The picture of the night was in three panels,—that of the morning in one.

According to Nora, Mr. Esterbrook had suffered a shock, that indefinite something that may mean so many things. He had been in the library and had evidently fallen in crossing the room. Miss Felton had found him and had sent for two or three doctors, who were now with him; she was terribly upset, and so the woman babbled on until the house was reached.

Three coupÉs were lined up before the door, and the house was lighted from top to bottom. Poppea judged that the physicians were still in consultation.

The cook opened the door, explaining that Caleb was wanted upstairs, and that Nora was to go at once to Miss Felton.

On her way to her room Poppea passed through the sitting room and tapped at Miss Emmy's door, which stood ajar, but there was no answer; the room was empty, so she continued on her way.

Turning up the light, she looked about the pretty bedroom, her eyes lingering on each article it contained. Was it possible that only four hours had elapsed since she had left it? Yes, the little Dresden clock was tinkling twelve.

Flowers from a concert of two days before filled the jars on the mantel-shelf, then she remembered that all the tributes of that evening had been forgotten and left behind. Philip had brought her a wicker basket of daffodils such as later in the season starred the bank garden below the parapet at home. She hoped that he would not know and be hurt; as for the rest, what did it matter?

The night was warm, yet she closed the window, and crouching before the hearth, lit the symmetrical pile of small logs put there chiefly for ornament. Stripping off her gay attire and dropping it in a heap on the floor of the dressing closet, she threw a wrapper about her and again kneeled before the fire, as though its upward motion was a spell against the loneliness of the room. As she looked at the curling flames, her eyes dilated, and a terror that was an absolute pain swept over her: a strain of music had penetrated the fog that enveloped her brain; it was the song of the Knight—the Knight of the Grail.

"Oh, God, what have I done?" she whispered to the fire, "promised to marry Bradish Winslow, when I have vowed that I would never marry until that is no longer a mystery. Promised to marry him, not for love, but to trample on those who were trampling on me. It is true that when I am with him there is something that makes me wish to stay, but when I am alone, I want to keep away. There is no one to speak to, no one to ask; if only I could feel Daddy's hand upon my hair to-night. Ah, little mother, won't you ask God to help me in some way that I can feel and understand? To-morrow it will be too late!"

Clasping the locket to her breast, she crouched lower and lower until her face almost touched the fire guard. The wood snapped and a live coal fell upon the carpet. Crushing it out with her slipper, her eye fell upon something white beside the hearthstone. Picking it up she saw that it was Hugh's weekly letter that she had read and laid by the clock and that a draught had wafted to her feet. Holding it between her palms, she gradually grew calm, and as she looked at it the only recourse opened before her: she must write to Winslow so that he would receive the letter when he awoke.

Going to the secretary with its litter of invitations and complimentary social notes, she swept them to the floor with a gesture half contempt and half full of the regret of renunciation. Then having cleared the shelf, she began to write, slowly as a child pens its copy, giving each letter a separate stroke and weighing its value. She had need of this care, for before she had finished, the sheet was wet with tears.

Quarter of one, tittered the silly little clock. Poppea knew that no mail would be taken from the pillar at the street corner before six, but it might be her only chance to get out unobserved. The lights in the extension, where Mr. Esterbrook's rooms were located, were burning brightly; now was her chance. Slipping on a long ulster, she went down without meeting any one, threw off the night latch on the door, and closed it behind her. Two of the cabs had gone, and the driver of the one remaining slept upon the box.

It was but a step to the corner and back, the only live thing that she encountered being a long-bodied cat which seemed to separate itself from the shadow of one pair of steps only to be swallowed by another shadow farther on. Gaining her room once more, she put out the light and threw herself upon the bed without undressing.

In the room beyond, which was Miss Felton's, Miss Emmy was pacing to and fro. The consulting physicians had gone and their own family stand-by, Dr. Markam, was now coming from Mr. Esterbrook's quarters ushered by Caleb, Miss Felton remaining behind.

"Tell me the best and worst," said Miss Emmy, following the doctor down to the sitting room.

Dr. Markam looked at her keenly as if to gauge the quality of her emotion, then said tersely, "The best is that he may be quickly released by another stroke, the worst that he may live for years partly or wholly helpless and with clouded mental faculties. Go up and try to persuade Miss Elizabeth that it is unnecessary for her to remain. She is not used to illness or misery. Caleb will stay to-night, and the nurse that I shall send will be here by daylight," and after drinking the glass of wine that Caleb offered him instinctively, he went out, thinking to himself how little his old friend Esterbrook had, at the end of life, to show for the elaborate trouble of his living.

Thus bidden, Miss Emmy crept softly into the outer room of Mr. Esterbrook's suite, then, not finding Elizabeth, she went through the dressing closet to the inner room where a night lamp burned with the pale rays of moonlight.

On the bed in the corner she could see the outline of Mr. Esterbrook's form, still as though he no longer breathed. A second look revealed a stranger object. Kneeling by the bed in the attitude of passionate despair, her face buried in the quilt, her hands clasping the rigid one, was Miss Elizabeth.

Miss Emmy could not at once take in the details; her natural supposition was that her sister was ill or had fainted and slipped from the near-by arm-chair. Going to her she touched her on the shoulder, and in a low tone gave the doctor's message about the nurse and the sufficiency of Caleb for the night.

Suddenly Miss Felton turned, but without moving from her kneeling posture, and her sister started back, amazed at the entire change in her face. Haggard and worn, furrowed under the eyes and pinched at the nostrils, it was a woman of seventy-five, not sixty-four, that looked up, while the carefully braided hair, always so exact a coronal to the unbending head, was loosened in a gray, dishevelled mass. Again Miss Emmy tried to explain the doctor's words. Pulling herself to her feet with difficulty, Miss Felton clutched her sister by one shoulder, almost screaming in her ear.

"I will not go! I will not have a nurse! Caleb will stay with us; Caleb will be sufficient." Then as Miss Emmy did not move or seem to understand, she shook her arm.

"I am going to care for him now, because I love him, have always loved him, and you, or else your shadow, have always stood between. If he could have stepped out of it for a month, a week, he would have known. I thought once that you too loved him and you were my frail little sister, my charge, and so I repulsed him, suppressed my nature, and kept back. But you, you called him 'Willy' and played kitten and knitting ball with him until you tired, until it was too late. Now he will never know; but if he lives, and I can make him comfortable, he may perhaps realize the comfort, and through it that I love him. Now go—and leave us together at last! And if the people talk, tell them that Miss Felton does not care!"

Shaken, nay, almost shattered, Miss Emmy dragged herself from the room, clinging from chair to table like a child who creeps. Of all the possibilities of life, this that had happened seemed the most impossible. Elizabeth, the emotionless woman of perfect balance and judgment! Like a condemned criminal but half conscious of what he is accused, she groped her way along the hall. She must speak to some one, it seemed, or lose her mind.

Poppea had sent a message by Nora that she must be called if needed. Surely her need was great, so she opened the girl's door and listened before entering.

"I am not asleep," said Poppea from the white draped bed, and raising herself on her elbow, she lit the night lamp on the bed stand.

"Is he—is Mr. Esterbrook any worse? Is he very sick?"

"Yes, but being sick is not the worst," and Miss Emmy told Poppea briefly what her sister now seemed to glory in, willing that the whole world should know.

Clasping her arms about the fragile creature, scarcely more than a bundle of ribbon and lace, Poppea held her close, crying, "Poor Aunty, dear Aunt Emmy, you are not blamable, neither did you know."

After a few minutes the girl's human sympathy relaxed the tension, and freeing herself, Miss Emmy sat down by the bed.

"What is it, child? You are not yourself to-night, any more than I am. Were you not well received? Something has happened. What is it?"

Poppea shivered as she tried to frame a sentence that should be truthful and yet not reveal, then she said:—

"One day you said that I could not keep on for long singing as I had this winter 'because they will not let you.' Every one was very kind, but afterward—it chanced to come to me that the women on whom I counted 'will not let me' continue, as you said, so I am going home, again—to-morrow."

"That is not all, Poppea."

"That is all that I shall ever say," she answered with the fixed intent that always astonished those who for the first time realized her capacity for firmness.

"You do not need; I understand. I, too, am going home to the Hill, Poppea, because they will not let me stay."

"Oh, Aunty! Aunty!" she cried, "lie down beside me. I'm afraid, afraid of I don't know what, as I used to be when I slept in the little hooded cradle and Daddy came and put Mack in beside me and sat and held my hand."

Then peace fell gently on Miss Emmy because this young creature needed her.

Bradish Winslow left the Hooper's as soon after Poppea as he might without having the two departures coupled. Not for the first time in his life had he been repelled and enraged by the absolute lack of social sincerity on the part of the group of women who, in their day, were the cohesive element of society. Yet he never realized the responsibility in the matter of men of his stamp who condone nearly everything in a woman so long as she is modish and amusing. Lighting a cigar and leaving his top-coat open that he might feel the vigor of the night air, Winslow strolled slowly from Gramercy Park westward to the Loiterers' Club. Contrary to his usual gregarious habits, he made his way to one of the least brilliantly lighted retiring-rooms, and ordering some club soda and Scotch, a kind of whiskey that was considered a marked eccentricity in the era of Rye and Bourbon, stretched himself on a sofa, hands behind head, and gave himself up wholly to steadying his nerves.

An hour later he entered his own bachelor home, a substantial and conservative house in one of the wide streets that cross lower Fifth Avenue, a little north of Washington Square. The house was neither his birthplace nor the home of his childhood, but a legacy from a great-aunt, the last of the Bradish name. It was twelve years since a woman other than a caretaker or housemaid had lived in it; the first six it had remained virtually closed, while during the second half of the period, Winslow had developed the two first floors as suited the fancy of a man who entertained elegantly and conservatively, not choosing to establish a carousing Bohemia at too close range. If he had some or any of the vices of his class and position, he chose to pursue them away from his normal surroundings and at his own pace, where at any moment he might either outdistance them or drop behind without clamor.

Hence the house, as he entered it with his latch-key, had the subdued and grave air of any family residence in the same quarter. Turning out the lights in the lower rooms, he went to his personal suite on the second floor, lighted some gas-jets in the three rooms, rang for his man, and gave directions that he was to be wakened at half-past nine, breakfast in his room, and would under no consideration see any one before eleven o'clock. Then as the valet, but half awake, stumbled out, steadying himself by the portiÈres as he drew them to, Winslow gave a sigh of relief, and flinging himself into a chair before the hearth, as Poppea had done, he stirred the embers and kindled a fire that was not for warmth but like summoning a sympathetic yet reticent friend.

Winslow's feeling during the two hours since he had, as he considered, rushed to Poppea's rescue was dual; he congratulated himself not a little that for once in his life he had let himself be swayed by a generous impulse and his own emotion. Also his curiosity was very expectant as to the stir that would be made by the announcement of his engagement to Poppea on the morrow and the consternation it would for various reasons cause. He could see the pallor come to the unprotected portion of his cousin Hortense's cheeks as she wondered if "Brad" would ever tell that baby-faced girl how desperately she had worked to enmesh him, and how deliberately and cleverly he had forced her to show a trumpless hand. Then there were others, and the thoughts of them were here and there tinged with regret. He had never been unscrupulous in his pleasures; he had simply lived life to the full as he saw it. As he was in a somewhat exalted and generous mood, why do things by halves?

Going to a large mahogany secretary in the corner, he unlocked a deep drawer that was hidden by a panel and took therefrom several bundles of letters and some photographs; to these he added a picture from a silver frame on the mantle, of a very charming dark woman, well-groomed and poised, but with an air of not belonging exactly to his world. He held the bundle to his chest a moment as he stood looking into the fire; opening a pit in the middle of the molten coals, he cast the letters into it, not even glancing at the superscriptions, and only separating them sufficiently to be sure that they would ignite, sat and watched them until they were consumed.

From their ashes came a more natural mood. The house was at best rather gloomy; how Poppea's coming would brighten it, and her voice echo up and down those great rooms when she laughed; for he meant that she should laugh and have no time for tears. The idea was very soothing; he wondered why he had never seriously contemplated marrying before.

Jove! but she was beautiful and unusual; he would have a miniature painted of her in the green muslin with the poppies in her hair. Then he would take her everywhere that people might envy him her loveliness.

No, he would not! Formulating the thought brought a sharp revulsion. He would take her abroad, away from the carpers and fawners alike, where they two should be alone; for, after all contributing motives, what he had said was true, he had loved Poppea at first sight, and as far as the better side of his nature was concerned, he loved her finally.

What a splendid ring he would buy her to-morrow, no to-day! a ruby held in a setting of poppy leaves to form the flower. Ah! but she already held the spell of oblivion over him. He liked to feel this. Of course they would be married in a month; there was no reason for delay. The old man Gilbert? That was easily fixed: an annuity as a parting gift from Poppea and some tears, of course. It would be strange if she did not show some feeling, and besides, ingratitude was one of the traits he most detested in a woman.

So when Winslow at last settled himself in his bed, severe almost as a hospital cot, that stood in an alcove curtained from the luxurious room to which it formed a sharp contrast, there was a smile on his lips, and closing his eyes, he brought his finger-tips together, touched them fervently, and flung a message into the dark. He well knew how to play the lover, but it was only this night that he realized what it was to be entirely in love with some one other than himself.

The morning, like the night, was mild, but with the chilly undercurrent suggestive of sudden rain that divides April from May. The city, always early to awake in some quarter, now wore its widespread spring alertness, and the venders of plants in a cheerful burst of bloom added their cries to the street sounds.

Looking toward the square for a sign of color in the tree-tops, Poppea saw a jet of water rising from the fountain that filled the air with spray through which some birds were flitting. That the fountain was being set in order showed that the same spring impulse was moving the city wheels that sent all the little hillside springs rushing madly to swell the tide of Moosatuck. How she hungered and thirsted for a sight of it!

At half-past nine, precisely to the moment, the time that he had been directed, Winslow's valet came in, closed the windows, drew the curtains across the alcove, and after arranging the toilet articles in the ample bathroom, which was also used as a dressing-closet, went out until the bell should say that his master wished his breakfast. For accustomed to luxury as Winslow was in externals, his primitive tastes were direct and simple and he detested the fuss and servility of bodily service.

When in half an hour's time, clad in a comfortable bath-gown, he lounged into the library and rang for his coffee, picking up the letters that were neatly piled on the desk, so quickly does the mind of man travel to direct issues, that he was already considering the coming change of breakfasting in one of the smaller rooms below stairs, and picturing Poppea, gowned in some filmy draperies, flitting in like one of the streaks of morning sunshine. As he glanced carelessly at the writing upon the various envelopes that he might receive a clew as to which, if any, were worth the trouble of opening on this particular morning, Poppea's characters fixed his eye. It is true that he had previously received but two or three brief notes from her, acknowledging flowers or an invitation, but the writing, full of decision and so opposite from the girl's almost poetic appearance, was of the type that is called characteristic and became fixed in the memory.

So she was moved to write immediately upon getting home, was his first thought; but instead of hastily tearing the note open, he turned it slowly and reflectively in one hand as he poured himself a cup of coffee, then drank it deliberately, and seated himself, before releasing the letter with a careful stroke of the paper-knife.

He had vainly tried the whimsical experiment of judging of the contents by the sense of touch. Everything about his connection with Poppea had been unusual, hence its added piquancy. Why should he not expect that its completion should be on the same plane? He almost dreaded the finding of a gushing and honeyed first love-letter of the newly engaged girl in her early twenties.

He read the letter through, then rubbed his eyes, turned the paper to the light, and read anew. In it was expressed gratitude to him coupled with self-reproach for allowing a bitter hurt to be revenged even in thought by the idea of marriage. There was a request for forgiveness, not for the retracting of a promise so much as for the sense of injury that had made the promise possible, and then the final statement that she would never take another's name until she had one of her own to yield. Piteous as was her agony of mind expressed, not so much in the words used as in their haste and almost incoherence, Winslow felt forcibly that the nature that lay beneath had its depths and measures of pride that his world could not fathom, because it was based upon a frankness, a fundamental noblesse oblige, that could neither be denied or argued away. A princess Poppea was, though wandering from her kingdom.

One thing was evident through it all. She had been doubtless attracted to him in a way, but she did not love him; her suffering, therefore, was complicated, but not keenly direct, as more and more every moment he felt his disappointment to be. Also the wind was taken out of any fanciful balloon of his self-sacrifice, and it fell collapsed.

No, she did not love him,—"By God, but she shall!" he cried, bringing his clenched hand down on the stand with a fervor that dashed the delicate porcelain cup and saucer to the floor in shivering fragments. "Life's been getting a sleepy nuisance these two years. What better to wake me up than to track her origin and find her name? Time, money, and grip I've got, if luck will only come in and take the fourth hand!

"What a conquest to remove her fantastic fortress and make her desire my love at one bound!"

This was the second time that a man had made this wish; a different man pitched in a different key.

This man, like the other, having made a resolution, went on his accustomed way, which in Winslow's case was to dress with unusual care, a dark red carnation, the prevailing flower for morning wear, in his buttonhole. His business affairs calling him down town but three days a week, he took a leisurely morning walk to the club, where he read the papers and listened to other news that would never appear in print. On some one's remarking upon the success that Miss Gilbert had achieved the previous night, that she had left early on account of Mr. Esterbrook's sudden illness before all the deserved congratulations had reached her, and that those who knew her best said that not less than two men of wealth were ready to back her for the study necessary to an operatic career, Winslow merely looked up, apparently only mildly interested, and observed in neutral tones:—

"Her voice has operatic capacity doubtless, but I should judge she lacked the physique. By the way, what is the news of poor old Esterbrook? A nice outlook ahead of us who grow old as bachelor dandies, I must say."

But what he thought was, "The cats have begun to weave their cradle for Poppea's undoing, and when they find she has gone, they will lay it to their strategy. Damn them!"