whose last prayer will be for you and not for herself. Oh, Derry, it will be hard to pass into the everlasting night, knowing that you and I shall never meet again on this side of the grave, but harder still to deliver into the keeping of one whom I loathe the living memory of my brief happiness. It may not be so. My child and I may go out into the darkness together; but I dare not petition the Most High for that crowning mercy. Have I really done wrong? I cannot decide, but grope blindly for guidance. If I am judged, it will be by One who looks into the heart, and will treat an erring woman with divine compassion as well as justice. But you, if ever you see what I am setting down here, and I am convinced that you will, even though I be long dead—what of you? My heart aches for you. Can I give you any message of healing and solace? Yes, one. If my child lives—ah, it is bitter to think that the mother’s eyes will be glazing in death when they see her babe!—I charge you with a sacred responsibility. What do I mean? I cannot tell you. I am fey today. I peer into a dim future. I only know that I shall not survive my little one’s birth, and that some day, somehow, you will understand that which is hidden from my ken in laying this duty upon you. And that way will come consolation. Do you remember how I used to hate that word ‘duty’? Yet it is stronger than I. It compels me, even now.

“Farewell, Derry. I kiss you, in a waking dream. No matter what the world has in store for you—though some other fair woman may quicken into life because of you—though men may honor your name and exalt you to the high places—you will never forget the girl you once held dear. As a souvenir, I send you all that is left of the bunch of white heather which formed my wedding bouquet. Did you see it that day when you hid on the ledge, and watched the triumphal start of a journey which has led me into such strange places and is now to end so soon? We never spoke of it when we passed the long, sunny hours by the lake—dear Heaven! our lake! Would that its bright waters had closed over my head then; for I was so happy, and so much in love with you and the world! But I knew what happened on that June day in the Gulch, for I could read your soul mirrored in your eyes; so now I give you one final memento, and hug the belief that you will press it to your lips. My poor secret dies with me, perhaps. I don’t imagine that the man whom I used to revere as a father will satisfy an unfathomable spite by denying my child the tending and luxury it will receive in Hugh Marten’s care. I could write reams of a woman’s sad longings, of explanations that would lead nowhere; but I dare not trust even you, else you would deem me mad. And I am not mad, only woebegone and fearful, for the night cometh, and I shudder at its silence and mystery. So, once more, and for the last time, farewell, my dear. I take you in my arms. I cling to you, even in death.”

The unhappy man wilted under that piteous leave-taking. He felt that he had descended into a tomb, and was listening to a voice speaking in dread tones. The thick curtains of despair closed over his soul, and he seemed to be falling into an abyss. He heard himself uttering a broken wail of protest; for it was borne in on him that Nancy’s heart-rending message had riveted close against the fetters he thought to have left forever amid the dun recesses of the Andes. What remained in life for him? What could there be of happiness and content, with the dire conviction lodged immovably in heart and brain that Nancy, like his mother, had died because of his wrong-doing? He was caught in some furious and fatal maelstrom which, like that fabled whirlpool of the North Sea, was sweeping him, in ever-narrowing circles, to irresistible doom. The marvel is that his mind did not give way; but a merciful release was not to be vouchsafed in that manner, for the fantastic laughter of lunacy would have been kinder than the blackness of darkness which now enwrapped his being. In that hour of abasement his spirit capitulated. Nothing mattered. He was crushed and paralyzed. He could not pray, because it did not seem as though there was One who gave heed. The bright world had become a place of skulls, a charnel house, a prison whose iron walls were closing in on him eternally.

It was a strange thing that he did not, even as a passing obsession, think of terminating the dreary pilgrimage of life then and there. At Bison, during the first stupor of grief after his mother’s death and Nancy’s desertion, he had pondered, many a time, the awful problem which ever presents itself to men of strong will and resolute purpose. When life appears to be no longer worth living the question arises—why not end it? But seven years of lonely musing had given depth and solidity to his nature. Above all, he had been taught to endure. He had come now to a worse pass than any that pierced the Andes; for an unending desert lay in front, while he was leaving a fair territory in which lay domestic joys and a love for which his soul hungered. In the moment when union with Marguerite Sinclair was forbidden so sternly he gaged with woeful accuracy the extent of his longing for her companionship. He understood, with a certainty of judgment that brooked no counter argument, that he could never marry. He dared not. If that which Nancy had said was true, he would surely kill himself in a paroxysm of loathing and self-accusation when any other woman’s kiss was still hot on his lips.

There remained a task not to be shirked—he must ascertain, beyond doubt, that Nancy was really dead. Gathering the four letters in whose yellowing sheets was summarized the whole story of his wasted life, he placed them in a pocketbook. In doing so, he happened to touch the case containing the ring he had bought for Meg. Oddly enough, that simple incident cost him the sharpest pang; but he conquered his emotions, much as a man might do who was facing unavoidable death, and even forced his trembling fingers to put the envelop which held Nancy’s white heather side by side with Marguerite’s diamonds. Then he went out.

An oldtime acquaintance in Denver with the ways of journalism led him to the nearest newspaper office. There he asked to be taken to the news editor’s room, and a busy man looked at him curiously when he explained that he wanted to know whether or not Mrs. Marten, wife of Hugh Marten, was living, and, if dead, the date of her demise.

There was something in Power’s manner that puzzled the journalist, some hint of tragedy and immeasurable loss, but he was courteously explicit.

“You mean Hugh Marten, the financier, formerly of Colorado?” he inquired.

“Yes, that is the man.”

The other took a volume from a shelf of biographies, by which is meant the newspaper variety—typed accounts of notable people still living, together with newspaper cuttings referring to recent events in their careers. Soon he had a pencil on an entry.

“Yes,” he said. “Mrs. Marten has been dead nearly seven years.”

“And her child? Is the child living?”

“Yes. Poor lady! She died in giving it birth. I remember now. It was a very sad business. Mrs. Marten was a remarkably beautiful woman. Her husband was inconsolable. He has not married again; but is devoted to his little daughter, who, by the way, was named after her mother—Nancy Willard Marten. Ah, of course, that middle name reminds me of something else. Mrs. Marten’s father, Francis Willard, was accidentally shot last year.”

“Shot?”

“Yes. He was summering in the Adirondacks, and was out after duck; but, by some mischance, caught a trigger when crawling through a clump of rushes, and blew the top of his head off.”

“He was near a lake, then?”

“Yes. It wasn’t Forked Lake, but a sheet of water in the hills not far distant. I can find out the exact locality if you wish it.”

“No, thank you. I am very much obliged to you.”

“No trouble at all. Sorry I hadn’t better news, if these people are friends of yours.”

So Willard was dead, and by his own hand, and the scene of his last reckoning was the lake which witnessed the ignoble revenge he had wreaked on Power by sacrificing Nancy! The broken man bowed his head humbly. He had been scourged with whips; but his sworn enemy had been chastised with scorpions.