Stacey Carroll was not more unusual than most men, but he was as much so. The only difference was that his diversity had been fostered by his education, and that he was not ashamed of it, but clung to it as something of value, desiring only to suppress the appearance of it. He was healthy and vigorous mentally as well as physically, mixed easily with his fellows, and was as usual on the surface as were they—on the surface. But really he was unusual in being extraordinarily sensitive to impressions, to whatever was beautiful (provided it was also faintly exotic)—in short, to whatever was fine and delicate and fanciful.

And if one asks how it came about that, with this characteristic, he was content to live in the city of Vernon, which had two hundred thousand inhabitants, was situated in Illinois, was not very beautiful, and certainly had no touch of the exotic about it, the answer is that he was not—with this part of him. The part was not by any means the whole. With a great deal of the rest of him Stacey very much liked living in Vernon. He liked many Vernon people, he liked the physical comforts of his existence, and he did not dislike being a member of one of the city’s most prominent families. He had a great capacity for liking both people and things. He could perceive bad in them, but quite instinctively his mind singled out and dwelt on the good. Moreover, it should at once be said for Vernon that it differed from the average middle-western city of two hundred thousand inhabitants. Being close to Chicago it was metropolitan in feeling; plays came to it and music; its citizens—the ones Stacey knew—were sophisticated, well informed, almost too up-to-date; the houses that they built—often with Stacey’s help—were modern and handsome. The provincial spirit had long since vanished from Vernon.

And, after all, Stacey’s very eccentricity—his delight in what was wistful and lovely,—though it would certainly have been better satisfied in Paris, was not altogether starved in Vernon, as a love of classic line might have been. Books and music fed it; and where in the whole world could he have found more perfect satisfaction of it than in Marian Latimer?

For the three years that he had known her, to enter the door of the house in which she and her parents lived had been to him like crossing the threshold of fairy-land. Outside there might be street-cars and motors and the smell of soft coal; within there was charm and grace and peace—not stupid peace, tingling peace—and Marian, who embodied them all, with so much more, and spread them about her.

Never until this evening had Stacey entered the Latimer house without experiencing a sudden sense of buoyancy. But to-night his heart was so heavy that it seemed to weigh his whole body down. He had a curious feeling that he must tread carefully or he would break something.

In the narrow Colonial hallway he gave his coat and hat to the maid, then went into the drawing-room, which was white and spacious, though the house was small.

Mr. and Mrs. Latimer were there; Marian was not. Marian was never there. She was always coming from somewhere else or going somewhere else—both in space and time. At least, that was the impression she left lovingly in Stacey. Not that she was full of futile restlessness. It was only that her charm was the charm of movement, of running water, of a humming-bird. Mentally as well as physically—oh, far more!—she paused only at moments in her flittings. You hardly ever caught her. But that made the rare moment more precious.

Her parents greeted Stacey with quiet cordiality and made him sit down beside them in front of the open fire that, in the semi-darkness of the room, set reflections glowing here and there across the yellow of polished brass and the cool rich surface of statuettes.

“Marian will be down soon, I’ve no doubt,” said her father, with a low laugh at having said it so many times before.

Stacey considered him, feeling much the same appreciation he felt for Marian—only without the thrill and the sense of enchantment.

And, indeed, Mr. Latimer deserved appreciation. He was slim and straight, and his head was the head of a Greek youth grown old. Curly white hair, straight nose, short upper lip,—nothing was wrong. His profile, at which Stacey gazed now, was clear and perfect, like Marian’s. Until three years ago Mr. Latimer had lived, with his wife and daughter, his books, his pictures, and his Chinese vases, in Italy; and certainly a Florentine villa seemed the properer setting. For the life of him Stacey could not understand why the Latimers should have returned to live in America, and of all places in America should have chosen Vernon, Illinois, even if it was Mr. Latimer’s birthplace. But Stacey was devoutly grateful that they had done so. He rather thought it was due to Mrs. Latimer, and he was glad to think so, since it gave him something to like her for.

Mrs. Latimer, in fact, worried Stacey a little, because he could not make her out. She, too, was handsome in a way, but she seemed to Stacey not to be in the picture, but aloof, dispassionately commenting on everything and every one, including himself, her daughter, her husband, and her husband’s Chinese vases. Stacey recognized honorably that this was probably only his fancy; for Mrs. Latimer never passed such comment aloud. She was habitually quiet, letting others talk; but she was certainly not stupid. Sometimes she would laugh suddenly and spontaneously when neither Stacey nor Mr. Latimer had seen anything amusing until her laughter caught them up, and sent them back to look again, and made them laugh too, always appreciatively.

“You’re grave to-night, Stacey,” said Mr. Latimer, turning his eyes to the young man’s face. “I suppose it’s this catastrophic war. Of course it’s to your credit that you’re capable of feeling it intensely; the fact reveals a precious un-American gift of imagination. But you’re wrong, all the same, to let the thought of the war weigh you down, you know. I’m increasingly convinced that each man has a world of his own and that this is the only world in which he can profitably live. I’m more convinced of it than ever now when I see painters and philosophers and musicians dropping their arts and engaging in violent, quite futile polemics on something outside their own worlds. A painter’s ideas on, say, the correct method of building a sewer are without value; so also are his ideas on war. He wastes his own time and that of others in expressing them. To each man his own world. To you building noble houses. To me collecting vases. Also we have properly an outlet for our emotion there. We have no outlet for emotion concerning the war. That’s harmful.”

Stacey had listened to the melodious flow of Mr. Latimer’s words with a faint unaccustomed irritation. He could see no flaw in the argument; logically Mr. Latimer was right. Yet, even if uselessly and wastefully, how could one help abandoning cool logic while the terrible waves of the war flooded in from every side? Just as that afternoon it had occurred to Stacey that success in business entailed an over-simplified view of life, so now it occurred to him that success in living entailed too neat a perfection. Actually the two results were not so very far apart. How odd! “Of course,” he added to himself, “he does not know that I have found an outlet for my emotion about the war.” But Stacey was not going to tell Mr. Latimer of this. He was going to tell Marian—if she would only come.

“It’s the ‘tour d’ivoire’ theory, sir,” he said, after a brief pause. “I dare say—”

But fingers brushed his hair and forehead, and his words ceased abruptly, while his heart gave a bound, and a slow thrill crept over him.

“Marian!” he cried.

But she was gone already and smiling at him mischievously from the arm of her father’s chair.

“I wonder,” Stacey said appealingly to Mrs. Latimer, “if you’d think me very abrupt in asking Marian to go up to the library with me. There’s something I want to talk over with her.”

Mrs. Latimer looked at the young man steadily, for the first time since his entrance. “No,” she said quietly, “do go.”

“I wonder,” said Marian gaily, “whether Marian is going to have anything to say about it.” But then, before the earnestness of Stacey’s expression, she ceased smiling and led him away.

Upstairs in the library she made him sit down in an easy chair and perched herself on an ottoman at his feet. She was admirably quick in responding to moods and she looked up at Stacey now with a tender gravity. He longed to stretch out his hand and touch her and draw her to him. But he knew that if he did so she would slip away from him to become all motion and fluidity again; so he merely sat and gazed at her fair curly hair, her eyes, her small mouth, and the delicate contour of her cheeks, thinking her like a Tanagra come to life.

“Marian dearest,” he said at last, “I’ve made up my mind about something—all alone, without asking you first, because if I’d asked you I’d have made it up wrong, no matter what you said. Marian, I’m going to the war.”

For just an instant the girl continued to gaze up at him, clearly not taking it in. Then her face flamed with eagerness.

“Oh, Stacey!” she cried, her eyes shining. “Oh, Stacey!”

But Stacey’s heart had all at once grown intolerably heavy with pain.

It is true that the very next instant Marian’s mouth drooped and she cried: “Oh, Stacey!” again in a different lower tone, and suddenly was in the young man’s arms and kissing him tenderly.

But, though Stacey was made dizzy with love, the pain endured. As long as he lived, he felt, he would remember that Marian’s first thought had been that he was going to be a hero; that he was going away from her into that horrid mess across the Atlantic, perhaps to be killed, only her second thought. This perception did not develop into criticism of Marian. Stacey was incapable of criticizing Marian. She was perfect. It was simply a wound—the first the war inflicted on him.

And also he felt dimly that since this morning all the fine clarity of his life had given place to confusion. His reaction to everything was hopelessly different. Throughout the evening Marian was prodigal of her grace, showered him with impulsive expressions of affection; yet, instead of sheer loving delight in her, such things stirred him to physical and mental desire, desire to possess this girl, body and soul. He flushed with shame. He had never felt this way before; or, if he had, he had not known it.

When at last it was so late that Stacey simply must not stay longer, Marian accompanied him downstairs, her hand in his. They looked into the drawing-room so that he might say good night to her parents, but the room was empty. Only a single shaded lamp had been left burning, and the fire on the hearth was flickering to ashes.

“I suppose papa’s at the club, and probably mamma has gone to bed,” said the girl, in the hushed tone that dark and emptiness induce.

“It’s awfully late,” he replied remorsefully.

She drew away from him to a distant dim corner, from which her face shone palely like a white flower in the night.

“Stacey,” she called softly, “come here!”

He obeyed, and all at once her slender arms were about his neck, pulling his head down, her fragrant hair was against his face, and her lips were pressed to his in such a willing kiss as she had never given him before. It left him trembling from head to foot. His heart beat madly. He could not speak.

But she could. “Now will you forget me, Stacey?” she murmured, with a low mischievous laugh.

Whatever she felt, it was certainly not what he was feeling. Well, that was right. He was glad of that—he supposed.

In the hall, however, she did not laugh. “Oh, Stacey,” she said, “come every day until you go! Come twice a day, three times! Come all day long!”

He kissed her fingers and stumbled dizzily out of the door.

When he reached the sidewalk a woman, muffled in a heavy fur coat, came toward him. “Mrs. Latimer!” he cried out in surprise, when she was close to him.

“I wanted to speak to you alone, Stacey,” she said. “So when I heard you leave the library I slipped on a coat and came out here.”

Stacey was genuinely touched, but also apprehensive—as one always is toward the mother of one’s fiancÉe—for fear that she was going to reprove him for something in his behavior to her daughter.

“Oh, but I’ve kept you a long time!” he stammered. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Stacey,” said Mrs. Latimer, looking gravely into the young man’s face, “you’re going to the war.”

“How did you know?” he exclaimed.

“I’ve seen it coming for many days,” she replied, “and to-night I was sure. You came to tell Marian.”

“Yes. How very, very good of you to want to speak to me and to wait for me here outside!”

She shook her head. “Come! Let’s walk up and down for a few minutes,” she said, and took his arm.

“Mrs. Latimer,” he begged, “you’re not going to tell me that I’m wrong? It’s been so hard for me to decide. You’re not going to tell me that I owe it to Marian to stay? It would be so sweet to stay!”

“Oh, no! Oh, no! no! no!” she replied. Then, after a pause: “How did Marian take it?”

“She was a dear!” he said loyally, but with a sinking feeling at his heart. “She has never been so kind to me before.”

“Was she glad you were going to be a hero?”

He started. This was uncanny. But he felt resentment, too. “Marian is so fine,” he said a little stiffly. “She sees things in flashes. She looks through the—the ugly facts to the glory beneath them. I’m not a hero—I know it only too well; but Marian sees only the collective recognition that I and a thousand others are giving of—of—the existence of something deeper than facts—of an idea.” He shook his head, unable to express his thought, and uneasily conscious that he was defending Marian—not very well, either.

“My dear boy,” Mrs. Latimer returned, “please believe that I am not blaming Marian for anything. I recognize as clearly as you do all her fineness. Marian lives in a palace. And when you live properly in a palace, perfectly at home there, you have palatial thoughts. But, you see, I don’t live in a palace. I’m of coarser clay. You don’t know me very well, Stacey, but I know you, I think. And I felt I must see you for a few minutes.”

He was moved by her kindness and murmured his gratitude.

“But I don’t really know,” she went on, “what it is I want to say. Nothing, perhaps. Certainly nothing that is clear. The world is a welter of confusion.”

He nodded assent, feeling closely and comfortingly drawn to this middle-aged woman who had always seemed aloof to him before.

Mrs. Latimer did not speak again for several minutes. “How do I know what war does?” she continued at last. “How should you know, for that matter? But, Stacey, if it changes you in odd deep ways that you can’t conceive of now—nor I, either—don’t, please don’t, suffer too much and blame yourself for the changes. There’ll be so much suffering you’ll have to go through anyway that it would be a pity to add to it unnecessarily.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think I understand, Mrs. Latimer.”

“How in the world should you?” she replied. “I don’t, either. I only feel something rather vaguely. But there is one thing clear, my dear boy. I want you to be certain that you have a sincere affectionate friend in me, who will always try her puzzled best to understand you sympathetically. And that was really all I had to say.”

“Oh, thank you!” he cried, genuinely touched.

“Now take me home,” she added. “We must go carefully around the house and I’ll let myself in at the back door so that Marian won’t know I’ve been out.” She laughed. “Think of your having an assignation with your mother-in-law and having to conceal it from her daughter!”

But when Stacey had seen Mrs. Latimer safely enter the back door of her house, and was walking home along the deserted streets, though he felt warmed and comforted by her unexpected intelligent friendship, he also felt an uneasy sense of disloyalty, as though he and she had become accomplices in a secret league against Marian.